Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America (57 page)

But when Moscow Center learned that White would be a senior adviser to the U.S. delegation at the founding conference of the United Nations in San Francisco, it ordered Akhmerov to arrange contact protocols
through Silvermaster so that a KGB officer could meet with him. White
met KGB officer Vladimir Pravdin in San Francisco, gave him information on the American negotiating strategy, assured him that "Truman and
Stettinius want to achieve the success of the conference at any price,"
and advised that if Soviet diplomats held firmly to their demand that the
USSR get a veto of UN actions, the Americans "will agree." He offered
other tactical advice on how the Soviets might defeat or water down positions advanced by his own government and answered a long series of
questions on a variety of issues about which Soviet diplomats wanted to
know American positions. Moscow Center told the KGB New York station that the results demonstrated what "`skillful guidance"' could get
from White. Moscow also appointed Pravdin as the new KGB station
chief in New York."9

Throughout 1945 White kept Moscow fully informed about the internal discussions within the government about Soviet requests for financial aid and a massive dollar loan. Despite his tendency to turn over
material that he thought of importance rather than following Moscow's
priorities, the KGB regarded him as an exceedingly valuable source. After President Truman replaced Morgenthau with Frederick Vinson in July
1945, White's influence diminished, and he considered leaving the Treasury for a private Washington consulting business. Pravdin met with White
in October 1945 and urged him to hang on: "`It was pointed out to Reed
[White] how important it was to us for him to keep his post and so forth.
Reed replied, however, that we wouldn't lose anything from his departure, since Peak [Frank Coe] would replace him perfectly well. Besides,
according to Reed, if he succeeded in establishing the planned office in
Carthage [Washington], he would not only retain his capabilities for informing us, but would even be able to expand his connections."' (Frank
Coe, who replaced White as director of the Treasury's Division of Monetary Research, was a secret Communist and an active KGB source.)120

White did not stay at Treasury, but neither did he open a private consulting firm. He assumed his position as director of the IMF in May 1946.
His contact with the KGB by this point, however, was over. In November
1945 Moscow had learned of Bentley's defection and assumed, rightly,
that she had briefed the FBI on White's cooperation with Soviet intelligence. It ordered the New York station and Pravdin to "break off contact" with White. There is nothing indicating a renewal of contact prior
to his death in August 1948.121

Increasingly at odds with American policy and suffering from heart
problems, White resigned from the IMF in March 1947. He supported
Henry Wallace's decision to launch the Progressive Party in 1948, but his
health prevented him from taking an active role. On 31 July Elizabeth
Bentley described White in testimony to the House Committee on UnAmerican Activities as one of the government officials who had assisted
Soviet intelligence through the Silvermaster apparatus in 1943 and 1944.
Whittaker Chambers testified on 3 August that White had assisted the
CPUSA's underground organization in Washington in the mid-1930s.
White demanded an opportunity to respond and testified on 13 August
1948. He vehemently denied giving any assistance to the Communist
Party or Soviet intelligence and insisted that he had no knowledge that
any of his close associates had been Communists. He cited more than a
decade of public service, and in ringing tones declared: "I believe in freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of thought, freedom of the
press, freedom of criticism, and freedom of movement. I believe in the
goal of equality of opportunity, and the right of each individual to follow
the calling of his or her own choice, and the right of every individual to
an opportunity to develop his or her capacity to the fullest. I consider
these principles sacred. I regard them as the basic fabric of our Ameri can way of life, and I believe in them as living realities, and not mere
words on paper. That is my creed." It was a powerful statement, the audience applauded, and the press treated it as a convincing repudiation of
Bentley's and Chambers's charges. White dramatically died of a heart attack three days later, passing into mythology as a martyr to liberalism.
But the evidence is overwhelming. Harry Dexter White assisted Soviet
military intelligence in the mid-193os and the KGB from 1943 to 1945
and perjured himself in his congressional testimony.122

Lauchlin Currie was another high-ranking government official who steadfastly denied ever working with Soviet intelligence but who passed information to the Soviets through the Silvermaster network. When Whittaker Chambers met with Adolf Berle in 1939, he identified Currie as a
"`Fellow Traveler'-helped various Communists-never went the whole
way." Bentley's deposition to the FBI in 1945 stated that Currie had
helped Silvermaster get a job at the Board of Economic Warfare and:

