Jewish communist spies in America and other countries

[Excerpt, regarding Jewish communist spies in America and other countries, from Chapter 20]

In recent years, with the collapse of the Soviet Union's communist regime, KGB and FBI archives have been increasingly accessible for scholarly examination and it is has become starkly clear that a large proportion of American spies for communist Russia were Jewish. They were instrumental in helping the Soviet Union secure American nuclear bomb secrets, as well as other espionage. In the 1950s, notes Ronald Radosh and Joyce Milton, "fear that the Jewishness of so many of the atom-bomb spy suspects would provoke an anti-Semitic reaction led to a defensive attempt [by Jewish organizations] to prove the patriotism of America's Jewish community and 'scare off' Jews who might be attracted to the Left." [RADOSH/MILTON, p. 353]

"What has proven most disturbing," noted the Jewish Exponent in 1999,

     "is the picture we have of the extent of the betrayal -- truly overwhelming

     in sheer bulk. The fact that many Jewish [American] radicals participated

     in espionage [for Russia] sticks in peoples' throats ... Spies, spies

     everywhere ... [Recent books about the subject] are invaluable for what

     they add to our knowledge of the [Cold War] period and may yet spur a

     bout of soul-searching among the remnants of the progressive community

     in America, so many of whom were -- and are -- Jewish ... [Such

     betrayers] allowed the Soviet Union to develop atomic weapons years

     before it may have been [otherwise] possible." [LEITER, p. 46]

Kevin MacDonald notes the 1950s case of Andhil Fineberg of the American Jewish Committee and his exploring of Jewish defensive strategies over the

      "repercussions of the fact that the great majority of communist spies

      were Jews ... Fineberg suggested that the best way to combat this

      threat to Jews was to de-emphasize Jewish group identity of 'good

      Jews' like Bernard Baruch as well as a 'bad Jews' like the communist

      spies. Identifying people like Bernard Baruch as Jews 'reinforces the

      concept of group responsibility' and 'the residue in the mind of the

      average American person whom the editorial is intended to influence,

      is likely to be, 'But why is it all those atomic spies are all Jews?'

      Fineberg argued that an attempt by Communist Party members to

      portray their persecution as anti-Semitism would be 'devastating' to

      Jews generally and recommended that the AJCommitttee reply to

      charges linking Jews and communism to the effect that 'criminals

      operate as individuals, not as members of religious or racial groups.'"

      [MACDONALD, p. 25]

A variety of people of course functioned as spies during the Cold War, but among the disturbing implications of such recent revelations is that the Soviet side of the Russian spy system was in large part Jewish too; a critical examination of the Soviet transnational spy system points in no small way to Jewish networking. As high-ranking KGB officer Pavel Sudoplatev noted in 1994, "The men and women [in Russia] who were most influential in acquiring atomic bomb secrets for the Soviet Union were all later purged because they were Jewish [i.e., Soviet intelligence officers were eventually driven from the ranks because of allegations of a 'Zionist conspiracy' within it]." [SUDOPLATEV]

On the American side of the Soviet spy network, perhaps the most famous spy case in American history centered on two Jewish communists -- Ethel and Julius Rosenberg -- who were convicted and executed in 1953 for passing along secrets to the Soviet Union. Harry Gold and David Greenglass were also Jewish accomplices. Until recent intelligence disclosures, for decades many Jews have held that the Rosenbergs "were blameless [and] ... that the couple had been framed by the FBI and had been executed out of a mixture of anti-Semitism and the government's wish to set an example to all self-professed radicals." Recent investigations, however, noted the Jewish Exponent, "had to conclude that their subjects were guilty as charged." [LEITER, 2-4-99, p. 57]

Curiously, "by design or destiny," also said the Exponent, "all the principals in the [Rosenberg] case were Jews. The presiding judge was Irving Kaufman, the prosecutor Irving Saypole was assisted by Roy Cohn, and the defense lawyers were Alexander and Emmanuel Bloch, father and son. To redress the balance, the jury was all gentile." [LUVIA, Y., 7-2-93, p. 1x] (This situation paralleled a similar court case in South Africa, the Rivonia trial, where there was a "prevalence of Jews in the [Communist] Party ... In a striking echo of the Rosenberg Trial in this country," notes David Biale, the prosecuting attorney, Percy Yutar, was himself Jewish and may have been partly motivated to show that Jews could be loyal to the regime.") [BIALE, D., 2000, p. 64]

