Listen to Dave Lindorff Discuss His New Book 'Spy for No Country' on NPR's 'The Pulse' with Maiken Scott

This Sunday (3/3) and Monday (3/4) at noone, WHYYY in Philly will air the interview about teenage spy Ted Hall, which will also run on over 100 NPR affiliate stations nationwide

Maiken Scott, executive producer and host of the issues program “The Pulse” discusses with TCBH! founder Dave Lindorff and investigative author the importance of the little known but hugely important decision by Ted Hall, at 18 in early 1944 the youngest physicist working in the Manhatttan Project, to later that year become a volunteer spy for the USSR. His motive, as Lindorff discloses, was not to support Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, but to prevent the US from emerging from WWII with a monopoly on nuclear weapons — and from using is terrible weapon.

Lindorff discloses the buried history of how the Truman Administration, even before the war had ended, set Manhattan Project scientists to working out how to industrialize production of its two new up to then hand-made super weapons — the Uranium and the Plutonium fission bombs that were demonstrated on the populations of Hiroshima and Nagasiki on Aug. 6 and 9, 1945. Why that hugely expensive mass production effort, which achieved a pace of 100 new fission bombs per year being added to the US stockpile by 1948, and why begin work on a vastly more powerful hydrogen fusion bomb, at a time the US still didn’t even know Soviet spies had penetrated the Los Alamos project and when US scientists and military strategists were confidently predicting it would take the war-ravaged Soviet Union at least 10 years to get their own bomb.

The answer was precisely to prevent that from ever happening, even if it would kill tens of millions of Soviet men, women and children.

The Truman administration’s plan was to hit the Soviets—America’s primary ally in the war against Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy in Europe—with 400 nuclear bombs by the early 1950s. as soon as it had that many bombs and the hundreds of giant bombers needed to deliver them.

Lindorff says the only reason that horrific genocidal plan never happened was that on Aug. 29, 1949, the Soviets successfully tested what was essentially a carbon copy of the bomb used in the Trinity Test of the first atomic bomb and the Nagasaki “Fat Man” bomb that remains the last atomic weapon used in war to date.

If you don’t live in the Philadelphia listening area of WHYY, check out the broadcast schedule of your local NPR affiliate to learn when the next edition of “The Pulse” is being broadcast in your listening area. It is aired on NPR stations in over 100 major cities across the US. Alternatively, go to WHYY Listen lIve at noon Eastern Time this coming Sunday or Monday on your phone or computer.

Meanwhile consider buying a copy of my deep-dive book “Spy for No Country.” Just published in December, 2023, the book gives a heavily footnoted in-depth account of what Ted and his Harvard roommate, friend and spy courier did, and the profound impact that spying had on nuclear history. It’s selling in most book stores and online at the hardcover retail price of $29.95 plus shipping. But if you sign up for a $150.00 Founder’s lifetime subscription to this site, I will send you a signed copy for my author’s discounted price of $20, covering the postage cost myself — a savings of about $15 plus you get the author’s signature on the title page too. If you miss it, beginning Friday there will also be a podcast of the entire interview on “The Pulse” websote. A link to that free podcast will also be posted on this site.

Here’s what Publisher’s Weekly had to say about the ”Spy for No Country”:

“Espionage buffs and fans of the movie Oppenheimer will savor Lindorff’s extensive scrutiny of this real-life cloak-and-dagger tale.”

And here’s Robert Scheer, one of America’s greatest living investigative journalists:

“This is an amazing story! A really important book, well documented and knowledgeable.”

or if $150 is too much to handle, sign up for free while the site stays that way through April, or if you want to help us get going, subscribe and make a small monthly payment: