Roy Schwitters

Part 1 – March 22, 1997

Riordan:

Roy, to begin this interview, I want to cover areas in the early 1980s, when you were becoming involved in the SSC. Were you present at Snowmass in 1982?

Schwitters:

No, I was not at the ‘82 meeting. In that period I was deeply involved with CDF [Collider Detector at Fermilab] at Fermilab, and that was the real build-up time, as we were designing and building it. I went out for one of the Snowmass meetings, but was really just sort of peripheral to some of the sessions.

Riordan:

How did you actually become involved in the SSC? Weren’t you on one of the Boards of Overseers?

Schwitters:

Yes, the intellectual tie was through CDF and doing that kind of physics. I think it was an important tie because, as you know, my background was in the e⁺e^- world, but I became interested around the time I left SLAC in the possibility of hadron beams to address the same kind of physics at extremely high energies. And so, I had moved to Harvard and was interested in Isabelle, which didn't go forward. Then I got involved in the Tevatron. It was really an intellectual progression in the mid-’80s that led me into this physics, and actually the SSC, which was being discussed intensively around Fermilab and the community. And in parallel with that I was involved in HEPAP [High Energy Physics Advisory Panel] in that period and was present at some of those discussions, which ultimately led to the setting up of the URA oversight of the design group. There was an ad hoc meeting of how it should be done with just random members and HEPAP members and others in the community. I was brought into that, made some suggestions, but I was not a member of the Board. I was quite busy at CDF and didn't particularly have the time or interest. But later on, like a second generation of Board members, I came on board in ’86 or ’87.

Also, I think a key interaction was, at Fermilab, I was working with Chris Quigg a lot on a number of these ideas and together we wrote a Science article on the physics objectives of the SSC. We had talked a lot about these things before he went out to the Central Design Group [CDG], in the period when we were developing CDF. Then we were actually asked informally by [DOE Assistant Director for High Energy Physics Bill] Wallenmeyer to provide what I would call a serious briefing book on the SSC. Namely, Wallenmeyer had given HEPAP a series of six or seven questions about the scientific merit, why is it needed, and so on — basically the key questions about the SSC. What he asked for was answers to those questions. From some people he got rather perfunctory, straightforward correct answers. It was clear it didn't satisfy him, so what happened is that Quigg, myself, and Panofsky worked for some time to prepare serious answers to those questions, and those evolved from one set of transparencies to a detailed set of notebooks on background material, references, and the like. For me it was an interesting experience because one had to hone the arguments down to the one pager that would become so important in subsequent interactions and Congress and the like.

Riordan:

These were to be directed towards lawyers and Congressional staff?

Schwitters:

Yeah, directed towards staff but principally towards Congress. What Wallenmeyer wanted was the answer for whatever purposes, but he wanted them sufficiently bulletproof, to the point, correct, defendable, and to see what the case for the SSC looked like. The date was March ’86. That really was my most intense early involvement with the effort, preparing that with Chris and Panofsky.

Riordan:

So, this was the output of all three of you?

Schwitters:

It was the output of all three. We did it at three levels. One had sort of bullets for transparencies, the second was written paragraphs, and then the third one, which was a separate volume, is background and reference materials, and papers.

Riordan:

This is something Wallenmeyer would turn around and use in preparing testimony for whoever was the political appointee?

Schwitters:

I assume so. In fact, we circulated it in this crude form broadly. Lots of people wanted it and we just xeroxed it.

Riordan:

March 1986 was also the time of the CDG conceptual design report.

Schwitters:

That's correct. It was coming together with that for the internal reviews. Ultimately, I believe it was the basis for Trivelpiece's briefing to Reagan, which came later in that period. Another historical aspect of this... I got a call from an editor of I think a now-defunct Washington magazine called American Politics. He wanted a brief article on the SSC. Having gone through this, I abstracted it into a popular article for the SSC. Trivelpiece gives that some importance in that, namely, unbeknownst to him, John Herrington saw the article and sort of the word went down, tell us more about the SSC. So, it caught his attention, his imagination, and then he entertained briefings. That's what Trivelpiece told me. You need to check the facts on that.

Riordan:

At what point were you serving on the Board of Overseers?

Schwitters:

Just about this time. When I came on, the Board of Overseers had been up and functioning for some period.

Riordan:

Do you have any reflections on that process? The whole CDG and the separate Board of Overseers was set up to distance the SSC project to some extent from Fermilab.

Schwitters:

Well, from the site-selection standpoint the main idea was to make it pure somehow. I thought the process needed a board. It was independent of Fermilab. It had a good group. I personally think it may have been too separated. Being out at Berkeley, for example, just made the logistics a little harder than being in Illinois. I personally argued at some of these meetings that Argonne would have facilitated our communications around the country a little easier. The Board itself, I thought, was a remarkably high-level and interesting group of people that took the project very seriously. Of course, I knew the high energy physics side of it, but the industrial side had some extremely good people who were helpful, like Bob Frosch from GM. John Deutch was on it. He was very provocative. I don't know what was motivating him on the thing. The main issues at the Board level had not so much to do with the political scene, but how to transition from the CDG operation into beginning to design a real project and a real laboratory. The CDG was enjoined from thinking about management issues and these other issues and these other generic forms of buildings and things as needed to support the technical side of the laboratories. By the time I got on with clear progress on the design, the issue in front of the Board was: how do you go from a CDG to a real lab? So that occupied a lot of the discussion, not “Will it be supported?” The government will have to analyze this [design] stuff and make a decision. Let’s be optimistic and assume it will go forward. What are the managerial steps needed to make it happen? My conception of the Board was that it was not the political side so much.

Riordan:

Was Leon on this Board?

Schwitters:

I don't believe he was. First of all, Leon was identified [with Fermilab]. Clearly there would be a site-selection process, and he was clearly identified with one particular site. There was one technical area that the Board was concerned about in the time I was there, and that was the magnet [issue], the technical progress on that. Needless to say, that was the topic which occupied us for a long time.

Riordan:

Did you get involved at all in the controversy that erupted regarding the high-field magnet versus the Texas Accelerator Center superferric design?

Schwitters:

The Board, no. Not to my knowledge. That was done by other committees under Maury [Tigner, director of the CDG]. It was his role and responsibility to review that stuff, and I personally think he did a good job.

Riordan:

This question was something taken all the way to the steps of Congress. It clearly entered the whole political realm, and you're saying that the Board of Overseers was just a passive observer?

Schwitters:

We saw it as a technical issue, and there were technical judgments being made. As I recall, we tried to support Maury in making those reports, and there were serious issues that would come later when the lab was set up, but I don't recall contention between the TAC designs and what the CDG was planning as a major Board issue.

Riordan:

What about the projected costs of the plant?

Schwitters:

The Board did not go in and do any independent reviews of this. The Board was trying to support Maury and get this done, and obviously everybody was concerned about costs and whether the project was viable. We did not do an independent cost assessment. We read Maury's materials. That whole level of activity was considered the purview of DOE and CDG.

Riordan:

You can look at that as one of the steps in cost increase. In 1983, the numbers were being thrown around at the low end at 1 billion dollars and at the high end at 3 billion dollars.

Schwitters:

It sticks in my mind that the numbers were more like three.

Riordan:

The Texatron idea — and without serious cost accounting...

Schwitters:

Frankly, that group didn't have any credibility on these kind of things. I had known some of those people from working on CDF, and I knew that their cost estimates on CDF were not credible. Again, in my own mind, the group that was really doing things, the CDG, was the credible group. I had been asked by Tigner to chair part of a detector-scoping exercise to estimate the generic cost of detectors, and we did that, wrote a report and sent it in. The numbers that came out from that were reduced, for whatever reason. It was evident from all this experience that there was extreme pressure to keep those figures low — those that were being discussed with CDG.

Riordan:

You mean the $4.4 billion was really before the DOE got its hands on it?

Schwitters:

The $4.4 billion figure was what we would have called, during the heyday of the budget debate, a “total estimated cost” involving the accelerator itself. The accelerator and holes in the ground, not the salaries. Now, in fact, that figure was the one that went into Bush's first budget that we came to deal with — $5.9 billion. It was the same $4.4 billion plus inflation and the detectors. The step when it went from the crude estimates of $3.3 billion to $4.4 billion by the CDG group didn't surprise me. I had experience with big detectors and things. The unfortunate thing is that you tend to forget things in budgets at that stage. The more accounting you do, unfortunately, the sign goes in only one direction.

Riordan:

The main thing I was getting at was whether there was any concern voiced at the Board of Overseers as to whether the numbers were getting too large?

Schwitters:

I can't recall any coherent or organized discussion on that. It was of general concern but somehow it was really the responsibility of the DOE and OMB to come back and tell us what was possible. The Board felt the responsible thing to do was to say what this machine would cost. And then it was the responsibility of the political side to see how to fit that into the budget. As I recall, that would have been the tone of the conversation. If you ask, “Was there ever a debate in the Board to seriously rescope the project?” I don't recall that ever coming up at that point. It did come up later as the lab was formed. I wasn't part of that.

Riordan:

So, you weren't on the Board when the CDG design came in?

Schwitters:

I think that's right. I came on after this was done, that I know. It was really a little bit later. Our main issues were then getting into a mobilization mode — into a lab mode and magnet orientation.

Riordan:

Also, didn't you serve on the National Academy Site Selection Committee?

Schwitters:

Yes, I did.

Riordan:

Specifically, what portion of the analysis?

Schwitters:

The way we did that was we divided up — I became an expert on some of the sites. We cross-linked the studies. Then I was mainly involved in the question of regional resources, which was the second-level criterion in the process, and we looked carefully at that. The questions there had to do with infrastructure and academic infrastructure.

Riordan:

Did it become evident at that point that there really were two leading candidates?

Schwitters:

If you don't mind, I'll back up a bit. First of all, you have to remember that times have changed. What impressed me was the energy in those proposals. For example, there were proposals from non-traditional physics areas. The point is that a number of states saw this as a vehicle to higher education and technology. It was really gratifying. It was impressive to read the work and the energy that went into the proposals. It went beyond the obvious boosterism side into a lot of people seeing this as an important thing to do. The second point is that I looked at it knowing full well I would probably play a role in it, either as a scientist or some other role, so that was my perspective. My feeling for my colleagues and others was — in a sense I had to ask myself, “Would this site be acceptable for physicists?” Would it be a place where a) it would work technically, and b) where people could come and do good science? In that sense, when we got down to the short list, I truly believed — some were better than others from a purely personal point of view of a visiting scientist — that the short list was the acceptable list. I made a pact with myself that I would be willing to go to any one of them, and I really mean that.

Now, to answer your question. It is clear that there were two, perhaps three, outstanding sites. There was a fourth site that was my personal favorite was in New York state, but the state declined to submit a final proposal. It was called Walkill Valley, near the Hudson Valley, near Woodstock. But technically and quality-of-life wise, it was a magnificent site. The fact is that Fermilab was clearly a strong site. The Texas proposal was without a doubt the best in terms of the quality of presentation, thoughtfulness in the document, and completeness of the answers. It was a very professional piece of work. There were a couple of others. There were some sleepers that I didn't expect to be so good, and one of those was North Carolina, factoring in a sense of countryside, what it looks like.

Riordan:

You said you focused on the regional resources?

Schwitters:

Yes, exactly. In my mind, the two issues were geology and regional resources. There the Texas site was clearly superior.

Riordan:

This is a general question I might have asked at the very beginning. Do you have any reflections on this whole process of throwing the site-selection process open to the whole country? The reason I ask it is that one of the most common comments I hear is that we never should have proposed it anywhere besides Fermilab. On the one hand, from the physicists’ standpoint, Fermilab had a lot of merit. From the standpoint of building political support on the project, Texas had a lot of merit. In retrospect, in throwing it open to the whole United States and then disappointing 42 or 43 proposers you perhaps create a lot of enemies?

Schwitters:

First of all, I don't find it terribly productive to rethink these things. On the balance, I thought it was the right thing to do. I took it as a given that it had to be done that way. That it was a tradition that such things in this country, to get funded, had to be spread around. I saw real benefits — you could see it in reading the reports that parts of the country really wanted this, and there would perhaps be special opportunities there. It may not have happened. I would have been perfectly happy to have another Fermilab. I guess I saw that as an appropriate thing to do at the time. These states are not stupid. They knew full well that there was going to be one site selected. They wanted a level playing field and a fair process, and it was inevitable that there would be some disappointment if they didn't win it, but I never thought that was a good argument against trying. These states are very sophisticated. They have lots of proposals coming and going. They knew they were going to invest an amount of money to put together a good proposal, so they knew what they were doing. I didn't see that as more negative than the positive side of getting more interest. And we saw that. States that were in the process seriously — I had been in communications with their governors — I simply asked them: now the site’s going here, we want to be an open facility for education as well as research, and we got a lot of positive feedback. I guess I don't buy the argument that that was a fatal mistake, and we would have succeeded by keeping it at Fermilab. My guess is that it never would have gotten started. It would have been always sort of little bits and pieces. The question is, do you die by a thousand little nicks or do you get your head chopped off, and we got our head chopped off.

Riordan:

This is certainly an excellent way to make the whole body politic aware of the project, with thirty states proposing for it. People begin to think about what you’re doing.

Schwitters:

It was in the news. I think it helped form an impression. It helped to form a milieu for the industrial scientific consortium to form the IISSC process, which was clearly a powerful body because the project went forward.

Riordan:

But at the same time, you could see the nucleus of the opposition forming in states like Michigan, which strongly objected to the decision. Didn't they ask the GAO to do a study or something like that?

Schwitters:

Yes, there certainly were sharp critics of the SSC that came in some sense from the disgruntled states. One of the most egregious mistakes in my mind was ruling out of order the trans-border site in New York State. It was actually in our packet. We could have read the thing. It turns out it never would have made the short list of proposals because it didn't have adequate geology, regional resources, and the like — at least we were told. The proponents of that site simply wanted to be treated fairly. For whatever reason it was announced by the DOE that they were going to ask that the committee not review that one. I think it was a big mistake because, I am told, this influenced [New York Congressman Sherwood] Boehlert’s antagonism toward the project. We found in the end that the proposals either stood up or stood down — it wasn't necessary. Michigan, what can I say. In this day and age, it’s the vogue in the country that people appeal decisions in the court. In my opinion it was a fair process. Michigan was on the short list, and in the end DOE took the responsibility of narrowing down the short list. I think they got the right answer. I would have been satisfied to work at any one of them.

Riordan:

As I understand it, the National Academy did not set up any rating system?

Schwitters:

That is right—it was clearly laid out in the ground rules. We would find a so-called best-qualified list. Would it be acceptable scientifically to have the SSC at this place? Would it work technically?

Riordan:

Was there a naturally occurring cut? Could you see a peak and a valley?

Schwitters:

It’s like assigning grades to students. You would like to have a valley — it makes it easier. As I recall, there were a couple of states on the borderline, and we had long arguments about those, whether to include them or not. As I recall the final debates, one was included and one wasn't.

Riordan:

California was clearly out?

Schwitters:

Oh, yes.

Riordan:

Because of the geology?

Schwitters:

Yes. They had two sites: one around Davis and the site northeast of Modesto. That site was somewhat better technically, but it was too far away from airports and things.

Riordan:

Were you aware of any attempts at this stage to bring political influence into the decision-making process?

Schwitters:

No. The only thing that was in the air was this question of the financial incentives offer, but there was an amendment to say that those would not be a part of the process. And so there was obviously a fear or threat that some state — and a lot of it was aimed at Texas — would somehow buy the project. But I was not aware of any at all.

Riordan:

This, I understand, is where you first met and became acquainted with Rafe Kasper?

Schwitters:

Correct. He was the staff director of that committee. He became a good friend.

Riordan:

At what point did you become aware that you were being considered for the Director of the SSC Laboratory?

Schwitters:

There were comments during those years by some people. I guess it was in that period, 1987-88, thinking about it, through comments, that it was a possibility. I had had a reasonably successful experience with bringing up CDF and was interested in the science. Finally, it came to a real head when I was asked to leave the Board of Overseers because they were getting into the director search process.

Riordan:

Do you know exactly when that was?

Schwitters:

I think it was around August, summer of ’88, as I recall. I remember actually being on a vacation. I was asked to fly to Fermilab where the overseers meeting was discussing this. That's when it became crystal clear where I was in this.

Riordan:

As I understand it, the search was done by a subcommittee?

Schwitters:

That's my understanding. The person that called me and offered me the position was [Cornell Professor Boyce] McDaniel, [Chair of the Board].

Riordan:

But before that you were aware...?

Schwitters:

I was aware.

Riordan:

Did you ever have to participate in the process, go for an interview?

Schwitters:

I might have submitted a resume. That was about it. They knew me from being on the Board. I don't recall a formal interview process.

Riordan:

As I understand it, it was really Pief [Panofsky] who put forward the idea that the Director of the SSC should really be somebody who was going to stay with it the ten years it took to build it?

Schwitters:

That was discussed by the Board in the spring of that year.

Riordan:

What did you think about that idea at that time?

