348 HISTORY OF THE COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY 



Committee remained loyal to their chairman. Of the ten members of 

 the Hechler subcommittee who were responsible for overseeing track- 

 ing and data acquisition, all except Hechler voted with Chairman 

 Teague. 



Hechler also clashed with Teague on a recommended cut in the 

 tracking network. Wydler, the ranking Republican on the Hechler 

 subcommittee, successfully amended the authorization bill in sub- 

 committee, cutting the tracking authorization from $250 million 

 down to $240 million. This action so upset top-side officials at NASA 

 that Deputy Administrator George Low paid a secret visit to Chairman 

 Teague, bearing a strongly worded argument in a letter from Admin- 

 istrator Fletcher which contended that U.S. dollar devaluations had 

 already robbed the tracking program of $8 million. Dr. Fletcher added 

 that a further cut of $10 million would endanger both the applications 

 program and manned space flights. It was a bold move which NASA 

 made to catch the subcommittee completely by surprise. The secret 

 was tightly guarded. Chairman Teague completely disarmed Hechler 

 at the opening of the full committee's markup session by saying: 



The Chair would like to state to the subcommittees that he's had nothing but 

 compliments on their work on this bill. 



After Hechler had completed his usual plug for increasing the aero- 

 nautics authorization, Teague dropped his bombshell. He read a few 

 sentences from the NASA Administrator's letter, blasting the $10 

 million reduction as endangering manned space flights and the appli- 

 cations program. Flabbergasted, the gentleman from West Virginia 

 just opened his dry mouth and no sound came forth; about all he could 

 think of was to ask that the full text of the letter, which the sub- 

 committee had not seen, be placed on the record. He counterattacked: 



I must express some surprise that a communication like this should not reach 

 any members of the subcommittee. I think it is a rather unusual procedure. 



Wydler defended his amendment to cut $10 million on the grounds 

 that $10 million had been reprogramed out of the tracking appropria- 

 tion the prior year, that the testimony indicated a 4-percent cut would 

 not hurt that much, and that this helped offset increases in aeronautics 

 recommended by the subcommittee. Then the tide began to turn against 

 the subcommittee. 



"I always thought that tracking and data acquisition was ex- 

 tremely important," Downing led off. He pointed out that his sub- 

 committee was concerned that their science and applications satellites 

 were sending out more data than the tracking and data network could 

 accommodate. "You are cutting a very essential program," charged 

 Downing. 



