Postol Alleges Pentagon Tried to Silence His Missile Criticism
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
MIT’s The Weather Oldest and Largest Today: Sunny, hot, 90°F (32°C) Tonight: Muggy, 73°F (23°C) Newspaper Tomorrow: Sunny, hotter, 95°F (35°C) Details, Page 2 Volume 121, Number 30 Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139 Wednesday, August 8, 2001 April Suicide Prompts Postol Alleges Pentagon Tried Judicial Process Review To Silence His Missile Criticism By Nancy L. Keuss ty Service (DSS) asked the Institute Responding to Carpenter Allegations, Vest and Shankar Mukherji to “retrieve and properly safeguard” ASSOCIATE NEWS EDITORS classified information relating to the Announces Independent Investigation Outspoken national missile incident and to “conduct an admin- By Sandra M. Chung ing romantic attention from Carpen- defense critic Theodore A. Postol istrative inquiry.” STAFF REPORTER ter despite knowing about her long- ’67, Professor of Science, Technolo- Although the Institute has The Office of the Suffolk County time boyfriend, Zev Arnold, who gy, and National Security Policy, recently come to the defense of Pos- Medical Examiner announced on attends Washington University in has accused the Pentagon of tol in the form of a written state- June 25 that the April 30 death of St. Louis. By the time of Carpen- attempting to silence his criticisms ment from President Charles M. Julia M. Carpenter ’03 was a sui- ter’s complaint, Karpe’s attentions of the National Missile Defense Vest, Vest’s initial reaction to the cide, the result of acute cyanide poi- had escalated to the point where he Plan. Pentagon’s allegations seemed to soning. Responding to allegations had invaded her privacy and seri- At issue is correspondence favor compliance with the prelimi- that Carpenter’s suicide was con- ously compromised her peace of between Postol and the General nary steps requested by the DSS, nected with a harassment complaint mind, said Cain, Arnold, and a num- Accounting Office (GAO), an inves- Postol said. she filed with the Random Hall ber of other close friends and family tigative branch of Congress, in “My immediate concern is that it Judicial Committee against Charvak members. Karpe declined to com- which he accused the Pentagon of appears that the Institute may be P. Karpe ’04, President Charles M. ment for this article. using doctored data to support its contractually obligated to move for- Vest has told The Tech that MIT Carpenter filed a harassment missile defense plan. The physi- ward with at least the initial steps COURTESY PROF. THEODORE POSTOL will commission an independent complaint with Random Hall Jud- cist’s April 17 letter to the GAO, an that we have been ordered to take Professor Theodore A. Postol investigation on the adjudication comm in late January of 2001, and analysis of a now-classified report, by the DSS,” Vest wrote in a July ’67, prominent critic of missile- process used to evaluate harassment Judcomm held a hearing and a trial has prompted allegations of security 23 e-mail message to Postol. defense plans, accuses the complaints. in February, during which several violations by Postol. The report, Yet proceedings from a meeting Pentagon of trying to stifle According to Matthew S. Cain friends of both Karpe and Carpenter previously unclassified, is widely last Thursday between Vest, Postol, him. ’02, Random Hall president, Karpe testified and presented evidence available on the Internet. other senior faculty members, and and Carpenter had become acquaint- concerning the nature and effects of In two letters to MIT, dated July researchers in the Security Studies ed early in the Fall 2000 term and the alleged harassment. Though 10 and July 19, the Defense Securi- Program suggested to Postol that Postol, Page 19 were friends for a while. However, Cain said, Karpe persisted in seek- Carpenter, Page 20 MIT, Caltech Report on ’00 Election By Jennifer Krishnan What Is, What Could Be, made Severity of problem a big surprise NEWS EDITOR several short- and long-term rec- Four to six million votes were ommendations. “The problem is more serious lost in the 2000 Presidential elec- For the 2002 election, the team than we had imagined,” Caltech tion due to problems with voting advocated replacing punch cards President David Baltimore ‘61 said. equipment and registration, and lever machines with more reli- The team estimated that 1.5 to 2 according to a report released by a able optical scanners, having pro- million votes in the Presidential team of researchers from MIT and visional ballots available at all election were lost due to faulty the California Institute of Technol- polling places, and implementing equipment and confusing ballots. ogy. early on-site voting to replace on- These were ballots that were “That is an unacceptably high demand absentee voting. unmarked, spoiled, or ambiguous. rate of vote loss,” Professor of The report also called for feder- Registration mix-ups, the report