The First War of Physics (66 page)

As dawn broke the rain subsided. Although the sky remained overcast, there was sufficient visibility for the optical instruments that had been set up to monitor the explosion. Kurchatov delayed the test by an hour. A number of structures had been built near the tower – one-storey wooden buildings, four-storey brick houses, bridges, tunnels and water towers. Locomotives, carriages, tanks and artillery had also been placed in the area. Animals were put in open pens so that the initial effects of radiation exposure could be examined.

The tower was not visible from the command bunker, but Kurchatov opened the glass-panelled door on the opposite side so that the scientists and generals gathered within could watch the flash reflected from the distant hills. There would be time enough to close the door before the shockwave struck. Beria remained deeply sceptical: ‘Nothing will come of it, Igor’, he growled at Kurchatov.

The countdown was completed at 7:00am on 29 August:

An explosion. A bright flash of light. A column of flame, dragging clouds of dust and sand with it, formed the ‘foot’ of an atomic mushroom. Kurchatov said only two words: ‘It worked’… What remarkable words these are: ‘It had worked! It had worked!’ Physicists and engineers, mechanics and workmen, thousands of Soviet people who had worked on the atomic problem, had not let the country down. The Soviet Union had become the second atomic power. The nuclear balance had been restored.

Flerov, bathed in reflected light, closed the door before it was shattered by the shockwave. Beria rushed to hug Khariton, but the only thing Khariton felt was relief. The bomb yielded about 20,000 tons of TNT equivalent, virtually identical to the yields of the Fat Man design used for the Trinity test and against Nagasaki. Had it not worked, the Soviet physicists would all have been shot.
²

Beria rushed to inform Stalin. Woken from sleep, an angry Stalin told him that he already knew. The next day Beria and Kurchatov submitted a hand-written report: ‘We hereby report to you, Comrade Stalin, that a large team of Soviet scientists, designers, engineers, managers and industrial workers has succeeded, after four years of hard work, in fulfilling the task that you set before them and had made the Soviet atomic bomb.’

On 3 September airborne radioactive fallout from the Soviet test was detected by instruments on board an American WB-29 (a B-29 modified for weather reconnaissance missions), flying a few miles east of the Kamchatka Peninsula. During the following week scientists tracked the radioactive air mass as it passed across America. The British were alerted on 9 September as the air mass crossed the Atlantic. By 14 September there was little room left for doubt. Scientists at Tracerlab in Berkeley, a private radiological laboratory, placed the time of the explosion – dubbed ‘Joe-1’ – at 6:00am on 29 August. They were out by only one hour.

Prime suspect

Gardner and Lamphere had been hard at work putting the jigsaw puzzle of evidence together. What the Venona decrypts told them was frightening: atomic secrets had haemorrhaged from the Manhattan Project.

In mid-September 1949 Lamphere had found a startling piece of information in a recently-decrypted message that had been sent to Moscow Centre from New York on 15 June 1944.
³
The message stated:
⁴

[1 group unrecovered] received from REST the third part of report MSN-12 Efferent Fluctuation in a stream [37 groups unrecoverable]. Diffusion method – work on his speciality. R[EST] expressed doubt about the possibility of remaining in the COUNTRY without arousing suspicion.

This was a partial summary of theoretical work on gaseous diffusion. The message went on to describe the strife between the ISLANDERS (the British mission) and the TOWNSMEN (the Americans) working on ENORMOZ. The message told Lamphere that spies had been at work not only in Canada, but also in America, at the very heart of the Manhattan Project.

The message also revealed the existence of a spy with the codename REST, which had been changed to CHARLES in another cable dated 5 October 1944. A message dated 16 November 1944 provided further details about REST/CHARLES:

On ARNO’s last visit to CHARLES’ sister it became known that CHARLES has not left for the ISLAND but is at Camp No. 2. He flew to Chicago and telephoned his sister. He named the state where the camp is and promised to come on leave for Christmas. He [ARNO] is taking steps to establish liaison with CHARLES while he is on leave.

