Los Alamos Historical Society Exclusive Event ‘Oppenheimer Conversations’ Featuring Kai Bird June 20

Tim Rieser, right, with U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy. Courtesy/Rieser by The World and Viet Nam Report

Author Kai Bird

LAHS News:

Los Alamos Historical Society will sponsor an exclusive event, “Oppenheimer Conversations” featuring Kai Bird, author of American Prometheus, the book on which the upcoming “Oppenheimer” movie is based.

Special guest at the talk, to be moderated by Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) National Security Research Center Director Brye Steeves, is Tim Rieser, U.S. Senate staffer who was instrumental in the recent vacating of the revocation of J. Robert Oppenheimer’s security clearance.

The evening begins at 6 p.m., June 20 in Fuller Lodge with Kai Bird’s book signing and a social hour. Hors d’oeuvres will be served by the Blue Window, with drinks from Bathtub Row Brewery. Conversations will begin at 7 p.m. Tickets are $100, available at losalamoshistory.org. This fundraising event supports the renovation of the Oppenheimer House.

Bird is a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian who has published biographies of John J. McCloy, McGeorge Bundy, J. Robert Oppenheimer, Robert Ames, and now The Outlier: The Unfinished Presidency of Jimmy Carter. He has also authored a memoir about his childhood in the Middle East. He is the Director of the Leon Levy Center for Biography at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.

Rieser attended Stanford University and Dartmouth College, receiving his BA from Dartmouth in 1976.  He earned his JD from the Antioch School of Law in 1979. From 1980–1983 he worked as a public defender in Vermont, his home state, and then spent a year as a teaching assistant at the Harvard Law School Project on Negotiation. In 1985, he began working for former Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont, who served for 8 terms and as President Pro Tempore and Chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee. 

In 1989, Rieser became a professional staff member of the Appropriations Committee. In 1995, he was named the Democratic Clerk of the Subcommittee on State and Foreign Operations and held that position until 2022, overseeing appropriations for the operations and programs of the Department of State, U.S. Agency for International Development, and other federal agencies and commissions, along with contributions to the United Nations and other multilateral organizations. He served as a senior advisor to the Chairman of the Appropriations Committee in 2023. From 1995–2023, Rieser also served as Sen. Leahy’s senior foreign policy advisor.

Those with questions or wishing more information may call the Historical Society at 505.662.6272.

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