Atomic spies

Atomic Spies and Atom Spies are terms that refer to various people in the United States, Great Britain, and Canada who are thought to have illicitly given information about nuclear weapons production or design to the Soviet Union during World War II and the early Cold War. Exactly what was given, and whether everyone on the list gave it, is still a matter of some scholarly dispute, and in some cases what were originally seen as strong testimonies or confessions were admitted as fabricated in later years. Their work constitutes the most publicly well-known and well-documented case of nuclear espionage in the history of nuclear weapons. There was a movement among nuclear scientists to share the information with the world scientific community, but that was firmly quashed by the American government.

The modern day sharing of nuclear technology with Iran, Libya, North Korea and possibly other regimes on the part of Abdul Qadeer Khan has yet to be fully explored. It is an open question whether the term "atom spy" will be applied to those operating outside the Cold War period, such as Khan and Argentine-American physicist Leonardo Mascheroni.

Whether the information significantly aided the speed of the Soviet atomic bomb project is also disputed. While some of the information given could have aided in developing a nuclear weapon, the manner in which the heads of the Soviet bomb project actually used the information has led scholars to doubt its role in increasing the speed of development. According to this account, Igor Kurchatov and Lavrenty Beria used the information primarily as a "check" against their own scientists' work and did not liberally share the information with them, distrusting both their own scientists as well as the espionage information. Later scholarship has also shown that the decisive brake on early Soviet development was not problems in weapons design but, as in the Manhattan Project, the difficulty in procuring fissile materials, especially since the Soviet Union had no uranium deposits known when it began its program (unlike the United States).

Confirmation about espionage work came from the VENONA project, which intercepted and decrypted Soviet intelligence reports sent during and after World War II. These provided clues to the identity of several spies at Los Alamos and elsewhere, some of whom have never been identified. Some of this information was available, but not usable in court for secrecy reasons, during the trials of the 1950s. As well records from Soviet archives, which were briefly opened to researchers after the fall of the Soviet Union, included more information about some spies.

