10-02-2010, 06:54 PM
(This post was last modified: 10-02-2010, 08:25 PM by Bruce Clemens.)
I came across a startling set of documents as I was perusing source material at the Cold War International History project web site. Under the link “Intelligence Operations in the Cold War” was something entitled “The Interrogation of Niels Bohr.”
The Cold War International History Project is part of the “Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars” and purports to support “…the full and prompt release of historical materials by governments on all sides of the Cold War, … integrating new sources, materials and perspectives from the former ‘Communist bloc’ with the historiography of the Cold War which has been written over the past few decades largely by Western scholars reliant on Western archival sources.”
The documents in question have neither contextual information nor provenance attached to them, but are dated November 28, 1945 and document a series of interviews Bohr gave to Soviet officials visiting him in Copenhagen. The subject was details about the U.S. development of the atomic bomb.
Interrogation Transcript
Cover Memo to Stalin about the interviews
[URL="http://www.wilsoncenter.org/index.cfm?topic_id=1409&fuseaction=va2.document&identifier=5034E31A-96B6-175C-9E8D4511D921ADE0&sort=Collection&item=Intelligence%20Operations%20in%20the%20Cold%20War"]
Evaluation by the scientific director of the Soviet nuclear project, Igor Kurchatov, of the interview with Niels Bohr[/URL]
Now to be visiting with the Soviet Union a few months after war’s end answering questions about the Atomic Bomb seems well, rather a surprise to me, and I immediately went to web based biographies about Bohr to see what else I could find about this incident. Result… nothing.
I found plenty of references about Bohr’s desire, after the war, to see all atom bomb information shared; he felt the power of the atom bomb was too great to entrust to any individual nation. However all sources I found seem to stop at mentioning that Bohr’s desire went unheeded. This from the Niels Bohr Institute of the University of Copenhagen:
To Bohr, the existence of weapons of mass destruction necessitated an ‘Open World', in which all scientific and technical information was shared between nations in order to avoid any kind of unfounded suspicion and critical misunderstanding.
With his unstoppable determination, Bohr was able to arrange personal interviews about the matter with both Prime Minister Churchill and President Roosevelt. However, his advice was not heeded.
Bohr continued his campaign after the war, communicating extensively with U.S. Foreign Secretary George Marshall in 1948 and writing a lengthy open letter to the United Nations in 1950 describing publicly his prior efforts which had so far been conducted with the statesmen in confidence.
Bohr's manifold efforts for an ‘Open World' continued to be his main preoccupation until the end of his life in 1962.
From Bohr’s Wikipedia entry:
Bohr believed that atomic secrets should be shared by the international scientific community. After meeting with Bohr, J. Robert Oppenheimer suggested Bohr visit President Franklin D. Roosevelt to convince him that the Manhattan Project should be shared with the Russians in the hope of speeding up its results. Roosevelt suggested Bohr return to the United Kingdom to try to win British approval. Winston Churchill disagreed with the idea of openness towards the Russians to the point that he wrote in a letter: "It seems to me Bohr ought to be confined or at any rate made to see that he is very near the edge of mortal crimes."[7]
Every other source I located provides no information about this tantalizing part of Bohr’s post-war exploits. Could it be because what he did might be thought of as treasonous? If a non-important, non-Nobel-Laureate did something similar, would this have been publicized and pursued?
I did manage to dig up a reference to this incident published in the September/October 1994 issue of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists where one Stanley Goldberg of Washington DC wrote about it in the Letters section that contends that Bohr gave the Soviets nothing of value in these interviews.
Yet Kurchatov’s evaluation appears to indicate otherwise…It appears that Bohr was not the one directing the path of the conversation. He simply answered pre-planned Soviet questions.
I find it fascinating that something so potentially explosive as Bohr unilaterally going to the Soviets in November 1945 and sharing A-Bomb information…against the wishes of Churchill and not necessarily with the blessings of anyone else…doesn’t get any disclosure.
Was he informing the Soviets or dis-informing them? If what he was saying was as innocuous as Mr. [edit: Dr.] Goldberg contends, Bohr wouldn’t have been accomplishing his goals in any case, so why even agree to participate?
Hoping this is a door that may lead to some very interesting research.
