Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America (43 page)

A 1943 KGB report reviewing earlier activity that needed to be reinforced
noted the work of four "journalists recruited and sent to Euro. countries:
"Eagle," "Yun," "Paul," "Leopard."" There were no indications of the
identity of "Leopard," but two of the other three can be confidently identified and one likely so.75

The most active of these overseas journalist sources was "Paul." (This
KGB "Paul" is a different person from GRU's "Paul"/"Pol" discussed in
chapter i.) In 1941 one Moscow Center message noted having received
"through "Paul"-information on the German army's military operations
in territories in Norway, France, and other occupied countries + a description of France's naval armaments. Through Paul-descriptions of a
large number of Amer. dip. workers in territories in G. and occupied
countries." Another 1941 memo, a Moscow Center evaluation of Amer ican intelligence, said that "Paul" had been recruited in 1940 and had
supplied "a word-for-word translation of a confidential report by the
director of the Washington office of "United Press" on the policies of
the Amer. government vis-a-vis the Japanese. z. "Paul"-on FrenchAmerican negotiations on the question of installing American navy and air
force bases on the island of Martinique and on French naval forces in the
West Indies." The same memo described "Paul" as "(currently in En-
gland)-a journalist. Secret member of the CPUSA. Valuable materials
and leads. He has major connections. Could be an information agent, talent-spotting agent, and a recruiting agent." Not surprisingly, Moscow
Center put "Paul" on its 1941 list of the "most valuable" agents in the
United States.76

"Paul" was probably Peter Rhodes. Rhodes was unambiguously a
KGB agent. Jacob Golos had met with him, and an October 1941 KGB
memo, using his real name, reported: "`Peter Rhodes. Peter has been
hired for a government job and is traveling to London in three weeks as
head of the information office, which will supply information to the president, Donovan, the 2nd Department [Army intelligence, G-z], naval intelligence, and the FBI. Peter has been given the right to hire employees
for the aforementioned office. This is a pretty good find for us. Sound
[Gobs] has been told to get a password and his address in London from
him."' Elizabeth Bentley later identified Rhodes as a member of Golos's
network and said that in 1945 she had learned that KGB contact with
Rhodes had been lost and the KGB asked her to restore it via Rhodes's
wife, who, however, brushed Bentley off. A deciphered KGB cable also
documented KGB attempts to restore contact with Rhodes in 1945. As
will be seen, Rhodes's Communist background and journalistic assignments also conform closely to those described for "Paul." Taken together
the evidence indicates that "Paul" was Rhodes."

Peter Rhodes was born in the Philippines of parents whose citizenship
was unclear. (Additionally, it appears his mother killed his father under
murky circumstances.) He came to the United States at the age of three
or four, received a BA and MA from Columbia University and then a second BA and MA from Britain's Oxford University in the mid-1930s. He
married lone Boulinger, a Belgian, in 1936. His first job in journalism
was with the Herald Tribune in Paris in 1936, the same year he was hired
by United Press (UP) as a correspondent. Based in Paris from 1936 to
1939, he subsequently moved to Copenhagen and Stockholm, from
where he covered the German occupation of Norway and the Soviet annexation of the Baltic states. He returned to the United States in mid 1940 via Moscow and Siberia and across the Pacific. Rhodes worked for
UP in America until January 1941, then took a job as a fundraiser for
United China Relief until August, when he joined the FBMS of the FCC
and was sent to England to set up a system of foreign broadcast monitoring to cover Europe. He worked there until October 1942, then returned to Washington to assist in establishing radio monitoring aimed at
French North Africa. In London he worked with OWI propaganda activities aimed at occupied Europe. He returned to the United States in
November 1944 on another OWI assignment but then shifted to the State
Department to assist in setting up radio broadcasts to the Balkans.

