from PC World: BBN, another defense contractor and ARPANET

[Mark Kohut]

>From ARPANET then to today, and another JFK conspiracy
theory and acoustical analysis..........

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BBN, Raytheon and a fresh JFK conspiracy theory

Last week we learned that Raytheon, long one of the nation's most powerful defense contractors, is acquiring venerable BBN Technologies, a networking pioneer perhaps most famous for its role in designing the ARPANet, precursor to the Internet.

In writing about the deal on Buzzblog, I included this footnote way done at the very end of the item: "History buffs will tell you that BBN is also known for having conducted acoustical analysis in 1978 for the House Select Committee charged with investigating the assassination of President John F. Kennedy 15 years earlier."

A reader who identified himself only as V12Merlin offered this provocative tidbit in response:

"One of the BBN engineers who worked on the Kennedy acoustic analysis thing was a close friend of mine, from my own Cambridge days. He told me at the time that what the team was ordered by someone high up not to publish what they actually found."

Now I've been a Kennedy assassination buff since reading a table-top version of The Warren Report in my grandparents' living room back in high school, but I'm neither willing nor able to vouch for the veracity of what V12Merlin's friend told V12Merlin some 30 years ago. However, another reader who identified himself as Joe Kraska, a former BBN employee living in San Diego, was in no mood to just let the comment slide. Writes Kraska of the alleged coverup:

"Because, you know, as we know, the noodle-backboned folks working at BBN, having found the real origin of the assassination of an American president would have all the ethical prowess of a peanut, and keep mum quivering in their boots because a Mysterious Evil Power (tm) ordered them not to tell the truth. We know now at least, how much faith you have in the fidelity of your fellow men. That's just sad."

And that's telling him, all right.