Interviewer: THIS IS CASSETTE B01010, INTERVIEW WITH ISIDOR RABI.
Interviewer: 13TH OF MARCH, 1986 IN NEW YORK CITY.
Interviewer: DR.
Interviewer: RABI, I'M GOING TO ASK YOU FOUR QUESTIONS ABOUT THIS FIRST PROGRAM, THE WAR TIME PROGRAM, AND THEY'RE GOING TO BE IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER.
Interviewer: THE FIRST ONE GOES BACK TO 1939.
Interviewer: IN '39, THERE WAS A DEBATE ABOUT WHETHER NUCLEAR PHYSICISTS SHOULD CONTINUE TO PUBLISH THEIR FINDINGS.
Interviewer: I'M INTERESTED TO KNOW WHAT YOU'RE POSITION WAS?
Rabi: The, I didn't hear any debate.
Rabi: It was suggested at that time that that be done.
Rabi: I had no part of it myself, since I was not a nuclear physicist.
Rabi: I have no objection whatever to withholding information at that time.
Interviewer: LET ME MOVE YOU UP TO THE WAR TIME YEARS, WHICH ARE REALLY THE FOCUS OF THIS...
Interviewer: WHEN J.
Interviewer: ROBERT OPPENHEIMER INVITED YOU TO JOIN THE MANHATTAN PROJECT IN 1943, WHY DID YOU DECLINE?
Rabi: Well, actually I took the war very seriously.
Rabi: And we could lose the war for lack of radar.
Rabi: The other project was very attractive scientifically, but very problematical.
Rabi: We were doing very well with the radiation laboratory in Cambridge.
Rabi: We could really talk of actions where our efforts had results so that I didn't feel in all conscious that I could go away.
Rabi: And besides, I really was interested in fighting Germans.
Rabi: They insulted me.
Rabi: They were just awful.
Rabi: So I didn't feel very much like going off.
Interviewer: WHAT ADVICE DID YOU GIVE OPPENHEIMER ABOUT THE QUESTION OF CIVILIAN VERSUS MILITARY CONTROL OF LOS ALAMOS?
Rabi: Oh, I told him most positively that it would not work.
Rabi: It had to be free of military control.
Rabi: That that's not how scientific work is done.
Interviewer: COULD YOU SAY, 'I TOLD OPPENHEIMER...'
Rabi: I told Oppenheimer very clearly that I didn't think it was possible that the civilian and military control did not mix.
Rabi: And if he wanted the job done, it had to be civilian.
Rabi: We can't have military orders, seniority and everything else, that sort of thing, interfere with the free play of the scientific imagination.
Interviewer: NOW I'M GOING TO TAKE YOU TO THE DRAMATIC MOMENT.
Rabi: That scientists are not very efficient, but very effective.
Rabi: As events have proved in that project and also at the radiation lab in Cambridge.
Interviewer: I'M GOING TO PUSH YOU FORWARD TO THE CLIMACTIC MOMENT...
Interviewer: WHEN THE BOMB WAS DROPPED ON HIROSHIMA.
Interviewer: I WOULD LIKE TO KNOW ABOUT WHAT YOUR PERSONAL REACTION WAS WHEN YOU LEARNED THAT THE BOMB HAD BEEN DROPPED ON HIROSHIMA?
Rabi: It wasn't nearly as strong as my personal reaction was when, at the test, where I was present.
Rabi: I'd...
Rabi: Hiroshima was something expected.
Interviewer: WHY DON'T YOU TELL ME YOUR REACTION AT THE TEST.
Rabi: The test was something else.
Rabi: That's where I really felt a visceral feeling that a new age had begun.
Rabi: It was enormously impressed on me.
Rabi: And that we, humanity really had a problem.
Rabi: As a matter of fact, after I watched it, first it was elation, because it was a success.
Rabi: The effort of my friends and so on.
Rabi: But within, shortly after that I really had gooseflesh.
Rabi: I could see a vision of what had happened in the world and what a dangerous world it had become.
Rabi: At Hiroshima, I was not at all surprised and so on.
Rabi: We'd read stories of bombings before.
Rabi: These large bombings of Germany and Japan.
