WHO KILLED KRIVITSKY

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP75-00149R000400430018-5
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 16
• Document Creation Date: November 11, 2016
• Document Release Date: February 1, 1999
• Sequence Number: 18
• Publication Date: February 12, 1966
• Content Type: NSPR

25 Years Ago, a Soviet Master Spy was Shot Here;
Some balled It Suicide, Others Cried Murder .
nitizd"-%-pproved --F'or Release
I ADP75 0.II49F O 6 430018-5
Contfnued
 .CPYRGHT Page 2
no ng remar a e except o- die. to ep one conversation every snore
seemed such a typical transient tragedy and snort of their neighbors.
that the police were not even Intrigued There was no silencer on the gun
!kv1}SPx:
p
e a
No one knew of any calls or visitors
ing them to inform Waldman of the for the man in 532, though the hotel
death of Samuel Ginsberg and to re- is big enough for people to come and
By Flora Lewis quest instructions for disposal of the go at normal hours without attract-
Washington post Staff Writer body' Ing notice. From the time he entered
THE MAID found the body at 9:30 A Hunted Spy his room until he was carried away.
Monday morning, Feb. 10, 1941, WALDMAN RECEIVED the police to the morgue, the only evident ac-
when she went in to clean up the room. call that afternoon. That broke It. tivity of the man in 532 as far as the
She opened the door with a passkey Ile Immediately identified Ginsberg as hotel staff knew' had been to order
that hung in the hall linen closet and Walter Krivitsky, formerly chief of, a bottle of club soda.
saw the man's feet and legs on the bed, A bellboy took it to him, went down-
lying the wrong way round with the Soviet military intelligence in Western stairs with the dollar bill offered In
feet toward the head of the bed. He Europe, a master spy who had known:
secrets, turned against Stalin and payment and went back up with the
was wearing trousers and socks, so she many
change. That was between 6:30 and
went on in to ask what time she could spilled a few, been marked and hunted 7 Sunday evening.
come back without disturbing him. He since by Soviet agents. ~ Randolph Thompson, 29, the bellboy,
More than once Krivitsky had said to
didn't answer. told police when asked if the man ap-
When the police sergeant came about Waldman, who was his lawyer, "if ever! 'peered despondent, "He appeared to
half an hour later, the maid, Thelma I am found dead and it looks like an i J k n 21 told him: "So I ; accident or suicide, don't believe it.1
s
V
C
lr? ma ac
o , ,
walked on over to the bed and looked They are after., me. They have tried
d I he ha hlnnrl all over hi. q. before." Walc1 an knew that the dead
?
an
reat
ass
h
??
c ...
e
head . . . 111011 a saw
Ing..." others. JJ
It was a modest description. A 130- An obvious case of murder, the law-
mushroom bullet, the kind with a yer concluded. He flew to' Washington
grain
scooped head to make a larger wound, and demanded an FBI investigation. It
had been fired from a .38 automatic 1, was refused. He asked for the homicide
at close range. It had torn through ! division's file. It was refused. He went
the man's brains' from the right tem-, to the Bellevue to look at room 532, a
leaving a. simple room furnished with narrow
le to below the .reft ear
,
p
hole the size of a substantial potato. twin beds, dresser, desk, chair and a
The bullet was lost somewhere In the
hotel room wall. The dead man was reproduction of a forest scene. The
r ,,,o an .> hoc scene.
slight, gray, unprepossessing, fully,
dressed, apart from shoes and jacket.
There was nothing about him or the
room that looked important: a brown
canvas satchel, a photograph of a boy,
three notes written respectively in Eng-
lish, Germ-an -and Russian. The gun,
covered thickly with drying' blood,. lay
on the floor.
A Genteel Setting
AN OBVIOUS CASE of suicide, Det.
Sgt. D. L. Guest concluded. He.
made the routine possession and identi-
ty checks, sent for the morgue wagon
and left the hotel staff to clear up the
mess.
The death of a guest is always an
embarrassment for a hotel, and it was
all the more jarring in the genteel but
modest atmosphere of the Hotel Belle-
by the discovery that he had registered
under the name of Walter Poref but
carried in his pocket a formal affidavit
identifying him as Samuel Ginsberg,
born in Russia in 1899.
The note in English was in an en-
velope addressed to ? Louis Waldman,
205 Broadway, New York. Accustomed
to misleading hotel registrations and
probably thinking little of it, Washing-
ton police wired New York
olic
sk-
found beside the body. Yet no one
in the hotel said he had heard a shot
between the time Krivitsky arrived, at
5:49 p. in. Sunday, according to the
register, and the time his body was
found Monday morning. The police
surgeon placed the probable time of
death at about 4 a.m., a quiet, hour
when there are few other sounds to
muffle a shot.
from the Inside. The maid had not said me to be just like all, foreign people,
whether she tested the door or not, only quiet and solemn." John Vernon Wil-
that she had stuck her passkey in the son, 30, the elevator operator, said to
The hole and window, opened it. overlooking what was the same question, "He seemed to be
be."
then a jumble of shacks and is now a just There like was anyone no else sign of would a be.scuffle. In
parking let; was open a few inches. But the room and nothing appeared to have
it was the fifth floor and there was no .been removed or disordered.
]edge or fire escape by which anyone
could enter the room through the win-. A. Trotsky Parallel
dew. IN ADDITION to Waldman most of
The lock on the door was not auto-
matic. Even with the latch shut, it
opened easily' to a passkey and was of other people who knew of him but
the crude type that probably- would had not met him made immediate
have opened to almost anything, In- public statements of their conviction
eluding a sturdy toothpick. !'that he' had been murdered by the
Neighbors Both Sides ! Soviet secret police.
rr HE SUITE to the left of Krivitsky's Mrs. Leon Trotsky, widow of the
vue, 15 E st. nw. .` room and the room to the right ' revolutionary leader who had been
The dead man was not known at the had been occupied. The walls and murdered in Mexico the summer be-
Bellevue. He had come in only the' doors are .not thick. Sometimes hotel fore, declared: "Krivitsky's death was
afternoon before nd ll d do or said Reside~lt com lained of he in e e c 1 1 thgoa
Sanitized- Approved for Release : 11-KUF~ - 000486 ~3 -v
FEB 13 1966 Co 1tlv"a
 CPYRGHT _, ? ? -rage 3
just one of the OGPU's many schemes A Period Illuniiltatecl eral staff courses and assigned to mili-.
to attempt to cover up its murders, tart' intelligence.
