| Volume 9 Number 7 | www.ntskeptics.org | July 1995 |
". . . And brick they had for stone, and slime they had for mortar."
Genesis 11:4
"There was a nefarious conspiracy to assassinate President Kennedy, and O.J. is innocent."The North Texas Skeptics made a field trip on June 17 to the Conspiracy Museum in the old Katy Railroad building in downtown Dallas. The afternoon included a walking tour of Dealy Plaza, perusing a bizarre kiosk area, viewing a wall devoted to the conspiracy of Lincoln's murder (the Lincoln Log?) and viewing the Zapruder film over and over and over.
— Ginny Vaughn
Lincoln's murder was a conspiracy, according to the museum's director, and was mandated by the government and no less than two American presidents. The museum's director, in contrast to the philosophy of most museum directors, has preconceived notions about the deaths of Lincoln and Kennedy. The Lincoln Log was a bit confusing to me, but in true conspiratorial form, the assassin escaped and lived his life here in Texas. Big, newsworthy people always seem to escape and live long lives. Elvis and Jesus come to mind immediately.
One piece of evidence offered was this: after John Wilkes Booth had lived his life in Granbury, Texas, he could no longer stand the guilt and drank an arsenic cocktail. The arsenic reacted with embalming fluid and turned his corpse into a mummy, which went on tour throughout the country. As soon as someone reasonably suggested that the mummy be submitted for testing, the mummy vanished. How convenient. A large sign said, "Maybe YOU have it!" Ewwww.
I spoke to an embalmer at the Dallas Institute of Funeral Services and was told that until 30 to 40 years ago, arsenic was a component of embalming fluid. He said that the additional arsenic might have made the fluid stronger, but the mummy story was pretty far-fetched. No kidding.
The walking tour was actually sort of nice, but it was like the nice feeling you get in parts of a bad dream. Some in our group had not been on a tour of the area, and learning about the various statues and plazas was interesting. Ron Rice was our tour guide, and says he is a former state police officer. He has his own theory about the assassination, and other ideas are not allowed. Some of the more obvious tales should be aired.
Mr. Rice, at the beginning of our walking tour, started bad mouthing the Sixth Floor Exhibit in the old School Book Depository. The Sixth Floor Museum has qualified for non-profit status, unlike the Conspiracy Museum. We got the usual "They are quoting the government's lies" story, and Mr. Rice made the correct assertion that the actual sniper's nest is protected by Plexiglas. His reason for this, however, was so that nobody would be able to actually approach the window and discover that Oswald could not have made those shots.
Paranoia under (Plexi)glas
I called the Sixth Floor Museum's Director of Interpretation, Dr. Montgomery. She has a Ph.D. in Museum Administration and told me that the Sixth Floor strives toward a balanced point of view. I asked her why the sniper's nest is protected by Plexiglas and her reply was that it is the primary artifact of an historic building. "124,000 people come to see it each year and restoration costs would be prohibitive if the Plexiglas were not there." It does not obscure visitors' view down Elm Street. "Museums exist to make people think, not to tell them what to think," said Dr. Montgomery.
Mr. Rice also claimed that the reason the Sixth Floor Museum does not show the Zapruder film is because they do not want visitors to see the ridiculousness of the shot-from-behind theory. Dr. Montgomery said that it was a tortuous decision about whether to provide the Zapruder film, but they opted not to show it due to the number of children that visit. It is graphic and violent, and they felt it best to keep it away from kids. They do, however, plan to have a research wing where the film can be viewed by adults.
Another point in Mr. Rice's theory is that the first shot was a throwaway to divert attention. There are a couple of major problems here. If I were a sniper intent on assassination, I would try to make the first shot count. Also, if Secret Service agents had heard a shot as Mr. Rice claims they did, they would have been all over the President like ducks on a June bug. I've seen video of President Reagan being shot, and almost before you could hear the report's reverberation, he was mobbed by Secret Service agents and shoved out of harm's way. This is their job, indeed, their primary reason for having a job. These men and women know what gunfire sounds like, and even if they thought it was a firecracker as Mr. Rice claims, they would not have taken a chance on being wrong.
Mr. Rice was very forthcoming when I spoke to him. He was in the fifth grade when Kennedy was killed and got interested in conspiracy theory when he was 15 and read one of the many Kennedy conspiracy books available shortly after the assassination. The so-called magic bullet was the one piece of evidence that decided his destiny.
A young woman began asking him reasonable questions such as, "Will we be seeing any of the government's evidence so we can make up our own minds?" Rice's reply was, "No, because nobody believes them anymore." She mentioned that the head shot may not be due to a gunshot from the front, based on her experience with firearms (she was raised on a farm). His reply to this was, "You just don't know what you're talking about," etc. He was so belligerent to her that she left, frustrated, before I could have a word with her. Mr. Rice shook his head and bemoaned "these people who ignore all the evidence."
His attitude toward me changed dramatically when he learned I am a skeptic. I was reminded of a quote in The True Believer: "It is the sacred duty of the true believer to be suspicious. He must be constantly on the lookout for saboteurs, spies and traitors." 1 What an exhausting way to live!
Professor Josiah Thompson, quoted in Case Closed by Gerald Posner, said (conspiracy theorists') work is an obsession and "there is a fantastic way in which the assassination becomes a religious event. There are relics, scriptures and even a holy scene - a killing ground. People make pilgrimages to it."2 Like Graceland and Jerusalem.
Everybody's in on the coverup!
Mr. Rice pointed out Posner's Case Closed to me saying that Posner used to agree with him, but the government got to him somehow and he's now quoting the government's lies. Posner's book, in my opinion, is an extremely even handed and thoroughly researched work of scholarship. Posner says, "the reaction from the conspiracy community was the opposite (of positive) — not simply negative, but often vitriolic. There was little effort to study my overall evidence with anything that approached an open mind."3 He goes on to say, "Other conspiracy buffs launched personal attacks. It was, as one journalist commented, as if overnight I had become the Salmon Rushdie of the assassination world. I was accused of treason by a buff who ran a Dallas research center."4
Rice also claims that Case Closed did poorly in sales, but it has been a national best-seller for quite a while. Posner says, "The response to the hardcover publication of this book surprised both me and my publisher, Random House."5 Rice claims that people don't want the mystery to end.
Posner also offers an insight as to why people are so fanatic about the existence of a conspiracy: "The notion that a misguided sociopath had wreaked such havoc made the crime seem senseless and devoid of political significance. By concluding that JFK was killed as an elaborate plot, there is the belief he died for a purpose, that a powerful group eliminated him for some critical issue."6
As for the head shot, people as diverse as Luis Alvarez, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist, in the September 1976 issue of the American Journal of Physics (which, as Penn & Teller point out, has never been sealed) established the "jet effect" through physical experiments and laboratory calculations. Penn and Teller,7 and Richard Trott have demonstrated that, although counterintuitive, because of fluid dynamics, motion in the direction of the bullet's source is not necessarily a violation of physical laws. Trott actually has a downloadable video clip of his demonstration on his World Wide Web site. (MPEG video of counterintuitive melon motion at http://www-usacs.rutgers.edu/~trott/)
By the time we made it down to the Great Coalbin (basement) to view the conspiracy kiosks, we were all pretty worn out. Kiosks included the Martin Luther King conspiracy, the KAL Flight 007 conspiracy, and others. Museum literature says, ". . . this exhibit contains information and statements which may shock you, and which you may not believe." Then it should come as no surprise that we remain skeptical. There is also the bizarre statement, "The Dalai Lama wants to make Tibet a Zone of Ahimsa. You can join TCM in making Dealy Plaza a Zone of Ahimsa." Uh, okay. Then, maybe, it will be be the perfect place to distribute Oliver Stone's ashes one day.
My overall impression of the museum was that I had entered a church of a conspiracy cult. My friend, Taner Edis, told me that, in his opinion, many humans find the notion that something bad happening to them having no reason at all even more distasteful than it being an act of active malevolence. Conspiracy theories allow persons who perceive themselves as persecuted to place themselves in a drama of broader scope; good vs. evil, with personalities attached.
Conspiracies are thought to have explanatory power; events that are otherwise haphazard can be fitted into the plan of Evil Government. These haphazard events' broader scope was demonstrated upon entering the building. Apparently, the ceiling fan was making a lot of noise in the basement, and a sign was posted which stated something like "we have continuously informed management about the problem, and since they do not want you to hear the truth, they refuse to repair it."
