The Silvermaster File of 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 territori ...

Federal Bureau of Investigation 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, ...

is a 162-volume compendium totalling 26,000 pages of documents relating to the FBI's investigation of

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

NKVD The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (russian: Наро́дный комиссариа́т вну́тренних дел, Naródnyy komissariát vnútrennikh del, ), abbreviated NKVD ( ), was the interior ministry of the Soviet Union. ...

moles Moles can refer to: * Moles de Xert, a mountain range in the Baix Maestrat comarca, Valencian Community, Spain * The Moles (Australian band) *The Moles, alter ego of Scottish band Simon Dupree and the Big Sound People *Abraham Moles, French engin ...

inside the

U.S. federal government The federal government of the United States (U.S. federal government or U.S. government) is the national government of the United States, a federal republic located primarily in North America, composed of 50 states, a city within a fed ...

both before and during the Cold War. Beginning in 1945 with the allegations of defector and former

courier Elizabeth Bentley ( Venona cover names “Myrna”; ''Umnitsa'', “Clever Girl”), the file is also known as the Bentley file or Gregory file ("Gregory" was the FBI code name for Bentley). The file takes its name from

Nathan Gregory Silvermaster Nathan Gregory Silvermaster (November 27, 1898 – October 7, 1964), 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 t ...

(Venona cover names Pel, Pal, "Paul"; "Robert") of the

War Production Board The War Production Board (WPB) was an agency of the United States government that supervised war production during World War II. President Franklin D. Roosevelt established it in January 1942, with Executive Order 9024. The WPB replaced the Su ...

, whom Bentley named as head of an underground Communist network known as the Silvermaster Group. Among the people named in the file in connection with this group are President Franklin Roosevelt's Administrative Assistant Lauchlin Currie (Venona cover name "Page")Robert J. Hanyok
''Eavesdropping on Hell: Historical Guide to Western Communications Intelligence and the Holocaust'', 1939-1945
(Washington, DC: Center for Cryptologic History, National Security Agency, 2005, 2nd Ed.), p. 119 and Assistant Secretary of the Treasury

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 ...

(Venona cover names “Lawyer”; “Jurist”; "Richard"). Also named in the file are

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 ...

(Venona cover name "Raider"), chief of the Aviation Section of the

, and contacts of his

Perlo group Headed by Victor Perlo, the Perlo group is the name given to a group of Americans who provided information which was given to Soviet intelligence agencies; it was active during the World War II period, until the entire group was exposed to the FBI ...

, including Alger Hiss (Venona cover name “Ales”), secretary general of the United Nations Charter Conference. (Like several others identified by Bentley, Hiss had been identified independently by another defecting Soviet courier,

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) ...

, to Assistant Secretary of State Adolf Berle in 1939.) Among dozens of others named by Bentley in this file in connection with this network is

Duncan Lee Lt. Col. Duncan Chaplin Lee (1913–1988) was confidential assistant to Maj. Gen. William ("Wild Bill") Donovan, founder and director of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), World War II-era predecessor of the CIA, during 1942–46. Lee is ...

(Venona cover name “Koch”), confidential assistant to William Donovan, founder and director of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), wartime predecessor of the

CIA The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gathering, processing, ...

Prosecutions

Original plans for Bentley to serve as a double agent and gather sufficient evidence to prosecute the Soviet agents identified in the Silvermaster files were ruined when her identity was inadvertently leaked and the USSR quickly shut down its operations. The Silvermaster file in combination with other secret proofs such as the Venona intercepts gave US intelligence the identity of many Soviet agents without the practical means to secure convictions. Also, the statute of limitations for an espionage prosecution was quite short. This was a significant part of the backstory of McCarthyism. Bentley's double agent career would have enabled the US to expose the spies without compromising Venona and losing that as an ongoing intelligence source.FBI Silvermanster file,

Memorandum for the Attorney General, January 27, 1947 A memorandum ( : memoranda; abbr: memo; from the Latin ''memorandum'', "(that) which is to be remembered") is a written message that is typically used in a professional setting. Commonly abbreviated "memo," these messages are usually brief and ...

Notes

References

* FBI Report, ''Underground Soviet Espionage Organization (NKVD) in Agencies of the United States Government''], October 21, 1946
FBI Silvermaster file, Volume 82)

External links

The Cold War International History Project (CWIHP)
has the full text of former KGB agent Alexander Vassiliev's Notebooks, containing new evidence on Soviet espionage in the United States during the Cold War * The Education and Research Institute has poste

* The

FBI Silvermaster File 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 ...

on the

Internet Archive The Internet Archive is an American digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It provides free public access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, software applications/games, music, ...

{{DEFAULTSORT:FBI Silvermaster file Espionage in the United States Espionage scandals and incidents Venona project Spy rings Communist Party USA 1945 establishments in the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation

Prosecutions

See also

Notes

References

Further reading

External links