Schwitters:

I thought it was right too. I thought the person who was responsible for pulling the laboratory together ought to be deeply responsible for its physics program. I felt that way strongly for the following reasons. I always felt disappointment in the physics output of the early Fermilab, where you had a brilliant machine — it was exciting. And yet the physics, the detectors, and the program weren't good enough in my view. And the measure of that is quite simply that the results — the bubble-chamber stuff and those early things — were done by CERN, which developed them a few years after Fermilab. I felt tied to the SLAC model where the experimental apparatus is an integral part of the whole process and has to be balanced with the same set of priorities. You can't give all the priority to one side or the other. I supported that view.

Riordan:

The reason I mention this point is because that philosophy of leadership choice would effectively rule out someone like Leon Lederman. What it really meant was that somebody of our own generation would have to be chosen. Because of events that happened in the ’70s, the pool was not that deep with people who had solid management experience on major projects.

Schwitters:

It’s a frighteningly shallow pool. And it’s a problem for the country. I was really hoping among other things that we would refill that pool by [building] the SSC. We simply had to bring in good young people to do that. There were a number of other good people at SLAC who had that experience.

Riordan:

That fit that definition?

Schwitters:

[Marty] Breidenbach did.

Riordan:

But he didn't really have that in ’88. He was just beginning.

Schwitters:

Carlo [Rubbia]. Burt [Richter]. There were some people but not enough, and that's a problem. I lay part of that responsibility on Fermilab. That was another one of my concerns about the Fermilab legacy.

Riordan:

Inevitably, we have to talk about you as the choice over Maury [Tigner].

[End of side of tape recording]

Schwitters:

As I understand it, the subcommittee at URA did not do a particularly good job of interviewing the CDG staff about their wishes on the Director. But I know that people from the CDG came to me in that early period after I was announced and complained bitterly about it. For some reason there wasn't a full discussion with those folks. I do know it caused a great deal of unhappiness and on either my first or very soon, a quick visit thereafter, McDaniel and Marburger came out to CDG with me on a very early visit. The point is that it was obviously a very sensitive matter. That got off to a bad start.

Riordan:

Do you think it was more the process of excluding them from the decision- making process?

Schwitters:

I am sure the decision bothered them because they were working with this guy and he was a good guy. I was also told — in addition to that — that the process was flawed. The people who came to me were concerned about this, and they were concerned with my viability, and that their input simply didn't get into the process. The way they put it to me was that they could have accepted any decision as long as they had had the chance to get their input in. They weren't about to be against me, but they wanted to get their input in before [the decision was made].

Riordan:

Which reminds me why Pief was always so effective in the decision-making process. He was very firm, but he always tried to make whoever was present in the room feel like they had a say.

Schwitters:

Correct. And [the CDG] people didn't feel that way. What ensued were a number of visits and negotiations from day one, whenever that must have been — September through the following January or so — discussions with Maury. I went a number of times out to Berkeley. Obviously, the logistics were complicated. In the midst of all this process, we had to write the URA management proposal for the DOE. It turns out that that was a major effort involving all kinds of policy matters with some real content later on, as well as just the grunt work of putting together the proposal. Anyway, in that process, I had many sessions with Maury. I had known him for years before that and attempted to find a role for him and failed.

Riordan:

Wasn't he on the proposal as Project Manager?

Schwitters:

We discussed Project Manager, we discussed Deputy [Director], we discussed all kinds of things. I thought Maury was very difficult to talk to. Clearly, he appeared to be very disappointed after not being chosen. All I can say is that he made some proposals which, at various times, I thought he was on, I thought he was off. The Board, as you can probably appreciate, was badgering me and pounding on me — McDaniel was being a little more quiet — was urging me to find a role and we were having lots of discussions.

Riordan:

What roles were you selecting?

Schwitters:

As I said, Deputy Director, Project Manager, lots of things. And it never really converged on something that Maury obviously felt gave him what he wanted and would work out. Some of this gets into really personal stuff that I would prefer... I don't think it’s fair to divulge because it was not a good negotiation. I certainly respected — and still do — Maury. But I had the uncomfortable feeling that if we couldn't have a heart-to-heart conversation, it could cause some uncomfortable feelings down the line. I always felt there was a lot of reserve there. For whatever reason he seemed disappointed and was uncomfortable working with me. It certainly made me nervous — what might happen downstream — but I wanted to explore all possibilities.

Riordan:

I think the problem he had was that he wasn't the Director.

Schwitters:

I don't know. Maury had a very clear view of what he wanted to do. He wanted to be like Bob Wilson, and he said that in different ways. It was clear he wanted total authority on lots of the detailed stuff that couldn't be granted. It was just a classic sort of conflict of styles, and what I can only believe to be profound disappointment that he was not chosen. It was really terrible not being able to form a working relationship and bring him in, because I knew full well that we needed the best people in the country. It certainly is naive on my part to assume this, but I was hoping that we could break down some of these things. There was certainly plenty of work for everyone.

Riordan:

I think, as a result, a number of people from CDG ultimately decided against coming on?

Schwitters:

What can I say? The Central Design Group was a very important, special group, and most of the senior people in the end didn't come. Their loyalty was clearly to Maury. And that's great, but it certainly made our life hard — doubly hard — in the sense of trying to get these people, because we clearly wanted them, and losing them and all the trauma of that.

Riordan:

In the process of selecting the Director, the DOE let it be known to the URA that they did not want to see Maury as the Director. He had had a number of run-ins with various members of the Department.

Schwitters:

I had heard comments to that effect. My view was to come up with a good plan, and I would have fought like hell for it. I never heard anything from DOE on that.

Riordan:

You came in [onto the Board] after the effects of that?

Schwitters:

That’s right. And that never came up to my level in the Board.

Riordan:

You mentioned that you actually took part in the writing of the management and operations proposal?

Schwitters:

Correct.

Riordan:

That had to be done in a way that, whatever site was chosen ...

Schwitters:

Correct. You actually had to sign an affidavit that key managers would go anywhere.

Riordan:

You were down to seven choices [of possible sites]?

Schwitters:

I knew the list of those choices, yes.

Riordan:

But wasn't it also true that the proposal had to be put together in such a way that it was a catholic proposal? Wasn't CDG excluded from that process also?

Schwitters:

From my understanding, yes. It had to be done in a way that would just use information that was in the public domain. It had to be a competitive proposal. There was a lot of concern that the whole process could be held up due to the fairness issue. You pointed out the GAO stuff with Michigan. There were a few questions about fairness of the site selection. People were trying to be formal yet very careful on those kinds of things so as not to raise those types of questions. I interpreted it as a positive thing for the DOE to avoid any legal hangups on disgruntled groups who might find a hook on which to hang their arguments.

Riordan:

Pief said that they argued with Salgado to not even have this RFP put out?

Schwitters:

Correct. He wanted to simply go in and [write] a letter contract. That was a subject of discussion in my tenure on the URA.

Riordan:

Do you have any reflection on that?

Schwitters:

I think obviously that would have been a better way to go. But with this sort of procurement mentality in the DOE, it was a non-starter. My reflections are that's the way it was. Pief became viewed as an anachronism within the Department. Writing that proposal in the end wasn't all that bad. It had some real merit to it. Again, its like the site-selection thing. I accepted it.

Riordan:

This is the point when discussions about industry involvement must have come up.

Schwitters:

Of course. We had the issue of — should the URA team directly be, in the management sense, affiliated with industry. That came up directly in the proposal and, as you know, we did team with two industrial companies.

Riordan:

Was [Douglas] Pewitt a strong advocate of that?

Schwitters:

Yes, he was. His view was that guys are not to be trusted. We needed [to have] management that can hold the line, which of course is not a fair representation of the way physicists had managed things. But that was what was out there. As it turns out — once again, I have to get personal here, and these are confidences — this is an area of unending disappointment, and what we did was wrong so there is plenty of blame to go around. The question is oversight of the conventional construction. Jim Sanford was a guy at CDG. Jim Sanford had a lot of experience with that as sort of a physics guru — Jim and Tim Toohig. They did know a lot about that. The issue was the management and oversight of the conventional construction. Pewitt — it wasn't just Pewitt — was saying you guys don't have the strength. To manage that [activity], you need to get your so-called customer’s representatives in the business — very strong and experienced people who will oversee these people. Then we heard proposals that we actually get people from an architect/engineering group to help, to be brought into the management. This would be positively viewed from the DOE side. But it also had some merit to it, because Tim and Jim didn't know how to manage these people. It was a dismal failure, because the company we got [Sverdrup Corporation] was going from a real engineering company with a great tradition in that [business] into essentially a strip-mall management [firm]. They had lost their technical soul, and we got one turkey and one guy who was just too weak to do this.

We then brought down the next guy from the [high energy physics] community — Bob Matyas from Cornell — a friend of lots of people. He had helped Wilson and company. He and Tim and Jim — in the end Rafe [Kasper] did our selection process, of the architect/engineering firm — and [when] it came to negotiating the contract, the fact is we got taken to the cleaners. There were criticisms of our strength in certain areas in that early period, and they weren't all wrong. A slightly more successful side of that was EG&G. They came on and essentially provided us with administrative services and things, which helped us mobilize. They rented space, they brought the people in, got the furniture. They're sort of action guys — they get stuff done. A lot of people didn't like them. We really had some pretty good guys there. In that early phase — in the fall when we were bringing in industry — I supported it and, like everything, some of it really was helpful and some was a disaster. The problem was within the lab, every disaster just proved these industrial guys were bad news. And that aggravated a lot of other fears on the part of the scientists — that this wasn't a scientific project, it was a military-industrial complex project. That perception was very powerful, very negative. But we wouldn't have gotten as far as we did without these guys.

Riordan:

Lets go back to the proposal, which is really the policy statement that then sets the tone. This was made, as I understand it, with the fear that there was going to be a competing proposal from Martin Marietta and maybe someone else?

Schwitters:

That's correct. In that context we fully assumed there would be another proposal. Martin Marietta for one, and certainly someone else for another.

Riordan:

And Pewitt argued that without a significant industry component you could well lose this [competition].

Schwitters:

I am sure he made that argument. That was not my rationale. My personal rationale was that I saw a desperate need for technical help to be able to mobilize and get together. I saw it as an opportunity. Again, I really felt that physicists should be doing physics, thinking about the experiments and such things. A lot of it was going to be routine and difficult management engineering that you wanted to pay these guys to come in, do it, and then they go away, and have the physicists concentrating on the physics. I felt that politically, downstream, it was clear by then… IISSC was up. The SSC was a great dream for people. You could say it was a money dream. Maybe that's right, but I am not quite so cynical. I think people were really wrapped up in the idea of such an outrageously large and exciting project, and wanted [to have] a policy of inclusion. I wanted people to be a part of it. There was plenty of work to do. I saw it as an opportunity. Some of it succeeded, and some of it failed miserably.

Riordan:

Was it set up with the industry component answerable to you?

Schwitters:

Yes. It was always according to the Director.

Riordan:

So what was the problem in the community?

Schwitters:

Damned if I know. You tell me. You know our community. They have certain images of things that aren't always exactly right.

Riordan:

Did people feel that long-standing members in the high-energy field had to be in all of the key management positions?

Schwitters:

Some people did. And they’re not wrong. It goes back to my point, in the end the scientific output has to be the driving goal. But there's so much management to do and so many difficult problems beyond the scope of [the community and its] experience, where in retrospect I just have no question that we needed to bring in people with different kinds of experience. You don't need them later in the running phase of the lab. But that was a fundamental tension.

Riordan:

Wasn't the reliance on industry also partly the result of the difficulty of recruiting physicists to come to Texas?

Schwitters:

Yes.

Riordan:

And for every physicist that didn't come down, you would be inclined to turn to industry?

Schwitters:

Sure. But in the end, and it was very much so in the beginning because it was useful. You've made the point, and I'll just say I agree that it was difficult to recruit physicists to come to Texas. In the CDG days... I'd be curious to hear your survey on this one — as to how much of it was me vs. Maury, and how much of it was Texas. I don't know the answer to that. But a lot of it does hinge on the Texas question. Established physicists, for various reasons, didn't want to move here. In the end, we got a terrific group of young people who were not known, not established yet, who were coming back from serving postdocs and other things, and who were a little more willing to come. But in those early days, the answer to your question is — yeah, we needed people who were technically competent. This is crucial to us because saving money on the project demands time pressure — you've got to get things done on a schedule and you've got to make decisions or you die. You spend lots of money and you don't accomplish anything. The contemplative attitude that we take to research is not appropriate. We're at war here, with budgets and deadlines, and so that was an area where different kinds of expertise were needed. There was a very important cultural tension that existed, especially in the early days. And anyone who was hesitant about coming to Texas, all they had to do was point to the industrial stuff as yet another reason not to come down here. We were such awful people, worried about the military-industrial complex or profits.

Riordan:

Were your hands tied to some extent by the DOE in this recruiting? I refer to the one example I am most familiar with — Rene and Tony Donaldson would have gone down had they been offered an increase in salary over what they were getting at SLAC and LBL.

Schwitters:

Yes, sure.

Riordan:

They didn't like the idea of moving to Texas, but at least for the [high-energy physics] community they would have gone down.

Schwitters:

Right. We had a hell of a time on salaries. I tried and tried and tried to get a plan that Bob Wilson had, which was some gold stars... It was a continual hassle. We would get good people down here and negotiate a salary, and at the last moment the DOE would say, “Sorry, too high, you have to come down by three thousand bucks,” or something similar.

Riordan:

So, the DOE was micromanaging at that level that early in the game.

Schwitters:

Absolutely. Day one. Worse than that, it was manipulating those numbers.

Riordan:

One person I have heard physicists complaining about is a particular member of the industrial contingent, Tom Bush. They felt an accelerator physicist should have been in that position as head of magnet development. Can you comment on that — on Tom Bush?

Schwitters:

That's a pretty complicated story. I looked pretty carefully around at people working in that area within the community, and asked some physicists, who did not want to come [down to Texas]. I was not impressed with Tom Kirk — you brought up his name. He was running the magnet program for CDG, and I didn't think he was capable of doing what would have to become a multi-hundred-million-dollar research and engineering job. It was a huge job. I knew that. I was frankly dissatisfied with what I saw the CDG was doing on the magnets. It wasn't even close to the scale it would take. Their magnets were failing. I had a review committee that Gus Voss chaired, and we got a polite but rather critical review from the first committee I appointed on this question. I got very strong opinions from senior people at accelerators around the world, like Japan, on this matter. Of the people I could have recruited, I didn't see anyone in the community that could do it.

I had heard through this management process... we had met Admiral Bob Wertheim, a friend of Pief, who was an absolutely stellar guy, does management very well, and technical systems... he recommended Bush. Tom had been working in some Stealth projects at the Skunk Works and elsewhere, and came highly recommended as a technical guy. That's how we came to meet Mr. Bush. Tom came in, he does have a physics background, and in the end he succeeded. He [eventually] made a product and was industrializing it. He had lots of problems. He was certainly a lightning rod as far as the [high-energy physics] community was concerned. He had a loyal and a fabulous group. He was a guy who could put together a group. In the end, it was a ragtag outfit of some wonderful characters. Tom himself did a number of things that would be exasperating to relations with the scientific community — it would drive me nuts. We had some other real management difficulties, but you had to give him credit. He had a group of young guys who were doing a great job on the magnets.

Riordan:

His industry experience — or maybe I should say procurement experience — was a real key. This guy was managing a billion dollars of procurement.

Schwitters:

Absolutely.

Riordan:

And was that the reason you could not find any corresponding candidate among the science community?

Schwitters:

It was like what we talked about earlier. There was a rather shallow [pool] of management experience in our community, especially at that time. Listen, a few other people had done things like that. John Peoples — he didn't want to come down. I offered him a number of possibilities. I didn't get to many other names.

Riordan:

From within the community?

Schwitters:

From within the community. There were some other names. We talked to a bunch of people. I went out to JPL [Jet Propulsion Laboratory] to find out about people who had managed various deep-space projects. There were some very good people there. They were getting into the very same situation like we are. People were doing projects alone. There was one extremely good guy we talked to, and he didn't want to leave Pasadena. So it’s this kind of person, who can think through a multi-year, billion-dollar effort, that's a rare breed. And at least have some appreciation that procurement is not trivial. Most of our colleagues think it’s trivial. It’s not that way when you’re in the billion-dollar class.

Riordan:

Well, especially with the magnets. Helen Edwards complains about Tom Bush — that his philosophy was, “Give me a blueprint and I will go procure it for you.” Whereas we see the process within the community as more evolutionary.

Schwitters:

Well, yes, and a part of it is Tom's style. And I think it’s a fair criticism. On the other side, Tom is better than that. He's an engineering developer. He knows there has to be feedback, but he wants to know what are the key parameters. “What do I have to control? How do I do this?” He was not as enamored as we are by some of the scientific detail, but his depth goes beyond what you just said. It really does, although he projects a flip style that gives that impression. In the end he actually had a pretty good relationship with Rae Stiening[?]. Rae was serving, if you can believe it, as a guru over there. But Tom had this young group of guys, Arnell? — this young Frenchman who was out at CDG. He was a theorist, and they had to rediscover details of eddy currents that had been lost from the Tevatron. In the end, they got to a rather sophisticated level [of understanding]. Jerry Dugan is a much more level-headed type who had a good relationship with Bush and company. The problem was that Tom would stand up in a meeting, and if he got nervous, he would give a bad impression.

