Theodore A. Postol (BG): MIT's role in missile test fraud

[Dudley_DUright]

AFTER MORE than 3 1/2 years of foot-dragging, excuses, and violations of federal regulations, MIT announced last week that it could not investigate credible evidence of possible scientific fraud in fundamental National Missile Defense research being done at MIT's Lincoln Laboratory. The reason outgoing president Charles M. Vest gave is that the Pentagon had classified everything about the investigation.

If the particular allegations of fraud have merit -- and I believe they do -- MIT and the Pentagon have been involved in a fraud that has promoted a weapon system that will have little or no utility and could cost hundreds of billions of dollars. Of even greater importance, millions of lives could be lost if this weapon system failed to defend our nation from a nuclear ballistic missile attack.

The allegations of fraud involve the critically important Integrated Flight Test 1A, or IFT-1A, in June 1997. Its purpose was to determine if the currently deployed National Missile Defense could tell the difference between warheads flying through space and simple balloons designed to look like warheads. If the IFT-1A experiment could not demonstrate that the weapon could perform this task, the weapon could never have a realistic chance of working in combat.

In May 2000 I sent evidence to the White House that, despite the claims of unqualified success by the Pentagon, the IFT-1A had in fact been a total failure.

Initially, the Pentagon claimed that the letter I wrote to the White House was secret. Then the Pentagon reversed itself and claimed that the experiment was old and irrelevant, and then it reinforced this claim by arguing that it now uses a slightly different sensor that renders the results of the IFT-1A irrelevant. Finally, after trying for years to dismiss the relevance of the IFT-1A, the Pentagon has again reversed itself and claims that the release of any and all information about it would cause grave, direct, and immediate harm to the national security.

more...

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2004/12/13/mits_role_in_missile_test_fraud?mode=PF

[displacedtexan]

1. Did you visualize a BRICK WALL while reading this?

I did.

Damn!

[Salviati]

2. Damn the 'defense' industry

Biggest bunch of welfare queens you've ever seen... I swear, if this was truely a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, the first thing we should do is nationalize all defense contractors...

:grr:

[enough]

3. That is one brave professor.

One individual standing up against some very large interests.

[starroute]

4. Postal has been a long-time critic of missile defense

He also poked holes in the idea that the Patriot missiles were at all effective during the first Gulf War. Just Google his name and you'll find a lot about him.

[Dudley_DUright]

5. Yup, I should have pointed that out

As a fellow physicist, I admire his scientific integrity.