gulation. then a professor at george mason university law school looks at a 10-year-old supreme court ruling that allow iss the government to seize private property under certain circumstances. and gary gallagher a history professor at the university of virginia and how the memory of civil war is affecting the current debate over the confederate battle flag. join the conversation by phone or on facebook and twitter. this summer book tv will cover book festivals from around the country and top nonfiction authors and books. in the middle of july, we're live at the harlem book fair for author interviews, panel discussions, and at the beginning of september, we're live from the nation's leslie groves and physicist j. robert oppenheimer had in ensuring the manhattan project was a success.

between 1942 and 1946 the manhattan project was a classified research program that produced the world's first nuclear weapon. those involved included rosemary lane who worked as head nurse at a hospital and isabella bell specialized in the study of plutonium. the two women recently spoke about their experiences at a symposium hosted by the atomic heritage symposium. this is 40 minutes. >> i hope you've enjoyed the morning program. we're now in for some additional treats this afternoon. this section is called girls of the manhattan project, and i sadly had to -- i'm not sad about filling in but i'm sad that denise kiernen who is the author of "girls of the atomic

city" will not be here today. so i know many of you are looking forward to her. she's just a wonderful, vivacious, engaging person and just fell in love with oak ridge and the girls that she met there and that are the heroines of her book. her book reached "new york times" best seller list when it came out and it fascinated people with a story of the women in world war ii who were working on this top secret project in oak ridge. and one of the girls -- she featured nine girls -- is with us this afternoon and that's rosemary meyers lane. three of them are captured -- three of the girls that are the nine major characters -- not characters but people she focused on in her book are on our voices of the manhattan

project website. we were able to take interviews with them so you can read the book and then listen and hear them on our website. colleen black is one i would like to remember who is in her book and a very, very dear enthusiast for preserving oak ridge's history and the creation of the national park. sadly, she passed away in the last couple of months, but she's just larger than life. she arrived in oak ridge with her extended family of ten persons and they lived in a trailer and worked in shifts so they could sleep in shifts, could all fit into the trailer. but she never talked about it without just exuding enthusiasm.

she'll be missed. another person that is focused in the book is katie strickland. she came from auburn, alabama, with her husband to work at the k-25 only to discover that the army's segregation policies for bid her from living with her husband. so she had to drivebribe the military police with homemade biscuits in order to have a rendezvous with him. the book is full of great stories. kind of like the stories we've been hearing yesterday and today. so one of the themes when i talked to denise about what she might like to talk about today is about the journey that each of these women took that was representative of the transformation going on in u.s.

society with respect to women and the world of work. it came from, you know, this necessity that there were huge manufacturing plants and manufacturing jobs that had to be filled by women because the men were off to war, but it really was an incredible impact on the united states and world society to suddenly open up all these opportunities to women. so, without further adieu i have two such samples right here. rosemary lane who was a nurse at oak ridge and isabella carle who was a chemist at the met lab in chicago. so first i'm going to ask rosemary to tell us a little bit about her story and how her experience on the manhattan project transformed her life.

>> well -- >> the problem we have is this mic needs to be about two inches from your lips. >> oh. well i got to oak ridge -- >> is that working? >> can you hear me? >> here we go. now it's on. go ahead. can we dim the lights a little bit? it's blinding up here. that's better, thank you. >> much better, thank you. >> mic? >> now it's off again? >> no. >> i came to oak ridge in august of 1943. i was a new -- relatively new graduate from nursing school. i graduated one year ahead of

that time and i had been working -- continuing to work at the hospital that i had finished my training in and then had -- was going to school part time and i got a phone call one day, and it was a former instructor of mine. and she said, oh i've got something to talk to you about. i'd like to meet you for lunch, which we did. she, it turned out had become a recruiter for the manhattan project for nurses because they were getting ready -- she was going to help staff a hospital that was in the process of being built. this is in august of '43. the hospital was still not built, but she was looking for people to work there and offered me -- gave me a very nice opportunity to be -- to go down and actually be a charge nurse at the emergency room of the hospital. well i was seriously becoming a member of the army or the navy as many of my friends had done

right at the height of the war. many had gone into the service. i decided, well, i think so. she assured me i would be serving my country and doing as great a good as i could at any military installation or any branch of the service and i did still have the opportunity that if i didn't like it, i could come home. i thought that was a pretty good deal to at least try, which i did. so i arrived the 15th of august, 1943 on a very very hot, sunny afternoon. met at the train in knoxville. another girl nurse who had graduated with me, we had also had the same opportunity to go to oak ridge. she was going to work in the o.b. department. so she came to the train to meet me with a friend. on to oak ridge. lived in a dormitory. there were only two dormitories for women and i think two or three for men at that time. it was a very, very hot day.

no roads. no sidewalks. one cafeteria and about three dormitories was where all the people who came to oak ridge from away from that area lived in single rooms or double rooms. we actually were in single rooms. i shared a room with rose basinsky was her name at that time. anyway, that's how i got to oak ridge. the hospital was still not built. actually, it was not built until -- completed until november. it was in the process. november it was finished, and it was a 50-bed hospital. and i was in charge of the emergency room, helped set it up. we were a very very very busy emergency room. that was the only medical place. we lived in the town of oak ridge. this did not serve the people who worked there during the day

when they were at work, there were medical facilities out at the plant sites but the people who lived in the town which at that time was mostly the families of people who were building and many of the scientists that were working out at the lab and they would go by bus out to their work sites during the day but then come back to the city -- to oak ridge. so we not only took care of emergency -- what an ordinary emergency room does taking care of emergencies, we were the medical -- only medical center in the area except for knoxville, which was 20 miles away. so it was a very, very busy place. we saw a lot of not only emergencies but sore throats strep throats as young families moved in ear aches and all the things that go with raising a family because the houses were being built very quickly very fast. comments would be made on the

way to would. when i went out to work the street was completely filled. there were 20 houses by the end of the day within that same area. and it's just by leaps and bounds. it was exciting. and i lived in this dormitory. it was hot. we all ate at the central cafeteria. there was also a recreation center in the town center which was available for us to meet. they had music and it was a place for -- of course almost all of the people there were young. most were unmarried, and they were from all over the united states. people from california to minnesota, new york, texas. you name it, it was just -- there were no -- and of course, you know locals were actually in any of the dorms as well. as a general rule, most of the people i worked with the whole

time i was there were not natives. they were from somewhere else. and when the hospital finished and, you know it was staffed by physicians who were all in the military. colonel ray was the director of the hospital and there were about, oh, i guess, 15 doctors from the university of minnesota, maybe not quite that many, who initially staffed the hospital. well shortly after the hospital was built they started an addition. they knew it wasn't large enough. they added an out-patient department and staffed it with all -- within months there were doctors from every specialty heading by departments the out-patient department, and with it my job grew. i went from just being in the emergency room to being in

