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+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ October 18, 1994 An interview with George Stanford, Argonne National Lab, Illinois. Introduction Along with Ted Postol, Alex DeVolpi, and Jerry Marsh, George Stanford was one of the Argonne scientists involved in the Progressive Case, serving as a technical adviser on the Progressive Magazine's behalf. Their book, Born Secret, documents the 1979 proceedings during which the US Government tried to restrain publication of Howard Morland's H-bomb article. The book deserves careful study since it deals with fundamental issues like the role of government secrecy, and how it affects freedom of speech. Here are the details of the book: TITLE: Born secret : the H-bomb, the Progressive case and national security / A. De Volpi ... [et al.] ISBN/ISSN: 0080259952 IMPRINT: New York, Pergamon Press, c1981 PHYS DESC: xiii, 305 p., 24 cm. (Pergamon policy studies) George has kindly volunteered his time to talk about some nuclear weapons issues. The questions are divided into 3 categories. (1) George's experiences during the trial, (2) his views on the issue of Plutonium smuggling, and (3) his views on the problems of Complete Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) verification. In this interview, GS stands for George Stanford, while GA stands for Gary Au, a theoretical physicist at Melbourne University, Australia. The interview was conducted via internet email. ----------------------- (1) General Progressive Case Questions ----------------------- GA: The court trial must have been tense and draining. After 15 years, what are your general impressions of that time? GS: Unlike my three coauthors, I was never directly involved in the court proceedings, although I did contribute to an affidavit or two. You are correct in guessing that life was somewhat tense and hectic during that episode. What we were trying to do was twofold: (a) to prevent prior censorship of material whose publication would have no adverse impact on national security, and (b) to prevent the revelation of any information that COULD affect our security, such as any information that truly revealed sensitive information about design and construction of a hydrogen bomb -- information that was not deducible from public sources. To attempt to conceal deducible information, of course, is both hopeless and counterproductive. ----------------------- GA: Let's get right to the core of the matter. What Howard Morland did was assemble pieces of public domain information into something which the US Government regarded as Restricted Data - the 3 concepts behind the Teller-Ulam configuration. This highlighted two problem spots of the Atomic Energy Act (AEA) - namely, the definition of Restricted Data, and the Born- classified interpretation of the Act. With your experience during the trial, how do you think the Act should be amended? GS: Perhaps there is some fine tuning that could be done to the Atomic Energy Act, but it seems to me that the problems lie mainly in its implementation. The born secret concept is a tricky one. If a person gets a brilliant idea for a weapon of mass destruction, we would want it kept under wraps. Nevertheless that could be no more than a delaying action, since someone else will get the same idea before long -- especially if it is known that the device can be made. At extremely rare times, therefore, born secret might be useful in buying time -- but only that. What CAN be protected much more successfully (and should be) is non-deducible results of large, expensive R&D efforts. Common sense is called for in implementing the guidelines -- do not try to suppress deducible conclusions, and do not confirm or call attention to non-deducible information that happens to leak out. ----------------------- GA: At the end of the trial, the Progressive magazine lost a small fortune, even though it managed to get the Morland article published without censor. Essentially, it was a case of limited private funds versus a bottomless pot of Government gold. Do you see self-censorship a major danger when private citizens cannot afford the financial drain to match the government? What were the reasons for Judge Warren refusing Sam Day's compensation claim after the stalemate? GS: Private citizens are always at a disadvantage in any contest with their government. Fundamentally, our protection lies in electing a government that does not abuse its power. As for self-censorship -- no, I don t see that as a major danger in even an imperfect democracy such as ours. It is be much more of a concern under more arbitrary regimes, such as fascist or communist ones. I don't know why Judge Warren denied compensation to Sam Day, but I note that the judge never did appear sympathetic to the defense, being under the delusion that Morland had written a "ecipe for a do-it-yourself hydrogen bomb." ----------------------- GA: Did Drs DeVolpi and Marsh agree with Dr DeWitt's estimate of a few days saved by a foreign group of scientists, after reading Morland's article? As