Alexander Vassiliev's Notebooks and The

SovietHaynes Inte andll igenceKlehr Activities in the United States during the Stalin Era

Alexander Vassiliev’s Notebooks and the Documentation of Soviet Intelligence Activities in the United States during the Stalin Era

✣ John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/jcws/article-pdf/11/3/6/697250/jcws.2009.11.3.6.pdf by guest on 30 September 2021

The history of intelligence and espionage can be a frustrating ªeld for historians, particularly if their period of interest is within the last 75 years. Most countries are signiªcantly slower to open their intelligence agency archives than their diplomatic records, and many have not released even a tiny fraction of intelligence material, the only exception being the partial opening of the intelligence archives of a few of the collapsed Eastern European Com- munist regimes. With the archives largely closed, the bits and pieces of information released by governments to placate public curiosity about espionage can be misleading. Ofªcial government statements often have more to do with public relations than with the truth. The spies themselves have rarely been available to be interviewed and have good reasons to avoid being too speciªc or entirely candid. When they do speak through memoir literature, they are as prone as autobiographers in other walks of life to romanticize their own importance, minimize their mistakes, and pass over unpleasant or sensitive events in silence, misdirection, or outright lies. In the United States and Great Britain, partial openings of the records of counterespionage agencies, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Security Service (MI5), offer some access into espionage directed at those countries, but even there the ªles are subject to severe redaction. Occasionally trials have brought to light information on espionage operations, but only a fraction of intelligence activities ends up being the target of public prosecution. For these reasons, Alexander Vassiliev’s notebooks provide a uniquely rich insight into Soviet espionage. As Vassiliev explains in detail in his introduc- tion to our newly published coauthored book, Spies, from early 1994 to the spring of 1996 he had unprecedented access to the archival record of Soviet

Journal of Cold War Studies Vol. 11, No. 3, Summer 2009, pp. 6–25

6 Soviet Intelligence Activities in the United States during the Stalin Era espionage activities in America from the 1930s to the early 1950s.1 The Rus- sian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), successor to the ªrst main directorate of the Soviet Committee on State Security (KGB), had decided to assist a project that partnered an active or retired KGB ofªcer with a Western author to produce a series of books on selected intelligence topics. Vassiliev, who had resigned from the KGB in 1990 to enter journalism, accepted an SVR offer to work with Allen Weinstein to prepare a book on KGB operations in the United States.2 Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/jcws/article-pdf/11/3/6/697250/jcws.2009.11.3.6.pdf by guest on 30 September 2021 Vassiliev did not have access to all KGB ªles, but he was allowed to examine many operational ªles of the KGB’s legal stations, some personal ªles of both ofªcers and sources, and the ªrst volume of the ªle on Project Enormoz (Enormous), the KGB nuclear weapons intelligence project, which covered the Soviet intelligence services’ assault on the Manhattan Project up to the end of 1945. Although Vassiliev was prohibited from making photocopies, he was allowed to make handwritten notes without restriction, including copy- ing verbatim passages out of hundreds of individual documents. Under the policies of the project, however, the notes were only for his own use and were not to be shared with his American coauthor. Instead, under SVR guidelines he prepared sanitized summaries of major topics and themes. With some ex- ceptions, only the cover names of sources—not their real names or identifying information—could be disclosed. And certain matters could not be discussed at all. Once the summaries were prepared, an SVR committee of senior of- ªcers reviewed them to conªrm that the guidelines had been followed. By the spring of 1996, complications had arisen. Crown Publishers, which had arranged the publishing project, had run into economic difªculties and canceled the contract with the SVR in 1995. Although the books already under way found new publishers (the Weinstein-Vassiliev volume was eventually published by Random House), the SVR attitude toward the project also cooled. The SVR and its sister Federal Security Service (FSB, the main successor to the internal apparatus of the KGB) had regained their footing in Rus- sian society, and the need for good press that had partly motivated the project was no longer urgent. Elements in the agency, particularly its still strong Communist faction, had always been hostile to any arrangement to publish Russian secrets, regarding it as a breach of security. Moreover, in early 1996

1. Alexander Vassiliev, “How I Came to Write My Notebooks, Discover Alger Hiss, and Lose to His Lawyer,” in John Earl Haynes, Harvey Klehr, and Alexander Vassiliev, Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009), pp. xxvii–liii. 2. The predecessors to the foreign intelligence agency best known in the West as the KGB went through a number of organizational and title changes in the 1930s and 1940s. For reasons of simplicity, “KGB” will be used throughout this article to avoid the distraction of multiple titles and acro- nyms.

7 Haynes and Klehr

President Boris Yeltsin seemed in danger of losing his reelection bid to Gennadii Zyuganov, the Communist candidate, in the presidential vote scheduled for June. After threats of retaliation from Communist ofªcers in the SVR, Vassiliev decided to leave Russia. He got a journalistic assignment in London and has not returned to Russia since. He is today a British citizen. Concerned about a physical search at the airport, Vassiliev did not take his original handwritten notebooks with him in 1996. Instead, he put his summary chapters, some of which had been approved by the SVR committee Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/jcws/article-pdf/11/3/6/697250/jcws.2009.11.3.6.pdf by guest on 30 September 2021 and others that were awaiting review, on computer disks and left Russia with the data. These summaries were given to Allen Weinstein and were the basis for The Haunted Wood: Soviet Espionage in America—The Stalin Era, published in 1999.3 That Weinstein had only Vassiliev’s sanitized summaries to use did not lessen the importance of The Haunted Wood, the ªrst survey of So- viet intelligence in the United States written from KGB archival sources, but it did limit the information contained in the book. Vassiliev retrieved his original notebooks from Moscow in 2001. Friends had been keeping them and simply shipped them to him in London by DHL. As explained in our preface to Spies, in 2005 we learned of the existence of the notebooks and traveled to London to examine them and discuss their prove- nance with Vassiliev. The following year we convened a one-day private meeting in Washington, DC, during which experienced historians, archivists, and intelligence professionals examined the notebooks and discussed with Vassiliev at length how they had been prepared. With the unanimous agree- ment of the participants at the meeting that the material was genuine, we obtained a foundation grant to have the notebooks professionally translated and a contract from Yale University Press to publish a book based on them. Alex- ander Vassiliev is a coauthor of the book and was fully engaged in the project. He prepared a transcription into word-processed Russian of his handwritten original notebooks, a great assistance to translators Philip Redko and Steve Shabad, and reviewed their translations, clarifying a number of ambiguities. In 2007, realizing that only a portion of the material in the notebooks could be used in our book, we distributed copies of the translated notebooks to specialists with established records of signiªcant archival research so that they could prepare essays in their areas of expertise. We exercised no review over their writing, requesting only that nothing be used prior to the appear- ance of Spies. Those essays are published in this special issue of the Journal of Cold War Studies, which sent out the manuscripts for external review to re- viewers who likewise agreed not to disclose the contents.

