Half-Life: The Divided Life of Bruno Pontecorvo, Physicist or Spy

by Close, Frank

  The language of these exchanges gives a mixed impression of the government’s sense of concern and urgency. On one hand, the information that trickled in from sources such as Segrè, the FBI, and the Swedish informants—sources whose identity and reliability were unknown except to a handful—caused a great deal of activity in the London headquarters of MI5. On the other hand, at Harwell, where Pontecorvo was based, Henry Arnold continued his soft touch with little sign of rapid action.

  During the March 26 phone call, Collard told Arnold that MI5 was concerned about Pontecorvo’s reliability, and urged Arnold to have a more formal meeting with him. The “suitable opportunity,” which Collard suggested Arnold look for, arose about a week later. Whether or not Bruno suspected anything previously, this time there was no doubt that the authorities were seriously interested in him. On Wednesday, April 5, Arnold had a “long talk with Pontecorvo.” His ability to wheedle information out of people is evident in his report, which states that Pontecorvo once again yielded up “quite freely” the information that his “brother Gilberto [Gillo] is an openly confessed Communist.” Furthermore, Arnold stated, “I understand that Gilberto’s wife who is French is also of the Brethren.”

  Arnold must have asked Pontecorvo directly about his personal beliefs, as his report states:

  Pontecorvo emphasized that he himself is not a communist and that his politics, if any, are Labour. His views are definitely “Left” but I found it difficult to assess exactly how “Left” they were. His wife Helene [Marianne] . . . holds very much the same political opinions as her husband, but here again Pontecorvo insisted that neither he nor his wife were communist. [Pontecorvo] expressed the opinion that with such a “Red” family background the Security authorities must naturally entertain certain doubts about himself, but he pointed out that on the continent the proportion of communists is far greater than in this country in that it is quite difficult to find an educated family that has not got some communist connections.16

  Later, after the Pontecorvo family disappeared, MI5 homed in on the fact that Bruno had volunteered information about his communist relatives while at the same time denying that he himself held such views. MI5 viewed Bruno’s move as a proactive attempt to defuse any suspicion that might have arisen if the authorities had discovered the existence of these communist relatives for themselves. This interpretation seems likely, as today we know that Bruno’s statement was false. As we have seen, he had been an enthusiastic communist ever since his early days in Paris, and at the time of the Soviet-German nonaggression pact in 1939 had become an active member of the French Communist Party. Indeed, it was none other than Bruno who had introduced his siblings Giuliana, Laura, and Gillo to communism.

  Arnold’s perceptive insight is on display in his assessment of Pontecorvo’s likely actions, written for MI5 in April 1950: “My personal view of Pontecorvo is that whereas he has obtained British nationality he would quite readily change it again should it be to his scientific advantage to do so.” Then, with wonderful irony, he adds, “Naturally I do not include countries which are under Russian domination [here, someone has penned an exclamation mark] but he has already toyed with the idea of an appointment in Rome University and is at present turning over in his mind an offer which has come to him from America.”17

  Arnold’s assessment: “From a security point of view it is difficult to regard a person with Pontecorvo’s international outlook and family history as reliable and I feel it would be a good thing if he were able to obtain a post at one of the British universities where we might continue to avail ourselves of his undoubted ability as a Consultant in limited fields.”18

  Colonel John Collard, the case officer at MI5, assessed Arnold’s report and reviewed Bruno Pontecorvo’s file. Collard identified three new developments since Pontecorvo’s appointment. First: Bruno’s admission that he had communist relatives abroad, and the “unsubstantiated” Swedish report that Bruno and Marianne were themselves communists. When Bruno’s suitability for employment at Harwell had first been assessed in 1946, Arnold had given MI5 the opinion that Pontecorvo was a “straightforward fellow with no political leanings.” Collard wryly noted the contrast with Arnold’s 1950 report.

  Second: Pontecorvo’s reference to Rome and the United States showed him to be willing to consider work outside Harwell, even outside the UK “despite [his] recent naturalization.” Between the lines, Collard gives a hint of being let down in his memo, disappointed that Pontecorvo is not really a team player, or at least is not committed to the British club.

