Spies, lies and the superbomb

Message Share Topic Printable Version Google Delicious Digg StumbleUpon Windows Live Yahoo Bookmarks reddit Facebook MySpace Newsvine Furl Topic Search Topic Options Post Reply Create New Topic

   Since we have airports going in the stuff on TV thread I thought I'd start this one for this series I saw on Natgeo especially given the tag line that Karl has been using. IMO it appears to me that there is a lot of revisionism going on with Teller these days.

But even if not with Teller in this series certainly the commies. Fuchs was explained away as a fellow that gave the a-bomb (at least) to the commies because he didn't want the US to be the only country that had it.  Oh, and the only reason he was a commie in the first place is because they weren't the Nazi's.
 He later didn't think communism was so hot so he confessed. 
Made me think so I looked it up. Because Russia wasn't an enemy at the time he gave them the secrets (the Brits are the ones that prosecuted him) he didn't get the death penalty but only 14 years of which he served 9 and change.
Yeah, he was disillusioned all right. From Wikipedia:

He was released on 23 June 1959, after serving nine years and four months of his sentence at Wakefield Prison, and promptly emigrated to the German Democratic Republic (East Germany). The tutorial he gave to Chinese physicists helped them to develop the bomb they tested five years later, according to authors Thomas Reed and Daniel Stillman.[5][6] (Some have challenged this assertion as unreferenced and unsupported.[7])

Also in 1959, he married a friend from his years as a student Communist, Margarete Keilson. He continued his scientific career and achieved considerable prominence. He was elected to the Academy of Sciences and the SED central committee, and was later appointed deputy director of the Institute for Nuclear Research in Rossendorf, near Dresden, where he served until he retired in 1979. He received the Patriotic Order of Merit, the Order of Karl Marx and the National Prize of East Germany.

I expect his confession was beat out of him as the Brits had the goods one him, I don't think he was disillusioned in the least.
I also noted an attempt to rehabilitate Oppenheimer. I don't think he was a spy but given that 1) his wife was a commie, 2) his brother was a commie 3) his mistress was a commie and 4) he had attended some commie meetings my goodness, that's a lot of commies and I think that revoking his security clearance was the only prudent thing to do.
I still consider Teller to be the true patriot of the bunch and the only one to see where everything was pointed.
Even with it's flaws it's not a bad series and I'd watch it again but wow, has Natgeo gone over to the dark side IMO.