Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America (72 page)

But in the fall of 1945 another threat appeared to the security of the
Rosenberg network. Elizabeth Bentley defected and told the FBI of her
work as a courier and agent handler for several dozen sources that had
been recruited for Soviet intelligence by Jacob Golos, and Rosenberg had
come to the KGB via Golos. Among the sources she identified to the FBI,
the KGB feared, was Julius Rosenberg.

Moscow Center informed its Washington and New York stations of
Bentley's defection on zz November and ordered immediate defensive
measures. Because Rosenberg had been deactivated in the spring, the
KGB no longer had direct contact with him. Consequently Feklisov used
a previously scheduled 12 December meeting with Joel Barr, a personal
friend of Rosenberg and leader of one of the groups broken from the
larger Rosenberg network, to set up a meeting with him. Feklisov reported to Moscow that his meeting had originally been scheduled to deliver film to Barr for use in photographing documents, but in response to
Moscow's cable about Bentley

He did not give the film to "Meter" [Barr], saying that he wanted to see "Liberal" [Rosenberg]. "Meter" should pass on the rendezvous terms: if things are
calm at Us house, at 23:00 on 15.12, he should send his wife to the drug-store
at the end of the street. The wife should not approach him; she should just buy
something and go home. - 5 minutes later, "C." ["Callistratus"/Feklisov] arrives at "L's." house.

C. left his house to go to the meeting with L. at i8:oo. From 19:00 to
19:30, he was in the Brooklyn maternity ward, where his wife was staying.
From there-to the Turkish baths on 46th Street, where he stayed until 21:40.
After that, he checked out in a taxi, on the subway, and in courtyards on 24th
Street. At 23:00, he went into the drug-store and saw L's wife. She was buying
cotton balls. When she saw C, she went outside. C. drank a cup of coffee and
went out as well. In order to make it seem like he lived at L's house, he bought
bread and 2 bottles of milk. He didn't run into anybody and went into Us
house unnoticed. "We went into the kitchen and immediately got to talking.
I asked the probationer [agent] whether he knew any of Sound's [Golos's]
friends. He replied that he only knew Sound and Echo [Schuster]. When I
asked whether he knew any women, he at first replied in the negative, but
then added that he had an agreement with Sound: any time he urgently
needed to see Sound, L. was supposed to call him from a pay phone and tell
his secretary that he wanted to see him. He only gave his first name-Juliusto this secretary. He never met her face to face. He did say, however, that he
had given Sound identifying data for himself, Yakov [Perl], Meter [Barr], and
Nil [Sussnn n]. This data was typed up, and therefore it is possible that it never
fell into `Myrna's' [Bentley's] hands. It is essential that you locate this data in
the correspondence from 1941-42 and compare the font of their typewriter
with the typewriter used by Myrna. The probationer assured me that Sound
was unaware of Senya [Sobell], Persian [McNutt], Hughes [Sarant], Lens
[Sidorovich], and Caliber's [Greenglass's] work with us.

At the end of the conversation, I informed L. that Sound's secretary (I
didn't give her name) had betrayed us and that we were very worried about
him as a result. I instructed him on how it is necessary to behave in the event
that lie is summoned before Hut [FBI]. We decided that he should deny that
he is a member of the fellowcountrvrnen [CPUSA], because lie had already
done so in 1941 and again in 1945. If he doesn't deny this now, as it says in
your telegram-then it would be illogical. He will also deny that lie has ties
with Sound and Echo. If lie is asked to give the names of his friends, he will
name Meter and Nil, who are old friends of his. He will also repudiate any
photographs and similar documents in which he appears with me, Sound, or
Echo. I gave him very strict orders to burn any notes containing the addresses
of probationers and materials that could be used as evidence of his affiliation
with fellowcountrymen.

Liberal and I agreed that the connection with him will be suspended for
3 1/2 months. The next meeting is scheduled for the third Sunday in March,
1946, at 8 o'clock P.M., next to the `Colony' theater, 79th Street and 2nd Avenue. I warned him that someone else might come to this meeting instead of
me. Therefore, I asked him to come to the meeting holding the magazine `Post.' Our person should be holding `Reader's Scope' in his left hand. Our
person should approach Liberal and ask him: `Aren't you waiting for Al? Liberal will answer: `No, I am waiting for Helen.' Our person should say: `I am
Helene's brother. She asked me to tell you something." -15

