Federation of American Scientists

70 years of

and counting

CHARLES D. FERGUSON

Editor in Chief

ALLISON FELDMAN

Managing and Creative Editor

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FAS Public Interest Report

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Alexander DeVolpi

Retired, Argonne National Laboratory

Freeman Dyson

Retired, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton

University

Charles D. Ferguson

President, FAS

Richard L. Garwin

IBM Fellow Emeritus, IBM Thomas J. Watson

Research Center

Frank von Hippel

Co-Director, Program on Science and Global

Security, Princeton University

Robert S. Norris

Senior Fellow for Nuclear Policy, FAS

B. Cameron Reed

Charles A. Dana Professor of Physics, Alma

College

Megan Sethi

U.S. Historian and Adjunct Professor, Cal Poly

Pomona and Southern New Hampshire

University

Daniel Singer

Of Counsel, Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver &

Jacobson LLP

Jeremy J. Stone

Founder, Catalytic Diplomacy

Cover image: U.S. military observe the explosion during Operation Crossroads

Baker, a nuclear test conducted on Bikini Atoll on July 25, 1946.

Source: U.S. Department of Defense.

PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE: REINVENTION AND RENEWAL

Charles D. Ferguson………………………………………………………………………………..1

THE LEGACY OF THE FEDERATION OF AMERICAN SCIENTISTS

Megan Sethi………………………………………………………………………………………...5

SCIENTISTS AND NUCLEAR WEAPONS, 1945-2015

Robert S. Norris…………………………………………………………………..…………….....12

GOVERNMENT SECRECY AND CENSORSHIP

Alexander DeVolpi……………………………………………………………………………......15

FAS HISTORY, 1961-1963

Freeman Dyson…………………………………………………………………………...………23

FAS IN THE 1960s: FORMATIVE YEARS

Daniel Singer………………………………………………………………………………...……26

REVITALIZING AND LEADING FAS: 1970-2000

Jeremy J. Stone……………………..………………………………………………...……………29

FAS’S CONTRIBUTION TO ENDING THE COLD WAR NUCLEAR ARMS RACE

Frank von Hippel…………………………………………………………………………………35

FAS ENGAGEMENT WITH CHINA

Richard L. Garwin……………………………………………………………………………...…40

NUCLEAR LEGACIES: PUBLIC UNDERSTANDING AND FAS

B. Cameron Reed……………………………………………………………………………....…43

MORE FROM FAS

Allison Feldman……………………...……………………………………………………………47

FAS LEADERSHIP AND STAFF..……………………………………………………………52

*Peter Agre *Sidney Altman Bruce Ames *Philip W. Anderson *Kenneth J. Arrow *David Baltimore *Paul Berg Drew Berry *J. Michael Bishop *Gunther Blobel *Nicolaas Bloembergen Josh Bongard *Paul Boyer *Michael S. Brown Tad T. Brunye *Linda B. Buck Anne Pitts Carter *Martin Chalfie *Stanley Cohen *Leon N Cooper *E.J. Corey Paul B. Cornely *James Cronin *Johann Deisenhofer Sidney D. Drell Ann Druyan Xiangfeng Duan Paul R. Ehrlich Demetra Evangelou George Field *Jerome I. Friedman *Riccardo Giacconi *Walter Gilbert *Sheldon L. Glashow *Roy J. Glauber *Joseph L. Goldstein *Paul Greengard *David J. Gross Tina Grotzer *Roger C.L. Guillemin W. Nicholas Haining *Leland H. Hartwell *Dudley R. Herschbach Frank von Hippel *Roald Hoffmann John P. Holdren *H. Robert Horvitz Peter Huybers *Eric R. Kandel

Leon Lederman* *Nobel Laureate

*Wolfgang Ketterle Nathan Keyfitz Ali Khademhosseini *Brian K. Kobilka *Walter Kohn *Roger D. Kornberg *Robert J. Lefkowitz *Roderick MacKinnon *Eric S. Maskin Jessica Tuchman Mathews Roy Menninger Matthew S. Meselson Richard A. Meserve *Mario Molina Stephen S. Morse *Ferid Murad *Ei-ichi Negishi Franklin A. Neva *Douglas D. Osheroff Aydogan Ozcan *Arno A. Penzias *David Politzer Paul Portney Mark Ptashne George Rathjens David M. Reif *Burton Richter *Richard J. Roberts Jeffrey Sachs Sara Sawyer *Phillip A. Sharp *K. Barry Sharpless Stanley K. Sheinbaum Evgenya Simakov Neil Smelser Marin Soljačić *Robert M. Solow *Jack Steinberger *Thomas A. Steitz *Joseph Stiglitz *Daniel Tsui *Harold E. Varmus Robert A. Weinberg *Steven Weinberg *Eric F. Wieschaus *Torsten N. Wiesel *Frank Wilczek *Ahmed Zewail

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Board of Sponsors in being part of a community

devoted to solving the world’s science and security

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Your contribution helps FAS to…

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Above: Linus and Ava Helen Pauling demonstrating in the streets for peace. San Francisco, CA, 1960s.

Source: SCARC Holdings, Oregon State University Libraries.

Charles D. Ferguson

rom its inception 70 years ago, the founders and members of the Federation of American Scientists were

reinventing themselves. Imagine yourself as a 26-year old chemist having participated in building the first

atomic bombs. You may have joined because your graduate school adviser was going to Los Alamos and encouraged

you to come. You may also have decided to take part in the Manhattan Project because you believed it was your

patriotic duty to help America acquire the bomb before Nazi

Germany did. And even when Hitler and the Nazis were

defeated in May 1945, you continued your work on the bomb

because the war with Japan was still raging in the Pacific.

Moreover, by then, you may have felt like Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer, the Scientific Director, that the project was

“technically sweet”—you had to see it through to the end.

But when the end came—the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki—in August 1945, you may have had

doubts about whether you should have built the bombs, or you may have at least been deeply concerned about the

future of humanity in facing the threat of nuclear destruction. What should you then do? About a thousand of the

F

Imagine yourself as a 26-year old chemist having participated in building the first atomic bombs…

“atomic scientists” throughout the country at various sites, such as Los Alamos, Oak Ridge, Hanford, and Chicago

began to organize and discuss the implications of this new military technology.1

This political activity was not natural for scientists. Almost all of the founders of FAS were so-called “rank-and-file”

scientists in their 20s and 30s. Members of this youth brigade—led by Dr. Willie Higinbotham, who was in his mid-

30s but who looked younger—arrived in Washington. With their “crew cuts, bow

ties, and tab collars [testifying] to their youth,” they roamed the halls of Capitol

Hill, educating Congressmen and their staffs.2 Newsweek called them the

“reluctant lobby.” As a history of the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) notes,

“Part of their reluctance stemmed from their conviction that the cause of science

should not be dragged through the political arena.”3

Fortunately, these scientists persisted and achieved the notable result of

successfully lobbying for civilian control of the AEC. While they also wanted

international control of nuclear energy, they fell short of that goal. However, they

were indefatigable in their educational efforts on promoting peaceful uses of

nuclear energy and warning about the dangers of nuclear arms races.

Throughout FAS’s seven decades, the organization has transformed itself into various incarnations depending on the

issues to be addressed and the resources available for operating FAS. To learn about this continual reinvention, I

invite you to read all the articles in this special edition of the Public Interest Report. This edition has an all-star list of

writers—many of whom have served in leadership roles at FAS and others who have deep, scholarly knowledge of

FAS. These authors discuss many of the accomplishments of FAS, but they also do not shy away from mentioning

several of the challenges faced by FAS.

What will FAS achieve and what adversities will occur in the next 70 years? As scientists know, research results are

difficult, if not impossible, to predict. However, we do know that the mission of FAS is as relevant as ever, perhaps

even more so than it was 70 years ago. Nuclear dangers—the founding call to action—have become more complex;

instead of one nuclear weapon state in 1945, there are now nine countries with nuclear arms. Instead of a few nuclear

reactors in 1945, today there are more than 400 power reactors in 31 countries and more than 100 research reactors in

a few dozen countries. Moreover, some non-nuclear weapon states have acquired or want to acquire uranium

1 Alice Kimball Smith, A Peril and a Hope: The Scientists’ Movement in America 1945-47 (Cambridge, Massachusetts, The MIT Press, 1971). 2 Richard G. Hewlett and Oscar E. Anderson, Jr., The New World, 1939/1946: Volume I, A History of the United States Atomic Energy Commission (The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1962), p. 448. 3 Ibid.

Charles D. Ferguson (then Senior Research Associate for Nuclear Arms Control at FAS) presenting at the

11th International Summer Symposium on Science and Global Affairs, Fudan University, Shanghai, China,

July 29, 1999.

enrichment or reprocessing facilities that can further sow the seeds of future proliferation of nuclear weapons

programs. For these dangers alone, FAS has the important purpose to serve as a voice for scientists, engineers, and

policy experts working together to develop practical means to reduce nuclear risks.

FAS has also served and will continue to serve as a platform for innovative projects that shine spotlights on

government policies that work and don’t work and how to improve these policies. In particular, for a quarter century,

the Government Secrecy Project, directed by Steve Aftergood, has worked to reduce the scope of official secrecy and

to promote public access to national security information. FAS has also contributed to the public debate on bio-safety

and bio-security. Daniel Singer (one of the contributors to this issue) and Dr. Maxine Singer have been active for

more than 50 years in bio-ethics. Dr. Barbara Hatch Rosenberg and Dorothy Preslar in the 1990s and early 2000s

worked through FAS to develop methods (such as an email list serve, which was cutting edge in the 1990s) to connect

biologists and public health experts around the globe to identify, monitor, and evaluate emerging diseases. In recent

years, Chris Bidwell, Senior Fellow for Law and Nonproliferation Policy, has led projects examining potential

biological attacks or outbreaks and the forensic evidence needed for a court of law or government decision making in

countries in the Middle East and North Africa. The Nuclear Information Project, directed by Hans Kristensen,

continues its longstanding work on providing the public with reliable information and analysis on the status and

trends of global nuclear weapons arsenals. Its famed Nuclear

Notebook, co-authored by Kristensen and Robert S. Norris, a senior

fellow at FAS, is one of the most widely referenced sources for

consistent data about the status of the world’s nuclear weapons.

I believe the greatest renewal and reinvention of FAS has been

emerging in the past three years with the creation of networks of

experts to work together to prevent threats from becoming global

catastrophes. FAS has organized task forces that have provided

practical guidance to policy makers about the implementation of

the agreement on Iran’s nuclear program and that have examined

the benefits and risks of the use of highly enriched uranium in

naval nuclear propulsion. As I look to the next 70 years, I foresee

numerous opportunities for FAS to seize by being the bridge

between the technical and policy communities.

I am very grateful for the support of FAS’s members and donors and encourage you to invite your friends and

colleagues to join FAS. Happy 70th anniversary!

Nuclear energy research travel (cosponsored by FAS) to the Republic of Korea, November 7, 2013, taken at Gyeongju National Museum: From left to right: Paul Dickman, Argonne National Laboratory, Lee Kwang-seok, Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute, Florence Lowe-Lee, Global America Business Institute, Everett Redmond, Nuclear Energy Institute, and Charles D. Ferguson, FAS.

“Statement of the Federation of Atomic Scientists.” Issued by the Hollywood Independent Citizens’ Committee of the Arts, Sciences and Professions, 1945.

Source: SCARC Holdings, Oregon State University Libraries.

Megan Sethi

he Federation of American Scientists (FAS) formed after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, precisely

because many scientists were genuinely concerned for the fate of the world now that nuclear weapons were a

concrete reality. They passionately believed that, as scientific experts and citizens, they had a duty to educate the

American public about the dangers of living in the atomic age. Early in 1946, the founding members of FAS

established a headquarters in Washington, D.C., and began to coordinate the political and educational activities of

many local groups that had sprung up spontaneously at universities and research facilities across the country. The

early FAS had two simultaneous goals: the passage of atomic

energy legislation that would ensure civilian control and promote

international cooperation on nuclear energy issues, and the

education of the American public about atomic energy. In

addition, from its very inception, FAS was committed to

promoting the broader idea that science should be used to benefit the public. FAS aspired, among other things, “To

counter misinformation with scientific fact and, especially, to disseminate those facts necessary for intelligent

T

From its very inception, FAS was committed to promoting the broader idea that science should be used to benefit the public.

conclusions concerning the social implications of new knowledge in science,” and “To promote those public policies

which will secure the benefits of science to the general welfare.”1

Activist scientists’ idealism regarding the public and its role in a democracy is evident not only in the rhetoric

scientists’ use, but also in the choices that they make when establishing their educational program. FAS, concerned

with scientists’ inexperience in public education, elected to enlist the assistance of other experts in the fields of

advertising and public relations. They also established the National Committee on Atomic Information (NCAI) as an

organization that would reach the public through the “opinion makers,” the leadership of public organizations like the

American Federation of Labor, the League of Women Voters, and the National Council of Churches. On a local level,

scientists’ associations across the country attempted to spread a message that went beyond simply the concern with

atomic energy and endeavored to educate the public about science in general.

Early efforts to educate the public were hindered, however, by a basic dilemma facing the scientists’ movement: how

to reconcile scientists’ reputation for objectivity with the sort of passionate political activism they attempted to

embrace. Scientists believed that their public prestige hinged upon their popular image as objective experts, and so

found it very difficult to navigate the murky waters of politics and propaganda. The scientists of FAS had a particular

agenda that ran counter to the emerging Cold War, and thus, their message of “no secret, no defense, international

control,” while grounded in scientific fact, was also explicitly ideological. FAS scientists were frequently chastised by

politicians and the media for abandoning objectivity and for attempting to interject their opinions into the realm of

international politics and military strategy. These rebukes, combined with scientists’ natural reticence toward political

involvement, contributed to an extended period of conflict and consternation within FAS, beginning in the spring and

summer of 1946 and continuing throughout the rest of the decade.

