Soviet and Nazi Defectors: Counter-Intelligence in WW2 and The Cold War

YURI RASTVOROV

I will never feel safe.

Yuri Rastvorov

One of the most significant NKVD defectors of the Cold War, Yuri Rastvorov had been a member of the Tokyo rezidentura for four and a half years, until he was granted political asylum in the United States on 24 January 1954, after having initially approached the British Secret Intelligence Service.

Born in July 1921 in Dmitriyev. Kursk Oblast, Rastvorov’s father had served as a Red Army commander and fought during the Russian Civil War, eventually being appointed military kommissar of the Tagansky District in Moscow. Rastvorov’s mother, a physician, died of breast cancer in 1946.

Upon the outbreak of the Second World War, Rastvorov was conscripted into the Red Army and posted to Latvia and Lithuania as part of the Soviet occupation. In December 1940, he was transferred to Moscow to attend a Japanese language course as a GRU officer. He graduated in 1943 and was assigned as a cryptanalyst to the Russian Far East. Between 1944 and 1946 he received further intelligence training in Moscow, and then was sent to the Soviet Embassy in Tokyo under translator cover. However, soon after his arrival at the NKVD rezidentura he was recalled to Moscow because his paternal grandfather had been denounced as a kulak landowner. In reality the peasant farmer, who had scraped a living with two cows and two horses, had perished of starvation in the 1932 famine. While still under investigation, Rastvorov had been sent to Khabarovsk

In any event, Rastvorov would change his mind about seeking asylum from the British, and in January 1954 approached the CIA through Maude Burris, his Oklahoma-born English language teacher, and met Quentin Johnson. According to Johnson, who retired to Rockport, Maine,

There were two things that apparently caused him to change his mind: (1) When the British thought they had him in the bag for sure, they made a small celebration in his presence which offended him as he interpreted their regarding him merely as a ‘big catch’. He certainly was, but it was unwise for the British to thus have acted in Subject’s presence. (2) The British had assured him that he would be settled in Canada, but at the last moment they indicated he would go there by way of England. This frightened Subject because he apparently had some knowledge there was a Russian Intelligence Service penetration of British Intelligence.²

Having been offered political asylum in the United States, and resettlement under the alias Martin Francis Simons, Rastvorov was flown to Okinawa for interrogation. During his interviews Rastvorov revealed that he had changed his mind about defecting to the British because in 1946 a former colleague, Vladimir Skripkin, had been betrayed when he had indicated his intention to defect. According to the CIA’s Cleveland Cram, later the CIA deputy station chief in London, Rastvorov

Rastvorov nearly had second thoughts about defecting at all, as Hunt, one of the CIA officers who accompanied him on the C-47 flight to Okinawa, later recalled he ‘was especially ill at ease, saying … that the Japanese would come aboard and take him off, handing him back to the Soviets.’

During his lengthy debriefing on Okinawa, Rastvorov was cross- examined on his background and intelligence career, which he described in these terms:

Rastvorov, who was known to his recruits as UCHIDA, revealed that some of his agents had been Japanese prisoners of war who had been released by the Soviets on condition that they undertook espionage missions in return for their freedom. Some simply disappeared after they reached Japan, but others apparently had felt a duty to fulfill the obligation. The rezidentura’s priority was information relating to the deployment or storage of American nuclear weapons in Japan.

Rastvorov also shed light on some unresolved counter-intelligence puzzles, such as the cases in 1952 of Masao Mitsuhashi and the celebrated leftist Japanese writer, Wataru Kaji. The latter had disclosed that he had been recruited as a Soviet agent when he had been held as a prisoner of war in the Soviet Union. He had then agreed to work as a double agent under American control, and he communicated with his Soviet handlers by radio. The issue became controversial when it emerged that Kaji had been kept in custody against his will after Japanese sovereignty had been restored in April 1952. Similarly, when Masao Mitsuhashi was returned to Japan, he provided information about his mission as a radio operator, and implicated Rastvorov.

Another of Rastvorov’s ‘meal tickets’ was John M. Byington, a United States Air Force military policeman whom he had recruited as a source, Byington had been a ‘walk-in’ at the Soviet mission in April 1953 when he had offered to sell information, and Rastvorov had been assigned as his handler. Rastvorov also named Major Rose Esther Ennis as a rezidentura recruitment target in 1952. She was then employed as a Russian language teacher by United States Army G-2 and was thought to be vulnerable because of having family members in the Soviet Union. Another counter-espionage lead was Ernest J. Lissner, a United States Counter-Intelligence Corps officer, who was alleged to have offered to sell classified information to the rezidentura in 1947.

Following his defection Rastvorov was invited in October 1954 to record his knowledge of the Petrovs, and this he did in the form of an affidavit:

I became personally acquainted with this woman during the latter part of 1943; at which time we both attended the Foreign Language School of the Committee of Information in Moscow, and studied the English language in the same group. We occupied adjoining seats in the classroom at this school. The classes were held three times weekly and we both attended regularly until June 1950 when I discontinued the school and departed Moscow for assignment in Tokyo. I have not seen Mrs Petrova since that time.

The Foreign Language School of the Committee of Information mentioned above, was comprised of intelligence personnel only, and the majority of the students in this school held the status of intelligence officers It is my recollection that Mrs Petrova held the rank of Senior Lieutenant when I first met her and was subsequently promoted to the rank of Captain. I recall her as a carcer officer I have identified a photograph of Evdokia Petrova from the 1954 issue of Time Magazine on page 30, as a good likeness of the woman described above. I wish to state that I knew her and she was known in the Soviet Intelligence Service by her maiden name of Evdokia Alexeevka Kartseva, I was aware that she was married to Vladimir Proletarsky (Petrov).

