THE THREE FROM GENERAL ELECTRIC

But the case of the three senior engineers who resigned from GE's Nuclear Energy Division in San Jose in early February seemed different, at least at first sight. They were nuclear engineers in responsible positions, with an average of 18 years experience in the field. In their news conference they appeared as sober citizens, displaying neither Ed Koupal's rabble-rousing hysteria, nor the amateurish sophistry of David Dinosaur Con-me.

Part of the shock was that here were three nuclear engineers, one of them a safety engineer, who had nothing new to say, but who made such childish statements as "I am no longer convinced of the technical safety of nuclear power."

No nuclear engineer worth his salt has ever been convinced of the safety of nuclear or any other power, for all power is highly dangerous. The real point is that nuclear power is safer than any other, bar none. But apparently you can work on nuclear safety systems for so long that you forget the basic idea of safety.

Or can you? Some ugly background soon leaked out.

All three are members of the para-religious Creative Initiative Foundation, and their "act of conscience" was carefully orchestrated for maximum effect by James Burch, who is also President of Project Survival, a fanatical anti-nuclear group led almost entirely by C.I.F. men. The C.I.F. hooked several G.E. nuclear engineers by promises of "personal improvement," "consciousness raising" and the usual come-ons used by the parareligious gurus. But only three (of at least eight in this group) could be brainwashed by repetitious emphasis that "God did not create plutonium, and therefore it is evil." [Who created the plutonium in Gabon, Africa? And, for that matter, does Our Daily Bread grow on trees?]

This is known from one of the ex-recruits, Walter Schwegman, who quit the C.I.F. because "its leaders refuse to allow any deviation from the religious-political 'party line'," and from the other ex-recruits who describe the C.I.F. as a tightly knit organization imposing doctrine from above.

The three will continue to draw money under their G.E. profit sharing plan, and Mrs. Schwegman reports that one of the converts' wives tried to reassure her about financial support after quitting at G.E., referring to the financial muscle of the C.I.F., which operates out of a $500,000 compound in Portola Valley. "Any organization that can raise $20,000 in one night," she is quoted by Mrs. Schwegman, "can easily support six or eight G.E. families."

All of this background was dutifully ignored by most mass media. (With some notable exceptions: We salute David Perlman of the San Francisco Chronicle, and the editorial staff of KNBC-TV4, Burbank, Calif.)

But money is not the real point. In other cases (which may follow), the financial part of the transaction may remain unknown or, indeed, may not even exist. Publicity, self-righteousness, esteem by the ignorant-but-numerous are some of the bribes that can be far more enticing than dollars.

For when science becomes entangled in ideology, it is not the phony rebel, but the man loyal to his scientific convictions who is required to display courage; all the spineless mediocrities need do is to conform to the times and parrot the slogans. Only a few years ago, Harvard psychologist R. Herrnstein concluded that the ability of carrier pigeons to learn was dependent on heredity more than on environment; next thing he knew, Harvard erupted in protest demonstrations against "Herrnstein the racist;" before he had even started his lecture on pigeons at a Midwest university, he had to be whisked off in a police car to save him from an angry crowd of fascists of the liberal variety; and as late as last year, his name was still being dragged through the lowest sewer, the mouth of Moscow's lackey Gus Hall, who called him a "leading exponent of Nazi-like poison."

Something similar is beginning to happen in the nuclear power issue. The hate mail that this monthly receives is always welcome and highly amusing (we'd print it if we had the space), but there are more serious cases. There are nuclear scientists who have stopped writing to the papers because their children are being harassed by their schoolmates; and their entire profession is being deluged by a flood of vicious calumnies. Most can stand the heat, but some can't, and that includes the three pitiful cop-outs from San Jose.

They have chosen the easy and glamorous life of the anti-nuclear professional, surrounded by adulating reporters and supported by dozens of wellheeled "educational" foundations, of which the C.I.F. is only one. Like Ex-Lax physicist Koupal (AtE Jan. 76), they will probably have their picture in Science, published by, of all things, the AAAS, the Am. Assn. of the Advancement (or Abolition?) of Science, chaired by Margaret Mead, an anthropologist whose anti-nuclear zeal is medieval (AtE Jan. 76).

None of them know the names of the people who die coughing out their lungs because too much power is fossil-fired and too little is nuclear. None of them know the names of the cancer victims who cannot be protected from fossil-fired wastes, but who could have been protected from nuclear wastes.

Koupal and Mead can always plead abysmal ignorance (which no one will dispute), but how well will the San Jose Three sleep when they are reminded of what they know, or ought to have known?