Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America (16 page)

In a startling 1994 memoir, however, a former KGB officer, Pavel Su doplatov, implicated Manhattan Project scientists Oppenheimer, Enrico
Fermi, and Leo Szilard in espionage. In a heated and highly public response, prominent scientists, journalists, political figures, and historians
criticized Sudoplatov's memory, evidence, and motives. The American
Physical Society, the leading physicists' professional organization, denounced the book and demanded that the U.S. government repudiate its
claims. The FBI does not usually make statements on historical controversies, but in response to pressure from Representative Les Aspin
(D-WI), it issued a letter stating that it possessed no evidence to support
the allegations against the scientists. Hans Bethe, a Nobel Prize-winning
physicist who had worked at Los Alamos, insisted that there was nothing
new to be learned about Soviet nuclear espionage, emphatically stating,
"Fuchs's espionage was enough to account for all the information that
came from Los Alamos to the Soviets, both oral and in the form of copied
secret documents. No additional moles were needed."'

Report by Julius Rosenberg, written in the third person and in English, on his and Ethel Rosenberg's meeting with Ruth Greenglass to recruit her to Soviet espionage, supplying questions for her to ask David Greenglass about Los Alamos. Courtesy of Alexander Vassiliev.

Sudoplatov's allegations received a deserved battering, but the view
that Soviet atomic espionage was a closed question did not last either.
The assertion that Fuchs's espionage explained everything evaporated in
1995 when the NSA (America's cryptologic agency) released World War
II KGB cables decoded by its Venona project that identified a major but
hitherto unknown atomic spy: Theodore Hall, a physicist who had worked
on the plutonium bomb at Los Alamos (discussed below). The Venona
decryptions also included the code names of several additional atomic
spies that the NSA and FBI could not identify.

The KGB designated its World War II atomic intelligence project
"Enormous," and Vassiliev's notebooks demonstrate that it was aptly
named. There was a very great deal more to the story of Soviet atomic espionage than the recently uncovered Hall and the long-known Fuchs and
Greenglass. KGB memos and messages recorded in the notebooks identify three additional unknown atomic spies. They also show that Robert
Oppenheimer was not a KGB source (neither was Fermi or Szilard) and
that the course of Soviet atomic intelligence in the United States was far
more complicated than the traditional narrative or its dissident alternatives had suggested.2

The decoded KGB cables released in 1995 not only exposed Theodore
Hall as a previously unknown Soviet source at Los Alamos but also identified, although only with a cover name (first "Fogel," later changed to "Persian"), another source providing information on the Manhattan Project facility at Oak Ridge, Tennessee. The cover names occurred in four
KGB cables in 1944. The messages made clear that "Fogel" was engaged
in atomic espionage, appeared to have technical knowledge, and provided
information about Oak Ridge. But the deciphered portions had little detail about "Fogel"/"Persian" himself, and NSA/FBI analysts footnoted
him as "unidentified."

The unidentified atomic spy generated speculation that "Fogel"/"Per-
sian" might be Robert Oppenheimer or Philip Morrison (a Manhattan
Project scientist with Communist ties). Much of the confusion stemmed
from disinformation provided by retired KGB officers in the early 199os.
The truth about "Fogel"/"Persian" is less sensational but more fascinating. He was not a high-profile scientist but an obscure engineer. However,
he was also the first significant source the KGB developed within the
Manhattan Project. Further, he was recruited by none other than Julius
Rosenberg, who thus recruited not just one atomic source (the longknown David Greenglass) but two atomic spies.3

The Vassiliev notebooks contain a February 1944 message from the
KGB New York station to Moscow Center about its new source, "Fogel":
"A good friend of "Antenna's" [Rosenberg's]-Russ McNutt ("Fogel").
Civil engineer. F. asked A. where he should work. A. suggested `Kellogg.'
F. got a job at `Kellex,' a subcontractor of `Kellogg.' Fogel-fellowcoun-
tryman [Communist]. He is on Dies's list. F. has an idea of where his information goes, but this doesn't bother him. So far, neither F. nor A. has
any idea what kind of factory F. is helping to build." Kellex, a subsidiary
of M. W. Kellogg company, signed a contract in December 1942 to
design, supervise the construction of, and procure the equipment for the
K-25 uranium gaseous diffusion plant at Oak Ridge. A 1945 KGB memo
discussing the sources on the technical intelligence (XY) line summarized
McNutt's contribution: "'Persian- Russell McNutt. B. in 1916 in the
USA. A civil engineer at the `Kellex' company. Married, 1 child. A fellowcountryman [Communist]; his father-a longtime fellowcountryman, a
close friend of `Helmsman's' [Browder's]. He is well-to-do. Gave materials on equipment used for `Enormous.' + A floor-plan of camp No.1 [Oak
Ridge]."4

