Foreign Relations of the United States, 1946, General; the United Nations, Volume I

Department of State Atomic Energy Files

Memorandum of Conversation, by Mr. John M. Hancock of the United States Delegation to the Atomic Energy Commission ⁵²

[Washington,] May 30, 1946.

Those present at the apartment of Mr. Byrnes in the Shoreham Hotel were Messrs. Byrnes, Acheson, Baruch and Hancock.

In a way, this will be a continuation of the morning’s discussion. After some conversation about general procedure, Mr. Acheson laid out the things he had wanted to talk with Mr. Byrnes about insofar as atomic energy was concerned. He thought there ought to be a means of coordinating the position of Government and that there should be a group set up in the State Department which would be able to gather for us the answers to any questions which might arise in the conduct of our discussions in New York. He even broached the point that it would be helpful if our body were here. He went on developing his idea, and I can see no disadvantage in an interdepartmental board, with appointees from each agency of Government who would get together the facts from the branches of Government concerned or would develop a statement of policy on the part of the departments concerned. The purpose of this would be to have a group in the State Department who would be in close contact with the President and get authoritative rulings on America’s position. Up to this point I can see advantages but no disadvantages.

Mr. Acheson went on to outline the idea that he might reconstitute, as a board, the Lilienthal Committee⁵³ for the purpose of advising the State Department. As to this I demur, because I believe it could only complicate our problem. The scientists as a body do not agree, and I feel we have to make our determination with our staff as to what should be our policy. These problems are not often purely scientific problems. They blend very quickly into political problems. If we were able to keep the scientists onto the purely scientific aspects, I wouldn’t look for any trouble because there is fairly general agreement among the scientists as to the purely scientific aspects. The divergences come in when you start interpreting these scientific facts into a political policy. The scientists tend to be unbending and calculating in the field of science—which is natural—but they carry over their inelasticity into arguments in the field of international affairs, politics in the proper sense, and negotiation. They generally seek to have the whole story laid out before committing themselves to it and that doesn’t lend itself to this plan of handling the problem. Mr. Baruch and Mr. Acheson are to talk that matter over further.

I told Mr. Acheson that I thought the military problems were entirely cleared now by the appointment of General Groves to act as the interpreter of military policy on behalf of the Chiefs of Staff and on behalf of the American delegation to the Military Security Committee [Military Staff Committee] of the United Nations Security Council.⁵⁴ Mr. Acheson thought General Groves would be speaking without the support of the military authorities and, when I said that I had seen nothing in General Groves’ conduct to lead me to support that belief, he was pleasant but firm in restating his position. Apparently, this is a relic of the fight of false issue about military versus civilian control, and also it may be a by-product of the feeling of the scientists toward General Groves. I understand that the most vehement of the group against General Groves is Dr. Urey,⁵⁵ and I also understand, on good authority, that General Groves kept Dr. Urey, on four different occasions, from making the wrong practical interpretation of the scientific fact of which Dr. Urey was fully possessed.⁵⁶

I think the matter of drafting is quite cleared up now. There had been a view expressed earlier that we should start men drafting early. I expressed my view that there wasn’t anything to draft at this stage of the operation, and yet it would be helpful to have assigned to us the men who were going to do the drafting and that they would be in a better position to do the drafting if they sat in on the decisions on policy matters which were later to be embodied in the form of a treaty draft. To me, it would be putting the cart before the horse to start drafting before policy decisions are made. We expressed our entire approval of having a man from the State Department to aid us in this work. When Mr. Byrnes emphasized the language difficulties and the suspicions that arise when a word is changed, it seemed clear to me that in any statement of policy which we draft and submit to the Commission, it would be helpful to have such drafts reviewed by the treaty drafters, as in that way we would be getting into our first draft the same language as we would expect to use in the final draft.

Going back to this matter of organization, I can see advantages in having a staff group in the State Department to dig up facts and to act as a clearing point with the President for a statement of our policies. I cannot see a situation in which the State Department would attempt to present to the President for approval some different content of a statement of policy than one in entire keeping with our views. If we have to go into battles before the President in case of a difference of point of view, then I think we want to carry our own banner before the President rather than have differing recommendations submitted by people who may feel entirely free to alter our statements, or might not knowingly do so.

It became very clear that we should work this out closely with the President and the Department of State. The purpose of this would be primarily to keep the President informed so that he would not say something in his press conferences which would be contrary to the position we might be taking in the Commission.

We distributed copies of the Ten-Point Policy Statement,⁵⁷ which were read over by all concerned.

There were two points discussed at quite some length. The problem of automatic sanctions was gone over again, and I don’t recall anything significant which was new. Mr. Baruch was again firm in his argument that we must get some automatic penalties, or that otherwise we had to tell the world that this plan gave us a warning of between three months and a year, which was zero in our form of Government. I think Mr. Acheson quite doubts the wisdom of the suggestion. He argued quite objectively for his point of view and didn’t insist upon it at all. Mr. Byrnes thinks the penalties would be some deterrent. Mr. Byrnes is going to see the President about the whole statement of policy.

