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Minor Nets. These men were the prime sources of information. There were minor spies and subsidiary nets in the Soviet apparatus.* On the Pacific coast, Communist Steve Nelson, now under indictment for contempt of Congress, organized a cell in the radiation laboratory at the University of California at Berkeley. Another ring operated around Chicago with Scientist Clarence Hiskey (also under indictment for contempt) as a chief contact. In New York, Yakovlev directed the activities of Courier Harry Gold, in his pickups from Fuchs and from Alfred Dean Slack (now serving 15 years for espionage), who gave Gold a sample of a new explosive called RDX. The Rosenbergs apparently fed Yakovlev the data collected from Morton Sobell, who worked in radar and electronics, while Rosenberg himself stole the proximity fuse by the simple expedient of putting one in his briefcase at the Emerson Radio Corp.
It was a sickening and, to Americans, almost incredible history of men so fanatical that they would betray their own countries and colleagues to serve a treacherous Utopia. The committee added that the FBI had reported no successful atomic spying since mid-1946. Considering the damage already done, the nation could only hope the FBI was right.
*The committee also investigated Radio Commentator Fulton Lewis Jr.'s charges that Harry Hopkins and Henry Wallace connived at sending atomic information and materials to Russia, through Great Falls, Mont, during the war, reported that it "could find no indications" that any unauthorized material was shipped.