  Third: Harwell no longer regarded Pontecorvo as “indispensable.”

  Based on this trio of new insights, Collard concluded that the security services should now reassess Pontecorvo’s case, after which they should discuss possible actions with Harwell.

  By the end of April, officials at the highest levels of MI5 were increasingly worried. On the twenty-seventh they received a clarification about the earlier Swedish report. Mrs. Pontecorvo, it was now agreed, lived in England and had been visiting her mother in Sweden. At least these facts were now correct. This latest missive stressed that “Mrs Pontecorvo is known personally to our source” who reiterated that “among friends she openly expresses communist sympathies.” Roger Hollis, the future director general of MI5, saw this note and wrote on the comment page, “Please discuss this case. Surely we should see if he can be moved.” Four days later, on May 10, Hollis recorded that he had “discussed with [Director of Counter-espionage] and we agree there is a security risk here.” Hollis concluded that Pontecorvo’s case was “not up to purge standards, but nevertheless we cannot feel happy that he should remain where he is.”19

  The next day, Martin Furnival Jones, another rising star of the security services who became the director general of MI5 after Hollis, discussed this with the senior echelons of the security services’ legal branch. They were concerned that the case, which was already a headache, could create even more problems if Pontecorvo—a probable communist sympathizer who had somehow slipped through the net—accepted a job in the United States. They proposed that a note be sent to the home secretary, and that Cockcroft transfer Pontecorvo within the UK. Arrangements were thus made to transfer Bruno from Harwell to the University of Liverpool, away from secret work. Although Bruno was not aware of these machinations, Arnold’s interviews, supplemented by more general inquiries from laboratory managers in the wake of the Fuchs affair, certainly made him feel persecuted.20

  IMAGE 10.1. Written comments by Roger Hollis in Bruno Pontecorvo’s security file, May 1950. Hollis agrees that there is a security issue but that it is “not up to purge standards.” He adds that “nevertheless we cannot feel happy that he should remain where he is” and welcomes the possibility of a move to the University of Liverpool. (AUTHOR, THE NATIONAL ARCHIVES.)

  AT THE END OF APRIL, BRUNO VISITED PARIS TO JOIN THE CELEBRATIONS for Frédéric Joliot-Curie’s fiftieth birthday. What transpired would add to his sense of persecution.

  By 1950, Joliot-Curie was the high commissioner of the French atomic energy commission, the CEA. The commission’s goal was to build nuclear reactors. Joliot-Curie wanted to produce abundant power for the nation but abhorred the unavoidable consequence—the production of plutonium for bombs. As a result he was a vociferous campaigner against nuclear weapons. Joliot-Curie was in Stockholm on his birthday, March 19, for a meeting of the World Committee of Partisans for Peace, where he signed the Stockholm Appeal, calling for an international ban on nuclear weapons. Millions around the world subsequently signed this document. The American media duly attacked him, and lumped Joliot-Curie’s name together with that of the recently arrested Klaus Fuchs. The CIA listed Joliot-Curie and half of the CEA’s scientific committee as “communist sympathizers.”

  As Joliot-Curie was away from Paris on his birthday, the celebration was postponed. His closest colleagues at the CEA organized an intimate and sumptuous banquet at the Popote des Ailes restaurant in Viroflay, near Versailles, fo
r the evening of April 26. Bruno was one of a small number of associates invited to the celebration. In the meantime, many critical events would transpire.

  On April 5, Joliot-Curie appeared at the National Congress of the French Communist Party, where, to loud cheers, he declared that “progressive and communist scientists shall not give a jot of their science to make war against the USSR.”21 He added that if the French government asked him to make nuclear weapons, he would refuse. On April 26, on the afternoon before the banquet, he was summoned to see the French prime minister, Georges Bidault. Bidault, who had been a comrade of Joliot-Curie’s in the Resistance, was distraught as he fired Joliot-Curie from his position as head of the CEA.

