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tial points according to documents of the Vladimir Nadeine of Izvestia) and historians
NKVD from 1944 to 1953, which were Sincerely yours, of science in Russia (Yuri Smirnov of the
released in June 1994. (See Moscow News Jerrold L. Schecter Kurchatov Institute) who, I was told by my
#23, 1994). They include the documents on Leona P. Schecter former colleagues, rose in their careers
Terletsky s mission to Niels Bohr and the through KGB connections, strongly sup-
formal establishment of the committee ported those in the Russian scientific and
headed by Sudoplatov to coordinate atomic The following letter will appear in the pa- intelligence establishment who found rev-
espionage. The main sensation is not this perback edition of SPECIAL TASKS to be elations in SPECIAL TASKS detrimental to
but what we learned about the system. We published by Little, Brown and Company on their prestige. They deliberately distorted
therefore are confronted with the necessity June 1, 1995 the material I presented. For example, I
of looking into other documents, said never wrote that Oppenheimer, Fermi,
Mironenko, who urged that the Presidential Writing memoirs, especially for the un- Szilard and Bohr were agents of Soviet intel-
archives and the security ministry archives wanted witness, is always risky. The events ligence. They cooperated, but we never
open their files. one describes have already been interpreted recruited them. It is noteworthy that Klaus
# Former KGB officer Vladimir by interests in power whose version influ- Fuchs and Bruno Pontecorvo never signed
Barkovsky (who handled agents in England) ences prominent historians and scientists any formal recruitment obligations despite
has affirmed Sudoplatov s account that and becomes history. I am reminded that their regular clandestine contacts with Rus-
Donald Maclean was the first to warn the Tacitus began his Annals by writing that sian intelligence officers and agents in the
Soviets that the British were seriously in- The histories of Tiberius, Caligula and Nero, USA and Britain.
vestigating the possibility of constructing while they were in power, were falsified One has to remember that all scientific
an atomic weapon. British critics of through terror and after their death were giants had a different perspective in the
Sudoplatov were in error in attributing the written under a fresh hatred. 1930s, 1940s and 1950s before the Cold War
early report to John Cairncross. The tragic events of the period from the hardened their views. At the end of the
# The presence of intelligence officer 1930s to 1953 covered in my book SPE- 1930s and from 1940 to 1945, leading scien-
Kosoy, a TASS correspondent under cover CIAL TASKS, including the beginning of tists of the international scientific commu-
in Sweden, confirmed a triangular link the Cold War and the myth of Klaus Fuchs as nity agreed to informally share nuclear se-
among Sweden, the U.S. and the Soviet the principal figure who passed atomic se- crets among all anti-fascist scientists. Ini-
Union as a path for espionage information. crets to Soviet Intelligence, had already been tially they were driven by fear that Nazi
# Soviet intelligence officer Arkady told and established as the framework ac- Germany would get the bomb first; later
Rylov, who handled incoming espionage cepted by all interested parties. In fact, there they believed that sharing secrets would be
documents for Sudoplatov, stated on Rus- were many more sources of atomic secrets the means of controlling nuclear weapons.
sian TV that Semyon (Sam) Semyonov, a besides Fuchs. Our intelligence officers in the United States,
Soviet intelligence officer instrumental in Harsh attacks on me and my book Gregory Kheifitz and Elizabeth Zarubin,
acquiring atomic secrets in the United States, without debating the principal facts were encouraged this attitude of sharing in their
told him the sources of the material were concentrated in one direction: to discredit contacts with Oppenheimer; Pontecorvo
Oppenheimer, Fermi and Szilard. me by calling me a terrorist and to hide from worked on Fermi.
# Zoya Zarubin, who was a young trans- public knowledge that two independent in- Reluctantly, the Russian military news-
lator working for Sudoplatov in the early telligence centers in which I worked the paper, Red Star, on April 28, 1994 admitted
1940s, stated in a videotaped interview that Administration of Special Tasks and the that Soviet intelligence agents took advan-
she worked closely with Igor Kurchatov Foreign Intelligence Directorate existed in tage of an international plot of scientists to
(director of the Soviet atomic bomb pro- the Soviet state security system. The public share nuclear secrets with each other. The
gram) to translate the first espionage docu- relations office of the Russian Foreign Intel- Western press, especially the American press,
ments into workable Russian. She said that ligence Service has alleged that there was no neglected to notice this statement by KGB
Soviet intelligence officer Zoya Rybkina, direct cooperation between intelligence and historian E. Sharapov and R. Mustafin, which
for whom she also worked, proudly told her senior Soviet scientists in developing our for the first time acknowledged the exist-
that she was in contact with Niels Bohr on first atomic bomb. This statement is incor- ence of the atomic team headed by
important information. Elizabeth Zarubin, rect and was made with the ulterior motive Sudoplatov and its role in the Soviet Union s
the intelligence officer whom Sudoplatov of discrediting my account. Department S of war effort.
said was successful in penetrating the Special Committee on Problem Number Since my memoirs appeared I have met
COLD WAR INTERNATIONAL HISTORY PROJECT BULLETIN 157
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