Security & Secrecy

Martin Sherwin: On June 5th, 1982. Well, now, John, why don’t you start and ask questions about the relationship with Cliff, because I think the [J. Robert] Oppenheimer relationship might be able to go on forever, and we’ll never get to your questions. John S. Rosenberg: Okay. Well, first, how did you come to meet? […]

Rhodes: Well, I had started to ask you about the Korean War. Was that a shock? Did that worry everyone and accelerate your sense of pressure? Taylor: I don’t think so. I don’t remember any feeling of pressure, that we had to do something by a certain time or else all hell would break lose. […]

Siegfried Hecker: Okay, I was just—a little bit more on the testing business. Again, I will not give you much because eventually, I am sure you will do all the research on this. There are some interesting dynamics in the testing business all the way around, because it is such an emotional issue. So hard […]

Richard Rhodes: Although again, I was struck in Russia with how different a world that was. Ted Taylor: Oh, yeah. Rhodes: How much more closely they were— Taylor: That is why I am so thankful because in many other places people get shot. Rhodes: Yeah. We could not even get directions on the street. Nobody […]

[Many thanks to Claude Lyneis for donating this footage to the Atomic Heritage Foundation.] Narrator: About seventy-five miles northwest of Walla Walla, Washington, in an isolated expanse of open desert, civilization entered into a new age, an age from which it would never emerge the same. Here, in the home of the Wanapum Indians, the […]

Martin Sherwin: Did you know Robert [Oppenheimer] when he was going out with Jean Tatlock? Chevalier: Yes, but I don’t think I ever saw them together. Sherwin: When we first spoke over the phone, you called me from the airport about three or four years ago. I was living in Princeton, New Jersey. Chevalier: Oh, yes. Yes, that’s right. […]

Martin Sherwin: This is an interview with John DeWire at Cornell University in his office at Newman Hall 228, Newman. Today is May 5, 1982.    You were with Robert Wilson’s group from Princeton that was recruited by [J. Robert] Oppenheimer in ’43, right? Late ’43, was it? John DeWire: Early ’43. Sherwin: Early ’43. DeWire: I […]

Donald Ross: My name is Donald Ross, and I am about to begin my eightieth year on this planet. I was born in Kenosha, Wisconsin, and I left there with my parents at an early age. We moved to the southern tip of Texas, and had a little farm not too far from Edinburg, Texas, […]

Crawford Greenewalt: Crawford Greenewalt. I’m named after my father, Crawford Hallock Greenewalt. The last name, Greenewalt, is spelled G-R-E-E-N-E-W-A-L-T. But in early years in the country, the Greenewalt’s spelled their name various ways. The present spelling may go back several generations. My father was born in 1902, in August. His mother was Mary Hallock, that […]

Gerhart Friedlander: My name is Gerhart Friedlander. Interviewer: What was your role in the Manhattan Project? Friedlander: I got into the Manhattan Project very early; in fact, before there was an official Manhattan Project. I was a graduate student at Berkeley at the University of California. My thesis advisor was Glenn Seaborg, who later on […]