DR. MANLEY, HOW DID YOU REGARD THE MILITARY ROLE OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS DURING '47-'48 AND DID OTHER SCIENTISTS AT LOS ALAMOS SHARE YOUR VIEW?

Well this was a personal problem as well as an international problem. And the personal problem was whether I would stay at Los Alamos. And there a number of reasons, including the international situation, why I did. There were, well, for one, I felt very strongly that time was required for the diplomacy to work after the war, the creation of the United Nations and so on. The need to maintain security during that time was very evident. The only security we had, because we wanted to, the country wanted to demobilize rapidly. The only security really was given by the atomic bombs. And so I think that many of us felt that it was important to try to maintain a stockpile, and an increasing number of atomic bombs. There were a couple of other reasons, too. The, the international control Baruch Plan was going on, very slowly. People were realizing that our ally Russia was gradually becoming a kind of a pariah.

LET'S JUST STOP THERE AND CHANGE THE SHOT, THE SIZE OF THE FRAME. AND WE'LL START AGAIN AT "PEOPLE WERE REALIZING," WE'RE JUST GETTING A DIFFERENT SIZE OF THE FRAME. AND, "PEOPLE WERE REALIZING...

People were realizing that our ally, Russia, was not being very cooperative and furthering our idea of the First World War cooperation. And that was another reason for having some strength. We had demobilized so rapidly, of course, that we didn't have that kind of strength. Then there was the final reason, as far as I, sort of a personal one but also a scientific one, namely, that I felt it was very important to restore the capital of science that had been used up during the war, and that meant doing basic research and in the various physical sciences, at someplace to build up that, to rebuild that capital. And I couldn't think of any better place than Los Alamos.

AND YOU SAID BEFORE THAT YOU WERE ESSENTIALLY GAINING TIME. AND I WONDERED IF YOU COULD JUST SAY THAT AGAIN, THAT YOU WANTED TO GET RID OF THE IDEA OF, THESE WEAPONS FOR WAR. IF YOU COULD REPEAT THAT...

Well, I think that all of us realized and that was one of the things that we tried to do in public education, what the atomic bomb meant for war. People that didn't realize it generally, so that was one of our programs. I don't think there was a single scientist that didn't realize what that meant. And consequently, we had to have some excuse, if you will, for carrying on with weapons work weapons that we didn't really believe in, you see. And the reason there was that, to gain time, hoping that the, that the politicians and diplomats and so on, would somehow solve the problem of the post-war world.

OK. WE'VE GOT IT ALL. LET'S JUST GO OVER THAT LAST BIT. IT'S EXACTLY THE SAME. JUST GO OVER IT AGAIN. THE INFORMATION'S THE SAME. LET ME ASK YOU AGAIN, WERE YOU ESSENTIALLY GAINING TIME? WHAT WAS THE SCIENTISTS' POINT OF VIEW? IF YOU CAN JUST SAY, WE AT LOS ALAMOS, THE SCIENTISTS AT LOS ALAMOS FELT THAT WE WERE GAINING TIME, THAT WE HAD TO GET RID OF THIS IDEA OF WEAPONS OF WAR, WHATEVER, HOWEVER YOU WANT TO PHRASE IT.

The point I think of, for many of us, and not just myself, was that we had to gain time after the war, so that the diplomacy, the political negotiations, the growth of the UN for example, all of those things could operate and act. And we were maintaining some security, by our efforts on nuclear weapons, although we didn't like them, and many of us were trying to tell the public that this war was different now with those things. We shouldn't have war.

TERRIFIC. NOW, LET'S MOVE ON TO WHAT KIND OF PROBLEMS DID THE AEC FACE IN ITS EARLIEST DAYS, IN 1947,'48? OH, LET'S HAVE A WIDE SHOT ON THIS, I'M SORRY. WELL I THINK WE NEED TO KEEP BREAKING IT UP. I THINK I'LL INTERRUPT YOU IF I FEEL WE'RE GETTING TOO LONG, AND THEN... I THINK THE THINGS I WAS MOST INTERESTED IN WHEN WE WERE TALKING THE OTHER DAY, WAS THE PRODUCTION OF THE BIGGER BANG FOR THE GRAM, AND THE PROBLEMS OF PRODUCTION AT HANFORD AND OAK RIDGE, AND LET'S KEEP THE MILITARY SITUATION SEPARATE, WE'LL DO THAT AS A SEPARATE. OK.

There are others that I think...

OK. FINE. I'LL ASK THE QUESTION AGAIN. WHAT KIND OF PROBLEMS DID THE AEC FACE IN ITS EARLIEST DAYS?

The AEC faced terrific problems. There was a widespread empire involving production plants, laboratories, and so on. People were leaving almost in droves morale was extremely low. The time that was required to get the civilian law through and set up was oh, almost a year. And this discouraged everybody. There were no objectives. The production plants were rolling, but you can imagine the spirit of the people, especially in the laboratories, and those laboratories were the key to the research and development for getting more energy out of the fissionable material in the weapon business. They were also the key for the building of reactors, not only production reactors but also reactors for power for public consumption. So that it was unbelievable how many different problems the AEC had to face. I'd like to mention, too, that the AEC had only one commission.

LET ME JUST STOP THERE, AND LET'S GET A CLOSE UP. OK, THE AEC COMMISSION HAD ONLY, IF YOU'D JUST PICK UP THERE.

