Wiesner. The ABM has been held to a modest waste of money, you know, a couple of billion dollars instead of 40 or 50 billion. So even on that score I think there was substantial gain.

Kistiakowsky. You see, in the first years of the existence of the President's Science Advisory Committee, when we were really very involved in military technology, there were similar battles about proposals of the military, but they were held completely in camera, they were on a highly classified level between the White House office and the Pentagon. The new phase is the public debate.

Wiesner. When Johnson became President, he already had a history of differences with the scientists on issues that had nothing to do with Vietnam. We had differed on the space effort. Most of us were against the crash manned space program, and we had, of course, argued about that, I had been opposed to the Mach 3 SST and he was for it. There were a whole variety of issues that had caused tensions between the Science Advisory Committee and Johnson. So when (Donald F.) Hornig became science advisor, he had to carry the burden of Johnson's alienation from the scientists. The tension was greatest on the Vietnam issue. The result was that Johnson's Science Advisory Committee didn't have as much influence on military technology as it had under Eisenhower and Kennedy. Kennedy once told a reporter that the Science Advisory Committee and the science advisor kept the government from going all one way. He appreciated what it did and President Eisenhower appreciated it, too. I don't think that Johnson felt a need for such help. Once that estrangement happened, it became necessary to take the battle elsewhere.

Kistiakowsky. Some of these quarrels that you are referring to, Jerry, took place long before he became President.

Wiesner. Right; when he was vice-president and chairman of the space council and space was the only real problem on which he had initiative.

Kistiakowsky. And I think he thought of the scientific community as being against him.

Wiesner. Because we were. We didn't really believe that the large manned space program made any sense scientifically and we kept saying so. In the end, we were willing to accept the President's judgment that it was necessary politically, but we fought against it being started, on technical grounds.

"...the people of the nation should know what their government is doing in their name to a much greater extent than they do. I think democracy cannot function properly with so much secrecy."

Kistiakowsky. Of course you know Johnson pushed for it before he was vice-president, while he was in the Senate.

Wiesner. Then, in the case of the SST, I wanted the United States to join the British-French consortium and build the Mach 2 aircraft. There were many reasons why, in my office, we didn't believe a Mach 3 SST made sense, but it ultimately went that route because the vice-president wanted it.

Kistiakowsky. And I contributed earlier than that, in the Eisenhower administration, to rejecting an SST project that was pushed about '59 or '60.

Wiesner. So there were many issues of this kind that we disagreed on..

Kistiakowsky. If you go back to, say the late '50's and early '60's, you will find that there was hardly a scientist who was privy to classified information because of his active part in government operations who ever made any public--either written or oral--statements on these matters involving security. The first change in that came about when the partial test ban treaty was signed and came up for Senate ratification. At that time, I was asked by the Administration to testify along with a number of others, like York, who had been in the government but were not in it full time anymore. I had vague qualms as to whether I should testify or not.

Wiesner. But of course, you were talking in support of the Administration.

Kistiakowsky. I was supporting the Administration and so I decided I would testify.