Some of the choices that the scientists’ movement made regarding their program of public education exacerbated this

dilemma, and almost led to the collapse of the organization itself. For example, the educational campaign conducted

through the NCAI was unable to fully capitalize upon opportunities offered by the American public. The public that

contacted the NCAI wanted not only information, but leadership and guidance from scientists. FAS, however, did not

quite know what to make of the suggestions and support “ordinary” Americans offered them. During their

collaboration with social scientists and public relations experts, the scientists of FAS reached the conclusion that in

order to educate the American people effectively, they might have to abandon their idealistic notions of the public’s

role in democracy and attempt to manipulate the public using propaganda techniques. Activist scientists were

uncomfortable with the prospect of abandoning their objectivity and uncertain how to effectively reach the public.

1 Aims of Federation, December 8, 1945, and FAS Constitution, July 21, 1948. Federation of American Scientists Records, Box 1, Folder 1, Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library.

Member associations faced the same dilemma regarding advocacy and objectivity, and confusion over this issue led to

the eventual collapse of many local groups. The dilemma of objectivity thus threatened to undermine the Federation.

By the early 1950s, however, FAS was able to maintain a consistent, if somewhat moderated, presence in American

political life. The movement as a whole had answered the question of whether scientists could (or should) be

concerned with social and political issues in the affirmative. To some extent, the scientists of FAS traded their earlier

passion for a new position of explicit neutrality. Given the excitement surrounding the movement’s initial activism,

the exchange of evangelism for “dull, hard work” must have seemed disappointing to some scientists and their

supporters. However, this shift in tone and methodology empowered FAS to expand its purview beyond simply

advocating for atomic energy control and embrace an expanded mission: To bridge the gap between scientists and

non-scientists, and to advocate for greater public understanding of science; for openness and transparency in policy-

making; and for the health and safety of the world’s population. The national organization worked throughout the

1950s to press for science policy that would serve the public interest, whether it was pushing for fuller disclosure of

atomic information and the creation of a lively public sphere, or advocating for caution in nuclear testing and eventual

world disarmament.2

Thus, the legacy of FAS can be measured in a variety of ways. Certainly its first and most tangible result was the

Atomic Energy Act of 1946, which many historians have argued was brought into being largely through the efforts of

the organization itself. Had scientists not organized to oppose the initial May-Johnson bill, which left the domestic

control of atomic energy largely in military hands, the history of the Cold War might have been very different.

However, scientists were forced to compromise on some key principles within the McMahon bill, which allowed the

Atomic Energy Act and the AEC to have a much greater military presence than they might have wished. The

Federation’s lobbying efforts certainly left an important legacy on the history of American politics during the Cold

War, but its success in this area was a qualified one, at best.

FAS also made a significant contribution to the creation of Cold War culture in America.3 Scientists’ use of

apocalyptic rhetoric in describing the terrible effects of the atomic bomb brought the frightening reality of nuclear

weapons home to millions of Americans. It is reasonable to suggest that without FAS, the American public might

have been far less aware of the important issues surrounding atomic energy. Certainly books and films, such as One

World or None, radio programs, and the innumerable pamphlets, brochures, and newsletters disseminated by FAS and

2 For more information about the early FAS and its activities, see Barnhart, Megan, “To Secure the Benefits of Science to the General Welfare: The Scientists’ Movement and the American Public during the Cold War, 1945-1960,” Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles, 2007; Smith, Alice Kimball, A Peril and a Hope: The Scientists’ Movement in America, 1947-1947 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965). 3 See Boyer, Paul, By the Bomb’s Early Light: American Thought and Culture at the Dawn of the Atomic Age (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1994).

its affiliated groups are material artifacts of how the scientists’ movement contributed to the creation of an atomic

culture.

Perhaps the most significant impact of the scientists’ movement lies in its

effect upon both individual scientists and the American scientific

community as a whole. Without question, individuals who joined FAS in

the aftermath of World War II were changed in a number of concrete ways

because of their involvement. Many scientists who were active in FAS

during its early years, even those who fell away from the organization in the

late 1940s, retained a conviction in the necessity for atomic energy control,

international peace, and the preservation of the environment throughout

their professional careers. Some channeled their beliefs into new

organizations. For example, Leo Szilard, initially one of the most ardent

members of FAS, never stopped working for international control, and

eventually established his own political action committee, the Council for a

Livable World, in 1962.4 Others, such as Manhattan Project geochemist

and active FAS member Harrison Brown, directed their postwar careers

toward developing atomic energy for constructive, rather than destructive,

purposes. In the 1950s, Brown was a leading organizer of the Pugwash

Conferences, a series of international gatherings of scientists to discuss

nuclear issues and international politics.5 He also influenced a number of

students, some of whom would later become politically active themselves.

For example, leading environmental scientist and public policy expert John Holdren read Brown’s book as a teenager,

and later went to Caltech to work with Brown, where he collaborated with other socially conscious scientists at the

Environmental Quality Laboratory and the Rand Corporation in Santa Monica. Holdren became active in the 1970s as

an environmentalist and critic of nuclear power and today he is the chief science advisor to President Obama.6 Thus,

not only did the scientists of FAS retain their beliefs and channel their activism in other directions beyond the postwar

scientists’ movement, but many also influenced the next generation of American scientists toward political activism

and the creation of public-oriented science policy.

4 See Hawkins, Helen S., G. Allen Greb, and Gertrude Weiss Szilard, eds., Toward a Livable World: Leo Szilard and the Crusade for Nuclear Arms Control, vol. 3, Collected Works of Leo Szilard (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1987), 425. 5 Revelle, Roger, "Harrison Brown," in Biographical Memoirs, ed. National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, 1994), 43-44, 49-50. 6 Wellock, Thomas Raymond, Critical Masses: Opposition to Nuclear Power in California, 1958-1978 (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1998), 101-02.

The original edition of One World or None (1946) sold 100,000 copies and was a New York Times bestseller.

It was reprinted in 2007.

FAS also spurred the creation of future groups while serving as a foundation upon which these organizations could

build. FAS was really the first major national organization of scientists to consider issues of science and policy; its

establishment heralded the arrival of scientists on the American political scene, and signified an emerging

consciousness of scientists’ social responsibility that would only grow and deepen in the years to come. In 1949, the

Society for Social Responsibility in Science (SSRS) was founded as an organization of scientific workers who explicitly

renounced militarism and promised “to...abstain from destructive work and devote himself to constructive work.”

Never particularly large or visible in American political life, the SSRS nevertheless attracted the support of several

prominent scientists, including Albert Einstein.7 Another example was the Scientists’ Institute for Public Information

(SIPI), established in 1963. SIPI was a direct outgrowth of the Greater St. Louis Citizen’s Committee for Nuclear

Information, established in the late 1950s around the issue of fallout and the banning of nuclear testing. When these

issues declined in the early 1960s, SIPI increasingly focused upon a broader environmentalist agenda. Although SIPI

was designed to provide scientific and technical information to the public “free from moral and political judgments,”

it, like FAS, was oriented around the assumption of scientists’ special responsibility to educate the public.8 Finally,

Physicians for Social Responsibility, established in 1961, can also be seen as a direct descendent of FAS. All of these

groups work to inform the public and legislators on scientific issues, just as FAS does.9

An even more significant legacy of FAS would come to fruition in the late 1960s with the establishment of groups like

the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) and Scientists and Engineers for Social and Political Action (SESPA, later

renamed Science for the People). These groups were both direct ideological descendants of FAS in at least one

important respect: both organizations explicitly advocated for public education and for the creation of science policy

that would serve public interests over those of the government or the military. The UCS arose out of a one-day work

stoppage at MIT in the spring of 1969 to protest the Vietnam War and the University’s complicity in the war. It was a

collective effort between students and a number of MIT faculty, including some scientists who had previously been

active in FAS. Faculty sponsors of the March 4 activities included Philip Morse, David Shoemaker, Irving Kaplan, and

Victor Weisskopf, all of whom had been active in FAS during its early days.10 SESPA also emerged in 1969 at a

meeting of the American Physical Society (APS) when a group of graduate students and young faculty became

dissatisfied with the failure of APS to oppose the Vietnam War. Eventually changing their name to Science for the

People, the group called for using science to benefit the public, and for “empowering the poor with scientific

7 Press release from the Society for Social Responsibility in Science, July 19, 1950. Federation of American Scientists Records, Box 23, Folder 8, Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library. 8 See Nichols, David, "The Associational Interest Groups of American Science," in Scientists and Public Affairs, ed. Albert H. Teich (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1974), 144, Smith, Allen, "Democracy and the Politics of Information: The St. Louis Committee for Nuclear Information," Gateway Heritage 17 (1996), Sullivan, Jr., William Cuyler, Nuclear Democracy: A History of the Greater St. Louis Citizens' Committee for Nuclear Information, 1957-1967, Washington University College Occasional Papers No. 1 (St. Louis, MO: Washington University Press, 1982), 70-72. 9 Nichols, "The Associational Interest Groups of American Science," 148-49. 10 Allen, Jonathan, ed., March 4: Scientists, Students, and Society (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1970).

knowledge, expertise and products.”11 Both UCS and SESPA/Science for the People thus followed in the footsteps of

FAS, which advocated for science to serve the public interest as early as 1945.

Scientists in recent years have continued the tradition begun by FAS of speaking out against government policies

which they believe distort science and mislead the public. On February 18, 2004, UCS released a statement signed by

over 60 leading scientists entitled “Restoring Scientific Integrity in Policymaking.” The UCS report accused the

George W. Bush Administration of ignoring and/or censoring scientific research that contradicted its political

ideology, and of undermining “the quality and independence of the scientific advisory system and the morale of the

government’s outstanding scientific personnel.”12 Scientists and the Bush administration clashed over various issues,

most frequently and publicly climate change and global warming.13 Bush’s successor, Barack Obama, has generally

been considered to be more favorable toward science; however, as a 2010 LA Times article suggests, scientists have

continued to raise many of the same concerns under Obama’s

tenure as they did during the Bush years.14 Scientists have also

increasingly fought with some members of Congress. Most

recently, scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric

Administration (NOAA) are contesting the attempts of Rep.

Lamar Smith, chairman of the House science committee, to subpoena email correspondence regarding a ground-

breaking climate change study published earlier this year. The American Association for the Advancement of Science

(AAAS) and other scientific groups have publicly announced their support for NOAA, arguing that, “Science cannot

thrive when policymakers – regardless of party affiliation – use policy disagreements as a pretext to attack scientific

conclusions without public evidence.”15 A direct continuity can be seen between the early efforts of FAS and these

recent examples of scientists’ political activism. The efforts of UCS, AAAS, and other groups to publicly oppose the

alleged manipulation of science by government officials would perhaps never have come about, had FAS not set a

precedent for scientists’ political activism.

Perhaps the most important legacy of FAS, then, is how it dealt with the issue of advocacy versus objectivity. In 1945,

FAS embarked upon largely uncharted waters; although certainly some scientists before the war acknowledged such a

11 Moore, Kelly. "Doing Good While Doing Science: The Origins and Consequences of Public Interest Science Organizations in America, 1945-1990." Ph. D. Dissertation, University of Arizona, 1993. 12 Union of Concerned Scientists, “Restoring Scientific Integrity in Policymaking,” January 23, 2007, http://www.ucsusa.org/scientific_integrity/interference/scientists-signon-statement.html (June 3, 2007). 13 Andrew C. Revkin, “Bush vs. the Laureates: How Science Becomes a Partisan Issue,” New York Times on the Web, October 19, 2004, http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F05E3D9123AF93AA25753C1A9629C8B63&sec=health (June 3, 2007). 14 Tom Hamburger and Kim Geiger, “Scientists Expected Obama Administration to be Friendlier,” LA Times (Los Angeles, CA), July 10, 2010, http://articles.latimes.com/2010/jul/10/nation/la-na-science-obama-20100711 (November 18, 2015). 15 Letter from AAAS et. al. to Rep. Lamar Smith, November 24, 2015, http://www.aaas.org/sites/default/files/Intersociety%20NOAA_letter%2011-24-2015.pdf (November 27, 2015).

Science cannot thrive when policymakers use policy disagreements as a pretext to attack scientific conclusions without public evidence.

social responsibility, never before had scientists attempted to engage in American political life on such a large scale.

Convinced of the righteousness of their cause and of their duty to educate the public about atomic energy control, the

scientists of FAS embraced an ideology which ran counter to the Cold War mentality that was rapidly coalescing in

American political and cultural life. By advocating such a relatively controversial agenda, FAS encountered a great deal

of opposition among some quarters, and scientists faced the possibility of having to relinquish their image as objective

experts. External opposition and internal conflict over the issue of scientific objectivity threatened to undermine the

scientists’ movement. FAS was able, however, to move beyond these concerns in the early 1950s, and to embrace their

foundational mission of working towards a publicly-oriented science. Its ability to retain its public image as a body of

objective experts, while simultaneously advocating for a political agenda, set an important precedent for future

generations of American scientists.

the

FAS 70th Anniversary Symposium and Awards Gala

September 28, 2016 Washington, D.C.

The afternoon will feature panel discussions relating to FAS’s mission, future issues and endeavors, and the work to be honored in the evening. The gala will follow, where the

Hans Bethe, Public Service, and Richard L Garwin Awards will be presented.

For more information on the awards and past recipients, please visit: http://fas.org/about-fas/awards/

Robert S. Norris

n August 8, 2015, twenty-nine scientists sent a letter to

President Obama in support of the agreement with Iran

that would block (or at least significantly delay) Iran’s pathways to

obtain nuclear weapons. This continues a tradition that began

seventy years ago of scientists having a role in educating the

public, advising government officials, and helping shape policy

about nuclear weapons.