Russell McNutt's father, Ernest, was a Kansas newspaperman and radical whose acquaintance with Earl Browder (chief of the CPUSA until mid1945) went back to the founding of the Communist Party. Browder was
Kansas-born and -raised and a radical activist opposing American involvement in World War I (he was imprisoned for impeding the draft). Ernest was a founder and state secretary of the Communist Labor Party in Kansas in
igig. During the 1920s, however, he pretended to moderate his politics.
Ernest eventually owned seven small newspapers, publishing in Kansas,
Oklahoma, Texas, and other Midwestern states. In 1939 a former CPUSA
member from Kansas testified before the U.S. House Special Committee on
Un-American Activities (the Dies Committee) that Ernest was a secret
member of the state Communist Party's executive board, although he had
run for the office of state printer in 1938 as a Democrat. He also identified
Ernest's sons, Waldo and Russell, as concealed Communists. Waldo had appeared at the first American Youth Congress (AYC) gathering in 1934 as a
delegate from the Rocky Mountain Young Men's Christian Association and
a leading figure in the caucus dominated by the Communists that seized
control of the organization; he became chairman of the AYC in 1935. In an
interview decades later, Gil Green, head of the Young Communist League
(YCL), identified Waldo McNutt as a secret member of the Communist
Party.5

Russell A. McNutt, Waldo's brother, was born in La Cygne, Kansas,
in 1914 (not 1916 as the KGB memo stated). He studied civil engineering at Kansas State University for one year, transferred to Brooklyn Polytechnical Institute, and graduated in 1940, after three years as an evening
student, working during the day for the federal Works Progress Administration. He was employed as an assistant engineer for the Borough of
Manhattan until 1942. McNutt then worked briefly for Republic Steel
and the Chemical Construction Corporation. He began work at Kellex
in November 1943.
6

Russell McNutt and Julius Rosenberg first met after Julius called
Waldo, then manager of a Communist-dominated consumer cooperative
in New York City, to inquire about farms that took people as summer
guests. At that time Ernest McNutt (Waldo and Russell's father) had a
farm in Haddam, Connecticut, and rented rooms and served meals to
summer guests who came for hiking in the area. Russell told FBI agents
in 1951 that he had encountered Julius at the farm several times and even
drove him there from New York once.?

Julius Rosenberg connected McNutt to the KGB in February 1944.
Despite more than two years of effort, at that point the KGB had not developed a single source in the Manhattan Project. A grateful Moscow
Center told its New York station chief: "`A bonus in the amount of $1oo
has been allotted out of the znd quarter estimate for `Antenna's' initiative
in acquiring an agent to cultivate `Enormous.' We leave at your discretion
the best form in which to give it to `Antenna'-cash sum, gift, etc."'S

Russell McNutt worked on structural designs for concrete water-cooling flumes and other major facilities of the K-25 gaseous diffusion plant
at Oak Ridge. Most of the time, he worked out of the company's New
York office, but he made occasional trips to Tennessee. Two deciphered
KGB cables reported on his activities. In February 1944 a long, technical report, largely unrecovered by American cryptanalysts, noted that
"Fogel" had provided information on "Enormous." One of the fragments
of decoded text referred to "8o pounds for the neutralization of weak...."
On 16 June 1944, Stepan Apresyan, chief of the KGB New York station,
informed Moscow that he had dispatched by diplomatic pouch the layout
of a Manhattan Project plant, clearly facilities at Oak Ridge, obtained
from "Fogel." In an analysis of intelligence work conducted in 1944 by the
KGB New York station, Moscow hailed "`Persian's' recruitment" as one
of the year's main achievements.9

Although there were several messages in Alexander Vassiliev's notebooks indicating that the KGB planned to transfer liaison with McNutt
from Rosenberg to Harry Gold, there is no evidence that ever occurred.
Gold later cooperated with the FBI and identified many of his sources
but never McNutt or anyone resembling him. A listing of agents in March
1945, after Rosenberg's sources had been reassigned in a security move,
showed that Anatoly Yatskov had been assigned to supervise "Persian"
and held his first meeting with McNutt on ii March 1945.10

