J. Peters
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J. Peters (born Sándor Goldberger; 11 August 1894 – 1990) was the most commonly known
pseudonym A pseudonym (; ) or alias () is a fictitious name that a person or group assumes for a particular purpose, which differs from their original or true name (orthonym). This also differs from a new name that entirely or legally replaces an individua ...
of a man who last went by the name "Alexander Stevens" in 1949. Peters was a journalist,
political activist A political movement is a collective attempt by a group of people to change government policy or social values. Political movements are usually in opposition to an element of the status quo, and are often associated with a certain ideology. Some t ...
, and accused Soviet spy who was a leading figure of the
Hungarian language Hungarian () is an Uralic language spoken in Hungary and parts of several neighbouring countries. It is the official language of Hungary and one of the 24 official languages of the European Union. Outside Hungary, it is also spoken by Hungarian ...
section of the
Communist Party USA The Communist Party USA, officially the Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA), is a communist party in the United States which was established in 1919 after a split in the Socialist Party of America following the Russian Revo ...
in the 1920s and 1930s. From the early 1930s, Peters was actively involved in the
espionage Espionage, spying, or intelligence gathering is the act of obtaining secret or confidential information (intelligence) from non-disclosed sources or divulging of the same without the permission of the holder of the information for a tangibl ...
activities of the
Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...
in the United States, fabricating
passports A passport is an official travel document issued by a government that contains a person's identity. A person with a passport can travel to and from foreign countries more easily and access consular assistance. A passport certifies the personal ...
, recruiting agents, and accumulating and passing along confidential and secret information. In October 1947, Peters was served with an
arrest warrant An arrest warrant is a warrant issued by a judge or magistrate on behalf of the state, which authorizes the arrest and detention of an individual, or the search and seizure of an individual's property. Canada Arrest warrants are issued by a j ...
for alleged violation of the
Immigration Act of 1924 The Immigration Act of 1924, or Johnson–Reed Act, including the Asian Exclusion Act and National Origins Act (), was a United States federal law that prevented immigration from Asia and set quotas on the number of immigrants from the Eastern ...
, which required alien immigrants in America to possess a valid
visa Visa most commonly refers to: *Visa Inc., a US multinational financial and payment cards company ** Visa Debit card issued by the above company ** Visa Electron, a debit card ** Visa Plus, an interbank network *Travel visa, a document that allows ...
. On August 3, 1948, while appearing under subpoena before the
House Committee on Un-American Activities The House Committee on Un-American Activities (HCUA), popularly dubbed the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), was an investigative committee of the United States House of Representatives, created in 1938 to investigate alleged disloy ...
(HUAC),
Whittaker Chambers Whittaker Chambers (born Jay Vivian Chambers; April 1, 1901 – July 9, 1961) was an American writer-editor, who, after early years as a Communist Party member (1925) and Soviet spy (1932–1938), defected from the Soviet underground (1938), ...
identified Peters as a spy. Later that month, Peters appeared under subpoena before HUAC but did not cooperate. He invoked the Fifth Amendment and refused to answer sensitive questions. On May 8, 1949, Peters left for communist Hungary to avoid imminent
deportation Deportation is the expulsion of a person or group of people from a place or country. The term ''expulsion'' is often used as a synonym for deportation, though expulsion is more often used in the context of international law, while deportation ...
by the
U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service The United States Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) was an agency of the U.S. Department of Labor from 1933 to 1940 and the U.S. Department of Justice from 1940 to 2003. Referred to by some as former INS and by others as legacy INS, ...
. Peters adopted the name "József Péter" and remained in Hungary until his death in 1990.


