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Interview with John Rhoades
Los Alamos National Laboratory

Interviewer: In your own words, what was the Manhattan Project?

John Rhoades: The Manhattan Project was an incredibly expensive, extraordinarily widespread project -- it spanned the country from Handford, Washington, back to Oak Ridge, Tennessee. It was an effort to find the answer to could nuclear energy be used as an explosive device? Could it be done in enough time to beat the German's to the punch, because we were quite certain that they were well along in the program by the time we'd learned about it.

Interviewer: What exactly could this device do?

John Rhoades: We knew that the principal of fission had sufficient stored energy within it, that it could create at least as much energy as the largest explosive then known to man, and probably larger. We had to do a lot of calculations before we knew how much to use and what its yield could be, but it was very clear that when those atoms finally came together and split it could create the most incredible amount of energy ever.

Interviewer: Now describe in your own words how some of these brilliant minds assembled in the middle of nowhere.

John Rhoades: The key to how these people, these extraordinary people, refugees from Europe, who had first-hand seen the horrors of Mussolini and Hitler. Many of them were Jews or, like Enrich were married to Jews. The key to their assembling here was Robert Oppenheimer. The very charismatic, very intelligent physicist, who was able to say "I need you, please come," and they came.

Interviewer: And who came? I mean, not just names, but just describe them and how they lived and the atmosphere among them.

John Rhoades: These were physicists for the most part. They were people who were used to the intelligencia, the climate of Europe, and the salons. They were used to an extraordinary life, sometimes of privilege, but at least to an intellectual superiority. When they arrived here on this maser, it was a sea of mud. They had to live in trailers. This was more than they could possibly imagine, but it was so important, they were able to get over that. They were able to get beyond that and create a life, not only of research, but a life of luxury, a life no. They were able to create a life of culture here, of excitement, of intellectual discourse. It was an extraordinary time.

Interviewer: Give me an idea of the age of these people.

John Rhoades: What we tend to think of scientists being in their fifties and sixties, these wizened old men, but it wasn't true. The average age here was twenty-five. Ted Hall, one of the key figures in our story, was eighteen when he arrived here. Richard Feinmann, an extraordinary and very amusing character here, was twenty-four. Plus we had many, many people from the Special Engineering detachment, young GIs and soldiers here at the time.

Interviewer: There was a lot of passionate debate about the issues involved, wasn't there?

John Rhoades: There was a debate going on. It was low key, because remember that they were working twenty hours a day, seven days a week, just busting and busting and busting every limit that had ever been known scientifically, to try to achieve this very, very difficult thing. At the same time, they were seeing the beginning of pictures in Life Magazine as the Buchenwald as the Dachau, as the American forces rolled into these concentration camps, which spurred them even more. So, on the one hand, you had the sense that this thing could be, perhaps the end of civilisation. On the other hand, they were losing family. They were losing friends. So it was this dichotomy going on at all times.

Interviewer: How much did some of the younger ones actually foresee the nuclear age and the balance of terror?

John Rhoades: I think it was the older people. People like Niels Bore, who understood that this power was so awesome, it had to be shared. Because if one country kept it, there would always be that power struggle, there would always be that one-upmanship, there would always be that imbalance, and so Bore pleaded eloquently to share it, as did some of the other characters in the scene.

Interviewer: Now, slightly more nuts and bolts questions. Who was Klaus Fuchs?

John Rhoades: Klaus Fuchs came over to Los Alamos through the British mission, because, remember, there had been terrific amount of co-operation from the start between the Americans and the British. Much of this early work came from the Cavendish at Cambridge University. That early work came to fruition in something called the MOD report, which really pushed Americans into the next phase. We got stalled. We didn't see a way out of some of these contradictions, but the British MOD report proved the feasibility, and so there was a lot of respect. Churchill and Roosevelt had agreed to collaborate, and over came this quiet, bespeckled physicist named Klaus Fuchs. The guy was willing to be everybody's baby-sitter. The guy nobody could really ever identify. Nobody had a very clear memory of him. He was the perfect spy. One of the things he loved to do was to volunteer for baby sitting, while people were off on rides, or while they were having these parties with these seances or these skits, Klaus was always willing to be your baby sitter. He had some mannerisms that made people on edge a bit. He had this kind of high, hyperactive laugh, but, by and large, people didn't remember him very much.

