• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 835 0

administrative and technical history of the Manhattan Project, also called the Manhattan Engineering District (MED). The purpose of the report was allegedly to give citizens enough information about nuclear energy for them to participate in a public debate about what to do next. The report also encouraged the idea that handing the bomb over to civilian control, as opposed to military control, would be a more democratic scenario. Instead, the controls imposed by the Atomic Energy Commission would ultimately prove to be even more impenetrable than military controls; Hewlett and Anderson, New World.

10. the concept “born classified” came to be: Quist, Security Classification, 1. Here Quist writes: “The Atomic Energy Act of 1946 was the first and, other than its successor, the Atomic Energy Act of 1954, to date the only U.S. statute to establish a program to restrict the dissemination of information. This Act transferred control of all aspects of atomic (nuclear) energy from the Army, which had managed the government’s World War II Manhattan Project to produce atomic bombs, to a five-member civilian Atomic Energy Commission (AEC). These new types of bombs, of awesome power, had been developed under stringent secrecy and security conditions. Congress, in enacting the 1946 Atomic Energy Act, continued the Manhattan Project’s comprehensive, rigid controls on U.S. information about atomic bombs and other aspects of atomic energy. The Atomic Energy Act designated the atomic energy information to be protected as ‘Restricted Data’ and defined that data.”

11. seventy thousand nuclear bombs: Brookings Institute, “50 Facts about U.S. Nuclear Weapons,” fact no. 6.

12. Atomic Energy was the first entity to control Area 51: This is one of the central organizing premises of my book and will no doubt be contested by the Atomic Energy Commission until they are forced to declassify the project to which I refer.

13. when President Clinton: The Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments (ACHRE) was created by President Clinton on January 15, 1994, to investigate and make public the use of human beings as subjects of federally funded research. Created by executive order and subject to the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA), the advisory committee was obligated to provide public access to its activities, processes, and papers, some of which can be viewed at http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/radiation/.

14. he did not have a need-to-know: Author interview with EG&G engineer.

15. “give[s] the professional classificationist unanswerable authority”: Quist, Security Classification, 24; Schwartz, Atomic Audit, 442–51.

16. largest facility is, and always has been, the Nevada Test Site: Written correspondence with Darwin Morgan, September 21, 2010, U.S. Department of Energy, Nevada Operations Office, Office of Public Affairs and Information.

17. not controlled by the Department of Defense: It cannot yet be determined for certain if the Department of Defense (DOD) was involved in running the very first program at Area 51. Research at NARA (National Archives and Records Administration) reveals that DOD had a lot more to do with Paperclips than previously known publicly. For example, documents obtained by me through a FOIA request reveal “in the early 1950s the Defense Department [Office of Defense Research and Engineering (ORE)] and the JIOA took up overall direction of PAPERCLIP, which ran under the acronym of DEFSIP, or Defense Scientist Immigration Program.” JIOA stands for Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency and was run by the Joint Chiefs of Staff. These multiple agencies and multiple chains of command serve to hide information.

Chapter One: The Riddle of Area 51

Interviews: Joerg Arnu, George Knapp, Thornton “T.D.” Barnes, Colonel Hugh Slater, Richard Mingus, Ernest “Ernie” Williams, Dr. Albert “Bud” Wheelon, Colonel Kenneth Collins, Colonel Sam Pizzo, Norio Hayakawa, Stanton Friedman

1. Nighttime is the best time: Interview with Joerg Arnu.

2. Robert Scott Lazar appeared on Eyewitness News: Interview with George Knapp; George Knapp,