Nuclear espionage
Encyclopedia : N : NU : NUC : Nuclear espionage
| Nuclear weapons | |
|---|---|
| |
| History of nuclear weapons | |
| Nuclear warfare | |
| Nuclear arms race | |
| Weapon design / testing | |
| Nuclear explosion | |
| Delivery systems | |
| Nuclear espionage | |
| Proliferation | |
| Countries | |
| Nuclear weapons states US · Russia · UK · France China · India · Pakistan Israel · North Korea | |
Manhattan Project
During the Manhattan Project, the joint effort during World War II by the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada to create the first nuclear weapons, there were many instances of nuclear espionage in which project scientists or technicians channeled information about bomb development and design to the Soviet Union. These people are often referred to as the Atomic Spies, and their work continued into the early Cold War. Because most of these cases became well-known in the context of the anti-Communist 1950s, there has been long-standing dispute over the exact details of these cases, though some of this was settled with the making public of the VENONA Project transcripts, which were intercepted and decrypted messages between Soviet agents and the Soviet government. Some issues remain unsettled, however.
The most prominent of these included:
- Klaus Fuchs – German refugee theoretical physicist who worked with the British delegation at Los Alamos during the Manhattan Project. He was eventually discovered, confessed, and sentenced to jail in Britain. He was later released, and he emigrated to East Germany. Because of his close connection to many aspects of project activities, and his extensive technical knowledge, he is considered to have been the most valuable of the "Atomic Spies" in terms of the information he gave to the Soviet Union about the American fission bomb program. He also gave early information about the American hydrogen bomb program but since he was not present at the time that the successful Teller-Ulam design was discovered, his information on this is not thought to have been of much value.
- Theodore Hall – a young American physicist at Los Alamos, whose identity as a spy was not revealed until very late in the twentieth century. He was never arrested in connection to his espionage work, though seems to have admitted to it in later years to reporters and to his family.
- David Greenglass – an American machinist at Los Alamos during the Manhattan Project. Greenglass confessed that he gave crude schematics of lab experiments to the Russians during World War II. Some aspects of his testimony against his sister and brother-in-law (the Rosenbergs, see below) are now thought to have been fabricated in an effort to keep his own wife from prosecution. Greenglass confessed to his espionage and was given a long prison term.
- Ethel and Julius Rosenberg – Americans who were supposedly involved in coordinating and recruiting an episonage network which included David Greenglass. While most scholars believe that Julius was likely involved in some sort of network, whether or not Ethel was involved or cogniscent of the activities remains a matter of dispute. Julius and Ethel refused to confess to any charges, and were convicted and executed.
- Harry Gold – American, confessed to acting as a courier for Greenglass and Fuchs.
Israel
In 1986, a former technician, Mordechai Vanunu, at the Israeli nuclear facility near Dimona revealed information about the Israeli nuclear weapon program to the British press, confirming widely-held notions that Israel had an advanced and secretive nuclear weapons program and stockpile. Israel has never acknowledged or denied having a weapons program, and Vanunu was abducted and smuggled to Israel, where he was tried in camera and convicted of treason and espionage. Whether Vanunu was truly involved in espionage, per se, is debated: Vanunu and his supporters claim that he should be regarded as a whistle-blower (someone who was exposing a secretive and illegal practice), while his opponents see him as a traitor and his divulgance of information as aiding enemies of the Israeli state. The politics of the case are hotly disputed.
People's Republic of China
In a 1999 report of the United States House of Representatives Select Committee on U.S. National Security and Military/Commercial Concerns with the People's Republic of China, chaired by Rep. Christopher Cox (known as the Cox Report), it was revealed that U.S. security agencies believed that on-going nuclear espionage by the People's Republic of China (PRC) at U.S. nuclear weapons design laboratories, especially Los Alamos National Laboratory, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and Sandia National Laboratories. According to the report, the PRC had "stolen classified information on all of the United States' most advanced thermonuclear warheads" since the 1970s, and included the design of advanced miniaturized thermonuclear warheads (which can be used on MIRV weapons), the neutron bomb, and "weapons codes" which allow for computer simulations of nuclear testing (and allow the PRC to advance their weapon development without testing themselves). The United States was apparently unaware of this until 1995.
The investigations described in the report eventually led to the arrest of Wen Ho Lee, a scientist at Los Alamos, which accused him of giving weapons information to the PRC. The case against Lee eventually fell apart, however, and he was eventually charged only with mishandling of data. Other people and groups arrested or fined were scientist Peter Lee (no relation), who was arrested for allegedly giving submarine radar secrets to China, and Loral Space & Communications and Hughes Electronics who gave China missile secrets. No other arrests regarding the theft of the nuclear designs have been made. The issue was a considerable scandal at the time.
Pakistan
Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan (better known as A. Q. Khan) is a Pakistani nuclear scientist who confessed in January 2004 to passing nuclear weapons technology secrets to Libya, Iran, and North Korea. On February 5, 2004, the president of Pakistan, General Pervez Musharraf, announced that he had pardoned Dr. Khan. Pakistan's government claims they had no part in the espionage.
See also
References
- Manhattan Project
- Rhodes, Richard. Dark Sun: The Making of the Atomic Bomb. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1995.
- Cohen, Avner. Israel and the Bomb. New York: Columbia University Press, 1998.
- Christopher Cox, chairman (1999). Report of the United States House of Representatives Select Committee on U.S. National Security and Military/Commercial Concerns with the People's Republic of China., esp. Ch. 2, "PRC Theft of U.S. Thermonuclear Warhead Design Information". Available online at http://www.house.gov/coxreport/.
From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.