Stalinists, for example, tried to make I HE WAY the world has gone has, It was still the proletarian-style army
the first unsuccessful attempt on Trot- unraveled some of the mystery. of Trotsky's creation, without formal
sky appear as self-assault." around they nian with his head blown rank, and Krivitsky's position of Kom-
Alexander Kerensky, head of the' to pieces on a hotel bed, and Krivitsky's brig (commander of a brigade) did not
short-lived Russian government that mystery holds clues to larger riddles- entitle him to be addressed as general,
overthrew the Czar and fell to the Bo1= If there is still no certain solution, though, it was the equivalent of brig-
sheviks, said In New York: "I am sure. there is enlightening evidence in the adier. Later he was made Komdiv
it was murder ... If it was not. a case about a period and a kind of (commander of a division), the equiva-
murder, then it was a suicide pro-' mentality that spawned some of the lent of major general.
yoked by a direct menace. I under- aching problems of today. In Wash- But his assignments were always
stand that they had been menacing ington's bland reaction at, the time "revolutionary-military," with emphasis
his son, whom he loved dearly." , lay also one of the keys to its later on the former, though in a hard-nosed,
Krivitsky's widow had no doubt that travails. practical way without much windy
her husband had been killed. Suzanne' One way or another, the tragedy can oratory or feverish agitation. Even
LaFollette, a close friend to whom the' be traced with a certain logical in, when propaganda was part of his job,
note in' German was addressed, said evitability to Krivitsky's life and times. he was the organizer, the arranger of
that Krivitsky had previously been ap-1 His name at birth was indeed Samuel deals and coups, not the spouter.
proached by three OGPU agents. "One Ginsberg. What he first saw of the . His first experience as an export
of them told him to stay out of the .world was the dusty lethargy of the tephnician in revolution came in Ger-
midtown area of New York If he ' small town of Podwoloczyska, Russian- many in 1923. Lenin thought the Bol-
,didn't want to get into trouble. The ruled when he was born June 28, 1899, sheviks could not survive without an-
man said, 'We work In threes and,' Polish between the great wars and part other major industrial country as
we've been on the lookout. for you of Russia again after the shift in Po-
partner, and he thought that Germany
constantly."' { land's borders following World War II. despoiled by inflation and fuming with
Jews in such small towns lived anger at French occupation of the
A Newspaper Flurry pressed warmly together against a hos- Rhineland were ripe for revolt.
LL THIS was prominently pub-1 tile, heavy-handed world, a life rich in
.fished In Washington, New York! melancholy and abrasives to sharpen It was -a devastating miscalculation
and other major newspapers for a day' the wits of those who had them, Sehmel- for the German Communists, who were
or two after his death. For about ten' ka Ginsberg did. Sensitive, keen-mind- Crushed. But the ardent Krivitsky deter-
days more, Hearst papers and various ed, alert, he grew into a slight but mined to save something from the
columnists who regularly called atten-!, wiry child, independent, passionately wreckage. Out of the organization built
o make a German revolution, he crea
t
tion to Communist activities gave spec- eager to throw his meager weight e
e
tacular reviews of Krivitsky's dra- against the oppressiveness of the world ad an extensive network ok of reliable
matic story and echoed the demand : he saw. agents.
for an official investigation of his' Later he wrote: "At the age of 13 Despifirm many later disaster, the
top-
death.. Several newspapers and, colum? I had entered the working-class move- c level roots were e enough to hrovid e top-
throughout nth from the German
nists sympathetic to. the left counter- ment. It was a half-mature, half-child- , high intelligence
World War the
attacked with fierce mockery at the ish act. I heard the plaintive melodies high command
suggestion that Stalin's arm reached of my suffering race mingled with new II. So prompt and efficient r- imes was when
when
to a Washington hotel room. songs of freedom. system hat there were .ti
But nobody did anything; there "But In 1917, I was a youngster of Soviet commanders the front must
simultaneously
wasn't much to be done. Krivitsky was 18, and the Bolshevik Revolution came have received at
found dead on Feb. 10, 1941. On June, to me as an absolute solution of all the disposition disposition and almost attack orders sent
22, :1941, Nazi Germany invaded the problems of poverty, inequality, injus- from Berlin to the Nazi commanders
Soviet Union. On Dec. 7, the, Japanese tice. I joined the Bolshevik Party with facing them. .
bombed, Pearl Harbor and the United my whole soul. I seized the Marxist Revolutionary Romance
States and Russia soon became allies. ! and Leninist faith as a weapon with HROUGHOUT THE twenties, Kri-
Few people wanted to think further which to assault all the wrongs against ~vitsky moved surreptitiously from
In those months about the death Of-' which I had instinctively rebelled."
and difficult man. Moscow to France, Holland, Switzerland,
one strange
Behiud?Lines Saboteur Italy and Austria. He had not gone
But he had been an extraordinary unnoticed when he tried to organize a
i man. His life also was extraordinary, ' j'T WAS NOT an idle metaphor. Like Red German army, however, and In
its secrets enmeshed with the ugly se- JL many of his comrades, Ginsberg 1926 he had to hide out from the Ber-
crets of a world in venomous struggle. took a revolutionary name-Walter lin police in the Soviet Embassy for
Now, a quarter of a century after Krivitsky-and became a serious fight- two months. After that, he dealt with
his death, the FBI files on Krivitsky er, tough, guileful, uninhibited by any the German network mostly from the
and those Inherited by the CIA remain other tie's in devotion to his cause. He periphery.
sealed, as are Moscow's files. In part, was worth more than the gun he In Vienna at one point, he met an-
that is probably because they identify carried. other Soviet revolutionist, a striking
agents and double agents who are st'~l In the Russian civil war that fol blond named Antonina Porfirjeva. She
active or might turn up again, lowed the revolution, he was sent be-
i was from Leningrad (St. Petersburg
Mostly, though, it must be because hind the White army's lines In the
i 1902)
the things in which Krivitsky was em-' Ukraine to organize sabotage, intelli- when she was born there Feb. 18, and
as the
broiled cast a long, unpleasant shadow gence, resistance at the enemy's rear. as different s from Krivitsky as the
that has. not yet blurred painlessly ! He so distinguished himself at these sparkling Russian north from the
with history. On the contrary, time guerrilla tasks, which he called "mis- heavy-scented, swarthy south.
has sharpened outlines that were hope- , sions of a revolutionary-military char- He was the intens electric-minded-
and lessly confused `en ~rivitsggy ved acter," at at the conclusion of the Intellectual. Shew was the h ge}{r broad
M4, h
addied. bianitizeq- - pprp
~e @d @d ZQ6RD s uJ3V fM' tlNYVIb
FEB .l 3 1 Continvefl
 CPYRGHT Page ik
? sary to sort out whether ideology
counted a little more for one and
proud patriotism for the' other, since
ing satisfaction.
In 1926, they married in Moscow.
,The marriage register gave his name
past was far behind him. The reality
Necessity made it an intricate and
Once, Krivitsky told a friend much
Rome on an Italian train. He was en-
prints of a new Italian submarine.
The task took over a year and many
must be highly secretive. An old ac-
quaintance happened to see Krivitsky
on the train and greeted him for what
He had learned to perfection all the
` actions and total attention to detail,
ese talks were so secret that not even
the German Foreign Office knew they,
were taking place. It was not possible
to penetrate them from the German
side.` However, the Nazis had succeeded
in breaking-or perhaps stealing-the
Japanese diplomatic codes.
Krivitsky managed to buy the codes
from the SS, though without of course
explaining how Soviet intelligence '
meant to use them. They were smug-
gled out of Berlin in a valuable early
edition of Francis Bacon, secretly de-
faced with markings to indicate the
coding keys.
