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

by Close, Frank

  4. TNA KV 2/1888, memo 118b.

  5. TNA KV 2/1889.

  6. Anthony Gardner interview, February 25, 2013.

  7. John Candy as told to Christine Wootton and Dunmore School around 1985, Christine Wootton e-mail January 13, 2014.

  8. Joe Hatton interview, August 30, 2011.

  9. Sir John Cockcroft diary, CAC.

  10. Caldirola’s card was found by MI5 and transcribed: TNA KV 2/1888.

  11. Mark Bretscher interview January 24, 2013.

  12. The record states: “Gil Pontecorvo—fees paid on 20 August 1949 for the Michaelmas term, which began on 16 September 1949. Pontecorvo—fees paid 4 January 1950 for the Lent term, which began 17 January 1950. Pontecorvo—fees paid 20 April 1950 for the Summer term, which began 28 April 1950.” This completed Gil’s first year at Abingdon School (Roysse’s). I am indebted to Sarah Wearne for this research.

  13. Abingdon School (Roysse’s) records, Abingdon School archives, c/o Sarah Wearne, viewed October 7, 2011.

  14. Received at Harwell on Monday, September 4, 1950.

  15. TNA FO 372/84837.

  16. TNA KV 2/1887, memo 40a.

  17. Edoardo Amaldi as recounted to Donald Perkins. Donald Perkins interview, September 16, 2011.

  18. Amaldi’s name went on file, however. In 1953 he arrived in the UK, to see Patrick Blackett and Lord Cherwell to encourage the UK’s interest in CERN. At London Airport his name was “checked against a list.” His bags were searched, and he was asked if he had heard from Pontecorvo. Donald Perkins interview, September 16, 2011.

  19. TNA KV 2/1887, memo 42a.

  20. TNA KV 2/1887, memo 48a.

  21. TNA KV 2/1889, memo 169b.

  22. TNA KV 2/1889, memos 188/190.

  23. TNA KV 2/1889, memo 181a.

  24. Saturday cinema was a feature of the 1950s, and this is the weekend when the story broke.

  25. Paul Gardner interview, March 4, 2013.

  26. Anthony Gardner interview, February 25, 2013.

  27. Anthony Gardner interview, February 25, 2013; Paul Gardner interview, March 4, 2013; David Lees e-mail, October 7, 2013; David Lees interview, October 15, 2013.

  28. Newspaper headlines of October 27, 1950, from assorted online sources.

  29. Newspaper quotes are from Sydney Morning Herald, October 22 and 25, 1950; Palm Beach Post, October 24, 1950; Melbourne Age, October 27, 1950.

  30. Sydney Morning Herald, October 25, 1950.

  31. Anthony Gardner interview, February 25, 2013.

  32. Ludo Pontecorvo interview, September 12, 2013.

  33. Ugo Amaldi interview, September 12, 2013.

  34. Gil Pontecorvo interview, November 22, 2011.

  35. TNA KV 2/1889, memo158a; TNA KV 2/1888, memo 121c.

  36. In her letter of October 26, Giuliana tells Guido that this was “about 15 days ago.” TNA KV 2/1888, memo 120a.

  37. Giuliana’s involvement seems assured, for her account raises further questions: How did the Pontecorvos get from her house to the airport if their car was in a garage? The “return to England in stages” and the request to pay the garage expenses are mutually inconsistent, unless Giuliana already knew they had left by plane. Furthermore, the idea that she received this request in a letter, sent from Rome in mid-September, some time after Bruno’s departure, is fanciful. On the other hand, there could be an innocent explanation of the confused dates, or at least a partial one. If she consulted a calendar during the interview, she could have identified the wrong week: the date of August 31, given for the car repair, could be a mistake for August 24, and the dates of the Pontecorvos’ departure, given as September 5 or 6, could be a mistake for the actual date of September 1.

  38. TNA KV 2/1889.

  39. TNA KV 2/1888.

  40. TNA KV 2/1888.

  41. Guy Liddell diary, October 21, 1950, TNA KV 4/472.

  42. TNA FO371/84837.

  43. Telegram sent October 24, 1950, TNA KV 2/1888, memo 71a.

  44. TNA KV 2/1889, memo 171a.

  45. TNA FO371/84837.

  46. TNA KV 2/1887, memo 62a.

  47. Guy Liddell diary, October 23, 1950, TNA KV 4/472. Liddell’s brief is given in KV 2/1887, memo 62a.

  48. Pincher, Treachery, Kindle edition location 6298; Chapman Pincher interview, November 14, 2013.

  49. TNA KV 2/1887, memo 29A.

  50. TNA KV 2/1888 and quoted in Pincher, Treachery, Kindle edition location 6298. Chapman Pincher interview, November 14, 2013.

