Joseph Milton Bernstein (September 30, 1908 – July 1975) was an American accused of spying for the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...

and later confirmed as a Soviet agent by the US intelligence program Venona.

Background

Joseph Milton Bernstein was born on September 30, 1908, in Connecticut. He attended

Yale University Yale University is a Private university, private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the List of Colonial Colleges, third-oldest institution of higher education in the United Sta ...

, where he joined the

John Reed Club The John Reed Clubs (1929–1935), often referred to as John Reed Club (JRC), were an American federation of local organizations targeted towards Marxist writers, artists, and intellectuals, named after the American journalist and activist John ...

Career

Bernstein allegedly recruited

T.A. Bisson Thomas Arthur Bisson, who wrote as T. A. Bisson (New York City, 1900–1979) was an American political writer, journalist, and government official who specialized in East Asian politics and economics. In the 1920s and 1930s, he worked for the Fo ...

, who had stopped working at the Board of Economic Warfare (BEW) and began working in the

Institute of Pacific Relations The Institute of Pacific Relations (IPR) was an international NGO established in 1925 to provide a forum for discussion of problems and relations between nations of the Pacific Rim. The International Secretariat, the center of most IPR activity o ...

(IPR) and in the editorial offices of Bernstein’s periodical ''

Amerasia ''Amerasia'' was a journal of Far Eastern affairs best known for the 1940s "Amerasia Affair" in which several of its staff and their contacts were suspected of espionage and charged with unauthorized possession of government documents. Publicati ...

''. Bisson passed to Bernstein copies of four documents: (a) his own report for BEW with his views on working out a plan for shipment of American troops to China; (b) a report by the Chinese embassy in Washington to its government in China; (c) a brief BEW report of April 1943 on a general evaluation of the forces of the sides on the Soviet-German front; and (d) a report by the American consul in Vladivostok. Bernstein is supposed to have functioned as the contact between Soviet Military Intelligence (

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

Philip Keeney Philip Olin Keeney (1891–1962), and his wife, Mary Jane Keeney, were librarians who became part of the Silvermaster spy ring in the 1940s.Rosalee McReynolds, Louise S. Robbins: ''The Librarian Spies: Philip and Mary Jane Keeney and Cold War Espi ...

of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) and his wife, Mary Jane Keeney of the Board of Economic Warfare and later the

United Nations The United Nations (UN) is an intergovernmental organization whose stated purposes are to maintain international peace and security, develop friendly relations among nations, achieve international cooperation, and be a centre for harmoniz ...

. In 1945 the Office of Strategic Services Security Division and the

FBI The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic intelligence and security service of the United States and its principal federal law enforcement agency. Operating under the jurisdiction of the United States Department of Justice, t ...

searched the offices of the magazine ''Amerasia'', which was suspected of holding classified government documents. The staff of the publication included accused Communist spies and agents, including Joseph Bernstein. In subsequent years, the case resulted in several convictions and a number of congressional hearings were held on the case. Bernstein's code with the GRU and in the

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 ...

is "MARQUIS".

Works

Books: *
Spotlight on the Far East
a handbook'' (1945) Translations: *
Eugene Delacroix, his life and work
' by Charles Baudelaire (1947) translation *
Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Verlaine
selected verse and prose poems'' (1947) edited with an introduction by Bernstein *
Literature of the graveyard
Jean-Paul Sartre, François Mauriac, André Malraux, Arthur Koestler'' (1948) translation *
Passionate journey
a novel in 165 woodcuts'' by Frans Masereel with introduction by Thomas Mann (1948) translation

References

External sources

* John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr, ''Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America,'' Yale University Press {{DEFAULTSORT:Bernstein, Joseph Milton 1908 births 1975 deaths Anti-communism in the United States American spies for the Soviet Union American people in the Venona papers Yale University people