USSR Denies Involvement With Spy Klaus Fuchs
The Soviet Union issued a statement on 6th March, 1950, denying any involvement with Klaus Fuchs, a German physicist who had been sentenced to fourteen years in prison just a week earlier for leaking nuclear weapon secrets.
“Fuchs is unknown to the Soviet government and no agents of the Soviet Union had any connection with Fuchs.” read the disclaimer from the USSR’s Soviet Tass News Agency, which was distributed to Western media.
Considering events following Fuchs’ release from prison, the Soviet denial might seem difficult to believe. Owing to good behaviour Fuchs was released early, in 1959, and he immediately moved to Soviet controlled East Germany. He was quickly granted citizenship and appointed Deputy Director of the Central Institute for Nuclear Research in Dresden – seemingly generous treatment for a man the Soviet government supposedly had no connection to. Spending the rest of his life in the Eastern Bloc, he received a host of honours from both the governing East German Communist Party and the scientific establishment of the Soviet Union.
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