2022–2023 Lecture Series
Oppenheimer's Neighbors
7 p.m., Fuller Lodge, 2132 Central Avenue
(unless otherwise noted)
(unless otherwise noted)
Tuesday, September 13 The British Mission to Los Alamos with Alan Carr
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The Manhattan Project was an enormous national effort, but it is often forgotten that many foreign-born scientists played vital roles. In particular, the United Kingdom greatly assisted the United States in developing nuclear weapons during World War II. The British Mission to Los Alamos examines key British contributions to the Manhattan Project, especially the valuable efforts of two dozen scientists who came by way of Britain to work at Los Alamos.
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Alan B. Carr currently serves as a Program Manager and the Senior Historian for Los Alamos National Laboratory. During his tenure as a laboratory historian, which began in 2003, Alan has produced several publications and lectures pertaining to the Manhattan Project, nuclear testing history, and the historical evolution of LANL. He has lectured for numerous professional organizations and has been featured as a guest on many local, national, and international radio and television programs. Before coming to Los Alamos, Carr completed his graduate studies at Texas Tech University in Lubbock.
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Monday, October 3 Codebreaking, Venona, and Identifying Soviet Spies in the Manhattan Project
with John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr (Zoom presentation)
with John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr (Zoom presentation)
Join Los Alamos Historical Society on Monday, October 3 at 7 p.m. for the next lecture in our series. John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr will present, over Zoom, their talk, “Codebreaking, Venona, and Identifying Soviet Spies in the Manhattan Project.” You can find the link to the Zoom lecture below. During World War II, neither Army counter-intelligence nor the FBI identified an espionage leak from the Manhattan Project’s highly secret atomic bomb laboratory at Los Alamos, NM. But in 1946 an Army Signals Intelligence Service project, later named “Venona,” decoded a 1944 cable sent from the Soviet KGB station in New York to its Moscow headquarters which identified leading American scientists working at the Los Alamos facility. Haynes and Klehr, who wrote the first history of the Venona project, Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America, will discuss the origins of the project. The night will also detail the fates of the three spies identified by Venona, as well as the discovery of a fourth spy who was only publicly identified in 2019 when Klehr and Haynes published an article in the CIA journal, Studies in Intelligence.
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John Earl Haynes was 20th Century Political Historian in the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress from 1997 until his retirement in 2012. He now resides in Santa Fe, NM He received his Ph.D. in 1978 from the University of Minnesota. He is the author/coauthor of twelve books: Secret Cables of the Comintern, 1933‑1943 (coauthors H. Klehr, F. Firsov) Yale University Press, 2014; Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America (coauthors H. Klehr, A. Vassiliev) Yale University Press, 2009; Early Cold War Spies: the Espionage Trials that Shaped American Politics (coauthor H. Klehr) Cambridge University Press, 2006; In Denial: Historians, Communism, and Espionage (coauthor H. Klehr) Encounter Books, 2003; Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America (coauthor H. Klehr) Yale University Press, 1999; editor, Calvin Coolidge and the Coolidge Era: Essays on the History of the 1920s, Library of Congress and the University Press of New England, 1998; The Soviet World of American Communism (coauthors H. Klehr and K. Anderson) Yale University Press, 1998; Red Scare or Red Menace? American Communism and Anticommunism in the Cold War Era, Ivan Dee, 1996; The Secret World of American Communism (coauthors H. Klehr and F. Firsov) Yale University Press, 1995; The American Communist Movement: Storming Heaven Itself (coauthor H. Klehr) Twayne Publishers, 1992; Communism and Anti-Communism in the United States: An Annotated Guide to Historical Writings, Garland Publishing, 1987; Dubious Alliance: The Making of Minnesota’s DFL Party. University of Minnesota Press, 1984. He has authored more than one hundred historical essays, the most recent of which are “Informants by the Hundreds: FBI Penetration of the CPUSA,” (coauthor H. Klehr) American Communist History, 2022; “The Atomic Spy Who Never Was: ‘Perseus’ and KGB/SVR Atomic Espionage Disinformation,” (coauthor H. Klehr) International Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence, 2021; “The ‘Mental Comintern’ and the Self-Destructive Tactics of the CPUSA, 1944-1948,” (coauthor H. Klehr) in Post-Cold War Revelations in the American Communist Party: Citizens, Revolutionaries and Spies, Bloomsbury Press, 2021; “Framing William Albertson: The FBI’s and ‘Solo’ Operation and the Cold War,” (coauthor H. Klehr) Journal of Cold War Studies, 22,3 Summer, 2020; “The American Communist Con Man: The story of Gus Hall, Grifter and Embezzler” (coauthor H. Klehr), Commentary, October 2020; “On the Trail of a Fourth Soviet Spy at Los Alamos: Project SOLO and the Seborers,” (coauthor H. Klehr) Studies in Intelligence, 63,2 September 2019.
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Harvey Klehr is Andrew Mellon Professor Emeritus of Politics and History and former chairman of the Political Science Department at Emory University where he taught from 1971 to 2016. He is the author or editor of fifteen books, three of which have been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America was published by Yale University Press in 2009. His latest book, The Twisted Life of David Karr: The Story of a Soviet Spywas pub-lished by Encounter Books. He has also written more than 120 articles and reviews for profes-sional journals as well as Commentary, The New Republic, New York Review of Books, Wall Street Journal and Weekly Standard. He was the recipient of the Emory Williams Distinguished Teaching Award for Emory College in 1983 and was recognized as the University Scholar-Teacher of the Year by Emory in 1995. He served a six-year term as a member of the National Council on the Humanities from 2004-2011.