To have so little trust in humanity, conspiracy theorists seem to inordinately trust people not to betray confidence. Even with all the people involved, and the international scope of the conspiracy, nobody blabs. Even in the very real Watergate conspiracy, somebody spilled the beans.
The Kennedy conspiracy theorists have a religious holiday, they are persecuted (in their eyes), they have unquestioned scripture, religious relics, a holy scene (the killing ground) and make pilgrimages to the holy site. They are Keepers of the Ultimate Truth and decry those who do not have an "open mind". As the saying goes, you want an open mind — not a gaping one.
Notes:
1. Hoffer, Eric. The True Believer — Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements.
Harper & Row, New York, 1951. p.125.
2. Posner, Gerald. Case Closed. Doubleday, New York. 1993, p. 411. Taken from CE 2137, WC Vol XXIV p. 735; CE 2138, FBI statement of Jesse A. Skrivanek, WC XXIV p. 739.
3. Ibid, p. xiii.
4. Ibid, p. xiv.
5. Ibid, p. xiii.
6. Ibid, p. xiv.
7. Penn Gillette and Teller. How to Play With Your Food. Villard Books, New York, 1992. p. 45. Sequence of freeze frames of assassinated melon. They strongly consider it a breach of good taste to use a second melon wearing a pink pillbox hat next to the target melon .
"The furnaces of Pittsburgh are cold; the assembly lines of Detroit are still. In Los Angeles, a few gaunt survivors of a plague desperately till freeway center strips, backyards, and outlying fields, hoping to raise a subsistence crop. London offices are dark, its docks are deserted. In the farm lands of the Ukraine, abandoned tractors litter the fields; there is no fuel for them. The waters of the Rhine, Nile, and Yellow rivers reek with pollutants."Time magazine used this scenario to introduce a 1972 story on the Club of Rome's computer model of the world's future. The Club published the results in a volume entitled The Limits to Growth. Their predictions through the end of the 21st century were dire indeed, with population soaring and natural resources becoming more and more scarce until the final collapse around in the middle of the next century. The depletion of natural resources and exhaustion of arable land would lead to a massive collapse of population to a level low enough that a despoiled planet could support it. The Club of Rome's report advocated restrained economic growth to postpone the day of reckoning as far into the future as possible.
The energy crisis of the early 1970s, with its shortages of petroleum, rapidly escalating energy prices, and long gas lines made the world more receptive to the Club's predictions. Petroleum prices seemed destined to increase exponentially into the future if, for no other reason, than a projection of past trends.
But whatever concerns I had about The Limits to Growth were allayed when I attended my first Society of Actuaries convention in 1972. A speaker at one session was S. Fred Singer, professor of Environmental Sciences and Member of the Center for Advanced Studies at the University of Virginia. Singer's talk was well attended, possibly because of all of the recent publicity on environmental issues. One member of the audience asked Singer's opinion of the Club of Rome's predictions. Singer was dismissive of the report for several reasons, including the fact that it ignored economic effects and innovation. He predicted that we'd live long and well, despite the dire predictions that were then popular.
The intervening years demonstrated that Singer was right. Petroleum prices began to slide in the early eighties. By the mid-eighties, regions in the oil belt resembled scenes from the thirties. Businesses failed, real estate prices dropped, and workers migrated to other states in search of work. And despite the prediction to the contrary, no one's been driven by desperation to farm the median strips of the Los Angeles freeways.
Singer's impressive career spans both academia and government. He served as a deputy assistant administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. His academic career includes Princeton, the applied physics laboratory at Johns Hopkins University, and a professorship of environmental science at the University of Virginia. He has a long list of publications on energy and the environment. Even so, he has received little notice in the popular media. Writers who promote environmental fear, such as Paul Ehrlich and Vice President Al Gore, have received considerably more attention and, in my opinion, more attention than they deserve.
Ennui and Ehrlich
Paul Ehrlich, a professor of Population Studies at Stanford University, is the author of The Population Bomb (1968), The Population Explosion (1990) and a number of other books on environmental issues. How accurate has he been? The magnitude of his errors became clear to me while digging through a box of old books that I've had for a couple of decades. I discovered a copy of Paul Ehrlich's The End of Affluence. A first reading in 1974 led to overwhelming boredom after only a few pages; a second reading today revealed a work with much of the comic quality of an old Marx Brothers film.
