29 Facts About George Koval

George Koval was born in Sioux City, Iowa to Jewish emigrants from the Russian Empire.

George Koval was recruited by the GRU, trained, and assigned the code name DELMAR.

George Koval returned to the United States in 1940 and was drafted into the US Army in early 1943.

George Koval worked at atomic research laboratories and, according to the Russian government, relayed back to the Soviet Union information about the production processes and volumes of the polonium, plutonium, and uranium used in American atomic weaponry, and descriptions of the weapon production sites.

In 1948, George Koval left on a European vacation but never returned to the United States.

Abram and his wife Ethel Shenitsky Koval raised three sons: Isaya, born 1912; George, born 1913; and Gabriel, born 1919.

George Koval attended Central High School, a red-brick Victorian building better known as "the Castle on the Hill".

Neighbors recalled that George Koval spoke openly of his communist beliefs.

Abram George Koval became the secretary for ICOR, the Organization for Jewish Colonization in the Soviet Union.

The George Koval family emigrated in 1932, traveling with a United States family passport.

The George Koval family worked on a collective farm and were profiled by an American communist daily newspaper in New York City.

George Koval graduated with honors in five years and received Soviet citizenship.

Later, George Koval was recruited by the Soviet Main Intelligence Directorate, or GRU.

George Koval was drafted into the Soviet army in 1939 to explain his sudden disappearance from the city.

George Koval told coworkers he was a native New Yorker and an only child.

George Koval received basic training at Fort Dix in New Jersey before being sent to The Citadel in Charleston, South Carolina.

George Koval attended the City College of New York and studied electrical engineering.

George Koval's CCNY classmates looked up to the older Koval as a role model and father figure who never did homework and was a noted ladies' man, never knowing about his Soviet education and wife.

George Koval was assigned to Oak Ridge, Tennessee; at the time, project scientists were researching enriched uranium and plutonium-based bombs, with the Oak Ridge laboratories central to the development of both.

George Koval enjoyed free access to much of Oak Ridge; he was made a "health physics officer" and monitored radiation levels across the facility.

George Koval was charged by his handlers with watching Oak Ridge's polonium supply to transmit information about it through a Soviet contact named "Clyde".

George Koval's information reached Moscow via coded dispatches, couriers, and the Soviet Embassy.

George Koval was transferred from Oak Ridge to a top-secret lab in Dayton, Ohio, on June 27,1945, where polonium initiators were fabricated.

George Koval returned to New York and CCNY, where he received his bachelor's degree in electrical engineering on February 1,1948.

George Koval left by sea in October 1948 and never returned to his birth country.

In 1999, George Koval was living on his small pension in Russia and had heard that US war veterans like himself could apply for Social Security payments.

George Koval described his 57 years of post-spy life living in Russia as "uneventful".

George Koval's family knew he had done work for the GRU, but the subject was never discussed.

George Koval did not receive any high awards upon his return, a fact that bothered him.