Lauchlin Currie was friendly with the Silvermasters and was particularly
friendly with George Silverman. To the best of my recollection, Currie did not
supply Silverman or the Silvermasters with any documents, but used to inform
Silverman orally on various matters. As an example of the information orally
furnished Silverman, I recall one occasion when Currie informed him that the
United States was on the verge of breaking the Soviet code. I recall that Currie was a social guest on occasion at the Silvermaster home, although never
when I was present as I have never met him, and the only significant information concerning him I presently recall is that after Golos' death there was a
discussion between Silvermaster and `Bill' [Iskhak Akhmerov] as to the advisability of introducing Currie and Harry White directly to the Russian contact.... Currie himself was actively assisting in passing on information coming
to him in the course of his duties.123

Born in Nova Scotia in 1902 and educated at the London School of
Economics, Lauchlin Currie went to Harvard for a doctorate in economics. In 1934 he became an American citizen and got a job with Harry
White in the U.S. Treasury and then moved to the Federal Reserve
Board. Currie joined the White House staff in 1939 as a senior administrative assistant to President Roosevelt, who sent him to China in 1941
and 1942 on special missions as his personal representative. The White
House detailed Currie to serve as deputy administrator and day-to-day head of the Foreign Economic Administration in 1943, an indication of
his key role in wartime Washington. After FDR's death in April 1945,
however, President Truman accepted his resignation and Currie left government service.

The FBI interviewed Currie in 1947, and he denied that he had assisted Soviet intelligence, although he admitted a close relationship with
Gregory Silvermaster and George Silverman (he insisted he had no reason to suspect either of Communist sympathies). He hedged on one of
the few specifics that Bentley had remembered. In response to a question
about American efforts to decipher Soviet codes, Currie said he did not
remember discussing the matter with Silverman but said he might have
done so since his friend was a government employee (an economist at
the Railroad Retirement Board). When Currie testified to Congress in
1948, likely realizing that Bentley had only indirect knowledge of his activities through Silvermaster and Silverman, neither of whom was cooperating with the FBI, he flatly denied any indiscretion and also denied any
suspicions that any of his friends had Communist sympathies .124

While the press paid relatively little attention to Currie during the 1948
hearings, the FBI, which believed Currie had lied repeatedly, continued its
investigation. It interviewed William Y. Elliott, a senior official with the National Security Council, who recalled that sometime in 1944, when he was
an administrator at the War Production Board, Currie had told him that
American ciyptanalysts had broken the Soviet diplomatic code. Elliott reported that Currie claimed to have "tipped off" the Soviets because he was
attempting to prevent "the sowing of seeds of distrust between allies."
Meanwhile, Lauchlin Currie took a permanent job in Colombia in 1950
and later married a Colombian citizen. In 1955 he lost his naturalized
American citizenship and later became a Colombian national.125

Nine deciphered KGB cables discussed Currie. While Bentley had
been under the impression that Currie provided only verbal briefings, an
August 1943 KGB New York cable reported to Moscow that Currie gave
Silverman a memorandum on an unspecified political subject that was
either from or for the State Department. More significant, in June 1944
the KGB New York reported that Currie provided information on President Roosevelt's reasons for keeping Charles de Gaulle at arm's length.
Currie also told the Soviets that contrary to his publicly stated position,
Roosevelt was willing to accept Stalin's demand that the USSR keep the
half of Poland that it had received under the Nazi-Soviet Pact of 1939
and that FDR would put pressure on the Polish government-in-exile to
make concessions to the Soviets.126

Up to 1944 Currie dealt with Soviet intelligence at a distance through
Silverman and Silvermaster. Vasily Zarubin, reflecting on his time as a
KGB station chief, said: ""Page' [Currie] cannot be considered organizationally connected to `Pal's' [Silvermaster's] group. He is merely a good
acquaintance of `Aileron' [Silverman] and sometimes meets with `Pal'
himself. The latter pair draw some information on polit. issues from
him."' Zarubin noted that he wanted to meet with Currie directly, but he
had come under FBI surveillance (due to the "anonymous letter"; see
chapter 9), and: "'I personally made an attempt to establish a personal relationship with `Page.' However, the circumstances under which I was in
`Carthage' [Washington] made it impossible for me to have contact with
him. His status was too high for mine, and in addition this already occurred during the period I was under surveillance. It was impossible to
create a situation for meetings with him, let alone explain these meetings, without drawing suspicion to him.' "127

