Atomic Spy

by Nancy Thorndike Greenspan

  Martin’s one-and-a-half-page first draft was a terse a through f framework with disquieting facts, starting with Fuchs as a Soviet agent in 1944. “FUCHS has been proved beyond all reasonable doubt to be identical with the Soviet Agent REST.” The decisive factor for MI5 had been Patterson’s timeline that eliminated Peierls.

  Martin went on to list the risks to security at Harwell if Fuchs was still spying, as well as the problems of disposing of him. There was still no evidence of suspicious contacts; no means to limit his access to top secret information at Harwell; no grounds for legal prosecution; and no simple administrative way to remove him.

  As the list made the rounds for review, MI5 added an assurance: MI5 would not proceed with a recommendation to the prime minister without an FBI response.

  Then the next draft suddenly introduced a new tack—“a direct approach” in the form of interrogation. MI5 had reason to believe, or at least hope, that Fuchs might break. The final draft concluded that “an interrogation of FUCHS is in fact the step which is most likely to lead to a satisfactory solution,” that is, his removal from Harwell. It gave no rationale, but there was one. During this time, a new issue surfaced, one introduced by Fuchs himself.

  On October 17, Arnold met with Robertson for his weekly meeting and reported on a visit from Fuchs. Arnold explained that Fuchs came in to ask for advice concerning his father. Emil Fuchs, who lived in Frankfurt am Main in the western zone, had received an offer of a chair at the University of Leipzig in the eastern zone. Klaus Fuchs asked if he should discourage his father from accepting the offer, given his own position in nuclear research. Arnold said he needed to think about it and that Fuchs might wish to do the same. They agreed to meet in a couple of days. Fuchs departed.

  Arnold relayed to Robertson that Fuchs seemed visibly relieved as he left. MI5 told Arnold to advise Fuchs that he should discourage his father because of the Russians’ potential for gaining a “hostage” and leverage.

  Arnold astutely guessed that Fuchs had pondered this problem for some time. Fuchs, of course, had learned of it when Emil and his nephew Klaus had visited the previous July.

  Fuchs had also received another portend of future complications, a letter from an old family friend, a pastor living in Jena in the eastern zone. He had written to thank Fuchs for sending the life-sustaining food packages (hence the entries on the bank record to the Overseas Supply Company) and invited him to visit if he came to see his father in Leipzig. With his father’s move, these kinds of Eastern intrusions would multiply.

  Because of the mail warrant, Robertson had received and flagged a translation of the letter. He requested a mail check on letters from the pastor because “his letters bear a strong imprint of pro-Soviet propaganda,” namely a long paragraph describing the wonderful life in the eastern zone. It seems that Robertson had failed to appreciate the one-sentence reference to Leipzig that signaled Emil’s move to the East.

  MI5 missed other possibilities too. Early on, while the agency stewed over whether Fuchs had a sister in the United States, friends at Harwell could easily have answered the question. During Emil’s visit on his way to Germany from the United States, he dined with them and Arnold as well. None of this was secret.

  Arnold and Fuchs met again on October 20 in Arnold’s office. Fuchs trusted Arnold and asked that their conversation be kept in “strictest confidence.”

  Arnold stressed to him that the security services did not want researchers covered by the Official Secrets Act to have ties in Russian-controlled areas. Fuchs should tell his father not to accept. Fuchs replied that his father would not be persuaded by him if he felt he was “doing good” by accepting. Arnold asked if Fuchs thought it strange for his father, who was seventy-five years old, to be offered a chair. Fuchs implied that the question had occurred to him. Would his father take a chair in the western zone? Arnold asked. Fuchs thought not because his father was “disillusioned” by his experiences in Frankfurt. Would his father take a chair in England if one could be found? Maybe, Fuchs replied.

