Nixon, Ehrlichman & Magruder on Technology Opportunities Program

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I think we've done that.

The next thing is to accomplish something.

Well, I wish I did, Mr. President, but I think that comes after the election.

I really do.

We've laid out a focal point.

We've got to do it.

We cannot drop out of that race.

No, sir.

Let's keep all of our assets to the extent that we can to get back into that business.

That's certainly one of the main objectives of this new Technology Opportunity Program.

All right.

Now, your time is close.

Go ahead.

And I thought if we could just talk from this, that would cover the whole section.

All right.

together on urgent national needs .

The first thing I did was go to the government, do what would amount to a library, some research, see what else is going on so we don't get it cross-purposes or embarrassing.

So the first thing I found was a congressional study called Government Practices on Securities, being done largely by DOJ, but it's a congressional study.

So having reordered it, especially in the United States,

that I discovered that there was also a study of, very unbiased, the strategy of international transfer of technology, what's good about it, what's bad about it, what's indifferent, what issues do we have, and I reordered it there.

And then John had asked the National Aerospace Council to do a study that was right on target with the first question.

What's the health of the aerospace industry and air transport?

The SST is a part of that.

That's due on the 1st of October.

And then I kind of gathered, and no one had looked at the industry.

So I wrote 50 letters to the top trade organization using John for the benefit criteria.

That will grow to 1,000 people.

The enthusiasm for that has been just almost beyond belief.

Another secretary, Lynn, has come out in a fairly yellow clasp.

We need to talk about this.

So this is going to get us not just

from every type of industrial discipline in the United States.

What are three things?

What are good ideas that we should help stimulate?

What kind of initiatives does the government have in the way of tax incentives?

So everything is to go to Congress for appropriation.

early depreciation rhinos, maybe an R&D bank could have ran as low as rhinos.

And I found that Congress was doing a study called Innovation in Industry and Government.

Then I organized six task forces.

The first one is the scientific or the engineering one.

That's headed by Dr. David.

This is when the secretary is for research in each department.

But I felt the need for

a good legal look at what kind of things would happen to these technology initiatives aimed at urging national needs and economic opportunities if we had a repressive or a stimulative input from antitrust laws and patent policies.

So John is going to give that assignment to Lucy.

That's very quiet, kind of sensitive.

We don't talk about that much.

We're in the acceptance.

to do the best preliminary results yet.

The second task force was to work with the industry and with the other government to see what type of initiatives were available.

Through that initiative, each opportunity arises.

What's the best way to fund that?

Maybe it's to do it by taxi ride.

So early appreciation.

Oh, by the way, that's getting headed up under Dr. Cracken, by the new gentleman, Edward Soffman.

The third one, a very sensitive one, extremely sensitive one, is some of these initiatives might be unwise because of labor crises.

In other words, you might decide to do an airplane that just is no good because the alpha said you have to have three pilots, and the very others would say you have to have a fireman.

But we don't want this to be people who think we're doing something funny.

So Jim Logan is looking at that, and it's, again, very funny.

All of these opportunities, which we are getting to be about an eight-foot-high stack now, are going in each of these groups we've scrubbed down.

The other, of course, is to look at the impacts of the transfer in and out of the country.

I'll hit on a schedule.

We have finished our first look at these initiatives.

I wasn't proud of it.

The problem that gave me to be assistant secretary in the department was a little bit of a drive.

It was a little bit of a drive to get going.

But we're slowly getting them, I think, to think in terms of the new government organization.

Now, that may be what I did at the end of my life.

In other words, maybe I have a so that here are some bold, innovative things that we can do to marshal technological resources in human resources, in natural resources, in community development, in economic development.

It has a different narrative in it.

That's not the way you go to Congress.

You go to Congress for appropriations by the present departments.

But, amazingly enough, they fall under those categories.

And when you don't go into those categories, they get so diffused that you're not very well focused.

You know, the real problem, of course, that I have is dealing with scientists and engineers, it's hard to get them to think big.

I alluded to that.

Somebody about the first week not told me we should have a first cut.

That probably has something that we would be ashamed to breathe through on.

Parallel to that, I must do two other, I must get some review people outside of the government to review two functions.

In the technical area, they've got to advise us from an unbiased viewpoint if these things are needed and if they're feasible.

Because in business departments, people will tend to have a vested interest.