charge of the out-patient department and helping to set up the protocol and the standing orders and so forth equipment, the staff, the people who were working in that clinic. it was pediatrics, obg, all of the clinics you would have, ent. you name it those services were all available to people, but none of the nurses were military, but all the physicians were. they were captains and colonels and so forth. and they all had their families. they moved to oak ridge and they were there by the time i got there. they occupied the first so-called permanent type houses. there were a lot of other different types of temporary housing in the oak ridge area that was occupied by people who were the workers primarily. big companies that were doing all the building and doing the roads. there were no roads and sidewalks. there was lots and lots of mud

but it was a lot of fun. met a lot of nice people and had a lot of good times. and so anyway, that's where we were and that's where -- it was at a time when we saw as many as 1,000 patients in a day throughout the whole clinic. that's how busy it was. it was very challenging and very satisfying. you got to know lots of people from a lot of the country. anyway, as i said, after that we went to -- that was in 1943 and of course the war continued to stay very, very busy. we had some interesting incidents being a nurse. i lived in the nurse -- started in the dormitory then moved to the house that was built for nurses only. it was a dormitory, which was right next door to the hospital and lived there for a while.

and we outgrew that. so one day colonel ray asked me if i wouldn't mind moving to an apartment which was this close to the hospital because they needed more space in the dorm and so they could add more -- put an addition on. we were getting -- we were allowed to go to some of the apartments that people were occupying. so i shared an apartment with the chief dietician of the hospital. it was right next door to -- so it was easy to go to work but we had a bedroom a living room and a little kitchen. so it was a very nice experience. well, i enjoyed that for, oh, i guess probably six or eight -- about eight months and got another phone call from colonel ray and asked -- and told me that i'd have to move out of my dorm and i'd have to go back to the -- i'd have to go back to the dorm because they needed my apartment because there was some man out of y-12 which was one of the areas that had become mentally deranged and that because he was such a high

security risk, he could not be removed from oak ridge that they would have to find a place for him to stay and be treated at that place so they did build out of my apartment. there was a guard with him all the time. they barred all the windows in the place. that's where he did stay. we did have a psychiatric department at the clinic as well, and that's where -- and he was being treated until they said he could never be removed from there until the war was over because he had too much information that could be very harmful because he spoke too much about what he did out at one of the plants. so that was a nice experience and not so nice when i had to go back to the dorms but it was one of the things that happened in oak ridge. in 1945 the war was over and none of us knew.

everybody was so conscious of the fact that we were the big secret city. they were about to send one to knoxville, that's when we could go to shop and everything. lots of posters and signs everywhere to encourage people to not talk, to not speak. you know leave any information you have where it is. you not discuss your job with anybody. and of course i was just a nurse -- i was a nurse in a hospital like any other city is what it amounted to but i was serving the families of the people who worked out at the plant areas but i didn't have secrets to any projects of any kind. it wasn't like i was a threat or could have been very much of a threat. i might have been able to hear something from someone else that you couldn't pass on to someone else. nobody could come visit you. you had to get a permit or a pass. and -- to come in to visit so

you always -- nobody could drop by to see you. in '45 the day the bomb was dropped, it was quite a memorable day as it was for many many people. the colonel told us all to meet in his office at 10:00 in the morning. so we -- all the staff everybody who could, not patients but those of us who worked there, and the president was on the radio. there was no tv at that time. and made the announcement that the bomb had been dropped on hiroshima and his comment was now you know what you've been doing here or what you've been helping to do. doing other phases of the work. and people worked around the clock at the plant sites so there were a lot of people working lots and lots of hours

under lots of not such good conditions many times. everybody seemed to be -- we had a very patriotic feel about them. you didn't hear much complaining except for the mud and the heat. these things are normal. when the war was over, all the military doctors went back to their cities of origin and set up their practices again. quite a number did stay in oak ridge and continued to stay in the clinics and continued practices because many people continued to stay in oak ridge because research was being done and although at one time there was 75,000 people living there, there were quite a few. i just was ready to go back to chicago and then i had an opportunity to work out at -- on the sites out in the area x-10

as an industrial nurse. that was open 24 hours a day but i was a charge nurse for dr. feldman who was a director. while there i met my husband. he was a research assistant. he had a job as a research assistance. he had just returned from four years in the navy and needed some material one day and came to the health department or my department and come to find out we lived or grew up in little towns in iowa, and i mean very small towns, and had never met before. anyway, that was the beginning of a friendship and we got married about a year later. he continued to work there as a research assistant. went back to school and got his degree. he finished his degree. he left his internship.

we married and lived there. he went to work for the energy commission and when they were transferred up to washington, d.c., in 1958, our family moved up here. of course, we were sad, all of us. we had met so many nice people who had been -- gone through labor like our family. if all of your friends became your family, we celebrated holidays together. it was a wonderful great experience. i feel grateful to have had the opportunity to have worked there and it was just by chance but i did enjoy it. [ applause ] >> thank you very much. >> i went over. >> no it was excellent. isabella. we heard isabella yesterday for

those of you that were here but she's going to tell us her experiences at the met lab. >> i was a graduate student in 1943 and my husband of not too many months was also a graduate student, had deferred until he got his ph.d.. the day he got his ph.d. he also got a notice from his draft board he was now 1a material. and he was somewhat sad about this because once you got your ph.d., you had a certain dedication to the science, a lot of expenditure of energy and that

marched over to the laboratory and i was told that this was now my new bailiwick and that norman davidson who was running that particular laboratory would tell me what it was all about. only first i found out if i could by myself what it was all about. i think they were trying to see

how secure their system was about the information about the research that was going on in the building. well, it didn't take too long to find out that i was working on a new element, plutonium. and this new element needed to be explored as to its chemical properties. a man by the name of seborn was at the head of that particular laboratory laboratory. although i didn't see much of him on one or two occasions. it was only afterwards that i got to know him. in the laboratory i was escorted to i was told that there was a new element and the new element

needed compounds made and they needed to have their chemical properties evaluated and so that's how i met up with plutonium. we -- our group which consisted of about six people got our materials from oak ridge so we got plutonium in the form of plutonium oxide however, the purity was not as good as pure chemical compounds can be. and the interest was to make new compounds and to study the chemistry of the plutonium from a chemist's point of view. i soon found out that this was a

heavy metal also that it would take knowledge of inorganic chemistry to make the appropriate derivatives from it and as it happened in my degree work for a ph.d. in chemistry i never had any courses in heavy metal chemistry. that was another new point. in quite a hurry i had to find out how to make inorganic compounds, how to analyze them and in addition this one had very peculiar properties in that it had an extremely high melting point and i couldn't come up with anything. there was a whole new world in

