Harold Agnew (1921-2013)

A member of the Manhattan Project and Director of LANL played a large role in the development of nuclear weapons and policy.

I had only one opportunity to interact with Harold Agnew and that was in May 2012 when he participated in the Santa Fe Institute’s “Legacies of the Manhattan Project” meeting that included Harold, Murray Gell-Mann, Stan Norris, Gregg Herken and Gino Segre. At the reception the night before, I met his daughter Nancy. She had taken German from my dad when she attended Los Alamos High School. As we were talking about my dad, she mentioned that her mom’s gravestone was close to my dad’s in Guaje Pines Cemetery. Harold jumped into the conversation and said that when he was arranging for his wife’s ashes to be placed in Guaje Pines, he told the Los Alamos County clerk “the next time you see me, I’ll be in a box too.” 

Agnew’s recollections and sense of humor captivated the room over the two day meeting. 

Harold saw the people of the Manhattan Project come together and unite to build an atomic weapon that Niels Bohr said “can never be done unless you turn the United States into one huge factory.”  He not only was witness to the Hiroshima bombing from the B-29 bomber that flew beside the Enola Gay, but spent most of the next 33 years in Los Alamos impacting nuclear weapons designs and nuclear deterrence policy. 

He weighed in on many topics over the weekend. Susan Voss and I tweeted the highlights of the meeting using the hashtag ‘bomblegacy’. I learned a lot about politics and choices that occurred in the next three decades beyond the Manhattan Project, an era not discussed nearly as much as 1940-45. I kept a copy of my tweets and here are some of my favorite topics of that weekend:

Early in the War:

Agnew: Early on in the war we weren't doing that well. We were running scared for a long time. 

Agnew: I could not tell my parents where I was. All of my parents' friends' kids were in the military. I was MIA. 

Agnew: Everyone united. Everyone worked together. Oppy could handle people. 

Agnew: I had a bunch of my college classmates killed in the War, mostly in the Pacific.

 

Limited U-235 for the Production of Little Boy and Fat Man:

Segre: Once Fermi realized that Pu trigger wouldn't work, the scientists would just pick up new experts to solve the problem. 

Segre: The question was whether there would be enough U-235...Agnew: Just enough for one bomb. But lots of Pu. 

Segre: Lots of ideas to fix the problems...no one knows exactly who solved these problems...but they got solved.

Norris: I find it remarkable that the necessary amounts of material were ready for each bomb dropped on Japan. 

Norris: The reactors could supply enough material for a bomb every 10 days. Groves was already thinking about bombs 3,4, and 5. 

Segre: Suppose the Pu bomb had not worked out and all we had was a U bomb. Would they have used it? 

Norris: Probably. Agnew: I don't know why not. If the Japanese hadn't surrendered, we would have. 

Norris: Transportation of Pu was superbly compartmentalized. Pu handed off from Hanford -one train to another for work at LANL. 

Agnew: All the metallurgy work was done starting from scratch (in such a short time). It still amazes me. 

 

On the Bombings:

Agnew: I was not at Trinity test. I was on my way to the Pacific. We were practicing for Hiroshima/Nagasaki drops. 

Agnew: Our jobs were to find the right frequency to monitor equipment during bomb drop. We were in back of a dark plane. 

Agnew: We got a signal from Tibbetts when they dropped the bomb and equipment. We got our signals. There was an enormous flash. 

Agnew: There was a double shock. It surprised us. It was the reflection from the ground. 

Agnew: I squirreled away a camera & put them in the tail gunner position of plane to film Hiroshima bomb dropping Got color pictures. 

Agnew: We had to drop the bomb on Nagasaki 3 days later. We didn't want to go.

Agnew: I sent film through a courier to Albuquerque to get developed. Had no idea if I got anything. 

Agnew: The pictures came back developed. We had good pictures before and after drop. Big brownish cloud in between. 

Agnew: Smithsonian wanted the film. I thought it would end up like a stuffed owl. Gave film to Groves, Oppy & others.

 

After the Bombings:

Segre: Was there a chemical analysis of the bomb after Nagasaki bomb was dropped that found traces of Pu? 

Agnew: That would have been highly unlikely. Japanese do have the letter in a museum from Alvarez to Japanese physicists. 

Agnew: This letter http://t.co/fO9CCRJr was not sanctioned by anyone. It was done to try to convince the Japanese to stop war.

 

The Security Culture Surrounding the Manhattan Project:

Segre: Idea to many people is that conducting something in secret like the Manhattan Project is incredibly difficult to do.

Gell-Mann: It was the physicists who created the secrecy.

Agnew: It was the scientists who created the secrecy classifications at Chicago.

Agnew: There was a person who wanted everything compartmentalized. Enrico Fermi said "no way!"

