by Gregg Herken
10. Bethe: Schweber (2000), 76–104; Rhodes (1986), 188–90; Blumberg and Owens (1976), 108.
11. Blumberg and Owens (1976), 75–76.
12. Teller to Fermi, July 17, 1942, “Enrico Fermi, 7/17/42–5/17/44” folder, box 74–17, LANL.
13. Berkeley seminar: Fitzpatrick (1998), 58; Eldred Nelson interview (1999).
14. Serber (1998), 68–69; Eldred Nelson interview (1999).
15. Bethe’s theories of how the stars produced their energy would win him a Nobel prize the following year.
16. Bethe claimed that he and Teller worked together to restrain Serber, “who was trying to make things too complicated.” Bethe interview (1988).
17. Serber interview (1992).
18. Oppenheimer evidently left in such a hurry that the exact purpose of his mission remained unclear to those he left behind. Both the H-bomb and the possibility of setting fire to the atmosphere fit the description of “very disturbing news” that Oppenheimer had hurriedly and cryptically given Compton over the phone.
19. “Better to accept the slavery of the Nazis than to run a chance of drawing the final curtain down on mankind!” was how Compton remembered their thinking in his memoirs. Teller disputes Compton’s version. Compton (1956), 128; Teller (2001), 160.
20. Hewlett and Anderson (1990), 102.
21. Serber subsequently described the seminar as “very lively” and even “a lot of fun.” Serber (1992), xxxi.
22. Teller had not overlooked the inverse Compton effect but believed that it occurred too slowly to have an impact upon the reaction. Bethe claimed that he proved otherwise. Bethe interview (1988).
23. Hewlett and Anderson (1990), 104, 675 fn.; ITMOJRO, 11; Rhodes (1986), 420–21.
24. Rhodes (1986), 421.
25. Oppenheimer evidently belonged to the ranks of the doubters. Jones (1985), 58–59.
26. “The W[ar] D[epartment] has turned thumbs down on O[ppenheimer] by telephone,” Compton’s secretary informed him. Memorandum of conversation, Aug. 18, 1942, box 1, JRO/AEC.
27. Oppenheimer clearance: “Subject: Oppenheimer, J. Robert,” various documents, box 1, JRO/AEC records; “The Counter Intelligence Corps with Special Projects,” vol. 8, 62, History of the Counter Intelligence Corps (U.S. Army Intelligence Center, Fort Holabird, Md., n.d.), Modern Military Records, National Archives.
28. Oppenheimer to Conant, Oct. 12, 1942, no. 140, Bush-Conant file, OSRD/NARA. Wensel to Lawrence, Sept. 1, 1942, and Lawrence to Wensel, Sept. 9, 1942, no. 140, Bush-Conant file, OSRD/NARA.
29. Oppenheimer to Conant, Oct. 12, 1942, no. 140, Bush-Conant file, OSRD/NARA.
30. “Report of S-1 Meeting,” June 25, 1942, no. 120, Bush-Conant file, OSRD/NARA.
31. Aug. 15, 1942, memos, box 39, Sproul papers.
32. Harold Fidler, Jan. 14, 1997, personal communication.
33. “Minutes of Fifth Meeting,” Sept. 13–14, 1942, no. 117, Bush-Conant file, OSRD/NARA; Leslie Groves, Now It Can Be Told: The Story of the Manhattan Project (Harper, 1962), 18.
34. Heilbron, Seidel, and Wheaton (1981), 32; Hewlett and Anderson (1990), 141–44.
35. Childs (1968), 379, 383–84.
36. “Report on Multiple Mass Spectrograph,” Sept. 13, 1942, folder 4, carton 29, EOL; Childs (1968), 336.
37. Smyth (1989), 82–83; Groves (1962), 3–4.
38. K. D. Nichols, The Road to Trinity: A Personal Account of How America’s Nuclear Policies Were Made (Morrow, 1987), 42–43.
