June 19-25, 2003

cover story

Gold Fingered

GOLD STANDARD: Harry Gold's younger brother Joe reads the news about the arrest.

How a nebbish from Philadelphia became a spy and helped bring down a Soviet atomic espionage ring.

by Allen Hornblum

At 5-foot, 6-inches short and 180 pudgy pounds, Heinrich Golodnitsky wasn’t ever going to be mistaken for James Bond. Even with the adoption of a more Americanized handle, Harry Gold wasn’t going to be seen for anything more than he appeared to be, a harmless little schlemiel. With his droopy eyelids and perpetually sad, moon-shaped face sitting atop a dated, colorless business suit, his wide, hideous tie tucked in his pants, there’d be no suave, prepossessing, "Gold -- Harry Gold" aura to this secret agent’s act.

Even by Depression-era standards this performance was understated. Unlike Ian Fleming's dashing British operative who ordered his drink of choice shaken, not stirred, Gold, a bookish, Northeast Philly nerd by way of Fourth and Shunk may have desired his matzoh balls delicately sculpted by moist, soft hands instead of machine-rolled, but he'd never be so bold as to request it. Gold, you see, was as selfless, submissive and nondescript as they come.

Gold, however, was the real deal and Bond was invention. And as we've all been told, truth is stranger than fiction.

Harry Gold was certainly strange. A bizarre, innocuous schlepper according to some, an adroit, cunning con man to others, Gold was the quintessential enigma wrapped in riddle. To this day, however, and despite his significant role in history, no one has quite figured the little man out.

Fifty years ago this month, diminutive, unassuming Harry Gold was the centerpiece of a life-and-death drama that inspired raucous street protests abroad, deep political rifts at home and the lasting enmity of his countrymen He played a pivotal role in what J. Edgar Hoover called "the crime of the century."

On June 19, 1953, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were electrocuted at Sing Sing Prison's death house for their role in "altering the course of history to the disadvantage of our country" by turning the secret of the atomic bomb over to the communists.

Harry Gold, dutiful son, graduate of South Philadelphia High School for Boys, exemplar student at Penn, Drexel and St. Joseph's universities and longtime employee of the Pennsylvania Sugar Company at Shackamaxon and Delaware avenues, was the linchpin of the government's case. As the federal prosecutor said, "Harry Gold forged the necessary link in the chain that points indisputably to the guilt of the Rosenbergs." In so doing, Gold destroyed, in the words of a one high-ranking Russian agent, "one of the Soviet Union's best intelligence networks."

But not before he had also "sold his own country down the drain" and been awarded the Soviet Union's Order of the Red Star -- a highly prized combat medal for bravery that very few noncombatants and non-Russians ever won.

During the past half-century, dozens of books and scores of articles have been written about the Rosenberg case, as emotionally charged philosophical partisans have marshaled their facts and leveled their arguments in an effort to prove or disprove the government's claim of a wide-ranging Rosenberg spy ring. While some saw Ethel and Julius Rosenberg as innocent victims of a massive government frame-up in a land polluted by McCarthyism, others saw the Jewish couple from New York as evil communist agents, the menacing vanguard of an ever enlarging espionage network determined to subvert America according to Stalinist dictates. Only very recently, with the release of the Venona files -- the government's secret transcripts of double-encrypted Soviet codes sent and received by Soviet diplomatic missions in the United States -- and the publication of tell-all books by former Soviet spies confirming the Rosenbergs complicity in espionage, have veterans of the Old Left begun to lower their once-strident voices.

For all those years, however, one man -- one meek, unremarkable Philadelphian -- drew the onus of Rosenberg defenders and American loyalists alike. Called a pathological liar and borderline schizophrenic by the former and a traitor and Jewish scum by the latter, Gold was even turned on by his formerly adoring Russian handlers, who eventually considered him "a coward a weakling" who "rolled over on his back" when confronted with "a minimum amount of pressure."

