Gold said he had never handled espionage material, had never met Fuchs, had never been to Santa Fe to see him, and in fact, had never been west of the Mississippi in his life. He was co-operative, and told the FBI men they were welcome to search his home. Carrying out the search, one of them found a map that had fallen behind a bookcase; it was a street map of Santa Fe, the one he had bought in preparation for his meeting there with Fuchs. Confronted with this, Gold confessed that he was Raymond.
Meanwhile, Hoover had asked the British authorities for permission to send FBI agents to interview Fuchs in prison. A peremptory request to the Home Office delivered before Fuchs was brought to trial was peremptorily refused. A later request, delivered more diplomatically through the American Embassy in London, was granted. It says something of the anti-American atmosphere in Britain at this time, brought on partly by the antics of the anti-Communist witch-hunters with whom the FBI was identified, that objections were raised in Parliament to this. One member, George Thomas, said: ‘This distasteful procedure is watched with some anxiety by the public.’ The Home Secretary, Chuter Ede, had to assure the House that permission had been granted only because of the special circumstances of this case, and that Fuchs would be interviewed only if he was willing.
Two FBI agents, Hugh H. Clegg and Robert J. Lamphere, set out from the Washington office. On the way to New York, where they were to catch their plane, they stopped in Philadelphia to collect some photographs and movie film taken of Gold. He had not yet confessed at this time, but he was under surveillance. The film was taken clandestinely, from a car.
They interviewed Fuchs ten times altogether, between 20 May and 2 June, in a room in Wormwood Scrubs prison normally reserved for prisoners’ consultations with their lawyers. Sometimes the interview lasted only an hour, sometimes it lasted longer with a break for lunch. Skardon was present at every one.
The first began with Fuchs asking the FBI men some questions. He asked about his friend Edward Corson. He told them. Corson knew nothing about his espionage activities, and wanted an assurance that Corson was not in any trouble because he had sent that cable after he was arrested. They told him that Corson was not under suspicion. Then he asked about Kristel Heineman, his sister. They assured him that the FBI men who questioned her had conferred with her doctors first, and that they were concerned not to aggravate her condition.
Clegg and Lamphere took up right away the question of the identity of Fuchs’s American contact, ‘Raymond’. He gave them as full a description as he could, much as he had done already for the British intelligence service. Then the two agents showed him fourteen photographs of several different people, and he picked out three pictures of Gold as possibles.
At the next interview they had a projector, and they showed the film of Gold. Fuchs was trying hard. The film was taken in secret and was not all that clear. ‘I cannot be very positive, but I think that it’s very likely him,’ he said. ‘There are certain mannerisms I seem to recognize, such as the too obvious way he has of looking around and looking back.’ At a later interview, they showed the film again, and also some new photographs of Gold which had just been flown to London. He looked at these, and said finally, ‘Yes, that’s my American contact.’ He confirmed this when he saw the film again. At their request, he wrote on the photograph, in scratchy, irregular handwriting: ‘I identify this photograph as the likeness of the man whom I knew under the name of Raymond, (signed) Klaus Fuchs, 26th May, 1950.’
The FBI did not wait for this final identification to arrest Gold: he had already confessed and they arrested him in Philadelphia on the same day that Fuchs wrote this statement. Fuchs’s positive identification was taken as corroboration.
Then, over the next few interviews, Fuchs took Clegg and Lamphere through all his contacts, recalling everything he could about people, places, dates, details, in Britain as well as America. He was hazy about some details, particularly the meeting with Gold in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in February 1945. He also recalled what he had told Raymond. He even recounted in detail his trip to America in 1947.
At the end of these interviews, they engaged in an exercise which shows something of the atmosphere of suspicion in America at this time. They went through a long list of his scientific colleagues, including Oppenheimer. Fuchs told them the extent of his friendship with each one. They reported each faithfully, and added to each that Fuchs knew of no ‘Communist or espionage activities’ by this person.
Fuchs continued to correspond with Arnold, his friend and his hunter, his cherished nemesis. In one letter, written nearly six weeks after his arrival in Wormwood Scrubs, he wrote:
I want to thank you very much for all the trouble you are taking looking after my belongings. In some way I can’t feel that they belong to me, since most of it is so much a part of my life at Harwell. For that reason, if there is anything you or the Skinners or Rennies would like to have please take it — not as a gift, but as something that rightly belongs to you.
The book which I would like to have is the third edition of Einstein’s The Meaning of Relativity.
I believe I still owe the Rennies some money for milk and rations etc. Could you please ask Marjorie and settle it?
After this, he tried again, with Arnold’s help, to search in his heart and mind, to work out the meaning of what he had done and its significance for his own character:
I think it was better that Skardon handled the matter, because I would be certain that my decisions were really my own, and not made because of mental stress. When first you told me that you [word illegible] about it, I was already prepared to go through with it, even though Skardon, I suppose, was not yet sure about it.
What I am trying to say, and I haven’t succeeded very well, is that you must not blame yourself for anything that you did. Blame me — and if you can’t do that, blame Hitler and Karl Marx and Stalin and their blasted company.
However, the real hurt is much farther back. How could I deceive in this way? I am not trying to excuse — in fact I am trying hard to understand it myself — because it hurts me too. I know I got myself to the point when I myself did not know that I was deceiving you, whilst I was actually doing it. Sometimes I knew it immediately afterwards, when you praised me, and those were the worst moments. But usually I could go on for days and weeks.
Then he went on to explain his drinking, in a passage quoted earlier:
Mrs Peierls asked me today:[22] how could you drink the way you did? As a matter of fact, it did surprise me when I found that I could get drunk without any fear. I thought at the time that even then I could control myself, but I don’t think that explanation is correct. I think the truth is that under the influence of alcohol the control disappeared, but not only the control but also the whole other compartment of my mind. Does it make sense? And if it does make sense, if just a little alcohol could turn it into schizophrenia, how far gone was I in my ‘normal’ life?
I don’t dare yet to pretend that I really know the answer to these questions. But I think that I am getting nearer to it every day. You can help me — if you are frank with me, without fear of hurt.
Please give my love to Eva [Arnold’s wife].
In another letter, he told Arnold he had been reading Charles Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities, and had been ‘bowled over’ by the first paragraph: