Lawsuit Spurs Debate Over PCAST Meetings: Should They Be Open To Press And Public?

Some researchers question the aura of secrecy that surrounds the presidential panel's closed-door sessions on science policy Scientists around the United States appear to be at loggerheads over the question, brought to the fore by a recent lawsuit, of whether the President's Council of Advisers on Science and Technology (PCAST) should be conducting a greater portion of its work in meetings that are open to the press and public. On one hand, some, including PCAST members, say that discussing such potentially sensitive matters as AIDS research and bio- diversity in closed meetings enables the council members to be more candid and objective in offering their advice to President Bush and the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP). Closed meetings, they say, also allow for more give-and-take of contrasting views within the group, formed by the administration in early 1990. WASHINGTON, D.C.--Election-year politics was sprinkled amid science issues as the President's Council of Advisers on Science and Technology (PCAST) convened here for its regular June meeting, dealing with issues including the superconducting supercollider (SSC) and federally funded AIDS research. A portion of the meeting was ordered open to the public by a United States District Court judge in Washington. In contrast to the panel's previous practice, the open portion of the meeting was expanded to include both the morning and afternoon sessions of the first day, while the concluding half-day--as usual--was devoted to closed discussions. About a dozen members of the public, nearly all of them reporters, appeared for the meeting, held in a high-ceilinged con- ference room at a Council on Environmental Quality townhouse. Before the meeting began, members of the council could be heard exchanging a few quiet remarks about the election year as they scanned newspaper stories reporting that Ross Perot's organization had recruited veteran political operatives Ed Rollins and Hamilton Jordan. Perot's name later was brought up directly by a PCAST member while the group listened to a presentation about the progress of SSC being given by Roy F. Schwitters, director of the Texas megaproject. Schwitters noted that two prominent Perot supporters who were on hand for the previous day's Dallas news conference for Rollins and Jordan--Tom Luce, a senior aide, and Morton Meyerson--had served as chairmen of the Texas National Research Laboratory Commission, a panel overseeing the state govern-ment's $1 billion contribution to the supercollider. Regarding Perot's political rise, Schwitters commented that "it's quite a phenomenon." But he declined to offer any detailed remarks about Perot, saying: "I want to stay away from that." During his presentation to PCAST, Schwitters emphasized that SSC- -despite some reports of likely problems with tunneling work for the 54-mile-accelerator--can be constructed without running over the budget of $8.249 billion set for it last year. "We at the laboratory are committed to seeing the project completed within this budget," Schwitters said. Schwitters said about 25 of the planned 8,000 superconducting magnets have been built for the accelerator, which he said will offer a research potential "absolutely unmatched anywhere in the world." Budget figures were noticeably absent when Walter R. Dowdle, deputy director of the Centers for Disease Control, gave a presentation about AIDS vaccine research. Dowdle provided a brief review of how the HIV virus functions, the particular challenge to developing an effective vaccine posed by various strains of the virus--"It's just a swarm of mutants"-- and some approximate figures on the scope of the AIDS epidemic. Dowdle said that the estimated number of people infected around the world includes about 6 million in Africa, 2 million in the Americas, 2 million in Asia, and 500,000 in Europe. The presentation did not disclose any significant information that had not already been reported, and omitted any funding projections for AIDS vaccine and other research. After lunch, PCAST reconvened to discuss work on a project to develop a report providing policy guidance to the next administration on the health of the nation's research-intensive colleges and universities. Council member Peter Likins, president of Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pa., warned that, owing to a variety of economic pressures, it now appears that some U.S. universities--both public and private--are headed for "financial collapse." White House science adviser Allan Bromley, chairing the meeting, outlined plans for a series of hearings around the country to gather information for the report. "We're going to have a busy summer," he said. Bromley also told PCAST members: "This is an important issue-- much too important to get it tangled up with election-year politics." --Barton Reppert On the other hand, some scientists--as well as science journalists--contend that more time given to open sessions would raise the level of knowledge in the scientific community and among the general public about administration policy on key science and technology issues. They also say that the council--which consists of White House science adviser Allan Bromley and 12 prominent members, drawn mainly from universities and industry (see story on page 5)--should comply more fully with statutory provisions that restrict closed meetings by federal advisory committees. Lewis Branscomb, director of science, technology, and public policy at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government, echoes the sentiments of a number of scientists, administrators, and industry leaders interviewed for this article by contending that there is merit on both sides of the issue. "To the extent that it should be viewed as a mechanism through which the president gets personal advice, I think [PCAST's] meetings are appropriately off the record-- closed," says Branscomb, an executive branch science committee veteran. "But to the extent that it is a body that is essentially advising the work of OSTP and the director of OSTP, then surely the advisory committee statute should apply." Branscomb observes that "a committee operating at that level is operating in a political