Peter Gutzeit, the Soviet Consulate in New York City, was also an officer in the NKVD. In 1934 he identified Noel Field and his friend, Laurence Duggan, as future Soviet spies. Gutzeit wrote on 3rd October, 1934, that Duggan "is interesting us because through him one will be able to find a way toward Noel Field... of the State Department's European Department with whom Duggan is friendly." (3) Iskhak Akhmerov decided that Boris Bazarov should be the one to work with Hede Massing on this project.

Whittaker Chambers, the Soviet spy, noted: "From my first day in Washington, I had heard the name of Laurence Duggan as a likely underground recruit. I also heard constant rumors about Duggan's great friend, Noel Field, a Harvard man and Quaker of good family who was in what was then the West European Division of the State Department. The Fields and the Duggans lived in the same apartment house. Hiss began an intensive campaign to recruit Field and Duggan. He reached the point of talking very openly to Noel Field. I was afraid to ask just how openly they were talking, for I might have been tempted to urge caution, and in such delicate negotiations much must be left to the tact of the negotiator, in this case Alger Hiss. Too much supervision or advice may lead to disaster, or at least to an awkward situation." (4)

Hede Massing wrote in This Deception: KBG Targets America (1951): "To 'develop' Noel Field was the task I was to concentrate on. I was to keep my eyes open, meet other people and report on whatever could be of value to us; but Noel was my main assignment.... I met them one evening at their own home. We hit it off extremely well. Not only was Herta Field from Germany, but the atmosphere, the whole household, was very similar to any intellectual German household that I had known. Herta and Noel were deeply concerned about fascism in Germany and were very well informed on all the political issues of importance. It was quite obvious that the first evening that Noel was a learned and astute student of Marxism." (5)

In April 1936 Massing's reported to her controller that Field had been recently approached by Alger Hiss just before he left to attend a conference in London: "Alger Hiss (she used his real name because she was unaware of his codename) let him know that he was a Communist, that he was connected with an organization working for the Soviet Union and that he knew Ernst (Field) also had connections but he was afraid they were not solid enough, and probably, his knowledge was being used in a wrong way. Then he directly proposed that Ernst give him an account of the London conference." The memorandum continued: "In the next couple of days, after having thought it over, Alger said that he no longer insisted on the report. But he wanted Ernst to talk to Larry and Helen (Duggan) about him and let them know who he was and give him (Alger Hiss) access to them. Ernst again mentioned that he had contacted Helen and Larry. However, Alger insisted that he talk to them again, which Ernst ended up doing. Ernst talked to Larry about Alger and, of course, about having told him 'about the current situation' and that 'their main task at the time was to defend the Soviet Union' and that 'they both needed to use their favorable positions to help in this respect.' Larry became upset and frightened, and announced that he needed some time before he would make that final step; he still hoped to do his normal job, he wanted to reorganize his department, try to achieve some results in that area, etc. Evidently, according to Ernst, he did not make any promises, nor did he encourage Alger in any sort of activity, but politely stepped back. Alger asked Ernst several other questions; for example, what kind of personality he had, and if Ernst would like to contact him. He also asked Ernst to help him to get to the State Department. Apparently, Ernst satisfied this request. When I pointed out to Ernst his terrible discipline and the danger he put himself into by connecting these three people, he did not seem to understand it." (6)

On 26th April, 1936, Boris Bazarov reported back to Moscow: "The result has been that, in fact, Field and Hiss have been openly identified to Duggan. Apparently Duggan also understands clearly her (Hede Massing) nature... Helen Boyd (Duggan's wife), who was present at almost all of these meetings and conversations, is also undoubtedly briefed and now knows as much as Duggan himself... I think that after this story we should not speed up the cultivation of Duggan and his wife. Apparently, besides us, the persistent Hiss will continue his initiative in this direction. In a day or two, Duggan's wife will come to New York, where she (Hede Massing) will have a friendly meeting with her. At Field's departure from Washington, Helen expressed a great wish to meet her again. Perhaps Helen will tell her about her husband's feelings." (7) Headquarters instructed Bazarov to be certain that none of his agents undertook similar meetings across jurisdictional boundaries without your knowledge". Bazarov was particularly concerned about the behaviour of Hede "knowing that her drawbacks include impetuousness".

