FBI: Soviet Intelligence Travel & Cover Techniques (1953)

#0080001-9 
SOVIET INTELLIGENCE 
TRAVEL AND ENTRY 
TECHNIQUES 
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SECURITY INFORMATION - CONFIDENTIAL 
SOVIET INTELLIGENCE TRAVEL 
AND 
ENTRY TECHNIQUES 
April, 1953 
Federal Bureau of Investigation 
United States Department of Justice 
John Edgar Hoover, Director 
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TABLE OF CONTENTS 
Page 
PREFACE. ....... 000 cecuee WG ieee A aback ae bes orp ae Ret i 
INTRODUCTION........ Pee Beles hae et tai hy le Un ac ie ite a athe iii 
I COVER UTILIZED BY SOVIET INTELLIGENCE 
FOR TRAVEL AND ENTRY.............- cece eee e see eeee 1 
As OUI C1al, os honk ste kee iw eee hide Liew eee 3 
1. The United Nations. ......... 0c. cc cece eee eee 3 
2. Diplomatic and Consular Services............ 4 
3. Diplomatic Courier Service...........0.e00- 8 
4. Trade Delegations and Purchasing 
COMMISSIONS ..0 065. c4. 20d rhe ote Beat Hea Sam 9 
5. News-gathering Agencies................002- 12 
6; (Red Crosses 2 cues Sata adiel eee dee Mae G aaies 13 
7. Commercial Coverage. .........0ceeeeeeeece 15 
a. Individual Character.............0-000- 15 
b.. Collective Character... c.s46 wee caw 18 
Be. Study Groups. ais ecre hj SG a ESSA Meee ale Sek 20 
B. Private (Nonofficial)..........2cceecceresecccers 22 
1 2SPCCialists isc bs cakG ee foe n Was ea Vewie ner ees 22 
2. Students Sent Abroad..........c.c cece eens 23 
3. Foreign Nationals Trained and Re- 
turned to Operate in Their Native 
LsANG sw 6476 2g tee anne oe ae oe we Ok ees 24 
4. Naturalized Citizens. ............ceeseeeeves 25 
5. Foreign-born Spouses. ......--.eeeeseceeees 26 
G:. JREIIGEES is ben Soelkiat etal bares Ques oe 26 
7. Growing Up Agents from the Inside........... 28 
C.. SUMMAP Ys 35253356 Chea ile eee et OSG S ee Re SS RES 30 
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Page 
Il. FALSE IDENTITY TO AID TRAVEL AND 
ENTRY OF THE SOVIET INTELLIGENCE 
SERVICES is. ¢ seed as 5 oN is eS Ue ee Doe 31 
A. De-Russianizing. ............ ccc cece carer cececes 33 
Bs alse He gends 1. veut sat eum ew wee 34 
C. False Documents...............cccececcocvecvece 	35 
1. Birth Certificates. ..........0cceccecccececs 35 
2. Affidavits of Faked Relatives.......... sunwonece 40 
3. Naturalization Certificates............ceece- 41 
4. “PABSPOPUS is sr eno oie 6 6 sc ee Oe GET eS 43 
I. USE OF PARACHUTES FOR ILLEGAL ENTRY.......... 60 
IV. ESCAPE DEVICES USED BY SOVIET AGENTS.......... 62 
WV... "GONG LUSION§ 25150545 Git Soin dd a ha Beda de Sanaa ae Gh week ary 68 
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SECURITY INFORMATION - CONFIDENTIAL 
PREFACE 
A key to the detection of Soviet secret intelligence agents in 
foreign countries is the discovery of the plans for travel and entry that the 
Soviet Intelligence services have adapted somewhat successfully to their 
requirements. A knowledge of the modus operandi of Soviet Intelligence 
agents has proved to be beneficial to the governments harried by Russian 
interlopers and their followers. Therefore, a study of Soviet travel and 
entry techniques may provide basis and direction for the opposing operations 
required of our counterintelligence and internal security forces. 
Trained Soviet agents sent out from Moscow to organize an under- 
ground apparatus for long-time operation in a foreign country enter, exit 
and travel about quite freely because they are protected by falsifications 
and cover occupations which make them appear above the suspicion of the 
target country's protecting authorities. Ways have also been devised for 
securing the entrance of an agent on a single mission and of other persons 
who will be called upon to cooperate at some distant date. 
This paper provides a review of the travel and entry techniques 
that have been used by the Soviet Intelligence services. Awareness of past 
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successful Soviet techniques may assist in preventing possibilities from 
becoming eventualities. 
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INTRODUCTION 
The United States Government has taken a number of steps to 
control the travel and entry of subversive elements. We impose visa restrictions 
on all people from Iron Curtain countries. We have a program for screening 
at points of entry those foreigners regarding whom we have adverse information. 
We have curtailed the travel privileges of Russia's official representatives -- 
excepting Soviet nationals with the United Nations or other international organi- 
zations -- preventing secret trips in and out, and about the country. We deny 
passports for extended stay abroad to admitted Communists and to anyone who 
is found to have given consistent and prolonged adherence to the Communist 
Party line. But the Soviets, in their planning, anticipated rebuffs and set up 
measures for facilitating clandestine travel and entrance to foreign countries 
where they wish to collect military, economic or political information. 
In the past, Soviet Intelligence operations in Europe, Asia and 
America show that travel and entry plans for foreign agents have been worked 
out in Moscow. Whatever plans proved successful have been developed into 
a pattern for agent activity, and those methods have been incorporated into the 
training program for preparing future agents to be sent abroad. 
The direct attention that the Soviet Intelligence headquarters devotes 
to travel and entry techniques is illustrated by ''Task No. 3 of 1.8.45 "* as- 
signed to Sam Carr, a member of a Soviet Military Intelligence network operating 
in Canada. Among the nine items to be reviewed and reported to the "Director" 
in Moscow are: 
* 1.8.45 is August 1, 1945, not January 8, 1945. 
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"4, More expedient methods to slip into 
the country. 
"5. Conditions of entry into the country 
and of moving about in the country. "' * 
An earlier Soviet operator said he was ordered to make a full 
report to his superior on the methods by which naturalization papers and 
passports are obtained in the United States. He found there was a dearth 
of information concerning these procedures and he gradually came to be 
considered an expert on the subject. Agents coming to this country were 
directed in Moscow to contact him for instructions. 
Walter Krivitsky, former Soviet Intelligence agent, said that 
about 1928-29 the Russians discovered that American and Canadian passports 
could be obtained relatively easily, and they came into frequent use both 
for Fourth Department, or Soviet Military Intelligence, and for OGPU** 
agents. With a bit of adroit,illegal maneuvering entrance to Europe and 
Asia was also possible, Krivitsky said that although the Fourth Department 
in Moscow was able to produce perfectly forged passports of any country, 
* The Report of the Royal Commission, June 27, 1946, p. 553. 
** The Secret Political Police of the Soviet Union, formerly the Cheka 
and the GPU. 
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it was much preferred that espionage agents should travel on genuine pass- 
passports, procured, if necessary, by means of forged documents of identity. 
Up to 1928 or 1929, he said, Soviet agents usually traveled on Austrian, 
German or Danish passports. 
An agent who was active during the 1930's said that for the pro- 
tection of cover stories there was, in the OGPU offices in Moscow during 
his time, a passport department for the preparation of any necessary 
documents. He stated that he gathered this from conversations as well 
as from his original dealings with George Miller, a photographer employed 
in the passport office. 
It is the present policy of the Soviet Government to keep its 
officials engaged in foreign travel aloof from foreigners, so that undesirable 
ideas will not alter their political convictions. Political reliability is 
amore important qualification than technical ability or general suitability 
for any particular foreign appointment. This policy results in very few 
Soviet citizens being allowed to travel and very few foreigners being allowed 
to visit the USSR. The result, as pointed out by a 1948 report of a foreign 
intelligence agency, is that all Russians abroad are official representatives 
of the Soviet Union and no Soviet citizen would be granted a passport for a 
"private" visit; even a scientist who has been sent abroad to attend an inter- 
national conference is attached to the local Soviet Embassy or trade delegation 
to which he has to report on arrival. 
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Security and counterintelligence investigations have revealed 
that the Soviets take advantage of both legal and illegal cover for maneuvering 
the travel and entry of their foreign agents. Consequently, cover 
occupations, and falsifications supporting them, are the framework for 
this study. 
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I, COVER UTILIZED BY SOVIET INTELLIGENCE 
~ FOR TRAVEL AND ENTRY ~~ ——S—s™ 
From a Soviet Intelligence defector who has furnished reliable 
information, we have learned that all Soviet citizens living abroad are 
considered by the MGB* for assignment to a specific espionage task out- 
side their own duties. Ali have a bona fide reason for employment abroad, 
the general task of observing everything which may be of interest to the 
various intelligence services in the USSR and in certain cases special 
espionage tasks for which they are already fully briefed before leaving 
Moscow. 
Soviet agents operate in a foreign country under two types of 
cover -- official and private. Official cover gives them a legal right to 
enter abroad in spite of the way they use or abuse the privilege. Official 
cover ranges from embassy appointments to commercial ventures. Some 
of the latter are infiltrated; others are devised for a particular agent's 
cover, and savor of the illegal because of the founding purpose. 
Aware that its legal residents in a foreign country are under 
suspicion, Soviet Russia, therefore, has provided for its secret agents 
to travel to and enter a country by illegal means, attempting to cover 
* Ministry of State Security, formerly the Cheka, the GPU, the OGPU, the 
NKVD and the NKGB. 
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all technical illegalities of identification, transportation and occupation by 
falsifications that appear to be légitimate explanations. An agent may enter 
the country intending to carry out his assigned covert duties independent 
-of official cover, but under private cover -- outwardly engaged in some 
innocent, legitimate and perhaps worth-while employment. In this con- 
nection, experience has taught our security agencies to suspect all 
Soviets who enter our country. Although there are thousands of anti-Soviet 
Russians in the United States, some of our espionage cases prove that the 
Russian Intelligence Service urges former Russians to cooperate. A Soviet 
defector who traveled back and forth from Russia to the United States between 
1936 and 1940 has warned us regarding his countrymen. 
Before observing in detail these covers for travel and entry, it 
should probably be mentioned that Soviet Intelligence seeks to utilize the 
cooperation of the Communist Party abroad. It appears that the utilization 
of the Party varies in scope and degree, and under changing circumstances. 
The Party is often called upon to furnish couriers, photographers, informers, 
mail drops, safe meeting places, etc. When service endangering the Party 
is required, the worker may drop out of the Party and join the espionage 
network, wholly responsible to domination and direction of intelligence 
headquarters in Moscow. 
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For several years prior to 1937, according to Krivitsky's 
information, it was arranged personally by General Berzin, head of the 
Fourth Department, and Piatnitsky, head of the Foreign Liaison De- 
partment of the Comintern, for each chief Fourth Department agent to 
receive a special introduction to a senior official of the Communist Party 
of the country in which he was to work. Krivitsky added that the "OGPU 
embassy agent has probably only a man earmarked fin the Communist Party] 
whom he can use when necessary." The first concern for conducting Soviet 
Intelligence operations is to get key operators strategically located in the 
country where they are to work. Aid from the Communist Party can be 
invoked according to the varying needs of the operators. 
A. Official 
Since, as was observed above, legal entrance of Soviet In- 
telligence agents under official cover is the least complicated scheme, 
these favored official covers, operated exhaustively by the Russians, should 
be examined for their past success. 
1. The United Nations 
Russian membership in the United Nations organization offers 
one official gateway for the Russians to enter the Western Hemisphere. 
Re are 
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Moreover, employees of anddelegates to the United Nations are entitled to 
certain privileges, exemptions and immunities accorded to international 
organizations in the United States. The United Nations organization, having 
the USSR as a member nation, offers a legal opportunity for the Soviets to 
introduce their agents into the United States, unhampered by restrictions 
limiting the area of their travels. The activity of Valentin Gubitchev showed 
that he had been placed in the United Nations for the purpose of contacting 
and receiving information from one or more informants like Judith Coplon. 
A case of more recent date was reported by a Russian in the 
United States on a Nansen passport as the dependent of a United Nations 
employee. This Russian said he was contacted by a Soviet representative 
in the United Nations Secretariat who endeavored to recruit him and to 
develop him as a source of information. Moreover, this representative, he 
said, placed him in contact with still another United Nations representative 
who also requested his service. 
2. Diplomatic and Consular Services 
Russia, like any other large country, designates people to repre- 
sent the nation abroad. Protected by diplomatic passport and immunity 
from arrest, search or seizure, the Soviet Ambassador to the United States, 
his staff and, through him, all assistants accredited to perform regular 
tasks for the embassy have a fairly secure local base from which to direct 
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intelligence activities. The success of this blind for protecting the coming 
and going of Soviet Intelligence agents in the guise of embassy personnel 
is indicated by its broad use. It appears that were it not comparatively 
successful, intelligence assignments would be handled more exclusively by 
other legal covers or by illegal agents. 
Between January, 1942, and August, 1944, Vassili M. Zubilin 
served in the United States as Third Secretary, then as Second Secretary, of the 
Soviet Embassy in Washington, D. C.; but it is alleged that he actually at 
the same time engaged in intelligence operations in the United States and 
Mexico Meantime, his wife allegedly operated a network of agents in the 
United States Government agencies. Anatoli B. Gromov, exposed by Elizabeth 
Bentley, was First Secretary at the Soviet Embassy in Washington, D. C., 
prior to his departure for Russia in 1945. On January 15, 1953, Yuri Novikov, 
a Second Secretary of the Soviet Embassy, Washington, D. C., was declared 
persona non grata by the United States Department of State after a Washington 
grandjury indictment named him sSeeneniedior in espionage against the 
United States. In the early 1940's Leonid Tarasov, attached to the Soviet Em- 
bassy in Mexico City as First Secretary, and Vitali Pavlov, First Secretary of 
the Soviet Embassy at Ottawa, were suspected of engaging in intelligence work. 
Besides the Secretaries of the Soviet Embassy in Canada, the report 
of the Royal Commission regarding Soviet Intelligence operations in Canada 
lists fifteen other Soviet Embassy staff members who gave themselves 
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over to espionage operations sometime or another after the embassy was 
established in 1942, 
Not only the Soviet Embassy but also other embassies may harbor 
a Soviet agent. In 1939, Richard Sorge, operating for Soviet Intelligence in 
Japan, was able through his former friendship with the German Ambassador 
to obtain a semiofficial status at the German Embassy in Tokyo. There he 
gathered information for Russia from the English and French Embassies as 
well as from the German. 
Soviet interest in the confidential activities of its dominated 
satellite nations is not unknown, neither is penetration of such areas wheh 
considered necessary to Soviet designs. 
The office of the Soviet Military Attache offers an opening used 
especially by Soviet Military Intelligence for getting its agents into a 
country. For example, it was Colonel Nikolai Zabotin, Soviet Military 
Attache, who headed the Soviet Armed Fortes Intelligence Department 
operations in Canada. His assistants, Lieutenant Colonel Petr Motinov 
and Lieutenant Colonel Vassili Rogov were also particularly active in this 
connection. 	| 
A clerk-accountant in the office of the Soviet Naval Attache in 
Washington, D. C., from February 5, 1948, to December 10, 1950, was 
reliably reported to have been engaged in espionage, collecting data per- 
taining to the national defense. 
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Teachers at the Military Institute of Foreign Languages have been 
said to speak openly of attaches as "legalized spies." 
Besides embassies, the Soviets also utilize consulates in foreign 
countries as bases for espionage operations. Pavel Klarin, Soviet Vice Consul 
in New York City in 1943 and 1944, was, according to the statements of his 
contacts, engaged in the operation to release Frank Jacson, Leon Trotsky's 
murderer. Pavel Mikhailov, as acting Soviet Consul General at the New York 
Consulate, was the official Soviet contact of several persons identified or 
strongly suspected as espionage agents and, according to Igor Gouzenko's tes- 
timony, assisted in setting up the Soviet Military Intelligence organization 
in Canada in 1942 and 1943. Anatoli A. Yakovlev entered the United States 
on February 8, 1941, as a clerk at the Soviet Consulate in New York City. 
He operated Harry Gold who obtained data from Klaus Fuchs. The Soviet 
consulates in San Francisco and Los Angeles have also in the past proved 
to be staffed with employees active in espionage tasks and also in operating 
Soviet agents within governmental agencies. 
By means of the various consulates in Japan, Richard Sorge was 
able to contact and make friends among informed employees who unwittingly 
furnished information valuable to his widespread efforts in behalf of the 
Soviets. 
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Igor Gouzenko, whose defection to Canadian authorities resulted 
in exposing much of the workings of the Soviet Intelligence organizations, 
stated among other things, that the Soviet Consul at Halifax had been employed 
by the Soviet Military Intelligence Office. 
The direction of overt tasks as well as of particular assignments 
is almost certainly the responsibility of officers of the MGB and of the GRU* 
using the cover of normal diplomatic and consular departments for security 
protection. 
According to a 1944 estimate, there were 2, 500 Soviet nationals 
in the United States on either diplomatic or official visas. It may be seen 
that Soviet foreign services provided cover for the entrance of numerous 
possible agents. However, by February 1, 1953, the number had been re- 
duced to 285. 
3. Diplomatic Courier Service 
Official Soviet couriers also enjoy the liberties of legal travel 
and entry, for they carry diplomatic passports. They normally travel in 
teams of two and are usually single, middle-aged men although there has 
been evidence in India of the employment of women. Diplomatic couriers 
are trained by and are under the supervision of the MGB; therefore, a stay 
*Soviet Military Intelligence Organization. 
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for an abnormally long period should be suspected. Mikhail Milsky and 
Gregori Kossarev, top-ranking Soviet Intelligence officers in the capacity 
of diplomatic couriers, engaged in 1944 in an inspection tour of Soviet espionage 
facilities in the United States, Mexico and Canada. Subsequently, activity of 
Kossarev with another courier companion in 1945-46 indicates further 
Soviet Intelligence operation. They spent long hours at the Soviet Consulate 
in New York City working late in the evenings; and, as was the case in 1944, 
several Soviet agents, possibly suspected of laxity, were recalled to Russia 
after the tours of these couriers. 
Between January and April, 1947, approximately fifty official 
Soviet couriers entered and departed from the New York area. 
4. Trade Delegations and Purchasing Commissions 
A legal opportunity for travel and entrance to a foreign country 
is open also to Soviet Government Purchasing Commissions and to trade 
organizations such as Amtorg. But the privilege of operating such organi- 
zations has been abused by the Soviets. Amtorg has been a cover for Soviet 
Intelligence ever since its founding in 1924, as was Arcos in England. 
The Soviet Government Purchasing Commission, although originally set up 
in the United States to handle lend-lease shipments, was simultaneously and 
subsequently used as a cover for bringing espionage agents into the country. 
20's 
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Victor Kravchenko, formerly an inspector for the Soviet Government 
Purchasing Commission, cited the case of Semen Vassilenko, an employee 
of the Commission, who flew from Washington to Moscow in February, 1944, 
with six pouches of material dealing with new and extremely secret 
developments in war industry in the United States. 
Gaik Ovakimian, once a leading Soviet agent in the United 
States, entered this country on August 15, 1933, on passage paid by the 
Russian Government. He was en route to Amtorg. In 1936, he traveled to 
Russia, returning on a temporary visitor's visa the same year. Subse- 
quently, he obtained thirteen extensions of permits to stay in the United 
States, all of them requested by Amtorg. The last such extension, 
which expired June 1, 1941, was requested in November, 1940, and indi- 
cated that Ovakimian was still conducting research in United States 
chemicals production for the Soviet Government. 
Major Sokolov came to Canada in 1942 ostensibly as a Soviet 
inspector of work in Canadian factories in connection with the Canadian 
Mutual Aid Program to the USSR. Meantime, he was a member of an 
espionage network controlled by key agents in the United States. 
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After the opening of diplomatic offices in Canada, Sokolov was 
turned over to Zabotin's network. Confusing to the Canadian authorities 
was the fact that Sokolov wore a uniform although not officially on the 
staff of the Military Attache of the Soviet Embassy, but on that of the 
Commercial Counsellor. 
The Soviet Commercial Attache in Berlin and the Attache at the 
Commercial Legation in Vichy functioned for the Rote Kapelle, * collecting 
information from the various networks and even organizing nets. 
From 1923 to 1925, visiting commigsions were chosen exclusively 
by the Soviet Intelligence service, according to Krivitsky. Later some 
difficulty was experienced in explaining the numbers composing such 
commissions. As aresult, agents had to be chosen from among the 
delegation or commission already appointed. 
* "Rote Kapelle" was the cover name for a secret operation started by German 
counterintelligence in August, 1941, and conducted against a wireless 
station of the Russian Intelligence Service which had been detected in 
Brussels. Subsequently, the operation extended into France, Holland, 
Germany and Switzerland, where at least seven major Russian networks were 
penetrated. Literally Rote Kapelle means Red Orchestra. 
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5. News-gathering Agencies 
Another légal passageway to a foreign country is as a repre- 
sentative for a newsgathering agency such as Tass, which Richard Sorge 
pointed out as a cover for collecting information. Such representatives 
also have legitimate cover for asking detailed questions and for roving 
about from place to place. 
Ismail Akhmedov, former chief in the intelligence department 
of the Red Army General Staff said that in 1941 he was sent to Germany 
as the first vice-president of Tass, Berlin, and that a real purpose of 
"my activity in Germany was the organization and direction of the intelligence 
work." 
Nikolai I, Zhivaynov, a Tass representative in Ottawa, 
formerly stationed in New York, was a member of the Soviet military 
espionage system, using the cover name "Martin." 
An illustrative instance can be cited of an espionage agent sent 
to the United States by Soviet Military Intelligence. Prior to the agent's 
departing from Moscow, Furmanov, the director, discoursed with him 
concerning the possibility of associating himself with some newspaper or 
magazine and writing petroleum articles, since the agent was a specialist 
in the petroleum field. In the absence of such employment, it was Furmanov's 
suggestion that the agent should find himself some type of occupation and do 
something to establish himself as a normal everyday citizen. 
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Richard Sorge, who headed the Shanghai conspiracy, was 
correspondent for German newspapers -- the Frankfurter Zeitung, and 
the Amsterdam Handelsblatt. The vast amount of travel and research he 
engaged in for the success of the papers and magazines he represented was, 
he insisted, the key to his successful Soviet espionage activity in the Far 
East. Sorge said he covered all his spy activity by his correspondent 
duties. 
Within the Rote Kapelle, Ilse Stoebe kept up successful liaison 
between an agent in Warsaw and one in Germany, traveling about as 
correspondent for German and Swiss newspapers. 
The journalist or press correspondent coverage presents an 
ideal shelter for the travels of an espionage agent. The "professional 
curiosity" which everyone expects to find in a journalist is undoubtedly 
excellent coverage for agent activity. 
6. Red Cross 
Alexander Foote, a British soldier with the International 
Brigade in Spain, said that for some reason the Party decided he was a 
suitable person to run a Red Cross truck which was to go to Spain from 
England at regular intervals, carrying medical supplies, etc. However, 
his real job was to be a courier between King Street (headquarters of the 
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British Communist Party) and the Communist command of the British 
Battalion of the brigade. He was also to act as passeur for unauthorized 
persons who wished to enter Spain. * 
G. Bessedovsky, the former Charge d' Affaires and First 
Counsellor of the USSR in Paris, following his break with the USSR in 
1929, made the statement that consideration was being given to sending to 
the United States an official of the OGPU, Dr. Scheftel, who would be 
presented as a representative of the Soviet Red Cross. 
Louis Budenz, in a notarized affidavit dated November 11, 1950, 
and submitted to the House Committee on Un-American Activities, wrote: 
",..I now know that this man Roberts was in 
reality Dr. Gregory Rabinowitz, or Rabinowitch, 
head of the Russian Red Cross in the United States.... 
"It is significant that the Soviet dictatorship 
has been so unscrupulous in its dealings with the 
American nation that it would use the International 
Red Cross (with which the Russian Red Cross was 
then connected) to advance espionage activities 
of various sorts in the United States. It is ironical 
that the Kremlin would use, or misuse, an organi- 
zation devoted to the saving of lives for the purpose 
of destroying the lives of its enemies by assassination." 
* Alexander Foote, Handbook for Spies (Garden City: Doubleday & Co. , 
1949), p. 15. 
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7. Commercial Coverage 
"Every member of the Soviet espionage organizations must 
have a reasonable job," declared Klausen, Sorge's assistant in Japan. 
The official posts which the Russian Intelligence services adapted to their 
travel and entry requirements show a remarkable variety. Besides 
diplomatic, humanitarian and journalistic coverages, the crafts and com- 
mercial professions were found suitable. 
Commercial coverages sometimes have individual character 
and sometimes collective character, for some conceal the individual agent 
while others conceal a network. 
a. Individual Character 
In Japan, Max Klausen, chief radio operator of the Sorge net- 
work, with his own money, went into the manufacture of fluorescent plates 
to conceal his activity as an agent. 
Moische Stern who conducted extensive Soviet Intelligence 
operations in the United States during the 1930's tells how he obtained 
a contract in this country as European representative to sell infrared ray 
equipment on a commission basis. This connection gave him an entree to 
European industrialists, military engineers, etc. The equipment was 
manufactured at Delft, Holland. 
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Several illegal resident agents have operated in England as 
American businessmen. One experienced agent came to the United States 
as an English businessman but when in London posed as an American 
businessman. 
Whittaker Chambers, confessed courier for a Soviet Military 
Intelligence apparatus in the United States, has told of his preparations to 
head a London branch of Maxim Lieber's New York publishing business. 
Lieber had been desiring this branch office. Now the Soviet apparatus 
would finance one for him, Chambers would do a regular job of seeing 
authors and srepuaine manuscripts received from the British, among 
whom Lieber already had some contacts. At the same time, Chambers 
would assist "'Bill,”’ his Soviet Intelligence superior, in setting up 
an apparatus in England. To use the United States as a base for estab- 
lishing Soviet apparatuses in other countries was then a common practice. 
Whittaker Chambers tells of another instance when the Soviets 
used a similar device. John Sherman, one of Chambers' superiors, had 
been ordered to go to Tokyo, Japan, and there set up a Soviet espionage 
apparatus. For this purpose he said that he needed a cover as a representative 
of a legitimate American business. He said that he also needed an assistant 
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and the latter would have to be an American-born Japanese with connections 
in high Japanese circles. It was Sherman's idea that they should set up an 
organization to be known as the American Feature Writers Syndicate. The 
purpose of the organization would be to place correspondents around the 
world. Plans were accordingly put under way. 
It has been reported that leading business concerns in Shanghai, 
as well as the service of American military organizations there, were 
infiltrated by an NKVD "Shanghai Unit" of fifty capable Russian agents 
with a monthly subsidy. 
William Hoffman (Willie Brandes), known for his military 
espionage activity in the British Wollwich Arsenal Case, posed as a com- 
mercial representative for the Phantom Red Cosmetic Company and for the 
Charak Furniture Company--both of New York City. 
By contract dated March 21, 1941, the United States Service 
and Shipping Corporation in New York was designated as exclusive agent 
and representative in the United States, Canada and Mexico for Intourist, 
the official Russian travel agency. Elizabeth Bentley declared it was 
set up with Communist Party, USA, money or Soviet funds and was a cover 
firm for Soviet espionage in the same category with World Tourists, Incor- 
porated. Regarding World Tourists, Louis Budenz stated before a United 
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States Congressional subcommittee that Jacob Golos, while head of the 
Control Commission of the Communist Party (time not stated), was directing 
espionage through that organization. 
In Amsterdam, the OGPU created the firm of Gada which 
provided the necessary business cover for Theodore Maly, alias Paul 
Hardt, the chief OGPU illegal resident for the United Kingdom during 1936 
and 1937. To create this firm, the resident OGPU agent in the Soviet 
Embassy in London had an uncle in Poland who understood the Polish import 
trade in rags and waste paper. The uncle, therefore, was sent by OGPU 
to Amsterdam to found the firm of Gada, which would appoint represen- 
tatives to work in London in connection with the export of rags to Poland. 
The sole purpose of this maneuver was to provide a genuine business cover 
for an OGPU agent in London. 
b. Collective Character 
An example of a collective commercial cover is one set up by 
the Rote Kapelle network after the Germans invaded the Low Countries. The 
Excellent Raincoat Company headed by Leon Grossvogel, a Communist in 
Belgium, was to be expanded to branch companies in Denmark, Finland, 
Norway and Sweden upon the advice and with financial aid from Leopold 
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Trepper, director of Soviet Military Intelligence in Western Europe from 1936 
to 1942. Having failed as a businessman in Brussels, Grossvogel then set 
up Simex in Paris and linked the Belgian company Simexco with it. The 
company was designed to enter into business relations with the Quartermaster 
General's Office of the Todt organization and of the Wehrmacht to collect 
intelligence information. 
A collective commercial cover was the aim tor creating the 
highly important firm called Wostwag, opened by the Fourth Department in 
‘Berlin in 1922. It provided a genuine cover for a large number of Fourth 
Department agents. The principal business of the firm was the sale of 
Russian produce in Germany. Two brothers, junior staff officers of 
the Fourth Department, ‘were put in charge of the organization and espionage 
side of the firm. They were naturalized Austrians of Polish origin. The 
business side of Wostwag (and later its various branches) was in the hands 
of an old Bolshevik--a Latvian. 
About 1925 or 1926, the Fourth Department suspected that the 
activities of the firm had become known to the German police. They decided 
to withdraw the two brothers and other members of the Russian General 
Staff and let the firm continue purely commercial activities. After their 
recall from Berlin, the brothers worked for a time in the Fourth Department, 
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managing accounts, Later, one brother was sent to Tientsin, China, where 
he founded and built up a very important branch of Wostwag -- The Far 
Eastern Trading Company. The other brother was sent to Urga, the Soviet 
colony in Outer Mongolia. In 1935, the latter was recalled to Moscow with 
the idea that he should go to America, The plan fell through and it was 
decided to send him to London where an affiliated company of Wostwag, the 
Fur Trading Company, was properly registered and carrying on legitimate 
business, with certain members of the staff, however, devoting part time 
to intelligence business. 
According to a former Soviet Government representative, 
so-called closed organizations were set up in foreign countries several years 
ago by Soviet Intelligence. These organizations, he said, are headed by an 
experienced agent who handles important espionage work and in the meantime 
has no contact whatsoever with any official Soviet Government representative. 
The agent who is the head of a closed organization is, the informant said, 
ordinarily not a Soviet citizen, but has assumed another identity based upon 
a false foreign passport. 
8. Study Groups 
In 1946, a group of ten Russian engineers made a six-month 
tour of major United States cities including New York City, Washington, 
D. C., Detroit and San Francisco. 
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Although there have been no direct allegations that any of these 
engineers were undercover agents of the Soviet Intelligence organizations, 
known Soviet practices regarding their citizens who chance to travel abroad 
in any capacity certainly placed these ten engineers in positions to acquire 
information that would be invaluable to the Soviet Government in the case 
of hastilities with the United States. 
Screened and perhaps briefed by Soviet Intelligence before leaving 
Russia, this study group was conducted through our cities according to a 
plan presented by the chairman of the Soviet Government Purchasing 
Commission in Washington, D. C. Few evening functions were attended by 
the group during their stay, for their evenings were occupied by the extensive 
reports required by the Soviet Government, pertinent parts of which would 
be avaulable to Intelligence headquarters. 
Consequently, under cover of official sanction, the Soviet 
study group, whether secret agents or legitimate engineers, gained detailed 
information on gas works, electric utility installations, water filtration 
and supply, sewage disposal systems, roads, etc. They obtained numerous 
blueprints, photographs and diagrams of specific facilities. All of this 
information can serve Russia immeasurably in planning targets for military 
action or sabotage in the United States. 
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B Private (Nonofficial) 
In order to take advantage of every opportunity to cover entrance 
abroad and freedom of movement upon arrival, the Soviets have occasionally 
used persons who had acceptable personal, private or individual reasons for 
going abroad. Secondarily, then, these persons would be assigned 
intelligence duties. 
1. Specialists 
Ozaki, who worked for Sorge in the Orient, set out during his 
trial by the Japanese the "Commandments" of the perfect Soviet spy, 
wherein he mentioned: “It is always good to be specialized in something. 
In regard to me IJ am a specialist in Chinese affairs and because of this I 
was solicited everywhere."' Among specialists admitted abroad as legitimate, 
worthy visitors are such as Dr. Alan Nunn May, the British nuclear 
physicist sent to Canada and the United States with a group of physicists. 
Soviet Military Intelligence urged him to undertake espionage in connection 
with his scientific studies. 
A former Soviet Intelligence agent in the United States said that 
a Russian specialist would be sent out of the country on a special mission, 
but before he departed or after he arrived at his destination that specialist 
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would be asked to perform a special task for Russian Intelligence. The 
specialist, he said, would be "hounded" until he completed the job. 
Engineers, technicians or others designated to visit a country 
to buy military or naval equipment were handed over to the intelligence 
departments for a short course of instructions on the particular secret 
mission to be carried out during their visit. They were also instructed to 
find contacts in factories they entered through whom the Soviets could 
continue to obtain information. 
2. Students Sent Abroad 
A former Soviet agent, whose name cannot be mentioned for 
security reasons, speaking about USSR students who are sent abroad for 
higher education, stated that all individuals who are allowed to leave the 
USSR must have a specific reason such as industrial espionage or preparation 
for future assignments either in the country to which they are sent or to 
some other country at a later period. He advised that students come within 
this category. 
Stanislaus Shumovsky came to the United States in September, 1931, 
as an exchange student. In June, 1936, he received his Master's degree 
from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. According to the statements 
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of his classmate, Ben Smilg, his paid tutor, Shumovsky was frequently 
away on trips to the West Coast or Texas with no explanation except 
that arrangements had been made at Amtorg. Subsequent assignments and 
contacts support the belief that Shumovsky was an active agent of the 
Soviet Government. 
Semen M. Semenov entered the United States as a student on 
January 18, 1938. He attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 
During the next few years, Semenov was reported to be operating a network 
of agents while he moved from one appropriate cover to another. 
3. Foreign Nationals Trained and Returned 
to Operate in Their Native Land 
In 1939, an agent and his wife were sent from Russia to Bulgaria 
to establish a network and wireless communication with Moscow. The 
salient angle of this event is that the couple was Bulgarian born and had 
gone to Russia as visitors in 1935 with no strong political background. In 
Russia they were picked up by Russian Intelligence, given espionage 
training, equipped with money, a transmitter, aliases, and addresses 
of Russian Intelligence contacts in Bulgaria. 
One of Elizabeth Bentley's supervisors, Anatoli B. Gromov, 
who had formerly served as First Secretary of the Soviet Embassy in 
Washington, D. C., once became concerned about her activity being 
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discovered, he told her it might be well for her to go to Moscow and receive 
special training. Thereafter, he said, she might be sent to Latin America, 
Canada, or she might be returned to the United States under another name. 
There are numerous known instances of the Russians using 
other nationalities for their espionage service. Often they send them back 
to serve intheir own country, where for them problems of travel and entry 
as well as many others will be nullified. 
Another more recent example is that of a Spanish Communist 
who went to Russia voluntarily to join the Red Army but instead was given 
a training course in radio and associated espionage operation, and then 
sent back to Spain to set up and operate a secret radio station. 
4, Naturalized Citizens 
An example of another type of legal entrance of an individual 
espionage agent is that of Simon A. Rosenberg. He was born in Poland 
but naturalized in the United States and employed by the Amtorg Trading 
Corporation, In 1931 he went to the Soviet Union as an engineer and was, 
he said, compelled to work for the OGPU, or his sister in Kiev would be 
killed. He signed a pledge and returned to the United States in 1932 where 
he contacted numerous Soviet agents and fulfilled assignments. 
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9. Foreign-born Spouses 
Even matrimony has on occasion offered assistance to the 
operation of Soviet Intelligence. Marriage of one who is foreign born to a 
United States citizen aids the foreigner in his desires to be accepted 
abroad in the country of his spouse. 
Hede Massing was born in Austria. It was her marriage to 
Julian Gumperz, an American, that was influential in securing for her an 
American passport which in turn made her a valuable courier for Soviet 
Intelligence. Her next step was to become a naturalized citizen of the 
United States. As a consequence, she retained her citizenship and passport 
privileges although her next husband was a foreigner. 
Ursula Hamburger, a German woman working for Soviet Intelligence 
in Switzerland in 1940, divorced her German husband and married the 
Englishman, Leon Beurton, thus incidentally acquiring British nationality. 
It is possible that Soviet Military Intelligence intended to use Ursula Beurton 
in England. 
6. Refugees 
Victor Kravchenko testified before a United States Congressional 
committee that in the early war years there was a great mass of refugees 
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who entered countries of the Western Hemisphere and that among these 
refugees were numerous agents of the NKVD. 
A German-born couple acquired German passports and fled to 
Leningrad in 1932 to escape the rising Hitler regime. The situation in 
Russia for foreign workers becoming constantly more uncomfortable, the 
couple accepted recruitment into the Russian espionage system in order to 
get out of Russia and to avoid being sent back to Germany. 
The Soviets arranged travel papers and visas, and allowed the 
couple to go to Stockholm, Sweden, to work against Germany for the Russians. 
Before departing, they procured on their own initiative an extension or a 
renewal of their German passport privileges. 
In .Stockholm from 1936 to 1939 and having received no parti- 
cular assignments and no more than $500 for the information they had 
furnished the Russians, the man wrote his Russian principal that they 
intended going to the United States since the Russians had left them "high 
and dry."’ Immediately following the writing of the letter, the couple went 
to the German Consulate and obtained another extension of their German 
passports. With no assistance from the Russians they applied for visas 
and obtained them in the fall of 1939. They then took a train to Oslo, 
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Norway, and left by boat for the United States. On March 18, 1951 -- 
free from Russian espionage contacts for fourteen years -- a stranger 
appeared at their home in the United States to revive their agent activity 
for the Soviets. 
7. Growing Up Agents from the Inside 
The plan which Krivitsky referred to as "growing up agents 
from the inside'' should be mentioned here. It is not a scheme to facilitate 
travel and entry, but rather a technique to avoid the problem of travel 
and entry. This method has the disadvantage of delayed maturity, but 
Krivitsky said 1t had been regularly used by the Soviets. It is understood 
that Soviet Military Intelligence using this plan is prepared in some instances 
to wait for ten or fifteen years for results, and in some cases has paid 
the expenses of a university education for promising young men in the 
hope that they might eventually obtain diplomatic posts or other key positions 
in the service of the country in which they are nationals. 
Similarly, to circumvent the American passport problem, 
Paul Crouch, an acknowledged former Communist, testified that Russian 
secret police in 1928 worked on a plan to have members of the Young 
Communist League employed with the State Department. Through them, 
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the Soviet Government would then supposedly have access to blank American 
passports. * 
The patience required in Soviet espionage activity is illustrated 
in an instance referred to by Julius Rosenberg, according to an informant. 
Rosenberg is reported to have said he advanced money to a young couple 
to open a business in the West. For years, according to the report, this 
couple operated a business to build up a front. During difficult times, 
Rosenberg supplied money to keep the business going. But during Rosenberg's 
later operations this man acted as a go-between, "for example, for men 
who had microfilm to send to me for further conveyance.'"' This man in 
the western city served as a secret drop for the East-to-West connections. 
Closely allied to this technique is an instance referred to during 
an interview with a former Soviet agent. Mention was made of a Russian 
couple who came to the United States September 11, 1936, and left April 28, 
1937. The agent said the indication was that the couple had probably been 
sent to this country for one special assignment or else "to establish" 
themselves or obtain a background so that they could be used in other 
countries. 
*'Government's Proposed Findings of Fact submitted to the Subversive 
Activities Control Board," July 28, 1952. 
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In regard to growing up Russian agents from the inside, both 
Ismail Akhmedov and Igor Gouzenko were cognizant of a plan to send a 
group of young intelligence trained Soviets to the United States for university 
educations. Thus, this group, to which Ahkmedov referred as the "seven 
brothers, " would be admitted to the country and would be appropriately 
stationed for future tasks. 
C. Summary 
The Soviets have found that the most secure and the most 
efficient coverage for entering their intelligence agents abroad is to 
appoint them to administer some sort of official business in the country 
where they wish them to operate. 
Traveling as a lawfully appointed representative of the Soviet 
Government, of a commercial establishment, as a specialist, a student, 
a refugee; or being a citizen of another country but secretly in the employ 
of the Soviets, the Soviet Intelligence worker enters a foreign country and 
attempts to remain undiscovered as an enemy, while he goes about organizing 
his network of informants and funneling information back to Moscow. 
Obvious, in the light of these travel and entry techniques, is the advantage 
a counterintelligence agency has when it is able to learn of these foreign 
intelligence agents before they enter and to provide measures for coping 
effectively with their hostile operations. 
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Il. FALSE IDENTITY TO AID TRAVEL AND ENTRY 
OF THE SOVIET INTELLIGENCE SERVICE 
Confronted with the need for placing intelligence agents in 
foreign countries and finding official and legal occupations covering travel 
and entry incommensurable with the supply of agents, the Soviets do not 
hesitate to use fraudulent, illegal means. Should diplomatic relations 
between Russia and so-called friendly countries be broken there would be 
cause for added emphasis on these clandestine means of placing intelligence 
agents in enemy countries. 
This study has brought to light no startlingly ingenious schemes 
used in the illegal travel and entrance of Soviet agents, only the devices 
that anyone facing defeat and reaching for extremities might grasp. 
An interview with a former Soviet agent has revealed that another 
agent entered the United States from Canada simply by being smuggled 
across the river in a rowboat at night. A former Comintern agent who 
operated periodically in the United States from 1929-1938 said that smuggling 
people into the United States was a highly secret business of the Party 
nuclei ahoard the vessels of the United States Lines and, to a certain extent, 
the Norddeutscher IJoyd and the former Red Star Line. 
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Some have tried to take advantage of holiday crowds crossing 
to and from Canada and Mexico, reasoning that officials may be lax in 
checking on the occupants of the streaming vehicles. Others, in wartime, 
have parachuted behind enemy lines. It has been a common practice for 
agents to camouflage their illegal entrances with cover stories, or legends, 
which correspond to the false names and false documents assigned them. 
Protected in that manner they are enabled to travel openly by plane, train 
or boat to a country where they operate under a cover occupation perhaps 
devised for their particular assignment. 
The Canadian espionage case and the Rote Kapelle operations 
are replete with instances of Soviet espionage leaders and their assistants 
being assigned false names. In the Canadian case, secret meetings and 
documents regarding them protected the agents involved by the use of cover 
names, although these agents were already protected by their legal cover 
occupation. Soviet agents identified during the Rote Kapelle operations were 
known under one false name in one country and under another false name 
in another assignment in another country. These constant changes in 
identity give the agent strong security. They confuse the international 
liaison of the different national counterintelligence services. 
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Leon Helfand, a former Russian ambassador to Rome, stated that 
important espionage work 1s handled by experienced agents who enter the 
country illegally disclaiming Soviet citizenship and remaining under an 
assumed identity based upon a false passport. 
Some of these illegal schemes for travel and entry are illustrated 
by instances which follow. Variations to correspond with the time and the 
country to be entered have been noted, but for the most part illegal travel 
follows a pattern. Viewing the pattern and noting instances of application 
might assist an investigator in his problems of trying to figure out what 
activity may have preceded a step he discovers, and what further steps the 
foreign agent might undertake unless prevented, 
A. De-Russianizing 
Concerning the selection of personnel to be utilized by the 
Russians in their intelligence work abroad, Elizabeth Bentley recalled that 
her superior had emphasized the need for "de-Russianizing" their agents 
as much as possible. This de-Russianizing used to be a study of the 
Foreign Department in Moscow from which agents are dispatched. Further- 
more, the process may be continued under the tutelage of a native Communist 
assigned to aid the newly arrived agent in managing dress, language, and 
customs, so he can move about unnoticed. 
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Language is one of the high hurdles for illegal Soviet agents. 
It is not unusual for a foreign agent to prepare himself with several 
languages. Elizabeth Bentley said that her superior, whom she called 
"Jack, '' was studying Spanish and familiarizing himself with Latin American 
affairs in general. He never indicated to her, though, whether the Russians 
were going to send him to Latin America or whether he himself intended 
to go. 
Hede Massing believed that she was invited’ to participate in 
espionage because of her "ability to get along with people and to move in 
varied circles without difficulty. '' Then too, she explained, she had 
married an American citizen and accordingly possessed a legitimate 
American passport -- the best protection for any European traveler at that 
time. 
B. False Legends 
For the sake of assuming a safe identification, an illegal 
resident agent needs a completely new legend to cover his life from birth 
to the present. Supplying the basis for these legends by securing legally 
registered birth certificates became a valued source of income for Com- 
munists in Canada-.and the United States in the 1930's and 1940's. 
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To smooth entry into Panama from the United States for the 
purpose of developing an intelligence contact, a Soviet agent sailed from New 
York with letters of introduction to various clubs in Panama signed by 
one Levy, who had been in Panama before. As a pretext for going to Panama, 
the agent was prepared to say that from his friend, Malcolm Whitaker, he 
had received a letter of recommendation to Major General Preston Brown, 
the Military Governor of the Canal Zone. This letter stated that the agent 
was on a pleasure trip and was going to visit the Browns. 
C. False Documents 
1. Birth Certificates 
Originally, the principal requirement for obtaining a birth 
certificate was a witness to certify the identity of the applicant at a local 
office for vital statistics. Consequently, the Soviets had not been reduced 
to moving their secret agents as false hockey players or under any other 
disguises. They simply entered Canada or the United States illegally and 
within a short time received citizenship and passport papers -- both false. 
One informant has stated that outside of Russia in the actual 
operation of the intelligence unit there is always one person who handles 
documents and obtains related information. According to his standing, 
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that person has the title of Inspector and is usually an assistant to the agent 
in charge of the intelligence operations in that country. According to the 
anonymous letter mailed to the FBI on August 7, 1943, Vassili Zubilin, 
Second Secretary of the Soviet Embassy, Washington, D. C., was revealed 
to be personally engaged in the illegal moving of agents into and out of 
the United States and in preparing counterfeit documents. 
When Hede Massing was working for the Russians in 1935, she 
said she was told to get hold of some birth certificates. The only way she 
was able to comply was to contact an important official of the Communist 
Party, USA, a tactic which her Soviet superior considered a regrettable 
necessity. She met him six or eight times in two or three months and 
eventually received the birth certificates in a sealed envelope, for which 
she paid him cash. 
A Hungarian Communist, Alexander Goldberger, who was known 
to his espionage contacts in the United States as J. Peters and as Stevens, 
had developed a system for trafficking in essential birth certificates, naturali- 
zation papers and other identifying documents for his contacts. One of 
them -- Whittaker Chambers -- told about Peters having several young 
Communists working in the Genealogical Division of the New York Public 
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Library. Some of these individuals would look up births of children who 
were born in the early part of the century; others would search for deaths 
which occurred during the same period. The lists of births and deaths 
were then compared. For example, Chambers said, a John Smith was 
found to have been born in 1900 and died several years later. An application 
then would be made for a copy of the birth certificate of John Smith. 
Communist Party members, using the names of parents listed on either 
the birth or death certificates, would write for photostat copies of these 
birth certificates to be mailed to a cover address from which they were 
turned over to Peters. It was Chambers’ impression that Peters received 
hundreds of these birth certificates which were used as the basis for 
securing legal passports, not all of which were to be used by espionage 
workers but some for Communist Party underground activity. 
John Loomis Sherman, Whittaker Chambers’ superior in a 
United States espionage apparatus, was designated to go to Tokyo, Japan, 
to set up an apparatus. He ordered Chambers to get him the needed papers. 
Peters obliged Chambers by securing a birth certificate in the name of 
Charles Chase on which Sherman procured a passport enabling him to 
travel to Japan and back to the United States. For a subsequent journey 
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Sherman did not make use of the same birth certificate but required Chambers 
through Peters to procure another. The one provided on this occasion was 
in an Irish name. It is to be noted that, although Sherman was American 
born, he falsified his identity, 
Between late 1935 and early 1937, Mr. and Mrs. Edward Joseph 
Herbert rented a furnished New York apartment from which they made three 
trips to Europe. The front sheet of the passport application of Mrs. Herbert 
contains a handwritten notation that a photostatic copy of the birth certificate 
of Sarah Graff was presented at the passport office. Mrs. Herbert directed 
that the passport be mailed to her New York address. Subsequent investi- 
gation disclosed that the real Edward Joseph Herbert and the real Sarah 
Graff had died as infants during the first year of their lives and that the 
couple traveling as Mr. and Mrs. Herbert were actually Mr. and Mrs. 
Vassili Zubilin, both Soviet Intelligence personnel. 
Zubiiin later, in 1942, became a member of the Russian 
Embassy staff in Washington, D. C, 
Alfred Tilton directed Soviet Military Intelligence in the United 
States (1927-1930) from New York City under the name of Joseph Paquett. 
He supported this false identity with fraudulent Canadian papers obtained 
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with the assistance of Tim Buck, Secretary of the Canadian Communist 
Party. Later, by means of more fraudulent documents, Tilton became 
"Alfred Martin." 
Communists placed in offices that could assist Soviet operations 
were an important part of the scheme for securing identification papers. 
When Whittaker Chambers was scheduled to go to England to help his 
Superior, "Bill, '' set up a Soviet apparatus, Chambers' family, consisting 
of wife and daughter, were to accompany him. Not only must he have papers 
for himself and his wife, but also for his infant daughter. J. Peters again 
obliged, securing birth certificates for Chambers and his wife in the name 
of David Breen. Then to perform the rest of his duty, Peters visited the 
City Hall at Atlantic City where he contacted the "right" individual (Chambers 
presumed he was a Communist), and for a fee, had the name of Ursula 
Breen written into the birth records and a regular birth certificate issued 
in that name. 
Peters was assisted also in getting hold of petitions of persons 
seeking naturalization, who included on their petition the names of minor 
children, He used these petitions to secure passports in the names of the 
children listed thereon. 
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A former Comintern agent who operated periodically in the 
United States explained that birth certificates of dead Party members or 
other people who were considered "'safe" were sent to the National Office 
from the district organizers of the Party. 
2. Affidavits of Faked Relatives 
This spurious method of getting into and out of a country by 
using ''safe" birth certificates was only one of several illegal methods used 
by the Soviet Intelligence services. Another method was to claim relation- 
ship with someone who could assist in gaining the required foundations 
for openly acquiring the needed legal papers. 
To assist him in his problems of "explaining" his way around, 
a Soviet operator leaving Moscow was frequently given the status of a "phoney" 
relative cf a citizen he would contact abroad and from whom he had been 
separated a number of years. Here again a legend would be required: the 
agent would be given a complete background which he would be requested to 
memorize prior to making any contact in the country he would enter. 
When ''Mark Jonas," Soviet agent destined to operate in Poland, 
entered the United States to organize his group, he was sponsored by a 
Benjamin Taishoff. When interviewed, Taishoff denied any wrongdoing, 
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stating that he had received a letter from the man using the name 'Haas." 
Appropriately recalling that they were cousins, ''Haas"' asked Taishoff 
to furnish him an affidavit. Taishoff complied. 
3. Naturalization Certificates 
Sources have made it clear that Russia told its agents to be on 
the lookout for naturalization certificates. One agent said he contacted an 
undertaker in Chicago to obtain naturalization certificates from unclaimed 
bodies. These certificates he said were subsequently utilized for illegal 
Soviet activities. 
Alfred Tilton, who once directed Soviet Military Intelligence 
in the United States, arranged with an undertaker in Brooklyn to purchase 
the naturalization papers of a deceased American soldier, Frank Kleges. 
Afterward, a Soviet agent assumed that identity, set about acquiring an 
American background and then went to Paris on a fraudulent American pass- 
port. 
To obtain naturalization papers, #23606, Series E, in Montreal 
on March 19, 1937, 'Mark Jonas" posed as a relative of Aaron Marcovitch, 
whose father-in-law'’s name was Samuel Jonas. 
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One "Charles Peter Atkin, '' a member of the Jmas group, 
posed as the son of a shoemaker, Sam Atkin, in Montreal. According 
to Sam Atkin, Jr., Aaron Marcovitch came to Sam Atkin, Sr., and told 
of having a refugee cousin whom he desired to bring into Canada to be 
naturalized. Marcovitch talked the shoemaker into letting him use the 
entry record of Sam Atkin, Jr., as a basis for establishing a naturalization 
identity for "Charles Peter Atkin."' Marcovitch collected the old Atkin 
papers and in three days was back with $100 and new papers for the 
shoemaker and his son. It is noted that the papers of the Atkins and 
"Charles Peter Atkin" bear consecutive numbers -- #23623, #23624, #23625. 
The passports issued to Mark Jonas, his wife, and Charles Peter Atkin 
bear the consecutive numbers -- #37628, #37629, and #37630. 
Aaron Marcovitch and Adolph Stark, also of Montreal, were 
apparently instrumental in procuring false Canadian papers for various 
Russian agents who desired to establish Canadian identities in order to 
facilitate their going to European countries to engage in espionage. Investi- 
gation proved that an illegal passport bureau was maintained at Montreal, 
Quebec, for the purpose of fabricating information upon which Canadian 
naturalization papers and passports were obtained for persons obviously 
connected with Russian OGPU activities. For an agent to go to Montreal 
"to change his feathers" (meaning to obtain the basis for new identity) 
was not unusual. 
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When arrested by Canadian authorities for internment, Stark 
and Marcovitch had between 150 and 200 applications for Canadian citizen- 
ship and other documents in their possession. These two men had been 
directed, at least to some extent, by a Mr. Stern of the United States 
who engineered such fraudulent activities in both Canada and the United 
States and who appeared to be an OGPU official. 
Aaron Marcovitch had even approached the Canadian Postmaster 
General Ernest Bertrand to get him to sign a letter recommending for 
citizenship one Willie Brandes who later proved to be a Russian espionage 
agent. Mr. Bertrand fully trusted Marcovitch, who "worked in my 
committee all through the elections under the supervision of my campaign 
manager." Nevertheless, the deception worked out by Marcovitch went 
so far as to include a false father for Brandes and also a false marriage 
which the rabbi, listed as officiating, denied performing. 
4. Passports 
The fraudulent passport system is without doubt the illegal 
scheme that has been worked out and used scientifically by both Soviet 
State Security and Military Intelligence organizations. Forged passports 
are mentioned by Richard Sorge as an operational objective. 
One of Ovakimian's agents stated that some passports were 
obtained on the basis of naturalization papers which had been either legally 
or illegally obtained and some were obtained on various birth certificates, 
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since, during the period of his operations, no independent investigation | 
was made of the applicant for the passport. 
Jacob Golos, president of World Tourists Incorporated and 
Elizabeth Bentley's superior, was instrumental in finding "safe'' people 
who would go to the Federal Agencies with the pictures of those to whom 
passports were to be issued in order to fill out the questionnaires and swear 
to the correctness of all answers given. The same people received the 
passports when they were delivered and handed them over to Golos. 
High OGPU officials had American passports and arrangements 
were regularly made to have these passports renewed in the United States 
by some other individual in order that the passports might be kept current 
for any necessary use by the individuals in possession of them. 
The Robinson-Rubens passport fraud case makes clear that 
during the 1930's illegally obtained passports were procured through the New 
York County Clerk's Office. Falsified applications were passed to the 
County Clerk through a chain of Government employees, making final certi- 
fication a favor for afriend. In other instances $500 or $1, 000 was paid 
per passport. 
Intelligence training courses are offered in Russia to carefully 
sifted foreign Communists, European and American, and to certain 
qualified Russians. Defectors have mentioned secret schools that teach, 
among other operations for espionage, passport forgery although it is noted 
that agents on missions neither manufacture nor falsify the documents they 
carry. That work is done by someone else. 
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The illegal agent first of all must conceal his connection with 
Russia. Consequently, if he begins his journey on his Russian passport, 
he exchanges it in the next country he enters for a false one of some other 
country and picks up his Russian passport again on his return journey, for 
in Russia every citizen over fifteen years of age, with the exception of 
collective farmers, must possess a passport as one of his identifying 
documents. 
At the end of a tour of duty, agents are sometimes summoned 
back to Moscow either for discussions or to take a course in some specialized 
subject In such cases, the individual travels to some other country -- 
usually one with a common frontier with the USSR -- and there ata 
prearranged rendezvous, he meets an agent from the Center* who hands 
him a new passport, sometimes a Russian one, containing the necessary 
visas, of course, bearing a false name. In return, the recalled agent 
hands over to the Center's agent a sealed envelope containing his original 
passport and necessary documentation which he receives back on his 
return from Russia 
Following an espionage mission Nicholas Dozenberg returned 
from China to Moscow in 1937. He stopped en route at the Soviet Con- 
sulate in Paris for a Soviet visa. Within three days, the visa was issued 
on a separate slip. Dozenberg stated that visas of this nature were commonly 
used and surrendered at the Soviet border in order that one's passport would 
not disclose that particular trip into the USSR. 
* Intelligence headquarters in Moscow. 
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The necessity of concealing relationship to Russia explains two 
features of travel techniques: 1. An agent seldom proceeds directly from 
Russia to the country where he is to operate and back again, but follows 
a devious route. 2. The Soviets coax into Russia and train for foreign 
espionage people of other nationalities who have passports from their 
own countries and who will operate secretly for Soviet interests. 
Sorge went to the Soviet Union from Japan in 1935, but by way 
of the United States. A Communist Party contact in New York gave him a 
forged American passport which he said he destroyed in Holland after 
leaving Moscow to begin his next assignment. The use of the forged pass- 
port was to prevent his real passport showing he had been in Russia. 
Sorge pointed out that he did not forge passports, that they were given 
him by contact men. 
Walter Krivitsky said it was not unusual for the Comintern 
representative or the OGPU agents in America to send American passports 
to Moscow where a staff was employed in "fixing" such documents according 
to the needs. Hede Massing referred to the "cobbling" of "captive" 
passports. 
In 1924, the Berlin police raided Comintern headquarters and 
seized a number of German passports, together with files listing the names 
of their original owners, the true names of the agents to whom they were 
issued and the false names under which the agents were traveling. 
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Max Klausen, Richard Sorge's assistant in Japan, told Japanese 
interrogators that at the Moscow General Headquarters there are hundreds 
of passports of different countries. All are authentic, for the Soviet 
Government took them from their rightful owners. Only the names and 
photographs are false. 
Austrian passports were among those used by the Soviets 
before they discovered the availability of Canadian and United States pass- 
ports. To obtain the issue of the legal Austrian passport a certificate 
of domicile was more important than a birth certificate. At one time the 
Fourth Department had as its agent the head of the local council of a 
small town in Austria. This man issued false certificates of domicile 
whenever required, and a confederate in a nearby town issued false birth 
certificates if these were necessary. However, sometime in 1934, both 
these men were arrested and the department was obliged to use Moscow- 
made Austrian passports for the time being. 
When Henri Robinson, operating in the Swiss network, wanted 
a passport, he turned over to a colleague, Anna Muller, the civil status 
information, the description and the photographs of Soviet agents whom he 
wished to furnish with the identifying documents. She transmitted the 
information to one Habijanic, an officer of the Swiss Cantonal Police, who 
searched the index file of the population in the city of Basle to finda 
person whose description corresponded with the one which he had received. 
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The passport request was then made through a willing colleague of Habijanic 
and the passport signed without difficulty by the head of the office. 
For many vears, and continuing as far as Krivitsky knew, 
there was a special section of the Fourth Department in Moscow that issued 
false documents. Two Lazowski brothers, expert forgers, were in charge 
and they had a number of experts under them. This staff prepared all kinds 
of falsifications, such as passports, credentials, signatures, and in fact any 
forgery required by the Fourth Department. However, the Department 
prefered to falsify an identity with which to secure a genuine passport, rather 
than to forge the passport. 
Russians have had much experience in forging documents. Pre- 
Revolution conditions in Czarist Russia gave them exceptional training in 
the art. The elaborate passport regulations which became prevalent in most 
European countries after 1918 found the Bolsheviks well prepared. Experts 
in the offices of Soviet Intelligence forge consular signatures and government 
seals wholly indistinguishable from the genuine articles, according to 
Krivitsky. 
Krivitsky stated further that the O. M.S. (International Liaison 
Section of the Comintern), unlike the OGPU and Military Intelligence, did 
not actually manufacture passports. Instead they procured genuine pass- 
ports and "doctored" them according to requirements. To obtain genuine 
passports, the QMS. drew up the fanatical zeal of Communist members 
and sympathizers. For example, if the QM.S. representative in the 
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United States required two American passports for agents in China, he 
communicated with his contact in the American Communist Party, who 
in turn obtained the passports from Party members or sympathizers. When 
the O. M.S. staff of approximately ten members received the passports, 
it removed the photographs, substituted others and made other necessary 
changes. Benjamin Gitlow stated that two passport factories operated 
for the Comintern and OGPU, one in Berlin, Germany, and one in Moscow. 
Blunders in all this falsifying are bound to occur. Following 
are a few that have been noted: 
1. An old date passport that appears to be new. 
2. Entries made with the same ink and the same 
handwriting although they have reference to 
different places of issue or places of entry. 
3. An exchanged photograph on the passport instead 
of bearing a genuine stamped impression carries 
a copy in indelible pencil. 
4. A subsequent entry of alleged residence in a 
different type of writing. 
5. Pages replaced by other pages recently inserted. 
6. Particular figures on the upper edges of pass- 
port pages cut off to conceal certain data. 
An agent who makes numerous trips into a given country in 
order to strengthen liaisons there makes use of passports having different 
names so as to avoid being noticed. Rudolph Hamburger of the Swiss 
network of the Rote Kapelle traveled sometimes with a German passport, 
sometimes with a Honduran passport. In order to effect his liaisons 
with Switzerland, Henri Robinson made use of three passports under 
different names. He presented one of them to the Swiss Inspection Office, and 
presented another made out in a different name to the French Inspection Office. 
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The absence of the exit stamp should have caused the frontier services to 
detect the fraud. 
Klausen, upon leaving Moscow for Tokyo, was furnished three 
passports -- Canadian, Russian, German -- each made up under a different 
name. Swiss police unearthed the information that during a period of 
two years, Ignatz Reiss, who operated Hede Massing's early activity 
in Soviet Service, used seven or eight different names and traveled on 
forged passports furnished by Soviet officials in the different European 
countries. 
A Soviet defector describes his own experiences as follows: 
After it was decided that he would be sent to the United States, he had to 
see a person in "'a little office in a building on Lubianka Square." The per- 
son in charge he found had already been notified and greeted him with: "I'll 
give you an American passport. Do you want to be an American citizen?" 
This person then referred him to a laboratory technician who asked him if 
he should like to be a Dane. The technician then brought in an old Danish 
telephone book and out of the classified section entitled "Pharmacists" 
selected a name in which the fraudulent passport was to be made up. But 
when actually made up, the passport described a merchant. For the 
American passport the name of a naturalized American doctor of Yugoslav 
origin was used. The agent was instructed to travel via Vienna on the 
American passport where he should meet a contact and exchange it for the 
Danish passport which was to be sent to Vienna by diplomatic pouch. 
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On his return trip to Russia this agent said he was issued a 
Canadian passport in his own name and in Paris picked up his original 
Danish passport already stamped to take him through Switzerland, Austria, 
and Poland. 
On his next trip to the United States he was given another 
Canadian passport with a different identity and he traveled by an entirely 
different route. 
Another example of using multiple passports and identities and 
making the exchange en route to the assignment is found in the account of 
a defector who operated widely for Soviet Intelligence. He said he left 
Moscow in January, 1930, on a Swiss passport in an unknown name and 
proceeded to Berlin where through a contact man who operated a cigar 
shop he met one Wilhelm, a Comintern agent. In a cafe Wilhelm exchanged 
passports with him so that he could proceed to the Balkans to organize the 
nucleus of military espionage networks in Rumania and Bulgaria. The 
second was a fraudulent German passport made out to a mining engineer 
with a German sounding name. With a corresponding legend, the agent 
had familiarized himself before leaving Moscow. 
| The same Soviet agent tells of traveling from Moscow to 
Brazil in 1934-35. Arriving in Copenhagen he exchanged the passport with 
which he left Moscow for an Austrian passport in the name of an Austrian 
merchant avowedly on a holiday. On the Austrian passport he proceeded 
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via Paris to Genoa, Italy, where he boarded a French liner for Rio de 
Janeiro. There a contact man met him at the boat and took him to a hotel 
in the Flamingo district where he met the organizer of the Brazilian Com- 
munist Party. 
The Rote Kapelle groups, active from 1936-1942 throughout 
Europe, depended frequently upon false passports. Leopold Trepper, 
perhaps the most important member of the venture, made several trips 
between Paris and Moscow in 1937 and 1938 each time with false papers 
in a different name. Leon Grossvogel used Uruguayan passports issued 
under Spanish or Mexican sounding names on his trips to the Scandinavian 
countries from Belgium under commercial cover. 
Another key operator in the Rote Kapelle, who was actually a 
Red Army captain and an expert in chemical warfare, went to Brussels as 
a student of chemistry traveling on a Finnish passport made out in an 
appropriately assumed name, Erland Jernstraem. Names and nationalities 
to agree with the falsified passports appeared throughout that undertaking. 
Although many operators in the networks were discovered, it is believed 
that a number were able to escape and may be active in present operations. 
A notable opportunity for procuring coveted Canadian and 
United States passports came during the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939). 
According to Walter Krivitsky, all volunteers' passports were taken up 
when they arrived in Spain, and very rarely was a passport returned. 
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Even when a man was discharged he was told that his passport had been 
lost. From the United States alone hundreds of volunteers went over. 
Krivitsky further reported that nearly every diplomatic pouch from Spain 
arriving at the Lubianka* contained a batch of passports from members 
of the International Brigade. He said tnat one day in the spring of 1937, 
a batch of about a hundred passports arrived; half of them were American. 
They had belonged to dead soldiers and after some weeks of inquiry into 
family histories of their original owners could easily be adapted to a Soviet 
espionage agent. 
‘Sometime around December, 1940, according to Elizabeth Bentley's 
statement, her superior, Jacob Golos, under investigation by the Dies 
Committee, ** opened a package and started to burn the contents, among which 
she specifically recalled were approximately thirty or forty American pass- 
ports. Golos explained that these passports were left with him by people 
who had gone to fight in Spain. 
Fraudulent passport techniques of the Soviet Intelligence services 
are demonstrated by the Witczak case. Message #11436 dated August 14, 
1945, from Moscow to "Grant" (code name for Colonel Nikolai Zabotin, 
Canadian Military Attache) was among the Russian documents Igor Gouzenko 
placed before the Royal Commission after he decided to break away from 
the Soviet Union. The message contains instructions regarding the obtaining 
of a new fraudulent Canadian passport for Witczak, whom Gouzenko identified 
It fer 	| } 
* A prison in Moscow. Gy ote ges oh sng War offen f MLV, 
fr 
A = hI IV: data“ 
** A special committee of the United States House of Representatives under 
the chairmanship of Representative Martin Dies of Texas set up in 1938 for 
investigation of un-American activities. Dies retired from the House in 1944, 
but the committee was put on a permanent basis and called the Committee on 
Un-American Activities in January, 1945. 	. 
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as a person assigned by the Soviet Union to the United States to build up an 
independent espionage network to be used in event diplomatic relations 
between the Soviet Union and the United States are broken off. 
Zabotin, working through Sam Carr, Organizing Secretary of 
the Communist Party for all of Canada, had been endeavoring for approxi- 
mately a half year to date of the telegram to secure a passport for 
Witczak biding his time as a student at a Los Angeles, California, ‘university 
and engaging in some obvious recruiting for espionage. 
Back in 1930, a bachelor, Ignacy Witczak, journeyed from 
Kurowo, Poland, to the Ontario district of Canada where ‘he became a 
farm laborer and received naturalization papers in 1935. In 1937, he 
secured a passport and went to Spain with the MacKenzie- Papineau Battalion 
of the International Brigade. At the military base of Abacete he and 
some others were relieved of their passports by an officer who stated 
that such documents should not be taken into the front line as they might 
be destroyed. When Witczak applied for his passport at the end of his 
term of service, he was told at brigade headquarters that the trucks 
which had carried the passports had been bombed, "probably" destroying 
the passports. Upon his return to Canada he did not apply for a new 
passport but did receive new naturalization papers, the original ones, he 
said, he lost while swimming a river in Spain. In 1945, Moscow assured 
Sam Car that the real Witczak had died in the Spanish Civil War. . 
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United States immigration records show that 'Ignacy and 
Bunia Witczak,'' Canadians, landed in New York from Boulogne September 13, 
1938. In 1940, one Ignacy Samuel Witczak registered in Los Angeles as 
an alien "merchant," "last arrived in the United States at Detroit, Michi- 
gan, on September 25, 1938. I came in by railroad unknown." He stated 
he was born at Kurowo, Poland. Such was the legend of the California 
Witczak, the fictitious Witczak. 
According to the files of notes Gouzenko displayed to the Royal 
Commission, Sam Carr had been instructed to obtain a new passport as 
well as a new identity for the Soviet Witczak but was having trouble arranging 
the transfer of identification from the real Witczak to the spurious one. 
Problems of naturalization and marriage were uppermost. It developed 
that the original Witczak's passport dated March 12, 1937, was used by 
Sam Carr and his aides to secure a renewal for the California Witczak. 
Questionnaires were provided, signatures forged, photographs supplied, 
and an office employee bribed to substitute a manufactured 1937 application 
form in the files for the original 1937 application, in order to furnish the 
basis for the issue of a new 1945 passport to the spurious Witczak. 
Anticipating that it might be necessary to surrender the old 
passport or, at least,to produce it for inspection at the Passport Office, Sam 
Carr suggested that burning it and leaving nothing except the number with 
which to compare the 1937 application would appear authentic. Carr's fee 
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for the whole transaction was set first at $5,000, but Moscow termed it 
"fantastic, '' so he reduced it to $3, 000. 
The passport was secured, but investigators have since brought 
to light the stealthy maneuvering that now plainly reveals the forgery. 
Shortly after Gouzenko defected, the f:ctitious Witczak mysteriously dis- 
appeared. 	| 
The case of Arthur Adams is a record of a number of journeys 
between the United States and Russia. On December 8, 1937, Samuel 
Novick, treasurer of the Wholesale Radio Service Company, Inc., New 
York City, wrote to the United States Consul at Toronto, Canada, asking 
permission to import his Canadian representative, Arthur Adams, as a 
skilled laborer. However, Adams was denied admission as there was no 
shortage in the labor field for which he was to be imported. Therefore, on 
March 31, 1938, Adams himself wrote the Immigration and Naturalization 
Service, advising that he did not desire to enter the United States as a 
skilled contract laborer as he was now an independent specialist, and 
that besides doing work for Wholesale Radio he planned to perfect a cream- 
whipping machine. He further explained that he planned to establish a 
laboratory of his own under the name of Technological Laboratories, Inc. 
On May 16, 1938, Adams again executed a "Preliminary Question- 
naire for Immigration Visa," stating, "Iamin business for myself." 
Under that section devoted to showing his purpose in coming to the 
United States, he stated: "I have organized in New York a Technological 
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Laboratory for the development of mechanical and electrical devices. 
The business is incorporated in the State of New York...I am the President... 
On the basis of the above cover, a fraudulent Canadian birth 
certificate and statements made by friends, Adams entered the United 
States on May 17, 1988, with permission to sy four months. Ignoring 
the four-months limitation, he took up residence in the United States. 
According to a former headquarters official of Soviet Military 
Intelligence, Adams had been called to Russia in 1932 or 1933 and recruited 
into the Soviet Military Intelligence Service upon the recommendation 
of the Comintern. This informant also stated that in 1937 Adams was 
dispatched to the United States to serve as a "legal resident" to operate 
for Soviet Military Intelligence and later was assigned tasks of obtaining 
top-secret blueprints and other American military secrets. 
Prior to 1938, Adams had entered the United States. On two 
of these occasions -- November 1, 1928, and again on December 5, 1932 -- 
he came in as a Soviet Government representative making inquiry con- 
cerning plans and equipment for factories and a contract for the use of 
the Wright Whirlwind Motor. 
It is conjectured that, on each of the above trips to the United 
States, Adams was engaged in Soviet espionage. 
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Another case that emphasizes the use of falsified passports 
concerns the journey of a Soviet agent who said he was given very little 
advice about travel and entry techniques. He was sent from Moscow to 
New York in 1934 under private cover. He proceeded as follows: 
Removed labels from his clothing. 
Limited amount of wearing apparel carried with him. 
Dropped the Russian language. 
Left Moscow by train traveling on a false American pass- 
port to Vienna. 
Spoke English en route. 
Met Vienna contact as directed and exchanged his American 
for a false Danish passport. (He said the official in the 
photography shop in the OGPU office where he secured 
his passports may have given him some background about 
Scandinavia. ) 
7, Spoke German to Vienna contact. 
8. Hesitated about going to the United States Consulate at 
Vienna or American Express to handle visa matters. 
9. Thought of saying he was going to see the Chicago World's 
Fair. 
10. Pondered the possibility of entering the United States 
through Cuba or Mexico. 
11. Secured a six-month travel visa for a "vacation in Mexico." 
12. Approached a tourist agency and explained he wished to 
travel to Mexico via Italy. 
13. Sent a note back to his director at Moscow from Genoa. 
14. Boarded a passenger freighter. 
15. Went to United States Consulate in Tampico, Mexico, to 
obtain a transit visa to go to New York "for travel to 
Europe." Had to present a ticket for European travel. 
16. Chatted casually with the Immigration Officer at Inter- 
national Bridge, Laredo, Texas. 
17. Showed officer his transit visa. 
18. Registered under Danish name at hotel. 
19. Traveled to New York by train. 
20. Contacted Amtorg. 
21. Boarded the Normandy for return to Russia on a Canadian 
passport in his true name. Ovakimian gave him a written 
background. 
Pm OOD eR 
ea 
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22 In Paris picked up his Danish passport already stamped 
to take him through Switzerland, Austria and Poland 
23. To return to the United States, was given papers of a 
naturalized Canadian citizen of Finnish descent. 
24. Returned to New York via Latvia; Paris; Port Arthur, 
Canada. 
Under certain circumstances, Soviet espionage agents use a 
special type of travel document, similar in appearance to a genuine pass- 
port The document is known as a "Sojourn Permit" or "Vid Na Zhitelstvo." 
Another United States intelligence agency has investigated the origin and 
use of this document and reports that it is not a valid passport although some 
countries will affix their visas. It is issued only by the Soviet embassies 
and consulates outside the USSR to persons being granted Soviet citizenship 
under the program of naturalizing White Russians, persons originating in 
areas annexed by the USSR but living outside the USSR, and persons who 
have lost their Soviet citizenship for any reason. This citizenship so 
acquired may be kept secret and its possessor forced to retain his former 
status abroad as cover for carrying on agent activity. 
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Hi. USE OF PARACHUTES FOR ILLEGAL ENTRY 
The Soviets train some of their agents to enter forbidden 
territory in wartime by means of parachute. Rote Kapelle agents with 
wireless transmitters were parachuted into the Low Countries and into 
Germany. 
Women as well as men were trained as wireless operators to be 
parachuted behind enemy lines. One of the girls so trained said that at 
the close of her radio course the espionage school she was attending 
moved to the outskirts of Moscow to practice encoding and deceding for 
two months. Then, on August 27, 1943, she and her male agent companion 
were flown from an airfield south of Moscow to a partisan transfer point 
for groups of partisans going in and out of Finland, In another plane, they 
were flown across the front lines and jumped into Finland at night. They 
wore civilian clothes, carried knapsacks containing their transmitters and 
receivers, and were provided also with food, pistols, maps, compasses 
and ration cards. The object of entering enemy territory was to contact 
and report to Moscow via clandestine wireless. 
Parachutists, as was the case in Poland, are trained to 
climax decomposition work. In Poland everything possible had been done 
before the outbreak of the war to prepare organized assistance from 
within for an invading Russian Army. Both the Fourth Department and 
OGPU had agents working in key positions in Government departments, 
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and over a period of years the Polish Army had been infiltrated by Polish 
Communists. It was the duty of the Fourth Department to organize groups 
of these Communists to act under the orders of specially trained Russian 
Army parachutists who, in the event of war, would be dropped behind 
the enemy lines to act in accordance with a prearranged plan. 
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VI, ESCAPE DEVICES USED BY SOVIET AGENTS 
Besides emphasizing the methods for facilitating travel on 
fraudulent passports, the instructions which Julius Rosenberg gave to 
David Greenglass also reveal a pattern of travel action for a compro- 
mised agent. 
About February, 1950, when Klaus Fuchs was arrested, Rosen- 
berg advised Greenglass to leave the country before his activity might be 
disclosed. Greenglass explained: 
"T was to go to Mexico City by train with my family. 
There I was to rent a house and write a letter to the 
Soviet Embassy in Mexico City. In the letter I was 
to mention something about the United Nations. I 
was to wait three days at which time I would go to 
the Plaza de la (something or other) and stand in 
front of the statue of Christopher Columbus at 5 p.m. 
with my thumb in the Mexico City street guide. A 
man would come to me.... The man would give me 
passports and money for a trip to either Stockholm, 
Sweden, or Berne, Switzerland, where I was to 
repeat the same procedure and if I were to go to 
Stockholm I would stand in front of a statue of 
Linnaeus, at which time I would receive the 
necessary papers to continue my trip to Czecho- 
slovakia where I was to write to the Soviet 
Ambassador to merely state, 'I[am here.'" 
According to Rosenberg, Mexico City is the springboard and 
from there his friends obtain passage to a predecided destination. 
or Canada, 
countries. 
Elizabeth Bentley was told that if she were able to get to Mexico 
the passport and visa problem could be handled in those 
When a Mr. Tamer was accused of removing documents from 
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files of the Crucible Steel Co., Harrison, New Jersey, he went into hiding 
and later left for the Soviet Union. 
Two of Ignatz Reiss's assassins escaped to Mexico, another 
to Spain. 
It is understood to have been the practice of OGPU to give travel 
advice to their prospective foreign agents who have not had the benefits 
of a training course. One agent stated that he could recall conversations 
at various times about major blunders, or agents being disclosed. Talk 
among the group was about how the agent should have listened to the 
instructions given to him concerning his method of travel. 
Six days after David Greenglass was arrested, Morton Sobell 
and his family took flight from New York by American Airlines for Mexico 
City. After his arrival there, he hid out in the rooming house section 
of that city under the name of N. Walter until the date of his location through 
Bureau investigation and his arrest by the Mexican Security Police. 
Rosenberg is said to have described Sobell's flight as foolhardy, stating 
that if he had consulted him, he (Rosenberg) could have arranged for Sobell's 
escape to Mexico through his contacts. 
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Investigations have brought out the evidence that Party leaders 
have been instructed to establish secret hide-outs for use in emergencies. 
Leading officials in the United States have been told to avoid being arrested 
and to make every effort to reach Mexico if the Communist Party is 
forced to go underground. Directions have been given for contacting the 
Communist Party in Mexico upon arrival. 
There are known instances of "safe" houses and mail drops 
being used by couriers in secret journeys across Europe and America. 
The Communist Parties in the various countries assist agents 
in their travels. It has already been noted that it is through the Com- 
munist Party and sympathizers that needed documents are often supplied. 
It is also the Communist Party that provides the "safe" houses. The Swiss 
police detected activity from a clandestine radio, revealing to them the 
approximate location of a Rote Kapelle operator. Before the police could 
apprehend the agent, the Swiss Communist Party took him to a safe place 
where they lodged and fed him for several months, Then he was taken to 
Communist sympathizers in Geneva. The Swiss Communist Party organized 
the secret departure of two agents and their passage into France where they 
were lodged first at the Soviet Embassy in Paris, then by a member of the 
French Communist Party. An agent en route from one country to another 
sometimes takes refuge at the Soviet Embassy where he stays until suitable 
cover and documents are provided. 
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Leopold Trepper, the Soviet's chief resident agent in France for 
Rote Kapelle operations, fled from his German captors and probably hid 
someplace in France until the end of the war; then he left under an assumed 
name. 
An emergency means of escape recommended is to board a 
Russian or a Russian-chartered boat in port and notify the captain to 
contact the Embassy. 
An avenue of escape in wartime is found in the advice to seek 
an assignment in counterintelligence close to the front, contact the 
partisans, desert with them and with their help return to the USSR. 
Agents who have lost favor with Moscow are sometimes "called 
home." Paul and Hede Massing were successful in escaping from Russia 
after complying with their summons. At first they met difficulties in 
regard to their requests to the Soviets to return their travel documents 
and to issue exit visas. Her passport and his certificate of identity were 
genuinely American and they insisted upon using them although the Soviet 
agents urging them to return to Russia had insisted that they use false 
passports. Finally Mrs. Massing threatened to go to the American 
Embassy for help and hinted that she had left in the United States the story 
of their activities and departure for Moscow, and if she and her husband 
did not return to the United States this story might be made public. Within 
three hours, the papers were in her hands. 
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The Rubenses, of the mysterious Robinson-Rubens passport 
case, were not as successful in freeing themselves after their trip "home." 
"Richard," identified by Whittaker Chambers as Rubens, was the Soviet 
agent whom J. Peters contacted regarding documents for identification, 
The chief of "Richard's" apparatus, General Berzin, had been liquidated. 
When "Richard" was summoned, he knew his turn had come. Therefore, 
skilled in passport falsification matters, it seems he made use of his 
knowledge to plant clues in order that Soviet action against him and his 
wife would be discovered by United States authorities. 
For himself and his American wife, he secured two sets of 
passports on the same day by filing applications with conspirators at 
the New York County Clerk's office where three contacts of J. Peters' 
underground apparatus were employed. The first set was taken out in 
the name of an unknown young man and woman named Robinson; the other 
set in the name of Rubens. Upon receiving the Robinson passports, 
Richard replaced the pictures with those of himself and his wife, but the 
application filed with the State Department still carried the Robinson 
pictures. The preparation came to light when Mrs. Rubens in Moscow 
sought help from the American Embassy there in locating her husband 
who "had disappeared." 
Chambers concludes: 
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"_,.From the first, I had been puzzled as to why 
an underground worker of Richard's experience 
would make two passport applications in one day, 
in an unusual way in an unusual place. I also 
wondered why he would take his American wife to 
Moscow during the Purge. I decided presently that 
he had taken her on purpose so that she might inter- 
cede for him if necessary. And he had left that 
curiously open trail (there were other easily followed 
clues also) so that it would be discovered. How 
desperate he must have been! And, in returning 
to Moscow, what a razor's edge he elected to walk 
on." 
* Whittaker Chambers, Witness (New York: Random House, Inc. , 1952), 
pp. 400-401. 
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SECURITY INFORMATION - CONFIDENTIAL 
Vv. CONCLUSION 
Placing their secret agents abroad to collect whatever information 
will be of use to the Soviets has resulted in the employment of certain 
travel and entry techniques which have been mentioned briefly in this paper. 
We have seen how the Soviet Intelligence Service uses official 
assignments as cover for key espionage agents. We have also observed 
that added opportunities have been secured by the use of nonofficial or 
private cover and concealed illegal entries. 
We have noted how agents unprotected by official cover make use 
of carefully prepared false identities and false documents. 	| 
We have seen the numerous techniques and something of the 
scope and variations used in the past by Soviet Intelligence. In the absence 
of information regarding future operations, we must assume that Soviet 
agents may continue to use these techniques for travel and entry. We may 
also assume that entirely new plans adapted to currently changing needs 
and policies will be put into practice. It will be important for our security 
officers and counterintelligence agents to recognize the old techniques and 
be alert to the use of new ones. 
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4099H.00080001-9 AP SECU Ret Rel tis TION A CORTIOES 
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