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President's Advisory Committee Straddles Worlds Of Politics, Science

SIDEBAR : PRESIDENT'S COMMITTEE OF ADVISERS ON SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY President Bill Clinton has expressed a strong interest in science and the environment. He has cited investments in these areas as critical if the United States is to remain the world's most advanced nation as a new millennium dawns.

CONVENING WITH CLINTON: PCAST members have meet with President Bill Clinton only once, last July. At the meeting, from left, were Gibbons, Holdren, Shaw, Malcom, Ayala, MacArthur, Sanders, Rodin, Young and Clinton.

Yet Clinton's interest in science does not necessarily translate into access for his scientific advisers, 18 men and women who constitute a group he has named the President's Committee of Advisers on Science and Technology (PCAST). Though the president officially appointed the members in August 1994, to date, he has attended only one of his PCAST's four meetings, on July 11, 1995.

PCAST member Charles A. Sanders acknowledges that the committee "is hampered by not having a direct line on a daily basis to the administration, and from there to Congress." However, adds Sanders-former chief executive officer of Durham, N.C.-based Glaxo Inc. and a Democratic candidate for the Senate in North Carolina-PCAST must also recognize the constraints of its role as an outside board of advisers: "We are just an advisory committee. We have to understand the limitations that imposes on us.

"All we can do is give them the benefit of our best advice," he concludes. "The administration must carry it from there."

No one would ever assert that PCAST's job is an easy one, especially for a bunch of part-timers whose personal concerns lie worlds away from the sometimes seamy political subculture of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Among them are Nobel laureates, titans of high-technology industry, eminent academics, and an astronaut (see accompanying list of members).

With Clinton so often occupied elsewhere, Vice President Al Gore, who has had a long-standing interest in science and the environment, has become PCAST's point man in the White House, attending meetings and even lunching with PCAST members. The vice president, in fact, spoke with PCAST members during their inaugural meeting on Oct. 25-26, 1994 (Notebook, The Scientist, Nov. 28, 1994, page 4).

Bruce L.R. Smith, senior staff member in the Center for Public Policy Education at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C., believes Clinton's lack of personal involvement demonstrates that the president "has been rather poor in his use of PCAST.

"Whenever you see something devolved down to the level of the vice president, you know that it is a recipe for irrelevance," Smith declares.

PCAST members, however, contend that they have made their voices heard in the administration. Committee member David E. Shaw, chief of D.E. Shaw and Co., a New York group of technology-oriented financial firms, notes that Clinton and individual committee members meet regularly. Shaw says that he himself speaks with Clinton every other month.

"The president is very much on top of the major science and technology issues," Shaw declares. "I think this president has a deeper understanding than past presidents on many of these matters."

Brookings' Smith points out an accepted fact of research life: Politics govern science. And, Smith says, PCAST-established by Bush in 1990 under the name President's Council of Advisers on Science and Technology and reconstituted by Clinton-straddles the two worlds. "No one who works in the office of the president is independent," Smith argues. "That's just a conceit of scientists."

"I think as time moves on, we feel that we are having an impact, but it takes some patience because we have to compete with all sorts of other issues," states PCAST member Mario J. Molina, Lee and Geraldine Martin Professor of Environmental Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who shared the 1995 Nobel Prize in chemistry.

"Our PCAST members know they are listened to carefully," asserts John H. Gibbons, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and PCAST's cochairman along with John A. Young, former president and CEO of Palo Alto, Calif.-based Hewlett-Packard Co.

"We try to see our members' time is well spent," Gibbons notes. "We have more panels than previous advisory groups. Rather than carry out too many independent studies and reports, we try to focus on timely issues and output that can affect policy decisions."

"What we're striving for is short documents, rather than long reports, which have an impact on current policies regarding science and technology," Molina explains.

As demonstrated in several notable incidents, Clinton's PCAST has indeed had a direct effect on science issues facing the nation, including matters of vital importance to national security.

