CONTENTS

THE "SECRET" REVEALED by ErwinKnoll I

THE H·BOMB SECRET by Howard Morland 3 To know how is to ask why

WRESTLING WITH LEVIATHAN by ErwinKnoU 13 The Progressive knew it would win

ATOMIC SECRECY: FUEL FOR THE COLD WAR by John BueU 18 The myth served a powerful few

A NATION BESET BYCONFUSION AND FEAR by Ron McCrea 25

THE WAYTHE PRESS SAW IT 27

LETTERS ON THE H·BOMB CONTROVERSY 30

A POSTSCRIPT by Howard Morland 33

ERRATA (December, 1979) by Howard Morland 35

BONANZA by Ron Carbon 36

AFTERTHOUGHTS-MARCH, 1981 by Ron Carbon (back cover) COMMENT

The 'secret' revealed

he fr ont cover of this magazine was designed fo r the patiently explained to our friends that the Founders, in their April 1979 issue. Only the date has been changed. wisdom, had not written a "mediation" process into the Bill T Howard Morland's article, "The H- bomb Secret, " of Rights. and all of the material on Pages 14 through 23, was set in We discovered that some of our fe llow citizens (and some type fo r the April issue. Not a word, not a comma has been of our colleagues in the media) believethe First Amendment changed. to be obsolete -a scrap of paperrendered useless by the de­ For more than six months - from March 9, when Federal mands of "national security." We discovered that our own District Judge Robert W. Warren issued, at the Govern­ Government believes the. First Amendment was exploded ment's request, a temporary restraining order barring by the bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945 - or at least publication of Morland's article, through September 28, rendered "inoperative" by the Atomic Energy Act of1954. when the U.S. Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals vacated We were determined to disabuse our fellow citizens, our Judge Warren's injunction - the cover design and reproduc­ colleagues in the media, and our Government of these un­ tion proofs were locked in a bank vault, "protected" from fo rtunate, undemocraticnotions. We were prepared to throw public scrutiny by an unprecedented act of censorship. all of our resources into the fight, and to find resources we It is not a perfect article, and had it not been the subject of did not even know existed. We were resolved, of course, to a historic prior restraint case, we would make some changes protect and preserve this magazine - but we were prepared, in it today. Howard Morland has learned that his article con­ if necessary, to sacrifice even The Progressive fo r the princi­ tains some technical errors; it is one of the many ironies of ple at stake. the case that the Government's attempt at suppression resulted in the disclosure of fa r more technical information rior restraint- the lawyers' term for censorship ­ than is contained in "The H-bomb Secret." In rereading the has always been regarded as an especially obnoxious proofs, we have fo und at least one typographical error and abuse of governmental authority. It has been despised one inaccuracy we should have caught in the first place: We -Pand rightly so - in the American constitutional tradition put Representative Ronald V. Dellums in the wrong Con­ and, fo r that matter, in the Anglo-Saxon legal tradition, fo r gressional district. centuries. The reason should be obvious: When the Stateim­ But what makes publication of "The H-bomb Secret" in poses prior restraint, it places its own conduct beyond public this issue of The Progressive important is that the article ap­ scrutiny; it deprives the ci tizenry of its right to fo rm an inde­ pears exactly the way Morland wrote it; exactly the way we pendent judgment as to the justice or injustice of its conduct. intended to publish it last spring, and exactly the way the Censorship is an indispensable device to those who would Government of the United States attempted to suppress it. wield power unchecked. Its publication is a triumph for the First Amendment. In 1643 the British parliament enacted a law conferring on Early last March, we could have acquiesced in the Govern­ a Committee of Examinations the power "to regulate print­ ment's offer to "rewrite" Howard Morland's article in a ing: that no book, pamphlet, or paper shall be henceforth fo rm that the U.S. Department of Energy would not find printed, unless the same be first approved and licensed by "obj ectionable. " We wasted few words in declining that such, or at least one of such, as shall be thereto appointed." magnanimous offer. It was against that law that Milton directed his fa mous We could have simply and quietly acceded to the Govern­ Areopagitica. "Henceforth, " he wrote, "let no man care to ment's demand for censorship on grounds of "national learn, or care to be more than worldly wise; fo r certainly in security" - as other publications have. We refused. higher matters to be ignorant and slothful, to be a common We could have complied with the entreaties of many of steadfast dunce, will be the only pleasant life and only in re­ our fr iends that we submit the matter to "mediation" by a quest.'' panel of "experts, " thus avoiding enormously costly litiga­ What we learned last spring is that the Government of the tion and, perhaps, heading off an adverse court decision. We United States is convinced it must keep the people of this na-

THE PROGRESSIVE I 1 tion ignorant and slothful so that they can lead the only pleas­ veloped for a third of a century, to open that system of ant life while the world marches toward nuclear Armaged­ secrecy to public discussion and debate, and to engage in that don. debate far more of the American people than we could ever But we also learned that the spirit of freedom still have hoped to reach through the pages of The Progressive. flourishes in our country- even after three decades of Cold We hope that debate will be a beginning- a beginning of War, witchhunts, and obsession with a kind of "national a process in which all of the nuclear policies pursued by out security" that seems to grow more elusive the more Governrilent will be held up to public scrutiny and review. relentlessly it is pursued. We hope that the process will end in a reversal of those policies and an end to the suicidal nuclear arms race in which We learned, to be sure, that freedom has many fair­ we have been unwitting, uninformed participants. We hope, weather friends. But we also learned that it has devoted and of course, that when Americans know the facts they will unwavering defenders. Among them are citizens who had share our views- but most of all we hope they will come to never heard of The Progressive, did not share its political know the facts. We are willing to take our chances with the perspectives, did not care about the nuclear issues involved judgments of an iriformed·people; that is called democracy. in our struggle, but were simply outraged by the very idea of People who want to be ignorant and free, as Madison ob­ censorship. served, want that which never was and never will be. We learned, to be sure, that a Federal judge would violate Read Howard Morland's article, "The H-bomb Secret." 200 years of legal precedents against prior restraint. But we Feel free to challenge his facts, or the conclusions he draws also learned that we could receive a fair and full hearing in from them. Feel free to question our editing of the article, the appellate courts, and that we could muster a formidable our judgment in publishing it. But most of all, feel free - array of legal talent in our behalf and in behalf of the First more free than any of us were for the six months and nine­ Amendment. We believe we would have won the right to teen days when the article could not be printed by us or read publish Howard Morland's article in the courts if the by you. And feel more free than any of us were even before Government had not aborted the case by moving to vacate March 9, for we are certain we have made it more difficult the iQjunction. We believe that is why the Government for the Government to be a censor, and less likely that its moved to vacate the injunction. next attempt at censorship will succeed. We learned, to be sure, that the costs of defending freedom can be astronomic, and could easily destroy a publication like The Progressive. But we also learned that among our readers and outside our readership there are peo­ ple willing to help defray those costs. We have found some of those people, and we hope to find the others whose help we need. A to be safegauded We learned, most significantly, that our country still pro­ prlaclple vides the promise of freedom - and that the promise grows The following statement support- . a small publication of political stronger when it is put to the test. ing The Progressive and the First commentary. Amendment was endorsed by the "We believe that The editor or publisher of The Nation, Progressive is fighting to protect orne fundamental questions raised by The Progressive Columbia Journalism Review, the First Amendment rights of ev­ in its First Amendment fight remain unresolved as this Society, Village Voice, Harper's, ery publicationin America. includ­ issue goes to press. We asked the Seventh Circuit Court The AtlanticMonthly, Ms., Scien­ ing those with which we are associ­ tific American. SevenDays, Work­ ated. of Appeals to rule that Judge Warren had acted improperly in S ing Papers, The New Republic, "In a time when military policy doing what no Federal judge had ever done before in the Mother Jones, Inquiry, Win, In is closely linked with technological history of this Republic - impose a prior restraint on These Times, The Witness, Texas capabilities. debate about military Observer, Science for the People, . policy that uses technical informa­ grounds of "national security." We asked the Court to find Dollars & Sense, TheBlack Schol­ tion is part of a vigorous system of that secrecy provisions embodied in the Atomic Energy Act ar, and Politics Today, and by or­ freedom of expression under the are so broad and vague as to be patently unconstitutional. We ganization spokesmen for Com­ First Amendment. The Govern­ mittee for a SANE. Nuclear Policy, ment's tendency to hide widely asked the Court to open the records of this case, which have Critical Mass Energy Project. War known technical processes under a been, themselves, subjected to heavy-handed Government Resisters League. Friends Peace mantle of secrecy in the national censorship. Committee. and American interest and prevent press com­ Friends Service Commiuee: mentary on these matters can only We do not know how the Court will rule. We do know we result in stifling debate, not in pro- • have already achieved some significant objectives- to ex­ "In 1971, the Government of tecting the physical security of pose the secrecy in which the nuclear arms race has been en- the United States moved against Americans. The New York Times and The "The facts at issue in the Washington Post in an unprece­ Government's dispute with The dented attempt to assert a right of Progressive will be determined in censorship and prior restraint. This the courts. but the principle of For additional copies of this reprint gross violation of the First freedom of the press is one to be (a $2.00 each (includes postage) write: Amendment was promptly and vigorously safeguarded by all of us. unequivocally rebuffed by the That is why we are pledging our REPRINTS courts. full support to The Progressive in The Progressive. 408 W. Gorham St. Madison WI 53703. "Now the Government has its fight against censorship and Payment with order. please. mounted a similar attempt against prior restraint."

:: I NOVEMBER 1971) The B·bomb secret To know how is to ask why

Boward Morland

(Copyright© 1979, Howard Morland.)

hat you are about to learn is a would be far beyond your capability- n October 24, 1978, Represen­ secret - a secret that the unless you have the resources of at 0 tative Ronald V. Dellums, a United States and four other least a medium-sized government member of the House Armed Wnations, the makers of hydrogen weap­ Nor is it because I want India, or Services Committee, sent a letter ask­ ons, have gone to extraordinary Israel, or Pakistan, or South Africa to ing the Department of Energy to ex­ lengths to protect get the H-bomb sooner than they plain publicly why it expects a shortage The secret is in the coupling otherwise would, even though it is of plutonium in its nuclear weapons mechanism that enables an ordinary conceivable that the information will production program. fission bomb - the kind that be helpful to them. Would the neutron bomb, which destroyed Hiroshima - to trigger the It isn't so much because the details was then going into production, re­ far deadlier energy of hydrogen fusion. themselves are helpful to an under­ quire more plutonium than the stan­ The physical pressure and heat standing of the grave public policy dard tactical nuclear weapons it is generated by x- and gamma radiation, designed to replace? moving outward from the trigger at the Had the shortage been induced by speed of light, bounces against the the plutonium requirements of a new weapon's inner wall and is reflected complete generation of multiple-warhead with enormous force into the sides of a 'A ballistic missiles- the Navy's Trident carrot-shaped "pencil" which contains oae·megatoa bomb (successor to Poseidon), and the Air the fusion fuel. Force's M-X (successor to Minuteman That, within the limits of a single ... would fit uader Ill)? sentence, is the essence of a concept What were the weapons specifica­ that initially eluded the physicists of the your bed' tions that had led the Department of United States, the Soviet Union, Brit­ Energy to contemplate a massive in­ ain, France, and China; that they dis­ dustrial retooling: the rebuilding of its covered independently and kept old plutonium production plant at tenaciously to themselves, and that questions presented by hydrogen Hanford, Washingt-on, and the restart­ may not yet have occurred to the weap­ weaponry - though they may well be ing of a standby reactor at Savannah on makers of a dozen <>ther nations essential. River, South Carolina? bent on building the hydrogen bomb. I am telling the secret to make a "Each of these options will involve I discovered it simply by reading and basic point as forcefully as I can: both financial costs and environmental asking questions, without the benefit of Secrecy itself, especially the power of a costs," the letter stated. "The Ameri­ security clearance or access to classifit>d few designated "experts" to declare can people need to know the reasons materials. There may be some missi· tg some topics off limits, contributes to a for the anticipated plutonium shortage pieces here and there- some parts of political climate in which the nuclear in order to have informed opinions on the puzzle that eluded my search - establishment can conduct business as the cost- benefit aspects of the but the general accuracy of my descrip­ usual, protecting and perpetuating the plutonium shortage issue. " tions and diagrams has been confirmed production of these horror weapons. As chairman of the Subcommittee by people in a position to know. The pernicious effects of hydrogen on Fiscal and Government Affairs, and Why am I telling you? bomb secrecy are well illustrated by an as a Congressman whose California It's not because I want to help you incident that occurred in Washington district includes one of the nation's build an H-bomb. Have no fear; that five months ago. two nuclear weapons laboratories,

THE PROGRESSIVE I 3 Dellums had more than a casual in­ an exploding fission bomb, the circular sure to the hydrogen part of the weap­ terest in such questions. object near the top of each drawing, is on. Radiation pressure- a term never Three weeks later he received the transferred by means of radiation pres- mentioned in the open literature - is Energy Department's reply: " ... It is not possible to respond to most of the questions in an unclassified manner. The enclosure to your referenced letter contains 'secret/ restricteddata' and should be so classi­ fied.'' The enclosure was the list of Somebody talked questions. It is now a secret. Had Dellums invoked the security privileges available to Representatives "Does anyone know the secret of signment from The Progressive to and Senators with a "need to know," the H-bomb?" demonstrate that official secrecy in he could readily have obtained the Howard Morland didn't really this area serves no useful public answers. But he did not choose to do expect an answer when he threw purpose. so. The response he received demon­ the question out half-seriously one A 1965 graduate of Emory strates the lengthsto which the keepers night a year ago in a dormitory at University in Atlanta, Morland of the secrets are prepared to go in the University of Alabama at Tus­ has had only a smattering of dealing with the public: They do not caloosa. science education: two courses in simply withhold the answers; they can About thirty students had physics,two in chemistry, and one · also confiscate the questions. gathered to see his traveling slide in quantum mechanics. As a jour­ Such tactics have served since the show on atomic power and the nalist, it was only this winter that dawn of the atomic age to shield arms race; in the discussion that he published his first article ("Tri­ nuclear weapons policies from public followed he was explaining that his tium: the New Genie," in the scrutiny and debate, giving an advan­ next project would be to find out February issue of The Pro­ tage to those who formulate the more about nuclear weapons. gressive) . What knowledge he has policies and have a stake in their per­ "Sure, I know," said a young of military affairs comes largely petuation. And yet the advantage is man in the back of the room. from the two years he spent pilot­ one gained mostly by default. It results "The secret is in the radiation re­ ing Air Force cargo planes be­ as much from the self-imposed flectors.'' tween California and Vietnam. restraintof those who are not members The student went on to explain But Morland put his training of the classification elite as from the that he knew some of the people and experience to use in an inten­ weapon makers' own complicated who worked at the big Union Car­ sive six-month self-education security system. The importance of bide plant in Oak Ridge, Ten­ project in which he read virtually looking behind ''secret/ restricted'' nessee, where most of the compo­ every scrap of information avail­ curtains, the relative ease of doing so, nents for hydrogen weapons are able on the subject, visited every and the value to be gained from the ex­ built, and that they had told him production plant to which he could ercise are lessons we have still to learn. the reflection of x- and gamma gain access, and interviewed scores The self-serving purposes of official rays was the key to how the weap­ of scientists and engineers in and secrecy- not the least of which is its ons work. out of the weapons program. paralyzing effect on the spirit of public The explanation made little im­ Every technicalfact was double­ inquiry - can best be understood by pression on Morland at the time, checked; none was printed unless examining the most momentous and he didn't even bother to get it could be authenticatedby at least official secret of them all: the mechan­ the student's name. But later on it two knowledgeable sources. His ism of a hydrogen bomb. helped him crack what the diagrams and descriptionsreceived weaponmakers consider to be one widespread review in the scientific fall the world's nuclear weapons of their best-kept secrets. community prior to publication. 0 secrets, none has eluded publi­ Such chance remarks were part Copies also were submitted to the cation more successfully than of the mosaic of information from Department of Energy for verifica­ the secret of the H-bomb. In the twen­ which Morland, a thirty-six-year­ tion as to technical accuracy. The ty-five years since its first successful old peace activist, constructed the Department declined to do this. field test in the South Pacific, no de­ report on these pages - a report Morland's research was sup­ scription of how it works has ever been confirmed by people who are ported by donations to Th e made public. knowledgeable about the hy­ Progressive's arms race investiga­ The diagrams that accompany this drogen weapon program but are tion fund. He also received article are a close approximation of that not at liberty to discuss it openly. research assistance from a col­ process. They show the progression of He undertook the project on as- league, Louise Franklin Ramirez. events that occur during the detonation of a hydrogen weapon. The energy of