Soon after the end of World War II, scientists mobilized themselves to address the pressing issues of how to deal with

the many consequences of atomic energy. Of prime importance was the question of which government entity would

control the research, development and production of atomic weapons, and any peaceful applications. Would it be the

military, as it was during World War II, or a civilian agency, such as the newly created Atomic Energy Commission

(AEC)?

The Federation of Atomic Scientists was founded on November 1, 1945, as a collection of groups from the major

Manhattan Project sites. The following January, it renamed itself the Federation of American Scientists and soon had

O

Public Meeting Announcement, November 3, 1957.

Source: SCARC Holdings, Oregon State University Libraries.

Source: SCARC Holdings, Oregon State University Libraries

nearly 3,000 members, many of whom had been part of the Manhattan Project. The standard history on the early

years is documented in Alice Kimball Smith’s A Peril and a Hope: The Scientists Movement in America, 1945-47. On almost

every milestone throughout the Cold War, scientists weighed in with an opinion – sometimes they were for the issue

and sometimes against. This was accomplished through formal federal advisory committees, testimony before

Congressional Committees, and articles published in such magazines as The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Scientific

American and the Public Interest Report.

In the face of the Soviet Union detonating a nuclear bomb in August 1949, ending an American monopoly, the issue

for President Harry Truman was how to respond. The decision to approve or reject development of a hydrogen bomb

involved major American scientists. The Chairman of

the AEC’s General Advisory Committee was J. Robert

Oppenheimer. He and the majority of the committee

members recommended against development of an H-

bomb, even referring to it as “a weapon of genocide.”

Stronger opposition was stated by a minority that

included Enrico Fermi and I. I. Rabi. Included in their

lengthy report, they believed that “it is necessarily an

evil thing considered in any light.” Edward Teller and

his supporters, Ernest Lawrence, John von Neumann,

and Luis Alvarez (among others), pressed Truman to

proceed. The President’s press release of January 31,

1950 directed the AEC to continue “work on all forms

of atomic weapons, including the so-called hydrogen or

super-bomb.”

Scientists were later involved in the debate over a

limited test ban treaty and whether radiation from

atmospheric detonations was harmful. For example, in

1962, FAS member Linus Pauling won a Nobel Peace

Prize for his efforts in mobilizing millions of

Americans, especially mothers, against nuclear testing, and in 1962 and 1963, FAS Chairman Freeman Dyson and

other members of the FAS Council were very active in educating Congress about the test ban. (See the article in this

issue by Professor Dyson.) More recently, the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty was debated in the Senate in 1999, and

although testing by the United States stopped in 1992, the treaty remains un-ratified. For decades from the late 1960s,

scientists (particularly many FAS affiliated scientists) have had opinions about strategic arms control treaties with the

Soviet Union and Russia, such as SALT and START, as well as the Intermediate Nuclear Forces treaty of 1987. In the

“Atom Bombs Held Cheap, Plentiful.” New York Times, November, 18 1946.

Source: SCARC Holdings, Oregon State University Libraries.

1980s, FAS affiliated scientists (notably Hans Bethe, Frank von Hippel, and Richard L. Garwin) advised the U.S.

government and the larger public about the strategic risks and technical challenges of the Strategic Defense Initiative,

or the so-called “Star Wars missile defense system.” More recently, in 2000, FAS mobilized 50 Nobel Laureates to

sign a letter, written by Hans Bethe, to advise then-President Bill Clinton to defer deployment of even a limited

national missile defense system until the strategic and technical concerns were resolved. President Clinton did defer

deployment, but his successor President George W. Bush went ahead with deployment and in parallel, withdrew the

United States from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty.

On March 29, 2016, FAS published a letter, signed by 35 Nobel Laureates in the sciences, to

the national leaders at the 2016 Nuclear Security Summit, held in Washington, D.C. from

March 31 to April 1. The letter urged global action on three technical issues that, if fully

resolved, would reduce the risks of nuclear and radiological terrorism close to zero in those

three sectors. [See fas.org for a copy of the letter and full list of signatories.]

Throughout its history, the Federation of American Scientists has been an organization where scientists have served

on its Board of Directors and the FAS Advisory Council and debated public policy positions on nuclear weapon

matters. From the late 1940s through the 1990s, the Council would regularly issue policy position statements with the

intention to advise political leaders. [Refer to previous issues of the FAS Newsletter and the Public Interest Report for

news of these statements.]

In the 21st century, FAS remains committed to providing a platform for scientists to advise government officials

about nuclear policy. Recently, FAS has been forming task forces and study groups (that include scientists and

engineers, as well as legal and political experts) to examine the technical and policy aspects of challenging problems in

nuclear security, nonproliferation, and arms control. Also, through the Nuclear Information Project and through

publications of the Nuclear Notebook (distributed by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists), FAS continues to serve as

the leading source of information on nuclear weapons around the world. In sum, FAS has (and will continue to have)

an enduring role in ensuring that scientifically credible information and analysis remain an essential part of the public

debate.

Alexander DeVolpi

rom its beginning, the Federation of American Scientists has been immersed in policies and issues regarding

government secrecy and censorship. By the time World War II broke out, the fission process had been

observed, followed by detection of the neutron, and recognition of induced uranium fission. In the early 1940s, some

scientists in the United States, Great Britain, the Soviet Union, and Germany realized the potential for nuclear

weapons.

The three atomic bombs detonated in the summer of 1945 were created and assembled at secret U.S. government

sites by a mixed pedigree of scientists, engineers, and military officers. The decision to drop two of them on Japanese

cities was determined by military and political events then occurring, particularly in the final year of World War II.

Our Soviet wartime ally, excluded from the American, British, and Canadian nuclear coalition, used its own espionage

network to remain informed. Well-placed sympathizers and spies conveyed many essential details of nuclear-explosive

development. Through this network, Stalin learned of the Manhattan Project and the Trinity test. As the German

invaders began to retreat from Soviet borders, he established his own secret nuclear development project. Stalin also

turned shortcomings of American secrecy to his political advantage, notably his entering the war against Japan at the

very last minute in order to ensure a voice in the final post-war territorial settlement.

F

These cited events are detailed in a pair of well-documented volumes, Nuclear Shadowboxing:

Contemporary Threats from Cold War Weaponry (2004-2005), resulting from a post-Cold-War

collaboration of four coauthors: a former Soviet weapons scientist, an nuclear-engineer

emigre who had served in the Soviet Navy, a Canadian-born nuclear physicist, and myself. It is

replete with references and documentation. Excerpts can be accessed on Google Books.

Later I adapted and updated much of that material into a more readable, less academic

trilogy of books, Nuclear Insights: The Cold War Legacy (2009), available on Amazon.

A memoir now in draft stage, Cold War Brinkmanship: Nuclear Arms and Civil Rights, recalls my

experiences with information control and government secrecy. The draft includes a detailed

history of the Cold War from an activist’s viewpoint.

Immediately after the war, American policymakers made a profound miscalculation that the United States would have

an enduring nuclear monopoly (safeguarded by secrecy). But, in response to the atomic bombing of Japan, the Soviets

accelerated their own program to make a nuclear weapon, getting their first reactor in operation before the end of

1946. Despite Western efforts to control materials, information, and scientists, the Soviets succeeded with testing their

own nuclear-explosive device in 1949, an achievement that profoundly influenced the ensuing Cold War.

By the 1950s, the Cold War became a prominent factor that quickly led to the Korean War, the first space travel by

humans, construction of radiation-fallout shelters, and deployment of intercontinental ballistic missiles. Britain,

France, and China became members of the “nuclear club,” and both the USSR and the United States tested

thermonuclear weapons. Air, missile, and undersea launch platforms for launching nuclear weapons came under

development, and some began deployment. By the early 1960s, the long Vietnam War had begun.

Although the United Nations attempted to develop a policy for international control of nuclear weapons, the Soviet

Union and the United States couldn’t reach an agreement. This was but one factor in what turned out to be a Cold

War ratcheting, largely between the two superpowers. Citizens everywhere saw nuclear fission both as a massive threat

and as a source of useful energy. In the 1960s, the weapons states carried out numerous nuclear-explosive tests and

the total number of nuclear weapons grew rapidly. Atmospheric testing generated radioactive fallout, contributing to a

public debate about nuclear arsenals. The Cuban Missile Crisis (1962) brought the world to the brink of nuclear war.

Paradoxically, this confrontation caused the Soviet Union to build more missiles, while also creating pressure in both

the United States and the Soviet Union for international control of nuclear weapons. The United States began

harnessing nuclear energy for peaceful purposes, and nuclear-power plant construction began worldwide.

Concurrently, considerable domestic and international public opposition evolved against nuclear-arsenal expansion.

Discomforted by lawful dissent, the U.S. government often resorted to information management and domestic

spying. Human rights in the West were frequently disregarded in the name of national security. In the USSR,

essentially all dissent was quashed by heavy-handed dictatorial methods.

Proxy wars began to break out around the globe, as well as prolonged government psychological campaigns,

propaganda dissemination, and espionage. The Cold

War gradually became a chronic, largely East-West

conflict. With political hostility characterized by threats,

propaganda, and other measures, it was pursued

primarily through economic pressure, political actions,

propaganda exercises, extra-legal acts, and proxy wars

(often waged through surrogate nations and client

states). Some events led to an increasing role for

government secrecy, censorship, and surveillance.

The United States, while proceeding with a robust

nuclear-weapons testing and improvement program,

simultaneously embarked on peaceful applications of

nuclear energy, such as civilian power and medical

radioisotopes. Proposals (Atoms for Peace) were made

for sharing and controlling the international

development of non-military applications of nuclear

fission. These proposals had been influenced by a secret June 1945 report conveyed to President Roosevelt: The

Franck Report, written in part by Eugene Rabinowitch, later the founding editor of the journal that became known as

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, conveyed a plea against dropping the atomic bomb on Japan; it also warned of a

possible post-war arms race and a destructive nuclear war. Just one month after the atomic bombings of Japan, a

secret (“classified”) U.S. planning document was formulated, embodying a nuclear first-use policy if war broke out

with the Soviet Union. Secrecy provided a curtain for sustaining an arms race: hidden behind that veil were deliberate

fear-generating government tactics. Overly trusting publics were unaware of the implications (and even the existence)

of fateful decisions.

In a classified 1948 document (NSC-20), the United States overhyped the perceived Soviet threat to security as both

“dangerous and immediate.” A nuclear-warfare policy was recommended for dealing with the Soviet Union and with

the potential spread of communism. The U.S. Strategic Air Command designated major Soviet urban-industrial

concentrations as nuclear-bomb targets. Had such attacks happened, that could have largely foreclosed political

settlement because Moscow and many other cities would have been obliterated. And, conversely, the United States

might have been “decapitated” by nuclear retaliation, losing its leadership and a substantial number of inhabitants.

Now, among the less-tangible Cold War remnants are excessive secrecy and surveillance. Those policies and practices

were once deemed necessary in controlling dangerous information, especially on how to make nuclear weapons.

“It Takes Lots of Courage.” York Gazette and Daily. September, 20 1962.

Source: SCARC Holdings, Oregon State University Libraries.

However, carefree strategies of nuclear brinkmanship were also concealed by censorship. And domestic spying was

not uncommon — against those outside of, or opposed to, government policies.

A major challenge for security in our new millennium is to lessen the still-present danger of deliberate, accidental, or

unauthorized use of nuclear explosives. Even now, although East-West belligerency is over, the quantitative and

qualitative nuclear-arms race has not entirely died out; nor are arsenals being drawn down at a pace consistent with the

newfound security that came with the end of superpower confrontation. Many alarming and frightening situations

have occurred.

Early in the Cold War, scientific organizations were divided on the potential benefits of civil defense and emergency

planning. Choosing to promote arms control rather than war planning, the Federation of American Scientists, along

with its chapters throughout the United States, began to speak out against the frantic and illusory appeal of civil

defense in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Under the leadership of Argonne physicist David R. Inglis (later chairman

of the national organization), the Chicago FAS chapter articulated the limitations of civil defense. The Argonne group

engaged in detailed analysis of a public discussion of advance preparations and emergency responses in the event of

nuclear war.

In our westernmost state, home of the Seattle FAS Chapter, a legislative committee was looking for communists. The

following information, found in an FBI file released under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), shows that at

least one state government had its own investigative committee, which acted in coordination with Congress:

In connection with his testimony before the Joint Fact-Finding Committee on Un-American Activities, State of

Washington, on July 20, 1948, Dr. J.B. Mathews, former Research Director for the Special Committee on Un-

American Activities, U.S. House of Representatives [HUAC], submitted a list of “COMMUNIST Front

Organizations,” which included the FEDERATION OF ATOMIC SCIENTISTS.

Senator Joseph R. McCarthy became the leading anti-communist crusader of the late 1940s and early 1950s; he made

the U.S. Senate a forum for charges similar to those being levied in the House. Senator McCarthy’s campaign against

communist “subversion” ruined many careers and contributed substantially to the anti-communist hysteria of the

time. His tactics gave rise to the abiding and derogative term “McCarthyism.”

In 1950, McCarthy specifically denounced FAS as being “heavily infiltrated with communist fellow-travelers.”

McCarthy received information directly from J. Edgar Hoover, head of the FBI. One of Hoover’s agents later

admitted that: “We were the ones who made the McCarthy hearings possible. We fed McCarthy all the material he was

using.” Here’s one explanation for this controversial period:

With the war going badly in Korea and communist advances in Eastern Europe and in China, the American public

was genuinely frightened about the possibilities of internal subversion....