3. Allen Weinstein and Alexander Vassiliev, The Haunted Wood: Soviet Espionage in America—The Sta- lin Era (New York: Random House, 1999).

8 Soviet Intelligence Activities in the United States during the Stalin Era

Alexander Vassiliev recorded his notes in eight separate notebooks, labeled Black, White #1, White #2, White #3, Yellow #1, Yellow #2, Yellow #3, and Yellow #4, plus a ninth collection of loose pages labeled Odd Pages. In total the notebooks come to 1,115 pages. Three versions of the notebooks exist: the original handwritten versions, transcriptions into word-processed Rus- sian, and translations into English. The latter two duplicate the pagination and page formatting of the original handwritten version. Thus the material on page 65 of the handwritten White #1 is parallel to the material on page 65 Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/jcws/article-pdf/11/3/6/697250/jcws.2009.11.3.6.pdf by guest on 30 September 2021 of the transcription and translation of White #1. Researchers wishing to verify a passage because of a concern about translation or some other ambiguity can move among the three versions with a minimum of confusion. In the spring of 2009 Vassiliev donated the notebooks to the Library of Congress with no restriction on access, although he retained rights to reproduction beyond individuals being authorized to make one copy for personal research use. The notebooks were made available for research as soon as they were ofªcially delivered to the library. In addition, ªles in Portable Document Format (PDF) of the scanned original handwritten notebooks, transcriptions, and translations have been placed on the Internet.4 Accompanying the notebooks is a lengthy concordance of proper names cross-indexed with cover names (in English and transliterated Russian) that assists researchers in keeping straight the often bewildering cast of characters, along with a guide listing the KGB ªle numbers and titles found in each notebook and their page location. The notebooks contain Vassiliev’s summaries of KGB archival documents along with quotations, many very lengthy, from those documents, as well as citations to the particular document, ªle, and page from which the information came. Because the SVR archive remains closed, Vassiliev’s notebooks are as close as scholars are likely to get to the actual documents for many years or even decades. As extracts or quotations from contemporaneous documents that were written at the time the events were occurring or shortly afterward, Vassiliev’s summaries have the virtue of being a record of how the very agency that conducted the spying understood its operations. These ofªcial communications are not the guesses, sometimes inspired, sometimes incorrect, of counterespionage ofªcers. Nor are they the reluctant, often minimal admis- sions from suspects or the statements from defectors who in some cases had a personal agenda. Instead, the notebooks contain the accounts of the successes and failures of the KGB by the KGB itself. They are not public “spin” offered by a bureaucracy anxious to demonstrate its value to a public or protect the organization’s self-image.

4. See “Vassiliev Notebooks,” held by the Manuscript Division, Library of Congress. The PDF versions are available on the website of the Cold War International History Project, at http:// www.cwihp.org.

9 Haynes and Klehr

Any archival historian knows that even contemporaneous documents can sometimes mislead because the creator for some reason did not correctly un- derstand the events he was reporting, harbored prejudices and assumptions that distorted what was reported, or for reasons of self-promotion or self- protection distorted what actually happened. But that is true of all archival records no matter what the subject and is why historians feel more conªdent when multiple documentary sources are available that corroborate each other and allow one to screen out the misleading outlier. Given the several Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/jcws/article-pdf/11/3/6/697250/jcws.2009.11.3.6.pdf by guest on 30 September 2021 thousand KGB documents transcribed, quoted, extracted, and summarized in 1,115 pages of densely handwritten notes, Vassiliev’s notebooks provide researchers with an abundance of material that offers ample basis for validation with independent sources. The notebooks not only complement and corroborate new sources that have appeared in the past decade but go considerably beyond them in detail. Declassiªed materials from Communist International (Comintern) and Communist Party, USA (CPUSA) ªles are signiªcant and helpful and shed some light on espionage in the United States, but the ªles include only a small number of KGB and Soviet military intelligence (GRU) documents—the ones that made their way to the Comintern or CPUSA—that cover only a tiny fraction of KGB activities.5 We dealt with such evidence in two earlier books, The Secret World of American Communism and The Soviet World of American Communism.6 The World War II KGB and GRU cables deciphered by the National Security Agency’s Venona project and released in the mid- 1990s are also an exceedingly valuable documentary source, out of which we wrote Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America.7 But valuable as the Venona decryptions are, they represent only a few thousand cables out of hundreds of thousands sent, and those decoded were random, the result of the few cables out of the total body that were vulnerable to being decrypted. Con- sequently, the subjects covered by the Venona messages ranged from the trivial to the important, and often they were only partly decrypted. Even when com- plete, they were messages boiled down for transmission by telegram, often short, terse, and lacking detail. In 1992, retired KGB ofªcer Vasili Mitrokhin defected to Great Britain. In the latter part of his career he had been the KGB’s archivist and secretly

5. Like the Soviet foreign intelligence agency, the Soviet military intelligence body changed its name over time before receiving its best-known name, GRU (for Main Intelligence Directorate of the Gen- eral Staff). For the sake of simplicity, the GRU acronym will be used throughout. 6. Harvey Klehr, John Earl Haynes, and Fridrikh Igorevich Firsov, The Secret World of American Com- munism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995); and Harvey Klehr, John Earl Haynes, and Kyrill M. Anderson, The Soviet World of American Communism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998). 7. John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr, Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999).

10 Soviet Intelligence Activities in the United States during the Stalin Era transcribed some of the documents that passed through his hands. After he retired in 1984, he typed up his notes into ten manuscript volumes (eight geo- graphical and two case histories), destroying the original notes. When the British Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) exªltrated him to the West, he brought with him the ten volumes of transcribed notes and some envelopes of original notes not yet transcribed. This material formed the basis for two highly valuable books on Soviet intelligence by Christopher Andrew and Mitrokhin, The Sword and the Shield and The World Was Going Our Way, as Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/jcws/article-pdf/11/3/6/697250/jcws.2009.11.3.6.pdf by guest on 30 September 2021 well as a KGB lexicon.8 Andrew is a leading historian of intelligence, and Mitrokhin’s material is extremely rich, but valuable as the books are, scholars would like to have the underlying material open for independent review. As of 2008, however, the SIS and the Mitrokhin family have released only a small portion of the transcribed material and original notes, none of it dealing with operations in the United States. (In any case, only a portion of Mitrokhin’s material dealt with operations in the United States, whereas all of Vassiliev’s material focuses on American-related subjects.) Just as Mitrokhin’s material cannot be checked against the original KGB documents still classiªed in Moscow, Vassiliev’s notebooks cannot be com- pared to the original ªles and folders he examined. Nevertheless, we are conªdent that his material is genuine. The information is congruent with other evidence on Soviet espionage that has emerged over the years, including material from archives and intelligence agencies that was inaccessible at the time Vassiliev was doing his research. Thus, cables translated by the Venona project can be found in Vassiliev’s notes, with the undecrypted portions in plain text. Cover names that U.S. and British counterintelligence were unable to identify are linked in Vassiliev’s ªles to real people, who, upon examina- tion, ªt the biographical details from the KGB cables deciphered by the Venona project. The notebooks clarify occasional errors by U.S. counter-

