Howard Morland
| Howard Morland | |
|---|---|
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| Born |
September 14, 1942 Birmingham, Alabama |
| Occupation | journalist, author, activist |
Howard Morland (born September 14, 1942) is an American journalist and activist against nuclear weapons who, in 1979, became famous for apparently discovering the "secret" of the hydrogen bomb (the Teller–Ulam design) and publishing it after a lengthy censorship 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.
Morland graduated from Emory University in 1965 and entered Air Force pilot training, at Lubbock, Texas, aspiring to a career in astronautics or commercial aviation. 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, gave a lecture in Honolulu, 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 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 world-wide.
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