Julius Robert Oppenheimer was an American theoretical physicist and professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley. Oppenheimer was the wartime head of the Los Alamos Laboratory and is among those who are credited with being the "father of the atomic bomb" for their role in the Manhattan Project, the World War II undertaking that developed the first nuclear weapons. The first atomic bomb was successfully detonated on July 16, 1945, in the Trinity test in New Mexico. Oppenheimer later remarked that it brought to mind words from the Bhagavad Gita: "Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds." In August 1945, the weapons were used in the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The Venona project was a United States counterintelligence program initiated during World War II by the United States Army's Signal Intelligence Service, which ran from February 1, 1943, until October 1, 1980. It was intended to decrypt messages transmitted by the intelligence agencies of the Soviet Union. Initiated when the Soviet Union was an ally of the US, the program continued during the Cold War, when it was considered an enemy.
Jean Frances Tatlock was an American psychiatrist and physician. She was a member of the Communist Party of America and was a reporter and writer for the party's publication Western Worker. She is most widely known for her romantic relationship with Robert Oppenheimer, the director of the Manhattan Project's Los Alamos Laboratory during World War II.
Rudy Baker, a Communist Party USA (CPUSA) official, is today best known for his role as head of the CPUSA's underground secret apparatus. He succeeded to the position in 1938, after the removal of J. Peters.
The Commission on Protecting and Reducing Government Secrecy, also called the Moynihan Commission, after its chairman, U.S. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, was a bipartisan statutory commission in the United States. It was created under Title IX of the Foreign Relations Authorization Act for Fiscal Years 1994 and 1995 to conduct "an investigation into all matters in any way related to any legislation, executive order, regulation, practice, or procedure relating to classified information or granting security clearances" and to submit a final report with recommendations. The Commission's investigation of government secrecy was the first authorized by statute since the Wright Commission on Government Security issued its report in 1957.
Irving Charles Velson was an American who had a long career in the Communist Party of the United States (CPUSA) secret apparatus and who allegedly worked for Soviet Military Intelligence (GRU). He was the son of Clara Lemlich Shavelson and changed his name to Velson by 1938. Velson worked as a machinist at the Brooklyn Navy Yard from 1931 to 1938.
Leonard Emil Mins was an American who worked in the Russian Section of the Research and Analysis Division of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) during World War II. Mins also worked for Soviet Military Intelligence (GRU).
Ross Lomanitz (1921–2003) was an American physicist.
James Walter Miller (1890–1950) was an American citizen and an alleged asset of the San Francisco Office of the KGB from 1943 to 1945. Miller worked in the United States Government wartime mail censorship office. Miller was allegedly recruited into espionage for the Soviet Union by Isaac Folkoff of the Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA). His cover name was "Vague".
Clarence Francis Hiskey (1912–1998), born Clarence Szczechowski, was a Soviet espionage agent in the United States. He became active in the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) when he attended graduate school at the University of Wisconsin. He became a professor of chemistry at the University of Tennessee, Columbia University and Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute. For a time, Hiskey worked at the Tennessee Valley Authority and the University of Chicago Metallurgical Laboratory, part of the Manhattan Project. He was the father of Nicholas Sand.
Haakon Maurice Chevalier was an American author, translator, and professor of French literature at the University of California, Berkeley best known for his friendship with physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, whom he met at Berkeley, California in 1937.
Stjepan Mesaros, best known as Steve Nelson (1903–1993), was a Croatian-born American political activist. Nelson achieved public notoriety as the political commissar of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade in the Spanish Civil War and a leading functionary of the Communist Party, USA. Nelson is best remembered for having been prosecuted and convicted under the Smith Act in 1953.
Major General Kenneth David Nichols, also known by Nick, was an officer in the United States Army, and a civil engineer who is notable for his classified works in the Manhattan Project, which developed the atomic bomb during World War II, as Deputy District Engineer to James C. Marshall, and from 13 August 1943 as the District Engineer of the Manhattan Engineer District. He was responsible for both the uranium production facility at the Clinton Engineer Works at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and the plutonium production facility at Hanford Engineer Works in Washington State.
Oppenheimer is a television miniseries about J. Robert Oppenheimer, produced by the BBC. It was broadcast in the United Kingdom on 29 October 1980 and in the United States on 11 May 1982. The series starred Sam Waterston as Oppenheimer.
Roger Robb was a United States Circuit Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and trial attorney, best known for his key role as special counsel to an Atomic Energy Commission hearing that led to revocation of J. Robert Oppenheimer's security clearance in 1954.
The Oppenheimer security hearing was a 1954 proceeding by the United States Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) that explored the background, actions, and associations of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the American scientist who had headed the Los Alamos Laboratory during World War II, where he played a key part in the Manhattan Project that developed the atomic bomb. The hearing resulted in Oppenheimer's Q clearance being revoked. This marked the end of his formal relationship with the government of the United States, and generated considerable controversy regarding whether the treatment of Oppenheimer was fair, or whether it was an expression of anti-Communist McCarthyism.
John Lansdale Jr. was a United States Army colonel who was in charge of intelligence and security for the Manhattan Project.
The Executive Committee of the Communist International, commonly known by its acronym, ECCI (Russian acronym ИККИ), was the governing authority of the Comintern between the World Congresses of that body. The ECCI was established by the Founding Congress of the Comintern in 1919 and was dissolved with the rest of the Comintern in May 1943.
