Paul Vanden Bout, Interviewed by Kenneth I. Kellermann, 11 April 2025

Kellermann: 00:07

Okay. Ken Kellerman with Ellen Bouton, and we're about to talk to Paul Vanden Bout, and it's Friday, April the 11th.

Vanden Bout: 00:18

2025.

Kellermann: 00:20

2025, thank you. So, Paul, as I wrote to you, we're mostly interested in your time at NRAO, particularly as Director. But in the way of background, why don't we start with a little bit of background about time you were in Texas?

Vanden Bout: 00:40

Okay. Sure.  So, I studied physics. I went to graduate school in Berkeley to study physics. And my first exposure to radio astronomy was there listening to talks in astronomy that Jack Welch, they found OH, and I heard a couple of those talks. And then I didn't think about it any further. Went off to New York, to Columbia, and joined Bob Novick's X-ray astronomy group which was a really tough way to do astronomy. We had rockets that went up. They either blew up or they only got a few minute’s worth of data. And Roger Angel was my office mate, and the two of us decided we had to get out of there. And we went to Texas. And the connection with Texas started earlier. When we went to White Sands to launch these rockets, there were sometimes delays. And so, we would go to McDonald Observatory to see what was going on.

Vanden Bout: 01:59

So, people at McDonald's knew both of us. And so we moved to Texas. And I was supposed to be their space astronomer, which I never did. Pat Thaddeus and I used the big telescope to do some spectroscopy follow-up stuff that Pat had done earlier. Very old-fashioned. It's just astonishing by present standards. But anyway, we were walking around the mountain, and here was this little antenna unused. It was idle. And Arno Penzias and Bob Wilson and Keith Jefferts had just discovered CO. And Arno was cross with Dave Heeschen for not giving him the telescope all by himself. And Pat said, "I think we should get something going here," and we did. Made a little partnership with Harvard and Bell Labs and the Goddard Institute for Space Studies. And the Millimeter Wave Observatory operated for a good number of years. It turned out a couple dozen PhD students, lots of visitors, people that became sort of the pioneers of millimeter spectroscopy, interstellar spectroscopy. And that went on for quite a while. And I didn't use NRAO telescopes very much. I applied for time on the 12-meter and didn't get it. But somehow, I ended up on NRAO committees, the Users Committee, and later on the Visiting Committee. And an ad hoc committee to decide where the VLBA headquarters was to be. Socorro or Charlottesville. Bob Hughes was the AUI president. And so, this is good for your oral history, here. Bob essentially used me to get after Mort Roberts. I think he was fed up with Roberts. And so, we decided that the VLBA headquarters should go in Socorro. And the reasons, I think the reasons were good. It's certainly a headquarters for radio interferometry, a lot of people there. But it kind of worked here, too. In Charlottesville. I think it was a great stroke of luck that we chose Socorro because that got kind of-- bolstered our relationship with Pete Domenici, Senator Domenici from New Mexico, who turned out to be invaluable over the years. And then I was on the Visiting Committee, and again, I think Hughes kind of pushed me in the direction of complaining a lot about things at the Observatory so he had some excuse to not renew Mort. And I felt bad about that over the years. But Mort and I, eventually, that was all water over the dam. And we ended up on good terms.

Vanden Bout: 05:53

Then I went back to Texas, but the little MWO was running out of gas. And there was the 12m now which telescope did we run and build? What was it? At Mauna Kea and the 30-meter or whatever--

Kellermann: 06:20

25.

Vanden Bout: 06:20

25-meter, 25-meter. So, it was not getting built. And there was a little revolution in the user community. And decided maybe what we needed was an interferometer at millimeter wavelengths. And out of that came the millimeter array proposal. Well, I thought that was all a really good idea. And about that time, there was a search committee for a new Director. Mort had stepped down. I was on the search committee with Thaddeus and Carl Heiles, and I can't remember who the rest of them were. Were you on that committee, Ken?

Kellermann: 07:09

Penzias and Townes.

Vanden Bout: 07:10

Penzias and Townes, okay.

Kellermann: 07:12

No, I was another candidate.

Vanden Bout: 07:13

Oh, you were another candidate, okay.

Kellermann: 07:16

That's how I know who was on it.

Vanden Bout: 07:17

And so, we asked a lot of people, and it sort of wasn't going anywhere. There was a meeting, I'm pretty sure it was in Albuquerque, I'm not positive. Might have been in Dallas at the airport. And he had said, "Well, is there anybody on the committee that would consider doing this?" And so Heiles and I raised our hands somewhat tentatively, okay, good. He kicked us out of the room. And then they interviewed--

Vanden Bout: 08:02

[brief phone interruption]. They kicked us out of the room and interviewed Carl first. And Carl was in there for-- that was a pretty good stint, 30 minutes or [crosstalk]--

Kellermann: 08:16

This is without any preparation? I mean, Carl did not know, and you did not know in advance to prepare something to say or anything?

Vanden Bout: 08:25

No, no, no. It was on the spot. I don't know for sure, but I think what happened is that Carl got in one of his usual modes and delivered a long rant about what was wrong with NRAO and what he was going to do to fix it and so forth. And he came out, kind of wrung out and plopped down in a chair, and he said, "You do it." And then they interviewed me, and that went reasonably well, and I ended up here with some encouragement from people like Kellermann and Lockman and Dave Heeschen. And so, I ended up at NRAO.

Kellermann: 09:14

Well, I can't speak for Lockman or Heeschen, but you wrote in the copy of the ALMA book that you gave me, "To Ken, who encouraged me to come to NRAO." I don't remember that. [laughter]

Vanden Bout: 09:26

You did. Yeah.

Kellermann: 09:29

Maybe I was afraid I might be next, and I might get the job. [laughter]

Vanden Bout: 09:35

Yeah. No, no. I remember that. Yeah. I visited, of course, and you and Dave were here, and we talked. And I don't know if I went to-- I think Jay was still here. Jay was still in Charlottesville at the time. Yeah. So, what's next on your list?

Kellermann: 09:57

Well, you've actually covered a lot of the questions I was going to ask. So how long were you Director?

Vanden Bout: 10:06

I think it was 17 years. Something like 17 years. It was comparable to Heeschen's tenure.

Kellermann: 10:19

And looking back over that time, what would you say was your biggest accomplishment, the thing you were most proud of?

Vanden Bout: 10:27

Oh, well, getting funds for ALMA. Then when I came, I was very keen on the MMA. But things got in the way. The VLBA was underway. That had to be finished. There was no question about that. And it wasn't easy to finish it up. The funding was sort of up for grabs every year for a while. And so, it took some time to get that project finished. And then, of course, the 300 Foot Telescope fell down, and we got into the Green Bank Telescope construction, which was fraught with all sorts of difficulties, and took quite a while. And then I thought, "Well, okay, now it's time to push ALMA." And Giacconi had arrived to be president of AUI, and he had hired-- at Anneila Sargent's urging, he had hired-- so I'm having a senior moment here.

Kellermann: 11:38

April Burke.

Vanden Bout: 11:39

April Burke. April Burke, okay? And she had her lobbying firm, Lewis-Burke Associates. And they specialized in science. And so, April was a huge help. She's something else. I mean, she had just finished getting the funding for LIGO and had been hired by Caltech to do that, but the firm was new. I mean, she didn't have a lot of money in the firm. She put $30,000 on her credit card and got cash, which she gave to some person, a phone number she was given, and she met this person in some office somewhere. And he passed the money to Senator Livingston, or was it Representative Livingston?, from Louisiana. And with that, Livingston pushed the funding for LIGO through. She wasn't afraid to do things like that. And she was a huge help with the ALMA funding. April, and Carol,[McGuire] whose name escapes me at the moment, was terrific. She was an aide to Domenici on the budget committee. And then he had a lobbyist, of all things. The Senator had a lobbyist in New Mexico to work the legislature there.

Kellermann: 13:32

Sorry. The Senator had a lobbyist?

Vanden Bout: 13:36

Yes. On his staff. I mean, she wasn't called a lobbyist, but that's what she did. She went to Santa Fe every two years to the legislature and pushed his projects through the legislature.

Kellermann: 13:49

The state legislature.

Vanden Bout: 13:51

The state legislature. She was an enormous help. So, we worked with those people and never could get the man really interested in ALMA. Other things happened, like we had this crazy idea, in retrospect, I mean, pushed by Ron Ekers, among others, to get a supercomputer. We needed a supercomputer because if you used the VLA at maximum extent and did spectroscopy, you'd, never mind polarization, you would never be able to reduce the data without a supercomputer. And there was some backing for this. I think when Mort was Director, he had a high-level panel come in and address this question. And they thought we should have a supercomputer, except for Arno Penzias, who said it was crazy to buy a supercomputer. If we just waited a few years, we could get one that fit in a cigar box. Of course, he was right.

