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The Mystery of Ales (Expanded Version)
The argument that Alger Hiss was a WWII-era Soviet asset is flawed. New evidence points to someone else
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To view the print version of The Mystery of Ales published in the Summer 2007 issue, click here.
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Nearly 60 years ago, Alger Hiss, a former high official in the U. S. State Department, was convicted of perjury and sentenced to prison on the grounds that he had lied about his role in a Soviet spy ring prior to World War II. The Hiss case became the most controversial spy story of the Cold War — and for good reason. As the distinguished historian Walter LaFeber once observed, “It was the Hiss trial, among other [events] that triggered the McCarthy era.”1 For many conservatives, the Hiss case confirmed the specter of Soviet infiltration at the highest levels of American government. The case also catapulted an obscure California congressman, Richard M. Nixon, onto the national scene. Nixon championed the allegations against Hiss and in 1950 was elected to the U.S. Senate, largely based on the notoriety he had acquired from the case.
Even today, the Hiss affair remains a painful metaphor for the marginalization of left-wing New Dealers by anti-Communist crusaders, the weakness of the American Left for the last half century, and the less-than-courageous performance of American liberals during two generations of conservative ascendancy.
Although Hiss insisted on his innocence until his death in 1996, many Cold War historians, and perhaps most notably Allen Weinstein in his 1978 book, Perjury: The Hiss-Chambers Case, have firmly concluded that Hiss was part of a clandestine Communist cell from 1935 onward and that he passed information to the Soviet Union from late 1936 to early 1938 through an underground Communist courier named Whittaker Chambers. Most historians have conceded the argument to Weinstein (who is today the Archivist of the United States). They have done so, however, not because the evidence against Hiss is clear and definitive, but because the evidence box — filled as it is with a morass of circumstantial detail — leaves them the easy option of finding him guilty of some form of espionage activity during his murky relationship with Chambers.
To a few skeptics, however, this muddled spy case will remain an open question until the Russian archives disgorge incontrovertible proof that Hiss was or was not a conscious agent. Despite continuing claims that documents U.S. researchers obtained from the Russian archives in the early- tomid-1990s represent a “massive documentation of the guilt”2 of Alger Hiss, not a single document with his name or that of Whittaker Chambers has ever been produced from the publicly accessible Russian archives. To be sure, there are a few references to Hiss in Soviet-era documents that have been leaked to Allen Weinstein and his Russian co-author, Alexander Vassiliev. But in their book The Haunted Wood, Weinstein and Vassiliev leave the impression that Hiss is repeatedly mentioned in Soviet-era documents. But their narrative of Hiss’s espionage in the 1930s is heavily referenced to Weinstein’s Perjury. And when they quote from three 1945 KGB documents describing a Soviet source at the U.S. Department of State, they substitute Hiss’s name in brackets for “Ales,” the cover name for an American working for the Soviets. They do the same thing when quoting from a Soviet intelligence cable dated March 30, 1945, decrypted and released by the U.S. government under the National Security Agency’s Venona program. Weinstein and Vassiliev did get exclusive access to a crop of documents from the KGB archive. But references to Alger Hiss in those documents boil down to only five pages from a single SVR (Russian Foreign Intelligence Service) file.3
The Hiss case has also become a litmus test of what is considered to be legitimate Cold War historiography. Since the late 1970s, historians and journalists who remain agnostics on the question of Hiss’s guilt invite ridicule — or condemnation.4 The consensus historians — led by Weinstein — have largely succeeded in making Hiss’s guilt a piece of the conventional wisdom.
We do not propose to address the larger question of whether Hiss was guilty or innocent of espionage, but rather to explore whether he fits the profile of the Soviet asset hidden behind the cover name Ales (pronounced in Russian as A´-les).
Historians of the craft of intelligence recognize that assigning identities to code names more than 50 years after the fact is fraught with peril. It is difficult at best to translate from one language and culture to another, particularly when dealing with partially decrypted documents. Other imponderables include the ambiguities surrounding witting and unwitting sources and, most obviously, the incentives for intelligence officers to exaggerate the value of both their information and their sources. All of this is to say that we are aware that, like others before us, we tread on thin ice. Still, we have found evidence to suggest that Hiss could not have been Ales, and that an alternative candidate exists.
