X-Message-Number: 5123
Date: 06 Nov 95 18:02:06 EST
From: "Steven B. Harris" <>
Subject: CRYONICS: Atom Spys

   This may be somewhat afield, but David Stodolsky has been
saying several things about history and government that I cannot
let slide past.  One is this:

  >>A review of the facts will demonstrate that the Rosenberg and
related cases were fabricated to promote the geo-political
interests of the US government after the war... Winston Churchill
collaborated in the Atom Spy Hoax, because as he said, it is
easier to mobilize people when the you "put a face on the enemy."
<<

    The truth of this statement perhaps depends on what is meant
by "related cases,"  but I believe the original question was
whether the USSR was significantly helped on the path to the 
A-bomb by spying.  The Rosenbergs aside, indeed they were.  I
recommend particularly a recent book called _Klaus Fuchs, Atom
Spy_.  The Fuchs family ("Fuchs" = "fox" in German) were known as
the "red foxes of Kiel," both for the color of their hair and the
complexion of their politics.  Young Klaus was a socialist from
the beginning, a fact ignored by the Manhattan project in the
pre-cold war era.  In 1945 Fuchs worked on the Manhattan project
at Los Alamos, and owned a car (one of the few project scientists
who did-- his friend Feynman used to borrow it to visit his sick
wife), and Fuchs himself used the auto to ferry copies of a great
many important A-bomb project documents to Harry Gold in Albuque-
rque, where they were in turn sent on directly to Moscow.  There
is adequate testimony from Soviet physicists in the book that
these documents did help immeasurably in directing Soviet A-bomb
research down fruitful channels.  This information probably saved
the Soviets 5 to 10 years.  Fuchs eventually returned to Britain,
where he worked in atomic energy and continued to transmit
British atomic energy research data to the Soviets through the
late 1940's.  

   In 1950 Fuchs spontaneously confessed to all this to the Brits
(after being questioned as a peripheral part of another investig-
ation entirely), shocking everybody (Fuchs made no secret of his
activities after his confession, officially or to his friends,
and seems to have been genuinely puzzled at how much consternat-
ion they caused).  The only reason Fuchs wasn't hanged is that he
was a British citizen, and had transmitted secrets to a British
ally, not an enemy, and thus could not be prosecuted under the
traitor act.  Instead he got 16 years, the max penalty under the
official secrets act, of which he served 9 on good behavior.  On
release he was worried about being sent to the US and there put
on trial again, but since he was a British Citizen (and had been,
even when in the US) instead he was charitably expelled upon
prison release directly to East Germany, where he was given all
kinds of high medals and awards by the Communists (what for,
David?).  Though a mediocre scientist he became director of
nuclear research in the East Germany (a measure of his political,
not theoretical strength), and was alive in the mid 1980's, and
may even still be alive today (anybody know?).  Though he 
continued after release to give socialist propaganda speeches on
East German radio for decades, he never said a word to suggest
that he had been imprisoned on the basis of a false confession,
or for things he didn't do.  Indeed, if Churchill wanted a face
put on the enemy, it seems very curious at how hard the Communi-
sts worked to supply one in this case.  Perhaps Dr. Stodolsky can
explain.

   (I should add that there is no evidence that Fuchs transmitted
anything important about the H-bomb, the key "side by side
primary/secondary configuration" idea for which was indeed
independently devised by Sakharov in the USSR, and Teller and
Ulam in the U.S: see _The Advisors-- Teller, Oppenheimer, and the
Hydrogen Bomb_).   The first H-bomb was a several-story-high
cryogenic refrigerator containing liquid hydrogen-2 (deuterium)
designed by the U.S., but the first real "deliverable H-bomb" was
actually a Soviet bomb-- so by about 1955 the Soviets had fully
caught up and passed the US in this area.  The Rosenbergs bore
the full blunt the public anger at this turn of events, but all
evidence from the (former) U.S.S.R. since its dissolution does
indeed point to the guilt of the Rosenbergs also-- however
ineffectual they might have actually been as spies.  Stalin is
even on record in documents which have come to light in the last
few years, as referring to the Rosenbergs as true heros of the
Societ Union).

                                     Steve Harris


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