Moscow Rules

“Moscow Rules” are rules of thumb said to have been developed during the Cold War to be used by spies and others working in Moscow. They were reformulated for literary purposes by former SIS officer Ian Fleming:  “Once is an accident. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action.”  Another SIS Officer, John le Carre’, condensed the Rules: "For in that profession there is no such thing as coincidence."

Coincidences in 1949 regarding the FBI’s Klaus Fuchs investigation are a case of  Moscow Rules on steroids:

• In July 1949  FBI Headquarters fielded a new Top Secret unit to investigate a critical mass of decrypted KGB messages to be received from the Army Security Agency (ASA) at Arlington Hall.  [1]

• In July 1949  British cryptanalysts participating in the ASA’s Soviet message project were able to decrypt a KGB message linking Soviet agent REST to a technical document bearing the designation “MSN.”  This document was immediately understood by British intelligence to have been authored by one of the British Mission scientists assigned to the Manhattan Project.  [2]

• In July 1949  after 3 years of ‘dormancy’ Klaus Fuchs’ American courier, Harry Gold, received a letter from his KGB control officer requesting a meeting.  [3]

• In July 1949  Klaus Fuchs missed a scheduled meeting with his KGB control officer in London.  He had never missed such contact before.  [4]

• In October 1949  British SIS Officer and Soviet Agent Kim Philby arrived in Washington DC as Liaison to both the FBI and CIA.  [5]

One hastens to Kim Philby’s autobiography, My Silent War, for more ‘appreciation’ of how it so happened that a Soviet spy was so quickly placed at the center of what J. Edgar Hoover called the Crime of the Century.  In July 1949 Kim Philby was SIS Station Chief working out of the Britiish Embassy in Istanbul, Turkey.  He had been there 4 years.  Philby wrote: “In the summer of 1949, I received a telegram from headquarters which diverted my attention to quite different matters.  The telegram offered me the SIS representation in the United States, where I would be working in liaison with both CIA and the FBI.  The intention was to upgrade the job for a significant reason.  The collaboration between the CIA and SIS at headquarters level (though not in the field) had become so close that any officer earmarked for high position in SIS would need intimate knowledge of the American scene. It took me all of half an hour to decide to accept the offer.”  Righto, Mr. Philby! ….except Moscow Rules do not permit such gambit.

Nub of the Matter

Who proposed, influenced or made the decision to send Philby to Washington DC?  The first person under consideration would be Philby’s boss at the time, Sir Stewart Menzies, Head of SIS.  However, it must be the case that in July 1949 when British Intelligence cryptanalysts uncovered Fuchs’ atomic espionage on behalf of the Soviet Union, this development was immediately brought in person to Prime Minister Winston Churchill.  It was Churchill’s decision then to finesse the Americans by not informing Truman and/or the FBI. The immediate requirement for the Prime Minister and his intelligence Chiefs was damage control.  Who then among Churchill’s advisers put forward Philby as the best operative to send to the US to finesse/contain the situation?  Moscow Rules require that individual to also have been a Soviet Agent.

Footnotes

1.  The FBI-KGB War, Robert J. Lamphere and Tom Shachtman, 1995, page 134.  “I grabbed Ernie Van Loon who had recently come to work with my section, and together we asked he AEC for a copy of that scientific paper which the Russian message had summarized.  In two short days we learned that Klaus Fuchs was the author of the paper summarized in the KGB message, and that Fuchs was one of the top British scientists on the Manhattan Project.”  Van Loon’s transfer from Los Angeles to FBIHQ occurred in July 1949.

2.  The Perfect English Spy, Tom Bower, 1995.  Biography of Dick Goldsmith White, Director of MI5.   A.  “Two more Venona messages from Washington to Moscow had been decrypted. One summarized a working document from the Manhattan Project and another identified the author and source.  The source was unmistakably identified as Klaus Fuchs. The breakthrough was passed to White. Reading Fuchs personal file, White appreciated MI5’s compromised position.” Bower, page 92.  B.  “After July 1949, Fuchs’s telephone [at Harwell] had been tapped and his mail intercepted.”  Bower, page 95.

3.  The Haunted Wood, Allen Weinstein and Alexander Vassiliiev, 1999, page 318.  “Gold received a coded letter on July 18, 1949: “Dear Harry, Just got back to New York and am going to stay here for about three weeks. Will be very glad to see you if you suggest when you can come. Yours sincerely, John.”

4.  The Man Behind the Rosenbergs, Alexander Feklisov, 2001, page 226.  “I had six covert meetings with Klaus Fuchs from September 1947 to April 1949, one every three to four months.” (page 214);  “Our next meeting on April 1, 1949, was to be the final one.”

5.  My Silent War, Kim Philby, Chapter 10, The Lion’s Den, page 183.  “In the summer of 1949, I received a telegram from headquarters …..  decide to accept the offer.”