Over time, however, McNutt turned out to have less commitment
and value than originally believed. He was working at a Kellex design office in New York City, a useful source for information on the massive
uranium separation plant that the company was building at Oak Ridge.
But the KGB wanted sources on the spot with access to information
about the machinery and technical operations under way inside the facilities. McNutt, to the KGB's consternation, refused an offer from
Kellex to move to Oak Ridge. The KGB New York station reported that
he did not want to leave his comfortable apartment in New York for a
place where there was no housing for his family, including his child, nor
did he want to abandon the summer vacation business he had started
with a fellow Communist, one that had required a $20,000 investment
and that he was assisting in managing. At Moscow Center senior officer
Andrey Graur wrote on the New York cable, "Can't we persuade Persian
to go work at the camp? We would cover the necessary additional pay-
ments."II

The Center promptly cabled New York to meet with McNutt to emphasize how much it wanted him to take the job transfer and urged the New York station to "appeal to Persian's [McNutt's] sense of civic duty
and explain to him that by moving to Camp-i [Oak Ridge], he would
have an opportunity to be of great benefit to our common cause." To
assuage his financial concerns, KGB promised to pay him whatever he
needed and urged him to have one of his relatives take over the summer
lodge business. Yatskov met McNutt every two weeks from March until
May; he reported that he continued to provide Kellex design information but also confessed failure in persuading McNutt to move to Oak
Ridge:

"Persian [McNutt] refused to go to Novostroy [Oak Ridge] in connection with
his wife's illness. At pres., in addition to the fact that his wife's health has not
improved, Persian's trip is also impossible because the company is no longer
renewing its proposal, and Persian cannot bring it up himself b/c, people usually only agree to travel to Novostroy, which doesn't give any advantage, only
if there is no alternative. In the March-April period, Persian worked on standard computations for water supply and ventilation and did not have any interesting materials at his disposal. It was only at the last meeting, on May 8th,
that he gave a plan indicating equipment location in building K-3oz (the reference on a key plan), four pages of blueprints, and a supplement to the
plan."

McNutt's insistence on staying in New York limited his usefulness for
Soviet intelligence, and, as with all members of the Rosenberg network,
the KGB lost touch with him after Elizabeth Bentley's defection in late
1945 triggered the withdrawal of most of the officers who had handled
technical intelligence. But when the KGB recontacted Julius Rosenberg
in May 1948 to reestablish their earlier relationship, Moscow Center
listed McNutt as one of his former agents that it wanted Rosenberg to
revive .12

David Greenglass had first met McNutt in 1946, when he and Rosenberg discussed McNutt's becoming the South American representative
of the small machine parts business that they had started with other relatives. (McNutt did move to Caracas in 1947 to pursue business opportunities and obtained a job with Gulf Oil. He remained abroad until
1949.) Greenglass also recalled that Rosenberg asked him to deliver an
envelope containing $i,ooo to McNutt. Rosenberg was an investor in
one of McNutt's postwar business ventures, an effort to develop a fortyacre site in Westchester County, New York, as a planned community
through McNutt's company, Industrial Planners and Designers. (The
venture was not successful.) Although the FBI investigated McNutt after Rosenberg's arrest and concluded that he was at the least a Communist
sympathizer and possibly a party member, he was never publicly identified or named during the case. Despite a number of contradictions between McNutt's account of his postwar relationship with Rosenberg and
Greenglass's account, the FBI concluded that "no information positively
identifying him as a member of the Julius Rosenberg espionage network
has been developed to date." By his own silence and willingness to face
execution rather than cooperate with the government, Rosenberg
shielded the first of his two atomic espionage recruits from arrest and
prosecution.13

Other members of the Rosenberg espionage apparatus faced prison,
years of investigation, or public obloquy, or they fled to the Soviet Union.
But Russell McNutt emerged unscathed and publicly unassociated with
Soviet espionage. He went on to a successful career as an engineer, both
in the United States and abroad. By 1974 he was a vice-president of Gulf-
Reston, the Gulf Oil subsidiary that was developing the planned community of Reston, Virginia. He eventually became chief engineer of Gulf
Oil and traveled the world for the company. In 2007 the last surviving
Soviet spy on the Manhattan Project was retired and living at the Blue
Ridge Country Club, a luxurious Lee Trevino-designed golf course and
resort in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina that he had developed and built. When contacted, he recalled Julius Rosenberg, but
the ninety-three-year-old former spy claimed to no longer remember anything else about his past association with him and declined an interview.
He died in February, 2008.14