The Catcher Was a Spy

by Nicholas Dawidoff

  And then everything paused. The Alsos Mission had departed for Italy in December. (Before Pash left, Groves told him that if the new German secret weapon were possessed even by a country like Uruguay, Uruguay could then dictate terms to the rest of the world.) Berg and Horrigan, assigned to do the same job as Pash, were scheduled to leave Washington that month as well, but their travel orders became hopelessly delayed. The American Fifth Army, under General Mark Clark, commanded the Italian theater, and was recalcitrant on the subject of permitting them entry. Weeks would turn into months as the OSS tried unsuccessfully to prod the approval out of the stonewalling Fifth Army.

  At first, Berg used the impasse to good advantage, shuttling up to New York, where Estella lived, and to various libraries and offices where he was learning science as quickly as he could stuff it into his head. He read Max Born’s Experiment and Theory in Physics and accounts of Chadwick’s work with neutrons. He studied quantum theory and matrix mechanics, which led him to Heisenberg and his uncertainty principle. William Fowler, a Cal Tech, Nobel Prize—winning physicist who met Berg shortly after the war, says that Berg taught himself a great deal of physics. “I think Moe understood Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle as well as I did,” he says.

  Among the people Berg consulted were several scientists at the U.S. Office of Scientific Research and Development, including its chief, Dr. Vannevar Bush, and an electronics expert named Eugene Fubini, who’d come to the U.S. from Italy in 1938. Bush gave him a glowing letter of introduction, a sign of how seriously the OSS mission was being taken. Fubini on the other hand gave him nothing. “He asked about atomic weapons,” says Fubini. “He sure did. But I could not help him. I felt he was not a technically competent guy, but a person who tried hard to find the truth.” Berg was briefed by rocket and guided missile specialists, and on Italy’s Guidonia supersonic wind tunnel and its director, a young, gruff, and brilliant aerodynamics specialist named Antonio Ferri.

  Toward the end of December, Berg took a train to Schenectady, N.Y., where he met with a General Electric physicist named Guy Suits. When he began a discussion, Berg liked to first take a man’s measure during an exchange of what amounted to little more than innocuous banter. If after a while he felt he could trust the man, he laid out his mission and asked for advice. Suits seemed discreet, so Berg told him that he had decided that Switzerland was the best locus for personally investigating the German scientists. Switzerland was a neutral country, and the only place outside their own country where German scientists could attend scientific meetings, which they liked to do, not least because the schnapps, cheeses, and chocolates that were no longer available in Germany were still in ample supply in Zurich and Bern. Suits had received his doctorate in physics under Paul Scherrer, the head of the physics department at the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule (ETH), the Federal Technical College in Zurich. Scherrer had been providing useful AZUSA information to Allen Dulles, the OSS Bern bureau chief, and it was Scherrer whom Berg had really come to talk about. Berg knew that Scherrer had friends in the German scientific community. Could he trust him with highly sensitive information? Suits said he thought he could. Berg asked Suits for a letter of introduction to Scherrer, and Suits obliged him.

  Back in Washington, Berg and Horrigan, now known by their OSS code names of Romulus (Horrigan) and Remus (Berg), were filling their satchels as well as their heads. They requested two Kodak cameras, a movie camera, and a dozen pairs of women’s nylon stockings. On their request form they said that these would be given to high-ranking Italian officials, but the situation smacks of intentions of another sort. Stockings were nearly impossible for European women to get during the war, something which would not have escaped a sometime gallant like Moe Berg.

