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From: un@allegra.uucp (Uwe Nonnenmann)
To: mod-ki@unido.informatik.uni-dortmund.de
Date: Fri, 4 May 90 10:39:56 EDT
Subject: Shakeup at DARPA
Keywords: Politik, USA

mod-ki message 0457
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Following are some US funding news - Uwe Nonnenmann, AT&T Bell Labs
 
type: NYT (Copyright 1990 The New York Times)
priority: Regular
date: 04-20-90 2130EDT
category: Financial
subject: BC DEFENSE TECH (2takes)
title: IN POLICY DISPUTE, PENTAGON OUSTS CHIEF OF ITS HIGH-TECH AGENCY
author:  JOHN MARKOFF
text:
       Sparking expressions of outrage from Capitol Hill to Silicon
Valley, the Defense Department said Friday that it had removed the
director of its agency responsible for developing advanced
technologies.
       Department officials said the move resulted from a bitter
dispute over what the agency's role should be in financing research
projects intended to make U.S. high-technology industries more
competitive.
       Dr. Craig I. Fields, the director of the Defense Advanced
Research Projects Agency, or Darpa, was told Friday that he was
being removed and transferred to the position of deputy director of
defense research and engineering for defense management report
implementation.
       He was informed of his transfer by a representative of Deputy
Defense Secretary Donald J. Atwood.
       The new post would include responsibility for streamlining the
general research activities of the Defense Department.
       The Pentagon said Friday that Fields had not been discharged,
but several officials of the research agency said he had lost his
position because of his advocacy for high-technology initiatives
opposed by some high Bush administration officials.
       These officials have expressed their opposition to policies that
help specific industries.
       In a telephone interview Friday night from his home in
Washington, Fields said he was weighing his options and had not yet
decided what to do. He had no further comment.
       White House officials refused to comment on the announcement.
       Fields' transfer follows closely on the heels of a Pentagon
decision earlier this month to cut financing for research on
high-definition television, a technology for delivering sharper
television images that has become a symbol in the debate over how
the United States can best compete with Japan.
       In recent months, the research agency has served as a lightning

rod within the Bush administration for a policy debate over whether
the government should actively encourage developing advanced
commercial technologies like high-definition television and more
sophisticated semiconductors and computers.
       Fields has advocated a more activist approach within the
government and has apparently incurred the wrath of high
administration officials who oppose the idea that the government
should attempt to pick ``winning'' technologies.
       Richard G. Darman, the White House budget director, and Michael
J. Boskin, the chairman of the President's Council of Economic
Advisers, are widely reported to oppose extensive government
backing for high-technology research consortiums.
       One White House official said Friday that Darman believed that
the research programs were not as valuable as many high-technology
supporters have contended and that the programs could have a
limited impact on America's industrial base.
       Darman has argued that the technologies are better developed
with funds from business and industry.
       ``They think Dr. Fields has done far too much,'' said a Pentagon
official Friday who asked that he not be identified.
       ``They want to buy technology from the Japanese that he had
hoped we could use as a lever to make the United States more
competitive.''
       People close to the Defense Department said Friday that what
might have finally led to Fields being transferred was a decision
that the agency made this month to invest $4 million in Gazelle
Microcircuits Inc., a Silicon Valley electronics company that is
working on high-speed circuits made of gallium arsenide.
       Under an experimental program approved by Congress, Darpa made
its investment much like a venture capitalist would, expecting to
receive a payback if the company becomes successful.
       The deal also allowed Gazelle to deflect an investment from a
Japanese company, which might have entailed transferring the
technology to Japan.
       One Defense Department official said Friday that the deal
provoked ``grouchiness'' among high Pentagon officials, who
wondered why the Pentagon was investing in a company when another
private company, albeit a Japanese one, was willing to put money in.
       Defense Department officials apparently discussed the
possibility of a new role with Dr. Fields on Tuesday, the Pentagon,
official said, but he told them that he wished to remain head of
the agency.
       Friday, according to several of the Department's officials, he
was presented with paperwork outlining his transfer with no advance
warning.
       Darpa has long been regarded as a gadfly within the Pentagon.
       Its budget, about $1 billion a year, is tiny, and its staff,
mostly scientists with Ph.D.'s, is lean and unbureaucratic.
       Fields, who is universally described as having a quick mind and
as being very assertive and willing to take controversial stands,
has been almost an institution at the agency.
       While most of its officials are university or industrial
scientists who stay at the agency for a few years, Fields has been
there 16 years, longer than any other technical person.
       A graduate of the Bronx High School of Science and the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Fields received a doctorate
from Rockefeller University, where he took oral examinations in
psychology, mathematics and physiology.
       The shift drew cries of outrage from members of Congress who
support government spending to support high-technology and from
former government officials.
       ``It's terribly wrong,'' said Robert B. Costello, a former under
secretary of defense during the Reagan administration.
       ``Darpa, in order to do its job, has to be involved in certain
industrial activities.
       ``How else can you do the job?,'' Costello asked. ``I don't
understand the administration's logic.''
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