should have been appointed to the panel. They were not any of the people I would have thought of. And none of them seemed to have expertise in the weapons systems area. And I was rather troubled by that.

It turns out that all of the people that I would have named are now known as SDI supporters in the computer science field. So I was not making any kind of political judgment, it was just that I felt that the panel members did not have the right expertise, and I was bothered that there was no review of the expertise of the panelists.

Senator LEVIN. No what?

Dr. PARNAS. No review by any authority of whether they were expert in the right things or not, and there was nothing on the record.

I asked Dr. Lau how he picked those people, and he told me, well, they are people I have worked with before; I know I can trust them. That was the only criteria he gave.

Another concern about the panel that bothered me was that I did not believe we were given the information necessary to give good technical advice.

We had very, excuse the word, "Mickey Mouse" briefings from two officers, not from technical people. There was no serious discussion of the ideas.

When I pointed out that we did not have adequate information, the organizers sort of ran around and tried to find somebody that could give us the right information, and could not find such a person.

I am also very concerned about this panel, as a computer scientist, because of the results it reported. There are two reports that I have seen, that are known as Eastport reports. The 1985 report is a very well known publicly distributed document, contains some very vague but strong criticism of the Phase I architectures; it essentially says, redo phase I; and start over.

Now if you read that carefully, you will see that if the panel was right, then the SDIO and all ten of the contractors in Phase I had to be incompetent, because the mistakes that the panel reported were so obvious and so elementary that you would not expect to see anybody doing something the way they described it.

Later on I served on an OTA panel, and as part of my advisory role to OTA I learned a little more about those ten contracts, and I believe that the Eastport Group's description of them was inaccurate, and the criticism of them was undeserved.

So if you take the other side, if the panel was wrong, then you wonder about the membership and their expertise.

One of the proposals in the Eastport report was something called the SDInet, which is a very vague proposal of a network to achieve three goals, the first one to serve as a proving grounds for communications in SDIO; the second one to connect the contractors; and the third to permit resource sharing.

Now, from my point of view as a computer scientist, none of those things made sense to me. First of all, it turns out you cannot use ground-to-ground communication as a proving ground for space-to-space protocols, because the conditions are very different.

Second, we already had a network that connected the contractors, known as the ARPAnet, of which Dr. Cohen was well aware because he is maintaining it.

And third, if you want to use something as a proving ground, you do not also give it to contractors to connect them, because they want reliable connections. You cannot use something as a proving ground and have reliable connections at the same time.

So the whole thing did not make any sense to me until I learned from a magazine that Dr. Cohen had gotten that contract. Other than that, the thing did not make any sense at all.

There is a second Eastport report which has not been very widely circulated-I only recently got to see it-issued in 1986. Ĭ think I can say without fear of contradiction that it is not a report. It is a collection of papers with three holes punched through them. All that is in it is a set of vague working papers, and each one is prefaced with a statement that says, the Eastport panel neither agreed nor disagreed with what comes after.

They duplicate each other; they sometimes contradict each other. And they are obviously working drafts. There are two worth discussing in there-none were good. The best one described itself as vague mutterings on a hard problem, and the other one said it was a product of a few minutes of less than quality thought.

I think those self descriptions were accurate, and I saw no contribution to the government in that report.

The important thing to realize, I think, in the light of testimony I heard earlier today was that the first Eastport report did get a lot of publicity. Because, as a result of my resignation from the panel, there was a lot of attention paid to it.

And it is very difficult for me to believe that anybody in SDIO was not aware of Eastport and did not know what it was doing. I know that at one point I received very angry telephone calls from SDIO telling me that they were preparing a report for General Abramson, and that it had to be complete with every aspect of the Eastport Group in it.

So again, I just have trouble understanding what was meant when officials testify that they had not heard about it. It was in front page articles in the Washington Post, page 7 of the New York Times, and so forth.

I would like to just close, perhaps, because I have been so negative, with a couple of thoughts. I was a government employee, albeit only on a part-time basis, for 14 years. And it is very difficult under present conditions for organizations like SDIO to get good scientific advice through what I consider to be normal channels, proper channels, of civil service appointment, the way that I did most of my work.

As I have detailed in my report, proper procedures makes it very difficult to hire consultants, and the rates are very uncompetitive. I think that may be a slight excuse for the SDIO-and other organizations to try to get payment sort of through the back door to consultants.

However, I believe that in this case it would have been easy for them to get better advice. I know that I offered to do the thing as a government employee, but Dr. Lau was not interested in that arrangement. He wanted to hire me directly in this way.

I think that is about all that I have to say.

Senator LEVIN. Thank you very much, Dr. Parnas. Again, your statement will be made part of the record.

In reading your written statement, if I understood it correctly, you indicated that DOD officials were responsible for establishing Eastport and selecting its members, not some contractor, is that correct?

Dr. PARNAS. That is correct. I dealt directly with ONR employees, and the contractor that finally paid us was never even mentioned in the initial discussions.

Senator LEVIN. So you had no connection with that contractor at

all?

Dr. PARNAS. I received a check from them.

Senator LEVIN. Other than that?

Dr. PARNAS. Other than that, yes.

Senator LEVIN. And do you remember the name of that contractor?

Dr. PARNAS. University of Maryland. Actually, to be more precise, I taught at the University of Maryland many years back; but at the time I had no other connection.

Senator LEVIN. So it was the University itself, it was not a component thereof?

it.

Dr. PARNAS. No, I got a check, it said University of Maryland on

Senator LEVIN. As far as you know, were they performing only a non-substantive administrative role?

Dr. PARNAS. That is what I was told. And that is all they did with me.

Senator LEVIN. Your written statement indicates that Eastport panelists were paid $1,000 a day instead of FACA's limit of about $250 a day. You apparently were paid at the approximately $250 a day as a Navy consultant; is that right?

