The Rosenberg Ring Revealed Industrial-Scale Conventional and Nuclear Espionage

UsThdein Rosenberg Ring Revealed

✣ Steven T. Usdin

Recent leaks from the archives of the former Soviet Committee on State Security (KGB) have ªnally made it possible to assemble a nearly complete picture of Julius Rosenberg’s espionage career.1 The new information not only illuminates aspects of his career that were previously unknown; it also removes the shadows that have cloaked many of Rosenberg’s activities and those of his comrades. The image that emerges is that of a Soviet agent who was far more involved in nuclear espionage than federal prosecutors or his most persistent critics over the last 60 years could have known. The reassessment is made possible by notes that Alexander Vassiliev took in the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) archive, including many verbatim transcriptions of cables to and from Rosenberg’s Soviet handlers in New York. Although Vassiliev, a former KGB ofªcer, had permission from the Russian government to make the notes, they were not supposed to be released and are available today only because Vassiliev decided to make them public in deªance of the Russian government. The notes’ provenance and reliability are detailed by John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr in this issue of the Journal of Cold War Studies. The accuracy and reliability of the notes are conªrmed by a thorough review and a comparison with information about the Rosenberg ring from the Venona decrypts of World War II KGB cables released by the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA), from declassiªed Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) ªles, and from other sources.2

1. The KGB, formed in 1954 from the Ministry of State Security, was known by several other names in the period covered here. For the sake of clarity and consistency, the familiar acronym KGB is used throughout this article. The same applies to the Soviet military intelligence agency (GRU), which was known by several other names prior to 1949. The familiar acronym GRU is used throughout. 2. Alexander Vassiliev was not given access to Rosenberg’s KGB ªle. Rather, the information about the Rosenberg ring in the Vassiliev notebooks was gleaned from other ªles that mentioned its activities.

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The newly available Soviet intelligence records show that the espionage disclosed during the trial of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg and Morton Sobell, and later in declassiªed FBI and NSA documents, only hinted at the size of Rosenberg’s network and the scope of its activities. Combined with the rich variety of sources from both sides of the former Iron Curtain that have become available to scholars over the last two decades, Vassiliev’s notes conªrm the Rosenberg ring’s status as one of the most effective industrial espionage operations in history. The Rosenbergs’ prosecution was based on espionage committed by Ethel’s brother, David Greenglass, in a machine shop near the New Mexico sites where the ªrst nuclear bombs were designed and tested. The Vassiliev documents show that Rosenberg also directed the penetration of a massive, secret facility in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, where the U.S. military spent billions of dollars to develop technologies for enriching uranium used in the ªrst nuclear weapons and to experiment with plutonium production technology. In addition to revealing the true scope of the Rosenberg ring, the KGB ªles help answer some of the most compelling questions about the Rosenberg case: why a group of young Americans was willing to risk everything to spy for a foreign government; the extent of Ethel’s participation in its espionage activities; and why the Rosenbergs chose stoic deaths when a few words of confession could have saved their lives. Members of the Rosenberg ring were devout Communists who strongly identiªed with an idealized view of a utopian Soviet state. One of Julius’s So- viet intelligence handlers, Aleksandr Feklisov, has written that Julius imagined he was a Soviet partisan, living and ªghting behind enemy lines. A February 1947 note in a KGB ªle that Vassiliev recorded supports that assessment, asserting that Rosenberg “is deªnitely a person who is completely devoted to us” and “views working with us as the main purpose of his life.”3 Ethel was fully aware of and supported her husband’s espionage activities. She helped recruit her brother and sister-in-law, David and Ruth Greenglass, as spies. According to a decrypted KGB cable, Ethel knew that at least two of her husband’s friends were members of the ring. Vassiliev’s notes from KGB ªles also indicate that Ethel met two of Julius’s Soviet case ofªcers. Soviet of- ªcials not only trusted Ethel to maintain silence about her husband’s and brother’s spying; they also considered assigning her more active tasks, includ-

See Original Notes from KGB Archives by Alexander Vassiliev (1993–1996), translation by Steven Shabad (1993–1996), reviewed and edited by Alexander Vassiliev and John Earl Haynes (2007). Final page numbers in all subsequent citations from Vassiliev’s notebooks refer to the 2007 English translation. 3. “Report by ‘Callistratus,’” 27 February 1947, KGB File 40129, v. 4., p. 353, in Alexander Vassiliev, White Notebook #1, p. 120.

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ing working as a courier. The arrest of David Greenglass and the subsequent unraveling of the network rendered those plans irrelevant. Ethel may not have typed her brother’s notes, as Ruth Greenglass testiªed in court, but Ethel almost certainly provided logistical assistance during the years that Julius pho- tographed thousands of pages of classiªed documents and met with his Amer- ican agents and Soviet case ofªcers in the couple’s cramped apartment. The Rosenbergs’ silence in the face of the death penalty can be explained in part by the fact that they were protecting a number of agents whom they correctly believed the FBI had not identiªed, men and women who had trusted Julius with their lives and who might be able to continue their clandestine work after his death. Admitting their espionage would have meant not only betraying the ideology that had been the organizing principle for their entire adult lives, but also imperiling comrades who might otherwise live unmolested—and perhaps continue their work for the USSR. The Rosen- bergs must have understood that any confession, no matter how limited, could have started unraveling threads that connected them to scores of Soviet agents, exposing comrades to grave danger and harming the Soviet cause. Jul- ius’s jailhouse conversations with an FBI informant indicate that he expected his network to continue its work regardless of his fate.4 The new KGB ªles disclose the names of individuals the Rosenbergs died to protect. As Julius and Ethel undoubtedly hoped, several of these agents en- joyed prosperous lives undisturbed by punishment for—or even the need to acknowledge—their espionage. Some continued to serve the Communist cause, although thereis no evidence in Vassiliev’s notebooks that the KGB was foolhardy enough to deploy any of Rosenberg’s recruits for espionage after Rosenberg’s arrest. The most startling revelation about Rosenberg in the new KGB documents is that he recruited Russell Alton McNutt, the son and brother of prominent members of the Communist Party of the United States (CPUSA), to inªltrate Oak Ridge. The FBI and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) brieºy investigated McNutt, an engineer, in 1950–1951 as part of a broad review of individuals associated with Rosenberg, but they failed to uncover any evidence of his espionage. The FBI knew from decryptions of Soviet intelligence cables accomplished under the Venona program that an American whom the Russians referred to by the cover names “Fogel” and “Pers” (or “Persian”) had compro- mised Oak Ridge security.5 The U.S. intelligence community—and, follow-

4. “Jerome Eugene Tartakow’s report to the FBI on conversations with Julius Rosenberg,” 18 January 1951, in FBI File # NY 65–15348, Section 1B–285–1B634. FBI ªle obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request and available in the FBI FOIA Reading Room, Washington, DC. 5. Venona, New York to Moscow, 11 February 1944.

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ing the 1995 public release of the Venona decryptions, academic experts— expended enormous energy attempting to identify “Fogel”/“Pers.” The KGB and its foreign intelligence successor, the SVR fueled this activity by launching an elaborate disinformation campaign involving the identity of “Fogel”/ “Pers.” Although, in retrospect, evidence from the Venona decrypts and McNutt’s biographical details match perfectly, prior to the release of the Vassi- liev notebooks apparently no one in the West had thought to compare clues about “Fogel”/“Pers” with information known about McNutt. Beyond disclosing the identity of McNutt and other previously uniden- tiªed Rosenberg recruits, the new KGB documents make it possible to assemble a detailed chronology of the ring’s espionage operations and to use the timeline to place its activities into historical context. Sympathizers have argued that Julius Rosenberg and the men he recruited were principled anti- fascists, that their violations of U.S. secrecy regulations were little more than enthusiastic, perhaps misguided, manifestations of support for the wartime goals shared by the United States, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union. For example, Rosenberg’s codefendant Sobell, in a letter to The New York Times on 12 September 2008 explaining his long-belated confession, asserted that he had “helped an ally (admittedly illegally) during World War II.”6 In fact, Sobell’s memoir and the memories of others who were members of the espionage ring, as well as the timeline of the ring’s covert activities, indicate that Rosenberg and his comrades were motivated by loyalty to Com- munism, the country that embodied it, and the ruthless men who ruled the USSR. They were eager to help the Soviet Union before it was allied with the United States, during World War II, and after victory over the Germans and Japanese, when war between the two remaining superpowers was a real possibility. Rosenberg started reaching out to Soviet intelligence before the German invasion of the Soviet Union, at a time when Iosif Stalin and Adolf Hitler were collaborating to subjugate the residents of central Europe and the Baltic states.7 The Japanese surrender in September 1945 ended the Second World War and with it any justiªcation for viewing the United States and Soviet Union as allies in a common ªght against fascism. The new Soviet intelligence documents demonstrate that Rosenberg’s attempts to pierce the wall of secrecy around America’s nuclear and conventional arsenals continued long after Tokyo’s surrender and strongly suggest that they would have continued

6. Morton Sobell, “Letter to the Editor: The Rosenberg Case,” The New York Times, 19 September 2008, p. A18. 7. Robert Meeropol, An Execution in the Family (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2003), p. 224.

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into the Korean War if U.S. and British counterintelligence investigations had not shut them down. Testifying at Rosenberg’s trial, Max Elitcher, an engineer who said that Rosenberg had been trying for years to recruit him as a spy, reported that Rosenberg was still at it in 1948. “The war was over and he [Rosenberg] was saying that even though the war was over there was a contin- uing need for new military information for Russia.”8 The focus of the Rosenberg trial on World War II nuclear espionage has obscured the larger threat the ring posed to American security. In addition to planning the theft of weapons technology that could have been deployed against U.S. soldiers in Korea, Rosenberg at the time of his arrest was target- ing some of the world’s leading nuclear physicists, including two who were later awarded Nobel prizes, Hans Bethe and Richard Feynman. Without the FBI’s knowledge, the bureau was, in effect, engaged in a race with the KGB to determine the fates of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. The newly released excerpts of KGB ªles show that if the FBI’s investigation had been even slightly slower, the Rosenbergs would probably have made it to Prague, Moscow, or some other safe haven. David Greenglass was arrested on 15 June 1950, the day that Julius had told the KGB that the Greenglass and Rosenberg families would be ready to depart for Mexico.9 The arrest slammed shut the window on Rosenberg’s escape and made his detention and trial inevitable. The trial and execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were deªning mo- ments for a generation. They continue to resonate in an era when Americans are worried that ideologically motivated fanatics are conspiring with foreign enemies to undermine their security and that in investigating such plots the government may be undermining civil liberties. Over the last ªve decades the Rosenberg case has been invoked as evidence for and against claims that Communist espionage conspiracies threatened national security, to support allegations of American society’s anti-Semitism, and as a measure of the FBI’s vigilance and of the justice system’s integrity. The case has been woven into narratives about gender bias and featured prominently in baroque conspiracy theories. The Rosenbergs have been etched as romantic ªgures by Picasso and eu- logized and celebrated in novels and plays. As they have been assigned surro- gate roles in a dazzling range of social and political conºicts, attention has

8. United States of America vs. Julius Rosenberg, Ethel Rosenberg, Anatoli A. Yakovlev, also known as “John,” David Greenglass, and Morton Sobell, Stenographer’s Minutes, p. 328, http://www.law.umkc .edu/faculty/projects/FTrials/Rosenberg/RosenbergTrial.pdf. 9. NY to Center, 3 June 1950, KGB File 86192, v. 1, p. 121, in Alexander Vassiliev, Yellow Notebook #1, p. 49.

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drifted away from the facts of their case. Many of the attempts to use the Rosenbergs’ fate to bolster arguments about contemporary issues are based on inaccurate notions of their actions and motives. It is ironic that so little attention has been focused on the technology the Rosenberg ring gave to the USSR, the counterintelligence failures that allowed individuals who had been identiªed as security risks to have access to national security secrets, and the mechanics of the network’s activities. No other major espionage case can be so thoroughly documented from the per- spectives of the individual spies, intelligence ofªcers who handled them, counterintelligence ofªcers who detected their actions, and government of- ªcials who prosecuted and sentenced them. The recent release of grand jury testimony that led to the indictment of the Rosenbergs and Sobell, and Sobell’s astounding decision to confess after stonewalling for more than 50 years, are only the latest entries in a public record that includes tens of thousands of pages of primary-source documents. Despite the abundance of evidence, the shadows of a generation’s battles over the ideology of Communism, anti-Communism, and even anti-anti-Communism have obscured the truth, leading to wildly differing interpretations of the scope, scale, and signiªcance of the Rosenberg ring’s espionage. Barring a decision by the Russian government to open all of its World War II–era intelligence ªles for public inspection—an extraordinarily im- probable event—Vassiliev’s notes are the last deªnitive source of information historians of the case are likely to receive. The release of the notes, coming a few months after the U.S. government unsealed the Rosenberg grand jury transcripts, provides the ªnal piece in the jigsaw puzzle composed of evidence collected on both sides of the Iron Curtain.

Origins

The nucleus of the Rosenberg spy ring was forged in the mid-1930s in the politically superheated alcoves of the City College of New York (CCNY) cafeteria, where the sons of Russian Jewish emigrants gathered ªve days a week for passionate discussions about the causes and solutions to the world’s political and economic problems. Communist claims that the country was run by and for the beneªt of a small group of greedy plutocrats who grew fat on the blood and sweat of workers were quite credible to the young men who commuted to the CCNY campus. Most had grown up in the tenements and streets of the Lower East Side and Brooklyn, in a world that has disappeared, where almost everyone’s parents had ºed Tsarist rule, Yiddish was spoken more ºuently

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than English, and poverty was ubiquitous, preventing children from even re- alizing that they were poor. The Great Depression, which had eradicated whatever economic security their parents had attained, combined with widespread anti-Semitism to leave Rosenberg and the friends he made at CCNY cut off from and largely unaware of the larger American culture. At the same time, they avidly consumed anodyne propaganda about the Soviet workers’ paradise. The contrast between the harsh realities they experienced every day and the fantastic prospect of utopian Communism created a unique political environment. As at other campuses, CCNY’s students divided themselves into two opposed political factions, but instead of Democratic and Republican the camps were Stalinist and Trotskyist. Faculty and students published several under- ground Communist newspapers with the Soviet hammer-and-sickle symbol on the mastheads. More than half of Rosenberg’s electrical engineering class considered themselves Communists. Rosenberg was a central ªgure in the CCNY cafeteria’s Alcove 2, called The Kremlin in the CCNY yearbook because it was the focal point for the college’s Stalinists. Alcove 1 was occupied by a smaller group of Leon Trotsky’s devotees. During Rosenberg’s ªnal two years at CCNY, his adversaries in Al- cove 1 included Irving Kristol, Daniel Bell, Irving Howe, and Nathan Glazer. These four men later repudiated the Marxism of their youth, but they all credited the intensity of the CCNY political scene for launching their careers as public intellectuals. Rosenberg organized and led the Steinmetz Club, a branch of the Young Communist League that drew its membership from the CCNY electrical engineering class. The rise of fascism in Europe and Japan, the Spanish Civil War, and the oppression of blacks at home were frequent topics of discussion at Steinmetz Club meetings. This was the high-water mark for Communism in the United States, a time when the Popular Front strategy that emphasized the “Americanism” of the CPUSA made it seem as if the party could become a legitimate part of the political system. Although the CPUSA in the late 1930s adopted the outward forms of democratic institutions and co-opted the images of Abraham Lincoln and Thomas Jefferson, the party was, as always, ªrmly under the control of the So- viet Communist Party. All pretense of independence—and for most Ameri- cans, any claim to moral standing—disappeared in August 1939 with the an- nouncement of the pact between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany. Just as Stalin’s collusion with Hitler redrew the map of Europe, it also redeªned Communism for a generation of Americans. Thousands left the CPUSA or quietly let their memberships lapse, leaving a core of only the most

