Transcribed,
translated, and edited by Kevin Riehle
With assistance from Katherine
Ruffatto
Introduction
The
following is the English translation of a video-recorded interview of Zalman
Volfovich Litvin, who operated as a Soviet military intelligence illegal
officer in China from 1935 to 1937, and in Southern California from 1938 to
1945. He used the name Ignacy Samuel
Witczak while he was in the United States.
The interview took place in 1992, when Litvin was 84 years old, and he
died the following year. A video of the
interview is posted to the Russian video site Net Film in two parts at https://www.net-film.ru/film-25738/
(Part 1) and https://www.net-film.ru/film-25737/ (Part 2).
The
existence of an illegal intelligence officer using the name Witczak was first
made public in 1946 in the Canadian government’s Report of the Royal Commission, which presented the results of
investigations based on the revelations of Soviet military intelligence code
clerk Igor Gouzenko, who defected in September 1945. The materials that Gouzenko turned over to
the Canadian government contained a reference to Witczak, which the Canadian
government passed to the FBI, leading to an FBI investigation. Witczak was mentioned again in 1952 in a U.S.
congressional report titled The Shameful
Years: Thirty Years of Soviet Espionage in the United States, which
provides additional detail about the FBI’s investigation. The name Zalman Litvin was not known at that
time. Litvin’s real name was first made
public in 1990 by Petr Ivanovich Ivashutin, the long-serving former Director of
the Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff (GRU), in his article “Докладывала точно” (“Reported Precisely”), Военно–Исторический Журнал (Journal of Military History), 1990, No. 5. Litvin was also briefly referenced in Venona
materials, which consist of communications between Moscow and Soviet
intelligence stations around the world from 1943 to 1946 that were intercepted
and decrypted by the U.S. government, and made publicly available in 1995.
Litvin’s
account provides valuable firsthand documentation of a Soviet intelligence
officer who operated clandestinely abroad.
Nevertheless, as it was recorded over 45 years after the events
described, he glosses over certain portions of the story and deliberately
withholds some information to protect his sources.
Litvin’s
interview should be read in conjunction with Dr. Mike Gruntman’s book Enemy Among the Trojans: A Soviet Spy at USC
(Los Angeles; Figueroa Press, 2010) (http://www.astronauticsnow.com/spyatusc/index.html),
which provides a U.S. perspective on the case, as well as information about
Litvin’s life after his return to the Soviet Union in 1945.
Interview: “From the History of Secret Services,” Part 1
Narrator: Special services of any country do not
tolerate too close attention on them by journalists. That is understandable. Despite the fact that we know today that the
Academy of the Ministry of Security of Russia
is located here, much, or more accurately everything, is carefully hidden from
the curious eyes of passers-by.
Russian
special services are justifiably proud of the fact that among their employees
have been outstanding intelligence officers of the 20th century, like Rudolf
Abel, Gordon Lonsdale, and Richard Sorge. Russians show them love, and adversaries,
respect. But there are people who have
worked for many years beyond the borders of the country and who have done
infinitely much for its security, but whom professionals from neither Japanese
nor American counterintelligence services could name.
Their
strengths were not only an outstanding ability to use weapons of all kinds,
but, even more so, a deep analytical ability, and of course, a love for their
homeland.
Today,
when the press pays so much attention to all types of traitors like Kuzichkin
and Gordievsky, we
will tell about a remarkable military intelligence illegal, Zalman Litvin.
Litvin: A long time before World War II, information
about the plans of Japanese militarists began to arrive at the intelligence
organs of the Soviet Union, at military intelligence GRU. To clarify which direction Japanese military
circles would choose to fulfill their expansionist aspirations, to solve that
task, the GRU trained a whole group of great intelligence officers, including a
man named Richard Sorge, a man of legend, who succeeded, under the most
difficult Japanese circumstances, to create a hugely effective intelligence rezidentura that has no equal for its
results.
At
the same time, it created a second echelon as well, into which, completely by
chance, I was drawn.
I was
born in a small Siberian town, Verkhneulinsk, which is located between Irkutsk
and Chita. That town is now called
Ulan-Ude and is the capital of the Buryat Autonomous Republic.
Journalist: You were born into a patriarchal Jewish
family, right?
Litvin: I was born into a patriarchal Jewish
family. I had a brother and sister. My father was a merchant in one of the shops
in Verkhneulinsk. We lived at below
middle class. I was the only member of
my family to receive a higher education.
After graduating from middle school in 1926, I entered the Eastern
Department (Chinese Section) of the Far Eastern State University in
Vladivostok.
Journalist:
You had chosen that specialty since childhood.
Why specifically there?
Litvin: I chose that specialty, so to speak, by
chance. I initially was thinking about
entering the Irkutsk State University law school. For some reason I had always imagined myself
as becoming a great lawyer. But some of
my friends influenced me, saying, “there are already too many lawyers, but
there are too few China specialists. Why
don’t you go to the famous Far Eastern State University?” At that time there were only two Eastern
Departments, in Leningrad and Vladivostok.
I
studied there for four years. During
those four years I was able to obtain a pretty good knowledge of the Chinese
language, good enough that, during the events on the Chinese Eastern Railway in
1929,
I was recruited (as a student in the third year of the Chinese department) as a
translator in the First Pacific Division.
I crossed the Chinese border with the division at that time and for the
first time encountered, so to speak, the necessity of using the language for
military purposes.
We
captured a group of prisoners and I was assigned as supervisor of the prisoner
convoy. I was to deliver them from
Manchurian territory to Khabarovsk, where Blyukher,
who later became a marshal, was commander.
I interrogated the prisoners in Khabarovsk for Soviet military
intelligence. It was then that I first
came to the attention of Soviet military intelligence.
Journalist: How did that happen?
