ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION

By Dr. Svetlana A. Chervonnaya

I.  Some considerations on the document's origin:

The text discussed here was discovered by Dr. David Lowenthal among the papers of his late brother, John Lowenthal. It consisted of several pages of handwritten notes in Russian that in 2002 Alexander Vassiliev, the Russian co-author with Allen Weinstein of "The Haunted Wood" (1999), produced in London in the course of his libel case, Vassiliev v. Frank Cass & Co., Ltd. (Jury Bundle, pp. 303, 304 and 305). Vassiliev's notes, which are titled "A. Gorsky's report – to Savchenko S.R. 23 December, 49," have two parts: the shorter part presents excerpted extracts from Anatoly Gorsky's overall report to Lieutenant General Sergei Savchenko (as sourced by Weinstein to SVR file 43173, vol. 2v, pp. 46-48); the longer part is Gorsky's "Failures in the U.S.A. (1938-48)" list (as sourced by Weinstein to SVR file 43173, vol. 2v, pp. 49-55).

For a better understanding of the full document's origin, and by "full document" I mean both Gorsky's list and the excerpted report that precedes it, it is necessary to note that at the center of the libel case was Vassiliev's assertion that he had seen the name of Alger Hiss written in clear in files of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) that had been made available to him in 1994 as Allen Weinstein's SVR-designated Russian co-author. ("The Haunted Wood," by Allen Weinstein and Alexander Vassiliev, is a history of Soviet espionage in the Stalin era compiled from documents kept in Soviet intelligence archives.) These notes were produced in court as part of Vassiliev's effort to substantiate his claim about Hiss.

According to Alexander Vassiliev's initial story, when leaving Russia for good in 1996, he smuggled out of the country on floppy disks his notes of the SVR archival documents he had seen. This suggested that the Russian handwritten notes produced in London might be Vassiliev's handwritten copies made from his electronic files. Quite recently, however, Vassiliev has changed this story. Writing to Dr. John Earl Haynes, Vassiliev has stated that back in 1994 at the SVR, he took handwritten notes in notebooks of the archival documents he was being shown - and then afterwards translated them into English in his computer for his American co-author; by the time of the British court litigation, Vassiliev had allegedly had his old notebooks smuggled out of Russia. According to this story, it might appear that the notes presented to the British court could have been Vassiliev's original notes.

This is contradicted, however, by the eyewitness account of an SVR Press Office official, who told the author, "Vassiliev did not make handwritten notes, but was writing in his laptop." This seems to support Vassiliev's initial story - and a tentative conclusion that we may be dealing not with a second-hand but, in fact, with a third-hand source. At the same time, the scanned images of the pages in Vassiliev's handwriting do look as though they had been taken from a notebook. At this stage, there is not enough data to resolve this controversy.

The images of Jury Bundle pages 303, 304, and 305 display Alexander Vassiliev's notes of pp. 46-54 of the SVR Archive's file 43173, vol. 2v. According to retired SVR Major General Julius Kobyakov's Web postings, this looks like a "general correspondence file," that is, a file with rather wide circulation within the service, and thus not containing the most sensitive information, such as the simultaneous identification of the service's assets by both their code names and their real names. According to independent oral accounts by several veterans of the service in conversation with the author, such highly sensitive information is likely to be found only in the service's most secret personnel files.

Although even the less revealing archive made available to Vassiliev is completely sealed off from public access, the footnoted references to it in "The Haunted Wood" give some indication of its internal structure. On the surface, its organization would seem to resemble files housed in the archive of the Russian Foreign Ministry (AVP RF), another "departmental" Russian archive where public access is limited to scholars working in particular fields.

