Joseph E. Persico (55 page)

Alongside this invaluable aide to the President walked another Lauchlin Currie. In 1940 he had become involved with two men with names close enough to create confusion. One was Abraham George Silverman and the other Nathan Gregory Silvermaster. Currie had been a graduate student at Harvard when he met Silverman, who was then teaching economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. When Silverman came to the capital to work for the Railroad Retirement Board, the two men renewed their acquaintance, and Currie now considered Silverman “one of the top ranking statisticians of Washington.” He met Gregory Silvermaster in 1940 when FDR asked Currie to look into an alleged shipboard mutiny, actually only a one-day in-port work stoppage. Silvermaster had become involved in the dispute as an employee of the Maritime Labor Board. Thereafter, Currie continued to see both Silverman and Silvermaster, whom he described as strictly social acquaintances.

Silvermaster was born in Odessa, Ukraine, and raised in China, where he attended a school run by an English religious order. He came to the United States at age sixteen, eventually earning a doctorate in economics and philosophy from the University of California at Berkeley. When Currie met him, he was in his early forties, a trim man with steel gray hair, horn-rimmed glasses, a neatly trimmed mustache, and the manner of an English headmaster. In mid-1942 the Board of Economic Warfare, the mobilization planning organization, thought it could use Silvermaster more profitably than could the Farm Security Administration to which he had transferred. Silvermaster then went to work for the BEW on loan. His new employment provided access to sensitive intelligence—America's production schedule for tanks, planes, other armaments, and the raw materials they required. His very presence at the BEW alarmed agencies involved in wartime security. The Civil Service Commission, MID, and ONI all sent warnings to the board claiming that Gregory Silvermaster was an out-and-out Communist with a long record of Communist associations, and certainly not a man to be trusted with military secrets. A Civil Service Commission investigation concluded: “Mr. Silvermaster is one of the really important operatives of the undercover Communist Party in the United States.” The military agreed and wanted BEW to fire him.

Among the undecipherable cables piling up at Arlington Hall, one from New York to Moscow dated September 2, 1943, demonstrated the NKVD's close interest in Silvermaster. “A few days ago,” it read, “two representatives of the Khata visited Pazh and began to [garbled] about Pel, in particular, is he a Fellow countryman.” Pel was Silvermaster and Khata the FBI. Pazh, meaning “page,” was “possibly Lauchlin Currie,” according to Venona's later decryption. The FBI had indeed questioned Currie as to whether he considered his friend Silvermaster a Communist. Currie drew a fine distinction. He told Hoover's men that for him the dividing line was June 22, 1941, the date Germany invaded the Soviet Union. Until then, the German-Soviet peace pact applied and a Communist would have opposed the United States going to war against Germany. But Silvermaster, during that time, had favored war. Therefore Currie did not regard him as a Communist, but simply a liberal New Dealer like himself.

Elizabeth Bentley served as the courier between Silvermaster and the New York NKVD station. She later gave an account of what happened after the security agencies began going after Silvermaster. She had gone to his home to pick up purloined secret documents and found him slumped in an armchair. “What's the matter?” she asked. Silvermaster handed her a letter to the BEW from then Army G-2 chief, George Strong, stating that the military intelligence agencies had proof that Silvermaster was a Communist disloyal to the United States and demanding that he be removed from his sensitive post. Bentley recalled Silvermaster saying, “It's no use fighting this thing. They've probably got enough to hang me. I'd better resign now before they kick me out.” This potential loss to the spy ring alarmed Bentley. She had started out collecting three or four rolls of microfilm per trip to Washington gathered by Silvermaster from fellow spies inside the government to turn over to her controller/lover, Jacob Golos, in New York. Silvermaster's productivity had grown so swiftly that the knitting bag Bentley carried on the New York train now bulged with some forty rolls every two weeks. She pleaded with him not to give up so easily and urged that he “pull every string you can to get this business quashed. Use Currie, White [Harry Dexter White], anybody else you know and trust.”

