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.
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".
Jacob Golos was a Ukrainian-born Bolshevik revolutionary who became an intelligence operative in the United States on behalf of the USSR. A founding member of the Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA), circa 1930 Golos became involved in the covert work of Soviet intelligence agencies. He participated in procuring American passports by means of fraudulent documentation, and the recruitment and coordination of activities of a broad network of agents.
Elizabeth Terrill Bentley 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 intelligence by contacting the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and admitting her own activities.
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.
Jack Bradley Fahy (1908–1947) was an American government official. He allegedly spied for the Soviet Naval GRU during World War II. Soviet naval intelligence was much smaller than the Soviet army's GRU, and only a fraction of the size of the KGB.
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.
Irving Charles Velson 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.
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).
Elza Akhmerova, also Elsa Akhmerova was an American citizen, born Helen Lowry. She is a niece of Earl Browder, General Secretary of the Communist Party of the United States (CPUSA). She died of leukemia.
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".
Floyd Cleveland Miller was a member of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA), who confessed in 1954 to having worked for the Soviet intelligence agencies.
Sylvia Callen Franklin, also known as Sylvia Lorraine Callen, and Sylvia Caldwell, was a young Chicago communist, recruited by Louis Budenz into the Communist Party USA's secret apparatus c. 1937.
Sergey Nikolaevich Kurnakov or Sergei N. Kournakoff was a former tsarist cavalry officer who had immigrated to the U.S. and later became an ardent ideological Communist.
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.
Nicola Napoli, was the President of Artkino Pictures, Inc., the primary distributor of Soviet films in the United States, Canada, Central America and South America from 1940 to 1982. Napoli was a double agent Soviet Spy for the United States. In 1941, he became an informant for the secret information concerning formulas and products manufactured by Dupont Corporation of America. As part of his role he was a member of Communist Party of the United States (CPUSA) and is known to have passed classified Soviet intelligence information (NKVDUS) to US intelligence during World War II. He was the secretary for the Anti-Fascists movement in, New York.
Ricardo Manlio Leonidas Setaro (1903–1975) was an Argentinian who served as deputy chief of the Latin American department of CBS Radio during World War II and maintained a covert relationship with Soviet intelligence, including Iosif Grigulevich. Setaro entered the United States in 1942 to study journalism. He had previously operated a news agency in Buenos Aires which distributed TASS News Agency dispatches. A 1943 deciphered Venona message identifies Setaro as a courier for KGB funds which list as expenditures "maintenance of the Apparat" and "operational work".
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.