 

The Soviet Union’s Nuclear Weapons Program:

Herken: Groves estimated it would take the Russians 20 years to get a nuclear weapon. 

Herken: The scientific estimate was 3-4 years.

Herken: 1947 - Most Americans thought it would take Russians 3-4 years to get a bomb.

Agnew: To me it's amazing what the Russians went through to get a bomb so quickly. 

Agnew: Russia's own design was more complex and efficient than the design they tested, which was a copy of Fat Man.

 

After the Manhattan Project:

Norris: After ManProj, question was - do we want the military to keep control of Los Alamos? 

Norris: Atomic Energy Act turned everything over to the Atomic Energy Commission 

Norris: AEC kept government/contractor model. Univ. of Calif stayed in control of Los Alamos. Other corps oversaw other Labs.

Norris: AEC ran both military and civilian side until mid-1970s when AEC was abolished. 

Norris: Military side went to ERDA then DOE. Civilian nuclear power went to NRC. 

Agnew: Functions were separated because of a majority of Congress did not have access to important information. 

Agnew: One person in Congress said that the military wants everything but doesn't pay for everything. Split began. 

Agnew: This was the end of what had been a strong relationship between the nuclear complex and the military. 

Agnew: The decision to split things up was done by a joint committee in Congress who made their decisions in secret. 

Question: Congress saw none of the budget for ManProj. Truman finally caught it. Was the lack of knowing budget the reason? 

Norris: Congressional oversight committee broken up too in the mid-1970s as nuclear sides split. New committees created. 

Norris: Now there was Senate and House Armed Services Committee and Appropriations, Energy and Water Committee. 

Agnew: Clinton P. Anderson had been NM Senator on the Joint Committee and was very helpful to Los Alamos.

Norris: Then came Senator Pete Domenici, who took care of LANL and SNL for decades. 

 

On Thermonuclear Devices:

Agnew: Mike was first US test of a thermonuclear device. It was the first time I was scared. It got hotter & hotter.

 

Nuclear Waste:

Norris: Cold War ends. Soviet Union dissolves. There then becomes a much closer look at what we have done w/i nuclear complex. 

Norris: My employer NRDC launches a lawsuit on the Dept of Energy in a ground breaking case over the massive environmental mess.

Norris: Environmental clean up activities get going. Not as much as should gets done. Scale/questions of cleanup significant.

Agnew: The way we got rid of waste - mix w/ concrete, dig a big cylindrical hole, line w/ culvert. There is a farm of it. 

Agnew: Waste should be above ground in monitored retrievable storage to get rid of the heat. You can see if there is a leak. 

Agnew: I argued with Sierra Club. Look at the Pyramids. They are still here. 

Agnew: Put the Catholic Church in charge on monitoring the storage. It will be here forever. Sierra Club person not humored.

 

Air Force’s vs. Army’s Nuclear Weapons Strategy:

Gell-Mann: The army wanted a lot of small nuclear weapons while the Air Force wanted big, huge weapons only. 

Gell-Mann: Some said that Oppenheimer was a subversive because he supported the Army's vision, not the Air Force vision.

M-29 Davy Crockett Weapon System was a tactical nuclear recoilless gun for firing the M388 nuclear projectile.

Davy Crockett recoilless spigot gun was developed in the late 1950s for use against Soviet troops had war broken out in Europe 

Question: Who ran Rocky Flats? Agnew: Dow Chemical 

 

Edward Teller:

Agnew: After Sputnik we were in competition with Lawrence Livermore to build a smaller missile. We made the Mark 49 warhead. 

Agnew: After Oppenheimer Affair, Edward Teller was not allowed to come to Los Alamos until I became Director in the 70s. 

Agnew: One of the first things I did as Director in 1970 was to invite Edward. 

Agnew: I needed a keeper for Edward. I put Jay Keyworth in charge of him. 

Agnew: Jay Keyworth wrote a book about Edward and others but it was never published. It was not very good. 

 

When Harold was Director of Los Alamos National Laboratory (1970-1978):

Segre: When you became Director in 1970, what was atmosphere? 

Agnew: We had no interaction with military & other agencies within. We always had just 2 postdocs at Los Alamos. 2 years & out. 

Agnew: 75% of the nuclear weapon designs came from Los Alamos. We took over. 

Agnew: We brought in military staff. Fissile material was controlled by Atomic Energy Comm. Bombs by the military.

Agnew: Fissile material would be transferred to the military and given a receipt. This was a custody issue. 

Agnew: There were a lot of tricky issues that the military, NATO and others juggled to avoid a mistake within Europe. 

Agnew: There was a group called Operations from EU Shape, NATO, US. Highlight was stopping in Malta for $1 Beefeater Booze.

