Science: Problem in Security

Atomic authorities are still baffled by Scientist-Spy Klaus Fuchs, who has been locked in his British prison for twelve months of his 14-year sentence. As a trusted insider in both U.S. and British atom-bomb laboratories, Fuchs had an enormous amount of secret and vital information. He insists that he transmitted his knowledge to the Russians. If he did, the secrets might as well be published openly, with benefit to all Western scientists.

But did he? Who can be sure? Fuchs was a theoretical physicist (one of the best), and the matters he dealt with were abstract and difficult. It is hard to transmit such knowledge from one qualified scientific mind to another, even with plenty of time and many face-to-face conversations. There is an excellent chance that much of Fuchs’s information never reached Russian physicists in a form they can use.

Besides, the authorities reason, Fuchs may still be trying to help the Russians from his prison cell. He may be confessing to have told more than he actually did—in hope that publication will finally transmit all his knowledge to the Russians. So the authorities figure that it is best to keep their mouths tight shut, act as if Traitor Fuchs had told the Russians nothing.