Donald Le Vine

Aaserud:

Okay. I am with Donald Le Vine at the TRW outside the Washington Beltway. It is the 29th of July, 1991, and I would like to ask you some questions particularly about your experience with the JASON group, but I would like to start out talking about your earlier career in order to get a sense of how you get involved in JASON and related areas. We just have to start from scratch without any biographical material.

Le Vine:

Where do you want to start?

Aaserud:

Well. You could tell me about your educational background and how that relates, if it relates, to your later career including getting into JASON. So what is your educational background?

Le Vine:

I went to the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. I have a Ph.D. in Theoretical High-Energy Elementary Particle Physics, which is related to what most of the JASONs used to be, anyway.

Aaserud:

Exactly, yes. And quite a few still are.

Le Vine:

Yes. So there’s a natural affinity right there. I graduated in 1969, went in the Army for four years. First spent time at Defense Intelligence Agency for two years in Roslyn, VA and then went to DARPA, where I met Dave Mann. I don’t know if you’ve talked to Dave Mann. Dave had something to do with the JASON too. He was at DARPA. And I did a project at DIA in which I ended up briefing him and his deputy, Kent Kresa. And I liked them, they liked me, so we finagled the Army to send me up to DARPA.

Aaserud:

So you got into DARPA directly from Michigan?

Le Vine:

No. I went to Defense Intelligence Agency first. That was for two years, two and a half years, and then I went to DARPA which was just up the street, and that’s where I met Koether and all those people. I must have reported in June, and the second week I was there my immediate boss took me out to San Diego and I met these characters called JASONs — Sid Drell Zachariasen, a lot of the people whose papers I used for my thesis, so this was my meeting with all my little local physics gods.

Aaserud:

So which year was this now?

Le Vine:

It had to be 1971 or 1972. But I have my own bio which has the dates on it. My own resume.

Aaserud:

It would be nice to get one.

Le Vine:

I think I started working with JASON in 1973. So it must have been 1971 I went to DARPA. And the first summer I just met a few of ‘em, putting names with faces. And then, I think it was the second summer some guy had come up with this weird idea of making a new electron gun that was gonna kill everybody and his brother with the energy. And people thought it wouldn’t work, but they didn’t know how it worked, because on page 19 there was this equation which no one believed. So they gave it to me, because I was the resident physicist, and being naive I started on page 1 instead of on page 19, and it seemed to me the guy did Lorentz transform twice, which I knew was illegal. So it was the summer, and I took it out to Sid Drell — because I knew if anybody knows about special relativity it’s Sid. His and Bjorken’s book was the book I used when I was a graduate student. Then he came back and said I was absolutely right, wrote a little note to my boss. That’s my first technical interaction with the JASONs.

Aaserud:

Actually I’ve been at SLAC and I looked through the Drell papers and I’ve asked for copies of that correspondence. That correspondence exists actually, but I don’t have it here.

Le Vine:

And so that’s how I started. I got to know him. You know, it was flattering, a guy just out of graduate school to be vindicated by him.

Aaserud:

What was your general task in DARPA?

Le Vine:

I just ran, I guess, sort of new technology, running odds and ends high technology programs. I didn’t have any major multi- million dollar programs, just bits and pieces of things. So I met a few of the JASONs and then my boss, Dave Mann, got interested in the Navy and ASW, anti-submarine warfare, and he led a study for the Navy. And he decided he wanted me to run one of the three studies going on in geomagnetics, how you could detect submarines with geomagnetics, if you could. And so as part of the study I ran into Allen Peterson, Ed Frieman, Ken Watson, Norman Kroll. I’m sure you know all those guys.

Aaserud:

Yes.

Le Vine:

They were my experts. That’s when I really got to know them, and we spent a good part of a year working on the study.

Aaserud:

But this was…

Le Vine:

It was not JASON.

Aaserud:

… still not JASON.

Le Vine:

It’s not JASON, but these were all JASONs. And then I was out the next summer, which must have been the summer of 1972. Then I left DARPA in early 1973. I resigned from the Army and became a consultant for myself, really working for Dave Mann, who left DARPA and went to the Navy. He eventually became Navy Under Secretary for Research and Development. He started working for Admiral Zumwalt. And so I was helping him on ASW. And then I was out for summer study, JASON summer study in San Diego at Bishop’s School, 1973, and let’s see — this is after they had gone to SRI. And Bob Leonard, was then the Executive Secretary, director of the JASON office, which was out in Menlo Park. You know, when they left Ida and went to SRI, everything got moved to Menlo Park. And apparently — this is all in retrospect — they began to realize that you can’t run JASON from California. You need somebody in Washington. And Ed Frieman seemed to be impressed with me on this Navy ASW effort, and he, in typical Ed Frieman fashion, behind the scenes organized things. That’s Ed’s style and Bob Leonard approached me and offered me the job.

Aaserud:

Ed Frieman was Chairman at the time.

Le Vine:

No. Ken Watson was.

Aaserud:

Ken Watson was.

Le Vine:

I think JASON was — this is all in some sense subjective — unhappy with it being run on the west coast. And they weren’t happy with some of the support. They wanted somebody full- time that belonged to them rather than belonged to SRI. I don’t know all the ins and outs, but they approached me to set up a Washington office. JASON would still be run out of Menlo Park. would be just called a physicist, but run the office in SRI Washington and Roslyn, have a secretary, and sort of be the Washington point man reporting to Menlo Park.

Aaserud:

So this was a job that was a little different from David Katcher’s and the earlier persons.

Le Vine:

Yes, that’s correct, that’s right. I must have started October of 1973.

Aaserud:

So you shared it to some extent with Bob Leonard then.

Le Vine:

That’s right. He was my boss. And he was actually involved in running the JASON office: it consisted of myself, my secretary, Bob Leonard, his secretary, and whatever staff. And everything was done in Menlo Park. All the staff functions, all the writing of checks, consultant forms, all the administrative efforts, typing of reports, all was done on the west coast. That changed over several years, which I think violates your 15-year history. But that’s how it started. And so I got into ‘em by actually having been at DARPA, met some of these people, and then they came to me and wanted me to set up something in Washington.

Aaserud:

Well according to what I found out here from the JASON records, a look at the JASON records at the MITRE Corporation, you were appointed in October 1974. Is that correct?

Le Vine:

Was it 1974? It could be. Maybe I got my years one off. It’s possible. I would go back to look at my resume.

Aaserud:

Well there is a memo from Bob Leonard to JASON members, 11 October 1974, which is introducing you.

Le Vine:

Okay. I’m off by one year then. I concede that easily enough. Okay, so everything I just said, you have to extrapolate by one year. And I must have left the Army the first of January, 1974. Because I was only a consultant for eight months. So it must have 1974 instead of 1973.

Aaserud:

Well, to get even farther beyond my main period of interest, you started in 1974 and you quit when?

Le Vine:

1985. November 1985.

Aaserud:

So that was a fairly long tenure.

Le Vine:

Yes.

Aaserud:

And you were placed in Washington during all that time.

Le Vine:

Yes. I was first at SRI in Roslyn and then at MITRE.

Aaserud:

How did you and Bob Leonard divide up your tasks?

Le Vine:

Well, it’s sort of the typical things between humans. It sort of evolves. At the first summer study, I had to go to him. He was there at the summer study, as I was, and so he was in charge and I was sort of the leg man that did all the leg work, but he was in charge of making all the decisions. And I think that was true also in Washington and in Menlo Park. I could do things but I had to every day call him and clear everything I was gonna do with him.

Aaserud:

What was Leonard’s position within SRI, by the way?

Le Vine:

He was I believe a deputy director of a laboratory. And he eventually became director of the lab, of the radio physics lab. I can be mistaken. Even when I first met him, he was deputy director or one of the deputies of the lab.

Aaserud:

So this was a side task for him, but a full task for you.

Le Vine:

Yes. That’s right. And I forgot how big the lab is, but my memory is I guess the lab was probably a couple hundred people. Yes, what you said is correct. There was somebody else, by the name of Bob Barnes, out in Menlo Park, whose job apparently was to assist Leonard before I came on the scene. I don’t know. I had the impression — that’s all hearsay — that that didn’t work out too well, but I have no firsthand knowledge. And you know, when you’re talking about people that’s a very sensitive issue. People are not always straightforward about human interaction and who did what to whom and how they felt. There was some friction going on, but I don’t know what it was. And as you probably know, there was a lot of friction when JASON left IDA.

Aaserud:

Well I don’t have a complete handle of that. You came in I suppose after the transition had been completed.

Le Vine:

I’ve heard a lot of stories, but they’re not firsthand; this is all hearsay.

Aaserud:

Well I just spoke to a central person today of course, Alexander Flax, who was the President of IDA when it happened. And I talked to Steve Lukasik who was the director of ARPA.

Le Vine:

He sort of instigated it, at least that is the story I’ve heard.

Aaserud:

That’s my impression from the records, that he was most eager. And he was unquestionably the most negative about JASON when I interviewed him too. So it makes sense.

Le Vine:

Have you talked to Hal Lewis?

Aaserud:

I’ve talked to Hal Lewis, and he was not too crazy about Steven Lukasik, that’s right. But, you know, I’ve received general feelings. I don’t feel I have a sense of the details involved in the transition. The formalities were obviously important. I mean the Congress had decided to reduce funding for IDA, and that was important obviously, but to what extent it was that and to what extent it was personal I am unable to say.

Le Vine:

Yeah, you know, everybody has their own theories about that; I have a story which I believe, but it is hearsay, because I was not there. And even if I was there, it might only be hearsay too. It depends upon the perspective when you saw what was happening. But it is consistent. Lukasik was head of DARPA when I was there too. And it’s consistent with Lukasik’s theory. He did not like to have people stay at DARPA for more than three or four years. He liked rotation. And the possibility that he also viewed that it would be good for JASON to rotate is not inconsistent at all with his personnel policies at DARPA. And they had been at IDA for 13 years, 14 years. That’s a long time. And I know what you’re talking about the $600,000. It was coming out of IDA’s ceiling.

Aaserud:

But, in any case, when you got there, did you sense that there was a problem of starting anew from SRI, was this a new thing for JASON do you think, or did they fit in quickly? It’s hard for you to say who weren’t there during the IDA period of course.