Kellermann: 15:04

I remember him visiting me in Bonn on his way to Stockholm, and he made those same comments.

Vanden Bout: 15:12

Well, we pushed for a supercomputer and got the Senator on board. He thought that would be great. We'd have one at Tech, and it would be connected by fiber to Los Alamos and New Mexico State. It would be a great thing. And so, we all met in his office with the director, the NSF director, Eric--

Bouton: 15:47

Bloch.

Vanden Bout: 15:49

Bloch. Eric Bloch, who had been to Socorro and looked at our computing stuff and labeled it junk. So, we thought, "Okay. Let's--

Kellermann: 15:59

His background was in computing, wasn't it?

Vanden Bout: 16:01

Oh, yes. He was at IBM. He developed one of their lines. I can't remember exactly which one it was.

Kellermann: 16:06

360.

Vanden Bout: 16:08

All I remember is that later on, John Armstrong, an AUI trustee, who was vice president of IBM, said that when Bloch went to NSF, left IBM for NSF, they broke out champagne. So anyway--

Kellermann: 16:28

At IBM?

Vanden Bout: 16:29

At IBM. Yes. So, there we were in Domenici's office with Bloch, and Domenici said he wanted a supercomputer in Socorro, and NSF should pay for it. And Eric said, "No, he already had one at Cornell and UC San Diego, and that was enough." Illinois had one too. That was enough. We could use those. We didn't have to have one of our own. And this went on for a while. They kicked me out of the room. And so, I was waiting. And I was there with the New Mexico aide or lobbyist. And she said, "It's not going well in there." She said, "But when you go back in, you have to ask for something." And so, we went back, and they said, "Well, this isn't going to happen." The senator said, "Apparently, I'm not going to bully the NSF." And Eric left. And I said, "Look, we were going to put this in a building in Socorro and the Tech campus, and we really need that building. And it could be the VLBA operations center. And maybe someday we could even move the VLA operations down to the building. And it would be a great thing for us." And so, he had her lobby the legislature for-- I can't remember what it cost for the building. 3 million bucks or something like that in severance bond income. The state got money for the oil that was extracted down there near Texas. And so that was a great thing. We got this building from Domenici, but no real interest in ALMA. And then later on, April told me that it was their feeling that he would not support ALMA until we had upgraded the VLA. And that proposal was in the wind. We could get 10 VLAs for the price of the first VLA. And it turned out he was very strongly supportive of that and added to the NSF budget. Every year, he added-- I think it was 5 million bucks or something like that-- over a period of time that would pay for the upgrade. And it was great because it was add-on money. And when the project was over, that money stayed there, but it went into the grants program. And so, everybody was happy. And once that was underway, then he was amenable to talking about ALMA. And I'm afraid I oversold it a little bit. I told him we were going to build a lot of the electronics in Socorro, and we did some, but not the front ends, which were done everywhere, and here. And so, he became supportive of ALMA. But my efforts to get ALMA funded as an international partnership did not go well. I was told by Neal-- what was Neal's last name? The director, NSF director. Neal? He's at--?

Kellermann: 20:40

Yeah, he's at Rice.

Vanden Bout: 20:42

Rice, yeah. He's at Rice. Anyways, the best--

Kellermann: 20:45

[crosstalk].

Vanden Bout: 20:47

--director NSF ever had. [Neal Lane] I mean, he was fantastic. Later went on to become the science advisor to the president. I'll come up with his name in a minute. But Neal, I kept hoping that he would become supportive. And John Bahcall said-- it was high on Bahcall's list of priorities. The number of--

Kellermann: 21:15

The Millimeter Array was.

Vanden Bout: 21:16

Yeah. We're talking Millimeter Array at this time, not ALMA. The name arrived later. Yeah.

Kellermann: 21:23

Remember, I chaired the Radio Panel.

Vanden Bout: 21:25

Yes. Right.

Kellermann: 21:26

So, there was no discussion in the Radio Panel. It was clear that was the first priority.

Vanden Bout: 21:32

The top priority in the list that came out was Gemini. But John Bahcall was a little cross about that because it sort of-- they'd done Gemini South, I think, by fiat. Kind of Bloch just did it. And when Bahcall complained about that, Bloch said if he had to wait for committees, then nothing would get done.

Kellermann: 22:04

No, both. The recommendation was so many million dollars for one of those--

Vanden Bout: 22:13

Oh, for one.

Kellermann: 22:14

--telescopes. And Bloch engineered this deal with the UK for the same amount of money--

Vanden Bout: 22:21

We could--

Kellermann: 22:22

--you could do half of two.

Vanden Bout: 22:23

We could do half of two.

Kellermann: 22:25

Bahcall complained about that. That's what Bloch said, what you just said.

Vanden Bout: 22:28

And John's real priority was the MMA. And so, he said-- and John could be very aggressive. He said, "Here's what we're going to do. We're going to call everybody who ever had anything to do with Neal--"

Kellermann: 22:48

Lane.

Vanden Bout: 22:49

Lane. Neal Lane. Okay. So, we did. Graduate students, postdocs he had over the years, and these people called Neal up and said, "This MMA thing is really great." And he got tired of this. He was a little annoyed, right? And I heard from the Astronomy Division that we were to call off the dogs. But then he said, "I want to meet with you." And so, I had to come up, and we had a meeting in the Old Ebbitt Grill, which is in the hotel there in Washington, very close to the White House. So, the Ebbitt Grill opens very early in the morning, and we were there at like 6:30 or 7:00, something like that. The place was empty. And it's a great place to go and see. It looks like something out of a mobster movie, sort of.

Kellermann: 23:55

Where is it?

Vanden Bout: 23:56

It's in - what's the famous hotel that's close to the Capitol [the Hay Adams], and I can't remember, but it's in this hotel. But anyway, it's all booths and tile. It's got a lot of tile, very old-fashioned. And I was there and Neal Lane, and somebody else who I cannot remember, and neither can Neal because I've asked him. And he said, "If you want to do this, it has to be an international partnership or I can't get it funded." And that was all the rage. Bloch had started that with Gemini, and it was all the rage. And the other person there, who could have been one of two people, either Bill Harris, who was on the NSF staff, a bit of a wise guy, [or Ernie Monize].

Kellermann: 24:50

He visited here some time ago.

Vanden Bout: 24:52

Bill Harris. He's an AUI trustee now. Or it was, the guy became Secretary of Energy [Ernie Moniz] from MIT, who often met with Neal Lane. He was in the White House at OSTP. Anyway, this other person said, "You want to put this thing in Chile?" And I said, "That's right. It's absolutely the best sight, blah, blah, blah." And he said, "Who is the senator from Chile?" I said, "Well, I'm not positive, but I think it's Pete Domenici." And he said, "Okay. Good luck." And so, I went off to try and sign people up first to the Netherlands, and we had a proposal. I wrote a proposal. And Ewine van Dishoeck and I ran around the Netherlands trying to sell this proposal. It went to [Netherland's National Research Council (NOW)] I can't remember what the agency was. I get a little confused with these Dutch agencies. But the head of it was Reinder van Duinen. And it had pretty good reviews except for the French reviewer, who was undoubtedly Dennis Downes, who made a lot of really good points, like the MMA wasn't big enough and etc., etc. And Riccardo Giacconi, who was Director General of ESO at the time, European Southern Observatory, wrote a letter to van Duinen and said he thought it was completely wrong that the Netherlands would sign up with NRAO and then Germany might. And we would pick them off one at a time. Instead, it should be a partnership with all of Europe, and so van Duinen rejected the proposal. And in Canada, the way astro-politics goes in Canada is very complicated. The Astronomical Society, Canadian Astronomical Society, has a lot to say. And they had committees. And then whoever funds the Dominion Radio Astronomical Observatory, and a place in Victoria and in Ottawa. Who was a Nobel laureate on molecular spectroscopy?

Kellermann: 27:53

I know who you mean. [Gerhard Herzberg]

Vanden Bout: 27:54

Yeah. So, they had a lot to say, and they had all these committees, and it went on and on. And we made a deal called NAFTA. It was kind of a North American-- it wasn't NAFTA; it was a riff on NAFTA. The North American whatever, between NRAO and Canada and Mexico, it turned out. And we would consider all Mexicans and Canadians to be US citizens as far as time goes on the telescope. And--

Kellermann: 28:32

I wonder if Trump knows about this. [laughter]

Vanden Bout: 28:37

And you might ask, "Why?" I mean, already, we had open skies, so what's the deal? But I implied that ALMA or the MMA was going to be different and that it was going to be if you didn't pay, you didn't play. And the Canadians sort of signed up for this, and in the end, Rita, Rita--

Kellermann: 29:01

Colwell.

