Sonia Steinman Gold

This article is part of the Venona series.
Secret apparatus
Division of Monetary Research
Silvermaster group

Sonia Steinman Gold was the wife of Bela Gold and part of the Silvermaster spy ring in Washington D.C. for the Soviet Union during World War II. Prior to World War II she worked for the U.S. House of Representatives Select Committee on Interstate Migration and in the United States Bureau of Employment Security. Sonia Gold received an appointment after Assistant Secretary of the Treasury Harry Dexter White was asked by the CPUSA underground secret apparatus to place her within his office. The appointment within the Treasury Department Division of Monetary Research was to help facilitate the transmission of stolen documents to the Soviet Union. Much of the information dealt with the Treasury Departments's views and recommendations about applications for loans made by the Chinese and French governments. There was also political information regarding Charles DeGaulle, leader of the French National Committee (Comité National Français). Her office was one block from the White House. Sonia Gold left the Treasury Department in late 1944 on maternity leave.

Sonia Gold's code name in Soviet intelligence and in the Venona project is "Zhenya".

Sources

• Allen Weinstein and Alexander Vassiliev, The Haunted Wood: Soviet Espionage in America--the Stalin Era (New York: Random House, 1999)
• FBI Silvermaster group