by shaver » Sun Apr 16, 2006 10:06 pm
From the 4/16 easter edition of the Baltimore Sun:<br>Intelligence Gathering by Jonathan Pitts<br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.baltimoresun.com/features/custom/aetoday/bal-ae.finkbeiner16apr16,0,5770979.story?coll=bal-aetoday-headlines">www.baltimoresun.com/feat...-headlines</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br><br>Why, Finkbeiner wondered, would a physicist - a man normally interested in the properties of matter, space and time - be looking for narcotics along a border?"<br>....<br>Finkbeiner tracked down 36 Jasons and managed, in varying degrees, to overcome their controlling personalities and passion for secrecy. She crafted the first true history of their sometimes off-the-wall, sometimes brilliant contributions to the nation's defense and intelligence agencies. She exposes a link connecting World War II to the Cold War, the Cold War to the Vietnam War, Vietnam to the war on terror.<br>...<br>In the panic after the Soviets sent the Sputnik satellite over North America in 1957, it seemed natural when a few Manhattan Project alumni - Princeton's John Wheeler and Columbia's Charlie Townes among them - proposed a group that could "inject new ideas into national defense," Finkbeiner writes. By 1960, a tiny steering committee had hand-picked "a tremendously bright squad of some 30 people." All were physicists, "young and patriotic and full of beans," she writes.<br>...<br>They named themselves the Jasons after the mythical explorer who sought the Golden Fleece. They met in the summer, heard out the government's concerns, and did the sort of high-level, free-form brainstorming they rarely experienced during their full-time careers. They made just a nominal sum.<br><br>For the next four decades and more, up to the present, the 30 - and the select few they have chosen to add with the passing of years - have met secretly every June and July in the same building in La Jolla, Calif. They've numbered fewer than 100 altogether. Their findings have shaped modern warfare.<br>...<br><br>The Jasons were less keen on coverage. Their summer work is classified. Some fear losing their security clearance; others don't want to alienate their government sponsors. Every member loves the free-wheeling exchanges, the back-and-forth, the scrawling of equations on the backs of envelopes.<br><br>Some fear for their safety. A newer member, a man in his 40s who spoke on condition that he be identified only as "Dr. X," admitted to being "somewhat freaked out" by being a Jason. His projects have taught him about biochemical warfare, so he "[knows] things that bad people would want to know. I don't want anyone to come looking for it from me." <br><br>Link to her book at Amazon:<br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0670034894/sr=8-1/qid=1145235817/ref=sr_1_1/104-9998755-6263153?%5Fencoding=UTF8">www.amazon.com/gp/product...oding=UTF8</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--> <p></p><i></i>
