Great Spies of the 20th Century

by Patrick Pesnot

  End of the history lesson. The man who practically handed the atomic bomb to Stalin was called Klaus Fuchs. Yet this spy was also a distinguished scientist and idealist, who somehow got lost in the crooked world of espionage.

  In 1940 the Soviets learned that the Allies had decided to study the production of high-powered weapon-based uranium 235.The man who gave them this information was called John Cairncross: the legendry spy and the fifth man in the famous Cambridge Five, including Philby, Burgess, MacLean and Blunt,21 although Cairncross had been exposed in recent years.

  Stalin immediately understood the importance of the information and knew that the

  Soviet Union could not stay out of such a discovery. It was not just about the Second World War, into which the USSR would soon be drawn, but also about the inevitable competition that would exist between the East and West after the fall of the Third Reich. However, Soviet scientists were behind in nuclear research. This meant that in order to catch up quickly and overcome these shortcomings, they had to use any means possible to unlock the secrets of the Allied atom.

  It has been estimated that over 200 agents operated outside of the USSR in this gigantic espionage operation (including Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, of whom we now know that Julius at least was guilty). Many others have slipped through the cracks and have never been exposed by western intelligence services.

  There are two possible reasons for this: the first is that the Allies, and the Americans in particular, have been reluctant to recognise how their ranks had been infiltrated, especially when it came to international scholars. The second, much bigger reason, is that the secret still exist today.

  To look inside this particular dossier, we must first go back in time.

  Stalin had been warned early on by both his intelligence services and by Cairncross that the British and Americans were working on a new atomic weapon: a terrifying super bomb.

  The Kremlin leader was sceptical by nature, but if there was even an ounce of truth in this information, the Soviets could not afford to miss the boat. As a result, Stalin ordered his intelligence agencies and the future KGB to track down the atom, using the codename Operation Enormoz. Fuchs would form one of the centre pieces of the operation.

  Klaus Fuchs was a curious character and in many ways, remains a mystery. His father was a Lutheran pastor and one of the first to join the German Social Democratic Party, even before the First World War, during which he made clear his pacifist beliefs. These views were frankly unorthodox in Germany at the time, and resulted in very hostile reactions. The young Fuchs undoubtedly suffered as a result and later at school, was regularly beaten up by the sons of former soldiers.

  In spite of this, Fuchs very quickly aligned himself with the socialist cause. In Kiel, where his father settled after the war, the Fuchs were soon being called the ‘Red Foxes',22 although the young man would go much further than his father, soon abandoning the Social Democratic Party for the KPD: the German Communist Party. This was around the time that Hitler came to power and so was a brave gesture at the time. However, we now know that the German Communist Party politics orchestrated by Moscow paradoxically contributed to the success of Hitler and the bloody hunt of the communists that was to follow. Like other activists, Fuchs had to go into hiding, but his father was arrested. A hunted man, Fuchs had no choice but to go into exile. He chose England.

  Fuchs was a brilliant man: by the time he left his native Germany at the age of just 20, he already held a degree in physics and mathematics. He decided to continue his studies in England and enrolled at the University of Bristol, gaining a doctorate in theoretical physics in very little time at all.

  When he first arrived, Fuchs had asked to be considered as a refugee and was careful to hide his political beliefs from the British authorities.Yet at university, he clearly professed his pro-communist ideas and never hid his sympathy for the Soviet Union. In Bristol, he actively participated in mass meetings ran by the ‘Society for Cultural Relations with the USSR'. During these meetings, transcripts were often read out concerning the sinister trials in Moscow. Fuchs' master and director of research, the future Nobel Prize winner Sir Neville Mott, recalls that he was deeply impressed by the passion with which his brilliant student played the role of Vychinsky, the relentless prosecutor of the Moscow trials. He reported that Fuchs accused the defendants in an ice-cold voice, adding that he never suspected to hear such a thing from so quiet and discreet a young man.

  It would appear that Fuchs had not yet been recruited by Moscow's intelligence services, even if they had probably already got their eye on this talented young man. Perhaps they were just waiting for the right time to contact him? That is to say, the day when Fuchs would have access to scientific information of the highest order.

  From an academic perspective, Fuchs' scientific journey is impressive. After leaving Bristol he went to work with the great physicist Max Born, another Nobel Prize winner who had already made important discoveries in nuclear physics. Like Fuchs, he was also a German refugee, although it is not necessarily their shared origins that brought them together. Undoubtedly, Born was immediately impressed with Fuchs' scientific capabilities, but he would have to do without his services for several months. Although Fuchs had applied for British citizenship, it was done just at the outbreak of the Second World War and so he had yet to be naturalised. This meant that he was still a German refugee and so immediately came under suspicion. Like hundreds of other exiles, Fuchs was deported to Canada for security. It was his boss, Max Born, who moved heaven and earth to lobby for his release. Beyond the sympathy he must have felt for Fuchs, Born had other reasons for wanting the young physicist's return: their research into the atomic bomb.

