Talk:Born secret/GA1

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| result = Unsuccessful. RoySmith (talk) 14:53, 20 June 2025 (UTC)

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{{al|{{#titleparts:Born secret/GA1|-1}}|noname=yes}}
:This review is transcluded from Talk:Born secret/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Nominator: {{User|Very Polite Person}} 02:25, 15 May 2025 (UTC)

Reviewer: RoySmith (talk · contribs) 19:02, 12 June 2025 (UTC)

Starting review...

Looking at Special:Permalink/1293008434

• Ref 2 (Gillman 2019) is somebody's homework assignment, i.e. not a WP:RS. I also don't understand why it is listed with the title "Can Trump Just Declare Nuclear Secrets Unclassified?"

:* Gillman is totally gone now, [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Born_secret&diff=1296230163&oldid=1296215276 see here]. -- Very Polite Person (talk) 18:14, 18 June 2025 (UTC)

• Ref 17 (Neier 1980) is probably closer to an opinion piece than a WP:RS, so needs to be attributed as opinion. You do so in two of the three places it's used, but state "All four weapons fell to earth" in wiki-voice; that one probably needs a better source.

:* All set here on [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Born_secret&diff=1296212292&oldid=1296043142 this edit.] -- Very Polite Person (talk) 15:44, 18 June 2025 (UTC)

• I see you are using List-defined references. While this is acceptable under WP:GACR, I would encourage you to not do this. It is a rarely-used style, and as such not well supported by many tools (notably the Visual Editor). I expect that in the future, new tools which may be developed will be increasingly less likely to support LDR, making it difficult for other editors to work on this article.

• Ref 18 (A Summary of Accidents and Significant Incidents Involving US Nuclear Weapons and Nuclear Weapon Systems) could use a more complete reference. I can't find it in either of the NYPL general or reference catalogs, nor in WorldCat, nor in a Google search. How can somebody find this?

:* Just to swing back to this one, it's now redundant. It's referenced on page 2 [https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1426902 here in footnotes], is found through [https://primarysources.brillonline.com/browse/weapons-of-mass-destruction/doe-report-a-summary-of-accidents-and-significant-incidents-involving-us-nuclear-weapons-and-nuclear-weapon-systems-june-2-1990-secretrestricted-data-doe-foia;wmdowmdo10006 here], and GWU has an OCR of it [https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/media/29457/OCR readout here]. I pulled it as redundant/too much headache. -- Very Polite Person (talk) 15:51, 18 June 2025 (UTC)

::OK, so I'm left with trying to verify {{blockquote|He cited three notable cases: repeated fires and releases of plutonium at the Rocky Flats Plant near Denver, Colorado; the 1961 Goldsboro B-52 crash, in which a United States Air Force Boeing B-52 Stratofortress came down near Goldsboro, North Carolina, leaving a single Mark 39 nuclear bomb “one safety” from detonation; and the 1966 Palomares B-52 crash over Palomares, Spain, where a mid-air collision dropped four B28FI Mod 2 Y1 thermonuclear bombs.}} against the remaining two citations (Asselin 1966 and Maydew 1997). I don't have access to those; could you send me exerpts from them which support the statement? RoySmith (talk) 22:22, 19 June 2025 (UTC)

:::So what I'm learning here is that simplified sourcing is preferred and adding supplemental sourcing (like "here's more if you want to pursue further") seems to add unexpected complexity and issues.

:::The article here has:

:::: {{tq|Aryeh Neier, writing in 1980 for the Index on Censorship essay USA: Born classified, warned that the born-secret doctrine could be invoked to suppress reporting on nuclear accidents and contamination.[13] He cited three notable cases:}}

:::Then Neier writes on page 3:

:::: {{tq|The editors of The Progressive say that there are many similar matters that are inadequately discussed in the United States because of the secrecy with which the government has shrouded everything nuclear. As examples they point out: 'At Rocky Flats, Colorado, where the "triggers" for H-bombs are made, substantial amounts of plutonium have escaped into the environment, undoubtedly causing numerous cases of cancer. In North Carolina, eighteen years ago, an Air Force bomber crashed, tripping five of the six safety devices on one of its twenty-megaton Hbombs - a near catastrophe. At Palomares, Spain, where a US plane accidently dumped a load of H-bombs, thousands of tons of radioactive soil had to be dug up and hauled away.'}}

:::Then this article has:

:::: {{tq|repeated fires and releases of plutonium at the Rocky Flats Plant near Denver, Colorado;}}

:::Which is about Rocky Flats Plant, which has a well known history of these fires and plutonium issues, and is heavily sourced there.

