Douglas Alexander: “in 1942 President Franklin D. Roosevelt summoned a bipartisan group of congressional leaders to the White House. He…”

“in 1942 President Franklin D. Roosevelt summoned a bipartisan group of congressional leaders to the White House. He outlined with them a secret plan to win World War II. At the conclusion of the briefing, the President asked Kenneth McKellar of Tennessee, who chaired the Appropriations Committee in the Senate, if the Senator could hide $2 billion in the appropriations bill for this project to win the war. Senator McKellar replied: That will be no problem, Mr. President, but I have one question: Just where in Tennessee do you want me to hide the $2 billion? That place in Tennessee turned out to be Oak Ridge, one of the three secret cities, along with Hanford in Washington and Los Alamos in New Mexico, that became the principal sites for the Manhattan Project. The purpose of the Manhattan Project was to end the war by finding a way to split the atom and build a bomb before Germany could. Nearly 200,000 people worked secretly in 30 different sites in three countries. President Roosevelt's $2 billion appropriation equaled $24 billion in today's dollars. Less than 3 years later, after that conversation between President Roosevelt and Senator McKellar, the project succeeded when on August 6 and 9, 1945, the first atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. On August 14, Japan surrendered unconditionally.”