David Goldston

[This transcription has been rearranged chronologically, as opposed to the original arrangement in the digital copy of the interview.]

Weiss:

This is Steven Weiss interviewing David Goldston, on the 21st of November 1997, in Sherry Boehlert’s office in the Cannon House Office Building.

Goldston:

Rayburn [House Office Building].

Weiss:

Rayburn, that’s right, I walked past the Cannon. The way I like to start these interviews, especially when I’ve already met someone and know a little bit about them, is to get a richer sense of your background, leading up to your engagement with the SSC, to sketch a biography…

Goldston:

I graduated from Cornell in 1978 with a degree in History and came down here initially as the Congressman’s press secretary.

Weiss:

Congressman Boehlert [ed. Sherwood "Sherry" Boehlert, a Republican from Utica, New York]?

Goldston:

Yes, in 1983.

Weiss:

Did you grow up in his district, then?

Goldston:

No, I grew up on Long Island, but after college my first job was working on a newspaper in Utica, New York, so I got to know him when he was county executive. And when I left there, before he ran for Congress, I worked in the state legislature for a little while, and then after he won, he basically [asked me to come work for him in DC as his press secretary]. And, with some reluctance, I did accept the job. And I left that job, moved over to the House Science Committee in November 1985, because I’d gotten tired of the press secretary job. [Rep. Boehlert] was then the Ranking Member on what was then the Science, Research and Technology subcommittee, so he had a slot that he was able to fill. I had an interest in the issues, but it was also that I wanted to leave, he wanted to keep me, and this was an available slot where I could be doing something new but still be of assistance to him. And as I said, it involved issues that I was interested in. I’d always had some interest in science — and certainly with academic and education policy in general. I stayed there until September 1990 full-time, when I enrolled at Penn to work on a PhD in American history. So, I kept working part-time, although that’s not an official thing. I went back part time — came back in October 1993, I guess — October 1, 1993, I think, officially, full-time.

Weiss:

PhD in hand?

Goldston:

No, coursework completed. One of my friends says I’m a “DCD”, from [inaudible, ed. a spin on ABD, all-but-dissertation].

Weiss:

A DCD? How’d you do that?

Goldston:

By not taking my exams. I’ve got to say it’s a stupid decision I don’t regret. Anyway, I stayed on the Science Committee until May 1994, went downtown for a year to work for the private-sector Council on Competitiveness, and headed up a report there on science policy. I came back here May 1995 as [Rep. Boehlert’s] legislative director and shifted my focus to primarily environmental policy, although I still am the person in the office who does science policy and is still followed as [inaudible]. I’m dealing with every issue that comes across the desk, but the environment became my primary focus.

Weiss:

So, you were around for the whole [SSC affair]?

Goldston:

For all of it.

Weiss:

From the beginning.

Goldston:

Right.

Weiss:

Do you remember when you first heard of the Superconducting Super Collider?

Goldston:

No, and even when it was more current, I realized I couldn’t remember exactly how we got involved in it. Part of it was, obviously, that it was before the Committee, and I probably got involved when the DOE was starting a giant contest in which every state, almost, was competing for the site [ed. in 1987]. And I don’t really remember how or why it caught the congressman’s eye quite so much. It actually wasn’t in our subcommittee’s jurisdiction. It was really in the Energy Subcommittee’s jurisdiction. At the time New York was competing, and I think the way we first got involved, actually, was because the northern New York site — we talked a little bit about this last time — was a trans-boundary site. Our first involvement with it — I don’t know who got us involved. There were lawyers up there that were calling us, and I assume it was…

Weiss:

Up there? Northern New York?

Goldston:

Up in the North Country, which is outside our district, but it’s close by, and also obviously with a New Yorker on the panel… So, our first real involvement was pressing the Department to consider this trans-boundary site, because they always expressed reluctance and then outright refusal, eventually, to look at anything that was international. And that was our first focus on [the project], and that probably was how we first got involved. The reaction of the Department… We had expressed often that they get [wanted?] our votes, because we were always expressing skepticism, right from the beginning. Part of what disturbed us was this DOE refusal to consider an international site, in what was ostensibly an international project. So, our very first involvement with it made us very skeptical. And we started expressing that skepticism, even while New York was in the running. It always seemed that that site was a long shot. We didn’t think that, but we thought that it ought to be considered. We certainly thought that, given the offer of Canadian hydropower. It was just a red flag — the idea that they would rule this out, from the get-go.

Weiss:

Had there been any New York delegation-wide response to the 1983 decision, to close, or to cease construction on the Brookhaven collider? On Isabelle?

Goldston:

Isabelle. That’s before I really got involved. I don’t know. There probably was.

Weiss:

Okay. I’m just trying to get a sense of how far that reached.

Goldston:

Isabelle had some sort of long, demonic path to demise. I can remember reading [about it]. I grew up on Long Island. I remember reading about it on Newsday through most of my childhood. It was a long up and a long down. Isabelle did keep coming up later, as a sign that these projects only [inaudible]. And that was probably more important rhetorically than it was. [There was] this DOE sense, I think — the general sense was one of invincibility: They just went from strength to strength, and everything worked out, and they built Fermilab and SLAC, although most members [of Congress] don’t know the history of any of this. I think they might know about Fermi’s nuclear reactor, in Chicago. I’m sure it’s just been a straight path of successes. So, the importance of Isabelle, I think, was largely that it was a historical correction for that [record]. They’d say, “You know, this hasn’t always panned out the way it was expected.” And I think that was the warning that we were [drawing?] on. But Boehlert certainly was not, at least to my recollection, was never involved in anything about Isabelle. There may have been some state delegation-wide letter that he signed, but it certainly wasn’t something that actively engaged us. And I wasn’t on the Science Committee yet, but I don’t remember any hearings on Isabelle.

Weiss:

Any hearing at that time, but [inaudible]. That decision to [make the project?] international, or…

Goldston:

No.

Weiss:

So, when you moved to the Science Committee, what kinds of things were you doing over there? More researching for hearings?

Goldston:

Well, on committee staff you basically do the day-to-day work that people associate with Congress, so, everything — planning hearings. We were in the minority then, obviously, but we were always very active. The Committee worked in a relatively cooperative manner, certainly one of the oddities of forty years of Democratic rule. [There were] eight Democratic staffers and me doing the same work, but we cooperated with this… The committee was set up probably because of the way Boehlert operates, partly because of the way I operate, so it was a pretty much a team [effort], but all the things — talking to the agencies, setting up the hearings, drafting the legislation, meeting with groups — basically everything that committees do. The primary agencies we [on the subcommittee] oversaw were NSF and NIST. Wasn’t [NIST] NBS then? And then sort of general academic funding issues. So, it was doing a lot of NSF business. One of the issues that came up started as early as 1985, but there was a long history of fighting to create a facilities program at NSF — basically NSF awards for university construction. So, that was one issue. There were also some various cats-and-dogs issues that we were very involved in. There was a nutrition-monitoring act, that the committee kind of worked on for years, that we finally were able to broker the deal that got it going. It was an interest of [California Democratic Congressman] George Brown [ed. who became Science Committee Chairman in 1991, after New Jersey Congressman Robert Roe stepped down], who was also interested in the subject… a personal sort of quest by the then — well, later — staff director. She was then just a staffer on the committee whose background was in nutrition. Doubled at the Department of Agriculture and HHS [Health and Human Services] primarily. Those were two agencies we generally didn’t have jurisdiction over.

Weiss:

So, it was more the grunt work of legislation than designing political strategies or things like that?

Goldston:

Well, that is a part of it.