  Work on the subject was already progressing at pace in the English laboratories. The idea had originally been born in the 1930s, when atomic physicists had discovered the tremendous energy that was hidden in this elementary particle.Yet a way still had to be found as to how to release this energy. The English, and the Americans, were working in haste: they had legitimate reasons to think that Nazi Germany were also perusing the same research. Victory in the war would belong to whomever succeeded first. We now know that German research was far less advanced that the Allies had thought, but nevertheless, in the early 1940s there was a real urgency to succeed. Through Born, Fuchs now became involved in these top secret works.

  The British counterintelligence-espionage service, MI5, sounded the alarm bell: Attention! This man is a communist! Yet their warning were ignored by those higher up, who argued that they could not risk ignoring the services of such an eminent researcher, regardless of his politics. Thus, Fuchs would learn the secrets of the ‘Tube Alloys' programme, the codename given to the British atomic bomb research project.

  It is probably at this moment in time that Fuchs became a soviet spy. But how? He would later claim that it was he himself who took the initiative to make contact with the Russians. But by making this confession, was he just making himself look better in an attempt to justify his betrayal in the name of his idealism? It is far more likely that the Soviets took the initiative and they seemed to have no trouble in convincing Fuchs to work for them. After all, deep down he was still a communist and it was his duty to help his true homeland, the homeland of socialism, to build an A-bomb.

  Stalin was already thinking about the post-war period, and he was not the only one. In 1943, the Americans had begun preparing the hunt for Nazi scientists in view of the inevitable rivalry that would exist between Moscow and the West, once peace had returned.

  The recruitment of Fuchs provided a bright prospect for the Soviets. He was not only closely associated with English research , but in 1943 he was asked to travel to the United States on an even more secret mission: the Manhattan Project, which would lead to the construction of the first A-bomb. The Soviets could not have imagined a better outcome, especially as Fuchs was now working with the creme de la creme of global physicists: the Americans had all assembled in Los Alamo
s, in the New Mexican desert, with no less that twelve Nobel Prizes between them.

  Fuchs was directly involved in the design and assembly of the first bomb, detonated in July 1945, and had access to the most top secret documents, which he would hand over in the classic manner. From time to time he met with a man called Harry Gould, a chemist and a member of the NKVD. As the facilities, not just the men, at Los Alamos were closely monitored, Fuchs only saw Gould during his short holidays, which he was granted sparingly. The meetings were always held in the upmost secrecy, away from the where the research was taking place, usually in New York. Even at this time, the Americans had their suspicions, although they were particularly embarrassing ones!

  In Los Alamos, where the cream of the western world’s physicists, numbering twelve Nobel winners, worked in total secrecy, the English scientists (including Klaus Fuchs who had finally been naturalised), were more informed than their American colleagues. Indeed, it seems that the British scientists could have had access to all the sections of the Manhattan Project, which was actually very compartmentalised. According to a book written after the war by a Los Alamos security officer, the English essentially had complete knowledge of the chain assembly of the gun, how the bombs were configured and even possible later developments, such as the H-bomb. However, the officer felt that they had only minimal knowledge of the technological elements. Whatever the case, Fuchs had been able to transmit documentary material on the bomb to the Soviets.

  The boss at Los Alamos was Professor Oppenheimer, a man of rather progressive ideas, who in his youth had even shown to have sympathies for the communists. Such thoughts in the US were unacceptable and enough to make you be treated as a leper. Yet despite the opinion of the military security, Oppenheimer was appointed director at Los Alamos. No doubt because he was seen as being indispensible and men of his brainpower were very hard to find!

  At the head of the top secret research at Los Alamos, the authorities kept a close eye on Oppenheimer and his entourage. As soon as rumours began to circulate, he was the main suspect. This was naturally a very difficult situation. After all, he was still he head of the Manhattan Project. This meant that question shad to be asked, but very very carefully. However, one day, the scholar subtly admitted that members of his team had actually been approached by the Soviets. This nuance is very important: he did not say that they had been betrayed, but that they had been approached, which is very different.

  For his part, Fuchs was unaware that other researchers had been in contact with Soviet services. As a result of the partitioning enforced during their research, these men often worked together in the same laboratories without knowing who was or who was not a spy. We now know that there was another prestigious Soviet collaborator in Los Alamos. He was an American physicist and a scholar of great reputation, but despite being identified, was never arrested in order to guard his secrecy.

  Naturally, the building of the bomb was not just an extraordinary secret, but a particularly volatile one, which the Americans were quick to realise. However, when they realised that they had been spied on throughout the entire development process of the first bomb, it was too late: Moscow had already received all the material it needed in order to catch up with its nuclear research. It wasn't until 1949 that the Russians detonated their first atomic bomb, in an act that surprised the rest of the world, if not the Allied secret services!

  Having highlighted the systematic pillaging carried out by the Soviets during Operation Enormoz, the intelligence experts were expecting Moscow to succeed in building an atomic bomb sooner or later. It was inevitable. However, the secret that had to be guarded at all costs went by the strange and nefarious name ‘Venona'.