The third thing I need is actually a group like Ben Shriever and Mr. Janine and people of Agile that can tell us what's the smart way to manage it and how to be a wise way to finance it.

And that's this so-called political constitution process.

After they've scrubbed the initiative down, and of course these industry inputs will continue to come in, by the end of October, we would hope to have something.

Now, as you left, I did say, everybody working on that said, that Bill McGregor, that's a remarkable kid, but since about a second back at the end of November, I think the only thing I really want to leave with you is this.

The most important thing we're going to do, first of two things.

One, what we do and what the country thinks we're doing.

And at this point, it's far more important to do what we do boldly and grammatically.

Well, you know, we announced that the $100 million program for cancer has been kind of horsed around, hasn't gotten anybody to head it up, or is that the other thing?

you can sort of lose the feeling about it.

I mean, how much is it going to make a difference?

Now, as a matter of fact, as a matter of fact, Richard and the boys at BGW are exactly correct.

Probably the best way to just piss away the $100 million I'm getting to the Institute of Health out there, you know, let me say that in this instance, you undoubtedly will have the hero there.

Come up with, well, just do it the way we did doing it previous.

Do it quietly and do it well.

Oh, that is what we want.

We have got to do it.

in a very bold, exciting, interesting way.

And that means you've got to have innovations.

You've just got to, even though it may not be the best way to do it.

Because there needs to be a psychological lift here.

A variable.

And you're not going to get a psychological lift by doing things in a great, ill, efficient manner that we usually do things, you see.

That's our problem.

So we could say the Manhattan Project wasted a lot of shot to the moon, wasted a lot of it.

to what you do at DC.

I come to the point that I just can't emphasize too far.

Lean hard for a new agency, something we can talk about so that people can think something is being done rather than to do it better and more efficiently through the routine, dead ass government agencies that we presently have.

That's the only thing I can't do.

I've asked on that subject.

John made that very clear to us.

It's the first time he's politely shooting at us.

Yes, the political side is very important.

People ask, they always ask this question.

Some of them ask, are we going to subsidize America so we can compete with subsidized Japanese?

Well, the answer is no.

We might have to consider it.

Of course, the way we subsidize them is through tax write-offs and things like that.

The main point is that this whole area, it's got to be something that's new, it's a breakthrough, it's an initiative.

Rather than, rather than, I can, without even reading them, I can tell you what you've gotten already from the agencies, the crap you've gotten from the Treasury and from the Congress and all that.

They don't think they, they don't think they, right, Congressman?

Now you run into this in everything we do.

We have a hell of a time, for example, in the law enforcement field.

We've done quite a bit, but we're having one hell of a time getting any credit.

The only part of the next big law enforcement is Edgar Hoover.

I mean, every time they arrest a...

Here's what I've run into that verifies what you've said.

None of the agencies, with a single exception of NASA,

a little bit AEC, a great deal in DOD, which is not sanitary in this field we're talking about, although they can help.

None of them have program definition, system management capability.

They think little.

They don't understand the word feasibility.

They don't understand the word a market need or a public need.

So what's needed is the kind of management capability that was available on Manhattan, was available on Apollo.

So after John

really made your point very clear to me, and he did.

I went to see Fletcher and Lowe very quietly, and I asked them, since you're the only agency that has the steel T that they have, is NASA, tell me what systems management in these new initiatives you could take on or how you could provide the manpower by, say, taking your best guy or your next best guy and forming a nucleus to do this job in a separate system.

They're working on that.

The horror that I have is that if we take this on in a new area, and we don't do like we did Apollo, and we provide the Sam Phillipses, we had 150 of the very best program managers from the Air Force.

We just pulled them out, shoved them in, and made Apollo work.

Because NASA didn't have the capability when space started.

They have it now, and they have it in space.

So if we're going to have a new NASA, we've got to have some old NASA heads, some old airport heads that really know how to do this without getting into some horrible thoughts, wasted effort, mismanaged environment.

We've got to have the very best.

And I'll give you an example of how people don't think big.

I went through the DOT NASA package.

NASA was guilty of this, too.

There was no SST in there.

And I said, well,

Let me take this package, which is this big, and work backwards from a threat on aviation.

And a threat is what we talked about in our first meeting.