Interviewer: WHEN YOU SPOKE TO ESPAR BEFORE, YOU MADE A COMMENT THAT YOU THOUGHT THAT THE BARUCH PLAN AFTER THE WAR WAS A GOLDEN OPPORTUNITY MISSED.
Interviewer: CAN YOU ELABORATE ON THAT COMMENT?
Rabi: Oh, I have a feeling it was something of which I'm very proud, that the United States was as big as that to offer this to the world and I thought it was simply wonderful that the American people, and the Congress showed an understanding of the dangers of nuclear weapons for humanity.
Rabi: Such as hasn't been seen since.
Interviewer: WHY DO YOU THINK THE GOLDEN OPPORTUNITY WAS MISSED?
Rabi: Although this was officially presented, the people who were pushing it were not of one mind.
Rabi: They were sort of overwhelmed by having done this and when the Russians turned it down, they seemed to be very pleased.
Rabi: Instead of pushing it further and say, of course we expect you would turn it down because it's a radical proposal, now let's continue talking.
Rabi: They didn't do that.
Rabi: But there was that one moment, that flash.
Interviewer: COULD YOU REPEAT BRIEFLY YOUR RESPONSE TO WHEN OPPENHEIMER INVITED YOU TO JOIN THE MANHATTAN PROJECT IN '43, WHY DID YOU DECLINE?
Rabi: Oh, I declined because I was well established in this war effort.
Rabi: I believed in what we were doing.
Rabi: We were on the road to success in stopping the Germans in various ways.
Rabi: In warfare, in the bombings, and so on.
Rabi: So, the other was very serious, but in a certain sense a lark.
Rabi: A great place for physicists going to do this extraordinary thing, but the war actually was in the radar fields.
Rabi: And we weren't at all certain winning the war.
Rabi: It was a very doubtful period right then.
Interviewer: THE FINAL THING...
Interviewer: I'D LIKE TO ASK YOU TO MAKE THE STATEMENT THAT YOU MADE THAT THE...PLAN WAS A GOLDEN OPPORTUNITY MISSED.
Rabi: I don't remember exactly what I said.
Rabi: Do you want me to comment once again on the Baruch Plan.
Rabi: In the light of what has happened since, one looks at the Baruch Plan as something as almost unbelievable when the United States made this most generous proposal, a breathtaking thing, in view of the fact that we had, we had the bomb.
Rabi: We were the only ones who had the bomb, and knew it's awful power.
Rabi: And we were willing to give it up for some sort of super national governing body.
Rabi: That was a depth of understanding and insight that's simply awesome when you look back on it now.
Rabi: And I'm very proud that the United States had the generosity of mind and the wisdom to propose such a thing.
Interviewer: PROGRAM TWO STARTS WITH THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE AEC, WHEN YOU WERE ON THE GAC TO THAT COMMISSION.
Interviewer: CAN YOU TELL ME WHAT WERE THE MAJOR ISSUES WHICH OCCUPIED THE GAC IN ITS EARLIEST MEETINGS?
Rabi: Well, there were various...various issues.
Rabi: In the first place we were in a very responsible position because the members of the GAC were almost the only ones in the country that knew about atomic weapons and what it implied — the whole thing.
Rabi: The military knew very little, and of course it had been kept so secret that the public knew very little.
Rabi: So all sorts of matters of policy would be directed to us because we were charged to advising the Atomic Energy Commission, the President, and the Congress.
Rabi: So it was — was a group of central importance.
Rabi: I don't remember the agenda items which we had, but they covered the whole range from the control, the numbers, the designs, the plants that might be built for new ones, relations with other countries, things of that sort.
Interviewer: WERE THE GAC SCIENTISTS UNITED IN THEIR VIEWS ABOUT HOW TO TACKLE ATOMIC DEVELOPMENT? HOW DID YOU PROCEED?
Rabi: We were a pretty homogeneous group.
Rabi: We...
Rabi: we had very few difficulties and Oppenheimer was a very good chairman, he knew how to handle it.
Interviewer: CAN YOU TELL ME A LITTLE BIT MORE ABOUT OPPENHEIMER?
Rabi: Well, of course he — a very extraordinary person.
