OSTIblog Articles in the Oppenheimer Topic

DOE Releases Manhattan District History and Oppenheimer Personnel Hearing Transcript via OSTI-Hosted OpenNet

The Department of Energy (DOE) recently completed two significant declassification efforts and has made the newly released documents publicly available on the OpenNet database, which DOE launched 20 years ago to improve public access to declassified documents.  The website is supported by the DOE Office of Classification and hosted by the Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI) on a cost-reimbursable basis.

Over a 12-month period concluding in July 2014, DOE released to the public the Manhattan District History, a multi-volume classified history of the Manhattan Project.  Commissioned in late 1944 by General Leslie Groves, the history was “intended to describe, in simple terms, easily understood by the average reader, just what the Manhattan District did, and how, when, and where.”  The history records the Manhattan Project’s activities and achievements in research, design, construction, operation, and administration, assembling a vast amount of information in a systematic, readily available form.

Through the combined efforts of the Office of Classification and the Office of History and Heritage Resources, in collaboration with OSTI, the full text of the entire 36-volume Manhattan District History, organized in 79 files and containing more than 13,500 pages, is now available to the public on OpenNet.  Unclassified and declassified volumes have been scanned and posted.  Classified volumes were declassified in full or with redactions; still classified terms, phrases, sentences, and paragraphs were removed and the remaining parts made...

Related Topics: atom bomb, declassified, hearing, Leslie Groves, Manhattan Project, OpenNet, Oppenheimer, security