Washington-U. S. A.
COFFIN, TRIS
WASHINGTON—U.S.A. By Tris Coffin Senate Probes U.S. Stand on Disarmament, Bomb-Test Ban In this, the hour when the voice of the turtle is heard and spring has burst suddenly and beautifully on...
...This time, the Administration, pushed and prodded both at home and by its allies to move on the disarmament issue, is looking to Congress for guide lines...
...The third view is the confused position of the Eisenhower Administration, which, inch by inch, is being budged from its refusal to negotiate unless a cut-off on nuclear production is included in the package...
...Both men, highly articulate and intelligent, have become publicly identified with the H-bomb...
...Orear denied that it would be possible to cover up an explosion by confusing it with an earthquake, except in the case of blasts so small they would have no military value...
...But the real issue steals into almost every sentence— whether man can ever again live free from the fear of a nuclear Armageddon...
...This old controversy still lies heavily on the minds of all involved...
...Quite understandably, the military wants a weapon that will kill the most people...
...How Utopian it seems to talk of a meaningful, effective, adequate disarmament which would protect the world from the horrors of modern war...
...Dr...
...Indescribable difficulties stand in the way of negotiating a disarmament agreement...
...Dr...
...A second point of view was offered the committee by Dr...
...Oppen-heimer told the editors: "It is not that disarmament is too Utopian...
...In the angry argument that raged through Washington and the scientific community almost a decade ago, Teller and Strauss (encouraged by the Pentagon) staked their reputation on building the big bomb...
...For example, Admiral Strauss, in disputing the view s of Dr...
...When we stopped talking, we lost the opportunity to ease tensions...
...Secretary of State John Foster Dulles is unhappily resigned to a summit meeting...
...The significance of these hearings far exceeds the usual reviews of policy by the full Foreign Relations Committee...
...He said an effective system for detecting tests could be developed overnight—by simply requiring that all seismographic observatories send copies of their records to a UN inspection agency...
...Orear said: "Suppose five years from now, 30 nations have nuclear bombs, and suppose one of these hidden megaton bombs should go off here in Washington...
...Also, Dr...
...This latter was indicated by an editorial in the Washington Post and Times-Herald on April 19 which acknowledged "Dr...
...At least three points of view have emerged from the hearings in Room 457 of the Senate Office Building...
...Stand on Disarmament, Bomb-Test Ban In this, the hour when the voice of the turtle is heard and spring has burst suddenly and beautifully on Washington, man's dilemma is being dissected in a small crowded room on Capitol Hill...
...Thus our Government's great hope of security, massive retaliation, is fading away and will become meaningless in a few more years...
...This cannot be done through international organizations alone...
...Admiral Strauss recalled difficulties in discussions with the Kremlin over Korea, and said: "We must not yield on points they want...
...were out of town...
...He revealed that an AEC announcement which erroneously stated that the U.S...
...Senator Humphrey' told me he had received more mail on this issue than any other he ever tackled, and that he had been encouraged by members of "in" governments of our allies with whom he had talked both here and at the United Nations...
...If we talk and reach even small agreements, and our people go to Russia and theirs come here, this would reduce the depth of the Iron Curtain...
...Both the U.S...
...In a recent speech at Cornell, Dr...
...And if these critics are given clearance to look at the facts, they are then not permitted to discuss what they know publicly...
...Why should we yield when they will not...
...Chet Holifield (D.-Calif...
...Blasts would be checked by UN teams on the sites and by monitoring the atmosphere...
...underground test had been detected only 250 miles away had been protested before its release by two key AEC officials, and that the truth (the test had been detected in Alaska) came out only after an inquiring reporter checked with the Coast and Geodetic Survey...
...At the open committee hearing, Dr...
...The greatest danger, he observed, lay not...
...Russia has 75 "high quality seismic stations...
...We are getting into a tricky situation...
...Humphrey added: "Every time information is available contrary to your views, it is classified...
...Far beyond disarmament, one has to envisage a world of affirmative collaboration in the world's work between people, irrespective of nationality...
...When this happens, the concept of massive retaliation will be reduced to an absurdity...
...Both Symington and Bethe, incidentally, regard the fall-out issue as vastly exaggerated, a view not accepted by a large bloc of scientists, such public figures as Adlai Stevenson and various laymen who also want cessation of nuclear tests...
...Oddly enough, the dilemma was stated a day before the current series of meetings opened and by a scientist not invited to appear...
...President Eisenhower seems quite ready to talk to the Russians about a nuclear-test ban or any other subject...
...All these forces cite the scientific arguments of Dr...
...Lined up with the military is a solid phalanx of Congressional conservatives led by wily Senator Styles Bridges (R.-N.H...
...The spring test series of the U.S...
...Teller sounded like a man defending his soul...
...Bethe opposes continued testing of nuclear weapons, and said that, while an airtight inspection system does not now exist, it could be developed...
...Hans Bethe, who heads the group named by Presidential science adviser Dr...
...It means that the world has to be an open world in which, practically speaking, secrets are illegal...
...Oppen-heimer's opposition led to what amounted to a sit-down strike by eminent scientists and, eventually, his own dismissal from atomic work...
...He sat in the witness cliair, rocking back and forth and speaking out with an emotional fervor that left his audience limp...
...The great danger in continuing present developments is a trigger-happy world...
...loses" the nuclear weapons race, the USSR will start shooting...