Litvin: A representative of our intelligence, whose
surname I remember well—his surname was Melnikov,
a colonel by rank—was the rezident
there. He paid attention to me because I
knew English, and at that time he had received a large amount of intelligence
information in English. He didn’t have a
translator, and when he heard that I knew English and could help him as a
translator, he brought me into that intense activity.
I
can now say, from the perspective of those long, long years ago, that the GRU
learned about my existence based on his recommendation. And suddenly, completely unexpected for me, I
was called to the telephone. A man
introduced himself with a military rank and told me that a comrade wanted to
meet me and talk about my future. It was
completely unexpected for me. I, of
course, agreed. He told me directly, “we
are interested in you as a person who knows both Chinese and English and who
has undergone training in the city of Kashgar.
We have only positive information about you, and we want to bring you
into the work of the GRU. Think about
it.”
Journalist: And how long did you consider the
proposition?
Litvin: I considered the proposition for only a short
time, because I was, apparently to some measure, an adventurer. I was possessed with an adventurer’s spirit,
so to speak, to continued working along that line, with which I had on a small
scale already become acquainted in Kashgar.
And being still young, I of course, was interested, and I was being
called into that line of work. I agreed.
Journalist: Does that mean your training as an illegal
began?
Litvin: The training of illegals is, I would say, a
kind of in-house training, because I don’t even known whether at that time
there was any kind of special training school for preparing illegals. I just don’t know. But for some reason, maybe because I had some
small experience, they decided to use and train me… to use major specialists in
that field working in the GRU.
Journalist: And the work in China, was it supposed to be
directed against someone, against some country, or for what were they training
you in that work?
Litvin: At that time China held an adversarial policy
against the Soviet Union. Naturally, I
was directed to work against China of that period; against a China that conducted
an anti-Soviet policy. At that time, our
very famous intelligence officer Borodin
worked in China; the Borodin who played a huge role in training Chinese
revolutionaries.
Journalist: And when and where did you meet Borodin the
first time?
Litvin:
I never met him. I only know his name, knew that he worked in
Canton, and that he created, or he participated in creating, the Whampoa School
in the city of Canton, which trained Chinese military intelligence
officers. The “Whampoa School,” as far
as I can remember, maybe that isn’t completely accurate, but I remember the
name very well.
Journalist: Did only Chinese train at that school?
Litvin: Only Chinese trained at the school, and our
comrades were the instructors. At that
time our General Blyukher was operating under the name General Galin, worked
under the name Galin. He, along with
Chiang Kai-Shek prepared the so-called famous Northern Military Approach. Chiang Kai-Shek at that time cooperated with
us, so to speak, until he was captured in Shanghai, where he essentially
betrayed us and Blyukher and Borodin had to escape.
Journalist: Zalman Volfovich, during your training as an
illegal, when did the Japanese direction come up, and did it come up then?
Litvin: No, it didn't come up at that time. But they told me that my education…they would
tell me that my education allowed them to use me widely in countries on the
Asian continent, not naming countries specifically. But at that time, so to speak, the most
important country for me already, without need for any clarification, was
Japan, because no other countries could compare in political and military
significance with Japan. I already felt
at that time that Japan…I felt without them telling me, that our distant
interests were with Japan.
Journalist: When your training was complete, when did you
find out, so to speak, what your direction would be?
Litvin: Sometime toward the end of 1934 I was ready
to travel to China.
Journalist: How did you get there?
Litvin:
A route was planned. I was initially
supposed to travel to Vienna and live there for a time to become acquainted
with the capitalist ways of things at that period. From Vienna, I was to go to Italy, and my
designated rezident in northern
China, Zhbikovskiy,
traveled to America to obtain legalization in China for him and me. We were supposed to meet in Italy. For some reason, the Administration decided
to legalize me as a citizen of Finland, even though I didn’t know a word of
Finnish. They obtained a passport but,
so to speak, with a fake photograph. I
therefore attached little meaning to this.
I thought that the Administration knew everything, and I traveled to
Poland, through Austria, to Italy, and stayed for a short time in Italy until
my future rezident arrived
there. We traveled to Shanghai
completely successfully.
Journalist: And that passport did not disappoint?
Litvin: That passport did not disappoint. We decided initially to go to Shanghai, I
mean, to set up our base at Peking.
Journalist:
And how did you secure legalization? How
did Zhbikovskiy get to America? Under
what passport did he travel, Zalman Volfovich?
Litvin: Zhbikovskiy lived under a German passport,
since he knew German superbly. He
superbly knew Polish as well. But he was
a German by his passport. How did he
come to America? He succeeded,
apparently with the help of some of our comrades, to arrange with a large, at
that time, American perfume firm, from which he received the rights to open an
affiliate in China, with the rights to sell a wide variety of American perfume
products in China. When he arrived in
Italy, he already possessed the necessary documents.
[Section
break]
Litvin:
I gradually befriended a whole group of students at Peking University, young,
talented guys. And I thus learned that
they had strong anti-Japanese attitudes.
Journalist: The Chinese?
Litvin: These Chinese students. Occasionally I had picnics with them, they
came to visit me, and I visited them in their dormitory. Their instructor led them and me, and I
gradually befriended a whole group of Chinese students. And that was unexpected for me. They turned out to be the main heroes in the
drama I was called on to play in China at that time because I had received
clear instructions to operate against Japan.
Journalist:
You mean, when you received instructions for Japan once you were already in
China?
Litvin:
…instructions for Japan, since at that time the invasion into northern China by
Japanese forces had begun. At that very
time I received the assignment to collect information about which Japanese
forces were entering northern China, how are they armed, what were their plans,
and what were their objectives? That
group of Chinese students with whom I came into contact, with whom I had become
friends even before I received that assignment, was a great help. I was surprised that they so easily agreed to
work against Japan. I understood that
they were so infected with anti-Japanese feelings at that time, that they were
so upset by the sudden invasion of the Japanese into northern China, that they
immediately, almost for no money, helped me.
