Drafting the Speech that Would Initiate Operation Candor: the National Security Council Meeting of July 22, 1953, II
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Candor: openness of mind, impartiality, frankness, freedom from reserve or disguise, from Latin candor, brightness, radiance, from candere to shine. “Candle” has the same root. www.etymonline.com, accessed September 9, 2024
I believe that until we have looked this tiger in the eye, we shall be in the worst of all possible dangers, which is that we may back into him.
J. Robert Oppenheimer
On July 22, a week after Oppenheimer’s essay “Atomic Weapons and American Policy” was published in the journal Foreign Affairs and the teams in Project Solarium had submitted their reports, President Eisenhower was given another draft of the speech he might give to initiate Operation Candor.
The draft said at the top,
It is my duty as President and Commander-in-Chief to render this accounting.
Yes, that’s what Oppenheimer had been saying: in Operation Candor, the “accounting” of how things stood in the nuclear arms race would have to come from the highest authority. It couldn’t come just from, say, atomic scientists, as it had been since immediately after World War II. Even if it wouldn’t say anything very different from what the atomic scientists had been saying.
Ike had always been worried that Operation Candor would reveal “secrets.” Oppenheimer had assured him that candor wouldn’t require revealing anything that should be kept from the Soviets, like about technical matters their scientists might not have had time yet to figure out. The draft went on,
In so doing I propose to reveal no information which could be useful to an unfriendly power.
Here Ike extends his worry about “secrets” to anything that could be “useful.” About milk production, say? Maybe, now that the Soviets were “an unfriendly power,” we wouldn’t want to share even that with them? Not unless we’d get something out of it that would advantage us?
Might we think, though, that something we might get out of our new policy of candor would be a greater willingness on their part to begin to work with us in good faith on the very difficult problem posed now by the nuclear arms race? In his essay in Foreign Affairs in July, Oppenheimer had suggested that that was a possible outcome.
Next, the draft would have Eisenhower say,
It is your due as Americans to know what you must face and what you must do in the worst circumstances—in a situation which will never occur if prayerful policy can prevent it.
Well, then. Just what were we to think were those “worst circumstances”? Would Ike go on to give us a sense of that? Or is that just what Ike didn’t want to do because it might cause some of us to panic or despair? Would he rather leave what the “worst circumstances” might be up to our uninformed, perhaps even deluded, imaginations? If we wanted to think about it at all?
In any case, the latest draft said that to prevent the “worst circumstances,” we would be offering “prayerful policy.” Yes, “prayerful policy” would be good. “Smart policy” too. And I suppose even more important, “wise policy.” The draft stayed with “prayerful.”
The draft did go on to spell out “worst circumstances” somewhat.
My fellow Americans, the fact of transcendent importance for our national security today is that the Soviet atomic stockpile has now reached the point where if delivered on target in the United States—I repeat, if delivered on target—it could injure this country gravely, both in material damage and in loss of life. Moreover, the time is coming within a very few years, when the Soviet supply will be sufficient. . . to hurt us critically so that our ability to carry on the war thus forced upon us would be substantially impaired. The Soviet stocks may now already be counted in three figures; in a few years, the Soviet Union may have over a thousand.
Okay. There Ike would be acknowledging one of Oppenheimer’s main points—that in the nuclear arms race that had started in earnest when we dropped the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, things had recently changed. For three and a half years after the race started, we’d been the only country in the world to have nuclear weapons. Now, eight years later, Ike would want us to recognize that the Soviets also had such weapons and that we had arrived at a place where “this country” might be “hurt...critically” by nuclear weapons, “both in material damage and in loss of life.” “Critically,” he would explain, meant that “our ability to carry on the war…would be substantially impaired.”
And “in a few years” from now, the draft would have Ike say, things could be even worse. So then not just hurt “critically” and “impaired,” maybe, but. . . what? That was not yet spelled out. Would it be?
Before that time, however, our “ability to carry on the war forced on us” would be only “substantially impaired,” the draft said. That was was “hurt critically” was said to mean. Which would suggest that after such a surprise attack, or after a nuclear exchange, we’d be able to carry on fighting the nuclear war.
Like after Pearl Harbor we’d been able to pick ourselves back up and get into what then became World War II.
So if this attack with the new nuclear capability happened, it would be bad, but maybe not all that bad? Not decisive? Not terminal? Candidly, is that what we were supposed to think?
In the essay that Oppenheimer had published less than two weeks ago, “Atomic Weapons and American Policy,” the tone was more somber. “Somber” means “dark, gloomy.” There Oppenheimer had written,
I have never discussed these prospects [the prospects presented by the nuclear arms race] candidly with any responsible group, whether scientists or statesmen, whether citizens or officers of the Government, with any group that could look steadily at the facts, that did not come away with a great sense of anxiety and somberness at what they saw.
Ike had access to “the facts,” if anyone did, even in the regime of secrecy that had governed our affairs since the passing of the Atomic Energy Act in 1946. If he wanted to know them. Was he, then, in the group of those Oppenheimer thought had been able to “look steadily” at those facts?
Ike also found this draft unsatisfactory. But here’s a question. When Ike found the drafts of the speech he might give to initiate Operation Candor unsatisfactory because they were “too gloomy,” was he wrestling with the fact that the drafts were too gloomy or that the situation was?
In any case, Ike had clearly said Operation Candor should be kicked off sooner rather than later, not later than September or October. Like a couple of months from now.
So it should get kicked off pretty soon.
If it were to happen at all.
Next: What We Weren’t Terrified Enough Of Yet, I