Camp No. 2 was the codename for Los Alamos. On 27 February 1945 Moscow Centre had sent a message back to New York with a long list of questions concerning CHARLES. Moscow wanted to know what CHARLES had been doing since August 1944 and the purpose of his trip to Chicago. The message also assigned CHARLES’ sister the codename ANT.

In another message, dated 10 April 1945, Moscow Centre advised ANTON (Leonid Kvasnikov) in New York of the value of CHARLES’ information:

CHARL’Z’s information 2/57 on the atomic bomb (henceforth ‘BAL…’) is of great value. Apart from the data on the atomic mass of the nuclear explosive and on the details of the explosive method of actuating ‘BAL…’ it contains information received for the first time from you about the electromagnetic method of separation of ENORMOZ. We wish in addition to establish the following: 1. For what kind of fission – by means of fast or slow neutrons – [35 groups unrecovered] [281 groups unrecoverable].

The partially recovered codename ‘BAL…’ in this message is most likely ‘balloon’. Whoever REST/CHARLES was, it seemed that his information had been very highly regarded by the Soviets. This was betrayal on a massive scale.

Lamphere narrowed the list of suspects down to just one man. Fuchs had been the author of the theoretical paper on gaseous diffusion mentioned in the June 1944 message. From Fuchs’ personnel file Lamphere learned that he had started at Los Alamos in August 1944 and that he had a sister – Kristel – living in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The file showed that Fuchs had made the visit to Chicago that was detailed in the message traffic. It showed that he had visited Cambridge while on leave from Los Alamos during February 1945.

There was some further evidence of possible culpability from other sources. A Gestapo file that had fallen into the hands of the Allies in Kiel towards the end of the war stated that Fuchs had been a Communist since 1934. Fuchs’ name was also found in the address book of Israel Halperin.

Lamphere was convinced. Fuchs was his prime suspect. He opened a case file, initiated an investigation and wrote to alert British intelligence on 22 September.

Quantum jump

On the morning of 23 September 1949 Truman stated publicly that: ‘We have evidence that within recent weeks an atomic explosion occurred in the USSR.’ America may have had over 100 atomic bombs in its stockpile, but it now no longer had a monopoly on the technology.

Oppenheimer and other members of the GAC who met later the same day were shocked by the news. While some, like Rabi, believed that this brought closer the prospect of an atomic war, Oppenheimer was more sanguine. He advised Teller to ‘Keep your shirt on’.

Speculation mounted as to how the Soviets had managed to build the bomb so quickly, years before they were predicted to have the capability. But for many in senior positions in the AEC and the Truman administration, the Soviet atom bomb was now a political and military reality, demanding a political and military response. Inevitably, attention returned to the Super.

Lewis Strauss had no doubt that every effort should now be made to accelerate development of a super-bomb:

It seems to me that the time has now come for a quantum-jump in our planning (to borrow a metaphor from our scientist friends) – that is to say, that we should now make an intensive effort to get ahead with the super. By intensive effort, I am thinking of a commitment in talent and money comparable, if necessary, to that which produced the first atomic weapon. That is the way to stay ahead.

The time had also come to tell the President. Truman still did not know that the Super was possible.

The so-called hydrogen or super bomb

Teller had left Los Alamos in 1946. But he had watched, seething, as the Communist Party gradually took control of his native Hungary. In the elections of May 1949, candidates from the Hungarian Workers’ Party, formed by the ‘merger’ of the Communist Party and Social Democratic Party in 1947, had stood unopposed. The People’s Republic of Hungary was declared shortly afterwards and a period of repressive Stalinist rule under the authoritarian leader Mátyás Rákosi began. Soviet-style purges and show trials soon followed. Teller was persuaded to return to Los Alamos. He resumed work on the Super in July.

On 21 October Oppenheimer noted in a letter to Conant that the Super is ‘not very different from what it was when we first spoke of it more than seven years ago: a weapon of unknown design, cost, deliverability and military value.’ Oppenheimer’s position on the morality of the Super was at this stage somewhat ambiguous. ‘We have always known it had to be done,’ he continued in his letter, ‘and it does have to be done … But that we become committed to it as the way to save the country and the peace appears to me to be full of dangers.’

