Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America (106 page)

The sometimes swift withdrawal of officers and station chiefs also left
problems with the New York station's institutional memory, once with
comic results. On station chief Pastelnyak's orders, a KGB officer created
a hiding place inside the New York consulate in 1941 "in the upper level of the kitchen next to the Consul General's dining room, in the righthand
china cabinet, the fourth or fifth door of the cabinet under the lower shelf
counting toward the floor." It contained "explosives, a timer-detonator, poisons, and weapons." Zarubin had the ten pounds of explosives removed
and destroyed in 1943. When one officer left New York late in 1944, however, he believed the hiding place still contained "a special Mauser silent
pistol with rounds, timer-detonators, poisons, and a sword cane ."79

Years passed, changes were made in the consulate's interior, and then
in 1947 the USSR lost its lease and had to move to a new building. Obviously this material could not be left behind, but the hiding place was too
well hidden. The staff could not find it. Pavel Fedosimov, acting chief of
the New York station, asked for better directions from Moscow Center,
but it replied: "`Our attempts to determine precisely the location of the
hiding place, whether the objects in it were removed, by whom and when,
have not produced positive results."' Former station chiefs Zarubin and
Apresyan "`supposedly knew only that there was a hiding place, but they
don't know when its contents were removed."' Prokhorov "`has the same
information."' Another operative "`assures us that the poisons and the
silent pistol were removed from the hiding place and are kept in your
safe. He doesn't know anything about a cane with a sword built into it. As
you say, the matter has become extremely confused because of poor organization during the turnover of offices when the managers were replaced. In order to avoid possible trouble as a result of this, check in the
closets in which the hiding place cited in the previous cable could be."'
And Moscow asked incredulously, "Boris" (an unidentified KGB officer)
"`says that you know about a hiding place located in the equipment room
(somewhere in the wall). What kind of hiding place is that?' "80

Fedosimov was unable to send good news. Except for a hiding place
that Prokhorov had opened when Fedosimov had arrived in New York,
"nothing has been found in the kitchen." Prokhorov had given him "a
pen-revolver with two cartridges that contained poisoned bullets" in 1944,
but he had shipped that to Moscow in February 1947. Fedosimov wanted
to know if "this pen-revolver is the specific revolver that was in the hiding place in the kitchen," about which he knew nothing until Moscow
had cabled him. The only hiding place of which he was aware was on the
sixth floor of the consulate, whose contents he had removed in 1945 and
sent to Moscow. Rather unhelpfully, he added that he "cannot report anything regarding the cane." The new tenants of the old Soviet consulate
never reported finding any hidden weaponry, so presumably everything
had been removed at some point.sr

Even the most competent agents were sometimes stymied by the bureaucratic inefficiencies that frequently interfered with efforts to develop
and utilize sources. Peter Gutzeit complained to a colleague at Moscow
Center that earlier in 1934 he had asked to be given the "connection" to
Jacob Golos and "`received a telegram categorically forbidding a connection with him."' Four months later, the decision was reversed, and
Gutzeit was even authorized "`to forbid his [Golos's] connection"' with
another Soviet operative, "Smith," who headed an independent unit.
Mystified, Gutzeit complained: "`What does this mean? What compelled
you to give such contradictory directives, both in the first case and in the
second?' "82

Gutzeit's irritation stemmed from Moscow's confusion about how to
sort out the multiple Soviet and Communist entities operating covertly in
the United States. The KGB's New York station, established in 1933 after
diplomatic recognition of the USSR, was its first permanent presence in
the United States. But there had been some episodic and limited KGB
operations prior to that time. "Smith" was a KGB officer named Chivin,
who had contacted Golos in 1930 for assistance in obtaining false American passports, thus beginning Golos's connection to the KGB. Chivin did
not report to the New York station, although Gutzeit knew of him, but belonged to a shadowy and semi-autonomous KGB unit headed by Yakov
Serebryansky, the "Administration for Special Tasks," which carried out
kidnapping and assassination missions, many directed at anti-Bolshevik
and anti-Stalinist Russian exiles, and prepared for wartime sabotage mis-
sions.33

