WTW submitted its first FOIA related to the Jelliscope Welliscope a while back, and we received responses from NASA to share with you all! Thomas cluing in on one email thread in the midst of hundreds of pages from Nature's FOIA kicked off this quest and we learned a whole lot more about this Space Karen as a result. We also get into more of why Sean O'Keefe is a piece of work with a story Lydia stumbled on in the process. For our amazing patrons, we're attaching the emails themselves as a treat because you all are the best! If you have ideas on avenues to pursue with an additional FOIA to NASA (or insider tips of what dots may connect), feel free to email us at lydia@seriouspod.com or thomas@seriouspod.com! Please pretty please consider becoming a patron at patreon.com/wherethereswoke!
Anywhere you see diversity, equity, and inclusion, you see Marxism and you see woke principles being pushed.
Wokeness is a virus more dangerous than any pandemic hands down.
The woke monster is here and it's coming for everything.
Instead of go-go boots, the seductress Green Eminem will now wear sneakers.
Hello, and welcome to Where There's Woke.
This is episode 17.
I'm in witness protection, so my voice is being modified.
I'm Thomas Smith, and that blew it.
That blew the witness protection.
No, Thomas Smith is pretty generic.
I think I'll be fine.
And that over there is Lydia Smith.
How you doing?
Hi.
My voice is not completely wrecked, so I'm better than you, I guess.
Yeah.
But I'm excited for today's episode.
You know, I don't even know if non-patrons know this.
Do they?
I don't think so.
Non-patrons.
Better reason than ever to have been a patron this whole time.
IYKYK.
Sick though I may be, I am still very excited.
My enthusiasm is nowhere near dampened because as you may remember from such episodes as the whole James Webb thing, Where There's Woke put out our first official FOIA request during that series.
Yep.
And we actually got the results a decent chunk of time ago.
We won't talk about how long ago it was.
It's been a little while.
There's been other stuff going on.
It's almost two months ago, actually.
It's been a while.
We've had the FOIA request product, whatever, resolve response, I guess, for two months.
But you know, that's the benefit of being a patron, right?
They knew about it, about the time that we found out about it.
They got to be wondering why we haven't done this episode for even longer.
True.
First off, congratulations, Lydia.
You were the one.
Thank you.
Did this request.
And it was interesting.
First, I hope of many requests we do in the future, assuming the stuff we're covering involves government.
I think, have we sent another one in?
Yeah, I have another one out right now that, well, it's not an official FOIA.
It's something that was already FOIA'd, but never published anywhere.
So I reached out to the organization that did the FOIA and I'm working on getting that.
That's related to our Title IX episode that we did a little bit ago.
And Betsy DeVos.
Yeah.
We've got FOIAs and different area codes, but yeah, this is about the- That's really good.
Glad I can make you laugh.
That's really not- Whatever.
I liked it.
This is related to getting more to the bottom of the just absolutely horrendous, unjust process that was undertaken by NASA in the James Webb Telescope renaming controversy.
We've renamed it the Jelliscope Wellscope Space Telescope.
We have.
I should talk less because I sound like a frog.
Um, what did we try to get at when we were doing this?
What was our goal?
Refresh everybody.
I think what I'm actually going to do is take each FOIA request separately.
So we'll talk about the first one that we did that was kind of like a clean cut response.
And then we'll get into the second one, which is far more extensive, and we have more exciting things to talk about there.
But the first one was related to the naming policy at NASA.
And in the episode that we did on that one, I think everyone will recall that I found the policy, NASA's policy for How they decide on names for their different missions and that it clearly was not followed.
It wasn't acknowledged by Sean O'Keefe, the administrator at the time who decided on the name of the Jelliscope-Wellscoe Space Telescope.
And there really wasn't any mention in media about that.
They assumed that NASA followed their policies and procedures appropriately.
And so the FOIA request that I sent related to that was I wanted to ask for ad hoc naming committee minutes Agendas and any deliverables regarding the proposal and selection of the James Webb Space Telescope because there is supposed to be a naming committee.
I wanted to see all the times that they met, what they talked about, who was part of it, anything that they put together.
I also wanted any emails to or from Sean O'Keefe regarding the proposal and selection of the name for the telescope and then I limited that date range search Yeah, we're buds.
We're friends.
years, 2000 to 2004.
And that was an interesting one because NASA's first response to me was, do you know what his email was?
And I was like, you need to tell you what your former administrator, like your top dog.
Let me check my address.
You've only had so many administrators in your history now.
Yeah, that must be a bullshit-like thing.
I don't know, right?
I mean, that's gotta be like... I think so.
I think it's a tactic.
If you can't say the magic words of what his address is, then we don't have to give you anything, maybe?
I worked for the state very recently, and it was if a request was worded in a particular way, it's not the government agency's responsibility to interpret it for you as the requester, right?
So I think this is kind of falling under the same thing.
If I said I didn't know, it would be a whole lot easier for them to say, we can't find it because they don't have it at their fingertips kind of thing.
But I wasn't going to let that happen.
So I did a lot of Googling, and what I actually landed on was a congressional hearing back in 2007 regarding the Inspector General for NASA, Cobb.
I don't know if you have heard about him at all.
I don't think so.
So Robert Cobb was the inspector general for NASA for some time.
And so essentially what this process looked like was, and this is just a very quick tangent that I think speaks to Sean O'Keefe's character, and that's why I'm talking about it.
When Sean O'Keefe was appointed administrator, he did not like the inspector general that was at NASA, and he went to George Bush.
And he said, I don't want her on this team.
Wow.
And no one really knows what happened exactly behind the scenes, but she was gone.
And all of a sudden, Robert Cobb was appointed Inspector General of NASA.