an aside, it is believed Klaus Fuchs' information to the Russians cut 12-18 months work off their A- bomb project. Of course, he was giving the *results* of experiments, not just theoretical calculations. The question right now is with India, who is on the brink of H-bomb research. As a physicist, I know how many blind alleys one can go down in research. Since radiation coupling isn't an intuitive idea (this doesn't mean it isn't a *derivable* idea though), I would have estimated at least a few *months* for Indian scientists to come up with simulations showing the idea was workable. GS: All four of us agreed with DeWitt that Morland's original article had nothing that would appreciably help an H-bomb designer. As a consequence of Government actions, however, basic design concepts that were highly classified and, although perhaps already deduced by individual uncleared scientists, had not been widely disseminated, got a lot of publicity. Just how much help all this would be to a designer is not clear, but it is undoubtedly far more than the original article would have been -- depending on how sophisticated the designer was to start with. ----------------------- GA: This brings us to the role of secrecy. We know that all secrecy does is slow down research by foreign scientists. This is because basic physics (by its nature) can be rederived from experiment. We've had 40 odd years of secrecy and China, France, Russia, UK, and India have the bomb. We think Pakistan and N. Korea are close to one, and Israel and S. Africa have ones which can be quickly assembled. Do you think we have relied too much on the 'secrecy mystique', and neglected other matters like proper control of weapons materials? As an aside, why does it seem that the 'bad guys' are always the foreign scientists?! Most of us want peace and disarmament too! GS: It should by now be clear to everyone that in the past we relied far too much on secrecy. We arrogantly assumed that we were the only ones who could develop nuclear weapons, and that therefore we could retain our monopoly. That kept us from pursuing international arrangements that might have held the nuclear arms race under some sort of control. ----------------------- GA: After studying 'Born Secret', it was my impression that of all the Argonne scientists, you were the one most reserved about the idea of publishing Morland's article. I think your view was that publication would take the 'mystique' out of the H-bomb- making business, and would trigger off research in other countries. Were you affected at all by Day's argument that 'mystique' wouldn't deter foreign scientists who had the proper industrial/research base to develop a weapon? What is your present view on this matter? GS: Not "would" trigger such activity, but could conceivably in a marginal situation. Day's statement was of course correct, and I had no quarrel with it then, nor have I now. However, I felt (and still do) that publishing the article served no useful public function, so that any chance, however slight, that something unfortunate might result had nothing to offset it. The same thought, of course, applies to your own elaborations of Morland's material. But that is by no means the same as saying that the Government was right in trying to suppress Morland's article -- in so doing, they converted an otherwise obscure article into world-wide news. ----------------------- GA: Of course, the Brown and Rosengren affidavits did great damage to the tried-and-tested security principle of not denying or confirming material in the public domain. Using this technique, the govt seemed to lose more than they gained. In fact, they seemed to give away what they were trying to protect! Do you think the 'bungle' came from the lower levels or high up? GS: I have no idea. My suspicion at the time was that the thinking went like this: "This information is practically out in the open anyway, so revealing it is worthwhile if doing so helps teach the Press not to fool around with the Atomic Energy Act." ----------------------- GA: Given the derivability of Morland's ideas from public domain sources, Judge Warren seemed to see from a biased viewpoint when he believed the government's exaggeration of the article's proliferation value. Do you think his perception of the 'credibility' or credentials of the government's weapons scientists wrongly influenced his viewpoint? After all, the govt had a monopoly of knowledge. But does that translate into a soundness of judgement? Why didn't Judge Warren accept that he had little scientific technical knowledge in the matter of nuclear weapons and establish an independent panel of scientific advisers to aid him? Was it due again to the 'credibility' thing? Is Judge Warren still active today? GS: My speculation is that the judge is the sort of patriot who deems it disloyal to question the government on matters of military affairs or foreign policy. Whatever the reason, I see his failure to appoint a disinterested panel of experts as a fundamental error of judgement. I don't know where he is now, or what