As soon as my library gets this book I will be reading it. About 5 years ago I read a lot on the Manhattan Projects scientists/physicists, many of whom show up in this book. According to Bill Cooper in Behold a Pale Horse, this group was intimately involved in the UFO coverup for obvious reasons.
That this book has been published is an indication to me that all the secrecy is coming to an end. The end of one of two things is inevitable: secrecy or this planet.
'The Jasons: The Secret History of Science's Postwar Elite,' by Ann Finkbeiner
Rent-a-Genius
By JOHN HORGAN
Published: April 16, 2006
Last summer, I received an e-mail message from a defense contractor that was advising a federal security agency and wanted my ideas on fighting terrorism. I assumed it was a joke. But when I called the contractor's number, a woman named Debbie convinced me that the firm and the offer were real. Her firm's client was seeking advice from non-experts who could "think outside the box."
Illustration by Viktor Koen. Photos, starting second from left: AP; Susan Spann for The New York Times; Frank Curry for The Times; Alexandria King/The Albuquerque Journal
Members of Jason have included, from left: Hans Bethe, Freeman Dyson, Richard Garwin, Steven Weinberg and Murray Gell-Mann.
Rent-a-Genius
By JOHN HORGAN
Published: April 16, 2006
Last summer, I received an e-mail message from a defense contractor that was advising a federal security agency and wanted my ideas on fighting terrorism. I assumed it was a joke. But when I called the contractor's number, a woman named Debbie convinced me that the firm and the offer were real. Her firm's client was seeking advice from non-experts who could "think outside the box."
Illustration by Viktor Koen. Photos, starting second from left: AP; Susan Spann for The New York Times; Frank Curry for The Times; Alexandria King/The Albuquerque Journal
Members of Jason have included, from left: Hans Bethe, Freeman Dyson, Richard Garwin, Steven Weinberg and Murray Gell-Mann.
THE JASONS
The Secret History of Science's Postwar Elite.
By Ann Finkbeiner.
The Secret History of Science's Postwar Elite.
By Ann Finkbeiner.
304 pp. Viking. $27.95.
Readers Opinions
Forum: Book News and Reviews
I loathe militarism, so I worried that accepting the assignment would be hypocritical. But the invitation was flattering and challenging and the money was tempting. So I agreed. As long as I didn't propose anything that violated my principles, I told myself, what would be the harm?
Forum: Book News and Reviews
I loathe militarism, so I worried that accepting the assignment would be hypocritical. But the invitation was flattering and challenging and the money was tempting. So I agreed. As long as I didn't propose anything that violated my principles, I told myself, what would be the harm?
It seems only fair to reveal my own ethical elasticity before I pass judgment on Jason, the subject of the journalist Ann Finkbeiner's fascinating, disturbing new book. I first heard about this secretive group of independent government science advisers in 1993 from the physicist Freeman Dyson, one of Jason's longest-serving members. Dyson made Jason sound like fun: a bunch of brilliant iconoclasts brainstorming during summer vacations about problems ranging from nuclear missile defense to climate change. But Finkbeiner shows that at times, Jason seethed with ethical conflict.
Of the 100 or so scientists who have served on Jason, Finkbeiner has interviewed 36. A few spoke anonymously, and others refused to talk at all. That reticence is not surprising, given that as much as three-quarters of Jason's work has
consisted of classified military projects, some of them morally questionable. Like Errol Morris's film "The Fog of War," in which Robert McNamara painfully revisits Vietnam, Finkbeiner's book shows how even the smartest people with the noblest intentions can end up committing shameful acts.
Jason (the term refers both to the group as a whole and to individual members) was conceived in the late 1950's, when the physicist John Wheeler proposed assembling a few dozen top academic scientists to give the government no-holds-barred advice. In 1960 the group began gathering each June and July in various locations. Physics was still riding the wave of prestige generated by the Manhattan Project, and all the original Jasons were physicists. Mildred Goldberger, the wife of the early member Murph Goldberger (and herself a physicist), proposed naming the group after the mythical Greek hero. Funding came primarily from the Advanced Research Projects Agency at the Pentagon
(known today as Darpa).
