The Times & the Secret

"Secret nuclear test detonations at more than 300 miles above the earth were conducted by the United States early last September." So began last week the year's biggest news beat: a report by New York Times Military Editor Hanson W. Baldwin on Project Argus--an attempt to gauge the behavior of high-speed electrons in the earth's magnetic field (see SCIENCE). The story was much more than a beat. Working on Argus, Reporter Baldwin months ago got into the precarious position of having to decide when and how--if at all--to use material that could critically influence the course of international events. He decided that the world should not know then, and that it should know last week.

A Question of Country. A lean, grey eagle of a man, Hanson Baldwin at 56 still stands as ramrod stiff as when he graduated from Annapolis in 1924. He has been the Times's military analyst since 1937, won a Pulitzer Prize for his 1942 series on combat in the South Pacific that included the disclosure of the U.S. plight on Guadalcanal. Working his beat, Baldwin first came across Argus "some weeks" before the late August and early September tests, got together the outline of the project "without limitation on its use."

At the time, the U.S. was on the defensive in the radiation fallout controversy, and Russia certainly would have made propaganda hay out of a story that the U.S. was planning to explode atomic bombs over the South Atlantic. Some scientists told Baldwin that if he printed the story, the furor might well force the U.S. to stop the tests. But it could also be argued that Baldwin had a duty to tell the American public in advance about an event that might have serious international implications. Baldwin decided to stay mum.* Says he simply: "It was a question of whether or not you were going to hurt your country."

Developing the Story. Baldwin called in scholarly Science Reporter Walter Sullivan, 41, went to work developing the story further from a score of sources (including some top Pentagon scientists), worked so secretly that even the Times's Washington bureau had no inkling of the project. After the tests, the pair found many scientists who wanted all the data made public, but none who was able--or willing--to lay it all out in one package. As their material grew, the Timesmen repeatedly urged the Pentagon to release the story in full.

The request was reasonable enough.

The story was bound to come out sooner or later. In fact, the U.S. was committed to release much of the information to the world at large as part of its International Geophysical Year program. But the Pentagon stubbornly sat on the data. Last week, convinced that a U.S. official was about to break the news and certain that Russia had already calculated the theoretical effects of such tests, Baldwin and Sullivan recommended publication to Managing Editor Turner Catledge. Before the presses rolled, they informed the Pentagon and the White House that the story was on its way.

The Unprepared Pentagon.Despite this tipoff, the Pentagon was totally unprepared when the Times hit the streets at 10 p.m. with accounts of Argus that slipped on a few details (e.g., the project's rockets used only solid fuel, not liquid and solid as reported). Uninformed public-information officers on duty at the Pentagon had nothing at all to tell the clamoring press. Characteristically, Murray Snyder, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs (TIME, March 2), had warned a few top scientists to give only innocuous answers to newsmen. But the cry for information grew so loud that at 12:35 a-m Snyder belatedly issued a four-paragraph bare-bones story, which erroneously stated that the tests occurred in late September. Complained Chairman John Moss of the House Subcommittee on Government Information: "This appears to be another example of the Pentagon attempting to manage the news, and once again Murray Snyder has stumbled."

At a tumultuous press conference 13 hours after the Times broke the story, Deputy Secretary of Defense Donald A. Quarles and his top scientific aides gingerly gave out less information than was in the Times's original stories. Badgered by the press, Quarles took the surprising stand that full material on the now public story would have to be released only "through normal scientific channels" (e.g., learned journals like the Physical Review, circ. 10,530). Snapped Quarles about the clean-handed beat of Baldwin and Sullivan: "I would say it was not playing the game with the Defense Department the way I would like it played."

Hardly a newsman in the U.S. could agree with Quarles. Hanson Baldwin, Walter Sullivan and the Times had in fact played the game at its best--with initiative and responsibility.

* As did TIME, which had the outline of the story last August from Pentagon Correspondent Edwin Rees.

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