Rabi: An enormous gift of language and the apt phrase and the right word at the right time.
Rabi: He had a very great capacity to hear many views and to put them together and balance them as — so that I think he was largely responsible for the unity of the group while we were functioning.
Interviewer: CAN YOU REMEMBER ANY OF THE POLICY DECISIONS? I KNOW IT'S DIFFICULT.
Interviewer: THERE WERE THINGS LIKE...WEAPONS TESTING...
Interviewer: CAN YOU REMEMBER ANY OF THE DECISIONS AT ALL?
Rabi: Unfortunately, we decided-- it was all taken down on tape -- before tape -- anyway it was taken down.
Rabi: And we decided that they'd be destroyed after each meeting.
Rabi: After the were communicated, because since we were concerned with things of so grave importance we wanted a free discussion and we had very free discussion.
Rabi: And we didn't want this to be subpoenaed afterwards.
Rabi: It was really very top secret stuff mostly.
Rabi: So I don't remember.
Rabi: I didn't keep a journal that would tell me what were the first...
Rabi: the first things.
Rabi: But one of the things we recommended strongly was to give more information to the military.
Rabi: They really knew very little, very few people in the whole armed services, top brass, that knew what this was about.
Rabi: That could get the measure of it.
Rabi: I think that's a rather remarkable piece of information, that to bring the military into the picture wh — where they weren't before.
Interviewer: WHAT KIND OF THINGS DID YOU THINK THEY SHOULD BE INFORMED ABOUT?
Rabi: Oh everything.
Rabi: What is the bomb? What's involved in its manufacture? What its effects might be.
Rabi: What measurements to make.
Rabi: What studies to make.
Rabi: What...every --everything concerned.
Rabi: What does...
Rabi: destructive power.
Rabi: What its range will be.
Rabi: Everything one would want to know about a military weapon.
Rabi: This doesn't mean that it was spread throughout the military, but at least some of the top people would know and their assistants would know.
Interviewer: I'M GOING TO MOVE ALONG NOW TO THE SOVIET BOMB EXPLOSION.
Interviewer: WHAT WAS YOUR REACTION TO THE FIRST SOVIET BOMB?
Rabi: I was I must say I was a bit astonished that it came that soon.
Rabi: We knew it would come.
Rabi: And I hadn't thought very much about it myself.
Rabi: What would happen when they had exploded the bomb.
Rabi: Ah, my own feeling had been in the direction of trying to get rid of it, rather than an adversary position with the bomb.
Rabi: And when that came I was, as I remember it, I was rather upset, that now we were in for an arms race with the bomb.
Rabi: I had hoped all — that along the lines of the Baruch plan and other ideas of that sort we would come to some sort of arrangement that the bomb would not become important in world affairs.
Rabi: That we could somehow put it...
Rabi: into the background, some general agreement.
Rabi: After all, the war was just over, there was a tremendous victory on the Allied side.
Rabi: The Soviet Union was our ally.
Rabi: The other allies were a supreme power, and that we would use the occasion to build a new world.
Rabi: So I was rather disappointed that the — I knew it was inevitable.
Rabi: I was rather disappointed myself that it came so soon, that we hadn't — the public, the government hadn't really digested the importance and the import of this whole event.
Interviewer: LET'S STOP THERE...
Rabi: Of course, there were many people who were very upset about it — and felt that some sort of reply should be made.
Rabi: And that led to the big push on the hydrogen bomb.
Interviewer: JUST COMING TO THAT NOW, DO YOU REMEMBER THE MEETING WHICH TOOK PLACE WITH ALVAREZ AND LAWRENCE IN NEW YORK CITY?
Rabi: Oh yes, they came to my office, just at that point, how to reply, how to restore our dominance we had.
Rabi: And—
Interviewer: START AGAIN INCLUDING QUESTION IN ANSWER.
Rabi: Yes Ernest Lawrence and Luis Alvarez came to my office one day and on the very important mission, what to do with -- now that we no longer had a monopoly.
Rabi: And they had various ideas of how to proceed.
Rabi: One of them was to step up our efforts which clearly we would do.
Rabi: And the other was to put the greater effort into the hydrogen bomb -- was called the "super" then.