As Harvey Klehr and John Earl Haynes, Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America (2000) have pointed out: " Field was not new to Soviet and Communist clandestine work. A mid-level State Department official in the 1930s, he had been the object of a tug of war between two separate Soviet espionage networks. Hede Massing, who worked then for the NKVD, later wrote that she had attempted to recruit Field but he had told her he preferred to work with his old friend Alger Hiss, who was part of a GRU network. (8)

Soviet intelligence now had three well-placed agents, Noel Field, Alger Hiss, Laurence Duggan and Julian Wadleigh, within the State Department. The main task of these agents was to discover information from America's "neutral" diplomatic outposts regarding the capabilities and intentions of Germany and Japan. At the time, the Soviet Union viewed both countries as its potential enemies in an Atlantic-Pacific war. (9)

Valentine Markin, a senior NKVD plays a special officer based in New York City wrote: "In world politics, the U.S. is the determining factor. There are no problems, even those 'purely' European, in whose solution America does not take part because of its economic and financial strength. It plays a special role in the solution of the Far Eastern problem. That is why America must be well informed in European and Far Eastern matters, and its intelligence service is likely to play an active role. This situation raises the following extremely important problems for our intelligence in the U.S... It is necessary that the agents we now have or intend to recruit provide us with documents and verified materials clarifying the U.S. position in the matters mentioned above and, especially, the U.S. position on the Far Eastern problem." (10)

In 1936 Noel Field accepted a post in Geneva with the League of Nations. According to Whittaker Chambers Field was now being run by Walter Krivitsky. He wrote in Witness (1952): "At the time, I had wondered why the parallel apparatus would let Noel Field leave the State Department. It was General Walter Krivitsky who first told me that Noel Field had left the State Department on orders from his apparatus to work for Krivitsky, who was then chief of Soviet Military Intelligence in Western Europe." (11)

In 1938 Field became a League of Nations representative in Spain. He therefore became involved in the Spanish Civil War and helped to aid victims of the conflict and was involved in the repatriation of members of the International Brigades. They also took care of Erica Glaser, who became separated from her parents. They took her back to their home in Switzerland.

By the summer of 1937, over forty intelligence agents serving abroad were summoned back to the Soviet Union. Walter Krivitsky realised that his life was in danger. Alexander Orlov, who was based in Spain, had a meeting with fellow NKVD officer, Theodore Maly, in Paris, who had just been recalled to the Soviet Union. He explained his concern as he had heard stories of other senior NKVD officers who had been recalled and then seemed to have disappeared. He feared being executed but after discussing the matter he decided to return and take up this offer of a post in the Foreign Department in Moscow. General Yan Berzin, Dmitri Bystrolyotov and Vladimir Antonov-Ovseenko, were also recalled. Bazarov, Maly, Antonov-Ovseenko and Berzen were all executed. Ignaz Reiss attempted to defect but he was assassinated on 4th September, 1937. (12)

Two agents, Hede Massing and Paul Massing complained about these deaths. They were invited to return to Moscow to discuss these matters. Amazingly, they agreed to the proposal. Hede later recalled in This Deception: KBG Targets America (1951): "That we ventured on this trip in spite of the fact we had heard that during the first five months of 1937, 350,000 political arrests had been made by the GPU, was fantastic as I look back on it." (13)

In January 1938 they were interrogated by Mikhail Shpiegelglass. "Peter (Vassilli Zarubin) brought a man with him one night whom we both liked very much. He seemed as European as Peter was Russian: cultured, civilized, pleasant. He spoke German almost fluently, with a slight eastern intonation that reminded me of Ludwig and Felik; and made me feel at home with him. They had come many hours later than they had announced themselves, and I accordingly was set to be as cross as possible... His manner had a way of putting one on the defensive. He shook hands heartily and said, 'I am Comrade Spiegelglass.' Somehow we knew that this was his real name, the significance of which we learned many years later when Krivitsky's book was published. This charming comrade was responsible for the murder of Ludwig! (Ignaz Reiss). In keeping with routine procedure, he must have earned a medal for it. Obviously, he had come into the last phase of our initial interrogation and wanted a few points elaborated upon. It was as though it was his job to pull in all the loose strings and weave them tightly, securely, together. After he had finished with us we were taken into the social and family life of the NKVD. Their purpose in doing this was to express their gratitude, their esteem and trust of us." (14)

