U.S. NUCLEAR TESTING THE SHOTS HEARD ROUND THE WORLD

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP75-00149R000600050018-5
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 10
• Document Creation Date: November 11, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 19, 1999
• Sequence Number: 18
• Content Type: MAGAZINE

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letter from the PUBLISHER'
CPYRGHT
WE have had considerable experience
V V in doing cover stories on people
who at the crucial-moment won't talk
to us?mostly dictators, Communist
or otherwise. This week Contributing
Editor Ed Magnuson had the task of
writing a cover story on an American
inaccessible to us, and to everyone
else, as he performed his vital part in
one of the week's big news events.
Luckily, as readers will recall (TIME,
April 20), we had already got to
know quite a bit about Bill Ogle, sci-
entific director of the nuclear tests on
Christmas Island. And our reporters,
seeking out his colleagues at Los Ala-
mos, learned much more last week
about Ogle and his teammates. Our
difficulty, of course, was shared by all
the press?it lay in the Administra-
tion's decision, for reasons of inter-
national public opinion, to minimize
the U.S. resumption of nuclear testing.
Naturally we share every American's
desire not to have any of our nuclear
secrets given away, and when in doubt
always clear with proper authority in
Washington discreet information that
we sometimes come across. But we
don't think a political decision to
minimize an event for propaganda rea-
sons is quite the same thing; we think
it conflicts with a basic national right
to be told as much as possible (within
the limits of security) about a program
that has so much importance to us and
to the world, that costs so much
money, and that ultimately involves
decisions on which the public must
have understanding and knowledge.
We think that this public knowledge
is best gained through the, normal
process of security-conscious reporters
interviewing security-minded sources,
rather than merely quoting Defense
Department handouts. We are aware
of the philosophical intricacies in-
volved, and in this week's cover story
believe we stay within bounds while
properly adding to public knowledge.
And it is surprising how much, ob-
serving these limits, can be told.
MEDICINE EDITOR CANT

WE were pleased to learn that Gil-
" bert Cant, TIME'S Medicine editor
since 1949, has been awarded $2,500
and a gold statuette as winner of the
1961 Albert Lasker Medical Journal-
ism award for outstanding medical
reporting in magazines. Cant's cover
story on Virologist John Enders (TIME,
Nov. 17) was cited for "presenting an
exciting and informative view of the
world of viruses" that "has set a high
standard deserving of emulation." No-
bel Prizewinner Enders himself, in a
letter to Cant, called the piece "an
excellent statement in a short compass
of the present state of virology. Com-
ments from colleagues have been uni-
formly favorable."
In fields as specialized as medicine,
we try to be intelligible to the lay-
man while keeping the respect of the
professionals in the field. Carrying out
this double obligation is a specialty of
Gilbert Cant's. The author of a dozen
cover stories in the field, Cant, 52,
before he became Medicine editor,
spent five years as a writer and cor-
respondent for TIME. During the war,
Cant made two extensive tours of the
Pacific theater as a correspondent.
wrote three books on the Navy's role
there. An enthusiastic sailor (sloops.
not stinkpots) and field birder, Cant
carries over into these fields some
of his passion for meticulousness.
Books
Business
Cinema
Education
93
85
65
66
The Hemisphere 34
Letters 10
INDEX
Cover Story.. .18
Medicine 56
Milestones 80
Modern Living.. 68
Music 48
The Nation 17
People 36
Religion 53
Science ? ? ? 40
Show Business, 59
Sport 45
Time Listings. 98
The World ..26
TIME, MAY 4, 1962
Sanitized - Approved For Release : C1A-RDP75-00149R000600050018-5
CPYRGHT
"Give me a man who loves his work."
There aren't many places leftwhere
a man can get this personally involved
with his work.
We're lucky; ours is one of them.
Most of the mechanics who work
for us have been crazy about air-
planes ever since theywere this high;
they wouldn't be happy or satisfied
Some of the youngsters who've got
the "bug" will come back to our em-
ployment office 10, 15, even 20 times
for a chance to be a mechanic at
American Airlines?
Mechanics like this aren't in it just
for the money. They have a fierce
pride in their work, and a sense of
They work under men who've been
with us since the days whr.r we were
flying the mail routes in biplanes;
the grand old men of civ! aviation.
And the spirit is contagio J:i.
Few ever leave; of tho!E.e who do,
a surprising number comii back.
They love their work, and their work
doing any other kind of work. responsibility. shows it.
Sanitized - Approved For Release : CIA-RDP7MWM?CdefiNfirs,
/coma
AMERICAS lEAD'AG AIRLINE
CPYRGHCPYRGHT CPYRGHT
r
Sanitized - Approved For Release : rIA-RDP7MitYlligliff00600050018-5
CHRISTM
Above its sand and scrub, what the free
THE ATOM
For Survival's Sake
fSee Caved
C ICT Tril
world did not want but could not avoid.
Dawn's first light broke through a
heavy haze, diffusing Christmas Island's
end-of-the-world ugliness. The barren
stretches of sand and scrub, the grey hulls
of freighters and barges in the tiny harbor,
the naked steel testing towers, the ex-
posed beams of half-completed buildings,
all took on a weird beauty. It was already
a humid 76?. An 8-knot breeze rippled
the coconut fronds. In a small operations
building, about 15 technicians sat amid
the coffee-cup litter of a sleepless night.