Those who eventually enlisted included giants like Dyson, Murph Goldberger and the future Nobel laureates Steven Weinberg, Val Fitch, Charles Townes, Murray Gell-Mann and Leon Lederman. Some of their motives, like serving their country and reducing the threat of nuclear war, were altruistic. Others were less so: becoming an insider with access to secret information; finding "sweet" solutions to technical puzzles (to borrow Robert Oppenheimer's description of the Manhattan Project); and getting paid ($850 per diem today).
The Jasons interviewed take pride in some of their accomplishments. They have excelled at "lemon detection," finding the flaws in ideas like "dense pack" nuclear-missile sites, which one Jason, Sid Drell, called "dunce pack." In the 1980's, Jason helped establish a Department of Energy program to improve the accuracy of climate models. In 1996 Bill Clinton signed the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, in part
because Jason had concluded that tests were no longer needed to ensure the viability of America's nuclear arsenal.
Jasons also contributed to the invention of adaptive optics, which boosts the power of telescopes by correcting for atmospheric distortion. On the other hand, the Pentagon kept the technology classified for almost a decade to reserve it for a project that many Jasons opposed, the Strategic Defense Initiative. Episodes like these made some Jasons wonder how much good they were really doing. Dyson complained that "the secrecy held up progress in adaptive optics for 10 years."
The Vietnam War was the group's nadir. In 1966, Dyson, Steven Weinberg and two other Jasons compiled a classified report that weighed the pros and cons of using low-yield nuclear weapons to destroy bridges, roads, airfields, missile sites and troops in Vietnam. The report concluded that using nukes made no military sense. Dyson told Finkbeiner that he and his
colleagues would "probably" not have issued a report that reached any other conclusion. Yet the disturbing implication is that, under different circumstances, nuclear attacks might make sense. Finkbeiner accuses Dyson and his co-authors of "supping with the devil."
(Page 2 of 2)
Meanwhile, other Jasons designed an electronic "infiltration barrier" to keep Communist troops out of South Vietnam. The barrier consisted of minuscule land mines and microphones that could be dropped from airplanes. The mines were intended not only to maim but also to make a noise detectable by the microphones. The microphones would radio a computer that analyzed the signals to determine if they came from peasants, animals or enemy troops. If convinced that enemies were in the region, American commanders would order an airstrike of cluster bombs. The Jasons argued that their barrier represented a relatively humane alternative to the wholesale bombing of North Vietnam. But
the electronic barrier failed to stop either the bombing or Communist infiltration.
THE JASONS
The Secret History of Science's Postwar Elite.
By Ann Finkbeiner.
The Secret History of Science's Postwar Elite.
By Ann Finkbeiner.
Jason's Vietnam-related research was exposed in 1971 when The New York Times published its articles on the Pentagon Papers, a secret history of the Vietnam War commissioned by McNamara. Antiwar activists denounced them as war criminals. A woman sitting on a plane next to the Jason Richard Garwin stood and proclaimed: "This is Dick Garwin. He is a baby killer."
Finkbeiner clearly likes most of her subjects. But she doesn't let them off the hook. She gently yet firmly keeps asking, What were you thinking? Most seem to agree with Murph Goldberger that Jason's involvement with Vietnam, while well intentioned, was "the greatest mistake that any of us ever made."
Steven Weinberg apparently agreed; he resigned from Jason in the early 1970's "because I had no idea
whether what I was doing was useful or not." But he rejoined in the 1980's as a senior adviser, and Jason continues to attract new members. Even before 9/11, Finkbeiner notes, Jason had increasingly turned to counterterrorism projects, but she offers few details. Nor does she mention whether Jasons are advising the United States on the war in Iraq.
One current Jason, a chemist called Professor Y, defends her military research as an ethical responsibility. "If I tell the truth, even about frightening weapons systems, that's got to be the right thing to do." But this seems naïve in light of Jason's history. Professor Y, and indeed all scientists advising the military, would do well to question whether they are really making the world a safer, better place.
Finkbeiner's book also carries a message for those who fear we are entering an anti-science age, in which right-wing politicians, religious fundamentalists, Luddites and postmodernists challenge
science's authority. Some scientists are circling the wagons, depicting science as the embodiment of enlightenment and all its critics as knaves or buffoons. But science is and always has been as morally fallible as any other human activity. Indeed, because of its immense potential for altering our lives for good or ill, science needs critics like Finkbeiner now more than ever.
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