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APPENDIX II

PORTRAIT OF A MASTER SPY-J. PETERS

One Saturday morning in the early summer of 1949 a rotund little Hungarian waddled down the ramp of a New York airport to a waiting KLM airliner.

J. Peters was not leaving the United States willingly, but as he paused at the door of the airplane he flashed a "Cheshire cat" smile over his shoulder.

There was ample cause for self-satisfaction. His 25 years in America had been extremely productive. Only a few hours before, at an intimate little dinner party, a top Communist leader had said of him:

"If I had to search and seek in my mind for any man who made a more significant contribution to the growth and development of the Communist Party in the United States, I could not find such other person."

In appearance Peters hardly seemed to fit that tribute. But under this pudgy frame there dwelt a scheming spirit which was the delight of the masters of the Kremlin.

Peters was about 5 feet 4 inches tall. He had dark, bushy hair, and a moustache. His face, hands, and body were fat and round. He loved good food, took an occasional drink, and did not smoke.1

For relaxation the little Hungarian read mystery and detective stories-a true busman's holiday, because Peters, professionally, was the head of Soviet espionage in the United States.

As with all master spies, Peters continues to be a man of mystery, though there is much material on his career. At one time he even appeared before a congressional investigating committee, and a rare photograph of him taken at that hearing is reproduced in these pages. But the information is wispy and at times contradictory. There are gaps.

Much of this is probably due to his use of many aliases during his long career. As a matter of fact, the name J. Peters is itself a pseudonym, though it was the one he went by more than any other of the dozen or more names he used from time to time.

His real name seems to have been Sandor Goldberger, but he also was known at one time or another as Alexander Goldberger, Jack Roberts, Steve Lapin, Pete Stevens, Steve Miller, Isador Boorstein, Blake, Steve Lapur, Alexander Stevens, J. Peter, J. V. Peters, and, of course, J. Peters.

Louis Budenz, former editor of the Communist Daily Worker, referred to Peters as a "man of many names."

1 Source material for this sketch may be found in pp. 1483-4514 of pt. 27, Scope of Soviet Activity in the United States.

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This photo was published August 30, 1948, by the New York Sun with an explana tion that he is holding the papers served on him that day by the House C American Activities Committee (House Committee on Un-American Affairs Sometimes he would change his name abruptly overnight, as illus trated by this excerpt from Budenz' testimony:

"Mr. STRIPLING. Now, early in your testimony you mentioned that you knew J. Peters as the head of the underground movement. Could you elaborate for the committee your knowledge of that activity of J. Peters as a Communist Party functionary?

"Mr. BUDENZ. Yes, sir. You will note in my book, This Is My Story that Mr. Peters appears there, and that I refer to him as the man of

many names.

"In fact, I also speak, I think, about his reminding me of the Cheshire cat, or something, because he always had an artificial smile. But what I particularly noted there was his many other names, Miller, Jack Roberts, and many other names within a short period of

Steve

"Mr. NIXON. Will you name as many of those names as you can remember?

"Mr. BUDENZ. Yes, sir. The thing is, of course, I learned some later, but the names that I recall immediately there in 1936 and 1937 were brought to my attention by the fact that Mr. Peters himself very bureaucratically told me about them; that is, I had to see him frequently on the ninth floor. He was then, I think, supposedly the organization secretary of the party, although nobody knew him to any great degree. When I say 'nobody' most of the rank and file members did not know him.

"I would have to go up there on business, and I would say 'Comrade Peter' and he said, 'Now, my name is Steve,' and he would be very abrupt about it, 'Steve Miller.' Then, later on, he told me his name was Jack Roberts. I came home and told my wife, 'I'm getting dizzy trying to keep Peters' names before me.' But either then or on other occasions, I learned his name to be Alexander Stevens, I think Alexander Goldberg, and

"Mr. STRIPLING. Did you know him under the name Isidore Boorstein?

"Mr. BUDENZ. I knew that was his organization name. I learned that from some source in the party, or other. Those are all of the names I can think of for the moment. But there were a number of rames during the course of time."

But such an active agent cannot remain a complete enigma. Information gathered by the subcommittee from many sources, and brought together for the first time in our record, allows us to bridge some of the gaps. When the story is pieced together it forms a reasonably comprehensive whole.

There are conflicting accounts of Peters' early life in Hungary. John Lautner, former Communist Party functionary, told the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee on June 21, 1956:

"He comes from Hungary. His father was a railway official, and they lived in Czop in the northern part of Hungary, and later on in Debrecen. And he took some law courses in Budapest, and during the war he was a lieutenant in the Austro-Hungarian Army. And prior to his coming to the United States for a number of years he was the regional secretary of the Communist Party in Czechoslovakia. The region under his jurisdiction was what is known as Pod Karpatska Russ, which was at one time part of Hungary, and later on became part of Czechoslovakia."

Peters gave more details of fighting in World War I to Whittaker Chambers, who worked under the master spy as a courier for a Government espionage ring in Washington. The information was given to a congressional committee on August 3, 1948:

"Peters told me at one time that he had been a petty officer in the Austrian Army during World War I. After the Bela Kun revolution in Hungary he was a member of the Soviet Government of Hungary, I think, in the Agricultural Commissariat."

