On October 5, 1945, Los Alamos published the “Super Handbook,” a top-secret compendium of everything that was known to date about the H-bomb. Teller was its principal author. Three days later, Edward completed the “Super-Gadget Program,” a summary report on the thermonuclear research that he had done in cooperation with Fermi and Konopinski. It recommended the production of superbombs in quantity once the feasibility of the weapon was determined.
Teller’s work on the Super and related projects continued almost to the day of his departure. In mid-December, shortly after arranging the shipment to Chicago of his piano—a small concert grand with a cracked sounding board which Mici had dubbed “the Monster”—Edward filed a classified patent on the Booster, the fission bomb whose yield would be increased by burning tritium and deuterium at its core.119
Teller likewise did what he could before leaving to promote his ideas in the political world. That winter, he flew to Washington to testify before Congress on behalf of a bill that promised to free scientific research from military interference.120 Tipped off by Fermi that the Scientific Panel had taken a dim view of superbombs in its report on postwar research, Teller prepared a lengthy rebuttal. Presented as the answers to a series of hypothetical questions, Teller’s letter was, in essence, his case for the Super.121
Teller’s letter argued that the first American superbomb could be ready in as little as two years if it were made the focus of a concerted, crash effort, though five years was “a conservative estimate.”122 Since the Super itself did not require any hard-to-obtain materials like enriched uranium or plutonium, Edward posited that a Soviet H-bomb might follow closely the Russians’ first fission weapon. As to whether ethical qualms should figure in the decision whether to proceed with the Super, Teller dismissed the question as simply irrelevant: “If the development is possible, it is out of our powers to prevent it.”
Exhorting that work on the H-bomb be transferred to “a capable and strong group of men,” Teller sent the letter to Fermi on October 31, 1945. A few days later, as promised, Fermi forwarded the document to its real and intended audience, Secretary of War Patterson.
When Teller’s move to Chicago was delayed for several more weeks that January, he used the postponement to teach a final class at the lab’s impromptu university. In the days before the move, Teller’s mood had shifted, and he had even begun looking forward to leaving Los Alamos. Bradbury’s decision not to pursue the Super had removed a great burden from him, Edward confided to Maria Mayer. A friend at the lab accused Teller of “behaving like a pious man should when his mother-in-law dies.”123
On February 1, 1946, Edward, Mici, and Paul drove down from the mesa and headed east.
* * *
Those who stayed at Los Alamos regarded the news coming out of Washington about the bomb with emotions that ranged from bemused detachment to speechless outrage.124
A much-quoted after-dinner address that Groves gave in September to a group of International Business Machine executives at the Waldorf-Astoria sparked a firestorm at the lab.125 Groves had spoken of keeping the bomb “under the control of the United States until all of the other nations of the world are as anxious for peace as we are.… I mean they must be anxious for peace in their hearts, and not merely by speech or by signature to a treaty they do not intend to honor.”126
“Did it really add anything to the expression of your opinion to say, ‘and the more they talk the shorter the time seems to get’?” John Manley wrote to Groves in exasperation.127 Groves apologized to Bradbury for the controversy that the speech provoked—but not for its message.128
More controversial still was Groves’s attempt to railroad through Congress legislation that originated in the War Department, and that would have given the military a dominant voice in the domestic control of the atom. The May-Johnson bill proposed to create a part-time, nine-member commission responsible for the military as well as the civilian applications of atomic energy. Because the commission’s four uniformed members would have had veto power over the majority’s decisions, however, the bill was derided by civilian-control advocates, including the newly formed Federation of Atomic Scientists.129
Surprisingly, Groves’s ally in this uphill battle was Robert Oppenheimer. Whether out of conviction, innate pessimism, or residual feelings of gratitude, Oppie joined Groves in championing the “War Department bill,” despite opposition from baffled colleagues.130
Addressing a meeting of ALAS that fall, Oppenheimer had counseled the lab’s scientists against taking precipitous action to get their views before Washington.131 Yet Oppie’s visit to Truman had already shown that he believed in speaking the truth to power—starting at the top. Indeed, the question of how best to influence nuclear policy had been the subject of long and frequent arguments between Oppie and his brother, who favored public education over direct government action. (Robert felt “the path of public education was too slow,” Frank later recalled.)132
At Groves’s request, Oppie even rounded up the signatures of two of his three Scientific Panel colleagues in a telegram of support for May-Johnson.133 Only Compton, wary, had declined.
But when Lawrence and Fermi joined Oppenheimer in a press conference at the Pentagon, it became embarrassingly evident just how little they knew of the legislation they had endorsed. As Ernest was sheepishly forced to admit to reporters, he had never actually read the May-Johnson bill—and was unaware, for example, that it mandated ten years of prison and a $10,000 fine for the kind of inadvertent security slips that he had repeatedly committed during the war.134
Lawrence promptly withdrew his support from May-Johnson. Asked by Wilson and Higinbotham to testify before Congress on behalf of a rival bill, which guaranteed control over the atom to civilians, Lawrence sought the counsel of Neylan.135
Acting as the trial attorney he had once been, Neylan asked Lawrence to sit for a mock cross-examination. Within minutes, the lawyer had Ernest sputtering, caught up in contradictory statements about simple matters