Early years

Sándor Goldberger (or Alexander Goldberger ) was born August 11, 1894 in the town of
Csap The Colorado Student Assessment Program (CSAP) was an assessment required by the No Child Left Behind Act administered by the Unit of Student Assessment in the Colorado Department of Education (CDE). The CSAP was designed to measure how well stud ...
,
Ruthenia Ruthenia or , uk, Рутенія, translit=Rutenia or uk, Русь, translit=Rus, label=none, pl, Ruś, be, Рутэнія, Русь, russian: Рутения, Русь is an exonym, originally used in Medieval Latin as one of several terms ...
, in the northeastern part of the
Kingdom of Hungary The Kingdom of Hungary was a monarchy in Central Europe that existed for nearly a millennium, from the Middle Ages into the 20th century. The Principality of Hungary emerged as a Christian kingdom upon the coronation of the first king Stephen ...
. There were about 3,000 people in the town at the time of Sándor's birth, including a substantial number of ethnic Jews like the Goldbergers who had fled from
official An official is someone who holds an office (function or mandate, regardless whether it carries an actual working space with it) in an organization or government and participates in the exercise of authority, (either their own or that of their ...
and popular repression in the
Russian Empire The Russian Empire was an empire and the final period of the Russian monarchy from 1721 to 1917, ruling across large parts of Eurasia. It succeeded the Tsardom of Russia following the Treaty of Nystad, which ended the Great Northern War. ...
. Many of the Jews throughout the Kingdom of Hungary attempted to assimilate into society by the adoption of local language and customs, speaking Hungarian rather than
Yiddish Yiddish (, or , ''yidish'' or ''idish'', , ; , ''Yidish-Taytsh'', ) is a West Germanic language historically spoken by Ashkenazi Jews. It originated during the 9th century in Central Europe, providing the nascent Ashkenazi community with a ver ...
and, in general, attempting to become, in the words of one scholar, "more Magyar than the Magyars themselves." Peters's biographer notes that this seems to have been the case with the Goldberger family, who apparently spoke Hungarian in the home and who gave all three of their sons (Sándor, József, and Imre) ethnic Hungarian names.Sakmyster, ''Red Conspirator,'' p. 3. Like most other Jewish families in Csap, the Goldberger family was poor, with Sándor's father working as a train
brakeman A brakeman is a rail transport worker whose original job was to assist the braking of a train by applying brakes on individual wagons. The earliest known use of the term to describe this occupation occurred in 1833. The advent of through brakes, ...
before leaving to join his wife running a restaurant. The family seems to have been
secular Secularity, also the secular or secularness (from Latin ''saeculum'', "worldly" or "of a generation"), is the state of being unrelated or neutral in regards to religion. Anything that does not have an explicit reference to religion, either negativ ...
rather than actively religious members of the
Jewish faith Judaism ( he, ''Yahăḏūṯ'') is an Abrahamic, monotheistic, and ethnic religion comprising the collective religious, cultural, and legal tradition and civilization of the Jewish people. It has its roots as an organized religion in the M ...
, but it remains possible that they held nominal membership in a local
synagogue A synagogue, ', 'house of assembly', or ', "house of prayer"; Yiddish: ''shul'', Ladino: or ' (from synagogue); or ', "community". sometimes referred to as shul, and interchangeably used with the word temple, is a Jewish house of worshi ...
. In 1899, Sándor was sent to the large city of
Debrecen Debrecen ( , is Hungary's second-largest city, after Budapest, the regional centre of the Northern Great Plain region and the seat of Hajdú-Bihar County. A city with county rights, it was the largest Hungarian city in the 18th century and i ...
to live with his grandfather, where educational opportunities were brighter than those of Csap. Sándor attended and graduated from primary school and gymnasium in that city. He apparently developed an affinity for the workers movement at a similarly early age, influenced by his grandfather and an uncle who were active participants in the railroad and
machinist A machinist is a tradesperson or trained professional who not only operates machine tools, but also has the knowledge of tooling and materials required to create set ups on machine tools such as milling machines, grinders, lathes, and drilling ...
unions. Following his graduation from gymnasium in 1912, Sándor decided to become a lawyer, enrolling in the law school at the
University of Kolozsvár Royal Hungarian Franz Joseph University ( hu, Magyar Királyi Ferenc József Tudományegyetem) was the second modern university in the Hungarian realm of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Founded in 1872, its seat was initially in Kolozsvár (Cluj ...
in
Transylvania Transylvania ( ro, Ardeal or ; hu, Erdély; german: Siebenbürgen) is a historical and cultural region in Central Europe, encompassing central Romania. To the east and south its natural border is the Carpathian Mountains, and to the west the Ap ...
.Sakmyster, ''Red Conspirator,'' p. 4. He did not attend courses in that city, however, instead studying law on his own in Debrecen and returning only to take examinations. (Whittaker Chambers stated in his memoirs that, "He had studied law at the university of Debrecen in Hungary.") To support himself, Sándor worked briefly in an office job before taking a position teaching at the gymnasium in Debrecen. With the coming of
World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
in the summer of 1914, Sándor was drafted into the
Austro-Hungarian Army The Austro-Hungarian Army (, literally "Ground Forces of the Austro-Hungarians"; , literally "Imperial and Royal Army") was the ground force of the Austro-Hungarian Dual Monarchy from 1867 to 1918. It was composed of three parts: the joint arm ...
, receiving training in the
infantry Infantry is a military specialization which engages in ground combat on foot. Infantry generally consists of light infantry, mountain infantry, motorized infantry & mechanized infantry, airborne infantry, air assault infantry, and marine i ...
. Sándor was selected for officer training and early in 1915, he received a commission as a
Lieutenant A lieutenant ( , ; abbreviated Lt., Lt, LT, Lieut and similar) is a commissioned officer rank in the armed forces of many nations. The meaning of lieutenant differs in different militaries (see comparative military ranks), but it is often sub ...
in the infantry reserve.Sakmyster, ''Red Conspirator,'' p. 5. Sándor was assigned to the Italian Front, where he remained for the duration of the war.


