Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America (23 page)

Deciphered KGB cables released in the mid-199os contained both real
names and cover names. Often Venona project analysts were able to identify the real names behind cover names. But there remained, nonetheless,
more than 175 cover names of Americans who were assisting Soviet espionage that were never linked to real names. One of the most intriguing was "Quantum." Only three deciphered KGB cables mentioned
"Quantum." All three dealt with his meeting with a senior Soviet diplomat and two KGB officers at the Soviet Embassy in Washington in June
1943. Thereafter "Quantum" disappeared from sight. What made "Quantum" interesting was that the messages showed he had handed over complex chemical equations on the gaseous diffusion method for separating
bomb-grade U-z35 from unwanted U-z38 and had received a $300 payment (more than $3,500 in zoo8 dollars)."'

"Quantum" appeared to be a scientist or engineer of some sort and
senior enough to warrant a meeting with a high-ranking Soviet diplomat.
But beyond that and the fact he was in Washington in June 1943, there
were no clues to his identity. NSA/FBI footnotes to the "Quantum" messages simply stated "unidentified." Candidates for "Quantum" have
ranged from George Gamow, to Louis Slotin (a Canadian physicist with
Communist ties in his youth who died in a plutonium accident at Los
Alamos in 1946), to Bruno Pontecoivo (an Italian physicist who worked
at the atomic research laboratory at Chalk River during World War II
and who defected to the USSR in 1950).

All of the speculation was wrong. Vassiliev's notebooks identify
"Quantum": he was Boris Podolsky, a scientist never suspected of any association with Soviet intelligence. Born in Russia in 1896, Podolsky had
immigrated to the United States in 1911. After receiving his PhD in
physics from the California Institute of Technology, he returned to the
USSR from 1930 to 1933, working as director of theoretical physics at
the Ukrainian Physio-Technical Institute. Back in America in 1933, he
took a post at the prestigious Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton. In 1935 Podolsky co-authored with Albert Einstein and Nathan
Rosen one of the most famous theoretical articles ever written on quantum mechanics. After a quarrel with Einstein, Podolsky left Princeton to become a professor of mathematical physics at the University of
Cincinnati.62

The KGB did not seek out Podolsky. Instead, an early 1942 Moscow
Center report stated: "`Podolsky. He approached the embassy with a proposal to go to the Soviet Union to work on the problem of Uranium235."' The KGB gave Podolsky the cover name "Quantum," and a KGB
New York station memo in May 1943 designated him as its "only" source
on "Enormous" at the time.63

Podolsky was not only then the New York station's only source, but he
was also a difficult one. He met Vladimir Pravdin, a senior KGB officer,
and Semen Semenov, a specialist in scientific intelligence. Realizing that
Podolsky had a very high opinion of the worth of his knowledge, Pravdin
posed as a Soviet official newly arrived from the USSR:

"In order to establish definitively the results of his theoretical investigations
into this problem, he was invited in April to the `Factory' [Amtorg] building,
where he was interviewed by `Twain' [Semenov] and `Sergey' [Pravdin]. The
latter was introduced as Vasily Ivanovich Ognev, recently arrived from the Soviet Union, supposedly with instructions to meet with Quantum [Podolsky]
and find out what exactly he would like to report. Initially, he refused to report
his findings here altogether and thought it possible to report them only in the
Soviet Union, grounding this in a desire to keep his findings secret and expressing distrust that we would preserve this secrecy and his connection with
us. When asked if there was someone here, then, whom he could trust to receive his report on his current findings, b/c otherwise a trip to the Soviet
Union would be out of the question, he agreed to pass materials only to
`Grandfather,' in person."

