Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America (70 page)

One persistent claim of innocence by a convicted member of Rosenberg's network was not finally put to rest until zoo8. Morton Sobell, a
Communist engineer, was convicted along with Julius and Ethel Rosenberg in 1951 on charges of conspiring to commit espionage. Sobell was
not charged with atomic espionage, and the chief evidence at the trial
linking him to stealing secrets was the testimony of Max Elitcher, a Communist engineer who worked on technical questions regarding heavy
naval guns for the U.S. Bureau of Standards and who had known Rosen berg at CCNY. Elitcher swore that Sobell and Rosenberg had both tried
to recruit him, and the former had once taken him along when he went
to deliver some material to Julius. Sobell and his family had fled to Mexico as the FBI closed in on the Rosenbergs and used pseudonyms in an
effort to book passage to Eastern Europe. Mexican authorities seized Sobell and delivered him to the United States to face trial with the Rosenbergs. Convicted, he was sentenced to thirty years in prison and served
nineteen. Throughout his trial and imprisonment Sobell continued to
maintain his innocence, and after his release he spent decades lecturing
to civic groups and college audiences that he had been the victim of a
government frame-up and published an updated edition of his autobiography in 2001 reiterating that he and the Rosenbergs were innocent.3

While Rosenberg, Greenglass, and most of their associates had appeared in the Venona decryptions, Sobell had not, leading some skeptics
and Sobell himself to suggest that the lack of confirmation of his guilt in
Venona was evidence of his innocence. Such a claim was not logical. The
Venona project decoded about three thousand messages out of hundreds
of thousands the Soviets sent, and the absence of a deciphered message
dealing with a specific person was an absence of positive corroboration,
not negative evidence. In any event, the same KGB report that listed
Sussman also listed ""Senya,"-Morton Sobell" as another member of
Rosenberg's apparatus. Numerous other documents in the KGB archives
confirm his assistance to the KGB. And finally in September zoo8, after
fifty-seven years of lying, Sobell admitted to the New York Times that he
had engaged in espionage, and so had Julius Rosenberg.4

Sobell's and Sussman's recruiter, Julius Rosenberg, had been a leading
member of the Young Communist League when he attended engineering school at CC NY. After graduation he got a job in 1940 as an inspector reviewing production of electronic equipment for the Army Signal
Corps. A number of his comrades from the YCL club at CCNY's engineering school also quickly found jobs in the New York area facilities of
Western Electric, Reeves Electronics, Zenith, Bell Laboratories, and
other plants expanding rapidly to meet the demand created by the American military mobilization that began in 1940. Rosenberg quickly realized
that their positions offered them access to America's advanced radio,
radar, sonar, and other military electronics technology and decided to
seek out Soviet intelligence to deliver these secrets to the USSR.

Finding a contact with Soviet intelligence, however, was not easy even for a fervent young Communist like Rosenberg. Stalin's purge of his security services had left the American stations with only a few experienced
officers, and in 1941 the KGB had just begun to rebuild what Stalin's
paranoia had destroyed. Ruth Greenglass, Julius's sister-in-law, testified
at his trial that he had told her he had tried for two years to make contact
with the Soviets before he succeeded. Some time in the first half of 1941
he asked Abraham Osheroff, a veteran of the International Brigades and
an open Communist, for a lead to Soviet intelligence, but Osheroff offered no assistance. After the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union in June
1941 Rosenberg's repeated inquiries in Communist circles came to the attention of Bernard Schuster, a key figure in the CPUSAs underground apparatus. He, in turn, put Rosenberg in touch with Jacob Golos, and a September 1942 letter from Moscow Center to its New York station noted
that Golos recommended Rosenberg "`for use on the technical line."' By
late 1942, Rosenberg had acquired a cover name, "Antenna" (later
changed to "Liberal"), and had begun to build his espionage apparatus of
young engineers, chiefly friends like Sussman, who shared his Communist loyalties. When Rosenberg had accumulated sufficient material, he
arranged a meeting with Golos by phoning Elizabeth Bentley. She knew
him only as a voice on the phone who identified himself as "Julius" and
never learned his family name. 5

