II: he said that one was based in Amtorg in New York City, one in the Soviet Embassy in the United States at Washington, D.C., one in the Soviet Consulate General in San Francisco, one in Mexico City and ran by Vasilevsky, and also that an Akhmerov-led ring targeted CPUSA members for the Kremlin's needs. Sudoplatov also claimed the existence of a de facto Soviet safe house, Zook's Drugstore in Santa Fe, New Mexico, that first played a role in the first Trotsky assassination plot by Iosef Grigulevich, and later continued use as a base for atomic espionage in New Mexico. According to historian E.B. Held, this may have been disinformation on Sudoplatov's part to boost his accusations against Oppenheimer, who Sudoplatov claimed was codenamed STAR. American counterintelligence transcripts show that the identities of MLLAD and STAR were Theodore Hall and Saville Sax respectively. Held suggests that pieces of disinformation in Sudoplatov's memoir in 1994 may have been a reason why the Venona project was declassified in 1995. Nonetheless, Sudoplatov also refuted an apocryphal assertion originating from KGB writers, that of the existence of the alleged spy Perseus. Sudoplatov stated that Perseus was merely a cover name over multiple identities of Soviet agents or assets. The book also confirmed that Julius and Ethel Rosenberg had worked for Soviet intelligence although argued that their role was not very important. Other subjects However, the material on the atomic espionage is only a small part of the book, which also details many Soviet intelligence operations, mostly those with which Sudoplatov had personal involvement. For the period after Sudoplatov's arrival in Moscow, it also discusses the political machinations, both inside the intelligence services and at the top of the Soviet government. For instance, the events surrounding the falls of Nikolai Yezhov and Lavrentii Beria are given in considerable detail, as are the events in the Soviet Union leading up to World War II and Joseph Stalin's reaction to the outbreak of the war. Other reactions The controversy around the atomic information charges led to questions about who had written the book and whether Sudoplatov had deliberately made misrepresentations. A number of parties, including Russia's own Foreign Intelligence Service, contended that Sudoplatov exaggerated his own role in his autobiography. Members of the Soviet atomic bomb project felt that Sudoplatov's claims about the amount of information provided to them by Soviet intelligence denigrated the scientists' role