JUL 27, 2001
M.I.T. Physicist Says Pentagon Is Trying to Silence Him
By JAMES DAO
From the NY Times
WASHINGTON, July 26 - A leading critic of the military's missile defense
testing program has accused the Pentagon of trying to silence him and
intimidate his employer, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, by
investigating him for disseminating classified documents.
The case has raised questions about whether a document can be considered
secret if it is widely available to the public. And it has touched off a
dispute between the critic, Theodore A. Postol, and M.I.T. over how to
balance academic freedom with the university's obligations to cooperate
with Pentagon investigators.
At issue is correspondence between Dr. Postol, a physicist, and the
General Accounting Office, an investigative branch of Congress, in which
he accused the Pentagon of using doctored data to defend missile defense
technology.
Dr. Postol said his conclusions had been based on an unclassified report,
which he disseminated over the Internet and can now be downloaded from
Web sites around the world, including one in Russia.
But after Dr. Postol began distributing the report last year, the
Pentagon determined that it contained secret information. This month,
Defense Department investigators asked M.I.T. officials to stop Dr.
Postol from disseminating that information and to confiscate the document
from him.
The university has not done so. But in an e-mail message to Dr. Postol on
Monday, Charles M. Vest, the university president, said M.I.T. might be
required to ``move forward with at least the initial steps'' ordered by
Defense Security Service, a Pentagon agency. Dr. Postol provided a copy
of that message to The New York Times.
``They are basically threatening M.I.T. that it will lose its contract to
run this big laboratory if they don't abide by these demands,'' Dr.
Postol said in an interview.
The institute operates the Lincoln Laboratory at Hanscom Air Force Base
in Lexington, Mass., under contract with the Defense Department to do
research into missile defense, weather forecasting, military surveillance
and other sophisticated technologies. The lab's contract with the
Pentagon was worth $319 million last year.
M.I.T. officials declined to speculate today on whether Dr. Vest would
cooperate with the Pentagon's requests. But Dr. Vest issued a written
statement that raised questions about the investigation of Dr. Postol.
``While M.I.T. certainly abides by the laws that protect national
security, we also believe that the legitimate tools of classification of
secrets should not be misused to limit responsible debate,'' the
statement said. ``Trying to treat widely available public information as
`secret' is a particular concern.''
Pentagon officials declined to discuss details of their investigation.
But Lt. Col. Rick Lehner, a spokesman for the Ballistic Missile Defense
Organization, argued that the department was obligated to stop Dr. Postol
from disseminating potentially damaging information, even if it was
readily available.
``Just because it is made public doesn't mean it's declassified,''
Colonel Lehner said.
Dr. Postol agreed that the information was potentially damaging, but only
because it showed that the Pentagon was far from developing effective
antimissile weapons.
For years, Dr. Postol has argued that the Pentagon's prototype
antimissile system could not distinguish between decoys and enemy
warheads. He has joined forces with an engineer, Nira Schwartz, who has
accused her former employer, cobi TRW,coei
a military contractor, of faking tests and evaluations of the technology
to make it appear more successful than it was.
The latest dispute arose when the Pentagon hired five scientists,
including two from M.I.T.'s Lincoln Laboratory, to review TRW's
technology in the wake of Dr. Schwartz's accusations. The resulting
report disputed Dr. Schwartz's assertions and has been used to defend the
missile defense program on Capitol Hill.
But Dr. Postol, who in the 1990's successfully challenged the
effectiveness of Patriot missiles in the Persian Gulf war, analyzed the
report and concluded it had distorted data to make it appear that
available technology could reliably distinguish warheads from decoys. In
fact, Dr. Postol contends, that technology does not yet exist.
The Pentagon and TRW have denied that assertion.
Dr. Postol first raised concerns about the Pentagon report in a letter to
the White House last year. Not long after, the Pentagon determined that
officials had inadvertently not removed classified information from the
report before releasing it, including the tables and diagrams Dr. Postol
has used to attack the testing program.
But Dr. Postol, who has done work for the Pentagon and stands to lose his
security clearance, contends that the Pentagon's actions smack of a
cover-up. He has recruited supporters in Congress. el3 Representative
Henry A. Waxman of California, the ranking Democrat on the House
Committee on Government Reform, has asked the Pentagon to review Dr.
Postol's accusations about the report. Representative Edward J. Markey, a
Massachusetts Democrat, has asked the General Accounting Office to study
the Defense Department's classification policy.
``The question that naturally arises is whether such a policy really
protects national security or whether it merely serves to stifle the
ability of Dr. Postol to communicate his views,'' Mr. Markey asks in a
letter sent to the accounting office today.