THE VENONA PUZZLE
Until the mid-1990s, Weinstein and other historians accepted Chambers’s assertions that Hiss’s associations with the Soviets were confined to the period of 1934–38. But when the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) declassified the Venona documents, students of the case claimed that Hiss may have continued his presumed espionage into the World War II years. The documents are a collection of intercepted and fragmentary decrypted cables between Moscow and its overseas intelligence outposts (most prominently New York and Washington, D.C.) that produced hundreds of cryptonyms for agents, assets, contacts, or targets of Soviet intelligence. They also included many names of unsuspecting Americans whom Soviet intelligence operatives discussed, targeted, or merely mentioned. Alger Hiss’s name turned up in this second group.
In a fragment of a decrypted GRU5 (Russian military intelligence) New York-to-Moscow cable of September 28, 1943, a New York station chief of the Soviet military intelligence — GRU — (whom the Russians referred to as “rezident”) called “Molier”6 reported to his Moscow director that “the NEIGHBOR” (in this case, a resident or operative from the NKGB — as the KGB was then called — Foreign Intelligence) mentioned an official “from the State Department by the name of HISS [iv].”
Footnote iv to the cable comes from the NSA, which explains that by the time they gave up on trying to decrypt it in August of 1969, the FBI and NSA had only one candidate for “HISS.” Normally, these Russian-language cables use the Cyrillic alphabet, but here Hiss is spelled out in the Latin alphabet, perhaps indicating that the name was unfamiliar to the sender. At the time the cable was written, Alger Hiss was an assistant to Stanley Hornbeck, the State Department Political Advisor in Charge of Far Eastern Affairs.
Could a person openly named in such a message be an agent of that service at the time the message was written or at any previous time? Not according to Lt. Gen. Vitaly Pavlov, a former KGB foreign intelligence officer who had supervised intelligence operations focused on the United States beginning in late 1938. When interviewed in 2002, Pavlov firmly stated that no one openly named in the Venona cables could have been an agent.7 Why was he so sure? “Had he ever been an agent, the service would have his code name in the system.” Three years later, this opinion was upheld by another Russian intelligence professional, Maj. Gen. Julius Kobyakov.8 After reading the Sept. 28 Venona cable, Kobyakov told us that had Alger Hiss been an agent, “it would be very unusual to put a true name in a cable: speaking about one of their assets, normally, they would use a code name.”
This Venona message openly using the name Hiss has been lost in a heated, decade-long discussion of yet another Venona cable, N 1822, sent from Washington, D.C., to Moscow, originating from the NKGB intelligence station in the Soviet Embassy. Dated March 30, 1945, the cable describes a Soviet agent who had the code name Ales. The NSA released its English translation of the cable in 1996 with a footnote saying that Ales was “probably” Alger Hiss. Here is the full text of cable N 1822 as released in 1996:
From: Washington
To: Moscow
No. 182230 March 1945
Further to our telegram No. 283 [a]. As a result of “[D%A.’s]” [i] chat with “ALES,” [ii] the following has been ascertained:
1. ALES has been working with the NEIGHBORS [SOSEDI] [iii] continuously since 1935.
2. For some years past he has been the leader of a small group of the NEIGHBORS’ probationers [STAZhERY], for the most part consisting of his relations.
3. The group and ALES himself work on obtaining military information only. Materials on the “BANK” [iv] allegedly interest the NEIGHBORS very little and he does not produce them regularly.
4. All the last few years ALES has been working with “Pol’” [v] who also meets other members of the group occasionally.
5. Recently ALES and his whole group were awarded Soviet decorations.
6. After the YaLTA Conference, when he had gone on to MOSCOW, a Soviet personage in a very responsible position (ALES gave to understand that it was Comrade VYShINSKIJ) allegedly got in touch with ALES and at the behest of the Military NEIGHBORS passed on to him their gratitude and so on.
