President Harry S. Truman recalled meeting with Russian leader Joseph Stalin and British Prime Miniser Winston Churchill in 1945, and the American president pulled Stalin aside to tell him all about this new atomic bomb capable of bringing Japan to its knees and ending World War II. In his memoirs, Truman recalled expecting Staling to react with surprise and astonishment. Instead, Stalin seemed unimpressed. Why? Because his spies deep within the top secret Manhattan Project had already told him all about the U.S.-British atommic development project. Moreover, Stalin's spies had smuggled out the designs for the bomb, and Russia was already busy building its own bomb -- an exact copy of the Fat Man bomb soon to be dropped on Nagasaki. Russia had proven time and time again by 1951 its ability to penetrate any lair of U.S. military operations and receive foreknowledge of American plans.
One potential source of espionage regarding U.S. plans to deploy atomic forces to Britain was H.A.R. "Kim" Philby, the chief British security liaison to the United States who secretly was funneling top secret information to Moscow. Philby is known to have passed information to the Soviets about U.S. plans to infiltrate anti-Communist fighters into Albania to overthrow the pro-Soviet regime. Because the Soviets knew ahead of the infiltration ahead of time, soldiers were waiting for the fights and killed or captured them almost immediately. Hundreds of fighters were killed, and their family members were hunted down and killed or imprisoned. The Soviets also proved adept at shooting down U.S. reconnaissance planes during this period, including a Navy PB4Y spy plane off the coast of Latvia. Philby's presence on a U.S.-British security coordination committee in 1951 would have given him direct access to U.S. plans regarding the flight of Globemaster 49-244, though no documents have yet been declassified showing any such linkage.
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