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dedicated activists. A degree of fanaticism was required for Jews like Rosen- berg and his comrades to remain in a party that advocated accommodation with fascists and that protested assistance to governments struggling against the Third Reich. The CPUSA’s unstinting defense of the Nazi-Soviet Pact wiped away any illusions the public had about the possibility that Communists could be integrated into the American political system. New Deal Democrats who had ac- corded special status to far-left totalitarianism abandoned that position. The change in attitudes was reºected in the prosecution of CPUSA head Earl Browder for traveling to the USSR on a false passport, his stiff four-year sentence, and efforts to purge Communists from government positions that gave them access to sensitive information. Jobs were scarce during the Depression, and widespread anti-Semitism at engineering companies further limited employment options for young men with Jewish-sounding names.10 The government, especially the military, was one of the few exceptions. The armed forces, acutely aware of the need to prepare for the coming conºict and of the importance of emerging technologies like radar, accepted all qualiªed applicants. Despite Rosenberg’s general distaste for the U.S. government and adamant support for the CPUSA’s opposition to bolstering American military capabilities, in the fall of 1940 he moved to New Jersey to work for the Army Signal Corps. Many of his Stein- metz Club comrades also took civilian jobs at branches of the U.S. armed forces. Rosenberg’s weak engineering skills had landed him a low-level job as an inspector, ensuring that factories met the Army’s minimum quality requirements, a task he performed indifferently.11 The job put him in an excellent position to obtain valuable information. Inspectors had to understand the entire production cycle, from component manufacturing to assembly of the ªnal product, and they were encouraged to study manufacturing processes for related products. Communism was not a hobby or casual activity for Rosenberg and his comrades; it was their deepest passion. The disconnect between the party’s opposition to U.S. military preparedness and their defense work was a heavy

10. Edward H. Flannery, The Anguish of the Jews: Twenty-Three Centuries of Antisemitism, 3rd ed. (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 2004), p. 261. Nobel laureate Martin Perl noted in his autobiography: “We put aside my becoming a doctor, dentist, lawyer, or accountant in favor of my becoming an engineer. This was an unusual choice for a Jewish boy in the early 1940’s because there was still plenty of antisemitism in engineering companies.” Martin Perl, “Good Schools, Books, a Love of Mechanics, and You Must Earn a Living,” in Gosta Ekspong, ed., Nobel Lectures in Physics, 1991–1995 (Singa- pore: World Scientiªc Publishing Co, 1997), p. 163. See also Morton Sobell, On Doing Time (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1974), p. 33. 11. FBI NY 100-37158 reports on another inspector’s agitation about JR’s failure to detect and report shoddy manufacturing.

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burden.12 Rosenberg’s solution to the dilemma, stealing U.S. military technology and giving it to the Soviet Union, must have had a special appeal to romantic ideologues. Espionage allowed them to reconcile their jobs and beliefs, and the considerable risk reafªrmed their dedication to the Soviet Union and allowed them to feel they were contributing directly to its survival. It is not known when Rosenberg ªrst decided to spy for the Soviet Union. He may have started thinking about it in the summer of 1939, when he and two future members of his espionage ring, Nathan Sussman and Mi- chael Sidorovich, were working for Williams Aeronautical Corporation. Its owner, Paul Williams, was a Spanish Civil War veteran with ties to the Soviet government, including its intelligence agencies. The KGB dropped Williams from its rolls in 1942 because Rosenberg had informed a KGB contact about indiscreet comments Williams had made about his covert connections to the Soviet Union.13 By the spring of 1941, Rosenberg had started contacting Spanish War veterans and other Communists who he hoped might be able to put him in touch with Soviet intelligence ofªcers.14 The timing—while Stalin and Hitler were still collaborating in the carving-up of Poland and Soviet troops had occupied large swaths of territory from the Baltic to the Bukovina—indicates that helping the Soviet Union, rather than ªghting fascism, was Rosenberg’s primary goal. Several sources have reported that Rosenberg started looking for a connection to Soviet intelligence in 1941, but prior to release of the Vassiliev notebooks, there was no evidence to indicate exactly when he succeeded. The new KGB documents show that Rosenberg’s espionage career began in earnest in the winter of 1941. A 1945 KGB memorandum chronicling American operations notes the following:

Julius Rozenberg [sic]. B[orn] in 1918 in NY. A Jew. Married (Ethel). 2 year-old child. Both are fellow countrymen [CPUSA members]. He is on a special register [i.e., a list of secret CPUSA members]. He is an electrical engineer by train- ing. He works as an assistant workshop chief at the “Zenith” company, which manufactures radio devices for the army signal corps. He was recruited to work with us through “Sound” [Jacob Golos] in late ’41.15

12. Sobell, On Doing Time, p. 39. 13. See “Letter C—NY,” 25 June 1942, KGB File 35112, v. 1., p. 169, in Vassiliev, Black Notebook, p. 107; and Michael Sidorovich’s testimony to the Rosenberg grand jury, 1 Sept. 1950, in National Ar- chives and Records Administration (NARA), available on-line at http://media.nara.gov/northeast/ nyc/rosenbergcaseªles-sidorovich-michael-pg9716to9724.pdf. 14. Max Elitcher and Ruth Greenglass both testiªed at the Rosenberg trial that Julius Rosenberg told them he had started trying to contact Soviet intelligence around 1941. 15. “Agent network as of 1 February 1945,” KGB File 40594, v. 7, p. 15, in Vassiliev, Black Notebook, p. 119.

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Another KGB memorandum transcribed by Vassiliev reveals that Bernard Schuster (cover name “Echo”) introduced Rosenberg to Golos. Golos and Schuster were members of the CPUSA’s Control Committee, a small group responsible for imposing party discipline and rooting out and expelling individuals who were not sufªciently subservient to Moscow’s policies. Schuster took over CPUSA liaison with the KGB during Browder’s jail term. Vassiliev’s notes and KGB cables decrypted under the Venona program mention that after Rosenberg began spying Schuster maintained monthly contact with him to collect CPUSA dues and ensure that his relationship with the Soviet Union was running smoothly. Golos was invaluable to the KGB in the 1930s, playing a part in many of its most secret activities in the United States. In the early 1940s, however, the “Center,” KGB headquarters, decided to professionalize its U.S. operations and to ease out freelancers like Golos who were not under Moscow’s direct control and did not operate by its strict rules. Golos’s handling of Rosenberg exempliªed the need, from the KGB’s perspective, for a more disciplined approach. Rather than set up elaborate, and tedious, communications procedures, Golos simply gave Rosenberg a telephone number and instructed him to go to a payphone late at night, inform the woman who answered “this is Julius,” and tell her he had information to pass on to his Soviet intelligence contact. Rosenberg later learned that the phone rang in the apartment of Eliz- abeth Bentley, Golos’s lover, conªdante, and assistant. Vassiliev’s notes indicate that Rosenberg had already devoted considerable thought and energy to espionage when he met Golos. Golos, a KGB memorandum noted, “got this group, consisting of three young fellow countryman engineers working in war production, from ‘Echo.’” This indicates that Ros- enberg had already accomplished one of the most difªcult and delicate tasks in the art of intelligence: He had convinced two Americans to risk everything by stealing secrets for a foreign government. From the start Rosenberg was a recruiter and leader.16 The Vassiliev notebooks reveal that Rosenberg’s initial recruits were close friends from the Steinmetz Club, Joel Barr and Sidorovich. The next recruit was Sussman. Barr’s name is not a surprise. The FBI identiªed him as a likely Soviet spy even before it homed in on Rosenberg. Nearly every account of the Rosenberg ring features a discussion of Barr’s spying and his ºight to the USSR. Barr was a brilliant engineer with an ebullient spirit and a love for clas-

16. “To Cde. V. N. Merkulov, USSR People’s Commissar of State Security, State Security Commissar, First Grade Memorandum (on the station’s work in the country),” KGB File 35112, Vol. 1, p. 407, in Vassiliev, White Notebook #1, p. 8.

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sical music that rivaled his passion for Communism. When he started spying for the Soviet Union, he was working at the Signal Corps on one of the Allies’ most critical military technologies, airborne microwave radar sets to detect submarines. Sussman’s name is unknown to the public, is far less familiar to scholars of the Rosenberg case, and prior to release of Vassiliev’s notes had not been deªnitively linked to espionage. The FBI interviewed Sussman extensively in the early 1950s, considered him a friendly source, and cleared him of involve- ment with espionage.17 Sussman, a childhood friend of Rosenberg’s, was working as an inspector for the Navy in the winter of 1941. His position gave him access to detailed manufacturing speciªcations for naval weapons. In April 1942, Sussman got an engineering job at Western Electric that allowed him to obtain information about sensitive technologies, especially radar and analog computers. The decision by these three young men to take matters into their own hands by giving the USSR sensitive military technology at a time when the United States was at war reºects a stunning level of arrogance. Not only did they arrogate to themselves the right to override military and civilian leaders’ decisions about what technology should be provided to the Soviet Union, they also ignored or disregarded the enormous security threats inherent in their actions. Barr, Rosenberg and their colleagues had no way to verify that Golos was actually working for the USSR—he could have been a Nazi posing as a Soviet ofªcial. Even if Golos was sending their information on to Moscow and not Berlin, Rosenberg and his comrades were in no position to be conªdent of the security of the chain of communication. Especially during the ªrst months of the Rosenberg ring’s collaboration with the KGB, when the Nazis were rapidly advancing through Soviet territory, couriers or ªles with sensitive intelligence documents could easily have been captured. If classiªed information about U.S. military technology had fallen into German hands, the Nazis might have exploited it to develop enhanced weapons for use against U.S. and Soviet troops, and they certainly would have developed countermeasures. The documents Barr and Sussman provided on airborne radar illustrate the threat. Secrecy was vital because if the Germans had learned that their enemies had created radar that worked on microwave frequencies—an accom- plishment Nazi scientists were conªdent was impossible—they would have

17. Sussman’s identity as a Soviet spy is not a complete surprise. I correctly speculated in 2005 that Sussman was the agent identiªed in the Venona decrypts as “Nil.” See Steven T. Usdin, Engineering Communism: How Two Americans Spied for Stalin and Founded the Soviet Silicon Valley (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005), p. 296.

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built detectors and jammers to render the radar useless. They had already deployed detectors on submarines for radar operating at other frequencies. Thus, from the start the Rosenberg ring’s operations put countless lives at risk.

Expanding Scope of Espionage

The scope of technology available to Rosenberg’s band of amateur spies dramatically increased in April 1942 with the addition of the ring’s most talented operative. Vassiliev’s notes indicate that William Mutterperl, who had later changed his name to Perl, was “recruited by ‘Sound’ on the basis of a lead by ‘Liberal’ [Julius Rosenberg] in Apr. ’42.”18 Like Rosenberg, Barr, and Sussman, Perl had been an active member of the Steinmetz Club at CCNY. In February 1939, when Rosenberg received a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from CCNY six months behind his classmates, Perl graduated with a master’s degree. He quickly obtained a position as an engineer at the Na- tional Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), the predecessor of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. At NACA, Perl worked on and had access to highly classiªed technology. Sidorovich, a boyhood friend of Rosenberg’s and also an engineer, was another early recruit. A message dated 8 August 1942 from the KGB’s New York ofªce to its Moscow headquarters and recorded in one of Vassiliev’s notebooks reported, “On the technology line ‘Sound’ is in contact with: ‘An- tenna’ [Julius Rosenberg], ‘Lens’ [Michael Sidorovich], ‘Gnome’ [Perl],” and with three agents who have not been identiªed beyond their cover names: “Builder,” “Arsen” and “Slave.”19 The three unidentiªed agents do not appear in subsequent entries in the Vassiliev notebooks. The New York KGB ofªce reported that all of the members of the Rosenberg ring had been told that they were working for the CPUSA but that Golos had noted that Rosenberg “senses that the materials are going to

18. “Letter NY—C,” 17 February 1945, KGB File 40594, v. 7, pp. 25, 26, in Vassiliev, Black Note- book, p. 120. 19. “C. to Maxim,” 28 August 1942, KGB File 35112, v. 6, p. 216–218, in Vassiliev, White Notebook #1, p. 37–39. Two of these unidentiªed members of the Rosenberg ring could be the other members of a Communist cell that met in the Rosenberg apartment: Morris Savitsky, a City College of New York (CCNY) and Steinmetz Club alumni who worked as an inspector in defense factories, and Henry Shoiket, a mechanical engineer at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Both were investigated in the 1950s by the FBI, which found no evidence of espionage. The cover names do not appear again in the Vassiliev notebooks, and subsequent descriptions of Rosenberg’s network do not mention them. An- other KGB ªle, “Station on XY in NY (proposal from C.),” KGB File 40159, v. 3, in Vassiliev, Black Notebook, p. 117, indicates that Rosenberg had four recruits when he started working with Golos: Barr, Sussman, Sidorovich, and an unidentiªed agent with the cover name “Blanco.”

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us.”20 In fact, there can be little doubt that he was aware that the information his network was stealing was going to Moscow. It is inconceivable that Rosenberg and his comrades would risk their livelihoods, perhaps their lives, with the intent of giving the CPUSA thousands of pages of technical documentation that no one in the party leadership could comprehend, much less use. Microwave radar blueprints were as useful in the CPUSA’s New York headquarters as snowshoes in a Calcutta monsoon. The August 1942 message highlighted the KGB’s great esteem for Rosen- berg by suggesting that he be elevated in stature to a full-time intelligence operative and made a “group leader.” Rosenberg had assembled a team with great potential, but Golos, who had no background in technology, was unable to exploit it fully. He could not evaluate the information the group provided and was far too busy running numerous other espionage networks and pro- viding counterintelligence to the CPUSA to provide close oversight or mentoring. Semen Semenov, a pioneer in Soviet technological espionage, began por- ing over Golos’s reports in the spring of 1942. Semenov, who had studied for two years and received a master’s degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology prior to being activated as an intelligence ofªcer, was one of the few Soviet KGB men who could pass as an American, and he developed close bonds with his agents. In a memorandum for the KGB ªles probably written in 1945, Semenov described how “in 1942 I learned that ‘Sound’ was working with a group of local fellow countrymen [CPUSA members] in the ªeld of technical intelligence. One could infer from the Center’s letters that nothing was known about this group, that fragmentary materials came in from them that were given low marks.”Semenov added: “While I had fragmentary data about this group, I still determined that it had great potential in the ªeld of radio engineering and aviation. Based on this, I proposed to the station chiefs that ‘Antenna’ and his group be turned over to me for communications, which was done despite some resistance from ‘Sound.’”21 This note correlates with Bentley’s recollection that she ªrst heard from “Julius” in the fall of 1942 but received only about a half-dozen calls. Rosenberg was the ªrst agent transferred from Golos to the control of professional KGB ofªcers. Semenov’s memorandum relates that he

found in “Antenna” a young party member who wanted to use the channels of the fraternal organization [CPUSA] to provide our country with tech. assistance. On matters of agent work, our requirements for the nature of the materi-

20. “NY to C,” 18 August 1942, KGB File 35112, v. 7, p. 98, in Vassiliev, White Notebook #1, p. 44. 21. “Report by Semen Semenov to P. Fitin on his work,” archival ªle 40129 v.3a, p. 205, in Vassiliev, White Notebook #1, p. 110.

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als to be obtained and elementary rules of covert work, he was completely green. The group worked along the lines of a party group and “Antenna” controlled it like a party organizer.

