Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America (13 page)

"Paul," described by Glasser as claiming to be "Karl's" successor, was
Maxim Lieber. "Paul" was not directly identified as Lieber in Vassiliev's
notebooks, but Chambers in Witness wrote that Lieber was the agent the
CPUSA and GRU chose to hunt for Chambers after his defection and
that in the underground Lieber's cover name was "Paul." Born in Poland,
Lieber became a naturalized U.S. citizen and a successful literary agent
in the 1930s, representing such highly popular writers as Erskine Caldwell. He wasalso a secret member of the CPUSA and carried out various
tasks for Chambers's espionage network. In 1948 Lieber admitted to FBI
agents that he and his family had shared a summer cottage with the
Chambers family in 1935 but refused to further discuss his role and invoked the Fifth Amendment rather than answer questions before a grand
jury. After a hostile examination by the House Committee on Un-American Activities in 1951, during which he once again invoked the Fifth
Amendment, Lieber hastily fled to Mexico. Fearing extradition to the
United States, in 1954 he moved to Poland, where Communist authorities provided for his housing and support, and his wife was given a post
teaching English at Warsaw University. He did not return to the United
States until 1968.21

In addition to forwarding Glasser's autobiography, handwritten in English, to Moscow, Anatoly Gorsky, then Washington KGB station chief,
also sent a summary in which he wrote that "Karl" earlier had been a
GRU station chief who also used the cover name "Steve" when reporting
on "Richard" (the cover name of Harry Dexter White). Gorsky, however,
was confused. "Karl" and "Steve" were separate persons and neither had
been a GRU station chief, as Moscow Center, after checking with GRU,
pointed out in a memo to him correcting his summary: ""Karl" (Robert
Tselnis) had worked with the neighbors [GRU], but had subsequently refused and threatened to betray probationers [agents] he knew about to
the Amer. authorities. "Pol" had also worked with the neighbors. "Steve"
is "Storm"; we do not use him at present." "Steve" was Josef Peters, who
also had the KGB cover name of "Storm." "Steve" was one of several
pseudonyms that Peters used in the underground. Chambers, for example, noted Peters's use of "Steve" in Witness. Hope Hale Davis, another
Washington Communist, also remembered Peters as "Steve" in her memoir of her activities in the party underground.22

Glasser in his autobiography had written that he had been contacted by "Paul." Both Gorsky in his summary and Moscow Center in its reply
substituted a variant Russian spelling of the name Paul, one that is rendered "Pol" when transliterated into the Latin alphabet. Phonetically the
difference between "Paul" and "Pol" is minor, and in any case, it is clear
that Glasser's "Paul" is the same person as Gorsky's and the Center's "Pol."
Moscow Center confirmed that "Pol" was a GRU agent but did not further identify him. As noted above, other evidence identifies "Pol" and
"Paul" as Maxim Lieber.23

As for "Karl," Moscow Center's report said that "Karl" had also been
a GRU agent but one who had dropped out ("refused") and threatened
to go to American authorities. This conforms to Glasser's memory that
"Karl" had at some point disappeared and to Chambers's account that in
the late spring of 1938 he dropped out of Soviet espionage and warned
GRU that he had kept documents that would compromise its operations
and that he would deliver them to American authorities if he or his family were harmed.24

The Center also reported that "Karl" was also known as "Robert Tselnis." This name does not occur anywhere in FBI investigatory files, congressional hearings, or the literature on Soviet espionage and the CPUSA.
It is likely a hitherto unknown pseudonym used by Whittaker Chambers;
he is known to have used a number during his covert work: Adams; Carl;
Charles; Bob; David Breen; Lloyd Cantwell; Arthur Dwyer; Hugh Jones;
Karl; John Kelley; Harold; and Charles Whittaker. Robert Tselnis may just
be one more of that long list. But possibly it was simply an error in reporting by GRU to the KGB. In any event, no real "Robert Tselnis" can
be found. Other KGB documents also confirm Whittaker Chambers's
identification as "Karl." In late December 1948 the KGB Washington station cabled Moscow with a plan to discredit "Karl," who was described as
having given damaging testimony to the House Committee on Un-American Activities and a U.S. grand jury about Soviet espionage in connection
with the Alger Hiss case. It was Whittaker Chambers, not "Robert Tselnis," who testified to the House Committee on Un-American Activities
about the Hiss case in the late summer and fall of 1948 and to the grand
jury investigating the Hiss case in October and December. Additionally, an
internal KGB evaluation of the Washington station's suggestion dispensed
with the cover name and referred to "Karl" as "the traitor Chambers."25