Bouton: 29:02

Colwell.

Vanden Bout: 29:03

Colwell. NSF director after Lane. She went for an agreement with Canada and not Mexico and sort of ignored this deal we'd made. And so, the Canadians were in, and it was starting to roll along. And then there was Japan. And I went to Japan very early on. They had an IAU symposium on star formation in Tokyo. And so, I met all the guys there, Morimoto and Ishiguro-san, and later on - let's see. Who was it? - Norio. Anyway. And--

Kellermann: 30:02

Kaifu.

Vanden Bout: 30:03

--they were very keen on doing something, but they were building the optical telescope in Hawaii, and Japan does one thing at a time. They said, "We have to wait till that's finished."

Kellermann: 30:17

Subaru.

Vanden Bout: 30:18

Subaru.

Kellermann: 30:20

Subaru, yes.

Vanden Bout: 30:22

And so, we kept in touch. I took many trips to Tokyo to talk to these guys, and we kept this alive. And eventually, there was discussion about Japan joining ALMA. It led up to what would this combo of the MMA and their project-- they had various names over the years, but the Large Submillimeter Array was one of them, I think. And what would this combination look like? So, there was a workshop in Tokyo, and we went, and they went, and Bob Brown eventually evolved a great combination; it looked really good. And there was somebody from Europe there, Peter Shaver. And Peter went back to ESO and told Riccardo that-- he said, "It looks like the US and Japan are going to make a deal." And Riccardo called me up, and he said, "I think we need to talk," and I said, "Wow." I mean, this is great, but we're making real progress with the Canadians and the Japanese. And I think Neal Lane is going to give us some development money. And if the scope of the project changes, we’ve got to tell him that up front. And he said, "You're pulling the train, it’s leaving the station on me." I said, "Yes. How soon can you get here?" It was two weeks. Two weeks later, they were here. But before we hung up, he said, "Europe will not take less than 50%." And I said, "Well, neither will we. And Japan will come in later, I suppose, but we'll see how that works out." And he said, "No, that'll be all right." He said, "We can--" well, that was much later. I'll save that for later downstream. Anyway, they showed up, and we had a meeting in the auditorium here, two tables, two long tables, and we faced each other. And on our side was me and Bob Brown and Neal Evans and others. And on their side, it was Riccardo, and I think Peter was there, I'm not sure. But from Bonn, the guy recently died.

Kellermann: 33:42

Karl Menten.

Vanden Bout: 33:42

Karl Menten. Karl Menten was his main man. And I don't think Dennis Downes came, but there were others. And Neal Evans was on our side. And we sort of started off. Neal said it looked like some kind of a powwow between a couple of mobsters. But it was really very cordial. I think by the coffee break, we had a deal. And it was because everybody got what they wanted. They got a big collecting area, and we--

Kellermann: 34:27

They being Europe.

Vanden Bout: 34:28

Europe. Right. Which is something that Dennis Downes had insisted on, way back when, Dennis pointed out that-- I mean, this is very early on. After Bob and I found CO at a high redshift in one of the IRAS sources, Dennis pointed out that our interpretation was completely nuts. And what it was, was a lensed source. And if we were to see the unlensed population of these sources, we needed a really big collecting area. And he pushed that all along. And so the Europeans, when they came up with their proposal, which was a large southern array, it was a big collecting area. But it only went up to 220 gigahertz. So, they got the big collecting area. I think we wanted 64, 12 meters or something like that. And we got frequency flexibility, all the bands you could imagine in the millimeter. And we wanted the high site to support these bands. They had a site south of San Pedro de Atacama in the Salt Flats, sort of, which would have been fine for them. Although when I visited that site with Bob and Angel Otárola, there was a placard hanging on a barbed wire fence that said, "Peligro. Minas," which are, "Danger. Mines." And when we drove off, we drove over a rifle thing that went off, a rifle shell that fired as we drove over it.

Vanden Bout: 36:40

So, we were not keen on this site! And we wanted the high site for sure, which we knew a lot about at that point. We'd been studying sites for the MMA for a long time. I mean, the first vision was Frazer Owen. Frazer had a great deal to do with getting the MMA going. In some sense, it was his idea to do a millimeter VLA. He wrote the first MMA memo. Frazer gets a lot of credit. Anyway, he wanted--

Kellermann: 37:23

He should get a lot of credit, you mean.

Vanden Bout: 37:25

Oh, and he did in the end.  [in our book on the history of ALMA]

Kellermann: 37:26

Did he?

Vanden Bout: 37:27

I mean, I think he was pleased. He wanted it on Baldy, which is the mountain near the VLA site. And Baldy was better than the VLA site. But the topography on the mountain is pretty rough if you want a flexible array that you can expand. I mean, carting antennas around on the mountain was not going to be easy. Peter Napier pointed all this out. Peter gets a lot of credit, too, for all of this. Peter, a world-class worrier, he could point out all sorts of problems way in advance. And then sites in Arizona. And they were pretty good. One of them, I think, was the Springerville site, would have been okay. It had a lot of area, and local people got all excited about it and started writing letters and newspaper articles.

Vanden Bout: 38:29

And then we thought-- I think mostly at Bob Dickman's urging, "Take a look at-- take a look at Hawaii." And we had a VLBA antenna there and put a tipping radiometer there and see what it was like. Well, it was way better.

Kellermann: 38:51

Bob was then at the NSF?

Vanden Bout: 38:52

Yes. Bob was at the NSF. And so that became kind of a default site and--

Kellermann: 39:09

Sorry. Which did?

Vanden Bout: 39:11

Hawaii. But would it fit on Mauna Kea? Well, Don Hall, the director there, insisted that it would. Cam Wade tried to figure out some way to put it up there, and it was not so easy. It would have been much easier on Mauna Loa, but they had an atmospheric station there that studied things like ozone, it was not their project. That was Phil Solomon. He measured ozone in the atmosphere at Mauna Loa. But they had a project that monitored carbon dioxide in--

Kellermann: 39:58

It's the sea site.

Vanden Bout: 39:59

Yeah. And this was the National Atmospheric Observatory. And after months, they told us they would strongly oppose us putting things up there.

Kellermann: 40:21

Well, we had that same issue with the VLBA antenna because we wanted to go to Mauna Loa.

Vanden Bout: 40:26

Right. They didn't like the idea of grease and oil nearby. And so, Hall was very keen. We tried to make a deal with Hall. We even had a sort-- he wanted 15% of the time. And I think we said he could have 10% of the time and all of the single-dish observing time, of which there would never be any.  [Confused – it was the VLBA antenna on Mauna Kea that had this agreement.]  And he agreed to that. And then again, at Dickman's urging, we looked in Chile. And that was great fun. I mean, we went down there, Bob and I, we got a tour, first of all, of the optical observatories, all three of them, and saw how they operated in Chile. And the Cerro Tololo people were very helpful. We bought things and did contracts through them for a while when we started studying the high site in particular.

Vanden Bout: 41:53

But Angel Otárola was a desert rat. He worked for the, let's see, for SEST. It's a Swedish ESO Sub-millimeter Telescope. But they let us have him for a couple of weeks. And we met him in Antofagasta at the airport and got a couple of trucks. We decided for our visits in Chile we needed somebody who—[phone call interruption This is the same doctor. I can't talk now.]

Kellermann: 42:37

We can talk more later.

Vanden Bout: 42:39

We may have to. And so, we took Riccardo Giovanelli down there as our interpreter. And then Bob had-- this was not such a good idea. Bob said, "We had a postdoc from Chile once, and we ought to ask Hernan Quintana to go with us." And we did. So, it was Bob and me and Giovanelli and Otárola and Quintana. And off we went to study high sites in Chile. Well, this has been done once before. Because the Smithsonian Institution was building their sub-millimeter array and they had studied sites in Chile. They'd sent a team down, and they had studied, from the topo maps, they'd studied all the sites above some elevation. And we decided we'd just go look at these sites. They never went there because the Secretary of the Smithsonian insisted it be on US territory. He already had an operation in Panama, which was, I don't know, jungle bugs or something.

Kellermann: 43:54

Yeah, it was very controversial.