Riordan:

As I understand it, Maury Tigner's name was on the proposal to manage and operate the SSC, but it was really only his name? Was he on board in spirit at that time, or was he just lending his name to the document?

Schwitters:

I am trying to remember. I don't think his name was on it.

Riordan:

It was on it as deputy director or project manager.

Schwitters:

It was certainly on there for awhile.

Riordan:

What's telling is that there is no resumé for him, although there are resumés for the others.

Schwitters:

You corrected me. The RFP that asked for the proposal required that we name four individuals, and they did not include the deputy director. They included the head of accelerator physics, the director, the head of civil construction, and the head of the business office. Those are the four names that came with resumés because that was required in the RFP. Now you’re asking me a more difficult question. Was Tigner on board? In my view, I would have been delighted to have had him on as deputy director. This document was put together during the period we talked about earlier — trying to find him a role in lab management. Obviously that role had not been worked out satisfactorily. He didn't really join us ever. So, this was put down as a work in progress during our discussions.

Riordan:

Okay, because as I recall, soon after the DOE accepted this proposal (because they didn't have any other choice), Maury decided by March 1989 that he was going to go back to Cornell.

Schwitters:

He actually joined Bechtel. He decided... and I think the timing must have been around January. We had a brainstorming meeting on finding personnel; we retreated to a little place in Tennessee. We decided just to gather in Tullahoma, Tennessee. It was a number of the... [?], Jim Leiss was there, a lot of people who were friends of the project, for a brainstorming session on names. Maury was there. And it was around that time — I don't remember precisely — that he really decided that, no, he didn't find anything suitable. What he did was decide to join — I’m blocking on the fellow’s name because he was a BOO member for awhile. Another person, a guy from Bechtel, who I tried to recruit as project manager, gave Maury a job working at Bechtel for awhile. I have forgotten when he went back to Cornell.

Riordan:

You had considered Maury as project manager?

Schwitters:

Yes.

Riordan:

Given my distant viewpoint, that strikes me as perhaps the place where he could make the biggest contribution.

Schwitters:

Of course. We had lots of discussions, negotiations, requirements, and philosophical ideas, and it just didn't close.

Riordan:

Did he have any problems working with Helen?

Schwitters:

Let me say this. He had a very specific list of people he demanded in key roles, that at least as it was put to me, was his demand.

Riordan:

Were they CDG people?

Schwitters:

Yes, but they were in top-level roles and, for example, did not provide roles for Helen and others. There were very clear conflicts with other parts of the management grouping.

Riordan:

So very early in the game you went to Helen? Before this issue was resolved?

Schwitters:

Yes. I had to have someone who was head of accelerator physics and who would sign up to go anywhere. We put her resumé in there to be the key person for that. And she was willing to do that.

Riordan:

And this all had to be done on fairly short notice?

Schwitters:

Sure did. Now Helen's role was that of a named individual — there was this distinction. These four had to sign up and be ready to go anywhere.

Riordan:

It strikes me as particularly odd that one of the positions for which they did not ask for the name is project manager?

Schwitters:

Well, the whole thing was odd — how they structured this thing. One can only assume that they were planning to manage the project out of DOE.

Riordan:

It did not seem right that they were asking for the names of the three or four most important figures?

Schwitters:

Well, that's how the RFP was structured.

Riordan:

Would I be wrong in interpreting that as reflecting a desire to delete the project manager itself?

Schwitters:

That's what I said. I think it certainly raises question.

Riordan:

You brought in Dick Briggs as one way to replace Maury. Could you say something about him? He is one of the people whose role appeared to me to be the most vague during the year I was deeply involved with the URA?

Schwitters:

Well, Dick was not recommended at the Tullahoma meeting; it must have been before. He was an experienced guy who had built big accelerator projects before. He is very well known in the fusion community. He is a very personable guy, and so I got to know him and really liked him as the project was unfolding and people were deciding to come or not come. I asked him to be deputy director and project manager. Then a couple of interesting things happened, the most interesting being that the DOE had legal authority to approve the deputy director and they simply sat on it. It was [DOE Office of Energy Research Director] Bob Hunter’s decision, and we had all kinds of emissaries coming and going but never really saying why. There was this cloud in the spring of 1989 as to whether or not they were going to approve him.

Riordan:

From a moderately high level in the DOE. Was it because they came from two very separate and warring camps in fusion research?

Schwitters:

Correct, they did. On the FEL [Free Electron Laser] for Star Wars. I knew that. It was weird stuff. You know what it’s like in Washington, where you try to punch on this marshmallow, but you never find out what the problem is. I picked Dick. He's a fine person. And we couldn't find out whether they were going to reject him or not. So, this led to one of the absolutely important meetings between the [Texas] state officials and ourselves, namely Panofsky, myself, Tom Luce and Fred Bucy in Washington, with Hunter. By the way, this is all wrapped up in Hunter's management plan. Are you aware of Hunter's management structures that were being imposed on us?

Riordan:

I might have heard something about it.

Schwitters:

Anyway, this is wrapped up in the management plans that were being developed in the DOE as we were starting the project — to restructure our management responsibilities under Hunter. So, it’s not just Dick in isolation but lots of other things. In the end, Hunter was fired. He left the DOE and Dick was quickly approved as Deputy Director. Now the role of Dick — he is a good guy. He clearly felt uncertain, uncomfortable in the end, with his relationship with Helen — with the high-energy community, and so on. For reasons I still don't fathom, it didn't work out very well.

Riordan:

I never had a sense of him as somebody, like a Sid Drell, who could step in and take over the entire responsibility [of the Director].

Schwitters:

Well, he did. Sometimes he did. We had one fatality during the tunnelling, while I was in Washington. I heard about it and got back and Dick had done a superb job of dealing with a very tough crisis in a small amount of time. You’re right, he did not have that kind of confidence in various places, and it’s still a mystery to me to this day what happened...

[End of side of tape recording]

Schwitters:

I don't understand why it became a problem, a real problem — in the later days, not early on. Toward the end, the Board really insisted that I change. Over the years I negotiated with a number of people, some of whom you know very well, to be Deputy. People that I was closer to personally. I could not convince them to come to Texas. There was always this component in the recruiting process. Dick is a fine guy, but it didn't work out very well.

One thing — I don't know if you want to get into it — but the Hunter role was interesting and difficult and divisive in the spring of 1989, where DOE's management plans became clear on how they wanted to do this project, namely like that of a large military procurement. I don't know how much background you have, but I'll say a few things. Hunter had tasked Ed Temple, Bob Diebold, and a number of others to begin developing management plans. His ostensible argument was to bring together all of the needed arms of DOE into one office to be able to streamline things, the Office of the SSC. At least as presented, it became a bureaucratic monster with an office of a couple of hundred people. Most of them were at the site and quite a few of them were in Washington overseeing the project. It had a philosophy that held very much that the physicists should specify [the design] and hand it over to what they called an industrial contractor. These arguments came back later when you were in Washington. We were again under attack by [Clinton administration Energy Secretary] Hazel [O’Leary]'s crowd. Anyway, that person would supposedly execute the design, build it, and then hand it over to the physicists to operate. The model of it was presented by Hunter's task force.

Riordan:

Temple and Diebold weren't subscribing to this, were they?

Schwitters:

They wrote it.

Riordan:

Really?

Schwitters:

Yes. So, they came down, and we had a meeting. We knew that our present contractual relationship was under threat. There was a lot of hassle even signing the contract. I forget whether we were on a letter contract with the state or if we had a real contract. Basically, it was always tenuous whether we would even be in business the next week.

Riordan:

This is 1989?

Schwitters:

This is 1989. There was a review of these plans where, in the end, I think Pief must have forced it. John Foster, a defense guy, he had been Secretary of Defense previously or... anyway, one of the defense establishment guys in Washington. He chaired a committee with a number of notable admirals and generals and some other types on it to review the URA management. Essentially, it was URA defending the management structure we had, which had been traditional in high-energy physics, and Hunter’s people — principally Diebold and the whole crew — presenting this other plan. In the end, Foster had the sense to throw out the other plan; it was unworkable. But it was scary. There was kind of a kangaroo-court atmosphere to it because we had no idea what they were planning. We were simply told to show up one day at the DOE and present our management plan and here was this other elaborate thing.

Riordan:

You were saying that the basic philosophy was that the physicists would ...

Schwitters:

Specify. They would specify what was needed and hand this over to DOE.

Riordan:

The DOE would then go and do the procurement?

Schwitters:

They would essentially procure a supercollider. They were going to manage the AE/CM directly; then, when the right time came, the project would be handed over to us.

Riordan:

Fiscal authority would not flow through?

Schwitters:

That's right. No authority, other than we would write down some scientific specifications and they would build it and hand it back. Needless to say, that was unacceptable. I have forgotten all of the details, and the best I can probably do is find my files on it someday. The best records are undoubtably Pief’s records and files on this, because it was a continual crisis during the spring of 1989 on this issue — related also to our contract negotiations and everything else going on with the URA contract. In the end, the Foster group said it was unworkable. And then Hunter didn't stop, he kept going.

Finally, we began to mobilize here. The Texas Commission had started to have tripartite meetings — the Commission, the Lab and DOE — and they clearly got wind of the fact that these management changes were in the air. They were interested in this. They also knew full well that Briggs had never been approved yet as deputy. They were wondering about that. And so finally — Hunter left I believe in October of ’89 — so around August and September, the whole thing came to a head when Hunter was about to present his new management plan to [Energy Secretary Admiral James] Watkins and to us. We were going to be told what we were going to get, and so Pief and I went back to Washington with Tom Luce and Fred Bucy to hear this plan. Luce did the most brilliant piece of lawyering I had ever seen. He had had some meetings, and the DOE were outlining their ideas on management in these tripartite meetings. And, again, we were just hearing it for the first time, and it was a deep concern. They were talking [about having] 230 FTEs on site.

Finally, one of the things they showed was that they were going to then hire additional, what are called 8A subcontractors. That’s a so called “beltway bandit.” It’s these small disadvantaged companies who can do consulting studies beyond the normal procurement process. They had a plan. To manage the physicists they were going to have 8A companies doing this. This was part of the grand plan. In the end, they actually showed a statement of work. They were getting ready to bring on some 8As, and they showed a statement of work, and it was essentially the same statement of work of the URA. Tom Luce saw this and said before Hunter even got started, “Excuse me, Admiral, we don't really have any questions about management, but I do have just one question. Why is it that in your new plan you would be hiring an 8A subcontractor with essentially the same statement of work as the URA contractor to do the scientific side of this?” Watkins said, “We aren't going to do that.” Luce replied, “Well, here is a copy of the statement of work for the 8A, and here's the URA statement of work. They look the same to me. What do you think?” Watkins looked at them and said, “They're the same — there must be a mistake.” He's sitting in the room. There's the four of us, Pief and myself, Watkins, [Deputy Director of the Office of Energy Research Jim] Decker turning slides, and Hunter. And finally Watkins sees these two pieces of paper, and they're the same, and he says, “We don't do this. We don't have subcontractors managing our other contractors, do we Bob?" And Bob was clearly getting agitated by that point, and didn't say anything, and that was the end of the meeting. And then about a couple of weeks later we were negotiating with different people. And the Briggs appointment went through.

Riordan:

I always heard Texas had a lot to do with the removal of Hunter.

Schwitters:

Hunter played a big role in the removal of Hunter. I mean, that this was such a patently absurd idea that Luce did not intend any political... It’s just simple logic. He says you could put these two pieces of paper together. Even the scene was absurd. He framed the argument so simply and so clearly that it was just patently absurd what was going on here, and Watkins recognized it for what it was. It was an impressive performance by Mr. Luce.

Riordan:

Hunter was a Reagan appointee?

Schwitters:

Correct.

Riordan:

So, his tenure was always... there was always a question mark hanging over it. He could be easily replaced.

Schwitters:

Okay. The good news was he wanted to pull together the relevant arms of DOE into a single organization. That's what he was saying. He was a friend of Sid Drell. Sid kept arguing all along, "Oh, you guys are just wrong, Bobby Hunter is a wonder guy. He's trying to help you.” And yet out of him came a management plan with 230 oversight people and basically the plan we ended up with. It was written by Temple and Diebold and company, and it never went away.

Riordan:

Do you get the feeling that what the DOE really would have preferred was for Martin Marietta to have put in a proposal, and then gone with them?

Schwitters:

I don't know. I know that like all of us, a lot of people projected a lot of dreams on the SSC. I think there were a lot of good guys on the DOE staff who wanted a big role. Everybody wanted a big role. I don't think it’s so grandly thought out as that. I think there was no question — at a certain high level in the system — they wanted the security. They felt comfortable with a Defense Department type of procurement. Simply the idea that you could actually trust a group of interested people to build something that was in their interest to make it work right, they couldn't understand that idea of trust. That's what I was telling you yesterday. This common vision, I would say a trust in common vision, that we all really wanted to do this. That was missing from day one.

Riordan:

You’re talking about a common vision of the project among OMB [the White House Office of Management and Budget], DOE, the industrial community...

Schwitters:

I'm talking of the three partners: the scientists URA, the DOE, and the OMB.

Riordan:

OMB is a relatively small number of people?

Schwitters:

That's a small number of people, but the fact is, the continuity of budget line had to be there or you’re always being jerked around.

 

Part 2 – March 31, 1998

Riordan:

Let me just pick up where we left off, Roy, and maybe pick up a few points that we missed. For example, how did you find out that the SSC was going to be sited in Texas?

Schwitters:

I was in Washington for some meeting — I’ve frankly forgotten what it was — on the day that it was to be announced in the DOE. So, Rafe Kasper [SSC Associate Director Raphael Kasper] and I went over to the announcement. And as I recall it was two days after the [1988] election. We simply stood in the back of the big lecture hall at the Forrestal Building and at a certain point [Democratic senator from Texas] Lloyd Bentsen and others walked out on stage with the Secretary of Energy [John Herrington] and it became clear where it would be sited. In fact, Lloyd, who had just been Vice Presidential candidate of course, had no voice at that point. He had lost his voice during the last days of the election. It was quite a moving event, actually, to see him because he made a very good impression, on me at least, during the election. That was the announcement.

Riordan:

Were you at all surprised by it?

Schwitters:

It would have been the most probable site in my book, but it was a very close call between that and Fermilab. So, I was not surprised, no. On the other hand, I would not have been surprised had Fermilab been chosen.

Riordan:

Did you have any information, having been on the National Academy of Sciences panel, or from any relationships you had at the DOE? Had any rumors ever leaked out?

Schwitters:

No rumors had ever leaked out to my knowledge, at all. You know, we were very aware of the selection process, and I was aware of the DOE’s work of going to the sites, but absolutely no hint of how they had added up the points.

Riordan:

Did you have any favorite choices at this point? Were you leaning toward Fermilab in your own mind?

Schwitters:

No, in my own mind I really was open-minded. I saw positives and negatives to both the Texas and the Fermilab sites. Truly, I believe that the Best Qualified List represented a set that I personally was willing to go to. Although I felt that Texas technically, obviously, had a very good site from a geological point of view, and it clearly had powerful political support. So, that was a big positive in my mind, against the positives of Fermilab, namely the existing lab, and principally existing machines. On the other hand, I was frankly concerned about the deep tunnel and the lack of local political support. I had witnessed that in my own work in the waning days at the CDF [Collider Detector at Fermilab] and during the writing of the URA proposal, which took places in St. Charles, near Fermilab. I was acutely aware of the rather hostile local environment. So, those were real concerns on my part. To be honest, those were important to me, and in that sense, I guess I felt a certain relief with the Texas decision — knowing that, at least from a political point of view, we couldn’t have had a stronger supporter.

Riordan:

Okay, we have heard from people both directly and indirectly that other key people who signed on really had signed on in the hopes that it was going to be Fermilab.

Schwitters:

Yes.

Riordan:

We were talking about [Fermilab Business Manager] Bruce Chrisman who only spent about 6 months down in Texas and, to a lesser extent, Helen Edwards.

Schwitters:

Yeah. These two I think had different views on it. I knew from Helen before the site was announced that she just thought it was irrational to pull up stakes at Fermilab and go off somewhere else. So, her position was, I think, absolutely defensible and clear from a technical point of view. So, I understood that from the beginning. I did not know from Bruce that he was really not going to honor that pledge to move there. That came as a surprise.

Riordan:

Wasn’t there a fourth key person?

Schwitters:

Well, the fourth key person was the Sverdrup person [Robert Robbins], and of course for people in the construction industry it’s standard, you move where the construction is. So, that was never an issue.

Riordan:

Okay. In retrospect, having gone through the experience, do you think Fermilab would have been a preferable site? I'm referring to the difficulty of putting together the infrastructure.

Schwitters:

It is clearly a question of weighing those difficulties of the start up with the political support and frankly enthusiastic local support of Texas. I don’t have an answer to that question and the reason is the following: my concern is, and I believe I said this at the previous interview, I don’t know that it ever really would have gotten off the ground at Fermilab, the incentives for major delay were such that it might have lost momentum early. On the other side, I think there is no question in my mind that in later aspects of the project, when we were really trying to beat it down to minimal cost, the fact that one had to recreate all this infrastructure was a terrible burden on the Texas site, and the fact that Fermilab… had its own political constituency which was threatened by this and took the obvious courses. Perhaps if it had gotten off to a start [at Fermilab] and we actually had gotten to the point of beginning tunneling it would have been a more likely site. My own concern is whether it would have gotten off the ground [there] at all.

