SLEEPER AGENT

The biography of a Soviet spy whose story may be new even to history buffs.

The son of a Russian-Jewish immigrant who settled in Iowa, George Koval (1913-2006) grew up in a middle-class family, performed brilliantly in high school, graduated at age 15, and enrolled in the University of Iowa to study engineering. Unlike most American Jews, Koval’s parents welcomed the 1918 Bolshevik Revolution, and by the time the Depression overwhelmed the nation, George was a dedicated communist. In 1932, George and his family immigrated to the Soviet Union, where he entered the elite Mendeleev Institute in Moscow to study chemistry. His talents caught the attention of Soviet army intelligence, which recruited him and sent him back to America, where he enrolled at Columbia University. As accomplished as he had been in Moscow, Koval impressed the army after being drafted in 1943 and found himself part of the Manhattan Project in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, where he kept Moscow informed. He did the same after his transfer in 1945 to Dayton, Ohio, where polonium was assembled into the triggers essential to nuclear explosions. In an intriguing narrative, journalist Hagedorn emphasizes that Dayton was as important as Oak Ridge and Los Alamos in the creation of the atomic bomb. After the war, Koval returned to New York. Although he no longer engaged in weapons research, the Cold War had begun, and defections of Soviet agents had exposed several of Koval’s contacts. Still off the official radar, he returned to Russia in 1948. The final 50 pages of the book are the most fascinating. Despite Soviet reports extolling Koval’s work, he received no rewards. Unable to find work, he wrote a pleading letter to the director of Soviet intelligence. The result was a modest teaching position at the Mendeleev Institute, from which he retired after 35 years on a pension so meager that he applied (unsuccessfully) for U.S. Social Security benefits in 1999. Learning this and fearing bad publicity, Russian intelligence raised his pension.

An eye-opening account of perhaps the Soviet Union’s most successful sleeper agent.