our agent cultivation of ‘E-s’ began at the end of 1941 on the basis of agent reports that had come in, stating that England and the USA were pouring their major scientific and material resources into solving the latest scientific problem of utilising the internal energy contained in the nucleus of the uranium atom; specifically, using it for military purposes – to create a uranium bomb of enormous destructive power.
In addition to studying all the field reports, Ovakimian prepared intelligence summaries for his political masters, and from early 1942 targeted the recruitment of potential intelligence assets at secure laboratories across America and the UK. In the US, he masterminded a plan identifying targets to be approached and the individuals to contact them. A telegram sent on 27 March 1942 from Moscow to New York read:
Letter No 7 (XY)
The present situation urgently calls for the mobilisation of all the resources we have for the deployment of intelligence work for the tasks letter No. 4 (1941), and other orders and, especially, on the chemistry of poison gas, protection from poison gas, issue of bacteriological weapons and the problem of uranium-235.
To accomplish this, we consider it necessary to inform you about a number of persons who need to be immediately recruited for our work. Among them will be those already mentioned in our letters of 1941.
III. The problem of uranium-235
In England, Germany and the USA they are working very hard on the problem of obtaining uranium-235 and using it as an explosive for making bombs of tremendous destructive force. Apparently the problem is quite close to being solved. We need to take this issue seriously.14
To Ovakimian’s frustration, over the course of 1942 cleverly planned approaches to Russian emigrés and other scientists in the US associated with atomic work were rebuffed. But despite the many false starts, after he assigned some of his most experienced operatives to the work in the US and UK, his team’s successes began to mount. Early in 1942, he had transferred the experienced Leonid Kvasnikov (ANTON) to New York from Moscow, where Kvasnikov had been head of S&T, and one of the MIT alumni, GLAN, to London from the US.
In April 1942, a telegram sent to Vasily Zarubin, the head of New York Rezidentura, shows how close Ovakimian had become to the subject. Moscow had received an alarming report based on information from a source working in the Chicago University Metallurgical Laboratory, an American scientist and Communist, Clarence Hiskey (RAMSAY):
Together with a group of prominent physicists and chemists at Columb. U., he [Hiskey] is urgently working on a radioactive bomb. It is thought that this bomb will have enormous destructive power with a very large blast radius, possibly hundreds of miles long. Those who know about the bomb fear it could annihilate millions of people, which is why a large part of the work has to do with developing means of protection against the bomb. As of yet, no one knows what effect the sudden release of radioactivity will have on solid material such as cement, or how long this effect will last.
So many recent advances in the work have been made that scientists are ready to test the bomb in some vast, desolate area, which will have to be blocked off for hundreds of miles. The Germans are far ahead of the Americans in their work in this field. The Germans already have the ability to use the bombs, but fear that the large affected area will be inaccessible to them.
Within days Ovakimian had replied to Zarubin in detail, pointing out and correcting the exaggeration in Hiskey’s alarmist statements, while attaching a list of questions for the scientist to follow up on:
Ovakimyan’s decision: To Cde. Kvasnikov. Discuss it with me.
p.34 C/t C – NY dated 5.4.42.
The report, received from Hiskey, on the major work being done by the Americans on uranium-235 is accurate, although in many respects it exaggerates in terms of what has been achieved. They are working on the problem intensively in England, Germany and the USA.
The question of using the energy of uranium for military purposes is of great interest to us. With regard to this question, we need the following information:
1. Isolating the main source of uranium energy – uranium-235 – from uranium. The Americans’ achievements in this regard. Laboratory and factory methods of isolation. Industrial equipment for the isolation process.
2. At what stage is the current research on using uranium energy in bombs?
3. Who is working on developing a shell for the uranium bomb, and where?
4. A means of detonating the uranium bomb, i.e. a primer.
5. Means and protective measures against uranium’s radioactivity during production.
6. What information is available on the Germans’ work on developing a uranium bomb, and in what way does their work have an advantage over that of the Amer-s, as H reports?
