Distorted Commentary

A motion picture of the March 1 thermonuclear-bomb test in mid-Pacific arrived last week in Washington. Those who watched a top-secret screening were impressed by the horrendous blast, and even more impressed by the voice of the scientist-commentator on the sound track.

As the blast reached out with a force three times greater than the estimates, the scientist's running commentary was audibly distorted by surprise and fear.

The same understandable sort of sur prise and fear distorted much of the commentary on the bomb through the Western world last week. President Eisenhower kept his voice even and his answer matter-of-fact when he was asked about the March i explosion at his press conference. It was quite clear, he said, that this time something must have happened that we had never experienced before, and must have surprised and astonished the scientists. But Eisenhower's evenness of tone was lost when unnerved editorial writers in Britain and the U.S. seized on the words "surprised"' and "astonished."

CALL OFF THAT BOMB! screamed London's Laborite Daily Herald. The Manchester Guardian asked, in reference to U.S. plans for another test shot in late April: "Is it really wise to proceed with these explosions?" In the House of Commons, the Laborites used the bomb as a new political weapon on their old target, the U.S. And Prime Minister Churchill, in the most solemn tone, assured a hushed House of Commons that the "overwhelming consequences of development ... fill my mind out of all comparison with anything else."

The professional between-the-lines readers of Soviet intentions believed that there were signs of Russia's growing respect for thermonuclear warfare. Three weeks ago, Matenkov acknowledged publicly that a war with modern weapons would be "the destruction of world civilization"--and this was news in Russia's censored press. Last week the army newspaper, Red Star, tried to explain what an H-bomb was like: it was like the explosion of the great Tunguska meteorite which struck Siberia in 1908 with a force of a million tons, "and felled the forest over an area of 100 square kilometers."

By any other name, the thermonuclear bomb was mushrooming into world consciousness as the most total single factor of power in history. The Administration decided to make certain that the U.S. knew as much about the problem as security would allow, determined to release to television and press next week an edited film of Operation Ivy, the first thermonuclear test at Eniwetok, in November 1952--complete with a montage of estimated effects of a similar bomb on Washington and Manhattan. And this week Chairman Lewis Strauss of the Atomic Energy Commission returned to Washington from the atomic testing grounds to announce that a second thermonuclear test blast had been "successfully" set off last Friday. This time U.S. voices were calm and collected.

. . .

Last week FBI Chief J. Edgar Hoover brought the atomic-bomb threat down to earth as he warned the U.S. to be on the lookout for enemy bomb smugglers. Probable items in their equipment:

P: A gunbarrel device, with a bore of not less than two inches or more than ten inches. Purpose: to fire a projectile of fissionable material into a plug of fissionable material at the end of the bore, thus creating a critical mass and atomic blast.

P: Fissionable material for the gun barrel (plutonium or uranium), which is extremely heavy, weighing about half again as much as lead (50 Ibs. would be about the size of a softball). Beware of any article extremely heavy for its size, since fissionable material may be disguised by a coating of plastic.

P: High explosives for use in an implosion-type bomb, probably in specially fabricated shapes, with one side of each piece rounded out to fit on a sphere. Most high explosives are light tan in color, have a soapy feel, and are half again as heavy as water.

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