Senator LEVIN. On the question of chartering committees that only meet once or twice within a short period of time, would you support an amendment to the law which exempts those committees from the chartering requirement, but still require them to comply with the balance and the notice requirements?

Mr. GLITZENSTEIN. I would. I think it is clear that the public's major interest lies in those two areas and it is the substance that the public is concerned about, not the technicalities, and I think that kind of amendment would be appropriate.

Senator LEVIN. Thank you.

Chairman GLENN. Thank you, Senator Levin.

Just a couple more questions before we move on to Admiral Watkins. First, what is the status of the litigation involving the AIDS Commission now, either one of you?

Mr. RUBENSTEIN. We filed the lawsuit in the middle of October and the judge scheduled a hearing for October 30th, at which time the lawsuit was argued. At that point, there were two vacancies on the Commission, because of the resignations of the Chairman and Vice Chairman. Since the lawsuit was filed, after that argument on October 30th, those two vacancies were filled by two people we all thought, and our clients thought, were a step in the right direction: two people who are much more qualified and better experts. That went some degree to answering some of the problems that we had seen in the Commission, and thus we rebriefed some of the issues for the judge at that point and

Chairman GLENN. Even though with that action you are still keeping the lawsuit in, is that correct? You have not withdrawn the suit?

Mr. RUBENSTEIN. That is correct. We felt that those two people went some of the distance to making the viewpoints of the Commission members more balanced. These people were more expert, had more expertise in AIDS issues, and we thought they balanced some of the more extreme views. We are still concerned that people who are going to be directly affected by the work of the Commission are still not represented on the Commission, and the lawsuit is still pending.

Again, we rebriefed the issues for the judge in the middle of November and it is under advisement at this point.

Chairman GLENN. What types of people do you think would balance it out so that you would withdraw the suit?

Mr. RUBENSTEIN. I think it is very focused at this point on the issue of the people who are going to be directly affected by the work of the Commission. What we would like to see is someone who represents people with AIDS and the people who provide health care to people with AIDS, these kind of people who are in the day-to-day

Chairman GLENN. Speak up just a little bit. I think you are coming through-

Mr. RUBENSTEIN. The people who are in the day-to-day trenches of dealing with AIDS, the people who live with the disease every day, and the people who provide direct services to those people are not represented on the Commission at this point; and we feel that they have very important input into the Commission and that legally they are required to be there.

We also think, again, on the issue of inspiring confidence in the conclusions this Commission comes to, that the public would have much greater sense that this Commission was fair and was coming to good conclusions if these people were included in the decision making process. We are also concerned that AIDS has disproportionately impacted certain segments of our population, specifically black and Hispanic persons and gay persons, and we do not think those groups are properly represented on this Commission, either. Chairman GLENN. With the size of the commission, can they all be represented?

Mr. RUBENSTEIN. Yes.

Chairman GLENN. Or would the Commission have to be expanded to a greater number.

Mr. RUBENSTEIN. Well, the Commission has already been expanded once. It was originally set up to be 11 persons and it has been expanded to 13, and obviously neither of those numbers is set in concrete. There have been commissions that have been much bigger than this. The National Academy of Sciences, which turned out a book on AIDS in 6 months, had many more people participating in the making of that book, and we think a small expansion of this Commission could satisfy our needs. In fact, such a larger Commission would not impede the work of it, but by getting these people on the Commission it would really make the work much easier for the people to do.

Chairman GLENN. OK. Has your group submitted any specific names of people you would suggest?

Mr. RUBENSTEIN. We have not submitted any specific names, though on several occasions, starting back at the beginning of September, when we first contacted the White House about our concerns, we indicated our desire to sit down with persons, and at this point with the lawyers on the other side, to point out people we would like to see and that we think would balance the Commission. Chairman GLENN. Just a couple more questions, quickly. Dr. Murray, you stated, "One general rule of thumb instructing members of deliberative bodies is that individuals who have taken strongly polarized positions on the issue to be discussed should be excluded from committee membership, since the commissioner's job is to arrive at conclusions." Now, I agree with you on one hand, but, on the other hand, I do not, I guess, because I think we don't always want something set in concrete. The conclusion of a commission may well be, and the AIDS Commission conclusion may well be that there is not any answer right now, we have got to continue research. Now, that is not the conclusion we are hoping will come out of this, obviously, but it may be the only one available right now, so I do not know that I would agree that people that might have extreme views should be excluded in the interest of coming down with a firm conclusion of some kind.

