()P[MOS & Vll-VVS inThe X-Rated WeaponnSam Cohen: The Truth About thenNeutron Bomb: The Inventor of thenBomb Speaks Out; X^llUam Morrow;nNew York.nby Will MorriseyntCr*n1 his book marks the first time an’nuclear hawk’ has defected from thenAmerican nuclear establishment,” exclaimsnthe dust jacket. One expects anothern”What have I done?” lament, guaranteednto make its author a celebrity onnthe church and college lecture circuit.nPartisans of disarmament will surely buynit, hoping to confirm their prejudices. Ifnso, I hope they read it Fbr Sam Cohen (whonworked at Los Alamos during World Warnn, then became a specialist in radiologicalnwarfare, inventing the neutron warheadnduring the late 1950’s) refuses to seenhimself as a Dr. Frankenstein:nSpeaking candidly and truthfully, Inwill say that I’ve never had any moralnqualms or feelings of guilt about mynpursuits in this military field. I have alwaysnbelieved that the United Statesnmust have strong and effective militarynforces—especially nuclear forces.nHis patience with dovish colleagues isnlimited: “many respected scientists . . .nknow better intellectually but are emotionallynhelpless to look objectively atnissues involving the military use of nuclearnradiation.” Or, still more bluntiy,n[TJhere has been one thing that particularlynimpressed—better still, depressedn—me about most renowned Americannscientists. This is their ability to be impeccablyncarefiil and responsible whennworking in their fields of specializationn(if they’re not, their colleaguesnwill catch them and even punish them)nbut their sloppiness and irresponsibilitynwhen giving their scientific opinionnon nuclear weapons when they havenMr. Morrisey is associate editor ofnInterpretation.n6nChronicles of Cttlturenan ideological bias against them, becausenthey know that their colleagues,nwho share their bias, don’t give andamn when they do.nAmong these are scientists prominent innthe nuclear-fi-eeze campaign: the late Dr.nGeorge Kistiakowsky, Eisenhower’snscience adviser, whose “strong ideologicalnconviction that a nuclear test bannwas imperative” led him to support thenfirst such ban (1958), abrogated by thenSoviets three years later; Dr. JeromenWeisner of MIT, who campaigned vigorouslynfor John Kermedy and evidentiynhas maintained his partisan allegiance;nand Nobelist Hans Bethe, who claimed,nvidth Oppenheimer, that the hydrogennbomb could not be built. Cohen dispelsnthe popular illusion that scientists speaknobjectively vAiea they engage in politics.nCiohen divides his book into two sections.nThe first four chapters contain hisnaccount of the neutron warhead’s inventionnand the controversies it provoked.nThe Pentagon had wanted nuclear warheadsnthat could generate a powerfulnblast, intense heat, and radiation—in thatnorder. Cohen wanted to reverse thatnpriority, for two purposes: to develop anwarhead whose high radioactivity wouldncause the explosive in an incoming nu­nnnclear warhead to decompose (e.g., thenSprint anti-ICBM missile which resultedn”many years later”); to develop a shortrangenmissile warhead whose intense butnshort-lived radiation would make it “thenfirst batdefield weapon… in history [that]nwould allow a guaranteed, hi^ily effectivendefense against an invading army withoutnproducing wholesale physical destructionnof the country being invaded.”nThe Pentagon, particularly the Navy,nchampioned the neutron warhead firomn1959 to 1961, not so much because itncared about the weapon itself but becausenit wanted to end the Eisenhower/nKhrushchev nuclear test ban. Then asntoday, the Soviets denounced neutronntechnology, with Khrushchev averring,n”This is the morality of monsters!” Similarnprotestations from the community ofnconscience recurred until September 1,n1961, when the Politburo announced anunilateral end to the ban, followed byn”the most massive series of tests the worldnhas ever seen.” Having arranged theirnexperiments in advance, the Sovietsnbriefly gained a lead in nuclear-weaponsntechnology. (Cohen has the good mannersnnot to insist that readers associatenthis tactic with Mr. Andropov’s recommendedn”fireeze.”) Afl;er this debacle, thenPentagon no longer needed the neutronnwarhead as a weapon in bureaucraticnwarfare; interest in it disappeared untilnthe mid-1970’s. By then, the policy ofndetente had yielded a Soviet advantagenin European ground troops so strikingnthat even President Jimmy Carter noticednit. He planned the neutron warhead’snproduction and deployment, then renegednafter Brezhnev, Senator Mark O.nHatfield, and other peace-loving soulsninveighed against the “capitalist bomb”nthat “destroys people but not property.”nCohen remarks:nThe problem is that any agreement,ntacit or explicit, to effect a mutualnforswearing of N-bomb production isnnonsense. There is no conceivablen