SOVIET INTELLIGENCE TRAVEL AND ENTRY TECHNIQUES

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP65-00756R000400080001-9
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: C
• Document Page Count: 79
• Document Creation Date: November 17, 2016
• Document Release Date: July 8, 1998
• Sequence Number: 1
• Content Type: REPORT

Appamemmir a 0080001-9
SOVIET INTELLIGENCE
TRAVEL AND ENTRY
TECHNIQUES
E BEAU SC1F T 1 VES TI A TIO
`A'TES I ART
3 r Hoo , Di ctor-
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SECURITY INFORMATION - CONFIDENTIAL
SOVIET INTELLIGENCE TRAVEL
AND
ENTRY TECHNIQUES
April, 1953
Federal Bureau of Investigation
United States Department of Justice
John Edgar Hoover, Director
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
PREFACE...... .
INTRODUCTION.. .... ...............................
I. COVER UTILIZED BY SOVIET INTELLIGENCE
FOR TRAVEL AND ENTRY ............................. 1
A. Official........... .............................. 3
1. The United Nations .......................... 3
2. Diplomatic and Consular Services............ 4
3. Diplomatic Courier Service ................. 8
4., Trade Delegations and Purchasing
Commissions ..... ......................... 9
5. News-gathering Agencies .................... 12
6. Red Cross..... . ........................... 13
7. Commercial Coverage ...................... 15
a. Individual Character .................. 15
b. Collective Character .................. 18
8. Study Groups .............................. 20
B. Private (Nonofficial) ............................ 22
1. Specialists. . .............................. 22
2. Students Sent Abroad .... . ................. 23
3. Foreign Nationals Trained and Re-
turned to Operate in Their Native
Land.__..... .......................... 24
4. Naturalized Citizens. . ...................... 25
5. Foreign-born Spouses ...................... 26
6. Refugees ................................... 26
7. Growing Up Agents from the Inside........... 28
C. Summary........ 30
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Page
II. FALSE IDENTITY TO AID TRAVEL AND
ENTRY OF THE SOVIET INTELLIGENCE
SERVICE ............................................ 31
A. De-Russianizing ................................ 33
B. False Legends .................................. 34
C. False Documents ...... ...................... 35
1. Birth Certificates .......................... 35
2. Affidavits of Faked Relatives . . ..... . .. . ..... 40
3. Naturalization Certificates.................. 41
4. Passports...- .................. ........ 43
III. USE OF PARACHUTES FOR ILLEGAL ENTRY.......... 60
W. ESCAPE DEVICES USED BY SOVIET AGENTS.......... 62
V. CONCLUSION ............................. o .......... 68
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SECURITY INFORMATION - CONFIDENTIAL
PREFACE
A key to the detection of Soviet secret intelligence agents in
foreign countries is the discovery of the plans for travel and entry that the
Soviet Intelligence services have adapted somewhat successfully to their
requirements. A knowledge of the modus operandi of Soviet Intelligence
agents has proved to be beneficial to the governments harried by Russian
interlopers and their followers. Therefore, a study of Soviet travel and
entry techniques may provide basis and direction for the opposing operations
required of our counterintelligence and internal security forces.
Trained Soviet agents sent out from Moscow to organize an under-
ground apparatus for long-time operation in a foreign country enter, exit
and travel about quite freely because they are protected by falsifications
and cover occupations which make them appear above the suspicion of the
target country's protecting authorities. Ways have also been devised for
securing the entrance of an agent on a single mission and of other persons
who will be called upon to cooperate at some distant date.
This paper provides a review of the travel and entry techniques
that have been used by the Soviet Intelligence services. Awareness of past
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successful Soviet techniques may assist in preventing possibilities from
becoming eventualities.
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INTRODUCTION
The United States Government has taken a number of steps to
control the travel and entry of subversive elements. We impose visa restrictions
on all people from Iron Curtain countries. We have a program for screening
at points of entry those foreigners regarding whom we have adverse information.
We have curtailed the travel privileges of Russia's official representatives --
excepting Soviet nationals with the United Nations or other international organi-
zations -- preventing secret trips in and out, and about the country. We deny
passports for extended stay abroad to admitted Communists and to anyone who
is found to have given consistent and prolonged adherence to the Communist
Party line. But the Soviets, in their planning, anticipated rebuffs and set up
measures for facilitating clandestine travel and entrance to foreign countries
where they wish to collect military, economic or political information.
In the past, Soviet Intelligence operations in Europe, Asia and
America show that travel and entry plans for foreign agents have been worked
out in Moscow. Whatever plans proved successful have been developed into
a pattern for agent activity, and those methods have been incorporated into the
training program for preparing future agents to be sent abroad?
The direct attention that the Soviet Intelligence headquarters devotes
to travel and entry techniques is illustrated by "Task No. 3 of 1. 8~ 45 " * as-
signed to Sam Carr, a member of a Soviet Military Intelligence network operating
in Canada. Among the nine items to be reviewed and reported to the "Director"
in Moscow area
* 1. 8. 45 is August 1, 1945, not January 8, 1945.
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"4. More expedient methods to slip into
the country.
"5.
Conditions of entry into the country
and of moving about in the country. "
An earlier Soviet operator said he was ordered to make a full
report to his superior on the methods by which naturalization papers and
passports are obtained in the United States. He found there was a dearth
of information concerning these procedures and he gradually came to be
considered an expert on the subject. Agents coming to this country were
directed in Moscow to contact him for instructions.
Walter Krivitsky, former Soviet Intelligence agent, said that
about 1928-29 the Russians discovered that American and Canadian passports
could be obtained relatively easily, and they came into frequent use both
for Fourth Department, or Soviet Military Intelligence, and for OGPU**
agents. With a bit of adroit,illegal maneuvering entrance to Europe and
Asia was also possible. Krivitsky said that although the Fourth Department
in Moscow was able to produce perfectly forged passports of any country,
* The Report of the Royal Commission, June 27, 1946, p. 553.
** The Secret Political Police of the Soviet Union, formerly the Cheka
and the GPU.
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it was much preferred that espionage agents should travel on genuine pass-
passports, procured, if necessary, by means of forged documents of identity.
Up to 1928 or 1929, he said, Soviet agents usually traveled on Austrian,
German or Danish passports.
An agent who was active during the 1930's said that for the pro-
tection of cover stories there was, in the OGPU offices in Moscow during
his time, a passport department for the preparation of any necessary
documents. He stated that he gathered this from conversations as well
as from his original dealings with George Miller, a photographer employed
in the passport office.
It is the present policy of the Soviet Government to keep its
officials engaged in foreign travel aloof from foreigners, so that undesirable
ideas will not alter their political convictions. Political reliability is
a more important qualification than technical ability or general suitability
for any particular foreign appointment. This policy results in very few
Soviet citizens being allowed to travel and very few foreigners being allowed
to visit the USSR. The result, as pointed out by a 1948 report of a foreign
intelligence agency, is that all Russians abroad are official representatives
of the Soviet Union and no Soviet citizen would be granted a passport for a
"private" visit; even a scientist who has been sent abroad to attend an inter-
national conference is attached to the local Soviet Embassy or trade delegation
to which he has to report on arrival.
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Security and counterintelligence investigations have revealed
that the Soviets take advantage of both legal and illegal cover for maneuvering
the travel and entry of their foreign agents. Consequently, cover
occupations, and falsifications supporting them, are the framework for
this study.
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1. COVER UTILIZED BY SOVIET INTELLIGENCE
FOR TRAVEL AND ENTRY
From a. Soviet Intelligence defector who has furnished reliable
information, we have learned that all Soviet citizens living abroad are
considered by the MGB* for assignment to a specific espionage task out-
side their own duties. All have a bona fide reason for employment abroad,
the general task of observing everything which may be of interest to the
various intelligence services in the USSR and in certain cases special
espionage tasks for which they are already fully briefed before leaving
Moscow.
Soviet agents operate in a foreign country under two types of
cover -- official and private. Official cover gives them a legal right to
enter abroad in spite of the way they use or abuse the privilege. Official
cover ranges from embassy appointments to commercial ventures. Some
of the latter are infiltrated; others are devised for a particular agent's
cover, and savor of the illegal because of the founding purpose.
Aware that its legal residents in a foreign country are under
suspicion, Soviet Russia, therefore, has provided for its secret agents
to travel to and enter a country by illegal means, attempting to cover
* Ministry of State Security, formerly the Cheka, the GPU, the OGPU, the
NKVD and the NKGB.
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all technical illegalities of identification, transportation and occupation by
falsifications that appear to be legitimate explanations. An agent may enter
the country intending to carry out his assigned covert duties independent
of official cover, but under private cover -- outwardly engaged in some
innocent, legitimate and perhaps worth-while employment. In this con-
nection, experience has taught our security agencies to suspect all
Soviets who enter our country. Although there are thousands of anti-Soviet
Russians in the United States, some of our espionage cases prove that the
Russian Intelligence Service urges former Russians to cooperate. A Soviet
defector who traveled back and forth from Russia to the United States between
1936 and 1940 has warned us regarding his countrymen.
Before observing in detail these covers for travel and entry, it
should probably be mentioned that Soviet Intelligence seeks to utilize the
cooperation of the Communist Party abroad. It appears that the utilization
of the Party varies in scope and degree, and under changing circumstances.
The Party is often called upon to furnish couriers, photographers, informers,
mail drops, safe meeting places, etc. When service endangering the Party
is required, the worker may drop out of the Party and join the espionage
network, wholly responsible to domination and direction of intelligence
headquarters in Moscow,
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For several years prior to 1937, according to Krivitsky's
information, it.was arranged personally by General Berzin, head of the
Fourth Department, and Piatnitsky, head of the Foreign Liaison De-
partment of the Comintern, for each chief Fourth Department agent to
receive a special introduction to a senior official of the Communist Party
of the country in which he was to work, Krivitsky added that the "OGPU
embassy agent has probably only a man earmarkedJn the Communist Party]
whom he can use when necessary. " The first concern for conducting Soviet
Intelligence operations is to get key operators strategically located in the
country where they are to work, Aid from the Communist Party can be
invoked according to the varying needs of the operators.