Weiss:

Okay.

Goldston:

They’re sort of part and parcel. It was not the same kind of political strategizing, the same order that I have to do now over at the [inaudible?], this east-west confrontation, and we’re talking partly on environmental issues. But it was some — as I said, this nutrition — it was … Our role was that of the honest broker, on this nutrition-monitoring bill that had been stalled for three Congresses, and then we helped work out the agreement that finally got it going. I think it took another Congress to do it. On university facilities, our role was as an equal part of the effort to sort of come up with a compromise. Although now when I think about it, if I remember, the university groups finally worked it out among themselves. Not right at the beginning, but eventually. The big battle then really was competitiveness policy and the steps that led NBS to become NIST, and that was fairly politically fraught, although not as nasty as it became later, as [inaudible] now as an illustration of persons in Congress, lightning-rods-involved issue. But I will say, nothing on the order that we had to deal with on the SSC.

Weiss:

This is also the era of the Internet coming through.

Goldston:

Yes, the committee was still relatively low-level. The committee was involved in pushing NSF to start the supercomputer center program [ed. promoted heavily by then-Senator Al Gore], which then was one of the big jumps in the start of the Internet, but I don’t think anyone on the committee had the foresight to see where that was going, certainly not a Luddite like me.

Weiss:

Some historians seem to think Gore was pushing the Internet.

Goldston:

He may have.

Weiss:

Because he [inaudible]?

Goldston:

A little, yes. The committee was very active on this, though, taking some of the early steps, and actually Sherry Boehlert was very involved in getting the NSF supercomputer program going, probably because of [theoretical physicist] Ken Wilson, who was then at Cornell, really pushing him in that direction. And the committee was really instrumental in getting NSF to establish a more comprehensive ongoing program. Originally, they had this program that was buying time on corporate computers for universities, and then moving them out to the centers to help jumpstart the Internet.

Weiss:

Cornell keeps coming up, although it’s outside of Boehlert’s district.

Goldston:

Well, it was pretty close in those days. From 1983 to 1992, the district included three of the towns in Tompkins County, which is where Cornell is, basically, surrounding the university. So, it was very close, and then obviously because he was an upstate New Yorker on the Science Committee, we were an obvious target. It’s obviously the [inaudible] of scientific knowledge and expertise in the area, but we also dealt with RPI [Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute] and [the Universities of] Syracuse and Rochester.

Weiss:

If you’re on the Science Committee now, and you’re still Sherry’s guy on the Science Committee, and so when he… [ed. at the time of the interview, Goldston was Boehlert’s legislative director in his personal office.]

Goldston:

It was like these tightrope-walking positions. In those days, and as his designee… I guess I still do that on the Science Committee, most other committees don’t. On the other hand, technically, I was part of the Republican staff, and my boss was from Republican hierarchy within the committee, so…

Weiss:

Right, so, your big boss would be the staff director…

Goldston:

Right, or technically, [Pennsylvania Congressman] Bob Walker [ed. the full committee’s ranking Republican], or [Manuel Lujan?], who was before Walker. I don’t know who the ranking Republican was.

Weiss:

Right, okay. So, in the mid-1980s, then, we have the SSC site competition and the international [New York-Canada] site is eliminated. Now, do you have any idea where that decision came from? The decision to have the site entirely within the US?

Goldston:

No, actually. We didn’t really do a lot of investigative work at that point, and we just complained. We pointed it out at every chance we got, how curious this was, that protons were the only thing that still couldn’t pass through the border unimpeded. But we didn’t go within DOE and question [how it happened]. This thing was still a kind of juggernaut. We were a voice crying in a small patch of the wilderness.

Weiss:

Who do you recall from DOE leading the charge?

Goldston:

In those days? Let me think. Well, one thing is that we got involved step by step by step. And so we weren’t as involved in knowing everyone who was everyone. I assume that [Deputy Director of the Office of Energy Research] Jim Decker was involved all along at the staff level, but I don’t remember who they had at the [political level].

Weiss:

The formal front guy then was Trivelpiece, Alvin Trivelpiece [Director of the Office of Energy Research from 1981 to 1987].

Goldston:

Right. Trivelpiece was involved, and at least… Was [Princeton University physicist] William Happer there yet?

Weiss:

No. [ed. Happer became director in 1991, during the first Bush administration.]

Goldston:

Trivelpiece we knew, yes.

Weiss:

Okay, but there weren’t other people who were always knocking on the doors?

Goldston:

No, and we didn’t feel for… I don’t remember having any personal contact…

Weiss:

Did he and Sherry have any personal relationship?

Goldston:

Not to my knowledge.

Weiss:

Okay.

Goldston:

They may have, as time went on, but I don’t remember them ever really having much [personal interaction].

Weiss:

Sherry said, and you both confirmed at the last interview [ed. with Michael Riordan and Steven Weiss, on October 30, 1997], that early support for the SSC was a mile wide and an inch deep.

Goldston:

Yes.

Weiss:

Could you explain what that meant?

Goldston:

Sure. The support was generated, we would say, almost entirely by the SSC site competition. This was not something that was on everyone’s lips, that we must build the next collider, next atom smasher. I think there was [inaudible]. This was sold entirely for economic development and prestige. And with virtually every state having at least one and sometimes more sites, it absolutely guaranteed support and interest. That was the only reason it was really of congressional interest. Otherwise, it would have really been another Science Committee backwater issue. Unlike the space station, it didn’t involve every contractor in the country. It really would have been off the radar screen, I think, for most members, if it hadn’t been for the nature of the site competition. The site competition made the SSC extremely visible. Many people at the time, of course, said that if they had built it at Fermilab and not attempted this greenfield site, it probably would have come out a lot differently. Because that [i.e., the greenfield site] obviously added to the cost, added to the way people looked at it as a fresh boondoggle kind of project. The site competition was absolutely the critical element to put it on the congressional radar screen. And then, Texas’s offer of — what was it, a billion dollars, that they were going to put in? That created …

Weiss:

That was very well known.

Goldston:

Oh, that was enormously well known because, again, the only real issue was the site competition. That threw everything off. So, then you had every state rushing in to make sure Texas didn’t get a leg up by basically buying the victory, and we had this agreement that these offers were going to be sealed. How do you seal an offer that’s already entirely publicly known? I don’t know, but I guess you could wonder if Illinois or somebody else was going to outbid them. I don’t know. The whole thing, especially in retrospect, seems pretty absurd. But that was the whole source of the support. And frankly, as opposition was generated, we had to wait for people either to have an excuse to change their minds, or congressionally, to die off — resign, retire, go on to something else. Because these members felt, at least, compelled to be locked in. There was still more honor around here than there is now. People weren’t willing to change their vote in Congress just because they weren’t in the race anymore, especially when they had been giving all these speeches about what a wonderful project it was, to defend their state’s involvement. So, that was absolutely the critical factor in the whole way the project was seen. But it was also its downfall in a lot of ways, because it did make it visible, in a way that basically focused the debate to a large degree on economic development issues, and not on the science. And that left it vulnerable later, both to people who criticized it from a pro-science view like we did, and to many people who vote against it just because of this aspect.

Weiss:

But the [inaudible]?

Goldston:

Probably would have been [inaudible]. But that was the last time. I think the fact that most people supporting the collider had no interest in the science, either. [ed. a largely inaudible section is deleted here.]

Weiss:

Is this fairly typical of science issues in general?

Goldston:

Well, the thing is, most science issues don’t really come to the floor this way, which is why it was so interesting.

Weiss:

Most of them are exclusively buried in appropriations legislation.

