> The Google chapter of "Lisping at JPL" (https://flownet.com/gat/jpl-lisp.html) may be what you are remembering.

That's close, but I think it's reflection of the same policy, not the same article. The article I remember talked about more languages that just Lisp, Smalltalk, and Java. It was overall down on Java, but had positive things to say about some Java programmers.