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William Perl

William Perl, born in New York City in 1918 [1919? 1920?], was a classmate of both Julius Rosenberg and Morton Sobell at college. He worked for the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics at Langley Field, Virginia, and Cleveland, Ohio, after his graduation. It was learned that Sobell maintained close contact with Perl through correspondence after their college graduation.

Perl, whose real name was William Mutterperl, was an outstanding student at the City College of New York. As a member of the Steinmetz Club, the campus branch of the Young Communist League, he met and befriended Julius Rosenberg, Morton Sobell, Joel Barr and Max Elitcher. All the men joined the Communist Party of the United States (CPUSA). According to Alexander Feklissov, the highly successful KGB officer in charge of foreign espionage: "Perl majored in aeronautical engineering and the two students met regularly, especially to discuss the great classics of Marxist-Lennist literature, which they read diligently. Just like Rosenberg... felt that the values of social justice, equality, and brotherhood were paramount; he hated the independently wealthy who did no work and lived in the lap of luxury."

Mutterperl came of age just in time to profit by an era in which young physicists are scouted almost as assiduously as young ballplayers. As a student at Manhattan’s City College (class of ’38), he proved himself a veritable Mickey Mantle among rookie scientists. Perl graduated with a degree in engineering in 1939 and in 1940 began working for the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) at their Langley Army Air Base research facility.

By 1944 he was in the big leagues. In 1944 Perl transferred to the NACA Lewis Flight Propulsion Laboratory in Cleveland. Both jobs provided Perl with access to extensive classified materials. While at the Lewis Flight Propulsion Laboratory, he streamlined his name to Perl and directed an Air Forces research project in supersonic-aircraft design. NACA sent Perl to Columbia University to pursue doctoral studies in Physics. While at Columbia Perl lived in the same Morton Street apartment where Barr and Sarant had lived. By 1950, the year he got his doctorate from Columbia with a “secret” thesis on “transonic flows past thin airfoils,” it began to look as though William Perl was associating with people who wanted to throw the game.

Following his doctorate work at Columbia Perl returned to Cleveland to work on a jet propulsion project related to supersonic flight. Perl was nearly given a position with the Atomic Energy Commission when his connection with Barr and Sarant, suspected Communists, was turned up by a security check.

Alexander Feklissov pointed out: "William Perl was still living in Cleveland where he had been kept dormant. Amid the hysteria of the times it was inconceivable to send a Soviet citizen to Cleveland to help him leave the country. Who, then, could possibly fulfill the mission? The underground network was disintegrating and every new contact could trigger new arrests... Even though he had been hibernating for four years, Perl had been a very important agent and it was a moral duty to save him."

In July of 1950 Vivian Glassman, Barr's fiancée, visited Perl in Cleveland to give him $2000, and advising him to go to Europe. Perl admitted that in July 1950, a girl he recognized to be a former girl friend of a close friend of his visited him in Cleveland. William Perl, statement to the FBI (26th July, 1950) "About noon on this Sunday afternoon (23rd July, 1950), while I was preparing to go out on a picnic, Vivian Glassman suddenly appeared.... I was quite surprised. I recognized her as a friend of Joel Barr's. I asked her to come in. She acted somewhat mysteriously. She proceeded to take some paper which I had lying around and start writing on it and motioning me to read what she had written and, well she wrote to the effect that she had instructions from a person unknown to her, in New York, to travel to Cleveland to get in touch with an aeronautical engineer to give him money and instructions to leave the country, and I believe she mentioned Mexico in that connection...." She mentioned the name “Rosenberg.” This girl was located, and an interview verified the above information and stated that Perl refused to accept the sum of $2,000 that she offered to him. Unlike Barr and Sarant, Perl decided not to flee the country, perhaps thinking he might be able to salvage his career.

Perl revealed that about early March 1951, shortly before the start of the Rosenberg-Sobell trial, he had been called to a meeting at Foley Square attended by various FBI agents and assistant U.S. attorneys involved in the preparation of the impending espionage case. One of those present was Roy Cohn. Perl recounted: "Mr. Roy Cohn informed me that... if I did not confess I would be indicted." He said he had replied to Cohn that "I had nothing to confess, but whatever he or anybody else had against me, I would very much like to hear in open court."

Perl was called to testify before a Federal Grand Jury and denied that he had been acquainted and associated with Julius Rosenberg and Morton Sobell. The indictment, which contains four counts, charges defendant with perjury in having testified falsely before a grand jury in the Southern District of New York, as follows:

(1) Q. Do you know Morton Sobell? A. Well, I do not, to the best of my recollection, although I realize he went through City College at the same time I did. (2) Q. Do you know Helene Elitcher? A. No, I do not.

(3) Q. Do you know Julius Rosenberg? A. No, I do not, to the best of my recollection.

(4) Q. You are positive that you don't know either Ann Sidorovich or Michael Sidorovich? A. Well, so far as my recollection can carry me, I am positive.

Defendant was described by his trial counsel as a "sort of young Einstein who loves physics," and as in a distressed state of mind due to his interrogation by the FBI before he was subpoenaed to testify before the Grand Jury. Such also is the general purport of defendant's own testimony at the trial, which covered these subjects in great detail; and he described the interpretation he placed upon the questions when propounded to him before the Grand Jury.

