Public Deception Quotes
Also published in What Do You Care What Other People Think, 1988. This was his last publication. He realized that NASA was under so much political and public relations pressure, that important science issues could not be faced squarely. So he wrote his own appendix to the report which was embarrassing to some of the administrators and contractors but was really appreciated by almost all of the scientists and engineers.
McClellan after he left his White House Post, reflected on the experience, and wrote a book that described the George W. Bush White House practices many of which he was involved with.
Such intellectuals as Max Eastman. John Dos Passos, and James Rorty were officially so classified.
Rickover, the father of the nuclear submarine was not only an expert in nuclear reactors and power, but he was known as a safety perfectionist with a safety record in the Navy that is still marveled at. President Carter, as a naval officer, had worked for Rickover and himself was technologically knowledgeable about nuclear power. He asked his old mentor to chair the investigating the Three Mile Island incident. Rickover actually recommended to the President that much of the report be secret, assuming that reform would take place quickly if the nuclear power industry were not killed by the damning expose of inept personnel and the lack of safety processes with a very dangerous process. However, few reforms were made nationally, and Rickover, 6 years later, grew to regret his recommendation for secrecy.
The George W. Bush administration became notorious for its deception of Congress, the Press and the public. In particular, the administration would develop elaborate scenarios of conditions in the world and develop military and foreign policy responses to them. Soon, it became clear that the scenario upon which the policy and action had been based, was inaccurate—a fantasy to begin with. There has been much debate whether the scenarios were deliberate lies to drum up political support for the administration or just errors of judgment based on bad intelligence. Snow, had to go out and maintain the scenarios even after it became clear that they had been fantasies.
In the 1950s evidence was pointing to the relationship between cigarette smoking and cancer, Then scientic studes showed that cigarettes were a causae of lung cancer and ohe forms of cancer. The tobacco industry had their own research that showed that tobacco was also addicting. Rather then give up the profits they were geting from cigaette sales, the tobacco companies hired John Hill and at his suggestion formed a "Tobacco Rsearch Comittee" where the followd Hill's strategy of casting doubt on the accuracy and completeness of the research shing the causal link. Even after the Surgeon General's relase of his 1963 Report explaining the extensive evidence that was then ammassed about the danger of cigarettes. None the less there was little money to publicize the Surgeon General's report, and the tobacco companies spent a fortune hammering the message that the research was not yet sufficient and more study is needed before America puts all the tobacco farmers and cigarette ndustry workers out of jubs when the evidence was "so doubtfull". The efforts to spread the disinformation about cigarettes actually delayed the public education programs, label warnings, media focus for a few decades. Slowly there were so many people dying a year (about 1/2 million) that most Americans finally befan to see throught the deception of the industry. But that delay was resonsible for more deaths and debilitations of Americans than had suffered that fate during all the Wars in American history. They were so successful casting doubt on one of the most proven of scientic medical research, politicians picked up the same techniques do negate many otehr scientifc findings that threatened their vested interests or where the implications of the resarch cere contrary to their ideology. Climaate change denyers used the exact same techniques that the tobacco indudstry used so skillfully with cancer.
