DR. BETHE, THINKING BACK TO THE YEARS IMMEDIATELY FOLLOWING THE WAR, HOW DID YOU AND YOUR SCIENTIST COLLEAGUES, PARTICULARLY ROBERT OPPENHEIMER, ASSESS THE NEED FOR ATOMIC WEAPONS IN PEACETIME?

Well, I think we were all convinced that atomic weapons now that they had been invented, had to be in the arsenal of the United States. I think most of us, Robert Oppenheimer in particular, thought it would be best if atomic weapons could be made international. Could be given to an international authority separate from but somewhat related to the United Nations. You probably know the efforts that were being possible charter for an international agency of this type, and this plan with some modification was then presented to the United Nations by Bernard Baruch.

WHAT WERE YOUR PERSONAL VIEWS AT THE TIME?

Well, my personal views were very much the same as that of Dr. Oppenheimer. At the time...that the only way to deal with this weapon was to give it to an international agency. We were all very enthusiastic at the time, about the United Nations. It has not fulfilled our dreams, but I think it is still a useful institution.

I WANTED TO ASK YOU ABOUT THE DEVELOPMENT AND PRODUCTION OF FISSION WEAPONS AT LOS ALAMOS. IF YOU CAN TELL ME HOW THINGS STARTED IN 1947 WHEN THE ATOMIC ENERGY COMMISSION CAME IN, HOW DEVELOPMENT PROCEEDED AFTER THAT TIME.

Well, the... the Los Alamos Laboratory was of course dedicated to perfecting fission weapons. Already during the war, and well especially in the last few months of 1945 we had worked on possibly great improvements in fission weapons which would make it possible to make them smaller more efficient, to use both uranium and plutonium together, which is a great advantage over moving — using only ones... one of them. And this development then took place in the years just after 1946. I believe it probably started already in '46, and it was possible to make fission weapons a great deal smaller. A great deal smaller in size. The original, fission weapon was about that big. It could barely fit into the bomb bay of a B-29, which was the biggest plane we then had. And it was highly desirable, we thought, to make smaller weapons which could be carried by a greater variety of planes. And that was very successful over the years. So the size of the weapon was shrunk, the weight of course likewise. And at the same time the yields, the energy release remained about the same or became even higher. This was a very intensive development. Essentially all the people at Los Alamos participated in it. At the same time, we thought that it should be possible to use less fissionable material to do this, because well, again the perfection of the implosion by which nuclear weapons are assembled made it possible to get more energy out of less material. That idea I believe goes back to about 1944, and was very very much talked about in the theoretical division of the laboratory in '44 and '45. Then after the war it was made a reality and tests were made in which we used fractions of a critical mass and still got quite a sizable explosive yield out of that.

WHAT WERE THE PROBLEMS FACING PRODUCTION IN 1947 WHEN THE AEC STARTED? WERE THERE SHORTAGES OF URANIUM OR...?

Well, in when the AEC started in early 1947 there were shortages, particularly in plutonium. And to a lesser extent in separated uranium, uranium-235. I remember that very well because at that time I was particularly interested in starting some experiments leading to a power reactor. And the AEC would not release any material to make critical experiments for starting a power reactor. So there was shortage of material. There was, there had been a year or so during which not much had been done, the year 1946. And very little had been done on the actual fabrication of assembled bombs. The Los Alamos Laboratory had continued to work, but the... the actual assembly of weapons was minimal.

IF YOU CAN TELL ME ABOUT THE SANDSTONE TESTS. THESE ARE THE TESTS IN THE SOUTH PACIFIC IN 1948. WHAT WAS THE SCIENTIFIC SIGNIFICANCE?

Are you sure it was in the South Pacific?

ON ENEWETAK IN 1948.

Yes.

SPRING OF '48.

Yes, for... well, the significance of the Sandstone test was to show that we could make much better weapons than we had made during the war. And this included both of the developments that I mentioned, we tested weapons of much smaller diameter and I think two stages in reducing diameter were simultaneously investigated. And also we kept the amount of fissionable material as low as we could. So mainly it showed that we could do a great deal better in making nuclear weapons and we could make them much more suitable for delivery by bombing planes.

WERE YOU ACTUALLY AT ENEWETAK? WERE YOU DOWN THERE?

I was never down in the South Pacific. The only nuclear test I ever watched was the very first one, the Trinity Test in 1945.

DO YOU HAVE ANY OTHER RECOLLECTIONS ABOUT SANDSTONE?

I only remember that we were very busy preparing it and then afterwards very busy evaluating it.

AND THE MAIN SIGNIFICANCE WAS THIS...MAKING THE SMALLER BOMBS?

Right.

IF I CAN ASK YOU AGAIN, THIS IS A GENERAL QUESTION ABOUT THE DEVELOPMENT AND THE PRODUCTION OF FISSION WEAPONS, BECAUSE WHEN WE DID IT BEFORE WE HAD A COUPLE OF TECHNICAL PROBLEMS. DO YOU MIND GOING THROUGH THAT AGAIN, AND I'D HAVE YOU DESCRIBE THE SIZE...

There was a fly in the room?

TRY NOT TO SAY, AS I SAID BEFORE...

Well, I can start from the beginning... Well, in the years after the war we... translated into practice some ideas we had had already during 1945. How to improve fission weapons. We thought first of all we should see to it to make them smaller so that they could be delivered by smaller planes instead of having a bomb which was that big, we would have one which was only this big. And in this size it could be carried by smaller planes including fighter bombers and so this we considered a very important development. Now one point I would like to make in this connection. At that time, Los Alamos determined more or less what they wanted to do. The military did not yet have the experience to really know what they wanted. So for instance the idea of making smaller bombs was a Los Alamos idea. It was not an idea of the military. It was clear to us that it would be useful and it was easy then to persuade the military, and I think that is how it should be, that the Laboratory which invents things should make proposals what they want to do and not wait for the — for Washington to tell them what to do. So this development was very successful. The bombs got a great deal smaller in stages. And at the same time we were concerned that we should not use too much fissionable material. So we tried to keep the amount of fissionable material less than one critical mass, and this also was successful.

CAN YOU REMEMBER ANYTHING — I'M WONDERING HOW THE TRUMAN ADMINISTRATION REACTED TO SOME OF THE WORK GOING ON. WERE THEY AWARE OF WHAT LOS ALAMOS WAS DOING?

Well, I was not an administrator, so I never talked directly to the people in Washington. I did talk once or twice to the Congressional Committee, to the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, which was set up jointly by the Senate and the House. They asked from time to time about the progress of the work, and what I would like to see done next. I testified for the first time to the Committee of the Senate, the McMahon Committee, which was framing the law, which later on set up the Atomic Energy Commission. This was back in '45, and then I think about once a year or every two years, I was asked to come down and tell them my opinions about the progress of the work.

AND WHAT DID YOU TELL THEM? WHAT WOULD THEY BE INTERESTED IN HEARING?

It's difficult to recall in detail what I told them or what they wanted to hear. Mostly they wanted more and more bombs, and more efficient bombs and using less material and getting more bang, and the then in later years of course, there were discussions whether this was really the right thing to do.

WE'LL MOVE ON NOW TO THE SOVIET PROGRAM. WHAT WAS YOUR REACTION IN SEPTEMBER OF '49 WHEN YOU LEARNED ABOUT THE SOVIET ATOMIC EXPLOSION?

Well, I was not surprised. Of course I wouldn't have known when it would occur. But some of us scientists had predicted from the very beginning that the Soviets would have a nuclear weapon very soon. In fact, the...Dr. Seitz who was later the President of the National Academy of Science, and I wrote an article together in 1945 in which we said that a determined country can have an atomic weapon in five years. This was in contrast to some of the official predictions of 20 years by Vannevar Bush and by General Groves. But we thought that a determined country could in fact do it in about the same time as we had done it. We didn't know at that time that already in 1943, the Soviets had given orders to their scientists to design atomic reactors and atomic weapons. That we found out only a few years ago. And if we had known that we probably would have predicted that they could have it faster, in fact they had it after four years. So I was not terribly surprised. I think the United States should have been prepared for a Soviet weapon at about that time.

HOW DO YOU EXPLAIN PRESIDENT TRUMAN'S SHOCK AT THE SOVIET BOMB?

Well, President Truman had advisers who were not scientists, and who gave the...him the official line so to speak, namely that the Soviets would take a very long time to make an atomic bomb. I don't know why they said that. But at any rate President Truman presumably listened to General Groves and to other people who made this prediction. I'm a little bit surprised that the Atomic Energy Commission and this...and the General Advisory Committee to the Atomic Energy Commission did not make predictions similar to ours.