Rabi: And it was...
Rabi: a great shock that we'd lost our monopoly, and at first at our meeting I agreed with them, and then later on, I changed my mind, because it would involve raising the arms race to a much higher level.
Rabi: It was bad enough with these bombs.
Rabi: Anybody who had seen them and felt it realized that.
Rabi: And then to raise it to still another higher level of destruction seemed to me not the direction we would go, for the United States.
Rabi: I had a point of view that's rather different than most.
Rabi: I felt that every advance in weaponry was a setback for the United States.
Rabi: We had these enormous natural advantages: the wide oceans, the Atlantic, the Pacific, the northern wastes.
Rabi: So our country grew up under conditions of complete security.
Rabi: And our institutions are rather different from other countries and we could afford that because we lived under security.
Rabi: If you make more powerful weapons, we may have it at the moment, but others will have it and our position of security, of the utilization of our natural advantages are gone and we become more like a continental power.
Rabi: And we're in that situation now.
Rabi: So I was always against any serious advance in weaponry if we could avoid it.
Rabi: So it was natural for me to not to push this further and to use the possibility as a means of getting the nations together.
Rabi: And to establish a strong moral position for the United States.
Interviewer: YOU WERE VERY KEEN ABOUT — YOU WERE TALKING ABOUT A WORLDWIDE PLEDGE AT THAT TIME WITH ENRICO FERMI.
Interviewer: CAN YOU JUST EXPAND ON THAT? THAT WAS A POSSIBLE ALTERNATIVE TO THE HYDROGEN BOMB.
Rabi: Well, actually, I don't know whether you've actually seen the Declaration signed by Enrico Fermi and myself.
Interviewer: I'VE SEEN EXCERPTS.
Rabi: Well, it yes, it the question was whether we should go all out with the super to make it the first priority.
Rabi: And the Committee, were unanimous against...
Rabi: against that.
Rabi: But Enrico Fermi and I had a minority report.
Rabi: And essentially the position we took was this idea was a terribly...a terrible thing, extremely destructive and in a certain sense immoral.
Rabi: Because it was so destructive it amounted to...
Rabi: to genocide.
Rabi: You wipe — could wipe out a city all at once.
Rabi: So as far as the United States was concerned, we proposed that the President call a conference of world powers to tell about this possibility, and to tell what a terrible thing it would be for the world.
Rabi: And to see if we could refrain from developing it anywhere.
Rabi: My feeling was that if it was turned down by other countries at least we are in a strong moral position — we warned the world.
Rabi: We told them this was a terrible thing.
Rabi: We didn't want to do it.
Rabi: We would only go ahead with it if compelled.
Rabi: So and I...
Rabi: I'm very proud of that...
Rabi: of our position.
Rabi: It...
Rabi: it didn't carry, but I think one looks back on it, I feel that if it had carried that it would be a better world now.
Interviewer: CAN I ASK YOU ABOUT ROBERT OPPENHEIMER'S REASONS FOR BEING AGAINST THE...ON THE HYDROGEN BOMB PROGRAM?
Rabi: I'm...
Interviewer: IF I CAN ASK YOU ABOUT ROBERT OPPENHEIMER'S VIEWPOINT.
Interviewer: [REPEATS QUESTION]
Rabi: Yes, well Dr. Oppenheimer and I agreed in these matters.
Rabi: And when these reports were written, he said he was...he was ready to sign either or both.
Rabi: So I might add something here.
Rabi: The leader in...
Rabi: in the Committee of opposition to the hydrogen bomb was Dr. Conant, President of Harvard.
Rabi: And he had a simple phrase, "The world is loused up enough without this hydrogen bomb." And I think this was more or less the sense of our...
Rabi: our group.
Rabi: Fermi and I took the moral position perhaps more strongly than the others, but in addition we had this practical suggestion for a conference, so as to take that position not only internally, but to the world.
Interviewer: HOW ABOUT -- WHAT ABOUT THE OTHER PEOPLE WHO WERE FOR THE DEVELOPMENT.
Interviewer: PARTICULARLY PEOPLE LIKE DEAN ACHESON.
