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Since Fuchs was no longer a subject, the British argue that they had no option but to let him go where he wanted: to East Germany to rejoin his 84-year-old father, who is now professor emeritus of the Red-run University of Leipzig. After refusing to talk to newsmen in Britain, on board his plane or when he landed in East Berlin, Klaus Fuchs finally gave an interview to a London reporter who tracked him down at a vacation cottage near East Germany's Lake Wandlitz. Had he been decently treated in prison? "Yes." Was he still a Marxist? That, said Fuchs, should be answered by his present whereabouts. Why had he passed nuclear secrets to the Soviet Union? "I don't wish to say anything about that." What were his plans for the future? Said Fuchs: "To take a job to help in the buildup of the new society here."
In the House of Commons, Home Secretary Richard A. ("Rab") Butler was asked whether he was satisfied that Fuchs's "brain would be of no further use to the Russians." In the fast-moving world of theoretical physics, Fuchs is considered way out of date, so Butler merely answered dryly, "I cannot extend my influence as far as that."