Alone in a darkened room, an electronics
technician pressed a microphone switch
and began the countdown on Operation
Dominic?the U.S. series of nuclear tests
in the atmosphere that the free world did
not want, but for its survival's sake could
not avoid.
Loudspeakers carried the countdown
across the claw-shaped coral atoll to sci-
entists huddled in and around instrument-
filled trenches. Radio carried it to some
40 ships and too aircraft of Joint Task
Force 8 deployed over 6,000,000 sq. mi.
of the Pacific. One of those aircraft, an
Air Force B-52, sped at high altitude
toward the island. In the operations cen-
ter, Dominic's scientific director, William
Elwood Ogle, wearing khaki shorts and a
green aloha shirt, nodded to Joint Task
Force 8's commander, Major General Al-
fred Dodd Starbird, a tough, tall (6 ft.
5 in.) veteran of atomic testing at Eni-
wetok and former chief of military ap-
plications for the AEC.
All instrumentation was ready. In sep-
arate control posts, the Air Force deputy,
Brigadier General John S. Samuel, and
the Navy deputy, Rear Admiral Lloyd
M. Mustin, clwkeWir_ _iadaw.copss_:
all ships, all plReg ggaoTitAPPTS:
unwanted craft had strayed into the dan-
ger zone. At 5:45 a.m. (Christmas Island
time), the countdown reached zero. The
11-52 dropped its nuclear payload. A flash
pierced the haze. The tests had begun.
Laconic Statement. A special circuit
carried the news to Atomic Energy Com-
mission Chairman Glenn T. Seaborg in
Washington. The AEC relayed the word
to President Kennedy, then cruising on
his yacht, the Honey Fitz, on Florida's
Lake Worth. The President's casual sur-
roundings were deliberate?they were part
of a major U.S. policy decision to under-
play the resumption of atmospheric tests.
Kennedy had no comment about the test,
stood on the March 2 speech in which he
explained why the U.S. felt the new series
necessary. All that the U.S. Government
had to say was contained in a laconic,
one-paragraph statement from the AEC,
which announced that the detonation had
taken place at to:45 a.m. E.S.T., and was
in the "intermediate-yield range."
Two days later, the U.S. fired a second
shot, also in the "intermediate range."
That term meant that the power of both
explosions was of more than 20 kilotons,
but less than one megaton?insignificant
in comparison with Russia's 58-megaton
terror blast last year. A low-power test
was also held underground in Nevada.
Despite the puniness of the U.S. shots,
Washington had been fearful that they
would set off a wave of anti-American,
ban-the-bomb reaction and rioting around
the world. Against this, the Kennedy
Administration had clamped the strictest
sort of secrecy on the Christmas Island
operations?admittedly more for psycho-
logical than for security reasons (after all,
the Russians could learn with instruments
just as much about these tests as the U.S.
learned about theirs). There were to be
no eyewitness news reports from Christ-
mas Island, no photographs of mushroom
do ovec..thq Pacific. AAtellic
VVAI Mar Agl M-Atirit
in Hawaii: "I can't even tell you if we've
got any Band-Aids out there."
Arranged Reaction. Such secrecy pre-
cautions seemed superfluous. Most of the
world's peoples were well aware that
it was the Soviet Union that last fall
broke a three-year test moratorium and
made such advances as to endanger the
world's balance of nuclear power. They
also knew that Russia's Khrushchev had
rejected repeated U.S. offers to forgo test-
ing if he would only sign a meaningful
no-test agreement, controlled by on-site
inspectors.
There were, to be sure, ban-the-bomb
demonstrations, but most had a prear-
ranged, perfunctory quality about them.
In Japan, which has good cause for
hating A-bombs, a drizzle discouraged
demonstrators, but about 600 chorused
antibomb songs in front of the U.S. em-
bassy in Tokyo. U.S. Ambassador Edwin
Reischauer later was heckled by 800 stu-
dents at Kanazawa University, where he
was lecturing on modern Japanese history.
Some 800 leftist Zengakuren youths
pushed and got pushed by cops who rather
easily kept them away from the U.S. em-
bassy. In Great Britain, where peace
movements are strong, 1,5oo marchers
paraded past the U.S. embassy in Lon-
don's Grosvenor Square, chanting "No
more tests." Read some of the signs:
"God Save the Queen, the Bomb Won't."
Among the neutralists, India's Prime
Minister Nehru told his Parliament: "I
am not here to blame either party, but
I beg and appeal to all the nuclear powers
to refrain from these tests while the Ge-
neva conference is on." Cairo's Algum-
huria wrote: "As the world cried in
panic from Soviet explosions in Moscow
a year ago, it does cry in panic today
from the Washington explosions."
In Turkey, only one newspaper even
put the news on Page One; some ig-
nored it completely. Radio Iran approved
the test resumption. There were no dem-
onstrations in Buddhist Burma, but the
Rangoon Guardian said that the nuclear
PAULINC AT TIIE WHIT 11017CE
The pickets and placards . . .
