"Soviet Colonel Oleg Penkosky spied in the build-up to the gravest nuclear crisis of all time, when the world came close to annihilation."
—Sean Pertwee's opening narration
In 1960, Soviet Military Intelligence Officer Oleg Penkovsky passes a letter offering to share secrets with the U.S. Government to American students visiting Moscow, but Washington fails to respond.
Penkovsky later passes a letter to British Trade Delegation representative Greville Wynne warning that Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev was planning an all-out nuclear attack. Penkovsky meets with MI6 officer Harry Shergold and Central Intelligence Agency agent Joe Bulik a short time later on a trip to London and warns that the Soviets have been arming Cuba. Penkovsky is instructed to gather info on missile strategy and is given British industrial secrets to help maintain his cover upon his return to Moscow.
Chief Marshall Sergei Varentsov tells Penkovsky of plans to deploy battlefield nuclear weapons in Berlin. Penkovsky passes this along with other secrets that hardens U.S. President John F. Kennedy's stance against Khrushchev. KGB Lt-Gen Gribanov begins a surveillance sweep of Western embassy staff in Moscow, including Penkovsky's contact Janet Chisholm. Wynne returns to Moscow to make contact and Penkovsky requests that he and his family are pulled out. CIA Chief John McCone agrees but needs info on Cuba first.
Penkovsky learns of the deployment of Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba but he is hospitalised before he can pass on the info. US surveillance photos reveal the build-up of missiles in Cuba that are identified from the materials previously supplied by Penkovsky. Penkovsky is arrested and confesses to Gribanov before signalling the Americans of an imminent Soviet attack in what Bulik suspects is an attempt to initiate a U.S. strike on Moscow. Penkovsky is convicted of spying and executed.
At about 36:17 a map of Europe and the USSR is presented, which incorrectly shows Russia at its post-1991 borders instead of the Soviet Union in 1962.
"1945, America prepares to unleash the most destructive weapon ever seen... a weapon of mass murder created by men of genius, but one is a communist spy."
Project mastermind Robert Oppenheimer only had enough uranium 235 for one bomb and Peierls and Fuchs were brought in to work on weaponising plutonium. Cut off from his Soviet handlers Fuchs throws himself into his work until he is allowed to visit his sister, Kristel, in Cambridge, Massachusetts where he re-establishes contact. The Soviet head of atomic research Igor Kurchatov monitors the American progress through Fuchs. Following Nazi surrender Fuchs fears the weapon will be used against the USSR.
Fuchs passes the details of the plutonium bomb, Fat Man, to his Soviet contact, Raymond. The project's tests are successful and the uranium bomb, Little Boy, is dropped on Hiroshima while Piles and Fuchs's Fatman is dropped on Nagasaki. In the aftermath Soviet premier Joseph Stalin orders Lavrentiy Beria to construct a Soviet plutonium bomb based on the Fatman plans supplied by Fuchs. Recalled to England, his adopted home, Fuchs returns with the nuclear secrets the U.S. is no longer willing to share. Fuchs passes the American secrets to the British as well.
Fuchs begins to doubt Stalin's actions and decides to stop spying for Soviets, but it is too late as the Soviet Union detonates Joe 1. FBI agent Robert Lamphere identifies Fuchs from decoded Soviet signals and MI5 commence surveillance. British security officer Henry Arnold coaxes a confession out of Fuchs who admits to having spied for the Soviets since 1941. Fuchs was convicted of espionage and sentenced to 14 years in prison.
"After the Second World War, America was looking forward to a bright Atomic future. As the only country with the atom bomb it felt secure. 29th of August 1949, the Soviets stun the world by exploding their own atom bomb. Suddenly the West itself was under threat. Edward Teller, a leading physicist from Hungary, believed the only way to save the world from Soviet Communism was to build an even bigger bomb, the hydrogen bomb, or Super."