Vanden Bout: 43:56

Yeah, and it was fraught with difficulty. And so, he didn't want to do that again. So off we went. And the first place we went to was Ollagüe, which is a very sad border town village sort of way up high on the border with Bolivia, where the train from Antofagasta to La Paz crosses the border. Pulled into town. One restaurant. It was pretty good, and we were pretty hungry. So, we got something to eat. And we came out, and there were the cops. Why had we not reported to the police station on entering the town? And then Otárola remembered if it's a border town, you got to go to the cops first. And so, they were cross as hell. And we went over there. And the guy in charge wanted to see our papers and the rental agreement for the trucks. And he said, "Well, your insurance is no good. And so, I'll have to seize the trucks and keep you here until we get this sorted out." And obviously, he was looking for money. And Otárola wasn't having any of it. He was talking to him. And so, while they were arguing, Giovanelli and I were out in the hall. And we looked down at the end of the hall, and there was a guy marching some of these carabineros up and down with their rifles. And Riccardo says, "They're getting the firing squadron." And about then, a guy walked in - he belonged to the station - who knew Otárola. They were friends. It's just incredible. And suddenly, everything was fine! No problemo. And so, we left and went off to see the site, which is really high and big. Sky was such a-- it was the bluest sky you can imagine. It was obviously a good site. We had water vapor meters with us-- well, a water vapor meter. We borrowed from Tucson, of Frank Low design. And the thing was cranky as all get out. It seemed to work once and gave a very low reading, but it was erratic, and sort of hammering on it didn't help. But we were convinced it was a good site. They had a little health station and a little school. But the idea of running a major telescope out of Ollagüe was not that attractive. We headed back. On the way back, we saw the full moon rising over some huge salt flat over the border in Bolivia. It was an unbelievable sight. And we were bouncing along. And we had headaches. And we were headed for the Park Hotel. And Quintano said, "Why don't we go to San Pedro? I've been there on vacation, and it's a charming town. And I think there's some high sites above San Pedro that we could look at." And so that's exactly what we did. We went down there and took his recipe for headaches, which was several pisco sours in a row. And the next day, we drove up the highway, the Jama Pass Highway, to look for these sites. Bob Brown knew all about these sites. He had studied the topo maps, and he knew his stuff. There was a big, flat space up there. So, they went up, and my truck failed about halfway up because it was carbureted. It didn't have fuel injection, and it was tuned up for out of Antofagasta, not for 5,000 meters. And so, I sat there. I can't remember who was in the truck with me. But I think it was Angel. And Bob went on with Giovanelli and Hernan. And they drove around but did not go to this flat that Bob knew about. Because they were worried about us. It was late in the day. They decided we would just go back. So, we went back down. We were sure that this would-- we tried to use the Low meter again. It was a disaster. It didn't work. But again, the sky. I don't know if anybody got a nosebleed. We thought, "This is a real potential site." And we reported back to Dickman and said, "We think there's a real prospect here." And Bob said, "You know what we have to do is, we have to get Hugh Van Horn and Bill Harris up there."

Kellermann: 50:13

And what was Bob's position?

Vanden Bout: 50:15

He was in charge of radio astronomy at NSF. He had the radio astronomy program at the time. So that was the university facilities and pushing the MMA and NRAO. He was our program officer, or at least supervised Oster. What was his name? Anyway.

Bouton: 50:42

Ludwig.

Vanden Bout: 50:43

Ludwig. How can I forget Ludwig? And he did. They flew down to Santiago. And on the way-- in Santiago, they crossed paths. Ah, yes. And I've got the story a little mixed up. Before that happened, a team from NRAO, Peter Napier and--

Bouton: 51:21

Simon Radford.

Vanden Bout: 51:25

Peter and--

Bouton: 51:26

Simon Radford.

Vanden Bout: 51:27

Right.

Bouton: 51:28

And Frazer.

Vanden Bout: 51:29

And Frazer. They had been there with a tipper, and they said, "This is an incredible site." And so, Bob arranged, and in the Santiago airport, Van Horn and Harris crossed paths with this team who were leaving. But Bob Brown had stayed in San Pedro. And while they were traveling to San Pedro, he went up and drove around and looked down on the site. Okay? He didn't go down to it because there were these-- yeah, what were they called? There were snow, ice formations. They looked like upside-down icicles. Apostles I think they were-- something like that. They looked like apostles. And so, Bob knew this site existed. And then we took Harris and Van Horn up there. Dickman wasn't there. And we got to the point where you could see the lakes in Bolivia. And Bob said, "I have seen this big flat site over there, and I'm pretty sure this is going to be a great site," and so forth.

Vanden Bout: 53:08

And Harris was completely blown away by the landscape. I mean, it is incredible and said, "You secure that site if it's there. Make sure this is a good site." And then on the way down, he said to Van Horn, "You get the money to make this happen." And Hugh was very pleased. And so, Harris became a really strong supporter, and we needed this sort of Mr. Big at the NSF behind it. Bill, at one point, when Riccardo left and they were looking for a new AUI president, Bill called me up and said, "Do you think I should apply?" He said, "We could work together to build our telescope." He was really, really behind it but he didn't. We ended up with somebody entirely different who got fired.

Vanden Bout: 54:28

So, he was great and we owe Bill. He probably still thinks it's his telescope. I mean, I'm sure he's a big NRAO supporter at AUI. So, this all came together. And we had this meeting in Charlottesville where we got the high site and lots of flexibility, and they got big antennas. And this played very well at NSF. We got development money. And we planned shortly after that to begin getting construction money for our half. ESO, it fit into their budget plans because Riccardo, who was there as DG, needed some space filler in his budget because the thing they really wanted to build was called the Overwhelmingly Large Telescope, OWL, which was nowhere near shovel-ready. It was going to cost a fortune. And so he wanted to keep the budget high. And this fit in perfectly.

Vanden Bout: 55:55

And then Peter Shaver had commissioned a workshop to study the science that would be done with this big array. And it got a ringing endorsement from Lo Woltjer. And Lo is sort of god-like in European astronomy. And so that's all Riccardo needed. He had a justification for his budget plan, and it all moved ahead. Let's see. Where would we go from here? Oh, we formed the ALMA Coordinating Committee that would manage this project, at least initially. And that's where the name ALMA came up. Bob Brown had a little contest: suggest acronyms. And the two that were suggested was ALMA - and this is by somebody who worked at NRAO in Socorro and his pal who was at Illinois in the software development business there [Dick Crutcher?] - and the other one, it was an unfortunate acronym. I can't remember exactly. But I mean, ALMA, everybody just went for it. There were some other suggestions, not very good. But Catherine Cesarsky, who was to become ALMA DG, she just loved it. And of course, it's very meaningful in Spanish. And so--

Kellermann: 57:45

You said ALMA DG, you meant ESO DG?

Vanden Bout: 57:48

ESO DG, yeah. And her right-hand guy for administration-- oh, I can't, a real rascal in my view.

Kellermann: 58:05

British. British guy.   [Ian Corbin]

Vanden Bout: 58:07

Yeah. British guy. We'll think of his name in a minute. He loved it because he could pronounce it. And so that carried the day. So, we had ALMA, the ALMA Coordinating Committee, it became. And a number of times it got organized. It organized a number of things, workshops, and per Riccardo's suggestion, the project got divided into deliverables. So, the way it would work is - in retrospect, this might not have been such a good idea, but it did work - instead of sending money to some new legal organization that would do it all, each side would produce stuff. So there was antennas, and there was site work, and electronics, and so forth. And the division of this was decided by the Committee, of course. Bob Brown and ESO guy, he did Gemini. Great project engineer at ESO. Can't think of his name at the moment.[Richard Kurz]

Kellermann: 59:39

[inaudible]?

Vanden Bout: 59:40

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're on to it. We'll think of it in a minute. The two of them worked all this out, and they very wisely included the Japanese because it was assumed the Japanese would come in. And so, they were part of this. And they divided it up. Well, the antennas had to get split 50/50. It was a huge package, and the site work got done with the US doing the high stuff and Europe doing the mid-level, and so forth. Electronics was split up. Various bands went to various places. So, a lot of good work was done by the Coordinating Committee. And then there was the meeting of the ALMA Coordinating Committee in Venice. It was a big meeting as it turned out. Wonderful hosts. I mean, the Italian astronomers went all out. We met in the Society of the Lynx, which is the oldest scientific society in the world. Unbelievable building, ancient stuff.

Kellermann: 01:01:07

I've been in that building. Fred Hoyle’s 65^th birthday party was there once.

Vanden Bout: 01:01:12

Ah, it's an amazing place. Anyway, and then, of course, they got a tour of the cathedral at night, a special tour at night, and they turned the lights on. The food was over the top. And in the meeting, there was a kind of routine report by Brown and this ESO project engineer. Why can't I think of his name? [Richard Kurz] Anyway, and then Eisenstein, who had succeeded Harris for math, physics, and astronomy. Eisenstein just had a little explosive interjection. He said, "No project this size can be run by a committee." He said, "There has to be a real project with a project director and a project engineer.” And it has to be organized in his mind like LIGO, which he thought was a huge success after NSF got a hold of it and reorganized it. And so, there was sort of nodding around the table. Yeah, indeed. And so, they said, "Who are we going to recruit for project director and project manager?" And Brown and, forgotten fellow said, who could it possibly have? I have a complete blank here on this guy's name. And I don't know why because I had so much to do with him. But anyway, they raised their hands. Bob said he would be happy to be project director, and the other guy would be project manager.