7. What information is available on the factory application of laboratory work on the uran. bomb?
The main customer for Ovakimian’s intelligence was Igor Kurchatov, who was to become the trusted scientist in charge of the Soviet atomic project. By late 1942 Kurchatov began receiving a copy of all the available intelligence to ascertain whether it was scientifically accurate. In parallel Stalin took a decision on 27 September 1942 to restart very limited Soviet atomic research on determining the feasibility of building a bomb.
Kurchatov responded enthusiastically to a letter from Molotov in November, praising the quality of material on British and American scientific breakthroughs. His note was copied to Stalin. The detailed note testified not only to how deep was the penetration of British laboratories in Cambridge, Birmingham and Liverpool, as well as the Chicago University Metals Lab, but also how much had been accomplished over the course of that year. Already in October, following extensive consultations with Soviet scientists, Moscow Centre had submitted the first detailed report on the Anglo-American plans to the Central Committee of the Communist Party and the State Defence Committee, both of which were chaired by Stalin. Kurchatov stated to Molotov and Stalin that Soviet science was behind that of the allies and the Soviets’ proposed plan was inadequate. He had concluded that ‘the [intelligence] materials available are not sufficient to determine that the production of uranium bombs is practically feasible … although there is almost no doubt that a definite conclusion has been made in this direction abroad’. He attached to his own report a list of technical information for the intelligence services to acquire from both the UK and the US, naming laboratories and scientists to target. Ovakimian directed agents to fulfil Kurchatov’s demands and in answer to the scientist’s detailed questions shared translations of agent material he had received.
The close manner in which this pair were to work over the course of the project was reminiscent of the way that Shumovsky had operated with Tupolev from 1931 to 1937. When Kurchatov’s team encountered technical problems, Ovakimian would provide answers from his agent in the field. Crucially, his team would provide the method to produce plutonium for the first Soviet bomb. The Soviets would also later copy the design of Enrico Fermi’s reactor at Chicago Met Lab. In March 1943 Kurchatov wrote about a set of documents Ovakimian had gathered that were passed to him:
My examination of these materials shows them to be of inestimable value to our country and Soviet science … The documents contain vital markers for our research, allowing us to bypass many highly labour-intensive phases of development and uncover new scientific and technical ways of resolving issues.15
Kurchatov attached four pages of further requests. He concluded, ‘It should be noted that the entire body of information on the material points to the technical feasibility of solving the entire uranium problem in a much shorter period than our scientists, who are not familiar with the progress of work on this problem abroad.’16
Initially Kurchatov and Ovakimian had worked through intermediaries, but by July 1943, as the volume of highly technical information increased, the two scientists were communicating directly.
In August that year, after several months of squabbles, Churchill and Roosevelt took the decision
at the Quebec Conference to pool UK and US scientific resources on the atomic project, to share information and to move British scientists to the US. Having signed agreements not to share any secrets of the work with third parties, a galaxy of international scientific talent, excluding any Russians, began researching and then building an atomic bomb.
The Allies’ joint ultra-secret Manhattan Project had started making progress in earnest from the middle of the year. It had become a huge, international undertaking, and would eventually employ more than 130,000 workersfn3 and cost the US government $2 billion. For additional security, the research and eventual production was divided across more than thirty separate sites in the US, the UK and Canada, but at its heart was the Los Alamos laboratory. This remote New Mexico facility would ultimately include twelve Nobel Laureates, a majority still in their twenties, the most remarkable collection of youthful talent ever assembled in a single laboratory. Hardly anyone involved in the ultra-secret work knew the complete process of how to build a nuclear device, yet the Americans failed spectacularly to keep the secrets from their then allies, the Russians.