Kitty Oppenheimer fears her communist connections may compromise her husband and his moral objections to the project. Sakharov reviews Fuchs' info on Teller's Super but has his own plans for a simpler but less powerful bomb. Federal Bureau of Investigation agent Robert Lamphere gets Fuchs to confirm his contact was Harry Gold and this leads to the arrest of the Rosenbergs. Teller and Stanislaw Ulam find an ingenious solution to the problems with their design, which is successfully tested following Teller's resignation from the project.
A power struggle in the USSR following the death of Stalin results in the downfall of Beria shortly before the testing of the Soviet H-bomb. Strauss orders the FBI to revoke Oppenheimer's security clearance under suspicion of spying for the Soviets. When U.S. testing runs out of control the American public are alerted to the power of this new weapon. Teller testifies against Oppenheimer at a security hearing and Strauss's objections are upheld. Sakharov becomes a leading dissident after civilians are killed in a Soviet bomb test.
"This is the first man to tell the world nuclear weapons have arrived in the most troubled region on the Earth, the Middle East. In doing so he's exposed the West's opposition to nuclear proliferation as little more than a sham. Vanunu is banned from talking to foreign media, based on eyewitness testimony, this film is his story."
—Sean Pertwee's opening narration
February 1977 Nuclear Technician Mordechai Vanunu is assigned to work at the top secret Dimona facility. In 1986 he reveals to journalists Oscar Guerrero and Peter Hounam the presence of an underground plutonium plant there. Former Israeli Prime MinisterDavid Ben-Gurion had commissioned construction of the plant in 1958. Vanunu had made the discovery after 7-years at the plant and had photos to prove his story. Hounam takes Vanunu to The Sunday Times in London, where Nuclear Physicist Frank Barnaby confirms the data, but the Mossad is tailing them.
Guerrero arrives in London and tries to sell the story to rival paper The Sunday Mirror. France, Britain and the U.S. had been complicit in the construction under a secret agreement between U.S. PresidentRichard Nixon and Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir. The lonely Vanunu befriends intern Wendy Robbins but she insists that they remain just friends. The discredited story in the Mirror causes the Times to delay their publication. Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres forbids the Mossad from kidnapping Vanunu on British soil so they spring a honey trap to lure him to Rome.
In Italy Vanunu is abducted and shipped back to Israel but the Times decides to publish in the hopes of protecting his life. The Western powers that had professed a stance of non-nuclear proliferation while collaborating in the construction of Dimona were exposed as hypocrites and yet the press in those countries remained curiously silent on the subject. The Israelis confirm that they have Vanunu in detention but refuses to explain how. Convicted of treason Vanunu was sentenced to 18 years in prison.
"Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan: brilliant scientist, trusted colleague, nuclear spy. Khan's master plan: to bring technology from Europe, build an atomic bomb for Pakistan, and set up a network to sell technology to Middle Eastern states from Libya to Iran."
—Sean Pertwee's opening narration
Pakistani scientist A.Q. Khan started working for URENCO in The Netherlands in 1972. working for the Pakistani Government, Khan gained access to technology due to lax security methods. Returning to Pakistan with his family in 1975.
Khan's family had left for Pakistan following the end of 1971 Indo-Pakistan War. Khan had become a fierce nationalist. Pakistan's President Bhutto supported Khan and he constructed a nuclear plant in the foothills of the Himalayas. Dutch enquiries in the 1980s finally revealed what Khan was doing but he gets off on a technicality. The U.S. overlooks Khan's program in order to gain Pakistani support against the USSR in Afghanistan. Khan acquires missile technology from China and extends his network into the Middle East.
UN Weapons Inspectors in Iraq uncover documents implicating Khan in nuclear trading but the West fails to act. Khan continues his trade amassing a huge personal fortune and becomes a hero following the detonation of Pakistan's first bomb. A joint CIA/MI6 task force uncovers Khan's dealings with Libya but are unable to move as Pakistani support is again needed in the post-9/11Invasion of Afghanistan. UN Weapons Inspectors in Iran uncover further evidence implicating Khan, which the Iranians confirm.
