...TELLER'S ROLE IN FUSION WORK AT LOS ALAMOS AND WHAT WERE HIS EXPECTATIONS AT THIS TIME?

Uh... Edward had played the extraordinarily important role during the uh... fission part of the war effort up until the close of the war in the thermonuclear uh… weapon concept. In fact that's what he did. That was his basic...and his fundamental interest was uh...fusion bombs. And he preferred to devote his time to that particular problem basically the theoretical aspects of it: would the reaction be made to go, would it burn, would it burn complete and so on. He preferred to do that than uh...to work on the more he called it...I think... aspects of fission weapons which could be used of course in the war. It was quite clear that you would never use a thermonuclear bomb in that war. Oppenheimer, I think quite wisely uh...decided that this was what...let Edward do it. You know, it's got to be done sometime by somebody. And uh...he really had adequate theoretical staff for the uh... fission bomb work. And uh...for the British mission and the American people over here. And uh...so he told Edward, Sure, fine fine. Uh... it nevertheless I suppose, left a certain tension there because Edward was never part of uh...whose original raison d'être was an assertion which was partly true that there were so many things to do at Los Alamos with its commitments to getting weapons from research and development into quote unquote production or ready to be produced that we didn't have time to do all these things. Neither time nor people and uh...and not uh...enough laboratory space or housing to acquire them. And so he persuaded the commission that a separate laboratory uh... for a ... more under his control uh...would uh...be required or should be built. And he was at Ernest Lawrence this was a good idea. And Ernest of course a very effective salesman. And uh...so the Livermore Laboratory was started. Uh...originally it was started to uh...say to uh... things that Edward thought should be pushed. A certain elementary factor of life turned up very quickly. That more laboratories are going to work long on a second rate project. And if you don't have as good idea, idea as good as, beyond the bounds of local security because they're all, in this case Macys' tell Gimbals and Gimbals tells Macys. They knew what they were doing. And nobody pursues a poor line of attack very long for obvious reasons. So we ended up doing very similar things between Los Alamos and Livermore and eventually became appropriate to sort of divvy up the...the developmental work. You do this one. I'll do that one. You do this one. I'll do that one. And so on.

LET ME JUST TAKE YOU BACK TO THE PERIOD OF THE HYDROGEN BOMB DEBATE. AND AT THIS TIME YOU TOLD THAT HE WANTED TO BE IN CHARGE OF THE THERMONUCLEAR PROJECT AND THAT YOU WERE CONCERNED LEST PEOPLE LEAVE. WHAT WAS EDWARD TELLER'S ROLL IN FUSION WORK AT LOS ALAMOS AT THE TIME OF THE HYDROGEN BOMB DEBATE?

Purely theoretical. Purely theoretical. No uh...no... uh... design. No uh... real physics. Uh... no testing, no making, no direction. But a looking into the theoretical possibilities of that type of reaction. Uh...it would have been very difficult to put Edward in charge of a practical weapon development. Uh...it wasn't his forte to do that sort of thing. And uh... I was faced with a number of, let's say of problems which I would have faced most seriously if I had put him in mechanical charge. Uh… which we didn't. And uh... eventually of course, or shortly thereafter uh… Edward left and the Livermore Laboratory set out presumably to do things that we at Los Alamos didn't have time to do.

BEFORE THE GAC MEETING YOU HAD A DISCUSSION WITH ROBERT OPPENHEIMER ABOUT THE CHANCES OF SUCCESS FOR THE ... I WONDER IF YOU COULD RECALL ANY OF THAT DISCUSSION.

