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

501.BC Atomic/7–2446

Mr. John M. Hancock of the United States Delegation to the Atomic Energy Commission to the Secretary of State

New York, July 24, 1946.

My Dear Mr. Secretary: In keeping with my promise on the phone a few minutes ago, I am inclosing three documents:¹⁴ one, the tentative outline of items for Committee No. 2 as presented at the meeting today; two, a copy of the record of Mr. Gromyko’s speech;¹⁵ three, the copy of the press release given by the Press Division.

There wasn’t anything unexpected in the speech and there wasn’t any new problem presented by it. This speech had been in the making for some time and I think Mr. Gromyko felt that he was being thwarted in his desire to make it. When the question arose today about his right to comment upon our #3 Memorandum,¹⁶ I advocated that we depart from the strict terms of the Agenda because his desire was quite well inside of the first item on the Agenda, which was then in tentative form and is now undergoing a minor textual revision.¹⁷

As to the tentative agenda, Mr. Gromyko’s four points were that the agenda did not cover these points: First, the prohibition of production of atomic weapons. (My reply was that I had no objection to any sharpening of the words but that I was willing to have the idea embodied in more specific terms. It already is included in the first two (I and II) broad classifications.); Second, the destruction of bombs. (My comment was that that was included in I, in specific terms in the expression “elimination from national armaments of atomic weapons” and in IA in the word “storing”.); Third, punishment by nations. (I pointed out that that was covered by our V on the Agenda in which we referred to enforcement agencies, actions by national governments, etc.); Fourth, definitive action and more definitive terms used as to the exchange of scientific and technical information. (I reminded him that this had already been specifically assigned to the Scientific and Technical Committee.)¹⁸

I don’t want to show an impatience over the delay on purely procedural matters, but it is very irksome. I haven’t wanted to argue about committee set-ups. I think the present attempt to split the problem into beneficial uses and dangerous uses by assignment to separate committees is unrealistic. The uses are safe up to the point that somebody decides to convert them into a dangerous use—as you so well know. The attempt to handle these problems as if they were separable will finally result in a merger, and finally the Working Committee will handle all policy matters. There seems to be a desire to handle policy matters as if they were unrelated to the scientific and legal aspects. People will have to learn that this is a problem in the whole, that one can view any problem from several aspects but one cannot insulate many bits of this problem until there is a general understanding of both the scientific and legal aspects and the reasons for the kind of control involved in our plan.

We are not going to fight for conducive votes on these matters. We have arranged to go along, develop points of agreement, ascertain points of disagreement without bringing the latter to a vote, and hope that in the orderly process of education, we will bring all to the same conclusion we have ourselves reached. I don’t like to use this expression educational process because it might give the impression that we think we are the only educated ones. After the session was over today, I talked to Mr. Gromyko, told him we would have an answer for his observations—all of which we appreciated—when we came to the problems in the order set forth in the tentative Agenda. His objections, you will note, are not keyed to the order of points for study, nor did they contain any matter of substance.

There was a curious misunderstanding during the meeting. The Chairman¹⁹ had proposed that the Agenda be modified and brought up at our fourth meeting a week from today. I deferred moderately to a week’s delay on the procedural matters and argued that we get into the substance without waiting for a week for agreement upon the precise wording of the Agenda. The French alone were a little hesitant about pushing too fast but the French Delegate²⁰ had not been in touch with developments of the past three weeks. He made some reference of desiring to hear from his home government, but in a subsequent talk with his right-hand man, Lacoste,²¹ I think I cleared up that point with him.

Going back to my talk with Gromyko, he is willing to meet in Committee No. 2 every day and he plans to be actively interested in going ahead with the very long Agenda which might well occupy the Committee for some months.

I think this is all in accordance with your desires and while it is not a complete review of the day’s events, it does cover the things at the top of my mind and those which would normally arise in the mind of anyone who might see the afternoon papers. We had a press conference this afternoon at 5:00 P.M., too late for the afternoon papers, and I think you will find a much saner atmosphere in the papers tomorrow.

Your Representative, Porter McKeever,²² was at the press conference and at the end of it, he was unreserved in his approval. I had emphasized that this was an explanation of Mr. Gromyko’s previous document which we were glad to have, that in no respect were we surprised, that there was nothing in the nature of a crisis, and that we were going ahead with our long Agenda with the consent of all concerned. I took plenty of time to give the reporters a lot of background. I am not sure they will use it as intended but the conservative ones were very appreciative of the time I had given them. Of course, they wanted me to tell them what we were going to do next, and I had foreclosed that question in the early part of the conference by stating that I was willing to discuss history, but that at this time I was not prepared to state what we would do in the future. I did make it plain that when we took action they could expect to hear of it in normal course.²³

Very truly yours,

John M. Hancock

14. The enclosures are not printed here.

15. At the 3rd Meeting of the Atomic Energy Commission, June 25, a Working Committee (Committee 1) consisting of one representative of each member of the Commission, was appointed. The Working Committee agreed to establish Committee 2 at its 2nd Meeting, July 12; the new body was directed to concern itself with the basic issue of international control. Regarding the development of the Commission’s committee system in June and July, and negotiations during that period, see Hewlett and Anderson, pp. 584–590.

    For the text of the summary record of the 2nd Meeting of Committee 2, July 24, during which Gromyko delivered the address cited here, see United Nations, Official Records of the Atomic Energy Commission, First Year, Special Supplement, Report to the Security Council (1946), pp. 114–120 (hereafter cited as AEC, I, Special Suppl.)

16. In elaboration of its proposal of June 14, the United States Delegation submitted three memoranda to the Commission (July 2, July 5, and July 12); for texts, see AEC, I, Special Suppl., pp. 92–102, and 106–111, or Documents on Disarmament 1945–1959, vol. i, pp. 25–42.
17. Mr. Hancock represented the United States on Committee 2.
18. Committee 3, the Scientific and Technical Committee, had been appointed at the 2nd Meeting of the Working Committee, July 12, to arrange the exchange of information and explore the peaceful uses of atomic energy. Committee 3 first met on July 19. Information submitted by the United States Delegation is contained in the following Department of State Publications: The International Control of Atomic Energy; Scientific Information Transmitted to the United Nations Atomic Energy Commission, June 14, 1946–October 14, 1946 (Washington, n.d.) and December 15, 1946 (Washington, 1947).
19. Capt. Alvaro Alberto da Motta e Silva, Brazilian Representative on the Atomic Energy Commission.
20. Alexandre Parodi, Permanent French Representative at the United Nations.
21. François Lacoste, Adviser, French Delegation to the Atomic Energy Commission.
22. Adviser, United States Delegation to the General Assembly.
23. The following handwritten addition by Mr. Hancock appears at the bottom of the source text: “No atomic bomb blew up here. We wanted to get their position denned a lot more and we will get it as the days go by—and in the process I hope we will get the educational process carried forward too.”