Riordan:

We’ve heard statements [mainly] coming from the DOE that they were really looking for another site, that Fermilab was viewed in some sense within the DOE as a tired laboratory, even though… Did you catch any of that? That they really were looking to establish a new laboratory somewhere down in the Southwest?

Schwitters:

I didn’t sense that. I really read their scoring sheet at face value and would have come close to the same decision myself. So, I didn’t see it that way. On the other side let me say — we may have debated this in the previous interview — that I think the rank and file of physics staff at Fermilab was not as strong as that at CERN or SLAC. And that frankly was a concern of mine because I thought that to carry off the challenging program really was going to take exceptionally good people and especially in the detector side of things. I’ve always maintained that — with the exception of a few notable examples — that many of the experiments at Fermilab were a disappointment because they were often superseded by CERN, which turned on [its Super Proton Synchrotron] much later. So, that was a concern, but relatively minor in my view because the positive thing about Fermilab was that they had a record, with the right leadership and things, of pulling together and doing tremendous projects. The Tevatron is the great example of that. In my own mind I certainly didn’t feel that way, that it was so tired that it was not viable, and I had no hint that DOE felt that way. Yeah. I don’t think it was definitive. If I recall correctly, the principal breaking point for Fermilab was the lack of local support.

Riordan:

And there was to some extent the deep drilling.

Schwitters:

Yeah, and the deep drilling. But the lack of local support was really depressing. Given the positive aspects of the laboratory, it was a surprise to many of us that it was not well regarded by the locals.

Riordan:

Well, just as an aside, I am looking forward to our upcoming battle with the… I think when you become an actual real project… well, actually, it wasn’t a real project. It was going to be a real project. It’s much easier to get through [to the press] for anti- than it is for a pro-view.

Schwitters:

Oh sure.

Riordan:

Expressing the pro-viewpoint is not news.

Schwitters:

That’s right.

Riordan:

Okay. So, five percent [of the population can have a big impact].

Schwitters:

No but…

Riordan:

…can get a fifty percent…

Schwitters:

That’s true. But still, the impression, when we had our offices sort of attacked by the local, small, vociferous group, there was true hatred shown by these people, and I’ve got to say that in Texas there was not a hint of that.

Riordan:

You are saying the actual office rooms were attacked?

Schwitters:

Yeah. We had a sit-in in our office where we were writing our URA proposal by the leadership of the anti-SSC group in Illinois, and it was as mean and nasty as any of the things I saw during 1968 at MIT.

Riordan:

Really?

Schwitters:

Absolutely.

Riordan:

So, there was a core?

Schwitters:

There was a very angry core that was special there and surprised me.

Riordan:

Okay. Let’s get to people. We didn’t talk much about Helen Edwards the first time around. When did you approach her to take over this position? You knew that you needed to have a head of accelerator physics [on the URA proposal].

Schwitters:

Correct.

Riordan:

At what point after you had been named Director did you approach Helen?

Schwitters:

Well, let me try to remember, put all this together. I approached Helen, as I recall, relatively early in the process because her name had to be on the proposal we submitted. So, that would have been in Fall of 1988. Remember, this process was compressed to essentially September and October of that Fall.

Riordan:

And that would be around…?

Schwitters:

I believe that’s right.

[End of side of tape recording]

Schwitters:

So, fairly early in the game I spoke to her.

Riordan:

Was it days? Weeks?

Schwitters:

I think it must have been a matter of days. Soon after I was asked to do this, I had a long… I’m recalling now. I had been obviously thinking about the possibility of this for some couple of months or something. I had been thinking in my own mind of candidates. So, before it was even announced these things were going through my mind, and I had a tremendous respect for Helen, for what she accomplished on the Tevatron. In my book this accomplishment is the most important thing that she actually completed, closed, a superconducting particle accelerator and made it work. I knew her reasonably well. I knew that there are difficulties working with Helen. She’s very demanding. So, I was aware of those aspects and then soon after — again, I’m speculating, it was a matter of days — I called [Fermilab Director Emeritus Robert] Bob Wilson to really get his views on a number of people, on all these key appointments but principally the question of business manager, because that was a hot topic at the time, and accelerator head. And I wanted to get his views, especially knowing that Maury [Tigner] was in a difficult position here given the apparent disappointment over not being chosen Director, and things like we discussed before [in the 22 March 1997 interview].

I wanted Bob Wilson’s advice on some of these people. So, I called him. It was interesting. The strongest discussion had to do with the business manager at first, where various names had been floated, names of people who had previously been in government, in the DOE and others outside of DOE. He was just rabid on not appointing a person with any connections to DOE. It was very interesting how strong it was. Anyway, back to Helen and Maury. Of course, Bob Wilson knew both of them well from his Cornell days and throughout the Fermilab days. He was concerned whether the sort of difficult aspects of Helen’s personality would be viable, and I would say that he cautioned me that she wouldn’t follow orders and that that would create problems. So, that was serious advice that I put on one side of the ledger against the very positive feelings I had about the accomplishments on the Tevatron. On the other side, in my view, with the exception of Maury, she was the most qualified to do this. The other person I was thinking about in this context was [CERN accelerator physicist] Roy Billinge.

[Telephone interruption]

Riordan:

You were talking about Roy Billinge.

Schwitters:

The third person that I considered was Roy Billinge from CERN. It turns out that Roy and Helen were together at Fermilab during the early days. They were respective heads of aspects of the original Fermilab. Roy had been willing to move there and took on an important role. Since then, he had gone on to CERN, building a number of important projects. He was head of the proton-synchrotron at the time, I guess. On the other side, I really thought Helen was stronger as a physicist and as an accelerator expert than Roy, who was again from the top laboratory in this area. So, with the inability to close a package with Maury, she was the top choice.

Riordan:

And you were still talking to Maury?

Schwitters:

I was still talking to Maury. But it was clear that we were getting down to the deadline, and Maury was not going to commit to any site, and there was no closure on a specific role that could fit into one of the slots in the proposal.

Riordan:

You just said something important, that he was not ready to commit to [any site]?

Schwitters:

As I recall, he was not willing to commit to [go to] any of the sites. As I recall. I may be wrong on that. It’s just an impression, but more to the point I think were still… Going back on this, I think it was clear by then that he would not be satisfied with one of those positions. It would have to be the project manager or deputy director, which were not the named positions. And so we still had to fill the named positions for various reasons. Okay, it was clear that Maury wouldn’t commit to one of the named [in the RFP] positions. Let’s put it that way to be more precise. And Helen complained bitterly, and I wasn’t sure what her attitude would be, but she sort of growled at me in her way and said, “This thing is important for the country. Yeah, I’ll sign up. We’ve got to do this.” That was kind of the reaction I got. She certainly didn’t like the notion of going outside of Fermilab, and I believed her when she said that she felt that in many ways it was Maury’s project also, and so she respected his personal involvement and commitment and recognized that aspect of it. On the other side, the importance of the project led her to be willing to sign up.

Riordan:

The question is obviously, would she have been willing to work for Maury? What was the chemistry between the two of them?

Schwitters:

You never really know until you work these things out. I don’t think that would have worked. That’s my impression. And I think Maury had absolutely no interest in having Helen around either. Maury gave me a handwritten note of his demands of people, and Helen was not on the list.

Riordan:

These were people who would work under him as project director, project coordinator?

Schwitters:

Yes. As head of the accelerator [construction?].

Riordan:

Do you still have that handwritten note?

Schwitters:

I probably do somewhere in some box somewhere.

Riordan:

It would be interesting to see.

Schwitters:

It would be very interesting. I’ll try to pick it out, but I’ve got a lot of boxes around and I don’t know where it is.

Riordan:

So, basically Maury really wanted to be able to dictate what was going to be his area, which was building the machine? He wanted to go out and name his people.

Schwitters:

Yes. Absolutely.

Riordan:

Do you remember whom he wanted?

Schwitters:

Sure. He wanted Alex [Chao] to be head of the accelerator division. He wanted Tom Kirk [of Fermilab] to be head of the magnet division. And he wanted Jim Sanford [of Brookhaven] to be head of conventional construction. You know, he wanted to recreate the CDG [Central Design Group] management group basically.

Riordan:

He wanted Alex in charge of the accelerator division.

Schwitters:

Yes.

Riordan:

As I recall he still went [to Texas].

Schwitters:

Alex did indeed go.

Riordan:

And he was in a fairly high position.

Schwitters:

Yes. He was… I’ve forgotten the exact title but he was the lead [accelerator] theorist for sure. Oh, Tom Kirk. We were talking about Alex. Tom Kirk really came from the physics side of CDG. He was not really involved in the machine in the very early days, with mobilization. You see, Kirk at the time was heading up the magnet program for the CDG. John Peoples [who succeeded Leon Lederman as Fermilab director in July 1989] had left it and gone back to Fermilab. And it was not going well.

Riordan:

Okay, so… ?

Schwitters:

Right. Now I’m not sure we should get into this, but the magnet program as it was then structured, with CDG and then the hand-off to the new SSC Lab, was in amazingly bad shape given the success of the [Tevatron]. A lot of the lessons of the Tevatron had simply been forgotten. Very interesting how fragile that whole process was. And I keep giving credit to [SSC Lab Magnet Director Tom] Bush. He had to fight back and build back that expertise that was such a loss from the Tevatron.

Riordan:

I wanted to get on with magnets. It was my perception that the magnet program, as handed off to you by the CDG was in trouble.

Schwitters:

Was in big trouble. It had serious training problems with the superconducting magnets. They would [quench] at low fields and then gradually the number of [quenches] would go up. There were many discussions in the BOO [SSC Board of Overseers] meetings on these magnet difficulties and frankly, when I was still a member of the Board of Overseers, I had a sense of deja vu watching the Brookhaven program. See, when I left SLAC and went to Harvard I was interested in joining the Isabelle Project [at Brookhaven], and I was placed on the magnet review committee. So, I got to meet [CDF spokesman] Alvin Tollestrup and eventually got involved with CDF through that connection. But I sat through many magnet presentations by Jim Sanford and others about failing magnets at Isabelle with a certain rather unscientific approach to the design problems, and what was frightening is that that [same] attitude, that the next magnet would be the perfect one, without a really bottoms-up engineering understanding, had left the SSC program in a very weak position, with bad training curves. Maury was even giving presentations on how long it would take to commission the machine by having to train all these magnets many times. That was just the breakthrough on the Tevatron, that training magnets was unacceptable, that they had to meet their design goal. Otherwise you’d never actually commission a machine at the full energy. So, this had crept back into the magnet development program in kind of an insidious way. And the second area, that hit us later, was the question of eddy currents and field distortions, that had also been previously solved at the Tevatron and then lost in the transfer of this technology. So, I’ll never forget my first Congressional testimony. I had to report on the latest failure of a magnet to Congress.

Riordan:

Do you remember when this was?

Schwitters:

That must have been in March 1989.

Riordan:

So, what you are saying then agrees with an article in the New York Times by Bill Broad in December 1988 about the problems with the magnets. Then that was pretty much correct?

Schwitters:

Absolutely correct. When I first came on board, and I’m trying to remember. Then right around that period is when I asked [DESY accelerator physicist] Gus Voss to chair this committee to review those magnets. And as I indicated in the other interview, they gave a relatively polite review. But in private, and in reading between the lines, it was very negative review because they thought that the 4 cm aperture was not credible, and that the training behavior was unacceptable.

Riordan:

This was later on?

Schwitters:

This must have been in the Spring 1989. It was early enough in the process because… Yeah, it must have been early 1989.

Riordan:

Was this Helen coming to you and saying, listen, we’ve got a problem?

Schwitters:

This one was for me. I sensed this very strongly because I had witnessed it so dramatically a few years earlier with the Isabelle program and in seeing the contrasting program with the Tevatron. And so I was acutely sensitive to this, and I was a BOO member and following along. Helen’s concerns came later with field quality. We’ll get into that I’m sure, but the basic mechanical robustness of the magnets was not there at that time. Nor did they appear to project, if you will, a comprehensive understanding of the problems. Now the root of the difficulty in a very complex story, at least in my mind… But anyway, that was the picture of the framework. So, Bill Broad’s article in that period was correct. This was very serious.

Riordan:

I recall that [Texas accelerator physicist] Russ Huson was perhaps a little active in stimulating [Broad's article]… Do you think there was some effort on the part of the Texas Accelerator Center to ring this little bell of theirs with the superferric magnets?

Schwitters:

I believe that was part of Broad’s article. But again, I never had any doubt in mind that the classic cosine theta [design] was the way to go. Especially at that point. We were into site selection, where you selected a site and you knew the basic scope of the machine and there was no turning back. Furthermore, the technology had been proven with the Tevatron. It was clear that just the elementary mechanical engineering had been done in a derivative way, not from the bottom up, on the new consequences of what were fundamentally the longer magnets of the SSC, the temperature variations and variations on thermal expansion coefficients and how they related.

Riordan:

The problem to me here is that, yes, it existed in the CDG largely because of the loose management structure that they had. They really didn’t have any control over Fermilab or Brookhaven or LBL where the work was actually being done. They could essentially look over their shoulders, but they weren’t paying the laboratories. It was the DOE that was paying them.

Schwitters:

Well, I think that’s partially true. But this is where I give Mr. Bush some credit. In the end, he recognized that you can make that excuse but you’re still the responsible party, and by God you go in there and you insist on a clean-up and get the act together.

Riordan:

Alright. Let me finish. To some extent that is what John Peebles came in and did.

Schwitters:

But he didn’t succeed.

Riordan:

But you are saying that it was not a total success.

Schwitters:

It was not a success.

Riordan:

There was still the problem of training.

Schwitters:

There were training and expansion problems. There were lots of detailed problems. Differential expansions, running into pinned support bolts. A lot of details. It was by no means solved by the time John left. I think there was progress. There was no question that John made progress on this, and in the end the problem was solved in the Fermilab shops, but only after a threat of cutting off funds and public humiliation… because, for example, just walking around the shop the whole notion of cleanliness, of review of where metal chips and things go, was gone. The shops for the Tevatron that Dick Lundy ran were remarkably efficient and clean, and at the Fermilab shops during the CDG days and the early SSC days, the main activity as far as I could tell was moving cigarette butts around. It was appalling how dirty the facilities were. So, the attitudes there had definitely been lost and had to be recreated.

Riordan:

But then Tom Bush is in a new situation. Now he’s controlling the funds. The R&D funds, right?

Schwitters:

Not really. Yes, Tom did have more control but there were large amounts of money that were signed off with direct transfer from DOE to Fermilab to carry on the program, and the attitude of a closed institution is very much to keep our people and our certain amount of technical activity alive. There were simply different goals for that part of that process, and it was a tough management problem. What I am saying here is that I empathize with the word you heard from CDG, that they had lacked control of these people. I think that is true. It is a more complicated control problem to be sure, but it’s one that you simply have to solve.

Riordan:

Well, let’s see. We’re talking about Tom Bush to some extent. How did he get along with Helen?

Schwitters:

Terribly. From day one… In fact, this is one of the most interesting observations I received. Admiral Levering Smith, a man at the time in his nineties that I met at the John Foster review of [SSC] management, was a friend and colleague of Admiral Bob Wertheim and was generally considered a very wise technical manager, and he knew Bush. So, I asked Levering Smith to come to the new SSC laboratory. We talked. He had presentations from Helen and Tom and then we had a private meeting. I’ll give you one anecdote. This man was wearing two hearing aids, he was about five feet tall, he was ninety years old or so, and he said, oh, this Higgs mechanism strikes me as a lot like the ether of electricity and magnetism, which I thought was a very astute point. But then we had a private session afterward, and he hit on the two management difficulties. He didn’t give any solutions but the two key management difficulties in those days, he says, you’re going to have trouble with Tom and Helen. You’re just going to have trouble with them. They're different people. I said, what should I do? He said, I don’t know but you’re going to have trouble. He predicted it, and his second point is the more theoretical debate about the matrix management scheme and how much of the rows and columns of the matrix do you emphasize? Do you build ships, or do you build propellers and engines, was the way he put it. For us, do you build magnets and accelerator parts or do you build a low-energy booster and a medium-energy booster, and so on. He put his finger right on the two key problems right from day one, but alas, he didn’t have any better suggestions than anybody else did.

Riordan:

I’ve heard several types of comments about Tom Bush. That he was really trying to run a closed shop. That he didn’t want his people to go out and talk with people in other divisions. He didn’t want people to come out here. That there’s this give and take they [high-energy physicists] are very used to, especially at SLAC, I know that's true at Fermilab. Being able to cut across boundaries is really where it’s at, and that’s one of the reasons Bush earned the enmity of people from other groups.

