Chronology of Soviet Espionage
Chronology of Soviet Espionage
Espionage Chronology
This chronology was prepared by T. M. Sanders (sanders@umich.edu).
Sources
This is an area about which it is very difficult to obtain thoroughly
reliable information. Some of the figures signed confessions or other
official statements, which may be the most reliable sources. In other cases,
considerable doubt about accuracy has persisted.
There are a number of general works, beginning with Alan Moorehead's
(old but excellent) The Traitors[1], Oliver Pilat's
The atom spies[2], H. Montgomery Hyde's The atom
bomb spies[3], and a number of more specialized works, cited
below. Some are by defectors and others whose reliability is difficult to
gauge.
Several recent works make use of material which became available only after
the disappearance of the Soviet Union. Notable among these are Stalin
and the Bomb,[4] Dark sun,[5] and
(in quite a different category) Special tasks.[6]
I (tms) have filed unsuccessful FOIA applications to both CIA and FBI.
Before German attack on USSR (June, 1941)
- 1933 Klaus Fuchs emigrates to England from Germany, where he was
already a Communist.
- 1935 Harry Gold (American chemist) begins espionage for USSR.
- 1940 Fuchs sent to internment camp in Canada as and Enemy Alien.
- June 1940 Bruno Pontecorvo escapes from Paris as Germans enter,
emigrates to Tulsa, Oklahoma to work on oil-well prospecting.
Wartime (1941 to 1945)
- 1941 Fuchs recruited into the `Tube Alloys' (nuclear) project, begins
passing information to the USSR.
- May 1942 Allan Nunn May joins ``Tube Alloys'' project in England.
- January 1943 Nunn May to Montreal with British mission, GRU (military
intelligence) agent.
- 1942 Fuchs becomes a British citizen.
- 1942 Julius Rosenberg allegedly spy for NKVD.
- April 1943 David Greenglass drafted into US Army.
- Spring 1943(?) Oppenheimer approached by Haakon Chevalier in ambiguous
``Chevalier Incident.''
- August, 1943 Oppenheimer discusses ``Chevalier Incident'' with Army
Intelligence for the first time.
- Late 1943 Fuchs posted to US.
- May 1944 Donald Maclean (NKVD agent) to US as diplomat.
- 1944 Fuchs meets Harry Gold, Soviet courier, is posted to Los Alamos
Theoretical Physics Division in August.
- July 1944 David Greenglass assigned first to Oak Ridge, then to Los
Alamos in August as SED machinist, shaping explosives for implosion.
- 1944 Nunn May visits Chicago Met Lab, Argonne, works on possible bomb
material uranium-233, reestablishes contact with GRU agent.
- March 1945 Kurchatov reads implosion material, probably from Nunn May.
- February 1945 Fuchs meets Gold in Boston, Santa Fe, passes details of
implosion, bomb design.
- 1945 David Greenglass, Los Alamos machinist passes drawings of
implosion lens to Harry Gold.
End of WWII (August, 1945) to ``Joe I'' (August, 1949)
- September, 1945 Igor Gouzenko, a code clerk in the Soviet
embassy in Ottawa defects.
- March 4, 1946 Physicist Allan Nunn May arrested
- May, 1946 Nunn May pleads guilty to a charge of violating
Britain's Official Secrets Act, sentenced to ten years in prison, a term
reduced for good behavior.
- 1946 Fuchs to England as head of the Theoretical Physics Division at
the new British atomic energy centre at Harwell.
- 1947 Fuchs reestablishes contact with Soviet agents.
- 1949 Fuchs under suspicion, as FBI passes information to British.
After ``Joe I'' (August, 1949)
- 1950 January Fuchs confesses; February 2 arrested; March 2 tried,
sentenced to 14 years.
- May 23, 1950 Harry Gold confesses.
- June 15, 1950 David Greenglass confesses.
- July 17, 1950 Julius Rosenberg arrested.
- August 11, 1950 Ethel Rosenberg arrested.
- September 2, 1950 Bruno Pontecorvo disappears into USSR.
- December 9, 1950 Harry Gold sentenced to 30 years.
