Anti-Nuke Free

The vice president of Charles Stark Draper Laboratories. Cambridge's largest defense contracting firm, sharply criticized the Nuclear Free Cambridge movement last night at a meeting of the Harvard Conservative Club.

A dozen students, mostly club members, showed up to hear Joseph O'Connor, vice-president of Draper, in Eliot's dimly-lit Junior Common Room. Few expressed disagreement with the speaker.

The Nuclear Free Cambridge referendum, which would ban all research and other activities in Cambridge which contribute to the development of nuclear weapons, will come up on the November 8 ballot. Draper is the only company that has announced it will suffer if the proposal passes.

Draper is working with the Citizens Against Research Bans (CARB), a citizen group which has been campaigning against the proposal since last August and which lobbied unsuccessfully to keep the referendum off the ballot.

The struggle against the ban has been "very wearing," but the coalition is making progress, O'Connor said.

Before the campaign, he added, Draper Labs expected 60 percent of Cambridge's citizens to vote for the proposal's passage, 30 percent to oppose it, and 10 percent to be undecided. Now, O'Connor predicts the referendum has a 50-50 chance of passing.

Draper Labs researches and designs missile guidance systems. O'Connor said the firm revolutionized naval warfare in World War II by inventing a gun that enabled the U.S. to deal effectively with Kamikazes. Draper also developed the sensory instruments that guide a missile from its point of launch to another specific point on earth. "We do feel we've performed a national service. There is no organization in the world that is more capable in developing these systems," he said.

O'Connor said a law such as Nuclear Free Cambridge could wipe out Draper and discourage new high-tech companies from locating here Innumerable research projects at MIT and Harvard would suffer. The proposal could ban research even on how to make weapons safer, he added.

Also, 1800 employees of Draper Labs would be out of work, said O'Connor.

O'Connor also criticized the referendum as vague, calling the title "a hoax," since there are no weapons actually created or stored in Cambridge.

O'Connor also said the act would be unconstitutional, since separation of powers means that the federal, not local, government has the sole responsibility for the defense of the U.S. Provisions of the law could send company researchers to jail if they continue research that is legal in the U.S. but illegal in Cambridge, he added.

If the referendum does pass on November 8, O'Connor said. Draper Labs will attempt to band together with MIT, Harvard and other concerned institutions to fight it in Federal District Court.

He said CARB will engage in an intensive campaign for the next two weeks to pull as many votes away from the proposal as possible.