At the time of his arrest, however, in May 1950, Oxford Circle neighbors and co-workers of Harry’s at the heart station laboratory at Philadelphia General Hospital were "flabbergasted." None of them could conceive of the "quiet," "conscientious," "pudgy" "little man" who kept to himself and put in long hours at work playing a critical role in a high-stakes game of international intrigue. Our Harry passing atomic bomb secrets from Manhattan Project scientist Klaus Fuchs and Army engineer David Greenglass on to the Soviets? Our Harry trafficking in industrial formulas and processes for over a decade? Our Harry a top Bolshevik courier? No way. You’ve got to be kidding, they said.

HARRY SPOTTER: Thousands line Market Street in front of the federal courthouse to catch a glimpse of Gold after his arrest by the FBI.

In fact, no one could believe it. "You wouldn't really take a second look at him," said an exasperated Dr. Pascal Lucchesi, PGH's medical director. "He's only about 5-feet, 4-inches tall, has stooped shoulders and always seemed to mind his own business."

"He was the most considerate man I had known" at the hospital, said one employee. Former co-workers at the sugar company were equally "thunderstruck." They recalled Gold as "conscientious," his propensity for "considerable overtime" and his solidarity with workers. He helped his colleagues with their college courses and once refused to cross their picket line during a strike, staying out of work 28 days even though he didn't need to and nearly lost his job.

"I just can't believe it," said a stunned Northeast rowhouse neighbor. "He seemed like such a nice fellow. He was so quiet." Shocked amazement was said to be the general community reaction.

That went for Gold's family as well.

"It's like a nightmare," proclaimed Joe Gold, Harry's brother and an Army veteran who saw action in the South Pacific. "All I know is my brother is not a communist. He never has been a communist. My father, Samuel, is not a communist, and neither am I."

As if the government's allegations against Harry weren't bad enough, the Gold family started to receive death threats. One missive began, "We are going to kill Harry. That Jew cocksucker, the spy, the Kike, the monkey is a disgrace. Hitler made one mistake, he should have killed all the Jews." Another said, "Only a Jew would sell his country to a stinking country like Russia for a few bucks." The Golds' quiet, peaceful lives had been turned upside down; they were frightened by the venomous threats and dumbstruck by what people were saying about Harry.

But the allegations were true; Harry said so himself. After scores of FBI agents performed hundreds of hours of plodding investigative work in the aftermath of Klaus Fuchs’ arrest in London in February 1950, Gold eventually became the chief suspect as the courier who had moved top-secret Manhattan Project material from Los Alamos to Moscow. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover said of the exhaustive search for Fuchs’ American courier, "In all the history of the FBI there never was a more important problem than this one, never another case where we felt under such pressure. The unknown man had to be found."

They found him all right, at 6823 Kindred Street in Oxford Circle. A 39-year-old chemist who lived with his brother and father, Gold initially denied any knowledge of the affair. Agents finally searched his cluttered room, pushed their way through 200 "pocket book" mystery novels and numerous scientific tomes and discovered a street map of Santa Fe behind a bulky copy of Principles of Chemical Engineering.

"How about it, Harry?" said one skeptical FBI agent who had heard Gold say he had never been west of the Mississippi.

"Give me a minute," said Gold, noticeably shaken.

The little man took a seat, accepted a cigarette from the agent and then said, "Yes, I am the man to whom Klaus Fuchs gave the information on atomic energy."

With Gold’s arrest, newspaper headlines trumpeting "Chemist Arrested Here as Atom Spy, Gave Fuchs’ Stolen Secrets to Reds" and "Local Chemist Admits Contacts with Dr. Fuchs" and thousands of people milling around the Federal Courthouse on Market Street hoping to get a gander at the homegrown spy, things moved rather quickly.

When the slight, unassuming defendant walked into court, he surprised everyone by claiming he was destitute and requested the judge appoint him an attorney "whose patriotism is unimpeachable with the entire respect of the court, public and bar." He further requested that whomever was appointed "not make a show," have "no radical connections whatever and no leftist or pinkish background whatsoever." It seemed the spy had had an ideological makeover overnight.

Curiously, Gold had no problem with pleading guilty to acting as a courier for a Russian atom bomb spy ring, but he was defiant in his refusal to plead guilty to the second part of the indictment -- trying to deliberately hurt the United States. "I said that before and I'm sticking to it," Gold told the judge. "I had no intention of hurting my country."

In what can only be described as an exquisite sense of humor, Judge James P. McGranery appointed John D.M. Hamilton, former chairman of the Republican National Committee and partner in the silk-stocking Philadelphia law firm of Pepper Bodine Stokes, as Gold's attorney. Hamilton quickly recruited a young assistant from the firm, Augustus S. Ballard, as co-counsel and then made off for what became repeated trips to Holmesburg Prison to interview their client.

Between federal agents and his attorneys, Gold sat through round-the-clock interrogation sessions. Gold opened up, nothing was held back. He told of his serendipitous start and lengthy career as a spy stretching back to the early years of the Depression when he stole data from the Pennsylvania Sugar Company concerning industrial solvents used for varnishes and lacquers, items such as ethyl acetate, ethyl chloride, amyl acetate and specialized chemicals for blending motor fuels. All of them and more would be passed on to AMTORG, a Soviet trade organization that fronted more strategic endeavors.

Later, during the war, Gold became even more valuable to his Russian handlers as he was bumped up to transporting key military and national defense secrets. Gold was routinely sent on information-gathering missions around the country. Industrial chemist Alfred Dean Slack, for example, supplied him with information on explosives and photographic processes in Rochester, N.Y., and Oak Ridge, Tenn. Fuchs and Greenglass (Ethel Rosenberg's brother) had passed vital atom bomb information on to him in Albuquerque and Santa Fe, N.M. Harry's trips to New York to meet Semon Semenov and Anatoli Yakolev, his Soviet contacts, were too numerous to count.

By December 1950, it was all over. Though he had cooperated fully, sat through endless hours of interrogation, served as a key witness in two trials and would present an unchallenged version of clandestine events in the upcoming Rosenberg trial, the government handed Gold a hefty sentence -- 30 years, five more than prosecutors requested and 16 more than the British gave Dr. Fuchs. Gold was unfazed by the lengthy sentence; he apparently felt he had it coming.

His stoic reaction to what was generally perceived as a life sentence behind bars was typical Gold; it seemed he always felt more comfortable taking orders than confronting the undesirable prospect of making decisions for himself. Free will and free choice were fine in theory, but quite untidy on an everyday basis.

More than a half-century later, how are we to explain such a man playing such a dramatic and controversial role in Soviet-American relations? How does a Harry Gold become the cornerstone of "the crime of the century"? A good place to begin is with those who knew him best and remained loyal to him throughout his lengthy imprisonment -- his lawyers.

Now in his early 80s and long-retired from the Pepper Hamilton law firm, Gus Ballard was a new kid on the legal block when John Hamilton, one of the titans of the Philly Bar and the National Republican Party chose him to assist with the Gold case.

"I was delighted to be chosen as co-counsel, but Hamilton told me to be prepared," recalls Ballard, of the highly charged political atmosphere. "He said every kook in the world is gonna call you names and say why don't you go back to Russia. He told me it was a big case, but I didn't know how big. When we went down to the courthouse for the first time to meet our client it was amazing. There were thousands of people out on Market Street and around the courthouse. It looked like the whole city turned out."

If Ballard was overwhelmed by the number of curiosity-seekers angling for a peek at the master spy and the attendant media coverage, he was underwhelmed by the reason for it -- his client.

"I saw this young, anxious Jewish intellectual and said to myself, this little guy is part of the crime of the century? You could walk down the street and you'd never look at him twice." In retrospect, says Ballard, "I guess that made him the perfect spy."

