Finkbeiner, Ann. The Jasons: The Secret History of Science's Postwar Elite.
New York: Viking, 2006. 304 pages.
The author first heard about Jason in 1990, and because there was
almost nothing published about the group, ended up chasing down some current
and former members for interviews. The Jason group is a collection of
Pentagon-funded scientists with top-secret clearances. It began in 1960 and
included some Manhattan Project veterans. The first public exposure of the
group occurred in 1970, when a student stole minutes of a Jason meeting from
an anthropologist and gave them to an alternative student newspaper. The
publication of the Pentagon Papers in 1971 added more information, and
Jasons were now regarded as villains by numerous academic activists around
the world. In 1972 a group called Scientists and Engineers for Social and
Political Action published a booklet on Jason, which is indexed in NameBase.
During the Vietnam War, Jasons worked on the electronic barrier
sensors, which detected activity and called in the bombers, and also on
nuclear weapons research and submarine communications and detection. In the
1980s they worked on the Strategic Defense Initiative (Star Wars), and in
the 1990s they began hiring biologists in addition to physicists, and
started some defensive biological warfare research. Jasons feel that they
can be apolitical, independent, and patriotic -- all at the same time.
This feeling will probably last until the U.S. starts another unjust war.
ISBN 0-670-03489-4
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