Russia Honors the Spy Who Stole the A-Bomb 506
An anonymous reader writes "The New York Times reports on the life of George Koval, codenamed Delmar, one of the most important spies to have infiltrated the Manhattan Project, the secret program that created the world's first nuclear weapon. President Putin recently granted Koval a posthumous Hero of the Russian Federation award, the highest honorary title that can be given to a Russian citizen. Koval was born in Iowa, spoke fluent American English, and played baseball. But he was also recruited and trained by the GRU, Russia's largest intelligence agency."
that's awesome (Score:4, Informative)
you do realize the japanese were slaughtering millions themselves in the name of imperialism? you do realize that if no A bomb was dropped, that more japanese and americans would have died in a land invasion of japan?
Re:youre a dirty damn hippy (Score:2, Informative)
Prussian? (Score:5, Informative)
Well, not so much (Score:5, Informative)
Chances are, given the considerable security, he did not learn a whole lot.
Even the top designers of the Oak Ridge gas separation plant did not know exactly what they were doing. What are the chances this guy got the goods?
And half of what they did at Oak Ridge was electromagnetic separation, which turned out to be way too inefficient. If he gave the Soviets that info, he did us a huge favor.
The Polonium separation that went on at a scientist's mother's house in Dayton was straightforward chemistry, nothing particularly novel or secret.
No James Bond here.
Article text (Score:5, Informative)
The New York Times
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November 12, 2007
A Spy's Path: Iowa to A-Bomb to Kremlin Honor
By WILLIAM J. BROAD
He had all-American cover: born in Iowa, college in Manhattan, Army buddies with whom he played baseball.
George Koval also had a secret. During World War II, he was a top Soviet spy, code named Delmar and trained by Stalin's ruthless bureau of military intelligence.
Atomic spies are old stuff. But historians say Dr. Koval, who died in his 90s last year in Moscow and whose name is just coming to light publicly, was probably one of the most important spies of the 20th century.
On Nov. 2, the Kremlin startled Western scholars by announcing that President Vladimir V. Putin had posthumously given the highest Russian award to a Soviet agent who penetrated the Manhattan Project to build the atom bomb.
The announcement hailed Dr. Koval as "the only Soviet intelligence officer" to infiltrate the project's secret plants, saying his work "helped speed up considerably the time it took for the Soviet Union to develop an atomic bomb of its own."
Since then, historians, scientists, federal officials and old friends have raced to tell Dr. Koval's story -- the athlete, the guy everyone liked, the genius at technical studies. American intelligence agencies have known of his betrayal at least since the early 1950s, when investigators interviewed his fellow scientists and swore them to secrecy.
The spy's success hinged on an unusual family history of migration from Russia to Iowa and back. That gave him a strong commitment to Communism, a relaxed familiarity with American mores and no foreign accent.
"He was very friendly, compassionate and very smart," said Arnold Kramish, a retired physicist who studied with Dr. Koval at City College and later worked with him on the bomb project. "He never did homework."
Stewart D. Bloom, a senior physicist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, who also studied with Dr. Koval, called him a regular guy.
"He played baseball and played it well," usually as shortstop, Dr. Bloom recalled. "He didn't have a Russian accent. He spoke fluent English, American English. His credentials were perfect."
Once, Dr. Bloom added, "I saw him staring off in the distance and thinking about something else. Now I think I know what it was."
Over the years, scholars and federal agents have identified a half-dozen individuals who spied on the bomb project for the Soviets, especially at Los Alamos in New Mexico. All were "walk ins," spies by impulse and sympathetic leaning rather than rigorous training.
By contrast, Dr. Koval was a mole groomed in the Soviet Union by the feared G.R.U., the military intelligence agency. Moreover, he gained wide access to America's atomic plants, a feat unknown for any other Soviet spy. Nuclear experts say the secrets of bomb manufacturing can be more important than those of design.