Armageddon Averted

The committee gathered to take stock of the last vestige of Soviet might, tons of bomb-grade nuclear fuel stored in the newly independent nations that emerged from the wreckage of the Soviet empire. The members heard a report from a PCAST subcommittee headed by John P. Holdren, the Class of 1935 Professor of Energy and Resources at the University of California, Berkeley.

What they heard was alarming: Enough enriched uranium and plutonium to erase civilization lay unguarded in the nations of the former Soviet Union. It was an invitation to Armageddon for any terrorist or rogue nation enterprising enough to cart it away.

Worse, the Clinton administration, enmeshed in one domestic political crisis after another, knew nothing of the danger.

PRESIDENT'S COMMITTEE OF ADVISERS ON SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

Chairmen: John H. Gibbons, assistant to the president for science and technology and director, Office of Science and Technology Policy John A. Young, former president and CEO, Hewlett-Packard Co., Palo Alto, Calif. Members: Norman R. Augustine, president and CEO, Lockheed Martin Corp., Bethesda, Md. Francisco J. Ayala, Donald Bren Professor of Biological Sciences and professor of philosophy, University of California, Irvine Murray Gell-Mann, professor, Santa Fe Institute, Santa Fe, N.Mex.; R.A. Millikan Professor, Emeritus, of Theoret-cal Physics, California Institute of Technology David A. Hamburg, president, Carnegie Corporation of New York John P. Holdren, Class of 1935 Professor of Energy and Resources, University of California, Berkeley Diana MacArthur, chairwoman and CEO, Dynamac Corp., Rockville, Md. Shirley M. Malcom, head, directorate for education and human resources programs, American Association for the Advancement of Science, Washington, D.C. Mario J. Molina, Lee and Geraldine Martin Professor of Environmental Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Peter H. Raven, director, Missouri Botanical Garden; Engelmann Professor of Botany, Washington University, St. Louis Sally K. Ride, director, California Space Institute, La Jolla; professor of physics, University of California, San Diego judith Rodin, president, University of Pennsylvania Charles A. Sanders, former chairman, Glaxo Inc., Raleigh, N.C. Phillip A. Sharp, professor of biology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology David E. Shaw, CEO, D.E. Shaw and Co., New York Charles M. Vest, president, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Virginia V. Weldon, senior vice president for public policy, Monsanto Co., St. Louis Lilian Shiao-Yen Wu, member, research staff, IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center, Yorktown Heights, N.Y.

"We are talking about several hundreds of tons, half of which was in the hands of the military; the other half was spread in other places," recounts one participant in the meeting, PCAST member Francisco Ayala, Donald Bren Professor of Biological Sciences and a professor of philosophy at the University of California, Irvine.

"It was quite apparent that not even an inventory existed, much less proper controls," Ayala remembers.

"It was incredible that there was that much in existence-much less in the former Soviet Union, unguarded," Sanders recalls.

The committee quickly reached a decision: The president must be warned and something must be done.

"You can't have this stuff floating around," asserts PCAST member Shirley M. Malcom, head of the directorate for education and human resources programs at the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Washington, D.C.

Gibbons placed a call to Clinton's chief of staff, Leon Panetta, who agreed to a May 1 meeting with Holdren and Gibbons, among others.

Panetta relayed the news to Clinton, who subsequently sought congressional approval for funds to provide the relevant nations with enough technical assistance to produce an inventory, establish appropriate controls, and monitor the movements of the mountain of fissile materials. "Within a fortnight the PCAST report was part of some major international policy negotiations," Gibbons notes.

Educational technology panel chairman Shaw comments that much of PCAST's substantive work is accomplished in these subcommittees of members and outside experts. For example, Shaw's subcommittee, which had held hearings last October 2-5 on the importance of educational technology in the nation's schools, worked closely with the president in preparing a public statement on the subject.

At the PCAST hearings, Malcom recalls, experts said that the crucial factors in education are "not just access to the Internet, not just computers, but also quality teachers and materials."

