Shortly after V-J Day, Secretary Stimson resigned and Secretary Robert P. Patterson was appointed in his stead. Patterson had known what the MED was trying to do and in a very general way was familiar with our operations. A major part of our money had come from an appropriation under his control for expediting the procurement of war materials. He told me once, early in the project, that while he had no responsibilities in connection with it, he stood ready at any time to give me whatever assistance he could. Actually, I did not have to call on him for help very frequently. Whenever I did, he responded immediately, and his services were invaluable.
On one occasion, he told me he was worried about the amount of money that he had authorized me to use, and felt that after the war he might well be asked, and quite properly, to explain to the Congress whether this money had been wisely spent. He went on to ask if I would have any objection to having a representative of his go over the project, particularly the vast construction operations at Hanford and Oak Ridge, so that he would have assurance from his own man that all was well. I said I would be very glad to have an inspection made, but that it would be impossible to obtain any one man outside the project who could adequately cover it all. There were no scientists who understood such major construction and almost no engineers who would understand the kind of science with which we were involved.
He said that he was not interested in checking the scientific phases of the work, for obviously he had to take the advice of people who did understand it. He did feel, however, that the construction operation, about which many rumors had reached him, could be gone over adequately. I agreed and told him I would be glad to have him select a competent man to do this. He asked whether I would object to Jack Madigan, one of his special assistants, and a distinguished engineer of many years’ experience. I assured him that Madigan would be most satisfactory to me, and that I would arrange for him to see whatever he wanted to throughout the project.
After a trip of several weeks, Madigan returned and told Patterson that he was ready to report. As Patterson told me afterward, he replied, “I’ll have to see you this afternoon because I have to leave for a Cabinet meeting where I am sitting in for Mr. Stimson in five minutes.” Madigan replied, “It won’t take me five minutes—I can give you my report in thirty seconds.” Intrigued by this, Mr. Patterson told him to go ahead, and Madigan reported, “If the project succeeds, there won’t be any investigation. If it doesn’t, they won’t investigate anything else.” Later that afternoon, he made a more detailed report, which satisfied the Secretary that there was no waste, that extravagance was not a keynote of the project, and that, in fact, it was being run on as economical a basis as anything of its size could be.
For reasons of military security, we had always made a determined effort to withhold all information on the atomic bomb project from everyone, including members of the Executive Department, military personnel and members of Congress, except those who definitely needed it and who were authorized to receive it. As a result our methods of obtaining funds had always been rather unorthodox.
During the early days, because of our rapidly changing plans, it had not been possible to establish any regular budgeting procedures. We were allocated funds that were already available to the War Department on an “as required” basis. For fiscal years 1945 and 1946, however, we had to ask for new funds. These requests were concealed in other requests for appropriations. During the entire period, we were allocated approximately $2,300,000,000 of which $2,191,-000,000 were expended through December 31, 1946.
In view of the unusual procedures by which we obtained funds and that we had to follow in spending these large sums of public money, I derived particular satisfaction from the testimony that the Comptroller General of the United States gave before the Senate’s Special Committee on Atomic Energy in April of 1946. He said:
We have audited, or are auditing, every single penny expended on this project. We audited on the spot, and kept it current, and I might say it has been a remarkably clean expenditure. . . .
. . . the very fact . . . that our men were there where the agents of the Government could consult with them time after time assured, in my opinion, a proper accountability. . . .
. . . from the very beginning, he [General Groves] has insisted upon a full audit and a full accountability to the General Accounting Office . . .
Before July 1, 1945, the majority of our money came from two sources—Engineer Service, Army; and Expediting Production; the latter being under the direct supervision of the Under Secretary of War. In justifying our requests for these funds, we were handicapped not only by the very size of the project and its many uncertainties, which made it impossible to budget in advance, but by the overriding need for secrecy, in the spending as well as in the getting.
