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Bureaucratic Politics & Tactical Use of Committees: The Interim Committee & the Decision to Drop the Atomic Bomb Author(s): Leon V. Sigal Reviewed work(s): Source: Polity, Vol. 10, No. 3 (Spring, 1978), pp. 326-364 Published by: Palgrave Macmillan Journals Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3234412 . Accessed: 18/05/2012 09:57

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Bureaucratic Politics & Tactical Use of Committees: The Interim Committee & the Decision to Drop the Atomic Bomb*

Leon V. Sigal Wesleyan University

With the publication of Graham Allison's Essence of Decision the "bureaucratic politics" model added a new dimension to the decision- making theory of foreign policy. Working within the "bureaucratic politics" framework Leon Sigal calls attention to the largely neglected role of committees in the decision-making process. In his analysis of the events leading to the decision to drop the atomic bomb on Japan, he shows how various types of committees can be used tactically to forge interagency agreement on and secure compliance by govern- mental agencies with policy decisions. The result is a valuable contribu- tion not only to the "bureaucratic politics" model but also to our

understanding of the decision to drop the atomic bomb.

Leon V. Sigal teaches in the government department of Wesleyan University. The author of Reporters and Officials: The Organization and Politics of Newsmaking and articles on the American foreign policy process, he is currently engaged in research on how wars end.

Bureaucratic politics approaches to foreign policy-making, as exemplified by the work of Graham Allison, all begin with organizational interest and

position as the dominant motive for the participants' policy stands and

proceed to explain the connection between conflicting stands and deci- sions, Allison's various phrases, "as the resultant of bargaining among individuals and groups within the government," alternatively, by "com-

* This article benefited from the comments and criticisms of two Wesleyan col- leagues, Clement Vose and Russell Murphy, as well as from other friends and associates who deserve acknowledgement but will not be getting it.

Leon V. Sigal 327

promise, conflict, and confusion of officials with diverse interests and unequal influence," or finally, "by the pulling and hauling that is pol- itics." 1 What exactly is that "pulling and hauling"? Is it possible to specify that causal connection any more clearly?

Borrowing Richard Neustadt's formulation, Allison writes, "Each player's probability of success depends upon at least three elements: bargaining advantages, skill and will in using bargaining advantages, and other players' perceptions of the first two ingredients." 2 In a subsequent article, Allison and Morton Halperin add, "What emerges from the game is also importantly affected by constraints, in particular by the routines of organizations in supplying information and options, and by the shared values within the society and the bureaucracy." 3 Apart from listing con- ditions or factors which affect the outcome of the game, though, just what do they mean by "the game"? Is it possible to specify the rules and strategies for playing it?

Allison and Halperin begin to do so. "The game," they say, "consists of each player['s] engaging in various maneuvers to achieve his desired results." 4 From what they and other bureaucratic politics analysts have written elsewhere, it is possible to derive at least four distinguishable ways of specifying the connection between conflicting stands and decisions:

1. bargaining-issuing threats and promises to rivals and allies in the government;

2. compromise and logrolling-negotiating a deal or "treaty" or tacitly agreeing to a quid pro quo;

3. persuasion-convincing other participants of the intellectual merit and moral rightness of a stand through analysis and argu- mentation;

4. tactics and maneuvers-manipulating the expectations, percep- tions, presumptions of risk, and willingness to participate of others in the policy process.

The first three explanations, dependent as they are on the particular details of individual cases, may defy systematic analysis. Elaborating the array of tactics and maneuvers employed by officials and examining their

1. Graham T. Allison, Essence of Decision (Boston: Little, Brown, 1971), pp. 173, 144.

2. Graham T. Allison and Morton H. Halperin, "Bureaucratic Politics: A Paradigm and Some Policy Implications," Theory and Policy in International Relations, ed. Richard H. Ullman and Raymond Tanter (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1972), p. 50.

3. Ibid., p. 51. 4. Ibid.

328 Bureaucratic Politics & Tactical Use of Committees

impact on various instances of governmental action may permit analysts to specify the rules and strategies for playing the game and to assess the systematic biases that they exert on outcomes. Among these tactics and maneuvers are exploiting responsibility for implementation in order to block, delay, or otherwise subvert faithful compliance with decisions; managing the news; and commissioning or drafting reports, memoranda, and speeches. A maneuver which has as yet occasioned little discussion by analysts of foreign policy-making is the tactical use of committees.5

Committees in the foreign policy process can take three different forms: interagency, extragovernmental, and amalgams of the two.6 Form is related to function. Interagency committees usually serve either to reconcile conflicting stands and forge agreement on policies and programs proposed for decision or to gain compliance with decisions already reached. The Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Washington Special Action

Group are examples of each.7 Extragovernmental committees provide a

synthetic vox populi, articulating the interests of an inchoate public in order to facilitate bureaucratic action or inaction in a democratic society. There are two variants of extragovernmental committees. Sometimes, an

agency assembles representatives of interested publics to channel outside advice and formulate recommendations. Other times, an agency estab- lishes a committee composed of prestigious and ostensibly disinterested outsiders to act as surrogates for their constituencies and legitimate pro- posals already formulated inside the bureaucracy-to justify and to ratify its proposals in order to satisfy the norms of democracy and deflect

5. Cf., Morton H. Halperin, "The Gaither Committee and the Policy Process," World Politics 13, no. 3 (April 1961):360-84, for a foreign policy example; and Elizabeth B. Drew, "On Giving Oneself a Hotfoot: Government by Commission," Atlantic Monthly 221, no. 5 (May 1968):45-49; Edwin E. Witte, The Develop- ment of the Social Security Act (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1963), pp. 1-75; Lee Rainwater and William L. Yancey, The Moynihan Report and the Politics of Controversy (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1967), chaps. 9, 11; George T. Sulzner, "The Policy Process and the Uses of National Governmental Study Com- missions," Western Political Quarterly 24, no. 3 (September 1971):438-48; and Thomas R. Wolanin, Presidential Advisory Commissions (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1975), for domestic policy examples.

6. The term, "interagency," a somewhat ambiguous one, is deliberately used here because "agency" can refer to various organization levels-office, bureau, or department-which have distinctive aggregations of interests.

7. Recent characterization of the Joint Chiefs of Staff as an interagency com- mittee in form and function appears in U.S., Department of Defense, Blue Ribbon Defense Panel, Report to the President and the Secretary of Defense on the De-

partment of Defense (Fitzhugh Report), 1 July 1970, pp. 32-35, 126-28. A description of the Washington Special Action Group appears in John Leacacos, "The Nixon NSC: Kissinger's Apparat," Foreign Policy 5 (Winter 1971):2-24.

Leon V. Sigal 329

anticipated criticism. Justification requires at least the appearance that the choice of proposals was based on a wide-ranging canvass of options, comparison of them according to criteria less parochial than organiza- tional interests, and argumentation and analysis approximating the free competition of ideas. Ratification implies a democratic laying on of hands-the "blessing" or endorsement, preferably unanimous, of a set of

proposals by a putatively representative and impartial group from the

public at large. The idea that a committee consists of a group of distinguished and

disinterested people convening in order to reason together and find a solution to a pressing problem may seem normatively satisfying to liberal democratic theorists, but its correspondence to reality is often hard to

prove. While committees have been known to do more-and less-than their founders had in mind, the officials who establish a committee often have rather precise, if at times unstated, conceptions of the functions that the committee is designed to perform and expectations of the conclusions it is likely to reach, before they set it in motion. The origins, mandate, composition, agenda, and internal procedures of a committee yield clues about those functions. Moreover, who its members are, how its mandate specifies the issues that they are supposed to resolve, and what terms of reference and information they receive in the course of their meetings often determine the conclusions that a committee reaches.

When the founders of a committee work in a number of government agencies with competing organizational interests, they may disagree about the functions that they intend the committee to perform and the expecta- tions that they have of its conclusions, while agreeing on the need to establish it. These differences, too, will usually be reflected in the origins, mandate, composition, agenda, and internal procedures of the committee.

A case in point is the Interim Committee and its Scientific Advisory Panel, which in the summer of 1945 came to the conclusion that the United States should use atomic bombs against Japanese cities as soon as possible and without prior warning.

I. The Interim Committee in the Policy Process

Analysts of the decision to drop the atomic bomb usually assume that the Interim Committee made its recommendation as part of the formal process of decision-making concerning the bomb. Yet the committee was not an action channel for that decision. Its consideration of how to use the bomb in the war was instead a maneuver to influence a decision made elsewhere in the policy process. It became part of the bureaucratic strategy of a handful of senior American officials with a stake in dropping

330 Bureaucratic Politics & Tactical Use of Committees

the bomb on Japan to head off opposition in the scientific community, lest that opposition succeeded in widening the range of options before the president on wartime use.

The action channels for selecting targets for the bomb were the Military Policy Committee and the Target Committee. Under the chairmanship of Vannevar Bush, director of the Office of Scientific Research and De- velopment (ORSD), with James Conant, then chairing OSRD's National Defense Research Committee, as his alternate, and one representative each from the Army and the Navy as members, the Military Policy Com- mittee "was charged with the responsibility of considering and planning military policy relating to the program including the development and manufacture of material, the production of atomic fission bombs, and their use as a weapon." 8 In the latter part of 1944, the committee dis- cussed criteria for target selection among themselves, with General Leslie R. Groves, in command of the Manhattan Engineering District (MED), and with Robert Oppenheimer and his staff of scientists at Los Alamos, especially John von Neumann. Groves gave his final approval to the criteria after consulting the chief of staff of the newly constituted Strategic Air Force, Brigadier General Lauris Norstad.9 Having established the criteria for targeting, Groves set up an ad hoc body, the Target Com- mittee, to choose specific cities to be bombed. Its composition reflected the two organizations whose operational concerns were most directly affected by the choice: three members were MED scientists and three others came from the office of Air Force Chief of Staff. Chairing the group was Groves' own deputy, General Thomas F. Farrell. Groves him- self carefully monitored the deliberations. Convened by Groves on April 27, 1945, the Target Committee met three times, last on May 28. It selected, and Groves approved, four cities in descending order of pref- erence: Kokura, Hiroshima, Niigata, and Kyoto. Secretary of War Henry Stimson would later succeed in eliminating Kyoto from the list; it was eventually replaced by Nagasaki.

In the light of actions by the Military Policy and Target Committees, what part did the Interim Committee and its Scientific Advisory Panel play in the decision-making? To assert that they reached conclusions consistent with those of the Military Policy and Target Committees is one thing; to claim that they were directly involved in the chain of com- mand on the A-bomb decision or that they had any formal authority to determine its wartime use is quite another. The Interim Committee and

8. Statement by the Secretary of War, Henry L. Stimson, August 6, 1945, re- printed in the New York Times, 7 August 1945, p. 4.

9. Leslie R. Groves, Now It Can Be Told (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1962), p. 267.

Leon V. Sigal 331

its Scientific Advisory Panel had no such direct involvement nor did they have such authority. Careful scrutiny of the policy process suggests that they had, at most, an advisory role to play. That role, moreover, was not to advise the president about wartime use of the bomb, but to advise the secretary of war about postwar research on and control of atomic energy.

The reason why the scope of its deliberations expanded beyond con- sideration of postwar research and control of atomic energy to include wartime use of the bomb, as well as why the Interim Committee itself came into being, stems from another source: unrest among MED scientists about the future of their research. What began as an interagency com- mittee to reach agreement on postwar plans added a panel of surrogates for the scientific community to bless an option for using the bomb already chosen in military channels. Evidence for these assertions comes from the origins, mandate, composition, and internal procedures of the Interim Committee and its Scientific Advisory Panel.

II. Origins: Support and Control of Atomic Energy Research

Initially conceived as an interagency committee to make recommenda- tions on the organization and control of postwar research on atomic energy, the founders of the Interim Committee gradually modified their conception during its formative period to have it perform another func- tion as well: to placate an aroused constituency within the scientific com- munity with the programmatic agreement it would reach on postwar control.

What aroused the scientists has often been misconstrued. Popular con- cern with the social and political implications of the atomic bomb since the war has led most postwar analysts to emphasize scientific opposition to its wartime use. What the dissident scientists had in common, however, was not opposition to any use of the bomb, but opposition to its use against Japan's population centers without warning. They proposed a variety of alternative uses: designating targets other than cities, such as military bases or ships offshore; issuing prior warning; or staging a demon- stration of the bomb. Moreover, their proposals were not aimed exclu- sively, or even primarily, at the issue of wartime use. Of all the proposals to reach senior officials regarding wartime use of the bomb, all but one dealt primarily with postwar control of atomic research, although they differed on how closely they tied wartime use to postwar control. The sole exception, which focused mainly on how to use the bomb against Japan, came from a nonscientist, Alexander Sachs. The MED scientists, further- more, tended to address the question of international control of atomic

332 Bureaucratic Politics & Tactical Use of Committees

weapons as subsidiary to the question of domestic control of atomic research. Their proposals focused on a dilemma at the heart of the issue of domestic control-between their need for large-scale government sup- port of their research and their desire for freedom of inquiry unfettered by government controls and secrecy. Some MED scientists eventually sensed that arrangements for postwar control, while subsidiary in im- portance to administrative and budgetary arrangements for domestic control, required a solution which was consistent with those domestic arrangements: national sovereignty over the bomb in countries around the world implied government control of atomic research at home. Some of the dissident scientists made a further connection between postwar control and wartime use: while using the bomb in some way during wartime would demonstrate the value of government expenditure on scientific research, only gradually did they come to the conclusion that dropping the bomb on a Japanese city without prior warning might make international control of atomic energy harder to achieve after the war.

Evidence for these relationships between domestic and international control and wartime use comes not only from the content of the scientists' thinking about the political and social implications of the bomb but also from the form that their thinking took. First, the proposals for inter- national control did not stand alone; they were contained in sections of longer and more comprehensive reports dealing with postwar administra- tion and funding of atomic research. Second, these sections were prepared either by subcommittees of the committees addressing the "larger" ques- tion or by individual scientists trying to impress those committees with the view that resolution of the international control issue might dictate the answer to the domestic control question.

The first attempt by a scientist to alert political leaders to the risk of unbridled use of atomic energy-and the first of many failures-came in the summer of 1944. The scientist was Niels Bohr, a Nobel Prize-winning Danish physicist, who was not employed by the MED but served as adviser to it. Like other scientists who would dissent from plans for the atomic bomb, he was an emigre from Nazi-occupied territory. His position as an outsider might have prevented a lesser man from gaining access to the president of the United States and the prime minister of Great Britain, but Bohr's persistence earned him meetings with both leaders.

He did not argue that they should refrain from using the bomb to aid the war effort, only that they try in advance to avert a postwar arms race with the Soviet Union by working out an agreement on inspection prior to its use: "Without impeding the importance of the project for immediate military objectives," he wrote in a July 1944 memorandum for President Roosevelt, "an initiative, aimed at forestalling a fateful

Leon V. Sigal 333

competition about the formidable weapon, should serve to uproot any cause of distrust between the two powers on whose harmonious col- laboration the fate of coming generations will depend." 10 While stressing the dangers inherent in a secret arms race, the memorandum contained few concrete suggestions for avoiding one.

Bohr left the president and the prime minister less disturbed about the prospect of an arms race than about a possible breach of security.1l It is apparent from the Hyde Park aide-memoire that the two leaders con- sidered any attempt at international control premature: they decided to keep the bomb's existence a secret. They also decided to have Bohr watched. Bohr was a forerunner of other dissident scientists, and many of his arguments anticipated theirs, as did the results he achieved. He was an exception in one important respect, however: he was the last dissident scientist to gain direct personal access to the president.

While failing to alter the thinking of Roosevelt and Churchill about the control of atomic energy, Bohr nonetheless provided a stimulus to scientific thinking about the social and political implications of the bomb. His ideas had a significant bearing on the organizational interests of sci- entists working in the American government: international control might reduce the need for secrecy at home, and secrecy was not only anti- thetical to the free exchange of ideas essential to the scientific enterprise, but was also incompatible with mobilizing public support for continued government funding of atomic research unrelated to military uses.

Bohr's intellectual influence on Vannevar Bush and James Conant was most immediately apparent. On September 30, 1944 they forwarded two memoranda to Secretary of War Stimson on "international postwar aspects" of the atomic bomb, which essentially recapitulated the line Bohr had taken with the president. Arguing that complete secrecy about the bomb was an "impossibility" and that an arms race conducted in partial secrecy would be "extremely dangerous," they advocated "com- plete disclosure of the history of the development and all but the manu- facturing and military details of the bombs as soon as the first bomb has been demonstrated" and proposed that "free interchange of all scientific

10. Niels Bohr, Memorandum to President Roosevelt, 3 July 1944. National Archives, Record Group 77, MED, Harrison-Bush files (henceforth H-B), folder 20, tab D, p. 8. A modified version appears in "An Open World," Letter to the United Nations, 9 June 1950, reprinted in Bulletin of Atomic Scientists 6 (July 1950):214.

11. Alice K. Smith, A Peril and a Hope (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965), pp. 8-9; Richard C. Hewlett and Oscar E. Anderson, Jr., A History of the United States Atomic Energy Commission, vol. 1, The New World, 1939-1945 (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1963), pp. 326-27.

334 Bureaucratic Politics & Tactical Use of Committees

information on this subject be established under the auspices of an in- ternational office deriving its power from whatever association of nations is developed at the close of the present war." Anticipating the bomb's availability by August 1, 1945, they suggested two options for its first use, a demonstration either "over enemy territory, or in our own country, with subsequent notice to Japan that the materials would be used against the Japanese mainland unless surrender was forthcoming." 12

The connection between international and domestic control became evident in contrasting reports drafted by two committees of scientists later that year: one emphasizing international control and government promotion of extensive research in the private sector by university and industry alike, research not limited to military applications; the other ignoring international control and relying on continued secrecy and con- centration on military-related research under government control.

The first, completed on November 18, was an outgrowth of a preoc- cupation with postwar funding at the University of Chicago's Metallurgi- cal Laboratory. There, as early as the spring of 1944, impending layoffs had heightened concern about its research agenda after the war while a

slackening workload had given scientists time to consider future organ- ization and control.13 A committee chaired by Zay Jeffries, a General Electric executive serving as a consultant to the MED, began sketching its "Prospectus for Nucleonics." While acknowledging that military ap- plications of atomic energy meant that its development could "not be left entirely" to private initiative, it concluded that confining research to

government laboratories under conditions of wartime secrecy was "both

unlikely and undesirable." 14 At the insistence of a biophysicist at the

Metallurgical Laboratory, Eugene Rabinowitch, the report contained a section on "The Impact of Nucleonics on International Relations and the Social Order." Rabinowitch, who was not a member of the Jeffries Com- mittee but who would become a leader of the dissident scientists after the war, drafted this section with Robert Mulliken, secretary of the com- mittee. "Peace based on uncontrolled and perhaps clandestine develop- ment" of atomic energy, they wrote, would be "only an armistice." They underscored their conclusion:

12. Bush and Conant memorandum to Stimson, "Salient Points Concerning Fu- ture International Handling of Subject of Atomic Bombs," 30 September 1944, H-B, folder 77, p. 2.

13. Hewlett and Anderson, The New World, pp. 322-24. Cf., U.S. Atomic

Energy Commission, In the Matter of J. Robert Oppenheimer, Transcript of Hear-

ing before the Personnel Security Board, 12 April-6 May 1954 (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1954), p. 33.

14. "Prospectus on Nucleonics," Report of the Jeffries Committee, Section vi,

quoted in Smith, A Peril and a Hope, pp. 550, 556-57.

Leon V. Sigal 335

That the inevitability of the development of nucleonics by some if not all nations shows compellingly, because of its potential military consequences, the necessity for all nations to make every effort to cooperate now in setting up an international administration with police powers which can effectively control at least the means of nucleonic warfare.15

The method of control which they supported, supervision of critical ma- terials, was analogous to government regulation of gold holdings; it would "give considerable scope to free private enterprise activity and still have the government hold a tight rein on important factors in the nucleonics field."