Wait, Inspector General?
Isn't that supposed to be like an independent thing?
Yeah.
So it wasn't.
So he was like, look, that previous inspector had weapons of mass destruction on them, so we bombed them.
They're gone.
No more of that person.
Bush is like, I can't believe this keeps working.
It's incredible.
I can do whatever I want with this excuse.
Okay.
So Robert Cobb, as I said, inspector Bob Cobb.
Isn't that from something?
That's from something.
Is it?
Bob Cobb.
I don't know it.
OK.
I'll look it up.
So there was a congressional hearing because there were some significant concerns about Cobb's independence as an inspector general.
This was during the Columbia disaster, which really could have used an independent inspector general because seven people died and they didn't get an independent inspector general.
And so Congress called him up because they really wanted to have him removed from his position.
And this congressional hearing was chaired by Bill Nelson, our current Mass.
Administrator, which is funny.
And I sent you the link so we can go ahead and hear what some of the Congress folks have to say about Cobb.
I'm seeing Bob Cobb was from Seinfeld, but I don't know.
I feel like it was something else, too.
Anyway, that's what I'm working on.
More on that later.
Mr. Cobb remains in office.
The findings of abusive authority by the PCIE involved Mr. Cobb's abusive and degrading treatment of his staff, resulting in massive staff turnover and affecting productivity.
Mr. Cobb referred to his professional staff as "burons," Mr. Cobb's shorthand for bureaucratic morons, and by other vulgar terms that I will not repeat here.
Rather than dwell on the abusive atmosphere created by Mr. Cobb and its effect on productivity, I want to make sure that the second finding regarding the appearance of a lack of independence receives the attention that it requires.
According to the official standards, Inspectors General and their staff, and I quote, have a responsibility to maintain independence so that opinions, conclusions, and recommendations will be impartial and will be viewed as impartial by knowledgeable third parties.
Mr. Cobb has utterly failed to do that.
Perception of Mr. Cobb lacked independence was set in motion during Mr. Cobb's hiring.
Shortly after Shaun O'Keefe moved from the Office of Management and Budget to NASA, Mr. O'Keefe, NASA's former administrator, decided that he didn't like the previous NASA Inspector General.
He went to the White House and demanded a new one.
How Mr. Cobb was selected is not entirely clear, but what is clear is that Mr. Keefe personally chose his new Inspector General and established a regime in which Mr. Cobb was part of Mr. O'Keefe's team and not the independent Inspector General required by law.
What the hell?
As Mr. Cobb described it, Mr. Keefe reached a conclusion that I would be the perfect person to conduct the independent office of Inspector General activities.
Once at NASA, Mr. Cobb called Mr. O'Keefe his boss and said he was afraid he would be fired if he displeased Mr. O'Keefe.
And why shouldn't he think that since Mr. O'Keefe had been able to fire the previous NASA Inspector General and pick the new one?
What?
Yeah.
So apparently they played golf together, drank together, ate together, also with the general counsel for NASA, Pastoric.
And they were referred to as the Holy Trinity by employees at NASA.
Anything that NASA wanted to do, they had to go through the three of them, specifically.
What?
So, Shaun O'Keefe is a piece of shit.
Yeah.
And corrupt, in my opinion.
And Robert Cobb, despite that hearing, did not leave his position.
He was not ousted.
Wow.
And then, two years later, he ended up resigning.
Did not say why.
And it was like a resurgence of people saying, like, please get rid of him.
And Obama was in office at that point in time.
That wasn't Bill Nelson, was it?
That guy talking?
No, that wasn't Bill Nelson talking.
Okay, I was gonna say, I didn't think about it.
I love the idea that he's like, yeah, the, and you know, this horrible harassing environment, fucking all this stuff I can't even mention.
And, uh, you know, that had an effect on productivity.
It's like, all right.
Yeah.
Also fuck this guy.
Like, I get that you're the government or something and you gotta be, well, we're just here to talk about the, you know, the, the budgetary concerns of the, it's like, yeah, but also fuck that.
Yeah, I mean, speaking of the budgetary concerns, that was also part of the material that was brought up two years later, where the House Science Committee chairman, Bart Gordon, who's a Democrat out of Tennessee, said NASA cannot afford another four years with an ineffective inspector general.
$17 billion that this guy is responsible for to make sure it's being spent appropriately.
A federal audit showed that Cobb had saved taxpayers only $0.36 for every dollar he spent on investigations.
Other inspectors general was $9.49.
Wow.
Yeah, so he's terrible and best friends with Sean O'Keefe and Sean O'Keefe knew all this was going on, wanted an inspector general who was going to be a yes man and got that.
So anyway, through that side quest, right, that I went on, I found his email address because there were emails part of the hearing exhibits.
Oh, wow.
Please tell me it was Sean O'Keefe at hotmail.com.
Yeah.
No, apparently it's Sean.O'Keefe at NASA.gov.
Oh, OK.
Really, you know, hard thing to track down, NASA.
It's not like you're a rocket scientist.
So I found that there.
I emailed them back and I said, hi, here's the email address for your administrator, your ex-administrator.
And they came back and said, oh, sorry, no responsive records.
The policy back when he left the agency was we destroyed history after 30 days.
I think some technological issues.
And incriminating evidence after one hour.
Yeah, but now they have a better system, so their retention policy is seven years.
They also said there are no meeting materials related to a naming committee, which is what I expected, because I don't think one ever existed.
So this just sort of confirmed that Sean O'Keefe did his own— Well, there was.
Oh, back then.
You mean like— Back then, yeah.
There was no particular naming committee for the James Webb decision.
Oh, I see.
Even more so.
There's a policy for it, but it was never done.