  51. The title of the debate is recorded in TNA reports. The admission that Pontecorvo might have “atomic secrets of value to the enemy” contradicts other official statements about Pontecorvo’s significance at the time. Indeed, the British administration, having been given false information by MI5, downplayed Pontecorvo’s significance. Their position was that he had not been involved in secret work, at least none that would have much interest to an enemy. After the revelation that Fuchs and Nunn May were actually Soviet agents, the British government was nervous that the revelation of a third spy would harm relations with the United States. At the time, Britain was desperate to have full access to American atomic know-how.

  52. Laura Arnold interview, August 30, 2013. Perrin was at this stage the deputy controller of atomic energy at the Ministry of Supply. It was to Perrin that Fuchs made his initial confession.

  53. TNA FO371/84837.

  54. TNA KV 2/1889, memo 121B.

  55. Statements were made in the House of Commons on October 23 and November 6, 1950. On November 19, 1951, member of parliament Frederick Erroll asked the new Minister of Supply, Duncan Sandys, questions about atomic scientists. Sandys confirmed that Pontecorvo was the only atomic scientist to have disappeared, to which Erroll asked, “Will the Minister make sure no other disappearances take place?” Hansard 494, no. 18 (November 26, 1951).

  56. TNA FO371/84837.

  57. Guy Liddell diary, October 15, 1951, TNA KV 4/473.

  58. TNA KV 2/1888, memo 121d.

  59. TNA KV 2/1889.

  60. TNA KV 2/1890, note 279a.

  61. TNA KV 2/1890, note 283a.

  62. Barbara Pontecorvo e-mail, August 19, 2011.

  63. TNA KV 4/242, note 26a, and KV 2/1887, note 65a. On October 23, 1950, Dick White of MI5, in a phone call to Geoffrey Patterson of the British embassy in Washington, said that he had “learned that morning that Paul [was] employed on research work connected with radar and that this should be reported to the FBI.”

  64. Jack Steinberger interview, Rome centenary meeting, September 2013.

  65. Giannini’s lawsuit sought a total claim of $10 million, for both past research uses during the Manhattan Project ($7.5 million) and the anticipated future production of fissile materials, including plutonium ($2.5 million). Simone Turchetti e-mail, August 17, 2014.

  66. L’Unità, August 23, 1950; quoted in Turchetti, The Pontecorvo Affair, p. 112.

  67. Calgary Herald, October 24, 1950.

  68. News Chronicle, November 3, 1953, stored at TNA KV 2/1888, memo 303a. In the 1980s a lawsuit in the United States recovered some of the money. However, much of it was taken up in legal fees. Gil Pontecorvo interview, September 11, 2013.

  CHAPTER 13

  1. Peter Hennessy letter to author, December 4, 2012.

  2. It is the information in those documents that formed the narrative in Chapter 10.

  3. Chapman Pincher confirmed that he had not seen it during his own research, which spanned several decades. Chapman Pincher interview, November 13, 2013.

  4. Chapman Pincher interview, November 13, 2013.

  5. Andrew and Mitrokhin, The Mitrokhin Archive, p. 203: “For almost a year [after his arrival in late 1949] Philby’s sole contact with the Centre was via messages sent to Burgess in London.”

  6. He came under suspicion and resigned from MI6 in 1951. However, colleagues in MI6 refused to believe that he could have been a double agent, and it was not until 1963 that Philby’s duplicity was made obvious to all, following his
defection to the USSR. Philby traveled to the USSR in 1963 from Beirut, where for several years he had been a newspaper correspondent. Although his role as a traitor was suspected by MI5 in 1951, at which time he was “amicably eliminated” (removed from the service without prosecution), his colleagues in MI6 continued to believe he was an innocent victim until 1963. This shows that the opinions of colleagues are not always reliable.

  7. Philby, My Silent War, Introduction.

  8. Gibbs, “British and American Counter-Intelligence,” note 253.

  9. MLAD was Ted Hall, and QUANTUM (or KVANT) was identified in 2009 as Boris Podolsky, a Russian-born American physicist. See Haynes et al., The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America. Some authors have misidentified one or the other of these as Bruno Pontecorvo. QUANTUM was an appropriate name for Podolsky, who is famous in quantum physics for his part in the EPR (Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen) paradox.

