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So I think one of the important things here is the real question of how, when we identify a needed thing to do, do we get it done, and done when it is timely. It goes to the questions you have raised, Mr. Chairman, about technological assessment, for example, how in fact even when we know we have the skills to do something and know we have a problem, can we move quickly enough so as, at least, not to allow the problem to get worse over the time period during which we are making the decisions necessary to commit the resources.

I would offer this as probably one of the clearest results of this study that has the broadest implications, not only for R. & D., but for the goals and objectives of our Federal Government generally. Mr. DADDARIO. At least insofar as R. & D. is concerned, the purport of what you have said is that the organizational structure in a sense prevents us from moving quickly.

Mr. LEDERMAN. In some instances, yes. I think, even though there may not be a rationale for saying why create a new organization when we already have the skill, the fact of the matter is that very often that gets the job done sooner, witness the NASA situation. We seem to think that a new program will get launched better, with a different kind of dedication, even if it is the same people, if they are within a new organizational entity.

Now this may not have any basis in logic, but it may have a great deal of basis in the psychological relationships of people and organizational entities that they are involved with.

Mr. DADDARIO. We did have the organizational capability to put together the space program. The decision to do it somewhere else rather than the military.

Dr. HARRIS. Right.

Mr. DADDARIO. Really.

Mr. LEDERMAN. There seems to be an element of enthusiasm that goes with the creation of of a new entity.

Mr. DADDARIO. We need not drag this on, but this was prior to that, the determination that it be done in NASA.

Mr. LEDERMAN. Yes, sir.

Mr. DADDARIO. Rather than in the military.
Mr. LEDERMAN. Yes, sir.

Mr. DADDARIO. If the military had had a program of that size for that particular purpose, I would guess they would have generated that amount of enthusiasm. But we did have an organization able to meet that objective, and it was the determination of the goal that I think would be most important.

Mr. LEDERMAN. Certainly.

Mr. DADDARIO. On the other hand, many of these other goals involved many political decisions and traditional problems. Yet, they can be overcome, providing the proper intent and purpose is put behind it. Dr. HARRIS. Mr. Chairman, I wonders if I might be permitted one supplemental statement? I don't want to interrupt your train of thought.

Mr. DADDARIO. Until the bells begin ringing, we have some time. Dr. HARRIS. All right. I was in Seoul, Korea, a week ago during the time of the moonshot. I arrived before the launch and was there during the moonshot.

I saw the launch on a friend's TV set in Korea. I stood with 60,000 to 100,000 Koreans on the top of Yongsan Hill in the rain to watch some of the events during the flight.

Mr. DADDARIO. 60,000 to 100,000?

Dr. HARRIS. 60,000 to 100,000 stood in the rain watching a 30-by-30 TV screen, each of us with our umbrellas. I saw the quiet but real enthusiasm of the crowd. Later I watched the moonwalk, itself, in the laboratories of the Korean Institute for Science and Technology, which is a joint Republic of Korea-United States Government program established to bring science and technology more effectively to bear on the economic development of Korea.

That evening Ambassador Porter had a reception for a National Academy of Sciences team looking at technical assistance in Korea, to which the representatives of KIST (Korean Institute for Science and Technology) were invited, I among them.

Ambassador Porter, I observed, received the compliments of every single Korean, and their very enthusiastic comments about the accomplishments of the United States. Having seen this and knowing the involvement of your committee in this program, I wanted to have an opportunity to tell you in a personal way how much the fact that the Americans were first on the moon had meant to the Koreans.

Mr. DADDARIO. Well, we are certainly appreciative of your telling us about that experience, Dr. Harris. It is one that I am sure that every member of this committee would have been pleased to share with you, to see that kind of enthusiasm about a program of the United States in such a place.

We thank both of you for your testimony.

Mr. Brown has already indicated that there is much in what you have said which needs to be analyzed further. It certainly puts before us many provocative ideas, as well as somewhat disturbing figures and statistics which must be looked at very carefully.

So we will need to take advantage of you both

Dr. HARRIS. We would be delighted to be helpful in any way we can. Thank you very much.

Mr. DADDARIO. Thank you ever so much.

This committee will adjourn until tomorrow morning at 10 o'clock in the same room, when we will have Dr. Ivan Bennett, former Deputy Director of OST, and Dr. James Shannon, former Director of NIH. (Whereupon, at 12:15 p.m., the subcommittee adjourned, to reconvene at 10 a.m., Wednesday, July 30, 1969.)

