User:Nobs01/Floyd Miller


 * There are three other cryptonym identifications that flow logically from these seventeen for a total of twenty. The Gorsky memo’s identification of CORA as Emma Phillips not only provides identification of an unidentified cover name in Venona, “CORA,” it also provides identification of two other unidentified cryptonyms, AMPERE and ROY.  The Venona cables about AMPERE and ROY identify him as CORA’S husband.  The identification of HURON as Byron Darling also supplies an identification for the unidentified Venona cryptonym ERNEST in as much as in October 1944, the HURON cryptonym was changed to EARNEST, only to be changed back to HURON in February 1945 for reasons that are not clear.

AMPERE =  Phillips, husband of Emma Phillips

ERNEST =  Darling, Byron

ROY =  Phillips, husband of Emma Phillips

[90]Cora was a cover name in Venona whose identity was established but which NSA redacted when it released the messages, possibly indicating the Cora cooperated with the FBI. The Venona messages indicated that Cora was married to another Soviet source, cover names Roy and Ampere, who was also identified but whose identify was also redacted. Cora is here identified as Emma Phillips but nothing is known of her.

88. The FBI dated FAECTs American origins to an August 1933 rally held in the auditorium of New York Citys Washington Irving High School; the unions first national convention was held in Chicago a year later. FAECTs U.S. leader was a Rumanian-born engineer, Marcel Scherer, whom the Bureau believed to be a Soviet agent. In 1941, Scherer went to California to expand the union. Paul Pinsky, FAECTs West Coast representative, left the union shortly thereafter in a dispute with Scherer, who was himself kicked out in 1943 for factionalism and disruption. Pinsky claimed that Scherer was more interested in promoting Communist ideology than in the welfare of workers. While he was in the west, Scherer more than doubled the membership of FAECT, which by 1943 included a Local at the Rad Lab. Until the German invasion of Russia, FAECT had organized strikes and work slowdowns at major U.S. defense industries and military bases. FAECT file, #61-7231, and Marcel Scherer file, #100-34665, FBI; Pinsky interview (1997).

89. Pinsky had gone to school at Berkeley and once took a class from Lawrence. He joined the Communist Party in the mid-1930s and became a radical unionist after being fired from his 30-cent-an-hour job as a poultry inspector at Swift Company. Pinsky claimed that Oppie joined the union in either 1939 or 1940. George Engebretson, A Man of Vision: The Story of Paul Pinsky (HICL, 1997), 15; Pinsky interview. In the 1980s, David Jenkins, a Bay area labor leaders and Communist, remembered that Oppenheimer had been helpful to [FAECT] in organizing the Shell scientists and technical workers, and, of course, knew Pinsky. Transcript of David Jenkins interview, Bancroft Library. 

18. New York to Moscow, Aug. 12, 1943, Venona decrypts. As of this writing, the National Security Agency refuses to release the name of the progressive professor, although Ernest Lawrence has been suggested as a candidate. If so, Molieres understanding of Lawrences politics was no better than his sense of California geography. By fall 1943, messages concerning atomic espionage in the Bay area were no longer sent to Moscow via New York but directly from the consulate in San Francisco. In another reorganization, in November, 1943, GRUs spies in the U.S. were transferred to Fitin and subsequently run by the NKVD. The day before Molieres message, Fitin had reportedly complained about duplication of effort by the GRU and the NKVD. The NKVD evidently learned of COMRAP bugs and wiretaps from Judith Coplon. Weinstein and Vassiliev, 157, 182. The author wishes to thank Peter Gorin for a copy of his unpublished paper, Intelligence Services of the USSR and Russia: Selected Historical Aspects.”