"The [Rosenberg] jury complexion, noted the Toronto Star in 1986, "has prompted charges that the Rosenbergs were victims of an anti-Semitic cabal." [AGES, A., p. M5] By 1999, however, the Jewish Exponent noted that "with the unearthing of voluminous evidence from the files of the FBI and the Kremlin, those who cling to the notion that Julius and Ethel Rosenberg and [Gentile] Alger Hiss were innocent deserve to be compared to people who believe the world is flat." [TOBIN, J., 3-11-95, p. 33]

Other Jewish American espionage agents for the Russians included Martin Sobell and Harry Magdoff, among many others. There was also Nathan Silvermaster, "a Russian-born economist who worked for the [American] Farm Securities Administration [and] established a network of friends in government to provide Soviets material and to aid the U.S.S.R. during World War II." [SUDOPLATOV, p. 189] Jewish-Russian Isak Akhmerov was the Soviet control officer of Yakov Golos (also Jewish), "the chief organizer of espionage activities through the American communist party." [SUDOPLATOV, p. 219] Gregory Kheifetz, Jewish too and one of the main organizers of the American Communist Party, had worldwide assignments from the Russians. [SUDOPLATOV, p. 84-85] Soviet agent Naum Isakovich Eitingen "used his connections in the [American] Jewish community to obtain new papers and identity." [SUDOPLATOV, p. 79] The Rosenberg's Russian case officer was also Jewish, Sam Semyonov (real name: Abe Taubman).

Controversial, prominent, and fabulously wealthy Jewish entrepreneur and art philanthropist Armand Hammer had long been under suspicion -- he was called by his secretary "the Pimp of the Politburo." [KUROPAS, p. 7] "Armand and his father," notes Edward Epstein, "had become crucial parts of the Soviet clandestine organization [in America] ... [EPSTEIN, 1996, p. 103] ... By 1940, British intelligence had developed a lengthy dossier on Hammer. It identified him and his associates as part of the Soviet 'secret regime' in the West." [EPSTEIN, 1996, p. 152] FBI files notes that Hammer "had been a Soviet courier," "he had laundered funds for the Soviet Union," "he had helped recruit Soviet spies and position them in the United States government," and "he had been, in the 1920s, a key link in a network that provided money to espionage rings in New York and London." [EPSTEIN, 1996, p. 170]

Carl Blumay notes the fundamentally Jewish nature of Hammer's contacts in early Soviet Russia:

    "From the moment of his arrival [in Russia] he was surrounded by old

    family friends, among them Ludwig Martens, whom Lenin had appointed

    to head the Soviet mining industry after his deportation from the United

    States; Boris Reinstein, whose functions as Soviet propaganda minister

    included serving as guide to visiting Americans; Julius Hammer's

    [Armand's father's] partner, Abe Heller, whom the State Department

    categorized as 'a notorious Bolshevik'; and the Hammer family's

    European representative, Boris Mishell, whose first assignment was to

    locate a Mercedes Benz for Armand." [BLUMAY, C., 1992, p. 43]



Maurice Halperin, who while heading "the research department of the Office of Strategic Services, America's main intelligence agency at the time, gave hundreds of American diplomatic cables to the KGB." [LEITER, p. 46] Bella Gold in the U.S. Commerce Department and Sonya Gold in the U.S. Treasury Department [WEINSTEIN, A.; VASSILEV, p. 167] were among those working with the aforementioned Nathan Silvermaster, a U.S. Treasury Department official who was also working as a Soviet espionage "group handler."