Well, Robert was in a very difficult quandary on this particular subject. I think it's very difficult to put words in other people's mouths. I think Robert hoped that it couldn't be made. That it would turn out to be impossible. He was very much frightened of putting in a new weapon of this potential character into the hand of... and quite rightly that once we succeeded in doing it successfully that all of the rest of the nuclear world would do the same thing. And uh...he was in a quandary, I think basically. He wished...I suppose he wished that nobody would do it, but there's no way in the world to bring that about. And the Russians are not ... Oppenheimer would want. And uh...So he was uh...He was unhappy about it. Uh... unhappy because it was simply out of his uh... He thought the world was practically on a collision course of catastrophe or something. Uh... it wasn't. It didn't. But I had made my point clear. It wasn't that he disliked what we were doing. He recognized that we had to do it. He, I think, was very unhappy that it had to be done at all. He'd have been happiest if we had gone ... Well, heck the thing won't work. And of course it didn't come up that way. It worked fine.

WHAT WAS YOUR PERSONAL REACTION TO THE REPORT THAT GAC DID ACTUALLY WRITE?

Well, look I didn't always like what the GAC said. It was rather strongly under the influence of ... To my feeling occasion, they weaseled pretty badly on some matters of that sort, but I didn't really care. I didn't uh... in a sense...to be quite blunt uh...the GAC or the commission could obv....not make fusion bombs if they didn't want to. They couldn't stop me from doing research on them. Because that's not in their control. You can't...you can't control what people think about, what people do in terms of research and computation, calculation, ideas. You can't control them or your crazy to try. Uh so they uh... I didn't really, I cared of course because I had thought the job ought to be done. But uh, and I really wasn't very frightened that it wouldn't get done. But I knew what I was going to do if they said, no, we won't make H-bombs. And I said, all right, don't make H-bombs. But if you look in ... cupboard someday you might have a ... one.

YES.

Do I make myself clear for you?

YES YES. ABSOLUTELY.

So I wasn't terribly concerned about this rather antagonistic uh...set up in the GAC. It wasn't antagonistic, nor was it unanimous. But there were very potential and very strong and persuasive voices in it that said, No. You can't expect to have all the apples in your pie.

WHAT EFFECT DO YOU THINK THAT TRUMAN'S ANNOUNCEMENT TO PROCEED WITH THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE H-BOMB HAVE ON LOS ALAMOS.

Well, nothing really. Except it's nice to be legitimized.

I WAS THINKING OF THE PRODUCTION. I MEAN, YOU WORKED A SIX DAY WEEK...

Well, yes because, I guess we do ... Well, at that time as we ... of war, the Russians were getting quite active and uh... we worked a 6 day week for the obvious reason to make things go a little, hopefully 20 percent faster. There were lots of things to do and it seemed the wise thing to do. After the war was over to get back to ...

WAS THERE THE SAME KIND OF SPIRIT ABOUT LOS ALAMOS AT THE TIME OF THE HYDROGEN BOMB EFFORT AS THERE WAS AT THE EARLIER EFFORT?

Yes, I would think so. It was clearly one of the next things that had to be done. Uh...it wasn't perhaps breaking the same new ground that uh...fission bombs, and it wouldn't sort of bring an end to a war so it doesn't have those two things in its favor. And by that time, the feeling about nuclear weapons you know, had perhaps crystalized a little bit more across the country. And the negative feelings of people and their public reactions to it had crystalized somewhat more and was a little bit more obvious. I think we would have liked to have had more wide spread uh … scientific support. But uh … but across the country, not across the country but there was increasing quite properly voiced uh… concern about the growth of nuclear weaponry. And now having got all the bombs they want or the kinds of bombs they want and now they want to make an even bigger bomb. And there were people who just sort of wrung their hands at this. Uh...man's stupidity or ... a man or what ever it was uh...Won't these people ever stop. And the answer, Well, not now.

THE MORALE AMONG THE SCIENTISTS WAS IT RIDING VERY HIGH?

Yes. As long as we had something like that to do. I think if we were told you can't do that, I would have had great difficulty in persuading people here that we had a weapons laboratory. If you can't do an important obvious weapon, that the Russians will very probably do then do you have a weapons laboratory or don't you. And it would be very hard to maintain morale without uh...feeling. Yes indeed. Washington wants what you are doing.

TELL ME ABOUT KLAUS FUCHS. WERE YOU SURPRISED AT HIS ARREST?