Le Vine:

Well, that’s a loaded question. There are two pieces, all to some extent colored by hindsight of course. But you could smell, you could feel it, there were tensions; there is no question about that. Even if one didn’t know what the tensions were. I got bruised a few times because I fell into sensitive areas which I didn’t know were there.

Aaserud:

That’s a good way of learning it.

Le Vine:

Yeah. It’s hard. It was also I think a trough in JASON’s technical history, and prestige I believe also. I don’t know if it’s cause and effect, but they were both there. My own personal observation which I made of the JASONs the first summer I went out there, was based upon listening to what they called a wrap-up at the end. And I found it boring and dull, except for a couple briefings by Rich Muller and Stan Flatté. Otherwise they were boring. And when I went back the next year I found them more interesting. That was Jonathan Katz — you’ve met Jonathan?

Aaserud:

No, I haven’t met him. That’s 1974 and 1975 we’re talking about?

Le Vine:

Yeah. It must have been. See, in those days they had different categories. Now it’s you’re a member or you’re not. Then they had three stages of categories. I forgot.

Aaserud:

Trial member, whatever, that’s probably not the name of it, and regular member…?

Le Vine:

That’s right. And they had difference in fees. It’s like associate and assistant and then full-fledged member.

Aaserud:

It was related to their professorial positions I think.

Le Vine:

No, no, it was not.

Aaserud:

Not at all? Okay.

Le Vine:

It was just trials, no. Because Jonathan was never a full professor, but he became a full JASON. Traditionally, you came out the first summer for a couple weeks, look each other over, and then you came back for a one-year trial and there’s like another year, and then you became a full-fledged member. It’s sort of like probation for a couple years. But they had different names. Jonathan was out there, for sort of a two week trial that summer. And they had a couple other young guys. You could tell that JASON was, in my view, a lot more interesting, more exciting.

Aaserud:

With the new people coming in.

Le Vine:

It’s sort of like the old topics were staid and dull and boring, and they had some new people doing some new things. And I could even feel that, even being an outsider then. And subsequently I learned, I think, that my initial perception was correct. It was not just Lukasik. I don’t think JASON was held in great high esteem by Washington in general at the time. It sort of hit a trough of becoming slightly irrelevant. And there was a lot of micromanagement attempted by DARPA, by Lukasik and Hellmeyer who was his successor. And there was a lot of fights as how to fend off this micromanagement. Micromanagement like trying to dictate who became a member and who didn’t; who was chairman and who was not chairman; and which problems you work on.

Aaserud:

So there was even a question at that time of whether JASON would have control of those questions? Not just choice of projects, but choice of members and choice of steering committee and chairmen.

Le Vine:

There were some fights about that. JASON as you know are very strong-headed people, most of them.

Aaserud:

Oh yes. I’ve come to that conclusion, yes.

Le Vine:

They are very jealous of their prerogatives. Maybe even more so then than now. It’s a subjective statement, but they all had tenure someplace else, this was a part-time job, and they felt that was important so they could tell the government to go to hell anytime they wanted to. They could tell ‘em bad news or good news, and they just didn’t feel that they should be told what to do, because it would then color their judgment; they no longer would be considered an independent entity if they had that happen. And there were a lot of internal steering committee fights, internally amongst JASONs, and then more importantly, how do we respond to DARPA, to this threat to our independence. And I think that’s exactly what it was. In retrospect, they weren’t proud of everything they did. You know, nothing in life goes in a straight line; two steps forward and sometimes one back. And that had some impact on the technical work they did in the summer and how well they could find problems. It had some impact on recruiting people, for if you don’t have anything interesting, why come. What kind of speakers you got. I mean they were all in some way tied together.

Aaserud:

Well, I don’t know if you would be willing to do this, even if you had some specific experience or specific example of what was discussed in that relation, I mean whether there was particular discussion of a member or a project that was a problem when you were there.

Le Vine:

Those things are difficult because when you involve particular people then it becomes personal. And I don’t think that particular names of people are so important.

Aaserud:

No. But you could say that you had firsthand experience of this.

Le Vine:

Well, there were a couple attempts to dictate who should become a member, and there were a couple attempts to have certain people fired.

Aaserud:

Which JASON has done by themselves anyway of course.

Le Vine:

Yeah. But no, this was that they were told to fire somebody. It’s a different statement. And, as you might expect, everybody had different judgment I guess. Everybody has a different opinion of the quality of each individual JASON. But one person in my view clearly was fired because of the pressure. I guess a compromise was made; somebody who was technically I thought reasonably good. But that’s not for me to judge… I wasn’t a JASON. But there were those fights. I’d put them in three categories: members trying to be imposed on the group by outsiders, outsiders trying to get members fired, and that kind of personality micromanagement, as well as what kind of topics. I don’t know how to get in more detail, because I don’t think it’s appropriate to talk about people.

Aaserud:

Well, the one thing that comes to mind immediately is the change of chairmanship immediately after from Hal Lewis to Ken Watson.

Le Vine:

Well that was before my time. There are stories I have heard. Whether they are true or not I can’t vouch for. I’m talking about after I actually saw the steering committee meetings. That’s only distorted by my memory, not by hearsay.

Aaserud:

Well, it’s hard to talk about people for obvious reasons. It may also be difficult to talk about projects, for other reasons, such as security and things like that. That’s another possibility for micromanagement of course that the DARPA or whichever organization they contract for tries to have too strong a say as far as JASON is concerned as to which projects they can and cannot take up.

Le Vine:

Well, you raise up a very important issue. I thought — this is my view of JASON — there were a series of problems that were clearly important technical problems, but one of the sponsors was trying to dictate which JASON could work on the problem and which couldn’t. There were two issues that were raised. One is, JASON at the time viewed its great strength that it had these 40-odd people with different backgrounds, and anybody could work on anything. And so you get a variety of people, and that has an advantage. Different perspectives come in and you can kibbutz and carry on. And JASON didn’t want to be a compartmented organization. And it seemed to be even then a tradition that anybody could work on anything they wanted, and they didn’t like the fact that somebody could come in a say, “I want Joe to work on it, but not Henry to work on the thing.” And then there’s the related issue, at the time I got there they started to get into black programs, which is just compartmented programs.

Aaserud:

Which would also become compartmented within JASON.

Le Vine:

And that becomes the issue, that the government de facto controls who gets clearances, but also it means that not anybody can work on it who wants to. You lose some peer review, because one of the advantages of these wrap-ups at the end of the year — the real value to the government — I thought was to come and listen the JASONs kibbutz with each other. JASONs who knew nothing about the subject asked questions and you get a feel for how good it is in real time. Having a Freeman Dyson or Dick Garwin review somebody’s work can be interesting, because they are bright enough, and you can see whether the speaker can defend himself or not. Well, if you have a compartmented program you can’t do that, and it defeats a lot of the value of JASON of having a wide variety of very bright but, let’s say, uneducated about that subject, people criticize some work to get a good peer review. And that to some extent lessens the value of JASON. It’s my view and the view of some of the other JASONs, but it’s clearly my perspective.

Aaserud:

There was a clash of cultures here of course.

Le Vine:

That’s right. And that was an issue that took up a lot of time, a lot of agony. This is again an issue of micromanagement of a different sort, and there were also factions within JASON, no questions given the strong personalities. Strong personalities don’t always get along with each other. It’s human nature. People don’t always get along with each other. So there’s different views, different motivations. My view of my job was to be neutral, which is not always easy to be. I served JASON; I didn’t serve one or the other, and that’s not always easy to do. But so in that sense, my job was to gather information and pass it on to everybody and not distort it. I guess because I lasted eleven years, I must have been reasonably successful at doing something along their line. But that was a major issue, it took months and months of harking about that problem.

Aaserud:

And you’re saying, as far as you’re concerned, it was a fairly new issue? It appeared when you came in, more or less?

Le Vine:

It appeared. This is my perspective, that this was a new issue. Until then everything had been let’s say secret, but just secret. Everybody had a TS clearance, so everybody could get into it. Then you started getting secret special access. It was the whole process of who could work on what, and why couldn’t all JASONs have access to it. When I first took the job in 1975, I did, in retrospect, one of the smartest things that I ever did I went around and met the JASONs at their homes, at their universities, rather than wait for them to come to me. I wanted to see them on their own turf, because I’ve always felt people are more comfortable when you can see them at their place. So I went around the country to meet these people.

Aaserud:

When you were introducing yourself?

Le Vine:

Yeah. And as I said, in retrospect it’s one of the smartest things I ever did, get to know them one-on-one. Then besides, when you can see three Nobel Prize winners in two days it’s awe-inspiring, and for a lot of these people I used their papers and their books. I didn’t have a big ego after going around and seeing these people. It puts you in your place. I was flattered that these people talked to me. But I went around, and one of the things I originally was gonna ask people, “What are you good at? What do you specialize in?” The answer I got, until I stopped asking the question, was, “Hey, I do,” for example, “high-energy physics for a living. I’m a bright guy, and I go to JASON and I do things I don’t know anything about, because there’s no conflict of interest having a fresh perspective. That makes me naive, but JASONs are smart enough that we can catch up, and the value of JASON is to do things that you don’t do for a living so you don’t have conflicts of interest, to give impartial advice and then to leave it.” It’s a statement of arrogance of physicists: A good physicist can do anything. But leaving aside the arrogance statement, there’s a lot of truth in this statement. Let’s take acoustics. I’m not talking to you, I’m also giving a lecture, right? This is a naive statement, but you saw the movies and books about World War II where they used sonar’s looking for submarines, so I figured the Navy had been doing acoustics for 20 years, 25 years by then, 30 years maybe, and knew what was going on. I don’t know how JASON got into acoustics, that was before my time. They knew nothing about it. The Roger Dashens of the world, Walter Munk, Ken Case, I think, Marshal Rosenbluth was involved, Ed Frieman, Stan Flatté, Ken Watson got into this, and in a couple years they learned enough about what all the other contractors were doing that they were making major significant contributions in passive acoustics. And it struck me, how could they do this? People had been working at it for 30 years, and these guys come in a couple years and make major new contributions. It’s sort of a prime example of how you take some very bright guys who don’t know that it can’t be done, who come in and start asking basic questions and figure out what the basic problems are, and then go off and do some creative arithmetic or mathematics, come up with some answers. And this was JASON at its best. But it was people who only did it part-time. And that impressed me that this is what JASON should be good at. Because that means when they tell the government that this is right and this wrong they don’t have any axe to grind, and they’re sort of looking at things with a new perspective. Now that is also a problem, this conflict of interest issue has gotten worse. As you may or may not know, people more and more do for a living what they did or do for JASON. And that is a problem that has been discussed often. I can’t speak for the last six years of course, but when I was there often it became a very troublesome problem. Usually the trouble was that they would learn it in JASON and then often start doing it academically. And there is this, I’ll call it conflict of interest issue. And I don’t mean that anybody did anything wrong, but this appearance that they no longer were novices at what they were doing, and they no longer were impartial observers. And that laid some of them open to accusations that they were biased. I’m not saying they were biased, but perception is as important as reality sometimes. But I believe some of the founding JASONs believed very strongly in this virgin approach to the problems.

