The Pentagon's Brain

by Annie Jacobsen

  With no formal training, and in a matter of a few years, Christofilos transformed himself from an elevator technician into one of the most ingenious scientists in the modern world. There are almost no details about his work during this dark time of occupation and war, but three years after the end of the war, in 1948, he wrote a letter to the University of California Radiation Laboratory in Berkeley, “purporting to describe a new invention,” according to York. “The letter was, apparently, not easy to decipher.” But when a scientist at Livermore finally did “puzzle it out,” says York, “he discovered that it was only another way of describing the synchrocyclotron,” a device that had been invented independently several years before by Edwin McMillan, a chemist at Berkeley, and Vladimir Veksler, a physicist in the USSR. “Papers describing that invention had already been published more than a year before Nick’s letter arrived, so it was set aside and forgotten,” said York. The supposition was that the letter writer could have gotten the information from the academic paper. Then, two years later, scientists at Livermore received a second letter from Nicholas Christofilos, this one describing another type of particle accelerator. “It was considerably more complex than the first,” said York, “and whoever was assigned to read it could not make out what it was trying to say.” Same as the first letter, it was cast aside.

  Two years later, two nuclear physicists at the Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island published a paper describing an accelerator, this one so technologically advanced that for the first time in the history of science, a machine could “produce particles with more than one billion electron volts of energy,” noted York. As it so happened, Christofilos had recently moved to the United States. When he read the article in a science journal, he contacted the authors to tell them he had already invented that machine in his mind, and had described it in a letter that was on file with the Livermore lab. When Christofilos demanded due credit for the invention, a search of the records was made. Sure enough, according to York, Christofilos had a clear priority of invention. “Naturally,” recalled York, the discovery that a Greek elevator installer had priority in this very sophisticated invention produced a flurry of interest and reaction.” In 1954 Christofilos was offered a job at Brookhaven, where a huge accelerator based on his invention was being built. But soon Christofilos became bored with the invention he had imagined years before. He was already well on to other ideas. When Herb York learned the strange story of Nicholas Christofilos, he saw great potential and hired him.

  Resistance came from the federal security clearance people. “They found it hard to believe that an ‘elevator mechanic’ had accomplished all that Christofilos had claimed,” said York. “He must be, they thought, some sort of mole that the Russians had pumped full of ideas not his own.” Clearance officers finally authorized Christofilos to work at Livermore, giving him access to top secret information. But he was denied the coveted Q clearance, which allows a scientist access to nuclear secrets. At Livermore, Christofilos produced one seminal idea after another. Eventually he was granted higher clearances than just about everyone else around him. When Sputnik flew, Christofilos became convinced that the Russians had gained a too significant scientific advantage over the United States. That they were likely planning a surprise attack. He threw all his energy and ingenuity into finding a way to keep this from happening. Now the Project 137 scientists were at a crossroads. It was risky and expensive. But if the Christofilos effect worked, it would be a magic bullet answer to ballistic missile defense.

  At Fort McNair, the scientists agreed that the Christofilos effect was worth investigating. In practical terms, it was the best idea anyone had come up with. The scope of national security threats facing the nation left many of the Project 137 scientists with a deep sense of foreboding. It caused “responsible people sleepless nights,” John Wheeler said. Although all of the scientists had worked on Defense Department programs before, learning of sixty-eight threats concurrently “weighed heavily on the conscience,” Goldberger recalled.

  “Many of the members of Project 137 were deeply disturbed and others even shocked by the gravity of the problems with which they found themselves confronted,” Wheeler wrote in his after-action report for ARPA. “The group has developed a strong feeling for and deep appreciation of the great crisis with which the nation is faced. The group senses the rapidly increasing danger into which we are inexorably heading.”

  Much rested on the success of Operation Argus, now set to unfold at the bottom of the world.

