THE MAN WHO STOLE THE H-BOMB

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33775, 22 February 1975, Page 11

THE MAN WHO STOLE THE H-BOMB

(By

MAX HASSEL)

On a March morning 25 years ago Britain’s spyeatchers had finally caught up with the man who sold Russia the blueprints of the hydrogen bomb — for £lOO.

The man was Klaus Fuchs, then aged 39. The arrest was a moment of espionage history. Probably no spy in peacetime had torn such a jagged hole in the West’s security precautions as the mild-man-nered Dr Klaus Fuchs, the man who was described at his Old Bailey trial in the spring of 1950 as “the most despised personality of his time, whose name is a byword for treachery.” Today, a quarter-cen-tury after Fuchs put half the world in jeopardy — and then eagerly confessed his eight years of double dealing to astonished British security men — he is a minor celebrity behind the Iron Curtain.

As deputy director of the Central Institute of Nuclear Physics at Rossendorf, near Dresden, in East Germany, and a member of the highly influential Central Committee of the East German Communist Party, Klaus Fuchs is slowly

coming back into the limelight. Worked hard At 63 and having been kept largely ip the background since, his release from gaol in 1959, he now has a .modern apartment near,Dresden and a salary .estimated at around $5OOO a year — princely' by Communist standards.

Certainly he seems to have been forgiven for his monumental confession to British security men 25 years ago which implicated a dozen associates, including Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who were sent to the electric chair.

He has worked hard for his new status: he has developed an air-to-air nuclear warhead now in service with the Soviet and East German air forces and is a leading consultant on nuclear power-plants. Politically, too, he is a tireless worker: he sent a .personal telegram of welcome to Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev on his recent visit to East Germany. There was never any question that Fuchs would not return to East Germany after his deportation from England in 1959 after serving nine years of his 14-year sentence. Elite team He had moved to England before the war, gathered a string of degrees, at British universities and later moved to America to work as a mathematician on the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos, New Mexico — the pilot scheme for the first atomic bomb. When Fuchs discovered what the project was. he decided that atom secrets should be shared with Russia. As he was to explain in his confession: “I decided the weapon was too dangerous to be allowed to remain in the hands of one nation.

“I established contact with the Russians through a member of the Communist Party. I did it to bring and maintain peace.” While he was busy handing over nuclear secrets Fuchs was careful not to allow his lawful work to suffer. He was now on the elite team working on the hydrogen bomb and was actually a co-inventor of the finished product. So the blueprints for the hydrogen bomb found their way ' to' Moscow. Fuchs was later to explain that as co-author of them he had a moral right to dispose of them as he felt fit. Ready to pounce Now Fuchs was back in Britain, working at the Harwell atomic energy establishment and still passing over secrets to the Russians. But his luck couldn’t last. By now, British MIS knew there was a leak. To Detective Superintendent George Smith, of British counter-espionage, came the order: “Investigate Fuchs.” Smith and his assistants soon found that a strange and bizarre personality lurked beneath the shy, studious facade of Klaus Fuchs. He drank himself almost senseless alone in his room, had no close friends, was cold and aloof to his colleagues, dressed shabbily and had occasional affairs with women far below his intellectual level. Further research revealed him as a Communist with a fanatical love for Russia. Throughout 1949 the file of evidence against Fuchs grew thicker, and by March, 1950, MIS was ready to pounce. Game was up Fuchs was asked to visit the Strand headquarters of the British Atomic Energy Authority for what he thought was a routine meeting. instead, the spycatchers were waiting for him. When Fuchs realised the game was up. he couldn't wait to confess. "I am suffering from mental conflict,” he said. Then in a torrent of words, he confessed to hrs eight years of double--dealing. Eventually Fuchs came before the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Goddard, who told him: "You have imperilled the good relationships between this country and the great American Republic with which we are allies. “I can only assume that you did not do it for

gain. You fell into the depths of self-deception in which people like yourself cart fall. Hero’s welcome In Wakefield Prison, Fuchs was popular with other prisoners who called him “The Doc.” He spent all his spare time on mathematical and physics problems. He was a model prisoner and earned full remission. So it was that in June, 1959, Klaus Fuchs, a tall, shambling figure, wearing a battered trilby and large black boots, boarded a Polish airliner for East Germany . . . and a hero’s welcome.