Sanitized - Approved Fo6Mkgdpi9_: CIA-RDP75-00149R000600050018-5
CPYRGHT
Vol. I,XXIX No. 18
???110111MIMILL
THE COLD WAR
The Theology of Freedom
TIME
THE WEEKLY NEWSMAGAZINE
THE NATION
tine was a rnme Minister and one was
a pastor. But both were preachers, and
each was in the U.S. with an Epistle to
the Americans. The sum of their gospel:
with patience and courage, backed by pow-
er, the U.S. and the free world will yet see
their principles triumph and emerge vic-
torious from the cold war.
Before his end.rof -week conferences
with President Kennedy in Washington,
LIEN ARTIN
MACMILLAN IN MANIIATTAN
An Epistle lo the Americans:
Britain's Harold Macmillan stopped off
in Manhattan to speak to the American
Newspaper Publishers Association. In the
past, Macmillan has shown an eagerness
to negotiate with Russia's Khrushchev
not always shared by America. Said he
now to the publishers: "Our duty is surely
simple?to be firm but patient, never to
yield and never to give ground, but never
to take provocative action ourselves; and
to wait maybe one, maybe two genera-
tions, maybe nattkr101
time the ordind gc%
area [Russia I, encouraged by higher
standards of material life, begin to look
again for that spiritual food, without
which man has :neve ? lived for prolonged
periods since he came into the world."
Appearing at the Uiiversity of Chicago,
Swiss Dogmatist Kari Barth, whose Epis-
tle to the Romans 4 years ago started
him on the theologi al career that has
taken him to the top. rank of Protestant-
ism (TIME cover, Ar il 2o), had a new
message for the U.S. veryone was aware
that Barth has long fa lted the West for
being as materialistic at the Communists
and?worse?cloaking l ecular ambitions
in religion. Said he now to the American
theologians: "If I were myself an Arner-
'can citizen and a Christian and a theo-
logian, I would look at that liberty statue
in New York harbor. She needs a little
or a good bit of det' thologizing--never-
theless, she may also be seen and in-
terpreted and underst oil well as a symbol
of the true theology. one not of liberty
but of freedom. It is real human free-
dom, one which God , yes us in his grace
10 obey him."
An American theo
Barth said, should :incl.
any inferiority comple
good old Europe freed
ority complex over or
Africa." It should also
"from fear of Comma
)gy of freedcm,
ie "freedom from
over or against
n from a supen-
t
!against Asia and
i include freedom
ism, Russia, in-
evitable nuclear warfar . and, generally
speaking, of all princi[ tlities and pow-
ers." Said Barth, sum aing up: "This
theology of freedom sho tId be a freedom
I or humanity."
Ancient advice? Perla tps. But it was
freshly drawn from int llectual sources.
There is a correlation tween patience
and courage. There is 4 nother between
talk and action.
Through the already lc -ig years of the
cold war, the world has se( ed condemned
to tat t(---for its own good. '\nd it will have
to keep on talking for a I ng while. Last
week the U.S. Secretary of State met with
the Russian ambassador i amiable con-
versations that, as the leakl had it, might
conceivably lead to an igreement of
some kind. The followin flay the Sec-
netary took off on yet anot r trip around
,he world for more talk, f n Athens to
Nustralia.
But after weeks of talk ad weeks of
oil, there was, at last, also a week of
v.ikttlotc 4,..?2--p,
' .CY15eV10#06tih"'elMfr.g are ,
,
'rid not just nice little technical marvels,
May 4, 1962
but big giant boosters that hissed and
roared an.d one of whi-di hit the moon
(see ScrENcE),, At Christmas Island, in
the hot Pacific, the U.S. resumed atomic
tests in the atmosphere, firing shots heard
round the world. They ere heard not for
the size of their bang bu, 'or the certainty
of their intent. For the T S. knew what it
had to do, why it had to do it, and did it.
If the immediate reactic n was any in-
dicator, most of the ,,.orld understood
the reasons behind the U position.
The theology of freed( m, as espoused
A
AflIIIUR .LIEGEL
BARTH IN CD 1. AGO
courage, patience, r. cwer, hope.
by the Prime Minister .ind the pastor,
and as already practiced by the U.S.
during the cold war, see-nal to have an
effect. The resumption of tests, coming
in the face of Khrushche? threats, seemed
to convince the Soviet L nion that the
U.S. will not be bullied.
With myriad trouble to worry about at
home, Khrushchev seemed almost willing
to think about being reaonable abroad.
As summer beckoned, Oa: relaxation of
5-cfosi049toep6000poeitbenere-
y the earn be oreanot un storm. It al-
most seemed like calm.
g_PY5GHT
Sanitized - Approved For Release : CIA-RDP75-
e race now "endangers mankind with an " "
nihilation." In the Philippines, apathetic
reaction was summed up by citizens who
asked: "Where's Christmas Island?"
In Europe, France's anti-American left-
ists failed to hold even a single meeting
or publish a petition. Christian democrats
and moderate socialists in Belgium or-
ganized a five-minute strike for May
8, but the U.S. embassy had not had a
single protest. Stones were thrown through
a few windows at the U.S. embassy in
Copenhagen, 50 demonstrators were held
back by police, but the newspaper Ber-
lingske Tidende said, "The U.S. was given
no choice," had "a duty to restore strate-
gical balance." No demonstrations were
reported in Latin America or Africa.
