the AEC (civilian part), NSF, ONR, Office of Saline Water, National Bureau of Standards, and the Weather Bureau.

34. Establish a Commission on the Organization and Management of the Executive Branch, hearings before the Subcommittee on Executive Reorganization of the Senate Committee on Government Operations, 90th Congress, 2d session (23 Jan. 1968), p. 58. Hollomon proposed that the Department of Science and Technology include the NSF, NASA, ESSA, National Bureau of Standards, Geological Survey, Census Bureau "and perhaps parts of NIH and the AEC."

35. D. F. Hornig, remarks as AAAS Meeting, Dallas, Texas (29 Dec. 1968). 36. Senate Misc. Doc. No. 82 (serial No. 2345), 49th Congress, 1st session (1886), vol. 4, p. 66.

37. The usual text for this organizational approach is the report of the First Hoover Commission, "General Management of the Executive Branch" (Feb. 1949), which recommended that: "The numerous agencies of the executive branch must be grouped into departments as nearly as possible by major purposes in order to give a coherent mission to each Department” (p. 34). Senator Humphrey quoted this recommendation in his Annals article (20). 38. The Department of Housing and Urban Development actually was established during the Johnson Administration, although President Kennedy pressed for its creation from the beginning of his administration. The stumbling block to congressional acceptance was President Kennedy's announced intention to appoint Robert C. Weaver as Secretary of the new department. Similarly, congressional opposition to a putative department head (Oscar R. Ewing) prevented President Truman from getting the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, which was created in the Eisenhower Administration. 39. President Nixon announced the appointment of an Advisory Council on Executive Organization on 5 April 1969. The members are: Roy L. Ash (chairman), president of Litton Industries, Inc.; George Baker, dean of the Graduate School of Business Administration, Harvard University; John B. Connally, former governor of Texas; Frederick R. Kappel, chairman of the executive committee, American Telephone and Telegraph Company; and Richard M. Paget, member of Cresap, McCormick and Paget. 40. Lapp (33, p. 206) proposed that the AEC's nuclear production facilities be mothballed in part and the remainder transferred to the Department of Defense. Representative Craig Hosmer, in an address "The Science Establishment: Where Is It Headed?" [Cong. Rec. (6 March 1968), p. E1606] posed the AEC problem in terms of diversification or decline: "Unless AEC's charter is revised to give it a responsibility to conduct research for other government agencies, it would seem that some of these facilities and programs would be better off under an organization more fundamentally oriented toward basic research, such as the National Science Foundation." 41. R. E. Miles, Jr., Public Admin. Rev. 27, 1 (March 1967). Text included in hearings before the Subcommittee on Executive Reorganization, Senate Committee on Government Operations, 90th Congress, 2d session (23 Jan. 1968), p. 115.

42. Public Law 90-407, 82 Stat. 360 (18 July 1968).

43. Public Law 85-454, 80 Stat. 203 (17 June 1966). See also Public Law 90-242, 81 Stat. 780 (2 Jan. 1968).

44. Our Nation and the Sea, Report of the Commission on Marine Science, Engineering and Resources (9 Jan. 1969 preprint), p. 7.

66

45. "... The easy answer to all problems in Government, scientific and nonscientific, seems to be to move them closer to the President. I don't think that tenable for all things he is already overburdened" [D. F. Honig (35) 1. 46. State of the Union Message, House Doc. No. 1, 90th Congress, 1st session (19 Jan. 1967), p. 3.

47. A current example of a government laboratory with diversified scientific capabilities and no obvious place to go upon withdrawal of military sponsorship is the Navy Radiological Defense Laboratory. It is slated for closure by the end of this year, even though its resources could be readily adapted to important research in the civil sector. The proposed closure of NRDL also illustrates the poor planning not infrequently found in government. Six months ago a $6-million cyclotron was installed for special research in biomedical effects of radiation.