Right.
So I think it just sort of confirms what we suspected.
Sean O'Keefe, piece of shit.
Even more so.
And decided to name it himself as far as all the evidence shows.
Even driving home further how much we should not care about this status quo.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You know, it's amazing.
Like people will defend to the death.
Well, some asshole who fucking sucked in 2000 whatever.
Yeah.
Named it after James Webb.
So we have to.
It's that's the best thing in the world.
And we can't change it.
Otherwise, the woke win, I guess.
And we can't have that.
Yeah.
All right.
So that's our first FOIA knocked out.
Our second FOIA is fun.
So this is related to a single email that you saw in the FOIA that came from Nature that was 394 pages long.
That was from someone named Kristen Erickson.
Yeah.
October 13, 2021.
Hi Paul, I know you and I have not had a chance to chat about this in the two years since I asked, with Eric's blessing, Hakeem to look into this matter.
My two cents.
Today's cancel culture should not sway the facts or evidence.
There is no evidence.
And then she links a Wikipedia article for evidence of absence.
I don't know.
So dumb.
Proven attribution given to different Secretary of State, not Webb.
Good luck today and know that I am in your corner.
And Paul responds, Paul hurts.
Kristen, this is an administrator's decision.
He has decided.
Redacted.
Paul.
P.S.
The administrator agrees that there is no evidence.
The full text of his decision statement is, we have found no evidence at this time that warrants changing the name of the James Webb Space Telescope.
The problem for most of the astrophysics community is not the decision itself, but the lack of rationale to explain why this is the appropriate decision.
For some people, the problem is the decision.
Also, the process.
The decision was announced by sending that one sentence in an email to six reporters.
Yeah.
That is hardly the kind of transparent process that gives the external community confidence.
And that's Paul who was blindsided by that, like, again, just couldn't be more bum bum bum bum, you know, just like... Oh, yeah.
He's doing this, doing this stuff, doing this process, and then, yeah, curb your enthusiasm.
And then they're like, hey, yeah, the statement, no responses yet from the journalist.
Paul's like, the what now?
No what now from the what now?
They're like, yeah, yeah, yeah, we sent out this one sentence to six journalists.
He's like, What?
What was it?
Oh, here it is.
And he's just like, can't even believe what's happening.
And he's pretty high up, too, in terms of hierarchy in the organization.
Yeah.
They were doing, again, they were probably doing a shit job.
Like, I'm not, I don't know how good of a job they would have done.
If this hadn't happened, And they had allowed the historian and the contract historian to do a thing.
Who knows?
Maybe they would have come to a better result.
I don't think it's impossible because if you also remember in the emails, there's that consultant, it seemed like.
It's redacted who it is, but it seemed like the consultant came in and was like, all right, we had somebody give us some advice on how to handle this.
And literally the consultant was like, change the name, change the name now, change it now, Change it right now.
Do it now.
Right now.
Stop reading this.
Go do it now.
I'm barely exaggerating because they're like, yeah, just get ahead of it.
Be done with it.
Because it's stupid.
It doesn't matter.
And it makes me think if it hadn't been for these, what are clearly anti-woke activists, Kristen for sure, this Kristen person I noticed, Kristen Erickson, who has no fucking connection to this at all.
There's no reason she should have been involved.
She's a busybody just like going around being like, oh, by the way, hashtag MAGA.
Don't not really.
But yeah, the woke agenda today in this day and age.
So I think she's emailing everybody, getting her mitts on all this stuff.
And I like that Paul is is like, yeah, OK, I get it.
Okay, she is Ginny Thomas.
Did I make the comparison before?
I don't think so.
She reads like Ginny Thomas, where even her personal email correspondences are like, and we all know that the woke left has gotten, you're talking in this like weird Language that's that's like scripted almost yeah, like is this really how you interact all the time absence of evidence is not evidence It's like yeah, yeah, man.
I know you don't need a link Wikipedia to the fallacy of evidence It's like fucking weird and Paul's just like yeah, all right cool, dude Yeah, this is an administrator's decision.
He's decided.
He's like, I'm in your corner!
And he's like, I'm not in a corner.
This isn't a job.
Yeah.
Well, and also he, I mean, I think he wanted, I don't know, he wasn't amazing or anything, but he definitely, Paul Hertz definitely wanted a better process than this.
I'll give him credit for that.
Yeah.
And then Kristen responds to that email with, I think taking the high ground is the only option.
Otherwise, some of the behaviors of the community prior to the analysis would come to light.
Yeah.
There's so much more important work to do.
Good luck today.
And I wondered what the fuck she meant by that.
I know.
I don't know.
And unfortunately, I don't know that we're going to get that answer particularly.
I think we can probably, I don't know, surmise some things.
Speculate a little bit.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So that's all that we saw within the initial FOIA that Nature called forward.
So we did an additional FOIA there wanting specifically more emails between Kristen Erikson and Hakeem.
There was material in other articles that Hakeem reported to her while he worked at NASA, so we wanted more information of, you know, what that relationship looked like, their working relationship.
And we specifically said for James Webb, the person, as well as the naming of the telescope.
And then we wanted emails to and from Kristen Erickson regarding James Webb, the person and the naming of the telescope and any emails between other parties regarding Hakeem and the James Webb project.
And the date range for this one, this is kind of where the biggest change was from Nature's FOIA, where we backed up to when Hakeem actually worked at NASA.
So we asked for everything from October 2016 through December 2021.
And despite how broad my request was, we ended up getting very little back in terms of page count.
Right.
But I still think there's some good things in there.
And I do have additional questions at the end of it, which might result in NASA's second FOIA for me.
And we got no, oh no, we got like one email from actual Hakeem, right?