19. Late in 1941, Pinsky left FAECT to become research director for the CIO in California. Part of his reason concerned ideological differences with the unions leadership, which Pinsky thought more committed to taking ideological stands than improving the lot of the workers it represented. Pinsky interview (1997).



http://www.childrenofthemanhattanproject.org/JRO/02.htm

In August 1943 the New York KGB cabled to Moscow that it would approach a scientist, described as a “progressive professor” and one of the directors of a major radiation laboratory. The KGB said that the approach could be made through Paul Pinsky, a CPUSA member and organizer for FAECT in northern California. None of the subsequent deciphered Venona traffic, however, discusses the matter further.95 Use of FAECT as a channel for Soviet espionage did not go unnoticed by American security officials. They made their concerns known to the White House, which got in touch with Philip Murray, national president of the CIO. He forced FAECT to cease organizing at the Radiation Laboratory for the duration of the war. Paul Pinsky attempted to delay the action, but he was overruled. The FBI later observed the GRU officer Ivanov visiting Pinsky's home in October 1943.96

95. Venom 1328 KGB New York to Moscow, 21 August 1943. The Venom message gives the professor's name in clear text, but the NSA chose to black it out in its release. Internal and other evidence suggests that the name was that of Ernest Lawrence, in which case the New York KGB most likely soon learned that Lawrence was not recruitable. This cable erroneously located the radiation laboratory at Sacramento rather than at Berkeley.

96. San Francisco FBI report, 22 April 1947, serial 5421 and “Comintern Apparatus Summary Report,” 15 December 1944, serial 3702, both in FBI Comintern Apparatus file. Pinsky also had a brother-in-law who was a physicist and who worked at Los Alamos on the bomb project. In 1944 Pinsky may have traveled to New Mexico to contact him. Pinsky himself later became research director for the California CIO while it was headed by Harry Bridges, a concealed Communist.

Pinsky, Paul: California Communist trade union official whom the KGB planned to use to approach a scientist working on the Manhattan Project.245

245. Venona 1328 KGB New York to Moscow, 12 August 1943.

Venona Appendix A Soviet spies

The cable passed on Schuster's description of those he had met: “Olsen is district leader of the Fraternal [Communist party] in Chicago. Olsen's wife, who has been meeting Ramsey [Hiskey], is also an active Fellowcountryman [Communist] and met Ramsey on the instructions of the organization. At our suggestion Echo [Schuster] can get a letter from Olsen with which one or other of our people will meet Ramsey and thereafter will be able to strike up an acquaintance.”83 Analysts at the NSA and the FBI did not identify Olsen, but it may have been the cover name or the party name of Morris Childs, at that time the head of the Communist party in Illinois. The message stated that Olsen's wife had been cultivating Hiskey, and the KGB wanted to use the relationship to put one of its agents in contact with him.

In July the New York KGB reported a follow-up to this May message.84 It told Moscow that Schuster had passed along copies of two letters that had been sent to Hiskey by Victor (an unidentified cover name) and Rose Olsen. Rose, however, is probably not Morris Childs's wife but his sister-in-law, Roselyn. Roselyn's husband, Jack Childs, was a full-time CPUSA functionary whose work for the party was obscure and probably connected with its underground. The section of the cable describing the content of the letters was not deciphered. There was a garbled indication, however, that one of the KGB's veteran liaison agents, Joseph Katz, had been assigned to the Hiskey case. On September 18, 1944, the New York KGB office sent a cable responding to several inquiries from Moscow, one of which was about the status of the approach to Hiskey. The New York KGB deferred its report, on the grounds that its intermediaries in the matter, Bernard Schuster and Joseph Katz, were out of New York at the time and that Rose Olsen, at that point designated by the cover name Phlox, and her husband had traveled to “Ramsey's area.”85

Finally, the New York KGB told Moscow in December 1944 that “Dick [Joseph Katz] is directly in touch with Phlox's husband and not with Phlox [Rose Olsen] herself. The intention of sending the husband to see Ramsey [Hiskey] is explained by the possibility of avoiding a superfluous stage for transmitting instructions.”86 Here the New York KGB is conveying its decision to Moscow that Jack Childs would make the approach to Hiskey. So far as is known, the approach, if carried out, was unsuccessful.87

