We are still with the spies who changed the course of the world. And today we are with a spy of a new kind.. the experts call him "the atomic spy".. or "the nuclear spy".
The year 1946, and a new American linguistics and code expert, named "Meredith Gardner".. sits down at his desk for the first time in his new job, amid copies of thousands of messages.. that the United States was intercepting from the Soviet Union to its embassies.. and copying them.. and sending them on.. and beginning, slowly, to search for some code, that these messages were hiding.
And "Meredith" was an unwanted employee, only recently and reluctantly appointed.. given his genius, despite being a confrontational, stubborn and unruly character, utterly unsuited to work in intelligence.. and because they were reluctant to waste such talent while employing him.. they put him among old messages, dating back to that period.. during the Second World War.. a full year after the war ended.
And the man begins his work, and he sets aside the messages that contain no code at all.. then "Meredith" takes up an ordinary message, addressed from Moscow, to the Russian embassy in Washington, dated six months before the end of the war.. and he begins to study it with interest.
And "Meredith" discovers some code in the message, that had escaped the eyes of everyone who came before him, and with brilliant simplicity, "Meredith" succeeds in breaking the extremely complex cipher.
And no sooner had "Meredith" broken the encryption, than he presented the message to his superiors.. who looked as though a real thunderbolt had fallen on their heads, their eyes frozen in their sockets, in extreme terror.
That is because the message contained 24 names.. that no one on earth could ever imagine might appear in Soviet documents.
And that is because these names were the most secret names on the face of the earth, at that date.
And those 24 names.. were of nuclear physicists, involved in one of the most secret and dangerous projects in history.
"The Manhattan Project". The project that began during the Second World War, with the aim of manufacturing nuclear weapons for the first time in the life of the earth, and it indeed succeeded in delivering the first bomb to the United States.. with which it ended the war, and declared itself a terrifying power standing alone on the scene.
And these names were the most dangerous secrets of the United States at all, in that period.. and no one knew anything about these scientists.. to the point that their own families and relatives.. knew nothing at all about their work.
Even in their bedrooms.. these scientists were watched.. and they were aware of that and knew it.. their correspondence.. their telephones.. everything.. and it was impossible for a single letter to leak from them.
Even in their work they did not call names by their names.. they did not say "uranium" or "bomb" or the like.. all these elements had code names, in code.
The "Central Intelligence Agency, CIA" had not yet been founded at that time and had not yet acquired millions of agents around the world as it has today; it was founded months later.. and because of this very incident.. but there was the newborn entity "the National Intelligence Authority".. which had been founded only a few months earlier.. from the date of the breaking of the catastrophic message's cipher.
And the intelligence men caught up the message.. and the hair on their heads stood on end with terror in their turn.. and a frightening question rose to the surface.. dragging behind it dozens of even more terrifying questions.
How did the Soviets know these names? Who is working for them in the Manhattan Project? Who is the spy who penetrated the most secret of American projects and passed its secrets to the Soviets?
And I wonder what else the Soviets have of the secrets? I wonder, did they learn the secret of the atomic bomb?
The truth is that the Soviets, during the Second World War.. were in a relentless race with the Germans and the Americans in the search for the secret of the bomb, and Germany almost reached it before everyone.. and had that happened.. the map of the world would have changed forever.
But what happened is that.. because repressive and bureaucratic regimes are by their nature repelling to scientists and the talented.. the man behind the most dangerous equation on which the atomic bomb was built, "Albert Einstein".. fled Nazi Germany because of the security harassment and the lack of personal appreciation.. and on his flight he avoided the Soviet Union.. which was repressive in its turn and would not have differed much from Germany, and he headed for the United States.. the land of the promised freedom. And there.. the United States opens its arms to him.. and treats him as an eminent scientist.. so he sends a letter to the American president "Roosevelt" in which he encourages him to start a project to manufacture an atomic bomb.. the letter that is with this post.
And the American president agrees, and grants unlimited credit to the project that they named "the Manhattan Project".. and indeed the team of American scientists takes up the equation that they had been missing.. and the project brings forth the dreaded weapon.. the atomic bomb.
The Soviets had a habit, that delayed them for years.. until they abandoned it in the era of "Khrushchev".. they did not spend well on scientific research, but they stole the research of others, because they were the masters of the world and its teachers in the art of espionage. And that made the question circle in the minds of the Americans.. I wonder how far the Soviets have got?
And American intelligence went back to review the history of everyone who had taken part in the Manhattan Project, beginning with the scientists, and ending with the security men and the guards, who used to guard the gates in the forbidden zone.. the town of "Los Alamos".. where the headquarters of the project was.
And it tightened close surveillance on everyone, without anyone feeling it, and American intelligence reached nothing of value.. until one of the American intelligence men noticed a strange movement.. of one of the scientists, which was that he was most of the time walking about toying with a small tennis ball.
And despite the naivety of the detail, it drew the attention of the security men, so they brought the man's file and reviewed it with interest.
And doubt began to hover around the man.
His name is "Klaus Fuchs".. of German origin, his father, a professor of comparative religion, forced him to study political science, despite his love of physics, then he fled to England in the late 1920s, and entered it as a refugee, where he went to work in a tobacco company, and tried to publish his research and inventions in physics, and the research journals ignored him completely.. because he was not a specialist.
But "Fuchs" in England meets a wealthy lady, one of the owners of the tobacco factory where he works, and he tells her of his dreams and his hopes, and she believes in him.. and introduces him to the giant of physics, the later Nobel Prize winner.. Sir "Nevill Mott".
And in "Nevill's" office at the university, the professor of physics was amazed, by "Fuchs's" knowledge, and his reading in the field, despite his literary studies, so he decided to enroll him in a doctorate programme directly, so that "Fuchs" would obtain, after only four years, a doctorate in physics from Bristol University.
And "Fuchs" tried to work as a professor of physics at the university, but despite his genius.. he was missing an important element.. that a professor needs in order to stand before the students.
Charisma.
"Fuchs" fails at teaching.. but Sir "Nevill" could not bear to see such a scientific mind wasted, and he arranged for him a research post at Edinburgh University.
And "Fuchs's" papers in physics pour into the scientific journals.. and he amazes the scientists.. and he becomes a name of high standing in the world of physics.
And in Edinburgh "Fuchs" obtains a new doctorate in science.. he sends a copy of it to his father with the utmost pride.. and with his scientific contributions.. the English government approaches him, and asks him to submit an application for naturalization.. so that he may become an English citizen.
But "Fuchs's" application at that time was not considered.. even though they were the ones who had asked him to submit it.
And the reason in this story would take long to explain, so we will continue our talk on the subject later...
And the conversation has a remainder.
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