But Murray’s Jesuitical distinctions concerning what he called “rational nuclear armament” were little understood by the public, and completely unappreciated by Strauss and the president. “He ought to be locked up. I think he is off his rocker,” a furious Ike told Strauss following Murray’s appearance before the Joint Committee early in 1957. After Strauss blocked a study—proposed by Murray—of the effects of an all-out nuclear war, the Democrat persuaded his allies on the committee to hold open hearings on the subject.3 Having tried—but failed—to have Murray’s security clearance revoked, Strauss told Eisenhower that he, too, was patiently marking the days on his calendar until June 30, 1957, when Murray’s term on the commission would expire.4
Murray, however, was determined to go down fighting. He had begun writing, in secret, what was intended to be a kind of political last testament. It was also, and no less, his parting shot at Strauss. Having arranged for the article to appear in Life magazine, Murray negotiated last-minute editorial changes from a pay telephone a block away from the AEC building—lest Strauss learn of the project via a bug in Murray’s office. (As Murray pointed out to an aide, Life publisher Henry Luce was a friend of Strauss, and the AEC chairman also served on the Board of Directors for a distillery that was a major advertiser in the magazine.)5
Appearing in the May 6, 1957, issue, “Reliance on H-bomb and Its Dangers” was a final warning against the allure of “the big cheap bomb.” Haunting the article was an apocalyptic vision of an all-out nuclear exchange between the United States and the Soviet Union—what Murray called “the three-hour war.”6
* * *
At Livermore, the test ban was likewise a growing concern, but for altogether different reasons. Despite the lab’s successes in Redwing, its future was still far from assured. The previous summer, the contract for the Atlas warhead had gone to Los Alamos. Although the clean bomb was still a priority at the lab, there was as yet no formal military requirement for the innovative designs coming out of Brown’s A Division.7 Livermore’s big bombs had yet to find a patron.
Teller, Brown, and Foster undoubtedly had this fact in mind when they attended a navy-sponsored scientific conference at Nobska Point, near Woods Hole, Massachusetts, in summer 1956. The meeting had been called to consider a variety of defense projects, but the scientists eventually focused upon a new kind of weapon—one that, not long before, had seemed only on the distant horizon: a submarine-launched ballistic missile.8
The rocket under consideration was a behemoth. To carry Los Alamos’s 1-megaton warhead, it would have to be almost five stories tall, weighing 80 tons. Too large to fit inside the submarine, a pair of the missiles would be borne in bulky compartments welded to the sub’s hull. The navy looked to Nobska’s experts for a better solution.
Because of his colleagues’ youth and inexperience, Teller spoke for Livermore. At a brainstorming session on July 20, Edward stood up to make a dramatic announcement. The navy, he suggested, had it backward: rather than build a bigger missile, it should make a smaller warhead. Teller’s remarks drew murmurs of surprise and then incredulity when he promised that Livermore could give the navy a miniature 1-megaton warhead, barely 1 foot across and weighing only 600 pounds, within five years. Teller’s bomb would be less than half the size of the smallest and lightest device that the Los Alamos lab had yet produced with comparable yield.
Teller’s promise was hardly a surprise to Brown and Foster, who had originated the recent ideas at Livermore for shrinking the size of superbombs.9 But a multitude of experiments in Nevada and the Pacific would be necessary just to prove the feasibility of the lilliputian H-bomb. A ban on nuclear testing at such a critical juncture, on the other hand, would stop Livermore in its tracks.
* * *
By early 1957, the clean bomb, still Livermore’s first priority, had become the AEC’s chief argument for continued testing.10 At the same time, recent developments at the Kremlin had given Eisenhower renewed hope for progress on the test ban. The consolidation of power in the hands of a relatively young and reform-minded leader, Nikita Khrushchev, was followed in mid-June by a Soviet proposal for a moratorium on nuclear testing lasting two to three years. Khrushchev had also accepted—“in principle”—on-site inspection of a test ban.11 On Wednesday, June 19, 1957, Eisenhower announced that he would be “perfectly delighted” to see an end to nuclear testing.12
The following day, Lawrence, Teller, and Mark Mills, the head of Livermore’s theoretical division, appeared before a subcommittee chaired by the Joint Committee’s Senator Henry Jackson. Jackson had called the session to discuss increasing plutonium production at Hanford. Within the first few minutes, however, Teller steered the discussion around to the clean bomb. Experiments then under way in Nevada, Edward claimed, would prove the feasibility of building small, highly efficient weapons. But bombs that were virtually fallout-free awaited further tests in the Pacific. At Jackson’s prompting, the trio agreed to make their case for the clean bomb before the full Joint Committee the following day.13
In the wake of Teller’s briefing, Republicans on the committee wondered aloud whether Eisenhower and Stassen knew of the various ways that the Russians might secretly violate a moratorium. While Lawrence remained mum about Alpine, Teller replied that the administration was probably unfamiliar with the latest thinking on how the Soviets could cheat. In a telephone call to the White House, Sterling Cole arranged a meeting with the president for Monday. Lawrence, Teller, and Mills spent the weekend at a Washington hotel, being prepped by Strauss.14
Accompanied by the AEC chairman, the physicists were ushered into the Oval Office on the afternoon of June 24. Lawrence—“all tight and excited,” Teller later recalled—was literally tongue-tied in the presence of Eisenhower. (“This awe was something I just could not imagine. Ernest’s ease with authority had always been
