The Woman Who Kept A Secret

it's been the movie feeling of all that i had and that might hit us was remarkable and i don't think anyone's ever seen explosion even is either hundred nine miles and when the night i'll remember about baileys of those green trees those green native trees were conditioning the gold it was different everything changed the world has changed everything would never be the same ever again in the world are creator maker of all things when you make maine more like

you caroline later construction work the outcome but also nature in order to advance peace by eliminating the causes of war lord who you remind us from time to time they're all power and all going to make it new

and that you are father and therefore we are your sons and daughters brothers and fifty with you know great gig just to be at least with ourselves with others above all with you how politicians or people in your peace with your rhetoric mcguffin has been inaugurated well and the injury part in joining here but we may not so much think of the console as the console to be understood as to wonder if they could be low as too low fourteen getting that ruthie it isn't pointing

that we are part and it isn't dying that we are born to eternal life the pittsburgh well all that is history now and these are replicas of its artifacts there's always more to history of course and its toll names like oppenheimer fair me on iraq the news for edward teller figuratively and prominently into the story of the economy today but have you ever heard of dorothy mckibben you need to because in the camp and played a remarkable role in those dramatic events which led to the birth of the nuclear age dorothy mckibben has been called the woman who kept a secret but that obscures in some respects rather than tells her

story operating out about let alone office in santa fe it was her dorothy mckibben that those now famous scientist gained access to los alamos beginning with the birth of the manhattan project in march of nineteen forty three her duties were varied everything from security arrangements to housing accommodations but that still doesn't tell the whole story because in tiny dorothy mckibben became the trusted adviser to friend the confidant the marriage counselor the den mother did the whole bunch of them for the oppenheimer is the fairness and the rest dorothy mckibben is now waiting for better recollection of those years is that during one of the most interesting stories of those early years of los alamos involves how you became what some people call the gatekeeper that one no nine how you came to accept that job who could you tell the war's well i was at that time not worried

those interested in trying the bank and they have nothing for me i was crossing the palace avenue and traffic running in a not in a santa fe and named joe stevenson are coached me and we did our conversation in the street in traffic to care of itself and you said how would you like the job of secretary rice said secretary took that and you said secretary i said well what would i do he said you would be a secretary you said don't you know secretary burns and i said not always and he said let's think this over i give you twenty four hours and there so that night i picked up telephone call several my friends on saturday stowed thing coming town that wants a secretary nobody had heard of anything to like them and they're twenty four hours were about to closing argument that siege

of that i loved him alive am a founder and just then you had taken too man i know was from california because he had on a boundless silks in the current maps the pants he had on a white sheriff and necktie and shoes and that we were speaking pleasantly i knew he was from california and as we were talking i was glancing around as a woman always does mr saccoccio is a slender very thin man you know what i have with a pipe in his hand he had on a trench coat an iraq funding advantages street which gave me the impression news kandahar needed to know that and he stopped and spoke to joe and during months eight and they introduced me to him and i said hello and then he said all right i'll see you only here and let them walk toward the door to leave

the hotel and i attended the two man job particularly it offered me this job and said i'll take john sununu was the g eight robert oppenheimer and i found that a prison for that life imprison adrienne jiang and a few others magnetic properties that was for me and anything you did i'd like to be part of it in any capacity and there's no doubt in your mind that j robert oppenheimer and whatever he might be was involved in this project which you about that position yes but i didn't know you as a director i don't know what his position was i knew that he was being your friend the muncie from california one of these people i didn't know he was the director of this they did the job you accepted was originally described as this amorphous

secretarial position planted it finally dawned on you the enormity of the magnitude and the significance of the position you just observed like falling in love you carry on and everything when you're aware of this fact if you had to compare this project's the atomic bomb to love that i'm just trying to tell you i worked in there and they needed so they put me in with three other secretaries and we sat at women i have desks and oppenheimer as sat at the desk in the back room and we sat in the front room and we had to take over for ranchers between santa fe and los alamos the hollows i personally were coming here and they were all young people and they are pregnant and may be a net