No. 431 Vadim [vi]9
NSA translators released the cable with the following notes:
Notes: [a] Not available.
Comments:
[i]: “A.” seems the most likely garble here although “A.” has not been confirmed elsewhere in the WASHINGTON traffic.
[ii] ALES: Probably Alger HISS.
[iii] SOSEDI: Members of another Soviet Intelligence organization, here probably the GRU.
[iv] BANK: The U.S. State Department.
[v] POL’: i.e. “PAUL”, unidentified cover name.
[vi] VADIM: Aantolij Borisovich GROMOV, MGB resident in WASHINGTON. 8 August 1969
According to FBI historian John F. Fox,10 the identification of Ales as Alger Hiss in Venona 1822 dates back to a May 15, 1950, FBI memorandum from Alan Belmont, head of the FBI espionage section.11 “It would appear likely,” the 1950 memo surmised, “that this individual [Ales] is Alger Hiss in view of the fact that he was in the State Department and the information from Chambers indicated that his wife, Priscilla, was active in Soviet espionage and he also had a brother, Donald, in the State Department.”12 In Fox’s opinion, “Why Hiss is connected with this message is unsurprising. Each of these clues as well as the mention of ALES’s connection to the Yalta Conference and a trip to Moscow afterwards each fits what was known about Hiss.” However, Fox concedes that “Hiss, of course, had been convicted of perjury less than six months before,” and this fact would have immediately occurred to the FBI team working on the Venona project.13
Those officials privy to the Venona intercept seem to have conducted, at best, a cursory investigation of Ales’s identity. Hiss seemed to fill the bill. Even so, in the same May 15 memo, the FBI noted that “an attempt is being made by analysis of the available information to verify this identification.”14 Even three years after Hiss’s conviction in 1950, the FBI was still conducting interviews about Ales — suggesting that the bureau had doubts.
The bureau’s agents questioned Averell Harriman, George Kennan, and John F. Melby, all Moscow-stationed diplomats who were involved with a 1945 Moscow visit by Secretary of State Edward Stettinius and his party after the Yalta Conference. Years later Melby revealed: “I would get visits from the FBI asking me what Alger Hiss had been up to, and had he gone secretly to see so-and-so and so-and-so, in the Kremlin. All I’d say was, ‘As far as I know, he didn’t do anything differently from anybody else in the party.’ If he did see anybody, I was not aware of it, and actually, Alger was staying at Spaso15 with us, along with Stettinius and others. If he did see anybody, which I’ve always doubted very seriously, I didn’t know anything about it. So after a while the FBI got tired of coming and seeing me on that old chestnut.”16
Melby was clear that the FBI questioned him “after the trial and after he [Hiss] had been convicted.”17The timing of FBI visits with Melby and the particular questions they asked him indicate that the bureau had in mind the clues contained in Venona 1822. They had similar questions for Kennan on April 8, 1953. And on May 12, 1953, they interviewed Ambassador Harriman and his daughter, Mrs. Mortimer, who had also flown back to Moscow after the Yalta conference. None of those interviewed was able to tell the FBI anything definitive. Clearly, the bureau’s identification of Ales as Hiss was never more than tentative.
Yet almost half a century later, when the FBI’s May 15, 1950, memo was released to the U.S. Senate Commission on Protecting and Reducing Government Secrecy, no mention was made of the FBI’s initial and continuing doubts. Appendix A of what has become known as the Moynihan Commission Report18said that “a Soviet cable of March 30, 1945, identified an agent, code-name ALES, as having attended the Yalta Conference of February 1945. He had then journeyed to Moscow where, according to the cable, he and his colleagues were ‘awarded Soviet decorations.’ This could only be Alger Hiss, Deputy Director of the State Department’s Office of Special Political Affairs; the other three State Department officials in the delegation from Yalta to Moscow are beyond suspicion.” A footnote specified that “the three others from the State Department in the U.S. delegation were Edward R. Stettinius Jr., Secretary of State; H. Freeman Matthews, Director of the Office of European Affairs; and Wilder Foote, Assistant to the Secretary of State.”
