This Is Only Test How Washington Prepared for Nuclear War (11 page)

D.C. Business and Professional Women’s Club they needed to fill the gap left by Congressional budget cuts by volunteering for first aid training.
⁴¹
Homemakers were targeted as well. In a fictional account of a daytime
attack, a local publication described “Jane,” a housewife, calmly helping in recovery efforts; her husband John was at his government job when the bombs fell.
⁴²

However, most Washingtonians, male or female, weren’t interested in emu
lating Totten or Jane. Just four men and two women came into the volunteer registration office on its first day. Commercial photographer Harry King enrolled in the wardens service, as did Mrs. Rachael Birnbaum and another volunteer. An American University graduate student opted for the civil defense speakers’ bureau; Mrs. Grace Stark was unsure which service she wanted.
⁴³
At the rate of six recruits per day, DCD wouldn’t obtain 100,000 volunteers until 1997. In a futile effort to boost recruitment, the commissioners declared that District government employees were expected to volunteer for civil defense, but this proclamation fell on deaf ears.
⁴⁴

Reports of racial bias were just as damaging to recruitment as apathy. At a public meeting held on February 26, the Federation of Civic Associations, an organization representing African American neighborhood groups, expressed concern to DCD that black Washingtonians weren’t adequately included in the wardens service. Schwartz responded that his staff had four blacks and four whites. A few days later, however, Fondahl privately told the Board of Commissioners he believed the complaint had “some merit.” Of the 81 Area Wardens appointed to date, just 16 were black. Fondahl recommended that a new warden division be created north of Benning Road and east of the Anacostia River. DCD should appoint a black warden for this division, said Fondahl, and give him the authority to choose his own staff and area wardens. The commissioners agreed, and Fondahl considered the matter settled.
⁴⁵

It wasn’t. By gerrymandering the warden divisions, DCD replicated the lines already separating black and white Washingtonians in housing, schools, theaters, and elsewhere. This segregation underscored the difficulty of recruiting volunteers by appealing to their civic conscience, to their common identity as Washingtonians. As DCD frequently said, all citizens
could
and
should
contribute to civil defense. Whether white or black, male or female, middle or working class, everyone faced the same threat. However, in a city— indeed, a nation—where race, sex, and class defined identities and drew boundaries around each person, breaking down the divisions that segregated the District’s citizens from one another with the notion of a shared
Washingtonian
identity seemed a distant ideal. Had Fondahl and Schwartz considered whether white wardens would even accept first aid training along
side of black wardens or share stockpiles of medical supplies with them? If civil defense in the District had any chance of thriving, it required the great
est degree of cooperation possible. As segregation of the warden divisions showed, such unity was unlikely in the racially divided District.

Like the wardens service, other emergency teams made only limited progress. The auxiliary police force hoped to enlist 4,000 volunteers, but by late February 1951, the Metropolitan Police reported that just 942 residents had signed up. Fewer than 50 people applied to join the hoped-for 300-strong emergency firefighters corps. Rescue Services secured a promise
of access to 400 local construction yards and hardware stores during an emergency, but it couldn’t find any volunteers. The Civil Air Defense Patrol achieved some modest success by registering more than 300 aircraft owners. In the event of an emergency, these pilots promised to volunteer their aircraft to help transport emergency supplies. And more than 3,500 restaurant and social workers agreed to provide food, shelter, and clothing for Washingtonians made homeless during an attack.
⁴⁶

Promises, applications, and enlistment meant little, however, without training or funding for equipment and supplies. Although the wardens service signed up 12,500 volunteers by July 1951, a mere 300 received special training. Less than half of the police reserve recruits received training; the 30 or so emergency firefighters received none.
⁴⁷
By late summer, the Medical and Health Services had only enlisted 2,109 personnel—the goal was 23,714—and had no money to stockpile medical supplies. Even the commander of the Civil Air Defense Patrol admitted he lacked the support of the municipal airports dotting the suburbs and his outfit really existed only as a set of signatures.
⁴⁸
Beset by these challenges, Fondahl hoped the creation of a federal civil defense administration would bolster recruitment and provide resources. After all, if civil defense officials in the nation’s capital couldn’t get help from their federal colleagues, then who could?

