Abstract
Of course certain atomic secrets must be protected, wrote F. H. Spedding, a Manhattan Project chemist. But the emphasis on secrecy had gotten out of hand. Complaining in the February 1949 Bulletin, Spedding offered his own over-the-top example:
“One might say that the telephone book or publications such as The American Men of Science or Who's Who would prove very useful to the enemy in that it would enable them to quickly locate our key scientists and engineers. On the other hand, I don't believe anyone would take the position that these books should be stamped ‘Secret.’”
What made me think of Spedding's example? Reading an apparently straightforward, no-tongue-in-cheek report by Bill Gertz, who on March 9 this year described a “five-page unclassified report,” a joint production of the cia and FBI—sent to Congress in January and “obtained by the Washington Times” in early March. The report argued that American society was in grave danger from Chinese spies lurking in American libraries, reading “open sources” like journals and magazines and the Internet.
(All this in the wake, of course, of the Wen Ho Lee case in which a Taiwanborn American scientist was variously accused of spying for China, a country he did not come from; of stealing secrets that were in fact not classified secret when he copied them; and giving away the plans for the W88, a 25-year-old bomb design, even though the documents said to be in Chinese hands have been traced to contractors and weapons assembly sites, where telltale errors were introduced.)
For the Bulletin, many of the events of the last year and a half, from the Cox committee report to the accusing fingers pointed at foreign-born citizens (let alone recent efforts to rehabilitate the memory of Sen. Joseph McCarthy), have had a particular resonance. This is “where we came in.”
Now, I know that today's witch hunts are small potatoes compared to the witch hunts of the late 1940s and early 1950s. But there is no reason to believe that politically motivated charges, aimed at gaining short-term advantage, are any less dangerous to a democratic society than they were 50 years ago.
Steve Aftergood, who heads the Government Secrecy Project at the Federation of American Scientists, kindly consented to act as “Guest Editor” for this special issue on nuclear secrecy.
Steve has brought together a group of writers who explore the subject from different viewpoints. He sets the stage by describing the reasons the American government wants to keep secrets from its citizens and suggests a few ways the habit might be curbed when the government's reasons are not very good. Publisher Stephen Schwartz updates us on the twists and turns in the Wen Ho Lee case. Historian Peter Westwick revisits the early post-war days. Surprisingly, he suggests that many in the nuclear establishment adapted to secrecy more easily than one might suppose; it had been, after all, the scientists' idea first. Howard Morland, who beat the censors in the Progressive case, says there is no secret—or shouldn't be. Proliferation expert David Albright disagrees.
We've added a brief report by Chuck Hansen on nuclear accidents, a personal essay on getting facts from the Energy Department, and a few decorative flourishes, some from the magazine's past.
We hope you like it.