Hede Massing asked Vassili Zarubin if they could have an exit visa so that they could leave the Soviet Union. He said that he did not have the authority to do that. A few days later he arranged a meeting with Nikolai Yezhov, the head of the NKVD. Zarubin warned her: "Hede, be careful when you talk to this man; don't tell him what you said to me, but tell him that you want to go out-and don't stress the point that you want to leave our service. He knows that. He is very important."

"The meeting took place in the Sloutski apartment, the same one where I had been at our first party. When we arrived, the important man was not yet there. There was an atmosphere of expectation. There was no vodka, as was usual before meetings. We sat and waited. There was not even flippant conversation. Finally he arrived. He, too, was in uniform. Though he had little glitter, still it was obvious that he was of a higher rank than my two companions. He was a man of about thirty-five, a Georgian, and fairly good looking in a foreign kind of way; to me, from the very first second, he was despicable. He took a seat on the other side of the room from me, crossed his legs, pulled out a heavy gold tabatiere, slowly tapped a cigarette on it - scrutinizing me throughout the process. Then he said in Russian what amounted to, Let her talk."

Zarubin told Hede Massing, "Tell your story, and I will interpret." Hede was so angry by Yezhov's attitude that she replied: "There is no story to tell. I'm tired of my story. I understood that I was brought here to ask this gentleman for my exit visa. All I am concerned with at this point is that my husband and I be able to leave for home. I've told my story time and again; I am sure that Mr. X can have access to it. So all I have to say now is - when am I going to leave?" Yezhov laughed out loud. "It infuriated me! I mimicked his laugh and said, 'It is not that funny, is it? I mean what I say!' He got up, said in Russian that the conference was ended, and without a word or a nod toward me, he left." (15)

Hede and Paul Massing appeared to have no chance now of getting an exit visa. Boris Bazarov, who was back in Moscow, was unable to help. Soon afterwards they met Noel Field who was also visiting the country. She decided to use this opportunity to get out of the Soviet Union. She telephoned Bazarov and told him: "When I had been connected and heard his answer at the other end of the wire, I said in a loud and clear voice, 'Boris, I have been asking you for our exit visas long enough! We have guests, Herta and Noel Field. I want them to be witness to my request. I am asking you for our exit visas for the last time... I should like to have our passports with the visas today. If we do not get them today, I shall have to make use of my rights as an American citizen. I will then go with my friends, the Fields, to the American Legation to ask for help.' I hung up. I was shaking."

Several hours later there was a knock on the door. It was Bazarov and in his hand he held a large envelope. "Here are your passports and the visas and a slip for Intourist, with which you can pick up your tickets tomorrow morning. We have made reservations for you on the evening train, via Leningrad." Hede Massing later recalled: "No further comment. He left. I held the envelope out to Paul. All strength had left me, I could not have opened it. It was true. It was really true. We could leave!" (16) Soon afterwards Bazarov was executed.

In August 1939, Isaac Don Levine arranged for Whittaker Chambers to meet Adolf Berle, one of the top aides to President Franklin D. Roosevelt. After dinner Chambers told Berle about NKVD agents working for the government: "Around midnight, we went into the house. What we said there is not in question because Berle took it in the form of penciled notes. Just inside the front door, he sat at a little desk or table with a telephone on it and while I talked he wrote, abbreviating swiftly as he went along. These notes did not cover the entire conversation on the lawn. They were what we recapitulated quickly at a late hour after a good many drinks. I assumed that they were an exploratory skeleton on which further conversations and investigation would be based." (17)

It has been claimed by the authors of Stalin's Secret Agents: The Subversion of Roosevelt's Government (2012) the list included Noel Field, Joszef Peter, Harold Ware, Alger Hiss, Nathaniel Weyl, Laurence Duggan, Lauchlin Currie, Donald Hiss, Noel Field, Harry Dexter White, Nathan Witt, Marion Bachrach, Julian Wadleigh, John Abt, Henry H. Collins, Lee Pressman and Victor Perlo. (18) Berle, who was in effect the president's Director of Homeland Security, raised the issue with President Franklin D. Roosevelt, "who profanely dismissed it as nonsense." However, in 1943, the FBI received a copy of Berle's memorandum.

