MIT Professor Visited by Pentagon Officials after Criticizing Missile Testing Program

UPDATE: MIT was denied the security clearance necessary to complete a full review of the situation to determine if data was in fact manipulated.

Theodore Postol, Professor of Science and Technology and National Security at MIT, wrote a letter describing how the Missile Defense Agency had doctored the results of the National Missile Defense Test. Postol was then visited by Pentagon officials who wanted to show him information contained within a folder labeled “Secret,” but he refused to look at the materials. Had he read classified information about the antimissile program, the Pentagon could later have stopped him from writing more on the issue because doing so could be considered a security clearance violation (regardless of the fact that Postol had the proper clearance to read the materials in the first place and that his writing referred only to non-classified information).