he's doing. ----------------------- GA: There seemed to be a heavy reliance on UCRL-4725 in the defense. Do you think the defense could be conducted without reference to such a specific incident? You must admit, the probability of foreign scientists accessing that document in the Los Alamos library seemed quite low. Why on earth didn't Alamos have an ID check on people using its library documents, considering the nature of the place, and the possibility of accidental declassification? GS: My feeling is that the case would have ended pretty much as it did, even if the mistakenly declassified UCRL-4725 had not come to light, but there is no way of knowing. No, I don't admit that the chance was very low that a foreign scientist might see that document in the Los Alamos library. That's a place to which one might well go (as Dimitri Rotow in fact did) in search of such information. Since the Los Alamos library was essentially open to the public, it is not clear how much help an "ID check" would have been in protecting erroneously declassified documents. ----------------------- GA: Speaking of Rotow, what were your feelings when you heard he had made numerous copies of UCRL-4725 and disseminated them? Did the govt eventually manage to round up these or are some still floating around? If they didn't round them up, do you think following such an action would result in *more* dissemination? The picture of irresponsible journalists running off a few thousand copies comes to mind. What's Rotow doing these days? GS: Since Rotow obviously understood that the report was sensitive, I felt that his reproducing it was irresponsible. If he had been thinking clearly and cared about preventing nuclear war, he would have requested confirmation that the report had been properly declassified. The fact that he had found it would have been sufficient to make his point. I don't know how many copies were not recovered. Trying to round up the copies was a judgement call, but since the word was out anyway that the report was out, trying to retrieve as many copies as possible was probably the better choice. I have not heard anything of Rotow since then. ***************************************** Addendum, April 2, 1996. GS: Gary Rotow has read the preceding comments, and takes exception to them. In his response, which I am pleased to insert below, his reference to "stealing evidence at night" refers to Los Alamos Security's retrieval of documents that he left overnight on a table in the Los Alamos library; he considers their doing so illegal, since he was gathering evidence as a declared member of a legal defense team. Rotow's comments: "There never were any copies of UCRL-4725 disseminated outside of very, very controlled circumstances and all such copies were returned to DoE. None were provided to "irresponsible journalists." UCRL-4725 was located as part of a search by the Progressive's legal defense team. We knew at the time that it, or documents like it, were at Los Alamos and we specifically went to Los Alamos to fetch a copy to produce to the Court as part of the case. It is true that a few copies were made, but only because DoE personnel illegally interfered with the defense team by stealing evidence at night and it was necessary to send some of the evidence out by multiple paths to make sure it would be available to the Court. At no time was UCRL-4725 in any way available to would-be proliferators except, of course, when it was in the government's hands." ******************************************** ----------------------- GA: America's classification system seems to be outdated and unwieldy, considering some data which are classified there are public domain in other parts of the world. The 1976 Rudakov incident [classification of material presented in open forum by a visiting Russian scientist] is one example. A current one is ICF target designs, which are discussed fairly openly in places like France. What are your impressions on this matter? GS: I agree that the system is outdated and unwieldy. Why are things classified in the U.S. that are open elsewhere? Remember that, while a classifier might possibly get a mild reprimand if he (or she) overclassifies an item, he is potentially in deep trouble if he is considered to have underclassified. Until the rewards and penalties are balanced, there will be skewing toward overclassification. ----------------------- GA: Sticking to the topic of indirect drive ICF, do you think such target designs can be declassified effectively without undue proliferation worry? GS: As an expert in neither ICF nor H-bomb design, I have no basis for an opinion. ----------------------- (2) The Plutonium Smuggling Problem ----------------------- GA: Let's discuss plutonium smuggling from Russia and the CSI. The German govt recently intercepted quantities of mox and weapons grade plutonium at their airports, possibly bound for Pakistan. What can be done to reduce such incidents on our side, considering we have little control in Russia's security affairs? GS: A careful reading of the news reports does not reveal