Gen. Sergei Savchenko

At the AVP RF, each archival collection is subdivided into thematic file folders (in Russian, "papka"), with each folder having a certain number of files (in Russian, "djelo") under various titles. For example, within a particular "American" folder, there would be separate files for correspondence between the Soviet Embassy in Washington and the Soviet Foreign Ministry in Moscow; between the New York Consulate General and the Soviet Foreign Ministry; between the U.S. Embassy in Moscow and the Soviet Foreign Ministry, etc.  In each file folder, documents and correspondence are arranged in a strictly ascending chronological order, so that an April 1, 1945 letter always precedes an April 2, 1945 letter. Following this logic, SVR file 43173 (if similar to an AVP RF file folder) should have several volumes (each with its own specific title), and documents within each volume would be arranged in a strictly ascending chronological order.

For a better understanding of the background to Alexander Vassiliev's notes, let us now briefly turn to Allen Weinstein and Alexander Vassiliev's "The Haunted Wood" (hereinafter THW).

On pages 296-7, THW presents some extracts from Gorsky's December 23, 1949 Report to Savchenko. According to a footnote, these particular excerpts from this document can be found in SVR file 43173, vol. 2v, pp. 46-47.¹

The quotes on page 296 are immediately preceded by an account of a December 25, 1948 cable to Moscow from the then Committee of Information's chief resident in the United States and Ambassador Alexander Semenovich Paniushkin. Writing in the

Amb. Alexander Paniushkin

aftermath of Laurence Duggan's suicide, it warns against both any further attempts at contacting former sources and any new "talent-spotting." The footnote to this quote refers the reader to a different passage within the same file: 43173, vol. 4, pp. 47-48. THW then says that Moscow rejected "Panyushkin's views," and sent the Washington station an instruction "to continue working with them [old agents]...." The footnote for this quote cites file 43173, vol. 2v, pp. 33 and 43. These two footnotes let us assume that vol. 2v contains Moscow-originating documents on the U.S. line (outgoing), while vol. 4 contains incoming documents being received from United States outposts (or, probably more precisely, from the Washington, D.C. station).

For some obscure reason, Allen Weinstein then jumps over three file pages to p. 46 of file 43173, vol. 2v, and quotes from the three opening paragraphs of Gorsky's December 23, 1949 report to Savchenko as a proof of "the bleak prospects described by Panyushkin .... confirmed the following year [i.e. 1949] by yet another analysis of Soviet intelligence's prospects in the United States filed in Moscow by the knowledgeable Anatoly Gorsky."

Ignoring the wealth of information found in Gorsky's list of "Failures," which immediately follows his report to Savchenko (and is found on pages 49-55 of the same file with its title on the bottom of page 48, immediately following the report itself), Allen Weinstein next fast forwards 250-plus file pages to discuss a certain "Fyodor"'s rejection of Gorsky's complaints about his "laziness and inability." (THW, p. 297, footnote 52, which cites file 43173, v. 2v, pp. 309-310.)

THW then quickly rewinds its account of file 43173, vol. 2v back to pp. 71-87 of the file, in order to give an account of a mid-March 1950 memo from Lieutenant General Sergei Romanovich Savchenko, who had been head of the MGB intelligence branch of KI (Committee of Intelligence) since September 19, 1949 (THW, p. 298, footnote 53, citing file 43173, vol. 2v, pp. 71-87); General Savchenko's memo discusses blows to Soviet intelligence operations that had been inflicted by the betrayals of five "group-leading" agents.² Specifically, General Savchenko details the failures of five "agent groups," including Bentley's ("who gave away more than 40 most valuable agents") and an additional "four agent groups" that failed because of the defections of MGB and GRU "traitors": "'Berg' [Alexander Koral], 'Buben' [Louis Budenz], 'Karl' [Whittaker Chambers], and 'Redhead' [Hedda Gumperz]." (Since reports created for the Soviet leadership would never have used real names but only code names handwritten into the typed text,³ all the real names in square brackets are an addition by Allen Weinstein.)

Gorsky's December 1949 Report lists the same five groups as Savchenko's March 1950 memo:

1. [Bentley's]  43 persons, including 7 Soviet operatives - hence 36 assets;
2. "Carl"'s 21 persons, including 1 Soviet operative -  20 alleged assets;
3. "Redhead"'s 6 persons, including 1 Soviet operative - 5 assets;
4. "Buben"'s 6 persons, including 1 Soviet operative - 5 assets;
5. "Berg"'s 16 persons, including 5 Soviet operatives - 11 assets.

