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 were still living with today. Were 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 id really like to do today is take a little bit of time and tell you about someone who maybe you havent heard of, and thats george coval. We have someone with us here who knew coval so well hear from him later. Id just like to introduce koval to you. There will be an article about him in a journal, i hope, in the fall, in september, with a coauthor of mine, mark cramer at the journal of cold war studies. Thats where this would be published. And my half of it is going to be the american story of george coval and marks 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 koval 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, im sorry, november 2nd in a ceremony russian president putin handed kovals 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 koval. He was outed by of all people Vladimir Putin. A miracle. So who was koval . 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. Ill 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 birobizan 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 koval 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 hes hes hes 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. Well send him back to america and see what happens. The Army Specialized Training program, a ast, in which they would take out smarter army gis, send them to college for further education, and make better use of them than just sending them to the front. 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 the seds. 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, where he becomes a Health Physicists. He has the run of the place. And hes using instruments that were designed earlier, the person who designed them measuring the radiation. So george is probably ingesting an enormous amount of information about how uranium is enriched. And plutonium and basically has the run of the place. Now, i heard he has his own jeep. More involved in [ inaudible question ]. Right, but living in the barracks among his colleagues, he must have learned a great deal and hes passing this information on to russia. We dont know how he did that or who his contact was. Im hoping that mark cramer, my coauthor, 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. Whats going on . So unfortunately we dont 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 thats 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 didnt work and these spies conveyed all that information. So george is at dayton, ohio, passing on information about polonium. Hes 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 dont know why, hes called back to moscow. And we dont 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 koval as an astp at ccny and also at in oak ridge. Pretty soon, in the early 50s, you know, they look around the u. S. Government looks around. You know, where is george . Hes flown the coop. Hes gone. He got away scott free. They come and interview all of his former colleagues and create a 900page fbi file, which Arnold Kramish 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 900page fbi file on george koval, but it doesnt go into the key questions. What did he pass on . And when and how. So theres more of the story to tell. And this just goes to show you that were not done with the Manhattan Project yet at all. There is many, many loose ends here and strands to explore and espionage is one of them. Finally, why did Vladimir Putin out george koval and say that he was a spy publicly . This all could have done privately and we never would have known about it. Our government has known about it for 50 years and hasnt uttered a peep about it. We had to rely on putin. Why did he do it . Well, i think two reasons. One, just because hes Vladimir Putin and he loves to stick an eye in americas face. So its beating his chest and saying, look, this man helped us get the bomb and you never found out about him and were going to honor him today. But more importantly, i think its the gru, its 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 Intelligences 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 thats 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 didnt 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 indepth. Immediate and even distant members of my family were contacted by the fbi and old friends, present friends and old friends were contacted by the fbi. And asked about me and what i had done in you know, my life. And so i dont know how he how he got through without being found out. To me, its amazing. At any rate, he did. I knew him i worked with him mostly at monsanto chemical where, as dr. Norris said, where they were producing moneye inging polonium. And my instruments were widely used there for polonium. And the instrument that i developed had two parallel plates inside brass plates, and the polonium that they wanted to measure, for whatever purposes was deposited on little platinum disks about an inch in diameter and then they would be inserted into this device on the bottom plate. The plates were about a sent meet er apart in a tube and then there was amplifiers and so forth to take it to another instrument that counted the impulses that were the electrical impulses that were developed by the rays going through the air and creating ions as it ionized the air. And then the ions would be collected by voltage on the two plates and it would be a small, electrical pulse which then would be amplified and counted by an electronic counter. And that is what basically what my instrument did. And at any rate, i had to train him on the maintenance and so on of those instruments and train his people, as well. Who worked there. At monsanto he may have been a physicist, but i was not aware of that. He was in charge of maintaining instruments at monsanto. Monsanto. Who was the other . Ill 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 youre 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 thats 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 werent 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 didnt 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 dont remember. Thats a mystery. Thats another one to solve. Another one to solve. Okay im ben in case you didnt 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. Im 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 youve heard here, machinists played a very Important Role in the development of the atomic bombs both particularly the implosion bomb. The reason being that theres 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 hes 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. Antisemitism 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 antisemitism. So antisemitism 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 antise mettic. Few jews e remained communists by 1940s except for what you might call the true believers. A true believer really believes and its 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. Thats the beginning of my relationship with him. It didnt 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 hes 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, its quite an amazing book. Its called the brother. Its 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. Thats why it was a tragedy. The fact that they were execute ed ed, it doesnt 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. Thats all i wanted to say about greenglass. I did also know ted hall. And in a different way. I didnt know ted hall politically. A friend of mine another sed and i were music lovers and i think its 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 hes 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. Thats 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. Thats 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 dont 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 thats why, in my opinion, thats 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. Im 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 didnt 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 dont. 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 heres 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, its money sometimes. Lately its 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 its fine. We already did it. It didnt do it. They never did it. Theres a story right there of somebody in mi6 had to give clearance to who they already knew was a communist spy. Thats another one to track down here. Theres so many other parts of this that need to be known. But thats ideological to a tee. It didnt 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. Hes 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. President s bush and putin were on a firstname basis. Our country was helping them with their internal strife and so that when putin decides to release george kovals 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 dont we let it all out into the open. You can score points on us we scored some points on you, lets continue moving forward. Right, okay, i accept all that. I think thats fine. Putin went on to say at the museum when hes handing over georges 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, thats 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 hes acknowledging in the Army Intelligence role. But relations go up and down with the former soviet union now russia i dont 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. Were going to have another i thought this was a great session session. Thank you very much. [ applause ] here on cspan 3 a look at the supreme courts decision to allow samesex couples to marry in all 50 states. Attorneys discussed the ruling house states are responding and whether the decision will affect religious freedoms. Its being hosted by the heritage first down sdpags will well take you there live at noon eastern. Later in the day a discussion on education policy for k12 students. The event focuses on a recent survey of Public Opinion on School Choice and other issues. Thats live at 3 00 p. M. Eastern on cspan 2. When congress is in session cspan 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 its American History tv, traveling to Historic Sites discussions with authors and historians, and eyewitness accounts of events that defined the nation. Cspan 3, coverage of congress and American History tv. Like many of us, first families take vacation time. And like president s 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 pubrs as a hard cover or ebook. 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. Its an hour. I promised on time delivery and it is now time. We are delighted youre having such a good time. Heres 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, ill 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 coauthors of the definitive biographer of oppenheimer that came out and won a pull it sder. Were going to hear from the grandchildren of oppenheimer and as a plus we have a niece granddaughter of general groves. So i dont