Alger Hiss 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 connection with this charge in 1950. Before the trial Hiss was involved in the establishment of the United Nations, both as a U.S. State Department official and as a U.N. official. In later life he worked as a lecturer and author.
The Venona project was a United States counterintelligence program initiated during World War II by the United States Army's Signal Intelligence Service, which ran from February 1, 1943, until October 1, 1980. It was intended to decrypt messages transmitted by the intelligence agencies of the Soviet Union. Initiated when the Soviet Union was an ally of the US, the program continued during the Cold War, when it was considered an enemy.
Victor Perlo was an American Marxist economist, government functionary, and a longtime member of the governing National Committee of the Communist Party USA.
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".
Edward Joseph Fitzgerald was an American who worked for the War Production Board during World War II and was an adviser to Senator Claude Pepper. He was alleged to have been a member of the Perlo group of Soviet spies. Fitzgerald's name in Venona project decrypt 588 New York to Moscow, 29 April 1944, was sent in the clear to Moscow by Soviet Case Officer Iskhak Akhmerov reporting on Elizabeth Bentley's meeting with Perlo group.
Since the late 1920s, the Soviet Union, through its GRU, OGPU, NKVD, and KGB intelligence agencies, 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.
Charles S. Flato was an American writer, American Communist Party member and a Soviet agent.
Bela Gold, also Bill Gold, (1915–2012), was a Hungarian-born American businessman and professor.
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.
Helen Koral was the wife of Alexander Koral. Both were Americans who, allegedly, worked for Soviet intelligence during World War II. The Koral's headed the "Art" or "Berg" group of Soviet spies. The Berg group acted as couriers for various Soviet contacts, including the Silvermaster ring. Helen Koral received a regular stipend of $100 per month from the KGB and work closely with Helen Lowry, the wife of Iskhak Akhmerov, the KGB Illegal Rezident during World War II. Her code name in the Soviet intelligence according to materials from the Venona project was "Miranda", and later changed to "Art".
Alexander Koral was an American member of the Communist Party of the United States (CPUSA) who headed a network of spies for Soviet intelligence during World War II called the "Art" or "Berg" group. Koral's wife, Helen Koral, also was involved with the group.
Anatoly Veniaminovich Gorsky, was a Soviet spy who, under cover as First Secretary "Anatoly Borisovich Gromov" of the Soviet Embassy in Washington, was secretly rezident in the United States at the end of World War II.
Haik Badalovich Ovakimian, Major General, USSR, better known as "the puppetmaster" in intelligence circles, was a leading Soviet NKVD spy in the United States.
Gerald Graze was the brother of Stanley Graze. Both were employed by the United States Department of State during World War II. In 1944, Katherine Perlo, the ex-wife of Soviet spy Victor Perlo, named Gerald Graze as a member of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) was employed in government. Gerald Graze was also listed in the Lee Report of Department of State security risks compiled in about 1947 by Robert Lee. The "Lee List" may have been Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s list in 1950 of Communists in the State Department. Both Gerald and Stanley Graze are identified in the 1948 Gorsky Memo of Compromised American sources and networks having a covert relationship with Soviet intelligence.
William Ward Pigman, also known as Ward Pigman, was a chairman of the Department of Biochemistry at New York Medical College, and a suspected Soviet Union spy as part of the "Karl group" for Soviet Military Intelligence (GRU).
Alexander Vassiliev is a Russian-British journalist, writer and espionage historian living in London who is a subject matter expert in the Soviet KGB and Russian SVR. A former officer in the Soviet Committee for State Security (KGB), he is known for his two books based upon KGB archival documents: Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America, co-authored with John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr, and The Haunted Wood: Soviet Espionage in America: the Stalin Era, co-authored with Allen Weinstein.
David Aden Salmon (1879–??) was a career government functionary in the U.S. Department of War and the U.S. Department of State. In 1931, Salmon rose to head the State Department's Bureau of Indexes and Archives, a department with over 150 employees at the time. In 2008 Cold War historian John Earl Haynes identified Salmon as "Willy", a codename for a Soviet agent, followed by a 2009 book which argued that Salmon was, from 1934 until early 1937, a paid source of classified diplomatic and military information which ended in the hands of Soviet intelligence. This identification has been challenged by at least one historian specializing in espionage history.
Henry Hill Collins Jr. (1905–1961), AKA Henry H. Collins, Jr., and Henry Collins, was an American citizen employed in the New Deal National Recovery Administration in the 1930s and later the Agricultural Adjustment Administration. He was a member of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) and the Washington D.C. based Ware group, along with Alger Hiss, Lee Pressman, Harry Dexter White and others. He was also a "pioneer in the compiling of ornithological field guides."
John Lowenthal (1925-2003) was a 20th-century American lawyer, civil servant, law professor, and documentary filmmaker, who defended the name and reputation of family friend Alger Hiss almost all his life.