working with the plutonium and trying to make compounds from it. i did succeed in making plutonium chloride in about six different ways, but this i didn't have and had to create by myself. i knew that it could be done in the vacuum line. i was familiar with vacuum lines, but i was not familiar with vacuum lines at high temperatures, and my vacuum lines were usually made of ordinary glass or pyrex glass because i had to work at temperatures near 8 or 900 degrees centigrade. fortunately, the stockroom at the university of chicago that we could use did have a lot of

pyr -- not pyrex sorry silica glass that was already in tubes of various sizes but in order to blow that glass -- i knew how to blow soft glass. i knew how to blow pyrex glass, but with this i had to use a torch that used hydrogen as the fuel fuel, and as many of you can imagine, a hydrogen flame is a pretty hot flame. it will melt things at 900 degrees. it will burn at 900 degrees and melt special glasses. some of the material i told you

about yesterday in the preliminary talk at this meeting. so i had to figure out how to handle the material to make a vacuum line with it working at the very high temperatures and blowing this particular glass required flames that gave off so much light that i had to use extra dark glasses that i couldn't see through unless i used a blowtorch that took advantage of hydrogen supply burned the hydrogen and to do the ordinary procedures one

would ordinarily use to get that into a vacuum line. unfortunately, we didn't have a pump to evacuate the vacuum lines that was sufficiently good good. i began to make new compounds from the plutonium that was sent to us from oak ridge. every week there would be a delivery, usually at the end of the week, of a new batch of plutonium oxide which was relatively pure but not chemically pure and pick out pieces of the plutonium oxide and react them with heir large

number of organic compounds that contained the chloride or the chlorine atom. i was successful in synthesizeing plutonium chloride under many different conditions. the point being to see what range of chloride compounds i could make. they all turned out to be the same no matter what chloride source was. from that point i was able to continue the work in growing

beautiful dark green crystals, gem quality. and it was a bit boring bass theecause the inorganic chloride i used made the same kind of crystals and they were, indeed the same material. it was all very constant. all plutonium chloride which was then tested by x-ray defraction by poif zacchariason who was a permanent faculty member of the physics department and he, indeed, figured out through x-ray diffraction that there was nothing other than plutonium chloride and it was all the same crystal class.

i had experiences in carrying this determine around in my pocket because that was the easiest way to get past the security guard with no problem. our chemistry building we were in a building called new chemistry. that no longer exists. it was dismantled some years ago. we would go along city blocks to the physics department with professor zacchariason had his permanent laboratory. that was fine until the security people found out what i was doing, and then i had two guards, one on either side walking with me always dressed in uniform so that everybody who looked it would have seemed there was something peculiar about me.

other than the job becoming somewhat monotonous because all i was making was plutonium chloride under very many different laboratory conditions and i was beginning to be quite good at it the other people around me were making plutonium bromide, and that made nice crystals too. plutonium fluoride which caused some disastrous conditions in that plutonium fluoride turned out to be a vapor, a gas, not a solid and our laboratory was filled with it so it had to be

removed by vigorous ventilation of the laboratory, and you know where that plutonium fluoride compounds went, you know, right out into the air, into the neighborhood houses nearby. but supposedly it was diluted sufficiently so nobody complained about any peculiar health effects, at least not at that time. another member of our group was making plutonium -- or trying to make plutonium iodide, and that was not quite as successful in making nice crystals. i suppose a side of me plutonium, there's a large side of me, bromide presented very

good crystallization. and then there were those who were trying to made plutonium plouride, and that was a disaster. it all went up into the air. it wasn't a solid. so the whole laboratory was shut down for a while until it was well ventilated well aired out i guess, to the benefit of all the neighbors who were living nearby and didn't know what was happening to them. but we didn't hear about any bad results in the future. so my experiences in chicago could be condensed to the making of the plutonium chloride in

many different ways. i don't know what the material was used for afterwards. thank you. [ applause ] >> i want to pursue questions, but i'm anxious to get the next panel here so we can make sure that we're on time for the other speakers who are coming, but we really appreciate the wonderful and diverse stories of rosemary and isabella, who are just two of the many women who found themselves working on the manhattan project. [ applause ] you're watching american history tv which airs each weekend on cspan 3. you can also follow us on

twitter swath cspanhistory. there's more on american history's facebook page including video of recent programs and viewer comments. that's at facebook.com/cspanhistory. the cspan city tour is partnering with our cable affiliates as we travel across the united states. join us and cox communications this weekend as we learn about the history and literary life of omaha, nebraska. the first advocacy groups fighting for racial equality. >> only ma had had a reputation as a city that when you came in if you were black you needed to keep your head down and you needed to be aware that you weren't going to be served in restaurants, you weren't going to be able to stay in hotels. when the deforest clubs began their operation the idea of --

and in fact the term civil rights wasn't -- they used the term social justice because civil rights wasn't part of the context. the idea of civil rights was so far removed from the idea of the greater community of omaha or the united states that they were kind of operating in a vacuum. i always like to say that they were operating without a net. there were not those important groups. there were not the prior experiences of other groups to challenge racial discrimination and segregation. >> we look back to the union pacific and how the construction of union station helped omaha's university. >> union pacific is one of the premiere railroad companies of america. it was founded in 1862 with the pacific railway act signed into law by abraham lincoln. so it combines several railroad companies to make union pacific and then they were charged with building the transcontinental railroad that would connect the east and west coast.

so they started here was moving west and central pacific started in -- on the west coast and was moving east and they met up in utah. and that's really what propels us even farther. we become that -- that point of moving west, the gateway -- one of the gateways to the west. >> see all of our programs from omaha saturday at noon eastern on cspan 2's book tv. american history tv on cspan tv. more now from the atomic heritage foundation with robert norris who is senior research associate for the natural resources defense council nuclear program. he tells the story of george cobal, american citizen who for ten years shared secrets with the soviet union. others are two manhattan project veterans who were later revealed to be soviet spies. this is 50 minutes.