Ever since, Ales’s identity as Alger Hiss has become a mantra for longtime believers in Hiss’s guilt. Today, NSA historian Robert L. Benson goes so far as to say that the word “probably” should be dropped in the NSA’s tentative identification of Ales.19 In his view, there can no longer be any question that Hiss engaged in wartime spying on behalf of the Soviet Union and that he is the Ales described in Venona 1822.
At first glance, this reasoning appears to be straightforward and logical. But a closer reading of Venona 1822 raises numerous questions:
• Ales had been working with the GRU since 1935; Chambers specifically said that Hiss had no GRU connections before 1937.
• Ales was the leader of a small group “mainly consisting of his relatives.” Hiss, his critics have assumed, in accordance with the FBI’s May 1950 memo, was “working” with his wife, Priscilla, and his brother Donald — although no one has ever lodged any espionage allegations against Donald, and the FBI itself said charges that he was a member of the Communist Party were unsubstantiated. Neither has any evidence surfaced that Priscilla was a Communist Party member.20
• Ales provided his Soviet handlers with “military information only.” Here the evidence pointing to Hiss is at best ambiguous, if not exculpatory. It would be illogical to use a State Department career diplomat with a legal background for obtaining information that would not normally come his way — and at the same time to underuse him for getting the diplomatic information he would encounter naturally. Attempts to prove that Hiss was Ales by pointing out that by 1944–45 he was privy to information on military matters seem to disregard this elementary logic of intelligence tradecraft.21
• Finally, and most important, Venona 1822 reports that “after the Yalta conference already in Moscow Ales was allegedly contacted by a very important Soviet official. (ALES gave to understand that it was Comrade Vyshinskij and on instruction of military neighbors passed onto him their gratitude and so on.”
Those who believe Hiss is Ales argue that this clue is the clincher: Ales attended the Yalta conference in February 1945 — and so did Hiss. Ales left Yalta and flew to Moscow where the Soviet Deputy People’s Commissar of Foreign Affairs (NKID) Andrei Vyshinsky ostensibly conveyed “their gratitude and so on.” Like Ales, Hiss left the Yalta Conference and flew with Secretary of State Stettinius to Moscow, where he remained for two days. On the evening of February 13, 1945, Hiss accompanied Stettinius to a performance of Swan Lake at the Bolshoi; he and Stettinius’s party sat in the central box of the Bolshoi with Vyshinsky — who presumably seized this occasion, perhaps during an intermission, to take Hiss aside for a moment and express his “gratitude.” Case closed. Ales was Hiss.
But after months of digging in both the American and Russian archives, we have discovered new evidence that demonstrates conclusively the falsity of this damning scenario. Hiss was not Ales. The historians who have maintained that he was Ales turned an assumption and a few clues into a conclusion without bothering to determine if Hiss actually fit the profile of Ales — or asking whether a better candidate for Ales existed.
THE SECOND GORSKY CABLE
We have discovered that Hiss had a firm alibi. We know this from a relatively recent discovery, a Soviet-era cable that sheds new light on the clues to Ales’s identity given in Venona 1822. This new evidence surfaced during a libel suit filed in London by Vassiliev, Weinstein’s Russian collaborator on The Haunted Wood. In 2003, Vassiliev lost his suit against the publisher of the late lawyer and longtime Hiss defender John Lowenthal, but in the course of the trial, he introduced numerous notes he had taken on Soviet-era documents that he was allowed to read (but not copy) in the archives of the SVR.22 One of these documents was a March 5, 1945, cable signed “Vadim,” written to his colleagues in Moscow. Vadim is known to have been Anatoly Gorsky, the NKGB’s station chief in Washington, D.C., who operated under the cover name Anatoly Gromov and the cover position of the first secretary in the Soviet Embassy in Washington. Gorsky would also be the author, almost a month later, of Venona 1822.23
For historians, the discovery of the Russian text of a cable preceding the decryption of Venona 1822 opened a new field of opportunity: to crosscheck the Venona decryption and identification against a Russian clear text from the coded cable traffic from World War II.24 Such an occurrence is the dream of any espionage historian — and a nightmare for any espionage professional. Allen Weinstein had access to Vassiliev’s notes on the March 5, 1945, Gorsky cable, but he cited only a small portion of it in The Haunted Wood. Vassiliev’s notes on the cable, originally written in Russian, read:
p.8825
C/c26 from Vadim, 5 March 45Wants to be included into the Sov. delegation at San Francisco conference. However, can’t leave the outpost [tochka] on [in the care of] any other operative. He wants — on [to leave it in the care of] the “Son” (Garanin F.A., transferred from Cuba to Washington as Soviet Embassy attaché.27)
After the conference Vadim wants to come to Moscow to report in person.
