Saturday 14 May 2022 10:19 PM The physicist living in the quiet suburbs of Sheffield who sold Britain's ... trends now
A university academic who lives quietly in the suburbs of Sheffield sold British secrets to Communist agents during the Cold War, including intelligence on weapons development, atomic energy and the US space programme, an investigation by The Mail on Sunday can reveal.
Professor Michael Stern handed agents from Czechoslovakia's secret police bundles of research papers as well as military and nuclear information over four years in the 1980s, according to documents unearthed in an archive in Prague.
The computer physicist and mathematician, who specialised in nuclear energy, held almost 30 meetings with Czech agents while working as an academic at the University of Sheffield.
Given the shadowy battle between Western spy agencies and their Communist rivals at the time, the meetings were arranged amid great secrecy. One intelligence file details plans by agents from the Státní Bezpecnost (StB) to arrange handovers of material at a seedy sex cinema in London's Soho.
Professor Michael Stern handed agents from Czechoslovakia's secret police bundles of research papers as well as military and nuclear information over four years in the 1980s, according to documents unearthed in an archive in Prague
The documents set out how Prof Stern – who was codenamed 'Propol' and categorised as a full 'agent' – received thousands of pounds from his Czech handlers and even signed a contract detailing payments for passing 'technical documentation' to the agency. Some of the material was deemed so valuable, the StB shared it with 'allies in the Soviet Union'.
The voluminous files running to more than 600 pages detail how Prof Stern passed over information on the 'military application of microwaves', a simulation programme for servicemen manning anti-aircraft installations and materials from the UK's Atomic Energy Authority, which is responsible for nuclear energy research – sometimes in plastic carrier bags from Woolworths.
His apparent treachery 'ranked him among the high-value agents providing valuable military and technical intelligence information', the documents claim.
Now 79 and retired, Prof Stern is a pillar of the community in the Greenhill district of Sheffield where he lives with his wife Gillian. He is understood to be a member of the local Liberal Democrat party and counter-signed nomination papers for the local parliamentary candidate in 2018.
Presaging the likely reaction in the quiet suburb where Prof Stern lives, the councillor, Simon Clement-Jones, said: 'Wow, an international spy. I never would have thought that. He is still a member of the Lib Dems as far as I know. I'll certainly ask him about it the next time I see him.'
Prof Stern is also understood to be a member of Step Out Sheffield, a local rambling club, and was last week seen outside his home wearing a cap and jacket emblazoned with its name beneath a fluorescent tabard.
Confronted at his £350,000 semi-detached home, the academic said he recalled meeting Czech embassy staff but insisted that he only ever handed over 'my own work'.
He said he had learned that he had been meeting StB intelligence officers only when his activities were discovered by MI5 and that he had then 'passed on information' to the British security services.
Given the shadowy battle between Western spy agencies and their Communist rivals at the time, the meetings were arranged amid great secrecy. One intelligence file details plans by agents from the Státní Bezpecnost (StB) to arrange handovers of material at a seedy sex cinema in London's Soho
But Professor Anthony Glees, an intelligence expert at the University of Buckingham who was given access to the files, said: 'This is a very tawdry, shabby trail of treachery and betrayal, the sort of everyday grubby espionage that leaves a nasty taste in one's mouth. For spy-hunters, however, it's a key win and for would-be spies a key warning. Every spy leaves a trail and one day they'll probably cop it.'
Prof Stern's relationship with the StB began in 1982 as the ageing Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev was confronted by the determination of Margaret Thatcher and US President Ronald Reagan to tackle the threat of Communism.
The files suggest, however, that the Sheffield academic was pre-occupied with more mundane concerns – a shortage of money.
A father of two children, then aged ten and eight, he was earning about £11,000 a year (£41,000 in today's money) as a lecturer in the University of Sheffield's Department of Applied and Computational Mathematics. According to the documents, a car crash had further strained his finances and so, with what seems reckless abandon, he wrote to a series of Eastern bloc embassies offering his own research in return for cash. The StB, who were at the vanguard of the Warsaw Pact agencies' spying operations in Britain, took him up on his offer.
Prof Stern was initially scouted by a Communist agent embedded at Sheffield University where he was serving an internship. After 'vetting the new candidate', Prof Stern was passed to an intelligence officer called
