This Is Only Test How Washington Prepared for Nuclear War (19 page)

And what about the distance itself? Operation Ivy had proved the inade
quacy of a ten-mile radius, as did another round of hydrogen tests conducted in March and April 1954. Bravo, staged on March 1, tested America’s first deliverable hydrogen bomb. Hours after the explosion, ash sifted down on the island of Rongelap, some 100 miles away. This fallout looked like snow, and it exposed the 86 people on the island to high levels of radiation, burning skin and causing hair loss. The United States relocated them. The crew of the Japanese fishing boat
The Lucky Dragon
, anchored 90 miles from the blast point, also experienced radiation sickness; one man later died due to this exposure.
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Hydrogen bombs were so powerful that the radioactive fallout produced could kill people nowhere near the blast itself; however, the ODM was slow to respond. In December 1954, the National Capital Regional Planning Council (NCRPC) asked for dispersal guidelines that took into account hydrogen weapons. This was hardly an unreasonable request, given the Council’s obvious interest in dispersal. The NCRPC, composed of members from District, Maryland, and Virginia planning bodies, worked to align local development with an overall regional plan. ODM stalled the group, however, replying that it was still studying the problem and couldn’t
provide additional information because relevant data was classified. In February 1955, Arthur Flemming told the Cabinet that dispersal standards needed revision but “a mileage yardstick that would conform to the increases in weapons capabilities” for all parts of the country wasn’t possible. Instead, he recommended fixing dispersal distances on a case-by-case basis.
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The AEC’s search for a building site exposed the limits of the ODM’s dispersal guidelines. Among wartime essential agencies, the AEC ranked high, and it had long outgrown its building on Constitution Avenue, forcing hundreds of employees to work in two tempos and a warehouse. Use of the scattered buildings incurred annual security costs exceeding $500,000 and lost work time. Clearly the AEC needed new quarters, and it recognized its part in dispersal’s success. “[C]ompliance with the dispersal policy will give impetus to dispersal by other Government agencies and industrial firms,” declared AEC chairman Lewis Strauss. In April, the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy authorized $10 million for the AEC to build a dispersed headquarters.
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The AEC established several standards. They included adequate road access, proximity to an established community, sufficient utilities, and compatibility with regional and federal plans for the greater Washington area. The most important requirement was the distance from the District: a mini
mum of 20 miles from the Mall, west of a north–south line extending from the Washington Monument. This line matched the inner border of Augur’s 1950 Dispersal Zone. Though it couldn’t rule out minor damage, the AEC believed such a location afforded “reasonable protection” from a 20-megaton hydrogen bomb detonated in Washington. It eliminated locations east of the District because the winds that would carry fallout, at altitudes of 20,000 feet and higher, almost always passed over Washington from the west. Although some planners recommended finding a site 30 miles away, the AEC’s Commissioners believed this distance was too far from the executive agencies it worked with and would result in high staff attrition.
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The AEC gave its criteria to the Army’s Office of the Chief of Engineers, which surveyed possible sites in Virginia and Maryland. During May it examined dozens of sites, recommending 4 in Maryland, 2 in Virginia. Each of the 6 sites lay at least 20 miles from the zero milestone marker. Next, the AEC hired an architect-engineer to further study the choices. In early June, it began meeting with the National Capital Planning Commission (NCPC; the new name for the National Capital Park and Planning Commission), and Director John Nolen, Jr., who had helped pick dispersal sites in 1949, promised his cooperation.
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The selection process wasn’t without complications, however; members of Maryland’s and Virginia’s Congressional delegations tried to influence the outcome. In late April, Senator John Butler (R-Md.) intimated to the press that a Maryland site was likely, prompting Congressman Joel Broyhill (R), who represented northern Virginia, to urge the AEC to choose Fairfax County. Though legislators from Virginia and Maryland had previously opposed dis
persal, the limited scale of the AEC project meant the advantages outweighed
the drawbacks; the new headquarters promised to economically benefit the area without overwhelming utilities or bringing higher taxes. Broyhill also saw the opportunity to apply pressure to the Virginia Highway Department. Knowing that access roads were part of the AEC’s location criteria, Broyhill asked to quote “a high official of AEC” saying that a lack of road planning might stop the commission from building in Virginia. The official demurred, telling the Congressman the AEC “could not afford to get drawn into a political wrangle.”
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The President asked why the AEC set 20 miles as its limit. Though the ODM had set a ten-mile marker for dispersal, Eisenhower thought the AEC should consider building
beyond
20 miles. After explaining the need to prevent staff turnover and to work with executive agencies in the District, Commissioner

