The FBI's Counterintelligence Strategic Partnership Unit Publishes an Ignorant White Paper

"[Dr. Pollack] extended his studies of Earth's atmosphere in collaboration with Carl Sagan and other colleagues to develop the nuclear winter scenario, a frightening extrapolation of the consequences of a global nuclear exchange. Published in the journal Science, the nuclear winter model fired the arms control movement of the 1980's and played a major role in encouraging U.S. and Soviet leaders to engage in serious disarmament talks. Pollack's contributions have shown that the study of other planets is not only valuable in and of itself, but also because of the new perspective it gives us of our own world...Someday, humans will walk on Mars, possibly even within Crater Pollack. Their presence on the red planet will owe much to the work of other explorers such as James Pollack, who devoted his life to studying other planets -- and helping us to appreciate and preserve our

own Earth."---NASA


This is a photo of the late NASA astrophysicist James Pollack. If he were alive, I am sure this award-winning scientist would be very surprised to learn that an FBI white paper is giving credibility to an absurd book called Comrade J, which claims that nuclear winter is a "KGB hoax."


Dr. Pollack had a crater on Mars named after him, according to his NASA biography, but the anonymous FBI official who wrote this white paper only has rocks in his head. Maybe instead of spreading vague, ignorant allegations about climate scientists in Comrade J, the FBI could have checked with NASA.


The Counterintelligence Strategic Partnership Unit of the FBI published a white paper in order to warn scholars about KGB spies, but what scholar will take FBI cautions about national security seriously when they publish such shoddy scholarship and malign the reputations of scientists who are also concerned about national security?


The FBI should retract this paper, admit their errors, and apologize to the scientists they have maligned by giving credibility to the book Comrade J. See here and here for some background.