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46 Robert W. Seidel Secret Scientific Communities: Classification and Scientific Communication in the DOE and DoD Robert W. Seidel Introduction the latter case, however, the final product must be checked by a “native speaker,” usually a civil servant au- cience and secrecy have an ancient lineage, dating thorized to declassify information whose provenance is Sback to the Egyptians and Babylonians who devel- classified documents or research. The potential restric- oped number systems, geometry, as well as secret codes, tion of the researcher’s free expression prevents most his- and evolving through the hermetic laboratories of the torians from applying this technique. Instead, they seek high Middle Ages, where alchemy, in particular, pro- to declassify information through the Freedom of In- tected knowledge of the elixir of life and the transfor- formation Act. This translation process is more difficult mation of base materials into gold. Historians like Mau- because it requires a knowledge of the existence of the rice Crosland (1962) who seek to decipher many of these source, seldom results in a translation that is complete, codes are still frustrated, as are Cold War historians, in and often requires years to be completed. Nevertheless, their attempts to break through the barriers of classifi- hope springs eternal among these historians that at the cation and security to learn about the activity of mod- stroke of a legislative pen or the bang of a judicial gavel, ern alchemists. the walls of national security will crumble into dust, and The Rosetta Stone of secret science is a security clear- they will be able to examine the original documents with- ance and a need to know that permits access to classified out need for translation. Their latest champion, Senator information and facilities. Twenty years ago the teams Daniel Patrick Moynihan, has proposed legislation to of historians that prepared histories of the Lawrence Ra- dismantle government secrecy and has written about it diation Laboratory, the Los Alamos Scientific Labora- (1998). The pitfalls put in the path of this legislation tory, and Sandia Laboratories obtained such clearances have been formidable (“Update,” 1998; “Administration and posed questions that opened drawers. Their prod- Underscores,” 1998; “President Critical,” 1998). ucts, still forthcoming, represent an attempt to apply a However, millions of declassified documents would traditional approach to history—the acquisition of the be unintelligible without a working knowledge of the requisite language with which to investigate a source— original language, in which there are many false cog- here, the new language of classification and security nates. These result because information systems incor- (Heilbron & Seidel, 1989; Furman, 1990; Hoddeson et porate different levels of information: One finds not only al., 1993). “facts” but also structural information related to prov- Like learning hieroglyphics or cuneiform, acquir- enance and program, a wealth of acronyms for which ing an understanding of classification and security is there is no single Rosetta Stone, and many other clues useful for historians who investigate such topics, includ- that require an intimate understanding of the uses of ing academic historians as well as agency historians. In such information. 46 Secret Scientific Communities 47 Historians of Department of Defense (DoD) and Bush took NACA as a model in many ways for the Department of Energy (DOE) laboratories have pro- mobilization of science, in particular, in organizing sci- vided a context for understanding information used ence and technology information. NACA had institu- within them. These “secret scientific communities” bal- tionalized the technical report as its preferred form of ance an interest in the dissemination of fundamental scientific communication (Wooster, 1987). Industrial and applied scientific work and a concern about protec- laboratories had developed analogous forms of internal tion of information that might, if released, damage na- technical communication (Hounshel & Smith, 1988; tional security. Therefore, a historical understanding of Reich, 1985). The advantages of the technical report for the reconciliation between science and secrecy in these rapid communication as opposed to more conventional institutions provides a means of examining the dynamic forms of scientific information are obvious. Because it is relationship between the ideally open and the nearly not intended for publication, it requires neither elabo- closed. rate documentation nor peer review. Distribution is of- Secret military research was unusual prior to World ten limited to those who are directly concerned with the War I, although it occurred even in ancient times, Greek work reported, and, when classified, a technical report is fire being a very early example (Long & Roland, 1994). accessible only to those who have the appropriate secu- Meanwhile, scientific information systems created in the rity clearances and a certified need to know its contents. seventeenth century have also been greatly ramified in As information science pioneer Harold Wooster this century (Price, 1963). This essay focuses on the last pointed out, “For some reason, technical documentary half century, not only because it saw the creation of se- reports are regarded as second class citizens, which is a cret scientific communities but also because it has seen pity. Reports have a long and honorable history going the production of massive quantities of secret science, back to 1915 and the old National Advisory Commit- unprecedented in the history of science, as well as the tee for Aeronautics” (Burton & Green, 1961, pp. 35– evolution of new information systems to replace those 37). Bush incorporated them into the standard NDRC of the early modern period. and OSRD contract. It called for contractors to report In 1940 Leo Szilard feared that the discovery of fis- “the progress of such studies and investigations from time sion by Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann at the Max to time as requested by the Scientific Officer, and . Planck Institute for Chemical Research in Berlin would furnish a complete final report of such findings and con- lead to the development of nuclear weapons. He urged clusions.” Moreover, it laid out stringent security provi- his colleagues in the United States, Britain, and France sions, prohibiting the disclosure of any information con- to refrain from publishing research on the chain reac- cerning the contract or the results of the work to anyone tion in uranium. When Frédéric Joliot-Curie and his except employees assigned to it during the course of the colleagues published nevertheless, this preliminary at- war. Failure to safeguard the information subjected “em- tempt at scientific self-censorship collapsed, and a flood ployees and contractors to criminal liability.” Aliens and of articles on fission chain reactions filled the scientific individuals determined by the contracting officer to be journals (Lanoette, 1992; Weart, 1979). undesirable were prohibited access to contractor facili- It required a higher power than Szilard’s to stem the ties and work (Stewart, 1948, Appendix 2). scientific passion for priority during the “phony war” of Simultaneously, Bush continued a decade-old effort 1939–1940. The National Defense Research Commit- to harness microfilm as a means of information storage tee (NDRC), which Vannevar Bush organized, supplied and retrieval. He won NDRC support for these efforts it (Meigs, 1982; Zachary, 1997; Stewart, 1948; Baxter, at the beginning of the war, but his efforts were frus- 1946). Bush had served as the vice president of MIT, trated by design and mechanical problems. By the end president of the Carnegie Institute of Washington, and of the war he could still only project his vision of their chairman of the National Advisory Committee on Aero- potential (1945). He also sought to automate cryptog- nautics (NACA), one of the few scientific advisory boards raphy (Burke, 1994). remaining from the mobilization of World War I. He persuaded President Franklin D. Roosevelt to authorize Military Security the NDRC and its successor, the Office of Scientific Security classification of technical information was a Research and Development (OSRD), to oversee aca- relatively new process at the beginning of World War II. demic and industrial research supported by the federal In 1936 Congress unanimously passed Senate Bill 1485, government. which authorized the president to define “vital military 48 Robert W. Seidel and naval installations or equipment as requiring pro- accelerators which could be used as neutron sources.... tection against the general dissemination of informa- The problem of liaison among all the groups was a fan- tion.” Roosevelt’s Executive Order 8381 gave him con- tastically difficult one. We couldn’t of course, use long trol of the army’s and navy’s classification system. The distance telephone; our work was classified. Teletype con- system assigned a “Secret” classification to information nections that could carry classified messages were limited that could “endanger national security,” or cause “seri- and next to hopeless for trying to unsnarl experimental ous injury to the interests or prestige of the nation, or difficulties.... We were so upset about the situation that any governmental activity thereof, and would be of great shortly after General Groves was appointed . we ap- advantage to a foreign nation.” A lower level of security proached him about establishing a new laboratory where applied

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