The Clinton Years: 1993-2001 1
14.5 FCCSET/NSTC
Under the guidance of Gibbons and Lane, FCCSET, elevated and expanded as the National Science and Technology Council (NCST) in 1994, continued to function at reasonably eective levels. Among the studies and reports of FCCSET/NSTC and its working subcommittees, three either resulted in cross-agency budget initiatives or consisted of reports on those initiatives: global change research (1994, 1996, 1997, 1998, and 2000); nanotechnology (1999 and 2000), and high performance computing and communication (1991, 1993, 1994, 1995, and 1996).17
13Andrew Lawler, Wanted: the Ideal Science Adviser, Science (December 12, 1997), 1872-73.
14Andrew Lawler, Clinton Seeks `Major Lift' in U.S. Research Programs, Science (January 28, 2000), 558-59.
15Science Scope, Science (April 21, 2000), 413.
16Lane, op. cit., 260.
17Texts of all FCCSET/NSTC reports from 1991 through January 2001 can be accessed at
http://www.ostp.gov/cs/documents_reports/nstc_reports_archive (<http://www.ostp.gov/cs/documents_reports/nstc_reports_archive>).
Figure 14.3: President Clinton signing the executive order creating the National Science and Technology Council. Behind Clinton, left to right, Gibbons and Vice President Al Gore. Courtesy of the William J.
Clinton Presidential Library
The high performance computing and communication topic enjoyed special status. In 1991, during the rst Bush administration, Congress authorized the creation of The President's Information Technology Advisory Committee (PITAC), whose scope was expanded under the Next Generation Internet Act of 1998.18 Comprising leading IT experts from industry and academia, the Committee helps guide the Administration's eorts to accelerate the development of information technologies vital for American prosperity in the 21st century.19
At Clinton's request, Congress authorized the National Nanotechnology Initiative (NII) as one of the major scal year 2001 research initiatives.
14.6 PCAST
Gibbons and Lane built on the precedent set by D. Allan Bromley in the rst Bush administration by appointing and making good use of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST).
This list of reports and less formal letters enumerates the range and scope of the issues they considered:
18http://www.nitrd.gov/pitac/index.html (<http://www.nitrd.gov/pitac/index.html>).
19http://www.nitrd.gov/about/about_nco.aspx (<http://www.nitrd.gov/about/about_nco.aspx>).
• The U.S. Program of Fusion Energy Research and Development Report (July 1995)20
• Science and Technology Principles (September 1995)
• Report to the President on Academic Health Centers (November 1995)
• Principles on the U.S. Government's Investment Role in Technology (June 1996)
• Report on Research Universities (June 1996)
• Report on Preventing Deadly Conict (November 1996)
• Second-Term Science and Technology Initiatives (December 1996)
• Report on Sustainable Development (January 1997)
• Report to the President on the Use of Technology to Strengthen K-12 Education in the United States (March 1997)
• PCAST Letter on Cloning (March 1997)
• Report to the President on Federal Energy Research and Development for the Challenges of the 21st Century (November 1997)
• PCAST Letter on International Energy Research and Development (May 1998)
• PCAST Letter on Educational Research (June 1998)
• Teaming with Life: Investing in Science to Understand and Use America's Living Capital (June 1998)
• PCAST Letter on the FY2000 Budget (November 1998)
• PCAST Letter on Critical Infrastructure Protection (December 1998)
• Powerful Partnerships: the Federal Role in International Cooperation on Energy Innovation (August 1999)
• PCAST Review of the NSB [National Science Board] Report on Environment
• Science and Engineering for the 21st Century (December 1999)
• PCAST Letter to the President regarding FY2001 Budget Priorities (December 1999)
• PCAST Letter to the President endorsing a National Nanotechnology Initiative (December 1999)
• Wellspring of ProsperityScience and Technology in the US EconomySpring 2000 (June 2000)
• Letter from PCAST to the President (January 2001)
• Letter from PCAST to Neal Lane (January 2001)
• Biodiversity: Connecting with the Tapestry of Life (January 2001).
14.7 Science and International Relations
In its nal (January 2001) letter to President Clinton, PCAST expressed thanks for his support and pointed to what it regarded as some of its most signicant accomplishments. Among these, it singled out increas-ing the use of American strengths in science and technology as instruments of the nation's international diplomacy. Lane spoke and wrote frequently about the importance of science and technology in interna-tional relations, particularly with important emerging economies such as China's and India's.21 By the time PCAST addressed this nal letter to Clinton, science and technology had become far more visible and ac-cepted tools of American foreign policy. During Clinton's rst term, the interest of the State Department in science had declined even further than during the H.W. Bush Administration. Recognizing Vice President Gore's interest in environmental matters, State replaced many of the science counselors posted in U.S. em-bassies with Environment Counselors. During the 1980s, there were twenty-two science counselors posted at embassies; by the end of 1997, only ten remained.