8. Christopher M. Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin, The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB (New York: Basic Books, 1999); Christopher M. Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin, The World Was Going Our Way: The KGB and the Battle for the Third World (New York: Basic Books, 2005); Vasili Mitrokhin, KGB Lexicon: A Handbook of Chekist Terminology (London: Frank Cass, 2001); “CWIHP Note on the Mitrokhin Archive—A Note on Sources” (June 2000), in The Mitrokhin Archive, Cold War International History Project (CWIHP) Virtual Archive 2.0 (http://www.wilsoncenter.org/index.cfm?topic_id?1409&fuseaction?va2.browse&sort ?Collection); and “The Mitrokhin Archive—A Note on Sources” (1990), in The Mitrokhin Archive, CWIHP Virtual Archive 2.0 (http://www.wilsoncenter.org/index.cfm?topic_id?1409&fuseaction?va2 .browse&sort?Collection). The cables deciphered by the Venona project are available on-line at http:// www.nsa.gov/public_info/declass/venona/index.shtml. Hard copies of the cables are also available at the National Cryptologic Museum, Fort Meade, MD. Histories of the Venona project include Robert L. Benson, The Venona Story (Fort Meade, MD: Center for Cryptologic History, National Security Agency, 2001); and Robert Louis Benson and Michael Warner, eds., Venona: Soviet Espionage and the American Response 1939–1957 (Washington, DC: National Security Agency and Central Intelligence Agency, 1996).

11 Haynes and Klehr intelligence in assigning cover names to real people, and in each and every case Vassiliev’s notes are more plausible: They contain details that no fantasist or forger could possibly have invented. This is not to say that there may not be some errors in transcription or note-taking, only that they are minor. Vassiliev occasionally failed to indicate where a quotation ended, sometimes could not recall what he meant by a cryptic summary phrase, and may have miscopied words here and there. In short, he might have committed some of the same errors to which any re- Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/jcws/article-pdf/11/3/6/697250/jcws.2009.11.3.6.pdf by guest on 30 September 2021 searcher working in an archive over an extended period is prone. But anyone reading the notebooks will be impressed by the care and thoroughness of his research and deeply grateful for the contribution he has made to our understanding of Soviet espionage in the United States. To highlight the richness of the notebooks, just consider that they enable us to attach real names to 61 previously unidentiªed cover names that emerged from the Venona cables and provide information on more than 50 other individuals who cooperated with Soviet intelligence. In Spies we bring out some of the highlights of Vassiliev’s notebooks, and the articles in this issue of the journal expand on these highlights. No case of Soviet espionage has received as much attention as that of Alger Hiss. Because he worked for the GRU, not for the KGB, we were surprised that the notebooks contained so much about him. But because both the GRU and the KGB tended to recruit from the same pool of secret mem- bers of the CPUSA, their networks in Washington, DC kept tripping over each other. Hiss appears in the notebooks under his various cover names, “Ju- rist,” “Ales,” and “Leonard,” and unambiguously under his real name in the mid-1930s, the mid-1940s, and the late 1940s. A ªnal entry in 1950 noted that the trial of the GRU’s State Department source “Leonard” had resulted in a guilty verdict and his imprisonment. The amount of material on Hiss’s work for Soviet intelligence was sufªcient to entitle the chapter on Hiss in our book “Case Closed.” (The Hiss case is also the subject of Eduard Mark’s important essay in this issue of the journal.) One surprise in the notebooks was information that from 1934 to early 1937 the KGB had a highly valuable source at the U.S. State Department, David Salmon, a veteran civil servant with no Communist background what- soever, who was recruited for cash that was more than his government salary. He was worth the money because he was chief of the State Department’s Divi- sion of Communications and Records. Salmon’s division not only circulated and archived all U.S. diplomatic communications but also ran the department’s cipher ofªce. Although Salmon was ideally placed for a spy, the KGB lost contact with him in 1937 when it broke its relationship with his courier and recruiter, Ludwig Lore. Once a prominent CPUSA ªgure, Lore had been

12 Soviet Intelligence Activities in the United States during the Stalin Era expelled in the mid-1920s in a factional dispute. He remained close to the Communist movement, however, and in 1934 the newly established KGB station in New York engaged him to recruit and manage sources. But the KGB eventually concluded that Lore, despite having recruited legitimate sources, had also invented several ªctitious agents and attributed some of Salmon’s authentic material to a non-existent State Department source in order to pocket the source’s subsidy. Because Lore was the KGB’s only link to Salmon, his loss also ended Salmon’s relationship with the Soviet Union. Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/jcws/article-pdf/11/3/6/697250/jcws.2009.11.3.6.pdf by guest on 30 September 2021 Vassiliev’s notebooks signiªcantly expand our understanding of Soviet nuclear weapons espionage, supplying real names for several of the cover names in the Venona decryptions whose real identities were never discovered. “Quantum,” mentioned in three 1943 KGB cables, met with a senior Soviet diplomat and two intelligence ofªcers at the Soviet embassy in Washington to provide technical information on gaseous diffusion uranium separation. “Quantum” was Boris Podolsky, a professor at the University of Cincinnati never suspected of any association with Soviet intelligence. A Russian-born physicist, Podolsky was coauthor, along with Albert Einstein, of the most widely read theoretical critique of quantum mechanics (presumably the inspi- ration for his cover name). As a source, however, Podolsky disappointed the KGB. He wanted to return to the USSR as a senior scientist, but the KGB wanted practical information on making a nuclear bomb. When he failed to do get a post with the Manhattan Project, he was dropped from the KGB’s list of agents. Another of Venona’s unidentiªed nuclear weapons sources was “Huron,” who was responsible for approaching senior scientists at the Manhattan Pro- ject’s Chicago facility. One historian even suggested he might be the Nobel- prize winning physicist Ernest Lawrence. But Vassiliev’s notebooks identify “Huron” as Byron Darling, a secret Communist who had received a doctorate at the University of Michigan in 1939 and worked as a research physicist at the U.S. Rubber Company in Detroit in 1941. Although he was not himself directly involved with the Manhattan Project, he knew a number of the scientists working on the nuclear bomb. The notebooks show that he never fulªlled the task set for him. The most startling identiªcation in the notebooks was a source on the Manhattan project facilities at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, who had the cover name “Fogel,” later changed to “Persian.” Russell McNutt, a civil engineer who worked for Kellex, the contractor that built the massive K-25 gaseous diffusion plant at Oak Ridge, is hardly a household name. But McNutt’s recruiter, Julius Rosenberg, is another matter. The notebooks show that McNutt was another of the young Communist engineers whom Rosenberg persuaded to assist Soviet intelligence, giving Rosenberg the distinction of re-

