National Affairs: The $5 Billion Mystery

Hardly an eyebrow flickered when the Senate Appropriations Committee last week voted its approval of the House's $56 billion appropriation for the armed forces in fiscal 1952. But when the Senators also voted to shove another $5 billion into the hands of Defense Secretary Marshall for what was described only as "additional air power," they threw the capital into a tailspin of speculation.

Harry Truman himself, talking to a roomful of Democrats in San Francisco (see The Presidency), gave the first wild whirl. "It is fantastic what can happen with the use of the new weapons that are now under construction in this country," he ad-libbed solemnly, "not only the one which we all fear the most, but there are some weapons which are fantastic in their operation." Most of Washington regarded this as just another Truman ad-liberty, but one reporter dug up North Dakota's garrulous Milton Young, a member of the Senate committee which had been considering the $5 billion, and asked him to comment.

"Why, yes," said Young, "they are new and terrible weapons of war that are just beyond imagination . . . something new and different . . . even more startling than germ warfare . . . It's something I never thought of. It is as closely guarded a secret as atomic weapons, but it will cost nothing like as much to produce . . ." Did the knowledge of the new weapons have anything to do with passage of the $5 billion? "Of course," said Subcommittee Chairman Joe O'Mahoney of Wyoming. South Carolina's Burnet Maybank added a slight damper. Appropriations for "the weapons," he said, were "small compared to $5 billion." Most of the money in the $5 billion item was specifically ticketed for direct expansion of U.S. air power—to increase the Navy's air arm as well as to start building the Air Force to the new congressional target of 163 wings.

What about the mystery weapons? Speculation zipped through nerve gases, atomic dust, disintegrator rays and harnessed sunbeams, but seemed to settle somewhere near guided missiles (see Armed Forces). Meanwhile the $61 billion bill spun toward final action on the Senate floor this week with new momentum.