Posted on 06/11/2009 6:32:01 AM PDT by MyTwoCopperCoins
LONDON: Secret files have at last revealed the identity of the top spy who transferred Britain's atomic bomb secrets to the Soviet Union and paved the way for the nuclear standoff with the west, triggering the Cold War for nearly five decades.
Though the MI5 suspected him, trailed him and monitored his every move, they were never able to get the man, codenamed "Eric" by the KGB, whose espionage campaign to steal the Allies nuclear bomb plans was codenamed Enormous.
Declassified MI5 files have confirmed that the master spy, described as the "main source", was a Soviet mole at the Cavendish Laboratories at the University of Cambridge, the heart of the wartime nuclear research programme.
Today, 70 years later, with the opening of MI5 and KGB files, "Eric" can finally be identified as Engelbert (Bertie) Broda, whose story is a tale of espionage and counter-espionage, elaborate spycraft, love and deception.
Broda was the KGB's prize spy, who fed Britain's nuclear secrets to Moscow for a decade, including the blueprint for the early nuclear reactor used in the US Manhattan Project, Times online reported on Thursday.
"Erics" secrets enabled the communist state to catch up in the race to build the nuclear bomb and set the stage for nearly five decades of nuclear standoff with the West.
Though the KGB archives of the period are now sealed, a brief window in the mid-1990s provided a KGB officer named Alexander Vassiliev access to the files.
Vassilievs notes form the basis of a new book, published in the US this month, revealing Brodas pivotal role in Soviet atomic espionage.
"Soviet sources in England were the first to provide Moscow with atomic intelligence," wrote Pavel Fitin, Moscow's head of Foreign Intelligence (1939 to 1946), in a memo quoted in Spies by Harvey Klehr, John Earl Haynes and Alexander Vassiliev.
According to Fitin, intelligence from Broda and others laid the groundwork for Soviet nuclear scientists, paving the way for the nuclear confrontation of the Cold War.
"The material included valuable and top-secret documents [that] served as a starting point for laying down the groundwork and organising work on the problem of atomic energy in our country," the memo stated.
Among Brodas information included the blueprint for one of the American Manhattan Projects early nuclear reactors.
Broda, who was being heavily trailed by the security service (MI5), went back to Austria to teach at the University of Vienna in 1948.
Brodas son Paul, who remained with his mother in Britain, is writing a book about his father and stepfather, the British report said.
The most remarkable thing about the scientist-spy was his ability to evade detection.
In 1983, at the age of 73, the celebrated professor was buried in a "grave of honour". Alongside that epitaph might stand another: "Eric", the spy who got away.
bookmark
At least Broda did NOT Hide his Birth Certificate! :-)
I hope he was dead!
“Engelbert (Bertie) Broda”
So was he a jew? Was the cold war the fault of the jews?
Is rev wright, right.
There is no doubt that the Soviets had the intellectual horsepower and industrial capacity to build a bomb, the nests of spies in the West just made it vastly easier. Most of them were ideologically motivated, meaning they were idiots. There is something about being cloistered in the academy that blinds people to the evil of totalitarians and tyrants, unto to this very day.
What excuse does the LSM have?
More details here:
“MI5 has also recently declassified its files on Broda, allowing the story of the spy who got away to be told for the first time. Engelbert (also known as Berti, or Bertie) was 28 when he arrived in Britain in 1938. The son of an Austrian aristocrat, he was handsome, highly intelligent and an ardent communist. As a student in Berlin and national leader of the German communist students, Broda had been imprisoned twice by the Nazis. Broda told the immigration authorities that he was a science student keen to attend a lecture at the University of Bristol. In truth, he was fleeing Nazi persecution and may already have made contact with the Soviet intelligence service. His wife Hildegarde soon followed.”
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article6465116.ece
Interesting read.
Wow! An attempted thread hijacking in less than 5 posts!