Then Krivitsky's agents in Berlin got
hold of the full file of the Japanese
negotiator's gabled reports to Tokyo
on the talks and established a tap on
'further correspondence. The files were
smuggled out on microfilm. With the
codes, -a first-rate translator of Japan-
ese, microfilm technicians and couriers, ?
Krivitsky worked feverishly In Holland
to speed the sinister news to Moscow.
Later, with the pylons for this net-
work well established, he was also able
to tell Moscow of the secret Japanese
decision not to attack the Soviet Union
in the event of a Pacific war. That was
information worth many divisions.
Even Used'Fascists
ITOST OF THE people he worked
with were trusted Communists,
but not all. His task was concrete action
lf
t
bli
h
d
i
s
f S
any es
s
e
aa
mse
as cosie
a
o
o- I In the case of the Italian submarine,
inside, as well. viet military intelligence in Western the key to success was a high-ranking
Early Anti-Stalinist Europe. He had offices in Paris, agents Fascist who loved money even more
rpHAT HARDNESS helped as Krivit- everywhere, and made his headquarters than he loved Mussolini.
comfortably in The Hague, where he Krivitsky's duty and his interests
sky unavoidably noticed the way posed as an Austrian dealer in rare brought him intimate knowledge of the
reality was shifting inside the Soviet books. His wife Tonya and small son underside of high politics in Russia and
Union. He wrote later with cold but Alek, born not long before, accom- Western Europe, and he had learned
savage contempt of the way Stalin panied him there. Outwardly, he led to take it as it came. In his mind's eye,
maneuvered the Red Army into sup- the roving but placid existence of a
porting the vicious collectivization collector of handsome, . interesting, he was still an idealist, driven purely
by the passion for a better, kinder
drive of the thirties and the initial harmless old volumes. In fact, it was a,
world. But his mind's hands had grown
.purges of Old Bolsheviks. life with sudden bursts of frenetic ac- horny in dealing with harsh facts and
Krivitsky always knew what was tivity, breathless dashes from city to his mind's stomach had been inured
going on, partly because of his posi- city, excruciating periods of enforced;` against revulsion.
tion and partly because of his mind, a waiting, and always nagging worries. He was the complete professional,
'taut precision instrument that could
spring to understanding of the most A Literal Cover fully equipped to set off without cavil
devious manipulations at a nudge from SOON AFTER he settled In The the dirty means against the distant
the simplest, most trivial-seeming facts. Hague, Krivitsky got his first lead: ' shining ends. Or so he and his superiors
on what was to become a major espio- supposed.
"I saw from him how a master spy's nage coup and old books became not But It wasn't always easy. Each trip
mind works," his American lawyer, only the cover for a spy but themselves
Louis Waldman, recalled later. "One a repository of secrets. back to Moscow chewed the
day we were coming back from Ellis Germany and Japan, he learned, were Tgalvanized
terror protection
Island on the ferry after an immigra- secretly negotiating an agreement that the The there, as as the against ainst juggernutubt of i
tion hearing. Krivitsky was reading the would mean war in the Pacific as well The Revolution c ned rolled on, was undeniable. oniable.
papers. The headlines were full of ne- as in Europe when the moment came. the midv birtie had
Stalin been had come god. Now, pro-
. to pro
gotiations going on, in Europe for col-, It was of vital importance to the Soviet claim himself the e Revolution.
havolutionn.
lective security against the Germans. Union, not only because of the military
"It must have been late;1938 or early' meaning of possible war on two fronts trembled, and and shrank k minds Krivitsky's
n
He didn't pay much attention to of its vast territory but also because e o to find solace in
i
Stalin himself was secretly seeking an nor ions.. ;a He ver watched loyalties, more
the main news, but suddenly way in ks
s ho. ' Bheviks
the ore Old Bolsheviks
the back of the paper he saw a one. exclusive agreement with Hitler. being cut down with cringing confes-
paragraph em nd grew terribl Krivitsk performs
excited. Sanitized - Appro&eir {a~ts*li~ 0 ~ ~ we much
harder or im w en a la a turned
E13 ?
"'Look at this,' he shouted. 'There's
going to be a war. Stalin will move.,
against Poland.'
"The Item," Waldman continued,
"was a dull little bit about the use of
old films from the 1919.20 Russo-Polish
war in the new training course for the
Red Army. Krivitsky said it meant
that secret preparations had started
for a Soviet move on Poland and that
Red Army soldiers were being insid-
iously accustomed to consider Poles
as the obvious enemy. It seemed ab-
solutely preposterous at the time,"
A Distressing Order
FROM WHAT he said afterward,
Krivitsky's soul no doubt squirmed
with disappointment and distaste at
many things he saw ' and foresaw in
Russia all through the bewildering
thirties. But he believed In his cause'
and he was trained to serve it without
question.
It distressed him when, in December, '
1936, a time when Hitler was dumping'
Communists in concentration camps
and Moscow was publicly scouring the
world for allies against Germany, to
be told that his espionage network in
Germany must be leashed. Moscow
and Berlin were on the verge of an
agreement, he was told, and nothing
'must b done to upset Hitler. Still,
he obeydd.
 CPYRGH Page 5
sanitized - Approved For Release : CIA-RDP75-00149R000400430018-5
Rep. Martin' Dies, left,
Listened to Krivitsky,
But, Heard Very Little,
natz Reiss, who worked under the
code name of Ludwig In Western Eu.
rope and had connections with Ameri-
ca, could swallow the ravishments of
his beliefs no longer. He wrote a letter
to Stalin, and he wrote to his favorites
in the network under him, declaring
his defection.
Krivitsky knew that Reiss was wa-
vering. A few hours before an appoint-
ment with his friend, at which Reiss
presumably meant to reveal his deci-
sion, a high Soviet police official
insisted on seeing Krivitsky In Paris.
The police, then called the OGPU, had
gradually moved in on-military intelli-
gence so that all Soviet agents abroad
.came under OGPU orders.
Spiegelglass, the police official sent
specially from Moscow, showed Krivit-,
sky the letter Reiss had just written.
He had intercepted it before it even
left Paris. The letter ended: "No, I
cannot continue any longer. I am re-
turning to freedom. Back to Lenin, to
his teachings and his cause." Then
Krivitsky was cautiously, but unmistak-
ably asked to help trap his friend
"the traitor."
0
FE : . naa
,.j
{iw'mxdw7iltC~t~~6a=~b~tidi'eOw.a
Washington Post Photo,
Attorney Louis Waldman, center, rushed to the morgue to view Walter
Krivitsky's body and claim he was murdered.
on the Red Army, his home in' the.
Revolution.
A Personal jolt
Stalin did. Krivitsky quivered but
said nothing. When he went to Moscow
in March. 1937. Krivitskv felt after a
A Silent Caller
HE DELAYED and evaded, manag-
ing to warn Reiss to escape. The
technique of warning that Krivitsky
chose captured precisely the nightmare
fantasy of the atmosphere among
"comrades" in that summer of ? 1937.