A contrary view came from the four-man Committee on Postwar Policy, chaired by Richard C. Tolman, which General Groves formed at the suggestion of Bush and Conant in order "to convince the scientists that we were not forgetting the postwar problems." 16 Sent to Groves on December 28, the Tolman report implicitly challenged Jeffries and ran counter to the desires of the dissidents for unfettered inquiry, sponsored by the government, on nonmilitary applications of atomic energy. "The most important conclusion of the Committee," it declared, "is that the military objectives involved in the field properly have overriding im- portance." From that premise, the report concluded that "postwar work in this field should remain under the general administrative control of Government." Its support for research in academic and industrial labora- tories was somewhat tenuous: "Insofar as security requirements permit, it would appear important" to promote this development. By assuming the likelihood of a postwar arms race and, by implication, no interna- tional control, the Tolman report stressed the need for domestic control:

Hence, in the absence of international agreements to the contrary, the Committee believes that a well-considered postwar security policy will have to be established in which careful consideration is given to the relative advantages and disadvantages of each proposed disclosure of information.17

As the Jeffries and Tolman reports were joining the issue of interna- tional and domestic control of atomic energy, Bush and Conant began

15. Ibid., p. 554. Also, p. 551. 16. Memorandum from Groves to Harrison, submitting the report of the Postwar

Policy Committee to Interim Committee, 19 June 1945, MED, TS of Interest to Groves, folder 3, tab H.

17. Report of the Committee on Postwar Policy, 28 December 1944, MED, TS of Interest to Groves, folder 3, pp. 2, 4.

336 Bureaucratic Politics & Tactical Use of Committees

pressing for high-level consideration of this and other postwar matters. On December 8, they met vith Assistant Secretary of War John J.

McCloy and Stimson's aide, Hlarvey Bundy, to propose formation of an

advisory committee, chosen by the president, to draft legislation on post- war control and to plan for release of information pertaining to the bomb. As Bundy presented their ideas in a memorandum to Stimson, the committee would consist of representatives of the secretaries of state, war, and navy and "three leading scientists familiar with the project." 18

A resurgence of concern in Chicago about layoffs and attempts to start work on research unrelated to the current war effort led Bush to renew his lobbying to form the committee. As he wrote to Bundy on

February 1:

At the present this problenl confronts General Groves in connection with certain work at Chicago, where the continuance of various

phases needs to be approached from the standpoint of postwar policy. In such connections I believe that General Groves should

turn, not to the Military Policy Committee, although of course he will keep them informed, but rather directly to the Secretary, to receive his instructions upon the advice of this new committee.19

Bush proposed to restrict the new committee's mandate to advising the

secretary of war on postwar plans, in order to distinguish it from the

Military Policy Committee, which was "concerned with the application of the matter [atomic energy] to the needs of this war."

In his letter, Bush paid special attention to the composition of the committee. After agreeing with Bundy's suggestion that George L. Harri-

son, president of the New 'ork Life Insurance Company and a close associate of Stimson's, would make "an excellent chairman," he dis- cussed how best to represent the scientists: "I have the strong feeling that the scientific members who are included should not be individuals who are now carrying heavy responsibilities or [are] involved in the

making of important decisions connected with the war program." Instead, he proposed Richard Tolman, and Henry D. Smyth, both of whom had served on Groves' Committee on Postwar Policy. Excluding himself, Conant, A. H. Compton, and Ernest O. Lawrence from membership would raise no insuperable obstacle: "Of course Conant and I will al-

ways be in close touch with men like Smyth and Tolman, and our advice

18. Memorandum from Bundy to Stimson, 16 December 1944, H-B, folder 69, p. 1.

19. Letter from Bush tc, Bundy, 1 February 1945, H-B, folder 69, p. 2. Cf., Hewlett and Anderson, Ti e New World, p. 337.

Leon V. Sigal 337

will be available to the Secretary whenever he may feel inclined to call upon us, quite apart from formal arrangements."

If committee members were expected to represent their fellow scien- tists, Bush felt that he and other scientist/administrators would be suspect in their colleagues' eyes: "The general attitude of scientists in this coun- try, however, will be more salutary, I believe, at the present time, if the advisory committee which formulates the matter includes scientists [who] have not taken quite as prominent a part in positions of authority." Proper surrogates should not seem parochial to the very constituency they are supposed to stand for, if representativeness is at issue.

Beyond acting as surrogates, Bush proposed that the committee serve as a channel through which members of the scientific community could pass their recommendations to senior officials, though he confined them to giving technical advice. His letter makes it evident that he had the Jeffries Committee in mind:

It may indeed prove that this advisory committee will wish to set up auxiliary groups for various purposes. For example, the group of scientists which prepared a report which was transmitted to General Groves through Dr. Compton might indeed be further called upon for elaboration of various scientific aspects of the mat- ters they have considered. I believe that the directive of the new committee should be so phrased as to encourage such procedure.20

On February 13 Bush heard from Bundy that Stimson had approved establishment of the committee, but two weeks went by without any sign of action to implement the recommendation. Growing impatient, Bush, accompanied by Conant, went to see Bundy on March 3 and, in Bundy's words, "strongly urged that there is no time to lose in preparing for the future of S-1," the code name for atomic energy. Among the reasons they gave for haste were the need for "immediate decisions" on the "scope" of work to be begun now on postwar projects, the prospect of "turmoil" among executive agencies seeking to control the enterprise, in particular Commerce and Interior, and even "public hysteria." In a follow-up memorandum to Stimson, Bundy posed three alternatives for the committee's composition: first, "a group of outstanding men who could by statute be named as a Control Commission with broad super- visory and regulatory powers as soon as the matter becomes public and the Congress can act;" second, "an Advisory Board with the actual controls in one of the present existing departments, War, State, or Com- merce," a format which Bush and Conant opposed; or third, a small

20. Letter from Bush to Bundy, 1 February 1945, p. 3. Emphasis added.

338 Bureaucratic Politics & Tactical Use of Committees

Advisory Committee, chaired by "the man who is contemplated as the Chairman of the future Statutory Commission," but composed of "actual working members of the Departments now busy with the problem." There was one exception: whether Commerce Secretary Wallace should serve on the planning group or on the Statutory Commission was a matter for Stimson to resolve.21

Two days later, Bundy met with the secretary of war, who noted in his

diary that they "had a most thorough and searching talk about certain

phases of it [S-1] which we hadn't got into yet together before." 22 Yet Stimson failed to mention the establishment of a committee during his

meeting with the president on March 15, their last before Roosevelt's death. It might have been an oversight on Stimson's part; but the pre- text for that session was what Stimson dismissed as a "jittery and nervous and rather silly" memorandum from War Mobilization Director James F.

Byrnes criticizing the MED as wasteful and calling for an investigation by a panel of "outside" scientists. Thus, Stimson may have deemed it an

inappropriate time to bring up formation of a committee of the depart- ments concerned.

Nearly six weeks passed before Secretary Stimson took up the com- mittee's formation with Roosevelt's successor. In the interval, two new manifestations of scientist unrest had appeared, in the form of a seven-

page memorandum by James Franck on the social and political implica- tions of atomic energy and an addendum by Bohr to his memorandum of the past July. While Franck's was the first recorded attempt to make

explicit the tradeoff between international and domestic control of atomic

research, Bohr went on to forge the link between international control of atomic energy and wartime use of the bomb. Even more ominous for the men in charge of the MED, Franck threatened to make the dispute public.

When Arthur H. Compton, director of the Metallurgical Laboratory, arranged for Franck to present his ideas on postwar policy to Commerce

Secretary Wallace, Franck asked Eugene Rabinowitch to assist him in

drafting a memorandum on which to base his presentation. The breakfast

meeting with Wallace was hurried, but Franck left a copy of his memo- randum with Wallace, who passed it along to Bush at OSRD.23 The April 21 memorandum began by expressing the fear of many Chicago scien-

tists, that support for atomic energy research had rested solely on its

21. Memorandum from Bundy to Stimson, 3 March 1945. H-B, folder 69. 22. Stimson Diary. Yale University Library, 5 March 1945. 23. Smith, A Peril and a Hope, pp. 31-33; also "Behind the Decision to Use the

Atomic Bomb: Chicago, 1944-45," Bulletin of Atomic Scientists 14, no. 8 (Octo- ber 1958):294.

Leon V. Sigal 339

utility for weaponry. If, on the one hand, efforts to produce a bomb were to prove fruitless, government support for work in the field might cease, jeopardizing other potentially more beneficial results from their research. If, on the other hand, the bomb were successfully detonated, it might set off an arms race, confining postwar research and develop- ment to military applications under conditions of secrecy that would drastically curtail freedom of scientific inquiry. Moreover, despite word that Secretary of War Stimson was soon to name a committee to consider a postwar program of atomic energy research, scientists feared that, so long as their research remained under military supervision, much of their work would be directed toward new weapons technology. Franck then pinpointed international control of atomic energy as the solution to the problem of domestic control in an arms race. America's current lead in research would not last once other nations undertook development of a bomb, but it might afford the United States an opportunity to propose a plan for international control which others would accept. He concluded with an implied threat to violate security regulations and make the scientists' fears public:

None of the scientists object to these regulations as long as they only bring about personal inconveniences and restrictions in mutual in- formation which would be useful for the work. These regulations become intolerable if conflict is brought about between our con- science as citizens and human beings and our loyalty to the oath of secrecy. That is the situation in which we scientists now find our- selves.24

Bohr meanwhile was proposing that steps toward international control be taken before the bomb's wartime use. In his addendum of March 24, 1945, stressing the urgency of international control, he recommended that

an agreement between the governments be invited before public dis- cussion can arouse sentiments and cause unpredictable complica- tions. It would, therefore, seem essential that consultations be initi- ated sufficiently long before there can be a question of the actual use of the new means of warfare.25

24. Franck's April 21 memorandum has been excerpted and paraphrased in Smith, "Behind the Decision to Drop the Bomb," pp. 294-95; and in Smith, A Peril and a Hope, pp. 31-32. A. H. Compton, who read both at the time, seems to have confused the two in his recollections, Atomic Quest (New York: Oxford University Press, 1956), p. 235.

25. Bohr, "Addendum to Memorandum of July 3rd 1944," 24 March 1945, MED, TS of Interest to Groves, folder 20, tab D, p. 6.

