A Century of Russian Disinformation: Part Five
Introducing Amtorg: The Kremlin's Historic Espionage Headquarters in America
This stack introduces Amtorg Trading Corporation, the import-export service in New York that the Soviets used as their espionage home base through much of the 20th century.
Established in 1924, Amtorg ostensibly managed trade between America and the Soviet Union. In 1929, it operated out of offices at 261 Fifth Avenue, a fashionable address for a fashionable outfit. If you wanted caviar for your party, Amtorg was the agency that arranged for it to be brought into the country. If you wanted to purchase a coat of Russian sable, Amtorg would bring that in for you.
But Amtorg primarily brought in spies. Lots and lots of spies. Officially, these spies were just employees of Amtorg: export managers, bookkeepers, chauffeurs and the like. Having a legitimate job title allowed Russian spies to operate without drawing much suspicion. It also allowed them to request information which they wouldn’t be able to obtain another way.
For example, if you wanted to sell American agricultural machines in Russia, Amtorg would arrange it, but would insist on being able to view the blueprints of the machine; Amtorg could use this examination to amass more information on American industrial designs and methods.
Amtorg’s status a legitimate enterprise allowed it to funnel money into America to fund Soviet disinformation and espionage operations, as described in previous stacks in this series. Amtorg quietly funded all of the Communist Party of America’s newspapers, in whatever language, which carried Kremlin talking points to the masses.
More openly, Amtorg published pamphlets and books about the natural resources and industrial development of the Soviet Union. This literature was scarcely more than propaganda, disclosing nothing about the county’s economic woes nor a word about Stalin’s vast purges and expanding gulag system.
Critically, Amtorg’s scope of operations also included shipping, giving Soviet intelligence perfect cover for getting its agents in and out of the country undetected. One of these agents, Paul Crouch, was brought into America on a cargo vessel that allowed no passengers; Amtorg simply signed him up under an alias as a member of the crew. Through this method, Amtorg also got George Mink into the country. Mink was GRU’s most notorious hitman; Trotsky accused of trying to assassinate him in Mexico in 1938.
Throughout 1920s and most of the 1930s, Amtorg operated with only minimal oversight from the United States. Throughout World War II, it managed the export of American weapons to the USSR. It wasn’t until the late 1940s that the United States government prevailed upon Amtorg to formally declare its advocacy for the Soviet Union under the provisions of the Foreign Agents Registration Act. Amtorg flatly refused to register despite several U.S. appeals that it do so.
The United States government was well apprised of Amtorg’s activities by then. Several former spies for the Soviet Union had disclosed Amtorg’s operations to the House UnAmerican Activities Committee. Amtorg’s lengthy and heavily redacted FBI file suggests that the Bureau had placed confidential informants working as double agents inside of Amtorg. They knew what the Soviets were doing and preferred to keep an eye on it rather than stop it.
Remarkably, Amtorg persisted until the 1990s when the Soviet Union collapsed. But as we now know, the collapse of the USSR was only partial, leaving more or less undisturbed an intelligence apparatus. And so I end this stack with a question for readers:
What organizations fulfill Amtorg’s many functions today?
Archival collections consulted:
Herbert Solow Papers, Hoover Institute, Stanford University
Paul Crouch Papers, Hoover Institute, Stanford University