[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 40 (Monday, March 15, 1999)]
[Senate]
[Page S2672]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

      By Mr. MOYNIHAN:
  S. 618. A bill to provide for the declassification of the journal 
kept by Glenn T. Seaborg while serving as chairman of the Atomic Energy 
Commission; to the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources.


                          private relief bill

 Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, I rise today to introduce 
legislation I introduced in the 105th Congress to require the 
Department of Energy to return the journal Dr. Glenn T. Seaborg kept as 
Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission. Dr. Glenn T. Seaborg, who 
died on February 25 at the age of 86, was the co-discoverer of 
plutonium, and led a research team which created a total of nine 
elements, all of which are heavier than uranium. For this he was 
awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1951 which he shared with Dr. 
Edwin M. McMillan.
  Dr. Seaborg kept a journal while chairman of the AEC. The journal 
consisted of a diary written at home each evening, correspondence, 
announcements, minutes, and the like. He was careful about classified 
matters; nothing was included that could not be made public, and the 
journal was reviewed by the AEC before his departure in 1971. 
Nevertheless, more than a decade after his departure from the AEC, the 
Department of Energy subjected two copies of Dr. Seaborg's journals--
one of which it had borrowed--to a number of classification reviews. He 
came unannounced to my Senate office in September of 1997 to tell me of 
the problems he was having getting his journal released, saying it was 
something he wished to have resolved prior to his death. Although he 
has left us, it is fitting that his journal should finally be returned 
to his estate. This bill would do just that. I introduced a bill to 
return to Dr. Seaborg his journal in its original, unredacted form but 
to no avail, so bureaucracy triumphed. It was never returned. Now he 
has left us without having the satisfaction of resolving the fate of 
his journal. It is devastating that a man who gave so much of his life 
to his country was so outrageously treated by his own 
government.
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