DR. BETHE CAN YOU DESCRIBE FOR ME IN LAYMAN'S TERMS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN FISSION AND FUSION?

Well, I'd be happy to describe the difference between fission and fusion. In fission, you start from a heavy nucleus, usually the nucleus of uranium, which has the weight of 238 units. And it has the very strange property, which nobody had expected beforehand that when you put an extra neutron into it, then it will split into two nuclei of about half the weight. And in doing so, it releases an awful lot of energy. On the other hand in fusion, you have two very light nuclei and commonly it is the nuclei of two types of hydrogen, hydrogen of mass 2 and of mass 3, who are brought together, and as we say, fused to make one bigger nucleus ejecting still a small fragment. And so the in one case you have a big nucleus splitting into two, and in the other case you have two small nuclei making a bigger one. The energy release per unit weight is greater in fusion than it is in fission.

CAN WE DO THAT ONE MORE TIME, WITHOUT THE WEIGHT. CAN YOU JUST SAY LIGHTER OR--

Well, in the case of fission you start from a heavy nucleus, usually a nucleus of uranium, and you split this nucleus into two parts. By doing that you release a great amount of energy. The fission, the splitting of the nucleus occurs after you put the neutron into the nucleus. On the other hand fusion involves two very light nuclei which you bring together, usually they are two types of hydrogen which you bring together and combine them to make the somewhat bigger nucleus, that of helium, and again release a lot of energy. The energy you release, is less than in fission, in one process, but because of the light weight of the fusing nuclei the energy released compared to the weight is greater in fusion than in fission. Is that better?

YES, THE FISSION WAS PERFECT. I THINK THE FUSION, IF YOU COULD JUST MAKE IT SHORTER. COULD YOU SAY IT ONE MORE TIME, THE FUSION? TRY ONE MORE TIME.

Start from fusion, yes. Well, in the case of fusion you would take two very light nuclei, usually two types of hydrogen and bring them together to make one somewhat bigger nucleus. And in doing so, you again release a lot of energy, in fact, compared to the weight you put in, you release more energy in fusion than in fission.

PERFECT. LET'S TALK ABOUT THE GENERAL ADVISORY COMMITTEE AND THE DEBATE OVER THE HYDROGEN BOMB.

OK.

NOW YOU TESTIFIED BEFORE THE HEARING. DO YOU REMEMBER THAT ACTUAL HEARING?

I can remember that time very well. Well, after the Russian explosion there were some scientists and quite a number of members of Congress who felt that we now had to go the Russians one better. The main exponent of this idea was Edward Teller on the part of the scientists. And he found very willing audience in the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy. So he advocated that the United States should now undertake a determined program, a crash program, on making a thermonuclear weapon. That had been an idea which had been around since 1942. During the war we didn't have the strength, we didn't have the manpower to put on this project. And after the war the development of the hydrogen bomb was going very slowly. Well, Teller wanted a crash program, the Atomic Energy Commission was undecided. So it asked its general advisory committee to deliberate on it. I had thought about it for several weeks before I testified to the General Advisory Committee. And at first I was somewhat inclined to follow Teller's ideas but I then talked it over with my wife and with two very good friends, Weisskopf and Plotchik, who tried to make clear what it would mean to go from a fission bomb to a fusion bomb. As we believed at that time, the power of a fusion bomb would be completely unlimited. It could be a thousand times that of a fission bomb. In fact such bombs have been made, have been tested. And one just has to visualize and I did in these weeks, what that would mean. That one bomb would destroy a city the size of New York. I remember in fact standing on the roof of the apartment house in which my parents-in-law lived, and looking over the roofs of New York City and imagining "Well what will it mean if this whole city gets eliminated by one thermonuclear bomb?" So I came to the conclusion that I did not want this development to take place. I was convinced that we were strong enough in fission bombs to wait it out and to be stronger than the Soviets in this area for a long, long time to come with without...and preferably without the fusion bomb. So one time, one day, I think in late October, the General Advisory Committee met and I was asked to testify, and I expressed these ideas, but mainly I was asked about the technical prospects of making the fusion bomb. And these technical prospects were not good. It was quite uncertain how it could be done. It was quite uncertain what way you would — could use to ignite a fusion bomb, and even if you ignited it would it then have a sustained reaction once it was ignited. It was clear that one needed to give a very high temperature to the deuterium that is the heavy isotope of hydrogen, if you want to have a thermonuclear reaction. Hence the word thermonuclear. It's not the difference between the fusion and the fission bomb....is that a fission bomb requires bringing together more than one critical mass of... fissile material, and it doesn't matter at what temperature you do that. On the other hand, in the...in the case of a fusion bomb the mass doesn't matter very much. But what matters is that you have a high enough temperature. And so if...the idea was that the high temperature would be generated by a fission bomb and that then would be used to ignite the fusion. So from the very beginning, back from 1942, we thought of two separate devices, the fission bomb and then the fusion, afterwards. And what was totally unclear in 1949, was how you could lead the high temperature from the fission bomb to the fusion device.