Activism


Europe

With the war coming to a close, Sándor returned to his hometown of Csap, where he came into contact with radicalized friends espousing
Marxist Marxism is a Left-wing politics, left-wing to Far-left politics, far-left method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a Materialism, materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to understand S ...
ideas about the
imperialist Imperialism is the state policy, practice, or advocacy of extending power and dominion, especially by direct territorial acquisition or by gaining political and economic control of other areas, often through employing hard power (economic and ...
nature of the war and touting the new social system in the process of being established in the wake of the
Russian Revolution The Russian Revolution was a period of Political revolution (Trotskyism), political and social revolution that took place in the former Russian Empire which began during the First World War. This period saw Russia abolish its monarchy and ad ...
.Sakmyster, ''Red Conspirator,'' p. 6. Sándor was won over to the
Bolshevik The Bolsheviks (russian: Большевики́, from большинство́ ''bol'shinstvó'', 'majority'),; derived from ''bol'shinstvó'' (большинство́), "majority", literally meaning "one of the majority". also known in English ...
cause and, together with four former
prisoners of war A prisoner of war (POW) is a person who is held Captivity, captive by a belligerent power during or immediately after an armed conflict. The earliest recorded usage of the phrase "prisoner of war" dates back to 1610. Belligerents hold priso ...
who were released from Russian captivity in 1918, became one of the founders of the first local group of the
Communist Party of Hungary The Hungarian Communist Party ( hu, Magyar Kommunista Párt, abbr. MKP), known earlier as the Party of Communists in Hungary ( hu, Kommunisták Magyarországi Pártja, abbr. KMP), was a communist party in Hungary that existed during the interwar ...
in Csap. During the brief
Hungarian Soviet Republic The Socialist Federative Republic of Councils in Hungary ( hu, Magyarországi Szocialista Szövetséges Tanácsköztársaság) (due to an early mistranslation, it became widely known as the Hungarian Soviet Republic in English-language sources ( ...
headed by
Béla Kun Béla Kun (born Béla Kohn; 20 February 1886 – 29 August 1938) was a Hungarian communist revolutionary and politician who governed the Hungarian Soviet Republic in 1919. After attending Franz Joseph University at Kolozsvár (today Cluj-Napoc ...
in 1919, Sándor served briefly on the governing council of
Ung County Ung County (in Latin: ''comitatus Unghvariensis''; Hungarian: ''Ung (vár)megye''; also in Slovak: ''Užský komitát/ Užská župa / Užská stolica''; ro, Comitatul Ung) was an administrative county (comitatus) of the Kingdom of Hungary. Its ...
.Sakmyster, ''Red Conspirator,'' p. 7. He managed to escape repression during the so-called
White Terror White Terror is the name of several episodes of mass violence in history, carried out against anarchists, communists, socialists, liberals, revolutionaries, or other opponents by conservative or nationalist groups. It is sometimes contrasted wit ...
after the collapse of the Hungarian Soviet regime, apparently benefiting from the 1920
Treaty of Trianon The Treaty of Trianon (french: Traité de Trianon, hu, Trianoni békeszerződés, it, Trattato del Trianon) was prepared at the Paris Peace Conference (1919–1920), Paris Peace Conference and was signed in the Grand Trianon château in ...
, which made
Carpathian Ruthenia Carpathian Ruthenia ( rue, Карпатьска Русь, Karpat'ska Rus'; uk, Закарпаття, Zakarpattia; sk, Podkarpatská Rus; hu, Kárpátalja; ro, Transcarpatia; pl, Zakarpacie); cz, Podkarpatská Rus; german: Karpatenukrai ...
part of
Czechoslovakia , rue, Чеськословеньско, , yi, טשעכאסלאוואקיי, , common_name = Czechoslovakia , life_span = 1918–19391945–1992 , p1 = Austria-Hungary , image_p1 ...
.


