Joel Barr (January 1, 1916 – August 1, 1998), also Iozef Veniaminovich Berg and Joseph Berg, was part of the

Soviet Atomic Spy Ring Atomic spies or atom spies were people in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada who are known to have espionage, illicitly given information about nuclear weapons production or design to the Soviet Union during World War II and the ea ...

Background

Born Joyel Barr in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

, to immigrant parents of Ukrainian Jewish origin. He attended

City College of New York The City College of the City University of New York (also known as the City College of New York, or simply City College or CCNY) is a public university within the City University of New York (CUNY) system in New York City. Founded in 1847, Cit ...

with

Julius Rosenberg Julius Rosenberg (May 12, 1918 – June 19, 1953) and Ethel Rosenberg (; September 28, 1915 – June 19, 1953) were American citizens who were convicted of spying on behalf of the Soviet Union. The couple were convicted of providing top-secret i ...

and later worked with Rosenberg and

Alfred Sarant Alfred Epaminondas Sarant, also known as Filipp Georgievich Staros and Philip Georgievich Staros (September 26, 1918 – March 12, 1979), was an engineer and a member of the Communist party in New York City in 1944. He was part of the Rosenbe ...

at the United States

Army Signal Corps The United States Army Signal Corps (USASC) is a branch of the United States Army that creates and manages communications and information systems for the command and control of combined arms forces. It was established in 1860, the brainchild of Ma ...

laboratories at

Fort Monmouth Fort Monmouth is a former installation of the Department of the Army in Monmouth County, New Jersey. The post is surrounded by the communities of Eatontown, Tinton Falls and Oceanport, New Jersey, and is located about from the Atlantic Ocean. Th ...

New Jersey New Jersey is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York; on the east, southeast, and south by the Atlantic Ocean; on the west by the Delaware ...

during

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

Career

The Army Signal Corps Engineering Laboratories at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey, hired Barr as an electrical engineer in July 1940. Julius Rosenberg signed on with the corps as a junior engineer two months later.

Espionage

In 1941 they were recruited as Soviet spies by

Jacob Golos Jacob Golos (born Yakov Naumovich Reizen, Russian: Яков Наумович Рейзен; April 24, 1889 - November 27, 1943) was a Ukrainian-born Bolshevik revolutionary who became an intelligence operative in the United States on behalf of the U ...

. Barr's code name was Meter. They in turn persuaded

to join the network. According to Alexandr Feklisov:

Joel and Alfred were good friends and spent a lot of time together. I must admit that Sarant had the makings of an undercover agent; he was a cautious young man, yet full of resolve, with progressive ideas. Before we recruited him though, he had to pass a test. Barr asked Sarant to borrow some secret documents to which he had access because he, Barr, needed them for his personal use. Alfred did not hesitate in helping his friend and in the meantime the Center approved a bona fide approach."

Barr was recruited into espionage by Rosenberg. In turn, he recruited Sarant and the two shared an apartment and were allowed to function as a team by their

KGB The KGB (russian: links=no, lit=Committee for State Security, Комитет государственной безопасности (КГБ), a=ru-KGB.ogg, p=kəmʲɪˈtʲet ɡəsʊˈdarstvʲɪn(ː)əj bʲɪzɐˈpasnəsʲtʲɪ, Komitet gosud ...

Case Officer In intelligence organizations, agent handling is the management of so-called agents (called secret agents or spies in common parlance), principal agents, and agent networks (called "assets") by intelligence officers typically known as case o ...

, Alexander Feklisov. Feklisov regarded the pair as the most productive members of the group. Both Barr and Sarant were trained and employed as

electrical engineer Electrical engineering is an engineering discipline concerned with the study, design, and application of equipment, devices, and systems which use electricity, electronics, and electromagnetism. It emerged as an identifiable occupation in the l ...

s and worked on military

radar Radar is a detection system that uses radio waves to determine the distance (''ranging''), angle, and radial velocity of objects relative to the site. It can be used to detect aircraft, ships, spacecraft, guided missiles, motor vehicles, w ...

