THE REAL SECRETS OF SCIENCE

...who preceeded Moorhead in the assault on secrecy, talked of a million cubic feet of classified government documents...

...How much remains hidden...

...But supported by an unclassified Air Force contract, the scientist keeps on, and, as Gardner commented, "We can't seem to classify his head...

...One of these spent $400,000 for the secret-storing of metal scrap from airplanes...

...After sitting on the letter for a year, FDA asked the writer to be more specific in his request...

...Gardner added, "as soon as he gets some interesting results he no longer has access to them...

...Defense and the AEC reported no costs on management and policy, and only State gave a figure on administration...

...Why make it easier for the Russians...

...BURIED in all these government secrets is material of all kinds, involving politics and international relations as well as science and technology...

...A few years ago David B. Tyler pointed out that among the classified findings of science were such data "as are found in the first edition of Kirkes' Physiology (1848) and the Handbook of Physics and Chemistry (1914...

...At one point there was even a debate as to whether the Migratory Bird Commission should be given the right to stamp documents with the three magic words—"confidential," "secret," and "top secret...

...As Congressman Moss said at the time, "The Army had again been caught in one of the Pentagon's favorite pastimes—marking `secret' or `confidential' or even `top secret' some bits of information that would be embarrassing or bothersome or merely untimely if disseminated to the public...

...The consumerists are perfectely aware that the federal government has perhaps the largest serious collection of data on the performance of thousands of products, ranging from hearing aids to gasoline...

...The blacklists began some 17 years before, during the McCarthy period, and apparently were compiled by lower-echelon bureaucrats without the knowledge of the Secretary...

...Although the blacklisting presumably has ended, there is no public indication that those responsible for creating these lists were ever punished or reprimanded...

...In fact, all the governmental specialists in the termination of intellectual pregnancy are supremely safe...

...Hundreds of agencies apparently rate themselves internally on their ability to hide knowledge...

...The government classifiers have not only worked overtime in keeping scientific secrets and warding off the intrusion of "security risks," they have been even more indefatigable in trying to keep the American public ignorant of these aspects of science and technology that have directly affected the public welfare...

...These figures come from Congressman William S. Moorhead (D–Pa...

...The National Archives alone are estimated to include 470 million pages of classified material, including 160 million pages of World War II secrets, whose contents have lost some of their novelty by now...

...For sheer hysteria aimed at walling off the American public from the discussion of a relevant scientific issue, nothing—one hopes—will ever equal the efforts of government agencies to squelch any reference to the possibility of an H-bomb during the early 1950s...

...A more recent attempt at amputating the mind, only partially successful, took place in 1968, when the AEC set up regulations pro viding that if a scientist working outside the AEC and without access to classified informa tion developed something of interest to the classified program, his findings would be permanently classified and removed beyond his use...

...Industry knows the facts, the consumers don't...

...With a filing system so cumbersome, it would seem that any system of stamping "top secret" on documents would be superfluous...

...As Congressmen Moorhead points out, Congress in its 1966 Freedom of Information Law established only nine categories of privi leged information that government agencies might withhold from the public, including is sues of national security and trade secrets...

...Nobody knows...

...One typical example came from the Food and Drug Administration (one of the most industrious proponents of secrecy) in response to an inquiry concerning the safety of various food additives...

...Some of the former may be essential to keep secret, but the results of science and technology are widely overclassified, mostly by officials, one suspects, whose only qualification was a complete lack of a sense of the ridiculous...

...The information can be pried out, but not in time for a newspaper or newscast deadline...

...How many secrets are being kept because setting up the bureaucratic structure to review them is too expensive for current budgets...

...It was a mild enough document, specifying that except for nine different categories of information, government agencies should willingly respond to requests from citizens...

...Not only is keeping secrets expensive for the government, abolishing them is almost equally so...

...Complete documentation of all these efforts would require compiling a small book and a low level of risibility...

...The hush-hush alloy absorbed radar waves, and its composition had been publicly known for a number of years...

