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military projects because that was where the government saw the greatest need for basic research into scientific and technical areas. There was another reason for the formation of ARPA that, at least in theory, had a lot to do with the perceived threats facing the United States and the need for basic research to respond to them. ARPA, because it was a network deep inside the government and ultimately the Department of Defense, could engage in research ostensibly far afield from the immediate needs of the military services whose research and development organizations were part of the command structure. ARPA wasn't. Although it reported to its own higherups in the Defense Department and at the White House, it was not part of a command structure and didn't have to confine itself to the agendas of the heads of the various special military corps. ARPA didn't just come into existence out of nowhere. Its ancestor, the National Research Council, had been formed under President Wilson to organize and marshal scientific research for defense purposes and as a rival to the Naval Consulting Board, which was run by Thomas Edison, who had gone on record as saying that the country didn't need a Naval Consulting Board at all. He invited scientists he called a bunch of "perfessers" down to his laboratory in New Jersey to walk around the "scrap heap" to see how real inventions were created. University researchers and corporate heads of research and development were naturally appalled at what Edison thought about government sponsored research for the war effort and rallied around the NRC. If there were government grants to be handed our for basic defense research, the scientists who worked for corporations, who needed help in basic research no matter what its primary purpose was, were anxious to become associated with this new organization. University researchers argued, through the prestigious National Academy of Sciences, that the National Research Council should be an "arsenal of science" to protect the United States through the application of its great brain trust in academia and industrial contractors to issues of national defense through technology. President Wilson agreed, and the NRC was born. One of the first tasks given to the National Research Council was the development of a submarine defense. Aircraft had not yet made a decisive appearance on the battlefield at the outset of World War |, but the German U-boats were ravaging the Atlantic fleets. The navy was desperately searching for a way to detect submarines, and although Nikola Tesla had submitted his plans for an energy beam detector that would send low frequency waves through the water to reflect off any hidden objects, the National Research Council thought the idea too esoteric and looked for a more conventional technology. Tesla's low energy wave didn't work well in water anyway, but years later Tesla's description of his invention was the basis for one of the most important devices to come out of World War Il, "radar." The National Research Council had established a pattern of government support for basic research when it had an aspect to it that could be developed for military purposes. It was the first time that research scientists from the private sector, corporations, academicians, bureaucrats, and the military were brought together to solve mutual problems. Therefore, the Advanced Research Projects Agency and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, son of ARPA, were natural outgrowths of an ongoing government relationship. The problem with ARPA was that it was political and had its own agenda. It was not uncommon for conflicts to arise between the Office of the Chief of Research and Development, General Trudeau, who was operating within the military command structure, and ARPA over money and the policy issues that arose between them. The staffs at ARPA and in the Pentagon crossed swords on a number of occasions, and more than once ARPA tried to lay the blame for its own shortcomings and mistakes on the military. During the early years of the Vietnam War, for example, ARPA tried to blame General Trudeau for mistakes in the deployment of Agent Orange. But General Trudeau and R&D weren't responsible at all for Agent Orange. It was ARPA's baby from the start. But when the field reports started coming in on the casualties Agent Orange was causing among our own troops and ARPA said that it would testify before Congress that General Trudeau was responsible, | hit the ceiling. | let the ARPA staff people know that, protocol be damned, | would storm into the congressional committees on military and veterans affairs and raise the roof of the Capitol Building until everyone knew that ARPA was trying to duck responsibility for negligence in the deployment of a bad chemical. ARPA backed down, but the bad blood between us remained. When the concept of an ARPA was first discussed at the White House, | saw the potential as well as the problem, but | also knew that a secret agenda driving everything was the policy of the UFO working group. ARPA was an asset to them because they could network through the university community and find out who had any information about UFOs that they weren't disclosing to the military, what technology was being developed that had any relation to the problem of UFOs or EBEs, and who in the academic or scientific community were coming up with theories about the existence or intentions of EBEs. In other words, in addition to being a conduit for research and research grants that fit certain government/military profiles, ARPA was another intelligence gathering agency, but dedicated to the academic and scientific communities. If information was out there, ARPA was going to find it and pay for its development. Therefore, when the urgency of coming up with a technological challenge to the Soviet space program arose in 1957, it was no surprise to anyone who understood the requirements of a space defense that it would be an 101