Semenov was referring to the fact that Rosenberg had established a CPUSA cell, Industrial Branch 16B, that included Barr, Sussman, and other longtime comrades. The group met at Rosenberg’s apartment, with Ethel acting as unofªcial secretary. Under Semenov’s guidance, Rosenberg and his friends were transformed from a loosely knit group teetering on the verge of detection that produced little valuable information into one of the most productive industrial espionage networks in history. The KGB ofªcer worked intensively to improve Rosenberg’s and his comrades’ conspiratorial skills. “Besides handling the group with regard to obtaining materials of interest to us, I started working regularly on educating “Antenna,” and through him the group members, to be agents working in the complex ªeld of tech. intelligence. As a result, “An- tenna,” ‘Tuk,’ [Sussman], “Scout” [Barr] and “Gnome” [Perl] undoubtedly matured, and obtained a number of highly valuable materials.” The Vassiliev notes reveal that Perl sometimes met directly with Semenov and provided “highly valuable designs in [the] aviation ªeld.” A KGB memorandum reporting on operations in the United States from January 1942 to August 1944 praises Semenov’s work with the Rosenberg ring. “The experiment of transferring ‘Antenna’’s group to direct communication with us proved completely worthwhile. The group began to work in a more organized and single-minded fashion and provided us with a number of valuable materials. “Antenna” was pleased with the switch to direct communications with us. He said that only after that did he start getting guidance and direction in his work.”22

McNutt

Julius Rosenberg’s recruitment of Russell McNutt exempliªes his resourceful- ness, autonomy, and value to Soviet intelligence. Correlating Vassiliev’s notes with declassiªed FBI and CIA ªles makes clear that the KGB gave Rosenberg a list of target ªrms, including the primary contractor responsible for design- ing and building the Oak Ridge complex, and that in response he recruited an agent and managed to get him a job at the company.

22. “To Cde. V. N. Merkulov, USSR People’s Commissar of State Security, State Security Commissar, First Grade Memorandum (on the station’s work in the country),” KGB File 35112, v. 1, p. 407, in Vassiliev, White Notebook #1, p. 8.

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On 27 July 1943, KGB headquarters sent a message to Vasilii Mikhailo- vich Zarubin, the most senior KGB ofªcer in the Unitede States, listing ªve targets associated with “Enormoz,” the KGB’s cover name for the Manhattan Project. One was the Kellogg company, which was building Oak Ridge. Without disclosing why Kellogg was of interest to the Soviet Union, Semenov suggested that Rosenberg persuade his friend to get a job at the company. A CIA report on the FBI’s investigation of McNutt states that in Novem- ber 1943 he resigned from the Chemical Construction Company after only one month on the job to take a position at Kellex, a Kellogg subsidiary that did design work for Oak Ridge.23 Two February 1944 KGB memoranda copied by Vassiliev note that McNutt made the job switch at Rosenberg’s sugges- tion and that Rosenberg did not initially reveal to McNutt that he was passing his information on to the KGB. “From the very start of his activities he distin- guished himself as a skilled, inventive agent.”24 Unlike most of the other spies Rosenberg recruited, McNutt had no connection to CCNY, nor were his parents immigrants from Eastern Europe. McNutt grew up in Kansas, a world away from the Brooklyn and Lower East Side tenements where most of the Rosenberg ring were raised. McNutt was a close friend of Browder’s and his recruitment as a Soviet spy was proof that the KGB did not shy away from procuring the services of individuals who were publicly known to be Communists. In August 1940, a former senior ofªcial in the Communist Party of Kan- sas testiªed to a congressional committee that Russell’s father, Ernest McNutt, had served with him on the executive committee of the party in Kansas and that Russell and his brother Waldo were party members. The KGB knew Rus- sell McNutt was on a list of Communists the committee had compiled and that the list was available to the FBI, but it had learned that the bureau had not established a vetting system to screen civilians working for defense contractors.25 Rosenberg met Russell at a Connecticut farm where Ernest and Waldo McNutt rented rooms to people seeking respite from the city (many of their guests were Communists). They also saw each other at meetings of the Feder- ation of Architects, Engineers, Chemists, and Technicians (FAECT), a Com- munist-dominated union that served as a KGB recruiting pool. Rosenberg

23. “Communist Matters—McNutt Russell Alton,” 15 September 1951 (released 11 October 1981), Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Ofªcial Dispatch, available on-line in CIA Freedom of Informa- tion Act (FOIA) Electronic Reading Room, http://www.foia.cia.gov/browse_docs.asp?doc_no ?0000014639. 24. “Report by Semen Semenov to P. Fitin on his work,” KGB File 40129, v. 3a, p. 205, in Vassiliev, White Notebook #1, pp. 110–111. 25. “NY—C,” 7 February 1944, KGB File 40594, v. 6, p. 240, in Vassiliev, Black Notebook, pp. 117– 118.

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and McNutt were both FAECT organizers, and Rosenberg lectured at FAECT-sponsored courses in New York.26 When McNutt started working at Kellex, security was so tight that he had no idea of the purpose of the massive cooling towers he was helping to design. Rosenberg also apparently did not know why the KGB wanted Kellogg inªltrated. A February 1944 message from the KGB’s New York station to Moscow noted: “So far, neither ‘F[ogel]’ nor ‘A[ntenna]’ has any idea what kind of factory ‘F[ogel]’ is helping to build.” New York also reported that “Fogel” had not been informed that he was working for the Russians, adding, he “has an idea of where his information goes, but this doesn’t bother him.” A message of 11 February 1944 partially decrypted under the Venona program gave only a tantalizing hint about “Fogel”‘s contribution to the Rus- sian bomb. “Herewith a report from ‘Fogel’ on Enormous...pounds for the neutralisation of weak...”27 A report in the KGB ªles dated 25 February 1944 that Vassiliev found ªlls in some of the blanks. “‘Fogel’ gave an assembly blueprint for one of the sections of the plant,” it states.28 The KGB, which had started trying to inªltrate the Manhattan Project in the winter of 1941, found it an extremely difªcult nut to crack and was delighted by Rosenberg’s success. In April 1944, the Center signaled its pleasure over his coup, telling its New York station chief, Stepan Zakharovich Apresyan, in a cable Vassiliev copied: “A bonus in the amount of $100 has been allotted out of the 2nd quarter estimate for ‘Antenna’s’ initiative in acquiring an agent to cultivate ‘Enormous’. We leave at your discretion the best form in which to give it to ‘Antenna’—cash sum, gift, etc.”29 Two months later, Moscow berated Apresyan for failing to recruit more agents with access to atomic secrets. “In the entire time that we have worked on ‘E[normous],’ in spite of our constant reminders to implement various measures and a number of absolutely concrete suggestions—where to work, what to work on—we have nothing besides ‘Fogel.’” His superiors told Apresyan that he could not take credit for Klaus Fuchs, a German refugee physicist who had high-level access to atomic secrets, because Fuchs had been recruited by the Soviet military intelligence agency (GRU) and transferred to

26. Herman C. Littlejohn, “Report on Harry Arthur Steingart,” 8 March 1954, in FBI File NY 100- 53305. 27. Venona, KGB New York to Moscow, 11 February 1944. 28. “Report on c/t NY—C,” 25 February 1944, KGB File 82702, v. 1, p. 150, in Vassiliev, Yellow Notebook #1, p. 11. 29. “Letter, C—To ‘May,’” 26 April 1944, KGB File 40159, v. 3, p. 361, in Vassiliev, Black Notebook, p. 112.

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the KGB. The message concluded sternly: “We cannot consent to such a situation in the future.” In June, the New York station reported that it had “dispatched [presumably by diplomatic pouch] two secret plans of the layout of the Enormous plant received from Fogel.”30 On 5 November 1944, Moscow again rebuked its U.S. ofªcers for failing to make more progress against its main target. The KGB had also become far less enthusiastic about McNutt, who it now referred to by the cover name “Persian.” “Since the agent cultivation of ‘En-s’ began, they have recruited only one agent, ‘Persian,’ who does not have major opportunities and is used without his knowledge.”31 The KGB decided to put responsibility for Enormous in more competent hands. On 10 November 1944, the Center sent a message to Leonid Kvasnikov, a KGB ofªcer who operated under diplomatic cover in the USSR’s New York consulate, informing him that a decision had been made “to allo- cate work on the XY line [scientiªc and technical intelligence] to an independent sector with you at its head as the station chief and a separate mone- tary fund.”32 In case he was in any doubt about the importance of intelligence about the atom bomb, the message stated that “Enormous” was of personal interest to KGB chief Lavrentii Beria. Feklisov, who by this time was handling Rosenberg, was instructed to report to Kvasnikov. The note also stressed the importance of Feklisov’s prized agent. Rosenberg “has become quite involved in our work; he knows our interests, handles a group of valuable agents, gave a number of leads,” Vassiliev’s notes on the ªle state, “Carelessness with him could have serious consequences for our entire work.”33 Another part of the November 1944 message settles a point of contention among scholars of Soviet espionage. Some historians have expressed skepti- cism over claims by Ethel Rosenberg’s sister-in-law, Ruth Greenglass, that Jul- ius had informed her in the winter of 1944 that David Greenglass was working on the atomic bomb and that Rosenberg had described the bomb in general terms. Speaking at a press conference following release of the Rosen- berg grand jury testimony in September 2008, Martin Sherwin, coauthor of a biography of Robert Oppenheimer, cited Ruth’s 1950 testimony about this incident as evidence of her lack of veracity. Even the basic principles of atomic weaponry were known only to a tiny group of men in Russia in 1944, Sher-

30. Venona, New York to Moscow, 16 June 1944. 31. “Plan of action on ‘Enormous,’ approved by Fitin,” 5 November 1944, KGB File 82702, v. 1, p. 223, in Vassiliev, Yellow Notebook #1, p. 15. 32. “C—To ‘May,’” 28 July 1944, KGB File 40159, v. 3, p. 442, in Vassiliev, Black Notebook, p. 113. 33. Ibid.

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win noted. He ridiculed the idea that the KGB would have briefed Rosenberg on the bomb. The Vassiliev notes, however, include an instruction from KGB headquarters to Kvasnikov to educate Rosenberg about the Manhattan Project. “In the interest of using ‘Liberal’ as effectively as possible on ‘E[normous],’ famil- iarize him with the main points of this problem.” The message also instructed Kvasnikov to get a ªrmer grip on McNutt by making him a witting KGB agent and separating him from Rosenberg. “‘Liberal’ should recruit ‘Persian’ and hand him to ‘Arno.’ ‘Persian’ should cover the ‘Kellogg’ and ‘Kellex’ companies.” “Arno” was the cover name for one of the KGB’s longest serving and most active agents, Harry Gold. There is no evidence that the instruction to connect McNutt to Gold was carried out. Although McNutt was formally recruited as a KGB agent, his activities illustrate the limitations and frustrations of relying on volunteer agents. In February 1945, McNutt, who was working on designs for the colossal structures that were being built at Oak Ridge—some of the biggest industrial buildings ever erected—received an offer to transfer to the secret town. The New York KGB station reported to Moscow with obvious regret that McNutt rejected the transfer in part because he did not know the nature of the pro- spective job, but also for personal reasons. McNutt did not want to leave his comfortable apartment in New York to live in rural Tennessee, where he would not be permitted to bring his wife and child. In addition, the move would interfere with one of the ardent Communist’s business ventures, a summer hotel in the New York area in which he had invested $20,000. The New York station reported that, at Oak Ridge, “he would be paid 80 dollars a week instead of 75; there would be no opportunities to make money on the side.” Upon receiving the message, a senior KGB ofªcer in Moscow asked the New York station if it could persuade McNutt to reconsider and take the job at Oak Ridge. The KGB offered to compensate him for any economic losses.34 Kvasnikov “was informed of our great interest in having ‘Persian’ move to Camp-1 [Oak Ridge], where we do not have any agents,” according to a KGB memorandum dated three days later.

We should arrange a meeting between “Persian,” “Liberal,” and “Callistratus” [Feklisov], in order to stress the signiªcance of this issue. First and foremost, we should appeal to “Persian”‘s sense of civic duty and explain to him that by moving to Camp-1, he would have an opportunity to be of great beneªt to our com-

34. “NY—C,” 5 February 1945, KGB File 82702, v. 1, p. 284, in Vassiliev, Yellow Notebook #1, p. 17.

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mon cause. As for the material aspect of this issue, he should be told not to let it worry him, because for the good of the cause he would be given additional pay- ments. As for his hotel business, he could hand it over to any of his relatives.35

McNutt resisted appeals to his civic duty. Anatolii Antonovich Yatskov, a senior KGB ofªcer, met with him in New York on 11 March 1945 but failed to convince the capitalistic Communist to move to Oak Ridge. The American cited his wife’s illness. Following that meeting, McNutt and Yatskov met every two weeks at least through mid-May. For much of that time he worked on mundane projects, “standard computations for water supply and ventilation,” but on May 8 “he gave a plan indicating equipment location in building K- 302 (the reference on a key plan), four pages of blueprints, and a supplement to the plan.” The message almost certainly refers to plans for the parts of the massive facilities where engineers were creating processes for enriching uranium using the gaseous diffusion process, a topic of great interest to Soviet physicists.36 It is extremely difªcult, and in most cases impossible, to determine what happened to speciªc bits of technical intelligence after they were transmitted to Moscow. One of McNutt’s reports seems to be an exception to this rule. So- viet nuclear archives released in the 1990s and subsequently reclassiªed include a reference to American intelligence that apparently corresponds to McNutt’s report of 8 May 1945. An undated memo from Isaak Konstantino- vich Kikoin, one of the few physicists permitted to view raw intelligence on the U.S. atomic bomb program, reported,

The materials dated 30.VII [30 July] are very interesting and important because they indicated that at least part of the plant is already functioning and operating. The text of those materials (3 pages) gives a description of a small chart showing the locations of plant buildings. The chart is pasted on a larger drawing also rep- resenting the locations of plant buildings. The description says that the small buildings are completely fenced off; an external description is given of what can be seen from the outside. That brief description is suggestive of what it could all be about. The textual and graphic materials (especially the latter one) are extremely important as they give some idea of the scale of the structures. Any ampliªcation of that material would be of extreme importance and of great help.37

35. “NY—C,” 5 February 1945, in Vassiliev, Yellow Notebook #1, p. 18. 36. “Aleksey’s ªrst meeting with Persian—11 March 1945,” KGB File 40129, v. 3a, p. 380, in Vassiliev, White Notebook #1, p. 116; and “C/t NY—C,” 11 May 1945, KGB File 82702, v. 1, p. 310, in Vassiliev, Yellow Notebook #1, p. 24. 37. Pavel Sudoplatov and Anatolii Sudoplativ, Special Tasks: The Memoirs of an Unwanted Witness, a Soviet Spymaster (Boston: Little, Brown, and Co., 1994), p. 473.

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Although Kikoin’s report appears to be based on McNutt’s espionage, the Soviet Union had another, possibly better, source at Oak Ridge. The KGB was almost certainly unaware of the fact that George Koval, a Russian émigré who years earlier had been sent by the GRU to the United States with instructions to integrate himself into American society, had penetrated Oak Ridge and other Manhattan Project facilities. While U.S. intelligence had known of Koval’s activities since he ºed to the USSR in the late 1940s, but only ºeeting references to his espionage had appeared publicly before July 2007, when the Russian military newspaper Krasnaya zvezda published a long article about him. A few months later, then-President Vladimir Putin awarded him posthu- mous honors.38

“Wasp” and “Bumblebee”

The KGB’s initial enthusiasm about McNutt dimmed considerably, and the urgency of its requests to recruit new agents with access to nuclear weapons secrets increased, when it discovered that McNutt had little opportunity to obtain valuable information and was unwilling to undergo personal sacriªces to improve his espionage potential. Just as Moscow was ratcheting up the pressure on its New York ofªce to recruit additional sources with access to nuclear secrets, Rosenberg came through with a second Enormous recruit. This time opportunity had knocked quite close to home: By a twist of fate, Ethel’s brother, David Greenglass, had been assigned by the Army to work at Los Alamos. The Vassiliev notes provide fascinating glimpses into Greenglass’s recruitment. They also show that he provided more information to the Soviet Union than was disclosed at the Rosenberg trial and that it was more important than has been previously understood. Apresyan, cover name “May,” informed Moscow in a 20 September 1944 message that its star agent, Rosenberg, was lining up David Greenglass as an Enormous source and that Greenglass’s wife, Ruth, would help the KGB break the tight security cordon the Army had thrown around Los Alamos:

“Liberal” has recommended Ruth Greenglass, his wife’s brother’s wife, for the role of caretaker of the safe-house apartment. Young Communist League mem-

38. An article forthcoming in the Journal of Cold War Studies by Robert S. Norris gives an in-depth look at Koval. The ceremony with Putin is covered in William J. Broad, “A Spy’s Path: Iowa to A- Bomb to Kremlin Honor,” The New York Times, 12 November 2007, p. A1, which mistakenly claims that this event marked the ªrst public disclosure of Koval’s secret work.

