Stacey Pendleton Lecturer at the University of Colorado Denver; State Coordinator, National History Day in Colorado

Transcription

1 Interview with Stacey Pendleton Lecturer at the University of Colorado Denver: Department of History May 16, 2014 At the University of Colorado-Denver Interviewed by Julie Speer Stacey Pendleton Lecturer at the University of Colorado Denver; State Coordinator, National History Day in Colorado Julie: How did you first get interested in the Cold War? Stacey: Well, I ve grown up in Colorado my entire life and my family has been situated here for a very long time. And my grandparents were the ones who really got me most interested in it, because my grandmother would tell me stories about Colorado during the 1950s, specifically about if an atomic bomb would drop what the plan was. They lived in Morrison at the time well it s actually the border between Morrison and Conifer, so very foothills, very rocky where they lived. They had 40 acres of land and she always told me that if a bomb were to drop, their big plan was to go find a cave in the hills. And she actually had her dog tag and she gave it to me a few years ago so I always use it in my classes, but ever since then, I ve always been really fascinated about the ideas of what would drive somebody to look for a place to survive. What were the things involved that made this happen. And during my high school years, I came into contact with some of those early duck and cover films. And, I thought, how ridiculous are these? So I wanted to learn a little more about it and it just became a little bit of a passion for me over time. And I ve always been interested in 1950s culture, obsessed over I Love Lucy, so it was really something that came down to my childhood and it just kind of snowballed from there. And it has just become my passion ever since. Julie: Tell me about Colorado s role in the Cold War. Stacey: Well, Colorado became an interesting place really from WWII on. In a lot of ways, the West was gaining a lot of financial assistance from the government to start building up military installations, all that kind of stuff. So Colorado definitely wanted in on all of this, we had two senators in particular who really saw it as their intention to try to build up Colorado, in the 1950s on. It has Senator Ed Johnson, who s really the one who s going to push Colorado forward in terms of gaining Rocky Flats, amongst other things. And then you also have Senator Milliken. So both of them really tired to get Colorado into that money. We re talking millions of dollars that could be used for infrastructure, and really getting more and more people into Colorado. Julie: Let s talk more about those guys a little bit. Stacey: Ed Johnson was really the big guy in charge in a lot of ways. Well, they called him Big Ed, booming guy, big voice, very charismatic, and he definitely had kind of a Western mentality. So his big goal was to definitely try to make Colorado come forward the most out of any other state. So they did a lot of wheeling and dealing, as it were, in the Senate to try to get all these things here. In fact, he s going to be the major mouthpiece on a lot of bills that are going to be passed specifically on defense spending. So you re going to see his face on a lot of legislation that came down the pike throughout the 1950s. Julie: Anything about Senator Milliken?

2 Stacey: He was just the second in command, so to speak. But it s really going to be Ed Johnson who is going to be your big tour de force. Milliken often times followed a lot of the things Johnson pushed forward. So he just kind of backed him up on those things. Julie: Tell me about what some of the end results were. What were some of the major installations were, and how we played a part of the Cold War? Stacey: Well, starting in WWII, you re going to start seeing Colorado gaining ammunition plants, so if you re familiar with the Federal Center, towards the Lakewood area, that was a munitions factory in WWII. Certainly during WWII you re going to gain Lowry coming into its own in the Aurora area. So the Lowry Base is going to be a base of operations for communications in WWII, but also later on in the Cold War. You re going to start seeing build up of the Rocky Mountain Arsenal, where chemical weapons are going to be created, and it s also created a bit of controversy along the lines of Rocky Flats. And then Colorado itself is going to become really the heart of the Cold War in so many ways. You re going to have a ton of defense industries; NORAD is going to come in And that s going to be a real communication between the United States and Canada, in trying to create these communication lines. What happens if we re attacked? Let s get together, let s try to figure out the best ways of getting this information out. Let s try to prevent that attack from happening. So Colorado is going to be, really, geographically key to a lot of these things. Largely because we re not a coastal area, we re right in the middle of the map, so to speak. And if you read a lot of the discussions that people had in newspapers, in manuals, even in government documents at this point in time, people are saying that Colorado is strategically important just because we re not on a coast line; we can easily intercept an attack if we hear about it early on. So Colorado, in a lot of ways, is going to have a