In the book Why Congress (2023) by Phillip Wallach (which I taught in class today), there is a discussion of how the Truman Commission accidentally discovered and then kept secret the Manhattan Project.
The author and one of the participating Congressmen claim that action of keeping it secret "deserves to be remember as one of Congress' finest moments." (p58)
But with the Oppenheimer movie out this summer and all the arguments about creating nuclear weapons fresh in my mind- I can't help but wondering about this question:
Would it have been better for Congress to openly debate the merits of developing nuclear weapons?
The unitary Executive, as we hear from Hamilton in Federalist 70, has the advantage of “secrecy;” but the plural Legislature has the advantage of “deliberation and wisdom.”
All the arguments about secrecy have to do with the main argument for their development- namely, that "it was an undertaking paralleling a German project and that the first country to succeed would probably win the war." (p59)
Good point, CJ -- do you think even beyond the Manhattan Project, executive control of the war was excessive, including secrecy?
The government defaults to the position that ‘the people’ are too dumb to understand anything, and definitely too dumb to have any input. They don’t even trust us with voting in an election anymore.