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ber since 1942, a machine operator for the electricians’ union. According to “L[iberal]”‘s description, an able and smart young woman. Her husband is Da- vid Greenglass, a mechanic, drafted into the army, is at a factory in Santa Fe. Fel- low countryman. “May” requests approval to bring both Greenglasses into the fold, with a view to sending her to live with David after she is recruited.39 Moscow gave the green light, and Julius recruited Ruth Greenglass in Novem- ber 1944. She was assigned the cover name “Wasp.” Her husband’s cover name was “Bumblebee,” later changed to “Caliber.”40 Vassiliev copieda5December 1944 report on “Wasp” that contradicts her 1950 testimony to a grand jury and at the Rosenberg/Sobell trial in which she claimed to have recoiled at the notion of spying when the Rosenbergs ªrst suggested it and only reluctantly agreed to communicate the request to her husband. The report was written by Rosenberg and used real names, as he was unaware of the KGB’s cover names:

The following is a record of the conversation held by Julius, Ethel and Ruth. First of all, Julius inquired of Ruth how she felt about the Soviet Union and how deep in general did her Communist convictions go, whereupon she replied without hesitation that to her Socialism was the only hope of the world and the Soviet Union commanded her deepest admiration. Julius then wanted to know whether or not she would be willing to help the Soviet Union. She replied very simply and sincerely that it would be a privilege; when Ethel mentioned David, she assured us that it was her judgment such was also David’s understanding. Julius then explained his connections with certain people interested in sup- plying the Soviet Union with urgently needed technical information it could not obtain through the regular channels and impressed upon her the tremendous importance of the project upon which David is now at work. Therefore she was to ask him the following kind of questions.

1) How many people were now employed there. 2) What part of the project was already in operation, if any; were they en- countering any difªculties and why; how were they resolving their problems. 3) How much of an area did the present set-up cover. 4) How many buildings were there and their layout; were they going to build any more. 5) How well guarded was the place.

39. “Encrypted cable NY to M,” 20 September 1944, KGB File 40129, v. 3a, p. 168, in Vassiliev, White Notebook #1, p. 108. 40. “Report from 8 January 1945,” KGB File 86192, v. 1, p. 21, in Vassiliev, Yellow Notebook #1, p. 39.

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Julius then instructed her under no circumstances to discuss any of these things inside a room or indeed anywhere except out-of-doors and under no circumstances to make any notes of any kind. She was simply to commit to memory as much as possible. Ethel here interposed to stress the need for the utmost care and caution in informing David of the work in which Julie was engaged and that for his own safety all other political discussion and activity on his part should be subdued. At this point we asked Ruth to repeat our instructions which she did satisfac- torily.41 David Greenglass readily accepted the offer to become a Soviet spy. The value of the information he sent to Moscow is of considerable interest because of the government’s contention in the Rosenberg/Sobell trial that Greenglass’s espionage signiªcantly accelerated the Soviet effort to build a nuclear bomb. At the end of the trial, explaining his decision to impose the death sentence, Judge Irving Kaufman declared that the Rosenbergs were guilty of “putting into the hands of the Russians the A-bomb years before our best scientists pre- dicted Russia would perfect the bomb.” Kaufman was referring to data obtained from Greenglass. In a report to KGB headquarters on 4 July 1945 excerpted in one of Vassiliev’s notebooks, Leonid Kvasnikov summarized information Greenglass had provided, including a “report on a scientiªc experimentation center for preparing a uranium bomb, with a general ºoor plan and sketches of individual buildings attached.” Kvasnikov characterized a 33-page document Green- glass wrote on “the preparation of a uranium bomb; calculations and information regarding a structural solution to the problem of a uranium bomb” and “information on an electro-magnetic method for obtaining the element uranium-235” as being “highly valuable.”42 Vassiliev’s notes indicate that Green- glass also gave the Soviet Union information on “the problem of obtaining uranium-235” and a 22-page description of the nuclear bomb.43 Rosenberg arranged an opportunity for a Soviet KGB ofªcer to debrief Greenglass on 19 October 1945, when the machinist had been granted leave to visit his family in New York. Greenglass described his working conditions at Los Alamos, explaining that he was a machinist in a workshop that provided parts to the scientists who were developing nuclear bombs and that he did not have access to the bomb itself. Greenglass speciªcally said that his

41. “‘L-l’’s report on ‘Wasp,’” 5 December 1944, KGB File 86192, v. 1, p. 16, in Vassiliev, Yellow Note- book #1, p. 54. 42. “Letter NY—C,” 19 October 1945, KGB File 40594, v. 7, pp. 250–251, in Vassiliev, Black Note- book, pp. 137–138. 43. “‘Caliber’’s materials,” KGB File 86192, v. 1, p. 45, in Vassiliev, Yellow Notebook #1, p. 40.

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workshop produced the detonator for the bomb, and he even provided the KGB with a physical sample of material used in the detonator.44 Vassiliev’s notes show that Greenglass gave more information about the nuclear bomb than the FBI was aware of and that the information was more valuable than the scraps reported during the Rosenbergs’ trial. The information was not, however, remotely as damaging as the secrets leaked by other Manhattan Project spies, such as Theodore Hall, who never faced any charges, or Fuchs, who was imprisoned but then freed in a Cold War spy swap. Soviet ofªcials had great hopes that David and Ruth Greenglass would mature into valuable agents. Feklisov, in a memorandum recounting his American tour of duty, informed his superiors that the couple “are young, smart, able and politically developed people who believe strongly in the cause of communism and are full of desire to do everything in their power to provide as much assistance to our country as possible. They are indisputably people who are devoted to us.”45

Industrial-Scale Conventional Espionage

As the evidence that Rosenberg was a spy has mounted over the decades, his defenders have shifted from asserting his absolute innocence to claiming that the information he and his recruits gave the Soviet Union was inconsequen- tial. For example, in the wake of Sobell’s confession in 2008 that he and Rosenberg had been Soviet spies, the Rosenbergs’ sons, Michael and Robert Meeropol, wrote in a newspaper commentary that there is “no clear proof to this day of the value of the military/industrial information” Julius Rosenberg transmitted to the USSR.46 Although Vassiliev’s notebooks provide startling new evidence about Rosenberg’s nuclear espionage, they also reinforce the conclusion that his and his comrades’ most valuable contributions to the Soviet Union were secret speciªcations for conventional weapons. The group stole detailed information about techniques for manufacturing some of the most advanced military technology developed by U.S. industry during World War II, a period when the USSR’s struggle for survival prevented its engineers from keeping pace

44. “Letter NY—C,” 19 October 1945, KGB File 40594, v. 7, p. 250, Vassiliev, Black Notebook, pp. 137–138. 45. “Report by ‘Callistratus’ on his trip to the United States,” 27 February 1947, KGB File 40129, v. 4, p. 377, in Vassiliev, White Notebook #1, p. 120. 46. Michael and Robert Meeropol, “The Essential Lessons of the Rosenberg Case,” Los Angeles Times, 5 October 2008, p. 15.

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with progress among its allies and enemies in computing, electronics, aviation, and a host of other technologies. David Greenglass told the FBI that

Rosenberg told me that the Russians had a very small and a very poor electronics industry (this is, of course, another name for the radar industry) and that it was of the utmost importance that information of an electronics nature be obtained and gotten to him. Things like electronics valves (vacuum tubes), capacitors, transformers and various other electronic and radio components were some of the things he was interested in.

Greenglass added, “Rosenberg also told me that he gave all of the tube manu- als he could get his hands on to Russia, some of which were classiªed ‘top secret.’”47 Rosenberg’s primary contribution to the Soviet cause was recruiting and handling agents, but he also pulled off at least one extraordinary feat of technological theft. He provided manufacturing speciªcations for the proximity fuze, a technology that dramatically leveled the playing ªeld in the competi- tion between modern aircraft and land-based defensive artillery. Rosenberg subsequently managed to smuggle a working version of the device out of a closely guarded factory and deliver it to Feklisov as a Christmas present in the winter of 1943.48 The proximity fuze was precisely the kind of technology U.S. policymakers declined to give the Soviet Union during World War II. The American military was so concerned about the possibility that the secret of the proximity fuze would fall into German or Japanese hands, allowing its enemies to develop jamming technology rendering the new technology useless, that its deployment was initially limited to ship-based anti-aircraft batteries because unexploded shells that fell into the sea could not be retrieved. The proximity fuze was not released for use on land until early 1945, just in time for a version adjusted to explode artillery shells 30 feet over the ground— thereby killing far more soldiers than a shell that exploded on impact—to play a decisive role in the Battle of the Bulge. In addition to the security threat posed by the possibility that information about the proximity fuze would leak to its enemies, the U.S. military had another reason to withhold the technology from its Soviet ally. The USSR could not have developed the massive infrastructure required to mass-produce proximity fuzes in time to deploy them during World War II. Rosenberg almost certainly realized that he was giving the Red Army a weapon that it

47. “October 1953 interrogation of David Greenglass,” in FBI NY 65-14348, Sec. 1b-285-1b634. 48. Alexander Feklisov, The Man behind the Rosenbergs (New York: Enigma Books, 2001), p. 124; and “Report by ‘Callistratus’ on his trip to the US,” 27 February 1947, KGB File 34194, p. 381, in Vassiliev, White Notebook #1, p. 122.

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could use only after it had defeated Germany. Barr and Sobell later remem- bered that during this period they had assumed that armed conºict between Moscow and Washington was inevitable, and Rosenberg likely had similar views. Stealing the proximity fuze would have been enough to put Rosenberg in the top tier of Americans who spied for the USSR. But he did much more, creating a complex, sophisticated operation that stole industrial secrets on an industrial scale. Rosenberg recruited agents who gave the USSR blueprints for advanced airborne and land-based radar equipment; early jet engines and airframe technology; details of America’s initial forays into missile defense; and scores of other technologies that shaped Cold War battleªelds from the anti- aircraft batteries deployed around Sverdlovsk that shot down a CIA U-2 spy plane on May Day 1960 to the skies over Vietnam (see table 1). Much of the technology that members of the Rosenberg ring transferred to the Soviet Union was complementary. For example, the proximity fuze was one horse in a troika that revolutionized anti-aircraft defenses. The other ele- ments were the SCR-584 radar, the single-most important radar set deployed during World War II, and the M9 predictor, an analog computer that pre- dicted an airplane’s path based on input from the SCR-584. The Rosenberg ring gave the Soviet Union 600 pages of speciªcations for the SCR-584 and M9, prompting the KGB to authorize a $1,000 bonus—which its American agents refused to accept.49 Even as Rosenberg was covertly setting aside bits and pieces of proximity fuzes to assemble his 1943 Christmas present to the Red Army, he expanded his operation’s capabilities by recruiting Sobell.50 Sobell was a real red-diaper baby. As an infant he had toddled around the apartment while his mother chaired CPUSA meetings, and as a young man he had worked at a Commu- nist summer camp that an uncle ran. Sobell knew Rosenberg at CCNY, where he became an active member of the Steinmetz Club. When recruited by Rosenberg, Sobell was an engineer working on radar in General Electric’s Marine and Aeronautics Division in Schenectady, New York. He was an expert on servomechanisms, electromechanical devices that use feedback to control a device, such as an anti-aircraft weapon. Sobell also had access to “practically all of the General Electric Company’s work on ªre control radar,” a former supervisor told the FBI in 1950. Vassiliev’s notes reveal that Sobell wanted to leave his job because he was convinced that General

49. Feklisov, The Man behind the Rosenbergs, p. 135. 50. “Letter NY—C,” 17 February 1945, KGB File 40594, v. 7, p. 23, in Vassiliev, Black Notebook, p. 120.

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Table 1. Known Non-Nuclear Technology Transfer

Technology Description AN/CPQ-1 bomb The proximity fuze rivaled the nuclear bomb in terms of impact on fuze the war as well as security around its development, manufacture, and deployment; it transformed the war in the Paciªc by dramatically increasing kill rates for ship-based anti-aircraft weapons, and General George Patton credited it with playing a major role in win- ning the Battle of the Bulge. SCR-584 radar The SCR-584 was the single-most-important radar deployed dur- and M9 predictor ing World War II. Combined with the M9 “predictor” analog computer, it neutralized the V-1 “buzz bomb” and played a pivotal role in air defenses in several war theaters. AN/APS-2 radar Airborne microwave search set for patrol bombers, used for locating and homing in on surface craft and for general navigation. The AN/APS-2 was used with AN/APO-5 for blind bombing. All sets had provisions for identiªcation friend or foe (IFF). AN/APS-12 radar Fire-control radar. AN-CRT–4 The most sophisticated of a series of sonobuoys developed during sonobuoy World War II to detect German submarines. The AN-CRT-4, a broadband passive sonobuoy with a rotating directional receiving hydrophone, was developed too late to use in the war, but it was the basis for subsequent sonobuoys that were extensively deployed during the Cold War to detect Soviet submarines. AN/APS-1 radar Airborne microwave search-and-detection radar. AN/APQ-7 (Eagle) A ground-breaking airborne radar, it was perfected too late in the radar war for use in Europe and was not given to the Soviet Union under lend-lease. It could pick out a single large building in a city and had a range of 260 kilometers (160 miles). The AN/APQ-7 was in operation against Japan with B-29 Superfortresses by June 1945, allowing Allied bombers to attack in darkness and in cloudy weather. Westinghouse 19A The ªrst American-designed jet engine. jet engine (military designation: J30) P-80 Shooting Star The ªrst American jet aircraft manufactured in large quantities, the (12,000-page blue- P-80 was widely used in the Korean War. print)

The Vassiliev notebooks, Venona decrypts, and memoirs of Alexandr Feklisov, one of Julius Rosenberg’s KGB handlers, identify some of the hundreds of sensitive weapons and technologies the Rosenberg ring transferred to the Soviet Union

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Electric would not promote a Jew. But he stayed in place for ªve years at his Soviet handler’s request.51 Sobell left General Electric and went to work at Reeves Instrument Com- pany in June 1948. He had access to, and presumably gave the KGB, speci- ªcations for radar and tracking systems that were used for guidance of night- bombing and for detection of Soviet-made aircraft during the Korean War. Sobell continued spying until at least January 1950. After Sobell, the next addition to the ring was Alfred Sarant. Barr befriended Sarant while they both worked for the Signal Corps and formally recruited him in mid-1944, when they were working together at Western Electric. By 1944, the Rosenberg ring was running like a well-oiled machine. The ªles to which Vassiliev was granted access, like the cables decrypted under the Venona program, were reserved for urgent matters. At most they contain hints about the contents of the tens of thousands of frames of microªlm Rosenberg’s engineers copied during and after World War II. The KGB used its success in obtaining high-quality intelligence about U.S. aviation and radar technology, which came in large part from Rosenberg and spies he had recruited, as a benchmark for its nuclear intelligence. A March 1945 message from the New York KGB ofªce to Moscow indirectly points out the comprehensive nature of the KGB’s intelligence about U.S. “Air” (aviation) and radar technology. The message acknowledged “problems in our work” connected with penetrating Enormous and stated: “We need at least as much quality material as we have on ‘Air’ or radars, and this we should strive for as a minimum.”52 Success put tremendous stress on the organizational structure Rosenberg and the KGB had created to manage his network. Rosenberg found that keeping up with his day job while personally photographing the output from eight agents in his apartment and handling all communications with Soviet intelligence stretched him to the breaking point. To provide Rosenberg some relief, Feklisov got Moscow to agree in 1944 to spread the work around. Barr started to meet directly with Feklisov to turn over microªlm he and Sarant made of documents they took home from Western Electric. Rosenberg continued to copy documents he obtained, as well as those provided by Perl, Sussman, and Sobell, although a Venona document suggests that the KGB was unhappy about his lack of skill as a photographer. Feklisov provides an idea of the scale of the ring’s operation in his memoir, reporting that Barr and Sarant copied upward of 9,000 pages of secret

51. “Morton Sobell, Espionage—R,” 9 August 1950, in FBI AL-65-1672; and “Letter NY—C,” 17 February 1945, KGB File 40594, v. 7, p. 23, in Vassiliev, Black Notebook, p. 120. 52. “Letter NY—C,” 19 March 1945, KGB File 40594, v. 7, p. 102, in Vassiliev, Black Notebook, p. 136.