The task force targets Khan's network with a double agent and intercept a shipment of centrifuges to Libya. Muammar al-Gaddafi agrees to cooperate with UN Weapons Inspectors and the full extent of Khan's capabilities are revealed. Khan's deputy Tehir is arrested and interrogated in Malaysia and confesses. Pakistani authorities deny any knowledge of Khan's network and he is arrested and forced to confess on live television. Khan remains under house arrest in Pakistan where his secrets are protected.
"Fat Man" was the codename for the type of nuclear weapon the United States detonated over the Japanese city of Nagasaki on 9 August 1945. It was the second of the only two nuclear weapons ever used in warfare, the first being Little Boy, and its detonation marked the third nuclear explosion in history. It was built by scientists and engineers at Los Alamos Laboratory using plutonium from the Hanford Site, and one was dropped from the Boeing B-29 Superfortress Bockscar piloted by Major Charles Sweeney.
Klaus Emil Julius Fuchs was a German theoretical physicist and atomic spy who supplied information from the American, British and Canadian Manhattan Project to the Soviet Union during and shortly after World War II. While at the Los Alamos Laboratory, Fuchs was responsible for many significant theoretical calculations relating to the first nuclear weapons and, later, early models of the hydrogen bomb. After his conviction in 1950, he served nine years in prison in the United Kingdom, then migrated to East Germany where he resumed his career as a physicist and scientific leader.
Edward Teller was a Hungarian-American theoretical physicist and chemical engineer who is known colloquially as "the father of the hydrogen bomb" and one of the creators of the Teller–Ulam design. Teller was known for his scientific ability, difficult interpersonal relations, and volatile personality.
Theodore Alvin Hall was an American physicist and an atomic spy for the Soviet Union, who, during his work on United States efforts to develop the first and second atomic bombs during World War II, gave a detailed description of the "Fat Man" plutonium bomb, and of several processes for purifying plutonium, to Soviet intelligence. His brother, Edward N. Hall, was a rocket scientist who led the U.S. Air Force's program to develop an intercontinental ballistic missile, personally designing the Minuteman missile and convincing the Pentagon and President Eisenhower to adopt it as a key part of the nation's strategic nuclear triad.
Igor Vasilyevich Kurchatov, was a Soviet physicist who played a central role in organizing and directing the former Soviet program of nuclear weapons.
Building on major scientific breakthroughs made during the 1930s, the United Kingdom began the world's first nuclear weapons research project, codenamed Tube Alloys, in 1941, during World War II. The United States, in collaboration with the United Kingdom, initiated the Manhattan Project the following year to build a weapon using nuclear fission. The project also involved Canada. In August 1945, the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were conducted by the United States, with British consent, against Japan at the close of that war, standing to date as the only use of nuclear weapons in hostilities.
Oleg Vladimirovich Penkovsky, codenamed Hero and Yoga was a Soviet military intelligence (GRU) colonel during the late 1950s and early 1960s. Penkovsky informed the United States and the United Kingdom about Soviet military secrets, including the appearance and footprint of Soviet intermediate-range ballistic missile installations and the weakness of the Soviet intercontinental ballistic missile program. This information was decisive in allowing the US to recognize that the Soviets were placing missiles in Cuba before most of them were operational. It also gave US President John F. Kennedy, during the Cuban Missile Crisis that followed, valuable information about Soviet weakness that allowed him to face down Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev and resolve the crisis without a nuclear war.
The Soviet atomic bomb project was the classified research and development program that was authorized by Joseph Stalin in the Soviet Union to develop nuclear weapons during and after World War II.
RDS-6s was the first Soviet test of a thermonuclear weapon that occurred on August 12, 1953, that detonated with a force equivalent to 400 kilotons of TNT.
RDS-37 was the Soviet Union's first two-stage hydrogen bomb, first tested on 22 November 1955. The weapon had a nominal yield of approximately 3 megatons. It was scaled down to 1.6 megatons for the live test.
A thermonuclear weapon, fusion weapon or hydrogen bomb (H bomb) is a second-generation nuclear weapon design. Its differences to first-generation nuclear bombs affords it any combination of greater destructive power, a more compact size or a lower mass. Characteristics of nuclear fusion reactions make possible the use of non-fissile depleted uranium as the weapon's main fuel, thus allowing more efficient use of scarce fissile material such as uranium-235 or plutonium-239. The first full-scale thermonuclear test was carried out by the United States in 1952 and the concept has since been employed by most of the world's nuclear powers in the design of their weapons.