In 1944 "Grandfather" was the cover name for the Soviet consul general
in New York. In 1943, however, it appears, but is not certain, that "Grandfather" was the Soviet ambassador in Washington.64

The encounter scheduled with "Grandfather" took place in June 1943
at the Soviet Embassy in Washington. A KGB cable reported that "Quantum" delivered a technical paper to "Grandfather's deputy," "Grandfather" himself being absent. Semenov was also present and reported:
"Quantum [Podolsky] declared that he is convinced of the value of the
materials and therefore expects from us a similar recompense for his
labor-in the form of a financial reward." Semenov judged the material
of value and gave Podolsky $300 on the spot.65

The KGB New York station transmitted the material Podolsky handed
over in a lengthy three-part cable that set out the chemical equations un derlying the gaseous diffusion uranium separation. The cable itself was
unusual. Normally complex technical information went to Moscow via
diplomatic pouch. While such material took weeks to reach Moscow, the
formatting of telegraphic cables did not lend itself to complex and lengthy
chemical equations and posed difficult problems for the cipher officers
who had to encode them. Long international cables were also exceedingly expensive. Possibly the lack of success by the KGB New York station in producing significant atomic intelligence up to that point caused
it to rush this prized information to Moscow. Gaseous diffusion, developed at the Manhattan Project's affiliate at Columbia University, was
highly secret, and how "Quantum"/Podolsky got access to the formula
that expressed one of the variant methods to do it is unknown. He was
never employed by the Manhattan Project, and none of its activities were
pursued at the University of Cincinnati, where he taught. However, he
was a respected senior physicist and had done some work in gaseous diffusion (although not on uranium), so possibly scientists working on uranium separation had consulted him and shared with him some of the results coming out of the work at Columbia."

The KGB had referred Podolsky's request to return to the USSR to
work on the uranium problem to higher authorities and recorded: "`At
the echelon [high Soviet leadership] it was decided that there was no
need to bring `Quantum' [Podolsky] into our country. Therefore, we have
to use him where he is."' The Soviet Union had a number of talented
theoretical physicists, and adding another was not a priority. What Soviet
authorities wanted was not theoretical skill (Podolsky's strength) but experimental data and technical results on the American atomic bomb project, something that Podolsky had little opportunity to obtain at the University of Cincinnati. The KGB urged him to seek a post with more access
to the sort of information it wanted, and Moscow Center even authorized financial incentives. But Podolsky remained at the University of
Cincinnati. By November 1943 Moscow Center's patience was exhausted,
and it told the KGB New York station: "`Quantum' does not seem reliable." And with that there were no more references to "Quantum."
Podolsky continued to teach at the University of Cincinnati until 1961,
when he moved across town to Xavier University. He died in 1966.67

In late March 1942 Zalmond Franklin, a veteran KGB courier, had dinner with Clarence Hiskey in New York. The two had known each other in the mid-1930s at the University of Wisconsin, where both had been active in the Communist Party. Franklin, born in 1909 in Milwaukee, had
worked as a laboratory technician for the Department of the Interior before going to fight in Spain in 1937 with the Communist International
Brigades. After he returned, he began working for the KGB New York
station doing courier work, surveillance, and various espionage tasks.
Hiskey, born Clarence Szczechowski in Milwaukee in 1912, had graduated from the University of Wisconsin in 1935 and remained to earn his
PhD in chemistry in 1939. After teaching at the University of Tennessee
and working as a chemist for the TVA, Hiskey transferred to Columbia
University. In 1942 he joined the Substitute Alloy Material Laboratory, a
Manhattan Project facility, where he worked with Harold Urey's gaseous
diffusion uranium separation project.68

Franklin had never heard of the atomic bomb (few people had) and
was certainly unaware that Hiskey was working on it. He had run into
Hiskey on the subway and accepted a dinner invitation from his old party
comrade because he was considering entering the armed forces, knew
Hiskey had a reserve commission from college, and wanted advice about
getting a military assignment in bacteriological warfare. (Franklin's laboratory training included bacteriological work.) In a report to the KGB
New York station, Franklin explained that he had had dinner with
Clarence and his wife and added:

"When I left to go home Hiskey decided to walk me to the subway. Our conversation on the way is what leads to the reason for this report. It came about
in this manner: Hiskey remarked: Imagine a bomb dropped in the center of
this city which would destroy the entire city. I scoffed at that but pricked up
my ears because I have known Hiskey never to have been given to making
spectacular and ridiculous claims. That [I] scoffed at him seemed to make him
angry with the result that he said more than he intended to say.

There is such a bomb he stated very emphatically-I'm working on it. I
asked him if it was a `death ray' or gas. He, still angry at my unbelieving tone,
said it was a radioactive bomb.