Aaserud:

I think there’s a spectrum of opinion on that, even within JASON. If you look at oceanography for example, or look at Walter Munk. His academic work and JASON work are certainly related. Well, Steven Weinberg is kind of an in—between case, because he took up things he learned in JASON and published about them in the open literature, but remained mostly a particle physicist, which had nothing to do with JASON as far as I’ve understood. And then of course there are these people who maintain a complete separation.

Le Vine:

Yeah, but there’s a different class too. I mean, Walter was a oceanographer before he joined JASON. I think maybe Walter was so good the Navy or others never really questioned it. It’s also Walter’s style. Walter was never questioned about this, because he’s always open about it. The problem came not in the Walters of the world or the Carl Wunches, who was with JASON for a while, who came in as an oceanographer. But other people who let’s say were high-energy physicists, came in, learned oceanography, and then went off and changed their career towards oceanography. That was viewed differently than Walt who came in as an oceanographer. That’s what I’m talking about. You’re point is a conflict of interest, but I think JASON was more concerned with the case I was bringing up — people who could be accused of using JASON for personal gain. Okay? That’s a crass way of saying it, but there was a lot of concern about that, and there were cases in which some JASONs did this. I have individual people in mind, but that’s throwing darts at people. But that concern was there, and that’s an issue that has never ever been cleanly solved. Whether it’s harmed JASON or not is a personal statement.

Aaserud:

Or harmed the field of physics.

Le Vine:

That’s right. But you talked before that one of the reasons you got into this, you were interested in how academic physics is influenced. There is a very difficult but legitimate concern about getting academia involved in the, say, national security issues. “Personal gain” sounds so crass, but actually, you know, learning something from the government which you then turn into part of your career. That can be construed in many ways, but that’s a real difficult issue and it’s very tempting if you’re doing something in academia which is interesting, or let’s say it’s getting duller and the field is winding down, and you see something in JASON which is exciting, and even though it’s classified, you can extract parts of it and use that to help you change career. Now is that fair and honest, open? Is that the way academia should be or not? I ask that as a question, don’t think that’s a statement. In my view in some of the JASONs — it’s again a subjective statement — it was so subtle it happened to them in some ways they didn’t even know they were doing it, but they clearly veered that way and felt comfortable I guess with it. It happened in more than one case.

Aaserud:

I just wanted to say something on that. It may look like you’re interviewing me instead of the other way around, but I just have to say that I’ve got the sense from one JASON that they turn that question completely around and say that to some extent academic work, becoming more and more disciplinary, has become stifled to some degree, and that it is only high-energy physics that they are working with unless they work within JASON in which they got access to other problems in which they could use more of the physics they had learned originally. So they turned it around and think that JASON is a broadening experience and it’s academic work that could be the stifling experience.

Le Vine:

It’s a difficult issue, and there’s this perceptional problem. It depends on what you want JASON to be. If you want JASON to be a reasonably unbiased group of very bright people who you can give difficult problems to and ask them to either review other people’s work or more importantly try to come up with some proverbial “back of the envelope” work, then you want a group of people who are not tainted because they don’t care that this company or that company gets it; that you have the integrity to say that even though this guy has a reputation, his work is hogwash and this is the way it should go, or vice versa. And that’s very difficult to do when you have, in any sense, emotional or intellectual vested interest in it. Now, if you want JASON to be a group of knowledgeable people who meet every summer that you bring ideas to and they sort of go over it for six weeks, that can be a very different kind of group. And when I left in 1985, for several years there was this growing dispute — maybe it’s gone, maybe not — that JASON was becoming more and more a review of other people’s work, and several JASONs said, “That’s not our great strength. Our strength should be creativity; not reviewing what some other company has done.” Some of them disliked the fact of being reviewers. They’re good at it, but that’s a separate issue. What should JASON be? Now I have my own prejudice, but each person has his own image of what JASON should be, and this issue of, what we were talking about before, conflict perception, is tied to what your view of JASON is.

Aaserud:

And there are different views within JASON of that of course.

Le Vine:

That’s correct.

Aaserud:

But to be a little more concrete without mentioning names, did these things come up in the steering committee? I mean, was it discussed in the steering committee that this JASON or these JASONs or this work in JASON might lead to a conflict of interest, might lead to or has led to this person or this group doing other kinds of work in academia and therefore we should either change the project for them or get them out of JASON or something like that?

Le Vine:

Well, there were two phenomena — within the steering committee. There were informal discussions. There were also discussions in the steering committee itself. But the discussions in the committee weren’t always as blunt as the ones when you wandered into somebody’s room when they were talking. They were still steering committee members, but, I guess that’s human nature, to blunt it when you talk publicly. Yes, the issue was brought up, and there were several specific JASONs who at least initially were the source of the trouble. Yes, the issue was discussed and, but the subject is not clear enough that there was actually strict lines drawn. In some cases there were, but in a lot of cases it was fuzzed up. The trouble with giving examples is you end up giving names of people, and that’s not fair to them, because I’m not saying anybody was bad or good about this. I think it’s fair to say that — well, there are JASONs I don’t like, that’s fair to say, but I don’t know of any JASONs that I would say blatantly used this to their own end. So it’s not fair to accuse anybody.

Aaserud:

No, no, but it might have been discussed. That’s all I’m asking.

Le Vine:

Yes. It had been discussed. And I just want to keep away from names because then it all gets the taint of whether you think somebody’s bad or good. I’m not making judgments; I’m making observations. It was discussed and I think to me they went to the heart of JASON, the issues of who decides what problems they work on, who the members are, who has access, can any JASON work on anything, and this issue of academic life versus JASON life were core issues to its existence.

Aaserud:

Of course then we go full circle because in order for that to be a real issue, JASON would have to have a great freedom in the projects they were able to choose, among the projects that were possible in the Defense Department for example.

Le Vine:

I don’t understand. You mean in order to have a conflict academic versus the JASONs?

Aaserud:

In order to choose projects that would not lead to a conflict of interest or that would be productive in some sense, they would need to have a broad range of choices for the kind of projects they could take up.

Le Vine:

That’s true, but then the individual JASON could just not work on something.

Aaserud:

Yes. And that’s the case often, right?

Le Vine:

I mean, I don’t know it happened, but Garwin more than once made the comment in public that IBM works on something like this. But no one ever questions Dick’s integrity. Dick is not the kind of person to do that to. But Dick has made that comment in public, “Hey, IBM is working on something like this.” But no one would ever ask Dick not to work on it. You know Dick obviously, by your smile.

Aaserud:

Yes.

Le Vine:

He’s just not that type. But if you didn’t know Dick — it’s only because you know him. When you were talking you raised up another issue along the same lines. One of the reasons I found the first several years very interesting were these issues. These are very difficult issues, and I found them intriguing as to how the people try to cope with them, and how you handle them. It’s in a sense personal and institutional integrity, how you deal with these things.

Aaserud:

Well just to talk about the basis for your giving such statements. How did you work with the steering committee in practice? I mean, were you at all the meetings? Did you have constant contact with them?

Le Vine:

Yeah. Well my job evolved into this. I went to all the steering committee meetings, I wrote the minutes — that was my job, to take notes, write the minutes. My job was also — I was the staff, so I did all the staff work. But also to be in a sense the unbiased communicator. People would use me to call up and say pass on an idea, an opinion, a complaint. My job was to pass that on to everybody else. So I became the switchboard operator. I think I got a reputation for being unbiased but my job was to do it. And whether I agreed with it or not was independent. My job was to pass it back and forth. Because not everybody could get a hold of everybody, so they’d call me and say, “Tell everybody else this.” And that was my job, so I became the communication node of some sort. I’m sure there were other communications that went on totally independent of me. I’m not claiming I was the only node, but I was a clearinghouse of information, and I viewed my job to tell only those people who were supposed to know, tell them exactly what I heard, what I thought I heard, as best I could remember, untainted by my own opinions, and just sort of back and forth, and to be neutral rather than try to guide where it went. And it was very easy. Especially as they trusted me more and more, I could have influenced a lot more than I did, because it just takes a little bit of, as you know, of changing this or changing that, and I viewed that was wrong. I had a great deal of respect for JASON, still do, and I did also have my own view of what it should be. I mean I wasn’t totally without opinion. It’s probably fair to say, because the steering committee changed each year, people came on and off, that I became probably the corporate memory reasonably quickly. I was involved in all of the formal discussions, and a lot of the informal discussions also.

Aaserud:

Did you have the same clearance as the JASONs?

Le Vine:

Yes. Until, until we got into this —

Aaserud:

— compartmentalization, yes.

Le Vine:

And most of them I had, but there are occasions that I didn’t have those. So not in every case.

Aaserud:

So then what happened? Did they work directly? I mean, it’s much more difficult to run it then.

Le Vine:

It became more of a bone of contention who types the report, who locks it up, who transmits it to the government. And there were some altercations about — altercations is a strong word — there was some disagreements about how that was done, and caused some internal frictions. Because some of the reports were not done through the normal channel, and it caused some difficulties. Yes. No question about that. I think to go back to the same issue of this —

Aaserud:

To what extent were you involved in — what should I say — selling projects?