I simply, so to speak, got close to them ideologically. They knew I was from the Soviet Union…
Journalist: They knew?
Litvin: They knew.
I opened up to them. And I have
to say, that despite my over three-year stay in China, not one of them ever
betrayed me. They helped me for a long
time. In particular, they found a
Chinese man who worked in a Japanese headquarters, who had access at that time
to secret Japanese military document, copies of which I received from them.
Journalist: He worked in the Japanese general staff.
Litvin: Not in the general staff, but in the staff of
a group of forces that were occupying northern China.
Journalist:
Do you remember the name of the Chinese man who worked there?
Litvin: No.
Journalist: Through him came valuable…
Litvin: I remember only one surname of the supervisor
of the group, whose name was Zhao, his surname was Zhao. Zhao came to visit me in Tianjin about twice
a week from Peking. I had already moved
to Tianjin at that time. That city is
located about two to three hours by train from Peking. It is a rather large industrial center of the
PRC… that is, China, the Chinese Republic, not PRC. And he brought me information that he had
collected from his assistants, about the locations of Japanese forces in
northern China. He had it all written on
very thin rice paper—all of the data.
When he was coming to Peking on one of his meetings, Japanese forces
surrounded the train and began to search every Chinese person. You can imagine, if the Japanese discovered
that rice paper on him, he would be immediately shot. But he, showing extraordinary calm, held a
huge Chinese dumpling in his hands while he was being searched. The rice paper was inside the dumpling. And while a Japanese officer searched him, he
gradually ate the dumpling and ate the paper.
That is Zhao was like, what kind of courage he had. will never forget that man.
Journalist:
And your contacts with the rezident,
how did they happen, what was his leadership role?
Litvin: The rezident
gave me instructions for what direction I should work. Later he told me to open… to rent a location
for an office for our firm. I worked in
that office, came as if I worked there every day. Representatives of various trade
organizations who were interested in buying our perfume products came to my
office.
Journalist: American, you mean?
Litvin: American perfume products. I also organized the advertising of our
products in the Chinese press in China.
I had an agreement with an advertising firm that systematically
advertised our products. Our firm worked
pretty well, because we sustained our rezidentura
on its profits, and we were able to withstand any inspection, if there had been
one, to confirm the means on which my rezident
and I lived. It gave sufficient… the
volume of our sales was sufficient to justify our relatively comfortable living
in Peking and Tianjan.
Journalist: You mean you turned out to be a good
businessman.
Litvin: If I could say so, I turned out to somewhat
of a good businessman, able to navigate that rather uncomplicated business.
Journalist: Zalman Volfovich, was there only you and your
rezident in your group, or was there
someone else, like an assistant…?
Litvin: Only the rezident
and I. Plus our helpers who we had
recruited from among the Chinese.
Journalist: How did you transmit your collected information
to Moscow?
Litvin: A radioman was sent temporarily to the group,
a German by nationality, who represented a large Swiss watch company in
China. He had a transmitter and all of
our information was transmitted directly to Moscow through him.
Journalist: What Swiss firm did he represent in China, do
you remember?
Litvin: I don’t remember.
Journalist: You don’t remember, right?
Litvin: Which Swiss firm? No, I don’t remember. But I know he had a large selection of
watches.
Journalist: Zalman Volfovich, it was there where you
first met the Japanese.
Litvin: I saw there for the first time the Japanese
war machine. How cruelly they treated
the Chinese. They did not consider
Chinese to be people. They beat
them. They would not let them pass. They searched them. The treated them very
severely. And during the period I really
grew to hate the Japanese. It was
completely incomprehensible to me. How could you treat a man, a person, the way
they treated the Chinese? That great,
hardworking… The Chinese, if I could
briefly describe them, those people were workhorses, real workhorses, who could
labor unceasingly for a long time, an extremely long time, to feed their
family. It was a surprisingly poor
country. And of course, the Chinese were
divided into various militant groups.
And the Chinese power was in no way comparable to the Japanese
power. Japanese forces took northern
China practically without a shot, without any serious resistance.
Journalist: Did you already at that time know, so to
speak, or feel that Japan represented a threat to our country?
Litvin: Maybe not to the extent that I should have
imagined. But I understood, in any case,
that Japan was a country with which we should be extremely careful; which we
should study; that we should know, both from the perspective of its
technological potential, and from the perspective of its military
potential. The discipline of the
Japanese military was exceptional.
Japanese soldiers were exceptionally trained, both in technology and in
tactics. It was a highly specialized
people.
Journalist: But you did not like them as people, the
Japanese?
Litvin: The Japanese, no. I didn’t like them. They were very rude. They treated me more or less normally. But as I later learned, apparently some
suspicion about our firm had begun to bother them.
When
I received the order to liquidate our firm in 1937 and leave through Manchuria,
I received a transit visa in my passport through the Soviet Union to
Finland. I was supposedly still a
Finn. While I was in China, I remember
ordering an extremely beautiful tea service for 12 people. The tea service was sent to me from Japan. It was a beautiful tea service. I thought, how happy they will be at home to
receive such a present. I very carefully
packed it in a large chest with my other things. At the time, the government of Manchukuo was
already established under Japanese supervision.
I reserved a cabin on the train with the chest in which the tea service,
which I was closely guarding, was packed.
I crossed the border from China into Manchuria and there was a customs
post. Manchurian customs ordered me to
open the chest in which the tea service was located. The Japanese inspector, who was inspecting
Japanese customs and me, opened the chest, looked at the tea service, and
forcefully slammed the lid shut, and half the service was broken. I did not know why he treated me so
cruelly. When I arrived in Harbin, I
noticed surveillance following me. I
stayed in one of the best hotels in Harbin, and I constantly noticed someone
following me.
Journalist:
Japanese counterintelligence had spotted you?
