|
Audio
Outtakes from NOVA special - 1976-77
Passport problems [1 of 1]
Author: Linus Pauling
Length: 4:27
 Listen using Windows Media Size: 227 KB
Transcript:
In general the efforts that my wife and I had been making about peace, world peace, had been frowned on by the government.
For example, by Mrs. Shipley, the chief of the passport office. When we had been working on the structure of proteins and
had discovered the alpha helix, the Royal Society at London arranted the two day conference, a symposium to be devoted just
to this subject. I was to be the first speaker presenting the description of the structures we had found and Professor Corey,
the second speaker, my collaborator in Pasadena describing the background work that he and the other people had done and then
speakers from all over the world were to continue to discuss this work. I wasn't there because I was refused a passport. Then
there was nothing I could about it when I was refused a passport, but I appealed to Senator Morse of Oregon. After all, I'm
an Oregonian, and Senator Morse was incensed. He got legislation through the Senate requireing that there be an appeal board,
an appeal process. This didn't stop Mrs. Shipley. When we were invited to India to participate in the dedication of the new
laboratory there with Nehru and to stop in Greece and the...Israel to give lectures on the way to India, I received word that
I wouldn't be given a passport so I approached the President of the National Academy of Sciences, Det Bronk, a friend of mine
who said that he would speak to Mrs. Shipley about getting a passport. And he did so. And he sent word to me that Mrs. Shipley
said that the passport would be available for us in New York. We went to New York and went to the passport office and they
said we'd have to come back the next day. And after three or four days I sent a cable to Athens that I wouldn't be able to
speak at the University of Athens. They had said that we must now go down to Washington so we went down to Washington and
went around to the passport office and didn't see Mrs. Shipley but some official who said that we'd have to come back the
next day and after a couple of days I sent a cable to Israel saying that we wouldn't be able to give our lectures there. In
the meantime Christmas had come and we were in Washington, not our home, celebrating Christmas by ourselves and this went
on...New Years came and Mrs. Shipley kept delaying from day to day and finally it was on New Years that the new laboratory
was being dedicated in India, Bombay...so we gave up, went back to Pasadena. We had been put through a miserable period, my
wife and I, by Mrs. Shipley and had spent a couple of thousand dollars just to punish me and her for having complained about
not having a passport issued before. It's hard for me to believe that there are evil people in the world, you know, who will
do such things, but I can't see any reason for this series of events except this. Then last year we were with Detlif Bronk
shortly before his death. He said to me 'one of the things that I'm proud of in my life that I was able to help you, that
I succeeded in getting your passport.' And I didn't tell him that he hadn't succeeded. I thought if he's happy about that,
why shouldn't he stay happy the rest of his life. But no, he died a short while ago and so I can say that in fact Mrs. Shipley
put it over on him too.
|