The KGB's use of the CPUSA in its search for information on the

83. Venom 619 KGB New York to Moscow, 4 May 1944.

84. Venona 1020 KGB New York to Moscow, 20 July 1944.

85. Venona 1332 KGB New York to Moscow, 18 September 1944.

86. Venona 1715 KGB New York to Moscow, 5 December 1944.

Olsen: provided a letter of introduction for a KGB agent seeking in 1944 to contact a scientist working on the Manhattan Project. The scientist had been cultivated by members of the CPUSA, and Olsen was described as head of the Illinois Communist party. May be Morris Childs, head of the CPUSA in Illinois in 1944. Olsen may be a party name rather than a cover name.227

Olsen, Rose: See Phlox.

227. Venona 619 KGB New York to Moscow, 4 May 1944.

Phlox: CPUSA contact in Chicago of the New York KGB used in an attempt to approach a senior Manhattan Project scientist targeted for recruitment. Also referred to in the Venona cables as Rose Olsen, likely a CPUSA party name. May be the wife of Jack Childs or Morris Childs.242

242. Venona 619 KGB New York to Moscow, 4 May 1944; 1020 KGB New York to Moscow, 20 July 1944; 1332 KGB New York to Moscow, 18 September 1944; 1715 KGB New York to Moscow, 5 December 1944; 295 KGB Moscow to New York, 30 March 1945.

Berlin
Upon the family's reception in Germany, Martha wrote, "I felt the press had badly maligned the country" in the United States. CBS correspondent in Berlin William L. Shirer in reported her as being "Pretty", and "vivacious". Along with Mildred Harnack, she wrote a book column for Berlin Topics, a newspaper for English-speaking expatriates. In comparing Germans to the French, Martha considered Germans more "honest and sincere". Of the Germans Martha said, "They weren’t thieves, they weren’t selfish, they weren’t impatient or cold and hard; qualities I began to find stood out in my mind as characteristic of the French."

On an excursion to Nuremeberg Marth witnessed a young woman was forcefully drawn from a stopped streetcar. With her head shaven and her face "tragic and tortured," she wore a hanging from her neck which read "I Have Offered Myself to a Jew."

Ernst "Putzi" Hanfstaengl, press secretary of German Chancellor and Nazi party leader Adolf Hitler, told her, "Hitler needs a woman. Hitler should have an American woman—a lovely woman could change the whole destiny of Europe. Martha, you are the woman!" Later Martha wrote of the "glowing and inspiring faith in Hitler", and "the good that was being done for the unemployed."

She was very much attracted to Hitler and described him as "excessively gentle and modest in his manners. Unobtrusive, communicative, informal, he had a certain quiet charm, almost a tenderness of speech and glance." She was so enamoured with the Führer that she tired to organize a tour of the United States for him. This did not meet with the approval of Herman Goering, head of the Luftwaffe, who spread the rumour that Martha was a Soviet agent. (she had visited Moscow and Leningrad July, 1934 and wrote about the Soviet experiment in idealized and utopian colors. ) Hitler refused to see her again and banned her from all future diplomatic receptions. Soon after, reports circulated that Martha attempted suicide by slashing her wrists. No details of this has survived, it is possible that the affair has been hushed up 'diplomatically'.

