Joseph Weinberg

Joseph Weinberg was born in New York City. After graduating from City College of New York he moved to California and took a post at the Radiation Laboratory at the University of California. His wife, Muriel Weinberg, had studied at the University of Wisconsin. Both Joseph and Muriel were members of the Communist Party of the United States (CPUSA). (1)

In 1942 Steve Nelson, became chairman of the San Francisco branch of the CPUSA. He also became involved in espionage activities. "One part of Nelson's task was to gather information on the atomic bomb project. He was seen and overheard meeting with young Communist scientists working at the radiation laboratory at Berkeley. Information gleaned from FBI bugging and wiretaps indicated that several had discussed the atomic bomb project with him. Nelson made notes of what the scientists told him regarding their work, and he was subsequently observed passing materials, which the FBI assumed were his notes, to a Soviet intelligence officer operating under diplomatic cover at the USSR's San Francisco consulate." (2)

Joseph Weinberg - Soviet Spy

On of the scientists identified was Joseph Weinberg. FBI officials bugged Nelson's residence and discovered that Weinberg had delivered "highly secret information regarding experiments being conducted at the Radiation Laboratory, Berkeley, pertaining to the atomic bomb." Investigators reported that Nelson had "delivered this classified information to Soviet consular officer Ivan Ivanov for transmittal to the Soviet Union." (3)

Steve Nelson had a meeting with Vassili Zarubin, the most senior NKVD agent in the United States, in April 1943. "Zarubin travelled to California for a secret meeting with Steve Nelson, who ran a secret control commission to seek out informants and spies in the Californian branch of the Communist Party, but failed to find Nelson's home. Only on a second visit did he succeed in delivering the money. On this occasion, however, the meeting was bugged by the FBI which had placed listening devices in Nelson's home." (4)

The FBI bug confirmed that Zarubin had "paid a sum of money" to Nelson "for the purpose of placing Communist Party members and Comintern agents in industries engaged in secret war production for the United States Government so that the information could be obtained for transmittal to the Soviet Union." (5) J. Edgar Hoover responded by telling Harry Hopkins, a close advisor to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, that he was instituting a special code named COMRAP program to "identify all members of the Communist International (Comintern) apparatus with which Steve Nelson and Vassili Zarubin are connected as well as the agents of this apparatus in various war industries." (6) Hopkins then warned the Soviet ambassador that a "member of his embassy had been detected passing money to a Communist in California". (7)

Manhattan Project

Until this time Hoover had been totally unaware of the Manhattan Project. Joseph Weinberg, Vassili Zarubin and Steve Nelson were kept under "blanket surveillance" but none of them were arrested. Nigel West has argued that the reason for this was that "Hoover was unable to persuade the White House that the Soviets were engaged in wholesale espionage against their ally." (8) However, Athan Theoharis, the author of Chasing Spies (2002) has suggested that the most important factor in this was that the FBI had used illegal methods such as wiretaps to obtain evidence of spying and this could not be used in court against the men. (9)

Fifth Amendment

After the war Joseph Weinberg worked in the Department of Physics at the University of Minnesota. He was indicted on four counts of contempt after he had pleaded the Fifth Amendment before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). The charges were dismissed in March 1953 on the grounds that Weinberg had exercised his constitutional right, but nevertheless he lost his post at the university. (10)

Primary Sources

(1) Nigel West, Venona: The Greatest Secret of the Cold War (2000)


The precise nature of Robert Oppenheimer's relationship with the NKVD has long been a topic of intense interest. Although Robert was never formally a member of the Party, practically all his friends were, and, as he subsequently admitted, he 'probably joined every Communist front on the West Coast'. Frank, who joined the Radiation Laboratory in 1941 from Stanford University (and worked at both Oak Ridge and Los Alamos), had been a member of the CPUSA's Palo Alto branch since 1937, as was Robert's wife, Kitty. Her first husband, Joseph Dallet, was a CPUSA official who had fought in Spain as a member of the international Brigade, and the news of his death in 1937 had been broken to her in Paris by one of his comrades, Steve Nelson. Her second husband, whom she married in December 1938, was an English physician, Richard Harrison, who was interested in radiation and travelled with her to Pasadena where she took a graduate course in mycology and met Robert Oppenheimer. After eighteen months of marriage, Kitty divorced Harrison, and married Oppenheimer, and this was how the latter came into contact with Nelson, a senior C P U S A functionary and an NK V D courier for Oppenheimer's students Joseph W. Weinberg, Giovanni Rossi Lomanitz and David Bohm who worked at the Radiation Laboratory at Berkeley.

Originally from New York, Weinberg had graduated from the City College and become an active member of the Young Communist League before moving to California. His wife Muriel, who had studied at the University of Wisconsin, was also a Party activist, and C P U S A literature mailed to Radiation Laboratory scientists was traced to her. In March 1943 FBI surveillance on Steve Nelson's home and telephone identified Weinberg as a late-night visitor who wanted to copy a formula written in the handwriting of another scientist. This had been followed soon afterwards by a covert rendezvous in a park between Nelson and a Soviet vice-consul, Piotr Ivanov, at which packages were seen to be exchanged, and then by Zubilin's visit to Nelson's home. In August Weinberg was watched by Counter-Intelligence Corps (CIC ) agents George Rathman and Harold Zindle while he hosted a clandestine Party gathering at his apartment in Black Street, Berkeley, attended by Nelson and Lomanitz. Weinberg always denied his membership of the Party, his involvement in espionage and any knowledge of Steve Nelson, despite surveillance evidence showing Nelson's secretary, Bernadette Doyle, was a visitor to his home. He was indicted on four counts of contempt after he had pleaded the Fifth Amendment before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). The charges were dismissed in March 1953 on the grounds that Weinberg had exercised his constitutional right, but nevertheless he lost his post at the University of Minnesota's Department of Physics.

References

(1) Nigel West, Venona: The Greatest Secret of the Cold War (2000) page 183

(2) Harvey Klehr and John Earl Haynes, Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America (2000) pages 230-231

(3) Athan Theoharis, Chasing Spies (2002) pages 49-50

(4) Christopher Andrew, The Mitrokhin Archive (1999) pages 161-162

(5) Athan Theoharis, Chasing Spies (2002) page 50

(6) J. Edgar Hoover, memorandum to Harry Hopkins (7th May, 1943)

(7) Christopher Andrew, The Mitrokhin Archive (1999) pages 161-162

(8) Nigel West, Venona: The Greatest Secret of the Cold War (2000) page 192

(9) Athan Theoharis, Chasing Spies (2002) pages 95-96

(10) Nigel West, Venona: The Greatest Secret of the Cold War (2000) page 183