Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America (82 page)

Every nation's intelligence and security services have strengths and weaknesses. In the jargon of the intelligence world, while the Soviet
Union excelled in "humint" (human intelligence, the recruiting of sources
who steal documents and provide information), the United States excelled in "sigint" (signals intelligence, the interception and deciphering
of electronic communications). During World War II the Army and Navy
paired America's highly advanced radio and early computer technology
with thousands of ciyptanalysts, linguists, mathematicians, and other specialists and created the most powerful and advanced ciyptologic capacity in the world. The Army's Signal Security facility at Arlington Hall was
the largest, and eventually the Navy's and Air Force's counterparts
merged into it to form the Armed Forces Security Agency. A later reorganization transformed it into the National Security Agency. Once so secret that the inside joke was that "NSA" stood for "No Such Agency," it
now has a more public profile, but its significance in the public mind is
still much less than the better known Central Intelligence Agency, even
though the NSAs budget easily exceeds that of the CIA.

Winston Churchill observed in March 1946, "From Stettin in the
Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the
Continent." During the early years of the Cold War, America had little
ability to peer behind the curtain. President Truman had dissolved the
Office of Strategic Services in the fall of 1945, leaving the nation without
a comprehensive foreign intelligence service, while bits and pieces left
over from the OSS were parceled out to different agencies. Realizing the
need for coordinated foreign intelligence, in 1947 Congress with Truman's support created the CIA, but it would be years before it reconstituted the capability achieved by the OSS by the end of World War II.

The one bright light in America's intelligence capacity in the early
postwar period was Arlington Hall and signals intelligence. The NSAs
Venona project allowed the FBI to build on the information provided by
such defectors as Bentley to neutralize most of the KGB's impressive
Communist Party-based espionage networks of World War II origin. Of
even greater immediate importance to the Cold War, in 1946 the NSA
broke into the radio codes used by the Soviet armed forces. Two years
later the NSA was reading Soviet military logistics traffic almost as soon
as the messages were sent. By tracking the movement of Soviet military
equipment and supplies, American military commanders and the president could confidently judge Soviet military capabilities, separate Stalin's
diplomatic bluffs from serious threats, and spot preparations for invasions or attacks that needed serious diplomatic or militarily attention.

But in 1948, over a period of a few months, every one of the Soviet military cipher systems the United States had broken "went dark," in
code-breaker terminology, when the Soviet military implemented new
and much more secure cipher systems. The consequences were extremely grave. Stalin approved Communist North Korea's plans for an
invasion of South Korea in 1950. The North Korean military depended
entirely on the Soviet Union for the logistics of war, and starting in the
spring of 1950 a massive transfer of weapons, aircraft, artillery, tanks,
trucks, ammunition, fuel, and supplies from the USSR to North Korea allowed the invasion to proceed in June. Had the NSA retained the ability
to read Soviet military logistics communications, the United States might
have been forewarned of the threat of invasion and possibly been able to
use diplomatic or military action to block it. As it was, the massive North
Korea attack surprised and overwhelmed the unprepared South Korean
and American forces. The war cost more than thirty-five thousand American lives and several million Koreans and Chinese.

In 1950 the FBI identified Weisband as having been a Soviet spy in
the early 1940s. He never admitted anything, and no independent evidence appeared, but given his position assisting in translating deciphered
Russian messages, the NSA concluded that Weisband had most likely
alerted the Soviets of the NSAs break into their military communications
and enabled the USSR to change its cipher systems and protect its messages from American cryptanalysts. An NSA report obtained by the Baltimore Sun in zooo surmised that due to Weisband's betrayal, "In rapid
succession, every one of [the] cipher systems went dark," and "this dreary
situation continued up to the Korean War, denying American policy makers access to vital decrypts in this critical period." There was, however,
one puzzle. Weisband had been at Arlington Hall from late 1945 onward.
Why had it taken the Soviets until 1948 to realize that the United States
was reading its military radio traffic?14