Once again, the KGB's prudent defensive measures were unnecessary, but only barely so. Bentley told the FBI in 1945 that in 1942 she
had received calls from a "Julius" setting up meetings with Golos, but
while indicating Julius was a valued espionage source, Golos never told
her his family name; nor did he ever tell her the identity of any members
of Julius's network. She told the FBI, however, that once she had been
with Golos when he drove to meet Julius near the Knickerbocker Village
apartments. She had stayed in the car while he left to meet with Julius
and had seen him only at a distance. The FBI's investigation of Bentley's
allegations was a thorough one, and the resulting file contained thousands
of pages of investigatory reports. Dozens of Golos's sources and contacts
that Bentley had remembered only with a family name or only with a first
name or only phonetically with the exact spelling unclear were tracked
down with the clues to their real identity that she remembered. But Julius
remained unidentified. In this instance, FBI field agents overlooked an
elementary step. No agent ever checked with the Knickerbocker Village
rental management office, where he would have quickly learned that a
Julius Rosenberg had been renting an apartment there in 1942 (and was
still resident); that his physical description was compatible with Bentley's
memory; and that he had been fired from the Signal Corps for Communist affiliation at the recommendation of the FBI.1e

While Rosenberg and his network dodged the bullet of Bentley's defection in late 1945, their espionage, nonetheless, came to a temporary end.
Rosenberg himself had already been deactivated, and all of his former
network sources were soon "put on ice," in KGB speak. Moscow recalled
most of the experienced officers it had in the United States. XY line officers Feklisov and Yatskov, illegal station chief Iskhak Akhmerov, legal station chief Anatoly Gorsky, and others left the United States. Before departing, KGB officers attempted to notify their sources that contact was
being cut, advised them to cease all espionage and destroy any evidence
of intelligence work, and gave guidance on how they should respond if the
FBI questioned them. They also arranged passwords so that the KGB could revive contact in the future. One sign of Rosenberg's importance to
Soviet intelligence was that Lavrenty Beria himself ordered the American stations to cut contact with Rosenberg as a security measure to protect him.''

The KGB began to revive its networks in 1948, and in March Moscow
Center ordered the KGB New York station to contact Rosenberg and see
if Perl, Sobell, and Barr were still willing to assist the Soviet Union. It
turned out to be easier said than done. KGB officer Gavriil Panchenko
first phoned Rosenberg, but he refused to meet and indicated that he expected an authentic approach to come via his old CPUSA contact,
Bernard Schuster. But Panchenko succeeded in reestablishing contact
in May. In June 1948 a KGB report spoke of the revived ""Liberal's"
[Rosenberg's] group:... Yakov [Perl], Lens [Michael Sidorovich], Objective [Ann Sidorovich], Nil [Sussman], Hughes [Sarant], Senya [Sobell],
Persian [McNutt], Zenith [unidentified], Caliber [David Greenglass],
Wasp [Ruth Greenglass]." A July KGB report expanded on the renewal:
"From August's [Panchenko's] meetings with L. ["Liberal"/Rosenberg], it
is obvious that while the connection was deactivated, his group had, for
the most part, stayed unchanged and ready to carry out assignments and
that it has good info. resources. `In view of this, it is essential to take note
of the way L. himself behaves; despite the fact that his connection with
us was interrupted for over z years, he continued to conscientiously and
faithfully fulfill his obligations as a group handler, to stay in touch with the
athletes [agents], lending them vital moral and material support, and to
continue gathering the most valuable tech. information. "'I'

Despite Rosenberg's continued enthusiasm, it is not clear that his revived network or other KGB initiatives of the period were able to gain
traction in the more hostile environment of the Cold War, with public
opinion increasingly anti-Communist, and enhanced internal security regulations. An October 1948 Moscow Center cable pointed to Rosenberg
as an asset to exploit. But the New York station only reported Rosenberg's
difficulties keeping his machine shop financially afloat and the inadvisability of his seeking an engineering job with a defense contractor in view
of heightened security regulations. It did report that Rosenberg was cultivating two new contacts, "Plumb" and "List." "List" was not otherwise
identified, while "Plumb" was described only as a student who led a small
group of college Communists, someone with future prospects but no current access to information of interest. ("Plumb" was likely Maxwell Finestone, a leader of the YCL at Cornell and a Rosenberg contact at the
time. )r9

There is no indication whether Rosenberg's revived network produced any significant volume of intelligence in 1948 and 1949. In 1950,
following the arrests of Fuchs, Gold, and David Greenglass (discussed in
chapter z), the latter confessed and identified Rosenberg as his recruiter
and handler. Julius Rosenberg and his wife, along with Morton Sobell,
were tried in 1951. Convicted, the Rosenbergs, who refused offers of
clemency in return for cooperation, were executed in 1953; as noted
above, Sobell went to prison for nineteen years while Greenglass served
ten years.

