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<text id=94TT0465> <title> Apr. 25, 1994: Atomic Secrets </title> <history> TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1994 Apr. 25, 1994 Hope in the War against Cancer </history> <article> <source>Time Magazine</source> <hdr> BOOK EXCERPT, Page 64 Atomic Secrets </hdr> <body> A KGB Spymaster's Tale of How the Soviets Got the Bomb ((c)) 1994 by Pavel A. Sudoplatov and Anatoli P. Sudoplatov, Jerrold Schecter, and Leona Schecter. From SPECIAL TASKS: THE MEMOIRS OF AN UNWANTED WITNESS to be published by Little, Brown and Company, (Inc.) At 45 seconds past 5:29 a.m. on July 16, 1945, the predawn darkness of the New Mexico desert was illuminated by the light of a thousand suns. More than three years of frantic scientific work, propelled by the fear that Nazi Germany was on the brink of producing a weapon of such devastating power that it could bring defeat to the Allies, had produced the first atom bomb. Watching the explosion with a mixture of satisfaction and dread was J. Robert Oppenheimer, the 41-year-old polymath--master of eight languages including Sanskrit as well as the new arcana of atomic physics--who had led the team that developed the device. As the deep, rumbling explosion washed past him in the desert, two lines from the Bhagavad-Gita flashed through his mind: I am become death The destroyer of worlds Less than one month later, an atom bomb virtually incinerated Hiroshima. Then another was unleashed on Nagasaki. At least 200,000 people died in the first five months. Within five years, 130,000 more deaths had been recorded. But World War II was over, and Oppenheimer was a national hero. The Manhattan Project team members felt both proud of their scientific achievement and appalled by the destructive force they had unleashed. In 1947 Oppenheimer told fellow scientists that "in some sort of crude sense, which no vulgarity, no humor, no overstatement can quite extinguish, the physicists have known sin, and this is a knowledge they cannot lose." Then, seven years later, he was caught up in the national hysteria over alleged communist penetration of the U.S. government. A member of the President's Science Advisory Committee, consultant to the Atomic Energy Commission, adviser to the Departments of State and Defense as well as the National Security Council, he was abruptly stripped of his security clearance and banished from the councils of government. The charges against him included consorting with communists, bringing them into Los Alamos, being late to report a possible attempt to obtain classified information, and worst of all, intentionally impeding the government's program to build the hydrogen bomb. Along with the conviction of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg and the case of Alger Hiss, the Oppenheimer affair became emblematic of the witch-hunt atmosphere of the 1950s. The suspicion that there were subversives in the atomic-weapons program was encouraged by the Soviets' ability to produce their own atom bomb four years after Oppenheimer's success at Los Alamos, then to duplicate the H-bomb a mere nine months after the first thermonuclear explosion by the U.S. But the consensus among liberals and many intellectuals was that Oppenheimer had been railroaded and ruined by the witch-hunters. After the AEC's 4-to-1 vote against him, Oppenheimer returned to Princeton, where he continued as director of the Institute for Advanced Study, a job he had held since 1947, and lived in relative quiet and obscurity until the McCarthyite hysteria subsided. The physicist was partly rehabilitated by his government when it was announced on Nov. 22, 1963, that President John F. Kennedy would award Oppenheimer the Atomic Energy Commission's highest award, the Fermi Prize, for his contribution to nuclear research. The award was presented a month later by the new President, Lyndon B. Johnson. Now comes the publication of a book titled Special Tasks by Pavel Anatolievich Sudoplatov. Sudoplatov, once a Soviet spymaster, charges that Oppenheimer, while director of the Los Alamos laboratory that produced the A-bomb, knowingly shared American atomic secrets with the Soviets, enabling them to break the U.S.'s nuclear monopoly and become the superpower that threatened the West for four decades. The name of Sudoplatov is hardly known even in his native Russia. His identity and activities were among the best-kept secrets of the communist regime--and for good reason. He worked for 30 years at the heart of the vicious secret security apparat during the Stalin era. As director of the Administration for Special Tasks--a euphemism for acts of espionage, including assassination--Sudoplatov ran spy networks in Europe and North America; plotted the killing of Leon Trotsky, who had challenged Stalin for leadership of the worldwide communist revolution; and personally murdered Ukrainian nationalist Yevhen Konovalets. Most important, he supervised the Soviet agents who helped obtain America's most precious atomic secrets. Sudoplatov went the way of many of Stalin's associates when, in 1953, he was jailed by Nikita Khrushchev in a purge designed to eliminate Stalin's security chief, Lavrenti Beria, and to cover up Khrushchev's own role in the late dictator's murderous regime. Released from prison in 1968, he lived as a nonperson until after the collapse of the communist government in 1991. Over the past several years--with help from his son Anatoli, a professor of economics at Moscow State University, as well