Duncan Lee

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Lt. Col. Duncan Chaplin Lee was confidential assistant to Maj. Gen. William ("Wild Bill") Donovan, founder and director of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), World War II-era predecessor of the CIA, during 1942-46. Lee is identified in Venona as the Soviet double agent operating inside OSS under the cover name "Koch."[1], making him the most senior alleged source the Soviet Union ever had inside American intelligence.

While an OSS officer, according to Soviet courier Elizabeth Bentley, Lee -- frequently but inaccurately described as a descendant of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee[2] -- furnished her with information on “anti-Soviet work by OSS” and other topics of interest to Moscow.[3] As Bentley told the FBI when she defected in 1945, she transferred this information to her Soviet handlers.[4]

In her August 1948 appearance before the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HCUA), Bentley testified that Lee furnished her “various types of information,” which she then turned over to her Soviet handlers, including, in Bentley’s words, details on “whether the OSS had spotted any of our people [Communists]” in that organization. As the Germans were retreating from Eastern Europe and the Balkans, Bentley reported Lee as identifying groups working with the OSS to keep Soviet troops out of their countries. Lee also told her, she said, that “something very secret was going on” at Oak Ridge, Tenn., an apparent reference to the Manhattan Project. [5]

Lee, a former Rhodes scholar who attended Oxford University with fellow OSS staffer Donald Niven Wheeler (identified in Venona as the Soviet agent operating in OSS under cover name "Izra"[6]), repeatedly denied Bentley's allegations, under oath[7], but acknowledged he and his wife knew Bentley as a family friend (albeit under an assumed name)[8] and that he had met her several times while an OSS officer in various locations, as well as with Mary Price (identified in Venona as the Soviet agent operating in the office of columnist Walter Lippmann under the code names "Dir"[9] and "probably" "Arena"[10]), and veteran NKVD rezident Jacob Golos, identified in Venona as Zvuk ("Sound"). Lee said he eventually realized that Bentley held "communistic"[11] views and terminated their relationship[12], but never reported these meetings as regulations would seem to require.[13]

Lee’s testimony elicited from one HCUA member, Rep. John McDowell (R-Penn.), the comment: For the first time “since the conspiracy of Aaron Burr, a high officer of the Army has been accused publicly of the violation of the Articles of War, which he must certainly realize the penalties and the punishment.”[14] Lee was in fact never indicted much less convicted of perjury or any other crime despite the accusations of his alleged co-conspirator Bentley[15]. According to Bentley, Lee refused to meet with her in the presence of others when divulging classified information to her and refused to give her any classified documents; there was as a consequence virtually no credible evidence to corroborate Bentley’s accusations[16]. Bentley herself was not an effective witness. Only one of the dozens of people she denounced were ever convicted of any crime arising out of her accusations[17].

The VENONA decrypts that refer to Koch only confirm that Bentley passed on to Moscow the information she claimed to have received from Lee and do not in themselves provide independent evidence to corroborate Bentley’s accusation that Lee was the source of that information[18]. A 1944 Venona decrypt confirms that Lee tipped off Bentley about Donovan sending him on a secret mission to China.[19]

According to the Moynihan Commission, "It would ... appear from the VENONA messages that Duncan Chaplin Lee, Special Assistant to OSS Director William J. Donovan, was a Soviet agent."[20] “Agent”, however, is almost certainly a mischaracterization of Lee since there is no evidence that Lee was ever a member of the NKVD or any other Soviet intelligence gathering organization. On the basis of existing evidence “source” would be a better word to describe Lee, if that was in fact what he was.