Talking very rapidly now, he told me plenty: The essential points are as
follows: i. That the Germans were far ahead on this bomb. z. That his research, together with a number of the leading chemists and physicists, were
working with desperate haste. 3. The radioactive bomb has not been perfected in their laboratory but considerable progress has been made. 4. The
Germans may be advanced sufficiently to be ready to use it. 5. That if desperate, the Germans may use it even before perfection has been reached. 6. The
big problem with this bomb is one of control. It is expected that this bomb will melt down buildings within a very large radius-perhaps even hundreds
of miles. But radioactivity is still considerable of a mystery and there is no
telling what properties the radioactivity suddenly released will impart to such
stable substances as concrete-and how long this character will be imparted.
In other words, Hiskey claims that the only reason the Germans have not as
yet used the bomb is because they fear that a vast area will be made unavailable to them too. 7. The scientists in the Columbia research lab have advanced far enough to be planning on trying it out in some vast desert area.
Hundreds of miles will be blocked off. 8. Much of the work consists of finding
a defense for this bomb. 9. A great fear exists among those who know of the
bomb-it may truly destroy millions of people at a crack. io. It does not
weigh more than a thousand bombs-that is, the bomb will need not weigh
more than that to do untold destruction. Hiskey was sorry he told me about
this and swore me to silence. I said that I hoped the Soviets knew about this
-he said he hoped so too."69

Franklin's report was dated z8 March 1942, perhaps arriving at the
desk of Vasily Zarubin (KGB New York station chief) nearly the same
day he received Moscow Center's 27 March letter that scientists "`in England, Germany, and the USA are frantically working to obtain Uranium235 and use it as an explosive to make bombs of enormous destructive
power"' and telling the KGB's operatives, "`It is essential that we take up
this problem in all seriousness."' It must have seemed providential to
Zarubin that at the same time Moscow declared atomic intelligence to
be a high priority, one of the station's American agents had handed in a
report of long-standing friendly contact with a scientist working on the
project who was an ardent Soviet sympathizer and who had volunteered
a description of the very issue that Moscow wanted pursued.70

Zarubin swiftly sent a ciphered telegram to Moscow on i April summarizing the Franklin-Hiskey conversation. He proposed recruiting
Hiskey but noted that while Hiskey had joined the CPUSA in 1936, it was
not known if he was still a member. His wife, Marcia Sand, had been expelled from the party as "`a gossip."' In a response to New York on 5 April,
Moscow Center noted that Hiskey's description of the work being done on
U-z35 was accurate but overly optimistic about what had been achieved.
Emphasizing that the issue "`is of great interest to us,"' the Center posed
a series of questions to which it wanted answers. How was the U-z35 being
extracted from uranium, what progress was being made on the shell for the
bomb, what was the primer, how were workers protected from radioactivity during production, what was the status of the German research, and
what kind of practical factory work was being done?71

Franklin had a second encounter with Hiskey, having dinner at the
latter's apartment in late April. His report was sent to Moscow:

"I had dinner with Clarence and his wife and spend the evening with them at
their home. At no time did Clarence bring up the subject of his work and following instructions, I did not mention the subject. The time previously that
lie discussed the thing with me, his wife was not present and so it may be
that lie did not mention it this time because his wife was present the entire
evening. However I feel that he will not raise the subject again on his own
volition. Chances are lie regrets having done so in the first place. Clarence
asked me if l wanted to take a job on the project. I told him I would be interested and asked him about pay, etc. He said that he could get me in at once
remarking that an opening existed in the bacteriological phase of this work.
But then he reminded himself of my political background. He recalled that
in my University days-at that time Clarence was one of the leading faculty
Comrades-the underground-I was actively known as a Communist, that
I was one of the organizers of the University YCL and that this information
was down on paper in the University records. He went on to say that the
FBI made a most thorough checkup of all workers on this project and that it
would be dangerous for me, as far as the job was concerned, to face such an
investigation. And in view of that he felt that perhaps it would not be good for
him to recommend me inasmuch as if the FBI finds out my past then it will
not look good for him. He suggested that I apply for the job on my own. I
told him I would think it over.