A further direct confirmation that "Karl" was Whittaker Chambers
was a December 1948 KGB memo authored by Anatoly Gorsky, the same
man who as chief of the KGB Washington station informed Moscow
about Glasser's relationship to "Karl" in December 1944. In 1948 Gorsky was a senior official at Moscow Center, then headquarters of the Committee of Information (KI), a short-lived merger of KGB foreign intelligence with the foreign intelligence arm of GRU. Gorsky's memo listed a
large number of Soviet sources, agents, and officers in the United States
who had been compromised or exposed by defectors from both the KGB
and GRU. Leading Gorsky's list was "Karl-Whittaker Chambers." The
memo listed twenty-one persons, "Karl's group," compromised by Chambers's defection and included Alger Hiss and Harold Glasser.26

Additionally, Elizabeth Bentley in a statement to the FBI in December 1945 identified Glasser as having been one of her sources via the
Perlo apparatus, and an October 1944 KGB document on Bentley's
sources listed "'Ruble,. Former GRU source." "Ruble" was Glasser's
KGB cover name. (The ruble was the Soviet monetary unit, thus the
cover name was a wordplay on Glasser's status as a Treasury Department
official.) This October 1944 KGB memo, Glasser's December 1944 KGB
autobiography, and Gorsky's December 1948 document establish that
"Ruble"/Glasser had been in the late 1930s part of a GRU apparatus,
"Karl's group," managed by Chambers, and after Chambers's defection,
Maxim Lieber ("Paul"/"Pol") had attempted to reconnect with members
of the network, unsuccessfully in Glasser's case because he was about to
leave for nearly two years on a Treasury Department assignment to
Ecuador.27

Glasser's connections to Alger Hiss were not ended, however. After
his return from Ecuador and reconnection to Soviet intelligence through
the Perlo group, Glasser refocused KGB attention on his one-time colleague from Chambers's 1936-38 GRU apparatus. This is best understood by examining 1945 documents about "Ales" in both Vassiliev's notebooks and the deciphered KGB cables of Venona.

"Ales" was Hiss's GRU cover name in 1945. "Ales"/Hiss was a GRU
source, and while aware of his status, the KGB had no direct contact
with him until March 1945. That changed, likely triggered by a 3 March
1945 cable signed by the chief of foreign intelligence, General Pavel
Fitin, with an urgent order for the KGB's illegal station chief, Iskhak
Akhmerov:

At the forthcoming meeting with Albert [Akhmerov], pass on to him on our
behalf the following task. Jointly with Robert [Gregory Silvermaster], take all
requisite steps to obtain in good time and pass on to us information about the
composition of the delegation to the forthcoming conference which is in Babylon . . . what tactics the delegation intends to adopt, whom it is counting on for support, what blocs have been prepared already and formed, how far there
will be a united line for the representatives of the Anglo-Saxon world and so
on. As the information comes in pass on to the Center by telegraph without
delay.

"Babylon" was the cover name for San Francisco, so the upcoming founding conference of the United Nations was the subject. Akhmerov was an
illegal officer and not on the staff of a Soviet diplomatic office such as the
embassy in Washington or the consulates in New York and San Francisco.
Illegal officers operated under false identities and posed as ordinary persons. Moscow Center did not communicate directly with them; thus the
instruction in the cable that the order was to be passed to Akhmerov at a
"forthcoming meeting." The 3 March cable went to the legal KGB station
at the Soviet consulate in New York. From there it would have been delivered to Akhmerov at a regularly scheduled meeting, where messages
were passed between the legal station and his illegal station. Akhmerov
was then working at a fur and hat shop in New York. In any event, it
would be a day or two at least, and perhaps a week or more, before the
instructions reached Akhmerov.2s

