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Several historians and researchers have come to the conclusion that Harry Magdoff was among a number of persons inside the U.S. government used as information sources by Soviet intelligence. What is disputed is the extent to which the available evidence indicates Magdoff and others were aware or complicit in espionage activities.

Investigation

An FBI file description says Magdoff and others were probed as part of "a major espionage investigation spanning the years 1945 through 1959" into a suspected "Soviet spy ring which supposedly had 27 individuals gathering information from at least six Federal agencies. However, none of the subjects were indicted by the Grand Jury."

A mass of previously unremarked materials collectively known as the VENONA project was declassified by the U.S. government in 1995. Among these were Army decryptions of Soviet cables which revealed there to be some number of American citizens involved in espionage on behalf of the Soviet Union. Magdoff was among those investigated as a member of what was called the Perlo group.

The public accusation that Magdoff was working for Soviet intelligence was itself not new; it had originated with defector Elizabeth Bentley who provided this information to the FBI and later testified to that same effect in open hearings. Bentley told the FBI:

On the date specified I went to the apartment of John Abt, was admitted by him to his apartment and there met four individuals, none of whom I had ever seen before. They were introduced to me as Victor Perlo, Charlie Kramer, Henry Magdoff and Edward Fitzgerald. They seemed to know, at least, generally that they could talk freely in my presence and I recall some conversation about their paying Communist Party dues to me, as well as my furnishing them with Communist Party literature. There followed then a general discussion among all of us as to the type of information which these people, excepting Abt, would be able to furnish. It was obvious to me that these people, including Abt, had been associated for some time and that they had been engaged in some sort of espionage for Earl Browder.

Victor Perlo, leader of the group, asked if the material was going to "Uncle Joe" (Josef Stalin, General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union).

The Army Signals Intelligence Corp and the FBI conducted a thirty-eight year investigation into communist espionage with mixed results. According to Counterintelligence Reader, the Venona project confirms the accuracy of much of Bentley's testimony. Critics of Bentley point out that some of her claims were disputed at the time, and that the testimony of Bentley and others before various Congressional committees during the Red Scare was sometimes exagerated or involved guilt by associations assertions.

Decrypted cables

According to A Counterintelligence Reader, Magdoff was a member of the Perlo group. Magdoff was identified by Arlington Hall cryptographers in the VENONA cables and by FBI counterintelligence investigators as being a possible Soviet information source using the cover name "KANT" as of 1944. The name "KANT" appears in declassified decryptions from New York to Moscow, dated May 5, May 13, and May 30, 1944. The first is described by the decrypters as being sent from Pavel Ivanovich Fedosimov in which he requests to "telegraph a reply to No. 139 and advise about the posibility of a meeting with KANT."

On the 13 May cable, "MAYOR", according to Arlington Hall counterintelligence Iskhak Abdulovich Akhmerov, reports on the first meeting Elizabeth Bentley had with the Perlo group for the purposes of obtaining secret government information to transmit to the Soviet Union. Magdoff's surname was transmitted in the clear.

On HELMSMAN'S instructions GOOD GIRL contracted through AMT a new group:

MAGDOFF - "KANT". GOOD GIRL's impressions: They are reliable FELLOWCOUNTRYMEN , politically highly mature; they want to help with information. They said that they had been neglected and no one had taken any interest in their potentialities.

Magdoff at the time was ending a prolonged leave of absence due to a gall bladder operation was unsure of the type of material he could deliver. As a person targeted by Soviet intelligence as a potential recruit, or "probationer" in Soviet parlance, "KANT" was subject to a background check and a request was made for more information. The 30 May cable transmits personal histories for several members of the group.

2. "KANT" became a member of the CPUSA a long time ago, being , works in the Machine Tool Division of the DEPOT.

A number of U.S. government agencies (as well as locations within the U.S.) were also given cover names. In this case, "DEPOT" is said by NSA analysts to be code for the War Production Board, where Magdoff worked in the Statistics and Tools Divisions.

Moscow Archives

In Moscow the request was processed. Evidence was unearthed in the Comintern Archives in the late 1980s has Lt. General Pavel Fitin, head of KGB foreign intelligence operations, requesting of Comintern Secretary General Georgi Dimitrov, information to pursue Magdoff's recruitment. This document was published in a book by historians Harvey Klehr, John Earl Haynes, and Fridrikh Igorevich Firsov , and also in the memoirs of the Soviet Case Officer for Julius Rosenberg and Klaus Fuchs), Alexandre Feklisov, published in 2001.

