Dont know if all of you have met him, dr. Vince houghton, he is the historian and curator of the museum. He holds a ph. D from the university of maryland where his Research Centered on u. S. Scientific and technological intelligence, specifically nuclear, in the Second World War and the cold war, which makes him ideally suited to deliver todays talk. He also got his masters degree focusing on the relationship between the u. S. And russia. So you may get some questions focusing on the current difficulties with russia. Hes taught extensively, including on the diplomatic history, cold war and history of sciences. He is a u. S. Army veteran, served in the balkans where he assisted in both civilian and military intelligence activities. So were just delighted to have you as our speaker, as our first speaker. So please help me welcome vince houghton. Thank you, peter. Thank all of you for coming here today. Getting a chance to talk about the atomic spies, about nuclear intelligence, this is my field, this is also my passion. I try to do everything i can to p 4q talk about this to anyone who wants to listen. So its nice to actually have people who are interested in this. It does look a little strange Walking Around d. C. Talking to myself about Nuclear Weapons on a daily basis, so it is always nice to have people who are here and interested. This is my first chance to speak to the smithsonian group. I came to the spy museum in march so i only know you by reputation. But the reputation is that you are, by far, the most educated and most intelligent audiences that we can possibly have here at the spy museum. Im sorry i dont want to come across like im pandering. Youre far too intelligent, good looking and well dressed to fall for any pandering. Have you lost weight . In all seriousness, this is my field. Nuclear intelligence was something that i fell in love with at a very early age. At 7 years old i saw a tv movie called the day after in the 1980s. I remember that. I really fell in love thats probably a weird word when talking about Nuclear Annihilation of the United States, but i fell in love with the intricacies of this weapons system that is the worst the world has ever seen, but at the same time might be primarily responsible for us not having a major war in 70 years. Just that dichotomy was something that really drew me to this field. Today were going to be focusing on the atomic spies who spied on] 8 the United States. Well start with a little background. In august of 1949, the United States was shocked to learn that the soviet union had detonated n3ù pr t hahp hc their first atomic bomb. They called it rds1, nicknamed it first lightning. Here in the United States, we called it joe1, little homage to joe stalin. The soviets bomb was detonated in kazakhstan. They did it there so no one would know about it. They actually warranted to keep this bomb secret. You would assume a big Public Relations coup. Their worry was when the United States found out the soviets had a bomb wed double or redouble our efforts to create the next generation of weapons system and create more bombs. Well, they were right. What the United States didnt know is the United States created a scientific Intelligence Platform to discover when the soviets detonated their first atomic bomb. We called this measurement and signature intelligence. It was a modified b29, the same type of bomber used to drop bombs in hiroshima and nagasaki. This was modified to take air samples around the world to try to find out if there are any fission biproducts in the air. 1 0 this discovered the bomb test days after it was done by picking up excess radiation, excess fission byproducts as it flew a racetrack pattern in the pacific ocean. Immediately the United States got this information. Secretary of defense Lewis Johnson didnt believe it at first. He couldnt come to grips with the fact the soviet union had developed the bomb long before anyone assumed they would do so. Truman also could not believe that the soviets were now a nuclear power. He very famously said, i couldnt understand how those asiatics were able to match what we had done so quickly. After 90 of u. S. Atomic physicists looked at the data brought back by this one flight, they concluded, without any real equivocation, yes, the soviet union had in fact detonated their first atomic bomb. So truman had no choice but to accept this and to announce to the American Public in september that the arms race had begun. Now congress did what it did best they rallied very gao quickly and started pointing fingers at everybody they could possible point fingers at. How could this possibly happen . How could we be so surprised that the soviet union had detonated a bomb long before we thought they were going to . How did they get it so quickly . The estimate the Intelligence Community had given them was 1953 as the most probable date for a soviet bomb. But the worst Case Scenario that the intelligence agencies had given the government was 1951. They were just too slow and too stupid to be able to get the bomb as quickly as they did. So new ideas, new hypotheses zmf were brought up, how did they possibly get this bomb rolling. The senate and house had a joint and Nuclear Energy committee 2kh3n brought together, and brought the cia in front of them and other witnesses. One thing was the intelligence was right, it was actually going to take them eight years to build a bomb. The fact is they started in 1941, so we werent really wrong. It did take them eight years. Now the fact that you didnt know when they started is a bit problematic if you want to say how good your intelligence was but this is something that made them feel a little bit better about themselves. They also argued that