What Happened to Civil Defense?
CHAPMAN, WILLIAM
ADMINISTRATION'S SHELTER PROGRAM COLLAPSES What Happened to Civil Defense? By William Chapman Washington When the 87th Congress convened for its second session last January, the safest bet...
...It did not contemplate total protection, he said, though it might rescue between 40 and 55 million people...
...Inquests into the demise of civil defense led to two Southern Congressmen, both habitually hostile to shelter schemes...
...Although baffled by the unexpected hostility and indifference, the OCD planners maintained throughout that the public had not reverted to its pre-Berlin apathy...
...From the beginning, the shelter program was buffeted between the two extremes of Congressional hostility...
...Prodded for comment during a July press conference, President Kennedy said that he was still "hopeful" Congress would pass his bill...
...it was merely withholding its enthusiasm until responsible officials could offer something tangible...
...For example, 86 per cent of those questioned agreed that shelter space in buildings should be marked and provisioned...
...told him...
...At the other extreme, the shelter incentive plan was never enthusiastically received by those legislators who supported civil defense in the past...
...They are also looking into caves, mines and tunnels...
...His opposition remained unconvinced...
...In late 1961 the Administration had hoped to take civil defense out of Thomas' hands by reorganizing it in the Pentagon, but the Texas Congressman managed to retain jurisdiction...
...The poll was a great success at the Governor's Conference in Hershey, Pennsylvania, but it had little impact in the places which mattered most—the key committees of Congress...
...William Chapman, a staff reporter for the Washington Post, here makes his first contribution to these pages...
...But even less visionary proponents of civil defense had difficulty believing that Western civilization could be preserved through the purchase of two or three billion dollars worth of shelters in the next five years...
...In the last analysis the shelter program was stalled because no one with the power to move it cared to push...
...The only place that is presumably out of bounds is the subway tunnel on Capitol Hill...
...In any event many Congressmen, ignoring the results of the poll, continue to believe there is no substantial public support for an intensive shelter program...
...It is certainly death and destruction beyond the thinking perhaps of anybody in this room, as to what could happen...
...Anticipated support for civil defense from other quarters never arrived...
...If the danger is real enough to embark on such a program I should think it would be real enough for you to recommend that we do it on a crash basis," Representative Charles R. Jonas (R.-N.C...
...The OCD expected the incentives to create 100 million of the envisioned 235 million shelter spaces by 1967...
...Moreover, this was the same Congress which in its first session had introduced 36 civil defense measures, including a grim constitutional amendment permitting temporary appointments for House vacancies in the event of a national disaster...
...But the public still very much wanted a sensible shelter protection plan, according to Pittman and his associates...
...One need not have been an inside dopester to have agreed with columnist Roscoe Drummond that "Congress will undoubtedly approve the Administration's sensible fallout shelter program...
...By mid-August, the program was dead, and the Office of Civil Defense (OCD) was limited by appropriations to completing the less ambitious projects it already had underway...
...By William Chapman Washington When the 87th Congress convened for its second session last January, the safest bet in town was that President Kennedy's new approach to civil defense would slide through the legislative machinery with a minimum of friction...
...As one aide remarked: "The emphasis was all on the Government helping schools and hospitals, and who could vote against that...
...But seven months later Drummond was attempting to explain why Congress had betrayed his prescience: Civil defense, it had become clear, was hopelessly stalled for the rest of this year...
...The entire burden of stimulating Congress' interest therefore rested with Steuart Pittman and the able executive aides he summoned to replace the ineffectual management of the old Office of Civil and Defense Mobilization...
...Not a penny of these funds emerged from the House Appropriations Committee, and only $10 million was allowed for the further research the Committee deemed advisable...
...Representative Carl Vinson (D.-Ga...
...The hysteria had disappeared and that, they felt, was good, for no program could succeed on the crisis-and-calm foundation of the past 10 years...
...For several reasons, many of them conflicting, Congressmen never have shown much interest in large-scale civil defense, and when the edge was taken off the Berlin crisis, they quickly reverted to their traditional apathy...