Though PCAST's report was not due out for months, members briefed the president on the results of their research.

"If you can get bully-pulpit time," Malcom points out, "you want to make sure that any careful reflection from the panel could be provided to the president so that he could incorporate these ideas in his thinking."

Value Of Open Meetings

The suit was filed in United States District Court for the District of Columbia by business publisher Bureau of National Affairs Inc., the Science and Government Report newsletter, and the journal Nature. As a result of the litigation District Court Judge Thomas R. Hogan ordered that Bush's PCAST open to the public and the press a study of research-intensive universities; the council also released other reports and meeting minutes with virtually no deletions (B. Reppert, The Scientist, Feb. 22, 1993, page 1). The government eventually settled the case, agreeing to pay attorney's fees and other costs incurred by the plaintiffs (Notebook, The Scientist, March 22, 1993, page 4).

Clinton's one meeting with his PCAST was also closed to the public-even though the discussion centered on domestic politics, not national security or other privileged topics. The minutes of that meeting cite "security reasons" as the basis for shutting the public out. The president stopped in to see his advisers last summer between a meeting on affirmative action with the Congressional Black Caucus and the ceremony marking the normalization of relations with Vietnam.

At the time, according to Malcom, Clinton was deeply enmeshed in the administration's budget stalemate with Congress.

"Clinton felt quite frustrated at not being able to make people understand that science and technology are an investment that the nation has to make," she recalls.

The minutes of other meetings of Clinton's PCAST to date indicate that the committee has largely adhered to the judge's ruling and conducted its affairs before a small audience of journalists and others.

Rodney W. Nichols, a science policy expert who is chief executive officer of the New York Academy of Sciences (NYAS), says he is torn about whether such meetings should be held in public or private session.

"I frankly would favor doing some of both," asserts Nichols, who was special assistant for research and technology in the office of the Secretary of Defense from 1966 to 1970. "In some areas, which are politically sensitive or where there are major economic or technological uncertainties, the public is probably best served by having the meetings closed so that people feel free to openly debate the issues. After all, the information is going to the president and vice president.

"On the other hand, I favor open government. Having a few people from the press and people from federal agencies who can ask questions is basically healthy-so that all points of view are exposed," Nichols argues.

In an unusual move, Clinton's PCAST decided to resurrect a report on the health of U.S. academic research institutions by Bush's 1992 PCAST members. Ironically, the report was one of the documents initially kept secret by the Bush administration. It was released, and came to the current committee's attention, only after the judge's ruling.

"We made a commitment early on not to spend a lot of time doing big studies that would never be used," Malcom says of the decision to use a Bush administration report. "You can spend so much time doing a study that the urgency of the issue that you're reflecting on passes."

TIME WELL SPENT: OSTP's John Gibbons

Gibbons says of the 1992 report produced by Bush science adviser Allan Bromley and PCAST: "I reminded our PCAST that we're also wrestling with support of research universities, and that we should make use of the earlier report.

"We've also looked at academic health centers. We've used earlier wisdom and updated information to examine the question of support for research."

Politics has shaped many of the committee's discussions and will continue to do so in this election year, members note. In the face of ongoing budget battles, Molina points out, "one important function, I think, that we tried to fulfill is to work with the administration to provide further advice or ammunition or a united front, if you will,

BULLY PULPIT TIME: Shirley Malcom.

to make sure science does not get axed in the process of other politically motivated things, because it's not a sufficiently large piece of the budget to get attention directly."

Comments PCAST member and 1993 Nobel laureate Phillip Sharp, a biology professor at MIT: "We're going into the political season. I would hope that the PCAST would play some role in framing the technical side of that political agenda."

Steve Sternberg is a freelance science writer based in Alexandria, Va. Senior editor Steven Benowitz and associate editors Karen Young Kreeger and Thomas W. Durso contributed to this report.

(The Scientist, Vol:10, #6, p. 3 & 5, March 18, 1996)

(Copyright © The Scientist, Inc.)

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