From: Michael Novick <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > >Published Monday, April 5, 1999, in the San Jose Mercury News >------------------------------------------------------------ > >Explosive Theory On `Espionage' > > >By Michael Dorgan >Mercury News Staff Writer > >LOS ANGELES -- Sam Cohen is an atheist Jew whose most prized possession is >a peace medal given to him by a Roman Catholic pope. He got it for creating >the neutron bomb. > >"No (expletive deleted) rabbi or Protestant minister wanted anything to do >with me," grumbled Cohen, now 78 years old and still bitter that most >people didn't share the pope's approval of his work. > >After more than 40 years in the strange, shadowy world of nuclear weapons, >the father of the neutron bomb now spends his days brooding at his sunny >hilltop home in affluent Brentwood. His rail-thin body has been slowed and >stiffened by arthritis, but his mind remains agile and combative. > >Cohen is still eager to defend what has been derided as a "capitalist bomb" >that kills people without destroying property. But the thing he is most >eager to talk about these days is his theory on how China may have obtained >U.S. nuclear secrets. > >Just as a congressional committee is expected to release a report allegedly >documenting a successful espionage campaign by China and continuing lax >security at the nation's weapons labs, Cohen said he has a more probable >explanation of how China may have acquired the neutron bomb and the design >of miniature nuclear warheads. > >His theory, befitting a man who has devoted his life to big explosions, is >a bombshell. Cohen said he's convinced that China didn't steal those >secrets, but that the United States gave them away. > >"All the logic dictated that we do that," he said. "When we get in a jam, >so much for policy. We don't hesitate to break the ideological rules, just >like (President) Reagan did when it came to getting the hostages freed. He >gave hated Iran all sorts of conventional weaponry." > >That the Reagan administration swapped arms for U.S. hostages is a matter >of record. Cohen's claim that the United States gave nuclear secrets to >China is merely a spectacularly contrarian theory, and one quickly >dismissed by some people who were in relevant government positions when >China allegedly acquired the secrets in the 1980s. One former China expert >for the Central Intelligence Agency who doesn't personally know Cohen goes >so far as to suggest he may have lost his neutrons. > >"I suspect he has good days and bad days," said the former agent, Milt >Bearden. > >James Lilley, a former CIA station chief in Beijing as well as a former >ambassador to China, also finds Cohen's theory "far-fetched." He said that >to his knowledge transfer of nuclear technology to China was never even a >topic of discussion. > >But Robert Shreffler, former head of the weapons division at Los Alamos >National Laboratory, said Cohen "presents a plausible case." Shreffler said >his own experience as the first head of nuclear planning at NATO, in >1968-70, left him convinced that almost anything is possible in the >duplicitous world of diplomacy. > >Whether or not Cohen's suspicions are true -- and he has no hard evidence >to support them -- they help illuminate the Dr. Strangelove world that many >people had hoped would disappear at the end of the Cold War. The nuclear >genie remains out of the bottle, however, and a growing number of countries >have harnessed its power for potentially destructive purposes. > >Cohen said the U.S. motive for passing nuclear secrets to China would have >been to help it deter the United States' Cold War nemesis, the Soviet >Union. > >He said the United States in the mid-1980s provided conventional weapons >technology to China, including avionics for fighter planes, large turbine >engines for naval destroyers and anti-tank TOW missiles. If the United >States truly was worried about a Soviet attack on China, he reasoned, why >would it not have given China clandestine help in developing more >formidable weapons with which to defend itself against the Soviet nuclear >arsenal? > > > >Precedent established > >There was a precedent for giving away nuclear secrets, he said. Cohen said >he personally was informed by French officials that the United States >helped France develop a neutron bomb, and he said a former colleague at >Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory told him that scientists there also >helped Israel develop the bomb. > >Another reason Cohen suspects the United States gave the secrets to China >is that he is unconvinced by the evidence of espionage cited recently by >U.S. officials, who said they learned the secrets had been stolen by >monitoring underground tests in China and through intelligence documents >from China. > >Cohen, as well as several other experts, said it is impossible to determine >the design of a nuclear device through seismic readings. And Cohen said he >is skeptical about the alleged intelligence documents. Throughout his many >years of work on nuclear weapons programs up through the mid-1980s -- for >the Rand Corp., the Pentagon, the Air Force, and Los Alamos and Livermore >labs -- Cohen said U.S. intelligence agencies never succeeded in obtaining >any inside intelligence from China's