Irving Charles Velson
Encyclopedia
Irving Charles Velson was an American who had a long career in the Communist Party of the United States (CPUSA) secret apparatus and who allegedly worked for Soviet Military Intelligence (GRU
GRU
GRU or Glavnoye Razvedyvatel'noye Upravleniye is the foreign military intelligence directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation...

). He was the son of Clara Lemlich Shavelson
Clara Lemlich
Clara Lemlich Shavelson was a leader of the Uprising of 20,000, the massive strike of shirtwaist workers in New York's garment industry in 1909. Later blacklisted from the industry for her labor union work, she became a member of the Communist Party USA and a consumer activist...

 and changed his name to Velson by 1938. Velson worked as a machinist at the Brooklyn Navy Yard
Brooklyn Navy Yard
The United States Navy Yard, New York–better known as the Brooklyn Navy Yard or the New York Naval Shipyard –was an American shipyard located in Brooklyn, northeast of the Battery on the East River in Wallabout Basin, a semicircular bend of the river across from Corlear's Hook in Manhattan...

 from 1931 to 1938.

According to Congressional investigators, Velson worked closely with J. Peters
J. Peters
J. Peters was the most commonly known pseudonym of a man who last went by the name "Alexander Stevens" in 1949. Peters was an ethnic Jewish journalist and political activist who was a leading figure of the Hungarian language section of the Communist Party USA in the 1920s and 1930s...

, head of the CPUSA's secret apparatus, and supported Cpl. Robert Osman in espionage activities on behalf of the GRU in the Panama Canal Zone. Robert Gladnick, a former CPUSA functionary and a member of the Lincoln Brigade supported this version. Gladnick stated that Bernard Schuster (aka Bernard Chester) then director of the CPUSA's antimilitarist operations, was replaced in the mid 1930s by Velson, in a program to develop secret Communist groups among American military personnel. Venona decrypts show Velson reporting on weapons technology and other agent handling tasks.

Velson's code name with the GRU, and as deciphered by 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 "Nick".

Venona

Velson is referenced in the following Venona decryptions:
  • 1324 GRU New York to Moscow, 11 August 1943;
  • 1456 GRU New York to Moscow, 8 September 1943.
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