Oppenheimer established weekly colloquiums, where the division and group leaders could report their progress and problems in detail. The meetings, which became a Tuesday night tradition, came to be regarded as the linchpin of the laboratory’s productivity and rapid progress. “Oppenheimer insisted that absolutely everyone should be interested, and should know, and should contribute,” explained Bethe, adding that this open-handed approach encouraged even the lowliest of the scientists to take part and promoted a sense of enthusiasm and pulling together that became the heart and soul of their fledgling enterprise. He later wrote that Oppie’s leadership in establishing the “democratic organization” of the laboratory was one of the key factors in its ultimate success:
The governing board, where questions of general and technical laboratory policy were discussed, consisted of the division leaders (about eight of them). The coordinating council included all the group leaders, about 50 in number, and kept them all informed on the most important technical progress and problems of the various groups in the laboratory. All scientists having a B.A. degree were admitted to the colloquium in which specialized talks about laboratory problems were given. Each of these assemblies met once a week. In this manner everybody in the laboratory felt part of the whole and felt he should contribute to the success of the program. Very often a problem discussed in one of these meetings would intrigue a scientist in a completely different branch of the laboratory, and he would come up with an unexpected solution…. Oppenheimer had to fight hard for free discussion among all qualified members of the laboratory. But the free flow of information and discussion, together with Oppenheimer’s personality, kept morale at its highest throughout the war.
Groves subscribed to the opinion of one of his former chief engineers—“[I have] no objection to any committee as long as I appoint them”—and established his own Review Committee after Conant counseled him that forming such a body would improve his relationship with the scientific community, regardless of whether or not he chose to pay attention to their reports.
He [Conant] pointed out that these people were accustomed to making their views known to similar committees appointed by their university administrations, and that our adoption of this system would meet with their approbation. A further advantage which we both recognized was that a review committee, with its fresh outlook, might be able to make a suggestion that would be eagerly seized upon, whereas if the same suggestion came from me, it might be regarded as interference.
The Review Committee, which was composed of five scientists carefully selected by Groves for their familiarity with the project and sympathy with his views, approved the program laid out by the Los Alamos physicists and lauded Oppenheimer’s performance as director.
Oppenheimer had always been quick to grasp technical problems, but his adept handling of mesa politics, and particular finesse when it came to Groves, far exceeded expectations. Bethe, who prior to Los Alamos had regarded Oppenheimer as “a difficult human being” and someone who could be very tactless and cutting when he wanted to be, was pleasantly surprised by the change in his demeanor. For all his initial doubts, Manley, too, was impressed by the “astonishingly rapid transformation of this theorist” into a highly effective leader and administrator. Though he had become more aware of Oppenheimer’s warmth and consideration as they worked together on the early stages of the project, he still had seen nothing to suggest the hidden talents that emerged at Los Alamos. Manley was most impressed by Oppenheimer’s subtle orchestration of all the various players, which he likened to a “ballet,” with each person knowing what was expected of him and playing his assigned part. “He had no great reluctance about using people,” he observed. “But … it was an enjoyable experience because of the character of Robert to do it so adroitly.” Manley often wondered if Groves, who was a very astute judge of people, “sensed the breadth of stature and capability of this man in areas which his previous activity had given so few objective hints for the future.”
Greene, too, took note of this new, more mature turn in Oppenheimer’s character. “It’s a real mystery that he rose to this so fast, considering that he was a very diffident, shy person to begin with,” she said. But he had the scientists’ respect and their unstinting confidence—that he understood the problem and that it really could be done—and this gave him a new kind of strength and confidence. “He had that behind him,” she said, adding that statesmanship was “something he learned, and perhaps not too well.”
After the April gathering, Groves moved to tighten his hold over Los Alamos. In the wake of Condon’s resignation, he rescinded Oppenheimers authority to designate who came onto the Los Alamos site. From May 8, 1943, only he, and he alone, would have the power to authorize visitors to the secret city. Under his supervision, Oppenheimer would from then on periodically issue supplemental “Notes on Security,” clearly designed to clarify and further amplify the policy of compartmentalization laid out in the original “Memorandum on the Los Alamos Project,” which had been sent out to the scientists before they came and had served as an ominous introduction to their future life. The first memo had been stamped “Restricted” and warned the reader not to share the document with anyone but known project members—wives could be acquainted with the contents only if they were sworn to silence—and included a copy of the Espionage Act. It had provided the barest minimum of information, stated that limited movement outside Los Alamos and in the immediate area would be permitted, and concluded with a stern note from Oppenheimer:
The extent to which we shall be able to maintain this comparative freedom will depend primarily on our success in keeping the affairs of the laboratory strictly within the confines of the Laboratory, on the cooperation which the project personnel affords us in its discretion on all project matters, and on our willingness to rupture completely our normal associations with those not on the project.
A subsequent note from Oppenheimer on May 22, 1943, which had Groves’ fingerprints all over it, was far more severe in tone: “It is important that our personnel should maintain no social relations with people in the neighboring communities.”
