Brotherhood of the Bomb

by Gregg Herken

  The first helicopter did not return until nearly dusk. That evening, Teller nervously paced up and down the beach while the photographic plates were developed.

  Early the next morning, Teller received the news while brushing his teeth in the barracks bathroom. A few minutes later, peering at a tiny strip of film through a microscope in the island’s makeshift lab, he saw proof that, for a mere glimmer of a second, a thermonuclear flame had burned on Earth. Teller turned and hurried out the door. Hopping on a jeep that was headed to the nearby landing strip, Edward flagged down the Piper Cub that had been preparing for takeoff.55 As the little airplane taxied up to him, Teller wordlessly thrust a five-dollar bill through the cockpit window into Lawrence’s open hand.56

  Eniwetok, Edward had promised Gordon Dean, would not be big enough for his next bomb.

  14

  A BAD BUSINESS NOW THREATENING

  OPPENHEIMER AND THE General Advisory Committee received word of George while in a meeting called to discuss the future of Lawrence’s Materials Testing Accelerator. “The interesting mixture certainly reacted well,” read the terse telegram sent by a Los Alamos physicist. Oppie announced the news, but the GAC minutes remain silent on the response, if any. Despite Alvarez’s expressions of “optimism,” the committee subsequently voted not to award any money for the Mark II MTA until the Mark I was working. The prototype could still only run for a few seconds before it was shut down by sparking.1

  Although the success of George had been widely predicted, the staged-bomb proposal of Teller and Ulam cast the significance of the experiment in a whole new light. Dean called a meeting for mid-June at Princeton’s institute to consider whether to proceed with a full-scale test of the radiation-implosion design, which Teller favored.2

  Smyth hoped that Princeton might also be a “meeting of the minds between Teller and Oppenheimer.”3 But, as the gathering approached, the two protagonists were instead seen to be jockeying for position. Oppenheimer encouraged Bacher, Conant, and other early H-bomb opponents to attend. Afraid of being outnumbered by Oppie’s partisans, Teller made sure that his own allies—including Wheeler and Willard Libby, the Berkeley-trained chemist who had meanwhile replaced Seaborg on the GAC—would be in the audience. Believing that Teller would not wish to be identified as a spokesman for Los Alamos, Bradbury deliberately left him off the agenda at Princeton.

  Rather than recognizing this as a polite nod to his independence, however, Teller took Bradbury’s gesture as a deliberate snub—and even an effort to silence him.

  Barely had the first session begun on June 16, 1951, before Edward became visibly impatient, chafing at progress reports on projects that had long been under way at Los Alamos. His agitation grew when Oppenheimer, the session’s chairman, recognized first Bradbury and then Dean, and neither man mentioned the recent discovery by Teller and Ulam. As he had at Berkeley almost a decade earlier, when he had interrupted Serber’s primer on the atomic bomb, Teller stood up and demanded to be heard.

  At the end of his impromptu presentation, even those who had previously opposed the H-bomb—including Fermi and Oppenheimer—seemed “enthusiastic” about the prospects for the new Super, Dean noted. Bethe joined with Wheeler in rejecting further half-steps: the next test in the Pacific, part of Operation Ivy, should be of a prototype superbomb, code-named Mike.4

  Wrote Teller to Smyth in triumph: “It is now my conviction that the thermonuclear program is past its ignition point.”5 “The bickering was gone,” confirmed Dean in his diary.

  Yet, late that summer, de Hoffmann notified the AEC chairman that Teller was once again talking about leaving Los Alamos. (Dean had grown inured to such tactics. He had come to the conclusion, he wrote in his diary, “that Teller would never be completely happy.”6 A Joint Committee staffer reported from Los Alamos that scientists there had likewise learned to take Teller’s resignation threats “in stride.”)7

  Bradbury’s appointment of Marshall Holloway to head the lab’s accelerated H-bomb project had prompted the crisis. As leader of the Theoretical Megaton Group—the Family Committee’s successor, created to spearhead the development of the radiation-implosion bomb at Los Alamos—Holloway refused to agree to Teller’s date of July 1, 1952, for the test of Mike.8 Holloway and Bradbury both believed that the earliest the revolutionary new weapon could be built and tested was late in the year.9 To Teller, the choice of Holloway had been “like waving a red flag before a bull,” de Hoffmann told Dean.