geographic importance. Plus, we also have weather and geography definitely in our advantage. Our climate isn t humid, which is definitely one of the things they took into consideration when they were creating Rocky Flats because they have these very specific filters that they had to use with the machinery and the filters were very sensitive to humidity and Colorado had very low humidity. So that was one of the things under consideration. We would not have a lot of dust in comparison to other areas, so certainly there are a lot of things working to Colorado s advantage during this period of time. Julie: And those industries are still here, aren t they? It s still a huge industry, is it not? Stacey: Absolutely. Well, another industry that I forgot to mention earlier is Martin, which actually became Martin Marietta and then Lockheed Martin. And this is the installation that is going to create our missiles at that point in time. One of my favorite stories pertains to the Rush of the Rockies celebration in Stacey: Denver was celebrating a centennial, of sorts, and they were trying to highlight Denver s history and how far they ve come. So in 1959, they created this Rush to the Rockies celebration, which included a Pioneer Village in downtown Denver: they had basically a year s worth of activities that included highlighting the history of Denver, but also what Denver could do in the future. And among those things, the Martin Corporation decided, hey it s a great idea if we show off our Titan missile which we re going to really put into display in So, being 1959, they wanted to give Denver a first-hand look at what they ve accomplished. So there s this Pioneer Village right in the middle of downtown Denver and where does the Martin company decide to put the missile? Right behind the Pioneer Village. So, visitors would come in, they would see this massive Titan missile over this little, tiny village. And interestingly enough, this is where you re going to start seeing some citizens actually protesting. So you re going to see some early protest movements. And interestingly enough, if you think about it, one of the things that s going to start happening in the mid-50s on, is you re going to start seeing small groups of people getting together and starting to protest against the use of atomic energy for military uses. There re a lot of

3 concerns starting about that point in time about long-term health effects. In fact, a lot of your doctors are going to be the ones who are going to go to the forefront at the very beginning. Among those, Dr. Benjamin Spock, the well-known pediatrician he was very concerned about strontium 90 being released into the atmosphere from the atomic testing down in places like Nevada and New Mexico. Because basically, it s just a basic reaction, you have the atomic bombs drop, you have the fallout from that, it gets carried up into the atmosphere, and from that point on it eventually has to fall somewhere. And it ends up in the pastures. The cows eat the grass from those pastures, and, eventually, it gets transferred through their bodies to the milk. So there were concerns about long-term effects of children being in some sort of contact with that strontium 90. So you re really seeing a lot of people getting concerned about the long-term effects on health. So you have all these people coming in to the Rush of the Rockies celebration and they re starting to really protest these Titan missiles that could be used long-range and there s a lot of concern about the potential about how long that would last in the environment and on health effects. So you have all these people picketing at this celebration. So it wasn t the best idea at that point in time, but certainly Martin thought it was important to highlight this. And remember, this is a time of the military industrial complex, so ultimately the best idea is: oh we need to build up our nuclear arsenal as much as possible and basically threaten the Soviet Union in a way that will make them not want to attack us. It s a basic idea of mutually assured destruction. You build up, build up, build up until the point where either side, if they decide to hit the bomb, it means destruction of the entire world. So some historians have actually said that mutually assured destruction was the best form of foreign policy at that point in time, just because neither one would want to be the one to set the bombs off, but it s really a ridiculous policy when you think about it. Certainly pop culture got involved with this as well, so if you look at the movies and the books at the time, a lot of them will actually talk about mutually assured destruction. And it s a very huge concern. Nevil Shute wrote On the Beach that looked at that specific idea, so it was very much in the consciousness of Americans at that point in time well, Americans and people around the world really, about what threats could possibly happen as a result of somebody triggering the bomb. Julie: Let s talk about Rocky Flats: what they were doing, what people thought they were doing. Stacey: It goes back to Ed Johnson, basically while he s trying to build up Colorado as, really, this Cold War center, so to speak. Or at least get some industries here. Ultimately there were attempts prior to Project Apple, which is going to be the search that is going to initiate Rocky Flats. Julie: So tell me what Project