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Interview with Charles McWilliam, July 9, 2004

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2004-07-09

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Narrator affiliation: Engineer; Administrator, U.S. Department of Energy

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    McWilliam, Charles. Interview, 2004 July 09. MS-00818. [Transcript]. Oral History Research Center, Special Collections and Archives, University Libraries, University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Las Vegas, Nevada. http://n2t.net/ark:/62930/d1sj1b32b

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    Nevada Test Site Oral History Project University of Nevada, Las Vegas Interview with Charles McWilliam July 9, 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 Charles McWilliam July 9, 2004 Conducted by Joan Leavitt Table of Contents Introduction: involvement with preparation for the JVE ( 1988) 1 Soviet visit to NTS and culture differences 6 Visits to USSR and observations of Soviet people 7 Interactions with Soviets during their U. S. visits 10 Relations with OSIA over JVE treaty implementation 12 Photograph identification: Original Soviet JVE group in the U. S. [ C. McWilliam1] 15 Disneyland trip [ C. McWilliam2- 4] 17 Shopping at Smith’s supermarket 19 Disneyland trip, day at the beach, and shopping in Los Angeles [ C. McWilliam4a- 7] 21 Baseball games at NTS [ C. McWilliam8- 8b] 25 Picnic at Mt. Charleston [ C. McWilliam9- 13] 27 Example of Soviet machoism [ C. McWilliam14] 31 Second Disneyland trip [ C. McWilliam15- 18] 31 Trips throughout the Las Vegas area [ C. McWilliam19- 29] 32 Visit to the beach, local visits, and gift- giving [ C. McWilliam30- 38] 35 Travels to USSR to work as lead negotiator at Semipalatinsk [ C. McWilliam39- 61] 40 Transporting American drill rig from Kazakhstan to Vladivostok for shipment back to the U. S. [ C. McWilliam62- 74] 50 Conclusion: visit to Moscow prior to departing USSR [ C. McWilliam75- 77] 60 UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 1 Interview with Charles McWilliam July 9, 2004 in Las Vegas, NV Conducted by Joan Leavitt [ 00: 00: 00] Begin Track 2, Disk 1. Joan Leavitt: You’ve got some pictures that you’d like to describe and show, so why don’t you just go ahead and start with that. Charles McWilliam: Actually, before we do that, we were talking earlier about how I got involved in JVE [ Joint Verification Experiment]. And JVE was an ongoing process that actually started in January of ’ 88 with a Soviet visit to the test site after, I call it, Ronnie and Gorby got together and decided we ought to do something about verifying the Threshold Test Ban Treaty. At the time of the January visit, I was chief of one of the branches at the test site that supported everything that supported the Soviets coming in; food, lodging, transportation, security, all that kind of stuff. I provided the support for that. As part of that visit, they went back to Geneva and came up with agreements to start working on doing a joint verification experiment, both in the U. S. and the Soviet Union [ USSR]. The first group of Soviets, and I’m going off memory, probably showed up in March or April to start doing geological work. That was a group of seven. At that point, as I mentioned, Stewart was supposed to be the lead for it because that’s what his division— John Stewart. John Stewart. Yes. John Stewart, and that’s what his division did. He didn’t want to come out to the test site every day, so I volunteered to Jim Magruder that I would take that since I’m out here anyway. And so I became the lead U. S. representative to meet with the Soviets, to negotiate all UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 2 the support, all the requirements we’d have to meet that they could meet, and we were working off, at that point, a draft agreement from Geneva. Well, we actually got so far ahead of the work in Geneva that we were doing the negotiating, deciding what would happen when, and then they were implementing it, putting it on paper and in writing in Geneva. So it was a work in progress, and the work was going in front of the paperwork. So there was a group of seven Soviets that showed up. Do you remember their names? I probably have a list somewhere. Maybe when we go through the pictures, I can identify them. Some of them I’ll be able to identify pretty easy. We had no organization in place to begin this process, so we were basically— It was very sudden. You got the word in November and things had to be moving in January. Yeah, and it happened real fast. And so we started pulling in the expertise from our organization that we thought would be worthwhile. On those daily meetings we had the USGS [ United States Geological Survey] folks, the Fenix & Scisson, our contractor that did drilling, both of the labs [ Los Alamos and Livermore], EG& G [ Edgerton, Germeshausen, and Grier], REECo [ Reynolds Electrical and Engineering Company], all the various contractors that provided support. So we’d have at least a member from each one of those organizations that would be interacting