The AEC Commission had only one member out of five who had had any experience with the Manhattan District. The GAC, on the other hand, which was the advisory committee to the AEC, every member had had--except one--had had some association with the Manhattan District, many with Los Alamos in particular. The one who didn't was the one who run, was running the MIT radar research and investigations. So the experience was in the GAC, not in the AEC And so the GAC had a, an important role, a very important role to fulfill, in the early days, while the AEC was getting its feet wet in this new social experiment of a civilian commission.

GREAT. GREAT.

I was leading into the role of the AEC

OK. LET'S GO TO THE WIDE SHOT. SO...JUST CONTINUE ON THE ROLE OF THE AEC

The AEC, with its experience and knowledge of the Manhattan District, Cohnen in particular for example and of course, Oppenheimer, Fermi and Rabi and many others...had the duty to try to advise not only...

LET ME JUST STOP YOU. WE SAID A.E.C WHEN WE SHOULD HAVE SAID GAC I'M SORRY, IT WAS MY MISTAKE. OK. SO WE WERE GETTING ONTO THE ROLE OF THE GAC IF YOU'LL JUST PICK ME UP.

The role of the... You want me to...

YES.

The role of the GAC was to pro, really to provide the expertise and experience while the AEC was learning the ropes of the whole atomic energy business. And this came naturally to the members of the GAC because they had been so involved in the wartime activities. Among those responsibilities, for instance, was helping the AEC get good personnel in just the matter of staffing. Not only in the headquarters office in Washington, but in the field offices all over the country. Another one was policy questions about production was the raw material situation adequate? The GAC turn looking into that actually advised a step-up of both raw material procurement, the building of another production reactor at Hanford, for instance, and of course the great attention actually to both weapons and reactors, so the two main parts of a ongoing program. That also called for a great deal of research and development, and this involved the many laboratories that were under the jurisdiction of the AEC The only place that could do that work, really, were those laboratories. And that meant those laboratories had to work on weapons, that was Los Alamos, on new production processes, for example, Chicago, on reactors at Oak Ridge, and on separation procedures at Oak Ridge, just a tremendous number of problems.

WERE THE EFFORTS OF THE AEC HAMPERED BY THE MILITARY?

Well, I think that's a yes. But I'm prejudiced in several different ways in answering that question, because I thought a great deal of Groves, I think he did an amazing job. But on the other hand some of the work of Los Alamos was taken over by an army battalion which he set up in Albuquerque. And I complained by letter to him about the inadequacy of the army operation there. Then that was really quite early. Then after the Commission got going, it was actually around 1947, I think, that Groves was put on an, a linkage committee, a committee providing the link between the military department, the defense department, and the AEC And unfortunately, he could not give up his org— original power, and he was objecting to all sorts of things. He even objected to a new production reactor, which was a very sensible thing. He objected to the AEC weapons program. He felt it was impractical. And there a countless source of irritation to the AEC during those early days of '47 and '48.

I WONDER IF YOU MIGHT LIKE TO DO THAT AGAIN, JUST BY SAYING THAT, YOU KNOW, GROVES HAD DONE A LOT OF GOOD, BUT IN FACT, I'M JUST TRYING TO CUT IT DOWN. BUT, YOU KNOW, JUST SAY, WELL HE'D DONE A LOT OF GOOD, BUT BY TIE SUMMER OF '47 HE WAS ACTUALLY BEGINNING TO CREATE PROBLEMS. LET'S DO IT ONE MORE TIME.

As far as the military activities were concerned, I have to say I had a great deal of respect for what Groves did during the war. But after he got into a position of advisory with the AEC he became an irritant. I think he couldn't give up his power really very easily. And there were many problems mostly in the weapons end, centering around Albuquerque and the takeover of some of the activities that had previously been at Los Alamos.

LET'S GO TO A CLOSE UP. DID THE ISSUE OF SECRECY COME UP HERE? THIS COMPARTMENTALIZATION IDEA OF GROVES? WAS THIS A PROBLEM FOR LOS ALAMOS?

No, I don't the secrecy was really a terrific problem. The way it came in of course was in getting cleared personnel, to re-establish the strength of the laboratories. That always took time. But we had been trained in secrecy for four years during the war, essentially, so that we got accustomed to it, maybe that's the reason I didn't think it was a terrible problem.

WHAT WAS THE CUSTODY BATTLE ALL ABOUT?

Well, the custody battle was in principle a rather simple one. The AEC believed that the meaning of the Atomic Energy Act, establishing a civilian commission, was that they would look after the atomic weapons, completely, have custody of those. The military felt that they couldn't operate without having custody, that if a crisis should arise, the weapons would have to be in their hands beforehand or they couldn't properly handle. Now both points of view were justified, and it took a lot of compromise and consideration to ever resolve them. In fact, it was not resolved until Truman made a resolution in 1948.

LET'S GO TO A WIDE SHOT. WHY DID YOU THINK THE MILITARY SHOULDN'T HAVE CUSTODY?

