This is an excerpt from a new story about spies and scientists, Bruno Pontekovo's split life-physicist or spy
Pontekovo is a very talented physicist, in the second Before World War II, he worked with Enrico Fermi to study the phenomenon of "slow neutrons", which is of fundamental significance for promoting scientific understanding of matter. Pontecorvo became an outstanding scientist by his own ability, and during the war, he was at the core of the Allied use of nuclear energy. He is working on the highly sensitive reactor project in Canada and the United Kingdom. After the war, he settled in England and worked at the Havel Nuclear Research Center in Oxfordshire. Then in the summer of 1950, Pontecorvo and his family disappeared.
" MI5 After I forwarded your letter to them, did you call them back?"
The neat handwritten note on the House of Lords stationery is concise. When I was studying the mysterious life of physicist and possible spy Bruno Pontecorvo for about two years, I didn't know that it would let me solve the mystery of his sudden disappearance at the height of the Cold War in 1950.
MI5 did reply to me: A "lost" document about Pontecorvo was "found". The last record of the MI5 record before Bruno Pontkovo’s disappearance was a letter from the British Embassy in Washington on July 19, 1950. The document marked "secret" seems to have had little effect. No action was taken in London. However, this will lead to action in the Soviet Union. As soon as I saw that letter, the facts of the kaleidoscope began to become clearer.
In the years after World War II, the British Embassy in Washington was a weak link in Western security. Unknown to the authorities, it hosted three members of the infamous Cambridge Five Spy Group. From 1944 to 1948, one of these spies, Donald MacLean (Donald MacLean) took advantage of his position as the British representative on the US-UK-Canada Atomic Secrets Sharing Committee.Of course, he knew these secrets and passed the news of the development of the atomic bomb and nuclear energy to the Soviet Union. At the same time, Guy Burgess, another member of the organization, worked at the London Foreign Office until the end of 1950. For a period of time between 1949 and 1950, Burgess forwarded to the KGB a message of Kim Philby that originated in Washington. This situation continued until Burgess also moved to the Washington Embassy.
Kim Philby arrived at the embassy in September 1949. His official title is First Secretary, but his specific (and secret) role is as a representative of the Secret Service (SIS) or MI6 (MI6). Since World War II, Britain and the United States have been sharing intelligence. Therefore, one of Philby's duties is to liaise with the CIA, which means that in addition to British operations, he also knows some American operations.
In fact, from 1934 to 1963, Philby was a traitor throughout his career. His autobiography admits that he was a double agent who had worked for the Soviet Union but was paid by the British. Philby himself wrote his "All Commitments to the Soviet Union". He believes that his "spy appointment is purely a cover job" and will only make his "service to the Soviet Union the most effective." His deceptive resume included warnings of Soviet atomic spies when they were suspected. Philby used his location to remind the two confirmed spies of the Soviet Union: Alan Nunn May and Klaus Fox . It now appears that he also revealed to them Bruno Pontecorvo (BrunoPontecorvo), he is the most outstanding atomic physicist of the three.
Philby was one of the few people who participated in the greatest diplomatic secret of the West after the war: Project VENONA, an American plan to intercept and decrypt Soviet intelligence communications. In the summer of 1949, the American linguist Meredith Gardner (Meredith Gardner) deciphered the Soviet diplomatic code. The radio information between Moscow and the Soviet Embassy in North America is now open to the West. In September 1949, shortly after the Soviet Union’s first atomic bomb exploded,Philby listened to a briefing on VENONA. He immediately told the Soviet Union that their codes had been cracked, and carefully noticed every decryption he noticed.
The decryption mentioned three scientists working on the Manhattan Project. The news shows that these three people, code-named Childs, Quantum and Mrad, have passed the atomic secrets to the Soviet Union. Philby learned that Childs was Claus Fox. Despite Philby's best efforts, he was arrested and imprisoned in February 1950.
Philby is an extremely kind person. The Soviet intelligence operations at its embassy in Washington were in a state of turbulence, and two of their residents were recalled to the Soviet Union a few months before Philby arrived in the Soviet Union. Therefore, he refused to deal with any Soviet intelligence officials in the United States. For about a year, his only contact with the Moscow headquarters was through a message sent by his London accomplice Guy Burgess.