environment, inevitably. That's the nature of the presidency. And therefore it's not inappropriate that a significant amount of the work should be done out of the eye of the public--particularly the discussion of how you balance political considerations with technical considerations. "But it seems to me once the advice has been formulated, then it's very desirable if in fact it can be made public, so that people know how the president is being advised." The open vs. closed meeting issue was thrust into the limelight by a federal court suit brought on May 6 against PCAST and OSTP by the Bureau of National Affairs Inc. (BNA), a major business publisher, along with the newsletter Science & Government Report and the Washington office of Nature. In their suit under the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA), the plaintiffs called on PCAST to open all future meetings at which the council "intends to discuss its agenda, reports, projects, and panels regarding science and technology." Also, citing the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), the plaintiffs sought access to minutes of, and other records relating to, the council's meetings. BNA and the two science publications asserted that a May 7-8 PCAST meeting dealing with the June environmental summit in Rio de Janeiro and the biological diversity issue, as well as high-performance computing, was being improperly closed to the public. "If the defendants are permitted to deny the public access to the council's discussion of its reports on the Rio conference and other scientific and technology issues, the public will be deprived of an essential tool of our democracy--its right to know how the government is doing the public's business--in contravention of FACA," the suit said. In response to the legal action brought in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, the Justice Department said that if PCAST conducted in public its discussion of biodiversity and the summit in Rio, "other governments would have access to the council's advice before the president himself received it. "This would obviously undermine the administration's position in the delicate ongoing negotiations on international environmental initiatives," the department said in court papers. Regarding the computer technology issue, the department noted that PCAST was in the process of reviewing an interagency project and making recommendations to Bush on supercomputer funding priorities and future U.S. research efforts. "Premature disclosure of such information would significantly interfere with the efforts of the federal agencies in the area of supercomputer research," the government said. It added that this also could result in divulging of sensitive information to other countries, particularly Japan, that are competing with the United States in supercomputer research. According to an article in BNA's Daily Report for Executives, an analysis of PCAST minutes released under FOIA indicates that of the meetings held in September, October, and November of 1991, 72 percent of the council's total meeting time was spent in closed session. One PCAST member, Ralph Gomory, president of the New York- based Sloan Foundation, says he would like PCAST meetings to be as closed as possible. "My view is that if we had all open meetings, we would be totally useless," he says. "We really do try and form opinions, when we debate with one another, about things we think the president should hear. And we couldn't possibly do that in the open. I think that having PCAST be open would be the same thing as not having it at all." Gomory notes that PCAST's open sessions "tend to be more listening--getting information...But, hell, when you're going to express strong opinions and things about people or institutions or directions for the federal government, and you want to be able to do that in a direct and candid fashion, you cannot do that in front of an audience." Regarding the lawsuit, Gomory says: "I can understand the point of view of people who are looking at it as a legal issue. But I look at it in a completely nonlegal way, in terms of whether we can do something useful. And I would say that if we couldn't be closed, we wouldn't be useful." Another council member, Peter Likins, president of Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pa., notes that the decisions on whether particular matters are to be handled in open or closed session "are not made by the council, but they're made for the council by legal counsel. That is to say, we are told which issues are properly subject to public awareness and which issues deal with matters that might have implications to individual personnel...premature disclosure of budgets or that kind of thing, that are therefore properly closed." Likins says that "there's a legitimate basis for disagreement between the press and PCAST members" with regard to discussion of major questions such as the Rio summit. But he maintains that "our first responsibility is to share with George Bush our opinions about all matters that relate to science and technology. And oftentimes around the table we have different views. The president should hear a variety of views, and make some judgment as to what kind of position he wishes finally to take. And to me, that process doesn't work if it's accomplished in the public domain." Members of PCAST, with their affiliations and office telephone numbers: Chairman: D. Allan Bromley, assistant to the president for science and technology and director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy; (202) 456-7116. Norman Borlaug, distinguished professor of international agriculture, Texas A&M University, College Station; (409) 845- 8247. Solomon Buchsbaum, senior vice president, technology systems, AT&T Bell Laboratories, Holmdel, N.J.; (908) 949-5564. Charles Drake, Albert Bradley Professor of Earth Sciences and professor of geology, Dartmouth College, Hanover, N.H.; (603) 646-3338. Ralph Gomory, president, Sloan Foundation, New York City; (212) 649-1649. Mary L. Good, senior vice president, research and technology, Allied-Signal Inc., Morristown, N.J.; (201) 455-2000. Peter Likins, president, Lehigh University, Bethlehem, Pa.; (215) 758-3157. Thomas Lovejoy, assistant secretary for external affairs, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.; (202) 