A. Official
Since, as was observed above, legal entrance of Soviet In-
telligence agents under official cover is the least complicated scheme,
these favored official covers, operated exhaustively by the Russians, should
be examined for their past success.
1. The United Nations
Russian membership in the United Nations organization offers
one official gateway for the Russians to enter the Western Hemisphere.
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Moreover, employees of anddelegates to the United Nations are entitled to
certain privileges, exemptions and immunities accorded to international
organizations in the United States. The United Nations organization, having
the USSR as a member nation, offers a legal opportunity for the Soviets to
introduce their agents into the United States, unhampered by restrictions
limiting the area of their travels. The activity of Valentin Gubitchev showed
that he had been placed in the United Nations for the purpose of contacting
and receiving information from one or more informants like Judith Coplon.
A case of more recent date was reported by a Russian in the
United States on a Nansen passport as the dependent of a United Nations
employee. This Russian said he was contacted by a Soviet representative
in the United Nations Secretariat who endeavored to recruit him and to
develop him as a source of information, Moreover, this representative, he
said, placed him in contact with still another United Nations representative
who also requested his service,
2. Diplomatic and Consular Services
Russia, like any other large country, designates people to repre-
sent the nation abroad. Protected by diplomatic passport and immunity
from arrest, search or seizure, the Soviet Ambassador to the United States,
his staff and, through him, all assistants accredited to perform regular
tasks for the embassy have a fairly secure local base from which to direct
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intelligence activities. The success of this blind for protecting the coming
and going of Soviet Intelligence agents in the guise of embassy personnel
is indicated by its broad use. It appears that were it not comparatively
successful, intelligence assignments would be handled more exclusively by
other legal covers or by illegal agents.
Between January, 1942, and August, 1944, Vassili M. Zubilin
served in the United States as Third Secretary, then as Second Secretary, of the
Soviet Embassy in Washington, D. C. ; but it is alleged that he actually at
the same time engaged in intelligence operations in the United States and
Mexico. Meantime, his wife allegedly operated a network of agents in the
United States Government agencies. Anatoli B. Gromov, exposed by Elizabeth
Bentley, was First Secretary at the Soviet Embassy in Washington, D. C. ,
prior to his departure for Russia in 1945. On January 15, 1953, Yuri NTovikov,
a Second Secretary of the Soviet Embassy, Washington, D. Co , was declared
persona non grata by the United States Department of State after a Washington
grand jury indictment named him coconspirator in espionage against the
United States. In the early 1940? s Leonid Tarasov, attached to the Soviet Em-
bassy in Mexico City as First Secretary, and Vitali Pavlov, First Secretary of
the Soviet Embassy at Ottawa, were suspected of engaging in intelligence work.
Besides the Secretaries of the Soviet Embassy in Canada, the report
of the Royal Commission regarding Soviet Intelligence operations in Canada
lists fifteen other Soviet. Embassy staff members who gave themselves
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over to espionage operations sometime or another after the embassy was
established in 1942.
Not only the Soviet Embassy but also other embassies may harbor
a Soviet agent. In 1939, Richard Sorge, operating for Soviet Intelligence in
Japan, was able through his former friendship with the German Ambassador
to obtain a semiofficial status at the German Embassy in Tokyo. There he
gathered information for Russia from the English and French Embassies as
well as from the German.
Soviet interest in the confidential activities of its dominated
satellite nations is not unknown, neither is penetration of such areas when
considered necessary to Soviet designs.
The office of the Soviet Military Attache offers an opening used
especially by Soviet Military Intelligence for getting its agents into a
country. For example, it was Colonel Nikolai Zabotin, Soviet Military
Attache, who headed the Soviet Armed Forces Intelligence Department
operations in Canada. His assistants, Lieutenant Colonel Petr Motinov
and Lieutenant Colonel Vassili Rogov were also particularly active in this
connection.
A clerk- accountant in the office of the Soviet Naval Attache in
Washington, D. C., from February 5, 1948, to December 10, 1950, was
reliably reported to have been engaged in espionage, collecting data per-
taining to the national defense,
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Teachers at the Military Institute of Foreign Languages have been
said to speak openly of attaches as "legalized spies. "
Besides embassies, the Soviets also utilize consulates in foreign
countries as bases for espionage operations. Pavel Klarin, Soviet Vice Consul
in New York City in 1943 and 1944, was, according to the statements of his
contacts, engaged in the operation to release Frank Jacson, Leon Trotsky's
murderer. Pavel Mikhailov, as acting Soviet Consul General at the New York
Consulate, was the official Soviet contact of several persons identified or
strongly suspected as espionage agents and, according to Igor Gouzenko's tes-
timony, assisted in setting up the Soviet Military Intelligence organization
in Canada in 1942 and 1943, Anatoli A. Yakovlev entered the United States
on February 8, 1941, as a clerk at the Soviet Consulate in New York City.
He operated Harry Gold who obtained data from Klaus Fuchs, The Soviet
consulates in San Francisco and Los Angeles have also in the past proved
to be staffed with employees active in espionage tasks and also in operating
Soviet agents within governmental agencies,
By means of the various consulates in Japan, Richard Sorge was
able to contact and make friends among informed employees who unwittingly
furnished information valuable to his widespread efforts in behalf of the
Soviets,
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Igor Gouzenko, whose defection to Canadian authorities resulted
in exposing much of the workings of the Soviet Intelligence organizations,
stated among other things, that the Soviet Consul at Halifax had been employed
by the Soviet Military Intelligence Office,
The direction of overt tasks as well as of particular assignments
is almost certainly the responsibility of officers of the MGB and of the GRU*
using the cover of normal diplomatic and consular departments for security
protection..
According to a 1944 estimate, there were 2, 500 Soviet nationals
in the United States on either diplomatic or official visas. It may be seen
that Soviet foreign services provided cover for the entrance of numerous
possible agents. However, by February 1, 1953, the number had been re-
duced to 285.
3. Diplomatic Courier Service
Official Soviet couriers also enjoy the liberties of legal travel
and entry, for they carry diplomatic passports. They normally travel in
teams of two and are usually single, middle-aged men although there has
been evidence in India of the employment of women. Diplomatic couriers
are trained by and are under the supervision of the MGB; therefore, a stay
*Soviet Military Intelligence Organization.
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for an abnormally long period should be suspected. Mikhail Milsky and
Gregori Kossarev, top-ranking Soviet Intelligence officers in the capacity
of diplomatic couriers, engaged in 1944 in an inspection tour of Soviet espionage
facilities in the United States, Mexico and Canada. Subsequently, activity of
Kossarev with another courier companion in 1945-46 indicates further
Soviet Intelligence operation. They spent long hours at the Soviet Consulate
in New York City working late in the evenings; and, as was the case in 1944,
several Soviet agents, possibly suspected of laxity, were recalled to Russia
after the tours of these couriers.
Between January and April, 1947, approximately fifty official
Soviet couriers entered and departed from the New York area.
4, Trade Delegations and Purchasing Commissions
A legal opportunity for travel and entrance to a foreign country
is open also to Soviet Government Purchasing Commissions and to trade
organizations such as Amtorg. But the privilege of operating such organi-
zations has been abused by the Soviets. Amtorg has been a cover for Soviet
Intelligence ever since its founding in 1924, as was Arcos in England.
The Soviet Government Purchasing Commission, although originally set up
in the United States to handle lend-lease shipments, was simultaneously and
subsequently used as a cover for bringing espionage agents into the country.
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Victor Kravchenko, formerly an inspector for the Soviet Government
Purchasing Commission, cited the case of Semen Vassilenko, an employee
of the Commission, who flew from Washington to Moscow in February, 1944,
with six pouches of material dealing with new and extremely secret
developments in war industry in the United States.
Gaik Ovakimian, once a leading Soviet agent in the United
States, entered this country on August 15, 1933, on passage paid by the
Russian Government. He was en route to Amtorg. In 1936, he traveled to
Russia, returning on a temporary visitor's visa the same year. Subse-
quently, he obtained thirteen extensions of permits to stay in the United
States, all of them requested by Amtorg. The last such extension,
which expired June 1, 1941, was requested in November, 1940, and indi-
cated that Ovakimian was still conducting research in United States
chemicals production for the Soviet Government.
Major Sokolov came to Canada in 1942 ostensibly as a Soviet
inspector of work in Canadian factories in connection with the Canadian
Mutual Aid Program to the USSR. Meantime, he was a member of an
espionage network controlled by key agents in the United States.
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After the opening of diplomatic offices in Canada, Sokolov was
turned over to Zabotin's network. Confusing to the Canadian authorities
was the fact that Sokolov wore a uniform although not officially on the
staff of the Military Attache of the Soviet Embassy, but on that of the
Commercial Counsellor.
The Soviet Commercial Attache in Berlin and the Attache at the
Commercial Legation in Vichy functioned for the Rote Kapelle, * collecting
information from the various networks and even organizing nets.
From 1923 to 1925, visiting commissions were chosen exclusively
by the Soviet Intelligence service, according to Krivitsky. Later some
difficulty was experienced in explaining the numbers composing such
commissions. As a result, agents had to be chosen from among the
delegation or commission already appointed.
* "Rote Kapelle" was the cover name for a secret operation started by German
counterintelligence in August, 1941, and conducted against a wireless
station of the Russian Intelligence Service which had been detected in
Brussels. Subsequently, the operation extended into France, Holland,
Germany and Switzerland, where at least seven major Russian networks were
penetrated. Literally Rote Kapelle means Red Orchestra.
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5. News-gathering Agencies
Another legal passageway to a foreign country is as a repre-
sentative for a news-gathering agency such as Tass, which Richard Sorge
pointed out as a cover for collecting information. Such representatives
also have legitimate cover for asking detailed questions and for roving
about from place to place.
