Born in Passaic, New Jersey, Menaker was the son of a Russian Jewishimmigrant who was imprisoned for revolutionary activity in Russia. Menaker's family were noted radicals and one of Menaker's nieces, Ellen, was married to Victor Perlo, head of the Perlo group. He is named for utopian socialist Robert Owen. Menaker was identified by Arlington Hall cryptographers in sixteen Venona messages. Menaker assisted Floyd Miller's infiltration of the Socialist Workers Party. Several Venona messages are related to Menaker's employer, Michael Burd, for whom Menaker worked at the Midland Export Corporation of New York City. In 1944 and 1945, Menaker traveled to Chile to represent Midland Export. While in Chile he met the Chilean diplomat Christian Casanova Subercaseaux. Burd and Subercaseaux were also both Soviet intelligence agents. After returning from his 1944 Chile trip, Burd complained to the New York KGB office that Menaker alienated several companies they did business with. KGB Officer Pavel Ivanovich Fedosimov reported to Moscow that "allowances should be made'' working with Menaker since he had not been thoroughly trained or screened prior to assignment. In a later Venona transcript, the KGB speculates about the possibility that Laurence Duggan, another source who had recently resigned from the U.S. State Department, might go to Chile in place of Menaker or do some unspecified work with him. A cable from October references work with Joseph Katz, owner of the Tempus Import Company in Manhattan, and one of the KGB's most active agents. The decrypt requests instructions regarding Menaker's salary, and noted someone would be paying him thirty thousand dollars but that he might not receive it for a year. Menaker, like his friend Floyd Miller, "apparently cooperated with the FBI to some extent in the 1950s....His son wrote of the frequent presence in the household in the 1950s of a friendly FBI agent, but his father never spoke about precisely what he did in Mexico, or what he told the FBI." He is the father of author Daniel Menaker, and grandfather to Chapo Trap House host Will Menaker.
Venona
Menaker, whose code names as deciphered by Arlington Hall cryptographers is BOB and CZECH, is referenced in the following Venona project decryptions:
