Kenneth David Nichols
Major General Kenneth D. Nichols
Nickname	Nick
Born	(1907-11-13)13 November 1907 Cleveland, Ohio
Died	21 February 2000(2000-02-21) (aged 92) Bethesda, Maryland
Place of burial	Arlington National Cemetery
Allegiance	United States of America
Service/branch	United States Army
Years of service	1929–1953
Rank	Major General
Commands held	Armed Forces Special Weapons Project Manhattan Engineer District
Battles/wars	Occupation of Nicaragua World War II
Awards	Distinguished Service Medal (2) United States Atomic Energy Commission Distinguished Service Award Commander of the Order of the British Empire, (Great Britain) Medal of Merit (Nicaragua)
Other work	General Manager of the Atomic Energy Commission

Major General Kenneth David "Nick" Nichols (13 November 1907 – 21 February 2000) was a United States Army officer and an engineer. He worked on the Manhattan Project which developed the Atomic Bomb during World War II as Deputy District Engineer and then District Engineer of the Manhattan Engineer District. He was responsible for both the uranium production facility at the Clinton Engineer Works at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and the plutonium production facility at Hanford Engineer Works.

Nichols remained with the Manhattan Project after the war until it was taken over by the Atomic Energy Commission in 1947. He was the military liaison officer with the Atomic Energy Commission from 1946 to 1947. After briefly teaching at the United States Military Academy at West Point, he was promoted to major general and became chief of the Armed Forces Special Weapons Project, responsible for the military aspects of atomic weapons, including logistics, handling and training. He was Deputy Director for the Atomic Energy Matters, Plans and Operations Division of the Army's general staff, and was the senior Army member of the military liaison committee that worked with the Atomic Energy Commission.

In 1950, General Nichols became Deputy Director of the Guided Missiles Division of the Department of Defense. He was appointed chief of research and development when it was reorganized in 1952. In 1953, he became the general manager of the Atomic Energy Commission, where he promoted the construction of nuclear power plants. He played a key role in the proceedings brought against J. Robert Oppenheimer, that resulted in Oppenheimer's security clearance being revoked. In later life, Nichols became an engineering consultant on private nuclear power plants.

Early life[link]

Kenneth David Nichols was born on 13 November 1907 in West Park, Ohio, which later became part of Cleveland, Ohio, one of four children of Wilbur L. Nichols and his wife May née Colbrumn.^[1] He graduated fifth in his class at the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1929 and was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the United States Army Corps of Engineers. In 1929, Nichols went to Nicaragua as part of an expedition led by Lieutenant Colonel Daniel I. Sultan whose purpose was to conduct a survey for the Inter-Oceanic Nicaragua Canal.^[2] A fellow officer in the expedition, who would later figure prominently in Nichols' career, was First Lieutenant Leslie Groves.^[3] For his service on the expedition, Nichols was awarded the Nicaraguan Medal of Merit "for exceptional service rendered [to] the Republic of Nicaragua."^[2]

Nichols returned to the United States in 1931 and went to Cornell University, where he received a bachelor's degree in civil engineering. He became assistant to the Director of the Waterways Experiment Station in Vicksburg, Mississippi, in June 1932. In August he continued his studies at Cornell, where he completed his master's degree in civil engineering on 10 June 1933.^[2] While at Cornell he married Jacqueline Darrieulat.^[3] Their marriage produced a daughter and a son.^[1] He returned to the Waterways Experiment Station in 1933. The next year he received a fellowship awarded by the Institute of International Education to study European Hydraulic Research Methods for a year at the Technische Hochschule in Berlin. While there he was promoted to first lieutenant on 1 October 1934. The thesis he wrote won an American Society of Civil Engineers award.^[3] On returning to the United States he received another one year posting to the Waterways Experiment Station. From September 1936 to June 1937 he was a student officer at Fort Belvoir, Virginia.^[2] He then became a student again, using his Technische Hochschule thesis as the basis for a Doctor of Philosophy degree from the State University of Iowa.^[3] He became an instructor at West Point in August 1937, where he was promoted to captain on 13 June 1939.^[2]

World War II[link]

Argonne National Laboratory, DuPage County, Illinois

In June 1941, Colonel James C. Marshall summoned Nichols to the Syracuse District to become area engineer in charge of construction of the Rome Air Depot.^[4] He was promoted to major on 10 October 1941 and lieutenant colonel on 1 February 1942,^[5] when Marshall asked him to take on additional responsibility as area engineer in charge of construction of a new TNT plant, the Pennsylvania Ordnance Works, in Williamsport, Pennsylvania. On this project, Nichols worked with DuPont and Stone & Webster as major contractors, and dealt with Leslie Groves, now the colonel in charge of military construction.^[4]

