Howard Morland (born September 14, 1942) is an American journalist and

activist Activism consists of efforts to promote, impede, direct or intervene in social, political, economic or environmental reform with the desire to make changes in society toward a perceived common good. Forms of activism range from mandate build ...

against

nuclear weapon A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from nuclear reactions, either fission (fission or atomic bomb) or a combination of fission and fusion reactions (thermonuclear weapon), producing a nuclear exp ...

s who, in 1979, became famous for apparently discovering the "secret" of the

hydrogen bomb A thermonuclear weapon, fusion weapon or hydrogen bomb (H-bomb) is a second-generation nuclear weapon design. Its greater sophistication affords it vastly greater destructive power than first-generation nuclear bombs, a more compact size, a lo ...

(the Teller–Ulam design) and publishing it after a lengthy

censorship Censorship is the suppression of speech, public communication, or other information. This may be done on the basis that such material is considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or "inconvenient". Censorship can be conducted by governmen ...

attempt by the Department of Energy ('' United States v. The Progressive''). Because of some similarities in experience, he became outspoken in the protest against the detention of Mordechai Vanunu.

Career

Morland graduated from

Emory University Emory University is a private university, private research university in Atlanta, Georgia, United States. It was founded in 1836 as Emory College by the Methodist Episcopal Church and named in honor of Methodist bishop John Emory. Its main campu ...

in 1965 and entered

Air Force An air force in the broadest sense is the national military branch that primarily conducts aerial warfare. More specifically, it is the branch of a nation's armed services that is responsible for aerial warfare as distinct from an army aviati ...

pilot training, at Lubbock,

Texas Texas ( , ; or ) is the most populous U.S. state, state in the South Central United States, South Central region of the United States. It borders Louisiana to the east, Arkansas to the northeast, Oklahoma to the north, New Mexico to the we ...

, aspiring to a career in astronautics or commercial aviation. pp 23, 24. As a C-141 jet transport pilot, he was trained to carry nuclear weapons as cargo. He noted that the full-size bomb casings used in training were astonishingly small, of a size that could easily be mishandled. His wartime assignment was flying from California to Vietnam two to three times a month, returning with combat veterans and the bodies of soldiers who were killed in the war. Having opposed the war since before it began, he left the Air Force and embarked on a two-year trip around the world starting and ending in Hawaii. In fifteen months abroad, he passed through two dozen countries of southern Asia, the Middle East, and Europe, acquiring a personal feel for cultural diversity and global issues. Back in Hawaii, he surfed big waves and flew ten-passenger "Twin Beech" aircraft on all-island aerial tours. As a flight instructor, he developed a novel method of teaching new students to land an airplane by the end of the first lesson. When Dennis Meadows, co-author of ''

The Limits to Growth ''The Limits to Growth'' (''LTG'') is a 1972 report that discussed the possibility of exponential Economic growth, economic and population growth with finite supply of resources, studied by computer simulation. The study used the World3 computer ...

'', gave a lecture in

Honolulu Honolulu ( ; ) is the List of capitals in the United States, capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Hawaii, located in the Pacific Ocean. It is the county seat of the Consolidated city-county, consolidated City and County of Honol ...

, Morland took him surfing and was invited to join his new graduate study program at Dartmouth, where, after a year of course work, Morland joined the New England anti-nuclear

Clamshell Alliance The Clamshell Alliance is an Anti-nuclear groups in the United States, anti-nuclear organization founded in 1976 to oppose the Seabrook Station nuclear power plant in the U.S. state of New Hampshire. The group was co-founded by Paul Gunter, Howi ...

and became a full-time organizer. His objection to nuclear power was its potential for reactor melt-down, but his real concern was nuclear weapons, which he wanted to see abolished worldwide. In 1978, magazine editor Samuel H. Day recruited Morland to write a series of articles on nuclear weapons for ''

The Progressive ''The Progressive'' is a left-leaning American magazine and website covering politics and culture. Founded in 1909 by U.S. senator Robert M. La Follette Sr. and co-edited with his wife Belle Case La Follette, it was originally called ''La Foll ...

'', a magazine based in Madison, Wisconsin. The federal government tried to halt publication of his second article, "The H-Bomb Secret: How We Got It, Why We're Telling It", taking the magazine to court. Publication was blocked for six months by government intervention which provoked a landmark First Amendment legal case, United States v. The Progressive. The government's case for censorship collapsed when the information in question was shown to be in the public domain. Ironically, the court case produced new information that enabled Morland to correct a number of errors in his original article. The article is often erroneously described as a set of instructions for building a thermonuclear bomb. Morland has responded that such a bomb could only be built by a nation state; moreover, the information is conceptual — no engineering details are provided in the article. According to Morland, the article's purpose was to help energize the Ban-the-bomb movement and merge it with the broader

Anti-nuclear movement The Anti-nuclear war movement is a new social movements, social movement that opposes various nuclear technology, nuclear technologies. Some direct action groups, environmental movements, and professional organisations have identified them ...

. During the 1980s Morland worked on

Capitol Hill Capitol Hill is a neighborhoods in Washington, D.C., neighborhood in Washington, D.C., located in both the Northeast, Washington, D.C., Northeast and Southeast, Washington, D.C., Southeast quadrants. It is bounded by 14th Street SE & NE, F S ...

as an arms-control lobbyist with the Coalition for a New Foreign and Military Policy, a group that (under a slightly different name) had played a key role in forcing the

House of Representatives House of Representatives is the name of legislative bodies in many countries and sub-national entities. In many countries, the House of Representatives is the lower house of a bicameral legislature, with the corresponding upper house often ...

to begin publishing recorded vote tallies on amendments to bills during the Vietnam war era. Morland published the group's annual voting record, wrote articles, toured the college and activist lecture circuits, was active in the

Nuclear Weapons Freeze Campaign The Nuclear Freeze campaign was a mass movement in the United States during the 1980s to secure an agreement between the U.S. and Soviet governments to halt the testing, production, and deployment of nuclear weapons. Background The idea of simpl ...

, and specialized in connecting activists from the most liberal, i.e., most urbanized, Congressional districts to an annual effort to de-fund the Navy's Trident II D-5 ballistic missile. At the end of the decade, he worked at the House of Representatives, as the military legislative analyst for the liberal Democratic Study Group. After the

Cold War The Cold War was a period of global Geopolitics, geopolitical rivalry between the United States (US) and the Soviet Union (USSR) and their respective allies, the capitalist Western Bloc and communist Eastern Bloc, which lasted from 1947 unt ...

ended, he created multi-media training programs for a company started by a graduate school colleague, and started his own residential carpentry company, Morland Designs. In retirement, he participates in kayak races and works on Wikipedia articles about nuclear weapons and kayaking. His wife, Barbara Morland, retired in 2017 from a thirty-year career at the

Library of Congress The Library of Congress (LOC) is a research library in Washington, D.C., serving as the library and research service for the United States Congress and the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It also administers Copyright law o ...

, the last twenty years as head of the Main Reading Room. They have two daughters and four grandchildren.

References

External links

Picture of Morland and his model H-bomb
from 1983.

(2004 article, describes thought process in coming up with the "secret")

by Howard Morland, further thoughts on bomb "secrets"
''First-Strike Nuclear Warfare''
by Howard Morland, nuclear war slideshow {{DEFAULTSORT:Morland, Howard American investigative journalists American political writers American anti–nuclear weapons activists Nuclear secrecy 20th-century American journalists 21st-century American journalists American male journalists United States Air Force officers 1942 births Living people

Career

See also

References

Further reading

External links