The rest of the world has a nationalized plan to have a Concorde, to have an A300, 300-passenger short-range airbus, 150-passenger wide-body Mercure.

They've captured Boeing and the STOL because Boeing got to survive, so they're getting funded from the Italians.

Pratt & Whitney and GE, this week,

are going to make a decision to build their next modern jet civil engine with the French, with Senecma, a 20,000-pound, which will capture the market.

Within a month or two, the Japanese are going to sign up somebody else.

So I looked at the NASA and the DOT and the commerce people, and I said, well, this package solved that problem.

And they said, oh, no, we've got a little research on noise, and we're going to buy up some tire molds to cut noise on the highway down.

And I said, get your eyes up.

This whole industry is going to disappear if you don't come in with a bold, imaginative program to alter this course of events.

So I've sent them all back to the showers, and I'm going to get with, and I'm not sure the right people to get with, but I'm selectively picking people in the area.

Some are very low and some are very high that understand this problem and put together that package, which is the one that counts, and that's why you said don't lose the FSD.

What I think you're really saying is don't lose civil aviation.

Now, none of them have thought of that.

Now, industry might think of that, but everybody's a little chicken right now, Mr. President.

The situation of the proc fires and the Gaylord Nelsons and the soap and the problem of the Democrats trying to keep unemployment high has got a lot of little people trying to say a low profile will get us through this thing.

And that's just wrong.

That's what you said.

you're going to make it.

You're going to have to be bright, imaginative, and do something dramatic and new.

And I'm not going to be able to get that in front of you by the 6th of October.

I'm going to do it.

I'm going to try.

And I'm not going to let anybody off that schedule when it's 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Well, this is in context of this.

It's another thing.

Two of us get a touch of one.

The other thing has to do with education tax reform.

and is as bold as anything that has come down the road in a long time.

And that has to do with education costs linked to a rebate of property taxes or an elimination of property taxes in a little bit.

And it ties to this California case.

Now, these two are really both about very much the same thing, and that's 20-minute new jobs.

This is 20-minute new jobs.

This is getting the people ready to quit.

So they've taken 20-minute new jobs.

So at that point, they touch, but they are two very high visibility items.

that talk about this country ten years from now.

They don't know why.

They don't know how it links.

They must have some sort

because their numbers came out all pay-wise.

They were linked specifically to our need requirements.

So sooner or later we're going to have to cut that end of this.

Either that or we're going to have to set up our own taxes.

So, Eddie Cohen, I have talked to the secretary about this, John Tomlin, and because we were getting no action on a lot of the churches.

I don't want to change anything.

Well, look, you're on the right track, such that you're trying to look like you are.

I understand why you can't reach.

I mean, and that's what we get.

I mean, you know what I mean?

Well, don't tell anybody now.

Don't tell anybody.

in the bus, which of course you will do, but I must say that it's time they were thinking about this.

In fact, people should have started thinking at the minute we lost SSP.

That should have shocked this country into thinking, what the hell are we going to make?

What the hell are we going to make in the world?

You see, the point that a lot of people don't realize is this.

And they kept getting this morning references made to the fact, well, that

Only 4% of America's products are exported.

In other words, our exports are only 4% of our GNP, whereas maybe 30% of Canada's and 5% of Japan's, 30% of Britain's and the rest.

But the other side, they don't realize, we're not talking about the export market alone.

We're talking about the market in the United States.

We're the biggest market in the world.

Japan sells 30% of its exports to the United States.

And what is happening is that American firms are getting their butt's beat up.

That's it.

So when we talk about, well, this idea of being competitive in the world really doesn't matter because we don't depend on exports.

Hell, it doesn't matter.

It matters to great people because the United States is part of the world, and this is a big market.

It's the other side of that coin.

We have a milestone that you may be involved in, and I would like to lead it.

Sure.

One of the problems of the scientific community is inertia, you know.

Don't try to regulate us.

Please keep the basic research all fun and happy.

We're going to be appointing very soon a gentleman to head up the National Science Foundation because I think it's a matter of days.

I think that's a very important appointment.

Here's a man who understands what we're saying, but not a highly talented man.

I'd like to give John the kind of name that we should give him.

I am unfortunately with Dan

I think a lot of us should.

Nixon, Ehrlichman & Magruder on Technology Opportunities Program

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Nixon Library Finding Aid

Also recorded on September 24, 1971

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