The conclusion may be for some commissions that there is no conclusion to be had right now.

Dr. MURRAY. But that is only one reason for excluding those persons. The other reason is that they have a tendency-and I have had experience with this-to interfere with the deliberative process of the body and they spend lots of time arguing with each other and the chairman may have to spend an inordinate amount of time

trying to control that kind of interaction, so that is another important reason why those kinds of views-

Chairman GLENN. This would be very difficult to put into law. It seems to me it is more a matter of common sense than anything else. In trying to pick people and run a meeting and you cannot have somebody who is a disruptive element and interferes with all of the meetings. On the other hand, you want all views considered, as I said, given the military example a little while ago, you want to consider absolutely everything, no matter how ridiculous it may seem, and obviously the consensus is going to be to weed this out and weed that out, and you come out down the center here some place, but you want everything to be considered in any given situation.

Dr. MURRAY. You want to hear those views and you can in expert testimony or presentations, and you can allow the commissioners to consider that in their final deliberations.

Chairman GLENN. One other thing. Dr. Mayberry suggested that-no, the other person I quoted from a minute ago, the Vice Chairman, Dr. Meyers, suggested that maybe a handbook to tell people what is expected of them and all of the details of coming on a commission like this might be a good idea. Now, you have been on these commissions. Do you find that people coming on have those questions? Do you think a handbook that tells them what to do would be helpful?

Dr. MURRAY. Yes, I think the NIH has something like that. It is not very detailed, a rough manual. And the NAS, Academy of Sciences, spends half a day briefing new members of new committees about the rules and regulations.

Chairman GLENN. Good. Thank you, gentlemen. We appreciate it. Thank you very much.

Our next witness is Adm. James D. Watkins, retired, U.S. Navy, Chairman of the Presidential Commission on Human Immunodeficiency Virus Epidemic. Admiral Watkins, welcome, it is good to see you again. We welcome you and welcome any statement you wish to make in either its entirety or an abridged version. In either event, the entire statement will be included in the record.

TESTIMONY OF ADM. JAMES D. WATKINS, U.S. NAVY (RET.), CHAIRMAN, PRESIDENTIAL COMMISSION ON THE HUMAN IMMUNODEFICIENCY VIRUS EPIDEMIC, ACCOMPANIED BY POLLY GAULT, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

Admiral WATKINS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I bring with me today my Executive Director, Ms. Polly Gault, a former staff member here in the Senate.

Chairman GLENN. Welcome.

Admiral WATKINS. I would like to have her join me, if that is all right.

Chairman GLENN. Fine. Certainly.

Admiral WATKINS. Mr. Chairman, members of the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, I thank the members of the Committee for giving me the opportunity today to let you have my early views on the effectiveness of the Federal Advisory Committee Act

as it relates to my new role as Chairman of the Presidential Commission on Human Immunodeficiency Virus Epidemic.

Since assuming the Chairmanship of the Commission in October, I have essentially worked full-time to get the Commission to a position from which we can carry out the mandate given us by the President.

When I first entered the AIDS Commission office, there were two or three staff on board, quite a bit of unanswered mail, and no working strategy that I could find. There was great speculation as to whether the Commission could meet even its first deadline for filing a preliminary report sketching out Commission activities for its duration by December 7 or 90 days after the Commissioners were officially designated.

Today, 7 weeks later, the Commission is fully staffed with 21 top quality staff members and the preliminary report was submitted to the President yesterday, 6 days ahead of schedule. The Commission has set up a rigorous schedule of hearings as well as drafting an outline of our final report. In the meantime, since October, the Commission has met twice in Washington for public hearings as well as spending 3 days in South Florida visiting those on the front lines of AIDS.