...Among the new terms are the SPECAT of the Defense Department and the revealing CRYPTO of Transportation...

...The EPA, on the other hand, has shown a praiseworthy effort to respond to inquiries of a scientific and technological nature, particularly on the hazards of various pesticides...

...And one estimate suggests that the Pentagon itself could be filled to overflowing twice over with the documents it has classified...

...The writer then asked about the safety of sodium nitrite, widely used in preserving meat and fish...

...Almost as soon as it was proposed, the design of the camera vanished behind the walls of classification, and shortly thereafter, the entire field of mapping from space became classified...

...Harold Urey testified in the late 1950s that many of the essential classified scientific facts about the H-bomb could be found in any library...

...The data, as the GAO admitted, were really not indicative of the true total costs of classification...

...Let one example suffice...

...Later, after leaving government service, he asked to see a copy of his report—and was told it would take a special dispensation for him to see a copy of his own research...

...Most agenciesNOTEBOOK with the notable exception of the Environmental Protection Agency—have become masters of avoiding direct answers...

...As long ago as 1960, Congressman John E. Moss (D–Cal...

...In the meantime, in spite of the secrecy, the Soviets are orbiting their own cameras, apparently succeeding reasonably well in their mapping...

...The scientist pointed out that this measurement had already appeared in the widely distributed, official Smyth Report on the atomic bomb...

...Some experts have estimated 100,000 file drawers and 2 million separate classified documents in the Pentagon alone...

...At issue was an article by Hans Bethe on the H-bomb, which, according to reports, largely consisted of well-known statements of scientific fact, expressions of Bethe's opinions already reported in the media, and other data in the public domain...

...Or they will plead the cost of looking up the information, which apparently is disposed of in the most inaccessible manner possible...

...The conservationists are increasingly vocal...

...Even more startling perhaps than the obliterating of known facts are those instances where the classifiers have necromancer-like ability to control human memory...

...And there have been reports that, until stopped, government officials were attempting to classify newspaper clippings —a new bench mark in human folly...

...So far they have won few lasting victories, in spite of President Nixon's order early in 1972 to declassify some vital and many not-sovital government secrets of World War II...

...A few years later there were reports of mysterious ailments and even deaths affecting some 6,000 sheep near the Dugway Proving 562 Ground near Salt Lake City...

...It can take as much as two years before such a case is heard in court, to make the FDA or an equally close-mouthed Department of Agriculture disgorge information to taxpayers...

...NOTEBOOK Part of this cooperative attitude can be attributed to the growing strength of both the conservationist and the consumer movements...

...But Moorhead has at least managed to give some clues as to the cost of this federally prescribed ignorance, although the total expenditures for keeping the American public stupid are still not known...

...And Donald J. Hughes told a government hearing that one secret reaction in producing nuclear fusion—still classified in the United States—had already been published in a British journal by a scientist without any connection with the H-bomb program...

...The Pentagon promptly denied that escaping nerve gases were responsible, paid one rancher almost $400,000 for damage to his animals, and then tightened regulations for the testing of lethal chemicals...

...who has introduced a bill to make some sense out of the way federal employees make secret mountains out of factual molehills...

...A different approach toward embargoing the intellect turned up in 1969, with the dis covery of a blacklist that prevented more than 100 scientists from serving on advisory panels of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare...

...While federal agencies remained stubbornly silent, Philip M. Boffey pieced together reports from several sources adding up to conclusive proof that nerve gases emanating from Dugway were affecting the sheep...

...Among the classified secrets of the federal government have been figures on government purchases of toilet paper, long winter underwear, and paper clips, shark attacks on sailors in New York harbor in 1916, and a special bow and arrow developed for jungle warfare during World War II...

...Trevor Gardner, former assistant secretary to the Air Force, tells of an unnamed scientist whose security clearances had been lifted...

...In hiding facts, the security officers look as intelligent as the courtiers of King Canute sweeping back the sea...

...Eugene Rabinowitch has recalled the case of a scientist reprimanded in Washington for having published a physical constant in nuclear weapons research that was still classified as secret...

