A little nugget from the archives — Groves talked to FDR in 12/1944 about the fact that Soviets were spying on the Manhattan Project. Three things in particular are of interest to me here: (thread)pic.twitter.com/vGSLlRcNHJ
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2) That their discussion of this was mostly as a question of how transactional they can be with regards to the Soviets and "the secret." It's about the quid pro quo aspect to trading the secret for something. Again, a very different approach from later Cold War.
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3) And, of course, Groves expressing to Roosevelt that he had no confidence of keeping such secrets "permanently." Just another example from the time that even high officials thought that long-term secrecy was probably impossible, and just a temporary wartime measure.
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How does this square with Groves's confidence that the Soviets wouldn't get their bomb for a pretty long time? Or did he revise his estimates later?
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Groves' estimates on the time it would take the Soviets to get the bomb were not about secrets, they were about access to raw materials (uranium ore) and his ideas about Soviet industrial capabilities (which he thought couldn't do the high-precision work required).
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Ah, yes.
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