Interviewer: And what exactly did he give away?

John Rhoades: As near as we can tell, Fuchs gave away just about all the secrets. It's kind of a toss-up in what he gave away, and another one of our characters, Ted Hall, gave away. Clearly Hall was able to contribute the information about the implosion. The ability to compress that plutonium sphere with these explosive lenses, absolutely simultaneously, absolutely uniformly, so as to get the explosion. Fuchs on the other hand was able to give a broader kind of picture. He was able to say who was working here, and the Russians were able to trace that back to see what kind of discipline was involved in that persons being here. He could give them a lot of data. He was able to corroborate, because, remember, a hallmark of intelligence is to verify from independent sources, to make sure this information is not being propagated on you.

Interviewer: Broadly speaking, what was the kind of secrets that Fuchs was able to give away?

John Rhoades: Fuchs was able to give away both in large detail the overall scope of the project, because he had a fair amount of mobility. He was also able to give away some of the important details. Perhaps more where the Americans were making a run up a dead end and had to back track. He was able to short step, short cut the eventual process, so that the Russians were able to get to the bomb five years or more sooner than we ever thought they would.

Interviewer: And do we know why Fuchs did it?

John Rhoades: Fuchs was representative of many of the intellectuals of his time. Remember, numbers of these had seen Fascism up close and were afraid of it, and so Communism was quite attractive. The Spanish Civil War was an example of that. Robert Oppenheimer, the director of the project, had leftist leanings. One of his early girlfriends was a Communist. His brother had married a Communist. So it was very much in keeping that this attraction to the left was part of Fuchs' personality as well.

Interviewer: Once again, who was Ted Hall?

John Rhoades: Ted Hall was a brilliant young man. He had gone through Harvard at age sixteen. He wound up here as a physicist at eighteen. He was sent to the RALA, the Radioactive Lanthanum, which was an attempt to see how you could use plutonium, which was in very, very short supply. The amount of plutonium that was available could fit on my finger, if I would dare put it there. But they used instead this radioactive material, which they compressed inside these hemispheres. Ted Hall worked on the project in the implosion experiments. This is where they use these hemispheres to compress this radioactive substance for plutonium, the amount of which that was available could fit on my finger. It was extraordinary how they were making do with so little. He was right at the cutting edge of the technology, because that's what turned the corner into making the Fat Man device.

Interviewer: What did he give to the Russians? Do we know? What's our best guess as to what he must have given away?

John Rhoades: Our best guess, understanding that we're getting this information often from Russian espionage sources, who have a vested interest in appearing omnipotent and all-knowing. Our best guess is that the Russians got most of the implosion information, the information about how this fuel should be compressed from Ted Hall.

Interviewer: Why do we think Ted Hall did it?

John Rhoades: Ted Hall was young, he was naïve, he was very idealistic, and he truly believed, as numbers of other senior scientists did, that by sharing the information, he would create this equality, and that we would effectively all be paralysed and never use this terrible weapon.

Interviewer: The balance of terror.

John Rhoades: The balance of terror, exactly.

Interviewer: Security at Los Alamos is of course careful, but there was also some farcical aspects to it, weren't there?

John Rhoades: Security at Los Alamos was under the direction of General Groves, the military leader of the project. He had information, early on, even before Los Alamos was started, that the Soviets were looking hard at creating a uranium bomb. For that reason, he tightened security very tight. Passes were restricted. Los Alamos as a name didn't exist. It was Bach 1663. On people's birth certificates it said, baby born Bach 1663. No word of Los Alamos could be used outside. Letters were censored. They would arrive with big holes cut out of them. It was very, very tight security here. However, there were some interesting lapses. One of the lapses was Richard Feinmann. Richard Feinmann was later a Caltech Nobel Prize winner, who was a brilliant calculational physicist. He also had a great sense of humour. He discovered there was a hole in the fence, and the way he chose to attract securities attention to it was by going out the fence and coming in, and he would present his pass. Walk though. Ten minutes later he would go out the fence again, come back in. He did this over and over again, until somebody went -- wait a minute, there's something wrong with this picture. He would crack safes. His wife was dying of tuberculosis in an Albuquerque hospital. One of the ways he kept her spirits up was by exchanging coded messages back and forth. This drove the army security crazy. So it wasn't until he put the code, the key to the code in the letter, which they then took out and forwarded to his wife and vice versa, that they were willing to let him do it.