The Teller–Ulam design is a technical concept behind modern thermonuclear weapons, also known as hydrogen bombs. The design – the details of which are military secrets and known to only a handful of major nations – is believed to be used in virtually all modern nuclear weapons that make up the arsenals of the major nuclear powers.
Lev Petrovich Vasilevsky (1903–1979), also known as Leonid A. Tarasov, was the KGB Mexico City Illegal Resident during much of the period of the Manhattan Project. In 1943, the Moscow Center of KGB intelligence activities in North America, decided all contacts with J. Robert Oppenheimer, scientific director of the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos laboratory, would be through 'illegals' only. Vasilevsky, operating from Mexico City, was put in charge of running the illegal network after New York Resident Vasily Zarubin had been recalled to Moscow. Vasilevsky's instructions were to control the network from the Mexico City Residentura. Bruno Pontecorvo was the conduit supplying the atomic secrets from Enrico Fermi. Vasilevsky provided Pontecorvo with an escape route through Finland which Pontecorvo used in 1950 after the arrest of Klaus Fuchs.
Atomic spies or atom spies were people in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada who are known to have illicitly given information about nuclear weapons production or design to the Soviet Union during World War II and the early Cold War. Exactly what was given, and whether everyone on the list gave it, are still matters of some scholarly dispute. In some cases, some of the arrested suspects or government witnesses had given strong testimonies or confessions which they recanted later or said were fabricated. Their work constitutes the most publicly well-known and well-documented case of nuclear espionage in the history of nuclear weapons. At the same time, numerous nuclear scientists wanted to share the information with the world scientific community, but this proposal was firmly quashed by the United States government. It is worth noting that many scientists who worked on the Manhattan Project were deeply conflicted about the ethical implications of their work, and some were actively opposed to the use of nuclear weapons.
Nuclear espionage is the purposeful giving of state secrets regarding nuclear weapons to other states without authorization (espionage). There have been many cases of known nuclear espionage throughout the history of nuclear weapons and many cases of suspected or alleged espionage. Because nuclear weapons are generally considered one of the most important of state secrets, all nations with nuclear weapons have strict restrictions against the giving of information relating to nuclear weapon design, stockpiles, delivery systems, and deployment. States are also limited in their ability to make public the information regarding nuclear weapons by non-proliferation agreements.
Mordechai Vanunu, also known as John Crossman, is an Israeli former nuclear technician and peace activist who, citing his opposition to weapons of mass destruction, revealed details of Israel's nuclear weapons program to the British press in 1986. He was subsequently lured to Italy by the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad, where he was drugged and abducted. He was secretly transported to Israel and ultimately convicted in a trial that was held behind closed doors.
This timeline of nuclear weapons development is a chronological catalog of the evolution of nuclear weapons rooting from the development of the science surrounding nuclear fission and nuclear fusion. In addition to the scientific advancements, this timeline also includes several political events relating to the development of nuclear weapons. The availability of intelligence on recent advancements in nuclear weapons of several major countries is limited because of the classification of technical knowledge of nuclear weapons development.
Oleg Alexandrovich Lavrentiev was a Soviet and Ukrainian physicist in the former Soviet program of nuclear weapons whose research contributions were fundamental to understanding of thermonuclear fusion.
Vyacheslav Petrovich Feodoritov (February 28, 1928 - January 2, 2004), k.N, was a Russian physicist in the former Soviet program of nuclear weapons. He was a co-designer of the first two-stage Soviet thermonuclear device, the RDS-37, and became a chief of laboratory at Arzamas-16, now known as the All-Russian Scientific Research Institute of Experimental Physics.
Viktor Aleksandrovich Davidenko was a Soviet military engineer and mathematical physicist, whose research significantly enhanced the development of Soviet nuclear weapons during the Soviet atomic bomb project of 1942–1949.
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