...Fortunately, both interested corporations and consumer groups have won some major victories...

...Nevertheless, according to Gardner, this stubborn individual had "such inventive ability that he keeps coming up with `secret' and `top secret' ideas," applicable to weaponry...

...Recent testimony before hearings on the safety of food additives, incidentally, have incriminated sodium nitrite as a potential cause of cancer...

...And some cost estimates were impossible to develop...

...If the blacklist in HEW demonstrates that serious national security is not really the motitivation for government secrecy in science, the recent fuss over the application of the Freedom of Information Act is added proof...

...They neglect to answer inquiries for months, then tell the unfortunate inquirer that his question is too general, would he please be more specific...

...Charles G. Wilber, of Kent State, turned in a research report when he was working for the Chemical Corps...

...There was the solemn destruction of 3,000 copies of an issue of Scientific American by a special officer of the AEC who also supervised the destruction of the plates...

...The latter forced the disgorging of the Garwin report on the impact of the SST, and data concerning the environment impact of the Cannikin nuclear bomb tests in Alaska...

...During the early days of A-bomb testing, while the twinkling Geiger counters signaled the increase in radiation hazards in every laboratory across the country, the government insisted there was no danger from the stepped-up radiation levels...

...And never ask what is hidden behind stamped documents marked with LIMDIS, ATOMAL, NODIS and NOFORM...

...Moreover, these figures do not include the added bills for secret-keeping that come from government contractors...

...In 1965, a NASA advisory committee presented plans for a space-mapping aerial camera designed to improve the base maps of the U.S...

...The Act itself was passed by Congress several years ago, after a gestation period of 11 years...

...Yes," retorted the security NOTEBOOK officer, but that was in pounds per square inch, while you give the figures in kilograms per square centimenter...

...However, the American public can sleep more comfortably, if poorer, knowing that in addition to rubber stamps labeled "confiden tial," "secret," and "top secret," ingenious officials have invented 63 more terms for se crecy...

...During the past five years there have been some 2,500 cases in which federal employees have been punished for security leaks—and not one where such an employee has been penalized for overclassifying material, no matter how silly his activities made the entire federal security program look...

...A compromise resulted, but with the de cision still up to the AEC...

...The people who know don't dare tell...

...The costs of looking up information are also used as a roadblock to disseminating knowledge...

...A housewife who asked for data about birth-control pills was told that it would cost her more than $12,000 just to find the material, plus a copying charge of 25¢ a page...

...When considerable crop damage occurred near the Rocky Mountain Arsenal, government officials for five years blithely sat on the reasons for the injury to plants, before getting around to telling the public what had happened...

...Thus the government was deprived of the abilities of many distinguished scientists (one was a Nobelist), and the scientists, in turn, were deprived of the interchange of knowledge to further their own research—one of the main benefits to serving on a panel...

...This time the reply said the possibly poisonous effect of sodium nitrite was a "trade secret," and there the matter rested...

...And 3,000 superior civil servants are active abortionists of ideas, stamping "top secret" on papers they so designate...

...And the government is coy about releasing these figures, no matter how beneficial the facts would be to the taxpayers who have paid for the results...

...The response from the agencies totaled some $126 million a year and these figures were admittedly inadequate...

...THE PROCESS of removing knowledge from the free civilian world to the files behind the barriers of classified knowledge continues...

...Recently William G. Florence, former deputy assistant for Security in the Air Force, estimated that the Pentagon is sitting on 20 million documents, and 99.5 percent of them could be made public without endangering national security...

...At his request, the Government Accounting Office asked the Department of Defense, the Atomic Energy Commission, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and the State Department how much money they spent safeguarding, transmitting, and classifying documents, as well as investigating personnel...

...As an aide to Congressman Moorhead told Science, "If an applicant appeals to the director of the agency and shows willingness to go to court, he will generally get his information...

...What secrets were preserved by creating a blacklist in HEW has not yet been determined...

...Moorhead is the last in a series of congressional libertarians who have picked up a lance against the obscurantist windmills of government classifiers...