The other point of argument was with regard to uranium ore in the ground. Mr. Acheson wants the Authority to be given the responsibility of preventing diversion and so do we. He does not think the inspection can be as good as ownership, and he even wants to go so far as to give the right to take ore in the ground for power plants. I don’t see this argument at all. If we advance the argument favoring the right of eminent domain, we will to some degree facilitate the production of bomb material and certainly that isn’t our purpose. At the same time the amounts required for the so-called beneficial uses are almost negligible. I see no reason to give Government the power to seize the property of one citizen, with the object of converting it to purely commercial purposes. If we don’t make bombs and don’t create potentially dangerous power plants, there is more uranium readily and immediately available to meet the needs of the so-called beneficial uses.

Mr. Acheson’s argument is that Russia will not consent to inspection, and my argument—equally as firmly asserted—is that inspection can’t be any more difficult for the Russians to accept than to accept ownership by an international body in any country in which the State is supreme and the private property does not exist as such. It would seem to me that if we try to assert the right of ownership, we will have a more difficult time with Russia than if we ask merely for control or dominion. Mr. Acheson’s reply was that unless we own we cannot stop diversion in Russia. I do not see where an ownership gives us any advantage against inspection. On the other hand, I think, the nations which do believe in private property would demur to a Treaty asserting the right of eminent domain. Mr. Acheson claimed he did not quite understand my statement about ownership. We didn’t get very far in a discussion of it, but the last thought expressed by him was that he wanted the Authority given the responsibility to safeguard uranium supplies and to prevent diversions in any and every way which it was [saw] fit. And I did not demur to ownership in some cases, leases in other cases, licenses in some cases, or in other words to a plan of operation in which the Authority would be free to use its judgment as to the best means of carrying out its responsibility. One difficulty is the inherent difficulty I see in all administrative law procedures. Unless some guides are set down for the administrative law authority, almost inevitably the authorities are anxious to grab a lot of power.

When I brought out the problems of the financial set up, capital funds, working funds, etc., Mr. Acheson said no work had been done in that field, and when he volunteered to get a group for it, I told him that Eberstadt would be free today and that he had that assignment. I plan to write Mr. Acheson and ask him for any work which has been done on this problem in connection with other international groups. I emphasize my concern that with the ending of the war and the desire of Congress to cut expenditures, with the inability of many parts of the world to benefit from our plans and their probable lack of desire to contribute to the work, I fear the international Authority will break down and do such a poor grade of work, because of lack of funds, that the Authority will lose public favor and support and become defunct. I fear that the entire financial obligation in the end will rest upon us, and I do not look upon this prospect as favorable to the general project.

We had a long discussion about the reference to weapons of mass destruction. Mr. Byrnes said that the only intent back of the final resolution was to handle the matter of atomic energy and atomic bombs. He said that there had been mention made of biological warfare and that the broad term was used so that it might include biological warfare. I pointed out Mr. Byrnes’ statement made after Moscow, to the effect that the problem was the atomic bomb and other matters related to it which, of course, would seem to exclude biological warfare. It looks frankly as if the intent now is being made to exclude it so as to simplify our job and that the effort is being made to build up the argument that this reference was a bit of window dressing so far as gaining support for the entire program. I agree with Mr. Byrnes that our major effort should be in the field of atomic energy at this time. I also agree with Mr. Baruch that we cannot dismiss the problem from our presentation. (In talking with General Groves on Friday morning, May 31, he brought out a suggestion that when we list the crimes in connection with atomic energy, we also mention the use of biological warfare and provide a penalty for it without pushing for an exact definition of all the crimes which might be set up in this connection.) While there wasn’t any outspoken approval of either the content or the manner of expressing the other points, there likewise was no demurring to them.

During the day Mr. Baruch had questioned the wording in my memorandum—“It will readily be seen at this time that this is not the endorsement of the creation of national Authorities”. He thought we should cover both sides of the issue rather than leave it in the present form which is one sided. He didn’t use this expression, but I think his thought is that we neither endorse nor condemn the idea of having national bodies. In the discussion on this point last night, it seemed that the international bodies might wish to refer certain problems to national Authorities. For example, an international body might give a national body a certain quota of material for research or power plant use inside any one country. The international body could keep out of local politics by having allocations made by the national body.