He was sitting with Spiegelglass and
another agent in a restaurant at the
FTERWARD, exposing Soviet collu- to his post was getting ominous. Stoi-
sion with Nazis on the forgeries cally, he messaged his wife in The
that provided props for the Red Army . Hague to prepare to return to Moscow
purge of 1937, Krivitsky was able to with their child, though by then no
write: "It is one thing to consign to the army officer could be sure of survival
firing squad batches of politicians, such at home. ,
as Zinoviev or Kamenev. It is another When, after all, he was dispatched
to wipe out the helmsmen of a nation's once more to Western Europe, he took
war machine, his reassignment as bestowal by Stalin
"Would Stalin dare to shoot a figure "of the highest testimonial of loyalty
like Marshal Tukhachevsky or a leader within his 'power." There was some
like Gamarnik, Vice Commissar of War pride in that, despite the waves of
ligence), at such a critical international feel. long, though, On Sept. 4, 1937, Reiss's
moment? Would he dare to' leave the ? For another top Soviet agent, an old body, riddled with machine gun bullets,
Soviet pow(LK ggd~ss t$e ideas sReq a of `i{ A M- Swit4 b043M't8g9d In
zer an .
enemies b ~l ~Mg ~cX already drowned by over. : 'and
Army?" whehnin disgust and disillusion I g-, The Swiss police acted uick
mindless pleasure, light-hearted ele-.
gance around them. From time to time
after midnight, Spiegelglass went out
apparently to confer with other agents
stationed nearby. Each time, Krivitsky
sneaked to a pay telephone, called
Reiss and hung up as soon as there
was an answer. It would have been
beyond daring to say even one word.
Reiss understood at last and fled at
dawn the next morning. He didn't last
 CPYRGHT Page 6
Sanitized - Approved For Release : CIA-RDP75-00149R000400430018-5
such a typical transient tragedy that police were not even intrigued."
energetically. That assassination was rain of bullets from a machine gun out-
solved: murder by the OGPU after side Russia from Stalin's informal
Reiss had been lured to a rendezvous assassins."
by a woman who had worked under It was at the end of September,
him and had hinted that she was about dogged at every step, that he made
to join him in defection. what he called "the momentous deci-
Krivitsky felt sure that he had badly sion of my life." His wife asked him his
blotted his copybook by refusing to chances' for survival if they returned
help kill Reiss. After that, he too was to Moscow. He. answered, he wrote
under constant surveillance by Soviet later, that there was none,
agents in Paris. "But there is no reason you should
The Reiss murder carried his mental be punished on account oi; me," he
processes' one step further. Even the added. "When you get back, they will
intimate loyalty to a dear friend was, make you sign a. paper repudiating me
not to be allowed him. He still planned and denouncing me as a traitor. As a
to return to Moscow, but he had come - reward for this, you and our child will
to understand, as he later wrote, that be spared. As for me, it's sure death
"the choice before me was between a over there. I will not go to certain
T ONYA KRIVITSKY decided to de-
feet with her husband. The escape
had to be carefully planned. Krivitsky
planned it with the same detailed care
he had always given to his work. Paul
Wohl, a Central European who had
known him before, helped him and
secured the protection of the French
police and the patronage of the French
Socialist Premier, Leon Blum.
The Krivitskys surrendered their
false documents to the French Min-
ister of Interior, and in the appeal for
asylum, Krivitsky wrote: "I know that
a price has been put on my.head. The
assassins are after me, and they will
not spare even my wife or child."
sure bullet in the Lubianka (the OGPU, slaughter." (He knew that Gertrud Schildbach,
headquarters and prison in Moscow) who had lured Ignatz Reiss to his
from Stalin's i ]Z@daes Vet' * 4e1a : CIA-RDP75-0O1t49R??0340 k8E004&4 Reiss
FEB 13 1966 cmtntrued
 CPYRGHT Page 7
Sanitized Approverl For Release ? CIA_RPD1275-00149R000400430018_5
by giving the family a box of choco-
filled with strychnine. She was
lates
fond of the Reiss child and apparently
could not bring herself to do this, so
the roadside ambuscade was arranged
instead. The poisoned chocolates were
found in her Lausanne hotel room.
after she had fled.)
Krivitsky added In his appeal, "I
have often risked my life for my cause,
but I do not wish to die for noth-
ing ..."
It was on Oct. 6, 1937, that Krivitsky
finally made his break. Twice in the
months that followed In France, he was
approached by a handsome' young
Dutchman named Hans Bruesse, whom
Krivitsky had recruited for the Soviet
him that Bruesse, who had been an ex?
3i... .~ 'r _ Tir.,nrc Lsr ;If. Li ronl mn
k.-../
j
Krivitsky was wary, he knew the 711-1 "Imagine," he told his friend Su
tricks. The French police were vigilant. ?ounced that he had invented himself, in its empty insignificance. Krivitsky,
lathy at all for communism but were ;that he was really only Schmelka must have felt as Fdnstein would have
determined to awaken this country to Ginsberg, "a -well-known habitue. of if he had been solemnly asked to put
the evil of Nazism. Paris cafes" but never a Soviet agent, on public record the sum of 2 and 2.
The existence of two, ostensibly op- let alone an intelligence chief. The He knew so much of subtle ploys and
posed, wicked leaders in the world $25,000 from the 'Saturday Evening r lots; all-the Congressmen kept asking
seemed too much to, swallow. If Hitler Post was made to sound a proof of. him, (luring a day of testimony, was to
were bad, Stalin, whom he attacked, venality. The arguments did not erase'; confirm that the Kremlin ran the
must be good. If Stalin were bad, how Krivitsky from the scene, but they did Comintern and Stalin ran the Kremlin.
could people be aroused against succeed in giving him a highly distaste
At the time, of course, many Ameri
Iiitler? ful, suspect aura.
cans refused to believe that the Com-
H". e kist.rea1ity s a m
' and
LL THROUGH the thirties, the de- shared his attitudes quarreled the mirror, were true, and he volun- '
spair 'of. the depression and the , with him, partly no doubt out of envy lo.red nothing.
it l.oil1111ic J. arudel. rIIER EXILES woo mignt nave elementary to him as his own face in
tence of the democratic system in won in a country that ignored their ed, however, than just the right to stay
c oubts it nurtured about the compc- ? for the money and attention, he had There was something more he want.
modern society had tightened the lines own particular abilities. He was hard in the country. He wanted protection.
bth idlilf to his O i Nk h
-o-n
oca
g
ono aloes of I..,eog tu -- -- -___ anew 1.,e awl. across a
War in America. There was no climate cess that tLe knew best how to conduct Soviet agent he had known named
of Nazism and did not want to Mur the not absorb the public and private brief !followed ominously. Krivitsky was
es
e ominan vo c o g
had correctly identified the wickedness set in amiability; his agile mind could I Basoff was with several .others who
less of actual behavior.
f WasI- ton liance was fascinating but it was not United States, as it turned out.
Th d t i
accepted as more or less good, regard- Paul Wohl and Isaac Don Levine, his
early collaborators His intense bril- of a rendezvous for OGPU men in the
set of bad guys and all the others were Eventually, Krivitsky broke with both in a cafeteria on 42d Street, something
style of political in-fi htin His de-
ter the 'more impressively. . ~" . p .,g g ' who vanished outside her New York
effect tended to separate anti-Nazis" flf.vll,any I?- -- .. .,ay - .- r..