Apple is. Stacey: Project Apple was the search that was put together by the Dow Corporation, which is actually going to be the company that is going to be responsible for Rocky Flats for most of its existence, except for the time it s going to be taken over by Rockwell. But the Dow Corporation was found out by the United States government and they were put in charge of basically creating these factories. So it was the Dow Corporation and it was also the Atomic Energy Commission, which was something that came out of the 1946 Atomic Energy Act. There was a lot of concern early on about who should have ownership of the bomb and any sort of atomic energy. And so the Atomic Energy Commission was created out of that act in an effort to basically try to put that in the hands of civilians. A lot of people were concerned that atomic energy would be taken advantage of negatively if it were in the hands of the government, so basically this is an attempt to try to regulate that. So the Atomic Energy Commission, which is more or less civilian-run of course you have people with military backgrounds involved but they, along with the Dow Corporation started scouting out places. There were 21 sites on the list for potential places to create these military, basically factories, of these atomic bombs. And Colorado had three sites on the list. It was Denver, Colorado Springs, and Pueblo; but those other two areas were taken out of

4 consideration and Rocky Flats was deemed the perfect spot. Largely because it has some natural protection (again, the humidity), it had low humidity, low vulnerability to dust. So ultimately, that was the spot that was chosen. It also had good access to railroads as well as water sources, and electrical. So those things really came together and by Project Apple, that s where Rocky Flats is going to come into the equation. Julie: So, did Project Apple decide what other sites across the country were building the different pieces? Stacey: Well, a lot of that had been initiated before that point in time, but Rocky Flats is going to be part of that specific project. There were sites that were already pre-existing, certainly if you looked at Los Alamos; that s where your research and development is going to be. As well as the Sandy site, Livermore in California was also another place where they were doing research and development. But really from 1945 on, you re going to start seeing a real search in all the specific areas. The interesting thing is that you re not going to find a factory that s going to build a bomb from start to finish. Basically at this point in time, the government wanted Remember, this is a time when communist threat is a big thing and there is a big fear about communist aversion. So you have the House of Un-American Activities really going around challenging things. And so there was a concern that a lot of the people who were involved academically in these types of bomb situations could possibly be communist. So ultimately the big concern is to try to separate the process out so much so that no one person knows it from start to finish. So interestingly enough, Rocky Flats is about the third or fourth step in that process. Ultimately, Rocky Flats is going to create the pits or the triggers that will then be sent down to Pantex down in Texas where they re going to be installed in the bombs themselves. So you have a variety of places being created at this period of time. Colorado lost out initially on gaining one of the early plants. I can t remember the name off the top of my head, but we lost out to someone on the East Coast for that one. But there was a lot of concern in the public about whether or not we wanted to have nuclear reactors in Colorado. There was a huge fear that perhaps there would be a chain reaction and they didn t have a contingency plan in case something went wrong. But interestingly enough, we get Rocky Flats. Julie: At the beginning of Rocky Flats, can you tell me what people thought was going on there? Was there any speculation, and at what point did folks really know what was going on? Stacey: It s a really interesting thing, because the Denver Post creates a headline that says 45 Million Dollar Plant Coming to Colorado. At that point in time, that was the most amount of money that Colorado had actually spent on a factory of that sort, so we re talking big bucks here. But ultimately a lot of people were really thrilled about the idea of Rocky Flats coming here. Americans at that point in time remember, this a fairly new science so there s not a lot of understanding about what long-term effects those chemicals in those atoms will actually have on you. So people were really thrilled; hey, it s job opportunities, it s all sorts if great revenue for the state. So people in a lot of ways are very, very positive to the plant, but these are years shrouded in secrecy. Basically, if you worked at the Rocky Flats plant, you re not going to be talking about what you re doing in your day-job. That s limited to the factory. So there s not a great record in terms of the public about what s going on behind those closed doors. They know it has to do with atomic energy, they know it s an atom plant, but past that point, they re just going to be kind of in the background saying, it s best for us because it s going to keep us safe from the communists over in the Soviet Union. So people were very much for the Rocky Flats plant originally. Of course that will change over time, particularly when fires start happening in a lot of the buildings. The first big fire happened in It barely registered any blips on the record. There was a mention in some of the newspapers that a fire had occurred, but ultimately not a lot of concern on the part of

