Dangerous Knowledge

Dr. Robert J. Moon is a Chicago physicist who worked on the famed Manhattan Project. Thus, he knows a lot of "classi fied" (secret) facts about how Jo make atomic bombs. Last week he came to the rueful conclusion that his knowledge was threatening to be a bar to professional advancement.

Before and after his service on the Man hattan Project, 36-year-old Physicist Moon worked on atomic research at the University of Chicago. Last year McMasters University at Hamilton, Ont. offered him a job as head of its physics department.

Professionally, it was an attractive offer and a big step up. Bespectacled, talkative Dr. Moon jumped at the chance. He went to McMasters across the border and de livered one lecture.

Then his father, a Missouri lawyer, and Professor Ed Levi, of the Chicago Uni versity Law School, began to tell him that he might be heading for trouble. The Atomic Energy Act (which Levi helped to write) is vaguely phrased in spots but it has teeth like a Tyrannosaurus. For one thing, the Act threatens with the death penalty anyone who transmits U.S. atomic secrets to a foreign nation.

No Promises. Moon began to get cold feet about his nice Canadian job. He hur ried to Washington for a ruling from the Atomic Energy Commission. He got sym pathy and consideration, but in six months of asking, he got no specific ruling. Last week he decided to tell his troubles to the press.

In Washington, the commission ex plained that it could not forbid Dr. Moon to teach in Canada; but neither could it promise forgiveness for everything he might do or say in future. If he divulged official secrets during lectures in Canada, he would certainly be in bad. Furthermore, he had better keep away altogether from Chalk River, Canada's Government center of nuclear research, and he certainly could not continue as a consultant on U.S.

atomic projects. But if he used good sense in choosing his lecture subjects, he could probably keep out of trouble with the Atomic Energy Act.

No Safety. This was not the clearcut ruling that Physicist Moon wanted and it was not the clarification that many an other U.S. scientist had hoped for. Nuclear physics includes a bewildering mass of facts, figures and principles. Some are "classified" and known only (the AEC hopes) to scientists in its confidence.

Others have been declassified; they were discovered before the war, or have been recently discovered by independent scientists. No physicist who possesses secret information can be entirely sure what is safe to talk about. If he talks to foreign agents (or even to Americans not approved by the FBI) he might conceivably be risking the death penalty.

Dr. Moon and his fellow physicists are still hoping that the AEC (or Congress) will eventually tell them where they stand. Until they get the word they can stand safely only in classes in U.S. schools, before classes of U.S. citizens, teach only what the Atomic Energy Commission marks unclassified.

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