..- ,U, ???..4r???,,,4,,,? ,,P ,,,,, ?,,,,,;,, in Paris, of the Reiss murder, of the
scornfully attacked even. those who ' suaueu w ueIIUulll:e ulu1 dun 111"11 t
y ~ ,......a ,....._,..... ,.,.,. laboard a Soviet ship ~ and disappear
knew names and dates and places with Immigration Scrvice, prepared to de? Basoff into following him to the New
uniLea states. vviWn Suca prouumg, bile
nism, Russia and Stalin. Krivitsky, who With cunning, Krivitsky maneuvered '
than in sohle dusty polemical paninlrtet pucit ueai was mane, the aeportation ' nists, had been executed along with
high might save satisfied Krivitsky. order was dripped and Ks-witsky, the rest of her family in Leningrad be-
8 1J 1900
E
" - s. - - ,
picture taken. States. ni ht, wwaitin until. he could be sure
Sanitized -Approved For Release : CIA-RDP75-06149RO60400430918-5
right hearing for his facts. But it answered
right devilishly concocted to spread , . : _ _ , _ r vied out many hours later to spirit
,argued, an invention of the, extreme creasefl his problem of getting a sober whale conspiratorial arrangement car-
 0
CPYRGHT,. Page 10
that there was no one to obse a him many albums of passport photographs London. Had it ;;one on, it could have
going to Riverside Drive, where he ..submitted by people whose activities 'cost Britain 'the war in the terrible
lived under a false name. or identities she thought questionable. Year when she ;>ss fighting Germany
There were other encounters. Some. Krivitsky was told to go through an alone.
times Krivitsky called the police; they album and point out pny pictures that The l3ritish asked Krivitsky to come
could do nothing for him. It had been he recognized. There were a number of to London. He was leery. He told Wald-
better in France, where his sponsor people he had known as Soviet agents man he didn't trust the Neville Cham.
Leon Blum had made sure he was pro- and he gave details of when and where berlain government not to make a deal
ficial backing. through one book that day. When the
session was over, Waldman went pri-
Dovetailed With Chambers vately to State to,check on the per-
EANWHILE, his prediction of a
rr jI Nazi-Soviet pact came stunningly
true, and a few days later, Europe was
at war. Both his lawyer Louis Waldman
and his collaborator Isaac Don Levine !
realized that Krivitsky could help the
cause of the West and so help himself
by establishing a claim for concern
about his safety. They went about
arranging contacts for him separately.
Levine introduced Krivitsky to Whit-
taker Chambers, a former Soviet agent.
,,in the United States who had quit and
gone to work for Time magazine but
had not spoken publicly of his under-
ground existence. It was an exciting
meeting.
The two men sat in Levine's apart-
ment exchanging experiences, discover- i
ing as they went along that again and.
again one had the missing pieces to the
other's jigsaw puzzle. They found, com-
paring dates and places and descrip-
tions 'and plots,. that they knew a
number of the same agents though
often by different names.
Long after midnight, Levine went to
bed and left them talking. When he
woke the next morning, not early, they
were still at it. Much that had seemed
mysterious looked clearer.
That led to another meeting, later,!
formance.
"They told me he was candid and
correct," Waldman said much later.
"The information jibed with what the
Department knew." But the session
hadn't begun to plumb the crowded
dopths of Krivitsky's knowledge. A
second. meeting was arranged for a
week or two later. After that one,
Waldman.cliecked again and was told
that Krivitsky had done poorly, clearly
withholding and disguising informa-
tion:
"I went hack to the hotel and asked
Krivitsky why he'd changed. I'd
warned hint that if he didn't cooperate
fully, 1'd have nothing more to do with
him. He was angry.
"If" said that there was no use tell-
ing the American Government any-
thing in confidence because' it was so , ;
sloppy about security and so honey-
h
b
d
t
h
v,? i t
a
e
agen
s L
at everyl~lllll(~' . ~ ~~. -[ ~ y~~,r? ;df' 'y?dE 4
ile'd said t1R first time had got back to ~li ki~ll~ ~ .
FEB 1 3 1966
clantilmod
 Page 11
CPYRGHT Sanitized - Approved For Release : CIA-RDP75-00149R000400430018-5
King, a code clerk with access'to the'
.most crucial documents. The wartime
trial and conviction were only an-
nounced several years later.
g
p F p '+ cation that he ever did give much, PART FROM his reluctance to tell,
The clues were insufficient. What de One night spent walking the bong he was not officially asked. The
tails Krivitsky had given seemed to Island seashore and pouring out tales .Dies 'Committee only sought a kinder-
fall into place years after the war, to David Shub, father of his collaho? garten description of the international
rator' Boris, Krivitsky went on at ; Communist hierarchy, The FBI didn't
however, when ' Donald MacLean de- Y.
~e qr~ length about the dangers to which he bother with K i it
fected to Mosg~ lidd'- F/?- lovede (+ (0*0s,&iCdCI9~1 P/Sew11A =at kbAai y
uncertain mimber of valuable British he'afraid?. Why, should Stalin be after
and American secrets. you now? After all, you've already told
Krivitsky proved to be a productive everything and nothing further can
defector in England, and he was ade- make a difference."
Krivitsky also described another quatcly guarded there. He was asked "Oh, no;" Krivitsky said. "I
agent in the British Foreign Office, a to stay, but he had his' heart set on told the most important."
dashing Scotsman given to smoking a settling down in the United States.
In America, though, there is no indi Officially Unplumbed
i )e and sometimes wearin
a ca
Office friend Guy. Su Bess and a a him. " s
B 13 1966 O tinted
 Page 12
b~ elpase .: CIA-RDP75-00149R00040.0430018-5
-.... h... 1 V -.G GALL 114 -- 4 /110.uv Was even a passing effort at counter Stalin
intelligence, it was N
Nazi agents that
the FBI was after.
Th
re w
s n
CIA
r
n
thi
f
e
y
a
o
o
a
ng o
the sort. Army and Navy Intelligence,
Who ? Betrayed
direct interest to each service, not co
The State Department accepted infor. The Revolutions
m,ition brought to it, but had no Sn
vestigative branch.
It is hard to resist the speculation Wbom
thet the sensitivity sect surrounding of i voce the Government's secret Krivitsky ~[ ,' (1 ~J files is much less because of what they
contain than because they contain so
little that mattered. ii T he whole approach to security d e , Galled
"
1
intellligence at. that time was
primi-.
tive," in'the word of former Secretary
of State Dean Acheson. In view, of.
the general state of affairs, the casual ' " tz
surprising.
The situation in the State Depart:-,,.
ment was not improved by personal,
feuds already developing into political-~
vendettas. Adolf Berle was then the j
State Department officer in charge of,
liaison with military intelligence, Hal
had been a child prodigy, and as a'i
teen-ager at Harvard Law School he?~j
had offended Felix Frankfurter, then
a leading professor.