Litvin: Apparently at that time Japanese
counterintelligence had some information about me. I arrived from Harbin to the Manchuria station;
the Soviet Moscow-Manchuria express on which I was supposed to cross the Soviet
Union came to the Manchuria station.
That was the instruction from the Center. Most of the passengers who were traveling
with me, while we were waiting for the Soviet express at the Manchuria station,
asked the Japanese commandant for permission to see Manchuria. They all received permission, except me. He gave everyone their passport, but he kept
mine. I understood at that moment that
the Japanese knew something about me. I
prayed to God that I could…not for him to let me see Manchuria, but that he
would give me my passport so I could board our express that was arriving in
Manchuria.
Journalist: How did Zhbikovskiy get out of China?
Litvin: First I’ll finish telling about this. Zhbikovskiy went through Europe. He was ordered to leave through Europe. He traveled by a circuitous route to the
Soviet Union through Europe. I also
wanted to go through Europe, knowing the weakness, so to speak, due to various
suspicions. I very much did not want to
cross Manchuria. But they only
recommended that I travel through Manchuria.
When
the Soviet express arrived at the Manchuria station and the Japanese official
began to hand out passports, he looked at me, held my Finnish passport for a
short time, and angrily threw it at me.
I received my baggage, spotted the Soviet guide, and boarded the
luxurious, soft cabin. The train began
to move. And on that train I made it to
Moscow.
Journalist: And thus ended your first foreign assignment,
right?
Litvin: Thus ended my first foreign assignment.
Journalist: That was in 1937.
Litvin: That was 1937.
Journalist: And did your know what was happening at that
time in the GRU, how they were recalling...?
Litvin: You know, being in China I knew almost
nothing about that. But when I returned
to Moscow in 1937, I visited the GRU the next day or two. And after a day or two I learned how our
leadership was being replaced. I met
with one, and the next day he was arrested.
And thus, a significant portion of the people with whom I met were later
arrested by Stalin’s apparatus. I was
amazed myself knowing that arrests were happening, arrests of people whom I met
after my return from China. I realized
then for the first time that my supervisor was arrested, my rezident, with whom I had worked so
much, who had done so much for me. How long we had been friends, and how much
we had accomplished together; suddenly I realized he was arrested. And there was no one to ask about it. I was afraid to ask the question.
Journalist: And what do you think, why did they never
take you?
Litvin: To this day I cannot answer that
question. Many were arrested around
me. Not only did they not arrest me, but
they began to train me for a second trip after my home leave. It is hard for me to explain that. I to this day cannot say why. I was ready to be among those victims, who at
the time were very many. But a man with
whom I worked even to the end, I can’t remember his name, he was apparently
beyond suspicion, he met with me constantly during that time. But later I was transferred to another group
in the GRU that worked on Japan.
But
as for how people treated me in the GRU, as for how they treated me and talked
about me, how they talked about my future, I was completely at a loss about why
I remained out of that game. Why the KGB
at that time, I can’t remember what it was called then, the GPU…
Journalist: NKVD.
Litvin: NKVD… why I, so to speak, slipped away from
the attention of that organization.
Journalist: Zalman Volfovich, when you got to the Japan
Group, what kind of group was it? Did
they know, did they inform you that Sorge was working in Japan?
Litvin: Initially, I knew absolutely nothing about
that, and I did not know about Sorge’s work in Japan. But simply… Just as before I went to China,
they systematically lectured about Japan, what Japan was, the country, the
people, the economy, politics, state structure.
I gradually comprehended all of those elements, working in the group
that at that time was led by General Popov. He died.
In
the process of training, I gradually learned about their ideas, that the idea
was not to send me, not to assign me to Japan, but my direction was the United
States, where, in California there was a large number of Japanese citizens—that
is, American citizens of Japanese descent, the so-called Nisei. They considered… My leadership at that time considered that
specifically here many opportunities might open up to find Japanese who would
agree to work against their country, as American citizens.
Journalist: More precisely, why was California chosen,
Zalman Volfovich?
Litvin: I think that California was chosen first
because there concent… In southern
California there is concentrated a large Japanese population, in the area of
Los Angeles, in the area of San Francisco, where many Japanese, so to speak,
are already complete Americanized, are apparently completely loyal to
America. Politically it seems they were
close to the American ideals. And for
them, as we thought at that time, so to speak, they would not necessarily see
working against Japan as working against their native country. Their native country had become the United
States. And that apparently led our
leadership to believe that it would be easier to work with them, they would be
easier to draw into cooperation than, say, to attract a Japanese living in
Japan.
Journalist: Did the training for that American assignment
last long in Moscow?
Litvin: I think, as far as I can remember, that
training lasted about two months. It was
devised that I could best be legalized in American as a university student,
where I could meet both American and Japanese students. Universities in America occupy a special
position. They are independent. And the American student body has not, I
would say, so totally embraced American ideology, if I could say that. I experienced that for myself when I met
American students. I understood that
many of them had their own opinions about the various issues that America was
facing, and in particular issues related to Japan.
Journalist:
Zalman Volfovich, how did your wife react to the fact that such a diversion was
coming in her life too?
Litvin: It seems to me that she did not comprehend
all of the difficulties connected with this trip, with this assignment. But the very thought of traveling to Paris,
about traveling to a country like the United States, interested her. I don’t think she thought about the danger
connected with this assignment. It seems
like I sheltered her so much from those thoughts that the idea that this might
be dangerous, in particular for both of us, didn’t even arise. The thought did not take root.
Journalist: Zalman Volfovich, how did you get to California? And under what guise did you travel there,
what was your surname?
Litvin:
My surname was… First I was given a Canadian passport.
Journalist: In Moscow?
Litvin:
In Moscow. Under the name Richard
Witczak. As it was explained to me, the passport
belonged to that person, a Canadian of Polish origin, who had at some point
joined the Republican Army during the war in Spain. I was told that that person had died, that
the passport, so to speak, could be considered ironclad, and that in
Intelligence they thought the passport was very safe. It was in fact, a real Canadian passport,
with only the photograph replaced. The
remaining parameters simply fit. And
thus, with that passport, in that name, I traveled to the United States.