I felt with the— with Lilienthal and the Commission, that was really the meaning of the Atomic Energy Act and the Civilian Commission, that they should have custody. I recognized that it made problems. But the AEC should have had custody, under civilian control and under direct control of the President of the United States without going through a military link, you see. There was one thing that was rather troublesome, and that is how would the AEC, without a military force, guard the weapons? And that was a very strong argument for transfer to the to the military. But I thought that the civilian principle was so important, that this would be a foot in the door to make a deterioration in that civilian principle if it were permitted.

OK. WAS THERE ANYTHING ELSE YOU WANTED TO ADD ABOUT THE MILITARY OR ANYTHING ELSE ABOUT THE EARLY DAYS?

I have a list of several things...

YES, ANYTHING YOU'D LIKE TO ADD.

Yeah, I think it goes in.

YOU NEVER MENTIONED THE BUSINESS ABOUT THE BIGGER BANG FOR THE GRAM, AND I WOULD QUITE LIKE TO ASK YOU, IN 1948 IS OFTEN REFERRED TO BY HISTORIANS AS THE TURNING POINT, WHEN IT WAS THE PERIOD OF THE BERLIN BLOCKADE, AND THERE WERE THE WAR PLANS GOING ON, THE MILITARY WERE, PEOPLE LIKE CURTIS LEMAY WERE DEALING WITH THE ATOMIC BLITZ WAR PLANS, AND THERE WERE PEOPLE LIKE LOUIE JOHNSON TALKING ABOUT BIGGER AND BETTER BOMBS, AND McMANN OF COURSE. DID YOU FEEL THERE WAS UNNECESSARY, THEY WERE BEING UNNECESSARILY HAWKISH?

Yes, I think I did. Because that was in contrast you see to our idea. And I think I speak for the average scientist say, at Los Alamos in saying this, that what we were doing were, we were trying to improve the stockpile, make better weapons, get more bang for a for a buck, if you will as a natural process of evolution of the weapons business. And as long as we felt that the security depended on the weapons, this was a consistent position. But to stretch it as the military were trying to do, and Johnson's in particular to an outlandish realm, if you will, then that didn't sit very well with us. Because at the same time, you see, we were trying to get rid of weapons. It was Bradbury once, the director of Los Alamos, put it once very well. The purpose of Los Alamos was to work itself out of business.

THAT'S TERRIFIC, THANK YOU. NOW LET'S GO UP TO A CLOSE UP HERE. WE'RE MOVING ON NOW TO THE SOVIET BOMB. WHAT WAS YOUR REACTION TO THE NEWS OF THE SOVIET BOMB?

Really your question is, what was my reaction to the reaction in Washington to the, to the Soviet bomb. Because I was simply flabbergasted that the Washington setup had not anticipated the Soviet test. The scientists had predicted as late, as early '45 in this time scale, that somewhere between '48 and '50, the Russians would succeed in producing an atomic bomb. But there seemed to be absolutely no advance planning and anticipation of such an event. And I couldn't understand why anything could be more important to the security and welfare of the United States than to anticipate what steps should be taken when the United States lost its nuclear monopoly. And yet I found nothing really in State or Defense that indicated any preparation or any serious thought on this particular problem.

LET'S GO TO A WIDE SHOT ON THIS. PERHAPS YOU COULD EXPAND ON, WHAT WERE, HOW WERE THE MILITARY DOING THEIR PLANNING AT THIS POINT?

Well, you see, I was in the Washington office of the AEC quite a bit, and so I was getting a feel for the, some of the conflicts that were going on over custody, over especially the lack of willingness on the part of the military to give the AEC any basis whatever for the stockpile requirements, or even kinds of weapons. There was just almost no communication on that topic. They would clam up. The, the communication was a one-way street; they knew everything about the AEC but the AEC knew almost nothing about the military.

OK. NOW LET'S JUST GO THROUGH THAT AGAIN, BECAUSE IT'S A LITTLE COMPLEX. AND— OK.

YES, TALK ABOUT THE AEC AND THE MILITARY AGAIN.

Well, it was an unending complication between the military and the AEC due to the lack of communication on... to the AEC about the military requirements. What kinds of bombs. How many. And those things. They wanted to... The AEC rightly, I think, wanted to know the basis for those requirements. And that... the impression that we got in Washington was that the military simply took the production figures which they add on ...materials and divide it by the amount per bomb in order to get what they said to the AEC and the President was a requirement, and nothing any deeper than that.

AND HOW DID THAT AFFECT YOUR ACTIVITIES?

The the effect on Los Alamos of that sort of thing was probably not too great because we were getting our instructions directly from the AEC. But the AEC, on the other hand, really didn't understand what it was that the military wanted because they didn't understand the basis for the requirements. And therefore there was a hiatus in terms of the objectives of the AEC in terms of the military protection of weapons.

THIS WAS THE PERIOD OF THE SPRING WAR CRISIS, SO IF NUCLEAR WEAPONS HAD BEEN CALLED INTO ACTION, WHAT WOULD HAVE BEEN THE SCENARIO?

That probably well, by that time, there was a local agreement between the local military in Albuquerque and in Los Alamos about how to accomplish this transfer of custody fairly rapidly. And so that was almost solved. The problem was in Washington. The Washington military wouldn't...and the AEC wouldn't let go of this conflict. And they kept bringing it up even to Eisenhower and then later to Truman.

EVEN TO TRUMAN AND LATER EISENHOWER.

No.

EISENHOWER WHEN HE WAS ARMY CHIEF OF STAFF?

