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 pro****tion 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
****tray 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 de****tation 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 ***ual 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
im****tant 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 do***ents, 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 *** orgies, ****ist
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 im****tant 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 ****etsky). [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 ****eld 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 pro****tion 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
op****tunism, 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 ****rt. 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 ****," 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 ****trait 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."
|
