Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America (47 page)

Meanwhile the FBI tapped Glasser's telephone and searched his
apartment. A special departmental committee heard his case in October.
Glasser disavowed any Communist sympathies and claimed he had been shocked by the Nazi-Soviet Pact and disliked the CPUSA. He refused to
answer questions about Armand Feldman and claimed not to recognize
his photograph. He denied turning over information about the Spanish
Civil War to any unauthorized people but admitted to sympathies for the
Spanish Republican cause and that he had examined justice Department
files on neutrality issues, munitions shipments, and enlistments of Americans in the International Brigades, all matters that had nothing to do
with his assigned research projects. Assistant Attorney General Arnold
continued to provide Glasser with unquestioning support. (Arnold had
gotten Glasser restored to pay status in August although he remained suspended.)

The outcome was a compromise. The committee found that the
charge of Communist sympathies had not been proved and held that
Glasser's contacts with people outside the justice Department were not
inspired by disloyalty. On this basis Glasser would later repeatedly state
that the justice Department had "cleared" him in 1941, and his assertion
was widely accepted, including by major journalists. But the departmental committee went on to find him guilty of having been "negligent in the
manner in which he has treated the contents of the official files and papers of the Department of justice" and "because of his careless and improper disclosure of official information" he was asked to resign.20

Glasser did resign, but once again Thurman Arnold intervened to
soften the blow, accepting it "without prejudice," meaning that Glasser
could later ask for reinstatement. Arnold also arranged for Glasser to get
a new job with the Office of Price Administration (OPA). J. Edgar
Hoover, incensed at a Soviet spy's soft landing, sent a futile protest to his
new agency. In 1944 and 1946 the OPA asked that Glasser be given justice Department status as a special assistant attorney general to assist it
in handling some agency litigation. On both occasions the justice Department reviewed the reasons for his earlier separation and denied the
requests.21

Glasser left the OPA in 1946 and was appointed a lecturer at Rutgers
Law School in May 1947, promoted to assistant professor in 1948, and became an associate professor with tenure in 1950. A series of newspaper
stories in the early 1950s, while never directly naming him, linked Glasser
with espionage. They were based on a 1951 congressional report, The
Shameful Years, which mentioned an unnamed justice Department employee, forced to resign, who then worked for the OPA and who was described as a spy on the same level as Alger Hiss or Judith Coplon. The
House Committee on Un-American Activities finally subpoenaed Glasser on i8 March 1953. He was argumentative and frequently sparred with
committee members, distributing a statement calling his subpoena an attempt to "terrorize college teachers." Invoking the Fifth Amendment, he
declined to answer any questions regarding contact with Ovakimyan,
Feldman, or any other Soviet agents. After his testimony, I. F. Stone denounced the persecution of a man of "liberal or progressive outlook who,
to the best of my knowledge, has never been charged with being a Communist by any responsible person."22

The president of Rutgers, however, suspended Glasser for violating
university policy by taking the Fifth Amendment and convened a faculty
committee to investigate. Testifying under oath, Glasser falsely assured
the committee that he had already answered all the questions asked him
during prior investigations and therefore felt entitled to decline to answer those posed by Congress. He justified invoking the Fifth Amendment because he feared being indicted for perjury in the charged atmosphere of "hysteria." He claimed he was particularly concerned that
the government might produce Armand Feldman-whom he insisted he
had never met-to falsely testify that he had committed espionage. Finally, he proclaimed that his refusal to answer questions about contact
with Soviet agents was based on a principled moral position. While once
again denying party membership, he admitted to sympathy with "certain
important objectives" of the CPUSA. Asked with what things he sympathized, he cited the CPUSAs effort to enlarge democracy to economic
democracy and asserted that its objectives were parallel to those of Roosevelt's New Deal. He said he opposed the party's dogmatism and acceptance of intellectual guidance from Moscow.23

The committee found that Glasser had violated Rutgers's policy that
faculty should not invoke the Fifth Amendment and recommended that
he be permitted to resign from the school. He resigned. As a consequence, the American Association of University Professors in 1956 and
the Association of American Law Schools in 1958 censured Rutgers for
failure to observe standards of academic due process. Glasser found work
as a lawyer doing research for other attorneys before retiring and moving
to Massachusetts, where he died in 1976.24