4 I NOVEMBER 1979 the essence of what remains of the H­ the A-bomb secret from the world. supplement his job teaching physics at bomb secret. The Army had already told where the Cornell, he had been doing consulting This description and the details that factories were, what they did, who work for the AEC. follow are the result of six months' in­ designed them, and who ran them. When the first prototype hydrogen vestigation of the nuclear weapon The disclosures came in a report by weapon exploded in the South Pacific production complex in the United Princeton physicist H.D. Smyth, writ­ on November 1, 1952, the public had States. It is a mosaic of bits and pieces ten before the weapon was ever tested, no idea how it worked, except that taken from employe recruitment to protect the Army's bureaucratic some of its energy came from hy­ brochures, environmental impact flank in case the $2 billion Manhattan drogen fusion. No one outside the U.S. statements, books, articles, personal Project turned out to be a dud. It was and Soviet governmentsknew that five interviews, and my own private published immediately after the war. of its ten megatons of explosive energy speculation. A number of reliable Foreign scientists wishing to build fis­ had come from fiSSion, not fusion, and sources have confirmed that the infor­ sion bombs could learn from the that 5,000 square miles of ocean sur­ mation fragments are correctly as­ Smyth Report about the materials re­ face had, therefore, beencontaminated sembled. quired, the nature and the scale of with lethal levels of radioactive fiSSion The simple facts are deducible from operations needed to obtain the mate- products. The evidence sank to the ocean floor. Sixteen months later, when the sec­ ond bomb went off, that partof the H­ bomb secret was revealed. A hundred miles downwind, the entire population ' ... Workers ...look like aslroaaals of Rongelap Island and the crew of a oa a lraiaiag exercise' Japanese fishing boat called The Lucky Dragon were dusted with powdered coral containing enough radioactive fis­ sion products to blister their skin and make their hair fall out. One fiSherman careful journalistic inquiry and from rials, the enrichment and production died. Japanese scientists analyzed the well-known physical principles. If techniques that worked best, and the deadly ash on the fishingboat deck and weapons proliferation is to be con­ names of people to contact for further concluded that the bomb was as much trolled, the availability of this informa­ information. Atomic spies could read a uranium bomb as a hydrogen bomb. tion must be recognized by policy the Smyth Report like a manual telling Half its energy had come from the fiS­ makers, who presently prefer to them where to go and what to look for. sion of uranium-238, as hadmost of its believe the information is unique to the Smyth's exhaustive account, later deadly fallout. weapons states. regretted by the security-conscious The bomb designers had felt no A discussion of nuclear weapons Atomic Energy Commission, was the obligation to warn the world that their secrets might well begin with Albert first of many flaps over secrecy. new invention was anything more than Einstein's memorable comment: On March 15, 1950, Scientific a bomb with a super-powerful blast­ "There is no secret, and there is no American went to press with an article that, in fact, its radioactive fallout defense." He offered as a corollary, by Cornell physicist Hans Bethe about could lethally poison a far greater area "There is no possibility of control ex­ thermonuclear fusion, the process that than its blast could destroy. Indeed, the cept through the aroused understand­ lights the sun and other stars. The hydrogen weapon had been publicized ing and insistence of the peoples of the AEC, sensitive about anything having as a "clean bomb." Edward Teller and world." to do with the H-bomb, ordered the J. Robert Oppenheimer, weapon de­ Nuclear energy, Einstein concluded, presses stopped. Three thousand copies signers whom the pressroutinely called "cannot be fitted into outmoded con­ of the magazine were destroyed, and "brilliant," kept the faith with the cepts of narrow nationalisms." But the presses were restarted with several nuclear weapon priesthood and kept America had emerged from World sentences removed. At that time, the their mouths shut. They would not War II as the sole possessor of nuclear H-bomb had not yet been invented. divulge weapon design information weapons - and those who had The concept was still under study, and merely to discuss such moral issues as capitalized on Einstein's mathematical a feeble - and ultimately abortive - fallout. genius had no use then for his political public debate was starting over the The dangers of fallout from nuclear equations. Less than a year after the issue. testing soon became a national preoc­ Hiroshima bombing, Congress passed Publisher Gerard Pie! charged the cupation, but when American and the Atomic Energy Act, extending Commission with "suppressing infor­ Soviet nuclear testing went under­ wartime information control into the mation which the American people ground in 1963, radioactive fallout indefinite fuiure and creating the illu­ need in order to form intelligent judg­ ceased to be a public issue. Nuclear sion that it was possible for one nation ments," but Bethe declined to com­ weapon production entered a golden to keep nuclear secrets from another. plain about it. "These peoplecan cause age of public apathy. Multiple warhead By that time, it was too late to keep me all kinds of trouble,'' he said. To missiles were designed and deployed

THE PROGRESSIVE I 5 without serious complaint, and ar­ porkbarrel project for South Carolina, problems of nuclear waste disposal and senals grew enormously. By removing where nuclear weapons production is the biological effects of radiation- can their products from sight, the weapon the state's largest industry? Or for also understand the technology of makers were able to continue to refine Washington state, home of the power­ nuclear weapons, if provided with the their weapons without protest. ful and military-minded Senator Henry necessary information. The growing Few people remember that nuclear M. (Scoop) Jackson? scientific and technical expertise which weapon secrets were the underlying The Department's assertion of has strengthened worldwide opposition issuein the witchhuntsand blacklists of secrecy protected it from havingto pro­ to nuclear power is equally vital to a the Joseph M<-<;arthy era. In ways vide public answers. The answers, as revival of effective public concern over sometimes subtle, sometimes direct, we shall see, would have raised pro­ nuclear weapons. the continuing challenges to civil liber­ found questions of public policy. Knowledge of the basic principles of ties in America today are traceable, in hydrogen weapon design is helpful in part, to widespread belief in the need efore considering technical understanding the structure of the for some secrecy. People assume that details, it should be noted that nuclear weapon production system. It even ifnothing else is secret, surely hy­ for most people there will always provides insight into the purposes of drogen bomb designs must be pro­ Bbe an H-bomb secret, just as there will continued nuclear testing, the natureof tected from unauthorized eyes. The puncturing of that notion is the purpose of this report. The hydrogen bomb secret is now more than twenty-five years old. Five nationalgovernments have built indus­ 'Understaading the product is tries to produce H-bombs, and there is necessary to understanding the system' little reason to think that any other na­ tion that wanted to build them would have trouble finding out how to do it. Pieces of the secret have been declassified and published in what always be, for most people, a radio new developments in nuclear weap­ weapon makers call "the open secret and an automobile secret. Not onry such as the neutron bomb, and literature," which is accessible to you everyone is interested in how things the devastating effects of nuclear war. and me. But enough of the secret has work. But millions of people in our Paying attention to the details is also been kept from the general public to highly technological society are a way of reminding ourselves that the perpetuate the mystery and discourage amateur expertson gadgets as varied as weapons are real. The most difficult in­ inquiry. Weapon makers can still hide the electric doorbell and the nuclear tellectual hurdle most people en­ behind their solemn duty to secrecy power reactor. counter in understanding nuclear when hard questions are asked about Anyone familiar with elementary weapons is to see them as physical what they are doing. principles of college physics- such as devices rather than as abstract expres­ Congressman Dellums's questions those underlying the technical sions of good or evil. The human mind are a case in point. They concern a predicted shortage of plutonium in the weapons program - a shortage that calls for hundreds of millions of dollars to be spent upgrad­ 'No defense' ing production reactors and fuel reprocessing facilities in Washington The following is from a letter from no defense; there is no possibility state and South Carolina. Why? Albert Einstein, signed January of control except through the Is the nuclear warhead and bomb 22, 1947, appealing for support for aroused understanding and insis­ production rate scheduled to increase the Emergency Committee of tence of the peoples of the world. dramatically? Do the latest weapon Atomic Scientists: "We scientists recognize our in­ designs call for more plutonium than "Through the release of atomic escapable responsibility to carry to older designs? (Enriched uranium, energy, our generation has our fellow citizens an understand­ which is used together with plutonium, brought into the world the most ing of the simple facts of atomic remains abundant.) Is the plutonium revolutionary force since energy and its implications for shortage really a tritium shortage in prehistoric man's discovery of fire. society. In this lies our only disguise, caused by the neutron This basic power of the universe security and our only hope - we bomb's high requirement for tritium? cannot be fitted into the outmoded believe that an informed citizenry (Tritium and plutonium production concept of narrow nationalisms. will act for life and not death." operations compete for space in the For there is no secret and there is same South Carolina reactors.) Is the Energy Department's proposal really a

•: I NOVEMBER 1<)7<) ftvan I. Schematic diagram of a Figure 2. High explosives in the primary Figure 3. The fissile core is squeezed to 300-kiloton thermonuclear weapon before system begin to burn, driving beryllium more than double its normal density, going detonation. Concentric spheres near the neutron reflector (A) and heavy supercritical. Neutrons fired from a high­ top make up the primary system, or fis­ Uranium-238 tamper (B) inward toward voltage vacuum tube start a chain reaction sion trigger. The rest is the secondary the fissile core. The space between the in the fissile material. The chain reaction system. tamper and the core allows the tamper to concentrates first in the fast-fissioning develop momentum before hitting the Plutonium-239 (C). core.

boggles at gadgets the size of Fadoa Fael hot surfboards that can knock down every lithium-6 gases building for miles around. But these tritide, are devices made by ordinary people in deuteride ordinary towns. The weapons are lithium-6 harder to believe than to understand. detonator I II deuteride neutrons I I I There are three stagesto the detona­ I I I I I tion of a hydrogen weapon: fission, fu­ Fluloa Fael NllceUaaeou t I I sion, and more fission. Although one I I Flulle: beryllium event must follow the other for the Pu-239 t � weapon to work, they happen so x- and rapidly that a human observer would U-235 polystyrene foam gamma experience only a single event - an radiation explosion of unearthly magnitude. NoafluUe: IIIII D-T neutron u Within the bomb, however, fission­ U-238 generator the splitting of uranium and plutonium nuclei - comes first.

THE PROGRESSIVE I 7 (Copyright ' Flgwue 4. The chain reaction spreads to Flpre 5. The weapon casing (E) reflects Flpn 6. Fusion fuel reacts virtually slow-fissioning Uranium-235 (D). Fusion radiation pressure around the thick radia­ simultaneously throughout the pencil, re­ fuel at the center of the core showers the tion shield (F) and onto the sides of the leasing 130 kilotons of energy to complete core with neutrons, "boosting" fission fusion tamper (G), collapsing the tamper the second stage. High-energy neutrons efficiency. As the core expands to its ori­ inward. Heat and pressure of the impact from fusion are absorbed by Uranium- ginal size, reaction stops, completing the start fusion in the tritiated portion (H) of 238, which has so far served as a fission first stage of the detonation. Energy re­ the fusion fuel "pencil." The precise tamper, radiation shield, radiation re­ lease so far: forty kilotons. Prompt location of the tritium within the pencil flector, and fusion tamper. Now it serves gamma rays and x-rays travel outward at depends on where the designer intends the as fission fuel. the speed of light. fusion reaction to begin. Neutrons from this fusion activity breed tritium through­ out the pencil.

The mechanism for the first fission A-bomb the "primary system. " The it to work in the fusion process. The stage is a miniaturized version of the rest of the nuclear part of the weapon is design of the secondary system is the Nagasaki bomb. It has roughly the called the "secondary system." In H-bomb secret. same explosive power as the World published accounts, the primary The challenge in designing a hy­ War II weapon, but it measures less system is often referred to as the "trig­ drogen weapon is to make the second­ than twelve inches in diameter. This ger." By itself, it could level a small ary system finish its task of fusion fission "trigger" vaguely resembles a city, but in a hydrogen weapon it before the expanding fireball of the pri­ soccer ball, with the same pattern of merely provides the energy necessary mary systems engulfs and destroys it. twenty hexagons and twelve pentagons to ignite the second stage, which About a millionth of a second is all the forming a sphere. Detonator wires are releases energy by fusing hydrogen to time available for doing the job. Pure attached to each pentagonal or hex­ form helium. A fission bomb is the radiant energy, in this case the energy agonal face. When its full explosive only force on Earth powerful enough to of x- and gamma radiation, is the only energy is realized, this oversized canta­ provide the compression and heat thing fast enough and manageable loupe becomes the source of the radia­ needed to detonate a fusion bomb. enough to be harnessed for that pur­ tion pressure which ignites the fusion The secondary system is the pose. stage. mechanism which captures the fiSSion X- and gamma radiation travel at the Weapon designers call this miniature energy of the primary system and puts speed of light, more than a hundred

R: NOVEMBER 1979 from the primary system and focus it uranium-238 metal into thin sheets on the fusion fuel. It is the largest and and the machining of those sheets to heaviest component of any hydrogen make radiation reflectors. weapon, and one of the most impor­ The raw material for this process ar­ tant. rives by truck or rail from Fernald, The reflector-casing is usually made Ohio, where gaseous uranium-238 of uranium-238, a heavy, shiny, metal hexafluoride has been chemically called "depleted uranium." In the last reduced to pure metal blocks.At Y-12, stage of the weapon's detonation se­ the blocks are fed like cordwood to a quence, the depleted uranium ex­ giant rolling press which flattens them plodes with the power of many into sheets five-and-a-half feet wide Hiroshima bombs, producing most of and one inch thick. The sheets are then the weapon's deadly fallout. However, fed through smaller presses which the first function of uranium-238 in the reduce their thickness to as little as secondary system is to serve not as an five-thousandths of an inch. When a energy source but as a finely sheet has reached the proper thinness, engineered energy reflector. the weapon part is cut from it the way All the major components of the cookies are cut from a sheet of dough. secondary system are made by Union The rough-cut parts are then machined Carbide, the chemical company, in the to final dimensions. foothills of the Great Smoky Moun­ A graduate student at the University tains of Tennessee. The 500-acre of Alabama, who knows people who bomb factory where the work is done work in Oak Ridge, told me the reflec­ still bears the code name, Y-12, as­ tor-casing is composed of thousands of n.,... 7. Uranium-238 fissions, adding signed it by the World War II designers finely machined reflecting surfaces. another 130 kilotons of energy to the ex­ of the atomic bomb. The Oak Ridge Jack Case, Union Carbide's manager plosion and generating enough fission buildings where scientists enriched for the plant, says some parts made at products to kill everyone within 150 uranium for the Hiroshima weapon Y-12 are so thin and delicate that spe­ square miles with fallout. This is the end now house the world's most sophis­ cial techniques for "fixturing," or at> of the third stage. A fireball begins to taching rough-cut parts to a lathe, develop .... ticated H-bomb production line. When -ffiid an American hydrogen weapon ex­ to be developed. Normal fixturing plodes, most of the explosive power techniques would mar the parts or times faster than the expanding debris comes from components made at allow them to sag and be distorted by from an exploding A-bomb. If the pri­ Y-12. Half the equipment in the coun­ their own weight. Y-12 pioneered in mary system and the fusion fuel are lo­ try's far-flung nuclear weapon produc­ the use of chemical adhesives and suc­ cated some distance apart, say twelve tion complex is concentrated there. tion in fixturing. The reflector-casing inches, the radiant energy of the pri­ may be composed of many thin pieces mary system will have time to race of uranium-238 sandwiched together ahead of the expanding nuclear debris ew residents of Oak Ridge and into an exotic metal plywood. and· reach the fusion fuel first. nearby Knoxville are aware that Radiation reflectors for the H-bomb The cylindrical shape of most hy­ such products come from their arsenalenter the Oak Ridge Y-12 plant drogen weapons plays an important Fpeaceful valley. A chemistry professor as great blocks of uranium-238 metal role in determining how this radiant who occasionally lectures at Y-12 told and emerge as finely engineered energy will be distributed inside the me he didn't know whatwent on at the canisters the size of household garbage casing. The primary system is located plant; he sometimes wondered, but he cans. When war comes, the canisters inside one end of a three- or four-foot­ didn't think it was the production of will reflect and focus the radiation that long hollow cylinder casing, and the fu­ bombs. A woman whose husband is an sets off hydrogen fusion. sion fuel is locatedinside the other end. Oak Ridge radiologist expressed out­ The cylinder is normally eighteen right disbelief that Oak Ridge was still usion is called a thermonuclear inches in diameter, large enough to in the weapons business. And yet the process because heat makes it contain the soccer-ball sized primary weapons role of the plant is not secret; happen. Temperatures of several system inside one end and leave a few it just isn't mentioned in public. Fhundred million degrees Celsius are inches to spare around the sides. A Much of the H-bomb secret is in a needed to start the process. However, complete one-megaton bomb (having form that can't be written down. It ex­ the rate of fusion is determined by the the explosive power of one million tons ists in the hand-and-eye coordination densityof the hydrogen fuel. In a weap­ of TNT) would fit under your bed. of the skilled workers who operate on, the rate of fusion must be ex­ The cylindrical casing is more than machine tools at the Y-12 plant, or in tremely rapid. For a useful amount of just the package that holds the nuclear the quality of the machines themselves. fusion fuel to fuse in the allotted parts together. It is also a radiation One of the high-precision tasks is the millionth of a second, it must first be reflector designed to capture radiation squeezing of large blocks of greatly compressed. Without tremen-

