The Catcher Was a Spy

by Nicholas Dawidoff

  For years, he ignored all the government entreaties to resolve his debts. “He loved the United States, he was incredibly patriotic, but he didn’t consider that the IRS had anything to do with the United States,” says Berg’s friend Sayre Ross. It wasn’t until 1953 that the government moved in. Berg returned to Newark from a CIA assignment in Europe, and was contacted by FBI agents, who knew that he had been earning money and wanted to know how he intended to make good on his Novelart debts. Berg paid $500 and offered $200 more, to complete a compromise settlement. When the agents talked the matter over with him, Berg told them that he would earn $9,000 for the year, but he would reveal nothing about the nature of his government work except to say that he had no tenure and his employment might cease at any time. The government division charged with evaluating the situation recommended against accepting the compromise, noting that Berg’s “past history indicates that he might be able to earn much more than his present salary if he should leave government service and go back into business. He appears to be a man of middle age, in good health and of sound mind.”

  Berg was not able to earn more than his salary at that time. In fact, he earned far less. For 1954, his total income was nothing. His bank account held $200, and he had not another asset in the world, except for his battered old catcher’s mitts and some worn gray suits. By May 1955, after borrowing money to pay his 1953 income taxes, he was more than $12,000 in debt. In January 1956, he made another compromise offer, of $1,500, on the Novelart claim against him, and this time the offer was accepted. Berg told the FBI that he would borrow the remainder of what he owed from a friend in Washington, and apparently he did, ending the protracted affair for everyone but the friend, who probably never got his or her money back. According to Ethel Berg, the situation “depressed him deeply—yet he did not speak of it.”

  The failure of Novelart did not stop Berg from working. He stopped himself. Berg owed his tatterdemalion days to more than a hatred of offices and a loathing for routine. He didn’t work because his chosen employer, the CIA, did not want him, and for another most convenient reason: he didn’t have to.

  OF THE 13,000 people employed by the OSS in 1945, the CIA kept only 1,300 on the payroll. To his endless disappointment, Moe Berg was not one of them. Technically, he had resigned from the SSU, but the truth is that he had been cast aside, and he still pined for the work. Secret work fascinated Berg, even obsessed him. He spent hours filling notebooks with cryptic thoughts on the craft of intelligence work. “You can’t get intelligence by sitting & saying nothing,” he wrote one day. “Must learn to observe everything—where placed … my experiences in Moscow (1935)—Berlin (1933–35)—hotel rooms—things moved,” he scribbled on another. He holed up in Washington hotel rooms and sketched out lengthy CIA mission proposals that sometimes covered sixty or seventy sheets of hotel stationery. In 1951, for example, he begged the CIA to send him to Israel. “A Jew must do this,” he wrote in his notebook. For years, when he arrived home in the evening at his brother’s house, Berg would ask Dr. Sam, “Did any mail come for me from Washington?” With one exception, the response from Dr. Sam and the CIA was always no.

  The CIA was not spoiling to disappoint Berg. It did not ask him to do things for it at first because he had made such trouble for his SSU administrators at the end of the war. Then, when he was given some work, he did poorly enough that there was no reason to trust him with anything more. As with so much about Berg, this failure was a function of personality. The same qualities that made Berg the quintessential OSS agent led to problems at the CIA.

  The OSS overlooked Berg’s unpredictable movements, dilatory response to some orders, overlong reports, and shoddy accounting for large sums of money, and it soothed his quarrels with Jack Marsching and Allen Dulles. In General Donovan, he had a sympathetic boss whose sensibilities meshed happily with his own. The CIA would reject Donovan and his adventurous style of intelligence, bringing a more disciplined approach to the business of fighting Communists. Or, as Richard Helms, director of Central Intelligence (DCI) between 1966 and 1973 and an OSS veteran, puts it, “The difference between the two organizations, basically, was that the CIA, since it was operating in peacetime, had to set up far more regulations on what people and agents were doing.” Station chiefs, for example, would now always be told which agents were coming into their territory, and what their purpose was. The Agency would brook no more scraps like the one between Berg and Dulles. General Donovan, says Helms, “was not particularly interested in organization or administration,” and neither was Berg. Still, for all this, the CIA gave Moe Berg some work to do in 1952. Urgent voices in the U.S. were asking what kind of new atomic weapons the Soviet Union might be building, and Berg knew something about gathering intelligence on enemy bomb programs.

