Steven T. Usdin has pointed out: "Barr recruited Alfred Sarant, the only known member of the Rosenberg ring who was neither Jewish nor a graduate of City College of New York. Barr and Sarant were talented electrical engineers who found technical advances in radar and electronics as compelling and important as class struggle. This dual set of interests made them remarkably successful... Barr and Sarant worked on, or had access to, detailed specifications for most of the US air- and ground-based radars; the Norden bombsight; analog fire-control computers; friend-or-foe identification systems; and a variety of other technologies." (3)

Alexander Feklissov later recalled that Sarant's recruitment had a positive effect on Barr "who no longer felt alone and could sleep better". (4) Sarant even moved to Greenwich Village to share his friend's apartment. Sarant also got a new job at Bell Research Laboratories developing radio electrical devices for military application. This included working on the Lockheed P-80 Shooting Star. Barr worked for the Western Electric plant in New York City, designing improvements on radar devices to be fitted on B-type bombers.

By 1944 Julius Rosenberg was microfilming the documents being stolen by Barr and Sarant. On 5th December, 1944, Stepan Apresyan warned about overworking Rosenberg: "Expedite consent to the joint filming of their materials by both METER (Joel Barr) and HUGHES (Alfred Sarant). LIBERAL (Julius Rosenberg) has on hand eight people plus the filming of materials. The state of LIBERAL's health is nothing splendid. We are afraid of putting LIBERAL out of action with overwork." (5)

Sarant was now a member of a spy network that included Rosenberg, Barr, Morton Sobell, David Greenglass, William Perl and Vivian Glassman. These agents took the material as they left the office at night. The material was passed to Rosenberg, who arranged for it to be copied by Semyon Semyonov. The material was returned to the agents so that they could put the documents back in the office the following morning. Alexander Feklissov claims that between 1943 and 1945 the Rosenberg group "had given me over 20,000 pages of technical documents plus another 12,000 pages of the complete design manual for the first U.S. jet fighter, the P-80 Shooting Star." (6)

The Soviets suffered a set-back when Julius Rosenberg was sacked from the Army Signal Corps Engineering Laboratories at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey, when they discovered that he had been a member of the Communist Party of the United States (CPUSA). NKVD headquarters in Moscow sent Leonid Kvasnikov a message on 23rd February, 1945: "The latest events with (Julius Rosenberg), his having been fired, are highly serious and demand on our part, first, a correct assessment of what happened, and second, a decision about (Rosenberg's) role in future. Deciding the latter, we should proceed from the fact that, in him, we have a man devoted to us, whom we can trust completely, a man who by his practical activities for several years has shown how strong is his desire to help our country. Besides, in (Rosenberg) we have a capable agent who knows how to work with people and has solid experience in recruiting new agents." (7)

Kvasnikov's main concern was that the FBI had discovered that Rosenberg was a spy. To protect the rest of the network, Feklissov was told not to have any contact with Rosenberg. However, the NKVD continued to pay Rosenberg "maintenance" and was warned not to take any important decisions about his future work without their consent. Eventually they gave him permission to take "a job as a radar specialist with Western Electric, designing systems for the B-29 bomber." (8)

On 16th June, 1950, David Greenglass was arrested. The New York Tribune quoted him as saying: "I felt it was gross negligence on the part of the United States not to give Russia the information about the atom bomb because he was an ally." (9) According to the New York Times, while waiting to be arraigned, "Greenglass appeared unconcerned, laughing and joking with an FBI agent. When he appeared before Commissioner McDonald... he paid more attention to reporters' notes than to the proceedings." (10) Greenglass's attorney said that he had considered suicide after hearing of Gold's arrest. He was also held on $1000,000 bail.

On 6th July, 1950, the New Mexico federal grand jury indicted Greenglass on a charge of conspiring to commit espionage in wartime on behalf of the Soviet Union. Specifically, he was accused of meeting with Harry Gold in Albuquerque on 3rd June, 1945, and producing "a sketch of a high explosive lens mold" and receiving $500 from Gold. It was clear that Gold had provided the evidence to convict Greenglass.

The New York Daily Mirror reported on 13th July that Greenglass had decided to join Harry Gold and testify against other Soviet spies. "The possibility that alleged atomic spy David Greenglass has decided to tell what he knows about the relay of secret information to Russia was evidenced yesterday when U. S. Commissioner McDonald granted the ex-Army sergeant an adjournment of proceedings to move him to New Mexico for trial." (11) Four days later the FBI announced the arrest of Julius Rosenberg. The New York Times reported that Rosenberg was the "fourth American held as a atom spy". (12)

As Steven T. Usdin has pointed out: "Two weeks after the FBI arrested Greenglass, army security agency cryptanalysts gave their FBI liaison a more complete version of a previously decrypted 5 May 1944 KGB cable. The new version filled in critical blanks in previous iterations, for the first time identifying Sarant in clear text as an espionage recruit. Prompted by the cable, as well as an investigation of Barr that revealed his friendship with Sarant, two FBI agents knocked on Sarant’s door on the afternoon of 19 July 1950. He agreed to answer the agents’ questions and allowed them to search his house." (13)

