National Museum of Nuclear Science & History[The Atomic Heritage Foundation is grateful to the Augustine family for donating this interview for publication.]
Dolores Augustine: Today is January 1st, 2007, and behind the camera is Dr. Dolores Augustine of St. John’s University, New York. I am interviewing Mr. Reginald C. Augustine about the Alsos Mission. So, go ahead. You can start talking to us about what you did on the Alsos Mission.
Reginald Augustine served in the Army Air Corps during World War II. In 1944, he was assigned to the Alsos Mission, the Manhattan Project’s counterintelligence mission in Europe to determine how far Nazi Germany had gotten on the path to building an atomic bomb. Augustine served under Colonel Boris Pash, and accompanied the Mission’s scientists in France and Germany. He also escorted some of the German scientists captured by the Allies to Farm Hall in England, including Otto Hahn.
Cindy Kelly: I’m Cindy Kelly. It is February 1st, 2018. I’m in New York City, and I have with me Michael Joseloff. My first question to him is, please say and spell your name.
Michael Joseloff: Michael Joseloff, M-i-c-h-a-e-l, Joseloff, J-o-s-e-l-o-f-f.
Kelly: Great. Thank you. Well, you’re here today because you’ve written a wonderful book that I just finished, Chasing Heisenberg. Why don’t you tell us something about yourself, what’s your professional background, how did you get interested in this?
Robert Furman: Robert Furman. F-U-R-M-A-N. I was an assistant to General Groves in the Manhattan District, in his Twenty-First Street offices here in Northwest. And I joined him in late autumn of ‘43 and left him right after the war—right after the end of the war.
Cindy Kelly: Can we—just to—no one’s going to hear what I say, so. And don’t feel that I’m interrupting you because the beauty of editing is we can cut and paste things.
Furman: Sure.
Robert Furman served as General Leslie Groves’ assistant on the building of the Pentagon and the Manhattan Project. As Chief of Foreign Intelligence in the Manhattan Project, he coordinated and was a part of the Alsos Mission, conducting epsionage missions across Europe to interrogate Italian and German scientists, locate uranium, and determine how far the Nazis had proceeded with their atomic bomb project.