[In the House of Representatives], fearing communist infiltration, HUAC sought the return of nuclear research to

military control, but in a classic turf battle, the Atomic Energy Commission attempted to protect the civil rights of its

scientific staff. During this period, anonymous panels remained arbitrary and capricious, in one case denying clearance

because of membership in the American Association for the Advancement of Science. It also became difficult to hold

international scientific meetings, because many foreign invitees were denied visas, and passports for overseas travel by

Americans were withheld. The FAS Los Angeles Chapter became involved in these controversies.

A common tactic used by investigators was to cut a deal by pressuring a suspect to inform on others: if the suspect did

not give names, he or she would be thrown in jail or branded as seditious, and could not find work at all.

Government surveillance extended from the federal to the local level. Simply joining an organization was enough to

trigger a seemingly ominous information entry in government dossiers. For example, using FOIA, I found that my

being a member of FAS caused the FBI to add that piece of information to the (once-secret) file they kept on me.

Among those speaking out against McCarthyism were I.F. Stone, a journalist, who published a weekly journal, and his

son, Jeremy J. Stone (a PhD mathematician), who headed FAS from 1970-2000.

Even before the end of World War II, the government’s fear of communist spying

spread into many sectors of public life. American communists were distrusted as

possible “subversives.” In June 1945, the FBI arrested six people associated with

Amerasia (a journal about Asian affairs), accusing them of espionage on behalf of

the Chinese communists. Two of the six were convicted of unauthorized

possession of documents.

In 1947, when pressed by HUAC, President Truman imposed a Loyalty Order on

all federal employees and ordered FBI security checks, including applicants for

AEC fellowships. In 1950 an FBI investigation of Albert Einstein was opened, to

find out whether he might be a communist or Soviet agent.

J. Robert Oppenheimer, the wartime scientific head of the Manhattan Project, is

often called the “father of the atomic bomb” for his wartime role. But he provoked

the ire of many politicians with his outspoken opinions, and his security clearance

was revoked after a much-publicized hearing in 1954.

Leslie R. Groves and J. Robert Oppenheimer, 1940s.

Source: SCARC Holdings,

Oregon State University Libraries.

As early as 1947, the Justice Department considered prosecuting Leo Szilard for violating the outdated 1799 Logan

Act, which “prohibited private citizens’ correspondence with a foreign government [the Soviet Union] on a subject of

dispute between it and the United States.” Ironically, Szilard was — perhaps more than anyone — responsible for

getting America to develop the atomic bomb that expedited Japan’s capitulation and gave the United States immense

military superiority over the Soviet Union after World War II. Upon being threatened by the Justice Department,

Szilard made an appeal to scientific societies, where he invoked “the principle of the lesser evil,” reminding them how

German scientists gradually caved to Hitler’s purge of Jews.

Intensive HUAC focus was on Hollywood, perceived as a shaper of public thought, but other targets were

government workers, college professors, artists, musicians, gays, and Jews. During 1947, HUAC victimized the

“Hollywood Ten,” a group of screenwriters and directors.

Targets were asked to “take the pledge”: “Are you now, or

have you ever been, a member of the Communist Party?”

Many who refused on principle were blacklisted by movie

producers.

On 1 November 1945, the loosely organized Federation of

Atomic Scientists in Chicago had become the Federation of

American Scientists. That same year, the Bulletin of the

Atomic Scientists was established by scientists, engineers,

and other professionals of the Manhattan Project who

feared the horrible effects of these new weapons and

devoted themselves to warning the public about the consequences. Those early activists also worried about military

secrecy, dreading that leaders without the full and knowledgeable consent of their citizens might draw their countries

into increasingly dangerous confrontations.

The early history of FAS was described by its first Chairperson, Willy Higinbotham, thanks to his daughter, Julie

Schletter. [Please see the Spring 2015 issue of the Public Interest Report for in-depth coverage, available on fas.org.]

Alamogordo. Having witnessed the first nuclear test at Alamogordo, Higinbotham decided to help prevent a nuclear

arms race.

Almost everyone in Los Alamos was involved in constructing the weapon or designing and installing measurement

instruments for the test, with his group ... involved in the latter. Because of a last-minute call from Oppie [Scientific

Director J. Robert Oppenheimer], Higinbothm was invited to the test site. He reports only remembering Edward Teller

as one of the others in “our select group.”

Screenshot from the documentary film, Legacy of the Hollywood Blacklist (1987),

consisting of protestors opposing the 1950 jailing of the Hollywood Ten.

It was clear that the bomb worked as predicted.... Now I had to face the existence of nuclear weapons. It was a

paralyzing realization.... All I could think of was that the Soviet Union would surely develop nuclear weapons and

might blow us off the map. [A] bomb, such as the one I had seen, would wipe out any city.

The best defense against bombers in Europe had been to shoot down ten percent of the attackers. I came to believe that

attacking the US with nuclear weapons would not make sense even to an evil man like Stalin. (In my mind) at least

the US did not seem to be threatened.

Protests by Scientists. Higinbotham wrote about his experience at Los Alamos in organizing scientists in favor of

international control of atomic energy:

When General Groves said that we could keep the secret for 15 years, and Congressmen told scientists to design a

defense, we held a big meeting and started to draft a [protest] statement for the public.

Strangely, I don’t remember many discussions of the implications of nuclear weapons at Los Alamos before the end of

the war.... Scientists at Oak Ridge and Chicago were organizing and we began to hear from them.

The first large meeting was attended by about sixty people on August 20th [1945]. All agreed that we should form an

organization and the question of whether it should consider scientists’ welfare as well as the social implications of

nuclear energy, was discussed. Recommendations for the future of this project and of atomic power are being made.

Before the next meeting had been held, it was clear to everyone that the international control of atomic energy was the

vital issue and should be the only issue with which the organization was concerned.

The meeting on August 30th was attended by about five hundred individuals. They overwhelmingly approved a motion:

We hereby form an organization of scientists, called temporarily, the Association of Los Alamos

Scientists (ALAS). The object of this organization is to promote the attainment and use of

scientific and technological advances in the best interests of humanity. We recognize that scientists,

by virtue of their special knowledge, have, in certain spheres, special social responsibilities beyond

their obligations as individual citizens. Except for Edward Teller, we all agreed that the message

was that (1) there is no secret (scientists anywhere could figure out how to make atomic weapons

now that we had demonstrated that they are possible). In addition, (2) there is no defense that can

prevent great devastation by atomic weapons, and (3) we must have “world control.”

FAS Goals. Willy was elected the first chairman of the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) in January 1946. Five

questions immediately became the center of FAS attention: What would the atomic bomb do in the event of another

war? What defense would be possible? How long would it take for any other country to produce an atomic bomb?

What would be the effect of an atomic arms race on science and technology? Assuming that international control of

the bomb is agreed upon, is such control technically feasible?

Dave Inglis. The nominal leader of our Argonne lunchtime discussion group had been recruited for the Manhattan

Project at Los Alamos, to help build the first atomic bomb. After the war, Dave joined Argonne as a theorist in the

Physics Division. He became an advocate of nuclear disarmament because of the growing concern about the ongoing

spread of atomic weapons around the world. In the late 1950s, he became chairperson of FAS, and pleaded in public

and on Capitol Hill for a controlled worldwide ban of nuclear weapons.

The Chicago FAS chapter migrated to suburban Argonne as its members commuted when nuclear-reactor activities

originally at the University of Chicago started to expand and flourish at the new laboratory site. One of the first

prominent issues that the Argonne scientists discussed and vocalized was the proposed siting of anti-ballistic missile

installations near cities, like in the Chicago suburbs where some of the members lived.

Because the Argonne group consisted of physicists who had worked in the Manhattan Project, as well others who

shared concern about nuclear weapons being exploded over or near cities, members were able to present and explain

those messages to the public. The Argonne group was heavily involved in defeat of that U.S. government ABM siting

plan.

Freeman Dyson

was chairman of FAS from 1962-63. Fifty-year-old memories are hopelessly unreliable and historically worthless.

Fortunately, my mother preserved the letters that I wrote to her describing events as they happened. The letters are

reliable and give glimpses of history undistorted by hindsight. Instead of trying to recall fading memories, I decided to

quote directly from the letters. Here are two extracts. The first describes an FAS Council meeting in 1961 before I

became chairman. The second describes conversations in 1962 after I became chairman.

[Letter from Princeton, February 12, 1961]. The exciting day was Saturday February 4 when we had our big blizzard.

I had two meetings in New York that day. In the morning I was chairman of a session of the American Physical Society.

And in the afternoon we had a Council meeting of FAS, the political organization which tries to push the government into

doing reasonable things where nuclear weapons are concerned... I came full of curiosity and determined to make my voice

heard.

The meeting started predictably with a discussion of the Test Ban. Many of them spoke suggesting ways and means of getting

the public more enthusiastic about the Test Ban... At this point I decided to speak up. I said they could do whatever they

liked about the Test Ban but that I considered they were wasting a completely disproportionate amount of effort on it. I said

that to me the general problems of disarmament and the use of the existing weapons seemed hundreds of times more

important than any...test-ban. So they did then move on to talk about disarmament. They talked a long time and in the

end agreed to pass a long resolution pointing out the desirability of general disarmament... At this point I again made a

speech saying that I was quite unsatisfied with vague generalities, and that I considered FAS ought to be discussing some

real proposal to change drastically the existing international dangers. They replied, “Well, what do you have in mind for

I

Freeman Dyson, APS Meeting (1963).

us to do?” And I said, rather on the spur of the moment, not having anything prepared, “Let us see first of all whether this

council can agree or disagree with the following statement: We urge the government to decide and publicly declare as its

permanent policy that the USA shall not use nuclear weapons of any kind under any circumstances except in response to

the use of nuclear weapons by others. We urge that the military plans and deployments of the USA and its allies be brought

as rapidly as possible into a condition consistent with the over-all policy of not using nuclear weapons first.”

I was rather taken aback by the response to this. It was overwhelming. I had myself been feeling for some time that our

greatest danger at present comes not from having nuclear weapons but from being committed to using them in stupid and

disastrous ways. To most of the council this seemed to be quite a new idea. Not one of them spoke seriously against my

proposal. In the end it was voted on and carried unanimously... It remains to be seen what impression this action of FAS

will make upon the public. It could conceivably be important. Of course FAS is not as influential as it would wish to be.

But we do have good connections with people in high places.

[Excerpt from public announcement of FAS council resolution]

“We are aware that weighty arguments can and will be brought against our position. The present policy of deploying troops

and ships armed with tactical nuclear weapons, without any publicly announced doctrine to govern the use of these weapons,

has much to be said for it. Above all, the present policy has worked. It has preserved some kind of peace, and it has

successfully defended Western Europe and Formosa, for the last ten years. We are proposing to abandon what has in the

past been our chief shield against aggression in these areas. We are proposing to destroy the beneficent power which nuclear

weapons have had to prevent non-nuclear wars from starting. Opponents of our resolution can rightly say that we advocate

moving from a situation of proved short-term stability into a new region of precarious equilibrium and unknown risk. Our

answer to these arguments cannot be brief or simple. Basically, we believe that our nuclear shield in Europe will become

ineffective, that our nuclear deterrence of non-nuclear war will become illusory, as the next few years go by. In these

circumstances the most dangerous policy will be to continue to behave as if the shield and the deterrent were still adequate.

Purely from the military point of view, we shall be in a far stronger position in five years’ time if we now publicly admit our

need for a non-nuclear fighting power. If we officially abandon the crumbling shield of nuclear defense in Europe, there is

a reasonable chance that we shall have the courage and the will to create an effective non-nuclear shield in its place. This is

the meaning of the second sentence in the FAS resolution.”

I struggled back to Princeton through massive snow-drifts and arrived home at 3 a.m. For several days after the council

meeting, the New York newspapers were filled with stories and pictures of the record-breaking blizzard. Not a word

about FAS or about No First Use. We never succeeded in igniting a serious national debate about No First Use. Fifty

years later, I still see a commitment to a No First Use policy as a crucial first step toward a saner world.

[Letter from Princeton, April 26, 1962]. It has been a remarkable experience to be chairman of FAS. We are such a

small group of people (2000 members altogether) and we are mostly concerned with FAS only in our spare moments. So

it is astonishing to discover how seriously the people high in the government take our opinions. My chairmanship seems to

be a key to open all doors. In three days I have been in turn to talk with the second-in-command of the Space Agency, the

second-in-command of the Disarmament Agency, and Mr. Reuther the boss of the United Automobile Workers. All three

interviews were arranged by our man in Washington, Mr. Daniel Singer, who is the organizer of our activities. Chairmen

come and go but Mr. Singer remains. The reason why we have such an influence is mainly that we have used our influence

wisely in the past. For example, last year FAS put effective pressure on Congress by convincing a number of Congressmen

to establish the Disarmament Agency. Naturally the people who are now running the Disarmament Agency are grateful

to us.

I saw the Space Agency people mainly to appeal to them to put more money and effort into University research and student

fellowships... With the Disarmament Agency man (Frank Long) I talked mainly to arrange to work in his organization

during the summer in the most effective way... The most impressive by far of these gentlemen is Walter Reuther... He is a

phenomenally successful union leader with 1250000 men in his union, and at the same time an intellectual and a social

philosopher with all kinds of ideas for the reform of society.... He had a very big part in getting Kennedy elected president

(the UAW put all its muscle behind Kennedy’s campaign) and he now is able to talk to Kennedy with great freedom. He

also spent two years in his youth building a car factory in Russia. The Russians bought the tools from the Ford Company

and Reuther went over to teach the Russians how to operate them. He has strong views about Russia and gave Khrushchev

a bad time when Khrushchev was invited to supper with the union leaders in 1960.

Reuther is now deeply concerned about disarmament, understands that disarmament is essential, and is trying to get the

government to make plans ready so that disarmament can be done without throwing half his men out of work. Reuther is

convinced that this can be done if only the government is not afraid to face up to the size of the problem. We agreed on certain

measures of collaboration so that his union can act as a channel for some of our information. Altogether, very encouraging.