Ismail Akhmedov, former chief in the intelligence department
of the Red Army General Staff said that in 1941 he was sent to Germany
as the first vice-president of Tass, Berlin, and that a real purpose of
"my activity in Germany was the organization and direction of the intelligence
work. "
Nikolai I. Zhivaynov, a Tass representative in Ottawa,
formerly stationed in New York, was a member of the Soviet military
espionage system, using the cover name "Martin. "
An illustrative instance can be cited of an espionage agent sent
to the United States by Soviet Military Intelligence. Prior to the agent's
departing from Moscow, Furmanov, the director, discoursed with him
concerning the possibility of associating himself with some newspaper or
magazine and writing petroleum articles, since the agent was a specialist
in the petroleum field. In the absence of such employment, it was Furmanov's
suggestion that the agent should find himself some type of occupation and do
something to establish himself as a normal everyday citizen.
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Richard Sorge, who headed the Shanghai conspiracy, was
correspondent for German newspapers -- the Frankfurter Zeitung, and
the Amsterdam Handelsblatt. The vast amount of travel and research he
engaged in for the success of the papers and magazines he represented was,
he insisted, the key to his successful Soviet espionage activity in the Far
East. Sorge said he covered all his spy activity by his correspondent
duties.
Within the Rote Kapelle, use Stoebe kept up successful liaison
between an agent in Warsaw and one in Germany, traveling about as
correspondent for German and Swiss newspapers.
The journalist or press correspondent coverage presents an
ideal shelter for the travels of an espionage agent. The "professional
curiosity" which everyone expects to find in a journalist is undoubtedly
excellent coverage for agent activity.
6,. Red Cross
Alexander Foote, a British soldier with the International
Brigade in Spain, said that for some reason the Party decided he was a
suitable person to run a Red Cross truck which was to go to Spain from
England at regular intervals, carrying medical supplies, etc. However,
his real job was to be a courier between King Street (headquarters of the
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British Communist Party) and the Communist command of the British
Battalion of the brigade. He was also to act as passeur for unauthorized
persons who wished to enter Spain. *
G. Bessedovsky, the former Charge d' Affaires and First
Counsellor of the USSR in Paris, following his break with the USSR in
1929, made the statement that consideration was being given to sending to
the United States an official of the OGPU, Dr. Scheftel, who would be
presented as a representative of the Soviet Red Cross.
Louis Budenz, in a notarized affidavit dated November 11, 1950,
and submitted to the House Committee on Un-American Activities, wrote:
". . . I now know that this man Roberts was in
reality Dr. Gregory Rabinowitz, or Rabinowitch,
head of the Russian Red Cross in the United States....
"It is significant that the Soviet dictatorship
has been so unscrupulous in its dealings with the
American nation that it would use the International
Red Cross (with which the Russian Red Cross was
then connected) to advance espionage activities
of various sorts in the United States. It is ironical
that the Kremlin would use, or misuse, an organi-
zation devoted to the saving of lives for the purpose
of destroying the lives of its enemies by assassination. "
* Alexander Foote, Handbook for Spies (Garden City: Doubleday & Co. ,
1949), p. 15.
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7. Commercial Coverage
"Every member of the Soviet espionage organizations must
have a reasonable job, " declared Klausen, Sorge's assistant in Japan.
The official posts which the Russian Intelligence services adapted to their
travel and entry requirements show a remarkable variety. Besides
diplomatic, humanitarian and journalistic coverages, the crafts and com-
mercial professions were found suitable.
Commercial coverages sometimes have individual character
and sometimes collective character, for some conceal the individual agent
while others conceal a network.
a. Individual Character
In Japan, Max Klausen, chief radio operator of the Sorge net-
work, with his own money, went into the manufacture of fluorescent plates
to conceal his activity as an agent.
Moische Stern who conducted extensive Soviet Intelligence
operations in the United States during the 1930's tells how he obtained
a contract in this country as European representative to sell infrared ray
equipment on a commission basis. This connection gave him an entree to
European industrialists, military engineers, etc. The equipment was
manufactured at Delft, Holland.
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Several illegal resident agents have operated in England as
American businessmen. One experienced agent came to the United States
as an English businessman but when in London posed as an American
businessman.
Whittaker Chambers, confessed courier for a Soviet Military
Intelligence apparatus in the United States, has told of his preparations to
head a London branch of Maxim Lieber's New York publishing business.
Lieber had been desiring this branch office. Now the Soviet apparatus
would finance one for him. Chambers would do a regular job of seeing
authors and preparing manuscripts received from the British, among
whom Lieber already had some contacts. At the same time, Chambers
would assist "Bill, " his Soviet Intelligence superior, in setting up
an apparatus in England. To use the United States as a base for estab-
lishing Soviet apparatuses in other countries was then a common practice.
Whittaker Chambers tells of another instance when the Soviets
used a similar device. John Sherman, one of Chambers' superiors, had
been ordered to go to Tokyo, Japan, and there set up a Soviet espionage
apparatus. For this purpose he said that he needed a cover as a representative
of a legitimate American business. He said that he also needed an assistant
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and the latter would have to be an American-born Japanese with connections
in high Japanese circles. It was Sherman's idea that they should set up an
organization to be known as the American Feature Writers Syndicate. The
purpose of the organization would be to place correspondents around the
world. Plans were accordingly put under way.
It has been reported that leading business concerns in Shanghai,
as well as the service of American military organizations there, were
infiltrated by an NKVD "Shanghai Unit" of fifty capable Russian agents
with a monthly subsidy.
William Hoffman (Willie Brandes), known for his military
espionage activity in the British Wollwich Arsenal Case, posed as a com-
mercial representative for the Phantom Red Cosmetic Company and for the
Charak Furniture Company--both of New York City.
By contract dated March 21, 1941, the United States Service
and Shipping Corporation in New York was designated as exclusive agent
and representative in the United States, Canada and Mexico for Intourist,
the official Russian travel agency. Elizabeth Bentley declared it was
set up with Communist Party, USA, money or Soviet funds and was a cover
firm for Soviet espionage in the same category with World Tourists, Incor-
porated. Regarding World Tourists, Louis Budenz stated before a United
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States Congressional subcommittee that Jacob Golos, while head of the
Control Commission of the Communist Party (time not stated), was directing
espionage through that organization.
In Amsterdam, the OGPU created the firm of Gada which
provided the necessary business cover for Theodore Maly, alias Paul
Hardt, the chief OGPU illegal resident for the United Kingdom during 1936
and 1937. To create this firm, the resident OGPU agent in the Soviet
Embassy in London had an uncle in Poland who understood the Polish import
trade in rags and waste paper. The uncle, therefore, was sent by OGPU
to Amsterdam to found the firm of Gada, which would appoint represen-
tatives to work in London in connection with the export of rags to Poland.
The sole purpose of this maneuver was to provide a genuine business cover
for an OGPU agent in London.
b. Collective Character
An example of a collective commercial cover is one set up by
the Rote Kapelle network after the Germans invaded the Low Countries. The
Excellent Raincoat Company headed by Leon Grossvogel, a Communist in
Belgium, was to be expanded to branch companies in Denmark, Finland,
Norway and Sweden upon the advice and with financial aid from Leopold
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Trepper, director of Soviet Military "Intelligence in Western Europe from 1936
to 1942. Having failed as a businessman in Brussels, Grossvogel then set
up Simex in Paris and linked the Belgian company Simexco with it. The
company was designed to enter into business relations with the Quartermaster
General's Office of the Todt organization and of the Wehrmacht to collect
intelligence information.
A collective commercial cover was the aim for creating the
highly important firm called Wostwag, opened by the Fourth Department in
Berlin in 1922. It provided a genuine cover for a large number of Fourth
Department agents. The principal business of the firm was the sale of
Russian produce in Germany, Two brothers, junior staff officers of
the Fourth Department, were put in charge of the organization and espionage
side of the firm. They were naturalized Austrians of Polish origin. The
business side of Wostwag (and later its various branches) was in the hands
of an old Bolshevik--a Latvian.
About 1925 or 1926, the Fourth Department suspected that the
activities of the firm had become known to the German police. They decided
to withdraw the two brothers and other members of the Russian General
Staff and let the firm continue purely commercial activities. After their
recall from Berlin, the brothers worked for a time in the Fourth Department,
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managing accounts. Later, one brother was sent to Tientsin, China, where
he founded and built up a very important branch of Wostwag -- The Far
Eastern Trading Company. The other brother was sent to Urga, the Soviet
colony in Outer Mongolia. In 1935, the latter was recalled to Moscow with
the idea that he should go to America, The plan fell through and it was
decided to send him to London where an affiliated company of Wostwag, the
Fur Trading Company, was properly registered and carrying on legitimate
business, with certain members of the staff, however, devoting part time
to intelligence business.
According to a former Soviet Government representative,
so-called closed organizations were set up in foreign countries several years
ago by Soviet Intelligence, These organizations, he said, are headed by an
experienced agent who handles important espionage work and in the meantime
has no contact whatsoever with any official Soviet Government representative,
The agent who is the head of a closed organization is, the informant said,
ordinarily not a Soviet citizen, but has assumed another identity based upon
a false foreign passport,
8. Study Groups
In 1946, a group of ten Russian engineers made a six-month
tour of major United States cities including New York City, Washington,
D. C. , Detroit and San Francisco.
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Although there have been no direct allegations that any of these
engineers were undercover agents of the Soviet Intelligence organizations,
known Soviet practices regarding their citizens who chance to travel abroad
in any capacity certainly placed these ten engineers in positions to acquire
information that would be invaluable to the Soviet Government in the case
of hcStilities with the United States.
Screened and perhaps briefed by Soviet Intelligence before leaving
Russia, this study group was conducted through our cities according to a
plan presented by the chairman of the Soviet Government Purchasing
Commission in Washington, D. C. Few evening functions were attended by
the group during their stay, for their evenings were occupied by the extensive
reports required by the Soviet Government, pertinent parts of which would
be available to Intelligence headquarters.
Consequently, under cover of official sanction, the Soviet
study group, whether secret agents or legitimate engineers, gained detailed
information on gas works, electric utility installations, water filtration
and supply, sewage disposal systems, roads, etc. They obtained numerous
blueprints, photographs and diagrams of specific facilities. All of this
information can serve Russia immeasurably in planning targets for military
action or sabotage in the United States.
