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Intelligence Operation | The Manhattan Project was the top-secret U.S.-British-Canadian research program (1942-1946) that developed the first nuclear weapons under J. Robert Oppenheimer at Los Alamos and other facilities, culminating in the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. | 1942 | 1947 |
The Manhattan Project was a top-secret research and development undertaking by the United States with the support of the United Kingdom and Canada during World War II. Its primary objective was to produce the first nuclear weapons. J. Robert Oppenheimer was the scientific director of the project, and John von Neumann was also a key figure.1
Administration and the Combined Policy Committee
The atomic project's policy was coordinated through the Combined Policy Committee, the body of the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada. The committee's minutes of January 22, 1945 and March 8, 1945 list Harvey H. Bundy as a joint secretary with Dr. William L. Webster, and the minutes of July 4, 1945 list him as joint secretary with Roger Makins. The July 4 minutes include an item headed "Use of Weapon Against Third Parties."2
The Interim Committee met on May 31, 1945 under Henry L. Stimson, with George Marshall and Leslie Groves present by invitation together with Bundy and Arthur Page.3 The National Security Archive index lists the "Harrison-Bundy files" in Record Group 77 under folders 69, 76, 77 and 100, and identifies George L. Harrison as Stimson's special assistant on Manhattan Project matters.4
In July and August 1943, during the Anglo-American dispute over the exchange of information, Bundy wrote the record of the July 22, 1943 meeting at 10 Downing Street between Stimson, Vannevar Bush, Bundy, Winston Churchill, Sir John Anderson and Lord Cherwell, and on August 6, 1943 sent Stimson a memorandum on the views of Bush and James B. Conant on an agreement with the United Kingdom.5 R. Gordon Arneson, the Interim Committee's recording secretary, stated in a 1989 Truman Library interview that Bundy hired him and proposed him for that post.6 At the July 4, 1945 Combined Policy Committee meeting Bundy reported that Belgian Congo supplies and captured material received by the Combined Development Trust were on their way to the United States.7
Footnotes
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Hersh, Seymour M. The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy. Random House, 1991. Chapter 2. ↩︎
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Foreign Relations of the United States, 1945, vol. II, minutes of the Combined Policy Committee, January 22, March 8 and July 4, 1945, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1945v02 ↩︎
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"Notes of the Interim Committee Meeting, Thursday, 31 May 1945," National Security Archive, Electronic Briefing Book No. 162, Document 12, list of persons present, https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB162/12.pdf ↩︎
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National Security Archive, Electronic Briefing Book No. 162, document index, Record Group 77, Manhattan Engineering District records, "Harrison-Bundy Files," folders 69, 76, 77 and 100, https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB162/index.htm ↩︎
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Foreign Relations of the United States: The Conferences at Washington and Quebec, 1943, Bundy memorandum of July 22, 1943 and document 334 (August 6, 1943), https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1943 ↩︎
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R. Gordon Arneson, oral history interview, June 21, 1989, Harry S. Truman Library, https://www.trumanlibrary.gov/oralhist/arneson.htm ↩︎
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Foreign Relations of the United States, 1945, vol. II, Combined Policy Committee minutes of July 4, 1945, item 6, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1945v02 ↩︎