America

Peters emigrated to the
United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...
in 1924 and became an organizer for the
Communist Party USA The Communist Party USA, officially the Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA), is a communist party in the United States which was established in 1919 after a split in the Socialist Party of America following the Russian Revo ...
, concentrating his efforts in the party's Hungarian language section. Peters was a delegate to the Sixth Congress of the Communist International in Moscow in 1928 and was appointed head of the party's National Minorities Department in 1929.Sakmyster, ''Red Conspirator,'' pp. 1–24. By 1929 Peters (using the name "Joseph Peter," with no "s" at the end) was living in New York City and the Secretary of the Communist Party's Hungarian Bureau.Russian State Archive for Socio-Political History (RGASPI), fond 515, opis 1, delo 1600, list 36. Published as commercial microfilm as "Files of the Communist Party of the USA in the Comintern Archives," IDC Publishers, reel 122. He attended the CPUSA's 6th National Convention in March 1929 as the official representative of the party's Hungarian Bureau. He was also an alternate member of the governing Central Executive Committee of the party.


Espionage

As organizational secretary for the Communist Party in New York state in 1930, Peters was put in charge of building an illegal apparatus, or network, designed to support Soviet foreign policy. CPUSA and Comintern documents at the RGASPI archive in Moscow show that he headed the CPUSA underground apparatus from the early 1930s until
Whittaker Chambers Whittaker Chambers (born Jay Vivian Chambers; April 1, 1901 – July 9, 1961) was an American writer-editor, who, after early years as a Communist Party member (1925) and Soviet spy (1932–1938), defected from the Soviet underground (1938), ...
's defection in 1938. Peters was sent to Moscow for training with the Comintern in 1931 and was made a senior intern in the Anglo-American Secretariat. Returning to the US in 1932, the Central Committee assigned him to work in the ''secret apparatus'', where he remained until June 1938. Around 1933 or 1934, Peters took over from Chambers's previous ''
rezident A resident spy in the world of espionage is an agent operating within a foreign country for extended periods of time. A base of operations within a foreign country with which a resident spy may liaise is known as a "station" in English and a (, 're ...
'' handler. Chambers ascribed central importance to Peters' role:
The Soviet espionage apparatus in Washington also maintained constant contact with the national underground of the American Communist Party in the person of its chief. He was a Hungarian Communist who had been a minor official in the Hungarian Soviet Government of Bela Kun. He was in the United States illegally and was known variously as J . Peters, Alexander Stevens, Isidore Boorstein, Mr. Silver, etc. His real name was Alexander Goldberger and he had studied law at the university of Debrecen in Hungary. In addition, I had myself, during my entire six years in the Soviet underground, been the official secret contact man between a succession of Soviet apparatuses and the Communist Party, U.S.A. Both the open and the underground sections of the party were under orders to carry out, so far as they were able, any instructions I might give them in the name of the Soviet apparatuses.
In 1935, Peters penned ''The Communist Party: A Manual on Organization'', which includes the following:
The Communist Party puts the interest of the working class and the Party above everything. The Party subordinates all forms of Party organization to these interests. From this it follows that one form of organization is suitable for legal existence of the Party, and another for the conditions of underground, illegal existence...
The secret apparatus, under Peters, carried out surveillance, exposed infiltrators, protected sensitive party records from seizure, and disrupted rival communist and leftist movements such as the
Trotskyists Trotskyism is the political ideology and branch of Marxism developed by Ukrainian-Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky and some other members of the Left Opposition and Fourth International. Trotsky self-identified as an orthodox Marxist, a re ...
. Another of his duties included maintaining contact with the
Ware group The Ware Group was a covert organization of Communist Party USA operatives within the United States government in the 1930s, run first by Harold Ware (1889–1935) and then by Whittaker Chambers (1901–1961) after Ware's accidental death on Augus ...
in Washington D.C., and he took over direct supervision of that group in 1935. The head of the CPUSA,
Earl Browder Earl Russell Browder (May 20, 1891 – June 27, 1973) was an American politician, communist 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. Duri ...
