Alfred Sarant

Alfred Epaminondas Sarant, also known as Filipp Georgievich Staros and Philip Georgievich Staros (September 26, 1918 – March 12, 1979),[1] was an engineer and a member of the Communist party in New York City in 1944. He was part of the Rosenberg spy ring that reported to Soviet intelligence. Sarant worked on secret military radar at the United States Army Signal Corps laboratories at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey. Alexandre Feklisov, one of the KGB case officers who handled the Rosenberg spy apparatus described Sarant and Joel Barr as among the most productive members of the group. Sarant was recruited as a Soviet espionage agent by Barr.

Alfred Sarant
Born
Alfred Epaminondas Sarant

September 26, 1918[1]
New York City, U.S.
DiedMarch 12, 1979
Moscow, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union[2]
Burial placeBolsheokhtinsky Cemetery in Leningrad [2]
Other namesFilipp Georgievich Staros
Philip Georgievich Staros
AwardsDoctor of Technical Sciences 1967, USSR State Prize 1969 [2]
Espionage activity
Allegiance United States (defected)
 Soviet Union
Service years1941-1950
CodenameKh'YUS/HUGHES [3]
CodenameMETR/METER

Biography

A member of the Communist Party of the United States (CPUSA) during the Second World War, Sarant worked at the nuclear physics laboratory of Cornell University. ([4][5]) In 1941, Julius Rosenberg and Joel Barr were recruited as Soviet spies by Jacob Golos. They in turn persuaded Sarant to join the network.[6]

According to Alexander Feklissov:

Joel and Alfred were good friends and spent a lot of time together. I must admit that Sarant had the makings of an undercover agent; he was a cautious young man, yet full of resolve, with progressive ideas. Before we recruited him though, he had to pass a test. Barr asked Sarant to borrow some secret documents to which he had access because he, Barr, needed them for his personal use. Alfred did not hesitate in helping his friend and in the meantime the Center approved a bona fide approach." [7]

However, he was at first reluctant to become a spy but was eventually convinced to join the network by Barr. Sarant was given the code name Hughes.

The Venona project transcript of 14 November 1944 reported to Moscow that Sarant had been successfully recruited.[3] The transcript noted Sarant and Barr were roommates and good friends and proposed to pair them off and get them to photograph their own materials. Initially Barr delivered film to Rosenberg, who passed it on to officers of the Soviet intelligence. Later, Barr met directly with KGB officers; Sarant did not have direct contact with the KGB in the U.S. One transcript reports Sarant and Barr delivered 17 authentic drawings relating to the AN/APQ-7, an advanced and secret airborne radar system developed jointly by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Western Electric for the United States military.

In 1946 Sarant moved to Ithaca, New York, where he worked at Cornell University in the physics laboratories. Sarant's next door neighbor was Philip Morrison, a former Manhattan Project scientist and personal friend who joined the Communist Party of the United States in 1939. Sarant knew socially several prominent physicists, including Hans Bethe and Richard Feynman.

Two days after Julius Rosenberg's arrest on 17 July 1950, the FBI interviewed Sarant but did not arrest him, although it possessed decrypted MVD cables that clearly identified Sarant as a member of the Rosenberg ring.[8][9] Three days later Sarant ran away with Carol Dayton, the wife of his close friend and neighbor, Bruce Dayton; Sarant and Dayton abandoned their children and spouses. The two crossed into Mexico and eluded the FBI.[10]

In Mexico City, Sarant sought assistance from officials at an obscure Polish trade office, guessing correctly that they were intelligence officers. Following instructions from the KGB, the Poles hid Sarant and Dayton in Mexico, then engineered an escape that crossing the border to Guatemala on foot, taking a freighter to Casa Blanca, and flying to Poland via Spain. After six months in Warsaw they moved on to Moscow. The KGB arranged a dramatic reunion with Barr, who was summoned from Prague, where he had fled shortly after the Rosenberg ring started to unravel. Sarant was assigned a new identity, Philip Georgievich Staros, claiming a Canadian background to explain his accent. From Moscow, Barr and Sarant were resettled in Czechoslovakia and put to work as electrical engineers. They led a team that designed and built a prototype of the Soviet bloc's first automated anti-aircraft weapon. Their technology was quickly deployed and was in use, with some minor modifications, into the 1980s.

In 1956 Sarant and Barr moved to Leningrad where they were placed in charge of a military electronics research institute. They have been credited with being the founders of the Soviet microelectronics industry, in part because Sarant and Barr conceived of, designed and won political backing for the creation of Zelenograd, the Soviet Union's Silicon Valley. Sarant was the scientific director of Zelenograd until Nikita Khrushchev's forced retirement. In 1969 Sarant received a state honor for the UM-1, a computer that was widely used in Soviet industry.[11] He led the team that created the Uzel, the first digital computer installed in a Soviet submarine. The Uzel was integrated into the Kilo-class submarines and as of 2007 was still in use in the Russian, Iranian, Chinese and Indian navies. In 1979 Sarant died of a heart attack.[12] Carol Dayton, the woman who fled with him, returned to the United States in 1991.

