J. Peters
J. Peters was a former activist in the short-lived Bela Kun Communist regime in Hungary and a Communist Party USA official in its Hungarian ethnic section. Despite his public denial, Communist Party and Comintern documents at the RGASPI archive in Moscow show that he headed the Communist Party underground apparatus from the early 1930s until Chambers’ defection in 1938. He is identified as assisting Soviet espionage in deciphered KGB cables and in the KGB documents of The Haunted Wood.[1]
Origins
J. Peters' true name of this individual was probably Goldberger, and available information indicates he was born in Hungary. He entered the United States in 1928 from Czechoslovakia, and he claimed to have received a law degree from the University of Hungary. Following his arrival in this country, he was for many years manager of the Communist-Hungarian language newspaper Uj Elore.[2]
Party work
Peters wrote for the Communist Party USA — "A Manual on Organization" which was published by the Workers Library Publishers, New York City, in July 1945. This manual was referred to and quoted as the guide of Communist organizers.[3]
Espionage
Whittaker Chambers, then a senior editor of Time magazine, has said that his initial contacts with the Communist apparatus in the United States Government in Washington, D. C, were at the behest and under the direction of J. Peters.
Chambers stated that he was first introduced to Peters through Max Bedacht, then a Communist Party functionary, in about 1931. Chambers stated that from 1931 until approximately 1935, he acted as a courier carrying messages and articles between J. Peters and another individual known to Chambers only as "Arthur."
Sometime in 1933, Chambers was given instructions by Peters to contact Harold Ware in Washington, D. C, and act as liaison be- tween Ware and Peters. In addition to these liaison duties, Chambers was required from time to time to give pep talks to animate the Ware group.[4]
Ware Group
The famous Ware Group Communist apparatus was organized by Harold Ware, a son of prominent communist "Mother" Ella Bloor.
This group acted as an adjunct of the NKVD of the Soviets. The principal function of the group was to obtain information desired by the NKVD particularly with regard to individuals.
Chambers stated that frequently he turned over to Peters sizable sums which he had collected from the Ware group. Chambers has identified John Abt, formerly with the Agricultural Adjustment Administration, later with the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice, and with the LaFollette Senate Civil Liberties Committee as having been a member of this group. In 1952 Abt was representing the Communist Party USA as co-counsel with Vito Marcantonio before the Subversive Control Board.
Following the death of Harold Ware in an automobile accident, John Abt married Ware's widow, Jessica Smith, who at one time was a secretary in the Soviet Embassy in Washington, D. C. Later, when she became editor of Soviet Russia Today, she was one of the few persons ever to register as a Soviet agent.
Other members who comprised this group were Lee Pressman, formerly with the Agricultural Adjustment Administration, and later general counsel of the Congress of Industrial Organizations, Henry Collins, at one time a member of the Forestry Service of the Department of Agriculture, Nathan Perlow, an economist, and when known to Chambers was connected with the Brookings Institution in Washington, D. C., Charles Kramer, who was also employed by the La Follette committee while Chambers was in contact with him and Alger Hiss, who worked with the Agricultural Adjustment Administration, the State Department, the United Nations Organization, and finally was president of the Carnegie Foundation for International Peace.
It is believed that this was the original group organized for the Soviets in the United States Government. For a period of time a brother of J. Peters, Emmerich Goldberger, was employed as a chauffeur by the Soviet Government Purchasing Commission and Amtorg.[5]
References
- ↑ http://www.johnearlhaynes.org/page100.html
- ↑ The shameful years; thirty years of Soviet espionage in the United States, HCUA, January 8, 1952
- ↑ The shameful years; thirty years of Soviet espionage in the United States, HCUA, January 8, 1952
- ↑ The shameful years; thirty years of Soviet espionage in the United States, HCUA, January 8, 1952
- ↑ The shameful years; thirty years of Soviet espionage in the United States, HCUA, January 8, 1952