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The curious death of Oppenheimer’s mistress (2015)

105 points by Hooke 5y ago

kbenson 5y ago
What becomes more suspicious is when you look a bit more at the person who might have been most interested in Tatlock being “removed from the picture”: Lt. Col. Boris Pash, chief of the Counterintelligence Branch of the Western Defense Command (Army G-2 counterintelligence). A Russian immigrant to the United States who had fought on the losing side of the Russian Civil War, Pash was regarded by fellow Russian émigré George Kistiakowsky as “a really wild Russian, an extreme right wing, sort of Ku Klux Klan enthusiast.” It's interesting to me, that in the context of a story about the possible assassination of a U.S. citizen by its government for purported anti-government sympathies, that one of the main suspects would be an immigrant that achieved high status in the armed services (or came over as somewhat high status and retained some sort of rank in the military of a different nation?). That said, I'm not sure if that highlights how much more important in the past it was what you thought and how less important it was where you came from or if it's just really wild story that says less about the nation at that time and more about some really crazy characters that happened to be in proximity.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- kbenson 5y ago
  I'm stuck wondering now why there's such a weird reaction to this. To my knowledge, I didn't say or imply anything offensive or even worth disagreeing strongly about (it was more a conversation starter, since there were no comments yet), so am confused. Is there some misinterpretation that I'm not seeing that's leading to this?
vzaliva 5y ago
IANAL, but wouldn't it be possible to request all documents pretaining to this case under FOIA, to put this question to rest?
- deregulateMed 5y ago
  Requesting doesn't mean you will get anything. Had a lawyer on 2 occasions request various pieces of information regarding traffic, denied. And it was traffic, not state secrets...
  - jjk166 5y ago
    And of course the record needs to exist to begin with. Unsanctioned assassinations of US citizens probably aren't well documented.
  - dredmorbius 5y ago
    Not asking guarantees you won't. There are ways of increasing odds, including researching multiple questions or agencies, among others.
hindsightbias 5y ago
Also interesting: https://knowledgenuts.com/atom-bomb-creator-tried-to-poison-his-teacher/ https://knowledgenuts.com/atom-bomb-creator-tried-to-poison-...
- bjornsing 5y ago
  Wow, if eating that apple would have been lethal… that’s insane… But I somehow doubt that it would have.
MichaelMoser123 5y ago
interesting, it sounds that they had quite a bit of security around the Manhatan project, now how did they manage to ignore such a big number of real spies?
- mywittyname 5y ago
  Probably due to a good bit of misdirection aided by real spies. The obsession with "communists" always struck me as counter productive. What real Soviet spy would openly operate in communist/pro-Soviet circles? A spy who wanted to stay hidden would be a WASPy white supremacist who'd punch anyone that disrespected the flag. Intelligence operatives probably feed these communist groups with enough mundane operations to overwhelm the counter-intelligence and ensure they weren't looking under the correct rocks. All while the little old lady who says The Pledge to the flag every day before coming into the office is walking out with photocopies of top secret materials.
  - creamynebula 5y ago
    To be thinking about such things makes me smile remember how much as a child I wanted to be a spy or a police investigator!
  - mynameishere 5y ago
    Uh, no. The actual spies were pretty much the usual suspects.
  - pvg 5y ago
    What real Soviet spy would openly operate in communist/pro-Soviet circles? Quite a few did since that was where ideologically-motivated recruits were more readily available. The obsession was misplaced and counterproductive not because the spies weren't there but because the overwhelming majority of people with left-leaning politics weren't any sort of spies or even 'disloyal' in any material sense.
    - mywittyname 5y ago
      Sure, but I'm arguing that they were mainly there to tie up counter-intelligence resources. We rarely captured the spies who actually stole damaging information. Of the few notable ones that were caught, most weren't running around rallies in Che t-shirts. They were milquetoast, stodgy coots who lived in suburbia. The CIA et al did eventually catch on to the personality traits and personal situations that make for a compromiseable target. But they clearly spent decades chasing their tail before figuring it out.
trimbo 5y ago
> More recently, and more sensationally, there is an entire chapter on Tatlock’s death in Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin’s biography of Oppenheimer I read American Prometheus last summer, and did not walk away with any inkling that the discussion of Tatlock's death was sensational at all. I just re-skimmed that chapter and while it documents the questions others brought up later, the authors do not seem to imply they thought it was more than a suicide. They conclude by saying Oppenheimer never thought it more than suicide.
- mywittyname 5y ago
  From those snippets of interviews, it sounds like he really loved her. I can't imagine how I'd feel if a person I love died because of me. When the choices are to believe that they A) committed suicide, or B) were murdered for being affiliated with you by a powerful person who clearly has you in their sights, you probably try your damnedest to make yourself believe A.
ConfusedDog 5y ago
For technical courses or tutorials, platforms other than YouTube could be better choice since the chance of having a lot of views is much lower for solo video makers.

