91 



The great fear at that time was that not only nuclear research 

 but also other areas of basic research would fall into the hands of 

 the military. No one wanted that; in fact, the military did not want 

 that, either. And so these various formulas were kicked around. 



Senator Kilgore had a plan for a kind of National Science Foun- 

 dation which would be politically controlled, a kind of political 

 committee for the planning of the future, which frightened a lot of 

 people, and other plans. Vannevar Bush's plan, of course, was for a 

 civilian-controlled National Science Foundation which would, nev- 

 ertheless, have liaison to the military so that military work could 

 get done. 



These things were kicked back and forth, and the Government 

 found itself in a horrible bind, because if the taxpayers were going 

 to pay for it, then Government, Congress, had to have oversight. 

 But if politicians were going to decide what the research was, then 

 we were going to have a kind of Soviet system. 



In fact, when the AEC was first debated in Congress, Representa- 

 tive Claire Booth Luce and some others decried this as a commis- 

 sariat. One scientist said that you can call this a Nazi bill or a 

 Communist bill, whichever you think is worse. [Laughter.] 



The idea of Government control of the creation of new knowl- 

 edge was very frightening to many people. And if you take it to its 

 extreme, of course, it is. This is obviously what this committee 

 wants to prevent, and the chairman has spoken eloquently on that 

 already. 



Then there was the question of the military versus civilian. Well, 

 the Budget Bureau got into this, too, by the way, and managed to 

 mess up Congress' plans on more than one occasion, which I guess 

 it does with regularity. 



What finally happened, as you know, is that the vast majority of 

 basic scientific research in the United States that was funded by 

 Government did end up being funded by the Department of De- 

 fense by accident, because at least the Department of Defense was 

 an existing institution, and there were congressional committees to 

 oversee its activities, and the military made direct contracts with 

 universities to fund their research, and so the DOD ended up 

 having this responsibility even though it had never sought it. 



The National Science Foundation that did come into existence 

 was at first a very small, and weak, and underfunded organization. 



Well, in the 1950's, during the Eisenhower years, as we know, 

 concern grew that we weren't doing enough in basic sciences and 

 that the Soviets were catching up to us in a number of critical 

 fields, in nuclear research and in rocketry in particular. 



By 1955, I discovered in my research that you had scientists, 

 committees of scientists, some of whom were the same ones who, in 

 1946, had protested the military's involvement in science, now de- 

 manding in the White House that the DOD take a more active role 

 in promoting basic research, because the DOD, needless to say, did 

 most of its work in applied research. They wanted to develop weap- 

 ons systems, and since they had the big bucks, the scientists were 

 now saying: "Well, the DOD has to get more and more into basic 

 research, not only because they have the money but also because the 

 military competition is moving ahead so quickly that the DOD 



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