Le Vine:

I’m breaching your 15 years, because it’s difficult to divide everything by month, but I think what I evolved into and probably started out with was this. I was the only person in Washington, even when I was at MITRE when I was sort of in charge. At most I had three clerical administrative people working for me, I was the only one with technical-scientific background. My job was to maintain contact with all the clients, the 12 or 13 clients we had. Go to them looking for topics, arranging meetings for the JASONs to come in to talk about these topics, making sure the reports got done, distributed, often briefed to whomever they wanted to. But probably my most important job was being the external interface to the government, to making sure JASON was known, going around looking for topics, talking to people, doing the staff work on topics who were identified. But I think it’s fair to say I had a reasonable amount of influence in finding the menu of topics. And then once the menu was found, getting people to work on them. This was just as important as finding projects. JASON’s an ornery bunch, because not everyone will work on something just because they were told to. I mean people volunteered, so finding the critical mass was also part of the job.

Aaserud:

Well, you got a sense of that after a while.

Le Vine:

Yes. And my recollection is that JASON did in the 1980s, I can’t only remember so much in the 1970s — about 40 to 50 projects a summer. I guess a quarter of them went from one year to the other. There was a large turnover. To some extent how many we did was purely limited by my ability to how many topics I could do. Sometimes we volunteered for more than I could do, and they just died because I couldn’t find the people and the briefings. They left it to me, especially at the end, to find the people, the briefers, the papers, the reports to do that.

Aaserud:

So you were actually a go-between between the clients and the steering committee would you say?

Le Vine:

Yes. And when they came into town — I’m sure there were some exceptions, but most of the time I went to meetings. And, as I told them when I left, told the steering committee when I left, I ended up with too much power. This was of course in 1985. I believe that I had too much power. Maybe they relied on me too much, or it was an indirect statement of how much they trusted me, but I could have influenced JASON a great deal more than I should have been able to. And I took that as a compliment, but there is also a danger inherent in it. JASONs in my opinion, they in themselves need to spend more time going to see people. But that’s getting beyond your period.

Aaserud:

That’s a problem when you leave of course, but that’s much later. But in the early years of JASON they contracted or had as a client DARPA and nothing else it seems to me, at least not formally. And when you came in, they had broadened their base quite a bit I think. Isn’t that right?

Le Vine:

No. When I started their budget was $600,000, just DARPA, and there was some money from the CIA, and that was it.

Aaserud:

Really?

Le Vine:

Yes.

Aaserud:

So there was no civilian clients at that time?

Le Vine:

That’s correct. And there were no other DOD clients at the time. One of the impetuses to diversify was this micromanagement. That’s one way to handle it. If DARPA is 95 percent of the budget, then they have power over you, and that was one of the big drivers to go find other clients.

Aaserud:

But wasn’t there some CO₂ work or, I mean some atmospheric pollution work and some…

Le Vine:

That came out later.

Aaserud:

…transportation work even before your tenure?

Le Vine:

Oh, well that’s possible.

Aaserud:

But that came and went then. I mean, that was not a going concern when you arrived.

Le Vine:

When you say climate work, I think of DOE work of which Gordon MacDonald was the main instigator. That came later.

Aaserud:

Ruderman and Foley?

Le Vine:

Yeah. Ozone…

Aaserud:

Ozone layer. Yeah.

Le Vine:

I think — now this is a guess, and I can be very wrong on this — I think until I started, they may have had other work, but it was always someplace calling up DARPA and saying, “How about doing this?” as opposed to direct funding. Now I could be wrong, I could be wrong about that. But when I started, DARPA was 95 percent of the budget, and the diversification all came subsequent to that, and the motivation started with the compartmentalization issue. I have to think about who approached who first, but when it became apparent the Navy was interested in putting in a large sum of money, there was a lot of discussion in the steering committee whether we should: Wasn’t JASON just supposed to be at DARPA? DARPA being OSD, and reporting therefore to the DDR&E (?) who was then a more central figure I think than he is now and more encompassing. And there were people who argued, “We only work for the top guy, and if we start working for the services we lose our independence.”

Aaserud:

When you came in, was it Johnny Foster who was the DDR&E or was it Perry?

Le Vine:

It wasn’t Perry. Perry came in after Ward so I think it must have been at the end of Foster’s period. I didn’t meet Foster when he was there. The first DDR&E who I personally knew was Perry. But, you know, academics argue about everything, but there was discussion whether we should work for the Navy. Being OSD is different; we now become part of the service, and we lose again this objectivity that’s sort of above the fray, and should we go to Navy. If we go Navy, why not the Army, why not the Air Force, and we’re just getting spread out all over the place, and get involved in intra-service fighting. It’s sort of related. They’re related to the issues we were talking about before. And I believe — although this again is subjective of course, probably everything I’ve told you is subjective — in the end there were two things that pushed the Navy and led to the big break with DARPA. One was a subject that was absolutely phenomenally interesting — physics at its best. And secondly, micromanagement — trying to find a way to diversify, to break the strangle hold that DARPA had. There’s an irony to this in my view. When I left — again I don’t know what’s happened in the last couple years — DARPA’s budget had gone up, but JASON clearly was having troubles finding exciting, major exciting problems out of DARPA. I think DARPA would agree with that statement and JASON would agree with it, so there’s some irony in that statement. But the Navy provided superb and exciting physics at its best, and JASON did some of I think its most superb work. It’s all buried in some classification someplace — a lot of it is.

Aaserud:

Especially Navy work.

Le Vine:

Yes. You know the Navy. It was physics at its best, and these guys did some superb work. But there are some negatives that go with that. Compartmentalization, in accordance with your jocular jest; the Navy is known for that.

Aaserud:

But the Navy kind of work that was done before you came in — there was some — was that through ARPA?

Le Vine:

It was ARPA.

Aaserud:

It was? Okay.

Le Vine:

Now, it may be the Navy and DARPA had some agreement. I do have my files back probably then of what topics we worked on. I probably could figure out when they started some things, but I don’t know if I could or not. This is a feeling more than something I can vouch for — it’s like maybe 1973 and 1974 — but my feeling was that before then the Navy might have called up ARPA and said “Do it.” And DARPA would have spent 50K, 100K here for this subject or that, but it was not funded by the Navy or by DOE or by DNA. It was sort of a favor done. And there’s a difference, because when DNA for example put money in, the report went to DNA; it did not go to DARPA. But when DARPA put the money in, even if it was a DNA topic, it went to DARPA and then to DNA.

Aaserud:

That was in the earlier days. Yes.

Le Vine:

That’s right. So I think that the big distinction there was who you worked for, who you sent your reports to, and who you had some control over. Lukasik — I take that back, I don’t know who it was — directors of DARPA more than once got angry at JASON because JASON would write a report and send it to DDR&E and then he would call up the director of DARPA and chastise him on some topic when DARPA had not even seen the report. It can be embarrassing when it is negative on some program. JASON more than once went up here, and then the program manager and the director at DARPA got hit over the head. And you could argue whether that’s fair or not, but that happened more than once.

Aaserud:

And that was by intention, I mean that was a strategy.

Le Vine:

Yes. Well its intention because we’re gonna give unbiased advice, and we’re not gonna have a program manager who has a vested interest in his career to tell us what to say. We’re gonna make sure it gets there. It goes back to your image of “what is JASON.” Who does it work for? Does it work for the program manager? Does it work for the DDR&E?

Aaserud:

Well that’s split and conquer tactics. I’m sure it wouldn’t always work; it depends on the DDR&E and the ARPA director and the relationship and all that.

Le Vine:

That’s right, that’s right. And the JASONs, if you look at some of the reports — this goes back to this issue I think of the academic versus JASON, the topics you work on. If you’re really naive about some subject, let’s take acoustics, let’s pick on that, and you come and work on it for JASON, the answers you come up with a lot of the times will be naive, unrealistic. You might come up with a dollar figure something costs, and it may be crazy because the government can’t afford it. You know, a $100 million sounds like little when you’re talking about $300 billion, but it’s still a reasonable amount of money. The advantage of that type of approach is that you get not what bureaucratically is realistic; you get what is technically probably the best. And if you’re willing to put up with some naiveté you don’t have people saying, “Well, but the DDR&E won’t accept that program so I won’t say it.” You get sort of what you think is right. But you get a lot of naiveté. If you have people who get involved in understanding DOD, there’s a human tendency to say, “Well, I think that’s right, but these guys won’t buy it, so why give it to them?” I like the idea of the naive approach, because I’d rather have nine crazy ideas and one good one, than have somebody filter them out. Because then you never get change, you just get what’s acceptable, which is not always what is good for you. It may be painful for you, but it’s good for you.

Aaserud:

Was this as you discussed, in those terms, in the steering committee?

Le Vine:

Yes, that issue. In fact there was a meeting that went through 1:00 a.m. That I remember. This issue was discussed. And there I can give you names, because —

Aaserud:

Well, I’d like the names on the next tape.

Le Vine:

You know that I’m not great on dates, but in the 1970s throughout Sid Drell and Dick Garwin — you know both, I’m sure you talked to both —

Aaserud:

Yes.

Le Vine:

— came up with this idea of mini-subs. I don’t know if they’ve talked to you about this. This was using small submarines, small crews so that each would have two missiles, like SLBMs on ‘em. And they would patrol coastal waters, or near coastal waters. And therefore you could protect them. This is a way of protecting, this was protecting our missile force from the Soviet’s first strike to destroy the Polaris, Poseidon. And there was internal controversy for several years because Dick and Sid promoted this idea. And Dick went around in typical Dick’s fashion, finding all kinds gadgets of like sterling cycles, all kinds of different. Every time the government would come up with a technical reason you can’t have it, Dick would solve it. You know Dick. And so, he found specific submarines. We don’t need 120 men to run a submarine; you could automate it. You know, two men can run an aircraft plane; why can’t X men run a submarine in the coastal waters? You can have P3s over them (?), you know. It’s easier to monitor what’s going on close to the United States than it is out in the middle of the ocean. This was a reasonably controversial issue, and it did not make JASONs friends in lots of places. The Navy didn’t always like the discussions. It’s not just who controls the missiles, but how many people you have on submarines. Do you need a Trident or don’t you need a Trident? You need a Polaris or not? I mean these are big money issues. And Dick and Sid were not too timorous, you know. The steering committee got into some discussions, because there was some feedback to JASON, that said, “Hey, we don’t like this, and we’re your clients.” And there was discussions in the steering committee of whether we should suppress those reports or not. Rip Perkins is the one who made the statement, which I think is absolutely right, that it has nothing to do with whether he agrees with Dick and Sid or not. JASON’s there to promote ideas and put them out there for the government, not to tell the government what it wants to hear. And he wasn’t gonna let anybody stop JASON from publishing, and if they did he’d quit. Because JASON should be a place of ideas, and he would back Dick, even if he didn’t like the idea. Because it’s censorship, and that’s not what JASON should be like. And I agree with that idea, but that issue is an important issue. It gets to this issue, this thing, maybe in retrospect Sid and Dick were extremely naive and no one would buy it. But if they were sophisticated you’d probably lose lots of ideas which you really want. And there’s this tradeoff. That was discussed.