13 Haynes and Klehr

cruiting two Soviet nuclear spies: one at Los Alamos (his long-known brother- in-law, David Greenglass) and one source at Oak Ridge (the hitherto un- known McNutt). Escaping public involvement in the postwar revelations of Soviet nuclear espionage, McNutt enjoyed a distinguished career as senior engineer for Gulf Oil and was one of the developers of the planned community of Reston, Virginia. (McNutt and the Rosenberg apparatus are discussed in Steven Usdin’s essay in this issue of the journal.) Yet another unidentiªed nuclear weapons spy in the Venona decryptions Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/jcws/article-pdf/11/3/6/697250/jcws.2009.11.3.6.pdf by guest on 30 September 2021 was “Eric,” a source in Great Britain who reported on the British nuclear bomb project and passed along detailed technical reports received from the Manhattan Project. Vassiliev’s notebooks name “Eric” as Engelbert Broda, a Communist and refugee Austrian physicist who worked at Cambridge Uni- versity’s Cavendish Laboratory. After the war, Broda became one of the lumi- naries of Austrian physics. Well into 1944 most of the nuclear weapons intelligence the KGB received came from its sources in Great Britain. To Moscow’s great frustration, recruitment efforts in the United States either failed entirely or proved far less productive than originally hoped. Not until 1944—when Klaus Fuchs, already a Soviet spy, arrived in New York from Great Britain, the young Los Alamos physicist Theodore Hall volunteered to spy, and Julius Rosenberg recruited ªrst Russell McNutt and then David Greenglass—did the KGB begin to receive a plentiful volume of high-quality nuclear intelligence from the United States. The notebooks also provide convincing evidence that the KGB never successfully recruited J. Robert Oppenheimer, despite his secret membership in the CPUSA (membership he always denied). The notebooks show repeated but failed KGB efforts to meet with him. By late 1945 the KGB reluctantly concluded that its hopes for recruiting Oppenheimer were unrealistic. Oppenheimer remained on a KGB list until 1950, but it was a roster of “leading reactionary scientists” to be discredited in a KGB disinformation cam- paign.9 (Gregg Herken’s essay in this issue of the journal discusses Oppen- heimer and the frustrations of the KGB’s West Coast nuclear intelligence.) Although the notebooks exonerate Oppenheimer, they incriminate another well-known ªgure often accused of covert ties to the KGB. I. F. Stone, lionized by many as the very symbol of an independent journalist, ªrst went to work for the KGB in 1936 and remained active until at least 1939. Nor was Stone the most famous writer who volunteered to spy; the KGB also recruited

9. A. Raina, “To Comrade J. V. Stalin,...Planofoper. measures connected with Ch-s’s case,” 5 Feb- ruary 1950, KGB File 84490, v. 3, p. 44, in Alexander Vassiliev, Yellow Notebook #1, trans. by Philip Redko (2007), pp. 91–92. The ªnal page numbers given for all Vassiliev notebook citations refer to the English translations by Philip Redko and Steven Shabad.

14 Soviet Intelligence Activities in the United States during the Stalin Era

Ernest Hemingway, but despite repeated efforts to use him, he failed to de- liver any signiªcant information to the KGB. (Max Holland’s article in this issue of the journal deals with Stone in far greater detail than we do in Spies.) Other chapters in Spies deal with the wide-ranging and highly successful So- viet initiatives in scientiªc and technical intelligence, particularly the produc- tivity of Julius Rosenberg’s apparatus of Communist engineers in providing information on cutting-edge U.S. military technology. The KGB successfully penetrated the Ofªce of Strategic Services (OSS), almost every government Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/jcws/article-pdf/11/3/6/697250/jcws.2009.11.3.6.pdf by guest on 30 September 2021 agency dealing with conªdential matters, congressional staffs, and the White House. The subtitle of Spies is The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America. As the story of nuclear weapons intelligence illustrates, espionage is not a static process. Periods of success are mixed with stretches of frustration and failure. Apart from the vagaries of individual spies, KGB operations in the United States rose and fell twice. After diplomatic recognition in 1933, the KGB established a large legal station at the Soviet consulate in New York, a large illegal station also operating from New York, and small operations at the Soviet embassy in Washington and the Soviet consulate in San Francisco. By 1937, after some teething problems, these stations had built up very impressive networks for scientiªc and technical intelligence and had developed good sources at the U.S. State Department and Justice Department. But nearly everything was destroyed or crippled in the years that followed, not by pressure from the FBI but from Iosif Stalin’s own purge of his security services. The heads of the legal and illegal stations and many of their ofªcers were recalled and shot. The illegal station was shut down entirely in late 1939 when the last remaining ofªcer was recalled. By mid-1941 the legal station was greatly reduced in per- sonnel and no longer had any ofªcers with extensive American experience. Many of those only recently arrived spoke poor English. Not surprisingly, most of the once-thriving networks of the mid-1930s had been deactivated. After the German attack on the Soviet Union in June 1941, America’s importance to the USSR’s survival was critical, and the Soviet authorities demanded a vastly expanded ºow of intelligence from the United States. The KGB responded by dispatching experienced senior ofªcers, and the American stations were rebuilt. But the need for immediate intelligence was so urgent that the KGB stations resorted to converting CPUSA networks originally created for political goals into espionage rings and running them using CPUSA channels. Despite realizing how risky and insecure such tactics were, the KGB judged them acceptable to obtain quick results. In the short run, the results were spectacular, including Rosenberg’s large technical intelligence apparatus and the two large Washington networks of U.S. government ofªcials run by Gregory Silvermaster and Victor Perlo. By 1944 the KGB had multiple

