Nuclear Museum Logo
Nuclear Museum Logo

National Museum of Nuclear Science & History

Robert Lamphere (1918-2002) supervised many investigations of Soviet spies during the Cold War. He served as the FBI’s liaison to the top-secret Venona Project, which worked to break Soviet codes and revealed the extent of Soviet espionage in the United States.

His early espionage cases focused on those who attempted to infiltrate the Manhattan Project. In 1950, his interrogation of Klaus Fuchs in London led to the identification and arrest of Harry Gold, David Greenglass, and Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.

Robert Lamphere’s Timeline
1918 Feb 14th Born in Wardner, Idaho.

1941 Sep Joined the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

1947 Transferred to FBI headquarters as a Supervisory Special Agent and placed in charge of counterintelligence on satellite countries of the USSR.

1948 Began work on top-secret Venona project to decode Soviet intelligence cables.

1950 May Interrogated Klaus Fuchs in London.

1955 Left the FBI.

2002 Jan 7th Died of prostate cancer in Tucson, Arizona.

Related Profiles

Henry “Hap” Arnold

Washington, DC

Henry “Hap” Arnold was a United States general. Arnold was born in Gladwyne, PA, in 1886. He attended the United States Military Academy, and was personally instructed by the Wright Brothers, becoming one of the first military pilots in United States history.

Lloyd K. Garrison

Washington, DC

Lloyd K. Garrison (1897-1991) was an American attorney. A liberal lion, Garrison was born into a family with a proud tradition of activism.

Enrico Fermi

Chicago, IL

Enrico Fermi (1901-1954) was an Italian physicist and recipient of the 1938 Nobel Prize in Physics.   In 1942, Fermi relocated to the Chicago Met Lab, where he built an experimental reactor pile under Stagg Field at the University of Chicago.

Kazumi Matsui

Japan

Kazumi Matsui was elected as the mayor of Hiroshima, Japan in 2011. Matsui serves as the president of Mayors for Peace, an organization that brings together 7,700 cities across the globe with the goal of creating a world without nuclear weapons.