Given the lapse in Soviet intelligence coverage caused by the purges
and the Soviet leadership's demands after June 1941 for greatly expanded
intelligence, the KGB was grateful to Golos for filling in the gap with his
party-based networks. Nonetheless, from the point of view of KGB professionals Golos's arrangements also had liabilities. He allowed and even
encouraged his sources to continue Communist Party activity. Rosenberg, for example, continued to subscribe to Communist publications,
and he and his engineer friends were still members, albeit discreet ones,
of local CPUSA clubs. The KGB, however, regarded continued links to
the CPUSA as a serious security risk because it feared FBI penetration
of the party. In January 1942 Vasily Zarubin arrived to take over as station
chief. He spent much of 1942 rebuilding the American stations and
restoring and expanding networks run by professional officers and longtime KGB American agents. One of his goals was to end Golos's independence and the amateurish way his sources worked. He ordered Golos,
who had no background in technical matters, to focus on developing political and government sources in Washington and hand over his technical sources to the KGB.

Golos's chief KGB contact in early 1942 was Aleksey Prokhorov, a junior officer who had come to admire him. Zarubin replaced Prokhorov
with his own wife Elizabeth, a veteran KGB officer who had accompanied
her husband on his American assignment. When Prokhorov's American
tour ended, he was debriefed at Moscow Center and expressed the view
that Golos's contributions had not been sufficiently appreciated by the
senior officers of the KGB New York station. He described his role in the
transfer of Rosenberg's network, explaining that he took Elizabeth Zarubin to meet Golos and informed him that she would be his contact. He
said that at the very first meeting

"Vardo [Elizabeth Zarubin] brought up the possibility of transferring "Antenna's" [Rosenberg's] technical group from Sound [Gobs] to other workers.
"Sound" reacted very badly to this, became nervous, and didn't want to hand
this group over, and in response to "Vardo's" observations and arguments, he
said: `I know it myself. I can manage it myself,' etc.

Q: Did you warn Sound in advance that he would be transferred to someone different?

A: Yes, I warned him about this. In response, he asked me, what's the matter? Aren't I leaving? Why did all this need to be done? And when I informed
him that henceforth he would be working with a woman, he openly expressed
his displeasure.

Q: How did you explain why he was being transferred to a diff. person?

A: I explained to him that our bosses were doing this in the interests of our
work. Sound replied, `I don't see any need for it.' And when I accompanied
"Vardo" to meetings with "Sound," I would notice that in conversation with
V., Sound would speak reluctantly and various pieces of material had to be
`dragged' out of him. During conversations, he would more often than not address me, would look only at me, and would pretend not to notice "Vardo.""

Zarubin was insistent, however; Golos gave in, and the transfer was made.
In a 1944 retrospective report on his tour in the United States Zarubin
wrote:

"During the initial period of our work with Sound [Gobs] we did not raise the
issue of organizational changes in his group. We first encountered the difficulties of breaking up "Sound" into smaller units when we expressed our views
regarding the need for him, in order to deepen his group's work in obtaining
political and economic information, to get rid of several people who didn't
work on these matters. The first issue in this regard was "Antenna's" [Rosenberg's] group. "Sound" got this group, consisting of three young fellowcountryman engineers working in war production, from "Echo" [Schuster] but was
unable to give enough attention to working with it. We convinced him that it was advisable to transfer these people to our man, for whom it would be easier
to manage the group and utilize it more properly. The group was transferred
to our regular operative on the "XY" line, "Twain" [Semenov].

