Awhile back I authored a tech-history book on nuclear testing. It was published by Macmillan just before the first wave of the corporate takeover juggernaut took them down. And no, I won't flog the title here.
But since then I am regularly contacted by grad students and the occasional reporter trying to make sense of the 1950s and 1960s--especially since politically and militarily we seem to be returning to that interesting time period.
Example: nuclear bunker busters. Great idea. We tried it with shot "Jangle-Uncle" in the fall of 1951. Didn't work then, won't work now. Lots and lots of radioactive fallout though!
Anyhow, back to the story---the fellow who contacted me last week had done his homework and had come up with two great questions: (1) was Midland, Texas hammered from fallout in the time period before George Bush's sister died of leukemia? (answer: probably not---on a scale of fallout that county was, at worst, only the 678th hottest county in the U.S.) and (2) did President Eisenhower himself know that nuclear fallout was exposing large segments of the population to radiation?
The answer to the second question was as unfortunate as it is common. Because the hard answer is: no one really knows.
Of course, tons of paper have been devoted to the "what did Ike know and when did he know it" thing, but the hard fact is, we really don't know what that 1950s president knew about atomic bombs, fallout and cancer. Documents on the subject are getting harder to come by---for example, many of those I relied upon for my 1986 book are no longer available. Not reclassified, necessarily.
Just gone. Purged from the system.
So, the answer to historical questions of this nature are, as the computer geeks might say, an open switch.
Just like today.
Show of hands, grad students-- How many think Abu Ghraib was perpetrated solely by non-coms---privates first class, spec 4 and 5's---enlisted people---and not by distinguished gentlemen with one or two stars on each epaulet---individuals with their own desks at the Pentagon? Maybe even civilians with their own desks at the Pentagon?
See? No hands go up. Smart class! But of course we all realize, there's no documentation to support the allegation that anyone with the rank of major or above knew anything about all that badness.
As Randy Newman might say. . "Well. . . .yeah!"
But there you have it---the classic constraint on information--the understanding by the perpetrators that if a piece of paper memorializing the event doesn't exist---then the event--- Simply. Never. Happened.
Historians prior to the current time period relied largely upon documents to support their statements---and it's good that they did.
The problem with that approach is the fact that there may not be a document linked to the event. As an example, there may be hundreds of cases of nuclear fallout "hot spots" across the country that were investigated by the Atomic Energy Commission. But only those that were associated with a hard copy document made it into the reporter's copy. Grand total: Two.
Final analysis: the tales historians tell are limited by the paper the historians can unearth. No paper, no story. Which is why, of course, paper trails have usually ended well before the thread of responsibility reached the Top Office in the U.S. If it wasn't memorialized in writing, then it's merely hearsay, and subject to argument.
Enter the bloggers.
There has been a lot of superficial discussion about bloggers--- whether they are really journalists, whether they are ethically-challenged, zealots or merely amateurs. Those sorts of arguments are usually framed by men and women receiving a paycheck for doing essentially the same thing, i.e. professional journalists and media types.
Here's the reality: bloggers are to historians what quantum computing will be to the engineers. Why? Because if an important document--or better yet--eyewitness--exists at all, some blogger--some*where* will know where it is. And thanks to search engines like Google---the link will be made available to the researcher. And that researcher may(no---should)publish his analysis so that it will be accessible to others with a similar interest.
If a serious and computer-savvy grad student in history wanted to discover what Rumsfeld knew and when he knew it---he probably could do just that. Of course, it would take time, but it would be enormously entertaining. At the same time, the old guard journalists, many who still harbor strong feelings for their IBM Selectric (and who wouldn't?)and are holding up the presses waiting for their snitch to phone the office.
A few years from now, the operative advice to the reporter/journalist would be--forget the snitch--some blogger has already scooped you.
Blogging may be a sociological phenomenon, and it's often great entertainment. But to the historian, the psychologist, the sociologist, the political scientist, and of course, the journalist--anyone who wants to understand the meaning of events as they happen---blogspace is the social science equivalent of Hilbert Space.
And if the historian/social scientist/journalist employs the time-tested verification procedures, the answer to the question---no matter how arcane it originally was---is out there. It's on the screen of some obscure but energized blogger who has probably known the answer for weeks.
If not longer.