Harvey Klehr - The Millionaire Was a Soviet Mole: The Twisted Life of David Karr

2019 by Harvey Klehr

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FIRST AMERICAN EDITION

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Names: Klehr, Harvey, author.

Title: The millionaire was a Soviet mole : the twisted life of David Karr / by Harvey Klehr.

Other titles: Twisted life of David Karr

Description: New York : Encounter Books, [2019] |

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2018060271 (print) | LCCN 2018061389 (ebook) | ISBN 9781641770439 (ebook) | ISBN 9781641770422 (hardcover : alk. paper)

Subjects: LCSH: Karr, David, 19181979. | SpiesUnited StateBiography. | BusinesspeopleUnited StatesBiography. | Espionage, SovieUnited StatesHistory20th century. | Public relations consultantsUnited StatesBiography. | JournalistsUnited StatesBiography. | Pearson, Drew, 18971969Friends and associates. | Hammer, Armand, 18981990Friends and associates. | United StatesPolitics and government20th century. | CommunistsUnited StatesBiography. | EspionageUnited StateHistory20th century.

Classification: LCC E840.8.K27 (ebook) | LCC E840.8.K27 K55 2019 (print) | DDC 070.92 [B]dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018060271

To Layla, Sawyer, Solomon and Hudson

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

It often feels like David Karr has become an inescapable presence in my life. He has been around for nearly thirty years, sometimes part of my work virtually every day; sometimes hovering in the background. So, it is a bit unnerving to prepare to let him go.

When a research project goes on as long as this biography has, friends and family have a habit of asking awkward questions about why you havent finished it, whether you are blocked, or just plain lazy. In the case of David Karr, the reasons are more complicated, but may actually have made this a more complete book.

Not entirely complete, because some of the secrets of his life remain buried in closed archivesprimarily in Russia, but also in Israelthat may never see the light of day. Others may be in the possession of family members who declined my requests for information. But some archival material, once closed, has been opened since the fall of the Soviet Union and some former spies have been willing to tell some of his story.

I first became aware of David Karr in the mid-1980s, while doing research for the book that would be published in 1996 as The Amerasia Spy Case: Prelude to McCarthyism, co-authored with Ron Radosh. One of the defendants in that spy case, Andrew Roth had leaked information to Karr, who was then working for Drew Pearson. As I learned a bit more about Karr and his remarkable career, I was fascinated. The Amerasia book was delayed by a dispute with the original publisher, and casting about for a new topic, I decided to see if I could accumulate enough information about Karr to write a biography, or at the very least, an article.

I filed a Freedom of Information request to get his FBI file, a process that took several years. I put notices in the New York Times and New York Review of Books asking people who had known him to contact me. I began to visit archives that held material about him and traveled to interview friends and enemies. I wrote to family members. It was apparent that one of the keys to his life was in the Soviet Union; I wrote to an archive likely to hold material about his business dealings and was informed that it held material that I could see if I came to Moscow. Obtaining a grant and hiring a reliable translator and aide, I made plans to visit the Soviet Union in the spring of 1992. Between the time I planned the trip and when it took place, the Communist coup against Mikhail Gorbachev failed, and Boris Yeltsin gained power and dissolved the Soviet Union.

When I arrived in Moscow, the archive that had promised access suddenly claimed it held no material on David Karr. I later learned that a Russian journalist had published an article denouncing Western politicians who had cooperated in some way with the KGB, specifically naming Senator Ted Kennedy, and quoted from a KGB document naming Karr as an intelligence source. The topic had become too politically sensitive. I was, however, able to conduct an interview with Karrs closest Soviet colleague, although it produced little of value.

The trip, however, pushed David Karr out of my research plans for more than two decades. Yeltsin had banned the Communist Party and seized its property, including its main archive. Suddenly open to researchers, the Russian Center for the Preservation and Study of Documents of Recent History, as it was then known, contained the records of the Communist International. I was the first American, and one of the first Westerners, to rummage in those files. The archivists themselves had no idea what was in the files, many of which had never been examined by anyone. I discovered explosive material about Soviet espionage in America and was allowed to make copies of KGB memos marked Top Secret that were later resecretized.

That material began a more than twenty-year research enterprise, during which my collaborator, John Haynes, and I published six books (two with Fridrich Firsov) dealing with various aspects of Soviet espionage in America. During that period, the National Security Agency and CIA declassified the Venona files, a former KGB archivist defected to Great Britain with a treasure trove of material, and another former KGB officer, Alexander Vassiliev, worked with us, using his notebooks filled with copies and summaries of intelligence documents. It was an extraordinary opportunity and all-consuming. David Karr receded into the background.

As I began to near retirement, I vowed to finish my David Karr project. Going back to my notes, documents, and interviews from more than two decades ago, locating some people close to Karr whom I had not been able to find earlier, and discovering additional material, I was also chagrined to think of the questions I wish I had asked some people, now deceased, or the leads I wish I had followed before being drawn into other research. On the other hand, I hope that this project has benefitted from a longer perspective and deeper knowledge of both espionage and a tumultuous era in American history.

I am deeply grateful to the dozens of individuals, many now deceased, who wrote and talked to me about David Karr: Arnold Forster, Arthur Derounian, Jack Anderson, Luvie Pearson, Charles Simonelli, Denise Karr, Samuel Pisar, Louis Nizer, Alan Cranston, Armand Hammer (with whom I held a bizarre phone conversation in February 1989), Norman B. Norman, Sir Charles Forte, Dzhermen Gvishiani, Herv Alphand, Jean Guyot, Max Youngstein, Jacques Elis, Feenie Ziner, George Biderman, Christopher Cross, Daniel Bell, Felix Rohatyn, John Marsh, Arthur Schlesinger, Chester Berger, Theodore Marss, Lee Falk, Leo Bogart, Oscar Brand, and Russell Rourke.