The Cold War International History Project is part of the “Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars” and purports to support “…the full and prompt release of historical materials by governments on all sides of the Cold War, … integrating new sources, materials and perspectives from the former ‘Communist bloc’ with the historiography of the Cold War which has been written over the past few decades largely by Western scholars reliant on Western archival sources.”
The documents in question have neither contextual information nor provenance attached to them, but are dated November 28, 1945 and document a series of interviews Bohr gave to Soviet officials visiting him in Copenhagen. The subject was details about the U.S. development of the atomic bomb.
Interrogation Transcript
Cover Memo to Stalin about the interviews
[URL="http://www.wilsoncenter.org/index.cfm?topic_id=1409&fuseaction=va2.document&identifier=5034E31A-96B6-175C-9E8D4511D921ADE0&sort=Collection&item=Intelligence%20Operations%20in%20the%20Cold%20War"]
Evaluation by the scientific director of the Soviet nuclear project, Igor Kurchatov, of the interview with Niels Bohr[/URL]
Now to be visiting with the Soviet Union a few months after war’s end answering questions about the Atomic Bomb seems well, rather a surprise to me, and I immediately went to web based biographies about Bohr to see what else I could find about this incident. Result… nothing.
I found plenty of references about Bohr’s desire, after the war, to see all atom bomb information shared; he felt the power of the atom bomb was too great to entrust to any individual nation. However all sources I found seem to stop at mentioning that Bohr’s desire went unheeded. This from the Niels Bohr Institute of the University of Copenhagen:
To Bohr, the existence of weapons of mass destruction necessitated an ‘Open World', in which all scientific and technical information was shared between nations in order to avoid any kind of unfounded suspicion and critical misunderstanding.
With his unstoppable determination, Bohr was able to arrange personal interviews about the matter with both Prime Minister Churchill and President Roosevelt. However, his advice was not heeded.
Bohr continued his campaign after the war, communicating extensively with U.S. Foreign Secretary George Marshall in 1948 and writing a lengthy open letter to the United Nations in 1950 describing publicly his prior efforts which had so far been conducted with the statesmen in confidence.
Bohr's manifold efforts for an ‘Open World' continued to be his main preoccupation until the end of his life in 1962.
From Bohr’s Wikipedia entry:
Bohr believed that atomic secrets should be shared by the international scientific community. After meeting with Bohr, J. Robert Oppenheimer suggested Bohr visit President Franklin D. Roosevelt to convince him that the Manhattan Project should be shared with the Russians in the hope of speeding up its results. Roosevelt suggested Bohr return to the United Kingdom to try to win British approval. Winston Churchill disagreed with the idea of openness towards the Russians to the point that he wrote in a letter: "It seems to me Bohr ought to be confined or at any rate made to see that he is very near the edge of mortal crimes."[7]
Every other source I located provides no information about this tantalizing part of Bohr’s post-war exploits. Could it be because what he did might be thought of as treasonous? If a non-important, non-Nobel-Laureate did something similar, would this have been publicized and pursued?
I did manage to dig up a reference to this incident published in the September/October 1994 issue of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists where one Stanley Goldberg of Washington DC wrote about it in the Letters section that contends that Bohr gave the Soviets nothing of value in these interviews.
Yet Kurchatov’s evaluation appears to indicate otherwise…It appears that Bohr was not the one directing the path of the conversation. He simply answered pre-planned Soviet questions.
I find it fascinating that something so potentially explosive as Bohr unilaterally going to the Soviets in November 1945 and sharing A-Bomb information…against the wishes of Churchill and not necessarily with the blessings of anyone else…doesn’t get any disclosure.
Was he informing the Soviets or dis-informing them? If what he was saying was as innocuous as Mr. [edit: Dr.] Goldberg contends, Bohr wouldn’t have been accomplishing his goals in any case, so why even agree to participate?
Hoping this is a door that may lead to some very interesting research.
"If you're looking for something that isn't there, you're wasting your time and the taxpayers' money."
-Michael Neuman, U.S. Government bureaucrat, on why NIST didn't address explosives in its report on the WTC collapses
-Michael Neuman, U.S. Government bureaucrat, on why NIST didn't address explosives in its report on the WTC collapses