thumb|upright=1.5|[[Trinity nuclear test explosion; had Perseus been real, he would have given crucial information about this test to the Soviets.]]

Perseus () was the code name of a hypothetical Soviet atomic spy that, if real, would have breached United States national security by infiltrating Los Alamos National Laboratory during the development of the Manhattan Project, and consequently, would have been instrumental for the Soviets in the development of nuclear weapons. Among researchers of the subject there is some consensus that Perseus was actually a creation of Soviet intelligence. Hypotheses include that "Perseus" was created as a composite of several different spies, disinformation to distract from specific spies, or may have been invented by the KGB to promote itself to the Soviet leadership to obtain more state funding. There were, however, multiple confirmed Soviet spies on the Manhattan project. They included Theodore Hall, George Koval, Morton Sobell, David Greenglass, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, Klaus Fuchs, and Harry Gold.

Character and history

A reference to the profile of a spy who can be identified with Perseus describes him as an American scientist of young age at the time of the Manhattan Project. If he were real, Perseus would have supposedly been of age to participate in the Spanish Civil War.

In the early 1940s Perseus would have been in New York City visiting his sick parents. an American who joined the Communist Party during the Great Depression The meeting with Cohen must have been between September 1941 and July 1942, before Cohen enlisted in the army and left for the Western Front in Europe. According to one source, Perseus was supposedly still alive in 1991. PERS or even used to confirm that Perseus never existed. In 2009, VOGEL/PERS was outed as being actually Russell A. McNutt, a civil engineer employed by the company Kellex to work on facilities at Oak Ridge, who was recruited as a spy by Julius Rosenberg.

4th spy at Los Alamos

From the early 1950s till 1995, three Soviet spies had been confirmed to have infiltrated Los Alamos: Klaus Fuchs (German physicist), David Greenglass (military man and brother-in-law of Julius Rosenberg) and Theodore Hall (American physicist). Fuchs voluntarily confessed to British MI5 authorities in January 1950 and this subsequently lead to Greenglass in June of that same year. Finally, Hall's involvement was not identified until the release of documents from Venona in 1995, a few years before his death in 1999. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, publications like those by Chikov and Yatskov strengthened the theory of a possible fourth spy in Los Alamos, who would have been identified as Perseus (the PERS in the Venona files) or FOGEL. Sudoplatov misidentified Bruno Pontecorvo as the spy codenamed "Mlad", who is now identified as Ted Hall by researchers.

John Earl Haynes

American Cold War historian John Earl Haynes concluded that Perseus was an invention,

Albright and Kunstel

In their book Bombshell: The Secret Story of America's Unknown Atomic Spy Conspiracy, authors Joseph Albright and Marcia Kunstel dedicate the twentieth chapter to Perseus under the title of "The Perseus Myth" in which they conclude that the spy never existed. According to the authors, the KGB may have created Perseus for the purposes of self-promotion, to justify its own existence, and even to secure more state funding.

Gary Kern

In 2006 mail that was made public, author Gary Kern explained why he believed Perseus was an invention. Kern believes that Perseus was an extremely risky disinformation operation with multiple objectives, including:

  1. Show that the KGB was vital for the Soviet Union and, after 1991, for Russia.
  2. Prove that the KGB dominated the field (intelligence and espionage) better than the American and British agencies, since the latters were never able to catch the hypothetical Russian agent.
  3. Give more credit and prestige to Soviet intelligence agents for the development of nuclear weapons, even if this meant diminishing the contribution of Soviet scientists.
  4. Use Soviet spies of foreign origin living in Russia for propaganda, particularly the Cohens.
  5. Have some financial gain with the possible sale of the story.

Possible identities

thumb|Although the American physicist [[Philip Morrison was pointed out as Perseus possible real identity, the evidence for this was poor and the contradictions various.]]

Philip Morrison

In April 1999 American scientist, activist, and president of the Federation of American Scientists from 1970 to 2000, Jeremy Stone, published his memoirs under the title Every Man Should Try: Adventures of a Public Interest Activist.), and explained why he believed that this "Scientist X" was the real Perseus. noting that:

  • According to Chikov, Perseus participated in the Spanish Civil War, but during this time (1936–1939), Morrison was studying or about to graduate from Berkeley. Also, during his childhood, Morrison contracted polio, which affected his legs to the point that he required a cane to walk, making it unlikely that he could fight in a war. Although Haynes and Klehr noted that the agent identified as Perseus (or sometimes as "Mlad") has attributes and characteristics that do not match Hall, they still concluded that Perseus must have actually been an invention, the result of a misinformation operation with the goal of protecting Hall, who was still alive in the early 1990s. This could explain the presence of attributes that coincide between both at the same time of others that do not.

On August 19, 2020, Perseus was first referenced in the worldwide teaser trailer for Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War. He was later confirmed as the main antagonist in the game's campaign which is set in both the 1980s and the Vietnam War. In the game, Perseus is an international spy ring made up of espionage agents and rogue operators, with connections to a great number of anti-Western groups. The group is supposedly headed by a Soviet intelligence officer under the codename "Perseus". Perseus loosely appears during the game's campaign and is featured in the final scenes of the Pro-Soviet ending as the one responsible for taking control of the fictional Operation Greenlight (although based on the real-life Green Light Teams), which saw the insertion of nuclear weapons in every major European city, as an ultimate countermeasure to a Soviet invasion. The character referred to as "Perseus" is voice acted by American actor William Salyers.

See also

  • David Greenglass
  • George Koval
  • Manhattan Project
  • Theodore Hall
  • Rudolf Abel
  • Venona project
  • White Sands Missile Range

Bibliography

References

  • Los Alamos National Laboratory History
  • Los Alamos National Laboratory: «The Project Y Spies: An Historical Perspective on a Perennial Threat» by Alan B. Carr