The Atomic Spy Who Never Was: “Perseus” and KGB/SVR Atomic Espionage Disinformation

Abstract

In the late 1980s and early 1990s the KGB and its successor SVR began a campaign to claim a large share of credit for the USSR’s development of an atomic bomb. Memoirs by KGB officers celebrated their service’s success in penetrating the American “Manhattan” project. As part of this campaign, in 1991, Vladimir Chikov, a serving KGB (later SVR) officer, published an article in Russian and English, followed by a full-length book in French (1996), German (1996), and Russian (1997) on the exploits of an atomic superspy code named “Perseus,” said to still be alive and unknown to American security. “Perseus” was described as a senior physicist who was part of the Manhattan project from its origins, working first at the Chicago “Med” lab with Enrico Fermi and later at Los Alamos with Robert Oppenheimer. Veteran KGB officer Anatoly Yatskov, who had supervised several spies in the Manhattan project, added his endorsement of the “Perseus” story. For years, amateur and professional researchers used the clues in Chikov’s writings to search for the identity of “Perseus,” but no strong candidate emerged. With the opening of the Venona decryptions in 1995, most professional historians became convinced that “Perseus” was a KGB/SVR fiction, but “Perseus” lingers still with the wider public as a yet unidentified Soviet atomic spy. This article points to the internal contradictions and impossible assertions in Chikov’s “Perseus” story, as well as how Venona shows that Chikov took elements of the story of a real Soviet spy, Theodor Hall, to construct the “Perseus” myth. Hall was a junior scientist without an advanced degree who worked at Los Alamos in 1944 and 1945 (never at Chicago), but Chikov moved Hall’s story back to 1942 and elevated him from a junior figure to a senior scientist and associate of Fermi and Oppenheimer who, in Chikov’s words, gave Stalin “the Manhattan project on a serving plate.” Further, Chikov gave “Perseus” numerous attributes that precluded the still living Hall from ever being a candidate for the atomic spy “Perseus.”

Notes

1 Available on the Web and for downloading are hundreds of pages of authentic Soviet atomic espionage documents from the Venona decryptions and Vassiliev’s KGB archival extracts. The entire 109 pages of Vassiliev’s Yellow notebook #1 consist of extracts from the KGB’s Enormoz (atomic espionage) file. An equal amount of atomic material is scattered throughout other Vassiliev notebooks and the Venona decryptions. Atomic-related material can be identified in the Index and Concordance to Alexander Vassiliev’s Notebooks and Soviet Cables Deciphered by the National Security Agency’s Venona Project, https://www.wilsoncenter.org/article/venona-project-and-vassiliev-notebooks-index-and-concordance. From that site one can also download all of the Venona cables and the Vassiliev notebooks (original handwritten Russian, transcribed Russian, and English translation) from the same site. The index items include proper names, code names, names of Manhattan project facilities, references to “Enormoz,” and the like. Mitrokhin’s KGB archival notes were first made public in Christopher M. Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin, The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB (New York: Basic Books, 1999). Mitrokhin’s papers were later deposited at Churchill College, United Kingdom, and large sections were opened to research in 2014: The Papers of Vasiliy Mitrokhin, GBR/0014/MITN. Churchill Archives Centre. https://archivesearch.lib.cam.ac.uk/repositories/9/resources/1716

2 Alexander Feklisov and Sergei Kostin, The Man Behind the Rosenbergs (New York: Enigma Books, 2001).

3 “Nachwort von Gary Kern [Afterword by Gary Kern],” Wladimir Tschikow and Gary Kern, translated from English by Christiane Landgrebe and Chris Hirte, Perseus: Spionage in Los Alamos (Berlin: Verlag Volk & Welt, 1996), pp. 429–430; “Postface de Gary Kern” [“Afterword of Gary Kern”] in Vladimir Tchikov with Gary Kern, translated from American English by Dimitri Sesemann, Comment Staline a Volé la Bombe Atomique Aux Américains: Dossier KGB no 13676 (Paris, R. Laffont, 1996), p. 334. Both are translations of Stalin’s Atomic Spies: KGB File 13676, a manuscript by Vladimir Chikov, with Gary Kern as editor and translator. The English manuscript is a translated and edited version of what became Vladimir Chikov, Nelegaly: Dose KGB No 13676 [Illegals: KGB File 13676] (Moscow, Izdatelstvo ACT, 1997). Kern’s English manuscript, Stalin’s Atomic Spies, is not publicly available. Consequently, the published German and French translations are cited herein

4 Aleksandr Feklisov, “Podvig Klausa Fuksa,” Voenno-istoricheskii zhurnal, Vol. 12 (1990), pp. 22–29, Vol. 1 (1991), pp. 34–43, quotation on p. 41, cited and quoted in “Nachwort von Gary Kern,” p. 430 and “Postface de Gary Kern,” pp. 334–335. Feklisov would go on to author, presumably with SVR approval, books in Russian, French, and English on his career as a KGB officer: Aleksandr Feklisov, Za Okeanom i Na Ostrove Zapiski Razvedchika (Moskva: DEM, 1994); Aleksandr Feklisov and Sergueï Kostine, Confession d’un Agent Soviétique (Monaco: Rocher, 1999); A. Feklisov, Priznanie Razvedchika (Moskva: OLMA-Press, 2000); Feklisov and Kostin, The Man Behind the Rosenbergs.