The Moscow Center then responded to New York KGB headquarters on February 25, 1945 in Venona decrypt #179,180. The authors of Haunted Wood: Soviet Espionage in America, researchers Allen Weinstein, currently Archivist of the United States, and ex-KGB Officer Alexander Vassiliev say cover name "KANT" was replaced with "TAN". Moscow Center expressed concern that knowledge of some persons being recruited was widely known among other CPUSA members, so it was not uncommon for code names to change. The code name "TAN" appears Anatoly Gorsky’s Memo dated December 1948, a document from the KGB archives analyzed by Alexander Vassiliev. Gorsky was then a senior official of the Committee of Information (KI), the Soviet agency at the time supervising Soviet foreign intelligence.

A top secret internal FBI memo dated February 1, 1956 from Assistant Alan H. Belmont to the Director and head of the FBI's Internal Security Section, L. V. Boardman, discusses the advantages and disadvantages of using Venona materials to prosecute suspects. In this memorandum, which remained classified forty-one years until the Moynihan Commission on Government Secrecy obtained its release to the public in 1997, Boardman quotes the 13 May 1944 Venona transcript, which named several members of the Perlo group, including Magdoff. Though Belmont was of the opinion that VENONA evidence could lead to successful convictions, it was ultimately decided, in consideration of compromising the Army Signals Intelligence efforts, that there would not be prosecutions. The memo also raises questions about the disclosure of classified information to unauthorized persons based upon an exception to the hearsay rule requiring expert testimony of cryptographers revealing their practices and techniques to identify specific code names.

Skeptical Views

Victor Navasky, editor and publisher of The Nation, has written an editorial highly critical of the interpretation of recent work on the subject of Soviet espionage, arguing that historians who rely too much on Venona material are guilty of using every individual mentioned in the cables as prima face proof of their involvement in Soviet espionage.

Notes

^1 FBI Silvermaster group file, Overview from web index page.
^2 FBI Silvermaster group file, Part 2c, p. 182 (p. 3 in PDF format).
^3 United States. National Counterintelligence Center. A Counterintelligence Reader. NACIC, no date. <http://www.nacic.gov/history/CIReaderPlain/Vol3Chap1.pdf>, vol.3 chap.1, pg.31,: "The following were members of the Victor Perlo group....Harry Magdoff: Statistical Division of WPB and Office of Emergency Management; Bureau of Research and Statistics, WTB; Tools Division, War Production Board; Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce, Commerce Department."
^4 Venona 629 KGB New York to Moscow, 5 May 1944.
^5 Venona 687 KGB New York to Moscow, 13 May 1944.
^6 FBI Silvermaster group file, Part 2c, p. 182 (p. 3 in PDF format).
".....Magdoff, who had just returned from a period of approximately six months hospitalization, expected to return to the War Production Board but was uncertain as to what specifically he could be able to furnish....."
^7 Wikisource:Fitin to Dimitrov, 29 September 1944.
^8 Klehr, Haynes, and Firsov, The Secret World of American Communism, 1995, p. 312 (Document 90)
^9 "A NKVD/NKGB Report to Stalin: A Glimpse into Soviet Intelligence in the United States in the 1940's" Vladimir Pozniakov, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars Cold War History Project Virtual Archive: "Feklisov, pp. 65-105; M. Vorontsov, Capt. 1st rank, Chief Navy Main Staff, Intelligence Directorate, and Petrov, Military Commissar, NMS, ID to G. Dimitrov, 15 August 1942, No. 49253ss, typewritten original; G. Dimitrov to Pavel M. Fitin, 20 November 1942, No. 663, t/w copy; P. M. Fitin to G. Dimitrov, 14 July 1944, No. 1/3/10987, t/w copy; P. M. Fitin to G. Dimitrov, 29 September 1944, No. 1/3/16895, t/w copy. All these documents are NMS ID and FCD Chiefs' requests for information related to Americans and naturalized American citizens working in various US Government agencies and private corporations, some of whom had been CPUSA members. The last two are related to a certain Donald Wheeler (an OSS official), Charles Floto or Flato (who in 1943 worked for the "...Dept. of Economic Warfare"), and Harry Magdoff (War Production Board)-the request dated 29 Sept. 1944-and to Judith Coplon who according to the FCD information worked for the Dept. of Justice.-RTsKhIDNI, f. 495, op. 74, d. 478, l. 7; d. 484, l. 34; d. 485, l. 10, 14, 17, 31, 44."
^10 "Alexander Vassiliev’s Notes on Anatoly Gorsky’s December 1948 Memo on Compromised American Sources and Networks (Annotated)," John Earl Haynes: "3. "Tan" – Harry Magdoff, former employee of the Commerce Department."
^11 Ibid.
^12 "VENONA: FBI Documents of Historic Interest Re VENONA That Are Referenced In Daniel P. Moynihan's Book, 'Secrecy,'" pgs. 68-71
^14 Victor Navasky, "Cold War Ghosts" The Nation, July 16, 2001