Yeah, and nothing from his time at NASA.
Yeah, nothing, I was gonna say.
Which is, it's within seven years.
Yeah, I don't get that.
Do we get an explanation for that?
No, no, they just said, here's what you requested and sent it to me.
So I'm gonna be putting together a follow-up.
I think that means it doesn't exist.
I don't think there's any reason, unless there's a misunderstanding, which just goes to show that he wasn't at all emailing about it.
It's possible somehow all of this was in meetings and not in writing, but it just seems weird.
We already know Hakeem Olache is completely full of shit with his story.
There are a thousand reasons already, but There are no emails that back up his version of the story whatsoever.
Indeed, there's no emails at all from his time at NASA about this.
So what do we know about like when, I guess what I was trying to get at with asking you to do this FOIA, I FOIA requested you to do this FOIA request.
What I want to get at was can we determine the origination of Hakeem Olachei's investigation?
Yes, we can.
Really?
OK.
All right.
So the first email we get is from July 30th, 2020.
That's nearly a year after Hakeem was done at NASA.
He left in August 2019.
So this is from Kristen Erickson to Eric P. Smith.
CC of Gregory Robinson.
And Hakeem had reached out to her, to Kristen, on July 28, 2020, and says, Hello, Greg and Kristen, to catch you both up on the details of the web story.
I have attached a document I wrote that lays out the facts regarding the allegations against him.
I look forward to hearing your thoughts.
All the best, Hakeem.
So Kristen forwarded that over to Eric Smith, included Gregory Robinson in the CC line, and said, As FYI, Greg asked for this recently.
You will recall that fateful meeting we had in your office that kicked off Hakeem's quest.
Here is the product.
As much testimonial to the importance of the process of scientific citation and research as the findings, IMHO, in my humble opinion.
Up to Greg and Hakeem on next steps, but wanted you to also have, Kristen.
This is really interesting to me that it's material that Hakeem wrote after he had left NASA, and it confirms here that it was a meeting in an office that they had that kicked off Hakeem's quest.
And the other piece that I think is interesting, it's not published anywhere.
This is his draft that he's put together.
And then the up to Greg and Hakeem on next steps is also strange.
So Gregory Robinson.
What's his title?
He was the director of the James Webb Space Telescope Program.
Okay.
Yeah.
I mean, I think that is at least Hakeem did say like, oh, I marched into his office right when I got to NASA, which obviously isn't true because he got there when he started.
2016.
Yeah, 2016.
And I told him, do you know about this?
He said, oh my god, no.
But like, can you remind us Kristen Erikson's actual title?
Yes, she is the Director of Science Engagement and Partnerships.
Yeah, there is no fucking reason she's involved.
This is the weirdest thing.
So she oversees science mission directorate, citizen science, and strategic communication efforts.
The goal is to share science across the broadest spectrum of audiences.
She helps put together like the science lives that they do.
She'll go and speak at different places.
I don't know why she's involved here.
Because she's Ginny Thomas.
Look, you could make an argument, oh but science communication, so this relates to whatever.
Yeah, but my proof of why she isn't actually the person who should have been involved at all is she wasn't involved in any of the stuff that actually happened.
Yeah.
Like when the decision happened, when the thing was announced, there were all these other PR people.
She's never in the CC line.
Yeah, she wasn't even read into it.
Yeah.
She's just like, oh, I'm a Ginny Thomas who wants to, ooh, I'm married to Clarence Thomas Olache.
Oh my God, no, sorry, I shouldn't go there.
But this was weird stuff going on.
But she just like was such an activist on this issue.
And again, you will recall that fateful meeting We had in your office.
So that means Kristen Erickson met with the director of the project of James Webb and Hakeem Olachei.
And what's Hakeem's title at NASA?
Hakeem reported to her, so... Oh, he did?
That's my understanding.
Oh, that is interesting.
Okay.
Yeah.
Space science education manager.
So he worked in the education sphere at NASA.
Okay, so I didn't realize that she was his supervisor.
I guess that makes it make a little more sense.
So they are probably like, have you seen these woke activists?
Blah, blah, blah.
And she's Ginny Thomas.
So she's like, can't believe it.
Let's go talk to the program director, Robinson, essentially.
And they just take it upon themselves.
I just can't help but continue to remind people that NASA has a historian.
Yeah.
Like, they have a person who actually would have maybe been better to handle this, who they eventually go to after Hakeem does his whole thing.
It seems to be this, like, quest that Kristen Erikson and Hakeem Oluseyi went on.
Because it doesn't make any sense that they would be in charge of any of this.
Yeah.
And so simultaneous to her email to Eric, to loop him in on Hakim's draft, she also emailed Greg Robinson about 30 minutes later and said, hi, Greg, when you return and have a chance to read this, I hope you will agree that it is an important piece of research and worthy of not only publication, but more. I hope you will agree that it is an important I don't know what else the more is.
Framing?
Yeah.
In advance of our discussions, I can envision a NASA Science Live with you, Hakeem, and perhaps Kartik as a moderator to discuss this topic, show evidence, and also importance of the scientific process in refuting.
I think it is important for three reasons.
One, it's the right thing to do.
Two, you are in JW launch countdown.
And three, show how NASA addresses fiction versus fact.
I probably don't need to remind you also that Webb is a hero of mine, as well as the NASA administrator, smiley face.
Ugh.
Yeah, that NASA Science Live never happened.
Well, yeah, and that's sort of like, I speculated with some of that redacted stuff that it seemed like they were trying to do something like that, some sort of like summit with, and that was all redacted.
You don't remember?
Yeah.
I speculated that.
So that might be kind of where that came from.
Maybe, but I think they also have had those society roundtables.