Communists, predictably, fussed about
the tests. At the arms-control talks in
Geneva, Soviet Delegate Zorin charged
the U.S. with "hypocrisy, an aggressive
act against peace, pushing the world clos-
er to an abyss of atomic war." There
were no immediate demonstrations in
Moscow or in Communist China, although
the Chicoms sounded angriest of all. Pe-
king newspaper Ta Kung Pao charged
that the tests showed that President Ken-
nedy is "more vicious, more cunning and
more adventurist than his predecessor."
Across the U.S., most ban-the-bomb
groups seemed simply dispirited. Thirty
motorists in Boston turned on their head-
lights, followed a black station wagon
filled with flowers through downtown Bos-
ton in a mock funeral staged by two
women's peace groups. About 20 pickets
huddled at Chicago's Congress and Michi-
gan Avenues under a banner proclaiming:
"Nuclear Tests Threaten Mankind." Ad-
mitted their leader: "It's awfully hard to
keep up a sustained campaign." In Wash-
ington, Nobel Chemist Linus Pauling was
among marchers outside the White House.
Along the Road. Behind the compar-
atively mild reaction to the tests lie the
lessons of experience. The tortuous route
PICTORIAL. PARADE
PRESIDENT KENNEDY & FRIENDS* ON YACHT "HONEY FITZ"
Underplaying it.
from the first U.S. atomic blast at Ala-
mogordo, N. Mex., to the latest at Christ-
mas Island stretches over nearly 17 years;
it includes nearly 200 atomic explosions,
about ioo megatons of nuclear energy set
free in the atmosphere, 353 fruitless dip-
lomatic test-ban meetings. The men who
traveled that road were filled with doubts
about their eventual destinatioR, and at
every crossroads they argued bitterly over
which turn to take. Much of the history
of atomic testing has been forgotten, but
once recounted, its meaning is clear.
Judged against the proven nuclear capa-
bility of the U.S.S.R., the doubters, those
who preferred to stand still or even re-
treat, were always shown to be wrong. If
their advice had been heeded, Khrushchev
would now be the world's military master.
Christmas Island's Scientific Director
Ogle is one of a strange breed of profes-
sional weapons testers who have traveled
the atomic route in the conviction that
what they are doing will make the U.S.
stronger. They are fascinated by their
wondrous weapons, whose forces even
they do not fully understand. Another
such tester, Physicist Walter Goad Jr. of
the University of California's Scientific
Laboratory at Los Alamos, puts their view
simply: "Everyone here recognizes that
these weapons are terribly destructive and
that we don't know what will ultimately
happen. But we feel that in a world of so
much force, we have to be able to do as
well as anybody else."
"We Puny Things." In the predawn
darkness of July 16, 1945, dance music
echoed from loudspeakers as men smeared
their faces with sunburn cream and waited
ten miles from a too-ft. tower in the des-
ert near Alamogordo. Some had been
working and waiting three years for this
moment?and when that tower ignited at
5:30 a.m. in the world's first atomic ex-
plosion, the flash was so blinding that
UPI
Francis Farrell, one of the military super-
visors, told of his feelings: "Thirty sec-
onds after the explosion came, first, the
air blast pressing hard against the people,
followed almost immediately by the
strong, sustained, awesome roar which
warned of doomsday and made us feel
that we puny things were blasphemous to
dare tamper with the forces heretofore re-
served to the Almighty." Physicist J. Rob-
ert Oppenheimer, who directed the crea-
tion of this weapon at the Los Alamos
lab, was reminded of a passage from the
Hindus' sacred Bliagavad Gita: "If the
radiance of a thousand suns were burst
into the sky, that would be like the splen-
dor of the Mighty One."
Also watching from a mountainside that
morning was Los Alamos Physicist Ogle,
barely a year past his Ph.D. from the
University of Illinois. Though his role was
minor, he had caught the fever of the
race to make the bomb.
J-7.. After the war, many scientists,
appalled at the human toll their work had
taken in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, desert-
ed the field of nuclear-weapons develop-
ment. Ogle was not one of them. Says he
of the wartime deaths the bombs had
caused: "Our purpose was to do just
that." Congress placed atomic develop-
ment under a newly created, civilian-
controlled Atomic Energy Commission in
the hope that its pursuits would be mainly
peaceful. Yet some scientists were already
warning that the U.S. atomic monopoly
could not long be maintained, that the
Russians were making progress. A far-
sighted AEC commissioner, Rear Admi-
ral Lewis Strauss, argued for a high-
altitude patrol and seismographic network
to detect Russian atomic explosions when
and if they came. But AEC's idealistic
first chairman, David Lilienthal, decided
it was not needed. Finally, aroused by
. . seeme,gere y per undo . ark g asses, never really
saw it7. Genert flratn center) an a masseur.
tirtizielAgEApyprovIdsPcir Rireiteet* eiiAeRZF' 5-00119ROG06000500104 E. T.
PROTEST
TIME, MAY 4, 1962
19
RGHT sEiiiIIREITApprov@IFFIaGRIETlease : CIA-RDP75
FiRsT A-Bo NIB TEST
'-hose who preferred to retreat
St rauss. the Pentagon picked up the tab,
got AEC to furnish the technical knowl-
eoge to set up a rudimentary net..
The commission was even torn by
doubts over whether atomic-weapons de-
velopment should continue at all. In
April and May of E948 it conducted a
supersecret. Operation Sandstone at Eni-
wetok in which 9,800 men of Joint Task
Force fired three explosions from atop
:ftc-ft. towers?the biggest U.S. blasts up
to that time ( unofficial estimate: 120
kilotons }. Ogle manned Sandstone instru-
ments as part of the Los Alamos team.
