The FUCASE

The FBI investigation of Klaus Fuchs officially began on September 22, 1949, with the dissemination of a top secret memorandum captioned, "EMIL JULIUS KLAUS FUCHS, was. Espionage - R." After Fuchs was arrested in Britain in January 1950, the "Fuchs case" was shortened to FUCASE— this followed the convention of the MOCASE (Boris Morros investigation). “FUCASE,” however, had a short shelf life. American reflexive mispronunciation of Fuchs, and the derivative case name, was deemed too capricious and salty by Bureau chiefs. With undeniable regret at the supervisor level, another file name was directed. As history records, the more phonetically and politically correct “FOOCASE” was approved. [1]

Overview

When Fuchs was sent to America, the British Government withheld critical security information about him from the U.S. Army.   When the British security services investigated Fuchs in connection with the Gouzenko spy case, they withheld that fact from the Federal Bureau of Investigation.   When the Venona decrypts were being decipherd by a joint American-British effort, the British withheld the fact that they had broken a critical message and uncovered Fuchs’s espionage.

Kommunisten Partei Deutschlands (KPD)

Klaus Fuchs joined the German Communist Party (KPD) in 1932 in Kiel, Germany. In 1933, after Hitler was named Chancellor, the KPD was outlawed and a warrant was issued for Fuchs’ arrest. That same year, British intelligence “opened a security file on Fuchs when a MI6 agent in Kiel reported on his KPD activities.” The KPD ordered Fuchs to leave Germany and he escaped to Paris in summer 1933. Fuchs subsequently found a sponsor in Great Britain, Ronald Gunn. He obtained a travel visa and arrived in England in September. Joining the Gunn household in Somerset, England, Fuchs resumed his studies at the University of Bristol, where his patron was Nevill Mott, head of the Physics Department. In 1934, Mott successfully interceded with the British Home Office (Immigration) to have Fuchs’ residency extended after the German Consulate in Bristol notified the local police office that Fuchs was a Communist and refused to renew his passport. [2]

In England, Fuchs continued KPD political associations and activities: He contacted Jurgen Kuczynski, figurehead of the KPD in exile; he completed a KPD biographical sheet; he attended meetings of the Friends of Soviet Russia in Bristol; both he and his patron Nevill Mott were active members of Willi Muzenberg's KPD front organization, the Society for Cultural Relations with the Soviet Union; Fuchs raised funds for the communist side in the Spanish Civil War; he distributed KPD anti-Nazi propaganda leaflets not only in Edinburgh but smuggled them into Germany. At the time, the Home Office considered such activities “a political asset in the growing resistance to fascism and Nazism.” In 1938, Fuchs approached the Home Office with a request for an unlimited residence permit and the request was granted.” [3]

Fuchs’ status in England was that of a German political refugee. This changed dramatically in 1939: In August, Germany and Russia signed a formal non-aggression pact; on September 3, after the German invasion of Poland, Prime Minister Chamberlain announced to the British people that a state of war existed between Britain and Germany. Within months, Fuchs was classified as an enemy alien. In November, he was called before a tribunal in Edinburgh and found not to be a subversive threat. However, with the collapse of France and Russia’s invasion of Finland, Britain’s national security situation deteriorated significantly. In 1940, Fuchs was called before another enemy alien tribunal run by a special committee of representatives of the War Office and the Security Services. This time Fuchs was judged to be a security risk and, on May 12, 1940, he was interned on the Isle of Man. [4]

Fuchs was interned not because he was a native German who might support his homeland—his anti-fascist (anti-Hitler) credentials were peerless. He was interned because he was believed to be a staunch Communist, one still affiliated with the KPD and one who could be expected to support Russia—now viewed as a potential adversary. Indeed, the British government’s view of Fuchs’ background was such that it decided to segregate him further. In July 1940 he was sent to an internment camp in Sherbrooke, Canada. Here Fuchs behaved true to form: “Being among Germans again, he reverted to his Communist past and dropped his concealment of his Communist beliefs.” At Sherbrooke, the Communist internees formed a group lead by Hans Kahle, a German Communist who had commanded an International Brigade in Spain. Fuchs’s association with Kahle and membership in Kahle’s KPD camp group was reported and duly recorded in his security file with British intelligence. [5]