  Halfway across the earth, in the middle of the South Atlantic Ocean, the men of Task Force 88 were assembled as far away from civilization as man can get without being in Antarctica. The spot had been chosen because it was outside shipping lanes, in a remote expanse between the tip of South America and the tip of Africa, east of a dip in the magnetic field known as the Brazilian Anomaly. The weather was unpredictable, and there was the issue of high seas. It was in this rough ocean that the U.S. military planned to launch three nuclear weapons into space, off the back of a moving seaplane tender called the USS Norton Sound. The hope was that the Christofilos effect would create a great enough disturbance in the earth’s geomagnetic fields, in the layers of the ionosphere, and in radio waves that it would ruin the delicate electronics housed inside any incoming missile.

  An extraordinary number of men and machines were involved in Operation Argus, the only fully classified test in the history of U.S. nuclear testing; no part of the operation was made public, nor would the public know about it until the New York Times broke the story six months after its completion. There were 4,500 military personnel, hundreds of scientists and engineers, twenty-one fixed-wing aircraft, eight Sikorsky helicopters, three destroyers, a fleet oiler, an aircraft carrier, a seaplane tender, more than a dozen Lockheed X-17A missiles, and three nuclear warheads involved. ARPA was the agency in charge, with divisions from the Air Force, the Army, and the Navy shouldering major elements of the operation. Satellites, each carrying a payload of a hundred pounds of recording instruments, would be placed in equatorial and polar orbits by the Army Ballistic Missile Agency shortly before the tests. The sensors would record effects and relay data. With so many moving parts, on so many different continents, any number of things could go wrong.

  Weather was a major unknown to contend with. Operation Argus involved firing three nuclear-tipped Lockheed X-17A missiles off the back of a moving ship. The USS Norton Sound was capable of launching a missile in winds up to forty-six miles per hour, but no one had expected waves nearing twenty feet. The ship could make speed corrections to compensate for the wind, but the waves threatened to dangerously alter the missile trajectory in its boost stage. The commander of Task Force 88 was concerned with the safety of his crew, and with good reason.

  During a practice run of a missile launch, one of the X-17As failed in flight, after only twenty-five seconds. Had there been a nuclear weapon in the nosecone, it would have produced a catastrophic disaster. The missile would have been just a few thousand feet up, and exploding at that height would likely have killed or injured many of the crew. Making matters seem even more precarious, in the following test run, the missile failed again, this time just three seconds after launch.

  Secrecy was paramount to success. If the Christofilos effect was achieved, it would produce massive disturbances across the earth’s upper atmosphere. These disruptions would be detected by every nation monitoring these kinds of phenomena, most notably the Soviets. Total secrecy meant the disturbances would infuriate the Soviets; they would have no idea what caused them and would most likely conclude the United States was working on a top secret high-altitude weapon. This was one of the desired effects.

  Four days before the first nuclear launch, all ships and aircraft were in place. U.S. reconnaissance aircraft patrolled the skies over the South Atlantic. Ships carrying antiaircraft rockets were at the ready, in the unforeseen event of Soviet sabotage. The commander of Task Force 88 sent his final coded message to the
ARPA office at the Pentagon, a prearranged indication that the operation was a go at his end.

  “Doctor Livingstone, I presume?” the commander stated clearly into a ship-to-shore radio microphone. The first test would take place on August 27, 1958. Although no one had a name for it at the time, Operation Argus was the world’s first test of an electromagnetic pulse bomb, or EMP.

  Halfway across the world, in Switzerland, a remarkable series of events was taking place. It was the height of the summer season, and Ernest O. Lawrence and his wife, Molly, were attending a party at the historic Parc des Eaux-Vives, an eighteenth-century mansion on Lake Geneva. Mist rose off the lake, the weather was magnificent, and from the villa’s terrace where the couple sat behind protective glass, there were stunning panoramic views. Ernest and Molly Lawrence dined and watched fireworks. Wine flowed. And Ernest Lawrence was having a miserable time.

