Wiesner. It was regarded as gauche.

Langer. I remember there was a lot of criticism of you (Wiesner) and your office at that time, for not testifying in public, being secretive about the people on your staff, and so on.

Wiesner. I remember an article to that effect in The Reporter, but I think--I thought at the time--it was a total misreading of the role of science advisor. When I became science advisor, it was to be an assistant to the President, not as the representative of the scientific community or anyone else. At least this was my view of the situation. So in that role, I obviously couldn't, and didn't intend to, oppose the President. But there are obviously many different roles. In some you have much less obligation, such as when you become a member of the President's Science Advisory Committee or a Defense Department advisory committee, but are not a full-time participant. Even for such people, it's still regarded as bad taste to engage in public debate. Some of the younger people do testify before Congress, and they've been criticized for doing so. Dick Garwin (adjunct professor of Physics, Columbia University) was criticized for his SST testimony because it opposed the Administration's position. There is a general view that, if you're going to be part of the Administration, you shouldn't simultaneously attack its posture. I believe that, if you join an Administration as a full-time employee, that is a reasonable position. If you become so disaffected with its programs that you want to fight, the proper thing to do is quit. But I don't think advisors should be throttled, that is, silenced on all issues, or the country is handicapped in making decisions. I've personally concluded--and I've thought about this since the Pentagon Papers were published--that the nation has paid a much higher price for its secrecy than it would have paid through a policy of complete openness. We've done many things on the basis of inadequate information, not only in the Vietnam War: I question whether the arms race would have taken the extreme form it did if the intelligence fellows had been forced to say what the bases of their estimates were and to defend them. If they had been exposed to serious questioning and hammered at by skeptics and asked, for example, "What makes you think the Russians are going to have a thousand bombers?" If they had been required to show their evidence, we would never have had that "bomber gap."

Kistiakowsky. And we would never have had a missile gap. And now another missle gap.

Wiesner. And there are many other examples. You mentioned, for instance, the U-2, and the extensive border penetration by U.S. electromagnetic intelligence in the '60's. When I first told Kennedy about it, he said, "My God, if the Russians did that to us, we'd go to war." And it was top secret, so secret that I, as science advisor, had a hard fight to learn about it. And after I finally had a briefing on it, I asked a colleague, "Who the hell are they keeping it from? The Russians know about it." And we concluded it was being kept from the American people so they would not know what was being done in their name. The Pentagon Papers show that there are many things of this kind. Not only should people who are government consultants not be in this embarrassing position, but 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.

Copyright 1971 by the American Association for the Advancement of Science.