  Arnold then asked Fuchs how he would react to pressure from the Russians if his father moved. What if his father’s life were in danger? As Arnold described in a memo to Robertson, Fuchs replied “that at present he did not feel he would be induced to cooperate but it was, of course, impossible to say what he might feel under altered circumstances.” Fuchs’s question in return was, should he resign if his father accepted the position? Arnold said that this was an administrative decision, not his. He suggested that they discuss the matter again, but as he wrote to MI5, he didn’t think Fuchs would initiate it.

  Martin’s boss, Dick White, read Arnold’s memo a few days later and saw that someone had highlighted Fuchs’s response about reacting to pressure. He addressed a minute in the file to the director general:

  One could speculate a great deal on the meaning of the marked paragraph but there is one thing I am tempted to think—that is, that FUCHS’ answer indicates that there may be something to be gained from an interrogation.

  The director general and Martin supported White’s conviction. Confession could lead to disposal. Although others disagreed, Martin included the idea in the memo for the FBI. It was the director general’s call.

  CHAPTER 18

  Interrogation, London, November 1949

  In a large corniced office on the fifth floor of Leconfield House, MI5’s director general, Percy Sillitoe, faced his deputy, Guy Liddell, over the gnawing question of how to dispose of Klaus Fuchs. Sillitoe subscribed to the argument for interrogation championed by the chief of B Branch, Dick White. Liddell expressed concerns about possible repercussions of a confession, most notably, that this accomplished physicist, steeped in British and American nuclear research, would immediately defect.

  Sillitoe and Liddell were very different spirits, with further cause for tension between them in that Liddell had every reason to believe that he would be named to head the spy agency when, instead, Sillitoe was given the position in 1946.

  The director general had been a chief constable—famed and knighted for wiping out gangs and modernizing police forces in large cities. To make sure the police identified each other in a raid, he fashioned “Sillitoe Tartan,” the black-and-white checkerboard bands they wore. He was a policeman’s policeman, not reared in intelligence or the lifestyle of London’s old-school clubs.

  Those bastions of privilege had been part of Liddell’s life for three decades, first with Scotland Yard and since 1931 with MI5, mostly in counterespionage. In 1933, he had visited Berlin, met many of the top Nazis, and listened to dubious stories about the communists. He knew the territory quite well.

  Sillitoe focused on the potential upside of an interrogation; Liddell focused on the downside. The latter argued that they should avoid a confrontation and use Emil’s move as an excuse to get Klaus out of Harwell and transferred to a university. It was a logic that harked back to the days of war, when ability topped politics and punishment, if any, was a quiet reassignment or—worst case—a dismissal. But Sillitoe, the policeman, wanted confession and prosecution.

  Arnold’s assessment—that Fuchs’s relating confidences about Emil was “most unusual since he is normally the most reticent and self-sufficient of men”—had captured Sillitoe’s imagination, just as Fuchs’s reaction to possible Russian pressure had captured White’s. They saw themselves stalking a weakened prey.

  After the meeting, Sillitoe cabled Patterson in Washington about briefing the FBI on a revised plan using Emil’s move “to delve further into FUCHS’ mind.” That is, Arnold would talk with Fuchs, bring up possible pressure by the Russians, and then go into “the direct question of whether Fuchs had ever come into contact with Russians.” They hoped Fuchs would “unburden himself.” If not, at least they could observe his thinking. A caveat: the FBI shouldn’t construe this move as an alternative to gathering more evidence, particularly from Kristel and Bob Heinemann.


  The next day, when Arnold heard about the idea, he was hesitant. Interviewing Fuchs could undermine his personal relationships with staff if his role were known. Weighing whether Fuchs would confess, he saw “a most carefully calculating man” who wouldn’t have “an emotional breakdown.” Once Fuchs knew the evidence against him, his personal interest would be a heavy factor.

  On the other hand, Arnold thought he himself had the best chance of getting a confession. If Fuchs didn’t open up voluntarily, he could formally interrogate him relying on their friendship, established trust, and Fuchs’s nervous nature. He judged his chances of getting Fuchs to come clean at fifty-fifty.