  For the first time in the history of nuclear weapons, top scientists from the United States and the Soviet Union had been meeting here in Geneva, under the strictest of security provisions, to hash out technical terms so that a nuclear test suspension could go forward. The Geneva Conference of Experts marked the ultimate low point in the prolific nuclear weapons career of Ernest Lawrence. For more than twenty years, Lawrence had been one of the nation’s most vocal advocates for nuclear weapons development and testing, along with his deputy Edward Teller. That Eisenhower wanted Lawrence to represent him distressed Lawrence when he was first asked, and it upset him even more now that he was attending the conference.

  “The President has asked, so I must go!” he told Molly before they left California. The very thought rendered Lawrence “depressed over the idea,” according to his biographer Herbert Childs, but still he “felt it was his duty to accept” and to go to Geneva. The conference lasted all summer, and for Lawrence the meetings were becoming increasingly stressful. There were so many important technical aspects to iron out, including ways in which each side could be certain that the other side would not cheat. For that, Lawrence brought his Livermore deputy Harold Brown, the young physicist who had taken over York’s job as chief scientist at Livermore.

  Here in Geneva, Brown acted as Lawrence’s technical advisor. In order to stop testing, both superpowers had to agree to the creation of a network of 170 seismic detection facilities across Europe, Asia, and North America. This technology effort was being spearheaded by ARPA through its Vela Uniform program. Technology had advanced to the point where these detection facilities would soon be able to monitor and sense, with close to 100 percent certainty, any aboveground nuclear test over 1 kiloton and, with 90 percent certainty, any underground test over 5 kilotons. Both sides knew that in some situations it was difficult for detection facilities to tell the difference between an earthquake and an underground test. These were the kinds of verification details that the experts were working to hash out.

  Ernest Lawrence had been attending meetings by day and social events by night. The situation was stressful, and now he was exhausted. Lawrence worried that there was something wrong with his health. He deeply distrusted the Soviets. Perhaps working with their scientists was making him ill? He had just returned from a first-class trip across India and Europe, traveling in private planes and being driven by chauffeurs. He and his family had visited with statesmen and maharajahs. There, he’d felt fine. Travel always made him feel better, and Molly suggested a day trip to the ski resort at Chamonix-Mont-Blanc, in the nearby Alps. Lawrence agreed and off they went, but upon his return, Lawrence came down with a fever. The next day he was unable to get out of bed.

  “He just didn’t seem to get well, though he didn’t seem terribly sick,” recalled his colleague Robert Bacher, one of three nuclear scientists officially representing the United States. Fearing her husband had pneumonia, Molly Lawrence called for a physician. Dr. Bernard Wissmer examined Lawrence and noted that he “was cheerful and did not seem acutely ill, despite fever.”

  Lawrence confided in the Swiss doctor. He suffered from colitis, or inflammation of the bowels, he said, and he relapsed when he became tense. Dr. Wissmer gave him a proctoscopic exam and said he was in good health. The following day Lawrence made some effort to attend the conference, but mostly he had Harold Brown participate on his behalf. Venturing out of his hotel room, he collapsed in the hallway. Molly suggested they return home.

  “I could never live with myself if I left before this conference was over,” Lawrence told his wife. Dr. Wissmer prescribed penicillin. Then later that week, after a lakeside lunch with his translator, the Berkeley professor and Russian émigré Leonid Tichvinsky, Lawrence decided that he had had enough. “This is it, we’re going home tonight,” he told his wife.