Kellermann: 01:03:17

He's a European.

Vanden Bout: 01:03:18

The European guy. And it made perfect sense. They would have been fine.

Kellermann: 01:03:23

Kreutz or something like that?

Vanden Bout: 01:03:25

Yeah, Kurz.

Kellermann: 01:03:25

Kurz, that's it.

Vanden Bout: 01:03:26

Richard Kurz. And it was a good idea. And Riccardo said, "Well, he was very supportive of this, and so was Catherine." She said, "Yeah, she thought this was a good idea." And Eisenstein said, "Gentlemen, would you leave the room?" And he said--

Kellermann: 01:03:54

Which gentleman? Brown.

Vanden Bout: 01:03:56

Brown and Kurtz. And he said, "I can't support this." And he wouldn't say why. But I know why. Bob had blindsided him on the cost of the MMA. And we had a very fractious meeting in Arizona where the cost of the MMA had sort of doubled, and he learned about this in the meeting, okay? And it doubled for all kinds of good reasons. You could justify it. But he was extremely annoyed that he hadn't been apprised of this in advance. And so, he didn't trust Brown, and he wouldn't have Bob. And so that was that. So, then who? Well, I think Catherine said, "I think Paul should do it." And I said, "Wait a minute. I'm going on sabbatical." Well, that was too bad. And then Riccardo said, "I think Massimo Tarenghi should be the project manager." And so does anyone else?

Kellermann: 01:05:12

By this time, Riccardo was at AUI.

Vanden Bout: 01:05:14

No. No. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He was at AUI. By this time, he was at AUI. Of course he was. Catherine was at ESO. Anybody else want to do this? Yeah, well, there was a guy from Britain [Richard Wade] who wanted to do this who remained involved with ALMA over the years. So, we were sent away to the library. We had all these dusty books. And we were up there. And when we came back, it was decided that I should do the thing on an interim basis, okay? And they would look for a real one. And Massimo would be the project manager. And so that went well. Unfortunately, when Massimo and I-- well, first of all, I said, "I don't know this guy Tarenghi." I said, "I think I'd like to talk to him before I agree to this deal." So, we went home. I went home to Austin, or I met him in Austin. I don't know why I was in Austin. Must have gone back for some reason. And Massimo came and we had drinks and talked endlessly. We talked for hours. We really hit it off well. And so that was the deal. And then there was a-- oh, it had a board too. Of course, the project had a board. And the ALMA board met in Santiago, and they approved these appointments then. But before they did, Massimo and I told Riccardo and Catherine, who were the only players at the time - the Japanese weren't in yet - that the way we wanted this project to go is we didn't want a lot of interference from them. We thought we should run the project and they should just supply the money. And they said they would think about that. And the next morning, before the meeting, we met them for breakfast, and they said, "No."

Kellermann: 01:07:32

Yeah. You described that here.

Vanden Bout: 01:07:35

Yeah. Our institutional interests and priorities are more important. And they called our bluff. And of course, they knew that we were keen to do it. And so, we agreed to this. And this led to, of course, this crazy management structure we have for ALMA, which is very cumbersome. I mean, ESO today has said they would never do such a project again. And I don't think NSF would either. I mean, it's just, somebody's got to be in charge. But then it went on from there. And I thought, "Well, this is good." Massimo and I, we toured around all the labs on the electronics and people who thought they could build antennas and stuff. Massimo's style didn't go down well with the engineers. He asked the guys here in the lab how long it would take to develop and build these receivers. Oh, man. I mean, they wanted a bucket of money and many years to do this. And Massimo said, "Well, this is totally unacceptable. I'll just buy them in Japan." And this was repeated in the Netherlands and so forth. In the end, of course, these guys came through with fantastic specs. And it didn't take all that much time either. I mean, everything was more or less produced on time. But what happened is that we needed a permanent director and project manager. And they couldn't find anybody. I mean, it floundered, this search committee. And my wife, Rachel, said, "Why doesn't Massimo do it?" And of course, this had great appeal to Massimo to be a director. And Anneila thought it was a pretty good idea, and it went over. They appointed him. And I can't remember who the first project manager was, but maybe they were still looking for him. They were waiting for Massimo to assume the directorship and so forth. And unfortunately, Massimo got very sick. He always neglected his health. Wouldn't go to the dentist, for one thing. And so that was an issue. But he had ulcerative colitis, which he ignored, until there was a crisis. And when they operated, I mean, it was major, major surgery followed by infections, which required more operations. And he ended up in a recovery spa in Germany. And I had to just continue as--

Kellermann: 01:11:13

At what point did you step down as NRAO director?

Vanden Bout: 01:11:19

2000 and--

Kellermann: 01:11:21

No, no, not the year. But when you first became--

Vanden Bout: 01:11:24

Oh, oh, yeah. Yes. It was after that Vienna meeting.

Kellermann: 01:11:37

I didn't remember that you were about to go on sabbatical.

Vanden Bout: 01:11:40

Yeah.

Kellermann: 01:11:43

So for the sabbatical--

Vanden Bout: 01:11:45

That came later.

Kellermann: 01:11:46

There must have been some planning as to what would happen while you were on sabbatical as far as NRAO--

Vanden Bout: 01:11:53

Yeah, yeah. I mean, sort of right away, there was an Interim Director. Was it not--

Kellermann: 01:12:02

Miller.

Vanden Bout: 01:12:02

Miller. Goss, yeah.

Kellermann: 01:12:03

Well, that was after you had actually stepped out.

Vanden Bout: 01:12:06

Yeah. But I--

Kellermann: 01:12:08

So, the fact that it was interim, I think everybody was-- or at least I, who wasn't plugged in or anything, was caught off guard. It was kind of sudden. I mean, all of a sudden--

Vanden Bout: 01:12:20

Well, I had--

Kellermann: 01:12:21

To put it bluntly, you deserted NRAO. The rest of NRAO.

Vanden Bout: 01:12:24

Yeah, I think I had stepped down-- I had stepped down before the Vienna meeting. I told Riccardo I had high blood pressure, and it was because of him. He was really cross with me. Yeah, I think it was before the meeting. And I went there assuming I would be on sabbatical.

Kellermann: 01:12:55

On sabbatical or stepping down permanently as Director?

Vanden Bout: 01:12:58

Stepping down permanently as Director.

Kellermann: 01:13:00

Oh, and then going on sabbatical.

Vanden Bout: 01:13:01

And then going on sabbatical, yeah.

Kellermann: 01:13:04

So, you didn't step down as Director because of ALMA.

Vanden Bout: 01:13:10

No.

Kellermann: 01:13:11

It was because of--

Vanden Bout: 01:13:13

Because of Riccardo. I'd had it with the guy. I mean, he was a lot of fun at first, and we did think alike in many ways. I mean, we hated the same people. And I learned a lot from him, actually. He was really good on strategy and hopeless at tactics, just completely hopeless. He would leave the tactics up to his lieutenants, like Pete-- what's his name at Space Telescope. And Gursky, guys like that that were around him. They would take his crazy ideas for tactics, how we're going to do this, and either ignore them or shape them up into something reasonable. But after a while, it got just impossible. I mean, I go up there, and it wouldn't be long, and we would be we would be shouting at each other. And to the point of exhaustion, and then we'd say, "It's time for lunch." And we'd walk out to go to lunch, and the secretaries would be kind of, "Whoa." And I just got tired of it after a while.

Kellermann: 01:14:34

Was he micromanaging?

Vanden Bout: 01:14:35

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Of course, he thought he was Director.

Kellermann: 01:14:38

He didn't have anything else to do.

Vanden Bout: 01:14:42

That's exactly right. So, Bob Hughes was great. I mean, Bob Hughes wasn't anything special. I mean, he did what the AUI President is supposed to do. He played golf, right? He didn't pay any attention to me, and Brookhaven kept him occupied. But Riccardo was entirely different. He didn't have Brookhaven. All he had was me. And he got in one of his favorite hotshots to go through the whole observatory. And the guy was very perceptive. He said it's a sort of federation of observatories. Each site kind of runs themselves and has too much independence. Oh, God, it was awful. That was a big fight.

Kellermann: 01:15:30

You've read his book.

Vanden Bout: 01:15:30

Oh, the book. The book was supposed to be a history of modern astrophysics. It was his biography, his autobiography. Yes.

Kellermann: 01:15:44

Well, especially the chapter or two on NRAO.

Vanden Bout: 01:15:47

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. He'd saved us. Yeah, if you want to get a rise out of somebody, ask Bob Williams if he's read the book. Williams couldn't stand Riccardo. Just couldn't stand him. Anyway, that's all just gossip. But anyway, where were we?