The experiment of transferring "Antenna's" group to direct communication with us proved completely worthwhile. The group began to work in a
more organized and single-minded fashion and provided us with a number of
valuable materials. "Antenna" was pleased with the switch to direct communications with us. He said that only after that did he start getting guidance and
direction in his work." 6

The officer Zarubin assigned to manage Rosenberg, Semen Semenov,
was well qualified to assume direct liaison. He had arrived in the United
States in 1938, an inexperienced junior officer. But he was not used at
that time for operational duties. He enrolled in an engineering course at
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and spent two years improving his technical education, his English skills, and his understanding of
American society. By 1942 he was the lead XY line officer at the rebuilt
KGB New York station. When he returned from his tour in the United
States in 1944, Semenov prepared a lengthy report on his activities, including his contact with Julius Rosenberg:

"In 1942 I learned that "Sound" [Gobs] was working with a group of local fellowcountrymen [Communists] in the field of technical intelligence. One could
infer from the center's letters that nothing was known about this group, that
fragmentary materials came in from them that were given low marks. While I
had fragmentary data about this group, I still determined that it had great potential in the field of radio engineering and aviation. Based on this, I proposed to
the station chiefs that "Antenna" [Rosenberg] and his group be turned over to
inc for communications, which was done despite some resistance from "Sound."

I found in "Antenna" a young party member who wanted to use the channels of the fraternal organization to provide our country with tech. assistance.
On matters of agent work, our requirements for the nature of the materials to
be obtained, and elementary rules of covert work, he was completely green.
The group worked along the lines of a party group and "Antenna" controlled it
like a party organizer. Besides handling the group with regard to obtaining materials of interest to us, I started working regularly on educating "Antenna,"
and through him the group members, to be agents working in the complex
field of tech. intelligence. As a result, "Antenna," "Tuk" [Sussman], "Scout"
[Barr], and "Gnome" [Pert] undoubtedly matured and obtained a number of
highly valuable materials. In addition, starting from when "Antenna" transferred to me for communications he recruited valuable agents: "Senya" [Sobell] for radio and "Fogel" [McNutt] for "Enormous."

"Antenna" is a group leader. Radio engineer. Recruited for work by
"Sound" through the fellowcountrymen. A skilled agent, commands authority
with the group, which he is successfully handling. He is enthusiastic about his
work and wants to do as much as possible. Therefore he sometimes rushes and
doesn't think through certain aspects well enough. Our operative must carefully check and monitor his work and give him detailed instructions. His wife
is devoted to us, and she knows about "Antenna's" work with us. To improve
the work of "Antenna" and his group and ensure greater security, he must be
supplied with a safe-house apartment and photographic equipment."

With Semenov's encouragement and tutelage Rosenberg expanded his
network and gradually shifted his management style toward one more in
line with professional KGB tradecraft. He dropped out of CPUSA activity, although he continued to pay dues secretly through Bernard Schuster.'

Semenov supervised the Rosenberg apparatus for about a year and a
half. But increased FBI surveillance sparked by his identification as a KGB
officer in an anonymous letter received by the Bureau (see chapter 9)
forced him to turn over most of his agents to other officers. In April 1944
Alexander Feklisov took over liaison and managed Rosenberg until he returned to Moscow in 1946. Feklisov greatly appreciated Rosenberg's dedication to the Soviet cause and later wrote a memoir, The Man Behind the
Rosenbergs, that contained an affectionate and admiring portrait of him.'

Feklisov implemented several of Semenov's recommendations. The
latter had noted that the practice of having KGB officers pick up documents from Rosenberg, photograph them, and then return them was time
consuming and insecure due to the volume of material produced by
Rosenberg's apparatus. By the fall of 1944 Feklisov ended that procedure. Initially he gave Rosenberg a Leica (the KGB's preferred camera
for photographing documents) and supplied him with film. This, however, simply transferred the heavy photographic workload from KGB officers to Rosenberg, already overburdened with managing his network.
Consequently, Feklisov arranged for a second photographer for the
Rosenberg network. The KGB New York station told Moscow: "Liberal
[Rosenberg] had safely carried through the contracting of Hughes [Alfred
Sarant]. Hughes is a good pal of Meter [Barr]. We propose to pair them
off and get them to photograph having given a camera for that purpose.
Hughes is a good photographer and has a large darkroom and all the
equipment but he does not have a Leica. Liberal will receive the films
through Meter for passing on. Direction for the probationers [agents]
will be continued through Liberal, this will ease the load on him." By
early 1945, the New York station reported that Barr and Sarant, the most productive of Rosenberg's sources, were photographing their own material while Rosenberg filmed the material produced by Sussman, Sobell,
and Perl.9