Engineer Memoirs
You're talking now the late '50s, early '60s. We still viewed the Panama Canal as much
more important than we now do. And it was very important in the Vietnam War.
Tonnage went way up.
If you look at the tonnage now, the canal is not anywhere near as high on the horizon
for the United States. You don't have the interest that you had then. We're much more
comfortable with the proposition that they're going to take it than before. In those days,
it was unthinkable that we would give it to them.
Q:
It's like nuclear energy. There was a pretty firm consensus.
A:
Yes. I'm sure there were people that thought we ought to give them the canal. That's
another whole story.
You mentioned about my getting more into the diplomatic end of things. Ambassador
[John] Muccio, who had been our ambassador to Korea and was a retired ambassador,
was put in charge of this study group. There were people on the study group from the
Atomic Energy Commission and from the Department of the Army and so forth.
They met in the State Department. Kay Bracken was trying to get this study group to
come up with the right set of recommendations to help her handle this reply to Chiari,
which we did. We wrote this paper to President Kennedy which recommended that he
put it on the basis that we couldn't do anything until we resolved the sea-level canal
issue. Then it also directed that a program be started to investigate the use of nuclear
explosives for excavation.
Q:
So the use of nuclear explosives for excavation wasn't a secret matter?
A:
It became public then. Basically, it had been secret up to a point. I think if you looked
at the papers that were written, say in '57 and '58, most of those were classified.
About the time that I got to Livermore, which was the fall of '59, there started to be
some open work. It got to the point where the part that remained classified was the
devices themselves--the design of devices that would be clean enough to be
used--because that got into some of the most advanced weapons technology.
But in terms of the effects of the explosions--the size of the hole, the amount of
radioactive debris that would come out--well, that was sensitive because that related
to the type of device. But the percentage of the debris which would escape and the air
blast from these and the ground shock, all that information, a great deal was unclassified
and made public.
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