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Vladimir Putin strode to the podium in 2007 and announced that George Koval would be honoured with the prestigious gold star as a “Hero of the Russian Federation.” The proclamation was especially noteworthy given that Koval, who had died the year before at age 92, was an American.

What does it take for an American to become a Russian hero? Providing critical information needed to construct an atomic bomb will do it. George Koval, you see, was a Soviet spy. “Mr. Koval,” President Putin stated, “operated under the pseudonym Delmar and provided information that helped speed up the time it took for the Soviet Union to develop an atomic bomb of its own.”

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Koval was born to Russian immigrant parents in Iowa, but as an adult spent time in the Soviet Union, where he was recruited by military intelligence and trained as a spy before returning to the United States in 1940. There he joined the army and by 1944 managed to secure a position as a “health physics officer” working at the Oak Ridge laboratories in Tennessee where as part of the Manhattan Project researchers were bombarding the nuclei of plutonium and uranium atoms with neutrons. The energy released when these nuclei were split into smaller fragments, or “fissioned,” was the key to developing the atom bomb. Koval began reporting on these activities to his “handler,” however his opportunity to make a real contribution to the Soviet nuclear program came in 1944 when he was transferred to a top secret lab in Dayton, Ohio.