such
The roof fell in today, you might say. After the gay and happy time, the going-away party given me by the employees last night, this was quite a contrast. The news, I learned at about seven when I left the office, will be out when the man is arraigned in London tomorrow at about twelve our time…
It took place during the war project; but he had been here since, which drags us in. It is a world catastrophe, and a sad day for the human race.
That night, Lilienthal added the following day, “sleep wasn't too easy: the vision of ‘the top blowing off things,’ antagonism increased between US and Britain, witch-hunts, anti-scientist orgies… ” The Anglo-American
When Hans Bethe heard about Fuchs, he phoned Ralph Carlisle Smith, the security officer at Los Alamos, to ask after the 1946 Fuchs-von Neumann thermonuclear patent:
“‘Is it all there?’ Bethe asked.
“‘All,’ said Smith.
“‘Oh,’ replied Bethe… ” The patent application included a description of Teller's Super. Teller called Smith to ask the same question. He got the same answer but had a more venomous response. “I don't believe it,” Smith reports him saying. “If it's all there, it's because
Fuchs's arraignment on February 3 made headlines throughout the world. Six days later, in Wheeling, West Virginia, Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy began the witch-hunt Lilienthal had feared with a speech in which he claimed to have a list of 205 Communists who worked in the State Department. McCarthy was following up and capitalizing on the perjury conviction of former State Department officer Alger Hiss on January 21 (for having denied passing secret documents to Whittaker Chambers) as well as the Fuchs case. McCarthyism drew its poisons in part from a pervasive American conviction that the US had been made vulnerable to Soviet atomic bombs because spies in its midst had conspired to give the “secret” away.
With Fuchs's confession, writes Lamphere, “all hell broke loose at Bureau headquarters.” Fuchs had admitted he passed information to an American cut-out whom he knew only as “Raymond.” Hoover immediately ordered an all-out, first-priority nationwide search for Fuchs's American counterpart, designated “Unknown subject” — “Unsub” in Hooverspeak.
Julius Rosenberg evidently knew that Fuchs was under suspicion even before the Harwell physicist confessed. David Greenglass had gone to see Rosenberg during the 1949 Christmas holidays, to talk about their failing machine-shop business, when Rosenberg shocked him with the news that he would “have to begin thinking about going away to Paris.” Greenglass, Rosenberg warned, was “hot.” Greenglass's first thought was, “I'll never be able to read
Greenglass had another scare the last week in January: an FBI man called him and asked to see him. “He came to my house,” the young machinist testified; “he sat down at my table; I offered him a cup of coffee and we spoke. He did not say to me that he suspected me of espionage or anything else. He just spoke to me about whether I had known anybody at Los Alamos… I didn't tell him [about my espionage activity], but I was pretty well on the verge to tell him.” The visit must have unnerved Greenglass so soon after Rosenberg's warning, even though it concerned a lesser crime than espionage. Some of the Special Engineering Detachment (SED) men at Los Alamos, Greenglass included, had taken home natural-uranium dummy initiator spheres as souvenirs; the FBI was investigating the thefts.
Fuchs's arrest unnerved Harry Gold. He was scheduled to make a rendezvous on the first Sunday in February, February 5. He forgot which corner of the Jackson Heights intersection had been designated for the meeting and resorted to moving from corner to corner so that he would not be missed. His contact was supposed to be smoking a cigar. “Before leaving,” he said later, “I noticed a man walk past me with a cigar in his mouth. As he walked past me he turned around and looked at me. He then kept on walking… I placed no significance on this at the time.” Later, from FBI photographs, Gold identified the man with the cigar as Julius Rosenberg. The walk-by was as close as anyone approached Gold that Sunday; it was the last time he tried to contact the Soviets, or they him.
Monday, still “completely panicked,” Gold sought out his old friend Tom Black, the man who had recruited him for espionage fifteen years before. “It took me a full half-hour of walking through the dark side streets of downtown Philadelphia before I got up enough courage to tell him,” Gold writes. Black, says Gold, “was dumbfounded and horror-stricken” at the news. “As nearly as I can recall,” Black reported, “[Harry's] exact words were, ‘The FBI is looking for Fuchs's American contact and I am that man.’” Gold remembered with gratitude that Black “did not express any concern at being himself implicated or involved because of his known friendship for me; his principal concern seemed to be for my welfare.” Black: “He said that if he should be caught, he was going to take an overdose of sleeping pills… I tried to persuade him from committing suicide.” Gold tells the rest of the tale in FBI paraphrase:
Black counseled Gold that if Gold [was] picked up and questioned he should deny everything because it would be one person's word against another's. Gold told Black that his principal concern was his family and were he arrested, Gold requested Black to visit Gold's family and cheer them up… Gold and Black agreed that all future meetings between the two would be at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia] because no suspicion could be attached to meeting there.
Rosenberg came around to see Greenglass at about the same time, Greenglass recalled:
We walked along the park [for] about forty-five minutes — [He] said to me I would have to get out of the country with my family. I gave him the impression I was willing to go; only thing is, I didn't have the money to pay off my debts. He wasn't interested in that, wanted me to go and forget about my debts; I said I can't do that; these people are not wealthy people, whatever I take from them is blood money… At that time he wanted me to go to Czechoslovakia, a good job was waiting for me… The reason he wanted me to leave the US is because… Gold was Fuchs's contact man… He did not mention Gold by name — he said the same man, [he said] you remember that man out in Albuquerque… He said that… this man knew me and that when Fuchs was taken… he would tell about Gold and he would lead them to me… He wanted me to go with my whole family: pouf, disappear!… I figured I might [really disappear], so I better not go.
Greenglass suggested that Rosenberg contact “Dave” — Gold — and warn him to lie low; Rosenberg told his brother-in-law that Ethel had made the same suggestion.
Greenglass chose not to tell his wife about this conversation. It seemed unreal to him and Ruth was six months pregnant. Then accident foreclosed escape. An open gas heater warmed the Greenglasses’ small Lower East Side apartment. Early on the Tuesday morning of February 14, Ruth approached too close to the grating. Her nightgown caught fire and blazed up around her. David rushed to help, batting out the flames with his hands. Ruth was admitted to Gouverneur Hospital suffering extensive first-, second- and third-degree burns. She was critical for two days; the burns required grafting and she spent almost a month in the hospital. She had miscarried in Albuquerque in 1945; this time, despite her injuries, she did not lose her baby. David sustained second-degree burns to his right hand. While Ruth was hospitalized, he worked the night shift and took care of their young son by day. The Greenglasses were in no shape to go anywhere.
A week after Ruth Greenglass's accident, a newly deciphered 1944 Soviet cable gave Robert Lamphere “reason to believe that someone in a lower-level position at Los Alamos, who had had furlough plans in late 1944 and early 1945, was a KGB agent.” Lamphere requested the FBI Albuquerque field office to investigate.
