
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, April 17, 1994                   TAG: 9404170081
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-12   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE: NEW YORK                                LENGTH: Short

EX-SPY: BOMB SCIENTISTS TOLD SOVIETS

Robert Oppenheimer and other U.S. scientists gave the Soviets information on their efforts to build the first atom bomb, a retired Russian spy says in memoirs quoted in Time magazine.

The information passed on during World War II "significantly altered the direction of Soviet nuclear research," says Pavel Anatolievich Sudoplatov, who plotted the assassination of Leon Trotsky for Josef Stalin.

Excerpts from "Special Tasks: The Memoirs of an Unwanted Witness - a Soviet Spymaster" appear in the April 25 issue of Time.

The United States and the Soviet Union, World War II allies, raced to beat Nazi Germany to the creation of the first A-bomb.

Sudoplatov writes that members of the American science team who shared information with the Soviets included Nobel laureate Enrico Fermi and Neils Bohr, who worked with Oppenheimer on the Manhattan Project.

"Since Oppenheimer, Bohr and Fermi were fierce opponents of violence, they would seek to prevent a nuclear war, creating a balance of power, through sharing the secrets of atomic energy," Sudoplatov writes. - Associated Press

by CNB