HOW DID THE GAC SCIENTISTS RESPOND TO THE TESTING?

Well, the GAC seemed to be interested. They did not support or dispute my general political ideas. In fact they had other wit — witnesses who talked about that and may have been more competent to do this like George Kennan. And...but they discussed very much the technical side and I believe there was pretty general agreement that this was the situation at the time. We just didn't know whether it could be done and how it could be done.

WHAT WAS YOUR REACTION TO THE DECISION BY ADMIRAL STRAUSS AND EDWARD TELLER TO PROCEED WITH THE CRASH PROGRAM...? HOW DID YOU FEEL ABOUT THAT?

Well, I felt it was wrong. I felt that Edward Teller, was far too enthusiastic about the fusion bomb and that he seemed to consider that the salvation of the country. He considered it necessary to do it, and in addition to that it would guarantee the security of the United States. I think it has done the opposite. And looking back now after more than 30 years, it seems to me that just as it did at the time that the fusion weapon is a calamity. It's just increases the danger, the fission bomb was bad enough in giving much too much destruction by a single device, and the fusion bomb just exaggerated this a hundred-fold. I didn't see, and I don't see today that this is a good thing to do. But in particular, and very completely, the fusion bomb made it possible to package a lot of destructive power, a megaton, into a missile, and into a missile of a relatively small size. If we had only fission bombs, the destructive power carried by one missile would be far less than it is today. And the...it is possible at least that with the lesser yield of a fission bomb we would not have paid so much attention to intercontinental ballistic missiles... I would like to talk about the contention that the Soviets may have been ahead, would be ahead and so on.

THAT WAS MY NEXT QUESTION. MANY PEOPLE THAT WERE PRO-HYDROGEN BOMB ARGUED THAT THE SOVIETS WOULD HAVE GONE AHEAD ANYWAY, AND I WONDER WHAT YOUR RECOLLECTIONS WERE AT THAT TIME?

Well, the Russians would have gone anyway. Well the... it is still an open question to what extent the Soviets, would have developed a hydrogen bomb without us. The people around Teller and Admiral Strauss claimed that it was high time that we got into the hydrogen bomb, because look here in 1953 the Soviets exploded a hydrogen bomb.

DR. BETHE, WHAT WERE THE ARGUMENTS PUT FORWARD BY DR. TELLER AND ADMIRAL STRAUSS VIS-A-VIS THE SOVIET PROGRAM?

Well, the of course, we didn't know what the Soviet program was. I thought that we need not be afraid of it, even if we did not do develop a hydrogen bomb ourselves. My main argument was that we had such a lead in atomic bombs that it would take a long, long time before the Russians could equal us, even if they developed the hydrogen bomb before us. This argument in fact, was published by Bob Barker in the Scientific American in the spring of 1950, and I very much agreed with that. So you...the test of one weapon does not mean that you have a... lots of these weapons, which would be useful in a possible war. It takes years from a test until you get an arsenal, and therefore even if the Russians were deve — to develop the bomb before us we would have years to catch up and during these years our security would be guaranteed by the fission weapons, which we already had.

DID YOU FEEL THAT THERE WAS A REAL CHANCE OF INTERNATIONAL CONTROL AT THIS STAGE?

In 1949, there was essentially no chance of international control. There had been a chance in '46–'47, but the Soviets rejected it as is not surprising because they had been engaged in nuclear research and development already since '43, and so I think in 1949-'50, none of us thought that international control was a possibility. Later on it may have been diff — different. You see, we actually tested the first hydrogen weapon in 1952. The Russians tested their first device in '53. That was just about the time when Stalin died. The, his successors, Malinkoff, Khrushchev, were much more amenable to negotiations and I think it is one of the tragic incidents in the development of the arms race that we did not make use of the more relaxed attitude of the Russian leaders during that time. Surely after 1956 when Khrushchev had given his talk accusing Stalin of all sorts of crimes, surely after this talk, we had an opportunity and we did not use that...opportunity to relax the international situation. And failing to do this, I think we made life more difficult for people like Khrushchev who wanted such a relaxation.

