It was not an interrogation in the normal sense since its purpose was simply to put on the record facts that were known already to the prosecution. Humphreys asked leading questions and Arnold usually gave monosyllabic answers. As:
‘Did you introduce Skardon to Fuchs?’
‘Yes.’
‘Were further meetings arranged?’
‘Yes.’
‘On January 26, 1950, did Fuchs see you again before seeing Skardon?’
‘Yes.’ And so on.
The next witness was Skardon. There was the same kind of questioning, with Humphreys asking leading questions, although Skardon talked a little more. The questions covered Skardon’s meetings with Fuchs leading up to his confession, and then Skardon summarized Fuchs’s confession.
At the end of this cross-examination Fuchs’s defence counsel, Thomson Halsell, asked Skardon one question:
‘Would it be fair to say that since lunchtime on January 24th, the defendant has helped you and been completely co-operative in every way?’
‘Yes,’ replied Skardon.
Then Perrin went into the witness box, and was led through the gist of Fuchs’s statement to him about what he had told Soviet agents. The form of this cross-examination was the same as that of Skardon’s, with Humphreys putting the facts into the questions. As:
‘On January 30th, did you meet Skardon and the accused?’
‘Yes.’
‘Did he admit that he had passed technology information relating to atomic research to the Communists?’
‘Yes.’
At the end of the hearing, Dunne announced that Fuchs would be sent for trial at the Central Criminal Court, the Old Bailey, on 28 February.
Arnold’s appearance in court as a witness for the prosecution did not diminish Fuchs’s affection for him. He continued to write to him, and to regard him as a friend. Nor did Skardon’s appearance diminish Fuchs’s attachment to him.
Just as, when he decided to help the Russians he at first thought he would give them only his own work, and soon dropped that restriction, so now he told the British authorities everything and dropped his refusal to identify his contacts. He was taking it upon himself to give all the help he could to the Western side in the Cold War, as he had once taken it upon himself to give all the help he could to the Soviet Union. In his prison cell he told MI5 men everything he could about his contacts, recognition signals and meeting places, always talking either to Skardon or in Skardon’s presence. He did not know his contacts by name, but he went through photographs with the MI5 men. In this way he identified his first contact, Alexander, as Simon Davidovitch Kremer, of the Soviet Embassy.
Once, when he was not sure exactly where certain meetings took place, Skardon took him out in a car with a driver to the parts of London where the meeting places were, so that he could locate them, and then they went back to Brixton.
He had all his self-control. He was calm and collected throughout this period, and gave no hint to anyone that he thought he faced a death sentence.
Chapter Six
Shortly after this, Perrin found himself discussing the details of Fuchs’s crime in the Garrick Club, a gentlemen’s club favoured by senior figures in the theatre, publishing and the bar. Fuchs’s solicitors had retained Derek Curtis-Bennett, a leading criminal lawyer, to defend him. Curtis-Bennett telephoned Perrin and told him that he needed the full text of his confession and his account of what he had told the Russians. Perrin said he could not show him these for security reasons, but he would give him a summary of what they contained. So, in the way things are done, Curtis-Bennett invited him to dinner at his club, and in the oak-panelled dining-room there, festooned with theatrical paintings and drawings, Perrin showed him the parts of the confession to Skardon that were to be made public, and told him roughly what Fuchs had told the Russians. Curtis-Bennett said that since Fuchs had already confessed, he could only advise him to plead guilty, and try in court to minimize his offence.
In the trial at the Old Bailey, the leading figures in the British legal structure took part. The judge was the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Goddard, the senior judge in England, a man known among lawyers for his Conservative politics and his belief in retributive justice, a burly figure with rugged features in his scarlet and ermine robes of office. Sir Hartley Shawcross himself prosecuted; the General Election had taken place a week earlier and had returned the Labour Party to office, albeit with a greatly reduced majority, so he was still Attorney-General. The Duchess of Kent was among the spectators. So was Gisela Wagner, Fuchs’s cousin.
Curtis-Bennett conferred with Fuchs in the cell below the courtroom. He told him he would do his best to minimize the offence, but warned him that he might have to expect the maximum penalty. ‘You know what that is?’ he added.
‘Yes, I know. It’s death,’ said Fuchs.
Then Curtis-Bennett realized what Fuchs had been facing these past weeks. ‘No, you bloody fool, it’s fourteen years,’ he told him. ‘You didn’t give secrets to an enemy, you gave them to an ally.’ Whatever relief Fuchs felt at that moment, he did not show it.
The indictment contained four counts. The exchanges with the American Government on the charges to be brought that delayed Commander Burt had evidently ruled out the specific charge of passing secrets of Los Alamos in Santa Fe, perhaps because it was thought that it would be embarrassing to air this; at any rate, these four were quite sufficient to establish the crime of treason.
The four counts were:
That on a day in 1943 in the city of Birmingham for a purpose prejudicial to the safety or interests of the State he communicated to a person unknown information relating to atomic research which was calculated to be, or might have been, or was intended to be, directly or indirectly, useful to an enemy.
That on a day unknown between December 31, 1943 and August 1, 1944, he, being a British subject, in the city of New York, committed a similar offence.
That on a day unknown in February, 1945, he, being a British subject at Boston, Massachusetts, committed a similar offence; and that on a day in 1947 in Berkshire, he committed a similar offence.
Sir Hartley Shawcross, in the opening speech for the prosecution, said the case was as serious as any that had ever been prosecuted under this statute. Then he set out to quell in advance the kind of objections that were made to a heavy sentence in Nunn May’s case. He said there was no doubt that the information communicated was likely to be of the utmost value to an enemy. The country to which the information was conveyed need not be an actual enemy. ‘It is enough that the foreign country concerned should be a potential enemy, one which, owing to some unhappy change in circumstances, might become an actual enemy, although perhaps a friend at the time that the information was communicated. That country might never become an enemy. In this case, information was in fact conveyed to agents of the Soviet Union.’
Sir Hartley then said that strictly speaking, there was no need for him to go into the prisoner’s motives. However, he went on, in the statement by Fuchs which formed the basis of the prosecution, the questions of motive were so inextricably mixed with questions of fact that in fairness to him, and as a warning to others, it was right to say some word about motives, which would explain some of the facts.
‘The prisoner is a Communist,’ he said, ‘and that is at once the explanation and indeed the tragedy of this case. Quite apart from the great harm that the prisoner has done to the country he adopted and which adopted him, it is a tragedy that one of such high intellectual attainments as the prisoner possesses should have allowed his mental processes to become so warped by his devotion to Communism that, as he himself expresses it, he became a kind of controlled schizophrenic, the dominant half of his mind leading him to do things which the other part of his mind recognized quite clearly were wrong.’