Special attention — to “Ales”. Was at Yalta conference, then left for Mexico-City [and] has not yet come back. Our only key to him –“Ruble’”28 “Ruble” himself travels on business (Italy) — [it is] difficult to run [supervise] ‘Ales’ through him.
“29We have talked about ‘Ales’ with ‘Rubl’ several times.
As we have already written, ‘Rouble’ gives to ‘Ales’ an exceptionally good political reference as to the Communist Party30 member. ‘Ruble’ reports that ‘Ales’ [is] a strong, determined man with a firm and resolute character, [he] is fully aware that he is a Communist, [and] is underground — with all the resulting consequences. Unfortunately, he probably understands the rules of security [‘conspiratsiju’] in his own way as [do] all local Communists.As we have already reported to you, ‘Ales’31
that was connected with the neighbors. After the loss of contact with ‘Carl’,
‘Ruble’’
declined [to come in contact], when
’Ales’ came in contact with ‘Pol.’32
He [‘Ales’] himself told about this to ‘Ruble’’
a year and a half ago, when he was inviting the latter to meet with ‘Pol’ to continue the work.”“Ruble” may talk to “Ales” about reestablishing
the work. If he [e.g. ‘Ales’] would not like [working] with “Rouble”,
it is possible [to work] with us.p.89 There is one unclear circumstance. About six months ago, “Ales” told “Ruble” that he had met a Russian person (he did not give his name) who immediately asked him to write a small memo about one issue. “Ales” asked for “Ruble”’s opinion as to what he should do. “Ruble” declined from giving a direct answer, saying that “Ales” could act at his own discretion.
“Ales” should be approached by a Sov. [Soviet] representative. Either one of the Center’s operatives, or “Sergey”33, or me, “Vadim”. Most convenient — [to do this] at the conf-ce [conference] in S.-F. [San Francisco]. After 2–3 meetings, depending on how “Ales” behaves, we may be able to come down to business, referring to the password, or to “Ruble”, or [referring] just to the progressiveness of “Ales”.
The important clue here is Gorsky’s placing Ales at Yalta — and asserting that as of March 5 he was still in Mexico City attending the Inter-American Conference on the Problems of War and Peace. After flying from Yalta to Moscow, Alger Hiss had indeed accompanied Secretary Stettinius to the Mexico City conference, arriving on February 20.34 But Stettinius had asked Hiss to organize the San Francisco conference to found the United Nations. The conference was scheduled to open on April 25, and there was a lot of work to be done. So, less than two days after arriving in Mexico City, Hiss was ordered to fly home on the secretary’s airplane.35
FOOTNOTES
1 Walter LaFeber, The Washington Post, 12/7/1996.
2 John Earl Haynes, Harvey Klehr. In Denial: Historians, Communism and Espionage. Encounter Books, San Francisco, 2003, p. 141.
3 pp. 23, 22, 24, 25, 51 in the order they appear in the book of SVR file 36857, vol. 1.
4 For a full-blown polemical attack along these lines, see John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr, Op.Cit.
5 Russian abbreviation standing for the Glavnoe Razvedyvatel’noe Upravlenie — Chief Intelligence Directorate.
6 Molier [MOL’ER] was the code name of Pavel Melkishev, GRU resident in 1941–45 who operated under the cover of New York Vice Consul and later Acting Consul General Pavel Mikhailov.