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B6 Private (Nonofficial)
In order to take advantage of every opportunity to cover entrance
abroad and freedom of movement upon arrival, the Soviets have occasionally
used persons who had acceptable personal, private or individual reasons for
going abroad. Secondarily, then, these persons would be assigned
intelligence duties.
1. Specialists
Ozaki, who worked for Sorge in the Orient, set out during his
trial by the Japanese the "Commandments" of the perfect Soviet spy,
wherein he mentioned. "It is always good to be specialized in something.
In regard to me I am a specialist in Chinese affairs and because of this I
was solicited everywhere." Among specialists admitted abroad as legitimate,
worthy visitors are such as Dr. Alan Nunn May, the British nuclear
physicist sent to Canada and the United States with a group of physicists.
Soviet Military Intelligence urged him to undertake espionage in connection
with his scientific studies.
A former Soviet Intelligence agent in the United States said that
a Russian specialist would be sent out of the country on a special mission,
but before he departed or after he arrived at his destination that specialist
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would be asked to perform a special task for Russian Intelligence. The
specialist, he said, would be "hounded" until he completed the job.
Engineers, technicians or others designated to visit a country
to buy military or naval equipment were handed over to the intelligence
departments for a short course of instructions on the particular secret
mission to be carried out during their visit. They were also instructed to
find contacts in factories they entered through whom the Soviets could
continue to obtain information.
2. Students Sent Abroad
A former Soviet agent, whose name cannot be mentioned for
security reasons, speaking about USSR students who are sent abroad for
higher education, stated that all individuals who are allowed to leave the
USSR must have a specific reason such as industrial espionage or preparation
for future assignments either in the country to which they are sent or to
some other country at a later period. He advised that students come within
this category.
Stanislaus Shumovsky came to the United States in September, 1931,
as an exchange student. In June, 1936, he received his Master's degree
from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. According to the statements
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of his classmate, Ben Smilg, his paid tutor, Shumovsky was frequently
away on trips to the West Coast or Texas with no explanation except
that arrangements had been made at Amtorg. Subsequent assignments and
contacts support the belief that Shumovsky was an active agent of the
Soviet Government.
Semen M. Semenov entered the United States as a student on
January 18, 1938. He attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
During the next few years, Semenov was reported to be operating a network
of agents while he moved from one appropriate cover to another.
3. Foreign Nationals Trained and Returned
to Operate in Their Native Land
In 1939, an agent and his wife were sent from Russia to Bulgaria
to establish a network and wireless communication with Moscow. The
salient angle of this event is that the couple was Bulgarian born and had
gone to Russia as visitors in 1935 with no strong political background. In
Russia they were picked up by Russian Intelligence, given espionage
training, equipped with money, a transmitter, aliases, and addresses
of Russian Intelligence contacts in Bulgaria.
One of Elizabeth Bentley's supervisors, Anatoli B. Gromov,
who had formerly served as First Secretary of the Soviet Embassy in
Washington, D. C. , once became concerned about her activity being
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discovered, he told her it might be well for her to go to Moscow and receive
special training. Thereafter, he said, she might be sent to Latin America,
Canada, or she might be returned to the United States under another name.
There are numerous known instances of the Russians using
other nationalities for their espionage service. Often they send them back
to serve in their own country, where for them problems of travel and entry
as well as many others will be nullified.
Another more recent example is that of a Spanish Communist
who went to Russia voluntarily to join the Red Army but instead was given
a training course in radio and associated espionage operation, and then
sent back to Spain to set up and operate a secret radio station.
4. Naturalized Citizens
An example of another type of legal entrance of an individual
espionage agent is that of Simon A. Rosenberg. He was born in Poland
but naturalized in the United States and employed by the Amtorg Trading
Corporation. In 1931 he went to the Soviet Union as an engineer and was,
he said, compelled to work for the OGPU, or his sister in Kiev would be
killed. He signed a pledge and returned to the United States in 1932 where
he contacted numerous Soviet agents and fulfilled assignments,
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5. Foreign-born Spouses
Even matrimony has on occasion offered assistance to the
operation of Soviet Intelligence. Marriage of one who is foreign born to a
United States citizen aids the foreigner in his desires to be accepted
abroad in the country of his spouse.
Hede Massing was born in Austria. It was her marriage to
Julian Gumperz, an American, that was influential in securing for her an
American passport which in turn made her a valuable courier for Soviet
Intelligence. Her next step was to become a naturalized citizen of the
United States. As a consequence, she retained her citizenship and passport
privileges although her next husband was a foreigner.
Ursula Hamburger, a German woman working for Soviet Intelligence
in Switzerland in 1940, divorced her German husband and married the
Englishman, Leon Beurton, thus incidentally acquiring British nationality.
It is possible that Soviet Military Intelligence intended to use Ursula Beurton
in England.
6. Refugees
Victor Kravchenko testified before a United States Congressional
committee that in the early war years there was a great mass of refugees
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who entered countries of the Western Hemisphere and that among these
refugees were numerous agents of the NKVD.
A German-born couple acquired German passports and fled to
Leningrad in 1932 to escape the rising Hitler regime. The situation in
Russia for foreign workers becoming constantly more uncomfortable, the
couple accepted recruitment into the Russian espionage system in order to
get out of Russia and to avoid being sent back to Germany.
The Soviets arranged travel papers and visas, and allowed the
couple to go to Stockholm, Sweden, to work against Germany for the Russians.
Before departing, they procured on their own initiative an extension or a
renewal of their German passport privileges.
In, Stockholm from 1936 to 1939 and having received no parti-
cular assignments and no more than $500 for the information they had
furnished the Russians, the man wrote his Russian principal that they
intended going to the United States since the Russians had left them "high
and dry. " Immediately following the writing of the letter, the couple went
to the German Consulate and obtained another extension of their German
passports. With no assistance from the Russians they applied for visas
and obtained them in the fall of 1939. They then took a train to Oslo,
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Norway, and left by boat for the United States. On March 18, 1951
free from Russian espionage contacts for fourteen years -- a stranger
appeared at their home in the United States to revive their agent activity
for the Soviets.
7. Growing Up Agents from the Inside
The plan which Krivitsky referred to as "growing up agents
from the inside" should be mentioned here. It is not a scheme to facilitate
travel and entry, but rather a technique to avoid the problem of travel
and entry. This method has the disadvantage of delayed maturity, but
Krivitsky said it had been regularly used by the Soviets. It is understood
that Soviet Military Intelligence using this plan is prepared in some instances
to wait for ten or fifteen years for results, and in some cases has paid
the expenses of a university education for promising young men in the
hope that they might eventually obtain diplomatic posts or other key positions
in the service of the country in which they are nationals.
Similarly, to circumvent the American passport problem,
Paul Crouch, an acknowledged former Communist, testified that Russian
secret police in 1928 worked on a plan to have members of the Young
Communist League employed with the State Department. Through them,
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the Soviet Government would then supposedly have access to blank American
passports. *
The patience required in Soviet espionage activity is illustrated
in an instance referred to by Julius Rosenberg, according to an informant.
Rosenberg is reported to have said he advanced money to a young couple
to open a business in the West. For years, according to the report, this
couple operated a business to build up a front. During difficult times,
Rosenberg supplied money to keep the business going. But during Rosenberg's
later operations this man acted as a go-between, "for example, for men
who had microfilm to send to me for further conveyance." This man in
the western city served as a secret drop for the East-to-West connections.
Closely allied to this technique is an instance referred to during
an interview with a former Soviet agent. Mention was made of a Russian
couple who came to the United States September 11, 1936, and left April 28,
1937. The agent said the indication was that the couple had probably been
sent to this country for one special assignment or else "to establish"
themselves or obtain a background so that they could be used in other
countries.
*'Government's Proposed Findings of Fact submitted to the Subversive
Activities Control Board, " July 28, 1952.
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In regard to growing up Russian agents from the inside, both
Ismail Akhmedov and Igor Gouzenko were cognizant of a plan to send a
group of young intelligence trained Soviets to the United States for university
educations. Thus, this group, to which Ahkmedov referred as the "seven
brothers, " would be admitted to the country and would be appropriately
stationed for future tasks.
C. Summary
The Soviets have found that the most secure and the most
efficient coverage for entering their intelligence agents abroad is to
appoint them to administer some sort of official business in the country
where they wish them to operate,
Traveling as a lawfully appointed representative of the Soviet
Government, of a commercial establishment, as a specialist, a student,
a refugee; or being a citizen of another country but secretly in the employ
of the Soviets, the Soviet Intelligence worker enters a foreign country and
attempts to remain undiscovered as an enemy, while he goes about organizing
his network of informants and funneling information back to Moscow.
Obvious, in the light of these travel and entry techniques, is the advantage
a counterintelligence agency has when it is able to learn of these foreign
intelligence agents before they enter and to provide measures for coping
effectively with their hostile operations.
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II. FALSE IDENTITY TO AID TRAVEL AND ENTRY
OF THE SOVIET INTELLIGENCE SERVICE
Confronted with the need for placing intelligence agents in
foreign countries and finding official and legal occupations covering travel
and entry incommensurable with the supply of agents, the Soviets do not
hesitate to use fraudulent, illegal means. Should diplomatic relations
between Russia and so-called friendly countries be broken there would be
cause for added emphasis on these clandestine means of placing intelligence
agents in enemy countries.
This study has brought to light no startlingly ingenious schemes
used in the illegal travel and entrance of Soviet agents, only the devices
that anyone facing defeat and reaching for extremities might grasp.
An interview with a former Soviet agent has revealed that another
agent entered the United States from Canada simply by being smuggled
across the river in a rowboat at night. A former Comintern agent who
operated periodically in the United States from 1929-1938 said that smuggling
people into the United States was a highly secret business of the Party
nuclei aboard the vessels of the United States Lines and, to a certain extent,
the Norddeutscher Idoyd and the former Red Star Line.
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Some have tried to take advantage of holiday crowds crossing
to and from Canada and Mexico, reasoning that officials may be lax in
checking on the occupants of the streaming vehicles. Others, in wartime,
have parachuted behind enemy lines. It has been a common practice for
agents to camouflage their illegal entrances with cover stories, or legends,
which correspond to the false names and false documents assigned theme
Protected in that manner they are enabled to travel openly by plane, train
or boat to a country where they operate under a cover occupation perhaps
devised for their particular assignment.