Aaserud:

What time frame are we talking about now? Do you remember?

Le Vine:

I could tell by looking at those listed reports.

Aaserud:

Okay. Well, I have it here.

Le Vine:

Because I can find — these are by year, aren’t they?

Aaserud:

Yes.

Le Vine:

It’s late 1970s. There was a whole bunch of them that came out. Yes. It was the late 1970s. And it was main — Dick is a very controversial figure, as you know.

Aaserud:

Yes. Even within JASON?

Le Vine:

Yes. And Dick does not take things — Dick is blunt about his opinions. And so I think some of the controversies are not just about his technology, but about him as a person.

Aaserud:

I make a count of which person was mentioned most often in my interviews, and I, well, I didn’t count them all, but it seems that Garwin is a pretty obvious winner of the prize.

Le Vine:

Yes.

Aaserud:

And they don’t agree. But, he’s keeping it going to a degree. But well, you said that there were discussions within the steering committee as to whether JASON should stick with DARPA or whether it should spread out.

Le Vine:

Yes.

Aaserud:

And that there was a danger of spreading itself too thin or something like that.

Le Vine:

Getting caught into the fights between the services.

Aaserud:

But conversely, was there any problem in ARPA, or did ARPA react negatively to the prospect of having JASON going to other places?

Le Vine:

In other words did ARPA ever try to stop it.

Aaserud:

Because one could think that ARPA saw themselves as owning JASON to some extent and didn’t want competition from others.

Le Vine:

My first reaction to that, nothing comes to mind that they reacted. I’d say no. There was problems of how to work out the logistics. That’s a different issue. There were some government — only meetings at ARPA’s instigation, JASON wasn’t there, to discuss this issue.

Aaserud:

And you obviously were not there either.

Le Vine:

That’s correct. But I knew they were called for that reason. And so there may have been, but I don’t know. I cannot recall in my mind that there was.

Aaserud:

…anything of the sort.

Le Vine:

If there were, it doesn’t come to mind.

Aaserud:

Do you remember how the decision was made to go to another client, and how that developed and when?

Le Vine:

I think the answer is yes, but then I think we’ll end up in personalities. I think I do, at least of the first, of the big one. The Air Force avoids answering your question. Jack Martin, who was in my job for a while, became Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for R&D or something, and I know they went to Jack to get 50K or something like that. So the connection to the Air Force started at a personal basis, if you wanna say a personal. And I think Jack’s comment was, “Shit, for 50K it’s worth to have a place to sit at a table and listen to JASON’s discussions.” To have a buy-in, you know. I don’t blame him. That was personal, so that was a personal thing.

Aaserud:

And the project I could probably find from the list of reports.

Le Vine:

Yeah, I don’t know what the first projects for the Air Force were. Sometimes there was some joint topics, too. We got into that. The Air Force would want something DARPA would want, and they split the costs between them. I can’t think of any right now. I’d just as soon not say how they got into the big one. I think that would get into a personality discussion which I don’t think is appropriate.

Aaserud:

Okay. But is it within my time period?

Le Vine:

Your time period goes…?

Aaserud:

1975 approximately. But I think this is important.

Le Vine:

I think it comes slightly after your time. I would say it came after your time. And what I would be willing to say is what I’ve said it before. I believe the main impetus for it was an attempt to handle the micromanagement issue. If the micromanagement issue weren’t there, the chances are much less that they would have diversified. I can’t say zero, but much less.

Aaserud:

And the micromanagement came in with Lukasik essentially, or perhaps Rechtin. It was after Herzfeld.

Le Vine:

Yeah, well, see I didn’t get to JASONs — Lukasik was director of DARPA when I left and he was director of DARPA while I was at JASON for a while and so I can’t say that it didn’t start before him.

Aaserud:

I think it was a gradual development with Rechtin and Lukasik. You know the ARPA history.

Le Vine:

Yeah. And I think it’s somehow tied — and I don’t know where it started — but I think it’s somehow tied, that JASON just was not held in high esteem. There was a nadir in their development. That was another thing that goes back I guess maybe to the same business that I have noticed as a change the last couple of years before I left. When I went to JASON, it was an anti-establishment organization. It was outsider, respected in some sense for technical work, but clearly not an “in” group — and I believe it’s now an “in” group. And you can draw your own conclusions. There’s pluses and minuses to that, but I think JASON now is recognized by some people in Congress. It’s more of an establishment figure. And that is tied I think to this issue of what is JASON, what do you want. You don’t want to hear my opinion; you wanna hear the history, sort of more facts. But I think JASON has evolved over the years to more of that.

Aaserud:

Well it’s hard to avoid that with a history of more than 25 years.

Le Vine:

Either that or you become an irrelevancy. But you could argue that by being an establishment figure you lose some of your objectivity. And a case in point of that, which I don’t think Ed would disagree with. I mean, it’s a very difficult issue. You talked to Ed Frieman.

Aaserud:

Yes.

Le Vine:

When I first met Ed he was at Princeton, I think Deputy Director of Princeton Plasma Lab. I’m not sure who was the head.

Aaserud:

That was before you joined JASON?

Le Vine:

Yes. He was a professor up at Princeton, that’s where I met him. And then Ed became involved with the Navy. At first I knew more about the Navy than he did, but then it didn’t take him long. Ed’s a very bright guy. Then he got on all kinds of committees for the Navy. The pinnacle of all this in some sense is that he’s head of Scripps. When Ed became head of certain, some of the Navy committees, you might ask how can Ed do this and also serve JASON to help JASON analyze Navy material. Because he now hobnobs with the Admirals; therefore in quotes he is some kind of an “establishment figure.” I’m not in any way implying anything about Ed’s integrity. I can pick on Ed because you don’t have to worry about his integrity. But there’s this perception. How can he handle both? And doesn’t it worry you about JASON? The opposite is true of Dick. See Dick belongs to nobody. He doesn’t belong to IBM. We all know that. IBM pays him money, but Dick would just as soon cut an IBM idea as TRW idea and anybody else.

Aaserud:

That’s right.

Le Vine:

So he’s the opposite. And Dick is not an insider; never has been, never will be. Nobody would ever question that Dick somehow be tainted, but Ed, you know, he was in the government for awhile, and he was on these committees, dealt with the Admirals. Maybe he did more effective work than Dick by being an insider and helping get ideas accepted, but the perception could be made that Ed has a conflict issue. Well Dick is the opposite guy, pounding on the door on the outside, and Ed’s in the inside, and it’s a question of how do you change things — from the outside or the inside? And that sort of epitomizes to some extent the problem that you have. It’s a choice. And it’s not saying one is better or one is worse. It’s this problem. And it goes back to the issue, what is JASON? My guess is that you’ve asked that question to more than one of the people you’ve talked to, besides being more than one question it has probably changed over the years. The answer you would have gotten 20 years ago is different than you get now. And probably from the older people you get a different answer than from those who joined after Vietnam. But I think it’s central to this whole issue — what is the group, what it’s purpose is, and how do you get academics to help the Defense community, and in what form. You know the expression around here, all over the place: you can buy bright people. JASONs are bright, but they’re not uniquely bright. What makes them unique? You can’t buy Dicks, you can’t find Dicks every place, or Freeman Dysons or Roger Dashens, but you can find bright people, and what makes JASON unique? And we each have our own perspective of that. But if it’s just a bunch of bright guys, you can pay TRW to hire them. But somehow it would be different having those guys work for TRW than be JASON. You’d get different product. And so the question is then what is JASON.

Aaserud:

But then we get pretty quickly to the question of the impact of JASON. I’m not saying it’s a conflict, but there may be a tension between being independent and having an impact.

Le Vine:

Yes.

Aaserud:

And what is your view of the impact of JASON in that respect from your own experience? Okay, let me back up a little and tell you why I am asking you this, because I have interviewed about 40 JASONs, and they rate the impact of JASON fairly highly as a general rule. I thought that in order to get to the question in a more balanced way I need to talk to people who experienced JASON from the outside too, I mean in ARPA, in other places, who got their advice and used their advice. So I’m asking you as sort of…

Le Vine:

… halfway in and halfway out…

Aaserud:

… in the middle, but you certainly had more of an in and more of a contact with ARPA and the other groups that JASON worked with than most JASONs.

Le Vine:

Before I get to that, there’s something I keep forgetting to say. There’s also the issue of the technical competence within the government. There are different views. One of the directors at DARPA, Cooper, Bob Cooper, gave a talk to JASON once, a couple years ago, and he made the statement that the technical competence within the government is going down. If you buy that, the less competent people in the R&D agencies like DARPA are probably less able to appreciate what JASON can do for them. How you distinguish a Freeman Dyson from somebody else often depends on the person doing the distinguishing. And so some part of your answer depends on who you talk to and maybe your view of how the government has changed or not changed over time. I don’t have any quantitative numbers, but I would say that over JASON’s prime years, each summer one, maybe two ideas would come out of it which were worth every penny the government paid to JASON and more. But rarely more than two. Sometimes just one. But almost every summer something would come up. Sometimes there’s a huge thing, sometimes it’s a small thing.

Aaserud:

We can cross them off on a list here.

Le Vine:

Some of them you can. Some of them aren’t on the list. But sometimes the idea was worth — you can’t put a price on it, it’s just there. Let’s see, I’m not sure which ones you can say, which ones you can’t say, but I would say that for a number of years it was like that, and a lot of people in the government recognized that, that all they were looking for was one idea, even if it wasn’t for their agency. $2 million a year — if you can get one really genius idea it’s worth two million bucks. Where else you gonna buy it?

