DASA 2019-2

cause of this phenomenon, It is particularly the third reason which
has a direct tie-in with secrecy. In eleven cases before a Senate
subcommittee, secrecy or security was claimed, while trying to

identify the man responsible for making certain decisions,

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90

The facts

were that after days and days of digging, the decision maker could
not be found. Everyone was hiding behind someone else,
FREMONT-SMITH:

Who are you quoting?

DE BOER: Rickover, These were cleven cases in which the responsible man was never found, In other words, something was
,
originated, like a contract, but nobody waswilling to assume the
responsibility for that contract and say: “Here lam. I originated

FREMONT-SMITH: It will take them years to declassify it.
haven't got a staff to do it,

They

,

:

EISENBUD: [ think Chuck Dunham is correct when he says that
generally throughout the Atomic Enerzy program there's beena
candid policy. I don't think we need take the time to explore it unleas you want to. I thiak the policy has been a candid one, but there's
something different about this particular instance and it doesn't
necessarily involve the Atomic Energy Commission ‘n thie respect.
The fact of the matter ie that when I learned that Miss Root was working on the historical implications of this matter, I referred her toa
package which [ had teft in the New York operations office in which
[ pulled together all the documents that [ thought would be useful to
sumebady someday; [I left it with instructions that it shouldn't be dispersed, Most of this is pretty innocuous stuff, things like meterolupical reports, teletypes which give you the tame when various decisions were made to do various things and a long series of telegrams
of several pages a day which I sent from Japan, which was the only
chronological record of what went on, I've forgotten it; I don't remember it. I forgot that they dug up the fish, which I was reminded
of, and I learned yesterday that this stuff is still classified; there's
no hope of getting it out. That's been sent to Washington because,
on my suggestion, Miss Root asked for some of the material in that
packet, It was sent to Washington for review and it's still there,
How do you explain this”
,

‘

oss." No, there was always someone who could say: ‘IT was told
to do so but I can't divulge the source.'' This comes close to secrecy although it is not officially labelled so,

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that contract and [ was right in doing sv because at that time, etc.

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