The FBI’s Silvermaster file is a 162-volume compendium of some 26,000 pages of documents relating to the Bureau’s investigation of Communist penetration of the Federal government during the Cold War.

Beginning in 1945 with the allegations of defecting Soviet courier Elizabeth Bentley

Elizabeth Bentley

Elizabeth Terrill Bentley was an American spy for the Soviet Union from 1938 until 1945. In 1945 she defected from the Communist Party and Soviet intelligence and became an informer for the U.S. She exposed two networks of spies, ultimately naming over 80 Americans who had engaged in espionage for...

 (Venona cover names “Myrna”; Umnitsa, “Clever Girl”), the file is also known as the Bentley file or Gregory file (“Gregory” being the FBI’s code name for Bentley).

The file takes the name “Silvermaster” from Nathan Gregory Silvermaster (Venona cover names Pel, Pal, “Paul”; “Robert”) of the War Production Board

War Production Board

The War Production Board was established as a government agency on January 16, 1942 by executive order of Franklin D. Roosevelt.The purpose of the board was to regulate the production and allocation of materials and fuel during World War II in the United States...

, whom Bentley named as head of an underground Communist network known as the Silvermaster Group. Among the people named in the file in connection with this group are President Franklin Roosevelt’s Administrative Assistant Lauchlin Currie

Lauchlin Currie

Lauchlin Bernard Currie was a Canadian-born U.S.economist from New Dublin, Nova Scotia, Canada, and allegedly an agent of espionage for the Soviet Union....

 (Currie's Venona cover name was "Page") and Assistant Secretary of the Treasury Harry Dexter White

Harry Dexter White

Harry Dexter White was an American economist, and senior U.S. Treasury department official, participating in the Bretton Woods conference...

 (Venona cover names “Lawyer”; “Jurist”; “Richard”).

Also named in the file are Victor Perlo

Victor Perlo

Victor Perlo was a Marxist economist, government functionary, and a longtime member of the governing National Committee of the Communist Party USA...

 (Venona cover name “Raider”), chief of the Aviation Section of the War Production Board

War Production Board

The War Production Board was established as a government agency on January 16, 1942 by executive order of Franklin D. Roosevelt.The purpose of the board was to regulate the production and allocation of materials and fuel during World War II in the United States...

, and contacts of his Perlo group

Perlo group

Headed by Victor Perlo, the Perlo group is the name given to a group of Americans who provided information which was given to Soviet intelligence agencies; it was active during the World War II period, until the entire group was exposed to the FBI by the defection of Elizabeth Bentley...

, including Alger Hiss

Alger Hiss

Alger Hiss was an American lawyer, government official, author, and lecturer. He was involved in the establishment of the United Nations both as a U.S. State Department and U.N. official...

 (Venona cover name “Ales”), secretary general of the United Nations Charter Conference. (Like several others identified by Bentley, Hiss had been identified independently by another defecting Soviet courier, Whittaker Chambers

Whittaker Chambers

Whittaker Chambers was born Jay Vivian Chambers and also known as David Whittaker Chambers , was an American writer and editor. After being a Communist Party USA member and Soviet spy, he later renounced communism and became an outspoken opponent later testifying in the perjury and espionage trial...

, to Assistant Secretary of State Adolf Berle in 1939.) Among dozens of others named by Bentley in this file in connection with this network is Duncan Lee

Duncan Lee

Lt. Col. Duncan Chaplin Lee was confidential assistant to Maj. Gen. William Donovan, founder and director of the Office of Strategic Services , World War II-era predecessor of the CIA, during 1942-46...

 (Venona cover name “Koch”), confidential assistant to William Donovan, founder and director of the Office of Strategic Services

Office of Strategic Services

The Office of Strategic Services was a United States intelligence agency formed during World War II. It was the wartime intelligence agency, and it was a predecessor of the Central Intelligence Agency...

 (OSS), wartime predecessor of the CIA

Central Intelligence Agency

The Central Intelligence Agency is a civilian intelligence agency of the United States government. It is an executive agency and reports directly to the Director of National Intelligence, responsible for providing national security intelligence assessment to senior United States policymakers...

.

Prosecutions

Original plans for Bentley to serve as a double agent and gather sufficient evidence to prosecute the Soviet agents identified in the Silvermaster files were ruined when her identity was inadvertently leaked and the USSR quickly shut down its operations in order to avoid embarrassing and damaging prosecutions. The Silvermaster file in combination with other secret proofs such as the Venona intercepts gave US intelligence the identity of many Soviet agents without the practical means to secure convictions. Also, the statute of limitations for an espionage prosecution was quite short. This was a significant part of the backstory of McCarthyism

McCarthyism

McCarthyism is the practice of making accusations of disloyalty, subversion, or treason without proper regard for evidence. The term has its origins in the period in the United States known as the Second Red Scare, lasting roughly from the late 1940s to the late 1950s and characterized by...

. Bentley's double agent career would have enabled the US to expose the spies without compromising Venona

Venona project

The VENONA project was a long-running secret collaboration of the United States and United Kingdom intelligence agencies involving cryptanalysis of messages sent by intelligence agencies of the Soviet Union, the majority during World War II...

 and losing that as an ongoing intelligence source.

See also

• Active measures
  Active measures
  Active Measures were a form of political warfare conducted by the Soviet security services to influence the course of world events, "in addition to collecting intelligence and producing politically correct assessment of it". Active measures ranged "from media manipulations to special actions...
  
  
• History of Soviet and Russian espionage in the United States
• List of Soviet agents in the United States

Further reading

• “Testimony of Elizabeth T. Bentley,” Hearings Regarding Communist Espionage in the United States Government, Committee on Un-American Activities, House of Representatives, Eightieth Congress, Second Session, Public Law 601 (Section 121, Subsection Q [2]), Washington: United States Government Printing Office, 1948.

External links

• The Cold War International History Project (CWIHP) has the full text of former KGB agent Alexander Vassiliev's Notebooks, containing new evidence on Soviet espionage in the United States during the Cold War