340 Bureaucratic Politics & Tactical Use of Committees

Bush forwarded Bohr's addendum to Bundy on April 25. In his cover letter, he used Bohr's arguments to renew his appeal for immediate formation of the committee on postwar planning:

There is also great danger that this subject will become widely discussed at a somewhat later date, and I believe that preliminary discussions undertaken before this occurs are much more likely to produce the correct atmosphere for later definite accomplishment. Needless to say, I do not agree throughout with the memorandum Bohr has given me and which I now send to you. I do, however, agree with the general thesis that immediate steps are advisable.26

He advocated calling Bohr to testify before the committee because that "will make it clear to him that he is now in appropriate channels for presenting his views." These new manifestations of dissidence among the MED scientists, which threatened plans for the bomb's use, upset General Groves as well. According to Arthur Compton, it was Groves' subsequent expression of concern over the scientists' activities which finally galva- nized Secretary Stimson to set up the committee after months of inac- tion.27

III. Mandate and Composition: An Interagency Committee for Postwar Plans

Whatever the catalyst was, the secretary of war did not get around to briefing Roosevelt's successor about the bomb until April 25. After Tru- man had leafed through a 24-page report by Groves on developments to date, Stimson discussed postwar control and closed by informing the president of his decision to establish a committee with a mandate to advise him on atomic energy matters. In a memorandum summarizing his "talking points," which he later disclosed, Stimson said,

As stated in General Groves' report, steps are under way looking towards the establishment of a select committee of particular quali- fications for recommending action to the executive and legislative branches of our government when secrecy is no longer in full effect. The committee would also recommend the actions to be taken by the War Department prior to that time in anticipation of the postwar problems. All recommendations would of course be first submitted to the President.28

26. Bush letter to Bundy, 25 April 1945, H-B, folder 19, p. 2. 27. A. H. Compton, Atomic Quest, pp. 233-34. 28. Memorandum discussed with President Truman, 25 April 1945, quoted in

Henry L. Stimson, "The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb," Harper's 197, no. 1161 (February 1947):100.

LeonV.Sigal 341

Though ambiguously phrased, the memorandum does indicate that the committee's original mandate was limited to a time "when secrecy is no longer in full effect," that is, after the bomb's use. Some actions, how- ever, such as drafting press releases and recommending whether or not to pursue on-going research not relating to the war, would have to be taken "in anticipation of postwar problems."

Moreover, despite Stimson's circumlocutions, the committee was to be advisory to the secretary of war, not to the president. Stimson was not exactly asking the president's approval; he was attempting to inform Truman of a step he hoped to take on his own. implying that he was already doing so.29 Stimson, not the committee, would transmit recom- mendations for action to the president.

On May 1, Bundy and Harrison, whom Stimson had put in charge of setting up the new committee, discussed its cast with the secretary of war. Of the three alternatives that Bundy had posed on March 3, Stimson chose the third, a small advisory committee. The two aides urged that Stimson himself chair it, with Harrison as his alternate. Its membership should come from the various departments concerned: Undersecretary of the Navy Ralph A. Bard; Assistant Secretary of State William L. Clayton; OSRD Director Bush; Conant, Bush's alternate on the Military Policy Committee and president of Harvard; and Karl T. Compton, chief of the Field Service Office of OSRD and president of M.I.T. No representative of Henry Wallace's Commerce Department made the slate, but a "Spe- cial Representative of the President" did. The memorandum of record drawn up by Harrison also notes,

When appointed the committee will need promptly to organize appropriate panels to aid in its work-panels of specially qualified scientists, Army and Navy personnel, Congressional advisers, legis- lative draftsmen and others.30

The next day, to ensure interdepartmental cooperation, Stimson cleared the proposed membership with the president, who "said that they would be sufficient without a personal representative" of his.31 But without one, the president might feel freer to disown the committee's findings at a later date. Stimson thought of the very man the next morn-

29. Truman's recollection of the meeting betrays his own confusion. He writes of Stimson: "He also suggested that I designate a committee to study and advise me of the implications of this new force." Truman, Memoirs, vol. 1, Year of Decisions (New York: Doubleday, 1955), p. 87.

30. Harrison, Memorandum for the Secretary of War, "Interim Committee on S-1," H-B, folder 69.

31. Stimson Diary, 2 May 1945.

342 Bureaucratic Politics & Tactical Use of Committees

ing, a man whom Roosevelt had considered nominating for the vice presidency in lieu of Truman in 1944, a politician of weight in Demo- cratic circles whom Truman had already privately asked to serve as his secretary of state, but also a man who had suffered some embarrassment over his past criticism of the MED'S extravagance-James F. Byrnes. He was available for the task, having recently resigned from the directorship of the Office of War Mobilization and now back home in South Carolina awaiting formal nomination as secretary of state. On May 3 the president accepted Stimson's suggestion and personally telephoned Byrnes to in- vite him to serve.32

In his letter of May 4, inviting members to the committee's first meet-

ing, Stimson made no mention of wartime use in their mandate, but confined them to postwar planning. He referred to the group as the "Interim Committee," reflecting his intention to have it serve until

Congress established a permanent body to oversee the atomic energy program. While attempting to embrace the president, Stimson neverthe- less indicated that the committee was to be his own:

With the approval of the President, I am appointing an Interim Committee on S-1 to study and report on the whole problem of temporary war controls and later publicity, and to survey and make recommendations on postwar research, development and controls, as well as legislation necessary to effectuate them.33

According to the minutes of the committee's first meeting, May 9, Stim- son used virtually an identical formulation. He also noted that the committee was "appointed by the Secretary with the approval of the President" and that "reports and recommendations made by the com- mittee would be submitted to the Secretary, and through him, to the President." 34 The Committee was advisory to the secretary of war about

postwar plans.

IV. The Panel: Surrogate for the Scientific Community

Growing scientific unrest not only prompted formation of the Interim Committee, but also altered its composition. Originally, that composition

32. Memorandum from Harrison's secretary to Bundy, 3 May 1945, and memo- randum from Bundy to Harrison, 4 May 1945, H-B, folder 69.

33. Quoted in Walter S. Schoenberger, Decision of Destiny (Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 1969), p. 124. Emphasis added.

34. R. Gordon Arneson, Secretary of the Interim Committee, "Notes of an Informal Meeting of the Interim Committee," 9 May 1945, H-B, folder 100, pp. 1-2.

Leon V. Sigal 343

reflected its mandate: an interagency committee to agree on postwar plans. New manifestations of dissatisfaction at Chicago, however, led to the formation of a Scientific Advisory Panel to broaden representation from the scientific community.

Stimson's invitation to join the Interim Committee troubled Conant. His reply stressed "the growing restlessness" among scientists who had developed the bomb, restlessness in particular about "the international implications" of their work and "relations with Russia." He questioned the wisdom of his own and Bush's appointments: "I have doubts as to whether we are proper representatives of the scientific group for which we have been primarily distant administrators rather than active par- ticipants." He had two requests: first, that he be permitted to show his and Bush's September 1944 memoranda to some of his colleagues in order to assure them that Stimson had conveyed its substance in general to President Truman; and second, that the committee either invite "a few of the leading scientists" to testify before it on international control or arrange for them to have a personal interview with the president. He urged these steps, he wrote, "because I feel it is essential [that] the government have the full support of the scientific community in this matter and that there be no public bickering among experts when knowledge of the subject is revealed." In his response, Stimson, while insisting that Conant's reservations could be "overcome," gave no specific assurances of a hearing for the dissidents, saying only that "you might assure some of the more important ones [scientists] that the Committee which is now being formed will no doubt wish to hear them and their views sometime soon after it is organized." Though stating that he "per- sonally would see no objection to your acquainting a few of the group, whom you know to be reliable, with the substance" of the September memorandum, Stimson suggested Conant "defer this step until you sit with the Committee." 35

Inviting a few of the leading scientists to testify did not necessarily imply inviting any dissidents to do so. Indeed, Conant's suggestion, as well as Bush's of February 1 to establish an "auxiliary group" of scien- tists, was consistent with a strategy of countering the dissidents. In recommending establishment of a Scientific Advisory Panel to the Interim Committee, Stimson's staff, if not Conant and Bush as well, may have had just such an objective in mind.

35. Letter of 5 May 1945 and reply of 9 May 1945, H-B, folder 69. Cf., Hewlett and Anderson, The New World, p. 345; Fletcher Knebel and Charles W. Bailey, "Secret: The Fight over the A-Bomb," Look, 27, no. 16 (August 13, 1963):21-22; James B. Conant, My Several Lives (New York: Harper and Row, 1970), p. 299.

344 Bureaucratic Politics & Tactical Use of Committees

The choice of panelists provides some support for this interpretation. After consulting with Bush, Conant recommended J. Robert Oppen- heimer, Arthur H. Compton, Ernest O. Lawrence, and Enrico Fermi to serve on the Panel. All but Oppenheimer, noted Conant, were Nobel Prize winners. Compton, as director of the Chicago laboratory where scientific ferment was greatest, and Fermi, as an emigre who had only recently become a naturalized citizen of the United States, would have both seemed particularly well-chosen to act as surrogates for their MED

colleagues. Yet they had other characteristics more appealing to those

opposed to the dissidents. As Conant described Fermi in recommending him as a panelist, "Personally he is a quiet, non-political type of scien- tist." 36 Moreover, all four were MED administrators, who had risen to their present positions not only because of their intellectual ability but also because of their capacity to organize scientific research and obtain

government funding for it. On May 14, at its second meeting, the Interim Committee approved formation of the Scientific Advisory Panel as well as the four nominees of Bush and Conant.

Also at their suggestion, according to the minutes, "it was the sense of the meeting that the Scientific Panel should be free not only to discuss technical matters but also to present to the Committee their views con-

cerning the political aspects of the problem." 37 Yet some confusion still remained as to whether the panel would serve as spokesman for the scien- tists or as a channel for soliciting their views. In a letter to Lawrence four

days before the May 14 Interim Committee meeting, Karl Compton had written:

Conant, Bush and I accepted with the clear understanding that we did not undertake to serve as the mouthpiece of the American scientists who have really done the job and with the understanding that you and your several opposite numbers in the other groups will present your own views.38

In his letter inviting Fermi to join the panel, however, Harrison indicated that the panelists were to speak on behalf of their colleagues, not serve as a channel for transmitting information from the scientists to the com- mittee.