Rabi: I never spoke to him myself.
Interviewer: DO YOU AGREE WITH —
Rabi: I think it's disgraceful that they went through this whole debate —
Interviewer: LET ME JUST START YOU AGAIN.
Interviewer: "I THINK IT WAS DISGRACEFUL...
Rabi: I think it was disgraceful that Dean Acheson the Secretary of State, and the President never talked to the scientists directly about these questions.
Rabi: They made their decisions.
Rabi: But out...
Rabi: on the committee there were some eminent personalities like Dr. Conant for one.
Rabi: And Lee DuBridge the President of Cal Tech.
Rabi: We had Enrico Fermi and myself who were Nobel Prize winners and had large reputations.
Rabi: I could go on this way.
Rabi: It was a most extraordinary group.
Rabi: And that they never came and talked to us directly about these problems.
Rabi: Although by law we would be advising them.
Rabi: And I look back on that as...
Rabi: as a complete failure in the same sense as we see now in the Challenger.
Rabi: The top people never talked to the engineers directly.
Rabi: People talk about the moral responsibility of the scientists, but I'm more inclined to talk about the moral responsibility of the non-scientists who use the results of science who were in the position of responsibility for action without consulting the scientists who to really understand what they were doing.
Rabi: It's been a terrible difficulty of our times, and this present Star Wars thing is another example of the same thing.
Interviewer: NOW SECRETARY OF STATE, DEAN ACHESON'S VIEW AT THE TIME WAS THAT IT WOULD BE IMPOSSIBLE TO MAKE A PARANOID ADVERSARY, THE SOVIET UNION, DISARM BY EXAMPLE.
Interviewer: NOW WHAT WAS YOUR FEELING ABOUT THAT AT THE TIME?
Rabi: I'm really sorry.
Rabi: I didn't hear your question.
Interviewer: [REPEATS QUESTION]
Rabi: Well, he may be right.
Rabi: That is, he didn't have nerve enough to think of trying.
Rabi: We could always recover.
Rabi: To make a public effort, to put the United States in the position where we're not just pressing armaments, that we were talking peace and understanding between peoples.
Interviewer: HE ALSO--
Rabi: He didn't have enough courage really.
Interviewer: COMMISSIONER STRAUSS.
Interviewer: DO YOU RECOLLECT HIS VIEWPOINT ON THE — HE CALLED THE SOVIET UNION, "GODLESS ATHEISTS."
Rabi: And I don't think — Yes, he did, and that phrase carried a lot of weight with him.
Rabi: There was certain atheists --but to say that they were Godless is not to understand the power of God.
Rabi: I think he was...
Rabi: was paranoid about it.
Rabi: I don't know the causes of it, but it was foremost in his mind — it governed his actions and policies.
Rabi: In other words, he had a sort of religious vendetta against the Soviet Union and against communism.
Rabi: He was not the only one of course.
Interviewer: WHO ELSE ARE YOU THINKING OF?
Rabi: That in...
Rabi: in my view, the Soviet Union was a problem for us.
Rabi: I felt that we were a superior organization than the Soviet Union, culturally, morally, scientifically.
Rabi: And that it was up to us because we had that position, it was up to us to assume the attitude of a teacher, a bigger brother, a more advanced culture, not to fight them in their own development.
Rabi: We can't possibly run another country.
Rabi: We've demonstrated that.
Rabi: But we could help them develop their own, which we did with Japan.
Rabi: Even they had been our deadly enemies, our treatment of the Jap — Japanese was friendly and kind and firm.
Rabi: I was asked when we visited Japan in 1948, what I would recommend for the Japanese.
Rabi: And I told them that I wouldn't dream of making a recommendation of such a great power.
Rabi: But I can tell them what our experience had been, and if they could profit from it I would be very pleased.
Rabi: It was very fortunate that I didn't recommend anything because they did so much better than anything I could have recommended specifically.
Rabi: But we did support them in their efforts, both financially and by having friendly comradely relations with them.
Interviewer: [TECHNICAL DISCUSSION]
Rabi: I'm not sure that we couldn't have done that with the Soviet Union.
Rabi: I think that Churchill's attitude, some others here...
