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

74. Letter From the Acting Secretary of State to the Deputy Representative on the United Nations Disarmament Commission (Stassen)¹

Washington, September 27, 1955.

Dear Harold: The Department of State agrees with the belief you express in your letter of September 13, 1955² that there should be no proposal for a technical study group made in the Disarmament Subcommittee at this time. The Department believes that consideration of the Technical Exchange Panel, as well as Mr. Nutting’s suggestion for a scientific committee to study the problem of inspection as it relates to the feasibility of elimination of nuclear weapons,³ should proceed in the President’s Special Committee on Disarmament problems. The desirability of putting forward either of these ideas could be reassessed later in the light of developments in the Subcommittee.

We concur also in the decision reached at the meeting of the President’s Special Committee on Monday, September 19, in respect of Mr. Berding’s suggestion for a limited tryout of blueprint exchange and mutual aerial photography,⁴ that no action on this proposal be taken now but that the Special Committee keep it under review.

With reference to the next to the last paragraph of your letter, the Department believes that in providing guidance or in answering queries you put to us from New York it should undertake to coordinate with the Department of Defense and the AEC, so that these communications may be regarded by you as constituting interdepartmentally cleared positions. The suggestion is not intended to duplicate the functions of the Special Committee, but only to provide a procedure for rapid handling of communications with you in New York.

Sincerely yours,

Herbert Hoover, Jr.

1. Source: Department of State, Disarmament Files: Lot 58 D 133, Inspection—Task Force. Confidential.
2. Document 68.
3. Nutting, who discussed his proposal with the Western delegations to the Subcommittee of the U.N. Disarmament Commission in late September, formally introduced it to the subcommittee on October 7. The proposal asked the subcommittee to “consider setting up a group of eminent scientists representing each of our five countries” to investigate and report on the problem of prohibition and elimination of nuclear weapons. For Nutting’s proposal, see U.N. doc. DC/SC.1/PV.68, pp. 13–15)
4. Berding’s suggestion is discussed in Document 68. No formal record of the meeting of the President’s Special Committee on September 19 has been found in Department of State files.