  A few days later, Teller sent Bradbury his resignation letter. Edward made preparations to move his piano and his family, once more, to Chicago.10

  * * *

  Anxious to persuade Dean that he was not “walking out” on the H-bomb project, Teller had told the AEC chairman that were he to stay at the lab, his role there would be minor—merely approving engineering drawings. Teller wrote Strauss that he enjoyed being back at Chicago. But there was another reason, he conceded, why he had decided to make the break.11 Severing his ties with Los Alamos would free him to campaign without hindrance for a second nuclear weapons laboratory, a rival to “Oppie’s lab.”12

  Teller had quietly began recruiting scientists for a second lab as early as May 1950.13 The notion of a “separate institute” dedicated to building the H-bomb had been raised by the Joint Committee the following month. (“The profits which might be gained by moving out of Los Alamos now might be more top scientists in the project, faster progress on weapons research projects, and financial economies which would free dollars for bombs instead of water wells and golf courses for Los Alamos,” a staffer had written then.)14 More recently, LeBaron had warned the committee that if civilians did not act soon to move the H-bomb and other projects along, the military was “ready to take the driver’s seat.”15

  The idea of a “new establishment” likewise appealed to Strauss, who, feeling bored and unappreciated as a financial adviser to the Rockefeller Foundation, had welcomed a recent invitation from Truman to serve on a blue-ribbon panel overseeing procurement for the Korean War.16 Although no longer formally affiliated with the AEC, Strauss used his new position in Washington to lobby his former colleagues or their recent replacements at the commission.17

  Strauss’s fear was that Oppenheimer would continue to use his behind-the-scenes influence to thwart progress on the new Super. Meeting with Dean the previous winter, Strauss had shown the AEC chairman the draft of a long memorandum, titled “The Russians May Be Ahead of Us.” In his memo, Strauss blamed Oppenheimer for delaying the H-bomb program and likened the GAC chairman “to a commander who did not want to fight.”18 When Dean requested that he leave the draft memo and accompanying notes behind, Strauss instead made a show of burning the documents in the fireplace. A few days later, Dean learned that Strauss had originally intended the memo for Truman.

  Except for Libby, the scientists of the GAC had thus far expressed little enthusiasm for a “second Los Alamos,” which the majority rejected as “neither necessary nor in any real sense feasible.”19 The idea had yet to find any supporters on the commission, either. Early in 1951, however, that situation had begun to change.

  * * *

  Thomas E. Murray was a New York industrialist whom Truman had named in March 1950 to serve out the remainder of Lilienthal’s term. Murray, trained at Yale as an engineer, was the holder of more than 200 patents and had been in charge of New York City’s subway system during the Second World War. His interest in nuclear power had been awakened by the prediction of a physicist visitor to his office in 1940 that the subways of the future would run on atoms rather than coal.20

  But perhaps the most crucial fact about the 59-year-old Murray was not on his résumé: a prominent Catholic layman, the brother of a Jesuit priest, Murray considered religious faith more important than politics or ideology. Before accepting the post at the AEC, he had consulted several prominent theologians on the question whether the use of nuclear weapons was morally justified in time of war. Taking an almost Manichaean view of the Sovi
et Union, his tentative conclusion—that waging nuclear war was not only “something we are morally permitted to do; it may be something we are morally obliged to do”—was an issue that Murray continued to wrestle with privately, in frequent visits to the holy shrine at Fatima, Portugal.21

  At his first GAC meeting, in September 1950, Murray had been surprised that there was not more eagerness to push the H-bomb program. The new commissioner told the stunned scientists that the situation with the Super reminded him of the fate that had befallen one of his father’s inventions—which he said an industrial rival had bought the rights to and then simply put “on the shelf.”22

  The GAC meeting was not the first time that Murray had heard of the H-bomb. The superbomb project was being deliberately “sidetracked” at Los Alamos, Strauss had warned him early in his tenure, suggesting that Murray see Teller for the details.

