-Caveat Lector-
an excerpt from:
>From Major Jordan's Diaries
George Racey Jordan©1952 All rights reserved
LCCN 52-6448
Western Islands
395 Concord Avenue
Belmont. Massachusetts 02178
PRINTING HISTORY
Harcourt, Brace edition published 1952
Free Enterprise edition published 1958
American Opinion edition published 1961
The Americanist Library edition published 1965
170pps — out-of-print
--[13]--
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
"The Broadcast Goes on Tonight"
My one desire, after retiring from the Army, was to forget it. I had had a
surfeit of military life dominated by political practices, and vowed to have
nothing more to do with it. The means of escape was to plunge up to my ears
into private business, taking up where I had left off in 1942.
As a side-line I kept up a modest career in public speaking which has
continued until now. It started in Montana. Colonel Meredith was frequently
asked to deliver addresses. He loathed them and got in the habit of ordering
me to take his place. I remember that my first effort was before parents and
teachers of the Whittier School in Great Falls early in 1944.
For some reason invitations persisted after I left the Army, though I never
sought an engagement nor was I connected with a speaker's bureau. Prior to
1950 the subject was generally deeds of heroism on the Fairbanks flight and
my adventures among Russians. Again and again I declared that we knew nothing
about the Russians, while they knew everything about us. Understanding them
for what they were, I stated, was now one of the crucial things in the world.
The Smyth Report was issued in August, 1945, the month of the Hiroshima
announcement. My first intimation that uranium and the atom bomb had any
connection derived from summaries of the Smyth Report which filled newspapers
and magazines in the weeks following its appearance.
In my memory the word "uranium" sounded an echo, but I was not even certain
whether the spelling was the same I had written two and a half years earlier.
I made a journey to the safe where my most important records were stored.
>From a metal box I drew the memorandum on my first search of the diplomatic
suitcases. One of its entries read: "Uranium-92."
I thought to myself: "So that's what the Russians wanted with
uranium!" But my alarm was ,S quieted by official lulla-bies. Because of
"Russian ignorance and backwardness," top authorities stated, Moscow could
not hope for years to achieve
an atom bomb. Like the rest of the nation, I buried my head in the sand.
News in May, 1949, that a fraction more than an ounce of U-235 had been lost
or stolen at the Argonne Laboratory, convulsed the nation for more than a
month. Headlines bellowed and Congress roared.
My own response was indignation. In view of the petty amount involved, so
colossal an uproar appeared absurd and spurious. What was a single ounce of
uranium compared to the hundreds of pounds that had passed through Great
Falls? And why screech about the Russian espionage when Washington itself had
delivered to the Soviet Union one installment of 420 pounds and another of
half a ton?
Of course, I was still unaware of the distinction between uranium compounds
and uranium metal. I had heard of fissionable U-235 and non-fissionable
U-238, but they were phrases without meaning. In my untutored thought,
uranium was uranium, just as iron was iron. But my instinct was not wholly
wrong. The 1,465 pounds of uranium chemically handed by Lend-Lease to the
Soviet Union contained a potential of not merely one ounce of U-235 but 6.25
pounds, or 75 ounces.
In July, 1949 I took the plunge and phoned the office of Fulton Lewis, Jr. I
had never met him, but I was one of his radio fans. He was out of the city,
and I told the story to his secretary. Mr. Lewis never heard of my call.
On Sept. 23, 1949 President Truman disclosed that an atomic explosion had
just occurred in the Soviet Union.
I was shocked and stunned to the depths of my being American policy had
suffered a stupendous defeat. There was evidence in my possession, I was
convinced, proving that the disaster was chargeable not only to spies but to
actual members of the Federal hierarchy. it was information that the American
people obviously should have. But I was at a loss where to turn.
Eleven days after the President's announcement, I had lunch with my friend
Arthur Johnson at the Army and Navy Club in Washington. Once more I recited
the story of the Pipeline and my experiences at Great Falls. At the
conclusion, Mr. Johnson solved my dilemma with six words. He was a native of
New Hampshire and a personal friend of its senior Senator. As we left the
table, he announced: "I'm going to telephone Senator Bridges."
When I was received on the afternoon of Oct 5, the Senator looked at me
quizzically. "Well, Major," he smiled, "I'm afraid you're on the wrong track.
I have been assured that in 1943 there were not 1,000 pounds of uranium in
the whole United States."
"Who said the uranium came from the United States?" I retorted. "It came from
Canada!" The Senator seemed stunned. I told him there had been a previous
shipment of 420 pounds from Denver and a later consignment of what I then
thought to have been 500 pounds.
"What is more," I went on, "Mr. Hopkins personally directed me to expedite
the Canadian shipment." Incredulously, Mr. Bridges exclaimed: "Harry
Hopkins?" I insisted that Harry Hopkins himself gave the order by telephone.
The Senator asked whether I would be willing to testify, under oath, as to
what I had charged. I answered that I would. For two hours the Senator
examined me closely. As I was leaving, he said the things I alleged were so
shocking that an investigation would be necessary. He would need time to
decide on the course to be pursued. In the meanwhile, I must promise to keep
the matter secret. I gave my word.
Twenty days passed and, on Oct. 25, 1949 Fulton Lewis telephoned from
Washington. Senator Bridges had spent the weekend with him, he stated, and
they had gone over my story in detail. It was decided to use the Lewis staff
for a thorough investigation, and then, if the story stood up, to break it by
radio. I was to join Mr. Lewis at breakfast next morning at a hotel in New
York and bring my documents.
At 9 A.M. on Oct. 26 we got down to work. The commentator went through my
chief records page by page, item by item, and word by word. His questions
were pitiless; it seemed to me that the bar had lost a great prosecuting
attorney. Five hours later, at 2 P.M., he rose and stood for some minutes
looking out of the window. Then he wheeled about and let me know the verdict.
"I suppose the next stop," he drawled, "will be your former superior, Colonel
Gardner, in Mansfield, Ohio."
As I was collecting my papers, he added: "I'm sorry, Major, but this is
something I'll have to turn over to the FBI."
I heard nothing from Mr. Lewis for almost a month, but it was not long before
Edgar Hoover's boys started to haunt my days, from early morning to midnight.
In pairs they beleaguered my office. My three metal cabinets, brought up from
the basement, were ransacked folder by folder. Endless photostats were taken.
Looking for discrepancies, they had me tell the story again and again.
Sometimes their questions were new. More often they were the same ones, asked
on different occasions, to check previous answers.
When I slipped away for a quiet Thanksgiving to the home of my mother-in-law
in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, there, waiting in a chair on the porch when I
arrived, was an FBI man, with twenty typewritten questions.
On Dec. 1 there was a call from Mr. Lewis.
"Major," he announced, "I've checked your story from stem to stern. The FBI
made a parallel investigation and has given me permission to break it over
the radio. The first broadcast will be on Monday night, Dec. 5. We're going
ahead from there a whole week, and maybe longer."
He invited my wife and me to his home in Maryland for the weekend.
The next day we were sipping cokes in his living-room and my wife, Kitty, in
all innocence, dropped a bombshell. "By the way, Racey," she asked, "did you
get those calls from Walter Winchell?" Mr. Lewis slowly put down his glass. I
hurried to explain that Winchell's office had been telephoning since Nov. 28
and that in two days there had been several calls. The commentator rose.
"I think," he announced, "that we won't wait till Monday. The broadcast goes
on tonight. Let's get at my typewriter!"
There was the chance that Winchell, on Sunday, might try to beat the gun. And
so our opening interview went on the air that evening, Friday, Dec. 2, 1949.
pps. 137-140
--[cont]--
Aloha, He'Ping,
Om, Shalom, Salaam.
Em Hotep, Peace Be,
Omnia Bona Bonis,
All My Relations.
Adieu, Adios, Aloha.
Amen.
Roads End
Kris
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