THE ATOM: The Masked Marvel

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Never did so many trust so few so blindly as the people of the U.S. and the rest of the free world trust the members of the Atomic Energy Commission.

These almost unknown men are responsible for making the weapon that holds in check all-out Communist aggression. They spend billions of public funds, tie up a good part of U.S. scientific and business brains, and operate an industrial empire that may be the pioneer of a new technological era. The AEC controls a land area half again as big as Delaware—and is growing more rapidly than any great U.S. business ever did. Its investment in plant and equipment ($2,174,000,000) makes it bigger than General Motors Corp. At the end of its present expansion program, it will be bigger than U.S. Steel Corp. and General Motors combined. AEC will soon ask for (and probably get) another $6 billion. When this chunk of money is spent on new, strange, secret and dangerous equipment, the AEC will be bigger than the Bell Telephone System, now the largest business organization in the U.S.

What does this monstrous five-year-old do with its flooding billions? Does it spend them wisely and honestly? How efficient are its plants? How good are its newest bombs? How alive are its fabulous secret laboratories, on which the future safety of the U.S. largely depends?

In all other cases, such vitally important questions would be asked and answered continuously: in speeches, reports, official investigations and persistent probing by the press. Not so in the case of the AEC. All definite figures about its performance—from laboratories and uranium mines to finished atom bombs—are beyond the reach of the public. The men who possess the facts are forbidden on pain of death (Atomic Energy Act of 1946) to communicate them. For all the taxpayer knows, the AEC may be dropping his money down a bottomless hole.

There is no way around this situation. The fantastic secrecy is all the more fantastic because it is absolutely necessary. Anyone disposed to argue that point has been answered by Klaus Fuchs and his fellow atomic spies. Information given by them to the Russians probably saved months of research and effort on the part of the Kremlin's scientists.

What Can Be Seen. Only a few parts of the vast, weird underground world of atomic research and production stick up above the surface and can be reported.

In front of the white limestone building at No. 1901 Constitution Avenue, in Washington, stands a semicylindrical mirror. Guards sitting at ease inside the door can stare at its coldly gleaming curve and watch the whole face of the building without leaving cover. Along the building's window ledges run beams of infra-red light, each hitched to an alarm system. The windows themselves are intricately wired, and hidden wires thread through walls and partitions. No visitor is admitted to this stronghold except for a very good reason, and once a visitor is inside, he is watched and escorted continuously, even when he goes to the toilet.

No. 1901 Constitution Avenue is HQ of the AEC, headed by Gordon Dean, a 46-year-old lawyer (see box). No scientist, Dean was teaching law and running his 44-acre fruit ranch in California in 1949 when he was called to serve as a member of the commission under David Lilienthal, its first chairman.