On July 13, only two days after his discouraging démarche with Semenov, Lawrence came down with a severe cold and fever. While Ernest remained bedridden at the Hotel du Rhône, Brown, Bethe, and Tichvinsky reported in relays on the negotiations.
To the surprise of the U.S. negotiators, the talks were making rapid and steady progress. “My summary impression,” telegraphed Spiers, “is the Russians really want this conference to produce unanimous agreement.”110
Lawrence was frustrated at his inability to take part in the talks. His condition worsened, but he continued to resist Molly’s pleas that they return home. “I could never live with myself if I left before this conference is over!” Ernest told her.111
On July 23, physical examination by a doctor summoned to the hotel confirmed acute ulcerative colitis. A few days later, still feverish and in pain, Lawrence bowed to the inevitable and asked the State Department to book an emergency flight home. Molly and John arranged for Ernest to be admitted to Berkeley’s Peralta Hospital immediately upon his arrival.112
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Half a world away, at Bikini atoll, the Livermore firing party was readying the proof-tests of the Polaris warhead. On July 22, Juniper, one candidate for the W-47 primary, exploded with a force of 65 kilotons, exceeding even the lab’s highest estimate. The following day, Olive, the test of the W-47’s fusion secondary, gave almost twice the predicted yield: 200 kilotons.113 These back-to-back successes ensured that the W-47, and Polaris, stayed on their accelerated schedule.114
The irony of Livermore’s triumph was not lost on those at the lab. Having failed to build a small clean bomb, Livermore had produced an exceptionally dirty one in the W-47. Moreover, the Polaris warhead, while arguably revolutionary, would be attached to a missile that was, given the inaccuracy of submarine-launched missiles of the time, suited to only one purpose: city-killing.115
Two days later, on July 26, Pinon was canceled outright by the AEC with little fanfare. Lack of interest, security concerns, and a desire to avoid embarrassing publicity contributed to the decision.
Hoping that Livermore’s dramatic results with the W-47 might be enough to turn thinking around on the test ban, Teller telegraphed Starbird, asking that he also pass word of the lab’s stunning successes to the Joint Committee.116
Accompanied by Bradbury and McCone, Teller was at the White House on August 12 to brief Eisenhower in person on Livermore’s Hardtack results. The W-47, he told the president, represented an improvement “by a factor of two to five” over existing weapons.117 Equally dramatic progress might be made if testing could be continued for another year or two. The president, silent throughout Teller’s presentation, observed quietly at its end that the worldwide consensus that opposed nuclear testing was even more powerful than thermonuclear weapons. While Ike had recently approved another extension of Hardtack—adding several more tests, meant to ensure the safety of existing bombs—this time he made it plain that he intended to go no further.118
In desperation, Teller and Libby turned to McCone. Unwilling to confront the president on so important a matter after only a few weeks in office, however, the new AEC chairman instead asked his predecessor to intercede—warning Strauss that he might want to don a bulletproof vest first.119
On August 20, Strauss met with Eisenhower in the Oval Office. When Ike began to read a draft announcement he had prepared, welcoming the successful conclusion of the Geneva talks, Strauss interrupted to accuse the president of “surrendering.” Eisenhower exploded: the only future that Strauss was able to envision led either to war or to a never-ending arms race; a test ban, on the other hand, might eventually be the way to a stable peace. Stunned by Ike’s reaction, Strauss said that he personally thought it impossible to compromise with sin. He and the president had come to a “permanent fundamental disagreement,” Strauss wrote that night.
The next morning, the White House received a cable from Fisk in Geneva, announcing that both sides had come to full agreement on an inspection system for a test ban before adjourning. The “Geneva system” would be modeled closely on the plan outlined by Bethe and PSAC: a total of 170 inspection posts on the ground and ten ships would monitor compliance with the moratorium.
On the afternoon of August 22, Eisenhower announced that U.S. nuclear testing would cease with the completion of Hardtack at the end of October. While Ike indicated that the moratorium would be reviewed on a year-to-year basis, he invited Khrushchev to begin talks immediately on making the test ban permanent.
* * *
The news from Geneva failed to stir a reaction in Lawrence, who had been transferred by ambulance to Stanford Hospital, at John’s insistence, a week earlier. Molly’s concern had grown when Ernest stopped boasting of making a quick recovery at Balboa.
Finally, reluctantly, Lawrence consented to the colostomy operation he had long refused to consider. Even in extremis, he refused to submit to x-rays.
On August 27, surgeons discovered severe atherosclerosis of the main artery leading to the abdomen in the course of the operation. Not knowing the degree to which Lawrence’s circulation was compromised by the blockage, the doctors had already severed many of the vessels that carried blood to the lower trunk during the procedure. Before the five-hour ordeal was over, the patient had gone into circulatory shock. Numerous blood transfusions were of no avail. Ernest’s final words to Molly were “I’m ready to give up now.”
He died shortly before midnight.
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Earlier that day at the White House, Fisk and Bacher, just returned from Geneva, had briefed Eisenhower and the NSC on the successful conclusion of the negotiations.120 McCone, meeting with Ike in the