Schwitters:

Yeah. Now again that’s a complex question and it has elements of truth to it and elements of hearsay and everything else. Helen also runs a very tight, closed shop. There’s an implication there that Helen didn’t operate that way. She also ran a very closed shop with her people, with very tight senses of loyalty. Now, the good side of this is that Tom took a diverse team and really forged them into a rather effective group where they, again, did have — many of them, even people coming from the [physics] community into Tom’s organization — I believe changed their views and came away with more respect for Tom than many people outside the group. I think it’s a fair criticism that Tom, for various reasons — I think of experience of how he had done programs principally in secret areas… He had worked on this stealth ship that until just a year or so ago, I believe, was just a secret classified program and has now been written about at least. But of course it becomes natural in that environment that you do that from a security point of view. But that’s only part of the answer. I think there was a certain insecurity on his part with regard to the other scientists on the staff, and his expression of that insecurity often went to the extreme of breaking down communications and not enhancing them. So, that is a valid concern. On the other hand, two people were able to bridge that gap, [SSC accelerator physicist] Gerry Dugan, Ray Stiening, others, and were able to gain his trust and I believe there was good mutual discussion. So, a very complex psychological set of problems going on here.

Riordan:

This to me gets at the real core of the culture clash between physicists and engineers… Ultimately, you’re going to have make 10,000 magnets and to high accuracy. An engineer wants to freeze that design early in the process and work out the problems in the production process that are inevitably going to crop up… Whereas the physicists, I think, ultimately want to keep dithering with the design up to the last minute and then assume that, well, we can get it to work.

Schwitters:

Right. My position on this was very clear. My view is that we did have to build 12,000 of these very complex things. Very expensive, under time [constraints] and all kinds of quality assurance, and it simply would have to be done in an engineering project style. Furthermore, I was looking at bottom line results and, by golly, Tom was deeply criticized for not knowing magnets. Because he never worked in magnets, he made some really unfortunate, stupid remarks about, you know, they are just like missiles, same shape and same size. And he knows that was a dumb remark, but it was taken in the worst possible way by the community.

Now, having said all that the first test came — well, the second test. Tom was part of Gus Voss’s [review] committee. He got in and he impressed me with really understating the key problems that were there. When he came back and talked to me and told me what he saw, it resonated with my feelings on it. So, I was impressed by that. I was impressed by his thinking several steps ahead, always to the industrial side, that in the end we would have to build all these things and that he could not do it in the traditional physicist way [of sort of bailing wire and spit] and at the end of the day it will work, because it won’t work. So, he had that long-range vision that we set down one on one. He knew the right issues and priorities in my view. Then later, and we’ll come to this I’m sure, in 1989 when it became clear that we had to increase the magnet aperture, I felt that was the test. Could his team put together a design? I thought it was essential to do it both to show their own strength but also to demonstrate their credibility in the community, that they could win the confidence of the community by coming up with a credible design of a 5 cm aperture as an important test, and they did.

Riordan:

But it was a new magnet.

Schwitters:

It was a new magnet. It was a new magnet that solved the mechanical problems that were failing on the CDG magnets. It was a new magnet and it worked and it was being produced by industrial hands, in the Fermilab shops but with a clear program for transferring that technology to industry. On the other side, getting financial figures out, getting schedules, getting a lot of the other important ingredients out of this process was very difficult at times. And in particular, it was difficult for the other responsible associate directors and folks from my level who had to had to have those numbers to do that part of the job. And Tom was very difficult for them to work with. When I sat down with Tom and said we had to do these things, generally they got done, but it was difficult.

Riordan:

You didn’t want people from the DOE coming up to the director….?

Schwitters:

You certainly don’t.

Riordan:

You’ve got to figure out what isn’t working.

Schwitters:

Right. There was probably no more time-intensive job than to manage that relationship between Tom and Helen. They are the chief consumer of magnets and the builder. And again, in an ideal organization that would have been done by the project manager, but it didn’t happen.

Riordan:

Getting back to that, there were a couple of organization charts. I noticed on there the incredible sequence of project managers. I wanted to get the sequence right. Maury was the project manager on the M&O proposal, right?

Schwitters:

Right.

Riordan:

Although he didn’t have to be there. And then you originally had [Lawrence Livermore Lab accelerator physicist] Dick Briggs in there, right?

Schwitters:

Right.

Riordan:

Were Associate Directors Doug Pewitt or Ted Kozman ever in as acting project manager?

Schwitters:

Pewitt was in as Acting [Project Manager], Kozman was not. Pewitt bridged the time there until Reardon came in. [Brookhaven accelerator physicist] Paul Reardon. And then [SLAC accelerator physicist] John Rees. That’s the correct list.

Riordan:

To me, this continual changing of project managers, which probably other than yourself, was the key individual behind building an accelerator, was really a major problem, something you had to deal with.

Schwitters:

No question about it, and many of the questions come to a head here, the cultural questions between the engineering project approach side and the scientific side. All of these aspects come in there. The fact is you needed both, you needed sensitivity to the scientific [requirements], but you needed this big project experience and outline. By the time it was clear that a position for Maury just was not to be found, I had… The two top candidates that had come to me were Dick Briggs [of Lawrence Livermore Lab] and [Bechtel project engineer] Harold Forsen by that point. I interviewed both of them. They are both very experienced, very personable guys. I did offer the position to Forsen, but because of his commercial ties to his company he felt that it presented unacceptable potentials for conflict of interest and was not willing to take the position. Really, we scoured the countryside. We looked at Saturn plants, we had headhunters, we looked at people who had rebuilt New York airport systems and things like this, and these people are few and far between. There was a strong feeling in the older members of the community that Paul Reardon should have always been the choice. He had experience at Fermilab and with the tokamak at Princeton, and later in the SSC project he came on board. Frankly, I had my qualms about that.

Riordan:

He came in the middle, didn’t he?

Schwitters:

He came in the middle.

Riordan:

I remember he was there in 1991 when I showed up.

Schwitters:

I guess that’s right. That’s right, you can check the dates on that. But Paul came into the middle after really an extensive search process where we had a search committee that included senior people from the board of overseers. Rafe Kasper chaired it. We had Lou Allen, a former JPL [Jet Propulsion Laboratory] head and others. At that point I made one overture to a fabulous engineer from JPL, John Casani. He wasn’t interested. He was in a very fine position at JPL and didn’t want to leave.

Riordan:

So, at what point did you decide that Briggs was not the right guy?

Schwitters:

Well, frankly it started from the beginning. I mean, Dick just didn’t get engaged, didn’t take charge of the project. Now, part of this I think was a frustration over his uncertain status because DOE had not ratified his position as Deputy Director in the spring of 1989.

Riordan:

The clash with [DOE Director of the Office of Energy Research Robert] Hunter?

Schwitters:

The clash with Hunter, as we talked about before, went on for a good fraction of 1989. So, Dick is a very sensitive guy and he somehow didn’t get engaged in the project. It was a mystery to me and to [SLAC Director Emeritus] Panofsky [then Chair of the SSC Board of Overseers] and others as we talked about it. What happened is that he lost Helen’s respect early in that process and was just not in a very effective position.

[End of side of tape recording]

Schwitters:

…if either person is not doing the job that you need for them. Because on the one hand you need stability, you tried to hire people and recruit and in many of those areas Dick was doing a very good job by the way, recruiting people, helping the general quality of life in the laboratory.

Riordan:

Plus he's got that whole project management [responsibility]…

Schwitters:

Right. So, there were many positive things that were going on. On the other hand, the really hard-nosed pulling together of the people and the management for the project, budget reporting and all the details that go into this, was not getting done at the level we needed. And, as I say, he had lost the respect of Tom and Helen.

Riordan:

Did he agree to step aside?

Schwitters:

He agreed to step aside. He knew it wasn’t working well. He was frustrated. I don’t think he understood what was going on either. He’s a very fine guy. This must have been in the fall of 1989 or the spring of 1990. So, there was frustration, but I am just saying that there was not an infinite supply of people. You don’t just go lopping off heads, although in the end we had a depressingly long list of project managers. That was a continual difficulty and frustration.

Riordan:

What about Pewitt? You mention that he stepped in as acting project manager.

Schwitters:

Yeah. Again, Doug had experience in the more formal aspects of project reporting, accounting, systems engineering, those aspects that the DOE was looking for to tie together a project of this size. And so he was really an associate director without portfolio at that point. He was the person I asked to step in, in a purely acting role, and I made it very clear that it was temporary until we completed the search that I told you about before.

Riordan:

But hadn’t he been brought down to Texas to work on the, I guess you’d call it the CS² [cost-and-schedule control system]? Or is that something he picked up when he came down here?

Schwitters:

Well, yes. Doug of course became associated with this lab through his work with the URA proposal-writing and I think he truly loved the project and wanted to be involved on a senior level, and so he came down. He had experience in these project reporting schemes.

Riordan:

Had he worked on a project like that before or had he always been within the Beltway?

Schwitters:

I think he’d been within the Beltway. He’d been within the Beltway but had worked as a consultant on making proposals. He had had some industrial experience in the SDI [Strategic Defense Initiative] era. Back then he was with a company that Hunter owned.

Riordan:

Okay. But he’d been in Hunter’s company [Western Research Corporation, in San Diego]?

Schwitters:

He had been fired by Hunter as I understand it.

Riordan:

What I am saying is that it is one thing to have experience within the Beltway. It’s a completely different thing to be with a company that has a $1 billion or a multimillion-dollar contract and has to put one of these cost-and-schedule control systems in place and deal with all the messy details involved.

Schwitters:

You’re quite right. And of course this was complicated because the people from Sverdrup Corporation were supposed to also help deliver these tools for us as part of this. And all of that was failing. What I learn now in my years here, is that this is a fairly common phenomenon. The fact of putting together an individual project schedule plan often suffers these growing pains.

Riordan:

I think high-energy physicists are used to dealing with the WBS [Work Breakdown Structure] approach, but that’s just a fixed…

Schwitters:

That’s a completely different scale of problem than a modern management control system.

Riordan:

Yeah. And is it not true that when Pewitt came down there — I guess it was March of 1989 — that he perceived that here’s a problem that needs to be worked on.

Schwitters:

Yeah. He certainly did jump into that. Helen was very good at that. She got deeply involved in working with the scheduling.

Riordan:

Really?

Schwitters:

Absolutely. She understood this stuff quite well.

Riordan:

You need the total program.

Schwitters:

That’s right. And Doug, and Helen to a remarkable degree, worked on those problems deeply as we were preparing for the cost estimate in the spring of 1990, the main review. And Ted Kozman. That was a tremendous effort. By the way, the WBS aspect was totally bought into by our people. That was never a problem. It’s interesting. That’s still a problem in physics. In my experience in Europe on the ALEPH experiment [on the CERN Large Electron Positron Collider], they do not accept the idea that you should even have a WBS. It’s just chaos. It promotes chaos.

Riordan:

Somehow they get their projects done.

Schwitters:

Well, it’s interesting anyway that a totally…

Riordan:

But I think it was from the Bruce Crisman interview done by Lillian Hoddeson and Adrienne Kolb that he said there was a specific requirement in the M&O [SSC management and operations] contract that required that there would be a cost-and-schedule control system in place by X number of months. Six months. And that it really was Pewitt who initially jumped into it.

Schwitters:

He did. And as I understand it, as I was led to believe, this was a particular interest of Hunter’s that this be in place. That’s correct.

Riordan:

And was this one of the reasons that Hunter began to get nervous, that it was taking time to get this up?

Schwitters:

Yeah, I suspect that was part of it. Sure. Everybody was nervous. Not just Hunter. I think all parties were nervous. I think there was a general appreciation of the importance of this. What I think was missing from my own experience, and in all of our collective experience, was the actual difficulty of completing so many tasks and loading them into one of these systems and then the systems themselves being rather clumsy and awkward to work with. It was a daunting task which really didn’t get well-assembled until John Rees and Gerry Dugan took it over.

Riordan:

That’s by 1992?

Schwitters:

By 1992 it was in pretty good shape, but that took… Again, I think that was John’s real great contribution and there were some extraordinarily good staff people there. This woman there who had just experience in accounting systems scheduling and so on, who could simply work the logistics of loading one of these systems.

Riordan:

This is what comes up in a number of the analyses that have been done by various parties, including [the one done] by the DOE Inspector General in 1996: the lack of the CS², which would allow DOE to look in to see how the project really was working. It is also in the…

Schwitters:

Yeah. I think it is an easy target. It doesn’t change what you… Well, first of all we knew the budgets. We knew what people that had been doing the building and spending had been accomplishing. That was clear. It was a question of transparency, and supposedly these systems are in principle supposed to supply more transparency, so you do gain the confidence of others. In that sense I think that is a valid criticism. That transparency wasn’t there. On the other side, if you looked at progress made of a technical nature, of instructions completed, magnets built and so forth, with any technical experience one could claim that the project was making certain progress, basically following outlays as you’d expect. So, there is also that side of it. A cost-and-schedule control system, I think, is not a substitute for technical management, but it does provide greater transparency for others.

Riordan:

Would it be accurate to say that this is a kind of language that especially people working at the Department of Defense are used to using to express progress within a project such that the oversight people in the Department of Defense expect the project put into this kind of a format?

Schwitters:

Yes. I think that’s a good way to put it. It’s a language, it’s a format. It’s also a process for top-level analysis of these complex projects. In that sense I support the idea. It can also be a whipping boy. It’s a tool for bringing [inaudible]. It can also be a tool for micromanagement and manipulation.

Riordan:

Yes. I think we’ve some evidence from the DOE while we were there.

Schwitters:

That’s right. So, it has obvious positive benefits that you cannot argue with, but it has these other aspects. It’s enormously expensive in terms of manpower at the time… You see, I think this gets back at the fundamental difference between a scientific project, even one that has essential engineering aspects like the SSC, and a military procurement, because this is a one-off system. It’s not building, you know, N-square feet of conventional construction or the 139th F-15 fighter. It’s a one-off, where there is an essential interplay between the design and production as you go on in the process, and even though we can fault our physics colleagues with that, it’s still a fundamental aspect that you learn things as you go along and want to feed these back in a sensible way. So, it’s not clear to me that the CS² can ever be fully satisfactory to both parties in this kind of endeavor. I still think it creates additional tensions and use of resources that are not obviously the best arrangement given the nature of the project.

Riordan:

But it was in the M&O contract…?

Schwitters:

There was no question about it.

Riordan:

And you gave me a new piece of information. It really was Sverdrup’s responsibility.

Schwitters:

That was in the original contract. Well, again these things are shared [responsibilities], but one of their strengths was supposedly how to do that. Now in the end, they didn’t do anything on that. In the end it got shared with some help even coming in from the EG&G people [from EG&G, Inc. the other corporation teaming with URA on the SSC project].

Riordan:

I’ve heard from many different corners including yourself that Sverdrup did not…

Schwitters:

Right.

Riordan:

Could you give me more detail on what they were expected to do, especially in that first year? And how you went about determining they were not performing? We talked about the one with the…

Schwitters:

Right. Well, they were to supply us with leadership and a staff to manage conventional construction. Their personnel, a person from Sverdrup, Robert Robbins would be the Associate Director for Conventional Construction, and as part of that he would have staff that would be our beginning of our plant engineering staff. Essentially, it would leave behind a permanent plant engineering staff at the lab needed for the operating laboratory. But in the process of construction, you would want to build up beyond that and then have it gracefully go away. So, they were to provide that balloon and expertise for us to be able to manage the principal architect-engineering company. That was the idea.

Riordan:

What was the responsibility of the architect-engineering company?

Schwitters:

Well, ultimately the architect-engineer company would do the final designing, the real specifications. Sverdrup would be our representative, that is to say, they would interact with the scientific needs, the accelerator people, and then be at the negotiating table with the builders to see that we got the technical requirements satisfied. And then they would supply support staff on these questions like CS² and other aspects of the program. By the way, we also brought in on contract — not teaming, but later on contract — Lockheed to assist in systems engineering, and also they had people who got into implementing the CS².

Riordan:

Okay, but this was later.

Schwitters:

This was later, a year later, after 1990. Anyway, the basic problem with Sverdrup was that we had an image, I had an image in my mind, of the engineer who came from industry and worked with Bob Wilson at Fermilab, who was a tremendous success. Okay, he went on to build magnets at Brookhaven and everything else. And furthermore I had met a number of architect-engineering presidents and bosses in this process, and it’s a very impressive group of people because these guys go out and build things and build hundreds of miles and freeway exchanges and underground tunnels and so on. It’s a great community. So, we were looking for another person of this kind of stature who had just as great confidence. And they come in and build things. We’d seen lots of them. Well, in the end we didn’t find such people, we got rather weak people who were not confident and who would not interact well at all with the scientific staff and couldn’t interact with the construction staff. They were obviously not respected by anybody. That was the failure. We didn’t get good people. We had two associate directors from Sverdrup, Bob Robbins and…

Riordan:

Are any of them on this list here?

Schwitters:

Yes. Lieu Smith was the second Sverdrup person brought in after Robbins essentially just failed miserably — essentially a no-show. And Lieu Smith was a terribly nice guy, but just incapable of providing what we wanted.

Riordan:

So, they were in conventional construction under the project manager?

Schwitters:

Right.

Riordan:

Are these other people Sverdrup people [referring to an early organization chart]?

Schwitters:

I believe Morris and Crowley and Tenner. Yes, they were all Sverdrup people. I’m remembering now, there were some quite good people. Tenner was a good guy. It’s not that there aren’t good people in the industrial world. There are very good people in the industrial world, but for various reasons, I said before, this company was going through a transition.

Riordan:

I think you said sometimes they reminded you of a strip mall development firm.

Schwitters:

Yeah. They really had prided themselves in high-tech construction: wind tunnels, very fancy construction tunnels. And for whatever reason, the corporate model had changed to more the management of real estate.

