Victory And Beyond Ex-Councilman Kept Secrets In Spy-Novel Fashion Fbi Agent Bugged Cars, Houses Of Visiting Russians

Few people would think of former Spokane City Councilman Bob Dellwo as James Bond.

But during World War II, Dellwo guarded Hanford’s nuclear secrets in a cloak-and-dagger spy program that only recently was made public.

As a young FBI agent hired out of law school, Dellwo bugged the cars, apartments and meeting rooms of Russians arriving at the Port of Portland in 1943 and 1944.

He secretly photographed the contents of a briefcase carried by a known Soviet spy. Posing as a telephone repairman, he installed wiretaps in the Communist Party bookstore in Portland.

The Russians were U.S. allies. They were supposed to be in Portland as purchasing agents for the wartime lendlease program of U.S. help to the Soviet Union.

But some were there for other purposes, the lawyer recalled in his first interview on his once-secret life.

“Our background checks showed they were trained in chemistry and physics. Our phone taps told us they were highly interested in Hanford,” recalled Dellwo, 77.

The FBI’s top-secret surveillance program was called SINRAD Soviet Infiltration of the Radiation Laboratories.

It was linked to Army intelligence’s Operation Venona, a top-secret program that broke Soviet atomic spy codes, made public for the first time last month.

“This is the stuff of spy novels,” said John Deutsch, the Central Intelligence Agency’s new director, when he disclosed the program.

In 1943, Army cryptographers broke the Soviet code for the first time, learning there was a massive effort to spy on U.S. atomic weapons facilities.

The Army turned to the FBI to spy on the spies. The program was kept secret for decades because the government didn’t want to compromise the Venona program.

Dellwo’s first assignment was to set up a major spy-hunting program in Denver. FBI agents bugged telephones, trailed suspects and even snooped in their garbage, he said.

“We had surveillance centers all over the U.S. - about 100 up and down the West Coast.”

In late 1943, Dellwo moved on to Portland to set up a similar spy center.

A long-distance runner, Dellwo posed as “Joe Maguire” - the name of his brother-in-law, a Spokane priest. On his daily runs, he befriended Russians who worked for the Soviet Purchasing Commission.

He learned the Soviets were shipping odd things from Portland - including a huge bale that hid a collection of road maps from every state in the West.

“We modified the phones in their apartments. We learned there was a big influx of espionage agents,” Dellwo said.

While Hanford was being built in 1944, a group of 10 Russians asked to tour the Columbia Basin.

“We noticed many of them were in the field of nuclear science,” Dellwo said.

Posing as a Columbia Basin Irrigation Project engineer, Dellwo escorted them on a one-day road tour of Eastern Washington. Before the convoy left Portland, he bugged cars loaned to the Russians, turning radio speakers into mikes and putting shoebox-sized transmitters under the cars.

“We veered away from Hanford and never let them get close to it,” he said. When the Russians asked what was going on at Hanford, “we told them it has to do with hydroelectric power,” he said.

Soviet agents never infiltrated Hanford, said Dellwo, who left the FBI in 1948. “Ninety percent of the Russian visitors were legitimate. We worried about the 10 percent who weren’t.”

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