In September 1954, the Defense Department had asked both Los Alamos and Livermore to explore the possibility of designing a new type of H-bomb—one in which the effects of radioactive contamination could be either diminished or enhanced.74
There was little enthusiasm at the nuclear labs—or anywhere else—for the so-called dirty bomb, where large areas of enemy territory could be made almost permanently uninhabitable by jacketing the weapon with a common element, like cobalt, which produced long-lived fission products. Conversely, there were few advocates among the military for the reduced-radiation, or “clean,” bomb, at a time when U.S. war plans regarded enemy casualties caused by fallout as “bonus effect.”75
Recognizing that the future of all nuclear testing might well depend on their ability to reduce fallout, however, Livermore scientists responded to the Pentagon order with alacrity. In December, York reported that his lab was working on two different and promising approaches to the clean bomb. The Defense Department awarded the Livermore program “urgent” status, asking the lab to make clean weapons a major effort.76
Murray was another enthusiast for what the religion-minded commissioner called “the ‘pure’ bomb.” “Our objective should be to test a weapon of this type at the earliest possible date,” he had written Strauss that fall.77 In a meeting just two days after Tesla, Teller informed Murray that the lab’s recent success had “opened up a completely new field” for small bombs as well as large ones. He looked forward to the time when “the ‘pure’ weapon idea could take on added impetus,” Murray told Teller.78
One reason for Murray’s avid interest in the clean bomb was the fact that his campaign to ban large H-bomb tests had reached a dead end with the administration. (His latest meeting, this time with Dulles, lasted only five minutes. “I thanked Mr. Murray for his ideas,” the secretary of state wrote in a memo of their conversation.)79 Undaunted, Murray had written once more to the president in mid-March 1955, this time proposing a so-called threshold test ban, which would eliminate thermonuclear tests in the megaton range—tests that the GAC claimed would be easily detectable.80 Strauss, however, advised Eisenhower against any such agreement with “a cynical and treacherous enemy.”81
Ike, in fact, already had another approach in mind. Unwilling to abandon the test ban as an eventual goal, the president on March 18 appointed Harold Stassen his special assistant for disarmament.82
The thirty-one-year-old former “boy governor” of Minnesota had made a career disguising his considerable ambition behind a facade of midwestern blandness. Three years earlier, Stassen’s maneuvering had guaranteed Eisenhower a first-ballot nomination at the Republican convention. As Stassen was well aware, Ike owed him a political debt.
But what Stassen intended to be his first step—a comprehensive review of American foreign policy and strategy—was preempted by the Soviets, who, in early May, themselves called for a ban on nuclear testing. Although the Russian proposal was quickly rejected by the American side, since it had no provisions for inspection or enforcement, the fact that the Soviets had been first to propose a test ban infuriated Eisenhower.83 Following the failure of the Geneva summit that June, the president encouraged Stassen to wrest the diplomatic initiative from the Russians.84
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In July, Stassen announced the creation of eight blue-ribbon panels to study different aspects of disarmament, including a test ban.85 Hoping to placate conservative critics, the Minnesotan put well-known and respected figures at the head of each group. (Jimmy Doolittle was chairman of one panel; Walt Disney and Charles Lindbergh were among Stassen’s candidates for “disarmament consultant.”)86 To lead the all-important Task Force on Nuclear Inspection, Stassen chose Lawrence. Stassen also asked the various agencies involved—the Pentagon, the AEC, and State Department—to provide “experienced men with brilliant analytical minds” to assist the experts.87
Deeply skeptical of Stassen’s enterprise—as he was, indeed, of any initiative to the Russians—Strauss volunteered McKay Donkin, the “special assistant” he had earlier used to dig up dirt on Oppenheimer, to serve as the commission’s liaison with Lawrence’s task force.88 But Donkin’s real job was to spy on the inspection panel. At Strauss’s urging, Teller and Griggs were also added to Lawrence’s task force, which comprised a dozen scientists, most drawn from RAND and Livermore.89
Stassen had assigned Lawrence’s panel responsibility for devising an effective inspection system to uncover clandestine nuclear explosions, the fatal weakness of every test-ban proposal put forward thus far. Eisenhower hoped to make Lawrence’s scheme the centerpiece of his diplomatic overture to the Russians at the next summit.
Using the cover name Project Alpine, the group met for the first time that fall in Washington, where they received briefings from the CIA, the AEC, and the air force on Russian nuclear capabilities.90 While opinion among the panel’s experts varied as to the feasibility—and desirability—of a test ban, one task force member, York, remembered another, Teller, as being “unabashedly hostile to the whole idea.”91
Lawrence, on the other hand, seemed at least willing to maintain an open mind.92 Stassen scheduled a meeting of all the groups for late October 1955 at the Quantico Marine Base in Virginia, where task force leaders would report on progress.93
Plainly concerned that Lawrence, whether out of sympathy or enthusiasm, might be about to embrace Stassen’s vision of a disarmed world, Strauss advised caution: “All that the man in the street will realize is that a great scientist, inventor of the cyclotron, has accepted this assignment and, because of the stature of his scientific ability, is a magician and will pull the rabbit out of the hat.”94
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Strauss need not have worried. As Donkin assured the AEC chairman, Lawrence’s report to the Quantico conference would be direly pessimistic about the prospects for a test ban. Indeed, Ernest told his peers that a moratorium on testing could be “dangerous” for the United States, since the nation’s technological edge might be lost. His task force had concluded that the Russians would be able not only to test but to produce and stockpile nuclear weapons clandestinely. Unwilling to grant Russian inspectors access to Los Alamos or Livermore, Lawrence’s experts were
