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History See other History Articles Title: Spies Who Spilled Atomic Bomb Secrets Spies Who Spilled Atomic Bomb Secrets As part of the Soviet Unions spy ring, these Americans and Britons leveraged their access to military secrets to help Russia become a nuclear power by Marian Smith Holmes April 19, 2009 Klaus Fuchs and David Greengrass The Soviets did not lack for available recruits for spying, says John Earl Haynes, espionage historian and author of Early Cold War Spies. What drove these college-educated Americans and Britons to sell their nations' atomic secrets? Some were ideologically motivated, enamored of communist beliefs, explains Haynes. Others were motivated by the notion of nuclear parity; one way to prevent a nuclear war, they reasoned, was to make sure that no nation had a monopoly on that awesome power. For many years, the depth of Soviet spying was unknown. The big breakthrough began in 1946 when the United States, working with Britain, deciphered the code Moscow used to send its telegraph cables. Venona, as the decoding project was named, remained an official secret until it was declassified in 1995. Because government authorities did not want to reveal that they had cracked the Russian code, Venona evidence could not be used in court, but it could trigger investigations and surveillance hoping to nail suspects in the act of spying or extract a confession from them. As Venona decryption improved in the late 1940s and early 1950s, it blew the cover of several spies. Investigations resulted in the execution or imprisonment of a dozen or more people who had passed atomic secrets to the Soviets, but no one knows how many spies got away. Here are some of the ones we know about: John Cairncross Ultimately he was not charged, and according to some reports, asked by British officials to resign and keep quiet. He moved to the United States where he taught French literature at Northwestern University. In 1964, questioned again, he admitted to spying for Russia against Germany in WWII, but denied giving any information harmful to Britain. He went to work for the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization in Rome and later lived in France. Cairncross returned to England a few months before his death in 1995, and went to his grave insisting that the information he gave Moscow was "relatively innocuous." In the late 1990s when Russia under its new democracy made public its KGB files from the last 70 years, the documents revealed that Cairncross was indeed the agent who provided "highly secret documentation [of] the British Government to organise and develop the work on atomic energy." Klaus Fuchs Born in Germany in 1911, Fuchs joined the Communist Party as student, and fled to England during the rise of Nazism in 1933. Attending Bristol and Edinburgh universities, he excelled in physics. Because he was a German national he was interned for several months in Canada but returned and cleared to work on atomic research in England. By the time he became a British citizen in 1942, he had already contacted the Soviet Embassy in London and volunteered his services as a spy. He was transferred to the Los Alamos lab and began handing over detailed information about the bomb construction, including sketches and dimensions. When he returned to England in 1946, he went to work at Britain's nuclear research facility, and passed information on creating a hydrogen bomb to the Soviet Union. In December 1949, authorities, alerted by the Venona cable, questioned him. In a matter of few weeks, Fuchs confessed all. He was tried and sentenced to 14 years in prison. After serving nine years he was released to East Germany, where he resumed work as a scientist. He died in 1988. David Greenglass was Ethel Rosenberg's brother. He was the third mole at the Manhattan Project. Bettmann / Corbis Theodore Hall With the help of his courier and Harvard colleague, Saville Sax (a fervent communist and aspiring writer), Hall used coded references to Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass to set up meeting times. In December 1944 Hall delivered what was probably the first atomic secret from Los Alamos, an update on the creation of the plutonium bomb. In the fall of 1946 he enrolled in University of Chicago, and was working on his PhD in 1950 when the FBI turned its spotlight on him. His real name had surfaced in a decrypted message. But Fuch's courier, Harry Gold who was already in prison, could not identify him as the man, other than Fuchs, that he had collected secrets from. Hall never went to trial. After a career in radiobiology, he moved to Great Britain and worked as a biophysicist until his retirement. When the 1995 Venona declassifications confirmed his spying from five decades earlier, he explained his motivations in a written statement: "It seemed to me that an American monopoly was dangerous and should be prevented. I was not the only scientist to take that view." He died in 1999 at age 74. Harry Gold, David Greenglass, Ethel and Julius Rosenberg In addition to Fuchs and Hall, Greenglass was the third mole at the Manhattan Project, although they did not know of each other's covert work. In 1950 as the atomic spy network unraveled, Gold, who had picked up material from Greenglass in New Mexico, positively identified Greenglass as his contact. That identification turned the investigation away from Ted Hall, who initially was a suspect. Greenglass confessed, implicating his wife, his sister and his brother-in law. To lessen their punishment, his wife came forward, providing details of her husband and her in-laws' involvement. She and Greenglass had given Julius Rosenberg handwritten documents and drawings of the bomb, and Rosenberg had devised a cut-up Jell-O box as a signal. The Venona decryptions also corroborated the extent of Julius Rosenberg's spy ring, though they were not made public. The Rosenbergs, however, denied everything and adamantly refused to name names or answer many questions. They were found guilty, sentenced to death in 1951 and despite pleas for clemency, executed on June 19, 1953 in the electric chair at Sing-Sing prison in New York. Because they chose to cooperate, Greenglass received 15 years and his wife was never formally charged. Lona Cohen When the investigations and trials of the early 1950s got scorchingly close, the Cohens fled to Moscow. In 1961 the couple, under aliases, resurfaced in a London suburb, living as Canadian antiquarian booksellers, a cover for their continued spying. Their spy paraphernalia included a radio transmitter stashed under the refrigerator, fake passports, and antique books concealing stolen information. At their trial the Cohens refused to spill their secrets, once again thwarting any lead to Ted Hall's spying. They received 20 years, but in 1969 were released in exchange for Britons incarcerated in the Soviet Union. Both received that country's highest hero award before their deaths in the 1990s. Poster Comment: To top it off, the Communist Harry Dexter White was sleeping in the White House. Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread Top Page Up Full Thread Page Down Bottom/Latest
#1. To: BTP Holdings (#0)
Cohen...that's a French name, right?
I am not one of those weak-spirited, sappy Americans who want to be liked by all the people around them. I dont care if people hate my guts; I assume most of them do. The important question is whether they are in a position to do anything about it. My affections, being concentrated over a few people, are not spread all over Hell in a vile attempt to placate sulky, worthless shits. - William S Burroughs
Irish. Thanks, I'm still trying to sort all this out.
I am not one of those weak-spirited, sappy Americans who want to be liked by all the people around them. I dont care if people hate my guts; I assume most of them do. The important question is whether they are in a position to do anything about it. My affections, being concentrated over a few people, are not spread all over Hell in a vile attempt to placate sulky, worthless shits. - William S Burroughs
Rosenberg is French.
George M. Cohan (Yankee Doodle Dandy) and Roy Cohn (Mafia lawyer, Studio 54) were cousins. Little known fact :)
I am not one of those weak-spirited, sappy Americans who want to be liked by all the people around them. I dont care if people hate my guts; I assume most of them do. The important question is whether they are in a position to do anything about it. My affections, being concentrated over a few people, are not spread all over Hell in a vile attempt to placate sulky, worthless shits. - William S Burroughs
I was thinking Danish, from Shakespeare... I am not one of those weak-spirited, sappy Americans who want to be liked by all the people around them. I dont care if people hate my guts; I assume most of them do. The important question is whether they are in a position to do anything about it. My affections, being concentrated over a few people, are not spread all over Hell in a vile attempt to placate sulky, worthless shits. - William S Burroughs
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