Interview with Nick C. Aquilina, April 6, 2004

Nevada Test Site Oral History Project University of Nevada, Las Vegas Interview with Nick Aquilina April 6, 2004 Las Vegas, Nevada Interview Conducted By Joan Leavitt © 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 Nick Aquilina April 6, 2004 Conducted by Joan Leavitt Table of Contents Mr. Aquilina recalls his early career with Reynolds Electrical and Engineering Company [ REECo] at the Nevada Test Site. 1 Soviet scientists visited the Nevada Test Site for the Joint Verification Experiment [ JVE] in 1988. 3 The presence of Soviet personnel at the test site drew considerable media attention and strong reactions from the public. 7 Mr. Aquilina describes the organizational structure of the U. S. and Soviet test programs. 9 Arms control negotiations required a balance between practical and political concerns. Diplomats often proposed or insisted upon measures that were not feasible from an operations standpoint. 14 Mr. Aquilina recalls the living conditions and Russian hospitality that U. S. personnel experienced while working at Semipalatansk, the Soviet nuclear test site. 18 Journalists were eager to cover the Joint Verification Experiment events in both the United States and the Soviet Union. 25 Mr. Aquilina discusses his friendships and working relationships with several key figures in the nuclear testing program, including Troy Wade, Robert Barker, Victor Alessi, and Joseph Behne. 26 Trips to the Soviet test site at Semipalatinsk called for logistical innovation and personal sacrifices from U. S. workers and officials. 30 Mr. Aquilina shares some personal memories from his experiences in Geneva and the Soviet Union. 36 Hosting Soviet scientists at the Nevada Test Site created security concerns, but hospitality and entertainment were readily provided. 38 Mr. Aquilina discusses the roles of certain individuals within the organizational framework of the test program. 44 Mr. Aquilina describes the structure and responsibilities of the Nevada Test Site Planning Board. 48 Both journalists and protestors took interest in nuclear tests at the Nevada Test Site. 51 The intense focus on nuclear testing gave test site workers a common objective and contributed to a strong sense of camaraderie. Mr. Aquilina describes how the test site fostered a sense of “ family” among its workers. 55 Mr. Aquilina discusses the end of the Cold War the the Nevada Test Site’s role in upholding a policy of deterrence. 57 UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 1 Interview with Nick Aquilina April 6, 2004 in Las Vegas, NV Conducted by Joan Leavitt [ 00: 00: 00] Begin Track 2, Disk 1. Joan Leavitt: I would just kind of like to lead up to 1987. I understand that you came to the test site in 1962 and you worked with Reynolds Electrical and Engineering Company [ REECo]. Some of this information I got from your video, so if I wrote it down wrong this is a great time to get those kinds of things corrected. Now it looks like you worked under Ray Emans and that was under NTS support, is that right? Nick Aquilina: The Atomic Energy Commission’s Nevada Test Site support office at the Nevada Test Site. OK. Now that was at the test site. It wasn’t in Las Vegas. That’s right. Mr. Emans was the director of that office. OK. And then you had mentioned about working in town as a plans and budget director at the AEC? That’s correct. I came into town in 1973, 1974, in that era and became the director of plans and budget. OK, good. And then it seemed like you had mentioned [ Mahlon] Ink Gates. You told some delightful stories. Ink became our manager in 1971, the Atomic Energy Commission’s, then the Department of Energy’s, manager of the office, and I worked under him as the director of plans and budget. OK. And then you said he was kind of a mentor. UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 2 Oh, he’s a wonderful man. He was a retired general, and just something special about the man as a leader. He understood the need to be a leader first and a manager second. You had said that you had kind of patterned some of your style after him. Well, I tried to. That’s impossible to do but you try to pattern the way you manage and the way [ 00: 05: 00] you treat people off people like him, after people like him, so I always considered him as one of my many mentors in this business. He certainly was right at the top. That’s good. The next date that I noticed in your career was that you went to Idaho Falls with Charlie Williams to be a deputy manager to Troy Wade. No, Charlie Williams who was the deputy manager here under Ink Gates went to Idaho to be the manager of the Idaho National Engineering Laboratory which is located outside Idaho Falls, Idaho, similar to the test site here. Reactor safety was the principal responsibility up there. And I went with Charlie as his assistant manager for administration. I later became his deputy manager. And then Troy Wade replaced Charlie as the manager in 1983, so I was Troy’s deputy until 1987. OK. OK, good, you’re clarifying up, you know, some of these details. I appreciate that. And