  The news was not announced at the start of the banquet. The food and wine were superb, the atmosphere lighthearted—until Joliot-Curie rose to speak. Then everything came out. He rambled on “for hours, it seemed he could not stop himself.”22 Joliot-Curie was a broken man. In witnessing his former colleague’s downfall, Bruno Pontecorvo, already under intense pressure from Arnold and MI5, began to fear that the tentacles of McCarthyism had now reached Europe.

  BACK IN ENGLAND, MI5 WOULD SOON RECEIVE MORE GOSSIP ABOUT Pontecorvo. In the first week of June, Superintendent Evan Jones of Special Branch received a letter from someone whose name is redacted, but who is clearly a current or former member of Special Branch as he mentions having enjoyed the Branch Dinner. There is a certain quaint charm in the letter’s vague allegations, which, though wrong in several details, are nonetheless fundamentally accurate:

  Dear Evan,

  An old informant, reliable, told me a few days ago that an Italian scientist is employed in, or has some close connection with, a hush-hush factory or laboratory near Bristol. Although he does not profess it, he is a communist, acquainted with Fuchs and when in Town frequents the same restaurant as Fuchs did. My friend and others suspect him. Not much to go on and it might be a wild goose chase but I am sure my friend would not have mentioned it to me unless there was something in it. . . . I have no knowledge of any factory etc near Bristol and so cannot assess the truth or value of this. It is likely the Italian scientist is British born or is naturalized as I cannot conceive an alien being given access to anything in the nature of a research station, especially after the Fuchs affair.

  Harwell is in the country, midway between London and Bristol, which suggests that the informant was not strong on geography. The phrase “in Town” was the colloquial way of referring to London in the 1950s, but “frequenting the same restaurant as Fuchs” seems fanciful and irrelevant, as Fuchs was never known to have used a restaurant as a meeting place.

  As in the case of the Swedish informant, there were hints that the information in this letter might be dubious, but in any event it was duly noted by MI5 on June 9, and added to the growing file of anecdotal evidence about Pontecorvo. Michael Perrin, the former ICI administrator who by 1950 had become the director of atomic energy for the Ministry of Supply, wanted to assess the strength of these various claims, which clearly shared a common theme. He phoned MI5 to inquire about the reliability of the source from Sweden, whose evidence was the most explicit. Internal inquiries were then made within MI5. The record of these inquiries, even today, is heavily redacted, but reveals that an “R Badham” of section C “spoke to [X] on the phone today, and asked if he could let me know the reliability of their ‘source’. He phoned me back later to say that the source was ‘absolutely reliable.’”23

  Badham then phoned Perrin and told him that he could confirm the source to be “absolutely reliable.” Perrin, wanting to know more before passing judgment, then started asking questions: Did the source know Pontecorvo personally? Would MI5 guarantee the source as unimpeachable? Badham replied that he had told Perrin as much as he knew. Perrin, frustrated, decided that in order to form a solid assessment he had to get past these internal firewalls and speak directly with Roger Hollis. However, upon further reflection, he backed off and decided that this was not necessary “at this stage.”24

  And it would appear either that Perrin never took this any further with Hollis, or that Hollis himself took no action.25 The next entry in the MI5 files is a letter from the British embassy in Washington, DC, received on July 19; after that, it would seem, everyone took off for the summer. Nothing more was added to the Pontecorvo files until October, when news of his disappearance broke.26 From that point forward, as we shall see, the files are full of attempts to shut the barn door after the horse has bolted, along with discussions of how to minimize the political damage. It is clear that MI5 and practically the entire British security apparatus were taken unawares. It is my judgment that, in the summer of 1950, not even Bruno Pontecorvo anticipated that he was about to leave England forever.

  ELEVEN

  FROM ABINGDON—TO WHERE?

  1950

  HARWELL IS A COUNTRY VILLAGE, FIFTEEN MILES SOUTH OF OXFORD, surrounded by farmland, orchards, and racehorse stables. In the 1940s it was a rural backwater.1 The location suited the government’s purpose: it was accessible to London and Oxford University, yet sufficiently isolated that secrecy could be maintained. Except for the small village of Harwell, from which the laboratory took its name, the nearest towns formed a ring about five miles distant. Abingdon, a small market town to the north, midway between the laboratory and Oxford, was a favorite place to live among employees.