39. Groves (1962), 22.
40. Transcript of interview with Vannevar Bush, reel 7, 422, Bush papers, MIT.
41. Lansdale interview; Lansdale, “Military Service,” 23–24.
42. Hewlett and Anderson (1990), 83.
43. Seaborg (1992), vol. 1, 279.
44. Serber (1992), xxxii.
45. ITMOJRO, 12.
46. Groves (1962), 61–62; ITMOJRO, 166.
47. Davis, 146; transcript of interview with Edwin McMillan, 207, Bancroft Library.
48. Lawrence Badash et al., eds., Reminiscences of Los Alamos, 1943–1945 (Reidel, 1985), 13.
49. “Report of Special Agent Robert Stepp,” Sept. 20, 1942, box 1, JRO/AEC.
50. Alvarez (1987), 78.
51. Groves (1962), 61.
52. Compton (1956), 130; Childs (1968), 337.
53. Goodchild (1980), 66.
54. San Francisco field report, Feb. 10, 1943, file, box 1, JRO/AEC.
55. Oppenheimer to Bethe, Oct. 19, 1942, box 20, JRO.
56. Teller (2001), 163–64.
57. Teller to Oppenheimer, Mar. 6, 1943, Teller file, LANL; Rabi to Oppenheimer, Mar. 8, 1943, box 59, JRO.
58. Telegram, Oppenheimer to Dudley, Nov. 10, 1942, folder 29, carton 8, EOL.
59. Badash et al. (1985), 1–20; Hewlett and Anderson (1990), 229.
60. Badash et al. (1985), 13–20.
61. Jones (1985), 85.
62. Conant to Bush, Nov. 20, 1942, no. 140, Bush-Conant file, OSRD/NARA.
63. Oppenheimer’s medical history: Memo to record, Jan. 15, 1943, box 100, series 8, MED/NARA; Harold Fidler, Jan. 14, 1997, personal communication.
64. Smith and Weiner (1980), 247.
65. Oppenheimer to Rabi, box 59, JRO. Bacher agreed to join the lab but promised to quit the day that the army took it over.
66. Hewlett and Anderson (1990), 237.
67. Lillian Hoddeson et al., Critical Assembly: A Technical History of Los Alamos During the Oppenheimer Years, 1943–1945 (Cambridge University Press, 1993), 57–58; Badash et al. (1985), 21–40.
68. Oppenheimer to Robert Underhill, Mar. 8, 1943, folder 1, box 14, Robert Underhill papers, LANL.
69. Smith and Weiner (1980), 243.
70. Childs (1968), 351.
71. Underhill: Transcript of “Robert Underhill: Contract Negotiations for the University of California,” (Underhill interview) box 2, Underhill papers, Bancroft Library; “Transcript of Robert Underhill Memoirs,” Underhill papers, LANL.
72. “Transcript of Robert Underhill Memoirs,” Underhill papers, LANL.
73 Underhill interview, 18; box 2, Underhill papers, Bancroft Library.
74. Jones (1985), 126; Norton to Groves, Jan. 14, 1943, Organization and Administration file, MED History, U.S. Army Chief of Staff records (Army/NARA), RG 319, National Archives.
75. Sproul to Conant, Jan. 26, 1943, no. 96, Bush-Conant file, OSRD/NARA.
76. Irwin Stewart to Underhill, Jan. 23, 1943, and Sproul to Underhill, Feb. 10, 1943, folder 1, box 14, Underhill papers, LANL.
77. The deal was informally sealed on February 22, 1943. A separate contract was negotiated for Lawrence’s Calutrons. Underhill to Stewart, March 15, 1945, folder 4, box 13, Underhill papers, LANL.
78. Hewlett and Anderson (1990), 109.
79. Lawrence to Conant, Nov. 23, 1942, file 201c, series 5, MED/NARA.
80. Victor Bergeron, Frankly Speaking: Trader Vic’s Own Story (Doubleday, 1973); Harold Fidler, May 28, 1997, personal communication.