Political Science Stephen D. al funding to upgrade election says, caused a loss of 1.5 to 3 mil- Ansolabehere said at a press con- equipment. lion additional votes. According to ference on July 16. For the future, the team pro- the U.S. Census, Current Popula- “We need upgrade for the pre- posed a new voting framework, A tion Survey, of the 40 million regis- sent … without losing sight of Modular Voting Architecture tered voters who did not vote, 7.4 what’s down the road,” Caltech (AMVA). The central feature of percent said they did not vote due Professor of Economics and Politi- AMVA is that it separates the vot- to voter registration purposes. cal Science Thomas R. Palfrey ing process into several steps, Between 500,000 and 1.2 mil- said. In keeping with this philoso- thereby reducing the complexity of phy, the report, entitled Voting: each step. Voting, Page 20 Survey: Few Turn to MIT Mental Health GREG KUHNEN—THE TECH By Jeffrey Greenbaum Medical Mental Health Service. very useful tool,” Shavit said. Matt Scannell (left) and Sean Hurley of Vertical Horizon dual STAFF REPORTER The survey is part of a draft Overall, “there were very varying on stage during their July 22 show at the Tweeter Center. A recent survey conducted by the report by the Task Force, which results,” said David A. Mellis ‘02, Vertical Horizon opened for the Barenaked Ladies. See the Mental Health Task Force reveals concludes that mental health ser- former Task Force co-chair. Of those review on Page 9. that most MIT students with severe vices at MIT must be expanded surveyed, 74.1 percent indicated that mental issues do not turn to MIT and unified, and outreach must be they had had an emotional problem increased. Before releasing its that interfered with their daily func- final draft to the community, the tioning, but only 28.1 percent reported Task Force will continue to meet having used Mental Health. “These Mameet P. Khanolkar to revise the report and modify its stats surprised me,” Mellis said. Mameet P. Khanolkar MEng ’01, who received a who had collapsed. He was rushed to Deaconess specific recommendations. Yet the number of students degree in civil and environmental engineering in June, Waltham Hospital, where he was pronounced dead at using Mental Health increased collapsed and died on July 30. He was 24 years old. 5:37 p.m. According to an autopsy report, the cause of Task Force surveys students around 60 percent between 1995 Khanolkar was born in Bombay, India in 1976, and death was a massive acute pulmonaric embolism. Last spring, the Task Force and 2000. The Task Force com- graduated from Bombay University with a B.E. in Khanolkar, who lived with his sister and her hus- solicited 500 graduate students and pared mental health conditions at chemical engineering in 1998. While studying as an band, had been waiting to receive a work permit, 500 undergraduates to participate in MIT to those at eight other undergraduate at Bombay, he enjoyed playing cricket, which would have allowed him to begin his job as an a study of mental health conditions schools, and they all showed simi- table tennis, badminton, and tennis. information technology consultant in Cambridge. He at MIT. The survey asked specific lar increases in usage. MIT, how- Before arriving at the Institute, Khanolkar worked had planned to marry Rachna Jotwani, a graduate stu- questions about what people knew ever, was the only one of the for two and a half years as a project engineer at Ion dent at the State Unversity of New York, Buffalo, in about Mental Health and the Coun- schools that did not offer regular Exchange, a water treatment company in India. In Sep- India this coming February. At the time of his death, seling and Support Services (CSS). evening office hours. tember of 2000, he came to the United States and she was in India planning the wedding. It also included open ended ques- enrolled at MIT. The funeral was held in India. Khanolkar is sur- tions asking for suggestions. Community Concerns At about 4:30 p.m. on July 30, a passerby on vived by his sister, Meghana, and his parents, Prafull To accurately quantify the Senior Associate Dean for Stu- Stearns Hill Road in Waltham discovered Khanolkar, and Nayana Khanolkar of Bombay. needs of the community, the Task Force found that the “survey was a Mental Health, Page 20 Moby leads a mix Comics OPINION World & Nation . 2 of techno, rock, Michael Borucke contemplates Opinion . 4 and hip-hop to the G8 Summit in Geneva, and Arts . 7 the Area: One whether the ghost of Il Duce is On the Town . .11 Festival. still alive and well in Italy. Events Calendar . .17 Page 7 Page 14 Page 5 Page 2 THE TECH August 8, 2001 WORLD & NATION Bar Association Rejects Protestant Leader Refuses Loosening of Client Secrecy Rule THE WASHINGTON POST CHICAGO To Back Irish Peace Accord The governing body of the American Bar Association decisively rejected Tuesday a proposed change in its ethics code that would By Julie Tamaki Northern Ireland for decades.