Talk:Joseph Katz

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The origin of Joseph Katz is actually a friend of a friend in Virginia, is in his early 20s, and has not had any government job. I refrain from going into further detail of the guy out of respect for privacy. The site was brought up here as a hoax, complete with bogus sources.

Hmm. [Google Books magic happens] He appears in Red Spy Queen, Elizabeth Bentley's biography, but doesn't give any details about him. There's a Joseph Katz in the Venona book, as well, at least mentioned in passing in the appendix, and the cited article exists: [1]. Not ruling out that this article is a hoax - I'm not a great fan of the original author's reliability! - but the bare facts that a guy of that name was fingered as a spy by VENONA do check out. Shimgray | talk | 13:01, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

The article cited at the bottom looks legit, at the very least, where Hyde, a former CIA officer, calls Katz, a "master spy" who "who served the KGB for more than ten years as a superb multifunctional agent" and was in charge of managing Bernard L. Schuster, the organizational secretary of the Communist Party in New York. I'm happy to send a copy of it to anyone who is interested, just send me an e-mail. It is likely there are multiple people named Joseph Katz (Google Phonebook puts at least 34 in New York at the moment). --Fastfission 14:09, 17 July 2006 (UTC)