as from former TIME Moscow bureau chief Jerrold Schechter and his wife Leona--Sudoplatov has been preparing his memoirs. What follows is excerpted from his account of how Soviet espionage in America helped the Soviets get the Bomb. SPECIAL TASKS As early as 1940, a commission of Soviet scientists, upon hearing rumors of a superweapon being built in the West, investigated the possibility of creating an atom bomb from uranium, but concluded that such a weapon was only a theoretical, not a practical, possibility. Although no government funds were allocated for research, Leonid Kvasnikov, chief of the NKVD scientific intelligence desk [the organization that became the KGB, the Committee for State Security, was known as the NKVD in the 1930s and 1940s], sent an order to all stations in the U.S., Britain and Scandinavia to be on the lookout for information on the development of superweapons from uranium. A major shift in our intelligence priorities occurred just as Vassili Zarubin, a.k.a. Zubilin, was posted to Washington, ostensibly as third secretary at the Soviet embassy, but actually our new NKVD resident [in charge of espionage]. Stalin met with Zarubin on Oct. 12, 1941, before his departure for Washington, just as the Germans were on the outskirts of Moscow. We realized we needed to know American intentions because America's participation in the war against Hitler would be decisive. Stalin ordered Zarubin to set up an effective system not only to monitor events but to be in a position to influence them through friends of the Soviet Union. Over the next year and a half, however, intelligence reports from Britain, America, Scandinavia and Germany concerning the development of nuclear weapons would drastically alter our priorities once again. In September, Donald Maclean, a British diplomat, code-named Leaf, who was part of our Cambridge spy ring [a network of five well-placed Britons recruited by the Soviets in the 1930s], reported from London that the British government was seriously interested in developing a bomb with unbelievable destructive force based on atomic energy. He said that the uranium bomb might be constructed within two years. Maclean sent us a 60-page report, including minutes of the British Cabinet committee on the project, code-named Tube Alloys. Our intelligence activities in the U.S. continued to focus on efforts against Germany and Japan. Gregory Kheifetz, our NKVD resident in San Francisco, was trying to neutralize anti-Soviet statements by White Russians in the U.S. Lend-lease was beginning, and it was critical to change our image. The American Administration was very sensitive about criticism of its ties with the Soviet Union. We wanted to know to what extent this criticism was inspired by the Russian emigres. These concerns paled in comparison when Kheifetz reported on the full-scale development of an American atom bomb. Kheifetz advised us of a piece of information that changed Moscow's skeptical attitude about the atomic project. Kheifetz and J. Robert Oppenheimer, a brilliant American physicist at the University of California, had met in December 1941, and Kheifetz reported that the outstanding physicists in the Allied world were involved in a secret project. The concentration of such eminent scientists could not be accidental. As a deputy director of foreign intelligence, I saw these cables from the U.S. Kheifetz informed us that the American government would spend around 20% of all the money allocated for military research and development on the atomic project. At this very dangerous period of the war, the decision to spend so much money on the nuclear project convinced us it must be vital and feasible. That sentence in the cable was underlined by our analysts to emphasize to Lavrenti Beria [Stalin's notorious security chief] the project's importance. Kheifetz's first contact with Oppenheimer came at a party to raise money for the Spanish Civil War refugees on Dec. 6, 1941. Kheifetz was known to Oppenheimer as Mr. Brown, vice consul of the Soviet consulate. Kheifetz had an outgoing personality, spoke good English, German and French. He had been sent to America from Italy, where in the 1930s as deputy resident in Rome he targeted the physicist Enrico Fermi and his younger colleague and former student Bruno Pontecorvo as dedicated antifascists and potential sources. I had known Kheifetz over the years when he visited Moscow and was attracted by his personal charm and professional skill. Kheifetz managed to meet Oppenheimer alone for lunch later in December. Oppenheimer expressed his concern that the Nazis might succeed in building atomic weapons before the Allies. In their conversation Oppenheimer revealed Albert Einstein's then still secret letter, written to President Roosevelt in 1939, urging the U.S. to investigate the possibility of using nuclear energy to make a weapon of war. Oppenheimer had felt frustrated that there had been no prompt or adequate response to Einstein's letter, which had been initiated and drafted by Leo Szilard, a Hungarian-born physicist who had emigrated to the U.S. from Britain in 1938. Kheifetz was an experienced professional who knew better than to approach a jewel of a source such as Oppenheimer with the usual money or threats. Instead, he created a common ground of interest and idealism, drawing on stories of his travels and cosmopolitan view of life that the two men could discuss and compare. Oppenheimer, Fermi and Szilard could not be run as traditional agents. From Moscow we instructed another