Volume 53, Number 9 · May 25, 2006
The Secrets of the Bomb
By Jeremy Bernstein
Spying on the Bomb: American Nuclear Intelligence from Nazi Germany to Iran and North Korea
by Jeffrey T. Richelson
Norton, 702 pp., $34.95
In 1944, when the atomic project was well underway, if I went to the bar in the La Fonda Hotel in Santa Fe I might have seen some physicists I would recognize. For example, Robert Serber, one of Oppenheimer's closest associates, and his wife were sent to Santa Fe to plant the rumor that what was going on at Los Alamos had to do with submarines. I am not sure how much one would have learned by monitoring their conversations with other physicists, since they used a code when talking about the nuclear bomb project. Uranium-235 was called '25' and plutonium-239 was known as '49.' These were the fissionable isotopes. Niels Bohr was known as 'Nicholas Baker' and Enrico Fermi was known as 'Henry Farmer.' Los Alamos was known as 'Project Y' and the plutonium bomb was known as the 'gadget.'
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