Sylvia Callen Franklin, also known as Sylvia Lorraine Callen, and Sylvia Caldwell, was a young

Chicago Chicago is the List of municipalities in Illinois, most populous city in the U.S. state of Illinois and in the Midwestern United States. With a population of 2,746,388, as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, it is the List of Unite ...

communist Communism () is a sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology within the socialist movement, whose goal is the creation of a communist society, a socioeconomic order centered on common ownership of the means of production, di ...

, recruited by Louis Budenz into the

Communist Party USA The Communist Party USA (CPUSA), officially the Communist Party of the United States of America, also referred to as the American Communist Party mainly during the 20th century, is a communist party in the United States. It was established ...

's ''secret apparatus'' c. 1937. Callen was assigned by Dr. Gregory Rabinowitz to go to

New York City New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...

and infiltrate the

Trotskyist Trotskyism (, ) is the political ideology and branch of Marxism developed by Russian revolutionary and intellectual Leon Trotsky along with some other members of the Left Opposition and the Fourth International. Trotsky described himself as an ...

Socialist Workers Party (SWP) using the pseudonym "Sylvia Caldwell". She became the secretary of James Cannon, who headed the SWP. Callen later testified to a federal grand jury about her infiltration of the SWP and about how she provided information from the SWP offices to Rabinowitz. Rabinowitz was later replaced by Jack Soble. She had been married for a time to Zalmond Franklin, who also served

Soviet intelligence This is a list of historical secret police organizations. In most cases they are no longer current because the regime that ran them was overthrown or changed, or they changed their names. Few still exist under the same name as legitimate police fo ...

. For a time, she was also known as Sylvia Lorraine Doxsee. Callen is identified in

Venona The Venona project was a United States counterintelligence program initiated during World War II by the United States Army's Signal Intelligence Service and later absorbed by the National Security Agency (NSA), that ran from February 1, 1943, u ...

traffic under the cover name SATYR. Venona messages reveal Callen giving copies to the

KGB The Committee for State Security (, ), abbreviated as KGB (, ; ) was the main security agency of the Soviet Union from 1954 to 1991. It was the direct successor of preceding Soviet secret police agencies including the Cheka, Joint State Polit ...

of SWP correspondence, intimate information on

Leon Trotsky Lev Davidovich Bronstein ( – 21 August 1940), better known as Leon Trotsky,; ; also transliterated ''Lyev'', ''Trotski'', ''Trockij'' and ''Trotzky'' was a Russian revolutionary, Soviet politician, and political theorist. He was a key figure ...

's widow,

Natalia Sedova Natalia Ivanovna Sedova (, ; 5 April 1882 – 23 January 1962) was a Russian revolutionary and author known as the second wife of Leon Trotsky. She wrote on cultural matters pertaining to Marxism. Life Natalia was born in to the family of a ...

, and financial reports of Trotskyist groups. When Budenz later defected, he named Callen as a

Stalinist Stalinism (, ) is the totalitarian means of governing and Marxist–Leninist policies implemented in the Soviet Union (USSR) from 1927 to 1953 by dictator Joseph Stalin and in Soviet satellite states between 1944 and 1953. Stalinism in ...

infiltrator but her SWP comrades refused to believe him. In 1954, Callen, then known as Sylvia Doxsee and living in Chicago, was called before a grand jury. Invoking the Fifth Amendment, she refused to answer questions about her membership in the SWP, her relationship with the KGB, Louis Budenz, or anything else. She was called back to another grand jury in 1958. This time, she was more cooperative, confessing that she met regularly with Rabinowitz and Soble to pass on confidential Trotskyist material at an apartment rented by a woman named Lucy Booker. Callen was named as an unindicted co-conspirator when Robert Soblen was charged with espionage in 1960, but she never publicly testified. Callen's grand jury testimony was first publicly released and her status as a GPU agent confirmed as part of the International Committee of the Fourth International's ''Security and the Fourth International'' investigation.

