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 In his unpublished memoir, Chevalier wrote: “In the spring of 1942, Oppenheimer was called to Chicago—it was the first time, I believe, that an absence of his would coincide with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
