37. Gorski’s source, John Cairncross, was private secretary to Lord Hankey, a minister in Churchill’s War Cabinet and head of the scientific panel that reviewed the work of the M.A.U.D. Committee. David Holloway, Stalin and the Bomb: The Soviet Union and Atomic Energy, 1939–1956 (Yale University Press, 1994), 82; Rhodes (1995), 52.
38. Fuchs: Robert Williams, Klaus Fuchs: Atom Spy (Harvard University Press, 1987), 21–30, 38; Rhodes (1995), 108; Andrew and Mitrokhin (1999), 114–16. Fuchs had begun work at Birmingham in late May 1941. By Aug., he was passing information on atomic research there to his Soviet contacts. Benson and Warner (1996), 201–2.
39. Rhodes (1995), 53–54; Holloway (1994), 84.
40. A translation of Beria’s memo to Stalin appears in Pavel Sudoplatov et al., Special Tasks: The Memoirs of an Unwanted Witness—a Soviet Spymaster (Little, Brown, 1994), 441.
41. Holloway (1994), 40.
42. The Nazi attack had the effect of shifting research into areas that had a better chance of showing short-term results. Kurchatov and others at Leningrad’s institute were put to work at demagnetizing ships to protect them from mines.
43. Sudoplatov, et al. (1994), 448.
44. Holloway (1994), 70.
45. Ibid., 91–94. The translated memos of Mar. 7 and Mar. 22, 1943, are reprinted in Sudoplatov et al. (1994), 446–53.
46. Sudoplatov et al. (1994), 454.
47. Details of Fermi’s Dec. 1942 experiment apparently reached Moscow in late Jan. 1943. Albright and Kunstel (1997), 75–76.
48. Holloway (1994), 68.
49. Kurchatov noted that it would be at least another year before the Soviet Union could carry out the kind of research on plutonium that was then under way at Berkeley, since Russia’s cyclotrons had been put out of operation by the war.
50. Schwartz (1998), 226–32.
51. Kheifets: Ibid., 338; Sudoplatov et al. (1994), 84–85; “COMRAP” memo, Feb. 6, 1948, Benson and Warner (1996), 105; “Report on Soviet Espionage in the United States,” Nov. 27, 1945, entry 11, RG 233 (Dies Committee records), National Archives.
52. Eltenton-Kheifets meeting: Eltenton interviews, June 26 and June 29, 1946, George Eltenton FBI file, no. 100–5113, box 6, JRO/AEC.
53. The FBI hoped to find out more about Kheifets from a surreptitious entry of his apartment. But the bureau’s “black-bag job” yielded disappointing results. King interview (1997).
54. Ivanov: Haynes and Klehr (1999), 325. “Finding new recruits for a Soviet intelligence service within either the open section of a national Communist Party or within its secret cells or study groups is one of the duties of the Party liaison agent himself, but he may also have trusted Party members scattered throughout the Party organization who help him with this work,” noted a CIA memo on “talent spotting.” “Exploitation of the International Communist Movement by the Soviet Intelligence Services,” July 1954, file 13, box 78, RG 263 (Central Intelligence Agency records), National Archives.
55. Eltenton and Kheifets: Interviews, June 26 and June 29, 1946, Eltenton FBI file, box 6, JRO/AEC.
56. Eltentons: Eltenton interview, June 26, 1946, 11–12, Eltenton file, FBI; Dorothea Eltenton, Laughter in Leningrad: An English Family in Russia, 1933–1938 (privately published, 1998); summary report, Dec. 15, 1944, 39–40, COMRAP file, no. 100–17879, FBI. The author thanks Priscilla McMillan for bringing Dolly’s book to his attention.
57. The credulous Ms. Eltenton remained a true believer even after a close friend—her children’s nanny—was arrested and disappeared into the Soviet gulag.
58. Eltenton FBI interviews.
59. FBI agents witnessed several meetings in 1942 between Eltenton and Ivanov, who was on the bureau’s active “watch” list. Haynes and Klehr (1999), 329.
60. Conroy to Hoover, Aug. 14, 1943, sec. 6, COMRAP file, FBI. The following Nov., Lawrence, Gilbert, and Cannon served as honorary chairmen of a science panel at the Congress of American-Soviet Friendship in New York. Kuznick (1987), 266.
61. Eltenton FBI interview, June 26, 1946.
62. Ibid. Other evidence suggesting that either Eltenton or Chevalier attempted to recruit Oppie comes from a report that NKVD agents in the United States sent to Moscow in February 1944. The report noted that Oppenheimer “ha[d] been cultivated by the ‘neighbors’ [GRU] since June 1942.” Weinstein and Vassiliev (1999), 184.
63. Eltenton FBI interview, June 29, 1946.
64. Louise Bransten: “Rich Woman Balks at Reply on Spying,” New York Times, Sept. 20, 1948; “Apricot Heiress,” New York Mirror, Nov. 8, 1948; “Biography,” n.d., and “Statement of Louise R. Berman to Committee on Un-American Activities,” Sept. 20, 1948, Louise Berman papers, State Historical Society of Wisconsin, Madison, Wis. Louise married Lionel Berman in 1947 and changed her name.
65. Richard Bransten was heir to the MJB coffee-importing business founded by Morris J. Brandenstein. Bransten later became a successful Hollywood scriptwriter, providing financial backing to the magazine New Masses. Bransten had been the subject of an FBI investigation since 1941. Summary report, n.d., 444–45, pt. 6, Silvermaster file, FBI.
66. Louise Bransten and Silvermaster: Summary report, Dec. 15, 1944, no. 100–17879, COMRAP file, FBI; Weinberg and Vassiliev (1999), 158. In Nov. 1945, the FBI obtained a copy of a lengthy autobiography that Bransten had prepared for Mikhail Vavilov, then the Soviet consul in San Francisco. Preparation of such an autobiography was one of the final steps in the recruitment of an agent. Summary report, Apr. 22, 1947, COMRAP file, FBI.
67. San Francisco field report, May 31, 1944, sec. 44, COMRAP file, FBI.
68. Bransten’s Rosenberg Foundation also bankrolled the publication and distribution to Bay Area schools of a children’s book that Dolly had written while in Russia, The Boy from Leningrad.
69. Transcript of Louis Goldblatt interview, 1980, “Working Class Leader in the ILWU, 1935–1977,” vol. 2, 959–60, Bancroft Library.
70. Louise Bransten was the subject of two lengthy COMRAP reports, in 1944 and 1947. Summary report, Dec. 15, 1944, and Apr. 22, 1947, COMRAP file, FBI.
71. Interviews: King and Bowser (1997). A May 1943 FBI report, noting the “illicit relationships” between Bransten and Kheifets, concluded, “These possibilities will be borne in mind in future investigations.” San Francisco field report, May 7, 1943, vol. 1, Nelson file, FBI.
72. Jerrold and Leona Schecter, Sacred Secrets: How Soviet Intelligence Operations Changed American History (Brassey’s, 2002), uncorrected page proofs, 47–50, 315–16. In their previous book, written in collaboration with