agent in the U.S., Semyon Semyonov, to follow up on Kheifetz's report. He was to identify the major scientists involved in the project and to try and establish their specific contributions. A graduate of the Leningrad Institute of Mechanical Engineering, Semyonov, whom I had recruited in 1938, was sent to study at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1939 and to integrate himself into American life. He personally knew several of the scientists involved in the bomb project, but his old M.I.T. friends were unaware that their amiable Russian colleague was collecting information to be reported back to Moscow. Semyonov's code name was Twain, after the American writer, and he is now known in America as one of the men who ran Harry Gold, the agent who worked closely with Klaus Fuchs, the atomic spy. An active and effective case officer, Semyonov set off his own chain reaction in Soviet intelligence when, through his M.I.T. connections, he identified most of the prominent scientists involved in the Manhattan Project and, independently of Kheifetz, reported in the spring of 1942 that the uranium-bomb project was being taken seriously not only by scientists but also by the U.S. government. On March 10, 1942, Beria, in a letter to Stalin, stated, "In a number of capitalist countries, in connection with work under way on the fission of the atom nucleus with a view to obtaining a new source of energy, research has been launched into the utilization of the nuclear energy of uranium for military purposes." Academician Vladimir Vernadsky, the patriarch of Soviet science, suggested to Stalin that we approach the Danish physicist Niels Bohr and the American and British governments about sharing their information with us. Stalin told him, "You are politically naive if you think that they would share information about the weapons that will dominate the world in the future." Stalin did agree that the idea of privately contacting Western scientists through our own scientists could prove very useful. That Oppenheimer, a relatively young scientist, then age 38, was being put in charge of the American project influenced our decision to appoint Igor Kurchatov, then 40, to head ours. This was a controversial decision, as our older scientists did not, or could not, believe that Bohr and Enrico Fermi, world-famous figures, could be subordinate to Oppenheimer in Los Alamos, New Mexico. At the end of January 1943, we received through Semyonov a full report from Bruno Pontecorvo describing Fermi's first nuclear chain reaction in Chicago on Dec. 2, 1942. The report was the first documentary information that verified progress in making a bomb. It was written by scientists, not administrators, not from oral discussions or Cabinet minutes. When the British sabotaged the heavy-water installation at Vemork in southern Norway soon afterward, Stalin was convinced that the atom-bomb project was an authentic venture. On Feb. 11, 1943, Stalin signed a decree organizing a special committee to develop atomic energy for military weapons, with [Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav] Molotov in charge. Beria, acting as his deputy for the procurement of intelligence, gave me permission to invite Kurchatov, along with two other high-ranking physicists, Abram Ioffe and Isaac Kikoin, to my office in Lubyanka and to show them the scientific materials gathered by our agents, but without disclosing the sources. Kikoin was excited about the report on the first nuclear chain reaction, and although I had not told him who had done the work, he said immediately, "This is Fermi's work. He is the only one capable of producing such a miracle." I showed some of the material to them in the original English. I was in my 30s and hesitant to share secrets; I put my palm over the signatures and enumeration of the sources. Kurchatov, Ioffe and Kikoin were astonished and said to me, "Look, Pavel Anatolievich, you are too naive. You read the material to us, and we will tell you who the authors are." Then Ioffe identified Otto Frisch, a leading Austrian physicist, as the source of another document. I reported this incident to Beria and from that time was allowed to disclose to them all scientific sources of information. Kurchatov and his team often visited Beria in his office on the third floor of Lubyanka. Then they would come to my office on the seventh floor for lunch and to formulate assignments for the acquisition of information from abroad. The information significantly altered the direction of Soviet research. In March and April of 1943, Kurchatov identified in particular seven research centers, 26 scientists, and specific technical information on which we should concentrate our intelligence efforts. Kurchatov requested that the intelligence bodies find out about the physics of the fission process. He further specified locations where this work was being done and identified the American scientists whose work was essential to the development of an atom bomb. He said their efforts should be checked because "more precise definition" of technical details "requires painstaking work of a great number of various specialists," whom he then proceeded to name. In operational terms, this meant the development of these scientists as sources of information. By July 1943 our agents in the U.S. had already provided us with 286 classified publications on scientific research in nuclear energy. In February 1944, Beria summoned me to his office and appointed me to be the director of the new autonomous Department