. Barr was discovered by

counterintelligence Counterintelligence is an activity aimed at protecting an agency's intelligence program from an opposition's intelligence service. It includes gathering information and conducting activities to prevent espionage, sabotage, assassinations or ot ...

to be a Communist and was fired. He and Sarant then found employment with

Western Electric The Western Electric Company was an American electrical engineering and manufacturing company officially founded in 1869. A wholly owned subsidiary of American Telephone & Telegraph for most of its lifespan, it served as the primary equipment ma ...

and worked on a highly secret radar bombsight. Barr and Sarant gave the

USSR 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 nationa ...

over 9,000 pages of documents detailing over 100 weapons systems. When the war ended the two founded Sarant Laboratories, and sought defense contracts, but the company soon failed, after which the two split up. Barr worked for a while in late 1946 with

Sperry Gyroscope Company Sperry Corporation was a major American equipment and electronics company whose existence spanned more than seven decades of the 20th century. Sperry ceased to exist in 1986 following a prolonged hostile takeover bid engineered by Burroughs ...

on secret military radar systems, but was fired in 1947 after the

United States Air Force The United States Air Force (USAF) is the air service branch of the United States Armed Forces, and is one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. Originally created on 1 August 1907, as a part of the United States Army Signal ...

refused him a security clearance.

Defection

Barr then moved to Europe, studying engineering in

Sweden Sweden, formally the Kingdom of Sweden,The United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names states that the country's formal name is the Kingdom of SwedenUNGEGN World Geographical Names, Sweden./ref> is a Nordic country located on ...

and music composition in

Paris Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...

with

Olivier Messiaen Olivier Eugène Prosper Charles Messiaen (, ; ; 10 December 1908 – 27 April 1992) was a French composer, organist, and ornithologist who was one of the major composers of the 20th century. His music is rhythmically complex; harmonically ...

. Barr disappeared from his Paris apartment the day after

David Greenglass David Greenglass (March 2, 1922 – July 1, 2014) was an atomic spy for the Soviet Union who worked on the Manhattan Project. He was briefly stationed at the Clinton Engineer Works uranium enrichment facility at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and then ...

was arrested, and fled to

Czechoslovakia , rue, Чеськословеньско, , yi, טשעכאסלאוואקיי, , common_name = Czechoslovakia , life_span = 1918–19391945–1992 , p1 = Austria-Hungary , image_p1 ...

without taking his belongings. The KGB gave him a new identity; for the rest of his life Barr was known as Joseph Berg. In the summer of 1951, Barr met up with Sarant and the woman Sarant ran away with, Carol Dayton. Barr and Sarant, living under the name Philip Staros, settled in

Prague Prague ( ; cs, Praha ; german: Prag, ; la, Praga) is the capital and largest city in the Czech Republic, and the historical capital of Bohemia. On the Vltava river, Prague is home to about 1.3 million people. The city has a temperate ...

, where they headed a successful effort to design the first automated anti-aircraft weapon created in the Soviet bloc, a weapon that was used with minor modifications through the 1980s.

Zelenograd

In 1956, the two transferred to

Leningrad Saint Petersburg ( rus, links=no, Санкт-Петербург, a=Ru-Sankt Peterburg Leningrad Petrograd Piter.ogg, r=Sankt-Peterburg, p=ˈsankt pʲɪtʲɪrˈburk), formerly known as Petrograd (1914–1924) and later Leningrad (1924–1991), i ...

and were put at the head of a military electronics research institute, and enjoyed the benefits of the Soviet ''

nomenklatura The ''nomenklatura'' ( rus, номенклату́ра, p=nəmʲɪnklɐˈturə, a=ru-номенклатура.ogg; from la, nomenclatura) were a category of people within the Soviet Union and other Eastern Bloc countries who held various key admi ...

''. In May 1962, Soviet Premier

Nikita Khrushchev Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev (– 11 September 1971) was the First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964 and chairman of the country's Council of Ministers from 1958 to 1964. During his rule, Khrushchev s ...

toured their institute and agreed to their plan to establish a new city dedicated entirely to microelectronics. The city,

Zelenograd Zelenograd ( rus, Зеленогра́д, p=zʲɪlʲɪnɐˈgrat, lit. ''green city'') is a city and administrative okrug of Moscow, Russia. The city of Zelenograd and the territory under its jurisdiction form the Zelenogradsky Administrative O ...

