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1996. Sampling of coverage by major media.

"Fifty Years Under a Cloud: The Uneasy Search for Our Atomic History," by Tom Englehardt, Harper's Magazine, Jan 1996: 71-76. "The Smithsonian's Enola Gay exhibition, even in collapse, should be seen as a salutary, if not a healing, event, one for which we can thank the museum curators and historians involved. For it addressed a moment that Americans could still hardly bear to consider, and exposed the slow-motion collapse of the traditional narrative that had been going on for fifty years." [FullText]

"The Nation's Basement," by Frank Rich, New York Times, 06/22/96, 1:19. "There are some shows so dull they can't even give the tickets away. But who would have imagined that one of them would be produced by the Smithsonian Institution in celebration of its 150th birthday? . . . Welcome to the post-Enola-Gay Smithsonian." [FullText]

"Hiroshima's Shadow," by Kai Bird and Lawrence Lifschultz, Chicago Tribune, 08/13/96. "What difference did the cancellation . . . make in the real world? It made us dumber." [FullText]

"[Appeasement at the Smithsonian] Exhibiting Bias," by Jason Zengerle, New Republic, 10/20/97, 18-19. Clothing manufacturers oppose a proposed sweatshop exhibit: "We'll turn this into another Enola Gay." [FullText]

1996. Harwit publishes his version: "This is the history, as clearly as I have been able to reconstruct it, of an exhibition that never took place, never was seen by anyone, and yet gave rise to the most violent dispute ever witnessed by a museum."

Harwit, Martin. An Exhibit Denied: Lobbying the History of the Enola Gay. New York: Springer-Verlag, 1996. [FullText]

"How Lobbying Changed the History of Enola Gay," by Martin Harwit, Japan Quarterly, July-September 1997, 48-59. [FullText]

1996. A sampling of reviews and reactions:

"The Revelations of Martin Harwit," by John T. Correll (Dec. 1996): the book "is loaded" with "grievances against the Air Force Association." [https://web.archive.org/web/20101227051937/http://afa.org/media/enolagay/1296reve.html]

"The Plane Truth," by Linda Rothstein, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, March/April 1997, 55-57. "The AFA knew how to play the power game, how to get things done, while the folks at Air and Space took the high road -- and fell off the cliff." [FullText]

"An Exhibit Denied," by Edward J. Drea, Journal of Military History, April 1997, 419-21. "In retrospect there were surely better ways to implement the Enola Gay exhibit and perhaps Harwit was the wrong person to be in charge. Nonetheless the long shadow of the Enola Gay debacle will cast a pall on officially sponsored museum and history programs for years to come." [FullText]

"Academic Verities vs. Political Realities in the Enola Gay Exhibit Dispute," J. L. Heilbron, Physics Today, June 1997, 79. "Harwit's patient negotiation had produced a revised script that satisfied most of the parties. Thereafter the pressure was merely and meanly partisan. It is a shame that Heyman could not withstand it." [FullText]

Marion Milne, Political Quarterly 68.4 (1997): 440-43. "This is a tale of eroded hopes and institutional betrayal. . . . [Harwit] does a great service by telling his painstaking story. . . . His message shines as a beacon to every publicly funded body around the world. . . . If they are not allowed to tell the truth, then who will?" [FullText]

"An Exhibit Denied," by Patricia Mooney-Melvin, Journal of American History, December 1997, 1159. "No matter how hard Harwit tries in this volume to demonstrate his willingness to work with a range of stakeholders, his inability to understand the political nature of this exhibition's experience helped to ensure its eventual disaster. Despite the wealth of information and analysis in this volume, that issue continues to elude the author." [FullText]

"Enola, We Hardly Knew Ye," by John Leo, U. S. News & World Report, 12/01/97, 16. "The point is not that the curators were wrong. . . . The obliteration of a nonstrategic city filled mostly with women and children raises some obvious moral problems. But the state and its employees are not supposed to tell us how to think or feel about it. Nothing irritates the citizens more than being propagandized with their own tax money." [FullText]

Charlton Heston, Letter to the editor, New York Times Book Review, 12/07/97, 4. Heston recounts meeting with Heyman and asking for "Mr. Harwit's head on a plate." [FullText]

"The Enola Gay Debate," New York Times, 01/04/98, 7:2. "Heston' letter typifies the threat to public education in America today." "The image of Heston the biblical patriarch casting aside his customary mantle of authority, reverting to drag and donning the seven veils of Salome would normally evoke hilarity. In context, however, it is offensive." [FullText]