36. Conant letter to Harrison, 9 May 1945, H-B, folder 76. 37. Notes of an Informal Meeting of the Interim Committee, 14 May 1945, MED,

TS of Interest to Groves, folder 3, pp. 1-2. 38. Compton letter to Lawrence, 10 May 1945, MED, TS of Interest to Groves,

folder 3, tab R.

Leon V. Sigal 345

The committee requests that there be no discussion by you with anyone other than Dr. Oppenheimer of your call to appear. It is assumed that you are conversant with the views of your colleagues and associates and that you can present their general views as well as your own specific ones without the need of prior discussions with them.39

The concern of MED administrators and senior officials responsible for the project over the views of the dissident scientists on postwar control of atomic energy initially led to broadening the representation of scien- tists in the deliberations of the Interim Committee, but it did not extend to the point of including any of the dissidents either on the committee itself or on its Scientific Advisory Panel. Nor did it produce any precise commitment to allow any dissidents to testify in person or in writing to the committee. The Panel was to act as a surrogate for the scientific community, not to mediate in its behalf.

V. Expanding the Scope of Interim Committee Deliberations

As its original mandate spelled out, the Interim Committee's mission was confined to advising the secretary of war about the postwar organization, control, and support of atomic research. Wartime use of the atomic bomb was beyond its purview.

The dissidents' activity, however, threatened to raise alternatives to the option already chosen, dropping the bomb on Japanese cities with- out prior warning. Anticipating little support from the Joint Chiefs of Staff for their plans, those responsible for building the bomb, in par- ticular General Groves, attempted to thwart the dissidents, lest the president have second thoughts. For backers of a set of secret recom- mendations, still awaiting the president's final approval, drawn up by a handful of officials, all with organizational interests in their proposal, the prospect of an opposition alliance between the dissident scientists and the service chiefs made support for the plans for wartime use of the bomb desirable. If some officials and members of the scientific com- munity might question their plans, they would find others to endorse them. Despite the expanded scope of the deliberations, however, neither the committee nor its panel was ever invited to issue its own recom- mendations on whether or not to use the bomb and how; it was asked

39. Harrison to Fermi, MED, TS of Interest to Groves, folder 3, tab R. In his letter to Oppenheimer on May 16, (folder 3, tab B), Harrison "urgently requested that you regard its [the Interim Committee's] existence and its plans as TOP SECRET."

346 Bureaucratic Politics & Tactical Use of Committees

only to lend its prestige to options previously drawn up by the Military Policy Committee and the Target Committee. Arthur Compton's de-

scription is revealing:

Already the strategy for the military use of the bomb has been

carefully worked out. For shaping this strategy General Groves was

primarily responsible. His plan had been the subject of numerous discussions with General Marshall and Mr. Stimson. Before being put into effect, however, it was of prime importance that the right- ness of its general principles should be considered by a group of well-known and responsible public citizens. The care with which the members of the committee were selected is attested by the dis-

tinguished character of its membership. It was the independent judg- ment of this group of civilians that Mr. Stimson was now seeking.40

The Interim Committee met with its Scientific Advisory Panel at its fourth session, on May 31. Secretary Stimson opened the meeting with a long statement. According to the minutes, "He expressed the hope that the scientists would feel completely free to express their views on any phase of the subject." Noting that Army Chief of Staff George C. Mar- shall "shared responsibility with him for making recommendations to the President on this project with particular reference to its military aspects," he soared into his peroration:

The Secretary expressed the view, a view shared by General Mar- shall, that this project should not be considered simply in terms of

military weapons, but as a new relationship of man to the universe. This discovery might be compared to the discoveries of the Coper- nican theory and the laws of gravity, but far more important than these in its effect on the lives of men. While the advances in the field to date had been fostered by the needs of war, it was important to realize that the implications of the project went far beyond the needs of the present war. It must be controlled if possible to make it an assurance of future peace rather than a menace to civilization.4'

Finally, he spelled out the agenda for the meeting, again making no men- tion of wartime use:

1. Future military weapons. 2. Future international competition.

40. A. H. Compton, Atomic Quest, p. 221. 41. Notes of the Interim Committee Meeting, 31 May 1945, H-B, folder 100,

p. 2.

Leon V. Sigal 347

3. Future research. 4. Future controls. 5. Future developments, particularly non-military.42

Stimson's remarks were hardly a casual inspiration of the moment; they were well thought out in advance. He directed them at the Scientific Ad-

visory Panel, and through them, the rest of the scientific community. He and Marshall consciously engaged in managing the panelists' perceptions: "I think we made the impression upon the scientists that we were looking at this like statesmen and not like merely soldiers anxious to win the war at any cost." 43

After the scientists had provided a technical briefing and made their

pitch for continued government funding of atomic research, Oppenheimer turned the discussion to a fundamental issue raised by the dissident scientists, the need for "free interchange of information with particular emphasis on the development of peacetime uses." The United States, he argued, would strengthen its moral position if it "were to offer to

exchange information before the bomb was actually used." Stimson im-

mediately raised the issue of effective inspection. Expressions of skepti- cism came from Bush about the feasibility of releasing secrets and from Conant, Stimson, Marshall, and Clayton about the possibility of con-

ducting inspections. Such skepticism was the major premise of domestic, as opposed to international, control of atomic energy.44

From scientific interchange, talk shifted to notifying the Russians about the bomb itself. At this point, Marshall seconded Oppenheimer. Holding fast to the stand he had taken in the interservice fight over war

strategy in the Pacific, the Army chief of staff attributed the uncoopera- tive attitude of the Soviet Union to its quest for security; the solution

lay in reconstructing a balance of power lining up a coalition of like- minded states that would make the Soviet Union more cooperative after the war. In the meantime, though, the Army's strategy of invasion was

predicated on Soviet entry into the war against Japan. He suggested inviting "two prominent Russian scientists" to witness the Alamogordo tests, a proposal which combined his interest in wartime Soviet-American

cooperation with his solution for postwar relations. At this point, in the

42. Ibid. p. 3. Under "future controls," the talking points drawn up in advance state: "Can our present head start and our attitude toward controls be used to accomplish an extension of democratic rights and the dignity of man. (Popular governed nations versus single rule nations.)" H-B, folder 100.

43. Stimson Diary, 31 May 1945. Cf., his handwritten notes and talking points prepared by his staff, H-B, folder 100.

44. Notes of the Interim Committee meeting, pp. 8-10.

348 Bureaucratic Politics & Tactical Use of Committees

words of the Atomic Energy Commission official history, Byrnes "inter- vened decisively." 45 Expressing his "fear that if information were given to the Russians, even in general terms, Stalin would ask to be brought into the partnership," especially in view of American "pledges of coopera- tion with the British," he came out against using scientific interchange as a means of achieving international control of atomic energy:

Mr. Byrnes expressed the view, which was generally agreed to by all present, that the most desirable program would be to push ahead as fast as possible in production and research to make certain that we stay ahead and at the same time make every effort to better our

political relations with Russia.4

It was a measure of Byrnes' political stature that all those present felt

obliged to indicate formal concurrence with his view, or at least to refrain from objecting. When Byrnes had finished, Arthur Compton re- newed the plea for "freedom of competition and freedom of research

activity," but only "to as great an extent as possible consistent with

security and the international situation": in the absence of international controls, it was harder to make an unqualified case for eliminating do- mestic controls.

Immediately thereafter, the group broke for lunch. So far, plans for

using the bomb on Japan had been mentioned only in passing, but Arthur Compton notes, "throughout the morning's discussions it seemed to be a foregone conclusion that the bomb would be used."

47 At the start of the lunch hour, however, Byrnes asked Lawrence to elaborate on a suggestion he had made in brief during the morning's discussion, that the United States give a demonstration of the bomb's effectiveness before using it on Japan. Compton recalls asking Stimson the same

question. Recollections differ about the course of the discussion, probably because with the group seated at separate tables conversation proceeded along several roughly parallel tracks at once.4' There is unanimity on one point, however: the issue was not whether to use the bomb or not, but how best to use it.

45. Hewlett and Anderson, The New World, p. 357. 46. Notes of the Interim Committee meeting, 31 May 1945, pp. 11-12. Empha-

sis in original. 47. A. H. Compton, Atomic Quest, p. 238. 48. Hewlett and Anderson, The New World, p. 358; A. H. Compton, Atomic

Quest, p. 239; Herbert Feis, The Atomic Bomb and the End of World War II

(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1961), p. 46; Giovannitti and Freed, The Decision to Drop the Bomb, pp. 102-03.

Leon V. Sigal 349

After lunch, Stimson took the lead, much as Byrnes had in the morn- ing. As the official minutes record,

After much discussion concerning various types of targets and the effects to be produced, the Secretary expressed the conclusion, on which there was general agreement, that we could not give the Japanese any warning; that we could not concentrate on a civilian area; but that we should make a profound psychological impression on as many inhabitants as possible. At the suggestion of Dr. Conant, the Secretary agreed that the more desirable target would be a vital war plant employing a large number of workers and closely sur- rounded by workers' houses.49

Stimson's summary as qualified by Conant was not inconsistent with the choice of the Target Committee. Although the bomb was as yet untested, Stimson and the scientists present had little grounds for hope that an atomic bomb dropped on a city without warning was the best way to minimize noncombatant deaths and nonmilitary destruction. Quite the contrary, it was important to maximize the impact of the bomb, but preferable to choose a city that contained at least some warmaking installations to justify its designation as a "military target." They con- soled themselves with the hope that dramatizing the bomb's effects dur- ing the war might somehow make international control more likely than an arms race afterwards.

