The Fuchs Case: Can Secrecy in Science Work?

Today much information has recently become available, including U.S. Atomic Energy Commission files and FBI files on Fuchs' statements and on his and Gold's confessions, as well as memoirs published by Fuchs' communist associates in England. From these and other sources it is clear that many aspects of the case were kept from the public in order to conceal important political secrets, not just atomic ones. One political secret was how Fuchs' spying was discovered in the first place. We now know that in 1949, when American government cryptographers decoded some messages sent from the Soviet embassy in New York to Moscow during World War II, they came upon a report by Fuchs on work being done at Los Alamos. To conceal from the Soviet Union that their codes had been deciphered, the American and British security services sought to have Fuchs confess to his actions. The result was the series of interviews with Skardon and Perrin. The breaking of Soviet codes was never mentioned during the prosecution of the case and remained a government secret for decades. Another political secret was that Fuchs was known to be a communist even before he arrived in England as a refugee from Nazi Germany in 1933. From a Gestapo report and from information provided by a German agent working for the British in the city of Kiel, the British Home Office knew of Fuchs' membership in the German communist party (KPD). And Fuchs continued to express communist views while he lived in England. Even so, the British government, which was desperate to recruit scientists for the war effort, hired him in 1941 to work on the British bomb project and repeatedly cleared him for top-secret work. Was British security merely hasty or incompetent in not ferreting out Fuchs' communist ties, or were there more sinister reasons for granting him easy access to secret weapons information? We now can see that his spying was part of a much larger Soviet effort to penetrate and control the British intelligence services, especially those sections of M15 (domestic security, analogous to the FBI) and M16 (foreign intelligence, somewhat similar to the CIA) that were concerned with Soviet espionage. Guy Burgess, Donald Maclean, Anthony Blunt and H.A.R. (Kim) Philby all worked for British intelligence during the war, and all, we now know, were Soviet agents. Some people in the highest realms of British intelligence had a grave interest in making sure that the Fuchs case did not lead to disclosures about these Soviet in roads. One of the most important facts that the British government concealed at the time of Fuchs' trial was that he was helping the British build their own atomic bomb, a project that was being kept secret from the public and one that the American government jealously opposed. Of course Fuchs and other British scientists at Harwell had brought back from their work at Los Alamos much knowledge and experience that was crucial to the British project. Anglo-American cooperation on nuclear research, already shaky, was further endangered by the Fuchs case. The British government was understandably eager to keep Fuchs' betrayal of secrets as quiet as possible. The upcoming review of nuclear informtion exchange between the United States, Britain and Canada was not the only political reason why the case was hushed up in England. A general election campaign was also under way, and publicity about a massive security lapse would be of little help to the Labour Party and Prime Minister Attlee. Yet another political secret of the Fuchs case was that in fact he had not given the Russians any information of value concerning the hydrogen bomb. But the fear that he had done so was used to justify President Harry S. Truman's decision to develop "the super." In 1950 the exaggerated news reports of Fuchs' treachery were a boon to those who argued for expanding the scope of weapons research. The United States government had its own reasons for manipulating the public's perception of the facts in the case. In Czechoslovakia and in China, communism had achieved notable successes during the previous two years, and the Soviet Union had recently tested its first nuclear weapon. The FBI's discovery of a communist atom spy only accelerated the anti-communist sentiments being stirred up by Sen. Joseph Mccarthy and the Alger Hiss case. The FBI's use of wiretapping and other illegal clandestine activities to procure evidence in criminal cases seemed to be justified by these events. In such a tubulent political atmosphere, it is not surprising that the Fuchs case seemed to offer support for the policy of maintaining national security through increased secrecy. The scientists, many said, would simply have to be brought into line if they were to be given access to national se curity information. The example of Klaus Fuchs stood as warning to others that gaps in security would be identified and closed. During the Cold War the traditions of open scientific research, publication and peer review gave way to greater classification of scientific information, restricted research, and loyalty oaths for scientists. Yet secrecy and loyalty oaths had not kept Klaus Fuchs from perpetrating his crimes. He had worked in a world where security was supposedly maintained through secrecy, and he had publicly defended those rules, only to betray them privately. The case raises a number of disturbing questions about the sharing and concealing of scientific information from both enemies and friends. In the present nuclear age, is national security best achieved by allowing open scientific research or by imposing extensive restrictions? Put another way, what is the proper balance between security achieved through scientific advance and security assured through military secrecy? And finally, given the political as well as scientific secrets that became classified information in the Fuchs case, how do people in a democracy distinguish military and scientific secrets from political ones that simply restrict the public's right to know in the name of national security? Williams is professor of history and vice president for academic affairs at Davidson College, Davidson. NC 28036.

The Fuchs Case: Can Secrecy in Science Work?

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