With regard to secrecy in atomic matters Groves listed seven major objectives.
• To keep knowledge from the Germans and, to a lesser degree, from the Japanese.
• To keep knowledge from the Russians.
• To keep as much knowledge as possible from all other nations, so that the U.S. position after the war would be as strong as possible.
• To keep knowledge from those who would interfere directly or indirectly with the progress of the work, such as Congress and various executive branch offices.
• To limit discussion of the use of the bomb to a small group of officials.
• To achieve military surprise when the bomb was used and thus gain the psychological effect.
• To operate the program on a need-to-know basis by the use of compartmentalization.
Groves is not often thought of as a contributor to modern intelligence practices, but his widespread use of compartmentalization as an organizing principle was novel and significant. While Groves did not invent compartmentalization, he implemented it on a scale not previously seen. In his hands this organizational scheme was at once the prime method to limit information—and thus enhance security—and a major source of his power and influence. In government bureaucracies, especially ones heavily involved with secrecy, knowledge is power, and by knowing more one is able to shape the substance and pace of a policy or project. Groves had no agenda of his own. He was merely carrying out the decisions of the senior-level civilians to whom he reported, and he was in perfect agreement with them. There is not a hint that he ever abused his power, but by the same token, it has not been fully recognized how much power he had, how he acquired it, and what he did with it.
U.S. Department of Energy
This Oak Ridge, Tennessee, billboard was one of the many reminders that maintaining secrecy was of paramount importance.
STICK TO THE KNITTING!
Compartmentalization of knowledge, to me, was the very heart of security. My rule was simple and not capable of misinterpretation—each man should know everything he needed to know to do his job and nothing else. Adherence to this rule not only provided an adequate measure of security, but it greatly improved over-all efficiency by making our people stick to their knitting.
—GENERAL LESLIE R. GROVES
Security: A Headache on the Hill
In these excerpts, Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin discuss security issues at Los Alamos. Scientists and their families often clashed with Army officers over matters of secrecy and the strict rules governing communications with the outside world. From the Army’s viewpoint, many top scientists and their wives were known to have held Communist or leftist sympathies and needed to be closely watched. However, the Army’s security measures were often laughable, as Richard Feynman enjoyed demonstrating.
From American Prometheus
BY KAI BIRD AND MARTIN SHERWIN
With the title of scientific director, Oppenheimer’s authority inside Los Alamos was nearly absolute. Though he ostensibly shared power with a military post commander, Oppie reported directly to General Groves. The first post commander, Lt. Col. John M. Harmon, had numerous arguments with the scientists and as a result he was replaced in April 1943, after only four months on the job. His successor, Lt. Col. Whitney Ashbridge, understood that his job was to minimize friction and keep the scientists happy. Ashbridge, coincidentally a graduate of the Los Alamos Ranch School, lasted until the autumn of 1944, when, overworked and exhausted, he suffered a mild heart attack. He was replaced by Col. Gerald R. Tyler. Thus, Oppenheimer literally worked through three Army colonels.
Security was always a headache. At one point, Army security stationed armed military police outside Oppenheimer’s “Bathtub Row” house. The MPs inspected everyone’s pass, including Kitty’s, before allowing them to enter the house. Kitty frequently forgot to take her pass when she left and always made a scene when they wouldn’t let her back in. Still, she was not entirely unhappy about their presence: Always ready to seize an opportunity, she occasionally used the MPs as baby-sitters for Peter. When the sergeant in charge of the detail realized what was happening, he had the MPs withdrawn.
As part of his understanding with General Groves, Oppenheimer had agreed to name a three-man committee to be responsible for internal security. He appointed his assistants David Hawkins and John Manley, and a chemist, Joe Kennedy. They were responsible for security inside the laboratory (the T-Section), which was enclosed within a second, inner barbed-wire fence that was off-limits to MPs and soldiers. The internal security committee dealt with such prosaic matters as checking to make sure that scientists locked their file cabinets when they left their offices. If someone was caught leaving a secret document on his desk overnight, then that scientist was required to patrol the lab the next night and try to catch someone else. One day, [physicist Robert] Serber saw Hawkins and Emilio Segrè having an argument. “Emilio, you left a secret paper out last night,” Hawkins said, “and you have to go around tonight.” Segrè retorted, “That paper, it was all wrong. It would only have confused the enemy.”