:::: {{tq|the 1961 Goldsboro B-52 crash, in which a United States Air Force Boeing B-52 Stratofortress came down near Goldsboro, North Carolina, leaving a single Mark 39 nuclear bomb “one safety” from detonation;}}

:::Which is the 1961 Goldsboro B-52 crash, and is heavily sourced.

:::: {{tq|and the 1966 Palomares B-52 crash over Palomares, Spain, where a mid-air collision dropped four B28FI Mod 2 Y1 thermonuclear bombs.[14][15] All four weapons fell to earth.[16]}}

:::Which is the 1966 Palomares incident.

:::Should I just redo this with simplified accessible sourcing? These are all three extremely well known historical events. I'm not sure now what is best practice/MOS/policy around simply importing extra contextual facts that are part of other articles on well-known events. Like in Our American Cousin#Lincoln assassination, is it problematic that this isn't sourced from a GAC POV?

:::: {{tq|During the ensuing laughter, Booth, a famous actor and Confederate sympathizer who was not part of the play's cast, entered Lincoln's box and fatally shot him in the back of the head.}}

:::It might be helpful if I understood the general culture/standardized across GACs/FAs requirements for this, as I may need to update a number of articles to be... less complex? I have to admit I did get into the rapid habit of probably over and hyper-sourcing from a brief annoying dip into a few UFO related BLPs where it seemed like every attempt at improving articles was like walking into a firing squad. -- Very Polite Person (talk) 13:50, 20 June 2025 (UTC)

::::Um, right now you've got a statement that's cited to two sources which I can't find myself, but I assume you have, since you used them. I'm obligated as part of this GA review to verify that these sources do indeed support the statements. So, I'll just repeat my request: can you please send me those sources? RoySmith (talk) 14:20, 20 June 2025 (UTC)

:::::I'm just going to simplify things even more, and then will start a new project to go back through every one of my articles I've worked on and my drafts to make sure I'm going as close as I can to 1 source to 1 sentence.

:::::: {{tq|The editors of The Progressive say that there are many similar matters that are inadequately discussed in the United States because of the secrecy with which the government has shrouded everything nuclear. As examples they point out: 'At Rocky Flats, Colorado, where the "triggers" for H-bombs are made, substantial amounts of plutonium have escaped into the environment, undoubtedly causing numerous cases of cancer. In North Carolina, eighteen years ago, an Air Force bomber crashed, tripping five of the six safety devices on one of its twenty-megaton Hbombs - a near catastrophe. At Palomares, Spain, where a US plane accidently dumped a load of H-bombs, thousands of tons of radioactive soil had to be dug up and hauled away.'}}

:::::Further revised:

:::::: Aryeh Neier, writing in 1980 for the Index on Censorship essay USA: Born classified, warned that the born-secret doctrine could be invoked to suppress reporting on nuclear accidents and contamination. As examples of incidents he believed were inadequately reported due to secrecy, Neier cited: plutonium releases at the Rocky Flats Plant near Denver, Colorado; the 1961 Goldsboro B-52 crash in North Carolina; and the 1966 Palomares B-52 crash in Spain, where a mid-air collision dropped [thermonuclear]] weapons.

:::::That puts it absolutely contained within Neier, at the cost of some neat contextual wikilinks. [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Born_secret&diff=1296530482&oldid=1296230163 Edit here]. -- Very Polite Person (talk) 14:41, 20 June 2025 (UTC)

Next up, spot checks. I'll be looking at [3, 7, 11, 14, 22]

• {{tq|The rule originated in statutes covering the design, production, and use of nuclear weapons , though it can also encompass other nuclear ideas and related technologies }}
• {{tq|Suppose an average—or below-average in my case—physics student at a university could design a workable atomic bomb on paper. That would prove the point dramatically and show the federal government that stronger safeguards have to be placed on the manufacturing and use of plutonium . In short, if I could design a bomb, almost any intelligent person could.}}
• I don't have access to this source; could you send me scans of the appropriate pages, please?
• I did some more looking and found a copy in Internet Archives. I've added the URL to the citation. The block quote verifies, but the other use of it ("The rule originated ...") I can't find.