5 citizens. There were other things going on geographically at that point in time. Certainly the relationship was breaking down with the Soviet Union. At this point in time, the Soviet Union was actually in process of creating intercontinental ballistic missiles, so people were concerned about that. And 1957 is also the hallmark of when the Sputnik satellite goes up into space. So America is very fearful about that. They re not going to be too concerned about what s going on at that Rocky Flats plant. Julie: So what could have happened if that fire.. Stacey: Interestingly enough, there was a lot of fallout, residual fallout that actually came from that fire, but because it wasn t well-recorded, it could have been a nasty, dangerous thing. Ultimately when you re working with plutonium, there s a point with criticality. It s pyrophoric which means that if it s exposed to the air, it can catch fire very quickly. And this is something that can set off a set of chain reactions, so it could have been very dangerous for Colorado. It could have set off a massive explosion, but the big thing is the radioactive fallout. And remember that this is a plant that is basically 15 miles outside of Denver, so not the best area to be exposing people. Julie: Do you know how much plutonium is at the site? Stacey: Well, so basically what Rocky Flats is meant to do is to convert the plutonium, which they got from other sites, which was liquid at that point in time, into a metal. And eventually Rocky Flats goes to hollow triggers, so there s some machining that has to go into it. So these are people working in glove boxes and you re talking very minute amounts of plutonium getting exposed to the air, but even small amounts can cause a lot of damage biologically. What you have to consider is that every bomb that s in our nuclear arsenal in some way, shape, or form has something to do with Rocky Flats. There was a piece of it that was built there. I m going to say that there were somewhere around 77,000 nuclear weapons that were created over this period of time and every single one of them had Rocky Flats written all over it. And it s not just bombs; it s small nuclear devices and all these things were being tested in New Mexico at that point in time. And ultimately you have American soldiers in New Mexico who are testing a lot of this new technology and they re being exposed to the radioactive elements and the fallout, so this is a really fascinating time. And a lot of those quote-unquote atomic soldiers tried to put a class action lawsuit on the table in the 1990s, but nothing came of it because there s no definitive proof that their exposure was ultimately caused by those explosions. And very similar with Rocky Flats, if you actually look at the records and the class action lawsuits that have been filed over the years, a lot of them won t actually come to fruition because of that causality. There s no definite proof that X caused Y. Julie: Talk about the public starting to realize what was going on there and the protests. Stacey: Well, the thing you have to remember: 1969 is a big year for the Rocky Flats factory, especially Mother s Day, because that s when the major fire broke out in one of the glove boxes which is where they did their work on the plutonium triggers. And ultimately, this could have been like the 1957 fire, something that could have done a lot of damage. Ultimately what had happened is it caught fire in this glove box you re actually not supposed to put water directly on those glove boxes, but that s exactly what they did. And a lot of people say that it actually saved the factory, interestingly enough. But the factory caused enough damage from that particular fire and this was actually something that got on the radar of Americans at this point in time. And America at this point was really shifting its consciousness about health and environmental issues. Silent Spring had come out in the early 1960s by Rachel Carson that looked at DDT, the pesticide. And ultimately Rachel Carson, the author of that, really started the environmental movement from there on out. People were inspired to try to take action, to be

6 concerned about pollution, radioactivity. So what you re basically going to see is a really small scale environmental movement that s going to boom very quickly. And from 1969, when news of the fire got out, people became increasingly concerned, as they should, about what leaked out. There were some independent folks who started doing soil sampling around the area, and what they were finding were small concentrations of not only plutonium in certain areas, but what they also found were a lot of the byproducts that were just as lethal in a lot of ways as the plutonium itself; the byproducts to create those pits. And there was one area in particular that the Rocky Flats factory had used throughout the 1950s, known as pad 903. And what this was was an area where the byproducts, the liquid byproducts, were placed in this particular area in 55-gallon drums. And