  For many years, US intelligence had intercepted messages sent by Soviet spies, but had been unable to read them because they were in a code that had hitherto been impossible to crack. Yet in the years that followed the end of the war, a series of events led to the breaking of the infamous code. First, a KGB agent defected, followed by the recruitment of a brilliant analyst by the US secret service, who after using information provided by the former KGB agent, was able to finally crack the Soviet's code.

  The Americans were now able to decrypt messages sent by Soviet agents, as well as read the many undeciphered telegrams that had been stored away in their archives. This lead to the discovery of how their atomic secrets had been penetrated.

  But were they able to use this new information? There was always the risk that by doing so, you alert the enemy to your discovery and the source consequently dries up as he/she changes their encryption method. It was a real dilemma, and very similar to that of the German Enigma machine. The Allies did not want the Germans to know that they had broken their code, which resulted in the sacrifice of thousands of civilian lives after the bombings of Coventry, for example.

  If the Americans chose not to arrest the scientist at Los Alamos who had betrayed them, it was because they had chosen to protect the ‘Venona' secret instead.Yet it was as a result of information discovered through ‘Venona' that Fuchs was eventually unmasked.

  The story itself is quite strange. Fuchs returned to England in 1946 and was immediately engaged at the Harwell Centre. This was the British main centre for atomic research and had been set up in great secrecy, without the knowledge of the Americans. When the CIA revealed to the British that Fuchs was a spy, they demanded that he be removed. They could not bear the thought that an atomic scientist who was subservient to the Soviets was working for them. But that would risk revealing the secret ofVenona. Consequently, the British authorities, who after all had naturalised Fuchs, came up with a plan: the scientist would not be unmasked, he would leave of his own accord.

  They maintained that Fuchs could not bear the double life he was leading and had cracked. The nature of Fuchs' confession seems strange and false. Indeed, Fuchs said:

  British press at the time:

  I used the Marxist dialectic to establish two distinct compartments in my mind. In one, I allowed myself friendships and relationships. I could feel free and happy with others, without fear of being discovered, because I knew that the other compartment would take over if I ventured into deeper waters.

  This is very strange. Even more so is the fact that Fuchs declared that he left because he was starting to have doubts about the correctness of Soviet policy. After serving 9 years in prison, Fuchs had nothing else to do upon his release than to travel to East Germany, where he continued his work and was decorated several times.

  In any case, the Soviets had not been completely taken in by the British ploy. They had discovered ‘Venona', thanks to Kim Philby, the most prominent member of the Cambridge Five. In the years after the war, Philby coordinated the relationship between the British and American Intelligence agencies and so became aware of ‘Venona' and immediately alerted Moscow. From that moment, ‘Venona' was dead. However, the Americans were unaware of this fact, which is why they let a number of Soviet spies continue their operations - all to protect a secret which no longer existed! It is likely that one of these agents was the second spy scientist at Los Alamos, the American physicist Theodore Alvin Hall.

  Chapter 5

  Mroz: the death of a little captain

  For some, it was still the golden age of the secret war, a time when things were straightforward: the enemy was clearly identified in the east, separated from the rest of the world by a semi-impermeable frontier. Spies who seemed to come straight out of a John le Carre novel, were in a constant battle on a huge chessboard that stretched right across the Iron Curtain. Occasionally, when two players found themselves on equal ground, the stalemate ended in the murky light atop a bridge between the two worlds, where they would proceed to exchange their respective spies.

  This next story took place in the twilight of that bygone era, in 1960s France, where as in all the best spy stories, the traitors are not always the ones we think they are. According to one of the former heads of the DST,23 this was the moment when the service en
tered the modern era of counterintelligence-espionage, which shows the importance of this otherwise virtually unknown case.

  In all intelligence agencies there are traditionally two types of agents operating on foreign soil. One the one hand, there are those who have an alias that provides them with protection; a diplomatic status, for example. These spies work in an embassy or international organisation that affords them automatic protection, with expulsion being the worst that could happen to them if their true identity was revealed . It is estimated that during the Cold War, almost two thirds of Soviet diplomats were in fact KGB or GRU agents.

  The other category of agent is made up of what the intelligence world call ‘illegals'. These agents have no protection and if discovered, face the wrath of the country in which they have been caught spying. Their only hope of freedom would be to take part in a prisoner exchange with the opposing side. This precarious situation meant that it was vital for them to completely ‘blend in'. Consequently, before they set off on their mission they undertook months and months of training, during which time their official ‘legend' was created, including a new identity and full background history. They also had to familiarise themselves with the habits and customs of their adoptive country. Suffice to say, that all this training and preparation was very expensive.

  The roles of the illegals and those working under diplomatic cover were not the same. In general, a diplomat working for an intelligence agency acted as a case officer. It was their role to recruit spies, in particular men or women with classified occupations where it was difficult to gain access. They were essentially there to collect information together and act as the head of the spy network.