Goldston:

Yes, or they’re in authorization bills that aren’t especially controversial, so that most of the science bills now go through [without much opposition?]. They go through [inaudible] suspension, which is the [inaudible] celebrated the separation of those [inaudible]. Or the leadership, when there’s a quiet moment and they need something filled, it’s normal, if it’s not going to get out of control, they’ll bring in a science bill. Also, it’s not at all controversial. Technology policy goes through it a little bit [inaudible].

Weiss:

It's non-partisan…

Goldston:

That’s right, but that debate is really over economic policy. There’s nothing scientific, and this is legitimate. Really, what I’m interested in is the economic policy part of the debate, it’s not a question of [inaudible]. The debate is over what the role of government should be in fostering technology, too. So, I can’t think of any issue — I guess the space program was like this, but that was the Cold War — where the issue was really spending money on science. Maybe I’m blanking something out, but I can’t think of anything else. Nowadays, science comes up in a lot of environmental issues — that is, how policy should be informed by the science — which then creates sometimes ridiculous debates on what the science is, or in the great debate about census sampling, where opponents of… There are good arguments on both sides on legal grounds, and frankly both sides are motivated just on the basis of political grounds. You have a debate where people get up and argue that sampling is the same as guessing — a century after the creation of the social sciences. So, that’s the kind of science debate you get.

Weiss:

Right.

Goldston:

So, this was relative. The SSC was, as far as I know, unique, and I don’t think things like Isabelle ever got to this level on the floor, or for that matter, the Brookhaven stuff right now [ed. probably referring to the late-1990s tritium leakage that eventually led to the closure of the High Flux Beam Reactor], which again is not quite a science issue, but more about how to manage the lab. So, yes, the SSC debate was one of the rare times that the Science Committee…

Weiss:

That scientific research gets all the way to the floor.

Goldston:

Right, that the committee was embroiled in this kind of dispute. That was a new thing for us, and in some ways it was a learning experience for all sides on the committee, just because it was not that kind of [inaudible], brought to the floor like this. And I think it was probably helpful to the pro-collider people that [New Jersey Democrat Robert] Roe became Science Committee chairman, because he came out of the public-works mentality, and he knew that everybody [inaudible] staff.

Weiss:

Okay, so, in the early years, after the site selection, after the Texas site was chosen and they announced it — January 1989, what were you up to on the SSC at that point? [ed. The site selection announcement was made on Nov. 10, 1988.]

Goldston:

Well, we were just monitoring it. We were increasingly expressing a certain degree of skepticism; there were already some questions about how much money it would cost. Our angle was almost always, even after when we got involved with the more investigative stuff at the end — which we did such a great job on — was basically priorities. Is this where we want to put our money?

Weiss:

Priorities with science?

Goldston:

Again, within science, within science. And the counterargument was, of course, that this money’s not going to go to someplace else in science. Which is true, literally, but there’s still an opportunity cost, I think, especially with the way budget politics have evolved since then. I think largely we’ve been proved right. The other side will still say we were proved wrong, in the sense that this money [ed. from canceling the SSC] didn’t go to science.

Weiss:

So, even in 1988 we’re seeing budget politics tempering the discussion of priority.

Goldston:

That’s right, and again, I’ll have to look up some of those speeches and see exactly what we were saying. But, this issue where people tried to delegitimize, even minimize our stand by talking about [inaudible, ed. reviewing the transcript, Goldston comments this remark concerned the charge that Boehlert only opposed the SSC because a site in New York was not selected, when he had raised concerns about the project when New York was still a candidate site.]. Sherry always countered that by saying he still supported the project after the fact, which is true, in terms of voting. The way I usually try to counter it is by pointing out that we were already saying we had qualms. [inaudible] The priority being the issue. And at some point, Sherry was actually [inaudible]. It was again at Cornell, and it was probably after he said something [inaudible].

Weiss:

[inaudible]? [ed. This may be a question about American Physical Society President James Krumhansl, a Cornell University condensed-matter physicist who opposed the SSC.]

Goldston:

Right. Right. He had just finished his term. And I assume he got in touch with us at a point where… I can probably look it up.

Weiss:

He sent out a letter.

Goldston:

That’s right. Once we were already starting to get active a bit. So, that was something unofficial but [inaudible]. And also, he pointed out the fact that the SSC was not something that the entire physics community could use, which is pretty obvious to anyone, once you know the way things work. And part of the problem is, in this environment, that most members of Congress think science is this small, indivisible thing. You even get down to disciplines like biology, chemistry, and physics: that’s way too fine-grained for most members of Congress. And the idea that you have some fields that inherently compete, don’t like each other …

Weiss:

And the closer they are, the more they don’t like each other.

Goldston:

Right. It is just impossible to get people to understand these clean-air fights. The epidemiologists don’t like the toxicologists to begin with. This is an overlay on a rivalry that goes back to the origins of the fields, and they should liken … It’s two different ways of approaching the same question. That is just beyond comprehension for them — or at least if they understand it or know of it, which most of them don’t — then they [inaudible] because it hurts their worldview that science is this one thing that provides the answers.

Weiss:

Which scientists like to maintain as well.

Goldston:

Correct. Absolutely. Which actually means that when divisions like the ones between solid-state physicists and high-energy physicists are brought to the floor, they actually take on — I think, to people willing to listen — an exaggerated importance, because there’s no existing worldview where that’s a natural state of affairs.

Weiss:

But that is the way every faculty appointment is argued.

Goldston:

Right, right. And so then it looks [to the members] like, “Oh my god, there’s not unity here, the whole thing’s falling apart.” Where, actually, if you understand the way it’s [i.e., physics is] set up, you’d be more likely to shrug it off. So, it’s actually another case where, I hate to say it, ignorance was our friend.

Weiss:

You can turn that around the other way. People who think the Republicans and the Democrats are so different, and they don’t even have the same working styles, the build-up of staff and so on, it seems very odd, but when you start to learn more about the mechanics, there’s a lot of similarity.

Goldston:

Yeah. That’s life. Actually, I had always had the opposite view, which is that members of Congress think that people think in partisan terms. But the public — to make distinctions between the President and the Congress, or House or Senate, or Republic — it’s just those damn guys in Washington. These divisions where the House views the Senate as another planet, it is just beyond them. [inaudible]

Weiss:

Okay, so, in 1990, here, we've got a [inaudible]…

Goldston:

I was not as involved then. Well, I was down at that point to two days a week, and Dan [Pearson] and I were in touch pretty frequently, so we were still involved. Before that, I’m trying to think, there were things that I was involved in, which was really … There were a couple of floor fights.

Weiss:

All right, there were two authorization bills. There was one in 1987 that I think just died. I don’t even know if it came to the floor.

Goldston:

No, I think we actually brought it to the floor, but it… And the second one was in 1989?

Weiss:

The second one was in 1990.

Goldston:

1990, all right. So, that one …

Weiss:

That’s the Roe bill.

Goldston:

Right. That one I was very involved in. The 1987 one, if I remember correctly, was a bill where it did come to the floor. We tried to amend it already, to do — I don’t remember what — and we frankly just didn’t know the floor rules well enough, and they basically did a second-degree amendment to our amendment, it passed, and we just were caught with our pants down. And I was very upset. Sherry said, “Well, that’s how we learn how to do those things.” So, he just took it in stride, and it was a good lesson. The success we have on the floor now is really due to all the different things that were learned on the SSC. Although there’s still lots of individual things I have to learn all the time, in terms of just getting a sense of how you work the floor, and how you prepare for it — getting all the materials out, the whole education [process]. A lot of what you do around here is basically an educational function. Actually, I had lunch with [former Science Committee Counsel] Mike Rodemeyer talking about some of this, and he was saying — it’s the thing that in some ways the anti-space station people never learned. They did their little foray, but they didn’t do the sustained effort needed to get people to really think about these issues. On the one hand, they have a stronger set of opponents. On the other hand, they also don’t let [inaudible] a case that people understand a little bit better and a project that scientifically, obviously, is less — much less — defensible than SSC was.

