Bombshell : The Secret Story of America's Unknown Atomic Spy Conspiracy

by Joseph Albright, Marcia Kunstel

Ted Hall was a physics prodigy so gifted that he was asked to join the Manhattan Project when he was only eighteen years old.  There, in wartime Los Alamos, working under Robert Oppenheimer and Bruno Rossi, Hall helped build the atomic bomb.  To his friends and coworkers he was a brilliant young rebel with a boundless future in atomic science.  To his Soviet spymasters, he was something "Mlad," their mole within Los Alamos, a most hidden and valuable asset and the men who first slipped them the secrets to the making of the atomic bomb.

In a book that will force the revision of fifty years of scholarship and reporting on the Cold War, award-winning journalists Joseph Albright and Marcia Kunstel reveal for the first time a devastatingly effective Soviet spy network that infiltrated the Manhattan Project and ferried America's top atomic secrets to Stalin.  At the heart of the network was Hall, who was so secret an operative that even Klaus Fuchs, his fellow Manhattan Project scientist and Soviet agent, had no idea they were comrades.   Bombshell tracks Hall from his days as a brilliant schoolboy in New York City, when he came under the influence of his older brother's radical tracts, and on to Harvard, Los Alamos, and Chicago, where Hall continued to spy even after the war was over, passing more secrets while the Soviets were trying to build the Hydrogen bomb.

For forty years only a few Russians knew what Ted Hall really did.  Now Joseph Albright and Marcia Kunstel reveal the astonishing true story of the atomic spies who got away.   Bombshell is history at its most explosive.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Espionage

399 pages, Hardcover

First published September 16, 1997

Reviews

[Sheila · Rating 5 out of 5]

The fact that the Manhattan Project was so heavily infiltrated is not a sign of how sneaky Russians and their "spies" were. It's more a sign of how popular Communism was in the U.S. Most history books ignore the thousands of rank and file Communists who organized unions, and tenants, and farmers, and fought against racism. The Russians bore the brunt of the Nazi war machine. The Russians won the war, not the U.S. The Soviet Union lost 27+ _million_ people in WW2.

So seen in the proper historical light, this story is more like a Hollywood movie following the exploits of a British spy, let's say, infiltrating Nazi Germany. Even though Hall was a prodigy who went to Harvard at age 16, he was also an ordinary person motivated by ideals of justice and peace. The author could have spent more time explaining the absolute horror of the atomic bomb. Hall was not trying to arm and enemy, but to create a "balance of power." He may have been right, although it's also horrible to watch an insane build up of redundant nuclear bombs. Ultimately, we have to organize for a world wherein the cause of war (competition between armed capitalists) is a thing of the past.

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent view into the world of atomic espionage. It wasn't easy to see certain people as "bad guys", even toward the end of his life Ted Hall insisted, tho he never actually confirmed what he'd done, he'd only done as he did as he felt it was the right thing to do, knowing what he did as he did at the time. It's easy to look back at history and day, oh well, this or that could have or should have been, but he didn't have a look into the future.

[Monzenn · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'd rather read other science or spy books, though this one is interesting, too. Unfortunately as the story is not complete it delves on a lot of speculation, which doesn't help much in creating a clear narrative. But at least the speculated narrative - combination of atomic bomb history and how the Soviets were able to make their own - is interesting, though admittedly a bit of a pushdown on Soviet capability.

[Lynn Coburn · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was a grind. Too many pages of physics, and other branches of science that the average person doesn’t understand and really doesn’t need to know! This book gave me a headache. I thought it would read much easier and have some dangerous elements of spying. Do not waste your time reading this one.

[Marilyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

It combines outstanding research and compelling narrative. One of the best reports about the American physicist spy at Los Alamos who stole the plans for the atomic bomb.

[Craig Adamson]

reviewed in WSJ