To Our Readers

By James R. Gaines Managing Editor

Scratch a good reporter, and more often than not you'll find a secret reformer. Even when they're caught up in the weekly rush of wars and scandals, most journalists harbor the hope that the work they do will somehow, in ways they may not even understand, change the world.

Yet rare is the story that does lead to concrete action. Chicago bureau chief Jon Hull's cover story "A Boy and His Gun," (Aug. 2, 1993), about the deadly love affair between America's kids and their guns, is one such exception. Hull spent five weeks last summer hanging out with a gun-toting 16- year-old boy and his friends in Omaha, Nebraska, cruising in their cars, listening to their fears and dreams, gaining their confidence. The result was a chilling portrait of well-mannered -- and well-armed -- kids who seemed to have lost the ability to resolve their conflicts without shooting at one another.

Not surprisingly, the story became the No. 1 subject of Omaha talk shows and heated community debates. As Hull says, "I expected the story would cause ripples in a small city like Omaha." But the ripples spread far beyond talk. The mayor of Omaha and the Governor of Nebraska called special meetings to address youth violence. And in November, Omaha passed one of the toughest gun- control laws in the U.S., making it illegal for anyone younger than 21 to carry a loaded handgun. For offenders, the new law carries a mandatory minimum sentence of 30 days in jail.

For his work, Hull has won the prestigious 1993 Sigma Delta Chi Award for Magazine Reporting. In their citation, the judges wrote, "Using strong investigative reporting techniques, Hull spends time on the streets to get the personal stories behind a national problem. By choosing the Midwest city of Omaha as a backdrop, he demonstrates that this national issue is right at home in everyone's backyard."

Four weeks ago, we printed an excerpt from Special Tasks, the memoir of a Soviet spymaster published by Little, Brown. In it the principal author, Pavel Sudoplatov, charged that prominent scientists, including J. Robert Oppenheimer, Enrico Fermi and Leo Szilard, had knowingly made atomic secrets available to Soviet agents. Since publication of the book, many nuclear physicists and historians have raised serious questions about Sudoplatov's account. Our story on the controversy begins on page 63.