The District and the Federal Civil Defense Administration

On September 8, 1950, Stuart Symington, the new chairman of the NSRB, forwarded a report to the President entitled
United States Civil Defense
. The much-anticipated 162-page study provided a blueprint for a civil defense agency similar to the one outlined by Russell Hopley in 1948. Called the Federal Civil Defense Administration, it combined the ongoing planning tasks of the NSRB with additional tasks such as training, manuals, and attack warnings. However, the NSRB emphasized that civil defense was primarily the responsibility of the states and the citizenry. The federal government would train “key personnel,” for example, who would then train volunteers at the state and local levels.
United States Civil Defense
didn’t offer many clues on the financing of civil defense, nor did it give precise guidelines on how neighboring communities might coordinate their respective programs. Truman nevertheless called the plan “sound and workable.”
⁴⁹

If Symington and the NSRB expected accolades for the plan, they were mistaken. In October, several hundred mayors and civil defense officials traveled to Washington to discuss the civil defense relationship between the federal government and cities. As Symington sat tight-lipped at a conference table, his brow furrowed, the attendees voiced their concerns. Many complained that the federal government wasn’t interested in civil defense. “We feel that civil defense is the step-child of the government,” San Francisco’s mayor said to cheers. Others wanted guidelines on specific issues. Should we build bomb shelters or not? Newark’s mayor wanted to know.

How much money would the federal government contribute to communities’ emergency stockpiles? asked the civil defense chief of Hammond, Ind. Symington weakly responded that the NSRB would make recommendations once Congress returned from recess.
⁵⁰

Identical bills to establish the Federal Civil Defense Administration were soon introduced in the House and Senate, but various suggestions, many from state governments and executive branch agencies, delayed action. In December, while the House Committee on Armed Services opened hearings on a revised bill sponsored by Rep. Carl Durham (D-N.C.), the Senate began its own hearings.
⁵¹
The same month, the President issued an executive order establishing a temporary agency. The order did little more than detach the civil defense office from the NSRB, but Truman did name a director, south
erner Millard Caldwell. Tall and barrelchested, Caldwell looked like a line
backer. A loyal Democrat and the former governor of Florida, Caldwell had also served in the House of Representatives—Truman wanted a director with both Congressional and state governing experience. Though Sam Rayburn supported Caldwell, assuring Congressional approval, the NAACP registered vigorous opposition because of Caldwell’s support for racial segregation and white-only primary elections. The White House and Congress ignored the protests, and Caldwell was appointed.
⁵²

Meanwhile Congress tinkered with the civil defense bills. Conferees met twice to reconcile differences over wording, torts, security, and other details, finally producing, on January 2, 1951, the Federal Civil Defense Act. Truman signed it ten days later. The legislation created a Federal Civil Defense Administration (FCDA) and laid out a three-year program, splitting responsibility for costs between state and federal governments. Federal tasks included partial finance of shelter construction, training, setting of technical standards, and supervision of attack warning systems. The states were expected to provide matching funds for shelters and equipment and to administer ground-level civil defense. Approximately 3,000 administrators and research staff would be spread between the Washington and regional offices. The total projected costs for the new agency exceeded $3 billion.
⁵³

After five years of studies, intra-governmental squabbling, and presidential reluctance, the nation finally had a civil defense program. James Forrestal and Russell Hopley, both of whom were deceased, would have been proud. In Washington, the FCDA moved into offices at 1930 Columbia Road NW, in the Adams Morgan neighborhood. A bustling, curving street lined by apartment buildings, Columbia Road lay more than a mile from the White House, even farther from the Pentagon. This physical distance symbolized the outskirts of the national security state in which the FCDA would roam during its short-lived existence. Indeed, within a few years, the FCDA would move from Washington to Battle Creek, Michigan. This remoteness probably wouldn’t have pleased Forrestal or Hopley, but it probably wouldn’t have surprised them, either.

John Fondahl and the Board of Commissioners hoped the FCDA could help them solve the “special problems” posed by Washington’s dual status as
city and capital: align civil defense measures in federal buildings with DCD’s plans for warning, shelter, and evacuation; develop a coordinated metropoli
tan program amenable to the federal and neighboring local and state govern
ments; and integrate local civil defense with the NSRB’s standing responsibility for the capital’s security. Commissioner John Russell Young also asked Caldwell to help the District draft a realistic, precise budget. “Pending discussion with you of the major subjects that I have noted above, it is difficult for us to arrive at an intelligent policy for Civil Defense expendi
tures and activities in the coming fiscal year,” he wrote. Like other cities, the District needed to know if the FCDA would pay for the stockpiling of med
ical and other supplies.
⁵⁴
Caldwell also needed to know. Until Congress granted appropriations, he could only echo the answer Symington had given impatient city officials in October: wait a little longer, please.