Chivin's mission in the United States is unknown. Alexander Vassiliev
did not have access to the files of Serebryansky's group, and it comes into
the notebooks only when it brushes up against the KGB New York station, as it did with Chivin and Golos. This mysterious unit also appears in
connection with Elizabeth Bentley. Bentley wrote in her KGB autobiography that in 1936 a Communist comrade "`asked whether I would agree
to perform `special' antifascist work. I agreed, and she introduced me to
Juliet Stuart Poyntz-Glazer. Juliet spoke about illegal work in Italy, emphasizing the fact that, while doing this work, a woman must often do
unpleasant things, such as sleep with men, in order to get information
and so forth. I didn't like it. I told her that that didn't interest me."' Bentley said she met several more times with Poyntz, but eventually they quarreled, with Poyntz accusing her of Trotskyism and threatening violence.84

Bentley was a newly minted Communist in 1936 and knew nothing of
Juliet Stuart Poyntz (Glazer was a married name). But Poyntz had been
a well-known figure in American radical circles. She was director of education for the International Ladies Garment Workers Union in its early
years and one of the most prominent women leaders in the Socialist Party
and later the CPUSA. She left a prestigious faculty post at Columbia University for full-time radical work in the early 19205. At various times she
directed the party's women's department and the New York Workers
School and served on the staff of the Friends of the Soviet Union and International Labor Defense. After more than two decades as one of the nation's leading woman radicals, she dropped out of public political activity
in the early 19305. She disappeared from her New York residence in
1937, leaving behind her personal effects. A police investigation found no
traces, and an extensive FBI investigation was equally fruitless. Old
friends charged that she had broken with Soviet intelligence and been
kidnapped and murdered. Bentley told the FBI in 1945 that Golos told
her that Poyntz had been a traitor and was dead. Whittaker Chambers
also said that he had heard that Poyntz had been killed for desertion.85

Documents in Vassiliev's notebooks fill in more of the story of Poyntz's
involvement with Soviet intelligence. After reviewing Bentley's 1944 autobiography, Moscow Center checked on Poyntz and reported some data
it had obtained from the Comintern, including the fact that she had
worked in Moscow for its trade union arm, the Profintern, from late 1929
to March 1931. In December 1944 the American Department of GRU
told Moscow Center she was not in its network "and nothing was known
about her." But a second Moscow Center check in 1947 turned up additional information. From 1931 to 1933 Poyntz had worked for Sere-
biyansky's "Administration for Special Tasks," but no details were given
about her duties. The 1947 KGB memo also stated: "In Oct. 1934
[Poyntz] was recruited by the RU RKKA [Intelligence Directorate, Red
Army-that is, GRU] and in November of that year traveled to the U.S.
with an assignment to recruit agents. In November '36 arrived in Moscow
and in Feb. '37 returned to the U.S. again. An RU representative met
with Poyntz twice before her disappearance in early June 1937. The circumstances of the disappearance are not known to us." This does not
solve the mystery of Poyntz's disappearance, but it strengthens suspicions
that she met a grim fate at the hands of GRU."

During World War II Akhmerov's illegal station was clearly subordinate to and worked easily with the legal station under Zarubin and
Gorsky. But in the 19305, the illegal station under Bazarov and Akhmerov was semi-autonomous, and occasionally there were communications
problems about who was recruiting whom. In 1938 Akhmerov, busy
hand-holding a very nervous Laurence Duggan, realized that Gutzeit's
legal station had been trying to recruit him as well and waved off its effort. He pleaded with headquarters: "`Please take this into consideration
and somehow coordinate it so that a discrepancy like this does not occur
in the future."' Gutzeit, meanwhile, believed that Akhmerov should turn
over his operations against Trotskyists to him, lest the separate initiatives
lead to "dangerous collisions" because "`Jung [Akhmerov] does not know
our agents and we would not know his."' Ovakimyan of the legal station
informed Moscow that the competition between the legal and illegal station for sources had irritated Akhmerov, who intended to "`insist on his
rights.' "87