No, as president.

NOW LET'S MOVE ON TO THE SOVIET BOMB AGAIN. YOUR REACTION TO THE NEWS OF THE SOVIET BOMB. YOU WERE TALKING ABOUT THE LACK OF PREPAREDNESS...

The thing that amazed me as a result of the Russian explosion, was a lack of preparedness in either the State Department or the Defense for this event. That lack of preparedness meant a vacuum. And the only way that the vacuum is filled really was for the one person in the world, no doubt, who knew the answer to the proper response to the Russian test was Edward Teller. And he plunged in to promote his Hydrogen bomb, thermonuclear reaction kind of program in order to tell the Russians that we were going to be strong.

[REPEAT QUESTION]

My reaction to the test was a reaction to the Washington reaction, namely that there wasn't any preparation in either their logical places of state or defense for the ending of the United States monopoly by this Russian event. The only... There was a real vacuum and the only way of filling that vacuum was recognized by one Edward Teller who, obviously, was the only person who could have a program, namely his thermonuclear reaction or super bomb program, as a response to the Russian test.

GO BACK TO THE REACTION TO THE SOVIET BOMB.

The amazing absence of any preparation in state or defense meant a vacuum which was

LET'S START WITH THE SOVIET BOMB...

My reaction to the news of the Soviet bomb was to be aghast at the reaction of Washington which was that no preparation had been made in state or defense for this ending of the United States monopoly of atomic weapons. There was a vacuum created. And one man saw this and grabbed the opportunity. That was Edward teller.

HOW DO YOU EXPLAIN THE FANATICISM OF EDWARD TELLER TOWARD THE CRASH DEVELOPMENTS OF THE H-BOMB?

You're asking really to explain a explain Edward Teller. And that's too complex a subject. I could give you a few characteristics which might be helpful. One was that he had a love for mental problems. He was a theorist and he liked scientific puzzles of the mental variety. He... he also had a hate for the Russians and Russia. Third or the other... one other reason was simply that he would take any opportunity, in my opinion, to grab something which would work to the glorification of Edward Teller. That isn't very smooth.

HOW WOULD YOU EXPLAIN THE FANATICISM OF EDWARD TELLER TOWARDS THE CRASH DEVELOPMENT OF THE H-BOMB?

To explain that would be to Explain Teller...

TRY AGAIN WITHOUT SAYING THAT.

Well it came from several factors. His love of mental type problems. He was a theoretical physicist. His hate of the Russians and Russia. And maybe more important anything which could work to the glorification of Edward Teller was most acceptable.

COULD YOU SUMMARIZE THE GAC'S RECOMMENDATIONS CONCERNING THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE H-BOMB SEEING THAT THE GAC WAS PRO-FISSION AND ANTI-FUSION.

I'll try. There is a very decided difference between fission weapons and thermonuclear weapons which the GAC recognized. Nature has... puts a limit on the size of a fission weapon. There is no limit to a successful, if it can be made so thermonuclear weapon. They recognized that and therefore they saw that the only sensible targets were tremendous targets. One a hundred thousand time... sorry, about a hundred times the area of Hiroshima. Meaning therefore that only cities with many people being killed. Really weapons of genocide in that strict interpretation of the word. There was an error, I think, in common interpretation in a way that there was, they leaned on a moral issue. That's really not too, for instance, they knew what their plans were for the fission stockpile. They knew that there was very likely a sizable increase in the efficiency of the weapons. There was more material coming along and so on. So they were confident that the fission stockpile would handle any threat from a... from the Russians including a Russian hydrogen bomb.

HOW DID YOU GET INVOLVED IN THE G.A.C.?

Well, every member of the GAC was a presidential appointment. They needed somebody to do the leg work. Oppenheimer had had much experience with me starting in 1942 and after the war he asked me if I would be the executive secretary of the GAC. I agreed on the condition that it be a part time job and I not move to Washington.

WHAT WERE THE MAIN OBJECTIONS OF THE GAC TO THE HYDROGEN BOMB DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM?

I think one of the main objections was the fact that...nature puts a limit on fission weapons. A size limit. A yield limit. That is not true with a successful thermonuclear reaction. It can be as big as you wish. So it's really a doomsday machine. That means that it's useful only for very large targets. Targets primarily containing people. Consequently the GAC spoke of a weapon of genocide. Now the GAC also had very technical people as well as being humans. They were all with technical backgrounds. So they had many other reasons for disapproving of this proposed program such as the fact that the fission weapon program as outlined and approved by the GAC and the AEC would make the stockpile so powerful that it would deter or equal or better than the Ru... anything the Russians could do for many years. Another important factor, I think, was that the Sorry...

WHAT WOULD THE GAC PREFERRED TO HAVE HAPPEN AS AN ALTERNATIVE TO THE HYDROGEN BOMB?

Th... The alternatives to the hydrogen bomb was the program that was going on with strengthening in all of the intermediate places: raw materials, production research and development on weapons and so on. One has to realize, you see, that for... there had been a thermonuclear program for seven years. And in that seven years one still did not know how to make a thermonuclear weapon. Nor was there ever any indication from the military of a requirement for such a weapon.

THE GAC RECOMMENDED CONTINUING WITH FISSION DEVELOPMENT. WHAT DOES THIS MEAN BOMBS ARE BOMBS?

