PUBLIC BOMBS, AND MINDS BORN SECRET
Public bombs, and minds born secret When the Carter Administration first went to court two weeks ago to censor an article in The Progressive, it led the world to believe that it was rushing to...
...While the magazine's defense team must examine the secret testimony under Government guard and may summon only those experts that the Government approves, the Administration's witnesses cloud the air with technical jargon and dark forebodings about the fate of all mankind...
...Moreover, the harm that it predicts from publication of the article appears to be only hypothetical, vague and indirect — a possibility of damage to a policy of secrecy that already seems defenseless against the investigations of any modestly trained, indeed self-trained student of the weapons program...
...According to Mr...
...Morland's account to the court of where and how he gathered every significant statement and drawing in his article...
...The shouts of alarm are more harmful than the danger they describe...
...Scientific invention is a synthesis of known information...
...if he did, and for some unimaginable reason needed a hydrogen bomb too, he would presumably find it easy to recruit his own Howard Morland...
...The biggest danger that Defense Secretary Brown, a physicist, foresees from publication of the article is that anyone already able to produce an atomic explosive would gain assistance and time "in determining the appropriate direction to pursue" to develop a hydrogen explosive...
...The New York Times March 25, 1979...
...Morland, The Progressive set out not to betray any secrets (it opposes the spread of nuclear weapons) but to prove that once-significant secrets no longer exist — and that Government controls aim to monopolize only policy judgments...
...Let the article be published, they say, and hydrogen bombs will proliferate the world over and destroy the "monopoly" that so far extends — merely — to the American, Soviet, British, French, and Chinese Governments...
...But those are not judgments that Government may impose on editors...
...The case against The Progressive, however, turns out to be a case against the national interest — against free speech and free inquiry...
...They plainly do not justify suspending the First Amendment...
...Such thought and discussion, it contends, even if created from public knowledge, is "born classified" and should remain classified until Government decides otherwise...
...So District Judge Robert Warren, who wanted time to think "before I'd give the hydrogen bomb to Idi Amin," can feel reassured...
...The Government has yet to cite any breach of security, loss of classified documents, or invasion of its secret facilities...
...it may even be harmful to policy...
...We suppose that if he were now offered a fellowship to pursue his open inquiry in Canada or Uganda, he himself would have to be pronounced as "born> classified" and forbidden to use his reasoning powers...
...On the available evidence, the Government has failed to prove a sure, grave, direct, immediate, and irreparable harm to our nation — the only conceivable justification for censorship...
...Brown does not say how anyone so endowed and determined could possibly be prevented from acquiring the same information even faster than The Progressive's author, Howard Morland, an amateur in these matters who says he relied on public materials and authorized conversation, supplemented by his own deductions and speculations...
...The Government is doing its best to intimidate the Milwaukee judge and to incite the public against the magazine...
...The Secretaries of State, Defense and Energy and assorted experts in diplomacy and top-secret weaponry are testifying in public and secret affidavits, contending that the article discloses the concepts used to produce the United States Stockpile of weapons...
...The article may be an embarrassment and inconvenience...
...Public bombs, and minds born secret When the Carter Administration first went to court two weeks ago to censor an article in The Progressive, it led the world to believe that it was rushing to recapture its most precious secret, the instructions for building a hydrogen bomb...
...It asks that all thought and discussion bearing on atomic weapons be forever in its control, whether or not the information emanates from Government files and laboratories...
...That is a valid journalistic exercise...
...The Ugandan dictator does not own the requisite atomic bomb...
...Yet the Administration asks for more than suppression of this article...
...The arguments on both sides have now been filed and the Administration's case turns out to be lame in both logic and law...
...That the Government thinks all such thought and creative work will be conveniently "born" within the jurisdiction of the United States and that it can find and suppress every such talent is patently absurd...
...By this sweeping doctrine, the Government also suppressed parts of Mr...
...the exclusive possession of nuclear-weapon technology cannot be decreed by law as exclusive for all time...
...A district judge felt obliged to restrain the magazine temporarily, to let the Government meet its "heavy burden" of proving that such unprecedented suppression was justified by a grave, certain and irreparable hazard to the nation...
Vol. 43 • May 1979 • No. 5
