Interview with John Chapman Hopkins, April 11, 2005

Nevada Test Site Oral History Project University of Nevada, Las Vegas Interview with John Hopkins April 11, 2005 Los Alamos, New Mexico Interview Conducted By Mary Palevsky © 2007 by UNLV Libraries Oral history is a method of collecting historical information through recorded interviews conducted by an interviewer/ researcher with an interviewee/ narrator who possesses firsthand knowledge of historically significant events. The goal is to create an archive which adds relevant material to the existing historical record. Oral history recordings and transcripts are primary source material and do not represent the final, verified, or complete narrative of the events under discussion. Rather, oral history is a spoken remembrance or dialogue, reflecting the interviewee’s memories, points of view and personal opinions about events in response to the interviewer’s specific questions. Oral history interviews document each interviewee’s personal engagement with the history in question. They are unique records, reflecting the particular meaning the interviewee draws from her/ his individual life experience. Produced by: The Nevada Test Site Oral History Project Departments of History and Sociology University of Nevada, Las Vegas, 89154- 5020 Director and Editor Mary Palevsky Principal Investigators Robert Futrell, Dept. of Sociology Andrew Kirk, Dept. of History The material in the Nevada Test Site Oral History Project archive is based upon work supported by the U. S. Dept. of Energy under award number DEFG52- 03NV99203 and the U. S. Dept. of Education under award number P116Z040093. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in these recordings and transcripts are those of project participants— oral history interviewees and/ or oral history interviewers— and do not necessarily reflect the views of the U. S. Department of Energy or the U. S. Department of Education. UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 1 Interview with John Hopkins April 11, 2005 Conducted by Mary Palevsky Table of Contents Introduction: selection process for the United States continental test site and why the Nevada Test Site was chosen 1 Discusses Operation Greenhouse, concern about device designs and behavior, and need for testing 4 Talks about concern of federal government over safety issues of testing and public misunderstanding of dangers of nuclear weapons, people’s initial excitement about Las Vegas as the “ atomic city,” ( 1950s) and later evaporation of good will ( 1960s) because of fallout during atmospheric testing 7 Discusses actual biological effects of radiation and AEC’s concern for safety 8 Talks about W76 performance in conjunction with stockpile safety and performance issues 10 Hans Bethe, new weapons designs, and testing at Sandstone 12 Norris Bradbury and the role of Los Alamos National Laboratory in weapons development and testing, leading to formation of AFSWP for military testing 13 University of California, Ernest O. Lawrence, and changing role of UC in weapons development and testing 15 Formation of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory ( 1952) and their more “ adventurous” approach to testing 17 Edward Giller, military weapons effects tests, and need for Nevada Test Site to measure those tests 18 Discusses effectiveness of small vs. large size in weapons design 20 Birth ( 1933), family background, education at University of Washington, marriage ( 1954), work at Los Alamos National Laboratory ( summer 1955 and 1956), takes position in Physics Division at Los Alamos ( 1960) 23 Works on Operation Dominic ( 1961) 24 Works on ABM at NTS and LAMPF at Los Alamos ( 1968), becomes Division Leader of J- Division, Los Alamos ( 1974- 1982) 25 Talks about the interesting, challenging work of testing bombs, and the work of test director 26 Norris Bradbury, Carson Mark, and the broader issues of the role of nuclear weapons in the free world 29 Norris Bradbury, Harold Agnew, and relationship to military testing 30 Comparison of attitudes of Herbert F. York, Hans Bethe, Robert Wilson, and John Hopkins toward thermonuclear weapons 32 Why use of atomic bombs in World War II was important 34 Importance of deterrence factor of nuclear weapons during the Cold War 36 Nuclear weapons testing as complicated scientific experiment 38 Hopkins_ J_ 04112005_ TOC_ ARCH. doc UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 2 Hopkins_ J_ 04112005_ TOC_ ARCH. doc Talks about importance of analysis of Soviet tests and other foreign weapons programs as “ keeping track of the competition” 42 Discusses importance of measuring alpha and gamma in testing 43 Literature on nuclear weapons testing and activities 44 Conclusion: organization of the Nevada Test Site and roles played by various organizations in weapons projects 45 UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 1 Interview with John Hopkins April 11, 2005 in Los Alamos, NM Conducted by Mary Palevsky [ 00: 00: 00] Begin Track 2, Disc 1. [ The recording begins after the opening of a discussion about the process by which the Nevada Test Site was chosen.] John Hopkins: It’s interesting. You’ll talk to lots of people who will tell you that so- and- so was the one who selected the Nevada Test Site, and it’s much more complicated than that. It was not [ John] Clark, it was not Bill [ William] Ogle, it