The tests convinced AEC that it should
set up a permanent nuclear-weapons divi-
sion at Los Alamos, and Ogle became one
ot its seven-man experimental nucleus,
known as J-7.
Ivy & Castle. When the test-detection
system that Strauss had demanded dis-
closed that the Russians had set off their
first A-bomb on Aug. 29, 19,49, a new
controversy split AEC and the nation's
atomic scientists. Should the U.S. start
a crash program to develop a hydrogen
bomb? Strauss pleaded for it, but Lilien-
that and the other three commissioners
argued that the U.S. had a sufficient
atomic superiority. J. Robert Oppenhei-
mer, head of a general advisory commit-
tee of scientists to AEC, maintained that
the doubtful project would only divert
personnel from the proven A-bomb pro-
gram. To Strauss's side, however, came
AEC Physicist Edward Teller, whose
stkidies indicated that the II-bomb was
scientifically feasible, Connecticut's Dem-
otratic Senator Brien McMahon, chair-
man of the Joint Committee on Atomic
Energy, Secretary of State Dean Ache-
son, Defense Secretary Louis Johnson, and
finally AEC Commissioner Gordon Dean,
On Jan. 31, 195o, President Truman or-
tiered the H-bomb to be built.
Many of the tests that followed are just
vaguely familiar names now. but they
loom large in the memories of the weary
scientists, including Ogle, who sweated
them out. There was Ranger at French-,
man Flat near Las Vegas, Greenhouse at
Eniwetok, Buster-Jangle and Tumbler-
Snapper. With Ivy in November 1952,
the first hydrogen bomb was exploded,
wiping out the tiny island of Elugelab,
and digging a csanitizedngAp[)ro
ft. deep in the ocean's floor, near
ni-
20
wetok. During Castle, near Bikini in the
spring of 1954, miscalculations on power
and meteorology caused radioactive ash
to fall and injure 23 Japanese tuna fisher-
men?one fatally?on their trawler, Lucky
Dragon, which was 14 miles outside the
restricted zone. Ogle was a top technical
official at Ivy and Castle, ironically con-
siders Castle the test "which gave us
more of practical value than any other."
The U.S. H-bomb success came a mere
nine months before the Russians fired
their own hydrogen superbomb?proving
again that the doubters had been wrong.
The Bitter Debate. The U.S. continued
testing, at Nevada and in the Pacific,
from Operation Teapot through Opera-
tion Hardtack in October of t958. During
that period, the scientists tested tacti-
cal atomic weapons, dropped an H-bomb
I rom a B-52, fired a depth charge, trig-
gered a missile warhead too miles high,
tried fallout-free underground testing.
The Russians had been testing furiously,
too?and the world was embroiled in a
bitter debate over the fallout effects of
such things as strontium 9o, carbon 14,
cesium :37, iodine 131. Adlai Stevenson
had fanned fallout fears in his presiden-
tial campaign of 1.956, urging the U.S. to
stop testing. Now Russia announced it
wouVI stop its tests unilaterally. While
President Eisenhower pondered about
halting U.S. tests, the nation's scientists
were at one another's throats.
FIRST H-BoM12. 'I EST
CPYRGHTproved to Ue wrong.
Emll.1M11???????????????? 1?1=1???????1111.1?111?? MINIM=
MILESTONES IN
NUCLEAR HISTORY
JUIN E6, i945----World's first atomic
2xplosion, by U.S., at Alamogordo,
N. Mex.
AUG. 6, 1.945?Atomic bomb dropped
U.S., on Hiroshima, japan.
AUG. 9, T945--Second atomic bomb
Iropped by U.S., on Nagasaki, Japan.
JULY AND JULY 25, 1946 First
.est series, Operations Crossroads, at
AUG. 29, E949----First Soviet atomic ex-
plosion, ending U.S. monopoly.
NOV. r, 1952?World's first hydrogen
)omb explosion, by U.S., in Operation
lvy near Eniwetok.
AUG. 12, 1953-----First Soviet hydrogen
Jomb explosion.
MARCH r, r95.1.?Biggest U.S. explo-
don on record (i5 megatons), Operation
:astle, showers radioactive ash beyond
;afety zone, burns 23 Japanese fishermen.
ocr. 31, 'begins test mora-
:orium. Russia follows three days later.
SEPT. i, 1961---Russia breaks morato-
~ium, launches two-month, 50-explosion
;cries up to 58 megatons.
SEPT. 15, 1961------U.S. resumes under-
)round testing in Nevada.
MARCH 2, 1662?President Kennedy
mnou.nces U.S. will resume atmospheric
,ests in April, unless Russia signs a no-
:est agreement, permitting inspections.
APRIL 25, 1962,---U.S. resumes atmos-
vedifrtRelease : CIA-RDP75
MM.
Teller and then-AE( Commissioner
Willard Libby, a Nob.d Prizewinning
chemist, asserted that tb allout dangers
were highly exaggerated. 1 eller said that
the U.S. must keep test i g, since there
was no sure way to detect Soviet cheating
in low-power or undergo -id tests. AEC
Chairman John McCono doggedly op-
posed 4 test stop. Physi,-ht Edward U.