The book contains Mr. Ehrlich's pessimistic view of the future, as seen from 1974. It reiterates the Club of Rome's depiction of a world containing too many people chasing too few resources, and it predicts disastrous consequences. It is intended to serve as a survivor manual, to help at least a few survive into the 1990s. Ehrlich recommends stockpiling tins of tuna, "because periodic protein shortages (or at least sky-high prices) seem certain to occur within the ten-to-twenty year shelf-life of the cans." He anticipates a "nutritional disaster that seems likely to overcome humanity in the 1970s (or, at the latest, in the 1980s)." He believes that "a situation has been created that could lead to a billion or more people starving to death."
Food shortages will only be one of the problems that the world will face: "it seems certain that energy shortages will be with us for the rest of the century, and that before 1985 mankind will enter a genuine age of scarcity in which many things besides energy will be in short supply." Food, fresh water, paper, and needed minerals will disappear as people and industries starve.
Readers are urged to prepare for the coming disasters. He recommends various publications that those hoping to survive can use to monitor the unwinding of the modern world, while also noting, "Our local paper is quite adequate, in combination with radio and TV, to let us know if the world has come to an end."
Certain countries are "Miner's Canaries" to watch closely as harbingers of the doom to come. Japan, for instance, is "The Dying Giant That May Never Awaken." Overpopulation, congestion, pollution and industrial poisoning are seen as inevitable unless Japan's citizens "completely change and de-industrialize."
Brazil is another canary. "As long as those in control are profiting, the tragedy will be played out perhaps before 1985." What precisely is this tragedy? Ehrlich doesn't explain it in the nine pages devoted to Brazil although he seems to expect a decline in living standards, combined with agricultural collapse and rising infant mortality rates.
Predictions spill over into the political realm as well. Despite the Watergate scandals and the political demise of President Nixon, he foresees "increased concentration of power in the executive branch and further erosion of power of Congress and the courts." He prophesies that the President will seize power and dissolve Congress during the food riots of the 1980s.
Food prices will escalate, consuming more and more of our budgets. "Without planning and organization on the food front and a rapid decline in world fertility to below replacement level, the prognosis for 1990 and beyond is completely negative. A massive die-off from starvation is unavoidable." What about the future of the economy? "Probably before 1985, a general recognition of the changed economic status of the nation will lead to a stock-market collapse even more severe than the one that preceded the onset of the depression of the 1930's. . .confidence in the market as a place to make money may be more or less permanently eroded."
For Ehrlich, a change in industrial policy provides one means of obviating the coming collapse. Proper economic planning will lead to a steady-state, survival-oriented economy in which we will lead sane and ecologically sound lives as we farm our subsistence gardens. Wind and solar energy are proposed as alternatives to petroleum. The public is urged to preserve energy in ways great and small, including the advice to "Eat cold meals." The author strains to create panic as he asks: "Remember the great toilet paper panic of 1973?" The public is urged to stockpile food, medical supplies and, of course, birth control pills. "A period of social breakdown is a poor time to become pregnant."
Inhumane treatment?
Is it cruel to make light of Paul Ehrlich's long list of failures? Any guilt that I might feel was quickly dispelled by a precedent Ehrlich sets. He attempts to hoist economists on their own petard, by portraying them as "entrapped in their own unnatural love for a growing gross national product." Economists are so limited in knowledge that explaining to them the need for "no growth in the material sector, or . . . that commodities must become expensive" is like "attempting to explain odd-day/even-day gas distribution to a cranberry." He suggests a game: "When economists make predictions, . . . clip them and later check how accurate they were. . . . The inaccuracy of their predictions don't [sic] build confidence in economists."
Milton Friedman is derided as an arch-conservative, but Friedman does receive praise for first conceiving the idea of a guaranteed income for the poor. This is, remarkably, one economic proposal that has since been discredited by empirical evidence.
Throughout the book, innumeracies run rampant. Ehrlich deplores oil company profits, and quotes percentage increases in the first quarter of 1974 that range from 39% to 718%, while failing to specify the base from which they grow. The widening gap between the incomes of the rich and poor in Brazil is deplored: "In the 1950s and 1960s, the ratio of the average income of the richest 20% of the population to that of the poorest 20% increased from 15-to-1 to 25-to-1." A more accurate picture should, at the very least, include some indication of how the incomes of the poorest 20% have changed over time.
