Word: baldwinism
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...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...
...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...
...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...
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...
...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...