A flurry of e-mails and a possible about-face followed the US Central Intelligence Agency's (CIA) announcement last week that it would issue a classified report on an unclassified brainstorming session about scientific openness. The meeting held in Washington, DC on Jan. 23–24, focused on bioterrorism and was hosted by the National Research Council (NRC), which gathered leading microbiologists for a remarkable unclassified session with the CIA's strategic assessments group.

Opening the doors to scientists without top security clearance was intended as a way of getting participation from top microbiologists who have had little or no contact with the nation's security establishment.

But last week, NRC's Kerry Brenner sent an e-mail to participants, passing along the message that CIA would be "assembling a short, classified summary" of the meeting, and touching off a torrent of questions from the scientists. Several had spoken at the meeting about the necessity for biosecurity consultation to take place in a new, open model of interaction between researchers and security agencies, one that would replace the secret dealings of Cold War days.

"The model they instinctively reach for, the nuclear weapons model, doesn't hold very well for a lot of reasons," Roger Brent, director of the Institute for Molecular Sciences in California, told The Scientist, explaining the position he took at the meeting. "Nuclear weapons were created by governments with immense resources that could be summoned only by governments. The governments owned all the scientists and kept them behind barbed wire."

Not so with microbiology, which has few secrets and many skilled practitioners, the vast majority of them outside the government.

"In the future, if we want to deal with BW [biological warfare] defense, we cannot move forward in the same time-worn ways as we have with nuclear weapons," said Steven Block of Stanford University's departments of biological sciences and applied physics. "It's simply not possible to control the information in the same way, and the kinds of control we use for nuclear weapons do not work against biological weapons."

"For good or ill, there is very little about biology that, if you could keep it secret, would give you any measure of protection," Brent said.

It seemed to those present that the CIA listened.

"Let me make an offer right here. Nancy [Forbes, of the CIA] is going to be responsible for writing up the conference report. I can make that unclassified and I can get it out to you people," said William Anderson of the CIA, according to a transcript of the meeting which made the rounds last week. "In the past, we tend to go for official use only, but I'll push the envelope and I'll make this unclassified and we'll get it out," Anderson continued.

Then came the April 1 e-mail from NRC saying that the CIA was preparing a classified summary of the meeting, a plan which some of the scientists read as an ironic and unfortunate step backwards in warming relations between the security establishment and life scientists.

Within a few hours, the CIA's Nancy Forbes e-mailed the participants, saying that the agency "will definitely look into putting out an unclassified version of the report for workshop attendees, and will let the group know as soon as this has been decided."

Two scientist participants who did not wish to be identified said they were still not reassured that the CIA would make good on Anderson's pledge.

Steven Aftergood, who tracks government secrecy issues for the Federation of American Scientists in Washington and who first brought the contretemps to light, called Forbes' response "a remarkable pirouette by the CIA," and a sign that the agency could meet the scientists halfway.

"It is not a revolution by any means, but the moments when agencies and individuals change their minds are extremely interesting and important," Aftergood remarked. "National policy is derived from many such changes of mind."