The Mysterious Russian Letter In the summer of 1943, an anonymous typewritten letter in Russian suddenly appeared at FBI Headquarters. Talk about intrigue: the disgruntled writer accused more than ten Soviet diplomats in the U.S. of being spies, including the Soviet Vice-Consuls in San Francisco and New York and the Second Secretary of the Soviet Embassy in Washington—Vasilli Zubilin. The author even claimed (falsely) that Zubilin was spying for the Nazis. The charges were hard to believe. The Russians—our country’s allies in World War II—spying on the U.S.? At the time, the FBI had only just begun investigating the extent of Soviet operations in America, with most resources heavily dedicated to Axis espionage and sabotage cases. Now, this letter. What to make of it? Parts of it were strange and unbelievable, like the Nazi connections, but other parts confirmed things the FBI already knew or suspected. It was clear that its author was credible and well versed in Soviet intelligence in the United States. Four months earlier, in fact, agents had learned that Zubilin had spoken with—and slipped money to—a Communist Party official named Steve Nelson. Zubilin’s aim? To infiltrate a Berkeley, California, lab doing work for the Manhattan Project, America’s secret atomic bomb program. The FBI passed what it learned about Zubilin’s spying to the War Department, which had primary investigative jurisdiction on the project. After the war ended, agents would investigate other, more serious attempts to steal U.S. A-bomb secrets, but that’s another story. In the meantime, the Bureau had a predicate to take a closer look at Soviet espionage. Agents launched a major investigation to discover the potential interrelationships of Soviet diplomats, the Communist Party of the United Photo of Vasilli Zubilin in 1943 copy of the mysterious letter that mentioned him Photo of Vasilli Zubilin in 1943 and a copy of the mysterious letter that mentioned him States, and the Communist International party, or Comintern. Through the case—called COMRAP, for “Comintern Apparatus”—the FBI learned that Soviet spying was a significant threat, which helped the Bureau prepare for the Cold War to come.
Posted on: Sun, 07 Dec 2014 09:39:58 +0000