Oppenheimer struggled constantly to protect his people from The Hill’s security apparatus. He and Serber had numerous discussions about how to “save” various people from being dismissed. “If they had their way,” Serber said of the security division, “there wouldn’t have been anybody left.” Indeed, in October 1943 the Army’s security investigators recommended that Robert and Charlotte Serber both be removed from Los Alamos. The FBI charged, with typical hyperbole, that the Serbers were “entirely saturated with Communist beliefs and all of their associates were known radicals.”
While Robert Serber’s views were certainly leftist, he had never been as politically active as his wife. Charlotte had poured her energies in the late 1930s into such projects as raising funds for the Spanish Republicans. But, of course, Oppenheimer himself had been more politically active than Charlotte. It is unclear from the documentary record how the Army was overruled, but Oppie probably vouched personally for the Serbers’ loyalty. One day Capt. Peer de Silva, the chief resident security officer, confronted Oppenheimer with Serber’s political background, only to have Oppenheimer dismiss it all as unimportant: “Oppenheimer volunteered information that he had known Serber was formerly active in Communist activities and stated that, in fact, Serber had told him so.” Oppenheimer explained that he had told Serber, prior to bringing him to Los Alamos, that he would have to drop his political activities. “Serber promised me he would, therefore, I believe him.” Incredulous, De Silva thought this evidence of Oppenheimer’s naïveté, or worse.
Like many Hill wives, Charlotte Serber worked in the Tech Area. And though G-2’s security file on the Serbers noted her family’s left-wing background, Charlotte’s job as scientific librarian literally made her the gatekeeper for The Hill’s most important secrets. Oppenheimer placed enormous trust in her. Casually dressed in jeans or slacks, Charlotte presided over the library as a social hangout and “center for all gossip.”
Richard Feynman, an incorrigible practical joker, had his own way of dealing with security regulations. When the censors complained that his wife, Arline, now a patient at a tuberculosis sanatorium in Albuquerque, was sending him letters in code and asked for the code, Feynman explained that he didn’t have the key to it—it was a game he played with his wife to practice his code-breaking. Feynman also drove security personnel to distraction when he went on a nighttime safe-cracking spree, opening the combination locks for secret file cabinets all over the laboratory. On another occasion, he noticed a hole in the fence surrounding Los Alamos—so he walked through the main gate, waved to the guard, and then crawled back through the hole and walked out the main gate again. He repeated this several times. Feynman was almost arrested. His antics became part of Los Alamos lore.
The Army’s relations with the scientists and their families were always shaky. General Groves set the tone. In private with his own men, Groves routinely labeled Los Alamos civi
lians “the children.” He instructed one of his commanders: “Try to satisfy these temperamental people. Don’t allow living conditions, family problems, or anything else to take their minds off their work.” Most of the civilians made it clear that they found Groves “distasteful”—and he made it clear that he didn’t care what they thought.
Oppenheimer got along with Groves—but he found most of the Army’s counterintelligence officers obtuse and offensive. One day Captain de Silva barged into one of Oppenheimer’s regular Friday afternoon meetings of all the group leaders, and announced, “I have a complaint.” De Silva explained that a scientist had come to his office to talk and, without asking his permission, had sat on the corner of his desk. “I didn’t appreciate it,” fumed the captain. To the amusement of everyone else in the room, Oppenheimer replied, “In this laboratory, Captain, anybody can sit on anybody’s desk.”