  Abingdon is located on the River Thames, about fifty miles inland from London; in Tudor times King Henry VIII had briefly lived there to escape the plague. Among the town’s several historic buildings was a boys’ high school, Roysse’s, that had been founded in the twelfth century and whose students ranged in age from eleven to eighteen. Roysse’s rose to prominence following the arrival of James Cobban as headmaster in 1947. Although he had missed out on D-Day due to appendicitis, Cobban had a distinguished war record and had risen to the rank of lieutenant colonel due to his work in military intelligence.

  When Cobban arrived, the school was on the periphery of the town, which was about to be revolutionized by the work at Harwell. The arrival of hundreds of scientists and their families led to a sudden expansion. Abingdon was being transformed into a company town for those associated with “the Atomic.”

  To accommodate the influx, an estate of red brick houses was built across the road from the school. The Pontecorvos moved into one of these houses: number 5 Letcombe Avenue, just a five-minute walk from the local tennis club and immediately adjacent to Roysse’s. In 1949, many sons of Harwell employees enrolled at the school, Gil Pontecorvo among them.

  For Gil, now eleven years old, the first year at Roysse’s was difficult. Having made friends in the school at Chalk River, he had been moved away to a different continent and had to start afresh. In England some students thought he was American, and he remembers them teasing him: “You Americans! You want to drop bombs on us.” He also remembers a talk about Moscow he heard at one of the school clubs, which was like “a story from the Arabian nights, with merchants sitting cross-legged in the street selling their goods, the difference being that instead of streets paved with gold, Moscow was dirty and cold.”2 The image of Moscow that this left in his mind was of a Wild West frontier town, lawless, in the badlands. Although this image is extreme relative to my own memories from that era, it was indeed the case in the West that Moscow, and all the lands beyond the Iron Curtain, seemed like some black night, filled with unknown specters: terra (and terror) incognita.

  On September 19, 1949, Gil joined the youngest class of students, along with a boy named Anthony Gardner.3 Anthony and his younger brother Paul, who lived two doors down from the Pontecorvos, at number 9, became good friends with Gil and his brothers. Their father, John, was an administrator at Harwell, and a very good tennis player, who had formed an immediate kinship with Bruno. Around the corner lived Egon Bretscher, who had come to Harwell from Los Alamos. His son, Mark, who was younger than Gil, was due to start at Roysse’s at the beginning of the following school year,
in September 1950. Gil and Mark were not close friends but the families knew each other. In the summer of 1950, Gil, who had already had a year’s experience at Roysse’s by then, agreed to accompany Mark on his first day of school, to introduce him to the strange surroundings.

  Today Mark is a distinguished microbiologist, Anthony Gardner is a successful actor, and his brother Paul, now retired, is a long-term Abingdon resident. In interviews with me, all three recalled their memories of Abingdon, in that tense period just after the war when provisions were rationed; families kept chickens, ducks or even goats for eggs and milk; and young boys could cycle in the surrounding countryside on roads almost free of cars.

  IN JANUARY 1950, WHEN FUCHS WAS ALREADY UNDER SUSPICION BUT the security services had yet to establish if others at Harwell were involved, an MI5 agent arrived at Roysse’s in the guise of a music teacher named Royd “Doggie” Barker.4 At least, that’s what several former pupils believe. This fantasy—if fantasy it is—would hardly have been dampened by the events of that year, starting in February with the arrest of Klaus Fuchs, who for a few months had lived on the school premises.

  Immediately adjacent to Roysse’s campus was an old house called Lacies Court, which had been donated to the school, who used it as a residence for unmarried teachers.5 During part of his time at Harwell, Fuchs too had lodged there, though he had no formal association with the school itself. His time at Lacies Court was a result of the school’s links with Harwell, which helped a lone scientist find temporary lodgings. However, his arrest in February 1950 created excitement among the boys, and led to the whispers about the music teacher.