Christopher Andrew - The Sword and the Shield

WITH THE EXCEPTION of the Five, potentially the most important Soviet spy in Britain was the nuclear physicist Klaus Fuchs, recruited by the GRU late in 1941. 30When Fuchs left for the United States late in 1943 as part of the British team chosen to take part in the MANHATTAN project, he was—though he did not realize it—transferred from GRU to NKGB control and given the codename REST (later changed to CHARLES). 31Earlier in 1943, the Centre had instructed its residencies in Britain and the United States that “[t]he brain centers [scientific research establishments] must come within our jurisdiction.” Not for the first time, the GRU was forced to give way to the demands of its more powerful “neighbor.” 32In 1944 Melita Norwood, the long-serving Soviet agent in the British Non-Ferrous Metals Association, ceased contact with SONYA of the GRU and was given an NKGB controller. 33In March 1945, after her employer won a contract from the TUBE ALLOYS project, Norwood gained access to documents of atomic intelligence 34which the Centre described as “of great interest and a valuable contribution to the development of work in this field.” She was instructed to say nothing about her espionage work to her husband, and in particular to give no hint of her involvement in atomic intelligence. 35Atomic intelligence from London and the American residencies was complementary as well as overlapping. According to Vladimir Barkovsky, head of ST at the London residency, “In the USA we obtained information on how the bomb was made and in Britain of what it was made, so that together [intelligence from the two countries] covered the whole problem.” 36

On February 5, 1944 Fuchs had his first meeting in New York’s East Side with his NKGB controller, Harry Gold (codenamed successively GOOSE and ARNO), an industrial chemist born in Switzerland of Russian parents. 37Fuchs was told to identify himself by carrying a tennis ball in his hand and to look for a man wearing one pair of gloves and carrying another. 38Gold, who introduced himself as “Raymond,” reported to Leonid Kvasnikov, head of ST at the New York residency (later known as Line X), that Fuchs had “greeted him pleasantly but was rather cautious at first.” 39Fuchs later claimed, after his arrest in 1949, that during their meetings “the attitude of ‘Raymond’ was at all times that of an inferior.” Gold admitted, after his own arrest by the FBI, that he was overawed by the extraordinary intelligence which Fuchs provided and had found the idea of an atomic bomb “so frightening that the only thing I could do was shove it away as far back in my mind as I could and simply not think on the matter at all.” 40

On July 25, 1944 the New York residency telegraphed the Centre: “Almost half a year of contact established with REST [Fuchs] has demonstrated the value of his work for us.” It asked permission to pay him a “reward” of 500 dollars. The Centre agreed, but, before the money could be handed over, Fuchs had disappeared. 41It was over three months before Gold discovered that Fuchs had been posted to Los Alamos, and he did not renew contact with him until Fuchs returned to the east coast on leave in February 1945. 42

During 1944 Kvasnikov’s responsibilities were extended: he was given the new post of ST resident for the whole of the United States—a certain indication of the increasing priority of atomic espionage. 43Late in 1944 Kvasnikov was able to inform the Centre that, in addition to Fuchs, there were now two more prospective spies at Los Alamos.

The first, David Greenglass, was recruited through a group of ST agents run by Julius Rosenberg (codenamed successively ANTENNA and LIBERAL), a 26-year-old New York Communist with a degree in electrical engineering. Like Fuchs, the members of the Rosenberg ring, who included his wife Ethel, had been rewarded with cash bonuses in the summer. The ring was producing so many classified documents to be photographed in Kvasnikov’s apartment that the New York residency was running dangerously short of film. The residency reported that Rosenberg was receiving so much intelligence from his agents that he was finding it difficult to cope: “We are afraid of putting LIBERAL out of action with overwork.” 44

In November 1944 Kvasnikov informed the Centre that Ethel Rosenberg’s sister, Ruth Greenglass (codenamed WASP), had agreed to approach her husband, who worked as a machinist at Los Alamos. 45“I was young, stupid and immature,” said David Greenglass (codenamed BUMBLEBEE and CALIBRE) later, “but I was a good Communist.” Stalin and the Soviet leadership, he believed, were “really geniuses, every one of them:” “More power to the Soviet Union and abundant life for their peoples!” “My darling,” Greenglass wrote to his wife, “I most certainly will be glad to be part of the community project [espionage] that Julius and his friends [the Russians] have in mind.” 46

The New York residency also reported in November 1944 that the precociously brilliant nineteen-year-old Harvard physicist Theodore Alvin (“Ted”) Hall, then working at Los Alamos, had indicated his willingness to collaborate. As well as being inspired by the myth-image of the Soviet worker-peasant state, which was an article of faith for most ideological Soviet agents, Hall convinced himself that an American nuclear monopoly would threaten the peace of the post-war world. Passing the secrets of the MANHATTAN project to Moscow was thus a way “to help the world,” as well as the Soviet Union. As the youngest of the atom spies, Hall was given the appropriate, if transparent, codename MLAD (“Young”). Though only one year older, the fellow Harvard student who first brought Hall into contact with the NKGB, Saville Savoy Sax, was codenamed STAR (“Old”). 47Hall himself went on to become probably the youngest major spy of the twentieth century.

THE PENETRATION OF Los Alamos was part of a more general surge in Soviet intelligence collection in the United States during the last two years of the war, as the NKGB’s agents, buoyed up by the remorseless advance of the Red Army towards Berlin and the opening of a second front, looked forward to a glorious victory over fascism. The number of rolls of microfilm sent by Akhmerov’s illegal residency to Moscow via New York grew from 211 in 1943 to 600 in 1944 and 1,896 in 1945. 48The Centre, however, found it difficult to believe that espionage in the United States could really be as straightforward as it seemed. During 1944-5 the NKGB grew increasingly concerned about the security of its American operations and sought to bring them under more direct control. 49Among its chief anxieties was Elizabeth Bentley’s habit of socializing with the agents for whom she acted as courier. When Bentley’s controller and lover, Jacob Golos, died from a sudden heart attack on Thanksgiving Day 1943, Akhmerov decided to dispense with a cut-out and act as her new controller. Bentley’s first impressions were of a smartly dressed “jaunty-looking man in his mid-thirties” with an expansive manner. (Akhmerov was actually fortytwo). She soon realized, however, that “despite the superficial appearance of a boulevardier, he was a tough character.” 50For the next six months, though Bentley continued to act as courier for the Silvermaster group in Washington, she felt herself under increasing pressure.

In March 1944 Earl Browder passed on to her another group of Washington bureaucrats who had been sending him intelligence which he had previously passed on to Golos. 51Bentley regarded Victor Perlo (RAIDER), a government statistician who provided intelligence on aircraft production, as the leader of the group—probably because he acted as spokesman during her first meeting with them. 52Akhmerov, however, believed that the real organizer was Charles Kramer (LOT), a government economist, and was furious that the Perlo/Kramer network had been handed over by Browder not to him but to Bentley. For over a year, he told the Centre, Zarubin and he had wanted to make direct contact with the group, but Browder had failed to arrange it. “If we work with this group,” Akhmerov added, “it will be necessary to remove [Bentley].” 53