Return to Responses, Reflections and Occasional Papers

Return to Vassiliev’s Notes on Gorsky Index Page

 

 

Comparative Analysis of Cover Names (Code Names) in the Gorsky Memo

and Cover Names in Venona.

October 2005

by John Earl Haynes

 

Cryptonyms Identified in the Gorsky Memo that Match Venona identifications

Total: 42[1]

ACORN  =  Bella Gold

ADAM  =  Eva Getsov [Rebecca Getzoff]

AILERON  =  Abraham George Silverman

ALBERT  =  Iskhak Abdulovich Akhmerov

ALEXEY [ALEKSEY]  =  A. A. Yatskov

ART  =  Helen Koral

BERG  =  Alexander Koral

BOB  =  Robert Menaker

CAUTIOUS  =  Julius Joseph

CHAP  =  Franklin Salmond [Zalmond Franklin]

DIR [DEAR]  =  Mary Price

ECHO  =  Bernard Schuster

ELZA (ELSA)  =  Akhmerova [Helen Lowry]

EXPRESS MESSENGER  =  Richard Setaro

GENNADY  =  Gaik Badelovich Ovakimian.

HARE  =  Maurice Halperin

INFORMER  =  Joseph Katz

IZRA  =  Donald Wheeler

JULIA  =  O. V. Shimmel[2]

KOCH  =  Duncan Lee

MYRNA  =  Elizabeth Bentley

PAGE  =  Lauchlin Currie

PAL  =  Gregory Silvermaster

PEAK  =  Frank Coe

PILOT  =  Ludwig Ullmann

PRINCE  =  Laurence Duggan

RAID [RAIDER]  =  Victor Perlo

RICHARD  =  Harry White

ROBERT  =  Gregory Silvermaster

RUBLE  =  Harold Glasser

SATYR  =  Sylvia Caldwell [Sylvia Callen]

SERGEI  =  Vladimir Pravdin

SHAH  =  K. A. Chugunov

SOUND  =  Jacob Golos

STOCK  =  Mikhail A. Shaliapin

TED  =  Edward Fitzgerald

TWAIN  =  S. M Semenov

VADIM  =  Anatoly Gorsky

VARDO  =  E. Y. Zarubina

VIM  =  Lauchlin Currie

X  =  Joseph Katz

ZHENYA  =  Sonya Gold

 

*********************************************************************

 

Cryptonyms Identified in the Gorsky Memo that Supply Identifications for Cryptonyms that are Unidentified in Venona

Total: 18 / 21

 

CHARLIE  =  Cedric Belfrage[3]

CORA  =  Emma Phillips

DAN  =  Stanley Graze

FLORA  =  Ruth Rivkin

GOR [HOR?]  =  Joseph Gregg

HURON  =  Byron T. Darling

MIRAGE  =  Robert Miller

MOLE  =  Charles Kramer

MON  =  Bernard Redmont

MUSE  =  Helen Tenney

REDHEAD  =  Hede Gompertz [Gumperz]  [Hede Massing]

RUFF  =  Franz Neumann

SAX  =  Solomon Adler

SISKIN  =  Eduardo Pekino [Pequeño?]

SMART  =  Elliot Goldberg

STORM  =  Joseph Peters

TAN  =  Harry Magdoff

TEACHER  =  Melamed [cover name has female ending]

 

 

            There are three other cryptonym identifications that flow logically from these seventeen for a total of twenty.  The Gorsky memo’s identification of CORA as Emma Phillips not only provides identification of an unidentified cover name in Venona, “CORA,” it also provides identification of two other unidentified cryptonyms, AMPERE and ROY.  The Venona cables about AMPERE and ROY identify him as CORA’S husband. The identification of HURON as Byron Darling also supplies an identification for the unidentified Venona cryptonym ERNEST in as much as in October 1944, the HURON cryptonym was changed to EARNEST, only to be changed back to HURON in February 1945 for reasons that are not clear.