there the average age of their time is twenty five this was an atlanta march and forty three the first in may they all went up to the hill the housing was completed that this getting people are presented rather nerve wracking because their dads you stamps and they had food stamps and the diaries were lovely inched in what they were doing they did sometimes forget this stopover and to pick up her family and somebody like that in that bit of sound something else to a mansion overlooking enrico fermi the community of santa fe how did they out of the city itself the people the townspeople react well harrison is editor of the new mexico chile staff not become in my outfit she won't tell you and you're doing and second people would call me from someplace in town and say their that crazy man here you know is going on since then the number and that's how we got in and we had a fisher price we

contacted three years you worked with robert oppenheimer that left an indelible impression on your mind i wonder if you'd share with us give us a word portrait of the robin robert oppenheimer you remember that well he was very natural and very active you come to the house he would make the best dry martinis the overhead and he would cut the stage in precious paragraphs which was a ritual of maine you we have and kitty was often when cain was as what yes she was charming and now best <unk> levin i think is when i said that to make a speech when the navy gave los alamos that dream of martin luther king for excellence i am though of the grandstand which is no longer at los alamos

directed and narrated looked out over the valley into this anger the keystone and i went of course amazon is coaching the grandstand there was robert casey alone and he was really in himself and i mean that because when these within himself he's not conscious of anyone else and i just settled a young he had as i've described as a rather glazed look in his eye eyes and he was composing the speech that he made five minutes later and it was one of the best speeches that have never been down at los alamos whether they have a copy of it and now i do not know that i think of him that way and i think of them where people are so charming and so helpful there shady young people about about physics than about science and so forth the early

days of los alamos some of the various names in the world of science strode that mesa i'm like i'm a teacher impressions of some of those people as well i know oppenheimer board very great respect for niels bohr right why why was he why did he won't bore in such high regard because you is that last year he was going to end up at the two germans had discovered this new wave teen hundred says use of atomic energy i talked to him and he's the first to get everything all together he was sort of a master of the scientists and he came over here and you a charming i see him standing up for the big wide straw hat on and i remember driving

robert and jackie the life of frank oppenheimer up to frank's ranch at augusta springs and now we stopped in a meadow and us tour around and looked around and everything and rob it's set in nineteen thirty eight his first he had heard of this there were others ii wrongly prisoner ali yes he and and robert were just like this they spent months together in geneva talking and talking and he i thought the world of rugby and ensure they exchange very important ideas on this work together our eye and report fairly our electricity i signed first so i don't think he may have come in the

office without taking him straight africa colored dawn party those people that know and eighteen minutes or whatever and then the young man reno minced on women and men in large armored another for america it was done they would bring their liquor and refreshments to one darren the downstairs room for is for it and have a party an issue that he would go i mean as fmla named as alarming as quite like he's smuggling build lessons here certain kinds of silly pearson that i saw families standing than that i think in that way the road from los alamos chords in that lead to to trinity what was the mood as the date for the test approach i am i back room felt

attention and i just felt it in my bones i could hear from telephone calls that things are getting to a crescendo and so forth there's some friends of mine who are young scientists from me on sunday and said that we're going on a picnic tonight and got in the car and we drive to the top of the sandy a peek out of the caribbean netherlands under nine miles away from trinity and it was raining and i could see it great claim in the sky and dragging these service moody's says if things to take temperature room full of technical and regret in those things that i kept her out he's down there and it's raining and cursing retaking of the ocean the sea let the end of july and then at five thirty dying didn't hear any

notes that the sky lit up to the top of the ask a texas guy for about a fourth of the horizon and we just watched it and had a feeling on did you know did you know when you saw that explosion what you have seen this thing of the aisle that i had when that might hit us was remarkable and i don't think anyone's ever seen explosion even as either hundred nine miles and spend the night i'll remember that their ways of those green trains as green native trees were shining the gold it was different everything changed the world has changed everything would never be the same ever again in the world after hiroshima tell us the mood of robert oppenheimer as you perceived that mood well he

