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Flora Don Wovschin (born 20 February 1923) was a suspected Soviet spy who later renounced her American citizenship.
Wovschin was born in New York City. Her mother was Maria Wicher and her stepfather was Enos Regnet Wicher. She attended the University of Wisconsin–Madison, Columbia University and Barnard College. At Barnard, she was active in the American Students Union and may have been a member of American Youth for Democracy. She attended Barnard College with Marion Davis Berdecio and Judith Coplon, both of whom Wovschin later recruited into service for the NKVD.[ citation needed ]
From 9 September 1943 to 20 February 1945, she worked in the Office of War Information, then transferred to the Department of State. She resigned from the State Department 20 September 1945. Wovschin acted as courier between Coplon and Soviet intelligence. Wovschin transmitted to the Soviet Union the information that the Americans had somehow become aware of NKVD internal codenames for various American institutions, including CLUB, HOUSE, BANK and CABARET, as used in the NKVD's most secret communications. After the war, she renounced her American citizenship and travelled to the Soviet Union where she married a Soviet engineer. An FBI counterintelligence report on Wovschin has a hand-written note in the margin stating she may have died serving as a nurse in North Korea. Her code name in Soviet intelligence and in the Venona project is "Zora".[ citation needed ]
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The Venona project was a United States counterintelligence program initiated during World War II by the United States Army's Signal Intelligence Service and later absorbed by the National Security Agency (NSA), that ran from February 1, 1943, until October 1, 1980. It was intended to decrypt messages transmitted by the intelligence agencies of the Soviet Union. Initiated when the Soviet Union was an ally of the US, the program continued during the Cold War, when the Soviet Union was considered an enemy.
Harry Dexter White was a senior U.S. Treasury department official. Working closely with the Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau Jr., he helped set American financial policy toward the Allies of World War II. He was later accused of espionage by passing information to the Soviet Union.
Kitty Harris was a Soviet secret agent and "long-time special courier of the OGPU-NKVD foreign intelligence during the 1930s and 1940s." Although mentioned by name in Walter Krivitsky’s book I was Stalin’s agent, Harris was identified only in 2001 when her code name "Ada" or "Aida" was found in declassified files from the Venona Project. This was a counterintelligence program initiated by the United States Army's Signal Intelligence Service that ran from February 1, 1943 until October 1, 1980.
Jack Soble was a Lithuanian who, together with his brother Robert Soblen, penetrated Leon Trotsky's entourage for Soviet intelligence in the 1920s. Later, in the United States, he was jailed, with his wife Myra, on espionage charges. He was born in Vilkaviskis, Lithuania as Abromas Sobolevicius and sometimes used the name Abraham Sobolevicius or Adolph Senin.
Judith Coplon Socolov was a spy for the Soviet Union whose trials, convictions, and successful constitutional appeals had a profound influence on espionage prosecutions during the Cold War.
Charles Kramer, originally Charles Krevisky was a 20th-Century American economist who worked for U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt as part of his brain trust. Among other contributions, he wrote the original idea for the Point Four Program. He also worked for several congressional committees and hired Lyndon B. Johnson for his first Federal job. Kramer was alleged a Soviet spy as member of the Ware Group, but no charges were brought against him.
Elizabeth Terrill Bentley was an American NKVD spymaster, who was recruited from within the Communist Party USA (CPUSA). She served the Soviet Union as the primary handler of multiple highly placed moles within both the United States Federal Government and the Office of Strategic Services from 1938 to 1945. She defected by contacting the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and debriefing about her espionage activities.
Lt. Col. Duncan Chaplin Lee (1913–1988) was a confidential senior assistant to Maj. Gen. William Donovan, founder and director of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), World War II-era predecessor of the CIA, between 1942 and 1946. Lee has posthumously been identified by the Venona project as the NKVD mole inside the OSS with the code name "Koch," making Lee the most senior alleged spy the Soviet Union ever recruited inside the U.S. intelligence community.
As early as the 1920s, the Soviet Union, through its GRU, OGPU, NKVD, and KGB intelligence agencies, used Russian and foreign-born nationals, as well as Communists of American origin, to perform espionage activities in the United States, forming various spy rings. Particularly during the 1940s, some of these espionage networks had contact with various U.S. government agencies. These Soviet espionage networks illegally transmitted confidential information to Moscow, such as information on the development of the atomic bomb. Soviet spies also participated in propaganda and disinformation operations, known as active measures, and attempted to sabotage diplomatic relationships between the U.S. and its allies.
Hede Tune Massing, née "Hedwig Tune", was an Austrian actress in Vienna and Berlin, communist, and Soviet intelligence operative in Europe and the United States during the 1930s and 1940s. After World War II, she defected from the Soviet underground. She came to prominence by testifying in the second case of Alger Hiss in 1949; later, she published accounts about the underground.
Maurice Hyman Halperin (1906–1995) was an American writer, professor, diplomat, and accused Soviet spy.
Maria Wicher was married to Professor Enos Wicher and was the mother of Flora Wovschin. The family were all spies for the Soviet Union during the 1940s. Maria had previously been married to Dr. William A. Wovschin, Flora's father. Her code name in Soviet intelligence and in the Venona project is "Dasha".
Juliet Stuart Poyntz was an American suffragist, trade unionist and communist spy. As a student and university teacher, Poyntz espoused many radical causes and went on to become a co-founder of the Communist Party of the United States (CPUSA). Later she began working as an intelligence agent for the Soviet Union, travelling secretly to Moscow just as some of her comrades were being executed in Joseph Stalin's Great Purge, after which she resigned from the party. This is widely assumed to have led to her unexplained disappearance in New York City in June 1937 as the likely victim of an assassination squad, possibly because she had been associating with Trotskyists.
Marion Davis Berdecio, born Marion Davis, was a recruit of the Soviet intelligence in the United States.
Pavel Mikhailovich Fitin was a Soviet intelligence officer (INO–GUGB–NKVD–NKGB) who was the director of Soviet intelligence during World War II, identified in the Venona cables under the code name "Viktor."
Iskhak Abdulovich Akhmerov (1901–1976) was a highly decorated OGPU/NKVD (KGB) Soviet security officer, best known to historians for his role in KGB operations in the United States 1942–1945. His name appears in the Venona decryptions over fifty times, often as signatory, and on his return to the Soviet Union in 1945/46, he rose to deputy chief of the KGB's 'illegal' intelligence section.
Vladimir Sergeevich Pravdin, or Roland Lyudvigovich Abbiate, codename LETCHIK ["Pilot"], was a senior NKVD officer and assassin working in Europe during the Great Terror. He later became a KGB agent, stationed in the United States.
Enos Regnet Wicher was an American professor of physics at Columbia University. He had been married to Rae Kidd, future star of the 1938 nudist movie "The Unashamed," while both were students at the University of Wisconsin 1935-37. During World War II he worked in the Wave Propagation Group at Columbia's Division of War Research and was alleged to have spied for Soviet intelligence with code name "Keen".