was not Al [ Alvin] Graves, it was not Harry Truman. It was lots and lots of different people who looked at this over quite a few years, about five years, four years, and many different organizations were involved, many different groups looked at the various sites. At least when you look back at it in retrospect, the selection was obvious. What they looked at was how many people would have to be displaced; what are the problems associated with controlling the downwind population using the prevailing winds; how difficult would it be to get the land; what are the security problems associated with it; what is the weather like in terms of taking photographs of it— is it clear, were there atmospheric contaminants involved. And when you put all of the various areas that were looked at— and the areas that were examined fairly seriously were the White Sands Range, where the Trinity shot was fired; a section of the Carolina coast; an area in northern Nevada; two parcels in the Las Vegas Bombing and Gunnery Range, a northern parcel and a southern parcel, and they ultimately selected the southern parcel— and when you put all of these things together, particularly the safety, security, and the displacement of people, there was no question that the southern parcel won out. Also, the close proximity to a pool of workers, the proximity to Los Alamos [ National UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 2 Laboratory], the real estate available, the problems associated with eye burn from atmospheric tests, and so on, turns out that there weren’t any other serious areas in the running. As a footnote to all of this, there is another spot that they did not look at at that time, but we looked at in subsequent years, that really would be, at least from an atmospheric standpoint, as good as the Nevada Test Site, and that’s the Red Desert in Wyoming, which is sort of south- central Wyoming. There’s an interesting area there where there’s no drainage, where the Continental Divide splits and forms a basin— the Continental Divide goes on both sides of this basin— and it’s called the Red Desert, and it’s in south- central Wyoming. Look at it on a map sometime. That has a very low population. By the way, since I wouldn’t want to worry anybody who lives in that area, it’s not being considered as a possibility, but it would’ve been quite good. It turns out that for underground testing, the Nevada site selection was just fortuitously perfect, about as good as you could possibly do if you tried to design the geology for underground testing. Very low water table— which makes it not very good for homes that want to drill a well because the water’s about a thousand feet under, nine hundred feet down— and the [ 00: 05: 00] soil material is not conducive to cracking and splitting, so it’s really very, very good for underground testing. Mary Palevsky: And then I guess if it had been elsewhere, that they would’ve had to deal with the fact— it’s always struck me that Los Alamos really is in easy distance of Nevada. Yes, that was a consideration. It’s important, and so that was considered as well. [ Norris] Bradbury referred to this as a backyard testing area. Others didn’t like that term. But it turns out, it’s even closer to [ Lawrence] Livermore [ National Laboratory], so that it was very easy for them. But of course, when this first came out, Livermore didn’t exist. UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 3 So I had mentioned before we turned the tape on, the meeting that I read about in your draft of February 2004. [ 25 Feb 2004, Draft of Nuclear Testing in Nevada, John Hopkins and Barbara Germain Killian.] I understand you had rewritten a lot of this stuff, but that was extremely helpful to me. Because when I saw Dotty Grier, she mentioned being there in the early days and mentioned being in a meeting that I think— I have to go check her recording— she characterized as the meeting where the decision was made to use the test site. You’re saying already that it’s more complicated than that. Much more complicated than that, and also the decision was not Los Alamos’s decision. Los Alamos felt strongly that the Tonopah south site was the appropriate one, but there were many different reviews; it turns out whenever the federal government didn’t really want to make a decision, they asked for a new review. And this happened year after year, month after month, and the players were Los Alamos, the AEC [ Atomic Energy Commission], the Department of Defense [ DoD], the National Security Council [ NSC], the Armed Forces Special Weapons Project, AFSWP. There were lots of players involved. Now when I read your history and you read other histories, the narrative goes we were testing in the Pacific, geopolitical developments, the development of the Soviet bomb, the Korean War, and all these things made Nevada, or made a continental test site, more— something that people were thinking about, whereas in the beginning, they really were not. Any special insight you have about that, other than what one reads about the need to move it onsite [ to continental U. S.]