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What Life Was Like Inside the Hexagon Project
As new submitter kulnor writes, "Hexagon, a cold war secret project around spy satellites to monitor USSR was declassified last September." kulnor excerpts from the AP story as carried by Yahoo, outlining how more than 1,000 people in and around Danbury, CT kept mum about the nature of their employment: "'For more than a decade they toiled in the strange, boxy-looking building on the hill above the municipal airport, the building with no windows (except in the cafeteria), the building filled with secrets. They wore protective white jumpsuits, and had to walk through air-shower chambers before entering the sanitized 'cleanroom' where the equipment was stored. They spoke in code.' As more and more WWII and cold war secrets are declassified, we learn about amazing technological feats involving hundreds of people working in secrecy. I wonder what will emerge in a few decades around modern IT, the Internet, hacks, and the like." Every time I visit Oak Ridge, TN, I am amazed by the same phenomenon of successful large-scale secrecy.
It was actually the secret government workers, and not the conspiracy theorists, who wore the tin-foil hats.
So much for the usual anti-conspiracy claim of "more than a few dozen" people not being able to keep a secret. 1000 people can keep a secret for decades as long as they have a sufficient incentive.
Its amazing what technology the spy game brings forth, one has to wonder how much this really cost, considering they haven't declassified that yet? The cost would of been huge, not just in the $ sense, but in the fact that all those specialist from different fields where taken to develop just this one project for so long.
It dose seem odd, that if the amount is so high that it hasn't been declassified, why they went ahead with it when the SR71's were in use, or was this a bit of a power-play between different branches of the government not sharing or not wanting to give up control over something.
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I wonder what will emerge in a few decades around modern IT, the Internet, hacks, and the like.
I wouldn't be surprised if little or nothing is declassified in the future. Given the never ending "war on terror" they can come up with excuses to redact just about everything.
Developers: We can use your help.
I was there almost 10 years ago. nice and very expensive homes. a very nice spanish restaraunt. seemed like a lot of educated people lived there.
this explains it. educated people usually try to educate their kids
Yes, current shit is heavily redacted. This has always been the case. For that matter it was even heavier in the past and prior to 1966 (when the FOIA was passed) there was basically no mechanism to even ask. During WWII you just didn't find out about government secrets, at all.
Part of declassification is just age. Most things stay classified for 25-72 years (how long depends on what you are talking about). So until that time has passed, they aren't declassified. Parts might be made available under FOIA or other special circumstances, but they aren't full declassified.
The reason is that information is only sensitive for so long. So by building in an automatic time, you reduce the risk anything still sensitive is revealed.
After that time, the documents get reviewed to see if they should be released. The government has released a lot of shit too, some of it not at all flattering to them.
So for stuff now, 25 years is the earliest you'll see it. Some things last longer (50 years is the House of Representatives standard). The longest I know of is census data, that is 72 years.
Declassification isn't automatic after that time, of course, but they do seem to take it seriously. There are lots and lots and lots of declassified documents out there. So please don't bitch that they won't show you classified stuff now. That has never been the case. If you think that should be changed fair enough but don't try to act like it is a new thing.
Any time people tell you that some conspiracy for which there is evidence actually exists cannot possibly be true, because too many people would have to know about it for it to remain secret, consider this story about the Hexagon Project. Consider how many Cold War projects like this one maintained secrecy for so long, until it was declassified decades after its mission was completely obsolete, generations after it was actually operating. Consider that a project like this was kept secret even though everyone keeping the secret had a clear conscience, their project never implicated in moral wrongs like torture, false flag invasion, inside job "Let It Happen On Purpose" self-sabotage or worse.
Then consider the conspiracy evidence you're being asked to ignore on the grounds that the Hexagon Project couldn't possibly have been kept secret. And consider it again.
Note that the demonstrated ability to keep complex, valuable secrets completely hidden for a long time does not create evidence of a conspiracy where there is none. It simply debunks the defense that a conspiracy cannot exist because it could not be kept secret. It can be kept secret. So the evidence, when it exists, can be judged on its own merit.
--
make install -not war
It's no surprise that they can keep a secret. Civilian personnel in defense and intelligence are, by and large, capable of keeping a secret when it counts. They are motivated to do the job and keep such secrets as are necessary to get it done (this does not include fraud, but the Important People do what they want). They know that info getting out could cause soldiers to die and wars to be lost. Speaking for my colleagues, it is not just another job because we know what's at stake.