Oppenheimer then proposed conducting several atomic bomb strikes at the same time. His suggestion would have the effect of postponing wartime use until enough bombs were available, as well as eliminating the interval between strikes that would facilitate maximizing blast effects by gauging the results of the first drop and adjusting subsequent ones. Groves immediately objected:

(1) We would lose the advantage of gaining additional knowledge concerning the weapon at each successive bombing; (2) such a pro- gram would require a rush job on the part of those assembling the bombs and might, therefore, be ineffective; (3) the effect would not be sufficiently distinct from our regular Air Force bombing pro- gram.50

The discussion turned to curbing the scientific unrest. First, General Groves complained that the MED had been "plagued since its inception

49. Notes of the Interim Committee meeting, 31 May 1945, pp. 13-14. Quoted in Knebel and Bailey, "Secret: The Fight Over the A-Bomb," p. 21. Emphasis in original.

50. Notes of the Interim Committee Meeting, 31 May 1945, p. 14.

350 Bureaucratic Politics & Tactical Use of Committees

by the presence of certain scientists of doubtful discretion and uncertain loyalty," but the committee put him off, agreeing that "nothing could be done about dismissing these men until after the bomb has actually been used or, at best, until after the test has been made." Next, Arthur Comp- ton raised the issue of continued support for operations at Chicago not bearing directly on "current war use" but "considered desirable in terms of future development." The committee deferred to Bush and Conant, who recommended that the Chicago programs "should be continued at their present levels until the end of the war." Finally, Harrison ad- dressed the panel's relationship to the committee and the MED scientists: "It was considered a continuing Panel which was free to present its views to the Committee at any time." The committee, in particular, formally requested the panel "to prepare as speedily as possible a draft of their views" on what sort of organization should be established "to direct and control this field." 51

Yet the panel was only to serve as surrogate for the scientists, not as channel between the scientists and the committee. According to the minutes, the committee agreed that the panelists were "free to tell their

people" of the existence of the committee and its mandate, though not the

identity of its members, and to say that they, as panelists, "had been

given complete freedom to present their views on any phase of the sub-

ject." 52 In a memorandum of record drafted a year later, the rapporteur of the committee, R. Gordon Arneson, asserts,

The Panel was requested to make clear to the scientists the fact that the Panel was to be the channel of communication to the Committee and that whatever recommendations the Committee might make would go to the Secretary of War and hence to the President as

necessary.53

Arneson's recollection, however, is at odds with the official record. What- ever efforts individual panelists may have made to solicit and transmit the views of their colleagues in the scientific community were on their own initiative rather than at the committee's instructions.

The following day, June 1, the Interim Committee reconvened to hear the views of a panel of industrialists on postwar organization of research. Later, in executive session, after considering the question of continued

funding for the MED, the committee formally adopted a resolution on wartime use:

51. Ibid., pp. 14-16. 52. Ibid., pp. 16-17. 53. Arneson, Memorandum for the Files, 24 May 1945, H-B, folder 76, p. 2.

Leon V.Sigal 351

Mr. Byrnes recommended, and the Committee agreed, that the

Secretary of War should be advised that, while recognizing that the final selection of the target was essentially a military decision, the

present view of the Committee was that the bomb should be used

against Japan as soon as possible; that it be used on a war plant surrounded by workers' homes; and that it be used without prior warning.54

Although the Committee had had no mandate to do so, Byrnes was an astute enough politician to recognize its "power to bless." That same afternoon, even before the resolution had been formally transcribed and transmitted through the secretary of war, he went to see the president. They discussed the strategy of invasion and the toll it would take. Byrnes cited one military estimate which put American casualties at one million. He then reported on the committee's deliberations. The president, says Byrnes, "expressed the opinion that, regrettable as it might be, so far as he could see, the only reasonable conclusion was to use the bomb."

55

On June 6 Stimson gave the president his version of the committee's actions. First among the "points of agreement" he cited was "that there should be no revelation to Russia or anyone else of our work in S-1 until the first bomb had been successfully laid on Japan." 56 It was perhaps more than the committee had agreed to.

VI. Using the Panel Against the Dissidents

Even though the president was now apprised of the Interim Committee's views, its consideration of wartime use was not quite complete. Still an- other outcropping of opposition at Chicago led to tactical exploitation of its Scientific Advisory Panel to counter the dissidents. Besides broad-

ening the representation of scientists somewhat, those who supported the

Target Committee's plans could use the panel to supersede other action channels for transmitting advice from the scientific community. By re-

ferring all such advice to the panel instead of bringing it directly to the Interim Committee's attention, they could place another procedural hurdle between the dissident scientists and the president: the dissidents' recommendations would have to pass through or around the MED'S

54. Notes of the Interim Committee Meeting of 1 June 1945, pp 9-10. Emphasis in original.

55. James F. Byrnes, Speaking Frankly, (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1945), p. 262; All in One Lifetime (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1958), p. 286, supplies the correct date of the meeting.

56. Stimson Diary, 6 June 1945.

352 Bureaucratic Politics & Tactical Use of Committees

security apparatus to the panel, then on to the committee and the secre-

tary of war before reaching the White House. On June 2 Arthur Compton took it upon himself to solicit proposals

from the Chicago scientists for the panel's consideration at a June 16 meeting in Los Alamos. His invitation was the catalyst for coalescence of various informal study groups into six formal committees, including one to consider the social and political implications of atomic energy. Known commonly as the Franck Committee after its chairman, James Franck, it consisted of seven members. Besides Franck, three others were prominent dissidents: Eugene Rabinowitch, Leo Szilard, and Joyce Stearns. Initially the informal study group had focused on postwar research support rather than on wartime use of the bomb. "We felt," says Hughes, "that if the war ended before the bomb was used there would be little attention paid to atomic energy and a postwar economy drive might stop the develop- ment." )7 By the time of its formal constitution as a committee, however, some members had come to the realization that wartime use had its at- tendant risks in the form of postwar military control.

The Franck Report, finished on June 11, started from the premise that domestic and international control were inseparable: "All present plans for the organization of research, scientific and industrial development, and publication in the field of nucleonics are conditioned by the political and military climate in which one expects those plans to be carried out." 58 For scientific inquiry to proceed relatively unfettered at home, it was essential to avoid an arms race and the military control of research that would accompany it. The United States' headstart in nuclear develop- ment might tempt its leaders to place their hopes in an arms race, but its

advantage was not insuperable. While security ultimately lay in establish-

ing a world government, a proposal which national leaders were dis- inclined to look upon with favor, Franck had a less radical alternative: "a

specific international agreement barring a nuclear armaments race," along the lines laid out by Bohr. How could the United States obtain such an agreement with the other states in the international system? At this point the Franck report challenged plans to drop the bomb on

Japan:

If we consider international agreement on total prevention of nu- clear warfare as the paramount objective, and believe that it can be achieved, this kind of introduction of atomic weapons to the

57. Letter from Donald Hughes to Alice K. Smith, 1 October 1957, quoted in Smith, A Peril and a Hope, p. 43.

58. The "Franck Report," 11 June 1945, quoted in Smith, A Peril and a Hope, app. B, p. 560.

Leon V. Sigal 353

world may easily destroy all our chances of success. Russia, and even allied countries which bear less mistrust of our ways and inten- tions, as well as neutral countries may be deeply shocked. It may be very difficult to persuade the world that a nation which was capable of secretly preparing and suddenly releasing a weapon as indiscriminate as the rocket bomb and a million times more de- structive, is to be trusted in its proclaimed desire of having such weapons abolished by international agreement.59

Instead of first using the weapon against Japan, Franck proposed a demonstration "before the eyes of representatives of the United Nations, on the desert or a barren island." Nevertheless he added,

After such a demonstration the weapon might perhaps be used against Japan if the sanction of the United Nations (and of public opinion at home) were obtained, perhaps after a preliminary ulti- matum to Japan to surrender or at least to evacuate certain regions as an alternative to their total destruction.60

By dramatizing the benefits of money spent on atomic energy research, he noted, some wartime use of the bomb would enable scientists "to obtain adequate support for further intensive development of nu- cleonics in this country" and avoid the danger that "enough information might leak out" to spur rival powers' bomb-making while lack of public support for defense spending slowed America's advance and narrowed its lead in the arms race.61

Szilard wanted to go still further. According to Rabinowitch,

When Szilard added that perhaps the good thing is neither to demonstrate the bomb nor to tell anybody until the end of the war that we have successfully tested it, he felt that would give us more time; slow down the arms race; perhaps even prevent the develop- ment of the arms race. It was a typically Szilardian idea based not upon open discussion and open education of the people and open political action but a kind of saving the world despite itself-as I called it. I always wanted to save the world by education and Szilard wanted to save the world by conspiracy.62

59. Ibid., p. 566. The line of argument was Szilard's, according to Eugene Rabinowitch.

60. Ibid., p. 567. 61. Ibid., pp. 568, 571. 62. Quoted in Giovannitti and Freed, The Decision to Drop the Bomb, p. 116.

354 Bureaucratic Politics & Tactical Use of Committees

While mentioning Szilard's argument, the report did not endorse it but only stated that if immediate prospects for an international agreement were remote, "the pros and cons of an early revelation of our possession of nuclear weapons to the world-not only by their actual use against Japan, but also by a prearranged demonstration-must be carefully weighed by the supreme political and military leadership of the country, and the decision should not be left to military tacticians alone." "3 The link between postwar control and wartime use was in place.

Even before all seven of his colleagues could sign the final draft, Franck, spurred on by others who feared it might get "lost" in regular communications channels, rushed off to deliver a copy by hand to Arthur Compton in Washington on June 12. Compton says that when he first tried to arrange a meeting with Stimson, he was told that the secretary was out of town; but Stimson's diary places him in his office that day. Compton then turned the report over to Arneson along with a covering letter undercutting it. In Compton's words,

In this note it was necessary for me to point out that the report, while it called attention to difficulties that might result from the use of the bomb, did not mention the probable net savings of many lives, nor that if the bomb were not used in the present war the world would have no adequate warning as to what was to be ex- pected if war should break out again.64

Although Stimson may never have seen the report, Arneson did notify Harrison of its existence. According to Arneson's notation in the Interim Committee log, "Harrison decided that the Scientific Panel and not the Committee should consider the memorandum from the Chicago scien- tists." 65 On June 16, the day the Panel met, Harrison telephoned Comp- ton at Los Alamos to make his request.66 Compton promised a reply in time for the committee's next meeting. Lest the panel misconstrue its mandate, Harrison defined it narrowly. "We were asked," Compton recalls, "to prepare a report as to whether we could devise any kind of demonstration that would seem likely to bring the war to an end without

63. The "Franck Report," quoted in Smith, A Peril and a Hope, p. 568. 64. A. H. Compton, Atomic Quest, p. 236. Cf., Memorandum from Compton

to the Secretary of War, 12 June 1945, H-B, folder 76. 65. Knebel and Bailey, "The Fight Over the A-Bomb," p. 22. Cf., Feis, The

Atomic Bomb and the End of World War II, p. 53; and Smith, A Peril and a Hope, pp. 49-50.