Weiss:

The scientists are important. Scientists aren’t supporting it at any level.

Goldston:

No. That’s right.

Weiss:

But then in 1987…

Goldston:

No, in 1987, we did something… I’ll have to look up, but we might still have done what we actually proposed. We lost. [inaudible] 1989 is the year they’re starting to be worried; that’s why they were willing to alter the bill to do things like put the cap [on U.S. funding of the SSC] in.

Weiss:

1989, I think, is when Roe became the chair of the Science Committee.

Goldston:

Right.

Weiss:

Before that, I think …

Goldston:

Again, Roe wants it. Roe is a much stronger chair. On the one hand, Roe has had nothing to do with these issues. He’s been on the Science Committee since he was in Congress, but has never shown up to anyone’s… Right, there are people who didn’t know what he looked like. On the other hand, he had this history on what was then the Committee on Public Works. He was someone who liked to get into the details, liked to mix it up, look for strong bills to push through. And the feeling was that he might help. By this time, we had begun to start getting people alarmed about the project. The costs were already going up significantly.

Weiss:

And there were some losers, already.

Goldston:

Right, there were plenty of losers, [ed. meaning the states that lost out in the site-selection competition] and they were worried enough. It’s not 1989, is it?

Weiss:

I think it was still …

Goldston:

Yes, that’s 1990.

Weiss:

I’m pretty sure it was May of 1990.

Goldston:

That’s right. That makes more sense, because it was long enough after the loss [ed. of other states in the site competition] that we [began?]. The numbers were going up. We had things like [Bush’s science advisor] Allan Bromley testifying that the original $5 billion estimate was just a back-of-the-envelope guess, and now the new number [ed. by then getting close to $8 billion] was a real estimate. They represented it that way at the time.

Weiss:

So, the details of the cost increase, between May and December 1989, January 1990, didn’t really temper this authorization bill.

Goldston:

Well it…

Weiss:

There was a major redesign.

Goldston:

Right. So, they did that. So, that was one set of issues. And it was becoming clearer that people were getting more interested in this international issue, and then the Department of Energy [inaudible]. At that point we had an international subcommittee, which [inaudible]. And they were nervous enough that they designed the bill to do things like put in these caps on what the federal contribution would be [ed. The House authorization bill of 1990 established a cap of $5 billion on the U.S. federal contribution to the SSC.] It was in the end probably more rhetorical than anything else, but we supported them.

Weiss:

Now, did you guys negotiate that in? Or was that George Brown’s committee staff.

Goldston:

I think it was the staff. Yeah, we had been putting out a huge amount of stuff.

Weiss:

[inaudible]?

Goldston:

We … First of all, we basically had a one-man operation. [inaudible]

Weiss:

The appropriations subcommittee? [ed. Inaudible exchange.]

Goldston:

But that was basically it. We had no [inaudible]. And against us, we had Texas, which not only had a high-powered delegation, but also high-powered lobbyists that they had brought on. DOE, the administration, the contractors, they were much better placed through this than we were. But we did have already this kind of… The budget environment was changing, people were getting more [concerned as the SSC budget?] increased. We had this sense that already this project was spinning a little bit out of control, with significant redesign and significant increases, what is it, 5 to 8.5 billion, or something like that?

Weiss:

About that, 5.9 to 8.2 billion.

Goldston:

To 8.2 billion

Weiss:

8.25 billion.

Goldston:

Something like that. So, before that bill, I'm trying to remember the timing of all this … Before the bill was marked up… It was before mark-up. We must have a transcript of this mark-up issue, definitely.

Weiss:

Mark-up hearings aren’t always published hearings.

Goldston:

No, it’s not published, but they had a transcript. There’s transcripts, but they didn’t usually publish them for some reason.

Weiss:

Okay.

Goldston:

I think I have a copy.

Weiss:

Yeah, that would be great [to have].

Goldston:

Where the night before, they were worried about our opposition. There was a meeting late the night before, and I can’t remember — I’d have to go back and dig all this stuff up. I don’t remember if they ordered a cap in, but they were [inaudible]. Whether… I think that was the way it was drafted was, the cap… If I remember correctly the cap was already in there, whether the bill was written in such a way that it would never really come to it, never really cut off, the cap would be so retroactive [inaudible]. Roe liked to bring bills to the floor that did not have a [inaudible], and I thought that was especially important for the Science Committee because, it was really… If you were going to take up a lot of time on the floor, then they might not give you a slot. So, we had a negotiation that started around, I don’t know, eight or nine o’clock, the night before the [mark-up].

Weiss:

So, this was members and staff, or…?

Goldston:

Well, the only member involved was Roe. If I remember, Walker’s staff was already… Walker, at this point, was supporting the project, [but] not all his staff. And then I was called in. I don’t know if I was just… I think I was just hanging around late, getting ready for the mark-up… to be called into this meeting, and they had people like Ray McCaskill there, and a bunch of other people from, probably four or five people from [inaudible].

Weiss:

I particularly want to hear this, because I…

Goldston:

And four or five others, [including] a lot of Democratic staff. And we negotiated out… I remember that it was in the Annex at this point. I remember feeling very uneasy about whether it was a really good deal that I'd cut, again. And Sherry was still around, so I told him we were working on this, but he had not begun … He likes to be kept abreast of what's happening, so [inaudible].

[The rest of this tape is inaudible. End of side of tape.]

Goldston:

So, that’s around 9:30 at night. Around 11 o’clock, we get this call, in my office, to come down to Mr. Roe’s office, that they have the bill. And this is really dirty pool, whether they intended it that way or not.

Weiss:

This is at night…

Goldston:

Oh yeah. Not the 11 o’clock [aspect], that happens all the time around here, but the idea that you’re going to go down to legislative counsel, draft up an agreement that’s just been made, that’s really pretty fluid without the other side there, and then go present it for a read-through at 11 o’clock at night, when the mark-up’s at 9:30 the next morning, in front of the chairman. This is not a comfortable position to be put in. By this time Sherry was gone. I think I told him that I didn’t expect anything else to happen, or we would talk about it in the morning. Or maybe he just wanted to go home and wasn’t willing to stay. I don’t remember which. So, we’re called into a meeting with the chairman. I just remember it’s a room like this, and there are couches on both walls.