Alfred Sarant denied he was a spy and after being interrogated for a week he was released. With the help of the NKVD, Sarant managed to flee to Mexico. He took with him, Carol Dayton, a neighbor who he was having a secret sexual relationship. Her husband, Weldon Dayton, later claimed: "It is my belief that she considered Sarant to be unjustly accused. He maintained his complete innocence to us." (14) Sarant and his mistress were hid by Polish intelligence officers in Mexico City. They were then smuggled across the border to Guatemala, where they boarded a cargo ship headed to Casablanca. The couple eventually reached the safety of Warsaw. (15)

Sarant and Dayton then moved on to Czechoslovakia where they joined up with Joel Barr, who had also escaped from the clutches of the FBI. Senior Soviet intelligence officer, Alexander Feklissov met them in Prague in 1955: "Sarant... was a handsome southern European type, with black hair slicked back, bushy eyebrows, small mustache and swarthy complexion. His dark eyes were set very deep. I had seen pictures of him smiling and now he appeared dark and unhappy, just like Barr. They both gazed at me intensely. They were, in fact very different types as I could observe during the meal. Alfred was not so tall, about five feet eight, well built, with broad shoulders full of Mediterranean exuberance. Joel Barr looked like an intellectual, over six feet tall, very thin and round-shouldered. He was losing his hair and this made his face look even longer, with his gray eyes behind his thin-rimmed glasses." (16)

Barr and Sarant told Feklissov they wanted to "build compact computers for military purposes" in the Soviet Union. Their request was granted and they moved to Moscow at the end of 1955. The men were given their own laboratory in Leningrad with the name LKB. Sarant was head engineer and Barr was his deputy. The first LKB computer "turned out ten times smaller than similar Soviet machines, using less electrical power and functioning flawlessly." LKB was the first lab in the Soviet Union to manufacture transistors and integrated circuits. The UM-1 was the first computer to network technological procedures.

Nikita Khrushchev visited LKB to inspect what has been described as a "sort of Silicon Valley before its time". After giving him a radio that was no larger than a pea, Sarant took Khrushchev on a tour of the laboratory. Afterwards he told him: "Nikita Sergeyevich, we are on the threshold of an intellectual revolution that will not only change our way of life but our way of thinking.... You have just seen that in the manufacturing of computers we are practically at the same level as the United States. But we want to pull ahead of America! We need your support. We can make the USSR the first technological power in the world." (17)

A few days after this meeting the Soviet government decided to build a microelectronic center. Three months later the city of Zelonograd was being built thirty miles outside Moscow. The capital was surrounded by satellite cities, each one with a different specialty in nuclear physics, missiles, high tech computers and space travel. Sarant was named director of the centre and Barr became his deputy.

According to one Soviet source: "Sarant proved to be not only a talented scientist, but also an excellent organizer. He and his team almost single-handedly established microelectronics in the USSR, creating early small computers that could be fitted on planes and submarines. In the mid-1960s, Sarant's Design Bureau had over 800 employees, and he enjoyed the personal support of Nikita Khruschev... After the death of Khruschev, however, Sarant found his position compromised by those in the scientific hierarchy who resented the freedom he enjoyed. His meritocratic policy of employing talented non-Party members and Jews was also frowned upon." (18) Eventually both Sarant and Barr were removed from their posts.

Alfred Sarant later married Anna Petrovna. In 1974 he was appointed head of a new laboratory for artificial intelligence in Vladivostok. On 16th March, 1979 he was proposed as a candidate as a member of the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union. He traveled the 5,000 miles to Moscow only to find his jealous colleagues had rejected his candidacy. Sarant was taken ill in the car taking him back to the Moskva Hotel and a few minutes later he died of a heart attack. (19)

(1) Obituary on St. Petersburg website.

(2) Alexander Feklissov, The Man Behind the Rosenbergs (1999) pages 116 and 117

(3) Steven T. Usdin, Tracking Julius Rosenberg’s Lesser Known Associates (April, 2007)

(4) Alexander Feklissov, The Man Behind the Rosenbergs (1999) page 117

(5) Stepan Apresyan, report on Julius Rosenberg (5th December, 1944)

(6) Alexander Feklissov, The Man Behind the Rosenbergs (1999) page 140

(7) NKVD headquarters, message to Leonid Kvasnikov (23rd February, 1945)

(8) Alexander Feklissov, The Man Behind the Rosenbergs (1999) page 114

(9) The New York Tribune (17th June, 1950)

(10) New York Times (17th June, 1950)

(11) New York Daily Mirror (13th July, 1950)

(12) New York Times (18th July, 1950)

(13) Steven T. Usdin, Tracking Julius Rosenberg’s Lesser Known Associates (April, 2007)

(14) Quoted by Walter Schneir and Miriam Schneir, Invitation to an Inquest (1983) page 304

(15) Steven T. Usdin, Tracking Julius Rosenberg’s Lesser Known Associates (April, 2007)

(16) Alexander Feklissov, The Man Behind the Rosenbergs (1999) page 286

(17) Alfred Salant, quoted in Alexander Feklissov, The Man Behind the Rosenbergs (1999) page 288

(18) Obituary on St. Petersburg website.

(19) Alexander Feklissov, The Man Behind the Rosenbergs (1999) page 290