  In February 1951, Murray met with Teller, who promptly “left no doubt as to the fact that he would prefer a separate director, a separate group and conditions preventing continual interference with the work.”23 Teller also singled out “Robert Oppenheimer and Associates” for impeding the nation’s military buildup.

  Three days after the Princeton conference, Murray wrote to Dean, urging immediate creation of a new laboratory, independent of Los Alamos and dedicated to building the new superbomb.24 Dean had agreed to study the question. When the verdict that autumn turned out to be negative, Murray assumed Strauss’s role of the iconoclast in commission meetings. His was consistently the sole vote in favor of a second lab.25

  * * *

  On Capitol Hill, McMahon and Borden were also busily promoting the argument that Los Alamos would benefit from competition. The Connecticut Democrat had recently announced his own presidential bid, under the slogan “McMahon’s the Man,” and had seized upon what he hoped would be a potent issue for his campaign: the need for speeding up work on the Super.26 Borden had written recently of using super-bombs to “cauterize Soviet global aggression.”27

  Thus far, however, neither McMahon nor Murray had been able to enlist the military in their crusade. Despite prodding from both men, the joint chiefs’ poker-faced chairman, Omar Bradley, steadfastly refused to set a military requirement for a specific number of superbombs or to endorse the call for a second lab.28

  But pressure was building. On September 28, 1951, the AEC’s director of intelligence informed Dean that the Soviets had tested a second atomic bomb. Although he was initially reassured by the fact that Joe-2 received smaller headlines than the World Series playoff game, Dean’s sense of relief proved short-lived. In late October, the Russians exploded a third bomb; this one, dropped from an airplane, had twice the yield of Fat Man.29

  The Soviets’ feats inspired renewed calls for a speedup in the H-bomb program, as well as increased pressure for a second lab. Murray raised both issues that fall with Truman, who remained noncommittal, however.30 Dean was likewise resisting the importunings of his former law partner and McMahon’s zealous staffer. In a letter to Borden, the AEC chairman expressed serious reservations about another “across-the-board weapons research lab.”31

  * * *

  Visiting Princeton that fall, Teller persuaded Oppenheimer to let him make the case for the second lab in person at the next meeting of the General Advisory Committee. On December 13, 1951, Oppie presided over an unusually tense meeting of the GAC in Washington, with Murray present. Reading from a six-page statement, Teller outlined a surprisingly modest effort. The lab he proposed would employ no more than 300 scientists, who would work on a diverse arsenal of weapons that included the H-bomb and the hydride. At the end of two hours of sometimes impassioned pleading, Edward believed that he had convinced the GAC of the soundness of his views.32

  But the only consensus once Teller left the room was against his plan. Rabi predicted that the effort would require a work force of 1,500, not 300. All but Libby expressed fears that Los Alamos would be “pirated” to staff the second laboratory. In a compromise that they suggested—but thought best not to put in writing—Oppenheimer and Rabi volunteered to go to Los Alamos in hopes of persuading Bradbury to organize a new group at the lab, possibly headed by Bethe, but including Teller.33

  Exasperated, Murray complained afterward that the GAC was simply “trying to juggle personalities.” He had already decided to talk to Lawrence, Murray told Libby, about an altogether different approach.34

  Ernest was in Washington to testify before the Joint Committee on behalf of the MTA. He was still hopeful of seeing a phalanx of Mark II accelerators rise on the banks of the Missouri—even though the prototype at Livermore was still beset by broken welds, persistent sparking, and vacuum leaks. (The cost of fixing the latter was becoming “fantastic,” engineers warned. Lawrence assigned everyone at the lab—physicists, engineers, and technicians—to plugging the leaks.)35 Although he told the Joint Committee that the Rad Lab “approached the accelerator project with increasing confidence and enthusiasm,” in fact, both patience and optimism were waning.36