? There was a great deal of concern and discussion about whether to test on the continental United States. Before the Sandstone operation in 1948, there was a meeting with very senior- level leaders in Washington, D. C. about whether to test in the Pacific or test in the continental U. S., and it was approximately evenly divided, but the decision was made to go to the Pacific and they UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 4 went to Enewetak at that time. I suspect we would not have gone to Nevada when we did if it weren’t for both the Soviet bomb and the Korean War. Now in your draft, unless there’s something I just didn’t understand, and much of the science as you can tell me— I don’t know when I’m treading into classified areas here. I say in the informed consent that that you always just tell me when you can’t tell me something, and that makes it really easy. Do not hesitate. OK, no problem. There’s not very much of this that’s classified. I just wondered. But that [ Operation] Ranger, the first Nevada tests, were related— what they did at Ranger— when did you get to the lab anyway? I got to the lab in 1955. [ 00: 10: 00] All right, we’re going backwards. We’ll get back to that story. But the science on Ranger had something to do with [ Operation] Greenhouse? Yes. What can you tell me about that? Well, Greenhouse was scheduled for the spring of 1951, and there was concern about the device designs. And anything that they did at Greenhouse was big and expensive. And when it was clear, during the summer of 1950, that there were serious worries about the behavior of the devices that they were intending to test in Greenhouse, they wanted to test one or a few devices prior to the spring of ‘ 51. And so there was a strong push to find someplace locally— locally meaning someplace short of Enewetak and Bikini— where they could fire a device or two, even just an air drop, perhaps, out over the Pacific. So that looks like it was also an element that converges, then, on continental—? UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 5 Yes. It was very important to Los Alamos, and also at that point there was some concern whether the Department of Defense could actually support the tests in Greenhouse. They threatened not to support the tests on Greenhouse because of their commitments in Korea. And this caused an enormous amount of back room deals and lobbying during late August and September of 1950. That’s interesting, I had never— you write about it— but I’d never thought, with the world we are in now, it’s very immediate. How far can you extend yourself? So it makes more sense of that past. Well, it took ten to fifteen thousand people, dozens of ships, hundreds of airplanes. It was a big commitment. So Ranger— let’s go to that. I want to talk to you a little bit about this thing that we spoke of before I turned the recorder on, which is— you say there were heavy hitters at this meeting. There really were, this, I guess it’s late August, September meeting? August 1st. September. Yes, September 1st. Or his memo is September 1st, OK, but so the meeting is August 1st, with Fred [ Frederick] Reines and Norris Bradbury, John Clark, Enrico Fermi, Alvin Graves, William Ogle, and Edward Teller. And you’re saying here “ who had called attention during Sandstone to weather prediction problems at the Pacific.” So what was the gist of this meeting, and I’ll try to get that memo that Dotty talks about, or the minutes that she talks about. [ See LAMS 1173, Sept. 1, 1950, Discussion of Radiological Hazards Associated with A Continental Test Site for Atomic Bombs, Frederick Reines.] The question was, how big a device could they fire in Nevada safely? And could they do shots without jeopardizing the general public? UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 6 And so the meeting would be— I’m just trying to understand as a non- scientist— all these minds would get around and, what? Look at existing data? Well, the only data that they had, really, that were applicable came out of Trinity. That was a fairly low shot. There were concerns about the device fallout. The fallout would be lower than Trinity if the device were higher. Trinity was a hundred feet. And that picked up an awful lot of the desert floor, mixed it with the fission products, and then distributed it downwind for a hundred miles or so, and that was serious. So could they test devices high enough so that the fireball would not reach the ground? What happened if there was something wrong with the [ 00: 15: 00] fusing and it went all the way down to the ground and then detonated? There were concerns about that sort of thing, as well. How accurately could they actually drop a bomb? In other words, another look to see what the problems were with testing in a continental environment. Things they didn’t have to worry about in the Pacific. Now, in the Pacific, they’re on land, though, when they do those things, so— Yes, but there are two things. One is there’s not an awful lot of land, for one thing, and the— by the way, they weren’t all on land, but they were in Greenhouse— they’d just wait until the prevailing wind is not over some occupied islands for the next five or six hundred miles and then they’d fire. OK, so I’ll get that. Most of the ones in the Pacific were not fired on islands. They were fired either on barges or— well, there were, in the early days, tower shots. Sandstone and Greenhouse. Right. I just want to go through these notes. What did I have on—? Some of these were just questions about wanting to look at the documents and that. I don’t know if we need to talk about them. Oh, yeah, this document, “ the desirability of an area in the Las Vegas Bombing Range UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 7 should be used as a continental proving ground,” we can look at these afterwards. I’m wondering if I can get some version of some of these reports. I just needed to ask you if they’re still classified or if you— a lot of these— Most of those are not classified. So most of these I can get from Martha [ DeMarre of the Nuclear Testing Archive] in Las Vegas. Sure. There’s very little of that that’s classified nowadays. And there was one other thing. And then we talked a little bit about Ranger. And tell me what you have— for me, there’s this interesting line sometimes between public relations, the notion of public relations in telling people that there’s going to be continental testing, and actual public safety issues, and it’s something that people look at and say, Well, was this just PR? How was the safety connected to that? But what kinds of things have you [ found]? Well, I think it was a very interesting period. There was a great deal of worry on the part of the federal government about whether people would be very concerned about the safety issues that were raised. After the strikes on Japan, there were wild misunderstandings about how dangerous nuclear weapons really were out at some number of miles. And some of this, I think, was rather encouraged, probably, by people in the media and government officials, the feeling that if you set off a nuclear weapon, it would kill everything within tens or hundreds of miles, which was actually incorrect. So there was a great deal of concern in the late forties about how the general population would view this. What they didn’t realize, I think, was that there was a great deal of excitement on the part of the general population to think that perhaps they were part of this national defense activity, something on the cutting edge of technology, something interesting and exciting. And Las Vegas was delighted to be chosen as the base camp area for testing to the northwest in the UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 8 Nellis Bombing and Gunnery Range. And Alamogordo [ New Mexico] was very disappointed that the Trinity site was not selected. There were all sorts of strange news stories [ 00: 20: 00] that came out about the hype of being the atomic city, the location for the U. S.’ s atomic testing grounds. All sorts of things were advertised as being atomic, from soap to hot springs. Well, you know, prior to World War II, there were radium hot springs that people wanted to go to for therapeutic reasons, and there was a uranium soap, as a matter of fact, that somebody had made. Now, whether it contained any uranium or not, I don’t know, but the name was used. So there was a lot of interest and excitement, and instead of being negative publicity, I would say it was quite positive. Because of fallout that did exist, though, during the atmospheric test days, I would say a lot of that goodwill evaporated by the early sixties. I don’t think it ever got to the point in Las Vegas where there was really hostility on the part of the general population, but there wasn’t as much of a feeling of patriotic pride in this. Although the fallout gets an enormous amount of press today and people who are the Downwinders worry about this, it was extremely rare for anyone to get more radiation than the general population guidelines at that time. I think probably the maximum anyone got, and this probably only refers to a dozen or less people, got over 4 or 5 R in the cloud passage. It’s an interesting problem, doing my research, to see the very strongly- held views about the actual effects of fallout, even from various scientific studies and stuff, and it’s interesting to see how someone can absolutely assert that the science says one thing, and then someone can absolutely assert the science says something much more dangerous or much less dangerous. In the course of your research, have you come across that? It’s just interesting to me. UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 9 Well, no. I have been exposed to that sort of thing over the years, but we’re not putting very much effort into the public controversy about fallout. I know a reasonable amount about what the issues are. The biggest problem and question is, what is the biological effect of very, very, very small doses of radiation? And there’s relatively little known about that. There’s a tremendous amount of information from mice where they studied millions of mice, for example. And the genetic effects, which worried people a lot in that period, are almost nonexistent. Maybe they are nonexistent. And that’s consistent with the examination of the people from Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as well, and that is that people who suffered from the radiation were the people who were actually there, not the offspring of the people who were there. The doses were very, very small, and it’s very difficult to find something that one can really attribute to radiation. Some people, like Dina Titus in her book, Bombs in the Backyard [ Atomic Testing and American Politics, 2001], give the impression that the AEC didn’t worry very much about public safety, and that’s just wrong. The criteria were different then, less stringent than they are today, but in terms of paying [ 00: 25: 