>> why don't we invite the people who knew four of the spies at los alamos and george coval who was mostly at dayton, i guess, but also at oak ridge. robert s. norris whose book is the definitive biography of general leslie groves and we have copies of it out there for you. he'll talk about how groves took the -- made basically an intelligence revolution in taking security measures to new heights. and yet how the project had these spice that were instrumental in giving kirchitof

and the soviets the information they needed to advance their work on the atomic. >> boomer:. we -- bomb. we have a couple of eye witnesses who will tell you what it was like to work with these spies. set the stage. >> thank you cindy. is this microphone on? way in the back? well, i could talk about all the things that cindy talked about. i think that groves through his obsession with secrecy and not letting any information out really was one of the architects of not only the manhattan project architecture of secrecy,

but what came afterwards and we're still living with today. we're talking about compartmentalization, which was the bedrock way that he organized things. you only needed to know what you needed to know and nothing else. so that kept everyone limited to a certain spot. and i characterized it as a kind of pyramid. it was down at the bottom people hardly knew what they were working on at all. maybe they were just turning the dial or something at oak ridge, and as you went up the pyramid fewer and fewer people knew more and more about the different aspects of the program. and at the very top was general groves who knew everything, and it was really basically the source of his power because he was able to orient things in

such a fashion to keep it moving. so i could talk about all of that and i could talk about claude fuchs and theodore hall and david greenglass who were three spies who i know something about, but what i'd really like to do today is take a little bit of time and tell you about someone who maybe you haven't heard of, and that's george coval. we have someone with us here who knew coval so we'll hear from him later. i'd just like to introduce coval to you. there will be an article about him in a journal, i hope, in the fall, in september with a co-author of mine, mark cramer at the journal of cold war studies. that's where this would be published. and my half of it is going to be

the american story of george coval and mark's part of it is sort of the russian part of it. so how do we know about coval? well, on october 22nd 2007 of all people russian president vladimir putin posthumously bestowed the hero russian federation gold medal on george coval who was dead at that time. he said for the courage and heroism displayed in carrying out a special mission and on october 2nd -- november 2nd i'm sorry, november 2nd in a ceremony russian president putin handed coval's medal and documents to the defense minister in the gru museum. the gru is army intelligence red army intelligence. not the kgb but the military side of things.

so this is how we know about george coval. he was outed by of all people vladimir putin. a miracle. so who was coval? he was an american citizen and he spied for the soviet union for almost ten years from 1939 to 1948 with most of his time spent in oak ridge, almost a year, 11 months, followed up by six months at dayton ohio. i'll come to that in a minute. now how did he get here? his parents were russian jews and they came to america like many immigrants did from russia at the beginning of the 20th century, and they located themselves in sioux city, iowa. and george was born there.

1918. and along with an older brother. and as i said they were russian jews and believed stalin -- this is one of the interesting facts. stalin decided to establish a kind of socialist jewish homeland, a kind of palestine kind of place for jews and he did so at a place called bureau bizan out at the edge of nowhere in siberia. and believe it or not, thousands of people went from all over the world to occupy this place, and among them was the coval family from sioux city iowa. so they took george with them and his brother and off they go to bureau bizan. still exists.

it was a failure as an experiment for a jewish homeland. the winters were long and cold, the summers were hot. the soil was bad. people were naive. it was a disaster, but nevertheless, george spent two years there learning russian from american citizens. and he goes to moscow to an institute and gets more education. he had already graduated from high school. he had already been a year at the university of iowa so he's -- he's -- he's on the ball here. he has quite a bit of knowledge. and somehow he comes to the attention of the gru at this point. perfect mole. we'll send him back to america and see what happens. so they send him back. he arrives back in the united states on the west coast in 1940. comes all the way to new york

city and at that point it's the run up for world war ii and fdr and others are getting ready for it and there's a selective service and he's drafted into the u.s. army. now, another program they had in the u.s. army was the army specialized training program, in the u.s. army was the army specialized training program. in which they would take out mar tir army g.i.s, send them to college for better education and make better use of them. george became a part of the astp and was sent to city college in upper manhattan. and then in the most fortuitous

situation, which no one could have predicted and it was just a lucky hit for the soviets george is selected for the special engineer detachment. we heard quite a bit about about it. but they were the junior members that assisted the senior scientists. they were graduate students, they were a special group and they were very important. george gets tapped for that and gets sent to oakridge tennessee. he has the run of the place. and he's using instruments that were designed earlier, the person who designed them measuring the radiation. so george is probably ingesting an e enormous amount of information about how uranium is

enriched. and plutonium and basically has the run o of the place. right but living in the barracks among his colleagues, he must have learned a great deal and he's passing this information on to russia. we don't know how he did that or who his contact was. i'm hoping that mark cramer, my co-author, is digging into the russian archives and is finding out more about how this information. was transmitted. but just the fact that 75,000 people are living in oakridge, this it must get the attention of the russians. something is going here. what's going on? so unfortunately we don't know

the kinds of information he he passed on. so he spends 11 months at oak ridge and then he sent to dayton, ohio. and dayton ohio is the place that's probably the most secret part of secret manhattan project where pa loan yum was produced and developed and sent. that along with burr ril yum is made into a little marble that goes on the inside of a plutonium core bomb and spawns neutrons. for the russians to know about that is a big fact, something they department have to discover themselves. the russians could have done all this by themselves but it would have taken longer. the espionage probably sped up

the soviet program by maybe 18 months. so they got the bomb a year and a half earlier than they would have if they had done it themselves. and what was prevented was going down a lot of dead ends that we went down and found out that didn't work and these spies conveyed all that information. so george is at dayton, ohio, passing on information about polonium. he's discharged from the army and goes back to new york city and gets his degree and g.i. bill of rights probably. and then in 1948 and we don't know why, he's called back to moscow. and we don't know what triggered that fact of why he was called back, but he was. and he spent the rest of his

life back in the soviet union in russia and died just a little while ago. now one of his buddies, a person named arnold kraikish, whose name came up before, was with ko value and also in oak ridge.koval and also in oak ridge. the u.s. government looks around. where's george? he's flown the coop. they come and interview all of his former colleagues and create a 900-page fbi file, which arnold first asks for under the freedom of information act and later i got in a week and a half

because it had already been declassified. so most of the information here is from that 900-page fbi file on george koval but it doesn't go into the key questions. what did he pass on? and when and how. so there's more of the story to tell. and this just goes to show you that we're not done with the manhattan project yet at all. there is many, many loose ends here and strands to explore and ex ex espionage is one of them. why did vladimir putin out george koval and say that he was a a spy publicly? this all could have done privately and e we never would have known about it. our government has known about

it for 50 years and hasn't ut uttered a peep about it. we had to rely on putin. why did he do it? well, i think two reasons. one, just because he's vladimir putin and he loves to stick an eye in america's face. so it's beating his chest and saying look, this man helped us get the bomb and you never found out about him and we're going to honor him today. but more importantly, i think it's the gru it's the army intelligence. when the fall of the soviet union occurred there was a great competition between the kgb and the scientists. who developed the bomb, who should get more credit for the soviet bomb? should it be the spies in the kgb or the scientists? and as a result of that

competition, we in the west learned a great deal about the soviet bomb. they published things. and i think what we have here is army intelligence's role. this is not the kgb. this is another unit of soviet intelligence. it was putin giving credit to army intelligence r for its help in solving the problem. so that's all i have to say about george koval today. and we have next to us here someone who knew george and has some things to say about him. >> thank you.

i had the unfortunate experience of having contact with two spies on the project. one of which was george koval who in oak ridge was an instrument health physicist and who was using instruments that i had a part of developing in his work. so i met him there at the first time. of course, i didn't know he was a spy until what was it last year that cindy asked me did i know george koval and told me he was a spy. at any rate, so i knew george at oak ridge because. i trained him on the instruments, as i did when he went to monsanto. and some different instruments which i had developed.

