Word: gac
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Dates: during 1953-1953
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Business as Usual. On Oct. 5, Strauss sent a memo to Chairman Lilienthal recommending all-out effort on the superbomb. The Atomic Energy Act had set up a General Advisory Committee of scientists to advise the President and AEC on scientific matters. Strauss urged that the GAC be called into special session to advise the commission how to proceed. On Oct. 29, the GAC met in a regularly scheduled session. After one day's deliberation, it reported its recommendation: the U.S. should not try to build a thermonuclear bomb...
...GAC Chairman J. Robert Oppenheimer, as spokesman, advanced two principal reasons: 1) a thermonuclear bomb would divert personnel and raw material from the A-bomb program, and hence the U.S. was giving up a known, certain thing to try an uncertainty; and 2) the U.S. should try again to negotiate a disarmament program with the Russians. The report's key passage said, approximately: Not one of us thinks the thermonuclear bomb should be made. The President should tell the people that the bomb is fundamentally and ethically wrong...