, instructed Peters to co-operate with Soviet intelligence. About 1936, Peters recognized that some members of the Ware group had potential for advancement within the government so a decision was made to separate them from the group. Chambers became the courier between the
GRU The Main Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, rus, Гла́вное управле́ние Генера́льного шта́ба Вооружённых сил Росси́йской Федера́ци ...
and the new group. The members separated included
Alger Hiss Alger Hiss (November 11, 1904 – November 15, 1996) 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 con ...
, Henry Collins and
Lee Pressman Lee Pressman (July 1, 1906 – November 20, 1969) was a labor attorney and earlier a US government functionary, publicly alleged in 1948 to have been a spy for Soviet intelligence during the mid-1930s (as a member of the Ware Group), following hi ...
. Testimony by former Soviet agent
Whittaker Chambers Whittaker Chambers (born Jay Vivian Chambers; April 1, 1901 – July 9, 1961) was an American writer-editor, who, after early years as a Communist Party member (1925) and Soviet spy (1932–1938), defected from the Soviet underground (1938), ...
tied the 1937 disappearance of American Communist Party founder and OGPU Agent
Juliet Stuart Poyntz Juliet Stuart Poyntz (originally 'Points') (25 November 1886 – 1937) was an American suffragist, trade unionist and communist spy. As a student and university teacher, Poyntz espoused many radical causes and went on to become a co-founder o ...
' disappearance to the shadowy Soviet Comintern agent J. Peters. As an inside member of the Soviet
Comintern The Communist International (Comintern), also known as the Third International, was a Soviet Union, Soviet-controlled international organization founded in 1919 that advocated world communism. The Comintern resolved at its Second Congress to ...
and
OGPU The Joint State Political Directorate (OGPU; russian: Объединённое государственное политическое управление) was the intelligence and state security service and secret police of the Soviet Union f ...
espionage network, Peters is believed to have participated in the planning of the kidnapping and alleged murder of fellow CPUSA member Poyntz by a Soviet assassination squad. Peters was removed as head of the secret apparatus two months after Chambers broke with the espionage ring in 1938 and was replaced by Rudy Baker. In 1940,
Paul Crouch Paul Franklin Crouch /kraʊtʃ/ (March 30, 1934 – November 30, 2013) was an American television evangelist. Crouch and his wife, Jan, founded the Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN) in 1973; the company has been described as "the world’s la ...
(later an FBI informant) met with Peters (also
Jack Stachel Jacob Abraham "Jack" Stachel (19001965) was an Americans, American Communist functionary who was a top official in the Communist Party USA, Communist Party from the middle 1920s until his death in the middle 1960s. Stachel is best remembered as one ...
and William Weiner) in
Memphis, Tennessee Memphis is a city in the U.S. state of Tennessee. It is the seat of Shelby County in the southwest part of the state; it is situated along the Mississippi River. With a population of 633,104 at the 2020 U.S. census, Memphis is the second-mos ...
regarding "underground matters," according to his SSIS testimony on October 26, 1951. Of Peters, Crouch said:
Mr. CROUCH: I came to Memphis because I had just had discussions in New York with Fred Brown, alias Alpi, J. Peters.
Senator EASTLAND: J. Peters was the Communist boss of this country who was over
Earl Browder Earl Russell Browder (May 20, 1891 – June 27, 1973) was an American politician, communist 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. Duri ...
, was he not?
Mr. CROUCH: On underground matters, things of that kind, yes.
Senator EASTLAND: In fact, he was a Soviet military agent?
Mr. CROUCH: Yes, an intelligence agent. He was in charge of all the intelligence work in this country for the international Communist movement.
Senator EASTLAND: A direct representative of the Communist International in Moscow?
Mr. CROUCH: Yes.
Senator EASTLAND: On their payroll?
Mr. CROUCH: Yes.
Senator EASTLAND: On the payroll of the Russian military secret service?
Mr. CROUCH: That is correct. He represented them in this country.
Peters continued to work on the CPUSA's Central Committee staff on what a 1947 Soviet Communist party personnel report, called "special assignments." An examination of the Comintern's records turned up two 1943 messages from the GRU referring to a GRU officer in Washington as having come across "a group of workers singled out by the American Comparty CC entral Committeefor informational work and headed by the CC worker 'Peter.'" Though usually called "Peters" in the United States, in Comintern archives, his name is often rendered as "Peter." "Informational work" was GRU parlance for clandestine activity.


