A little-known reason for keeping activities clandestine is that it really cuts down on the hassle.

When I was at the Pentagon I got the job of answering a FOIA request from some group wanting to know if the Shuttle astronauts on a particular mission had photographed the Soviet industrial city of Chelybinsk using their hand held cameras. The group wanted confirmation of this reported activity because they were “investigating links between NASA and the intelligence community.” Well, gee, at one time the Shuttle was supposed to be the ONLY vehicle we would have to put anything into orbit, and national intelligence payloads would have to fly on the vehicle, so there had to be some links. And the National Reconnaissance Office certainly had better assets to take pictures of stuff in Russia than an astronaut hanging out of the back of the Shuttle with a Brownie Hawkeye. So it was all quite silly.

But the NRO officially did not exist at that time so I go the FOIA tasking. I referred to some reference works in the Pentagon library, called the NRO and told them what was going on, and in the end responded to the FOIA by saying that we had no information on the subject, which was quite true.

If you don’t exist then you don’t have to answer the dumb phone calls and letters. Congressional staffers and the GAO and the like have to be rather more circumspect about showing up at your door. And all that is worth a lot, believe me.

Blert #61:

In WWII the Japanese launched 15,000 balloon bombs at the US. The first few were reported by the US news media but then when we realized what was going on the Feds asked the media to keep quiet about it. And they did. From the Japanese perspective they were pumping out thousands of balloons and none were getting there. They quit. The secrecy did result in the deaths of 7 people in Oregon who were foolish enough to go over to a bomb and poke at it, but it utterly deprived the Japanese of any feedback.