As trial counsel for defendant expressed it in his summation, defendant's mind is claimed to have worked in this fashion: "I want to do everything I can to help the Government. I want to disassociate myself from these people, Rosenberg and Sobell, Barr and Sarant, and the rest of the crew, just as far as I truthfully can — as far as I truthfully can. I don't want to go to the extent of committing perjury or lying about it, because that certainly would interfere with physics." Counsel for defendant further stated: "My instructions were to concede everything. He wanted to get everything before the jury."

Witnesses testified that Perl and the spies (both of whom were his classmates at City College) had been seen together dozens of times and that he had frequently attended meetings of the Young Communist League with them in New York. Sobell and Rosenberg were classmates of defendant at C. C. N. Y., where defendant received the degrees of Bachelor of Engineering in 1938 and Master of Electrical Engineering in 1940. Sobell and Rosenberg also took the course in Electrical Engineering. The Assistant Registrar of the college produced records which showed that defendant and Sobell were in the same class and section for eight courses with sections having as few as seven students, meeting as often as three times a week. He was also in the same class and section as Rosenberg for two courses, one of which had only fourteen students and met three times a week, the other with twenty students meeting twice a week.

There was also testimony by several collegemates of defendant who were on intimate terms with him, and who saw defendant with Sobell and Rosenberg in the lunchroom and in the "Tech" Building at CCNY "a half dozen to a dozen times a month," and present with them at meetings of the Young Communist League as well as at rallies in Union Square. One of these witnesses described a conversation had with defendant who described himself as active in the Young Communist League and pointed out as examples of others Max Elitcher, Morton Sobell and Julius Rosenberg. Another witness described in some detail the Steinmetz Club, affiliated with the Young Communist League of C. C. N. Y., which consisted of a group of engineering students. This witness attended ten to twelve of the meetings of the Steinmetz Club during the period of 1937 and 1938 and said there was "a constant nucleus of about ten to fifteen people," including defendant, Rosenberg and Sobell, and Rosenberg introduced the speakers and led the discussion.

While there was more than ample proof of defendant's association with Rosenberg, the proof of his relationship with Sobell was overwhelming, and included documentary evidence of conceded authenticity in defendant's handwriting. If the witnesses are to be credited, and their testimony was corroborated not only by the documents but to some extent by testimony of defendant, given at a later date to the same Grand Jury, defendant and Sobell were for many years on terms of intimacy and friendship.

The indictment did not charge defendant with participation in any espionage and the claim that it was incumbent on the prosecution to prove that he was associated with or had knowledge of the espionage activities of Rosenberg and Sobell is little short of frivolous.

The jury found defendant guilty on counts one and three which concerned Sobell and Rosenberg, but acquitted him on the counts relating to Helene Elitcher and the Sidoroviches. The testimony relative to defendant's contact and association with Helene Elitcher and the Sidoroviches, while sufficient to comply with the two-witness rule applicable in perjury cases, was meager in bulk and circumstantial detail in comparison with that of the many witnesses who testified to the long series of occasions when defendant was with Sobell and Rosenberg and the substantial corroboration, to be found in some of the documents conceded to have been written by defendant and otherwise. There was ample basis for the conclusion of the jury that, while defendant's guilt with respect to his grand jury testimony relative to Sobell and Rosenberg was established to their satisfaction beyond a reasonable doubt, there was such a doubt as to his recollection of the others.

He was found guilty on two counts of perjury concerning his denial of knowledge of Rosenberg and Sobell. On June 5, 1953, he was sentenced to serve five years on each count to run concurrently. But immediately after the verdict, an assistant U.S. attorney rose and suggested that Perl’s troubles were only beginning: the FBI, he said, had information “directly” tying Perl to the Rosenberg spy ring. Perl’s $20,000 bail was revoked and he was led off to jail to await further judgment.

On appeal, the verdict wa ffirmed, with US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit staging "It is a deplorable fact that this young man of such promise and ability should have become so enmeshed in the toils as wilfully to testify falsely before a Grand Jury of the United States embarked upon an investigation of Soviet espionage; but on this record, free from any taint of error, he has justly been found guilty of that offense."

Decoded Soviet documents, the "Verona cables," provide compelling evidence that Perl was indeed a spy. A June 16, 1944, cable to Moscow reports that Perl had given the KGB "material information about air units for new aircraft." The information was thought so valuable that Perl was given a bonus of $500. The data he provided aided the Soviets in the unique tail-fin design of the MIG-15 fighter used in Korea.

Covemame YaKOV, formerly covername GNOM, was William Perl. VENONA cable NY-> Moscow, No. 1314, 14 September 1944 from MAJ to VIKTOR. A short message quoted in entirety: "Until recently GNOM [William Perl, rib] was paid only the expenses connected with his coming to TYRE. Judging by an appraisal of the material received and the rest [1 group garbled] sent by us GNOM deserves remuneration for material no less valuable than that given by the rest of the members of LIBERAUs group who were given a bonus by you. Please agree to paying him 500 dollars."