George C. Marshall Institute Case Study

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Chapter 2: Strategic Defense, Phony Facts, & the Creation of the George C. Marshall Institute In the late 1970s and early 19080s Edward Teller and Robert Jastrow led the way to strategic defense. They thought the Soviet had greater capabilities than they knew, and it was important to continue maintaining and expanding their nuclear weapon stockpile. They defended the SDI concepts to build an effective defensive system against the Soviet. In June of 1976 CIA director Bush approved the formation of three independent review panels. One panel was to review the Soviet missile accuracy, the second was to review the Soviet air defense capabilities and the third was to review Soviet “Strategic Objectives.” These panels were known as the “Team B.” In Jastrow accused the authors of TTAPS of ignoring the effects of the oceans and the fact that smoke would rain out. However, TTAPS did mention both circumstances and Jastrow was misrepresenting their work to suggest they intentionally downplayed elements that could lessen the impact. In 1986 Russell Seitz declared nuclear winter was dead because of its lack of scientific integrity. He summarily dismissed the models as bad science and said the TTAPS model “’postulated a featureless bone-dry billiard ball (instead of a realistic Earth) ... (and) instead of a realistic smoke emission, it simply dumped a ten-mile thick soot cloud into the atmosphere instantly.’” Seitz made sure that nuclear winter had been diminished to “’a barely autumnal inclemency.’” He later expanded his attack to encompass all science and the scientific establishment itself, and insisted that scientists had betrayed the public’s trust. Seitz said the scientific establishment was controlled by the liberal agenda. R. Seitz broad against science were promoted by business-oriented journal. However, if science took the side of regulation then the science Jastrow,

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