By Gorsky's reckoning, a total of 36 agents had been betrayed by Bentley, and an additional 41 agents had been compromised by four other "traitors." Compare this with General Savchenko's assertion that "more than 40" agents had been rendered ineffective by Elizabeth Bentley's defection, and "more than 30 valuable agents in four other groups" had been compromised by other defections. This discrepancy suggests that General Savchenko might have had another "Failures" list to draw on (or several other lists, if we take into consideration the possibility he might also have queried the "neighbor" service) - lists that proved to be more accurate than the one he had received several months earlier from Anatoly Gorsky.

THW does not indicate for whom General Savchenko wrote his March 1950 memo - but in Soviet bureaucratic procedures, the head of the intelligence service would not simply write memos for the file; he would instead write either an important instruction to a field station or a report to higher-level Soviet officials. Since there is no indication that the text of his memo was written as a cable, and therefore as an instruction to a field station, we can assume that it was written as a report to his superiors, perhaps the head of the MGB, or most probably the head of KI [the Committee of Information], or possibly someone even higher-up.

Keeping this context in mind, Anatoly Gorsky's December 23, 1949 Report to Savchenko and its accompanying "Failures in the U.S." list are most probably some of the background materials assembled that a couple of months later resulted in Director Savchenko's mid-March 1950 report. Since General Savchenko became the Director of the MGB branch of KI only on September 19, 1949, any request by him for the type of background materials Gorksy put together could only have originated after that date. Queried by higher authorities about the public disclosures in the United States of Soviet intelligence failures, the new Director would, according to standard procedures, request from his subordinates all necessary background materials.

It is my understanding that such a request would not be limited just to assigning Anatoly Gorsky to the task, since Gorsky's operational background in the U.S. was limited to the relatively short window of September 1944 to early December 1945. There should also at least have been an archival query - with archival references following the report of the former station chief in Washington, D.C. Considering the scale of the failures involved - and their public disclosure in the United States - other operatives on the American line might also have been requested to write their own reports.⁴ Since SVR file 43173 seems like a "general correspondence file," materials contributed by other operatives or contained in an archival report might well have landed in more sensitive files than those opened to Vassiliev and Weinstein.

II. The problem of dating

This background suggests that Anatoly Gorsky's "Failures in the U.S. (1938-48)" list (file 43173, vol. 2v, pp. 48-55) was an integral part of, or an immediate follow-up to, his December 23, 1949 "Report to S.R. Savchenko" (file 43173, vol. 2v, pp. 46-48) - and was, therefore, placed after the December 23, 1949 report in the file, according to the standard practice of chronologically ascending pagination.

In view of all the above considerations, the "Dec. 48" date written after the "Failures" list in Alexander Vassiliev's notes looks like a mistake - made either by Vassiliev or, more probably, by Gorsky himself. Moreover, even setting aside the background considerations just discussed, there are wordings and information within the "Failures" list text that make a "Dec. 48" dating highly improbable. For instance, any reader of the document should be particularly alert to the fact that Laurence Duggan, mentioned in the "Failures" list as a "Suicide," jumped or fell to his death on December 20, 1948 - leaving only a very slim chance for this fact to have been included in a list actually prepared during "Dec. 48."

III. Notes on code names used in Gorsky's list, "Failures in the United States (1939-48)"

1. "'Carl''s Group" as it appears in Vassiliev's notes is the most controversial among the five groups on the list:

Even at first glance, it is striking for its heterogeneity. Out of the 21 names included in the group, 10 cryptonyms are represented by numbers, and 11 by code names. Among the latter, the first four are not written with enclosing quotation marks (or inverted commas), while the rest (Nos. 9-10 and 17-21) are.

