Thus, by the early 1940s, New York was already home to a large network of Soviet agents. This had been accomplished thanks to a very effective scheme: First, Earl Browder, head of the Communist Party in the United States, talent-spotted would-be assets. Then his deputy, Comintern veteran Jacob Golos, would recruit and handle them.
For more than a decade, Golos ran the World Tourists agency. It was a good cover for sending American volunteers to Spain, but the agency also helped Soviet spies get legitimate American passports. Golos had figured out a way to obtain genuine birth and naturalization certificates.
The Soviets were thinking big. Golos’s offices were located in the iconic Flatiron building—that tall, rectangular high-rise that, even today, seems to cut through Fifth Avenue and Broadway like a boat through waves. His network consisted of dozens of agents, many of them remarkably well placed. Golos had people on the US Board of Economic Warfare, which coordinated the operations undermining the Third Reich’s economic capabilities; on the staff of a chief of the Army Air Forces; and in the US Treasury Department, to name just a few. These people had the potential to make serious impacts on the course of history. Take the radio engineer who ran one of Golos’s groups of agents, Julius Rosenberg: ten years later, Rosenberg would be a household name when he was sent to an electric chair along with his wife for passing the secrets of the atomic bomb to the Soviets. Many of these agents were idealists; some thought they worked for the US Communist Party. They had no idea they were actually working for Soviet intelligence.
Golos still had agents in Trotsky’s Socialist Workers Party, too. Ruby Weil, the operative who had helped bring about the assassination of Trotsky, was just one of them.
With the war in Russia raging against the Germans, the savvy spy runner saw an opportunity. Golos approached the White émigré community. Calling on their patriotism, he successfully recruited agents there. He told them—truthfully—that he had sent his wife and son to live in Moscow in 1936, and when the war started, his son, at his urging, had joined the Red army (he was wounded defending Leningrad). Now, as Golos made the rounds in New York, he worked on persuading some White émigrés to take their sons back to Russia to join the army. It was a new, nationalistic tactic. The White émigrés were told that it didn’t matter anymore whether they were enemies of the revolution; they were first of all Russians, and only that mattered. Some White émigrés responded, actually following through on Golos’s suggestion to take their sons back to Russia—and Soviet intelligence got its hands on more hostages.7
Golos’s was just one of several Soviet spy networks in New York. Some, like his, were successful, and others less so. Around the corner from the World Tourists office, in the building where Golos had his apartment, was a small company called Raven Electric. The company’s owner, another Russian emigrant, had a habit of dropping by Golos’s office.8
George Koval, a Raven Electric employee, was born in Iowa. Twenty-six years old and good-looking, George settled easily into his life in New York. A modest engineer, a thin man with high cheekbones and delicate features in round glasses, he was a fan of Walt Whitman, good at tennis, and liked by women. What George’s new acquaintances in New York didn’t know was that in 1932, he and his entire family—his mother, father, and two brothers—had moved from Iowa to the Soviet Union, lured by the IKOR (Idishe Kolonizatsie Organizatsie in Rusland), the Organization for Jewish Colonization in Russia. George, in his early twenties at the time, continued his studies in Moscow and in 1939 earned a degree in chemistry with an eye to a career in academia. But Soviet intelligence urgently desired access to a US military poison program. They couldn’t pass up the prospect of using a genuine American citizen to do the job—one with chemical training to boot. Koval was recruited, not that he had much of a choice: the secret police had compromising material on young Koval’s wife that could have landed her in jail.9 Koval was given intensive training and sent back to the United States. He left his wife and family behind—as perfect hostages.
Now, though, nothing was happening. Soviet military intelligence patiently waited for Koval to deliver, but the US military apparently didn’t have the chemical poisons program Koval had been sent to spy on. Koval was idling aimlessly in New York.