48. The views expressed herein are the author's and not necessarily those of any member of the Congress.

APPENDIX E

THE NEW PRIESTHOOD

THE SCIENTIFIC ELITE OF THE USES OF POWER

(By Ralph E. Lapp)

SCIENTISTS AND THE EXECUTIVE

If the author's thesis that the Congress is in a supine position with respect to the onrush of science and technology is accepted, then it becomes clear that the real decision-making takes place elsewhere in government. The location of the center of gravity on R & D decision-making was mainly in the Pentagon before Sputnik. After the Soviet success in 1957 more and more of the decisions involving research and development centered in the White House. President Eisenhower formalized a science advisory mechanism which has since expanded into a weighty apparatus in the Executive Office. Thus scientists have played a greater advisory role in decisions affecting the nation's welfare, although on some issues their advice has been disregarded.

The determinative postwar factor in the evolution of U.S. research and development was the Cold War. The nation's concern for its security and the potential of modern technology caused most of the total R & D funds to be dedicated to defense. For example, in the first post-Sputnik budget, the total federal outlays for nonsecurity research and development amounted to less than one-eighth of the $7.1 billion. One might quibble over whether NASA funds were primarily to reassure the U.S. sense of security; I would resolve the issue by describing this as money spent for "flag science." Although many legislators voted for NASA funds thinking that they would bear military rewards, it became evident that space was to be an area of status-seeking.

The above budget then describes the profile of U.S. research and development as funded by federal agencies shortly after the scientists ascended to advisory power in the White House. It is provocative to jump ahead to the 1966 fiscal budget and note how the profile has been altered in a span of seven years. In this way we may observe the gross changes in federal spending which surely (455)

point to policy changes, leaving aside for the moment the influence of science advice. The new order of federal R & D spending is:

The most prominent feature of this budget, apart from its total, is the NASA appropriation. As already explained, this budget item was primarily a Presidential innovation and cannot be ascribed to a consensus of White House science advisers. Without the federal outlay for space the total would have been about $10 billion, which would represent less than a doubling in seven years. This rate of spending actually represents a slowdown as compared with earlier years when the doubling time was roughly four years. As we have seen, this paring back of R & D appropriations coincided with closer congressional scrutiny of research; the size of R & D funds clearly caused Congressmen to begin assessing science and technology in the light of other expenditures.

On the face of it, the two most obvious features of the R & D budget after scientists trooped to the White House to act in advisory roles were contradictions-a space program not of their choosing and a cutback in R & D expansion. But the stark statistics conceal the innumerable tugging and pulling of forces operating at many levels within the officialdom of government. For example, R & D defense expenditures are down for fiscal year 1966 as compared to preceding years. This reflects not just a thaw in the Cold War but a change in philosophy of the Defense Department in which key scientists were highly influential, both within government and without. The sufficiency and redundancy of strategic weapons systems allowed for cutbacks.

Probably this comparison of the federal R & D budget profile is too harsh a criterion to apply to the influence of scientists at the White House level. As the latest added ingredient of policymaking, science advice will probably take longer to evaluate and it may manifest itself in subtler ways than by showing up as budgetary changes. Nonetheless, the most effective means of control of R & D is at the budgetary level; it is here that decisionmaking is of guillotine nature. Science advisers may give lofty advice and complex recommendations, but in the end the Bureau of the Budget must convert the words into deeds-into approval or disapproval of project or program funds requested by a government agency.

Evaluation of the effectiveness of the White House science advisers is difficult because of the low visibility of the work of the various individuals and groups attached to the Executive Office in an advisory capacity. For example, the White House does not issue any annual report on the status of science and technology. Presidential advisers are very discreet in exposing controversial R & D issues to the view of outsiders. Task force reports are rarely published; even the names of consultants are held confidential. Furthermore, the President's science adviser serves a relatively short term of office and each one has his own method of dealing with problems. Since the White House represents a Grand Junction where the pathways of political power intersect, it is difficult to separate out the causative factors in decisions made by the President on matters scientific or technical.