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Join Zoom Meeting https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84802563001?pwd=Y2YrRlByVTFTWDFMUnp6ZHdCN0RtUT09
Meeting ID: 848 0256 3001
Passcode: 780518
Meeting ID: 848 0256 3001
Passcode: 780518
Tuesday, November 1 In the Question of J. Robert Oppenheimer with Bruce Held
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Synopsis: J. Robert Oppenheimer was a great man and a loyal American. In our discussion, we shall see that Oppenheimer was not blameless in the events that led to the 1954 Atomic Energy Commission's (AEC) review of his security clearance. However, the AEC made an egregious error in revoking his clearance. They had the option – as Oppenheimer himself proposed – of letting his clearance expire. They did not do so because they admittedly sought to destroy his reputation as a source of trustworthy advice on nuclear policy. With all the historical facts now known, we can correct this error in a manner acceptable to all loyal Americans, and it is time that we do so.
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Bio: Bruce Held was Associate Deputy Secretary of Energy as well as Acting Administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration during 2013-2014, with oversight responsibility for America’s nuclear weapons complex, including Los Alamos National Laboratories. Prior to his work for the Department of Energy, Bruce served for three decades as a CIA clandestine operations officer, including tours as a CIA Chief of Station in Asia, Latin America, and Africa, as well as Special Assistant to CIA Director George Tenet. He received the CIA Intelligence Commendation Medal for “tenacity and extraordinary accomplishments during a period of hostilities.” Bruce writes A Spy’s Guide to American History, a free substack newsletter available here: bruceheld.substack.com.
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Tuesday, January 10 Hinge Points: An Inside Look at North Korea's Nuclear Program with Sig Hecker
(Duane Smith Auditorium)
(Duane Smith Auditorium)
Join the Los Alamos Historical Society at Duange Smith Auditorium on Tuesday, January 10th at 7pm to hear from Sig Hecker. He'll be presenting his findings from his upcoming book, Hinge Points: An Inside Look at North Korea's Nuclear Program. The talk will explore how North Korea progressed from zero nuclear weapons in 2001 to perhaps 50 such weapons in 2022.
Tuesday, February 7 (Postponed) Jumbo: The Secret Vessel Built to Hold an Atomic Bomb with Fred Fraikor
This lecture has been postponed until Fall 2023.
Tuesday, March 14 Groves and Oppenheimer: Friends and Foes? with James Kunetka
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Historian James Kunetka is the author of three popular books on America’s early nuclear weapons development as well as four novels. City of Fire: Los Alamos and the Atomic Age, 1943-1945 (1979), is the first mainstream history to focus the Manhattan Project narrative specifically on the individuals and dramatic scientific achievements at America’s fabled WWII secret weapons laboratory. Oppenheimer: The Years of Risk (1982), is a re-examination of Robert Oppenheimer’s complex public life, from the creation of the Los Alamos Laboratory in 1943 through nine turbulent postwar years until 1954, when he was dismissed from public service as a risk to national security. The General and the Genius: Groves and Oppenheimer – The Unlikely Partnership that Built the Atomic Bomb (2015) chronicles the extraordinary wartime relationship between two multifaceted, talented men who not only built and delivered the world’s first nuclear weapon but together established organizational and management practices that survive today as the bedrock of large scientific and technical programs. Kunetka’s four novels include the New Times bestseller, Warday, as well as Nature’s End, Shadow Man, and Parting Shot, the last two set in Los Alamos. Kunetka grew up as part of the Los Alamos family: his father joined the Laboratory in 1948 and worked first for Z Division and later, Sandia Base in Albuquerque. Kunetka is retired from the University of Texas at Austin.
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Tuesday, April 11 Captain Deak parsons - new mexico's homegrown atomic admiral
"Captain Deak Parsons—New Mexico's Homegrown Atomic Admiral" will be the
April lecture for the Los Alamos Historical Society, presented by acclaimed local
historian Nancy Bartlit. An expert on the Pacific War in World War II, Bartlit has
researched Parsons and his duty as the weaponeer on the flight of the Enola Gay. The
responsibility for the first atomic bomb to be armed in its modified B-29 hold
led him to practice removing and inserting the plugs which disarmed and armed the bomb
so many times that his fingers became bloody. The bomb had to be lifted up and dropped
exactly.
Though Parsons is sometime considered as one of the Manhattan Project's unsung
heroes, Bartlit presents the facts that counter that image. Having grown up in Fort
Sumner, NM, Parsons is claimed by the townspeople as their "Atomic Admiral."
This lecture follows the theme for the society's spring schedule—"Oppenheimer's
Neighbors." The presentation begins at 7 p.m. in Fuller Lodge on April 11. This lecture
series is sponsored by Enterprise Bank.
April lecture for the Los Alamos Historical Society, presented by acclaimed local
historian Nancy Bartlit. An expert on the Pacific War in World War II, Bartlit has
researched Parsons and his duty as the weaponeer on the flight of the Enola Gay. The
responsibility for the first atomic bomb to be armed in its modified B-29 hold
led him to practice removing and inserting the plugs which disarmed and armed the bomb
so many times that his fingers became bloody. The bomb had to be lifted up and dropped
exactly.
Though Parsons is sometime considered as one of the Manhattan Project's unsung
heroes, Bartlit presents the facts that counter that image. Having grown up in Fort
Sumner, NM, Parsons is claimed by the townspeople as their "Atomic Admiral."
This lecture follows the theme for the society's spring schedule—"Oppenheimer's
Neighbors." The presentation begins at 7 p.m. in Fuller Lodge on April 11. This lecture
series is sponsored by Enterprise Bank.
Tuesday, May 9 Annual Membership Meeting, speaker to be determined