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documents relating to more than 100 weapons programs. In 1945 alone, Perl provided the 12,000-page blueprint of the Lockheed P-80 Shooting Star and an additional 5,000 pages of documents on aeronautical technology. Sobell’s 1945 production ran to 2,000 pages.53 The Rosenberg ring’s information must have been especially useful to So- viet engineers who were ordered to create a radar industry immediately after World War II. The United States had provided the USSR with a large quantity of radar sets under the lend-lease program, but it held back the most advanced technology and never gave manufacturing instructions. The Vassiliev notes and Venona decryptions describe some of the speciªc radar sets the Rosenberg ring gave the USSR. A February 1947 internal KGB memorandum provides a retrospective assessment of the Rosenberg ring. The memorandum lists six types of radar the network supplied to the USSR in 1945, singling out the proximity fuze for special praise. “We should take special note of the materials given us by the agent on the AN/CPQ-1 [proximity] bomb fuze and a model of the fuze itself, which were given the highest marks by the Council on Radar,” a Soviet organization charged with bringing Soviet radar capabilities up to world standards.54 The KGB had three sources working on radar at Western Electric: Barr, Sussman, and Sarant. The trio car- pooled to work, so they had every opportunity to exchange information and coordinate their activities. One can reasonably assume that each individual in the Rosenberg ring provided details on every technology he was able to lay his hands on. In inter- views with their supervisors and colleagues, FBI agents determined that Barr, Sarant, and Sussman at Western Electric and Sobell at General Electric had access to detailed manufacturing and operating speciªcations for almost every radar model produced in the United States during the war and that they had complete freedom to remove classiªed documents from their ofªces (see table 2). In fact, they were encouraged to do so by managers who expected them to work at home. Only a handful of citations in the Vassiliev notebooks and Venona decryptions refer to speciªc technology Perl provided, but all indications are that he passed along some of the crown jewels of American aeronautical R&D. Several reports in Venona and the notebooks stress that Perl supplied “exceptional” information. The scale of his contribution can be inferred from the fact that the KGB moved Michael and Anne Sidorovich to Cleveland to work exclusively on copying Perl’s material and transporting microªlm to

53. Feklisov, The Man behind the Rosenbergs, p. 144. 54. “Report by ‘Callistratus’ on his trip to the US,” 27 February 1947, KGB File 34194, p. 381, in Vassiliev, White Notebook #1, p. 122.

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Table 2. Inferred Non-Nuclear Technology Transfer

Technology/Rosenberg ring spy who had access Description SCR-517 airborne radar Joel Barr, Nathan Sussman, Airborne microwave search sets for installation in patrol Alfred Sarant bombers for locating and homing in on friendly or enemy surface craft or coastal targets and for navigation. They were installed in B-17, B-18, B-24, B-25, and B-34 bombers, where they played a major role in detecting German submarines, ªrst neutralizing the U-boat threat in U.S. coastal wa- ters, and later in North Africa and Europe. SCR-520 airborne radar Joel Barr, Nathan Sussman, Airborne microwave radar that was ªrst installed in the Alfred Sarant Douglas P-70, a ªghter designed speciªcally for use at night. The SCR-520 was subsequently used in the Northrop P-61 Black Widow, the largest and heaviest ªghter aircraft ºown by U.S. pilots in World War II. APQ-13 Joel Barr, Nathan Sussman, Radar for the B-29, used in conjunction with the Norden Alfred Sarant bombsight, the ªrst radar that allowed for bombing through cloud cover. Starting in 1945, it was the ªrst military radar converted for weather warning. Norden bombsight Joel Barr, Nathan Sussman, One of the most closely guarded U.S. secrets of World Alfred Sarant War II, it used a mechanical analog computer comprising motors, gyros, mirrors, levels, gears, and a small telescope. It allowed bombardiers to drop their bombs within a 100-foot circle from an altitude of well over 20,000 feet. SCR-720-A, -720-B, -721 airborne radar Joel Barr, Nathan Sussman, A small version of the SCR-520, installed in P-61 aircraft. Alfred Sarant

SCR-717-A, -717-B radar Joel Barr, Nathan Sussman, Microwave small-package air-to-surface-vessel radar devel- Alfred Sarant oped from the SCR-517, installed in a retractable belly turret in the B-24 or B-25 replacing the lower gun turret. Mod II computer Joel Barr Airborne computer used for bombing by means of radar. Q-13 Joel Barr Low-altitude bombing attachment for radar. Long-range radar Joel Barr Early post–World War II ICBM research.

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Table 2. (Continued)

Technology/Rosenberg ring spy who had access Description Project Cyclone Morton Sobell An evolution of the M9 predictor, Project Cyclone was orig- inally designed for guided-missile R&D; it became the ªrst general-purpose analog computer sold in the United States. Target position simulator Morton Sobell Early analog computer-based simulator. AN/MPW radar Morton Sobell Radar used for missile guidance. Bomb scoring simulator Morton Sobell Early analog computer-based simulator. Navy Sonde technology Morton Sobell Weather balloons and equipment for tracking them. Small servomechanisms Morton Sobell Automatic devices that use feedback to correct the performance of a machine or system. Servomechanisms are at the heart of many weapons systems. During World War II, the servomechanisms Sobell worked on were used in ªre- control systems and in the bombing computer in B-29s. Project Thumper Morton Sobell The ªrst U.S. effort to develop defenses against ballistic missiles. D-558 research plane William Perl The D-558-I Skystreaks were among the ªrst early tran- sonic research airplanes. From 1947 to 1953 Skystreaks set world speed records. They provided critical information at a time when no accurate wind-tunnel data existed for the speed range from roughly Mach 0.8 to 1.2. 66-006 airfoil William Perl An experimental supersonic wing design

FBI ªles and other sources describe technologies to which members of the Rosenberg ring had access and almost certainly provided to the Soviet Union. In addition to the speciªc technologies listed below, the ring had detailed speciªcations for almost every radar model developed during World War II, analog computers used for aiming anti-aircraft artillery, and a wide range of aeronautical technology. Some of the technology the ring probably gave to the USSR is listed below. In addition, William Perl had access to and presumably gave the KGB design speciªcations for numerous military airplanes, including early jets. Perl also had access to supersonic aerodynamics; wind-tunnel design and data from wind-tunnel tests, including the ªrst supersonic tunnels; preliminary designs for a nuclear-powered airplane; and guided missile technology.

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New York. During the war, Perl rose to become one of the most senior engineers at NACA, where he had free access to conªdential technical reports the agency created to help U.S. aircraft companies design better planes. He helped design wind tunnels and had access to data from them, and he developed techniques for predicting the aerodynamic properties of airframe designs. Perl’s contributions to the USSR included speciªcations, and probably blueprints, for the ªrst American-designed jet engine. After the war, he had access to guided missile designs and supersonic aerodynamic data, including results from the ªrst supersonic wind tunnels. Vassiliev’s notes highlight the Rosenberg group’s postwar espionage and, in the process, hint at the damage to American security that could have occurred if the FBI had not ªnally arrested Greenglass and Rosenberg in the summer of 1950. The Rosenberg ring was preparing to send intelligence to Moscow that could have been put into action in Korea, and it was attempting to develop new, high-level sources with information about the U.S. nuclear weapons program. There can be little doubt that the information provided by the Rosenberg ring was used against U.S. soldiers during the hottest conºicts of the Cold War, in Korea and Vietnam, and that the protection provided by weapons that were based in part on information from Rosenberg and his colleagues emboldened the USSR to act in other arenas. The Vassiliev ªles make clear that the failure to detect Rosenberg’s espionage could have had even more serious results and that a delay of even a few months might have cost American lives. At the time of his arrest, just ten days before 90,000 North Korean troops and 150 Soviet-supplied tanks crossed the 38th parallel and started the Korean War, Greenglass was planning to steal plans for technology that could make Soviet tank guns shoot more accurately.

Close Calls

Venona, an ingenious U.S.-British decryption effort, eventually provided the leads that put Rosenberg and company out of business. The U.S. Justice De- partment’s prosecution of the Rosenbergs and Sobell, however, was not the intelligence triumph that J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI claimed. Rather, it marked the end of a long stream of missed opportunities and incompetence. Venona was one of the twentieth century’s greatest counterintelligence tri- umphs precisely because it illuminated an equally immense failure: the fact that a handful of Soviet intelligence ofªcers had recruited hundreds of agents who spied on every branch of government and ofªcial of interest to the Soviet Union, including President Franklin Roosevelt; provided real-time reports on

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the Manhattan Project, shaving years from the USSR’s effort to end America’s monopoly on nuclear weapons; and gave the Red Army blueprints for every major U.S. military technology developed during World War II. The massive scale of Soviet espionage against the United States in the 1930s and 1940s could lead observers to conclude that leakage of American technology was inevitable and unstoppable. A detailed examination of the Rosenberg case demonstrates that this was not the case. If the U.S. government had implemented vigorous security measures after 1939, when the Nazi-Soviet Pact revealed that fascism and Communism were two sides of the same coin, it is probable that Rosenberg and most of the other members of his operation would never have gained access to sensitive technology. A conspiracy that evolved into one of the most damaging betrayals of U.S. industrial secrets would have been no more than the fantasy of a second-rate electrical engineer. If wartime counterintelligence had established even rudimentary vetting systems at defense contractors for granting access to industrial secrets, the ring’s operations would have been shut down long before it stole the most damaging secrets. The counterintelligence failures embodied in the Rosenberg case started before Rosenberg was in a position to leak secrets to the Soviet Union. The fact that Golos was operating as a spymaster in 1941, when Schuster introduced him to Rosenberg, is a testament to failed U.S. counterintelligence. The FBI had learned of Golos’s role as a source to the CPUSA of forged and purloined government documents, and of his covert ties to Intourist, the So- viet travel agency, in October 1939, when it raided the front company he ran, World Tourists. Rather than pursue a case for passport fraud or other charges against Golos or seriously investigate his associations, the Justice Department reached an accommodation under which he pled guilty to failing to register as a foreign agent and was ªned $500. Newspapers reported the attorney general’s public assertion that Golos was a Soviet spy. A covert operative could hardly have been more thoroughly compro- mised. Public identiªcation as a spy, however, only temporarily inconve- nienced Golos. The FBI made some desultory attempts to watch him but quickly gave up. Beyond the Rosenbergs, Golos recruited some of his most important agents long after the time that a vigorous counterintelligence effort would have put him out of the espionage business. Indeed, he broke some of the cardinal rules of espionage tradecraft. Many of his agents were aware of each other’s spying, and some knew his identity. Golos gave Bentley access to and information about agents without obtaining prior authorization from So- viet intelligence. He used primitive, insecure communications techniques. A single turncoat, or an aggressive FBI investigation, would have unraveled

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Golos’s networks. This is exactly what happened when Bentley transferred her allegiance to the FBI in 1945, two years after Golos’s death. A May 1941 message from Aleksei Nikolaevich Prokhorov, a KGB ofªcer in New York, to his superiors in Moscow puts Golos’s role in perspective. He “has contact with tons of people. He knows everything. He is informed about all of our work. Everything at the [New York KGB ofªce] has been boiled down to ‘Sound,’ on all lines. Several agents who are connected to ‘Sound’ and provide reports are unknown to us other than by their cover names.”55 Vassiliev’s notebooks reveal that as early as October 1939 the KGB realized that its contacts with Golos represented a security risk. One of its agents, Samuel Dickstein, a Democrat who represented New York in the U.S. House of Representatives—aptly referred to by the cover name “Crook”—told the KGB that the Justice Department had a ªle on Golos. KGB ofªcials worried that Golos would be forced to testify to a grand jury that was investigating the CPUSA’s use of false passports. Investigation of Golos could have led the FBI to Gregory Rabinovich, a KGB ofªcer who was responsible for penetrating the Trotskyist movement. Golos was in constant contact with Rabinovich, meeting with him 500 to 600 times in two years, according to a KGB memorandum.56 Golos was not the only person involved with the Rosenberg ring who slipped through the FBI’s ªngers. The bureau had Rosenberg in its grasp in the spring of 1941, before he started working for the Soviet Union. Like hundreds of other Communists, Rosenberg had lied when he came to a question on the Civil Service employment form that inquired about afªliation with Communism or fascism. At the time, he had every reason to believe that the deception would remain undetected, but Rosenberg and other Communists learned, to their dismay, that the FBI had found a simple, foolproof method of identifying individuals who had supported the CPUSA, one that did not rely on informers and that could not be credibly refuted. The bureau dug up nominating petitions for Communist candidates who ran for elective ofªces in the late 1930s and crosschecked signers with federal government employment rolls. An investigation into Ethel Rosenberg’s signature on a 1939 petition nominating a Communist candidate for New York City Council led to her husband. Counterintelligence agents uncovered Julius’s close relationship

55. “‘Leonid’’s note on ‘Sound,’” 1 June 1941, KGB File 35112, v. 4, p. 199, in Vassiliev, White Note- book #1, p. 18. 56. “Report by ‘Harry’ in Dec. 1939,” KGB File 70994, p. 141, in Vassiliev, White Notebook #1, p. 145; and “Alexander Vassiliev’s Notes on Anatoly Gorsky’s December 1948 Memo on Compro- mised American Sources and Networks,” annotated by John Earl Haynes, trans. by Ronald Bachman and Harold Leich, October 2005, available on-line at http://www.johnearlhaynes.org/page44.html.