After Fox was arrested, developments accelerated. In June 1950, Philby learned of a new breakthrough in the decryption of VENONA: the Soviet telegram in 1945 revealed the existence of a spy circle in the British Intelligence Center. However, the information from VENONA is fragmentary. At this stage, they only partially decrypted it. It was the same for Philby, and he immediately understood that the message was referring to himself and his colleagues in Cambridge V.
In order to keep up with developments, Philby managed to increase his chances of entering VENONA and arranged for SIS to immediately provide him with a copy of any new VENONA materials. On July 18, 1950, Geoffrey Patterson, the liaison between the Washington Embassy and the U.S. Security Service, pointed out in a letter to the Director of the National Security Agency that the official reason for this arrangement was that it would Enable Philby to absorb and analyze new information before meeting with the FBI. Of course, in reality, Philby just wants to protect himself. After these exercises, Philby learned that VENONA has determined a code name, Homer, which he believes refers to McLean. This information has been passed to Moscow. The following year, with the shutdown of the network, McLean - and Burgess who was also damaged - defected to the Soviet Union.
Tim Marten is working at the British Embassy in Washington at this time,One of his responsibilities is to communicate with atomic energy. Tim recalled how the information was "super secretary" and therefore through the MI6 communication channel. Therefore, as the head of MI6 in Washington, Philby has direct access to every telegram I send or receive. "During this memory, Tim smiled. He went on to say, "Of course, I thought Philby was a good egg. He seems to be very gracious and keeps in touch with the CIA and the State Department frequently. He is a very respected person, obviously very capable. What we didn't know at the time was that he passed everything on to the Russians. "
Philby’s unique access to American and British intelligence enabled him to direct the spy band during the critical months of 1950, when the Soviet Union’s North American network was in danger. In addition to the information directly affecting him, Or mention that in addition to the Cambridge spy group, he also pays close attention to anything that his real employer, the Soviet Union, is interested in. In mid-July, he saw another letter drafted by Patterson.
Patterson I wrote a letter on July 13, 1950, and was received by the Chief of MI5 in London on July 19 (probably Philby’s contact in Moscow soon). His letter involved Bruno Pontecorvo: "The FBI reported to them , Pontecorvo is currently employed by AERE at Harwell. They added that they sent letters to British Intelligence Service on the Pontecorvo issue on February 2, 10, and 19, 1943. Presumably, they must have written to London directly, or to BSC New York, because the local SIS representatives could not track these letters. Many balanced scorecard files were destroyed [at the end of the war]. "
Patterson went on to point out that Pontecorvo participated in the Anglo-Canada Atomic Energy Project during the war and also lived in the United States." [The FBI] is now asking if we can provide them with any information indicating that Pontecorvo may currently Engaged in communist activities, or had engaged in such activities during his residence in the United States.
Patterson’s letter clearly mentioned Washington’s “local intelligence system representative”, which shows thatPhilby, the head of the entire national intelligence system in Washington, is fully aware of these developments. Just like what he did to Alan Nunn May and Klaus Fuchs, he now has to tell Moscow that the West has dealt with another atomic scientist, Bruno Ponteco. Wow (
As Patterson said, the British intelligence team in Washington could not find the 1943 FBI letters, even if the existence of these letters caught their attention. Given Philby’s reputation, one might think, The letter could not be found because he destroyed the evidence. However, it seems more likely that this time, Philby took sincere action: the letter from 1943 was indeed lost, probably in the second Many files were destroyed when the British Security Coordination Committee was closed at the end of World War II.
The FBI then forwarded a copy of the letter to MI5. They only showed evidence from the Bruno Communist Association. They did not show that he was a spy. They were resurrected in July 1950, indicating that they were part of an American fishing expedition inspired by McCarthyism. If Philby saw these letters, they would not panic. However, He doesn't seem to have it. He only knows that the FBI is interested in an atomic scientist named Bruno Pontkovo. They not only wrote an article, but also wrote an article in the 17 days of 1943, Winona I wrote him a letter, one of which revealed that two unidentified spies exist at the core of this atomic project, code-named Mrad and Quantum, and one of them may be Pontekovo.
