Ernest Graves
A:
It was a critical period. You are now reading a lot about the fact that the public was
misled in one way or another. A great deal of that occurred in Seaborg's administration.
Maybe anybody would have made those mistakes, but certainly when you look at his
background, and you talk to people involved in the program during that time, you get
the distinct impression that he was not the leader that was needed.
He wasn't of the stature of some of the people that went before him--David Lilienthal,
for example, who was the first chairman, and others.
Q:
That takes care of what I was going to ask you. I don't know if there was something
else that you think you ought to add about that--
A:
Well, I think perhaps we ought to move on to some other areas. After we have finished
them, if we want to come back, I could go into other interesting stories about the
nuclear program. First, we ought to cover your agenda.
Q:
Okay. As you obviously have seen by now, I don't always know the questions. But one
thing that you mentioned that I had never heard, in your tour at SHAPE, was this
concept of the third slice in the air base program. I don't understand that.
I think this may have come from the French. The French word for slice is tranche and
A:
this was the concept of the annual increment. They are now up to a much higher
number.
Q:
Oh, I see. It wasn't a geographical concept. Or anything like that.
A:
No, it was a time concept. The first slice dated back to the Western European union.
The second was the next year. The third slice was the big slice that was agreed upon
at the meeting in Lisbon. That took place early in 1952. At this meeting the foreign
ministers and the ministers of defense agreed that the annual program to which
everybody would contribute would include a certain number of airfields and so forth.
Q:
Okay. You've mentioned two people frequently. Bob MacDonnell, who I guess is your
neighbor here in Arlington.
A:
Bob MacDonnell died here this year.
Q:
No, I didn't know that.
A:
He was the head of the Construction Division in the Engineer Section of the
Headquarters of Eighth Army in 1946. He later went on to become the division
engineer of the South Pacific Division in San Francisco.
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