By the time of the next GAC meeting on 29 October Oppenheimer’s views were still not fixed, but Conant was utterly opposed to the development of a thermonuclear bomb on moral grounds. Although each member of the committee argued somewhat differently, there appeared to be a strong consensus regarding the conclusion: there were better things America could do than embark on a major programme to build a thermonuclear bomb. Oppenheimer, chairman of the GAC, aligned himself with the majority view.

This view was detailed in a report dated 30 October. Having summarised the technical problems associated with the production of thermonuclear weapons, the moral objections were put forward in a majority annex (so called because this was signed by the majority of GAC members, including Conant and Oppenheimer):

If super bombs will work at all, there is no inherent limit in the destructive power that may be attained with them. Therefore, a super bomb might become a weapon of genocide … We believe a super bomb should never be produced. Mankind would be far better off not to have a demonstration of the feasibility of such a weapon, until the present climate of world opinion changes … In determining not to proceed to develop the super bomb, we see a unique opportunity of providing by example some limitations on the totality of war and thus of limiting the fear and arousing the hopes of mankind.

It was an instinctive reaction to a morally repulsive weapon. If different moral codes indeed prevail during wartime compared with peacetime, then building an insanely destructive weapon without the justification of war was doubly reprehensible. In a minority annex to the report, Fermi and Rabi went further: ‘Necessarily such a weapon goes far beyond any military objective and enters the range of very great natural catastrophes. By its very nature it cannot be confined to a military objective but becomes a weapon which in practical effect is almost one of genocide … It is necessarily an evil thing considered in any light.’

Emotions were running high. The GAC report and recommendations of the AEC commissioners were passed to Truman. The commissioners themselves were split on the issue, with Strauss in favour of proceeding with the Super but with Lilienthal and others opposed. Strauss argued his position in a memorandum to the President dated 25 November 1949, in which he concluded: ‘In sum, I believe that the President should direct the Atomic Energy Commission to proceed with all possible expedition to develop the thermonuclear weapon.’

For a time, Oppenheimer may have thought that his views on the Super would prevail but, in truth, there were few supporters of his position in the Truman administration. Truman’s response to the split within the AEC was to appoint another study group consisting of Lilienthal, Acheson (now Secretary of State) and Secretary of Defense Louis Johnson. Lilienthal’s position had not changed. Johnson was in favour. The decision was therefore down to Acheson.

But Acheson was an astute politician, firmly in tune with the mood that now prevailed in the administration. This was a mood summarised in the response to the GAC report by the Joint Chiefs of Staff in January 1950, sent to Johnson, in which the Joint Chiefs advanced counter-arguments that we would hear again and again in subsequent years:

It would be foolhardy altruism for the United States voluntarily to weaken its capability by such a renunciation. Public renunciation by the United States of the super bomb development might be interpreted as the first step in unilateral renunciation of the use of all atomic weapons, a course which would inevitably be followed by major international realignments to the disadvantage of the United States … the security of the entire Western Hemisphere would be jeopardized.

Oppenheimer and George Kennan, whose ‘long telegram’ had helped to establish the rhetoric of the Cold War in 1946, made representations to Acheson in a final attempt to stop the Super. But it was already too late. At a scientific conference organised by the American Physical Society on 29 January 1950, Teller asked Oppenheimer if he would be prepared to join the Super programme. ‘Certainly not’, was Oppenheimer’s curt reply.

Although Acheson agreed with many of Lilienthal’s arguments, he had decided that domestic politics would demand a crash programme on the Super. A project to develop the thermonuclear bomb would be necessary to ensure Truman’s survival as president. At a meeting in the Oval Office on 31 January, Lilienthal began to put forward the objections. Truman interrupted him.

‘Can the Russians do it?’ he asked.

They all nodded.

‘In that case, we have no choice. We’ll go ahead’, Truman stated flatly.

Later that evening, Truman delivered a radio broadcast:

It is part of my responsibility as Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces to see to it that our country is able to defend itself against any possible aggressor. Accordingly, I have directed the Atomic Energy
Commission to continue work on all forms of atomic weapons, including the so-called hydrogen or super bomb. Like all other work in the field of atomic weapons, it is being and will be carried forward on a basis consistent with the overall objectives of our program for peace and security.