Tim wrote: On Monday, August 27, 2001, at 05:39 AM, Declan McCullagh wrote:

TERRORIST ATTACKS Defense Department (DOD), Office of the Secretary of Defense (F.R. Page 42998) Meeting of the Advisory Panel To Assess the Capabilities for Domestic Response to Terrorist Attacks Involving Weapons of Mass Destruction, to run August 27-28. Location: RAND, 1200 South Hayes St., Arlington, VA. 12 noon Contact: 703-413-1100, ext. 5282

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I've been seeing Declan forward a bunch of these terse paragraphs announcing these meetings. I never see any summaries of what was said. Anyone ever attend? (If they're closed to the public or journalists, why forward so many announcements of them?)

Why? Because you're making a tacit admission that the fact that the panel is being conducted at all is significant--and has a good chance of making a serious impact on future policy decisions. Since RAND is 100% responsible for the real meat of any "assessment" going on, you might say the panel is part of the mechanism by which analysis gets turned into actual policy and legislation. I choose to take this (and dozens of similar panels on widely diverse subjects) as proof that RAND-style policy analysis is alive, well, and more central to the policy process than ever. Call it a "pale imitation" of the early days if you want to, but you have to admit you all aren't ignoring it. And as far as I can tell, you damn sure won't be able to ignore it in the years to come either. Given that, maybe encouraging more cypherpunk-friendly people to take the analysis route isn't such a bad idea after all. ~Faustine.