8. Should this happen, the pressure for public showing
of the declassified film will become very strong.

Indeed, the

pressure already has started on the basis of rumors about the

content of the film,
9, Although the TOP SECRET and SECRET versions of the film
were previously shown to limited audiences whose official duties
required their viewing it, one report on the film's content |
already has been published (the November 1953 issue of FORTUNE

DOE ARCHIVES

magazine, page 121):

"There is little doubt that the small atoll upon which
the device, forerunner of the H-bomb, was detonated

was indeed blasted off the face of the Pacific, Where it
had been was left a submarine crater several hundred feet
deep and wide enough to swallow a dozen Pentagons,
The
fireball was more than three miles in diameter,
The
radioactive cloud that materialized from it soared toa

height of perhaps twenty miles,

in the span of
probably twice
mentioned.
If
in destructive

well into the stratosphere,

a few minutes, and the energy released was
the four to five megaton estimates usually
that was so, the Eniwetok experiment was,
power released, equal to between 400 and

500 Hiroshimas."

On November 16,

1953, the Associated Press correspondent assigned

to the Department of Defense placed a request with the Public
Information Service that correspondents be permitted to view

the film at least for useful background informationinreporting
to the general public as accurately as possible within security
limitations progress on the government's national defense programs.
10. Resisting the pressure for public showing of a declassified film will place the AEC in the position of withholding

material which will not affect the common defense and security,
according to its own official determination, and which is of
absorbing interest to the American public.

It seems prudent

to the Division of Information Services to évoid this dilemma
py determining that following the showing to the Mayor's Con-

e

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