Half-Life by Frank Close

Author:Frank Close [Close, Frank]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780465069989
Publisher: Basic Books

DAMAGE CONTROL

Whereas for Gil’s friends in Abingdon this was a spy story come true, for others the implications of Pontecorvo’s defection were more serious.

When news of Pontecorvo’s disappearance finally broke on the weekend of October 21, and suspicion grew that he had defected to the USSR, the strategy of the British authorities was to minimize the damage. Given Fuchs’s exposure earlier that year, and the resulting strain on Anglo-American relations, this was no time to admit that another spy had slipped through the net.

A telegram sent from the Cabinet Office to the British embassy in Washington on October 20 proposed responses to the anticipated press stories. Marked “TOP SECRET,” it concludes, “There is no definite proof he was bound for Russia and we shall do everything to play down the fact. Please inform State Department and AEC immediately and ask them to reply to any press enquiries on same lines as we are. It is just possible the press here may refrain from publishing anything through fear of libel action if Pontecorvo should turn up here again.”40

Meanwhile Guy Liddell, the deputy director general of MI5, continued to write in his diary. It records that on October 21 he received “the latest news about the disappearance of PONTECORVO a scientist at Harwell.” At this same time, Liddell apparently first became aware of the fact that in 1943 the FBI had written to the British Security Coordination in New York to report finding communist literature in Pontecorvo’s house. Liddell noted, “No one knows what happened to these reports, since the records of BSC have been destroyed.”41 As we shall see, these letters later became central to the affair.

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