This Is Only Test How Washington Prepared for Nuclear War (8 page)

In November, an AEC report entitled “The City of Washington and an Atomic Bomb Attack” fueled more speculation about the capital’s vulnerabil
ity. In plain but unflinching prose, the Commission described the effects of a 22-kiloton atomic bomb exploding 1,800 feet above the Pentagon, White House, or Capitol Hill. The blast would crumble or severely damage load-bearing brick walls as far as 8,000 feet from the ground zero. Intense heat traveling at the speed of light would ignite fires, as would severed gas and elec
trical lines; across the city, water pressure would drop to nothing. “While this is happening, what would be the fate of the people?” Flash burns would scorch exposed skin, radiation would poison tissue and internal organs. Continued functioning of the federal government in Washington would be impossible.
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Despite its grim scenario, “The City of Washington and an Atomic Bomb Attack” offered hope, claiming that sufficient warning and shelters would lower casualty rates, while dispersal of hospitals, fire stations, and executive agencies would protect these institutions and reduce the attraction of Washington as a target. Those familiar with the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey’s report, now more than three years old, found no surprises in the study, but the local press made much of its release. “One A-Bomb Could Cripple Washington: AEC Advises Dispersal of U.S. Agencies,” ran the banner headline of the November 17, 1949 issue of the
Washington Post
. Above an aerial photograph overlaid with concentric circles, the paper warned, “Blast Could Ruin Homes 6 Miles Away; Fires Would Sweep Across the City.” For all its sensationalism, however, the
Post
remained as optimistic as the AEC, even suggesting that casualties could be “eliminated” with adequate shelters and warning. At a news conference, the President also tried to dispel concern, calling the report “old stuff.”
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Tracy Augur’s boss submitted the report on emergency dispersal to the NSRB on the same day newspapers reported the AEC scenario. No one, including Augur, expected the federal government to build the tempos described in the report just because the Soviet Union could now build atomic weapons, but few could deny the study’s timeliness and the attrac
tion of long-term dispersal. Augur intended to make the most of the opportunity.

Imagining Long-Term Dispersal

Augur first had to reconcile differences among the Federal Works Agency, Defense, Budget, and the Park Commission. On paper, each body had interlocking responsibilities for long-term dispersal. The Federal Works Agency would pick dispersal sites, draft blueprints, and oversee construction. Defense had the most employees (counting both civilian and military) of any executive department. Budget would set price limits, and the Park Commission would ensure that dispersal meshed with its long-range plans for the Washington area.

In practice, conflict and confusion reigned. Budget, for example, encroached upon the domains of Federal Works and the Park Commission. Under Franklin Roosevelt, Budget had begun reviewing legislative bills to see if they supported the President’s programs. Truman expanded this practice. During his tenure, Budget provided the White House’s executive clerk with House and Senate bill reports, feedback from affected executive agencies, and its own recommendations. Truman regularly read these reports, thus giving Budget impressive power to mold policy on nonfiscal matters.
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To the irritation of Augur, dispersal was no exception. The Park Commission also found itself pushed to the side. Given its legislative charter, the Park Commission arguably had as much prerogative to plan dispersal as did Federal Works and Budget, yet these two agencies, along with the NSRB, consistently treated it as a junior partner.

In 1945, Congress had authorized the Park Commission to draft a comprehensive plan for metropolitan Washington concerning highway con
struction, development of new parks and playgrounds, and the location of future government buildings. Dispersal clearly fit within this mandate, and in April 1948, Park Commission chairman Ulysses S. Grant III asked the NSRB for its input.
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The blunt-spoken grandson of the Civil War General and pres
ident soon regretted his invitation. By August, the Park Commission had nearly completed its plan, but the drafting of “Security for the Nation’s Capital” continued. So Grant waited. And waited. In January 1949, the NSRB instructed Grant to submit monthly updates on the Park Commission’s contribution to the selection of dispersal sites, but Grant now had difficulty even meeting with representatives from Federal Works.
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Frustrated, he issued sarcastic reports: March, no progress; April, no progress.

