Whittaker Chambersand Elizabeth Bentley, as well as Soviet in-
telligence messages, indicates that as White progressed through the
Treasury Department, he had a long and informal relationship with
the NKVD.
White evidently never was a member of the Communist Party,
though he was clearly a sympathizer. He began working with the
NKVD in the mid-1930s, but he stopped reporting after Chambers’s
defection in 1938 became known. In the 1940s White again provided
the NKVD rezidenturawith information on American foreign and
monetary policies. He advised Moscow on America’s policy toward
the Nationalist regime in China and toward the evolving situation in
Poland. He is mentioned in a number of Venonamessages as an im-
portant source with the code names of “Lawyer” and “Richard.”
White, according to these messages, was handled personally by sen-
ior Soviet intelligence officers. He apparently never considered him-
self a spy or agent; he was apparently never paid but cooperated for
personal reasons.
In 1948 White was named as a Soviet spy by Chambers. Follow-
ing interviews with FBI special agents, he died of a heart attack. To
many of his friends and colleagues, White was a victim of a witch
hunt. A modern scholar has portrayed him as a radical New Dealer
who believed he was furthering American policy through his private
diplomatic initiatives. The Russian intelligence traffic suggests that
White was a very important agent who provided Moscow with a
source of significant political intelligence. White’s motivationis dif-
ficult to understand; the damage he did to U.S. interests is not.WOOLRICH ARSENAL CASE. One of the early failures of Soviet in-
telligence in Great Britain in the late 1930s was the Woolrich Arsenal
Case. Soviet illegalsrecruited British Communist Party members with
access to military secrets at the arsenal. These agents ran in turn sev-
eral men with access to British military secrets. The operation failed
because the British security service (MI5) had inserted an agent, Olga
Grey, into the Communist Party, and she was able to provide detailed
information about the agents’plans. Percy Glading and two other con-
spirators were arrested, tried, and received short jail terms.
However, the affair gave MI5 an exaggerated sense of it ability to
defeat the Soviet services. It may also have convinced MI5 not to286 •WOOLRICH ARSENAL CASE06-313 P-Z.qxd 7/27/06 7:57 AM Page 286