Investigation

On August 3, 1948, in testimony before the
House Committee on Un-American Activities The House Committee on Un-American Activities (HCUA), popularly dubbed the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), was an investigative committee of the United States House of Representatives, created in 1938 to investigate alleged disloy ...
, Chambers publicly stated that Peters was, "to the best of my knowledge, the head of the whole underground United States Communist Party." On August 30, Peters, under the name "Alexander Stevens" and represented by
Carol Weiss King Carol Weiss King (24 August 1895 – 22 January 1952) was a well-known immigration lawyer, key founder of the International Juridical Association, and a founding member of the National Lawyers Guild in the United States. Her left-leanin ...
, was subpoenaed to appear before a congressional investigating committee. He refused to answer any questions and left prior to deportation procedures for Hungary. In 1948, Louis Budenz wrote that he knew "J. V. Peters" as "Jack Roberts" in 1936. In 1949,
Hede Massing Hede Tune Massing, née "Hedwig Tune" (also "Hede Eisler," "Hede Gumperz," and "Redhead") (6 January 1900 – 8 March 1981), was an Austrian actress in Vienna and Berlin, communist, and Soviet intelligence operative in Europe and the United State ...
testified during Hiss's second trial about meeting Peters and described her involvement in greater detail in her 1951 memoir.Hede Massing, ''This Deception.'' New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1951; pp. 180, 187–188, ''passim.'' In 1952,
Nathaniel Weyl Nathaniel Weyl (July 20, 1910 – April 13, 2005) was an American economist and author who wrote on a variety of social issues. A member of the Communist Party of the United States from 1933 until 1939, after leaving the party he became a co ...
, another member of the
Ware Group The Ware Group was a covert organization of Communist Party USA operatives within the United States government in the 1930s, run first by Harold Ware (1889–1935) and then by Whittaker Chambers (1901–1961) after Ware's accidental death on Augus ...
, named Peters as head of that spy ring. In his 1952 memoir, Chambers refers mostly to "J. Peters" but also states that he knew him as "Steve" while serving in the underground. In 1953, Bella Dodd testified that she knew of Peters' manual and also someone named "Steve Miller," though it took her a long time to put the two together. Asked whether she knew him, she responded:
Well, that is an interesting question, because I knew the J. Peter manual before; I had read it. It had been given to me to read and study, and I knew a man by the name of Steve Miller, but Steve Miller was an insignificant little fellow who used to help with mimeographing at party headquarters. He was attached to the New York County committee. He was assigned to teach communism to some of the teachers, kind of take individual teachers who were rising in the party movement and give them special instructions. I thought he was just an insignificant little fellow until one day the authorities picked him up and I discovered he was J. Peters. He was engaged in using teachers throughout the United States for maildrop purposes, for revolutionary mail that was going back and forth from the Soviet Union to the United States. They would approach a pretty innocent teacher who came close to the movement and say, "Would you mind if a letter comes to your address?" Some mail would come to someone in Columbus or Cleveland or in California or in my section of New York, and the person would have no more relationship to that mail than the man in the moon.
Peters is identified as assisting Soviet espionage in deciphered KGB cables and in the KGB documents listed in ''The Haunted Wood'' by
Allen Weinstein Allen Weinstein (September 1, 1937 – June 18, 2015) was an American historian, educator, and federal official who served in several different offices. He was, under the Reagan administration, cofounder of the National Endowment for Democracy in ...
and
Alexander Vassiliev Alexander Vassiliev (russian: Александр Васильев; born 1962) 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 ...
. Many years later, he was located by Weinstein in Hungary and interviewed for Weinstein's book '' Perjury: The Hiss–Chambers Case''.


Later years

After his return to Hungary in 1949, Peters served in official Party capacities without prominence. In the 1980s, he wrote a secret Party memoir for the Hungarian party's secret files, which become available to the public and formed an important basis of ''Red Conspirator'' by Thomas L. Sakmyster.


Death and legacy

Peters died in Budapest in 1990, "barely noticed in Hungarian newspapers."Sakmyster, ''Red Conspirator,'' p. xxi. In ''Red Conspirator'', Sakmyster concludes that, as far as the Ware Group and related secret groups relate to Peters, they were "conducted by largely on his own initiative.... No Soviet agent ever served directly as his handler."