with the Soviets on a daily basis. These were primarily the contractors and government organizations that had been used to using the test site? Correct. We may need to back up. The laboratories, basically Livermore and Los Alamos, provided criteria: This is what we need to do to conduct a test. This is what we need. The DOE [ Department of Energy] office here and our contractors provided that. UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 3 How old were you at this time? Let’s see, this was ’ 88, so I was thirty- seven. You were one of the younger members of this group. Yes, I was one of the younger members. Were you dealing mainly with technical people in your group? On both sides. And we’ll go through some of the personalities. As we go through the pictures, I can describe them to you. And that’s what made it really easy because everybody was— Is because technical language— It’s the same. Yeah. It’s an international language. Except for the interpreters. The translators/ interpreters had a heck of a time because although at that point we thought the world evolved around nuclear testing, it’s really a very small number of people in the world, in both countries, that were nuclear testers and understood what it took. How many people, do you think, in the United States can understand? How small is that group? [ 00: 05: 00] At that point, I would have said three thousand people in the U. S. And how many do think that there was in the Soviet Union? Probably a similar number. About three thousand. Now, that’s somebody that understands a piece of it. If you start looking at somebody that understood the whole picture, we’re probably talking less than a hundred in each. In each country. UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 4 In each country, and I was one of those unique people that understood all the sciences involved, having been involved in nuclear testing at that point for about fifteen years. I understood the big picture and everything that went into making it, so that just fell right into my lap. You had said that sometimes it was a challenge to retrain Department of Defense [ DoD] people who were more temporary and would come in and out. Yes. And that the technical world had a challenge in educating people who make public policies and who are part of other agency groups. Well, that’s very true. Through all this process, and really the latter parts of JVE when we were starting to implement the treaty. I’ve got some pictures of that— what was called an AI device, anti- intrusive device negotiation after JVE, but this was part of the JVE that never got ironed out. So we went into Moscow during one trip, and at this point organizational changes in Washington had occurred. Our lead was at that point from ACDA, the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, and then we have had people from On- Site Inspection Agency [ OSIA], people from office of secretary of defense, and these are policy people from Washington that don’t understand technical terms or what we required. What’s possible and what isn’t possible. We actually had those people accusing the DOE laboratory people of passing secrets to the Soviets because we could talk back and forth with the Soviets, understand what they were saying, they understood what we were saying. The other policy folks— policy weenies, I’ll call them, and you’ll hear this term from time to time— didn’t have a clue. They wouldn’t know what was secret and what wasn’t. So, because they didn’t understand what was going on, we must have been doing something wrong. And this is part of what you see in interagency working UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 5 groups in Washington. There’s so many jealousies and empire building. They don’t work together to get something done. But yes, it’s a big problem getting the policy makers in Washington to understand the realities of the world- that science tells you this can be done, this can’t be done. Now, one of those realities seems to have to do with verification, because on the PNET [ Peaceful Nuclear Explosives Treaty] treaty and on the Limited Test Ban, both of them had language that said the Soviets would have access to the testing explosive sites, and the Americans would have access to the testing explosive sites. Now, my question, and this was back in 1974 and ’ 76, that someone, I’m assuming a policy maker, said that this would be possible, and the technical people said, it’s not possible. Is that kind of the debate that went on? That’s kind of the debate that went on. OK, so that’s one of the reasons why it took twelve years for a verification to finally come together and say, This is possible. Right. To finally hammer out what— You explained why it wasn’t possible? It wasn’t possible when you look at it from the picture, and part of it has to do with logistics, and these are some of the things that got hammered out through the JVE. If we have access to the site, what’s that mean? We can stand around and watch? That doesn’t do any good. So until somebody goes through and defines, What does “ access” mean? What are we going to gain from it? Is it worth, one, risking