it looks like before you came and took over as manager at the test site— now you used the term NVO—? NVOO, which is Nevada Operations Office. NVOO was the AEC’s short term for the Nevada Operations Office. All the DOE sites around the country had that symbol, if you will. ALOO was the Albuquerque office, Nevada was NVOO, RLO is the Richland [ Washington] office, Oak Ridge [ Tennessee], et cetera. That caught my ear. Right, NVOO. UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 3 And so you came to be manager July 1, 1987. That’s correct. Now during that time there were some Geneva negotiations going on, and can you tell what you knew about those negotiations? We knew very little, which was very interesting, because those activities were going on. They started under Ronald Reagan as part of some of the START [ Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty] treaties and some of the other treaties under President Reagan. But in our world, we really didn’t know or expect that the then- Soviets would be coming to Nevada and we would be going to their test site. The first time I heard it was very early in 1988 when Troy Wade, who was then the acting assistant secretary for defense programs for the Department of Energy, called me. And Troy and I had known each other for many years obviously, but when Troy called me he says, We’re going to have some Soviet political and technical people coming to this test site for a familiarization tour of the site. And then he gave me my instructions of what to do and expect on this particular visit. So that was the first time I had really come to the realization that we might be hosting Soviets at our test site. That must have stirred some really interesting feelings in you. Well, quite a shock because we were in the midst of the Cold War and, you know, this was the Ronald Reagan era when Ronald Reagan talked about defeating the Soviet Union and the Cold War was at its height, so it was quite a shock to us that here we might be hosting Soviets. And in fact on this familiarization tour we would in fact be hosting them. Some very senior people from the Soviet Union came over here. And it was a cold January day; it was Super Bowl weekend of January 1988 that they came here. I recall it was Super Bowl weekend because we had to get them a one- night hotel stay before they went to the test site in Las Vegas, and as you may know Super Bowl weekend is a big week in this town. The hotels are jammed and if you’re not at the UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 4 Super Bowl you’re in Las Vegas. We went down to the Golden Nugget and tried to negotiate some rooms. The people at the Golden Nugget who were very nice and cooperative made it clear to us that this was an awful big week for them and for them to provide [ 00: 10: 00] us a $ 55.00 room and to tie up an entire floor of the Golden Nugget was really pressing. But they in fact did give us that Monday night, I believe it was, of that week prior to the Super Bowl. And we had, it must’ve been thirty to forty Soviets, plus all the American contingent that came from back in Washington, staying at the Golden Nugget. Then the following day we did some tours in town and then we took them out to the test site. Now that was quite a long week from January 24 to January 30. That was a lot of time to be, I guess, showing them— What exactly did you—? Well, they were trying to establish how would this joint experiments be done at our site and their site, so they were just looking at protocols and procedures. Where would they stay at the test site? What would be available to them? What kind of equipment would be available to them? What kind of eating facilities, you know, recreational facilities, whatever. It truly was a familiarization trip and one to start talking about how would we perform these activities. The negotiations were going on in Geneva between the two countries, but some of the details of those protocols needed to be resolved and established. Things like how many people, and I believe it turned out that on any given moment there could be forty- five Soviet party people here, and when we went there it was the same thing, and you could change out the number of people, or the kinds of people, but the maximum you could have in any given time was forty- five. There was a lot of discussion on how would you send over the list of potential people who’d come over so that each country would have the opportunity to veto somebody. That didn’t happen very much but just the ability and the authority to cross off, if you will, from the potential list, because UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 5 we would submit a list of a few hundred that may be over there in the next seven, eight months, and they did the same thing here. So the visit to the site was exactly that: to get familiar. Where would their working areas be? What would they be allowed? How could they protect their stuff? You know, what kind of security would we have for them? So it was that kind of a thing. Now both you and Troy Wade mentioned that there had been, I