Kellermann: 01:16:09

Well, you stepped down as NRAO Director, and my impression was kind of sudden, which is why they had to appoint an interim person.

Vanden Bout: 01:16:23

And then I did take the sabbatical, finally. I mean, Massimo got better. You don't want to go to one of these German spas. The food was excellent, he said. And they stuffed him. He’d lost huge amounts of weight. But they would put him on these exercise machines. And when he thought he was going to faint, they'd clap an oxygen mask on him and tell him to keep going. [laughter] He finally escaped.

Kellermann: 01:17:02

Anyway, but back on the rest of NRAO, did you have any input, were you ever consulted about the search and appointment of the next Director?

Vanden Bout: 01:17:13

I did in a couple of ways. I mean, Anneila was very supportive of Fred. Wall [Sargent] and Fred got on great. They did some science together. And she was--

Kellermann: 01:17:33

He had been "fired" at Caltech.

Vanden Bout: 01:17:36

Yeah. Well, yeah. Nobody makes tenure at Caltech, so that's not a big deal. But yeah, she was quite keen on it. And I can't remember if Riccardo asked me or not. I do remember meeting with Fred at the board meeting where he was appointed in Seattle. Rachel and I went out with Fred and Helen for dinner. And it should have been a clue. Fred was very worried about how much authority he would have as Director. And I said, "Fred, you can do anything that you can get away with." Meaning the staff better be on board or you're going to be in trouble. But I don't think he really understood that. And when he took over, Bob Dickman called me up and he said, "I don't know about this." He said, "The guy seems to have the Mao Zedong management school in mind." And indeed, he did, of course. I mean, I had an office in the building, and one of the things that would happen sort of weekly was that Billie Rodriguez would appear in my office in tears. I had a box of Kleenex just for Billie. And Fred bullied people. It was not good.

Kellermann: 01:19:31

By the way, I saw Billie just--

Vanden Bout: 01:19:32

Did you?

Kellermann: 01:19:33

Yeah, had lunch together with Sheila.

Vanden Bout: 01:19:35

Oh, great.

Kellermann: 01:19:36

She's moved back to Charlottesville, to Lake Monticello.

Vanden Bout: 01:19:39

Oh, good. Good for her. Well, it didn't go that well. And yeah, there was some unhappiness. I think the Board appointed a committee that was to sort of review Fred.

Kellermann: 01:20:01

Well, that was after five years.

Vanden Bout: 01:20:02

Yeah. Neal Evans chaired the committee, and Neal's such a sweet guy and recommended that he go to charm school. And that they hired some guy to come in and advise Fred and so forth. But I don't think it went well, I don't know. But then, it was very sad because he didn't-- he took some crap unnecessarily. There was this adoring secretary he had after Billie.

Kellermann: 01:20:39

Bouton:

Heidi.

Heidi Winter.

Vanden Bout: 01:20:40

Heidi, Heidi. And Heidi was very good to Fred. And she was the one who put up the sign in the parking lot that said, "Director's Spot" or something. Because she knew Fred was sick. And she did everything for you to make life easier for him. And he took some crap for this. I don't think he minded, frankly.

Kellermann: 01:21:10

My recollection was that happened the day he arrived, that parking spot.

Vanden Bout: 01:21:14

I'm not sure about that, yeah. I don't know.

Kellermann: 01:21:17

Okay, maybe it's wrong.

Vanden Bout: 01:21:18

It happened the day Harry van der Laan arrived at ESO, I know that.

Kellermann: 01:21:23

That's a whole other story.

Vanden Bout: 01:21:26

That's another story.

Kellermann: 01:21:27

I saw Harry recently, also. I stayed with him.

Vanden Bout: 01:21:29

Yeah, so did I.

Kellermann: 01:21:30

Yeah, he told us you were coming.

Vanden Bout: 01:21:33

I was very sad, he fell off his bike. He's still in tough shape. Anyway, anyway. It's really tough, and Fred had a lung removed when he was at Caltech. And he was running on one lung, and then the cancer took over that one. So, that was tough. Helen--

Kellermann: 01:21:59

While he was at Caltech, I thought was when he went to Taiwan.

Vanden Bout: 01:22:03

It might have been in Taiwan, might have been. And it was--

Kellermann: 01:22:06

It was his physical exam to go to Taiwan, they found it. Anyway.

Vanden Bout: 01:22:12

Helen was very concerned about how-- she knew Fred's directorship was somewhat controversial. And she was very worried about how he would be treated in the book. What would we say about Fred? Well, it turned out we tried to write a book that was based on stuff you could look up in the archives, okay? And there was nothing there. There was nothing there, and that's unfortunate laptop incident where it got erased. And so, I told Helen, I said, "We'll do what we can, but there's just nothing there that we can cite." And she seemed to be understanding about it, which I don't know, maybe she was the one who gave the book to Goodwill in LA.

Kellermann: 01:23:11

She's in Boston now.

Vanden Bout: 01:23:14

Yeah, we're in touch with Helen. Rachel and I have Zoom meetings with Anneila, and Nick, and Helen on a fairly regular basis. And he did-- I know that he was involved in the antenna procurement business, which was very fraught, very difficult negotiations on both sides. And the other thing that I know, let's see. Was those things-- oh, yeah. Well, when he came to NRAO, he had an idea of who the geniuses were that kept the place going and made it great, right? It was Larry D'Addario and John Payne and people like that. And so, he gave them authority. It was a complete disaster. I mean, I just can't imagine D'Addario leading a team of anything. And John Payne, he was a very good engineer, but totally disorganized. It just didn't work out. It didn't work out. So, at the time, the NRAO ALMA project manager was Marc Rafal. And Tarenghi didn't like Rafal because Rafal was very loyal to AUI and NRAO. And Massimo thought he should be making decisions on the basis of the project and not what AUI or NRAO wanted. So, they didn't get along. And Marc did his best. He was a bit tied to the work breakdown structure. He was used to that. And after a while, Fred just-- they had some disagreements. I mean, I talked to Marc, and Marc said Fred would tell him, "You've got to do this." And Marc would say, "Well, you know, if you do that, this is what's going to happen. It won't be a good idea." And he would say, "No, you got to do it. I want you to do it." So, Marc would do it, and then there'd be some huge problem. And Fred would call him in and say, "Why did you do that?" And this did not work out in the end. And so, he canned Marc.

Kellermann: 01:26:07

He canned him or he left. I mean--

Vanden Bout: 01:26:09

Oh, no, he dumped. He told him, "You're over. It's over with you." And so, then it was a big problem. I mean, he tried to manage it himself. He tried to be the project manager. That did not work. It didn't last very long. He wanted to get Marc back. And Marc said, "Well, now I've formed a consulting company. I'll come back as a consultant at about twice the salary." It was great. And then they got the Brit, who was a good project manager. And he's very high in ESO right now. I still get a Christmas card from him, but I can't remember his name. Anyway.

Kellermann: 01:26:54

Anyway, so to back off a little bit, you explained, which is going to be one of my questions, why Bob Brown didn't become NRAO Director.

Vanden Bout: 01:27:06

Yes. Yes. That's my theory. By the way, I asked Eisenstein if that was the case in an interview with him, and he'd had no memory of it.

Kellermann: 01:27:16

Because Bob would have been, at the time, I thought, obvious. But also, for a long time, Bob had been your deputy, and because of your involvement in ALMA, he was sort of running the rest of NRAO.

Vanden Bout: 01:27:31

Exactly.

Kellermann: 01:27:32

So why did Bob get passed over as NRAO Director?

Vanden Bout: 01:27:41

He left before that, didn't he?

Kellermann: 01:27:42

No. No, I don't think so. I think he left because--

Vanden Bout: 01:27:45

I mean, the way we divided it up, he did everything but the VLA, and I talked to the VLA because Ekers couldn't stand him. They'd had some fight about the galactic center source or something. Ekers just couldn't get along with Bob at all. That's the way it was divided up. But then let's see, when I-- they did a search, I have no idea who they involved in the search, if he applied or was asked, or-- I don't know. I wasn't involved.

Kellermann: 01:28:28

I knew Fred from Caltech. We were good friends. After he came here, we fought all the time. But once we were outside this building, it was just like the old days.

Vanden Bout: 01:28:43

Oh, yeah. Oh, absolutely.

Kellermann: 01:28:45

And spent many pleasant evenings in his home and everything. But he was just a terrible Director. And this was known before he came. I mean, the people at Illinois--

Vanden Bout: 01:28:55

Lew Snyder

Kellermann: 01:28:55

--laughed at us. Yeah.

Vanden Bout: 01:28:57

So, I mean, I learned within a week of his arrival that I could not have anything to do operationally with him. I mean, he wanted me to be on a kind of little committee of advisors.