WERE YOU SURPRISED BY PRESIDENT TRUMAN'S ANNOUNCEMENT WHEN IT DID COME ABOUT THE HYDROGEN BOMB? ABOUT GOING AHEAD WITH THE HYDROGEN BOMB PROGRAM, CONTINUING THE HYDROGEN PROGRAM, AND THEN THE CRASH PROGRAM. WERE YOU SURPRISED AT THE TIME?

I was not surprised, but I was greatly disappointed by President Truman's announcement. I knew that there had been a hot debate in Washington between people like the general advisory committee to the Atomic Energy Commission which had come out strongly against the H-bomb development. And on the other hand, the Joint Committee of Congress on Atomic Energy who was without reservation for a crash program. And various people in the governments took sides, one side or the other, and so it was quite uncertain how it would come out. I think the final blow to Truman was the news of the arrest of Klaus Fuchs who had given these secrets of nuclear weapon, of manufacture to the Soviets since 1943. And in his confession he said that he also included what was known about the hydrogen bomb by 1946. So I believe this was a big motive for Truman to order a crash program on developing the H-bomb.

WHAT ARE THE REQUIREMENTS OF A SUCCESSFUL THERMONUCLEAR PROGRAM, AND WERE THOSE REQUIREMENTS MET WHEN THE PROGRAM WAS PROPOSED?

Say it again please.

WHAT ARE THE REQUIREMENTS OF A SUCCESSFUL THERMONUCLEAR PROGRAM?

Oh, I see, yes. Well, there are several requirements for a successful thermonuclear program. The first is of course that you have very efficient fission bombs. And the it is now well known, it has been released that the hydrogen bomb operates by means of the radiation, meaning ordinary electromagnetic radiation which is emitted by a fission bomb. It was therefore essential that we had fission bombs which were small in size. The big fission bomb of 1945 would never have done it because essentially no radiation can come out of it. And so the fission bomb development in the years 1946 to '49 at Los Alamos was essential as a background for the design of a thermonuclear weapon. The second requirement is that you have good computers. During the war we had used old-fashioned computers designed by the International Business Machines company, to calculate some of the things we were working with. But you needed much faster, much more sophisticated computers in order to calculate the way how a hydrogen bomb might be made to work. These computers came into being only in the early '50s, and of course they are enormously more powerful today. But I remember very well that we were eagerly using the very primitive electronic computers which were made in the early '50s for predicting how one could assemble a fusion bomb.

CAN YOU TELL ME ABOUT THE RELATIVE CONTRIBUTIONS OF TELLER AND ULAM TO THE THERMONUCLEAR DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM?

I'm happy to tell you about Teller and Ulam. Ulam had been working for quite a while on improving fission bombs. And he had found some possibilities to set off a second fission bomb by a first fission bomb. And he was thinking about ways how to do this. He discussed this with Teller, and Teller found that this might be very useful for his favorite object, namely to set off a fusion bomb, rather than a fission bomb. Also Teller thought of a different way to transmit the energy from the fission bomb to the fusion bomb different from that of Ulam. So I believe Ulam planted a seed in Teller's mind, how to transmit the energy, but it was I would say 90 percent Teller and only 10 percent Ulam. Teller now and in fact for many years already says that he would have had that idea himself even without Ulam. Whether that is true or not I have no way to decide. But certainly so according to the record and in my opinion, Ulam gave the first impulse. But Teller than ran with the ball, and did the made the important invention.

CAN YOU TELL ME ABOUT THE PRINCETON CONFERENCE?

I am glad to tell you about the Princeton Conference. Teller's invention was made in early spring of 1951. I'm not sure whether it was March or April, and it immediately persuaded many people who were interested in the problem, among them myself. It also persuaded the people directing the Los Alamos effort, especially the Associate Director, Darol Froman. So in May I got...I got documents from Mr. Froman telling me about Teller's invention and I think there must have been a visit — I don't remember which way, who visited whom, but certainly I was quite convinced that Teller had made an invention which would solve the technical problem, that didn't —

WHAT WAS ACTUALLY SAID AT THE CONFERENCE? WHO WAS THERE AND WHAT ARE YOUR MEMORIES OF THAT CONFERENCE?