maybe they had better germans than they did. During the Second World War there was a huge policy which ill talk about a little bitu sn later that went and rounded up all the top german atomic physicists. You have a little bit of knowledge about this with operation paper clip and the space program. Well, the same thing was done with atomic physicists. We got all the good ones. The germans that were kind of secondrate, that were underlings were snatched by the soviets. But all of a sudden, well, maybe germans were better than ours. Nobody really bought this, but it made them feel a little bit better about them selves. Maybe thee had some germans we didnt know about. Well talk more about open Source Intelligence later on. These are open source resources the soviets could have used to find out information about the american bomb program. They also talk about the fact maybe the soviets used safety shortcuts. When we built the atomic bomb here in the United States, the Manhattan Project, out of 500,000 people working on the project, only two were killed during this time. This is exceptional for war time. Two people were killed every day doing building aircraft and tanks here in the United States. The fact that building an atomic bomb only killed two people meant two things. One, is that we were very good at what we were doing. And we were very lucky. The other one is that we actually had some very stringent Safety Standards that we imposed. Well, if the russians decided, because theyre russian they dont really care too much about human life to throw out these safety concerns, well, they could probably knock a couple years off this prod so congress was happy to hear that. Then of course, its possible they had smart scientists. We had dismissed them out of hand. Well talk a little bit more about our perception of soviet scientists but they everyone kind of chuckled to themselves thats not the reason the one they were able to latch on to was this idea of espionage. That the soviets were stupid, evil, but they were able to steal our ideas. They had nothing original on their own but they were able to come into the United States, deal with these commies giving secrets over. Today were going to focus on three major ideas, three major questions that are historically important for the atomic spies. One, who are the spies. What makes up their spy networks. What were their ideology, what was the reason that they were spying on the United States. Secondly, when did the United States discover the espionage effort and what did we do to try to stop it. Most of the American Public doesnt discover the espionage effort until late in the 1940s, and even into the 1950s with the rosenberg trial. When did the u. S. Government know it was going on . Finally, for my purposes, how much did it matter . It is one thing to say there were spies, it is one thing to say we were doing something about it, but how much of a difference did it make . This is the real historical question here. First two questions are relatively straightforward factual and informative questions. < this one is the real counterfactual, the whatif of history. Professional historians, 1lc academics like myself, we like to pretend we dont like these whatif questions, its above us, were the ivory tower, we v . q dont want to deal with these whatif questions. Were lying to you. We like them as much as anybody else. These are the kind of questions that academics sit around at 2 00 in the morning after having a little too much wine or Something Else and have these conversations like we all do. If i could have a time machine, if i could go back and punch out hitlers great great grandfather right before he met his great great grandmother, id be ugly to have hitler. This is the same basic idea. If the soviets didnt have espionage, would they have still gotten the bomb. If the soviets didnt have espionage, how quickly would they have gotten it . These are the kind of things we can have lots of debates about. Id love to talk to you a little bit about it afterwards question wise. Lets talk about the sources of atomic intelligence that the soviets were able to gather during this time period. First, volunteers, ideologues, these are the people who truly believed in the soviet system, that truly believed in the idea that communism was this new way of life that was going to take over capitalism in the long run. There is also open Source Intelligence. These are things widely publicized, whether publications actually put out by the u. S. uy government, or things like a course syllabus. The french were a key component. They get a bad wrap, sometimes kan rightly so, as cheese eating surrender monkeys. But they did have very brilliant scientists. The problem is their brilliant scientists were also communists. Finally, there was also targeted intelligence by officials. This is one of the least told stories of the atomic spy period. There were actually professionals who infiltrated the United States with the expression purpose of bringing back information about the american Atomic Bomb Program. Lets talk a little bit about the soviet espionage structure. These are actually professional organized infrastructure. At the very top was the nkvd but with some assistance from the gru. The nkvd is the predecessor it the kgb. Gru is soviet military intelligence. At the head of all of this was a man named laurenti beria. He was responsible for all the intelligence gathering for the soviet union. He was a horrible, horrible person. Well talk more about this in a second. But he was so good at infiltrating u. S. Atomic bomb program that stalin kept him around. You know any basics about soviet history, in the late 30s, early 40s right before world war ii, stalin essentially