#1
At Third Place Books, 6 November 2007, Seattle, I asked Clive about how much detail he went into researching the work of Oppenheimer for the Great and Secret Show and I got the following response.
[Re.atomic bomb test at Trinity] "My sense is that they knew far more about how brutal the effects were going to be than they were letting on. The protestation that, 'Oh well, we really didn't know how it was going to be' was just that, it was a big put on because I think they knew very well.
"My sense is that if they had told the truth about what they really knew about how ghastly not just the short-term consequences but the long term effects were going to be - some of which even today we don't really know, right? - there would have been a much louder outcry. Whereas what really happened was that there was first a huge sigh of relief that the war on the Eastern front had ceased and that the Japanese had surrendered and that the Second World War was over."