NATIONAL SECURITY ACT OF 1947 FRIDAY, JUNE 20, 1947 HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, The committee met at 10 a. m., pursuant to adjournment, in room 1501 of the New House Office Building, Hon. Clare E. Hoffman (chairman) presiding. The CHAIRMAN. The committee will come to order. Mr. LATHAM. Mr. Chairman, I ask permission to insert in the record the original article by Admiral Zacharias, concerning unification, to which the reply was inserted in the record yesterday. I have two articles, the original article and the rebuttal article by Admiral Zacharias, if they could be inserted together with the article put in yesterday by Mr. Dorn, I think the whole picture would be complete. The CHAIRMAN. Without objection, it is so ordered. Mr. LATHAM. I also have an article concerning the work of the Marine Corps developing amphibious operations during the war. Also, I would like to call the attention of the committee to an article that was in yesterday's Wall Street Journal, June 19, 1947. The title is "Rocket Research" and the headline is "Experts project huge program to outmode bombers in 5 to 15 years. Giant atomic missiles to fly 5,000 miles without pilots at 3,000 miles an hour," and the generals say it is practical. I would like to read one short paragraph from this article: When the rocket finally emerges from the laboratory, it will make modern bombers look as old-fashioned as the Wright brothers' first plane. The new missile will have a range of 5,000 miles, as far as from Berlin to New Orleans. It will span this distance in less than 2 hours, moving at 3.000 miles an hour. It will presumably have an atomic warhead of indescribably destructive force. That is the Army work that is going on, now. Mr. HOLIFIELD. I suggest they be put in in the same way Mr. Dorn's article was put in. The CHAIRMAN. Here is a letter from Brigadier General Edson, supplementing his testimony, and I ask permission to put that in at the proper place with his testimony. STATEMENT OF ELLIS M. ZACHARIAS, REAR ADMIRAL, UNITED STATES NAVY (RETIRED)—Resumed Mr. WADSWORTH. In view of the fact that I am expected to attend a subcommittee meeting as soon as possible, I wonder if I might ask the witness some questions now. The CHAIRMAN. Certainly. Mr. WADSWORTH. I was unable to be present yesterday while Admiral Zacharias was testifying, due to the fact that there was an important meeting of the Committee on Rules. However, I have looked over the transcript of his testimony, and I find on page 313 of the transcript, the admiral testifies to an incident that occurred in the Congress in 1919 or 1920. His description of that incident is so completely at variance with my own recollection that it is difficult for me even to identify it. I would not bring this matter up with you were it not for the fact that the admiral used his conception of that incident as an argument to this committee, not to report this bill. Admiral, you say, after discussing the alleged attempts of the General Staff to acquire administrative authority over the Army that in 1919 or 1920, the Congress again took up legislation to reset these functions of the General Staff. At that time the Senate reported out of the committee favorably a bill to give administrative authority to the General Staff. Do you recall the number of that bill? Mr. ZACHARIAS. I have it here. The Senator was chairman of the Military Affairs Committee at that time. Mr. WADSWORTH. I think I could tell you the story of the legisla tion. Mr. ZACHARIAS. The House bill was H. R. 8287. The Senate bill was S. 3792. The CHAIRMAN. Will you identify the session or date, or something? Mr. ZACHARIAS. It is the Sixth-sixth Congress. The first bill was S. 2175, presented in 1919 as a War Department bill. This bill was killed in the committee during the first session of the Sixty-sixth Congress, but reappeared again in diluted form in 1920, as S. 3792, sponsored by Senator Wadsworth. Mr. WADSWORTH. You are mistaken in that statement, or rather the emphasis to be brought upon it. It is perfectly true that in 1919, the War Department sent up a bill which, in performing an administerial function of the committee, as chairman of the committee I introduced. We held long hearings on it. We rejected it completely and put it in the waste basket. It may be that another bill came up in the next session, but it was not the bill considered by our committee. Our committee drafted its own bill from the first page to the last without any instructions, guidance or influence from the War Department. The inference to be drawn from your testimony, and you would not have uttered the testimony had you not such an inference in your mind, was at that time that the General Staff or the War Department or whichever you call it, was influencing legislation in the Senate Committee on Military Affairs. Is that not right? Mr. ZACHARIAS. No, sir; I would not say that was the inference. Mr. WADSWORTH. Why did you describe the incident then? Mr. ZACHARIAS. The inference was simply to indicate that the General Staff was persisting in its efforts to take on additional functions of administrative duties, in addition to the advisory functions which were delegated to them by the original act of 1903. I did not mean to imply that they were using pressure or any other means on your committee and I am sorry if that inference was taken. Mr. WADSWORTH. It is almost impossible to avoid such an inference. The fact is that the Senate and House Committees on Military Affairs held their hearings in the same period of time. We were in close contact, one with the other. There were no fundamental differences between the two committees, including this matter of the General Staff, although the bill of course went far beyond the General Staff feature. It became finally the National Defense Act of 1920. The only difference between the two committees was in the form which the bill should take. The House committee proceeded on the theory that the best way to write the legislation was to amend the act of 1916. The Senate committee had preferred so write a new bill, and literally, when the two bills came into conference, there was scarcely any violent opposition from the House against our bill, or violent opposition on our part against the House bill. The thing that was adjusted was the form of the bill itself and the Senate agreed to take the House form and it became an amendment to the then existing National Defense Act of 1916. As you lately state, you give the impression, and I cannot see why you would relate it unless you intended to give the impression, that at that time the War Department and General Staff was still urging upon our committee in the Senate; the passage of legislation giving them administrative power, and that the Senate committee yielded to that. We did not. There was a slight change in language here and there all through the bill, but there was never any outbreak of discussion of a bitter or intense character with respect to functions of the General Staff. They were kept advisory in the planning agency of the War Department. That law stands on the statutes today. Mr. ZACHARIAS. The only point I desired to make was to emphasize that in March 1919, a bill was passed resetting the functions of the General Staff. That between March and September 1916, the War Department set aside some of those provisions over the objections of the Judge Advocate General of the Army whose statement I quoted yesterday. I then indicated that from these discussions, and there must have been great differences of opinion, there evolved the National Defense Act of 1920. That is the only point I wished to make and I am sorry if there were any inferences taken regarding the committee. Mr. WADSWORTH. Very well. The matter having been corrected, I have nothing more to add. The CHAIRMAN. At that point I will ask permission to insert, if upon examination there seems to be any question about it, a brief statement referring to the bills and the dates, and any part of the hearings that were held at that time, so the committee will have just what did happen. 