* * *
Fuchs had come to the United States the previous December and began passing secrets to the Russians almost immediately. Shortly before he left England, Rest had been asked by his Soviet control what he knew about the electromagnetic method of separating uranium. The question had surprised Fuchs, who, at the time, knew nothing of Lawrence’s Calutrons. Rest concluded that the Russians must also have a spy at Berkeley.113
On February 5, 1944, Fuchs met with his new espionage contact, New York chemist Harry Gold (Gus), on the corner of Fifty-ninth Street and Lexington Avenue. There Rest told Gus about “the process for the separation of isotopes of Enormous,” according to a coded cable that Kvasnikov sent to Fitin in Moscow a few days later.114 The other information received from Fuchs included details on “the electron method developed by Lawrence,” and the fact that U-235 obtained by gaseous diffusion was to be further enriched by “the electron method for final separation”—the Beta Calutrons, which would not begin operating at Y-12 for another three months.115
In Moscow, Kurchatov was in possession of a list of nearly 300 secret technical reports on the Manhattan Project. Many if not most of the papers came from agents in British laboratories, which continued to receive classified reports from the United States.116 Kurchatov’s memos to Pervukhin indicated that the Russians now knew fission cross sections as well as the critical mass of uranium and plutonium. But there were still important gaps in his knowledge, Kurchatov complained. Missing, for example, were the results of experiments at Berkeley on the fissioning of plutonium under fast neutron bombardment. Kurchatov drew the attention of Pervukhin to this lacunae with his blue pencil: “Information on the results of this work by Seaborg and Segrè is therefore of particular importance to us.”117
On August 12, 1943, the Rad Lab itself had figured in a coded telegram that Pavel Mikhailov (code name Molière), the GRU rezident at the Soviets’ New York consulate, sent to Fitin in Moscow: “In Sacramento, California, in the Radiation Laboratories, large-scale experimental work is being conducted for the War Department. Working there is a progressive professor (blank), whom one can approach through the Korporant.”118
Mikhailov’s message identified the Korporant—GRU’s term for a member of the Communist Party—as Paul Pinsky, the FAECT organizer whom Oppenheimer had helped to give the union a foothold in the Bay Area.119
From San Francisco, Kheifets continued to send messages to Moscow via diplomatic pouch and encrypted cables.120 Most of Kharon’s coded telegrams reflected the mundane concerns of a regional consulate; he reported on fleet movements as well as efforts to locate Soviet sailors who had jumped ship and asked for political asylum.*121 But Kharon also passed along secrets received, via a sub-rezidentura at the consulate in Los Angeles (Caen), from agents planted in southern California’s wartime aviation industries.122
Kheifets’s sources in the Bay Area included old-time party operatives likes “Pops” Folkoff (Uncle), as well as several new, younger converts.123 Among the latter was Louise Bransten—code-named Map—“the Bernstein woman” whom Steve Nelson had bragged to Zubilin about bringing into the fold, and journalist Anna Louise Strong, code-named Lyre.124 Kheifets was also seeking Fitin’s permission to recruit a “talkative” new agent: James Walter Miller (Vague), a naturalized citizen of Russian birth who worked as a clerk and translator in the Office of Postal Censorship in San Francisco. If Moscow did not approve his plan to “sign on Vague,” Kheifets cabled, he intended to make use of Miller in any case: “Uncle will arrange the details with the Fellow Countrymen [CPUSA members]. According to this plan Vague will pass his information to Map. Under a plan of this kind Vague will have no inkling that the information is coming to us.”125
In most cases, ideology rather than monetary reward was the spur to cooperation. The NKVD depended on the romanticism of American Communists. (Lyre’s Soviet control identified himself to her with the recognition phrase, “Greetings from Charlotte Corday.”)126
By early 1944, Bransten/Map was in New York, on what the FBI believed to be an espionage mission, in the company of another would-be spy: Haakon Chevalier.
* * *
Just five days after Oppenheimer had identified Chevalier as the mysterious go-between in the meeting with Groves, Hoover’s agents had begun shadowing the French literature professor through the streets of the city.127 Chevalier was staying at a nondescript hotel on Fifth Avenue, a few blocks from the apartment where Bransten had taken up temporary residence. Bureau agents obtained access to Chevalier’s diary from a cooperative chambermaid. Additionally, an FBI mail cover tracked Chevalier’s frustrations in his search for a position with Washington’s intelligence services. The job at OWI or OSS was “still hanging fire, so to speak, for reasons that you know,” Chevalier wrote Oppenheimer in early December 1943.128
Despite Oppie’s telling Groves that he had given Chevalier his “comeuppance” for trying to recruit Frank, Oppenheimer’s return letters seemed solicitous of his friend’s welfare—while simultaneously warning Chevalier not to reveal too much in his reply: “There are some things doubtless that you would not want to write to us here for no certain privacy is assured the mail, but why are you in New York and how long since, and to what end,” Oppie inquired.129
A few days before Christmas 1943, the FBI followed Chevalier to a rendezvous with Bransten at her apartment. “I would like to see you—it is about the same thing—Earl,” a bureau agent overheard Chevalier tell Bransten from the call box in the lobby.130 Previously, agents had tailed Bransten to meetings with Earl Browder at the Communist leader’s house in the city.131
On New Year’s