The Canadian espionage case and the Rote Kapelle operations
are replete with instances of Soviet espionage leaders and their assistants
being assigned false names. In the Canadian case, secret meetings and
documents regarding them protected the agents involved by the use of cover
names, although these agents were already protected by their legal cover
occupation. Soviet agents identified during the Rote Kapelle operations were
known under one false name in one country and under another false name
in another assignment in another country. These constant changes in
identity give the agent strong security. They confuse the international
liaison of the different national counterintelligence services.
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Leon Helfand, a former Russian ambassador to Rome, stated that
important espionage work is handled by experienced agents who enter the
country illegally disclaiming Soviet citizenship and remaining under an
assumed identity based upon a false passport.
Some of these illegal schemes for travel and entry are illustrated
by instances which follow. Variations to correspond with the time and the
country to be entered have been noted, but for the most part illegal travel
follows a pattern, Viewing the pattern and noting instances of application
might assist an investigator in his problems of trying to figure out what
activity may have preceded a step he discovers, and what further steps the
foreign agent might undertake unless prevented.
A. De-Russianizing
Concerning the selection of personnel to be utilized by the
Russians in their intelligence work abroad, Elizabeth Bentley recalled that
her superior had emphasized the need for "de-Russ ianizing" their agents
as much as possible. This de-Russianizing used to be a study of the
Foreign Department in Moscow from which agents are dispatched. Further-
more, the process may be continued under the tutelage of a native Communist
assigned to aid the newly arrived agent in managing dress, language, and
customs, so he can move about unnoticed.
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Language is one of the high hurdles for illegal Soviet agents.
It is not unusual for a foreign agent to prepare himself with several
languages. Elizabeth Bentley said that her superior, whom she called
"Jack, " was studying Spanish and familiarizing himself with Latin American
affairs in general. He never indicated to her, though, whether the Russians
were going to send him to Latin America or whether he himself intended
to go.
Hede Massing believed that she was invited'to participate in
espionage because of her "ability to get along with people and to move in
varied circles without difficulty. " Then too, she explained, she had
married an American citizen and accordingly possessed a legitimate
American passport -- the best protection for any European traveler at that
time.
B. False Legends
For the sake of assuming a safe identification, an illegal
resident agent needs a completely new legend to cover his life from birth
to the present. Supplying the. basis for these legends by securing legally
registered birth certificates became a valued source of income for Com-
munists in Canada-and the United States in the 1930?s and 1940sso
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To smooth entry into Panama from the United States for the
purpose of developing an intelligence contact, a Soviet agent sailed from New
York with letters of introduction to various clubs in Panama signed by
one Levy, who had been in Panama before. As a pretext for going to Panama,
the agent was prepared to say that from his friend, Malcolm Whitaker, he
had received a letter of recommendation to Major General Preston Brown,
the Military Governor of the Canal Zone. This letter stated that the agent
was on a pleasure trip and was going to visit the Browns.
C. False Documents
1. Birth Certificates
Originally, the principal requirement for obtaining a birth
certificate was a witness to certify the identity of the applicant at a local
office for vital statistics. Consequently, the Soviets had not been reduced
to moving their secret agents as false hockey players or under any other
disguises. They simply entered Canada or the United States illegally and
within a short time received citizenship and passport papers -- both false.
One informant has stated that outside of Russia in the actual
operation of the intelligence unit there is always one person who handles
documents and obtains related information. According to his standing,
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that person has the title of Inspector and is usually an assistant to the agent
in charge of the intelligence operations in that country. According to the
anonymous letter mailed to the FBI on August 7, 1943, Vassili Zubilin,
Second Secretary of the Soviet Embassy, Washington, D. C., was revealed
to be personally engaged in the illegal moving of agents into and out of
the United States and in preparyng counterfeit documents
When Hede Massing was working for the Russians in 1935, she
said she was told to get hold of some birth certificates. The only way she
was able to comply was to contact an important official of the Communist
Party, USA, a tactic which her Soviet superior considered a regrettable
necessity. She met him six or eight times in two or three months and
eventually received the birth certificates in a sealed envelope, for which
she paid him cash.
A Hungarian Communist, Alexander Goldberger, who was known
to his espionage contacts in the United States as J. Peters and as Stevens,
had developed a system for trafficking in essential birth certificates, naturali-
zation papers and other identifying documents for his contacts. One of
them -- Whittaker Chambers -- told about Peters having several young
Communists working in the Genealogical Division of the New York Public
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Library. Some of these individuals would look up births of children who
were born in the early part of the century; others would search for deaths
which occurred during the same period. The lists of births and deaths
were then compared. For example, Chambers said, a John Smith was
found to have been born in 1900 and died several years later. An application
then would be made for a copy of the birth certificate of John Smith..
Communist Party.members, using the names of parents listed on either
the birth or death certificates, would write for photostat copies of these
birth certificates to be mailed to a cover address from which they were
turned over to Peters. It was Chambers' impression that Peters received
hundreds of these birth certificates which were used as the basis for
securing legal passports, not all of which were to be used by espionage
workers but some for Communist Party underground activity.
John Loomis Sherman, Whittaker Chambers' superior in a
United States espionage apparatus, was designated to go to Tokyo, Japan,
to set up an apparatus. He ordered Chambers to get him the needed papers.
Peters obliged Chambers by securing a birth certificate in the name of
Charles Chase on which Sherman procured a passport enabling him to
travel to Japan and back to the United States. For a subsequent journey
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Sherman did not make use of the same birth certificate but required Chambers
through Peters to procure another. The one provided on this occasion was
in an Irish name. It is to be noted that, although Sherman was American
born, he falsified his identatyo
Between late 1935 and early 1937, Mr. and Mrs. Edward Joseph
Herbert rented a furnished New York apartment from which they made three
trips to Europe. The front sheet of the passport application of Mrs. Herbert
contains a handwritten notation that a photostatic copy of the birth certificate
of Sarah Graff was presented at the passport office. Mrs. Herbert directed
that the passport be mailed to her New York address. Subsequent investi-
gation disclosed that the real Edward Joseph Herbert and the real Sarah
Graff had died as 4nfants during the first year of their lives and that the
couple traveling as Mr. and Mrs. Herbert were actually Mr. and Mrs,
Vassili Zubilin9 both Soviet Intelligence personnel.
Zubiin later, in 1942, became a member of the Russian
Embassy staff in Washington, D. C.
Alfred Tilton directed Soviet Military Intelligence in the United
States (1927-1930) from New York City under the name of Joseph Paquette
He supported this false identity with fraudulent Canadian papers obtained
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with the assistance of Tim Buck, Secretary of the Canadian Communist
Party. Later, by means of more fraudulent documents, Tilton became
"Alfred Martin. "
Communists placed in offices that could assist Soviet operations
were an important part of the scheme for securing identification papers.
When Whittaker Chambers was scheduled to go to England to help his
superior, "Bill, " set up a Soviet apparatus, Chambers' family, consisting
of wife and daughter, were to accompany him. Not only must he have papers
for himself and his wife, but also for his infant daughter. J. Peters again
obliged, securing birth certificates for Chambers and his wife in the name
of David Breen. Then to perform the rest of his duty, Peters visited the
City Hall at Atlantic City where he contacted the "right" individual (Chambers
presumed he was a Communist), and for a fee, had the name of Ursula
Breen written into the birth records and a regular birth certificate issued
in that name.
Peters was assisted also in getting hold of petitions of persons
seeking naturalization, who included on their petition the names of minor
children. He used these petitions to secure passports in. the names of the
children listed thereon,
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A former Comintern agent who operated periodically in the
United States explained that birth certificates of dead Party members or
other people who were considered "safe" were sent to the National Office
from the district organizers of the Party.
2. Affidavits of Faked Relatives
This spurious method of getting into and out of a country by
using "safe" birth certificates was only one of several illegal methods used
by the Soviet Intelligence services. Another method was to claim relation-
ship with someone who could assist in gaining the required foundations
for openly acquiring the needed legal papers.
To assist him in his problems of "explaining" his way around,
a Soviet operator leaving Moscow was frequently given the status of a "phoney"
relative of a citizen he would contact abroad and from whom he had been
separated a number of years, Here again a legend would be required: the
agent would be given a complete background which he would be requested to
memorize prior to making any contact in the country he would enter.
When "Mark Jonas, " Soviet agent destined to operate in Poland,
entered the United States to organize his group, he was sponsored by a
Benjamin Taishoff, When interviewed, Taishoff denied any wrongdoing,
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stating that he had received a letter from the man using the name "Haas. "
Appropriately recalling that they were cousins, "Haas" asked Taishoff
to furnish him an affidavit. Taishoff complied.
3. Naturalization Certificates
Sources have made it clear that Russia told its agents to be on
the lookout for naturalization certificates. One agent said he contacted an
undertaker in Chicago to obtain naturalization certificates from unclaimed
bodies. These certificates he said were subsequently utilized for illegal
Soviet activities.
Alfred Tilton, who once directed Soviet Military Intelligence
in the United States, arranged with an undertaker in Brooklyn to purchase
the naturalization papers of a deceased American soldier, Frank Kleges.
Afterward, a Soviet agent assumed that identity, set about acquiring an
American background and then went to Paris on a fraudulent American pass-
port.
To obtain naturalization papers, #23606, Series E, in Montreal
on March 19, 1937, "Mark Jonas" posed as a relative of Aaron Marcovitch,
whose father-in-law's name was Samuel Jonas.
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One "Charles Peter Atkin, " a member of the Jonas group,
posed as the son of a shoemaker, Sam Atkin, in Montreal. According
to Sam Atkin, Jr., Aaron Marcovitch came to Sam Atkin, Sr., and told
of having a refugee cousin whom he desired to bring into Canada to be
naturalized. Marcovitch talked the shoemaker into letting him use the
entry record of Sam Atkin, Jr. as a basis for establishing a naturalization
identity for "Charles Peter Atkin. " Marcovitch collected the old Atkin
papers and in three days was back with $100 and new papers for the
shoemaker and his son. It is noted that the papers of the Atkins and
"Charles Peter Atkin" bear consecutive numbers -- #23623, #23624, #23625.
The passports issued to Mark Jonas, his wife, and Charles Peter Atkin
bear the consecutive numbers -- #37628, #37629, and #37630.
Aaron Marcovitch and Adolph Stark, also of Montreal, were
apparently instrumental in procuring false Canadian papers for various
Russian agents who desired to establish Canadian identities in order to
facilitate their going to European countries to engage in espionage. Investi-
gation proved that an illegal passport bureau was maintained at Montreal,
Quebec, for the purpose of fabricating information upon which Canadian
naturalization papers and passports were obtained for persons obviously
connected with Russian OGPU activities. For an agent to go to Montreal
"to change his feathers" (meaning to obtain the basis for new identity)
was not unusual.
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When arrested by Canadian authorities for internment, Stark
and Marcovitch had between 150 and 200 applications for Canadian citizen-
ship and other documents in their possession. These two men had been
directed, at least to some extent, by a Mr. Stern of the United States
who engineered such fraudulent activities in both Canada and the United
States and who appeared to be an OGPU official.
Aaron Marcovitch had even approached the Canadian Postmaster
General Ernest Bertrand to get him to sign a letter recommending for
citizenship one Willie Brandes who later proved to be a Russian espionage
agent. Mr. Bertrand fully trusted Marcovitch, who "worked in my
committee all through the elections under the supervision of my campaign
manager. " Nevertheless, the deception worked out by Marcovitch went
so far as to include a false father for Brandes and also a false marriage
which the rabbi, listed as officiating, denied performing.
4. Passports
The fraudulent passport system is without doubt the illegal
scheme that has been worked out and used scientifically by both Soviet
State Security and Military Intelligence organizations. Forged passports
are mentioned by Richard Sorge as an operational objective.
One of Ovakimian's agents stated that some passports were
obtained on the basis of naturalization papers which had been either legally
or illegally obtained and some were obtained on various birth certificates,
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since, during the period of his operations, no independent investigation
was made of the applicant for the passport.
Jacob Golos, president of World Tourists Incorporated and
Elizabeth Bentley's superior, was instrumental in finding "safe" people
who would go to the Federal Agencies with the pictures of those to whom
passports were to be issued in order to fill out the questionnaires and swear
to the correctness of all answers given. The same people received the
passports when they were delivered and handed them over to Golos.
High OGPU officials had American passports and arrangements
were regularly made to have these passports renewed in the United States
by some other individual in order that the passports might be kept current
for any necessary use by the individuals in possession of them,
The Robinson-Rubens passport fraud case makes clear that
during the 1930's illegally obtained passports were procured through the New
York County Clerk?s Office. Falsified applications were passed to the
County Clerk through a chain of Government employees, making final certi-
fication a favor for a friend. In other instances $500 or $1, 000 was paid
per passport.
Intelligence training courses are offered in Russia to carefully
sifted foreign Communists, European and American, and to certain
qualified Russians. Defectors have mentioned secret schools that teach,
among other operations for espionage, passport forgery although it is noted
that agents on missions neither manufacture nor falsify the documents they
carry. That work is done by someone else.
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The illegal agent first of all must conceal his connection with
Russia. Consequently, if he begins his journey on his Russian passport,
he exchanges it in the next country he enters for a false one of some other
country and picks up his Russian passport again on his return journey, for
in Russia every citizen over fifteen years of age, with the exception of
collective farmers, must possess a passport as one of his identifying
documents.
At the end of a tour of duty, agents are sometimes summoned
back to Moscow either for discussions or to take a course in some specialized
subject In such cases, the individual travels to some other country --
usually one with a common frontier with the USSR -- and there at a
prearranged rendezvous, he meets an agent from the Center* who hands
him a new passport, sometimes a Russian one, containing the necessary
visas, of course, bearing a false name. In return, the recalled agent
hands over to the Center's agent a sealed envelope containing his original
passport and necessary documentation which he receives back on his
return from Russia
Following an espionage mission Nicholas Dozenberg returned
from China to Moscow in 1937. He stopped en route at the Soviet Con-
sulate in Paris for a Soviet visa, Within three days, the visa was issued
on a separate slip. Dozenberg stated that visas of this nature were commonly
used and surrendered at the Soviet border in order that one's passport would
not disclose that particular trip into the USSR.
* Intelligence headquarters in Moscow.
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The necessity of concealing relationship to Russia explains two
features of travel techniques: 1. An agent seldom proceeds directly from
Russia to the country where he is to operate and back again, but follows
a devious route. 2. The Soviets coax into Russia and train for foreign
espionage people of other nationalities who have passports from their
own countries and who will operate secretly for Soviet interests.
Sorge went to the Soviet Union from Japan in 1935, but by way
of the United States. A Communist Party contact in New York gave him a
forged American passport which he said he destroyed in Holland after
leaving Moscow to begin his next assignment. The use of the forged pass-
port was to prevent his real passport showing he had been in Russia.
Sorge pointed out that he did not forge passports, that they were given
him by contact men.
Walter Krivitsky said it was not unusual for the Comintern
representative or the OGPU agents in America to send American passports
to Moscow where a staff was employed in "fixing" such documents according
to the needs. Hede Massing referred to the "cobbling" of "captive"
passports.
In 1924, the Berlin police raided Comintern headquarters and
seized a number of German passports, together with files listing the names
of their original owners, the true names of the agents to whom they were
issued and the false names under which the agents were traveling.
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Max Klausen, Richard Sorge's assistant in Japan, told Japanese
interrogators that at the Moscow General Headquarters there are hundreds
of passports of different countries. All are authentic, for the Soviet
Government took them from their rightful owners. Only the names and
photographs are false.
Austrian passports were among those used by the Soviets
before they discovered the availability of Canadian and United States pass-
ports. To obtain the issue of the legal Austrian passport a certificate
of domicile was more important than a birth certificate. At one time the
Fourth Department had as its agent the head of the local council of a
small town in Austria. This man issued false certificates of domicile
whenever required, and a confederate in a nearby town issued false birth
certificates if these were necessary. However, sometime in 1934, both
these men were arrested and the department was obliged to use Moscow-
made Austrian passports for the time being.
When Henri Robinson, operating in the Swiss network, wanted
a passport, he turned over to a colleague, Anna Muller, the civil status
information, the description and the photographs of Soviet agents whom he
wished to furnish with the identifying documents. She transmitted the
information to one Habijanic, an officer of the Swiss Cantonal Police, who
searched the index file of the population in the city of Basle to find a
person whose description corresponded with the one which he had received.
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The passport request was then made through a willing colleague of Habijanic
and the passport signed without difficulty by the head of the office.
For many years, and continuing as far as Krivitsky knew,
there was a special section of the Fourth Department in Moscow that issued
false documents. Two Lazowski brothers, expert forgers, were in charge
and they had a number of experts under them. This staff prepared all kinds
of falsifications, such as passports, credentials, signatures, and in fact any
forgery required by the Fourth Department. However, the Department
prefered to falsify an identity with which to secure a genuine passport, rather
than to forge the passport.
Russians have had much experience in forging documents. Pre-
Revolution conditions in Czarist Russia gave them exceptional training in
the art. The elaborate passport regulations which became prevalent in most
European countries after 1918 found the Bolsheviks well prepared. Experts
in the offices of Soviet Intelligence forge consular signatures and government
seals wholly indistinguishable from the genuine articles, according to
Krivitsky.
Krivitsky stated further that the O. M. S. (International Liaison
Section of the Comintern), unlike the OGPU and Military Intelligence, did
not actually manufacture passports. Instead they procured genuine pass-
ports and "doctored" them according to requirements. To obtain genuine
passports, the OM S. drew up the fanatical zeal of Communist members
and sympathizers. For example, if the QM. S. representative in the
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United States required two American passports for agents in China, he
communicated with his contact in the American Communist Party, who
in turn obtained the passports from Party members or sympathizers. When
the O. M. S. staff of approximately ten members received the passports,
it removed the photographs, substituted others and made other necessary
changes. Benjamin Gitlow stated that two passport factories operated
for the Comintern and OGPU, one in Berlin, Germany, and one in Moscow.
Blunders in all this falsifying are bound to occur. Following
are a few that have been noted:
1. An old date passport that appears to be new.
2. Entries made with the same ink and the same
handwriting although they have reference to
different places of issue or places of entry.
3. An exchanged photograph on the passport instead
of bearing a genuine stamped impression carries
a copy in indelible pencil.
4. A subsequent entry of alleged residence in a
different type of writing.
5. Pages replaced by other pages recently inserted,
6. Particular figures on the upper edges of pass-
port pages cut off to conceal certain data.
An agent who makes numerous trips into a given country in
order to strengthen liaisons there makes use of passports having different
names so as to avoid being noticed. Rudolph Hamburger of the Swiss
network of the Rote Kapelle traveled sometimes with a German passport,
sometimes with a Honduran passport. In order to effect his liaisons
with Switzerland, Henri Robinson made use of three passports under
different names. He presented one of them to the Swiss Inspection Office, and
presented another made out in a different name to the French Inspection Office.
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The absence of the exit stamp should have caused the frontier services to
detect the fraud.
Klausen, upon leaving Moscow for Tokyo, was furnished three
passports -- Canadian, Russian, German -- each made up under a different
name. Swiss police unearthed the information that during a period of
two years, Ignatz Reiss, who operated Hede Massing's early activity
in Soviet Service, used seven or eight different names and traveled on
forged passports furnished by Soviet officials in the different European
countries.
A Soviet defector describes his own experiences as follows:
After it was decided that he would be sent to the United States, he had to
see a person in "a little office i n a building on Lubianka Square. " The per-
son in charge he found had already been notified and greeted him with: "I'll
give you an American passport. Do you want to be an American citizen?"
This person then referred him to a laboratory technician who asked him if
he should like to be a Dane. The technician then brought in an old Danish
telephone book and out of the classified section entitled "Pharmacists"
selected a name in which the fraudulent passport was to be made up. But
when actually made up, the passport described a merchant. For the
American passport the name of a naturalized American doctor of Yugoslav
origin was used. The agent was instructed to travel via Vienna on the
American passport where he should meet a contact and exchange it for the
Danish passport which was to be sent to Vienna by diplomatic pouch.
