96Chapter 3|Risks to Public Safetypermissible. Ultimately, it appeared that the government in this case had been more concerned about preventing embarrassment than about protecting national security, strictly speaking. The document, after all, detailed past wartime decision making (much of which was of questionable quality) that had occurred some three to twenty years previously.THE H-BOMB CASEProbably the closest this nation has come to stopping publication on the basis of national security was the 1979 case of United States v. Progressive, Inc., though outside developments essentially dissolved the conflict before it could reach the appellate courts. The case arose when a freelance writer for the Progressive magazine, a political journal, completed an article describing in detail the design and operation of a hydrogen bomb. Prior to publication, a copy of the article was sent to the U.S. Department of Energy with a request that the department verify the accuracy of the technical information. But the government decided instead that portions of the article should not be published. The author and his editors claimed that all information in the article came from unclassified, public sources and would convey no secrets. The government nevertheless argued that the article was dangerous because it connected and explained various H-bomb concepts in a manner not available in the public realm. It claimed that portions of the article must be classified as estricted data�under the Atomic Energy Act, and the government went to federal court to stop publication. The District Court, after wading through stacks of affidavits containing complex scientific information, decided to issue the preliminary injunction. The court, groping for some specific test, concluded that the government had et the test enunciated by two Justices in the New York Times case, namely, grave, direct, immediate and irreparable harm to the United States.�2 The judge opinion stated in part:Does the article provide a o-it-yourself�guide for the hydrogen bomb? Probably not. . . . One does not build a hydrogen bomb in the basement. However, the article could possibly provide sufficient information to allow a medium-size nation to move faster in developing a hydrogen weapon. It could provide a ticket to bypass blind alleys. . . . What is involved here is information dealing with the most destructive weapon in the history of mankind, information of sufficient destructive potential to nullify the right to free speech and to endanger the right to life itself.13The Progressive promptly announced it would appeal, and the nation news media began bracing for an ultimate, landmark ruling that many feared would restrict freedom of the press. Unlike the Pentagon Papers case, which was