There are bombs and there are bombs. True. But in the development of fission weapons means m... many things including safety of use, the transportation, the more bang for the buck out of the fissile material which is very valuable. Better delivery capability. All sorts of things like that....of course, the number alone is extremely important, because the hydrogen bomb for instance is good for one large target, but many small bombs are far more flexible and more useful in a mil... military sense.

WHAT WAS THE STATUS OF THERMONUCLEAR WORK AT LOS ALAMOS AT THIS TIME? DO YOU REMEMBER ANY CONVERSATIONS WITH FELLOW SCIENTISTS INCLUDING OPPENHEIMER ABOUT THE CHANCES OF SUCCESS.

Oh yes. I do remember, because it had been an ongoing program. As I mentioned it started in '42. And I think there was never any time when there was not work going on the thermonuclear problem. The difficulty was how to ignite this batch of hydrogen isotopes and make an explosion. And that was really never solved until 1951. Sorry. Now most of the...all of the people at Los Alamos knew this... the difficulty and the as far as that time was concerned the essential impossibility of making a thermonuclear weapon. But the GAC, interestingly enough did approve a kind of thermonuclear program. It was in the program at that particular inst...time of the GAC report. It was a program called the Booster Program which only means that one was going to use thermonuclear reactions to enhance the fission weapons. That was appro — That again is a self limiting kind of device. And so the GAC had no qualms about either approving that, approving the size of the stockpile or the size of the individual yield from weapons.

CAN YOU JUST SAY THAT AT THIS POINT THE WEAPON WAS NOT TECHNICALLY FEASIBLE?

Yes. In spite of all of the work, for a long period of time and a continuing program on thermonuclear reactions at Los Alamos, no one had come up with a technically feasible design to make this reaction go. To produce the explosion from the hydrogen isotopes.

SO DID YOU FEEL WHEN EDWARD TELLER WAS BEING SO PERSISTENT?

Well, I felt like I had felt for quite some time about Edward Teller. That he was overdoing a pet project. I as a matter of fact, felt that he didn't pull his own weight on the fission bomb project, which is rather strange, because the only way you would ever get a thermonuclear reaction was to use a fission bomb to start it. And yet he concentrated so much on the hydrogen bomb, the thermonuclear reactions, that he didn't really contribute as much as he should have to the ongoing program. I was also very much concerned because he was an interruptive force in the laboratory trying to divert people from what I considered a reasonable ongoing program of fission weapons. And this would take talent. It would take supplies. It would take fissionable material. It would take the products of the reactors away from the from the fission program to do... to work on the hydrogen bomb.

CAN YOU JUST REPEAT THE LAST SECTION?

I was concerned because Teller, being one of the crew at Los Alamos had, I felt, shirked the responsibility for even during the war, the fission weapon. And in the post war years, the development of the fission weapons in favor of his interest in the hydrogen bomb. This took away the hydrogen bomb program would take away talent, facilities, material, and so on from the ongoing fission...program. And it was also one of the reasons why none of us at Los Alamos really liked almost none. And the GAC did the same.

WHAT WAS YOUR RESPONSE BY THE PRO-H-BOMB LOBBY THAT THE RUSSIANS WOULD GO AHEAD WITH THEIR H-BOMB PROGRAM ANYWAY?

There was an obvious technical answer to the that question. It simply was that there were two parts to it really...

[REPEAT QUESTION]

The...H-bomb enthusiasts, especially in the Joint Congressional Committee and in the military were saying it would be intolerable if the Russians could get... had an H-bomb before we. This was really false. It was a phony argument because our stockpile would have take care of, for many years, our defense against any program that the Russians could develop. Secondly, or another main point in that is that to do a hydrogen bomb program, one must have many tests. Every one of these tests is detectable. And so then there would have been advanced warning if the Russians had started an H-bomb program for example. And we could have done what ever we liked...

WHAT DO YOU RECALL ABOUT SENATOR MCMAHON AND ROBERT LEBARON'S VISIT TO LOS ALAMOS IN NOVEMBER AND HOW DID YOU FEEL ABOUT THEIR ENTHUSIASM FOR THE H-BOMB?

I recall that visit very clearly, because Bradbury was away and I... to me, saw it was a duty of being host to McMahon and to LeBaron for a briefing on the H-bomb question. The chief objective uh… of the briefing...

[REPEATS QUESTION]

One of the unpleasant things that I remember very definitely was my involvement in hosting Senator McMahon and Robert LeBaron at Los Alamos on... for a briefing on the hydrogen bomb. This was a problem because we knew that they would want to talk political aspects and we wanted to talk technical aspects. We managed to keep it fairly well on the technical aspect for most of the morning. But at lunch time it went into the political aspects. And on the way back from lunch, I was walking with McMahon and LeBaron and LeBaron came up with the comment, "What a wonderful tool the H-bomb would be for the United Nations." This set me aback. I had... again, flabbergasted by such a comment. What kind of thinking could this be. Would the security council take action against the country and bomb their capital out of existence? Was that what he was thinking about? I gave up at this point?

HOW ABOUT SENATOR MCMAHON?

Well I should get in... I don't remember any specific comment that I could get in the business of the comment at lunch... they were extremely hawkish and it worried me.