81. The DuPont engineer was, nonetheless, impressed by Lawrence: “He could have made any salary that he chose to name as a salesman.” Transcript of interview with Crawford Greenewalt, n.d., Hagley Museum, Wilmington, Del. The author thanks Professor David Hounshell for a copy of the Greenewalt interview.
82. Jones (1985), 104–5.
83. Interview with Wallace Reynolds, n.d., Bancroft Library.
84. Minutes of Coordinating Committee, Dec. 23, 1942, book 1, box 27, Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory archives, Berkeley, Calif. (LBL).
85. Jones (1985), 130; Smyth (1989), 201.
86. Nelson et al. (1969), 269.
87. Serber (1998), 73.
88. Chevalier (1965), 49.
89. Ibid., 48.
90. Ibid., 50.
91. Ibid., 46. In his unpublished memoir, Chevalier wrote: “In the spring of 1942, Oppenheimer was called to Chicago—it was the first time, I believe, that an absence of his would coincide with a planned meeting of our ‘closed unit’
—to discuss the state of work on the projected bomb.” Typescript of “The Bomb,” 43, Chevalier papers.
92. Haakon Chevalier to “Snipe,” Mar. 6, 1943, and Feb. 28, 1943, “Snipe’s Diary–1935,” Chevalier papers.
5: Enormoz
1. Transcript of Underhill interview, box 2, Underhill papers, Bancroft Library.
2. Marshall to Underhill, Apr. 1, 1943, official file, Contract 48 records, SBFRC.
3. Serber (1992), 3.
4. Serber (1998), 104.
5. Hoddeson et al. (1993), 86.
6. Tolman to Oppenheimer, Mar. 27, 1943, “Design and Testing Bomb” folder, MED history, Army/NARA; Serber (1998), 72.
7. Serber (1998), 104.
8. Serber (1992), 33; Oppenheimer to Groves, June 21, 1943, “Design and Testing Bomb” folder, MED history, Army/NARA.
9. Hoddeson et al. (1993), 65.
10. “Notes on Los Alamos Meeting,” Apr. 26–29, 1943, Tolman folder, MED file, OSRD/NARA.
11. Teller (2001), 171, 176; Davis (1968), 177; Michelmore (1969), 79.
12. Compton to Conant, Dec. 8, 1942, box 99, LLNL.
13. “Controlled Hydride Explosion,” n.d., LAMS-125; Teller to Lavender, July 17, 1944, LANL. Hydride: Hoddeson et al. (1993), 136; Joseph Albright and Marcia Kunstel, Bombshell: The Secret Story of America’s Unknown Atomic Spy Controversy (Times Books, 1997), 113–14. Serber claimed that Teller raised the question of the hydride bomb even before the Super at the Berkeley seminar. Serber interview (1992).
14. The plant began operations in Apr. 1944 but was shut down the following Sept., when Long was transferred to work on the gadget. Fitzpatrick (1998), 111.
15. Hoddeson et al. (1993), 75.
16. “Report of Special Reviewing Committee on Los Alamos Project,” May 10, 1945, Tolman folder, MED file, OSRD/NARA.
17. Oppenheimer to Groves, June 21, 1943, “Design and Testing Bomb” folder, MED history, Army/NARA.
18. “It would be much more comfortable to like everybody. Before I got to Los Alamos I even managed to do this—at least approximately,” Teller wrote to Maria Mayer in 1946. Teller to Mayer, n.d., box 3, Maria Mayer papers, Special Collections, University of California, San Diego (La Jolla), Calif.
19. Fitzpatrick (1998), 110.
20. Radiological warfare: Smyth (1989), 65; Barton Bernstein, “Radiological Warfare: The Path Not Taken,” The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Aug. 1985, 44–49.
21. Oppenheimer to Hamilton, May 24, 1943, folder 8, carton 5; and Hamilton, “A Brief Review of the Possible Applications of Fission Products in Offensive Warfare,” n.d., folder 25, carton 8, EOL.
