Bull by the Tail

After months of chasing and capturing atomic spies, the FBI finally made an inevitable announcement last week: its Denver agents had arrested an atomic souvenir collector. The G-Men announced the gist of the case with their usual deadpan gravity. The accused was a 28-year-old University of Denver metallurgical engineer named Sanford Lawrence Simons. He had admitted that while working at Los Alamos in 1946 he had stolen a pinhead-sized piece of plutonium and kept it buried under his house for four years.

But when they produced Simons, the affair began to sound oddly like something from a musical comedy. He turned out to be a mild-mannered, unshaven little man who smoked a pipe. He admitted his sins with a cheerful and relieved air.

He had always collected mineral samples, he said, and when he left Los Alamos he had taken the plutonium off his desk and "just walked out with it." He had realized, "almost instantly" that he didn't want it. But he could not take it back without revealing the theft. "It seems pretty silly now," he said, "but it was like having a bull by the tail."

Silly or not, the Government vfas convinced that Collector Simons wa6 telling the truth--there was absolutely no evidence that he had acted on anything but an odd impulse. But for all that, he was arraigned and, until $10,000 bail was put up for him, was hustled off to jail.

"I've never been arrested before," he said, as officers went through his pockets before putting him in a cell. "All this is pretty amazing." When the U.S. marshal held up an odd-looking tool he had been carrying, he explained: "That's the handiest gadget. It opens bottle tops and cans and things." He beamed as the marshal answered: "We'd better keep this pocket-sized machine shop. It might open a jail door, too." Before he was led away he said, approvingly: "It certainly is good to know the federal agents . . . and security officers are really on their toes."

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