Earl Browder

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Earl Browder : biography

May 20, 1891 – June 27, 1971

"I was involved in no conspiracies," Browder adamantly declared to Wallace and his television audience.

Browder repeatedly connected longtime Communist Party activist and Soviet agent Jacob Golos with CPUSA members who had come forward offering to share sensitive information that they thought the party should know.Kathryn S. Olmsted, Red Spy Queen: A Biography of Elizabeth Bentley. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2002; pg. 22. While initially most of these would-be informants were employees of private industry, later party members who were employees of the federal government were brought into Golos’s circle of contacts.Olmsted, Red Spy Queen, pp. 22–23. Browder was also periodically given access to important information by Golos before its transmission to his superiors in Moscow.Olmsted, Red Spy Queen, pg. 43.

Browder’s public protestations were further belied by the 1995 release of the so-called Venona documents, secretly decoded material which confirmed that Browder was indeed engaged in the recruitment of potential espionage agents for Soviet intelligence.Haynes, John Earl, and Klehr, Harvey, Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000; pg. ???.

In 1938 Rudy Baker (Venona code name: SON) was appointed to head the CPUSA underground apparatus to replace J. Peters, after the defection of Whittaker Chambers, allegedly at the request of Browder (Venona code name: FATHER). According to self-confessed NKVD recruiter Louis Budenz, he and Browder participated in discussions with Soviet intelligence officials to plan the assassination of Leon Trotsky.Affidavit of Louis Budenz, 11 November 1950, American Aspects of the Assassination of Leon Trotsky, U.S. Congress, House of Representatives, Committee on Un-American Activities, 81st Cong., 2d sess., part I, v–ix

While in custody, Browder never revealed his status as an agent recruiter to U.S. authorities, and was never prosecuted for espionage. Venona decrypt #588 April 29, 1944 from the KGB New York office states “for more than a year Zubilin (station chief) and I tried to get in touch with Victor Perlo and Charles Flato. For some reason Browder did not come to the meeting and just decided to put Bentley in touch with the whole group. All occupy responsible positions in Washington, D.C.”, Venona 588 New York to Moscow, 29 April 1944. Soviet intelligence thought highly of Browder’s recruitment work: in a 1946 OGPU memorandum, Browder was personally credited with hiring eighteen intelligence agents for the Soviet Union.

Members of Browder’s family were also involved in work for Soviet intelligence. According to a 1938 letter in the Comintern archives from Browder to Georgi Dimitrov, then General Secretary of the Comintern, Browder’s younger sister Marguerite was an agent working in various European countries for the NKVD.Klehr, Haynes, and Firsov, Secret World of American Communism 241 Browder expressed concern over the effect it would have on the American public if his sister’s secret work for Soviet intelligence were to be exposed: “In view of my increasing involvement in national political affairs and growing connections in Washington political circles … it might become dangerous to this political work if hostile circles in America should obtain knowledge of my sister’s work.” He requested she be released from her European duties and returned to America to serve “in other fields of activity.” Dimitrov forwarded Browder’s request to Nikolai Yezhov, then head of the NKVD, requesting Marguerite Browder’s transfer.Klehr, Haynes, and Firsov Secret World of American Communism 243 Browder’s half-niece, Helen Lowry, (aka Elza Akhmerova, also Elsa Akhmerova) worked with Iskhak Akhmerov, a Soviet NKVD espionage controller from 1936–1939 under the code name ADA(?) ADA was Kitty Harris (later changed to ELZA)). In 1939, Helen Lowry married Akhmerov. Lowry was named by Soviet intelligence agent Elizabeth Bentley as one of her contacts; she and Akhmerov and their actions on behalf of Soviet intelligence are referenced in several Venona project decryptions as well as Soviet KGB archives.