Let’s be honest; very few people read this blog (or would cop to reading it), and even fewer leave comments. So it was with some surprise that I saw a comment awaiting moderation on my recent post about the need for accrediting think tanks. I was even more surprised to see a long-detailed missive by one Frank von Hippel, defending David Albright against the charges made against him in Scott Ritter’s article upon which I drew as an example.
Von Hippel, a Professor of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University, goes to some lengths to dispute Ritter’s claims. For the record, I remain dubious as to Albright’s qualifications. Von Hibbel fails to refute Ritter’s claim that Albright has not only misrepresented himself as a “former IAEA inspector”, “He has never worked as a nuclear physicist on any program dedicated to the design and/or manufacture of nuclear weapons. He has never designed nuclear weapons and never conducted mathematical calculations in support of testing nuclear weapons, nor has he ever worked in a facility or with an organization dedicated to either.” That Albright has clearly been disingenuous in stating his qualifications is reason enough to regard his work and opinions with doubt, as well as the media outlets for whom he is a “go-to guy”.
But getting back to the comment itself, since so few people read Cogito! I must assume that this comment is the work of a damage control effort being done on Albright’s behalf. By googling random phrases in Von Hibbel’s apology for Albright, I found that this had been posted all over the web, particularly in blogs that had included recent discussion of Ritter’s article. Somebody looked all over the web for any post referencing Ritter’s article, and then posted Von Hibbel’s rebuttal.
Someone apparently has an interest in preserving Albright’s reputation. I see this as yet another example of the need for the kind of transparency that a robust accreditation process could deliver.