Aaserud:

That was Herzfeld’s statement. Yeah.

Le Vine:

And I think for a number of years that’s what you got. Sometimes in the craziest places, but you got them. Some of them didn’t pan out; not all of them panned out. Of some that come to mind that are public, the acoustics was one over several years. The Navy more than got its money’s worth. I think the Navy would say so. And they had a tremendous impact. I think in both those areas.

Aaserud:

There is also a question of how the advice was taken up of course and implemented.

Le Vine:

Yes. Free electron lasers is one in which it’s clear that they had the idea, Marshall Rosenbluth and Norman Kroll, Bob Novik. And the government took it up and spent lots of money on it, and it had an impact. Whether you think free electron laser is good or not is a separate issue, but they had a tremendous impact. They made a revolution in free electron lasers.

Aaserud:

To what extent did JASON try to follow up on the fate of the advice?

Le Vine:

That’s mixed. In the free electron lasers the government came to JASON every year and they did follow up, even after Norman left JASON. Have you talked to Norman?

Aaserud:

Yes.

Le Vine:

Good. I think Marshall would tell you it was Norman’s idea.

Aaserud:

I haven’t talked to Marshall.

Le Vine:

But that one may be the unusual one, because they followed up year after year, came back to JASON each summer, and Marshall and Norman and Bob reviewed it, made comments on it, and the community was pleased with that, the government was pleased with that, that was a real sort of contribution. And that’s one you can talk about. It’s unclassified. It’s straightforward.

Aaserud:

This started before your time, right?

Le Vine:

No. The free electron laser came after my time. During my time, I guess during my time.

Aaserud:

After you came, yes. OK.

Le Vine:

A gut feeling is that JASON was not very good about following up to see. They’d write a report and then it would just sort of go into the woodwork someplace. There is an advantage of let’s say Ed Frieman having been involved with the Navy, he could follow things up. I think the follow-up had a lot to do with personal relationships, and some relationships between JASON and individuals was very good and there was follow-up, some weren’t so good and they didn’t. And I think it was more of a personal than an institutional thing. A JASON person, but also the government person. Sometimes even the government was very enthusiastic about JASONs and would sort of force the follow-up in a sense from their point of view because they wanted it, they needed it. It’s hard to give an exact answer to you. JASON is a place of ideas, many of which at the first seem speculative and visceral because they can’t be engineered. That doesn’t detract I think in any way from the utility that the idea came from them. I don’t know of any particular case that JASON had an idea that turned into a system, surely not a weapon that I know of. But then I wasn’t around when they had a lot to do with RVs, and I didn’t have to do with that stuff. But I can’t tell you that out there there’s this XYZ gadget from a JASON idea. Free electron laser is probably closest, but I don’t think that’s working system yet, that I know of. They mainly did the physics to show whether it was worth putting money into study engineering, if you wanna say that, to make it plausible. And given a little bit of time to think, I could probably conjure up a dozen ideas which I think clearly had impact on the government. Whether the impact was lasting and led to something that was a final product, I don’t feel competent to tell you that. I didn’t know that Herzfeld said the same thing, but that was my view when I listened to the end of the summers. If I could find out of those two days an idea that was really just original, then I think the summer was worthwhile. But there were summers that, in my opinion…

Aaserud:

… they didn’t have them…

Le Vine:

… they didn’t have them. But I’m not a JASON, and we all know that, so my view of what’s good and bad is different. So I don’t know if that answers your question. It’s a hard thing to answer. It’s like asking DARPA what impact DARPA’s had on the DOD. It’s difficult, because it’s…

Aaserud:

And at that stage it may be difficult to distinguish JASON’s impact from other’s impact too, because at the implementation stage there are also other things that get involved and introduced into the picture.

Le Vine:

Yes. That’s right. And ideas which are brilliant, and then two years later they just couldn’t be done. And so there’s these tradeoffs. And it’s also that some of the problems were interesting but trivial, trivial in the sense they were small. And even the solving of them may have been amazingly important to the program manager but on a bigger scheme of even that agency was sort of in the noise. It’s also that issue of impact. Is it a national impact or is it sort of a very small piece. Different people with different perspectives will say different things. Again, trying to avoid your question, because I don’t know the answer, but there is some intangible thing that JASON did that was very clear. Let’s pick TRW, and you’re working on free electron lasers, which they did, and you know that in the next month you’ve got to go brief JASON—both scary and exciting. But the fact that you had to do it each year, it’s clear for a lot of contractors it motivated them to scrutinize their work and to be a lot sharper about what they did than they would have done otherwise.

Aaserud:

Well that’s a subtle effect.

Le Vine:

Yeah, it’s a very subtle effect, but it’s clear that there were program managers who used JASON for no other reason. They brought in the contractors and they were sitting there in the back room and just wanted to listen, and that was worth whatever the cost. If it passed, the Garwins and whoever happens to be there, then it was OK. In fact Bill Perry came out to JASON a couple of times to wrap up, and that’s what he said. He came to listen to the JASONs kibbutz the speaker — the other JASONs — and he learned from that kind of stuff. And to him it was worth what he paid for. That’s an intangible, and that’s in the eye of the beholder. So I don’t think I’ve answered your question, but I’m not really sure exactly how to answer it. One of the jobs I thought I had — JASON spoke different language than government. Most people in the government by necessity, even if they were technical when they went in, after a year or two you lose your edge because you get involved in the bureaucracy. JASONs didn’t appreciate the, well you can call it the pressures and realities of bureaucracy. They figured science was it. The first sentence of a report is often an equation, and they don’t understand how to translate all these equations into words which somebody can understand. And there clearly is a translational problem, and I thought that was part of my job, to try to talk the JASON well enough so I understand what he was trying to say and then try to put it in some kind of understandable prose. Sometimes it was successful, sometimes not, but there was a mismatch in languages, which made it I think sometimes difficult, because not everybody in the government could make that transition.

Aaserud:

If you look at a lot of these JASON reports, there are equations and equations and equations, and a government bureaucrat wouldn’t quite appreciate that.

Le Vine:

Exactly.

Aaserud:

Do you have any examples of funny stories or not-so-funny stories about difficulties of communication, how it expressed itself, whether you experienced instances of it?

Le Vine:

Let’s see. It’ll probably come to me tonight after you leave. I never thought about that. It’s a fair question, since I said it, didn’t I?

Aaserud:

Yes. It’s on the tape I hope.

Le Vine:

Well, yeah, I don’t deny I said it. The first thing that comes to mind is that Freeman Dyson — I guess Rich Muller was helping Freeman—came up with this idea of rubber mirrors. I don’t know if you’ve heard the expression of rubber mirrors.

Aaserud:

I’m not so sure. For satellites?

Le Vine:

This is for telescopes. On the ground when you look through the atmosphere you have this distortion problem because there’s the atmosphere and the air is moving, and how do you get rid of the distortions. And Freeman and Rich came up with this idea that instead of having a solid mirror you have it made in little blobs and you could independently move each one, so you can distort the mirror slightly to compensate for the atmospheric distortion. And the idea has actually been implemented in astronomical telescopes, I think also in DOD kind of telescopes, so that you can compensate for the atmospheric distortions.

Aaserud:

Feedback sort of thing.

Le Vine:

Yes, that’s right, some kind of feedback loops. And Dyson is a good mathematician — mathematical physics — and extremely good at that. I remember one report he wrote on that. At some time at the end of the summer I sometimes read some of these, and I went down to Freeman. Have you talked to Dyson?

Aaserud:

Yes.

Le Vine:

Well you know Freeman is so gracious and always like he has no ego there. He’s always so like “yes, thank you,” he’s always pleasant. You wouldn’t on the face of it think he was as bright as he is, unlike some other people who try to show it.

Aaserud:

Yeah, he doesn’t advertise it, no.

Le Vine:

That’s right, advertise, that’s right. And I went to Freeman and told him, “Look, I read this thing, and it doesn’t make any sense to me. And it sort of starts out with an equation and then it’s followed by another one, it’s probably very eloquent, but what in the hell does it mean?” And he told me and I said, “If you write this for the government, no one’s gonna understand what it is.”

Aaserud:

Yes, we’ll just stop the tape.

Le Vine:

I’m not sure where the story is gonna go. But I remember this was the first time I thought I ran into this. And so I went down to Freeman at Bishop’s School and told him, and he in his gracious way said, “Yes, you’re right.” And so he rewrote the introduction of his report into English, made a two-page paper in English. Now the report had some impact. Whether it was because I told him or not is irrelevant, but that’s the first I remember in which I made an attempt to have a JASON translate their work. I can think of many cases in which people have agreed with me. I’ve had a lot of people in the government, when I talked about a report, who would read the executive summary, they have no question, they believe every equation there. They just as soon have the equations as a bunch of appendices, and have a two-page executive summary. But that doesn’t give you any funny stories. Maybe they’ll come when we talk, but I can’t think of anything. Sometimes when you talk it comes back to you, but no, I have no funny stories. If I do, maybe they’ll come to mind. What I’m saying is, I know that that happened many times. That was the case.

Aaserud:

Well, how typical or untypical was this? Were you an editor for the JASONs to a great extent?

Le Vine:

I wouldn’t use that word. That’s not fair, because I’m a physicist by trade but I’m not a JASON physicist. If I had stayed an academic physicist I would not have become a JASON. I know that. So I’m not in their league.

Aaserud:

But precisely therefore, perhaps, you would have a better sense of what would need to be changed.

Le Vine:

I didn’t do all the reports, but I think it was not uncommon. I tried to read ‘em, and it was not uncommon for me to call the main author and tell him things along those lines. It wasn’t that I was looking for errors in arithmetic, because that I don’t feel comfortable with, but what does it say? What’s the meaning of it? That was an informal job, and I did it. I didn’t read ‘em all, couldn’t. That was not uncommon for me to do. And they mostly were gracious to accept that. Sometimes did something about it, sometimes they didn’t, but they were gracious and actually wanted to listen.

Aaserud:

Did the agencies ever come back and say, “What the hell? I don’t understand this?”