  Fuchs’s ultimate fate was not MI5’s to decide. The security agency gathered facts and made recommendations and, if possible, gained a confession. The decision on what might follow belonged to the Ministry of Supply, its director Sir Archibald Rowlands, and its controller of production (atomic energy) Sir Charles Portal (Perrin was his deputy)—and overall to the prime minister.

  Martin laid out a briefing document for Rowlands and Portal with an analysis of objectives, methods for achieving them, and effectiveness. Options for action were (1) no interrogation with retention at Harwell or transfer to another post; or (2) interrogation with either prosecution, dismissal, or retention. Sillitoe advised that only interrogation resulting in prosecution, not simply dismissal, secured all objectives.

  While MI5 waited for a response, the Listeners heard Fuchs mention his passport, an allusion that made a nervous Robertson more so. Arnold assured him that it was innocent. Fuchs had an administrative request for his birth certificate. His passport was the substitute.

  In the meantime, Patterson sent Martin the FBI’s official agreement for an interrogation provided it safeguarded the Venona source. At least one hurdle was crossed.

  * * *

  —

  On November 15, 1949, MI5 officers gathered to “clear our minds,” as Liddell put it in his diary. They were to meet with Rowlands and Portal the next day at the Ministry of Supply at Shell Mex House. To clarify their talking points, Martin wrote up a fourteen-point statement that summarized the other countless memos. It boiled down to one question for Rowlands and Portal: “How important is the need to prevent his defection?” It was an outcome that MI5 couldn’t absolutely prevent. For just that reason, Liddell held to his position that edging Fuchs out of Harwell was a better option than a confession.

  Martin’s minutes of the meeting on the sixteenth filled only one page. The Ministry of Supply first represented the concerns of Harwell’s director, John Cockcroft, that Fuchs’s value to Harwell was “extreme.” He didn’t want to lose him. If not a threat to security, Fuchs could be retained at Harwell; if he went to Russia, that country’s gain would be considerable. MI5 turned the argument and convinced Rowlands and Portal that the only way to ensure Fuchs’s reliability was interrogation, that “the advantages to be gained from a successful interrogation outweighed the risks involved.”

  That same day, Sillitoe briefed the prime minister, who agreed with the strategy of interrogation but requested it be postponed for a fortnight until Cockcroft returned from a trip. All agreed.

  * * *

  —

  Robertson determined that other than official trips, which were often with other scientists, Fuchs had left the Harwell area six times since September. The twenty-four-hour net had not produced the slightest odd conversation or unexpected meet up, except when he was with Erna. How much surveillance was needed?

  MI5 cut back to not pursuing Fuchs outside London when MI5 was “reasonably sure where he is going and why.” A little later, they did the same with telephone checks, suspending the Listeners’ services—although not the recording—in Newbury from midnight to 8:30 a.m.

  Meanwhile, Robertson delved more deeply into Fuchs’s past. He twice noted the name Ronald Gunn in Fuchs’s file, the man who had sponsored his naturalization filings in 1939 and 1942 and in whose home he had stayed while studying in Bristol. When Robertson queried the Registry, he found that in 1940 MI5 had opened a security file on Gunn that was filled with informants’ rumors but no mention of Fuchs. Reports described Gunn’s connection with the Imperial Tobacco Company, as well as the trips he and his wife had made to Russia in July 1932 and June 1936. It wasn’t these trips that had drawn the security service to them, though. It was their mail.

  An inquisitive postman had informed the Bristol police that Gunn was “in correspondence in suspicious circumstances with aliens,” indicating “leanings toward ‘either Communism or Nazism.’” His file held the names of “Communists or near-Communists” collected from the addresses on the envelopes. Robertson tracked one of these names to a list of veterans of the International Brigade in Spain available for national service during the war. That list had been compiled by the ubiquitous Hans Kahle.

