Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, March 24, 1995 TAG: 9503240126
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DAN STOBER KNIGHT-RIDDER/TRIBUNE
DATELINE: LIVERMORE, CALIF. LENGTH: Medium
Some of America's nuclear-weapon secrets soon may be available on CD-ROM.
Chuck Hansen, a Sunnyvale, Calif., engineer who is one of America's premier collectors of declassified bomb documents, is negotiating a deal with publisher Simon & Schuster. When the contract is signed, all 4,000 pages of his manuscript on the technical history of U.S. nuclear weapons will be squeezed onto one thin disk.
From there, it is just a few pokes at the keyboard or clicks on the mouse for the historian, student, intelligence agent or amateur bomb hacker to find specific data on a particular nuclear test, hydrogen bomb or weapon design concept. Hansen hopes to turn his idea into an information service, with an updated CD issued annually.
This is new territory for CD-ROM publishing, but Simon & Schuster Interactive thinks it has potential.
``The audience is not as narrow as you might think,'' said Julie Volcof, who's working on the project. ``The people who are interested in the subject are really devoted to it. They'll buy most anything written about it.''
Hansen, 47, first came to public attention in 1979, when he supported the Progressive magazine's effort to publish an article on the secrets of the hydrogen bomb.
The CD is an outgrowth of a book he published in 1988, ``U.S. Nuclear Weapons, the Secret History.'' Crammed with photos and text and footnotes, it is a cross between a history book and a Sears catalog of nuclear weapons. It did not make the best-seller lists, but it has since earned a reputation among the nuclear cognoscenti as the unclassified bible of weapons data.
Techno-thriller author Tom Clancy plumbed Hansen's book in writing ``The Sum of All Fears,'' his 1991 novel about a terrorist hydrogen bomb. Clancy has his own name for ``U.S. Nuclear Weapons, the Secret History.'' He says he calls it the ``Holy S---!'' book because that is what his bomber and submarine buddies say when he shows them the nuclear details Hansen has published.
Clancy is not sure whether sharing Hansen's data with the world, on a CD, is wise. ``In some ways I think so, but in some ways I think not. The information in that book is pretty good. In some cases a little too good.''
Writer Richard Rhodes, who won the Pulitzer Prize for his 1987 book, ``The Making of the Atomic Bomb,'' used Hansen's 4,000 pages in researching his new book, ``Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb.''
``Chuck is someone whose work, as it has expanded, was in search of an appropriate technology to display it. Nobody is publishing four- or five-volume works anymore. It just isn't done. Suddenly, here is the technology,'' Rhodes said, referring to the ability of a single CD to store massive amounts of information.
``He really does have a passion. There's a lot of indignation on his part. He's an honest citizen who's indignant that the Soviets knew all this and it was the American citizens who didn't.''
Hansen sees his work as a public service, helping the Pentagon and the Energy Department realize what they've declassified. ``They have no idea of what's out there,'' he said.
by CNB