Spying on the Nuclear Bear: Anglo-American Intelligence and the Soviet Bomb (review)

Conducting research about nuclear weapons is inherently difficult. The topic is sensitive and shrouded in secrecy with layers of classification. Doubly sensitive and secretive is what intelligence agencies historically thought about other countries' nuclear programs and forces. With the end of the Cold War, archival material is becoming available and this important story is starting to be told by a few intrepid scholars. Jeffrey Richelson in his Spying on the Bomb (2006) explored U.S. efforts to track nuclear developments of foes and friends, from the suspected German program during World War II to those of Iran and North Korea today. Michael Goodman, a fellow pioneer in this research field and a lecturer in the department of war studies at King's College, London, is more focused in his Spying on the Nuclear Bear, examining the joint U.S.-British effort to track the Soviet bomb from 1945 to 1958. The result is superb, as Goodman tells an enthralling and important story using the highest scholarly standards. He has been industrious in combing new archival material, using what appears to be all of the secondary literature on the topic, and tracking down participants or their heirs. Supporting a little over 200 pages of well-written narrative are 46 pages of endnotes and a 19-page bibliography.

Immediately after Hiroshima, the focus of Western governments shifted to the Soviet Union. The fledgling intelligence units on both sides of the Atlantic had a host of questions to answer. In the area of nuclear intelligence these questions were many. How long would it take Soviet scientists to develop and test a bomb, and how many could the Soviet Union produce? How was the Soviet program organized, who headed it, and which scientists were involved? How much uranium was available and of what grade? What were Soviet industrial, technical, and military capabilities? Finally, how would the Soviet military deliver a bomb to a target? Goodman describes the difficulties of finding reliable answers. Often, in the absence of anything firm, faulty assumptions crept in along with the untrustworthy technique of mirror-imaging. Not surprisingly, erroneous results were the outcome. This was clearly the case with the detonation of the first Soviet bomb in August 1949, two or three years earlier than predicted.

Goodman follows the turbulent relationship between the U.S. and British intelligence services. Each wanted as much information from the other as possible while at times not revealing everything it knew. The 1946 U.S. Atomic Energy Act (or McMahon Act) prohibited the sharing of certain kinds of knowledge (though it was revised several times in the 1950s). The bureaucratic turf battles of the era have many parallels today. Excessive secrecy often prevented even fellow national intelligence officers from sharing what they knew. Eric Welsh, a colorful figure in Goodman's story who was at the center of British nuclear intelligence, was once asked by a colleague at an already highly secret meeting which unit he directed. Welsh replied that it was too secret to mention.

A particularly strong chapter revisits the nuclear spy and defector cases, updates the latest thinking about their impact, and examines the strains they put on the relationship. It is instructive to see how the U.S. and British security services responded after the shocking revelations of the espionage activities of Klaus Fuchs, Donald Maclean, Kim Philby, John Cairncross, and Bruno Pontecorvo. Their postmortems were mostly efforts to disguise culpability, avoid blame, and claim the impact was minimal, leaving open the question of whether any lessons were learned—bureaucratic behavior that has resurfaced in recent intelligence failures.

Another chapter is devoted to the joint efforts to monitor nuclear testing through acoustic, seismic, and radiochemical means. Huge programs were created to track the Soviet tests, and for Britain in at least one instance this was a way to learn some tricks of the trade: Britain's mastery of the hydrogen bomb was aided...