Narrator: And thus, America awaited him. That was on the eve of the Second World
War. The story of that is in our next
episode.
Interview: “From the History of Secret Services,” Part 2
Narrator: We continue our story about an illegal
military intelligence office, Zalman Litvin.
In the past lie China, acquaintance with Japanese counterintelligence,
and the loss of friends and colleagues during the years of repression. Ahead lies a new assignment and new
dangers. This time, he will be
confronted by one of the strongest counterintelligence services in the world,
the Federal Bureau of Investigation of the United States of America. And thus, America.
Journalist: How old were you at that time?
Litvin: That was 1938—30 years old.
Journalist: Well, tell us, with your loving wife, 30
years old in Paris. I think you and your
wife had a wonderful time.
Litvin: We went to nightclubs, and in general we had
a wonderful time. And my wife of course
very much admired Paris. We went to
several stylish shops, but we were shocked by the colossal prices, which were
unaffordable to us at that time.
Journalist: And were you well supplied with money?
Litvin: We were supplied with money sufficient that
were not in need of anything. They
provided a certain amount, I don’t remember how much, for an extended period of
time in case I was out of communications, so that I could survive for some
time.
Journalist: Did you have any meetings with
representatives of intelligence in Paris?
Litvin: No. There were no meetings of any kind in
Paris.
Journalist: Nothing?
Litvin: We were supposed to go from Paris to
Boulogne. In Boulogne we boarded the
French, I think, I don’t remember, the French or Belgian steamer Bendan.
We traveled on that steamer to New York.
Of course, everything was very interesting to us, the steamer itself,
the people who were with us, and everything that we saw. But especially, of course, the moment we
sailed into New York surprised us the most.
It was, of course, the first time we had seen huge skyscrapers and the
huge Statue of Liberty. Everything I had
read, everything that I knew about America, seemed to me to be true. And I couldn’t take my eyes off those sites
that presented themselves before us when we sailed into New York on that
steamer.
Journalist: Zalman Volfovich, the thought of going to
America with such a specific mission.
Did it disturb you?
Litvin: You know, it did not disturb me. But the anxiety began the moment we arrived
at New York and they announced that immigration officials would be coming on
board the ship, and that every passenger on the ship would have to go through
immigration control. That, of course, is
what disturbed me. I was afraid and my
wife was afraid. Would we successfully
make it through immigration control?
Were there any mistakes in the passport?
Was the surname listed in any black list, which could, so to speak,
influence the immigration authorities?
That, of course, was very disturbing.
I think the two, maybe three hours of waiting before the immigration
inspector saw us were the most difficult for me in all of my time working in
intelligence, except for the final moment when I had to leave America. And when the immigration stamp appeared in
our passport my wife and I went to a restaurant and drank a bottle of
champagne.
Journalist: And with that, so to speak, the life of an
intelligence officer in America began.
Litvin: With that, my life as a Soviet intelligence
officer in America began. We checked
into the Hotel Taft.
Journalist: Were you supposed to meet somewhere there?
Litvin: A meeting with our man, a representative of
intelligence, was supposed to be there.
I didn’t know who. I knew only
the place and the password that I was to say to the person who was supposed to
meet me. It turned out that that person,
who waited for me almost daily, was desperate to meet me, because, it turns
out, I extended my stay in New York longer than I was supposed to. And the meeting happened almost on the last
day.
Journalist: And who was that person?
Litvin: That person I later learned worked as the
representative of Inturist in Los Angeles. He had been in the city for a long time and
was the rezident, the legal rezident of Soviet military
intelligence. He greeted me very, very
well. He was glad for my arrival. He said he was very worried that I had not met
him that whole time. I explained the
reasons. We arranged the next
meetings. In essence, it was decided
that it would legalize myself in America as a university student, an idea that
he had matured. It was proposed
initially in Moscow, but it had been planned only vaguely, and in my opinion
the solution of the issue was left to this person. He advised me to become a university student.
Journalist:
And how did you address him when you met him?
Did you call him by a Russian name or not?
Litvin: I used his Russian name. He was named Misha. But he called me Sam. That is, so to speak, a very common name in
America. And we became friends, but we
never went to each other’s homes, of course.
Meetings were strictly organized, clandestine, and each time I met him I
came away completely inspired.
Journalist:
And was communication only through him, or were there other methods?
Litvin: No, at first communication was through
him. But later, when he finished his
stay in America, communication passed through another person.
I
studied in the Political Science Department.
I chose that department because it fit my profession, and for me, with
my previous knowledge, it was a particularly attractive place where I could
develop, where I could show my abilities.
For that reason I chose that department specifically. And I succeeded, so to speak, in proving
myself positively to the professors in that department. Thus, the instructors and professors saw in
me a student who was broadly interested in the topics being studied in that
department. At that time, American
students, men and women, mostly had fun in the lower-level courses and thought
little about their studies. But all of
my attention was concentrated directly on a recognition that I had to
successfully pass those subjects that were being taught. In the second year, toward the end of the
second year in that department, my instructors even tasked me with grading the
tests done by American students. It was
a planned path, so to speak, toward determining my “me” in that
department. A second year foreign
student, so to speak, whom professors entrusted with grading students’ work—for
me that was a great success. It opened
the path for me to become friends with many American students.
Journalist:
Zalman Volfovich, student life, so to speak, was very stressful. But what was your life like as an
intelligence officer?
Litvin: Mostly my task was to study the people whom I
met—those students with whom I studied.
I began to invite students to my house for a cup of coffee to pick up
the discussions that we had in seminars and symposia, but just to continue them
at home. They came to my house. We lived in a small apartment. We would gather a group of about ten and for
several hours we would debate various topics.