S. This was one of the results of a major reorganization of our intelligence services, undertaken in part to accommodate the importance of atomic espionage. In previous years, atomic espionage had been the responsibility of two sections: the scientific department in the GRU [Soviet military intelligence] and the foreign intelligence branch of the NKVD, where I was a deputy director until 1942. In 1943 it was decided to coordinate the activities of the intelligence services monitoring atomic projects. Special Department S--at first it was called the Sudoplatov Group, but later Beria suggested we simply call it Department S--was responsible for direct contacts with the leaders of the Soviet atomic project and the dissemination of information to them from abroad. It was formally established by written orders of the government in 1944. At the same time, I was appointed head of the Special Second Bureau of the newly set up State Committee for Problem No. 1, whose aim was the realization of an atom bomb through uranium fuel. In this capacity I had full authority to supervise all activities of the Soviet special services relating to efforts to obtain information on the atom bomb. My function in both Department S and the Special Second Bureau was the same, but wearing two hats made coordination easier to achieve. We had progressed from the research to the production phase, and my position on the committee underscored the importance of my role in unifying our intelligence efforts to solve the problem of building a bomb. Beria told me, "The time has come for more systematic efforts in our work with scientists." To improve the atmosphere with our scientists, who were suspicious and nervous around NKVD officers, and to assess their strengths and weaknesses, Beria suggested I invite some of the scientists on the project to dinner. I was ordered to become their good friend, someone on whom they could rely in daily business and personal matters. On one such evening we ate in the sitting room behind my office. I do not drink at all because alcohol causes me severe headaches, and I imagined that scientists drank in a refined manner. Since I had placed a bottle of the best Armenian brandy in front of them, Kikoin and Kurchatov assumed it was a practical joke on my part that I poured the brandy into a teaspoon and placed it in the tea. They hesitated a moment, laughed at me, and filled their glasses. Beria convened the troika of Kurchatov, physicist Abram Alikhanov and Kikoin and told them in my presence, "General Sudoplatov is attached to you to provide you all necessary assistance. You have the absolute trust of Comrade Stalin and me personally. Whatever information is shared with you is to help you accomplish the mission of the Soviet government on which depends the survival of the Soviet state. I repeat that you have absolutely no reason to be concerned for the fate of people you trust or your relatives." When it became clear that the atomic project was a heavily guarded, top-secret American priority, I suggested that we use our illegal networks as couriers for our sources of information. Vassili Zarubin, our Washington resident, instructed Kheifetz to divorce all intelligence operations from the American Communist Party, which we knew would be closely monitored by the FBI. My deputy, Leonid Eitingon, and I also instructed Kheifetz and Semyonov to turn over to our old moles all their confidential contacts with friendly sources around Oppenheimer in California. Under Beria's direct orders we forbade Kheifetz and Semyonov to tell anybody from the American section of the Foreign Directorate [the official overseers of all espionage abroad] about this transfer of contacts. Later, in the purges of 1950, Kheifetz and Semyonov were accused of losing these contacts, which was untrue. Our principal targets of penetrations were Los Alamos and the research labs servicing it, especially the Oak Ridge, Tennessee, plant. We also attempted to get into the companies doing the actual manufacturing work for the government. In 1943 a world famous actor of the Moscow State Jewish Theater, Solomon Mikhoels, together with well-known poet Itzik Feffer, toured the U.S. on behalf of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee. Beria instructed Mikhoels and Feffer to emphasize the great Jewish contribution to science and culture in the Soviet Union. Their assignment was to raise money and convince American public opinion that Soviet anti-Semitism had been crushed as a result of Stalin's policies. Kheifetz made sure that the message they brought was conveyed to Oppenheimer. Kheifetz said that Oppenheimer, the son of a German-Jewish immigrant, was deeply moved by the information that a secure place for Jews in the Soviet Union was guaranteed. Although they were unaware of it, Oppenheimer and Fermi were assigned code names, Star and Editor, as sources of information. Star was used as the code name not only for Oppenheimer, but also for other physicists and scientists in the Manhattan Project with whom we had contact but who were not formally recruited agents. Code names were changed from time to time for security reasons; Oppenheimer and Fermi were also jointly known as Star. Anatoli Yatskov, alias Anatoli Yakovlev, in an interview in October 1992, before his death five months later, said the FBI had uncovered "perhaps less than half" of his network. He referred to Perseus as a code name for a major source still alive. I do not recall that code name or such a source, but I remember a cable