In June 1942, Nichols was again summoned by Marshall, this time to Washington, D.C.^[6] Marshal had recently been appointed as district engineer of the new Manhattan Engineer District (MED), and had received authorization to staff it by drawing on officers and civilians working for the Syracuse District, which was now winding down as the major part of its construction program was nearing completion. Marshall started by designating Nichols as his Deputy District Engineer, which became effective when the Manhattan District was officially formed on 16 August 1942.^[7]

Y-12 National Security Complex at Oak Ridge, Tennessee

The first major decision confronting the new district, which unlike other engineer districts had no geographic limits, was the choice of construction site. On 30 June Nichols and Marshall set out for Tennessee, where they met with officials of the Tennessee Valley Authority and looked over prospective sites in the foothills of the Cumberland Mountains that had been identified as combining the desirable attributes of power, water and transportation with sparse population by scouts from the Office of Scientific Research and Development. A site at Oak Ridge, Tennessee was chosen, but Marshall delayed purchase while he awaited scientific results that justified a full-scale plant. Afterwards, Nichols visited the Metallurgical Laboratory, or "Met Lab", at the University of Chicago, where he met with Arthur Compton. Seeing the problems of overcrowding there, Nichols, on his own authority, arranged for a new experimental site to be established in the Argonne Forest which would eventually become the Argonne National Laboratory.^[8]

Nichols took charge of ore procurement. He arranged with the State Department for export controls to be placed on uranium oxide and negotiated with Edgar Sengier for the purchase of 1,200 tons of ore from the Belgian Congo in a warehouse on Staten Island. Nichols arranged with the Eldorado Mining and Refining Company for the purchase of ore from its mine in Port Hope, Ontario, and its shipment in 100-ton lots.^[9] Nichols met with Undersecretary of the Treasury Daniel W. Bell and arranged for the transfer of 14,700 tons of silver from the West Point Depository for use in the Y-12 National Security Complex in place of copper, which was in desperately short supply in wartime.^[10]

Oak Ridge K-25 Plant

In September 1942, Groves, now a brigadier general, became director of the Manhattan Project.^[11] Groves immediately moved on the most urgent issues. He promptly approved the purchase of the site at Oak Ridge and negotiated for the project to be given a AAA priority rating.^[12] Groves soon decided to establish his project headquarters on the fifth floor of the New War Department Building in Washington, D.C., where Marshall had maintained a liaison office.^[13]

Nichols, who concentrated his attention on ore procurement, feed materials and the plutonium project,^[14] was promoted to colonel on 22 May 1943.^[5] On 13 August, he replaced Marshall as District Engineer of the Manhattan Engineer District.^[15] As District Engineer, Nichols was responsible for both the uranium production facility at the Clinton Engineer Works at Oak Ridge and the plutonium production facility at the Hanford site. One of his first tasks as district engineer was to move the district headquarters to Oak Ridge, although its name did not change.^[16] For his wartime work on the Manhattan Project, Nichols was awarded the Distinguished Service Medal by the United States Secretary of War, Robert P. Patterson.^[17]

Post war[link]

Nichols at his desk in 1945

Nichols was promoted to brigadier general on 22 January 1946.^[5] Following the departure of Major General Thomas Farrell, Nichols became Groves' deputy, although he also continued as district engineer. Asked to spend more time on weapons production and storage, Nichols established a new underground assembly plant at the Mound Laboratories in Miamisburg, Ohio, and recommended that Sandia Base be transferred from the United States Army Air Corps to the Manhattan District.^[17] In December, Nichols recommended the closing down of the alpha tracks of the Y-12 plant, thereby cutting the payroll from 8,600 to 1,500 and saving $2 million a month. Henceforth, uranium enrichment would be performed by the gaseous diffusion plants, the wartime K-25 and the new K-27,^[18] which had commenced operation in January 1946.^[19]

Nichols kept the national laboratories going with $60 million worth of research grants for fiscal year 1947.^[20] He helped Captain Hyman G. Rickover train a team of naval engineers at Oak Ridge to become experts in nuclear propulsion.^[21] In June 1946, Nichols went to Bikini Atoll to represent the Manhattan Project at Operation Crossroads, a series of nuclear weapons tests conducted to investigate their effects on warships.^[22] Like many of his contemporaries in an Army that was dramatically reduced in size as it rapidly demobilized, Nichols was reduced in rank, reverting to his substantive rank of lieutenant colonel on 30 June 1946.^[5] On return from Bikini, he found that he had been made an honorary Commander of the Order of the British Empire.^[23]

Aerial view of the Able mushroom cloud rising from the lagoon with the Bikini Island visible in the background.

The Atomic Energy Act of 1946 created the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) to take over the functions and assets of the Manhattan Project. President Harry S. Truman appointed its five commissioners on 28 October 1946, and Groves appointed Nichols as the military liaison officer to the AEC. Nichols' main responsibility was to help organize an orderly transfer of assets and responsibilities from the MED to the AEC.^[23] Military aspects were taken over by the Armed Forces Special Weapons Project (AFSWP).^[24] It was generally assumed that Nichols would become the AEC's Director of Military Application, but while Nichol's relationship with the AEC was cordial and the commissioners were impressed with his administrative skills, it also became clear that Nichols did not agree with the commissioners' concept of the Director of Military Application as a staff rather than a line function.^[25]

In February 1947 Nichols was appointed Professor of Mechanics at West Point, but in April 1948, he was recalled to command the AFSWP, with the rank of major general,^[5] becoming the youngest major general in the Army at the time. Although his rank entitled him to quarters at Fort Myer, Virginia, the Chief of Staff of the United States Army, General Omar Bradley advised him not to ask for them as there had been criticism from some senior colonels.^[26] Nichols also became Senior Army Member of the Military Liaison Committee to the AEC, and Deputy Assistant Chief of Staff of the Army (G-3) for Atomic Energy.^[5]

In his new role Nichols clashed with the AEC over the issue of whether it or the Department of Defense should have custody of nuclear weapons. The administration's policy remained firmly in favor of AEC control. This was tested during the Berlin Blockade, when Truman ordered B-29 bombers to Europe.^[27] For a time there was talk of calling off the Operation Sandstone nuclear weapons tests, but Nichols successfully argued for their continuation.^[28] In 1950, he became Deputy Director of the Guided Missiles Division of the Department of Defense, overseeing the Nike Project.^[29] He was appointed Chief of Research and Development when it was reorganized in 1952.^[30] Nichols retired from the Army on 31 October 1953. For his services from 1948 to 1953, he was belatedly awarded a second Distinguished Service Medal in 1956.^[31]

Nichols became General Manager of the AEC on 2 November 1953.^[31] In this capacity he initiated the AEC Personnel Security Board hearing on the loyalty and trustworthiness of atomic scientist J. Robert Oppenheimer. In a harshly worded memorandum to the AEC on 12 June 1954, subsequent to the hearing, Nichols recommended that Oppenheimer's security clearance not be reinstated. In five "security findings," Nichols said that Oppenheimer was "a Communist in every sense except that he did not carry a party card," and that he "is not reliable or trustworthy."^[32] The commission agreed, and Oppenheimer was stripped of his security clearance.^[33] A second scandal was the Dixon-Yates contract, a political controversy that became a major issue in the 1954 elections, resulting in Nichols appearing before a United States Senate subcommittee.^[34]

Later life[link]

Nichols left the Atomic Energy Commission in 1955 and opened a consulting firm on K Street, specializing in commercial atomic energy research and development. His clients included Alcoa, Gulf Oil, Westinghouse Electric Corporation and the Yankee Rowe Nuclear Power Station.^[35] Nichols was involved with the construction of the Yankee Rowe Nuclear Power Station, the first privately owned pressurized-water plant, and the Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Plant, which commenced operation in 1961 and 1968 respectively. They were both experimental and not expected to be competitive with coal and oil, but later became more so due to inflation and large increases in coal and oil prices. He was critical of over-regulation and protracted hearings, which meant that by the 1980s similar boiling-water or pressurized-water plants took almost twice as long to build in the United States as in France, Japan, Taiwan or South Korea.^[36]

Nichols died of respiratory failure on 21 February 2000 at the Brighton Gardens retirement home in Bethesda, Maryland. He was buried at Arlington National Cemetery.^[35]

Notes[link]

Bibliography[link]

v t e Manhattan Project Sites Clinton Engineer Works Hanford Engineer Works Oak Ridge National Laboratory Los Alamos National Laboratory Berkeley Radiation Laboratory Chicago Metallurgical Laboratory Ames Laboratory Montreal Laboratory Sandia National Laboratories Trinity Test Site Dayton Project Administrators Vannevar Bush James Conant Thomas Farrell Leslie Groves Kenneth Nichols Robert Oppenheimer William Parsons Scientists Robert Bacher Hans Bethe Niels Bohr James Chadwick Arthur Compton Enrico Fermi Richard Feynman Klaus Fuchs George Kistiakowsky Ernest Lawrence William Penney Emilio Segrè Glenn Seaborg Louis Slotin Leó Szilárd Edward Teller Richard Tolman Stanislaw Ulam Harold Urey Leona Woods Chien-Shiung Wu Related articles Timeline History of nuclear weapons Nuclear weapons and the United States S-1 Uranium Committee Interim Committee Chicago Pile-1 X-10 Graphite Reactor Y-12 National Security Complex Alsos Mission Smyth Report Project Alberta Silverplate 509th Operations Group Fat Man Little Boy Enola Gay Bockscar The Great Artiste Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (debate) Atomic Spies Atomic Energy Act of 1946 Operation Crossroads Tube Alloys See also: All articles in the Manhattan Project category

