F*** You! Mr. President: Confessions of the Father of the Neutron Bomb 3rd Edition Featuring a New Overview and Postscript Chapter, “The Profits of Fear” by Charles Platt Sam Cohen 2 Confessions of the Father of the Neutron Bomb © 1996-2006 by Sam Cohen, Los Angeles; All rights reserved for all media. A copy of this book may be found at: http://www.AthenaLab.com/Confessions_Sam_Cohen_2006_Third_Edition.pdf This third edition of Sam Cohen’s memoirs (with Sam’s requested change of title, and Charles Platt’s new chapter) supersedes the previously released second edition. Among other changes, the second edition had all the previously deleted expletives restored, and had many typographical corrections. The old first (printed) edition of “Shame” is obsolete. By the way, I want to be on record for urging Sam to consider a more moderate change of title. Note about major Adobe Acrobat PDF bug: Despite having purchased Acrobat specifically for the purpose of accurately converting MS Word documents, it still alters the layout and thus messes up the page numbering for the Index (even with accessibility-related reflow explicitly turned off, among a variety of other attempted workarounds). Their advertising seems quite deceptive for failing to mention thus very important deficiency. You can still make interpolation-guesses since the errors are approximately proportional to how far into the book the references are, or do searches in copies of the PDF file. Introduction 3 To Conrad Schneiker and Arp, my true and devoted friends. 4 Confessions of the Father of the Neutron Bomb Technical Editor’s Notes It’s very rare for any single book to really stand out in terms of many crucially important unvarnished first-hand historical ‘reality checks’. Sam Cohen’s book Shame is one of those few remarkable exceptions. The principle themes and characteristics of Sam’s book are: 1. It’s an inspiring story of dogged triumph over considerable childhood psychological torment and medical adversity. 2. It’s a remarkable story of recognizing the right problem to solve, versus merely reinventing bigger conventional weapons in new technologies. The neutron bomb aimed at reducing the civilian slaughter that now characterizes large-scale war—conventional and otherwise. It makes the morally crucial and counterintuitive case that the neutron bomb is the most moral weapon ever invented, and is thus the best type of nuclear bomb ever invented. (Keep in mind the prior actual and continuing dependence on monster stockpiles of inherently indiscriminate civilian-slaughtering—and civilian life-support infrastructure destroying—city-obliterating bombs.) 3. It’s a one-man American Perestroika and Glasnost movement, which honestly shows how many high-profile credit-mongering “Cold Warriors” and Cold War institutions were generally groups of cynical political opportunists who actually (and often knowingly) undermined real national security in their greedy lust for power, glory, and profit. 4. It’s to the foreign policy, national security, and military-industrial establishments what Feynman’s myth-shattering activities were to NASA’s phony Challenger ‘investigation’ (doublespeak for ‘cover-up’). It’s an amazing chronicle of how a handful of remarkable people can sometimes prevail over enormously larger institutional packs of political animals dominated by self-serving groupthink. It puts on record the sort of ‘real world’ bureaucratic skullduggery that others will generally only speak about off the record, and often only after swearing you to secrecy. 5. It shows why George Washington’s foreign policy advice—far from being allegedly obsolete—is actually becoming increasingly more important with proliferating advances in smaller and more powerful weapons. Contents Introduction............................................................................................................................... 7 1. Childhood and Life Before The Bomb................................................................... 11 2. Winning The War At Los Alamos......................................................................... 21 3. The Commies Are Coming.................................................................................... 35 4. Through The Neutron Looking Glass ................................................................. 123 5. So Nu?................................................................................................................ 207 6. Shame................................................................................................................. 259 7. Overview and Postscript: The Profits of Fear (Charles Platt)..................... 263 7.1 Prologue: Nuclear News on Route 66 ............................................................... 263 7.2 The Drama ......................................................................................................... 263 7.3 The Most Moral weapon.................................................................................... 267 7.4 A Nuke by Any Other Name ............................................................................. 268 7.5 What’s a Neutron? ............................................................................................. 270 7.6 Warfare as a Biological Function ...................................................................... 272 7.7 The Global Consequences of Child Abuse........................................................ 273 7.8 The Problem of Selling Sam.............................................................................. 276 7.9 The Profits of Fear............................................................................................. 277 7.10 Epilogue: An Exercise in Futility ...................................................................... 280 Bibliography .......................................................................................................................... 281 Index...................................................................................................................................... 283 Introduction All crystal balls are very, very cloudy. What we do know is that, barring divine intervention, human beings will remain human and this includes those involved in the formulation and implementation of US national security policies, especially nuclear weapon policies. As for those who have impacted on the evolution of U.S. nuclear policies, I have met, known and worked with a great many of them. As military men, in defending their profession and the their arsenals, are prone to say “Men make war, not weapons.” True, and they also make policies that lead to or — rather less often — avoid war. Our policies, which since World War II have gotten us into war after war — none of them successful or in our true interests — have remained the same. I have the gravest concerns that they will lead to still more wars whose consequences may seriously threaten our survival. These policies must be changed to keep us out of wars abroad and to be able to defend ourselves, at home. Unless this happens, I truly fear for our country. Historical scholars, ever since ancient times, have been tracing through and analyzing momentous eras in the course of human events. In recent years a number of them have applied themselves to the nuclear weapons era which, as I write seems to be coming to an end insofar as these weapons threatening mankind’s survival. All signs point to very large reductions in the arsenals of the United States and what used to be called the Soviet Union and with the apparent end of the Cold War, a large-scale nuclear war, with its devastating consequences and possibilities for the “Doomsday” scenario now seems remote. Not that currently non-nuclear countries won’t be clandestinely developing, buying, or even stealing nuclear warheads and means to deliver them; this probably can’t be stopped. That they might use these weapons in anger, this probably can’t be stopped. On the other hand, those countries that now possess nuclear stockpiles show increasing signs of being able to avoid their use. One could say, and I would concur, that the outlook for mankind’s survival has never looked better since the Nuclear Age began. What all this portends, I don’t pretend to know; nor does anyone else for that matter. Most of this book will be about my own personal experiences with those involved with the development and policy formulation for nuclear weapons. Having spent some forty or so years observing these people close at hand, nuclear weapons was my profession, I’ll be relating my experiences with and my opinions about them. For it was their collective behavior as human beings, not intellectual giants, as many of them were, which produced the evolvement of our policies. I’ll be telling tales about them, ranging from flattering to scurrilous, to show how these policies came about. As for our nuclear policies, what I’ll have to say will be mainly scurrilous, mainly because they’ve been divorced from human realities, which among other things involve going to war time after time. As for the people mainly responsible for the policies, I’ll be mainly scurrilous about them too, for they were people who thought they had a God-given ability to know the unknowable. At best, their behavior was hallucinatory; at worse they were just crooks and liars. 8 Confessions of the Father of the Neutron Bomb Of course, there were others, many others, who were just plain decent dedicated people, as I saw them, who dealt with nuclear weapons in