Documents in Vassiliev's notebooks establish that it was indeed
William Weisband who betrayed the NSAs success against the Soviet military codes. They also explain why it was not until 1948 that the Soviets
took remedial action: ""Zhora"-William Weisband, Amer. citizen, employed by the decryption service of the U.S. Dept. of Defense. Our agent
since '34. From 45 to 48, he was inactive. In Feb. '48, the connection was
restored." Thus, it was not until February 1948 that the KGB reestablished liaison with Weisband, deactivated in late 1945 in the wake of
Bentley's defection. Until the KGB spoke with Weisband in early 1948,
Soviet authorities had no idea that the United States was reading Soviet
Army communications.15

A 1949 KGB report explained in detail what happened after the KGB
restored contact with Weisband:

"In a single year, we received from "Zhora" [Weisband] a large quantity of
highly valuable doc. materials on the efforts of Americans to decipher Soviet
ciphers and on the interception and analysis of the open radio correspondence
of Sov. agencies. From materials received from "Zhora," we learned that as a
result of this work, Amer. intelligence was able to obtain important information about the disposition of Soviet armed forces, the production capacity of
various branches of industry, and the work being done in the USSR in the field
of atomic energy.... On the basis of materials received from "Zhora," our
state security agencies implemented a set of defensive measures, which resulted in a significant decrease in the effectiveness of the efforts of the Amer.
decryption service. As a result, at pres. the volume of the American decryption
and analysis service's work has decreased significantly."

Here is confirmation that Weisband's material triggered the Soviet military's implementation of new ciphers that left American intelligence and
American policymakers in the dark in the run-up to the Korean War. 16

Having delivered this material to the KGB in 1948, Weisband wanted
out, not just from espionage but out of the United States. The KGB
Washington station chief told Moscow in August 1948, "`Zhora' [Weisband] is asking to be granted asylum in the USSR." Moscow, however,
didn't want to lose a highly valuable source unless there was a clear danger, and at the time there was no indication that American security had
any suspicions about Weisband; his request was put off. The KGB, however, did seek to make his life easier. He received subsidies-$6oo in December 1948 plus an additional $400 to assist him with a recent automobile accident. He received another one-time payment of $1,694 in 1950.
(Always careful, the KGB insisted Weisband sign his real name to receipts.) The KGB noted that Weisband had "`big expenses."' It also kept
his goal of fleeing to the Soviet Union alive; in 1950 Moscow Center
agreed to his becoming a secret Soviet citizen, psychologically assuring
him of an eventual safe haven.''

Weisband met with KGB officer Nikolay Statskevich in July 1949, and
he brought back a worrisome report: ""Zhora" [Weisband] reported that
his agency was all of a sudden no longer able to read our cipher telegrams.
The leaders are worried, and it was suggested that there is an agent at
work. "Zhora" asked us not to be overly hasty in introducing reforms on
the basis of his reports, b/c failure [exposure] is possible." In as much as
Weisband was the "agent" involved, he had reason for concern.rs

Moscow Center did not take Weisband's security lightly. The KGB
Washington station used a variety of methods to pick up his stolen material. Dead drops were preferred for picking up documents, with face-toface meetings every two to three months in 1948 at a restaurant outside
Washington so that his KGB contact could "provide instruction." To increase security the Washington station had the restaurant under surveillance prior to the meetings to watch for FBI interest. In September 1949
documents were handed over in an automobile "brush pass," where one
party was in a parked car and the other pulled up next to it, documents
were passed through the windows, and the second car then departed. A
KGB memo noted: "On days that he meets with operatives [KGB officers], Zhora [Weisband] removes documents from his agency twice: once
during lunch, and the znd time-after work. On his person, under his
shirt. He hides the materials taken the 1st time around in the trunk of his
car. He had been instructed not to keep them in his car. To choose only
the most valuable ones. He asked for a camera, but he shouldn't be given
one. Careless storage or use could lead to failure [exposure]." Twice in
1950 Moscow Center indicated a desire to shift liaison with Weisband
from the legal officers of the Washington station to an illegal officer in
order to increase security, but it is a measure of the KGB's difficulties in
the late 1940s and early 1950s that it didn't have one available for the
task. r9