Well, yes. Very much. For two or three days people kind of looked at everybody, who are you? What do I know about you? We got over that very rapidly, but uh… it was of great surprise to us. The thing that people forget now about Klaus Fuchs is that he was working very hard for this country. His basic difficulty was that he hated the Nazis so much he didn't think that we were helping Russia enough to defeat Germany. And so he decided to take that particular thing into his own hands. He wasn't disloyal to this country. Many people think he was disloyal. He was intensely loyal to this country. But he didn't think we were doing enough to help...to help uh, he was...he was, I meant to say, fanatic anti-Nazi and he didn't think the Russians were getting enough help from us to defeat the Nazis in Germany. Well it's a simple enough point of view and uh...the thing that's wrong about it is he took the quote unquote law into his own hands. But he was didn't. He was not disloyal in...that sense.

WHAT CHARACTERISTICS DO YOU REMEMBER ABOUT THE MAN?

Oh. Extraordinarily pleasant. Very quiet. Very hard working.

IF YOU COULD START BY SAYING KLAUS FUCHS…

Very well. Klaus Fuchs, as I saw him, was an extraordinarily pleasant person. Much in demand as a single man at parties. Good bridge player. Uh… very pleasant. Good pianist. All the proper virtues. Was much in demand for social occasions. It came as a great uh...shock to discover that he'd been...leading a double life. And it wasn't I think until some time afterwards that people really discovered that, I wouldn't say his ... one of the best, but his motives, they were... could be understood.

WHAT DO YOU RECALL OF THE PRINCETON MEETING IN JUNE OF '51 WHEN THE TECHNICALLY SWEET SOLUTION WAS ANNOUNCED?

Well, I'm not quite clear how to answer that particular question. Uh...it was uh...nice to have the program, let's say, legitimatized. Uh... it didn't come as any great surprise to me that it would be, come to that. We knew what we were doing and what we would be doing. It was nice to have it kind of in the classified public, the GAC public and so on. ... It was nice to know that we had uh...backing and support. You can go about so far on your own, but it's a... sometimes you need money and sometimes you need materials. And uh… clearly if you're going to be sure of what you're doing, sometime you're going to need to test. And it was nice to have. I say, that was my reaction that I thought we were uh… out of the woods and that's in the political sense. We might not be out of the woods in the technical sense, but we were out of the woods in the political sense.

CAN YOU DESCRIBE IN LAYMAN'S TERMS WHAT THE ACTUAL TECHNICALLY SWEET SOLUTION WAS?

No.

OK. IT'S TOO DIFFICULT.

I'm sorry. It uh...

IS IT TOO DIFFICULT TO TALK ABOUT THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE GREENHOUSE TEST?

Well, seeing as the greenhouse test was uh... purely showed that what we were, the attack we were taking upon the production of a thermonuclear bomb would eventually be successful. That wasn't a bomb. By a thousand miles. I mean in the sense that there's a bomb is something you would use in a military action. And experiment. It was very, very successful. Because you diagnose it. You find out what happened. Worked almost exactly as predicted. And when it didn't work we had enough diagnostics to uh… to learn more about how to do it even better. Uh...in that sense it was a highly satisfactory experiment.

HOW ABOUT THE NEVADA TESTS?

Which one?

ALL OF THEM... 1951.

Oh, well. Look, they were very essential uh... Again, I think it's probably open knowledge that you don't, you have to have certain starting conditions for a thermonuclear weapon. And this, the only way you can get the thermonuclear division is to involve fission process. And in Nevada we could determine the starting conditions. And uh...we couldn't of course make very big bangs simple. We could make bangs that were quite adequate for our...for our purposes. And discover a lot of thing that we had to know of how to get from that thing to something that you would then want to test in the Pacific.

WHAT WAS YOUR REACTION AND THOSE OF YOUR COLLEAGUES AT LOS ALAMOS WHEN EDWARD TELLER STARTED LOBBYING FOR A SECOND WEAPONS LABORATORY? DID YOU THINK IT WAS NECESSARY?