7 Interview with Lt. Gen. Vitaly G. Pavlov, Moscow, May 7, 2002. (Interview conducted in Russian)
8 Interview with Maj. Gen. Julius Kobyakov, Washington, D.C., March, 2005 (Interview conducted in English.)
9 In October 2005, the NSA reluctantly released its Russian language decrypt of this cable, thus allowing scholars to parse the translation of this critical document from the Russian into English. (It is important to understand that due to the uncertainties of the decrypt process it is quite possible that inaccuracies have crept into the language. Here is a description of the encoding-encryption process: 1) the plain text is encoded with the current code book; 2) the encoded result is then encrypted with the use of one-time pads—resulting in groups of 5-digit numbers; 3) before sending the cable, these groups are transformed into 5-letter groups, using the Telegraph Table. On the receiving side, the decoding-decryption process would be reversed, with a possibility of differences and shades in meaning cropping up between Russian texts as composed by Russian operatives and Russian decrypts in the Venona files.) The released Russian decrypt differed in several respects from the English translation released in 1996. First, showed that the initial decrypt had no “A” for an unidentified individual who provided details on the “Ales” background, for in place of “[D%A.’s]” the Russian decrypt displayed [p ya]—two letters of the Cyrillic alphabet with “ya” designate the last letter of the Cyrillic alphabet transcribed with two sounds, when “A” is the first letter transcribed as [a]. Second, the Russian decrypt has left no grounds for any speculations that “Paul” in the 1996 translation might be Nathan Gregory Silvermaster, who was identified by the Venona translators as the NKGB group leader “Pal.” Moreover, the French-style spelling of “Paul” as “Pol’” suggests that “Pol’” was someone on the military intelligence line, due to the Venona pattern of using French cover names during that period (Molier, Ruan, Orlean, Leon, among others). Third, the release of the Russian transcript put an end to any linguistic controversies around the word “relations,” which in Russian turned out to be rodstvenniki–that is, blood relatives; as well as to who in fact went to Moscow after the Yalta conference (Ales or Deputy People’s Commissar of Foreign Affairs Andrei Vyshinsky, since it was clear that Ales “had gone to Moscow” “after the Yalta Conference.” Fourth, the Russian decrypt described the Soviet who “thanked” Ales as “ochen’ otvetstvennyi rabotnik” (a very responsible worker), which in Soviet jargon stood for a “very important employee” or “official” who might be taken as high as Vyshinsky, and it might designate a person of a lower rank, since in the Soviet hierarchy a designation of otvetstvennyi rabotnik was rather encompassing.
10 John F. Fox, Jr., FBI Historian, >In the Enemy’s House: Venona and the Maturation of American Counterintelligence. Presented at the 2005 Symposium on Cryptologic History 10/27/2005.0
11 Belmont to Ladd, Subject: Espionage, May 15, 1950. FBI FOIA. In fact, according to John F. Fox, the memo was written by Robert Lamphere who had been the FBI man on Venona project since spring 1948.
12 FBI, Mr. Belmont to Mr. Ladd, May 15, 1950, Subject: Espionage.
13 John F. Fox, Jr., Op. Cit. presentation at the 2005 Symposium on Cryptologic History, 10/27/2005.
14 Belmont to Ladd, Op. Cit.
15 Spaso House, Moscow official residence of U.S. ambassadors.
16 ACCINELLI: But when did the FBI question you about his activities?
MELBY: Oh, long after. It was after the trial and after he had been convicted.
ACCINELLI: Oh, really?
MELBY: They didn’t come see me about him really before the trial or anything like that, no. [See Oral History Interview with John F. Melby, U.S. Foreign Service Officer, 1937-55, November 14, 1986, by Robert Accinelli, Harry S. Truman Library.]
17 Oral History Interview with John F. Melby, Op. Cit.
18 Report of the Commission on Protecting and Reducing Government Secrecy, 1997, Senate Document 105-2, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, New York, Chairman.