It was not until 1983, thirty-three years after Sarant's flight to Mexico, that the full story of Sarant's life was told. A Russian émigré working at Harvard, Mark Kuchment, who had read The Rosenberg File linked Barr and Sarant to two prominent Soviet scientists, both native speakers of English.

Sarant's cover name in Soviet intelligence and in the Venona project is "Hughes".[3]

See also

Notes
  1. Federal Bureau of Investigation (2017-01-16). "COMMUNIST PARTY, USA, Underground Operations, INTERNAL SECURITY - C". p. 12. Retrieved 2018-01-15.
  2. "Alfred Sarant, electrical engineer in St. Petersburg, Russia". ZAO SAINT-PETERSBURG.COM. Retrieved 2019-01-15. He died in Moscow in 1979, and his ashes were buried at the Bolsheokhtinsky Cemetery in Leningrad.
  3. National Security Agency, VENONA project, ed. (1944-11-14). "Soviet diplomatic communications" (PDF). Arlington Hall. Declassified Documents > VENONA. Retrieved 2017-05-27. LIBERAL[ii] has safely carried through the contracting of "Kh'YuS"[iii]. Kh'YuS is a good pal of METR's[iv]. We propose to pair them off and get them to photograph their own materials having given a camera a camera for this purpose.- [iii] Kh'YuS: i.e. HUGHES, probably Joel BARR or Alfred SARANT
  4. "Alfred Sarant, electrical engineer in St. Petersburg, Russia".
  5. Brown, JPat, Lipton, B.C.D, and Michael Morisy (2019). Scientists Under Surveillance. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. p. 25.CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  6. Usdin, Steven T. (2005). "Tracking Julius Rosenberg's Lesser Known Associates: Famous Espionage Cases". Studies in Intelligence:Journal of the American Intelligence Professional. Center for the Study of Intelligence: CSI Publications. 49 (3). Retrieved 2017-05-27. In March 1944, the FBI obtained copies of the New York County Committee of the CPUSA's membership records, probably through an illegal burglary. The records included the names of Rosenberg, Barr, and Sarant, along with their addresses and party aliases. Quick action on this intelligence would have prevented the group from making some of its most important contributions to the USSR, including the SCR-584 radar, proximity fuse, and P-80 designs, all of which were passed after March 1944.
  7. Alexander Feklissov, The Man Behind the Rosenbergs (1999) pages 116 and 117
  8. National Security Agency, VENONA project, ed. (1944-05-05). "ALFRED SARANT, A LEAD OF ANTENNA'S: PROPOSED RECRUITMENT, DETAILS (1944)" (PDF). Arlington Hall. Declassified Documents > VENONA. Retrieved 2017-05-27. Please carry out a check and sanction the recruitment of Alfred SARANT[i], a lead of ANTENNA's[ii].
  9. Benson, Robert L. "THE VENONA STORY" (PDF). Center for Cryptologic History, National Security Agency. p. 58. Retrieved 2017-05-27. An interesting example of the type of material found in the reports would be in Special Report #6, 28 April 1948, which summarizes or gives the text of a significant number of LIBERAL/ANTENNA translations. [...] The translation of New York to Moscow No. 628, 5 May 1944 (paragraph 4), is important to the story of the development of the Rosenberg case. As of April 1948 the Arlington Hall VENONA unit had not been able to decrypt the first twenty-four groups of that message. Lacking this critical context, Mr. Gardner translated the message as giving a description of ANTENNA. When those missing twenty-four groups were decrypted see the reissue of the translation on 27 June 1950 it was shown that the message was in fact about Rosenberg's description of his friend Al Sarant, whom he recruited for the KGB.
  10. Federal Bureau of Investigation (2017-01-16). "Alfred Sarant". p. 49. Retrieved 2018-01-15. The subject was a member of the ROSENBERG espionage ring. In 1950 he deserted his wife and disappeared with CAROL DAYTON, the wife of BRUCE DAYTON. He has not been heard from since that time.
  11. Usdin, Steven T. (2005). "Tracking Julius Rosenberg's Lesser Known Associates: Famous Espionage Cases". Studies in Intelligence:Journal of the American Intelligence Professional. Center for the Study of Intelligence: CSI Publications. 49 (3). Retrieved 2017-05-27. In July 1959, Sarant and Barr attracted attention at the highest levels of the Soviet military when they completed a working prototype of a digital computer based on off-the-shelf components, including germanium transistors. The UM-1, intended as an airborne computer to control navigation and weapons systems, was small enough to fit on a kitchen table, was light enough for one person to lift, and required about the same power as a light bulb.
  12. "NOVA Online , Secrets, Lies, and Atomic Spies , Read Venona Intercepts: November 14, 1944". January 2002. Retrieved 2019-01-15. Sarant/Staros died of a heart attack in the USSR in 1979.

Sources

Further reading
  • Ronald Radosh and Joyce Milton, The Rosenberg File: A Search for the Truth, Henry Holt (1983), hardcover, ISBN 0-03-049036-7
  • Richard C.S. Trahair and Robert Miller, Encyclopedia of Cold War Espionage, Spies, and Secret Operations, Enigma Books (2009), paperback, ISBN 978-1-929631-75-9
  • Podcast interview with author of Engineering Communism: How Two Americans Spied for Stalin and Founded the Soviet Silicon Valley Part I Part II
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