Earl Browder - Espionage Activities

Espionage Activities

On June 2, 1957, Browder appeared on the television program The Mike Wallace Interview, where he was grilled for 30 minutes about his past in the Communist Party. Host Mike Wallace quoted Browder as having recently said "Getting thrown out of the Communist Party was the best thing that ever happened to me." When asked to elaborate, Browder replied:

"That's right. I meant that the Communist Party and the whole communist movement was changing its character, and in 1945, when I was kicked out, the parting of the ways had come, and if I hadn't been kicked out I would have had the difficult task of disengaging myself from a movement that I could no longer agree with and no longer help."

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

In reality, Browder was involved in coordinating the gathering of information on behalf of Soviet intelligence. 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. 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. Browder was also periodically given access to important information by Golos before its transmission to his superiors in Moscow.

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.

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.

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.” 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 involved in work for Soviet intelligence. According to a 1938 classified letter from Browder to Georgi Dimitrov, in the Soviet archives, Browder’s younger sister Marguerite was an agent working in various European countries for the NKVD. 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.” Browder’s request was followed in short order by a classified letter from Dimitrov to “Comrade Yezhov,” (Nikolai Yezhov, then head of the NKVD) requesting Marguerite Browder’s transfer. Browder's 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.