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Soviet spy living in Dayton may have helped give Russia nuclear weapons

George Koval, who spied for the Soviet Union while working on nuclear weapons in Dayton during World War II.

George Koval was a Soviet spy who worked in Dayton on the Manhattan Project and stole secrets that helped the Russians build their own atomic bomb, thus launching the Cold War. Koval received the Hero of Russia citation posthumously from Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2007. Koval's name is included on Monsanto company reports to the Manhattan Project managers.

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Russian President Vladimir Putin, left, Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov, second left, Head of Russia's Main Military Intelligence Agency Valentin Korabelnikov, center, toast at a ceremony of passing the awards given to prominent Soviet-era spy George Koval to the General Staff Intelligence museum in the Novo-Ogaryovo residence outside Moscow, Friday, in this Nov. 2, 2007 photo. Associated Press photo

DMITRY ASTAKHOV Russian President Vladimir Putin, left, Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov, second left, Head of Russia's Main Military Intelligence Agency Valentin Korabelnikov, center, toast at a ceremony of passing the awards given to prominent Soviet-era spy George Koval to the General Staff Intelligence museum in the Novo-Ogaryovo residence outside Moscow, Friday, in this Nov. 2, 2007 photo. Associated Press photo

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Russian spy lived in Dayton, stole secrets

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By Jim DeBrosse, Staff Writer Updated 11:49 AM Monday, February 15, 2010

DAYTON — When 92-year-old George Koval died in obscurity in Moscow on Jan. 31, 2006, he took his secrets as a Russian spy to the grave. But his cover has since been blown, forcing Western scholars to rewrite the history of espionage leading up to the Cold War — a history whose path cuts through Dayton.

After the Iowa-born Koval’s death, researchers uncovered some of what Koval did here, and in November 2007, then Russian President Vladimir Putin posthumously awarded him a gold star as a Hero of the Russian Federation.

While working on the Manhattan Project in Dayton, where triggers for the first atom bombs were built, Koval gathered information that may have helped propel the Soviets toward their own bomb. The successful detonation of a Russian nuclear weapon on Aug. 29, 1949, surprised even the CIA and marked the beginning of the U.S.-Soviet arms race.

Of hundreds of people assigned to the project in Dayton from 1943 to 1945, two are alive today, but neither could recall Koval. Records show he worked here from June to December 1945 while residing at 827 W. Grand Ave.

As an Army health physicist, Koval was charged with safeguarding workers handling radioactive polonium at the First and Euclid Street laboratory. “If there was a (chemical) spill or something, he was one of the guys who would come in and clean it up, but our paths never crossed,” said John Birden, 91, a research chemist on the project.

Don Sullenger of the Mound Museum Association will present a talk on Koval at the Mound Museum on Feb. 24. Sullenger said he has interviewed two other co-workers of Koval’s, but neither remembered anything suspicious. “It helped that he had a very good personality. He was always friendly to everyone.”

Researchers are stymied that Koval, the son of immigrants who moved back to Russia in the 1930s, could have gone undetected after his return to America, where he joined the Army just before the war.

In June 1945, when Koval was assigned to Dayton, the pace of work on the triggers was furious. “Perhaps people weren’t quite as security conscious as they should have been,” said National Park Service historian Ed Roach.

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