Caldwell did schedule a conference among one of his assistants, Fondahl, and Thomas Hayes, telling Young, “it is our hope that in this manner we will be able to work out a joint solution to many civil defense problems facing the District of Columbia.” To make good on this promise, in February the FCDA helped the DCD arrange an exercise demonstrating the use of helicopters and two-way radios to direct traffic during an emergency.
⁵⁵
That summer, the FCDA joined with Washington’s NBC station to produce a seven-part television series entitled “Survival.” Broadcast on Sunday after
noons, the half-hour episodes depicted warden services at work, including the “rescue” of a child trapped beneath a steel girder; explained how to find shelter in public buildings; and covered a host of other topics. A shoestring budget forced the FCDA to use its own staff as actors and set makers.
⁵⁶
However, the FCDA declined invitations to speak to local organizations about civil defense, worried such requests would inundate its offices. “Our policy in the past has been to turn down purely District things, and why change now,” wrote a public relations officer.
⁵⁷

Financial difficulties also prevented the FCDA from providing the level of support expected by Fondahl and the commissioners. In June, the FCDA requested more than $400 million; Congress granted less than $32 million. Then, the House cut entirely a $250 million request for the building of shelters. Caldwell kept up appearances, traveling the country, delivering speech after speech, but as reported at a July Cabinet meeting, he was “very discouraged” that the “Civil Defense set up [was] not off the ground.” By October, he still had little reason to be upbeat. As
Newsweek
put it, the FCDA was still crying “in the wilderness for money to put an ambitious program into action.”
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The same could be said about the DCD.

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4

I
n November 1950, the Truman administration reinvigorated its dispersal campaign. Because some legislators preferred decentralization to dispersal, the General Services Administration (GSA) began preparing a companion plan to permanently relocate some Washington-based agencies.
¹
Other legislators had questioned the attempt to vet dispersal through the appropri
ations committees, so GSA Administrator Jess Larson asked the chairs of the Public Works Committees, which oversaw federal buildings and construction, to introduce new dispersal bills. Both men, Sen. Dennis Chavez (D-N.Mex.) and Rep. Will Whittington (D-Miss.), said yes.
²

Setbacks in the Korean War added urgency to the request. After General Douglas MacArthur’s dangerous but successful landing at Inchon on September 15, U.S. and Allied troops pushed North Korean forces back across the 38th parallel. Hoping to uproot communism from the peninsula, Truman allowed an eager MacArthur to pursue the erstwhile attackers, but the counter-invasion brought the People’s Republic of China into the war. Seasoned by years of civil war, Chinese troops fanned out into a gap MacArthur had opened between his forces. The American-led advance was frozen, liter-ally—that brutal winter, temperatures reached as low as minus 36 degrees Fahrenheit—and transformed into a grueling retreat. What had seemed like certain victory in October had become a costly stalemate. The Chinese attack revived fears about the Soviet Union’s intentions, prompting NSRB Chairman Stuart Symington to tell Larson they might soon need “to relocate essential units of the Federal Government” to hotels and college campuses near Washington.
³
This relocation never happened, but the drastic turn
around in Korea made the need for dispersal all the more clear to its advocates. Certain members of Congress disagreed.

The Showdown Over Dispersal

The new dispersal plan submitted to the Public Works Committees double
d
the number of sites from four to eight but proposed to erect just one buildin
g
with a capacity of 5,000 at each location, thus allowing the dispersal o
f

40,000 employees. The new plan assumed additional offices could be built on those sites in the future for another 40,000 employees. A total of $190 million was requested to pay for the construction of the buildings, 60 miles of new roads, and 70 miles of highway upgrades. The General Accounting Office, then under construction on G and 4th Streets, provided a prototype for the proposed buildings. The sprawling, seven-story structure was the District’s first block-type federal office. With the introduction of flu
orescent lamps in the 1930s, large buildings no longer required natural light
ing, which meant architects could omit wings and inner courts.
⁴
The GAO, with its plain stone façade and evenly spaced casement windows, represented the future of federal buildings: functional, cheap, unadorned. For dispersal, Public Buildings commissioner W.E. Reynolds envisioned spartan buildings three to four stories high, with concrete walls faced in red or yellow bricks. In a major change, the new plan shrunk the dispersal zone from a 50-mile radius to one between 15 and 20 miles. Concern that federal workers living in the District might quit their jobs rather than commute prompted the reduction. In order to improve the bills’ chances of passage, Larson also wanted to locate the campuses close to existing towns rather than develop new communities.
⁵
However, as pointed out by Clarence Stein, founder and president of the Regional Development Council of America, if federal workers didn’t move with their offices, “the bombing of Washington by night . . . might wipe out the office workers themselves, leaving only the buildings to carry on.”
⁶

