Vladimir Pozner
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Vladimir Aleksandrovich Pozner (Владимир Александрович Познер) was a Russian-Jewish emigré to the United States. During World War II he spied for Soviet intelligence while being employed by the United States Government.[citation needed]
The Pozner family fled Soviet Russia after the Bolshevik Revolution, and Vladimir Pozner became a Communist sympathizer while living in Europe. He was chief engineer of the European branch of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) in Paris in 1938. He fought in the French army until its defeat in 1940, and then moved to the United States with his French wife and son in 1941. In 1943 he headed the Russian Section of the film department of the U.S. War Department. Pozner was a frequent contact of Louise Bransten.
Vladimir Pozner's cover name as identified in the Venona project by NSA/FBI analysts is "Plato".
Vladimir Pozner and his family moved to Berlin and later to Moscow in the early 1950s.
Pozner's son, Vladimir Vladimirovich Pozner, spoke internationally on behalf of Soviet agencies, and after the collapse of the Soviet Union came to be treated in the U.S., under the name Vladimir Posner (having anglicized the surname), as an independent journalist.
[edit] References
- Pozner memo, 23 May 1944, Comintern Apparatus file, serial 2378.
- John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr, Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America, New Haven: Yale University Press, (1999), pg. 233. ISBN 0300077718
[edit] Venona
Pozner is referenced in the following Venona project decrypts:
- 1131–1133 KGB New York to Moscow, 13 July 1943
- 1930 KGB New York to Moscow, 21 November 1943