  The New Year arrived with matters very much unchanged. Pash and the Alsos scientists were gnawing their fingernails in a fancy Naples hotel, waiting for the Fifth Army to liberate Rome; Berg and Horrigan were stranded in Washington, waiting for the Fifth Army to liberate them; and Groves was pacing back and forth in his offices in Los Alamos, Oak Ridge, Hanford, and Washington. British intelligence had by this time concluded that there was no German bomb project and had sent Groves a lengthy report saying so, but Groves and Furman weren’t buying it. “In this conclusion it is felt the British are skating rather thin” was the acid American comment scrawled on the bottom of the report. At a meeting in Chicago with Morrison, Luis Alvarez, and other scientists on the morning of January 2, Furman sat listening and worrying about the succession of ominous possibilities that came flying across the conference table. The Germans were increasing heavy-water production; Niels Bohr had been told that Heisenberg had built a chain-reacting pile in 1941; it might be possible to build a bomb without a huge industrial effort, using teams of skilled artisans instead. The meeting went on like this until deep into the afternoon. Four days later, Hitler’s propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels, announced that teams of German chemists and physicists were working at a feverish pace in underground laboratories to complete “the uranium torpedo.” Furman’s feeling was that it was a 10 percent chance that the Germans were doing something. Maybe the British could take such a chance, but he was not ready to. He had several hundred nervous scientists working at a feverish pace in New Mexico who weren’t convinced. How could he be? Besides, the last anybody had heard from Heisenberg was that he was reported to have said that he was at work on a bomb.

  IN LATE JANUARY, William Horrigan was transferred to Burma to set up an invasion for Lord Mountbatten, leaving Berg to work in the way he felt most comfortable—alone. Not that he was going anywhere. The month passed with more failed appeals to the Fifth Army and the news that the Anzio Beach landing had been botched. It would take months now to get to Rome.

  Boris Pash knew all about such delays. By early March his Alsos Mission was back in Washington. He had spent weeks waiting for the OSS to whisk them at night by submarine from a desolate shoal near Rome for delivery to the Alsos scientific specialists in Naples. It never happened, and the beachcomber’s sack full of explanations and requests for patience from the OSS in Italy left Pash emptyhanded and caterwauling with irritation.

  Elsewhere, there was at least some good news. Swarms of American B-17 Flying Fortress bombers disabled the Norwegian heavy-water plant at Rjukan. Then, when the Germans attempted to salvage the stock of partially purified heavy water by smuggling it out of Rjukan in the bottom of a ferryboat, Norwegian saboteurs blew out the boat’s hull with plastic explosive, plunging the heavy water—thirty-nine drums—to the bottom of an icy lake. This was not all. From Switzerland came word that Heisenberg would be speaking in Zurich at some point that year.

  Months of waiting in Washington were getting to Berg. Now he really did possess government secrets, and he began to take extraordinary measures to protect them. For some reason, he had developed a powerful dislike for the head of the Larson project, John Shaheen. Shaheen’s and Howard Dix’s offices at Q Building were situated in such a way that you could look from one into the other. Berg visited Dix frequently, and when he did, he’d crouch down low so Shaheen couldn’t see him, sometimes even hiding under the desk. He was adamant; Shaheen must know nothing about him. In March, Shaheen filled out an efficiency report on Berg, giving him the highest possible rating in all twenty-seven categories, but Berg knew better. Shaheen was not to be trusted. By now there were several people at the OSS whom Berg regarded as enemies, but he wanted even his friends, like Margaret Feldman, to keep their distance from him. Feldman, who worked as an OSS liaison to the State Department, learned to walk right past Berg in public without showing any recognition. “Moe was a guy with all sorts of turmoil going on inside him” was Earl Brodie’s impression. One more concern with Berg was his finances. He’d never been particularly careful about money, and now the combination of the repeated delays in obtaining his overseas travel permission and his expensive tastes meant he was piling up quite a tab at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington.