  10. Andrew and Mitrokhin, The Mitrokhin Archive, p. 204.

  11. Andrew and Mitrokhin, The Mitrokhin Archive, p. 194.

  12. Bruno Pontecorvo, Autobiographical notes; remarks made by Bruno Pontecorvo to Edoardo Amaldi, recounted in Ugo Amaldi interview, September 12, 2013.

  13. Patterson’s identification as security liaison officer, is taken from Andrew, Defence of the Realm, p. 377.

  14. M. Marten, Tim Marten, p. 129; Michael Marten interview and access to audiotape of Tim Marten, July 3, 2013.

  15. TNA KV 2/1887, memo 39a.

  16. Chapman Pincher has alleged that Philby removed critical evidence showing that Pontecorvo was a spy, and then “told his Soviet controller [which] may well have led the Soviets to warn Pontecorvo of his predicament” (Pincher, Too Secret Too Long, p. 152; discussed in Turchetti, The Pontecorvo Affair, p. 200). Pincher provided no sources, evidence, or even clear identification of exactly when Philby took these actions. He told me that the account represented his judgment based on what he had unearthed. When he wrote that book, he had not seen the letter of July 1950, which I showed him on November 13, 2013. He described it as a “very plausible” factor in Pontecorvo’s sudden flight.

  In order to evaluate Philby’s role, which is probably pivotal in separating Pontecorvo’s life into its two halves, a brief review of these events is worthwhile (see also Turchetti, The Pontecorvo Affair, p. 200 et seq.). First, in line with Turchetti, we can dismiss the idea that Philby was involved in this mini-saga of 1943, when news of the FBI’s discovery of communist literature in Pontecorvo’s Tulsa home was first transmitted to the British authorities in New York. At that time, Philby was employed at the Special Operations Executive in Beaulieu, England, and was in no position to remove letters in North America. Turchetti also dismisses the possibility that Philby “sat on” the 1949 FBI report that recorded Segrè and Thornton’s information about Pontecorvo; as we have seen, this report was in the hands of MI5 by December 1949. However, now that the letter of July 13, 1950, has come to light, a new interpretation of Philby’s role becomes possible, especially if one imagines things from Philby’s perspective.

  The allegations that Bruno “engaged” in communist activities are sufficiently general that they could cover anything from reading the Daily Worker to full-blown spying, including the murky middle ground of being a member of the Communist Party. When he read the letter, Philby had no means of knowing the reason for the FBI’s interest, or the level of Pontecorvo’s activities. His subsequent actions can therefore be seen as either ironic or fortuitous, depending on whether Bruno was innocent or guilty of spying. In any event, the result was that Pontecorvo fled to the USSR, which was without doubt to the Soviet Union’s great advantage.

  17. Today there are copies of two letters from the FBI in the British archives, dated February 2 and February 19, though whether these represent the full extent of the correspondence is unclear. Also murky is whether there is indeed a further letter from the FBI, or whether the letter of February 10 is a reply sent by the British. The public evidence is rather bland, at least to modern eyes: in 1943 the FBI reported finding communist literature in Pontecorvo’s house, something that would hardly merit such a rapid-fire exchange of letters at the time.

  If that was the sum total of the FBI’s evidence, Bruno Pontecorvo had little to fear, although in the McCarthyite frenzy of 1950 there would have been some turbulence. Conspiracy theorists might argue that Philby found these letters in July 1950, destroyed them, informed Patterson that he couldn’t find any trace, and then “alerted Soviet agents,” in line with Pincher’s aforementioned claim.

  This seems unlikely for the following reason: For Philby to have taken such action, the content of the letters would have to have been exceedingly serious, whereas copies of letters from the FBI to BSC are, as we have seen, rather bland. Philby had no wish to draw unnecessary attention to himself. So what content could have led Philby to destroy the letters? It is hard to sustain a plausible case. If the FBI had evidence that Pontecorvo was a spy, it is unlikely that this would have arisen in February 1943, when he had yet to begin serious work in Canada; it is even less likely that such damning evidence would have remained dormant until 1950, and then merely inspire a vague request to the British regarding possible “Communist activities.”

  Although Philby has been credited with almost magical powers of duplicity and stealth, this sequence seems far-fetched. The thesis that Philby would put himself at such serious risk is barely credible. He would have realized that the FBI was hardly likely to let such evidence fade away, and that they would doubtless come back to him with severe questions. Due to VENONA, UK intelligence was already aware that a network of double agents existed within its own organizations, including the Washington embassy itself. Fully aware of this, Philby had no wish to risk demonstrating that he himself held one of the starring roles in the VENONA decrypts.