Chambers later claimed that Berle reacted to the news with the comment: "We may be in this war within forty-eight hours and we cannot go into it without clean services." John V. Fleming, has argued in The Anti-Communist Manifestos: Four Books that Shaped the Cold War (2009) Chambers had "confessed to Berle the existence of a Communist cell - he did not yet identify it as an espionage team - in Washington." Berle, who was in effect the president's Director of Homeland Security, raised the issue with President Franklin D. Roosevelt, "who profanely dismissed it as nonsense." (19)

In 1941 Field became director of the American Unitarian Universalist Service Committee's relief mission in Marseilles. In this role he helped Jewish refugees to escape to Switzerland. Field also collaborated with the Organization to Save the Children (OSE), in an effort to get Jewish children released from French internment camps. Field also worked closely with the Office of Strategic Services (OSS). When the German Army occupied the south of France in November 1942, the Fields returned to Geneva.

Noel Field now became a relief worker, handling Eastern European refugees for the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee (UUSC). It soon became clear that Field was only interested in helping pro-Russian refugees. His superiors protested by cable. "Charity in present day Europe," answered Field, "cannot be neutral. Never have I had so clear a conscience.. and such a harmonious feeling of concord between my convictions and my obligations to suffering mankind." (20)

In March 1947 Hede Massing gave information to the FBI about the spying activities of Noel Field. Robert J. Lamphere carried out the interview with Massing. He then sent a message to the UUSC: "I told him (the representative of UUSC) I wasan't permitted to say anything about Field, since the matter was under investigation, but I suggested that the day would come when the church would not want to have Field associated with its endeavors. Allegations had begun to surface that Field was a KGB agent; I neither confirmed nor denied them. Soon, though, Field was fired by the church organization." (21)

On 3rd August, 1948, Whittaker Chambers appeared before the House of Un-American Activities Committee. He testified that he had been "a member of the Communist Party and a paid functionary of that party" but left after the signing of the Nazi-Soviet Pact in August 1939. He named several Soviet agents including Noel Field. Aware that he might be arrested if he returned to the United States he moved with his wife to Prague. However, a couple of days later Field went missing. Herta Field thought at first he had been captured by the CIA and had been taken back to the United States to face spying charges. (22)

On 2nd November, 1948, Noel Field wrote to Alger Hiss, who had also been named as a Soviet spy by Whittaker Chambers: "Inasmuch as Chambers's recorded fabrications concerning me are, in the main, based on his alleged conversations with you, I take it there is no point in my dignifying them with any public denial and that your libel action will automatically dispose of them... I need hardly tell you how angered and outraged I was over the irresponsible allegations made against you. Your testimony fully harmonizes with the memory I had of you during our all-too-brief acquaintance in Washington. While my views, as I recall, were somewhat to the left of yours, I always particularly admired you as an embodiment of the best Oliver Wendell Holmes tradition and as a man of unusual integrity in both his private and his official life. I trust you will receive full satisfaction in your libel suit." (23)

Herta reported her husband missing to the Czech authorities. She was arrested and taken to Budapest to join Noel Field. He had in fact been arrested on the orders of Lavrenti Beria. It was claimed that he had been spying on behalf the United States. Field was tortured and held in solitary confinement for five years. (24) In East Germany, in August 1950, six members of the Communist Party were arrested and accused of "special connections with Noel Field, the American spy." Field was also named as a spy in the trial of Rudolf Slansky, the Secretary General of the Communist Party, and 13 other officials. Slansky was executed on 2nd December, 1952.