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with Marcus Pogarsky (who later changed his name to Mark Page), a known CPUSA member. Many Communists were ªred from government jobs based on ºimsier evidence, but Rosenberg decided to ªght back. He vigorously denied the ac- cusation that he was a Communist, lying about his and Ethel’s CPUSA membership and their extensive activities in support of the party and the Soviet Union. The tactic worked. Lacking irrefutable evidence—evidence that would have been relatively easy to obtain, given Julius’s prominence in Com- munist circles during and after his years at CCNY—the Civil Service backed down. Ironically, a little more diligence on the government’s part would have ended Julius Rosenberg’s career as an Army inspector and possibly prevented him from becoming a spy. If the investigators who dug up the Communist nominating petition with Ethel’s signature had looked a little more carefully, they would have found that Julius had signed Communist petitions in Sep- tember 1939, August 1940, February 1941, and July 1942. A decade later, when the FBI found those signatures, Rosenberg was in jail awaiting trial.57 Rosenberg was not the only member of his espionage ring whose name appeared in the FBI and military intelligence ªles years before he started moonlighting for the Soviet government. The FBI, which had been investigating Morton Sobell’s anti-war activities for a year, sent a memorandum to the Ofªce of Naval Intelligence (ONI) on 14 September 1941 reporting that Sobell was a member of two Communist-front groups that opposed U.S. military assistance to Britain and American attempts to prepare for war against Germany. The Navy replied to the FBI in December, stating that because Sobell had resigned in October, it was not interested in him. The FBI determined that Sobell had gone to the University of Michigan to study for a master’s degree and also lost interest. ONI and the FBI conducted only cursory investigations of Sobell’s roommate and coworker, Max Elitcher.58 A decade later, when the FBI began seriously investigating Communist espionage, it learned that it could have preempted some of the KGB’s most serious breaches of American security simply by having kept a close watch on the small apartment building at 2225 N St., NW, in Washington’s West End neighborhood, where Sobell and Elitcher lived. Other Communists who

57. Photocopies of the petitions from September 1939, February 1941, and July 1942 are available in FBI File NY 65-15348, Sec. 1b-285-1b634. 58. “Re. Morton Sobell, Internal Security, Hatch Act,” 16 January 1942, in FBI File 101-2483-1; “Investigation Report,” 15 December 1941, in FBI File 101-2483-1; “Re. Morton Sobell, Internal Se- curity, Hatch Act,” 26 February 1942, in FBI File 101-2483-1; and “Re. Morton Sobell, Internal Security, Hatch Act,” 26 March 1942 in FBI File 101-2483-1.

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would later become the focus of intense FBI interest, including Barr, Perl, William Danziger, and probably the Rosenbergs, visited Sobell there. Sobell and Elitcher both dated Bernice Levin, a clerk at the Ofªce of Emergency Management and the Ofªce of Production Management, who lived one ºoor below them on N St. On evenings when she was not dating Sobell or Elitcher or attending Communist Party meetings in their apartment, Levin met in her apartment with Bentley, who visited her as Golos’s courier.59 Bentley had another source at 2225 N St., William Remington, a midlevel bureaucrat whom Bentley described as “one of the most frightened people with whom I have ever had to deal.” She brought him Communist lit- erature and left her meetings with documents about aircraft production and performance, a formula for making synthetic rubber out of garbage, and other sensitive topics stuffed into her knitting bag. Remington attended CPUSA meetings at N Street with Sobell and Levin.60 A lot of people knew that Rosenberg and his comrades had been ardent Communists in college, and more than a few must have suspected that they would put the USSR’s interests ahead of those of the United States. In the winter of 1941, Israel Cohen, an electrical engineer who had been in Barr’s and Rosenberg’s circle at CCNY but split with the party over the Nazi-Soviet Pact, traveled to New Jersey to visit his old friend Barr. As a prank, when Co- hen arrived at the apartment, he banged on the door three times and shouted: “Open Up, FBI!” He listened outside in surprise to a tremendous commotion inside—doors and windows slamming, repeated ºushing of the toilet, furni- ture being rearranged—until Barr eventually came to the door, dripping in sweat. His usually sunny countenance was replaced with a look of terror that changed to irritation when he recognized his old friend. Cohen immediately realized that he had provoked a mad scramble to eliminate evidence of espionage, but he kept this to himself.61 Counterintelligence ofªcials did not put Barr to the kind of test that Co- hen had applied, but not long after his visit they came to understand that Barr was a security risk. Following up on the same ballot petitions that had led them to Ethel Rosenberg, the FBI in December 1941 zeroed in on Barr and quickly told the Army about the problem.62 Unlike Rosenberg, Barr was not given an opportunity to contest the allegation that he was a Communist. He was informed that the Army considered him a security threat and was uncere-

59. Vincent J. Cahill, “Max Elitcher, Espionage—R,” 2 October 1950, in FBI File NY 65-14873. 60. Elizabeth Bentley, Out of Bondage: The Story of Elizabeth Bentley (London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1952), p. 148; and FBI LA 65-5082. 61. David Carter (formerly Israel Cohen), interview by author, 4 November 2005. 62. T. Scott Miller, Jr., “Report on ‘Unknown Subject,’ Espionage -R,” 18 October 1948, in FBI File 65-58236-2.

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moniously ªred on 23 February 1942. Armed military police conªscated his base pass and escorted Barr to the civilian side of the Fort Monmouth gate. The Army placed him on a list of individuals ineligible for employment. Barr’s ªring should have been the end of his career as a high-tech spy. Be- cause an extensive paper trail connected Barr to other members of the ring— for example, he, Rosenberg, and Sobell all listed Perl as a reference on job ap- plications, and Rosenberg used Sussman as a job reference—even a rudimentary investigation by the FBI could have led to the end of the Rosenberg ring. The reason for Barr’s ªring was well known among his colleagues and supervisors, so a single letter or telephone call to check on his references would have revealed that he had been terminated as a security risk. Instead, within weeks Barr landed a job at Western Electric that afforded him access to more highly classiªed information, and an even less rigorous security environment, than he had experienced at Fort Monmouth. The Army ªred Barr’s close friend, Sarant, in September 1942 because he had tried to recruit his colleagues to join the Communist-dominated Federa- tion of Architects, Engineers, Chemists, and Technicians union. Like Barr, Sarant had no difªculty obtaining a job at Western Electric working on secret radar projects. In August 1943, the FBI received an extraordinary document that could have spelled the end of the Rosenberg ring and a number of other Soviet intelligence operations. An anonymous letter in Russian addressed to “Mr. Hoo- ver” identiªed a number of legal and illegal KGB ofªcers in New York and Washington, including Kvasnikov, as well as Rosenberg’s handler, Semenov. The letter, which the FBI learned decades later had been written by a disgrun- tled, mentally ill KGB ofªcer, stated that Semenov “has his agents in all the industrial cities of the U.S.A., in all aviation and chemical war factories and in big institutes. He works very brazenly and roughly, it would be very easy to follow him and catch him red handed.” The FBI did follow Semenov, but its surveillance was quite obvious. Rather than catching the KGB ofªcer red-handed, the bureau simply made it difªcult for him to meet with agents. At some point, probably in the winter of 1943, Semenov cut off contact with Rosenberg and other agents. The hiatus threw Rosenberg into a panic, prompting him to contact Bentley and plead with her to ask Golos to get him back in touch with the KGB. A security lapse on the American side freed up a KGB ofªcer to take Semenov’s place. The story starts with the U.S. State Department’s rejection of the USSR’s July 1942 request for permission to operate a radio transmitter from its New York consulate capable of sending messages to the USSR. This denial did not diminish the KGB’s enthusiasm for the project. The KGB sent

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Feklisov to New York from Moscow to build and operate a clandestine radio transmitter. With the help of an American Communist, Feklisov succeeded. The KGB was unaware that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) detected the transmitter and a similar transmitter at the Soviet consulate in San Francisco in February 1943. U.S. authorities debated whether it would be better to demand that the embassy cease transmissions or to moni- tor the communications surreptitiously. The Los Angeles Examiner and New York Journal American broke a garbled version of the story, reporting that the FCC had seized illegal radio sets at the Soviet Union’s New York and San Francisco consulates and was keeping this information from the public. The story stunned U.S. ofªcials, who considered it a highly classiªed secret, and the reporter narrowly avoided prosecution for violating wartime security. Vassiliev’s notes indicate that the disclosure led the KGB to shut down the transmitters.63 Senior KGB ofªcers in the New York consulate treated Feklisov with the contempt that agent-handlers often feel toward technical specialists such as radio operators. In a note Vassiliev found in the KGB’s ªles, Kvasnikov reported that when he arrived in the United States, he “heard nothing but low opinions about [Feklisov] as an inept and irresponsible person. For that reason no assignments, especially serious ones, were given to him and he was used, to put it crassly, as an errand boy, without a chance to grow.” But Kvas- nikov saw potential in Feklisov, started giving him assignments, and found him to be a competent and dedicated operative, one who “bleeds for his area of work.”64 In 1944, as a result of the FBI’s intense surveillance of Semenov, the KGB decided to assign management of the Rosenberg ring to Feklisov. Rosenberg’s failure to cut ties with the Communist Party ªnally caught up with him in 1945. The FBI had obtained a list in March 1944 of individuals who had transferred from Industrial Branch 16B of the CPUSA, and nearly a year later the bureau ªnally got around to notifying the Army that Rosenberg’s denials in 1941 of any connection to Communism were untrue. If the FBI had seriously investigated the other names on the Branch 16B membership list, it would have found that several on it, including Barr, Sussman, and Sarant, had access to highly classiªed defense secrets. As with Barr and Sarant, Rosenberg’s February 1945 ªring from the Sig- nal Corps was not a barrier to employment in the private sector. Reeves In- strument Company, the contractor from which he had stolen the proximity

63. James David, “Soviet Secrets in the Ether,” Cryptologia, Vol. 27, No. 2 (April 2003), pp. 135–147; and “Report by ‘Callistratus’ on his trip to the United States,” 27 February 1947, KGB File 40129, v. 4., p. 353, in Vassiliev, White Notebook #1, p. 120. 64. “Cipher cable, M to NY,” 3 October 1944, KGB File 40129, v. 3a, p. 177, in Vassiliev, White Notebook #1, p. 109.

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fuze, quickly hired him. The KGB worried that Rosenberg’s termination was about more than his CPUSA membership. According to Vassiliev’s notes, the Center informed the New York station on 23 February 1945: “We should assume that ‘L[iberal]’ was ªred not only for his belonging to the CP. The FBI might have oth[er] incriminating information.” KGB ofªcials moved to re- structure the ring, assign all of Rosenberg’s agents to other handlers, and in- struct Rosenberg to stop communicating with the comrades he had recruited and resist the urge to steal secrets from his workplace.65 Rosenberg deeply resented forced retirement. In June 1945 the New York KGB ofªce reported to Moscow that he was “rather upset about the fact that he was left without any people, but he fully realizes the correctness of our plans to break his group up into smaller units. The main thing with which he currently has the hardest time reconciling is his relative inactivity. At every meeting, he asks to be allowed to take material out of the factory himself and thus make himself useful to us.”66 According to Vassiliev’s notes, the KGB, already jittery over intensiªed FBI surveillance, was further agitated by the October 1945 arrest and three- day detention of one of its agents, Bruce Darling. Darling told Soviet ofªcials that the FBI, in a case of mistaken identity, had thought he was an escapee from a mental hospital. As a result of the Darling incident, Lavrentii Beria ordered a temporary suspension of contact with some of the service’s most valuable agents, including Rosenberg and David Greenglass.67 Just as the dust was starting to settle, the KGB suffered a security lapse in November 1945 that threatened to expose many of its espionage operations in the United States. This calamity was the result not of an FBI counterintelligence coup, but of the culmination of the Soviet Union’s clumsy handling of two of its most important assets in the United States, Golos and Bentley. The Vassiliev notebooks record a chain of communications describing the New York station’s distrust of Golos, as well as sharp criticism from the Center for bungling orders to take over most of his agents. An August 1942 message from Moscow to New York accurately speculated that “knowing ‘Leonid’s’ characteristics as an operative, we assume that he approached his task ineptly and immediately shook ‘Sound’’s composure.” “Leonid” was the cover name for Prokhorov. After Golos died of a heart attack on Thanksgiving evening in 1943, the KGB tried to put Bentley, who had become an unofªcial partner in Golos’s

65. “Letter, C—To Anton,” 23 February 1945, KGB File 40159, v. 3, p. 472, in Vassiliev, Black Note- book, p. 114. 66. “NY—C,” 26 June 1945, KGB File 40594, v. 7, p. 134, in Vassiliev, Black Notebook, p. 124. 67. “C—NY, from Cde. Petrov,” 27 October 1945, KGB File 82702, v. 1, p. 430, in Vassiliev, Black Notebook, p. 34.

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activities, out of the agent-handling business. Unlike the members of the Rosenberg ring, she was motivated not by an ideological commitment to Communism, but by a romantic attachment to Golos. She also derived a sense of personal importance from her work with agents who were reporting from the halls of power in Washington. The KGB’s rough handling of Bentley led her to seek the FBI’s protection. She walked into an FBI ofªce in October 1945 and in brieªngs over the course of a month painted a detailed picture of Communist espionage. Com- plete disaster for the Soviet Union was averted only because it learned of Bentley’s treason almost immediately from Kim Philby, a KGB agent who was working in Washington as British intelligence’s liaison to the FBI and CIA. Thus, the FBI’s plan to deploy Bentley as a double agent failed, and the KGB buried or scuttled operations before its U.S. agents could be caught in compromising situations. The Vassiliev notebooks document how the KGB assessed the potential impact of Bentley’s apostasy on the Rosenberg ring. Barr saw Feklisov on 9 December 1945 for a routine meeting, turned over exposed ªlm, and told the Soviet ofªcial that he had run out of ªlm. This was an ongoing problem because the quantity of valuable documents the Rosenberg ring produced continually taxed the New York station’s ability to obtain supplies of 35-mm ªlm. The New York station received a cable from the Center three days later instructing Feklisov to meet with Barr and, rather than giving him more ªlm, to set up a meeting with Rosenberg. Vassiliev’s notes indicate that Barr was instructed to “pass on the rendezvous terms: if things are calm at L[iberal]’s house, at 23:00 on 15.12 [15 December], he should send his wife to the drug- store at the end of the street. The wife should not approach him; she should just buy something and go home.” Feklisov would arrive at the Rosenberg apartment ªve minutes later.68 Vassiliev’s notes detail the steps Feklisov took to detect and/or shake off surveillance:

From 19:00 to 19:30, he was in the Brooklyn maternity ward, where his wife was staying. From there—to the Turkish baths on 46th Street, where he stayed until 21:40. After that, he checked out in a taxi, on the subway, and in court- yards on 24th Street. At 23:00, he went into the drug store and saw L’s wife [Ethel Rosenberg]. She was buying cotton balls. When she saw [Feklisov], she went outside. [Feklisov] drank a cup of coffee and went out as well. In order to make it seem like he lived at L’s house, he bought bread and 2 bottles of milk.69

68. “‘Callistratus’’s report on the meetings with ‘Meter’ and ‘Liberal,’” KGB File 40594, v. 7, p. 352, in Vassiliev, Black Notebook, p. 125. 69. Ibid., pp. 125–126.

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The notes also contain a transcription of Feklisov’s report about a contin- gency plan that he and Rosenberg devised in case Rosenberg was arrested: We decided that he should deny that he is a member of the fellow countrymen [CPUSA], because he had already done so in 1941 and again in 1945. If he doesn’t deny this now, as it says in your telegram—then it would be illogical. He will also deny that he has ties with “Sound” [Golos] and “Echo” [Schuster]. If he is asked to give the names of his friends, he will name “Meter” [Barr] and “Nil” [Sussman], who are old friends of his. He will also repudiate any photographs and similar documents in which he appears with me, “Sound,” or “Echo.” I gave him very strict orders to burn any notes containing the addresses of probationers and materials which could be used as evidence of his afªliation with fellow countrymen.70 For the KGB, the news from the United States kept getting worse. Even as the agency was assessing the damage Bentley could cause, KGB ofªcials learned from newspaper reports that the FBI had caught Andrei Shevchenko, a KGB ofªcer who worked undercover as an employee of the Soviet Pur- chasing Commission, spying on Bell Aircraft Corporation. Shevchenko’s arrest was one of the few examples of effective FBI action against Soviet espionage during World War II. The bureau learned about Shevchenko’s espionage in 1943 and recruited some of his American sources as double agents.71 The arrest of Shevchenko and the loss of Bentley precipitated an extraordinary order from Moscow to New York on 6 January 1946 to suspend all contacts with agents.

