The CEA: A Contract, But Problems Remain

The University has been engaged in bitter negotiations with the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) for almost a year to determine who will control the operation of the $12 million Cambridge Electron Accelerator (CEA). Although Harvard and the AEC will probably sign a contract within two weeks for $5 million a year to operate the accelerator, neither the Faculty nor the Administration is pleased with the final contract provisions.

University negotiaters refused to sign a contract with what Dean Ford called the "intolerable limitations" originally imposed by the government. But the final settlement will still place unnecessary and unwarranted restrictions on experimental work at the accelerator.

According to L. Gard Wiggins, administrative vice-President, "long hard negotiations have produced a contract that the University can live with." But Wiggins admits that the "independence of Faculty members involved with the CEA will be impaired."

Harvard did not expect to be threatened with government control when it started to build the accelerator, because all work done there is unclassified. The 1956 contract initiating construction of the project made no mention of any Federal control over the CEA, but several Faculty members expressed fear at the time that government involvement could mean government pressure.

Contract Controversy

The present controversy arose last spring when Harvard and AEC officials began negotiating the contract for the CEA's first year operating expenses. To the University's surprise, AEC negotiators presented a contract filled with objectionable requirements which the government labeled "matters of national policy." According to Wiggins, "the AEC was adamant in its demands at the beginning of the negotiations and insisted that no provision of the proposed contract could be changed."

Harvard absolutely refused to sign the contract, and Wiggins says that the University "probably would have refused to operate the accelerator if the government had not backed down." Although the AEC paid for the accelerator and thus technically owns it, Harvard owns the land on which the CEA stands. And only Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are actually empowered to operate the facility. In all probability, the main reason the AEC backed down from its original rigid demands is that it feared the spectacle of a $12 million electron accelerator standing idle in Cambridge.

Much of the problem over the operating contract arose because the AEC paid for the accelerator and considers it, according to Wiggins, "a substantial government facility." Within the past three years, Congress has authorized the AEC to impose various restrictions over projects in which the commission has a "substantial financial interest," whether or not the projects are classified.

It was this question of financial involvement in the accelerator which led the AEC to attempt to impose very severe restrictions on Harvard.

The University's interpretation of the project is, however, completely opposed to the AEC's. According to Wiggins, "the accelerator is considered by Harvard to be just another part of the Physics Department and should not be subject to any more governmental control than the rest of the Department."

Project Unclassified

"Since everyone agreed in 1956 that the project was to be unclassified," Wiggins says, "Harvard believed that the accelerator would be treated like any other University research project." Wiggins admits that Harvard "was perhaps naive in thinking that the question of AEC control of the project would never come up," but stresses that in 1956 "the AEC did not have the specific Congressional authority it has now to classify a project, in which it has substantial financial interest, as a government facility."

The most irritating of the AEC's original restrictions involved so-called "controls in the national interest" which would have given the AEC power to control all exchange of information between the CEA staff and Soviet bloc scientists. The AEC proposal required that no technical information be released to Soviet bloc nations unless a Soviet scientist agreed in advance to release "equally valuable information to the United States." Nobody has yet figured out how to determine "equally valuable information."

According to President Pusey, this demand "irritated the Faculty greatly and would have been a serious abridgement of the right of every Faculty member to do research and speak freely about his results."

After long negotiations the requirement was deleted, but substituted for it was a clause which reads: "Requests for unpublished information from foreign nations may be filled, but, when appropriate, information will be requested in return." Thus Harvard is no longer required to request equally valuable information from Soviet bloc nations, but Wiggins admits that "the ambiguity of the phrase could still hinder exchanges of information between the accelerator and foreign scientists."

Background Check

A provision was kept virtually intact which required the University to make a 15-year check of the jobs and addresses of any alien it wants to employ at the accelerator and then submit the job application to the AEC for approval. In the final contract, the AEC will have ultimate authority to decide whether a Soviet bloc alien can be employed at the accelerator. This is the first time Harvard itself has not completely controlled all employment at the University.

The third major AEC restriction was on visitors to the CEA. The AEC was to have the power to stop any visit planned by accelerator officials, and the CEA was to be required to furnish a detailed report on the visit of every guest from a Soviet bloc country. All restrictions on casual visitors to the accelerator have been removed, but formal tours for scientists from Soviet bloc countries must have prior approval from the AEC.

When the objectionable controls were first presented to Harvard negotiators last April, the University rejected them completely. The AEC then did some revising and presented a new list of restrictions last April, but Harvard found the new controls as objectionable as the earlier ones.

Finally, under continuing pressure from the University and the ever-present fear that Harvard might actually refuse to operate the accelerator, top officials of the AEC gave approval in February to some liberalization of the original restrictions. But the AEC continues to insist on at least some controls. It fears, in large part, the wrath of economy-happy Congressional investigating committees which might slash the AEC budget because Communists are running around unsupervised at the Cambridge accelerator.

Harvard Obligation

The University still considers the AEC controls irritating and unjust. It accepted them to simplify AEC confrontations with the Congress and, as Wiggins stated last week, "because the research facility will do a lot for our Faculty." Yet for any reason, such an action establishes an unfortunate and dangerous precedent.

Harvard remains one of the few Universities in the United States which refuses to accept any classified research from the government during peacetime. The University follows this policy, according to President Pusey, "specifically because it does not want to get involved in any project which in any way limits the freedom of its Faculty." Pusey asserts that Harvard "is continuing to maintain its policy of eternal vigilance" and "carefully checks every provision of every contract to ensure that Harvard's freedom of action is not being restricted."

All work done at the CEA will be unclassified, but unhappily, the present CEA contract has many loopholes which could permit the Federal government to tighten its controls over the accelerator at some future time. Wiggins stresses that if the AEC should ever attempt to impose intolerable controls, Harvard will stop operating the accelerator. But by then electron research could be so dependent on Federal funds that it may be almost impossible to turn down the yearly operating grant from the AEC.

Harvard's Office for Research Contracts handled the negotiations with the AEC efficiently, but the bargaining will not be complete when the contract is signed. It is entirely possible that the University could have had even more of the restrictions removed if it had held out longer. And it may prove unfortunate that Faculty and AEC convenience were given priority over complete freedom of action for the University.