Anyway, there is this horseshoe of people, sort of acolytes, Roe’s in his chair behind the desk. All the science folks that…. Roe’s staff, SSC lab people, and then, like, here are Dave Clement, who’s the Republican staff director at the time, who’s very pro-collider, and Chris Wiler, who was Walker’s legislative guy on the committee who was actually very anti-collider, for purely budgetary reasons, and is almost in the “why would the federal government spend money on this kind of science?” camp. And they hand us the text, and they say, “All right, here’s the bill, look at it.” And I’m reading it, first off, still uneasy about the deal we cut to begin with, and this is not the deal we cut. There's still all these little loopholes in it, and I say — I’m much more used to being in these kinds of situations with chairmen now, but this was probably the first time I’d been in this situation at that point — and I say, “This is not acceptable.” Roe, who’s not the most patient person, and who prides himself of being a member who does know the details of a bill but isn’t always — at least in my experience with him — as up on them as he would like to think. That was probably less true when he was still in public-works stuff, but on the science stuff, he wasn’t always quite as sure of himself as he thought. “What’s wrong with it?” he asked. So, I ran through this stuff, and it was definitely the mechanics of it, because I remember, one of the things I said, which then really set him off, was… There were all these issues about whether the red ants were going to eat the liner [ed. a membrane inside the beam tube]. So, I said, “I want to be sure we don’t even kill one red ant until this particular hurdle is cleared.” This was the issue, because it was a series of hurdles. So, that starts him screaming and everything, and then I was going back and forth and I said, “Well, I think we need this,” and he said, “Well, I'm not doing this, and fire [all?] of us.” This is going over, now it’s about 11:30 at night, Sherry’s not there. It’s basically this wall of spectators, as this gladiatorial contest is going on with me …

Weiss:

You and Roe, I assume?

Goldston:

Yeah, and everyone else was sort of sitting there. And finally he said something to me, and I said, “Well, I think that’s a member issue.” He goes, “You’re damn right it’s a member issue.” And I said, “Well, there are no members here. I think we have to wait until tomorrow.” And he said, “That’s right, get out.” So, we left. Chris Wydler, who loves confrontation, he probably remembers it in detail more than I. He still thinks… this is his favorite story to recount, of all his years in Congress, this meeting. It’s not that [inaudible], but at any rate, we leave. I’m a little bit shaken but much more furious at the way this is working out, and finally decide, this is basically in effect God telling me (not literally) that this was a lousy deal to start with, and we were just going to go back and fight like we were going to start, and they stayed probably until the morning, getting materials ready. I was back in at seven, and came in, and got Sherry — tried to get Sherry at — He was already at some breakfast, and so he has no idea what… As far as he knows, there’s a deal, but everything’s actually fallen apart. Or maybe I’d gotten him and told him things are falling apart, but hadn’t given him any details. I don’t know. No, no, I hadn’t gotten him at all. So, then, we’re hanging around the Republican staff office, Simon, Clement, and a few others …

Weiss:

Had you been banished to the Annex [ed. of the Rayburn House Office Building]?

Goldston:

No, I was actually in the suite of offices for the subcommittee with all the Democratic staff. And the main Democratic staff had the basic suite, they’d pulled from the Republican staff, which wasn’t too much actually at that point. Had this little suite that’s in what’s now just one of the anterooms for the committee. So, I’m in there, and [Republican Texas Congressman] Joe Barton comes up to me and tries to start negotiating with me. He says, “Well, you know, can’t we work this?” He had heard that things had fallen apart. “Can’t we work this out?” And I said, “Well, we tried, but people are playing games on us here.” And he says, “Well, I talked to Sherry this morning…" — he saw Sherry at breakfast — "…and he said we’d see what we could do.” Which to me meant he had already gotten the idea that things were amiss, and he was just buying time, and I said, “Well, you talked to Sherry this morning and I haven’t, so I’m not really in a position to negotiate.” And actually at this point it got a little heated and I walked out. We were in Dave Clement’s office, Dave was there, Barton, and me, so I walked out, because I didn’t want to yell, and Barton’s actually a very nice guy. And then I came back in and apologized, and he takes me by the arm or shoulder, walking into this large room, and he said, “Now, son …” And I said, “I am not a child.” And as he takes his arm off me, we go back to congressional speak, and then — I think that was when he said the thing about Sherry — and I said, “I can’t do anything now.” So, we go to the mark-up session. Sherry comes by, about quarter to nine, I sort of fill him in, as I said he had already gotten some idea that things were amiss from the way Barton had approached him. I've got all this material. Now, the difference between what we wanted and the bill seems really narrow and technical because it’s the way these hurdles work. This was the single most confused mark-up I have ever seen, which is saying something.

Weiss:

Confused?

Goldston:

Because nobody understood what the issues were. Roe didn’t really understand what the issues were. Sherry did, but I was able to [inaudible]. It was confused to start because there’s all these numbers floating around about what DOE says are going to be real costs of [the SSC]. In fact, at one point [Connecticut Congressman] Chris Shays, who was then on the committee — Chris is great, because he’ll just sort of say things directly — said (this is like midway through the morning), “Mr. Chair, I’m entirely confused. I don’t understand what’s going on here. I mean, you say it’s [this] number, someone else says this number, can we wait, postpone the mark-up and get a letter or something from DOE and, you know, get a number that’s put in the record?” [ed. The projected SSC cost was still very fluid in May 1990.] Roe goes, “I just said it’s X billion dollars, so the number is in the record.” And that was the end of that discussion. At another point, there was all this confusion about the differences between the bills, our amendment and the bill and everything, and finally I said, “Can I just get …” — Because during the mark-up, the committee staff is at the witness table, and is there to answer questions if any arise, but it’s just majority staffers. It’s probably majority, minority [staffers] from the Energy Subcommittee or the people. Anyway, we were the outliers. So, Sherry finally says, “Mr. Chairman, would it be all right if I have counsel go and explain our sensible [inaudible]"? So, I go down to the witness table. Given how agitated I was, I must say it was a remarkably calm and concise summary of where we were. I finished, and Roe says, “All right, that’s what the staff says, here’s what the chairman says.” And again, it led to nothing. Then there’s a break in the hearing, and I’m going over to explain to the press why what Roe says is inaccurate.

Weiss:

So, there are press in this mark-up — big science press?

Goldston:

Oh yeah, there’s tons of press, because this is already…

Weiss:

Dallas Morning News, et cetera.

Goldston:

Exactly. And we, by this time, have established a pretty good working relationship with most of the press that covers [the SSC]. Which is another thing that I already knew how to do, but it was obviously very important. Even press from Texas who had started with a bias towards it. And we’ve always had a reputation of being direct and candid and honest. They can trust us as such. Anyway, so I go over and start explaining why Roe’s description is just wrong, and it’s fine if he wants to oppose us, but it’s just not accurate. So, Roe’s right-hand man, Bob [Maitland?], overhears this conversation and tells Roe that I’m saying he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Which, probably by that hour, with that little sleep, I probably did say something along those lines, not on the record obviously. So, Roe goes to Sherry and says, “Your guy is making me look like an idiot.” And Sherry says, “What?” And he explains this to him, Sherry goes, “Yeah, but Mr. Chairman, you’d hire him if you could, wouldn’t you?” And Roe says, “That’s not the point!” So, Sherry says to me, “You’ve got to be careful, what you say.” And I actually called Roe later to apologize. He wasn’t in, but he got the message that I was calling and it actually calmed things down. They actually refused to approve travel for me, for a week or two. There was some travel I was supposed to do for the committee, and that was punishment for the episode, but they recanted, and I was able to go on whatever trip it was. These trips tended not to be glamorous. Somewhere, usually speaking at some conference, you would fly in and out of the city for half a day. So, by this time, it’s getting pretty dicey. Anyway, the bill…

Weiss:

Now, you had a draft of your amendments at that point?

Goldston:

Yeah, we must have had them drafted in advance, and then…

Weiss:

And you'd worked with legislative counsel again to get those prepared and ready to go.