  Arriving back in California, Lawrence checked into a hospital. He never left. He was given a blood transfusion and was told he needed to have his colon removed. The thought of never being able to defecate like a healthy human horrified him, his biographer later revealed. Shortly after the surgery, Lawrence slipped into a coma. On August 27, he died. He had just turned fifty-seven years old. The Livermore laboratory would be renamed the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

  Halfway across the world in a far corner of the South Atlantic, outside shipping lanes and near a dip in the magnetic field, on the same day that Ernest Lawrence died, the first of the three Argus high-altitude nuclear weapons was detonated. Argus 1 suffered an errant missile trajectory and missed its target—which was 340 nautical miles above the earth—by more 230 miles. Three days later Argus 2 also failed to reach its desired altitude and exploded roughly 84 nautical miles above the task force launching area. The last and final test, Argus 3, was the most precarious, first with a misfire in high winds followed by a nuclear explosion on September 6, 1958, at an altitude of 115 nautical miles. Operation Argus proved to be a grand disappointment. The results were nothing close to what Nicholas Christofilos had predicted and Herb York had hoped for. While the Christofilos effect did occur, it was limited in intensity and very short-lived. More nuclear tests were needed. But the moratorium was coming.

  In Switzerland, at the Geneva Conference of Experts, the scientists submitted their final report. Given advances in the technology of detection, American and Soviet scientists now agreed that it was possible to cease nuclear testing. If one side cheated, they would be caught. President Eisenhower was delighted. The very next day he held a press conference to announce that the United States would halt nuclear testing, starting on October 31, if the Soviets formally agreed to halt testing as well.

  At Livermore laboratory in California, Edward Teller was furious. He had no intention of giving up nuclear testing without protest. Two days after the death of his colleague and boss Ernest Lawrence, even before Lawrence was buried, Teller sent a classified telegram to Brigadier General Alfred Starbird, the defense official at the Pentagon in charge of nuclear weapons tests. The telegram, marked “Priority,” had the subject heading “Thoughts in Connection to the Test Moratorium.”

  Teller told Starbird that the test ban was a threat to national security. That it showed weakness and vulnerability and opened America up to a sneak nuclear attack. “The purpose [of this telegram] is in part to clarify laboratory plans and in part to point out dangers in connections with future discussions concerning the test moratorium,” Teller wrote. “The laboratory must continue research and development of nuclear weapons,” he wrote, “in order to comply with the [president’s] directive.” More tests needed to be done in order to make sure that it was safe to comply. Furthermore, he argued, many of Livermore’s nuclear tests were not tests per se but rather scientific experiments, as Operation Argus was.

  There was a loophole to be explored, Teller suggested. “Explosions below a kiloton cannot be detected and identified by any of the methods considered realistic by any of the delegations at the Geneva Conference,” he wrote. The United States could secretly conduct low-yield tests. Yes, it would be cheating, but the Russians could not be trusted, and surely they w
ould cheat too.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Sixteen Hundred Seconds Until Doomsday

  Eugene McManus, an electronics technician, worked at the top of the world. He had joined the Air Force, at age seventeen, for adventure and to learn radar technology, and now here he was four years later working at a classified ARPA-activated outpost just nine hundred miles from the North Pole. This was the Ballistic Missile Early Warning System (BMEWS) facility, the world’s first operational missile-detection radar site, and it was connected directly with the North American Air Defense Command, or NORAD. McManus and everyone else who worked here knew the remote, isolated facility as “J-Site.”

  “Our job at J-Site amounted to ninety percent boredom and ten percent panic,” Gene McManus recalls. “The panic was if the power went off or if there was a missile scare.”

  J-Site was part of ARPA’s secretive 474L System Program Office, which was responsible for developing techniques and equipment to track all objects in space and any ICBMs that might be coming in over the North Pole. The Air Force ran the place, and McManus technically worked for RCA, Radio Corporation of America, under its defense contractor division, RCA Service Company.

  The Arctic environment played a role in everything, McManus explains. J-Site was located thirteen miles from the main Defense Department base in Thule, Greenland, an area that was landlocked by ice nine months of the year. For roughly four of those months, the sun never came up over the horizon and the temperature stayed around -40 degrees Fahrenheit. There was darkness all day and all night, the black sky interrupted only by the low-rising moon. For the two hundred people who worked at J-Site each day, the commute was called “the coldest thirteen miles on wheels.”