Sympathetic with communist principles. For this reason subject is dangerous as an employee at the radiation laboratory. This is the cal laboratory. Pash singlehandedly could keep people from getting jobs inside the Manhattan Project. Here you have three of the top people on that third tier of scientists under steve nelsons command. I want to read you the recommendation for max friedman, who was one of these guys providing information. It is recommended that subject be immediately separated from his employment on this project. Drafted into the army, and then removed as soon as possible to an outpost where he is not in position to obtain Additional Information about the project or transmit information that he already possesses. There is a second letter where they say they want to clarify what he means. Send him to siberia. Or send him anywhere but here. So thats really what pash is trying to do. There is a third win. Counterintelligence diplomacy. An attempt to use agreements and international processes to keep the soviets from getting this information. The first is the quebec agreement. This is between the United States, canada and Great Britain that says that we will not, either of us in this case, the United States and Great Britain, communicate any information about tube alloys, thats the british name for the Manhattan Project, to third parties except by mutual consent. Were saying were not going to tell anybody else. The real reason for this is we didnt want the british to tell the french anything about the Atomic Bomb Program. Then you get the combined Development Trust in june of 1944. This is the idea that the british and americans are going to do everything they can to buy up all of the uranium worldwide that we possibly could. We didnt understand at the time that uranium was everywhere, but we thought there was uranium in czechoslovakia, theres a lot in korea, the belgian congo. Lets make a deal and buy it all up so they wont have any for themselves. If we dug straight down, we would run into uranium. Its everywhere. We were trying the best we could. Theres something a little bit controversial called the smythe report. This is named after a princeton physicist who did not work on the atomic bombs. General groves wanted someone to come into the project and write about it. That sounds kind of counterintuitive when it comes to the idea of keeping things secret. The idea that groves had was that you could have somebody write about the science of the atomic bomb, we could publish this, and that would provide parameters by what you could say and what you couldnt say. Does that make sense . Qb,n i know it doesnt. At first im like why would you tell anybody . The idea was that, at the point in 1945, groves sat down with the scientists and said, what is going to be widely understood information in the world of International Science in the next year . What can a first Year Graduate student in physics figure out from the atomic bombs in the next year or so . Lets release that information now. Lets put it out there so everyone knows at this point what they can and cant say to journalists and foreign operatives. Or anything else. They said, we are going to release the smythe report and this is as much as you can talk about. When oppenheimer was interviewed after the war, all these atomic scientists were rock stars after the war was over, they knew they could only talk about what was already released in the smythe report. For groves this is a way to kind of contain the information. To say anything outside of this, youre instantly breaking the law. Finally the mcmahon act and this is really heavy handed. In june of 1946, after allen nunn may was outed, it looked as though there was some pretty significant leaks in the british Atomic Bomb Program. We didnt think there were any leaks in our program, but the british were leaky. The mcmahon act was passed, named after Brian Mcmahon who was the head of the Atomic Energy commission in congress, saying that we basically were cutting the british off. Were saying thanks for helping us build the bomb during the war, but youre on your own. We are no longer going to share information with you about atomic weapons. This is an attempt to plug the leaks from the british side and keep this information from getting out. Of course, the argument has been made in the last 60 years about, why didnt we do enough . Hopefully, ive shown you we did a significant amount. Im even going to argue today that we did too much. Im a leftwinger myself, but there was some significant counterintelligence overreach. During this time period. It actually had some detrimental effects for the american scientific community, and in essence the American National security community. There is a real backlash against nuclear theorists in the United States. Because of claude fuchs, allen nunn may, the rosenbergs and others, every theorist was painted with this brush of theyre leftists, theyre communists, theyre sympathizers. The argument made at the time oppenheimer has said this to one of his subordinants, when algar hiss was outed it didnt make lawyers look like theyre communists, but when one or two nuclear theorists are outed every single nuclear theorist was looked at as being a security risk. It had real implications on american science. Most universities around the country instituted loyalty oaths for their professors and scientists. Even berkeley had a loyalty oath. That tells you a lot. It caused a real brain drain. It caused a real problem with retaining toplevel scientists in Government Service or nonGovernment Service. By the spring of 1949, berkeley lost all of its theorists. Every single one of them resigned because they either refused to take the loyalty oath or because they were outed as being too left wing. This