105 points by Hooke 5y ago

What becomes more suspicious is when you look a bit more at the person who might have been most interested in Tatlock being “removed from the picture”: Lt. Col. Boris Pash, chief of the Counterintelligence Branch of the Western Defense Command (Army G-2 counterintelligence). A Russian immigrant to the United States who had fought on the losing side of the Russian Civil War, Pash was regarded by fellow Russian émigré George Kistiakowsky as “a really wild Russian, an extreme right wing, sort of Ku Klux Klan enthusiast.” It's interesting to me, that in the context of a story about the possible assassination of a U.S. citizen by its government for purported anti-government sympathies, that one of the main suspects would be an immigrant that achieved high status in the armed services (or came over as somewhat high status and retained some sort of rank in the military of a different nation?). That said, I'm not sure if that highlights how much more important in the past it was what you thought and how less important it was where you came from or if it's just really wild story that says less about the nation at that time and more about some really crazy characters that happened to be in proximity.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
kbenson 5y ago
I'm stuck wondering now why there's such a weird reaction to this. To my knowledge, I didn't say or imply anything offensive or even worth disagreeing strongly about (it was more a conversation starter, since there were no comments yet), so am confused. Is there some misinterpretation that I'm not seeing that's leading to this?

vzaliva 5y ago

IANAL, but wouldn't it be possible to request all documents pretaining to this case under FOIA, to put this question to rest?

deregulateMed 5y ago
Requesting doesn't mean you will get anything. Had a lawyer on 2 occasions request various pieces of information regarding traffic, denied. And it was traffic, not state secrets...
- jjk166 5y ago
  And of course the record needs to exist to begin with. Unsanctioned assassinations of US citizens probably aren't well documented.
- dredmorbius 5y ago
  Not asking guarantees you won't. There are ways of increasing odds, including researching multiple questions or agencies, among others.

hindsightbias 5y ago

Also interesting: https://knowledgenuts.com/atom-bomb-creator-tried-to-poison-his-teacher/ https://knowledgenuts.com/atom-bomb-creator-tried-to-poison-...

bjornsing 5y ago
Wow, if eating that apple would have been lethal… that’s insane… But I somehow doubt that it would have.

MichaelMoser123 5y ago

interesting, it sounds that they had quite a bit of security around the Manhatan project, now how did they manage to ignore such a big number of real spies?

mywittyname 5y ago
Probably due to a good bit of misdirection aided by real spies. The obsession with "communists" always struck me as counter productive. What real Soviet spy would openly operate in communist/pro-Soviet circles? A spy who wanted to stay hidden would be a WASPy white supremacist who'd punch anyone that disrespected the flag. Intelligence operatives probably feed these communist groups with enough mundane operations to overwhelm the counter-intelligence and ensure they weren't looking under the correct rocks. All while the little old lady who says The Pledge to the flag every day before coming into the office is walking out with photocopies of top secret materials.
- creamynebula 5y ago
  To be thinking about such things makes me smile remember how much as a child I wanted to be a spy or a police investigator!
- mynameishere 5y ago
  Uh, no. The actual spies were pretty much the usual suspects.
- pvg 5y ago
  What real Soviet spy would openly operate in communist/pro-Soviet circles? Quite a few did since that was where ideologically-motivated recruits were more readily available. The obsession was misplaced and counterproductive not because the spies weren't there but because the overwhelming majority of people with left-leaning politics weren't any sort of spies or even 'disloyal' in any material sense.
  - mywittyname 5y ago
    Sure, but I'm arguing that they were mainly there to tie up counter-intelligence resources. We rarely captured the spies who actually stole damaging information. Of the few notable ones that were caught, most weren't running around rallies in Che t-shirts. They were milquetoast, stodgy coots who lived in suburbia. The CIA et al did eventually catch on to the personality traits and personal situations that make for a compromiseable target. But they clearly spent decades chasing their tail before figuring it out.

trimbo 5y ago

> More recently, and more sensationally, there is an entire chapter on Tatlock’s death in Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin’s biography of Oppenheimer I read American Prometheus last summer, and did not walk away with any inkling that the discussion of Tatlock's death was sensational at all. I just re-skimmed that chapter and while it documents the questions others brought up later, the authors do not seem to imply they thought it was more than a suicide. They conclude by saying Oppenheimer never thought it more than suicide.

mywittyname 5y ago
From those snippets of interviews, it sounds like he really loved her. I can't imagine how I'd feel if a person I love died because of me. When the choices are to believe that they A) committed suicide, or B) were murdered for being affiliated with you by a powerful person who clearly has you in their sights, you probably try your damnedest to make yourself believe A.

ConfusedDog 5y ago

For technical courses or tutorials, platforms other than YouTube could be better choice since the chance of having a lot of views is much lower for solo video makers.