8. War of the Worlds radio broadcast as an example: Zachary, Endless Frontier, 190.
9. President Roosevelt had appointed: “Vannevar Bush, A Collection of His Papers in the Library of Congress,” Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington DC.
10. his next move: Zachary, Endless Frontier, 285. Zachary wrote,
“Bush’s role in the A-bomb’s birth actually burnished his reputation. Like Truman, most Americans were thrilled by Japan’s surrender and the end of the war… Rather than interrogate the leaders of the Manhattan Project, the public embraced them. Bush’s reputation as a scientific seer grew; his image as an unmatched organizer of expertise solidified. For Bush, the atomic bomb capped off his fiveyear rise to celebrity from relative obscurity.”
11. As Americans celebrated peace: “Majority Supports Use of Atomic Bomb on Japan in WWII”: David Moore, Gallup News Service, August 5, 2005.
12. Operation Crossroads was in full swing: Author interview with Colonel Leghorn, who was the commanding officer of Task Force 1.5.2 for the operation. I am indebted to Colonel Leghorn not only for generously sharing with me recollections of his historic role at Crossroads, beginning with his departure by airplane from the Roswell Army Air Field, but for lending me original photographs taken from his airplane during the 1946 nuclear tests. He also loaned me two original yearbook-type books where I learned the operation involved more than ten thousand instruments and nearly half the world’s supply of film. The Air Force alone took nine million photographs.
13. There were barracuda everywhere: Interview with Ralph “Jim” Freedman. Freedman’s first visit to Bikini was for the nuclear test Castle Bravo, six years after Crossroads, but the barracuda problem was the same.
14. led by a king named Juda: Bradley, No Place to Hide, 158.
15. The U.S. Navy had evacuated the natives to Rongerik Atoll: The documentary Radio Bikini (1987), directed by Robert Stone, includes remarkable outtakes of AEC footage showing military personnel rehearsing how to best pitch propaganda to the natives.
16. three-bomb atomic test series: Schwartz, Atomic Audit, 102. Operation Crossroads cost an astonishing $1.3 billion in 1946 eleven months after the war’s end, more than any subsequent test series.
Crossroads involved 95 ships and 42,000 military and civilian personnel. It was a show of force.
17. a young man named Alfred O’Donnell: Interview with Alfred “Al” O’Donnell.
18. “In the face of intense fire”: Air Force Historical Research Agency, 30 Reconnaissance Squadron (ACC), Lineage, Assignments, Stations, and Honors, Major Richard S. Leghorn, http://www.afhra.af.mil/factsheets/factsheet.asp?id=10193.
19. Curtis LeMay rarely smiled: Kozak, LeMay, iv. 20. five cents per bird: Ibid., 9.
21. “Caveman in a Jet Bomber”: I. F. Stone, The Best of I. F. Stone, 326-28.
22. LeMay was at Bikini to determine: Rhodes, Dark Sun, 261-62.
23. Operation Crossroads was a huge event: The New York Times described it as the largest and “most stupendous single set of experiments in history.” Senator Huffman called the test a “Roman holiday in the Pacific” and promised that the “only important impression these tests are going to give the world is that the United States is not done with war.” Members of the Southern Dairy Goat Owners and Breeders Association recommended that the sheep being used during the test be substituted with U.S. congressmen, on the grounds that good goats were harder to find than congressmen were. In the days leading up to the event, protesters picketed the White House with signs that read, BIKINI: REHEARSAL FOR WORLD WAR THREE.
24. one million tons of battle-weary steel: Fact sheet, Operation Crossroads, Defense Nuclear Agency, Public Affairs Office, Washington, DC, April 5, 1984.
25. Alfred O’Donnell stood below deck: Interview with O’Donnell.
26. the DN-11 relay system: Interview with O’Donnell; copy of a handwritten letter by Herbert Grier from O’Donnell’s collection.
27. What Leghorn witnessed horrified him: Interviews with Colonel Leghorn.
28. tossed up into the air like bathtub toys: United States Atomic Energy Commission Memorandum for the Board, August 23, 1973, #718922, Naval Vessels Sunk During Operation Crossroads; AEC film footage of the explosion, Atomic Testing Museum library, Las Vegas, NV.