Kellermann: 01:29:11

Me too, yeah.

Vanden Bout: 01:29:12

"Fred, I can't do this because I'm going to disagree with you in front of other people. That's not going to look good."

Kellermann: 01:29:18

Well, also, as former Director, it wasn't appropriate.

Vanden Bout: 01:29:20

Not appropriate.

Kellermann: 01:29:21

But I did. I did. He called it whatever, College of-- what do you call it? One of the presidents had-- Jackson—kitchen.

Vanden Bout: 01:29:35

The kitchen cabinet, kitchen cabinet. Yeah. But outside of NRAO, oh, it was wonderful. We went out to dinner with them. We went to their house. We had them down to the shore. It was all wonderful. Yeah. He's very different outside the office.

Kellermann: 01:29:52

I think the job was too big for him.

Vanden Bout: 01:29:54

Do you think that was the issue? He was a little insecure?

Kellermann: 01:29:56

Yeah. Anyway--

Vanden Bout: 01:30:03

What that's called? That's some kind of syndrome. I can't remember what that's called.

Kellermann: 01:30:10

Impostor syndrome.

Vanden Bout: 01:30:11

Yes, yes. An imposter syndrome.

Kellermann: 01:30:13

Did you have it?

Vanden Bout: 01:30:15

No. Not at NRAO, but when I went to the first AUI board meeting, we had a bunch of Nobel laureates. I go, "Whoa."

Kellermann: 01:30:25

Which is no longer true, but of course.

Vanden Bout: 01:30:28

Yes, yes.

Vanden Bout: 01:30:29

But it turned out they all did their business in the rest room the same way, so.

Kellermann: 01:30:36

Okay. You've given a long answer to what I asked you. What was your biggest accomplishment?

Vanden Bout: 01:30:42

Oh, yes. It was a huge long answer.

Kellermann: 01:30:45

That's right.

Vanden Bout: 01:30:46

Biggest failure you want to know next, right? I think it was--

Bouton: 01:30:49

What would you have done differently? Yeah.

Vanden Bout: 01:30:51

Well, the whole AIPS++ thing was a debacle, a disaster. It got so many people teed off. Our friend who went to Australia, the software engineer, he was a brilliant guy.

Kellermann: 01:31:11

Tim Cornwell?

Vanden Bout: 01:31:13

Yeah, Tim Cornwell. I made Tim Cornwell sort of independent of Miller. I can't remember exactly what it was all about, but Miller was furious. He quit. And then we had a big, big thing in Santa Fe between AIPS, well, and what was to become AIPS++, I don't know what they called it at the time. A big fight, and it got nowhere. And then Geoff Croes came. And Croes promised all sorts of things. We were going to develop this software package overnight because it was going to be an international effort, everybody working at once. And John Armstrong, the AUI trustee was very skeptical, "Whoa, at IBM, if they get one line of code a day, it's an achievement." And he was right, of course. It didn't go anywhere. I thought that was the best thing Fred did when he came is he dumped AIPS++. That was the right thing to do. So that was just a disaster. Let's see. The door is mostly closed. Richard Simon couldn't organize anything, as far as I know.

Kellermann: 01:32:52

What was his job?

Vanden Bout: 01:32:54

He was in charge of developing this new software package initially. I think-- what was it, the Naval Research Observatory or NRO? Who was our friend up there?

Kellermann: 01:33:11

Gart Westerhout.

Vanden Bout: 01:33:12

No, Gart, but then after Gart, there was for a long time--

Kellermann: 01:33:19

Oh, Ken Johnston.

Vanden Bout: 01:33:20

Ken Johnston. I think Ken is still laughing. I mean, the whole thing was just a disaster. And they would make reports about what they had done. Some good things came out of it. The Dutch guy wrote a piece of code that's used today. There's some legacy stuff from the project that got used.

Kellermann: 01:33:51

[inaudible].

Vanden Bout: 01:33:53

Yeah. But generally, it was a disaster. I shouldn't have let it go on.

Kellermann: 01:34:00

Okay. So, when you became Director, as you said, Bob Hughes was the AUI president, and there was an appropriate division of effort. He didn't micromanage or anything?

Vanden Bout: 01:34:16

He didn't pay any attention, basically.

Kellermann: 01:34:19

And then there was the Brookhaven incident?

Vanden Bout: 01:34:22

Yes.

Kellermann: 01:34:23

You went to AUI board meetings regularly. You were aware of the leak problem.

Vanden Bout: 01:34:35

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Of course.

Kellermann: 01:34:36

What did you think of the way AUI handled it? Did you see this as an impending disaster, or-- ?

Vanden Bout: 01:34:45

I think badly. Okay? Number one, they had no lobbyist. They didn't believe in hiring a lobbyist. April Burke was the first. And so, there was nobody that was tight with the local representative, senator, etc. There was nobody that could speak for them or had established any relationship with these people. And then, of course, these guys were really smart. Nick Samios is a smart guy. And his deputy-- Peter? Could it be Peter--?

Kellermann: 01:35:37

Samios?

Vanden Bout: 01:35:38

Samios had a deputy that he fought with all the time. Couldn't understand why I got along with Brown. Anyway, these are smart guys, but it was sort of like in these public meetings and that, I think they came off as being arrogant, talking down.

Kellermann: 01:36:05

Have you read the book?

Vanden Bout: 01:36:06

I've read the book. It's right on the money. It's right on the money. The book is-- that's who the guy Peter Pesh?

Kellermann: 01:36:13

Yes.

Vanden Bout: 01:36:14

No? Not right.

Kellermann: 01:36:16

Anyway, my only knowledge of it, you dragged me to some board meeting for some reason. And there was a presentation, and Nick got up and showed something and said, "You could drink a bathtub full of this water every day for 100 years. It'll be the same as a dental x-ray." Everybody had a good laugh, and they adjourned, went for drinks, yeah, and then a couple of days later, the shit hit the fan.

Vanden Bout: 01:36:42

I mean, they just didn't handle it very well. Of course, that well, you read the book, right? Nothing has changed.

Kellermann: 01:36:49

Well, I don't know about it.

Vanden Bout: 01:36:50

Yeah. No. Nothing has changed. The little leak is still there.

Kellermann: 01:36:58

Oh, I see. Management-wise.

Vanden Bout: 01:37:01

It stopped. It stopped because by the time the water got from the tank to where it stopped, it'd been a few half-lives.

Kellermann: 01:37:11

I heard that.

Vanden Bout: 01:37:13

Okay. And so, it's not a problem. The water doesn't ever get outside the compound.

Kellermann: 01:37:19

Anyway, I think you mixed it up before. So, Hughes quit or was fired or--

Vanden Bout: 01:37:26

Hughes. Bob Hughes?

Kellermann: 01:37:30

That's when they hired Lyle Schwartz. Yes.

Vanden Bout: 01:37:36

Yes. I think he stepped down. I don't know. I don't know. I don't think that the trustees pushed him, but I think he'd had it. And they got Lyle.

Kellermann: 01:37:49

Yeah. And before you said it was after Giacconi. It was after Hughes.

Vanden Bout: 01:37:53

It was after Hughes. No, no, yeah. I got that mixed up.

Kellermann: 01:37:55

And he only lasted a few months or something.

Vanden Bout: 01:37:58

Well, he lasted--

Kellermann: 01:38:00

That's right. It was under Schwartz that the Brookhaven thing finally hit the fan.

Vanden Bout: 01:38:05

Yes. Well, it was underway, okay? And they hired Schwartz. And I met with him, Lyle. I met with him, and he seemed like a good guy. We got along well. The problem was that the AUI attorney who we’d meet, he was at present at most board meetings because they always had a law suit going. He wanted them to sue the Department of Energy. He wanted to sue the government for breach of contract, okay?

Kellermann: 01:38:58

That was mentioned in the book, I think, yeah.

Vanden Bout: 01:39:00

Yeah. And Lyle would not support that, okay? And I was in the board meeting. He said, "I can't support that." And so, then they kicked the two of us out. And he explained to me that his wife was the lobbyist for the Chicago Mercantile, Market or whatever it is, the place where you buy commodities. And she had a job in Washington. And he would need to find a job in Washington. And if he had sued the government, he'd never get a job in Washington. And then they hauled him back in and canned him. Yeah. And then we got on the recommendation of Kellermann, we got Giacconi. At least you're partly responsible.

Kellermann: 01:40:08

Yeah. I think I was, yeah. He did straighten out AUI-- AUI was in disgrace, then. He did bring it back to a good--

Vanden Bout: 01:40:15

Oh, he did. He did. First of all, he said this lawsuit is nuts, and he wouldn't have any part of that.

