Mark quoted from a post at Kent's Imperative on the subject of bosses reading weblogs and asked if that wasn't how Tom parted ways with NWC.
Tom says:
That happened to me twice:1) I am told in 1998 that I can't waste NWC site space to post all interim products of my Y2K project (only final). So I build own project site at geocities.com and post everything. Tens of thousands of visits later, word gets around that best DOD site on Y2K contigency planning sits at geocities. People start writing online that it must be a CIA hoax.
Presto! I get an NWC project site.
Because I start posting every day--almost hourly on certain days--I bug the official webmasters of the NWC site so much they give up and make me the first prof who's his own webmaster with final approval.
I did all that to avoid giving anyone in the press a sense of "secret plans" being hatched at the college.
It didn't work: Jack Anderson wrote that column anyway.
2) At Xmas, 2004, I am investigated by the college after appearing on C-SPAN and having my personal website displayed, to include a reference to my just established LLC (I had previously gotten JAG approval for every consulting/speaking gig over the past 7 years, but hadn't sought approval on the LLC because I was told not to until we actually had a contract to approve). I am pulled before the provost at 4pm, Christmas Eve (Jim Giblin, still there) and threatened by my dean, now-departed Ken Watman, with severe professional charges of using my office for professional gain. His big evidence? First, a David Ignatius WAPO column noting my book sales (Watman: "I'm beginning to wonder if you haven't planned your entire time here at the college to produce a bestselling book!" My reply: "If I could predict the future that accurately, I wouldn't be working here, and certainly not under you!").
Second example? I am accused by Watman of hiding my negotiations with Putnam (no contract yet to submit) regarding a sequel to my NYT-bestseller "Pentagon's New Map.".
How did Watman know I was conducting my secret negotiations?
My dean followed it obsessively on my blog after numerous professors told him they were fans of it and he became concerned I was growing beyond his control.
When I was confronted by charges of this conspiracy, I replied, "Yes, we were all in it together, me and my tens of thousands of readers."
Clearly, I would have made a terrible spy.
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Comments (3)
The Public Affairs Office at NWC in place at the time supported Tom and all of his efforts. I think that deserves a quick note. Tom's success was good for the college - perhaps the biggest no-brainer in the history of media relations.
Posted by David | May 15, 2007 1:39 PM
TPMB writes:
.Correction: it was the best site, period. Gary North's site was an amazing resource, but it was suggestive rather than analytic. Tom's site was analytic: richly informed, but also cautious, and his final Report remains the best inquiry / summary of those curious times.
IMO, we still need -- now more than ever, in fact -- a map of the terrain of connectivity and dependencies of which the Y2K possibility gave us a foreshadowing. My personal view is that such a map should incorporate mental and emotional states among its loops, so that it can encompass both wars and rumors of wars, bank runs and rumors of bank runs, etc.
And on the millennium rollover – which tends to get dismissed as a "non-event" these days:
We shouldn't IMO forget that only a successful law enforcement action on the US / Canadian border prevented Ahmed Ressam from getting to LAX with enough explosives for the four timed luggage bombs he intended to detonate "at curbsides and inside terminals" at LAX on December 31st -- nor for that matter that it was only a vision of the Virgin Mary which persuaded senior members of the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God in Uganda to postpone their world's end holocaust (in which 500 plus members were locked into a church building and burned alive) from December 31st 1999 until March 2000.
Y2K was far more than a series of computer date bugs: it also involved a series of date bugs in the human brain.
Posted by Charles Cameron (hipbone) | May 15, 2007 3:24 PM
Charles is kind, and participated in a great workshop for us that kicked off the effort.
LCdr. Dave is right about the public affairs people at the Naval War College. Dave himself was instrumental in hooking me up with Andrew Chaikivsky, who wrote the Best and Brightest Esquire piece on me and remains a fellow contribuing editor with me to this day.
Dave was a huge resource to me for several years, and bailed me out of trouble with higher-ups on several occasions.
His boss, Cdr. Susan Haeg, was also a great officer, who really worked the system very intelligently and with great grace. She gave me top cover more than once, and was a real friend when I overstepped bounds and needed one.
I owe both them a lot.
Posted by Tom Barnett | May 15, 2007 7:51 PM