The Silvermaster File of the

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

Federal Bureau of Investigation The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic Intelligence agency, intelligence and Security agency, security service of the United States and Federal law enforcement in the United States, its principal federal law enforcement ag ...

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

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 ...

and

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 ...

moles inside the

U.S. federal government The Federal Government of the United States of America (U.S. federal government or U.S. government) is the national government of the United States. The U.S. federal government is composed of three distinct branches: legislative, execut ...

both before and during the

Cold War The Cold War was a period of global Geopolitics, geopolitical rivalry between the United States (US) and the Soviet Union (USSR) and their respective allies, the capitalist Western Bloc and communist Eastern Bloc, which lasted from 1947 unt ...

. Beginning in 1945 with the allegations of defector and former

courier

Elizabeth Bentley Elizabeth Terrill Bentley (January 1, 1908 – December 3, 1963) was an American NKVD spymaster, who was recruited from within the Communist Party USA (CPUSA). She served the Soviet Union as the primary handler of multiple highly placed moles ...

(

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 ...

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) was an economist with the United States War Production Board (WPB) during World War II, was the head of a large ring of Communist Espionage, spies in the U.S. government. It is f ...

(Venona cover names Pel, Pal, "Paul"; "Robert") of the

War Production Board The War Production Board (WPB) was an agency of the United States government that supervised war production during World War II. President Franklin D. Roosevelt established it in January 1942, with Executive Order 9024. The WPB replaced the Su ...

, 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 (8 October 1902 – 23 December 1993) was a Canadian economist best known for being President Franklin Roosevelt's chief economic advisor during World War II. After Roosevelt's death, he led the first World Bank survey ...

(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 Harry Dexter White (October 29, 1892 – August 16, 1948) was an American government official in the United States Department of the Treasury. Working closely with the secretary of the treasury Henry Morgenthau Jr., he helped set American financia ...

(Venona cover names "Lawyer"; "Jurist"; "Richard"). Also named in the file are

Victor Perlo Victor Perlo (May 15, 1912December 1, 1999) was an American Marxist economist, government functionary, and a longtime member of the governing National Committee of the Communist Party USA. Biography Early years Victor Perlo was born May 15, 19 ...

(Venona cover name "Raider"), chief of the Aviation Section of the

, 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 who was accused of espionage in 1948 for the Soviet Union in the 1930s. The statute of limitations had expired for espionage, but he was convicted of perjur ...

(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 Whittaker Chambers (born Jay Vivian Chambers; April 1, 1901 – July 9, 1961) was an American writer and intelligence agent. After early years as a Communist Party member (1925) and Soviet spy (1932–1938), he defected from the Soviet u ...

, 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 a confidential senior 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, between 1942 and ...

(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 b ...

, founder and director of the

Office of Strategic Services The Office of Strategic Services (OSS) was the first intelligence agency of the United States, formed 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 ...

(OSS), wartime predecessor of the

CIA The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA; ) is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States tasked with advancing national security through collecting and analyzing intelligence from around the world and ...

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 a political practice defined by the political repression and persecution of left-wing individuals and a Fear mongering, campaign spreading fear of communist and Soviet influence on American institutions and of Soviet espionage i ...

. 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 A memorandum (: memorandums or memoranda; from the Latin ''memorandum'', "(that) which is to be remembered"), also known as a briefing note, is a written message that is typically used in a professional setting. Commonly abbreviated ''memo'', t ...

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 The Silvermaster File of the United States' Federal Bureau of Investigation 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 both before ...

on the

Internet Archive The Internet Archive is an American 501(c)(3) organization, non-profit organization founded in 1996 by Brewster Kahle that runs a digital library website, archive.org. It provides free access to collections of digitized media including web ...

{{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