Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America (14 page)

Chambers also implicated Hiss's brother: "Donald Hiss never at any
time procured any documents. Nevertheless, he was a member of the apparatus which I headed." Donald Hiss transferred to the State Department from the Department of Labor in November 1937, shortly before
Chambers dropped out of Soviet espionage, and remained there until the
end of World War II. When Chambers met with Assistant Secretary of
State Adolf Berle in September 1939 and identified several dozen persons
as active in the Communist Party's covert operations in Washington and
implied possible espionage links, he included Donald and Priscilla along
with Alger Hiss. Victor Perlo included Donald Hiss on his list of people
with connections to Soviet intelligence.31

"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." When the GRU dominated Soviet foreign intelligence operations in the 1920s and 1930s, its
networks sought political and strategic information as well as more
narrowly defined military intelligence. But as the KGB established its supremacy in foreign intelligence in the mid-1930s, GRU's jurisdiction
was steadily narrowed, and it had to get its agents to produce more strictly
military information within its jurisdiction. In the fall of 1945 Alger Hiss
made an extraordinary proposal that the State Department create a new
"special assistant for military affairs" linked to his Office of Special Political Affairs, an office devoted to handling UN-related matters, with little
discernible need for military information. Moreover, when security officers belatedly began to look closely at Hiss in 1946, they discovered that
he had used his authority to obtain top secret reports "on atomic energy ... and other matters relating to military intelligence" that were outside the scope of his Office of Special Political Affairs.35

" 4. In recent years, Ales has been working with Pol repeat Pol who
also meets with other members of the group on occasion." "Pol," as noted
above, was Maxim Lieber, the former participant in Chambers's 1930s
apparatus whom GRU detailed to pick up the pieces of Chambers's network after his defection. Lieber invoked the Fifth Amendment to avoid
testifying about his relationship with Chambers and Hiss. The files of
Hiss's legal defense team demonstrate that at the time of his trial, a
Communist Party contact met with Lieber and conveyed a message to
Hiss's lawyers that Lieber "does know Hiss but does not propose to
admit it."36

"5. Recently Ales and his whole group were awarded Soviet medals."
In April 1945 General Fitin sent a memo to Vsevolod Merkulov, head of
the entire KGB, reviewing the extensive work that "Ruble"/Glasser had
done for the KGB and stating the following:

"According to information received from `Vadim' [Gorsky], the group of agents
of the military `neighbors' to which `Ruble' [Glasser] had previously belonged
was recently decorated by the USSR. `Ruble' learned about this from his
friend `Ales,' who is the leader of this group.

In light of `Ruble's' committed work for the USSR over the course of 8 years
and the fact that, because he was transferred to our station `Ruble' was not decorated along with the oth. members of `Ales's' group, I think it would be expedient
to recommend him for the Order of the `Red Star.' I ask for your approval."

This passage not only confirms the 30 March cable that "Ales" and his
group were awarded Soviet medals, but also adds that Glasser had been
working with "Ales's" group, providing further confirmation that "Ales"
was Hiss. Additional corroboration is in Elizabeth Bentley's lengthy November 1945 deposition, which described Harold Glasser's role in the
Perlo group:

Referring again to Harold Glasser, I recall that after his return from his assignment in Europe, probably in Italy for the United States Treasury Department,
Victor Perlo told me that Glasser had asked him if he would be able to get
back in with the Perlo group. I asked Perlo how Glasser happened to leave the
group and he explained that Glasser and one or two others had been taken
sometime before by some American in some governmental agency in Washington, and that this unidentified American turned Glasser and the others over
to some Russian. Perlo declared he did not know the identity of this American,
and said that Charley Kramer, so far as he knew, was the only person who had
this information. Sometime later I was talking with Kramer in New York City,
and brought up this matter to him. At this time Kramer told me that the person who had originally taken Glasser away from Perlo's group was named Hiss
and that he was in the U.S. State Department.

Bentley's statement that Glasser had been on loan to an espionage network headed by Hiss fits with Fitin's memo that Glasser had been working with "Ales's" GRU group and that the latter had been decorated.37

While Alger Hiss fits all six characteristics for "Ales" given in the 30
March cable, Stettinius, Matthews, and Foote meet only the travel itinerary of "Ales." There is no evidence linking any of the three to even a single other item.