19 Kai Bird interview with Robert Benson, 10/27/2005.
20 A FBI report to J. E. Hoover in January 1952 characterized “the unsubstantiated allegations of Whittaker Chambers that the subject [Donald Hiss] was a member of the ?ommunist Party underground unit” as “the preeminent charges.” “There are no specific allegations regarding the subject’s Communist Party membership and no specific indications that he has been active since the period encompassing CHAMBER’s allegations. There has been no allegation of espionage at any time. <…> no additional security investigation is contemplated at this time.” [SAC, WFO to Director, FBI. Subject Donald Hiss, 29/1/52. Subject Donald Hiss, File #101-4300, p. 40, FBI FOIA] As to Priscilla Hiss, there has been no independent evidence to support Chambers’ allegations.
21 Eduard Mark, “Who Was ‘Venona’s’ ‘Ales’? Cryptanalysis and the Hiss Case,” Intelligence and National Security, Vol. 18, No. 3, Autumn, 2003, p. 50.
22 Russian abbreviation for Foreign Intelligence Service [Sluzhba vneshnei razvedki], formerly KGB foreign intelligence.
23 Conceivably, the March 5, 1945, Gorsky cable is the elusive “cable no. 283” referred to at the beginning of Venona No. 1822
24 A third Gorksy cable about “Ales,’”dated April 2, 1945, is also known to exist, although so far only in an excerpted English translation. It offers less precisely dated—and thus more indirect—information about “Ales” than Gorsky’s March 5, 1945, cable, and is discussed on a later page of this essay.
25 Vassiliev’s pagination from the source file.
26 Coded cable.
27 According to the Russian Foreign Ministry’s records, as of June 1945 Garanin was Head of the Consular Department of Soviet Embassy in Washington, D.C. [AVPR, Fund 192, description 12, Por. 88, file 32, p. 129; also in descr. 12, Por. 84, file 1, pp. 66, 87].
28 “Ruble” [“Rubl’”] cryptonym appearing in Venona decrypted cable traffic; tentatively identified by Venona decryptors as probably Harry Glasser, Keynsian economist and Department of Treasury official.
29 Hereinafter quotation marks in the beginning and at the end of paragraphs were probably used by Vassiliev to show that he was quoting verbatim from the files.
30 In Venona cables, Communist Party membership appears under the cover word of “zemlyak” (plural: “zemlyaki”; feminine: “zemlyachka”), which was translated by the NSA as “fellowcountryman,” although a better translation would be “compatriot.” This open use of “Communist Party” is very unusual, for Communist Party membership was indicated by a cover word even in Soviet diplomatic and party correspondence of the 1930s to 1950s.
31 This is the end of the page designated since the London libel trial as Jury Bundle, p.309C. There is a gap between “Ales” on p. 309C and the first word on p. 309B— “that.” Most probably, this gap is due to improper scanning of page 309C. It is noteworthy that in the Russian notes “that” is written in the feminine gender suggesting that a missing noun might be “group,” which in Russian is also feminine.
32 Unidentified code name. Also referred to in Venona March 30, 1945 cable; not identified by Venona decryptors. Another appearance of “Pol’” is in GRU Stockholm to Moscow #4052, 25 Dec. 1944.
33 Code name of Vladimir Sergeevich Pravdin, NKVD station chief and operative in NYC.
34 “I telephoned Mr. Alger Hiss at Mexico City.…” Memorandum of Conversation, Mr. Alger Hiss, Mr. Grew, Mr. Stettinius, Feb. 20, 1945, Folder: “Memos of Conversation,” NARA, RG 59, Alger Hiss Files 1940–1946, Subject Files OSPA, Box 8, NA, College Park, MD.
35 “Mr. Hiss’ return to Washington in the Secretary’s plane now makes it feasible for Miss Maylot to go when the plane returns.…” State Dept. memo from Mr. Sandifer to Mr. Watson, Feb. 24, 1945, RG 59, Decimal Files, 710 Conference W and PW/2-2445, FIS.
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