For its part, Federal Works blamed the delays on Budget, which was sup
posed to be compiling statistics on Mall-vicinity executive branch employees and deciding which agencies should disperse.
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Budget finally finished this work in September, but the results violated Augur’s basic dispersal principles. Rather than reduce the number of executive employees within three miles of the zero milestone marker, Budget would allow it to exceed 175,000. Moreover, Budget wanted to disperse “nonessential” federal workers to free up space for war mobilization agencies. As Augur commented, Budget “recommends that the agencies which are important to the operation of the government in war time be concentrated in the vulnerable central zone of
the Capital, while the less essential agencies are dispersed to safer locations on the outskirts.”
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Meanwhile, Defense wanted to relocate 59,000 of its military and civilian employees to a single site. This would merely create another target, complained Augur. He turned to the NSRB for help, but Louis Johnson, an imposing and blustery man, regarded the NSRB as an ineffectual usurper.
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When the NSRB’s I.D. Brent finally managed to meet with Defense’s dispersal liaisons, they told him that Defense had no “assigned responsibility in connection” with long-range dispersal.
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Such bureaucratic scuffling and backbiting was practically sport in Washington, but without the cooperation of Budget and Defense, dispersal would fail. Even if a consensus on dispersal emerged within the national secu
rity state, the Park Commission remained excluded, which meant dispersal would further subordinate the city to the capital. The NSRB and its executive branch collaborators seemed to envision dispersal as a superstructure that the federal government could simply drop onto Washington. Focused on protecting the seat of government—and so far, only the executive branch— planners saw with clarity the capital but not the city. They decried the rickety Mall tempos yet ignored the squalid dwellings thronging alleys just blocks away. They saw traffic jams and fretted over the evacuation of federal work
ers; saw suburban fields and imagined government campuses where Mall-vicinity federal employees might one day work. With the exception of Augur, however, they seemed not to care where these workers lived and how a substantial population shift would impact Washington and the region. They knew dispersal required highways but seemed only concerned that these routes link dispersal sites rather than provide an efficient, regional network. How would dispersal affect the District’s economy? The Park Commission, in order to provide greater Washington with “a practical guide for step-by-step action to correct past mistakes and to build for future needs over the next 30 years,” had to align dispersal with its comprehensive plan, but national security planners seemed oblivious to this need.
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Augur thus found himself in a precarious position. As an urban planner for Federal Works (renamed the General Services Administration in July 1949), his responsibility was to plan only the dispersal of government buildings. As an advocate of cluster cities, however, he wanted to help the Park Commission integrate dispersal into its comprehensive plan. He managed to do both in his long-term plan.

Imagine
. . . an invisible line running due south from Westminster, Maryland, almost 50 miles north of the District, to the zero milestone marker. Another line, also beginning at the marker, crosses the Mall, the Potomac, and Arlington; following a straight southwesterly path, it skirts the sprawling Marine Corps Reservation at Quantico, terminating in Culpeper, Virginia. If an arc is drawn from Culpeper to Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, back to Westminster, an enormous pie-shaped area is created—this is the Dispersal Zone (figure 2.1). Within it lie all wartime essential federal agencies and personnel. Located no closer than 20 miles to the zero milestone marker, these buildings are widely scattered, with an average density ratio of 500
employees for every square mile. No more than 10,000 people work at any one site, but the total federal workforce in the zone exceeds 100,000.

Most of these employees used to work in the Central Zone, a circle with a five mile radius from the zero milestone marker. Prior to dispersal, they crowded into the Mall tempos, the Federal Triangle, and the Pentagon. Workday rush hour traffic congested roads and bridges, making the daily commute long and difficult. Now most of these employees live in rapidly developing communities within the Dispersal Zone. Its distance from Washington means the government buildings and residential communities rely on their own utilities, and new highways take them from their bungalow and ranch homes to campuses with modern offices and spacious parking lots. To be sure, these nondescript office buildings, with their reinforced concrete frames and narrow ribbons of windows, suffer in comparison to the looming Ionic colonnades of the Justice Building or the elaborate porticoes of the Old Executive Office Building. But security, not elegance and beauty, came first when blueprints were drafted for Dispersal Zone buildings.
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This was the future metropolitan Washington proposed in the cumbersomely titled “Basic Principles and Assumptions Governing Preparation of the Long Range Plan for the Security of the Nation’s Capital,” which Augur finished in May 1950. He had help—collaborators included Nolen and representatives from four executive agencies—but the document distinctly projected his voice and vision.

As in his emergency plan, Augur recommended sites of no more than 10,000 employees, though he increased the distance between sites to five miles. Augur said the government should purchase the privately owned emer
gency sites identified in the “Short-Term Emergency Plan,” but erect no buildings unless war broke out. Instead, construction of long-term dispersed buildings should begin immediately. Augur sketched out three zones or rings based on distances from the zero milestone marker: the Central Zone, 5 miles; Intermediate Zone, 5–20 miles; Dispersal Zone, 20–40 miles. The Central Zone encompassed the District and most of Arlington County, Virginia, but “
it is assumed that no units essential to the operation of the Federal Government in wartime will remain permanently in the Central Zone
” (emphasis in original).
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These agencies would move to the Dispersal Zone.

This was a remarkable, even stunning, recommendation. The Pentagon was situated in the Central Zone, as were the Capitol, White House, and Federal Triangle—even a short list reveals the plan’s sweeping aims. Augur wasn’t suggesting that Congress decamp from Capitol Hill or the president abandon the White House, but by positioning all future government struc
tures at least 20 miles from the Mall, he did intend to dramatically change the capital. And the alterations wouldn’t just show in the location of government buildings. Most current federal workers traveled into the city center for work; with dispersal implemented, they would travel outward. “[E]very