he was a wonderful guy. and i just wanted to say that when i went on the project when i was going to be transferred to the project, the government took great pains to investigate my background and depth. immediate and even distance members of my family were contacted by the fbi and old friends were contacted by the fbi and asked about me and what i had done in my life. and i don't know how he got through without being found out. to me it's amazing. at any rate, he did.

monsanto chemical where they were producing to loan yum and my instruments i had developed were widely used there.idely used there. they had two brass plates inside and the polonium that they wanted to measure for whatever purposes was deposited on little platinum disks about an inch in dieameter and would be insert eded into this device on the bottom plate. the plate.s were about a centimeter apart inside a brass

tube. then there was amplifiers and so forth to take it to another instrument that counted the impulses that were developed by the things going through the air and creating ions as it ion newsed the air and then the ions would be collected by voltage on the two plates and it would be a small electrical pulse, which would be amplified and counted by an electronic counter. that's what basically what my instrument did. and any rate i had to train him on the maintenance and so on of those instruments and train his people as well. people who worked there at

monsanto monsanto. he may have been physics, but i was not aware of that. but he was in charge of maintaining these instruments at monsanto. >> who was the other? >> i'll get to that. one of the things i wanted to mention that might be of interest, polonium had a tendency to spread and contaminate whatever it was near or in. it had a rather high vapor pressure and in addition when they were expelled, they kicked other polonium to nearby. and so in order to keep the

background radiation whenever you're measuring radiation, you have to be concerned about background radiation which includes cosmic rays and whatever activity comes from natural radioactivity that comes from whatever materials are around. it might be brass or whatever as some natural radioactivity. and then the polonium would contaminate these disks that the brass brass disks that the measured were put on. so i had to devise a means of chambers. samples of light sandpaper from every manufacturer of sandpaper in the country and some in europe for that matter.

in order to find a sandpaper with the lowest natural alpha ray contamination. and fortunately i was able to find one that was very low. that was used to sand and clean these brass plates in between measurement of the platinum disks with the polonium on them. i was there often to upgrade the equipment and so on. and we had dinner together lunch together, i mean i had never suspected him of anything. and that's the authority of

george koval. the other experience i had was i was at the university of chicago at the met lab. i lived at a graduate fraternity house and because there was a lot of -- because all their members were in the army or navy, they had empty rooms and they were very happy to get renters. so i would rent a room in a graduate fraternity house. and a number of other bachelors were also rented at the fraternity house as well. and the fraternity house while we weren't members of the fraternity, there were a few

members of the fraternity that were there as well as some naval medical students they had parties frumt and we were invited to attend the parties. there was a beautiful blond lady who was dated by many of the scientists. i was not among them because i was too young for her. but many of the scientists in their 20s and 30s dated her. and she was there for quite awhile and then one day she was gone. i mean she didn't show up for any of the parties. and word came out she had been

pick picked up by the fbi. >> what was her name? >> i don't remember. >> that's a mystery. that's another one to solve. another one to solve. >> okay i'm ben in case you didn't know that. in that case i think i believe the only person who knew two spies, really good spies. i actually knew a third spy too, in new york. i'm not going to mention her name. you have to remember the seds were a mixed group. many of them were budding

scientists, but some were engineers and some were -- a lot, in fact, were machinists. as you can gather from what you've heard here, machinists played a very important role in the development of the atomic bombs both particularly the implosion bomb. the reason being that there's a lot of parts that have to be manufactured. there was no templates. everything had to be done from absolute scratch. the country was scoured for machinists and he was caught up in there. in fact, he was a pretty good machinist. he wound it around and he was drafted, got into the army, wondered around a few places, was finally picked to go to loss

alamos. there were two dormitories. in a particular bed. the particular bed was next to mine exactly next to mine. there were double deckers. above me was my old friend william spindell and above david was another he was a friend of his machinist. you have to remember this was -- we came from similar backgrounds. in fact, we found out right away that we had had very similar backgrounds. david grew up on the lower east side. he lived on stanton street.

my first five years of my life was on stanton street. david greenglass was a member of the movement, as it was called. he was a communist. maybe this is a surprise when you hear how he's careful about his security. david was a communist. everything that rush da did and defended russia all the time. he was very political and now you have to remember also you have to know that my blgd. was very similar. i came from a radical background. he knew where i grew up in the bronx, which was a communist

neighborhood. you even had for awhile an alderman was elected in the city government who was a communist. i had a similar background to his. he also knew i had actually lived in the soviet union r for awhile. so he was very free in his dealings with me. there was one difference. david was a communist and was a communist at the time that he was at los alamos. i had lost my communist leanings. as you may know, the soviet union was the first place that

was very sympathetically by new york jews. anti-semitism played a major role in the immigration of jews to america from russia. when the revolution occurred in the soviet union jews were very sympathetic to the revolution because it was felt that the revolution was going to ban anti-semitism. so anti-semitism was a motivation that caused many new york jews to be sympathetic to the soviet union. this is a historic background that was very jewish in his culture behavior. in the development of the politics of the new york

community, every once in awhile something would happen that would cause people who believed in the communism. the soviet union did a lot of pretty horrible things. stalin murdered many more people even than hitler did. he eventually became anti-se mettic. few jews e remained communists by 1940s except for what you might call the true believers. a true believer really believes and it's impossible for a true believer to not find a rationalization for explaining almost anything. he kept his political believes all the way through up until 1944. i had long ago gotten rid of them and became much more

interested in physics than i was in politics. our relation began to deteriorate as he kept trying to push me and eventually my bunk mate asked for a transfer and we got out of there. we got away from him. that's the beginning of my relationship with him. it didn't end there because when greenglass was caught he sung like a canary. he did mention to the fbi that it he considered contacting several sympathetic people to act as spies. he included me among this list

and this is the reason he gave his handler. he said he's a good fellow. he organized a petition in favor of franklin d. roosevelt as president. that was one of his two reasons for thinking that i might become a soviet agent because i favored franklin roosevelt. that gives you an idea how smart david greenglass was. even though he was a a good machinist, but he was not brilliant. the other thing that he mentioned was that he lived in this radical neighborhood and therefore i was probably a good candidate. his handler howard gold, in his

efforts and told him to forget about it. he was a lot smarter than david greenglass. there is a book by sam roberts, a writer for "the new york times," it's quite an amazing book. it's called "the brother." it's about david greenglass and his relation with his sister and his wife and rosenberg. ruth was his wife. and e eventually the files came

out and howard gold was exposed and greenglass was finally smoked out. he gave the fbi everything they wanted to know. he did not hold back. out of all this developed the tragedy of the rosenbergs. i call it a tragedy because although they did was essentially obscene to give away those secrets to soviets, you have to understand where they came from. they were the remnants of the true believers that left over from the entire history of jews in the soviet union. that's why it was a tragedy.

