http://georgewashington.blogspot.com/2007/10/former-nist-employee-blows-...

A former NIST employee made the following statements regarding NIST's politicization and corruption (these emails were forwarded to me by a prominent 9/11 truth activist, I simply edited them to remove names so as to protect the anonymity of the whistleblower):

Communication dated October 1, 2007:

"NBS/NIST had become fully hijacked from the scientific into the political realm well before he became involved. That hijacking happened in the mid-90's, and has only grown stronger to the present. Prior to that time, the Director of NBS/NIST was appointed via the political process (Presidential nomination, Congressional confirmation), but with the firm understanding in the scientific community that the job was essentially a non-political one, as the leader of the government's premiere scientific research institution. Directors were carefully selected from a field of well-known senior scientists with management skills, typically from within the NBS staff, after gaining much credibility in their fields. Once appointed, Directors tended to stay on for several years, through different administrations in an essentially career mode, usually until they retired. That all changed under the Clinton administration.

I saw it happen. After retirement from the Army, in 1983 I joined then-NBS as a scientist on the staff. After 3 years, I decided to move on (engineering on the Star Wars project). Becoming sick of that charade in 1989, I succumbed to my former boss' entreaties and returned to now-NIST in a supervisory scientist position at the top civil service grade. I retired from there in 2001, and worked as a part-time contractor for them until last year. So I've had a chance to observe some of the higher-level NIST goings-on up close and personal for some time, and was personally involved in some of its politicization.

I don't know whether the NBS Director, Dr. John Lyons, was forced into retirement by the Clinton administration; I just remember the abruptness of the change after only 3 years on his job. He was replaced by a relatively unknown and also quite young scientist from DARPA. What I remember about her is her lack of credibility in representing NIST in scientific circles, her choice of senior staff with little regard for their scientific standing, and her keen emphasis on political sensitivities. She departed after a long four years, and the Director's office (and hence the whole Institute) has been in turmoil ever since. Four of her six successors to the present time have been "Acting", meaning in a practical sense that they may well not have had the personal credibility and scientific standing to survive the scrutiny of the confirmation process.

About the time of this major reduction in stature of the Director's office, some other major shifts took place at NIST, the echoes of which may have direct relevance to [9/11 truth]. Prior to that time, we were focused on scientific research and standards development that tended to be independent of what other government agencies were doing. All of a sudden, the senior levels of NIST were flooded with what I perhaps over-harshly termed "political commisars", whose job was principally to deal with what may be called "the political sensitivities" of our work and also making sure it supported big industry.

That support became an overtly-stated major mission for us. We lost a major share of our direct research funding, and from then on have been largely dependent upon receiving funds from other government agencies (the majority from Depts of Defense and Energy) for research and standards-making to support their own work. This "other agency" work amounted to about 40% of our total budget in my last several years there. In essence, we lost our scientific independence, and became little more than "hired guns".

When I first heard of [9/11 truth] and how the NIST "scientists" involved in 911 seemed to act in very un-scientific ways, it was not at all surprising to me. By 2001, everyone in NIST leadership had been trained to pay close heed to political pressures. There was no chance that NIST people "investigating" the 911 situation could have been acting in the true spirit of scientific independence, nor could they have operated at all without careful consideration of political impact. Everything that came from the hired guns was by then routinely filtered through the front office, and assessed for political implications before release.

Sorry this blurb became overly long, but I did want to make sure that an "insider's view" got onto the record."

Email dated October 2, 2007:

"A little more general insight into what I referred to as the NIST politicization, some of which may be of interest to you. In addition to the NIST "front office" looking closely over our shoulders, we had three major external oversight groups keeping close track of our little part of NIST, which admittedly dealt at times with some sensitive issues regarding technological security.

One was NSA (no surprises there!), another was the HQ staff of the Department of Commerce, which scrutinized our work very closely and frequently wouldn't permit us to release papers or give talks without changes to conform to their way of looking at things. A third was a bit of a surprise to some -- the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) had a policy person specifically delegated to provide oversight on our work. Just as a reminder, the OMB is an arm of the Executive Office of the President.

One more tidbit - a gentleman named William A Jeffrey served as NIST Director from July 2005 until last month. Interestingly, Dr. Jeffrey's previous assignment was in the EOP's Office of Science and Technology Policy! Talk about high-level oversight!! So one can be certain that on so hot a topic as yours, Dr. Jeffrey (and his previous political handlers in the WH - if they still were "previous") would be very personally involved at every step.

I don't know what more I can add that might be relevant, as I have been once-removed from NIST for the past 6 years as a contractor via [a defense company]. However, I do have some good NIST friends who are rather highly placed, so if you have any other questions re NIST, I might be able to ferret out an answer. Would be worth a shot anyway."