COULD YOU START AGAIN BY SAYING SENATOR MCMAHON DURING HIS VISIT TO LOS ALAMOS...

During Senator McMahon's visit at Los Alamos we tried to keep the conversation on technical points. He was continually bringing up the... up the political and diplomatic points. This upset me because he was extremely hawkish. He was expecting war with the Russians. He almost carried a revolver on his hip. And at lunch time — and the conversation continued on this sort of thing the reinforcement of one hawk by another hawk, McMahon by LeBaron for example, got almost unbearable to me. And then coming back to the laboratory from lunch... Can you fill in? I don't have to repeat that story.

HOW DID MCMAHON AND THE GAC EXERT PRESSURE ON THE AEC TO PROCEED WITH DEVELOPMENT OF THE H-BOMB?

The pressure of McMahon and his committee to go ahead with the development of the H-bomb was exerted primarily through the hawkish members of his committee on a defense department because they realized immediately an ally. The AEC was on a scientist free vote was in favor really of the... not going ahead with the program or the GAC recommendations. So the pressure on the AEC was confined essentially to two members of the... of the commission. And they... that pressure continued so much so that all of the members finally had to send letters to President Truman stating their position.

TELL ME ABOUT HOW THE FINAL DECISION WAS MADE.

The final decision was made in very strange way. There was one meeting of a subcommittee of the National Security Council actually which Truman had appointed. The Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of State and the head, Lilienthal of the AEC... The only meeting was because, I am quite sure Lo... Acheson felt that there was such disagreement between the three people there was not much point in having meetings to discuss it. The set up was really as soon as the joint congressional committee and the and the DOD, Defense Department, got together that set up of three people to advise Truman was forgone— The answer was a foregone conclusion because Acheson unfortunately, I think, took the opinion of the joint congressional committee of the National Committee to mean that(45( )54)that was a reaction of the public by and large. If they had known anything about it. And so Acheson therefore sided with foes, H-bomb people, along with defense. Leaving Lilienthal as...the minority. That was the reason for the decision of Truman to go ahead with the bomb. I would say that Truman approved of it too.

WHAT DO YOU REMEMBER ABOUT EDWARD TELLER'S REACTION TO THE GAC RECOMMENDATIONS?

Teller was furious at the GAC recommendations. He of course couldn't understand it. It... was a block for his plans to get in with his pet toy, the hydrogen bomb. And I had this duty of ex...trying to explain this background for the GAC recommendation to him at Los Alamos. And I finally gave up when he wanted me to wanted to bet me that he would be a prisoner of war of Russia, in the United States within five years if we did not go ahead with his program.

COULD YOU TELL ME THE STORY THAT YOU DID EARLIER?

Will you fill in the background on why the....

YES. SURE. WHAT WAS TELLER'S REACTION WHEN HE CAME TO VISIT?

Well it was my official duty to inform Edward Teller of the GAC recommendation.

LET'S START ONE MORE TIME.

It was my official duty to explain to Edward Teller the background for the GAC recommendation. And in doing that I drew a curve on the blackboard, I remember, which plotted the relations for the Russians and... on a vertical scale and time on a horizontal scale staining that during the war period when they were our allies, that was fairly high. And after that was a descending curve actually getting pretty much below the 0 point. And we were now in that phase of the curve. And what we needed was to delay further aggressive actions towards them in order, again, to have this time for diplomatic processes to work. Teller didn't buy this at all. And shortly thereafter wanted to make a bet with me that within five years, if he didn't... if we didn't go ahead with his program in developing the H-bomb, he would be found to be a prisoner of war, of the Russians, in the United States.

WHAT DID YOU THINK TO THAT?

At that point I gave up trying to do anything rational with Teller...

CAN YOU RECOLLECT ANY OTHER STORIES ABOUT THE PRO H-BOMB PEOPLE?

Well I can recall several instances which to me indicated the kind of individuals that were engaged in the pro H-bomb activity. For example on the West Coast Lawrence, Ernest Lawrence, the head of the Berkeley laboratory and Louis Alvarez, one of his colleagues simultaneously almost with Teller decided that the H-bomb was the correct response to the Russian test. They called Teller by... from Berkeley because Lawrence had a meeting in Washington and would be on... could go through Los Alamos, so they called Teller to get the latest information on the Hydrogen bomb. They arrived on a weekend. And Bradbury was rather surprised at their arrival because Teller had simply neglected to inform the director of the laboratory that the director of another AEC laboratory was going to seek a visit that weekend. That caused some consternation. And Bradbury of course did not like it very much. But they had a... essentially a private conversation with Teller and learned that there were many factors in making an H-bomb that they hadn't realized that the progress to date was very skimpy. And in fact, that no one knew how to go. The only thing which was encouraging to them was the... Teller was sure tritium required. And they gave them a clue that their game would be to propose to build on the shores of San Francisco Bay tremendous reactors for the production of Tritium.

LET'S THINK ABOUT THE OPPONENTS NOW.

Now some of the arguments in favor of the H-bomb are really quite ridiculous in terms of the knowledge at that particular time that this decision was being considered. For example, the only way that one knew that one might be able to make an H-bomb, involved liquid hydrogen isotopes. The... that is just about 17 degrees above absolute zero and you have to have very special equipment to liquefy the isotopes and to contain them and so on. Super super vacuum bottles if you will. This fanciness, this complexity was the situation that led Oppenheimer to make the comment, I thinking a letter to... that no one knew how to make the damn H-bomb anyway and if they did, they would have to be delivered to on target by an oxcart.