people’s lives because you’re putting them in places that are not very nice, and what logistics do we need? Are they going to provide housing? Food? Water? Clean air? That’s all the kinds of stuff that weren’t described. And does “ access” mean we get to see the nuclear device? UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 6 That falls under the category of intrusiveness, doesn’t it? Right. Yeah. And protecting the national secrets. And the suspicion seemed to be one of the biggest obstacles of all. [ 00: 10: 00] Yes, and I can tell you things like, and this is after the first group of seven. This is later, when Viktor Mikhailov showed up who, at that point, had been a Professor M. Nobody really knew his name or who he was, but he was like a lab director, their version of Los Alamos, Arzamas 16. And they were scared to death of Americans. We were baby killers; we were mean, bad people. We were concerned the first week for his health. His blood pressure went through the roof. He had almost passed out one time. It was this bad that he was so worried about not only meeting with Americans but being able to make a good showing. You said that they absolutely did not like being embarrassed. That was one of the worst things you could do to a Soviet was to embarrass them. That’s almost life or death to them. Correct. That’s right. That’s right. So if you wanted somebody to succeed on their side, you wanted to make sure they didn’t get embarrassed. That was a quick culture thing that you had to learn, wasn’t it? Oh, yeah, there was a lot of things that we learned real fast, and there was a lot of things that I didn’t realize why things were a certain way until I’d gone to the Soviet Union. Well, they didn’t have a problem embarrassing you. Oh, no. Because it seemed like whenever you made a mistake, they would rake you over the coals for it. UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 7 Oh, yes, yes, every time, every time. But in our culture, it’s not that big a deal, but they thought they were really doing something. And only once, consciously, did I have to embarrass one of their folks because— Shmatov. Alex Shmatov. Yes. Because I needed somebody in charge, and at that point I had two people, the technical head and their political head, and I needed to sort their folks out, so I had one person. And by embarrassing him, he was no longer in the lead. Was a decision that— did you make that by yourself, or did you do that, consulting with—? Yes. I talked it over with Magruder, saying, I’m having this problem and I’m going to solve it. And that was how I solved it, and it just happened to work itself into that situation where I could. That was brilliant. Well, it worked. It was one of those risks you take and you say, It’s got to happen. Where do you think they got their impressions of Americans as baby killers and things like that? This group, and Shmatov wasn’t one of those, but the techies had been so isolated, even from their own society, that all the brainwashing they did was where they got it. And I’ll tell you another story out of school, but this was on my second time into the Soviet Union, where we had to move the drill rig and equipment over to Nakhodka— Vladivostok— to ship it out. This was after the JVE. After the JVE. And they weren’t going to fly the C- 5— they weren’t going to do the expensive route back and you had to go the long way home on a boat, right? UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 8 Right. Well, I didn’t actually ride the boat. We ended up flying it from Kazakhstan to Vladivostok, and that’s a whole long other story. But on this trip— and this was two- and- a- half weeks, and we never knew where we were going to be and where we were going to sleep during this whole time, so everybody got pretty buddy- buddy. We were all together— so we had two KGB escorts, a good guy and a bad guy. They played the good cop/ bad cop thing. But we were sitting in Nakhodka, waiting to on load the equipment onto the ship. We were waiting for the ship—. He comes to me one evening and says, Have you got anything for me to read in English? Because he’s our interpreter, too, from the Soviet side. And I had brought in a U. S. history of World War II because of stories I had heard from other Soviets, saying to the effect that we helped the Nazis against the Soviet Union. So I had figured out these guys have a misimpression. They’ve been taught all along that we were the bad guys, even back in World War II, their great patriotic war. That we were on the side of the Nazis. Yes. And so I brought this book in with me on this trip. And we weren’t supposed to give gifts that would change their understandings of things, but since he asked for it, Here. Go ahead and read this. He sat up all night, read that whole book, and the next day he had a totally different expression on his face. It was just like the light had gone on and all of a sudden, the Americans weren’t so bad. [ 00: 15: 00] And this was after Gorbachev’s time of freedom of speech and things like that, and they still had these various misconceptions. Yes. It was not coming in and changing very