5 Vladimir Chikov, “How the Soviet Intelligence Service ‘Split’ the American Atom,” New Times No. 16 (23–29 April 1991), pp. 37–40 and No. 17 (30 April—6 May 1991), pp. 36–39.

6 Sergei Leskov, “Dividing the Glory of Their Fathers,” Moskovskaya Pravda, 6–15 June 1991, pp. 37–38; “Vokrug atomnoi bomby,” pp. 17–18, 19–20, 21–22; “Okhotniki za atomnymi sekretami” [“Hunters of Atom Secrets”], Moskovskaya Pravda, 6–15 June 1991 (five parts, the first featuring an interview with Barkovsky), cited and quoted in “Nachwort von Gary Kern,” p. 436.

7 Michael Dobbs, “How Soviets Stole U.S. Atom Secrets; Ex-Kremlin Agent Reveals New Spy in Bomb Project,” The Washington Post, 4 October 1992, pp. 1, 36–37.

8 Leonard Nikishin, “Sekrety Los-Alamosa, raskrytye sovetskoi razvedkoi, okazalis’ neotsenimymi dlya Kurchatova i ego komandy” [“Secrets of Los Alamos Uncovered by Soviet Intelligence Proved Invaluable to Kurchatov and His Team”], Moskovskie novosti, 4 October 1992, p. 13, cited in “Postface de Gary Kern,” p. 339. For unknown reasons the information about Kurchatov’s memos in Moscow News appears in the French edition of the Chikov–Kern book but not in the German.

9 A. A. Yatskov, “Atom i razvedka” [“The Atom and Intelligence Gathering”], Voprosy istorii estestvoznaniya i tekhniki, No. 3 (1992), pp. 103–107; quotation, p. 106. Vladimir Chikov served as a consultant for the publication. The overall title for the article was “On the Origins of the Soviet Atomic Project: Role of the Intelligence Service 1941–1946,” edited by V. P. Visgin, Voprosy Istorii Estestvoznaniia i Tekhniki (Problems in the History of Science and Technology, commonly abbreviated VIET), #3 (1992), pp. 97–134.

10 Roald Sagdeev, “Russian Scientists Save American Secrets,” The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (May 1993), pp. 32–36. The quoted Kern text is in “Nachwort von Gary Kern,” pp. 437–439 and “Postface de Gary Kern,” pp. 340–342. Not surprisingly, the KGB’s offensive to claim a large share of the credit for the first Soviet bomb did not go unanswered. Eighty-eight-year-old Yuli Khariton, a close colleague of Kurchatov in the Soviet atomic project, struck back in a number of Russian venues. His argument appeared in the United States as Yuli Khariton and Yuri Smirnov’s “The Khariton Version” in The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (May 1993), pp. 20–31. Khariton conceded that Soviet intelligence had contributed to the swift progress of the Soviet bomb project but downplayed its importance and denied any significant espionage contribution to the later hydrogen bomb project. The several years of back-and-forth between Russian spies and scientists are summarized in “Nachwort von Gary Kern” and “Postface de Gary Kern.”

11 The entire text in Russian of the withdrawn article, including the documents, can be found at https://www.elibrary.ru/item.asp?id=21217796. A translated excerpt can be found at https://nuclearweaponarchive.org/News/Voprosy2.html

12 Chikov, “How the Soviet Intelligence Service ‘Split’ the American Atom”; Chikov, Nelegaly.

13 Gary Kern, A Death in Washington: Walter G. Krivitsky and the Stalin Terror (New York: Enigma Books, 2003).

14 Pavel Sudoplatov and Anatolii Pavlovich Sudoplatov, with Jerrold L. Schecter and Leona Schecter, Special Tasks: The Memoirs of an Unwanted Witness—A Soviet Spymaster (Boston: Little, Brown, 1994).

15 On the problems with Sudoplatov’s account of Soviet atomic espionage, see Harvey Klehr and John Earl Haynes, “Special Tasks and Sacred Secrets on Soviet Atomic Espionage,” Intelligence and National Security, Vol. 26, No. 5 (2011), pp. 656–675.

16 Jeremy J. Stone, Every Man Should Try: Adventures of a Public Interest Activist (New York: Public Affairs, 1999); “Accuser in Spy Case Accepts a Denial,” New York Times, 14 May 1999. 

17 Chikov, “How the Soviet Intelligence Service,” Vol. 16, p. 39; Tschikow and Kern, Perseus: Spionage pp. 194–196; Tchikov and Kern, Comment Staline, pp. 147–148.

18 The authors gratefully acknowledge the assistance of Mark Kramer of Harvard’s Center for Cold War Studies in identifying the document images in Nelegaly.