Morad will eventually be identified as Ted Hall, a talented young physicist who is arguably the most successful of the "atomic spies." Quantum has been a mystery until 2009, the KGB document It is confirmed that he is Boris Podolsky, a Russian physicist born in the United States. These are not known to Philby in 1950. We have no conclusive evidence that Philby had warned the Moscow FBI against Ponti Kovo’s interest, or what this warning might consist of, is the least likely to be that no warning was issued.
Today, this letter from Washington is likely to be a key--maybe this Bruno Ponte The key to Kovo's unplanned flight.
***
MI5 completed the preliminary investigation into the disappearance of Pontecorvo in December 1950, three months after he defected. At the time, the British turned a deaf ear to Philby’s tricks, so no one doubted the FBI’s interest in Pontikevo in Moscow. Although the British government was worried that Pontekovo had escaped because he had previously handed over classified information to the Soviet Union, MI5 had no conclusive evidence, and its investigation did not reach a definite conclusion. So, what conclusion can we draw today about Bruno Maximovich Pontkovo's case and his possible spy role?
As a physicist, I am attracted by a scientific analogy. People once thought that the earth was the center of the solar system. In order to explain the planetary orbit requires a large number of "this round", as astronomers provide better data, special refinement of the model. This theory quickly became difficult to use. However, if the planets orbit the sun, everything will suddenly be in sync. I have similar views on the Pontecorvo incident. If a person concludes based on the lack of evidence against him that he did not deal with the Soviet Union while in the West, then several independent papers are needed to explain the various unresolved issues. On the other hand, if people accept the assumption that Pontykovo passed secrets before 1950, then a kaleidoscope of facts will be formed.
This is a sample.
At the end of 1949, the blueprint for the Canadian reactor arrived in the Soviet Union.
The source is someone other than Nunn May, who was imprisoned in 1946. It is possible for the Soviet Union to persuade Pontykovo to hand over blueprints before he defected to help them build a nuclear reactor for the social and economic well-being of citizens. If Bruno, a member of the Communist Party of China, refuses such a request to help his allies, it would be very rude.
KGB messenger Lona Cohen visited the US-Canada border several times from 1944 to 1948 to exchange information with people in Canada. Bruno Pontecorvo also regularly travels to the US border from Montreal , ostensibly to keep his US citizenship application active. Uranium samples were shipped from Canada to the Soviet Union,And Lona Cohen is its messenger.
This is an addition to an earlier sample by Alan Nunn May. The source of NunnMay's uranium was a reactor in the United States, and the second sample was almost certainly from Canada, which was only possible after the main reactor began operation in 1947. The year before, Bruno rejected job offers from major American universities. In order to go to Havel, he hesitated, changed the start date, and suddenly decided to stay in Canada to work for their reactor. This behavior can certainly reflect true indecision, but it also conveniently fits a portrait of a person so that the Soviet Union can keep up with the development of the reactor field.
Geoffrey Patterson sent his letter from Washington, and Philby intercepted the letter in July 1950, before Pontecorvo fled
The fact that Bruno hurriedly decided to flee instead of planning to move to the Soviet Union in a more orderly manner shows that he was responding to a major crisis rather than acting for personal reasons in principle. In July 1950, just a few weeks before Pontekovo arrived in the Soviet Union, Ronner Cohen was deported to the Soviet Union, which was another interesting coincidence.
The Soviet response to his arrival, including interrogation and five years of guards, was not a suitable welcome for socialist heroes.
The attitude of the Soviets towards Pontykovo when he arrived in the Soviet Union showed that they did not trust him. This may be understandable, regardless of the reason for his defect. However, this so-called distrust does not meet the Soviet Union’s commitment to get him there, and Pontkovo’s hastily reached agreement consistent with the plan. The overall situation is more in line with the Soviet Union's idea of punishing Pontykovo-Pontykovo is an agent who "trying to disengage" or become independent. Of course, he did not voluntarily choose to come to the Soviet Union to protest against the West like a hero.
In October 1992, a Russian historian represented ABC doing research on a documentary about the Cold War.
In the conversation between the researchers and their KGB guide, the possibility of interviewing Bruno Pontekovo emerged. The KGB host asked Pontecorvo to be interviewed in due course,"Just for the record", but Pontecorvo firmly refused. The researchers did not talk to Pontecorvo in person, but the response from the KGB contact "knocked my ears": Kakvelikii Fizik, Ne Kak Vash jebanyi shpion."
"I want to die as a great scientist, not as you Spy. ”
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