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First Los Alamos Contract Short on Details

Posted on: Monday, 11 July 2005, 18:01 CDT

Jul. 10--Even though the main contract for the secret laboratory at Los Alamos was signed on April 20, 1943, the University of California had been doing work on the project since January.

That part of the work was covered in an informal agreement laid out in a letter to Robert Underhill, secretary of the UC board of regents, from Irvin Stewart, executive secretary for the Office of Scientific Research and Development, an agency charged with coordinating scientific projects for military use.

The OSRD would bow out of the picture once the Army took over.

The informal agreement covered a period from Jan. 1 to July 31, 1943, and carried a payment of $150,000 to get started. The principal contract that was signed on April 20 but was backdated to Jan. 1. It carried a payment of $5 million.

The lack of advertising for competing proposals is one of the few clues to the nature of the contract. Otherwise, it mostly reads as a fairly standard document, with only as few hints of what's behind it.

For instance:

--Article I -General Statement of Work and Services. "The Contractor shall, with utmost dispatch, and to the best of its ability, procure and furnish the necessary personnel, supplies, materials, equipment and perform other services as shall be directed by the Contracting Officer or his authorized representative, for the conduct of certain studies and experimental investigations at a laboratory located at a site which has or will be informally made known to the Contractor."

--Article V -Cost of the Work. Subsection "h" is a disclaimer about cost of insurance for workmen's compensation, occupational disease, employer's liability and such: "It is recognized that complete insurance coverage may not be readily obtainable at acceptable rates." Whether that's because of the nature of the work or the secrecy isn't explained.

In the same article, section 2 starts out: "It is recognized that the work to be performed under this contract involved unusual and unpredictable hazards." Little was known about uranium, even less about plutonium.

--Article VI -Eight Hour Law. Laborers and mechanics who worked more than eight hours were to be paid 1 1/2 times the hourly rate. It raises the question of how much overtime was paid during the war.

--Article IX -Payments. Section 4 gives the contractor the right to suspend all work if payments from the government are late. What would have happened if UC had tried this?

--Article XIV -Convict Labor. Hiring not allowed, but the project could buy materials or supplies built by convict labor.

--Article XIX -Disclosure of Information. This spells out what happens if anyone talks about the project to anyone who isn't supposed to hear it. UC could be held responsible.

--Article XX -Employment of Aliens. The prohibitions pretty much make it clear that any foreigner wouldn't be able to do much. The secretary of war could approve hiring certain aliens, and presumably that's what happened for European scientists such as Edward Teller, Hans Bethe, Enrico Fermi, Stanislaus Ulam and the scientists and technicians from the British bomb project. The American project might not have succeeded without these "aliens."

--Article XXI -Responsibility of Contractor-Contingencies. Section "b" says the government, which "deems the work … to be in the interest of the prosecution of the War and had urgently requested the Contractor to undertake such work," will not hold the contractor responsible for delays or failures or damage or injuries of whatever kind (excepting willful misconduct on the part of the contractor). This would seem to be one of the clauses Underhill fought hard to include. It's understandable, given the nature of the work -and the nature of the results.

--Article XXIII -Anti Discrimination. "The Contractor, in performing the work required by this contract, shall not discriminate against any worker because of race, creed, color or national origin." Unless they're spies.

Because this contract was valid only through June 30, 1944, two extensions were needed to carry it through the war. The first, signed May 17, 1944, was valid until June 30, 1945, and paid UC $16 million. The second, signed March 19, 1945, lasted until June 30, 1956. It paid UC $36 million.

More extensions were signed until 1947, when the Atomic Energy Commission, which had taken over the nuclear-weapons-development programs, signed a formal contract with UC.

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Source: The Santa Fe New Mexican

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