Norman Moss - Klaus Fuchs - The Man Who Stole the Atom Bomb

‘Possibly,’ Fuchs replied. Skardon shrugged. He gave the impression that it was a pity that this little matter was going to end Fuchs’s career at Harwell and any possibility of such promotion. Suddenly, Fuchs put down his coffee cup, jumped up and said, ‘Let’s go back.’

This time he drove slowly, and in absolute silence. He had made up his mind. He had no defences left now. When they were inside the house, he told Skardon he had decided to confess, and said, ‘What do you want to know?’

Skardon said: ‘When did it start and how long has it been going on?’

‘I started in 1942 and had my last meeting last year,’ replied Fuchs. Skardon was surprised. He thought there had been just this one incident in New York, and maybe one or two others. But he did not betray his surprise.

‘Tell me, just to give me a better picture,’ he said, ‘what was the most important information you passed over?’

‘Perhaps the most important thing was the full design of the atom bomb.’ Skardon was really jolted. Clearly the security services had no idea of how serious this was.

Now that Fuchs had let down the barrier, he poured out the details. He talked rapidly for an hour. He told Skardon about meetings with Soviet agents over the six years, in Britain and America. He told him about meeting the agent he knew only as Raymond in his sister’s house in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and stressed that his sister was not involved.

He said he knew he was taking his life in his hands, but he had learned to do that long ago in Germany. He went on to say that he had changed his beliefs, and accordingly had reduced the amount of information he gave to the Russians. He still believed in Communism of a kind, he said, but was opposed to Communism as it was practised in the Soviet Union. He had decided that the only place for him to live now was England. He was worried about what his friends would think of what he had done, and he was worried most of all about what Henry Arnold would think, for Arnold was the security officer as well as a good friend and he had deceived him. He did not realize that Arnold had suspected him, and had him under surveillance, and that he was the one who had been deceived.

When this flow stopped they agreed that they were tired and that it would be better to continue this discussion another time. They both behaved as if they were dealing with a minor administrative issue. Fuchs looked in his diary and said that he had a committee meeting the following day, so they agreed to meet on the day after that, a Thursday.

Fuchs was calm and relaxed now. The uncertainties and anxieties that had tormented him over the past months were ended. He had found the right answer. So far as he was concerned, he was doing what the authorities wanted him to do, and confessing to everything he had done. Now there was no reason why he should leave Harwell, and he wanted to get back to work.

Skardon told MI5 the whole incredible story. They still needed a signed confession from Fuchs before they could arrest him. Fuchs, said Skardon, was in a trance; he had no idea of the likely consequences of what he had done. He wanted to keep him in this trance state a little longer. If Fuchs suddenly perceived his real position, he might be shocked into doing something drastic, like flight, or suicide.

Fuchs, meanwhile, took his courage in his hands and went to see Arnold, and confessed to him what he had done. He apologized for keeping things secret from him despite their close friendship. He told Arnold all about his confession to Skardon the day before. He told him something else that was worrying him: the Anglo-American declassification committee was to meet again soon, and he was due to attend. If he were not there it would look suspicious, and bad for Harwell. Arnold suggested that he tell Skardon about this the following day. He also did not try to break what Skardon called Fuchs’s trance state.

When Fuchs met Skardon on the Thursday, he said he wanted to get things cleared up as quickly as possible. Skardon said he must make a written confession. He said Fuchs could either write it himself, or dictate it to a secretary, or else dictate it to him. So they arranged that Fuchs would come up to London the following day and come to the War Office, at the top of Whitehall.

The following day he took a train from Didcot to London, a journey of about an hour. He was watched all the way by MI5 personnel, although he did not know this. Skardon met him at Paddington Station and drove him to the War Office. They went to the office that had been given to them, and Skardon took out a pen and a pad of notepaper. The procedure, like all the procedures so far, seems almost casual.

Fuchs’s excellent memory served him in good stead. He had worked out overnight what he intended to say, and now it all came out in the right order. He started dictating to Skardon:

‘I am Deputy Chief Scientific Officer (acting rank) at Atomic Energy Research Establishment, Harwell. I was born in Rüsselsheim on the 29th December, 1911. My father was a parson and I had a very happy childhood…’

His statement was 4,000 words long. All the important things that he had bottled up for years came out in it: his views on politics, his feelings about what he was doing, his motivations. It is an unusual confession in that it says very little about the offence. Fuchs did not go into details of his contacts with Soviet agents — places, dates, descriptions. Still less did he go into details about the information he gave them. He explained why he acted as he did, the reasoning process behind it, and then the doubts and conflicts that arose in his mind. He devoted more time to the political activities as a student in Germany that were so important to him than he did to his six years as a spy. Most of this is summed up in one sentence, after describing how he first contacted the Soviet intelligence network: ‘Since that time I have had continuous contact with persons who were completely unknown to me, except that I knew that they would hand whatever information I gave them to the Russian authorities.’

He told how he had divided his mind into two compartments, so that he could be a good and honest friend in one while his activities as a spy for the Soviet Union were locked away in the other; this is where he used the phrase ‘controlled schizophrenia’. Then he talked about his doubts, his feelings about Harwell, and his feelings over the past weeks.

The confession drew near to its end on a note of repentance:

I know that all I can do now is to try and repair the damage I have done. The first thing is to make sure that Harwell will suffer as little as possible and that I have to save for my friends as much as possible of that part that was good in my relations with them. This thought is at present uppermost in my mind, and I find it difficult to concentrate on any other points. However, I realize that I will have to state the extent of the information that I have given, and that I shall have to help as far as my conscience allows me in stopping other people who are still doing what I have done.

He then indicated how far his conscience might not allow him to stop other people doing what he had done: ‘There are people whom I know by sight whom I trusted with my life and who trusted me with theirs, and I do not know that I shall be able to do anything that might in the end give them away.’

When all this was written down, Skardon gave it to Fuchs to read. Fuchs read the statement through and made two or three minor alterations, and then added a sentence: ‘I have read this statement and to the best of my knowledge it is true,’ and signed it.

But more was needed. Fuchs himself had said in his confession that he would have to spell out what information he had given to the Russians, so Skardon said he had better tell him.