Acheson, who was a devoted admirer
of Frankfurter's. People took sides In
the State Department and the quarrel;
d i
h
th
hi
H
reac
nto
e
e W
te
ouse.
Berle's assignment carried with It a
hostile sensitivity to Soviet behavttor,I
a traditional attitude among old handsi
in State. Acheson's assignment,' in-I
valved in supporting Britain against
Germany and later, on President'
,Roosevelt's orders, in helping Russia
buy supplies in this country, tugged.,
him the other way.
Even during the Nazi-Soviet pact, a'
number of people in State believed that
'rye . 597' Eli 5 ti
eventually Stalin would have to fight
strength. The atmosphere was abrasive. United States should be ? handed over I"within ,the- United' States Government
i -
Hitler and that it was therefore im- to the Russians as Moscow was de Viand provided. a series of names. One
?portant to help the Russians build up manding. , 5)f them was Alger Hiss.
There were sharp, quarrels over daily Nobody succeeded in establishing an.)' There were other respected officials.,
decisions and a certain amount of in- orderly system of policy priorities that'.), It was an explosive charge with much
trigue in the attempt to influence them. sustained the basic aim of ' opposing !substantiating circumstance. Berle took
An early example came in drafting . Hitler and still left room for what it to the White House. Nobody paid
President Roosevelt's statement on the seemed conflicting decisions on the any attention. There was no investiga
Soviet Union's digestion of Latvia, merits of immediate questions. It tion. The incident was forgotten until
wasn't so ? much that Krivitsky ? was it was brought out in the postwar cross-
Lithuania and Estonia after the Hitler- frozen out of the picture,, h'jyst never fire of charges and countercharges that
Stalin partitition of Poland. Fast foot-, got in. led to the Hiss trial.
work by Loy Henderson, James Dunn' The Situation he confronted was In the McCarthy period that followed,
and then Under Secretary Sumner' demonstrated even more clearly when, deliberate suppression was charged.
Welles got an official denunciation out in 1941, Isaac Don Levine arranged a But the atmosphere at the time of the
of the White House before others in meeting between Whittaker Chambers Chambers- erle meeting makes it more
followed water it clown. But it was; and Adolf -rl Chamber r i 00-414 lact'1i 4 t F he
a116wecl by anysC11 IQiQldo&r~pprO C~h Ql~t ~eased - ] i `{~ Y1i AP
whether the Ball.ic States' assets in the Krivitsky, recited a story of spy rings d
FEB
 CPYRGHT Pa
- CIA_RDP75-00149R000400430018-5
~i+A??roved For Release 13
0
the bialy Depar, meat, not to be taken
seriously. The ..lcheson side automati-
cally supposed that there would be
something fishy in anything that came'
from Berle, and vice versa.
The Other Extreme
T IIE HAPHAZARD concern for se-
curity, the personal aninu~ities,
the emotional frenzy stirred for Russia
once the U.S.S.R. and the United States
became allies in war-this immoderate
background was doubtless an important,
factor in swinging the pendulum wildly
to the other extreme when World Warl
II had ended and the cold war was at
its height. Looking back, the McCarthy-,
ites decided-.that there must have been'
conspiracies because so much careless-,
ness seemed incredible in the new post-;
war awareness of intelligence opera-
tions.
There had been espionage and Com-
munist penetration of the Government'
without doubt. Those germs of sub
stance were multiplied into a national
fever because they were so difficult`
to trace in the general mush of the'
period that had 'harbored them. Ac-
cording to their temperament, people
concluded either that the whole eul.
ture was tainted or that it had always'
been pure.
Emotion gave credibility on a basis
of very few facts in the McCarthy',
period, just as it had denied credibility
on a basis of very many facts in thel
'
period of Stalin
s purges. Krivitsky]
happened to speak at the wrong time'
to be heard in earnest. He even died
at the wrong time. to be buried in
earnest.
By early 1941, he was back in the:
United States and out of steam. Hey
had quarreled with his collaborators,
and exhausted the fraction of revelaJ,
tions he was prepared to make. Still:
reading the papers and watching Euro
pean developments closely, he hoped!,
had been what he considered open
OGPU attempts to surround and then,
no doubt., to kill him. On other occa-
sions, 'he had grounds for suspicion. .
Once. lie had called Loy Henderson
at the State Department to say that he
was in danger, And was told to get in
touch with the New York police. The
police were, in effect, willing enough
to hold a nervous foreigner's hand if
he dropped into a precinct station, but
they were neither able nor willing to
give regular protection.
Then in early 1941, Krivitsky re-
ceived a message that set him shiver.
Alexander Kerensky, former
leader of Russia,. was convinced
that Stalin , agents murdered
Krivitsky.
to put his penetrating mind and burden ing with fright. He took it to his law-
of experience to use as a foreign affairs', yer, Louis Waldman, on Jan. 9.. It was
analyst. Columns are not so easily come addressed to his friend Suzanne Lafol-
by. He began to cast about for a new! lette, who had hahded it on. The mes
start, in life. , sage read:
ilia friends Eitel and Marguerite: "Will you please inform your hon-
Dobert had established themselves on orable friend K. that an ominous person
a farm near Charlottesville. They had is in New York: Hans . . . K('s) devious
only a few hundred dollars to begip. practices hardly justify this warning. I
hesitate to send it. It may be better to
It was a pioneering struggle, but they i. let the rats devour each other."
were making a life, and they were at
peace.
There were prospects, too. Dobert
had become a lecturer at the nearby
University of Virginia. Krivitsky was
The note, was from Paul Wohl, bitter
over his quarrel with Krivitsky; which
had been primarily, about money, but
still aware of his former friend's dan-
ger.
U.,~a. out w,s?eu nun guounignti.
talk about moving with his wife and Bruesse, the Dutchman who had once f3ut her guest was restless. The next
child to join the Doberts,'and work the worked for Krivitsky and twice before morning he told them that he still
farm in partnership. had tried to kill him. Wohl had seen couldn't sleep after. writing his letters
Two Opeii Attempts Bruesse boarding a bus on a Manhat- and had gone for a walk in the woods.
tan street. There was no question Of' He spoke appreciatively of the country-
r~HERE WAS OMF urgen y hl con- identt he as sure. He,y~ $?
1 sidering th . 9991 9 !Y 'Ot1ifMIA L~IMletlie4l 7 ~~
an peace u -..ere, he_ Col Fie Doberts.
a.2 3 3 MR
+..aua.oua. rvao a agvvall.V" 41, .ni,vatany 5
headquarters in The Hague.
Krivitsky was just as sure, when he
received the warning, that Bruesse's
sudden and no doubt illegal appear-
ance in the United States was to fulfill
the old mission. An OGPU agent who
had failed twice was bound to be in,
serious trouble himself, redeemable
only by final success.
Krivitsky began to talk about buying
a gun to protect himself. Waldman
pointed out that In New York or New
Jersey, he would have to get a permit.
Living under an assumed name, more'
than ever eager to hide his tracks,
Krivitsky. fumed and said he would
11
think'-it over.