Silvermaster then went to Currie for help. By now the two men had become close socially, having dinner in each other's homes with some frequency. Currie called the undersecretary of war, Robert P. Patterson, and asked that Silvermaster's case be reviewed. He was later to claim that his intercession was neutral, and that he made no recommendation for or against Silvermaster. Nevertheless, on July 3, 1942, Patterson wrote to the BEW saying, “I have personally made an examination of the case and . . . I am fully satisfied that the facts do not show anything derogatory to Mr. Silvermaster's character or loyalty.” While Silvermaster's fate was being decided, Moscow took the precaution of ordering a two-month break between him and his ring. The final resolution of the case was described by Bentley: “Greg [Silvermaster] was permitted to resign from the Board of Economic Warfare and return to the Department of Agriculture—and with a clean slate! After a sigh of relief that must have echoed throughout the entire Russian secret police apparatus, we went back to our normal routine.” Vasili Zarubin, code-named Maksim, the NKVD
rezident,
or espionage chief, in New York and later in Washington, happily informed Moscow in October 1943: “Recently [Silvermaster] told us that [Currie] made every effort to liquidate his case.”

During this period, Currie was also becoming more interested in the Chinese Communists. That spring he had sent FDR “a letter from a friend in China. We get so little about conditions in Communist China that I thought this might interest you.” Currie's correspondent spoke admiringly of the Red Chinese enclaves, reporting that he “could find no evidence of graft or scandal, either financial or sexual. . . . The people in the Communist area are much more alive intellectually and are filled with an ideal. . . . They teach the Army how to read and have newspapers circulating pretty widely.” Currie, in forwarding this report to FDR, could be seen as proselytizing for the Chinese Communists. Still, he had promoted, even administered lend-lease for the Nationalist regime of Chiang Kai-shek, however graft-ridden and ineffectual it was in fighting the Japanese. And his correspondent's views on the Chinese Communists were no doubt accurate and worth reporting to the President. Currie was always careful that his contacts with Communists not be misconstrued. On one occasion, after lunch with the Russian ambassador, Konstantin Oumansky, he immediately sent the President a memorandum. “I accepted, thinking that I might be able to pick up something interesting or significant which I could pass along to you,” he assured FDR.

Currie, though possessing the President's implicit trust, nevertheless had his critics within the administration. In 1943, Henry Morgenthau, Jr., discussed with the President possible candidates for a key international economic post in London. “Who do you want?” FDR asked. Morgenthau replied that either Currie or James Landis would suit him fine. Roosevelt said, “I think Lauch Currie would be good. He is doing lots of odds and ends and this will give him a lot to do.” But when Morgenthau floated the name to Henry Stimson, the secretary of war answered that he “did not want Currie and would not take him unless the President so ordered.” The Army, Stimson explained, had no confidence in Currie's loyalty. John Franklin Carter noted in his diary for April 14, 1943, that the Nationalist envoy, “T.V. Soong, had opposed Laughlin [
sic
] Currie's nomination as ambassador to China. Must tell Pappy.”

Currie informed Harry Hopkins in August 1943 that he had recently talked to “Mr. Zubilin” of the Soviet embassy about an immigration case. Zubilin was a cover name for Vasili Zarubin, now operating out of the embassy at 1125 Sixteenth Street. The building, an eighteenth-century-style Italianate marble mansion built by Mrs. George Pullman, wife of the sleeping car tycoon, seemed an odd outpost for the anti-capitalist champions of the proletariat. The beneficiary of Currie's intercession was Paul Hagen, known as Karl Frank before he came to America, an Austrian refugee and an admitted former Communist whom the FBI suspected of being “a secret agent of the Soviet government.” What Currie had done for Hagen was to appear as a character witness when he applied for a reentry visa allowing him to visit Canada and then return to the United States. On August 7, J. Edgar Hoover received an anonymous but astonishingly accurate letter, sent apparently by a disgruntled NKVD official, disclosing the names of the Soviet Union's top eleven agents in America and two of their American associates. Zarubin was one of those exposed, and the last line of the letter noted that he had some “high-level agent in the office of the White House.”

Another New York to Moscow cable dealt with Currie's old MIT associate and Washington friend, Abraham George Silverman, a member of the Silvermaster ring described by a fellow agent as a whiner always complaining about the heavy party dues he had to pay. Silverman evidently was attracted to at least one facet of capitalism. He worried constantly about his financial straits and had turned to Currie for advice on playing the stock market. Currie was apparently a better government economist than a market seer, since Silverman lost money on his investments. Elizabeth Bentley later stated that upon taking a civilian job with the Air Corps in the Pentagon, Silverman “began to bring documents to the Silvermaster home.” According to an August 1944 NKVD cable, when it appeared that Silverman was to be transferred, he tried to use Currie's influence to find a job that would keep him in Washington, even though “Pazh [Currie] . . . is in strained relations with Aileron [Silverman].”