Journalist: But you were, in general, preparing the
ground for recruitment.
Litvin: To a certain degree to find out—well, I can
say, to attract them to—for recruitment as well.
Journalist: Zalman Volfovich, how many people did you
attract to that work?
Litvin: Well, I don’t remember now, but it was
several people. I don’t want to answer
that question in more detail because those people might still be alive and
well, my answer, so to speak, could compromise them in some way.
Journalist:
But you attracted them to work against Japan?
Litvin: The main task was to find people who would
agree to work against Japan. There were
some people whom I was able to convert on that basis. I thought that it might be safe to discuss
with them a topic that very much interested me: Japan; and that I came to
America with a specific purpose. I
wanted for several of them to help me learn more deeply about Japanese military
plans.
Journalist: Zalman Volfovich, how in your assessment did
the Center evaluate your work? Did you
collect any information?
Litvin: Initially, it evaluated my work in the first
year as unsatisfactory, because in the first year, although we had agreed that
I would concentrate my attention on studies, and therefore I would devote
little of my attention to my primary profession, they, so to speak, considered
that I was devoting too much of my attention to my studies. And even in one of the letters that I
received, they asked me, “would we have sent you just to graduate from an
American university?” It was such an
ironic question, to which I answered that everything I had done in the first
year was absolutely necessary for further work in my primary job.
Journalist: That first year was unsatisfactory, but
later?
Litvin: Later on, in my opinion, they evaluated my
well. They considered everything to be
going successfully. And when I succeeded
in recruiting several people to send them to Japan, they were very, very
satisfied.
Journalist:
Was that followed with any awards or promotions?
Litvin:
You know, during my stay in America I received several awards and promotions…
Journalist: Which ones?
Litvin: I received the Order of the Red Star—two
Orders of the Red Star, several medals, and later the Order of the Patriotic
War…
Journalist: Two Red Stars only for the time you spent in
America.
Litvin: That was for America, yes. That is what they told me because I didn’t
see them. They sent me several
congratulations from the GRU leadership, congratulating me for awards and
promotions to the next rank.
Journalist: What rank were you when you arrived in
America?
Litvin: I arrived as a senior lieutenant. At that time it was called a teknik-intendant of the first rank—that
was three squares.
Journalist: And when you left?
Litvin: I left as a lieutenant colonel.
Journalist: That’s not bad; you were well promoted.
Litvin: Yes.
Journalist: So, you finished your term of study and you
remained as an instructor at the university.
Litvin: The process was, after I completed my
bachelor’s degree I continued on to work on the next level, a master’s
degree. And at that point, when I
graduated from university and received my diploma, I was offered a position as
an instructor in the department from which I graduated. I became, thus, an instructor. At that low rank I was instructing a course
that was usually led by someone who held a doctoral degree. So after I received a master’s degree, my, so
to speak, supervisors in the department began to prepare me to continue on and
work on a doctoral degree in political science, a “PhD in political science.”
Journalist: Zalman Volfovich, during that time when you
were working and studying, were there any specific tasks from the Center, were
you faced with any concrete tasks? For
example, to obtain information about such and such, etc.? Specifically?
Litvin: They demanded information from me about
people, so to speak; I gave the most detailed information about all those
people whom I had attracted to myself and I recruited them only after I receive
approval from the Center. I made no
recruitment pitches without the Center’s approval. Only with the agreement of the Center. Therefore, they very thoroughly checked every
person that I proposed. And after I
receive approval, I, so to speak, talked concretely with the given person. But they never asked me about them. And as I recollect, as you know, at that
time, we received during the war years a large amount of military materiel by
lend-lease. Lend-lease provided
certain…we received significant assistance from the United States through
lend-lease. There was a firm proposal
from President Roosevelt at that time that all that was planned for lend-lease
would be sent in a timely manner to the Soviet Union. But there were many companies that sabotaged
President Roosevelt’s decision. I was
tasked to a certain degree to find out which companies in southern California
were delaying the lend-lease orders. I succeeded in finding people who worked
in those companies and who could give me information that indicated that the
leadership of a company considered lend-lease to be of secondary importance,
and that it was necessary to fulfill orders for their own armed forces, and
only then for the Soviet Union. That was
one of the assignments included in my plans only after the beginning of the
World War II.
Journalist:
How often did you communicate with Moscow?
Litvin: I did not have direct communications with
Moscow. I communicated only through the
representative who worked there. At
first it was once per month or twice per month.
When I gathered more information, the meetings became more frequent.
Journalist: Who initiated the meetings, you or he?
Litvin:
Mostly me, because I could not keep the information that I handed over for a
long time. I would contact my
representative and ask for an expedited meeting, to move up the meeting to a
sooner time.
Journalist:
Did you phone him, or how did it work?
Litvin: I phoned him.
I had a certain phone number and a certain code by which we would, so to
speak, agree to meet. The meeting place
was pre-arranged and designated for several times in advance.
Journalist:
Wasn’t it dangerous to phone, with counterintelligence…
Litvin: I phoned from a payphone, never from my
house. The conversation was about
business. It would have been hard to
determine that the conversation was of a special character, using codes of a
certain type. It was a business
discussion, a conversation about this and that.
But in the process of the conversation certain words were inserted that
let my colleague know that I wanted to meet him.
Journalist: As far as I understand, along with your work
receiving all of those ranks, a bachelor’s degree, and a master’s degree in
America, you also became a father in America?
Litvin: I became a father in America, yes. My son was born. My wife was cared for by one of the major
specialists of the time. She gave birth
in one of the major hospitals, as they were called. The hospital was called the “Cedars of
Lebanon.” It was one of the most famous hospitals in Los
Angeles, and famous American actresses usually gave birth in that hospital. It
was quite an expensive hospital, but I receive a special compensation for all
of the costs associated with the payment.
Journalist: What American name
did you give your son?