LET ME ASK YOU ABOUT THE OPPENHEIMER HEARING. WHAT WAS THE SIGNIFICANCE FOR YOU PERSONALLY AND FOR THE SCIENTIFIC COMMUNITY IN GENERAL.

The Oppenheimer hearings, to me personally, were a traumatic experience. I realized that those hearings would mean literally the ruin of the career of Oppenheimer. Both his personal life and his professional life. I was really aghast that personal enmity towards Oppenheimer from... by Strauss and Teller in particular, could result in that kind of an operation in which a very able, valuable scientist would be removed from his position as a...as an important consultant to the United States government. It's not only just the fact of the hearings and the...this... impression on Oppenheimer, but also on all other scientists. I think this is part of the reason for the rift, subconsciously perhaps, that the method of removing, of firing an individual from his well recognized position could not help but have a very depressing effect on the... other scientists desire or willingness to work for the federal government in an advisory capacity. This is probably the reason why there was so many people came to the defense of Oppenheimer. Not that there was anything underhanded about that defense. It was a belief in Oppenheimer as a symbol of the way things should be run.

WHERE DID THIS ALL STEM FROM?

Well I... the cause of this is difficult to ascertain. You see, I'm suggesting a very sort of subtle reason. Namely that there was a bifurcation, an incipient bifurcation, if you will, in the scientific community and that had to do to a great degree with the success of science in the...in the World War II. The obvious role it was going to play in governmental affairs in the post war world. The amount of money that was going to be spent. And so on. This bifurcation was rec... was caused in a way by many of the scientists having their own ...old cod, if you will that science was done for sciences sake. Or at the most for the welfare fo the people, for the good of the people. But gradually, there were scientists who were beginning to take a different point of view. Namely that science, their science was done for a personal aggrandizement. Power, excision of the imagery, even money, perhaps. So this is a... is a complex situation, but I think it must be realized that it is a complex situation. And it's not just a simple conflict of personalities.

IF YOU HAD TO SUM UP, YOU SAID THIS WAS A CHANCE WHEN THE ARMS RACE COULD HAVE BEEN STOPPED. AND YOU ALSO SAID THAT FISSION WEAPONS WOULD HAVE SUFFICED. COULD YOU JUST SUM UP THAT? THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE HYDROGEN BOMB DECISION.

I guess that if I asked myself what this was all about I'd come up with a simplistic kind of answer. Namely, that most of it was phony. That the claim that... the ideal response to the Russian test was a false claim because there were other responses that could have made much more sense. I hope that the history will show that the all of the ideas of the General Advisory Committee on the technical consideration that it really was not worth the effort and talent and facilities and equipment and raw materials as a response. Because it could be so easily countered by the growth of the fission weapon program. Even for the hawks it was very difficult to understand why one could be so enthusiastic for this thing. And I think that the only reason, really, was that slogan, that a thousand times more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb was just swallowed hook line and sinker by anyone who had an inclination to be anti-Russian and more or less hawkish in general.

IF YOU COULD JUST SAY WELL AND THE TRUTH OF THE MATTER IS ETC...

You see, one of the mainstays of my argument that the thing was phony or my characterization that it was phony was the fact that continually it was evidenced that our fission weapon program, if undisturbed by a wild hydrogen bomb program, would give us adequate security and defense against anything that the Russians, for instance, could mount. Or we would know in time to do something else.

WHAT ABOUT THE MORAL ASPECT?

The common public impression, of course, is that the GAC position was relatively weak because a bomb is bomb. And why make such a fuss about thermonuclear bombs in comparison with fission bombs. Especially when one was going on and on in increasing the yield of fission bombs which actually got up to 500,000 tons of TNT eventually. But there was no real military use for such large weapons. The... the.., distance between fission weapons and unlimited thermonuclear weapons is so large, that one cannot describe the effects or the use of a thermal nuclear bomb in anything except the same category as a tremendous natural catastrophe; the wiping out of thousands of square miles and so on. So that... the difficulty, you see, was that the moral aspect was that one didn't like to kill people. That one did kill people in war, but why kill all of the people all of the time, with one single bomb, that was the H-bomb program. You can sort of take things gradually, if you will, with the fission weapons, giving time for a little human thought, maybe, in the process.

YOU WERE SAYING: "THE PRESIDENT'S DECISION." IF YOU COULD START WITH THAT.

My reaction is that the decision to go ahead with the H-bomb program was perhaps first of all based on incorrect technical considerations. That tha... that program was not necessary for the security of the United States. Sec... next the whole program, the adoption of such a program would be a signal to everyone in the world that the United States had given up any humanitarian war in favor of weapons of mass destruction, of tremendous mass destruction, including widespread killing of people: genocide if you will.

DID ROBERT OPPENHEIMER SHARE YOU OPINION?