In all frankness, no. But uh...it's the sort of thing you are in no position, a director is in no position to say no. You can't uh... oppose it. Uh...Edward claimed to have lots of good ideas that we didn't have time to explore. It turned out that his ideas were not practical and not useful. Uh...so they came....we came back to the two laboratories doing almost the same thing in terms of weapon development. That was silly. So we then kind of split the pie. They'd do one type, I mean one thing. And we'd do another and then so on as I've said. Uh...it was in a sense predictable because uh... this is not a Macys and Gimbals situation as I've mentioned. And Macys does tell Gimbals and Gimbals does tell Macys. In other words they would know what we were doing and we would know what they were doing. And neither of us would pursue a blind alley very long. Am I making myself clear.

YES.

So essentially you are, ah, you set up two laboratories to do the same thing each of which is telling each other all it's doing. And pretty soon you find the position, well how many, the only thing is now can I convert this particular idea or design into a useful system, useful weapon? And can I do that at the same time I do this one, into a useful weapon. And the answer is, well, let's have, we've got two laboratories, you take that one, and I'll take this one and you take that one and I'll take that one and so on. And ah --

DID YOU FEEL THAT LOS ALAMOS COULD HAVE HANDLED ALL THE —-

In all frankness, yes, I felt we could have, and yet there was a certain virtue to having a separate laboratory, and you are then less subject to criticism, much less subject to criticism if things aren't going as fast as the military wants, oh, you do all you can. And urn, secondly it's rather nice to have partners, you do learn more. And ah, and it takes a little load off your shoulders in the sense that if you're the sole person responsible for a new bomb, and something goes wrong, you were the sole person responsible. If you've got a … you've got a pal up at … up at Livermore, that's, you share this responsibility and this, it ah, it's a little less nerve wracking.

WHAT WERE YOUR FEELINGS AT THE TIME ABOUT THE OPPENHEIMER HEARINGS?

Well, I was very sorry that they had come about. Ah, I was always firmly convinced of Oppenheimer's basic loyalty, and um, the hearings seemed to be both unnecessary and unkind, and ah, to some extent futile. Ah, it is quite true that Oppenheimer in his younger days had had some left wing friends. Ah, it's unfortunate that some of the things that he did as head of the direct, ah, General Advisory Committee, ah, displeased some parts of the Commission, Congressional Staff. I think they were done honestly and ah, well it was good judgment. Now whether the judgment was right or not, ... but they were thought about very carefully. And ah, you might go through the same set of data and come out with a different answer, in fact, I would have myself. ... they were honest judgments, and I was, I thought this was a very sad occasion. As you are aware, I testified at the hearings in his behalf. And ah, as I was and convinced then, I am still convinced now of his basic loyalty.

I'M JUST GOING TO GO OVER A COUPLE OF THE EARLIER...

There were, as you know, there were various efforts made to compensate him and ...but it just never worked.

IF YOU CAN DESCRIBE FOR ME THE SITUATION AT LOS ALAMOS IN EARLY 1947.

Well, the situation at Los Alamos in early 1947, we were making ah, good progress in conventional fission weapons. Ah, if you're driving a the particular point this is the time that the Russians turned up with their own device, was startling to say the least. Ah, we had all believed, I think here, that in due course, I would have given three or four years, the Russians would have made their own bomb. After all, they had Klaus Fuchs and they had this and that and then another thing. But to have done all this in the length of time, which was roughly the same length of time that it had taken us... this country, was something of a surprise.

WHAT I WAS GETTING AT WAS THE RECRUITMENT IN THE EARLY DAYS. I WAS GETTING TO THE, BEFORE THE SOVIET BOMB, THE SITUATION AT LOS ALAMOS EARLY '47 AND YOUR PROBLEMS OF RECRUITING. THAT WAS REALLY JUST BEFORE '47, WASN'T IT?

