Spying in America: Espionage from the Revolutionary War to the Dawn of the Cold War

33. The Spy from the Cornfields: George Koval

253 The Spy from the Cornfields George Koval Koval was a trained agent, not an American civilian. He was that rarity, which you see a lot in fiction but rarely in real life— a sleeper agent. A penetration agent. A professional officer. John Earl Haynes on George Koval. Quoted by Walsh, “George Koval” Six decades after the end of the Manhattan Project, a rare event occurred in espionage history. On November 2, 2007, Russian prime minister Vladimir Putin posthumously honored Soviet citizen George Koval with the Hero of the Russia Federation Medal, the nation’s highest civilian honor, and acknowledged Koval’s contribution to the Soviet Union’s development of an atomic bomb. In the Kremlin’s press release on this unusual event, Putin noted that Koval, operating under the code name DELMAR, provided information that “helped speed up considerably the time it took for the Soviet Union to develop an atomic bomb of its own, thus ensuring the preservation of strategic military parity with the United States.”1 According to Putin’sadmission,Kovalwasabletoobtainthiscriticalinformationbecause he was “the only Soviet intelligence officer to penetrate the US secret atomic facilities producing the plutonium, enriched uranium, and polonium used to create the atomic bomb.”2 33 254 The Atomic Bomb Spies: Prelude to the Cold War Nations rarely acknowledge those who have spied for them, even with the passage of years and especially in the extremely secretive Russia. Putin’s calculated public revelation had less to do with historical enlightenment than with politics. Putin had consistently touted the past achievements of the intelligence services as part of his nationalist agenda. A former KGB officer himself, Putin headed the Federal Security Service (Federal’naya Sluzhba Bezopasnosti, FSB). After embarking on a political career that led to the presidency of Russia, Putin significantly increased the budget, authorities, and morale of the nation’s intelligence services and used them as instruments to solidify his power. In addition, Putin presented the Koval award a month before parliamentary elections in December 2007, and the event was timed not only to promote patriotic pride and public support for his spy services but also to ensure victory for his party, United Russia, which did triumph handily with about 65 percent of the vote nationwide. Just a few months earlier, Putin had also publicly trumpeted his pledge to restore Russian military power after a decade of steep post-Soviet decline, which may explain his recognition of the achievements of an officer from the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence service. To laud the civilian service as well, the Russian government awarded a similar medal soon after to George Blake, a Soviet spy in British intelligence who had escaped prison after his arrest for espionage. Both medals were awarded a few months after Britain’s Queen Elizabeth had presented a medal to Oleg Gordievsky, the senior KGB officer who had spiedforyearsonbehalfoftheBritishandhaddefectedin1985.Someobservers suggested that the Russian awards were a rejoinder to the United Kingdom , which had roiled bilateral relations by accusing Russian intelligence of involvementinthepoisoningofthePutinregimecriticAlexanderLitvinenko in London.3 Whatever the political reason behind Putin’s decision, he did acknowledge an important event in the history of Russian espionage against America. Koval’s achievement was unique. Despite the extensive network of SovietspiesstealingAmericansecretsinthe1930sand1940s,nootherknown staff officer of Russian intelligence has ever obtained employment with a security clearance inside a US government agency.4 Koval’s story began in an unlikely venue for an espionage tale, the heartland of America’s corn belt in Sioux City, Iowa, a central hub for the tristate area of southwest South Dakota, northwest Iowa, and northeast Nebraska. 255 The Spy from the Cornfields • George Koval In the second great wave of immigration to the United States, millions of Russians and Eastern Europeans came to America’s shores and fanned out across the country. Iowa’s farmlands, meatpacking plants, and coal mines attracted many of them with the promise of employment and a better life. This new wave of immigrants included Jewish craftsmen and merchants like Koval’s father Abraham, a carpenter by trade, who had fled the czar’s ruthless persecution of their brethren in Russia and set up cultural organizations and synagogues in their newly adopted land to preserve their heritage. Abraham Koval and his wife Ethel, the daughter of a rabbi, left their small town near Minsk in Byelorussia and settled in Sioux City in 1910. Three sons were born to the couple in America. George...