Without telling Waldman, he found
out that no permit was necessary' in .,
Virginia, but he did say that he was
going there to arrange to bpy a farm.
Waldman insisted that the reluctant
Russian testify before a New York leg-
islative committee investigating com-
munism in the schools, and Krivitsky
wanted the appearance date postponed
until after the Virginia trip. His
hear-ing was set for Monday, Feb. 10.
The Friday before, he took the train
south. He stopped off In Washington to
see Loy Henderson, mentioning his
new fears and his decision to buy a gun
for self-defense. Then he went on to,
The Doberts listened to his explana-
tions and answered his unending
stream of questions, but they couldn't
help feeling dubious.
"I just couldn't 'see Walter as a
chicken farmer," Marguerite said later.
"He was a total intellectual, just not
the type."
Krivitsky was a- man without hob-
bies, without interest in sports, in
nature, in the use of his hands or legs
for the pleasure of it. It was the brain
that did all his working and living. But
he went on endlessly about the farm,
the chores, the cost.
All that remained to settle the deal,
he said, was for his wife Tonya to have
a look and give her agreement. Tonya
and their son Alek, then 6, had stayed
behind in New York that weekend.
Krivitsky went on about his plans
late into the night. Tired from the
day's work, the Doberts went to bed,
but after a short time; Krivitsky'
knocked on their door, He had a bad
headache and. couldn't sleep, he said.
Marguerite, a tall, warm woman of
great practical competence and steady
good cheer, handed him some aspirin
 CPYRGHT
Sanitized - Approved For Reae esell+: CIA-RDP75-00149R000400430018-5
cc8. 1 3 1966
ing he had received.
Target Practice
SATURDAY MORNING, Krivitsky
and Marguerite Dobert drove into
Charlottesville. They went to a hard-
ware store and bought a gun without
any difficulty. Later, the clerk iden-
tified The gun as the one found In the
hotel room and he identified Mrs.
Dobert and a photograph of Krivitsky
as the customers who had bought it.
For some reason never brought out,
he sold mushroom bullets as ammuni-,
tion instead of ordinary bullets, un-
usual for sale to a person explaining;
that he lived in a wilderness and.
needed something to protect himself.;
When he spoke about the gun, accord-
ing to all thoso Who hoard him, Krivit-'
sky talked only in terms of his urgent
need for self-protection after the warn-
later, "but then he :ways was. After- the station who frightened him, or why. The nearest they came to the
ward, I couldn't help thinking that I The Bellevue had no record of his; self-justification that is the one con-
should have noticed more carefully making any telephone calls from his stant to expect in suicide notes was a
whether there was something wrong. room. Its residents and staff paid no general reference to the inescapable
But I didn't. I didn't think of anything, special attention to the man who reg-obligation to "go." Only the note to his
He was the usual high-strung Walter" istered as Walter Poref until the maid wife Tonya went that far. It said:
} "Ile was nervous," illarguerite said ' whether he saw someone in or around' about any intention of killing himself
membered his "artillery." He patted the Each note carried a sentence beneath
canvas bag that was his only luggage
the the signature. He had never been' a
anA ....:a -...... -_ aL..__
the only place I could get the firearm.
It had been written in Russian. Mrs.
Krivitsky challenged the police trans-
lation. as soon as she saw the note.
Instead of rendering the first sentence
to suggest that Krivitsky found it
"impossible" to live, she said, a correct
translation would be:
"it .is very difficult but I want very
badly to live, but to live is no longer
allowed me."
Inference 'of Coercion
THE LOGIC of the situation and the
man seemed to dictate that legiti-
mate suicide notes would have read
quite differently, with some mention
of the OGPU's hounding him, his disil-
lusionment with Moscow, his problems
in creating a now life in the United
dente that they had not been followed charged undertones.
because she would have noticed an- 'The notes iookcd self-explanatory to
other car on the back roads, the police, but to people who knew
Before she dropped him at the corner Krivitsky, they looked strange in many
of Union Station, she asked Krivitsky details. It was his handwriting, all
if lie wanted her to mail the letters he right, and it was on the same kind of
had mentioned writing late Friday paper that the Roberts had given him
night. He said he, would-look, after them at their Virginia farm. But the. style
himself. She. asked 'him if he had re-
was not quite typical of.Krivitsky.
called the housekeeper to his -room "This is very difficult and I. want to
the?nextmorning. live very badly, but it is impossible. I
No photographs were taken in the love you, my only one. It is difficult -
hotel 'room to establish the trajectory'! for me to write, but think about me
of the bullet; no effort was taken to and then you will understand that I
recover the bullet from the wall; no must go. Don't tell Alex yet where his
fingerprints were sought. All this was-; father is gone. I believe that in time
common practice when there was. any you will tell him because it is best for
suspicion of crime. But the immediate him.. Forgive, it is very hard to write.
police assumption was that they were Take care of him and be a good mother
dealing with a clear-cut case of suicide,' to him, and be always quiet and never
and .the coroner took their word for it get angry at him.
that afternoon.
"He is very good, and always very
A Question of Style' not enemies. I think my friends are big.
i~HAT EVENING, however, Lquis I.'see you, Tonya and Alex. I embrace
Waldman, Tonya Krivitsky and you. Vela,
other people spoke out to challelige "P.S. On the' farm of Dobertov I
the verdict, Waldman hurried to Wash' wrote this yesterday, but I did not
ington. It was too late to seek evidence I'. have any strength in New York. I did
at the scene of Krivitsky's death; every; not, have any business in Washington,
thing had been tidied. I went to see Dobertov because that is'
_
J alV UVpVL L1lpL 1>LLV 1LJf1J'
drove Krivitsky back to Washington 1 had diet with his brains blown out,
so lie could catch a train. He men-; but no absolute proof that the gun
tioned his appointment. in New York found in his room was the weapon
on,Monday morning. She took a wrong used nor that he and no one else had
turning on the way and for a time j pulled the trigger. All that was -left
they wandered about country roads.. was the body, the three notes and the
Later, she remembered that as evi- long Krivitsky story with its heavily
Krivitsky asked her whether Union - anates. it nrivitsxy aia cnoose to xiil
.have afterthoughts. All who knew him himself, these were doubtless the rea-
Station, like railroad stations in most i agreed that he always was clear in fliis'
big European cities,. had facilities for sons, and he was'not given to cryptic
mind on what he wanted to say and or fuzzy expressions.
travelers to bathe. There was no run- stopped when he had said it. Of course, a man's state of mind in
ping water on the farm and he wanted Each P.S. mentioned third persons. contemplating suicide is likely enough
to clean up while he was waiting for The note to Waldman had an added ! -to be illogical. No certain deductions
item referring to the Doberts; though
the next New York train. She didn't could. be' made from the notes. But
know the answer. not by 'name. The note to Suzanne their. very oddness served to convince
But she did know, looking back, that Lafollette mentioned her brother and his wife and other intimates that-he
it was an altogether normal conversa- sister-in-law, though they scarcely knew . had been cunning to the end.
tion with every 'sign that Krivitsky I Krivitsky, He was a man thoroughly The notes read, they felt, as if
was intent only on boarding the train, trained to recognize the implications ' Krivitsky had been forced to write
no sign that he had other plans, of involvement in scandal. It was odd them 'and had cannily found words and
But he never left Washington. He h - -
went to the Bellevue Hotel, a. five- that he should drag the names of it forms that would reveal mortal black-
black-
relevant people into his personal
.minute walk from, the station. No one-
tragedy. mail to the addressees but not to the
knows whether he went there directly blackmailer, howev
or entered sta io st Even more inexplicable to his inti- er astute 'he might
the changed his ~io ot~e * Di'aF0rR' )tea e! 5 IRD OO149R0004004310018-5
tha nnfpc- T ev said no ine soeei 1e 'IT helve.,, 11 tt,- -t A-- a..11 11 - ______
aOr-a'
 Page 15 CPYRGHT
Sanitized - Approved For Release : CIA-RDP75-00149R000400430018-5
Reiss's body, riddled with machinegun,
bullets, was found beside a lonely
road in Switzerland.
