> That's a valiant attempt at myth-fighting, but it doesn't fully convince me. For example, one hop to Wikipedia gives this:

And in that same Wikipedia section there are 3-4 other people, including Herzfeld, who was the guy/director who authorized the actual starting of the project, who say otherwise:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARPANET#Creation

Meanwhile you cherrypick 1-2 paragraphs at the end, while there are over a dozen that say the opposite. Note that Kukasik was later the director of DARPA, which had a completely different mandate that (no-D) ARPA.