0.7 The early cold war: 1950-57  (Page 2/7)

The golden consultancy

A central question faced by the White House during the latter half of 1950 was whether the Korean crisis would be a prelude to a more widespread crisis and, if so, whether the U.S. government was in a position to mobilize its superior science-based military technologies to cope with it. Various arrangements had been attempted since 1944 to maintain civilian scientific input into national defense planning. Among these was the Board for Research and Development (RDB), established in 1947 as a civilian advisory group in the Pentagon and chaired successively by Vannevar Bush, Karl Compton, and William Webster. In 1948, the RDB established a Committee on Plans for Mobilizing Science under the chairmanship of Irvin Stewart, President of the University of West Virginia and a wartime associate of Bush’s at the OSRD. The evolution of defense-related science policy has been reviewed by Herbert E. York and G. Allen Greb, “Military Research and Development: a Postwar History,” The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 33 (January 1977), 12-25. Organizing Scientific Research for War , a 1950 Stewart committee report to the President, concluded that existing institutional arrangements were not effective and were in any event largely irrelevant to the current and possibly expanding national defense emergency. Irvin Stewart, Organizing Science for War (Boston: Little Brown and Company, 1948). The committee’s recommended solution was to reconstitute a central coordinating and operating body whose director would have direct access to the president, on the model of the OSRD.

That October, Truman designated William T. Golden as a special consultant to the White House, charging him to “review...the organization and conduct of scientific research and development activities in the Department of Defense and related agencies and the organization of the Government for the promotion of scientific activities generally during the emergency period,” and to submit an informal report, with recommendations, on feasible and appropriate means to improve coordination and oversight. Blanpied, op. cit. , xx. Among the factors leading Truman to believe such a review was necessary were the conclusions and recommendations of the Stewart report, evidence of mounting congressional concern about military preparedness, and “the approaching activation of the National Science Foundation.”

Golden, a Wall Street investment banker, had served with the Navy Department in Washington during World War II as a “dollar a year man” and afterwards had helped organize the AEC. From October 1950 through April 1951, he conducted extensive interviews with the scientific leadership in universities and government, as well as with policy-level officials in both the AEC and the Pentagon. His initial focus was on the relatively narrow question of how to improve the effectiveness of the Pentagon’s Joint Board for Research and Development, but the scope of his discussions inevitably turned to the broader questions of whether a completely new institutional arrangement was required to mobilize science for defense and what role the National Science Foundation should play in defense preparations.