...Bethe's testimony was in a secret session, but similar data was given openly by Dr...
...It means that some major powers must be less nationalistic...
...He contended that nuclear explosions can be hidden or at least confused with earthquakes, that the U.S...
...Teller's defense of the H-bomb is involved in his testimony...
...Much more than Dr...
...When they said they would negotiate a nuclear-test ban, they gave us a chance to get closer, but we threw in proposals we knew they would not accept...
...The Senator sarcastically pointed out that the AEC came to the Joint Atomic Committee with an explanation of this incident when its two accusers, Anderson and Rep...
...He has stated privately two fears...
...Anderson was even blunter...
...Senator Symington, the former Air Force Secretary, told Admiral Strauss: "I think you made a mistake in tacking on the cut-off of production before you will talk to the Russians...
...That the hearings were held at all is a tribute to the dogged valor of Minnesota's Senator Hubert Humphrey, the committee chairman...
...Emotion springs out at every hearing...
...Teller's scientific prowess" but declared: "The political arguments, it seems to us, are heavily on the side of a positive move to break out of the stalemate of stand-patism...
...Ours was an innocent age...
...must continue testing to perfect anti-missile devices with nuclear warheads and to perfect a clean bomb, and that bomb stockpiles and production are "almost impossible to detect...
...He, was upset by criticism of H-bomb ¦ fall-out, and even argued that a small dose of radioactivity may be healthful and that some mutations are beneficial...
...The Bethe philosophy has considerable backing on Capitol Hill...
...While the Administration continued to ponder its stand, Dr...
...Teller feels that he is losing ground among the public in his campaign against a disarmament agreement with Russia...
...It is opposed to any international agreement that would limit the production, testing or stockpiling of nuclear weapons...
...Harold Stassen believes such Congressional action would end the disputes and chart the course...
...He is losing a bitter dispute with the Pentagon over perfecting a "clean" nuclear weapon and transforming our stockpile into this type...
...Admiral Strauss, on the stand, heard three Democratic Senators, Humphrey, Clinton Anderson of New Mexico and Stuart Symington of Missouri, accuse the AEC of hiding or altering data which would dispute Strauss's views...
...Opponents of disarmament have circulated rumors that "Hubert has been taken in by Russian propaganda," he was attacked editorially in his own state, and Congress, until very recently, has shown a massive indifference to his probings...
...James R. Killian to study control and inspection of nuclear weapons...
...On the surface, the Senate Disarmament Committee is trying to find out whether an effective nuclear disarmament treaty can be negotiated...
...Edward Teller, father of the hydrogen bomb, and Lewis L. Strauss, the Wall Street banker who enjoys the title of Admiral in the Naval Reserve and is chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission...
...J. Robert Oppenheimer, scientific boss of the wartime atom-bomb project, told the International Press Institute: "When we made the primitive, tiny weapon, we thought of casualties in the hundreds of thousands, not hundreds of millions...
...While newsmen and camera crews swarmed like ants to the labor rackets hearings to record the sordid stories of prostitutes and goons, disarmament has usually been covered by a few yawning wire-service men...
...will include dirty bombs...
...We would not even know against whom to retaliate...
...and USSR must develop their ICBMs until the missiles become invulnerable...
...These are the fraternal communities of men embarked in specialized work, whose knowledge binds them together...
...it is that it is not Utopian enough...
...made the weapon, this would lead to a terrifying nuclear arms race, and could explode into a war that would destroy our land...
...One former Eisenhower aide, fully aware of the indecision behind the stately walls of the White House, is pushing for a Senate or concurrent resolution calling on the Administration to enter into negotiations with Russia on nuclear testing...
...We need real negotiations with an understanding of opposite points of view, with equal sacrifices and equal gains for all involved, and with the mutual feeling that gains have outweighed sacrifices...
...These communities are the human counterpart and basis of international institutions that the future must hold, and on them rest, it seems to me, the hope that we will survive this most peculiar period in the history of man...
...Hans Bethe, said his own judgment was better than that of many scientists, because his decision to make the H-bomb proved the correct one...
...Teller had four main assumptions—that the Soviet Government will never permit effective inspection of its nuclear plants or stockpiles, that it cannot be trusted, that no self-enforcing agreement is possible, and that, if the U.S...
...He said: "We are entering into a period of mortal peril to all nations with the perfection of inter-continental ballistic missiles...
...Symington pointed out testimony at variance with Strauss and remarked: "We ought to get these differences cleared up, but the difficulty is that your critics can't get access to the facts you say back up your claims...
...He did suggest that the UN set a limit on radioactive contamination from tests, and allot amounts to nuclear powers...
...But it means even more, the development of something which pervades the whole of natural science and most of learning and which is beginning even to touch our colleagues behind the Iron Curtain...
...Jay Orear, a member of the Columbia University nuclear inspection project...
...We should not shut the door to a first step...
...The loudest and clearest voice is that of the military...
...in massive retaliations but in the smuggling of nuclear bombs into a city...
...Oppenheimer had predicted that, if the U.S...
...plus nationality and political groups which sincerely believe that the USSR, as a bellicose power, cannot be relied on to carry out any agreement...
...Bethe argued for a world agreement to ban weapons testing as a great step to reduce tension...
...But Admiral Strauss and the Joint Chiefs of Staff are dead set against any conversations on stopping the tests...
Vol. 41 • May 1958 • No. 18
