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The crash program for building the "super" dwarfed even the Manhattan Project. The AEC nearly tripled in size, growing from a handful of sites and 55,000 employees to 142,000 employees spread across more than a score of sites. It would devour nearly 7 percent of the nation's entire electrical output, and, according to historian Richard Rhodes, exceed in capital investment the combined market capitalization of Bethlehem Steel, U.S. Steel, Al..
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Then, one night, while daughter Margaret played the piano upstairs, the floor indeed gave way and the piano crashed through, sending plaster and rotted wood onto the executive mansion's first floor below. The subsequent extensive and high-profile restoration provided the perfect cover to install a secret bomb shelter. On August 1, 1950, Truman's naval aide, Robert Dennison, wrote a memo to the renovation team, explaining, "The President has..
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Garrett M. Graff |