Condon prophesied that "?I any thousands
of persons will die agonis eg deaths from
bone cancer and leukemia.' Nobel Chem-
ist Pauling cited the mut n ion threats to
future generations. Cornell Physicist Hans
Bethe, who had opposed 11-bomb devel-
opment, headed a presicl a tial study, re-
ported that detection of .oviet tests was
technically feasible. ReIi, tantly, Eisen-
hower said that the U.s. would refrain
from tests for one year fwg nning Oct. 31,
1958, if the Russians would start talks
on an inspection system by that date.
Thus the tiresome talk [hon and the
tricky moratorium began.
Time for Tinkering. TI c moratorium
was a period of frustratin for the weap-
ons specialists at Los Al; mos and at the
University of California's other AEC lab-
oratory in Livermore. had no way
of knowing when?if ev.r?their nation
might desperately need thtir rare knowl-
edge again. As the morator um continued,
they gleaned every last v lie out of past
data. developed new th,ories that lay
useless without test contiimation. Some
began drifting into other fields.
Ogle shifted easily into I re AEC's pro-
gram to develop nuclear ,-ocket propul-
sion, ostensibly a peacef ii venture?but
with obvious military pc ;sibilities. After
spending inone than a imarter of the
previous twelve years away from home
(he had not missed one J S. atomic-test
series either in the Pacific t r Nevada). he
enjoyed being with his wine Minnie and
their five children, now a4;ed three to 20.
He could tinker with hi four battered
used cars, catch up on his avid reading of
Arctic exploration (sample title: Narra-
tive of the Discovery of toe Fate of Sir
John Franklin and His Ccbt 'anions pub-
.00449R00060005 3 3 .8-4
,rking
on the ranch house that he and his sons
TIME, MAY 4, 1962
Sanitized - Approved For Release' CIA-RDP7Q-00149R0006000,)0018-,)
PI' were building on a lonely 13-acre site While Kennedy seemed to be weighing boss; Starbird in turn selected Ogle to
run the scientific end of the show. Since
Eniwetok and Bikini were uncomfortably
close to sizable Asiatic populations and
technically under the control of the test-
skittish United Nations, Kennedy per-
suaded Prime Minister Macmillan to let
the U.S. test at Britain's equatorial
Christmas Island, 1,200 miles south of
Hawaii.
Soon Starbird was organizing his task
force behind the Lincoln Memorial in a
decaying frame building recently vacated
by the CIA. Amid cartons and bare walls,
he summoned all the old test veterans he
could find. As his force grew, so did the
costs: up to $1,000,000 a day. Involved
are some 1,700 airmen, 6,600 sailors, 600
soldiers, ioo marines, i,000 civilian tech-
nicians, 1,800 civilian construction work-
ers. Starbird's air armada includes high-
flying U-2S, workhorse C-f3os, B-57s and
near Los Alamos.
Ogle is a lively man who loves western
clothes, detests neckties and big cities,
and barely tolerates strangers. "Nature's
a lot easier to grasp, because you can
take a specific natural law and be sure
it'll repeat itself?not so with people."
He excels at his unusual specialty because
he thinks straight, argues his points force-
fully, easily bridges the gap from the
theoretical problem to its technical solu-
tion. Says a colleague: "His particular
talent is to function essentially as a sci-
ence chairman?hear all the arguments,
draw conclusions. His being attached to
any experiment increases the odds on its
success. People have confidence in him."
Ogle's fascination with the bomb is
shared by others of his breed. Says his
friend, Physicist Goad: "It is such a great
phenomenon, so far outside the field of
human experience, that it remains awe-
some." These men are tough-minded about
their jobs, yet not insensitive to its por-
tents for civilization if misused. Says
Los Alamos Physicist George Cowan: "I
think there is more honest-to-God worry-
ing on this hill than you ever find among
the bleeding hearts outside. But there
aren't too many scientists around who
know how to do this job?so you do it,
and do it as best you can." Adds Ogle:
"This is a frighteningly dangerous world
we live in?it's scary." Yet he is less
nervous about nuclear testing than about
the frequent air travels his job requires:
his palms turn moist every time he takes
off in an airplane.
The Clincher. The long moratorium
was cynically prolonged when Soviet dele-
gates at Geneva first agreed to the prin-
ciple of inspection, even indicated willing-
ness to permit on-site inspection stations,
then retreated to their no-inspection
stand. Meanwhile, U.S. nuclear strength
clearly suffered. The nation was gambling
its whole deterrent posture and billions of
dollars on its Polaris, Minuteman and ad-
vanced Titan missiles. Theoretically, sci-
entists were certain that these missiles'
nuclear warheads would work?yet the
complete systems had never been tried.
Thus, even before the Russians broke
the moratorium, pressure was being ex-
erted on President Kennedy by some sci-
entists and Pentagon officials for a resump-
tion of U.S. testing. They argued that the
Reds probably were cheating anyway. Aft-
er Soviet skies erupted in a scatter-shot
array of 5o blasts last September and
October, there could be no real doubt
about what the U.S. would have to do.
