Martha Dodd (code name "Liza" or "Juliet #2") was the daughter of the
ambassador to
Germany (1933-1938)
William Dodd and a
covert Soviet agent. As his child she influenced her father's actions and reported on his personal correspondence. Dodd was also a good friend of
Eleanor Roosevelt, and the Soviets were very interested in information regarding "The Captain" (their code name for
FDR).
Martha was a romantic communist and very sexually independent woman. In fact according to one of her Soviet handlers: (p 64)
"Having once started, Martha, as in the past, talked quite freely… Martha's life in Berlin can be summed up in one word-"sleep." Seemingly, she spent most of her time in bed. In addition to the Russian or Russians, she had slept with a full-blown fascist-General Ernest Udet, second in command (after Goering) of the German air force; Louis Ferdinand, grandson of the Kaiser; and some guy at the French embassy in Berlin. (A real internationalist!)"
Despite her
promiscuity Dodd, once she met him, only had eyes for one man:
Boris Vinogradov. Vinogradov was a Soviet embassy official in Berlin. Once Dodd showed interest in him, Moscow advised using her to get
American intelligence on
Germany.
The Russians strung Dodd along, frequently promising her that Vinogradov would marry her. However after not hearing from him for some time (she was told he was transferred to other diplomatic work where he could not contact her, but in fact was in the process of being purged), she married American millionaire, and fellow communist agent Alfred Stern.
Dodd's intelligence career ended when she and her husband fled America for Mexico on July 20, 1956. She and her husband fled when Boris Morros named them as spies. It's also interesting to note that 18 years earlier, in 1938, Whittaker Chambers also named her, but by that point most of Dodd's most intensive spying was already over and the FBI could not make a case.
After Mexico, Stern and Dodd lived in the Soviet Union, but found it not to their liking and moved to Havana, Cuba where they stayed from 1963 to 1970. However, Cuba still did not meet their hopes and they moved on to Czechoslovakia where they spent the rest of their lives. Isn't it odd that while romantically idealistic about communism, they had a difficulty living under it?
Source: The Haunted Wood: Soviet espionage in America - The Stalin Era
By Allen Weinstein and Alexander Vassiliev