THE PROGRESSIVE I 9 dous compression, the fusion fuel the weapon and onto the sides of the pressing the fuel; the empty space be­ would not fuse fast enough to add fusion tamper. The fusion tamper then tween the fusion tamper and the fuel is much energy to the explosion before it collapses inward with enormous force, used to produce maximum compres­ was scattered uselessly by the expand­ driven by the pressure of x- and gam­ sion. In addition, the delicate ceramic­ ing fireball of the primary system. In a ma radiation from the primary system. like fusion fuel must be firmly cradled hydrogen weapon, radiation pressure is The fusion tamper compresses the fu­ and supported from all sides during the what compresses the fusion fuel suffi­ sion fuel and simultaneously heats its weapon's possibly rough ride to the ciently to make the device destroy a perimeter to ignition temperatures. target. city's suburbs as well as its center. An important part of nuclear weap­ A key ingredient in the design of this Radiation pressure, the principle by on design is the judicious use of empty aspect of the secondary system is the which the secondary system works, is spaces inside the weapon. The empty polystyrene foam that keeps the fusion normally too weak to be detected by space between a raised hammer and a fuel centered inside the fusion tamper. human senses. You cannot feel the nail allows the hammer to strike the By holding the fuel and the tamper physical push of a flashlight beam, for nail with much greater force than could apart, the foam allows the tamper to instance. There are no examples in the be mustered if the hammer were develop momentum before it strikes human environment of radiation in­ tense enough to move solid objects with more than barely measurable force. But the primary system of a hy­ drogen weaponis a nuclear power plant that generates twenty million kilowatt­ 'Continaed ... testing ...is a paradox hours' worth of thermal energy in a unless yoa know the secret' few billionths of a second, all inside a lump of metal compressed to the size of a baseball. Itsradiant energy can ex­ ert enormous force on an object lo­ cated only inches away. placed against the nailhead before pres­ the fusion fuel. Polystyrene foam is In fact, the radiation pressure inside sure was applied. In a hydrogen weap­ thus both a packaging material and an the weapon casing can theoretically be on, the fusion tamper serves as a ham­ empty space, protecting the hydrogen as high as a million million times mer that strikes the fusion fuel fuel during weapon delivery and col­ greater than atmospheric pressure - simultaneously from all sides, com- lapsing into nothing during detonation. about eight billion tons persquare inch. Physicists would describe the radiation as a .. gasof photons," a dense cloud of highly energetic pulses of electromag­ The price of secrecy netic energy, pushing violently against anything it touches. For the briefest Ten years ago the Pentagon ap­ costly measures taken indepen­ moment, the inside of the weapon pointed a nine-member "Task dently by the U.S. and the becomes an x-ray oven, similar in Force on Secrecy" to investigate U. S.S. R. to preserve technical principle to a microwave oven, but the effectiveness of the nation's secrecy, neither the United with unearthly temperatures and pres­ security system. This was one of its Kingdom nor China was long sures. findings: delayed in developing hydrogen As any science student can tell you, "With respect to technicalinfor­ weapons. heat is the enemy of compression. The mation, it is understandable that ''Also, classification of technical greatest densities are achieved when a our society would turn to secrecy information impedes its flowwith­ substance is compressed cold: Heat in an attempt to optimize the ad­ in our own system, and may easily tends to make it expand. Because fu­ vantage to national security that do far more harm than good by sion fuel in a weapon must therefore be may be gained from new discov­ stifling critical discussion and compressed befo re it reaches ignition eries or innovations associated review or by engendering frustra­ temperature, the fusion fuel of the sec­ with science and engineering. tion. There are many cases in ondary system is not exposed directly "However, it must be recog­ which the declassification of tech­ to radiation from the primary system. nized, first, that certain kinds of nical information within our It is protected on the end nearest the technical information are easily system probably had a beneficial primary system by a large radiation discovered independently, or effect and its classification has had shield. regenerated, once a reasonably a deleterious one.'' Around the sides of the fusion fuel is sophisticated group decides it is One of the task force members a tapered cylinder called the fusion worthwhile to do so. was Dr. Edward Teller, father of tamper. Radiation from the exploding "In spite of elaborate and very the U.S. hydrogen bomb. fission trigger is reflected around the large shield, or pusher, in the center of

10 .· NOVEMBER I 97lJ lhl!! IMir TO!:Imi!i, loi:Jik likll! ll!iiStllkiUI$ a lll aer· in a tl'!l!! no��c-nuclear �d\1 111111 bomlb$,

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THE PROGRESSIVE design have allowed more of the secret, once discovered, can long en­ of nuclear fission bombs became energy of the primary system to be cap­ dure, as Einstein observed. Attempts available long ago in the Smyth Report. tured and focused, smaller fission ex­ to limit knowledge may succeed tem­ Subsequent Atomic Energy Commis­ plosions have become adequate as trig­ porarily, but ultimately they are no sion declassifications and the ac­ gering events. One result of fifteen match for a determined investigator. cumulation of mountains of data and years of underground tests is a reflector The more practical effect of secrecy experience with the growth of the that will set offhalf a kiloton of second­ is to discourage and inhibit public par­ worldwide nuclear enterprise have ary fusion explosion with as little as half ticipation in the formulation of public eliminated the secret of fission bomb a kiloton of fission energy. Enter the policy - in this case not only nuclear construction. Credible designs and in­ neutron bomb. The neutron bomb weapons policy but also a broad structions for these have been prepared radiation reflector has to be made of spectrum of related policies (national by college-level physics students. high-density metal other than security, energy, environmental pro­ The building of a hydrogen bomb, uranium-238, so there will be no dirty tection, natural and human resource which can be ignited only by a fission fission explosion following the fusion. allocation) with which it is inextricably weapon, is a different matter. It would The metal is probably tungsten alloyed intertwined. take millions of dollars worth of spe- with nickel, iron, and, perhaps, rhenium. Underground testing was part of its design procedure. Unofficial sources say that a neutron weaponwith a total energy yield of one kiloton, one-twentieth of the Nagasaki 'The effect [of secrecy] is to stifle weapon, must contain more radioac­ tive tritium than a full megaton weap­ debate aboat ... naclear policy' on of more conventional design. The reason is that the deliberately weak neutron weapon is unable to generate much of its own tritium; more ·of it must be provided ready-made. Since Since World War II, the process of cialized equipment and hundreds of the country's only supplier of tritium is secrecy - the readiness to invoke '' na­ trained technicians to build a hydrogen also the sole present supplier of tional security" - has been a pillar of bomb - a feat beyond the capabilityof plutonium-239, an increase in orders the nuclear establishment. As Repre­ all but the most industrially sophisti­ for tritium is one plausible explanation sentative Dellums's recent experience cated nations. for the plutonium shortage about demonstrates, that establishment, act­ Whatever insights these descriptions whichCongressman Dellums inquired. ing on the false assumption that may provide to nations seeking to per­ "secrets" can be hidden from the fect their thermonuclear capability - ow could I, a journalist with no curious and knowledgeable, has suc­ Israel and South Africa,for example­ formal training in nuclear cessfully insisted that there are answers they are at best a triflingaddition to the • physics, learn things the which cannot be given and even ques­ information already available. No Government has kept out of public tions which cannot be asked. government intent upon joining the print for a quarter of a century? It was The net effect is to stifle debate nuclear terror club need long be at a surprisingly easy. People who make about the fundamentals of nuclear loss to know how to proceed. Nothing these weapons enjoy their work. Like policy. Concerned citizens dare not ask you or I could learn would long elude most of us, they enjoy talking shop. certain questions, and many begin to the nuclear physicists and engineers They also promote their activities in feel that these are matters which only a whose participation would be essential order to raise funds from Congress and few initiated experts are entitled to dis­ to such as enterprise. to recruitemployes. They learn to talk cuss. This self-imposed restraint only The risks of proliferation of hy­ and write without using classified entrenches further those who are com­ drogen weapons, such as they are, words, but they can'tlive in a vacuum. mitted to the nuclear arms race. must be weighed against the public In fact, any persistent investigator The secret of how a hydrogen bomb gain that may come from greater with the time, inclination, and deter­ is made protects a more fundamental awareness of how and why they are mination to learn the underlying scien­ "secret": the mechanism by which the already being produced. tific and technological principles, to resources of the most powerful nation Whether it be the details of a multi­ pierce the jargon and euphemisms of on Earth have been marshaled for million dollar plutonium production the industry, to examine the global catastrophe. Knowing how may expansion program or the principles voluminous public record, to look and be the key to asking why. and procedures by which nature's most listen carefully, and to put two and two Is it dangerous to tell how a hy­ explosive force is being packaged in together, can discover the findings and drogen bomb is made? No. For one our midst, we have less to fear from inventions of others. thing, the information falls far short of knowing than from not knowing. What In the business of nuclear weaponry, providing a blueprint for nuclear weap­ we do with the knowledge may be the as in science and technology itself, no on construction. The general features key to our survival. •

12 I NOVEMBER 1979 Wrestliag with levialhaa The Progressive knew it would win

Erwin Knoll ·

"We intend to resist the Govern­ such censorship in the 1971 Pentagon All this we knew, and we assumed ment's attempt at censorship and sup­ Papers case, it had been decisively the Government knew it too. And pression by all legal means at our dis­ rebuffed by the Supreme Court; that there we made our first mistake: We posal. We will appeal Judge Warren's the Court had ruled in 197 1 that if a thought the Government would recog­ preliminary injunction to the Court of prior restraint on publication were ever nize the realities and calculate the con­ Appeals and, if necessary, to the permissible, it could only be sustained sequences. We thought it would act in Supreme Court. We will somehow find in circumstances where there was con­ its own self-interest. Even after the the resources to sustain our struggle. clusive proof that publication would Department of Energy had advised us And we will win. result in direct, immediate, irreversible that it would seek a court order to "Watch this space for Howard Mor­ harm to the United States; that there block publication of Morland's article, land's article, 'The H-Bomb Secret: was no way the Government could we thought it would reconsider and Jet How W� Got It, Why We' re Telling meet such a test with respect to Mor­ common sense prevail. "Before the It' " land's article for The Progressive. Government actually goes to court," I - The Progressive, �That the Atomic Energy Act of told my colleagues at The Progressive, May 1979 1954 contained a secrecy provision that ''it will be seized by a spasm of sanity. '' was astonishingly broad and vague and I was dead wrong. he case was called Th e United sweeping, conferring on the Govern­ On March 9, in a Federal courtroom States of America vs. The ment the authority to suppress all in­ in Milwaukee, the Government found T Progressive, Inc. , Erwin Knoll, fo rmation (not just the Government's a judge willing to take its "national Samuel Day Jr. , and Ho ward Morland. own information) pertainingto nuclear security" claims on fa ith. He issued a It was an uneven match. We had the weapons, nuclear materials, and temporary restraining order against Government licked from the begin­ nuclear energy; that this incredible publication of Morland's article with­ ning and we knew it. statute had never been tested in the out even bothering to read the These were among the things we courts; that there was at least a strong manuscript. knew: likelihood that it would be found un­ �That the so-called secrets in constitutional. e were to encounter many Howard Morland's article weren't �That for all of these reasons, the more surprises in the next six secrets at all - that they were known Government's attempt to muzzle The months. One of the first and to thousands of people around the Progressive was bound to be an acute Wmost disappointing was the devotion of world; that they had been published in embarrassment - not to The many scientists- especially "liberal" books and journals and magazines and Progressive but to the Government it­ scientists - to the mystique of secrecy the Government's own reports; that self; that it would provide us with an which had apparently become, fo r any competent reporter, any diligent extraordinary opportunity to raise basic them, an act of fa ith. As soon as the researcher, and any capable spy could issues of public policy - to talk not first press accounts of the Govern­ do what Morland did - and could only about nuclear secrecy, censorship, ment's attempt at censorship appeared, probably do it better and faster if he and suppression, but about the crimi­ we began receiving telegrams, had more scientific background than nal insanity of the nuclear arms race telephone calls, and letters fr om lead­ Morland had. and its menacing half-brother, the ing luminaries of such organizations as �That no court in the United States nuclear power industry - and that we the Federation of American Scientists had ever allowed the Government to would be able to raise these issues with and the Union of Concerned Scientists, commit an act of censorship on a fa r greater audience than we could urging us not to publish the article and grounds of "national security" ; that ever hope to reach through the pages not to contest the Government's when the Government had attempted of this magazine. unprecedented assault on the. First