Among this non-numbered group, six (Nos. 1-3 and 17-19) are non-Russian, Christian names, four (Nos. 9, 10, 20, and 21) are Russian nouns, and one (No. 4) is an English adjective used as a nickname and designating a youthful age. The latter cryptonym strikes the alert reader as an alien presence in the context of the other non-Christian name cryptonyms within this group, all of which consist of nouns spelled in Russian: "Shtorm" ["Storm"], "Vig" ["Whig"], "Eleron" ["Aileron"], "Rubl'" ["Rouble"]. To be consistent with this pattern, the cryptonym "Junior" should be spelled in Russian - either "Mladshii" or its abbreviation "Mlad."

The numbered cryptonyms are striking for their resemblance to early, and later superceded, OGPU-NKVD numbered cryptonyms, such as "19th," the first code name of Laurence Duggan. As seen in GRU (Razvedupr) Venona deciphered cable traffic, their numbered code names several years later came to be written as "Source No. 12" for assets, and "Name No. 42" for Soviet operatives. Venona deciphered GRU cables have not yielded any three-digit cover names, only two-digit ones.

Alexander Vassiliev's selections from his notes on Gorsky's December 23, 1949 report to General Savchenko and the follow-up "Failures in the U.S." list do not suggest any reasons for including "Carl"'s allegedly Razvedupr (that is, the Fourth Directorate of the General Staff of the Red Army, an earlier name for the GRU) group into a list of failures by what was then the MGB (and had previously been OGPU - NKVD - NKGB). In the opinion of Dr. John E. Haynes, the reason for including a military group within an MGB report was that Gorsky wrote his report during the implementation of a short-lived Soviet foreign intelligence "umbrella" structure - the Committee of Information of the Counsel of Ministers of the USSR (hereinafter KI). KI was organized following a high-level May 30, 1947 decision to bring both branches of intelligence under the direct control of Stalin's top leadership.

Initially, KI was headed by Vyacheslav Molotov, then the Deputy Chairman of the Counsel of Ministers of the USSR. Molotov was assigned three deputies – one for MGB intelligence, one for military intelligence, and a third for the Foreign Ministry's information gathering. Another novelty was assigning so-called "chief residents" to each of the major "target countries," with the manifest goal of ensuring tighter control of the country's leadership over field operations - and direct reporting to the country's top leadership. In the United States, the "chief resident" would be Ambassador Alexander Paniushkin - who had his own direct links to the Central Party Committee.

The KI integration of information, however, was meant only to affect the very top echelon, and it was not intended to encroach on the two services' rigid compartmentalization at the level of their information-gathering, information-storing, and information-sharing activities.

Moreover, even this integration at the top turned out to be short-lived. By the end of 1948, the withdrawal of KI's military intelligence branch from the system (a withdrawal which had begun in the summer of 1948) was already almost fully complete.

There are several more items on the "'Carl''s Group" list to alert a discerning reader:

The first is the use of "Carl" as a cryptonym, when, according to Whittaker Chambers' own story, this was the name he used in 1934 - 1937 as his Communist Party underground cover name. Such cover names should be differentiated from code names used in operational correspondence, because the bearers of code names for the most part would have no way of knowing what code names had been assigned to them.

Next is the improbable first name - "Barna" - given to the Soviet Razvedupr operative in the United States in 1936 - 1938, Boris Yakovlevich Bukov. Assuming Gorsky in Moscow had access to military files, he would have been able to write a correct first name and might, moreover, have had a chance to learn Bukov's code name - "Sasha" (a shortened form of the Russian version of Alexander), as recently indicated in Russia [Bukov (Al'tman), Boris Yakovlevich ("Sasha") biography in: V.M. Lurie and V.Ya. Kochick. "GRU: The Deeds and the People." Neva - Olma press, 2003, p. 356.] Gorsky's characterization of Bukov as "our former operative" ["nash byvsh[ii] kadr[ovyi] sotr[udni]k"] suggests that Gorsky might, in fact, have been unaware that Bukov belonged to the "neighbors."