Litvin: Richard.
His name became Richard, shortened to Dickie. And after many years— he is more than 40
years old—to this day we at home and his friends still call him Dickie. But he is actually named Iosif Zalmanovich
Litvin.
Journalist: Zalman Volfovich, when did you start to feel
like it was getting hot?
Litvin: I was so sure of my security, I was so
certain of those friends who surrounded me that I absolutely did not feel
it. Of the things I was doing, what of
my tasks should I not be doing from the point of view of American laws? But once, the doorbell of my apartment
rang. I opened the door. A man entered whom I had met after
[Murom?]. I was to prepare for a trip to
Washington at that moment. There was a
university in Washington, called in English the “Fletcher School of Foreign
Relations”—it is like our diplomatic academy—where I was to receive…work on a
doctoral degree on the recommendation of my university. The idea of my entry into the diplomatic
academy arose after I had received an assignment to transfer from Los Angeles
to Washington in order to work in that group, the intelligence group that was
located in Washington. The Center had
decided that there should be such a person in that group, and there were people
there with whom a person with my specialty could meet. And thus, they decided to transfer me there,
despite my request that it was time for me to return to my homeland.
But
to get accepted into that diplomatic academy, I had to have authentic
documents. That, strictly speaking, gave
rise to the requirement for me to have a real Canadian passport. It was completely natural that, if I
submitted documents to that educational institution, the management of that
educational institution would certainly check the authenticity of my documents,
even with a recommendation from the administration of my University of Southern
California. The Center thus decided that
I should have a real Canadian passport.
Journalist: What, was yours not real?
Litvin: Well, it was a passport that belonged to, as
I later learned, a man who was living peacefully. But his…
He had returned form the Spanish civil war completely alive, and he
continued to live in Canada using that name.
I knew nothing about this.
Imagine what would have happened it they had arranged a meeting of those
two little guys? It appears that the
Center at that time also knew little about this man still being alive…
continuing to live in Canada. To
continue to operate with this passport, or even with a Canadian one if I were
to receive one, could lead to a catastrophe, because sooner or later it would
be established that it is a different person.
You can understand what a predicament I was in, but I still knew nothing
about it. Thus they told me that we
would work on completely receiving Canadian citizenship, receive a Canadian
passport, and that I should come to Canada at some time; that I would sometime
receive Canadian citizenship and on that basis a new passport. To do all that, it was necessary for me to
complete the corresponding forms and submit two photographs, of me and of my
wife. I completed all of these documents
and they were sent by diplomatic mail to Ottawa in the name of the military
attaché.
At
that very time, the cipher clerk Gouzenko, who became a traitor and who
compromised a great many Soviet intelligence officers, removed those documents
from the cipher room along with other documents and passed them to the Canadian
authorities. The Canadians became aware
of me at that time, that there existed another person [break in recording]
Soviet intelligence officer who was operating under cover as a student in Los
Angeles. And at the very moment, that
person came to my apartment, who said that something has happened and you
should cease all ties that you have. I
asked, what about Washington, should I still go? I was supposed to leave the next day. We agreed that if he appeared on the train
platform, I was not to go to Washington.
If he was not there, the trip would happen. I received specific instructions about whom
to meet and at what time in Washington.
And that is how I went to Washington.
Journalist:
He was not on the platform, that man, right?
Litvin: The man did not come to the platform.
Yes. And thus I had authorization to go
to Washington. But I already felt that
something was not right. When you asked
me the question about when I started to feel hot, it was at that time that I
felt that it was hot, because the appearance of that man at my home and, so to
speak, the instruction that I cease all communications, that usually happens
only in the case of danger.
Nevertheless, I went to Washington.
Journalist: Still not knowing what awaited you there?
Litvin: I didn’t know what awaited me there, with
whom I would meet. But the assignment,
so to speak, was to prepare for a permanent transfer to Washington. When I arrived in Washington, a turnstile
stood at the exit from the station.
Passing through it, I saw two well-dressed Americans in straw hats;
perfectly dressed. I knew perfectly at
that time that they were employees from the Federal Bureau of
Investigation. When I passed them, one
winked to the other. I felt intuitively,
that those two men would follow me.
Instead of taking a taxi I left on foot in the direction of the Supreme
Court building in Washington. Along the
way I turned and saw that the two were following me. I faced a dilemma: what to do? I was supposed to have a meeting. But I could not meet under the watch of those
two people. I could not compromise the
man who was supposed to meet me. And the
meeting was scheduled for that evening and was supposed to happen in a hotel—I
unfortunately forget the name of it now, but it was in a park not far from the
White House. And thus, for the whole day
I led those two people behind me. I went
into a cinema, and then I went into another cinema, I went into a café, and
then into a restaurant; I did everything to extract myself from their
surveillance. But nothing worked. Nevertheless, I decided to go all-in and
there was no way out. It was already
starting to get dark early. When I
approached a park, I was able to hide behind several trees that were in the
park. The agents that were following me
passed without noticing me. I used that
moment. Knowing the floor number, I went
to that floor in the hotel, and at the designated place on that floor I met the
person. He introduced himself and I
introduced myself.
He
said, “Don’t worry. I know you are being followed.” He described to me in detail what had happened
in Canada, directly from him. He is
still alive, that man; his name is Sergeyev.
He told me in detail what had happened in Canada. I asked what I should do. He answered, “decide yourself.” We came to an agreement. He recommended that I go to the Soviet
embassy. But I knew that I still had a
wife and son in Los Angeles. If I went
to the embassy I could not see them again.
I would essentially be leaving my family to the mercy of fate. I therefore did not agree to that. We decided he would take me in his car to
Baltimore, which was about two hours drive from Washington. The FBI agents had absolutely lost me.
Journalist: Zalman Volfovich, and what…
Litvin:
We parted in Baltimore. I stayed the
night in a hotel, and then I went to New York. But they gave me a contact in New York.
