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

Department of State Atomic Energy Files

The British Prime Minister (Attlee) to President Truman ⁷⁷

top secret
urgent
personal

[London,] 7 June 1946—12:36 a. m.
[Received 2:15 p.m.]

3019. Your telegram of the 20 April about the exchange of information on atomic energy.⁷⁸

I have held back my reply until I had been able to discuss the matter with Halifax and with MacKenzie King.

I should like first to go back a little over past history. In the early years of the war, in 1940 and 1941, our scientists were amongst the first to become convinced of the enormous military possibilities of the atomic energy project, and it will not, I think, be denied that both then and later, if we had been willing to face the diversion of industrial effort that would have been needed, we had the resources and the scientific and technical skill that would have enabled us to embark on the development of the project in this country. But to do that we should have had to reduce our efforts in other directions in which we were already heavily engaged, both in comparatively new but highly important fields of development such as radar and jet propulsion, and in the more established forms of war production. To do so at that time would not have been opportune, particularly so long as the threat of invasion lasted and while our principal centres of production were subject to air attack. Nevertheless, if we had continued to stand alone, I do not believe that we could have afforded to neglect so revolutionary a development and to gamble on the chance that the war would end without our enemies succeeding in developing it. At whatever cost, we should have been bound to make the attempt to develop it in this country. Whether or not we should have succeeded before the war ended, we should certainly have gained much knowledge and experience.

Fortunately, however, it was not necessary to make the choice. President Roosevelt had become interested in the idea of an atomic weapon and had decided to engage upon it all the vast resources of the United States. In October, 1941, he wrote to Mr. Churchill and proposed that any extended efforts in this field should be coordinated or even jointly conducted.⁷⁹ It was thus possible for us to decide that we would concentrate on assisting to the best of our ability the development of the enterprise in the United States. It is not for me to try to assess what that assistance was worth, but we gave it in the confident belief that the experience and knowledge gained in America would be made freely available to us, just as we made freely available to you the results of research in other fields such as radar and jet propulsion, on which, as a result of this decision, we were able to concentrate. It was part of that wise division of effort and pooling of resources which was made possible by the system of reciprocal aid which, without attempting to compare and measure the aggregate contribution on each side, enabled both countries to concentrate their efforts on those fields where they seemed likely to be most productive. I must repeat that, but for that system, we should have been forced to adopt a different distribution of our resources in this country, which would not have been so advantageous to the common interest.

As I have said, we entered on these arrangements in a spirit of partnership and in the belief that both countries would pool the experience which they gained. It was, in fact, later expressly provided in the Quebec agreement that there should be complete interchange of ideas and information on all sections of the project between members of the policy committee and their immediate technical advisers, and, at the lower level, interchange of information in the field of design and construction of large scale plants was not ruled out but was made subject to ad hoc arrangements to be approved by the Combined Policy Committee. At the same time it was left to the President of the United States to specify the terms on which any postwar advantages of an industrial or a commercial character should be dealt with as between the United States and Great Britain.

In the latter days of the war, we considered more than once whether under the existing arrangements we were making the best use of our resources and whether the time had not come when we ought to undertake a policy of more active development in this country if we were not to fall too far behind in a field of development in which we had, but a short time before, been in the forefront. But, on each occasion, after full deliberation, we came back to the principle of the Quebec agreement that the earliest possible realization of the project must come first and before any separate national advantage and that, while our scientists could still contribute anything to the work in the United States, they should not be withdrawn. We felt that we could rely on the provisions of the agreement to ensure that we should not suffer, that we should be given full access at the highest level to the knowledge of all sections of the project, and that the dissemination of such information to lower level would be limited only by considerations of security.

This situation continued until the goal had been reached and the first bomb dropped. At that point, we considered, we might reasonably prepare to undertake a more active programme of development in this country and might expect to be able to make use of the experience which had been gained up to that point in the joint enterprise.