66. Hewlett and Anderson, The New World, p. 367. Cf., Smith, "Behind the Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb," p. 298, for Oppenheimer's recollection.

Leon V. Sigal 355

using the bomb against a live target." 67 Whether these were Harrison's precise words or just Compton's understanding of them, the instructions seemed to rule out opening up the issue of whether or not to use the bomb at all as well as eliminate any options which fell in the range of violence between a demonstration and striking a major population center without advance warning.

The panel convened for two days during which it completed two other reports for the Interim Committee: one proposing a program of studies ranging from basic research to military, industrial, and medical applica- tions of atomic energy at a cost of $1 billion a year; and a second recommending extension of the MED'S authority into the immediate post- war period, funded at an annual rate of $20 million. In the context of a crash effort to polish their rationale for vast government expenditures on

postwar research, it would hardly be surprising if the panel gave only perfunctory consideration to the last-minute request. In its letter of trans- mittal, the panel acknowledged as much: "Because of the urgency of this matter, the panel was not able to devote as extended a collective deliberation to the problem as it undoubtedly warrants." 68

While the text of the Franck Report was never sent to the panel, Compton, for one, was familiar with its contents. Beyond reflecting aware- ness of Franck's conclusions, the panel report reads like an attempt to be responsive to them within the confines of its own instructions, to steer a course between the Interim Committee and the scientific community. As Compton writes, "We were keenly aware of our responsibility as the scientific advisers to the Interim Committee. Among our colleagues were the scientists who supported Franck in suggesting a nonmilitary demon- stration only." 69 According to its instructions, the panel's paramount objective differed from the Franck Committee's-not an "international

agreement on total prevention of nuclear warfare," but consideration of

"any kind of demonstration that would seem likely to bring the war to an end." Attempting to reconcile these two objectives, the panel re-

sponded by rejecting a demonstration on the grounds that it could not

produce Japan's surrender, while recommending that

before the weapons are used, not only Britain, but also Russia, France, and China be advised that we have made considerable progress in our work on atomic weapons, that these may be ready

67. A. H. Compton, Atomic Quest, p. 239. Emphasis added. 68. Cover letter from the Scientific Advisory Panel to the Secretary of War,

16 June 1945, H-B, folder 76. 69. A. H. Compton, Atomic Quest, p. 239.

356 Bureaucratic Politics & Tactical Use of Committees

to work during the present war, that we would welcome suggestions as to how we can cooperate in making this development contribute to improve international relations.70

The panel's reasoning emphasizes the lack of consensus among the ex-

perts in rejecting the demonstration option proposed by Franck:

The opinions of our scientific colleagues on the initial use of these

weapons are not unanimous: they range from the proposal of a

purely technical demonstration to that of military application best

designed to induce surrender. Those who advocate a purely techni- cal demonstration would wish to outlaw the use of atomic weapons and have feared that if we use the weapons now our position in future negotiations will be prejudiced. Others emphasize the op- portunity of saving American lives by immediate military use and believe that such use will improve the international prospects, in that they are more concerned with the prevention of war than with the elimination of this special weapon. We find ourselves closer to these latter views; we can propose no technical demonstration likely to bring an end to the war; we see no acceptable alternative to direct

military use.7

The panel forwarded the four-paragraph statement to Harrison on June 16 along with the other two reports. Five days later the Interim Committee met in executive session to discuss all three. Explaining the need for yet one more discussion of the use of the bomb, Harrison told his colleagues of the receipt of "a report from a group of scientists at

Chicago recommending, among other things, that the weapon not be used in this war but that a purely technical test be conducted which would be made known to other countries." He said that he had referred it to the panel for "study and recommendation." Faced with no new

alternative, but only the panel's endorsement, the committee simply "reaffirmed" its earlier conclusion.72 The panel's recommendation that the United States notify its Allies of the bomb's existence before drop- ping it on Japan, however, provoked a lengthy discussion. Bush and

70. Report of the Scientific Advisory Panel, H-B, folder 76. Excerpted in Feis, The Atomic Bomb and the End of World War II, pp. 53-54. Stimson, "The De- cision to Use the Atomic Bomb," p. 101; and A. H. Compton, Atomic Quest, p. 240, citing Stimson as reference, both omit the first two paragraphs. So does Knebel and Bailey, "The Fight Over the A-Bomb," p. 22, which supplies the last two paragraphs.

71. Ibid. 72. Notes of the Interim Committee meeting, 21 June 1945, MED, TS of Inter-

est to Groves, folder 3, pp. 6-7.

Leon V. Sigal 357

Conant reverted to their earlier stand in favor of trying to induce Soviet postwar cooperation on international control of atomic energy. The Committee came to a unanimous conclusion that the president notify the Russians at Potsdam that the United States was working on a bomb which it expected to use against Japan, but provide no further details. The committee thereupon adjourned. The Target Committee's option had been thrice-blessed.

VII. The Navy Runs the Security Blockade

Counting his blessings, Groves took steps to quell scientific protest and prevent options other than his own from reaching the president. When Szilard tried to solicit the endorsement of other scientists at the Metal- lurgical Laboratory for the Franck report, MED security men declared it classified and barred its circulation.73 When Szilard drew up a petition opposing use of the bomb against Japanese cities, Groves ordered it classified and shown only to those scientists cleared to receive the infor- mation Szilard possessed, thereby limiting its dissemination.74 In a telephone conversation with Arthur Compton, Groves urged him to have all of his staff "who are responsible people" keep the MED security men abreast of "what was going to happen" and took steps to prohibit any mass meetings among scientists to discuss the social and political im- plications of the bomb.75 Groves had some help from some of the panel- ists. When Edward Teller attempted to circulate a second version of the Szilard petition at Los Alamos, Oppenheimer asked him not to. "Szilard is using his influence as a scientist to influence political deci- sions," Teller recalls Oppenheimer as having said. "This is wrong. Don't you sign it. Don't circulate it." 76 Oppenheimer also alerted Groves.77 Trying to counter the petitions, Groves suggested that Compton commission a poll of Chicago scientists. After Szilard had turned over a sheaf of signed petitions to Arthur Compton on July 17, it took eight days for them and the poll results to reach Groves' office in Washington. It then took another week, in the course of which the president was giving

73. Smith, A Peril and a Hope, p. 46. 74. Memorandum from Major Grover C. Thompson to Col. John Lansdale,

11 July 1945, H-B, folder 76. 75. Groves diary, National Archives, 9 July 1945. 76. Edward Teller, address at a convention of the American Association for the

Advancement of Science, Chicago, 27 December 1970, quoted in The Washington Post, 28 December 1970, p. A-6. Cf., Teller with Allen Brown, The Legacy of Hiroshima (Garden City: Doubleday, 1962), pp. 13-14.

77. Groves diary, 17 July 1945.

358 Bureaucratic Politics & Tactical Use of Committees

his final assent to Groves' plans, for the general to get around to for- warding the packet to Stimson's office. It never did reach the president.

A year later, Arneson would use the work of the Interim Committee and its Scientific Advisory Panel as a rationale for the disposition of these documents. In a memorandum for the record, Arneson wrote,

a. The question of the use of the bomb had already been fully considered and settled by proper authorities.

b. As far as the scientists employed on the project were concerned, they had been given adequate opportunity to express their views on this or any other question relating to the project to the Interim Com- mittee through the Scientific Panel.

In view of the foregoing, it was decided that no useful purpose would be served by transmitting either the petition or any of the attached documents to the White House, particularly since the President was not then in the country.78

The committee and the panel could be used to justify keeping scientific advice from the president, rather than getting it to him.

Only one man succeeded in running the blockade of security to reach the president with a dissent to Groves' option, and he was not a scientist, but the Navy Department's representative on the Interim Committee, Ralph Bard. Although Bard had initially endorsed dropping the bomb on a Japanese city, by late June he was having second thoughts about the Committee's action. "The whole thing was engineered by Stimson and Groves," he told interviewers later. "We didn't know a damned thing about this business. For quite a while I couldn't tell what the hell was going on." 79 Back at Navy headquarters, there were many who

thought that a blockade alone would suffice to compel Japan's surrender. Bard later subscribed to this view:

The Pacific war was a Navy war. The Army didn't know what the hell was going on there. The Navy had sewed up those islands so that nothing was coming in or going out. The Navy knew the Japa- nese were licked. The Army wanted to be in on the kill.80

He sent a memorandum to Harrison on June 27 proposing an alternative to the Interim Committee's recommendation:

78. Arneson, Memorandum for the Files, 24 May 1946, H-B, folder 76, p. 4. 79. Quoted in Nuel P. Davis, Lawrence and Oppenheimer (New York: Simon

and Schuster, 1968), p. 245. 80. Ibid., p. 247.

Leon V. Sigal 359

Ever since I have been in touch with this program I have had a feeling that before the bomb is actually used against Japan that Japan should have some preliminary warning for say two or three days in advance of use.81

Besides a warning, Bard urged a prior effort to arrange a negotiated settlement based on the threats of Soviet entry and use of the bomb, and on a promise to preserve the emperor. He resigned his Navy post on July 1, but at Forrestal's suggestion he obtained an interview with the president. "For God's sake," he recalls telling Truman, "don't organize an army to go into Japan. Kill a million people? It's ridiculous." 82 To the president, two weeks after giving a preliminary go-ahead to the Army's invasion plans, Bard's opposition could have sounded like a simple recitation of the Navy's stand on war strategy. Truman assured Bard that he had given careful consideration to invasion plans and to offering Japan a chance to surrender before the bomb was dropped.

