The atomic physicist who lost “the biggest secret on the planet” in a train bathroom (and the mystery of where it ended up)

His attention was not on the man sitting on the toilet seat below, but on the wall next to him, where a manila envelope was hidden behind the pipes of the toilet system.

It contained nothing less than the greatest secret on the planet.and Wheeler had to get it back.

The clueless scientist had left it there on his visit to that cubicle just a few minutes earlier.

Wheeler, 41 (‘Johnny’, as his friends knew him) had been a key figure in the manhattan projectwho developed the first atomic bomb during the war, and was then the director of Matterhorn B, the US H-bomb project, based at Princeton University, where he had been a professor of physics since 1938.

He had taken the overnight train to Washington DC that day to meet with representatives of the US Naval Research Laboratory about an unrelated project, but decided he would also use his time in the capital to personally deliver his comments on the H-bomb to the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy (JCAE).

He had put in the manila envelope a six-page document that had been sent to him, which withhad details of the history of the manufacture of the H-bombthe terrifying new weapon of mass destruction that only the US possessed, and enough up-to-date technical details to get a foreign power wildly excited.

At night, he took the document out to read it and take notes before going to sleep. When she woke up in the morning, she took him to the bathroom with her so as not to leave him unattended in cabin No. 9, but he was left in the now occupied cubicle.

When he saw that the man had finished, Wheeler lunged forward and grabbed the manila envelope. Very relieved, he returned to his cabin and began to pack his suitcase to leave.

With everything ready, he pulled out the manila envelope for one last check on the H-bomb document. To his utter horror, the envelope contained only one more mundane document: the H-bomb report had disappeared.

A desperate search of his bunk and the entire car, followed by a frantic tour of the rooms and restaurants of Washington’s Union Station to try to identify any of his fellow passengers, proved fruitless.

Had it been stolen, Wheeler thought, by a Soviet agent?

Completely despondent, he had no choice but to report his loss to the JCAE, three of whose members rushed to the station to help with the search.

Finally, shortly after noon, JCAE Executive Director William Borden accepted the inevitable and telephoned the FBI office in Washington.

In the five weeks that followed, Special Agent Charles Lyons, leading the investigation, was able to identify and rule out as suspects to five men that they had taken neighboring bunks on the train that Wheeler had traveled on from Philadelphia.

But some worrying gaps remained.

First, Lyons was unable to locate an “ordinary, simply dressed” couple in their 30s and 40s, and their young son, who had purchased last-minute tickets and occupied the lower and upper berths of Stateroom No. 1. .

Even more worrying was not finding the occupant of lower bunk No. 8, diagonally opposite Wheeler.

Lyons had this individual’s ticket, purchased at the counter in Philadelphia, but unfortunately the name written on the rail company’s seating chart could not be identified. despite having been thoroughly studied at the FBI lab in Chicago.

What he read that night remains to this day highly ranked. But we can deduce something of what he said from Wheeler’s interview with the FBI.

The document confirmed that the US was on its way to a successful thermonuclear weapon (it had tested a rough prototype and was ready, codenamed ‘Ivy Mike’, in November 1952).

It also revealed that there were several varieties of thermonuclear weapons believed to be available for practical use.

Wheeler told his inquisitors that the top secret document also revealedaba technical details on the manufacture of the ‘super’ fusion bomb: that “lithium-6 and compression were helpful and radiation heating provided a way to get that compression.”

The physicist believed that the mention of Lithium-6 as a vital ingredient would have piqued the interest of the Kremlin. But he told FBI investigators that the “qualitative idea of ​​the radiation implosion … is the most important revelation” and could be crucial information for Soviet atomic scientists.

Wheeler had a history of being careless with official documents, but no one believed he was a Soviet spy.

In investigating the case, Agent Lyons first reported the movements of all Soviet diplomatic personnel on that morning of January 7.

He then launched an investigation into what he described as a “delegation of radicals” who was headed for the capital on Wheeler’s train.

It was a group whose destination was the White House where they would carry banners urging the president to commute the Rosenbergs’ death sentence.

FBI agents took numerous still photographs and film reels of this protest, and had Wheeler study them to see if he recognized any of the people from his train ride on January 6 and 7. But the scientist was unable to provide a positive ID, and that trail went cold.

The loss of the H-bomb document could not have occurred at a more critical time in the Cold War, nor more feverish in American history.

The war in koreaalready two and a half years old, showed no signs of ending.

chief witch hunter, Joe McCarthywas fueling an atmosphere of concern, even paranoia about communists at the heart of the government.

Then there were the atomic spies, Julius and Ethel Rosenbergwho had been tried, found guilty and sentenced to death.

Since late December 1952, the couple’s supporters had been picketing the White House continuously, asking President Harry S Truman to grant the couple clemency before he left office later that month.

In the midst of all that, this disappearance, which could have come straight from the pages of a spy thriller, perhaps from the pen of someone like Ian Flemingwho in 1953 was about to introduce the world to James Bond in “Casino Royale.”

The H-bomb document may have simply fallen out of Wheeler’s hands when he fell asleep that Tuesday night, somehow disappearing into the train’s structure, equipment or bedding.

But when newly elected President Dwight Eisenhower was tasked with revealing the writing’s disappearance to his National Security Council a month later, most of them were convinced it was the work of the Soviets, none more so than the vice presidentRichard Nixonwho urged the FBI to carry out a complete control of each and every one of the members of the JCAE.

Eisenhower asked his aide to contact FBI Director J Edgar Hoover about the ‘safekeeping’ of all the committee’s files, before any more documents were lost.

Eisenhower’s mood that day was a mixture of deep anxiety and anger that such a calamity should occur so early in his tenure.

Rarely a president of USA there was openly expressed your feelings so raw to his closest colleagues.

He frankly confessed that he was “scared,” and had no idea how to proceed. He expressed bewilderment that the document in Wheeler’s possession had been mislabeled “secret” instead of “top secret,” and simply sent by certified mail to a “university professor” at Princeton instead of being escorted to his office. hands by an armed guard.

If those responsible for this disastrous security breach – JCAE personnel – had been in the military, “they would have been shot”burst out the president.

The ECB would soon have a new president and a new configuration, but, as Eisenhower lamented, that would simply be “closing the barn door after the horse was stolen.”

FBI agents from the eastern US interviewed hundreds of people and oversaw the search for miles of railroad tracks and dozens of railroad cars, but found nothing.

The search ended, and Eisenhower turned to more immediate concerns, primarily trying to end the war in Korea.

Perhaps the H-bomb document will one day appear in one of the Kremlin archives.

What is a fact is that just 7 months later, in August 1953, the Soviet Union put itself on the same level as USA when he tested his own prototype H-bomb on the steppe of northeastern Kazakhstan.

As for ‘Johnny’ Wheeler, he was only scolded by Gordon Dean, chairman of the Atomic Energy Committee: he was too valuable a member of the H-bomb project to be fired.

Reflecting on the incident in his memoirs years later, Wheeler wrote: “It is interesting, even now, to wonder if my document was stolen by a Soviet agent. It could hardly have vanished.”

* Roger Hermiston is a writer and journalist. His latest book is “Two Minutes to Midnight: 1953 – The Year of Living Dangerously“ (Biteback Publishing, 2021). This article was published inBBC History Revealed magazine.

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