19 Tschikow and Kern, Perseus: Spionage, p. 184; Tchikov and Kern, Comment Staline, p. 138.

20 Ibid.

21 Tschikow and Kern, Perseus: Spionage, p. 183; Tchikov and Kern, Comment Staline, 137.

22 Tschikow and Kern, Perseus: Spionage, p. 206. Pontecorvo, a senior scientist in the British atomic program, defected to the Soviet Union in 1950. Neither he nor the USSR ever acknowledged his having been a Soviet atomic spy.

23 Tschikow and Kern, Perseus: Spionage, p. 229.

24 “Nachwort von Gary Kern,” p. 464; “Postface de Gary Kern,” p. 360.

25 Vol. 6 (“The USA”), MITN 1/6/2, Part 2 (“Illegal Intelligence”), The Papers of Vasiliy Mitrokhin, Churchill Archives Centre, Churchill College, Cambridge (UK). The authors thank Mark Kramer for locating the “Aden” passage in the Mitrokhin papers.

26 As noted above, “Volunteer” and “Leslie” are also identified as the Cohens in the Venona decryptions and the Vassiliev notebooks. Chikov identifies “Leslie” as Lona Cohen but insists that Morris’ code name was “Luis,” an identification not supported by such documentary sources as the Venona decryptions, Vassiliev’s notebooks, or Mitrokhin’s papers. “Serb” was identified in Vassiliev’s notebooks as Joseph Chmilevski who worked as a junior engineer at a naval sonar laboratory and was recruited into espionage by Morris Cohen. “Silver” is unidentified and does not appear in the Venona decryptions or Vassiliev’s notebooks. “Mark” who appears in Mitrokhin’s papers as a KGB illegal officer, does not appear in the Venona decryptions or Vassiliev’s notebooks. Chikov identified “Mark” as KGB illegal officer William Fischer.

27 Hall’s statement is reproduced in Joseph Albright and Marcia Kunstel, Bombshell: The Secret Story of America’s Unknown Atomic Spy Conspiracy (New York: Times Books, 1997), pp. 288–289.

28 On Hall, see Albright and Kunstel, Bombshell; John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr, Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999), pp. 310–17; and John Earl Haynes, Harvey Klehr, and Alexander Vassiliev, Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009), pp. 110–117, 123–124.

29 Venona KGB New York to Moscow, #1584, 12 November 1944.

30 Ronald Radosh and Joyce Milton, The Rosenberg File: A Search for the Truth (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1983), p. 46; Robert J. Lamphere and Tom Shachtman, The FBI-KGB War: A Special Agent’s Story (New York: Random House, 1986), p. 175; Michael Dobbs, “Codename ‘Mlad,’ Atomic Bomb Spy,” Washington Post, 25 February 1996, pp. 1, 20–21.

31 Albright and Kunstel, Bombshell, pp. 267–277; John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr, Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999), pp. 317–318; Gary Kern, “The PERSEUS Disinformation Operation,” H-HOAC, 17 February 2006, http://h-net.msu.edu/cgi-bin/logbrowse.pl?trx=vx&list=h-hoac&month=0602&week=c&msg=Lb%2bREHUoud/%2bSFUeQbPTMA&user=&pw=; John Earl Haynes, Harvey Klehr, and Alexander Vassiliev, Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009), p. 556, note 3.

32 “Nachwort von Gary Kern,” pp. 465–468; “Postface de Gary Kern,” pp. 361–363; Kern, “The Perseus Disinformation Operation.”

33 Robert Lamphere, “Preface,” Comment Staline, p. 12.

34 Tchikov and Kern, Comment Staline, p. 10.

35 Tschikow and Kern, Perseus: Spionage, 206. This passage is also quoted above.

36 Tchikov and Kern, Comment Staline, p. 156.

37 Chikov, Nelegaly, vol. 2, pp. 460–478.

38 In 2019, a fourth Soviet spy at Los Alamos in the Manhattan project days was identified, but it was not “Perseus.” It was Oscar Seborer, an Army Tech 5 with the Special Engineering Detachment. Harvey Klehr and John Earl Haynes, “Project SOLO and the Seborers: On the Trail of a Fourth Soviet Spy at Los Alamos,” Studies in Intelligence, Vol. 63, No. 3 (2019), pp. 1–14.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

John Earl Haynes

John Earl Haynes has written, coauthored, or edited twelve books and authored more than 100 articles and essays. Before retiring in 2012, he held the position of 20th Century Political Historian in the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress for over twenty years. While working for the Library of Congress, he was their historical representative to the International Committee for the Computerization of the Comintern Archive (INCOMKA Project). In 2014 he coauthored Secret Cables of the Comintern, 1933–1943. Haynes received his Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota in 1978. The author can be contacted at [email protected].

Harvey Klehr

Harvey Klehr is Andrew Mellon Professor Emeritus of Politics and History and former Chairman of the Political Science Department at Emory University, where he taught from 1971 to 2016. He is the author or editor of fifteen books, three of which have been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America was published by Yale University Press in 2009. He has also written more than 120 articles and reviews for professional journals, as well as Commentary, The New Republic, New York Review of Books, and the Wall Street Journal. The author can be contacted at [email protected].