Theodore Hall (also Jewish: original last name Holtzberg), while working on the nuclear bomb in Los Alamos, New Mexico, was "the only American scientist known to have given the Soviet Union details on the design of an atom bomb." [ALBRIGHT/KUNSTEL, p. 9-17] In 1945, Philip Jaffe, editor of Amerasia magazine, was arrested by the FBI. "Jaffe," noted the Jewish Exponent, "[was] a committed sympathizer [and had] contacts with Soviet intelligence agents and said he wanted to spy for them." [LEITER, 8-22-96]

The only known U.S. Congressman to have spied (beginning in 1937) for the Russians was also Jewish, Samuel Dickstein, for fifteen years a Democratic Congressman from New York, and later a judge. The Russian NKVD (precursor to the KGB) codenamed Dickstein "the Crook" because of his "mercenary instincts." Consummate hypocrite and deceiver, Congressman Dickstein was also "the founding father" of the (HUAC) House Un-American Activities Committee -- the organization that sought to expose Russian communist agents in American government and popular culture in the 1950s. [GUARDIAN, 1-27-99, p. 6] (Ten of the nineteen people subpoenaed by HUAC were Jewish, as were six of the ten who were indicted by the committee). [NAVASKY, p. 113]

Among non-Jewish Americans spying for the Soviets were some whose espionage roots revolved around sexual affairs with Jewish Russian agents: Elizabeth Bentley was the aforementioned Jacob Golos' lover. [WEINSTEIN/VASSELIV, p. 84] Martha Dodd's partner was Soviet agent Boris Vinogradov. In Bentley's case, after Golos died, she defected from the espionage ranks. Jewish Soviet agent Joseph Katz was assigned the task of killing her, but the murder was never carried out. [WEINSTEIN/VASSELIV, p. 108] In Dodd's case, she never knew that her love affair with Vinogradov was being directed from Moscow. She eventually married wealthy Jewish-American businessman Alfred Stern, who also became involved in Soviet espionage activities. Stern was influential in setting up a music business, with a Jewish-American Hollywood producer, Boris Morros, as a front for Soviet espionage efforts. "Most Americans who spied for Moscow during the 1930s," notes Allen Weinstein and Alexander Vasselev, "were antifascist admirers of the Soviet Union whose involvement in espionage had ideological roots. There were two noteworthy exceptions, one a U.S. Congressman [the aforementioned Samuel Dickstein] and the other a Hollywood producer [Boris Morros]. [Both] offered their services as Soviet agents for a price tag." [WEINSTEIN/VASSILEV, photo section] Even Marilyn Monroe's Jewish psychoanalyst, Ralph Greenson, was secretly an agent for the communist Comintern. (Monroe had a series of romantic affairs with the president of the United States, John F. Kennedy, and innocently shared information she gleaned from him with Greenson). [WOLFE, D., p. 384]

In later years, the only known Soviet spy to have penetrated the CIA (1973-77), described "in intelligence circles ... as one of the most important spies in United States history" was Karl Koecher. He was also Jewish. Koecher, notes Ronald Kessler, "gave his Czech handlers and the KGB details of dozens of 'top secret' CIA operations targeted at the Soviets and U.S. allies alike. He supplied them with classified CIA documents, lists of photographs of CIA employees in the United States and overseas and names of U.S. government officials who might be blackmailed into cooperating with the Soviets." Koecher and his wife Hana were enjoyed their American stay in the fullest of ways; they were extremely active in group sex orgies, nudist retreats, and wife-swapping events. [KESSLER, 4-17-88, p. C1]

There were a significant number of Jews working on the American Los Alamos nuclear bomb project, including some from other countries like Hans Berthe, Emilio Segre, and Edward Teller. (Jewish equivalents in England included Rudolf Peierls). Such Jewish immigrants were so important in the development of the bomb that Richard Rhodes, in his Pulitzer-prize winning The Making of the Atomic Bomb, devotes an entire chapter to their "exodus" from Europe, particularly Germany and Hungary. Jewish scientists involved in the bomb, Albert Einstein and Leo Szilard, even managed to get Jewish economist Alexander Sachs to convey to President Franklin D. Roosevelt the urgency of building the nuclear weapon. A colleague jokingly called immigrant Jewish bomb developers Szilard, Teller, and Eugene Wigner "the Hungarian conspiracy." [RHODES, R., 1988, p. 306, 308]

