Oscar Seborer

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Oscar Seborer
Born(1921-06-04)June 4, 1921
USSR
Service years1941–1951
CodenameGodsend

Oscar Seborer (June 4, 1921 – April 23, 2015), codenamed Godsend, was an

Los Alamos Laboratory in New Mexico
.

Early life

Oscar Seborer was born in New York City on June 4, 1921, youngest child of Jewish[1] Polish immigrants Abraham Seborer, a clerk, and Jennie (Scheine) née Chanover. He had four older siblings: three brothers, Max, Noah and Stuart, and a sister, Rose.[2] Abraham and Jennie lived in what was then called Palestine from 1934 to 1938, and Oscar apparently lived there with them.[1]

All five children had some contact with the

Abraham Lincoln Battalion during the Spanish Civil War, and was friends with Harry Magdoff, Irving Kaplan and Stanley Graze. Max never joined the CPUSA, but his brother Noah did. Noah was close to Frederick Vanderbilt Field, Maurice Halperin and Albert Maltz, a screenwriter who later became one of the blacklisted Hollywood Ten. Oscar's sister Rose worked for the CPUSA in New York in administrative positions.[1]

Neither Oscar nor Stuart joined the CPUSA. Stuart attended

Hatch Act of 1939 investigation in 1942, she denied having any involvement with the CPUSA. Oscar also attended CCNY but then enrolled at Ohio State University, where he studied electrical engineering.[4]

Manhattan Project

Oscar was drafted into the Army in 1942, but due to his special training he was assigned to the

Trinity nuclear test on July 16, 1945, with a group measuring the seismological effect of the explosion.[4]

Post-war

Stuart was discharged from the Army in 1946, but continued to work for it in a civilian capacity with the

State Department, he was told that he would not be granted the necessary security clearance.[4]

Oscar applied for a civilian position at Los Alamos in 1947, but withdrew his application. Instead, he went to the

Underwater Sound Laboratory in New London, Connecticut, where research on sonar for submarines was conducted. In August 1949, the commanding officer recommended his termination as a security risk, but on August 29 a review board overturned this decision. He was transferred to the Electronic Shore Division of the Bureau of Ships, where he was involved in the installation of electronic equipment in American and European harbors. The equipment itself was not secret, but the location of devices was. He was the only man working in the unit who did not hold a security clearance. On June 1, 1951 he tendered his resignation.[8]

Emigration

On July 3, 1951, Stuart, Oscar, Miriam and Miriam's mother Anna boarded the liner

Soviet Academy of Sciences. Miriam and Stuart divorced in September 1961, and she returned to the United States in December 1969.[10] She later worked as a medical technician at the United Nations until 1974. She died in 2002.[11] Stuart and Oscar married Russian women. They became friends with Donald MacLean, a British spy for the Soviet Union who had worked with them. Stuart wrote a couple of books including US Neocolonialism in Africa (1974), which was translated into English, and Weaponry and Dollars: The Wellsprings of U.S. Foreign Policy (1987), which was published only in Russian.[12]

Discovery

American codebreakers working on

Venona found that the Manhattan Project had been penetrated by Soviet spies, which gave it the codename "Enormous". They found references to codenames for three Soviet atomic spies working at Los Alamos: "M'Lad", who turned out to be Theodore Hall; "Caliber", who was David Greenglass; and "Godsend", who was ultimately identified as Oscar Seborer. Since Klaus Fuchs was also known to be a Soviet spy, there were at least four Soviet agents at Los Alamos.[12]

Death

Oscar Seborer died in Moscow on April 23, 2015. Mourners included his brother Stuart and a representative from the Russian Federal Security Service.[11]

Notes

  1. ^ a b c d Klehr & Haynes 2019, p. 4.
  2. ^ a b "The Seborer Family-Some Highlights" (PDF). Central Intelligence Agency. Archived from the original (PDF) on January 10, 2017. Retrieved December 18, 2019.
  3. ^ Volodarsky 2015, p. 366.
  4. ^ a b c d Klehr & Haynes 2019, p. 5.
  5. ^ Jones 1985, pp. 497–498.
  6. ^ Seborer & Droller 1949, pp. 1–2.
  7. ^ Seborer 1950, p. 1.
  8. ^ Klehr & Haynes 2019, p. 6.
  9. ^ Klehr & Haynes 2019, p. 7.
  10. ^ Klehr & Haynes 2019, p. 9.
  11. ^ a b Klehr & Haynes 2019, p. 12.
  12. ^ a b Klehr & Haynes 2019, pp. 10–11.

References

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