29. west of the Volga River: Pedlow and Welzenbach, Central Intelligence Agency, 22.
Leghorn believed: Interview with Colonel Leghorn. 30. what shipyards or missile-launch facilities: Ibid.; interview with
Hervey Stockman, who was the first man to fly over the Soviet Union in a U-2 spy plane.
31. Halfway across the world: Rhodes, Dark Sun, 261.
32. chain-reacting atomic pile would go critical: O’Keefe, Nuclear Hostages, 134.
33. Joseph Stalin was developing another secret weapon: Author interview with EG&G engineer.
34. secret weapon, called Hermes: Interview with Lisa Blevins, U.S. Army public affairs officer, White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico; “Report on Hermes Missile Project,” Washington National Records Center, Record Group 156.
35. belonged to Adolf Hitler: Hunt, Secret Agenda, 27.
36. secret project called Operation Paperclip: Paperclip was a postwar operation carried out by the Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency, a special intelligence office that reported to the director of intelligence in the War Department. Today, this would be the equivalent of reporting to the intelligence chief for the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Most details about Project Paperclip remain classified despite the government’s insistence otherwise. Paperclip began before the
war ended, and it was originally called Project Overcast and/or Project Pajamas. It had two primary goals: to exploit the minds of German scientists for American Cold War research projects and to keep the Russians from getting the German scientists, no matter how heinous their war crimes might have been. It is believed that at least sixteen hundred scientists were recruited by various U.S. intelligence groups and brought, with their dependents, to the United States. Paperclip had a number of secret, successor projects that remain classified as of 2011.
37. Wernher Von Braun: G-2 Paperclip “Top Secret” files, WNRC Record Group 330. Also from FBI dossier “Wernher Magnus Maximilian Von Braun, aka Freiherr Von Braun,” file 116-13038, 297 pages; also see Neufeld, Von Braun.
38. Dr. Ernst Steinhoff: G-2 Paperclip “Top Secret” files, WNRC, Record Group 319.
39. inside the two-million-square-acre: Schwartz, Atomic Audit, 169. Now called the White Sands Missile Range, the facility is the largest military installation in the country — the size of Delaware and Rhode Island combined. The first atomic bomb, Trinity, was exploded near the north boundary of the range.
40. Dr. Steinhoff said nothing: Hunt, Secret Agenda, 27; Neufeld, Von Braun, 239.
41. terrifying citizens: “V-2 Rocket, Off Course, Falls Near Juбrez,” El Paso Times, May 30, 1947.
42. Allegations of sabotage: Army Intelligence, G-2 Paperclip, Memorandum for the AC of S G-2, Intelligence Summary, Captain Paul R. Lutjens, June 6, 1947, RG 319, Washington National Records Center (WNRC), Suitland, Maryland. Hunt, Secret Agenda, chapter 3; Major Lyman G. White, “Paperclip Project, Ft. Bliss, Texas and Adjacent Areas,” MID 918.3, November 26, 1947.
43. “beating a dead Nazi horse”: In a March 1948 letter to the State Department regarding “German scientists [who] were members of
either the Nazi Party or one or more of its affiliates,” Bosquet Wev, director of the Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency, wrote, “[R]esponsible officials… have expressed opinions to the effect that, in so far as German scientists are concerned, Nazism no longer should be a serious consideration from a viewpoint of national security when the far greater threat of Communism is now jeopardizing the entire world. I strongly concur in this opinion and consider it a most sound and practical view, which must certainly be taken if we are to face the situation confronting us with even an iota of realism. To continue to treat Nazi affiliations as significant considerations has been aptly phrased as ‘beating a dead Nazi horse.’”
44. What made the aircraft extraordinary: Interview with EG&G engineer.
45. fighter jet: Interviews with Colonel Slater, Area 51 base commander (1963-68), Chandler’s personal friend. Chandler relayed this story to Slater decades after it happened.
46. The recovered craft looked nothing like a conventional aircraft: Interview with EG&G engineer, who was an eyewitness.
47. Cyrillic alphabet had been stamped: Interview with EG&G engineer.
48. near the Alaskan border: Interview with EG&G engineer.
49. What if atomic energy propelled the Russian craft: Interview with EG&G engineer.