Rabi: I'm not saying that the Soviet Union did not give plenty of cause for these feelings of...
Rabi: of suspicion, distrust.
Rabi: There's no question of that.
Rabi: But it was — we should have found ways and means of handling it.
Interviewer: CAN I ASK YOU ABOUT YOUR OTHER SCIENTIST COLLEAGUES.
Interviewer: PEOPLE LIKE ERNEST LAWRENCE AND EDWARD TELLER, WHAT IS YOUR REACTION TO THEIR VIEWS AT THE TIME?
Rabi: Well, they both have been very good friends of mine.
Rabi: Teller I knew since the time he was a graduate student in Leipzig with Eisenberg.
Rabi: And Ernest Lawrence, I've known since the early '30s or before that, the late '20s.
Rabi: So we had, with Ernest Lawrence a different view, a different estimate, just a political estimate.
Rabi: With Teller, I think the problem was more difficult.
Rabi: I had the feeling that he had — there was a change in Teller at some period in the late '30s, early '40s.
Rabi: He became very ambitious, very individual, very single-minded.
Rabi: And after a while I found it difficult to have simple contact with him.
Rabi: But a most charming person, he and his wife, Mici.
Interviewer: WHAT ABOUT HIS VIEWS ON THE HYDROGEN BOMB?
Rabi: He was mistaken.
Rabi: But he pursued it very passionately, and at the time of this discussion the General Advisory Committee, what he was advocating couldn't work.
Rabi: And this was proved later by Ulam and Everett.
Rabi: And Ulam made another suggestion which Teller improved vastly and that became the present thermonuclear weapon.
Rabi: But the particular thing about which there was this big fight, talked about, was about something which wouldn't work, that reminds me very much of what we have now 36 years later with Edward Teller in the same position advocating something which would not work.
Rabi: Advocating it with enormous passion and eloquence.
Rabi: As I say, history doesn't repeat itself, but in this case it does.
Rabi: It's the same case of a President who wouldn't even call on his scientists, President Truman, and now a President who has no scientific insight and doesn't call on his scientists, and is ready to make enormous promises and set in motion enormous ventures without asking scientists of which he has plenty.
Interviewer: LET'S JUST STAY WITH THE HYDROGEN BOMB DEBATE STILL.
Interviewer: HOW WOULD YOU EXPLAIN THIS DIVISION IN THE SCIENTIFIC COMMUNITY?
Rabi: There really wasn't a division.
Rabi: There was no division, except a small group of Teller and a couple of other people.
Rabi: But all the people that -- on the General Advisory Committee and others that I knew were...
Rabi: were of a similar mind.
Rabi: I didn't feel there was a division.
Rabi: There was a small party which was much more active politically.
Rabi: In the General Advisory Committee we had to stick to the rules.
Rabi: When you're outside, you're free to say anything and they did.
Rabi: So that they got President Truman to give this first priority at a time when we really didn't know how to make it, what to do.
Rabi: And that's what really alerted the Russians and others to put this great effort on.
Interviewer: CAN YOU REMEMBER -- WHEN THE ANNOUNCEMENT WAS MADE BY TRUMAN TO GO AHEAD, ON THE CRASH PROGRAM, CAN YOU REMEMBER ANY OF THE CONVERSATIONS YOU HAD WITH SAY, WITH OPPENHEIMER?
Rabi: Well, I don't remember it verbatim, but the general feeling was that we had lost.
Rabi: The President had spoken.
Rabi: There was nothing we could do about it.
Rabi: We were a country.
Rabi: You could feel he'd made a great mistake, but that's...
Rabi: that's all there was...
Rabi: was to it.
Rabi: The thing that has kept this country going actually is that when you lose a battle you wait for another opportunity.
Rabi: You lose — you don't start a counterrevolution.
Rabi: The President had...
Rabi: had spoken and then events would have to play themselves out.
Rabi: We were disappointed, very disappointed.
Rabi: We felt we had lost one of the great opportunities that come once in a lifetime or rather less, to establish a new world.
Rabi: We may not have succeeded, but it would have been wonderful to have given it a try.
Rabi: So I felt a great mistake had been made.
Rabi: We have to live with it.
