was working as an agent and passing them information, the reports are still all secondhand, and Janeâs state of mindâwhether she was under the impression she was helping the Sterns and the Communist cause or was fully cognizant that she was serving Soviet intelligenceâis unclear. Finally, given all the testimony on record from the Sobles and other Soviet recruits to the effect that they were under enormous pressure to keep Moscow supplied with information, and Jack Sobleâs admission under oath in the Soblen trial that he told Morros âliesâ just to keep him happy, there is no way to be certain of the accuracy or verisimilitude of these messages. They all had an obvious interest in exaggerating their progress to their Soviet handlers, and their inflated claims about new recruits and espionage coups may have been closer to empty boasts than actual achievements.
Apart from the Venona decrypts, a wealth of new material about Soviet espionage has also come to light in recent years from the notebooks of a former KGB officer, Alexander Vassiliev, who was permitted unprecedented access to Stalin-era intelligence archives in 1993. Sorting through Vassilievâs extensive notebooks of transcribed KGB material, two historians, John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr, have provided a thorough and carefully constructed account of Soviet intelligence operations in the United States during the 1930s and 1940s. These official communications include much new material about the Soble ring and the activities of the double agent Boris Morros. There are KGB memos referring to Jane and George, confirming the Venona cables and again implicating the pair as members of the Soble network. In one KGB memo, Zarubin listed ââSlang,â Jane ⦠of the Far Eastern Department of the âcabinâ [OSS]â as one of the sources recruited under his watch. In a later retrospective memo dated 1957, he wrote, âOn a lead from âLizaâ the agent âSlangâ was recruited, followed by âSlangâsâ husband, the agent âRector,â who once worked for American counterintelligence inAustria.â The authors go on to observe that the notebooks reveal that the KGB developed âmore than a dozen sources in the OSS,â eleven of whom were âsecret Communistsâ who came to the KGB via the American Communist Party, which is the same route Jane followed.
The Vassiliev notebooks, like the Venona transcripts, provide a fascinating glimpse into the inner workings of Soviet espionage, but it is impossible to simply accept the claims of the KGB authors or their American sources as fact. They were all too adept at spinning their successes and failures to have any of their accounts taken at face value. Once again, Vassilievâs access was partial and restricted, and, as Haynes and Klehr are careful to note, âeven contemporaneous documents can sometimes mislead because their author didnât correctly understand the events he was reporting for some reason, harbored prejudices and assumptions that distorted what was reported, or for self-promotion or self-protection distorted what actually happened.â
In spite of all these caveats, the existence of multiple documentary sources describing Jane Foster and George Zlatovski as Soviet assets establishes that they were deeply enmeshed in the Soble espionage ring. How they became caught up in the Soviet network, and whether or not there were mitigating circumstances, is another matter. The fact remains that in her book Jane never acknowledged even being aware of any Soviet espionage, let alone becoming a participant, and lied about the true nature of her complicated relationship with the Sterns, the Sobles, and Boris Morros. Even at the end of her life, she was too accustomed to half truths and evasions to permit herself to be completely candid. By writing a memoir about her wartime service and postwar travails, Jane hoped to
Apart from the Venona decrypts, a wealth of new material about Soviet espionage has also come to light in recent years from the notebooks of a former KGB officer, Alexander Vassiliev, who was permitted unprecedented access to Stalin-era intelligence archives in 1993. Sorting through Vassilievâs extensive notebooks of transcribed KGB material, two historians, John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr, have provided a thorough and carefully constructed account of Soviet intelligence operations in the United States during the 1930s and 1940s. These official communications include much new material about the Soble ring and the activities of the double agent Boris Morros. There are KGB memos referring to Jane and George, confirming the Venona cables and again implicating the pair as members of the Soble network. In one KGB memo, Zarubin listed ââSlang,â Jane ⦠of the Far Eastern Department of the âcabinâ [OSS]â as one of the sources recruited under his watch. In a later retrospective memo dated 1957, he wrote, âOn a lead from âLizaâ the agent âSlangâ was recruited, followed by âSlangâsâ husband, the agent âRector,â who once worked for American counterintelligence inAustria.â The authors go on to observe that the notebooks reveal that the KGB developed âmore than a dozen sources in the OSS,â eleven of whom were âsecret Communistsâ who came to the KGB via the American Communist Party, which is the same route Jane followed.
The Vassiliev notebooks, like the Venona transcripts, provide a fascinating glimpse into the inner workings of Soviet espionage, but it is impossible to simply accept the claims of the KGB authors or their American sources as fact. They were all too adept at spinning their successes and failures to have any of their accounts taken at face value. Once again, Vassilievâs access was partial and restricted, and, as Haynes and Klehr are careful to note, âeven contemporaneous documents can sometimes mislead because their author didnât correctly understand the events he was reporting for some reason, harbored prejudices and assumptions that distorted what was reported, or for self-promotion or self-protection distorted what actually happened.â
In spite of all these caveats, the existence of multiple documentary sources describing Jane Foster and George Zlatovski as Soviet assets establishes that they were deeply enmeshed in the Soble espionage ring. How they became caught up in the Soviet network, and whether or not there were mitigating circumstances, is another matter. The fact remains that in her book Jane never acknowledged even being aware of any Soviet espionage, let alone becoming a participant, and lied about the true nature of her complicated relationship with the Sterns, the Sobles, and Boris Morros. Even at the end of her life, she was too accustomed to half truths and evasions to permit herself to be completely candid. By writing a memoir about her wartime service and postwar travails, Jane hoped to
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