Boston Globe September 29, 2002
Homeland plan may fund new research
By Mary Leonard
WASHINGTON - Overshadowed in the Capitol Hill struggle for a Department of Homeland Security has been the quiet success by higher-education lobbyists in adding a high-level science and technology office to the proposed agency, with the potential to direct billions of dollars to research universities such as Harvard, MIT, and Caltech for developing antiterrorism technologies.
Legislation passed by the House in July and two bills now pending in the Senate would create a new office of science and technology in the proposed Cabinet department, headed by an undersecretary, and would coordinate homeland security research across the government, make grants, and ensure that universities and private research institutions can compete for federal funds.
None of the legislation specifies how much new research money might flow from the proposed Department of Homeland Security, but Kevin Casey, a lobbyist for Harvard, predicted it would be in the realm of $2 billion.
''What is very significant here is that a brand-new Cabinet department with a substantial outside research program is being born,'' said George Leventhal, a policy analyst at the Association of American Universities, which represents the nation's major research institutions and has played a key lobbying role. ''Presumably, over time, it will be comparable to NASA or the Department of Energy in its ability to sponsor research.''
A coalition of college lobbyists and academic associations began working late last year with Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, Democrat of Connecticut, and later with various House lawmakers to improve upon what they said was inadequate attention to developing innovative technologies and access for nongovernment research in President Bush's blueprint for the homeland security department.
''What we didn't want was a new civilian defense agency that didn't have a strong voice for science and technology,'' said April Burke, a lobbyist for the California Institute of Technology and the University of Southern California who organized the coalition.
The president proposed the new department would have a unit to study weapons of mass destruction, with an adviser responsible for research and technology. Elevating that proposed adviser to the more powerful post of undersecretary for science was critical, Burke said.
Dr. John Marburger, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, said President Bush fully supports a strong research component in the proposed department. The legislative changes sought by the universities are more semantic than substantive, Marburger said.
''But there is an explicitness there that wasn't there before, and that's good,'' Marburger said. ''It indicates the commitment to using technology to help solve some of these difficult problems and make homeland security systems more robust.''
The Senate is bogged down on Bush's proposal to relax civil service rules for homeland security employees, and Bush has threatened to veto the bill if he does not prevail. This week, the Senate is expected to set aside the legislation while it debates the resolution on a possible war with Iraq.
University officials say they would be disappointed if the legislation was not passed this session.
Lieberman's bill calls for the science office to develop ''a technology road map'' to set research goals and priorities. It would establish federally funded research and development centers outside the government and an academic and industry council to advise the undersecretary for science and technology.
''The fact is, the vast bulk of research and development relevant to homeland security will continue to be conducted outside the new department, in other agencies, in industry, and especially in our universities,'' said Lieberman, who called for the proposed department to ''actively collaborate with and support the academic research community.''
The House legislation - written by Representative Sherwood Boehlert, a New York Republican who is chairman of the Science Committee - provides for scientific peer review of research proposals and ''ensures that colleges, universities, private research institutes, and companies'' can take advantage of research opportunities. The House-passed bill also would set up a separate homeland security institute that would work with industries and universities to study infrastructure vulnerabilities.
Lieberman's bill would create the Security Advanced Research Projects Agency, which would distribute a new fund of $200 million to institutions and industries for fast-track research. A version of that security research agency proposed last week by Senators Phil Gramm, Republican of Texas, and Zell Miller, Democrat of Georgia, would raise the funding to $500 million.
The idea for SARPA springs from DARPA - the Sputnik-era agency in the Defense Department that made the initial grants to MIT and other universities for research that led to the Internet. ''This could be a crucially important mechanism for making cutting-edge investments in emerging technologies,'' said Jack Crowley, an MIT lobbyist who is monitoring the homeland-security legislation.
There is no provision in the House bill for SARPA, though university lobbyists say they are anxious to have this new agency and pot of money survive a conference committee that would resolve differences in the House and Senate versions.
John E. Pike, a leading defense industry analyst, said it could take several years for the new department to be fully functional, and it still is unclear whether it will become the research bonanza that some expect.
''The notion that the department is sitting on top of billions in small, unmarked bills, desperately trying to figure out how to shovel it out the building, or that it will be a gigantic windfall, is a mistake,'' said Pike, who directs globalsecurity.org, on the Web.
The university coalition also would like to see the conference adopt the language in the House legislation and the Lieberman bill that keeps control of a $1.5 billion fund for bioterrorism research at the National Institutes of Health, rather than move it into the Department of Homeland Security, as the White House proposed.
Harvard, which receives $250 million annually in research grants from NIH, lobbied hard against the move. ''Our view is that research should continue to be directed by scientific planning,'' said Casey, adding that programs could ''lose their luster'' if funding decisions were made by bureaucrats in the new agency and based on politics instead of peer review.
The Gramm-Miller bill in the Senate mirrors the administration's position. Marburger said research universities are opposing putting bioterrorism funds into the new department ''because of ignorance of how the government funding process works and a desire not to lose control of important research programs.''
The university lobbyists insist they aren't seeking special treatment and came down hard on a proposal in the House to create a single, college-based research center for homeland security. The measure, inserted in the House bill by Representatives Tom DeLay and House majority leader Dick Armey, both Texas Republicans, stipulated 15 criteria that ostensibly just one university, Texas A&M, could meet. Several lawmakers outside Texas objected to what looked like a pork-barrel project and insisted the criteria be expanded so more colleges could compete.
Mary Leonard can be reached at mleonard@globe.com.
This story ran on page A1 of the Boston Globe on 9/29/2002.
© Copyright 2002 Globe Newspaper Company.
