The spy who started the Cold War

[sabra]

Source: UK Times Online

MI5 and KGB files have at last revealed the identity of the agent who passed Britain’s atomic bomb secrets to the Soviet Union — and triggered the Cold War


For ten years a Soviet spy codenamed “Eric” fed Britain’s nuclear secrets to Moscow, paving the way for the Cold War. The KGB treasured him as its “main source” of atomic intelligence; MI5 suspected him, trailed him, opened his letters and monitored his every move. But he was never caught.

Today, 70 years later, with the opening of MI5 and KGB files, “Eric” can finally be identified as Engelbert (Bertie) Broda, a brilliant Austrian scientist who evaded Britain’s spy-catchers for a decade while working as a Soviet mole in the heart of the wartime nuclear research programme.

The amazing story of Bertie Broda reads like a John le Carré novel: it is a tale of espionage and counter-espionage, elaborate spycraft, love and deception. But, above all, it is the story of a double-life, filling in one of the last pieces in the complex jigsaw of Cold War espionage. Broda was the KGB’s prize spy: from the Cavendish Laboratories at the University of Cambridge, he provided Soviet spy chiefs with a stream of Britain’s nuclear secrets, including the blueprint for the early nuclear reactor used in the US Manhattan Project. Agent “Eric’s” secrets enabled the Soviet Union to catch up in the race to build the bomb and set the stage for the nuclear standoff that followed. The most remarkable thing about the scientist-spy was his ability to evade detection: he died in 1983, a celebrated professor of science at the University of Vienna.

The KGB archives are now sealed, but for a brief window in the mid-1990s a KGB officer named Alexander Vassiliev gained access to the files and began transcribing their contents. Vassiliev’s notebooks form the basis of a new book, published in the US this month, revealing Broda’s pivotal role in Soviet atomic espionage.


Read more: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article6465116.ece

[leveymg]

1. The Cold War was already in full swing by '49, when the USSR exploded its first A-bomb

Interesting sub-plot, but I don't think "Eric" or any other scientist "triggered" the Cold War. That too was a war of choice.

[MADem]

5. But Bertie was up to his tricks well before then. He was in the catbird seat in 41.

This fucker does have a lot of blood on his hands.

MI5 opened Broda’s mail, tapped his telephone and monitored his movements, but could find no evidence that he was anything other than a staunch communist and an accomplished scientist. In 1939, he was briefly interned and his flat searched, but without the discovery of any incriminating evidence. In 1941, Broda was offered a job at the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge, working on atomic reactors and controlled chain reactions with Hans Halban, a French refugee physicist at the cutting edge of nuclear research. Halban had fled the Nazis in 1940 and arrived in Britain carrying a suitcase containing most of France’s supply of “heavy water” used in nuclear reactors.

The Security Service objected to the appointment, noting that Broda represented a serious espionage risk. The spycatchers were overruled by the Government’s Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, which insisted Broda was too good a scientist to waste. “The exigencies of this department do override objections of security grounds,” the head of the department declared, but added complacently that “Mr Broda would not be employed on the more secret part” of the laboratory’s work.

It was a critical error: Broda was soon at the heart of the project, privy not only to Britain’s nuclear secrets but also those of the Manhattan Project, the US scientific programme to develop the first atomic bomb. Less than a year after starting work, Broda sent his first package of information, via Tudor Hart, to the KGB.

[Indydem]

2. Asshole...

How many millions died because of the treachery of this ass?

[leveymg]

3. None. The Russians didn't use the bomb.

We did.

[Indydem]

4. No, but the presence of the bomb in Russian hands and the fear of aggressive communism...

Sparked Korea and Vietnam, not to mention the massive spending.

[Recursion]

6. Alternately, the presence of the bomb deterred the US from starting more wars in the third world

You never really know

[Posteritatis]

7. The Cold War's only casualties were Japanese A-bomb victims?

Wow. Even for DU that's a pretty fucking impressive history fail.

[leveymg]

8. For all you or I know, the fact both sides had the bomb deterred WW3, saving hundreds of millions

American, British, European and Russian lives.

You don't have any idea of how destructive such a war would have been, and the power the bomb had to deter both sides from actually starting it.