supervising Soviet foreign intelligence reports in KGB file 43173 vol.2 (v) lists Magdoff as number "3. 'Tan' – Harry Magdoff, former employee of the Commerce Department" of Elizabeth Bentley's contacts in his report on compromised American sources and networks; NKVD operatives are ranked either alphabetically or in chronological order, beginning with pre-World War II names, followed by World War II names, with the Soviet Case Officer himself the last in line. 1 February 1956, FBI Belmont to Boardman Memo discusses prosecution of the members of the Perlo group, including " 'Kant' (Harry Magdoff)" but weighs the disclosure of Government techniques and practices in the cryptography field to unauthorized persons and would compromise the Government's efforts in the communications intelligence field. Skeptical Views Victor Navasky, editor and publisher of The Nation, has written an editorial highly critical of the interpretation of recent work on the subject of Soviet espionage, arguing that historians who rely too much on Venona material are guilty of using every individual mentioned in the cables as prima facie proof of their involvement in Soviet espionage. Appendix A to their book on Venona, Haynes and Klehr list 349 names (and code names) of people who they say "had a covert relationship with Soviet intelligence that is confirmed in the Venona traffic." They do not qualify the list, which includes everyone from Alger Hiss to Harry Magdoff, the former New Deal economist and Marxist editor of Monthly Review, and Walter Bernstein, the lefty screenwriter who reported on Tito for Yank magazine. It occurs to Haynes and Klehr to reprint ambiguous Venona material related to Magdoff and Bernstein but not to call up either of them (or any other living person on their list) to get their version of what did or didn't happen. Notes FBI Silvermaster group file, Overview from web index page. FBI Silvermaster group file, Part 2c, p. 182 (p. 3 in PDF format). United States. National Counterintelligence Center. A Counterintelligence Reader. NACIC, no date. <https://web.archive.org/web/20050224074214/http://www.nacic.gov/history/CIReaderPlain/Vol3Chap1.pdf>, vol.3 chap.1, pg.31,: "The following were members of the Victor Perlo group....Harry Magdoff: Statistical Division of WPB and Office of Emergency Management; Bureau of Research and Statistics, WTB; Tools Division, War Production Board; Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce, Commerce Department." Venona 629 KGB New York to Moscow, 5 May 1944. KGB agent & Earl Browder instruct Bentley on new recruits, Venona 687 New York to Moscow, 13 May 1944. FBI