After my term as FAS chairman ended in 1963, I spent another summer at the Disarmament Agency and took part in

two historic events, testifying for FAS at the Senate hearings in favor of ratification of the Test-Ban Treaty, and

marching with Martin Luther King to the Lincoln Memorial to hear him tell us of his dream for the future. I left the

office of chairman in the capable hands of my friend Robert Wilson, with feelings of pride for my modest contribution

to its message. I was lucky to be chairman at one of the high points of American history, with no premonition of the

disasters soon to come in Dallas, Memphis, and Vietnam.

Daniel Singer

am sharing some memories of the period 1960-1970 when I served as FAS General Counsel. I start by echoing

Freeman Dyson’s caution that 50-year old memories are unreliable. For anyone interested in FAS history, visit

http://fas.org/publications/public-interest-reports/ for a complete record of FAS Newsletters, beginning with the

first publication on March 1, 1946. It’s a great trip down memory lane.

I first learned about FAS in late 1958 when my wife, Dr. Maxine Singer, a molecular biologist employed by NIH,

shared with colleagues her concerns about a range of science-related public issues. I was then a young lawyer in the

small DC office of a larger NY-based general practice firm; the DC office had substantial experience representing,

among many other clients, American Indian tribes in matters before Federal agencies and on Capitol Hill.

At that time, FAS volunteers published a newsletter 8-10 times a year to keep its members (approximately 2000)

informed about matters of concern to scientists – e.g., radiation hazards, nuclear weapons, passport denials,

government secrecy, loyalty oaths, and civil liberties for scientists – in anticipation that scientists would take direct

policy to influence governmental action. For several years, the FAS Newsletter was assembled on our dining room

table and, willy-nilly, I became part of the process.

Recall, if you can, that in December 1953, the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, chaired by Admiral Lewis Strauss,

withdrew the security clearance of J. Robert Oppenheimer. In late 1945, the clearance was formally revoked after a

hearing. Oppenheimer was a distinguished physicist who was then the Director of the Institute for Advanced Study

and chair of the AEC’s General Advisory Committee. During World War II, he was the Scientific Director of the

I

Manhattan Project and was in every way a major force behind America’s successful wartime effort to build the atom

bomb.

In November 1958, President Eisenhower nominated Strauss, to the dismay and outrage of FAS members and many

others, to be the interim Secretary of Commerce. When Senate confirmation hearings were held the following spring,

several FAS leaders testified against confirming Strauss. In June of 1959, by a vote of 46-49, the full Senate declined to

confirm Strauss. [For a detailed history, see “Green, The Oppenheimer Case: A Study in the Abuse of Law,” 33

Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, September 1977.]

That political triumph persuaded the FAS leadership that FAS needed enhanced representation in DC. In 1960, FAS

retained my law firm and I became the FAS General Counsel. One of my tasks was to arrange appointments with

Congressional staff and Executive Branch officials for FAS leaders visiting in Washington. The small, separate FAS

office was closed and all membership and administrative functions were thereupon transferred to my law office.

By 1960, the test ban treaty and creation of an Arms Control and Disarmament Agency had been added to the FAS

agenda and the Kennedy-Nixon presidential campaign was underway. In addition to providing administrative support

for all FAS activities relating to membership, dues collection, Council meetings, officer elections, chapter support, and

relations with other like-minded organizations (e.g., SANE), we organized a series of breakfast briefings by FAS

members to inform Members of Congress and Congressional staffers about, and stress the need for, an official focus

for arms control activity – an idea that found support among both Democrats and Republicans. Shortly before the

1960 election, such an agency was created by Executive Order within the State Department and was continued after

Kennedy’s inauguration.

Members of the Atomic Energy Commission, April 26, 1954. Extracted from “U.S. Ponders a Scientist’s Past,” Life magazine. Source: SCARC Holdings, Oregon State University Libraries.

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Among Kennedy’s first White House appointments was MIT professor, Jerome Wiesner, as his Science Advisor.

Wiesner was instrumental in responding positively to quiet efforts by FAS and others to organize an official apology

to Oppenheimer for the AEC’s humiliating 1953 withdrawal of Oppenheimer’s access to any classified information.

Those efforts proved successful when Kennedy, in mid-1963 (prior to his assassination), announced that

Oppenheimer would receive the Fermi Award. The Award was presented by President Johnson in December 1963 in

a small White House ceremony. The December 1963 FAS Newsletter reported:

Fermi Award to Oppenheimer

Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer received the Enrico Fermi award, the AEC’s highest honor, from President Johnson at a

White House ceremony on December 2. In presenting the $50,000 award, the President praised Dr. Oppenheimer as

a “leader” who by his example had set “high standards of achievement” for the nation. The presentation came just ten

years from the date of President Eisenhower’s order suspending Dr. Oppenheimer’s security clearance. Those present at

the ceremony included members of the AEC, Congressmen, past winners of the Fermi award, and a representative of

FAS.

During the 1960s, FAS maintained its interest in keeping lines of communication open between U.S. and Soviet

scientists; FAS members were deeply engaged in the Pugwash conferences and in assuring that U.S. scientists could

communicate readily about science and science-related matters with colleagues abroad. The list of FAS worries, both

at home and internationally, included long-range missiles and anti-ballistic missile defense, tactical nuclear weapons,

CBW, and accidental wars. And on the horizon were issues related to newly-appreciated powers of scientists in

biological sciences. At the December 1968 annual meeting of the AAAS in Dallas, FAS put together a day-long

symposium entitled “Genetic Technology – Some Public Considerations.”

By the mid-1960s, FAS was sufficiently stable (both in terms of membership and finances) so that in November 1969,

FAS began a search for a full-time Executive Director who would revitalize the organization – increasing the

membership and broadening its agenda. On July 1, 1970, Jeremy J. Stone assumed that position, consolidated

operations in a new office on Capitol Hill, and helped keep FAS focused on its original mission – to assess and advise

concerning “the impact of science on national and world affairs.”

Jeremy J. Stone

hen, in 1970, I descended from the FAS Executive Committee to become the chief executive officer, FAS

had 1,000 members and an annual budget of $7,000 per year. The organization was very near death. During

my 30 year tenure, FAS became a famous, creative, and productive organization.

In arms control, our ideas were presented at three Washington-Moscow Summits: Carter and Brezhnev; Reagan and

Gorbachev; and Clinton and Premier Stepashin (as described later below).

To further improve U.S.-Soviet relations, we catalyzed 26 Congressional delegations to visit Moscow and played a key

role in catalyzing CIA-KGB cooperation in matters of common concern, such as North Korea and non-proliferation.

In nuclear policy, we developed the legal case that presidential first use of nuclear weapons without Congressional

authorization was unlawful. We found a way to lobby the World Court in its case on the legality of the use of nuclear

weapons, which helped to produce a kind of “Delphic tie.”

Early on, we released a critique of the Congressional testimony of Dr. John Foster, Director of Defense, Research and

Engineering in the Pentagon, who had argued that there was an “R&D gap” that favored the Soviet Union. Signed by

four high FAS officials with Defense Department experience, our rejoinder received much press, as well as a

Herblock Cartoon, and prompted an investigation by the R&D Subcommittee of Senate Armed Services.

The Nixon Administration, through its office of dirty tricks, launched a counterattack led by Charles Colson. He

persuaded columnist Joseph Alsop to smear me in the 600 newspapers of the LA Times syndicate. The smear took

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the form of outing me as the son of left-wing journalist I.F. Stone and said I was attacking Johnny Foster “because

the Russians wanted to get him out of the way.”

I survived the attack only because 75 percent of scientists are liberals, and my members and officials really did not

care what Alsop said. The whole episode resembled the real life movie Fair Game in which Vice President Cheney’s

office outed Joseph Wilson’s wife, Valerie Plame, as a CIA agent, driving them both out of town in retaliation for

Wilson’s criticism of President George W. Bush. But it did put me on Nixon’s “enemy list” as the youngest of about

20 famous and noteworthy academics.

In human rights, we were successful in pressuring U.S. scientific societies, including the National Academy of

Sciences, to create committees on human rights of colleagues abroad. In particular, we defended the human rights of

scientists in the Soviet Union, including those of Nobel Prize winner for peace, Andrei Sakharov, through five of his

hunger strikes.

In domestic legal issues, we stopped an illegal CIA mail-opening operation and persuaded a judge of a way to prevent

prior restraint of the press in a case involving hydrogen bomb secrets.

In high level domestic politics, we catalyzed the resolution of a conflict between Henry Kissinger and whether he had

to testify before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. We also produced a famous letter from John Dean to me

that forced President Nixon to let John Dean testify. A Washington Post editorial called our effort a “footnote in

history.”

In a press release, we were the first to announce Ronald Reagan’s interest in astrology.

For an environmental issue, at the request of Carl Sagan, we investigated and defused urgent predictions of two

famous scientists that an East Coast earthquake was impending. This work is described in my memoir Every Man

Should Try: Adventures of a Public Interest Activist (PublicAffairs, 1999). In his introduction of the Russian edition of this

book, the famed Russian Academician Evgeny P. Velikhov wrote:

Jeremy’s effectiveness has really been impressive. He led only a very small organization [i.e., Federation of American

Scientists], whose professional staff grew from one to only a half-dozen over thirty years. Yet he is able to show, in these

Chapters about his own efforts, that he could compete—in influencing the political life of his own country and of the

whole world—with the most powerful governmental entities and with non-governmental organizations whose budgets

were many times higher than his own.

The former head of the State Department Policy Planning Committee, Morton Halperin, commented, “Jeremy's

influence has been as great as that of all but the most senior figures in government.”

During this period, FAS came to have a budget of about $1.4 million in today’s dollars (still small compared to many

other organizations), but it had the sponsorship of about 100 famous officials, including 57 Nobel Prize winners.

At the beginning, critics whispered that FAS was just “Jeremy and a telephone” because I operated out of a one-room

office and made a business of rounding up famous FAS sponsors and/or the FAS executive committee to sign off on

my petitions and testimony. In fact, this was

my modus operandi throughout the next 30

years.

During this period, I wrote most of the 300

monthly newsletters and addressed diverse

subjects of science and society. But I

secured experts to endorse my editorials on

concrete actions and left my name off the

newsletter. I testified before Congress

twenty-five times, mostly before the Senate

Foreign Relations Committee, but also the

Senate and House Armed Services

Committee and some others. Membership

peaked at only about 5,000 through

petitions sent through direct mail but it didn’t seem to matter.

In the 1980s, we recruited a small but capable staff, including John Pike on technical issues of global security, Steve

Aftergood on Secrecy, David Albright on non-proliferation, and Lora Lumpe on arms sales. Their substantial

achievements await their own books and are not included here. We purchased a few adjacent Capitol Hill townhouses

to provide them with offices and to anchor the organization’s finances.

In the sixties, during five annual summer trips to the Soviet Union before joining FAS, my wife, B.J., and I had

pioneered the effort of lobbying Moscow to start official talks with the United States on an ABM Treaty – a treaty

idea I developed at the Hudson Institute in 1963. This became the most important treaty of the Cold War and we

defended it for three decades. When Ronald Reagan proposed Star Wars, John Pike became the most visible

opponent of Reagan’s plan (which threatened the continuance of the treaty).

FAS Staff Photo, April 1987.

Scientific Exchange with China and Peaceful Unification with Taiwan. In 1972, a major accomplishment was taking the first

scientific delegation to China, a month after Nixon, and catalyzing the return of Chinese scientists to America in a

quiet important negotiation in Beijing. In 1996, we invented a new approach to unifying Taiwan with the Mainland

that was applauded in both Beijing and Taipei.

Vienna Summit Proposal. In June, 1979, President Carter secretly presented our SALT III proposal, entitled Shrink

SALT II, to President Leonid Brezhnev at the Vienna Summit.

Geneva Summit Proposal. In 1985, our bear-hug strategy for keeping disarmament going in the face of Russian fears of

the Reagan Star Wars program was proposed by Reagan at the Geneva Summit. We had earlier sold the strategy to the

Russian leadership in a Moscow briefing. The idea was that both sides would engage in major reductions of

intercontinental ballistic missiles subject to neither violating the ABM Treaty. Strobe Talbott, in The Master of the Game:

Paul Nitze and the Nuclear Peace, reports on how we advanced this proposal in both Moscow and Washington.

Washington Summit Proposal. In 1999, we persuaded Russian Prime Minister Sergei Stepashin, during a meeting in

Moscow, to offer the U.S. the right to build a small ABM in return for parity at 1,000 strategic missiles. This proposal

was designed to eliminate first strike threats. Our slogan was: “Truncate the Sword and the Shield Becomes

Harmless.” Stepashin secured his Government’s approval and offered this to President Clinton in a private meeting in

the Oval office. Clinton turned it down, saying “Vice President Gore is running for President and he doesn’t want any

trouble.” The Administration suppressed the fact that this dramatic proposal had been offered.

Resolving the Cambodian Civil War. To prevent the return of the genocidal Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, we revealed, in a

New York Times op-ed, “Secret U.S. War in Cambodia,” that the CIA was running a secret war against the Hun Sen

Government (which included the Khmer Rouge forces). By persuading Senator Alan Cranston to open hearings on

Cambodia, we defeated an effort by Congressman Stephen Solarz to arm the Cambodian insurgents, which would

have drawn us militarily into another Indochinese war.

After securing international agreement from Russia, Australia, and China, we induced the four Cambodian factions to

work together to end the civil war in a novel way. We then invited Premier Hun Sen of Cambodia to Washington, as a

guest of FAS, where he managed to secure $250,000,000 from Congress to fund the Cambodian election that

eventually settled the war.