I don't know exactly what they're called.
They would have, like you said, summits.
But the NASA Science Live is under that education wing where they talk about different topics of, like, how to become an intern at NASA.
And then they did the first images from James Webb came.
Let's talk about it.
And then Eric Smith responds and says, Thanks, Kristen.
This was an interesting read and a very nice example of someone taking the time to do things right.
I noticed that Hakim didn't take credit for all his hard work by putting his name on the piece.
Is that because the timing and vehicle for dissemination are still TBD?
Again, this is Thursday, July 30th, 2020.
Kristen responds, correct.
All the work is his and he deserves full credit.
It really became quite the journey for him.
You will recall we didn't quite know how, in quotes, real the allegations were.
Once he delved into the facts and found, quote, the other undersecretary of state, it was not unlike a scientist finding their aha moment.
That is why I think there are really two stories here, the scientific process and the refuting of the slander.
I just, it's, look, once again reminding people that the other undersecretary of state was directly reporting to James Webb.
It's, it's incredible.
Yeah, the aha moment also I thought was really funny.
It's just silly.
It's just silly.
A few months pass, and now we're at November 30th, 2020.
And this is an email originating from the Office of Communications Public Affairs Officer Felicia Cho.
And she reaches out to Mamta Nagarajah, the Deputy Division Director for NASA Science Engagement.
And she says, Hi Mamta.
A while back, Hakim had written a rebuttal on accusations of Webb, the namesake, being a bigot.
We are looking to see if there is a way to verify this research and get this story out without it directly coming from NASA.
Do you know if there are plans of this being published widely by Hakeem or some other outside person?
Did your team have thoughts on how to push this out more widely?
And we don't get a response from MAPTA, although I don't know if that's because it's not... No, it should have been within the scope of our thing, right?
Yeah.
I mean, there's, I think, a reason why she reached out to her Deputy Division Director for NASA Science Engagement.
But guess who cc'd?
Kristen Erikson.
Kristen Erikson cc'd.
She responds.
And she says, Good afternoon.
I spoke to Hakim.
He still plans to publish and is in the process.
He not only refuted, but validated Webb as a champion.
FYI, Hakeem was just elected as president, National Society of Black Physicists.
We'll let all know when Hakeem gets published, Kristen.
So they're best friends.
Yeah.
She was not addressed in that email.
Well, she was cc'd.
She was cc'd.
Yeah, but I mean, there are plenty of other people cc'd and no one else chimed in.
And then a couple months later, it's every couple of months, this sort of kind of comes from the ground.
So February 10th, 2021, Kristen emails Greg and Eric and says, Hi, Eric and Greg, you're probably aware this has been released.
Yeah, I was trying to figure that out.
Hakeem's Medium article.
This is half a year after she sent them the draft, so it had been about six months.
And Eric responds, "Hi, Kristen.
Yes, we've seen this and reactions to it.
I'm talking with various historians and libraries to collect additional data.
Thanks for sending this along." And then Kristen responds, "Are you still glad we did this?" Yeah, I was trying to figure that out.
I don't know what the fuck.
I don't know.
It's like weird coded.
I don't know.
It's weird.
Yeah, it doesn't make any sense.
And Eric responds, getting closer to the truth is always the best path, even if it is not always comfortable.
Some things that I wanted to share here, you know, this is February 2021.
So in Brian Odom, the historian's report, he says he didn't start until March of 2021.
Working on his project, right?
Because he had to wait for the direction from NASA.
It had to be assigned to him.
He couldn't just say, I want to do this special project like Hakeem got to do that has nothing to do with his job.
And he says, in early March 2021, I began a historical investigation into the career of James Webb.
The formal effort was ordered by Bill Nelson in late spring 2021.
And Bill Nelson wasn't appointed as administrator until May 3rd, 2021.
So we had an acting Nass administrator from January 20th, 2021 after Joe Biden took office until then.
And then prior to him under Trump was Jim Bridenstine from April 23rd, 2018 through January 20th, 2021, which is interesting.
Climate change denying Jim Bridenstine.
But what annoys me is that Bill Nelson sucks, too.
Why is he administrator under Biden?
I don't get it.
Yeah, well, because he, I mean, he hated Cobb in that congressional hearing.
Look, we all hated Cobb.
That doesn't guarantee you.
That's a baseline.
But Bill Nelson at least has that space background.
Yeah, yeah.
So he's not Sean O'Keefe.
Yeah, the February ones were interesting.
So it was surrounding Hakeem's publication.
And then it's quiet for a few more months.
And June 29th, 2021, Kristen Erikson starts another email, Fred.
And this is to Eric with a CC to Greg every time.
And she— Subject.
Subject is status colon James Webb not a racist.
Yeah.
This is going to pop up in a FOIA request.
Oh, my God.
What a fucking boomer.
Yeah, totally.
So this sent, you know, first thing in the morning kind of thing.
And so she says, Hi, Eric.
I was watching The Lavender Scare last night on PBS, and it reminded me to ask you, what is the status of your investigation regarding James Webb?
As FYI, what is unsettling is several times when I have spoken with the Webb Project folks on other topics, they talk about renaming.
Let me translate.
Kristen Erickson is like, I don't understand.
I spoke to the manager about this, and yet people are still not instantly on my side.
What is happening here?
This email, I was wondering when we were going to get to it.
This email contains my favorite fucking sentence.
This is the white, boomeriest fucking sentence of all time.
Please continue.
Has evidence been found and I am a memo behind?
I don't know why she would need to know.
Has evidence been found?
Yeah.
Yeah, like, are you in charge?
Are we reporting to you?
Yeah.