Then, too, the advice-taker must be considered as preponderantly more significant at the White House level than the purveyor of recommendations. The President may or may not take to heart scientific advice. He may find the scientists' jargon and syntax alien to his own as President Truman did when he was briefed in the late summer of 1949 on Joe I, the first Soviet nuclear test. A special group of eminent scientists transmitted and tried to translate the pertinent detection data to the President but there was a real gap between the parties. When Mr. Truman left office he expressed himself publicly as doubting the validity of the Soviet test. This was bewildering to scientists who examined the data and knew that it constituted proof of the Soviet nuclear bomb.

There is no need to detail the pre-Sputnik arrangements for injecting R & D advice into the Executive Office. Vannevar Bush's relations to Roosevelt were of an ad hoc nature. Truman had Mr. John R. Steelman, the economist-sociologist, as a White House counselor but he was not regarded as a powerhouse for science. Korea served to hoist some warning flags that science might need more highlevel attention and Truman established a Science Advisory Committee in 1951 under the Office of Defense Mobilization. But he had no official science adviser and no eminent scientist could claim a close relationship to him. Science was still not yet within the orbit of Presidential power.

It was during Eisenhower's second term that the shock wave of scientific events crashed down upon the White House and produced visible changes in the science advisory system there. A very large segment of the scientific community felt that a shake-up was long overdue and they welcomed the impact of Sputnik upon political affairs. Many scientists deeply resented the Eisenhower regime's blindness of the affairs of sciences which were discovered by security excesses, the Openheimer disgrace, the fallout scandal, the nuclear test issue, and a lack of sympathy for intellectualism. Although funds for R & D increased sharply under Eisenhower, they were aimed in the direction of a weapons culture, and the climate for science itself was chill.

The Soviet success with ballistic missiles shocked the American people and politicians who had lulled themselves into a reveire that the United States was the chosen land for scientific accomplishments. Although President Eisenhower personally downgraded the significance of Soviet technological triumphs, he was forced to give ground. In a nationwide television address on November 7, 1957, on the heels of Sputnik II and a wave of publicity over the orbiting of Laika, a dog, the President revealed:

I have created the office of Special Assistant to the President for Science and Technology. This man, who will be aided by a staff of scientists and a strong advisory group of outstanding experts reporting to him and to me, will have the active responsibility of helping me follow through on the program of scientific improvement of our defenses.

It is significant that this new office was oriented along defense needs. James R. Killian, president of the Massachusetts Insitute of Technology, was named as Eisenhower's science adviser. Not a scientist himself, Killian brought to the post a thorough knowledge of federal bureaucracy and a wide acquaintance with scientists and technologists.

The scientific experts mentioned by Eisenhower were organized in the President's Science Advisory Committee (PSAC) and they were headed by Killian. The committee included on its initial roster the following: Robert F. Bacher, physics professor, California Institute of Technology; William O. Baker, vice president, Bell Telephone Laboratories; Lloyd V. Berkner, president, Associated Universities: Hans A. Bethe, physicis professor, Cornell University; Detley W. Bronk, president, National Academy of Sciences; James H. Doolittle, Lt. Gen., vice president, Shell Oil Company; James B. Fisk, vice president, Bell Telephone Laboratories; Caryl P. Haskins, president Carnegie Institution of Washington; George B. Kistiakowsky, chemistry professor, Harvard University; Edwin H. Land, president, Polaroid Corporation; Edward M. Purcell, physics professor, Harvard University; Isidor I. Rabi, physics professor, Columbia University; H. P. Robertson, physics professor, California Institute of Technology; Jerome B. Weisner, director, Electronics Research Laboratory, M.I.T.; Jerrold R. Zacharis, physics professor, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Herbert York, chief scientist, Department of Defense.

About half of the members could be called active in research and two-thirds confined their specialization to the physical sciences. Scientists on the PSAC task force generally represented two geographic areas, northeastern United States. especially Boston, and California.

It will be recalled that President Eisenhower suffered a stroke in November 1957. By February 4. 1958, he had recovered sufficiently to honor scientists at a White House dinner party. Some forty-nine couples, including many high-ranking officers, were feted at a white-tie-and-tails dinner which displayed gold service at the table and four wines with appropriate courses. The scientists had assumed new social status, but it remained to be seen how they would fare as advicegivers and decision-makers.

