0.6 The science-government compact: 1945-1950  (Page 15/16)

By late 1943, it was becoming clear to Smith that the federal government would be more extensively involved with scienceduring the postwar era. The role of the BoB would be to assure that any expandedscientific responsibilities would be integrated into the federal structure in accordance with sound principles of administrative management, including thepreservation of presidential authority. Transformation of wartime government research installations to peacetime uses would obviously require advancedplanning. Accordingly, Don K. Price, a protégé of Louis Brownlow’s who was detailed to the BoB from the Coast Guard and who was dispatched in 1944 tofamiliarize himself with the Manhattan Project installations, became the principal advocate within the BoB for civilian control of atomicenergy. Author and Trudy Solomon interview with Don K. Price, October 1981.

In 1944, Smith grew wary of the Research Board for National Security (RBNS) on the grounds that it would be too far removedfrom presidential control. Daniel J. Kevles, “Scientists, the Military, and the Control of Postwar Defense Research: The Caseof the Research Board for National Security, 1944-46,” Technology and Culture 16, #no. (Jan. 1975), 20- 45. He therefore took steps to assure that it would be quietly starved of funds. Later, he convinced Truman to withhold support for a measureintroduced by Senator Harry S. Byrd (D-VA) to establish the RBNS as an independent agency on the grounds that federal science policy ought to beimplemented coherently rather than piecemeal. Despite the fact that Vannevar Bush had been instrumental in creating thedefunct RBNS within the National Research Council, he also opposed Byrd’s measure, since he regarded the RBNS as a temporary expedient whose functionswould ultimately be incorporated into his proposed National Research Foundation. In 1945 testimony before a Senate committee, Smith said, “The President, and the Bureau of the Budget in his Executive Office, need scientificadvice… The proposed foundation can fulfill a valuable function in supplying such advice. It will need to be given…authority to call on the scientificbureaus of the Government for information, and the duty of making recommendations to the department heads and the president on theirprograms.” England, op. cit. , 30

He also asserted, with respect to the organization and management of the foundation, “I feel it is my duty to keep thescientists from making a mistake in the field of public administration… An agency which is to control the spending of public funds in a great nationalprogram must be part of the regular machinery of government. If the Government is to support scientific research, it should do so through its own responsibleagencies, not be delegating the control of the program and turning over the funds to any non-governmental organization.”

The tension between the BoB’s desire to establish a National Science Foundation as an essential component of the federalscientific enterprise and its concern for administrative conformity and presidential prerogatives persisted. Because of those concerns, the BoB remainedclosely involved in attempting to shape successive versions of NSF legislation to meet the demands of the scientific establishment, the shifting congressionalleadership, and the administration itself. William D. Carey, who had come to the BoB in 1942 from Harvard’s Littauer School of Government and had been assignedto help organize the Atomic Energy Commission in 1946, emerged as the principal advocate, within the BoB, for a National Science Foundation. Possibly because ofhis closer association with senior scientists such as Bush and Conant on the matter of the AEC, Carey did not share his colleagues’ concern over thepresidential control issue. Rather, he considered the NSF Act of 1947 workable from BoB’s perspective, despite the fact that control was to be vested in apart-time, presidentially-appointed board rather than the president himself. For that reason, he vigorously (though privately) dissented from BoB’s advice thatPresident Truman veto the National Science Foundation Act of 1947. Ibid., 81-82.