Important personages in Britain appealed Fuchs's incarceration. Chief among these was Professor Max Born, who described Fuchs as among the two or three most gifted theoretical physicists of the young generation and a man who could do work of national importance. Another who petitioned for Fuchs’ freedom was Nevill Mott. These appeals found their mark and Fuchs was returned to Britain on December 17, 1940, whereupon he resumed work at Edinburgh University. On May 10, 1941, Rudolf Peierls invited Fuchs to join his Birmingham University lab to do work related to the discovery of uranium fission and its possible use in an atom bomb. Fuchs moved to Birmingham on May 28, before he was officially cleared to work on atomic research. In June, after several weeks of security vetting, he was granted a restricted clearance. Some of Fuchs work at Birmingham would in fact be included in the seminal Maud Committee report. [6]

On June 22, 1941, Germany declared war on Russia. The security calculus in Britain became the opposite of what it had been—misgiving about Soviet Russia was replaced with embrace. By the autumn of 1941 Britain was providing massive military aid to Stalin. Moreover, the head of British Intelligence went to Moscow for meetings with his Soviet counterpart. Churchill concluded the Cripps-Molotov agreement, a treaty of mutual military assistance and scientific exchange. In late 1941, Britain’s atomic bomb project was taken over by the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research (DSIR). At this juncture, Fuchs’ clearance was again reviewed. The security dossier on Fuchs was dicey enough to warrant bucking the decision to DSIR Director, Sir Edward Appleton. In the final analysis, Appleton decided “Fuchs was so important to Tube Alloys that the security risk should be taken.” As a result, Fuchs signed the Official Secrets Act and was cleared for atomic work with no restrictions. Virtually concurrent with these events, Fuchs reverted to type. In late 1941, he contacted KPD leader Jurgen Kuczynski and “told him he had some information that could be of value to the Soviet Union.” Forthwith, Klaus Fuchs became a Soviet espionage agent. [7]

In 1942, Fuchs applied for British citizenship. The security services raising no objections, Fuchs was naturalized in July 1942 as a “national interest [special] case” (meaning he was a physicist during wartime). Subsequently, however, it was reported to British security that while interned at Sherbrooke Fuchs had associated with KPD leader Hans Khale and had been a member of the Communist cell there organized by him. Another report then came in from “a refugee source” to the effect that Fuchs “belonged to the German Communist Party and was taking part in propagandist activities in Birmingham.” Neither of these new items of information resulted in a challenge to Fuchs's security clearance. At this same time, Fuchs was regularly meeting Soviet control officers (e.g., SONYA) and passing everything he knew about Tube Alloys, which was everything there was to be known. [8]

Klaus Fuchs had been a Soviet spy in Britain for two years at the point in December 1943 when British officials included him in the British Atomic Mission to America. When General Groves received the names of the British Mission scientists, he requested specific assurances as to their security clearances. The British responded with a vague, unsatisfactory answer. Groves again asked for more definitive security information on the members of the Mission. The answer he received was “that each member had been investigated as thoroughly as an employee of [the U.S.] engaged on the same type of work.” Groves reluctantly accepted this blanket statement. The British assurance was a conscious, calculated decision to withhold derogatory security information about Fuchs from the U.S. Army, the sole agency charged with counter-intelligence security for the Manhattan Project. [9]

Halperin Address Book and Diary

On September 5, 1945, Igor Gouzenko, a cipher clerk at the Soviet Embassy in Ottawa, Canada, defected. He brought out of the embassy over 100 documents exposing an espionage network run by Red Army Military Intelligence (GRU). One of the sources developed by the GRU was Israel Halperin (codename BACON). It so happened that Halperin had a connection to Klaus Fuchs and to Fuchs’ sister in Boston, Kristel Fuchs Heineman. The connection was this: Halperin’s brother-in-law, Wendell Hinkle Furry, was a member of the same Communist Party cell in Boston as Kristel’s husband, Robert Block Hieneman. When Fuchs was interned at Sherbrooke in 1940, Halperin and Furry served as a communication channel between Klaus and Kristel. Halperin sent Fuchs sundries and reading material. Consequently, Halperin entered brother and sister in his personal address book as follows:

"Klaus Fuchs
asst. to M. Born, 84 Grange Lane
University of Edinburgh, Scotland
Camp N Camp L Internment Operations [Camp L circled]
Kristel Heineman, 55 Carvel Road, Watertown." [10]