Just as Shumovsky played a vital role in creating the Soviet strategic bomber, Ovakimian masterminded the intelligence operation that acquired its cargo, the bomb. In support of his efforts, MIT alumni recruited and ran agents on both sides of the Atlantic. After his move to the UK, GLAN (Nikolay Yershov)17 set up the London end of the S&T operation. In his time in the UK, the London Rezidentura provided the majority of important atomic intelligence to Moscow, giving details of the far more exciting advances being achieved in the United States as the Americans’ massive investment in research paid off. He even tried to recruit Ernest Hemingway as an agent of influence, and developed as a source the UK-based scientist ERIC, identified as Austrian Engelbert Broda, who on 11 August 1943 was credited as ‘at pres., the main source of info. on work being done on E., both in England and in the USA’. Based on the papers ERIC supplied, by spring 1943 Ovakimian had concluded that: ‘The scale of the work carried out in America is much broader. Hundreds of highly qualified researchers participate in it, and their work has yielded more tangible results, and therefore the results of English works do not deserve much attention’. In August 1943 Ovakimian stressed the urgency of penetrating America by proclaiming that ‘cultivating the “E”(normoz) problem should be considered the main priority of station chiefs’ assistants working on the XY line in England and the USA in the upcoming period. [In E(ngland). – Glan; in the USA – Anton.]’18
When Ovakimian shifted the intelligence focus to the US, Semyon Semyonov (TWAINfn4), who was now running S&T in New York, became more important to the success of the operation than Yershov. Semyonov ran at least twenty agents in the US and his name pops up in many later FBI investigations as a talent spotter, recruiter and controller of sources. Among his atomic-related activities, he formally recruited Julius Rosenberg on Labor Day 194219, ran the key figure of Klaus Fuchs when the scientist moved to America,20 managed the Cohens (Fuchs’ couriers) and from 1940 onwards was Harry Gold’s controller. Semyonov worked more methodically and energetically than his peers. His first involvement in ENORMOZ was in the problematic recruitment of the American scientist Boris Podolsky (QUANTUM) in 1943.fn5 The codename was appropriate as Podolsky had co-authored a seminal paper on quantum mechanics with Albert Einstein. He had approached the Soviets in 1942, claiming he wanted to help them by moving to Russia to work on researching uranium-235. At the time no such work was being conducted in the Soviet Union. In 1943, the plan was for Semyonov to ‘persuade [Podolsky] that it would be more useful for him to stay in the USA and become involved in work at one of the places that interests us’. Although Podolsky was never directly involved in the Manhattan Project, at a follow-up meeting in the Russian embassy facilitated by the future foreign minister Andrey Gromyko, Semyonov paid him $300 for material on the top-secret gaseous diffusion method of separating the prized uranium-235 isotope from uranium. QUANTUM was the first source recruited by the US Rezidentura to provide any significant information, but after the first transaction Podolsky refused to provide any more intelligence and was quietly dropped.
In late July 1943, in a document he had prepared on the latest intelligence, Ovakimian dismissed the threat of the Germans developing a nuclear bomb, a concern that had been hanging over the USSR. Ovakimian had learned from the American and British efforts what was required to succeed in developing an atomic weapon, and these clearly showed the task to be beyond the Germans. They lacked the scientific and natural resources to move beyond laboratory work. Up to that time the most vital atomic work had been taking place in the Metals Lab in Chicago University, but getting more Soviet operatives on the inside had proved difficult. Before the Quebec Conference resolved their differences, the British and Americans had stopped sharing information. As the Soviet sources on American achievements were all British, this had been a problem. Ironically, the Americans had stopped sharing secrets with the British because they were concerned their allies were under an obligation to share them with the Russians officially.
Chicago was where Fermi’s first nuclear reactor, known as a pile, had been built and where the fissile element atomic weight 94 (later named plutonium) was discovered. Moscow considered sending someone to join source Clarence Hiskey (RAMSAY) at the Met Lab and came up with his friend Zelmond Franklin (CHAP), who seemed a likely candidate. But Moscow feared that Franklin’s membership of the CPUSA would mean he would fail the background security check and in turn throw suspicion on Hiskey. As it transpired, Hiskey was later observed meeting Arthur Adams, a Soviet Military Intelligence officer, and would be transferred out of the Manhattan Project, sent by the US military to count warm underwear in a base in Canada.
