Word: sudoplatov
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...planned at least one more, speaks with repellent offhandedness about still other assassinations. He is capable of warmth, though -- for his old boss, Lavrenti Beria, and for Beria's boss, Joseph Stalin; he still admires both even while acknowledging their "criminal activities." None of which by itself discredits Pavel Sudoplatov's sensational tales of Soviet espionage; in fact his closeness to Beria, Stalin's last secret-police chief (1938-53), whom he served as a spy master, put him in a position to know. But Sudoplatov's most stunning charge -- that world-renowned physicists J. Robert Oppenheimer, Enrico Fermi, Niels...
...issue is a single chapter, excerpted in the April 25 issue of TIME, of the book Special Tasks: The Memoirs of an Unwanted Witness -- A Soviet Spymaster. Though Sudoplatov and his son Anatoli are listed as the authors, the book was actually put together by American journalists Jerrold Schecter, a former Moscow bureau chief for TIME, and his wife Leona, from 20 hours of taped interviews with Sudoplatov, together with his official writings for KGB archives and other documents gathered by his son. The spymaster, however, now 86, read and signed the written Russian-language version of the disputed chapter...
...Moscow the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service -- a successor to the agency that Beria once headed and Sudoplatov worked for -- put out a rare public disclaimer. Sudoplatov's "allegations ((about)) Enrico Fermi, Leo Szilard, Robert Oppenheimer," it said, "do not correspond to reality." Oleg Tsarev of the same agency, an in-house expert on atomic spying, says, "Having seen the summary file ((on nuclear espionage)), I can tell you there are no such names as Sudoplatov mentions in it." He makes one tiny exception: "One of our sources had a discussion with someone who knew Oppenheimer in 1945." But the report...
...biographer of physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, I urge strong caution in accepting without serious scrutiny Pavel Sudoplatov's account of Oppenheimer's "contributions" to Soviet nuclear weapons development ((BOOK EXCERPT, April 25)). It is a matter of historical record that Oppenheimer was interested in a variety of left-wing causes during the 1930s and early '40s and that friends and family belonged to the American Communist Party for brief periods. It is also true that the Soviets were able to penetrate the wartime Manhattan Project -- and particularly Los Alamos. Klaus Fuchs is without doubt their greatest success in that regard...
There is no evidence that he passed or allowed others to pass classified information to the Soviets or any other source. Sudoplatov claims to recall events that took place more than 50 years ago. His memory could be faulty or in error, or he might be guilty of deliberate fabrication. He could be confusing Oppenheimer's prewar politics with Fuchs' detailed reporting of bomb secrets...