Interview with Thomas A. Tombrello - Caltech Oral Histories

Tombrello–192
Union and the United States had every reason to keep everybody under very tight control. We
prevented a lot of things from happening just by sheer intimidation. It was as if you had a
pressure cooker and you kept the lid nailed down tight. And my prediction in 1992 was that
we’re no longer controlling the pressure cooker, and it’s building up; and we don’t know where
everything is going, but it’s not just two players anymore, it’s everybody. That’s when I
suggested that Livermore get into another line of business. That even if peace were coming, we
still want to read other people’s mail. I said they should get into the surveillance business,
intelligence business. Widgets for the intelligence crowd. I made a basic mistake in that. I
looked on the CIA, with its enormous budget, as being a monolith to whom you could sell all
sorts of things. But I got it completely wrong. The CIA is huge. It has a huge budget. But you
will sell a widget in one office, and the guy next door couldn’t care less; he wants a different
widget. So it became a much more interesting sales job, and the people that worked with that
program at Livermore were geniuses at marketing something that was a marketing nightmare,
which is equipment to help you determine proliferation and things like that.
ASPATURIAN: Well, it’s very necessary, isn’t it?
TOMBRELLO: It’s very necessary, but it was a different marketing challenge than I had
anticipated. It was not what I expected at all. I was right, but it was a much bigger challenge.
I’m pleased that Livermore made it into about a $300-million-a-year enterprise.
ASPATURIAN: Anything else you’d like to add to this particular session?
TOMBRELLO: No. I think I mentioned that the ultimate thing is, What is the ultimate role of, not
just the weapons labs in the future but all the national laboratories? What is their long-term
function? Do they have a vision? The origin of the Argonne National Laboratory was the
reactor program, the Light Water Reactor Program. Well, they don’t do that anymore. I’m not
just picking on Argonne National Lab—I’m picking on Brookhaven; I’m picking on Livermore;
Sandia; Los Alamos.
I think that’s probably it. I think there’s not much more to the national labs. We can do
the division tomorrow, starting on that.
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