arnold, you. guilty! it is always a joy for me to come. you are a friendly group, a knowledgeable group. i hope i have the chance to keep coming back in the future. thanks for your attention. you've been watching american history tv on c-span3 and we want to hear from you. follow us on twitter@c-span history, connect with us on facebook at facebook.com/c-span history where you can leave comments and check out c-span.org/history and check out upcoming programs. every sunday at:00 eastern on american history tv, it is "reel america," featuring archival films from the government, industry and educational institutions. taking viewers on a journey through the 20th century. "reel america," every sunday at

4:00 p.m. eastern on c-span3. the 114th congress gavels in on tuesday at noon eastern. we'll see the swearing-in of members and the election of the house speaker. watch the house live on c-span and the senate live on c-span2. with the new congress you'll have the best access on the c-span networks with the most extensive coverage anywhere. track the gop as it leads on capitol hill and have your say as events unfold on tv, radio and the web. next on american history tv, it was a great surprise to the u.s. government when the soviet union tested its first atomic bomb in 1949. an historian with the international spy museum, vince hougtton talks about how it may have led to the atomic bomb.on, talks

about how it may have led to the atomic bomb.hton, talks about how it may have led to the atomic bomb. >> we are delighted today to have our own historian. don't 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 today's 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. he's taught extensively, including at the universityon 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 we're 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 talk about this to anyone hop wants to listen. so it's 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. i'm sorry i don't want to come across like i'm pandering. you're 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 -- that's 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 we're going to be focusing on the atomic spies who spied on the united states. we'll start with a little background. in august of 1949, the united states was shocked to learn that the soviet union had detonated their first atomic bomb. they called it rds-1 nimcknamed it first lightning. here in the united states we called it joe-1, little homage to joe stalin. the soviet's 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 we'd double or re-double our efforts to create the next generation of weapons system and create more bombs. well, they were right. what the united states didn't 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 b-29 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 fissfis fission products in the air. 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 didn't believe it at first. he couldn't 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 couldn't 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 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 were brought up how did they

possibly get this bomb rolling. the sflat and house had a joint and nuclear energy committee 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 weren't really wrong. it did take them eight years. now the fact that you didn't 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 them selves. they also argued that maybe they had better

it made them feel a little bit better about them selves. maybe thee had some germans we didn't know about. we'll 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 they're russian -- they don't really care too much about human life -- to throw out these safety concerns, well, they could probably knock a couple years off this program. so congress was happy to hear that. then of course it's possible they had smart scientists. we had dismissed them out of hand. we'll talk a little bit more about our perception of soviet scientists but they -- everyone kind of xhuk lechuckled to themselves -- that's not the reason! the one they were able to latch on to was this idea of espionage. that the soviets were supdtupid, 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 we're 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 doesn't discover the espionage effort until late in the 1940s, and even into the 1950s with the rosenburg 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 what-if of history. professional historians, academics like myself, we like to pretend we don't like these what-if questions, it's above us we're the ivory tower, we don't want to deal with these what-if questions. we're 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 hitler's great great grandfather right before he met his great great grandmother, i'd be ugly to have hitler. this is the same basic idea. if the soviets didn't have espionage, would they have still gotten the bomb. if the soviets didn't have espionage, how quickly would they have gotten it? these are the kind of things we can have lots of debates about. i'd love to talk to you a little bit about it afterwards question wise. let's 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 continue 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. government or things like a course sulyllabus. the french were a key component. they get a bad wrap sometimes rightly so, as cheesy 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 safety officials. this is one of the least told stories of the atom tick spy period. there were actually gru professionals who ill fin traited the united states with the expression purpose of bringing back information about the american atomic bomb program.

let's 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 lavrenti beria. he was responsible for all the intelligence gathering for the soviet union. he was a horrible, horrible person. we'll 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 if he 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 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 message from the atomic spies to the soviets. finally the cpusa the xhoonist 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. let's 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 wasn't 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 includes chevkhrushchev took power and destalinized the soviet union, b bechlteria received karmic justice. the top soviet intelligence person in the united states not in washington, d.c. actually stationed out of new york city, that was the main base for soevviet intelligence during the war. hireer