Contact Resumed

The Vassiliev documents demonstrate that after the KGB totally severed communications with Rosenberg and his ring, it stumbled from one course of action to another in a futile attempt to build new intelligence networks in the United States. A KGB ofªcer, referred to in cables and internal memoranda as “August,” was instructed in March 1948 to go to Rosenberg’s apartment,

70. “C—NY,” 25 May 1950, KGB File 86192, v. 1, p. 114, in Vassiliev, Yellow Notebook #1, pp. 47– 48. 71. “FBI Trails Russ Agent Who Has A-Bomb Secrets,” Associated Press, 4 December 1945; and Venona, 16 June 1944, New York to Moscow. The Venona decrypt, which mentions Shevchenko, reveals how thoroughly the Soviet Union had penetrated the U.S. aircraft industry; it mentions that eight days earlier the ofªce had dispatched information from Perl about “air units” (almost certainly jet engines) that “deserves exceptional attention.” The cable instructed Moscow: “Pay particular attention to it [in conjunction with] the information on analogous organizations engaged on a similar problem.” The information on the “analogous organizations” came from Shevchenko and is a reference to data—vetted and probably rendered useless by the FBI—he obtained on the P-59, the ªrst American-built jet aircraft.

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where he was to initiate a conversation using written notes, apparently to avoid detection by FBI listening devices. “August,” probably a midlevel KGB ofªcer named Gavriil Panchenko, was supposed to learn the whereabouts of Perl, Barr, Sobell, and David Greenglass and to ªnd out whether they were willing to resume their work for the Soviets.72 Panchenko either did not comply with the instructions to go to Rosen- berg’s apartment, or if he did he failed to connect with Rosenberg. When Panchenko telephoned in early May, Rosenberg refused to speak with him because he expected that reactivation would be conducted through Schuster. Headquarters instructed Panchenko not to go through Schuster because a high-level CPUSA defector, Louis Budenz, had publicly exposed his espionage activities. Panchenko was then instructed to avoid Rosenberg and use telephone directories to ªnd the Greenglasses and Barr. The KGB was apparently unaware that Barr had been ªred in October 1947 from an engineering job at Sperry Gyroscope, where he worked on radar for guiding long-range missiles, after an FBI background check revealed his 1942 ªring by the Corps of Engineers and his more recent membership in Rosenberg’s CPUSA cell. Barr traveled to Europe in January 1948 and subsequently studied electrical engineering in Stockholm and music in Paris. None of the documents unearthed to date indicates precisely when or where he resumed contact with the Soviet Union, but personal papers found after his death indicate that he received money and instructions from the KGB during his travels. When the KGB ªnally resumed contact with Rosenberg in May 1948, having revised its plan to avoid him, it learned that Rosenberg not only had remained in contact with the members of his ring but had continued to stock- pile classiªed information. His network at this time included Perl, Michael and Ann Sidorovich, Sarant, Sussman, the Greenglasses, and an unidentiªed agent with the cover name “Zenith.” Rosenberg had even provided ªnancial support, perhaps supplied by the afºuent McNutt, to keep the Sidoroviches in Cleveland to support Perl. By the summer of 1948, Perl had returned to New York, where he was working as an assistant to Theodore von Karman, the world’s preeminent aerospace engineer. At the time, von Karman was chairman of the Scientiªc Advisory Board to the U.S. Air Force chief of staff. Perl’s access to von Karman gave him insight into the country’s most sensitive strategic thinking on aviation and missile issues, as well as access to documents on cutting-edge technology. The KGB received an immediate return on its decision to reactivate

72. “C—NY,” 12 March 1948, KGB File 40159, v. 5, pp. 50–51, in Vassiliev, Black Notebook, p. 127.

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Rosenberg. Over the 4 July holiday Perl removed a huge amount of classiªed information from von Karman’s personal safe, and Rosenberg organized a marathon 17-hour copying session at his own apartment. Clues from the Vassiliev notebooks about the Rosenberg ring’s activities during this period are especially valuable because the window into the KGB’s U.S operations provided by the Venona project extends only to 1945. Vassiliev’s note about a 7 July 1948 KGB memorandum records Moscow’s surprise at its agent’s dedication, instructing the New York ofªce:

it is essential to take note of the way “L[iberal]” himself behaves; despite the fact that his connection with us was interrupted for over two years, he continued to conscientiously and faithfully fulªll his obligations as a group handler, to stay in touch with the gymnasts [agents], lending them vital moral and material support, and to continue gathering the most valuable tech. Information.73

Deploying Rosenberg to collect American secrets was too risky, but the KGB was enthusiastic about using his close relatives, especially the Green- glasses. In August 1948 Panchenko told Rosenberg that David Greenglass should apply for a job at Los Alamos. In September, Panchenko instructed Rosenberg to employ David and Ruth Greenglass to photograph Perl’s materials, “of which he has a great many in NY, at the New York k/k [safe house].” The Soviet ofªcial told Rosenberg to store the undeveloped ªlm at his apartment.74 In December 1948 the KGB was contemplating Rosenberg’s and Green- glass’s futures. A machine shop the two men had opened a few years earlier was failing, and Moscow considered suggesting that Rosenberg open a broker- age or an equipment repair shop. The KGB abandoned plans to get Green- glass a job at Los Alamos because “he will not be able to get a position where he could become an independent source of information that would be of interest to us, owing to his limited education and area of specialization.” In- stead, Soviet ofªcials considered making Greenglass a courier for Rosenberg or promoting him to an assistant who could meet with agents when Rosen- berg was too busy. On 18 December 1948 the New York KGB ofªce sent Moscow a sample of uranium-238 Greenglass had stolen from Los Alamos. U-238 is one of three naturally occurring isotopes of uranium, so it is unlikely that the material was of value to the Soviet Union. For the next six months, Rosenberg, his local KGB handlers, and their superiors in Moscow deliberated about the best

73. “C—To Uglov,” 7 July 1948, KGB File 40159, v. 5, p. 173, in Vassiliev, Black Notebook, pp. 128– 129. 74. “NY—C” 21 September 1948, KGB File 86192, v. 1, p. 56, in Vassiliev, Yellow Notebook #1, p. 42.

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way to deploy Greenglass. Plans were made for him to attend the University of Chicago, where he could serve as a talent-spotter. Rosenberg was told to in- struct Greenglass to type reports every two months about his acquaintances and anything he learned about scientiªc activities on the campus. Greenglass was supposed to photograph these reports, and Ethel Rosenberg was to act as a courier, traveling to Chicago to bring the undeveloped ªlm to her husband. The KGB offered Greenglass something like a GI Bill. The Soviet Union would pay all of his academic expenses, plus a stipend of $125 a month. In August 1949, however, Rosenberg told Panchenko that the plan to send the Greenglasses to Chicago was not going to pan out because the Uni- versity of Chicago had rejected David’s application. He would not apply again because Ruth was pregnant with their second child and did not trust any doctor except for the one who was caring for her in New York.75 Greenglass and Rosenberg continued to try to ªnd ways for the former to serve the Soviet cause. In October 1949 Greenglass got a job at the Arma Cor- poration in Brooklyn, working on a ªre-control radar linked to a gyroscopic mechanism for stabilizing and aiming tank guns. Contrary to Greenglass’s statements to the FBI and testimony to a congressional committee that he had refused Rosenberg’s requests to steal the technology, the Vassiliev notebooks indicate that Greenglass was an eager accomplice. Greenglass told Rosenberg that Arma was making good progress on the technology “and even offered to take the camera with him and copy out all the blueprints at work.” Moscow decided that giving Greenglass a Leica was too risky and proposed instead that he sketch the blueprints from memory.76 In addition to details about Greenglass’s activities, the Vassiliev notebooks shed some light on a murky aspect of the Rosenberg case, the network’s operations in Ithaca, New York. Sarant moved to Ithaca in October 1946 with the intention of studying physics at Cornell University. He met with Hans Bethe, an acquaintance of Sarant’s father-in-law, but failed to persuade the eminent physicist to provide a recommendation to the university. After Cor- nell rejected his application, Sarant got a job working on the university’s syn- chrotron. He developed friendships with a veritable Who’s Who of nuclear physics, including Bethe and Feynman, as well as Philip Morrison, who had worked on the Manhattan Project. Perl and Barr stayed in contact with Sarant after he moved to Ithaca, visiting him there and subletting his Greenwich Vil- lage apartment. According to Vassiliev’s notes, Rosenberg recruited two other agents at

75. “NY—C,” 30 June 1949, KGB File 86192, v. 1, p. 71, in Vassiliev, Yellow Notebook #1, pp. 43, 44. 76. “NY—C,” 13 January 1950, KGB File 86192, v. 1, p. 85, in Vassiliev, Yellow Notebook #1, pp. 44– 45.

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Cornell. The notes do not identify the agents, but the details support the FBI’s suspicions that Rosenberg’s last recruit was Maxwell Finestone, Sarant’s wife’s former boyfriend. The evidence strongly suggests that Finestone and Sarant were planning to ªnd ways to transfer information from the Cornell physics community to the USSR. There is no evidence, however, that they succeeded or that any of the physicists with whom Sarant associated were aware of his espionage activities.77 Even as Rosenberg cranked up his old espionage ring, he and the KGB were troubled by indications that the FBI was ªnally close to detecting his activities. If the KGB had any doubt that its U.S. operations were threatened, it learned in late 1946 that the situation was about as bad as it could get. Codebreakers working at an Army unit that was later integrated into the Na- tional Security Agency broke the ªrst messages on Soviet nuclear intelligence in December 1946. In July 1947 they learned about a Manhattan Project spy who had operated under the cover names “Antenna” and “Liberal” and whose wife was named Ethel. The KGB was well informed about the Army’s progress. One of its agents, William Weisband, who worked for the Army as a civilian linguist, was literally standing over the shoulder of an Army codebreaker when he decrypted some of the most important KGB cables. At the time, the KGB was not in touch with Weisband. When it resumed contact in February 1948, it apparently learned about the Venona program. In addition, the KGB’s highly placed British agent Philby was working in Washington and receiving regular brieªngs on Venona from 1949 to 1951. Moscow watched years of work crumble as the U.S. Army’s decryption of more and more bits of World War II cables allowed it to piece together a mo- saic of Soviet intelligence activities. Even with many pieces missing, Soviet ofªcials knew enough clues had been found to ensure that the FBI would eventually detect many of the KGB’s American agents. Rosenberg’s agents started feeling that the FBI was closing in during the summer of 1948. On 30 June 1948, Elitcher arrived at Sobell’s house in Long Island, New York, and announced that his car had been followed from Washington, presumably by FBI agents. After deciding that they were no longer under surveillance, Sobell and Elitcher drove to Manhattan, where Sobell delivered a roll of ªlm with secret information to Rosenberg. Two months later, the FBI’s New York ªeld ofªce sent a letter to headquarters noting that Sobell had signed a petition for a CPUSA candidate in 1939 and had been employed at a Communist camp run by Sobell’s uncle.

77. “C—To Bob,” 7 December 1948, KGB File 40159, v. 5, p. 278, in Vassiliev, Black Notebook, p. 131.

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The FBI ªles do not indicate whether the information was ever shared with military intelligence. The FBI did inform Harry Belock, a senior manager at Sobell’s employer, Reeves Instrument Company, in 1948 that it suspected Sobell might be spying for the Soviet Union. Belock persuaded the FBI to let him retain Sobell, with the understanding that the bureau would keep him under surveillance.78 The military was either unaware of or unconcerned about the FBI’s supicions. In February 1949 the Inspector General’s Ofªce of the Air Provost Marshal sent Reeves Instrument, which had recently hired Sobell, a letter authorizing his access “to all information up to and including top secret classiªcations.”79 The FBI had not yet connected the dots, but Rosenberg’s activities were causing anguish in Moscow, where senior KGB ofªcers knew how tenuous his position was. Headquarters instructed Panchenko on 22 December 1948 to provide details on how Rosenberg was handling his agents:

We are particularly worried by the possibility that “Liberal” still talks to gymnasts [agents] about our work at his apartment. We have accurate information that the competitors [U.S. counterintelligence] wiretap apartments belonging to individuals whom they investigate. Therefore, [Rosenberg] should be given another strong warning about the inadmissibility of such conversations at his or any of the gymnasts’ apartments.80

In September 1949, Moscow told the New York KGB ofªce to discuss with Rosenberg the need for David and Ruth Greenglass to come up with a cover story to explain their acquaintance with Harry Gold, a KGB courier who had visited them in New Mexico. The KGB’s concern increased in February 1950, when it learned that FBI agents had visited David Greenglass at his apartment and questioned him about thefts of uranium from Los Alamos. Greenglass denied all impropriety. When Panchenko heard about the incident, he told Rosenberg that U.S. counterintelligence lacked concrete proof of the Greenglasses’ collaboration with the KGB. But Panchenko expressed greater concern in his note to Mos- cow, speculating that the FBI might be following up on the 2 February 1950 arrest of Klaus Fuchs, or that Greenglass’s questioning had taken place as part of a broad dragnet the bureau was casting for Soviet agents. Panchenko con-

78. “Testimony of Harry D. Belock, 12/14/1950,” in Rosenberg Case Files, Record Group (RG) 118: Records of U.S. Attorneys, 1821–1989, Northeast Region of U.S. National Archives and Records Ad- ministration (NARA-NR), New York, NY, available on-line at http://media.nara.gov/northeast/nyc/ rosenbergcaseªles-belock-harry-pg10307to10333.pdf. 79. “Information concerning Sobell’s employment with the Reeves Instrument Corporation,” in FBI NY 100-37158. 80. “C—To Bob,” 22 December 1948, KGB File 40159, v. 5, p. 300, in Alexander Vassiliev, Black Notebook, p. 131.

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cluded that “the fact that [Greenglass] was questioned indicates that counterintelligence will keep its eye on [him] for a certain period, and will likely dis- cover the essence of his relationship with [Rosenberg], which could lead to a thorough investigation of [Rosenberg’s] entire group.”81 The KGB broke off contact with Rosenberg and instructed him to appear at certain locations at speciªed times to demonstrate that he had not been arrested and to enable Soviet ofªcials to see whether the FBI was following him. The ªrst of these appearances occurred on 5 February 1950, when Harry Gold went to an elevated train station in Queens. Rosenberg “passed by and looked very closely at my face. The time was on a Sunday morning at just about ten a.m. He was smoking a cigar,” Gold told a grand jury in August 1950.82 The KGB realized that, in violation of its standard operating procedures, the Rosenberg ring was entangled with other espionage networks. A message dated 4 April 1950 from the Center to the KGB’s New York ofªce notes connections from Fuchs, who had been arrested a month earlier, to David Greenglass, Ruth Greenglass, and Julius Rosenberg. The thread was Gold, who had met with both Fuchs and the Greenglasses. The message raised the possibility that it might be necessary to have the Greenglasses ºee the United States and suggested a route from the United States to France to Czechoslova- kia. The message contained a remarkably prescient assessment of the consequences of allowing the Greenglasses to fall into the FBI’s hands:

In the case of [David] and [Ruth Greenglass], what the competitors [U.S. counterintelligence] have on them is not only their clear and incontrovertible in- volvement in our work, but also evidence that they passed secret materials on the atomic bomb to us. On this basis the competitors will exert strong pressure on [David] and [Ruth Greenglass], using intimidation and other means, even to the point of arresting them, and eventually will compel them to give testimony, with all of the concomitant implications for [Julius Rosenberg], his group and all of our work in the country.83 Three weeks later, Julius Rosenberg told the KGB that the Greenglasses could not leave because Ruth was two-and-a-half months pregnant. In addition, her health was delicate as a result of an accident in January in which she had stepped too close to a gas heater and received serious burns that required ten weeks of hospitalization.

81. “Excerpt from a report on a c/t from NY,” 13 February 1950, KGB File 86192, v. 1, p. 92, in Vassiliev, Yellow Notebook #1, p. 45. 82. “Harry Gold’s testimony to the Rosenberg-Sobell grand jury,” 2 August 1950, p. 9087, in Rosenberg Case Files, RG 118, NARA-NR. 83. “Letter C—NY,” 10 April 1950, KGB File 86192, v. 1, p. 97, in Vassiliev, Yellow Notebook #1, p. 46.

