Atomic spies
"Atomic spies" or "atom spies" were people in the United States, Great Britain, 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, and in some cases, what were originally seen as strong testimonies or confessions were admitted as fabricated in later years. Their work constitutes the most publicly well-known and well-documented case of nuclear espionage in the history of nuclear weapons. There was a movement among nuclear scientists to share the information with the world scientific community, but it was firmly quashed by the U.S. government.
Confirmation about espionage work came from the Venona project, which intercepted and decrypted Soviet intelligence reports sent during and after World War II. They provided clues to the identity of several spies at Los Alamos and elsewhere, some of whom have never been identified. Some of this information was available but not usable in court for secrecy reasons during the 1950s trials. Additionally, records from Soviet archives, which were briefly opened to researchers after the fall of the Soviet Union, included more information about some spies.
