Chester

The NKGB foreign intelligence cover name which appeared in the notes on KGB foreign intelligence records taken in the mid-1990s by the former KGB officer and journalist Alexander Vassiliev. According to Vassiliev’s notes, the cover name was used in 1944 and 1945 for the American nuclear physicist and head of the Manhattan Project, Robert Oppenheimer.

Chester was also the party name of CPUSA functionary Bernard Schuster. The name appears in a single, partially decrypted NKGB Venona cable from September 21, 1944. Its bearer was identified by Venona translators as “Bernard Schuster nee Ekho.”

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