While a student at the City College of New York, Perl joined the Steinmetz Club, the campus branch of the Young Communist League, where he met and befriended future Soviet spies Julius Rosenberg, Morton Sobell and Joel Barr.
Perl graduated with a degree in engineering in 1939, and in 1940 began working for the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) at their Langley Army Air Base research facility in Hampton, Virginia.
Perl was nearly given a position with the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission when his connection with Barr and Sarant, suspected Communists, was turned up by a security check.
After his return in late April 1953, Wise "stated in strict confidence that he felt Perl should plead guilty and cooperate with Government in giving espionage into."
On May 4, 1953, U.S. Judge Thomas Francis Murphy (government prosecutor in the Hiss Case) referred trial for instant case of perjury to Judge Sylvester J. Ryan of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, to commence on May 19, 1953, with Lloyd McMahon and Robert Martin prosecuting and Raymond L. Wise and Stanley Kanavek defending.
As for evidence from Helene Ellitcher, Wise argued that the court could only expect her to corroborate the testimony of her husband, Max Elitcher, a communist and known perjurer.
Perl is mentioned in 14 KGB messages decrypted by the Venona project, a joint British-American intelligence effort, under the covernames 'Gnome' and 'Jacob'.
[13] John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr have suggested that data provided by him aided the Soviets in the unique tail-fin design of the MiG-15 fighter used in the Korean War.