What Is the IDA?

The Institute for Defense Analyses, a civilian research arm of the Government, seems to have replaced the CIA and Dow Chemical Co. as a focus of academic antiwar protests. Under pressure from students and faculty alike, President George W. Beadle last week canceled the University of Chicago's affiliation with the Institute. University ties with IDA have also come under fire at Columbia, Princeton and Michigan.*

Protests against IDA are somewhat misplaced, since the Institute has nothing directly to do with prosecution of the war in Viet Nam. Most of its work consists of evaluating the effectiveness of weapons systems for the Department of Defense, turning out independent reports that provide university-based advice on the use--and limitations--of specific armaments. The reports generally deal with future rather than immediate technical problems, and advice is not binding on the Pentagon.

Paper-Clip Building. IDA was founded in 1956, after the loint Chiefs of Staff discovered that it did not have enough civilian experts to study all its weapons problems. The Institute, which is headed by General Maxwell Taylor, now employs 575 full-time civilian analysts in a high-arched, eleven-story building (dubbed "the paper-clip building") in Washington plus 50 communications experts housed in a Princeton campus building leased by IDA. Government agencies request IDA for specific research help; this year the Institute is handling 100 projects costing $14,241,153.

The affiliated universities provide directors to run the corporation and supply experts--usually professors on leave of absence--to work on specific projects. Despite all the fuss at Columbia over IDA, none of its professors are actually on the IDA payroll, although about 300 have signed up to serve when needed as part-time consultants. Columbia President Grayson Kirk and Columbia Trustee William Burden serve on IDA's executive committee.

Restraining Influence. Although most of IDA's projects are classified, they include work on such technical questions as ballistic-missile accuracy, surface-to-air missile guidance and the Nike-X warhead. IDA lately has broadened out to provide research on nonmilitary problems. It has studied the probable demand for a supersonic airliner, and is negotiating a research contract with the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Officials of IDA argue that if they were free to talk about its classified work, they could prove that the Institute has frequently been more of a restraining influence than an escalating pressure on questions relating to the war in Viet Nam.

*Other members: M.I.T., Caltech, Stanford, Tulane, Penn State, Illinois, California and Case Western Reserve University.

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