Friday, 23 October 1987 Washington, DC

1. TELLER AND WOOD ARE ACCUSED OF FALSIFYING X-RAY LASER DATA
by Roy Woodruff, the former Director of Weapons Development at Lawrence Livermore. Woodruff is in Washington today at the summoning of Rep. George Brown (D-CA) to discuss the charges with Congressional leaders. Rumors that tests of the x-ray laser concept have been at best inconclusive have been circulating for a long time. In an April letter to the president of the University of California, Woodruff complained that Roger Batzel, the laboratory director, had refused to allow him to correct falsely optimistic research reports that Teller and Wood communicated directly to President Reagan and other top policy makers. As a result, Woodruff felt compelled to step down from his position. Wood and Teller have been uncharacteristically shy since Woodruff's grievance became public this week. However, in Congressional testimony just last month (WN 18 Sep 87), Lowell Wood angrily accused the APS report on directed energy weapons of being overly pessimistic about the prospects for x-ray lasers.

2 . MORE BAD NEWS FOR SDI
is contained in a recent study by the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment. "SDI: Technology, Survivability and Software," was delivered to members of the Appropriations and Armed Services Committees of Congress on August 31 -- in classified form. Inevitably, however, the OTA report has begun to spring leaks. An Administration source, who has seen the OTA study, describes it as "devastating," and says it reinforces the APS report. It is not clear when, if ever, the rest of us will be allowed to see it.

3. THE FOUNDERING US SPACE SCIENCE PROGRAM
has been told to stay out of the only lifeboat. The Soviet Union, anxious to display its technical achievements and new scientific freedom, has invited several US researchers to put experiments on Soviet launches. With US launch capacity at zero and a long queue of high-priority military launches extending as far as the eye can see, American space scientists view this as the only way to avoid the loss of a generation of new researchers. But, it has only worked once. "Space components" fall under the provisions of the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR), administered by the State Department. John Simpson, an astrophysicist at the University of Chicago, convinced the State Department to grant him a licence to fly a dust experiment on the Soviet Halley's Comet probe. He was so elated by the outcome of this venture into east-west cooperation that he called a press conference. Bad mistake! Richard Perle, the Pentagon's resident xenophobe (now a novelist), promptly demanded that NASA terminate its contracts with Chicago. A NASA Advisory Council Task Force on International Space Relations, however, in a report that has not yet been released, found that the Pentagon's perception that there have been serious losses of US technology through cooperative space programs is simply not based on reality.



Bob Park can be reached via email at whatsnew@bobpark.org
THE UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND
Opinions are the author's and are not necessarily shared by the University, but they should be.