The American Spy Inside the Manhattan Project — George Koval | Cold War Files

George Koval was the most invisible spy in the Manhattan Project — an American-born Soviet intelligence officer who operated inside the United States' most classified nuclear weapons facilities for years without detection. While the FBI focused on theoretical physicists, Koval collected the industrial manufacturing data that helped the Soviet Union detonate its first atomic bomb three to four years ahead of American intelligence projections.

This documentary explains how Koval was recruited by Soviet military intelligence, how he gained security clearance through the U.S. Army's Special Engineer Detachment, how he accessed Oak Ridge's uranium enrichment plants and Dayton's polonium production facility, and why his espionage remained undetected for over sixty years.

All details in this video are based on publicly available historical records, declassified Soviet archives released after 1991, U.S. government documents, and statements from intelligence historians.

Inside this video:
• How the GRU recruited and trained George Koval in 1930s Moscow
• How he infiltrated the Manhattan Project's industrial facilities through military service
• The uranium enrichment and polonium initiator intelligence he transmitted to Moscow
• Why security doctrine focused on physicists while engineers moved freely between sites
• How his intelligence accelerated Soviet nuclear development by years
• Why his operation wasn't discovered until Russian archives were declassified in the 2000s

This is a factual historical case study designed for educational and documentary purposes. No dramatization. No speculation. Only the verified events behind one of the most consequential intelligence operations of the Second World War and early Cold War.

If you want more stories from the era of Cold War espionage and the operations that shaped nuclear history, consider subscribing to Cold War Files.

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CHAPTERS:
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0:00 - August 29, 1949: The Soviet atomic test that shocked Washington
2:30 - The Manhattan Project's security assumptions
8:45 - George Koval: Birth in Iowa and emigration to the Soviet Union
15:20 - GRU recruitment and training in Moscow
18:40 - Return to America and infiltration of the Manhattan Project
22:15 - The Special Engineer Detachment: Mobility without scrutiny
28:30 - Oak Ridge: Uranium enrichment intelligence
38:45 - Dayton: The polonium initiator
48:20 - Intelligence transmission to Moscow
52:10 - Post-war departure and operational success
55:30 - Discovery: Russian archives reveal the truth
58:40 - Legacy: The lesson of industrial espionage

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