406 HISTORY OF THl COMMITTEI ON SCIENCI AND TECHNOLOGY 



Mr. Frank Hammill is the staff member assigned to this Subcommittee and is 

 available to give you such assistance as you may require. If you need additional help 

 from the staff, please let mc know. 



THE LAUSANNE CONFERENCE 1972 



When Chairman Miller was raking part in the Ministers of Science 

 meeting of the OF.CD in Paris in November 1971, Senator J. de Grauw, 

 chairman of the Ministers' Committee on Science and Technology, 

 asked him personally to come to Lausanne, Switzerland, in April 1972. 

 The invitation was followed up with many written pleas for Miller to 

 speak at and participate in the Third Parliamentary and Scientific 

 Conference of the Council of Europe. In January 1972, J. D. Priestman, 

 clerk of the Assembly of the Council of Europe, once again appealed 

 to Chairman Miller: 



Your presence at the Conference would be a welcome confirmation of the coop- 

 eration initiated between our respective Science Committees in the spring of 1968 

 with the informal exchange of views at Strasbourg and our own participation at 

 your Panel on Science and Technology in 1969- 



It was a tough decision for Miller to make. He looked at the 

 calendar and saw that the Democratic primary in California would be 

 coming two months after the Lausanne meeting, a primary which 

 proved to be his own Waterloo. He agonized over the decision, because 

 he was supremely confident that despite the fact he was 80 years of age 

 the voters of the East Bay area would surely follow the habit they had 

 since 1944 and send him back for another term. Finally, on March 3, 

 he wrote Priestman : 



Unfortunately, my schedule will not permit me to be present. However, I am 

 designating Honorable James W. Symington, a Member of this Committee, to attend 

 in my place. Mr. Symington is Chairman of our Subcommittee on International 

 Cooperation in Science and Space and is a former Chief of Protocol of the United 

 States Government. He is uniquely qualified to represent me at this important 

 conference. 



For Symington, this meant that his subcommittee which he had 

 just inherited would have to wait before launching any substantive 

 hearings in depth. But Lausanne gave him a challenging opportunity 

 to display his unusual talents as a leader, mixer, and international 

 consensus former. His fluency in French, the language of the Confer- 

 ence, served him in good stead, and time after time he advanced 

 "proposals which were incorporated in the final conclusions of the 

 Conference," according to H. C. Christenscn writing from Strasbourg. 

 Christensen, secretary of the Committee on Science and Technology of 

 the Council of Europe, wrote an enthusiastic letter to Chairman Miller 

 on April 28: 



Mr. Symington's active participation and stimulating interventions in the 

 discussion was highly valued by all participants. 