over time, the drums degraded and there s a lot of evidence showing that a lot of that seeped into the ground. So that area needed heavy remediation when the factory itself closed. But people at that point in time were starting to take notice of this. A lot of the nearby farmers were very much concerned about how the factory had negatively influenced their own cattle. There s one person in particular, a lady by the name of Beanie Abbot. She actually looked at all her animals and saw that a lot of the babies had deformities. And so she would actually keep a lot of those animals specimens in an effort that if one day someone wanted to try to figure out what was going on and needed definitive proof, she would have it. So you have this lady stockpiling all of her animal s defects, which is a really interesting thing to think about. Julie: Talk about what you know about the animals in the area (in regards to deformities). Stacey: Well, I ve only seen a few pictures, but you would have these frogs that would have multiple body parts, extra limbs, all that sort of stuff. But the cattle were the big thing. You d find cows that had double bladders, all sorts of weirdness. So it was doing internal damage as well as visible, external damage. Because ultimately what radioactivity does over time is that it degrades the cells so basically what you re seeing in these animals was defects that came throughout the pregnancies of the mothers. So that raised a lot of questions about long-term effects on humans as well. Another thing that was a big concern for folks was the tritium that might get into the water at that point in time. So the interesting thing to consider is from 1950 to 1960, you re going to see a population explosion in the Denver metro area. And it s not just because of our wartime companies, but also the oil industry is really booming at that time. So basically if you look at 1950, there s roughly about 550,000 people in the Denver metro area. By 1960, that s exploded to over 900,000. So you have a lot of people in that population, and it s a big concern about Rocky Flats and the communities like Boulder, Westminster, and Arvada. So people in that area are going to be very much concerned about what s leaking into their water supply by that point in time. And certainly Marcus Church, the guy who actually sold off part of his land to Rocky Flats development, will actually have a lawsuit against Rocky Flats over a lot of those same concerns. He had a trout farm so he had that on his radar that perhaps some things weren t necessarily going right on the other side of those walls. So you have all these environmental things really captivating a lot of Americans at this point in time. And 1970 is going to be your first Earth Day, so environmental issues are definitely going to be a major point of concern for people in the 1960s. So, ultimately as more and more information leaked out about Rocky Flats, certainly some of the workers were talking about health violations and a lot of the workers who had been there long-term started experiencing adverse health conditions. Numbers of people had various types of cancers and a lot of them were cancer survivors. So all this is coming together and people are starting to connect the dots, thinking, well maybe there s something more to this. So you get to the late 1970s, early 1980s, and people are coming together and really starting to protest. And by this point in time, one of the things you have to think about in the 1970s is that the foreign policy is

7 really changing for the United States. It s not so much about nuclear buildup; certainly 1962 is going to be the moment where people are really going to question whether we should be building up our nuclear arsenal or tearing it down, largely because of the Cuban missile crisis. This is the one time where America is really at the threshold of atomic warfare where bombs could have actually been used. So from that moment on, Americans really started pushing forward with anti-nuclear sentiment. So there are initial talks, particularly with Khrushchev, about trying to limit. We actually see the immediate limited test band treaty that s going to come right after that. So a lot of Americans are going to start pushing forward, and by the 1970s you re going to see a cooling relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union. Granted there s still a lot of tension between these two places, but ultimately this is a period of détente; it s a cooling period. You re going to start seeing the leaders coming together and signing agreements to start limiting the amount of nuclear weapons in their arsenal. The strategic arms limitations treaties are going to be the things of the day. Of course all of that is going to go away with Ronald Reagan, but in the 1970s there was more or less cooling of the attitudes. So more and more people are questioning whether or not the United States needed to even have places like Rocky Flats. So more and more families started protesting at the gates of Rocky Flats. A number of the workers will tell you that every day when they left work, there was always someone there at the gates calling them baby killers, calling it a death factory. So the workers really took a big brunt of the animosity from the public when they left the factory every night. But ultimately what you re going to start seeing is mass protests