from New York reporting the date of the first nuclear blast that referred to information passed by three moles and friendly sources--Charles (Klaus Fuchs), Mlad (Pontecorvo) and Star (meaning Oppenheimer and Fermi). The three moles, whose names I do not remember, worked in their laboratories. It should not be excluded that Perseus is a creation to cover the real names of the sources. In developing Oppenheimer as a source, Vassili Zarubin's wife Elizabeth was essential. She hardly appeared foreign in the U.S. Her manner was so natural and sociable that she immediately made friends. Slim, with dark eyes, she had a classic Semitic beauty that attracted men, and she was one of the most successful agent recruiters, establishing her own illegal network of Jewish refugees from Poland, and recruiting one of Szilard's secretaries, who provided technical data. She spoke excellent English, German, French, Romanian and Hebrew. Kheifetz provided Elizabeth Zarubin with a rundown on all the members of Robert Oppenheimer's family, known for its left-wing sympathies, to enable her to approach them. He then introduced Elizabeth Zarubin to Oppenheimer's wife Katherine, who was sympathetic to the Soviet Union and communist ideals. Through Katherine, Elizabeth Zarubin and Kheifetz convinced Oppenheimer to refrain from statements sympathetic to communist or left-wing groups in order not to call the attention of the FBI to himself. Zarubin and Kheifetz persuaded Oppenheimer to share information with "antifascists of German origin." Oppenheimer agreed to hire and promote these people, provided he received confirmation of their opposition to Nazism before they came to the project. Oppenheimer, together with Fermi and Szilard, helped us place moles as laboratory assistants in Tennessee, Los Alamos and Chicago. In total there were four important sources of information who transmitted documents from the labs to the New York and Washington residents and to our illegal station, which was a drugstore in Santa Fe, New Mexico, near Los Alamos. The drugstore was established as a safe station for illegals during the plot to assassinate Leon Trotsky in 1940. It was simply good luck that a previous mission left us with a safe house near Los Alamos. There was one respected scientist we targeted with both personal threats and appeals to his antifascism. George Gamow, a Russian-born physicist who defected to the U.S. in 1933, played an important role in helping us obtain American atom-bomb secrets. Academician Ioffe spotted Gamow because of his connections with Niels Bohr and the American physicists. We assigned Semyonov and Elizabeth Zarubin to enlist his cooperation. With a letter from Ioffe, Elizabeth approached Gamow through his wife Rho, who was also a physicist. She and her husband were vulnerable because of their concern for relatives in the Soviet Union. Gamow taught physics at George Washington University in Washington, and instituted the annual Washington Conference on Theoretical Physics, which brought together the best physicists to discuss the latest developments at small meetings. We were able to take advantage of the network of colleagues that Gamow had established. Using implied threats against Gamow's relatives, Elizabeth Zarubin pressured him into cooperating with us. In exchange for safety and material support for his relatives, Gamow provided the names of left-wing scientists who might be recruited to supply secret information. In 1943, under the influence of Kheifetz and Elizabeth Zarubin, Oppenheimer also agreed that Klaus Fuchs be included in the Los Alamos British team. Fuchs, a German communist who was forced to seek refuge in England in 1933 and who completed his education as a physicist at Bristol University, had offered his services to the Soviet Union in 1941. When Fuchs appeared, he was to identify himself as the only one on the British team who had escaped from a German prison camp [Fuchs had never been in a prison camp] and thus gain the respect and absolute confidence of Oppenheimer. Elizabeth Zarubin was also assigned to check on two Polish Jewish agents established on the West Coast as illegals in the early 1930s. They had remained under deep cover for more than 10 years. One of these agents was a dentist whose code name was Chess Player. The dentist's wife became a close friend of the Oppenheimer family, and they were our clandestine contacts with Oppenheimer and his friends, contacts that went undetected by the FBI. To the best of my knowledge, even Elizabeth was not identified by the FBI as a Soviet case officer in America until 1946, after she had returned to Moscow. We received reports on the progress of the Manhattan Project from Oppenheimer and his friends in oral form, through comments and asides, and from documents transferred through clandestine methods with their full knowledge that the information they were sharing would be passed on. One agent report cited Oppenheimer's stressing that information should be leaked so as not to be traceable to those who worked in Los Alamos. In all, there were five classified reports made available by Oppenheimer describing the progress of work on the atom bomb. Not only were we informed of technical developments in the atomic program, but we heard in detail the human conflicts and rivalries among the members of the team at Los Alamos. A constant theme was tension with General Leslie Groves, director of the project. Kheifetz's description of Oppenheimer as a man who thought of problems on a global scale was revealing. Oppenheimer