Almost immediately the war came to an end, and we were told that until new arrangements could be concluded, the supply of information must be stopped. When I visited Washington, therefore, in November, it was an important part of my purpose to secure that, as President Roosevelt had promised Mr. Churchill at Hyde Park in September 1944, the cooperation which had existed during the war should be continued and that it should be full and effective.⁸⁰ I was very much reassured, therefore, when you agreed that this should be so and that the Combined Policy Committee should be asked to recommend arrangements to that end. It seemed a natural and a logical continuation of the previous agreement that the arrangements for peace time collaboration would cover at least the same ground as before and would take account of the fact that this country was now free to devote a substantial industrial effort to the atomic energy project. The matter was discussed, in the first instance, at a conference held in Judge Patterson’s room at the War Department and afterwards in greater detail by Sir John Anderson with General Groves and Mr. George Harrison, and together they drew up the memorandum to which you refer. I can find no support in the paragraph of that document, which you quote, for the view that there was no obligation to exchange information about the construction of large scale plants. It is indeed clearly laid down that, while the principle was not in doubt, the best means of giving effect to it should be considered further by the Combined Policy Committee.

Such discussions did, in fact, take place and lasted many weeks. Finally, a unanimous report was submitted to the Combined Policy Committee by a Subcommittee on which your Government was represented by General Groves. The draft agreement which the Subcommittee drew up provided that there was to be full and effective cooperation in the exchange of information required for the development programmes of the two countries. We made it clear in the discussions that our own programme would include the construction of large scale plants in this country.

When the Subcommittee’s report was considered by the Combined Policy Committee, it came as a surprise to us to find that your Government was not prepared to enter into any agreement, nor to proceed on the basis of the agreements previously reached between us, nor yet to agree that cooperation should, in fact, continue by administrative action. The clause of our agreement, signed in November, by which the Combined Policy Committee was to recommend the arrangements required for continued cooperation has thus remained a dead letter.

I cannot agree with the argument that to continue such cooperation would be inconsistent with the public declaration on the control of atomic energy which you and MacKenzie King and I issued in November. That our three Governments stand on a special relationship to one another in this field is a matter of record and was, in fact, the reason why we took the initiative in issuing the declaration. It is surely not inconsistent with its purpose that the cooperation begun during the war should continue during the peace unless and until it can be replaced by a wider system. And until recently, at any rate, I think it is fair to say that it was generally assumed iii both our countries that this cooperation was continuing. And, indeed, in one important part of the field it is: I am referring to our joint control of raw materials. We have not thought it necessary to abandon that—in my opinion, quite rightly. Why then should we abandon all further pooling of information?

You evidently feel that it would be inconsistent with the declaration issued at Washington that another atomic energy plant should be constructed and that the United States should assist in its construction. The purpose of the Washington declaration was to promote the development of atomic energy for peaceful ends and to ensure that it should not be used as a means of destruction. It was certainly not intended to stifle all further development in other countries, any more than it was suggested that the development which has already taken place in the United States should be abandoned. We have made no secret of the fact that we intend to produce fissile material, though naturally the use which we shall make of it will be much affected by the deliberations of the Atomic Energy Commission.

In the meantime, I can see nothing in the Washington declaration, or in the assembly resolution, which requires us to dissolve our partnership, either in the exchange of information or in the control of raw materials, until it can be merged in a wider partnership, I should be sorry to think that you did not agree with this view.

I have set out the position fully and frankly as I am sure you would have wished me to do. I realize that an additional complication may arise from the fact that the McMahon bill containing stringent provisions about the disclosure of information has within the last few days been passed by the Senate.⁸¹

I would nevertheless most strongly urge that for the reasons I have given our continuing cooperation over raw materials shall be balanced by an exchange of information which will give us, with all proper precautions in regard to security, that full information to which we believe that we are entitled, both by the documents and by the history of our common efforts in the past.

77. Transmitted through military channels to the White House as telegram 3019.
78. Ante, p. 1235.
79. President Roosevelt’s letter of October 11, 1941, and Prime Minister Churchill’s reply are described in Hewlett and Anderson, p. 259.
80. The pertinent portion of the Aide-Mémoire of conversation between President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill, September 18, 1944, is printed in Foreign Relations, The Conference of Berlin (The Potsdam Conference), 1945, vol. ii, p. 1371. Additional documentation on the agreement, which was negotiated following the Quebec Conference of 1944, will appear in a subsequent Foreign Relations volume.
81. For information on legislation on atomic energy in 1946, see Hewlett and Anderson, chapter 14.