It was not enough that the scientists were shut away from prying eyes; they were to avoid any human society beyond the gates. The censorship regulations dictated that they never introduce themselves to local residents, identify their occupation in any way other than as “engineer,” or mention where they were staying even in the most general terms lest the smallest detail betray their location. “Don’t mention the topographical details which are essential to the Project,” another security pamphlet warned. “Box 1663” was the only address they were allowed to give out—it went on their new IDs, forwarded mail, boxes containing their furniture, auto registrations, driver’s licenses, insurance policies, bank accounts, and ration coupons. They could not sign their name to any form, even something as innocent as a library card, that might give away their identity or whereabouts. They were forbidden to travel more than one hundred miles from Los Alamos, circumscribing their lives within a tiny fragment of the map bordered by the New Mexican towns of Albuquerque, Cuba, Las Vegas, and Lamy Exceptions would be made only for trips related to laboratory business and personal emergencies. If they passed people they knew on the street, they were to cut them dead. If they were recognized at any time, or happened upon an old friend from their former life, they were to keep the conversation short and would have to submit a lengthy report to the security force. They were RESTRICTED, as they were reminded again and again in large, bold letters in every new instruction booklet and directive.
Leaving the post for even a short time was not an easy proposition. The fence that enclosed Los Alamos was surrounded by an outer fence, separating the two-by-eight-mile-wide strip of land from the rest of the world. There were only two ways to access the closed city: the Main Gate, or East Gate Guard Tower, which was reached by the desert road from Santa Fe; and the less used Back Gate, or West Gate, which opened onto mountain country and woods and led d
own to the Valle Grande, an immense volcano basin now covered in pasture. Each guard station was posted with red-and-white warning signs that read:
U.S. GOVERNMENT PROPERTY
DANGER! PELIGROSO!
KEEP OUT
The uniformed sentries did not permit anyone to enter or leave the compound without proper authorization. The elaborate inspection process quickly became the bane of everyone’s existence. The passes handed out to people by Dorothy McKibbin when they first arrived in Santa Fe were good for only twenty-four hours, which required newcomers to report with dispatch to the Pass Office on the Hill, located in the old stone pump house. There they would be photographed and fingerprinted, and subjected to the first of many strange and humiliating interrogations. Did they have any unusual birthmarks? Identifying scars? All this would be duly recorded in their files and noted on their permanent passes. They would then be informed of all the secrecy regulations and required to sign the Espionage Act. But even then they were not home free. The credentials had to be renewed every two weeks in the Pass Office, or the MPs would solemnly shake their heads and they would not be allowed through the gate. Many an irate physicist and his tearful wife were detained at the gate, or turned away completely, because their passes had expired. Hans Staub, one of the project’s resident philosophers, was convinced he saw ominous implications in the steel fences. “Are those big, tough MPs, with their guns, here to keep us in or to keep the rest of the world out?” he demanded once, only half in jest. “There is an important distinction here and before I leave this place, I want to know the answer.”
Telephone calls were routinely interrupted by overzealous monitors, who cut the connection every time a curious relative asked a probing question in order to caution personnel before they replied. Security was also steaming open their mail and perusing the contents. Adding insult to injury, Groves denied this was happening and maintained that a policy of self-censorship was adequate. But as an experiment, Fermi once slipped a strand of his own hair into a letter to his wife. She reported back to him that when she opened it, the hair was gone. As the months went on, the rumors persisted that G-2 was opening and reading letters, and the complaints increased. Groves determined that censorship was not such a bad idea, and Oppenheimer went along with it.
A list of regulations was then drawn up by army officials and circulated to the staff. Specifically, this meant that in addition to not revealing any details about their location, they were not to mention the names of colleagues at the lab or anything relating to their work or equipment. Sending photographs of Los Alamos, drawings, even doodles, was strictly against the rules. They were instructed to put their mail in the box unsealed, and the censors would collect it, and cart it off to the cramped offices next to Dorothy’s on East Palace, where it would be read, sealed, and sent on its way. If the censors did not like what they read, they would blue-pencil the offending passages and send back the letter with suggested revisions. When Shirley Barnett sent her mother a sketch of how she had arranged the furniture in her new apartment, along with the dimensions of her tiny living room, the letter was returned with a note requesting she excise all the physical descriptions. Incoming mail was also read and resealed, and it arrived bearing the stamp “Opened by the Army Examiner.”
The system was simple, but the psychological repercussions were complicated and profound. Letters from Los Alamos tended to be terse. Bob Wilson’s wife, Jane, recalled being too “painfully self-conscious,” and altogether too terrified that she might in some way incriminate herself, to put pen to paper: “I couldn’t write a letter without seeing a censor pouring over it. I couldn’t go to Santa Fe without being aware of hidden eyes upon me, watching, waiting to pounce on that inevitable miss-step. It wasn’t a pleasant feeling.” She wrote of a chance encounter with a college friend on the streets in Santa Fe that left her badly shaken. It had been thrilling to see someone “from the outside world, someone whose life wasn’t mixed up in supersecret matters. But even this encounter was against the rules”:
“Come have a Coke with me,” my friend suggested, little realizing the enormity of her proposition.