saw the threat and promise of the atomic age and understood the ramifications for both military and peaceful applications. We always stressed that contacts with him should be carefully planned to maintain security, and should not be used for acquiring routine information. We knew that Oppenheimer would remain an influential person in America after the war, and therefore our relations with him should not take the form of running a controlled agent. We understood that he and other members of the scientific community were best approached as friends, not as agents. Since Oppenheimer, Bohr and Fermi were fierce opponents of violence, they would seek to prevent a nuclear war, creating a balance of power through sharing the secrets of atomic energy. This would be a crucial factor in establishing the new world order after the war, and we took advantage of this. The line between valuable connections and acquaintances and confidential relations is very shaky. Occasionally the most valuable information comes from a contact who is not an agent in the true sense--that is, working for and paid by us--but who is still regarded in the archives as an agent source of information. Our problem was that the atomic espionage business required new approaches; we used every potential method to penetrate into a unique area of activities that was intensively guarded by the American authorities. I was pleased that the world view of the Western scientists was strikingly similar to that of our own scientists who were quite sincere in 1943 in suggesting that our government approach the British and Americans to share with us information about nuclear research and suggest the organization of a joint team of Soviet and American and British scientists to build the bomb. This was also the ideal of Niels Bohr, who had greatly influenced Oppenheimer not only as a scientist but also in his political world views. While Bohr was in no way our agent of influence, his personal views were that atomic secrets should be shared by the international scientific community. If the development of atomic weapons had been left totally to the scientists they might have changed the course of history. By 1943 it was agreed at the Center that all contacts with Oppenheimer would be through illegals only. Lev Vasilevsky, our resident in Mexico City, was put in charge of running the illegal network after Zarubin left Washington. But Vasilevsky was directed to control the network from Mexico, not to move to Washington where the FBI could more easily monitor our activities. Our facilities in Washington were to be used as little as possible. A description of the design of the first atom bomb was reported to us in January 1945. In February, although there was still uncertainty in the report, our residents in America stated that it would take a minimum of one year and a maximum of five years to produce a sizable bomb. The experimental test of one or two bombs would take only two or three months. On Feb. 28, 1945, we presented to Beria a summary on the progress of atom-bomb accomplishments in the U.S., describing in detail the leading American centers such as the Oak Ridge plant in Tennessee. We also described the activities of the American firms Kellex Corp. (subsidiary of M.W. Kellogg), E.I. Du Pont de Nemours and Union Carbide Corp. The American investment of $2 billion and the employment of hundreds of thousands of people in construction of the plants were included. On April 6, 1945, Kurchatov received from my department details on the method of activating an atom bomb, and on the electromagnetic method of disintegration of uranium isotopes. The material was so important that he assessed it the next day and swiftly presented our report to Stalin on the prospects of atomic energy and the necessity of creating an atom bomb. Twelve days before the first atom bomb was assembled, we received a description of the device from both Washington and New York. I saw two documents relating to the intelligence information received from America a short time before the first nuclear test. One cable came to the Center on June 13 and another on July 4, 1945. A week later it was reported to Beria that two intelligence sources, unconnected to each other, reported almost simultaneously the imminent explosion of a nuclear device. A detailed report from Fuchs came from Washington via the diplomatic pouch after he met his courier, Harry Gold, on Sept. 19. I remember that later we also received a detailed report from Pontecorvo. I do not remember which one was which, but both these reports contained a 33-page design of the bomb. What we received in September included photos of the nuclear reactor in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. The photos were helpful because at that time we had started building our first nuclear reactor. I remember that a 12-page summary of the report, with a description of the bomb, compiled by Semyonov and signed by Vasilevsky, was channeled by me to Beria and Stalin. This document became the basis for our own work on the atomic project over the next three or four years. The information we received from our sources in America and Britain was extremely valuable in enabling us to develop our own atomic program. The detailed reports we received contained specifications for the design and operation of nuclear reactors and for the production of uranium and plutonium. Fuchs' contributions were substantial. In 1944, through him we knew the timing, scope and progress of the Manhattan Project; we