Contents

Notable atomic spies

Gallery

References

  1. ^ "Morris Cohen, 84, Soviet Spy Who Passed Atom Plans in 40's". New York Times. 5 July 1995. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=990CE0DC1438F936A35754C0A963958260. Retrieved 2008-07-07. "Morris Cohen, an American who spied for the Soviet Union and was instrumental in relaying atomic bomb secrets to the Kremlin in the 1940s, has died, Russian newspapers reported today. Mr. Cohen, best known in the West as Peter Kroger, died of heart failure in a Moscow hospital on June 23 at age 84, according to news reports." 
  2. ^ A.M. Hornblum, 'The Invisible Harry Gold' (Yale University Press, 2010) kindle edition. locations 4030-37
  3. ^ Pace, Eric (January 29, 1988). "Klaus Fuchs, Physicist Who Gave Atom Secrets to Soviet, Dies at 76". New York Times. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=940DEFDF1030F93AA15752C0A96E948260&scp=1&sq=Klaus+Fuchs&st=nyt. Retrieved 2008-07-07. "Klaus Fuchs, the German-born physicist who was imprisoned in the 1950s in Britain after being convicted of passing nuclear secrets to the Soviet Union, died yesterday, the East German press agency A.D.N. reported. He was 76 years old." 
  4. ^ "Klaus Fuchs". TruTV. http://www.crimelibrary.com/terrorists_spies/spies/fuchs/1.html. Retrieved 2008-07-07. "His name was Klaus Emil Fuchs, and he was, as it has been shown by history, the most important atom spy in history. Not any of the notorious names in the saga of the theft of the atom bomb secrets Allan Nunn May, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, and David Greenglass had been as important to the Russian effort as Klaus Fuchs." 
  5. ^ "1972 Death of Harry Gold Revealed". New York Times. February 14, 1974. http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F50B1EFA3D541A7493C6A81789D85F408785F9. Retrieved 2008-07-07. "Harry Gold, who served 15 years in Federal prison as a confessed atomic spy courier, for Klaus Fuchs, a Soviet agent, and who was a key Government witness in the Julius and Ethel Rosenberg espionage case in 1951, died 18 months ago in Philadelphia." 
  6. ^ "Greenglass, in Prison, Vows to Kin He Told Truth About Rosenbergs". New York Times. March 19, 1953. http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F00714FE3D59107A93CBA81788D85F478585F9. Retrieved 2008-07-07. "David Greenglass, serving fifteen years as a confessed atom spy, denied to members of his family recently that he had been coached by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the drawing of segments of the atom bomb, or that he had given perjured testimony against his sister, Mrs. Ethel Rosenberg, and her husband, Julius." 
  7. ^ a b Cowell, Alan (November 10, 1999). "Theodore Hall, Prodigy and Atomic Spy, Dies at 74". New York Times. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9800E7DE103AF933A25752C1A96F958260. Retrieved 2008-06-26. "Theodore Alvin Hall, who was the youngest physicist to work on the atomic bomb project at Los Alamos during World War II and was later identified as a Soviet spy, died on Nov. 1 in Cambridge, England, where he had become a leading, if diffident, pioneer in biological research. He was 74. ... Mr. Albright and Ms. Kunstel say Mr. Hall and a former Harvard roommate, Saville Sax, approached a Soviet trade company in New York in late 1944 and began supplying critical information about the atomic project." 
  8. ^ http://books.google.com/books?id=nIYC5pd1XQoC&pg=PA325&lpg=PA325&dq=irving+lerner+cyclotron&source=bl&ots=Jz1jHDDGws&sig=8d5l3qC1QdpiDv9PQjY4b5vAjU8&hl=en&ei=cvUrTcg_xN-WB_qL0coK&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=
  9. ^ "Alan Nunn May, 91, Pioneer In Atomic Spying for Soviets". New York Times. 25 January 2003. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A00E0D91739F936A15752C0A9659C8B63. Retrieved 2008-07-07. "Alan Nunn May, a British atomic scientist who spied for the Soviet Union, died on Jan. 12 in Cambridge. He was 91. ... One of the first Soviet spies uncovered during the cold war, Dr. Nunn May worked on the Manhattan Project and was betrayed by a Soviet defector in Canada. His unmasking in 1946 led the United States to restrict the sharing of atomic secrets with Britain." 
  10. ^ "Execution of the Rosenbergs". London: The Guardian. June 20, 1953. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/1953/jun/20/usa.fromthearchive. Retrieved 2008-06-24. "Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were executed early this morning at Sing Sing Prison for conspiring to pass atomic secrets to Russia in World War II." 
  11. ^ "The Rosenbergs: A Case of Love, Espionage, Deceit and Betray". TruTV. http://www.crimelibrary.com/terrorists_spies/spies/fuchs/1.html. Retrieved 2008-07-07. "Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were charged with the crime of conspiracy to commit espionage, and tried under the Espionage Act of 1917." 
  12. ^ "Execution of the Rosenbergs". The Guardian (London). June 20, 1953. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/1953/jun/20/usa.fromthearchive. Retrieved 2008-06-24. "Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were executed early this morning at Sing Sing Prison for conspiring to pass atomic secrets to Russia in World War II." 
  13. ^ "Morton Sobell Free As Spy Term Ends". New York Times. January 15, 1969. http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F30B14F63C5E147493C7A8178AD85F4D8685F9. Retrieved 2008-07-07. "Morton Sobell, sentenced to 30 years for a wartime espionage conspiracy to deliver vital national secrets to the Soviet Union, was released from prison yesterday after serving 17 years and 9 months." 
  14. ^ Roberts, Sam (September 11, 2008). "For First Time, Figure in Rosenberg Case Admits Spying for Soviets". New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/12/nyregion/12spy.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss. Retrieved 2008-09-11. "In an interview on Thursday, Mr. Sobell, who served nearly 19 years in Alcatraz and other federal prisons, admitted for the first time that he had been a Soviet spy." 

Further reading