SECRECY NEWS
from the FAS Project on Government Secrecy
Volume 2016, Issue No. 94
November 17, 2016

Secrecy News Blog: http://fas.org/blogs/secrecy/

GARWIN TO RECEIVE PRESIDENTIAL MEDAL OF FREEDOM

The celebrated and accomplished individuals selected by President Obama to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom -- the nation's highest civilian honor -- include figures such as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Bill and Melinda Gates, Robert Redford, Bruce Springsteen, Michael Jordan-- and Richard L. Garwin.

As noted by a November 16 White House news release, "Richard Garwin is a polymath physicist who earned a Ph.D. under Enrico Fermi at age 21 and subsequently made pioneering contributions to U.S. defense and intelligence technologies, low-temperature and nuclear physics, detection of gravitational radiation, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), computer systems, laser printing, and nuclear arms control and nonproliferation."

The Medals will be presented at the White House on November 22.

The giving of awards is fraught with latent meanings and assertions of power and identity (as the hullabaloo over Bob Dylan's Nobel Prize, and Dylan's muted response to it, show).

In this case, a Presidential Medal of Freedom will hardly enlarge the reputation of Garwin, who could not be more highly esteemed by those who know him or are familiar with his work.

But it casts a somewhat unexpected and therefore moving new light on the Obama White House, which had the breadth of awareness to recognize Garwin and to select him for this honor, together with those who are more widely famous.

Over here, Garwin is practically family, having been a member of the Board of the Federation of American Scientists for many years and a supporter of the organization, including the project on government secrecy, for even longer.

FAS maintains the Garwin Archive, an online collection of many of his published and unpublished works.

Earlier this week, we posted slides from his latest paper entitled "Don't Reprocess Spent Fuel from Light-Water Reactors," which was presented this month at a seminar in China.

MELVIN LAIRD: A DECLASSIFIED HISTORY

Melvin R. Laird, who served as Secretary of Defense during the Nixon Administration, passed away on November 16. His tenure as Secretary was described in an official history published last year by the Department of Defense that is based in part on classified government archives.

"Although the text has been declassified, some of the official sources cited in the volume may remain classified," wrote DoD historian Erin R. Mahan in a Foreword. The 732-page volume was authored by historian Richard A. Hunt. See Melvin Laird and the Foundation of the Post-Vietnam Military, 1969-1973, Volume 7 of the Secretaries of Defense Historical Series, 2015.

"Laird's tenure as secretary coincided with significant changes in national security policy," Dr. Mahan wrote. "Faced with an NSC system that consolidated policymaking in the White House, Laird used his political canniness and bureaucratic skill to stymie the attempts of Nixon and National Security Adviser Henry A. Kissinger to assert greater control over the defense program," Dr. Mahan wrote.

"Laird was fully involved in planning the Breakfast bombing [of Cambodia in 1969] but disagreed with Nixon and Kissinger about doing it clandestinely," Dr. Hunt wrote. "He later explained, 'I told Nixon you couldn't keep the bombing in Cambodia secret. . . . It was going to come out anyway and it would build distrust. . . . I was all for hitting those targets in Cambodia, but I wanted it public, because I could justify before Congress and the American people that these were occupied territories of the North Vietnamese, no longer Cambodian territory. I could have made that case, but they [Nixon and Kissinger] thought it was important to keep it secret'."

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Secrecy News is written by Steven Aftergood and published by the Federation of American Scientists.

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