If no evidence has been found, my strong recommendation is to publicly, in quotes, reclaim the name, sooner rather than later, since the rumor churn is happening.
Nature abhors a vacuum.
So fucking stupid.
Okay.
I also respect that by reclaiming the name, the agency is exposed to other naming issues.
This administrator must decide.
He cannot have Mission Equity and Stennis at the same time.
I sure hope someone is speaking truth to power.
And then my favorite sentence, I sure hope someone is speaking truth to power.
Yeah.
She's gonna go march.
The most boomer fucking appropriation of a phrase.
She means, I hope someone is speaking truth to power.
Like, I'm trying to think of a good analogy.
It's like, in Star Wars, if she's like, I sure hope one of, you know, Darth Vader's advisors is telling him, hey, the Rebels fucking suck.
Like, I hope someone's speaking truth to power.
So weird.
Speaking truth to power means like, Telling them the things they don't wanna hear.
This is like, speaking truth to power, the truth is like, they need to hear it.
The power is fucking the status quo and needs to hear the actual truth of what's going on, not, I hope someone is telling the person in charge that everything they think is already right, and that's truth to power.
I can't even describe how funny this is in my mind.
I hope someone is speaking truth to power.
She just means it literally, like, is someone telling the things I think is truth to the person who is in power?
It's just the perfect... And not like the societal, systemic... Yeah, it's not quite a malapropism or whatever, but it's like a literal use of something that's not really a literal phrase, you know?
God, it's so her.
She's just absolutely that person.
All right, so then Eric responds.
I almost feel bad for Eric at this point.
He's like, okay.
Hi, Kristen.
NASA senior management is fully aware of concerns raised regarding the mission's name and the astronomy community petition about the topic and are working with historians on the matter.
We have not moved beyond this holding statement stage, to my knowledge.
I worked with historians to provide information to management on the topic.
It's on the ninth floor, and that's all I know.
I was hoping there would have been a decision by now.
So again, June 29, 2021.
Kristen responds, Thank you for the quick response, Eric.
As you might remember, Jim Webb is a hero of mine.
Yeah, we know.
You talked about it like six months ago in your other email.
And I hope that he and the program does not get swept away in the cancel culture.
The cancel culture.
Yeah.
That said, if there is historic evidence of racist or homophobic behaviors, I certainly accept the agency actions dot dot dot.
I love this, because it's like she forgot even what the problem was, because the subject is status.
James Webb not a racist?
Yeah.
He wasn't accused of racism.
Why would that be the... It should have been like, James Webb complicit in Lavender Scare, you know?
Yeah, James Webb a racist.
Yeah.
So this wasn't in the FOIA that we got, but it's from the other FOIA.
It's not related to Kristen Erikson, but it's an Eric Smith tie-in that happened a couple months after this.
So again, as of June 29th, 2021, Eric Smith says, NASA senior management's fully aware of the concerns.
It's on the ninth floor.
Wish they would have made a decision by this point.
We're just at the holding statement.
In the Nature FOIA, if you go to September 29th, 2021, so a couple months later, what we get is Alexandra Witts from Nature emailed Brian Odom.
Brian Odom forwarded it to Karen Fox, who's the senior communications official.
So, refresher on this one.
A lot of these were Brian Odom, again, not a hero, but he's the historian and he's starting literally the day that the decision is made was supposed to be the first day of that contract historian even getting access to start the research.
And so, you know, say what you want about them.
They're like, let's do this.
Maybe let's try to do it right.
Hopefully.
We don't know what for sure what it would have been, but They're starting a process of actually doing some investigating.
And they find out like, okay, decision made, game over.
And I love it because the communications people even totally understand how fucking stupid this is because they're like, yeah, just forward all requests you get to me.
So people are asking Brian Odom, like, hey, what the fuck?
You were supposed to do a report.
Is that canceled or did you finish or what?
And he doesn't even respond.
He's like, OK, I'll just forward these to you.
And the person even says, yeah, I don't want your name on there.
Like, yeah, they recognize how shitty this is.
And they're like, yeah, just send them to me because I don't want you to muddy your hands with this like bullshit that we've pulled.
But for someone who's in communications, I don't think she does a very good job here.
So she responds to Alex at Nature at 4.20 p.m.
She says, Cheers, Alex.
Brian forwarded me your email.
To answer your question about the study of the web name, yes, it's concluded.
We've done as much as we can do at this point and have exhausted our research efforts.
Yeah, I pointed that out.
Right.
And then at 518 p.m., less than an hour later, she re-responds and says, FYI, this is the new response.
This is to Brian.
Just so you have it, it's still fairly short, but wanted you to be aware before I sent it to Alex.
And I'm going to BCC you, not CC you, actually.
I don't want to put you in the position of seeming to be fully complicit in this response.
Yeah, or to get a reply all with more questions.
And so the original statement, she says, was, we found no evidence at this time that warrants changing the name of the JWST.
Question, have we concluded our investigation?
Yes, we've done as much as we can do at this point and have exhausted our research efforts.
Those efforts have not uncovered evidence warranting a name change.
Question, do you have a report you're going to release?
No, we don't have anything to report because we haven't found anything.
And then the next day, September 30th, this is a thread between Brian Odom and the external historian and Eric Smith, who is serving as program director for James Webb.
Eric Smith says, Hi Brian.
The NASA administrator sent the following statement earlier this week to several reporters who has asked about the web name issue in the past.
We have found no evidence at this time that warrants changing the name of the James Webb Space Telescope.
It's starting to get out today through other media after I was asked about this at an astronomer's meeting yesterday.
I think the research is still important and this statement keeps the door open for that.
So they're trying to massage that statement a little bit, even after their senior communications person the day before was very... Yeah.