against Rocky Flats, which is what leads to the encirclement movement. Basically, a lot of your early movements against Rocky Flats are going to be religious organizations such as the Friends, the Quakers, as well as various Catholic organizations. A few nuns were actually arrested during that period of time for their actions against Rocky Flats. Remember, this is still a very secured area. There s security all over the place and if you tried to breach it, guess what? Security is going to take you out. But ultimately the encirclement movement was going to be created with the intent to try to prevent the movement in and out of various materials to go down to Pantex. So basically you had groups of adults. (Children were encouraged not to come because parents were concerned about the fallout that they would get, the exposure that they would get from the encirclement activity.) So you basically have large numbers of adults holding hand-to-hand completely around the Rocky Flats plant in a real moment of solidarity. And the news certainly picked up on that, and it s definitely one of the most enduring images of the Rocky Flats plant. Julie: And I heard it was 20,000 people. Do you know how many people participated? Stacey: I just know it was thousands, but 20,000 is the consistent number that I hear. [someone asks something] Stacey: 1979 On no, the encirclement was in was an interesting time as well because Rocky Flats was actually on the national consciousness and there were even a few musicians who came out to sing against Rocky Flats. Among those, Jackson Browne and Bonnie Raitt. They actually did a concert that was very much in alignment with this anti-nuclear mentality also marks a banner year because that s the year that Daniel Ellsberg and 285 others got arrested for protesting outside of Rocky Flats. So you have big national figures who are going to be very much against Rocky Flats and making the message known. So, the word got out by the time of the 1970s and 1980s. The encirclement movement happened in the 1983 with over 20,000 people in attendance. At one point in time, there was even a teepee and, I can t remember if it was late 1970s or late 1980s: some groups got together and they decided to block the railway into Rocky Flats. And they literally had this teepee, this huge teepee that they put on the train tracks. So people were getting really inventive in

8 their ways of protesting Rocky Flats. Of course you have people in costume coming out dressed as skeletons, certainly people tried to get as much attention as they possibly could during this period of time. Julie: Tell me about the events leading up to the FBI raid. Stacey: Well, again, it s that basic idea that you have a lot of workers starting to blow the whistle on certainly their own health effects, but there s also a major concern about the lack of concern on the part of the owners and the government about safety regulations within Rocky Flats itself. So a lot of the workers are going to be the ones dropping dimes, so to speak, and trying to get people concerned about the safety violations. So ultimately it s that, amongst a lot of studies that were being done in the area, which led up to that FBI raid. So at this point in time, we re starting to see a transition. By this point Rockwell is out of the question: there s a new company that came in and absorbed Rocky Flats. And the Atomic Energy Commission by that point in time is not in charge of Rocky Flats anymore: it s the Department of Energy. So there s a lot of transitioning going on in terms of leadership. So all this is kind of coming together in a perfect storm and, ultimately, all these people dropping dimes, so to speak, on all these activities is what is going to lead up to an investigation. So in 1989, you re going to see Rocky Flats really starting to end as a facility. It officially closes by In 1992 starts that remediation process, like, oh my gosh, we have places like pad 903 that we need to clean up now. And ultimately people scrubbing down the walls trying to get things cleaned up. Just going back to that 1969 fire, that was the most expensive disaster to ever happen at that plant. It took two years just to clean up the factory from all the radiation. People would have to go in with complete suits to save themselves, so to speak, from the radiation. It was nastiness Julie: Tell me about burying waste as a tactic. Stacey: So one of the things that a lot of these factories, not just Rocky Flats, but Rocky Mountain Arsenal, one of the tactics they did to try and eliminate some of the byproducts, which might not have as much radioactivity, was to bury the byproducts. So it was a lack of understanding at that point in time about long-term effects and what could potentially happen. The basic idea is that if you bury it, it s not exposed to the air; therefore, there really is no harm, no foul done. So if you bury it, over time it could potentially degrade; the things inside will degrade as well. It really comes from a lack of understanding of long-term effects of radioactivity on a population. It doesn t really account for seepage into aquifers as well as soil. There are some areas, particularly in Rocky Flats itself, which are very much radioactive at this point in time and very much contaminated: ultimately later on as more and more people started understanding the long-term effects