nuclear weapons program. > >"Over decades and decades, the success of all those cloak-and-dagger guys >was zero," he said. "Zilch. The Chinese program was hermetically sealed." > >The U.S. nuclear program, on the other hand, leaked like a sieve from the >very beginning. > >In 1944, even before it was publicly known that the United States was >developing an atomic bomb, the head of the Manhattan Project told >scientists at Los Alamos that Germany and the other Axis powers already >were aware of their efforts, Cohen said. > >So was Russia, thanks to Klaus Fuchs, a brilliant theoretical physicist, >devout Communist and spy who fled Nazi Germany and began working at Los >Alamos shortly after it opened. > >One of the most successful spies was Ted Hall, whom Cohen remembered as a >sweet and eccentric genius who arrived at Los Alamos at age 17 after >completing his doctorate at Harvard. Hall's failure to bathe or wash his >uniform caused him to smell so bad that everyone else at the lab stayed >clear of him, and when his filthy uniform eventually wore out and began to >tear, he sealed the holes with staples. > >Cohen himself had his quirks, he admitted in an unpublished memoir. As a >youth, he wrote, he frequently indulged in vengeful fantasies in which his >eyes were deadly emitters of radiation. > >"What I knew, indeed was convinced of, was that were I angry enough at >someone I could stare/glare an intense beam of invisible radiation that >would literally burn into their eyes and brain, leaving empty smoking >sockets as well as an empty mind with no control over their sphincter >muscles," he wrote. > > > >Difficult childhood > >Even in high school he had trouble controlling his own bowels, a problem he >blames on his mother, who gave him frequent enemas and kept him so filled >with carrot juice that his skin was tinted yellow during much of his >childhood. > >Trouble didn't end for Cohen once he got free of his dominating mother. So >controversial was his neutron bomb that it provided a rare point of >agreement among leading Cold War figures on both sides. > >Soviet leader Nikita Khruschev denounced it as a manifestation of the >"bestial ethics" of imperialism. He said the neutron bomb was the moral >equivalent of "wanting to kill a man in such a way that his suit will not >be stained with blood, in order to appropriate the suit." > >Sen. Mark Hatfield of Oregon also was harsh in his assessment. He said the >weapon belonged to "the realm of the unconscionable." > >But Cohen continued to insist that the neutron bomb, all stockpiles of >which were ordered destroyed by President Bush after the Persian Gulf War, >is the most moral weapon ever conceived. > >Unlike the atomic bomb or the more powerful hydrogen bomb, the neutron bomb >was not designed to create a huge and destructive explosive force. Instead, >it releases a burst of radiation that can kill or incapacitate enemy troops >while sparing civilians and the cities in which they live. > >Cohen said he first recognized the need for such a bomb upon visiting Korea >in 1951 and finding Seoul in approximately the same condition as Hiroshima >after it was hit with an atomic bomb a few years earlier. Horrified at the >scale of destruction, which in Seoul's case was caused by conventional >weapons, Cohen says he saw the need for a "discreet" nuclear device that >could achieve the desired military objectives without causing immense >collateral damage. > >Because its destructiveness can largely be confined to combatants, Cohen >said, the neutron bomb complies with the ancient Christian doctrine of >"just war" that says a military response should be as discriminating as >possible. Pope John Paul I apparently agreed, and in 1978 gave Cohen a >peace medal. > >But the anti-nuclear bomb lobby didn't regard the neutron bomb as humane, >and argued that it made nuclear war more palatable. Many in the nation's >military also disliked it, though often for a different reason. > >After finally refining his concept in the late 1950s, Cohen said he >personally briefed then-President Eisenhower and the head of the Strategic >Air Command, Gen. Curtis LeMay, but found that neither of them was >interested. He said they feared that development of the neutron bomb would >drain resources from efforts to create hydrogen bombs of the highest >possible yield. > >Cohen said LeMay told him: "You know what I want from you nuclear guys? I >want one bomb that will wipe out the whole Soviet Union." > > > In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material is distributed without charge or profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this type of information for non-profit research and educational purposes only. People Against Racist Terror (PART) PO Box 1055 Culver City CA 90232 Tel.: 310-288-5003 E-mail: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> URL: <http://people.we.mediaone.net/part2001/index.html> Order our quarterly: "Turning the Tide:Journal of Anti-Racist Activism, Research & Education" End the racist death penalty! Free Mumia Abu-Jamal, Alejandrina Torres, and all political prisoners and P.O.W.'s in U.S. prisons! ------------------------------------------------------------------------ We have a new web site! http://www.onelist.com Onelist: The leading provider of free email community services