Among his miscellany of White House assignments, Currie was also tracking the development of RDX, a secret plastic explosive. He prepared a “Memorandum for the President” in which he reported, “I have been reliably informed that this explosive gives an effect 40% greater than TNT.” At this time, Bentley somehow managed to acquire information on RDX which she delivered to her controller. Currie further reported progress on the B-29 bomber to the President. Bentley delivered plans for the B-29 to the NKVD while the development of the plane was still under wraps. Others may have supplied Bentley with the RDX and B-29 secrets; but Currie was privy to this information, and was in touch with Silvermaster, whose job was to pass intelligence on to “Good Girl.”

Possibly the most incriminating charge against Currie also came from Bentley, though at second hand. She claimed that in 1944 “Mr. Silverman told me that Mr. Currie came dashing into Mr. Silverman's house sort of out of breath and told him that the Americans were on the verge of breaking the Soviet code.” Bentley's charge against Currie was hearsay. It achieves some credibility, however, in that Currie did have access to decrypts coming out of the Map Room where he could have learned that Arlington Hall was trying to break the Soviet ciphers.

A case against Currie as a Soviet spy working next to the President cannot be rejected out of hand. The evidence, however circumstantial, is considerable—his vouching for Gregory Silvermaster's placement in a sensitive wartime job; his testimony in favor of Paul Hagen, a suspected Soviet agent; that he reportedly gave classified documents to Abraham George Silverman, an agent of the Soviet Union; that he was approached to keep Silverman in a Washington job; that he had insider knowledge of RDX and the B-29 which the Russians learned about; that he had alerted the Soviets about American progress in cracking Soviet codes; and that at least eight NKVD cables between New York and Moscow refer to Pazh, most plausibly Currie. In
The Haunted Wood,
Currie is referred to unequivocally by authors Allen Weinstein and Alexander Vassiliev as one of several “Soviet agents,” a “fellow-agent,” and “the only presidential aide then also working for Soviet intelligence.”

Several NKVD cables between the United States and Moscow, however, indicate that the Soviets did not regard Currie as an agent in their back pocket, but rather as a longtime target for recruitment. One cable sent in 1942 bemoaned the lack of agents “surrounding Roosevelt or such persons as Hopkins.” An NKVD message dated April 6 of that year stated bluntly, “[P]enetrating the surroundings of Roosevelt himself is the goal that we seek in our everyday work.” A later message urged Silvermaster to continue to try to recruit “Pazh.” Three years later, Moscow still appeared to be trying to enlist Currie. “Find out from Albert [an NKVD officer] and Robert [Silvermaster] whether it would be possible for us to approach Pazh direct.” A message filed a month later suggested Pazh's close cooperation, but not outright control by the NKVD. “P. [for Pazh] trusts R [Silvermaster], informs him not only orally but also by handing over documents. . . . Up to now, Pazh relations with Robert were expressed, from our point of view, only in common feelings and personal sympathies.” Obviously, Moscow considered Pazh highly worth recruiting but yet to be recruited.

Elizabeth Bentley later admitted that she had never met Currie, that he never turned over any information or documents directly to her. She even stated, “The man was not a Communist.” She was not sure that Currie knew that intelligence from him eventually found its way into Soviet hands. An NKVD correspondent cabled his superiors that “Pazh” still did not yet understand that Silvermaster was a spy for the Soviet Union.

In the literal sense of the word, did the Soviet Union have a “spy” in the Roosevelt White House? It clearly had a manipulable sympathizer so useful that it may be a quibble as to whether or not the man was consciously involved in espionage for a foreign power. However, a line exists that one crosses in moving from being used to knowingly spying for another country. While Lauchlin Currie provided aid and comfort to a rival if not an enemy power, it does not appear that he consciously crossed that moral divide. Currie was a New Deal liberal and, in associating with a Silvermaster and a Silverman, imagined himself in the company of like-minded souls. He appears to have given the information he provided as an act of solidarity, looking upon these associates as legitimate comrades in the struggle against fascism. His behavior was hardly singular. Harry Hopkins, before the Tehran conference, tipped off the Soviet embassy in Washington that the FBI had bugged a secret meeting in which Vasili Zarubin passed money to Steve Nelson, a Yugoslav immigrant, an alumnus of Moscow's Lenin Institute, and the San Francisco organizer for the American Communist Party. Hopkins, reflecting FDR's determination to do nothing to upset the Soviets, had acted while unaware that Zarubin was the Soviet
rezident.