Hard-lined about what was going on.
The external historian, I believe, responds and says, Hi Eric and Brian.
I saw the statement this week and read the NPR story.
The archives are supposed to reopen October 8th if all goes well.
They haven't rescheduled my appointments though.
I'm going to try to find an end around to get to some of the records if possible.
Blah blah blah blah.
I can't say that I'm happy about the way things were stated in the NPR story.
And then Eric Smith responds, hi, yes, the NPR story did make it seem like we've done all the looking we can, when in fact we've only just been able to access already publicly available material.
I did read this at the time, yeah.
Yeah, and so I think it's just, it's— It's amazing.
That spin is like, well, here's what happened.
The investigator was on their way to drive to the museum and their tire was flat.
And so they're like, oh, well, I can't go.
And then she's like, well, we've done all we can in the investigation.
And guess what?
We didn't find anything.
There's no evidence.
We did all we can.
We've exhausted our means of investigation and we didn't find anything.
It's like, that's a pretty misleading way of saying we haven't even fucking started.
Yeah.
Because there were, like when you say we've gone as far as we can go, as far as we can go is I'm stuck in my garage because my tire's flat.
Right.
But we've gone as far as we can go.
You know what?
We didn't find anything.
So there's no report.
We didn't find anything because we didn't look.
I can give you a report on my tire or my garage, but that's it.
If you don't want those, then no report.
And then two weeks later, of course, is Kristen Erikson's email to Paul Hertz that we read earlier, the one that was originally made available.
You know, just her bringing it up again.
So that's sort of the state that we were at with the Kristen Erikson emails.
Some other quick notes I do want to say about her.
She's been at NASA a very long time, and You know, she's probably like late 50s, early 60s based off of her college graduation date.
She got her bachelor's in business administration from Texas A&M in 1985.
And from my research, she started working back at NASA at least 1994.
Perhaps longer.
She was the director of the business office for the space shuttle program and has been with NASA ever since.
She received her master of public administration from Harvard in 1999 while she was working at NASA.
So I think she's like NASA through and through.
But yeah, the cancel culture, you know, just some of the phrases are particularly interesting.
And then the only other piece that I want to say, which is an aside, I just, man, just reading through it, you know, having worked for the government, granted not as large of an agency as NASA, but having worked through the government... No, you probably worked for a bigger... I mean, yeah, we did have a lot of staff.
A lot of people worked at our department, but reading through it, it...
It's so challenging because it's like I understand some of the positions that some of these folks are in, probably feel like they can't make decisions, and then you get a random person like Kristen Erickson who She's the reply all person, basically.
She's the person you want to have imposter syndrome, but no, she doesn't.
Yeah.
She has everybody else's an imposter syndrome.
Yeah.
So it was just like really frustrating to read because it's like, oh, I feel like I know people like this, you know, all up and down that spectrum anyway.
I know.
I had made a quip, so I actually had to check.
Not that this is where you most recently worked, but CDCR.
Oh, yeah.
Definitely three times the employees of NASA because of all the peace officers.
Budget-wise, half the budget of NASA.
Yeah.
So one of our 50 states, the budget for prisons Is half of what NASA is.
That's depressing.
That's so crazy.
I just had to check real quick.
I think the other thing that I want to do is, you know, I had mentioned this in a previous episode, but again, contrasting Kristen Erickson's approach with James Webb Space Telescope to Jane Rigby, who was recently promoted to the senior project scientist for James Webb Space Telescope.
When the naming controversy was kind of like at its peak a bit, she did tweet about it and said, said as a private citizen, a transformative telescope should have a name that stands for discovery and inclusion.
And some folks in there say, sometimes I think about the rock in the hard place you're caught between and my heart hurts.
But then Yeah.
Then you scroll down to some of these.
I mean, Twitter is a mess.
It is incredible.
I mean, there are some people who are saying the time to complain about it was 10 years ago, or should I say 20?
Anyway, now it's just nagging.
Yeah.
It's a name for a bunch of mirrors.
Why do you care?
It doesn't affect you.
It's the same gaslighting bullshit.
These classic, when you're on the status quo side, these are the bullshit tactics.
Why do you care so much about this?
Why do you care so much about it?
It was one asshole in the Bush administration who named it for... Why do you care?
I'll write back at you.
Just rename it.
To change the name would be to imply Webb was guilty until proven innocent.
We can't jump on every bandwagon for every person accused of wrongdoing in an age where those accusations are used as an easy means to an end.
Yeah, because the woke agenda is we, even though this one person is totally innocent, who we didn't even hadn't heard of, we want a different person's name on there.
And if you do rename it, that means he's guilty.
It's just funny because I didn't know the fuck James Webb was.
The idea that James Webb was part of this secret woke agenda, it's like first they come for your James Webbs.
And to rename it doesn't mean that you're guilty until proven innocent again I've already said too much about this but like the burden for should you get a fucking one-of-a-kind massive science operation biggest in the world named after you is not the same standard as did OJ commit murder do you think if you were if you are responding to the project scientist for James Webb Space Telescope an astronomer
your response would be what is wrong Just enjoy the pictures.
Yeah.
Anyway.
It's just so frustrating, this incredible person who is working on the project, still there.
I know Lucianne Walkowitz resigned, but Jane Rigby is still there.
And there are probably a lot of other people who have had to make that decision to resign Well, so Ching Rigby is actually in NASA, right?
Yeah.
Yeah, because so Lucianne Walkowicz was on the like advisory committee.
Oh, right, right.
Resigned from the committee.
A little bit different, but yeah.
There's only one more email that we didn't cover, I think.
Everything else is a repeat, I believe.
But this is February 18th, 2021 from Kristen Erickson.
