Cheap Nova - Secrets, Lies & Atomic Spies (Video) Price

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Customer Reviews of Nova - Secrets, Lies & Atomic Spies

Short history of American traitors during 1940's - 1950's
This video discusses the U.S. effort to break the code of encrypted telegrams sent from Russian diplomats in the U.S. to Russia during WWII. After successfully deciphering some of the telegrams, the gov't learned that Russia was spying on the U.S. and knew about the secret project to build an atomic bomb. It also learned that there were some Americans working as spies for the KGB. The focus of the story is a teenaged physicist named Theodore Hall who worked at Los Alamos during the war. With all the worldly wisdom and experience of a teenager he decided to give atomic research to Stalin, a man whom we now know was responsible for more death & suffering than Hitler. The film also discusses the Rosenbergs, who were the scapegoats for the hundreds of Soviet spies in the U.S. The gov't didn't want anyone to know that they had been able to decipher some of the Russian messages, so most of the spies went unpunished, including Theodore Hall. Includes interviews with one of the Rosenberg boys, the son of spy Saville Sax, the wife of Theodore Hall, Los Alamos physicist Sam Cohen, codebreaker Meredith Gardner, FBI agent Robert McQueen and others. I gave this film 4 stars because I felt it touched on too many topics & characters for an hour-long documentary. When there is too much going on in a doc like this, it clouds the central theme and lessens the impact of the work. Still, I enjoyed this film.