learned the principles of atom-bomb detonation and why the method had been chosen. He gave us: The principle of the lens-mold system and dimensions of the high explosive on which it worked. A discussion of the principle of implosion developed at Los Alamos. Details about plutonium, multiple-point detonation, time and sequence of construction of the atom bomb and the need for an initiator to set off the device. He also provided a comparative analysis of the operation of air- and water-cooled uranium nuclear reactors. We received plans for a plant to refine and separate uranium isotopes that greatly reduced the amount of raw uranium to be processed. On July 20, 1945, 10 days after the information on the imminent explosion of the American nuclear bomb was reported to Stalin, he made up his mind to upgrade the State Committee for Problem No. 1, making it a more powerful Politburo group. A pivotal moment in the Soviet nuclear program occurred in April or May 1946. The first Soviet nuclear reactor had been built, but all attempts to put it into operation ended in failure, and there had been an accident with plutonium. How to solve the problem? One idea, which proved unrealistic, was to send a scientific delegation to the U.S. to meet secretly with Oppenheimer, Fermi and Szilard. Another suggestion to solve the problem of the balky reactor was to send [someone] to see Niels Bohr in Denmark. We decided that one of our officers, Yakov Terletsky, a physicist who had processed and edited all the scientific information that was gathered by our intelligence networks, should be sent to see Niels Bohr in the guise of a young Soviet scientist working on a project. With the exception of Kurchatov, he was the most knowledgeable and would be able to hold his own with Bohr. He was to explain the problems in activating the nuclear reactor to Bohr and to seek his advice. Terletsky could not be sent alone on such a critical assignment, so he was accompanied by Lev Vasilevsky. He would lead the conversation with Bohr while Terletsky would handle the technical details. I met with Terletsky in 1993, just before he died. He recalled that at first Bohr was nervous and his hands trembled, but he soon controlled his emotions. Bohr understood, perhaps for the first time, that the decision that he, Fermi, Oppenheimer and Szilard had made to allow their trusted scientific proteges to share atomic secrets had led him to meet agents of the Soviet government. Bohr had sent official confirmation to the Soviet embassy that he would meet with a delegation, and now he realized that the delegation contained both a scientist and an intelligence officer. Thus, after this first contact with Vasilevsky, Bohr preferred to speak only to Terletsky, his scientific counterpart. There was no choice but to let Terletsky meet Bohr alone with our translator. Terletsky thanked Bohr in the name of scientists in Russia known to him, for the support from and consultations with their Western colleagues. Bohr readily explained to Terletsky the problems Fermi had at the University of Chicago putting the first nuclear reactor into operation, and he made valuable suggestions that enabled us to overcome our failures. Bohr pointed to a place on a drawing Terletsky showed him and said, "That's the trouble spot." This meeting was essential to starting the Soviet reactor, and we accomplished that feat in December 1946. After our reactor was put into operation, Beria issued orders to stop all contacts with our American sources in the Manhattan Project. The FBI was getting close to uncovering some of our agents. Beria said we should think how to use Oppenheimer, Fermi, Szilard and others around them in the peace campaign against nuclear armament. Disarmament and the inability to impose nuclear blackmail would deprive the U.S. of its advantage. We began a worldwide political campaign against nuclear superiority, which kept up until we exploded our own nuclear bomb in 1949. Our goal was to preempt American power politically before the Soviet Union had its own bomb. Beria warned us not to compromise Western scientists, but to use their political influence. Through Fuchs we planted the idea that Fermi, Oppenheimer and Szilard become advocates against the hydrogen bomb. They truly believed in their positions and did not know they were being used. They started as antifascists and became political advocates of the Soviet Union. Beria's directive was motivated by the information from Fuchs in 1946 saying there was serious disagreement among leading American physicists on the development of the hydrogen bomb. Fermi objected to the development of the superbomb and Oppenheimer was ambivalent. Their doubts were opposed by fellow physicist Edward Teller. Fuchs, who returned to England in July 1946, continued to supply us with valuable information. From the fall of 1947 to May of 1949, Fuchs gave to Colonel Alexander Feklisov, his case officer, a theoretical outline for creating a hydrogen bomb and initial drafts for its development at the stage they were being worked on in England and America in 1948. Most valuable for us was the information Fuchs provided on the results of the nuclear tests at Eniwetok atoll of uranium and plutonium bombs. Fuchs was arrested in 1950. Oppenheimer reminded me very much of our classic scientists who tried to maintain their own identity, their own world and their total internal independence. It was a peculiar independence and an illusion, because both Kurchatov and Oppenheimer were destined to be not only