  Robertson requested a mail warrant and telephone tap on Gunn. He asked the Bristol constable to relay any findings, warning that Gunn could be involved in “subversive activity on behalf of Soviet Russia,” although, he acknowledged, he had no evidence. Robertson assumed that during the time he had stayed with the Gunns, Fuchs adhered “to the same Communist views.”

  * * *

  —

  Also continuing to delve into Fuchs’s past was Arthur Martin. On November 21, he and a few others sat down with Frank Kearton, Fuchs’s former co-worker in New York. First, they told Kearton that Fuchs was a Soviet spy. An astonished Kearton thought Fuchs the least likely person to suspect. To him Fuchs had been completely absorbed in his work, an extension of Rudi Peierls’s “brain,” and happy to remain in the background. He had a small furnished apartment and little social life and showed no interest in politics. Not the same Fuchs as now, he added. Kearton had witnessed, as had others, a transformation in Fuchs, whose growing position in the field had not only increased his confidence but widened his interests.

  The men from MI5 took Kearton through Fuchs’s “movements,” specifically the possibility of his knowing about a return to the U.K. in the summer of 1944. Kearton thought that Peierls might have told him about the prospect of a team in the U.K. working on diffusion and that Fuchs could guess that he might be sent back. Kearton didn’t know when the decision to transfer Fuchs to Los Alamos occurred, but he knew that Peierls went there at the end of June. Kearton could imagine that once there, Peierls realized how much he needed Fuchs. If Peierls made a request, Fuchs would have heard about it around mid-July.

  As for the “friends and relatives” category, Kearton volunteered that Fuchs had family someplace outside New York City, at least a train ride away, and that he visited them on two weekends. Kearton didn’t know of any friends, but he did know that a group of researchers at Columbia was a contractor on the project and used his results. His contact there was someone named Cohen.

  On the “clerical staff” side, Kearton listed a couple of secretaries and at least one “machine computer,” a person who performed the calculations that Fuchs, Peierls, or Kearton handed her. This woman had a degree in mathematics and was Russian, her parents being recent émigrés. She didn’t generally see finished documents, but she could have gained access to and would have understood some of the material. He thought that only he, Fuchs, and Peierls would have had unrestricted access. Even if the typists would have had access, they wouldn’t have understood what they were seeing. In fact, they had no knowledge of the mission’s purpose. The MSN series of papers, including the one passed along to the Russians, was for the Americans, in particular the group at Columbia.

  Kearton offered his own theory about potential spies. If there was one, it was Skyrme, whom he described as “a person likely to have strong convictions, that he almost certainly did develop social contacts in New York, that he got involved in several minor ‘scrapes’ and that he was generally ‘rather odd.’” MI5 listened but, given past experience with scientists’ assessment of their own, r
emained jaded and unconvinced.

  Kearton gave them nothing to contradict the information they already had. But the Russian machine computer was a new complication. Martin immediately cabled Washington with the information, including the fact that the Americans had rejected Peierls’s recommendation for her employment—probably at Los Alamos—on security grounds. Next, he and John Marriott, an MI5 officer, related the discovery of the Russian machine computer to Liddell, as well as the possibility of her contact with university students. But as Liddell noted, “Neither Martin nor Marriott are in the least shaken in the belief that FUCHS is the man we are after.”

  The next day Martin received a list of the seventeen MSN papers and an overnight response from Washington about the female Russian mathematician. Neither the embassy nor the FBI knew her identity, and finding it wouldn’t be easy. For the embassy, an extensive file search might be a security risk. For the FBI, a trace required either a name or manpower in New York to find it. They wouldn’t do more unless MI5 deemed it essential, which it didn’t.

  * * *

  —

  Meanwhile, Fuchs kept going about his normal life. In mid-November, he and Peierls went to a three-day conference on elementary particles in Edinburgh organized by his former mentor Max Born. They caught the night train in London—Robertson didn’t have them followed—and from Peierls’s daily phone calls to his wife the Listeners reported that the two sat together at the conference, hung around together talking physics, and one night went to a terrible movie.