The first analysis of the Soviet tests
was not alarming, despite its fearsome
megatomics and Nikita Khrushchev's
boastful threats. Outside the Administra-
tion, some of the old voices were still
crying against a resumption of U.S. at-
mospheric testing. Kennedy was then also
getting go-slow counsel from his scientific
adviser, M.I.T.'s Jerome Wiesner. The
President immediately ordered under-
all the arguments, his mind was made up:
the U.S. would almost certainly have to
test in the air. The clincher came from
old Testing Foe Hans Bethe, whose de-
tailed study showed that the Soviet blasts
had been badly underrated. That 58-meg-
aton bomb, Bethe reported, actually was
a too-megaton giant tamped down by a
casing of lead. The U.S.S.R. could hang
this on its biggest operational missile and
hurl the full f oo megatons across 3,500
miles to the U.S. The Russians had made
great gains in putting a bigger punch into
a smaller package (weight-yield ratio),
thus could increase either the range or
power of existing weapons systems. They
had approached perfection in a clean
bomb. (In some of their blasts, the fission
trigger?which is the main source of a
bomb's radioactivity?formed only 2% of
the explosive yield.) They were able to
MUSTIN, STARBIRD, SAMUELS & OGLE
But don't ask them about the Band-Aids.
fire warheads that survived the punish-
ment of re-entry into the atmosphere,
something the U.S. had not even tried.
Most significant, their high-altitude tests
indicated work on an anti-missile missile.
The main reason that Kennedy did not
order immediate U.S. atmospheric tests
was that the scientists were not ready
for a meaningful series.
Tools of the Trade. The presidential
green light sent the testing pros at Liver-
more and Los Alamos into an explosive
burst of activity. A thorough series takes
up to 18 months to prepare; they were
given five months. Each lab sent its sug-
gestions on what to test to Washington
for top decision by AEC Chairman Sea-
borg. Military experts fired off plans to
Defense Secretary Robert McNamara.
Actual programming was done by AEC's
atom-wise general manager, Major Gen-
ground testing to resume in longstanding eral Alvin Luedecke, 51, and Defense's
tunnels in Nevai. and,: on 1ov.A2 ar; bri t lltairkAr r?
dered preparatio !AA treprmv&ov RtSW Fes
to proceed.
netiy tapped Starbird for
f,
s ,
overall
field
WALTER BERM Tr
B-52s, versatile Neptune antisubmarine
patrol craft.
For Ogle, getting ready for Dominic
meant a frantic air chase between Hawaii,
Omaha, Nevada, Washington and Denver
?an average of some t,000 miles a day.
Working to coordinate the plans of some
90 electronic, construction and research
firms and Government specialists, he
picked Denver as a convenient air stop to
meet the company representatives peri-
odically. As scientific director, he is in
charge of all the experiments?and Domi-
nic is essentially a scientific affair. He is
also in charge of safety, which boils down
mainly to fallout. To predict fallout pat-
terns, he has 15 new weather stations,
which cost $2,000,000 to assemble and
stretch 4,600 miles east and west, 3,000
miles north and south. More mundanely,
he frets about technicians who become
homesick, scientists disabled by sunburn,
5-Me41000N10110?-Airks
Ogle carries a bulging attache case filled
rijic AV .4 ICILn
n 1
CPYRGHT Sanitized - Appivved For Release : CIA-RDP75-00149R000600050018-5'
with odd items: a small compass ("I'm
always getting turned around on these
islands"), an altimeter ("to see if my
Air Force plane is really getting off the
ground"), some tin drinking cups ("for
beer in the desert or coffee on a MATS
plane"). With the attache case goes the
ever-present padlocked briefcase enclos-
ing the tools of his trade: a slide rule
and shcafs of classified documents.
Worse than Alcatraz. The mass
arid machines--from construction bull-
dozers to fragile milliammeters?trans-
formed 3a-mile-long, i5-mile-wide Christ-
mas Island. The island's two ramshackle
towns, ludicrously named London and
Paris by the British, were invaded by
Si ateside workers who groused about the
heat, the lack of latrines, sun hats, soap
zutd razor blades. This is the island that
inspired acid poetry by a British R.A.F.
man stationed there in 1958: "The island
abounds with monstrous ants/ Which af-
feet our clothing, our shirts and our
pants/ And since we came here we've
done nothing but curse/ For even Alca-
raz couldn't be worse."
Amid the chaos and the complaints,
,fTF-8 plunged ahead toward the April
deadline set by the President in his na-
tionwide television announcement in
March?a notable speech in which he
ticked off the Soviet test achievements
rd declared: "I must report to you in
candor that further Soviet series, in
absence of further Western progress.
could well provide the Soviet Union with
nuclear attack and defense capability so
lmwerful as to encourage aggressive de-
signs." Noting the world's fallout fears.
Kinnedy said he found it "deeply regret-
table that any radioactive material must
zidded to the atmosphere?that even
one additional individual's health may
Ii risked in the foreseeable future." He
promised that the U.S. tests will add only
to the natural background radioac-
tivity of the world's environment.