15 Haynes and Klehr sources in nearly every U.S. government agency of interest to Soviet intelligence. But almost all of the KGB’s new Washington sources had been recruited through Jacob Golos and his assistant, Elizabeth Bentley. After Golos died in late 1943, the KGB stations, now up to full strength, sought to profes- sionalize operations by gradually moving Bentley aside, taking over direct su- pervision of the several dozen sources she ran in Washington, cutting the sources’ links to the CPUSA, and grouping them in small, compartmented units reporting to a KGB ofªcer or a long-serving American agent. Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/jcws/article-pdf/11/3/6/697250/jcws.2009.11.3.6.pdf by guest on 30 September 2021 Bentley, however, resented being pushed aside, and in the fall of 1945 went to the FBI. The result was a second catastrophe as sweeping (although not as lethal) as Stalin’s purge. Bentley had worked with most of the senior ofªcers and agents of the KGB’s American stations, and Moscow feared that Golos had informed her about others. In response to her defection, the KGB recalled most of its experienced ofªcers from the United States in 1946 and 1947, including the chiefs of the legal and illegal stations in New York and Washington. Most of its agent networks were deactivated. The ªrst new Washington station chief hastily dispatched in 1946 had actually been slated for Japan, spoke almost no English, and quickly proved to be unable to cope with the situation. To compound the KGB’s difªculties, Bentley’s defection also coincided with the end of World War II, when the FBI’s counterespionage focus shifted from the German and Japanese threat to the Soviet Union. The FBI’s person- nel had grown enormously during the war, and the bureau now had ample manpower to deploy against the CPUSA and Soviet intelligence. (John Fox’s article in this issue of the journal discusses the evolution of FBI counterintelligence.) Furthermore, U.S. cryptanalysts of the Venona project made their ªrst breaks into World War II KGB message trafªc in 1946, and a steady ºow of deciphered messages either directly identiªed or provided the FBI with leads to scores of Soviet agents. In the late 1940s the KGB spent much of its time on damage control, and repeated attempts to revive old networks or build new ones in the anti-Communist atmosphere of the late 1940s came to little. Use of the CPUSA as an auxiliary and recruiting pool was no longer possible because of the FBI’s close attention to party activities, and public revelations of the party’s assistance to Soviet espionage by congressional commit- tees and the FBI permanently tainted American Communism with treason. Only two bright lights emerged for Soviet intelligence in the postwar period. Judith Coplon, recruited in 1945, used her position in the Foreign Agents Registration section of the Justice Department, a key ofªce that received FBI counterespionage reports, to keep the KGB informed about the progress of FBI security investigations so that Soviet agents could be warned when the FBI began to focus on suspected spies. But deciphered KGB cables

16 Soviet Intelligence Activities in the United States during the Stalin Era allowed the FBI to identify her in late 1948. Although she was charged with espionage-related crimes, her convictions were reversed on technical grounds. Nonetheless, her exposure cost the KGB a valuable source.10 Coplon, in any case, was only helping the KGB respond defensively to FBI initiatives. The most important spy in the postwar period inºicted serious damage on U.S. interests and likely contributed to the enormous human and material costs of the Korean War. For scholars of the Cold War, one of the most signiªcant and fascinating stories that emerge from Vassiliev’s notebooks Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/jcws/article-pdf/11/3/6/697250/jcws.2009.11.3.6.pdf by guest on 30 September 2021 is that of William Weisband, whose obscurity masks his key role in postwar history. Weisband claimed to have been born in Alexandria, Egypt, but might have been born in 1908 in Odessa, Russia, and later moved to Egypt with his parents, whom he accompanied to the United States in 1925. U.S. counterintelligence ofªcers believed that he returned to the Soviet Union sometime in the early 1930s, perhaps to study at the Comintern’s Lenin School. Re- cruited by Soviet intelligence in 1934, he was working as a courier for the KGB’s New York station by 1936.11 The KGB transferred Weisband to California in mid-1941 to reestablish contact with Jones York, an aeronautical engineer and paid Soviet source. Over the next year, Weisband met with York about ten times, delivering lists of speciªc aviation technical questions the Soviet government wanted ad- dressed. The two became friendly, meeting at York’s home as well as nearby bars and restaurants, and York even learned his contact’s family name, which years later, when talking to the FBI, he remembered as “Villesbend.” After Weisband was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1942, the KGB turned liaison with York over to another courier, Amadeo Sabatini.12 Weisband had a talent for languages. Russian was his native tongue, but

10. “Judith Coplon: The Spy Who Got Away with It,” in John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr, Early Cold War Spies: The Espionage Trials That Shaped American Politics (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), pp. 192–207. 11. Robert Louis Benson, “Weisband” (paper presented at the Ninth Symposium on Cryptologic His- tory, Maritime Institute, Linthicum, MD, October 2003); Robert Louis Benson to Harvey Klehr, 20 June 2007; “‘Zero’ was handed over to ‘Link,’” c. 1936, KGB File 3461, v. 2, p. 165, in Alexander Vassiliev, Black Notebook, p. 17; “Expense estimate for the NY station for the 2nd quarter of 1937,” KGB File 3464, v. 1, p. 84, in Vassiliev, Black Notebook, p. 27; and “Agents: (3rd qtr. of ’38),” KGB File 40159, v. 1, p. 253, in Vassiliev, Black Notebook, p. 101. See also Raymond J. Batvinis, “Is Counterintelligence an Affair of State or Justice? The Bureaucratic Struggle over Responsibility in Two Wars,” paper presented at the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations annual meeting, Chantilly, Virginia, 2007. 12. KGB New York to Moscow Center, 17 July 1941, KGB File 40594, v. 5, p. 126, in Vassiliev, Black Notebook, p. 103; FBI Washington Field Ofªce Report, Jones York Deposition, 6 October 1953, re- produced in Benson and Warner, eds., Venona, pp. 167–170; “Background on ‘Needle,’” 10 February 1947, KGB File 40129, v. 4, p. 257, in Alexander Vassiliev, White Notebook #1, p. 120; Hood to Di- rector, 11 April 1950, Serial 53, in FBI Jones Orin York File 65-2223; and Hood to Director, 4 April 1950, Serial 57, FBI Jones Orin York File 65-2223.