The use of the cryptonym "Leonard" gives no indication whether it was a cryptonym used in operational correspondence by the military intelligence line back in the 1930s (highly improbable, to my mind), or a cryptonym used in the NKVD's own operational correspondence, either in the 1930s or (most probably) during Gorsky's own time as Washington, D.C. station chief. One thing, however, is certain: if Alger Hiss had indeed been the agent "Ales" described in Venona decrypted cable No. 1822, the author of that cable, "Vadim," also known as Anatoly Gorsky (the author of "Gorsky's Report"), would have definitely put his new boss, General Savchenko, on high alert.

To reiterate, the use of an English language cryptonym, "Junior," for Alger Hiss's younger brother, Donald, instead of its more expected Russian equivalent ("Mlad" or "Mladshii"), suggests a highly murky origin for this cryptonym.

Another strange irregularity is Gorsky's use of the Communist Party cover name "David Carpenter" for No. 13 on his "'Carl''s group" list in place of the real name of the man behind it – David Zimmerman, a mid-level Communist Party functionary in Maryland in the 1930s. According to Whittaker Chambers, a certain "David Carpenter" had supervised an underground party group in Washington, D.C. and had introduced Chambers to Wadleigh, Reno, and Pigman (Nos. 5, 6, and 8 on the list). As in several other instances, Gorsky lists "Carpenter's" occupation – "newspaper employee" – as of the time he was compiling his report (December 1949), when Zimmerman joined the editorial staff of the Communist "Daily Worker." (From 1946 to 1948 or 1949, he had been a member of Communist Party U.S.A.'s Control Commission.)

Next is the presence of Noel Field's name among allegedly "military" intelligence assets under his reported OGPU [predecessor to NKVD - NKGB - KGB] intelligence code name in 1935 - 1936.

Even more troubling is the presence on the alleged 1930s "military" list of three code names - "Richard," "Eleron," and "Rubl'" - that appear in Venona 1944 - 1945 decrypted NKGB cable traffic (coinciding with the time of Gorsky's own U.S. posting), and simply could not have served as code names used by another branch of Soviet intelligence in the period preceding World War II.

Last, but not least troubling, is the titling of this group as "'Carl''s Group." According to Chambers' own account, his role had been that of a courier. In the known history of both branches of Soviet intelligence, I am unaware of any group named after its courier. Although very little information is publicly available on the workings and structure of pre-World War II Soviet military intelligence networks in the United States, the scarce hints that are available indicate a different set-up from the one suggested by Chambers. For instance, Petr Ivanovich Ivashutin, the long-time post-war GRU director, who served from 1963 - 1987, in an article written after his retirement discussing the situation in his service in the aftermath of the late-1930s purges,⁵ named three U.S.-based groups - specifically, "the groups of Adams, Bukov, 'Mulat'" - that survived the purges and "were able to provide the Center with important information." The knowledgeable General Ivashutin identified the first two groups by the names of their Soviet illegal operatives - Arthur Alexandrovich Adams and Boris Yakovlevich Bukov - and identified the third group by the code name ("Mulat" ["Mulatto"]) of its Soviet illegal operative, Zalman Wulfovich Litvin, whose real name had not yet been publicly disclosed at the time Ivashutin wrote his article (1994). Moreover, Director Ivashutin indicates that, Whittaker Chambers' story notwithstanding, Bukov continued his operations well into 1939 - until his recall to the Soviet Union.

2. "'Redhead''s Group" ["Grupa Ryzhei"]:

The controversial aspects of Gorsky's presentation of this pre-World War II group of agents may stem from the fact that Gorsky himself was shifted from the British line to the American line only in mid-1944, arriving in Washington, D.C. sometime around September 12, 1944.

Gorsky thus might not have been aware of details of the group's composition through personal contact and experience. Sitting in Moscow in 1949, however, with his service's archives at hand, he should have done a better job.

