In making this case, Conant's, Urey's, and Compton's audience was their boss, the 'hero' who organized atomic slaughter along scientific industrial lines, General--then a mere Brigadier, Leslie Groves (click here). The memo's most pointed purpose, about which a bit more detail follows below, was a discussion of how the U.S. might operationalize, as a poison gas, new forms of carnage and mayhem on the basis of discoveries and offshoots of what was taking place in California, Tennessee, New Mexico, Washington, and elsewhere that the new Uranium-Plutonium-Industrial-Complex was springing up.
Perhaps by happenstance, or plausibly not at all a matter of chance, the lead voice in this troika--Conant's--was already deeply steeped in both the governmental agency and technical arcana of poison-gas weaponry (click here). "World War I would be remembered as the 'chemist's war,' primarily due to the use of poison gas warfare initiated by the German army against the French in 1915. Conant worked on gas warfare projects in laboratories at American University in Washington, D.C., the largest federally funded scientific research project to that date. (Immediately upon taking leave from Harvard), (n)ewly commissioned Lieutenant Conant immediately went to work on mustard gas and then on a more toxic and easily deliverable gas, lewisite."
In 1918, Conant's promotion to Captain corresponded with taking on the task of organizing the mass manufacture of adequate supplies of poisons, should that become necessary. Twenty-five years later, a new thanatopic technology under consideration, Conant--again on leave from the Crimson--once more confronted the issue of how to garner adequate supplies of lethal elements, raising that as one of many problematic matters in the S-1 Uranium Committee threesome's report.
"Two of the signers of this report (believe that) an attack within the next few months may be expected if it is to be made at all. Immediate preparations for reply accordingly become important unless there are reasons, unknown to us, for discounting the probability of use of radioactive warfare by the enemy. 'Perhaps the most effective reply would be to answer immediately in kind.'"According to the distribution protocol attached to the report, its makers created only three copies of the complete document. Vannevar Bush and a Colonel O'Connor received the only two duplicates clearly slated for dissemination. The Manhattan Project's leader, and perhaps a very few of Groves' superiors, obtained the summary memorandum that is now fairly widely visible online.
This memorandum itself adopted mostly Compton's and Urey's perspectives; they constituted the majority of the three-man-body, in any case. Neither the summary nor the report text guaranteed that the U.S. would use 'dirty bombs,' but, with absolute clarity, they insisted that the U.S. be prepared for such a contingency (click here).
A Conant, Compton, & Urey Prayer for Radioactive Poison Gas Weapons
Thus, without equivocation, this missive completely abrogated the 1929 Convention barring use of any form of poison gas or similar noxious weaponry, a Geneva Accord that many U.S. strategists summarily rejected as applicable to American forces (click here). Nevertheless, roughly half a century following 'civilized humanity's' decision to proscribe this sort of weapon of mass destruction, the United States became a treaty signatory to the "Protocol for the Prohibition of the Use in War of Asphyxiating, Poisonous or Other Gases," an agreement that the language of the Manhattan Project documents definitely, and the practical placement of DU weaponry arguably, would violate. For instance, one could hold up the following snippet as counter to the spirit and letter of this international statute.
"An effective reply which could be ready by December, 1943 would be several bombs of 10,000 curies each prepared at the Clinton (Oak Ridge) plant. The preparation of such bombs would retard perhaps by a few days the development program for (atomic bomb per se) production. This procedure would require consultation with an expert on aerial bombs, and preparation to extract and deliver the radioactive material in the needed form. Immediate action is necessary if such devices are to be available before the end of 1943."In typically elliptical bureaucratic language, Groves' 'executive summary' notice introduced an overall organizational scheme. Under it, the suggested options that the majority of the S-1 Uranium Committee subcommittee promoted became doable. Though stodgy and vague, the meaning seems nevertheless fairly obvious (click here).
"a. Immediate formation of a research and study group at the University of Chicago under supervision of the present Area Engineer. Assignment to this group of competent individuals now working on dust and liquid disseminating munitions and field testing of chemical warfare agents from the National Defense Research Council.In the heart of the memo, a much starker and more sinister expression predominates. 'Dirty bombs,' weapons of indiscriminate impact, and prohibited ordnance are all part of the order of battle (click here).
c. The responsibility of the above organization would be:
(1) Develop radiation indicating instruments, expand present facilities of the Victoreen Company, and prepare a trial order for instruments with this company.
(2) Make theoretical studies pertaining to the methods, means and equipment for disseminating radioactive material as a weapon of warfare.
(3) Conduct field tests in isolated locations, such as Clinton Engineer Works or Sanford Engineer Works, using a non-radioactive tracer material.
(4) Prepare an instruction manual for the use of, or the defense against, radioactive weapons. This manual would be similar to that now used by the Chemical Warfare Service for gas warfare."
"As a gas warfare instrument the material would be ground into particles of microscopic size to form dust and smoke and distributed by a ground-fired projectile, land vehicles, or aerial bombs. In this form it would be inhaled by personnel. The amount necessary to cause death to a person inhaling the material is extremely small. It has been estimated that one millionth at a gram accumulating in a person's body would be fatal. There are no known methods of treatment for such a casualty."
An Interpretive DU-Nexus for the Memo and the Report Behind It
A couple of points require mention here. The first is that both the memo and the portion of the full report that is open to examination mention "fission products" specifically as likely components of such weapons. The second is that the repeated mention of the potential for machining or grinding particles into gas or smoke certainly could easily include Uranium, the diversion of which would also explain the explicit recognition of possibly delaying by a short time the acquisition of fissionable materials from Oak Ridge's enrichment program for bombs.
The fuller report that stood behind the easily acquired synopsis is not obviously available in anything like its entirety. The euphemistically-named National Security Archives at George Washington University (GWU), among the many fascinating details of doomsday housed therein, includes a substantial amount of material about radiation, including two sections of the full narrative of the S-1 subcommittee.
A large body of materials concerning the Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments (ACHRE) also awaits the intrepid detective there, for example. The execrable records revealed therein underlie, in some part, a vast financial liability that the United States has accepted in regard to soldiers, workers, and civilians--at least occasionally prisoners, who suffered cancers and other sicknesses, often fatal, likely because of exposure to radiation or toxicity related either to the production of Uranium, or to the inescapable creation of transuranic elements or fission offspring that were radioactive.
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