Rhodes's attachment to communism was long-standing. As a UP correspondent in the late 1930s, he wrote extensively about the Americans
fighting with the International Brigades in Spain and became an ardent
partisan of their cause, including serving as an American delegate to the
International Coordinating Committee for Aid to Republican Spain. A
German Communist who had been with the International Brigades entered the United States illegally using Rhodes's passport, apparently given
to him by Rhodes. In 1939 and 1940 Rhodes also signed nominating petitions to put Communist Party candidates on the New York ballot (shortening his signature from Peter Christopher Rhodes to Christopher
Rhodes). The Comintern archive contains a February 1940 coded cable
from Rudy Baker, then chief of the CPUSAs covert arm, reporting that
Rhodes had not gone to Bucharest, Rumania, as planned earlier and, consequently, was unable to make his scheduled contact there with Soviet
agents. The FBI, while conducting surveillance of Jacob Golos, observed
him meeting with Rhodes in 1941, prior to his FBMS assignment in London, and then again in 1942 after his return. When FBI agents interviewed Rhodes in 1947 and asked about his relationship with Golos, he
denied ever meeting him.'s

"Yun," another of the four journalist sources, was Stephen Laird.
"Yun" appeared in a number of KGB cables deciphered by the Venona
project, and the information in the cables allowed the FBI to identify
"Yun" as Laird without difficulty. Born Laird Lichtenwalner to a Pennsylvania Dutch family, he attended Swarthmore College in the mid-1930s
and then embarked on a career as a journalist. He first appeared in KGB
files in 1941, when he worked for Time magazine, where he and Peter
Rhodes were contacts of Jacob Golos. At this point Moscow Center told
its New York station: "`We are becoming convinced that the Time publishing house is a well organized intelligence agency that sells its material
to the FBI, the State Department's intelligence service, and military and naval intelligence."' Laird, the magazine's London correspondent, was at
this point already a KGB contact with the cover name "Yun." Later that
year the KGB New York station sent Moscow Center a report from "Yun,"
described as a "probationer" (KGB term for its agents), with brief descriptions of American reporters in Germany, Switzerland, and the
United States, and: "`In addition, "Yun" [Laird] gives quotations from
comments by highly prominent members of American circles with whom
he personally discussed U.S. foreign-policy issues. All of these individuals hold anti-Soviet positions and say that support for the USSR in its war
with Germany lays the groundwork for the `spread of Bolshevism
throughout the world."" Moscow, however, was concerned about Laird's
bona fides. In November 1941 it informed the KGB New York station
that it continued to be concerned about the "`intelligence apparatus inside the Time complex"' that reported to American security agencies and
had "`suspicions regarding the involvement of our sources `Paul' [Rhodes]
and Tun' [Laird] in it."' Despite Moscow's queries, New York had not
yet investigated further. Since both these sources were being used overseas, "`this aspect must be cleared up as soon as possible."' In as much as
both remained in good standing as sources, the matter was apparently
resolved.79

When he returned to the United States, Laird, newly divorced and
distraught, was supervised by Elizabeth Zarubin. There was some concern because Laird's wife "knows about everything and is also working
for us. Her new husband knows everything, too." But Zarubin met with
her and reported to Moscow that "she had a good impression" and there
was nothing to worry about. By the middle of 1944 contact with Laird
had been turned over to Konstantin Chugunov. A KGB message from
August 1944 positively evaluated Laird.

[He] gives the impression of a politically well-developed person who wishes to
help us. However, he considers his potentialities to be limited, for he deals
only with technical work on the magazine. He can pass on correspondents'
telegrams but we receive them from other sources. Using his connections
among journalists and studying the magazine's materials, he could draw up political reports for us but he lacks perseverance for that. Besides, [undeciphered
words] breakup with his wife. Yun [Laird] declares that he is used to reporters'
work and would like to go abroad again, but the owner of the magazine will
not send him because he disapproves of his radical views. The other day the
film company RKO took him on as a film producer, which he succeeded in
getting thanks to social connections in actor and producer circles. According
to Yun's words, Vardo [Elizabeth Zarubin] in her time did not object to such a maneuver and afterwards it may give him an opportunity to make trips to Europe and do work useful to us. In the middle of September Yun is moving to
Hollywood. We consider it expedient to continue liaison with him in Hollywood. Telegraph whether a new password should be agreed upon.