As had been the case in Constantinople, there were not one but two Soviet intelligence stations, or rezidenturas, in the United States—one legal and one illegal. Vasily Zarubin ran the legal station based in the New York Soviet consulate. His wife, Liza Gorskaya, helped him run the station. One of their tasks was to reactivate contacts with agents who had fallen off the radar or stopped collaborating. Gorskaya was particularly good at bumping into people on the streets, getting invited to lunch, and then firmly reminding them that it was time to get back to work for Soviet intelligence.
In the beginning of 1943, Stalin initiated a major change to the Soviet uniforms, replacing the futuristic Communist cubes on the collars with the golden epaulets of the tsar’s Russian army. In May, these golden epaulets were also introduced for Soviet diplomats—and soon Zarubin, too, sported a gold-framed tunic at receptions. The country’s ideology was rapidly moving from a vision of a universal Communist future to a dream of the Russian empire’s glorious past. Nationalism was deemed more inspirational to soldiers fighting the horrible war with Germany.
The uniforms were not the only thing that changed. Soviet intelligence also started to change the rules. From now on, Moscow Center wanted full, top-down control over all recruited agents. Thus, it set out to abolish all roles played by Communist Party intermediaries. The horizontal networks of agents—a vibrant mix of determined operatives, fantasists, and idealists—were to be replaced with a hierarchy. Information would be compartmentalized and subordination strict. As in the Soviet Union, unquestioning obedience was top priority. Obedience, after all, was seen as the best guarantee of security.
Golos was the first to fall. He was efficient, yes, but he ran his extensive network largely on his own and on his own terms. It fell to Zarubin, ever the disciplinarian, to enforce Moscow’s wishes. He was chosen to force Golos to hand over his agents to Russian officers to control. Moscow’s—and thus Zarubin’s—argument was that Golos might be under FBI surveillance. After all, he had already been investigated during the Spanish Civil War for helping American volunteers travel to Spain to fight for the Republican side. Golos had even been arrested, but he paid a fine of $500 and was quickly set free. Zarubin informed Golos that he was a security risk and must step down.
Golos refused. He was adamant: the inexperienced Soviet officers Moscow had begun sending to work in Zarubin’s station didn’t understand the American mentality. The new Russian operatives were “young and inexperienced, didn’t work hard, and were not careful,” Golos complained to his colleague.10 Indeed, many didn’t even have a basic command of English. Golos explained that some of his agents didn’t realize they spied for the Soviets, rather than Browder’s party, and the revelation that they worked for a foreign country would come as a shock. This, he said, would be dangerous.
Zarubin was not one to be swayed by argument when he had his orders. He was also aware of two important events from Golos’s past that made him potentially dangerous. First, Golos had known Trotsky; the two men met in New York during World War I. Second, at the height of the Great Purge, Golos had enjoyed the backing of the then-chief of foreign intelligence.11 But when the chief fell out of favor, he was summoned to Lubyanka and injected with potassium cyanide. Golos lost his protector and remained tainted by the association.
So Zarubin kept pushing. In April 1943, Moscow’s chief of foreign intelligence sent Golos a personal letter urging him to give up his network. Again, Golos refused.
The same month, George Koval was drafted into the US Army. Uncle Sam needed young men with engineering training. Koval’s youngest brother, Gabriel, who had enlisted in the Red army, had just been killed in Russia.
CHAPTER 7
THE TIDE TURNS
That very month, in Apri
l 1943, the FBI recorded a conversation that took place at the house of a US Communist Party activist in Oakland, California. Steve Nelson, a veteran of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade in Spain, was under FBI observation, as he had long been suspected of running an underground Communist Party cell within the Berkeley Radiation Laboratory. Because his work was involved with the atomic bomb project, Nelson’s phone and house had been wiretapped for months.