Interviewer: What was at stake for Russia if, say, Britain and the US were the only people with the bomb?

John Rhoades: Clearly, when we detonated our weapon in 1945, our experiment down here in New Mexico, the Russians learned about it right away. Now obviously up the Yeti, for Berea, for Stalin, for all the people involved in management of the Russian effort, they realised that they were going to be behind the eight ball, and that was going to thwart any of their expansionist impulses.

Interviewer: Explain if you could looking at it from the point of view of the Russians. How would it seem if only your main enemies had the bomb? What was at risk? What was at stake? What was at stake for the Russians if they didn't get a bomb of their own?

John Rhoades: As soon as they realised that the Americans had beaten them to it, that the Americans had a successful explosion in the New Mexico desert, it upped the anti for them. They would now always be a second or third class power, without the ability to dictate terms at the end of the war. It would frustrate their attempt in Manchuria, their attempt in Japan, their going for the Kuril Islands to the North -- everything would be off the table. They would now no longer be a power able to dictate those terms. So the possession of that atomic bomb, to at least achieve parity, was of paramount importance to Stalin.

Interviewer: Now describe the encounter between Truman and Stalin at Potsdam.

John Rhoades: The Potsdam conference was a wonderful poker game. Truman came with what he thought was a fist full of aces. He had just got the information from General Groves that the atomic test was successful. That we had the bomb; that all this effort was to good purpose, and that we could dictate the terms. He quietly took Stalin aside and said, "You know we have this extraordinarily powerful bomb?" He said, and we have his note that says, "Stalin did not know what I was talking about. Stalin played an absolute poker face." Why? Because he had it. Because Stalin already had from his espionage networks, had funnelled every detail of the atomic weapon, and so he could afford to sit at the table. He could afford not to play into Truman's hand.

Interviewer: Now, tell us in your own words how in 1949 the Russians finally did detonate a bomb, which was virtually identical to the one behind you?

John Rhoades: The Russian scientist team was very good. They were our equals. They would have achieved that weapon, perhaps in another three to five years, but the pressure on them was extraordinary. The head of the secret police was driving them. He was their boss. Now, think about it in your terms. If you had a choice between exploring your own technology, the outcome of which was uncertain, or using the American technology, where you knew the result, and your boss was the head of the secret police, which would you have picked?

Interviewer: So, when that bomb went off in 1949, what was it really a copy of?

John Rhoades: Okay. That bomb they detonated, that first fission device, was an exact duplicate of the bomb we had set off in the New Mexico desert. That information had provided, in such sufficient and exquisite detail, that they blew up a complete copy.

Interviewer: Is that virtually the same as the bomb behind you?

John Rhoades: That is the same as the bomb behind me. The bomb that the Soviets detonated in 1949 was an exact copy a copy leaked by Fuchs and his team, a copy of the bomb that's sitting right behind me now.

Interviewer: What exactly did this big espionage effort contribute to the Soviet bomb?

John Rhoades: The Soviet espionage effort contributed a number of important things. First of all, it bought them time. They didn't have to go down a number of the same blind alleys we almost did. For instance, creating a plutonium weapon in the long device. The Thin Man. They avoided that right away. Second, it helped them be a major player that much sooner, before we could gear up, before we could weaponize our whole weapons industry. Because, remember, what we were trying to do at the end of the war was take this Fat Man and this Little Boy and stock pile them. We were using them as our hedge against further Soviet aggression. By having those weapons there, available on their side, they achieved for a moment a paralysis. In fact, they were able to move faster than we were. Sorry, that's getting into the hydrogen story, you don't want to do that.

Interviewer: Well sort of one goes to the other, doesn't it?

John Rhoades: The Soviet espionage effort was absolutely essential to their plans for the spread of Communism. Because, as long as the United States and Britain were the sole owners of the nuclear manhole, their ability to become a player on the world scene was nil. They would always be a second fiddle. So, by that espionage effort, shortening that period of time, preventing them from going down these blind alleys, not making some of the mistakes we had made. It shortened that period of time that allowed them to become the World power that Stalin wanted them to be.