The Object of Secret Science: Censoring Hormone Herbicides in the Second World War

In the final year of World War II, scientists advising the U.S. government on hormone herbicide research struggled to develop censorship practices that blended conventional modes of publication with the comparatively draconian model of atomic secrecy. Botanist Ezra J. Kraus encountered this dilemma in his capacity as referee for the Advisory Committee on Scientific Publications (ACSP), under the aegis of the National Academy of Sciences. Officially, his task was to review manuscripts prior to their publication and to withhold those of military significance. In practice, particular features of hormone herbicide research, including its disciplinary affiliations and preexisting publication practices, rendered Kraus’s project difficult. This paper examines Kraus’s work with the ACSP in the context of his own herbicide research at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, chemical weapons research at Camp Detrick, and his advocacy of prompt publication following V-J Day. By restoring Kraus’s project of censorship to its proper disciplinary and institutional context, I demonstrate that decisions on censorship were not exclusively questions of civilian versus military applications but rather intersected with a desire to preserve priority for military-contracted researchers after the war. These interlocking questions of dual use and priority claims came to characterize the 20th-century history of Agent Orange, the most infamous object of Kraus’s short-lived censorship committee.