Martha soon met Rudolf Diels, Chief of the Gestapo under Goering. Diels oversaw Berlin’s Columbia House, "one of the most ghastly prisons in Germany," Diels earned an intimidating reputation among both Germans and foreigners. Diels spent much time describing for Martha Nazi intrigues and "inter-party struggles and hatreds." Martha admitted that during the time when they dated she was "intrigued and fascinated by this human monster of sensitive face and cruel, broken beauty." Martha said, "I am also equally convinced that he was, and is, no more of a Nazi than many of the others who give lip-service to it for their various personal or political reasons." She told of once visiting Diels in his office and seeing dictaphones covering his desk. Diels told Martha that "spying was done not only by the Secret Police Department but by every department... Goebbels spied on Goering and Goering on Goebbels, both on the Secret Police staff, and the Secret Police section on both of them." Discovering firsthand the hateful paranoia that permeated the Nazi regime, a disillusioned Martha soberly realized the true nature of National Socialism. "There began to appear before my romantic eyes—yet not so romantic after all, since these are authenticated facts—a vast and complicated network of espionage, terror, sadism and hate, from which no one, official or private, could escape." A week after attending a party in June 1934 at the house of Captain Ernst Röhm, commander of the Sturm Abteilung (SA), Röhm was liquidated in the purge known as the Night of the Long Knives.

One young man Martha became involved with, a member of the SA, had "a curious name which indicated his Slav origin." An ardent Nazi who "believed that Hitler really meant something with his socialist slogans." The two shared discussions of current affairs in Germany, and he believed "with the same millions of others, that the Fatherland had been mortally crippled by the Treaty of the Allied Powers and he put his faith in Hitler to restore Germany and bring prosperity to the simple man." The effect the relationship had on Martha "was to challenge me into thinking through clearly my own point of view".

Martha said the young Reichswehr officers she dated "definitely distrusted the Führer and didn’t like what they considered ‘socialism’", but "as long as Hitler left their Army alone, as an autonomous unit in the German nation, and gave them the chance, economically and otherwise, to develop and become more efficient, they would be content." The militiary officers "wanted their own freedom, their own leaders, their nonpolitical nature." Professional soldiers were "infinitely less symptomatic of the new Germany than their confreres in the SA, and the SS." She also spent much time with Prince Prince Louis Ferdinand of Prussia, heir of the Kaisers and House of Hohenzollern and got to know him very well.

Writing about German cultural life in the Third Reich, Martha said "jazz of any type is loathed and feared by Hitler. It represents to him the International Marxist-Jewish conspiracy." Martha maintained that "Only a few night clubs attempt to play jazz and they are very bad. Hitler allows two or three such places to stay open in Berlin for the sake of the foreigners and diplomats living in and visiting the German capital—foreigners who pay heavily into Nazi coffers."

After several affairs with diplomats, newspapermen and Nazi officials, she fell in love with Boris Vinogradov, first secretary of the Soviet embassy. She was recruited into Soviet intelligence, became a member of the Communist Party, and began passing information obtained from opening her father's mail and gossip obtained at diplomatic parties and recruited others into espionage work. On a trip to Moscow Dodd tried to persuade CPSU General Secretary Josef Stalin to let her marry Vinogradov and was denied. Vinogradov was executed in the Great Purge of 1938. Her father was recalled to Washington D.C. in 1937 and Martha returned home with the family.

Stern
After her return to the U.S. in 1938 Martha married millionaire investment broker, Alfred Kaufman Stern. Stern was a financial contributor to the German Communist Party (KPD), and an open supporter of the Communist Party of the United States (CPUSA). In 1939 she published Through Embassy Eyes, an account of her adventures in Berlin which was adapted to a Hollywood film. Around the same time Martha recruited Jane Foster as a Soviet agent. She and her brother, William Dodd, Jr., published in 1941 an edited version of their deceased father's diaries of his time as ambassador. She became active in left wing politics working closely with Vassili Zubilin, head of KGB operations and second secretary of the Soviet Embassy in Washington. In December 1943 Zarubin and Hollywood producer Boris Morros met with the Sterns who subsequently invested $130,000 in the Boris Morros Music Company, a front organization that would serve as cover for Soviet espionage.

At the same time, the Sterns' work as highly visible advocates of Soviet causes attracted the attention of a congressional investigating committee. After they were subpoenaed by the House Committee on Un-American Activities in 1953, the Sterns fled to Mexico rather than testify. The government was finally ready to move against the Soble ring in 1957. Jack Soble and his wife, Myra, Jacob Albam (then Soble's assistant), and the Sterns were indicted for espionage.

