His Russian biographers claim he served in the United States army during World War I and eventually achieved the rank of major.
An acute lack of qualified personnel (a situation partially created by the Bolsheviks themselves) meant that Adams, with his strong engineering background, immediately became a top bureaucrat.
He quickly managed to get a legal position, and established his own firm and his own agent network involving over 20 experts from the American military industrial enterprises.
In July and August he provided another 1500 pages and specimens of weapon-grade uranium, plutonium, and berillium, Eskulap did not appear at the September rendezvous and Adams learned he was terminally ill.
It is known that, in 1943, U.S. Military Intelligence received information from confidential sources linking Adams to scientists working at the Met Lab.
The FBI and Military Security performed an illegal search of Adam's New York apartment and discovered sophisticated camera equipment, material for constructing microfilm, and notes on experiments being conducted at the atomic bomb laboratory in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.
They also observed him climbing into an automobile driven by Pavel Mikhailov (codename: Molière) the GRU station chief in New York.
While en route, Hiskey's bags were searched and found to contain seven pages of notes on secret work at Oak Ridge.
There are a number of Venona decrypts which refer to Hiskey, (codename: Ramsey) but they are concerned with Soviet attempts to re-establish contact with him once he had been drafted.
Lerner resigned his job and went to work for Keynote Records in New York, a jazz label which also employed Adams as a technician.
The FBI picked up his trail in Chicago where he was seen boarding a train for the west coast accompanied by Eric Bernay, owner of Keynote Records and a well-known Comintern agent.