At that first meeting it was evident Gold was "happy to have true-blue American lawyers, but he was already determined to plead guilty. He was very remorseful and wanted the whole story out," says Ballard. "The burden of a double life had just gotten to him. But we nearly had a very big problem with the plea. Harry admitted he helped a foreign power, but he was unwilling to accept the portion of the indictment that dealt with intent to injure the United States. He had no intention of harming his country. We threatened to withdraw the plea if that stayed in there."

Over the following days, months and years, Ballard came to know Harry fairly well. Despite different cultural attitudes, political philosophies and Gold's lengthy imprisonment, a close friendship was formed. It's obvious Ballard saw much good in Harry.

"He was an intriguing guy, very bright, very articulate and a compulsive worker," says Ballard of his infamous client. "He was a likeable person, he never complained. He was a good conversationalist and a glutton for knowledge and information. And Harry loved sports, not as a participant, but as a spectator."

Ballard says Gold adjusted well to prison life and became a model prisoner. He worked in Lewisburg's medical unit and even obtained "three or four patents for intricate medical procedures such as blood tests." Some say he even enjoyed imprisonment. On hearing such accusations, Harry told his lawyer, "Gus, don't tell people I'm happy in prison. Nobody is really happy in prison."

As the years went by and others, such as Greenglass and Fuchs, received their pass out of prison, Ballard worked vigorously to procure Harry's release. "Eight of Gold's appeals were shot down by the time JFK was assassinated," says Ballard, who gradually grew "discouraged by the process" and started to consider executive clemency as an alternative. He even sought out Roy Cohn, one of the Rosenberg prosecutors, for assistance. Gold had always been cooperative, but was still a hot potato, and the government wasn't about to release such a formidable character while the Cold War was still brewing.

Then in 1966, the call came in. "We're going to release Harry," said a parole officer.

"I don't believe it," replied Ballard. "Say it again."

Harry returned to his doting brother and aged, sickly father and spent the remaining six years of his life living in their modest two-story brick Kindred Street home and working quietly as a clinical chemist at John F. Kennedy Hospital on Roosevelt Boulevard. He died on the operating table at the hospital while undergoing heart surgery and was buried at nearby Har Nebo Cemetery.

As to the reasons Harry became a spy, Ballard is more circumspect. He talks of Gold's difficult childhood in South Philadelphia, the family's economic problems during the Depression, the pervasive anti-Semitism at the time and Harry's sense of obligation.

"Harry Gold got on a treadmill and didn't know how to get off," says Ballard of his client's strange odyssey. "Harry was grateful to AMTORG for getting him a job during the Depression. The Soviets just led him along. The Russians were viewed early on as the only friends of the Jews and Harry tried to help them."

Though he routinely stole and moved sensitive documents for them, Ballard says, "Harry was never enthusiastic about what he was doing. And when he wanted to stop, they threatened to divulge what he had done. He was just trying to be helpful and repay a debt."

Helpful to whom? Repay what debt? The answers to those questions and others are to be found in The Circumstances Surrounding My Work as a Soviet Agent, Harry Gold’s autobiographical prison treatise written at the behest of his lawyers just after his arrest in 1950.

The book was "Hamilton's idea," said Ballard. "He wanted Harry to write an account of his spy activity." The result was one of the more unusual big-house memoirs -- a handwritten sociological and political mea culpa illuminating much of Gold's life and decision to become a Russian spy.

A good portion of the 100-odd page document written in pencil in a grammar-school composition book focuses on Gold's troubled youth in South Philadelphia.

Born to Samson and Celia Golodnitsky, Russian Jews in Berne, Switzerland, in 1910, the family moved to Philadelphia when Harry was 4. Life on the 2600 block of South Phillip Street was far from easy. The street, according to Harry, "was the objective of surprise sorties by the Neckers," a gang of street toughs that lived in an undeveloped, marshy section of South Philadelphia, which is currently home to the Food Distribution Center. Though the Neckers ran roughshod over most inhabitants north of Oregon Avenue, "the gang showed special hatred for Jews in these brick-throwing, window-smashing forays."