Fitin's order was high priority, so the American station likely moved
quickly to produce results. As the cable had suggested, one route was
through "Robert," the cover name for Gregory Silvermaster, an economist
with the War Assets Division of the Treasury Department. Silvermaster
led a CPUSA-based network of government officials that had come to
the KGB via Jacob Golos and Elizabeth Bentley, just like the Perlo group,
and included one highly placed source, Harry Dexter White, recently
promoted to assistant secretary of the treasury, who was a senior adviser
to the American delegation to the UN conference. Akhmerov, KGB liaison with Silvermaster, made the necessary arrangements, and at the San
Francisco conference White met covertly with a Soviet intelligence officer, provided information on the American negotiating strategy, and offered advice on how the Soviets might defeat or water down positions
being advanced by his own government (see chapter 4).29

As useful as White might be (and was), Anatoly Gorsky realized that
potentially there was an even better source, Alger Hiss, a Soviet agent
reporting to GRU. Hiss had joined the State Department's Office of Special Political Affairs in May 1944 and had become its director in March
1945; it was this office that supervised U.S. preparations for the founding of the United Nations. Normally, the KGB would leave alone a source
known to report to GRU, but given the urgency of General Fitin's 3 March order, Gorsky ignored this policy and on 30 March reported by
cable that one of his officers had been in direct contact with "Ales":

As a result of a conversation of "Pya" with Ales, it turns out:

i. Ales has been continuously working with the neighbors since 1935.

z. For a few years now he has been the director of a small group of probationers of the neighbors, for the most part drawn from his relatives.

3. The group and Ales himself are working on obtaining only military information, materials about "the Bank"-the neighbors allegedly are not very interested and he doesn't pass it regularly.

4. In recent years, Ales has been working with Pol repeat Pol who also meets
with other members of the group on occasion.

5. Recently Ales and his whole group were awarded Soviet medals.

6. After the Yalta conference, back in Moscow, one very high-ranking Soviet
worker allegedly had contact with Ales (Ales implied that it was Comrade
Vyshinsky) and at the request of the military neighbors he conveyed to him
their thanks, etc.

This 30 March message was deciphered by the Venona project, and "Pya"
was a garbled decryption that the chief NSA code breaker eventually decided was "A" for "Albert"/Akhmerov. "Ales" was not identified directly
in this cable as Alger Hiss. A footnote to the cable prepared by FBI and
NSA analysts concluded that "Ales" was "probably Alger Hiss." Additional
details about "Ales" in documents in Vassiliev's notebooks make the identification certain.30

The pool of the possible candidates for "Ales" is a small one because
of statement number 6 in the message: "6. After the Yalta conference,
back in Moscow, one very high-ranking Soviet worker allegedly had contact with Ales." With the defeat of the Nazis certain, President Franklin
Roosevelt, Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and General Secretary
Joseph Stalin met at Yalta in the Crimea in early February 1945 to negotiate an agreement for the occupation of Germany and other liberated nations. When the conference ended, most of the American delegation returned home via the Middle East. A contingent from the
American embassy in the Soviet Union returned to Moscow but stayed
there. "Ales," however, was back in the states in March in time to meet
a KGB officer. Only a small party, led by Secretary of State Edward Stettinius, went from Yalta to Moscow to finish a few details of the conference and returned to Washington by March. Aside from support staff
(and "Ales" was not plausibly someone in that category), the Stettinius
party included only four State Department officials who could possibly have been "Ales": Stettinius himself, senior diplomat and adviser on European affairs H. Freeman Matthews, Stettinius's press aide Wilder
Foote, and Alger Hiss.31

While all four men satisfy statement number 6 in Gorsky's 30 March
cable, only Alger Hiss matches any of the other five statements, and he
matches all five:

"i. Ales has been continuously working with the neighbors since
1935." The evidence that Hiss had begun work for GRU ("the neighbors") in the mid-1930s is overwhelming. It led a jury to convict him in
1950 and was reaffirmed by every court that examined the case thereafter and is supported by the leading scholarly accounts of the case.32

"2. For a few years now he has been the director of a small group of
probationers of the neighbor s, for the most part drawn from his relatives."
In 1948 Chambers produced typed and handwritten material he had
hidden a decade earlier from his final months before he dropped out of
Soviet espionage. He recalled that Priscilla Hiss retyped many of the
documents her husband stole from the State Department. Technical
examination by both prosecution and defense experts established that
most of the material was typed on a typewriter owned by the Hiss family
in the mid-193os. One of the document specialists hired by the Hiss defense went even further, advising defense lawyers that on the basis of the
strong and weak hits of the typing pattern, the documents had been typed
by Priscilla and not Alger.33