Captain de Silva, the only West Point graduate resident at Los Alamos, could not laugh at himself. “He was profoundly suspicious of everyone,” recalled David Hawkins. That Oppenheimer had appointed Hawkins, a former Communist Party member, to the lab’s security committee, only fueled De Silva’s suspicions. Oppenheimer liked Hawkins and thought highly of his abilities. He also knew that Hawkins was a loyal American, whose left-wing politics—like his own—were reformist rather than revolutionary.
Some of the security restrictions were deeply annoying to everyone. When Edward Teller said that his people were complaining about their mail being opened, Oppie replied bitterly, “What are they griping about? I am not allowed to talk to my own brother.” He chafed at the notion that he was being watched. “He complained constantly,” Robert Wilson recalled, “that his telephone calls were being monitored.” At the time, Wilson thought this “somewhat paranoiac”; only much later did he realize that Oppie had indeed been under near-total surveillance.
Even before Los Alamos opened in March 1943, Army counterintelligence instructed J. Edgar Hoover to suspend FBI surveillance of Oppenheimer. As of March 22, Hoover complied, but he instructed his agents in San Francisco to continue their surveillance of individuals who might have been connected with Oppenheimer in the Communist Party. On that date, the Army informed the FBI that it had arranged for full-time technical and physical surveillance of Oppenheimer. A large number of Army Counter-Intelligence Corps (CIC) officers had already been placed in undercover assignments even before Oppenheimer arrived in Los Alamos. One such agent, Andrew Walker, was assigned to serve as Oppenheimer’s personal driver and bodyguard. Walker later confirmed that CIC officers monitored Oppenheimer’s mail and his home telephone. Oppie’s office was wiretapped.
ON OPPENHEIMER’S OPENNESS
Oppenheimer insisted that everybody at the Los Alamos Laboratory could know everything. More than that, he insisted that the group leaders and senior scientists come to weekly meetings in which absolutely everything was discussed in detail. Scientists did that with enthusiasm. Oppenheimer thereby created a spirit of the Lab as a whole that was one of his great contributions.
—HANS BETHE
Mrs. Farmer, I Presume
Laura Fermi, wife of physicist Enrico Fermi, describes her family’s journey to Los Alamos and the confusion caused by using code names for some of the most famous scientists working on the Manhattan Project.
From Atoms in the Family
BY LAURA FERMI
On the same train I had the pleasant surprise of seeing another of our friends, Harold Urey, whom I had left in Leonia over two years before. It would be more accurate to say that through the open door of a roomette I saw a tired-looking man who looked like Harold Urey, stretched on the divan, absorbed in who knows what thoughts and what deep concern. Nella and Giulio, whom I dispatched in reconnaissance, reported that yes, that man must be Mr. Urey. Harold was overworked and tired and looking older than his age all during the war years; he recovered only when he could put his mind at rest about the war and his wartime duties.
I could not go up to him and say: “Aren’t you Harold Urey?” Not even: “Hello, Harold!”
Most of the important scientists traveled under false names in those days. His might have changed to Hugh Ulman or Hiram Upton, for the Army, who was responsible for the changes, had imagination and saved only the initials. Enrico was Eugene Farmer when he traveled, and Arthur Compton had two names, Mr. Comas and Mr. Comstock, one for the East and one for the West. Once he was napping on a flight to California from New York when the hostess woke him up to ask his name.
“Where are we?” Compton inquired by way of reply, and looked out of the airplane window.
So I did not dare speak to Harold Urey. But after a while he emerged from his thoughts and saw us. We talked at length about our families, the friends we have in common, about the latest news of the war, the Allied victories in France—our troops were rapidly approaching Paris—but neither of us mentioned our destination or the purpose of our trip.
We all got off the train at Lamy.
I had hardly set foot on the platform when a blond soldier walked up to me.
“Are you Mrs. Farmer?” he asked.
“Yes, I am Mrs. Fermi.”
“I was told to call you Mrs. Farmer,” he said mildly, but there was reproof in his blue eyes. Among the instructions I had received in Chicago, none indicated that I was to use Enrico’s new name.