rapidly. And this was a guy stationed at Moscow. These two Soviet KGB escorts, when we first met with them, I was talking to one and saying, Oh, here, you’re going to get to see your country, get to go across. [ And he said] I don’t want to go on this. I was told to do this. UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 9 Because Moscow is their heaven. That’s the only place they ever want to go. The rest of the country, they think, is junk. So it’s not that they even see their own country. They don’t want to. Not especially— they’re not tourists; they’re not interested. No. And you also said that they seldom smiled. Yes. Early on, we’d get rumors of the U. S. people over there getting very depressed. Well, when I started going over, I started looking at why are these people getting depressed. And it’s because you never see a smile. And my first time in, I think I was there for six weeks, and I got on a Lufthansa Airline in Moscow, and the stewardess smiled, and it was like I’d died and gone to heaven. It clicked right then what’s been missing. So that next trip back in, where we were going coast to coast over the Soviet Union, I turned to our interpreter while we were sitting in a bus waiting for— well, actually, they were getting me some medication out of a pharmacy because I had pneumonia at this point, and I was the only one on the list to go back in, so I had to go back in with pneumonia. You were fighting a lot of things, weren’t you? Oh, yeah. And so I’m telling him, Here’s a group of people walking down the street, not a smile on their face, and I’m telling him, If that was in the western world, those people would be laughing and smiling, telling jokes, and I said, You never see that here. And he just turned to me and said, Well, that’s the way we are. Now later, I put this all to [ together]— and this was flying out— it’s lack of capitalism. They have no hope of improving their status in life or where they are because, one, they don’t get to keep UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 10 the fruits of their labor. They don’t get to do anything with it that they want. And it was interesting, after the fall, when I was going back in doing implementations and stuff, you’d start seeing, from the younger ages, smiles. Really? Yeah. The twenty- somethings were starting to smile, but it hadn’t worked its way up through the ages yet. So that was an interesting— it really makes— like I came out one time and said, It’s capitalism that makes America great. Democracy just allows us to have it. And it was interesting. Oh, I can do this for days. Whatever direction you want. You have a lot of information. Did you want to start with your pictures? Yes. What we’ll do is I’ll go through the pictures. And these are two notebooks of pictures that the Soviets gave me. A lot of them are signed by the Soviets themselves. When various groups were leaving, they would pass on these books to us. These were pictures that they took, is that what you—? These are pictures that they took, or some of our folks took for them and they had additional copies made, and so a lot of these won’t show up anywhere else. So this is when we had the first group of seven, this first bunch here. OK. Now, where is— they’re in a home— These are taken in model homes. On the weekends, we would take them on trips to try to keep them occupied, gainfully employed, and not trying to find secrets on the test site. I guess I can say that now. So you kept them busy during the— We had them 24/ 7. UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 11 Did you ever get a break? Finally. I started taking them on the weekends because some weekends, I would be with them, and then I had to finally say, I’ve got to get a day off. So it was basically 24/ 7 because even if I wasn’t there, if there was a problem, I’d get the call. So yes. I was usually putting on site about eighty hours a week. We would have meetings in town. One day, for instance, I’d have to leave at— we’d bring people in off an airplane. I’d usually end up getting them set in and bedded down and everything, two o’clock in the morning. Three o’clock in the morning, I’d have to be back up for a meeting in town. Who met at three o’clock in the morning? Well, I’d have to leave the test site to make the meeting in town. You know, get up and get ready to go. And so we would have these early meetings in town before everybody else had to do their regular job in town, and then I’d go back out to the test site and make sure I was there in time for the three o’clock. So you didn’t get much sleep either, then. No. They needed a young one, didn’t they? They did, and they about burned him out. [ 00: 20: 00] And you did that pace for how many months? Basically from April till August. August, it slowed down, but we still had them around and they slowly went back to the test site, and then I went out to their test site and did another six weeks there. Was it Frances Guinn and you— Ernie Williams, was he a part of what—? UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 12 He was part of the support. We had Ernie Williams supporting, Frances Guinn supporting, a