The KGB was careful with Weisband because he was easily the most
valuable agent it possessed in this era. Moscow Center delivered a highly
critical review of the work of its American stations in 1948, finding it "extremely weak and ineffective," complaining that the information delivered was "questionable" and that less than a fifth was even thought worthy of reporting to the Soviet leadership. However, it carefully exempted
Weisband's material from its condemnation. And in 1950 it sent an angry
message to the Washington station chief when it received a report that
Statskevich had gone to a meeting with Weisband even though he suspected he was under surveillance: "`Such an attitude toward meetings
with `Zhora' [Weisband] is completely at odds with our repeated instructions about the need to observe all precautions during work with this valuable agent.' '20

Weisband's undoing, however, did not come from tradecraft errors
by the KGB Washington station. Appropriately, it was the NSAs own
Venona project (a project on which he had assisted in translating the messages) that led to his exposure. "Link," Weisband's cover name during
World War II, appeared in three Venona decryptions. But the details about "Link" were insufficient to identify him. There was, however, ample
detail to identify "Nick," the cover name of Amadeo Sabatini. Confronted
by the FBI in 1949, Sabatini made a partial confession, admitted to working as a courier, and identified one of the technical sources he had managed in 1943 as Jones York. The FBI confronted York, and he admitted
providing military aviation technical material to Sabatini and to an earlier
KGB liaison whom York had known as "Bill," who had let slip his family
name, remembered as "Villesbend." The trail led to Weisband, whom
York visually identified as his former courier. Interviewed by the FBI,
Weisband initially denied any involvement in espionage; later he said he
would neither confirm nor deny it. In 1953 Weisband admitted that he
knew York but refused to answer any other questions about him. He refused to answer a federal grand jury subpoena and spent a year in prison
for contempt of court. Both he and his wife lost their jobs with the NSA.
(Barring a confession, the NSA argued vociferously against any prosecution of Weisband, fearing that his defense lawyers would resort to "graymail" and expose in open court information about the NSAs code-breaking operations that would do even more damage to American security
than Weisband had already done.) William Weisband, whose betrayal of
American code breaking caused incalculable damage to American security, died in 1967.2r

Two of the KGB's long-serving couriers were the Korals, Alexander and
his wife Helen. Their devotion also included steering their oldest son,
Richard, into the family business. Even after American counterintelligence uncovered them, the Korals successfully avoided revealing the full
extent of their espionage careers or their contacts, lying to the FBI and
evading prosecution.

Alexander was born in London in 1897, the child of East European
Jews, and was brought to the United States as a child. He studied at
Cooper Union and Brooklyn Polytechnical Institute and began working
for the New York Board of Education in 1922, in school maintenance as
a plumbing and drainage engineer. After taking a leave of absence in
1928, he returned in 1932 on a part-time basis and three years later became a permanent mechanical engineer. Helen was born in New York in
1904; they were married in 1923 and had two sons, Richard, born in 1924,
and Gilbert, born in 1926.22

An ordinary-looking couple, the Korals were members of the Com munist Party and at some point in the late 192os or early 193os assisted
a CPUSA-based network led by Dr. Philip Rosenbliett and linked to Soviet military intelligence. An autobiography that Alexander Koral wrote
for the KGB in the late 193os related what happened next: "In Oct. 1932,
Dr. Philip Rosenbliett ... introduced me to Irving Steppin." Steppin was
a pseudonym used by Valentin Markin, then in the process of setting up
the illegal KGB station in the United States operating out of New York.
Koral went to work for Markin and summarized his duties: "Taught English to Irving [Markin] and his wife for about 6 months. In 1932, I helped
Irving get his passport extended for 6 months or so. At living's request,
I bribed an official in the immigration service.... From 1933 until
(roughly) 1936, I worked on photography. At Will's [Akhmerov] suggestion, I went to Windsor, Canada, to receive luggage. Delivered mail
abroad-Jan. 2, 1937. At pres., I work with Will; safeguard documents,
etc." Helen Koral also wrote an autobiography, in which she described
her work as a courier in New York for Akhmerov, as well as carrying mail
to Europe and back for the illegal station. Akhmerov sent Moscow his
own evaluation of their work in late 1936: