73. In the winter of 1942–43, the Chevaliers hosted another party for Russian war relief which Robert and Kitty Oppenheimer attended. “And of course the Soviet consulate was represented.” Chevalier (1965), 51.
74. San Francisco field report, n.d. sec. 5, Chevalier file, FBI.
75. Oct. 13, 1942, entry, “Snipe’s Diary,” Chevalier papers.
76. Chevalier to “Snipe,” Apr. 4, 1943, “Snipe’s Diary—1935,” Chevalier papers. Chevalier was hoping to get a posting in North Africa, which, Schwartz writes, was “then a major target of the KGB, as revealed in the Venona traffic.” Chevalier (1965), 55; Schwartz (1998), 410.
77. George Eltenton told the FBI that he had arranged Chevalier’s meeting with Lattimore. Eltenton interview, June 26, 1946, Eltenton FBI file, box 6, JRO/AEC. Lattimore: “Statement Before Foreign Relations Committee,” Senate Hearings folder, box 33; and Ladd to Hoover, Oct. 25, 1949, correspondence, April 1944–June 1952 folder, box 28, Owen Lattimore papers, Library of Congress; Owen Lattimore file, no. 100–24628, FBI; Schrecker (1998), 248–50.
78. King interview (1997).
79. Harold Fidler, Feb. 20, 1997, personal communication.
80. Pash: “Biography” folder, box 1, and “Colonel Boris T. Pash—Teacher, Soldier, Dedicated Worker for the Orthodox Church,” Russian Orthodox Journal, Feb. 1971, 6–11, photo box, Boris Pash papers, Hoover Institution Library, Stanford, Calif.
81. Pash to “Coney,” June 9, 1942, correspondence folder, box 3, Pash papers.
82. After the war, Pash went to work for the CIA’s Directorate of Plans.
83. Robert King, Feb. 6, 1997, personal communication.
84. San Francisco field report, Feb. 10, 1943, JRO/FBI. Oppenheimer investigation of 1942–43: Burton to Ladd, Mar. 18, 1943, JRO/FBI; Hoover to Strong, Mar. 10, 1943, and Strong to Hoover, Mar. 18, 1943, box 1, JRO/AEC; “Re: Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer,” Apr. 16, 1954, JRO/FBI.
85. Hoover to Strong, Mar. 10, 1943, box 1, JRO/AEC.
86. Jones (1985), 256.
87. Hoover to Strong, Mar. 10, 1943, box 1, JRO/AEC.
88. Hoover to Pieper, Mar. 22, 1943, JRO/FBI; Pieper to Hoover, Dec. 2, 1943, JRO/FBI.
89. The transcript of the Nelson-“Joe” conversation, without date or title, was kept by Groves in his personal safe during the war. Transcript, entry 8, box 100, MED/NARA. Excerpts are also in a memo of Aug. 19, 1949, Joseph Weinberg FBI file, box 6, JRO/AEC.
90. Doyle was the organizational secretary of the Communist Party in Alameda County. She and Nelson had met with Joe the previous Thursday, Mar. 25. Glavin to Tolson, Sept. 29, 1948, 50, HUAC file, FBI.
91. Transcript, entry 8, box 100, MED/NARA. “Joe dictated and Steve wrote down at this point approximately 150 to 200 words, largely indistinguishable, but believed to be from the conversation a basic formula of some type,” Branigan noted. The “magnetic spectrograph” was Lawrence’s Calutron. The “velocity selector” referred either to the Isotron or to an apparatus used by Nelson and Frankel in measuring uranium cross sections. A 5-centimeter sphere may have referred to the critical-mass calculations performed by Nelson and Frankel; the plutonium core of the first atomic bomb would have made a solid sphere approximately 5.5 centimeters in diameter. The mention of deuterium suggests that “Joe” might also have passed along information about the 1942 summer seminar that discussed the Super, since deuterium plays no role in electromagnetic separation. David Hawkins, Project Y: The Los Alamos Story (Tomash Publishers, 1983), pt. 1, 99–100; transcript, entry 8, box 100, MED/NARA; personal communications: Herbert York, Nov. 5, 1997; Eldred Nelson, Jan. 25, 1998.
92. Ironically, Nelson told Joe that he and his friends “should never talk in a house but only when they were outside.” Nelson-“Joe” transcript, 26.
93. King interview (1997).
94. Coincidentally, Nelson’s meeting with “Joe” occurred just a week after the FBI and the FCC discovered the secret radio transmitter at San Francisco’s Soviet consulate. See note 35.
95. Pieper to Hoover, Mar. 31, 1943, sec. 1, CINRAD file, FBI.
96. San Francisco field report, May 7, 1943, sec. 1, CINRAD file, and Glavin to Tolson, Sept. 29, 1948, HUAC file, FBI.
97. Zubilin’s real name was Zarubin, his code name Maxim; both he and his wife, Elizabeth (code names Vardo and Helen), were senior NKVD agents. Zubilins: Haynes and Klehr (1999), 394; Robert Louis Benson, Venona Historical Monograph, no. 2 (U.S. National Security Agency, 1996), 4–6; Benson and Warner (1996), 51–54.
98. A 1952 publication by the House Committee on Un-American Activities contained a slightly different version of this conversation. U.S. Congress, The Shameful Years: Thirty Years of Soviet Espionage in the United States (U.S. Government Printing Office, 1952), 31. The version here is taken from verbatim transcripts contained in two contemporaneous FBI reports on Nelson. Ladd to Hoover, Apr. 16, 1943, 1–9, vol. 2; and San Francisco field report, May 7, 1943, 10–22, vol. 1, Nelson file, FBI.
99. Nelson has been suggested as a candidate for a still-unidentified West Coast Soviet operative who appears in Venona messages, code-named Butcher. Nelson’s real name, Mesarosh, means “meat-cutter” in Hungarian. Haynes and Klehr (1999), 428 fn.
100. Although “Bernstein” is deleted from the transcript in most of the FBI’s report, a subsequent analysis of the Nelson-Zubilin conversation by the bureau notes a reference by Nelson to “the Bernstein woman,” whom the bureau concluded was Louise Bransten. San Francisco field report, May 7, 1943, 30, vol. 1, Nelson file, FBI.
101. Tamm to Hoover, Apr. 6, 1943, sec. 1, CINRAD file, FBI; Groves (1962), 138.
102. Ladd to Hoover, Apr. 7, 1943, sec. 1, CINRAD file, FBI.
103. “Under no circumstances should this matter be discussed at conferences with representatives of G-2 and ONI [Office of Naval Intelligence],” the FBI director instructed. Hoover to SACs, Apr. 9, 1943, sec. 1, CINRAD file, FBI.
104. The Hoover-Hopkins memo is cited in Benson and Warner (1996), 49–50. It is unclear whether Hopkins ever responded to Hoover’s warning. However, Robert King remembered Pieper
