34. Lilienthal (1964), 29.
35. Groves (1962), 411.
36. Lilienthal (1964), 27; Hewlett and Anderson (1990), 540–51.
37. Hewlett and Anderson (1990), 549–51.
38. Ibid., 551–54; Lilienthal (1964), 29–30.
39. Transcript of interview for “The Day after Trinity,” box 3, Frank Oppenheimer papers.
40. Teller (2001), 234; “HB” to Borden, Apr. 29, 1950, no. 1497, JCAE.
41. Smith (1971), 335.
42. James Chace, Acheson: The Secretary of State Who Created the American World (Simon and Schuster, 1998), 125.
43. Lilienthal (1964), 30.
44. Higinbotham interview (1993).
45. Groves (1962), 412; Acheson (1969), 154.
46. Lilienthal (1964), 43.
47. Baruch plan: Herken (1980), 158–65.
48. Herken (1980), 166.
49. Groves to Secretary of War, Mar. 27, 1946, file 10, series 1, pt. 1, MED/NARA.
50. Baruch told Bush why he had decided to drop the scientists: “because as I told them, I knew all I wanted to know. It went boom and it killed millions of people.” Herken (1980), 161, 168.
51. ITMOJRO, 40; Acheson (1969), 155.
52. Herken (1980), 162.
53. Truman and Byrnes yielded when Baruch threatened to quit unless his revisions of the Acheson-Lilienthal report were approved.
54. Hewlett and Anderson (1990), 576–77.
55. Oppenheimer’s prediction of what would happen if the UN negotiations failed would later seem prophetic, but Lilienthal attributed his friend’s pessimism to “nerves.” Lilienthal (1964), 70.
56. Alfred Loomis reinforced Neylan’s message. Childs (1968), 379.
57. Ibid., 378.
58. Ibid., 374. “He says that these will mean considerable income to him, and that, moreover, he is practically being ordered by his present federal superiors to accept,” Sproul wrote in his office diary. Oct. 1, 1945, memos, Sproul papers.
59. York (1987), 37.
60. Lawrence to Neylan, Aug. 13, 1946, folder 85, box 155, Neylan papers.
61. Childs (1968), 379.
62. “Program for the Radiation Laboratory,” Apr. 1, 1946, administrative files, box 1, LBL; Lawrence to Groves, Feb. 15, 1946, file 600.12, series 5, MED/NARA.
63. Nichols to Groves, Jan. 22, 1946, file 334, series 5, MED/NARA.
64. “Meeting of the Advisory Committee on Research and Development,” Mar. 8–9, 1946, file 334, series 5, MED/NARA.
65. Hewlett and Anderson (1990), 633–35.
66. Cooksey to Loomis, Apr. 23, 1946, folder 8, carton 46, EOL.
67. Nichols to Groves, Mar. 14, 1946, file 600.12, series 5, MED/NARA.
68. Teletype, Bradbury to Douglas, Jan. 11, 1946, and Nichols to Regents, Jan. 14, 1946, Underhill papers, LANL.
69. Mar. 12, 1946, memos, Sproul papers.
70. Nichols to Underhill, Apr. 3, 1946, and Underhill to Regents, “Re: New Mexico Project,” Sept. 18, 1946, Underhill papers, LANL.
71. “I want to keep Lawrence as close to atomic energy as I can,” Sproul told the regents. Minutes of the Finance Committee, Sept. 27, 1946, Underhill papers, LANL.
72. Military Liaison Committee and Joint Committee: Hewlett and Anderson (1990), 434–35, 504–13.
73. Ironically, McMahon was no longer the committee’s leader. Iowa senator Bourke Hickenlooper became chairman of the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy when the Republicans captured control of Congress in the 1946 election.
74. Strauss met Lawrence in fall 1939, when Ernest was looking to fund the 184-inch. Strauss had known Teller since 1938, when Edward spoke at Temple Emanu-El in New York, where Strauss was president of the congregation. Virginia Walker to Teller, May 5, 1959, Teller folder, Lewis Strauss papers, Herbert Hoover Presidential Library, West Branch, Iowa (LLS/HHPL); Lawrence to Strauss, Apr. 4, 1940, folder 52, carton 16, EOL; Richard Pfau (1984), No Sacrifice Too Great: The Life of Lewis L. Strauss (University of Virginia Press, 1984), 55.
75. Strauss insisted that his name be pronounced “Straws.” His inflexible self-righteousness more than once cost Strauss friends and delayed his promotion in the navy. Pfau (1984), 49, 75.
76. San Francisco field report, Oct. 24, 1946, sec. 3, JRO/FBI.
77. Hewlett and Anderson (1990), 640; Lewis Strauss, Men and Decisions (Doubleday, 1962), 213.
78. Lilienthal (1964), 95; Hewlett and Anderson (1990), 621.
79. Lilienthal (1964), 107.
80. Ibid., 109; Hewlett and Anderson (1990), 642.
81. In late spring or early summer 1946, Groves ordered the Military Intelligence Division’s files consolidated at Oak Ridge and shipped to the FBI in Washington. However, these evidently did not include his own “investigation files,” on Oppenheimer and others. Rhodes to Groves, Jan. 16, 1947, file 313.3, entry 5, MED/NARA; and Fred Rhodes interview (1998). As late as 1948, the army’s wartime investigative files had to be “borrowed” from the FBI by the AEC. Gingrich to Lilienthal, Nov. 9, 1948, series 1, “Div. of Security” file, AEC/NARA.
82. Groves later passed these files along to his successor at AFSWP, Kenneth Nichols, when he stepped down in 1948. J. Dossett to Colonel Lampert, Oct. 7, 1948, and Groves to Nichols, Feb. 29, 1948, MED investigative files, Defense Nuclear Agency records, RG 374, Army Corps of Engineers archive, Ft. Belvoir, Va.
83. GAC: Hewlett and Anderson (1990), 648; Richard Hewlett and Francis Duncan, Atomic Shield: A History of the United States Atomic Energy Commission, vol. 2, 1947–1952 (University of California Press, 1990), 15–17.
84. McMahon later claimed that “when the Commission took over, there were exactly two bombs in the locker.” The size of the U.S. nuclear arsenal had also been a shock to Lilienthal: “Actually, we had one [bomb] that was probably operable when I first went off to Los Alamos; one that had a good chance of being operable.” Borden to files, July 5, 1951, no. 2365, JCAE; Herken (1980), 196–97. Early U.S. atomic arsenal: Rhodes (1995), 282–83; David Alan Rosenberg, “U.S. Nuclear Stockpile, 1945 to 1950,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, May 1982, 25–30.
85. Bacher had just returned from personally inventorying the atomic stockpile at Kirtland Air Force Base. Transcript of Bacher interview, n.d., 108, Robert Bacher papers, Caltech archives, Pasadena, Calif.; “Draft Minutes of the General Advisory Committee,” Feb. 2–3, 1947, no. 79441, CIC/DOE.
86. McCormack to Wilson, Apr. 16, 1947, Radiological Warfare folder, box 1223, AEC/NARA.
87. Oppenheimer’s comments were widely reported in the press. Chicago Tribune, Dec. 6, 1945.
88. Oppenheimer to Truman, May 3, 1946, box 73, JRO. Crossroads: Jonathan Weisgall, Operation Crossroads: The Atomic Tests at Bikini Atoll (Naval Institute Press, 1994).
89. The project was finally canceled by President Kennedy in 1961. Nuclear-powered bomber: Hewlett and Duncan (1990),
