In My Enemy's House: The Secret Saga of the FBI Agent and the Code Breaker Who Caught the Russian Spies, Blum - B +

                                  Late in WWII, the FBI assigned Bob Lamphere to the it's Soviet Espionage division. Meredith Gardner, fluent in German, spent the war code-breaking, utilizing his extraordinary linguistic and mathematical skills. These two men would lead the chase of the Soviet spy ring that unearthed the secrets of the  US atomic bomb. As the war wound down, the FBI field office in N realized that they were surrounded by Soviet activity. A Soviet cypher clerk in Toronto defected and a minor American agent told all she knew to the FBI. The Soviets had been aware of, and casually paid attention to, western atomic efforts since the war had. As the war turned in their favor, they started their own program, and the new head of Laboratory 2 asked the KGB to steal whatever it could.  Meredith Gardner was assigned to the team working on the Russian language cyphers after the war's end. By 1947, Lamphere was a supervisor in the Espionage section in Washington and asked if he could meet with someone in Signals Intelligence. His early meetings with Gardener were fruitless.  The code-breaker was reluctant to talk, but eventually warmed up when Lamphere was able to drop on his desk a bundle of illegally obtained memos from a Soviet office. Using the plain text memos, Gardener was able to crack the Soviet code. He came across some astounding correspondence between NY and Moscow. He showed Lamphere conclusive evidence that the Soviets had penetrated the Manhattan Project as early as 1944. Their superiors assigned the two men to work together to exploit the deciphered cable traffic. Meanwhile, the two Soviet agents running Operation Enormoz in NY were so successful- sending thousands of pages of documents to Moscow- that Laboratory 2 was officially building the Soviet bomb based on the KGB stolen information. Another cable that Gardener was able to read mentioned an agent codenamed- 'Liberal' and provided enough information that Lamphere might be able to track him down. The hunt for Julius Rosenberg was on.              Other names, all with a CCNY connection, were popping up. The FBI was on the trail of Max Elitcher, Joel Barr and Morton Sobell. They even learned that Liberal's wife's name was Ethel.  In late August, 1949, the US learned the stunning news that the USSR had an atomic bomb. Lamphere went to the AEC, custodian of all Manhattan Project files, to follow up on something Gardener had sorted out.  A KGB cable from 1944 had mentioned a specific document obtained from Oak Ridge. Lamphere read the document, saw that its author was K. Fuchs and further concluded that it had to have been shared by one of the fifteen high level UK scientists working on the project.  Some more digging confirmed that Klaus Fuchs, A German who had moved to Britain, was their man. The FBI alerted MI5 and soon, Fuchs confessed.  The British prosecuted him under The Official Secrets Act and he was spared execution. Indeed, he received only 14 years in prison. While Lamphere interviewed Fuchs, back in Philadelphia the FBI cornered Harry Gold, Fuchs' courier, and both acknowledged their relationship. The FBI squeezed Gold hard and he gave up a cornucopia of information. Both Lamphere and Gardener were still focused on Liberal and his wife, Ethel, but could not find a lead to him. They knew Gold had picked up material from Liberal in Albuquerque but no more.  The FBI uncovered and arrested David Greenglass in NY. Gold had given him up as someone from Los Alamos who had provided him with information.  Greenglass confessed and implicated his brother-in-law, Julius Rosenberg. Rosenberg spent the next day at the FBI office but acknowledged nothing. He did, though, mention that his wife's name was Ethel. With further information from Greenglass, both Julius and Ethel were soon in custody.     Justice was swift in the early 50's. The Rosenbergs would not confess and were convicted of espionage. At Lamphere's request, Hoover wrote the judge in the case and requested clemency for Ethel.  She was convicted, on her brother, David Greenglass' testimony,* of typing notes for Julius. In NY District Court, Judge Kaufmann laid the Korean War and its tens of thousands of deaths at their door because they had provided the Soviets with atomic secrets, and sentenced the Rosenbergs to the electric chair. Both Lamphere and Gardener knew from earlier Soviet cables that Ethel was not involved in espionage work. But, the fact that the Army had cracked the Soviet codes years ago was so confidential that even the President did not know it. It took twelve minutes to execute  both Rosenberg's in Sing Sing's electric chair on June 19, 1953. Both Lamphere and Gardener were haunted by Ethel's execution. Lamphere left the FBI and Gardener moved to England. In the late 90's, they met for dinner, but could not quite toast their accomplishments. The same year, Sasha, the Rosenberg's Soviet handler, sprinkled Russian earth on their graves on Long Island.

*Later in  life, Greenglass told the NYTimes that upon further consideration, it may have been his wife and not his sister, who did the typing.