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On his return trip to Russia this agent said he was issued a
Canadian passport in his own name and in Paris picked up his original
Danish passport already stamped to take him through Switzerland, Austria,
and Poland.
On his next trip to the United States he was given another
Canadian passport with a different identity and he traveled by an entirely
different route.
Another example of using multiple passports and identities and
making the exchange en route to the assignment is found in the account of
a defector who operated widely for Soviet Intelligence. He said he left
Moscow in January, 1930, on a Swiss passport in an unknown name and
proceeded to Berlin where through a contact man who operated a cigar
shop he met one Wilhelm, a Comintern agent. In a cafe Wilhelm exchanged
passports with him so that he could proceed to the Balkans to organize the
nucleus of military espionage networks in Rumania and Bulgaria. The
second was a fraudulent German passport made out to a mining engineer
with a German sounding name. With a corresponding legend, the agent
had familiarized himself before leaving Moscow.
The same Soviet agent tells of traveling from Moscow to
Brazil in 1934-35. Arriving in Copenhagen he exchanged the passport with
which he left Moscow for an Austrian passport in the name of an Austrian
merchant avowedly on a holiday. On the Austrian passport he proceeded
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via Paris to Genoa, Italy, where he boarded a French liner for Rio de
Janeiro., There a contact man met him at the boat and took him to a hotel
in the Flamingo district where he met the organizer of the Brazilian Com-
munist Party.
The Rote Kapelle groups, active from 1936-1942 throughout
Europe, depended frequently upon false passports. Leopold Trepper,
perhaps the most important member of the venture, made several trips
between Paris and Moscow in 1937 and 1938 each time with false papers
in a different name. Leon Grossvogel used Uruguayan passports issued
under Spanish or Mexican sounding names on his trips to the Scandinavian
countries from Belgium under commercial cover.
Another key operator in the Rote Kapelle,who was actually a
Red Army captain and an expert in chemical warfare, went to Brussels as
a student of chemistry traveling on a Finnish passport made out in an
appropriately assumed name, Erland Jernstraem. Names and nationalities
to agree with the falsified passports appeared throughout that undertaking.
Although many operators in the networks were discovered, it is believed
that a number were able to escape and may be active in present operations.
A notable opportunity for procuring coveted Canadian and
United States passports came during the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939).
According to Walter Krivitsky, all volunteers' passports were taken up
when they arrived in Spain, and very rarely was a passport returned.
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Even when a man was discharged he was told that his passport had been
lost. From the United States alone hundreds of volunteers went over.
Krivitsky further reported that nearly every diplomatic pouch from Spain
arriving at the Lubianka* contained a batch of passports from members
of the International Brigade. He said tnat one day in the spring of 1937,
a batch of about a hundred passports arrived; half of them were American.
They had belonged to dead soldiers and after some weeks of inquiry into
family histories of their original owners could easily be adapted to a Soviet
espionage agent.
Sometime around December, 1940, according to Elizabeth Bentley's
statement, her superior, Jacob Golos, under investigation by the Dies
Committee, ** opened a package and started to burn the contents, among which
she specifically recalled were approximately thirty or forty American pass-
ports. Golos explained that these passports were left with him by people
who had gone to fight in Spain.
Fraudulent passport techniques of the Soviet Intelligence services
are demonstrated by the Witczak case. Message #11436 dated August 14,
1945, from Moscow to "Grant" (code name for Colonel Nikolai Zabotin,
Canadian Military Attache) was among the Russian documents Igor Gouzenko
placed before the Royal Commission. after he decided to break away from
the Soviet Union. The message contains instructions regarding the obtaining
of a new fraudulent Canadian passport for Witczak, whom Gouzenko identified
ifl~ ~A
* A prison in Moscow_
** A special committee of the United States House of Representatives under
the chairmanship of Representative Martin Dies of Texas set up in 1938 for
investigation of un-American activities. Dies retired from the House in 1944,
but the committee was put on a permanent basis and called the Committee on
Un-American Activities in January, 1945.
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as a person assigned by the Soviet Union to the United States to build up an
independent espionage network to be used in event diplomatic relations
between the Soviet Union and the United States are broken off.
Zabotin, working through Sam Carr, Organizing Secretary of
the Communist Party for all of Canada, had been endeavoring for approxi-
mately a half year to date of the telegram to secure a passport for
Witczak biding his time as a student at a Los Angeles, California, 'university
and engaging in some obvious recruiting for espionage.
Back in 1930, a bachelor, Ignacy Witczak, journeyed from
Kurowo, Poland, to the Ontario district of Canada where 'he became a
farm laborer and received naturalization papers in 1935. In 1937, he
secured a passport and went to Spain with the MacKenzie-Papineau Battalion
of the International Brigade. At the military base of Abacete he and
some others were relieved of their passports by an officer who stated
that such documents should not be taken into the front line as they might
be destroyed. When Witczak applied for his passport at the end of his
term of service, he was told at brigade headquarters that the trucks
which had carried the passports had been bombed, "probably" destroying
the passports. Upon his return to Canada he did not apply for a new
passport but did receive new naturalization papers, the original ones, he
said, he lost while swimming a river in Spain. In 1945, Moscow assured
Sam Carr that the real Witczak had died in the Spanish Civil War.
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United States immigration records show that "Ignacy and
Bunia Witczak, " Canadians, landed in New York from Boulogne September 13,
1938. In 1940, one Ignacy Samuel Witczak registered in Los Angeles as
an alien "merchant, " "last arrived in the United States at Detroit, Michi-
gan, on September 25, 1938. I came in by railroad unknown. " He stated
he was born at Kurowo, Poland. Such. was the legend of the California
Witczak, the fictitious Witczak.
According to the files of notes Gouzenko displayed to the Royal
Commission, Sam Carr had been instructed to obtain a new passport as
well as a new identity for the Soviet Witczak but was having trouble arranging
the transfer of identification. from the real Witczak to the spurious one.
Problems of naturalization and marriage were uppermost, It developed
that the original Witczak's passport dated March 12, 1937, was used by
Sam Carr and his aides to secure a renewal for the California Witczak.
Questionnaires were provided, signatures forged, photographs supplied,
and an office employee bribed to substitute a manufactured 1937 application
form in the files for the original 1937 application, in order to furnish the
basis for the issue of a new 1945 passport to the spurious Witczak.
Anticipating that it might be necessary to surrender the old
passport or, at least,to produce it for inspection at the Passport Office, Sam
Carr suggested that burning it and leaving nothing except the number with
which to compare the 1937 application would appear authentic. Carr's fee
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for the whole transaction was set first at $5, 000, but Moscow termed it
"fantastic, " so he reduced it to $3, 000.
The passport was secured, but investigators have since brought
to light the stealthy maneuvering that now plainly reveals the forgery.
Shortly after Gouzenko defected, the Lctitious Witczak mysteriously dis-
appeared.
The case of Arthur Adams is a record of a number of journeys
between the United States and Russia. On December 8, 1937, Samuel
Novick, treasurer of the Wholesale Radio Service Company, Inc. , New
York City, wrote to the United States Consul at Toronto, Canada, asking
permission to import his Canadian representative, Arthur Adams, as a
skilled laborer, However, Adams was denied admission as there was no
shortage in the labor field for which he was to be imported. Therefore, on
March 31, 1938, Adams himself wrote the Immigration and Naturalization
Service, advising that he did not desire to enter the United States as a
skilled contract laborer as he was now an independent specialist, and
that besides doing work for Wholesale Radio he planned to perfect a cream-
whipping machine. He further explained that he planned to establish a
laboratory of his own under the name of Technological Laboratories, Inc.
On May 16, 1938, Adams again executed a "Preliminary Question-
naire for Immigration Visa, " stating, 111 am in business for myself, "
Under that section devoted to showing his purpose in coming to the
United States, he stated. "I have organized. in New York a Technological
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Laboratory for the development of mechanical and electrical devices.
The business is incorporated in the State of New York... I am the President..
On the basis of the above cover, a fraudulent Canadian birth
certificate and statements made by friends, Adams entered the United
States on May 17, 1938, with permission to stay four months. Ignoring
the four-months limitation, he took up residence in the United States.
According to a former headquarters official of Soviet Military
Intelligence, Adams had been called to Russia in 1932 or 1933 and recruited
into the Soviet Military Intelligence Service upon the recommendation
of the Comintern. This informant also stated that in 1937 Adams was
dispatched to the United States to serve as a "legal resident" to operate
for Soviet Military Intelligence and later was assigned tasks of obtaining
top-secret blueprints and other American military secrets.
Prior to 1938, Adams had entered the United States. On two
of these occasions -- November 1, 1928, and again on December 5, 1932 --
he came in as a Soviet Government representative making inquiry con-
cerning plans and equipment for factories and a contract for the use of
the Wright Whirlwind Motor.
It is conjectured that, on each of the above trips to the United
States, Adams was engaged in Soviet espionage.
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Another case that emphasizes the use of falsified passports
concerns the journey of a Soviet agent who said he was given very little
advice about travel and entry techniques. He was sent from Moscow to
New York in 1934 under private cover. He proceeded as follows:
1. Removed labels from his clothing.
2. Limited amount of wearing apparel carried with him.
3. Dropped the Russian language.
4. Left Moscow by train traveling on a false American pass-
port to Vienna.
5. Spoke English en route.
6. Met Vienna contact as directed and exchanged his American
for a false Danish passport. (He said the official in the
photography shop in the OGPU office where he secured
his passports may have given him some background about
Scandinavia.)
7. Spoke German to Vienna contact.
8. Hesitated about going to the United States Consulate at
Vienna or American Express to handle visa matters.
9. Thought of saying he was going to see the Chicago World's
Fair.
10. Pondered the possibility of entering the United States
through Cuba or Mexico.
11. Secured a six-month travel visa for a "vacation in Mexico. "
12. Approached a tourist agency and explained he wished to
travel to Mexico via Italy.