Most notable is the absence from this list of most of the "'Redhead''s Group"'s Soviet operatives: specifically, Boris Bazarov, the "illegal" resident in the U.S. in 1935 - 1937, who perished during the purges of 1938; Itshak Akhmerov, Bazarov's deputy and later his successor as "illegal" resident; and the younger operatives, Mikhail Borodin and Samsonov. On the other hand, Elizaveta Zarubina, whose name appears on the list, might have had a rather brief experience with Hede Massing in the 1930s. Then an "illegal" operative on the German line, Zarubina in 1937 spent several months with her husband, Vassily Zaroubine, on an "illegal" mission in the U.S. The Zaroubines arrived for their second - and "legal" - U.S. mission in December 1941, long after Hede and Paul Massing had withdrawn from active work for Soviet intelligence. With his service's "American line" archives at hand, Gorsky should have known better - and specifically should have been aware that following Ignatii Reiss's assassination in September 1937, the Massings in fact refused to continue working further for Soviet intelligence, and maintained a very low profile after their 1938 return from a visit to the Soviet Union.

It is also strange not to see Noel Field's name on this list, and to note the omission of a couple of other names that had recently been publicly identified as assets of "'Redhead's Group."

3. Although "'Buben''s Group," the third group in the "Failures" list, seems less controversial, it is not completely problem-free, either. Most notable is Gorsky's ignorance of the fate of the long-time OGPU U.S. "illegal," Harry Rabinovich, who perished during the purges of 1938, and so could not possibly "reside in the USSR" at the time that Gorsky was writing his report. Another problem is the odd use of the word "svyazist" (communication worker, operator) instead of the terms commonly used in intelligence cable traffic: "radist" (radio operator) or "svyaznik" (courier, contact man).

4. Anatoly Gorsky seems most knowledgeable when describing the last two groups on his list - and both of these groups were in operation during his own time as resident in Washington, D.C. Even here, however, quite a number of details that I discuss in my footnotes to the text of the "Failures in the U.S." list indicate that he most probably relied upon his memory or on more recent reports from the United States when compiling his report to General Savchenko, rather than on the more detailed archival information that would have been readily available to him.

IV: The origins of "'Carl''s group": a new theory

Considering all its inconsistencies, the origins of the information recorded in "'Carl''s group" deserve more careful scrutiny. From the way it was presented in Gorsky's List, it's clear that Anatoly Gorsky's information was not based on primary sources, as has recently been suggested by some American reviewers. But neither was the list simply pasted together from contemporary American newspaper accounts and reports available to Moscow operatives by the end of 1949. Although all but three names on the list (Harry Azizov, Peter MacLean, and Harry Rosenthal), as well as some of the cover names used, had figured in Whittaker Chambers' public testimony, this would fail to take into account not only these three names but also the numbered code names or the considerable confusion in Gorsky's presentation. 

So is this list a final corroboration of Whittaker Chambers' story, as has been recently alleged - or is it some mysterious and previously unknown variant of Chambers' story itself? The answer is a complicated one.

To find a key to this puzzle, I went back to a 2003 interview I did in Moscow with a long-time veteran of the GRU. He mentioned a briefing he was given early in the 1950s, prior to his own U.S. mission, where he was instructed: "to avoid any contacts with any individuals anyhow connected with the failures of 1940s." This warning was given to him by Lev Tolokonnikov, then one of the GRU heads, who "in his own time in the United States was pursuing the 1940s failures cases." Tolokonnikov was gathering this information and reporting his findings to his superiors.

According to Tolokonnikov's only published brief bio [in Lurie and Kochick's "GRU: The Deeds and the People," Op. Cit., p. 474], from 1949 to 1950 Lev Tolokonnikov was the First Secretary at the Soviet Embassy in Washington, D.C., and as such a direct subordinate to Ambassador Alexander Paniushkin. According to Alexander Paniushkin's official SVR bio, his chief assignment as KI chief resident in the U.S. from 1947 to 1952 was "to minimize the damage to Soviet intelligence operations inflicted by defections of mid-1940s" and "to avoid any breakup of Soviet-American diplomatic relations" [www.svr.gov/history/personalities]. According to a recent on-line interview with Lev Tolokonnikov's son, from 1949 to 1950 his father was the resident of strategic military intelligence in the United States. Hence, by implication, Lev Tolokonnikov's direct responsibility would be "minimizing the damage" of Igor Gouzenko's defection in Canada in September 1945. This suggests the reasonable probability that Gorsky had sourced his "'Carl''s group" information directly from Tolokonnikov via Paniushkin.