The legislators who determined dispersal’s fate were an interesting lot. Chavez was a former grocer’s clerk who attended night law school and worked his way from the New Mexico legislature to the U.S. Senate. A stocky man, his broad face stretched by jowls, Chavez was a heavy drinker, and the possibility he might manage the bill on the Senate floor while under the influ
ence wasn’t far-fetched. Fortunately Spessard Holland (D-Fla.), chair of the subcommittee on Public Buildings, stepped in. With his shock of white hair and wire-rimmed glasses, Holland could pass as a mild-mannered professor, but a strong temper occasionally flared.
⁷
Whittington had little to gain or lose by dispersal; he was a lame duck, on his way back to Greenwood, Miss., and he was content to let his fellow committee members dominate the hearings.

At the House hearings, which began on December 8, George Dondero (R-Mich.) repeated the question he had asked in August: How will the pub
lic react to the dispersal of federal workers when cities like Detroit remain concentrated? When Larson said that Ford’s gigantic River Rouge facility couldn’t be as easily moved as offices for federal workers, Dondero rejoined that the $190 million might be better spent on military weapons. Paul Cunningham (R-Iowa) wanted to know if a 20-mile radius really could provide protection against atomic blasts. “I cannot visualize much advantage in placing them [the dispersal sites] in the circles that I see on that map,” he said, referring to the visual aid Tracy Augur had brought along.
⁸

Appearing before the Senate Public Works Committee a few days later, dis
persal advocates confronted more tough questions. Chavez wanted to know
why the headquarters for the National Park Service couldn’t be located elsewhere in the country. Assistant Budget Director Roger Jones replied, “[t]he whole question comes as to where do you draw the line between the concept of the retention of the seat of government in this area, and where does the dispersion of functions or decentralization of functions get you to the point where you actually do not have Washington as the seat of government.” He asserted that dispersal wouldn’t alter the District’s status as the capital, but if dispersal was the best passive defense against nuclear attack, why nudge selected federal offices just 20 miles from the zero milestone marker, especially since the United States and the Soviet Union were both developing hydrogen bombs? When asked about the probable destructive range of hydrogen bombs, Colonel Ramsay Potts, an NSRB official and former member of the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey, avoided a direct answer but implied that 20 miles was sufficient distance.
⁹

The Senate hearings ended with testimony from suburban residents and urban planners. Many supported the principle of dispersal but worried about negative side effects. The committee heard from the Northern Virginia Regional Commission, which worried that tax-exempt federal campuses would increase taxes and overburden utilities. The commission had support from Frederick Gutheim, an author and the chairman of the recently formed Washington Regional Planning Council, which wanted to align dispersal with regional and local planning.
¹⁰
Gutheim disputed the claims of Jones and Larson that new residents brought in by dispersal would benefit suburban communities. Property taxes on new homes will not cover the costs of new roads and schools, Gutheim argued. He was just as troubled by a vision of free-for-all development: “look, for example, at the way in which the city [Washington] is spreading down the highways leading out of the city—this vast motor slum, hot-dog stands and filling stations and housing projects are all mixed together.”
¹¹

The administration didn’t press for a floor vote before Congress recessed. Both bills died but were reintroduced in the new Congress. In his 1952 budget plan, Truman requested funds to pay for the eight-site dispersal plan, and he stated that government units that could operate efficiently outside of the capital could be decentralized. Agencies on the decentralization list reportedly included the claims office of the State Department, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, the Census Bureau, and part of the Veterans Administration.
¹²
The bill that emerged from the second session of Senate hearings thus matched dispersal of 20,000 employees with decen
tralization of up to 25,000 federal workers. The bill, S. 218, cut the number of sites and buildings from eight to four (5,000 workers at each site) and reduced the budget request to $107 million. Significantly, the dispersal zone stayed at the 20-mile line. The funds requested covered the buildings, park
ing lots, telephone lines, water and sewage connections, and the construction of a radial highway encircling the District on its north, south, and west sides to provide access to the dispersal campuses. S. 218 also authorized the razing of the tempos and asked the GSA to work with state and local bodies in
carrying out dispersal. At a glance, the bill seemed to offer something to please everyone.
¹³