THE PROGRESSIVE I 13 llM!t!blld "md i!Ji)m

14 CBS News, asserted categorically, surfaced in Australia, two U.S. speech protected by the First Amend­ "The Government will win this case." officials, William Grayson, an Energy ment. Under that ingenious doctrine, They did not lack fo r company in ex­ Department physicist, and Keith Sam Day suggested, the historic slogan pressing those views. Werhan, a Justice Department lawyer, "Fifty-four Forty or Fight" would not Even among those who thought the flew to Australia to check the situation. be protected speech. More to the point, Government's assault on the First Round-trip fa re is about $1,800." the Government would be empowered Amendment was totally unwarranted, We were not prepared for the bizarre to suppress details of the next nuclear many implored us not to pursue our tactics and exotic arguments the power accident. rights in the courts lest we ''jeopardize Government was willing to pursue in the First Amendment" by an adverse court. From the beginning of the case, till, our initial assumptions court decision. What was painfully legal briefs, affidavits, and exhibits ­ proved to be correct: The case clear to us apparently eluded them - ours as well as the Government's - was an acute embarrassment to that if the First Amendment could only were heavily censored by the Govern­ theS Government, and we were well on be preserved by foregoing its protec­ ment and excluded fr om the public the way to winning it in the courts. tion, it was not merely in jeopardy; it record. Our lawyers had to be Shortly after the Government went · was gone. "cleared" by the Government to ex- into court against The Progressive, we began hearing rumors about disaffec­ tion in the Justice Department's ranks. Later, newspapers reported that a ma­ jority of the Department's lawyers '... we have won a small... victory working on the case had urged At­ ia a coatiaaiag straggle' torney General Griffin Bell to drop it. The Justice Department, we were given to understand, was in the unhap­ PY position of a reluctant lawyer serv­ ing a stubborn and vindictive client - e were not prepared fo r the amine these secret filings, and could do the Department of Energy. costs of the case, which placed so only under conditions that ranged The Government's case - if it ever W (and continue to place) an fr om inconvenient to impossible. They had a case - deteriorated rapidly. Our almost catastrophic strain on the were strictly enjoined fr om com­ attorneys - Th e Progressive's law firm meager resources of this magazine. municating any of these ''restricted of LaFollette, Sinykin, Anderson, and (See Ron Carbon's "Bonanza" on data" to us - the defendants - or Munson; the national legal staff of the Page 66 of this issue.) We were not fr om telling ·us what had transpired in AmericanCivil LibertiesUn ion, which prepared for its duration - it isn't over closed sessions of the court. On June represented the editors of this maga­ yet - or fo r the burdens it would im­ 15, when we asked Judge Warren to zine; Tom Fox of Madison and Paul pose on The Progressive's small staff. liftthe injunction he had imposed upon Friedman of the Washington firm of To the Government, of course, time us, he issued a secret opinion which, at White and Case, who represented and money are no object. Th e Wash­ this writing, we have still not been per­ Morland - worked heroically to de­ ington Star reported: mitted to read. fend the First Amendment, to "It is virtually impossible to com­ The Government's arguments fo r challenge the constitutionality of the pute the cost of the Government's suit abrogating this nation's 200-year-old Atomic Energy Act, and to compile a against Th e Progressive. Briefs filed by tradition against prior restraint were no factual record that demolished the the Justice Department in U.S. District less mind-boggling. The case began Government's "national security" Court and in the Court of Appealscar­ with the assertion that nuclear infor­ claims. ry the names of twelve Government mation was "data restricted at birth" We had other help. Distinguished lawyers. There may have been others - classified the instant it came into lawyers volunteered useful advice. who helped prepare briefs and being, even if it was based entirely on Some leading newspapers - Th e New affidavits. public sources and on our own creative : York Times, . The Boston Globe, Th e "Mark Sheehan, a Justice Depart­ work. Chicago Tribune - joined in "friend­ ment · spokesman, said the commit­ As the case progressed and the of-the-court" briefs in support of the ment was 'not at all unusual' for an im­ Government's arguments were effec­ First Amendment, and so did several portant case. Peter N. Bush, assistant tively challenged by our attorneys (and dozen magazines and such organiza­ general counsel of the Energy Depart­ by the increasingly publicized facts) , tions as the AmericanSoc iety of News­ ment, said perhaps ten attorneys fr om the Government continuously shifted paper Editors, the National Association his agency had worked on the case. But ground. By the time our appeal was of Broadcasters, and the Association of government lawyers, unlike most pri­ argued in the Seventh Circuit Court of American Publishers . Th e . vate attorneys, do not keep a record of Appeals in Chicago in mid-September, Progressive' s readers responded, as their billable hours, so the true cost is the Government had arrived at a they always have, with moral and fi­ impossible to pin down. novel and fr ightening notion - that nancial support. "When a copy of Morland's article "technical" information was not We received invaluable assistance

THE PROGRESSIVE I 15 fr om some dedicated nuclear scientists a letter that a nuclear "hobbyist, " thermonuclear weapons information who did not necessarily agree with The Chuck Hansen, had written to Senator by a newspaper in Madison, Wiscon­ Progressive's politics - or even with Charles Percy of Illinois about The sin." our calculated assault on the Govern­ Progressive's case. On September 16, On September 28, the Appeals ment's mystique of secrecy - but who the Hansen letter was published in fu ll Court vacated Judge Warren's injunc­ were outraged by the Government' s by The Press Connection, a newspaper tion and left us free to publish Howard unfounded assertions in the case. in Madison, Wisconsin. (See "A Na­ Morland's article in this issue of The And then there were the nuclear tion Beset by Confusion and Fear," by Progressive. "hobbyists, " determined to prove that Ron McCrea, on Page 36 of this issue.) what the Government called "secret" On September 17, the Justice Depart­ was not secret at all. (See Sam Day's ment announced that it "has decided ut the case is not over. When it "The Other Nuclear Weapons Club" to seek dismissal of the cases against announced that it would "seek on Page 32 of this issue.) Eventually the Daily Californian and Progressive dismissal" of the cases against the Government was compelled to ad­ magazine ....The reason for the dis­ BThe Progress ive and the Daily Califor­ mit that two of the three "secret con­ missal was the publication of an article nian, the Justice Department also an­ cepts" it had identified in Morland's containing restricted data concerning nounced that "the Criminal Division article were already in the public do­ main - and the third, the Govern­ ment said, was one that Morland got wrong. Furthermore, the Government acknowledged that it had "mistakenly" declassified scores of documents containing information at least as "secret" as Morland's, and placed those documents on public li­ brary shelves. As it became increasingly clear to us that we would win the case in the courts - and perhaps win a ruling that invalidated the secrecy provisions of the Atomic Energy Act - we began to suspect that the Government would seize on its firstfa ce- saving opportunity to drop the case and declare it "moot." We were scrupulously careful - we bent over backwards - to observe the injunction and the "protective order" issued by Judge Warren to prevent dis­ closure of "restricted data"; we wanted to give the Government no pretext for avoiding a court decision on the constitutional and legal questions we had raised. When an anonymous caller told us he had a copy of Mor­ land's manuscript and would arrange for its publication, we begged him not to do so. On September 13, our case was argued before a three-judge panel of the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago; the judges - who rebuffed a Government request to hold the hearing behind closed doors - were expected to hand down a decision within days or, at most, a few weeks. On September 15, the Government went into court in San Francisco to ob­ tain a restraining order against a college 'I published Bow To BuDd an B·Bomb to prove newspaper - the Daily Californian at we have freedom of the press' Le Pelley, The Christian Science Monitor Berkeley - barring it fr om publishing

16 I NOVEMBER 1979 M. G. Lord. Nt!wsdoy

will undertake a preliminary inquiry to junctive relief the Government and the broadcasts that have stated one or determine whether any prosecution is district court believe it provides. more of the three concepts the appropriate for violation of court or­ Moreover, there will always be a very Government sought to protect in the ders in the two cases and the Atomic real danger that subsequent cases like context of thermonuclearweapons, yet Energy Act." The Department of this one will become 'moot' - either the Government sought no iQjunction Energy has spread the word that it has because the Government moves nor brought a criminal action Arbi­ some of its own scientists under in­ unilaterally to dismiss them at some trary decisions of the Government to vestigation. point, because an article that has been invoke the statute or not may never be And when it asked the court to dis­ restricted appears in another publica­ reviewed if the Government carefully miss the injunction against publication tion, or because the defendants lack chooses its cases." of Morland's article, the Justice the financial ability, the confidence, or How these questions will be resolved Department also moved to declare the the courage to litigate the case fully in remains to be determined as this issue case "moot" and to preserve in per­ the trial court or on appeal. In the of The Progressive goes to press. petual secrecy some of the suppressed meantime, of course, the defendants Whatever the outcome, we believe we legal documents in the case. We are will have lost their constitutional rights have already made it more difficult for vigorously resisting the Government's to a district court's injunction .... the Government to mount its next as­ attempt to abort a ruling on the issues "Until the United States brought sault on the First Amendment - if we have laid before the courts. In a this action, it had never formally in­ only by making some Americans (and bri�f submitted to the Court of Appeals voked the Atomic Energy Act to en­ some of our colleagues in the media) on September 24, The Progressive's at­ join or to punish political speech. With more aware of the threat. torneys wrote: this action, however, and the suit We .believe we have won a small but ''This case clearly is capable of against the Daily Californian, it has important victory in a continuing strug­ repetition both for these defendants demonstrated an apparently new­ gle. We are in that struggle for the and for others. Yet it will continue to found willingness to use the sweeping duration. The late Heywood Broun, evade review until these defendants, provisions of the Act to do just that. who fought his own battles against the another magazine, newspaper, or indi­ These cases also have provided ample arrogance of official power in the vidual again forfeits - however tem­ evidence of the potential for the arbi­ 1930s, once wrote, "The underdog porarily - First Amendment rights to trary and discriminatory use of the Act. can and will lick his weight in the litigate the fundamental issues raised There are in the record of this case wildcats of the world." by the Atomic Energy Act and the in- more than twenty-five publications and We think so too. •

THE PROGRESSIVE I 17 Atomic: sec:rec:y: fuel for the cold war

The myth served a powerful few

Jolm Baell

n February 1946, six months after sion of World War II, the scientists United States had a secret - one it had the destruction of Hiroshima estab­ who had built the atomic bomb argued to keep at all cost. Secretary of State lished the United States as the that the public should have more infor­ James Byrnes had a political agenda world'sI first nuclear superpower, an . mation about nuclear matters and that 111ore conventional than that of the obscure British scientist made scientists should be freed fr om wartime scientists. He argued in October 1945, headlines by admitting that while constraints on the conduct and publica­ and subsequently, that too much atten­ working in the Canadian atomic energy tion of their research efforts. None was tion was being paid to "impractical" program he had leaked secrets to more cognizant of the need for open­ notions of international control of the agents of the Soviet Union. ness than Henry D. Smyth, author of atom. He and President Truman His role in America's wartime the Government's official report on pushed a countervailing notion that Manhattan Proj ect had been the wartime Manhattan Project, which came to dominate U.S. nuclear policy: peripheral. His contribution to the was published six days after They argued that the basic scientific budding Soviet atomic weapons pro­ Hiroshima: principles of atomic physics might be gram - offered in the spirit of interna­ "Here is a new tool for mankind, a widely known, but the "engineering" tional science - was negligible. The tool of unimaginable destructive was not. That part, they said, should be ten-year sentence meted to him by a power. Its development raises many kept secret. British court returned him quickly to questions that must be answered in the Despite the Administration's view, anonymity. near fu ture. These questions are not the atomic scientists had a substantial But the case of Dr. Alan Nunn May, technical questions; they are political impact on Congressional development the world's first known "atomic spy, " and social questions, and the answers of an atomic energy statute. Early sent shock waves through the Ameri­ given to them may affect all mankind drafts accepted the free dissemination canbody politic. And it cast an imprint for generations. In a free country like of scientific information as the basic - as indelible as it was pernicious - ours, such questions should be debated principle which should govern legis­ on the nation's firstfo rmative efforts to by the people," Smyth wrote. The lation in this field. Only information fo rge public policy in the virgin field of Smyth report was not a "blueprint" produced by Government laboratories atomic energy. for the A-bomb, but it presented a should be restricted. But the atomic spy While economic and military elites wealth of specific detail on how the stories of early 1946 changed the bal­ may not have contrived the May case, scientists and engineers had built it. ance of forces in Congress. The they benefited immensely from itscon­ The Manhattan Project scientists emphasis of the bill shifted from infor­ tribution to the mystique of nuclear understood that nuclear fission was not mation dissemination to information secrecy. The need for protection of the a magic potion which only an anointed control. The newly fo rmed Special "secret" became the linchpin of the few had been fo rtunate enough to Committee on Atomic Energy decided Cold War and a major fo rce in preserv­ stumble upon. They recognized that it that because it was not always clear ing the power of those who profit from was the achievement of scientists fr om where science leaves otT and tech­ that global struggle. The struggle had many nations. J. Robert Oppenheimer, nology begins, a new category was already begun in the afterglow of scientific director of the project, knew needed to encompass any scientific and Alamagordo, Hiroshima, and that the Soviets could build their own technical information that might re­ Nagasaki. bomb within a fe w years should they quire restriction. They called it In the first monthsafter the conclu- choose to do so. His assessment was "restricted data." The new Atomic widely shared. . Energy Commission was given carte Despite the prevalent view of the blanche to determine what kinds of in­ John Buellis an associate editor of scientific community, political leaders fo rmation would fit the category. Th e Progressive. preferred to tell the public that the The desire of the Truman Adminis-

18 l NOVEMBER 1979 tration and its supporters in Congress mended immediate international con­ n 1945, the United States had jus1 to foster a mystique of secrecy - even trol of the atom. Byrnes responded that emerged fr om the most severe against the advice of leading scientists this new intelligence was all the more depression in its history. Followin� - can best be understood in the con­ reason for American scientists to go Ia prolonged period of economic ex pan· text of the emerging Cold War and its back to their drawing boards. Science sion during World War I and the post­ budding competition in the political, may have no boundaries, he said, but war decade, American productive economic, and military sectors. Stalin did. It was an early presage of capacity had grown to a point where ar As early as the fa ll of 1945, a scien­ President Truman's decision, in 1950, underpaid labor fo rce could no Ionge1 tific panel advised Secretary of State to order development of the hydrogen absorb enough goods to keep the econ· Byrnes that a new weapon even more bomb. omy moving. In the depth of the Grea1 powerful than the A-bomb was tech­ The primary commitment of the na­ Depression, unemployment hoveree nically fe asible. The scientists fe ared tion's political leadership was not to at around a quarter of the labor fora that construction of such a weapon ending the incipient arms race but to and the Gross National Product fell tc could also be undertaken by other in­ preserving and expanding U.S. global almost half its 1929 level. dustrially and scientifically advanced power. The legacy of the Cold War, World War II showed that higl: nations and that a U.S. decision to which gave postwar American im­ levels of Government spending could develop it might lead to a qualitative perialism its powerful early thrust, lives keep the economy from such and quantitative arms race fraught with on today in the fo rm of the Atomic downturns. Though economists in the the utmost danger. They recom- Energy Act. tradition of John Maynard Keyne� argued that Government spendin� could be focused on such social pur­ poses as public housing or mass transit, economic and political leaders feared that spending for these ends would un­ dermine the social structure by foster­ ing greater equality and removing im­ portant sources of private investment. The postwar solution to that problem was to foster a demand for the products of U.S. capitalism without threateni� its political underpinnings. Dean Acheson put the problem in a nutshell when he wrote in 1945: "We cannot go through another depression like the Thirties without fa r­ reaching consequences fo r our eco­ nomic and social system. The problem is one of markets. We can' t consume everything we produce without chang­ ing our fu ndamental social structure." As if in confirmation, headlines in Business Week summarized the preva­ lent business view in early 1946: "U.S. Drive to Stop Communism Abroad Means Heavy Financial Outlays for Bases, Relief, Reconstruction. But in Return, American Business is Bound to Get New Markets Abroad. " An "international Communist con­ spiracy" helped justify efforts to keep the "free world" open to U.S. exports. It also justified a permanent arms race, which meant lucrative cost-plus con­ tracts fo r two-thirds of the fifty largest corporations. Secrecy has helped sustain that proc­ ess by narrowing the circle of decision­ 'Begone! What we do with your Flnt Amendment rights makers. The most basic ·decisions Is none of your business' about the development and deploy­ K onopucJ.:�. Aladi,\On Pre<;, � ( 'onnectton ment of new weapons systems have

