Last modified on June 28, 2020, at 23:42

Nicola Napoli

This article is part of the
Venona
series.

Secret apparatus
Manhattan Project
KGB

Nicola Napoli was the President of Artkino Pictures, Inc., the sole distributor of Soviet films in the United States, Canada, Central America and South America in 1930s and 1940s. Napoli passed information from the Communist Party of the United States (CPUSA) to Soviet intelligence during World War II. Artkino later became Amkino.

Napoli was born 16 November 1905 in New York of Italian parentage and was taken to Italy at an early age by his parents. He returned to the United States in 1924, and up to 1928 edited Il Lavoratore, an Italian Communist publication in New York. In 1936 Napoli travelled to Russia and other European countries. At one time Napoli was an officer of Intourist, Inc., the parent company of World Tourist, which was operated by Jacob Golos, a high level operative in the CPUSA's Secret apparatus. Shortly before Golos' death of a heart attack in November 1943, Golos told Soviet defector Elizabeth Bentley that he was turning Napoli over to another Russian contact to continue the covert relationship.

Artkino was registered with the U.S. Department of State under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) as an agent of the Soviet Government. However, both the U.S. Department of Justice and the War Department had difficulty and no cooperation in gaining Artkino's full compliance with the FARA Act, an investigation under the Internal Security Act revealed.

A Venona cable of decrypted Soviet intelligence traffic which lists the names of scientists engaged on the problem of atomic energy, has Saville Sax contacting Napoli, who then directed him to Sergey Kurnakov.

Venona

Nicola Napoli is referenced in the following Venona project decrypt:

1699 KGB New York to Moscow, 2 December 1944.

References

  • FBI Silvermaster file, pgs. 463, 464 (PDF pgs. 64, 65).
  • John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr, Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999), pgs. 239, 259, 303.