Jewish folks seem to be suceptible to the left wing virus, that’s for sure. The success of the left in painting Hitler as an antileftist has probably contributed to the epidemic, post World War II. Others have commented on this proclivity far more knowledgably and articulately than I ever could. American WASPs seem to succumb to the disease in even greater numbers, (e.g., Alger Hiss, Harry Dexter White, Elizabeth Bentley...) although, presumably at a lower rate. The infection rate among Anglo-Saxons in Oxbridge during the 1930’s was close to 100%, rivaling the contemporaneous outbreak among Jews at CCNY.
The Cold War was actually started in the 1920s. The Russians viewed the freedom and economic success of the United States as a refutation of Marxist theory. As long as the United States suceeded, critics of Marxism had at least one counter example to point to. Hostility of the Soviets to the United States was not predicated on existence or actions of any single ethnic group. Many individual Jews in the West aligned themselves with the Soviet Union for more or less the same reasons that Western eggheads did.
I am not sure of the exact number but I believe less than a dozen were ever prosecuted. The real outrage of the McCarthy era was not innocent people accused of being Communists, it was guilty Communist agents going unpunished.
Side Note: It would be interesting to have a list of current high profile “progressives” whose parents were on the payroll of the Soviet Union.
AL Gore family received large sums of money from Soviet Agent Armand Hammer, John Kerry's father was part of a pro-soviet clique in the 1950s State Department and later on Mr. Kerry became a virtual North Vietnamese Agent, Obama had Communist Mentors as did Hillary.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article6465116.ece
“”In 1941, Broda was offered a job at the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge, working on atomic reactors and controlled chain reactions with Hans Halban, a French refugee physicist at the cutting edge of nuclear research. Halban had fled the Nazis in 1940 and arrived in Britain carrying a suitcase containing most of France’s supply of “heavy water” used in nuclear reactors.
The Security Service objected to the appointment, noting that Broda represented a serious espionage risk. The spycatchers were overruled by the Government’s Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, which insisted Broda was too good a scientist to waste. “The exigencies of this department do override objections of security grounds,” the head of the department declared, but added complacently that “Mr Broda would not be employed on the more secret part” of the laboratory’s work.
It was a critical error: Broda was soon at the heart of the project, privy not only to Britain’s nuclear secrets but also those of the Manhattan Project, the US scientific programme to develop the first atomic bomb. Less than a year after starting work, Broda sent his first package of information, via Tudor Hart, to the KGB.
The KGB’s espionage campaign to steal the Allies’ nuclear bomb plans was codenamed “Enormous”. Broda was given the cover name “Eric”. In December 1942, the KGB station in London reported delightedly to Moscow that “ ‘Eric’ — who, since January 1942 has been Halban’s assistant in special division (devoted to Enormous) of the central laboratory on explosives in Cambridge — is completely informed about all the workings on Enormous both in England and in the US because he has access to American material on Enormous that the English had received as part of an information exchange.” “”
Great VENONA ping!
Nope! You wish! Just a True Comment:-) Any problem with that?
??? As in, "I wish someone would come along and hijack this thread." Right?
Huh?
Just a True Comment:-) Any problem with that?
Umm, yes. That's why I commented on it.
Internet Posting 101: What you posted had nothing at all to do with the subject of the article posted.
Nothing.
It was about an entirely different subject which has plenty of threads devoted to it already. That's why posts like yours are called "thread hijacking".
Whether the comment was true or not is beside the point.
You should make Obama Birth Certificate comments on threads that are about that issue. This thread is not.
Thread hijacking is bad form.
You seem to be the one highjacking the thread with aton of babble. Good day:-)
Well put!
LOL! Yeah, that one was a little startling...
"I'm not dead!"
"'Ere, he says he's not dead."
"Yes he is."
"I'm not."
"He isn't."
"Well, he will be soon, he's very ill."
"I'm getting better..."
|
|
|||||||
Gods |
Just adding to the catalog, not sending a general distribution.To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list. |
||||||
|
· Discover · Nat Geographic · Texas AM Anthro News · Yahoo Anthro & Archaeo · Google · · The Archaeology Channel · Excerpt, or Link only? · cgk's list of ping lists · |
|||||||
After reading the article, I don't.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
