According to an article found in the Mississippi State University archives published in Starkville Daily News called “MSU football trainer became Russian Spy,” Cohen, a high school student from the Bronx, was brought to Mississippi in an attempt to help the university gain renown outside of the South. However, after playing on the freshman team for one season, it became evident that Cohen did not have enough talent to make the varsity team. Cohen then became the football team trainer to earn money to go to school.
“Aging American confesses to spying for Soviet Union,” a copy of an article published in the Washington Times found in the university archives, states that Cohen said he “ruined” his knee playing football in college.
During his senior year, the 1934 Reveillecredits Cohen as being “always on the job and is largely responsible for the success the team met with.”
Cohen was at Mississippi State College studying business from 1931-1934, graduating in three years. After earning his undergraduate degree, Cohen attended graduate school in Illinois where he became involved in civil rights. He was expelled for distributing pamphlets calling for a revolution.
A copy of the article “Ex-Memphian, nuke spy for Soviets, dies,” found in the university archives, originally published in Commercial Appeal, states Cohen became a member of the American Communist Party in 1935 after returning to New York.
According to a The Guardianarticle, “US Spy Takes Secret to Grave,” found in the university archives, Cohen fought against forces in the Spanish Civil War, but was shot by a machine gun in both legs during his first battle.
During his recuperation in Barcelona in the spring of 1938, he was approached by Soviet intelligence officers. They proposed he return to America and become a spy for the Soviet Union; he accepted.
Cohen’s obituary in The Guardian, which can be found in the archives, states in 1941, Cohen married his wife Lona, a librarian, whom he met at an anti-fascist rally. She shared her husband’s beliefs and agreed to help him in his intelligence activity. She would remain his spy partner throughout their career.
An article found in the university archives, “Morris Cohen: Stole US Atom Secrets for Soviets,” said the Cohens were the founding members of an undiscovered spy ring responsible for stealing atomic secrets from Los Alamos, N.M.
During Cohen’s time spying in the United States, he claimed to have gained atomic secrets from a physicist codenamed “Perseus.” On July 4, 1945, the New York headquarters of The People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs — a police organization of the Soviet Union dealing with espionage and other policing areas — wired Moscow atomic weapon information. When the bomb was tested in New Mexico 12 days later, Soviet scientists already had precise descriptions of the weapon.
A British physicist, Klaus Fuchs, supplied atomic bomb drawings and was eventually discovered by American code breakers.
In Cohen’s obituary in The Scotsman, which can be found in the university archives, the Moscow newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravadapraised him for his intelligence work.
“Thanks to Cohen, designers of the Soviet atomic bomb got piles of technical documentation straight from the secret laboratory in Los Alamos,” it said.
According to Cohen’s obituary in The San Francisco Chronicle, which can be found in the archives, the Cohens later became subjects of an investigation by U.S. authorities after World War II. Because the Cohens were friends with Julius and Ethel Rosenberg — who were later executed for espionage involving passing atomic bomb secrets to the Soviet Union — they were interrogated.
According to the book “The Secret World of American Communism,” after the Rosenbergs were arrested, the Cohens fled New York because a Soviet diplomat warned the Cohens in the summer of 1950 of an FBI crackdown, causing the Cohens to flee through Mexico, The Guardiansaid.
After undergoing spy training, the Cohens resurfaced four years later in Britain. The couple took on the names of Peter and Helen Kroger, deceased New Zealanders. For six years, they led a double life as rare book dealers in London, while secretly being radio operators for the Soviet Union.
Daily Telegraph‘s obituary for Cohen, which can be found in the archives, said the couple betrayed some of Britain’s most vital naval secrets. Cohen’s obituary in the Daily Mail, which can also be found in the archives, said Cohen worked as a spy paymaster and communication expert at this time, while Lona microfilmed secret British documents.
According to the article, “Real-Life Espionage Takes to the Stage,” published in the New York Times, found in the university archives, once the Cohens had become suspicious to British intelligence agents from MI5 used a neighboring apartment owned by the Search family to spy on the Soviet agents.
Ruth and Wilfred Search were friends of the Cohens. During this time, Ruth almost gave away the secret to Lona at Christmastime. Ruth wanted to put a warning message saying “go” in a mince pie she baked for her neighbors but, in the end, did not.
In 1961, according to The Guardian, the Cohens were trapped by British agents and were soon convicted of conspiring to steal submarine warfare secrets. Spy paraphernalia littered the couple’s apartment, including books with microdot messages and a transmitter powerful enough to reach Moscow.
 They were sentenced to 20 years and served eight before being traded for Gerald Brooke, a British teacher who had been set-up by the KGB. The Cohens spent the rest of their lives in Russia, training new spies part of the time.
“Their whole life was one of sacrifice and great courage. They believed in the ideal of communism,” George Blake, a British double agent in service to the Soviet Union, said and was quoted by The Guardian.
Svetlana Chervonnaya, a historian who had met the Cohens, said in a transcript of an interview with PBS, which can be found at pbs.org, at the end of their lives, she believed the Cohens wanted to die Americans. She said they told her their motivations for becoming traitors to their country.
“Because [Lona] joined during the war. So her motivation as she said was anti-war and to save American lives, and since he joined much earlier, I think that with [Morris], it’s more ideological,” she said. “He was more ideological. He was more on communist lines. Though she was also left wing. So I think that he came along on ideological lines. That he was helping and working for socialist, maybe workers’ paradise, as people in low Manhattan at that time thought about the Soviet Union.”
According to the article “Aging American confesses to spying for Soviet Union,” after Lona died in 1992, Cohen gave an interview to Komsomolskaya Pravada, saying he wanted to take the secret of “Perseus” to the grave and said the physicist could still be alive and living in the U.S. at the time.
“I hope he is having a calm and peaceful life there now,” he said in 1994. “He has done something to be proud of.”
In the article, “Morris Cohen: Stole US Atom Secrets for Soviets,” it is stated Cohen died in 1995 at the age of 84, believing he took his secret of “Perseus” to the grave.
“I assume even in 100 years his last name won’t be exposed,” he said in the 1994 interview.
However, according to the 1998 edition of Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, the Soviets had invented “Perseus.” The fake agent is actually a combination of three agents codenamed “Mlad,” “Star” and “Pers.”
According to the book “Spies: The Rise and Fall of KGB in America” and Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, Theodore Hall, a young physicist, was “Mlad,” Saville Sax, a courier for atomic secrets, was “Star” and Russell McNutt, a civil engineer recruited by Julius Rosenberg, was “Pers.” It is known that the Cohens did work with Hall.