Jones Beene wrote:
I wonder if Brian Josephson knows the answer:
I doubt he knows more than you or I. He is a smart cookie but he does not seem to have any inside knowledge. Of course I do not have any inside knowledge either, but I based on conversations with Josephson, I do not get the impression he is keeping any secrets about cold fusion.
In general, my impression is that "inside information" and "secret government knowledge" seldom amounts to much. I suppose specific tactical information is probably often good, but "big picture" analyses and judgments of the future are no better than you or I could write, and often much worse. I will not bore the audience here with stories I have probably already told, but my parents were involved in low-level espionage during the Second World War and in the opening stages of the Cold War, and they said the State Department and the CIA never knew anything more than you can read in the New York Times. I have seen the CIA's semisecret and declassified papers about Japan. If I had written stuff like that as an undergraduate, I would have gotten an F.
- Jed