References

Print

• Elizabeth Bentley, Out of Bondage: The Story of Elizabeth Bentley (New York: Ivy Books, 1988) ISBN 0804101647
• Frank J. Donner, The Age of Surveillance: The Aims and Methods of America’s Political Intelligence System (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1980)
• Alexandre Feklisov, The Man Behind the Rosenbergs: Memoirs of the KGB Spymaster Who Also Controlled Klaus Fuchs and Helped Resolve the Cuban Missile Crisis (New York: Enigma, 2001) ISBN 1929631081
• Harvey Klehr, John Earl Haynes, Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999) ISBN 0300077718
• Harvey Klehr, John Earl Haynes, and Fridrikh Igorevich Firsov, The Secret World of American Communism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995); p. 312 (Document 90) reproduces a copy of the September 29, 1944 Fitin to Dimitrov memo (RTsKhIDNI 495-74-485) ISBN 0300068557
• Harvey Klehr, John Earl Haynes, and Kyrill Anderson, The Soviet World of American Communism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998) ISBN 0300071507
• Herbert Romerstein, Stanislav Levchenko, The KGB Against the "Main Enemy": How the Soviet Intelligence Service Operates Against the United States (Lexington, Mass.: Lexington Books, 1989) ISBN 0669112283
• Ellen Schrecker, The Age Of McCarthyism: A Brief History With Documents (Boston: St. Martin's Press, 1994)
• Ellen Schrecker, Many are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America (Boston: Little Brown, 1998)
• Allen Weinstein and Alexander Vassiliev, The Haunted Wood: Soviet Espionage in America—the Stalin Era (New York: Random House, 1999) ISBN 0788164228
• Nigel West, Venona: The Greatest Secret of the Cold War (London: HarperCollins, 1999) ISBN 0006530710

Online

• FBI memo, Belmont to Boardman, February 1, 1956
• FBI Silvermaster group file, Part 2c, pgs. 182-188 (pgs. 3-9 in PDF format). Magdoff described in the context of Elizabeth Bentley's testimony pertaining to the Perlo group.
• FBI Silvermaster group file, Part 5b, pgs. 170-178 (pgs. 86-94 in PDF format).
• Victor Navasky, "Cold War Ghosts," The Nation, July 16, 2001.
• United States. National Counterintelligence Center. A Counterintelligence Reader. NACIC, no date. <http://www.nacic.gov/history/index.html>
• Vladimir Pozniakov, A NKVD/NKGB Report to Stalin: A Glimpse into Soviet Intelligence in the United States in the 1940's
• Wikisource:Fitin to Dimitrov, 29 September 1944
• Wikisource:Venona 687 KGB New York to Moscow, 13 May 1944, Perlo group

Images

• Venona 629 KGB New York to Moscow, 5 May 1944.
• Venona 687 KGB New York to Moscow, 13 May 1944.
• Venona 769, 771 KGB New York to Moscow, 30 May 1944, p. 1.
• Venona 769, 771 KGB New York to Moscow, 30 May 1944, p. 2.
• Venona 769, 771 KGB New York to Moscow, 30 May 1944, p. 3.
• Venona 179, 180 KGB Moscow to New York, 25 February 1945.

1. FBISum
2. Testimony
3. CIReader
4. KANT
5. MAYOR
6. silversm2cp3
7. Dimitrov
8. Haynes
9. Feklisov
10. Vassiliev
11. Gorsky
12. Memo
13. TheNation

• Venona