Early History Of The Atom Homework Answers
Julieann Rohde
Of the Soviet spies not caught during the war, one of the most valuable was the British physicist Klaus Fuchs. Fuchs first offered his services to Soviet intelligence in late 1941. Soon thereafter, he began passing information regarding British atomic research. Soviet intelligence lost contact with him in early 1944 but eventually found out that Fuchs had been reassigned to the bomb research and development laboratory at Los Alamos as part of the newly-arrived contingent of British scientists. Fuchs worked in the Theoretical Division at Los Alamos, and from there he passed to his Soviet handlers detailed information regarding atomic weapons design. Returning home to begin work on the British atomic program in 1946, he continued to pass secret information to the Soviet Union intermittently until he was finally caught (largely due to VENONA), and in January 1950 he confessed everything.
For over four decades, Klaus Fuchs was thought to be the only spy who was a physicist at Los Alamos. In the mid-1990s, release of the VENONA intercepts revealed an alleged second scientist-spy: Theodore Hall. Like Fuchs, a long-time communist who volunteered his services, Hall made contact with Soviet intelligence in November 1944 while at Los Alamos. Although not as detailed or voluminous as that provided by Fuchs, the data supplied by Hall on implosion and other aspects of atomic weapons design served as an important supplement and confirmation of Fuchs's material. The FBI learned of Hall's espionage in the early 1950s. Unlike Fuchs, however, under questioning Hall refused to admit anything. The American government was unwilling to expose the VENONA secret in open court. Hall's espionage activities had apparently ended by then, so the matter was quietly dropped.
On Cairncross as the source of the first word on atomic energy to reach Moscow, see Holloway, Stalin and the Bomb, 82-83; Andrew and Mitrokhin, Sword and Shield, 114; and Weinstein and Vassiliev, Haunted Wood, 172. Cairncross may have passed word as early as October 1940; see Richelson, Century of Spies, 136. In 1993, Cairncross denied to the Schecters ever having passed this information (Jerrold and Leona Schecter, Sacred Secrets: How Soviet Intelligence Operations Changed American History (Washington: Brassey's, 2002), 348 (note 5)). On Maclean passing word of the atomic bomb program in the fall of 1941, see Richelson, Century of Spies, 137. On Maclean in general, including his work with the AEC, see Haynes and Klehr, Venona, 52-55. On the Flerov letter, see Holloway, Stalin and the Bomb, 76-79.
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