In the KI period, this was the line of command: On general policy questions, Paniushkin reported to the KI head (until February 1949 to V.M. Molotov; then for a few months to A.Ya. Vyshinsky; and after mid-September 1949 to V.A. Zorin.) On intelligence operational matters on the foreign intelligence line, he reported first to P.V. Fedotov, the MGB intelligence representative at KI, and after mid-September 1949 to S.R. Savchenko, KI's first deputy chairman on foreign intelligence ["The Essays on the History of Russian Foreign Intelligence," vol.5. Moscow, 2003, p. 8]. By implication, military intelligence operational matters would be reported by the military intelligence resident to, originally, F.F. Kuznetsov, Department of Defense representative at KI, and, after January 1949, directly to GRU director M.V. Zakharov [Lurie and Kochik, Op. Cit., p. 112].

Hence, after September 1949, Gorsky, in his capacity as Moscow foreign intelligence operative on the U.S. line, would have had access to Paniushkin via his (Gorsky's) new director, General Savchenko. As both chief KI resident and an Ambassador, Paniushkin could, in turn, query his diplomatic subordinate, First Secretary Tolokonnikov – and report back to Moscow on his operational line of communication.

To find documentary confirmation of my conclusion, I turned to the 1948 - 1949 files of VOKS [the Russian abbreviation for All-Union Society for Cultural Contacts] collection at the State Archive of the Russian Federation [GARF]. In the 1930s and 1940s, many intelligence residents on both lines doubled as VOKS-authorized representatives in the United States. In his own time in Washington, D.C., Gorsky had himself acted as a VOKS-authorized representative. VOKS 1941 - 1945 files also show considerable input from Tolokonnikov's predecessor as GRU chief resident – Pavel "Mikhailov" [Venona's "Molier"]. After "Mikhailov" had to leave the United States as persona non grata (in late December 1945, in the aftermath of Igor Gouzenko's defection), VOKS affairs had become the domain of "Mikhailov"'s former subordinate on both the intelligence and the consular line, one P.I. Fedosimov. Hence, I reasoned that at some point I would see Lev Tolokonnikov's name in the VOKS files.

Indeed, my archival search soon produced an August 10, 1948 letter by Yakov Lomakin, the Soviet New York Consul General, to VOKS's Boris Boldyrev [VOKS files at GARF, fund 5283, description 14, file 531, p. 46].

Lomakin reported that "due to comrade Fedosimov P.I. departure to the Soviet Union, at present Vice-Consul comrade Tolokonnikov L.S. is in charge of VOKS affairs."  Lomakin sent a copy of this letter to Ambassador Paniushkin in Washington, D.C.

Eureka! We now know that Tolokonnikov first arrived in New York to step into "Mikhailov"'s shoes not only as GRU resident but also as New York Vice Consul and VOKS hand. Moreover, he had strategically arrived in time for HUAC's New York hearings – to track the situation first hand! 

However, less than two weeks after Lomakin's letter to VOKS, the New York Soviet Consulate General would be closed in the heat of a diplomatic scandal. Still, the Consular staff would not be sent home packing immediately: a New York report to VOKS dated September 27, 1948 shows them busy sorting their archives [GARF, 5283-14-529, p. 14]. Unlike most other New York Consulate officials, Tolokonnikov would pack his belongings only to relocate to the Soviet Embassy in Washington, D.C. at some later point in the fall of 1948 – promoted to the First Secretary [GARF, 5283-14-534, p. 79; AVP RF, 0129-32b-336-1, p. 283].

