Ollie Gillman at the British newspaper the Daily Mail offers a piece on a new book that claims the notorious British traitor and spy Kim Philby tipped off Italian Bruno Pontecorvo, who later fled to the Soviet Union.
For decades the mystery of why Italian nuclear physicist Bruno Pontecorvo defected from the Allies to the USSR has baffled Cold War historians.
The scientist, while on holiday in Italy with his wife and children in 1950, suddenly disappeared, resurfacing years later on the side of the Iron Curtain.
But now a new book has revealed that Pontecorvo was being trailed by the FBI for suspected communist activity, and has claimed that he fled to Russia after being tipped off by none other than infamous double agent Kim Philby.
Pontecorvo, a prominent nuclear physicist in Britain, the U.S. and Canada, shicked the world when he defected to the USSR. After re-emerging five years later in Moscow, he eventually said he left for ideological reasons - but the real reason why he fled remained shouded in mystery for more than 60 years.
Frank Close, a scientist who believes that Pontecorvo could have gone on to win a Nobel prize had he stayed with the West, told the Observer that the FBI were investigating the Italian at the time of his disappearance.
You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:
You can also read Ben Macintyre's outstanding book on Philby, A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal.
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