The director of the atomic bomb program was also Jewish, J. Robert Oppenheimer. "I had had a continuing, smoldering fury about the treatment of the Jews in Germany," he once said. [RHODES, R., 1988, p. 445] The chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, for that matter, in that era was also Jewish, David Lilienthal. "The most vital information for developing the first atomic bomb," says former top KGB official Pavel Sudoplatov, "came from scientists designing the American atomic bomb at Los Alamos, New Mexico -- Robert Oppenheimer, Enrico Fermi, and Leo Szilard." [SUDOPLATOV, p. 172] (Of the three, Fermi was not Jewish, but his wife was). Jewish Soviet agents Gregory Kheifetz and Elizabeth Zarubin "persuaded Oppenheimer to share information with 'antifascists of German origin' ... Oppenheimer, together with Fermi and Szilard, helped [the Soviets] place moles in Tennessee, Los Alamos, and Chicago as assistants in those three [nuclear] labs." [SUDOPLATOV, p. 190] Others seminally influential with Oppenheimer included Jewish actor Solomon Mikhoels and Yiddish poet Itzik Feffer (later murdered in Soviet purges) -- Russian nationals on a tour of the United States with the Moscow Yiddish State Art Theatre. [SUDOPLATOV, p. 188] Soviet intelligence noted in 1944 that Oppenheimer, head of America's nuclear weapon program, was a "secret member" of the American Communist Party. [WEINSTEIN/VASSILEV, p. 183-184] For Szilard's part, the army's head of atomic bomb security, Leslie Richard Groves, thought the scientist was "the kind of man that any employer would have fired as a troublemaker." "Groves," says Richard Rhodes, "seems to attributed Szilard's brashness to the fact that he was a Jew." [RHODES, R., 1988, p. 502] Groves also suspected the scientist of being a spy and had him put under surveillance, but caught him doing nothing illegal. [RHODES, R., 1988, p. 506-507]

On the Soviet side of the Russian-American spy rings, "the [Russian] men and women who were most influential in acquiring atomic secrets for the Soviet Union were all later purged because they were Jewish." [SCHECHTER, p. 301]

.......................

Further along in the Soviet spy world, other Jewish Soviet intelligence operators in America included George Gamo, who provided Moscow with "the names of left wing [American] students who might be recruited to supply secret information," [SUDOPLATOV, p. 192] Lev Vasilevsky, who from Mexico City headed efforts to get information from nuclear bomb director Oppenheimer, and Leonid Eitingon, who set up two Polish Jewish agents on America's west coast. The early lead scientist in Moscow's intelligence agency who studied stolen atomic spy secrets was also Jewish, Yakov Petrovich Terletsky.

Fleeing Stalinism, the most prominent Soviet spy ever to defect to America, General Alexander Orlov (originally Leiba Lazarevich Feldbin) was also Jewish. In the 1930s Orlov set up a Soviet spy school outside of Barcelona. An American Jew, Morris Cohen, "became one of the elitist of the elite at the special school," [ALBRIGHT, p. 31] and Cohen's first Russian spy controller in New York was also Jewish, the aforementioned Semyon Semyonov. [ALBRIGHT, p. 33] "Why [defector] Orlov never told American authorities about Cohen after the general received asylum in the United States in mid-1938 remains Orlov's secret." [ALBRIGHT, p. 32] Senator James O. Eastland once called Orlov "the highest ranking officer of the Soviet State Security [later KGB] ever to come to the side of the free world." Yet, with access these days to KGB archives, in an entire 1993 volume about Orlov, John Costello and Oleg Tsarev assert that "Orlov had played a subtle game of wits, first with the FBI and then with CIA interrogators. This enabled the Soviet agents he recruited and former colleagues he could have identified to continue clandestine operations against the West. Orlov's case was therefore a classic: it was the record of a man squeezed between divided loyalties with little room to maneuver." [COSTELLO/TSAREV, p. 10-11, p. xi, xii] (Other prominent Soviet Jews who defected to the U.S. were Valter Krivitsky (Samuel Ginzburg) and Ignati Reis (Natan Poretsky). [VAKSBERG, p. 97] )

