Solomon Adler

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Solomon Adler (or Sol Adler, alias Schlomer Adler) (died August 4, 1994) was a Treasury Department official and a Soviet spy. Born in Great Britain, he was educated at Oxford University, emigrating to the United States in 1934. He joined the faculty of the People's Junior College in Chicago. In 1935, he was hired by the Federal government, joining the New Deal Works Progress Administration's National Research Project, headed by David Weintraub and Irving Kaplan. He became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1940.

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[edit] Biography

In 1939, former Communist Underground courier Whittaker Chambers identified Adler to then-Assistant Secretary of State Adolf Berle as a member of an underground Communist group in Washington, D.C., the Ware group. Chambers correctly identified Adler as then serving in the General Counsel’s Office at Treasury, from which, Chambers said, Adler supplied weekly reports to the Communist Party.[1]

Adler served as Treasury attaché in China, where he shared a house in 1944 with Institute of Pacific Relations employee and Chinese Communist secret agent Chi Ch’ao ting (aka Chi Chao-ting)[2] and State Department "China hand" John Stewart Service, who would be arrested the following year in the Amerasia scandal.

From China, Adler sent back reports opposing President Franklin D. Roosevelt's gold loan program of $200 million to help the Nationalist Chinese Government finance its defense against the Japanese invasion in 1943. Assistant Secretary of the Treasury Harry Dexter White (identified in the Venona decrypts under the code names “Lawyer”[3]; “Jurist”[4]; “Richard”[5]) and Director of the Treasury's Division of Monetary Research V. Frank Coe (Venona code name "Peak")[6] (who would would later abscond to Red China with Adler)[7] supported this view (to de-stabilize the anti-Communist government of Chiang Kai-shek). Hyperinflation in China amounted to more than 1,000% per year between 1943 and 1945, weakening the standing of the Nationalist government domestically in China. This inflation helped the Communists eventually to come to power in China.

In 1945, former NKVD courier Elizabeth Bentley identified Adler as a Treasury contact of the Silvermaster group in Chungking.[8]

By 1950, Adler was the subject of a Loyalty of Government Employees investigation. Adler resigned just prior to a decision by the Civil Service Commission and Treasury Department. Thereafter, Adler returned to Britain, and when his American passport expired after three years, he was denaturalized and lost his American citizenship.

In the 1950s, Adler emigrated to the People's Republic of China. Adler, Coe, and Sydney Rittenberg worked together in China translating Chairman Mao's works into English. He worked for twenty years for the Chinese Communist Party's Central External Liaison Department, an agency involved in foreign espionage.[9] A photograph shows him with Henshen Chen (aka Chen Han-seng, a member of the Richard Sorge Soviet spy ring)[10], a senior government official who had been an intelligence operative in the United States from the late 1930s until 1949. Chen wrote in his memoirs that he used the cover as an editor for the journal Pacific Affairs and worked as a researcher at the Institute of Pacific Relations, and had covert liaisons with the Communist Party of the United States (CPUSA).

Adler died in China on August 4, 1994.

According to ex-KGB officer Alexander Vassiliev, Anatoly Gorsky, then NKVD rezident in Washington, identified Adler in 1948 in the so-called “Gorsky memo” as the Soviet agent designated "Sax."[11] This agent, transliterated "Sachs (Saks)" in the Venona decrypts is (together with White) described as supplying information via both Gorsky and Communist Party boss Earl Browder about the Chinese Communists.[12]

[edit] References

  1. ^ Whittaker Chambers, Witness (New York: Random House, 1952), 0-89526-571-0, pp. 468; U.S. Senate Internal Security Subcommittee, Interlocking Subversion in Government Departments [Hearings] (Washington: U.S. Govt. Print. Off., 1953), part 6, pp. 329–30; Adolf Berle, "Underground Espionage Agent," September 2, 1939
  2. ^ S. Rpt. 2050, 82d Cong., 2d sess., Serial 11574, pursuant to S. Res. 306, Institute of Pacific Relations (Hearings July 25, 1951–June 20, 1952 by the Subcommittee to Investigate the Administration of the Internal Security Act and Other Internal Security Laws of the Committee on the Judiciary)
  3. ^ 1251 KGB New York to Moscow, 2 September 1944, p. 2
  4. ^ Robert J. Hanyok, Eavesdropping on Hell: Historical Guide to Western Communications Intelligence and the Holocaust, 1939-1945 (Washington, DC: Center for Cryptologic History, National Security Agency, 2005, 2nd Ed.), p. 119 (PDF page 124)
  5. ^ 83 KGB New York to Moscow, 18 January 1945, p.1
  6. ^ John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr, Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America (New Haven, Conn: Yale University Press, 1999), ISBN 0300077718, p. 143
  7. ^ Raymond F. Mikesell, "The Bretton Woods Debates: A Memoir," Essays in International Finance (Princeton University Department of Economics, International Finance Section), ISBN 0-88165-099-4, No. 192, March 1994, fn 19, p. 55
  8. ^ Statement of Elizabeth Terrill Bentley, November 30, 1945 (FBI file: Silvermaster, Volume 6), p. 26 (PDF p. 27)
  9. ^ John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr, Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1999) ISBN 0300077718, p. 144
  10. ^ Maochen Yu, "Chen Hansheng's Memoirs and Chinese Communist Espionage," Cold War International History Project Bulletin, 6-7 (Winter 1995/1996), p. 274
  11. ^ Anatoly Gorsky, "Compromised American Sources and Networks," December 1948 (tr. Alexander Vassiliev)
  12. ^ 14 KGB New York to Moscow 4 January 1945, p. 2

[edit] Works

  • Solomon Adler: The Chinese Economy (London, Routledge & Paul 1957)
  • Joan Robinson, Sol Adler: China: an economic perspective (Foreword by Harold Wilson; London, Fabian International Bureau 1958)
  • Sol Adler: A Talk to Comrades of the English Section for the Translation of Volume V of Chairman Mao's Selected Works (Guānyú "Máo xuǎn" dì-wǔ juǎn fānyì wèntí de bàogào 关于《毛选》第五卷翻译问题的报告; Beijing, Foreign Languages Press 1978).

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