There is another Gorsky cable to Moscow Center regarding "Ales" in
Vassiliev's notebook, dated Monday, 5 March 1945, just two days after
the Saturday, 3 March, cable arrived from Moscow with its order to find
sources for the upcoming UN conference. This cable has the appearance
of a quick response to Moscow's order, intended to show that the American station would swiftly deal with Moscow's request and suggesting the
option of going outside existing KGB sources to contact "Ales," the GRU
agent.

Two of the early sentences of the 5 March cable appeared to shrink
further the pool of candidates for "Ales" and actually appeared to exclude
Alger Hiss: "Particular attention-to `Ales.' He was at the Yalta Conference, then went to Mexico City and hasn't returned yet." After leaving
Moscow, Stettinius's party, including Matthews, Hiss, and Foote, did not
return directly to the United States but went on to Mexico City for the
Chapultepec conference of hemispheric foreign ministers starting on zi
February. Matthews, a European specialist, and Hiss, responsible for
preparing for the upcoming UN meeting, were not needed. Both left the
conference early, getting back to Washington at the end of February,
while Stettinius and Foote remained in Mexico City until the conference
ended on 8 March.38

Superficially, this appears to remove Matthews and Hiss as candidates
for "Ales," leaving only Stettinius and Foote. But the statement actually
indicated that Anatoly Gorsky thought "Ales" was still in Mexico City as
part of the American delegation. If one looks at the totality of the evidence, the most sensible conclusion is that Gorsky simply did not know
that "Ales" had returned early. Gorsky could have known that Hiss had returned. Hiss had spoken on a public affairs radio program, and two newspaper stories on the program mentioned him, although in neither case
was he given headline treatment because more prominent diplomats, including the acting secretary of state, Joseph C. Grew, were speaking on
the program. But that Gorsky could have known is simply to state a possibility and is not the same as his actually knowing. Hiss was not at this
time a prominent figure. He was a senior DOS official but one at the third
or fourth level of the hierarchy and as yet little known to the press or
public. Not until he presided over the opening sessions of the UN founding conference in San Francisco in May 1945 did he make an impression
on the national media. Nor, for that matter, was "Ales" an agent whom the
KGB would have reason to track. He was a GRU source of whom the
KGB was aware simply because one of its agents, Glasser, had worked
with "Ales." Aside from Glasser's association with "Ales," Gorsky and the
KGB had had no contact, regular or otherwise, with "Ales" and no reason to pay attention to his movements.39

It would have been easy for Gorsky to have assumed on 5 March that
Hiss was still in Mexico City. We do not know precisely when Gorsky saw
Moscow Center's 3 March cable with its order that information on the upcoming UN conference be sent to Moscow "without delay," but the earliest
was Saturday, with Sunday more likely since it had to be deciphered, and he
had to compose his reply, get it ciphered, and send it on the way on Monday, 5 March. With all his responsibilities as a KGB station chief in wartime,
balancing the time demands of his cover job as a senior embassy diplomat
with his other job directly overseeing the KGB Washington station and supervising the KGB stations in New York and San Francisco, as well as the
illegal station headed by Akhmerov, it is likely that he simply assumed "Ales"
was still in Mexico City with Secretary Stettinius.

In any case, the 5 March cable has more to say of "Ales" than the single item that Gorsky thought he was still in Mexico City. These other attributes of "Ales" revealed in the cable all point straight at Alger Hiss:

Our only key to him-"Ruble" [Glasser]. "Ruble" is going on assignment himself (Italy).... It is difficult to oversee "Ales" through him. "We spoke with `Ruble' several times about `Ales.' As we have written already, `Ruble' gives
`Ales' an exceptionally good political reference as a member of the Comparty.
`Ruble' reports that `Ales` is strong and strong-willed, with a firm and decisive
nature, completely aware that he is a Communist in an illegal position, with all
the ensuing consequences. Unfortunately, it seems that, like all local Communists, he has his own ideas about secrecy. As we already reported to you, `Ales'
and `Ruble' used to work in `Karl's' [Chambers's] informational group, which
was affiliated with the neighbors. When the connection with `Karl' was lost,
`Ruble' backed out, while `Ales' entered into a connection with `Pol' [Lieber].
He told `Ruble' about this himself a year and a half ago, when he asked the latter to meet with `Pol' in order to continue work. -40