Well Opp... I'm almost parroting Oppenheimer's opinion. I'm sure that he shared that opinion. It's a very interesting thing, but the GAC went along with increasing fission weapons and so on through out. And then suddenly opposing the... or foregoing really, the hydrogen bomb. And it's difficult for a person with a... not a technical background to understand that distinction between the fission and the thermonuclear program. There were two things. One was the business of trying to introduce a pause in this arms race. It was jus... just beginning by the atomic explosion in Russia. To consider what might be and maybe both countries didn't want to do this kind of business. But there was no chance with the rushing into an H-bomb program, the notification therefore to everybody including the Russians, that we were going to adopt for our national policy a technique of mass destruction including damage over hundreds of square miles by a single H-bomb.

WHAT WAS THE GREATEST DISAPPOINTMENT TO YOU ABOUT THE DECISION TO GO AHEAD?

Well I didn't, the greatest disappointment to me, I think, was of course, I didn't like the decision. I didn't agree with it. I thought it was ill conceived and ill advised and without good scientific and technical and even political basis. But... but even if it were possible, a greater disappointment to me was the way in which the decision was reached. I had thought that the United States government operated on a more or less logical of things you'd study a topic and write a report maybe and examine all sides of a particular thing. This is of course why I was so aghast that no advance planning had been made for the event offending our monopoly. But this is not the way that this decisions took place. As you can see from the history, it was mostly a political selling job by one person aided by a joint congressional committee and the military. And even by the Secretary of State.

CAN YOU REPEAT THAT FOR EDITING REASONS?

Instead of a of a rational approach to the decision to go ahead with an H-bomb program... I was very disappointed in the governmental mechanism at by which that decision was reached. It was a frenetic approach. Mostly by one individual recruiting supporters here and there. A... an invasion really of the Washington scene by this individual with his supporters and the supporters becoming very influential because they were members of the congress. And effective on the G...on the Defense Department. Also effective on the State Department because they presumably, as Acheson assumed, represented what the American people would feel if they had any chance to know anything about it. I was disappointed in Acheson because I thought he might have had guts enough to do the experiment of letting the people know what was going on. It was really no sense in keeping that a classified issue. You didn't have to know the technical details. You didn't even have to know whether an H-bomb could be made or not. You could have discussed the point of the weapons of mass destruction, of the genocide, of the technical things to a certain extent with the public.

WHAT DID THIS MEAN FOR THE FUTURE OF ARMS RELATIONS WITH THE SOVIET UNION AND THE ARMS RACE.

This... as far as the Soviet Union is concerned, it was a very clear signal, as it was to the rest of the world that we were out to rely on weapons of mass destruction for the security of the United States. And that decision, that policy decision which... bomb policy decision signaled to the whole world that this was going to take place. And it signaled to the Russians that had to meet the challenge. Also develop an H-bomb after they had developed an A-bomb and that this would be the beginning of an arms race which one could just simply see coming along. We had the H-bomb. The we had missiles. Then we had moving of warheads. And so on and so on. There's no end to this attempt to get a solution of a political problem by technical means.

COULD YOU JUST MENTION THE MISSED OPPORTUNITY...

Another aspect of my feeling about the decision was that it was a missed opportunity to call a halt in the arma... nuclear armaments. A time for reflection and decision. Negotiations, if you will, if possible with the Russians about their future plans as well as considering ours. And instead by the activities of really of one man we were rushed into a phony decision, phony on the basis of the technical need, the security need, and just an interference, really, with what was going on as a more or less rational, gradual increase of the security of the United States with fission weapons.

IF YOU COULD JUST COMMENT ON THE SIZE OF THE STOCKPILE WHEN THE AEC TOOK OVER AND HOW TRUMAN'S REACTION... MOST OF ALL WHY WAS IT SO SMALL?

Anyone is naturally very curious about the size of the stockpile at any time and especially at the at the beginning. I actually was not privy to the numbers completely. But it is public knowledge that at the time of the Nagasaki drop there was a spare plutonium weapon available which was not used. Whether that was the only one or there were still more is an open question. Another fact that is quite common knowledge, is that after the AEC took over and Bob Barker inventoried the stockpile and reported back to his fellow commissioners, they then had to report to the President of the United States, by law, what the condition was of the stockpile. And interestingly, Lilienthal gave this report. He had a re... written report but the numbers were all on another piece of paper and he filled them in orally. He... even offered to get... to let Truman put that information in his safe. But Truman said, Oh, no. You keep that in your safe. But Truman, on hearing those numbers was aghast at the implied condition of the stockpile. Now as not an innocent bystander, I can explain some of the reasons for that. It has to be recognized that the whole project of getting an atomic bomb ready when it was ready was a kind of a laboratory exercise by a bunch of scatter brain scientists, let's say. It was a... it was a laboratory of ceiling wax and string... You couldn't expect that would be the basis for a stockpile of any sizeable amount or any reliability either. So one of the first jobs that Los Alamos had to undertake was to get the production of those. First of all, even the design but also the production of atomic weapons into some systematic and factory type environment. That was gradually done... through the Albuquerque operations. But it does explain I think why, with all of the hiatus of the year long period of trying to decide when the... whether the army was going to give up, when, and so on that the people were really admirable to do anything. And they still tried to keep on trying to solve some of these problems of getting a... an off the shelf weapon, let us call it, rather that a laboratory model as a basis of the security of the United States. So I'm not at all surprised that Truman was aghast when he heard the numbers, whatever they were. I'm sure that they weren't very large. And that there was a very good reason as I've indicated why they weren't large.