-9that LRL felt more urgency to develop a readiness program because by reducing
the present six month to one of approximately 2 months,
the urgency of any future
decisions regarding nuclear testing will be increased and the possibility of using
long lead time as an excuse to delay decision will be eliminated.
LRL was going to press for a readiness program.
He advised that
LRL will send in another letter
in the near future which will outline an up-to-date readiness program."
In
reviewing these minutes before they were sent in, Bradbury communicated to Brown
"I must admit that I have since imagined a situation in which the Russians walk
out of the Geneva conference loudly proclaiming that they won't be the first to
test and then rush off to the UN to get a resolution denouncing testing (which they
probably could).
Under these circumstances, the U.S. might be willing to ignore the
first part of the episode but not the second, and thus we might find ourselves with
a very limited time to get off a test of two."
A 27 April 61 letter from Bradbury to Betts notes that the present information
DMA is that the amount to be given LASL for weapons thru FY 62 is about 2 million
short of what they estimate to be their needs.
He notes that they can possibly
live at this decreased if they have to and details how they reduce their spending,
about 1/2 of which wauld be to reduce activities in certain local areas.
However,
he doesn't wish to curtail any of this and asks DMA to clarify whether they will
try to fight for the money of just how LASL should act.
The 25 May reply from Betts to the minutes of the Mar.
inter-laboratory
meeting, makes a few comments expecially on weapons assignments.
Noting that
the labs assume the moratorium would continue under present ground rules, he
states "However, we must be careful not to permit ourselves or our thinking to
become too completely "conditioned" to a "no test" environment.
When and if the
moratorium is lifted, as there is at least a reasonable chance that it will be,