 

AMPERE  =  Phillips, husband of Emma Phillips

ERNEST  =  Darling, Byron

ROY  =  Phillips, husband of Emma Phillips

 

******************************************************************************

 

Cryptonyms Identified in the Gorsky Memo that

Contradict Venona identifications

Total: 1

ARENA  =  Price, Mary  [Venona]

ARENA  =  Graze, Gerald  [Gorsky Memo]

 

Arena appears in Venona and was identified by NSA/FBI as the cover name of Mary Price in messages of April and May 1944 and as unidentified in a message of June 1943.  Mary Price also appears in Venona under the cover name Dir or Gift in two messages: one in June 1943 and another in July 1944.  The Gorsky memo also identifies Gift as Mary Price.  In light of this Gorsky memo, NSA/FBI’s identification of Arena in the Venona cables as Mary Price appears to be incorrect.  It is possible that the contradiction is a confusion due to the KGB having shifted cover names, but in looking at the dates of the Arena and Dir/Gift messages, this seems only a possibility.

 

***********************************

 

Cover Names Identified in the Gorsky Memo that

do not Appear in Venona [Total: 37]

 

[A number of these cover names are from the “Karl” group and are likely cryptonyms from the mid-1930s, prior to the Venona era.]

 

19th = Laurence Duggan

101st = Peter MacLean

103rd = David Carpenter

104th = Henry A. Wadleigh

105th = Henry Collins

107th = Felix Inslerman

113th = Harry Rosenthal

114th = William W. Pigman

115th = Lester Hubel

116th = Harry Azizov

118th = F. V. Reno

Boy  = Charles Flato

Buben = Louis Budenz

Buck = David Weintraub

Dan = Stanley Graze

Ernst = Noel Field

Green = John Spivak

Harry = Rabinovich

Irma = Ray Elson

Jerome = Barna Bukov [Boris Bykov]

Junior = Donald Hiss

Karl = Whittaker Chambers

Leonard = Alger Hiss

Liberal = Frank Palmer

Lock  = Sylvia Koral

Long = Norman Hite

Lyucya  = Olga Pravdina

Mushroom = Willard Park

Oscar = Oscar Bernstein

Rita = Sylvia Caldwell

Rupert = V.V. Sveshchnikov

Sid = Allan Rosenberg

Son = Richard Koral

Teddy = William Remington

Tino = Irving Kaplan

Wacek = Paul Massing

Wig = Lee Pressman

 

************************************

 

Cover Names Unidentified in the Gorsky Memo that

do not Occur in Venona [Total: 6]

 

Fyodor[4]

Guide

Jack

Lana

Rur

Vladimir[5]

***********************************

 

Unclear cases [Total: 2]

 

Artem = A. Slavianin[6]

Kahn =  Avram Landy [7]

 

******************************************************************************

 

[End]

Return to Responses, Reflections and Occasional Papers

Return to Vassiliev’s Notes on Gorsky Index Page

 


[1]To this total for some purposes one would add, for a total of 43, Allan Rosenberg who occurs in the clear with no cover name in Venona as well as here in the Gorsky memo but with a crytonym.

[2]Julia occurs in Venona in a number of messages as the cover name of Olga Khlopkova, a Soviet consulate staff member and KGB operative.  O. V. Shimmel may be the real name of Khlopkova (note the same first initial).

[3]The CHARLIE messages in Venona are highly compatible with Belfrage.  Belfrage is also identified in Venona under an unbroken cryptonym.

[4]In The Haunted Wood Fyodor is identified as Gyorgi Sokolov.

[5]In The Haunted Wood Fyodor is identified as Alexander Panyushkin.

[6]Artem occurs in the Venona traffic and is identified as likely the cover name of either G. N. Ogloblin or M.N. Khvostov, two Soviet staffers.  A. Slavianin may be the real name of one of the former (KGB personnel often used pseudonyms when assigned to a diplomatic post abroad), NSA/FBI may be in error on the identification of Artem, or this may be a different Artem entirely.

[7]Kahn occurs in the deciphered Venona cables in 1944 and, while unidentified by NSA/FBI, was likely Avram Landy, a senior CPUSA official who supervised party work among ethnic groups.  But whether Kahn/Landy of 1944 is this Kahn of 1948 is unclear.