Judge William P. Lipkin, then a finance officer with the rank of captain, recently told me that he remembers vividly what happened when he once questioned a rather sizable MED voucher that passed over his desk for payment. His superior told him firmly, “You will forget that you know anything about it. Just forget that you spoke to me about it. Just pay all MED bills and discuss the matter with no one.”
We had a bad moment in late 1943, when Congressman Albert J. Engel informed the Under Secretary of War that information had reached him concerning our construction at Oak Ridge. He requested further details and stated his intention of visiting the site in the near future. In reply, he was told that this work was highly secret, and that the information he wanted could not be given to him; eventually, he was persuaded to forget his contemplated visit. Although we received numerous Congressional inquiries from time to time, in every instance the member concerned accepted our explanations, with some reservation, no doubt, and observed the War Department’s request for secrecy.
We realized from the start that this could not go on forever, for our expenditures were too vast and the project was too big to remain concealed indefinitely. And, as always happens in the case of any large construction job, rumors and distortions of the facts abounded, and could understandably become a source of concern to any Congressman who heard them. We decided the only thing to do was to brief the leaders of both the House of Representatives and the Senate, so that they would understand and support the needed appropriations.
Consequently, on February 18, 1944, Secretary Stimson, General Marshall and Dr. Bush (we all felt it would be better if I were not present) met in the Speaker’s office in the Capitol, with Speaker Sam Raybura, Majority Leader John W. McCormack and Minority Leader Joseph W. Martin, Jr. Mr. Stimson reviewed the general state of the project and discussed the financial situation, including expenditures, available monies and estimated future requirements. He gave them our general program of construction, talked of the various possible procurement efforts and indicated an approximate schedule for the completion of our work. General Marshall talked of the project’s relation to America’s over-all strategic war plans, and Bush outlined the scientific background and explained the potentialities of the weapon.
The Congressmen indicated their approval without reservation. They said that, while the amount of money needed was large, they were in full agreement that the expenditures were justified, and that they would do everything possible to have the necessary funds included in the coming Appropriations Bill. It would not be necessary, they said, to make any further explanations to the Appropriations Committee.
It was agreed at this time that Raybura would be given advance notice of how our requests for appropriations would be inserted in the bill. He would pass this information on to McCormack and Martin, and the three of them would then tell a few members of the Appropriations Committee that they had gone into the subject with Secretary Stimson and General Marshall and that these items should not be questioned. The other members of Congress would be given only the most general reasons for the need to accord special handling to our requests for funds.
Later, at a similar meeting, Senators Alben W. Barkley, Wallace H. White, Elmer Thomas and Styles Bridges (respectively the Majority and Minority Leaders and the Chairman and Senior Minority Member of the Military Sub-Committee of the Appropriations Committee) were given essentially the same information. In his presentation, Bush quite optimistically stated that there were no scientists in either Britain or the United States, associated with our project, who did not believe that we would be successful. He went on to say that, while we had devoted our entire attention to the military use of atomic energy, he thought that atomic fission would ultimately prove to be of great benefit to the human race. The Senators showed a quick appreciation of the importance of the project and said they would have no trouble in handling our appropriations in much the same way as the House planned to.
Nevertheless, most of the members of Congress remained completely in the dark about our work.
Finally, in early February, 1945, when it was necessary to transfer other War Department funds to “Expediting Production” as a first step in making them available to us, Mr. Engel objected vigorously and demanded a detailed justification. Mr. Stimson handled this by inviting Engel to a meeting with me in his office, where we showed him some general information on unit costs of real estate, roads and housing. We were careful, however, not to give him any idea of the costs of our industrial facilities. This measure succeeded, for the moment, in warding off any charges based on rumors of great waste and unreasonably high costs.
Yet it was obvious that we would have more trouble in the future unless we gave fuller information to a few members of Congress. I urged, therefore, that we approach the Congressional leaders with the suggestion that, if they agreed, we invite a very small number of carefully selected legislators to visit Oak Ridge and, if they desired, Hanford as well. With President Roosevelt’s approval, Mr. Stimson thereupon made an appointment for the two of us to discuss the matter with the House leadership.