In a November 27, 1998, op-ed piece in Science, J. Thomas Ratchford, who had served as Associate Direc-tor for Policy and International Aairs under Bromley, virtually washed his hands of the State Department:
Elegant organizational constructs and unfunded legislative mandates for the Department of State cannot work. The commonsense approach is to give the federal research and development (R&D) agencies the policy direction and resources to do for State much of what it has not been able
20Texts of all these reports can be accessed from http://www.ostp.gov./cs/pcast/documents_reports/archive (<http://www.ostp.gov./cs/pcast/documents_reports/archive>).
21Lane, op. cit.
to do for itself. Only this will catalyze the necessary two-way interchange between science and engineering on the one hand and foreign-policy development on the other.22
At the time, a special committee of the National Academy of Sciences was already considering recom-mendations to strengthen the links between science and technology and U.S. diplomacy. Apparently, the increasingly vocal outrage among experts about the virtual elimination of science and technology from Amer-ican foreign policy had caught the attention of Secretary of State Madeline Albright. In April 1998, she asked NAS to prepare a report on specic means through which the links between science and technology and in-ternational diplomacy could be restored and strengthened.23 The NAS panel, chaired by Robert Frosch, a research fellow at Harvard University, stated bluntly: Ironically, as the world becomes more technologically interdependent, the trend at the State Department has been to downplay science and technical expertise. He advised Albright to articulate and implement a policy that calls for greater attention to [science] dimensions of foreign policy throughout the department.24
The panel recommended that the number of science counselors posted in U.S. embassies be increased to at least twenty-ve, and that the Secretary of State should appoint a Science Advisor. Gibbons agreed to come out of retirement to serve as interim Science Adviser to the Secretary of State until Norman Neureiter, a retired industrial chemist who had served as science counselor in several Eastern European capitals earlier in his career, assumed the post in November 2003.
Even though Albright (and, to a lesser extent, her successors) sought to follow the NAS panel's recommen-dation, the uses of science and technology made by the State Department as tools of international diplomacy remain problematic. Although the number of science counselors has increased, they were rechristened as Counselors for Science, Technology, Environment, and Health, thus increasing their responsibilities without providing them with the requisite additional sta to cope with them. Additionally, most of these counselors are ill-equipped by virtue of their backgrounds to serve eectively. While most countries appoint science counselors to their foreign embassies by detailing individuals from R&D ministries, the State Department selects career diplomats, few of whom have any scientic training. A principal qualication for appointment seems to have been experience serving in a U.S. diplomatic mission in the given country. The appointees' lack of a professional science or technology background tends to impede their eectiveness.
14.8 Assessment
Near the end of Clinton's term, an article in Science concluded that his administration deserved relatively high marks with respect to science policy.25 Such praise, Washington policy watchers say, illustrates how the science community has warmed to what many originally perceived to be at best his ambivalence about science policy. Clinton was credited for signicant increases in budgets for the federal government's principal science and technology agencies and for beating back attempts by the Republican majority in Congress to weaken his R&D budgets.
22J. Thomas Ratchford, Science and Government: Put Science and Technology Back into Foreign Policy, Science (November 27, 1988), 1650-51.
23David Malako, Diplomacy: Gibbons Joins Eort to Boost Science at State, Science (October 15, 1999), 391-92.
24Ibid.
25David Malako, Science Policy: Clinton's Science Legacy: Ending on a High Note, Science (December 22, 2000), 2234-36.
Figure 14.4: President Clinton tries out the White House website designed by OSTP sta. Courtesy of the William J. Clinton Presidential Library.
However, not all science policy experts gave the Clinton administration high marks. A September 2000 meeting convened by the AAAS and the Center for the Study of the Presidency gave high marks to Gibbons and Lane, but faulted Clinton for not using PCAST as eectively as he might have, and was skeptical about whether the roles of science and technology in international aairs had really been strengthened under him.
These criticisms, however, were relatively mild. Had the same participants in that September 2000 meeting been reassembled eight years later, their criticisms of the second Bush presidency (2001-09) would likely have been considerably harsher.