Well, let's get our time scales straight here. I took over the laboratory in 1945.

'45. MMMM.

And during the course of the next year. Ah, come 1947, ah, the laboratory was expanding, trying to expand. We were aware that...that the Russians were active in the business. We were aware that the next thing that we had to do would be to try to develop a fission type, fusion type weapons.

YES.

And for this we would like to have more staff. Ah, and so we set out very vigorously to get more staff.

YES. BUT YOU SAID TO ME YESTERDAY THAT THE...

Well, it may be we were talking slightly at cross-purposes. You see, I said it was nice, if I recall our conversation, it was nice to have civilian bosses rather than working for people in uniform, not that we hadn't done so during and immediately after the war. But ah, civilians are more accustomed to working for civilians. The military had a very effective input through the Military Liaison Committee. And that seemed to most of us, all of us, to be a very effective way of getting military advice into the design ah, area. In other words, what did the military need? And that would come from the Military Liaison Committee.

WELL, WHAT WERE YOUR PRIORITIES AT THIS TIME, IN TERMS OF YOUR ACTIVITIES AT LOS ALAMOS? WHAT WERE YOUR PRIORITIES?

Well, the...the top priority was always, um, nuclear weapons. Ah, to get the nuclear weapons that you had in a design state into a ah, useful military form. Now that… that means a lot of things that I can't very well discussed, but they must be capable of being stockpiled, ah, easily, they must be, get easily from the stockpile into vehicle, delivering vehicle, whatever it may be. Ah, they must have long ah, let us say shelf life. They must require minimum quote unquote maintenance. Uh, these are the general characteristics of any good weapon and they are characteristic of a nuclear weapon.

IF YOU COULD JUST SAY THAT YOU'RE CONCENTRATING ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF FISSION BOMBS AND MAKING THEM SMALLER FOR DELIVERY VEHICLES THAT'S AS MUCH...

That wouldn't be entirely true if I were to say that.

OKAY.

We were concentrating at that time primarily on fission bombs because A, we didn't uh, have fission bombs that would be useful for any thermonuclear weapon that we could, if we could conceive of anyone we didn't know enough at that time. But we knew enough at that time but we knew enough so that certain conditions would have to be met. And that a certain skill and facility uh, and detail technology of fission bombs would be a prime requisite for any useful that is to say militarily useful fusion device.

THESE BOMBS HAD TO SMALL IN ORDER TO BE USEFUL THAT'S WHAT I'M TRYING TO...

Well you don't have freight cars available to deliver a bomb over an enemy. Look you are restricted by the design of a bomb bay of an airplane. And later on you became restricted by the capacity of certain types of ground to ground long range missiles, but clear those things are very restrictive because you have to have great big fuel tanks and that sort of thing. So you have to look, uh, that is what was so helpful to have a military advisory committee who could keep you informed of military vehicle developments. By vehicle I mean the things that might carry our device to the enemy. And tell you what they could do, were doing, could not do.

HOW DID THE, YOU TOLD ME EARLIER, WHEN WE TALKED ABOUT THE DECISION TO GO AHEAD WITH OPERATIONS SUNSTAND THAT THE ORIGINAL DECISION CAME FROM THE LABORATORY TO THE AEC, AND I WAS INTERESTED IN HEARING MORE ABOUT THAT, HOW THE DECISION WAS MADE TO GO AHEAD, WHY IT WAS NECESSARY AND WHAT THE EFFECTS WERE ON ACTIVITIES AT LOS ALAMOS?

Well the laboratory I would say, had always, has always been looked to by the AEC to present to it its plans and its needs for money and for testing. In other words, the, the Labor, the Washington offices do not invent bombs. They're invented here. The need for testing is recognized here. The Washington offices uh, look to us to tell them when we need and what we need and how much we need of it. And that includes money and and bomb testing and things like that. Is that the point you're driving at?