It seems that Harry was always at risk on South Philly's mean streets in the 1920s; even short trips to the local public library at Broad and Porter could turn into hair-raising episodes. On one occasion when Gold was 12, he was "seized by a group of 15-year-old boys at 12th and Shunk streets and badly beaten."

Over the next two years, Sam Gold had to "convoy" his son to and from the library each Saturday, much to Harry's embarrassment. For years to come, the relatively undersized, friendless youth had to chart his way through the streets to avoid bullies who found little Harry an irresistible target. Not surprisingly, books became his friends.

Apparently, Sam Gold had his own problems. One of the few Jews working at the Victor Talking Machine Company (the precursor of the Radio Corporation of America), he was regularly harassed.

"They stole his chisels, put glue on his tools and clothes and generally made life difficult for him," wrote Gold. One "Irish foreman" had it in for him and told Sam, "You Jew son-of-a-bitch, I'm going to make you quit" and placed him on a "speeded-up production line where Father was the only one hand-sanding cabinets."

Sam returned home each night, his fingertips raw and bleeding. Celia would "bathe the wounded members and Pop would go back to work the next morning. But he would never quit or complain," although "he always tried to conceal his fingers from us."

The accumulated blows over the years to both himself and his family resulted in Gold developing "a tremendous resentment" and an "overwhelming desire to do something active to fight it, to combat it -- something on a much wider and effective scale than by smashing an individual anti-Semite in the face."

To compound the family's woes, the Golds were desperately poor, Harry was chronically sick and underweight and they soon had an additional mouth to feed (son Joe -- they called him Yussel -- was born in 1917). The Golds had to skimp constantly, living-room furniture purchased from Lit Brothers had to be returned and Celia Gold was adamantly opposed to charity. Anything that smacked of a charitable handout was considered "deep ignominy" and rejected. For example, the school district had a summer camp for "sickly and undernourished youngsters" outside of Philadelphia. Gold qualified, but Celia wouldn't hear of it. Only when teachers deceptively informed her it was part of the regular public-school program did she relent. Gold gained weight, "developed a fabulous appetite" and was said "to eat anything that will stand still long enough or won't eat him first."

The Depression only aggravated the Gold family's economic problems. Harry Gold lost his job at Pennsylvania Sugar Company and had to drop out of Penn and search for work. A serious student, Gold wanted to be a scientist and spent several years at Penn and Drexel Institute's evening school pursuing his goal, but he needed to help his family put food on the table. (Years later he would graduate summa cum laude from Xavier University. Curiously, although he earned just about all As in courses ranging from organic chemistry to differential calculus, he received his only C in principles of ethics.)

After a lengthy job search during the Depression, however, a man named Tom Black assisted him in getting a job at Holbrook Manufacturing, a soap firm in Jersey City. To acquire and keep the job, Gold had to hide the fact that he was Jewish, but he was still tremendously appreciative. The income kept him and his family fed and together. Black, a former Penn State student, had one request: He wanted Gold to join the Communist Party.

Although Gold was never politically active, he was influenced by his mother's socialist proclivities and "fascination" with Eugene Debs. Gold bought into many of his mother's beliefs and became a supporter of the socialist Norman Thomas, but he was moderate in his political tastes and was "horrified" to learn a high-school friend of his had become a communist.

Grateful for the Jersey City job, Gold felt obligated to attend Communist Party meetings, workers educational classes and endure Black's "steady barrage of facts" about the failure of capitalism. Gold found the whole thing rather "dreary and futile." The communists he met were "despicable bohemians who prattled of free love; others were lazy bums and would never ever work and finally a certain type of endless, boring talkers to whom no one but this weird conglomeration of individuals would listen. "

Despite the "shabby and shoddy lot" of Party members he was meeting and the reacquisition of his former job at Pennsylvania Sugar, Gold complied with an alternative proposal by Black -- to aid AMTORG, the Soviet trade organization. He'd have to steal "a variety of specialized information on certain chemical processes" held by his employer, but Gold agreed. His reasons were twofold. The first was his sincere desire "to help the people of the Soviet Union enjoy the better things of life." Because of its role as the only nation where "anti-Semitism was a crime against the State" and their singular effort to stop the "ever-growing monstrosity of Fascism," they deserved assistance.

