If the Americans chose not to arrest the scientist at Los Alamos who had betrayed them, it was because they had chosen to protect the ‘Venona' secret instead.Yet it was as a result of information discovered through ‘Venona' that Fuchs was eventually unmasked.
The story itself is quite strange. Fuchs returned to England in 1946 and was immediately engaged at the Harwell Centre. This was the British main centre for atomic research and had been set up in great secrecy, without the knowledge of the Americans. When the CIA revealed to the British that Fuchs was a spy, they demanded that he be removed. They could not bear the thought that an atomic scientist who was subservient to the Soviets was working for them. But that would risk revealing the secret ofVenona. Consequently, the British authorities, who after all had naturalised Fuchs, came up with a plan: the scientist would not be unmasked, he would leave of his own accord.
They maintained that Fuchs could not bear the double life he was leading and had cracked. The nature of Fuchs' confession seems strange and false. Indeed, Fuchs said:
British press at the time:
I used the Marxist dialectic to establish two distinct compartments in my mind. In one, I allowed myself friendships and relationships. I could feel free and happy with others, without fear of being discovered, because I knew that the other compartment would take over if I ventured into deeper waters.
This is very strange. Even more so is the fact that Fuchs declared that he left because he was starting to have doubts about the correctness of Soviet policy. After serving 9 years in prison, Fuchs had nothing else to do upon his release than to travel to East Germany, where he continued his work and was decorated several times.
In any case, the Soviets had not been completely taken in by the British ploy. They had discovered ‘Venona', thanks to Kim Philby, the most prominent member of the Cambridge Five. In the years after the war, Philby coordinated the relationship between the British and American Intelligence agencies and so became aware of ‘Venona' and immediately alerted Moscow. From that moment, ‘Venona' was dead. However, the Americans were unaware of this fact, which is why they let a number of Soviet spies continue their operations - all to protect a secret which no longer existed! It is likely that one of these agents was the second spy scientist at Los Alamos, the American physicist Theodore Alvin Hall.
Chapter 5
Mroz: the death of a little captain
For some, it was still the golden age of the secret war, a time when things were straightforward: the enemy was clearly identified in the east, separated from the rest of the world by a semi-impermeable frontier. Spies who seemed to come straight out of a John le Carre novel, were in a constant battle on a huge chessboard that stretched right across the Iron Curtain. Occasionally, when two players found themselves on equal ground, the stalemate ended in the murky light atop a bridge between the two worlds, where they would proceed to exchange their respective spies.
This next story took place in the twilight of that bygone era, in 1960s France, where as in all the best spy stories, the traitors are not always the ones we think they are. According to one of the former heads of the DST,23 this was the moment when the service entered the modern era of counterintelligence-espionage, which shows the importance of this otherwise virtually unknown case.
In all intelligence agencies there are traditionally two types of agents operating on foreign soil. One the one hand, there are those who have an alias that provides them with protection; a diplomatic status, for example. These spies work in an embassy or international organisation that affords them automatic protection, with expulsion being the worst that could happen to them if their true identity was revealed . It is estimated that during the Cold War, almost two thirds of Soviet diplomats were in fact KGB or GRU agents.
The other category of agent is made up of what the intelligence world call ‘illegals'. These agents have no protection and if discovered, face the wrath of the country in which they have been caught spying. Their only hope of freedom would be to take part in a prisoner exchange with the opposing side. This precarious situation meant that it was vital for them to completely ‘blend in'. Consequently, before they set off on their mission they undertook months and months of training, during which time their official ‘legend' was created, including a new identity and full background history. They also had to familiarise themselves with the habits and customs of their adoptive country. Suffice to say, that all this training and preparation was very expensive.
The roles of the illegals and those working under diplomatic cover were not the same. In general, a diplomat working for an intelligence agency acted as a case officer. It was their role to recruit spies, in particular men or women with classified occupations where it was difficult to gain access. They were essentially there to collect information together and act as the head of the spy network.
The role of the illegal was quite different. Their mission was to infiltrate a business or institution in order to gather information that would then be forwarded on to the network leader. Although they often worked alone, an illegal could also build up their own network by recruiting other moles who would then work for the original illegal, sometimes without even being aware of who or what they were actually working for. It all rested on very fine lines and was an extremely difficult task to implement.
In the world of espionage, the contact between a case officer and their agent was major cause for concern, as it is at that moment that the mole is at their most vulnerable. This lead to the use of a number of sophisticated methods of communication, such as the dead