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On 23 May, Rosenberg reported that the Greenglasses agreed to leave the country, but Ruth’s physical condition made it necessary to wait at least three months. Stories in that morning’s newspapers of Gold’s arrest had thrown the KGB into a justiªed panic. Moscow sent an urgent cable stating that the Greenglasses needed “to leave the country as soon as possible, because if they remain in the country, it will inevitably lead to their arrest.” The cable suggested that even if the entire family could not travel at once, David and Ruth should travel with their newborn child and leave their older son with relatives. If that proved impossible, David should ºee on his own. Similar recommen- dations were made regarding the Rosenbergs.84 The KGB went to great lengths to clear the path for the Greenglasses and Rosenbergs to get to safety, including ordering KGB ofªcers in Mexico and Sweden to explore a variety of scenarios for hiding the two families and transporting them to Europe. If the Rosenbergs and Greenglasses had swiftly com- plied with the KGB’s instructions, they would have been in Prague or Mos- cow by the time the FBI started looking for David and Julius. However, instead of moving immediately, Julius told the KGB on 3 June 1950 that the two families would be ready to leave the country on 15 June. One reason that Julius delayed his departure was evidently so that he could travel with the Greenglasses. His courtesy proved to be a fatal mistake. David and Ruth never intended to leave the United States. Rather, they played along with Julius’s entreaties to collect substantial amounts of cash he provided to facilitate their travels. Another likely reason that Rosenberg delayed his escape was to alert members of his ring who he expected would stay behind. In the early hours of 10 June, Finestone drove Julius Rosenberg to Ithaca to meet with Sarant. The topic of their meeting is unknown, but Rosenberg by this point knew that the FBI was closing in, and he therefore undoubtedly warned his agents to de- stroy compromising documents. That evening, Julius met with David Greenglass for the last time. Five days later, on the afternoon of 15 June, David Greenglass was mix- ing baby formula—Ruth was back in the hospital, receiving treatment for her burns—when he heard an insistent knock at his apartment door. The FBI did not have a search warrant, but Greenglass allowed its agents to search the apartment, and after arranging for relatives to take care of the children he agreed to go downtown to answer questions. At 9:25 p.m. Greenglass con- fessed to nuclear espionage, then quickly volunteered the information that his brother-in-law was the leader of an espionage network.

84. “C—NY,” 25 May 1950, KGB File 86192, v. 1, p. 114, in Vassiliev, Yellow Notebook #1, pp. 47, 48.

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The Rosenbergs abandoned all thoughts of ºight when they learned that Greenglass had been arrested. They probably assumed that FBI surveillance would make it impossible for them to leave the country and that being caught in an attempt to do so would conªrm their guilt. Other members of the Rosenberg ring scrambled for safety. Barr, who had been making plans for at least a couple of weeks to leave Paris, where he had been living since July 1949, disappeared on 16 June 1950. He arrived about a week later in Prague, where the KGB gave him a new identity. Sobell reported to work as normal on Friday, 16 June, but called in sick on Monday. On Wednesday he with- drew all but $10 from his bank account, and the next day, 22 June, boarded a plane with his wife and two children. The FBI, which had suspected Sobell of espionage since 1948, noticed his departure on 24 June. The bureau quickly determined that he had traveled to Mexico and launched a manhunt in cooperation with local police. Mexican authorities found and arrested Sobell in August and immediately drove him and his family to Laredo, Texas, with a car full of FBI agents trailing behind. On 17 July 1950 the FBI arrested Julius Rosenberg. Four days after Ros- enberg’s arrest, Vivian Glassman, Barr’s former girlfriend, arrived at Perl’s apartment in Cleveland. Communicating entirely in writing, she gave Perl instructions for ºeeing to Mexico and offered him $2,000 in cash. But Perl, who was being vetted for a job at the Atomic Energy Commission, concluded that the visit was a test or a provocation. He sent Glassman away and reported the incident to the FBI.85 When the FBI ªrst questioned Glassman, she told them that a Russian man whom she had never previously met had appeared at her New York apartment on 21 July and given her the $2,000. He instructed her to travel to Cleveland and deliver the money to Perl, along with instructions for escape. Glassman reported that after she returned to New York, the Russian returned to her apartment, whereupon she informed him that Perl had rebuffed the offer and returned the $2,000. Subsequently Glassman invoked her constitu- tional right to avoid self-incrimination and refused to discuss the incident with the FBI, a grand jury, or a congressional committee. Sarant’s odyssey suggests that the Rosenbergs may have miscalculated when they decided that FBI vigilance following Greenglass’s arrest made escape impossible. Sarant voluntarily underwent a week of FBI interrogation, allowed the Bureau to search his home, and was aware of its intense surveillance. Nonetheless, acting with no assistance from the KGB, Sarant—traveling with his next-door neighbor’s wife, Carol Dayton—eluded the FBI,

85. John B. O’Donoghue, “Vivian Glassman, Espionage—R,” 8 August 1950, in FBI File 65-59334- 3.

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crossed the border, and connected with Polish intelligence in Mexico City. Af- ter consulting Moscow, the Polish agents stashed the couple in a safe house, smuggled them across the border to Guatemala and put them on a cargo ship. They boarded another ship in Casablanca, then ºew from Barcelona to War- saw. Six months later, Sarant and Dayton met up with Barr in Moscow. They returned to Prague with him, spent ªve years in Czechoslovakia, and then moved to Leningrad. Sarant and Barr built the Soviet bloc’s ªrst computerized anti-aircraft weapon during their ªve years in Prague. After moving to Leningrad, they became leading ªgures in the Soviet microelectronics and computer industries. The two American engineers met with leading Soviet politicians and intellectuals, including Nikita Khrushchev and Leonid Brezhnev; worked for the So- viet Navy, space program, and Air Force; were responsible for thousands of employees; and received some of the USSR’s highest honors. Sarant died in Moscow in 1979. Barr returned to the United States in 1992 and until his death in 1998 split his time between Leningrad and the homes of friends and relatives in the United States.86 In contrast to Sarant’s dramatic escape, one of Rosenberg’s ªrst recruits, Nathan Sussman, avoided punishment by convincing the FBI that he had re- nounced Communism and by pretending to dish up dirt on his former associates while keeping his participation in and knowledge of espionage secret. Sussman ªrst came to the FBI’s attention in October 1944, when it received a list of members of Rosenberg’s CPUSA cell, Industrial Branch 16B. The bureau ofªcially closed its ªle on Sussman a month later, having done little if any investigation. The FBI’s interest in Sussman revived in August 1950, when Greenglass told FBI agents that Sussman had been in contact with Rosenberg from 1938 to 1947. “Greenglass advised [the FBI] that he believes that Sussman might passively pass information to Julius Rosenberg but he did not believe him to be an aggressive spy.”87 When the FBI interviewed Sussman in November 1950, he denied membership in any Communist organizations. Two months later, the FBI, armed with documentation of Sussman’s CPUSA membership, got him to admit joining the Young Communist League in 1935, serving as president of a Young Communist League chapter in 1937, and joining CPUSA Industrial Branch 16B in 1942. The FBI also told Sussman that it had copies of afªda- vits he had signed to obtain jobs at two defense contractors in which he denied association with any Communist organizations. Facing the threat of in-

86. Sarant’s and Barr’s stories are detailed in Usdin, Engineering Communism, pp. 1–285. 87. “Re. Nathan Sussman, Espionage—R,” 15 October 1953, in FBI File 65-61683.

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dictment for perjury, Sussman cooperated energetically with the FBI—or so the bureau thought. In fact, Sussman embarked on what must have been a nerve-shattering course, informing on his former associates while avoiding any mention of their or his own participation in espionage. He named numerous individuals who had been secret Communists, including Julius Rosenberg, Barr, Sobell, and Sarant, and agreed to testify at the Rosenberg and Perl trials. Sussman testiªed as a friendly witness to Senator Joseph McCarthy’s subcommittee on investigations, which did not ask any questions that suggested it had any doubt of his loyalty to the United States. Likewise, an FBI ªle summarizing the bureau’s interactions with Sussman noted: “During the investigation of Sussman, no evidence of espionage activity was developed on his part. This case was placed in a closed status during September 1953.” Sussman, one of Rosenberg’s ªrst and longest-serving recruits, slid into obscurity, taking his knowledge about the ring’s espionage to his grave.88 Like Sussman, the FBI learned about Russell McNutt from Greenglass, who reported that he suspected McNutt was one of Rosenberg’s agents. In in- terviews with the FBI McNutt denied any connection to espionage, and no evidence surfaced to contradict his claims of innocence. McNutt was fortu- nate that the mentions of “Fogel” and “Pers” in Venona did not provide enough detail to implicate him. McNutt had a long, prosperous life, dying at the age of 94 in February 2008. The FBI was quite certain that Finestone was a member of Rosenberg’s ring. The bureau recruited an informant in his Manhattan apartment building, bugged his apartment, and wiretapped his telephone, but failed to ac- quire any damning evidence. Finestone moved to the Catskill Mountains, where he and his wife ran a hotel, hosted Communist meetings, and raised funds for Communist causes. Perl was convicted of perjury for lying to a grand jury about his association with Rosenberg.

Ethel and Ruth

Historians, writers and relatives have argued ªercely about Ethel Rosenberg’s espionage activities, especially about the justice of her conviction and death sentence. The lack of evidence up to now has allowed partisans to depict her as a saintly ªgure, a victim of both anti-Semitism and sexism, or as a conniv- ing schemer who ruthlessly manipulated her husband and brother. The Vassiliev notebooks show that Ethel was neither an innocent victim

88. Ibid.

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nor a hardened Soviet spy. She certainly was aware of and supported Julius’s espionage and helped with some of the logistics. The KGB had plans to use her more actively, but these were cancelled by the FBI’s unraveling of the Rosenberg ring. The Rosenbergs’ sons, Michael and Robert Meeropol, and some historians have argued that Venona exonerates Ethel. Speaking to a Public Broad- casting System (PBS) interviewer in 2002, Michael Meeropol said: “Venona makes it clear that the wife of Liberal—and let us concede as the lawyers say that Liberal is Julius Rosenberg—that the wife of Liberal, who was deªnitely our mother Ethel, is not a spy. There’s a line in one of the documents that is very explicit.”89 Meeropol was referring to a 27 November 1944 message from the KGB’s New York station to the Moscow Center:

Information on Liberal’s wife. Surname that of her husband, ªrst name Ethel, 29 years old. Married ªve years. Finished secondary school. A Fellow countryman [CPUSA member] since 1938. Sufªciently well developed politically. Knows about her husband’s work and the role of Meter [Joel Barr] and Nil [Sussman]. In view of delicate health does not work. Is characterized positively and as a devoted person.

The Meeropols have interpreted this message to mean that Ethel did not work for the KGB. The phrase “does not work” could, however, simply indicate that she was not employed. A message from early 1945 recorded in Vassiliev’s notebooks provides some additional context for the Venona message; it states that Ethel “knows about her husband’s work and personally knows [two KGB ofªcers, Semenov] and [Feklisov]. She could be used independently, but she should not be over- worked [because of] poor health.”90 The Rosenbergs lived with their two children in a small, three-room apartment. Julius used the apartment to photograph thousands of secret documents and to meet with his agents. Ethel literally lived in the middle of Julius’s operations. Further, the Vassiliev notebooks support Ruth Greenglass’s contention that Ethel participated in the discussion that led to Ruth’s recruitment as a Soviet agent.91 The KGB was extraordinarily careful to keep to a minimum the number of people who could compromise its ofªcers. This suggests that the agency’s conscious decision to allow Ethel to meet Semenov and Feklisov stemmed

89. Transcript of interview with Robert and Michael Meeropol, NOVA television special: “Secrets, Lies, and Atomic Spies,” NOVA, PBS, 5 February 2005. The transcript is available on-line at http:// www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/venona/fami_meeropol.html. 90. “Letter NY—C,” 17 February 1945, KGB File 40594 v. 7, p. 15, in Vassiliev, Black Notebook, p. 119. 91. “‘L-l’’s report on ‘Wasp,’” 5 December 1944, KGB File 86192, v. 1, p. 16, in Vassiliev, Yellow Note- book #1, pp. 54–55.

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from a high level of trust. Feklisov’s familiarity with Ethel allowed him to assign her the late-night shopping in the winter of 1945 signaling that it was safe for him to visit Julius in their apartment. Vassiliev’s notes about Feklisov’s subsequent conversation with Julius do not mention whether Ethel was present. Given their very close relationship, it seems likely that Julius informed his wife of the Soviet ofªcial’s warning that the defection of Golos’s secretary put him at risk. She may have participated in the subsequent collection and burn- ing of incriminating documents. The KGB’s postwar plan for David Greenglass to study at the University of Chicago and for Ethel to serve as a courier bringing his reports to New York is further evidence of the Soviet agency’s conªdence that she was willing and able to support her husband’s espionage career. Ethel seems to have participated in the effort to cover up the family espionage business. A message of 30 June 1950 from the New York KGB station to the Center, transcribed by Vassiliev, notes surveillance around the Greenglass apartment; it concludes that Ethel should retrieve $5,000 of the $6,000 Julius had given David to help him ºee.92 Eugene Tartakow, an inmate whom the FBI recruited to inform on Julius Rosenberg in the weeks before and during his trial, reported that Julius told him Ethel had been checked out by the KGB, was trusted, and had “assisted me on many of my projects.” On the ªrst day the FBI questioned Julius Rosenberg, he voluntarily accompanied bureau agents downtown to answer questions but refused to grant permission to search his apartment. That evening, Julius Rosenberg told Tartakow, Ethel took $7,000 in cash and a Leica camera in a brown shopping bag to the apartment of a friend for safekeep- ing.93 Although Ethel was not in a position to steal secrets, the Vassiliev notebooks, the Venona decryptions, and her husband’s jailhouse conversations all indicate that she was a willing and active participant in Julius’s espionage activities. On the other hand, the evidence does not suggest that the harm she did to American security approached the damage done by others who were caught collaborating with Soviet intelligence but were never prosecuted. One way to put Ethel’s espionage activity and her death sentence into perspective is to compare her actions with those of her sister-in-law. The government secured David Greenglass’s testimony against Julius and Ethel by agreeing not to charge his wife, Ruth. Like Ethel, Ruth was an enthusiastic supporter of her husband’s spying. When Julius and Ethel tentatively asked

92. “Letter NY—C,” 30 June 1950, “Report by ‘Kirillov’ on the meeting with ‘King,’” KGB File 86192, v. 1, p. 131, in Vassiliev, Yellow Notebook #1, p. 50. 93. “Eugene Tartakow’s 18 January 1951 Report,” in FBI File NY 65-15348, Sec. 1b-285-1b634.

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Ruth whether she would be willing to help the USSR, “she replied very simply and sincerely that it would be a privilege,” Julius told the KGB.94 Following Julius’s and Ethel’s instructions, Ruth subsequently convinced David to spy for the USSR, acted as a courier between New York and Albu- querque, and then moved to New Mexico. Unlike with Ethel, the KGB assigned Ruth a cover name, and the Center approved money to pay for the activities of both David and Ruth. Ruth was never indicted, and the FBI helped shield her and the Greenglass children from harm by giving them new identi- ties.95 Ethel Rosenberg’s and Ruth Greenglass’s espionage activities have far more in common than their fates would suggest.

94. “Report by Semen Semenov to P. Fitin on his work,” KGB File 40129, v. 3a, p. 205, in Vassiliev, White Notebook #1, p. 110. 95. “‘L-l’’s report on ‘Wasp,’” 5 December 1944, KGB File 86192, v. 1, p. 16, in Vassiliev, Yellow Note- book #1, pp. 54–55.

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