After Halperin was arrested in February 1946, the RCMP searched his home and confiscated his address book and a diary. On March 12, 1946, the FBI received photo copies of these documents, which contained over 700 hundred names of persons living in Canada, the U.S. and other parts of the world. Bureau Headquarters conducted a preliminary review of the contents. Then, on June 11, 1946, copies of the address book and diary were forwarded to 19 FBI field offices for immediate investigation of persons located in their areas. Upon receipt of the Halperin materials, the Boston office instituted a Security Matter-C [Communist] investigation of Kristel Fuchs Heineman. [11]

Investigation of Kristel Heineman led to the fact that her husband, Robert Heineman, was an active member of the Communist Party. A separate investigation was therefore opened on Robert Heineman. In view of the fact that Wendell Furry was also listed in Halperin’s address book, the Boston office instituted a Security Matter-C investigation of him. FBI records indicate that neither Kristel nor Robert Heineman were interviewed by Boston agents in 1946 relative to the Halperin matter. Ostensibly, information developed from other sources was sufficient to clear the Heinemans of any involvement in the Gouzenko case. The Boston investigation of Kristel Heineman was closed in December 1946; the investigation of Robert Heineman was closed in October 1947. [12]

On September 22, 1949, FBI Headquarters opened an espionage investigation of Klaus Fuchs. The basis of the investigation was Venona decrypts revealing Soviet espionage by an unknown subject with the covername REST, later changed to CHARLES. Inasmuch as the decrypts implicated a sister of REST, the Bureau instituted a separate investigation of Kristel Heineman for Espionage. At the outset of these investigations, a search of the Bureau’s indices returned five items for Klaus Fuchs:

•  An Army MED notification to the Bureau of the arrival of “K. Fuchs” in the U.S. in December 1943
•  An Army MED notification to the Bureau of the transfer of “Dr. K. Fuchs” to Los Alamos in August 1944
•  An Army MED notification to the Bureau of the return of “Dr. K. Fuchs” to the U.K. from Montreal, Canada, in June 1946
•  The name Klaus Fuchs was found in Israel Halperin’s address book
•  A Gestapo document, captured in 1945 at the end of the war, listed the name “Klaus Fuchs” as a  suspected Communist Party member. [13]

The question that arose for FBI investigators in 1949 was, what action had been taken by the Bureau in 1946 when it received the Halperin address book with an entry for one Klaus Fuchs of the University of Edinburgh? A Special Agent was tasked to prepare a memorandum on this point for Director Hoover prior to his appearance before a Congressional committee on February 6, 1950. The agent’s review noted that at the time Halperin’s address book was received from the RCMP, March 1946, the “derogatory” German document containing the name Klaus Fuchs had not yet been recorded in the Bureau’s registry. Therefore, “as of that time, the Bureau’s files contained no information whatsoever identifiable with Klaus Fuchs, University of Edinburgh.” Further, it was noted, “the Halperin address book having been made available to the British Intelligence Services by the RCMP, no attempt to investigate individuals listed therein with addresses in Great Britain was made [by the FBI].” [14]

The security concerns of General Groves and the security laws of the United States were absolutely known to the British government. Notwithstanding this fact, at no time did the British furnish to U.S. officials the information that Klaus Fuchs had been interned as a German enemy alien and that he had been a member of the German Communist Party. [15]

Venona - Rest/Charles

In early 1949, collaboration between the United States and Britain began in what would turn out to be the Fuchs case. At that time, British cryptanalysts were working at the Army Securtiy Agency (ASA) on the Venona program. Progress on a number of messages showed a British interest, and General Carter Clark, head of the ASA, met with representatives of British Intelligence about this development. At a conference on April 4, 1949, one of the items again raised with British intelligence officers (Geoffrey Patterson MI5, and Peter Dwyer MI6) was decrypt information regarding the covername Rest. According to FBI documents, “the British representatives indicated considerable interest in the material regarding Rest and indicated that they were attempting to identify him.” Although still very fragmentary, the decrypt showed that in June 1944 Soviet agent Rest had furnished his espionage contact a document partially identified as “MSN.” [16]

Fast forward: In the middle of August 1949, the ASA forwarded a slew of Soviet decrypts to the FBI for investigation. Among them were at least seven decrypts pertaining to Soviet agent Rest, later changed to Charles. In the four months since April, the ASA had made progress on the message that discussed a report designated as “MSN-1_”. In August 1949 this decrypt, New York to Moscow, No. 850, 15 June 1944, now read as follows:

“To Viktor …. [one group unrecovered] received from Rest the third part of the report MSN-1 (one digit missing) - - - - Efrent (Efferent?) Fluctuation in a Stream [37 groups unrevoverable] (diffu?)sion method - - - work on his specialty. (Rest?) …. doubt of the possibility of staying in the United States without arousing suspicion. According to Rest’s information the British and the Americans finally ……….. slowing down of research work on diffusion. The Americans advised the representative of Great Britain that construction of a plant in Great Britain ‘will directly contradict the spirit of agreement on Atomic Energy signed together with the Atlantic Charter.’ Right now ….. (of?) Great Britain in Washington is looking into the details of the transfer of the work to Great Britain. Rest presumes he will have to leave in a matter of a month and a half.” [17]

Later in August, the Bureau’s new Soviet Message Unit advised British intelligence that they were in receipt of Bureau Source Five (Venona) material that included significant data on Rest/Charles (which was described). This memorandum requested British assistance on identification of the MSN report and the identity of Rest. In early September, the British confirmed that the MSN report was likely a document originated in 1944 by the British Mission in New York, and they supplied information on four British scientists believed to have had access to it. These were, “Rudolph Ernest Peierls, C. F. Kearton, Dr. Tony Hilton Royle Skyrme, and Emil Julius Klaus Fuchs.” [18]

The information on the first three scientists proved correct. The data on Fuchs, however, was completely inaccurate. Fuchs's name was reported to the FBI as “Emil Julius Klaus Fuchs;” his place of birth as "Ruesselhtenm, country unknown;" his occupation as "medical physicist;" his August 14, 1944 transfer as a posting to “Oak Ridge;” and his current status as, “a senior research worker at the Atomic Energy Project at Harwell, England.” Five data items on Fuchs, all falsehoods. This bogus information was included in the FBI Headquarters Memorandum dated September 22, 1949, which inaugurated the Fuchs investigation. In a 4-page letter of the same date, September 22, 1949, the Bureau summarized in detail to British intelligence its investigation of Klaus Fuchs and his sister, Kristel Fuchs Heineman. In a letter dated October 29, 1949, British intelligence formally replied and acknowledged the espionage of Klaus Fuchs. This British memorandum confirmed that, among the 4 scientists under suspicion, Fuchs alone had a sister and concluded, "in the light of information supplied by you Fuchs has been proved beyond all reasonable doubt to be identical with the Soviet agent Rest." [19]

The British concession, “information supplied by you,” was a sop—a ploy in The Great Game. In point of fact, a charade had been taking place for most of 1949. In February 1950, during the press frenzy in London surrounding the arraignment and trial of Fuchs, two senior British officials leaked that it was the British intelligence services who had uncovered Fuchs. [20]

The Great Game

“The Great Game” is a term found in British lore. Historically, it referred to the rivalry in the Nineteenth Century between the British Empire and the Russian Empire for supremacy in Central Asia. Although the ends of The Great Game were geopolitical and strategic, it was the tactical use of intelligence that often was key. Originally, the term is attributed to Arthur Conolly, an intelligence officer of the British East India Company's Sixth Bengal Light Cavalry. British novelist Rudyard Kipling popularized the expression in his 1901 novel Kim. Its usage in the Twentieth Century has devolved to the notion of spycraft, a dark art at which the British are considered world-class. [21]

British Mission

The British Atomic Mission to America during the war is a direct consequence of the Quebec Agreement signed by Roosevelt and Churchill on August 19, 1943. This agreement formalized the collaboration between the U.S. and the U.K. on the development of the atomic bomb, cloaked as “the Matter of Tube Alloys” in the language of the Agreement. The specific predicate for the scientific Mission was the clause, “Whereas this may be more speedily achieved if all available British and American brains and resources are pooled:” One of the science areas in which the British were advanced was Diffusion Theory, the methods and analytics of purifying and aggregating fissile material (uranium). In England in November 1943, a team of diffusion specialists was assembled under Wallace Akers. They arrived in Portsmouth, VA, aboard the Andes on December 3, 1943. [22]

