Fundraising 2012/Translation/Howard Morland video (captions)

00:00:00.700,00:00:08.154 So, I was on assignment for the "Progressive" magazine, and I discovered what is known as the "H-bomb secret."

00:00:08.154,00:00:10.825 So that was one of the articles I wrote.

00:00:10.825,00:00:18.994 The government got ahold of it, and took us to court, censored the article, stopped the publication,

00:00:18.994,00:00:22.093 and we were in court for about six months

00:00:22.653,00:00:26.869 Over the course of six months we "won over" the press and the arms control people

00:00:26.869,00:00:34.069 and we convinced the government that the information I was writing about was in the public domain anyway.

00:00:34.114,00:00:35.296 so they dropped the case and we won.

00:00:35.296,00:00:36.959 My name is Howard Morland.

00:00:36.959,00:00:43.273 I've been called a "whistle blower," but I was actually just a journalist covering a story.

00:00:45.524,00:00:49.024 I came in contact with this guy named John Coster-Mullen, who was a truck driver.

00:00:49.000,00:00:54.000 who had written a self-published book on the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs.

00:00:54.929,00:00:59.608 and he had no expertise in science at all,

00:00:59.608,00:01:08.329 but he had this weird idea that he would start going to reunions of the people who dropped the bomb.

00:01:08.500,00:01:12.876 even though he wasn't even their generation.

00:01:13.336,00:01:17.674 But he went there, he started making friends with these people, talking to them.

00:01:17.674,00:01:22,889 They started telling him what they knew about the Hiroshima bomb and the Nagasaki bomb.

00:01:23.348,00:01:29.198 And when I looked at his evidence, I was convinced, and I asked him - I said the Wikipedia article has got it wrong.

00:01:29.210,00:01:29.965 Do you want to fix that?

00:01:29.965,00:01:31.673 And he said, "I already tried."

00:01:31.673,00:01:39.788 I submitted a correction to the Wikipedia article, and this guy named Fastfission, who - we don't know who he is.

00:01:39.788,00:01:41.750 He has always remained anonymous.

00:01:41.746,00:01:50.890 he said that this is not credible information because you don't have anything you can cite except your own self-published book,

00:01:50.887,00:01:54.030 and every other book in the world says you're wrong.

00:01:54.486,00:02:01.810 So I said, well, I think we can fix that, even though I knew nothing about it. This was my introduction to Wikipedia.

00:02:01.810,00:02:04.410 I said, I think we can fix that.

00:02:04.407,00:02:06.750 And I got Richard Rhodes, who wrote a Pulitzer Prize winning book, The Making of the Atomic Bomb,

00:02:10.851,00:02:20.700 Stan Norris, who had written the biography of Leslie Groves, the General who ran the [Manhattan] Project.

00:02:21.156,00:02:29.260 and a couple of other people, and we all wrote into the Talk Page and told Fastfission,

00:02:29.265,00:02:35.490 we've all got published books. We haven't said anything about this topic, but we read this guy's book, and we think he's right,

00:02:35.494,00:02:37.120 and everybody else is wrong.

00:02:37.116,00:02:41.960 And so Fastfission then yielded, and I wrote the correction.

00:02:42.394,00:02:47.410 Wikipedia is one of the most amazing institutions I've ever encountered.

00:02:47.477,00:02:49.610 I don't know anything like it.

00:02:50.059,00:02:58.980 It is a testament to the desire of people to know things and to share information.

00:03:00.096,00:03:03.370 Despite the fact that from the beginning of time,

00:03:03.371,00:03:07.670 when people started learning how to do stuff, I'm sure they tried to keep it secret.

00:03:07.670,00:03:11.320 I know that people who write books, especially in the nuclear weapons field,

00:03:11.325,00:03:16.870 largely they are professors, or people working at think tanks; they have a salary.

00:03:16.871,00:03:20.120 They write these books. The books don't make any money.

00:03:20.125,00:03:23.120 They are read by very few people.

00:03:23.500,00:03:29.650 But they write the book, they give a seminar, but the Wikipedia article that I wrote on nuclear weapons design

00:03:32.812,00:03:36.390 gets, I think, the last time I looked, it had something like 400 hits a day.

00:03:36.390,00:03:39.860 Nobody's book gets that much publicity.

00:03:39.858,00:03:46.970 And I don't get any money for it, but I produce this information, and

00:03:46.968,00:03:49.240 somehow it's getting out there, and people are looking at it.

00:03:49.235,00:03:55.600 So, that's the satisfaction of being a writer whose work is read.

00:03:56.178,00:03:57.100 Director: Victor Grigas

00:03:57.105,00:03:57.660 Codirector: David Grossman

00:03:57.659,00:03:58.310 Producer: Zack Exley

00:03:58.308,00:03:58.820 Director of Photography: Pruitt Y. Allen

00:03:58.820,00:03:59.500 Video Photographers: Jack Harris, Adam Parr, Matthew Storck

00:03:59.505,00:04:00.030 Portrait Photographers: Adam Novak, Karen Sayre

00:04:00.028,00:04:00.490 Makeup: Melissa Klein

00:04:00.492,00:04:01.880 Interviewers: Alma Chapa, Jonathan Curiel, Stephen Geer, Dan McSwain, Corey O'Brien, Frank O'Brien, Jacob Wilson

00:04:01.882,00:04:03.130 Production Coordinators: Megan Hernandez, Bryony Jones, Beatrice Springborn

00:04:03.129,00:04:03.950 Production Assistants: Toby Hessenauer, Kristin Rigsby

00:04:03.953,00:04:04.650 Video Editors: Justine Gendron, Victor Grigas, Jawad Qadir

00:04:04.651,00:04:05.180 Writer: Desirina Boskovich

00:04:05.177,00:04:06.240 Transcription Services: Kate Aleo, Michael Beattie, Karen Callier, Petro Leigh, Mimi Li, Jacqui Pastor, Kristie Robinson, Brittany Turner, Susan Walling

00:04:06.245,00:04:06.820 English Closed-Captioning: AlanKelly VerbatimIT