New York Times: Meet the spy who changed the world and the Soviets owned their first nuclear bomb

The New York Times published a report on the disclosure of more spies who helped the former Soviet Union to obtain the first atomic bomb by transferring information from the United States where they worked.

According to the report, the world's first atomic bomb was detonated on July 16, 1945, in the New Mexico desert in the United States as a result of high-secret efforts in a project code-named "Manhattan Project," whose nerve center is located near Los Alamos in the same state.

Only 49 months later, the Soviet Union detonated an almost identical bomb in Central Asia, abruptly ending the United States' monopoly on nuclear weapons.

The speed is amazing
According to the report, the speed with which Moscow was able to achieve this achievement surprised scientists, federal institutions and historians of America. A few years later, three spies were identified that transferred American nuclear knowledge to the former Soviet Union. A fourth spy, Oscar Seborer, who, like the first three Cold War spies, was identified at the heavily guarded Los Alamos laboratory.

Seborer fled to the Soviet Union a few years later. The FBI eventually learned of this, but kept the information confidential.

The report cites nuggets from an article by Cold War historians Harvey Claire and John Earl Haynes, published in the current issue of Intelligence Studies, an internal CIA magazine, "On the Path of a Fourth Soviet Spy in Los Alamos." In separate interviews, spy hunters told historians they were still collecting evidence about the exact nature of Cyberer's atomic theft.

Jewish immigrants
Born in New York City in 1921, Seborer, the youngest child of Jewish immigrants from Poland, attended New York City College, studied electrical engineering and worked in Los Alamos from 1944 to 1946.

In July 1945, he worked in the seismic effects monitoring unit of the first US atomic bombing. His Soviet symbolic name, Godsend, could be translated into Arabic in this context as the "gift of God" and came to Los Alamos from a family of spies.

In 1951 Seborer fled the United States to the Soviet Union with his older brother Stuart, as well as his brother-in-law and mother-in-law, and in 1964 was awarded the prestigious Red Star Military Order. He died in Moscow in April 2015 under the presumed name of Smith, and his funeral was attended by officials, including the undersecretary of the Internal Security Agency.

Group of relatives
From the examination of KGB archives, the authors of the report, Claire and Heinz, obtained information about a mysterious group of spies in the United States known as the "group of relatives." The latter provided confidential information about Enormos, the symbolic name of the US project to the Soviets.

In 2012, Claire obtained files from the FBI - declassified at the time - for informers who successfully infiltrated the American Communist Party. He suddenly solved the atomic puzzle to reveal that Godsend was the code name for Oscar, Godfazer was the code name for Stewart, and Relativ was their older brother Max.

Mark Kramer, director of Cold War Studies at Harvard University, said the study highlighted the "extent of espionage in the Manhattan Project," adding that it would help to paraphrase a long debate about the relative importance of American spies and Russian scientists in Moscow for Russian atomic penetration in 1949.

Bomb Equation ( A )
Following the fourth spy, Claire and Heinze uncovered the secret life of the electrical engineer, the fourth spy, whose family was part of a network of people associated with the KGB. They reported that Seaburer joined the US military in October 1942 and was appointed to the Oak Ridge Complex. Tennessee, a giant industrial arm of the Manhattan Project. The documents revealed that he handed the Soviets the equation of the bomb "A".

Mark Kramer visited the Harvard scientist in Moscow last year and tried to help historians track down Stewart (formerly known as Seborer) who was thought to be alive because no records of his death had been found. Although Stuart had a registered phone number, anyone who tried to call him who followed him failed to get a response.

Kramer went to Stuart's last known apartment and rang the doorbell, but no response either. He spoke to the neighbors and showed them a picture of him. But he didn't get any information.

The Harvard scientist concludes that there is still a lot to know about the atomic spy that has helped change the world.