The Diffusion group, also known as the “Akers Mission,” comprised 16 members, one of whom was Klaus Fuchs. It was projected from the beginning that, upon completion of their collaboration on Diffusion, the Akers group would return to the U.K. By March 1944, most members had returned home. It was decided at this time, however, that Fuchs should stay in the U.S. The official history of Britain’s atomic energy program reveals that this decision regarding Fuchs was the subject of special consideration: “when it was decided that Fuchs should remain in the U.S., Michael Perrin went out of his way to ask security for their latest and most detailed views on Fuchs—it was a very important matter vis-à-vis the Americans and he wanted to be quite sure ‘we do not slip up in any way.’” Again, this was a policy rethink on the issue of Fuchs's security dossier, several months after the security review that allowed him on the British Mission in the first place. The concern expressed by Perrin is inconsistent with the British claim that all that was known about Fuchs was his communist “proclivities,” and that “no reliable evidence of Communist sympathies or affiliations had been obtained since Fuchs arrived in Britain [in 1933].” [23]

The truth of the matter is that British foreign intelligence, MI6 and its American subsidiary, BSC, had a detailed and accurate dossier on Klaus Fuchs. Indeed, Fuchs himself told FBI Special Agents Clegg and Lamphere that his internment classification was “German Communist” and, further, that in 1941 he had advised his enemy alien hearing board that he was a Communist in order to convince the board of his anti-Nazi sentiments. Despite three requests by General Groves for specific security vetting on members of the British Mission, the British withheld the derogatory data on Fuchs. Perrin’s statement shows that this action was not only intentional, but with full understanding that Fuchs’s employment on the Manhattan project would contravene the laws and policies of the United States. Most cleverly, the British fobbed-off a U.S. Army General with the purported truth: ‘each member has been investigated as thoroughly as an employee of yours engaged on the same type of work.’ This, in reality, was more than true: By factors, British personnel security investigations were superior to U.S. Army CI background checks.

In 1965, in retirement, Groves read Margaret Gowing's official history of the British atomic energy program and came across a detail that did not comport with his understanding of the facts. He wrote Gowing for clarification. From Robert Norris's 2002 biography of Leslie R. Groves:

"Groves asked about a statement in her book that a 'qualified clearance was given to Klaus Fuchs.' At the time [1943] Groves understood that the British Mission had been given an unqualified clearance. Groves had refused clearance until he got a definite statement as to their security status. Dr. W. L. Webster, of the British Central Scientific Office in Washington, initially supplied a list of names, which Groves rejected as inadequate. Webster then wrote that they were all reliable people; Groves rejected this as well. Finally Webster wrote to the effect that 'Each man has been investigated by MI-5 to the same extent that he would have been investigated if he were an American who was to have access to the same information.' This statement was clearly false. The matter remains unresolved to this day. Did Webster lie or did someone else?"  [24]

Gouzenko Investigation

The head of all United Kingdom intelligence operations in the Western Hemisphere during the war was William Stephenson (a Canadian). He was personally dispatched to North America by Winston Churchill, arriving in the U.S. in 1940. His initial cover was that of British Passport Control Officer in New York. This small government office was inadequate and was quickly subsumed into the existing British Supply Council. From this cover, Stephenson headed British Security Coordination (BSC), an umbrella intelligence organization with representatives from MI6 (SIS), MI5, and Special Operations Executive (SOE). It is reported that Stephenson happened to be in Ottawa in early September 1945 when Gouzenko defected and, furthermore, that it was largely due to his counsel that Gouzenko was not handed back to the Russians. In addition to his own frequent presence in Ottawa, Stephenson ordered two intelligence officers there to oversee the Gouzenko case, MI6 officer Peter Dwyer from Washington D.C. and BSC officer John-Paul Evans from New York. [25]

Documents taken out of the Soviet Embassy by Gouzenko implicated Israel Halperin in a GRU spy network. Halperin was arrested on February 15, 1946, by the RCMP on charges of violating Canada’s Official Secrets Act. At the time of his arrest, an address book and diary, containing over 700 names of business firms and individuals, were confiscated from his home. One of the entries in the address book was, ‘Klaus Fuchs assistant to Max Born University of Edinburgh Scotland.' Having been informed in 1946 that the Halperin material had been made available to British intelligence, the FBI, at the outset of the Venona Fuchs investigation, pursued the question of what British intelligence had done regarding the Halperin-Fuchs link. Two puzzling answers were forthcoming. The first, developed from the inert Gouzenko file, was that British intelligence representatives in Ottawa in 1946 did not take copies of the Haperin documents. The second was the British response in October 1949 that the contacts of Halperin with addresses in Great Britain had not been investigated. As to the crucial question of why Fuchs was not uncovered in 1946, it is fair to say the British were fronting incompetence. [26]

