The Making of the Atomic Bomb: 25th Anniversary Edition

by Richard Rhodes

When I suggested to him that the solution of this problem might be more important than all the schemes for a world organization, he agreed and authorized me to tell Professor Bohr that he, Bohr, might tell our friends in London that the President was most eager to explore the proper safeguards in relation to X. Much controversy surrounds this meeting, because Roosevelt later implicitly repudiated it. Why, if the President was worried to death about the postwar implications of the bomb, did he entrust a mission to the British to so informal an arrangement? He had not even met Niels Bohr. An answer to this question would answer a more substantive question: whether Roosevelt was in fact interested in exploring ideas of international control or whether he was already committed to perpetuating an Anglo-American monopoly (the Quebec Agreement implied commitment, and he had recently discussed cornering the world uranium and thorium markets with Groves and Bush).