  And then, w
hen all seemed vexing and fruitless, the travel orders were finally approved. Before Berg left, Furman wanted to see him. This time, it was Berg’s turn to listen. Furman was blunt and efficient, and Berg found it easy to organize a running account of the meeting into six sections, which he set down on a pad in his cramped, spidery script and labeled “FURMAN/SECRET.” Furman wanted to know which German and Italian scientists were alive, where they were located, and what their travel plans were. Berg was to learn what he could about German secret weapons, but he was never to breathe the words “radioactive” or “atomic bomb.” Dutifully, Berg wrote “TABOO” beside each word. He was always to be on the lookout for recently constructed industrial complexes, and if he found one, he should be ready to provide diagrams of its antiaircraft defenses. In February, the Allies had bombed the Kaiser Wilhelm Gesellschaft in Berlin-Dahlem, because Heisenberg’s laboratory was there, and Furman wanted an account of the damage and he wanted especially to know if there were any casualties beyond test tubes. (Furman was hoping to kill people.) Last, he requested a status report on the supply of rare metals in countries throughout Europe. Berg’s notes don’t say so, but it’s likely that at this meeting Furman supplied him with the list he carried with him to Europe of German and Italian scientists, a spy’s dossier, which had been annotated with comments ranging from age and home address to political affiliation. Heisenberg, for example, was described as a forty-two-year-old Protestant who was “pro-German but anti-Nazi.” Among the notations Berg made on his copy were numbers ranking the various scientists in order of importance. Among the Italian scientists, he placed a large “1” beside Edoardo Amaldi, a thirty-five-year-old anti-Fascist who “May be in touch with Germans.”

  On May 4, dressed in black, white, and gray, with $2,000 in OSS travel funds in one pocket and a .45 pistol in the other, Berg reported to a military airplane hangar outside Washington and boarded a plane for Europe. The travel orders permitted him passage to London, Portugal, Algiers, and Italy, and were signed by Donovan himself. The general couldn’t usually be bothered to sign travel orders, but this was no usual mission.

  Bernard Berg at work in the pharmacy. (Charles Owen Collection)

  Rose Berg was beautiful and good-humored, and her children were devoted to her. (Charles Owen Collection)

  Before she became a respected Newark teacher, Ethel Berg was an aspiring actress. (Courtesy of Elizabeth Shames)

  Little Moe. “Send me to school like Sam and Eth.” (Charles Owen Collection)

  Counselor at Camp Wah-Kee-Nah. “There isn’t a boy who doesn’t jump with glee to play ball with me.” (Courtesy of New York Public Library)

  At the Princeton sundial on graduation day, June 19, 1923. (Charles Owen Collection)

  The best baseball player in Princeton history. (Courtesy of Princeton University)

  A semester at the Sorbonne. “I am the happiest one in the universe.” (Courtesy of New York Public Library)

  Chicago White Sox catcher. “I don’t care how many of them damn degrees you got, they ain’t never learned you to hit the curve.” (Charles Owen Collection)

  Rookie shortstop with the Brooklyn Dodgers. (Charles Owen Collection)

  A patient at Mercy Hospital. “And what would I do if I broke my leg?” (Columbia University Law Library)

  A young lawyer with a white-shoe firm. “I have always considered the game only a means to an end.” (Associated Press/Wide World)

  Berg visited Japan twice. In 1932, he tutored young Japanese catchers and visited a geisha house with Ted Lyons. (Charles Owen Collection)

  In 1934, he made clandestine films (Charles Owen Collection) and then traveled across Asia by train. (Columbia University Law Library)

  At spring training in Florida with “Black” Jack Wilson (UPI/Bettmann) and visiting the Franklin Institute’s observatory in Philadelphia.

  “Isn’t this wonderful. Work three hours a day, travel around the country, and get paid for it.” (Columbia University Law Library)

  The aging Red Sox catcher. “I’ve had a pretty fair time in lost country.” (UPI/Bettmann)

  The New York Times, April 23, 1941.

  Berg and Estella Huni. “The most beautiful and cultivated and intelligent girl I have ever known,” said Sam Berg. (Paul Kahn)

  Visiting his brother Sam in California in 1943. “What the hell are you doing in an army plane?” (Charles Owen Collection)

  On Heisenberg’s trail. En route to Florence, Aldo lcardi dressed Berg in fatigues. (Charles Owen Collection)

  Berg bicycling and skiing with Paul Scherrer. (Charles Owen Collection)

  Watching a baseball game in the Yankee Stadium press box with Jerome Holtzman (at Berg’s left) and (Columbia University Law Library)

  chatting in the Yankee Stadium press room with Casey Stengel (left) and General Groves. “You’d be at a game and he’d be behind you, you’d look up again and he’d be gone.” (Charles Owen Collection)

  The perfect spy. “There were a lot of strange people in OSS. He was certainly sui generis.” (Charles Owen Collection)

  Still portrait with newspapers. “I don’t know where I’ll be tomorrow.”