22. Oppenheimer to Fermi, May 25, 1943, LANL.
23. Davis (1968), 182.
24. Fitin: Haynes and Klehr (1999), 391–92.
25. Soviet atomic espionage: Benson and Warner (1996), x; Allen Weinstein and Alexander Vassiliev, The Haunted Wood: Soviet Espionage in America—the Stalin Era (Random House, 1999), 182–83.
26. Trotskyists, for example, were referred to as khorki—“polecats.”
27. Silvermaster group: Haynes and Klehr (1999), 131–32, 191–207; Weinstein and Vassiliev (1999), 151–71; Nigel West, Venona: The Greatest Secret of the Cold War (HarperCollins, 2000), 289–316; and Nathan G. Silvermaster file, no. 65–56402, pt. 1, FBI.
28. White went on to become director of the International Monetary Fund; he also had the code names Jurist and Lawyer. Currie was FDR’s special representative to China and deputy administrator of the Foreign Economic Administration. Haynes and Klehr (1999), 346, 369.
29. Crook, Morris Dickstein, was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1923 and subsequently served eleven terms in Congress. Liza was Martha Dodd, who was recruited as an agent in the 1930s. Ernst was Noel Field, who was likewise recruited by the Russians in the 1930s. Frank was Laurence Duggan, a Latin American expert who also went by the code names Prince and Sherwood. Ales is believed to be Alger Hiss. Weinstein and Vassiliev (1999), 140–50, 57–60, 18–20, 44–49; Haynes and Klehr (1999), 269–73, 201–4, 167–71.
30. Haynes and Klehr (1999), 196. One OSS agent, Jane Foster (Slang), was a friend of Haakon Chevalier’s and spied for the so-called Perlo group. Slang appears in Venona messages from New York to Moscow on June 21, 1943, and May 30, 1944. Foster: Haynes and Klehr (1999), 272–73; Jane Foster, An UnAmerican Lady (Sidgwick and Jackson, 1980), 96.
31. A Venona cable sent from San Francisco to Moscow in Mar. 1944 showed that the watchers, too, were being watched: “According to information from Brother-in-Law, the chief of Salt in Babylon, Lieutenant Colonel Pash, left for Italy at the end of December.” Haynes and Klehr (1999), 447 fn.
32. As early as that summer, Anton was passing atomic secrets to Moscow. In June 1943, these included a detailed description of the gaseous diffusion process from a still-unidentified American scientist code-named Quantum. Venona decrypts: New York to Moscow, June 22 and 23, 1943.
33. Gore Field: Rhodes (1995), 96–100; George R. Jordan, From Major Jordan’s Diaries (Harcourt, Brace, 1952).
34 As of this writing, the decrypts are also available on the National Security Agency’s Web site, www.nsa.gov.
35. The illegal radios were evidently meant as a backup, should cable traffic be suspended. Both transmitters fell silent in fall 1943, days after a newspaper story reported their existence. “Probe to Bare Reds’ Illegal Radios in U.S.,” New York Journal-American, Oct. 17, 1943. My thanks to Jim David for uncovering the facts about the Soviet radio transmitters.
36. The Soviets’ top spy in the United States, Gaik Ovakimyan, had been arrested in May 1941 and deported. Soviet espionage in England: Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin, The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB (Basic Books, 1999); West (1999), 52–94.
37. Gorski’s source, John Cairncross, was private secretary to Lord Hankey, a minister in Churchill’s War Cabinet and head of the scientific panel that reviewed the work of the M.A.U.D. Committee. David Holloway, Stalin and the Bomb: The Soviet Union and Atomic Energy, 1939–1956 (Yale University Press, 1994), 82; Rhodes (1995), 52.
38. Fuchs: Robert Williams, Klaus Fuchs: Atom Spy (Harvard University Press, 1987), 21–30, 38; Rhodes (1995), 108; Andrew and Mitrokhin (1999), 114–16. Fuchs had begun work at Birmingham in late May 1941. By Aug., he was passing information on atomic research there to his Soviet contacts. Benson and Warner (1996), 201–2.