00] attention to this and trying to reduce the fallout risk and danger, they cared a lot about it and spent an awful lot of time and effort and money to make sure that the public was exposed to the absolute minimum amount. Yes, it’s an interesting artifact because it’s a cultural study as well as a historical study and social study, and of course part of those impacts in Nevada are downwind populations and talking to them. One of the questions I would ask her, if I had the opportunity is, how did she get this impression, where did it come from, that the AEC didn’t care about this? The AEC clearly spent a lot of time and effort worrying about it. And so I don’t know where that attitude comes from. Well, maybe we’ll, when things move along a little bit, we’ll put— UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 10 You’re in the position to ask her. She must spend some fair amount of time in Las Vegas. I don’t know if she lives there or not. Yes, Dina lives in Las Vegas. She’s a political scientist. I see her occasionally. No, I was thinking, well, that’d be interesting, a couple of years down the line when things are more developed, we’ll have a panel and then you can— I’ll invite you and I’ll invite Dina and you can ask her. But OK, great. Let me see what else I had here. Oh, this is just an aside, John. You had mentioned, I think when we saw each other before or maybe in here, Betty Perkins and W- 76 history. I wonder if you saw that big piece in the New York Times about the W- 76 safety issues. [ William J. Broad, Aging Warheads Ignite Debate among Scientists, The New York Times, April 3, 2005] Yes. It wasn’t a safety issue. It was a performance issue. Oh. But didn’t he allude something to safety? No. A performance issue. No, it’s just a performance issue. He said it wouldn’t work very well. You know, I think he’s wrong. Oh, that’s interesting. That’s another subject matter. But I thought about that. I saw that piece the day I hit New Mexico. It was in last Sunday’s paper. No, it’s not a safety issue. Then I’ll have to read it again more carefully. I guess I saw something about rust or something and began to wonder. So that stockpile looks good, in your opinion. I think it looks pretty good. UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 11 Because the other impression I got from that piece was that there was something about retooling it in some way that would require future testing, and I guess that’s what one of the controversies was. Well, the so- called margin is not great on that. That is, it was made during a day and age when they wanted the minimum weight, minimum size, maximum yield. And so everything is really shaved to the maximum degree, which makes it less forgiving of problems. It wasn’t intended to last for fifty years without testing or rebuilding. And it’s difficult to have total confidence that something that you haven’t tried for a long time would actually work. Sure. That’s just common sense, actually. It’s sort of like not starting a car but making sure that it would start when you turned the key. You can be sure of the first year or two or three or four or five, but how about thirty or forty or fifty years downstream? Well, but the point you raised, and I hadn’t thought of asking you about this, but that’s an interesting question, when all this was being done, we were working for deterrent, right? But I guess you couldn’t really think down the line what you were going to do with really dangerous weapons fifty years out. Well, again, they’re not dangerous in the sense that it’s a safety issue. It’s, will the durn thing work? Right, but I’m saying dangerous if they were to be used, so what happens if they’re sitting there fifty years and you have a choice to use or not? I don’t know. I haven’t really talked a lot with anybody about the logic of the stockpile, you know what I’m saying? Well, yes. These are areas that I’m not sure that have a hard and fast answer to them. Someone mentioned this to Harold Agnew one time about losing confidence in the stockpile if we stopped UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 12 testing and Agnew said, Oh, that’s easy. You just hire people who are confident. OK? You know, if we think they’re going to work and the adversary thinks they’re going to work, [ 00: 30: 00] they will serve their purpose, probably. The danger is if we’re not at all sure that they’ll work. Or if we’re only— what if you’re only 80 percent sure? And the problem is not if you have a confidence of 80 percent, say, it’s not that eighty out of a hundred would work; it’s a 20 percent chance that none of them will work. Ahhh. Oh, of course, yes, because if something fails, it’s likely to fail on them all. Yes. Yes, that’s a little off our subject matter but that’s— It is, yes. But that’s an interesting question about, as I said, how people thinking about the stockpile as these weapons are being invented and built. But speaking of design, another interesting thing that you said here [ in Nuclear Testing in Nevada draft] and I actually hadn’t understood this but it makes perfect sense, is that during Manhattan days, that [ Hans] Bethe’s theoretical group was thinking about new weapons designs other than Fat Man, and that those were things that were actually tested in the early days, is that right? They were tested in Sandstone. In Sandstone. Tell me a little bit more