her contact and controller in 1938. Golos (born Yakov Naumovich Reizen), an immigrant from Russia who became a naturalized United States citizen in 1915, was one of the Soviet Union's most important intelligence agents in the United States. When they met, Golos was involved in planning the assassination of Leon Trotsky (which would take place in Mexico City in 1940). Bentley and Golos soon became lovers and, at this point, she thought she was spying solely for the American Communist Party. It was more than a year before she learned his true name and, according to her later testimony, two years before she knew that he was working for Soviet intelligence. In 1940, two years into their relationship, the Justice Department forced Golos to register as an agent of the Soviet government under the Foreign Agents Registration Act. This increased the risk of contacting and accepting documents from his network of American spies, and he gradually transferred this responsibility to Bentley. Golos needed someone to take charge of the day-to-day business of the United States Service and Shipping Corporation, a Comintern front organization for espionage activities; Bentley took on this role as well. Although she was never directly paid for her espionage work, she would eventually earn $800 a month as vice president of U.S. Service and Shipping (a considerable monthly salary at the time, ). As Bentley acquired an important role in Soviet intelligence, the Soviets gave her the code name "Umnitsa", loosely translated as "wise girl" or "clever girl". Silvermaster group Most of Bentley's contacts were in what prosecutors and historians would later call the "Silvermaster group", a network of spies centered around Nathan Gregory Silvermaster. This network became one of the most important Soviet espionage operations in the United States. Silvermaster worked with the Resettlement Administration and, later, with the Board of Economic Warfare. Although he did not have access to much sensitive information, he knew several Communists and Communist sympathizers in the government who were better placed and willing to pass information to him; using Bentley, he sent it to Moscow. The Soviet Union and the United States were allies in World War II, and much of the information Silvermaster collected for the Soviets concerned the war against Nazi Germany; the Soviets were bearing the burden of the ground war in Europe, and were interested in American intelligence. This intelligence included secret estimates of German military