Riordan:

And I think I have some seen some commentary, again probably by Bruce Crisman, that they had been fairly effective in getting the proposal out the door.

Schwitters:

Yes.

Riordan:

Once they brought in people who knew how to cross the t’s and dot the i’s.

Schwitters:

They were pretty good there, although I thought EG&G really had superior staff there in getting the proposal out the door.

Riordan:

So, you really had to rely more on EG&G to take up some of the slack from the…

Schwitters:

Well, again, the trouble with the failure of a senior person like that is that a lot of people have to double for the person and carry out what he or she is not doing, and then you’ve got to try to resolve it and get other people in. So, it becomes a very expensive proposition when somebody is failing in those key positions.

Riordan:

At what point did you ease Sverdrup out of its position?

Schwitters:

Well, I think then it came… I can’t remember exactly when, but after Lieu Smith, it just became clear that these guys weren’t performing, and it was about the time when we had gotten the architect-engineer on board and we had a pretty good relationship with them, with the PBMK [Parsons-Brinckerhoff/Morrison-Knudson] people. We just forever vowed there was no value added by Sverdrup.

Riordan:

But you still needed somebody to specify, we want a building with 1,000 square feet and it’s going to have air-conditioning, etc.?

Schwitters:

Right.

Riordan:

Because somebody has got to step into that role on behalf of the physicists.

Schwitters:

That’s right.

Riordan:

Was it John Rees?

Schwitters:

I am trying to remember now. That actually was going pretty well.

Riordan:

The guy from the military?

Schwitters:

Yes. It was George Robertson. And John Ives. He came in as a regular lab employee and he was a very nice guy and made a good impression on everybody and really got taken into the community. And he went around in a very matter-of-fact, straightforward way. He established work requirements and so on. Got things done. Bob Matyas from Cornell had a good reputation but was a little older guy, didn’t want to really commit to coming to Texas full-time. He was just not the right person at the right time in his career for this kind of role [as director of conventional construction].

Riordan:

I think we have enough on that question. I want to get back to the site-specific design, which is really the big issue of 1989. Is it accurate to say that the design that you were handed [by CDG] was viewed by a large segment of the high-energy physics community as good work?

Schwitters:

Yes.

Riordan:

Had a really solid design. Maybe we’ve got some problems with magnets, but we'll work things out. But it strikes me that in the process of [reviewing] the site-specific design that real flaws turned up in that design. I mean, that’s one way of interpreting it. Another way of interpreting it is that Helen Edwards had much more conservative approach to accelerator building when she came in whereas Maury’s approach was a little more like… “We can work something out.”

Schwitters:

Yeah. Well, like anything there are elements of truth to all of these. Plus, there is new information. I thought the design, right from the beginning, was optimistic, the 4 cm aperture. Nobody outside of the CDG liked that, and I had some very strong words with senior accelerator builders, CERN and so on, saying that that was wrong, almost from day one. Gus Voss said it in his report. Everybody said it. Okay. Then I started just myself looking into the consequences of that. Now the CDG approach to that was a very elaborate system of correcting magnets on every magnet. And we started looking at that. That frankly scared the hell out of me because it was a very elaborate wiring system. You had to be dynamically tuned for each magnet and you had no way to check for errors. It was wired up correctly and then the only way to really check the mean lifetime.

Again, in my own mind and going back over the previous interview, I really felt during that time [in 1989] that we had a responsibility to get this machine commissioned quickly on the air because the community was investing so much. And I was just not going to tolerate another unending set of commissioning problems like the original Fermilab and the SLC [Stanford Linear Collider at SLAC] had. These were devastating and so I was acutely sensitive to that. And so yes, the mentality was to be more conservative because I felt it was essential that we get on the air in a reasonable time, and that we do good physics. On the other side there were people calling for the fact that we had to make the aperture big enough to have 10³⁵ luminosity [100 times greater than the original 10³³ SSC design luminosity] and so on. And I rejected that. I really thought we had to find a middle road. Next point. By the way, I was not that well connected with a lot of the technical discussion coming in. Helen was. She did a great job in 1989 ferreting out the difficulties in that design. Anyway, what struck then struck me personally was the work of [Stanford professor] Dave Ritson and Ray Stiening on tracking particles through these non-linear fields and, sort of using the cliche of the day, the chaos ideas, to show the sensitivity of the stability of the orbits to the non-linearities in the magnetic fields, namely, with rather small-sounding differences in the quality of the magnets one got drastically different possibilities for unstable machines.

Riordan:

Is that after going through X million orbits?

Schwitters:

If you go through X million orbits what is astonishing is that the betatron amplitude can just almost spontaneously jump up and a proton can go for millions and millions of turns and then, all of a sudden within a few turns, just leave the machine. And this is a manifestation of classical physics now known as chaos where one introduces non-linear effects. There just are very complex motions of these particles.

Now the vulnerable point for the SSC was when the beams were stored in their initial injection orbit before all the particles are put in, and before you can accelerate them to high energy where they are much more robust and stable. Anyway, Dave Ritson had developed some qualitatively new simulation codes that dramatically showed these effects. They could go through more turns than were simply possible [to simulate] in the CDG days and show that after millions of turns the particles that appeared to be stable up to that point would spontaneously leave the machine. And so that was a real shocker to me at least and got everyone’s attention. And I’ll never forget one comment — and I think it was by [accelerator physicist] Don Edwards, but it might have been Dave Ritson — that depending on the different random number seed that you used in the simulation, a machine would either be pretty good or not be very good. So, what was introduced here was the notion of the unlucky machine, and suppose you build an unlucky machine. Well, I frankly found the notion of an unlucky machine 50 miles in circumference to be totally unacceptable. In retrospect, a later problem came along, the vacuum loading, which made it absolutely clear we needed a bigger aperture.

Riordan:

The vacuum loading?

Schwitters:

Vacuum loading due to synchrotron radiation on a vacuum system. De-sorbing gas [molecules from the walls] and then transporting them out, not getting a thermal vacuum runaway problem made it imperative that you had to have the bigger apertures, possibly even a liner which is what the LHC [ed. Large Hadron Collider, under construction at CERN at the time of the interview] is doing. So, this was the crucial issue in our minds then [in 1989], whether to make the… It was really a very simple thing. Going from a 4 cm diameter aperture to a 5 cm one was the whole debate, but that was the [major] cost-increase in the program.

Riordan:

But let’s get back to those non-linearities. Am I correct in assuming that those are due to the eddy currents?

Schwitters:

No. These non-linearities are just due to intrinsic positional errors and distribution of currents in the standard design. This was before we got into eddy currents. You simply put in the normal construction tolerances and the design of the magnet, then the non-linearity scale is a strong function of the magnet aperture… It’s like a tennis racket. If you build a big Prince tennis racket you have a bigger sweet spot in the center and it’s that kind of thing that happens with these magnets. So, you actually win rather dramatically even though the aperture goes only from four centimeters to five. The non-linearities that kill you are high order poles, ten, twelve, and so on, that scale [to] the high power of that.

Riordan:

And that’s just due to wires?

Schwitters:

That’s due to electrodynamics. Putting wires and positioning them to industrial powers.

Riordan:

I thought that the perception of the eddy currents as seen by Dave Ritson… and let us say more conservative than….

Schwitters:

Yeah. Now that came in… Even more than the SSC, the DESY [the German laboratory Deutches Electronen Synchrotron] Proton Synchrotron had a large ratio of design final energy to injection energy, and that’s the issue here. Over what span of energies can you inject into it at stable orbits and then accelerate into the higher energy. And so, DESY actually had a larger ratio, I believe, than SSC. So, it meant that they were even more sensitive to these matters and there was deep concern that they would have troubles. Now they did have some troubles, although in the end, they compensated for them using other techniques to dynamically control the pressure coordinates around the magnets. They did that and had reasonable but not great performance. Essentially, it’s a difference of an order of magnitude number more "knobs" [to adjust]. When you do these adjustments, you’re adjusting dozens or hundreds of correction currents going in various parts of the machines and one essentially tries to adjust these to optimize the overall performance, but it’s a large search through a space of a lot of parameters. With the SSC you’d have over an order of magnitude more knobs. So, it was not clear that such a process would even converge, that you could even get a beam around and use the same technique used at DESY to get a stable orbit to improve the linearity of the machine to the point that you could actually make it work. And of course this was the fundamental problem of the original Fermilab synchrotron, where it had a very small, what they call dynamic aperture, which meant it was extremely sensitive to small changes in the operating conditions, and to this day those were never fully understood. In fact, Fermilab has thrown away its main ring and replaced it with another one because it was so hard to run. Anyway, I felt that that kind of approach to an SSC was just not acceptable.

Riordan:

So, that’s it, right? There were really two problems here. One was a dynamic aperture which has to do with the size of the magnet—

Schwitters:

And the quality of the fields, and so on. Right.

Riordan:

The other is increasing injection energy from 1 TeV to even 2 TeV due to eddy currents.

Schwitters:

Right. Okay, you’re getting into several issues here. Yes. There are also so-called persistent currents at low energies which are related to the eddy currents in the magnets. These also set up fields that create errors that are detrimental to the machine. That was another one of several issues there. It was part of a lost art of how to better eliminate or at least minimize those eddy currents in how you treat the superconducting wire. That was something that had to be re-learned.

Riordan:

I didn’t realize that was dealt with on the Tevatron.

Schwitters:

Oh sure. There was a coating. There were in fact details of coating on individual strands of wire and how they were insulated from each other. And there was zebra-wire, and there was ethanol coating and all this stuff. It’s a very subtle interplay between eddy currents and sharing of current in a quench. So, one is… a tough optimization between various planners, and so it’s a difficult engineering problem but again it was one that was simply forgotten in the transition from the Tevatron through CDG back to SSC. Now, the second point you raised was the raising of the injection energy from [1 TeV to 2]. This has two important effects. One is to inject the higher field for the machine there for the eddy currents or persistent currents are relatively small in effect. The second thing is the beams go into the main ring smaller so they require a smaller dynamic aperture. Most people, most advisers — in fact, I remember having a conversation with [SLAC Director] Burton Richter on this point — felt that was far and away the best investment for solving these types of injector energy problems, namely, the cheapest way to buy security was to double injection energy. I think the questionable decision, if you will, was to combine both the increase in energy and the increase in aperture.

Riordan:

That’s my question, I guess. Did you need to do both? Could you have gotten away with one?

Schwitters:

With hindsight, we could have gotten away with one. In my view we could have done it without doubling the energy of the injector. But Helen felt very strongly about that, and that’s what we…

Riordan:

So, Helen was really the point person…?

Schwitters:

Oh yeah.

Riordan:

She resigned over the…

Schwitters:

Oh, that was more complicated.

Riordan:

Okay. We’ll come back to that. I’ve read that the memo that Panofsky put together in December 1989 recommending really holding the line as far as possible. I mean, it’s pretty clear to me that having made the decision to make both of those changes you could not get much…

Schwitters:

That’s correct. We knew that. And furthermore, there were other… It was clear that every other cost… I’m exaggerating. Other significant costs from the CDG estimate were always on the optimistic side of things. There really wasn’t, whatever you want to call it, an adequate contingency or whatever. Cost of tunnelling, cost per square foot… When we started getting into those in late 1989, spring of 1990, it was clear everywhere that the error was one-sided. So, that was the background for Panofsky's position [on down-scoping]. This led into the real serious end of the decision process to down-scope the SSC energy… It led to DOE reviews, to URA reviews, to the Drell panel [led by SLAC Deputy Director Sidney Drell] and so on.

Riordan:

We’re talking about spring of 1990?

Schwitters:

That comes later. Yeah. The final outcome of those processes [came in 1990], but they were beginning in that period.

Riordan:

As I remember there were a number of committees that came in around December and January of 1989. Voss with…

Schwitters:

No, Voss was earlier, when we had a machine advisory committee. Billinge was chairing that. You’re talking fall of 1989 and now we are reviewing the dipole aperture and the injection energy.

Riordan:

I mean, what’s really driving this is presumably Helen and other accelerator physicists who were… more conservative than others.

Schwitters:

Oh, everybody was — Ritson… and Stiening and everyone. These tracking programs were new information. There was the old gut feeling that 4 centimeters would never really be adequate anyway. By the way, the time driver on that was the October deadline to specify the SSC footprint. So, we had to verify the footprint in, I believe, October of 1989, so that the land procurement process could begin. Because then DOE would review it and then request the land to be purchased by the state. So, there was a clear set of deadlines there that had to be met. So, the early design studies were as much related to confirming the footprint as anything.

Riordan:

Yeah….

Schwitters:

You see, there were a number of other subtle changes in there that Helen insisted on,… and just buying more margin in several areas. That’s true, and I think, certainly in retrospect, not all of those were absolutely necessary. On the other hand, the big majority were.

Riordan:

Now, I guess what I am leading up to is, is there any way you could have come in close to the $5.9 billion cost figure [that the DOE had presented to Congress earlier that year]? I think that’s where people sort of were headed… I think everybody agreed that without cutting the energy down to 15 [TeV per beam, that the cost would have to increase].

Schwitters:

I don’t see how, without cutting it down to 15 TeV, we could have done it. We just purely went… By the time you got to that stage in the numbers, what mattered is the linear number of miles in circumference. The magnets, the vacuum systems, power supplies, and all of that stuff. And it was very clear to all of us that given the optimism in the $5.9 billion budget, namely that there really was not a margin for much of anything — and again, this one I’ll stick with to the end — the need for the 5 cm aperture then arose and the basic scope was set, the basic dollar amount.

Riordan:

Panofsky recommended as much. He felt was possible to keep the growth, say, within the $6 billion range.

Schwitters:

Yeah.

Riordan:

That’s not let the growth get any more than $6.8 billion or something like that. And I think that involved cutting some things from…

Schwitters:

15-to-17 TeV, in that ballpark. Again, this came a little bit later, when we had that debate with Panofsky. At least I recall at that point, that at a later point, when it was really going to cost us… Well, during that general time… So, now we’re not talking…As I recall…

Riordan:

Okay, maybe it was December 1989. He said he was totally voted down.

Schwitters:

He was voted down. There was a special URA meeting on this, and some of the other voices were very interesting. First of all, at sort of a top level, how much [higher] can you go? $1 billion or $2 billion, or what is the real number? Of course, in the end the biggest driver in these costs was the project planning time. If you took an extra year if you slowed down, it was another $1 billion. You’re in a very vicious cycle of costs there because of the “standing-army” costs. So, one of the things right away you have is that the CDG budget was built around a very fast timeframe that was clearly not going to be acceptable to anybody. So, that’s almost $1 billion right there.

Riordan:

Especially when you’ve got to redesign the magnets.

Schwitters:

That’s right. So, that’s why I really think realistically we’re talking 15 TeV to get costs down to within striking range of the $5.9 billion. Now, the argument that countered that on the board members, the sort of senior people with experience in Washington and the principal advocates of holding the line, came from, first of all the state of Texas, but second were Bob Stempel from General Motors and Harold Shapiro from Princeton.

Riordan:

I remember they were on the Board [of Overseers].

Schwitters:

They were on the Board and exceptionally good people. Both of them made the same argument, namely, they said, listen, nobody believed that this sort of project at the stage it’s in was not going to have an increase at one time as long as you come up with a credible design, just because that’s the very nature of these things that the first design is preliminary, is not site-specific. It doesn’t surprise me a bit, the magnitude of the increase. I mean, that’s how real projects go. So, their view was that this is expected. On the other side, if you are just willing to give up in your scientific base, your scientific rationale, then where will you stop? I mean, if you’re willing to go down — “You say you wanted 20, now you wanted 15, well, what about 12?” — you run the risk of a free-fall there and then, what they said was, where your community has credibility is in your scientific needs. You know, go reassess these scientific needs, but beware of that side of the argument, namely, if you don’t have conviction on those and you’re not serious about wanting 20 TeV, then that’s also a very negative thing to consider on this project.

Riordan:

So, you’re saying that some said that if the physicists should really tighten their belts, cut this thing to the bone, staying close to the original $5.9 billion could actually have been viewed in a negative way?

Schwitters:

Oh yeah, if you didn’t believe in your scientific rationale. Remember, at the same time the space station was going through this stuff. And they were down-scoping. That was the popular thing to do. That had been done many times. They still do it. And these guys were aggressively negative on it. Again, the thing that you have credibility on is what do you, the scientists, feel you need? And, as Panofsky said, he got voted down. He was almost the only one arguing that position.

Riordan:

What’s in my mind now is that this need for 20 TeV — it could be 40 TeV total [collision energy] — was based on the theoretical trajectory of where the [likely]… physics [might] lie.

Schwitters:

Right.

Riordan:

But those numbers had been revised downward since that time. We’re now talking about 100, 200 GeV.

Schwitters:

But again, I felt we were not building a machine to find only the Higgs but to explore electroweak symmetry-breaking up to the point where you could have really anomalous effects. Even if you find a 100 GeV Higgs boson, you want to know what else is up there.