Le Vine:

They said it, I think, a little more subtly. I would say after a while what was suggested is, “Why don’t you have a review back at DARPA? Why don’t you come back with a couple of your graphs and summarize the work?” I think that was a subtle way of saying that. Before the reports are out — okay? I can’t guarantee it, but I think that what they wanted was a 15-minute summary. It’s also why several of the program managers came out for the 2-day wrap-up because in a half hour talk you can’t get too much into the technical stuff and then they have a chance to talk. And in fact I encouraged the program managers to come back and talk to whoever the principal author was, off in the corner, or over lunch or something, and learn what they meant. Because when you talk they can’t keep saying, “X, Y, Z,” you know, integrals and that stuff; they have to use words. And I think the people you find who are happiest with JASON on the programmatic level were people who used them that way. They would come out maybe at the beginning of the summer, tell ‘em what their problem was, come back at the middle, or especially at the end, and talk to them. Not just read the report. Over the years I see an evolution of having two or three JASONs come back and give a half a day summary to a bunch of people about what JASON has done. And then they had to be nontechnical. That may have been the way of saying this.

Aaserud:

Yes. But during the typical summer study there was a lot more people present than the JASONs?

Le Vine:

Yes.

Aaserud:

— including people from the clients.

Le Vine:

But a lot of the program managers would just give ‘em a task and never come out. That was not uncommon at all. There was no interaction. Most of the visits by far, over 90 percent of the visitors, were people who came out to give briefings. They were not the program manager type.

Aaserud:

To give briefings, yes.

Le Vine:

Yeah. So we had lots of people who would come there to give —

Aaserud:

For a day or so and leave again.

Le Vine:

That’s right. And that’s different than the guy whose job is come out and talk. Joe Mongano might be a good guy for you to talk to. I have his phone number someplace. Joe was at DARPA, he’s a physicist, is a laser guy, direct energy guy. He was the DARPA point of contact for JASON for several years.

Aaserud:

Okay. Starting when approximately?

Le Vine:

I guess it’s 1980-1984, something like that. He and Sherman Karp, both opinionated, both bright guys, they’re both in the area, could give you stories about the impact, and they could you give it to you from the government point of view. This at the program manager level, not at the Herzfeld-Lukasik level.

Aaserud:

Well, as I said, I am mainly interested in the earlier period.

Le Vine:

Yeah. Those would be later, they would be later people.

Aaserud:

That’s right.

Le Vine:

You talked to Bengston.

Aaserud:

Yes. A long time ago. And I talked to Katcher. And I’m talking to Don Le Vine now.

Le Vine:

Did you talk to Jack Martin?

Aaserud:

No. I have not.

Le Vine:

And there was another guy: Turner.

Aaserud:

Turner, who was there for a very short period.

Le Vine:

Yeah. You want to know about the impact the first several years. You basically want to talk to people who were there before I was there. Dave Mann would be interesting to talk to; he would not be gray.

Aaserud:

He would not be — I’m sorry?

Le Vine:

He would not be gray at all, his opinions will not be gray. He has strong favorites and strong unfavorites. But he was there, he’s known JASON before my time. He was in DARPA for several years. Well, everybody has prejudice, no matter who the hell they are, don’t we? Most people who come to mind who may give you some insights from the government would be post 15 years. And Katcher and Joel may be better sources of names than I would be.

Aaserud:

Possibly, but I mean I’m sure you have some sense of the earlier period too — not from firsthand experience, but just from picking up on what was there when you came. So I’m still going to ask you the following question. Instead of asking about people I will ask you about projects in the sense that if I am going to produce anything more than an article on JASON, such as a book for example, I think I would need a very good idea in detail of a project or a set of projects that JASON did that are representative and that I also can get access to, and to follow these projects from the beginning until the end in some detail to get some sense of how JASON worked.

Le Vine:

Well, the one that comes to mind would be acoustics, for me, passive acoustics.

Aaserud:

Navy work.

Le Vine:

No, this was started under DARPA. I’m positive.

Aaserud:

Yes. Without any…

Le Vine:

…Navy funding.

Aaserud:

No compartmentalization either.

Le Vine:

That’s right. And it was unclassified. They picked up a subject that had been done for 30 years and made major, major changes to it that even the community accepted.

Aaserud:

Is that a project that’s also called “Unsound”?

Le Vine:

No.

Aaserud:

No. That’s non-acoustic.

Le Vine:

That’s non-acoustic, that’s right. You’ve talked to Bill Nierenberg, I can tell. Bill likes Unsound.

Aaserud:

It was actually Munk who used it, but okay, I’ve spoken to Bill too.

Le Vine:

That’s the one that was going on when I started, so it’s a new time period. It started I think a year, maybe a year or so before I started.

Aaserud:

Which one? The Unsound?

Le Vine:

No, the passive acoustics. And I can point out probably the articles in there. I don’t know how they got into it, but that one I think was a clear success, had impact you could follow, and made a contribution to a subject that had been going on for many years.

Aaserud:

Well I’ve been warned by others about following Navy work.

Le Vine:

Yes, you may be stonewalled.

Aaserud:

That’s right.

Le Vine:

I will not dissuade you of that. One other that maybe — well, that’s another Navy one.

Aaserud:

Well okay.

Le Vine:

You’ve heard of SANGUINE? That’s a JASON idea.

Aaserud:

Yes. That was Christofilos originally.

Le Vine:

Yeah. He was a JASON.

Aaserud:

Well I think it comes all the way from Project 137 in 1958.

Le Vine:

I don’t know when it started, but I remember that. That I knew nothing about. I mean I just happened to see that.

Aaserud:

And Christofilos is also a character.

Le Vine:

Yeah. I never met him. But that’s what I hear, yes. Internal waves, yes. Here’s one article from 1969. It had to do with internal waves. Munk, Dashen, Zacharias are probably the main characters. If you could get Walter to talk. Walter was the instigator of that, and Roger Dashen. Have you talked to Roger?

Aaserud:

Yes.

Le Vine:

This is all business of internal waves and the effect of internal waves on propagation of sound. And they had a lot of other people helping them.

Aaserud:

But that’s affected some people’s work in physics too, hasn’t it?

Le Vine:

Yes, that’s right.

Aaserud:

So that would have a lot of good aspects to it.

Le Vine:

Yeah, I think that’s all unclassified.

Aaserud:

But the implementation wouldn’t be, of course.

Le Vine:

Probably not.

Aaserud:

If I was going to follow up that.

Le Vine:

That’s right. I don’t know how sensitive the Navy would be on that. You may or may not run into problems on that. Because even though some of the systems have been talked about in the newspaper, that doesn’t mean the Navy will talk to you about them. I’ve learned that too. What’s unclassified is not necessarily open.

Aaserud:

Well, Fred Koether is a perfect source on those problems.

Le Vine:

Yes.

Aaserud:

He knows his ins and outs of that.

Le Vine:

SEE-SAW. The JASONs were involved for a long time in this thing SEE-SAW, this using particle weapons.

Aaserud:

Yes. Brueckner strongly recommended that as a case.

Le Vine:

But that was at least at the time classified. I don’t know if it’s been unclassified or not, but for a long time parts of that were secret. And the Navy took up some of that even when DARPA dropped it as a strategic defense. The Navy was considering putting it on carriers. And you may run into classification problems and maybe not. It looks like 1969 is the first one I see of that.

Aaserud:

1969 — the passive acoustics thing.

Le Vine:

Yeah, internal waves. The re-entry vehicle stuff, which is way before my time, I don’t know. That was what sort of the founding problem was, “Can you make an RV?” And you’ve talked to the people about that.

Aaserud:

Yes, that was what Goldberger and Brueckner and Watson consulted Convair about before they formed JASON.

Le Vine:

That’s sort of what they, I gather, got their teeth into the first time. But I don’t know. Because that was way before my time, and so I don’t know whether it’s a good one to follow or not. The first one that comes to mind, the one of my tenure, would be this acoustics. This report is secret, but I thought this stuff was unclassified. Surface Waves and Internal Waves — unclassified. Internal Waves. My guess is you could get the genesis of it. The bulk of the work is unclassified. Implementation I don’t know. I don’t honestly know that. Here’s a whole bunch of them that are secret. Some of them are unclassified, and here’s a bunch of them that are secret.

Aaserud:

That’s worse.

Le Vine:

That was another thing JASONs looked at. One of the arguments against doing acid rain environmental problems was that it was unclassified. This was discussed in the steering committee. The discussion was: what is JASON? To be a JASON you have to have a TS clearance, or get one. Get a TS clearance. Okay, so JASON was to do classified national security problems that you couldn’t get done someplace else. You have a group of people, they’ve got their clearances, you come together, you have a secure place. But if you do unclassified work you could supposedly make these people consultants for a period of time. You don’t have to go through this whole administrative structure. Again, if JASON is to be unique, one of the uniqueness’s is that it does classified work. You just can’t go and have a summer study and get five people from different universities. That you could do for an ozone study or an acid rain study, assuming they are available. But if it’s secret you just can’t clear somebody overnight. So JASON was a unique reservoir because everybody had TS clearances. And so we shouldn’t get into the unclassified, because that’s doing what other people could do. So that was discussed, that issue too. Now that I think about it, that was relatively late. That was I think in the early 1980s that argument came up. So probably most everything then had a classified nature to it, if for no other reason than it was leading edge of technology possibilities. And these were even ideas like Densepack, which you may have heard of or may not. That was a basing idea for ICBMs for a while. Now it’s gone by the wayside, but the work was all classified when it was done. I don’t know if it’s been ever declassified, but even if the idea became dismissed, it still was done in a secret time, because if it did work out, you didn’t want the bad guys to know about it. So you may have difficulty finding something that’s purely unclassified.

Aaserud:

Was there some pressure from within JASON to do unclassified work, non-defense work, I should say?

Le Vine:

My recollection is that that was much beyond your time period. That idea only came up later.

Aaserud:

I was thinking that perhaps it was one result of the Vietnam experience. That some people felt burnt by that, and that was a way of keeping people.

