Ernest Graves
That was quite an inspiration: the idea that we were going to build another canal and
that, if I got started at this stage of my career, by the time they came to build it, I might
be in charge of it. I worked on that for quite a few years, but it wasn't to be.
Q:
I want to go through step-by-step with your assignments. But for about the next ten
years you were involved in one way or another with the Panamanian isthmus, weren't
you?
A:
That's right. With time out for being the deputy district engineer in Los Angeles one
summer and going to the Army War College, from the fall of 1959 until February of
1967, I worked basically on the Panama Canal and nuclear excavation. I learned a lot.
In those jobs, I again was given a chance to do things. I learned a lot from that. I had
tremendous opportunities.
Q:
I notice the trend of your jobs, particularly your last involvement, is you're moving out
of the technical part and into the diplomacy of relations with Panama. Is that right?
A:
That's true--although certainly at the beginning, it was very much technical. My first
tour at Livermore, from the fall of '59 until April of '61, was technical. I worked on a
study of what would be involved to do this canal project.
Q:
So you were focusing specifically on that project?
A:
The technical aspects. They had made some crude estimates. But they had never really
planned the project. For example, they had only the vaguest notion of how long it
would take.
I worked with a number of the people at Livermore, particularly a civilian scientist
named Milo Nordyke. We worked out in much more detail the size of the explosions
that would be needed and the problem of how these explosives would be emplaced,
whether in holes or in tunnels.
We worked on the cost of these emplacements. Then I tried to do some work on the
costs of all the appurtenances, because even though the scientists started out talking
about the fact that we were just going to blast the ditch through here, all kinds of
streams were going to be intercepted by this. The drainage for those streams had to be
considered. We tried to make rough estimates of what the whole engineering job would
involve.
Then I left to go to Los Angeles, and that's when the Russians broke out of the test
moratorium. Harold Brown and Gerry Johnson, who had been at Livermore, moved to
Washington. Brown became the director of Defense Research and Engineering.
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