Killian and his cohorts faced a wide variety of problems in 1958-priority items in defense, a space program, educational demands for the future supply of scientists and engineers, "ugly ducklings" like the nuclear airplane and the nuclear rocket, coordination of federal R & D, fallout, and nuclear test policy. The latter,

as has been discussed earlier, was an issue on which some committee members focused to bring about a reversal in U.S. policy. Unfortunately, the PSAC group suffered from the faults of a high-level advisory body. It could air the problem and make recommendations but it had no operating function. It was organized too late to encourage the research which could have swung the balance in favor of an effective test-detection system in 1958 when the Geneva talks were critical. The PSAC experts soon discovered that politics was much more influential in government policy than physics. They found that they could reach general agreement, for example, on the matter of canceling the ANP project (Aircraft Nuclear Propulsion), but this was technical advice which was hard for a politician to swallow when the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy fought for its pet. For years Joint Committeemen like Senator Jackson and Congressman Mel Price had been gifted with a vision that saw ANP flying in a year or so; they seemed to have special intelligence of a competitive Soviet nuclear bomber. In the collision of science and politics over such an issue as ANP the obvious tactic for the President was to stall. Finally under President Kennedy the atomic airplane was canceled, but not before a billion dollars had been spent.

How political should a PSAC scientist be? Should he give advice on the basis of how he interprets "the national good"? Should he take an academic view of a technical problem or should he season this with a sense of political reality? It would seem that the name of the President's committee identifies the primary qualification of its members as scientific experts. Since they serve an advisory capacity, their environment can produce an awareness of political factors. The latter is easily imparted by good staff liaison work or by the simple fact that almost every PSAC member had a background of experience in dealing with bureaucracy. The President has his own political advisers and it would appear that the prime function of the PSAC group would be to give advice on scientific and technical merit of various projects, proposals, and programs. The presence on the PSAC group of members like Detlev Bronk and Jerome Wiesner injected more than a few grains of political salt into the committee's deliberations.

The preponderance of physical scientists on PSAC raised the question of how representative it was of American science. Was not the committee overweighted against, say, the field of biological science? But this was not the basic question. Even if all the sciences were to be allocated membership on PSAC by some numerical relationship, there would still remain the same question which has been raised with regard to the National Academy of Sciences. How could PSAC claim to be representative of U.S. science?

The PSAC problem was even more vexing than that posed for the Academy because the latter had a multitude of committees and advisory groups and could be reckoned as more representative than a single eighteen-man committee. If we look upon PSAC as a potent priesthood of science, we may inquire into the means by which PSAC divines what the general assembly of U.S. scientists thinks about the state of science. The PSAC members are extremely stuffy about discussing their committee deliberations; I have had difficulty finding any scientists who have been solicited for an opinion by PSAC members. The committee holds eleven two-day sessions each year but only occasionally does the outside world learn what transpires in PSAC. Usually this communication takes the form of a published report of a task force, but these are few and far between. The first such was a brief report, "Introduction to Outer Space," dated March 28, 1958, which was fairly colorless as a policy statement but did contain one warning: "It would not be in the national interest to exploit space science at the cost of weakening our efforts in other scientific endeavors. This need not happen if we plan our national program for space science and technology as part of a balanced effort in all science and technology." Can one inspect the current R & D budget and find evidence of the balance which PSAC recommended? In fact, what kind of over-all balanced program did PSAC have in mind? There is no published record of any PSAC recommendation for such a program.

If the President's committee were to publish a recommended program for a balanced effort in the nation's research and development, then the scientists outside the White House could function in a democratic manner by individually appraising the programs and feeding back reflections on them to PSAC members, to scientists in government, and to Congressmen. There would be the possibility of discussing the issue in the nation's news forums and within scientific societies. Granting that the scientific community has no internal cohesion or mechanism for acting as a collective Solomon on the matter, it could nonetheless function in a diffuse democratic manner. Furthermore, competent individuals within our