Wednesday, June 12, 2013

Stick to your knitting!

There was a time not terribly long ago that a group of about maybe 245 to 350 people--scientists, army and security specialists and a couple of politicians--were able to keep a secret about America putting together an atomic bomb program that was as complicated as it would be controversial. My father was one of them.

The success of the Manhattan Project depended very much upon the discretion and patriotism of those people, and the integrity of the structure of the grand plan of compartmentalization of work areas across the country consisting of secret cities and facilities and areas which brought about the development and manufacture of plutonium in Hanford, Washington, where I was born. Another fuel, Uranium 235, produced in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, was being developed as a vital component needed to actually set off the test bomb in the desert below Los Alamos, New Mexico. The real thing came to fruition and finally were dropped and exploded on the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan. Of course, those terrible weapons of mass destruction finished the war with Japan and, thus, because of their potency and savagery set up the Cold War with the Soviet Union and a new national security paradigm. In addition, the possession of such technology reinforced America's claim with the Soviets as bipolar powers, almost equal one to the other.

I've often wondered how my dad, who headed up Hanford's security division, would view today's security establishment. I believe he would think there could be no Manhattan Project, partly because of electronic surveillance capabilities, in addition to the lack of  integrity of participating individuals who would sell their mothers for fame or fortune.

Today, there too seems to be a lot of consternation about outsourcing government security jobs to outfits like Booz Allen Hamilton and others. I don't share it.
Compartmentalization of knowledge, to me, 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. Adherence to this rule not only provided an adequate measure of security, but it greatly improved overall efficiency by making our people stick to their knitting. General Leslie R. Groves, head of the Manhattan Project
You see that outsourcing is not new, and its advantages seem obvious. The Manhattan Project served as a model for post war national security and is used today. One major difference is the shear volume of top secret security clearances: there are 1.2 million of them, whereas years before only a few thousands carried a top secret classification.

So, I find it difficult to blame outsourcing for our snoopy problems. It is more likely that the ethos of our times that say that self-important individuals such as Edward Snowden believe they can effect some major change by blowing off their top secret classifications and enter the world of Assange and Manning into some sort of espionage immortality.

That being said, I also have great reservations about the NSA programs and the Patriot Act. I didn't like it when President Bush started it, and I don't like it now. Too much has gone wrong. Too much information. Too much access. Too much. Even with our new, asymmetrical warfare model, the Patriot Act goes too far. We must begin profiling Islamists who seek to kill us, not listen in on Grandma Schottenheimer and Sister Sue.

When my dad watched out for bad guys,  like Soviet spies (American) Theodore Hall and (German) Klaus Fuchs, both physicists who were working in the "areas," there was no need to listen in on fellow citizens. The "enemy" then was not you and me.

Now Americans have become the enemy in the metadata revolution. Every bit of telecon information is currently connected to that great data center in the sky (or in a gigantic repository in Utah). There is another program, called Echelon, owned by Great Britain which is the next step up in data collection and has been utilized  by our government for years now. Do not kid yourselves; this information is already being accessed, whether the phone calls are listened in on or not. The exponential speed at which data is put together into dossier fashion is astounding. My fear is our government--the Obama regime especially--will continue to lie and cover up to the nth degree, leaving our civil rights in the rear view mirror.

Quaint as it is, I wish we had knitting to stick to.

Thanks for the read.

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