- March, 1951 Rosenberg trial.
- April 5, 1951 Rosenbergs sentenced to death.
- June 19, 1953 Rosenbergs executed, after many appeals for clemency.
Biographical Sketches
Klaus Fuchs
Klaus Fuchs was born in Germany into a Quaker family, and lived through
the rise of Nazism. His anti-Nazi politics evolved into communism. He
emigrated to England in 1933, and received his professional education
there. He was recruited into the `Tube Alloys' (nuclear) project in 1941
by Rudolf Peierls, and became a British citizen in 1942. He was,
according to his own statements, passing information to the USSR as
early as 1941. He was sent to the US in late 1943, part of the group of
British scientists who joined the Manhattan project. He first met his
American contact, Harry Gold, in New York in early 1944. Posted to Los
Alamos in 1944, Fuchs was out of contact with Gold until 1945, when they
met: first in Boston, then in Santa Fe. Gold was also in contact with
David Greenglass, a machinist at Los Alamos who provided crude
drawings of the implosion lens. Fuchs passed a great deal of extremely
important technical information. He was present at the Trinity test, and
had been involved in important theoretical work-from gaseous
diffusion to bomb design.
Fuchs returned to England in 1946 as head of the Theoretical Physics
Division at the new British atomic energy centre at Harwell. He
remained at Harwell until his arrest, having reestablished contact
with Soviet agents in 1947.
In 1949, the FBI passed on to British Intelligence some evidence that a
British scientist had provided information to the Soviets from Los Alamos.
Fuchs came under suspicion because of his prewar communist background.
His brother was still a communist; his father accepted a position
(teaching theology) at Leipzig, in East Germany.
Fuchs began a series of ambiguous conversations with British security
officials, culminating in January, 1950, in a confession. He was
arrested February 2, tried on March 2, and sentenced to 14 years in
prison. His crime was not treason, because the USSR was not an enemy.
Released in June, 1959, he emigrated to Dresden, East Germany, where
he was employed as a physicist until his death.
Allan Nunn May
The event which unraveled the spy network in Canada was the defection
of Igor Gouzenko, a code clerk in the Soviet embassy in Ottawa, in
early September, 1945. This led directly to a physicist-spy,
code-named ``Alek'' engaged in wartime nuclear research in Canada.
Gouzenko's Soviet documents revealed him to be an Englishman named
Allan Nunn May, a person who had had many leftist connections in
prewar years. Nunn May, never at Los Alamos himself, nonetheless
obtained information of interest to the USSR. He informed them of the
nature of the Trinity and Hiroshima bombs, the U-235 output of the
plant at Oak Ridge, and of Pu-249 at Hanford, and passed a small
sample of U-233 to Soviet agents.
May was arrested March 4, 1946. He made a written statement, which included
these words:
... I gave and had given very careful consideration to
correctness of making sure that development of atomic energy was not
confined to the USA. I took the very painful decision that it was
necessary to convey general information on atomic energy and make
sure it was taken seriously. For this reason I decided to entertain
a proposition made to me by the individual who called on me...
Nunn May was tried in May, 1946, pleading Guilty to a charge of
violating Britain's Official Secrets Act. (Passing information to an
ally does not constitute treason under English law.) He was sentenced
to ten years in prison, a term which was reduced for good behavior.
Subsequent to his 1952 release he worked in Cambridge, then emigrated
to Ghana, where he taught physics. He died in Cambridge January 12th, 2003.
Bruno Pontecorvo
Bruno Pontecorvo was born in Pisa, Italy 22 August, 1913 to a
prominent Jewish family in the textile business. He obtained his
undergraduate education in Pisa, and his doctorate with Fermi, in
Rome, in 1934. He was one of the discoverers of the effectiveness of
slow neutrons in producing nuclear reactions.
In 1936, He was awarded a fellowship to the Collège de France, where he
worked with the Joliot-Curies, remaining in France until the German attack
in 1940. In France, he married Marianne, a Swedish woman, and was active in
anti-fascist, anti-nazi, and pro-communist activity, particularly in
connection with the Spanish civil war. He also did significant nuclear
physics research, for which he received a prestigious prize.