  IN 1952, THE American Zeitgeist was fear—cold, damp, corrosive fear. After 1950, when Klaus Fuchs, tall and slim behind tortoise shell glasses, was arrested in England for the crime of using his over-soft voice to turn over atomic secrets to the Russians, American intelligence began to wonder not just how much the Russians knew but who was telling them. Worried into a frenzy of suspicion by the likes of Harry Gold, Kim Philby, Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, and Allan Nunn May, and goaded by the long, paranoid lash of Joseph McCarthy, some Americans saw traitors everywhere. In Washington, in 1952, CIA director Bedell Smith confessed that he was “morally certain” that “there are Communists in my own organization.”

  On February 5, 1950, in Oak Park, Illinois, a frightened man was moved to write the FBI director J. Edgar Hoover a letter in which he stated, “In connection with the current A-bomb spy developments, I may be able to present you with a possible lead. The subject is Moe Berg.” The man—he begged the FBI not to “mention my name in any way”—had met Berg at Claridge’s Hotel in London during the war, where he learned that Berg, the son of Ukrainian parents, was “quite favorably disposed to Soviet Russia. In view of his extensive travels to Switzerland and Sweden, it is possible that he might have passed important information to Soviet agents.” He felt that the FBI “would do well to investigate [Berg] thoroughly.” Hoover, always glad to oblige, dispatched an agent to meet with Berg’s accuser at a bar, where the man backed off a little. He “stated that although he was not particularly suspicious of Berg, he felt that Berg did have an immense amount of valuable information pertaining to the atomic bomb in his possession.” All this was neatly taken down and filed away without any public disclosure. It is probable that Berg, a vigorous American patriot to the end, was never told that his government had investigated allegations that he was turning over secrets to the Russians.

  Another man with an immense amount of valuable information about the atomic bomb was Enrico Fermi’s prize student, the dashing Italian scientist Bruno Pontecorvo. Nearly as brilliant a tennis player as he was a scientist, Pontecorvo had been an employee at Harwell, the British atomic research establishment, when on September 2, 1950, during a vacation, he and his family disappeared from Helsinki, Finland. It was eventually revealed that Pontecorvo was now playing his tennis in Moscow, but what remained a mystery were his reasons for defecting and what he was telling the Soviets.

  American intelligence was still puzzling about this ten months later, when Berg proposed going to Europe and tracking down some of his old scientific contacts to see what they knew about Soviet atomic science, about Pontecorvo, and about postwar German nuclear research. “We said, ‘great idea,’ ” recalls an official in CIA Eastern European and German operations at the time. Berg filled out an information questionnaire, on which he claimed “good” facility in only three languages, and listed the Riggs Bank in Washington and a Washington hotel as credit references. To the CIA that said “I don’t live anywhere.” Berg was given a fat $10,000 contract, an airplane ticket, and an expense account, and off he went.

  Berg landed in Europe on July 11, and spent several months there. It was like old times. He visited Scherrer in Zurich and Amaldi in Rome, and spent plenty of ti
me in London. He later told friends that he went to the Black Forest in Germany to interview Anna Anderson, allegedly Anastasia, the daughter of the last czar, and considered her “a complete fake.” Slipping effortlessly into his OSS routine, in each city Berg slept in posh hotels, dined on magnificent meals in the finest restaurants, and kept no receipts for the several thousand dollars it cost him. Very quickly he lost touch with his superiors at the CIA. His operations file began to fill up with pieces of paper that asked “Where is he?” “What’s he doing?” and worried that “the operation is going down the toilet.”

  Eventually Berg found his way to the old spa town of Bad Homburg, not far from Frankfurt, where he paid an unannounced visit to Michael Burke and his wife, Timmy. Burke was in charge of American covert activity for the area, and lived in a large house near the park that ran through the center of town. Berg moved into the guest house behind the Burkes’ house. After breakfast on his first morning there, Berg went with Burke into Frankfurt. While Berg was gone, a maid tidied up the guest house, making the bed and arranging the newspapers that had been scattered around the room into a neat pile on the desk. Berg returned later in the day, took one look at the room, and became very upset. “No one is to disturb my newspapers,” he told Burke with some vehemence. For the maid, he left notes beside the newspapers that said, “Don’t disturb—they’re alive.” The maid did not set foot in the guest house again until Berg had left. She couldn’t. Berg had confiscated her key.