THE PROGRESSIVE I 19 been made by a select few. One of so long as the location of the pass could Government has jeopardized those them, Herbert Y ark, now a critic of the be kept hidden from strangers. As a liberties anew in its impassioned process, points out that fewer than 100 result, all strangers seemed to be dan­ defense of the doctrine of "restricted scientists and political leaders made the gerous enemies. Even members of the data." fateful H-bomb decision. The General community were potential enemies, The success of the United States, the Advisory Committee of the Atomic those who know the location of the Soviet Union, China, Britain, and Energy Commission had felt that the pass most of all, since through treason France in crossing the thermonuclear H-bomb question was "so filled with or indiscretion they might reveal the threshold made it clear that the data serious implications" that it should be secret." were not really restricted from those decided only as part of broad national Within such a psychological climate, with the will and capacity to make H­ policy, and that much of the informa­ the Soviet A-bomb test that broke the bombs. As Howard Morland's article tion needed for a judgment could and American monopoly in September demonstrates, the principal barrier to should be made public. But the Com­ 1949 - years before it was expected the development of thermonuclear mittee's deliberations were never by political leaders, if not by scientists weapons is not ignorance of a secret opened to the public. No arms control - along with the arrest of Klaus but the lack of the necessary scientific advocates were present for its debates Fuchs, a British scientist who admitted and industrial capacity. Had the mys­ because none had received the neces­ tique of secrecy not beclouded the sary Government clearance. public's understanding of that elemen­ The mystique of secrecy also has taryfact, no judge could haveheld that allowed the atomic weapons establish­ 'Lifting the veU any article - no matter how accurate ment to conceal the consequencesof its or detailed- would give Idi Amin the decisions. The test of a large atomic •••Is aol aa ead H-bomb. bomb in Nevada in April 1953 led to If there is no secret, and if the unexpected radioactive fallout as far ·Ia Itself' Department of Energy knew that, why east as New York state and to the in­ did the Government assert the op­ gestion of high levels of radioactive posite so strenuously? Perhaps it is iodine by children in southern Utah. passing atomic information to the Rus­ becausethe secrecy myth servesto sus­ Despite knowledge of these dangers� sians, helped foster an obsessive con­ tain the notion thatthe key to prevent­ Government scientists withheld the cern with secrecy. Although the value ing nuclear weapons proliferation is factsand ridiculed the concerns of local of Fuchs's contribution to the Soviet keeping a "secret" out of the hands of residents. atomic weapons program was ques­ other nations. And that notion serves In a similar fashion, the mystique of tionable, his case helped reinforce the to disguise the fact that our Govern­ secrecy has allowed the Government popular notion that atomic secrets are ment is the real nuclear proliferator. to withhold information on the safety embodied in a mysterious formula that When President Eisenhower hazards of nuclear power, an offshoot am be scribbled on pieces of paper and broached his "Atoms for Peace" plan of itssecret weapons program. And the quickly converted into weapons of in 1953, the Government hoped to technological connections between mass destruction. market more than 3,000 nuclear reac­ nuclear power and nuclear weapons The trial, conviction, and execution, tors by the end of the century. This have been consistently shielded from some years later, of "atom spies" goal has been scaled down, but nuclear public view. The mystique of secrecy Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, also ac­ technology exports are continuing to has thus deprived Americans of infor­ cused of passing atomic secrets, drove boom. There are now more · than 200 mation and perspectives which would such anxieties deep into the conscious­ reactors around the globe, most of seriously have undermined public con­ ness of millions of Americans. them American, and each produces sent to the arms race, the Cold War, Public fears of treachery and treason about 500 pounds of plutonium - related domestic policies. were easily played upo'l to foster hys­ enough to make about twenty-five and· In the domestic arena, the atomic terical intolerance of those whose atomic bombs. secrecy mystique intensified the Cold ideologies questioned the social order. Lifting the veil of secrecy from the War mentality of political repression. The political formulations of Senator nuclear weapons program would show Alan Barth, an editorial writer for Th e Joseph McCarthy were rooted in the how the notion of atomic secrecy has Wa shington Post, observed percep­ early policies of the Atomic Energy been manipulated since the beginning tively in 1949: Commission. of the nuclear age to chill public debate. ''The myth of monopoly im­ But lifting the wraps from the policy of measurably aggravated our sense of oday, the secrecy mystique con­ secrecy and the interests it serves is not vulnerability and insecurity. It created tinues to limit the civil liberties of an end in itself. It is no more than an something worse than a 'Maginot T those who would challenge U.S. essential first step in the search for an Line' complex. It made us feel some­ nuclear policy. Throughout its case alternative to the arms race as a basis what as though we were a community against Th e Progressive, and in subse­ for U.S. prosperity and security. A hidden away in some remote mountain quent threats to investigate scientists basic ingredient of that alternative fastness approachable only through a who aided the magazine in its effort to must be the redistribution of economic secret pass, and thus immune to attack publish "The H-Bomb Secret," the resources and economic power. •

20 · NOVEMBER 1 (}79 The other aac:lear weapons c:lab How the H-bomb amateurs did their thing

SUDael B. Day Jr.

ast winter, as it was preparing to pearance of this issue of Fusion maga­ land descriptions. His speculative link­ take Th e Progressive to court to zine, Energy Secretary James ing of the two gave a helpful clue to suppress "secret/restricted data" Schlesinger and his staff will begin cir­ other amateurs in pursuit of the H­ Labout the hydrogen bomb, the United culating the story - if not attempting bomb "secret. " States Government chose to ignore the legal prosecution - that the informa­ Another hint came with the filing of fa ct that the same material had just ap­ tion in 'The Secret of Laser Fusion' is a "friend-of-the-court" brief by the peared in much greaterdet ail in a polit­ classified. Therefore, we want to make Fusion Energy Society, publishers of ical magazine written for a technical it clear that this article is based on in­ Fusion. In arguing thatthe principles of readership specializing in the science fo rmation made public by the Soviet thermonuclear weaponry are already which underlies the design of thermo­ Union and readily available in Soviet well known (though classified in the nuclear weapons. and other international scientific cir­ United States) , the brief repeated the The lawyers and experts who de­ cles, as well as upon information con­ substance of the Fusion article and fe nded our right to publish "The H­ tained in a scientificpaper published by thereby spread on the open court Bomb Secret" are still legally re­ Bernhard Riemann in 1859." record a virtual paraphrase of what the strained from saying whether they Rather than prosecute Fusion, court was holding in secret. complained about the Government's S,chlesinger chose to suppress The By this time, the Department of double standard and what they tried to Progressive, whose author, by coinci­ Energy was putting out unintentional do about lt. But the painstaking efforts dence, had selected some of the same hints of its own. of others to bring the material to light "secret/restricted" material to make In the earliest days of the case, three eventually forced abandonment of the the same point that information of this Argonne National Laboratory case. sort is readily available to people who physicists, Alex DeVolpi, Gerald The secrecy rules laid down by Judge know how to look for it. Marsh, and George Stanford (our Robert W. Warren last March, at the The three scientific concepts scientificadvisers for the Morland arti­ insistence of the Government, made it specified by the Department of Energy cle) , filed a "friends-of-the-court" af­ impossible for participants in the case as "secret" were set forth by Morland fidavit documenting public sources to draw public attention to "The Secret in layman's terms and by Fusion in fr om which design principles fo r the H­ of Laser Fusion,'' an unsigned article more technical language. bomb could be learned. A fo urth in the March issue of Fusion magazine, Although there was no way for Argonne scientist, Theodore Postol, published and distributed unbe­ others to know what the Department also an adviser, submitted two defense knownst to us before publication of of Energy found objectionable in the affidavits in the same vein. Howard Morland's article for Th e Morland article, the relevance of the Under the secrecy rules of the case, Progressive was blocked on March 9. Fusion article to the case gradually the Department of Energy had an op­ The editors of Fusion, oblivious to became apparent to a few outsiders. portunity to censor all materials. In the our plan to publish Morland's article in The first to make the connection was case of the Argonne scientists, the De­ our April issue and to the Govern­ a Milwaukee Sentinel reporter, Joe partment let several helpful references ment's plan to prevent it, had drawn Manning. Hoping to duplicate Mor­ slip through, the most valuable of provocative attention to their own arti­ land's fe at, he wrote an explanation of which was a ten-year-old Encyclopedia cle in an editorial "Note to the the workings of the hydrogen bomb af­ Americana article by Edward Teller, Reader": ter spending a week reading library fa ther of the hydrogen bomb. Dia­ "We fu lly expect that with the ap- sources, one of which was the Fusion grams accompanying the Teller article article. Manning' s condensation of explicitly detail the H-bomb' s unusual Sa muel H. Day Jr. is managing editor "The Secret of Laser Fusion" was re­ configuration. of The Progressive. markably close to the pertinent Mor- At about the same time, the

THE PROGRESSIVE I 21 Government submitted an affidavit by the case and enthusiastic in his support Californian at Berkeley, defied a De­ a nuclear weapons design consultant, of the magazine's cause, he quickly be­ partment of Energy warning and Jack Rosengren, depicting Morland's came a sidewalk superintendent, or­ printed the text of the letter. Six other design as not just an ordinary H-bomb chestrating his own campaign of college newspapers later fo llowed suit. (as the author had described it) but as a harassment against the Department of Proliferation of the forbidden representation of the most efficient Energy. Argonne letter re-ignited Senator Per­ weapon in the U.S. stockpile. This af­ Enlisting the support of his Con­ cy's interest in the case. Toward the fidavit, too, escaped censorship. gressman, Representative Pete Mc­ end of the summer an aide contacted The Argonne scientists reasoned Closkey, Hansen bombarded Depart­ Hansen and asked to be kept informed. that a careful investigator could con­ ment of Energy officialdom with letters That was all the encouragement clude fr om this that the Government challenging their conduct of the case. Hansen needed. had accidentally identified Teller's en­ Throughout the spring he drove the Within days, eighteen pages of cyclopedia diagrams (which them­ Department's chief classification single-spaced type were on their way to selves had never been cleared fo r officer, John Griffin, to distraction by Senator Percy. For openers, Hansen security) as the key to the design of the organizing an "H-bomb design con­ drew up a bill of particulars against most efficient H-bomb. test. '' The first entry to be classified by three Government weapons experts ­ Iricensed by what they regarded as Griffinwould be the automatic winner. Edward Teller, George RatQjens of the security breaches by the Government (The Department threatened to refer Massachusetts Institute of Technology, itself, they spelled this all out in a letter the matter to the FBI.) But Hansen's and Theodore Taylor of Princeton - to Senator John Glenn of Ohio, chair­ heaviest ammunition was still to come. saying they, not The Progressive, man of a Senate subcommittee that Before the Department of Energy should be charged with spilling nuclear oversees national security matters. The declared the Argonne scientists' letter secrets. But the meat of the letter was scientists asked the Senator to in­ to Senator Glenn to be "secret/re­ in what Hansen called "a brief histo­ vestigate the Department of Energy. stricted data," Hansen already had ry ...of some of the theoretical ideas The Department responded, a month moved into high gear. He had secured which led to the concepts now at issue later, by classifying their letter. a copy fr om one of the half-dozen in Th e Progressive case. " Glenn and another subcommittee sources to whom the scientists had sent The "brief history" consisted of a member, Senator Charles Percy of Il­ copies, made copies of his own, and puzzle into which Hansen had carefully linois, had already tangled with the De­ mailed them around the country. One fitted pieces fr om Fusion magazine, the partment of Energy on another matter of the recipients, the student-run Daily "amicus curiae" brief of the Fusion involving The Progressive case. Seek­ ing evidence to bolster the magazine's contention that H-bomb design infor­ mation is readily available, an in­ vestigator for the American Civil Liberties Union, Dmitri Rotow (him­ A11EN1iON SA'R W'x'A'R'DI self an amateur nuclear weapons de­ ?toEA� 'DiST?ECiA'Rt> M'r' signer) , visited the Los Alamos Scien­ 'PREVtOVS ANNOUNCEMENT tific Laboratory public library and A'BOUf 'rtf! SK't) FALLiNG! pulled fr om the open shelf a highly sen­ sitive and highly technical H-bomb re­ port, UCRL-4725. The Department promptly closed the library and re­ classified the report and an equally sen­ sitive companion document, UCRL-5280. Glenn and Percy both expressed amazement. The Government later admitted in court that the two docu­ ments would have been as valuable to an H-bomb designer as anything in the Morland article.

mong those who fo llowed these developments with an eagle eye was Charles Hansen, a Califor­ Ania nuc lear weapons hobbyist. Hansen, �-,r-_. a Palo Alto computer programmer,

had spent five years writing a book �---;._:-:�- Sanders, Milwaukee Journal about nuclear weapons. Fascinated by

22 I NOVEMBER 1979 Energy Society, the Teller diagram, Publication of Hansen's letter by ress, notably in fusion energy, which is and the Rosengren affidavit. For good Th e Press Connection in Madison, the society's pet project. measure, he included a diagram drawn Wisconsin, the following day, coupled Thus, by spilling "The Secret of with the aid of a tuna fishcan and some with a threat by the Chicago Tribune to Laser Fusion' ' in an article spiced with jar lids. do the same unless taken to court, en­ thermonuclear fusion concepts they Hansen thoughtfully mailed copies sured the final triumph of the H- bomb knew to be "secret/restricted data," to a half-dozen newspapers - and to amateurs. the Fusion editors hoped to challenge the Department of Energy. On Monday, September 17, the the Department of Energy's classifica­ On August 30, his home-town Justice Department announced it was tion program. The article, drawn main­ newspaper, Th e Peninsula Times- Tr i­ abandoning its case against Th e ly fr om the international literature bune of Palo Alto, printed a story Progressive. (some of it 120 years old) , foc used about his charges, reproducing the tantalizingly and explicitly on the same crude diagram he had provided but ..orlan d's purpose in writing the supposed secrets that were to be at making no effort to decipher his ��· article, and Th e Progressive's issue in the Morland article. physics. Other newspapers - Th e purpose in publishing it, was to When the Government ignored Fu­ Oakland Tr ibune, The San Jose Mer- dispel the secrecy mystique that pro- sion's published report and concen­ trated instead on suppression of Mor­ land's unpublished article, the maga­ zine concluded there was a conspiracy between The Progressive and the De­ 'Tell Boward I'm sorry partment of Energy to set up an easy test case that would establish the U I spoiled it for him' Government's right to suppress scien­ tific research and industrial develop­ ment in the field of fusion energy. (In the Fusion Energy Society's view, we and Energy Secretary Schlesinger were cury News, The Milwaukee Sentinel, tects and nourishes the nuclear weap­ in the samedespised environmentalist, and The Wa ll Street Journal - sat ons program. The weapons, not the anti-technology camp.) back and wondered whether they had a "secrets," were the prime target. Denieda test case ofits own, the Fu­ story. Demonstrating that hydrogen bomb sion Energy Society jumped into Th e At the Daily Californian, editor design information could be readily ob­ Progressive case in hopes of upsetting Tom Abate and his staff also won­ tained fr om public sources, and then the "conspiracy" by ensuring a victory dered. They had their answer a few revealing and commenting on it, was fo r Th e Progressive, not the Govern­ days later when, on September 12, for us.a means to an end. We wanted to ment. The society's unsolicited word came that the Hansen letter - raise the level of public consciousness "friend-of-the-court" brief, filed in like the one they printed three months about America's continuing prepara­ the open record and loaded with "se­ earlier - had just been classified "se­ tions for nuclear war. cret/restricted data'' culled from scien­ cret/restricted data." Few of the H-bomb amateurs tific journals, was a loaded cannon On the same day, a Milwaukee nu­ shared all those assumptions, but their pointed at the Government's case. clear weapons hobbyist, Jerry Fass, in­ collective efforts helped make our For all their paranoid overtones, the terviewed by the Sentinel's Joe Man­ point about the H-bomb secret. Fusion Energy Society's article and ning. checked in with another success­ The contribution of the Fusion brief were persuasive indictments of fu l description of the H-bomb "se­ Energy Society toward cracking the the irrationality of the Government's .cret, '' but already the fa t was in the Government's case was rich in irony. classification program and of the fire. There could be few groups more Government's heavy-handed influ­ For a few hectic days the Depart­ ideologically distant fr om Th e Pro­ ence on freedom of scientific inquiry ment of Energy scurried from news­ gressive or more fu ndamentally at and freedom of the press. These were paper to newspaper, attempting to re­ home with Pentagon notions of "na­ considerations which also weighed trieve its "secret. " But by then it was tional security." heavily with other H-bomb amateurs. too late. Already the Hansen letter was To the society and to the editors of None of the four Argonne scientists multiplying - as were the con­ Fusion magazine, the problem was not shared Th e Progressive' s conviction sequences. Unsure of the Daily with the H-bombs themselves but with that publication of the Morland article Ca lifornian's intentions, the Depart­ secrecy as a mechanism fo r protecting would serve a useful purpose. (Most of ment rushed into Federal court in San and strengthening the nation's tech­ them counseled vigorously against Francisco on Saturday evening, Sep­ nological lead in H-bombs and other publication because they thought Mor­ tember 15, to secure an injunction fo rms of modern weaponry. Not only land's science was sloppy and his politi­ against the student newspaper. Before is secrecy self-defeating in this regard, cal point dubious.) But the Govern­ the ink was even dry the presses were they argued, but it also retards the na­ ment's act of suppression made them preparing to roll 2,000 miles away. tion's general scientific- industrial prog- defenders of our right to publish it.