Interviewer: LET ME ASK YOU ABOUT THE ROLE OF KLAUS FUCHS, AND THE SOVIET ESPIONAGE IN GENERAL, IN THIS PERIOD?
Rabi: I'm no expert on that.
Rabi: I knew Klaus Fuchs at Los Alamos.
Rabi: He was part of the British delegation.
Rabi: He was an extraordinarily polite man.
Rabi: He was driving me somewhere, and I ran out of cigarettes, and he stopped the car, ran over to some store and got me cigarettes and so on.
Rabi: But I didn't know anything about his antecedents.
Rabi: And I was astonished when it turned out that he really was a spy.
Rabi: I don't know whether you'd call it a spy.
Rabi: I guess you would have to.
Interviewer: JUST ONE OTHER QUESTION ABOUT THE GAC MEETING, AND THE DISCUSSION ABOUT THE SUPER (?).
Interviewer: DO YOU RECALL THE TESTIMONY OF HANS BETHE AT THAT PARTICULAR — AT THAT HEARING?
Rabi: Testimony where?
Interviewer: AT THE GAC MEETING, AT THE ACTUAL MEETING, OR GEORGE KENNAN, DO YOU KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT GEORGE KENNAN'S TESTIMONY?
Rabi: They were not in the GAC.
Interviewer: BUT THEY GAVE TESTIMONY AT THE TIME FOR ASSESSING HOW TO RESPOND TO THE SOVIET BOMB.
Rabi: I don't think so.
Rabi: I have no recollection of that.
Interviewer: OK, LET'S MOVE ON TO THE ISSUE OF THE SECOND NATIONAL LABORATORY.
Interviewer: HOW DID YOU FEEL ABOUT THAT AT THE TIME?
Rabi: I felt very badly about it.
Rabi: That I didn't feel it served any important military purpose.
Rabi: We had a good laboratory at Los Alamos.
Rabi: And I felt that setting up this thing was a mistake.
Rabi: I didn't mind the money.
Rabi: We were a rich country, but it set up further obstacles in the direction of a peaceful solution to the the nuclear weapons problem.
Interviewer: ANOTHER HUGE AREA WHICH COMES INTO THE END OF OUR PROGRAM, THAT'S THE ISSUE OF ROBERT OPPENHEIMER LOSING HIS SECURITY CLEARANCE.
Interviewer: WHAT I'M INTERESTED IN KNOWING IS WHAT YOU FELT PERSONALLY WAS THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THAT?
Rabi: I think it was a terrible thing for the United States.
Rabi: Robert Oppenheimer was a side — the kind of man who had this tremendous popularity in the world.
Rabi: He had some of the kind of popularity that Einstein had.
Rabi: Whenever I went with him anywhere, here, over in Europe, people were after him for autographs and so on.
Rabi: He...he was this charismatic figure and we...
Rabi: when we established the Conference on the Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy and Lewis Strauss asked me, who should we push to be President of the Conference, I said, I guess we've killed cock robin.
Rabi: We killed off Oppenheimer who was a tremendous asset to the United States in representing.
Rabi: Secondly, the ingratitude which prompted this enormous injustice to this man who really did an unbelievable job in getting the atomic bomb built in that very short time, running that laboratory, starting from scratch, and in less than two years, a little more than two years later we had the bomb, collecting these marvelously gifted people and running them as a unit, except for some people like Teller, who were...
Rabi: just were in opposition all the time, I have the feeling that it was one of the darkest pages in history.
Rabi: There are other cases where great men have been disgraced after achievements.
Rabi: This wonderful story Belisarius, in the old Greek empire.
Rabi: This was a terrible thing, sort of to kill off a man.
Rabi: He was irreplaceable.
Rabi: There's been nothing like him since.
Rabi: There's been no acknowledged leader of American scientists since his time.
Interviewer: WHY DID THOSE HEARINGS CAUSE SUCH A RIFT IN THE SCIENTIFIC COMMUNITY?
Rabi: They didn't.
Rabi: The scientific community was thoroughly behind Oppenheimer.
Rabi: Teller disgraced himself and he was more or less ostracized.
Rabi: But there was no rift.