On April 10, Nelson hosted an unusual guest at his home at 3720 Grove Street.1 The man arrived at Nelson’s modest Berkeley residence in a chauffeur-driven car with a license plate from the Soviet Consulate in San Francisco. The guest introduced himself as Cooper.2
There was something odd about Cooper from the beginning of the conversation. “By the way, I don’t know if you really imagine my position, who I am and so on? I’m about five heads up over people you know nothing about,” said Cooper, for starters.3 To FBI agents listening to the conversation, it soon became apparent that Cooper was indeed a high-ranking Soviet diplomat. Cooper produced a thick stack of money, counted it out, and handed it over to Nelson. They then spoke at length about Soviet intelligence operations in the United States. Nelson, like Golos, argued that it was better to keep using Communist Party intermediaries to run agents, but the unnamed Soviet official was adamant: Soviet intelligence didn’t want to do that anymore. The agents’ names were stated and the role played by Browder discussed in detail. In short, the conversation amounted to a full disclosure of espionage activity in the United States, recorded in its entirety by astonished FBI agents.
The FBI typed up a complete transcript and quickly identified the diplomat. It was Vasily Zarubin. He had just made one of the biggest mistakes of his life.
Naturally, the FBI embarked on a thorough investigation. Ironically, it was Zarubin, not Golos, who posed the real security risk. His meeting with Nelson awakened the FBI for the very first time to the threat of Soviet spies on American soil.
On May 7, FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover sent a letter to Harry Hopkins, Roosevelt’s foreign policy adviser, at the White House.
Personal and Confidential by special messenger
Dear Harry:
Through a highly confidential and reliable source it has been determined that on April 10, 1943, a Russian who is an agent of the Communist International paid a sum of money to Steve Nelson, National Committeeman of the Communist Party, USA, at the latter’s home in Oakland, California.
The money was reportedly paid to Nelson for the purpose of placing Communist Party members and Comintern agents in industries engaged in secret war production for the United States Government so that information could be obtained for transmittal to the Soviet Union.4
In the letter, Hoover fully identified Zarubin as “a Russian agent” and the third secretary of the Soviet embassy.5
Hoover at once launched two intelligence investigations. More than fifty FBI agents in New York and fifty more in Washington were tasked with tracking Soviet spies.
A week later, the Kremlin declared the complete dissolution of the Comintern. The timing of the move was hardly a coincidence; the White House had briefed the Soviet ambassador about Hoover’s letter. When the Moscow correspondent for Reuters asked Stalin about the reason for disbanding the Comintern, Stalin answered that the Comintern’s dissolution was “proper” for several reasons, the first two being:
(a) It exposes the lie of the Hitlerites to the effect that “Moscow” allegedly intends to intervene in the life of other nations and to “Bolshevize” them. From now on, an end is put to this lie.
(b) It exposes the calumny of the adversaries of Communism within the Labour movement to the effect that Communist Parties in various countries are allegedly acting not in the interests of their people but on orders from outside.6
Stalin had many reasons to dissolve the Comintern, but it was clear he especially wanted to downplay the ties between American Communists and Soviet intelligence. With the war raging, Russia’s relationship with its most important ally was not something Stalin wanted to jeopardize. Any day now, the Soviet army anticipated a big German offensive near Kursk—and American tanks supplied by lend-lease were part of the Soviet defensive effort.
But things kept falling apart. On August 7, an anonymous letter addressed to Mr. Hoover arrived at FBI headquarters in Washington. It exposed Zarubin as “the so-called director of the Soviet Intelligence in this country” and named Zarubin’s nine “closest associates,” including his wife, Liza, who “directs political intelligence here, has a vast network of agents in almost all ministries including the State Department.”7 The letter was sent by Zarubin’s deputy—who considered Zarubin too arrogant.
The White House briefed the Soviet ambassador about the letter, but Zarubin was undeterred. Zarubin kept pushing Golos, to no avail. Then he changed tactics and approached Golos’s deputy, Elizabeth Bentley. If he wanted to bypass Golos, he greatly miscalculated; Bentley was Golos’s lover, and she immediately reported her contact with Zarubin.
On November 26, 1943, Zarubin and Golos held a meeting to clear up the mess. A fierce argument ensued, but Golos was adamant and firmly refused to give up his network. The next day was Thanksgiving. Golos took Bentley to dinner and then to a movie. After the movie, he went to Bentley’s home in the West Village and spent the night.8 The next morning, Golos was dead, apparently of a heart attack. Whether Zarubin had anything to do with his death remains unclear to this day.
