Sir Rudolf was a spy
From Mr Nigel West Sir: David Turner (Letters, 17 July) has quoted somewhat out of context what I wrote in 1987 about Professor Peierls's liti- gation against Richard Deacon's 1979 book The British Connection. At that time Dea- con reported that Peierls had been denounced as a Soviet spy by Allan Foote in 1946, and had further claimed that Peierls was dead. The author had no evi dence to support his first charge and the second was demonstrably untrue; my description of these events was accurate.
However, nine years later, in October 1996, the Venona texts began to undergo declassification and release, and they put the charges against Sir Rudolf Peierls in an entirely different light. Deacon never knew anything about Venona during his lifetime, and there is no hint in any of his books that he ever learned of the existence of the source. What has changed since Deacon was so wrong about Peierls in 1979 is that the cryptographers and counter-intelligence analysts have concluded that the best candi- date for the atom spy codenamed Vogel (and later Pers) in Venona was Sir Rudolf. The evidence is entirely circumstantial, and is documented in detail in my Venona: The Greatest Secret of the Cold War, but clearly the implication of Mr Turner's intervention is that chronologically subsequent evidence is immaterial, and that the death of Sir Rudolf Peierls (and therefore his ability to bring another action for defamation) was an influence on whether to disclose in 1999 that the loss of Peieris's security clearance was a direct consequence of the suspicion that he was considered the best candidate for the spy codenamed Vogel/Pers.
Mr Turner's first proposition is patently nonsensical and illogical, although his sec- ond might not appear to be quite so absurd. However, I can confirm that I did consider the issue of Sir Rudolf s reputation before publication, and I used as a yardstick whether the text published could be justi- fied (as if he were alive and willing to com- mence proceedings). Sir Rudolf was investi- gated initially as a candidate for the spy codenamed Rest (and Charles) in Venona, who turned out to be Klaus Fuchs. Having been eliminated conclusively under that cryptonym, he remains the best candidate for Vogel/Pers and inevitably will do so until the GRU archives are opened to inde- pendent scrutiny.
Nigel West
nigel@westintel.co.uk
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