17 Haynes and Klehr

he spoke English almost without accent and had picked up some Arabic from his childhood in Egypt. The Army recognized his skills and sent him to a lan- guage school to study Italian and to Ofªcer Candidate School. He received a commission and, at his request, assignment to the U.S. Army Signal Security Agency (predecessor of the National Security Agency). He left for Great Brit- ain in July 1943 and later served in North Africa and Italy. A KGB New York station cable in June alerted Moscow that Weisband had ªnished his Italian course and suggested a password for approaching him in Britain. While Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/jcws/article-pdf/11/3/6/697250/jcws.2009.11.3.6.pdf by guest on 30 September 2021 Weisband was overseas, he also kept in touch with the KGB by writing to Lona Cohen, another KGB courier, via his brother. A February 1945 KGB cable only partly deciphered by the Venona project suggested that Weisband had some contact with Soviet naval intelligence; this likely related to his Army assignment in Italy as liaison with several Soviet naval ofªcers.13 In late 1944 KGB ofªcer Semen Semenov returned to Moscow and wrote a summary report on his tour of the United States. He had worked with Weisband and offered this assessment:

‘“Link” [Weisband]. Helped me in receiving materials from “Emulsion” [unidentiªed technical source] and “Brother” [unidentiªed technical source]. Was connected to agents “Smart” [oil industry source Elliot Goldberg] and “Needle” [Jones York]. Has a great desire to work with us. Shows composure and calm at work. Considering his nice work in the West and indisputable growth during his time in the army (Africa, Italy, Britain, France), he should be utilized upon his return as an illegal in technology and assigned as the handler of a group.”14

Weisband, however, had a brighter espionage future than a return to courier and agent-handling work. After his discharge at the end of the war, the Army Signal Security Agency rehired him as a civilian linguist assigned to Arlington Hall, the military’s super-secret code-breaking facility then in the process of shifting from German and Japanese codes to Soviet codes. With his native Russian, Weisband became a lead translator for decrypted Soviet messages. With the exception of nuclear weapons espionage, one could hardly imagine a post of greater interest to Soviet intelligence. In October 1945, following Igor Gouzenko’s defection in Canada, Moscow issued a warning to

13. Venona 981 KGB New York to Moscow, 23 June 1943; Venona 1239 KGB New York to Moscow, 30 August 1944; Venona 154 Moscow to KGB New York, 16 February 1945; and Semenov to Fitin, c. 1944, KGB File 40129, v. 3a, pp. 212–213, in Vassiliev, White Notebook #1, pp. 112–113. See also “Victor” to “Anton,” 23 February 1945, KGB File 40159, v. 3, p. 474, in Vassiliev, Black Notebook, p. 133. 14. Semenov to Fitin, 29 November 1944, KGB File 40129, v. 3a, p. 213, in Vassiliev, White Notebook #1, p. 113.

18 Soviet Intelligence Activities in the United States during the Stalin Era protect six valuable American agents, including Weisband, by then code- named “Zhora”:

Surveillance has been increased. Safeguard from failure: “Homer” [Donald Maclean], “Ruble” [Harold Glasser], “Raid” [Victor Perlo], “Mole” [Charles Kramer], “Zhora” [Weisband], and “Izra” [Donald Wheeler]. Reduce meetings with them to once or twice a month. Minor agents should be deactivated. Care- fully check out against surveillance when going to meetings, and if anything seems suspicious, do not go through with them. Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/jcws/article-pdf/11/3/6/697250/jcws.2009.11.3.6.pdf by guest on 30 September 2021 But with news of Elizabeth Bentley’s defection in November, the “Center” (KGB headquarters in Moscow) ordered more drastic measures, and the KGB cut contact with scores of American sources, including William Weisband.15 Every country’s intelligence services have strengths and weaknesses. In the jargon of the intelligence world, while the Soviet Union excelled in “humint” (human intelligence, the recruiting of sources who steal documents and provide information), the United States excelled in “sigint” (signals intelligence, the interception and deciphering of electronic communications). During World War II the U.S. Army and Navy paired America’s highly advanced radio and early computer technology with thousands of cryptanalysts, linguists, mathematicians, and other specialists and created the most powerful and advanced cryptologic capacity in the world. The Army’s Signal Security facility at Arlington Hall was the largest, and eventually the Navy’s and Air Force’s counterparts merged into it to form the Armed Forces Security Agency (AFSA). A later reorganization transformed it into the National Security Agency (NSA). Once so secret that the inside joke was that “NSA” stood for “No Such Agency,” the NSA now has a more public proªle, but its sig- niªcance in the public mind is still much less than the better-known Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), even though the NSA’s budget easily exceeds that of the CIA. Winston Churchill observed in March 1946: “From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Conti- nent.” During the early years of the Cold War, the United States had little ability to peer behind the curtain. President Harry Truman had dissolved the OSS in the fall of 1945, leaving the country without a comprehensive foreign intelligence service. Bits and pieces left over from the OSS were parceled out to different agencies. Realizing the need for coordinated foreign intelligence, Congress with Truman’s support created the CIA in 1947, but several years were needed before the CIA reconstituted the capability achieved by the OSS as of the end of World War II.

15. Moscow Center to “Vadim,” 21 October 1945, KGB File 43173, v. 1, p. 162, in Vassiliev, Black Notebook, p. 57.

19 Haynes and Klehr

The one bright light in U.S. intelligence capabilities in the early postwar period was Arlington Hall and signals intelligence. The NSA’s Venona project allowed the FBI to build on the information provided by such defectors as Bentley to neutralize most of the KGB’s impressive Communist Party–based espionage networks of World War II origin. Of even greater immediate importance to the Cold War, the NSA in 1946 broke into the radio codes used by the Soviet armed forces. Two years later the NSA was reading Soviet military logistics trafªc almost as soon as the messages were sent. By tracking the Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/jcws/article-pdf/11/3/6/697250/jcws.2009.11.3.6.pdf by guest on 30 September 2021 movement of Soviet military equipment and supplies, U.S. military com- manders and the president could conªdently judge Soviet military capabilities, separate Stalin’s diplomatic bluffs from serious threats, and spot prepara- tions for invasions or attacks that needed serious diplomatic or militarily attention. But in 1948, over a period of a few months, the Soviet military cipher systems that the United States had broken “went dark,” in code-breaker terminology, when the Soviet military implemented new and much more secure encryption systems. (In NSA lore this event is known as “Black Friday,” although it was actually spread over several months as the Soviet Defense Min- istry changed different military cipher systems.) The consequences were grave. Stalin approved Communist North Korea’s plans for an invasion of South Korea in early 1950. The North Korean military depended entirely on the Soviet Union for the logistics of war, and a massive transfer of weapons, aircraft, artillery, tanks, trucks, ammunition, fuel, and supplies from the USSR to North Korea that began in the spring of 1950 allowed the invasion to proceed in June of that year. Had the NSA retained the ability to read Soviet military logistics communications, the United States might have had sufªcient warning of the threat of invasion and possibly been able to use diplomatic or military action to block it. As it was, the massive North Korea attack surprised and overwhelmed the unprepared South Korean and U.S. armed forces. The war cost more than 58,000 American lives and several million Korean and Chinese lives and gravely enhanced Cold War ten- sions. In 1950 the FBI identiªed Weisband as having been a Soviet spy in the early 1940s. He never admitted anything, and no independent evidence appeared, but given his position assisting in the translation of decrypted Russian messages, the NSA concluded that Weisband had most likely alerted the Soviet Union to the NSA’s break into Soviet military communications and enabled the USSR to change its cipher systems and protect its messages from U.S. cryptanalysts. An NSA report obtained by The Baltimore Sun in 2000 surmised that because of Weisband’s betrayal, “In rapid succession,

