26 September 1965

Professor Hans A. Bethe

Physics Department

Cornell University

Ithaca, New York

Dear Hans:

I write to you, the Chairman of the Board of Sponsors of the Bulletin of the atomic Scientists, to communicate to you my decision to resign from the Board of Sponsors.

I ask that you inform the Editor of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, in order that my name may be removed from the list of members given on the title page of the Bulletin.

You know about the trouble that I had with the Editor of the Bulletin in my effort to get him to publish suitable corrections and retractions about the statements published in the first two attacks on me that appeared in the Bulletin. You also know about the third episode – the publication, without my previous knowledge, of a statement by Bentley Glass in the June 1963 Bulletin, containing obviously untrue or seriously misleading statements about me. These statements were made with page references to my book No More War! As I have pointed out in my answer, published in the September 1963 issue of the Bulletin, reference to my book shows that Bentley Glass has misrepresented my statements in a serious way, such as to tend to damage my reputation and to support his earlier allegations that I had mad flat misstatements or scarcely trustworthy extrapolations from the existing facts.

I feel that the Editor of the Bulletin should, in justice to me (a member of the Board of Sponsors), have checked the statements in the communication by Bentley Glass, before publishing this communication; moreover, I believe that he should have sent the communication by Bentley Glass to me, before publication, and have given me the opportunity to comment on it with respect to its reliability and suitability for publication, or to prepare a reply to be published in the same issue. The delay of three months before publishing my reply and the Editor’s half-hearted apology is so great that the publication of the reply and the apology can diminish only in part the damage done to me by the publication in June of the Bentley Glass communication.

I am accordingly forced to resign from the Board of Sponsors of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. I am not willing to continue to sponsor Eugene Rabinowitch as Editor of the Bulletin.

Yours truly,

Linus Pauling:hpg