SECURITY
The seemingly irreconcilable nature of the eternal conflict
between security restrictions and the desire for operational
efficiency was well illustrated in Operation SANDSTONE.
In any
endeavor involving large numbers of people, there is no more certain way to court failure than to withhold from those people the
information which they need to understand the importance of the
relationship between their individual efforts and the community
effort.
An undertaking so vital to national security :nc of such
international significance must, of course, be guarded from unfriendly observation to the maximum practical extent, but an attempt
to obscure under "Top Secret" classification facts which are clearly
evident to thousands of individuals does nothing mare than create
a fiction in whichnobody believes.
Fortunately, a more realistic understanding of the requirements
of the Atomic Imergy Act and of the meaning of "AEC Restricted Data"
developed as the operation progressed.
In most instances, however,
this new understanding resulted not from any modification of policy
but from individual analysis instead.
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Section VIII