WE have had considerable experience in doing cover stories on people who at the crucial moment won't talk to us--mostly dictators, Communist or otherwise. This week Contributing Editor Ed Magnuson had the task of writing a cover story on an American inaccessible to us, and to everyone else, as he performed his vital part in one of the week's big news events.

Luckily, as readers will recall (TIME, April 20), we had already got to know quite a bit about Bill Ogle, scientific director of the nuclear tests on Christmas Island. And our reporters, seeking out his colleagues at Los Alamos, learned much more last week about Ogle and his teammates. Our difficulty, of course, was shared by all the press--it lay in the Administration's decision, for reasons of international public opinion, to minimize the U.S. resumption of nuclear testing.

Naturally we share every American's desire not to have any of our nuclear secrets given away, and when in doubt always clear with proper authority in Washington discreet information that we sometimes come across. But we don't think a political decision to minimize an event for propaganda reasons is quite the same thing; we think it conflicts with a basic national right to be told as much as possible (within the limits of security) about a program that has so much importance to us and to the world, that costs so much money, and that ultimately involves decisions on which the public must have understanding and knowledge.

We think that this public knowledge is best gained through the normal process of security-conscious reporters interviewing security-minded sources, rather than merely quoting Defense Department handouts. We are aware of the philosophical intricacies involved, and in this week's cover story believe we stay within bounds while properly adding to public knowledge. And it is surprising how much, observing these limits, can be told.

WE were pleased to learn that Gilbert Cant, TIME'S Medicine editor since 1949, has been awarded $2,500 and a gold statuette as winner of the 1961 Albert Lasker Medical Journalism award for outstanding medical reporting in magazines. Cant's cover story on Virologist John Enders (TIME, Nov. 17) was cited for "presenting an exciting and informative view of the world of viruses" that "has set a high standard deserving of emulation." Nobel Prizewinner Enders himself, in a letter to Cant, called the piece "an excellent statement in a short compass of the present state of virology. Comments from colleagues have been uniformly favorable." In fields as specialized as medicine, we try to be intelligible to the layman while keeping the respect of the professionals in the field. Carrying out this double obligation is a specialty of Gilbert Cant's. The author of a dozen cover stories in the field. Cant, 52, before he became Medicine editor, spent five years as a writer and correspondent for TIME. During the war, Cant made two extensive tours of the Pacific theater as a correspondent, wrote three books on the Navy's role there. An enthusiastic sailor (sloops, not stinkpots) and field birder, Cant carries over into these fields some of his passion for meticulousness.

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