76 



Sharp: I wondered what you thought was the role of Pugwash and the 

 larger picture of international scientific cooperation? Is 

 there a larger picture? 



Revelle: It was gradually superseded by smaller bi-lateral groups 

 between the US and the Soviet Union. For example, the 

 present group, chaired by Murph Goldberger of Cal Tech, the 

 National Academy Committee on International Security and 

 Arms Control, which has met with the Russians several times 

 the last few years, in Moscow and in this country both, 

 [lost on tape] is a member of it. Pete Pinofsky is a 

 member. Mostly physicists. Not entirely so. 



The guiding spirit was a man with the wonderful name 

 of Spurgeon Keeney, the son of an older Spurgeon, a 

 one-generation older Spurgeon Keeney who was very much 

 interested in birth control, spreading contraceptives 

 everywhere. This man has spent his entire life in the arms 

 control business, working in the White House and later in 

 the academy and in the Arms Control Agency. There was a 

 previous committee like that headed by Paul Doty of Harvard. 

 I'm pretty sure Paul Doty is a member of this committee too. 

 This was an idea invented by Tom Malone. He was foreign 

 secretary of the academy. 



The Pugwash has had the characteristic that its most 

 effective efforts have been in small symposia organized 

 several times a year when people want to have a symposium on 

 some particular subject. Like security in Europe, for 

 example, or confidence-building measures like better 

 communications and things like that. Or some other specific 

 subject — what to do about nerve gases, or what to do about 

 biological warfare, and is there biological warfare? Is 

 this yellow rain, for example, something deposited by bees 

 or by airplanes, and so forth. Those have been I think 

 rather effective. 



The big international meetings I don't think have been 

 very effective in the last few years. They probably were 

 fairly effective to begin with. 



At Udaipur we had a battle in the last day of the 

 conference trying to arrive at a conference report or 

 conference resolution. The sticking point was Vietnam. It 

 couldn't have been Udaipur. 



Sharp: This was sometime in '68? 



Revelle: Udaipur was in '63. We had hardly been in Vietnam at all at 

 that time. It was really under Johnson that we intervened 

 and under Nixon. So it must have been at a later meeting. 



Anyhow, this was a nightmare of a meeting. It went to 

 about midnight, after starting to meet about three in the 

 afternoon. 



Sharp: What was the main problem? 



Revelle: The problem was that they wanted to condemn the United 



States for its intervention in Vietnam. I was one of the 