had a real problem, real impact on u. S. National security. If you want top scientists in the field of government, if you want people building the next atomic bomb or the next Fighter Aircraft or the next spacecraft, you need scientists. Scientists were having a real problem getting clearance. From the u. S. Government. Somewhere between 20,000 and 50,000 scientists and engineers were backlogged waiting for clearance in the early 1950s every year. Thats 20,000 to 50,000, these are top people that we needed to beat the russians into space. Top people that we needed to develop the plane to rival the mig15. But they were waiting, they couldnt get clearance because of this overreach, and this fear of soviet spies everywhere. So im going to read you i was going to read you a longer one, but this is the money sentence at the very end, someone that was talking in front of a group of scientists during this time of real overreach and he ends a long talk when he talks about the fact that we need to have an environment of trust, an environment of openness in science with this last paragraph. Its such an atmosphere talking about this atmosphere of fear and suspicion. Such an atmosphere is unamerican. The most unamerican thing we have to contend with today. It is a climate of a totalitarian country in which scientists are expected to change their theories to match changes in the Police States propaganda line. Not steve nelson. Its not some berkeley scientist, its president harry s. Truman. Speaking before a group of scientists in 1948. This gives you an indication about how far we have gone. This is before mccarthy. Im still talking 1948 and the problem that scientists ran in to. Okay, so finally, and then ill wrap up and open up for questions. How much does the spying matter . How much did it make a i difference . Would they still have gotten the bomb . Great quote the only secret about the atomic bomb was whether or not it would work and that question had been answered by hiroshima and nagasaki. The man doing the quote is glenn seaborg. Discoverer of plutonium, the Manhattan Project scientist, he is somebody who knows. There is a longer quote im not going to read all of, but this is from a man who was the chief scientist for what is called the American Mission to discover what the german Atomic Bomb Program was doing he understood scientific intelligence. So this is after the bomb, right after the soviet bomb came out. And said, the recent revelations of early leaks of atomic revelation to russia reflect a state of mind which should fill each of us with grave concern. The general impression seems to be russia has a bomb, therefore someone must have given her our secrets. We skip down to the bottom. By all means let us understand clearly and admit openly that the russians constructed their bomb all by themselves without any help from us or from captured germans. It is very wrong to underestimate ones adversaries. The question is, did they get the bomb because of the spies . The answer to that is that probably not. They were going to get it anyway. Atomic science is not nationalistic. We talked about this before. The basic tenets were understood worldwide. The discovery of fission opened the field completely. Within minutes of hearing about the discovery of fission enrico fermi held up his hands in the United States and said this much uranium and poof its all gone. And within days after the discovery of fission Robert Oppenheimer was drawing crude designs of bombs on his chalkboard. This is instantaneous understanding. This wasnt something that was going to be a secret for long. The argument that soviet scientists were idiots, as much as we tried to embrace that argument, theres a great story here i have to tell you. A man named herbert york, and york was a Second GenerationManhattan Project scientist. He was a very young guy in the Manhattan Project and then became one of the top people working on the later project. York told a great story in his memoirs that come out later on. He says he was called in by the u. S. Military, a bunch of generals, who were worried about the soviets sneaking in a suitcasesized bomb into washington or new york and then starting world war iii by blowing up one of these cities with a secret bomb. So the generals asked york, is this a possibility . Could the soviets do this and york said absolutely not, theres no chance. And the general is like, how can you be so sure . York said tongueincheek, the soviets havent mastered the technology of the suitcase yet. So thats the perception a lot of people had of soviet science. But soviet science was as good as everybody else. We just didnt want to believe they knew what they were doing. The same people that the american Manhattan Project scientists studied under in europe in the 1930s the soviet scientists studied under. This is going to happen one way or another. Im actually going to skip this because it is really long. This is the first real talk about atomic bombs. Look at when it is. 1914. H. G. Wells wrote a book called the world set free where he talks about the atomic bombs being used in a war in the future. This wasnt an idea that we came up with. This is an idea that had been around since the very beginning of the 20th century. So the idea that we were going to be the only ones to have the bomb and the soviets were too stupid, it would have happened one way or the other. So the spies can be forgiven for that. Now the other question that matters, how much more quickly . How much faster would they have gotten the bomb . More quickly based on what . That is a key question involved in all of this. The american scientists had one vision of this. Academics like oppenheimer saying theyre going to get the bomb in a year or two. Dont underestimate these