Fearing extradition from Mexico, the Sterns fled to Communist Czechoslovakia. In the 1960s they moved for a time to Castro's Cuba but returned to Prague. Their indictments were dismissed in 1979, but they never returned home and died in Prague.

With the assistance provided by Morros, the government had ample evidence against Jack Soble, and he decided not to risk trial. He, his wife, and Jacob Albam pleaded guilty. Soble also made a detailed statement of his past activities. In addition to testifying about Mark Zborowski, he assisted the government in convicting his brother, Robert Soblen, of espionage in 1961. Sentenced to life in prison and suffering from leukemia, Soblen jumped bail and fled to Israel using a passport issued to a dead relative. The Israelis, however, refused to admit him and put him on a plane to the United States. During the flight he attempted suicide and the plane landed in London, where he underwent medical treatment and launched another battle for asylum. When he was ordered deported to the United States, Soblen took a large dose of barbiturates and died.

60. Vanden Heuvel, “Grand Illusions,” 248.

61. Given that the anonymous Russian letter (see chapter 2) specifically named Morros as a KGB contact and its authenticity was accepted by the FBI, it may be that Morros in his autobiography exaggerated the extent to which he volunteered his services. The FBI most likely would by that time have gathered information about his espionage activities that would have provided leverage to encourage his cooperation.

62. Annotated list of CPUSA and Young Communist League members in the International Brigades, Archive of the International Brigades, RTsKhIDNI 545–6846.

Attracting the attention of the House Un-American Activities Committee, the Sterns fled to Cuba and then to Prague, Czechoslovakia. Alfred Stern died in Prague in 1986 and Martha Dodd Stern died in August 1990 at the age of 82.

In 1953, tipped off that they were about to be indicted as Soviet spies the Sterns fled to Mexico City with their son. In 1957, they were indicted on six counts, one—conspiring to transmit US defense information to the USSR-carried the death penalty. Fearing that they were about to be extradited, they emigrated to Prague where she said the United States persecuted the progressive-minded where Martha died in 1990.

They fled to Czechoslovakia,

http://www.traces.org/marthadodd.html

In the fall of 1943 Soviet intelligence informed Morros they that found a wealthy couple willing to invest in a sheet music company that would serve as cover for Soviet espionage. In December Zarubin drove Morros to Connecticut, where they met with Alfred Stern and his wife Martha Dodd Stern. The couple who invested $130,000 in the Boris Morros Music Company.

The Sterns were the epitome of Communist fellow-traveling chic. Alfred Stern, born in 1897, was educated at Phillips Exeter Academy and Harvard. In 1921 he married Marion Rosenwald, daughter of the head of Sears, Roebuck and Company, and directed the Rosenwald Foundation for a decade. After divorcing his wife in 1936 and receiving a million-dollar settlement, Stern met and married Martha Dodd, daughter of America's ambassador to Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1937.

Born in 1908, Martha Dodd was a femme fatale of the 1930s. Her long list of lovers included Carl Sandburg and Thomas Wolfe. She had shocked the diplomatic community in Germany with her torrid love affairs with Rudolf Dies, head of the Nazi Gestapo, and Boris Vinogradov, first secretary of the Soviet embassy. Vinogradov and Dodd asked the Soviet government for permission to marry in 1936, but they were turned down. Vinogradov returned to Moscow and their relationship came to an end. Decades later she learned from Soviet contacts that he had been executed in 1938. Although it is not certain, Vinogradov most likely was a KGB officer, and his execution was part of Stalin's late 1930s purge of his intelligence agencies. Jack Soble later testified that Martha Dodd had told him that she had worked as a Soviet source while at the U.S. embassy in Berlin and during her relationship with Vinogradov.56

External link

 * The Martha Dodd Papers, Library of Congress.
 * The Mocase Case.

Dodd, Martha Dodd, Martha