WELL THE REASONS WHY IT WAS NECESSARY AND THE--IT WAS NECESSARY BECAUSE YOU GOT INTO THIS SITUATION, I KNOW YOU SAID IT IN EARLIER TIME, WE TALKED ABOUT HAND-CRAFTING TO MASS-PRODUCTION AND THIS WAS THE SIGNIFICANCE THE SAND STONE TEST.

Well, I said, ..., it was more complicated than that, but um, uh, at that time things were going into quote unquote factory production. Uh, and we had to keep track of that, too. But the real interest in the laboratory was not in production matters it was in uh, the progress of search and development of nuclear and making weapons that were easier to maintain, to stockpile, to carry, to deliver, uh, shake and ... you can say. All the things that go wrong with any piece of military ordnance and could be expected at one time ... nuclear weapon, it must be able to survive that.

AROUND THIS TIME, DAVID LILIENTHAL WHICH IN HIS DIARY SAID HE WAS CONCERNED ABOUT YOUR ENTHUSIASM FOR BIGGER AND BETTER BOMBS, NOT JUST, NOT JUST YOURS BUT ALSO DANIEL FREEMAN'S AFTER THE SUNSEN TEST...AFTER THE SUCCESS OF THAT...

Well, what am I supposed to say. I was concerned about his lack of enthusiasm for bigger and better bombs. No I wasn't it was not a matter of, of concern, uh, Lilienthal was probably never uh, an enthusiastic uh, military weaponeer. And that isn't oh, not said in any disparaging way. It wasn't the thing he liked very much. He was fall, found himself, what he had to have it in his family of jobs. But I don't think he liked it particularly. Uh, it wasn't his idea of nicest ways to live a life, uh, nicest ways to live in a world, nuclear war, I thought he regarded it with, would have thought he regards, we all would his, horrendous. Uh, I think he worried uh, was he contributing to the probability or possibility of nuclear war. Yes, I suppose he was. He would be on the winning side if he, unless you have enemies that all agree and there was never any real sign of any agreement across the world as a matter.

HOW DID YOU FEEL AS REGARDS POSSIBILITIES OF ANOTHER WAR, I MEAN THE WARHEAD WAS OVER I MEAN HOW DID YOU FEEL ABOUT CREATING MORE WEAPONS AND MORE, MORE, A LARGER STOCKPILE?

I'd probably be on the side that has more weapons from the point of view of being stronger than on the weaker side. Simply said...Would you like to be in a country where the Russians had a predominant lead over you in nuclear weaponry? Don't tell me yes, please.

...THERE WASN'T TOO MUCH LIAISON BETWEEN THE MILITARY AND AEC...?

Well, look there wasn't any AEC until, until uh, whenever the TOM-JAY Act was passed in '46, and we were still busy before that. And it took them, it took the AEC a long time, well it took them at least a year to learn whether, how things were working.

... IT WAS THE AEC HAD JUST STARTED AND THAT YOU FELT YOU HAD DIRECTION AT LAST. THAT'S WHAT YOU TOLD ME.

Yes, well at least we had a—we had a boss in Washington--

YOU WERE FOCUSING ON FISSION WEAPONS...

But we referred to ...fission weapons because as I said, we knew we had to have remarkably uh, sophisticated as a matter fact, use that nasty word, sophisticated uh fission weapons before we would have a prayer of making any thermonuclear weapon of which we could then conceive. So what the course of our development was uh, simple-minded in that sense, we didn't have to be told that, I didn't have to go and ask for permission to do it, I would go--...this is what we are doing.

SO LOS ALAMOS AT THIS TIME, IF YOU CAN SUM UP FOR ME IN A FEW—JUST IN A COUPLE OF SENTENCES, WHAT...

Now let's get the time straight first of all, what year?

IT'S 1947...

1947.

AND IT'S APRIL.

Time of the first Russian bomb.

NO, NO THAT'S MUCH LATER, THAT'S TWO YEARS LATER.

What is April '47 especially?