20 Soviet Intelligence Activities in the United States during the Stalin Era every one of [the] cipher systems went dark,” and “this dreary situation continued up to the Korean War, denying American policy makers access to vital decrypts in this critical period.” A 1995 internal NSA history (released in 2008) stated:

The FBI never found out what, if anything, Weisband passed to the Soviets. But his close involvement with the Soviet problem [strongly suggests that] some of the tightening up of Soviet communications was a result of Weisband’s activities. Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/jcws/article-pdf/11/3/6/697250/jcws.2009.11.3.6.pdf by guest on 30 September 2021 Many AFSA employees believed, rightly or wrongly, that he was single-handedly responsible for “Black Friday.”

One puzzle remained, however. Weisband had been at Arlington Hall from late 1945 onward. Why had it taken the Soviet Union until 1948 to realize that the United States was reading its military radio trafªc?16 Documents in Vassiliev’s notebooks establish that it was indeed William Weisband who single-handedly betrayed the NSA’s success against the Soviet military codes. The notebooks also explain why it was not until 1948 that the Soviet Union took remedial action: “‘Zhora’—William Weisband, Amer. citizen, employed by the decryption service of the U.S. Dept. of Defense. Our agent since ’34. From ’45 to ’48, he was inactive. In Feb. ’48, the connection was restored.” Thus, not until February 1948 was the KGB able to reestablish liaison with Weisband, who had been deactivated in late 1945 in the wake of Bentley’s defection. Until the KGB spoke with Weisband in early 1948, Soviet authorities had no idea that the United States was reading Soviet military communications.17 A 1949 KGB report explained in detail what happened after the KGB restored contact with Weisband:

In a single year, we received from “Zhora” [Weisband] a large quantity of highly valuable doc. materials on the efforts of Americans to decipher Soviet ciphers and on the interception and analysis of the open radio correspondence of Sov. agencies. From materials received from “Zhora,” we learned that as a result of this work, Amer. intelligence was able to obtain important information about the disposition of Soviet armed forces, the production capacity of various branches of industry, and the work being done in the USSR in the ªeld of atomic energy....Onthebasis of materials received from “Zhora,” our state se-

16. On the NSA background to the Weisband story, see “Who Was William Weisband?” in Benson and Warner, eds., Venona, p. xxviii; Laura Sullivan, “Spy’s Role Linked to U.S. Failure on Korea,” Bal- timore Sun, 29 June 2000, p. 1A; Benson, “Weisband”; John Schindler, “Weisband,” paper presented at Symposium on Cryptologic History, Maritime Institute, Linthicum, MD, 2003; and Thomas R. Johnson, American Cryptology during the Cold War, 1945–1989, 2 books (Ft. Meade, MD: Center for Cryptologic History, U.S. National Security Agency, 1995, declassiªed 2008), Book 1, pp. 277–278. 17. “Plan of measures,” March 1949, KGB File 43173, v. 2c, p. 25, in Vassiliev, Black Notebook, p. 75.

21 Haynes and Klehr

curity agencies implemented a set of defensive measures, which resulted in a signiªcant decrease in the effectiveness of the efforts of the Amer. decryption service. As a result, at pres. the volume of the American decryption and analysis service’s work has decreased signiªcantly.”

Vassiliev’s notebooks provide conªrmation that Weisband’s material triggered the Soviet military’s implementation of new modes of encryption that left U.S. intelligence and policymakers in the dark in the run-up to the North Ko- Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/jcws/article-pdf/11/3/6/697250/jcws.2009.11.3.6.pdf by guest on 30 September 2021 rean invasion.18 Having delivered this material to the KGB in 1948, Weisband wanted out, not just from espionage but out of the United States. The KGB’s Wash- ington station chief told Moscow in August 1948: “‘Zhora’ [Weisband] is asking to be granted asylum in the USSR.” Moscow, however, did not want to lose its most valuable source unless a clear danger was at hand, and at the time there was no indication that U.S. counterintelligence had any suspicions about Weisband. As a result, his request was put off. The KGB, however, did seek to make his life easier. He received subsidies: $600 in December 1948 plus an additional $400 to assist him with a recent automobile accident. He received another one-time payment of $1,694 in 1950. (Always careful, the KGB insisted that Weisband sign his real name to receipts.) The KGB noted that Weisband had “‘big expenses.’” Soviet ofªcials also kept alive his goal of ºeeing to the Soviet Union. In 1950 the Center agreed to his becoming a secret Soviet citizen, psychologically assuring him of an eventual safe haven.19 In July 1949 Weisband met with KGB ofªce Nikolai Statskevich, who brought back a worrisome report:

“Zhora” [Weisband] reported that his agency was all of a sudden no longer able to read our cipher telegrams. The leaders are worried, and it was suggested that there is an agent at work. “Zhora” asked us not to be overly hasty in introducing reforms on the basis of his reports, b/c [because] failure [exposure] is possible.

Inasmuch as Weisband was the “agent” involved, he had reason for concern.20 The KGB Washington station used a variety of methods to pick up Weisband’s stolen material. Dead drops were preferred for picking up documents, with face-to-face meetings every two to three months in 1948 at a restaurant outside Washington so that his KGB contact could “provide instruc-

18. “Plan of measures,” pp. 25, 27, in Vassiliev, Black Notebook, p. 75. 19. “‘Zhora’ is asking,” c. 1948, KGB File 43173, v. 4, p. 230, in Vassiliev, Black Notebook, p. 70; “In Dec. ’48,” KGB ªle 43173, v. 7, p. 18, in Vassiliev, Black Notebook, p. 91; “Vasin signed,” c. 1950, KGB File 40159, v. 2, p. 101, in Vassiliev, Black Notebook, p. 96; and “We consent,” c. 1950, KGB File 43173, v. 11, p. 87, in Vassiliev, Black Notebook, p. 95. 20. “At a meeting,” 16 July 1949, KGB File 43173, v. 11, p. 85, in Vassiliev, Black Notebook, p. 91.

