In 1951 he was recruited by MGB First Chief Directorate (Political intelligence wing) and trained as a MGB "illegal agent" (NOC) on foreign soil. During his intelligence training he married and had two children. In 1953, Molody travelled to Canada on a Soviet merchant ship, posing as a Canadian national named "Gordon Lonsdale" (the true Lonsdale had died in Finland in the early 1940s). MGB foreign branch took possession of the Finnish public books after the war and had frequently used them to establish new spy identities. From Canada, "Gordon Lonsdale" illegally travelled to the US without a visa where he started his operations as an aid to an atomic spy Rudolph Abel. He also first met an American communist Cohen couple (Morris and Lona (UK cover names Peter and Helen Kroger).