that any appreciable quantity of truly weapons-grade plutonium has been intercepted: (a) some 350 grams of subgrade stuff that is hard to use for an explosive even given a critical mass, which is several times that amount, and (b) about six grams of almost- pure plutonium-239 -- so pure that the total in existence probably is less than a critical mass. (For details, see "Plutonium, Politics, and Panic" by Mark Hibbs in the November/December 1994 issue of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.) Nevertheless, the possibility that a serious amount of weapons-grade plutonium could be diverted is a major worry. We can, in fact, influence Russia s security affairs -- for instance, by helping provide gainful employment for people who might otherwise feel pressured to sell contraband in order to put food on the table. For the short run, the control of weapons material on our side seems pretty secure. Long-term, the only practical solution to the plutonium problem, both here and abroad, is to put all of it under active management -- as could be done, for instance, with a system of fast-spectrum power reactors that can consume excess plutonium. (One technology that can do that, the Integral Fast Reactor (IFR ) was approaching final demonstration of practicality when it was recently terminated by the Clinton administration.) If seriously pursued, that technology could bring all plutonium into very secure surroundings in just a few decades. ----------------------- GA: Speaking of Pakistan, what do you see as the probability of regional conflict with states lobbing atomics at each other? Places that come to mind include Pakistan-India, the Korean Peninsula and Iraq-Israel. Come to think of it, add all of the Middle East! Another possibility is that such a state would have the mettle to lob one at US forces, to test its resolve! The recent Iraqi Republican Guard manoeuvres come to mind. GS: What we must hope is that nobody will feel that using an atomic bomb is worth the risk, pending more secure international management of weapons materials and technology -- including highly enriched uranium, which is a far more likely route for a proliferator than reactor-quality plutonium. Reducing the plutonium from the weapons programs to something equivalent to spent fuel is an urgent first step. ----------------------- GA: Stolen nuclear materials is the big worry in our present system. High safeguard on all parts of the plutonium cycle is hard to implement, due to the vast number of people who have work access to the substances. If we go to breeder reactors and a plutonium-based energy economy, do you think the 'benefits' are worth the cons? France seems to be heading in this direction. GS: By "breeder reactors" you really mean fast reactors. The benefits definitely "are worth the cons." There are a variety of possible "plutonium-based economies." As I indicated above, and conventional wisdom notwithstanding, fast reactors in fact offer a good, final solution to the plutonium problem. This is a large and very poorly understood subject. Today's thermal reactors that are inherently prolific breeders of plutonium (although they do not breed more total nuclear fuel than they consume). Essentially all the plutonium in the world today (including the weapons) was bred in thermal reactors. While a fast reactor can be designed to breed plutonium at about the same rate as a thermal reactor (in which case it is a "breeder," it also (unlike a thermal reactor) can be a net consumer of plutonium, in which case it is a burner, not a breeder. The modern generation of fast reactors has been specifically and successfully developed to solve the problems of proliferation and management of long-term waste that have plagued both thermal and first-generation fast reactors. I can give you supporting information if you're interested. Also, a forthcoming article in the Journal of the Franklin Institute ("Responsible Stewardship of Nuclear Materials," by W.H. Hannum) explains the situation in some detail. The bottom line is that the cons of modern fast reactors are misapprehensions, and fast reactors offer just about the only realistic hope of removing plutonium from national and international commerce. ----------------------- GA: Do you think a nuclear terrorism scenario is likely in the near future, if our present 'safeguards' remain unchanged? GS: I believe that the chances are extremely slim that a subnational terrorist group will even try to make a nuclear bomb, much less succeed; the job is too tricky, the required time and patience are too great, and there are so many quicker, easier ways to do damage and get attention. Other nuclear scenarios, however, are conceivable: (a) A group steals some plutonium or uranium and claims to have made a bomb; this would be an attention-getter. (b) A group steals radioactive material, scatters some around, and threatens to scatter more if their demands are not met. Realistically, the first scenario is overwhelmingly more probable as a bluff than as a meaningful threat, and the second is (relatively