the fact that they were execute ed ed, it doesn't really relate to what they did. what they did was unforgivable. having them electrocuted is somehow sad. that out of all of the past history, this should be in a culmination. that's all i wanted to say about greenglass. i did also know ted hall. and in a different way. i didn't know ted hall politically. a friend of mine another sed and i were music lovers and i think it's safe to say now we built a very fine high fidelity system out of stock from the stock room.

and we played it we assembled it in the office of another sed richard bellman, who became a famous mathematician, and we played music late at night when nobody was around. we loved marlo very much. we call it a mushroom society because if you know marlo he's very gloomy sometimes. ted hall heard about the mushroom society and he volunteered to join it. so we admitted him into the mushroom society. ted hall showed up late at night and we would all sit together and mull. about marlow. that's really how i got to know

him. i would never discuss politics with him. and our conversation only related to music. incidentally as an anecdote of this and reading "the brother" robert says that the day that ted hall heard about rosenbergs being executed he was listening to marlow on the radio. it really shook me up. that's all i wanted to say. i do have a few general words i want to add, which is not really related to this about the problem and why it was so successful. i don't think anybody has yet

mentioned the fact that in 1942 during the rise of hitler and the militarization of japan there was a very strong feeling in america that we had to go into the war. but it was not a -- on the left and on the right there was opposition to going into the war. on the right there was a pacifism to keep the boys out of the war. on the left there was a slogan

that said the yanks are not coming. at pearl harbor this all changed. there was a time in america where i think that 99.9% of americans all believed the same thing. they all wanted to fight the fascists and win the war. it was the only time in recent memory where the america was completely unified. the fact that the great estrogen ration of soldiers, i think it was more than that. i think it was the great estrogen ration of all of america. the manhattan project worked successfully because every single american believed in the war and they wanted to defeat the nazis and the fascists. that was what made everybody

work together and succeed in building the bomb. by the time 1945 rolled around, people were so eager to end the war that when the atomic bomb went off, there was universal applause. of course, that changed in later years but the relief that the bomb produced in the world and america was extremely important. many americans believe to this day that e we saved more lives by the bomb itself. the bomb has been said before here, the bomb actually saved

lives rather than in addition to causing destruction. so that's why, in my opinion, that's why the manhattan project was so successful. thank you. [ applause ] >> we have a couple minutes for questions if anyone has. right down here in front.

>> when say 1945 before the bomb was dropped. >> the mic is turned off now. >> i'm sorry.

i would go a step further than you and say that 1945 before the bomb was dropped this country had been in a long war and the choice was either to drop the bomb or to continue that war. and we didn't know if the bomb was going to work, but there was never a choice, never a thought of not dropping the bomb. >> i think we have to thank president truman for making a very brave decision in dropping the second bomb. that ended the war within a week. >> any other questions?

>> do you know yet why george koval being brought up in america decided to go along with the gru and become a spy? >> we really don't. there is evidence that in sioux city, iowa he was already sort of radicalized. it was really ideological, so i guess he was an easy target once he got to the soviet union and was approached and here's an opportunity to go back and be an american citizen. but actually a soviet mole. this is something that why does anybody become a spy and some ideological, it's money sometimes. lately it's money. the earlier spies have been ideological ones. true believers like

greenglass -- >> i should point out that all the spies that we know about were ideological spies. not one german spy has ever been revealed. but all four spies just like all over americans were patriotic, but they were patriotic for proverse reasons. but they still believed in the war. >> he was a communist in germany before he went to britain. somebody in britain let him through the loop here. british missions said it's fine. we already did it. it didn't do it. they never did it. there's a story right there of

somebody in mi6 had to give clearance to who they already knew was a communist spy. that's another one to track down here. there's so many other parts of this that need to be known. but that's ideological to a tee. it didn't take a nickel from many modern spies. . >> he was a smart cookie. >> he was a very smart cookie and contributed to three nations bombs. ours, great britain russia and some people even say the chinese. but we have three very documented cases of him helping

the project of three bomb programs. he's a very competent smart scientist that was recognize. ed at the time among his colleagues and certainly afterwards. >> thank you to the panel. i want to return back to your introduction of george koval and when you said that vladimir putin in 2007 was in a way poking his eye at us at the american americans for not being able to detect a nuclear spy. might i offer a different suggestion that in 2007 russian u.s. relations were actually not bad. presidents bush and putin were on a first-name basis. our country was helping them

with their internal strife and so that when putin decides to release george koval's name it was, in fact a bit of an acknowledgment and also possibly an awareness that he knew we knew about koval evidenced by the fact that the fbi had had this file on him for decades. espionage in the investigation had not ceased since the cold war and time had come to sort of in a twisted sense of cooperation to say, we know you know we know so why don't we let it all out into the open. you can score points on us we scored some points on you, let's continue moving forward. >> right, okay, i accept all that. i think that's fine. putin went on to say at the museum when he's handing over george's medals to the gru despite the top secret regime at

the facilities and strict control over staff, mr. koval managed to send descriptions of the sites back to moscow along with information on their areas of work and the processes and production volumes of the elements in question. so i mean, that's about as much as we have about what george actually did. if i had to rank the reasons why putin did this, i would put the gru contribution first that he was giving credit to army intelligence. this is from a kgb officer too. putin is no -- he knows the business. the areas he's acknowledging in the army intelligence role. but relations go up and down with the former soviet union now russia i don't know how that plays into the revelation

here. we do know that those archives tightened up and they are much more difficult to get into. mark cramer tells me that and others who try and do research in russia. and there was an opportunity when yeltsin was around when you could walk in the archives and find out all kinds of important things about soviet history and russian history. >> is there some desperate question? nobody is desperate. we're going to have another -- i thought this was a great session session. thank you very much. [ applause ] here on c-span 3 a look at

the supreme court's decision to allow same-sex couples to marry in all 50 states. attorneys discussed the ruling house states are responding and whether the decision will affect religious freedoms. it's being hosted by the heritage first down sdpags will we'll take you there live at noon eastern. later in the day a discussion on education policy for k-12 students. the event focuses on a recent survey of public opinion on school choice and other issues. that's live at 3:00 p.m. eastern on c-span 2. when congress is in session c-span 3 brings you more of the best access to congress with live coverage of hearings news conferences, and key public affairs events and every weekend it's american history tv, traveling to historic sites discussions with authors and historians, and eyewitness accounts of events that defined the nation. c-span 3, coverage of congress and american history tv.