Coming Up. Right up to the count-
down on Operation Dominic. the Pres-
ident offered to halt the whole massive
operation if Khrushchev would sign on
t fro controlled-test-ban line. The nye/ left
it all up to jTF-8--and the pragmatic
1till Ogle of U.S. science. Throughout
most Of the summer, the results of their
work will glow in Pacific skies in some
explosions with. a force up to 15 mega-
tons to prove the reliability of present
L.S. weapons, improve the efficiency of
developing missiles, test the nuclear vul-
nerability of the nation's multibillion-
dollar radar defenses. Polaris missiles will
gush out of the ocean from submarines,
Minuteman "ICBMs will roar off island
launching pads?and, unless the weapons
theorists have been wildly wrong, their
nuclear payloads will ignite as planned.
tunefully, in the shots near the mid-
cific's Johnston Island, the U.S. may
progress toward the anti-ICBM missile,
possibly by setting off a nuclear blast in
the path of an Atlas missile speeding 40
miles high. As the testers testify, such ex-
ileriments are btafiitioip* a2rAfprity"
ening. But there is fib ettice1
POLITICS
The Brass Ring
"Why not shoot for the brass ring?"
asked New Hampshire's Republican Gov-
ernor Samuel Wesley Powell Jr. "Why not
go for the presidency?"
So last week mused Wes Powell, 4.6,
even as he recuperated in White Sulphur
Springs, W. Va., from a mild heart attack
suffered in March. The scoffers could scoff
and the skeptics could skept, but Powell
was in dead earnest about grabbing for
the brass ring in 1964. He had already
laid out a set of plans, based mainly on
his record as a rip-roaring stump speaker,
a perpetual-motion campaigner?and a
fellow who has never seemed to know
when he was whipped.
Brick by Brick. Powell, along with
most others, figures that he is a cinch
for re-election next: November to a third
BILL FINLEY
GOVERNOR POWELL
He and Abe is the way he figures it.
gubernatorial term. But his figuring goes
far beyond that. He plans to start barn-
storm;ing nationally in 1963, then to enter
New Hampshire's presidential primary,
the first of the year, in March of 1964.
He will gleefully invite other Republican
national aspirants to contest him in that
primary. And, as it happens, Powell can
only be had news for New York's Gov-
ernor Nelson Rockefeller, who has a de-
voted Dartmouth College following arid
would love to get his own 1964 campaign
off to a rousing start with a New Hamp-
shire primary win. After that, Powell says
he will enter the important Wisconsin pri-
mary--"I think a man with my back-
ground will appeal out there"?and then
sweep on. to the G.O.P. nomination.
That would leave only Jack Kennedy
between Powell and the White House--
and Powell says he has already figured out
how to handle Kennedy.. Beginning next
Vetiu17011)11161#key). no if a week at t e rest t n if he wins
the Republican nomination, Powell will
really set out after Keno dy: just
build up every brick, brij: by brick, in
that wall around Berlin. ask every
day, 'Why didn't you pit those planes
over the Bay of Pigs?' "
"By God." 'To Powell. i he prospect is
so real that he jokes wit Ii friends about
becoming "the last Presir cit the country
ever had who studied by 'I implight." Pow-
ell has, in fact, climbed e long way. His
father was a day laborer ii Portsmouth.
N.H. his mother worked e a maid in the
mansion of ex-Governor lchabod Good-
win. Both of his parents v ere members of
the Salvation Army, and T,'cung Wes toot-
ed the cornet while his fat ler pounded the
big bass drum.
Powell worked his ve;,v through two
years at the University io New Hamp-
shire, then set out for ti, West to earn
enough money to finish h,s education. He
rode circuit in 'Wyoming ;,s a lay Congre-
gational minister, got law degree at
Southern Methodist, ani ended up in
:r94o working for a young New Hampshire
Senator named Styles II ridges. When
Powell arrived at 8:r4 a ra. on his first
work day, Bridges exclaim "By God.
you and I are going to get a ong all right."
They did, indeed. As lir dges' political
protege. Powell managed I he office of the
man who managed New Il.m npshire. After
combat duty in World r II (he was
severely wounded in the le 't arm as a 13-24
gunner). Powell returned 1 Bridges' office.
But in 1.949 he quit to pui ,e le his own po-
litical career and prompt le ran into trou-
ble. In .t9 5o and 1954. Pri?\ ell was beaten
in senatorial primaries: in ? he was de-
feated in the gubernatorial p imary. Then.
in ro59, he began his cu cut regime as
Governor. Last year, when Styles Bridges
died. Powell completed hi declaration of
political independence by refusing to ap-
point the Senator's widow ti his scat.
"Yes, Ma'am." A mai, vho calls him-
self a "pragmatic" Rept( rican, Powell's
greatest political asset is us determina-
tion. In 958, after years o f defeat, he had
just tiled his f)apers for Go Jernor when a
woman approached him i m the general
store of his home town, Hampton Falls.
"You running again?" she [leered.
"Yes, ma'am," replied Powell. "The
way I figure it. I've got a few times to go
to catch up with Abe Lim oln. As I re-
member, he ran eight or nine times and
was defeated.* Then al..) elected him
President, and then they 1 ot him. It's a
hell of a future to look tom N ird to." Come
what may, Powell can haul] y wait.
Bob Bows Out
With his landslide re-re( ction as New
York's mayor last fall, Ri b mt F. Wagner
established himself as tin date's leading
Democratic vote getter, amil a principal in
any Democratic plans to cf?i eat New York
Governor Nelson Rocket eiler next No-
vember. Last weekend, in a hastily called
* in point of fact. Lincoln three elections
for public olfice: one for the Illinois House of
5-poil9R0()06000350.0108-16 U.S.
cnate 1855 1858).
22
TPA I. MAY 4, 1962