III
For quite some time staff investigators had been picking up puzzling hints of a secret enterprise larger even than the Canol Project, odd bits and pieces of information indicating huge, unexplained expenditures for something identified only as the Manhattan Project. On June 17, 1943, Truman telephoned Secretary of War Stimson. Their conversation was brief:
STIMSON: Now that’s a matter which I know all about personally, and I am the only one of the group of two or three men in the whole world who know about it.
TRUMAN: I see.
STIMSON: It’s part of a very important secret development.
TRUMAN: Well, all right then—
STIMSON: And I—
TRUMAN: I herewith see the situation, Mr. Secretary, and you won’t have to say another word to me. Whenever you say that to me that’s all I want to hear.
STIMSON: All right…
TRUMAN: You assure that this is for a specific purpose and you think it’s all right. That’s all I need to know.
STIMSON: Not only for a specific purpose, but a unique purpose.
TRUMAN: All right, then.
STIMSON: Thank you very much,
Apparently, however, more information kept coming to Truman in one way or other, and by July he had been told enough to know the essential nature of the “very important secret development.” Incredibly, he even put it in a letter to Lewis Schwellenbach, who had since left the Senate to become a federal district judge in Spokane. Schwellenbach had been concerned over sudden, enormous land condemnations for the DuPont Company along the Columbia River near a desolate railroad town called Hanford. Nearly half a million acres were involved and he had written to Truman to inquire about it. On July 15, 1943, Truman wrote to say he shouldn’t worry.
“I know something about that tremendous real estate deal,” he said, “and I have been informed that it is for the construction of a plant to make a terrific explosion for a secret weapon that will be a wonder.” He added, “I hope it works.”
This was a terrible breach of security on Truman’s part, an astonishing lapse of simple good judgment—to have passed on such information in so offhand a fashion in an ordinary letter sent through the mail. It was exactly the sort of “insider” talk, one member of the senatorial “club” to another, that gave generals and admirals nightmares and little desire ever to tell politicians anything more than necessary. Truman had not bothered even to write in private, but dictated the letter to Mildred Dryden, which means that as of then she too was aware of the making of “a terrific explosion.”
But apparently no one ever found out about the letter. Neither Schwellenbach nor Dryden said a word more on the subject, as far as is known.
Curiosity and concern over the DuPont operations at Hanford did not end there. Senator Elbert Thomas of Oklahoma wanted the situation investigated. He, too, apparently had been hearing stories. A staff man on the Truman Committee informed the chairman confidentially that complaints of waste and inefficiency at Hanford had become “chronic,” and added, “In my humble opinion, I believe that this is another ‘Canol,’ wherein the guise of secrecy is being resorted to by the War Department to cover what may be another shocking example when the lid is finally taken off.”
Truman felt pressured to know more, his agreement with Stimson notwithstanding.
On November 30, 1943, he informed Senator Thomas, “I have sent an investigator to look into it, and I hope we can find out what is wrong.”
A few weeks afterward, Fred Canfil walked into a Western Union office in Walla Walla, Washington, and sent the following telegram, collect to Senator Truman. It must have made interesting reading to whoever put it on the wire:
COLONEL MATHIAS, COMMANDING OFFICER DUPONT PLANT, TOLD ME THAT YOU AND THE SECRETARY OF WAR HAD AN UNDERSTANDING THAT NONE OF YOUR COMMITTEE WOULD COME INTO THE PLANT. THROUGH ANOTHER AGENCY I FOUND THAT WITHIN THE LAST 10 DAYS A CONFIDENTIAL LETTER WAS RECEIVED FROM THE WAR DEPARTMENT…TO ARMY OFFICERS AND TO HIGH CIVILIAN ENGINEERS…. TO THE EFFECT THAT THESE PEOPLE WERE TO SEE THAT NO SENATOR OR ANYONE CONNECTED WITH THE SENATE WAS TO BE GIVEN ANY INFORMATION ABOUT THE PROJECT.
Canfil, who may not have known as much as Truman about the purpose of the plant, was only doing his duty. Truman thought him overly efficient. “Whenever he finds out that I want something,” he once said of Canfil, “he never stops until it is done….”
But after the wire from Walla Walla, committee interest in the Manhattan Project cooled. The understanding with Stimson was honored again. Nor is there anything in the record to suggest that Truman ever heard of separating plutonium from U-238 (the work going on at Hanford) or had any idea how “the terrific explosion” was to be made.
Only a few months later, Stimson, General Marshall, and Vannevar Bush, head of the Office of Scientific Research and Development, drove to the Capitol for a private meeting in Speaker Sam Rayburn’s office. Present besides Rayburn were the House majority and minority leaders, John McCormack and Joe Martin. It was then, in February 1944, that Stimson and Marshall revealed “the greatest secret of the war” for the first and only time on the Hill. As Joe Martin wrote years later:
The United States was engaged in a crash program to develop the atomic bomb before the Germans perfected one. Marshall described the design of the bomb in some technical detail. Stimson said that if the Germans got this weapon first, they might win the war overnight. They told us that they would need an additional $1,600,000,000 to manufacture the bomb. Because of an overriding necessity for secrecy, they made the unique request that the money be provided without a trace of evidence to show how it was spent.
The three legislators agreed to do what was necessary. Senator Truman was told nothing.
Yet according to Stimson’s diary, the chairman of the investigating committee was soon after him once more. Truman was now asking that a member of the committee staff, General Frank Lowe, be taken into Stimson’s confidence about the Hanford Works. Stimson by now was extremely annoyed with Senator Truman. Stimson thought he had an agreement. He told Truman no, a response Truman did not take lightly. “He threatened me with dire consequences. I told him I had to do just what I did,” said Stimson in his diary, adding, “Truman is a nuisance and a pretty untrustworthy man. He talks smoothly but he acts meanly.” Under no circumstances was Senator Truman to be told anything more.