CENTRALIZATION OF FEDERAL SCIENCE ACTIVITIES

WEDNESDAY, JULY 30, 1969

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE AND ASTRONAUTICS,
SUBCOMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, RESEARCH, AND DEVELOPMENT,

Washington, D.C.

The subcommittee met, pursuant to adjournment, at 10:13 a.m., in room 2325, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Emilio Q. Daddario (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.

Mr. DADDARIO. This meeting will come to order.

Our witnesses this morning are Dr. Ivan L. Bennett, who is the director of the New York University Medical Center; and Dr. James Shannon, special assistant to the President, of the National Academy of Sciences.

In introducing them to this committee and giving them these titles, it does not mean that this is a sufficient introduction or explanation of their backgrounds. We need not go any further than to refer to the time when Dr. Shannon was the head of NIH, did an exemplary job for so many years, and Dr. Bennett, previous to his present assignment, was deputy to the Science Adviser to the President. He is also on the permanent science panel of this committee. Both have the kind of background which this committee is particularly concerned about and anxious to get advice on, so far as these hearings are concerned.

I thought that it would be wise if both Dr. Shannon and Dr. Bennett came to the table together. We will proceed first with Dr. Bennett's testimony and then with Dr. Shannon, with the committee welcome to ask questions at any time during the course of the delivery of this testimony.

Dr. Bennett?

STATEMENT OF DR. IVAN L. BENNETT, DIRECTOR, NEW YORK UNIVERSITY MEDICAL CENTER

Dr. BENNETT. Mr. Chairman.

Mr. DADDARIO. Before we continue, I would like to welcome to the committee a new member, Congressman James Symington, who is here for the first time, which means the committee has been somewhat enlarged, by one member on each side of the aisle. We are happy to have you, Jim.

Mr. SYMINGTON. Thank you.

Dr. BENNETT. Mr. Chairman and members of the subcommittee, it is a pleasure and a privilege to appear before you again. My admiration and gratitude for your interest in national science policy and

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for your many actions to support the quality and to assure the effectiveness of the Federal effort in science and technology are a part of the record of past hearings. They are expressed in the most complimentary language and fulsome phraseology that I dared to use and still retain some degree of credibility. All of my testimony before you, until today, was given in my former official capacity as a member of the Executive Office of the President during the last administration, and was and I think rightly-constrained by that administration's executive policies. Here at the beginning of my first statement before you as a private citizen, then, I wish to say that the compliments that I have paid in the past to the work of this subcommittee coincide with my personal opinions. My prior praise and thanks were, indeed, something more than the mere parroting of an official consensus, agreed upon at midnight meetings somewhere within the dim recesses of that fortress of administration policymaking, the Executive Office Building. I can present only one piece of tangible evidence in support of this declaration. Were it not for my high opinion of your committee's panel on science and technology last January when Dr. Lee DuBridge resigned to assume a position which places him under constraints similar to but, I hope and trust, not identical with those which I have now cast off. In short, I can now tell it like it is, or rather, tell it like I think it is.

There is a neurological disorder known as psychomotor epilepsy in which the victim, rather than suffering from periodic, generalized convulsions such as occur in the better known form of epilepsy, so-called grand mal, is subject to fleeting aberrations of mentation. A particular type of psychomotor epilepsy is characterized by episodes during which new objects or persons may seem strangely familiar. This is referred to in medical jargon as the déjà entendu phenomenon, the feeling that something one has just heard has been heard at some other time, or as the déjà vu phenomenon, the mental impression of having just seen something which has been seen before. I mention these clinical phenomena not simply to remind you of my biomedical background, but because they best characterize my initial reaction to the news that the subcommittee was planning to hold hearings on the subject of “Centralization of Federal Science Activities."

The subject of centralizing Federal science has been discussed and debated, off and on, privately and publically, for a surprisingly long time. Shortly before my former boss, Dr. Donald Hornig, ended his tenure as Science Adviser to President Johnson, he referred to the recurrent "peaking of public concern about the state of American science" which has led to suggestions for centralization as well as evolutionary steps in that direction at intervals of 5 or 6 years since World War II. This began with Vannevar Bush's landmark report, Science: "The Endless Frontier" in 1945 which along with the so-called Steelman report, "Science and Public Policy," in 1947, finally led to the establishment of the National Science Foundation in 1950. The Korean war stimulated the establishment of the Science Advisory Committee in the Office of Defense Mobilization in 1951, then the challenge of sputnik in 1957 led to the elevation of the committee to the White House as PSAC and the appointment of Dr. James Killian to advise President Eisenhower in 1957, and then after another review

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