Works

* ''The Communist Party: A Manual on Organization'' (1935)


See also

*
List of American spies This is a list of spies who engaged in direct espionage. It includes Americans spying against their own country and people spying on behalf of the United States. American Revolution era spies Spied for the Patriots * Hercules Mulligan * Abra ...
*
John Abt John Jacob Abt (May 1, 1904 – August 10, 1991) was an American lawyer and politician, who spent most of his career as chief counsel to the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) and was a member of the Communist Party and the Soviet spy network "Ware Gro ...
*
Whittaker Chambers Whittaker Chambers (born Jay Vivian Chambers; April 1, 1901 – July 9, 1961) was an American writer-editor, who, after early years as a Communist Party member (1925) and Soviet spy (1932–1938), defected from the Soviet underground (1938), ...
*
Noel Field Noel Haviland Field (January 23, 1904 – September 12, 1970) was an American communist activist, diplomat and spy for the NKVD, whose activities before and after World War II allowed the Eastern Bloc to use his name as a prosecuting rationale du ...
*
Harold Glasser Harold Glasser (November 24, 1905 – November 16, 1992) 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 ...
*
John Herrmann John Theodore Herrmann (November 9, 1900 – April 9, 1959) was a writer in the 1920s and 1930s and is alleged to have introduced Whittaker Chambers to Alger Hiss. Biography Herrmann was born in Lansing, Michigan in 1900. He lived in Paris in ...
*
Alger Hiss Alger Hiss (November 11, 1904 – November 15, 1996) 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 con ...
*
Donald Hiss Donald Hiss (December 15, 1906 – May 18, 1989), also known as "Donie" and "Donnie", was the younger brother of Alger Hiss. Donald Hiss's name was mentioned during the 1948 hearings wherein his more famous and older brother, Alger, was ac ...
*
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 ...
*
Ward Pigman William Ward Pigman (March 5, 1910 – September 30, 1977) 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). Biograp ...
*
Lee Pressman Lee Pressman (July 1, 1906 – November 20, 1969) was a labor attorney and earlier a US government functionary, publicly alleged in 1948 to have been a spy for Soviet intelligence during the mid-1930s (as a member of the Ware Group), following hi ...
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Vincent Reno Franklin Vincent Reno was a mathematician and civilian employee at the United States Army Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland in the 1930s. Reno was a member of the "Karl group" of Soviet spies which was being handled by Whittaker Chambers until 19 ...
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Julian Wadleigh Julian Wadleigh (1904–1994) was an American economist and a Department of State official in the 1930s and 1940s. He was a key witness in the Alger Hiss trials. Background Henry Julian Wadleigh was born in 1904. He went to an English "public" s ...
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Harold Ware Harold or "Hal" Ware (August 19, 1889 – August 14, 1935) was an American Marxist, regarded as one of the Communist Party's top experts on agriculture. He was employed by a federal New Deal agency in the 1930s. He is alleged to have been a S ...
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Nathaniel Weyl Nathaniel Weyl (July 20, 1910 – April 13, 2005) was an American economist and author who wrote on a variety of social issues. A member of the Communist Party of the United States from 1933 until 1939, after leaving the party he became a co ...
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Harry Dexter White Harry Dexter White (October 29, 1892 – August 16, 1948) 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 W ...
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Nathan Witt Nathan Witt (February 11, 1903 – February 16, 1982), born Nathan Wittowsky, was an American lawyer who is best known as being the Secretary of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) from 1937 to 1940. He resigned from the NLRB after his commun ...
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Carol Weiss King Carol Weiss King (24 August 1895 – 22 January 1952) was a well-known immigration lawyer, key founder of the International Juridical Association, and a founding member of the National Lawyers Guild in the United States. Her left-leanin ...


References


Further reading

* * John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr, ''Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America.'' New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999. * * Allen Weinstein and Alexander Vassiliev, ''The Haunted Wood: Soviet Espionage in America—The Stalin Era'', Modern Library, 1999. * Allen Weinstein, '' Perjury: The Hiss–Chambers Case.'' New York: Random House, 1997. {{DEFAULTSORT:Peters, J. 1894 births 1990 deaths American Comintern people American Marxists American people of Hungarian-Jewish descent American communists Hungarian Jews Members of the Communist Party USA People from Chop, Ukraine Spymasters Soviet spies against the United States Jewish socialists