  The Burkes were fond of Berg, and enjoyed a pleasant fortnight with him. He always wore a kimono to breakfast. At dinner parties he was shy—Timmy had the feeling he was always “sizing people up”—but when the three were alone, Berg told wonderful stories about his days in Japan. One Sunday, he joined Timmy and her French poodle for a walk in the Bad Homburg park. All was amicable until they rounded a corner and Timmy recognized an acquaintance. “Oh, there’s Bobby Van Roijen,” she said. Berg shot away from her and hid behind some bushes. It was late fall and the bushes had no leaves, so Berg in his dark overcoat was plainly visible. “Who’s that man?” Van Roijen asked Timmy. “A friend,” she replied smoothly. “He had to go to the loo.” Timmy and Van Roijen waited for a few minutes, and eventually Berg emerged from the bushes and walked back to the house with Van Roijen, Timmy, and her poodle. Nobody said a word. Timmy told her husband about what had happened, and Michael Burke was delighted. “Oh, that’s Moe,” he said. “I once was with him at Rockefeller Center and suddenly Moe just left me and hid behind a column. After a while he came out. We carried on and he never explained anything.”

  When he got back to the U.S., the CIA was perplexed by Berg. He wouldn’t reveal anything. “We said to him, ‘Who did you see, what did they have to say?’ ” says a CIA officer who spoke with Berg at the time. “It was not very solid. It was, well, flaky. He was tantalizing. He’d talk about schemes and people with great enthusiasm and you’d say, ‘Moe, tell me about this,’ and it disappeared in a cloud of fluff. I sometimes felt that when Moe told things, some of it might have been embroidering.” The comments that began appearing in the operations file now said that Berg had failed to find out anything in Europe but wouldn’t admit it.

  Berg seems to have learned nothing from his OSS accounting experiences after the war, for now he could provide the CIA with no expense record at all, and when pressed for one, he lost his patience. “Oh, for Christ’s sake, quit being bureaucrats,” he complained. Had he produced something of value, the Agency might have been willing to do that—the CIA abounded with brilliant profligates—but all Berg could offer was obfuscation. The CIA had been patient. When his contract expired in 1953, after a brief lapse it was renewed. Nobody was asking Berg to do very much, however, and desperate for work, he tried to latch onto a CIA project he’d heard about. He pitched himself as a bargain, arguing that since he was already being paid, he would be doing valuable work for nothing. “Thank you, no” was the answer. When his contract expired in 1954, this time the CIA chose not to renew it.

  In 1966, Berg tried again. His work proposal was received optimistically, he was given CIA security clearance, and he was invited to Washington to discuss a possible assignment. He did not impress. The Berg CIA file now bulged with comments that said that he was more unpredictable and more irascible than ever, a man who insisted upon operating as a loner, not as part of a team, who couldn’t conform to accounting requirements, and who delivered an unsatisfactory product. No assignment was extended to him, and the security clearance was terminated.

  Berg, of course, didn’t tell people any of this. He once explained to Sam Goudsmit that he broke with the CIA in 1960 because it was anti-Semitic and because he couldn’t get along with Allen Dulles. Dulles was the deputy director of the CIA from 1951 to 1953, and then the DCI, until November 1961. Berg had never forgiven him for their wartime spat in Bern. Donovan died in 1959, and Dulles was an honorary pallbearer at the funeral. Berg told Ted Sanger that if Donovan had known Dulles had a hand on his coffin, “He’d have jumped out and run away.”

  While there is plenty of evidence that Berg blamed his troubles on Dulles, there is none that Dulles aggressively impeded Berg at CIA. People who worked with Dulles describe him as a practical man, willing enough to overlook personal differences with a subordinate if he thought he could get good work out of him. “Dulles was a big fella,” says Bill Hood. “If he saw a use for a guy like Berg, he’d have said, ‘Well, maybe he’s matured.’ He wouldn’t have held a grudge. He just wanted to get on with the job.” As a rule, the CIA takes care of its own, and it might have looked after Berg had he played by their rules. But he did not because he could not. Allen Dulles wasn’t the source of Berg’s problems, Berg was.

