An American ‘regular guy’ was a Russian top spy

By William J. Broad

NEW YORK: He had all-American cover — born in Iowa, college in Manhattan, army buddies with whom he played baseball. George Koval also had a secret. He was a top Soviet spy, code named Delmar, trained by Stalin’s ruthless bureau of military intelligence.

Atom spies are old stuff. But historians say Koval, who died last year in Moscow and whose name is just coming to light publicly, appears to have been one of the most important spies of the 20th century.

On Nov. 2, the Kremlin startled Western scholars by announcing that President Vladimir Putin had posthumously given the highest Russian award to a Soviet agent who in World War II had penetrated the Manhattan Project to build the atom bomb.

The announcement hailed Koval as “the only Soviet intelligence officer” to infiltrate the project’s secret plants, saying his work “helped speed up considerably the time it took for the Soviet Union to develop an atomic bomb of its own.”

Since then, historians, scientists, federal officials and old friends of Koval’s have raced to unearth his story — the athlete, the guy everybody liked, the genius at technical studies.

The Soviets were able to turn him, scholars say, because of his Russian Jewish roots.

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