Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1954-04-08
Mccarthy on the H-Bonb


other of his typically reckless declarations in
asserting that "our Nation may well die" because
of an "18-month deliberate delay" in its pro-
gram to develop and produce the hydrogen
bomb.
In effect, in making this statement, Mr..
McCarthy-as if seeking a new target apart
from the State Department., the Army, ETC.
has now moved in against our nuclear Scien-
lists, the Atomic Energy Commission and the
Joint Congressional Committee the Atom.
He has done so by insinuating that these expert
groups are open to the suspicion of having been
duped by Communist TRAITORS in our Govern
ment"-duped into deliberately" stalling on
H-bomb work, for year and half, despite
intelligence reports indicating that the Rus
slams were "feverishly" striving throughout that
period to arm themselves with thermonuclear
weapons.
But what are the facts? The first fact is
this: That in January, 1950-more than four
years ago-President Truman issued directive
instructing the Acc to continue its work on
all forms of atomic weapons including the So
called hydrogen or super bomb" second fact
is that the directive-which Mr.. Mccarthy ap-
parently believes should have been put into
effect in June of 1948-was motivated by the
detection, in August of 1949 of the Soviet I'm
distinct from thermonuclear.> In other words,
our Governments decision to launch an about
effort to produce the H-destroyer was reached
not long after the Russians had set off the
initial defamation revealing that they had
learned how to manufacture the much milder
A-deStroyer
And there are other facts that make Mr.
McCarthys statement seem particularly ire
SponSbe. For example, both before and after
the 1850 Truman directive, a number of nuclear
experts seriously doubted that the H-bomb
could be produced, and others-although con-
vinced that it could be produced-feared that
the effort to develop 1t might dangerously cut
into our output of A-weapons. Accordingly,
because of these scientific uncertainties and
similar debatable factors, the agencies chiefly
concerned pondered the matter very carefully
until men like Gordon Dean (former chairman
of the AEC), Lewis L. Strauss (now chairman)
and the late Senator Brien Mcmahon (then
head of the Joint Congressional Committed
carried the day in favor of an affirmative de-
csion. In short, there was no Communist
engineered deliberate delay" but there un-
doubleday was good deal of understandable
elaboration that was in no sense sinister even
though it may have slowed things up bit.
Certainly, the Nation has no need to fear
that it may well die" because of this delibera-
ton. True enough, as Acc Chairman Strauss
has said, there is good reason to believe that
the Russians began to work on the H-bomb
substantially before we did," but we staged our
first thermonuclear test at Eniwetok in May of
1851, and our second-the mightiest man-made
blast up to that time-in November of 1852. The
Soviet Union, on the other hand, did not set off
its initial hydrogen explosion until August of
1858, and our Government has not announced
the detection of any additional ones since then
This fact, coupled with our current experiment
tation in the Pacific leaves little room for doubt
that we are still well ahead of the Kremlin in
the field of and weapons.
All of which speaks pretty much for ITSELF
Representative Price of the Senate-House
Atomic Committee does not seem to have exag-
gerated in saying of Mr.. Mccarthy that "he
doesn't know what he's talking about"