, was built on the outskirts of Moscow and Sarant was named deputy director, with authority over more than 20,000 engineers and scientists. Barr and Sarant lost their positions at Zelenograd when Khrushchev was deposed, but they continued to work on military projects, including the

Uzel Uzel (; or Uzel-près-l'Oust) is a commune in the Côtes-d'Armor department in Brittany in northwestern France. It is about west-northwest of Rennes and north-northwest of Loudéac. The old school, in the centre of Uzel, was the scene of tor ...

fire-control computer that was installed in

Tango Tango is a partner dance and social dance that originated in the 1880s along the Río de la Plata, the natural border between Argentina and Uruguay. The tango was born in the impoverished port areas of these countries as the result of a combina ...

and

Kilo KILO (94.3 FM broadcasting, FM, 94.3 KILO) is a radio station broadcasting in Colorado Springs, Colorado, Colorado Springs and Pueblo, Colorado, Pueblo, Colorado. It also streams online. History KLST and KPIK-FM The 94.3 signal signed on th ...

submarines. In 1983, a Russian émigré, Mark Kuchment, working at

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

's Russian Research Center, who had read ''The Rosenberg File'', linked Barr and Sarant to two prominent Soviet scientists, both native speakers of English.

Post-Soviet era

After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1992, Barr returned to the United States but denied his participation in espionage. He split the next six years between the U.S. and Russia, and died in 1998 in

Moscow Moscow ( , US chiefly ; rus, links=no, Москва, r=Moskva, p=mɐskˈva, a=Москва.ogg) is the capital and largest city of Russia. The city stands on the Moskva River in Central Russia, with a population estimated at 13.0 million ...

, Russia. There are seven deciphered KGB transmissions about Joel Barr. Barr's code name in the Soviet intelligence and in deciphered

Venona project The Venona project was a United States counterintelligence program initiated during World War II by the United States Army's Signal Intelligence Service (later absorbed by the National Security Agency), which ran from February 1, 1943, until Octob ...

transcripts was originally "Meter" (also "Metre" and "Metr"); it was later changed to "Scout" (also "Skaut"). The November 14, 1944 Venona cable also documents the successful recruitment of

Ruth Greenglass Ruth Leah Greenglass (née Printz; April 30, 1924 – April 7, 2008) was an American citizen who acted as a spy for the Soviet Union along with her husband, David Greenglass. Early life Ruth Leah Printz was born to a Jewish family on April 30 ...

Notes

References

*Steven T. Usdin,
Engineering Communism
How Two Americans Spied for Stalin And Founded the Soviet Silicon Valley'',

Yale University Press Yale University Press is the university press of Yale University. It was founded in 1908 by George Parmly Day, and became an official department of Yale University in 1961, but it remains financially and operationally autonomous. , Yale Universi ...

October 10, 2005, hardcover, *Steven T. Usdin,
The Origins of Zelenograd: The Amazing Story Of Two U.S. Engineers In Cold War Russia
' video lecture *Steven T. Usdin,

' *

John Earl Haynes John Earl Haynes (born 1944) is an American historian who worked as a specialist in 20th-century political history in the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress. He is known for his books on the subject of the American Communist and anti- ...

and

Harvey Klehr Harvey Elliott Klehr (born December 25, 1945) is a professor of politics and history at Emory University. Klehr is known for his books on the subject of the American Communist movement, and on Soviet espionage in America (many written jointly wit ...

, ''Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America'' (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999) *Allen Weinstein and Alexander Vassiliev, ''The Haunted Wood: Soviet Espionage in America—the Stalin Era'' (New York:

Random House Random House is an American book publisher and the largest general-interest paperback publisher in the world. The company has several independently managed subsidiaries around the world. It is part of Penguin Random House, which is owned by Germ ...

, 1999) * Alexander Feklisov, ''The Man Behind the Rosenbergs: Memoirs of the KGB Spymaster Who Also Controlled Klaus Fuchs and Helped Resolve the Cuban Missile Crisis'', (New York, Enigma, 2001)
FBI Venona file''Making it in the USSR''
by Mark Kuchment, The New York Review of Books, Volume 31, Number 5 · March 29, 1984 *PBS Nova Online,

'

External links

An Interactive Rosenberg Espionage Ring Timeline and Archive
{{DEFAULTSORT:Barr, Joel 1916 births 1998 deaths Scientists from New York City American people of Ukrainian-Jewish descent American expatriates in Czechoslovakia American defectors to the Soviet Union American people in the Venona papers American spies for the Soviet Union Espionage in the United States Soviet computer scientists Soviet engineers Soviet Jews People granted political asylum in the Soviet Union Engineers from New York City American computer scientists 20th-century American scientists