  With no Donovan or Groves to protect him, Berg withered into obsolescence as the profession that had made him a hero shook him loose. “He was a real romantic, I guess,” says a man to whom Berg reported at the CIA. “He had a wonderful notion of being a buccaneer, an independent operator. Intelligence doesn’t work that way. I would have thought that—particularly in those days [the 1950s]—if he had produced anything of value, people would have overlooked the idiosyncrasies, overlooked his freewheeling methods of operation.” But the results were not good, and the style was out of favor. “A Berg who is wandering around the world doing all sorts of jobs is just the sort of fellow we didn’t want—they attract too much attention,” says Richard Helms. “Risk taking within structure” was what the CIA preached to its operators. Controlled risk takers are rare, and Berg, like most people, was unsuited to these living games of chess. An intelligence man should never advertise that his business is secrets, and Berg did so constantly. “The goal of the craft is natural appearance,” says Charles McCarry, a retired CIA deep cover agent. “A man who says ‘Shsh’ makes people who are inside either very nervous or very contemptuous.”

  Monroe Karasik, one of Berg’s colleagues at the OSS, managed to follow Berg’s career and concluded, “Moe was an amateur and quite a good amateur, but in the end an amateur. The people you won’t ever hear about are the real professionals. Moe had all of the qualifications, but I don’t think he ever became a pro. It starts with the ability, but you must always attend to it. Moe did not take the time to become a pro. People who succeed in this métier thought he was useful but limited. In a certain sense he resembled a beagle. They have marvelously sensitive noses. They smell something utterly delicious and then they smell something else utterly delicious. That’s why beagles run away a lot and get lost.” Berg was a determinedly non-introspective man, and may never have known why exactly he failed at the CIA. And when he did poorly at the assignment he was given in 1952, and came home to find government agents pressing him for the Novelart money, he did not stop to analyze his plight. Instead, he turned tail, ran away, and got lost.

  BROKE, DISAPPOINTED, AND disinclined, Berg did have one asset that no government could strip from him—his personality. People were drawn to him, they always had been. “Every success he h
ad came from his personality,” says Harry Broley. “He was a hard man to walk away from. He was loaded with charm.” Even at the CIA, it wasn’t that anyone had disliked Berg. The CIA man who supervised Berg’s 1952 assignment says that Berg “engendered great affection. He was a delightful personality, fun to be with, a real extrovert with a high level of energy.” Berg’s personality had become an impediment to his intelligence career, but it would be an advantage elsewhere. When he couldn’t make a living at the CIA, Berg began traveling from place to place, visiting.

  An unplanned, itinerant existence is unthinkable for most people, but Berg was comfortable with it. He acknowledged as much in 1954, writing in a notebook, “As always, fluid. If I’m in the vicinity, I’ll be there.” And when Russell Gray invited him to speak to his Princeton class in 1959, Berg was again candid about his circumstances. He refused to make a speech—“It wouldn’t become me to address guys who knew me at seventeen”—and made no promises to attend the gathering. “You know I’m a vagabond,” he told Gray. “I don’t know where I’ll be tomorrow, as a matter of fact.” Like George Orwell, down and out in Paris, Berg found that poverty “annihilates the future.” After the war, Berg discovered that friends would happily supply him with lodging, meals, clean underwear, suits, and even pocket money just because they liked to be around him. For most of his last twenty-five years, Berg permitted all sorts of people that pleasure and came to believe that he was doing them the favor.

  Berg dressed in wash-and-wear suits, nylon or rayon shirts that could be wrung out in a sink each night and required no pressing, and thick black policemen’s shoes, ideal for a man prone to bunions and who often walked great distances. His luggage consisted of a small ditty bag that held only a razor and a toothbrush. He rarely bought train tickets. Instead, Berg made friends with train conductors, who considered it a privilege to be his host. Then, leaning back in his free seat, Berg would open his newspaper and read while the train hurried him on to a city that he’d just decided to visit. Today’s destination was tomorrow’s point of departure. Instead of a locus, he had only datelines.