...Swept into Washington on the tide of the excitement and near-hysteria of 1961, they were suddenly left stranded on the beach when the tide ebbed away...
...Committee staff members questioned its value and complained that some questions were loaded...
...The attempt to gain new confidence for civil defense by reorganizing it in the Pentagon plainly failed...
...The White House virtually ignored it until the issue was dead...
...About 60 million potential shelter spaces were located in 120,000 existing buildings last year, and engineers and architects are now making more detailed inspections...
...Representative Albert Thomas (D.-Tex...
...The poll seemed to indicate an extraordinary endorsement of the community fallout shelter plan...
...What is the purpose...
...For the coming year the Administration had asked for $460 million, enough for 20 million spaces by next July...
...On one side were those who refuse to believe that nuclear war is possible and thus feel that money spent for shelters is money wasted...
...Representative Chet Holifield (D.-Calif...
...whose subcommittee on appropriations for independent offices annually pares civil defense requests, held hearings on the bill in March and then tabled it on the grounds that there was no authorization for the incentive grants...
...And while only a bare majority of 51 per cent believed that fallout shelters could save "a significant number of lives," well over 60 per cent endorsed other specific aspects of the OCD program...
...As one Congressman put it, "They are trying to cover a bed with a handkerchief...
...Conservative Republicans were suddenly heard quoting scientists and professional pacifists on the futility of fallout shelters...
...Though the fever over the Berlin crisis had broken, the public was still demanding an effective, longrange shelter program—or so at least the returning legislators claimed...
...Congressional comment in and out of the committee hearings revealed still other motives for freezing the bill...
...Others suggested that the incentive grants would become multi-million dollar boondoggles for local politicians...
...So, who is going to be foolish enough to drop the first one...
...We must assume that [Khrushchev] has the bombs and means of delivering them to this country, and certainly we know that we can deliver as many if not more to his country," Thomas said...
...Besides Congressional opposition, they had to grapple with a significant segment of the scientific community which proclaimed the whole idea of shelters a hoax, and with a nation which no longer seemed to care...
...And always lurking behind the controversy were recollections of past civil defense debacles—the failure of evacuation plans, the bitterness of the family-shelter era, and so on...
...Who is going to win...
...chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, had not only declined to call the bill up for hearings but had never really discussed it seriously with his staff...
...The President's civil defense plan emphasized community fallout shelters, a welcome contrast to the incredible guns-at-the-door debate which had contributed to the familyshelter dizziness last autumn...
...It was greeted there with a studied coolness by the military chiefs who frequently exert great influence on the Congressional armed forces committees...
...spoke up for it publicly, but in private told anyone who asked that it was an "ineffectual" program...
...If civil defense officials had any illusions that a fear of nuclear attack might hasten Congressional approval, they were quickly relieved of them when Thomas opened his subcommittee hearings...
...The Administration's plan sought to provide incentive grants to public institutions, such as hospitals, schools and welfare agencies, which would agree to provide fallout protection in new buildings...
...Their optimism was buoyed early in July when the results of the Elmo Roper-Michigan State University public opinion poll on civil defense were made public...
...Can either side win by it...
...These were indeed formidable roadblocks, but the obstructions of Vinson and Thomas offer only a surface explanation for the interment of civil defense this year...
...Holifield, of course, is virtually a minority of one in the civil defense field, having long ago established as a minimum target the erection of fire and blast shelters to save everyone at a cost of $20 billion...
...Neither the House nor the Senate Armed Services Committee had bothered to hold hearings on the bills, while the House Appropriations Committee casually dismissed the shelter plan with the comment that more research was needed...
...Steuart L. Pittman, the Pentagon's embattled assistant secretary for civil defense, again and again explained to skeptical committees that the Administration's program offered only the hope of saving some lives which otherwise would be lost...
...Currently immobilized for lack of money, the OCD hopes to struggle through the rest of the shelter survey program in 1963...
Vol. 45 • September 1962 • No. 18