As seen in VOKS 1949 files, once in Washington Tolokonnikov would be spared the time-consuming job of VOKS representative (the job Gorsky had himself had to toil at while First Secretary in Washington, D.C.) – leaving Tolokonnikov more time to track the failures of his service's old networks through all accessible sources, including confidential ones. Incidentally, in his cover role as First Secretary, Tolokonnikov might also be in charge of the Embassy's daily press clipping service that, according to VOKS and NKID [People's Commissariat of Foreign Affairs] files, used to be Gorsky's domain during his own time in Washington, D.C. And it goes without saying that prior to his departure for the United States as his service's resident, Tolokonnikov would definitely receive a proper "orientation" (meaning a thorough briefing) from his service's old American hands.

Alas for Gorsky, however knowledgeable Lev Tolokonnikov may have been, with all we know about the relationship of the two Soviet sister services, he would not be expected to be enthusiastically sharing his secrets with the "neighbors" (as the services used to call each other). Hence, in response to Ambassador Paniushkin's query, he might have reported some mixture of names and information that could have been tracked back to Whittaker Chambers' story, together with some odd and not-so-odd additions.

This is still a theory that should take quite a bit of further research to substantiate – or a dramatic archival find to refute. The Russian archival collections that might hold or hide a direct answer to the "'Carl''s group" puzzle are closed to researchers and will remain so for many years. Presently, we can rely only on circumstantial evidence and on leads available in publicly accessible archives – as well as on shreds of oral history. The VOKS files I have seen so far are only the tip of the iceberg of this huge collection. Further reading through them may produce more corroborative information.

Although still a theory, this and only this may explain the manifest contradictions in the "'Carl''s group" list, including the confusion of Communist Party cover names with real names ("David Carpenter," "J. Peters"); the presence of OGPU source Noel Field on an ostensibly GRU list, along with his (Field's) reported OGPU code name (an addition that was most probably Gorsky's own contribution); the mix up of code and cover names, as well as the inclusion of Venona-period NKGB code names and other inconsistencies that are discussed above and in the footnotes to "Anatoly Gorsky's Report to Savchenko S.R."

Footnotes:

1. All extracts from SVR File 43173 cited in "The Haunted Wood" remain classified and have not been publicly released by the SVR.

2. "The most tangible blow to our work was inflicted by the defection of our former group-leading agent [Elizabeth Bentley] in November 1945, who gave away more than 40 most valuable agents to American authorities…. The majority of agents betrayed by [Bentley] worked at key posts in leading state institutions: the State Department, organs of American intelligence, the Treasury Department, etc. ….

          "Besides [Bentley's] treachery, at the same period of time - i.e., since the end of 1945 - there were failures of four agent groups (working independently from the agent network headed by [Bentley]) that followed [according to] testimony given to Federal Bureau of Investigation by former agents of the MGB, and the GRU - traitors "Berg" [Alexander Koral], "Buben" [Louis Budenz], "Karl" [Whittaker Chambers], and "Redhead" [Hedda Gumperz]. There were more than 30 valuable agents in these four groups, including former officials of the State Department, Treasury Department, Interior Department, etc.

          "The last link in this chain of failures was the arrest of [Valentin] Gubitchev and [Judith] Coplon, which took place on March 4, 1949, and their trial, which ended in March 1950. Thus, as a result of all these failures, we lost an agent network that had been in operation for many years and was a source of valuable political and economic information for us."

3. Judging by the available images of several declassified reports from 1945 - 1957 period, including some signed by Lt. Gen. Sergei Savchenko (including reports from the file of "Arach"/"Mark"/William Fisher also known as Rudolph Abel; and the "Enormoz"/atomic espionage files, all of which contain both typed text and inserted hand-written code names).

4. According to Alexander Feklissov (in interviews conducted by the author in 1995 and early 1996), at the time of an investigation into the failure of Julius Rosenberg's network, General Savchenko requested detailed reports from all the case officers and Moscow operatives involved.

5. Petr Ivashutin. "Reported Correctly." Included in "The Soldiers of an Unseen Front." Moscow, 1994, pp. 5-16.

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