Despite Bentley’s accusations, Lee went on to have a successful career as a lawyer in the private sector[21]. Lee continued to represent clients such as Claire Chennault and Whiting Willaurer. In 1949, following the fall of China to the communists, Lee represented a CIA-front company in the Hong Kong and UK courts in a successful effort to keep a large fleet of transport aircraft in Hong Kong, once owned by the Nationalist Chinese government, from being turned over to the new communist Chinese regime after its recognition by the British[22]. Lee joined insurance giant American International Group in 1953, rising to serve as AIG’s chief in-house lawyer in New York City prior to his retirement in 1974[23]. He subsequently moved to Toronto with his Canadian wife where he died in 1988[24].

[edit] References

  1. ^ 800 KGB New York to Moscow, 8 June 1943, p. 1
  2. ^ “KGB, The Inside Story of its Foreign Relations From Lenin to Gorbachev” (Harper Perrenial, 1990)
  3. ^ FBI Silvermaster file, Vol. 6, p. 35 (PDF page 36)
  4. ^ FBI Report, Underground Soviet Espionage Organization (NKVD) in Agencies of the United States Government, October 21, 1946, p. 163 (PDF page 181)
  5. ^ “Testimony of Elizabeth T. Bentley,” Hearings Regarding Communist Espionage in the United States Government, Committee on Un-American Activities, House of Representatives, Eightieth Congress, Second Session, Public Law 601 (Section 121, Subsection Q [2]), Washington: United States Government Printing Office, 1948, p. 727
  6. ^ 771 KGB New York to Moscow, 30 May 1944, p. 3
  7. ^ Testimony of Duncan C. Lee, U.S. Congress. House. Hearings Regarding Communist Espionage in the U.S. Government, 80th Congress, August 10, 1948.
  8. ^ Testimony, op. cit.
  9. ^ 868 KGB New York to Moscow, 8 June 1943
  10. ^ 588 New York to Moscow, 29 April 1944, p. 3
  11. ^ "Testimony of Duncan Chaplin Lee -- Resumed," HCUA Hearings, op. cit., p. 733
  12. ^ Testimony of Duncan C. Lee, U.S. Congress. House. Hearings Regarding Communist Espionage in the U.S. Government, 80th Congress, August 10, 1948.
  13. ^ Ibid., p. 735
  14. ^ Ibid., p. 749
  15. ^ Testimony of Duncan C. Lee, U.S. Congress. House. Hearings Regarding Communist Espionage in the U.S. Government. 80th Congress, August 10, 1948.
  16. ^ Bentley Statements to the FBI November 30, 1945.
  17. ^ Athan Theoharis, “The FBI and American Democracy” (University Press of Kansas, 2004). John Earl Hynes and Harvey Klehr “Early Cold War Spies” (Cambridge University Press, 2006).
  18. ^ See Athan Theoharis, “The FBI and American Democracy” (University Press of Kansas, 2004).
  19. ^ 1353 KGB New York to Moscow, 23 Sept. 1944, p. 1
  20. ^ Report of the Commission on Protecting and Reducing Government Secrecy, 1997, Senate Document 105-2, Pursuant to Public Law 236, 103RD Congress(United States Government Printing Office, Washington : 1997) Appendix A: 7. The Cold War
  21. ^ “A Register of Rhodes Scholars 1903-1981” (Rhodes House, Oxford, 1981)
  22. ^ David McKean, “Tommy the Cork, Washington’s Ultimate Insider from Roosevelt To Reagan”, (Steersford Press, 2004); William McLeary, “Perilous Missions, Civil Air Transport and the CIA’s Covert Operations in Asia” (Smithsonian Institution, 2002); Letter from Major General (Ret.) Claire L. Chennault to Adjunct General, U.S. Army, May 27, 1951 and Affidavit of Whiting Willauer, May 15, 1951.
  23. ^ “A Register of Rhodes Scholars 1903-1981” (Rhodes House, Oxford, 1981).
  24. ^ New York Times, Obituary, 1988.

[edit] Source

  • Allen Weinstein and Alexander Vassiliev, The Haunted Wood: Soviet Espionage in America—The Stalin Era (Random House, 1998)
  • FBI Venona FOIA