The AEC and Secrecy

In the early 1940s, when work on the first atomic bomb was still a closely guarded secret, the late author Cleve Cartmill wrote a short story for Astounding Science Fiction describing in uncannily correct detail how such a weapon might be made and used. U.S. security officials, appalled at the story's resemblance to reality, at first threatened to impound and classify all copies of the magazine. Then, realizing that banning the issue would draw even more attention to the bomb story, they nervously allowed the magazine to go on the newsstands.

A theoretical physicist in California named Vincent LoDato, 32, does not dabble in science fiction. But now, as a result of some factually scientific writing of his own, he has suddenly found himself in a position reminiscent of Author Cartmill's three decades ago. LoDato's troubles began in February when he was laid off from the Rand Corp. after money was withdrawn from the environmental project he was assigned to. Setting up shop in his Santa Monica, Calif., home, he turned to a pet project and early this summer finally completed some complex calculations on possible means of controlling thermonuclear fusion--the same awesome process that fires the sun and other stars. The goal of LoDato's work was hardly new; like many scientists in laboratories round the world, he proposed using laser beams to reach the enormous temperatures (as high as several hundred million degrees) needed to sustain fusion reactions. Nonetheless, LoDato felt that his contribution was sufficiently original to justify his request for an $80,000 grant from the AEC to pay for computer analysis of his complex equations.

At first, the commission's response seemed favorable. Visited by three AEC officials who wanted to learn more about his work, LoDato says, he was admiringly told: "You've done what it cost the Government hundreds of thousands of dollars to do." Then, about three weeks later, the AEC abruptly changed its tune. Invoking secrecy rules known as "Sigma One," which cover weapons-related theoretical work, the commission's division of classification told LoDato that his 15-page proposal had been classified as "secret/restricted data." Subsequently, he says, AEC officials ordered him not to write down anything else on the subject, forced him to withhold a scientific report intended for the journal Nature, stamped every page (including a few blank pages) of his 79-page notebook as "secret/classified," and insisted that his colleagues and even his wife--who types his papers--be kept completely in the dark about his work. In an explanation that could have been cribbed from the pages of Catch-22, one AEC functionary said: "He is allowed to think classified data, but he is not allowed to write it down."

H-Bomb. Why did the AEC react so strongly? Physicist Ralph Lapp, long an independent and critical observer of the workings of the atomic energy establishment, speculates that LoDato may well have hit upon processes that could be useful both in controlled nuclear fusion and its military antithesis, the H-bomb. The AEC's own explanation lends some support to Lapp's thesis. Under the secrecy provisions of the Atomic Energy Act, a commission spokesman points out, any work that touches upon weaponry--as the AEC claims is the case with LoDato's calculations--is subject to classification, even if it is not new. The spokesman also noted that hundreds of scientists who have submitted ideas to the commission have been placed under similar restrictions. But he said that LoDato had not been ordered to stop writing on the subject entirely, and that he was free to seek employment with a private firm involved in fusion research. The only thing the AEC wants him to do, the spokesman added, is to submit future papers in this area for review and possible classification before he tries to publish them.

LoDato accepts the AEC decision to classify his papers and notes, but he is embittered by the constraints that he insists the commission has placed on further discussion and expansion of his work. "There is supposed to be an energy crisis," he told TIME Correspondent John Wilhelm, and "this is my contribution [to help solve it]. How can this be against national security?" If security is involved, he says, "why don't they put a guard on my front door and a safe in my office? Then I could work at home. This way, they are literally forcing me out of the fusion game."

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