In early June 1944, Browder acceded to Akhmerov's demands and agreed to instruct the members of the Silvermaster group to report directly to the NKGB. Bentley later said that this was the event that turned her against Communism in the United States. "I discovered then that Earl Browder was just a puppet, that somebody pulled the strings in Moscow," she would say. Her biographers suggest that Bentley's objections, rather than being ideological, were related more to a lifelong dislike of being given orders and a sense that the reassignments of her contacts left her with no meaningful role. Late in 1944, Bentley was ordered to give up all of her remaining sources, including the Perlo group she had recently acquired. Her Soviet superior also told her that she would have to leave her position as vice president of U.S. Service and Shipping.