guys. Government scientists were giving a much broader prediction. Herbert york is giving you an idea. The military people, leslie groves, were predicting 20 years before the soviets got the bomb. Politicians like harry truman very famously when asked when would the soviets get the bomb, said never. That asiatic comment gives you an idea of what he was thinking. Then the intelligence agencies, they had a different view. So they had some ill go through this quickly. The first estimate of when the soviets would get the bomb in 1946. Soviets would develop an atomic bomb sometime between 50 and 53. The next estimate was the joint Nuclear Energy intelligence committee, same prediction as before, by july 48 they acknowledge its impossible to determine when theyre going to get the bomb, but maybe by 1950s, most probable date mid 1953. Not a lot of changes here. June 49 report, same as above. July 49 report, just a month before. The office of scientific intelligence said information now available substantiates the date already estimated in the 49, 48, 47 and 46 report, earliest date mid 50s, most probably mid 53 but new information suggests it would not be before mid1951. My favorite was 1949, predicted a first soviet bomb in mid 1953. This is 23 days after all right. So you can see how well the Intelligence Community was doing when it came to predicting this. Real quickly, the argument for the idea that spies were important weve already gone through all this. Intelligence showed the soviets what path not to take. The mistakes we made they didnt have to make. The Russian DefenseMinistry Later on, when koval was awarded 2007 hero of the Russian Federation said that the intelligence allowed the soviets to make the initiator prepare to the recipe provided by coval. Stalin, beria, soviet science, all these wanted american know how and american influence tell them where they were going. Stalin said i dont believe what our Scientists Say unless i see the west has done it first. Technical drawings are very important. The ones that greenglass provided were key to figuring out the soviet bomb and then of course we talk about uranium separation and Petroleum Production for things that took us years to figure out and it was easier for the soviets. The quick argument against, the smythe report. This provided a lot of the information necessary right off the bat that there wasnt needed to be stolen that gave the soviets the theory behind the atomic bomb. It provided form but not function. What i mean by that is it gave the recipe, but it didnt give the experience of how to actually cook the meal. My wife and i are dramatically different in our cooking skills. You could hand us both a complicated recipe and mine would be set on fire and hers would be a beautiful, great meal. We knew how to cook. The soviets didnt. We provided them with a recipe but not the experience on how to actually do things. In this case, its not about building one bomb. Its about building lots and lots of bombs. So the Technical Capability of building this stuff was not something you could provide with just drawings and information. Most of the claims about how great the soviet intelligence was comes from retired kgb officers. So take that for what its worth. Liked i talked about before, you just give the recipe, means they had to redo a lot of the experiments, investigate competing processes for separating uranium and plutonium and it still took longer for them to pull off than the Manhattan Project. This isnt primarily because of uranium and industrial capacity. It took them much longer to refine uranium and much longer to build all of these apparatuses in this industrial background. We had to build cities for the Manhattan Project. Oak ridge tennessee was built from the ground up, not to mention los alamos which was just desert. That took time. The soviets needed to catch up with that industrial capacity. So arguments for, arguments against. I will end it there and take questions. I want to give you guys a chance i could talk forever but i dont want to do that. Im going to make cspan crazy by taking the mike and moving around. I dont like standing in one spot. Wait for the microphone to get to you. Laura right there. Thanks very much for the presentation. Not only do you know a lot about this stuff you structured it very, very well to help us. A couple of questions of detail. Should we believe David Greenglass when late in life he says he lied about his sister . Secondly, what was steve nelsons background before he became a naturalized american . Im dreading that youll say hes a brit. So we actually dont know a lot about steve nelson before he came to the United States, to answer that question second. He actually gave different stories for where he came from. He know he was naturalized at one point. Again the documents, because he was a private citizen, that wasnt under surveillance before that, theres not a lot of research into his background. He wasnt a brit. Tr he was most likely something russian background. There are arguments about was he latvian . Or was he one of the prebaltic. But he was from Eastern Europe or eurasia beforehand. To answer your first question, it is always tricky when youre dealing with deathbed confessions or later in life confessions but what makes greenglass perhaps believable was his motivation at the time for lying. He wanted to make sure his wife was not implicated in this. So pushing off and agreeing to testify against ruth im sorry ruth was his wife, against ethel and Julius Rosenberg was his way of keeping the blame from being pushed onto his wife. So it is one of those kind of courtroom, get immunity for telling a lie kind of things, where it is more believable in my mind that ethel probably was certainly knowledgeable, but a willing partic