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N0KFQ > TODAY 17.06.07 07:55l 55 Lines 2662 Bytes #-6360 (0) @ WW
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Subj: Today in History - Jun 17
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From: N0KFQ@N0KFQ.#SWMO.MO.USA.NA
To : TODAY@ALLUS
1943 : FDR's secretary of war stifles Truman's inquiry into
suspicious defense plant
On this day in 1943, President Franklin D. Roosevelt's secretary
of war, Harry Stimson, phones then-Missouri Senator Harry S.
Truman and politely asks him not to make inquiries about a
defense plant in Pasco, Washington.
World War II was in full swing in 1943 and Truman was chairing a
Senate committee on possible war profiteering committed by
American defense plants. In the process of investigating
war-production expenditures, Truman stumbled upon a suspicious
plant in the state of Washington and asked the plant managers to
testify in front of the committee. Unbeknownst to Truman, this
particular plant was secretly connected with a program to develop
an atomic bomb-- the Manhattan Project. When Stimson, one of a
handful of people who knew about the highly classified Manhattan
Project, heard about Truman's line of questioning, he immediately
acted to prevent the Missouri senator from blowing the biggest
military secret in world history.
On June 17, Truman received a phone call from Stimson, who told
him that the Pasco plant was part of a very important secret
development. Fortunately, Stimson did not need to explain
further: Truman, a veteran and a patriot, understood immediately
that he was treading on dangerous ground. Before Stimson could
continue, Truman assured the secretary you won't have to say
another word to me. Whenever you say that [something is highly
secret] to me that's all I want to hear if [the plant] is for a
specific purpose and you think it's all right, that's all I need
to know. Stimson replied that the purpose was not only secret,
but unique.
America's secret development of the atomic bomb began in 1939,
with then-President Franklin Roosevelt's support. Even after
Truman became Roosevelt's fourth-term vice president in 1944, the
project remained such a tightly controlled secret that Roosevelt
did not even inform Truman that it existed. Only after Roosevelt
died from a stroke, in early April 1945, did Stimson inform
Truman of the nature of the Manhattan Project. The night Truman
was sworn in as Roosevelt's successor he noted in his diary that
Stimson told him the U.S. was perfecting an explosive great
enough to destroy the whole world.
On April 24, 1945, Stimson and the Army general in charge of the
project, Leslie Groves, gave President Truman a full briefing on
the development status of the atomic bomb. Before the year was
out, the new president would be faced with a decision: whether or
not to use the most powerful weapon then known to man.
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