Ehrlich decries the false nutritional and medical claims of vitamin and diet advocates. "For this, the only defense is knowledge, plus a healthy skepticism for anything that sounds like a far-fetched claim." He gives excellent advice, but unfortunately, fails to apply it to his own claims.
The book is an endless catalog of failed predictions. Potential problems are treated as certain to occur and then magnified into disasters. There is not even the slightest acknowledgment of the possibilities immanent within human creativity and our problem-solving capacity as antidotes to Ehrlich's dark and pessimistic vision.
Nobelist Richard Feynman, one of the great physicists of this century, provides an excellent definition of integrity in science: "I'm talking about a specific extra type of integrity that is not lying, but bending over backwards to show how maybe you're wrong, that you ought to do when acting as a scientist. And this is our responsibility as scientists, certainly to other scientists, and I think to laymen."
Paul Ehrlich fails this test in this book, as well as in his other works. His 1968 book The Population Bomb reveals a desire to frighten the reader that is so intense that at times he contradicts himself in the same paragraph. Why is overpopulation dangerous? Among the reasons given is that overpopulation sows the seeds of communism. He then offers Red China's population control program as proof of this thesis as if a communist regime would discourage its cause!
What is the worst-case consequence of overpopulation in America? He suggests that the United States will be driven, by the mid 1980s, to use insecticides so damaging to the environment that a horrified world will launch a nuclear attack on our country, in order to forestall environmental despoliation of this magnitude. The message here is that an America reduced to radioactive rubble is, in Ehrlich's theology, preferable to one saturated with insecticides.
A hunger for hyperbole
Why are environmentalists so prone to overstatement? Perhaps, because it sells books and magazines. Newsweek may have discovered this in a 1975 article when many were speculating on the possibility of a new Ice Age: "The central fact is that . . . the earth's climate seems to be cooling down. (Meteorologists) are almost unanimous in the view that the trend will reduce agricultural productivity." Perhaps they rediscovered this strategy in 1992 when others were speculating on the possibility of global warming: "The atmosphere may be reaching the limit of its capacity to absorb emitted carbon dioxide without falling into a disastrous greenhouse effect."
There's another explanation, though. Many "true believers" are convinced that their cause is of such extreme importance that exaggeration is justified. Al Gore, for example, urged journalists to avoid stories that might dampen the public's concern about the environment. The New Republic notes that, "Lately Gore and the distinguished biologist Paul Ehrlich have ventured into dangerous territory by suggesting that journalists quietly self-censor environmental evidence that is not alarming, because such reports, in Gore's words, 'undermine the effort to build a solid base of public support for the difficult actions we must soon take.'" Richard Feynman again provides insight, in his first principle: "You must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool."
Others, of a more cynical bent, suggest darker motives. Consider an article from The American Spectator that ran a couple of years ago entitled "Clean Air's Dirty Politics." The piece concerns the Monterey Bay Unified Air Pollution Control District, as legitimized by the Clean Air Act and enhanced by California's stricter state legislation. The regulatory board created under this act serves as a kind of second government, levying fines and fees while fashioning its own rules.
In just five years, a commercial sewer hookup has increased in cost from $1,500 to as much as $22,000 and all of this is exempt from the strictures of Proposition 13 that limit the government's authority to tax. Those who pay the bills have a right to a hearing, but none to an appeal. Local businesses are impoverished, while the board flourishes, with a new building and a well-paid and rapidly expanding staff.
But in point of fact, the Monterey Bay area has some of the cleanest air in the country. So why is this regulatory control needed? The author, a local attorney, concludes his article with this observation: "With Proposition 140 limiting the number of terms Willie [Brown] and his cronies can serve as legislators, they are looking to the air boards and other job-for-life regional agencies to save them from living by their own rules in the private sector. They will be well looked after."
Recycling doom (and doomsayers)
The idea that environmental regulation serves to provide career opportunities for otherwise unemployable politicians may be more than a scurrilous speculation. Tim Wirth, former U. S. Senator from Colorado, has found employment as the U. S. delegate to the Cairo Population Conference. If Al Gore doesn't move on to higher political office, he will probably end up safely ensconced as the director of some environmental organization. And certainly one of the most prominent members of the political class to join the ranks of the unemployed in recent years is Mikhael Gorbachev, who now devoted his time to Green Cross International. His new career is dedicated to guess what? protecting the environment. The wreck of the former Soviet Union includes some of the most environmentally despoiled real estate in the world, but this should not, in any way, impugn Gorbachev's motives.
