COMMENTARY | The demands of the Senate Commerce Committee for documents from NASA, especially concerning the development of the Space Launch System, and NASA's failure to provide those documents have resulted in a sharply worded letter.
The letter, signed by Sen. Jay Rockefeller, chairman of the committee, and Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, the ranking member, expressed exasperation that NASA has failed to provide the requested documents that are required under the 2010 NASA Authorization Act in order to facilitate congressional oversight of the space agency.
The exasperation was clearly expressed in the second to last paragraph of the letter:
"We regret that NASA appears to be unwilling to cooperate with our efforts to conduct legitimate congressional oversight. Although NASA assured Commerce Committee staff in a May 27, 2011, telephone call that your agency was 'not looking to hide anything,' NASA's failure to provide the requested documents over the past month leaves us no choice but to conclude that NASA does not intend to cooperate with our efforts to make sure that your agency is complying with its duties under the 2010 Act and properly spending taxpayers' dollars."
The last paragraph of the letter contained a threat:
"Unless NASA decides to change its approach to our inquiry and provide the Committee with the materials requested in our May 18 letter by 6:00 p.m. on Monday, June 27, 2011, Chairman Rockefeller will issue you a subpoena for production of these documents."
The letter and the controversy surrounding the document request reflects a growing sense of distrust of NASA by Congress, which appropriates the money that NASA needs to operate. The failure to provide legally required documents to the Senate Commerce Committee suggests one of two possibilities.
One possibility is that NASA is unable to provide those documents. That would bespeak incompetence on an epic scale, since record keeping is something one would think that a government bureaucracy would be good at.
The other possibility is that NASA is stalling and, despite protestations to the contrary, actually has something to hide.
Congress has made its will very clear that it wants the MPCV, formerly known as Orion, and the heavy lift Space Launch System, flying by 2016. Congress may not provide enough funding to make this happen and is as yet ambivalent as to what the new spacecraft's mission is, aside from taking astronauts beyond low Earth orbit to -- somewhere. NASA has in turn been ambivalent as to whether it can build the spacecraft or whether it even intends to, despite the congressional mandate.
The tug of war between Congress and NASA, the direct result of President Obama's cancellation of the Constellation space exploration program, seems about to take an ugly turn. What Congress will do if NASA somehow defies the subpoena is as yet unknown. While the Obama administration could attempt to invoke executive privilege, that would tend to contradict the dictates of the 2010 NASA Authorization Act the president signed into law.
The matter could very well wind up in court for a showdown. It all depends on how far NASA, and by extension the Obama administration, intends to take the matter.
Mark R. Whittington is the author of Children of Apollo and The Last Moonwalker. He has written on space subjects for a variety of periodicals, including The Houston Chronicle, The Washington Post, USA Today, the L.A. Times, and The Weekly Standard