of radiation and contamination. What they did during that remediation period from the 1990s on was dig all that stuff up and basically put them on these huge trucks that would go down to be buried in places like New Mexico, away from populations. So a lot of what you re going to see taken from that area is going to be in kind of cavernous storage areas. So even today there s not really a great way of saying what do we do with all this stuff, so it s a little bit concerning. Certainly, it s just a lack of understanding. One of the things you ve got to keep in mind with atomic energy is that it is a relatively new science. Really, we didn t know a lot of long-term effects, specifically if you look at long-term health effects. What we really only had to go on for humans was Hiroshima and Nagasaki. That s the first big case study we see on radiation. So ultimately, if you look at civil defense manuals, a lot of the things that they re saying in those manuals is not necessarily correct by today s standards, but it was correct for that time because they looked at what had happened at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And the basic idea is, Oh, you can live through this atomic attack, but if you get into any sort

9 of contact with radiation, just wash. Just go take a shower and use a lot of soap. So it s a lack of understanding about long-term effects. And that translates even into the ways that we stored our contaminants. Julie: Tell me about some of the civil defense tactics of the day in Colorado and the United States. Stacey: Well, the interesting thing is, as Colorado became more of a Cold War center, there became an increasing concern about perhaps being a target for the Soviets. So certainly the United States took a lot of concern about trying to protect the larger population and Denver was certainly no exception to that, Colorado was no exception to that. Colorado Springs has a really great civil defense program, but the basic idea is that there has to be some survivability in the event of a Soviet attack. So basically what you want to do is have a population that s ready, that s prepared. So there was a lot of training to be done, manuals were produced that were handed out and distributed to a large group of citizens, basically trying to get them in touch with what they should do. Some people started building bomb shelters, fallout shelters in their back yards in an effort to try to save themselves and their families in the event of an attack. Most people agreed, especially contractors, that such a thing wouldn t necessarily lead to any survivability. But civil defense measures, in a lot of ways, were intended to, more or less, make people feel comfortable with the Cold War and basically make them feel like they could survive a nuclear attack when, in fact, that probably wasn t the case. If you look at early civil defense manuals in Denver, a lot of them will tell you that you can survive an attack; a nuclear bomb won t actually kill off a large percentage of your population. But the interesting thing is that if you look at a lot of the communication, secured communication between political leaders, most people realize that an atomic attack would take a large toll on the population. They knew this, but these were measures put in place to keep people psychologically in a place where they didn t feel panicked. The interesting thing is that Denver started trying to create some large-scale public shelters in the case of an atomic attack, but the most interesting one is actually in relationship to Red Rocks, the amphitheater. Denver leaders came together and said, Okay, if we re going to survive this attack and continue to create our government and administer past this point, what we need to do is have a place outside of the city that is going to keep us safe. So a number of newspapers reported that there was about 11,000 dollars spent to try to convert the area underneath the stage of Red Rocks for Denver s political leaders. So they would have a place to store their records, to talk about next steps in an effort to try to keep things rolling as the Cold War would progress, so to speak. But ultimately, you have a lot of these mass shelters. But the big concern was what to do with kids. You had to have this basic assumption that even though you might have a home shelter, mom s at home, dad might be at work, and the kids are definitely going to be at school. So there s a facet that pertains to schooling at this time. So that s where those ideas of duck and cover are going to come in. There was a film produced by the Archer Company out of New York City. It was called, literally, Duck and Cover, and it featured an animated turtle by the name of Bert. And Bert tried to tell children, hey, you could survive this, all you need to do is go somewhere and duck and cover. Obviously, the first place was to try to duck and cover under a desk, but ultimately Bert showed students that they could duck and cover anywhere and they would survive an atomic attack. And I show the video to my students and today they laugh about it they think it s farcical. But ultimately at that point in time it gave students the feelings that perhaps they could survive, that this is something I could live through. So it made sense to them. This was for a young audience: you don t want to freak out a bunch of kids that s not a goal.