Journalist: He gave you a contact…
Litvin:
He gave me a contact for New York. In
New York I also stayed in a hotel. And
after sometime I met with our man. He
told me even more details about what was happening in Canada, and that the
Center was doing everything it could to resolve all of those events so that it
did not reflect on me. He supplied me
with additional money, and we agreed to meet again. After a while, I stayed in a hotel for a day
or two.
Journalist: Do you remember the hotel, where is it?
Litvin: I don’t remember the hotel because I switched
several hotels in New York. And I must
say that wherever I went, the Federal Bureau of Investigation found me.
Journalist: They found you?
Litvin: Yes. I
tried to rent a room advertised in the New
York Times, in a private apartment. I succeeded, and I stayed several days in that
apartment. I eventually went downtown
and noticed surveillance. I broke away
from the surveillance several times, and they found me several times. Then I decided to ask one of my friends to
buy me a car.
Journalist:
A new one?
Litvin:
A car…another car, fill it with gas, park it is a certain place, and give me
the keys. That car, so to speak, waited
for my departure from Los Angeles. Every time I left the house I would agree
with my wife that if I phoned and used a certain word, it would mean I had
broken free from surveillance. Imagine,
every time I left, my wife did not know whether I would return in the evening
and she would be alone. That concerned
me greatly, and she was obviously also worried. In any case, we agreed that there was no other
solution. If I leave and don't try to
get out, we would be arrested. And if I
am not there, they could not accuse her of anything and she would be left, so
to speak, free and Moscow would do everything possible to save her.
One
of my students, who I had given many “A’s”…
Journalist:
“A’s” at work, you mean, or…
Litvin: For work and without work; in order to
maintain her in good standing. She was
the daughter of a major businessman in America. One day she came in her car to the place
where my office was and asked—she said her father had given her a new Cadillac
for her birthday—would I like to try out the new Cadillac and go to lunch with
her? I thought, why not? I took my brief case just in case. We got into her car and went to a restaurant
of her choice. We had a wonderful lunch
at the restaurant. We talked. We discussed various topics related to her
studies, with her university. And after
that…after lunch, she said, “let’s go back to the university.” I told her, you know, that I have some
business in the city. Why doesn’t she go
on her own.
I
already said, I think, the when we were traveling I did not notice any
surveillance, there was no surveillance.
And so I of course wanted to take advantage of that moment. I was surprised, and I was sure that there
should have been surveillance, but there wasn’t any. And that way, having broken free from
surveillance, I approached the place where my car was parked, got into it,
called my wife and told her I was leaving. As it turned out, it was Thanksgiving Day,
and many Americans had gone into the mountains. I thus told her that I was invited to go into
the mountains so they would lose me. I
said I had left the car parked in the student village. It appears that representatives of the FBI
had not taken their eyes off the car.
They did not know where I was.
Late, late at night, as I learned later from my wife they phoned my wife
and asked where I was. My wife said I
had gone to the mountains for a picnic.
“What should we do with your car?
Drive it to your house?” She told
them to let it stay where it was.
Incidentally, I don't know what happened to that car. And I drove that car all night to San
Francisco.
Journalist: People were waiting for you there?
Litvin:
They were waiting in San Francisco. Our
people met me in San Francisco, and we went together in a car, and then in
another car, to a city, where…I have forgotten…
Journalist: Portland.
Litvin: Portland.
To the city of Portland where they were waiting for me.
To my luck, one of our ships was in
Portland without any American monitoring.
The captain and his assistant met me.
They put me in one of the spare…it was a firebox, a reserve
firebox. I stayed in that very firebox
for two days. They brought me food
there. Only the captain and his assistant
knew I was there. The captain was very,
how to say, encouraged that they gave him the opportunity to fulfill such a
patriotic mission and extract a Soviet intelligence officer from the country.
After
the American pilot disembarked and our ship left American territorial waters
into the open sea, the open ocean, I left the firebox and met many Soviet
passengers who were returning home and all were surprised that they had not seen
me when they embarked on the ship. I
invented all sorts of stories for them and in any case, I became friends with
that group of passengers and our ship and half-cargo steamer set off for
Vladivostok. A cutter approached our
ship in Vladivostok before we entered the port, while we were still in open
water. GRU representatives were on the
cutter, and a colonel whose name I don’t remember. They brought a greatcoat and military uniform
with them, since I had left with only a raincoat and it was cold. They took me off the ship so the passengers
who remained on the ship, did not know that I…I wasn’t there any more.
I
stayed in Vladivostok several days. I of
course went to see the building where I had studied, walked the streets where I
had spent four years. Many of the
passengers who had left with me were going to Moscow, but they gave me a
specific day when those passengers had already departed or were still in
Vladivostok so that I would not meet them on the train. And so, I went on that
train, accompanied by GRU representatives, to Moscow.
Narrator: Today we have told about only one of the many
intelligence officers who spent their entire lives in the service of their
country. In the future we plan to
continue our program with stories of the special services.
The views expressed in this article are
those of the original publishers and do not reflect the official policy or
position of the Department of Defense or any U.S. government agency.
This is likely a reference to Mikhail Gorin (probably
a pseudonym), a GRU officer operating under cover as the manager of the Los
Angeles Inturist office from 1936 to December 1938. The FBI arrested Gorin for receiving classified
information from Hafis Salich, who was working for the U.S. Office of Naval
Intelligence in California. The information Salich provided to Gorin involved U.S. monitoring of
Japanese officials and Japanese-American citizens, which was consistent with the
tasks assigned to Litvin. This court
case came to be known as Gorin v. United States, one of the few pre-war
applications of the U.S Espionage Act of 1917; see
https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/312/19 (accessed 21 January 2019). See also Ellis M. Zacharias, Secret Missions: The Story of an
Intelligence Officer (New York: G. P. Putnam’s, 1946), pp. 203-205.
