Irving Charles Velson

Last updated

Irving Charles Velson (June 3, 1913 - 1976) was an American who had a long career in the Communist Party of the United States (CPUSA) secret apparatus and who allegedly worked for Soviet Military Intelligence (GRU). He was the son of Clara Lemlich Shavelson and changed his name to Velson by 1938. Velson worked as a machinist at the Brooklyn Navy Yard from 1931 to 1938.

According to Congressional investigators, Velson worked closely with J. Peters, head of the CPUSA's secret apparatus, and supported Cpl. Robert Osman in espionage activities on behalf of the GRU in the Panama Canal Zone. Robert Gladnick, a former CPUSA functionary and a member of the Lincoln Brigade supported this version. Gladnick stated that Bernard Schuster (aka Bernard Chester) then director of the CPUSA's antimilitarist operations, was replaced in the mid-1930s by Velson, in a program to develop secret Communist groups among American military personnel. Venona decrypts show Velson reporting on weapons technology and other agent handling tasks.

Velson's code name with the GRU, and as deciphered by the Venona project is "Nick".

Venona

Velson is referenced in the following Venona decryptions:

Related Research Articles

Earl Browder American pro-Communist political activist

Earl Russell Browder was an American political activist and leader of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA). Browder was the General Secretary of the CPUSA during the 1930s and first half of the 1940s.

Harold Glasser was an economist in the United States Department of the Treasury and spokesman on the affairs of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) 'throughout its whole life' and he had a 'predominant voice' in determining which countries should receive aid. Glasser was a member of the Perlo group of Soviet spies during World War II and worked closely with Harry Dexter White. His code name in Soviet intelligence and in the Venona files is "Ruble".

Charles Kramer, originally Charles Krevisky was a 20th-Century American economist who worked for U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt as part of his brain trust. Among other contributions, he wrote the original idea for the Point Four Program. He also worked for several congressional committees and hired Lyndon B. Johnson for his first Federal job. Kramer was alleged a Soviet spy as member of the Ware Group, but no charges were brought against him.

Lt. Col. Duncan Chaplin Lee was confidential assistant to Maj. Gen. William Donovan, founder and director of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), World War II-era predecessor of the CIA, during 1942-46. Lee is identified in the Venona project as the Soviet double agent operating inside OSS under the cover name "Koch," making him the most senior alleged source the Soviet Union ever had inside American intelligence.

Since the late 1920s, the Soviet Union, through its GRU, OGPU and NKVD intelligence services, used Russian and foreign-born nationals as well as Communists of American origin to perform espionage activities in the United States. These various espionage networks had contact with various U.S. government agencies, transmitting to Moscow information that would have been deemed confidential.

John Jacob Abt was an American lawyer and politician, who spent most of his career as chief counsel to the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) and was accused of membership in the Communist Party and the "Ware Group" alleged by Whittaker Chambers to be a Soviet spy network. Abt denied that the group was a spy ring, noting that the security classification system did not yet exist, and none of the documents he had access to involved national security.

J. Peters 20th-Century Hungarian spy for USSR in the USA

J. Peters was the most commonly known pseudonym of a man who last went by the name "Alexander Stevens" in 1949. Peters was an ethnic Jewish journalist and political activist who was a leading figure of the Hungarian language section of the Communist Party USA in the 1920s and 1930s. From the early 1930s, Peters was actively involved in the espionage activities of the Soviet Union in the United States, fabricating passports, recruiting agents, and accumulating and passing along confidential and secret information.

Mary Wolfe Price (1909–1980) was an American who was accused of being a spy for the Soviet Union.

Rudy Baker, a Communist Party USA (CPUSA) official, is today best known for his role as head of the CPUSA's underground secret apparatus. He succeeded to the position in 1938, after the removal of J. Peters.

Harry Magdoff was accused by a number of authors as having been complicit in Soviet espionage activity during his time in US government. He was accused of passing information to Soviet intelligence networks in the United States, primarily through what the FBI called the "Perlo Group." Magdoff was never indicted, but after the end of the Cold War, a number of scholars have inspected declassified documents from U.S. and Soviet archives. They cite these documents to support the claim that Magdoff was involved in espionage. Other authors have taken issue with some of the broader interpretations of such materials which implicate many Americans in espionage for the Soviet Union, and the allegation that Harry Magdoff was an information source for the Soviets is disputed by several academics and historians asserting that Magdoff probably had no malicious intentions and committed no crimes.

Zalmond David Franklin or Salmond Franklin was a Communist Party of the United States member and KGB asset during World War II. Zalmond was married at one time to KGB operative Sylvia Callen. According to the testimony of Louis Budenz, Zalmond did "secret work in Spain during the Spanish Civil War, and he also worked part of the time as a bacteriologist at a Spanish Loyalist hospital. Upon returning in the late 1930s, Zalmond is alleged to have been recruited for anti-Trotsky work and was sent on several missions to Canada on behalf of Soviet intelligence. He worked as a security guard at the Soviet Pavilion in the 1939 New York World's Fair, sharing this work with two of his former comrades from the International Brigade, Morris Cohen and Milton Wolff. He is reported to have worked in Alberta, Canada, in 1943. Michael Straight named Franklin in his FBI interview as one of his Soviet intelligence contacts.

Ignacy Witczak was a GRU illegal officer in the United States during World War II.

Leonard Emil Mins was an American who worked in the Russian Section of the Research and Analysis Division of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) during World War II. Mins also worked for Soviet Military Intelligence (GRU).

James Walter Miller (1890–1950) was an American citizen and an alleged asset of the San Francisco Office of the KGB from 1943 to 1945. Miller worked in the United States Government wartime mail censorship office. Miller was allegedly recruited into espionage for the Soviet Union by Isaac Folkoff of the Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA). His cover name was "Vague".

Theodore Bayer was president of the Russky Golos, or Russian Voice Publishing Company, which published an anti-capitalist Russian-language newspaper during the Great Depression and World War II. Russky Golos was funded by the Comintern and by advertising, commercial newsstand and subscription sales. Its editorial position was closely aligned with the Communist Party of the United States (CPUSA). Bayer was allegedly part of a Soviet military intelligence (GRU) network.

Clarence Francis Hiskey (1912–1998), born Clarence Szczechowski, was a Soviet espionage agent in the United States. He became active in the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) when he attended graduate school at the University of Wisconsin. He became a professor of chemistry at the University of Tennessee, Columbia University and Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute. For a time, Hiskey worked at the Tennessee Valley Authority and the University of Chicago Metallurgical Laboratory, part of the Manhattan Project. He was the father of Nicholas Sand.

Arthur Aleksandrovich Adams – a Soviet spy, Hero of the Russian Federation, who passed to the Soviet Union critical information about the American Manhattan Project.

Nicholas "Nick" Dozenberg was an American political functionary with the Communist Party USA in the 1920s. Late in 1927 Dozenberg was recruited into the underground Soviet military intelligence network, for which he worked for more than a decade under the pseudonym "Nicholas Ludwig Dallant." Apprehended by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in December 1939, Dozenberg cooperated with the investigation fully, giving oral or written testimony before the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) on three separate occasions. Never charged for espionage, Dozenberg pleaded guilty to a charge of passport fraud in 1940 and received a comparatively light jail term of one year and one day. He lived a quiet and private life following his release from prison in 1941.

References