like many of us, first families take vacation time. and like presidents and first ladies, a good read can be the perfect companion for your summer journeys. what better book than wounone that peers inside the personal life of every first lady in american history. "first ladies", the inspiring stories of fascinating women who survived the scrutiny of the white house. a great summertime read available from publicrs as a hard cover or e-book. general groves was the director of the manhattan project between 1942 and 1946. he worked closely with physicists. next on american history tv, a

group of psychologicalscholars and biographers talk about the role both men had in creating an atomic bomb. this was also from the atomic heritage foundation. it's an hour. >> i promised on time delivery and it is now time. we are delighted you're having such a good time. here's another really interesting session. it is a session again, to look at the leadership of groves and oppenheimer, who were very different people but both in their own way -- well, i'll let you decide which was indispensable. first we have as a repeat performer, robert norris, the biographer of the definitive

biographer of general groves. then we have the co-authors of the definitive biographer of oppenheimer that came out and won a pull it sder. we're going to hear from the grandchildren of oppenheimer and as a plus we have a niece -- granddaughter of general groves. so i don't know, how should we set this up? let them decide or let you decide. we'll let the audience decide. listen closely now. the decision is which man was the indispensable man of the manhattan project? take it away. >> i guess i'll start.

that's part of the title of my book actually. i'll just speak about two aspects of general groves. as you may or may not know, he grew up in the army. his father was an army chaplain. he was determined to go to west point and he graduated fourth in his class. at the time the automatic choice of anyone who was at the head of their classes at west point joined the corps of engineers. he graduated on november 1st 1918. war was over but 11 days later november 11th 1918, and he's now an engineer in a peacetime army and very slow to move through the ranks.

and in the run up to world war ii after he served in various places around the united states, been getting bigger and bigger projects and getting good efficiency reports he is part of the construction division of the army corps of engineers, which is building all of the camps, the ordinance plans and erg for the run up to world war ii. so by the time there's pearl harbor. this infrastructure is much in place. he had a million people working for him as head of army mobilization. before he got. the job of building the bomb. and you may not know it but he wasn't the first choice. the first choice was a guy named james marshal, also west point and corps of engineers. he was chosen in the summer of

1942. and who was in this building, was unhappy with that choice. he wasn't moving very fast and he went to the army and he said to general marshal and another guy named brian summerville, we have to move faster on that bomb. so they said, okay, we'll give you or our best man and that turned out to be groves, who from day one put his foot on the accelerator and never let up. there are four other people here, so just a couple more minutes. if there's any secret to who he was and why i think the manhattan project was such a success, i think it has to be the corps of engineers. this is an amazing institution that i knew nothing about, es especially working at the natural resources defense council. but i tried to immerse myself as much as i could in sort of who

these people were. this tiny, tiny, tiny group in at the time, a small army and even when it was a large army they still remained a small group, in the united states it's almost unique. the french do a little bit, but we have combat engineers, which is all armies have engineers but we also have a civilian function for them and they build big, big things. you want the panama canal, here's the panama canal. groves is a perfect specimen out of the culture of this place. and he in september 17th, 1942 testifying not far from here up on capitol hill and wants to go. overseas and be a combat engineer. they are staging for operation torch, the invasion of north africa and basically his boss

comes up to him and says aoife job for you. he says not that thing. not that thing. i don't want that. because he had been in the engineer's office overseeing marshal at get. ing things done on the bomb project, which is already underway. so from day one, groves puts his foot on the accelerator and never lets up and in a thousand days, as alex told us, speed was everything. the name of my book is "racing for the bomb." the element of speed was always there from the outset. one other quick thing about groves and his indispense blt. not only was he a pure product of the core of engineers which is part of the secret of the whole thing was his measure of people. he could spot somebody and know

almost automatically whether or not this person was qualified to do a job or not. the best example of that is robert oppenheimer. they first met on october 8th 1942, less than a month after groves got the job and he's visiting all the laboratories and he meets robert oppenheimer in california on the berkley campus at a luncheon given by the president and oppenheimer had already been really part of the bomb program after gregory bright resigned oppenheimer was given the responsibility of research on neutrons. so he has a conference in california with his, what do you call shs the galaxy of luminaries and they discuss where are we in the bomb

project. so i'm sure that the conversation that he had with groves was music to groves' ears. he wanted to move fast, he wanted an isolated place where work could be done. these are just things that groves wanted to hear and he chose him, this is my man. his background was a little shady. he's left us leanings, communists, none of that phased groves and he stuck with oppenheimer through thick and thin and put his foot down and said this is the person who is going to lead when others said he couldn't run a hamburger stand. that was how they viewed oppenheimer. so groves part of his indispense blt, and i'll end here was his ability to size somebody up again and again he did it.

oppenheimer is just the best example of this, but he did it a dozen times with qualified people that e e he sent out, gave them responsibilities and they did the job and got the bomb built. so i'll pass on the baton to ky bird. >> well, obviously, stan has proven that groves was the indispensable man. because he could -- >> because he was oppenheimer. >> because he picked oppenheimer for the manhattan project and it was a most unlikely choice because oppenheimer had a vast experience in management meaning he had managed about 12

graduate students previously and that's about it. but he was charismatic. and very briefly i want to steal an anecdote from bob carter, who is sitting here in the front row whom i interviewed this morning. he's a veteran of los alamos and he told e me the following anecdote which illustrates freshly our view of oppenheimer. and bob tells the following story. soon after he arrived, he went to the post office and received a letter in the mailbox from his mother. and he's standing there in the post office. he opens the letter and whole words and phrases and sentences are cut out of the letter.

physically cut out. he holds up this letter full of holes and show it is to his friend standing there and his friend grab it is and says this is an outrage. we have to report this to him right away. they run over to oppenheimer's office barged past his secretary and confront oppenheimer, who looks at this letter and grabs his hat, i assume the pork pie hat, and grabs these two young men who are all of 23, 24 and he takes them over to see some major or lieutenant kernel, head of security and oppenheimer is apparently visibly angry and he shows him this holey letter and

says this is an outrage. this is a violation of our agreement on security. you cannot sensor incoming letters. presumably outgoing letters. and he not only shouts at him about this, he says i want you to retrieve the missing pieces. i mean i was delighted to hear this story from bob carter this morning. it illustrates oppenheimer's charismatic leadership qualities. it illustrates why oppenheimer could motivate people to work r for him long hours and it also illustrates his relationship with the other indispensable man, general groves because they were constantly battling

over security and oppenheimer would often stand his ground. i think he thereby became the ultimately the indispensable man. and got. the bomb built in two and a half years, which was by all accounts a miracle. i now turn it over to marti sherwin, my more experienced and much more deeply knowledgeable scholar about oppenheimer. >> yeah sure. the first thing i want to say is that stan is right. oppenheimer could not have run a hamburger stand. it wouldn't have interested him. and i think that's one of the keys to understanding why oppenheimer who had no serious administrative experience before coming to los alamos was able to be such a successful leader.