THE PROGRESSIVE I 23 'Ya goHa have a note from yer mother' Ashley, Toledo Blade

For scientists at Argonne and at the that the Morland material was already ill the publication of the Mor­ Lawrence Livermore Laboratory who in the public domain. But the Depart­ land article strengthen the First had read the Morland article and knew ment's bizarre behavior also distorted W Amendment by demonstrating its publication would be harmless to the issues of the case by suggesting that that it can be exercised, albeit at great the national interest, it was easy to sup­ the answer to the problem lay in more cost, even in so highly sensitized an port publication on First Amendment secrecy, rather than less. If there was area as H-bomb secrecy? Will the ex­ grounds. And they did so with ded­ any lesson Senators Glenn and Percy ercise of the right accomplish its in­ icated energy. Their prestige as nuclear seemed to draw fr om the case, it was tended purpose of emboldening others weapons experts blunted the Govern­ that. to look more closely at the H-bomb? ment's allegations that national The answers will come later. But first security had been endangered and there had to be an answer to the ques­ made the First Amendment fight a II' s a secret tion of the H-bomb secret. It was pro­ safer one for others who were unwill­ vided by the H-bomb amateurs: ing to take The Progressive's claims on The fo llowing footnote from a de­ There is no secret. fa ith. fe ndants' brief in The Progressive What hope there may be that human The blunders of the Department of case was at first censored by the sanity will yet prevail is best reflected Energy - the closing of a public library Government and subsequently by a message fr om one amateur to and the attempted suppression of released for public filing in the another telephoned to The Progressive citizens' letters to their Senators to court record: on the night the Government dropped cover its own mistakes - vastly "All electromagnetic radiation its case. weakened the Government's case. travels at the speed of light. Any "Tell Howard I'm sorry ifl spoiled it Such mistakes demonstrated the ab­ particulate matter must travel at for him," said a jubilant Chuck surdities of the classification program less than the speed of light." Hansen. "And tell him that it wasn't and lent credibility to our argument my best effort. '' •

24 NOVEMBER 1979 REFLECTIONS

A nation beset by coafasioa · aad fear

Boa McCrea

n September 16, The Madison alternatives, it seems dismayingly Unfortunately, because this illusion 0 Press Connection published a likely that nothing short of a similar is so firmly entrenched, even a nuclear letter from a citizen to a Senator "demonstration effect" can shatter war might not bring home the proper which containeda general discussion of American ignorance about the present point. Numerous Jetter writers have the design and dynamics of the hy­ state of nuclear weapons proliferation suggested that if the bombs start fa lling drogen bomb entirely drawn fr om and availability. it will be because people like us and public sources. The writer's purpose That may be a premature and overly The Progressive had the temerity to was to underscore the U.S. Govern­ pessimistic assessment on my part, but write about fo rbidden things. They do ment's untenable posture in The I have been stunned to find how many not realize that the Original Sin was Progressive case and to argue for a ra­ Americans, including many American committed long ago, that the apple has tional revision of the classification journalists, are still living in the age of been off the tree for decades, that all policy of the Atomic Energy Act, a law nuclear monopoly, secrets, and the the world has eaten of it, arid that a written in the era of nuclear monopoly Rosenbergs. The world has changed, worldwide act of penance - disarma­ and unsuited to today's need fo r open knowledge of the means of ultimate ment - is necessary immediately to discussion of a runaway technology. redeem humanity from the hellfires of The purpose of The Press Connec­ a rapidly impending atomic Judgment tion in publishing the letter was to ad­ Day. vance the debate and to demonstrate our own conviction as to the rightness 'This experieace second sad conclusion I have and safety of The Progressive's position reached is that another modern by putting our very freedom on the has left as aU technology - the technology of line. We also sought to right the rela­ Amass media and instant information - tions of press to government by shall:iag oar heads' has made Americans Jess, not more, challenging the bizarre theory of capable of dealing with life-and-death "retroactive classification" with a sim­ issues of national policy. After thirty ple act of publication. years of saturation bombardment by Other, larger newspapers were pre­ slogans, messages, and thirty-second pared to make the same challenge. But destruction has become universal, yet spots, we have become a nation of we were the first. Americans are cocooned in illusion. headline readers and grabbers-on-the Today, after assessing press and The irony is that while the focus of go, almost disabled when it comes to citizen response, I am almost per­ discussion is the containment of understanding an event that does not suaded that it will take an actual nuclear weapons information - a fit into easy categories. nuclear war somewhere in the world to fu tile exercise at this point in history - Thus, for many people around the make Americans wake up to the scien­ the urgent issue of · containing the country, the story has been: (1) A tific realities of the 1980s. spread of nuclear weapons fuels, which Wisconsin "alternative" newspaper Even as it took Three Mile Island to are a byproduct of everyatomic reactor published "secret" designs fo r the H­ explode the myths of safe nuclear we export, is largely a matter of public bomb; (2) The Government dropped energy and expert infallibility and turn indifference. Not only are we not dis­ its case against The Progressive because mainstream opinion toward energy arming (as we pledged to do eleven the "secret" was out; and (3) The years ago in the Nonproliferation Government is now trying to find who Ron McCrea is the editor of Th e Treaty) , we are passing out bullets. leaked the "secret" and deciding Madison (Wisconsin) Press And yet it is information that Ameri­ whom to prosecute. Connection, in which this article cans perceive as the threat to their As a result of that simple scenario appeared in somewhat longerfo rm. security. going out across the country as the es-

THE PROGRESSIVE I 25 sence of the story, the backlash against there was the question about how we free press has become most critical in us in the mail (and in some editorials) expected the fortunes of The Press explaining and furthering these move­ has been predictably furious. In a way, Connection to be affected by all the ments, trust in that press is about at its I regret that The Progressive chose to publicity. Some were blunt enough to nadir. title its suppressed story"The H-Bomb ask directly whether our motive wasn't Even more ironically, press treat­ Secret: How We Got It, Why We're strictly commercial. ment of a story like ours shows just Telling It." That provocative headline, This experience has left us all shak­ how well placed that mistrust is. whose irony has been totally lost in ing our heads. The country is so cyni­ press coverage, set the tone for the cal, and the press so jaded itself, that whole hysterical non-debate that has no one can deal with the idea anymore y last observation is about occurred in the last several months. that anyone might do something out of IIliberals and conservatives. In a The magazine's idea was to point up simple conviction. curious way, some of the most the contradictions about a "secret" I tried to explain againand again that clear-eyed understanding of the action that is not a secret at all - but mass no one risks a twenty-year prison term of The Press Connection and of the media do not deal in contradictions. for publicity, that the publicity was not issue of nuclear secrecyhas come from They deal in simple categories and op­ something we had asked for or en- conservatives. The only major newspa- positions- good guys and bad guys, patriots and traitors, secrets and stoolies. I halfway suspect that if Th e 'The liberal Washiagtoa Post Progressive had simply gone ahead and published Morland's article with some ...automatically accepted the homely title like "A Citizen's Guide to , official llae oa aaclear secrecy. • • • the H-bomb" or "Everything You Wanted to Know About the H-bomb (But Were Afraid to Ask)," the whole flap might have evaporated. joyed, that people on the staff were per in the country to throw down the The homely headlines would not close to breaking down because of the gauntlet over the Hansen letter was the have expressed The Progressive's pressures of trying to produce a news­ Chicago Tribune, long the Mighty challenge to the nuclear establishment, paper in the middle of a media zoo. Wurlitzer of heartland conservatism. which was, of course, the point, and I told them they were wrong to think The liberal Washington Post, on the it's probably true that James that because we were small and other hand, automatically accepted the Schlesinger and Griffin Bell, living in strappedwe had nothing much to Jose; official line on nuclear secrecy and has their barricaded worlds, would have we had everythingto lose, and we were called on the Government to prosecute taken action anyway. closer to the brink of losing it than, say, the editors of The Press Connection to But pushing the button of "We've the Chicago Tribune, which had an­ the full extent of the law. Got a Secret" almost guaranteed that nounced plans to publish the Hansen This turn of affairs makes me wish the public discussion would spin out letter and eventually did so. we had withheld publication and let the into fantasyland. Modem media have No one seemed especially con­ Tribune go forward first. In this simple­ destroyed literacy and stripped us of vinced, and I read in this attitude and minded society, the two notions of subtlety. the attitude of our letter writers the "Chicago Tribune" and "betrayer of most profound threat of all. national security" could not have fit W third paradox is that The Press If the performance of the media has together in the same peanut-sized .IaConnection is bearing the brunt so jaded and embittered Americans as compartment. The contradictions of the public's vast bitt�rness to believe, as they seem to, that the would have exploded and people and cynicism toward the corporate press will go so far as to sell out the would have been forced, ifnot to think media. country for private gain and hide twice, then to think at least one-and-a­ Letter after letter accuses us of play­ behind the First Amendment, then the half times about what the hell was ing fast and loose with national security time is not far away when a govern­ really going on. in order to work an angle ...to milk ment that wishes to restrict the press Unfortunately, we were not thinking publicity for dollars and readers... to severely will be able to do so with sub­ tactically but rather ethically and sensationalize a grave issue for our stantial popular support. professionally on that sunny Saturday own gain. Most painfully to me, they The cry of "Too much democracy!" afternoon when we decided to publish say: You probably did it because you is being heard more and more these the harmless letter of a citizen to a had nothing much to lose. days, especially as grass-roots move­ Senator. As a result, the attention has I might add that not only do readers ments pose serious opposition to been ours, the backlash has been ours, and viewers assume this; virtually ev­ nuclear power and the corporate per­ and the terribly sobering realizations ery news reporter who came into The petration of food, energy, housing, and about the state of national conscious­ Press Connection for interviews about health-care inflation. Ironically, at the ness have been ours. the Hansen letter did also. Inevitably, moment when the institution of the Make them yours as well. •

26 l NOVEMBER 1979 TBE WAY TBE PRESS SAW IT

Here is a sampling of editorial opinion on the Government's mation which might violate laws such as the Atomic Energy abandonment of its First A mendment suit against The Act . . . . The fa ct is that Government attorneys, in this case Progressive: at least, insisted that supporting information for their argu­ ments had to be kept secret. This kind of situation places We need ao •ore such victories those with the authority to invoke secrecy without justifica­ tion in possession of power that is potentially more danger­ We are deeply concerned by the issue of prior restraint raised ous than a hydrogen bomb. . . . Unless the press challenges by Th e Progressive case, yet we are left with the disturbing the Government under present conditions, censorship can conclusion that, if this was a victory for the First Amend­ be invoked under the flimsiest pretenses and fo r purposes ment, we need no more such victories. Our form of govern­ that have little or nothing to do with national security or the ment rests on freedom of information protected by the First dissemination of secrets. Amendment. Our national security is vital. The missing in­ - Milwaukee Sentinel gredient in the dispute was a lack of wisdom and re­ sponsibility in invoking these claims. The act should be rewriHea -Los Angeles Times The Atomic Energy Act, which tries to make information Dispel the cloud about nuclear power the exclusive possession of a priesthood of bureaucrats and scientists, should be rewritten, not in­ The Government's decision to drop its Federal court action voked. The act has been used to keep Americans from mak­ against The Progressive leaves unsullied the Warren deci­ ing informed decisions about nuclear power and weap­ sion .... Warren's drastic ruling was taken without requiring onry. . . . Th e Progressive case should spur the Government the Government to prove an overriding danger to the nation to come up with new procedures to give the public the nu- was involved in an article that was put together fr om material in the public domain. The public and the press are now left with the Warren ruling. It hangs over the Bill of Rights like a dark cloud. If it is left unchallenged it will remain as a danger­ ous precedent for fu ture assaults on our constitutional freedoms. - Th e Capital Times, Ma dison, Wisconsin

The world will aot cruJDble

Now that the "secret" is out, the Government says it will drop its suit against Th e Progressive. Good. The suit should never have been filed. The story is scheduled to be printed in the November Progressive. The world will not crumble. But perhaps some bureaucrats should. -Kenosha (Wis consin) Ne ws

Celebration Is premature

Victory celebrations on the most important issue in the case - prior restraint of the press - are premature. The Govern­ ment . . . has not given up its claim of the right to invoke Morin, The Miami Herald censorship of the publication of supposedly classified infor-

THE PROGRESSIVE I 27 clear information it needs, while denying our enemies the in­ fo rmation they want. - Chicago Sun- Times TOBUILD AN H-BOMB Tlae Govemm.eal should pi'Osecate HOW The only truly effective way the Government can keep se­ crets is to keep them. Once they get out, they tend to spread quickly -just as this one was. The only real protections then available against publication of such secrets are the moral constraints felt by those into whose hands they have fa llen or the deterring effect of the criminal provisions of the Atomic Energy Act. ... In this case, neither was sufficient to prevent publication - the former because too many people thought the Government was carrying secrecy too fa r and the latter becausesome people, apparently including the editors of Th e Press Connection, believe the Government lacks either the will or the ability to prosecute .... While a prosecution of those editors could jeopardize the current classification system and, perhaps, portions of the Atomic Energy Act it­ self, a decision by the Department of Justice not to prosecute could well turn that act's deterring provisions into a sham. In that event, the Government would be tempted to ignore what it should have learned from this affair about protecting itsown secrets and to rely even more on a dangerous system of ineffective prior restraints - which it should in fa ct aban­ don. Conrad. Los Ange/rs Times - Th e Wa shington Post

Uaload dleplstols the media, which is what the First Amendment is all about, remains intact. We congratulate The Progressive and the American Civil - Wisconsin State Journal, Madison Liberties Union for resisting, againstthe advice even of some customary defenders of a free press. The Government's case simply collapsed when other publications began to print simi­ A polat weD made lar H-bomb information, found by other amateur students in The real issue is not the need for censorship but the need to public sources.. . . [But] before suffering a technical get rid of annihilative weapons. By publishing the Hansen let­ knockout, the Government had created some pernicious ter, The Press Connection helped to make that point and to legal theory. Lacking evidence that anyone had stolen H­ uphold freedom of the press. bomb secrets, it claimed the right to suppress all nuclear -St. Louis Post-Dispatch weapons information on the grounds that it is "born classified" - even if born in the minds of free men. And lest this reading of the law fall, it then proclaimed that "techni­ A threat to our freedom cal" informaton - allegedly distinguishable from political The threat of proliferation, this assault on the First Amend­ ideas - was never entitled to the free speech and press ment reminds us, lies not just in the physicaldest ruction that guarantees of the First Amendment. If the courts now avoid may someday occur from the spread ofweapons technology, ruling on them, these doctrines would lie around, in Justice but in the police state psychology that develops as Govern­ Jackson's phrase, like loaded pistols. It would be wiser to ment strives to "protect" us from accidents, disasters, or unload them while they lie within reach. terrorism. In a world dominated both by the arms race and -The Ne w York Times by the growing attachment to nuclear power, the threat to our freedom is as great, or greater, than the threat to our Tlae apec:ter reaaalu latact security; and that may be the most important lesson The Progressive has forced on us. If the news media are to assert that freedom of the press is - Detroit Free Press absolute, then The Progressive's case was a poor set of fa cts. Articles about nuclear secrets tend to shift the judicial burden Precious IIHie lusdflcalloa from the Government to prove irreparable harm - where the burden should lie under the Pentagon Papers decision - There is precious little justification for publishing data con­ to the media to justify its publication. By the dismissal, bad cerning U.S. weaponry which could seriously harm this press law has been avoided. The specter of prior restraint of country. The right to publish does not necessarily extend to

