Christopher Andrew - The Sword and the Shield

57. Bentley, Out of Bondage, pp. 68-9, chs. 7, 8. Codenames from vol. 6, ch. 5, part 2 and VENONA decrypts. The sanitized SVR account of Golos’s career makes no reference to his sexual indiscretion. “Russian [intelligence] operatives,” it concludes, “will always honor and take pride in him.” Primakov et al., Ocherki Istorii Rossiyskoy Vneshnei Razvedki, vol. 3, ch. 16.

58. vol. 6, ch. 12. The VENONA decrypts indicate that Belfrage was also codenamed UCN/9.

59. On BSC, see Andrew, For the President’s Eyes Only, pp. 96, 102-3, 127-30.

60. vol. 6, ch. 12. The KGB file noted by Mitrokhin confirms the main features of the account, contested by Belfrage during his lifetime, in Bentley, Out of Bondage, pp. 139-40—notably his espionage links with Golos and with V. J. Jerome, a close associate of Browder.

61. vol. 6, ch. 5, part 2.

62. On the woeful limitations of the intelligence on the Soviet Union available to Roosevelt early in the war, see Andrew, For the President’s Eyes Only, pp. 132-3.

63. Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, pp. 340-1; Zubok and Pleshakov, Inside the Kremlin’s Cold War, p. 23.

64. vol. 6, ch. 12. Hopkins had been personally briefed by Hoover on Zarubin’s visit to Nelson (Benson and Warner (eds.), VENONA, document 9). Hoover would doubtless have been outraged had he known that Hopkins had informed the Soviet embassy.

65. The source of the information on the talks between Roosevelt and Churchill was codenamed “19”—an example of the Centre’s confusing habit of sometimes recycling the same codename for different people. Laurence Duggan had formerly been codenamed “19,” but by now had the codename FRANK; he cannot, in any case, have provided this information. A detailed, meticulous and persuasive study by Eduard Mark concludes that it is “probable virtually to the point of certainty that Hopkins was 19. ” Mark, “Venona’s Source 19 and the ‘Trident’ Conference of 1943.”

66. Andrew, “Anglo-American-Soviet Intelligence Relations,” pp. 125-6. Crozier, Free Agent, pp. 1-2.

67. Hopkin’s efforts to avoid US-Soviet friction also included securing the removal of officials he judged to be anti-Soviet: among them the US ambassador in Moscow, Laurence A. Steinhardt; the military attaché, Major Ivan D. Yeaton; and Loy W. Henderson, head of the Soviet desk in the State Department. When Soviet foreign minister Molotov visited Washington in May 1942, Hopkins took him aside and told him what to say to persuade Roosevelt of the need for an early second front in order to contradict contrary advice from the American military. Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, pp. 297-300, 341; Mark, “Venona’s Source 19 and the ‘Trident’ Conference of 1943,” p. 20.

68. Bohlen, Witness to History 1919-1969, p. 148.

69. Dilks (ed.), The Diaries of Sir Alexander Cadogan, OM, 1938-1945, p. 582.

70. Cited by Kissinger, Diplomacy, p. 412. On relations between Churchill and Roosevelt at Tehran, see also Kimball, Forged in War, pp. 237-55.

71. Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, p. 342.

72. The use made by Stalin of intelligence from Britain during the Tehran Conference remains more problematic, given the Centre’s unwarranted suspicion at that time of its main British sources.

73. vol. 6, ch. 5, part 2.

74. vol. 7, ch. 2, para. 2; appendix 3, n. 21.

75. vol. 7, ch. 2, para. 5.

76. vol. 7, ch. 10, para. 15.

77. Philby, My Silent War, pp. 49-50, 67-8.

78. vol. 7, ch. 10, para. 5.

79. Borovik, The Philby Files, pp. 196-7. On SIS’s lack of a Moscow station in the 1930s, see Andrew, Secret Service, p. 573.

80. The text of the report was first published, along with other KGB documents on atomic espionage, in Voprossi Istorii Estestvoznania i Tekhniki (1992), no. 3. This issue was withdrawn shortly after publication, but the documents are reprinted in Sudoplatovs, Special Tasks, appendix 2. Cf. Costello and Tsarev, Deadly Illusions, p. 218.