In the course of its investigation of persons identified by Elizabeth Bentley as Soviet spies, the FBI heard from one informant that David Wahl
was "a master spy." Those files were heavily redacted, few details about what had led the informant to this conclusion have ever surfaced, and
Wahl has been little mentioned in books and articles about Soviet espionage. Documents in Vassiliev's notebooks offer a glimpse of some of
Wahl's work for Soviet intelligence and hints of his importance.25

Wahl was born in Cleveland, Ohio, in 19og. He graduated from Oberlin College and earned a master's degree in librarianship from Western
Reserve University. After initial employment at the New York Public Li-
braiy (NYPL), he worked at the Library of Congress from 1937 to 1942
and was then on the staff of the Board of Economic Warfare. In 1943
Representative Martin Dies identified Wahl as a hidden Communist and
demanded that he be fired. Testifying before Dies's Special Committee
on Un-American Activities in 1943, Wahl denied any link to the CPUSA,
insisted he was not associated with a CPUSA shop paper at the NYPL or
the Communist-aligned American Peace Mobilization, and disclaimed
any association with such Communist union officials as Eleanor Nelson.
He admitted, however, that he was chairman of the board of trustees of
the Washington Book Shop but denied that it had any Communist links.
(The Washington Book Shop was dominated by members of the CPUSA.)
A subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee headed by
Representative John H. Kerr (D-NC) also investigated Wahl, and he
again adamantly denied any link to any Communist organization. He
brazened it out, and although the Kerr subcommittee recommended and
Congress agreed to deny funds for the salaries of three federal employees judged to be secret Communists, Wahl was not among them.2s

Nonetheless, Wahl left the Foreign Economic Administration (into
which the BEW had merged) late in 1943 and found a position with the
Office of Strategic Services, although what he did there is unclear. The
OSS demobilized in late 1945, and he went to work for the American
Jewish Conference as secretary of its Washington office in 1946, dealing
with issues of displaced persons and immigration to Palestine. Wahl became the first executive director of Americans for Haganah the following
year. Created to raise money and political support for the self-defense
force that became the nucleus of the Israeli Army, it was largely funded
by a well-connected, self-made New York garment manufacturer, Abraham Feinberg. Feinberg had befriended Harry Truman in 1944, when
the latter was vice-president; raised the money to finance his highly successful whistle-stop railroad tour during the 1948 campaign; and played
a major role in soliciting Truman's support for the establishment of the
state of Israel.

As executive secretary of Americans for Haganah, Wahl was in fre quent contact with American diplomats and politicians. He also traveled
to Israel in both 1948 and 1949 and met with such figures as Teddy Kol-
leck and David Ben-Gurion. Americans for Haganah mounted campaigns
against supporters of Menachem Begin's Irgun in the United States, with
Wahl charging that Begin represented a "fascist" threat to the democratic
Israeli government. Once the Haganah had been transformed into the
Israeli Defense Force, the organization agreed to change its name to
Americans United for Israel, but it became embroiled in intra-Zionist
politics, with the Zionist Organization of America insisting that it should
remain the premier support group for Israel in the United States and the
Israeli government fretting that Israel Speaks (the group's newsletter,
which had replaced Haganah Speaks) should not get involved in internal
American or Israeli politics, and Wahl and Feinberg eventually allowed
it to wither away.

Wahl had, in fact, been a Soviet intelligence agent from the mid-1980s
until at least the late 1940s. A Moscow communication in 1948 suggested
reestablishing connections with an agent code-named "Pink." Wahl's real
name never appears, but the details fit Wahl and no one else. "Pink" was
described as the "ex. secretary of the Jewish American organization
`Americans for Haganah."' A Moscow Center memo went on to state:

Recruited in '36 by GRU agent handler Aronberg, who handled him until 45.
In Apr. 45, having become displeased with Aronberg's conspicuous behavior
and crude working methods, "P" ["Pink"/Wahl] refused to work with him and
reported this to MGB [the KGB of that era] agent "Vendor" [Harry Kagan],
whom he had known for a long time as a member of the CP USA.... With C's
[Center's] approval, "Vadim" [Gorsky] contacted P. on 18.04.45. In November
45, he was deactivated.... He participated in party work until '37. The Americans suspected him of belonging to the CPUSA. In 41-43, he twice found
himself under investigation on suspicion of being affiliated with various Communists, but in 45, by a special resolution of Congress, these charges were
dropped and he was rehabilitated.

