Jacob Golos

Russian-born Jake Golos (birth name Jacob Rasin or Jacob Raisen) (1890-1943), born in the Ukraine. He was a Bolshevik revolutionary and Soviet secret police operative in the USSR. He was also a longtime senior official of the Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA) involved in covert work and cooperation with Soviet intelligence agencies. He changed his name to Golos because of his involvement with a pro-Bolshevik daily newspaper published in New York, Russky Golos or The Russian Voice. During World War II he developed several large espionage networks of secret Communist party members who worked for the United States government and linked them to the Soviet intelligence. They are commonly referred to as the "Golos ring" of Soviet espionage agents.

Jacob Golos was the "main pillar" of the NKVD intelligence network and they disliked his refusal to allow them contact with his sources. He was not merely a CPUSA official assisting the NKVD (an agent or “probationer” in KGB slang) but held official rank in the NKVD. The code name "Sound" appears in the Venona decryptions as a Soviet source and was identified as Jacob Golos. The reference to Golos in the Venona decrypts as an “illegal colleague” corroborates Elizabeth Bentley's testimony.

The term “nelegal’ny sotrudnik” can be translated as “illegal colleague,” “illegal associate” or “illegal operative,” was Soviet espionage terminology for a Soviet officer or professional agent who operated without the protection of diplomatic or official status with a Soviet embassy, consulate or agency and usually with false documents. Soviet officers with the latter status were said to be “legal.” Golos also worked for the Society for Technical Aid to Soviet Russia and was head of a company called World Tourists, which while posing as a travel agency actually facilitated international travel to and from the United States by Soviet agents and CPUSA members. World Tourists was also deeply involved in passport fraud.

The NKVD suspected Golos of Trotskyism and tried to lure him to Moscow, where he could be arrested. The US government got to him first, prosecuting him in 1940 for being an unregistered foreign agent. But even then, he would not surrender his agents.

In 1941, Golos had set up a commercial forwarding enterprise, called the U.S. Service and Shipping Corporation, with Elizabeth Bentley, his lover, as one of its officers.

In the fall of 1942, a Communist cell of engineers was turned over to Golos for Soviet espionage purposes and Julius Rosenberg was the contact between Golos and the group. Golos believed this cell, the XY Line of engineers was capable of development. The XY Line began enormous efforts to penetrate the Manhattan Project, code-named ENORMOUS (ENORMOZ).

Elizabeth Bentley then took over the operation after Golos's sudden death in November 1943 (thus the reference in the decrpyts to him as a “former” colleague).

Source

• John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr, Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999).

External link

• The Atom Spy Case, famous FBI cases
• Cold War Counterintelligence
• John Earl Haynes interpolations and annotations on selections from Alexander Vassiliev’s Notes on Gorsky’s December 1948 Memo
• The Spies Who Loved Us? article by Ellen Schrecker, The Nation, May 24, 1999