Other members of the Rosenberg network were more fortunate. Joel
Barr was in Paris studying music when Rosenberg was arrested. He disappeared. Alfred Sarant, employed at Cornell University, was questioned
by the FBI but escaped surveillance and fled to Mexico, where he disappeared. He abandoned his wife and children, taking with him his neighbor's wife, who herself abandoned her husband and children. The KGB
resettled Barr and Sarant under false identities in Czechoslovakia. Later
they were both moved to the Soviet Union, where they headed a secret
electronics laboratory that developed cutting-edge Soviet military technology. The KGB attempted to get William Perl to leave the United
States, sending a courier to him with $2,000 in cash. But he declined,
hoping to ride out the storm. While he escaped prosecution for espionage, he was convicted of perjury and sentenced to five years in prison.
Perl's couriers, the Sidorovichs, avoided prosecution, as did atomic spy
Russell McNutt. "Zenith," "Plumb," and "List," part of Rosenberg's post1948 network, were never identified by the FBI.20

The fate of "Nil," Nathan Sussman, was curious. As noted, Sussman
had been a friend of Julius Rosenberg since childhood and had been one
of the most active Communists among the young engineering students at
CCNY. Born in 1918, he had received both a BA and master's in engineering at CCNY and had done course work for his PhD at Brooklyn
Polytechnical Institute. During his first interview with the FBI in December 1950, he lied, denying that he knew Julius very well or that either
Rosenberg or Sobell had tried to recruit him into the CPUSA. Just a
month later, reinterviewed, he was more forthcoming, admitting that he
had been a member of the YCL from 1935 to 1940, even serving as president of the CCNY chapter, and had joined the CPUSA in 1942. He had
belonged to the same party industrial branch as the Rosenbergs; when it
was dissolved in late 1943, he moved to a residential branch along with
his wife. Sussman worked for Western Electric and was transferred to
Winston-Salem, North Carolina, in 1944, not returning to New York until 1947, when he took a job with Fairchild Aviation, working on classified research. During his initial interview Sussman appeared to the FBI to be
"very nervous, gave cryptic answers to the questions." During a reinterview he tried to avoid naming specific CPUSA members he had known
but swore that he no longer held any sympathy for communism or had
ever been asked for or given information about his work to unauthorized
persons. He admitted that he had been a party member prior to signing
an affidavit for Western Electric denying such membership. With the
threat of an indictment for perjury, he named other engineers who had
belonged to a CPUSA industrial branch and agreed to testify, if needed,
at the Rosenberg trial regarding his knowledge of Julius's party membership. If Julius took the stand and denied being a member of the
CPUSA, the government could call Nathan Sussman to rebut his testimony. However, at the trial the Rosenberg defense chose not to have
Julius testify on the question of party membership, and the prosecution
never called Sussman as a witness .21

In 1953 the Senate Committee on Government Operations, chaired
by Senator Joseph McCarthy, held hearings on Communist infiltration of
Army Signal Corps facilities and called Sussman to testify. The committee counsel, Roy Cohn, a McCarthy aide, questioned him. Cohn had been
one of the government prosecutors in the Rosenberg trial and would have
been fully cognizant of Sussman's statements to the FBI. He also had a
well-deserved reputation as a ruthless, demanding, and often rude interrogator.

Sussman appeared first in executive session, where he was the model
of a cooperative witness. Instead of taking the Fifth Amendment, a tactic adopted by almost every other witness still linked to the Communist
Party, he willingly admitted being a member of the YCL at CCNY and
named a host of others, including not only Rosenberg, Sobell, Barr, and
Elitcher, but also several others who had denied being Communists. He
admitted that he and Julius were two of the most active participants in
Communist activities at CCNY and acknowledged his continued membership in CPUSA branches until his resignation in 1945. Cohn's questioning was polite, and he never asked about espionage, even though
other witnesses who had known Rosenberg far less intimately or less long
were badgered about whether they had ever mishandled confidential documents or assisted Julius in his activities. Sussman then appeared in public session, where he again admitted to having belonged to the YCL from
1935 to 1938 and to the CPUSA from 1938 to 1940 and from 1942 to
1945. The break coincided with the two years he worked for the govern ment as a Signal Corps inspector. He also admitted that while at Western
Electric from 1942 to 1947, he worked on classified contracts. Directly
contradicting the sworn testimony of another engineer, Aaron Coleman,
he insisted that Coleman had been a fellow Communist. Roy Cohn asked
if Sussman had given the FBI information about the Communist connections of Rosenberg, Sobell, and others shortly before their trial, and
he acknowledged that he had done so. The proceedings were altogether
polite and calm.22