Dark Mission by Richard C. Hoagland

Author:Richard C. Hoagland
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Feral House
Published: 2010-07-21T16:00:00+00:00

The Birth of NASA

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), was created by an act of Congress98 on July 29, 1958. Its ostensible purpose was to act as a “civilian science agency” for the betterment of Mankind, and simultaneously to “enhance the defense of the United States of America.” We have always been taught that NASA is a public agency, beholden only to the will of the people through their representatives in Congress. The Act itself, as Hoagland noted in the Introduction, paints a very different picture.

From the beginning, NASA was under the thumb of the Department of Defense, subject to the whims of the Pentagon on any issue judged to be “necessary to make effective provision for the defense of the United States.” It was required under the Act to make available “to agencies directly concerned with national defense... discoveries that have military value or significance.” Such determinations were to be made solely by the President of the United States (obviously on the recommendation of DOD, the NSA, CIA, DIA, etc., etc., etc.)—and were not subject to Congressional oversight.

The upshot of this is that the “civilian” Space Agency was compromised from its inception. A civilian figurehead director (NASA Administrator) was trotted out for the public to consume, but he was always taking orders from the Pentagon on any question it determined was in the interests of “national defense”—and the Pentagon was accountable to no civilian branch of government on these issues (other than the president—who, in practice, defers to “military recommendations” on matters of national security 99% of the time).

Thus, NASA—as mandated in its Charter—was/is beholden to its Pentagon masters (through the White House) first and foremost; to its own interests, second; and to the general public thirdly … if at all.

Thus, regardless of its well-cultivated public persona—as “a civilian, primarily science-gathering” Agency—NASA has always been under the thumb of the defense/intelligence establishment.

This de facto political reality, which has been quietly in place from NASA’s inception a half-century ago, is finally “out in the open” for anyone paying attention; recent remarks by the current NASA Administrator, Michael Griffin, have (at last) revealed the real nature of NASA’s underlying structure and allegiance … and it’s clearly not to “pure scientific investigation,” or “the scientific community” ….

Griffin, a former CIA employee, was appointed the new head of NASA in 2005 by President George W. Bush, after the previous NASA Administrator, Sean O’Keefe, suddenly resigned. Amid his first actions, in keeping with the White House announcement in 2004 of the President’s “Vision for Space Exploration,” Griffin began severely cutting long-term science programs in the Agency—“stealing from Peter to pay Paul”—to fund the two biggest financial drains on-going: the aging manned Space Shuttle and increasingly expensive Space Station Programs; and the new “Vision for Space exploration”: the still amorphous plan “to return astronauts to the Moon” within the next 13 years.

When members of Griffin’s own “NASA Advisory Council” publicly balked in 2006 at what they saw as “a serious imbalance in priorities,” Griffin

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.