KGB cables confirm that Laird remained in contact with the KGB in Hollywood. One plaintive telegram from a KGB officer in September 1945
asked for an automobile to meet Laird in Los Angeles since otherwise "I
should be simply walked off my feet." Laird remained a reliably pro-Soviet journalist, reporting the rigged 1947 Polish elections were free and
fair. He spent most of the remainder of his life abroad, settling in Switzerland, before returning to Pennsylvania, where he died in 1990.80

While it is not certain, the remaining overseas journalist source,
"Eagle," may have been Winston Burdett and his cover name a KGB play
on the newspaper for which he worked, the Brooklyn Eagle. Deciphered
KGB cables, Comintern records, FBI investigatory files, and Burdett's
own testimony confirm that in 1940 Golos approached Burdett, a secret
Communist. He asked him to obtain credentials as a foreign correspondent from the Eagle and to undertake Soviet intelligence tasks while traveling in Europe as a war correspondent. Burdett traveled first to Stockholm and later to Norway, Rumania, Yugoslavia, and Turkey, all the while
meeting with Soviet agents to relay reports on what he had heard and
seen. "Eagle," an unidentified cover name in the Venona decryptions,
was deactivated in 1944, a pattern consistent with Burdett, who drifted
away from Soviet intelligence after a few years. He testified to Congress
regarding his involvement with Soviet espionage in 1955.81

Several KGB journalist contacts had connections to China or Far Eastern affairs. Although none of them were particularly productive sources,
their stories illustrate the many lines Soviet intelligence threw out in
order to reel in information.

Andrew J. Steiger was born near Pittsburgh in 1goo. After attending
the Union Theological Seminary for a few years in the early 1930s, lie
turned to journalism. He never admitted any links to the CPUSA, but
Louis Budenz testified before a Senate investigating committee that
Steiger had been a secret Communist in the 19308 and had written for the
Daily Worker: At some point in the 1930s he traveled to the USSR,
learned Russian (he later did some professional translation), married a
Russian, and became a specialist on the Soviet Far East. He returned to the United States by 1941, but the Soviets refused to give his wife a visa
and she remained in Moscow.

Steiger wrote for numerous magazines and worked for CBS Radio
for a time. In 1942 he co-authored Soviet Asia, Democracy's First Line of
Defense with another former Moscow correspondent. In mid-1944 VicePresident Henry Wallace toured China and Soviet Siberia on a wartime
goodwill mission. In a remarkable act of deception, Soviet authorities
showed Wallace a massive Gulag camp at Magadan, where they had temporarily taken down the guard towers, camouflaged the barbed wire
fences, locked the prisoners into their barracks, offered the guards' barracks and recreational facilities as workers' quarters, dressed guards as
workers, and had them perform dramatics for the visiting Americans. The
vice-president accepted at face value Soviet claims that the slave labor
camp was a combination industrial development community and TVA-
like reclamation project. After his return to the United States, Wallace authored a book, Soviet Asia Mission, praising Soviet accomplishments in
Siberia. In the book Wallace acknowledged that Steiger had written the
text based on notes Wallace had kept during the trip. In 1949 Steiger became a Reuters stringer in Moscow and rejoined his Russian wife. She finally received a visa after Stalin's death and they returned to the United
States, but he soon returned to Moscow as a stringer for several small
newspapers and died there in the late 1960S.82

At some point, likely when in the USSR, Steiger was recruited by Soviet intelligence. In April 1941 Moscow reminded Gayk Ovaldmyan, KGB
New York station chief, of its desire that he contact Steiger using the passwords arranged while he was in the USSR:

"In our last two letters we wrote you about the necessity of finding out the particulars about agent `Fakir,' Andrew Steiger, but to date we haven't had a reply
from you regarding this matter. We learned from the magazine Amerasia for
March, which we have received, that `Fakir' is in New York and is contributing
to many newspapers and magazines. The March issue ofAmerasia magazine
contains his article, `How Strong Is Soviet Siberia?' The article is very good
and one can sense that he is well versed in the international situation and the
world economy. Find out the particulars about `Fakir' through Amerasia magazine, make contact with him (we enclose the meeting instructions), and activate him, using him for econ. intelligence and the press. Report immediately
when you have made contact with him.

Meeting instructions: The meeting must take place on the 8th or the i5th
at iz noon on the corner of West End Avenue and 8,5 Street.... The source
will have a Life magazine in the right pocket of his overcoat, and if the weather is good, a hat in his left hand. You will say in English, `Regards from Alice.' He
will reply, `Thanks. I would like to visit her.' You will say, `She will be very glad
to see you.' After that you can get down to business."