This meeting never took place, for President Roosevelt died the day before it was to be held. For some reason, the War Department was not notified of the President’s death immediately. Eventually, Secretary Stimson and General Marshall were asked to come to the White House, and were informed of it there. I learned of it from an officer whose wife heard it over the radio. When I telephoned the Secretary’s office to verify my surmise that the meeting would not be held as scheduled, I learned to my amazement that this was the first intimation they had received of Mr. Roosevelt’s death.
Later, President Truman and the House leadership concurring, we invited Congressmen Cannon, Snyder, Mahon, Taber and Engel to visit the Clinton Engineer Works at Oak Ridge in May. They appeared to be entirely satisfied with what they saw, and like everyone else were impressed with the hugeness and complexity of the installation. They did not raise a single question about possible waste; indeed they seemed thoroughly convinced that we had spared no pains to economize wherever it would not interfere with getting the job done. We told them about Hanford, but they indicated that they saw no necessity to go out there.
During their inspection of Oak Ridge, they were shown everything that I thought would be of interest to them. In order to permit complete freedom of discussion, I took the two senior members with me, Nichols took two more, and the fifth was taken by one of Nichols’ principal assistants. Our cars were driven by senior officers who knew all about the Oak Ridge Project, so that there could be no security difficulty in carrying on an intelligent conversation at any time.
The only time I thought that there might be some question raised about the work came after our return to Washington. As I was saying’good-by to them at the airport, Congressman Taber, who had long been renowned for his interest in keeping down government expenditures, said: “General, will you come over here a minute—I want to ask you a question.”
My first thought was: “Well, here it comes,” and so I was utterly astounded when Mr. Taber said: “There is only one thing that worries me, General. Are you sure that you are spending enough money at Oak Ridge?”
I assured him that I thought I was, but I hastened to add that in a project such as this no one could be absolutely sure; if we played it safe, we could never hope to win; chances had to be taken. Perhaps it would have been wiser to build a larger plant, but I did not think so. This rather vague answer seemed to put Mr. Taber’s fears at rest. When I reported our little talk to Mr. Stimson, he was as amazed as I had been.
The Senate’s special committee to investigate the national defense program became interested in various phases of the MED at an early date and we had some difficulty in keeping it from looking into the project. Any investigation of this sort would have endangered security and seriously impeded our progress, for it would have taken a great deal of effort and time on my part, as well as on the part of other key people in the project, to prepare the necessary answers for the committee.
Senator Truman, the chairman of the committee, agreed at Secretary Stimson’s request to delay any investigation of the project as a whole until either security permitted it or the war was over. Later there was a proposal that two staff members of the committee, then both in uniform (General Frank Lowe, and Lieutenant Colonel Harry Vaughan), be sent to Pasco, Washington, near Hanford, to look into the question of alleged waste in the construction of housing, roads and other matters not connected directly with any process secret. Secretary Stimson replied that we would have to accept the responsibility for any waste or improper action that might otherwise be avoided by the work of the committee. Mr. Truman accepted the Secretary’s decision in good grace. Throughout the chairmanship of Senator Meade, his successor, the same co-operative spirit prevailed.
After V-J Day, we arranged for Senator Mitchell of Washington, Senator Ferguson of Michigan and Senator Kilgore of West Virginia to visit the Hanford Engineer Works. Colonel Donald E. Antes, who represented me on this occasion, told them that the only figure he could give them was the over-all construction cost—$350 million.
They were also informed that I would be glad to appear before the committee and answer any questions that I could without violating security. The Senators and their party were the first civilians not directly connected with the project who had ever been permitted to enter a process building. Senator Ferguson summed up the reaction of the committee as a whole with the words: “Good job, well constructed, and there is no evidence of embellishments or extravagance of funds anywhere.”