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Unlocking the Ts: Spies Revealed in Venona Code Mostly Eluded

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- -- A18 WEDNESDAY, DEMBER 25,1996 a Unlocking the ts: Spies Revealed In Venona Code Mostly Eluded ges '.1;11951, FBI Confronted Hall and Sax, but Couldn't Show Its Proof theit80 or so people who were iclenti- aviet agent corned "Mlact" (Kus- By Michael Dobbs fien.as Soviet agents, fewer than 10 ahjIfor 'youngster"). According to So- t Washington Post StaffWriter. were ever successfully prosecuted. wet intelligence documents, "Mlad" •±- The Fl3rs failure to bring charges tip-lied off the Kremlin about the test- agent Robert McQueen was *gains! Hail and others raises ques- , i of the first American atomic bomb. Coim that the young man he had , tions about the value of top secret in thily 1945 and handed over a rough *heed to accompany him to FBI head- fennation. In the, len tun, some ex!. theprint of the device to his Soviet %afters in Chicago was a Soviet spy. WO believe, Vellnin MaY:Prove,t0 be contacts. Burgle aho knew that proving the More useful. to historians seelon- g to =tmerican and Russian documents -tharge of espionage in front of a jury write the defuitive story of a canto- Skate that the Soviets had five or six could be enormously difficult ierwal period in American history than illtirmants at Los Alamos, the most ,The case against Theodore Alvin irvias to the US. government at the important of whom was the British nu- IRA-seemed clear enough. Intercepted clear physicist Klaus Fuchs, who con- tiCreinlin cables showed that he had Venona shiiiis is that prose: Itoiiesed to espionage in 1950 and was handed over top secret information to entF8 spies n§ verY, very-tough," said to 15 years in prison by a the Soviets while working on the Ivey ICIehr, author of "The Seaet 88tish court The documents suggest !atomic bomb project, at Los Alamos, Worfil of American Communism" and a t, t; provided the Soviets with 41.M., during the, last, few months of professor of political science at Emory urufloantly more information ahout ...WOW. War IL The information provid- thlletrsity. "Unless you catch them in the bomb than convicted American at- ; ed by Hall and other spies had heltied grer t, or have someone hire [the for- . 4 spies such as David Greenglass; or j ..,the, Russians build their own bomb, Mei—Communist agent] 'Whittaker DI* and Ethel Rosenberg, who were which turned out to be a carbon copy Chambers who produced, typewritten maned for treason in 1953. Another ricilie American Original. iiad handwtitten material that could be rtant informant,' Imown by the 14., March 1951, when he ccefront- iced. to [Alger] Hiss, it is very diffi- "Pas," has never been iden- '8d"Hall with the espionage allegations, Olt to wage convictions." )AcQueen had amassed a great deal of "FBI records made public in recent aecently released FBI docuMents information about the Harvard physics maxnths show that McQueen and other.' 4114 interviews with investigators and iodigy who had been recruited to join FBI 'agents attempted to get Hall and members have helped to re= 'Manhattan PrOject at the age of lfiX alleged collaborator to confirm in- e several lingering mysteries 18. An, experienced investigator who ' ling details contained in the Mut the government's handling of hirr, worked on some of Amerimi's t , intercepts, but were unable to. a Hall case, including the failure to loughest espionage cases, he had Rtract confessions. Now 71, Hall igesecute. The 'new information also ,;! spent months sifting through Hall's '. not on to have a distinguished career *Ods light on the reasons many ' tom keeping an eye on his left-wing *a microbiologist and was permitted ljnIericans of Hall's generation felt at- 4riends, and observing his 'Irregular" ; $stlivave the United States in 1962. In- tracted to Communist ideology, to the -we* habits at the University of Chico- terviewed at his home in Cainbridge, eiVent that some of them were pre- 80- rugland, last February, Hall refused to pad to spy on behaff, of the Soviet -..,Ant McQueen faced a problem that miss the espionage allegations on Union. l)ecome very familiar to investiga- maids that it would be "detrimental' lots,seeking to exploit what officials , health. now descrthe as one of the biggest w.,01 was convinced that Hall was One of the key pieces of evidence 1:eriffierinteffigence breakthroughs of guilty, but I could never develop against Hall is contained, in a coded the Cold War, The very existence of eirough evidence to prosecute lira,' message sent by the head of the Soviet espionage network in New York to his _the:Pude-breaking program known as ailid McQueen, who has since retired. "{Tenons" was one of the nation's most I* described the Hall matter as one of superiors in Moscow in November,. closely guarded secrets. Without cm- two unresolved cases that continue to 1944. The message, which was decod- -Aerating evidence, MCQueen would Saber him after 25 years as an FBI ed by American cryptographers in *forced to let a Soviet agent go free. merit and 12 years as a judge. 