  18. In TNA KV 2/1888, file 16a, G. R. Mitchell notes that Cimpermann, the American FBI liaison in London, delivered archival copies of these letters to MI5 on October 23, 1950. File 103a records their receipt by the agency on October 28, as well as Ronnie Reed’s confirmation that he personally received them on October 30. Memo 23a states that these letters are “the only material on PONTECORVO in his [FBI] files,” which supports the thesis that, in 1950, there was no evidence in either the UK or US that Pontecorvo had broken the Official Secrets Act.

  19. TNA KV 2/1888.

  20. Because the only evidence against Hall was from VENONA, and the authorities were reluctant to reveal their success in breaking the Soviet code, the only way they could prosecute Hall was if he confessed. Hall declined to do so, was never prosecuted, and remained unknown until the final years of his life, when the VENONA decrypts were made public. Fuchs, as we have seen, confessed when confronted by the security authorities in England, and went to jail for fourteen years. Some have suggested that QUANTUM was Bruno Pontecorvo, but this is fanciful: in 1943, QUANTUM passed information about the gaseous diffusion process, under development at Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Pontecorvo was never at Oak Ridge, and had no expertise in gaseous diffusion. His specialties were neutrons and nuclear reactors. The information on QUANTUM’s activities is consistent with the biography of Boris Podolsky. See also Andrew, Defence of the Realm, p. 375, note 58.

  21. TNA KV 4/472.

  22. Anthony Gardner interview, February 25, 2013.

  23. The MI5 suspicion that these could be the mysterious Messrs Wittka and Allegrini, who accompanied Bruno from Rome to Stockholm, might have substance, however.

  24. Gil Pontecorvo interview, September 4, 2013.

  25. Boris Ioffe described this interview in the Kremlin about physics as an “interrogation” (Boris Ioffe e-mail, August 5, 2011, and video interview of Ioffe by Giuseppe Mussardo, 2012. I am grateful to Giuseppe Mussardo for a copy of this interview). Another former Soviet scientist, who wished to remain anonymous, told me that soon after 1955, when Pontecorvo’s presence became known, a well-connected source (who in the opinion of my informant was extremely reliable) mentioned that
Pontecorvo had also been interviewed by the KGB. This is consistent with the claims of former KGB agent F. D. Popov, who goes further and states that Pontecorvo “was regarded as so important that he was interviewed by Beria” (quoted in Pincher, Treachery, chap. 48; confirmed in Chapman Pincher interview, November 14, 2013).

  26. F. D. Popov, quoted in Pincher, Treachery, chap. 48.

  27. Guy Liddell diary, September 12, 1950, TNA KV 4/472.

  28. Lorna Arnold interview, 2013.

  CHAPTER 14

  1. Gil Pontecorvo interviews, February 24, 2011 and September 4, 2013; Bruno Pontecorvo in Mafai, Il lungo freddo, p. 159.

  2. Gil Pontecorvo interviews, February 24, 2011, and October 12, 2013.

  3. I have debriefed Gil Pontecorvo about this on several occasions. He is sure the route was not via Porkkala, as the border was unremarkable: “There were no major military installations for example” of the kind that one would have expected at the Porkkala base. At most, he recalls passing an unremarkable sentry post in the middle of the woods, after which Bruno emerged from the trunk. A direct journey to the USSR would have taken the family east, whereas Porkkala is to the west. Gil again: “I did not check the direction of the sun!” Although Porkkala cannot be ruled out, it seems most likely that the Pontecorvos took a direct eastward road journey to the USSR. Gil confirmed that stories about ships or submarines are nonsense: “I have never been on a submarine!”

  4. Mafai, Il lungo freddo, p. 159.

  5. Background in this section is drawn from Mafai, Il lungo freddo; interviews with Miriam Mafai in 2012; and interviews with Gil Pontecorvo throughout the project.

  6. Gil Pontecorvo interview, February 24, 2011.

  7. Bruno Pontecorvo, Autobiographical notes.

  8. Mafai, Il lungo freddo, p. 163.

  9. It was a rare privilege for a Soviet citizen to meet a foreigner at that time. Even two decades later, in my experience, it was a natural reaction for sophisticated Soviets in that situation to be interested in how events were perceived in the West.

  10. Gil Pontecorvo interview, September 4, 2013.