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Harry Magdoff and espionage

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Venona Material

Soviet cable from New York to Moscow on the 13 of April, 1944, refers to MAGDOFF - "KANT".

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. The U.S. government, as well as several historians and researchers have come to the conclusion that Harry Magdoff was among a number of Soviet intelligence sources within the U.S. government.

The public accusation that Magdoff was working for Soviet intelligence was itself not new; it had originated with defector Elizabeth Bentley who testified to that same effect:

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.

Bentley's testimony resulted in many acrimonious investigations of alleged spies, including of Magdoff. Her claims were widely contested at the time; they were not used to initiate prosecution against those accused of being involved in espionage. Other documents have since corroborated many of Bentley's original claims.

The Official History of counter intelligence operations in the United States, published by the United States Office of the National Counterintelligence Executive (ONCIX), lists Magdoff as a member of the Perlo group of Soviet agents. Magdoff was identified by Arlington Hall cryptographers in the VENONA cables and by FBI counterintelligence investigators as being a Soviet information source described using the cover name "KANT" as of 1944. The name "KANT" appears in declassified decrypts of cables 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 a "telegraph a reply to No. 139 and advise about the possibility of a meeting with KANT."

On the May 13 cable, "MAYOR", according to Arlington Hall counterintelligence is Iskhak Abdulovich Akhmerov, reports on a meeting in which Elizabeth Bentley was placed in contact 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, and was unsure of the type of material he could deliver. As a new recruit, or "probationer" in Soviet parlance, "KANT" was subject to a background check and a request was made. The May 30 cable transmits personal histories of the probationers.

February 25, 1945; Vassiliev, Haynes believe "TAN" to be a latter day cover name for Magdoff.
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 to be code for the War Production Board, where Magdoff worked in the Statistics and Tools Divisions.

In Moscow the request was processed. Evidence was unearthed in the Comintern Archives in the late 1980s, Lt. General Pavel M. Fitin, the head of KGB foreign intelligence operations in Moscow, requested of Secretary General of the Comintern Georgi Dimitrov information to complete 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 Alexandre Feklisov (the Soviet Case Officer for Julius Rosenberg and Klaus Fuchs), published in 2001.

Moscow then responded to New York KGB headquarters on February 25, 1945 in Venona decrypt #179,180. According to the authors of Haunted Wood: Soviet Espionage in America, researchers Allen Weinstein and ex-KGB officer Alexander Vassiliev, the cover name of "KANT" was replaced with "TAN". Moscow expressed concern that knowledge of some probationers working for various groups was widely known among other CPUSA members, so it was not uncommon for code names to change. The code name "TAN" appears in a memo of Anatoly Gorsky’s, 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, discussed the advantages and disadvantages of using Venona project materials to prosecute suspects. In that 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 May 13, 1944 Venona transcript, which named several members of the Perlo group, including Magdoff. Though Belmont was of the opinion that the 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.

Notes

^1 "The Sage of Imperialism" Susan Green, Seven Days, May 3, 2003.
^2 FBI Silvermaster group file, Part 2c, p. 182 (p. 3 in PDF format).
^3 A Counterintelligence Reader, Office of the National Counterintelligence Executive, Official History, p. 31 citing claims of Elizabeth Bentley: "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 Wikisource:Fitin to Dimitrov, 29 September 1944.
^7 The Secret World of American Communism, Yale University Press, 1995.
^8 "A NKVD/NKGB Report to Stalin: A Glimpse into Soviet Intelligence in the United States in the 1940's" Pozniakov, Vladimir, 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."
^9 "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."
^10 Ibid.
^11 "VENONA: FBI Documents of Historic Interest Re VENONA That Are Referenced In Daniel P. Moynihan's Book, 'Secrecy,'" pgs. 68-71

References

Print

  • Elizabeth Bentley, Out of Bondage: The Story of Elizabeth Bentley, New York: Ivy Books, 1988. ISBN 0804101647
  • 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, The Venona Secrets: Exposing Soviet Espionage and America's Traitors (Regnery Publishing, Inc., 2000). ISBN 0895262754
  • 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
  • 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

Images of VENONA decrypts pertaining to "KANT" and "TAN"

  1. Testimony
  2. ONCIX
  3. KANT
  4. MAYOR
  5. Dimitrov
  6. Haynes
  7. Feklisov
  8. Vassiliev
  9. Gorsky
  10. Memo
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