Thomas O. Jones volunteered to join the Army before the start of WWII. As the war began to unfold in Europe, Jones was placed in a sub-organization of the Army called the Counterintelligence Corps. Eventually, his work in the Counterintelligence Corps led him to the Manhattan Project, where he was recruited to help with security. Jones oversaw many of the operations taking place in places like Chicago, Decatur and Ames, IA.
In 1945, Jones was transferred to Los Alamos to work as an intelligence officer, where his role was “to see that whatever happened, nobody noticed.” He provided security for the Trinity Test and “had people circled around the test site as far down as El Paso and Amarillo, Texas” to ensure that things went “smoothly” and that ordinary citizens did not report anything unusual.