lot of folks in town supporting. And you have to remember, in addition to doing this, Vern Witherill who was the director of the test site, he went to the Soviet Union. So now, I’m director of the test site, too. I’ve got a billion dollar budget to manage everything in the test site, plus implementing this treaty, plus supporting the work going on in the Soviet Union, because we had to ship stuff back and forth all the time. Were the others equally as busy as you were? I don’t think so. I think they got the glory and I got the work. But no, I don’t think there was anybody else as busy, but there was a lot of people working, and I wouldn’t have been able to do this without having competent people. Part of your team. Part of our team. I say I did all the work but yeah, I did it, but I did it through a lot of other folks that were good. I could say, You go do this, and it happened. And I didn’t have to follow up and— I understand Frances Guinn was one that was kind of a right hand person for you. Yes. Right and left sometimes. But we had also a lot of lab guys and the contractor guys. It was hard later on, after JVE, we ended up implementing the treaty. Well, now along comes this other organization called OSIA that says, But we’re going to be the lead. We’re going to implement it. Now we ended up losing our slots of people that we could take to the Soviet Union, and it was even harder. And I, over and over again, had to push to these guys, We have volunteers. These are civilians, scientists; some of the few in the country that can do this that are volunteering their time to risk their lives to implement this treaty. Why wouldn’t they let you use them? UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 13 Well, because they wanted to be in charge. They wanted to say, We’re going to work you guys forty- eight hours a day. And I’m going, No, no, no. You’re not going to put our guys’ lives at risk. Again, if you talk about the nuclear physicists in the country that had ever tested a device, we’re down to six. You risk one of their lives to do this stuff, then it was nuts. And they were military, and they have different rules and regulations than civilians, so it was hard to train this organization on how to do it. But they had convinced the powers that be in Washington that they should be in charge of implementing the treaty, and so we had to train them. Was this under Clinton or was this under—? This was under Bush, the first Bush. It was under Bush. And, they don’t get involved in this level of detail, and in defense of the OSIA. They had been implementing the INF treaty, and that was a military- to- military type thing. Was the OSIA, were they less technical or—? Oh, yeah. They were less technically knowledgeable, then. Yes. And that was one of the problems. That was one of the big problems. And then the fact that they thought they could just step in and do what technical people had— When the treaty, JVE, was negotiated, we knew we needed a certain number of people. We gave up some of those slots to the intelligence, and then now comes the OSIA people, without any technical competence, and now we’re losing four more slots to their people. Actually more. UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 14 They’re going over there and they don’t have the technical expertise to do any monitoring whatsoever, so they’re going to stand around and look important? Yes. Is that really what it ended up being? It was so bad at one of the coordinating groups, and this is where we would actually implement to do a test when we were in the Soviet Union, OSIA guys in charge, and I’m sitting next to them as the technical head. And the Soviets were similar. They had their technical people there, Ministry of Atomic Energy people. Viktor Mikhailov, who is the minister, like our Secretary of Energy, with one of the generals that’s in charge of the site. The OSIA person starts the meeting, addresses the general, a one- star general— As if he’s in charge. — instead of the secretary, and I’m going, Oh, my God. It was just those kinds of things that just left us hanging many times. [ 00: 25: 00] When you talk about implementing, you said “ slots.” Does that mean that they retained the forty- five limits, limited number of people? Is that kind of what you’re talking about when you’re saying “ implemented it,” that Americans go over there— And we have this many slots that we can put people in. And the same thing when they come over here. And so you’re having too many cooks and not enough workers. Yes. With other agencies wanting to come in and have their presence be the one in charge. Yes. Well, you’re shedding some interesting light on the problems, even aftermath. UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 15 Oh, yes. It was lovely. [ Looking at photographs from this point] I can’t remember his name, but this was the gentleman that was technically in charge of the geological data gathering that was going on initially during the JVE. That’s another thing. We don’t have a list of names of the Russian teams. There are lists somewhere. But not declassified. They’re in my attic. They’re not