From Poland, Jozef Swiatlo, also Jewish,

    "won international fame on account of his defection in 1953. [He] was

    head of Section One [in the Polish government], which dealt with foreign

    intelligence services and their infiltration into key party and state

    positions." [CHECINSKI, M., 1982, p. 70-71]

Another Polish Jew, Jerzy Bryn, a diplomat, attempted to defect from Poland to the West, changed his mind, and was sentenced to life in prison for treason. [CHECINSKI, M., 1982, p. 152]

Elsewhere, the "most senior Soviet intelligence officer ever convicted in America," Colonel Rudolf Abel, [ALBRIGHT, p. 245] was also Jewish, later freed in 1962 in exchange for American spy plane pilot Francis Gary Powers. Likewise, the "Resident Director of all Soviet spy networks in France between World Wars I and II" was Jewish, Ignace Reiss. [GREENBERG, M., p. 44]

In Britain, shockingly, the fifth Soviet spy known to have penetrated British intelligence was an heir to the fabulously wealthy capitalist Rothschild fortune, Nathaniel Meyer Victor Rothschild. An entire volume, entitled "The Fifth Man," about his betrayal was published in 1994. Rothschild "supplied espionage material to the Russians on work in everything from nuclear weaponry and radar to germ warfare developments at the biological center." [PERRY, p. xxii] Roland Perry also notes that Rothschild "was camouflaged as the Fifth Man by virtue of his powerful position in the [British] Establishment. The vast wealth of his banking dynasty embedded him in the power elite more than the other members of the [spy] Ring of Five. It was a perfect cover and served to shield him. He seemed the epitome of the ruling class in twentieth century Britain, and therefore the least likely to be a traitor ... Rothschild was more loyal to his Jewish heritage than anything English ... Rothschild assisted in the creation of a homeland [Israel] for the Jews who had been dispossessed [in Europe]." [PERRY, p. xl]

Another of the preeminent five Soviet spies in Great Britain was (non-Jew) Kim Philby. Alice Kohlman, notes the Jerusalem Post, was "the Jewish woman who had been Kim Philby's first wife, and by some accounts, instrumental in leading the young Philby to work as a Soviet agent." [ARAD, p. 21]

Canada? Erna Paris notes that

     "The highest ranking Jew in the Canada Communist Party was Sam

     Carr [born Shloime Kogan] ... Carr's crucial role as principal recruiter

     of Soviet spies was revealed in the 1946 Royal [Canadian] Commission

     on Espionage." [PARIS, p. 171]

Canada also had its own Jewish Congressman-traitor:

      "The man who actually transmitted Canadian atomic information

      to Russia was Fred Rose (born Rosenberg), the only communist

      MP [Member of Parliament] ... The effects of Rose's conviction

      ricocheted through the Jewish community of Montreal ... The

      primarily Jewish voters of Cartier [an area in Montreal] ... found

      themselves represented in Parliament by a convicted spy." [PARIS, p.

      174, 175, 181]

Upon release from prison in 1951, Rose moved to communist Poland. [PARIS, p. 176]

Communist East Germany? "Markus Wolf, the mastermind of former East Germany's spy network" was in 1993 "charged with treason, espionage, and bribery." In recent years, noted the Associated Press, Wolf "has had more appreciation of his Jewish roots." [COSTELLO, K., 5-3-93]

In the years leading up to, and during, World War II, a Polish Jew, Leopold Trepper, headed a Soviet spy ring (known as the "Red Orchestra") in western Europe that was able to infiltrate the Nazi General Staff in the early 1940s. Trepper was an early member of the Zionist Hechalutz organization. [PERRAULT, p 16] Likewise, in the early 1930s, another Jewish communist, Isiah Bir (nicknamed "Fantomas") headed a Soviet spy ring in France. His number two man in command, Alter Strom, was also Jewish. [PERRAULT, p. 18]

In Trepper's network, in earlier years, a traitor to his organization was an unnamed Dutch Jew, a "former head of a Soviet Spy ring in the United States." [PERRAULT, p. 21] Trepper's spy network, notes Gilles Perrault, consisted of "a high proportion of Jews." [PERRAULT, p. 49] These included Leo Grossvogel, Jules Jasper, "Camille," the Sokols, Abraham Raichman, "Captain" Gurevich, and many others. Trepper survived the war and, under the alias Leiba Domb, became a publisher, specializing in "Jewish classical literature." [PERRAULT, p. 509]