think you would call it, measuring devices— well anyway, let me use the term “ remote sensing laboratory devices” which had measured each other’s explosions? Well, the whole purpose of the Joint Verification Experiment, to put it in simple terms, was to verify the treaty. The treaty that was proposed in 1974 and came into effect on April 1, 1976 was to limit the size of the devices to be tested to a 150 kilotons. Prior to that the treaty was that you could test underground, but there was nothing said about how big of an experiment you could conduct. So the purpose of the Threshold Test Ban Treaty of 1974 that came into effect in the spring of 1976 put a limit on that, 150 kilotons. The Senate never approved that treaty. We followed it but it was not a formal treaty because, as you know, in our nation when you have a treaty you have to have Senate approval of your treaty. The reason the [ U. S.] Senate would not approve it, there was no verification process, you know, it was trust but verify kind of issues. So the purpose of the Joint Verification Experiment was to have a methodology that you could verify that they in fact were living up to the treaty requirements. So again the purpose was, how do you validate that, how do you verify that, without being intrusive to the experiment? Experiments are very expensive. A lot of classified stuff goes on in the explosion. So there had to be a method that you could verify. There’s many ways you can do it. Seismic is one way. But [ 00: 15: 00] seismic, you had to have an awful lot of seismic gear in very close to get an accurate reading, because geology will influence how the ground reacts to a seismic condition, just like an UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 6 earthquake. So that wasn’t a desired effect. And the United States came up principally at Los Alamos laboratory with a method that was called CORRTEX [ Continuous Reflectrometry for Radius versus Time Experiment]. What it really did, and to put it in simple terms: if you have a short in your telephone lines to your house, a telephone worker will come out and he will send a signal down the line. When it hits a short it bounces back and he’s able to measure the time it took to bounce back. And through a mathematical formula he can tell where that short is, the length from where he sent the signal until the short and then it comes back and it’s recorded in a device. Well, CORRTEX is very similar. What you’re doing there is at some distance from their ground zero where they’re going to have their experiment, thirty- one meters to be exact, you put cables down, and those cables come out to a recording trailer that you saw in the picture, and when the experiment goes off underground and starts crushing that cable, just through the blast effects, you’re able to measure the speed of the shorts— So the cable is related to CORRTEX. That’s correct, and through a lot of experiments and a lot of discovery and inventions that Los Alamos did, we’re able to measure the yield of the shot probably plus or minus five to ten percent. So it was a very acceptable way of measuring the experiment, plus since you were thirty- one meters away with your stuff, your cables, you were not being intrusive in their experiment. All you would have to do is drill a hole parallel to their hole, same depth, and put your cables down thirty- one meters away. You didn’t have to have anything to do with their particular hole. So that’s what CORRTEX was. And the Soviets had developed a very similar— they didn’t call it CORRTEX but whatever they called it, it was very similar in concept to what we did. UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 7 So that’s what was the purpose of the JVE. And so they came to the Nevada Test Site on August 17, 1988 [ and] conducted on our Kearsarge event a similar experiment. We went to their site and on September 14, 1988 we conducted our CORRTEX experiment. Both nations claimed victory, if you will, that they were able to verify the yield of the shot. And as a result of that, a year or two later the [ U. S.] Senate in fact approved that treaty and it became a treaty between the United States and the Soviet Union. Thank you. You’ve given kind of an overall summary leading up to Kearsarge, and I know that it was not only important to be opening it up to the Soviets, but it also required a great deal of organization and logistics because of the media attention that came. Quite a bit. There was quite a bit of media interest. I thought not as much as there should’ve been, because I really felt that this was a significant historical event in bringing two enemies together with a common goal and perhaps was symbolic of ending the Cold War. Because here you’re bringing nuclear scientists into our country and then we’re sending nuclear scientists into theirs, and these people were talking, enjoying each other’s company often, and so it was a very significant, I thought, step in ending the Cold War. And there was some media interest, but not as much as I thought there should’ve been and could’ve been. I don’t think people really [ 00: 20: 00] understood what the impact of this was. You know, the Cold War definition is different to everybody. What was the Cold War? When did it start? When did it end? But regardless of your own definitions, surely the nuclear deterrence of both countries and the nuclear power of both countries was a very significant part of the Cold War, and to bring the two nations together with another treaty, a treaty that eventually led to cessation of testing— that wasn’t the purpose of it but we got there a couple years later, as you know. The last test we did at the site here was in September of 1992, the Divider event, so here you’re talking less than, what, UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 8 almost exactly four years later, that was the last test that we did. So I think all of this kind of came together, so yes, we were busy with the media but it didn’t get the attention I thought it should. Yes. Well, I noticed you had a number of photo opportunities. There was quite a process put in place as far as for media to get badged. A lot of inquiries to—? Yes, and most of those, though, were of course local reporters here, and there was always that interest, and places like Albuquerque where they’re very familiar with the Department of Energy, formerly the Atomic Energy Commission, places like that. But on the national news circuit you didn’t see too much of that. We had some UPI [ United Press International] and AP [ Associated Press] people coming up from California, Los Angeles, but again— there was coverage, I don’t want to say it, but I didn’t think the significance of it was ever truly understood. I thought it was a historical part of the end of the Cold War. Well, I had read in one document, Thomas Clark had said that, I think it had been 1982 since the media had actually watched one of these tests, and this was really an opportunity that hadn’t been opened up for quite a while. Yes, in the last few years of testing we opened up a little bit more. After the Joint Verification Experiment of 1988, subsequent to that occasionally news people— we always broadcast it over the radio, you know, the exact zero time of a shot and we would have the countdown on the radio, especially some of our larger tests, so people in Las Vegas, in the event they felt any ground motion at all or any movement of a tall building, that they would know that it was not an earthquake; it was an activity at the site. Now you were making a point of announcements before the tests for the reason so that the public could gain a little more confidence in the test site, weren’t you? UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 9 Well, confidence yes, but also the fear factor. If you were on the top of a tall building and we were doing a large experiment, the ground motion which would be fairly slight, but if you were on the top of a tall building you would feel the same movement that an earthquake would provide. So we wanted to make sure, so we pre- announced and then we would announce on the radio the actual countdown. We never knew the exact time of a test before the fact, because depending on weather conditions and things at the site. So we would announce that on the radio live and let people know. Also, you know, in case people had any damage. With some of the larger tests you might have a cracked window, or if you had a water well in your back yard, depending upon the exact geology of that area, there might be some damage done to your well. And we had a contractor who would go out and investigate the damage and then we would pay whatever was required. OK. I found some names, and one of the names happens to be the author of this book that you showed me, I Am A Hawk. Let’s see, what was his name? Viktor Mikhailov. [ I Am a Hawk: Memoirs of Atomic Energy Minister ( Edinburgh: Pentland Press, 1996)] Yes, Viktor Mikhailov, yes, and he’s on the list. Tell me what you remember about Igor Palenykh. He was their similar to Paul Robinson was for us. I don’t think he had the exact same title probably, but in their world he was the ambassador for nuclear test talks. And so he was over in Geneva and he would negotiate with Paul, and he came out here to the test site. So he was the [ 00: 25: 00] political person in this activity. Yes, so he came for the January visit. Did he come again? He came for the January and he came many— oh, he came many times. He was here on the event day. UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 10 Oh really. Oh, on Kearsarge then, August 17. August 17. He was here then and came out a number of times. Like I said, he’s since passed away. He was quite a gentleman, very smart, but he was a political guy doing the negotiating. Tell me what you remember about Yevgeniy Kutovoy? Other than that he was part of their scientific group. I don’t really remember much about him. OK. Well, here’s Sergei Zelentsov, Soviet air force. Yes, he was another member of their party over here, and it was interesting for a couple of reasons. One, of course, a lot of them did not speak English, so our communications were totally through the