::: I'm 99% sure I hosed that one up refactoring/bulk changing the article late last year or early this year doing copy/editing--[https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Born_secret&diff=1295423106&oldid=1295301975 this restores the better source for that]. I'll keep chewing through the list, thanks again! -- Very Polite Person (talk) 17:22, 13 June 2025 (UTC)

::So, given that, I still need to verify the first statement ("The rule originated ...") and I'm not able to do that by reading Wellerstein 2022. Can you point me to specifically where Wellerstein says those things? RoySmith (talk) 22:34, 19 June 2025 (UTC)

:::: {{tq|The rule originated in statutes covering the design, production, and use of nuclear weapons, though it can also encompass other nuclear ideas and related technologies.[1]}}

:::In lede and this are the partners between that body:

:::: {{tq|Historically, the born-secret concept applied to any data related to nuclear technologies, whether or not the specific technology was developed by the United States government or by other parties.[1]}}

:::From Wellerstein:

:::: {{tq|Gen. Leslie Groves, head of the Manhattan Project, leaked information to the press about a minor Soviet spy ring in Canada in early 1946, which set off the first round of atomic spy fears, and resulted in the McMahon committee revising their bill significantly. The final version of the McMahon Act had removed the section on “dissemination of information” and replaced it with a section dedicated to “control of information,” which included an expansive new secrecy category and huge penalties for violating it.}}

:::: {{tq|This new category, called “Restricted Data,” was defined as “all data concerning the manufacture or utilization of atomic weapons, the production of fissionable material, or the use of fissionable material in the production fo power.”}}

:::: {{tq|Over the years, the “all data” part would be taken very literally: All data relating to atomic weapons, irrespective of who discovered or invented it, or whether they worked for the U.S. government or not, would be covered. For this reason, Restricted Data is frequently referred to as “born secret,” because the classification requirements technically apply the moment the information itself comes into existence, however it does.}}

:::That's where I drew that language from. -- Very Polite Person (talk) 14:10, 20 June 2025 (UTC)

• {{tq|Secret Restricted Data, Formerly Restricted Data , and other National-Security Information.}}
• There's three citations here for a single sentence. That makes it hard to verify. Refs 7 and 9 touch on some of this, but I don't see anything that talks about "historically" Ref 8 404's. Could you provide more exact citations for this sentence?

::: This one turned out to be an easier fix... Burr covers it, plus some copy/editing. I just over-cited that one. I have no idea why I thought it was controversial (it obviously isn't). [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Born_secret&diff=1295425635&oldid=1295425458 Edit here]. -- Very Polite Person (talk) 17:44, 13 June 2025 (UTC)

::Sorry, I'm not seeing it. The statement in question is now {{blockquote|United States government scientists working on nuclear matters have historically held Q clearance, required for access to top secret, restricted data, and other national security information}} and none of that appears to be supported by Burr 2993. RoySmith (talk) 22:39, 19 June 2025 (UTC)

:::From this article:

:::: {{tq|United States government scientists working on nuclear matters have historically held Q clearance, required for access to top secret, restricted data, and other national security information}}

:::From Burr source:

:::: {{tq|The two scientists received 'Q' clearances for nuclear weapons design information because any information that they developed on nuclear design would, under the law, be considered secret and 'born classified.'}}

:::Burr confirms:

:::* Q clearance was required for access to nuclear weapons design information.

:::* Restricted Data falls under what they needed clearance to access or produce (as it was "born classified" under the Atomic Energy Act).

:::* These scientists were working on nuclear matters for the U.S. government (specifically, at Lawrence Radiation Laboratory under the Atomic Energy Commission).

