Report: Griffin Confronts, Lambastes An Obama Transition Team Member, Resists Requests For Information
NASA Administrator Mike Griffin flatly denied as untrue a report by the Orlando Sentinel that he blistered a member of President-elect Obama’s NASA transition team, saying to her face that she isn’t qualified to judge the manned space exploration program, while he also clamped tight controls on NASA staffers’ contacts with the Obama team.
The story was based on not-for-attribution comments of people who the paper said witnessed the exchange, but who didn’t want to be identified in print.
According to these unnamed sources, the confrontation occurred at a book party in the NASA library, where Obama space programs adviser Lori Garver and Griffin argued over whether she trusted his word.
All of this is untrue, Griffin said.
“A recent report in the Orlando Sentinel suggested that NASA is not cooperating with members of President-elect Obama’s transition team currently working at [NASA] headquarters,” Griffin stated. “This report, largely supported by anonymous sources and hearsay, is simply wrong.”
To the contrary, Griffin said, he has taken steps to ensure that NASA staffers provide full support to Obama transition team members.
“I would like to reiterate what I have stated in a previous email to all NASA officials: we must make every effort to ‘lean forward,’ to answer questions promptly, openly and accurately,” Griffin said.
He used statistics to show the level of assistance provided.
“We are fully cooperating with transition team members,” he said. “Since mid-November, the agency has provided 414 documents and 185 responses to 191 requests.
There are six outstanding responses, and the agency will meet the deadline for those queries.”
His open-door policy also applies to NASA contractors, he said.
“We strongly urge full and free cooperation by companies performing work for NASA,” he said. “I am appalled by any accusations of intimidation, and encourage a free and open exchange of information with the contractor community.”
He rejected the divisive reports by unnamed sources.
“The transition team’s work is too important to become mired in unsupported and anonymous allegations,” he said. Obama’s “transition team deserves everyone’s complete cooperation.”
If those reports were true, they would represent a reversal of progress for NASA with the president-elect. Obama early in his presidential election campaign envisioned cuts in NASA budgets to pay for other programs, only to change course and promise Florida voters that he would support NASA solidly and provide an extra $2 billion to the space program to narrow the looming half-decade gap in American space capabilities.
Under orders from President Bush, NASA must cease flying the space shuttle fleet by October 2010. But the replacement Orion-Ares, the next-generation U.S. spacecraft system being developed by the Constellation Program, won’t have its first manned space flight until 2015. During that gap, NASA — the agency that placed men on the moon — will be reduced to having its astronauts hitch rides to the International Space Station from the Russians, aboard sometimes-troubled Soyuz space vehicles.
Lockheed Martin Corp. [LMT] is developing the Orion crew exploration vehicle, a space capsule. And various segments of the Ares rocket to lift Orion into space are being developed by The Boeing Co. [BA], Alliant Techsystems Inc. [ATK], and Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne, a unit of United Technologies Corp. [UTX].
Obama’s later comments about an extra $2 billion would seem to indicate that those contractors would have nothing to worry about, because the Constellation Program would continue to be funded. His comments were reassuring to Florida voters, who fear the loss of thousands of jobs when the space shuttles cease flying.
According to the Sentinel story, however, the Obama transition team aide, Garver, a former NASA associate administrator, asked how much money could be saved by canceling Ares 1. At the same time, Obama team members also asked how much it would cost to shrink the half-decade gap.
According to the story, Griffin was shocked to find the Obama camp would even consider dumping part or all of the Constellation Program in the dustbin, and he began limiting what NASA staffers could tell the Obama team, and also placed limits on what NASA contractor personnel could tell the transition team.
In his purported 40-minute discussion with Garver, Griffin also was said to have demanded to speak directly to Obama, according to the sources.
The exchange, if it occurred, might reflect a personality clash with Garver, but one thing is clear: it doesn’t reflect any lack of respect by Griffin for women. His deputy of many years has been Shana Dale. Other women occupy senior positions in the space agency. And he has ensured that there is ample room for women in the astronaut corps. On his watch, for the first time there have simultaneously been women commanding a space shuttle mission and the International Space Station. A woman has set a longevity record for time in space by a U.S. astronaut. And women have set spacewalk records.
If Obama decides to replace Griffin, as the article indicated may occur, it will be difficult to find a new leader for NASA who would command the widespread respect that Griffin has received, especially from members of Congress.
Griffin, a veteran in the space program, holds multiple advanced degrees. He possesses an immense depth of expertise about all the myriad programs he oversees.
However, at the same time, he is noted for bluntly speaking the truth regardless of what others may think of it, rather than being a diplomat or politician.
He has indicated he would like to stay on as administrator, but noted that Obama hasn’t asked him to remain. (Please see Space & Missile Defense Report, Monday, Nov. 17, 2008.)
It is typical for an incoming president of one party, succeeding an incumbent president of the other party, to wish to replace most or all senior policymakers.
An exception was Democrat Obama’s decision to retain Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, an appointee of Republican Bush.
In a way, it’s not surprising that Griffin might take an independent stand that could risk alienating the next president of the United States. Griffin previously has taken stands that irritated the current occupant of the White House, President Bush.
The NASA administrator was sworn in to office April 15, 2005. He has noted since that if he had been in the top NASA post earlier, he would have opposed, strongly, Bush’s decisions creating the half-decade gap in NASA manned space transport capabilities. Griffin termed the impending U.S. loss of space transport capabilities “unseemly.”
An independent thinker, he also recently sent what he thought was a private email to a few senior NASA leaders, only to have it wind up in news media stories. In the email, Griffin deplored a “jihad” against NASA programs by the Office of Management and Budget under Bush, in which the Bush White House has savaged NASA funding for many programs. (Please see Space & Missile Defense Report, Monday, Sept. 8, 2008.)