Ken O'Keefe

Kenneth Nichols "Ken" O'Keefe (born July 21, 1969)^[1] is an Irish-Palestinian citizen and activist and former United States Marine and Gulf War veteran who renounced his US citizenship on March 1, 2001.^[2][3][4]He led the human shield action to Iraq and was a passenger on the MV Mavi Marmara during the Gaza flotilla raid. He said that he participated during clashes on the ship and claimed to have disarmed two Israeli commandos.^[5][6]

Military background[link]

O'Keefe served as a United States Marine in the Gulf War. According to O'Keefe's own website, he was discharged under "other than honorable conditions."^[7]

Marine Conservation[link]

O'Keefe created a marine conservation social enterprise 'to protect and defend the marine environment' in Hawaii in 1996.^[8] This social enterprise conducted ghost net recoveries and endangered Green Sea Turtle rescues of turtles wrapped in monofilament fishing line. Many of the turtles that were rescued required amputation of their fins due to the damage from the fishing line. O'Keefe became a pioneer in sea turtle rescues in Hawaii and led a campaign to create a marine sanctuary (Pupukea MLCD) on the North Shore of Oahu.^[9] In 1998 he joined an anti-whaling campaign in which he was bloodied when attempting to retrieve a boat belonging to the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, of which he was a crewmember. It was in this time he was mentored by Captain Paul Watson.^[10][11] Eventually he served as the regional director for the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society in Hawaii.^{[12][13][14][15]}</ref>[9] </ref>

Human Shield Action to Iraq[link]

In December 2002, O'Keefe started the human shield action to Iraq group. Intended to "make it politically impossible for them to bomb" Iraq by placing western civilians as "shields" at non-military locations, about 75 activists traveled over land from London to Bahgdad in two double-decker buses.^[16][17] Critics of the human shields argued that their mission would only protect Saddam Hussein. O'Keefe argued the "people of Iraq" would suffer the most from a war and publicly acknowledged Hussein as a "violent dictator".^[18] At its height about 300 human shields were in Baghdad, but due to challenges internally, with the Iraqi dictatorship and O'Keefe's deportation from Iraq, the numbers dwindled.^[16][19]

Citizenship[link]

O'Keefe formally renounced his U.S. citizenship in 2001, but

"... O'Keefe has tried officially to renounce his citizenship twice without success, first in Vancouver [Canada] and then in the Netherlands. His initial bid was rejected after the State Department concluded that he would return to the United States—a credible inference, as O'Keefe in fact had returned immediately. After his second attempt, he waited seven months with no response before he tried a more sensational approach. He went back to the consulate at The Hague, retrieved his passport, walked outside, and lit it on fire. Seventeen days later, he received a letter from the State Department informing him that he was still an American, because he had not obtained the right to reside elsewhere. He had succeeded only in breaking the law, since mutilating a passport is illegal. It says so right on the passport".^[20]

Gaza Flotilla involvement[link]

In June 2010, O'Keefe was on board the MV Mavi Marmara. During the Gaza flotilla raid, O'Keefe was among the passengers who clashed with the Israeli military. In the course of the clash, O'Keefe claims to have been involved in providing initial first aid to a seriously wounded passenger and disarming two Israeli commandos. He claims he helped to disarm one commando of his gun and aided in subduing another, personally taking possession of a 9mm pistol from the second commando, removing the "real bullets" or live ammunition from the pistol and giving the bullets to others while hiding the weapon. He explained that it was his hope that the weapon could be used as evidence in any subsequent trial. O'Keefe said of the experience that it was like "combat but without combat weapons" and that "We had in our full possession, three completely disarmed and helpless commandos" who were "surrounded by at least 100 men"; "we could have done anything with them." He said that "woman provided basic first aid, and ultimately they were released, battered and bruised for sure, but alive. Able to live another day."^[21][22] O'Keefe was among those arrested and detained in Israel.