I raised the query again as to whether it wouldn’t be a good plan to provide that large power plants should be permitted by the international body only, with the approval of the Security Council. The difficulty in this matter is that with the uncertainties of development in the field of denaturing, we might be setting up in the Atomic Development Authority a power which would permit the location of civilian power plants in one country. In the uncertainties regarding denaturing, in particular of plutonium, a permission given to one nation to build a large number of power plants might disturb the military balance among the nations to an extreme degree. It would be a factor of safety to have the location and the existence of such plants approved by the Security Council where such projects would come under the view of the military security group. This, of course, contemplates an advancement in power plant development and the right in the Authority to change its position regarding these large power plants. The difficulty is that if the Authority once permits a certain large power plant to use material which seems safe at the start, it might later have to draw back the potentially dangerous material and allow operation only with material which was safe in accordance with the changed standard. Have it explicitly stated that changing standards might require change of material. This would create a definite friction between the Atomic Development Authority and the nation involved, particularly if the nation involved were trying to set up large power plants so as to have larger production of bomb material more readily available in the event of need. While no specific assent was given to this idea, there was no demurring on the part of Messrs. Acheson or Byrnes.

There seemed to be a good deal of confusion in regard to the matter of licensing. Admittedly, I have not been trying to write a statute which would grant to the Atomic Development Authority any specific powers in the granting of licenses or any right to include in the terms of the license any specific project. I deliberately avoided doing this because I thought that an attempt to develop the terms of such licenses at this time would only take our eyes off the main problem. I certainly have no objection to a more specific statement than the ones I have used with regards to this license, their granting or their terms.

On the morning of May 31, Mr. Baruch and I talked with General Groves in the Shoreham Gardens. We reviewed the delegation of authority to him; the talk with Messrs. Byrnes and Acheson of last evening; the need of posting the Chiefs of Staff regarding our policy before any decision was made by the President as to national policy. We also went over our statement of the ten-point policy program and mentioned the two additional points which we had been discussing. These two points are a consideration of the MacArthur plan to embody in the Constitution of Japan a prohibition against war, and the idea developed from the Nuremberg trials that the individual has responsibility for violating the laws. General Groves commented on the second point to the effect that if the President ordered him to do something contrary to the Treaty, Gen. Groves would be aware of the criminal liability in international law in the event we lost the war. We didn’t press the point, but I would guess that any military man would be skeptical on this point.

Gen. Groves used one very pat expression which impressed me very much. It arose in a discussion of what are weapons of mass destruction. In the suggestion previously discussed regarding a prohibition regarding biological warfare, he said we must make it impossible for any major nation to start a war. He didn’t satisfy himself with the statement that in the event war comes, all the forbidden weapons will be used. His statement rather was that as these terrible weapons will be used if war once starts, the only course of the nations to follow is to prevent any nation from starting a war. This is nothing particularly new by way of concept, but, I think, it is a better way of expressing the idea than I have previously heard.

I gave Gen. Groves my Ten-Point Program, and he went over it carefully. He thought the penalties should be “immediate and certain” rather than “prompt and certain” as I had written it.

I forgot to mention that Mr. Byrnes justifies the exclusion of biological warfare from our work at this time on the ground that these weapons have never proved themselves in warfare as has the atomic bomb. Mr. Byrnes thought that if we can solve this one problem of the atomic bomb, we can then go on to solve the others. I pointed out to him that the kind of inspection which might be adequate for controlling abuses with atomic energy quite certainly would not be adequate for these other kinds of warfare.

General Groves thinks that it is too strong a statement to say that it can be regarded “as probable” that atomic energy will in the course of years provide an important supplement to other methods of power production. He would not demur if the words “as probable” were changed to “quite possible”.

[Here follows an account of further discussion with General Groves concerning personnel and the release of classified information.]

52. The meeting here described occurred on the evening of May 30
53. Reference is to the Board of Consultants which advised the Secretary of State’s Committee on Atomic Energy.
54. In a letter of May 27, Fleet Adm. Chester W. Nimitz, Chief of Naval Operations, had informed Mr. Baruch that General Groves would represent the Joint Chiefs of Staff with respect to technical and security matters confronting the United States Delegation to the Atomic Energy Commission (Department of State Atomic Energy Files).
55. Dr. Harold C. Urey, Professor of Chemistry and member of the Staff of the Institute for Nuclear Studies, University of Chicago.

56. In a memorandum of June 2 to Hancock, Tolman stated the following:

    “On page 3, it is stated that General Groves kept Dr. Urey, on four different occasions from making the wrong practical interpretation of scientific facts. This I think comes from me, and needs a little correction. What I said was that I could give four instances of where General Groves’ scientific and engineering intuition was better than that of the scientists. Only one of these applies to Urey. This, however, was the very important one, that Urey thought that the diffusion process, for which he was the top scientist, ought to be abandoned, and Groves was the one who forced it through to its very successful conclusion, and thus really saved Urey’s scientific reputation.” (Department of State Atomic Energy Files)

57. The memorandum under reference is not printed; for a summary of its substance, see Hewlett and Anderson, p. 567. A redraft dated June 4 is printed on p. 827.