The New Bomb

Premier Malenkov's announcement that Russia has the hydrogen bomb was aimed at the U.S., and as a verbal bombshell it was something of a dud. In Washington there was none of the ashen-faced confusion that followed the discovery, in 1949, that the Russians had exploded an atomic bomb. President Eisenhower heard the news and an hour later took off for Denver and vacation without comment.

Was there really a Russian H-bomb? High-flying U.S. airplanes continually monitor the upper air to collect telltale evidence of atomic explosions. They had reported no evidence, as yet, of a Soviet hydrogen explosion. But the handful of men who know the most about hydrogen bombs (and cannot forget that an entire Pacific island disappeared when the U.S. successfully exploded an experimental model last November) were prepared to assume that the Russians have the H-bomb secret. The U.S. atomic scientists have, in fact, been waiting for the Russian H-bomb ever since they learned of the treachery of Communist Spy Klaus Fuchs. who knew much about U.S. H-bomb planning.

From his home in Culpeper, Va.. AEC Chairman Lewis Strauss stated: "We have never assumed that it was beyond the capability of the Russians to produce such a weapon and that is the reason why, more than three years ago, it was decided to press forward with this development for ourselves."

In Los Angeles, Strauss's predecessor at the AEC, Gordon Dean, was less inhibited by official responsibility. "America must realize," said he, "that the Russians have a strong atomic potentiality, strong scientific talent, great engineering know-how, vast deposits of ore, and the police state in which all these things can be effectively combined. Under such conditions it would be both foolish and extremely dangerous for America to assume Malenkov was lying."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.