about that. Well, now one is beginning to get close to classified information, but I can say a little that’s not. There were ideas about how to improve the efficiency of things like Fat Man, how to make them work better, and there was some experimental work that went on here, testing some of these ideas. And so they wanted to make sure, for Fat Man and for the devices that they were going to UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 13 use in World War II, that they had a very high degree of reliability and would actually work and would be available very soon. And so they went a fairly conservative route that way. By war’s end, though, they had some ideas, a number of ideas. For one thing, Little Boy in particular was very inefficient and a terrible waste of a lot of uranium. So there was a desire to get away from that as soon as possible and to explore other, newer, modern implosion systems. And one of the reasons that [ Norris E.] Bradbury really was opposed to participating in [ Operation] Crossroads – Los Alamos only participated kicking and screaming— Really? Yes. Bradbury felt that was a silly waste of time and effort and if you dropped a nuclear weapon on a Navy ship, you knew what was going to happen; it was going to sink. He thought this was silly. And he considered two separate aspects. Los Alamos’s role was not really well defined in late ’ 45. It wasn’t at all clear what we were supposed to do: just make more Fat Man and Little Boys for the Air Force, or to do design and development work on new weapons? Bradbury was concerned about what the University of California’s role might be. If it was a physics role, then he thought they would be interested in supporting it. If it looked too top- heavy in the engineering aspects, they were not. When Z- Division was split off during the summer of ’ 45 and started its migration to Albuquerque [ New Mexico], the University of California was not interested in participating in that kind of work, in the weaponization. They were interested in the physics of nuclear weapons. So when the military became more interested in weapons effects, Bradbury said them, You go do that. We have no interest in that. So you were saying there were two issues. [ 00: 35: 00] There were two issues with respect to Los Alamos’s role. One is what should Los Alamos do, and what might the University of California do, and what should the Department of UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 14 Defense do? Bradbury, in the summer of 1946, was not at all sure that Los Alamos ought to be engaged in nuclear weapons testing at all. Then by November of 1946, he had changed his mind, and the way he phrased it is that testing weapons behavior, like the Alamogordo test, is the appropriate role of Los Alamos, but testing of weapons effects, the Crossroads kind of testing, was not appropriate for Los Alamos. The Department of Defense tried to get the University of California, Los Alamos, and the AEC more deeply involved in weapons effects, and Bradbury always dug in his heels. And so that was the reason that the Department of Defense formed AFSWP, the Armed Forces Special Weapons Project, whose first leader was General [ Leslie R.] Groves, to look at weapons effects, what do weapons really do in a military environment. Now, let’s back up a little bit, because I’ve tried to, from the things that you have here and other things, what can you tell me more about what Bradbury’s reasoning behind that was, as far as the— that it wasn’t pure physics or—? Well, I think that he was— well, let me say that in late ’ 45 and in ’ 46, it wasn’t clear what Los Alamos might do. If I can grossly exaggerate, if you ask the military if they want an improvement in any particular thing, they say, no, we’re perfectly happy with what we’ve got. And Bradbury was concerned that the military might view the role of Los Alamos as just making more Fat Men and Little Boys. And he wasn’t interested in doing that. He wanted to do R& D [ research and development] on new weapons physics concepts. OK. And this is because he’s a scientist at heart? I mean what—? I think it’s because— I think probably it’s a number of reasons. One is, I think, is because he was a scientist at heart. Number two is he liked the arrangement with the University of California. Although that’s a separate issue, and let me say that until, oh, late winter of 1946, the University UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 15 of California was not really interested in pursuing, continuing, their management role of Los Alamos. Once the war was over, their piece was done? Their commitment expired six months after the end of the war. And they were asked by the Corps of Engineers that ran the Manhattan Project to continue, and their response was not just No, it was Hell, no. We have absolutely no interest in this. It would be an interesting research project to pursue that a little bit further, and Alan Carr [ LANL archivist] has done some of this, and actually he wrote an article about how Los Alamos got to be the way it was and what some of the correspondence was back and forth. But by the summer of 1946, the University of California had changed their position 180 degrees. I speculate that the reason for that was that a great champion of nuclear weapons and a nuclear weapons role for the University of California was E. O. La