81. According to the minutes of the Scientific Advisory Committee, Cairncross briefly served as its joint secretary; SAC (DP)(41), CAB 90/8, PRO. In his memorably mendacious memoirs, Cairncross denied that he ever held this post. Even if he is correct in this instance (and Whitehall committee secretaries were, almost invariably, capable of ensuring that their names were correctly recorded), this would not have affected his access to SAC minutes since, by his own admission, he “had no difficulty in having access to the secret papers in Hankey’s office.” Cairncross, The Enigma Spy, pp. 9-10, 88-92.

82. The revelation that Cairncross, thanks to his access to Scientific Advisory Committee papers, was the first to warn the Center of the plan to construct the atomic bomb first appeared in 1990 in Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, p. 321. Probably because Cairncross was then still alive, a series of KGB/SVR-sponsored publications suggested that the report of the Scientific Advisory Committee had come instead from Maclean. (See, e.g., Costello and Tsarev, Deadly Illusions, p. 218; Samolis (ed.), Veterany Vneshnei Razvedki Rossii, pp. 31, 60.) Following confirmation by Yuri Modin, who was given responsibility for Cairncross’s file in 1944 and became his controller in 1947, that the Scientific Advisory Committee report came from Cairncross, the SVR changed its tune. In 1998 it released documents from Cairncross’s file proving that he supplied the report and giving further details of his role as the first of the atom spies. West and Tsarev, The Crown Jewels, pp. 228-9, 234; Michael Smith, “The Humble Scot Who Rose to the Top—But Then Chose Treachery,” Daily Telegraph (January 12, 1998).

83. The text of Beria’s report of March 1942, first published in Voprossi Istorii Estestvoznania i Tekhniki, 1992, no. 3, is reprinted in Sudoplatovs, Special Tasks, appendix 2, pp. 439-41. On the background see Holloway, Stalin and the Bomb, pp. 82-4.

84. Holloway, Stalin and the Bomb, pp. 84-9.

85. vol. 6, ch. 6. Roosevelt and Churchill agreed verbally on unrestricted exchange of information on the atomic project, but did not commit the agreement to writing. The Americans in charge of the MANHATTAN project afterwards claimed to be ignorant of the agreement. Not till the Quebec agreement of August 1943 was “full and effective collaboration” between Britain and the United States agreed in writing.

86. vol. 6, ch. 6.

87. Holloway, Stalin and the Bomb, p. 85.

88. Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, pp. 321-2.

89. West and Tsarev, Crown Jewels, pp. 231-3.

90. Fuchs preferred meeting in London Underground stations. He later complained to Markus Wolf that Kremer’s habit of constantly looking over his shoulder to see if he was being followed “seemed to attract more attention to us than simply getting on with it.” Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, pp. 322-4; Wolf, Man without a Face, p. 230. The best biography of Fuchs is Williams, Klaus Fuchs, Atom Spy.

91. The references to FIR in Mitrokhin’s notes, including her involvement with Fuchs, identify her as SONIA (vol. 7, ch. 14, item 17). She is not to be confused with a British NKGB agent also codenamed FIR, an official of the Economic Commission for Asia and the Far East (ECAFE) recruited in China in 1943 (k-24,126).

92. Werner, Sonya’s Report, pp. 250-3; Wolf, Man without a Face, p. 230.

93. Wolf, Man without a Face, p. 229.

94. vol. 7, ch. 14, item 17. It is just possible, though not probable, that an even stronger candidate for either of these titles is identified in files not seen by Mitrokhin. Like most, if not all, British agents recruited in the 1930s who were still active after the Second World War, Norwood had more than one codename in the course of her career. Though Mitrokhin’s notes refer to her only as HOLA, her codename in 1945, shortly after she returned from GRU to NKGB control, was RITA. Extracts from KGB files made available by the SVR to Weinstein and Vassiliev, though not mentioning Norwood by name, identify RITA as an employee of the Non-Ferrous Metals [Research] Association (Weinstein and Vassiliev, The Haunted Wood, p. 194; cf. the reference to RITA in VENONA decrypts, 5th release, part 2, p. 247.)