Friday, 23 Jul 1993 Washington, DC

1. NATIONAL SECURITY CLASSIFICATION SYSTEM IS UNDERGOING REVIEW.
In 1982, Ronald Reagan reversed a 30-year trend toward reduced classification with Executive Order 12356. His order could be paraphrased as, "when in doubt, classify." And classify they did, 2,000,000 new documents that year alone. The order even allowed reclassification of documents that had been declassified. President Clinton directed the Information Security Oversight Office (ISOO) to lead an interagency task force in drafting a revised classification system by 30 November 1993. But groups favoring major revision are skeptical; ISOO is run by the same people that have been in charge of the secrecy system for the past 12 years. While no one questions the need for secrecy in a dangerous world, the cost of excessive classification has been high. Protected from normal scientific scrutiny and debate, erroneous scientific information and flawed technical concepts were used as the basis of costly and impractical programs. A critical 1987 APS study of the directed energy weapons that were the basis of the SDI was held up for more than seven months awaiting declassification.

2. THE $350M QUESTION: FUND BEST IDEAS OR FUND NEEDY DISTRICTS?
The Advanced Research Projects Agency and the National Institute of Standards and Technology are cooperating in the distribution of $350M for the new Technology Reinvestment Program intended to help businesses hurt by defense downsizing to diversify. "We will pursue the best ideas--we have a long-range view," ARPA director, Gary Denman, assured the House Technology Subcommittee. The money "will allow industry to take a risk it wouldn't be able to take otherwise." The government absorbs the risk; industry takes the product to market. But subcommittee members from some of the hardest hit regions had one question: "What about my district?" As Jane Harman (D-CA) saw it, "Open competition is fine, but you have to explain why some states aren't funded." Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) was more specific, "You should be trying to save the aerospace industry." NIST and ARPA anticipate over 4000 proposals.

3. BUT ARE MURDERS IN WASHINGTON BEING COMMITTED MORE HUMANELY?
Physicist John Hagelin promised to reduce violent crime by having one thousand TM experts meditate coherently (WN 25 Jun 93). Oops! Preliminary results suggest they got the polarity wrong; homicide hit a record high level. But, at a press conference yesterday, Hagelin offered a lesson in data analysis: although murder is up from a year ago, there has been a decrease of 2.3% in "brutal crime." A clean shot between the eyes maybe. Could the drop in brutal crime be due to the increase in D.C. police surveillance and a new summer jobs program? Those programs, Professor Hagelin explained, have been more than offset by the heat wave--so the field must be working. Patched through to the press conference via satellite link from Holland, Zen master Maharishi Yogi, the intellectual force behind the experiment, explained the success of the experiment: "No one wants to be shot--it's painful." Amen.



Bob Park can be reached via email at whatsnew@bobpark.org
THE UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND
Opinions are the author's and are not necessarily shared by the University, but they should be.