28 I NOVEMBER 1979 everything that is not specifically prohibited by the Govern­ record. It can be argued that once a country has acquired the ment. There should be some room fo r editorial responsibility A-bomb, the damage is done. We would not argue that there in the offices of the news media as well. are no secrets the press should not publish. But the Atomic - Toledo Blade Energy Act, which actually labels some information "classified at birth, " may be outdatedand in need of amend­ Ceuonldp Is aol lbe aaswer ment. - Th e Sea ttle Times If governments built nuclear weapons simply because they know how, nations with those weapons would include Eacaplav a terrlltle Hlltack Canada, West Germany, Japan, Sweden, and almost cer­ tainly others, in addition to nations that have built them fo r We see the outcome as mainly an avoidance of a terrible motives involving security and prestige. Proliferation of the precedent that would enlarge the Government's power to information in question has been under way for a genera­ engage in secrecy (both justified and unjustified) , impair the tion .... The responsibility of governments in possession of ability of the press to disseminate information and reduce the nuclear weapons is to negotiate and implement serious steps public's defense against government by deceit of the toward getting rid of them. Pretending that this requirement, governed .•.. Thus, the Government's abandonment of its the most essential one the world is confronting, can be par­ case against The Progressive is no occasion fo r crowing about tially satisfied by censorship is an evasion of that respon­ a great new breakthrough for freedom of the pr�. but it is sibility. causefor journalists and other citizens alike to breathe a sigh - The Ann Arbor Ne ws of relief that a dangerous restriction on fr eedom has been avoided. & daagerou optloa IIIII opea - Milwaukee Journal We 'd have preferred to win this case on the basis of a Far froa dear thorough airing in court and a judicial determination that the Government has no business trying to prohibit publicationof Was the outcome indeed a "clear-cutvictory" fo r the Amer­ material it had allowed to slip into the public domain over the ican public? Have the people no vital interest apart fr om idle years. The time to have protected these H-bomb "secrets" curiosity about how thermonuclear bombs are made? If you was long ago, by keeping a tighter rein on what the Govern­ believe the Government's contention - not yet decisively ment itself and its scientists made public. We would have rebutted by the magazine or its apologists - that certain of liked fo r a court to have said so. By backing down now with­ Morland's disclosures might accelerate the proliferation of out a trial, the Government can leave open its option to try H-bombs, then you must accept that the public's safety, again at a time when the fa cts don' t interfere so much with its security, and tranquility were also at issue. National effort. "security" can be a slipperyjustification ... but the abuse of - Chicago Tribune the security argument . does not render it invariably un­

sound. . .. It ... is far from clear that we need extensive &aoa.. a ted act technical information on H-bombs to debate policies involv­ ing their possible use. The information needed to build an atomic bomb - 1� po­ -The Wa shington Star tent than a hydrogen bomb but still immensely powerful - has long been, for all practical purposes, a matter of public TM aaayJdiAwlna While Idi Amin has been removed fr om the roster of ter­ rorist effectives... there are still fa r too many of his ilk .... Because... this is the political and criminal reality of today, we return to the basic question of the propriety of the publication of thermonuclear how-to-do-it manuals. The possibility ...is that of terrorists armed with small nuclear weapons holding entire communities hostage on threat of catastrophe. - The Sa n Francisco Chronicle

Tbe real qaestloa

The real question is Government secrecy and whether the people have the right to know not only about the bomb but about the technology and economy that support it and the dangers thereof. Our congratulations to Th e Press Connec­ tion The Progressive. �;,.-..� and Only through the bold action of a few will the constitutional rights of all Americans be pro­ The Progressive •avulae ceaterfold tected. D.B. Johnson - Th e Portland (Oregon) Observer

THE PROGRESSIVE I 29 LETTERS ON TBE B·BOMB CONTR- - OVERSY

Congratulations - and many thanks - together, etc., but you do not have the the publishing of the controversial H­ are in order from journalists across the right to do so. bomb article. country for your successful defense of the I ask you to apologize to Almighty God Our library is dedicated to the infusion constitutional freedoms we all eqjoy. Writ­ about this sin and that you become Chris­ and defusion of United States history ers and editors like yourselves, who are tian. If you don't stop publishing about the through scholarly research. We believe willing to take chances and do battle in the H-bomb or any other bomb, you can face your article adds to the annals of American legal trenches, are the lifeblood of a con­ arrest. If you are a member of the Com­ judicial history. For this reason, we would tinuing free press in the United States. munist Party, there is a law against this like a copy of the article fo r our historical We at Ha rrisburg understand your party since June 23, 1978. archives. problems only too well. Following the Ma ry Elizabeth Humphrey Williams G. Kevin Da vis publication in August 1978 of our article, Grand Rapids, Michigan Winfield, Jllinois "Meltdown: Tomorrow's Disaster at TMI" (see The Progressive, June 1979) , Unbelievable! I am a graduate of the Of course you should not enjoy such liber­ Walter Creitz, then president of University of Wisconsin and a strong ad­ ty as to publish the article on the secrets in Metropolitan Edison Company, wrote vocate of third-consciousness idealism, the U.S. nuclear weapons program. Congressman Gus Yatron expressing his honesty, and a better world. Yet I could But then, let's do away with U.S.-type concern that an "article of this ilk . . . [a] not fa thom the rationale behind the pur­ democracyfirst. highly sensationalized and blatantly dis­ suit of a cause at the expense of your ac­ Alfons Ertelt torted scenario involving nuclear safety" tions. I am all fo r freedom of the press, but Mo nterey Park, California could appear in a magazine receiving not fo r possible world destruction, which Federal CET A fu nding. Congressman your article will expedite. Haven't we Yatron forwarded Creitz's complaint to The staff and administration of the Kevin learned anything from history? There have the Department of Labor, which subse­ Davis Private Library wish to extend our always been the Hitlers of this world, who quently declared us ineligible to receive congratulations to you and your staff upon will use such tools to meet the ends of CET A fu nds. This decision is still under appeal. No matter that Creitz and Yatron bypassed the prescribed procedures fo r challenging a CETA grant; no matter that only seven months later Three Mile Island Unit 2 was spewing radiation into the central Pennsylvania atmosphere; no mat­ ter that the lack of plllnning for such a con­ tingency - detailed in the article - sud­ denly became a horrible reality; the nuclear industry, backed up by the Government, was attempting to stifle the truth. We're looking forward to the publica­ tion of Howard Morland's story. Keep up the good work. Ed Perrone Ha rrisburg Ma gazine Ha rrisburg, Pe nnsylvania 'Be reaDy weal to llae Ubruy for books oa how lo make aa B·bomb... bal llaey were all checked oa You may think you have the right to print r articles about the H-bomb, how to put one Stayska/, Chicago Tribune

30 I NOVEMBER 1979 their crazy, power-hungry, and irrational limit my freedom from fe ar of a World peace, fr eedom, justice, and the people's goals. Thanks to you, you've helped that War III. right to know what their Government is possibility along. Congratulations! I fe el sadder and more doing about nuclear weapons. Principles You now probably gloat over your depressed now than I ever have. must not be lost sight of if a nation is to achievement. Was it worth it? Morale of Cristi Currie survive in dignity. the masses already hangs low from the West Bend, Wisconsin I couldn't be prouder of The Progressive cloud of doom that hangs over their heads. than I am. You not only have won your Many would like to see such weapons gone Congratulation, celebration, jubilation! own cause but have also helped the weak­ entirely. The Progressive has given a great witness kneed to get to their feet and fight on. I'd You remind me of my younger days, by hanging in there. We are all the better think that those who wrote letters saying when radical yet unripened youth thronged for your conscience and courage. The Progressiveshouldn't have printed the the streets, riding their white chargers and Ma rjorie Murphy article ought to reassesstheir viewpoint, to playing hero fo r a day with little wisdom to Saxtons River, Vermont put it mildly. back up their causes. A fight fo r a cause is Betty Daland good, but again I say at what expense? Congratulations to all of you upon the vin­ Milton, Wisconsin You fightfor freedom but at the same time dication of your great fight for principles of Congratulations and best wishes to The Progressive, staff, and friends. It is nice to win one. Hang in there. Stanley Ha milton Sebring, Florida

I am impelled to share with you the excite­ ment I fe lt when my eye fe ll on a headline in our Denton Record-Chronicle: "Media Cheer End of H-bomb Litigation.'' Prob­ ably the Justice Department is relieved to have an "out" to drop its suit against you. Mrs. J. M. Logue Denton, Texa s

I have yet to be convinced of a reasonable explanation as to why an article on the making of an atomic bomb should be published. On a subject such as this, doesn' t my "right" to know seem a little ludicrous? The matter has already been settled that this information could be of use mostly to leading countries such as In­

dia and Israel who possess· the wherewithal to make the device. With that in mind, one cannot convince me that these countries could possibly glean any new knowledge from a magazine article. These countries already possess top scientists who surely know all there is to know. I am sure I am like a majority of Ameri­ cans who understand nothing in this highly technical data. Maybe I'm terribly naive, but I go back to my original question: Why would The Progressive wish, in the first place, to print such data? Ma ry Davis Va lencia, California

As one who rushed to subscribe to your magazine after hearing of the prior re­ straint placed against you, Jet me not only congratulate you on the withdrawal of the censorship suit against you but also sub­ scribe to an additional year's worth of good reading. 'So mach for a ao-hiHer' I only regret that the case did not go to trial (and inevitable appeal to the Supreme Herblock, The Wa shington Post Court) where a definitive decision against

THE PROGRESSIVE I 31 prior restraint and censorship in general would have helped to ensure that our press remains fr ee. As it is, prior restraint has been invoked for six months and upheld by a higher court (in that the appeals court didn't instantly overturn Judge Warren) . The threat that censorship will again be im­ posed at a later date remains. Please file suit against the Justice Department on the basis that your constitutional rights under the First Amendment were violated. Ask for Sl in punitive damages (to establish the guilt of the Government and clearly define that prior restraint is unconstitutional) and fo r compensatory damages in an amount great enough to cover your legal costs and other expenses incurred in defending yourself against an illegal action. This should make the Justice Department think twice about fu ture actions of this type. Keep up the good work. Taylor Jarnagh Bemidji, Minnesota

Congratulations on the U.S. Govern­ Wright. TlwMilwaukee Sentinel ment's decision to drop its case. The American people owe you a debt fo r your "secret" by Uncle Sam. And ifl recall cor­ prosecution under it in the fu ture. If there valiant fight for freedom of the press. rectly, this same fa te befell a physics pro­ is a lesson to be learned from all this (there Those who claimed that this case could fessor a number of years ago; he made are many lessons, but this one hasn't been result in a court decision upholding the some independent theoretical calculations emphasized enough) it is that we owe a Government lacked not only your involving laser energy and its possible use great debt to the radical and alternative courage, but also your insight into the as a trigger fo r fu sion power. press - publications like yours and The heart of the issue: If you are afraid to fight John Campbell Press Connection - that have had the fo r freedom of the press, then you've al­ San Jose, Costa Rica courage to say the emperor has no clothes. ready lost it. Robert Friedman Dick Bauer There are many good newsmen in the Ne w York, Ne w York Somerville, Ma ssachusetts country and there are also the kind that ·would do anything to get a story - even to Two billion dollars, give or take a few No human being, whether as a Govern­ the extent of possibly betraying their own million, might get you a neat fa mily-size ment official or in some other position to country. H-bomb, if you shop around a bit. That in­ exercise control, should ever have more Are you reallyso well informed that you cludes the hardware, raw materials, proc­ than the most necessary minimum of are positive your additional hydrogen essing, and a copy of The Progressive (or a authority over other human beings. My bomb disclosure won't aid a foreign coun­ good high-school physics book). whole life, its actions and observations, try? testify for me to the significance of Lord Also, have you set yourselfup as a self­ So, man, was I scared today! Not scared Acton's "Power corrupts ...." . appointed censor or "uncensor" in op­ about sensible, steady fe llers in the No matter what the fu rther develop­ position to what our Government leader­ Kremlin and the White House, such as the ments, you have succeeded. You have ship recommends? late Stalin and Nixon, of course. but about made a contribution of exceeding value. Your kind disgusts me and also scares some dirty foreign refugee nuts right here Wanda Lamade the hell out of me. in Marin County who maybe read that Twenty-nine Pa lms, California Fred C. Morse Jr. Progressive rag and squeeze Oak Ridge A us tin, Texa s maybe into the laundry room of the base­ The U.S. Government has done you a ment. great service by giving your voice an influ­ You call this a First Amendment victory Glenn B. Meagher ence beyond your wildest dreams. The over Federal censors. I call it irresponsible Fa irfa x, California least you can do for them is to expand your journalism. In all likelihood you have inquiry into the many skeletons that are given birth to some hotshot backyard Congratulations on your victory and that still in their closets - to do anything less bomber and we'll all be destroyed. of decent American people and the free would be a disservice to humanity! Ann McLin people of the world. It would be interesting to know how New Orleans, Louisiana Now I can sleep better, eat better, and many times the "Born Secret" classifica­ work harder to infuse in my students the tion has been used. Around the time that Congratulations. A victory in the courts great spirit of The Progressive, which is you were in the headlines, a small item was would have been sweeter, but a victory is a also the moving fo rce of America as you carried by one of the network newscasts victory. Even though the Atomic Energy and I know it. about two inventors whose idea for a voice Act still stands, I don't see how the Tra n Va n Dinh scrambler for CB had just been declared Government will be able to sustain a Philadelphia, Pe nnsylvania

32 I NOVEMBER 1979 A postscript

Boward Morlaad

hope the world recovers from the that human civilization has no fu ture fo r a year came to fru ition. By penetrat­ invention of radio and television. unless that fu ture includes nuclear dis­ ing the nation's most glamorous When radio was new, Hitler and armament Sometimes I include a role nuclear "secret," I accomplished IRoosevelt used it to mesmerize their for myself in the scenario. Walter something many people thought was respective nations with fr enzied Cronkite reads the news script: impossible, and my name became part speeches and cozy fireside chats. Its "A young free-lance journalist of the national news. My attorney was modern variant, television, gives a revealed today that years agoleaders of besieged with calls from newscasters handful of newscasters the power to tell the United Statesand the Soviet Union and talk-show hosts. I appeared several 200 million Americans what happened engaged the civilian populations of times on national television. For a cou­ in the course of every day, and few both nations in a mutual suicide pact. ple of weeks it seemed the whole world people question their judgment about CBS News has learned that, according wanted to know how I had learned the what was important enough to tell. to the provisions of the pact, a single H-bomb secret and why I wanted to Although I canhardly stand to watch act of madness or a simple miscalcula­ tell it television myself, I understand that tion on either side could result in 200 It was flattering suddenly to be taken most citizens are so fond of thedancing million deaths and the complete seriously by strangers - especially by colored lights on the cathode-ray tube destruction of each nation's industrial fa mous strangers whose opinions are that they can hardly take an idea, per­ capacity, as well as radioactive con­ trusted by millions of Americans. son, or event seriously unless it has tamination of most agricultural lands. Many of the interviewers were hostile been covered by the electronic picture Such destruction could take place at at first, but their attitude only pointed medium. When I tell my friends that I any time without warning, and be ac­ up the paradox that a magazine which have an overriding concern about the complished within hours. '' advocates nuclear disarmament was imminence of thermonuclear war, they The CBScamera slowly zooms in on trying to publish an article by an anti­ think I'm living in the past Walter Cronkite's serious, every­ nuclear activist - an article revealing Years have gone by since any "talk­ thing's-going- to-be-all-right fa ce as he "the H-bomb secret. " ing heads" on the CBS Evening News explains that a Presidential commission My own objective was merely to have expressed such a concern. Walter has been appointed to investigate the strip the mystery away fr om nuclear Cronkite has hardly mentioned nuclear startling allegations, but we should not weaponry. I hoped that demystification warfare since the Cuban missiles went waste time waiting for the result Every of the Bomb would have a therapeutic back to Russia, and he doesn' t seem a American should immediately refuse effect on America's foreign and eco­ bit worried about the fa ct that three to pay war taxes, publicly renounce the nomic policies. It was a motive too officers on any one of our thirty-one use of nuclear weapons, and demand subtle and too convoluted to be Poseidon submarines can start a the conversion of war industries to believed, and I soon gave up trying to nuclear war on their own A real civilian purposes. explain it Instead I tried, whenever danger doesn' t become a matter of As they say in New York, "It'll possible, to make simpler statements general concern until Cronkite and his never happen. " Any situation we have in fa vor of nuclear disarmament, most colleagues announce it and describe it lived with for years is not newsworthy, of which were edited out of my re­ in their deadpan, fa therly manner. and anything as profitable as the ported comments. I managed to slip a And so, for some years now, I have nuclear arms race is too important to few purely symbolic messages past the nurtured a television fa ntasy. In my make the Evening News. news censors - my basically honest fa ntasy the network news producers But something almost as improbable fa ce to show that I'm a nice guy, and a suddenly rediscover the Balance of did happen last March. An anti-nuclear picture of a nuclear weapon with my Terror and shock the nation with word guerrilla theatre stunt I had worked on shoe sitting on top to show the relative