:::Burr is saying:

:::* government-hired physicists

:::* working on nuclear

:::* were granted Q

:::* because anything they made would require Q because it's all nuclear

:::* "historically" --> this was from the 1960s

:::What specific wording is the problem in that sentence? I have to admit I'm not seeing it? -- Very Polite Person (talk) 14:19, 20 June 2025 (UTC)

::::You've taken two specific instances of scientists being given Q clearances and generalized that to "scientists ... have historically held Q clearance". That's a broader claim than what's supported by the source. I also don't see anything which says that Q clearance is required for top secret or restricted data. You've put together a logical chain of statements which could reasonably lead to this conclusion, but it's not what the source actually says, so it's WP:SYNTH. RoySmith (talk) 14:27, 20 June 2025 (UTC)

• {{tq|Writing for the Cardozo Law Review , Aviam Soifer argues that classification can even apply retroactively to the original conception—or “germination”—of an idea}}
• Verified.

• {{tq|Quist further observes—citing Federal Register notices in 1967 and 1972—that one narrow “loophole” exists...}}
• Another example of a multi-citation cluster that makes it difficult to understand which citations apply to which parts of the text. Made worse by the list-defined reference format getting in the way of effective tool use and that link to the Federal Register being in a format that's not searchable (I know, that last one isn't your fault). In any case, please break this up into more precise citations to the particular bits of text each one supports.

::* Looking back at this one--the main quote is in the Quist linked PDF here [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Born_secret#cite_note-Quist_Oak_Ridge_2002_chapter_4-5 at this reference]. Do a control-f first for "According to current DOE procedures" and then for "but is classified only when it reaches". PDF page 11 and document page 88. It won't come up from one long control-f as it's got footnote text under each sentence in turn. It's such a narrow, particular and one-of-a-kind loophole, and a quote so jam packed with data, that it seemed to be a no-brainer to include. The other two cites after Quist are to the actual Federal Register materials he himself referenced. Was that not OK to do that? I'd seen people add supplemental links directly to relevant tertiary data like this elsehwere. -- Very Polite Person (talk) 21:22, 17 June 2025 (UTC)

::You are presenting a quote from Quist, so what your citation should be is something that verifies that Quist said the thing you are claiming he did. The two citations to the FR are extraneous in this context because you're not actually talking about what the FR says. So I'd drop those two FR references. You also left {{tq|At that point, classification restrictions must be applied [Fed. Reg. 37, 15393 (Aug. 1, 1972); Fed. Reg. 32, 20869 (Dec. 28, 1967)]}} out of your quote, which is fine, but you should indicate the omission with "..." per MOS:ELLIPSIS. You also need to give a better citation so people can find this. Your "do control-f" explanation helped me to find it, but that's not what you would put in a citation. Since you're using that reference in multiple places, you could use {{t|rp}} at each citation to provide a more precise location, i.e. something like this.{{rp|88 note {{doubledagger}}}} RoySmith (talk) 22:57, 19 June 2025 (UTC)

:::As an aside, the first of those two FR citations is to a NPRM (Notice of Proposed Rule Making). That's not a law. That's an announcement that they want to make something a law and are soliciting public commentary. But that's Quist's problem, not ours. RoySmith (talk) 23:00, 19 June 2025 (UTC)

• {{tq| Nuclear physicist Frank Chilton judged Phillips’s design “very likely to work”. Phillips later said, “It’s very simple; any undergraduate physics major could have done what I did.}}
• Note, this is two adjacent citations to the same source; they should be merged.
• People Magazine seems like an odd source for this kind of article. WP:PEOPLEMAG says "the magazine should not be used for contentious claims unless supplemented with a stronger source". Is there a better source that could be used for this? In any case, the quote "very likely to work" does not appear in the source.

• The current version of this is {{tq|In 1976, Princeton University undergraduate John Aristotle Phillips designed, on paper, a nuclear weapon to demonstrate how easily such technology might be acquired by American adversaries, earning the media nickname "the A-Bomb Kid".[18]}} cited to the Youngestown Vindicator. The problem there is that there's nothing that supports "the A-Bomb Kid" being a widely used nickname. It's what the Vindicator called him, but there's no reason to believe anybody else called him that. Also, that name is only in the headline and headlines are not reliable sources.

Please ping me when you've addressed all of these and I'll come back to take another look. RoySmith (talk) 20:41, 12 June 2025 (UTC)

:Thanks, I'm going to work through these this week (I have another in GA and it's hard to avoid scratching draft itches, but I'll focus more on these two). Re that obscure source, when I imported some of that data from the Palomares article, I remember thinking that was a weird primary obscrurity from so long ago, but the relevant bits were referenced as secondary in other material so I left it--it seemed like a secure sourcing loop. I don't know I actually need it though--it may be basically an artifact. I'll look through it.