Riordan:

Multiply that by the typical factor of 10 and you’re still…

Schwitters:

Listen: the argument was squishy. So, on the Drell panel that’s for sure. Now, the consequences of going to15 TeV, really saving money, that was to build a different machine, build a smaller machine by 20 or 30 percent so you can save that money. Now, what are the consequences of that? We haven’t even talked about that side of it. Is the Waxahachie site appropriate? Not clear, probably not. Do you reopen [the site-selection process]? I mean, you don’t just carve 20 or 30 percent out of the circumference of the ring and have it fit in the same way. You’ve got a totally different picture of land acquisition, for example, of population that is affected, and so on. And so that was a whole other area.

Riordan:

So, you’re saying this group from Waxahachie had made a proposal based on…

Schwitters:

Well, the state of Texas had.

Riordan:

…this is going to sit well…

Schwitters:

Well, it’s not the people of Waxahachie, it’s the country. I mean everybody. There were 36 proposals, whatever the number was. They had all based it on this basic [20 TeV per beam] scope, and so there was a very real concern that you would simply reopen the site-selection process.

Riordan:

Oh. Okay.

Schwitters:

That’s a biggie.

Riordan:

That all these other places would say, wait a minute, if it’s only 30-40 miles around…

Schwitters:

Yeah. Do the ground rules still hold? Is that the best site? Not at all clear to me.

Riordan:

Alright. So, then you’re committed to staying within a few miles of the [original design circumference]—

Schwitters:

See, this is frankly my biggest worry: you had to stay within a few miles of the site. Otherwise, you had a huge problem.

[End of side of tape recording]

Riordan:

We were talking about how you could only modify the ring by a few miles on either side. That’s only going to change the price marginally.

Schwitters:

Right.

Riordan:

So, cutting to 15 or 17 TeV was not really an option given the whole can of worms?

Schwitters:

That was our sense. We explored that with the state. Some background here. When it became clear that the cost of the project as planned was going up, I met with the Texas commission [Texas National Research Laboratory Commission, or TNRLC] people and told them about it. We had a meeting with the governor, a memorable meeting with Bill Clements, where we discussed these same issues. There was mixed opinion. [Texas businessman and philanthropist] Peter O’Donnell, I would have to say, was very much of the Panofsky camp. I think he was very concerned about cost growth. He is a quiet guy who works behind the scenes so he never really confided in me these views, but I could tell it in his questions and body language. But I tried to lay out the options here, namely, to get the cost down to $5.9 billion, where we would be talking 15 or so TeV — a rather substantial change of size — and what the issues were, why we had to increase the aperture. Bill Clements is a technically knowledgeable guy. He comes from the oil industry and the Defense Department, and he was very outspoken, very sharp, and quizzed me mightily on this stuff, but then, in a phrase I will never forget, said, “Fellows, it’s nut-cutting time around here: I think we’ve got to do this, and we got to do it right.” And that was their feeling as well.

Riordan:

Would this meeting have been in December of 1989.

Schwitters:

I can’t remember. We could find it. Probably in that period. It was in Dallas, at his company headquarters, on a Saturday morning.

Riordan:

But before the URA meeting in Washington?

Schwitters:

It was right in the same frame, probably before.

Riordan:

Okay. I think that [URA meeting] was on December 14.

Schwitters:

Yeah. Rafe Kasper has the best notes on this stuff. I’m sure he’ll give you some wonderful quotations from that meeting.

Riordan:

Was there also a sense that you were spending billions of taxpayer dollars and you had better do it right?

Schwitters:

Absolutely. I felt there was billions of taxpayers dollars and there was time, and I still believe to this day, that a person’s time — especially the creative time of physicists — is the one nonrenewable resource we’ve got. And it just kills me, the careers that were wasted during the commissioning of the main ring at Fermilab. So, that was a very important consideration in my mind all along. And we were sensitive to that from the pain and suffering that had been taking place at SLAC on the SLC in that same period, or just before that period. So, yes, the feeling of myself, and it was articulated by Gordon [?] and by these other people like Harold Shapiro was just that, namely, that this is a major commitment, major money, it really has to be an instrument that performs well and that has future growth. The other thing to think about here, that I thought about at least, was, what do we do after it’s been operating for ten years? Clearly the unique feature we would have would be the tunnel and infrastructure of a relatively large ring. And clearly vis-a-vis cost, that would be the road to its future use as people developed higher-field magnets and the like. Furthermore, it was also obviously the natural site for joining with the [proposed next] linear collider. It was big. So, the Texas site, it goes back to that other question. One thing that I remember sensing at the very head of my list of positives was the potential for that site. The size, the way it fit with the land and the towns, and quality of that limestone was just magnificent. It would have been a great place to build on for a long-term laboratory, better so than Fermilab.

Riordan:

Getting back to this 40 TeV…

Schwitters:

Yeah.

Riordan:

I accept the argument that you couldn’t change the footprint more than a few miles in any direction and that’s a huge concern…, but I don’t accept that you had to hit 40 TeV.

Schwitters:

I agree.

Riordan:

That is definite, if it had saved money with some missing-magnet approach, for example, you could have started at 15 TeV per beam and say, okay, we can put [our R&D efforts] into magnets, we can expect that we can go to lower temperatures just as fast.

Schwitters:

Right.

Riordan:

Would any of those scenarios have saved more than a few hundred million?

Schwitters:

None that we studied. That was the point. None of them would make the qualitative difference between essentially $5 billion and something, a number under $6 billion, and a number that was over $7 billion. And that was a qualitative break that we saw.

Riordan:

There was nothing that was going to get you the 0.5 billion or 1 billion dollars [savings].

Schwitters:

Without absolutely devastating the project….

Riordan:

Going to a…?

Schwitters:

Yeah. Essentially to a non-detector scenario. Just build a machine, and I refused to do that. In fact, that was the agreement, that we would absolutely keep the detector component the same and not request any more.

Riordan:

Who were you talking to in Washington at this time? This was 1989. You’re really extending quite significantly your own personal reach. At various levels, who did you really talk to in 1989?

Schwitters:

We talked to OSTP [the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, which was headed by Allan Bromley in 1989]. That was always kind of a mixed experience. Of course, we had had to borrow money from them before, and had reasonable interactions there. I’m trying to remember. You must know exactly when [Princeton University physicist] Will Happer came in [to become Director of the Office for Energy Research]. I talked to Will Happer a lot.

Riordan:

He came in in 1991.

Schwitters:

Was that 1991, that late?

Riordan:

I’m trying to get an idea of what access you had.

Schwitters:

Okay, let’s back up. Let’s see. It was a lot of discussion with Jim Decker [Deputy Director of the Office for Energy Research, a career official who stepped in as acting Director after Robert Hunter’s departure in October 1989]. That was the first experience I had when I flew back to Washington to give them a heads up [about the likely cost increase] and that’s when the New York Times sent somebody [to cover] the crisis in 1989. That’s the first time I had that experience of it being a private meeting and seeing it literally the next day in the New York Times. [ed. The story broke in the Washington Post in a 19 November 1989 article by R. Jeffrey Smith, “Supercollider Could Face Cutbacks.”] And shall we say it influenced my vision of the trust of that organization very quickly, if I wasn’t already concerned.

Riordan:

So, this was really an ER [Office of Energy Research] meeting, wasn’t it? Temple, Decker.

Schwitters:

This was at that level. That’s correct.

Riordan:

I mean, you were not talking to [Deputy Secretary of Energy] Henson Moore.

Schwitters:

Okay, I was talking to Henson Moore. I’m talking to the Admiral [James D. Watkins, Secretary of Energy under Bush]. Around that fall, in October, we were talking about the SSC footprint. Because remember, the formal thing we’re doing is signing off on the footprint, a big deal. And I came in and gave Henson a briefing on this and he saw the fact that the footprint was larger in two areas. One was to accommodate the 2 TeV injector, and the other was the so-called fixed-target finger on the other side. The [B/V] volt, that we recommended against by the way because I was concerned about any indications of extravagant cost. Anyway, that was put in by DOE. But Henson recognized instantly that this had ramifications for cost and schedule, so he went into a tirade on, not a penny more than $5.9 billion.

Riordan:

This is somewhere like October?

Schwitters:

It would have been like October. Mr. Deputy Secretary, we’re going through this cost review, and you’ve got to know that there were a lot of things that were underestimated and we’re going through this and we’re going to give you the best people, the best figures we can, and so on. But that’s when he was very upset, concerned with that. So, I was again talking to him in that period. And of course, talking to people on the Hill. In the fall there is not much activity on the Hill because not much is going on. In spring one starts the sequence of having visits, meetings with all the various players on the committees on both sides.

Riordan:

What about DOE? What about Watkins, did you deal with him?

Schwitters:

Well, remember we had those fateful sessions with Hunter [in September 1989].

Riordan:

Okay, but Watkins was in on those?

Schwitters:

Oh yeah, that was a meeting with Watkins and Hunter.

Riordan:

Okay, so this was when [TNRLC Chairman Tom] Luce just finally—

Schwitters:

Showed Watkins directly that here was a statement of work, for these two different groups on the same statement. What have you got here?

Riordan:

Have you ever been one-on-one with Watkins?

Schwitters:

There were various times in there. In fact, that’s right, well, there’s the famous one with Watkins, [ed., when Watkins became deeply enraged], but yeah, there were occasional one on ones with Watkins or with Watkins or with [Paul?] in that period. I came in and gave him a briefing on this stuff. I was usually met with a tirade.

Riordan:

Even in say the middle of 1989?

Schwitters:

There I think the main meetings were still with Henson. There was this fateful meeting over the cost growth issue. And I think Watkins, as I recall, wasn’t part of it as much as Henson.

Riordan:

I’ve heard that Jay [Sneller?] did a lot of the work for Henson.

Schwitters:

Jay did a lot of the work… That came later. His trips all came later.

Riordan:

How did Watkins find out about this cost increase? Were you the bearer of the bad news?

Schwitters:

I’m not sure. I don’t fully recall the sequence. The memorable time with Watkins came at the time that [Panofsky?] and Drell] were briefing him on the results of that.

Riordan:

About… the Drell panel?

Schwitters:

Yeah.

Riordan:

They had gotten the findings of that study?

Schwitters:

Well, ask him about what happened to the group. [URA President] John Toll told me I would have to brief Watkins before that. And they were literally sitting out in the hallway, and Watkins went berserk and started screaming at me and swearing, yelling about all this stuff. I don’t know quite what the point of all of it was. It was just an absolute explosion.

Riordan:

Hadn’t he been briefed by somebody else?

Schwitters:

Of course he had been briefed. I had briefed him myself privately in his office in a much quieter situation, so I don’t quite know what the theatrics that were going on were. But anyway, there was just an explosion at that time. So, that was fairly late. I mean, he knew by then.

Riordan:

This would be January of 1989 [ed. 1990]? The Drell panel has weighed in [by then].

Schwitters:

Yeah. That was literally when it was. I mean, he knew that. He had been briefed. I assume he had been briefed when I came in October, when they certainly got the picture then that there would be potential overruns. And as I say, there was a meeting with Decker when I specifically laid it out to them, and then Henson gave his speech — it must have been October — when we were presenting the footprint. They signed off the crucial steps. They had to sign off on the footprint, and they did. There was nothing hidden from anybody at anytime.

Riordan:

According to [Panofsky?], if I remember correctly, this meeting that came after yours, with [Columbia physicist and Nobel laureate] T. D. Lee and Drell… really had a lot of impact on Watkins… So, here were the eminent theorists saying we’ve got to have 40 TeV.

Schwitters:

Right. I think it did.

Riordan:

Because it really generated a lot of… support in the community. We’ve got to go for it this time, otherwise we might not be sure we’ll have another chance.

Schwitters:

That’s right. I think that’s true. Part of the explosion I do understand now. It probably made sense in the presentation. Really what I was trying to do then — people may not believe this given what happened — but I was desperately trying from the beginning to build a working relationship with the DOE since we needed each other. And I was simply going through this process. In those days we were really hoping to hold to a $7.8 billion dollar budget. We thought that that was practical, that we could do it, and that then we get down to the point that you’ve said, okay, with appropriate belt-tightening, the thing would only make 17 TeV per beam. That within that kind of mentality we could deliver a program at $7.8 billion. I really believe that. I believe that to this day. And so, what I was trying to do is make that kind of argument, what it would take, and I was pointing out the schedule and the decision processes and things and just pointing out some of the difficulties then that we were having between the different organizations within DOE. And I think clearly what I had done is to imply criticism on DOE in that process and I think that’s what really set him off. I mean, he knew about the project.

Riordan:

About problems you had with ER [the Office of Energy Research]?

Schwitters:

I wasn’t that specific. As I recall, we probably didn’t find the transparencies in the records, it was just simply, we need these decisions from you, you need this from us. It was that kind of discussion. There were some milestones. If we were to keep on schedule for a $7.8 billion budget, here are the kind of tight spots I saw. Timing issues and details. No complaints about personalities or anything at that stage, it was just that here were some big, major policy milestones that would have to get resolved. And I believe that those put him a bit on the spot and then he reacted.

Riordan:

So, then, what you’re saying is that it was not reacting against the cost [increase]?

Schwitters:

That’s my impression. He knew that that was coming for sure.

Riordan:

Do you think there was an element in this conflict that led to what can be perceived as Watkins’ distrust of physicists…?

Schwitters:

Oh sure.

Riordan:

It may have pre-existed but they’re a step up at this point.

Schwitters:

Oh sure. I think it also raised questions with the Texas people. Absolutely. For sure. It hurt us deeply, the trust factor in both operations.

Riordan:

Would I be correct in making the conclusion that it was this event that led to Watkins insisting on people like [Joe] Cipriano[from DOD Naval Weapons Procurement Office] to oversee the project and putting [Stone & Webster engineer] Edward Siskin in as project manager? [ed. Siskin actually became General Manager in 1990; Paul Reardon became project manager reporting to Siskin.]

Schwitters:

I think so. That’s a logical deduction. I don’t know what was the defining moment. You know, there was this rather consistent pressure from the internal staff from the beginning, pre-Hunter days, and it certainly helped solidify their position.

Riordan:

Actually, I wanted to get back to that. It strikes me that in writing the M&O contract, especially from what we heard from Bruce Crisman, who was deeply involved in those negotiations, that URA pretty much won the bet on those negotiations, largely because DOE wanted to have it delivered before Reagan left office. This would have been January 1989.

Schwitters:

Oh, the contract.

Riordan:

Yeah. They wanted to have a signed contract so that they could announce during the second Reagan term.

Schwitters:

Okay.

Riordan:

So, that put time pressures on DOE to negotiate. Then eventually, I don’t know if it’s part of it, but they played tough on a little stuff like vacation [ed. according to Crisman, who served as SSC Business Manager for the first six months].

Schwitters:

Oh, I was in on a lot of that. I didn’t see it quite that cleverly and Machiavellian. Remember that there is a history of negotiating M&O contracts. There is such a precedence that flows through all of the contracts. And Panofsky is a real expert on all of this, so he was holding on, on principle, and deeply held principles, because he didn’t trust Leon [Lederman] and Crisman [of Fermilab] from previous DOE negotiations. URA had given up some of the cherished things that he believed in. So, I must say that I never thought of that as a timing game against [Reagan's departure]. No, it was really the principle of a lot of important details. But we were very successful in those arguments, yes. But I attribute that to Panofsky’s experience and [?].

Riordan:

But you could have had an ongoing—

Schwitters:

We did. We only had a letter contract. We didn’t have a final contract.

Riordan:

By the end of January?

Schwitters:

No. We were just announcing then. I’m trying to remember. We didn’t get the contract until much later as I recall. You’ve got to go check those dates. I’ve just forgotten. We can go back and check that history. I’ve just forgotten, but it was not over for quite a while, and then we got into this extended problem with Richard Briggs, and there were other aspects of it. I mean, it all ground together.

Riordan:

What I am throwing out as a straw man is a possible scenario where the DOE, because of the time pressures of wanting to get something solid, to get some final contract before Reagan goes out of office, gives away—

Schwitters:

That’s right. They made the announcement in the waning days of the administration, that’s for sure.

Riordan:

Yeah. But then they feel cheated.

Schwitters:

Well, they didn’t give away anything. They gave us the kind of—

Riordan:

But they didn’t—

Schwitters:

They were hoping for much more.

Riordan:

Maybe they feel there is a rupture?.

Schwitters:

They do. Okay, they wanted a lot more than previous M&Os. Yes.

Riordan:

But then they feel, okay, we’ve given up too much, we’ve got to tighten the reins on this. This would be one way to explain Hunter’s actions, we’ve got to put in this management plan, which to me, I’m a little surprised that Ed Temple and [Bob Diebold?] participated in that so vigorously. These are people who have lots and lots of experience.

Schwitters:

I can’t psychoanalyze these things. I don’t know.

Riordan:

But it requires a lack of trust.

Schwitters:

There is no question these things reflect a lack of trust. Yes. But I’ve heard stories that that’s sort of Hunter’s modus operandi in everything he does, that there’s nothing new in it.

Riordan:

Well, you guys turned Hunter on to the fact that he comes out of the defense side of things.

Schwitters:

Right. And Watkins is also used to that sort of thing.

Riordan:

And so they’re perhaps used to a more micro-management style?

Schwitters:

I think so. See, I think that’s more important than a particular feeling about a negotiation. I mean, a contract negotiation is a contract negotiation. You negotiate it and go on to the next step.

Riordan:

But you can, especially in something like a time-pressured [scenario]…, you can come out of that period, goddamn it… with Hunter… and find ways to tighten the screws.