1948 or 1949, referred to Hal by I Out of the several hundred Soviet The charges against Hall first sor- name as .a "talented physicist" recruit- ,hgents mentioned in the Venona inter- ed earlier this year when the Na- ed from. Harvard to work on the atom- cepts, pubficly released early this year, tional Security Agency, the U.S. gov- ic bomb project at Los Alamos. It de- 'fewer than half have been identified by iiiMient entity responsible for code scribes him as having "an exceptionally U,Si counterintelligence. And out• of bitaldng, publicly identified him as the keen mind" and being "politically de- velcoPee ' THE WASHINGTON POST "We consider it edient to maintain liaison . with H [Theodore According to the message, Hall de- cided to cooperate with Soviet intelli- Alvin Hall] through gence on the advice of his former Har- vard roommate, Saville Sax. We S [Saville Sax] and consider it to maintain. liai- son with Mall through Siaxl and not not bring in bring -in anybody else," the message continued.; Subsequent messages refer anybody else." to Hall by the code name Miad and to message from head of Soviet spy Sax by the code name Star (Russian network in New York decoded by the for "old man")'. Sag died in 1980 at age U.S. military's Venona project 56. While there is nothing iii Hall's fanr FILE PNOTOME GUARW1 See MLAD, A19, CoL 1 THEODORE ALVIN HALL IHLAD, From Al8 . sponsible for persecuting Jews in, czarist Russia." fly background to suggest an obvioui • Boria Sax said' his grandparents vita Soviet connection, his friend Saville tually "barricaded themselves" into Sax could almost serve as a case study their New York apartment building, in KGB recruiting techniques. He and spent much of their time dreaming :::Came from a family of poor Jewish im- about an idealized Russia that they had ::migrants, who left Russia in 1914 dur: left behind.' They welcomed- the Bol- `Ing one of the periodic antisemitic pa- shevik Revolution of 1917, viewing ::trams carried out under the czars. His the Communiats as the enemies of the 'parents settled in New York, living in hated czarist oppressor. This romanti- an apartment bloC with dozens of other cized view of Russia blinded the family . .4ewish families and never really assim- to the new waves of antisemitic perse- . Hating into American society. , cution under Josef Stalin. "It was- a very closed community," The Venona transcripts 'indicate recalled Boria Sax, Saville Sax's oldest that Saville Sax was introduced to So- son, a teacher in upstate New York. viet agents by his mother, Bluma Sax, They had a rather paranoid view of who worked for a Conunimist front or- Ainerica. They identified American so- ganization. "She was basically. a peas- - „ciety with the people who were re- ant woman who . looked up to Stalin . VU PHOTO SAVILLE SAX very highly, and thought that his re- He could be a very impressive intellec- • employees said Hall made no attempt ' gime would put an end to antisemi- teal conversationalist, but he was un- to hide his left-wing sympathies or his tism," recalled Saville Sax's former disciplined and prone to violent fits of contempt for the U.S. Anny. wife, Susan Peters. • temper." Hall and Sax remained friends after The FBI opened a major investiga- Saville Sax's intuitive intelligence the war, when both moved to Chicago. tion into the Sax family in 1949, after helped get him accepted to Harvard at Hall got a job in the biophysics depart the names of Bluma and Saville Sax the age of 17, where he struck up a ment of the University of Chicago. Sax showed up in intercepted Soviet intelli- friendship with Hall. Their former drifted from job to job. When the FBI gence documents. Peters said she at- Lowell House roommate, Roy Glati-, - hauled them, in for questioning on tributed the FBI's interest in her hus- bet', who went on to work at Los Ala- March 16, 1951, Sax was a taxi driver. band to the McCarthyite paranoia that mos and become a professar of theo- Having worked on other espionage • turned American society upside down retical physics at Harvard, recalled cases, McQueen knew that Iris best in the early '50s M a hunt for. Soviet that Sax exercised a "mysterious influ- chance of getting Hai to confess was Wies- ence" over Hall. Socially awlcward and to obtain corroborating information Boria Sax described his father as a withdrawn from other students, Hall from other members of the spy ring.
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