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Policy

State Department Officials Afraid To Use Real Names When Talking About Space Policy

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
June 29, 2010
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Briefing by Senior Administration Officials on the President’s National Space Policy Via Teleconference
“SENIOR ADMINSTRATION OFFICIAL ONE: No, no. What it does is it sets up best practices for things like transparency, confidence building measures. I don’t know if my colleagues want to add anything more on that.
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL TWO: No, I don’t have anything to add.
SENIOR ADMINSTRATION OFFICIAL ONE: Yeah, it is not an arms — a legally binding arms control agreement. What it is, again – is, again, set up best practices how responsible space-faring nations would act. And it would be politically binding, not legally binding. That is a confidence in transparency building measure. And I think in the near term that’s where the focus of the Administration’s efforts will be.”

Keith’s note: Yesterday, the space media got a 6 minute warning by email that White House officials were going to have a media telecon to discuss the new space policy. NASA PAO only found out at the last minute and did their best to alert us. Yesterday, the State Department also had a stealth press briefing – by telecon – about space and NASA apparently did not get a heads up – ergo no media advisory for the space media. But in addition to no advanced notice, no one at the State Department was willing to use their name or allow comments to be attributed to them. I am trying to decide if this is attributable to arrogance or cowardice. It is probably safe to assume both.
But the most post hypocritical part of this entire stealth exchange is when “Senior Administration Official One” and “Senior Administration Official Two” start to talk about “best practices for transparency.” What could these two people possibly know about “transparency”? They won’t even use their own name in an official State Department activity, a transcript of which is posted on an official website.

NASA Watch founder, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA, Away Teams, Journalist, Space & Astrobiology, Lapsed climber.