Harvard Clashes With U.S. On Control of Accelerator

The University has been engaged in bitter negotiations with the Federal government for almost a year to determine who will control the operation of the $11 million Cambridge Electron Accelerator, L. Gard Wiggins, administrative vice-President revealed yesterday.

The Atomic Energy Commission originally insisted on controlling all exchange of information between the CEA staff and Soviet bloc scientists and wanted to place strict limitations on visitors to the accelerator. The Commission also demanded a long background information check on any alien employed by the CEA.

"Many of the AEC demands irritated the Faculty greatly," Wiggins said, "and were a serious abridgement of academic freedom." Wiggins said that the Commission "has withdrawn many of its more objectionable demands, but admitted that the University "is not completely happy" with the present contract for operation of the accelerator.

"Long, hard negotiations have just about produced a contract that we can live with," Wiggins said, "but the academic freedom of Faculty members involved with the CEA will be impaired somewhat."

Wiggins said that the University never expected to be threatened with government control when it started to build the CEA, "because all the work done there is unclassified." The original contract for construction of the accelerator specifically limited Federal control over the CEA, but at the time, several University officials expressed a fear of undue government pressure on Harvard.

The controversy arose last year when University and AEC officials prepared to negotiate a contract to give Harvard and M.I.T. about $5 million a year to operate the accelerator. To the University's complete surprise, AEC negotiators presented a contract filled with objectionable requirements which the government labeled "matters of national policy."

At the begining of the negotiations, Wiggins said yesterday, "the AEC was adamant in its demands and insisted that no provisions of the proposed contract could be changed."

"The University just could not sign such a contract," Wiggins said. He indicated that the University probably would have refused to operate the accelerator if the Government had not backed down. "Harvard will never sign a contract limiting its freedom of action," Wiggins declared.

Of particular annoyance to University officials was a clause in the contract imposing "controls in the national interest." The proposal required that no technical information be released to Soviet bloc nations unless a Soviet scientist agreed in advance to release "equally valuable information" to the United States.

At the University's insistence the requirement was deleted, but substituted for it was a clause that reads: "Requests from foreign nations may be filled, but, when appropriate, information will be requested in return." Wiggins admitted that the ambiguity of the phrase could still hinder exchanges of information between the CEA and foreign governments.

The original contract also required that before the CEA employ any alien it make a detailed check of his jobs and addresses for the preceding 15 years. Limitations on visitors were very strict, and CEA officials were to be required to furnish a detailed report on the visit of every guest from a Soviet bloc country.

"None of these restrictions has been completely eliminated," Wiggins said yesterday, "but most of the requirements have been made more palatable."

Robert E. Cummings, assistant director of the CEA, said yesterday that most of the restrictions are ridiculous because no classified work is being done or is planned at the accelerator. He stressed that the CEA "will never have a staff of security people at the accelerator."