I'm coming to the conference. Now obviously once this was accepted it was important to involve the AEC and the General Advisory Committee in this because it meant a very fundamental change of the program of the Los Alamos Laboratory. So a conference was set up in June, '51, in Princeton. The host was Robert Oppenheimer, and the entire General Advisory Committee was there and I believe the entire Atomic Energy Commission. From Los Alamos came a number of people including Teller, and there were also invited people, a very few including myself who had followed the development. As far as I remember I was asked, and I believe I was asked by Teller himself to present Teller's invention. As I remember it, but Teller's memory is the opposite. As I remember it I was giving the main presentation of the idea because Teller thought that people would listen to me more than they would listen to him. And anyway it was accepted almost immediately. Teller then also spoke. So did Wheeler, who had been much engaged with Teller in the preceding year or two, designing the first, the test, the so-called greenhouse test, and who knew very much about the subject. So as I remember the meeting was very amiable, everybody agreed it should be done. Oppenheimer was immediately convinced and later on said this is the sweet technical way to do it, which was very much held against him. And so there was general agreement that Teller's idea should be pursued. There was still disagreement just in which way this should be done. Should there be one big test, maybe a year and a half later? Or should there be a number of smaller tests before hand? Teller wanted the latter, the Los Alamos laboratory wanted to work toward one big test for the simple reason that any test takes a lot of effort and takes the effort of the same people who afterwards have to go and do the big test.

HOW DID YOU FEEL ABOUT BEING PULLED INTO THE PROGRAM AT THIS TIME? DID YOU WANT IT TO SUCCEED?

Well, I had been consulting with Los Alamos all the time. I think in 1950, I went at least three times to Los Alamos. I was happy when Ulam did some calculations which seemed to show that Teller's original idea would not work. But I was then, I was very much informed on the ups and downs of the idea. Once Teller made his invention it was clear to me that it would work. It was also clear to me now that probably the Russians could do it too. But the invention had to be made, and so after the after Teller's invention I think we had no choice. It had to be done.

OK, WHAT I WANTED TO ASK YOU IS IT TRUE THAT THE TECHNOLOGICAL IMPERATIVE WAS AT WORK AT THIS STAGE, AS REGARDS THE THERMONUCLEAR PROGRAM? IS IT TRUE TO SAY THAT THE TECHNOLOGICAL IMPERATIVE WAS AT WORK?

Well, the technological imperative certainly was at work at that time. It is a question whether one could have stopped a little later. And I think the technological imperative is to a large extent influenced by political situations. When we started on Teller's invention in the spring of '51, Stalin was firmly in power and was in fact becoming more radical than he had ever been. There was very little chance of accommodation at that time. But as I said before, later on we might have tried, especially after '56, we might have tried to come to an agreement with the Russians. Unfortunately by '56 both the Soviets and we had established successfully the thermonuclear principle so it was more difficult...it... to stop at that...at that point. But it would have been possible.

CAN YOU TELL ME WHETHER YOU THOUGHT THERE WAS A NEED FOR A SECOND NATIONAL LABORATORY AT LIVERMORE?

Well, in my opinion there was no need for a second national laboratory. Los Alamos was doing its job very well. It produced the thermonuclear bomb in the year and a half after Teller's invention. You couldn't do much better. The second laboratory was very much the wish of Edward Teller and it was to some extent a question of personalities. He simply couldn't get along with the Director of Los Alamos who was a very nice soft-spoken gentle, gentleman, Norris Bradbury, who didn't like crash programs. Who liked just systematic progress. And it was a difference in character, because Edward Teller always liked crash programs and if possible to change them after six months and do something different. The systematic people at Los Alamos couldn't stand this. However, Edward Teller had the great influence with the Atomic Energy Commission and particularly with the Joint Committee of Congress, and so the second laboratory was established. In fact it was established just about when Los Alamos was ready to test the thermonuclear weapon. The first two years of the Livermore Laboratory, the second laboratory were not very successful, but in the meantime the two laboratories work in parallel, and generally in good friendship with each other, supporting each other, being at the same time jealous of each other, and sometimes Los Alamos produces more and sometimes Livermore. Whether all that is nee...necessary is a different question. Probably we should make fewer designs of atomic weapons. But if you are devoted to having lots of new designs of atomic weapons, then probably two laboratories are better than one.

