Foreign Relations of the United States, 1955–1957, Regulation of Armaments; Atomic Energy, Volume XX

308. Diary Entry by the President, October 29, 1957¹

October 29, 1957

I was visited by Professor Rabi, Admiral Strauss, Gordon Gray, and one or two others.² The purpose was to bring to me certain conclusions reached by Professor Rabi’s Committee, called the Scientific Advisory Committee to the Director of Defense Mobilization.

Briefly, their conclusion was that we now enjoy certain advantages in the nuclear world over the Russians and that the most important of these gaps can be closed only by continuous testing on the part of the Russians. Professor Rabi’s Committee has therefore reached the conclusion that we should, as a matter of self-interest, agree to a suspension of all tests subject only to the installation of inspectional systems that would almost surely reveal the occurrence of a test. Scientists differ as to whether certain nuclear tests can be conducted without any knowledge reaching the outside world, but the Rabi Committee believes that with a half dozen or so properly equipped inspectional posts inside of Russia, any significant explosion could be detected.

While the Rabi Committee agreed that certain advantages in our weaponry could be realized by advancement of testing, they say that the expected advantage would be as nothing compared with maintaining the particular scientific gap that exists in the design of the Russian H-bomb as compared to ours.

The nature of this gap is that Russian bombs are unshielded against certain types of radio activity that could be placed around them as they approach. The effect of this would not be to destroy the bomb but to reduce its effect by something like 99%.

Admiral Strauss and his group of scientists do not believe some of the assumption made by the Rabi Committee.³ They are keenly afraid that should we discontinue our tests, the Russians would, by stealing all of our secrets, equal and eventually surpass us. So Admiral Strauss and his associates believe we should continue all of our experiments and testing out in the open, refusing to be victimized by Russian duplicity. They are quite firm in their belief that we could not protect ourselves adequately against that duplicity.

The outcome was that Gordon Gray, Admiral Strauss and General Cutler are going to try to get (if possible) an agreement of scientific opinion in this whole matter to see what we should do about it.

Incidentally, I learned that some of the mutual antagonisms among the scientists are so bitter as to make their working together almost an impossibility. I was told that Dr. Rabi and some of his group are so antagonistic to Drs. Lawrence and Teller that communication between them is practically nil.

D.D.E.⁴

1. Source: Eisenhower Library, Whitman File, DDE Diaries. Top Secret.
2. Others present were Goodpaster and Cutler. Goodpaster’s memorandum of this conference is scheduled for publication in volume XIX.
3. Strauss’ views are summarized in the memorandum of conference, infra.
4. Printed from a copy that bears these typed initials.