Now, give classified info to some dummy in Congress...that's scary. Those people get their clearances by virtue of their jobs and not because of their own merits. And the spill procedures that we have to follow don't apply to them. Just like all those other laws and regulations don't apply to them.
Sounds like they borrowed this from the movie Andromeda Strain.
-- By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.
During times of great national unity, when there's a clear perceived threat, you can get this kind of cooperation.
Right now, the US and most industrial nations are so internally divided that they would be unable to pull this off. There is no longer a culture, sense of shared purpose, or goal.
While some consider this a benefit, it means we're all sitting ducks when someone comes around who has their act together. China comes to mind.
Futurist Traditionalism
What is the rationale for keeping the dollar amount spent classified? How were contracts awarded? What were the profits made? What sort of kickbacks were involved? As fascinating as the technology is, I'm thinking there is a still more fascinating, albeit quite different, story left untold.
Wir sind geboren, um frei zu sein - Rio Reiser
It can be kept secret.
There is no one "it" here. The existence of some secrets does not imply that it's possible to keep any secret.
For one thing, it was most assuredly not a secret that the US had spy satellites. As much as the US would have loved to keep that fact secret, they couldn't. The world might not have known the exact details of some specific program, but the general idea was definitely too big of a secret to keep under wraps.
> They know that info getting out could cause soldiers to die and wars to be lost. Speaking for my colleagues, it is not just another job because we know what's at
> stake.
Except that the wars and soldiers all work under the direction of congress. So those wars get started by those dummies, based on lies, and against our real interests. So... really the scary thing is that... you people who are so into the mission that you are willing to keep a secret, are also willing to work for the dummies in congress.
Frankly, It all seems like a huge waste to me, the only one of the lot who had any sense in his head, as far as I can tell, was Bradley Manning.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
FTFA
Despite 1,000 workers mostly keeping mum, both the US and the USSR had a general idea of the operational capacity of the other nation. The `secret' was the proverbial `elephant in the room.' Everyone knew it was there, they just didn't talk about it.
That is an entirely different animal than actually keeping a conspiracy secret.
Given the size of the US government, there have to be documents that no-one alive knows about anymore, because everyone who had access died before they should have been released. Locked somewhere in a poorly marked filing cabinet, the combination or key lost decades ago. Even if found, since there's nobody left who understands the document, it would remain classified. (Or does the Government automatically declassified information it doesn't understand, or does it just destroy the document?)
I imagine in the Pentagon, there are entire rooms that have been lost for awhile.
What happens if a Pentagon archivist finds media in an unknown (to him) format, like a weird sized mag tape. If it's undated, and currently undecipherable, what to do? If he doesn't have the budget to transcode it, most likely it goes back in the hole.
All ideas^H^H^H^H^Hprocesses in this post are Patent Pending. (as well as the process of patenting all postings)
Throughout history, a society of secret societies is necessarily tyrannical. Then criminal. Then it eats itself alive. Enjoy.
Even though this program was recently declassified, I recall reading about the Keyhole (KH) satellites many years ago in the book 'The Puzzle Palace'. I suppose it's interesting to know more specific details, but I'm not sure how much is really new here.
We just won't know how much of a secret this was, until they declassify their documents about what they knew about the place.
It doesn't really matter if it was a secret to the US public. If the Russians knew where it was being made, they could implement plans to dig for more information about it.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
They may not have known the name. They may not have known all the details of where the satellites were being manufactured or where the data was being analyzed. But the very article linked to mentions aspects of the program that were impossible to hide (e.g. rocket launches) and mentions that other nations knew what sort of program the US had in place. It's one thing for people to keep secret that they are the ones working on this particular secret project and it's another thing entirely for people to keep secret that they are working on a secret project.
Consider the woman in the article who didn't know what her dad did for a living. She concluded it was a secret. She may not have known what the secret was. But degrees, professional certifications, and prior work history were all available to her should she have wanted to explore. This sort of situation would be different from someone's whose father worked for a front for a secret project. In that situation, the man's daughter would not have even known that there was something to hide. That second sort of secret is the sort of secret that conspiracy theorists generally want us to believe in. It takes quite a bit more effort than the first kind of secret which amounts to the proverbial `elephant in the room' that everyone knows is there but nobody dare speak of.
