Security & Secrecy

Ernest Tremmel: I’m Ernie Tremmel.  I graduated from the University of Wisconsin in civil engineering, and I went to work for the Corps of Engineers in St. Louis. One of my bosses was a Captain Powell who, after I was in St. Louis two years, got transferred to a secret project he was going to […]

Nancy Greenewalt Frederick: My father, Crawford Greenewalt, was the only child of Dr. Frank Lindsay Greenewalt and Mary Hallock Greenewalt. Dr. Greenewalt was a physician at Gerard College in Philadelphia, and my father grew up there most of his young life. He went to a German school, what we would call a preschool, run by […]

Stephane Groueff: Mr. Hobbs, part three. J.C. Hobbs: The discussion in connection with piping and all of these fancy bends. Badger Company in Boston, I think, had the contract for the copper expansion joints. Groueff: Between pipes? Hobbs: Between pipes, so it would take care of expansion. The expansion joints had been located where an […]

Hans Bethe: The other was M – A – D, MAD [Mutually Assured Destruction], which essentially says that nuclear weapons make sense only as a safeguard against nuclear weapons. As [Wolfgang] Panofsky has said recently, and there is actually an article by him, “It is not a doctrine. It is a fact of life. Nothing […]

Harry Allen: Mr. Wilson and company set us up a purchase request for a barber chair, because they couldn’t get off work in time to get their hair done. Robert Van Gemert:  There was only one man cutting hair, I think, up there. Allen: The barber service was extremely limited, and we just happen to […]

 Martin Sherwin: This morning I am making arrangements to interview Norris Bradbury in Los Alamos, New Mexico. January 10, 1985. How would you characterize the major problems that [J. Robert] Oppenheimer had when he first got the job as the administrator for Los Alamos? Or at least, when you came on? Norris Bradbury: Let’s get this […]

General Kenneth Nichols: —found we did not have the authority to satisfy DuPont. Stephane Groueff: But why did DuPont challenge your authority? Nichols: Because they had trouble, in World War I, being called munitions makers and investigated after World War I, so they are more conservative than most companies. And they wanted to have in their […]

Tom Ryan: In the early morning of August 6, 1945, three B-29 bombers departed from Tinian Island in the Pacific Ocean. Six hours later, they changed the course of history. A single atomic bomb dropped from the Enola Gay exploded over Hiroshima, Japan. In an instant, over four square miles of the city and an […]

Martin Sherwin: This is Martin Sherwin. I’ll be interviewing Sir Rudolf Peierls at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. Today’s date is June 6th, 1979.  You first met [J.Robert] Oppenheimer in Zurich in 1929? Rudolf Peierls: Right, yes. Sherwin: At that time, I think you mentioned you were working with [Wolfgang] Pauli’s group? […]

Stephane Groueff: [Enrico] Fermi had the characteristics of a real genius. Colonel Franklin Matthias: Almost every time you would get in contact with him, something would come up that was impressive. Physically, he was a small man, unimpressive person, but he grew real large when he started talking about things he knew. Groueff: Was he […]