it interested him. if you look back at oppenheimer's life which obviously we didn't do enough of because we didn't know this great story. but we got an x for research here. if you look back at oppenheimer's life you'll notice from the point of grade school he always had to be the best at things that interested him. and he was. and i think that's keet toy to understanding why he was such an infective leader. -- infect effective leader. he was incredibly smart. he had all the information about what was going on in the theoretical division in his head. he knew what was going on in the machine shop. he knew people's names. he devoted himself completely to

the project. i think he lost 50 pounds from maximum weight of about 150 down to almost 110 pounds or whatever it was. he was just consumed by making sure this thing got done as quickly as possible. and the other thing about him is that he was a perfect partner for general groves. they both had the same goal and they worked extremely, extremely well together. every physicist i interviewed who was at los alamos has said to me that if it was not for oppenheimer being the director, the bomb never would have been completed in august of 1945. well, that was a source of great pride for him on the one hand. and it became a source of great

sorrow for him on the other hand. because he learned after the war, contrary to the thing thez said here that the bomb was not necessary to end the war. that the war would have been over at the same time because that's when the soviets entered the war. it was the entry of the soviet union into the war that brought the japanese to surrender not the atomic bombs. but that's a long and long argument that will go on forever, i think. i just want to quote something that oppenheimer said that i think is the great legacy of los alamos. you know when he came back on november 16th 1945 so receive certificate and award he said in his very brief remarks this is part of them, if atomic bombs

are to be added as new weapons to the arsenals of the warring world, or to the arsenals of the nation's preparing for war, then the time will come when man kind will curse the man names of los alamos and hiroshima. but people of this world must unite or they will perish. this war that has ravaged so much of the earth has written these words. and i submit to you in terms of the argument that nuclear weapons have been good because they have been a deterent that it is not nuclear weapons that prevented world war iii. it is world war ii. 20 million dead russians was enough for russia. the destruction of germany was enough for the germans.

there would not have been a third world war in nuclear weapons were never invent order had never been used. and now charlie. >> wow. >> how do i follow that? marty, great quote. at the time before i knew that this was a debate between the independencible man oppenheimer which i never would have agreed to, i thought i was going to have to write a speech. i have that wrote in there about los alamos and then i crossed it out. i'm glad you brought it up. so i guess two quick thoughts after hearing the talk. one is i want to throw-in a word for general groves. one of the things i did is read a book by general groves. i think it's groves himself not norris -- it was really good. and it was hundreds and hundreds of pages detailing the effort

to -- you know the whole manhattan project. and as usual when i get a book, i scan through and look for oppenheimer and say where is my grandfather? and i think it was mentioned once or twice. and you really got -- you got a scope of how big a project it was. it was enormous. >> are you saying that groves didn't think that oppenheimer was the indispensable man? >> i submit that you to yes. so i want to put -- and also my dad, he is not liberal with things to say. he has really nice things to say about groves. his eyes and his smile and he has really warm words about general groves which i was impressed with. that's one of the things. but keeping this debate going, how about science as the independencible man? there is another oppenheimer quote about the great things in science where they're not made

because a man chose to. i don't have the exact words, but because they're inevitable. that is certainly the situation there. so, yeah there was a thing with open oppenheimer that people like to still talk about. you can imagine the project going that way. >> i'm not prepared to do this. i meant to sit up in the last row and just be a stranger to all of this. but i was born in 1946. and came to live with my grandparents here in washington when i was about 3 months old, waiting with my mother until we could go to germany to join my father who was in the corps of

engineers. and so my grand -- i was the first grandchild. and i think i have a very high status. and i was very, very close to him. i was 24 when he died. i saw a great deal of him as a grandfather. and so addressing the issue the title of this debate, i would say that i would call it a tie. i always whenever you see the photos of famous photos, i've been out to los alamos the statues are there together. and i would call it a tie. obviously i don't think it could have happened with the speed and the organization without both men. so my grandfather was a wonderful grandfather. he was very strict. he had an opinion on everything. and he thought he was an expert on fashion, romance.

he was terribly worried i wasn't marry by the age of 22 and was always trying to think of somebody that he could fix me up with of course in the army who would be the perfect husband. he was -- we were very very close. and i actually saw -- i had lunch with him the day before he passed away. and so i miss him terribly. and i just don't know what else to say. i'm not an expert on what he did during the war. but as a grandfather he was tops. >> if i could jump in, how could groves and oppenheim ver gotten along at all? they were complete opposites as far as i can see. they were different

personalities. >> well, i think it had to do with ambition and a common goal. and that each saw in the other the realization of what they were trying to do. i use the phrase each saw in the other their route to immortality. anything oppenheimer wanted he would ask groves and groves would get it for him. any person in the world any amount of money, any instrument, anything. and groves had put great stock in oppenheimer's ability. and so i think his qualities in him and charismatic leadership came out and was a brilliant director at los alamos. so, you know, they were joined at the hip even though they were quite different backgrounds and they had this common purpose and i think that's part of groves' secret here.

he was able to entwine himself with other people and choose people who could get things done and saw in him they could get something from them. >> oh, you mean the scientific director of los alamos. the question was, who else were on the short list or long list for being scientific director of los alamos? well practically every physicist who ran a lab. you know lawrence compton. and so on. and the story as we came to understand it was that every time groves would talk to these other people who are very experienced administrators, he

had the sense that there was kind of a organization in their minds and they didn't know how to go right to the heart of the problem. and oppenheimer wanted the job. and again when oppenheimer wanted something he was generally able to figure out how to get it. and when he talked to groves he impressed groves with the idea that this guy knows how to get this job done. and eventually that was true. but you know, at the beginning we tell the story when los alamos was first organized, oppenheimer said well you know we got 20 really smart physicists. it's like the psychics department and get this thing done. he had no conception of how to do it. and robert wilson who was an

experimental physicist and much younger but did have a very good organizational sense, you know, would go to him and say we need a -- flow chart or organization chart who reports to oppenheimer. what you are talking about? we know each other. we report to each other everybody. but finally things got so out of control in these early months that oppenheimer realized he had better reset his orientation. and he did. and from that point on thinged got organized in a way that they had to be organized because he picked people to do it and he understood what had to be done. >> marty said that opp itch chose groves. it's not the other way.

>> okay. >> i want to say something about groves also. i have to say, i was incredibly impressed reading about the oppenheimer hearings and how loyal groves was to supporting oppenheimer during those very dark very dark days. in the end, he was forced to say something that lewis straws and the fbi were pressuring him to say that in effect he wouldn't be able to choose oppenheimer under the current security regulations as opposed to what was going on before. but he was trying to stick with oppenheimer all the way. and that really showed character. in addition to being a fashion

person, he was a good friend. >> he was loyal. >> questioner. >> why did you select the question of who was more important, oppenheimer or groves? >> good question. >> cindy did that. >> i think just to provoke controversy among -- >> i don't think it was more important. the question was independencible. >> i think there