 

Ideas for Other Nuclear Products:

Agnew: There was a senator who wanted Pu hand warmers for duck hunting.

Agnew: At one point there was an idea for a nuclear hand grenade.

 

Risk of Nuclear Weapons Accidents and Theft:

Question: Was there concern for a loss/theft of weapons? 

Agnew: That is still classified. But there was a worry about accidents.

Herken: No known cases of lost or stolen weapons in the US. It is unknown wrt the Soviet weapons

Norris: Military personnel protecting weapons had to meet the most stringent standards otherwise they were relieved of duty.

Norris: Huge interest in nuclear weapons by the military in 1960s. Then military realized how difficult it was to oversee them. 

Norris: In one 2-year period we built 14,000 weapons to get to 30,000+ weapons. 

Norris: At the moment at Pantex, there are 13,000 Pu pits stored in cans inside igloos.

Norris: Certain portion of these pits will stay for natl security/others will be destroyed. That is a legacy of MP and Cold War. 

Norris: Tanker and B-52 collided in Spain. Bomb fell in Med. It was recovered. Other tiers of mishaps. 

Norris: After a handful of scary incidents, Air Force reduced requirement for its planes to be loaded with nuclear weapons.

 

The Star Wars Program:

Agnew: The StarWars program was a crazy era. I got an invitation to meet with a guy Oliver North. 

Agnew: North says that the President wants to do Star Wars. Pentagon supportive. 

Agnew: A month later a guy named John Gardner calls me and says "why aren't you coming to these Star Wars’ meetings?" 

Agnew: My participation on committee short. I quit, wrote a letter - “you have invented a new kind of decoy that's invisible.”

 

Nuclear Weapons Testing:

Segre: How sure are we that the stockpile will still work without nuclear testing? There has been no nuclear testing since 1989.

Norris: Current debate is we will lose expertise if we don't design new weapons through a modernization program.

Agnew: Actual stockpile weapons during my time were tested twice. Now each year several weapons are taken apart & tested. 

Agnew: The Brits rebuild a fraction of their weapons each year to keep their capability in tact. The Russians now may do the same.

Agnew: There is no "better" weapon design. A megaton is a megaton. 

 

Permissive Action Link (PAL):

Segre: Pakistan has as many as 100 weapons, a nontrivial number. 

Agnew: We should share PAL technology with other countries. It is important that someone does not mishandle a weapon. 

Agnew: A PAL is a security device for nuclear weapons. Its purpose is to prevent unauthorized arming/ detonation of the nuclear weapon.

 

The Establishment of the Santa Fe Institute:

Gell-Mann: In the early 1980s, we started talking about an interdisciplinary research institute. Lots of discussions and ideas. 

Gell-Mann: The Santa Fe Institute is what came out of these discussions.

Agnew: I remember thinking "Good luck finding the funding for something like this." 

 

On the Change from University of California to Defense Contractor Management

Herken: Stan, you touched on role of Congress. Before it was "common good" focus. Now individual congressmen with individual interests.

Herken: Los Alamos went from Univ of California to being run by Bechtel. Ohio Congressman led this change. 

Agnew: Total waste of money! Now the gross receipt tax to NM is 10x more than my budget as Director in the 1970s. 

Linda Cordell: The fee University of California charged to run Los Alamos originally was $1. 

Agnew: UC got more money to run Labs, but if they didn't spend it all, which they never did, they put it into research. 

 

What is the future of nuclear weapons? What should we be scared about? 

Agnew: First issue is unauthorized use. The US has control of this. But what about Pakistan & India? 

Segre: Another one is that India decides to attack Pakistan or vice versa. 

Agnew: Rational governments won't use a nuclear weapon. 

Norris: India and Pakistan really dislike each other. Americans and Russians could still drink vodka together during Cold War.

Segre: Should a country use a nuclear weapon on another, perhaps that would be wake up call globally to scale down nukes. 

Agnew: No way. Countries probably would want more nukes. 

Segre: There is essentially no data about using nuclear weapons. There is only data around the thinking of using nuclearweapons. 

Norris: In the Iranian case, will Iran and Israel adopt a MAD posture like the US & Russia did? 

Agnew: We shouldn't have any US nukes in Europe. 

 

The Most Unintended Consequence of the Manhattan Project:

Norris: A nuclear arms race of monumental proportion. 

Herken: Although the proliferation of nuclear weapons has been slower than predicted. 

Agnew: A consequence of Manhattan Project is that fear of nuclear weapons is tied to nuclear energy.

Segre: It is not clear to me we would have had big science successes without the Manhattan Project. 

 

Rest in Peace, Harold.

 

molly

Images: LANL and Susan Voss