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"?A disturbing but interesting book . . . General; undergraduate; graduate; faculty.?-Choice ?Controversial and thought-provoking but well-supported and convincingly presented. Secret Science offers a fresh perspective on such issues as technology transfer, information control and management, government-industry cooperation and the global marketplace.?-Sea Power ?Foerstel argues convincingly that federal control of science and technology is both a serious threat to democracy and a profoundly ineffective way to organize the scientific enterprise.?-Booklist ?Foerstel's Surveillance in the Stacks (1991) was a science librarian's response to the FBI's ""Library Awareness Program,"" in which the feds asked for records of ""suspicious"" foreign nationals consulting technical reference books. Here, the author expands his scope to examine the broader issue of governmental control of scientific research and publication in a free society . . . compelling for its detailed and extensively documented treatment of the damage done to science in the name of security. Required reading for anyone concerned with continued abuses of power by the military-industrial complex.?-Kirkus Reviews ?The strength of this book lies in the extensive research that the author has conducted and synthesized. No one has brought the complex web of contemporary American information policy issues together in such an understandable construct. Historians, public policy analysts, archivists, librarians, and records managers seeking to democratize American national information policy need to read this book.?-American Archivist ""A disturbing but interesting book . . . General; undergraduate; graduate; faculty.""-Choice ""Controversial and thought-provoking but well-supported and convincingly presented. Secret Science offers a fresh perspective on such issues as technology transfer, information control and management, government-industry cooperation and the global marketplace.""-Sea Power ""Foerstel argues convincingly that federal control of science and technology is both a serious threat to democracy and a profoundly ineffective way to organize the scientific enterprise.""-Booklist ""The strength of this book lies in the extensive research that the author has conducted and synthesized. No one has brought the complex web of contemporary American information policy issues together in such an understandable construct. Historians, public policy analysts, archivists, librarians, and records managers seeking to democratize American national information policy need to read this book.""-American Archivist ""Foerstel's Surveillance in the Stacks (1991) was a science librarian's response to the FBI's ""Library Awareness Program,"" in which the feds asked for records of ""suspicious"" foreign nationals consulting technical reference books. Here, the author expands his scope to examine the broader issue of governmental control of scientific research and publication in a free society . . . compelling for its detailed and extensively documented treatment of the damage done to science in the name of security. Required reading for anyone concerned with continued abuses of power by the military-industrial complex.""-Kirkus Reviews"

Foerstel's Surveillance in the Stacks (1991) was a science librarian's response to the FBI's Library Awareness Program, in which the feds asked for records of suspicious foreign nationals consulting technical reference books. Here, the author (Engineering and Physical Sciences Library/University of Maryland) expands his scope to examine the broader issue of governmental control of scientific research and publication in a free society. While government interest in the military applications of scientific research has a long history, Foerstel concentrates on the cold war period, in which national security became the justification for unprecedented control over research and publication. Measures originally put in place during WW II (to keep the atomic bomb out of Nazi hands) gained a new lease with the emergence of the Soviets as the perceived threat to world peace. In practical terms, this meant that any scientist with a leftist past was a fair target for the security apparatus: J. Robert Oppenheimer is only the best known of the scientists victimized by the shift in political winds. Foerstel documents the growth of the Black Budget - funds for research so secret that its very existence is kept hidden from Congress. Another growth area for governmental control is cryptography, especially the use of computers to generate and read encoded documents. An especially disturbing area of governmental encroachment, Foerstel says, is the attempt to control the spread of unclassified information, with the government arguing that a hostile power may add together innocent facts to arrive at dangerous conclusions - the mosaic theory of intelligence. Often dry and pedestrian, but compelling for its detailed and extensively documented treatment of the damage done to science in the name of security. Required reading for anyone concerned with continued abuses of power by the military-industrial complex. (Kirkus Reviews)

?Foerstel's Surveillance in the Stacks (1991) was a science librarian's response to the FBI's Library Awareness Program, in which the feds asked for records of suspicious foreign nationals consulting technical reference books. Here, the author expands his scope to examine the broader issue of governmental control of scientific research and publication in a free society . . . compelling for its detailed and extensively documented treatment of the damage done to science in the name of security. Required reading for anyone concerned with continued abuses of power by the military-industrial complex.?-Kirkus Reviews

Author Information

HERBERT N. FOERSTEL is Head of Branch Libraries and Head of the Engineering & Physical Sciences Library at the University of Maryland. He holds degrees from Hamilton College, Rutgers University, and Johns Hopkins University and is the author of Surveillance in the Stacks: The FBI's Library Awareness Program (Greenwood, 1991).

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