I just love this.
It's not important, but it's just funny.
Subject, Ken Sembach's wife is a historian.
Oh, yeah.
Hi Eric, if you're still looking for historians to look into Hakeem's paper, just found out Ken's wife is a historian.
And there's no reply.
It's just the perfect, again, it's this exact person's mindset.
She's emailing the person in charge of like, there is a NASA historian.
There is a NASA historian.
He's either going to do it and he's going to enlist the help of another historian.
I think he's got it.
He doesn't need to know like your mom's friend is a historian.
Like it doesn't, it's so fucking Kristen Erikson, like this classic Kristen Erikson behavior.
Classic Kristen.
Ken's wife.
Oh, good.
Oh, because we couldn't find one.
So we needed to know if anyone's wife was a historian.
Yeah.
Does she do history related at all to this in any way?
No idea.
It doesn't say.
It doesn't say, like, if she specializes in fucking the Cold War or the, you know, any of the era that, like, Matt, no, just she's a historian.
God, what a... Yeah.
It's a perfect example of this person.
I can tell you about Ken's wife.
Oh, did you?
I looked her up a little, but I didn't find much.
Oh yeah, there's not much.
Dr. Marguerite Hoyt, she is a professor at Catholic University of America.
So.
Yeah.
There you go.
Who knows?
I mean that.
Who knows?
Might mean nothing or it means exactly what we all think it means.
All right.
So you might think we're done with this.
You might wish we're done with this.
No, this was, this was awesome to get an actual update.
I think we learned a lot.
Is there anything that you think we need to FOIA again?
I mean, we still, I still don't feel a hundred percent.
Exactly.
I am going to push for more Hakim emails from when he actually worked there.
I'm going to try and get some more information because I don't feel like this second request was what I was really hoping for in full anyway, so I'm going to do a little more digging there.
I also really want to look into the former NASA administrator while Hakeem was there, Jim Bridenstine, because he also could have been part of this conversation.
I mean, he's, you know, anti-LGBTQ.
Thank you.
He's a wonderful figure.
So I am curious about him, so I might do some more digging related to him.
And then if any listeners want to write in with suggestions, if anything like has really crossed your mind of connections, I am happy to take that.
I will say just a very generality, no specifics.
Not talking about any specific episodes of any kind, because for real, we'll protect confidentiality 100%.
I have heard from multiple people involved in things we've done, we've covered on the show, to put it in the vaguest of terms.
And if that's you, reach out.
We will 1000% protect Confidentiality, a million percent.
I'm mentioning in the vaguest sense, somewhere in our episodes, someone related to something has contacted me, and that's all I'll say.
So if there's anybody who thinks they might have something they could tell us, but they don't want to put their name to it or whatever, we will a million percent respect all confidentiality, anonymity, anything like that.
If you have anything you think would help or any experience or anything to tell us, let us know.
Yeah, you can either email Thomas at thomasatseriouspod.com or myself, Lydia, at seriouspod.com, and we're happy to look into any ideas you might have, any leads you might have.
But that's sort of where I'm at right now with this FOIA request and eager to get my next one.
And if the next one doesn't have anything important, we probably won't take the space of doing another time.
Yeah, I'll just maybe release it.
Yeah, like post it.
Yeah, exactly.
We could post this on Patreon.
Let's post our actual results on Patreon.
Okay.
The emails, just for fun.
Yeah.
But there's something we need to leave you with, everyone.
Yes.
And by leave you with, I mean, this is a To Be Continued.
You might have thought we were done, but no.
Maybe you caught it.
Maybe there was a weird sentence you heard that you were like, I don't know what that means.
Lydia and I both had the same reaction.
Yep.
When Kristen Erikson, boomer fucking Kristen Erikson, Ginny Thomas says, I also respect, and I don't know if she meant respect.
I think she meant expect, maybe.
I also respect that by reclaiming the name, the agency is exposed to other naming issues.
Because that's what she wants to do.
So why would she say respect?
I think she does mean respect.
I think she's saying she understands it's a complicated decision for them to make.
No, but that doesn't make sense.
It would be the opposite.
If you change the name, then you're exposed to like, oh, now they had that victory.
That's why I'm confused.
Okay.
I also respect that by reclaiming the name.
The agency is exposed to other naming issues.
Okay.
Maybe, I see what you're saying.
So maybe the things she says are so fucking backwards.
Who knows?
Yeah.
Anyway, this administrator must decide, and this is the sentence, he cannot have mission equity and Stennis at the same time.
Yeah.
And we're like, what is Stennis?
What's Stennis?
Yeah, and so I looked it up, and oh my fucking God, the next episode on Where There's Woke, hashtag rename Stennis Center, and I promise you that Lydia doesn't know what's in for this.
This is another surprise one for Lydia.
This is, there's, this is, oh boy, this is one of those research things where, this is only gonna be one episode, I promise, but it is worthwhile.
It is like, Just wait until you hear this fucking thing.
So to be continued, turns out there was a name all along that was way fucking worse than James Webb, which is the Stennis Center.
And so hopefully my voice will be a little better by the time I record this entire thing about hashtag rename Stennis Center.
Can't wait.
Well done, Lydia, on the FOIA request.
That was fun.
That's a big milestone.
In the meantime, please, please pledge at patreon.com slash where there's woke.
Wait, have we done our bonus?
Have we teased it yet?
No.
No one knows anything.
I don't even think we've teased our bonus for this month.
Holy crap.
We have none other than Cecil from Cognitive Dissonance on to help critique, maybe learn a bit from the comedy stylings of one Rob Schneider.
Yeah, that's right.
We watched Rob Schneider's new comedy special, so you don't have to.