Goldston:

Yeah. That’s correct. And then they were still valid, because things hadn’t…

Weiss:

And they would know the bill well enough that your amendment fits in…

Goldston:

Right. But what I don’t remember now… My guess is that they still came forward with their compromise, and our amendments could have been drafted earlier to the original bill, and I don’t know if we just opposed theirs. Or it may have been that if the way we substituted stuff, the original amendment still worked, and they were just substituting different tax [inaudible]. Legislative counsel can redraft stuff while the mark-up hearing is going on, which may have been when this happened. I don’t remember. Because the bill was different from what it had been at 9 o’clock that night, usually you have to do some pretty quick redrafting. Anyway, it was pretty tense. In fact, John Doyle, who Roe had brought over from Public Works, was someone I felt I could trust, whom I think I was the only person on the committee who felt that way about the bill. The Democratic staff ended up hating it. And they were going to John the next day, once everything had calmed down, and saying, “So, what’s your take on all this?” I started repairing bridges, at least at the staff level, which still was helpful, because John always made sure then that they knew what was going on, and he was in the loop. Now, when we finally went to the floor on that bill, I don’t remember if we still were trying to amend it or not. I think we did try to offer amendments to tighten the cap. One thing we didn’t want to do was to have a floor debate that was on what appeared to be the minutiae that no one could understand the impact of.

Weiss:

There were a couple of amendments that were offered.

Goldston:

We redid amendments. We made sure not to make the same mistakes we had made in ’87, but I think we probably made some new ones. Plus, they still had the votes at that point. But the critical thing was, the House was now on record as having both the cap and the requirement for foreign participation. And those two [provisions] became absolutely critical, because that’s what we kept focusing on, over and over and over again. After that, the debate really was more on … I think in terms of public consumption, [there was] just a sense that it was spiraling out of control, and new people were involved each time, who hadn’t necessarily voted for that bill. It was important to us, and I think it was important because… Well, I’m not sure anyone ever got the point. [Science Committee staffer] Dan [Pearson] used to sort of ridicule me for sticking too much to the facts, in this case. But this notion that Congress had sort of suddenly changed, switched gears… [ed. probably meaning in 1992, when the House first voted to cancel the SSC.] One thing that we always point out to the scientific community… I did a column after it was all over for some physics publication that I could dig out [ed. see Riordan notes of his APS talk on April 29, 2001] that really laid out very clearly where we thought things had gone wrong — and also just the way scientists ought to approach this. And one point we made is that this was not some new thing. The first time House got a chance to really vote on this project, it said, “We’re only doing it under these conditions.” And no one ever took them seriously.

Weiss:

If it had stayed within budget, would Sherry have supported it? The project?

Goldston:

That’s a good question. I think we probably would.

Weiss:

What I’m trying to get at is, were these…

Goldston:

What was the critical…

Weiss:

The caps were designed more as political levers for the future, or was that really… If the collider had stayed within those parameters, would it have been a good project?

Goldston:

Well, we didn’t design the caps. They were done in reaction to what we were doing. That was their response to the opposition. I don’t think we said, “Put a cap on it.” I don’t think we even said, “Pull in 20% foreign contributions.”

Weiss:

There’s a rolling number between 20 and …

Goldston:

Thirty.

Weiss:

… a third, and the legislation, I believe, has that bracket.

Goldston:

That’s right. Those were things done because the opposition was mounting so rapidly. But I think we — again, our sense all along was that we would have had other concerns in terms of the management, but those [concerns] would have always been reflected in cost. So, I think that the answer is yes, in that the cost never stayed within the same [range?] for too many months in a row, so we never really had to cross that bridge. But while we didn’t come up with those numbers — given that our view was based on priority within science and budget concerns, and that, again, we tried to stay very far away from the idea that this was not an appropriate use of federal money — it’s certainly conceivable. I think things had already become so charged, within high-energy physics at that point, you had… There was very little trust, and there was already this sense on both sides, that they were going to — that this was going to be Armageddon. But I think if [the SSC cost] really had stayed at that level, our opposition would have subsided. As I said, it never stayed at that point.

Weiss:

And, not to mention that you would have harnessed the votes.

Goldston:

Right. I don’t think there was anyone else involved who was doing this with quite the viewpoint that we were. It was a pure boondoggle budget kind of thing for most people, including the Democrats involved, and it was like, "We’re going to be the first to slay a big project." So, a lot of things, a lot of forces had been set in motion that would have been very hard to control. And obviously, by the time the project was finally killed in 1993, that was even truer with [Congressman Dingell’s?] people. [ed. Michigan Congressman John Dingell became the principal voice of the Democratic opposition to the SSC in 1993.]

Weiss:

One of the things you mentioned in passing with the space station, was that it was this Cold War thing.

Goldston:

Well, the space program, not space station…

Weiss:

There are people who claim this was also a Cold War program. How would you respond to that?

Goldston:

The SSC, or just high-energy physics?

Weiss:

Yes, either one.

Goldston:

There was a little bit of that. I think the Cold War was already ending, by 1989, and arguing that high-energy physics was a great Cold War program wasn’t a real strong argument to keep going.

Weiss:

Was it in ’86 and ’87?

Goldston:

I don’t remember. Because the project didn’t actually become controversial until after the site selection, it’s hard to know. The Cold War arguments were mostly adduced in the end by opponents, because to the degree you could argue that this was a Cold War relic was another reason to dispense with it. I always said that was a little bit illegitimate. Obviously, our physics program developed as a Cold War — or actually, World War II interest, but to argue that Fermilab was fighting the Cold War was a bit far out, a little bit of a stretch. Now, I actually think the Cold War becomes a nice catch-all. In some ways it’s impossible to exaggerate the significance, and yet people manage to anyway. It’s a club to hang anything on, and I think that science funding in general, including high-energy physics, after the initial [late 1950s] bump-up and after the early ‘60s, was at least as much a function of a Great Society viewpoint in both spending and knowledge and [inaudible] the American [role in it?].

Weiss:

And skill of the scientists to keep the appropriators out of their way.

Goldston:

That’s right, as [the SSC] was a Cold War artifact. The fact that the Cold War was there, as sort of a backdrop, obviously helped, and I think that’s bad history. That should be the continuing run-up through the late ‘60s and ‘70s and onwards, but the Cold War just is too convenient when people work it into some political arguments they want to make. It’s not very convincing analytically.

Weiss:

Within the ‘60s, the space program, and race to the moon, and all that is…

Goldston:

That’s clearly Cold War.

Weiss:

And [inaudible]?

Goldston:

It’s [like what Reagan?] said, “Aren’t our Germans better than their Germans?” [ed. a quote from The Right Stuff]. But, as I said, the Cold War was much more… In the early days, at first, they didn’t think… the military idea of building one piece in everybody’s district that they worked on. I think the Cold War [motivation] that was there, probably went largely unstated, and the Cold War [inaudible], but they aren’t critical. Again, I think they added to this whole notion that this is something that we’re starting to do automatically, that the world had changed, that we were on this automated path, not realizing that everything was different now. Even more important than anything in the Cold War, I think, was the notion of the rise of Japan as an economic fighter, which was much more the focus of a lot of the science debate at that point. And obviously it was the impetus for all the changes going on in technology policy, even though the same kind of changes [inaudible] a decade or so for a couple of reasons. But this notion that basically we were going to do this huge basic research project and Japan wasn’t [involved?]… The fact that Japan was always the one that was supposed to give money and never did, added an additional reason [for canceling the SSC?]… Japan just helped highlight the notion that they’re the ones that we were actually at war with now, and look at the different way they’re approaching this kind of project. Even though in retrospect that doesn’t make much sense, in both what’s happened to their economy and what they want to do with their science establishment. But that was the sort of reigning notion at the time.