From conversation with Evdokia, I learned that she was employed at an earlier date in the Fifth Directorate (Cipher) of GUGB/NKVD and had worked with Gerasim Balasanov, who was a friend of mine. Evdokia also told me that she and her husband had been assigned to the Soviet Embassy in Stockholm, Sweden, where she was employed as a Cipher Clerk. Both were officers of the Foreign Intelligence Directorate of NKGB, later MGB, during this service in Sweden.

I learned from Evdokia that in 1948 she was not a member of the Communist Party but was a member of the Komsomol (Young Communist League). As a candidate for membership in the Communist Party, she was then in the process of being accepted as a Party Member.

As a matter of interest, Evdokia told me that 3he had a child by a previous marriage who had died. I also have a recollection that she stated that she had learned a little Japanese.

On 15 April 1954 I observed a photograph in The New York Times newspaper of that date, which was reported to be of Vladimir Petrov. I recognised this photograph immediately as that of an MVD Intelligence Officer with whom I was previously acquainted. I had known this individual under the name of Vladimir Mikhailovich Proletarsky.

I first met Proletarsky after he returned to Moscow from Sweden, which occurred I believe in 1947. Proletarsky was given an assignment in the Second Directorate of the KI (Committee of Information) which was responsible for positive intelligence operations in Europe. During 1948 and 1994. I saw Proletarsky frequently at KI Headquarters, both in the office area and in the mess hall. Proletarsky was sometimes accompanied by his wife, whom I knew well because of having attended language school with, her, In late 1949 Proletarsky was transferred from the KI to the MVD (Ministry of State Security), I knew of this transfer through conversations with Proletarsky’s wife who also told me, on a later occasion, that she and Proletarsky had both performed cipher duties at the Soviet Embassy in Stockholm, Sweden, between 1943 and 1947. I cannot state what names Proletarsky and his wife used in Sweden, I have never known him personally under any name other than Vladimir Mikhailovich Proletarsky.

Proletarsky was a relatively well-known officer among Soviet Intelligence personnel at Moscow in the late 1940s, and he said I had several mutual friends in the Soviet Intelligence Service. It is my best recollection that Proletarsky held the rank of major or Lieutenant- Colonel in 1950,

I last saw Proletarsky at Moscow prior to my departure for Japan. I had no knowledge that Proletarsky or his wife had been transferred to Australia until I recognised his photograph in The New York Times in April 1954.

I have carefully read the above statement consisting of four typewritten pages, and hereby certify as to its truthfulness and accuracy.

Rastvorov’s defection was not made public until August 1954, by which time he had been safely installed in a safe house in Travilah Road, Potomac, in the guise of a Czech immigrant codenamed DIPPER 19. There he was interrogated by fellow tennis enthusiast, Fred Kovaleski, who would become his lifelong friend.

In 1956 Rastvorov obtained a Mexican divorce from his wife Galina Andreevna Godova, a well-known ballet dancer with whom he had a daughter, Tatyana, in 1945, so he could marry Hope Macartney one of his CIA debriefers, by whom he had two daughters, Alexandra and Jennifer. It would be more than a decade before the girls were told about their father’s true antecedents. In 1977, Hope divorced Rastvorov, and began a relationship with an ice-skater, Anne Garnier, but his life went into a decline.

Rastvorov started many businesses, including a restaurant, the Captain’s Table, in Georgetown, Washington DC, but none prospered. He died in February 2004, aged 82, having hired a lawyer to extract a belated annuity from the CIA, having easily exhausted his original payment of $25,000, plus a further $25,000 from Life magazine. According to the FBI Counterintelligence Reader,

In all, he produced over 1,000 positive and operational intelligence reports, including the identification of about 600 Soviet intelligence officers and agents. The information that he provided was considered to be very important and useful.

Skripal had made a rather vague approach to the British naval attaché in Tokyo on 9 May 1946, and then gone to the Americans ten days later, again with an offer to go back to Moscow and then defect with his wife on his very next foreign posting. Nothing more had been heard of Skripkin, but Rastvorov explained that Skripkin had been betrayed, and had incriminated himself when two NKVD officers had showed up at his Moscow apartment pretending to be British SIS officers This news caused consternation in London as it suggested that the Soviets had somehow acquired a copy of the original Naval Intelligence Division report of Skripkin’s tentative offer, which had included his address in Moscow. Initially, the reaction in London was that the likely source of the leak had been Kim Philby, who had been dismissed from SIS in July 1951, although Philby had never been on the NID report’s distribution list. Later, more light would be shed on the incident. Firstly, when the KGB’s Anatoli Golitsyn defected in December 1961, he recounted the Skripkin episode and confirmed that he had seen photographs of two NID reports about Skripkin which had come from London. Secondly, when challenged in January 1963, after Philby had accepted immunity from prosecution and written a confession, he denied any knowledge of Skripkin. The inescapable conclusion was that in the summer of 1946 another, as yet unsuspected Soviet mole had been active in London.

The other topic that was of great interest to Rastvorov’s interrogators was the Petrovs, recently defected in Australia, who had been known to him since 1943 under their NKVD cover-name of Proletarsky. Indeed, he recalled that he had even attended the same language course as Evdokia.

Chapter III