WEISS, ERNEST• 569been identified, but it is believed that he went to the United States for
a brief visit in December 1932, returning in time to introduce Weiss
to Robert Switz in September 1933 in Kensington Gardens. Two
months later Switz and his wife Marjorie were arrested in Paris and,
according to Weiss’s subsequent statement toMI5, he had supported
himself by playing the piano, and this had been the first moment he
had realized that he was involved in Soviet espionage.
Weiss was undeterred by the newspaper reports from France of
Switz’s arrest, and in 1935 he went to Enge, Switzerland, to meet his
new controller,harry ii. This meeting resulted in Weiss handling
British secrets stolen by two Soviet agents, MajorWilfred Vernon
of the Air Ministry and an Irishman, Frederick Meredith. Both were
Communist Party of Great Britainmembers working at the Royal
Aircraft Establishment at Farnborough who had visited Russia in a
group of eight tourists in May 1932. Weiss, who had by now adopted
the identity ‘‘Walter Lock,’’ ran Vernon and Meredith until August
1937, when during his absence on holiday Vernon’s home was ran-
sacked by burglars.
After Vernon’s arrest, Weiss was assigned a new controller, a man
he knew asandreand was later identified as a GRU illegal named
Henri Robinson. Weiss’s cover was so good that, when he was
called up for military service in England, he went undetected and was
granted a commission. After the war he worked as a concert pianist,
and his first encounter with MI5 occurred when he was interviewed
byJim Skardonat the end of a recital he had given in the Albert
Hall. He cooperated fully with the Security Service and was never
prosecuted. He died in 1982 without disclosing to any of his friends
his secret role as a GRU agent.
According to Weiss’s statement to MI5, he had received scientific
information from a German refugee named Hans Lubszynski, a for-
mer Telefunken radio engineer who had come to England in 1934.
Lubszynski was in turn in contact with an unconscious source, a
physicist from Berlin named Dr. Heinz Kallmann, then working as a
researcher pioneering television technology for EMI. However, Kall-
mann moved to the United States in February 1939 thus reducing
Lubszynski’s usefulness. Weiss’s other contacts includedAndre ́La-
barthe, a scientist who had worked for the French Ministry of Air
until 1938; Professor Marcel Prenant of the Sorbonne, a leading