Elizabeth Bentley

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Elizabeth Bentley, 1948

Elizabeth Terill Bentley (born January 1, 1908 in Milford , Connecticut , † December 3, 1963 in New Haven , Connecticut) was an American communist who worked as a Soviet agent from 1938 to 1945 .

Life

She graduated from Vassar College with degrees in English , French and Italian (1930) and began studying at Columbia University in New York. In 1933 she received a scholarship to the University of Florence , where she was involved in the fascist university movement. Her teacher and anti-fascist Mario Casella was able to convince her of his political direction. After her return to the USA, she continued her studies at Columbia University, where she first joined the American League against War and Fascism and, in March 1935, joined the Communist Party of the USA (CPUSA).

While working at the Fascist Italian Library in New York from 1938 onwards, she came into contact with companies and people who provided the fascist regime in Italy with information on US politics and military progress. On behalf of the Communist Party, she collected this information and passed it on to her contact, Jakob Golos, at the Soviet consulate . Their regular meeting point was in the immediate vicinity of Rock Creek Park . Golos, who was also her lover in the meantime, ensured that she was given an important position in the US Service and Shipping Corporation, a clandestine company of the US Department of Justice, in 1940. There she rose to Vice President and provided Golos with all the important information. During this time she formed the so-called Silvermaster group together with Nathan Gregory . a. consisted of prosecutors and historians, creating one of the most important communist espionage groups in the United States during World War II .

In 1943, her contact and lover Jakob Golos suffered a fatal heart attack. The CPUSA General Secretary Earl Browder then informed her that he would transfer the management of the spy network to the new agent of the Soviet consulate, Iskhak Akhmerov , and that he would merge with the Perlo group around Victor Perlo . This severely restricted their influence within the network. Reluctantly, she carried out her work in this new organization. At the beginning of June 1944, Akhmerov asked Bentley to report directly to the NKVD in Moscow in future . She then referred to Browder as a Moscow puppet. At the end of 1944, she was then informed by Browder, Perlo and Akhmerov that she had to hand over all the documents that were still available to her and to vacate the post of Vice President of the US Service and Shipping Corporation - officially resigning - because security was being dealt with in Moscow fear the group. Shortly thereafter, she began an affair with a man she was unsure of whether he was an FBI agent or the Soviet Union. Because of this uncertainty, she began to drink and also appeared repeatedly drunk at meetings with her new command officer, Anatoly Gorsky . Bentley then viewed Bentley as unreliable and informed her that she would be switched off as an agent in coordination with the CPUSA. At the beginning of July 1945, after these differences with the party leadership and through Stalin's policies , she left the Communist Party (CPUSA) and revealed herself to the FBI in August 1945. In the context of and because of their various statements, which dragged on until November 1945, the FBI initiated a break-in at the Soviet consulate in New York and stole the Venona papers there . Even so, she met Gorsky in September 1945. After Luis Bedenz , the head of the CPUSA party newspaper Daily Worker, turned away from communism in October 1945 , it was supposed to be shut down for good . She anticipated this measure and on November 6, 1945 made an extensive confession to the FBI about her previous activities and contacts. She named about 150 people who had worked as agents for the Soviet Union in the USA. With this and her previous uncontrolled behavior, she thwarted the FBI's plans to use her as a double agent .

Your most important statements regarding the espionage by the Soviet Union before the Committee for Un-American Behavior were published in 1948 and formed the basis for the formation of an intelligence project to decipher the papers and, as a result, to expose numerous agents such as Klaus Fuchs in England , Ethel and Julius Rosenberg as well Morton Sobell . Their statements also had a great influence or were the basis for measures during the so-called McCarthy era against American communists.

Bentley died of pancreatic cancer at Grace-New Haven Hospital in New Haven, Connecticut, aged 55 .

Names named by her

See also

literature

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Bentley, Elizabeth
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Bentley, Elizabeth Terill (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American agent for the Soviet Union
DATE OF BIRTH January 1, 1908
PLACE OF BIRTH Milford, Connecticut , USA
DATE OF DEATH 3rd December 1963
Place of death New Haven (Connecticut) , USA