Historical Dictionary of Russian and Soviet Intelligence

ist bases and headquarters. In March 2005 the Russian press an-

nounced the death of Aslan Maskhadov, a leader of Chechen nation-

alists, in an action with an FSB taskforce.

The FSB is continuing the KGB’s responsibility for the prosecu-

tion of “especially dangerous state crimes.” President Putin has given

the service great latitude in investigating some of the “economic em-

pires” that flourished in the Yeltsin period, and several of the new

Russian capitalists who flourished during the Yeltsin administration

are in custody or have fled the country.

But the FSB has had some difficulty adjusting itself to the rule of

law. In 1995 the FSB arrested a former naval officer, Aleksandr

Nikitin, for revealing secrets about the Russian navy. Nikitin had

written about certain ecological abuses committed by the navy,

which were in fact common knowledge in the West. He was tried

several times on charges of treason and acquitted on each occasion.

Other whistleblowers have been tried for treason, and some were

also acquitted. In its most notorious act, in 2000 the FSB arrested

an American businessperson, retired U.S. Navy commander Ed-

mund Pope, and held him for 253 days. In 2004, based on FSB ev-

idence, a Russian court convicted a Russian researcher of treason

for revealing state secrets to Western intelligence. The material re-

leased actually was from open sources, but the researcher received

a lengthy term in jail.

FUCHS, KLAUS-EMIL (1910–1988).A gifted physicist, Fuchs fled

to London from Nazi Germany in the early 1930s. While he was in-

volved in the early British nuclear weapons program codenamed

“Tube Alloy,” he volunteered to work for Soviet intelligence. In

Great Britain, Fuchs originally was run by a GRU illegal, but his

case was transferred to the NKVDafter Fuchs moved to the United

States to work at Los Alamos. Fuchs was probably the most impor-

tant of several Soviet penetrations of the nuclear weapons program

codenamed Enormoz. He was run by a series of illegals. His NKVD

code names were “Rest” and “Charles.”

On his return to Britain after World War II, Fuchs maintained

contact with Soviet intelligence, passing on information about the

British nuclear weapons program for four years. Under suspicion,

Fuchs was arrested and confessed to a British counterintelligence

FUCHS, KLAUS-EMIL (1910–1988) •89

06-313 A-G.qxd 7/27/06 7:55 AM Page 89