Jesse Michels went to Tokyo to interview Japanese officials. Japanese officials interviewed him instead. Here’s what they wanted to know, and what he told them.
Peggy, you're right and thank you. Michels attributed the "exact locations" exchange to AOC in the NicoNico broadcast, and we matched his framing against the later AOC "titles, programs, departments, regions" exchange rather than the actual Garcia exchange on page 19. Both the questioner and the comparison quote were wrong. We're updating the briefing with a correction now and crediting your catch.
The underlying paraphrase-drift observation still holds (Grusch said "I know the exact locations," which Michels rendered as "addresses of where the UFOs are housed"), but getting the questioner wrong was exactly the kind of primary-source failure the section was supposed to model discipline against. We failed it. Appreciate you reading carefully.
I absolutely agree that the paraphrase-drift observation is still valid although this may not be the cleanest of examples. I want to add I wasn't trying for a gotcha. It was just my own memory was of Grusch saying that he knew exact locations but I had no real recollection of where or when in which of the many hours of Grusch interviews I have watched. I have to credit Grok at telling me where to find it.
That's at least two great catches now — the Ryder family tree on THE ARCHITECT and today's Garcia attribution on THE TOKYO TABLE. Your eye for primary-source detail is rare and exactly the kind of eyes we want on the work.
Thanks for reading carefully and taking the work seriously. Accuracy is the most important thing here.
Don't trust us, check our data. If we get something wrong we want to know.
“For whatever reason, the Japanese became as interested as any other country, which I think speaks to some intuitive, visceral connection that the culture seems to have with this topic.”
Japan, more than any other nation on Earth, knows the stakes that are involved. In August, 1945, no one could quite wrap their heads around atomic power. It went from the realm of an abstract possibility into a nightmare reality for the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and all of Japan. No other country has had that experience. That probably opens them up more to the reality of possibilities.
Michels did misstate who the questioner was, it was not AOC but Garcia. See page 19 of the congressional record:
Mr. GARCIA. And where?
Mr. GRUSCH. I know the exact locations and those locations were
provided to the Inspector General and some of which to the intel-
ligence committees. I actually had the people with the firsthand
knowledge provide a protected disclosure to the Inspector General.
Peggy, you're right and thank you. Michels attributed the "exact locations" exchange to AOC in the NicoNico broadcast, and we matched his framing against the later AOC "titles, programs, departments, regions" exchange rather than the actual Garcia exchange on page 19. Both the questioner and the comparison quote were wrong. We're updating the briefing with a correction now and crediting your catch.
The underlying paraphrase-drift observation still holds (Grusch said "I know the exact locations," which Michels rendered as "addresses of where the UFOs are housed"), but getting the questioner wrong was exactly the kind of primary-source failure the section was supposed to model discipline against. We failed it. Appreciate you reading carefully.
I absolutely agree that the paraphrase-drift observation is still valid although this may not be the cleanest of examples. I want to add I wasn't trying for a gotcha. It was just my own memory was of Grusch saying that he knew exact locations but I had no real recollection of where or when in which of the many hours of Grusch interviews I have watched. I have to credit Grok at telling me where to find it.
That's at least two great catches now — the Ryder family tree on THE ARCHITECT and today's Garcia attribution on THE TOKYO TABLE. Your eye for primary-source detail is rare and exactly the kind of eyes we want on the work.
Thanks for reading carefully and taking the work seriously. Accuracy is the most important thing here.
Don't trust us, check our data. If we get something wrong we want to know.
“For whatever reason, the Japanese became as interested as any other country, which I think speaks to some intuitive, visceral connection that the culture seems to have with this topic.”
Japan, more than any other nation on Earth, knows the stakes that are involved. In August, 1945, no one could quite wrap their heads around atomic power. It went from the realm of an abstract possibility into a nightmare reality for the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and all of Japan. No other country has had that experience. That probably opens them up more to the reality of possibilities.