declassified, or maybe, like you said, some of the paperwork was put together after the fact. Maybe this was just things that didn’t make it into the archives at all. Could be. Let’s see if I have some names here. But some of these folks came back. This is Michael Farafonov . The translator. Translator. And he came back. Alex Shmatov. Our KGB guy. Our KGB guy. Talked English as good as you and me. Grew up in New York. His dad worked for the Russian Embassy. I’m trying to remember his name [ tapping on photo]. Because he continued on in the organization. Actually, during implementation, he had a daughter born that had a heart problem. That’s the one. That’s the one. You told that story of how she had heart problems and how the Americans worked together to help her to get the surgery that she needed. UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 16 Vadim Smirnov . Vadim. Yeah. And so when I saw him later, ten years later at the reunion, he was there, and he’s turned into an alcoholic. At this time, he was young, energetic. It’s so sad. That’s common, though, with people over there, though, isn’t it? You want another story on alcoholism? While we were trying to move the equipment out of the test site after JVE, we were negotiating and they’re negotiating in Geneva. And so we’re sitting there waiting from day to day, and then finally we get the word, Well, we’re going to ship some of it on rail, but not the drill rig. So they bring in their equipment that are called tank haulers, and they’re hauling the equipment to the rail yard. But we’re negotiating and we’re saying, Well, why can’t we start early in the day? Because we couldn’t get started till ten o’clock in the morning. And by this time, I had built up a really good rapport. They would share stuff with me that they wouldn’t tell anybody else. And basically it got down to they couldn’t start because they had to put coolant into their equipment once it warmed up enough in the day. And I said, Well, why don’t you use antifreeze and keep something in it all the time? [ And they said] We can’t leave antifreeze in the equipment because the soldiers drink it all. So they’re drinking— Anything. Poison, basically, was the kind of alcohol they were drinking, just to get the alcohol. So all their military equipment, they’re draining it at night so it wouldn’t freeze and refilling the radiators the next day. Those are things you don’t find in the books either. No, those are the kinds of things you don’t find. [ C. McWilliam1] So that was the original group. That’s Frances [ Guinn]. UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 17 Where’s Frances? Right here [ C. McWilliam2]. OK. I think these pictures go into a trip we took. This is Viktor Mikhailov. After he came in— Well, you know what? I���m going to put this [ number one sticker] here and then I’m going to put a number two here because we’ve got Frances here. Oh, well, maybe I’m just saying Viktor Mikhailov— do you mind if I do this? No. That’s fine. Number three is Viktor. [ C. McWilliam3] OK. Is that Viktor, too? No, this is me. Oh, that’s you. I’m looking at it, who is that guy? Oh, that’s me. Through Frances, we arranged a trip to take them to Disneyland on one of the weekends, and this was shortly after Viktor got there, so this is probably two weeks after he’s been there. And so we rent a bus and take them to Disneyland. So he got to go to Disneyland, too. Yes, so you’ll see a lot of pictures that they took, and a lot of it was on the bus. We got a speeding ticket, so of course, they were taking pictures. And there’s Alex out there trying to negotiate. [ C. McWilliam3a] [ 00: 30: 00] Shmatov. Shmatov, yeah. Speeding tickets— Yeah, we’re going along the road and I’m going, Now, why are they taking pictures of all these big overpasses? Because as you get down into L. A. [ Los Angeles] on [ Interstate] UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 18 15, and I’m going, Why are they taking those pictures? And I realized why when I got over there. So you can see all the pictures they were taking along the way and on the buses and stuff. Apartment buildings and a lot of different places we planned— They’d never seen anything like this before. Never. Never. At Disneyland, I’ll tell you some of the stories. [ C. McWilliam4] This is standing in line, waiting to get on board the Star Tours ride. And I’m talking to Viktor there and we’re talking back and forth and he’s saying, I would never stand in line to wait to get on a ride like this. You guys must be nuts. We finally get up and go on the ride, go through it, we’re getting off, and he says, Let’s go get back in line. This ride is—. So that was neat. Some of the other interesting things is they were really surprised at the number of foreigners that are in Disneyland, all the German- speaking, the French- speaking, from all over the world because, again, they were top scientists. They were basically locked in their laboratories and their housing areas, and never knew what the rest of the world was. They believed that they were living higher than the rest of the world, that their living standard was better than the re