"Alek" Goes Free

"Alel" Goes Free

Months before the first atomic bomb was exploded in Alamogordo, N.Mex., in July 1945, someone tipped off Moscow. The Russians quickly followed up the tip. In the files of the Russian intelligence services in Moscow there was the name of a British physicist, a secret member of the Communist Party, then working on the atomic project in Canada: Dr. Allan Nunn May.

The Moscow director of Russian military intelligence ordered his Ottawa bureau chief, Colonel Nikolai Zabotin, to get in touch with Dr. May through Sam Carr, organizing secretary of the Canadian Communist Party and a central figure in the spy network Zabotin had built up in Canada. Zabotin thought Carr too risky a contact and put one of his Russian operators on to May. What the Russians wanted most at this stage was information about uranium and atomic energy, and May gave it to them. In accordance with Russian espionage practice, Zabotin's man insisted on paying May, despite his squeamish objections, for his information. The fee: a bottle of whisky and at least $700. In the records of the Russian intelligence, Dr. May became known by the code name "Alek."

Message to Moscow. After the Alamogordo explosion, May's job in Canada came to an end, but before returning to England he was able to pass on to Zabotin minute samples of separated uranium isotopes. Zabotin immediately sent one of his men flying back to Moscow with the samples, dispatched this signal to Moscow: "Facts given by Alek: 1) the test of the atomic bomb was conducted in New Mexico (with '49', '94-239'). The bomb dropped on Japan was made of uranium 235. It is known that the output of uranium 235 amounts to 400 grams daily at the magnetic separation plant at Clinton . . . Alek handed us a platinum with 162 micrograms of uranium 233 in the form of oxide in a thin lamina." Zabotin told Moscow that in London Alek would be working at King's College and arranged for him to be met on the street in front of the British Museum.

At this point, Russian calculations were upset by a 26-year-old cipher clerk in the Russian embassy in Ottawa. Igor Gouzen-ko had been in Canada only two years, but he had learned to love the free Western way of life. Entrusted with the coding of Zabotin's dispatches, he became alarmed at the magnitude of the conspiracy and the added power the possession of an atomic bomb would give Dictator Stalin. One evening Gouzenko ran out of the embassy with his shirt stuffed with Moscow telegrams, including some mentioning Alek.

May failed to appear in front of the British Museum on the arranged days, but the British had no difficulty finding him at King's College. At first he denied everything, but when confronted with evidence of his complicity, he confessed: "I only embarked on it because I felt this was a contribution I could make to the safety of mankind." He refused to name his contacts. May, then 34, was tried in London in May 1946 and sentenced to ten years in prison. He was the first major atom spy to be convicted.

Years later, British and U.S. counterespionage agents ran down the now familiar roster of traitors: Klaus Fuchs, Harry Gold, David Greenglass, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. Only then did the full significance of the atomic spy ring dawn on the free world. All this while, in Britain's Wakefield prison, Allan Nunn May had proved an exemplary prisoner, becoming a trusty and working as a librarian, and earning all the remission allowed by British law for good behavior. This week, after serving two-thirds of his time (six years eight months), Atomic Physicist Allan Nunn May was released, his debt to society marked officially paid. He was a free man.

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