Arthur Adams (spy)
Arthur Aleksandrovich Adams (October 25, 1885, Eskilstuna, Sweden – January 14, 1969), was a Soviet spy, and Hero of the Russian Federation, who passed critical information to the Soviet Union about the American Manhattan Project. Early life Adams was born in the city of Eskilstuna, Sweden in 1885 to a Swedish father and a Russian Jewish mother. Following the death of his father, Adams's mother with her children returned to Russia, where she died in 1895. Adams entered a military navy school in 1896. In 1903 he graduated from a school of mining technology in Kronshtadt. His wife, Dorothy, was an aunt of American book editor Robert Gottlieb. Political activities and exile While in college, Adams joined the Bolshevik party and actively participated in the 1905 Russian Revolution in Russia's South. The Tsarist police arrested him and sent him into exile in 1905, Adams escaped from his place of exile and emigrated to the United States in 1913. His Russian biographers claim he served in the United States army during World War I and eventually achieved the rank of major. In 1919 Adams was included in the Martens' mission (a de facto Soviet trade mission in the United States). An acute lack of qualified personnel (a situation partially created by the Bolsheviks themselves) meant that Adams, with his strong engineering background, immediately became a top bureaucrat. In 1925 Adams became deputy head of the Main Board of Aviation Industry of the USSR, and worked in that position for 10 years. Adams was responsible for supplies of imported equipment and materials for the aviation industry and therefore often made trips abroad. That's when he was noticed by experts of surveillance agency of Red Army (future GRU). Adams, an educated engineer, established personal relationships with other scientists during his frequent trips abroad. He often visited enterprises in Europe and America. Adams collected technical and industrial information which he shared with the Soviet military. As Adams was successful in completing tasks of the surveillance agency, it was decided to accept him as staff intelligence worker. In 1935, at the age of 50, Adams was enlisted to serve in the chief intelligence service of the Red Army. Adams was sent to the U.S. for illegal work. He quickly managed to get a legal position, and established his own firm and his own agent network involving over 20 experts from the American military industrial enterprises. In 1938 Adams was summoned to Moscow, having been falsely denounced. Luckily enough, the falsified case against Adams was closed and in 1939 he moved back to the U.S., creating his intelligence network anew. Atomic espionage Arthur Adams was one of the first Soviet spies to receive information about the American Manhattan Project. Contemporary Russian sources state that Adams (codename: Achilles) was in contact with an agent (codename: Eskulap) who was associated with the Chicago Met Lab. In June 1944 Eskulap reportedly gave Adams 2500 pages of documents relating to the development of the atomic bomb. In July and August