Historical Dictionary of British Intelligence

MAYER, HANS• 349

nization ‘‘absolutely free from any political bias or influence,’’ and

must limit his investigations of espionage, sabotage, and subversion

to those that have ‘‘an important public interest bearing on the De-

fence of the Realm.’’ The Maxwell Fyfe Directive was made public

byLord Denningin 1963 and remained in force until the 1989Se-

curity Service Act, which extendedMI5’s remit tocounterterror-

ismand the protection of the country’s ‘‘economic well-being.’’

MAY, ALLAN NUNN.A Cambridge-educated nuclear physicist and
Communist Party of Great Britainmember, Dr. Allan Nunn May
was identified byGRUdefectorIgor Gouzenkoas a Soviet spy run
during World War II in Canada. Codenamedalek, May was the sub-
ject of intensiveMI5surveillance upon his return to London, and at
one pointIona von Ustinovprepared to masquerade as afalse-flag
Soviet contact in the hope of entrapping him. May was finally ar-
rested in London in March 1946 and was sentenced two months later
to 10 years’ imprisonment. After his release from prison, Dr. May
returned to Cambridge, where he died in 2003, never having dis-
closed who recruited him or when. According to theKGB archives,
May was recruited by Jan Chernyak, codenamedjan, who had
worked at theCavendish Laboratoryat Cambridge before the war.

MAYER, HANS.The anonymous author of the secret document
known to British Intelligence as ‘‘the Oslo Report,’’ Professor Hans
Mayer had spent his professional life working for the German elec-
tronics firm Siemens, but in 1940 he traveled to Oslo on business and
sent a letter to the British embassy describing in detail various Ger-
man technical developments, including the proximity fuse and the
flying bomb. In August 1943 Mayer was arrested by the Gestapo for
listening to a BBC broadcast, and he was imprisoned at Dachau be-
fore being moved to Sachsenhausen, Gross-Rosen, Mauthausen, and
finally Buchenwald, the concentration camp where he was liberated
in May 1945. After the war Mayer worked for the U.S. Air Force at
Wright Field, near Dayton, Ohio, and in 1947 accepted a professor-
ship at Cornell University to study radio astronomy. Although there
was considerable speculation over the years about the real identity of
the author of the Oslo Report, it was ProfessorR. V. Jones, theSe-
cret Intelligence Service’s wartime scientific adviser, who revealed
Mayer’s name in 1989.