-pEPORTERS TRACKED DOWN
first learned of Krivitsky's death from
the Tuesday morning papers at 'her
friend's house ? in Washington, where
she had spent the night after leaving
Krivitsky at the station. At first she
refused to believe it, still sure that he
had returned to New York the previous
Sunday. But there was his picture and
photostats of he notes in his hand-
writing.
Distraught and bewildered, she in-
vented for her:hostess a telegram from
her husband asking her Co come home
quickly. She drove off without a word
did not end the excited public
deemed the death.a suicide." The police
were smarting under the charge of in-
'~.~ ti 4 .;^. ? was found.
`~ - The only thing Mrs. Dobert was able
left him, and about clues to' his inten
tions from his behavior over the week=
'end, was: "He did tell me, 'If anything
should happen, to me, look after Alex
and Tonya.' That was on the drive back
to Washington on Sunday. I said, 'Don't
be' silly, Walter. Nothing will happen
to you.' He didn't argue with that. He.
was calm and cheerful, still full of
plans about the farm."'
Ideological Debate
HE, REAFFIRMED coroner's verdict
"tllo letter (to her) was written under
Coercion. The OGPU had threatened
that they would kidnap or harm me
and our child unless he did what they
directed--kill himself. He made this
bargain because of his great love for
us. But lie was murdered in this fashion
just as surely as though they had pulled
the trigger of the gun." 7
Waldman argued passionately for an
FBI investigation. It was refused on
the ground that a possible murder in
Metropolitan Police. The lawyer pointed that.it "did not and is'not going to in-
out that Krivitsky had been and was vestigate the case." The spokesman '
likely to have continued to be a witness
before congressional committees and
y c ec e be empty shell oun
on the floor and confirmed that it was
fired from Krivitsky's .38..It was too
late to look for -fingerprints on the gun.
It had been covered with blood when
the 'police first arrived and had been
cleaned in the meantime.
Itivciitcd a Telegram
about the affair. But when it came out
that she had brought Krivitsky to
Wasli ngton and was one of the last
to see him, her evidence was sought.
Detective Chief Bernard W. Thomp-
son reported to the press that "now, as
before,.we are convinced that Krivitsky
killed himself." The Washington Post-.
reporter added in his account, "Thomp-
son stressed the words 'as before,' em-,
phasizing that almost from the moment
he was found . . investigators have
was S. J. Tracy in the office of J. Edgar'
hoover, who did not personally make'
.,a proper basis for an FBI investigation. a public comment or agree to receive
After 24 hours of hullabaloo in the Waldman.
press and a Congressman's speech de- Newspapers with strong anti-Com-
ploring inefficient, negligent police munist editorial
policies kept up the-
. 'work on the case, the Washington ..,clamor-for a few days, reviewing some
police reluctantly reopened it. They in, of Krivltsky's life and other cases ? of
terviewed the maid, the housekeeper, OGPU assa
i
ti
ss
na
ons beyond Soviet
.the District of Columbia was not a the bellboy and the hotel mer
~~}a est.
Federal but, aSaPA I i ~k -bVedlf or, I ae , ; t i ( p IX R o r,~ NO
jurisdiction rested entirely with the the rooms adjacent to Krivitsky.,, ~ a`ii P ti3"iv y.
Ben Hecht wrote in PM: "Swingin
FEB 13 1966 C3tmt2nt,sd
 Pae16 CPYRGHT
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Roman candles over its head, blowing "give an eyetooth to find him." They,
,smoke out of its ears, complete with no longer doubt his existence.
electric-lighted nose, fright wig and fire After the war, the FBI did develop.
gong hitched to its fanny, the Press is an interest in the Krivitsky case and
galumphing up and down the highways its implications. It began collecting a
looking for the scoundrel who mur- file which is still secret. Suicide is no.
tiered that darling man, Gen. Walter longer a firmly held official judgment.,,,
Krivitsky . . . The point and purpose lout neither has any new evidence
of the Rumpelstiltskin manhunt is to (-merged to prove that Krivitsky was
blow up the deviltries of Stalinism and reordered, by another or by his own,
allow Moscow, rather than Berlin, to band under threat of dire harm to his
frighten the pants off everybody ... '
"The Red Menace being pumped out l
wife and the son he adored.
The boy has grown up now and is
an engineer living a normal life under
another name. The widow, who also.
uses another name, still lives in New
York, ill after all the years of desperate
struggle to earn a living and protect
h,+r son. They are no longer afraid, but
they have had nothing more to do with
PYR I ie comatose Krivitsky is on your
corner newsstand. And the presses;
printing it are not being supervised by
OGPU and Gestapo chieftains, knout
in hand. It is, nevertheless, -as giddy.
an example .of the cynical contempt for
readers' intelligence as ever came over
the short waves from Europe ..." . politics since that February day in 1941.
Ralph Ingersoll, also in PM, poured The proof of exactly what happened
scorn on the fuss and asked with must lie in Soviet police archives, more
righteous indignation why Krivitsky's secret even than the guarded FBI and
death deserved more attention than CIA files on the case, for whether the,
the seven. lines reporting the suicide OGPU engineered Krivitsky's death or,
of a Brooklyn clothing worker on simply sat by and won its goal without,
the same clay. "Where is our con- Kertion, reports had to be made.
science ?" he demanded. "What But even as a riddle, Krivitsky's-
treacherous OGPU lives in us that we story illuminated a period and its.
must accept and take into our hearts sanguine aftermath. The frenzy-of the y
any dirty rat ...
A Rplnpc r? ~r lci'cs t.
FEB 13 1966
postwar Communist hunts had its
would, in the words of one' officihl, f hand. r 4
roots in the prewar propaganda battles
aed, the lackadaisical unconcern for
} HEN THE EXCHANGES MI vitu-, security in tnose days.
Aeration shifted to other topics; Nobody responsible then bothered
other news.. Nobody reported seeing' much with the kind of problem Krivit?"
Hans Bruesse again. Twenty-five' years Sky evoked. Then, as now, many
later, intelligence services in the shouted at each other to advance their
United States and' Western Europe arguments. Few looked to the case at
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