speaking) more of a nuisance than a serious threat. If I were a terrorist, I would look for something far more believable and serious than either of those -- for instance, a serious threat to bomb a dam or the World Trade Center. Please do not see this as an argument that safeguards should not be as strong as possible. They should. The safeguards that would be made possible by a system of fast- spectrum power reactors would render both of the above scenarios extremely unlikely, and make illicit construction of plutonium explosives even harder to pull off. ----------------------- (3) CTBT Ratification ----------------------- GA: Nuclear testing is the main form of scientific information on weapons design. Implementing a CTBT would be universally beneficial. The problem is in the verification process, especially with the small yield (< 1 kt) ones. There is also the problem of threshold states who believe they have nothing to lose in going ahead. Are there any solutions to this quandary? GS: I think so. History shows that verification of an arms control treaty is transformed from an issue to a detail to be worked out, once the parties decide that the treaty is fundamentally in their interests. In my opinion, a comprehensive test ban is easier to enforce than one with a threshold (such as 1 kt), because disputes over whether an explosion exceeded the threshold could not arise. Any explosion at all would be a violation. In the case of a truly comprehensive test ban, a would-be tester has to weigh the benefits of testing against the penalties if caught. Here are some of his considerations: (1) Without any testing, he could make a uranium bomb. (2) For a militarily useful program, he would need a series of tests, with the probability of detection increasing with each test. (3) For an advanced nuclear-weapons state, the benefit of an additional, isolated small test is marginal at best. (4) As I understand it, a meaningful test with a very small yield is very hard to carry out reliably, if the tester is new to the game. (5) A "threshold state with nothing to lose" is hard for me to picture. Given such a critter, however, the problem is not one of verification but of enforcement. (6) Don't forget whistleblowers. The bigger and more meaningful the program, the more likely it is to leak. One can imagine international and unilateral arrangements that encourage whistleblowing in such a situation. The object would be to give the would-be tester very low confidence that the testing would not be detected. (7) Absolute verification is never achievable. What is achievable (if the treaty is to have meaning) is confidence that any cheating would be detected before it became a serious threat. ----------------------- GA: Do you think its hypocritical for the USA to go on with underground testing, bearing in mind the feelings of the non- weapons states who have signed the NPT? The USA has done more testing than the rest of the world combined. There is also the matter of the USA reserving the right to use its nukes on non- weapons NPT countries. Do you agree that this is a major reason for foreign scientists getting the go-ahead for bomb projects? GS: Whether or not it's hypocritical, I do think it's counterproductive for the U.S. to drag its feet on a CTBT. I also think that an announced "no first use" policy would be very helpful. Those U.S. positions do seem to be major reasons that renewal of the NonProliferation Treaty next year is in doubt. ----------------------- GA: A CTBT wouldn't stop the proliferation of present, tried bomb designs. This wouldn't prevent an arms escalation based around existing systems like the SS-20 and Minuteman. Do you think a reduction of present arsenals, and a *promise* not to make more, should be added as a condition for CTBT implementation? How can this be enforced? GS: There currently is no realistic motivation to make more missiles. If a major power were sometime to conclude, rightly or (more likely) wrongly that escalation was in its best interest, no " promise" would have weight; it could not be enforced. As I see it, the only assurance that such escalation will not occur lies in an international environment in which there is nothing to be gained by so doing. ----------------------- GA: China recently (14/10/1994) tested a trigger at Lop Nor. It has done about 41 in total, whereas the USA has > 1000. Do you think America fears losing its superpower status, if it gives up its edge in nuclear weapons technology? Is it any co-incidence that the UN permanent security council members are also the nuclear weapons states? GS: Don t expect me to know what "America" fears or does not fear. In my opinion, the way for the U.S. to preserve its superpower status and its edge in nuclear weapons technology is to accomplish a CTBT as soon as possible. The Chinese (for instance) have far more incremental knowledge to gain per test than does the U.S. ----------------------- Thank you for your time, George. Permission to reproduce this file is granted so long as its contents are not modified. The Red Phoenix, 1994