interpreters. Number two is any formal conversations were with very few people. Palenykh that you mentioned and of course the author of our book, Mikhailov. We used to call him Viktor, so I keep forgetting his last name. Mikhailov. Probably easier to remember the first names. And it would be through people like Mikhailov. The rest of the people, you didn’t have much to do with them really. Now their counterparts on our side, our scientists from Los Alamos or Livermore, dealt with them one- on- one with their counterpart, an engineer or a physicist, et cetera. But as far as management people, we were dealing mostly with the few that I mentioned. So most of my memories and my dealings are with those few. With Viktor. Probably with Viktor. Viktor, Palenykh, and later when we went to their test site, with General Il’enko, which would be this individual right here [ newspaper clipping, N. Aquilina14]. OK. Now it looks like their nuclear program was more under their military? Well, the way they’re set up organizationally, they have a Ministry of Atomic Energy is what they had, equivalent to our Washington kind of a thing. But at the test site, General Il’enko was UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 11 their test site manager. That’s that individual [ indicating photo]. Not Mikhailov; Il’enko, the general, he was their— I think probably in here somewhere the proper spelling of that is [ sound of pages turning]. He might have it in his index. Oh, here he is right here. There he is right there. There he is. That’s him. He’s the Soviet commander. OK. I thought I saw that name somewhere. OK. So you had more to do with Il’enko then? Yes. I was his counterpart, so he would deal with me. Oh, he was your counterpart. Yes, because he was the manager of their test site. I was the manager of our test site. OK, and he’s an army commander. Yes. Viktor Mikhailov was more like a lab director here. It’s not equivalent exactly, but if you looked at Palenykh was like Paul Robinson and then Viktor would be a combination of Troy Wade at the time and the director of a lab, because he was head of their science stuff. And then their manager, General Il’enko, and I, we were managers of the test sites. So that was our counterparts. Well, let me also kind of go over some of the U. S. officials that were named on the list. Joseph Salgado. Joseph Salgado was the headquarters, Department of Energy guy. Joe was the head of the operating offices, chief operating officer, for the Department of Energy. But the interesting thing and an interesting story about Joe is that while he was going to their test site, because he came for the shot, the Senate approved his appointment by the president as deputy secretary of the Department of Energy. That happened while he was en route. So we thought, and Joe thought, that it would be a wonderful historical, unique thing to have him sworn in on their test UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 12 [ 00: 30: 00] site. So Troy brought a Bible and in our barracks with all the Soviet generals with all their medals observing, Troy swore in Salgado as deputy secretary [ N. Aquilina4]. On Soviet soil. On Soviet soil, and when you swear in, you know, you talk about your enemies and “ under God” and so I guess those Soviet officers must’ve been wondering what in the world are these people doing. And I was relaying our process through an interpreter to these officers of the Soviet military, and there was Joe taking his oath of office. So that’s who Joe Salgado was. He kind of was our boss; he was Troy’s boss in Washington. Oh, OK, because I have been trying to figure out what the personnel organization would be. OK, so you would say that Salgado—? Well, he was the deputy secretary of energy, so he was all our bosses. John Harrington was the secretary at the time. OK, Harrington, and then Troy Wade was kind of between Salgado—? Troy was under Salgado as the assistant secretary for defense programs, and then this office, Nevada, reports through the assistant secretary of defense programs, so that was the chain of command. OK, yes, that’s helpful there. Now we’ve got Ambassador Paul Robinson— Paul Robinson. Wonderful guy. He was the ambassador, official appointed by the president and the State Department— he was in the State Department— as the ambassador for nuclear test talks, was his title. So did George Schultz kind of turn things over to him then? Well, he would be working for George Schultz as the head of the State Department and as you know, there’s many ambassadors under him, but Paul’s title was ambassador for nuclear test UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 13 talks, so Paul was head of the negotiation team in Geneva. But the interesting thing is Paul came out of the weapons program, so he wasn’t just a political State Department person. Paul was the deputy director of Los Alamos National Laboratory at one time in his career, and today he’s the director of Sandia National Laboratory in Albuquerque, New Mexico, which is a contractor to the Department of Energy and does the engineering part of the nuclear bombs. Oversimplification, but Livermore and Los Alamos does the physics and Sandia does the engineering. It’s more than that, but if you had to look at it in a very simplified way, the design people are Los Alamos and Livermore; Sandia’s all the engineered parts of the bomb; and Nevada is where they test. Well, I understand in order to coordinate a test, you’re dealing with seventeen different organizations. Incredible amount of different organizations, ranging from national laboratories to Department of Defense to many other federal agencies like the weather bureau and the USGS [ U. S. Geological Survey], and then all our contractors at the site. So it’s an incredible web of different organizations that comes together, and all at that moment reporting to the Department of Energy. It seems like the collaboration that goes on among that many people, that many organizations— I’ve never seen anything like it at any other site, and certainly no other government organization. Well, this is, you know, to me the very interesting behind- the- scenes preparations for one of these shots, you know, because a shot might have a name but all of the organization that takes place behind the scenes is just, I mean, it’s phenomenal. That’s right. Was phenomenal. Well, that’s what we want to try to preserve is that part of the story. I noticed that you had called it a “ can do” organization and that even that there was a reputation that some of your people UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 14 had that reached Geneva, and that Ambassador Robinson would tell you about how the work that being done over in the Soviet Union was being talked about. Could you share any of that? [ 00: 35: 00] Well, a number of things. I went a couple times to Geneva myself because we had representatives there to help Paul and his team, because a lot of Paul’s teams were State Department- type people who are good at negotiations but did not know very much about conducting a nuclear test. Yes, what was practical, yes. Paul did, but a lot of people under him did not. So we had a number of people on Paul’s team. When I say “ we” I mean Los Alamos, Livermore, Sandia, and people here at the Nevada Test Site. Well, I noticed your assistant, Jim Magruder, was one of those who was a member of the delegation. That’s right, Jim spent time over there, because Jim is very knowledgeable about diagnostic systems. Before he came to work for the government, he worked for EG& G [ Edgerton, Germeshausen, and Grier] who was our major diagnostics contractor, if you will, our technical support diagnostics contractor. They’re the ones that develop the equipment that you get data from the shot. And when Jim was working for EG& G, he theoretically invented many things related to diagnostics. Then he came to work for us, and Jim had a number of jobs, but he was a test controller. We had three certified, trained, official certified test controllers. Jim was one of the three. We would assign a test controller for each event at the site, and for that event the test controller is in charge. The labs are in charge of the technical aspects of the explosion, but the Department of Energy’s test controller was the one who said yea or nay. He would assure the UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 15 safety aspects and the security aspects. And so these seventeen or eighteen different organizations on shot day all reported to Jim Magruder. And it either went or it didn’t. That’s right. He was the final say. So that was Jim. And so he went over to Geneva and he would participate in the negotiations to let them know how things were at the site. But then we would send finance people over to see how are the financial stuff going to be done. We would send other people over who understood drilling. To give you a small example, I remember in one of their negotiations over there, you know, they were signing papers that talked about doing continuous cores, core sampling, which means as you drill a two- or- three- thousand- foot hole, they wanted one continuous core sample from the side of the hole. Well, that’s impossible to do. I mean, you can’t do that. They’re going to break. The ground isn’t that stable. You’re not going to get a continuous core sample. But State Department people don’t know that. They were putting that in legal documents. So we would have people who understood our drilling activities over there helping Paul’s team, because there’d be quite a team doing all this negotiations. It’s a very complex thing when you’re negotiating with a country like the Soviet Union so you want to get everything as right as you can. Now I understood that the second round of negotiations occurred in February, but the document wasn’t actually signed until May, so are you saying then that the negotiations that you were involved in, and some of the lab people, went on from February until May? Is that the time frame we’re looking at here? Yes, and they went on far after the shots, because now you had the experiment to prove you can do it. Now the question became, how do we continue