357-1300. John McTague, vice president, technical affairs, Ford Motor Co., Dearborn, Mich.; (313) 322-3000. Thomas J. Murrin, dean, school of business administration, Duquesne University, Pittsburgh; (412) 434-5157. Daniel Nathans, professor of molecular biology and genetics, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore; (410) 955-8445. David Packard, chairman of the board, Hewlett-Packard Co., Palo Alto, Calif.; (415) 857-1501. Harold Shapiro, president, Princeton University, Princeton, N.J.; (609) 258-6100. PCAST member and Nobel laureate Daniel Nathans, a molecular biologist from Johns Hopkins University, also says he believes that "there ought to be a substantial amount in closed session. Basically, it's because we're often discussing tentative drafts of reports--many of the things are just in completely new or incomplete form. "Views are expressed that may have little to do with the final outcome of the deliberations," Nathans says. "And I think that people have to be free to express those views and concerns without it being interpreted as their final opinion. Many of us change our mind. As the discussion goes along, we learn more, and there's criticism across the table. I think it's very important to preserve that part of the deliberations." Nathans also points out that the council has had "remarkably good access to the president until fairly recently, when he's been preoccupied with other things.... Up until this recent period we would see him approximately every other month and spend 30 or 45 minutes with him on some restricted range of topics." Nathans adds that "it's very hard to know how much effect we are having. What one learns is that there's an enormous amount of input coming from various directions into the White House and to the president.... All I can say for sure is that the access has been there." Several non-PCAST scientists express differing views about the degree of openness the council's meetings should adopt. Harvard University biologist Edward O. Wilson says he can see why on many issues, including the Rio summit, "discussions would be better inaugurated, at least, in closed sessions, so that people could speak their minds. After all, these people are in politically sensitive positions, some of them." Later discussions, he says, can shift to open session. Wilson adds that he got a "very good hearing" on the biodiversity issue when he met with PCAST in closed session late last year. Thomas Eisner, a Cornell University biologist who has been working on global conservation, says: "I have mixed feelings about openness when it comes to really wanting to deliberate something in detail. But on the other hand, there should be openness about what decisions are then collectively reached." It may be advisable for PCAST to adopt "a more visible modus vivendi," Eisner says, partly because "one just doesn't have much of a feeling for what this administration is doing in terms of leadership. And being somewhat open, or at least sharing decisions--and maybe pros and cons if there are split views--is part of open government." Gregory Dash, a physicist at the University of Washington, Seattle, says the question "depends on the issue, and it's also a quantitative question--how much time. "It seems to me they [PCAST] should have no reluctance whatsoever to establish clearly outlined plans for when [meetings] are closed. I can't imagine that in peacetime there's any call for a large percentage of closed sessions." Thomas Wong, program director for medical studies at Research Triangle Institute in North Carolina, says that PCAST should do the bulk of its work in public. He notes that members of the council are highly experienced people "who know what to say at an open meeting and still get the point across.... These people are well versed at speaking their mind in a public setting without really ruffling a lot of feathers. Or they should be able to do that." Richard Herrett, a biochemist and president of EnvirAg Associates, a Bethesda, Md., biotechnology firm, says PCAST should have a greater amount of open discussion on policy matters related to genetically engineered foods and other products. "This is an issue that the public is certainly going to have a concern about and for. Anything that can be done to take the mystery out of it, and to enhance understanding, would be a favorable kind of thing," Herrett says. Alan Robock, a global climate change specialist at the University of Maryland, College Park, says: "All the meetings should be open, and the more the public knows about the advice that the president gets about science issues, the better are interests of the public served." An attorney representing BNA and other plaintiffs in the court action, Eleanor H. Smith, says that in addition to its legal aspects, the case has wider implications for "the public's ability to know what type of advice members of PCAST are giving to the president regarding science. "Who's influencing the president? We have a right to know that. That is true for the council and for other advisory committees. And if the public is rountinely ignored, which it has been by the council, then we are frustrated in our ability to know what the government is up to." FACA mandates that meetings of advisory groups be open except under limited circumstances. Advisory panels such as PCAST may close meetings by invoking 10 exemptions that are incorporated by extension into FACA from the Government in the Sunshine Act. PCAST has held about 20 meetings since being formed by the Bush administration in early 1990. Federal Register notices announcing its meetings frequently have said that sessions will be closed because the council will be discussing matters that, if disclosed prematurely, "would significantly frustrate the implementation of decisions requiring agency action." However, Smith says examination of PCAST meeting minutes released under FOIA indicate that "the exemption claims by the council in their notices are unsubstantiated....What we see here is an approach to closing meetings which borders on the ridiculous." Barton Reppert is a freelance writer based in Gaithersburg, Md.

Lawsuit Spurs Debate Over PCAST Meetings: Should They Be Open To Press And Public?

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