'No other course'

With conservative pressure mounting on President Harry S. Truman to build “The Super” – the hydrogen bomb – in the face of what was perceived “the Soviet threat,” the secrecy surrounding the debate made it seem a “fait accompli.”

David Lilienthal, then chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, noted in his diary: “We keep saying we have no other course; what we should say is we are not bright enough to see any other course.”

(Source: David Halberstam’s “The Fifties”)

Prescient words.