Bentley inherited Golos’s contacts, and she also refused to give them up to Zarubin’s people. She was already convinced that the Soviets had killed her lover. Zarubin put her under the same pressure he used with Golos, but instead of turning over the contacts, she went to the FBI. Meanwhile, Earl Browder’s Soviet bosses removed him from his longtime position as chairman of the US Communist Party. It looked as if everything Jacob Golos, a Communist idealist and a shrewd secret operative, had worked to build for twenty years was turning to ashes because of Soviet intelligence’s paranoia and obsession with control.
Meanwhile, Zarubin kept wreaking havoc. After his visit to Nelson’s home in Berkley, the FBI followed his every step, identifying people on the way. Zarubin was contaminating everybody he spoke to.
But some of Golos’s Americans-turned-Soviet-spies were still out there. As it turned out, these agents were the ones who helped Stalin get the bomb—the biggest Soviet intelligence coup ever, bar none.
The war was still on, but the era of recruitment on anti-Nazi grounds was ending. Golos, a Comintern veteran, had been able to reach out to a wide variety of people: Americans with Communist leanings, German refugees, and European scientists who had fled from Hitler, to name a few. He could win them all over, using different strategies, to spy for a cause. Under the new scheme, where any new agents had to work directly for Soviet intelligence, this approach was all but impossible.
In August 1944, Washington had enough of Zarubin and requested his removal. Zarubin was summoned back to Moscow. There, he had to face accusations of being careless in running New York’s station. Worse, he was suspected of being a double agent for the FBI. Stalin, in the depths of his paranoia, started a new purge in the secret services.
It was almost surreal. While the FBI was working hard to crack the spy rings built by Golos and his comrades in the United States, in Moscow, Stalin began attacking the very operatives who ran these successful networks. The first to fall were the Jews.
In addition to sheer luck, surviving a pogrom requires two qualities: One is boldness. The other is an ability to build horizontal networks through relatives, friends, and other contacts. Anyone who masters these skills makes for a perfect spy—something the Soviet secret service had understood since the civil war. But the ability to benefit from unauthorized connections fell out of fashion in light of Stalin’s paranoid state.
Zarubin survived the purge. He had made serious mistakes (to put it mildly); among the accusations he faced were that he had addressed his subordinates by their code names in th
e presence of diplomats and settled “illegal” agents in the apartments of “legal” officers.9 Despite all this, he was not punished. In fact, he was rewarded and made a major general of state security.10 But his wife, Liza Gorskaya, then just forty-six years old and the brains behind the couple, was forced into retirement. She was a Jew, which had now become a problem.
There was one intelligence function for which Stalin still needed tough, brutal, old-school spies like Nahum Eitingon: assassinations. With the war nearing an end, Eitingon was tasked with building a new department dedicated to assassinating enemies.11 Stalin still valued the skills of the killer of his archenemy, Trotsky. So Eitingon, too, was lucky again. In his department, Eitingon was joined by his stepdaughter, Zoya Zarubina, the child of Vasily Zarubin. By now, Eitingon already defined a large part of Zoya’s life.12
Zarubina had once been that nine-year-old girl who smuggled Eitingon’s gun out of the Soviet Consulate in Harbin in 1929. Later, it was Eitingon, her beloved stepfather, who brought her to Moscow. At school she excelled in languages and became an athletics champion. Just before the war, Zarubin, visiting Moscow, talked her out of following his and Eitingon’s path into the secret service, so she chose a career in linguistics. But when the war started, she was immediately enlisted in the special forces division OMSDON, tasked with terrorizing the German rearguard and supervised by Eitingon. She became an experienced saboteur. Later, because of her family connections and her command of foreign languages, she was put in charge of translating the atom bomb documents that Stalin’s agents stole from the Manhattan Project.
The Compatriots Page 7