The KGB and GRU also jostled against each other, causing occasional
problems and jurisdictional issues. Whatever the formal lines of authority, on the ground the two agencies sometimes bumped into each other
or were so compartmentalized that the right hand of Soviet espionage
sometimes did not know what the left hand was doing. The KGB and
GRU both scrambled to recruit Duggan and Noel Field at the State Department in the mid-1930s, with Hede Massing (KGB) and Alger Hiss
(GRU) competing for Field's loyalties. Michael Straight (KGB) and Hiss
eyed each other a few years later, raising fears that they would be exposed
to each other like Duggan, Hiss, and Field had been (see chapter i).
When it considered recruiting Charles Flato, the KGB learned from
CPUSA contacts "that he is supposedly connected with one of our other
organizations," but "we were unable to verify this, especially as the GRU
couldn't tell us for sure whether or not Flato was being used on their
line." In the mid-193os Harold Glasser had been part of Whittaker
Chambers's GRU-linked apparatus but had been cut loose after Chambers's 1938 defection. The KGB picked him up in 1944. A year later the
KGB grumbled that GRU had tried to contact Glasser and might lead
the FBI to him. Gorsky asked that GRU be instructed to leave him alone,
especially as he had no military information, but GRU denied it had tried
to contact him.88

In addition to bureaucratic tussles among its own employees and
agencies, Soviet intelligence also had to interact with the CPUSA. The
party had created a secret apparatus in the early 1930s on orders from the
Comintern. Led at first by Josef Peters, it was responsible for internal security; spied on government and private enemies; infiltrated Trotskyist and Lovestoneist organizations, the Socialist Party, and other rivals on
the left; and maintained contact with underground Communists working in the federal government. It also cooperated with Soviet intelligence
agencies. While the CPUSAs covert arm performed a variety of tasks for
the KGB, greatly enhancing its effectiveness, at times the relationship
could prove unwieldy and frustrating. Akhmerov tried to approach Victor Perlo in 1943 through Gerald Graze, who had once belonged to the
same party unit, but it precipitated a chain of futility. "The fellowcountryman [CPUSA] leadership had to intervene in order to notify" Perlo
that he would be working with Graze. The instructions were supposed to
have come from John Abt, who was connected to Perlo via the CPUSA.
Earl Browder gave orders to Abt "to meet with his comrades and do what
is requested of him," but Abt resisted, insisting that Browder's "instructions to him in this regard were not binding and that he could do
something when he had received orders from his superior," Josef Peters.
An exasperated Akhmerov wrote: "`We once again took this matter to
`Helmsman' [Browder], but he shrugged and said there was nothing he
could do in this situation. There is currently a new fellowcountryman
[CPUSA] leader being appointed in Washington, who will be instructed
to notify `Eck' [Perlo] of our interest, and only afterwards will his connection with `Arena' [Graze] be possible."' And that was only half of the
delay. In March 1943 Zarubin explained that Perlo's recruitment had
been "delayed because, according to preliminary information, he had
been connected through the fellowcountrymen [CPUSA] to someone
with ties to the GRU; it was decided not to take any concrete action until
the matter was cleared up. Now it is known for a fact that the GRU has
nothing to do with this matter." When Elizabeth Bentley finally met with
Perlo's group on Browder's orders, a year after the first futile attempt to
contact him, the group members complained that despite their desire to
help, they had been neglected for years by the CPUSA.sy

The CPUSA, of course, had its own view of how the relationship should
work. Vasily Zarubin traveled to California in 1942 and met with Steve Nelson, chief of the Communist Party in the San Francisco Bay Area and director of the CPUSAs covert apparatus in the West. Zarubin delivered cash
to assist the party's underground work and discussed cooperation between
the KGB and the party. The FBI had Nelson's residence bugged and
recorded the conversation. While both men were in a cooperative mood,
Nelson complained that Soviet intelligence operatives directly approached
CPUSA members in California and asked for their help on specific assign ments. He was not upset that party members were being used by Soviet intelligence but that CPUSA officials like him, active in the underground apparatus, were being bypassed. The FBI summary of the conversation read:
"Nelson suggested to Zubilin [Zarubin's pseudonym] that in each important
city or State, the Soviets have but one contact who was trustworthy, and to
let that man handle the contact with party members who were to be given
special assignments by the Soviets."90