I was numb with embarrassment. Woodenly, I accepted the invitation, although my conversation was a succession of fluid grunts. A moment’s slip and I, by nature blabbermouthed, felt that I would find myself hurtling into the gaping entrance to hell. It was a relief to say goodbye. Then, like a child confessing she has been naughty, I reported my social engagement to the Security Officer. Everything had to be reported to the Security Officer. Living at Los Alamos was something like living in jail.
The scientists and their families tolerated these indignities and mourned their lost privacy and freedom. Accustomed to the lax atmosphere of university campuses, they reacted with varying degrees of resignation, anger, and dismay to their confinement. Even though they knew the importance of wartime secrecy, they could not help being disconcerted by the daily reality of being watched. On brief excursions into nearby Espanola or Santa Fe for supplies they might find themselves tailed by security. There were rumors that their apartments were bugged and that one or two physicists had been pulled aside and warned not to talk about their work at home. They felt security was always breathing down their necks, and Dorothy saw the toll it took on their behavior. They became increasingly stiff and unnatural in public, and at times the reply to the most casual question would suddenly freeze on their lips. They were so plagued by G-2, she wrote, that project members would turn pale with fright if they thought their cloak of obscurity was about to be lifted. “When a shopkeeper automatically inquired, prompted more by way of western hospitality, Where are you from?’ the answer was always a stammered Box 1663, as the speaker faded into the background. Security allowed them to say no more.”
For the most part, the scientists and their families tried to be cooperative with their guardians. They wanted to safeguard the secrecy of the project, even if many of the rules seemed contradictory and vague. But to Dick Feynman, who was very young, very bright, and barely out of school, the censors seemed pointlessly arbitrary and high-handed, and he delighted in foiling them at every turn. Feynman was precocious, even by Los Alamos standards, and full of mischief. Despite his youth, he was included in all the high-level meetings with the senior scientists because he was regarded as unusually brilliant and innovative. He had only agreed to come to Los Alamos with the promise from Oppenheimer that he could regularly visit his wife, who had tuberculosis and was convalescing in a sanitarium in Albuquerque, a few hours away. Feynman had married his high school sweetheart and wrote to her almost daily. To make the correspondence more amusing for them both, he suggested she write to him in a code of her own devising that he would then decipher. When her letters arrived, written in what appeared to be gibberish—“TJXYWZTW1X3”—the censors naturally queried the content. Feynman would explain that the text was written in code and that he did not know what it said because he did not have the key. The censors did not approve of this game, and after much back and forth, it was finally agreed that she would enclose a key so they could read the letter and that they would then remove the key before forwarding the letter to him. But after trying to figure out a few more Feynman missives, Captain Peer de Silva, the chief of security at Los Alamos, changed his mind and declared, “No codes.”
The fun did not end there. The Feynmans graduated to even more elaborate forms of cryptography. Letters from Feynman’s wife began to arrive with words whited-out, whole passages missing, and in one instance “a hole cut out of the paper.” One of the accepted rules of censorship on the post was that the censors only tampered with the outgoing mail. Everyone knew they also monitored the incoming mail, but “they were not supposed to take anything out.” In his reminiscences of Los Alamos, Feynman described in detail the way he exploited every loophole in the system to drive the censors to distraction:
There was always some kind of difficulty with the letters going back and forth. For example, my wife kept mentioning the fa
ct that she felt uncomfortable writing with the feeling that a censor is looking over her shoulder. Now, as a rule, we aren’t supposed to mention censorship. We aren’t, but how can they tell her? So they keep sending me a note: “Your wife mentioned censorship.” Certainly, my wife mentioned censorship. So finally they sent me a note that said, “Please inform your wife not to mention censorship in her letters.” So I start my letter: “I have been instructed to inform you to not mention censorship in your letters.” Phoom, phoooom, it comes right back!
At a certain point, Groves decided he had had enough of the budding genius’s hijinks. This may have been when Feynman took to safecracking for his own entertainment and worked out how the Los Alamos combination locks functioned, which enabled him to open anyone’s safe just by listening to the tiny clicks the knob made when turned backward and forward. He enjoyed embarrassing colleagues by leaving their safes open so they would be scolded by security, or by putting little notes inside signaling that he had struck again. The last straw may have been when he chose to demonstrate how easy it was to get into the classified facility by finding a hole that had been cut in the fence by some of the local workmen, who used it as a shortcut. Feynman went out the gate and in through the hole, and out and in again, round and round until he finally caught the attention of the sergeant at the gate. It is likely the general drew the line at having one of his scientific minions, a jumped-up graduate student no less, holding his security measures up to ridicule. Oppenheimer was forced to run interference for Feynman again and again, and had he not been so gifted, and his wife so desperately ill, there would have been hell to pay. As it was, his pranks quickly became a favorite topic at dinner, and if nothing else, the rapidity with which his more outrageous escapades made the rounds testified to how efficient the classified community’s gossip network had become. “He caused a lot of trouble,” said Greene. “But Dick always looked distraught, and Oppie made allowances.”
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