Alfred Sarant
Encyclopedia
Communist Party USA
The Communist Party USA is a Marxist political party in the United States, established in 1919. It has a long, complex history that is closely related to the histories of similar communist parties worldwide and the U.S. labor movement....
in New York City in 1944. He was part of the Rosenberg spy ring that reported to Soviet intelligence. Sarant worked on secret military radar at the United States Army Signal Corps laboratories at Fort Monmouth
Fort Monmouth
Fort Monmouth was an installation of the Department of the Army in Monmouth County, New Jersey. The post is surrounded by the communities of Eatontown, Tinton Falls and Oceanport, New Jersey, and is located about 5 miles from the Atlantic Ocean. The post covers nearly of land, from the Shrewsbury...
, New Jersey. Alexandre Feklisov
Alexandre Feklisov
Aleksandr Semyonovich Feklisov was a Soviet spy, the NKGB Case Officer who received information from Julius Rosenberg and Klaus Fuchs, among others.-Biography:...
, one of the KGB
KGB
The KGB was the commonly used acronym for the . It was the national security agency of the Soviet Union from 1954 until 1991, and was the premier internal security, intelligence, and secret police organization during that time.The State Security Agency of the Republic of Belarus currently uses the...
case officers who handled the Rosenberg spy apparatus described Sarant and Joel Barr
Joel Barr
Joel Barr , also Iozef Veniaminovich Berg and Joseph Berg, was part of the Soviet Atomic Spy Ring...
as among the most productive members of the group. Sarant was recruited as a Soviet espionage agent by Barr.
The Venona project
Venona project
The VENONA project was a long-running secret collaboration of the United States and United Kingdom intelligence agencies involving cryptanalysis of messages sent by intelligence agencies of the Soviet Union, the majority during World War II...
transcript of 14 November 1944 reported to Moscow that Sarant had been successfully recruited. The transcript noted Sarant and Barr were roommates and good friends and proposed to pair them off and get them to photograph their own materials. Initially Barr delivered film to Rosenberg, who passed it on to officers of the Soviet intelligence
KGB
The KGB was the commonly used acronym for the . It was the national security agency of the Soviet Union from 1954 until 1991, and was the premier internal security, intelligence, and secret police organization during that time.The State Security Agency of the Republic of Belarus currently uses the...
. Later, Barr met directly with KGB officers; Sarant did not have direct contact with the KGB in the U.S. One transcript reports Sarant and Barr delivered 17 authentic drawings relating to the APQ-7, an advanced and secret airborne radar system developed jointly by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT has five schools and one college, containing a total of 32 academic departments, with a strong emphasis on scientific and technological education and research.Founded in 1861 in...
and Western Electric
Western Electric
Western Electric Company was an American electrical engineering company, the manufacturing arm of AT&T from 1881 to 1995. It was the scene of a number of technological innovations and also some seminal developments in industrial management...
for the United States military.
In 1946 Sarant moved to Ithaca, New York
Ithaca, New York
The city of Ithaca, is a city in upstate New York and the county seat of Tompkins County, as well as the largest community in the Ithaca-Tompkins County metropolitan area...
where he worked at Cornell University
Cornell University
Cornell University is an Ivy League university located in Ithaca, New York, United States. It is a private land-grant university, receiving annual funding from the State of New York for certain educational missions...
in the physics laboratories. Sarant's next door neighbor was Philip Morrison
Philip Morrison
Philip Morrison, was Institute Professor Emeritus and Professor of Physics Emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology .-Early life and education:...
, a former Manhattan Project
Manhattan Project
The Manhattan Project was a research and development program, led by the United States with participation from the United Kingdom and Canada, that produced the first atomic bomb during World War II. From 1942 to 1946, the project was under the direction of Major General Leslie Groves of the US Army...
scientist and personal friend who joined the Communist Party of the United States in 1939. Sarant knew several prominent physicists socially, including Hans Bethe and Richard Feynman.
Two days after Julius Rosenberg's arrest on 17 July 1950, the FBI interviewed Sarant but did not arrest him, although it possessed decrypted KGB cables that clearly identified Sarant as a member of the Rosenberg ring. Three days later Sarant ran away with Carol Dayton, the wife of his close friend and neighbor, Bruce Dayton; Sarant and Dayton abandoned their children and spouses. The two crossed into Mexico
Mexico
The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...
and eluded the FBI.
In Mexico City, Sarant sought assistance from officials at an obscure Polish trade office, guessing correctly that they were intelligence officers. Following instructions from the KGB, the Poles hid Sarant and Dayton in Mexico, then engineered an escape that crossing the border to Guatemala on foot, taking a freighter to Casa Blanca, and flying to Poland via Spain. After six months in Warsaw they moved on to Moscow. The KGB arranged a dramatic reunion with Barr, who was summoned from Prague, where he had fled shortly after the Rosenberg ring started to unravel. Sarant was assigned a new identity, Philip Georgievich Staros, claiming a Canadian
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
background to explain his accent. From Moscow, Barr and Sarant were resettled in Czechoslovakia
Czechoslovakia
Czechoslovakia or Czecho-Slovakia was a sovereign state in Central Europe which existed from October 1918, when it declared its independence from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, until 1992...
and put to work as electrical engineers. They led a team that designed and built a prototype of the Soviet bloc's first automated anti-aircraft weapon. Their technology was quickly deployed and was in use, with some minor modifications, into the 1980s.