While in prison he claimed that like him, Alger Hiss had been a Soviet spy during the 1930s. According to Major Szendy of the Hungarian Interior Ministry: "Field confessed … only now recognizing that he had become a tool for the American intelligence and that he had also handed over other people to the American intelligence. Field emphasized repeatedly, that decades ago, while he was in the USA, he had approached the Communist Party and had cooperated with the Soviet intelligence agencies for a long period of time; he did not know why this connection was cut off. Furthermore, he emphasized that the House Committee on Un-American Activities was investigating him in connection with the case of Alger Hiss. Field stated that he had been trying to clarify his membership in the Communist Party since 1938 (when he travelled to Moscow) and that he was promised, last time in Poland, that this would happen." Noel Field admitted that he had been recruited by Hede Massing in 1934: "In the year 1934 (as far as I remember) I got in touch with the German communists Paul Massing and Hede Gumpertz who informed me that they were spying for the Soviet Union. I handed over lots of information to them – orally as well as in writing - about the State Department." (25)

Ethan Klingsberg has argued that this evidence is not reliable: "Furthermore, legitimate grounds exist for concluding that the references to Alger Hiss are among those statements coerced by the Hungarians. All the prison references to Hiss have a seed prior to Field's imprisonment. The recruitment story comes from Chambers's HUAC testimony... Why would Field draw on this material to relate to his captors stories about his relationship with Hiss, Soviet agent and/or supporter of Communism, without regard for whether the stories were necessarily true? The first explanation is straightforward. Anybody held in solitary confinement for three years on charges of being an American spy would try to think up any remotely believable stories to relate to his accusers about how he was in fact connected with supporters of Communism." (26)

Herta and Noel Field were released in October 1954. (27) They decided not to return to the United States and live in Budapest. He defended his captors with the words: "My accusers essentially have the same convictions that I do, they hate the same things and the same people I hate - the conscious enemies of socialism, the fascists, the renegades, the traitors. Given their belief in my guilt, I cannot blame them. I cannot but approve their detestation. That is the real horror of it all." In 1956 he defended the Soviet suppression of the Hungarian Uprising.

Noel Field died on 12th September, 1970.

(1) Time Magazine (24th October, 1949)

(2) Hede Massing, This Deception: KBG Targets America (1951) page 142

(3) Peter Gutzeit, Soviet Consulate in New York City, memorandum to Moscow (3rd October, 1934)

(4) Whittaker Chambers, Witness (1952) page 381

(5) Hede Massing, This Deception: KBG Targets America (1951) page 140

(6) Allen Weinstein, The Hunted Wood: Soviet Espionage in America (1999) page 5

(7) Boris Bazarov report to Moscow (26th April, 1936)

(8) Harvey Klehr and John Earl Haynes, Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America (2000) page 75

(9) Allen Weinstein, The Hunted Wood: Soviet Espionage in America (1999) page 11

(10) Valentine Markin, cable to Moscow (March, 1934)

(11) Whittaker Chambers, Witness (1952) page 381

(12) Gary Kern, A Death in Washington: Walter G. Krivitsky and the Stalin Terror (2004) pages 124-145

(13) Hede Massing, This Deception: KBG Targets America (1951) page 202

(14) Hede Massing, This Deception: KBG Targets America (1951) page 218

(15) Hede Massing, This Deception: KBG Targets America (1951) page 229-230

(16) Hede Massing, This Deception: KBG Targets America (1951) page 234-235

(17) Whittaker Chambers, Witness (1952) pages 462-463

(18) M. Stanton Evans & Herbert Romerstein, Stalin's Secret Agents: The Subversion of Roosevelt's Government (2012) page 101

(19) John V. Fleming, The Anti-Communist Manifestos: Four Books that Shaped the Cold War (2009) page 320

(20) Time Magazine (24th October, 1949)

(21) Robert J. Lamphere, The FBI-KGB War (1986) page 57

(22) Sam Tanenhaus, Whittaker Chambers: A Biography (1997) page 246

(23) Noel Field, letter to Alger Hiss (2nd November, 1948)

(24) Harvey Klehr and John Earl Haynes, Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America (2000) page 75

(25) Major Szendy, Hungarian Interior Ministry (22nd August, 1952)

(26) Ethan Klingsberg, The Nation (8th November, 1993)

(27) Time Magazine (3rd January, 1955)