He emigrated to the United States in 1940, first finding employment with an
oil-well surveying company. In 1943, he obtained a position with a
British/Canadian Atomic Research group in Montreal, moving with them to
Chalk River, Ontario, where a large heavy-water-moderated reactor was built.
After the war, in 1949, he moved to the Harwell Atomic Research centre in
England. He discussed, but never carried out, efforts to obtain citizenship
in the various countries where he worked, finally becoming a naturalized
British citizen. By 1950, he had decided to leave Harwell for academia, and
accepted a position at University of Liverpool, to begin January, 1951. In
early 1950, after the Harwell physicist Klaus Fuchs confessed to spying for
the USSR within the Anglo-American atomic bomb project, Pontecorvo admitted
his communist connections to the English security forces.
In the summer of 1950, Bruno, Marianne, and their three children
departed Harwell for a vacation on the Continent. They drove through
France to Italy, spent time with various Pontecorvo family members, then
flew to Stockholm on 1 September, abandoning a beloved sports car
in a Roman garage. In Stockholm, they made no attempt to reach
Marianne's family, and departed the next day for Helsinki. There they
disappeared from Western view, presumably into the Soviet Union.
At the time, Pontecorvo was widely considered an ``atomic spy'', lumped with
the physicists Nunn May and Fuchs, and others such as Harry Gold, David
Greenglass, and the Rosenbergs. Alan Moorehead[1]
considers him in this class, although he was not involved in weapons work,
showed no trace of contact with Soviet agents, and did not appear to have
planned a permanent departure from Harwell.
His first public appearance within the USSR occurred in 1955. He held a
press conference, and wrote an article in Pravda, in which he stated,
``In 1950, the atmosphere was such that I could no longer breathe.'' He
prospered professionally in the USSR. He died at Dubna, Russia September 24,
1993. A version of the years after 1950 appears in Miriam Mafai's biography
Il lungo freddo.[7]
Specific allegations of espionage appear, for example in references
[8] and [6].
The Rosenbergs and Greenglasses
The FBI identified Harry Gold as Fuchs's American contact. His statement
led to David Greenglass, and then to Julius and Ethel (Greenglass)
Rosenberg. Gold and Greenglass confessed, testified against the
Rosenbergs, and served jail sentences. The Rosenbergs, whose connection
with spying was certainly more distant than that of the others, were
convicted and executed after many appeals for clemency.
Harry Gold
References
- [1]
-
Alan Moorehead.
The traitors.
Harper, New York, 1963.
HD 9698 .A23 M82 1963.
- [2]
-
Oliver Ramsay Pilat.
The atom spies.
Putnam, New York, 1952.
HD 9698 .A23 P64 (GRAD).
- [3]
-
H. Montgomery Hyde.
The atom bomb spies.
Hamish Hamilton, London, 1980.
UB271.R9 H992 (UGLI).
- [4]
-
David Holloway.
Stalin and the bomb : the Soviet Union and atomic energy,
1939-56.
Yale, New Haven, CT, 1994.
UA 770 .H6321 1994 (GRAD).
- [5]
-
Richard Rhodes.
Dark sun : The making of the hydrogen bomb.
Simon & Schuster, New Yok, 1995.
UG 1282 .A8 R461 1995.
- [6]
-
Pavel Sudoplatov, J. L. Schecter, and L. P. Schecter.
Special tasks : the memoirs of an unwanted witness, a Soviet
spymaster.
Little, Brown, Boston, 1994.
JN 6529 .I6 S831 1994 (GRAD).
- [7]
-
Miriam Mafai.
Il lungo freddo : storia di Bruno Pontecorvo, lo scienziato che
scelse l'URSS.
Mondadori, Milano, 1992.
QC 16 .P77 M34 1992 (SCIENCE).
- [8]
-
Christopher M. Andrew and Oleg Gordievsky.
KGB : the inside story of its foreign operations from Lenin to
Gorbachev.
Hodder and Stoughton, London, 1990.
HV 8224 .A66 1990 (GRAD).