Philip Aronberg, Wahl's recruiter, was a long-serving CPUSA cadre whom
Nicholas Dozenberg (himself a former CPUSA official turned GRU
agent) recruited into GRU service in the 193os and who later appeared
to have occasionally undertaken KGB assignments.27

Aside from his role in recruiting Philip and Mary Jane Keeney (see
chapter 5), nothing is known of the substance of Wahl's work for GRU
from 1936 to 1945. When he shifted to the KGB in 1945, he worked for
only a brief time before he was deactivated, and what assistance he pro vided the KGB in this period is unknown. The earliest mention of him in
KGB communications came in June 1945, when Moscow received from
British diplomat (and KGB agent) Donald Maclean a lengthy evaluation
of American "domestic and foreign policies and about Truman and his
circle" that he had obtained from British ambassador Lord Halifax. The
KGB knew little about Truman and welcomed the information, but it was
also anxious to get a measure of how much it could rely on Halifax's judgment about the new American president and his advisers. Consequently
it ordered the KGB New York station to assign some of its American
sources, including "Pink"/Wahl, to provide background information on
Truman to assist in verifying Halifax's conclusions. In October Anatoly
Gorsky reported that the Foreign Economic Administration (a wartime
agency) had been abolished and "Pink" had not been able to find a government job, so he had "decided for now to become a Washington representative of a conservative Jewish American conference," a reference
to Wahl's new position at the American Jewish Conference. Gorsky suggested that the KGB ante up $1o,ooo to enable Wahl to join his brother
in starting "a small company in Washington as a cover." Andrey Graur, a
senior officer at Moscow Center, wrote on Gorsky's cable, "Clearly we
are not going to give $1o,ooo." Wahl was then deactivated.28

Nearly two years later, Grigory Dolbin, KGB Washington station
chief, informed Moscow that one of the station's co-optees, Soviet diplomat Mikhail Vavilov, "ran into `Pink,' who works at the `American Jewish
Conference."' They were meeting frequently, and Vavilov "receives legal
oral information"-that is, Vavilov was meeting Wahl in his official role
as a Soviet diplomat listening to Wahl discuss Palestine and did not have
a covert "agent" relationship with him. Moscow promptly replied that
Wahl was one of "the neighbors' [GRU's] agents." Moreover, it warned:
""Pink" [Wahl] is actively being investigated by Amer. counterintelligence. The neighbors' [GRU's] work with "Pink" and his group was very
careless.... Any contact between Soviets and "Pink" or anyone from his
group `is very dangerous."' Moscow Center went on to instruct Dolbin (a
new and unprepared station chief) that he "should not have tolerated
`Oleg's' [Vavilov's] anarch. [anarchic] activities" in meeting frequently with
former GRU agents without supervision and to order Vavilov to cut all
contact with Wahl because of the threat that it might trigger American
counterintelligence interest.29

Dolbin took Moscow's warning to heart and ordered Vavilov to break
the connection. Vavilov, a diplomat on temporary assignment to the KGB
and not a professional officer, grumbled that he would lose access to in formation he needed for his diplomatic work but complied. Wahl, however, proved persistent. Ignoring hints that the encounters were undesirable, he visited Vavilov at the embassy, insisting that he was not under
surveillance but finally agreeing not to meet personally but to mail Vavilov
"official materials" from the American Jewish Conference.30

Wahl's shift from the American Jewish Conference to his new job as
executive secretary of Americans for Haganah stimulated the KGB's interest. Moscow Center put aside its earlier concerns, and in May 1948
Sergey Striganov, the first secretary of the Soviet Embassy and also a
KGB co-optee, reestablished agent contact with him. In August the station reported to Moscow that they were meeting every three weeks.
Wahl, the KGB Washington station explained, "currently occupies a key
position in work pertaining to Palestine. He has a chance to receive info.
on the State Dep. line." The station also asked for information on whether
he had ever been paid for his intelligence and whether he should be offered money "`as a stimulus for him to step up his work with us."' He
had also been asked "to select someone from the State Dept. or FBI for
recruitment. Pink promised to do so."31