Le Vine:

There never was unanimity in JASON that I know of about anything, but there was a sizeable group who felt that that work was a mistake. And there’s also a bad flavor that JASON shouldn’t have gotten into psychological and sociological kinds of things. There was a reluctance on the part of a lot of people to get into that again. They should have stuck with physics, and one of the problems was getting into the sociological kinds of things. But that again was over when I came. And I’m sure you’ve looked at the years when people joined. There was this hiatus, you know, when Dashen and Curt Callan came in the late 1960s, but there was several years in which no one joined. It was a definite dearth of time, and that had to do with probably the Vietnam. That’s what sort of divvied up the generations, but there was a dearth of new blood, and maybe new ideas. I think I came at the tail end of that.

Aaserud:

Okay. So it started to improve.

Le Vine:

Because they had Flatté and Muller, Katz, Curt — I think Roger came in 1966 and then Curt came later. I may be wrong about that. I think there was a beginning of infusion of some new blood. But there was several years in which no one joined.

Aaserud:

And that was not a decision of the steering committee, that was just the difficulty of getting new people.

Le Vine:

Yeah, that I don’t know. I think it was out of favor. There have been people who have turned down JASON when I was there because they did not want to work on defense problems. I think that’s gone up and down.

Aaserud:

That’s probably hard to find documentation on, because I would suppose that people were asked very informally first.

Le Vine:

Well, if you look back at the minutes, which you probably have —

Aaserud:

Yes, well, not a full set, I think.

Le Vine:

I remember writing them. You don’t say all that’s said.

Aaserud:

Oh no, of course.

Le Vine:

In some sense the juiciest things from a historical point of view were never written.

Aaserud:

I have a very good example of that here actually. “Instead of incorporating your comments in the minutes, I thought that this form might be better; less likely to get to ARPA.”

Le Vine:

That sounds like — sounds believable.

Aaserud:

That’s from you to Watson in 1975. So you know that’s just an example of it.

Le Vine:

And that was part of the ongoing friction, if you want to say it, between them.

Aaserud:

I was stupid. I didn’t bring the main documents that these comments pertain to. So there was not a big discussion when you were there as to expand JASON towards, you know, biology or sociology. I know there was before your time.

Le Vine:

No. There was none.

Aaserud:

None at all. That was settled when you were there.

Le Vine:

Yes. It was physics. And in fact there was… Let’s see, I can’t tell whether it’s before or after your time. There was an experiment that didn’t work out well that reinforced that. There is one computer scientist really, Despain, but there was another man who was in a related field called Computer Science but different than him.

Aaserud:

One of the younger ones?

Le Vine:

No, he’s an older man. And that didn’t work out. There was a communication… Saul Amarel.

Aaserud:

A person who didn’t stay in JASON?

Le Vine:

That’s correct. And I think the reason was Saul was at Rutgers. He’s a bright guy, he’s in computer science too. There was a communications problem between him and the physicist. There was a definite gulf. And one of the arguments is JASON should be…you know, it’s silly — it’s not silly, it’s small things. It was important when we found a building that all JASONs could be on one floor. That was partly my doing, but it’s clear I was just reflecting other people’s wishes. There was this fear that if you put JASONs on two floors you’d break ‘em up. And the value of JASON is that you can all wander up and down the hallways. And it sounds silly, but it’s important that everybody can communicate. Otherwise you can’t work on the same problems, and oftentimes I think the bright ideas came from bull sessions in the hallways. And so it was important that there was some homogeneity. Physics is heterogeneous enough that you have lots of perspectives, but it is homogeneous to some degree. Saul who, as I said is a bright, bright guy, didn’t fit in. And I think Carl Wunch, who is an oceanographer, had the same problem. Munk in some ways is unusual I think, because he is an oceanographer but can understand physics.

Aaserud:

Allen Peterson perhaps to some extent?

Le Vine:

Yes. But they had Saul, they looked at artificial intelligence, before it was a big fad. I forgot which year that was. But that left him.

Aaserud:

Artificial intelligence. Allen Peterson looked at that to a great extent.

Le Vine:

Yeah. But Saul Amarel made a big effort. As I said, there was a communications problem, there’s difference in languages.

Aaserud:

Which is both personality and discipline of course.

Le Vine:

That’s right. But I think honestly there was never an argument or discussions that I can remember of going beyond physics. No no. Astrophysics was considered a part of physics — astronomy.

Aaserud:

Right. But you see, if you look at the discussions behind establishing JASON in the first place. When Goldberger for example was writing to Wheeler about what kind of people should join JASON, he wrote that theoretical physicists in general is not a good group to join. People would have to have some experimental qualities too. And he thought that the general experimentalist with a theoretical frame of mind was the perfect person to join. He did not think that particle physicists who were only interested in particle physics were good JASONs.

Le Vine:

And that goes probably maybe back to this idea that they’re gonna do things differently than they do in the universities. You have to have somebody who can in a couple weeks pick up some subject and become a semi-expert on it. But if you look in JASON now — well, six years ago — there’s several classes of them. There’s the inventor class, there’s a few of the guys who are inventors, that’s what they do and that’s what they do best, they invent ideas. Then there’s a few of them who are elegant mathematicians. And there’s different kinds of people, depending on where the problem is, you get different kinds of people.

Aaserud:

Yeah. Well Dyson is both of course.

Le Vine:

But if you have some complicated integral, you run down to Dyson, you know. “Freeman, you solve that for me.” But people like Bill Press — I don’t know if you’ve talked to Bill?

Aaserud:

No, I haven’t.

Le Vine:

Bill is an inventor type. When you are looking for some invention, you go to Bill and Paul Horowitz…gadget guys, always. They are much younger, but they were the inventor types. And I think Walter is more that way too. Walter is a conceptual person, and I’m not sure he’s as interested in the gory details. He’d always every couple of years come up with a new idea of what to do in oceanography. I guess the answer to your question is no. I don’t remember any major discussions. It was sort of accepted. There were major discussions whether they wanted women. It wasn’t if they wanted women; could they find a woman. And could they find a woman who wouldn’t be a nominal woman.

Aaserud:

I know of one woman who has been in JASON. That’s after my time. That’s the extent of it.

Le Vine:

I guess there’s two more. Sally Ride I think is a JASON. I’ve never seen her there. I don’t know if I saw her actually. But that’s beyond your time.

Aaserud:

Well I’m jumping now, but I had one more question on my mind, and that’s was there ever a dispute that you remember about the classification of a report between JASON and whatever client who received the report? Did you recommend a classification and…

Le Vine:

…and the government overruled it? Yes. But the way the process worked—because we had some problems, some faux pas I guess is what you say — is that we sent out all reports to the government as if they were secret. Because it didn’t make any difference internally at all, but everything is secret including the waste, and then we just handle everything as secret. Since it had to go to the government before it went out anyway, we treated everything as secret, without, let’s say, stamping every paragraph, but treat it so if afterwards they decided it was secret we could go back and trace it. And then we sent everything to the government under that guise, and then they decided what the classification was.

Aaserud:

Okay. So you didn’t recommend anything in reality.

Le Vine:

Well we did make a recommendation. We did make a recommendation, but you asked if there is a dispute. And I do believe that there were mistakes made on this, that we thought something was unclassified and the government later on decided that it was secret. Things probably got sent to the government unclassified and the government decided it was secret, so what we decided is treat everything secret. Since everybody was cleared, it didn’t make any difference. So I think no. I think one of the things Nierenberg was proud of saying, was — and as far as I know it was correct: “JASON that I know of never was the source of a leak, and never had a security problem that I know of.” And, as far as I know, that’s true. I don’t know what’s happened recently, but as far as I know that’s the case.

Aaserud:

But we’re coming back to the question of the relationship between JASON and academic physics now again, because conceivably some JASON thought that a technical paper he had produced in JASON was so good that he wanted it on his publication record, and he had a strong sense that this is unclassified. And in such a case there might be some kind of dispute, but you don’t remember that.

Le Vine:

You’re asking the question or posing a hypothesis? You were just saying did this ever happen?

Aaserud:

Yes.

Le Vine:

Or are you trying to say, you meant you’ve been told of one that did happen and want me to confirm it?

Aaserud:

No, I have never been told. The only thing I know is that there are cases in which JASON reports led to well-renowned publications in, you know.

Le Vine:

…journals.

Aaserud:

In journals. And without knowing anything, I’m just asking you whether there are instances in which there were articles which JASONs saw as important but they were unable to publish because the government didn’t accept that it was unclassified. That is my question, and now my tape is running out.

Le Vine:

The example I think of was definitely after your time. And I can’t remember how it was used. We had been going back and forth several times with the government as to whether it should be classified or not. I think it finally got published, but I’m not sure how much of it got modified. I know who the author was. If you were asking the question differently, do I ever know of a case in which the government censored something that JASON thought should be unclassified and the government just seemed to arbitrarily and capriciously want to censor, that I cannot recall. Disagreements were sort of over numbers. I think this came down to, “We don’t want that specific number mentioned, because we think that number’s classified.” And the guy would say, “No, but it’s in the handbook,” and they’d fight over this or that, and maybe they’d compromise and they’d say plus or minus something, I don’t know. Nothing comes to mind that somebody felt that they were somehow censored that Secrecy was used as an excuse to keep something out of the press. If that’s what you ask, I can’t think of anything if that’s the case.

Aaserud:

Well, “excuse”, I don’t know. During the early part of the war, you know, all publications that involved fission were prohibited from publication, which of course had the effect that the enemy would understand that something was going on.

Le Vine:

You should ask that question of Dick and Sid. Because one possibility was these mini-subs. They might have a better recollection of that. Sid would probably be the better one to ask. Because if anything my recollection is there may have been some discussion about that, but it’s too vague for me to make a comment. I just don’t remember. It was not a big problem. If it happened, it was an exception.

Aaserud:

Because conceivably it’s not just numbers, but the fact that a certain kind of technical work was done within JASON might be viewed as dangerous.

Le Vine:

This list was classified at one time “for official use only.” The list of JASONs was. I guess the Freedom of Information Act probably stopped that, but for a while JASON was very sensitive about its membership list.

Aaserud:

Well I know they’re sensitive. It took a long time before they trusted me with it. Well, it’s still like that. I mean, I’m not supposed to give it to the National Enquirer or anything.

Le Vine:

At least until the early 1980s there were still pickets at Columbia. I don’t know if they still are there.

Aaserud:

I think it’s been later too. I think I picked up for a while.

Le Vine:

Is that it?