The soldier motioned us to a GI car and drove us the sixty-odd miles to our destination. Compton and Urey were whisked away in another car. They were to attend a meeting at Site Y.
“As if they were walking in the woods”
Physicist Niels Bohr escaped Nazi-occupied Denmark in 1943 and traveled to the United States to work on the bomb effort at Los Alamos. General Leslie R. Groves ordered his security agents to follow Bohr, both for the scientist’s own safety and to ensure that he did not disclose any secret information. However, Bohr, referred to by the code name Nicholas Baker, and his son, Aage (Jim Baker), were not easy targets for surveillance, as this memo from the head of the Counterintelligence Corps illustrates.
201 Baker, Nicholas
5 February 1944.
MEMORANDUM FOR: Dr. R. C. Tolman,
Office of Scientific Research & Development,
Washington, D.C.
Subject: Nicholas Baker.
1. At the conclusion of a recent report of the technical surveillance of the Bakers, the reporting agent made the following comment:
“Both the father and son appear to be extremely absent-minded individuals, engrossed in themselves, and go about paying little attention to any external influences. As they did a great deal of walking, this Agent had occasion to spend considerable time behind them and observe that it was rare when either of them paid much attention to stop lights or signs, but proceeded on their way much the same as if they were walking in the woods. On one occasion, subjects proceeded across a busy intersection against the red light in a diagonal fashion, taking the longest route possible and one of greatest danger. The resourceful work of Agent Maiers in blocking out one half of the stream of automobile traffic with his car prevented their possibly incurring serious injury in this instance.”
2. I understand that the Bakers will be in Washington in the near future, at which time you will unquestionably see them. If the opportunity should present itself, I would appreciate a tactful suggestion from you to them that they should be more careful in traffic.
JOHN LANSDALE, Jr.,
Lieut. Colonel, Field Artillery.
Electric Rocket Story Fails to Launch
Charlotte Serber was one of the first people to arrive at Los Alamos with her husband, physicist Robert Serber. Here she recalls a botched attempt to spread a misleading rumor about the work at Los Alamos and conceal the true aim of the project.
From “Labor Pains”
BY CHARLOTTE SERBER
One April afternoon I was called into the Director’s Office with physicist John Manley, the lieutenant in charge of G-2, and Priscilla [Greene, Oppenhe
imer’s secretary]. Dr. Oppenheimer told us that gossip in Santa Fe was becoming worrisome. He explained that rumors were getting wilder and wilder. They were saying that we were building a submarine for the Russians (on the driest mesa for miles!); they called Los Alamos a home for pregnant WACs. It was funny, yes, but the worry was that sooner or later someone might guess a little closer to the truth. After all, a cyclotron had arrived by freight. To the public, cyclotrons meant University of California. University of California meant atom-smashing, and to someone, atom-smashing might mean atomic bomb. It therefore seemed expedient to spread a story in Santa Fe which was along scientific lines, was within the realm of possibility, and incidentally was incorrect. It had to account for all the civilian scientists, for the supersecrecy, and for the loud booms that Santa Feans were beginning to hear on fine mornings.
“Therefore,” said Oppy, “for Santa Fe purposes, we are making an electric rocket.”
This seemed like a fine idea to us, but it wasn’t at all clear how we were to be involved since G-2 presumably could see that this story was spread. But then came the punch line.
Said Oppy, “I think that John and Charlotte can manage to get this story around. Go to Santa Fe as often as you can. Talk. Talk too much. Talk as if you had too many drinks. Get people to eavesdrop. Say a number of things about us that you are not supposed to. Say the place is growing. Finally, and I don’t care how you manage it, say we are building an electric rocket. No one is to be told of this assignment. If you are successful, you will be reported on by G-2 in Santa Fe and by other Los Alamosites who overhear you. You will be protected if you get into trouble, but for the moment it is a secret mission.”
The Manhattan Project Page 24