sen m i i\ mi w hi 11 hoi si 521 



Davis, recalling he had been a "voice crying in the wilderness" when 

 he ob]ected early on to the abolition of the Office of Science and Tech- 

 nology, now expressed his support for the new machinery recom- 

 mended. Hechler added: 



This is really a landmark report and one that 1 am very excited and enthusiastic 

 about. I certainly hope that this committee can take a ver) strong and positive stand 

 not only in support of the report but in furthering efforts to make sure that its recom- 

 mendations are put into legislation or practice. 



Unfortunately, the Killian report came the day after Pickle, on the 

 House floor, had led a bitterly partisan attack on the White House 

 staff budget. Wydler and Winn teamed up to needle "some members on 

 this committee who were strongly advocating those cuts yesterday." 

 Pickle responded by saying he really favored a cabinet Department of 

 Science, which McCormack was enthusiastically plugging, rather than 

 any more expansion of the White House. But the long-range influence 

 of the Killian report on the 1976 legislation proved to be much greater 

 than the mixed reaction it received on June 26. 



GREEN LIGHT TO DRAFT A BILL 



By far the most important development which occurred was that 

 Teague notified Yeager on June 26 that he wanted him to start drafting 

 legislation to improve the advisory, planning, and organizational 

 aspects of Federal science policy. This came as a big surprise, because 

 Yeager and the staff had not contemplated moving into the bill- 

 drafting stage until many months in the future. Teague consulted with 

 Mosher, but there was no general public announcement and other 

 committee members were not apprised of the strategy which was to 

 speed up the process of writing legislation. 



When the hearings resumed in July, one of the refreshingly frank 

 witnesses to testify was Don K. Price, dean of the Kennedy School of 

 Government at Harvard University. Price refused to pussyfoot around 

 the question of why he thought President Nixon had abolished the 

 science machinery originally fully developed by President Eisenhower, 

 under whom he once served as Vice President. Brown asked Price 

 if he were "hinting at a situation which many members of the com- 

 mittee probably thought, one way or another was the case — that 

 scientists ended up on the President's enemy list and were banned from 

 the White House because of this." Price responded: 



I don't think we really need be at all mealymouthed about the fact that quite 

 obviously, while there were a number of strong Presidential sympathizers among 

 leading scientists, in the academic world the leading natural scientists tended to be 

 very heavily against President Xixon on the Vietnam war and he knew it 





