Career
Bernstein allegedly recruited his fellow Communist T.A. Bisson who had stopped working at the Board of Economic Warfare (BEW) and began working in the Institute of Pacific Relations (Intellectual Property Rights) and in the editorial offices of Bernstein’s periodical Amerasia. Bisson passed to Bernstein copies of four documents: (a) his own report for BEW with his views on working out a plan for shipment of American troops to China. (b) a report by the Chinese embassy in Washington to its government in China.
(c) a brief BEW report of April 1943 on a general evaluation of the forces of the sides on the Soviet-German front.
And (d) a report by the American consul in Vladivostok. In 1945 the Office of Strategic Services Security Division and the Federal Bureau of Investigation searched the offices of the magazine Amerasia, which was suspected of holding classified government documents.
The staff of the publication included accused Communist spies and agents, including Joseph Bernstein. In subsequent years, the case resulted in several convictions, none major, and a number of congressional hearings were held on the case.
Bernstein"s code with the GRU and in the Venona project is "MARQUIS".
