...One of the proven Soviet
methods of disinformation was the “grooming” of defectors. The most advanced
technique of disseminating false information through individuals required that
the disinformation agents themselves be not let in on the secret. Instead, the
deception makers in Moscow were producing a “biome,” whose microclimate
used disinformation as oxygen. Those who were immersed and breathed it in, were
led to believe, in all sincerity, that what they had been fed was true.
All planned defections
were encouraged from such environments. The designated guinea pigs were put in
critical situations abroad, when suddenly they found the ground sinking under
their feet. Whether a private indiscretion or a public misdeed had been uncovered,
they found themselves compromised, and received their summons back to Russia,
which meant the end of their dolce vita in foreign lands, lifetime disgrace,
and possible imprisonment.
Some Russians under such
circumstances broke down, and allowed themselves to be quietly shipped back
home. Others discovered within themselves a will to defect. The FBI called such
defections the “standard pattern.”
…The famous Soviet
defector, who actually started the ball rolling on the atomic espionage business,
was a certain Igor Guzenko, a Soviet encryption officer at the Soviet Embassy
in Canada. He defected soon after the end of the war in 1945, carrying along a
pile of classified document codes and secret communications. To be fair to him,
he probably had no idea that his generous gifts to the Free World were very
much tainted. The Canadian government passed the Guzenko file on to Washington,
and the show hit the road.
Launching their atomic
espionage hoax into orbit, the Russians were closely watching the reaction to
their surprise packages. Had they failed to receive sufficient credibility and
attention at the other end, they were ready to feed more fuel into the
pipeline. But the matter was immediately taken seriously in Washington, and the
case snowballed. What made the matters worse, with President Roosevelt dead,
his Vice President Wallace disgraced for being soft on Russia, and the
other principal players of the wartime Administration either dead or withdrawn
from the political scene, the explosive truth about the passing of atomic secrets
to the Russians deliberately had become anathema in Washington.
President Harry Truman, a late addition to the FDR Administration, would not
touch this matter now with a ten-foot pole.
As the case progressed,
there were some truly bizarre twists. Some of these were part of Moscow’s
script, others were not.
The voluntary confession
of the respected British nuclear scientist Klaus Fuchs astonished the Free
World, when he denounced himself as a Soviet spy. A self-confessed spy is a
great dishonor to his profession and a humiliating embarrassment to the
country, which was using his services. It is a well-established fact that
without Fuchs’s self-incrimination, there would have been no case made against
him. Had this game been played straight, Moscow should have cursed Fuchs’s betrayal
and might have well put a price on his head, to make of him an example of how
not to behave. But in reality, fairly soon after he started serving his jail
sentence, Klaus Fuchs was exchanged by Moscow, and returned to East Germany, to
rewards and honors, and a life of privilege, reserved for heroes. (According to
General Milstein, prior to his bombshell, Fuchs, who was one of the Manhattan
Project scientists involved in the atomic exchange, had been blackmailed
by the Soviets, and did not have much choice in this grotesque situation,
except to play out the role, which was assigned to him.)
Whereas the Klaus Fuchs confession
was an integral part of the Soviet disinformation campaign, another
self-confessed spy, the American Harry Gold, had absolutely nothing to
do with it. He managed to produce such fantastic charges against himself that
the disbelieving Russians immediately suspected him, and for decades held on to
this view, that he had to be some kind of Mafia-embezzler on the run from the
mob. It looked to them that in this unusual manner of self-incrimination, Gold
must have found for himself a cozy and safe refuge behind the walls of a federal
penitentiary, where he seemed eager to spend the next thirty years of his life
in safety and seclusion…
Stalin’s interest in the
Rosenberg trial did not stop with the couple’s sentencing in 1951. He was
impressed with the Rosenbergs’ stubborn silence, but was nevertheless convinced
that at the last moment, rather than die in the electric chair, they would
crack up, and name names, any names, to save their skin. He died three
months before the couple’s execution proved him wrong.
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