  Not only were Ernest’s grandiose plans being openly sniped at by his old-time foes, but the MTA had become the butt of unkind humor even among former friends. In “discussing the accelerator [Oppenheimer] did not hide his feelings under a bushel,” Joint Committee staffer Ken Mansfield reported from Princeton. Rabi observed, puckishly, that although enough money made it possible to do almost anything in science for a while, eventually the laws of physics prevailed.37

  Told by Murray of the GAC’s opposition to a second lab, Lawrence thought “childish and silly” their objection that not enough qualified scientists could be found to staff another Los Alamos. Warming to the topic, Lawrence told Murray that he considered a second lab essential, but that it should start out on a small scale: “He, along with Dr. Teller and a few others, could form the nucleus for such an effort. It could gradually and eventually take over.”38

  * * *

  On December 14, 1951, Neylan’s special Committee on Atomic Energy Projects gathered on the UCLA campus to review an “exceedingly urgent” request from the AEC, received just the day before. The commission was asking the university to approve three subcontracts, totaling $11 million, to “provide for special equipment and material necessary in connection with the primary purposes of Project 36.”39 No other information was forthcoming, nor was any requested. (“The chief function of our committee was to know nothing,” Neylan would later boast.)40

  Assured by Underhill that the university was obligated to carry out the AEC’s bidding, the six men approved the request pro forma. With little discussion, and even less understanding, Sproul and the regents of the University of California had unanimously—and unknowingly—authorized construction of the world’s first hydrogen bomb.41

  * * *

  At the Rad Lab’s traditional party that New Year’s Eve, Lawrence asked the question that Murray had posed to him—“Do we need a second laboratory?”—of a young protégé. Thirty years old, Herbert York had been Lawrence’s graduate student when the war broke out. Sent to Oak Ridge, York returned to Berkeley after V-J day to finish his degree; later, he had supervised the lab’s diagnostic measurements of George in the Pacific.

  At his mentor’s suggestion, York promptly set out on a monthlong, cross-country trip aimed at finding an answer to the question that Lawrence had posed. On one of his first stops—in Chicago, to see Teller—the young physicist discovered that sides on the question were already clearly drawn, and that Teller, not Lawrence, was the real “prime mover” behind the second lab. He was, York later admitted, “readily persuaded to Teller’s point of view.”42

  On stationery from his Chicago hotel, York drafted a detailed, twenty-three-page outline of the kind of work that might be done at the new lab. His plan, complete with an organization chart and a list of prospective recruits, left no doubt that the future laboratory would be principally dedicated to building bombs: four different types of H-bombs were listed, including a radiation-implosion A
larm Clock and Teller’s classical Super. Ignoring Ernest’s parting admonition—“no big names and no big plans”—York also hoped to draw upon the cream of the nation’s scientific talent. He anticipated ground breaking as early as May.43

  On February 2, 1952, Teller visited Berkeley at Lawrence’s invitation to discuss the second lab. The duo drove out to Livermore, where Ernest showed off the Mark I in its big corrugated steel building, visible in the flat valley for miles around, and spoke enthusiastically of Livermore as a home for the new laboratory. Later, over Mai Tais and dinner at Trader Vic’s, Lawrence asked if Teller would come to Livermore, should it be the site for the second lab. Edward insisted on one condition—that the work at the lab be specifically on thermonuclear weapons.

  No promises were made, and few details were discussed.44 Lawrence’s final, avuncular advice was that Teller talk to Murray about how to lobby effectively for the second lab. A few days later, meeting at the AEC with Murray, the evangelical commissioner counseled patience.45

  * * *

  By that winter, the GAC had considered—and rejected—the second lab no fewer than three times.46 Even the AEC’s Division of Military Application had come out against the idea, believing it would disrupt the H-bomb program already under way at Los Alamos.47 Anguished appeals from McMahon and Murray received the usual genial response from Dean but no action.48 Bradley, too, continued to reject the senator’s pleas to join the flagging crusade.49 Borden had begun toying with a plan to raise private funds for the project.50 He reported to McMahon that Teller was close to despair.

  But Borden also had some good news to report: the Joint Committee had a new, powerful—and secret—ally in its campaign for the second lab.