W.F.
Libby assured him that 20 miles provided sufficient protection.
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Satisfied, Eisenhower said nothing more about a more distant site, and, in July 1955, the AEC picked a farm close to Germantown, Md., as the location for its new headquarters. The 155-acre parcel included fields, woods, wet
lands, and streams. Located at the intersection of Md. Rte. 118 and the Washington National Pike (U.S. Route 240; I-270 today), the site had the terrain, highway access, and neighboring community desired by the AEC. The site was also 25 miles from the zero milestone marker. Construction of the new building started on May 29, 1956.
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The CIA also got new quarters outside of the District, but it took a much different approach. CIA director Allen Dulles believed the CIA deserved headquarters befitting its vaunted status in the national security state. In 1953, if judged by its work space, the CIA seemed lowly and insignificant. Staff worked out of almost 40 different buildings, shuttling across the District for meetings at tremendous cost in time and money. Many offices were in the hated Mall tempos. (“This is a damned pig sty,” Dulles exclaimed after entering one.) He dreamed of a self-contained campus for the CIA, replete with landscaped grounds, cafeteria, and a secure perimeter.
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Such a vision should have made Dulles partial to dispersal, but the tempos, for all their flaws, had something dispersal could never offer: proximity to the Capitol, the Pentagon, and, most important, the White House. If the presi
dent needed to call together his national security policymakers, a 40-minute drive from a distant office meant the CIA director would arrive long after everyone else. Dulles wasn’t about to let that happen to him, and he was a man used to having his way. Physically, the sixty-two year old wasn’t impos
ing, the slim frame of his youth now portly, the once dark, full hair gone or gray, combed over a high forehead. Wire frame glasses and a well-groomed mustache suggested a respectable if unremarkable profession, perhaps the law or academia, but his unassuming appearance concealed a strong will.
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At a December 1954 Cabinet meeting, Dulles told the President and Flemming that he wanted to keep the CIA close to Washington. Neither man objected.
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Dulles already had a site in mind. During the early 1920s, when he had worked at the State Department, he had attended parties at elegant estates near the small Virginia town of Langley, in Fairfax County, about
seven air miles from the zero milestone marker. The area remained scenic and mostly undeveloped, with forested, rolling hills abutting the Potomac. The federal government owned great swaths of land, including a Bureau of Roads reservation of almost 600 acres. The Georgetown Pike (Rte. 193) and Chain Bridge Road (Rte. 123) connected Langley to the District via the Chain Bridge. Once completed, the George Washington Memorial Parkway, which followed the river’s gentle southeastern curve, would offer an alternate route. Accompanied by aides, Dulles went for a leisurely drive to make an informal survey of the government-owned land. The terrain was as beautiful as he remembered, and it took just 20 minutes to get there from the Mall. A
cordon sanitaire
would be easy to trace around the building, annexes, and parking lots. (Dulles worried about Soviet agents watching the comings and goings of CIA staff from the easily surveilled tempos.)
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Ironically, Tracy Augur had identified Langley as a possible short-term dispersal site in 1949. Now the site lay well within the zone of destruction, but that didn’t concern Dulles.

The Langley choice had plenty of opponents. Some residents wondered who would pay for road improvements, schools, and sewers. Echoing his criticism of the Truman dispersal plan, Frederick Gutheim said the CIA’s move would threaten Langley’s low-density zoning and consume potential park land. Roger Fisher, a Langley civic leader, fought the CIA every step of the way. In July 1955, he told the Senate Appropriations Committee that the agency would bring to Langley a “big Government housing project of chicken-coop type houses that would deteriorate land values.” He also wor
ried that new schools would be needed. The NCPC noted with concern that the campus would house 10,000 employees; it had long recommended that new federal office centers be capped at 5,000 employees. In December 1955, it voted six to five against the Langley site, though it had no power to stop the CIA. The Upper Montgomery Country (Md.) Planning Commission also objected to the site, while others urged the CIA to stay put. The Federal City Council, a body of Washington business and civic leaders, and the
Washington Daily News
wanted the CIA to build in the District in order to boost the local economy. Otherwise, the CIA should fulfill dispersal by removing itself entirely from the target zone, editorialized the
Daily News
, which chided the ODM for hoping Langley looked like actual dispersal.
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Dulles rebutted the complaints with his customary aplomb. Publicly, he or his spokesmen offered assurances that the proposed CIA complex wouldn’t ruin property values or parks. There were “very, very few employees who could pay the prices that the land in this area of Langley will bring,” Dulles told the NCPC. The CIA released figures stating that 48 percent of its employees lived in Northwest D.C. and Montgomery County; presumably these individuals would keep their present homes and commute to Langley. Dulles assured several Congressional committees that the CIA needed just 100 or so acres, leaving plenty of land for park use. As trump, the CIA played the national security card. One member of the NCRPC said that the CIA “told in confidence of other advantages bearing on national safety and
security which makes this site [Langley] preferable to all others examined.” The secret asides revealed the CIA wanted to fence off its parking lots from prying eyes, but to call it a matter of pressing national security helped grind down the opposition. Dulles also won over important members of Congress one by one, usually over evening cocktails.
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The lobbying worked. In July 1955, the Fairfax County Planning Commission approved the Langley site, as did the NCRPC, later that year. Also in July, Congress authorized extension of the George Washington Parkway if the CIA moved to Langley. Then the NCPC reversed itself and voted seven to five to approve the site, with the understanding that the CIA would cooperate with local officials to maintain Langley’s “low-density character.”
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Excavation began in September 1958 on a parcel of 140 acres in the eastern portion of the Bureau of Roads reservation. Made of reinforced concrete, the CIA’s new headquarters offered one million square feet of office space, a 1,000-seat cafeteria, and a connected auditorium. Employees began moving to the building in September 1961.
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The Federal Relocation Arc and Continuity of Government

The Arc was much more of a priority than dispersal. In January 1954, Eisenhower, Flemming, and the NSC met in a White House conference room to discuss the executive branch’s readiness to carry on after a nuclear war. Flemming began with a pessimistic but realistic appraisal: a nuclear attack on Washington would have a destructive radius of at least ten miles, and given the number of wartime essential agencies working within this area, “the danger of surprise attack involving disaster to the District of Columbia constitutes an unacceptable risk of interrupting governmental functions essential to national survival.”
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This statement could hardly have surprised those present. Flemming was merely echoing “Security for the Nation’s Capital,” which had been gathering dust for almost six years, and his proposed actions sounded familiar, too. He said executive agencies needed to designate lines of succession and draft plans to delegate responsibilities to field offices after an attack. Two years before, Truman had ordered executive agencies to begin such planning. As Augur and the NSRB had recommended, Flemming said that during an emergency, wartime essential personnel should relocate to “existing facilities at safe locations large enough to accommodate them for the duration of the emergency.”
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