THE PROGRESSIVE I 33 size - and to convey my visceral con­ tempt for the Bomb. The intended message was that nice guys don' t like nukes.

did not set out to prove that the H­ bomb secret was already public knowledge. I set out to prove that IH-bombs are real - that they have size and shape. The secrecy that keeps them out of sight and mind does not remove them from our lives. They are not· score-points in a basketball game between the superpowers; they are in­ dustrial products. I would rather have relied on a real H-bomb or a set of official blueprints for my description, and the fact that I used publicly availa­ ble sources and my own imagination diminishes the impact of my account by reducing its credibility and robbing it of concrete detail. It was not surprising that the con­ troversy quickly focused on peripheral issues - the Government's power to restrain the press, the sources myof in­ formation, how the Government got advance word that The Progressive in- · tended to publish my story, whether its publication would provide ldi Amin with an H-bomb. The real issue wasignored. It was ig­ nored for the same reason that none of the recent fea ture films about Vietnam has made a serious effort to portray the Vietnamese honestly. Ifthe story of the Vietnam war were told fr om the Viet­ namese point of view, it would say too much about our leaders that the finan­ cial backers of feature fllms don't want Patcbwol'k •JS�ua to know, and don't want us to know. If EnKtlhordt, St. LouisPost-Dispatch the story of the H-bomb is told without censorship, we cannot avoid acknowledging that the blame for the The publication of the H-bomb arti­ miles ahead of where we were six arms race lies with our own govern­ cle in this issue of The Progressive is months ago, and the peace movement ment, not with the Russians. America certainly a victory for free speech. It is has acquired some of the credibility started it, and America bears the pri­ certainly a blow to the mentality em­ that has traditionally been reserved for mary responsibility for perpetuating it. bodied in the secrecy provision of the the Edward Tellers of this world. Ban­ That fa ct is too true and too close to Atomic Energy Act But there hasbeen the-bomb people are increasingly home to be news. no detectable impact on the mad mo­ refusing to take a back seatto ban- the­ Thus, the real censorship in The mentum of the nuclear arms race. The reactor people in the anti-nuclear Progressive's H-bomb secrecy case was SALT II debate hinges on the irrele­ movement. If we keep struggling, not the deletion of technical informa­ vant presence of a few thousand Rus­ some day we may actually hear Walter tion fr om my article; it was the long­ sians in Cuba. No one even talks about Cronkite announce a reduction in the standing voluntary censorship, getting rid of the Bomb. number of nuclear weapons. And it especially in the electronic media, Though I have experienced the per­ may eventually become a "realistic" which makes it necessary to stage a sonal frustration of trying to capitalize position to advocate total withdrawal sideshow in order to call passing atten­ on a fleeting notoriety in order to raise (as in the case of Vietnam) fr om the tion to the most serious crisis our a substantive issue, the effort has pro­ suicide pact inherent in the world' s civilization has ever fa ced. duced some positive effects. We are nuclear arsenals. •

34 I NOVEMBER 1979 Errata

Pressure genera red by radiation - not steam .... Morland·� discussiOn of was not included in my article was in­ the direct fo rce of radiation pressure the role of radiation prcswrc is entire­ itiated by the Government fo r reasons

- is the key to the design of the ly incorrect. ..." that are still not clear. It seriously hydrogen bomb. That somewhat Even though the quotation is from hampered the defense, which may esoteric distinction has apparently the defendants' own legal brief, none have been part of the reason it was been the focal point of in camera of the defendants had seen that state­ done, and it ultimately resulted in the hearings and court filings in the case ment before September 24. A wall of disclosure of more info rmation that of The United Stares vs. The Progres­ <;ccrecy separates the defendants and the Government is supposedly trying sive, the prior restraint case that their attorneys. The defendants' at­ to keep secret. delayed publication of my article, torneys were obliged to obtain In addition to the matter of explod- "The H-Bomb Secret," for more security clearances in order to read ing styrofoam, there are probably than six months. the secret documents the Govern­ technical errors in my description of In my description last month of ment was showing to the judge. The the fusion fuel capsule of the second- how the H-bomb works, I stated that defendants refused to apply for ary system. It probably does not con- the physical pressure of radiation re­ security clearances on the grounds tain any tritium, but it probably does Oe..:ted offthe inside wall of the bomb that a security clearance is a secrecy contain, at the center, a one- or two­ casing compresses the fusion fu el agreement which would interfere with inch diameter rod of highly enriched package directly. That statement the defendants' ability to write about uranium or plutonium running its omits an important intermediate step: nuclear matters in the fu ture. Tnus length. That rod of fissionable materi- X-rays from the fission bomb that the defendants have been informed of al is compressed to supercriticality as serves as the H-bomb trigger are ab­ such discussions about the technical the fu sion fuel capsule surrounding it sorbed by an exotic, high density deficiencies of the article only after is compressed in on it by the explod- polystyrene-type foam. The foam is the censor has approved. ing styrofoam. It then becomes the transformed into a highly energized The Government had no obligation second A-bomb trigger which is often plasma which explodes and com­ to show any secret documents to the mentioned but incorrectly described. presses the fu sion fu el package. judge. The introduction into the court It heats the fusion fuel capsule from. Exploding styrofoam is thus an im­ record of technical information that the inside while the styrofoam com­ portant element in the H-bomb presses it from · the outside. The detonation sequence which is entirely Uranium-238 which contributes up to missing from my account. My account 90 per cent of the total explosive incorrectly attributes the compression energy of the bomb is probably not lo­ effect to radiation pressure. cated in the bomb casing, but- rather is In the diagrams accompanying my probably confined to the casing of ·tbe article, I showed an empty space be­ fu sion fu el capsule, where its fissiolf' · �­ tween the carrot-shaped fusion fuel by high energy neutrons can further package and the bomb casing that sur­ add to the heat and pressure which rounds it. That empty space should be promote fusion. filled with hard foam material that ex­ Finally, the fusion fuel inside the plodes when it absorbs x-rays, as plutonium core of the primary system shown here. is probably a mixture of tritium and This information was released for deuterium gas under high pressure. public filingon September 24, when a The whole affair illustrates that the Government brief authorized the secrecy provisions of the Atomic restoration of certain passages that Energy Act are unenforceable, in ad­ had been previously deleted from the dition to being an unwarranted inter­ public version of the August 31 brief fe rence with the First Amendment of defendants Erwin Knoll, Samuel rights to unfettered public discourse. H. Day Jr., and myself. When the Government tries to sup­ The pertinent passages, on Page 4 7, press discussion of info rmation that is are as fo llows: "Essentially, the x-rays in the public domain, at the very least produce a plasma of energized matter it must confirm the accuracy of the in­ which pushes on the fusion fuel fo rmation it is trying to suppress. tamper in much the same way that Furthermore, if this case is typical, boiling water produces steam which the Government will eventually re­ pushes on the blades of a turbine. But veal publicly more of its "secrets" Morland's discussion of the role of than are already out if it attempts to radiation coupling in the compression take private citizens to court in order of fusion fu el is as inaccurate as if he to silence them. said that boiling water turns the blades of a turbine - he leaves out the ( �' I Y7Y. Howard Morland 1 Howard Morla nd

THE PROGRESSIVE I 35 TBE LAST WORD

the time nor the money to pursue our usual subscription promotion program, which under ordinary circumstances would have produced 3,000 or 4,000 new subscribers. Bonanza It is true that we have received a few subscription orders that might not have come in were it not for the First Amendment case. Perhaps a dozen or two reporters entered subscriptions af­ ter covering the case. And Teri Terry tells me that both the Department of Boa Carbon Energy and the FBI have ordered sub­ scriptions. ast March, shortly after the for any other services rendered in his I could tell you how close we have Government of the United States forty-year association wih the maga­ come on several recent occasions to went to court to muzzle The Pro­ zine. missing the month-end payroll, or how gressive,L a syndicated columnist who But an unprecedented First Amend­ adept I've become at stalling irate cred­ shall remain nameless here suggested ment case is a most extraordinary cir­ itors. that our magazine had "goaded and cumstance, and the distinguished law But I'd rather tell you, inste;d, provoked" the Department of Energy firm of LaFollette, Sinykin, Anderson, about the evening a fe w weeks ago into trampling on the First Amend­ and Munson was in no position to tie when several of us had dinner to­ ment so that we could reap a "bonanza up most of its time and talent on a pro gether, a block from the magazine's of publicity. " It was all, he implied, a bono basis. Even at substantially re­ office, and how thewaitress, when she get-rich-quick scheme The Progressive duced rates, the legal fees have been brought our check, asked us to con­ had cooked up. formidable. tribute her tip to The Progressive's Le­ We didn' t know whether to laugh or The American Civil Liberties gal Defense Fund. cry - and we had no time to do either. Union, which took on the defense of What else can I tell you? That we are The telephones started ringing right Editor Erwin Knoll and Managing Edi­ living out of suitcases, drinking too away. Reporters all over the country tor Sam Day, charges no legal fees, of much coffee, not seeing enough of our picked up on the idea that we were get­ course. But the ACLU has financial fa milies, smoking too many cigarettes. ting rich, and naturally they thought it problems of its own, and out-of-pocket If that were all it costs to defend the was a good story. costs - for travel, telephone, printing, First Amendment, we'd have no So let me tell you how rich we got, and the like - must be reimbursed. problem; we could afford to pay for and are still getting. In April 1978, our travel costs months or years, if necessary. But it Like most political publications, The amounted to ...zero. Nobody went costs money, too -lots ofmoney. The Progressive is no stranger to financial anywhere. In April 1979, by contrast, Progressive is $125,000 in debt right adversity. It was founded in 1909, and our travel expenses for the month now, and the figure will surely grow in these last seventy years it has ex­ came to $4,909. How did we do it? It larger before it begins to diminish. So perienced two kinds of times - hard was easy. Confronted with the need to what good is your $10 or $25 contribu­ times and terribly hard times. Right collect scientific affidavits in support of tion? now it is experiencing desperate times. our position as quickly as possible, I left Well, right now, as you read this last Defending the First Amendment has Madison at 7:30 one Monday morning page of the November issue, you are already cost us more than $200,000 - and flew to Milwaukee, then to San one reader among approximately and the end is not yet in sight. Francisco, drove first to Berkeley, then 40,000 subscribers, all of whom I joined the staff of Th e Progressive to Stanford, back to San Francisco, presumably care a great deal about six years ago, and in those six years the flew down to Los Angeles, drove out such issues as nuclear secrecy, the magazine incurred a total of about to Riverside and back to Los Angeles, danger of the arms race, and the state $1,000 in legal costs - an average of flew on to Denver, to Minneapolis, of the First Amendment. So it's simple $165 a year. Except in the most extra­ and finally home to Madison - arriv­ arithmetic: If you and every one of ordinary circumstances, Th e Pro­ ing at 9:15 Tuesday evening. Others your fe llow subscribers were to send gressive's attorney and chairman of the made similarly fra ntic - and expen­ just $20, we could afford to defend the board, Gordon Sinykin, had never sive - journeys. whole Bill of Rights. sent us a bill for his legal services - or What does the plus side of the ledger But, of course, not everyone will show? Well, circulation has grown ­ send a check. A small number of peo­ Ron Carbon is the publisher of by about 700 subscribers. The problem ple will. Please be one of that small Th e Progressive. is that for six months we had neither number. Soon. •

36 I NOVEMBER 1979 Afterthoughts-March '81

As the cover suggests, this reprint finances? And, knowing what we based on considerations of "na­ contains all of the material on "The know,would we do it again? tional security" pose a grave threat H-Bomb Secret" published in The The answer to the first question to democracy. Progressive's November 1979 issue, remains essentially what it was in Some of our colleagues in the exactly as it appeared there, along November 1979-see my "Bonan­ mass media felt that ours was not a with a brief follow-up piece by Ho­ za" piece from that issue in this re­ good First Amendment test case, ward Morland, published in the De­ print. Our legal defense of the right since it involved the emotion­ cember 1979 issue, which corrects a to publish ultimately cost us almost charged issue of nuclear secrecy, few technical errors that appeared $250,�a huge sum for The Pro­ and since the highest officialsof the in his now famous article. gressive--and two years later we still Federal Government were pre­ Although our supply of Novem­ owe $55,000 of it, gradually reduc­ pared to swear-and did swear, to ber 1979 issues is depleted, we still ing our indebtedness with the help their own subsequent embarrass­ have copies of the May 1979 issue, of contributions from subscribers ment-that publication of Howard . which contains much useful material and other devoted friends of the Morland's article in The Progressive on the background of The Pro­ First Amendment. (Our attempt to would injure the United States. But gressive's First Amendment case. recover legal costs from the Govern­ we know there is no such thing as a Of particular interest are two arti­ ment was rebuffed by the same "good" First Amendment test case: cles describing the way most of the judge who initially restrained us The First Amendment comes under scientific community-and much of from publishing.) attack only when someone thinks the nation's press-responded to Th e Progressive's circulation has there is an urgent reason for curbing the Government's unprecedented increased modestly in the last cou­ freedom-and it is precisely in those attempt at censorship. ple of years, but that is probably at­ circumstances that the First Amend­ The extremely heavy volume of tributable less to the H-bomb case ment must be upheld. special orders we have received in­ than to widespread concern about One of our strongest motives for dicates that many high school his­ the Reagan Administration and delivering this reprint into your tory, government, civics, and social what its policies portend for the fu­ hands-and those of as many other studies classes, as well as college and ture of the country. (And, if you've Americans as possible-is to dem­ university courses in journalism, read the "Bonanza" piece , I'm onstrate that even a struggling, per­ mass communications, political afraid I'd have to check the circula­ petually hard-pressed enterprise science , and law, are studying The tion filesto tell you whether the FBI like Th e Progressive can successfully Progressive Case and the implica­ or the Department of Energy re­ stand up to the mightiest forces in tions it holds for the First Amend­ newed their subscriptions; we ·the Government of the United ment. Please feel free to write to us haven't worried much about it.) States when a fundamental issue of about this reprint and copies of the When we are asked whether we freedom is at stake. We believe that May 1979 issue in quantity for class­ would do it all again, our reply is un­ attempts to undermine the Bill of room use . hesitating and unequivocal: Abso­ Rights are bound to intensify in the More than two years after the lutely. We never believed we had months and years ahead. We be­ Government went into court to pre­ any choice but to resist with all our lieve it urgently necessary that those vent publication of Howard means a totally unconstitutional, il­ attempts be resisted as vigorously as Morland's article, two questions are legal , and irrational attempt at cen­ possible, by as many people as pos­ still frequently posed to us: Wha:t sorship. After much reflection , we sible. We hope our experience in was the effect of the legal case on are more convinced than ever that successfully defending our right to Th e Progressive, its circulation , its the Government's claims to secrecy publish will prove helpful.

Ron Carbon, Publisher