O'Keefe and another activist say he was beaten at the Tel Aviv airport when he resisted deportation, while still in Israeli custody. He claims that a policeman hit him on the head with a truncheon and that he was choked until he almost blacked out. He said he spent two more days in a detention facility in the airport after the incident. O'Keefe said the Irish consul general tried to convince him to agree to leave and asked him to wash the blood off his face but he refused.^[23][24]

A video showing his bloodied face was released upon his arrival in Istanbul. On June 6, 2010, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) charged that O'Keefe is an "anti-Israel extremist" and "operative of the Hamas Terror organization". According to the IDF he was entering the Gaza Strip in order to "form and train a commando unit for the Palestinian terror organization."^[25] He responded: "If they had a supposed terrorist in their possession, why the hell did they let me go?" He acknowledged having had meetings with Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh and other senior Hamas officials.^[21]

Road to Hope[link]

In October 2010, O'Keefe joined the Road to Hope humanitarian aid convoy to Gaza. Organizers were seeking to transport the convoy from the port of Derna, Libya to el-Arish, Egypt on board the private-charter roll-on/roll-off ferry M.V. Strofades IV, which left port unexpectedly without any of the aid after the ship's owners and captain got into an argument with the aid workers, although seven Libyan port officials and ten of the Road to Hope team were on board.^[26]

Organisers of the convoy claimed that despite paying a shipping agent for the charter of the ship, O'Keefe and the others were "kidnapped" from the port by the owner and the captain of the ship who "went nuts".^[27] The ship owners claimed that the activists had boarded the ship without any contract or charter. Due to a "tense atmosphere" aboard the ship, and (as he claimed) receiving no response from the Libyan authorities, the captain feared for the safety of the ship and decided to sail out of Libyan waters.^[26]

The ship eventually docked at Piraeus, Greece after being boarded by Greek commandos. All the activists were allowed to disembark after they were found to have committed no crime.^[28][29] The captain and owner were subsequently arrested.^[30]

Political Views and Conspiracy Theories[link]

On Iran's Press TV program, The Agenda, while speaking on the topic of "America: Is it a Civilized Nation?", O'Keefe denied the plausibility that the 9/11 Attacks were committed by Osama bin Laden and the 19 hijackers. He claimed it was an "inside job" and that the "US government and intelligence agencies, including Mossad" were responsible. He also alleged that the United States government, including the President, had prior knowledge of the Japanese attacks on Pearl Harbor during World War II, but allowed the attacks to go ahead in order to have an excuse to enter the war.^[31][32]

O'Keefe appeared, alongside Jenny Tonge at an Israeli Apartheid Week talk at Middlesex University on 23 February 2012,^[33] during which he stated, "Israel and Mossad were directly involved in 9/11" and that it "continues to foster false flag terrorism". He added later,

"Now, let's be clear, if it was possible, for an Israel to exist, in which it truly accepted all of the people of that region, especially the original inhabitants that were kicked out and murdered in masse, if it could somehow, legitimately recognise all of the people of that region, as brothers and sisters, and make sure that laws existed in which every last person was treated equally, then I would shift my wrath towards Israel to an opening of seeing if this nation could conceivably act with any human decency. But there is no indication that there is any genuine intention for anything like that at all, so, if Israel is inherently a racist state, if it is inherently an apartheid state, then I want no part of Israel, it has no place in this world. And it does in its current form, if you want me to use some inflammatory language, in its current form should be destroyed... Just like the UN in its current form should be destroyed, just like the American empire in its current form should be destroyed, just like the British empire in its current form should be destroyed, just like every corrupt, racist government should be destroyed."^[34][35][36]

A heated debate with supporters of Israel, who included Zionist Federation co-vice-chairman Jonathan Hoffman, followed O'Keefe's speech.^[37][38] The police later reviewed remarks made by O'Keefe at the meeting after allegations were made by two pro-Israel activists who had been in the audience that that they incited racial hatred by comparing Jewish audience members to Nazis (O'Keefe had said: "The Jewish state is acting on behalf of the Jewish people. You [the Jewish people], like the Nazis, now have a special obligation. The decent Germans of World War Two, what did they do when the Nazis came to power and instituted their policies? Did they do enough to stop the Nazis? No, they didn't. What are the Jewish people doing right now? Are you doing enough to stop your racist, apartheid, genocidal state?").^[39] After looking at submitted video and media material, the police came to the opinion that no criminal offences had been committed and no further action was taken.^[38] Six student societies in the Palestine solidarity movement released a statement condemning O'Keefe's remarks as anti-semitic, stating that such opinions had no place in their struggle "against all forms of racism".^[40]

References[link]

External links[link]

• World Citizen Ken O'Keefe official website