Los Alamos devised the bomb, while its parts and fuel were made at secret plants in such places as Oak Ridge, Tenn., and Dayton, Ohio -- sites Dr. Koval not only penetrated, but also assessed as an Army sergeant with wide responsibilities and authority.
"He had access to everything," said Dr. Kramish, who worked with Dr. Koval at Oak Ridge and now lives in Reston, Va. "He had his own Jeep. Very few of us had our own Jeeps. He was clever. He was a trained G.R.U. spy." That status, he added, made Dr. Koval unique in the history of atomic espionage, a judgment historians echo.
Washington has known about Dr. Koval's spying since he fled the United States shortly after the war but kept it secret.
"It would have been highly embarrassing for the U.S. government to have had this divulged," said Robert S. Norris, au
Re:youre a dirty damn hippy (Score:4, Informative)
Both cities had relatively small populations in comparison to other locations in Japan with major military installations. They probably could have made a good case for a military installation in Tokyo, but they didn't. They could have gone for minor installations, but that would have been ineffective.
Sometimes you can't avoid colatteral damage, but you can minimize it, and this does appear to be the case.
Comment removed (Score:3, Informative)
Mod parent down, he is lying (Score:5, Informative)
They did not volunteer, they were drafted.
If you're going to comment on something like this as though your opinion should be considered, you'd better make sure you don't make an obvious and glaring mistake like that.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conscription_in_the_United_States#World_War_I_and_World_War_II [wikipedia.org]
"Conscription was next used after the United States entered World War I in 1917. The first peacetime conscription came with the Selective Service Act of 1940, which established the Selective Service System as an independent agency. The duration of service was originally twelve months. It was expanded to eighteen months in 1941. When the United States entered World War II, service was required until six months after the end of the war."
Learn about the subject before you pretend to knowledge you obviously don't have.
Hitler was working on the bomb too (Score:4, Informative)
One can fuel a reactor with unrefined uranium if one uses heavy water as a moderator, but they were unable to get enough heavy water because some commandos blew up the Norsk Hydro heavy water plant in Norway, then when they were trying to ship their existing inventory to Germany, the commandos sunk the ship it was on. Their heroics were portrayed in the movie The Heroes of Telemark.
After the war, the Allies found a sub-critical heavy water reactor in Germany.
Saddam Hussein really was trying to build a bomb before the first Gulf War - arms inspectors found calutrons, as well as buried power cables going from power plants to the calutrons (they require prodigous amounts of electricity to power their electromagnets).
The arms inspectors also found copies of World War II-era US patents on improvements to Calutron technology. They had been declassified, you see.
I discuss these and other fun facts in my essay Kiss Your Sorry Ass Goodbye, The Atom Bomb Is Gonna Fly [hydrogenbomb.org].
Re:that's awesome (Score:5, Informative)
You just had to try both designs out, didn't you?"
Prior to being dropped on its target, the Uranium bomb wasn't even tested. The mechanics of it were so simple that it was assumed to be every bit as reliable as a conventional bomb. The Plutonium bomb had been tested previously, so we knew it worked. The physics were solid, but the mechanics of the implosion device were in question until it was tested (at the Trinity test site).
So in one hand you've got a bomb we knew would work, and in the other you've got a bomb we'd tested already. Just had to try out both designs? That's just stupid.
Both were dropped because they didn't surrender immediately. Had they continued their refusal to surrender, we would have kept dropping nuclear weapons until no one was left alive from that country to threaten the world. The United States did not start that war, we ended it. We ended it by hitting two military targets, one of which was chosen because of the military value combined with the fact that the surrounding topography drastically limited the blast radius to minimize civilian casualties. You just can't drop bombs that big without civilian casualties. On the other hand, there was no way to convince Japan that continuing the fight was futile without dropping bombs that big. Until they believed that they would be completely annihilated without even the honor of taking as many of their enemy down with them, they were committed to a land war where every man, woman, and child would fight to the death.
Re:that's awesome (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Prussian? (Score:3, Informative)