Paul / [Pol], [Pol'], [Pa-ul']

I. Paul [Pol]

A so-called “street name,” or alias, that according to Whittaker Chambers was used by a Communist literary agent, Maxim Lieber, while he was in the Communist underground during the 1930s.

II. [Pol'], [Pa-ul']

A Russian cover name that was used in operational correspondence by the NKGB foreign intelligence during World War II with two Russian spellings — as a French name, which is spelled in Russian as [Pol'], and a German name, spelled in Russian as [Pa-ul']. Both spellings designated the same courier or liaison officer of the NKGB’s military “neighbors,” the Soviet military intelligence, or GRU.

With the French spelling [Pol'], this name appears:

1) In a March 30, 1945 cable sent to NKGB Center in Moscow by its Washington, D.C. station chief (or resident), “Vadim,” whose real name was Anatoly Gorsky. This cable was partially decrypted in the course of the Venona operation and is commonly known as “Venona 1822.” It gives some background on the “neighbors”‘ source “Ales” (an NKGB-assigned pseudonym). [Pol'], it said, is someone with whom “Ales” “has been working” “in all the recent years,” and “who also occasionally meets [with] other members of the group.”

2) In a March 5, 1945 cable, sent to Moscow by “Vadim”/Gorsky, which was not decrypted during the Venona operation but came to light in early 2005 in notes taken in 1994 by a former KGB officer and journalist, Alexander Vassiliev, for his first American co-author, Allen Weinstein, [Pol'] appears as someone with whom “Ales” “came in contact” “after the loss of contact with ‘Karl‘” – and with whom “Ruble” “declined” to make contact.

With the German spelling [Pa-ul'], this name appears in Alexander Vassiliev’s notes on several NKGB documents from December 1944 as someone who “in June 1940 tried to find an approach” to “Ruble” – an incident which “Ruble” wrote about in the autobiography he prepared for resident Gorsky. Upon receipt of this information, Moscow NKGB Center ascertained that [Pa-ul'] “worked for the neighbors” – and instructed its Washington resident Gorsky “to warn ‘Ruble’ not to come into contact with [Pa-ul']” in case the latter “appeared again.”

Crosschecking these sources against information and documentation that has recently become available in Russia confirms that [Pol'] and [Pa-ul'] both refer to the same person with the cover name of “Doctor” – a man who has recently been identified in Russian publications as an agent-group leader and liaison officer of the GRU’s “Omega” group ["rezidentura"] in Washington, D.C. from 1940 to 1945. This group was headed by Lev Alexandrovich Sergeev (“Moris“).