"To me," wrote Gold, "Nazism and Fascism and anti-Semitism were identical. This was the ages-old enemy. " Gold wanted to "participate" in the struggle for justice. He wanted to do "something and not be an idle bystander. "

The second reason was Gold's "basic lack of discipline," which enabled individuals to take advantage of his uncontrolled desire to please, especially those he felt he owed a debt. In this particular case, Black

had saved Gold’s family from "economic destitution" -- the debt needed to be repaid. Initially it was just industrial espionage -- different types of corporate chemicals and processes -- but that eventually led to military secrets and the funneling of Manhattan Project data to the Soviets.

In one of his first pieces of industrial espionage work, Gold met Paul, his contact, at Broad and Chestnut streets to turn over purloined documents. The New Yorker was unimpressed with downtown Philadelphia and asked Gold, "Is that all there is?" On hearing Gold’s answer, he suggested that future meetings to transfer documents should alternate between Philadelphia and New York. He then offered Gold $40 to purchase a chemistry book, The Techniques of Soaps, Fats, Oils and Waxes, but Gold became agitated. Gold refused the money and told Paul he wasn’t helping the Soviets for money.

Almost from the very beginning, the work began to dominate his life. But Gold never complained; he was the perfect worker -- regardless of who retained his services. As Gold declared in his prison memoir, "The planning of a meeting with a Soviet agent, the careful preparation for obtaining data from Penn Sugar, the writing of technical reports and the filching of blueprints for copying (and then returning them), the meetings in New York or Cincinnati or Buffalo, going to a rendezvous with Al Slack in Tennessee or Klaus Fuchs in Cambridge or Santa Fe -- and the difficulties I had in raising money for all these trips, … cajoling Brothman to do work and the outright blackmailing of Ben Smilg for the same purpose and the many lies I had to tell at home, and to my friends, to explain my whereabouts during these absences from home (Mom was certain I was carrying on a series of clandestine love affairs and nothing could be further from the truth), the hours of waiting on street corners, waiting dubiously and fearfully in strange towns where I had no business to be and the uneasy killing of time in cheap movies … all these became so very deeply ingrained in me. It was drudgery and I hated it."

The lifestyle of a secret agent took its toll, especially psychologically, but Gold adjusted by compartmentalizing his life. "When on a mission," writes Gold, "I just completely subordinated myself to the task at hand. … Once I started out on a trip, I totally forgot home and family and work and friends and just became a single-minded automaton, set to do the job. And when the task was completed and I returned home the same process again took place, but this time in reverse. I would return to work and would become completely absorbed by it, a very easy and natural affair for me, and I would cast away and bury all thought and all memory of everything that had happened on the trip."

Even before the FBI finally tracked him down, the little man from South Philadelphia who had nothing but good intentions had come "to the horrible and sickening realization that it had all been such a tragic and irremediable mistake. … I, who so much wanted to combat the hatred of Jews in America, have now done so much more to aid in its spread."

But the realization was too late, and as Gus Ballard, his attorney, said, "Harry didn’t know how to get off the treadmill." From the moment of his arrest, Gold "tried to act with dignity, … sought no legal outs or deals and … expected to take his punishment" like "a man."

Harry Gold concluded the unusual cellblock chronicle of his life as a spy by quoting a passage from "The Hollow Men," a T.S. Eliot’s poem: "This is the way the world ends. This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang, but with a whimper."

Added Gold, "I do not propose to whimper. I have done my best to make amends, but I know that, somehow, sometime, somewhere, I shall, with God's help, make an even greater restitution."