Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 7/1/84; site seismo.UUCP
Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!mhuxl!ihnp4!zehntel!hplabs!hao!seismo!flinn
From: flinn@seismo.UUCP (E. A. Flinn)
Newsgroups: net.followup
Subject: Re: Senator William Proxmire and The Golden Fleece Awards
Message-ID: <2259@seismo.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 23-Jul-84 17:27:26 EDT
Article-I.D.: seismo.2259
Posted: Mon Jul 23 17:27:26 1984
Date-Received: Fri, 27-Jul-84 07:19:46 EDT
References: <915@ulysses.UUCP> <775@ihuxb.UUCP>
Organization: Center for Seismic Studies, Arlington, VA
Lines: 35

At least one of the Golden Fleece awards was completely groundless -
that of April 1976, awarded to the NASA Lunar Programs Office, with
which I was associated at the time.   The Senator had received a crank
letter from a disgruntled constituent who was an ex-employee of a NASA
contractor at Johnson Space Center, and the letter accused NASA of
wasting the taxpayers' money in building a fancy facility to house the
lunar samples, and of diverting the money secretly to do research on
meteorites.  The budget proposal for $2.5M to make the lunar sample
curatorial facility more secure against floods, tornadoes, and
vandalism was at that time making its way through the NASA financial
people and OMB, and it was certainly not a lavish or wasteful thing.
Meteorite research was and always had been part of the lunar science
program.

NASA received this letter for comment, and we wrote several pages
refuting all the accusations; this was sent back to the Senator in the
normal course of business, and we thought nothing further about it
until the 4/76 GFA hit the newspapers.  Apparently whoever was in
charge of getting the Senator's name into the newspapers chose to
ignore NASA's reply and go with the accusations as if they were
proven.

A great deal of time was spent discussing this business with the
Senator's staff and various congressional committee staff members.
Sen. Goldwater read the NASA refutation into the Congressional Record,
but Senator Proxmire never withdrew his accusation.

Unfortunately Senator Proxmire was the Chairman of the Senate
appropriations subcommittee which dealt with the NASA budget, and just
to demonstrate that you don't get into a pissing contest with a United
States Senator and win, the next opportunity Sen. Proxmire had, he cut
the $5.5M NASA lunar research budget to $0.5M.  Much of this cut was
later restored, but the reverberations in lunar science and
terrestrial geology were severe.