Theodore Hall
For nearly half a century Fuchs was thought to have been the most significant spy at Los Alamos, but the secrets Ted Hall divulged to the Soviets preceded Fuchs and were also very critical. A Harvard graduate at age 18, Hall, at 19, was the youngest scientist on the Manhattan project in 1944. Unlike Fuchs and the Rosenbergs, he got away with his misdeeds. Hall worked on experiments for the bomb that was dropped on Nagasaki, the same type that the Soviet detonated in 1949. As a boy, Hall witnessed his family suffer during the Great Depression and his brother advised him to drop the family name Holtzberg to escape anti-Semitism. Such harsh realities of the American system affected young Hall, who joined the Marxist John Reed Club upon arrival at Harvard. When he was recruited to work at Los Alamos, he was haunted, he explained decades later, by thoughts of how to spare humanity the devastation of nuclear power. Finally, on leave in New York in October 1944, he decided to equalize the playing field, contacted the Soviets and volunteered to keep them apprised of the bomb research.
With the help of his courier and Harvard colleague, Saville Sax (a fervent communist and aspiring writer), Hall used coded references to Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass to set up meeting times. In December 1944 Hall delivered what was probably the first atomic secret from Los Alamos, an update on the creation of the plutonium bomb. In the fall of 1946 he enrolled in University of Chicago, and was working on his PhD in 1950 when the FBI turned its spotlight on him. His real name had surfaced in a decrypted message. But Fuch's courier, Harry Gold who was already in prison, could not identify him as the man, other than Fuchs, that he had collected secrets from. Hall never went to trial. After a career in radiobiology, he moved to Great Britain and worked as a biophysicist until his retirement. When the 1995 Venona declassifications confirmed his spying from five decades earlier, he explained his motivations in a written statement:
"It seemed to me that an American monopoly was dangerous and should be prevented. I was not the only scientist to take that view." He died in 1999 at age 74.
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/Spies-Who-Spilled-Atomic-Bomb-Secrets.html
arely staircase,
There is a matter of faith in the view that releasing such things brings peace. Free release of information to maintain an open and equal society and world sounds good to me.
Some founders opposed endless restriction by those who sought to profit on innovative creations that would benefit mankind. We've seen this done repeatedly, where ideas are silenced to by those who want to maintain a monopoly. Thus we have industrial espionage, the ridiculing of solutions and a need for whistleblowing.
In the matter of weaponry as you bring up, the same information can be used by a variety of groups to profit from and kill people, doing the opposite of the idealistic vision presented. It's a quandary people have devoted their lives, seeking to protect lives by withholding information that some groups would use in order kill others.
In fantasy world, people would truly want to work together and do what's best for all. In the real world, Teabaggers, Talibans and others are violently opposed to letting anyone live outside their vision.
The GOP Teabags made a point of following people from rallies of those who for were health care, and now gun control meetings. They abused public data bases to follow them to their homes, passing out social security numbers, work numbers, schools their children attended, addresses of their family members, etc. in order to intimidate those of other political persuasions.
The point being, to keep them from exercising their right of free speech and public assembly across this nation. It has been intense since 2010.
I would think it imprudent to release launch codes to anyone, but recognize such codes do not entail the ability to use them. There is a control in place through the chain of command, the operation of missiles, etc. that are unavailable. The DOD website has been hacked, but only the front page. The current scandal du jour is not about nukes.
But I think there are those who would still hold to the ideas of those on that link I provided. They would let loose anything they could get to level the field, even if it meant destroying it. For their ideology or their faith, whatever it is.
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