Except the agencies scheduled for decentralization. Veterans administrator General Carl Gray, who had previously agreed to decentralize the 8,000 employees of his insurance claims section, changed his mind, fearing the affected employees would quit. Keep them on the list, Truman told Budget Director Frederick J. Lawton—this was a unit that didn’t need to work in Washington.
¹⁴
Every agency, it seemed, could justify staying in the District. The American Patent Law Association argued that the Patent Office, which had relocated to Richmond, Va., during World War II, must remain in Washington: defense agencies drew on its collection of scientific data; its cur
rent headquarters, the Commerce Building, had specially built records storage space; its patent experts would resign rather than move. One Budget consult
ant estimated that only between 50 to 60 percent of the employees in all of the agencies currently scheduled for decentralization would follow their jobs.
¹⁵

Suburban opposition to dispersal also continued. A recurring complaint was that the federal government already owned too much land beyond the District line. The 56,000-acre Quantico Marine Base southwest of Manassas Va., and the Agriculture Department’s 12,000-acre Beltsville tract in Prince Georges County, Md., were cited as prime examples. Prince Georges’s assessor explained the drawback to federal ownership of more than 20,000 acres in his county: “At an average annual tax of about $40 an acre, that runs into a lot of money we don’t get.” Suburbanites had an ally in Rep. Howard W. Smith (D-Va.), who said the federal government should use only its land for disper
sal “instead of paying more of the taxpayers’ money to buy more land which takes it out of taxation and causes the communities to suffer.” As an example, he cited Bull Run Park in Virginia.
¹⁶
Such proposals gave dispersal advocates headaches. Sites suitable for dispersal were limited and turf battles— literally—were likely. Bull Run Park contained a Civil War battlefield. Would the Interior Department quietly hand over chunks of this national park for federal offices?

The House Public Works Committee tabled its bill, leaving dispersal in the Senate’s hands. S. 218 reached the floor on April 18 with Holland as floor leader. The Florida Democrat called the bill a “vital security matter,” and, when compared to the billions of dollars already spent on atomic research and weaponry, economical as well. William Langer (R-N.Dak.) disagreed, complaining that federal buildings always cost more than originally pro
jected. Why not just “close certain of these agencies and send the employees home, and let them stay there?” asked John Williams (R-Del.). Homer Capehart (R-Ind.) wanted to know why the tempos had to be razed. Irritated, Holland answered, “the demolition of those temporary buildings is absolutely necessary if we are to demonstrate that we are not just a bunch of ostriches with our heads in the sand.” During subsequent debate, the decision to shrink the dispersal zone proved fatal, as legislators observed that 20 miles wasn’t enough distance. Opponents also said the removal of just 20,000 workers wouldn’t reduce the capital’s attraction as a target and called
for decentralization. Everett Dirksen (R-Ill.) successfully moved to send the bill back to the Public Works Committee for “further study.”
¹⁷

Further study. The bland phrase couldn’t mask the motion as a death blow. In a note thanking Holland for his efforts, Truman remarked, “[h]ow anybody could oppose a national defense project as important as that [dispersal] to the capital of the United States I can’t understand.”
¹⁸
In January 1952, the President once more asked for dispersal in his budget message. In a bid to win over suburban residents and Rep. Smith, Truman promised that only government-owned land would be used.
¹⁹
It wasn’t enough to change Congressional minds, however, and Truman didn’t press the issue. By this date, Tracy Augur had quit his job as Urban Planning Officer. Few had worked as hard as Augur to disperse the capital, making the ignominious outcome not just a professional blow, but a personal one, too.

The Mysterious Mountain

Throughout 1951, Blue Ridge Summit, a small Pennsylvania town close to the Maryland border, was enjoying an economic boom as workers for the

P.J.
Healy Co. filled the town’s restaurants and businesses during their off-hours. Healy specialized in excavation. It had dug the Lincoln Tunnel in New York City; now the firm was burrowing tunnels beneath Raven Rock Mountain, not far from Blue Ridge Summit. Forested and flat-topped, Raven Rock stood approximately six miles northeast of Camp Ritchie, a Maryland National Guard training facility recently expropriated for the Army, which supervised the tunneling. At the base of Raven Rock, metal sheds straddled gigantic holes carved into the mountain, cranes protruded from ground stripped of trees and brush. Round-the-clock, trucks rolled up to the site’s guarded gates to unload supplies and equipment. The Defense Department said a supplemental communications base was being built, but this was no ordinary installation: it was an underground command post for the military services, the Office of the Secretary of Defense, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
²⁰