Weiss:

You had a successful mark-up, floor vote that both supports the project and puts in the caps and these constraints…

Goldston:

And we already had the sense that this project was wounded. I don’t think we had the sense that we’d definitely win in the end. It was the sense in both camps, but the fact that they [ed. the SSC supporters in the House] had to put those limitations in — or felt that they had to — was very insignificant, supposedly. I think that gives the sense that they were worrying about us, which actually at that point, I’m not sure they had to do as much as they were doing. But again, it was more, I think, because of their approach to legislation on it, because they were going to lose any vote. But again, we were this very small, rag-tag guerilla group — not to embellish too much — and they’ve got all these big guns, and they’re acting like they’re running scared, that’s in legislative strategy, “Can we taste the other side’s fear?” And so that really gave us increased momentum, rather than less. Not as much as winning would have, obviously, but in ignoring the sense that there’s a clear problem here in this project. Everything that we were learning about the project more and more indicated that we were right to be worried, but I always felt guilty about this whole thing. I don’t like killing science projects. As you can tell just by the number of times I bring it up, I don’t really like alliances with people who think that basic human curiosity is somehow a bad thing. And you know, that’s all a negative thing. That’s one thing, we do a lot of negative stuff on environment, too, but that’s stopping things that are ultimately, demonstrably bad. This [the SSC] is a question of priority. And all this argument about, “This is going to set science back,” or discourage people — some of which was self-fulfilling — because it was portrayed in a way that fit with the theory that what was going on was this “anti-science Congress.” If you look at the totality of what was happening in science policy then or now, it’s very hard to make that argument.

Weiss:

Do you think it was…

Goldston:

I think that the project was troubled, and that there was a growing sense that momentum was with us.

Weiss:

That bill never went anywhere.

Goldston:

Correct.

Weiss:

Did you ever expect it to?

Goldston:

No. Energy authorization bills haven’t gone through the Senate in forever. No, everyone viewed this as setting the House position. And that was going to be critical, because it was going to send— Or significant, in that was going to send a message both to the appropriators and in some sense the administration about how much latitude they had, what they could expect from the House. So, it really didn’t matter if it was signed. It would have been better. It would have made the caps debate less rhetorical and more truly problematic for the administration later on, but in putting the House very clearly on record about how far the administration could go, I still think that was important. And we never were under any illusion the bill would… Roe might have been. And if the bill had been more in support of [the SSC], it might have [gone to the Senate], because Bennett Johnston might have loved to have picked up a bill that he could wave around and say, "look," but he didn’t really need to do that. He chaired both the appropriations and the authorization committee, and that’s again one of the differences between House and Senate. The Senate doesn’t really need authorization bills ever, unless it's something legislative that they’re really trying to do. But this sort of authorizing for the sake of it, arguably, this was always an issue. Arguably, DOE had general authority under which to build the SSC, so they didn’t need an authorization; that was something that they occasionally tried to fight with [inaudible], because if you can argue that it was an unauthorized project, you could get it out of appropriations under a point of order, although [inaudible?] come and protect it if they thought we had any chance of doing that. But the fact that this bill had limitations on it meant there was really no reason the Senate would pick it up. And if they had, they would have done [a different bill, and there would have?] been a conference committee [inaudible].

Weiss:

So, the bill passed [in the House] and then you went off to Philadelphia [ed. for graduate studies at the University of Pennsylvania].

Goldston:

Right.

Weiss:

And you’re [now] occasionally involved.

Goldston:

Yeah. More than occasionally, but more, I’d say it was like a consulting role than a day-to-day role. And then, of course, Boehlert moves from SRT [ed. Science, Research and Technology Subcommittee] over to Investigations [ed. the Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee], and that sets up a whole new platform.

Weiss:

Right. So, that starts in 1991.

Goldston:

Right.

Weiss:

’91 and ’92…

Goldston:

And then of course [Democratic Michigan Congressman Howard] Wolpe becomes a real partner because of his role and his staff. [Ohio Congressman Dennis] Eckhart is left with… Actually, the Democrat who in 1993 was part of the last battle was [Congressman] Jim Slattery from Kansas. But yeah, this thing keeps… The pattern’s been set, but now, the investigative [part], where you can see a lot more of the problems… Some of them were silly things that Sherry was never willing to deal with: the Christmas party and the art on the walls and stuff. He just thinks that that’s ridiculous as a complaint. He didn’t think it was ridiculous to take it up, but [his committee staff] would have all these pages prepared and he’d just say, “Okay, we’ll go to the next divider in the binder on that. I’m not yelling at people for having a Christmas party.” And a couple of times it really threw them off there, for what they had planned for the hearing, but then the larger issues were still there. There were no foreign contributions coming in. Nothing! And of course the foreign participation cuts both ways, because Bennett Johnston didn’t like it. And then it also got into [how we've] got to give the Japanese contracts for things that we don’t want them to learn how to build.

Weiss:

Right.

Goldston:

So, that became a pretty deadly issue. And things kept building.

Weiss:

Right.

Goldston:

So, then the debates — fights — started to be over appropriations.

Weiss:

Okay. But you don’t have any official role [in that]?

Goldston:

Well, I was on staff, and I was back. Boehlert had me come to town like the night before one of the appropriations battles, and I’m doing the floor speeches and stuff, but I’m not running it. Dan Pearson is obviously the person who is doing the real work.

Weiss:

Right. But also, Boehlert’s not on the appropriations committee.

Goldston:

Right. Right.

Weiss:

So, he….

Goldston:

So, he can only play the floor card. And the fight… We talked a little bit about this before, I’m sure. Dan Pearson mentioned it to me. To fight appropriators, in those days, it was a little breaking down. A floor [battle?] was unheard of. It was scaling a very high peak and especially Energy and Water [Appropriations], which is the [ed. water infrastructure] projects bill. So, no one wants to vote against it, because you’re not going to get your dam next time [around]. And [Alabama Congressman Tom] Bevill [the Chairman] and [Indiana Congressman John] Myers [the Ranking Minority Member] were both appropriators of the old school, very non-ideological, very much “you help out who you can help out.” It’s more like some little-city political organization, you just happen to be funding large, federal projects. Sometimes you go into the back room and trade a little. And the story we always heard, although I don’t know if it’s true, was that the Bush administration told Bevill, “Give us our money for SSC and we’ll leave you alone with everything else.” I don’t know if that’s true. And that was the way it proceeded, and they really were very unprepared for what hit them. They were just not used this kind of battle. They were used to just little floor [inaudible], and Energy and Water was …

Weiss:

The battles being in conference, not on the floor?

Goldston:

Yeah, those are different, those are sort of trading battles. Occasionally, I’m sure they had project battles, but they were used to coming to the floor and saying how much they’d helped everyone. They were always the first bill out in those days, because it was the easy one. There were no philosophical issues, they gave people their money, and they applauded, and went away. So, this was a real turn of events for them, and I don’t know the degree to which they really ever ran into the opposition, to what we were doing. It would be interesting to know what was actually going on behind the scenes. I’m sure all the Texas lobbyists were writing everything for them, and the Science Committee was generally doing a lot to back them up. But I think they were just not the people who were ready to go to the floor and have a full philosophical fight over a project. It just wasn’t what they were used to doing.

Weiss:

Did this project ever have enough national prestige that it was part of the negotiations for appropriations subcommittee members, the quantity that they would get…?

Goldston:

I don’t know. I mean, that’s an arcane [inaudible] … Our story was, in the sense that they needed enough, and it was also part of the budget number, included in Function 250 [ed. the budget number for science].

Weiss:

But it didn’t play out, in the subsequent decision made.

Goldston:

No.

Weiss:

Because sometimes those numbers can become contentious enough that they frame the…

Goldston:

Right, right. That all became increasingly true later on. Yeah, they clearly were getting that money to accommodate that [ed. the SSC?]…

Weiss:

And, it was…

Goldston:

…and whatever else they needed at that point.

