Nexus - 0402 - New Times Magazine-pages

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An agreement to fill the Soviet order was negotiated with such 1944 was Dr Phillip L. Merritt. Appearing January 24, 1950 dispatch that in four days Rosenberg was able to report victory to before the Un-American Activities Committee, Dr Merritt swore the Purchasing Commission. The shipment from Ontario to Great he was taken by surprise, a day earlier, on discovering for the first Falls and Moscow followed in due course. time that the Eastman Kodak order had been shipped to Russia by The Port Hope machination had the advantage, among other way of Army Ordnance. things, of bypassing the War Production Board, which was sure to General Groves was likewise uninformed. Asked as a witness warn the Manhattan Project if it knew the facts, but could be kept —_—_ whether it was possible for uranium shipments to have been made in ignorance because its jurisdiction ran only south of the border. in 1944, he answered, "Not if we could have helped it, and not General Groves was advised at once of the Soviet application with our knowledge of any kind. They would have had to be for 1,000 pounds of uranium salts. He was not disturbed, being entirely secret, and not discovered."* He declared there was no confident the embargo would stand. After declining to endorse way for the Russians to get uranium products in this country the application, he approved it later in the hope of detecting "without the support of US authorities in one way or another". whether the Russians could unearth uranium stocks which the The Soviet Purchasing Commission appears to have had Manhattan Project had overlooked. American industries were instructions to acquire without fail 25 pounds of uranium metal, consuming annually, before the war, upwards of 200 tons of ura- which can be extracted from uranium salts by a difficult process nium chemicals. requiring specialized equipment. Supported or advised by Lend- "We had no expectation," General Groves testified December 7, Lease, the commission for a whole year knocked at every avail- 1949, "of permitting that material to go out of this country. It able door, from the Chemical Warfare Service up to Secretary would have been stopped."* Stimson. As a matter of fact, uranium metal was then non-exis- So far as the United States was concerned, the embargo held tent in America, and for that reason had not been specified in the fast. The truth that it had been side-stepped by means of resort to Manhattan Project's embargo or named as a "strategic" material. Canadian sources did not come to the General's knowledge until Stimson closed a series of polite rebuffs with a letter of April three years later. 17, 1944, to the chairman of the Purchasing Commission, Lt Another violation of atomic General Leonid G. Rudenko. But security was represented by the Moscow was stubborn. Under third known delivery to Russia, in Another violation of atomic security Soviet pressure, the commission, 1944. It proved to be uranium or its American friends, had an nitrate. During May of that year, was represented by the third known inspiration. Why not have the Colonel Kotikov showed me a delivery to Russia in 1944 It proved uranium made to order by some 5 . warning from the Soviet private concern? Purchasing Commission to look to be uranium nitrate... As usual, a roundabout course out for a shipment of uranium, was taken. The commission first weighing 500 pounds, which was . . " . approached the Manufacturers to have travel priority. The Disguised asa commercial Chemical Co., 527 Fifth Avenue, Colonel was soon returning home. transaction" within American New York, which passed the As the climax of his American order along to A. D. Mackay, mission, he proposed to fly the pre- territory, the deal was managed by Inc., 198 Broadway. By the lat- cious stuff to Moscow with his Lend-Lease. ter it was farmed out to the own hands. Cooper Metallurgical Laboratory Disguised as a "commercial in Cleveland. According to Mr transaction" within American terri- Mackay, neither he nor the tory, the deal was managed by Lend-Lease. Chematar and Cooper concern suspected that their customer was the Soviet Canadian Radium & Uranium were abandoned in favor of the Union. Procurement Division of the Treasury Department, although the But Mackay reported the deal to the War Production Board, Treasury, under regulations, had no authority to make uranium which warned the Manhattan Project. The latter's expert on rare products available to the Soviet Union. metals, Lawrence C. Burman, went to Cleveland, it is related, and Contractors were asked to bid, and the winner was the Eastman urged the Cooper firm to make sure that its product was of "poor Kodak Company. Somewhere in this process, the expected 500 = quality". He did not explain why. But the metal, of which 4.5 pounds shrank to 45. Eastman Kodak reported the order to the pounds was made, turned out to be 87.5 per cent pure as against War Production Board as a domestic commercial item. the stipulated 99 per cent. Whatever the motive, it was determined not to send the com- Delivery to the Soviet Union was then authorized of a small pound by air. After a Treasury inspection in Rochester, the sample of this defective metal, to represent "what was available in MacDaniel Trucking Company drove it to the Army Ordnance the United States". Actually shipped was one kilogram, or 2.2 Depot at Terre Haute, Indiana, arriving July 24. The shipment pounds. The Purchasing Commission abruptly silenced its turned up in freight car No. 97352 of the Erie Railroad, and got to demands for pure uranium. But the powers that be found it suit- North Portland, Oregon, on August 11. By means of shifts not yet able to omit this item, as well as the Rochester sale, from the 1944 divulged, the uranium nitrate found itself aboard a Russian schedule of exports to Russia. steamship, Kashirstroi, which left for Vladivostok on October 3. From the start, in contrast to the atmosphere prevailing in Colonel Kotikov, who had planned a triumphal entry into Washington, the Manhattan Project was declared by General Moscow with a quarter-ton of "bomb powder" as a trophy, gave —_ Groves to have been "the only spot I know that was distinctly up the project in disgust on learning that the shipment would be anti-Russian"* Attempts at espionage in New York, Chicago and only 45 pounds. Berkeley, California, were traced to the Soviet Embassy. They In charge of uranium purchases for the Manhattan Project in convinced General Groves in October 1942 that the enemies of Lend-Lease. 28 = NEXUS Disguised as a "commercial transaction" within American territory, the deal was managed by FEBRUARY - MARCH 1997