Rabi: There was no rift in the scientific community.
Rabi: I know very, very few people, at that time who were concerned, who felt it was a rift.
Rabi: That felt that a great injustice had been done.
Interviewer: DR.
Interviewer: RABI, WHAT WAS THE SIGNIFICANCE FOR YOU PERSONALLY OF THE OPPENHEIMER HEARINGS?
Rabi: Well, I think it was a great tragedy, and a great loss for the United States, because we took away from public life this charismatic personality, who was a natural leader, and had acquired this position within government and outside and in Europe, in public.
Rabi: He was a world figure.
Rabi: One doesn't often get such a person.
Rabi: It's a little bit like Einstein's reputation.
Rabi: And even though he was the head of Los Alamos and made this atomic bomb, he wasn't resented somehow.
Rabi: His gifts of language and delivery and so on, and personality were such that we really had a great asset.
Rabi: And this was destroyed.
Rabi: I remember when we had the Conference on the Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy in Geneva, this enormous conference and I was talking to Mr. Lewis Strauss, he asked whom should we push to be chairman of the conference, and I said, "I guess we've killed cock robin".
Rabi: He would have been the natural chairman.
Rabi: As it was we had a...
Rabi: a...
Rabi: an Indian as Chairman.
Rabi: It would -- and he was a natural leader, who had a lot of support of the community.
Rabi: And is...is very greatly missed.
Rabi: We haven't had anything like it since.
Interviewer: IF YOU HAD TO SUM UP THE WHOLE PERIOD, 1947 TO '53 AND LOOK AT THOSE YEARS, HOW -- CAN I ASK YOU?
Rabi: When I look back on it now, it was a period of very great achievement.
Interviewer: LET'S JUST REPEAT THAT AGAIN BECAUSE OF THE TRAFFIC.
Rabi: As I look back on it now, it was a period of very great achievement of course.
Rabi: And also of lost opportunities.
Rabi: It was a period when American science and in fact the whole country was united in a tremendous effort.
Rabi: When we look back on it it's almost unbelievable.
Rabi: And I have a feeling it's reached its apex in these proposals we made for the control of atomic energy.
Rabi: And we got there, and we got to the heights and became dizzy and climbed down again.
Rabi: And now, on a road, I don't know where it will lead, but it was a wonderful decade, and a disappointing one in my view.
Rabi: We had this enormous power and we failed to use it fully for the best purposes for our own country.
Rabi: I'm not talking so much about the world, but for our own country to fulfill our own promise, to fulfill our own ideals, the ideals on which this country was founded, by the founding fathers.
Interviewer: COULD I ASK YOU TO COMMENT ON THE FACT THAT THERE WERE MORE BOMBS AND THAT THERE WERE HYDROGEN BOMBS, AND THEY WERE BIGGER BOMBS.
Rabi: And the question is?
Interviewer: [BACKGROUND DISCUSSION]
Rabi: Well, I feel very badly.
Rabi: Because there's this movement of rivalry of an increase in destructive power.
Rabi: I don't see any countervailing movement, and that's the terrible thing.
Rabi: I don't see the push in the other direction.
Rabi: We've seen these -- these summit meetings, which usually end in disappointment, as this did.
Rabi: There's no real move, no force pushing us in the direction of peaceful solutions to these problems.
Rabi: It is more the frightening idea of deterrence, of annihilation.
Rabi: And we know from history, that's not enough.
Rabi: That the core -- the idea of destruction never stopped people from being foolish and stupid.
Rabi: We've done this — I can point out a whole series of wars, where it was clear they had no real purpose.
Rabi: So now in spite of the destructive power of these things that we have — I don't see any force coming in from any direction which would slow this down.
Rabi: And actually and this is so terrible, I don't think our differences between us and the Soviet Union are all that great.
Rabi: Not great enough to involve the destruction of these populations, and of these wonderful people, the Americans or the Russians or whatever.
Rabi: It's a war without any really defined purpose, this Cold War.
Rabi: And it could end in a destruction that is senseless, meaningless, following no American ideal.
Rabi: I won't talk about the Russians because I don't understand them.
Rabi: I can only understand the United States.
Rabi: But that is not what this country was founded for.