Incredibly, there were even Jewish spies working for Hitler's Aryan fascism, some of whom "had prewar careers as criminals ... The fact that several were so easily 'turned' [to work for Hitler] suggests that opportunism, rather than ideology, was often the dominant motive." Such spies included Hans Arnheim (sentenced to death in 1940 by the French who captured him) and Joseph Jakobs (part-Jewish; sentenced to death by the British in 1941). Rudolph Korda, a Hungarian-Jewish journalist, also headed a German spy ring til 1942. Karl Molnar (described as "part Jew"), chief of the Hungarian intelligence in Istanbul, was "a valuable collaborator with the Abwehr [the Nazi intelligence organization]." Ivan Lissner, described as "a German half-Jew," was a collaborator in Germany itself; he was even a Nazi party member. In Shanghai, Hans Mosberg served Nazi spy interests. "The terrible fact," noted the Jerusalem Post, "remains that their actions contributed, each in his own degree, to the Nazis' anti-Jewish and anti-human war machine." [WASSERSTEIN, B., 4-9-99, p. 5B]

[What's highlighted with nostalgia in this Jewish ethnic press article? Communism, the "martyrdom" of Jewish American spies for the Soviet Union, deceit, and the ages-old root of international Jewish "spiritual" (even for atheists) solidarity which herein transcends all other ideologies.]

Rosenbergs were 'good Jews,' attests Danville centenarian,
By DAN PINE, Jewish Bulletin

"Harry Steingart looks damn good for 101. He dresses nattily every day, his tie knotted crisply in the collar of a freshly pressed shirt. He walks with a cane, but doesn't really need it ... A lifelong progressive, Steingart once counted among his friends an attractive Jewish couple from New York. Their names: Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, arrested 60 years ago this month, convicted of espionage and executed at the height of the Cold War. "They were good Jews," says Steingart in a strong voice. "They were loyal to the people of the world, not the warmakers. If not for them, I might not be alive right now' ... In the 1920s, it was hard for Jews to get decent work, particularly in Steingart's field. For one job, he bluffed his way in by saying he was Lutheran. "They didn't see me nude," he says laughing. He finally landed a position with Emerson Radio, and in 1928, married the daughter of a Tammany Hall boss. "Before the crash," remembers Steingart, "I became a rich man with a 70-foot yacht' ... Though Steingart had no direct knowledge of the Rosenberg's espionage activities, he'd had many political conversations with the couple, both of whom had been members of the Community Party ... But for Steingart, not only did he lose two friends, he also faced an FBI investigation. That inquiry stalled when he told his interrogators he would plead the Fifth. Meanwhile, prosecutors approached first Ethel, then Julius Rosenberg with a list of names, all suspected "subversives." Steingart's name was on that list. The Rosenbergs were promised life in prison rather than execution if they would confirm the listed names as Soviet spies. Both, says Steingart, affirmed they would prefer to die. Steingart's wife was one of the top leaders of a movement to save the Rosenbergs. Pablo Picasso sent a pen-and-ink portrait of the couple to the Steingarts; the original is now with a niece, while Steingart proudly shows off a high-grade copy. The Rosenbergs were put to death in June 1953, both martyrs, according to Steingart. The second half of the 20th century saw Steingart continue his career, relocating permanently in the Bay Area, watching the turbulent decades come and go. He remained politically active, working with the ACLU and other organizations for years ... And though the man claims to be secular, Steingart sustains an unbreakable spiritual bond with the Jewish people. A bond, he believes, that will outlive him. "Who saved the world?" he asks rhetorically. "The Jews. We're .02 percent of the population, but we have 25 percent of the Nobel Prizes. I am proud of the name Steingart. I am a proud Jew."

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When Victims Rule. A Critique of Jewish pre-eminence in America
2,000 page scholarly work featuring approximately 10,000 citations from about 4,000 bibliographic sources.
The most thorough investigation to this day on Jewish power and influence in the USA and the world.