Chambers testified again on August 30, 1948, before a congressional committee:

"Mr. NIXON. Did Mr. Peters ever tell you of any of his experiencesI am attempting to establish by this question

"Mr. CHAMBERS. Yes; occasionally he reminisced, and I remember he told me of his experiences in the First World War when he was prob

ably a noncommissioned officer on the Serbian front and later on the Russian front and then on the Italian front.

"I remember one incident especially of the Italian campaign. At zero hour they were supposed to advance against very strong Italian lines in the mountains, and the lines were considered so strong that it was feared that the soldiers, the Austrian soldiers, wouldn't advance.

"However, they did, and as they came into the Italian line they found line after line of men dead, the reason being that the Germans who had come up in support of the Austrians had shelled the Italians from beyond the hills, and due to some structure of the terrain the Austrians had not heard the barrage.

"He also told me that he was believed by the soldiers to bear a charmed life, so that during a heavy fire they would cluster around him, endangering themselves and him.

"I remember him telling me that toward the end of the war, when the Austrian armies were crumbling, the first soldiers of the Soviets were appearing, he was called up for some kind of insubordination, I believe, and took his medals and either handed them or tossed them at his superior officer."

This swashbuckling version of J. Peters' war experiences was disputed by Louis Rethy Reed, a fellow Hungarian and one-time Communist colleague of Peters. Reed stated flatly that Peters got out of officers' school too late for any fighting. Furthermore, he cast doubts on Peters' Communist activity in Hungary. In a sworn affidavit to the Internal Security Subcommittee dated July 18, 1956, Reed said: "Alexander Goldberger was born at Munkacs in north Hungary in the year of 1897. He attended grammar school there. He finished high school at the Calvinist High School in the town of Sarospatak and entered the Calvinist College in the city of Debrecen, where he studied law. After less than a year of college he was drafted to the army, but by the time he came out of officers' school with the rank of ensign, the

war was over.

"He had no part whatsoever in the 1919 Communist uprising. He only began to give vague hints about his activities in Hungary after the actual participants like myself were gone. In fact, Szanto and Lustig related to me some very tall stories he told to the gullible American Communists and wanted me to call his bluff, but by then even such bait was not sweet enough for me to have any more contact with Eari Browder and his central committee."

At any rate, it is known that Peters, or Goldberger, arrived in the United States on February 10, 1924, at New York, for permanent residence.

It did not take him long to swing into action. Almost immediately he appeared at a meeting of the Yorkville branch of the Hungarian Workers Federation, claiming membership in the Czechoslovak Communist Party.

There was a shortage of intellectuals in the party. Peters learned fast and rose fast. Soon he was employed as a writer on the Uj Elore, Hungarian Communist daily. He had been recommended for the job by Louis Rethy Reed.

Reed tells the story in eloquent fashion:

"Scheming was his specialty even in those early days. It was he and James Lustig who convinced me that I have to accept the general

secretaryship of the Hungarian Federation in 1926. He knew quite well that with my affliction (TB) I would not last very long. And when in 1927 I broke down and was advised to take a rest in Arizona, he was elected to be my deputy and act with full powers of my office in my absence.

"And act he did. The general secretary was also in charge of a dummy corporation which controlled the assets of the Uj Elore. With his signature and the signature of a dummy president (who was always controlled by the secretary) all the assets of the paper could be sold. "Early in 1928 I had a long-distance conversation with Peters. He told me that the Daily Worker went bankrupt in Chicago and unless we take them in and print them for cost they will be unable to publish. I protested, knowing well that we were unable to pay our own printers for weeks at a time and owed them large sums of money. My suggestion was that the Jewish Freiheit take them in, they were on a more solvent basis than we were. True, the Jewish paper had no English type, but I also suggested that we lend them two linotypes for the purpose.

"Peters twisted my suggestion around and reported to the Hungarian Bureau that I favor the merger of the Freiheit and the Elore printing shops. Since it was supposed to be my suggestion it was adopted and before I got wind of the scheme, the Elore building was sold at a loss and the building on Union Square was purchased with a fantastic mortgage the weak Hungarian paper could never pay off. All the assets of the Hungarian paper were signed over in my absence by my worthy deputy to a new dummy corporation controlled by the central committee of the Communist Party. Lovestone, who was secretary of the central committee, washed his hands and told me it was a voluntary action by the "generous" Hungarian comrades. And he also reminded me that Peters had full authority to act in my absence. And Lovestone, the innocent, began to pay off. When in the fall of 1928 I returned to New York-hopping mad— there was little I could do to undo the damage. I resigned the secretaryship and at the suggestion of Lovestone, Peters was elected in my place. Soon Peters also managed the merged printshop and even with his very poor English began to get important American assignments.

"Then came the open letter of Stalin early in 1929. With the rest of the Lovestoneites I also left the Party and went west to nurse my TB. Peters, the opportunist, doublecrossed his mentor Lovestone and stayed on with the Foster group. And Earl Browder was also grateful and began to pay off.

"In 1932 I took my last look at Moscow. The idea came from Browder, who thought that with a little bait he can get me back into the party. My idea was quite different. I was sure it will cure me for good. I had to report to Clarence Hathaway, who at that time was the American representative at the Comintern. To my great surprise it was my high-riding former deputy, Joe Peters, who acted as representative in Hathaway's absence, who was called back to the States for some hurried conference.

"He was very generous with me. He told me that the reason he did not hit back when I slapped him for the printshop swindle was because he always loved me. He lived in the Hotel Lux on Twerskaya;

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