APRIL '47, THAT'S WHEN THE AEC HAD COME INTO BEING…

We were making all the official there was in nuclear weapons, if you want it, simple-minded as said, best we could. And uh, and developing other ones. We knew the general direction the development would have to take. Uh, and we were doing that. And we weren't sitting I, sometimes don't mean to be difficult, I seem to get the impression, see we sat down, sat on our hands. We were the only source, if we couldn't get directions from Washington, we had to provide our own direction. And we did.

...A LOT OF THE DIRECTION OBVIOUSLY WAS FROM YOU SINGLY?

Well I had revisors and we had all kinds of confus... and so on and uh...

HOW DID YOU GET PEOPLE'S ENTHUSIASM? HOW DO YOU CATCH THEIR ENTHUSIASM?

Just to point out what their laboratory was doing and was not doing. There was a whole area of, of weaponry having to do with the practical use of the DD reactions, so-called fusion bombs. I could tell people, we were working on that but clear this was something that we had to work on very hard. And I didn't really have enough people to devote to it. It's also, you can see without violating security that required the Greek sophistication and developed an efficient weapon systems. And uh, this wasn't being done as fast as one would like to get it done, I needed more people, more money, more facilities. Uh, we needed a way to keep in touch with the scientific world, a way to let us have things for graduate students to do. Uh, we needed uh, things we, things to, that would interest people coming here for summer consulting and participate in the laboratory programs. We need summer consultant programs, we did that. We do all the things that you have to do to vitalize uh, a laboratory that puts it in contact with the people that you want to involve in it. You want to involve graduate students, fresh Ph.D.s, uh, post-docs, uh professors, all kinds of people you want to involve in it, uh, that can add to your--add to your program.

AND HOW HARD WAS IT FOR YOU?

Was it hard to do? Not as hard as I was afraid, no it was not terribly hard to do. Uh, I don't suppose I really ever had all the people I wanted, uh, but I got to a point where I was, had all the Ph.D.s that I thought was reasonable for a laboratory of this sort, you don't want the 10,000 Ph.D.s and nobody to do the dirty work. And uh, you don't want too many, you want some, you got to have a certain reasonable portion of people who'll do the computing, who'll just do routine computing that they're told to do. You have to have machinists, you have to have electronic experts, you have to have all kinds of people that balance a laboratory.

DID YOU ALSO TELL THEM, DID YOU HAVE TO CONVINCE THEM THAT THEY WERE ONLY THE A-BOMB PROGRAM WAS ONLY HALF FINISHED, THAT'S WHAT YOU MENTIONED TO ME BEFORE.

Well, it was no great secret that there was no basic source of energy, name of the... and that uh, where that could lead we didn't know.

I THINK IF YOU COULD SAY, I HAD TO CONVINCE PEOPLE, IF THAT'S...

That's the sort of thing that you were clearly leading into. If there was, if there was a proc... um… a civil weapon…

I THINK IF YOU COULD SAY SOMETHING LIKE I HAD—THAT THAT WAS MY MOTIV--MY MAIN PROBLEM WAS CONVINCING PEOPLE THAT THE ATOMIC PROGRAM HAD NOT FINISHED AT THE END OF THE WAR?

Well, it was certainly one of the things that uh, started for it was not finished in any way but end the war. It was, it had to get the things there B-29s and B-50s, it was hardly finished. So even the--in the limited sense, efficient weapons was very far from finished. Uh, and as I've said uh, looking behind the scenes, uh, was the knowledge around the world, that there was another source of nuclear energy, namely the ... the... reaction. And was known to the Russians as well as it's known to us. It was known everywhere. Uh, the thing that was new and different was that you now had a potential means, possibly, for uh, utilizing that deuterium energy and the task was to see, can you do this and how do you it and how do you do that and make it a useful and deliverable weapon? That H-bombs and uh, certainly involved A-bombs, I think is no longer classified, but would have been classified ten years ago, but that is certainly well known that there's some sort of a quote, unquote mechanism and people gifted and school boys have made drawings of uh how this might work and that, not always too bad, really...