Dr. PARNAS. That is correct.

Senator LEVIN. What reason was given to you for the higher rate of pay?

Dr. PARNAS. They just said that that is what they were paying, and did not I like it. And I must admit that I am human enough to like it.

Senator LEVIN. Do you believe the Eastport Group's members should file financial disclosure forms and comply with the DOD's directive on standards of conduct?

Dr. PARNAS. Yes, I do.

Senator LEVIN. You indicated that you were a consultant to the Navy, and you contrasted that experience with your experience as a member of the Eastport Group, indicating that the Navy, in your consultancy, displayed greater sensitivity to ethical matters. Is that fair?

Dr. PARNAS. That is quite true. I think NRL has been very careful about that throughout my contact with them.

Senator LEVIN. And why do you think that there was that difference? What explains it?

Dr. PARNAS. I do not know. I have great respect for many of the people at NRL, and maybe it is just a special case. I cannot generalize on that, sir.

Senator LEVIN. You also testified in your written testimony that the Eastport members "did not distinguish between their role as advisers to SDIO and their role as researchers seeking funding.

Do you think that the Eastport recommendations were aimed more at obtaining research money for panelists than providing technical advice to SDIO?

Dr. PARNAS. Well, not all of the panelists, as far as I know, got that money. But I am telling you that in reading the report, I kept noticing little sentences that struck me, that this is a bid for having more work for them in various forms.

They kept recommending, in both reports, in fact, that they be reappointed, and that the committee keep on being funded, and that kind of thing.

Senator LEVIN. You were critical of the recommendation to develop an SDInet. Do you believe that that is an example of a recommendation that is more sensitive to providing a panel member or members, possibly, with research money than with providing SDIO with vital technical advice?

Dr. PARNAS. Well, I have not seen all of the documents, or the detailed documents on the SDInet, but from what I have seen, it makes no technical sense, and the only motivation I could think of for it was in some sense, "one hand washes the other.'

Senator LEVIN. Dr. Parnas, we want to thank you. You have come from Ontario, I understand, to testify. We appreciate it. There may be additional questions of you, also, that we would like you to answer for the record, although there is no legal obligation for you to do so. We would appreciate it in any event.

Thank you again.

Our next witnesses are from the General Accounting Office. Rosslyn Kleeman is the Senior Associate Director. I will let you, Ms. Kleeman, if you would, tell us who accompanies you.

TESTIMONY OF ROSSLYN KLEEMAN, SENIOR ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR, GENERAL ACCOUNTING OFFICE,1 ACCOMPANIED BY GREG ZIOMBRA, ASSIGNMENT MANAGER, GENERAL GOVERNMENT DIVISION, AND LYNN GIBSON, SENIOR ATTORNEY, OFFICE OF GENERAL COUNSEL

Ms. KLEEMAN. Yes, I have Lynn Gibson, who is with our Office of General Counsel, and Greg Ziombra, who worked with us on this request.

Senator LEVIN. Ms. Kleeman, we have your statement. Would you summarize it?

Ms. KLEEMAN. I can summarize it very briefly, and I will do that. We found in our review that the Department of Defense has implemented many recommendations that we and other organizations made, and we believe they are generally complying with the Act. However, there are some key recommendations still not implemented that we believe should be implemented.

You asked first that we look at the issue of balance. We believe that the DOD advisory committees could use some guidance in this

area.

1 See p. 104 for Ms. Kleeman's prepared statement.

At a minimum, the guidance should indicate factors to be considered in selecting committee and panel members, and the guidance should also require the reasons for the selections be documented. The DOD scientific advisory committees currently do not cite the specific reasons that they select individuals for panel assignments, and we believe that they should.

A second area you asked us to look at is screening for conflicts of interest. And the Department of Defense agreed with our previous recommendations, and we found that their procedures requiring reviews to be documented were generally followed when members were first selected for a committee.

However, prescribed procedures were not followed when the committee members were assigned to panels. Consequently, we could not tell that reviews were made of panelists' financial interests, in light of their new duties; or that any conflicts or potential conflicts were identified or resolved.

And as you mentioned earlier, we looked at DOD reviews, and in addition to the decreasing number of reviews, we found that DOD does not have a plan which the committees and panels-of the committees and panels which will be reviewed in the future.

We believe that DOD should regularly review the advisory committees' operations, and ensure that any deficiencies that are found are promptly reported, and corrective actions taken.

Finally, you expressed particular interest in the Navy's actions on our recommendations in our earlier report that its panel members be appointed as special government employees, rather than being considered by the Navy to be employees of a grantee.

And we reviewed a number of the Navy panel appointments, and found that all the members we reviewed were now appointed as special government employees.

That is a quick summary, and I would be glad to answer any questions that you have.

Senator LEVIN. Thank you very much. I believe your testimony is that the number of committee reviews being done each year by the DOD has declined, and that no written plan exists for ensuring that all 61 DOD committees are reviewed in a three-year period. Is that correct?

Ms. KLEEMAN. Yes, that is right, sir.

Senator LEVIN. Who conducts those reviews?

Mr. ZIOMBRA. The Deputy Assistant Secretary for Administration.

Senator LEVIN. Can you tell us anything about the quality of the reviews that are being done?

Mr. ZIOMBRA. We really did not do an evaluation of the quality of those reviews. We just looked to see how many reviews were conducted, and we looked to see what results came about from those reviews.

Senator LEVIN. Now, apparently, you looked at four DOD committees; is that correct?

Mr. ZIOMBRA. That is correct.

Senator LEVIN. You did not look at the Eastport Group, for instance; is that correct?

Mr. ZIOMBRA. No, we did not.

Senator LEVIN. Did you look at the SDIO?