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War and Peace in the Nuclear Age (1986-03-03)
About this film
Joseph Volpe was the General Counsel for the Atomic Energy Commission in the late 1940s and early 1950s. In this first interview, he describes Gen. Leslie Groves, who directed the Manhattan Project, then discusses the collapse of U.S.-U.K. atomic cooperation after the war, noting Gen. Groves' extraordinary instruction to AEC staff not to take steps to fulfill an agreement between President Truman and Prime Minister Attlee. He describes this state of affairs as "humiliating," ascribing Groves' insistence as arising primarily from his "obsession" over security, which also frequently left the State Department and Congress in the dark. He goes on to recount a 1948 meeting between Presidents Truman and Eisenhower along with members of the AEC to resolve the issue, but notes that the consensus that developed was wiped out by members of the Senate who objected that such cooperation violated the Atomic Energy Act. He also discusses internal differences that arose in connection with the Acheson-Lilienthal proposal and the Baruch Plan, which he says centered around not just substantive disagreements but Bernard Baruch's desire to put his own stamp on the plan. He closes by acknowledging his…
Directors & creators
WGBH
Subjects
public broadcasting, AAPB, Joseph Volpe, Leslie Groves, Harry S. Truman, Clement Attlee, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Bernard Baruch, J. Robert Oppenheimer, John Anderson, Gordon Arneson, Atomic Energy Commission, Manhattan Project, Atomic Energy Act of 1946, Acheson-Lilienthal proposal, Baruch Plan, Quebec Agreement, nuclear proliferation, nuclear weapons security
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