39. Rhodes (1995), 53–54; Holloway (1994), 84.
40. A translation of Beria’s memo to Stalin appears in Pavel Sudoplatov et al., Special Tasks: The Memoirs of an Unwanted Witness—a Soviet Spymaster (Little, Brown, 1994), 441.
41. Holloway (1994), 40.
42. The Nazi attack had the effect of shifting research into areas that had a better chance of showing short-term results. Kurchatov and others at Leningrad’s institute were put to work at demagnetizing ships to protect them from mines.
43. Sudoplatov, et al. (1994), 448.
44. Holloway (1994), 70.
45. Ibid., 91–94. The translated memos of Mar. 7 and Mar. 22, 1943, are reprinted in Sudoplatov et al. (1994), 446–53.
46. Sudoplatov et al. (1994), 454.
47. Details of Fermi’s Dec. 1942 experiment apparently reached Moscow in late Jan. 1943. Albright and Kunstel (1997), 75–76.
48. Holloway (1994), 68.
49. Kurchatov noted that it would be at least another year before the Soviet Union could carry out the kind of research on plutonium that was then under way at Berkeley, since Russia’s cyclotrons had been put out of operation by the war.
50. Schwartz (1998), 226–32.
51. Kheifets: Ibid., 338; Sudoplatov et al. (1994), 84–85; “COMRAP” memo, Feb. 6, 1948, Benson and Warner (1996), 105; “Report on Soviet Espionage in the United States,” Nov. 27, 1945, entry 11, RG 233 (Dies Committee records), National Archives.
52. Eltenton-Kheifets meeting: Eltenton interviews, June 26 and June 29, 1946, George Eltenton
FBI file, no. 100–5113, box 6, JRO/AEC.
53. The FBI hoped to find out more about Kheifets from a surreptitious entry of his apartment. But the bureau’s “black-bag job” yielded disappointing results. King interview (1997).
54. Ivanov: Haynes and Klehr (1999), 325. “Finding new recruits for a Soviet intelligence service within either the open section of a national Communist Party or within its secret cells or study groups is one of the duties of the Party liaison agent himself, but he may also have trusted Party members scattered throughout the Party organization who help him with this work,” noted a CIA memo on “talent spotting.” “Exploitation of the International Communist Movement by the Soviet Intelligence Services,” July 1954, file 13, box 78, RG 263 (Central Intelligence Agency records), National Archives.
55. Eltenton and Kheifets: Interviews, June 26 and June 29, 1946, Eltenton FBI file, box 6, JRO/AEC.
56. Eltentons: Eltenton interview, June 26, 1946, 11–12, Eltenton file, FBI; Dorothea Eltenton, Laughter in Leningrad: An English Family in Russia, 1933–1938 (privately published, 1998); summary report, Dec. 15, 1944, 39–40, COMRAP file, no. 100–17879, FBI. The author thanks Priscilla McMillan for bringing Dolly’s book to his attention.
57. The credulous Ms. Eltenton remained a true believer even after a close friend—her children’s nanny—was arrested and disappeared into the Soviet gulag.
58. Eltenton FBI interviews.
59. FBI agents witnessed several meetings in 1942 between Eltenton and Ivanov, who was on the bureau’s active “watch” list. Haynes and Klehr (1999), 329.
60. Conroy to Hoover, Aug. 14, 1943, sec. 6, COMRAP file, FBI. The following Nov., Lawrence, Gilbert, and Cannon served as honorary chairmen of a science panel at the Congress of American-Soviet Friendship in New York. Kuznick (1987), 266.
61. Eltenton FBI interview, June 26, 1946.
62. Ibid. Other evidence suggesting that either Eltenton or Chevalier attempted to recruit Oppie comes from a report that NKVD agents in the United States sent to Moscow in February 1944. The report noted that Oppenheimer “ha[d] been cultivated by the ‘neighbors’ [GRU] since June 1942.” Weinstein and Vassiliev (1999), 184.
63. Eltenton FBI interview, June 29, 1946.
