In 1975, historian Jack Holl alleged Wheeler's loss of a sensitive document was a factor in Oppenheimer's suspension http://bit.ly/2y7ojCT pic.twitter.com/rhpxQpxEBe
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Additionally: the general history with Soviet post-Cold War spy stuff was intel agencies claiming credit for nuclear work.
One would imagine that if they could claim to have gotten the USSR the H-bomb — and thus devalue Sakharov's contributions — they would have.
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I once asked Edward Teller the extent to which the USSR H-bomb relied on espionage. He insisted it was all Sakharov, not spies.
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Sure, but would he know that? He had a definite agenda there. Teller's argument was always that H-bombs were easy for scientists to make.
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Hence, in his mind, it was criminal that Oppenheimer et al. had said they shouldn't/couldn't work on them originally.
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It was people in the pro-Oppenheimer camp (like Bethe) who insisted that they were difficult, that Teller (or Ulam) was a genius, etc.
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Teller's insistence surprised me. "Sakharov designed it without outside help." Period. Expected more uncertainty. Hiding something?
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Again, I think it is more about Teller's own view of the history of H-bombs than anything on the inside. It was a multi-decade debate,
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and Teller's position got very hardened. Teller's article of faith is that any sufficient scientist should be able to figure it out easily.
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All it would require is government funding/will to do it — exactly what he felt was denied in the US until 1950.
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