10 And the interesting thing is, I went down to Red Rocks on a tour with my friend over the summer and they did not know a thing about it. I went on the tour: no ideas. I m like, seriously? Come on, tell me about this, I want to know more. Julie: Is there still an impact of the Cold War in Colorado today? Stacey: Colorado certainly has a lot of legacies from the Cold War. A lot of the facilities that we saw in the Cold War actively being used for Americans safety and military use are transformed today. Rocky Flats is actually not a building anymore. It is a wildlife refuge area, as is Rocky Mountain Arsenal. There are a few areas that are still off-limits to the public at Rocky Flats, but by and large you can still go there and walk your dog and whatnot. But you have places like the Martin Corporation, which is now Lockheed and they focus on aerospace technologies. So transforming from missiles to now going into space largely from NASA. So thinking back to Sputnik, we re seeing Colorado going forward from that point on. And Colorado has a lot of federal workers. At the height of the Cold War, some historians even refer to Denver as Little Washington, so you have a lot of government facilities still in Colorado even today. Certainly, we re seeing a lot of the technologies carrying over from the Cold War that are just being expanded, like aerospace technology, for example. Colorado Springs really boomed as a result of the Cold War, so it s not just Denver that s going to benefit from this. You have NORAD; you have a lot of folks coming into the state, specifically for Colorado Springs at that period of time. So Colorado Springs boomed significantly from the Cold War on. And it s continued to grow. We had gained the Air Force Academy by 1959, And that was supposed to be the West Point of the Rockies. So Colorado is really influential in those things and has continued to exist, so we still have the Air Force Academy, we still have Martin Corporation, and we still have Lowry Air Force Base. So Colorado is still experiencing a lot of the legacy from the Cold War. Julie: What about the economic impact of the Cold War in Colorado? Stacey: Certainly we re seeing a booming state from that. We got a lot of money as a result of those industries coming to Colorado. So, like I said, it created a lot of jobs for people, so you re going to see people even coming from the eastern part of the United States directly to Colorado just for those purposes. So in a lot of ways, our population really reflects that economic change. Because Colorado was not a not really a big state, infrastructural-wise, in that regard, but because of those industries, you re going to see a transformation of Colorado. Julie: Looking at what s happening now with Russia, do ever think we could have another Cold War? Stacey: Well, in a lot of ways there s some potential that the United States and Russia could perhaps see cooling relationships once again, particularly as we see it with Putin right now over the issue with Ukraine. There s always a potential that things could go wrong and we would be in a position where we d have to use harsh measures once again. But in terms of a buildup of a nuclear arsenal, you know, I really don t see that as being as pertinent as it once was. I think we ve advanced different technologies, such as drone technologies that would fight our battles more effectively at this point in time. And we re going to resort to other things like cyber warfare. So I think the potential is there, but the mechanisms of warfare have changed. Julie: Is there anything that you think we ve learned from the Cold War? Stacey: Well, in a lot of ways I think people have tried to prevent this expanded type of warfare. Ultimately, I think as we re moving forward, the thing that people will remember most about the Cold

11 War is the threat of potentially being taken out by something as small as a bomb we re talking something very small. Julie: Since there are differences of opinion, what would you say the dates of the Cold War were, in relation to Colorado? Stacey: Well, it depends on which historian you ask, there are some that say that the Cold War started in 1917 when the Soviet Union came into existence. But the typically accepted dates of the Cold War are from 1945 to about Some people will cut it off at 1989 with the fall of the Berlin Wall, but really when the Soviet Union dissolves between 1990 and 1991 is when we generally end the Cold War. The Cold War was a relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union that went wrong, really, after WWII. The basic idea is that it wasn t an all-out war as we know it. What it was was a war of words, a lot of proxy wars, and the threat of nuclear annihilation of each country. So basically what you have is the United States sitting on one end really promoting democracy and capitalism. And then on the other end, you have the Soviet Union and other communist states that are really promoting their ideologies. And ultimately what you re going to see are these years of bad relationships between government leaders, a lot of misinformation, and a build up of technologies that were intended to wipe each other out. Julie: Could you explain more about what the glove boxes were, what they looked like? Glove boxes are really, really fascinating things. A lot of the early ones had Plexiglas, which isn t the best material to be using. But basically what they were is that you can directly handle the plutonium and the plutonium was put into these contained boxes and you had these specific gloves you had to wear. The dexterity on these workers had to be incredible, because these gloves are heavy. They re leaded; they re really hard to work with. So these glove boxes created a contained environment, so to speak, and it also had ideal conditions so that plutonium wouldn t spontaneously combust or cause a criticality or chain reaction. Julie: Do you know how many they had? Stacey: They vary in types, they had quite a few. Building C is where most of those were housed. [Unknown:] Do you know how many nuclear weapons the Soviet Union made, and how many it would take for global annihilation? Stacey: Our nuclear arsenal was far bigger than the Soviet Union s, but they still had a significant arsenal themselves. I can t remember the exact numbers that the Soviets had, but ultimately we had ours pointed at them they had theirs pointed at us. Very small amounts would have caused nuclear annihilation in a lot of ways. The interesting thing is that we created our H bomb by 1952, which is something really significant. It s dirtier in terms of radioactive fallout than an average uranium bomb or plutonium bomb, which are what we used in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But the Soviets created Tsar Bomba by 1960 and this was the dirtiest bomb ever dropped and it caused the biggest explosion. So even though theirs may not have been as big as ours, the technology certainly was there to have maximum impact. END