National Security & Science: 2a

Are their two levels of Science?  Do we really know just how far ahead the United States government is from what we read in the newspapers?
The national security test got weaned on the Manhattan Project.  From their few elected officials know just what technology our government has or does not have.

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The Manhattan Project is viewed by some to represent the beginnings of the national security state.  In this project, which produced the atomic bomb, there was sharp disagreement between two philosophies.  One was the open exchange and collaboration of scientists, the other, the emphasis of security by General Leslie Groves.  In an article written by Eugene Rabinowitch, published in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, October 1962, titled, Now It Can Be Told, Rabinowitch quotes General Groves in connection with the security at Los Alamos.

Compartmentalization was the very heart of security. My rule was simple and not capable of misinterpretation - each man should know everything he needed to know to do his job and nothing else...the colloquim [at Los Alamos] existed not so much to provide information as to maintain morale and a feeling of common purpose and responsibility. From the stand point of security, it presented a major hazard...

"To keep knowledge from those who would interfere directly or indirectly with the progress of the work, such as Congress and various executive branch offices."
Leslie Groves
Manhattan Project


In this article, Rabinowitch adds his own opinion of Groves' approach.

It does not occur to Groves that if the Project succeeded in a remarkably short time, it was because compartmentalization was often broken by scientists. James Franck, a most law-abiding citizen, told me: "In this place you can succeed only if you manage to find out what you are not supposed to know." In science, nobody knows in advance what can help solve the problem at hand. The treatment of the multiplication of micro-organisms by a Russian mathematician may turn out to be relevant to neutron chain fission. An engineer can often - but not always! - fulfill his assignment with limited knowledge doled out by superiors; but a scientist exploring the unknown cannot.

There is no question that our current protocol for the classification of information is expensive.  Managing the secrecy costs about $7.7 billion just in 2005.  In 2009, for every $1 spent releasing old secrets, $196 is spent creating new ones.  Since the Obama administration, there has been an 8% decrease in security classifications from 2008.  Still in 2009 alone, 183,224 new documents were classified.  This amounts to 501 new classified documents a day or one every 2.8 minutes.  This amount of information is staggering.  Of course, we would not argue in favor of no secrecy on the part of our government.   The problem seems to be that there is no balance.  The "black budget" for example is not accountable to Congress.  If it is not accountable to Congress, then it is not accountable to the American people.

I urge the United States to move…toward unilaterally abandoning all forms of scientific and technical secrecy….I advocate this in the enlightened self-interest of the United States… First [because] in science there are very few real secrets…. Second [because of] the long term [adverse] effects of secrecy on scientific progress, especially in the United States."
Edward Teller
Physicist


Are There Two Levels Of Science: Classified Science & Mainstream Science?
The question we will discuss here is whether with this ponderous amount of new classified information a day, there would also not be included in that a large amount of patents, and scientific papers included.  There have long been rumors among conspiracy websites about the sophistication of science that the United States government has.  Some believe that there are virtually two levels of science - public science of the kind you can read about on the Internet or watch on the History Chanel and classified science which only a select know about.  

This thesis would at first seem obvious in some ways, but the implications of it are quite sizable.  Another critical question in all of this is how much further ahead is classified science from public science?  Is it 5 years ahead?  20 years ahead?  50 or 100 years ahead as some imply?  If any of this is true, certainly there must be certain areas in science that must be more advanced than others.  If any of these sciences is this far ahead, then it would mean that many in  the media, and even in scientific circles are in the dark as to the true state of their field of science.  It would also mean that when breakthroughs are introduced in the press, we are really watching a show.  The implications are huge and hard to believe.  Some say that the Federal government cannot keep secrets.  That something of this magnitude would leak out.  They are right in our opinion.  And that argument betrays itself, because this information has leaked out, if you believe the reports of people in the industry and the military.  So this argument, in our opinion, is not a very effective argument against the veracity of this concept.

Skunkworks & Ben Rich
Our thoughts on this began to be more serious after watching reports by Jim Goodall, a writer for Jane's Defense Weekly.  Jim Goodall has a rather illustrious resume in the area of aeronautics as writer, author and expert.  You can see his 4 books in Amazon.

We include these videos featuring Jim Goodall's remarks concerning the advanced status ob black projects in the Air Force at least.  If you cannot see the embedded video, here is the link: http://bit.ly/p6sic6.


The question is what kind of technology could Ben Rich have been speaking about?  In what area of science  could the United States be one hundred years ahead of the known public science?  We will discuss this in our next installment in this series.