David Karr
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David Harold Karr, born David Katz (1918, Brooklyn, New York – 7 July 1979, Paris) was a controversial American journalist, businessman, Communist and NKVD agent.
Early life
Enthralled with the radical left, Karr began writing at a relatively young age for the Communist Party USA publication, the Daily Worker.
Espionage allegations
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In 1943, Karr came under the scrutiny of Representative
With the release of the
Karr earned a reputation as an unscrupulous investigative reporter who misrepresented himself to sources.
On 12 September 1946, Pearson wrote an article based on a classified US military study of British military operations against the Greek Communist insurgency. The article, which alarmed the U.S. State Department, contained highly classified information on the British order of battle in Greece. The document had been in the office of the Director of the Office of Special Political Affairs, one Alger Hiss. An investigation revealed that the original document was missing and that the information reached Pearson through his aide, David Karr. The FBI suspected that Karr was working for the KGB and that his income was derived in part from the Soviet government.
The FBI had Phillip Jaffe under audio surveillance during the Amerasia investigation and overheard Jaffe discussing with Andrew Roth various possible contacts for information from government sources. Roth told Jaffe that Karr could obtain "a lot of stuff on the Far Eastern things that the other guys don't get because of his Treasury connections. He goes up once a week with Harry"." Jaffe inquired as to whether this was Harry Dexter White, already under suspicion for communicating information to the Soviet Union; Roth stated that it was. In 1950, Senator Joseph McCarthy referred to Karr as Pearson's "KGB controller".[citation needed]
Karr later began a series of articles on the use of public relations in business takeovers. In 1959, Karr became CEO of the Fairbanks-Whitney Corporation, a large
Karr frequently boasted of having close ties with prominent US senators and presidential candidates and that he transmitted information between the Soviet and American governments on such issues as détente, trade, and strategic-arms negotiations. Karr, then living in Paris, headed a Franco-American firm called Finatec. According to KGB files, Karr arranged meetings between Sen. Edward Kennedy and Soviet leaders. A KGB file describes Kennedy in 1978 trying to help a close friend, former Senator John V. Tunney of California, get some business in the Soviet Union.
In 1992,
In 1978, American Senator
Edward Kennedy appealed to the KGB to assist in establishing cooperation between Soviet organizations and the California firm Agritech, headed by former Senator J. Tunney. This firm in turn was connected to a French-American company, Finatec S.A., which was run by a competent KGB source, the prominent Western financier D. Karr, through whom opinions had been confidentially exchanged for several years between the General Secretary of the Communist Party and Sen. Kennedy. D. Karr provided the KGB with technical information on conditions in the U.S. and other capitalist countries which were regularly reported to the Central Committee.[4]
In late 1978, as
Death
Within days of learning of Karr's public disclosure, Hammer dropped his takeover bid of Meade. Seven months later, in July 1979, hours after returning from a trip to Moscow, Karr was found dead in suspicious circumstances in his Paris hotel room. Amid suspicions that Karr had been murdered, his widow halted the burial so that an
After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1992, in the new atmosphere of openness, Soviet investigative journalist Albats published an article in Izvestia quoting documents from KGB archives that Karr was "a competent KGB source" who "submitted information to the KGB on the technical capabilities of the United States and other capitalist countries."
Legacy
In 2009, his grandson Doug Karr made the short film Ten for Grandpa about his fabled ancestor. The film premiered at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival.
References
- ISBN 0-300-07771-8(1999), p. 245
- ^ "Rich and red: The USSR's prize assets | Harvey Klehr". The Critic Magazine. 2020-09-19. Retrieved 2022-02-02.
- ISBN 0-374-52738-5. Retrieved 27 November 2010.
- ^ Yevgenia Albats (24 June 1992). "Senator Edward Kennedy requested KGB assistance with a profitable contract for his businessman-friend". Izvestia. p. 5.
- ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2022-02-02.
- Yevgenia Albats, Senator Edward Kennedy Requested KGB Assistance With a Profitable Contract for his Businessman-Friend, Izvestia 24 June 1992, 5.
- Paul Quinn-Judge and Kathryn Tolbert, KGB file tells of prime treatment for Sen. Kennedy The Boston Globe 24 June 1992. [1]
- Statement of Rep. Fred E. Busbey, Congressional Record 18 February 1944, A876.
- Statement of Rep. Martin Dies, Congressional Record 1 February 1943, 504–516.
- Extension of Remarks of Hon. Francis E. Walter, Congressional Record 6 February 1957.
- Henry Wallace Papers: see Harold Young from Oskar Lange, 3 July 1944.
- Washington Post, 3 July 1944.
- FBI Silvermaster file, (PDF p. 33).
- Washington Post, 4 July 1994.
- Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. to Harvey Klehr, 18 April 1990.
- John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr, Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999, pgs. 244–247.
- Yevgenia Albats, Reporting Stories in Russia That No One Will Publish Nieman Reports, The Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University, Vol. 53 No. 4 Winter 1999.