In 1956 Sarant and Barr moved to Leningrad
Saint Petersburg
Saint Petersburg is a city and a federal subject of Russia located on the Neva River at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea...
where they were placed in charge of a military electronics research institute. They have been credited with being the founders of the Soviet microelectronics
Microelectronics
Microelectronics is a subfield of electronics. As the name suggests, microelectronics relates to the study and manufacture of very small electronic components. Usually, but not always, this means micrometre-scale or smaller,. These devices are made from semiconductors...
industry, in part because Sarant and Barr conceived of, designed and won political backing for the creation of Zelenograd
Zelenograd
Zelenograd is a city, which, along with the territories and settlements under its jurisdiction, forms one of the administrative okrugs of Moscow - Zelenograd Administrative Okrug...
, the Soviet Union's Silicon Valley
Silicon Valley
Silicon Valley is a term which refers to the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area in Northern California in the United States. The region is home to many of the world's largest technology corporations...
. Sarant was the scientific director of Zelenograd until Nikita Khrushchev
Nikita Khrushchev
Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev led the Soviet Union during part of the Cold War. He served as First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964, and as Chairman of the Council of Ministers, or Premier, from 1958 to 1964...
's forced retirement. In 1969 Sarant received a state honor for the UM-1, a computer that was widely used in Soviet industry. He led the team that created the Uzel
Uzel (computer)
Uzel was the Soviet Union's first digital computer used on submarines, to assist in tracking multiple targets and calculate torpedo solutions. Uzel's design team was headed by two American defectors to the Soviet Union, Alfred Sarant and Joel Barr . An upgraded version of the Uzel computer is...
, the first digital computer installed in a Soviet submarine. The Uzel was integrated into the Kilo class submarines and as of 2007 was still in use in the Russian, Iranian, Chinese and Indian navies. In 1979 Sarant died of a heart attack. Carol Dayton, the woman who fled with him, returned to the United States in 1991.
It was not until 1983, thirty-three years after Sarant's flight to Mexico, that the full story of Sarant's life was told. A Russian émigré working at Harvard, Mark Kuchment, who had read The Rosenberg File linked Barr and Sarant to two prominent Soviet scientists, both native speakers of English.
Sarant's cover name in Soviet intelligence and in the Venona project
Venona project
The VENONA project was a long-running secret collaboration of the United States and United Kingdom intelligence agencies involving cryptanalysis of messages sent by intelligence agencies of the Soviet Union, the majority during World War II...
is "Hughes".
Source
- Steven T. Usdin, Engineering Communism: How Two Americans Spied for Stalin And Founded the Soviet Silicon Valley, Yale University Press (October 10, 2005), hardcover. ISBN 0-300-10874-5
- Tracking Julius Rosenberg’s Lesser Known Associates https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/csi-studies/studies/vol49no3/html_files/Rosenberg_2.htm
- John Earl HaynesJohn Earl HaynesJohn Earl Haynes is an American historian who is a specialist in 20th century political history in the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress...
and Harvey KlehrHarvey KlehrHarvey E. Klehr is a professor of politics and history at Emory University; he is known for his books on the subject of the American Communist movement, and on Soviet espionage in America ....
, Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America (New Haven: Yale University PressYale University PressYale University Press is a book publisher founded in 1908 by George Parmly Day. It became an official department of Yale University in 1961, but remains financially and operationally autonomous....
, 1999). ISBN 0-300-08462-5 - Feklisov, Alexander, The Man Behind the Rosenbergs: Memoirs of the KGB Spymaster Who Also Controlled Klaus Fuchs and Helped Resolve the Cuban Missile Crisis (New York,Enigma, 2001)
- FBI Venona file
- PBS Nova Online, The November 14, 1944 cable: Joel Barr and Alfred Sarant
- EngineeringCommunism.com http://engineeringcommunism.com
Further reading
- Ronald RadoshRonald RadoshRonald Radosh is an American writer, professor, historian, former Marxist, and neoconservative. He is known for his work on the Cold War espionage case of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg and his advocacy of the state of Israel....
and Joyce Milton, The Rosenberg File: A Search for the Truth, Henry Holt (1983), hardcover, ISBN 0-03-049036-7 - Richard C.S. Trahair and Robert Miller, Encyclopedia of Cold War Espionage, Spies, and Secret Operations, Enigma Books (2009), paperback, ISBN 978-1-929631-75-9
- Podcast interview with author of Engineering Communism: How Two Americans Spied for Stalin and Founded the Soviet Silicon Valley Part I Part II