Harry Dexter White was a senior U.S. Treasury department official. Working closely with the Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau Jr., he helped set American financial policy toward the Allies of World War II. He was later accused of espionage by passing information to the Soviet Union, an allegation which was confirmed after his death.
Nathan Gregory Silvermaster, 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 the FBI Silvermaster File, documenting the Bureau's investigation into Communist penetration of the Federal government during the 1930s and 1940s, takes its name. His wife, Helen and stepson, Anatole Volkov, were members of his ring.
Elizabeth Terrill Bentley 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 within both the United States Federal Government and the Office of Strategic Services from 1938 to 1945. She defected by contacting the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and debriefing about her espionage activities.
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.
Jane Foster Zlatovski (1912–1979) allegedly engaged, with her husband, George Zlatovski, in covert activities on behalf of the Soviet Union while employed in sensitive U.S. Government wartime agencies during World War II. They were indicted in 1957. Their case was never tried and both Zlatovskis denied the accusations.
Lt. Col. Duncan Chaplin Lee (1913–1988) was a confidential senior assistant to Maj. Gen. William Donovan, founder and director of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), World War II-era predecessor of the CIA, between 1942 and 1946. Lee has posthumously been identified by the Venona project as the NKVD mole inside the OSS with the code name "Koch", making Lee the most senior alleged spy the Soviet Union ever recruited inside the U.S. intelligence community.
As early as the 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, forming various spy rings. Particularly during the 1940s, some of these espionage networks had contact with various U.S. government agencies. These Soviet espionage networks illegally transmitted confidential information to Moscow, such as information on the development of the atomic bomb. Soviet spies also participated in propaganda and disinformation operations, known as active measures, and attempted to sabotage diplomatic relationships between the U.S. and its allies.
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.
Jacob Epstein, also known as Jake Bermanen, was an American-born Soviet spy.
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.
Samuel Jacob Rodman, was an American double agent during World War II. Rodman was employed by the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) and spied for the Soviet Union at the same time. Rodman was a member of the Communist Party of the United States (CPUSA), and his previous occupations were teaching and journalism.
Elza Akhmerova, also Elsa Akhmerova, was an American citizen, born Helen Lowry. She was a distant relative of Earl Browder, General Secretary of the Communist Party of the United States (CPUSA). She died of leukemia.
Floyd Cleveland Miller was a member of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA), who confessed in 1954 to having worked for the Soviet intelligence agencies.
Mikhail Tkach, also Michal Tkacz, Michael J. Tkach, and M. Nastivsky, born in Mastisiw, Poland, of Ukrainian parents, and arrived in the United States at New York City on November 25, 1909, under the name Michal Tkacz. Tkach's wife, Yeroslava, was born in Slatchev, Poland, and entered the U.S. in 1913. The Tkachs lived in New York City from 1922 onwards. Tkach became a naturalized U. S. citizen in New York City on December 8, 1936.
Mark Zborowski was an anthropologist and an NKVD agent. He was the NKVD's most valuable mole inside the Trotskyist organization in Paris during the 1930s and in New York during the 1940s.
Robert Talbott Miller III was an American citizen who worked in the United States Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs during World War II. He was alleged to be part of the Soviet espionage group known as the "Golos ring" in the 1940s.
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 and during the Cold War.