Hearings will resume next week and again the week following. As I said in my letter of transmittal to the President yesterday, we have learned much from the 200 witnesses who have come before the Commission. They have helped us identify issues we need to address in the near future, and I feel the commission is now on a solid footing to do its work and finish by June 1988. So that is where we are today.

The following are my very brief views on FACA. As you can appreciate, I am new to this Act. I only have limited experience, consisting of only the past 7 weeks. So, I would like to come back to the Committee, if you would allow me, after the commission work is complete, and then I will have a better insight into the workings of the Federal Advisory Committee Act. Here are just a few observations that I can make from my experience in the last 7 weeks. I believe very strongly in the Government in the sunshine. I feel that almost all advisory committee or commission meetings should be conducted in public. However, we have been informed by counsel from the Department of Health and Human Services that we can only close our meetings if we are discussing personnel.

There are two other very limited instances in which this Committee might want to allow closure of meetings, and you discussed these in previous testimony. Mr. Chairman, I wish I had had your words because they were very much in synchronism with my thoughts.

First, for initial organizational purposes, we had a closed meeting to discuss personnel matters. It was very difficult for me, with no structure, no base line of reference to start from, to start assigning and hiring personnel before we knew what we were even talking about. So, it was a cart before the horse. It was difficult in our situation because I was trying to pick it up from virtually a zero reference base. But I believe in those circumstances there should be an opportunity to allow organizational discussion as long as it is cou

pled with sometimes sensitive personnel assignments. I do not believe even congressional committees would do otherwise.

Second, there should be some opportunity for the members to meet as a group privately to draft a final report. I cannot imagine that members of this Committee would believe that they could produce a quality committee report if they had to do so without the opportunity to debate tough issues, find resolutions as a result, realize and correct mistakes in private, and the like. And I think the airing of points of extremism is very germane to that discussion to reach a middle ground.

There are many times when my management technique says drive very far to one side to see if we can elicit a tighter discussion and begin to define the issues more clearly. And yet, were that to be taken out of context as an attempt to find resolution, I think you would be subject to ridicule. Therefore, I do believe there is time for tough internal discussions between the principals to try to come to the proper conclusions.

Again, I would like to come back to you at a future time, after June, with some more thoughtful recommendations than I am able to make today on possible amendments to the Federal Advisory Committee Act, and I would certainly be glad now to answer any questions that you or the members may have regarding my role as the Chairman of the Commission and its relation to your efforts here today.

Thank you.

Chairman GLENN. Thank you very much. We do appreciate your coming up to testify. I know that you are very busy with this. I understand you now have a full team of commissioners again, I believe.

Admiral WATKINS. Yes, sir, we do.

Chairman GLENN. So I know that you are eager to devote full time to it, and I commend you for getting the preliminary report out early. I do not know whether it was an accident that it came out the day before our hearing or not, but we are glad to have it out in whatever time frame it comes out.

I did have one question on it. I have not read through the whole thing yet, it is quite voluminous. I did read the cover letter here. You hit four main points in that. One is on the prevalence of AIDS. I guess the paragraphs could be summarized as the prevalence, No. 1, home care, No. 2, whether there are drugs available for the treatment of AIDS, No. 3 and the drug abuse problem in general, where AIDS is passed from one person to another, No. 4.

I read through that this morning and I was thinking a few moments ago here, you do not specifically address prevention. Was that accidental, because it seems to me that is a very important part of your whole function-

Admiral WATKINS. We do. The problem is-

Chairman GLENN [continuing]. Here, yet that is not in your summary sheets here, it is not mentioned at all. Do you plan not to get into that?

Admiral WATKINS. No, not at all, Mr. Chairman. We will address prevention. I do not want to confuse the forthcoming hearings, which are going to focus on the four issues that you just outlined to us from the final report or the rest of the agenda. What we are