Clarence Hiskey

Clarence Francis Hiskey (1912–1998), born Clarence Szczechowski, became active in the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) when he attended graduate school at the University of Wisconsin. He became a professor of chemistry at the University of Tennessee, Columbia University and Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute. For a time, Hiskey worked at the Tennessee Valley Authority and the University of Chicago Metallurgical Laboratory, part of the Manhattan Project. Hiskey's wife may have been involved in espionage also.

Hiskey joined the Chicago Metallurgical Laboratory in September 1943. A May 1944, New York KGB to Moscow Venona project decryption of Soviet intelligence traffic reported that Bernard Schuster of the CPUSA secret apparatus, which had been working with Soviet intelligence, had been to Chicago on the KGB's instructions. The message recorded Schuster's description of those he had come in contact with, which included Rose Olsen, and stated Olsen had been meeting with Hiskey on the instructions of the organization. In July, it appears Joseph Katz had been assigned to the Hiskey case.

On 28 April 1944, Army counter-intelligence (G-2) observed Clarence Hiskey meet with Soviet Military Intelligence (GRU) illegal officer Arthur Adams. The government then neutralized Hiskey from the Manhattan Project by drafting him into the Army, and stationing him in Canada for the duration of the conflict. While en route, Army counter-intelligence officers secretly searched Hiskey's luggage and found seven pages of classified notes taken from the Chicago Metallurgical Lab. When the officers subsequently performed a follow up search, the notes were no longer with Hiskey.

In 1948, the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) established that Hiskey was an active member of the CPUSA and had attempted to recruit other scientists to pass secret atomic data to Soviet intelligence. Congressional investigators concluded:

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