Working to Save Peru from Sendero Luminoso. Two years were spent working to secure the arrest of Sendero Luminoso’s

Abimael Guzman who was trying to destroy Peru in order to save it. We campaigned to persuade U.S. intelligence to

help Peruvian intelligence, despite some strange CIA apprehensions that it would violate the rule against assassination.

On a trip to Lima, we learned that Guzman could not leave the country and was traveling in a green limousine with

frosted windows. But it was British intelligence, using his brand of cigarettes, who finally tracked him down. With his

arrest, the Sendero Luminoso movement collapsed.

Seeking to Deter the Sale of North Korea’s Fissionable Material. After visiting North Korea in 1991, we helped to spread the

accurate idea, through Moscow and Beijing intermediaries, to Pyongyang that the West could identify their uranium

and plutonium if North Korea were to sell it.

Failing to Avoid the Balkan War Between Serbia and Kosovo. We tried to prevent the subsequent NATO war in the Balkans

by proposing, years before, a detailed treaty and rationalization of how the Kosovo Albanians could rent Kosovo

from the Serbs. Although we tried to persuade both sides to agree to the treaty, it ultimately failed.

Scientific and Political Exchange with Iran. During the regime of President Khatami, we catalyzed an exchange agreement

between the National Academy of Science (NAS) and the Iranian Academy of Sciences on peaceful issues of science.

We did this by taking the first scientific delegation to Iran in two decades and bringing back an Iranian delegation

which we shared, for a day, with NAS where agreement was reached.

The End of the Cold War. In February 1989, I urged support for President Gorbachev in a New York Times op-ed, “Let's

Do All We Can Do for Gorbachev.” This op-ed was quoted at length in the historic New York Times editorial of April

2, 1989, entitled, “The Cold War is Over.”

In my 65th year, I left FAS and started Catalytic Diplomacy, a tiny 501c3 organization designed to continue my work

without administrative responsibilities. 2000-2006 became the most exciting period of my life and it revealed, happily,

that I could be effective, at least at that age and stage, without a protective umbrella of famous scientists. The

achievements of Catalytic Diplomacy are described in a second life memoir, Catalytic Diplomacy: Russia, China, North Korea

and Iran. (A 100-page summary of all my activities during the half-century period 1962-2014, can be accessed at

http://catalytic-diplomacy.org/summary.php.)

On my resignation, John Pike left immediately to start GlobalSecurity.org. Earlier, David Albright had left to start the

Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS). Of my staff projects, only Steve Aftergood's excellent Project on

Government Secrecy remains at FAS. FAS continues with my former staffer, Dr. Charles Ferguson, an energetic and

dedicated physicist, as president.

Though FAS is a small organization, its record shows that it can magnify the voice of science in Washington and it

can move quickly and effectively. I was privileged: to have revived it; to have had it as a vehicle for my ideas; and to

have directed its activities for that crucial 30- year period that saw the triumph of some nuclear arms control and the

termination of the Cold War.

Cover of Atomic War! comic book, Volume 1 Number 2. Canton, Ohion: Junior Books. December 1952.

Source: SCARC Holdings, Oregon State University Libraries.

Frank von Hippel

hen, at Jeremy Stone’s instigation, I was elected chair of the Federation of American Scientists in 1979, I

had no idea what an adventure that I was about to embark upon. This adventure was triggered by President

Reagan taking office in 1981 and resulted in FAS making significant contributions to ending the U.S.-Soviet nuclear

arms race and the Cold War.

This was not the President Reagan we remember now as the partner of Mikhail Gorbachev in ending the Cold War.

This was a president who had been convinced by the Committee on the Present Danger1 that the United States was

falling behind in the nuclear arms race and was in mortal danger of a Soviet first nuclear strike. Reagan appointed 33

members of the Committee to high-level positions in his administration, including those of National Security Advisor,

Secretary of State, Director of the CIA, and numerous senior positions in the Department of Defense. Under this

leadership, the Reagan Administration proposed a U.S. nuclear buildup that would deploy almost 10,000 new ballistic

missile and cruise missile nuclear warheads, accurate enough to attack Soviet ballistic missiles in their hardened silos.

1 For a history of the Committee on the Present Danger see, for example, http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Committee_on_the_Present_Danger

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Thus, it was clear that the Reagan Administration was responding to fears of a first strike by acquiring enhanced

capabilities for a first strike against the Soviet Union.2

This move to resume the nuclear arms race was disturbing after the period of détente with the Soviet Union under

Presidents Nixon and Ford, but the public image of the Soviet Union as a status quo power had already been shaken

by the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979.

Public alarm escalated further when it became apparent that some of the new Reagan Administration officials shared a

belief that they had been attributing to the Soviet Union: that it

would be possible to fight and survive a nuclear war. T.K. Jones,

the Reagan Administration’s Deputy Under Secretary of Defense

for strategic and theater nuclear forces, famously said, “If there are enough shovels to go around, everybody’s going to

make it.”

This cavalier attitude toward nuclear war galvanized a major grassroots movement that called for a “freeze” of the

nuclear arms race. An estimated one million people came out to support this idea at a single demonstration in Central

Park, New York in June 1982. That November, citizens in nine states, the District of Columbia, and 37 cities and

counties voted for a Freeze in referenda. In Europe, a similar mass movement rose up against the deployment of a

new generation of Soviet and U.S. nuclear missiles in Eastern and Western Europe.

FAS, under Stone’s leadership, rose to the occasion and worked with Senator Edward Kennedy to try to get

establishment support for the Freeze movement – including by holding its own hearings on the idea. I looked for an

analytic contribution that I could make and decided to work with my colleague, Hal Feiveson, on the verification of a

halt to the production of highly enriched uranium and separated plutonium for weapons.3 We have been analyzing

and advising on stopping production of fissile materials ever since.4

In March 1983, President Reagan shifted from his advocacy of a nuclear buildup to a call for the nation’s scientists to

join in a Strategic Defense Initiative (quickly dubbed by critics as “Star Wars”) that would render nuclear missiles

“impotent and obsolete” by creating a space-based missile defense system. A few months later, FAS received a letter

from a group of Soviet Academicians that asked whether FAS had changed its views on the desirability and feasibility

of ballistic missile defense. Stone wrote back that, no, we had not.

2 Harold Feiveson and Frank von Hippel, “The Freeze and The Counterforce Race,” Physics Today, January 1983, pp. 36, 38, 40, 42, 44, 46-49, reprinted in Frank von Hippel, Citizen Scientist (American Institute of Physics, Masters of Modern Physics Series, 1991; Simon and Schuster paperback, 1991; now Springer). 3 Harold Feiveson and Frank von Hippel, “Cutting Off the Production of Fissile Material for Nuclear Weapons,” Federation of American Scientists Public Interest Report, June 1982, pp. 10, 11. 4 Harold Feiveson, Alexander Glaser, Zia Mian and Frank von Hippel, Unmaking the Bomb: A Fissile Material Approach to Nuclear Disarmament and Nonproliferation (MIT Press, 2014).

If there are enough shovels to go around, everybody’s going to make it.

The Soviet response was an invitation to Moscow. Four of us accepted the invitation to visit over Thanksgiving

weekend of that year: Jeremy, John Holdren (then Vice Chair of FAS, now President Obama’s Science Advisor), John

Pike, an FAS staffer who had become a leading critic of ballistic missile defense, and me.

In Moscow, we were greeted by the leadership of the Soviet Committee for Peace and Against the Nuclear Threat,

chaired by Evgeny Velikhov, the head of the Soviet Union’s fusion program and Vice Chair of the Soviet Academy of

Sciences. The Committee’s Deputy Chairs were Roald Sagdeev, the head of the Academy’s Space Research Institute;

Sergei Kapitza, a physicist who had become famous in the Soviet Union as the host of a TV science program; and

Andrei Kokoshin, the Deputy Director of the Academy’s Institute on the U.S. and Canada. We brainstormed with this

group on how to end the nuclear arms race.5 A year and a half later we learned that Velikhov and Sagdeev were also

brainstorming with Mikhail Gorbachev, who became General Secretary of the Communist Party in March 1985.

Gorbachev’s first initiative to halt the nuclear arms race was to declare a unilateral Soviet moratorium on nuclear

testing in August 1985. The Reagan Administration refused to join in the moratorium and suggested that the Soviets

were still testing at low yields. In October 1985, Velikhov suggested to me that we find some seismologists willing to

monitor the Soviet test site in Kazakhstan. I invited three groups to meet with Velikhov at the Soviet Academy’s

headquarters in May 1986. One of the groups, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) declared itself ready

and, under Tom Cochran and with the help of seismologist

Charles Archambeau, had seismologists from UC San Diego

on the ground in Kazakhstan two months later. The sudden

Soviet openness to in-country monitoring convinced

Congress that the verification problems of an underground

nuclear test ban could be dealt with. This eventually resulted

in the Hatfield-Exon-Mitchell amendment to the Fiscal Year

1993 Energy and Water Appropriations bill that resulted in

the end of U.S. nuclear testing in 1992.

One of Stone’s most ardent campaigns during this period was

to free Andrei Sakharov from his exile in Gorky (now Nizhny

Novgorod) where Sakharov had been banished, out of reach

5 Frank von Hippel, “The Committee of Soviet Scientists Against the Nuclear Threat,” Federation of American Scientists Public Interest

Report, January 1984, pp. 1‑4. See also the more recent retrospective, Frank von Hippel, “Gorbachev’s unofficial arms-control advisers,” Physics Today, September 2013, pp. 41-47.

Frank von Hippel and Andrei Sakharov discuss the possibility of cutting U.S. and Soviet nuclear forces (without changing the basic war fighting approaches of the two) in Sakharov’s apartment, just after his release from seven years of internal exile in Gorky, January 1987.

of foreigners, in 1980, after denouncing the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Now, with Velikhov as a captive audience,

Stone redoubled his efforts – and his determination paid off. In December 1986, Gorbachev allowed Sakharov to

return to his apartment in Moscow.

In Moscow that January, Velikhov organized simultaneous conferences on nuclear disarmament of scientists, religious

leaders, writers, actors, medical doctors, and business people. Stone, Pike, and I participated in the scientists’

conference, as did Sakharov. During a visit with the Sakharovs the evening before, Sakharov and Stone agreed to urge

Gorbachev to ignore Reagan’s Star Wars program, due to it likely collapsing under its own weight, and take advantage

of Reagan’s willingness to negotiate deep cuts in offensive nuclear weapons (what later became the START and

Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaties [INF]). Velikhov asked me to address Gorbachev on behalf of the scientists’

conference. I emphasized deep cuts and the removal of offensive forces along the inter-German border.6 One reason

why I was given such a prominent role may have been the name of our organization, the Federation of American

Scientists, which can conjure up much more than the small albeit important NGO that we know FAS to actually be.

In July 1987, I joined in a letter to Gorbachev with three Western European members of a Pugwash working group

that had for years been promoting the idea of non-offensive defense.

Kokoshin had been promoting similar ideas in Moscow, but he felt the need

for foreign support.7 Kokoshin had urged me to include these ideas in my

speech to Gorbachev. Gorbachev replied to our letter in November 1987,

stating that “You approach this in conceptual and practical terms which

might well provide the basis of a solution to the problem.”8 In December

1988, at the United Nations, Gorbachev announced that 5,000 Soviet tanks would be unilaterally withdrawn from

East Germany, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary. This laid the basis for the 1990 Treaty on Conventional Forces in

Europe under which the Warsaw Pact reduced its forces to approximate numerical parity with NATO with strict

regional limits to prevent massing at the inter-bloc boundary.

In February 1987, the Federation of American Scientists and the Committee of Soviet Scientists entered into an

“Agreement to Carry Out a Joint Scientific Study of the Feasibility of Implementing and Maintaining Disarmament.”

The primary focus of the study was on detecting warheads and verifying their elimination – something that the Bush

Sr. Administration had previously claimed was impossible when asked during the Senate ratification hearings “why

only missiles, but no warheads” were being destroyed under the INF Treaty.

6 “A U.S. Scientist Addresses Gorbachev, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists,” May 1987, pp. 12-13, reprinted in Frank von Hippel, Citizen Scientist, op. cit. 7 Matthew Evangelista, Unarmed Forces: The Transnational Movement to End the Cold War (Cornell University Press, 1999) chapter 14. 8 “Analysts Address Gorbachev” (with a response from Gorbachev) in Federation of American Scientists. Public Interest Report. February 1988, pp. 14-15.

The Federation of American Scientists can conjure up much

more than the small albeit important NGO that we know

FAS to actually be.

The bulk of the analytical work was done by Steve Fetter of the University of Maryland and Robert Mozley of

Stanford on the U.S. side and by Stanislav Rodionov and Oleg Prilutsky from Sagdeev’s institute on the Soviet side.

The result was a pioneering analysis on warhead verification and a spectacular demonstration of the detection of

gamma and neutron radiation from an actual Soviet warhead on a cruiser in July 1989 by a U.S. team organized by

Tom Cochran and a Soviet team from Velikhov’s Kurchatov Institute.9

During this period, another issue arose. In 1988, the Soviet Union lost radio contact with a low-earth-orbit, nuclear-

reactor-powered satellite, Cosmos-1900, which began to spiral down into the earth’s atmosphere. Just before reentry,

its controllers managed to boost the reactor into a higher, long-lived orbit where its radioactive inventory could decay

safely.

