Interview with Thomas A. Tombrello - Caltech Oral Histories
Interview with Thomas A. Tombrello - Caltech Oral Histories
Interview with Thomas A. Tombrello - Caltech Oral Histories
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<strong>Tombrello</strong>–185<br />
set up to prevent weapons from being sold by the people inside the system. Nunn–Lugar gave<br />
them a great deal of help in that. The two senators, who were willing to cross the aisle to work<br />
together and both of whom are very interesting people, deserve an enormous amount of credit.<br />
Of course, we’ve also had to deal <strong>with</strong> secretaries of energy who bordered on the absolute<br />
boundary of flakiness. The worst were in the Clinton administration. Clinton was a wonderful<br />
president, but Hazel O’Leary and the governor of New Mexico—<br />
ASPATURIAN: Bill Richardson?<br />
TOMBRELLO: Richardson, yes. They were the ultimate flakes.<br />
ASPATURIAN: Well, now of course you have Steven Chu in there.<br />
TOMBRELLO: I have a very high opinion of Steven Chu. I’ve known him a long time. I have a<br />
very high opinion of his undersecretary, Steve Koonin. I think we are in pretty good shape.<br />
There are detailed quibbles about Tom [<strong>Thomas</strong>] D’Agostino, who actually runs the NNSA<br />
[National Nuclear Security Administration], the weapons piece. He’s not a bad person. I just<br />
think they tried awfully hard to find somebody to replace him. He was acting NNSA secretary<br />
when Steve Chu came in. I had several chats <strong>with</strong> Steve Chu about it. I gave him names. He<br />
told me he tried not only once but twice to hire those names. Some good people just don’t want<br />
to do that particular job.<br />
ASPATURIAN: Are you in contact <strong>with</strong> Steve Koonin on any of these issues?<br />
TOMBRELLO: Well, he’s a lot busier than I am, but I expect to see him in a few weeks, and I’m<br />
looking forward to it. We did have an interesting evening about a year ago. He convened a<br />
small ad-hoc committee to come back to the DOE for dinner in December—we were lucky; we<br />
got in and out <strong>with</strong>out a blizzard—to talk about “Climategate.” The department was very<br />
interested in our take—there were about half a dozen of us—on those hacked e-mails from the<br />
Hadley Climate Research Unit in England. That was a very interesting meeting. To what extent<br />
did the contents of the letters discredit climate science? And the answer is, They shouldn’t have.<br />
http://resolver.caltech.edu/<strong>Caltech</strong>OH:OH_<strong>Tombrello</strong>_T