Venona

The

Venona project The Venona project was a United States counterintelligence program initiated during World War II by the United States Army's Signal Intelligence Service and later absorbed by the National Security Agency (NSA), that ran from February 1, 1943, u ...

was a United States

counterintelligence Counterintelligence (counter-intelligence) or counterespionage (counter-espionage) is any activity aimed at protecting an agency's Intelligence agency, intelligence program from an opposition's intelligence service. It includes gathering informati ...

program initiated during World War II by the United States Army's

Signal Intelligence Service The Signal Intelligence Service (SIS) was the United States Army codebreaking division through World War II. It was founded in 1930 to compile codes for the Army. It was renamed the Signal Security Agency in 1943, and in September 1945, became ...

(later absorbed by the

National Security Agency The National Security Agency (NSA) is an intelligence agency of the United States Department of Defense, under the authority of the director of national intelligence (DNI). The NSA is responsible for global monitoring, collection, and proces ...

), which ran from February 1, 1943, until October 1, 1980. It was intended to decrypt messages transmitted by the

intelligence agencies An intelligence agency is a government agency responsible for the collection, analysis, and exploitation of information in support of law enforcement, national security, military, public safety, and foreign policy objectives. Means of inf ...

of the

Soviet Union The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

(e.g. the

NKVD The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (, ), abbreviated as NKVD (; ), was the interior ministry and secret police of the Soviet Union from 1934 to 1946. The agency was formed to succeed the Joint State Political Directorate (OGPU) se ...

, the

, and the

GRU Gru is a fictional character and the main protagonist of the ''Despicable Me'' film series. Gru or GRU may also refer to: Arts and entertainment * Gru (rapper), Serbian rapper * Gru, an antagonist in '' The Kine Saga'' Organizations Georgia (c ...

). Syvia Callen is referenced in the following Venona project decryptions, indicating that she worked for Soviet NKVD:
899 KGB New York to Moscow, 11 June 1943
p. 1
899 KGB New York to Moscow, 11 June 1943
p. 2
926 New York to Moscow, 16 June 1943

670 KGB New York to Moscow, 11 May 1944
p. 1
670 KGB New York to Moscow, 11 May 1944
p. 2
670 KGB New York to Moscow, 11 May 1944
p. 3 * 751–752 KGB New York to Moscow, 26 May 1944
851 KGB New York to Moscow, 15 June 1944
p. 1
851 KGB New York to Moscow, 15 June 1944
p. 2

References

* Louis Budenz affidavit, 11 November 1950, ''American Aspects of the Assassination of Leon Trotsky,'' U.S. Congress, House of Representatives, Committee on Un-American Activities, 81st Cong., 2d sess., part I, v–ix * Louis Budenz, ''Men Without Faces: The Communist Conspiracy in the USA'' (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1948), 123–126. * New York FBI memo, serial 1980, FBI Silvermaster file (FBI file 65-56402). On Straight, see chapter 5. * Sylvia Franklin Dossier (New York: Labor Publication, 1977) contains excerpts from Callen's grand jury testimony. * Callen's grand jury testimony is in ''The Gelfand Case: A Legal History of the Exposure of U.S. Government Agents in the Leadership of the Socialist Workers Party'', vol. 2 (Detroit: Labor Publication, 1985), 526–564. * FBI memorandum, ''Existing Corroboration of Bentley's Overall Testimony,'' FBI Silvermaster file, serial 4201; Margaret Browder FBI file, 100-287645, serial 153; Booker interview in Sylvia Franklin Dossier. * John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr, ''Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America'' (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999), pgs. 261, 262–263, 276. * **

External links

FBI Silvermaster file
{{DEFAULTSORT:Callen, Sylvia Members of the Communist Party USA Members of the Socialist Workers Party (United States) American people in the Venona papers American spies for the Soviet Union Possibly living people Year of birth missing Women spies