A concern at the time was that reactors with much higher power might be launched to power the space-based beam

weapons that had been promoted as a part of the Reagan Administration’s Strategic Defense. Sagdeev suggested a

joint study on space reactor arms control. The resulting report proposed a number of possible limitations on orbiting

reactors, ranging from a ban in low-earth orbit to a renewable total ban for 15 years. Dan Hirsch, Steve Aftergood,

David Hafemeister, and Joel Primack played major roles on the FAS side of the study and Prilutsky and Rodionov on

the Soviet side.10

My engagement with FAS as chairman of either the lobbying arm or the tax exempt arm continued until 2003, with a

two-year break during 1984-86 while John Holdren was chairman and again during 1993-1994 while I was in the

White House.11

FAS, in partnership with Velikhov’s Committee of Soviet Scientists, made vital contributions to ending the U.S.-

Soviet nuclear arms race and the Cold War. The political conditions that made this possible were created by the

grassroots Nuclear Weapons Freeze Movement in the United States and the fortuitous appointment of Mikhail

Gorbachev as General Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party. I regret that we weren’t able to make more

significant cuts in nuclear weapons and take U.S. and Soviet missiles off alert with the end of the Cold War. FAS and

other NGOs committed to nuclear disarmament must be prepared should such a window of political opportunity

open up again.

9 Reversing the Arms Race: How to Achieve and Verify Deep Reductions in the Nuclear Arsenals, Frank von Hippel and Roald Sagdeev, eds (Gordon and Breach Science Publishers, 1990); S.T. Belyaev et al, “The Use of Helicopter-borne Neutron Detectors to Detect Nuclear Warheads in the USSR-US Black Sea Experiment,” Science & Global Security Vol. 1 (1990) pp. 328-333; and Steve Fetter et al, “Measurements of Gamma Rays from a Soviet Cruise Missile,” Science, 18 May 1990, pp. 828-834. 10 Six articles on “Space Reactor Arms Control” in a special section of Science & Global Security, Vol. 1, Nos. 1-2 (1989). 11 Frank von Hippel, “Working in the White House on Nuclear Nonproliferation and Arms Control: A Personal Report,” F.A.S. Public Interest Report 48, #2, March/April 1995, pp. 1, 3-8.

Richard L. Garwin

upporting and expanding on Frank von Hippel’s cogent and exciting narrative of some of the great

accomplishments of the Federation of American Scientists, I detail below two endeavors, at least one of which

may have had far-reaching impact.

The first was the initiative of FAS Director (and later President) Jeremy J. Stone who, in 1971, wrote the president of

the Chinese Academy of Sciences to introduce FAS and to begin some kind of dialogue. The story is well told in

Stone’s memoir:1

Improving US Relations with China

A. Catalyzing Scientific Exchange; …

In the Spring of 1971, I wrote Chinese Academy of Sciences president Guo Moruo about sending a delegation to

China. My wife, B. J., had already been learning Chinese. Guo Moruo said our request was being considered

“positively.” Two months later, President Nixon went to China—a momentous breakthrough. We wrote again and,

within eight days, received a visa. It turned out that “positively” did not mean affirmatively! But when Premier Zhou

Enlai found out we had been inadvertently misled, he ordered our entry.

1 http://catalytic-diplomacy.org/miscPDFs/Defending-Civilization-Using-Catalytic-Ideas-Jeremy-Stone.pdf.

S

Richard L. Garwin, 1987.

Thus, weeks after the Nixon visit to China, Jeremy and his wife BJ were in China with Jerome A. Cohen, who has

persisted for the last four decades in a dedicated campaign for legal rights in China. As Chairman of FAS, Marvin S.

(Murph) Goldberger and his wife Mildred were there, too. Murph was a leading theoretical particle physicist in

the1950s, a member of the President’s Science Advisory Committee and of its Strategic Military Panel; in 1971 he was

professor of Physics at Princeton and was later to head Caltech and then the Princeton Institute for Advanced Study.

At the time, I was a member of the (National Academy of Sciences’) Committee on Scholarly Communications with

the People’s Republic of China. We soon learned of

the world travels of a delegation of Chinese scientists

who were investigating environmental affairs and

remediation in other countries, and both NAS and

FAS worked vigorously and enthusiastically to bring

the delegation to the United States. After reasonably

favorable responses were received, there was a

vigorous competition between the two organizations

as to which one would be the formal host of the visit.

As an official of both, I helped to settle this

competition by being more involved than I normally

would have been in the visit, which included meeting

the delegation in Washington and encouraging IBM

to host its week in New York, with visits to academic institutions, as well as industrial research centers.

Jeremy writes:

Five months after our visit, the first Chinese delegation arrived— after two decades of isolation from America. It

announced at each stop that it was visiting at the invitation of NAS and FAS. We gave the farewell banquet in San

Francisco. The Chinese called us the “pioneers.” So this was successful.

Those involved in hosting the Chinese Scientists delegation were invited by the PRC to make a return visit to China,

and “leading members” of the delegation could bring their spouse. My colleagues decided that a leading member was

the president of some organization, which I was not, so I wrote to those issuing the invitation that I would be

delighted to visit China at a later time when I could bring my wife. Early in 1974, the invitation came from the China

Electronics Society and Chinese People’s Association for Peace and Disarmament, co-sponsors of our one month

visit, which involved my speaking many times on computers and on experiments to detect gravitational radiations, and

once on nuclear weapons and arms control.

FAS and Princeton University researchers meet with Chinese delegation at Princeton, 1999: From left to right: Jeremy J. Stone, Charles D. Ferguson, Frank von Hippel, Li Bin, Hu

Side, Hal Feiveson, Hui Zhang, Hu Side's interpreter, and Oleg Bukharin.

The March/April 1994 PIR2 leads with the story, “Arms Control in South Asia-- Four Civilizations Gently Collide at Arms

Control Conference.” The meeting was first proposed in mid-1993 at the initiative of Frank von Hippel, Chairman of the

FAS Fund, the policy research and education arm of FAS. Frank had been told by Indian colleagues that they were

interested in meeting with the Chinese; they were explicitly not interested in getting together with the Pakistanis, but

Frank felt that it was essential to bring together representatives from China, India, and also Pakistan.

When Frank entered the Clinton Administration as Assistant Director for National Security Affairs in OSTP, FAS

President Jeremy J. Stone assumed the responsibility of planning the conference with the essential involvement of

Shen Dingli, Professor at Fudan University, who had trained at Princeton under von Hippel. So the conference went

forward with five participants each from the United States, China, India, and Pakistan.

By the time the conference took place, I was FAS Vice Chairman and Chairman of the FAS Fund; the delegation

consisted of Jeremy J. Stone and Jerome Holton representing FAS, myself, Frank von Hippel, and Stephen P. Cohen

– an expert on both India and Pakistan and who was also a former member of the State Department Policy Planning

staff.

The cited PIR has a full description of the conference, which was arduous, substantive, record breaking, and of

uncertain impact. Frank von Hippel calls it “a great disappointment,” but Shen Dingli points out that “after the

Shanghai round of the four-nation talk, three more rounds were held in Goa (1995), Rawalpindi (1996), and Virginia

(1998). Though these dialogues did not succeeded in preventing India and Pakistan from testing nuclear weapons in

1998, they started a culture of addressing the control of nuclear weapons and their spread among concerned Chinese,

Indian, Pakistani, and American people. They have also helped develop Chinese communities of nuclear arms control

and nonproliferation to engage with their Indian and Pakistani counterparts.” Other initiatives were surely involved,

such as that of the Committee on International Security and Arms Control (CISAC) of the National Academy of

Sciences, which has met regularly with a counterpart group of Chinese Scientists since 1988.

Neither the 1971-72 FAS initiative nor the 1994 Shanghai conference was simple, but they both illustrated what an

inspired, independent organization with long involvement in the field can do with the aid of networking.

Perhaps such approaches are more difficult now, with increasing bureaucracy on all sides and with increasing efforts

to limit communication and free expression, but that is good reason to increase the effort to make progress on the

control and elimination of the most destructive weapons in the world, and the protection of civilization against

conflict.

2 http://fas.org/faspir/pir0494.html.

B. Cameron Reed

n late 1945, a group of scientists who had been involved with the Manhattan Project felt it was their civic duty to

help inform the public and political leaders of both the potential benefits and dangers of nuclear energy. To

facilitate this important work, they established the Federation of Atomic Scientists, which soon became the Federation

of American Scientists. Over the years, FAS has evolved into a model non-governmental organization that plays a

leading role in providing scientifically-sound, non-partisan analyses of nuclear and broader security issues. I have long

admired FAS and was therefore deeply honored when President Charles D. Ferguson asked if I would be interested in

preparing a brief essay for a special edition of the PIR that

would commemorate the organization’s 70th anniversary.

A period of mild apprehension then followed: What could I say on

the relationship between science and society that had not been said a

thousand times before? As it happened, Charles’ request arrived just

after the early-August anniversary of the bombings of Hiroshima

and Nagasaki at the end of World War II. The 2015 anniversary was particularly notable because 70 years is the

approximate average human lifespan and media and online coverage of the event seemed richer than usual. My

reflections on this coverage became the inspiration for this essay.

I was distressed to find that most of the reporting I saw seemed to concentrate on two main themes. First were the

renewed calls for the Japanese government to apologize for atrocities committed by the forces of their country during

the war. The response was a lengthy statement from the Prime Minister of Japan that described the historical

circumstances of the war, but never included a real acknowledgement of responsibility. A back-and-forth game of

I

FAS has evolved into a model non-governmental organization that plays a leading role in providing scientifically-sound, non-partisan analyses of nuclear and broader security issues.

hollow rhetoric over an apology is pointless; such a gesture would now be (at best) only symbolic, as any surviving

victims of Japanese aggression or their descendants could not expect any sort of meaningful compensation.

Second was the notion, often implicit but sometimes explicit, that America was guilty of a monstrous moral

transgression by having used the bombs. However, the coverage tended to be thin on the complicated realities of the

historical context. By August 1945, the Japanese were essentially defeated and sending out peace feelers, but the

operational fact was that they were continuing to fight on in the hope of securing more favorable surrender terms as

Americans grew weary of the war. The atomic bombings may not have ended the war, but they surely helped to end it,

thereby sparing the lives of thousands of Japanese citizens who would otherwise have been lost had island-conquering

campaigns and conventional and firebombing raids on that country’s cities continued – let alone what might have

happened had a ground invasion occurred. President Truman and his advisors faced horrific decisions and had to

keep in mind the eventual postwar strategic situation. Let us not also forget that Truman’s fundamental humanity

manifested itself when he ordered a halt to any more atomic bombings after the destruction of Nagasaki. There is

likely not one of us who did not live through those times who can ever internalize the weight of such decisions, the

horror of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the gut-wrenching anxiety of a Marine aboard a troopship awaiting his invasion

orders, the overwhelming worry of his family back home, or the subsequent lifelong soul-searching of a Los Alamos

scientist, who by chance found himself spared from active service to play a role in the development of the most

destructive weapons in human history.

It is understandable that brief media stories will concentrate on dramatically different opinions instead of trying to

dissect a complex set of circumstances. But such coverage does viewers and readers a serious disservice in that it

reinforces a perception that the background events have no relevance for

today’s world. After all, the war ended two generations ago, and weren’t

most nuclear weapons decommissioned after the end of the Cold War?

Nothing could be further from the truth. Seventy years on, a myriad of

pressing issues that had their geneses in that time are in desperate need of

informed debate.

At least another seven decades worth of issues lie before us. Even many

well-informed persons are utterly unaware that thousands of nuclear

weapons still exist. What are their rational roles in the military and

deterrence policies of the major nuclear powers in a world of rapidly

evolving and very asymmetric threats? How many such weapons are

realistically needed to sustain such policies? What weapons modernization

programs are justifiable, and which are simply products of entrenched

bureaucracies and turf protection? Do national laboratories have the

resources necessary to preserve historical knowledge and build new

capabilities in areas such as nuclear forensics as existing weapons systems

are retired and dismantled? Can the fissile materials involved be

responsibly secured against theft and proliferation until they can be

blended into reactor fuel? How can weapons-reduction and test-ban

negotiations remain on track and on the radar of the public and political officials in the face of the inevitable

international crises and mutual suspicions between nations that will spring up? Can growing and aspiring nuclear

powers be convinced that reversing their weapons-development trajectories would in fact bring them better long-term

security and liberate resources that could be used to benefit their citizens? Can public trust in the safety of nuclear

power be restored? How should we deal with the thousands of tons of nuclear waste that have accumulated, a burden

that will only grow as we come to rely more and more on greenhouse-gas-emission-free nuclear power? Do we have

the will to stick to the long-term commitments of funds, resources, and effective oversight that will be necessary to

remediate areas impacted by fissile-materials production facilities? These questions and many more cry out for public

education based on factual information presented by informed experts who are capable of balancing considerations of

the various risks and benefits involved without advancing their own agendas. I encourage FAS to remain involved in

such meritorious public service and members of the scientific community to contribute their knowledge and expertise

to such efforts. The need is more important now than ever.

Richard Rhodes, author of the much-acclaimed book The Making of the Atomic Bomb, has optimistically asserted that we

are now in the era of the “Twilight of the Bombs.”1 But after years of researching nuclear weapons in general and the

Manhattan Project in particular, I must respectfully disagree. I believe that the situation is more akin to the afternoon

of a long summer’s day. The light of nuclear weapons is still very much with us and events in countries such as Iran

and North Korea show that it still commands a compelling allure. Much work remains to be done to fulfill Secretary

of War Henry Stimson’s May 1945 vision of nuclear energy as “an assurance of future peace rather than a menace to

civilization.” 2 There is quite literally a world of opportunities for a new generation of scientists, educators,

commentators, and policymakers to support the mission of FAS in contributing to realizing Stimson’s dream. What

more fitting way could there be to honor his generation and those who founded and have helped to sustain FAS for

the last 70 years?

1 Rhodes, Richard. Twilight of the Bombs: Recent Challenges, New Dangers, and the Prospects for a World Without Nuclear Weapons (Vintage, New York, 2011). 2 Reed, B. Cameron. The History and Science of the Manhattan Project (Springer, Berlin, 2014) p. 375.