Be that as it may, there is still the question of actions by the RCMP. Halperin was brought to trial by Canadian prosecutors. Records show that the confiscated Halperin material was examined minutely by Canadian security officials. Historians have characterized Halperin's personal address book as the "carrier of a virus," infecting all named in it. It is an organic certainty that the RCMP observed Fuchs’s entry in the address book, taking particular note of one “Klaus Fuchs,” who had been a British internee in Canada in 1941. The name Klaus Fuchs was also available to RCMP investigators in other Canadian records. Since arriving in the U.S., Fuchs had traveled to Canada twice on Tube Alloys matters. Presumably, the British Supply Council (British Security Coordination) in New York had submitted Fuchs's name and clearance to RCMP security prior to his attendance at a Canadian National Research Council conference in March 1944. Canadian immigration records would also have reflected Fuchs's visa and visits to Canada. [27]

In consideration of the above, there appears to be a “dog that didn’t bark” aspect to the proverbial question, What did British intelligence know, and when did they know it? It is important to recognize what the British never asserted to the FBI: They never affirmed or denied that in 1946 they had knowledge of the Halperin entry on Klaus Fuchs. Even if uncritical authors/historians accept the British disavowals regarding 'copies' and 'investigations,' it cannot be the case that the RCMP did not, in 1946, bring German Communist Klaus Fuchs to the attention of their brethren security service. As it happens, there are two circumstances that suggest that they did, thus undercutting the British denials (already absurd on their face). The first is that when the Halperin address book was made available to British intelligence in March 1946, Fuchs was still working at Los Alamos. Within months, however, he was extracted—departing from Montreal by RAF bomber in June 1946. [28]

The second, more provocative circumstance is an item double-sourced in the existing literature. It is reported that MI5 officer Michael Suppell, in a review of Fuchs's MI5 file in late 1946, noted for the record that “a diary seized in Canada following Gouzneko’s defection also mentioned Fuchs” and Suppell had recommended that Fuchs be investigated. However, MI5 officials reviewing Fuchs’s file four years later in 1950, found that “Suppell’s recommendation … had been ignored.” The evidence indicates otherwise, to wit, that Suppell’s recommendation was overruled by higher authority—trumped by a greater national security interest. It is significant that MI6 had used Fuchs’s services as far back as 1941. Moreover, in 1946, proximate to the time of Suppell’s review, MI6 had put Fuchs in a British Army uniform and sent him to Germany to interview atomic physicist Otto Hahn. The British treacheries of “no copies” and “no investigations” are recognized for what they were, operational disinformation. [29]

Triple-cross

During the early phases of the Fuchs investigation, the FBI and British intelligence exchanged information regarding the fateful transfer of Klaus Fuchs to Los Alamos. The British had advised that Fuchs was transferred to Oak Ridge in August 1944. But the Bureau had already learned from the AEC that he had actually gone to Los Alamos. Given its significance, the British were obliged to provide a detailed explanation of his transfer to Los Alamos. The British account failed to include an important document, a letter dated July 14, 1944, by James Chadwick, scientific head of the British Mission in Washington, D.C. [30]  The following is an extended abstract from the Chadwick letter:

"Dear Peierls, I have now had talks with both Kearton and Fuchs about the future of the New York section and in particular about their own positions. ... Fuchs' future is not so clear. ... I have now had a talk with Fuchs himself. He feels that he has a special contribution to make in England, whereas in Y [Los Alamos] he would be one of a number and can make no really significant difference to the work. ... I agree completely with these views of Kearton and Fuchs, and I feel sure you also agree at least in principle. ... I come now to the point of this letter. It would put me in a very awkward position if a request for Fuchs' services in Y were to be sent to Groves. ... I therefore do not want Bethe to ask for Fuchs. Further than that, I want Bethe to say that Fuchs would not be specially useful in Y, if Groves asks if they want him, as he may. This means some tactful work on your part and I hope you will be able to do what is necessary by suggestion rather than direct action. ... I have prepared the ground here and I think the matter can be arranged. I have stated that Fuchs could be useful in Y but that his special qualifications are not on the nuclear side but on the diffusion plant. Yours sincerely, J. Chadwick." [31]