scientists but also directors of huge government-sponsored projects. The conflict was inevitable; we cannot judge them, because the bomb marked the opening of a new era in science, when for the first time in history scientists were required to act as statesmen. Initially neither Oppenheimer nor Kurchatov was surrounded by the scientific bureaucracies that later emerged in the 1950s. In the 1940s, neither government was in a position to control and influence scientific progress, because there was no way to progress except to rely on a group of geniuses and adjust to their needs, demands and extravagant behavior. Nowadays no new development in science can be compared to the breakthrough into atomic energy in the 1940s. Atomic espionage was almost as valuable to us in the political and diplomatic spheres as it was in the military. When Fuchs reported the unpublished design of the bomb, he also provided key data on the production of uranium-235. Fuchs revealed that American production was 100 kg of U-235 a month and 20 kg of plutonium per month. This was of the highest importance, because from this information we could calculate the number of atom bombs possessed by the Americans. Thus we were able to determine that the U.S. was not prepared for a nuclear war with us at the end of the 1940s or even in the early 1950s. Stalin pursued a tough policy of confrontation against the U.S. when the cold war started; he knew he did not have to be afraid of the American nuclear threat, at least until the end of the 1940s. Only by 1955 did we estimate the stockpile of American and British nuclear weapons to be sufficient to destroy the Soviet Union. In August 1949, the Soviet Union exploded its first atomic device. This event, for which we had worked a decade, was not announced in the Soviet press: therefore, when the Americans announced our explosion on Sept. 23, Stalin and the Soviet security establishment were shocked. Our immediate reaction was that there had been an American agent penetration of our test, but in a week our scientists reported that nuclear explosions in the atmosphere could be easily detected by planes sampling air around Soviet borders. This scientific explanation relieved us of the burden of proving there was no mole among us. Kurchatov and Beria were honored by the government for outstanding contributions and services in strengthening the might of the country. They received medals, monetary awards and certificates granting them lifetime status as honored citizens. Free travel, dachas, the right of children to enter higher education establishments without exams were also granted for life to all key scientific personnel on the project. The children of illegal officers serving abroad were also admitted to universities without entry examinations. In assessing all the materials that were processed by Department S, we must take into account the views of academician Yuli Khariton and academician Anatoli Alexandrov, who said that Kurchatov [who died in 1960] was a genius who had made no major mistakes in the design of our first atom bomb. They noted that Kurchatov, having in his possession only several micrograms of artificially produced plutonium, was brave enough to suggest the immediate construction of major facilities to refine plutonium. The Soviet bomb was constructed in three years. Without the intelligence contribution, there could have been no Soviet atom bomb that quickly. For me, Kurchatov remains a genius, the Russian Oppenheimer, but not a scientific giant like Bohr or Fermi. He was certainly helped by the intelligence we supplied, and his efforts would have been for naught without Beria's talent in mobilizing the nation's resources. From an intelligence point of view the FBI's failure to detect our espionage rings is understandable. The personnel in the Manhattan Project were assembled hastily and included foreign scientists. There was no time for the FBI during the year and a half it took to organize the Manhattan Project to establish a strong counterintelligence network of agent informers among the scientific personnel of the project. That was absolutely necessary for detection of mole penetration. In our case the selection of personnel was an easier task because all their records were at hand. We must also take into account the historical circumstances. At the beginning of the war, the primary concern was to rule out leakage of information to the Germans. My theory is that the FBI was checking for German connections of the scientists at Los Alamos. Pro-Soviet sympathies were on the record, but they began to acquire importance in the eyes of the administration of the project only in the final stage, in 1945. A directive to intensify the search for communist sympathizers was issued at the end of 1944, after an initial check of left-wingers in the radiation laboratory at Berkeley. Although we managed to penetrate the project by planting scientists close to Oppenheimer, Fermi and Szilard, and through Fuchs, we never stopped our efforts to use the initial channel at Berkeley because of its connection to Los Alamos. The FBI probably detected these efforts, but overconcentrated on figures at the radiation laboratory, who played a lesser role. The most successful penetration and most valuable stream of information came in the last phase, prior to the production of the bomb in 1945. By the time American counterintelligence efforts were strengthened, we had ceased contacts with our agents. None of our agents was caught red-handed. </body> </article> </text>