killed everybody. Took out his entire hierarchy. Anybody who could potentially be a threat to him in the future. Beria survived because of his ability to infiltrate the Atomic Bomb Program. Below him, we have others. There is a hierarchy here n developed by the soviet union from the resident here in the United States we call it the chief of station to those people directly responsible for running the atomic spies here in the United States. Work our way down to harry gold who was an american currier bringing messages from the atomic spies to the soviets. Finally the cpusa, the communist party of the United States, and their main person, steve nelson, who is responsible for establishing a very little known spy ring at colleges and universities in the United States. Lets break them down a little bit. At the top of the soviet hierarchy, beria. He is not a very nice person. Had he some very interesting tastes in young girls and boys. He really enjoyed torturing people. He wasnt somebody that ordered torture. He ordered it, then watched it and took a lot of real pleasure in it. Stalin did not like him very much. He was hated throughout the soviet system. But again he was so good at what he did that he was kept around. The interesting thing about beria is he was one of the pure architects of the red terror during this time period. Personally responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths. He is, ironically, the last person who fell victim to the red terror. When Nikita Khrushchev took power and destalinized the soviet union, beria received karmic justice. The top soviet intelligence btwx person in the United States, not in washington, d. C. Actually stationed out of new york city, that was the main base for soviet intelligence during the war. Hierarchy continues with the senior case officer. This is the person who will be running the spies on a day to day basis. His real name was yaxsov, came to the United States under the pretense that he was the general counsel of the soviet union in new york city. Pretended he was a lawyer. This is really his cover for his activities as nkcbd senior case ju officer for this spy network. What makes him interesting and very important in this case is that his specialty was scientific and technological intelligence. You dont want to just send anybody if youre going to run an atomic spy ring. Atomic weapons are very complicated, especially in the 1940s when very few people understood what was going on with nuclear fission. You wanted somebody that m0 understood scientific and technological intelligence whichs made him the perfect person. Then alexander feklisov. He was the resident in the 1960s and where a lot of people may know his name is that he was the back channel for the cuban missile crisis. He was the man who Robert Kennedy and others spoke to to try to create this deal to trade the jupiter missiles in turkey for the missiles in cuba. His book is fascinating, called the man behind the rosenbergs. The title gives away everything. Theres not a lot of secrecy behind what the book is about. Really what this book does, it came out end of the cold war and really ended a lot of the debate about Julius Rosenberg. Well talk more about rosenberg in a second but there was always this left liberal debate was rosenberg scapegoated because he was jewish or was a liberal. This book ended a lot of that debate. Then youve got lower levels. Harry gold. Gold actually was a chemist by trade so he knew what he was looking for. He was somebody that made a lot of sense to run atomic spies. He was born to russianjewish immigrants. Never really gave up this russian side to him. Interestingly enough, he was a very successful chemist but he lost his job in the great depression. This is something that helped radicalize him. We talk about ideology and any time i talk to people who are 40 and below, they dont really underst nnjtq a uu n against their country and become a communist. Because communism for anyone that age was a dying institution that obviously doesnt work. But for those who grew up in the 1930s or who came of age during this time period and saw the great depression, the loss of jobs, the 20 to 25 unemployment and the idea of bread lines and the fact that people were going through such hardship, and then looked over at the propaganda coming out of the soviet union where everybody had a job, where everybody had a good life, where there were no class distinctions, where in some cases there were no religious or racial distinctions. Now this is a pipe dream. This is nonsense. But this is what was coming out of the soviet union. Ideolo0r y it is hard to explain but it is not hard to empathize with people who said this is the real wave of the future. Harry gold was one of these guys. When he lost his job in the great depression, this was one of the real stirs steps to led to his radicalization. He is a currier later on for arguably the most atomic spy. Steve nelson was the primary recruiter for a lot of universitybased professors who were giving information to the soviet union. Nelson was a naturalized citizen vlkp 1 o so he wasnt a natural u. S. Citizen to begin with. He had spent a lot of time in spain. He was an american volunteer that went and fought on the side of the republicans against the fascists during that time. Then moved to russia for several years, then returned to the United States in the early 1940s. Be forewarned, he was on our radar the minute he walked back into the country. He is not somebody that was able to sneak back in and get away with it. When he was here he was a member of the National Committee for the communist party of the United States and really the leader in california. He had no official title but he was re