[FPSPACE] US tracking of early Soviet lunar and planetary probes, use of open sources in secret documents

[Sven Grahn]

----- Original Message ----- >
> I do agree with your notion Sven, that much of the time, "Secret" 
> stampings
> are of publicly-sourced data.  But what is also supposed to happen in such
> classified level reports is that the reason why it is stamped "Secret" is
> because of the evaluations done on the open-sourced data.

Yes, of course, this is quite true...

> So one has to be careful to not say that "Secret" documents are merely
> equivalent to articles in Spaceflight looked over by bored government
> boffins/apparatchiks, and slapped with a rubber red stamping at the tops 
> and
> bottoms of pages.

Funny that you should mention Spaceflight articles, because the reason I 
asked the question to that intelligence officer is because he had my own 
articles to Spaceflight stamped "secret" (a big red stamp) - we were 
discussing what was in them. And, this was not some bored apparatchnik - he 
was a sharp guy.

Sven