Gorsky's description of the relationship of "Ruble"/Glasser with "Ales"
fits Hiss and only Hiss. Most important, Gorsky stated, ""Ales' and 'Ruble'
used to work in `Karl's' informational group, which was affiliated with
the neighbors.- As already noted, "Karl" was Whittaker Chambers; the
"informational group which was affiliated with the neighbors" was Chambers's 1936-38 GRU apparatus. Both Hiss and Glasser were members
of Chambers's group. The other three candidates for "Ales" (Stettinius,
Matthews, and Foote) never had any link to Chambers's apparatus. Stettinius and Foote were neither living nor working in Washington during
the 1936-38 period when Chambers's apparatus, which was Washingtonfocused, was in operation, while Matthews was only occasionally in Washington during a series of foreign diplomatic assignments. Additionally,
once again "Pol"/Lieber is linked to "Ales," and Maxim Lieber had ties to
Hiss but to none of the other candidates for "Ales."

Gorsky noted that Glasser gave ""Ales' an exceptionally good political reference as a member of the Comparty. "' Again, Hiss's links to the
Communist Party are well documented, while there is no evidence of any
CPUSA links for the others. Glasser had a documented relationship with
Alger Hiss, telling the FBI he had known Alger since 1938 and had a
close personal relationship with Donald Hiss. In contrast, there is no evidence that he had a personal relationship with Stettinius, Foote, or
Matthews. In January 1945 Glasser prepared a list of his close contacts at
the KGB's request. Of the thirty-one persons he listed, all but three are
known to have been active members of the Washington Communist underground. Of the four "Ales" candidates, only Alger Hiss appeared.41

There is one final "Ruble"/Glasser document in Vassiliev's notebooks
that references "Ales." In April 1945, Gorsky reported that "Ruble," still
the KGB's only link to "Ales," had delivered an alarming report:

"An FBI agent informed Stettinius that one of their agents had seen a batch of
documents that were delivered in a suitcase to NY to be photographed. Afterwards, they were returned to Washington within 24 hours. These documents included a polit. report and important cipher communications. Based on the nature of the documents, only 3 people had access to them. One of these people
was `Ales.' The FBI agent said that in the next 72 hours they would conclusively
identify who had been responsible for leaking these documents. According to
Stettinius, the FBI agent had told him that operations of this sort involving documents have been going on for i8 months now, and that `hundreds upon hundreds' of documents had been removed as a result." Stettinius asked the FBI
agent whether these documents ended up at `PM' [PM newspaper] to which the
latter replied: "`No, much further left than that.' Toward the end of his conversation with "Ales" on this subject, Stettinius told him: `I hope it isn't you."'

The incident referred to was the Amerasia case, where hundreds of stolen
OSS and State Department documents were found at the offices of Amerasia, a journal published and edited by a secret Communist, Philip
Jaffe. Hiss himself corroborated this incident reported by Glasser in 1945
to the KGB, telling his chief attorney in 1949 "that he was at the San
Francisco Conference in 1945 when the Amerasia scandal broke and that
Stettinius told him that he had seen some of the papers taken from
Jaffe ... and that they included papers from Stettinius's office and from
Hiss's office." (The FBI soon established that Emmanuel Larson and
John Service at the State Department and Andrew Roth at the Office of
Naval Intelligence were the principal sources of the stolen documents,
and attention turned away from Hiss.)42

Another reference to "Ales" in this period was also likely related to the
Amerasia case. Moscow Center cabled Gorsky on 29 May 1945 to warn
that it had received information that American counterintelligence had
stepped up its activities, noting, "the incidents with `Hare' and `Ales' are
yet another confirmation of this." "Hare" was Maurice Halperin, chief of
the Latin American Division of the Research and Analysis section of the
OSS and a productive Soviet agent. There is no indication what trouble
Halperin faced, but the Amerasia investigation and the suspicion it threw
on "Ales" clearly worried Moscow.43