Certificate of Service issued in August 1945 to Harriet Mitteldorf née Morris, a founding member of FAS.

Allison Feldman

After finishing up his second MacArthur Foundation-sponsored research project on issues related to verifying a

nuclear agreement with Iran, Christopher Bidwell, FAS Senior Fellow for Nonproliferation Law and Policy, and his

team are now focused on a third project that will look at the increased role played by nongovernmental organizations

(NGOs) in verifying compliance and noncompliance with nuclear nonproliferation obligations. Special attention will

be paid to how the privacy rights of entities and individuals whose data are used to make a determination can be

protected.

In a letter dated March 26, 2016, 35 Nobel Laureates from physics, chemistry, and medicine urged national leaders

attending President Obama’s fourth and final Nuclear Security Summit on March 31st to reduce the risk of nuclear or

radiological terrorism to near-zero in three sectors. The signees stressed that because terrorist threats “cross national

boundaries,” they “require the concerted work of all nations to prevent… terrorist acts from happening.” They also

“urge” world leaders “to devote the necessary resources to make further substantial progress in the coming years to

real risk reduction in preventing nuclear and radiological terrorism.” The letter, written by Dr. Burton Richter, a

Nobel Laureate in physics and the Paul Pigott Professor in the Physical Sciences at Stanford University and Director

Emeritus, Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, and Dr. Charles D. Ferguson, President of FAS, and list of signees is

available online at: https://fas.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/nobel-laureates-letter-to-nss-march-20162.pdf.

To date, Japan’s peaceful nuclear energy use has taken the form of a nuclear fuel recycling policy that reprocesses

spent fuel and effectively utilizes the plutonium retrieved in light water reactors (LWRs) and fast reactors (FRs). With

the aim to complete recycling domestically, Japan has introduced key technology from abroad and has further

developed its own technology and industry. However, Japan presently seems to have issues regarding its recycling

policy and plutonium management and, because of recent increasing risks of terrorism and nuclear proliferation in the

world, the international community seeks much more secure use of nuclear energy. Yusei Nagata, an FAS Research

Fellow from MEXT, Japan, analyzes U.S. experts’ opinions and concerns about Japan’s problem and considers what

Japan can (and should) do to solve it.. A full version of the report can be accessed online at: https://fas.org/wp-

content/uploads/2016/03/japannukefuelrecyling_final.pdf.

In this study, Christopher Bidwell and Dr. Randall Murch explore the use of microbial forensics as a tool for creating

a common base line for understanding biologically-triggered phenomena, as well as one that can promote mutual

cooperation in addressing these phenomena. A particular focus is given to the Middle East/North Africa (MENA)

region, as it has been forced to deal with multiple instances of both naturally-occurring and man-made biological

threats over the last 10 years. Although the institution of a microbial forensics capability in the MENA region

(however robust) is still several years away, establishing credibility of the results offered by microbial forensic analysis

performed by western states and/or made today in workshops and training have the ability to prepare the policy

landscape for the day in which the source of a bio attack, either man-made or from nature, needs to be accurately

attributed. A full version of the report can be accessed online at: http://fas.org/pub-reports/microbial-forensics-

middle-east-north-africa/.

The threat from the manufacture, proliferation, and use of biological weapons (BW) is a high priority concern for the

U.S. Government. As reflected in U.S. Government policy statements and budget allocations, deterrence through

attribution (“determining who is responsible and culpable”) is the primary policy tool for dealing with these threats.

According to those policy statements, one of the foundational elements of an attribution determination is the use of

forensic science techniques, namely microbial forensics. In this report, Christopher Bidwell and Kishan Bhatt, an FAS

summer research intern and undergraduate student studying public policy and global health at Princeton University,

look beyond the science aspect of forensics and examine how the legal, policy, law enforcement, medical response,

business, and media communities interact in a bioweapon’s attribution environment. The report further examines how

scientifically based conclusions require credibility in these communities in order to have relevance in the decision

making process about how to handle threats. The report can be found online at: http://fas.org/pub-

reports/biological-weapons-and-forensic-science/.

From the start of the development of the new $10 billion B61-12 guided nuclear bomb, FAS has been at the forefront

of providing the public with factual information about the status and capabilities of the program. In November 2015,

Hans Kristensen, Director of the FAS Nuclear Information Project, was featured in a PBS Newshour program about

the weapon where former STRATCOM commander and Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General James

Cartwright confirmed FAS assessments that the increased accuracy of the B61-12 could make it a more usable

weapon [http://fas.org/blogs/security/2015/11/b61-12_cartwright/]. In early 2016, FAS and NRDC used a

government video of a B61-12 test drop to analyze the bomb’s increased accuracy and earth-penetrating capability

[http://fas.org/blogs/security/2016/01/b61-12_earth-penetration/]. The analysis was used in a New York Times

feature article, “As U.S. Modernizes Nuclear Weapons, ‘Smaller’ Leaves Some Uneasy.”1

The official entry of the term “climate change” in the latest revision of the Department of Defense Dictionary of

Military and Associated Terms reflects a growing awareness of the actual and potential impacts of climate change on

military operations. Steven Aftergood, Director of the FAS Project on Government Secrecy, reported in Secrecy News

that according to a Pentagon directive issued in January 2016, “The DoD must be able to adapt current and future

operations to address the impacts of climate change in order to maintain an effective and efficient U.S. military.”

Among other things, the new directive requires the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and the Director of

National Intelligence to coordinate on “risks, potential impacts, considerations, vulnerabilities, and effects [on defense

intelligence programs] of altered operating environments related to climate change and environmental monitoring.” In

a report to Congress last year, the DoD said that “The Department of Defense sees climate change as a present

security threat, not strictly a long-term risk.” Read Aftergood’s analysis in full here:

http://fas.org/blogs/secrecy/2016/01/dod-climate/.

1 Broad, William J., and David E. Sanger. “As U.S. Modernizes Nuclear Weapons, ‘Smaller’ Leaves Some Uneasy.” New York Times. January 11, 2016. Web. <http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/12/science/as-us-modernizes-nuclear-weapons-smaller-leaves-some-uneasy.html>.

The FAS Nuclear Information Project provided the public with important analysis about the mission and capabilities

of the new nuclear air-launched cruise missile the Air Force is developing: the Long-Range Standoff missile (LRSO).

The analysis was the first to highlight an overview of the mission government officials say the missile is needed for, a

mission that includes a worrisome nuclear war-fighting role [http://fas.org/blogs/security/2015/10/lrso-mission/].

Hans Kristensen was also quick to point out that a new long-range conventional air-launched cruise missile being

deployed by the Air Force could do much of the LRSO mission and he recommended canceling the LRSO, a measure

which would save $20-$30 billion [http://fas.org/blogs/security/2015/12/lrso-jassm/].

FAS research on the status and modernization of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons was covered extensively in news media

reports in connection with Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s visit to Washington in October 2015. The FAS

Nuclear Notebook, co-authored by Hans Kristensen and Robert S. Norris, FAS Senior Fellow for Nuclear Policy,

published by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, estimated that Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal has grown by 20 weapons since

2011 to 130 warheads presently, including new tactical nuclear weapons. The research was used by the New York Times

in a background article, “U.S. Set to Sell Fighter Jets to Pakistan, Balancing Pressure on Nawaz Sharif,”2 and an

editorial, “The Pakistan Nuclear Nightmare,”3 as well as by the Associated Press and Indian and Pakistani news media.

The Nuclear Notebook can be accessed at: https://fas.org/blogs/security/2015/10/pakistan-notebook/.

Transparency is not ordinarily a trait that one associates with intelligence agencies. But the Office of the Director of

National Intelligence has released a transparency implementation plan that establishes guidelines for increasing public

disclosure of information by and about U.S. intelligence. Based on a set of principles on transparency that were

published earlier last year, the plan prioritizes the objectives of transparency and describes potential initiatives that

could be undertaken. Thus, the plan aims “to provide more information about the IC’s governance framework; to

provide more information about the IC’s mission and activities; to encourage public engagement [by intelligence

agencies in social media and other venues]; and to institutionalize transparency policies and procedures.” FAS Secrecy

News reports that the plan neither includes any specific commitments nor sets any deadlines for action. Moreover, it is

naturally rooted in self-interest. Its purpose is explicitly “to earn and retain public trust” of U.S. intelligence agencies.

Nonetheless, it has the potential to provide new grounds for challenging unnecessary secrecy and to advance a

2 Rosenberg, Matthew and David E. Sanger. “U.S. Set to Sell Fighter Jets to Pakistan, Balancing Pressure on Nawaz Sharif.” New York Times. October 21, 2015. Web. <http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/22/world/asia/white-house-set-to-sell-new-fighter-jets-to-pakistan-in-bid-to-bolster-partnership.html>. 3 The Editorial Board. “The Pakistan Nuclear Nightmare.” New York Times. November 7, 2015. Web. <http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/08/opinion/sunday/the-pakistan-nuclear-nightmare.html>.

corresponding “cultural reform” in the intelligence community. Read Aftergood’s analysis here:

http://fas.org/blogs/secrecy/2015/10/transparency-plan/.

The number of people in the Department of Defense holding security clearances for access to classified information

declined by 100,000 in the first six months of FY2015, recounts FAS Secrecy News. The latest available data show 3.8

million DoD employees and contractors with security clearances, down from 3.9 million earlier in 2015, and a steep

17.4 percent drop from 4.6 million two years ago. Furthermore, only 2.2 million of the 3.8 million cleared DoD

personnel are actually “in access,” meaning that they have current access to classified information. Thus, further

significant reductions in clearances would seem to be readily achievable by shedding those who are not currently “in

access.” The total number of security-cleared persons government-wide is roughly 0.5 million higher than the number

of DoD clearances, putting it at around 4.3 million, down from 5.1 million in 2013. The new DoD security clearance

numbers were presented in the latest quarterly report on Insider Threat and Security Clearance Reform, FY2015 Quarter 3,

September 2015. The reduction in security clearances is not simply a reflection of programmatic or budgetary changes

– rather, it has been defined as a policy goal in its own right. A bloated security bureaucracy is harder to manage, more

expensive, and more susceptible to catastrophic security failures than a properly streamlined system would be. The full

post is available to view here: http://fas.org/blogs/secrecy/2015/10/clearances-down/.

Today, your support is as important as ever...

Making a planned gift to FAS, either by including us in your estate plans or through gifts of stock, will enable

you to support our mission and establish a legacy of commitment to peace and to the responsible use of

science and technology.

Members of FAS’s Board of Trustees and Board of Experts are prominent figures in the scientific, academic,

international security, business, and policymaking communities.

BOARD OF TRUSTEES

Charles D. Ferguson

President

Gilman Louie

Chair

Partner, Alsop Louie Partners

Rosina M. Bierbaum*

Vice Chair

Professor of Natural Resources and Environmental Policy;

Professor of Environmental Health Sciences, University of

Michigan

Stephen P. Hamblen

Secretary/Treasurer

President of Fairview Builders, LLC

Rodney W. Nichols*

President Emeritus, New York Academy of Sciences

Jan Lodal*

Distinguished Fellow, the Atlantic Council

Former Principal Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Policy

Peter Thiel

Thiel Capital

*Joint Appointment

BOARD OF EXPERTS

Rosina M. Bierbaum, Chair

Scott Sagan, Vice Chair

Caroline S.G. Munro Professor of Political Science, Stanford

Alton Frye

Presidential Senior Fellow Emeritus, the Council on Foreign

Relations

Lt. General Robert G. Gard, Jr.

Chairman, Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation

Martin Hellman

Professor Emeritus, Electrical Engineering, Stanford

Lisa Gordon-Hagerty

President and Chief Executive Officer, LEG Inc.

Lawrence M. Krauss

Foundation Professor, School of Earth and Space Exploration

and Physics Department, Arizona State University

Martha Krebs

Executive Director for Energy and Environmental Research

Development, University of California at Davis

Jan Lodal

Rodney W. Nichols

Maxine L. Savitz

Member of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and

Technology (PCAST)

Michael L. Telson

Vice President, General Atomics Corporation

Valerie Thomas

Anderson Interface Associate Professor of Natural Systems,

Georgia Institute of Technology

EX

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ITT

EE

Coming from a variety of scientific and academic backgrounds and with professional experience in government,

environmental science, physics, nuclear engineering, law, and political science, FAS staff work to provide technical

and skilled analysis on a variety of catastrophic threats to security and to serve the community of concerned citizens

and experts striving to reduce these security risks.

Charles D. Ferguson, President

Steven Aftergood, Director of the Government Secrecy Project

Hans Kristensen, Director of the Nuclear Information Project

Pia Ulrich, International Nuclear Policy Analyst

Allison Feldman, Communications and Community Outreach Officer

Kevin Feltz, Financial Controller and Office Manager

FAS experts and affiliates are members of the FAS Network, comprised of leading specialists from the scientific,

policy, and academic communities who tackle vexing security challenges that affect international security

Christopher Bidwell, Senior Fellow for Nonproliferation Law and Policy

David Hafemeister, Visiting Scientist

Martin Hellman, Adjunct Senior Fellow for Nuclear Risk Analysis

Bruce MacDonald, Adjunct Senior Fellow for National Security Technology

Jenifer Mackby, Senior Fellow for International Security

Yusei Nagata, Research Fellow from MEXT, Japan

Robert S. Norris, Senior Fellow for Nuclear Policy

Paul Sullivan, Adjunct Senior Fellow for Future Global Resources Threats

Source: SCARC Holdings, Oregon State University Libraries.

the FEDERATION OF AMERICAN SCIENTISTS

Join us in our mission to impact security and science policy by educating policy makers, the press, and the

public with nonpartisan, technical analysis.

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