62559 47 34 i Mr. WADSWORTH. It will be rather difficult. I tried it myself overnight and cannot find a copy of those bills as reported to the Senate or as reported to the House at that time; that is 27 years ago. Mr. McCORMACK. Would the library not have it? Mr. WADSWORTH. They might. They might not show the amendments and the changes in phraseology of the bill which was many, many pages long, in which Admiral Zacharias points out one particular item and emphasizes it. Mr. McCORMACK. You were chairman of the committee in one session and you certainly ought to have a recollection on it. You know what your state of mind was and the state of mind of the other members of the committee. Mr. WADSWORTH. I remember just what we were working for and what we finally managed to achieve. The CHAIRMAN. Have you anything further on that particular topic? Mr. ZACHARIAS. No, sir. The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Holifield had some questions yesterday. Mr. HOLIFIELD. I did not keep track. I think I yielded most of my time to Mr. Rich. The CHAIRMAN. You may proceed. Mr. HOLIFIELD. Do you have some comment, Admiral Zacharias? Mr. ZACHARIAS. I would like to have your last question of yesterday. Mr. HOLIFIELD. I withdraw the question. However, I am prepared to pursue that subject a little bit further, the subject of radioactivity in regard to naval vessels, naval maintenance bases, harbors, and so forth. I had the opportunity of serving on the President's Atomic Bomb Evaluation Commission to Bikini and witnessed the tests. Referring specifically to the underwater explosion, I believe I am on sound ground when I say that something like four square miles of water was contaminated and ships within the target area, to the extent of better than 90 percent of the ships in the target area were also contaminated. I have here some information which I will introduce later, regarding the persistency of that radioactivity. In view of the knowledge which you have of that subject, I direct to you a question as follows: Do you believe that it would be possible to protect any harbor, such as San Francisco, Mare Island, the Norfolk Navy Yard, Hampton Roads, or any base of that type, from persistent contamination by an underwater explosion of an atomic bomb. I might say that if for any reasons of security you wish to withhold your answer, you are perfectly within your rights. Mr. ZACHARIAS. Before I answer that question, I would like to indicate that I think any discussions of tests or results should be held only in closed session, because of their great importance on our future security. Of course, those things which have been published could be discussed, but they are certain to lead to other things which might be of value to a potential enemy. In the second place, the question that you set forth is hypothetical. I do not believe that with the state of development and learning that anyone is competent to discuss it with beneficial results at this time, regardless of what was observed at Bikini; but I do want to emphasize the security side, and I would prefer not to discuss it in open session. Mr. HOLIFIELD. I will yield to the witness' suggestion, although I will make this remark: that many facts which have been published are public information, and among those facts are facts which indicate that at least 9 months after the explosions at Bikini, many of the ships were still too hot with radioactivity for human beings to stay on the ships. Those ships have been towed to different ports in the United States and are under observation. I bring up this matter because of the fact that you have brought up in your testimony, Admiral, the factor of obsolescence of the large type of bombers such as the B-36, which could be a carrier for the bomb, as the B-29 was, and in the discussion of obsolescence, certainly we should take into consideration these changes, which in my opinion make the heavy battleship and the heavy carrier just as obsolete as the development in the antiaircraft and proximity base homing devices might possibly make the bomber. Therefore, as an offset to your contention, I think that should go into the record. Mr. ZACHARIAS. I agree we should take cognizance of all changes or possible changes and profit by them, but I would like to emphasize that the Bikini test was held upon ships at anchor, and you will have an entirely different proposition with ships at sea where they are mobile, and I might even go so far as to say that we would not have any more fear of the atom bomb at sea than we would have of gas, because you are in a position-or at least the majority of the ships are in a position-to leave the area immediately. Mr. HOLIFIELD. Admiral, I am not going to engage in an argument with logistics with you because I recognize your superiority in knowledge and experience along that line. However, I want to point out that I did not refer to mobile ships; I referred to immobile maintenance bases and harbors. Mr. ZACHARIAS. I want to emphasize the question of mobility, because that is the point which we feel is going to be a controlling factor in future wars, and our national security will depend upon the ability of the Navy to move freely about the oceans and transport weapons, whether they are aircraft, missiles, or others, to the vicinities where they can be used against an enemy. As I see it now, the Navy and the aircraft carriers are still the only means of transportation for delivering those weapons against a potential enemy effectively. Mr. HOLIFIELD. Then we must discount the information put into the record this morning by Mr. Latham in regard to the 5,000-mile range of rocket-propelled atomic warheaded missiles. Mr. ZACHARIAS. As one of the members indicated yesterday, we should talk about what we have on hand today, and give consideration to possible future developments. I think that is a sound method of procedure. Mr. HOLIFIELD. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time. Mr. JUDD. Mr. Latham. |