22 Soviet Intelligence Activities in the United States during the Stalin Era tions.” To increase security the Washington station had placed the restaurant under surveillance prior to the meetings to watch for FBI interest. In Septem- ber 1949 documents were handed over in an automobile “brush pass” (in which one party was in a parked car next to which a second car pulled up, al- lowing the documents to be passed through the windows and the second car then to depart). A KGB memorandum noted:

On days that he meets with operatives [KGB ofªcers], “Zhora” [Weisband] re- Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/jcws/article-pdf/11/3/6/697250/jcws.2009.11.3.6.pdf by guest on 30 September 2021 moves documents from his agency twice: once during lunch, and the 2nd time—after work. On his person, under his shirt. He hides the materials taken the 1st time around in the trunk of his car. He had been instructed not to keep them in his car. To choose only the most valuable ones. He asked for a camera, but he shouldn’t be given one. Careless storage or use could lead to failure [exposure]. Twice in 1950 the Center indicated a desire to shift liaison with Weisband from the legal (diplomatic cover) ofªcers of the Washington station to an illegal (covert) ofªcer in order to increase security, but it is a measure of the KGB’s difªculties in the late 1940s and early 1950s that it did not have one available for the task.21 The KGB was careful with Weisband because he was easily the most valuable agent it possessed in this era. The Center delivered a highly critical review of the work of its American stations in 1948, ªnding it “extremely weak and ineffective,” complaining that the information delivered was “questionable” and that less than a ªfth was even thought worthy of reporting to higher So- viet ofªcials. However, the Center carefully exempted Weisband’s material from its condemnation. In 1950 it sent an angry message to the Washington station chief when it received a report that Statskevich had gone to a meeting with Weisband even though he suspected he was under surveillance: “‘Such an attitude toward meetings with “Zhora” [Weisband] is completely at odds with our repeated instructions about the need to observe all precautions during work with this valuable agent.’”22 Weisband’s undoing, however, did not come from tradecraft errors by the KGB Washington station. The NSA’s own Venona project (a project on which Weisband had assisted in translating messages) is what led to his exposure.

21. “Pavel’s” lines, KGB File 43173, v. 2c, pp. 26–27, in Vassiliev, Black Notebook, p. 75; “Materials from,” 13 September 1949, KGB File 43173, v. 7, p. 100, in Vassiliev, Black Notebook, p. 91; “On the days,” c. 1949, KGB File 43173, v. 7, p. 114, in Vassiliev, Black Notebook, p. 91; Moscow Center to KGB Washington, 28 February 1950, KGB File 43173, v. 2c, p. 70, in Vassiliev, Black Notebook, p. 81; and Moscow Center to KGB Washington, 28 March 1950, KGB File 43173, v. 11, p. 51, in Vassiliev, Black Notebook, p. 94. 22. “The stations’ info,” c. 1948, KGB File 43173, v. 8, p. 84, in Vassiliev, Black Notebook, p. 92; and Moscow Center to “Vladimir,” 3 January 1950, KGB ªle 43173, v. 11, pp. 11–12, in Vassiliev, Black Notebook, p. 94.

23 Haynes and Klehr

Weisband’s cover name during World War II appeared in three Venona decryptions. The details were insufªcient to identify him, but the decryptions contained ample detail to identify Amadeo Sabatini. Confronted by the FBI in 1949, Sabatini made a partial confession, admitted to working as a courier, and identiªed one of the technical sources he had managed in 1943 as Jones York. The FBI questioned York, and he admitted providing military aviation technical material to Sabatini and to an earlier KGB liaison whom York had known as “Bill,” who had let slip his family name, remembered as “Villes- Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/jcws/article-pdf/11/3/6/697250/jcws.2009.11.3.6.pdf by guest on 30 September 2021 bend.” The trail led to Weisband, whom York visually identiªed as his former courier. Interviewed by the FBI, Weisband initially denied any involvement in espionage. Later he said he would neither conªrm nor deny it. In 1953 Weisband admitted that he knew York but he refused to answer any other questions about him. Weisband refused to answer a federal grand jury subpoena and spent a year in prison for contempt of court. Both he and his wife lost their jobs with the NSA. (Barring a confession, the NSA argued vocifer- ously against any espionage prosecution of Weisband, fearing that his defense lawyers would resort to “graymail” and expose in open court information about the NSA’s decryption operations that would do even more damage to U.S. security than Weisband had already done.) William Weisband, whose betrayal of American codebreaking caused incalculable damage to U.S. security and helped one arena of the Cold War become hot, died a free man in 1967.23 Spies and the articles in this special issue use only a portion of the material in Vassiliev’s notebooks. For example, the Odd Pages include 27 pages from File 49701, KGB special intelligence reports about the United States that were sent to Stalin, Vyacheslav Molotov, and Lavrentii Beria in 1945–1948. We made only minor use of these reports because their largely diplomatic em- phases do not bear on the chief themes of our book, but scholars of the early

23. FBI Washington Field Ofªce Report, Jones York Deposition, 6 October 1953, in Benson and Warner, eds., Venona, pp. 167–170; Hood to Director, 11 April 1950, Serial 53, in FBI Jones Orin York File 65-2223; and Hood to Director, 4 April 1950, Serial 57, in FBI Jones Orin York File 65- 2223. In a very belated response to the possibility that defense lawyers would thwart espionage prose- cutions by threatening to subpoena or use discovery motions to obtain government secrets and expose them in open court, the U.S. Congress in 1980 passed the Classiªed Information Procedures Act (CIPA), establishing procedures for the handling of classiªed information in criminal trials. CIPA provided that government prosecutors could request that a judge review classiªed information demanded by a defense attorney under discovery procedures both in camera (non-publicly, in judicial chambers) and ex parte (presented by only one side, the government, without the presence of defense attorneys). The judge would then rule on what classiªed information necessarily had to be disclosed to enable the defendant to present an adequate defense, and the act included an option of substituting unclassiªed summaries for the sensitive materials. CIPA called on judges to balance the need of the government to protect intelligence information and the right of the defendant to a fair trial. CIPA reduced but did not eliminate the “graymail” problem in espionage and terrorism cases because a large element of individual judicial discretion (arbitrariness) remained.

24 Soviet Intelligence Activities in the United States during the Stalin Era

Cold War will ªnd valuable these reports of what Soviet intelligence was tell- ing the highest leaders. Researchers will ªnd in the notebooks much to write about that we did not deal with and may recognize matters of importance that we missed entirely. We are conªdent that a large number of dissertations and books and many journal articles will use these notebooks. Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/jcws/article-pdf/11/3/6/697250/jcws.2009.11.3.6.pdf by guest on 30 September 2021