https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-an-article-about-the-h-bomb-landed-scientific-american-in-the-middle-of-the-red-scare/

On April 1, 1950, the New York Times carried a sensational front-page headline, “U.S. Censors H-Bomb Data; 3,000 Magazine Copies Burnt.” The story's lead sentence read: “Gerard Piel, editor of the Scientific American, attacked the censorship policies of the Atomic Energy Commission yesterday when he disclosed ....” The article went on to report that the government had destroyed every trace of the original text by physicist Hans Bethe, melting down the “objectionable linotype slugs” at the printing plant and then incinerating the “complete file of proofs” along with those 3,000 printed copies.

Piel, a scion of the family that brewed Piels Beer, was one of the first journalists to recognize the implications of nuclear research for weapon making, and he faced censorship, blacklisting and surveillance. Reporting for Life from 1943 to 1944, Piel was shown a telegram from the wartime Office of Censorship warning the magazine that certain topics, such as “atomic energy” and “uranium,” were now classified. “I took that telegram as a reading list,” Piel recalled. During an interview with Piel, Robert W. Wood of Johns Hopkins University fumed about a secret Manhattan Project that was placing heavy orders for his spectroscopic research equipment. The physicist, however, figured out the purpose of the classified endeavor. “They're engaged in making the most frightful weapon,” Wood told Piel.