13. Sent a note back to his director at Moscow from Genoa.
14. Boarded a passenger freighter.
15. Went to United States Consulate in Tampico, Mexico, to
obtain a transit visa to go to New York "for travel to
Europe. " Had to present a ticket for European travel.
16. Chatted casually with the Immigration Officer at Inter-
national Bridge, Laredo, Texas.
17. Showed officer his transit visa.
18. Registered under Danish name at hotel.
19. Traveled to New York by train.
20. Contacted Amtorg.
21. Boarded the Normandy for return to Russia on a Canadian
passport in his true name. Ovakimian gave him a written
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22 In Paris picked up his Danish passport already stamped
to take him through Switzerland, Austria and Poland
23. To return to the United States, was given papers of a
naturalized Canadian citizen of Finnish descent.
24. Returned to New York via Latvia; Paris; Port Arthur,
Canada.
Under certain circumstances, Soviet espionage agents use a
special type of travel document, similar in appearance to a genuine pass-
port The document is known as a "Sojourn Permit" or "Vid Na Zhitelstvo. "
Another United States intelligence agency has investigated the origin and
use of this document and reports that it is not a valid passport although some
countries will affix their visas. It is issued only by the Soviet embassies
and consulates outside the USSR to persons being granted Soviet citizenship
under the program of naturalizing White Russians, persons originating in
areas annexed by the USSR but living outside the USSR, and persons who
have lost their Soviet citizenship for any reason. This citizenship so
acquired may be kept secret and its possessor forced to retain his former
status abroad as cover for carrying on agent activity?
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III. USE OF PARACHUTES FOR ILLEGAL ENTRY
The Soviets train some of their agents to enter forbidden
territory in wartime by means of parachute. Rote Kapelle agents with
wireless transmitters were parachuted into the Low Countries and into
Germany.
Women as well as men were trained as wireless operators to be
parachuted behind enemy lines. One of the girls so trained said that at
the close of her radio course the espionage school she was attending
moved to the outskirts of Moscow to practice encoding and decoding for
two months. Then, on August 27, 1943, she and her male agent companion
were flown from an airfield south of Moscow to a partisan transfer point
for groups of partisans going in and out of Finland, In another plane, they
were flown across the front lines and jumped into Finland at night. They
wore civilian clothes, carried knapsacks containing their transmitters and
receivers, and were provided also with food, pistols, maps, compasses
and ration cards. The object of entering enemy territory was to contact
and report to Moscow via clandestine wireless.
Parachutists, as was the case in Poland, a r e trained to
climax decomposition work. In Poland everything possible had been done
before the outbreak of the war to prepare organized assistance from
within for an invading Russian Army. Both the Fourth Department and
OGPU had agents working in key positions in Government departments,
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and over a period of years the Polish Army had been infiltrated by Polish
Communists. It was the duty of the Fourth Department to organize groups
of these Communists to act under the orders of specially trained Russian
Army parachutists who, in the event of war, would be dropped behind
the enemy lines to act in accordance with a prearranged plan,
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VI. ESCAPE DEVICES USED BY SOVIET AGENTS
Besides emphasizing the methods for facilitating travel on
fraudulent passports, the instructions which Julius Rosenberg gave to
David Greenglass also reveal a pattern of travel action for a compro-
mised agent.
About February, 1950, when Klaus Fuchs was arrested, Rosen-
berg advised Greenglass to leave the country before his activity might be
disclosed.
Greenglass explained:
"I was to go to Mexico City by train with my family.
There I was to rent a house and write a letter to the
Soviet Embassy in Mexico City. In the letter I was
to mention something about the United Nations. I
was to wait three days at which time I would go to
the Plaza de la (something or other) and stand in
front of the statue of Christopher Columbus at 5 p. m.
with my thumb in the Mexico City street guide. A
man would come to me.... The man would give me
passports and money for a trip to either Stockholm,
Sweden, or Berne, Switzerland, where I was to
repeat the same procedure and if I were to go to
Stockholm I would stand in front of a statue of
Linnaeus, at which time I would receive the
necessary papers to continue my trip to Czecho-
slovakia where I was to write to the Soviet
Ambassador to merely state, 'I am here.' "
According to Rosenberg, Mexico City is the springboard and
from there his friends obtain passage to a predecided destination.
Elizabeth Bentley was told that if she were able to get to Mexico
or Canada, the passport and visa problem could be handled in those
countries. When a Mr. Tamer was accused of removing documents from
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files of the Crucible Steel Co. , Harrison, New Jersey, he went into hiding
and later left for the Soviet Union.
Two of Ignatz Reiss's assassins escaped to Mexico, another
to Spain.
It is understood to have been the practice of OGPU to give travel
advice to their prospective foreign agents who have not had the benefits
of a training course. One agent stated that he could recall conversations
at various times about major blunders, or agents being disclosed. Talk
among the group was about how the agent should have listened to the
instructions given to him concerning his method of travel.
Six days after David Greenglass was arrested, Morton Sobell
and his family took flight from New York by American Airlines for Mexico
City. After his arrival there, he hid out in the rooming house section
of that city under the name of N. Walter until the date of his location through
Bureau investigation and his arrest by the Mexican Security Police.
Rosenberg is said to have described Sobell's flight as foolhardy, stating
that if he had consulted him, he (Rosenberg) could have arranged for Sobell's
escape to Mexico through his contacts.
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Investigations have brought out the evidence that Party leaders
have been instructed to establish secret hide-outs for use in emergencies.
Leading officials in the United States have been told to avoid being arrested
and to make every effort to reach Mexico if the Communist Party is
forced to go underground. Directions have been given for contacting the
Communist Party in Mexico upon arrival.
There are known instances of "safe" houses and mail drops
being used by couriers in secret journeys across Europe and America.
The Communist Parties in the various countries assist agents
in their travels. It has already been noted that it is through the Com-
munist Party and sympathizers that needed documents are often supplied.
It is also the Communist Party that provides the "safe" houses. The Swiss
police detected activity from a clandestine radio, revealing to them the
approximate location of a Rote Kapelle operator. Before the police could
apprehend the agent, the Swiss Communist Party took him to a safe place
where they lodged and fed him for several months. Then he was taken to
Communist sympathizers in Geneva. The Swiss Communist Party organized
the secret departure of two agents and their passage into France where they
were lodged first at the Soviet Embassy in Paris, then by a member of the
French Communist Party. An agent en route from one country to another
sometimes takes refuge at the Soviet Embassy where he stays until suitable
cover and documents are provided.
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Leopold Trepper, the Soviet's chief resident agent in France for
Rote Kapelle operations, fled from his German captors and probably hid
someplace in France until the end of the war; then he left under an assumed
name.
An emergency means of escape recommended is to board a
Russian or a Russian-chartered boat in port and notify the captain to
contact the Embassy,
An avenue of escape in wartime is found in the advice to seek
an assignment in counterintelligence close to the front, contact the
partisans, desert with them and with their help return to the USSR.
Agents who have lost favor with Moscow are sometimes "called
home. " Paul and Hede Massing were successful in escaping from Russia
after complying with their summons. At first they met difficulties in
regard to their requests to the Soviets to return their travel documents
and to issue exit visas. Her passport and his certificate of identity were
genuinely American and they insisted upon using them although the Soviet
agents urging them to return to Russia had insisted that they use false
passports. Finally Mrs. Massing threatened to go to the American
Embassy for help and hinted that she had left in the United States the story
of their activities and departure for Moscow, and if she and her husband
did not return to the United States this story might be made public. Within
three hours, the papers were in her hands.
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The Rubenses, of the mysterious Robinson-Rubens passport
case, were not as successful in freeing themselves after their trip "home. "
"Richard, " identified by Whittaker Chambers as Rubens, was the Soviet
agent whom J. Peters contacted regarding documents for identification,
The chief of "Richard's" apparatus, General Berzin, had been liquidated.
When "Richard" was summoned, he knew his turn had come,. Therefore,
skilled in passport falsification matters, it seems he made use of his
knowledge to plant clues in order that Soviet action against him and his
wife would be discovered by United States authorities.
For himself and his American wife, he secured two sets of
passports on the same day by filing applications with conspirators at
the New York County Clerk's office where three contacts of J. Peters'
underground apparatus were employed. The first set was taken out in
the name of an unknown young man and woman named Robinson; the other
set in the name of Rubens. Upon receiving the Robinson passports,
Richard replaced the pictures with those of himself and his wife, but the
application filed with the State Department still carried the Robinson
pictures. The preparation came to light when Mrs. Rubens in Moscow
sought help from the American Embassy there in locating her husband
who "had disappeared, "
Chambers concludes.
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". . . From the first, I had been puzzled as to why
an underground worker of Richard's experience
would make two passport applications in one day,
in an unusual way in an unusual place. I also
wondered why he would take his American wife to
Moscow during the Purge. I decided presently that
he had taken her on purpose so that she might inter-
cede for him if necessary. And he had left that
curiously open trail (there were other easily followed
clues also) so that it would be discovered. How
desperate he must have been! And, in returning
to Moscow, what a razor's edge he elected to walk
on."*
* Whittaker Chambers, Witness (New York: Random House, Inc., 1952),
pp. 400-401.
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SECURITY INFORMATION - CONFIDENTIAL
V. CONCLUSION
Placing their secret agents abroad to collect whatever information
will be of use to the Soviets has resulted in the employment of certain
travel and entry techniques which have been mentioned briefly in this paper.
We have seen how the Soviet Intelligence Service uses official
assignments as cover for key espionage agents. We have also observed
that added opportunities have been secured by the use of nonofficial or
private cover and concealed illegal entries.
We have noted how agents unprotected by official cover make use
of carefully prepared false identities and false documents.
We have seen the numerous techniques and something of the
scope and variations used in the past by Soviet Intelligence. In the absence
of information regarding future operations, we must assume that Soviet
agents may continue to use these techniques for travel and entry. We may
also assume that entirely new plans adapted to currently changing needs
and policies will be put into practice. It will be important for our security
officers and counterintelligence agents to recognize the old techniques and
be alert to the use of new ones.
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 Ap el. ,mF ..
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