The recruitment of Fuchs provided a bright prospect for the Soviets. He was not only closely associated with English research , but in 1943 he was asked to travel to the United States on an even more secret mission: the Manhattan Project, which would lead to the construction of the first A-bomb. The Soviets could not have imagined a better outcome, especially as Fuchs was now working with the creme de la creme of global physicists: the Americans had all assembled in Los Alamos, in the New Mexican desert, with no less that twelve Nobel Prizes between them.
Fuchs was directly involved in the design and assembly of the first bomb, detonated in July 1945, and had access to the most top secret documents, which he would hand over in the classic manner. From time to time he met with a man called Harry Gould, a chemist and a member of the NKVD. As the facilities, not just the men, at Los Alamos were closely monitored, Fuchs only saw Gould during his short holidays, which he was granted sparingly. The meetings were always held in the upmost secrecy, away from the where the research was taking place, usually in New York. Even at this time, the Americans had their suspicions, although they were particularly embarrassing ones!
In Los Alamos, where the cream of the western world’s physicists, numbering twelve Nobel winners, worked in total secrecy, the English scientists (including Klaus Fuchs who had finally been naturalised), were more informed than their American colleagues. Indeed, it seems that the British scientists could have had access to all the sections of the Manhattan Project, which was actually very compartmentalised. According to a book written after the war by a Los Alamos security officer, the English essentially had complete knowledge of the chain assembly of the gun, how the bombs were configured and even possible later developments, such as the H-bomb. However, the officer felt that they had only minimal knowledge of the technological elements. Whatever the case, Fuchs had been able to transmit documentary material on the bomb to the Soviets.
The boss at Los Alamos was Professor Oppenheimer, a man of rather progressive ideas, who in his youth had even shown to have sympathies for the communists. Such thoughts in the US were unacceptable and enough to make you be treated as a leper. Yet despite the opinion of the military security, Oppenheimer was appointed director at Los Alamos. No doubt because he was seen as being indispensible and men of his brainpower were very hard to find!
At the head of the top secret research at Los Alamos, the authorities kept a close eye on Oppenheimer and his entourage. As soon as rumours began to circulate, he was the main suspect. This was naturally a very difficult situation. After all, he was still he head of the Manhattan Project. This meant that question shad to be asked, but very very carefully. However, one day, the scholar subtly admitted that members of his team had actually been approached by the Soviets. This nuance is very important: he did not say that they had been betrayed, but that they had been approached, which is very different.
For his part, Fuchs was unaware that other researchers had been in contact with Soviet services. As a result of the partitioning enforced during their research, these men often worked together in the same laboratories without knowing who was or who was not a spy. We now know that there was another prestigious Soviet collaborator in Los Alamos. He was an American physicist and a scholar of great reputation, but despite being identified, was never arrested in order to guard his secrecy.
Naturally, the building of the bomb was not just an extraordinary secret, but a particularly volatile one, which the Americans were quick to realise. However, when they realised that they had been spied on throughout the entire development process of the first bomb, it was too late: Moscow had already received all the material it needed in order to catch up with its nuclear research. It wasn't until 1949 that the Russians detonated their first atomic bomb, in an act that surprised the rest of the world, if not the Allied secret services!
Having highlighted the systematic pillaging carried out by the Soviets during Operation Enormoz, the intelligence experts were expecting Moscow to succeed in building an atomic bomb sooner or later. It was inevitable. However, the secret that had to be guarded at all costs went by the strange and nefarious name ‘Venona'.
For many years, US intelligence had intercepted messages sent by Soviet spies, but had been unable to read them because they were in a code that had hitherto been impossible to crack. Yet in the years that followed the end of the war, a series of events led to the breaking of the infamous code. First, a KGB agent defected, followed by the recruitment of a brilliant analyst by the US secret service, who after using information provided by the former KGB agent, was able to finally crack the Soviet's code.
The Americans were now able to decrypt messages sent by Soviet agents, as well as read the many undeciphered telegrams that had been stored away in their archives. This lead to the discovery of how their atomic secrets had been penetrated.
But were they able to use this new information? There was always the risk that by doing so, you alert the enemy to your discovery and the source consequently dries up as he/she changes their encryption method. It was a real dilemma, and very similar to that of the German Enigma machine. The Allies did not want the Germans to know that they had broken their code, which resulted in the sacrifice of thousands of civilian lives after the bombings of