Given the size of the US government, there have to be documents that no-one alive knows about anymore, because everyone who had access died before they should have been released. ... Even if found, since there's nobody left who understands the document, it would remain classified. (Or does the Government automatically declassified information it doesn't understand, or does it just destroy the document?)
Every Original Classification decision includes the date at which the information is to be automatically declassified. Every classified document is supposed to be marked with a reference to the document which made the Original Classification decision, and the date at which it becomes declassified. All classified documents are supposed to be physically inventoried twice a year, and that inventory reported upstream. So for classified documents, the situation you describe would be less likely. Not impossible -- people don't always follow the rules, to be sure -- but less likely.
Most people who haven't worked with this stuff don't understand that classification is as much about accountability as it is about confidentiality. There's a huge paper trail associated with classification.
But not everything secret (lower-case "s") is necessarily classified. There could well be stuff that's locked up and long-forgotten precisely *because* it hasn't been formally classified, and thus isn't subject to all the above.
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I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
Many of these secrets were, and weren't. The Hubble Space Telescope was built in Danbury, Conn., for example, in that very same building. Anyone involved in the HST, or even following it closely before launch, knew about its close design and engineering connections to the then current spy satellites. That was never really directly discussed in the press, but it was certainly common knowledge in the astronomy community. (In the same way, the Lunar Orbiter spacecraft shared a lot of engineering heritage with the KH-9.)
That is what generally strikes me about the "deep secrets" that get revealed after decades - it's rare to have anything be a total secret. The clues are generally there, if you have the wit to put them together.
STILL the best kept secret.
HST was not built in Danbury. HST was built by Lockheed in Sunnyvale. The primary mirror was ground (incorrectly) in Danbury by P-E.
Not quite. While the optical components were manufactured by Perkins-Elmer (and thus almost certainly in Connecticut), the bird was actually assembled by Lockheed out in California.
It's theorized that one of the reasons there are no photographs of Hubble being transported from California to the Cape (something usually accompanied by much press hullabaloo) is that it used a transport container that was either modified from a KH-9 container, or so closely resembled one that it made security folks nervous.
The whole culture of telling everything about yourself all the time is relatively new. We're talking about this on /. where we talk, sometimes, more openly than we would in person; lots of people reveal things on "social media" and are then surprised when some unexpected person actually reads what they revealed. Before this instant publicity existed, and with a less liberal culture, it's not really surprising that things were kept quieter, and that the shock when it was revealed was that someone had broken the secrecy rather than that the things happened in the first place. (Think of Watergate, or Roosevelt's wheelchair, or Kennedy's extracurricular activities.) OTOH that's why you have intelligence analysts (not necessarily spies) who find the loose ends and piece them together into the story.
That is what generally strikes me about the "deep secrets" that get revealed after decades - it's rare to have anything be a total secret. The clues are generally there, if you have the wit to put them together.
Yes, this is true, but it is also true that if the media doesn't approve of, or spell it out for the dumb masses, (including most Slashdotters, just to be clear), then the truths people determine through investigation and logic are often ridiculed or ignored.
You don't need perfect secrecy when broad population control and social programming are so effective.
The Manhattan project was not a large scale secret, from the Russians. They new the bomb was under development and knew how it was progressing. Truman told Stalin about the Trinity test result at Potsdam and was mystified that Stalin was't more surprised. It was because Stalin already knew the results.
Hexagon secrets = Dharma Initiative
The argument is along the lines of:
The US managed to keep this specific spacecraft secret (ignoring that the manuals to its follow on, the KH11, got sold to the USSR at one point.)
Therefore, The John Dillinger Died for You Society must have been telling the truth!
Then you should be really baffled about Soviet secret cities where various technological wonders were developed by hundred thousand people.
But usually secret installations are not secret to the adversary but only to the general public and that's because of the (ethical) implications of the work done there.
> amazed by the same phenomenon of successful large-scale secrecy
You fool yourself! The russians had been able and are still being able to counter any US tech edge by their human intelligence capability, i.e. spy men and women. America is too tech-centric and that will be its downfall. There is no secret a juicy pussy can't grab. Call 90-60-90 to apply for hard abdominal labour.