VIII. Fighting Scientists with Scientists

Secretary of War Stimson, who approved formation of the Interim Com- mittee, saw it as advising him on the postwar organization and control of atomic research, not on wartime use of the bomb. Only as the scientists' protest gained momentum did the committee and its Scientific Advisory Panel give consideration to wartime use, and then in order to deflect and undercut that protest, screening the options that it generated and muting the arguments that it raised. Even when the committee and the panel did endorse the option selected by the Target Committee, the secretary of war did not regard them as advisory on wartime use. "The conclusions of the committee," he wrote in 1947, "were similar to my own, although I reached mine independently." 83 After the war, their action served as Stimson's justification, not explanation, for wartime use.

Neither the committee nor its panel had any authority to make a decision about wartime use because neither was in the military chain of command. Had they chosen to intervene in the bombing decision, they might have had the political resources, though not the mandate, to alter it. That neither committee attempted to do so is due to the composition

81. "Memorandum on the Use of the S-1 Bomb," from Ralph Bard to George Harrison, 25 June 1945, reprinted in Knebel and Bailey, No High Ground, pp. 109-110.

82. Quoted in Davis, Lawrence and Oppenheimer, p. 247. Smith, A Peril and a Hope, pp. 52-53, got a different version of events in an interview with Bard.

83. Stimson, "The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb," p. 101.

360 Bureaucratic Politics & Tactical Use of Committees

that their founders set at the outset and the agenda and procedures they arranged once underway.

Bard was the only member of the Interim Committee or its Scientific

Advisory Panel whose organizational interests disinclined him to favor

dropping the bomb. Despite efforts after the war to emphasize the "dis- tinguished" and disinterested character of its membership, the two bodies were essentially interagency committees composed of representatives of most of the organizations concerned with and responsible for atomic

energy matters. Perhaps none was more concerned or responsible than Groves himself, yet his presence at all committee meetings has passed unnoted in most public accounts. He explains the downplaying of his role in the deliberations:

It would not have looked well if I had been officially appointed to serve on a committee of civilians. But I was present at all its meet-

ings and I always considered it my duty to recommend that the bomb should be dropped. After all, great numbers of our boys were

dying every day at that time in the war against the Japanese. So far as I am aware none of the scientists who opposed the dropping of the bomb had any relatives in the field. So they could very well afford to be "soft." 84

To Groves, atomic energy was too important a matter to be left to

politicians, let alone, scientists. Besides the interests of committee and panel members, the distribution

of information in their possession also limited the amount of internal

opposition likely to arise. Those who knew the most about the bomb were those with the largest stake in using it-officials in charge of the MED. Wartime security compartmentalized information. Scientists on the

panel, who had detailed knowledge of the bomb's workings, had only a

general awareness of the military plans for its use or of alternative plans for ending the war by conventional and diplomatic means. Byrnes, Bard, and Clayton, while privy to some of the other plans for ending the war, knew few precise details about the bomb and military plans for

using it. Only Stimson and Groves knew the whole story. The agenda of the committee and its panel and the order of items on

it tended both to reflect the scientists' own priorities and to shape their stakes: their common preoccupation with postwar government funding for atomic research took precedence over any private misgivings about wartime use. In particular, the premier scientist/administrators, Conant

84. Groves, quoted in Robert Jungk, Brighter Than a Thousand Suns (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1958), p. 182.

Leon V. Sigal 361

and Bush, who as of September 1944 had been advocating a demon- stration of the bomb, may have felt reluctant to take on a losing, if not lost, cause of opposition to its use on Japanese cities without prior warn- ing. Postwar organization and support was a priority item of business and one which took up nearly all of the time of the committee and its panel. Secretary of War Stimson was careful to point this out, albeit obliquely, in his postwar recollection of their consideration of wartime use: "That part of its work which particularly concerns us here," he wrote in a carefully contrived justification for the decision, "related to its recommendations for the use of atomic energy against Japan, but it should be borne in mind that these recommendations were not made in a vacuum." 8s Oppenheimer's postwar testimony on the panel's activities had a more disarming frankness about it:

Apart from trying to make as vivid as we could the novelty, the variety, and the dynamic quality of this field, which we thought very important to get across, that this was not a finished job and there was a heck of a lot we didn't know, much of the discussion [re- volved] around the question raised by Secretary Stimson as to whether there was any hope at all of using this development to get less barbarous relations with the Russians.

The other two assignments which they had-one was quite slight. We were asked to comment on whether the bomb should be used. I think the reason we were asked for that comment was because a petition had been sent in from a very distinguished and thoughtful group of scientists: "No, it should not be used." It would be better for everything that they should not. We didn't know beans about the miltary situation in Japan. We didn't know whether they could be caused to surrender by other means or whether the invasion was really inevitable. But in back of our minds was the notion that the invasion was inevitable because we had been told that. I have not been able to review this document, but what it said I think is char- acteristic of how technical people should answer questions.

We said that we didn't think that being scientists especially qualified us as to how to answer this question of how the bombs should be used or not; opinion was divided among us as it would be among other people if they knew about it. We thought the two overriding considerations were the saving of lives in the war and the effect of our actions on the stability, on our strength and the stability of the

85. Stimson, "The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb," p. 100.

362 Bureaucratic Politics & Tactical Use of Committees

postwar world. We did say that we did not think exploding one of these things as a firecracker over a desert was likely to be very impressive. This was before we had actually done that. The de- struction on the desert is zero...

The other assignment brought me and the other members of the

panel to Washington. They asked us to produce a prospectus about what needed to be done in atomic energy. We wrote a great big book.86

IX. The Politics of Committees

Since 1945, the action of the Interim Committee and its Scientific Ad-

visory Panel has generated intense historical controversy: some have cited the conclusions of the committee and the panel to bolster their accounts of why the United States had to drop atomic bombs on Hiro- shima and Nagasaki; while their adversaries, seeking to undercut these accounts, have pointed to the other options for using the bomb proposed by committees of dissident scientists within the MED.87 In the controversy both sides have regarded the statements and actions of committee mem- bers as evidence either of the intentions of the United States or of the

personal beliefs and ideological predispositions of the individuals in- volved.

A bureaucratic politics approach suggests that orthodox and revisionist historians alike have misconstrued the part played by these committees in decision-making on the atomic bomb and misinterpreted their reports. Taking the committees at their word uproots their recommendations from the political context-bureaucratic and domestic, as well as inter- national-which nurtured them. Treating the committees as authoritative forums for decision-making overlooks the possibility that a committee can be a maneuver for playing the game of bureaucratic politics. By controlling the formation, mandate, composition, agenda, and internal

procedures of committees, senior officials in the War Department and

86. A. E. C., In the Matter of J. Robert Oppenheimer, p. 34. 87. Examples of the first group are Karl T. Compton, "If the Atomic Bomb

Had Not Been Used," Atlantic 178, no. 6 (December 1946):54-56; Stimson, "The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb," pp. 97-107; Feis, The Atomic Bomb and the End of World War II, pp. 50-57; and Louis Morton, "The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb," Foreign Affairs 35, no. 2 (January 1957):334-53. Their ad- versaries include: P. M. S. Blackett, Fear, War and the Bomb (New York: Whittlesey House, 1949), pp. 114-16; Gar Alperovitz, Atomic Diplomacy (New York: Random House, 1949); and Gabriel Kolko, The Politics of War (New York: Random House, 1968), pp. 540-43.

Leon V. Sigal 363

the MED could exploit them tactically in order to obtain the outcomes that they desired.

In the course of decision-making on the bomb, only the Military Policy Committee and the Target Committee had formal roles in the

policy process. Composed of representatives of the agencies directly concerned, they were the action channels authorized to select target cities in Japan.

The Jeffries and Franck Committees, composed predominantly of MED

dissidents, were largely self-generated, loose in structure and procedure, and lacking the formal mandate of a duly constituted intragovernmental committee. They resembled an ad hoc lobby trying to aggregate and articulate the interests of a previously inchoate group, more typical of

organizations commonly found outside the government trying to influ- ence what happens inside. Cut off from public attention and thus unable to mobilize popular support, these committees were doomed to im-

potence. This point did not escape Eugene Rabinowitch at the time. On

July 12, he addressed a memorandum to his colleagues at Chicago, argu- ing that with the completion of the Franck report, they had accomplished all that they could "within the present limits imposed by uncompromising secrecy." Signing Szilard's petition "merely for the purpose of 'going on the record'" would "contribute nothing new," but had "only strained

unnecessarily our relations with the Army." What the dissidents needed was to break the bonds of security and go public:

The only way in which the present situation could be changed radi-

cally is a limited or unlimited removal of secrecy restrictions, not on technical details, but on the fundamental fact of successful liberation of atomic power, before any use is made of this power, thus giving us the possibility of discussing the subject with a larger group of responsible people in Washington, and what is more im-

portant, giving the public opinion at large the chance to assimilate the facts and to influence the decision as to the best use to be made of the new weapon.88

For the immediate future, Rabinowitch recommended a petition to the American people, in effect, a leak to the press. Beyond that, he urged formation of a "Scientist Political Action Committee" to lobby on public policy issues relating to atomic energy, the genesis of the Federation of Atomic Scientists.

88. Edward Rabinowitch, Memorandum to the Committee on Panel Discus- sions, 12 July 1945, reprinted in Smith, A Peril and a Hope, app. c, pp. 573-74. Emphasis in original.

364 Bureaucratic Politics & Tactical Use of Committees

The Interim Committee originated as an interagency committee to forge an agreement among departments on postwar organization for atomic research. As dissident scientists perceived the connection between wartime use of the bomb and postwar research plans, the committee's composition was broadened by the addition of a Scientific Advisory Panel and its agenda lengthened to include wartime use, albeit briefly. Consideration by the committee and the panel of how to use the bomb against Japan was part of a bureaucratic strategy of senior War De- partment and MED officials with organizational interests in dropping the bomb on Japan's cities. The committee was not a formal channel for

decision-making on the bomb, but a tactic of bureaucratic politics, a

blocking maneuver to blunt the dissidents by preventing their options and arguments from reaching President Truman and by getting other scientists to endorse the option already chosen by the Target Committee. As James F. Byrnes remarked at the time, "In this age, it appears, every man must have his own physicist." 8'9

89. Byrnes, quoted in Michael Amrine, The Great Decision (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1959), p. 98.