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Ladies' Room. The more Rickover studied the atomic submarine, the better it looked to him, but he soon found that few Navy bigwigs were even slightly interested. He had a few influential friends, but he had to fight constantly to keep a narrow foothold in the Navy's development affairs. As the postwar Navy settled down, his stock went down, too. Called back from Oak Ridge, he was reduced to vague "advisory duties" in an office that was once a ladies' room.
Having failed to interest the Navy, he tried the Atomic Energy Commission, but in 1947 the AEC was preoccupied with the urgent job of building up the nation's stockpile of atom bombs. It regarded nuclear power as a project for the future.
At last Rickover risked a step that was brash by Navy standards. After long preparatory politicking, he asked Admiral Chester Nimitz, an old submariner who was then Chief of Naval Operations, to back the atomic submarine. Nimitz saw the point at once and signed a letter (prepared by Rickover) to the Secretary of the Navy, recommending work on an atomic sub. Secretary John L. Sullivan approved the project, and Rickover became chief of the Navy's newly created Nuclear Power Division in the Bureau of Ships.
Then he renewed his attack on the AEC, which, as lord of the atomic empire, would have to take part in the project. At first, the AEC showed no official interest, but Rickover's new Navy backing took gradual effect. One of the AEC's worries was a lack of both public and congressional enthusiasm for anything nuclear except bombs. This ruled out civilian power reactors as too peaceable, but the nuclear submarine was a weapon and had a weapon's immediacy.
At last, in 1949, the AEC made a deal with the Navy, creating a Reactor Development Division headed by Dr. Lawrence R. Hafstad. At Rickover's suggestion, Hafstad agreed that the new division should include a "Naval Reactors Branch." The man in charge: Captain Rickover.
Tempo 3. This bureaucratic tour de force made Rickover boss of both the Navy and the AEC ends of his project. He could, and did, write letters to himself, answer them right off, and so get Navy-AEC "agreement" for the record. He assembled the bright young officers of his Oak Ridge days, told them not to wear uniforms, mixed them with civilian scientists. He moved them into an AEC building called Tempo 3, on Constitution Avenue, stripped the carpets from the floors to work at wartime pressure amid wartime austerity.
Rickover's high-level wangling operation is regarded by Washington connoisseurs as a classic, but it was not wholly admired by his Navy superiors. Captains are big men on ships, but in Washington "Navy country," where gold, braid glitters like Christmas trees, they do not amount to as much. And here was a captain with power that few admirals dreamed of.
Rickover has little tolerance for mediocrity, none for stupidity. "If a man is dumb," says a Chicago friend, "Rickover thinks he ought to be dead." Rickover did not conceal his opinions, and many of the officers he regarded as dumb had grown into admirals, cruising the Pentagon. They had not forgotten or forgiven. One of his opponents remarked recently: "We thought we had him fixed, but now he's out of control."