The Silvermaster File of the United States'

Federal Bureau of Investigation The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic intelligence and security service of the United States and its principal federal law enforcement agency. Operating under the jurisdiction of the United States Department of Justice, t ...

is a 162-volume compendium totalling 26,000 pages of documents relating to the FBI's investigation of GRU and NKVD moles inside the

U.S. federal government The federal government of the United States (U.S. federal government or U.S. government) is the Federation#Federal governments, national government of the United States, a federal republic located primarily in North America, composed of 50 ...

both before and during the

Cold War The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The term '' cold war'' is used because the ...

. Beginning in 1945 with the allegations of defector and former NKVD courier

Elizabeth Bentley Elizabeth Terrill Bentley (January 1, 1908 – December 3, 1963) was an American spy and member of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA). She served the Soviet Union from 1938 to 1945 until she defected from the Communist Party and Soviet intelligenc ...

(

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

cover names “Myrna”; ''Umnitsa'', “Clever Girl”), the file is also known as the Bentley file or Gregory file ("Gregory" was the FBI code name for Bentley). The file takes its name from

Nathan Gregory Silvermaster Nathan Gregory Silvermaster (November 27, 1898 – October 7, 1964), an economist with the United States War Production Board (WPB) during World War II, was the head of a large ring of Communist spies in the U.S. government. It is from him that th ...

(Venona cover names Pel, Pal, "Paul"; "Robert") of the War Production Board, whom Bentley named as head of an underground Communist network known as the Silvermaster Group. Among the people named in the file in connection with this group are President Franklin Roosevelt's Administrative Assistant

Lauchlin Currie Lauchlin Bernard Currie (October 8, 1902 – December 23, 1993) worked as White House economic adviser to President Franklin Roosevelt during World War II (1939–45). From 1949 to 1953, he directed a major World Bank mission to Colombia and re ...

(Venona cover name "Page")Robert J. Hanyok
''Eavesdropping on Hell: Historical Guide to Western Communications Intelligence and the Holocaust'', 1939-1945
(Washington, DC: Center for Cryptologic History, National Security Agency, 2005, 2nd Ed.), p. 119 and Assistant Secretary of the Treasury Harry Dexter White (Venona cover names “Lawyer”; “Jurist”; "Richard"). Also named in the file are Victor Perlo (Venona cover name "Raider"), chief of the Aviation Section of the War Production Board, and contacts of his

Perlo group Headed by Victor Perlo, the Perlo group is the name given to a group of Americans who provided information which was given to Soviet intelligence agencies; it was active during the World War II period, until the entire group was exposed to the FBI ...

, including

Alger Hiss Alger Hiss (November 11, 1904 – November 15, 1996) was an American government official accused in 1948 of having spied for the Soviet Union in the 1930s. Statutes of limitations had expired for espionage, but he was convicted of perjury in con ...

(Venona cover name “Ales”), secretary general of the United Nations Charter Conference. (Like several others identified by Bentley, Hiss had been identified independently by another defecting Soviet courier, Whittaker Chambers, to Assistant Secretary of State Adolf Berle in 1939.) Among dozens of others named by Bentley in this file in connection with this network is

Duncan Lee Lt. Col. Duncan Chaplin Lee (1913–1988) was confidential assistant to Maj. Gen. William ("Wild Bill") Donovan, founder and director of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), World War II-era predecessor of the CIA, during 1942–46. Lee is id ...

(Venona cover name “Koch”), confidential assistant to

William Donovan William or Bill(y) Donovan may refer to: Sports *Bill Donovan (1876–1923), pitcher and manager in Major League Baseball *Bill Donovan (Boston Braves pitcher) (1916–1997), pitcher in Major League Baseball *Billy Donovan (born 1965), American bas ...

, founder and director of the

Office of Strategic Services The Office of Strategic Services (OSS) was the intelligence agency of the United States during World War II. The OSS was formed as an agency of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) to coordinate espionage activities behind enemy lines for all branc ...

(OSS), wartime predecessor of the

CIA The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian intelligence agency, foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gat ...

Prosecutions

Original plans for Bentley to serve as a double agent and gather sufficient evidence to prosecute the Soviet agents identified in the Silvermaster files were ruined when her identity was inadvertently leaked and the USSR quickly shut down its operations. The Silvermaster file in combination with other secret proofs such as the Venona intercepts gave US intelligence the identity of many Soviet agents without the practical means to secure convictions. Also, the statute of limitations for an espionage prosecution was quite short. This was a significant part of the backstory of

McCarthyism McCarthyism is the practice of making false or unfounded accusations of subversion and treason, especially when related to anarchism, communism and socialism, and especially when done in a public and attention-grabbing manner. The term origin ...

. Bentley's double agent career would have enabled the US to expose the spies without compromising Venona and losing that as an ongoing intelligence source.FBI Silvermanster file, Memorandum for the Attorney General, January 27, 1947.

Notes

References

* FBI Report, ''Underground Soviet Espionage Organization (NKVD) in Agencies of the United States Government''], October 21, 1946
FBI Silvermaster file, Volume 82)

External links

The Cold War International History Project (CWIHP)
has the full text of former KGB agent Alexander Vassiliev's Notebooks, containing new evidence on Soviet espionage in the United States during the Cold War * The Education and Research Institute has poste

* The FBI Silvermaster File on the Internet Archive {{DEFAULTSORT:FBI Silvermaster file Espionage in the United States Espionage scandals and incidents Venona project Spy rings Communist Party USA 1945 establishments in the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation

Prosecutions

See also

Notes

References

Further reading

External links