Schwitters:

That could very well be. It’s a plausible scenario.

Riordan:

You wouldn’t disagree with that scenario?

Schwitters:

No. It’s plausible. I just have no evidence one way or another.

Riordan:

Because I continue to see this behavior on the part of the DOE at several states, the next one being the [Jefferson Lab in Virginia?]…

Schwitters:

That’s right.

Riordan:

That we’ve really got to…

Schwitters:

Oh yeah. By the way, this attitude goes far beyond just DOE and high-energy physics. I’ve recently gotten into this humanitarian de-mining topic and it’s very interesting. If you read the World Bank reports [it’s the] same the same thing, don’t trust the technical experts except on technical questions. So, it’s very interesting and in my mind an issue of concern, the scope of trust of technical expertise. So, we can get into that over a drink.

Riordan:

On the other hand, what I would have thought would have been the appropriate way to oversee this project, is to build on what by all accounts was a very successful record and network that Temple and you put together.

Schwitters:

That’s what we thought too.

Riordan:

You compare the record in terms of cost overruns… versus almost anything in government. That little paper Temple put together about 1986, you’d say, my God, he was right. Why can’t we make this the nucleus of [the DOE oversight of the SSC Project]?—

Schwitters:

That was our position going in. Certainly in my experience it worked with these same guys on detectors, it worked very well.

Riordan:

The chain of events, and perhaps the end of the M&O contract, the second stage is the management plan, and the third stage is the cost overrun, which leads DOE to decide that it’s got to attain a completely new [approach to] oversight.

Schwitters:

But they had decided that at the very beginning. They went in with that. It was there at the RFP [Request for Proposals], the original RFP. The M&O contract had all these trappings.

Riordan:

That it was going to require on an order of magnitude increase [in oversight]?—

Schwitters:

Yeah. It was of great concern to us.

Riordan:

So, you see a continuity?

Schwitters:

Yeah. I guess I’d say that. I think we go back to the [Fermilab?] days. I think it was a concern when it was obvious that the right way from a purely technical point of view to begin this process was a negotiation and sort of, immediately with URA, or as [?] say, [URB?] entity, without the competitive foothold he had established. You can imagine at that stage a natural evolution and, okay, you can call it discreet or continuous, the facts are similar. But for whatever set of reasons, DOE felt that it was not in a position to do that. It had to be a competitive procurement as we got through the scope of the program. But there are a set of decisions that I think— well, it goes on afterwards, I’m sure.

Riordan:

Maybe this will be the perfect time to just give you the microphone because I realize that DOE’s, the government approach was that you were building a machine. Whereas, as I recall, your attitude was we’re building a high-energy [physics] community.

Schwitters:

Yes, I felt strongly, we’re building a laboratory, that in the end its success or failure would depend on scientific discoveries, and that given the long timescale, the cost, the fact that it was in a new part of the country as far as high-energy physics was concerned, that these were all tremendous challenges, and that to succeed we would have to, a) succeed managerially, and b) succeed scientifically, and that all of those aspects would go into it. So, yes, it was much more than a machine, because just a machine per se without scientific content would be a failure in my view.

Riordan:

Is there any scenario you could perceive that you could design the machine and let essentially other entities build it, and still have a healthy scientific community?

Schwitters:

I honestly don’t think so.

Riordan:

If that portion of the activity is well-funded? I mean, this is obviously what the DOE wanted to do.

Schwitters:

People wanted to do many things. Given the right set of conditions anything was possible. Somehow this is the wrong debate. I guess this is what I am frustrated about: in the end you’ve got to get some dedicated people who will do it. We tried hard to bring in people outside the community just to augment the strength. I felt that that was an essential part of it. So, I guess the way I would phrase the question is: would they be more successful at bringing together people really competent to do it and carrying it off? I don’t think so, because inevitably there will be funding restrictions and it’s only when you’re truly and deeply committed to the scientific goals that you get down and, as Governor Clements would say, it's nut-cutting time to make the hard choices, get it done. So, I guess the scenarios would still involve, to be successful, sort of trust, inter-working relations with people. In fact, those are more important than the formal contract aspects. The trouble is that we failed to achieve that kind of trust between the various players.

Now, I’ll ask a slightly different question, why did we fail them? And here there really were fundamental differences over roles and responsibilities, and you said it well a minute ago when you said DOE’s oversight role. I truly believe that that idea was not what was in play here, and it comes about in funny ways. One is the expectations of the technical staff there who really were committed to the scientific roles of the project, but they wanted to play a strong technical role. That was clear. Two, was that the Admiral’s way of doing things was different than what we were used to. We were negotiating with Japan. We prepared documents for discussion with the government officials with Japan. I made an innocent editorial remark, namely, it was mentioned that Admiral Watkins “carries out” programs of high-energy physics. I said perhaps you should write this as Admiral Watkins “supports” programs in high-energy physics. And I was assured that, no, in fact the high-energy physicists support him. So, there were very important culture clashes going on in so many different dimensions that I don’t think we ever got it straight on these respective roles and responsibilities.

Riordan:

It strikes me that the DOE made the decision to measure progress based on building the facilities. To a much lesser extent they measured success in building a high-energy community.

Schwitters:

No question. And that’s a tenet of modern management theory, too, to monitor these things.

Riordan:

It just has to do with the feeling of the community itself and the feeling of the larger high-energy physics community… I mean, one of the measures we could have applied is a willingness of people to come down there and take full-time jobs and commit to the fact that they are going to be there.

Schwitters:

That’s right. Without a doubt.

Riordan:

I look at this organization chart in September 1989 and, you know, I highlighted in yellow the ones that I think really come out of the high-energy physics community, whether they are physicists or not. Correct me if I’ve missed anyone here. [Doug Crise?], did he come from anywhere?

Schwitters:

Yeah. He came from Berkeley.

Riordan:

Anyone else?

Schwitters:

No, it was slim pickings from the beginning. On the other side, a lot of extraordinary good young people who were not yet established came and made tremendous contributions and would have risen to real figures of prominence in the future.

Riordan:

Can you give me a few examples?

Schwitters:

Sure. [Kenny Thomas?] came from Oxford. There was a whole set of young physicists. Jim Siegrist came.

Riordan:

Didn’t he still work for someone else?

Schwitters:

He kept his position at Berkeley. A number of people did that, others didn’t. Oh, I forget his name. The whole group of people that went off to Wall Street. I am blocking names that come to me. Anyway, so there was a terrific group there that had been taking postdocs at CERN and Brookhaven and various places and had not settled into permanent slots yet and wanted to come where the action was. And they were every bit as good as the best people at the other labs in the community. And I understand that that’s what happened to Fermilab as well. Bob Wilson told me this. In the end, the senior people never came to Fermilab, very few did, and he was frustrated. So, that seems to be part of the learning experience.

Riordan:

They would come down… for sort of one year?

Schwitters:

That’s right. And then a group of other senior people did come and committed as best they could for frequent periods of time. So, it was a mix of some older people.

Riordan:

But there was always this element that people didn’t come down because of this military-industrial culture.

Schwitters:

I think that’s a cheap excuse. I don’t buy that. I think that people didn’t want to come down for other reasons. It was pretty much an excuse. I think the people who came here— you talk to Gerry Dugan and even Ray Stiening, who was probably most critical of that, a lot of others who came, again this young crowd who joined the Physics Division. I think it was a cheap excuse, a cheap shot.

Riordan:

But in general you’d say that this attempt of yours, this goal you’ve portrayed, of wanting to build a scientific community, would have been able to work if allowed to?

Schwitters:

I believe so, personally. Oh yes. Absolutely. But it was with new characters. It wasn’t the old establishment. Oh yeah, it was exciting, and I ran into those people around the country. It was just great. They all wished they were back here working.

Riordan:

I wanted to talk about Ed Siskin. Was he somebody that the Admiral really needed to have in management to feel comfortable?

Schwitters:

That’s what we were led to understand.

Riordan:

Can you describe the process of his selection, including the whole management [structure]? I mean, it wasn’t a normal slot. You had to create one for him, right?

Schwitters:

We had to create one. As I recall, I think Johnny Toll first heard in these sort of endless discussions of management that DOE had a person that they wanted us to hire as project manager. This was about the time, as I recall, that we had had a search committee and the committee recommended Paul Reardon in roughly that same period. And I think we told DOE that, because that was an approved position, and we certainly did not want to blow that. And the DOE was not going to accept Reardon; they had somebody [else they wanted to be] project manager. That was sort of what we were told. Then there were meetings at various levels, but the one I remember is some [BOO] members — Panofsky, probably [Cornell accelerator physicist Boyce] McDaniel, I’m not sure, Johnny, myself — went over and had a very tough session with Jim Decker on this. I think that’s when I first heard the name Siskin, I’m not sure.

Riordan:

December of 1990?

Schwitters:

Must be. And we were thinking this was going to be an over-my-dead-body issue and that you were going to take somebody and it was a real knock-down, drag-out [battle]. So, we said let’s find out who this person is. So, then at a certain point he became identified as Ed Siskin. And so Ed at a certain point came out to the lab. Actually, maybe even before I met him, I might have had him meet with members of that [project manager] search committee — certainly with Panofsky. He went out to SLAC, he met Rafe Kasper. I met him. He came to the lab and made a first round of discussions. I’d say he made a mixed set of impressions of people, from very positive to very negative. I think he made a good impression on people like Helen and [SLAC Director] Burt Richter.

Riordan:

Had Burt been on the search committee?

Schwitters:

No, he wasn’t but I think Ed met him out at SLAC. He went out to SLAC and I wanted him to see SLAC and see a lab and go around and look at things. And so he did talk with Burt. He was very impressed with Burt. Smart guy. Anyway, I like him a lot. Pretty fast and loose. Again, one of those guys who claims a lot more knowledge than he really has when it comes down to details. But that was the situation. We had very little knowledge about him. He had worked for a while as a consultant to the nuclear power plant that had a lot of difficulties near Dallas, so I called the new CEO of the Texas utilities and asked him about Siskin. He gave a fairly good report, a technical guy, got some things done.

Riordan:

But had he managed a $1 billion dollar project?

Schwitters:

Not really. He’d come in to help. And as things developed, of course he said he had managed a $1 billion project. He’d come in as a consultant. He had been an engineering consultant. He’d been expert witness in those kinds of activities. But had he really built a $1 billion project, and so forth? It was clear he had not. So, this presented the potential again for a really knock-down, drag-out shoot-out between URA — as I recall that’s [?], Reardon and [?]. I mean, I had mixed feelings on Paul Reardon. I liked Paul personally, but he has just never been that strong, and he always struck me as a guy claiming all the credit but not really doing the work. As it turned out that’s what he was. It is clear now that there was a real knock-down drag-out between URA and DOE.

Riordan:

That they would block—

Schwitters:

They would accept Reardon, and URA didn’t want Siskin. And it might be one of these things typically to find a way for people to work together. And since there was enough work to do, [we figured] let’s get both of them. So, we had a dinner in which Reardon, myself, and Bob Sheldon had dinner together in Dallas and we simply decided to discuss it. There was this stand-off.

Riordan:

Who is Bob Sheldon?

Schwitters:

Sheldon was a buddy of Reardon’s, he was sort of an associate of Helen’s. He goes around, he’s a project guy. He goes around and does things on projects. Been at CERN, been on Fermilab construction, very nice guy, bon vivant.

Riordan:

What was he doing here?

Schwitters:

Well, he’s really here because he was a buddy of Reardon’s and likes a good meal and a good glass of wine. No, I just thought it would lubricate the dinner a little better. And we had talked about that maybe this was a catastrophe. We didn’t need any train wrecks. We could get Paul, he’s very close to Paul, he was a consistent associate of Paul’s, could we forge a relationship here? And we had a nice dinner and at a certain point even Paul and Siskin wandered outside. I think Siskin had a smoke or something. They had a private chat. Sheldon and I had a chat. And then it sort of evolved into this general manager, project manager idea in the spirit of getting more strength on board in this area.

Riordan:

That’s how this came about?

Schwitters:

You know, I have to say, Ed had certain real strengths that he brought. I think he was fundamentally honest in the process. On the other hand, there was a lot of bravado, and other negatives that you generally don’t get in our field, that we’d like to eliminate from our field. So, it made it difficult to gain the full kind of trust that you have with scientific colleagues. He had this management attribute which I don’t like of being sweetness and light to the people above him and being a terror to the people below him. He very much practiced that management style, which I felt created additional tension in the lab that I didn’t like, but there’s not much I could do about it. You give the guy the responsibility, you’ve got to let him to do his job. So, there were additional tensions there.

Riordan:

Did he pick up the responsibility to put together the cost-and-schedule control program?

Schwitters:

Well yeah, he said he was going to do that.

Riordan:

It was supposed to be him, right?

Schwitters:

He’s supposed to be a big expert in that. Yeah, that was going to be part of his job.

Riordan:

It was no longer something that was under the project manager?

Schwitters:

That’s right.

Riordan:

Seems logical for a general manager…

Schwitters:

Yeah. And then he was also…We were so busy that he’d also oversee the other service functions, the personnel things, so I didn’t spend as much time there, and that was fine, that was good solution.

Riordan:

It also seems like he took an increasing role in going to Congress.

Schwitters:

He did that. He had certain connections through the Energy and Water Subcommittee for many years.

Riordan:

Hunter Spillan [Clerk of the Energy and Water Subcommittee]?

Schwitters:

Yes, Hunter Spillan. And so, that was kind of an interesting experience. He was clearly not respected by the members of Congress, because— he is known as sort of a Hill person, but it was clear when you were around there that he didn’t garner much respect from the Hill people. So, we tended to take Ed's information with a grain of salt, although he was close to Hunter. Still, I think he had good information there.

Riordan:

So, not like in the later days when an issue came up about how well the project was being managed. As I recall, they were not particularly eager to hire Paul Reardon. [inaudible]

Schwitters:

Oh, that was me.

Riordan:

[inaudible]

Schwitters:

Oh sure. They set up all of that. No, that came from [Congressman John Dingell's staff member Robert] Roach. Well, I think there they [ed., the DOE?] had a Washington insider that they knew how to play hardball with. [And they] thought they were just going to get lots of goodies. [?] put him on the spot. [It] made an embarrassing show.

Riordan:

Do you think Siskin set up an alternative management channel through which people who disagreed with Reardon could air that dispute? Did they have access to such an opportunity?

Schwitters:

To my knowledge, no, he didn’t do that. I think people disagree, but, no, I don’t believe he went around me, I really don’t. We talked about that a lot with Siskin, who seemed honest. I think he had a close relationship with Cipriano, and I think he hatched a lot of ideas with Cipriano. But to my knowledge I really could not detect any improper relationship on his part.

[End of side of tape recording]

Riordan:

If I could compare your tenure to [Wolfgang Panofsky's?], it was a more diffuse leadership. In other words, there were several channels — this is my perception which could be wrong — but there were several channels through which people could appeal, could go to Cipriano, go to Watkins. There was no sense where the buck stopped.

Schwitters:

Oh yeah.

Riordan:

And you didn’t have this firm control over everything that was going on.

Schwitters:

It was very difficult. That’s right. That created a lot of difficulty. First of all, the perception I believe is correct. You were asking— and I think that was also the perception of Siskin. You ask a different question, did I actually think he executed in that regard. I don’t think he did, not much. Certainly Cipriano did. He plays for all he’s worth. He would go intermingle with the staff and make plans and leave things at the xerox machines and all that. All the little games were going on there at that level for sure. And then of course [Doug] Pewitt was going around to his contacts. He was gone [from the SSC staff], but he was still coming in and talking to people in the lab and garnering information and dirt and stuff and spreading it around. Oh sure, Pewitt was always coming around and talking to people.

Riordan:

As some kind of self-appointed oversight? What was his role?

Schwitters:

Partially just coming around, having lunch, playing golf with his buddies. Partially, he later got into some management consulting. At a certain point we made him put on a red visitor badge because he was involved in some of the procurements. And it absolutely made him madder than I’ve ever seen him, and I think it was Jack Story [of EG&G, head of the technical services division] who said, well I’m sorry but you’re a visiting consultant now, with these contracts now, so you’ve got to wear a red visitor’s badge. But specifically Siskin. I think people perceived that as an obvious KGB plan, the KGB model. It could be described as such if you discuss these things. But in the end, you know, maybe it happened. I was tightly tuned to it happening. I just don’t have any evidence other than I don’t think I’m so naive.

Riordan:

Okay, So, you’re saying that essentially Siskin was in the middle of a big, loyal chain—

Schwitters:

Reasonable. Again, I think you can hatch some crazy ideas with Cipriano, and they may then take on a life of their own. And sometimes they even come back down. They had a crazy scheme that we were going to do with the Medium Energy Booster and there was some fixed-target mode, heavy-ion experiment or something, and it was just elementary mistakes of physics, and stuff, and it was a wacko idea that came down from DOE or something and gotten into there. I think I traced it down and sort of patched it somehow. A brilliant bull session where Cipriano annoyed plenty of physicists again. And resonating with Siskin, some screwball plan went out.

Riordan:

A red herring?

Schwitters:

Yeah. Right. This kind of nonsense would go on. I think at a certain point Ed even recognized where he could get good information and I think it stopped a lot of that.