LET ME JUST ASK YOU ABOUT THE NEXT LOT OF WEAPONS TESTS THAT HAPPENED IN THE SOUTH PACIFIC, THE GREENHOUSE TESTS IN 1951. CAN YOU JUST TELL ME VERY BRIEFLY WHAT THE SIGNIFICANCE — THE SCIENTIFIC SIGNIFICANCE OF THOSE TESTS?

I cannot tell you very much about the Greenhouse Tests. There were two parts of it which I can tell you about. One was what is now generally known as the booster that is a device in which you put thermonuclear material in the center of a...of a fission weapon and thereby boost --its...

THESE WERE ALL FISSION TESTS?

The main you put it in the center of a fission device and increase the yield of the fission weapon. Of course there is some thermonuclear energy produced as well, but the main idea is to increase the yield of fission energy. So that was one device which was tested there. Another device was very large fission weapon, larger than — in yield than anything that had been done before. Then there was the most important test, which to Teller confirmed the chief idea of the of his new invention, and I cannot tell you anymore.

ONE FINAL QUESTION ON THIS PROGRAM. AND IT'S CONCERNING THE OPPENHEIMER HEARINGS IN 1954. AND UNFORTUNATELY, WE'RE NOT ABLE TO GO INTO TREMENDOUS AMOUNT OF DETAIL ON IT... SO IT'S JUST ONE QUESTION. AND THAT IS WHAT WAS THE SIGNIFICANCE FOR YOU PERSONALLY AND FOR THE SCIENTIFIC COMMUNITY IN GENERAL OF THE HEARINGS WHICH LED TO THE REVOCATION OF DR. OPPENHEIMER'S SECURITY CLEARANCE.

You have to understand the Oppenheimer hearings in the context of the time. It was 1954. Joe McCarthy was at the height of his power. And nearly everybody felt threatened, felt insecure, because almost anybody could be called before McCarthy and undergo a very disagreeable and probably very damaging interview. One for instance was a General in the Army. The Atomic Energy Commission did not feel secure themselves. There was some conflict between it and the Joint Committee. Well, in addition I think most scientists are inclined to be rather liberal and therefore were possible targets of Joe McCarthy. He didn't make any difference between liberals and communists. On this background the Atomic Energy Commission as well as the Joint Committee found a very a very useful scapegoat: that was Robert Oppenheimer. He had communist associations in his past. He had behaved foolishly in one instance, which as far as I am concerned was totally irrelevant to Oppenheimer in general, but he was a very suitable victim, and so the Atomic Energy Commission started proceedings against Robert Oppenheimer. Essentially the entire scientific community was on Oppenheimer's side, and I was very strongly so. I testified, so did lots of other prominent scientists. Many who were much senior to Oppenheimer and me and I think they all testified very well. But in the end the hearing board paid attention not to that testimony, perhaps to the testimony of Edward Teller, at least that is generally believed. And Edward Teller gave a very strange testimony in which he said, well he thought that Oppenheimer was loyal, but he couldn't understand the way he behaved. Now I must say, I can't understand the way Edward Teller behaves, but I didn't say that in any judicial proceedings. So that together with this very old and in my opinion unimportant incident with Eltonton and Chevalier, made the hearing board decide that Oppenheimer was not qualified to have a security clearance.

WHAT EFFECT DID THIS HAVE ON THE SCIENTIFIC COMMUNITY AND ON ROBERT OPPENHEIMER HIMSELF?

Robert Oppenheimer, I think was largely broken by this hearing. He never was the same again. His influence on the government, on the atomic energy development was a large part of his life, and the proceedings themselves were very nasty. So he never was the same again. To my knowledge he did not, resume any really scientific work. He still listened to... to his colleagues, but he didn't do any... any creative work of his own. On the scientific community it was a deep shock that this happened. And we were especially disturbed by seeing the verdict in comparison with the record of the proceeding. The record in our opinion did not in any way -- justify the verdict. So some of us in particular the American Physical Society, made some protest statements. They were, of course, ineffectual and nobody knows about them anymore. But looking at it from today it seems to me that Robert Oppenheimer was the sacrificial lamb who saved all the rest of us. After the Oppenheimer hearings which had produced quite a stir, the Atomic Energy Commission found it necessarily to conciliate the scientists rather than to attack other scientists. And it may -- might well have been the other way if Oppenheimer had not suffered his fate.