Weiss:

So, now I have, in 1992, the House votes it down on the floor. And now Dan [Pearson] would have been the point-man for the political staff of that.

Goldston:

Right.

Weiss:

Okay, and I’ve got his discussion here.

Goldston:

That must have been the year, that… Yeah, in fact, I was actually back for a fair amount of…

Weiss:

You were back in June of 1992?

Goldston:

Yeah, I was actually back for the floor battle. Because I remember that night. But I did not… He was the point man, by far. In fact, I don’t think he even went to the floor. I think I went up to the gallery, I don’t think I stepped on the floor at that point. I can remember going back afterwards.

Weiss:

When the appropriations conference [report] came back, and the Senate version was in there, basically, was there any thought of fighting that significantly?

Goldston:

We had thought about it. First of all, that was the expected result. And I think we thought we couldn’t win.

Weiss:

Did you even count votes on it, in that degree of detail?

Goldston:

I don’t think so. But you’d have to double check with Dan.

Weiss:

Okay.

Goldston:

But I think we just decided inherently [that] to defeat a conference report is even harder, obviously, because now, everything… We’ve done it a couple times since then. We did it on an Interior appropriations [bill] a couple years ago, they were mines and national forest mining reform — actually defeated it twice, but [the bill?] got vetoed and became part of our government shutdown. [inaudible] But I think we discovered… It was an uphill battle; it was going to be very difficult. It was going to put people in line. And you know, even if your members are getting credit for voting with you, they have battle fatigue really quick, and this is one of the things we do all the time, it’s departmental policy, so people get tired of us saving their lives. So, I think the sense if you’re going to go up against these guys again, and there just wasn’t the desire to. And I think our feeling was now [that] clearly we had the momentum. At some point we were going to win. They don’t like the idea of more money being wasted on a project that was not going to go anywhere, and especially because there was a sense that they were going to really celebrate things now, to make it as much of a bed of roses as they could. But the worst thing to do would be to lose. That would actually set you back and in some ways erase the attack of the earlier play. And so strategically, we were better off waiting until next year. And so then, if I remember correctly, it was a pretty conscious, strategic decision, but I don’t think we actually got so far as to canvass people. I think we just sort of had a general sense for what people were saying. [ed. Here Goldston appears to be discussing the fall 1992 floor fight, which they lost.]

Weiss:

The same fall is an election, Bill Clinton comes in, lots of new faces. Big staff turnover, as well?

Goldston:

Well, you mean on the committee?

Weiss:

Yeah.

Goldston:

No, I don’t think there was too much staff turnover.

Weiss:

And for new members coming in, how much were they drawing from the pool of existing staff? How much were they bringing in…?

Goldston:

Well, first of all, I don’t know, there’s always a lot of turnover in personal staff offices. It’s mostly twenty-year-olds, who are around for a year or two and then leave, so you’re constantly starting from scratch on that.

Weiss:

Okay. So, there was no particular change in the staff dynamics on this issue?

Goldston:

I don’t think so. I mean, the Science Committee staff was pretty much unchanged. I think in the year— was that when Dennis Eckert decided not to run again?

Weiss:

I believe so, yes.

Goldston:

So, that had some of the staff, and he had good staff, but member to member, you’re always having to remake alliances as personal staffs change, and the election doesn’t do that much.

Weiss:

Yeah. But the membership changed.

Goldston:

The membership certainly changed.

Weiss:

Quite dramatically.

Goldston:

Yes.

Weiss:

Did you…

Goldston:

Not as dramatically as the next one. [ed. the wave election of 1994, which turned control of the House over to Republicans for the first time since the 1950s]

Weiss:

Not as dramatically as the next one, but it was dramatic at that time, in the century.

Goldston:

Right, right.

Weiss:

Did you see that as a tactical opportunity, a strategic opportunity?

Goldston:

Well, the Republicans saw that the change in the White House might be an opportunity. It was not immediately clear to us if the Clinton administration would continue to fight for this the way the Bush administration had. When previously we had Bush and Jim Wright and everybody was a Texan. So, Jim Wright was gone, Bush was gone, it just was not clear where the Clinton administration would be on [the SSC]. Now, eventually they came down strongly, and there were a lot of conflicts going on, whether [pushing a point of view?] and it was much more than that. In terms of Congress, it was much more of a continuing progression, we’re getting more support each time. Let’s focus on the budget and the fact that more conservatives… We certainly recognized we had a leg up, but there was just [the need to?] continue to build up what we had been doing. The bigger wild card was the administration.

Weiss:

So, in the springtime, and then an even bigger vote to cancel the collider…

Goldston:

Right, and by then they knew they were in trouble. That was the year they no longer wanted Energy and Water to be the first bill out of the gate, which had been the tradition for quite some time, and I think that was almost a point of honor for Bevill.

Weiss:

Energy and Water?

Goldston:

Yeah. And they didn’t want it because of what they learned last time, the lesson they took away was that members now are left spoiling for something that they can say they cut, and if you’re the first one out, then they’ll cut you, and then they had spent their energy and everyone else comes out clean. So, someone else can come out first and defuse this desire. Then maybe they can get away with their project. Well, that might have worked three or four years earlier. By this time there was too much focus on that project as an entity in and of itself. And so they tried that. It did not come out first, they tried to smooth… They could, if other people could sop up this budgeteering, because they didn’t want…

Weiss:

Do you remember anything particularly interesting about that vote?

Goldston:

No, other than you’re never sure by how much you’re going to win. We worked it like crazy. Although, let’s see, that vote was when?

Weiss:

May, I believe [ed. actually late-June 1993].

Goldston:

Yeah. Dan had already switched to the majority…

Weiss:

Yes.

Goldston:

Yeah, so Tim Clancy was doing… I think I had done a lot of it. For the October vote on the conference report, I was back and forth…

Weiss:

Right, you’re back here full-time, legislative director, at that point?

Goldston:

No, I was back on the committee.

Weiss:

Back on the committee?

Goldston:

Yes. I remember being involved, but I don’t know. Dan and Tim may have done most of the work on the internet, because we consult online. But, at any rate, I was involved, but it was not [inaudible]. No, you can never… The thing I remember is that we thought it was a good sign that they were nervous enough that they were changing the order of the bills, but you just… We just never took anything for granted. We had Slattery and Sherry with the cards of individual people to check. We really worked this. Actually, it was always a little hard, getting… We’d meet periodically, and Slattery would talk to like 35 people, and Sherry said, “Well, I got to at least three, and I’m sure I’ll get more…” “Talk to them!” So, we worked it, but I think it wasn’t a big surprise by that point.

Weiss:

Yes. Now, in October, you decide, this time you are going to take on the conference. How much do you know of the inner workings of the conference? The dynamics of the conference committee?

Goldston:

Well, not much. We know that the conference committee had only people who support the project, so no need to wonder about that.

Weiss:

Six people and they all support the SSC.

Goldston:

Yeah. This was a rebel group from outside appropriations attacking appropriators. They’re not going to get in their conference and worry about us, so… And yet, people who are very strongly for the project, like Johnston had an economic, state interest in it, because [inaudible, ed. the General Dynamics superconducting magnet factory was in Hammond, Louisiana]. And you’d have Bevill and Myers, who don’t like being told what to do, and probably aren’t even for the project, but don’t hold anything against it, so we were expecting it to come back again. And, again, how you make a decision to file a bill for it this time, again, I don’t know.

[ed. The recording ends abruptly at this point.]