The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB

60. Romerstein and Levchenko, The KGB against the “Main Enemy,” pp. 111-12. George Silverman, to whom (according to Bentley) Currie rushed to deliver his warning “sort of out of breath,” is identified by the VENONA decrypts as a Soviet agent (codenamed ELERON [AILERON]). Currie himself may well be the agent codenamed PAGE to whom there are a number of references in the decrypts. Though denying that he had ever been a Soviet spy, Currie later acknowledged that he been entertained at Gorsky’s home. Senior White House officials such as Currie were among the very small group privy to the highly classified information that OSS had obtained a charred NKGB codebook. There is no reference to Currie in Mitrokhin’s notes.

61. The senior FBI agent who took part in the early analysis of the VENONA decrypts, Robert Lamphere, wrongly claims in his memoirs (The FBI-KGB War, pp. 87ff) that the NKGB codebook was later used to assist the process of decrypting. National Security Agency, Introductory History of VENONA and Guide to the Translations, p. 8.

62. Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, p. 295.

63. vol. 6, ch. 8, part 1. vol. 7, ch. 2, para. 22.

64. vol. 6, ch. 6.

65. Holloway, “Sources for Stalin and the Bomb,” p. 5.

66. vol. 7, ch. 2, para. 19.

67. Albright and Kunstel, Bombshell, pp. 121-7.

68. Albright and Kunstel, Bombshell, ch. 15. The career of Morris and “Lona” Cohen is summarized in vol. 6, ch. 5, part 2.

69. Albright and Kunstel, Bombshell, pp. 138-9.

70. NKGB report to Beria, July 10, 1945, first published in Kurier Sovietski Razvedke (1991); extract reprinted in Sudoplatovs, Special Tasks, appendix 4, pp. 474-5 (Sudoplatov misidentifies MLAD as Pontecorvo).

71. The story of Lona Cohen’s trip to Albuquerque is briefly told in the short biography of her in Samolis (ed.), Veterany Vneshnei Razvedki Rossii, p. 71. See also Albright and Kunstel, Bombshell, ch. 17.

72. vol. 6, ch. 5, part 2. Unsurprisingly, this remarkable tale improved with the telling. In some recent Russian versions, Mrs. Cohen hid the documents in a box of Kleenex. The less elaborate account noted by Mitrokhin appears more reliable. He does not, however, identify the Los Alamos scientist who supplied the documents.

73. vol. 6, app. 2, part 5. The first VENONA reference to Yatskov’s responsibility for ENORMOZ dates from January 23, 1945; VENONA decrypts, 1st release, p. 60.

74. Samolis (ed.), Veterany Vneshnei Razvedki Rossii, pp. 169-71.

75. VENONA decrypts, 3rd release, part 2, p. 268.

76. Though Mitrokhin’s notes include references to most of the best-known, as well several hitherto-unknown, Soviet spies in the wartime United States, all refer to NKVD/NKGB agents. There is thus no reference to Hiss, who worked for Soviet military intelligence.

77. VENONA decrypts, 3rd release, part 3, p. 207.

78. k-27,appendix, para. 21.

79. Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, pp. 343-8.

80. Kimball, Forged in War, p. 318.

81. VENONA decrypts, 3rd release, part 3, p. 207. A footnote to this decrypt, added by NSA in 1969, identifies ALES as “probably Alger Hiss.” The corroborative evidence now available puts that identification beyond reasonable doubt. Of the four Americans (other than US embassy staff) who went on to Moscow after Yalta, only Hiss fits Gorsky’s description of ALES (Moynihan, Secrecy, pp. 146-8). Gordievsky recalls a lecture in the Centre in which Akhmerov referred to his wartime contact with Hiss. Hungarian intelligence files on the Noel Field case show that Field also identified Hiss as a Soviet agent. Whittaker Chambers, the ex-GRU agent who exposed Hiss, testified that, as indicated by Gorsky’s telegram, Hiss first began supplying intelligence to Moscow in 1935. Both Chambers and Bentley, like Gorsky, implicated some of Hiss’s family, as well as Hiss himself, in Soviet espionage. Further evidence pointing to Hiss came from the Soviet defector Igor Guzenko in 1945. Though the statute of limitations prevented Hiss’s prosecution for espionage in 1950, the evidence used to convict him of perjury in that year, for lying about providing government documents to a Communist spyring, remains compelling. See, inter alia: Breindel, “Hiss’s Guilt,” New Republic (April 15, 1996); Schmidt, “The Hiss Dossier,” New Republic (November 8, 1993); Weinstein, Perjury; Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB. ALES, in the Cyrillic alphabet, looks like a contraction of “Alger Hiss”—one of a number of Soviet codenames at this period which contain clues to the identity of the agent concerned.