ONE WAY TO GET A CONSENSUS

Among the astronomic number of Washington institutes, committees, lobbies and other bodies living off your taxes, by grants from the wealthy foundations, by direct panhandling, and most likely, by all three simultaneously, there is something called The Nuclear Control Institute. Last summer it published a 33-page "Report of the International Task Force on Prevention of Nuclear Terrorism" ($12, NCI, 1000 Conn. Ave., NW/#704, DC 20036), which was written up grandiosely in Science (7/11/86), thus warning all seasoned Science readers that it wasn't worth much.

[The Science article did contain some news, though, even if not directly connected with the report. Theodore Taylor, co-author of the influential Nuclear Theft (1976) and habitual panic-maker on the subject, has changed his mind on the danger of homemade plutonium bombs, which he now considers much lower than when he wrote the book.

Perhaps somebody showed him the curve reproduced above.]

There is nevertheless something extraordinary about the document, and that is its signatories. It includes such genuine scientists as Dr Harold Agnew, former director of the Los Alamos Labs, and General Electric's Dr Bertram Wolfe, present President of the Amer. Nuclear Soc. But they are in the company of such sleazy professional antinukes and disinformation spreaders as Bernard Feld (erstwhile editor-in-chief of the notorious Bull. Atom. Sci.) and such semiliterate bureaucrats as former NRC Commissioner Victor Gilinsky, who understands nothing about nuclear safety, and considerably less about nuclear terrorism. How can you get such disparate men to sign the same document?

And so forth. The report is an insult to any garbage can, unfit for anything but insertion in the Congressional Record.

Not long ago, I gave speech in Dallas, Tex., on "Nuclear Terrorism and Proliferation" to a convention of Doctors for Disaster Preparedness and the Amer. Civil Defense Assn. It is available on cassette tape for $11 (video tape $38) from Satellite Broadcasting, Box 5364. Rockville, MD 20851. I suspect readers will find my treatment and recommendations somewhat more outspoken.