Deciphered KGB cables confirm Bentley's statement that the KGB
sought direct contact with Currie but had not achieved it during her
tenure as the group's liaison up to the early fall of 1944 because of objections from Silvermaster. An October 1944 cable refers to Akhmerov
meeting with Currie, along with Silvermaster and Silverman. Akhmerov,
however, usually presented himself to his sources as an American Communist who assisted Soviet intelligence and not as what he was, a KGB
officer and chief of the illegal station. A February 1945 Moscow Center
to New York station message directed: "Find out from Albert [Akhmerov]
and Robert [Silvermaster] whether it would be possible for us to approach Page [Currie] direct." A March 1945 message from Moscow
noted, "Page [Currie] trusts Robert [Silvermaster], informs him not only
orally, but also by handing over documents." But Fitin, head of KGB foreign intelligence, told his New York station that he wanted more out of
Currie: "Up to now Page's [Currie's] relations with Robert [Silvermaster]
were expressed, from our point of view, only in common feelings and personal sympathies. [Unrecovered code groups] question of more profound
relations and an understanding by Page of Robert's role. If Robert does
not get Page's transfer to our worker, then he [unrecovered code groups]
raising with Page the question of Page's closer complicity with Robert."
The March 1945 message was the last one concerning Currie that the
National Security Agency deciphered, so the Venona decryptions do not
establish that the KGB succeeded in removing Silvermaster and Silverman as intermediaries and establishing direct contact with Currie. A reasonable interpretation of all the evidence leads to the conclusion that Currie was well aware that the documents and information he gave Silverman and Silvermaster went to Moscow. Nonetheless, his defenders
have clung to the view that Currie simply was indiscreet, naively briefing
and handing over documents about sensitive policy matters to friends
who turned out to be Soviet spies.128

More than two dozen KGB documents in Vassiliev's notebooks, the
earliest from 1941 and the latest from 1948, settle the matter. They show
that Currie actively assisted Soviet intelligence via Silvermaster and Silverman from 1941 until 1945. They also show that after Zarubin's departure in mid-1944, Moscow Center continually pressed its American
stations to bring Currie into a more direct agent relationship, which Silvermaster resisted but to which he eventually acceded. In late 1945 the
KGB Washington station reported: "In Oct. 1945 a recruitment conversation was held with L. C. [Lauchlin Currie]. After some hesitation, he
agreed to cooperate and gave several informational materials." There is
no indication which KGB officer held the "recruitment conversation"
with Currie, but in 1947 Currie admitted to the FBI that in 1945 he met
several times with the first secretary of the Soviet Embassy, Anatoly Gromov; he described the meetings as harmless discussions on cultural subjects. Gromov was the pseudonym used by Anatoly Gorsky, chief of the
KGB Washington station, who had replaced Zarubin as the senior KGB
officer in the United States. Gorsky's report of his expenses for meetings
with persons of "open. [operational] interest" includes $15 for dinner with
Currie in January 1945. (This was an expensive dinner, the equivalent of
a restaurant bill of $175 in 2oo8.)129

The first KGB document dealing with Currie was from April 1941,
noting that Silvermaster had sent in a summary of Currie's report on his
first trip to China. He followed this with a summary of Currie's briefings
on American Far Eastern policy. Moscow Center recognized Currie's importance and directed that Silvermaster should make recruiting his friend
as a regular source a high priority. By January 1942 Moscow Center
treated Currie as part of Silvermaster's group and assigned him the cover
name "Page" but recognized that he did not yet have a regular agent relationship and was "being used without his knowledge," meaning without
being explicitly told his information went to Moscow via the KGB. (One
may doubt that Currie, a man of political sophistication, really thought
that Silvermaster, then a mid-level economist with the Farm Security Administration, needed to be told the details of America's China policy and
that the information went no further.)130