Yankee Flyer,
Glad you got it off with little problem.
RC and Sunray are very probably correct.
Cosmolene can permeate threads evenly, I have taken off an original P14 barrel off a receiver that came from India. I was expecting a titanic struggle given that the receiver was an Eddystone which are reputed to have barrels screwed in by gorillas. Instead, the wet cosmolene encrusted threads allowed me to quite easily remove the de-milled .303 barrel with a minimum which had been in place since WWI and no the receiver was not cracked to allow such permeation. I am sure that it was cosmolene as I have learned the distinctive smell of Indian cosmolene from old stocks and parts that I have used to rebuild Enfields and the like.
If you are really interested whether the U.S. Govt put anti-seize lubricant on the threads, I am sure that you could find some armorers manuals circa when your rifle's barrel was put on whether anti-seize was applied to threads. Otherwise, you could try boards like Gunboard or milsurps.com. Given that chain of custody for old milsurps is difficult to establish in most cases, it is possible that some individual owner or even armorer applied anti-seize to your particular barrel even if that was not general practice. If it was an import then establishing who did what is probably not doable.