:For the Phillips quote block, I swapped out to an easier more accessible source (plus I don't email on Wiki stuff and honestly suck at scanning/OCR work). I'll just swap out the remaining usage of that source to another.

:Thanks for your help! -- Very Polite Person (talk) 22:15, 12 June 2025 (UTC)

:This one is set, that passage was out of removed Gillman and I can't find it now elsewhere, even digging into newspapers.com and other directions. -- Very Polite Person (talk) 12:45, 17 June 2025 (UTC)

{{ping|RoySmith}} -- I think I got everything you flagged so far, if you want to look at your convenience -- no hurry at all! -- Very Polite Person (talk) 18:55, 19 June 2025 (UTC)

{{ping|RoySmith}} As an aside, this makes me increasingly annoyed (not your fault) that there is no viable and trivial way to use one source and then assign somehow with unique cites on a line-by-line basis to specific quotes. E.g., like, {{tq|"Wikiprose, John Smith then did stuff.[15-14]}} which would drop to the proper References section, but also then output the specific quoted passage that explicitly supports that exact invocation in {{tq|[15-14]}}. Kind of like how my draft here for my own tracking of quotes is setup:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Very_Polite_Person/draft/Field_propulsion#cite_note-Gilland_NIAC_Plasma_2011-5

So the idea is {{tq|[15-14]}} would be the 14th usage of the 15th source, and would drop you to the exact Reference section "quote line" for that matching sentence in the wikiprose. Maximized lazy transparency.

I had tried making User:Very Polite Person/Template:CiteQuoteGroup but it didn't work out. If you know of a policy/MOS viable way to do this, I would love to know. -- Very Polite Person (talk) 13:59, 20 June 2025 (UTC)

I'm afraid I'm going to have to close this as unsuccessful due to an inability to verify claims in the article against the sources. It's to be expected that there might be some discrepancies, but there's too many places where the sources simply did not support the claims. I'm particularly concerned that I asked you three times to provide me with source material to help me with the verification but you appear to be unwilling or unable to do that, which I do not understand. RoySmith (talk) 14:52, 20 June 2025 (UTC)

{{abot}}

{{ping|RoySmith}} I was literally in the act of addressing every concern of yours, and had updated this against every single issue you raised. I updated every sourcing issue you had. I was trying to post this last one as you closed the GA:

:Until I have time later to see if I can construct a more verbose 1:1 cited contextual few sentences built off this in a future further expansion, would this revision satisfy your worries?

:: Government scientists working on nuclear weapons design have held Q clearance, to access Restricted Data.

: Against Burr: {{tq|The two scientists received 'Q' clearances for nuclear weapons design information because any information that they developed on nuclear design would, under the law, be considered secret and 'born classified.'}}

: And Quist (page 10): {{tq|In the final version of the Atomic Energy Act of 1946, Congress established a special category of information called “Restricted Data.” Restricted Data (RD) was defined to encompass “all data concerning the manufacture or utilization of atomic weapons, the production of fissionable material, or the use of fissionable material in the production of power.” Thus, by operation of law, nearly all atomic (nuclear) energy information fell within the definition of RD. The Atomic Energy Act authorized the AEC to control the dissemination of RD, specifying as a prerequisite to access to this information that an individual must have a security clearance.}}

Which is now updated into the article.

Is this the normal way these things go? -- Very Polite Person (talk) 14:56, 20 June 2025 (UTC)

:The first time I asked you for source material, you replied {{tq|I don't email on Wiki stuff and honestly suck at scanning/OCR work)}} which sounded like "I'm not going to do that". That was not great, but I let it go. The next time I asked for something, you ducked the request and went into a long explanation about how you were going to rework the sourcing. But I really did want to see those sources so I asked again, and rather than responding to my request you again went into an explanation about how you were going to simplify the sourcing and start some new project to rework your old articles.

:There's a lot of problems here with the sourcing. I was willing to take the time to work with you on those issues. But I'm not willing to ask three times for stuff, have you blow off the requests, and then come back and ask a fourth time. RoySmith (talk) 15:16, 20 June 2025 (UTC)