started out to do we are constantly constantly constantly economy up in summer sixty six from princeton and said that he had cancer of the throat into the news kabul and we talked about this and so i just don't know that he agonized the abc to go over there and see what they could do with pollution and i'm as i said before they were not a sloppiness that

the japanese were densest up about it but they were doing it in the aftermath the next major chapter in the story of nuclear it was the decision to go forward with the production of this search in the production of what they call the super the hydrogen bomb and hear how edward teller figured prominently into the story of course but briefly tell us about edward teller his early years apple has held only about the high they were against that everybody said taylor we didn't mean it we had death right there and everyone of the bird whose uprising at harvard are rose before against it all twelve were against it and there they voted against

the super bomb they thought it was shocking and unnecessary and excessive and we just heard the word easily enough i was famous names and i'm trying to think of them they were honest word and every one of them voted not to that are for the sake of science and we ought to do in an e lee college his bomb the veterans ever call are going to follow the hydrogen bomb that time around at this in the news are his patients thing to do it and no and they made it and this was a shocking thing we are hate the idea of it compared the ego of robert oppenheimer to the ego of an edward teller elected charming question absolutely fascinating that no link either between them and their kind of

you and as i was going to say i'll get back to this later on and that's one reason at retirement to live or more because a he was so strong on what he wanted and the uk compare their character an american too dandelion i would assume or contrast of the two egos and the two characters if you can't compare them what's the difference between an orchid and a dandelion i am saying that market is refining designed and built and delicate and subtle and aromatic and the dandelion this is the thing you pick up with the heel if it's going to take

over your grass after the hearing i understand which ii robbie told me about in detail ana when it was sitting in a chair outside in this unattractive not very attractive building in washington the trial was over a threatening forty days at me like that and edward came out and said to robert good that robert said i don't know which in maine after which she has said hi i'm homer understood the magnitude of the problem with that that was developing here that there were those who have decided for whatever reason that there was reason to be suspicious whether it's class food clue what ever of the american scientific community i don't think he thought of things like that era and he wrote at the beginning and learn that her general attacked and writing in the road that he had been

naive and politics and he had done a lot for people in germany who are hard up and he had friends there any sense of money to get them and they have a new ceo he was naive and politics he was initial publication is proven quite different i but it was still true president john kennedy as it were personally in a very subtle way to apologize to robert oppenheimer with the american sentiment against any iranian that the family prize well interesting thing about that was that edward got in there before and he kept that for me that is the photographs that gap it at that unless it goes to that robert and that affects me robert and asked me to come

on stage with them and see him get the family prize and then and turning michelle i just and i just couldn't given a plane and go there as so sick about is being shot and that they thought they call it off and then the ottomans coming said no they don't have it and johnson to give it to jewish but edward was present when roberts that the family prize he couldn't be out of the picture for anything at off and i said to katie later i don't if i'd been there i would've dropped a brick and instead she said i like to do and then the press came out movies tv pictures of edward shaking hands and robert busy without shame here then came the drinks and hydrogen peroxide

itself dorothy i'm having to listen to this and publish all of this that it's the tenor of my thoughts do you believe that when robert oppenheimer said i only come to shatter the world in may have been fired that the cia fired about it would be on a collision course with our own extermination as a consequence of what he did he married at that gently in a slot in the back of his mind sharing were also crazy and so on that's innocent maniac gets control of the country the way hitler did and women's england's in a pretty precarious position and you know i don't know that people get so many mathers so interested in money or they don't think of the good of the country than it might be possible

but in a given this has been to the most pleasant evenings i spent in a very long period time low lying the guard is a great honor and pleasure think he's thinking that's it for tonight thanks for joining us and our roads cannot act like that title fall into kept a secret that they get a lot better gerard not only god the outcome but also nature in order to advance peace by eliminating the causes of war lord who you remind us from prime time that all power and all good news or is it knew and that you are farther and therefore we are your sons and daughters there's been frustration with grace toward ourselves with others above all which

you hope all nations or people in your peace with your race war mcguffin has been inaugurated the pittsburgh to pass but the pain or wounded

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