As the speed of American achievements increased, and following complaints from scientists, the lack of progress in agent recruitment in the US drew criticism from the highest levels of the Soviet security services. Progress could never be fast enough or the intelligence deep enough. Ovakimian rode his agents hard, even sending reading lists to New York to get them along the curve, especially on ‘element 94’. The lists were so secret they had to be destroyed after reading. For the Russians the thaw in UK and US relations following Quebec came as an unexpected boon as it brought some of their established British-based intelligence sources to North America. The most important of these was Klaus Fuchs, a German-born Communist and scientist. He had begun work in Britain on the Tube Alloys atomic project in 1941 before being transferred to Columbia University in 1943 (and in 1944 to Los Alamos). His controller until his departure to New Mexico was Semyon Semyonov and the intermediary was Harry Gold. Described as ‘a reserved, serious comrade, and he works with full awareness of the importance of the job he is doing’, Fuchs would prove to be one of the most significant sources of information inside Los Alamos.21 A second Soviet recruit was the prodigy Ted Hall, who had graduated aged just eighteen from Harvard. He joined the Manhattan Project without knowing the nature of the work, and at the first opportunity volunteered to provide secrets to the Russians, giving a detailed description of the ‘Fat Man’ plutonium bomb and the processes for purifying plutonium. A third Soviet source at the New Mexico laboratory, David Greenglass,fn6 was at best a minor player.
Semyonov’s recruit Julius Rosenberg proved energetic and useful as a group leader. Semyonov described him as ‘a skilled agent, commands authority with the group, which he is successfully handling. He is enthusiastic about his work and wants to do as much as possible’.22 Rosenberg was an electrical engineer who recruited friends working in defence industries – people he had known from his days at City College of New York who were Communist sympathisers – or members of his family to join his group. He was able to persuade one friend, Russell McNutt (FOGEL), to join the design bureau for the construction of facilities at Oak Ridge, a key Manhattan Project site in Tennessee. At one stage McNutt did not realise he was working for the Russians but happily passed on plans and designs to Rosenb
erg. Another Soviet military intelligence illegal who would become a valuable source at Oak Ridge was George Koval, who had been drafted into the army and fortuitously assigned to the facility.
By 1943 the intelligence gathering was widespread and the Soviet scientist demands so brazen that the US authorities started taking notice. But it was Vasily Mironov (KURT), the fourth MIT alumnus uninvolved in atomic espionage, who, as it transpired, was responsible for the disruption of Ovakimian’s spy networks. Unlike the others, KURT worked in the Washington embassy on the political line, not S&T. As a result of schizophrenia he developed a pathological hatred of his boss and in 1943 secretly wrote a letter to the head of the FBI, naming the key Russians working as intelligence officers in the US and Canada:
KVASNIKOV works as an engineer at AMTORG is ZUBILIN’s [Zarubin’s] assistant for technical intelligence, through SEMYONOV – who also works in AMTORG, is robbing the whole of the war industry of America. SEMYONOV has his agents in all the industrial towns of the USA in all aviation and chemical war factories and in big institutes. He works very brazenly and roughly, it would be very easy to follow him up and catch him red-handed. He would just be glad to be arrested as he long been seeking a reason to remain in the USA, hates the NKVD but is a frightful coward and loves money. He will give all his agents away with pleasure if he is promised an American passport.
The letter exposed the scale and activities of the Soviet espionage ring stretching from New York to Los Angeles. Mironov was insane and accused his boss, the resident Vasily Zarubin, of being both a German and Japanese agent. He later wrote a second letter to Stalin making similar accusations about his colleagues that forced the recall of the linchpins of the Soviet organisation. When the FBI received the first letter they were puzzled by much of the rambling and did the minimum to follow up. They ignored the big fish protected by diplomatic immunity but did gradually increase surveillance on Semyonov.
The Spy Who Changed History Page 34