  11

  A Perfect Spy

  War meant upheaval for many people, but not for Moe Berg. Right down to his black necktie, he did not alter himself. The chaos around him did not change the rhythms of his life. He remained a quiet traveler, whose days were still packed full of mysterious interludes with people who saw him just once and never forgot him.

  Boarding the airplane on May 4, 1944, for the long flight from Washington to Newfoundland to Scotland to London, he settled into a seat beside one occupied by George Shine, a major assigned to join Army General Omar Bradley’s staff. As Shine told Thomas Powers many years later, he was soon curious. Not only was Berg wearing his accustomed black, gray, and white mufti in a plane filled with military men dressed in olive drab, but not long after takeoff a pistol slipped out of his pocket and fell into Shine’s lap. Berg looked at his neighbor sheepishly. “I’m inept at carrying a gun,” he said. Shine recommended that Berg stash the pistol inside the belt at his waist. No luck; soon enough the gun was loose again. And again. Finally, Shine offered to stow Berg’s gun in his bag, and Berg, who apparently had been supplied with a gun but not with a bag or holster, accepted. Berg then shortened the long day of flying for Shine by regaling him with stories of his travels in Japan and Russia. When they got to London, Shine gave Berg back the gun and told him where he’d be staying.

  Berg checked into Claridge’s Hotel and ate a meal of sallow vegetables accompanied by one small morsel of beef. This wouldn’t do. The next day found him beside Shine again, dining as Shine’s guest in hearty style at the American officer’s mess. Berg returned the favor by taking Shine to a restaurant—Estella had suggested several from her days at the Matthay School—and choosing their wine by château and year. Berg was in fine storytelling form during these dinners, and the two men talked for hours. They made a date to have lunch on May 9, but Berg asked that it be tentative and, in fact, he never appeared, so Shine ate alone. Berg had admitted that he was in the OSS, and had mumbled something about going to see Mark Clark by submarine, but Shine really had no idea of what Berg was doing, nor would he ever meet him again to ask.

  Malcolm Muggeridge described the OSS men he saw in London as arriving “among us, these aspiring American spy-masters, like innocent girls from a finishing school, anxious to learn the seasoned demi-mondaine ways of old practitioners,” but if guns bewildered Berg, MI-6 and London did not. London was the headquarters of the European Theater of Operations for the U.S. Army, and Berg found no shortage of people to see there. On May 11, for instance, he met with a navy colonel named William Moore, with whom he discussed Toledo, the Allied intelligence code name for biological warfare. Moore told Berg that the British were so skittish on the subject of, say, being bombarded by disease-bearing rats that they “take the view that Toledo is never to be discussed.” Berg shared some documents wit
h Moore, who copied them, thanked Berg for his trouble, and sent them in to his superiors, claiming he’d found them himself.

  More useful was H. P. “Bob” Robertson, professor of mathematical physics at Princeton, whom Guy Suits had encouraged Berg to look up when he got to England. In the U.S., Robertson had interviewed scientists for work on the Manhattan Project, and had been fully briefed. Now he was working outside London as Vannevar Bush’s liaison with British scientific intelligence. As a young physicist in 1925, Robertson had gone to Germany for two years to work as a research fellow in Göttingen and Munich, where he met many of the scientists who now concerned Berg. Robertson dearly loved a party, and at Princeton in the mid-1950s he had hosted a lively one every Tuesday night for people at the Institute of Advanced Studies, which were attended by the likes of Niels Bohr, I. I. Rabi, Eugene Wigner, and Werner Heisenberg.