Whatever the reasons, environmentalists and many politicians express a clear antipathy toward good news. An article in The Washington Post presented a balanced picture of ozone depletion in 1993. The article received the American Association for the Advancement of Science Westinghouse Science Journalism Award for large newspapers, while also provoking a storm of angry complaints from environmentalists for its dearth of pessimism. The journalist explains their reaction: "some environmentalists have a hard time dealing with good news. When the government took the bald eagle off the endangered species list in June [1994], for example, some environmentalists were upset. They saw it as bad news."
Someone gets Gored
Singer continues to contribute to the environmental debate with articles and editorials. An article on global warming in the April 1991 issue of Cosmos may have been a source of embarrassment to Al Gore. Singer's co-authors of this article are Dr. Chauncey Starr and the late Prof. Roger Revelle. Al Gore, interestingly enough, claimed in the introduction to Earth in the Balance that Roger Revelle was his mentor at Harvard. The article strongly disagreed with Al Gore's book.
About a year later this article came to public attention and was used to challenge Al Gore. At that time, Julian Lancaster, a research associate at Harvard, accused Singer of misusing Revelle's name as a co-author on the piece. An editorial in the June 27, 1994, National Review credits a campaign of vilification derived from this accusation to Al Gore. This resulted in a libel suit that was settled in Dr. Singer's favor before it went to trial. Lancaster retracted ". . . any and all statements, oral or written . . ." and added "I apologize to Professor Singer for the pain that my conduct has caused him and for any damage that I may have caused to his reputation." He also expressed regret for the actions of Anthony Socci of Al Gore's staff, and for the actions of Dr. Walter Munk and Edward Freeman who'd pressured a book editor to keep the Cosmos article from being reprinted.
I contacted Dr. Singer to verify the National Review editorial. Singer replied: "In accusing me of misusing Revelle's name, Lancaster . . . may have been driven by ideological views of global warming. If he had political or other personal motives, this did not emerge in pre-trial discovery. We cannot be certain, therefore, that he acted at the direct instigation of then-Senator Al Gore. . . . We did learn from documents and sworn testimony that Gore phoned Lancaster shortly before he started his defamatory actions against me in the Summer of 1992 (at the height of the presidential campaign), that there was extensive written and other communication between Lancaster and Gore's staff, and that one staff member, Dr. Anthony Socci, participated directly and personally by writing a defamatory letter."
Winners and losers
Paul Ehrlich has almost single-handedly popularized fear of overpopulation in America. He founded Zero Population Growth, and his name is still listed on the letterhead of that organization. Despite his horrible track record, he has maintained a standing in the media. He appeared briefly in the early '80s as a spokesman for nuclear winter (another discredited theory), until some critics began using his past failures to discredit him. CNN's month-long series "The People Bomb" used Paul Ehrlich and Carl Pope of the Sierra Club as the only two on-air sources. The series is a warmed-up version of Mr. Ehrlich's failed vision with the disasters postponed into the future. He was also employed as a correspondent for NBC news from 1989 through 1992.
His prestige also seems to survive in political circles. The 1990 book The Population Explosion by Mr. Ehrlich and his wife continues to rehash these same failed predictions. Tim Wirth, former Democratic Senator from Colorado and U. S. delegate to the Cairo Population Conference, notes on the book jacket that "This superb, closely reasoned, and fact-filled book should do much to clear the way for badly needed political action." And no less than Vice President Al Gore adds "The time for action is due, and past due. The Ehrlichs have written the prescription. . . ." If these books don't drive you to panic and despair, then surely the jacket blurbs will.
S. Fred Singer is now president of the Science and Environmental Policy Project. This organization is dedicated to educational programs aimed at scientists, the media, decision makers, and the general public. SEPP concentrates its activities on global, regional and local atmospheric issues, and on risks from exposure to chemicals and radiation. If you're tired of supporting ZPG and prefer to support an organization with a better track record on environmental issues, you can get further information at:
The Science and Environmental Policy Project
4084 University Drive, Suite 101
Fairfax, VA 22030
Tel: (703) 934-6940
Fax: (703) 352-7535