Kellermann: 01:40:22

But anyway, let's go back to NRAO. So, you came. The VLBA got built, and then there was the 300 Foot incident. Were you concerned that the RSI proposal was a factor of two lower than everybody else?

Vanden Bout: 01:40:49

Yeah, we talked about that. I don't know. But I think let's see. Who was the business manager at the time? I think--

Kellermann: 01:41:05

Oh, Ted. It was still Ted Riffe.  [Note added post-interview:  Riffe retired in June 1987, so the business manager at the time was Jim Desmond.]

Vanden Bout: 01:41:09

It was still Ted.

Kellermann: 01:41:10

Yeah, because I was on the committee

Vanden Bout: 01:41:12

I think--

Kellermann: 01:41:13

--and everything, and he ran it.

Vanden Bout: 01:41:14

I think Ted's [Jim’s] feeling was that we would have a hell of a time picking somebody else because it was the low bid. And of course, he had-- I mean, he knew these guys. He had experience with them. And then, oh, the other-- yes, of course. The other thing was it matched the money, okay? I mean, to pick the other contractor with only half the money in hand, we couldn't go back to Senator Byrd. So that's probably why we did it. It might have been a concern in somebody's mind. But--

Kellermann: 01:42:04

Did you ask him? You couldn't. You weren't allowed to, I guess.

Vanden Bout: 01:42:09

No, I guess not.

Kellermann: 01:42:10

You couldn't disclose the other--?

Vanden Bout: 01:42:13

No, no, I don't think we could.

Kellermann: 01:42:14

No, no, no.

Vanden Bout: 01:42:16

Yeah. And of course, it turned out to be very difficult.

Kellermann: 01:42:21

And the other bids turned out to be more or less correct as far as--?

Vanden Bout: 01:42:25

They were pretty much on the--

Kellermann: 01:42:26

And how--?

Vanden Bout: 01:42:26

--money.

Kellermann: 01:42:26

$100 million, yeah.

Vanden Bout: 01:42:28

Yeah. Yeah. They were pretty much on the money, although it's not clear that they wouldn't want a big cost increase too. They might have taken theirs and said, "Oh, no, we've had all these problems or we didn't interpret the spec right or something like that." And it would have gone-- it would have gone fine with RSI until we had this argument about the lifetime. They said the lifetime of the mechanical-- the mechanical lifetime was 20 years, by which they meant the motors and the gearboxes, and by which we meant the structure. The whole blessed thing is mechanical. And then when we insisted on that, they had to beef up the joints in the backup structure. And that led to more weight, etc. It was a kind of cascading of problems. And then they mismanaged the project too. They kept switching cranes and doing crazy things, and, yeah, it was a nightmare.

Kellermann: 01:43:43

So, at the time, the VLBA was still under construction?

Vanden Bout: 01:43:47

I guess so, yes.

Kellermann: 01:43:50

And was there any informal agreement or relation between the two antenna projects, RSI?

Vanden Bout: 01:44:05

No. No. The only connections we had with RSI over antennas like the VLBA antenna were antennas for the Navy. We wanted one at Green Bank, and they wanted one in Florida. And we kind of helped, I think. But we didn't get our Green Bank antenna, and they went separately to Florida. And I don't think there was any-- I don't remember any of that.

Kellermann: 01:44:45

Another name I can't remember. The president of RSI.

Vanden Bout: 01:44:49

Oh, he's a great guy. Dick--

Kellermann: 01:44:54

Thompson.

Vanden Bout: 01:44:56

Dick Thomas. Dick Thomas.

Kellermann: 01:44:57

Thomas. Thomas.

Vanden Bout: 01:44:58

Dick Thomas. Dick Thomas.

Kellermann: 01:44:59

You say great guy.

Vanden Bout: 01:45:00

Oh, he's a terrific guy. Dick was a really good guy. He was so much fun.

Kellermann: 01:45:07

I considered him as one of the people I wouldn't buy a used car from.

Vanden Bout: 01:45:11

Well, you had to be careful and business-wise with Dick. And, illustrated by a story he told us one night-- we used to go out to dinner with him and had drinks and stuff. And he said, "I bought a bank." And he said, "But my wife won't open an account in the bank." I said, "Why not?" He said, "Well, it's in a mobile home at the moment." And he said, "But you wouldn't believe how great it is to own a bank." He said, "It's like legal theft." Yeah. Yeah. It was okay with Dick, but he sold the company. He sold the company over a barbecue at his home with the president of COMSAT. COMSAT wanted a totally vertical monopoly. So, they would produce content, and they would distribute content with their satellite, COMSAT. And the ground stations would be built by RSI. Well, they didn't do any due diligence. And so, they discovered, after they'd bought the company, that they had this problem in Green Bank. And they filed claims. Dick had filed claims, in fact. And I think Dick had told them that the claims were golden. But our view was that they were somewhat less than golden. And I remember going up there with Randy Squires, who's our attorney. Randy's a terrific guy. And we took a cab to COMSAT headquarters. And it was just completely over-the-top corporate-wise. I mean, it was in a building near Dulles, very nice building. The receptionist was this incredibly-- it looked like she belonged and worked for a Gucci or something like that. You went upstairs, and the guy showed us all these things. They owned a hockey team.

Kellermann: 01:47:43

Yep. Colorado.

Vanden Bout: 01:47:44

Colorado. And they'd won the top prize. And it was a disaster because they had to pay bonuses to all these hockey players. And he went on and on. And he wanted us to sign, and that's what provoked the visit. He wanted me to sign a statement that said these claims were-- I can't remember what, were viable or something like that so that they could have a footnote in their financial report. So, there'd be the claims and asterisk and down at the bottom, NRAO Director thinks these claims are probably okay. Well, Randy said, "No way. We're going to go talk to these guys." And we got there and it came to loggerheads. And we left. He offered a ride to the airport. "Great. We'll take the limo to the airport." And I heard some [inaudible]. And we were going to the airport in this limo, and Randy started talking. I said, "Wait, wait, wait a minute. This thing is probably bugged." Right? Then they came down here. Randy and I and their lawyers because we said we're going to go to-- it was arbitration, not mediation, arbitration. They came down here, and we met with their lawyer, the guy's name I've long forgotten, who is now a federal arbitration judge. But they wanted 30 million. And Randy and I thought about it, and we agreed that we would give them-- I can't remember, 4 or 5 million to go away. And they were offended by this. “We'll see you in court.”

Vanden Bout: 01:50:13

And then we did go to court, of course. Court consisted of a room in a hotel near Dulles Airport. Dave Heeschen and Dave Hogg and especially Harvey Liszt were just invaluable. And there was a huge amount of xeroxing of stuff and turning over of emails and trying to remember conversations and things. I was not that great a witness. Randy had to keep telling me, "Don't be so helpful." The best witness we had by far was [Lee] King. It was like kind of consulting an oriental guru or something like that. I mean, if the question wasn't right narrowly on the point, it was no. He was a terrific witness. The worst witness of all was Bob Hall, except for one thing. He was horrible, and they couldn't brief him enough. But in the course of his testimony, the judge discovered that Bob Hall had served under Patton, and he was a big World War II buff, and Patton was his hero. And I think from that point on, Bob Hall was good guy. In the end, of course, I can't remember. We owed them something-- I don't know. I remember. It's in the book.

Kellermann: 01:52:21

It's in our book.

Vanden Bout: 01:52:22

Yeah. They owed us something. And the difference was we owed them something. And of course, we didn't have any money to pay for this. But with a one-time accounting trick, we changed the fiscal year and got an extra quarter of funding. And that took care of that much to the dismay of the Senate Authorization Committee for NSF. The guy [Chay Kim] up there that ran that hated Rita Colwell . And he was just waiting for this disaster to occur at NSF where they hadn't planned ahead and so forth. And magically, we paid for it. He was so disappointed. He was a good guy, but he didn't like Rita. And yeah, that was that.

Kellermann: 01:53:24

Okay. I think we've covered almost everything except to back up for a minute with ALMA. You described the long process of funding and construction. And you said, "We'd never do it that way again." So, the only thing left, looking back now, has ALMA been a success? And what do you think is the most important scientific outcome?

Vanden Bout: 01:54:00

Oh, well, yes. I mean, it's clearly a success. I mean, I don't know what the status is today. But in terms of scientific output, it's equal to Hubble. And Webb is probably steaming right along now. So, I don't know what the current statistics are, but--

Kellermann: 01:54:21

That's the number of publications.

Vanden Bout: 01:54:24

Yeah. So, in terms--

Kellermann: 01:54:26

What, in your perspective, is the main scientific contribution?

Vanden Bout: 01:54:30

Well, while we were wondering, of course, if it was worth it, they did HL Tau. And so, when that came out, it was obviously a huge success. I mean, the image was just stunning. Everybody--

Kellermann: 01:54:49

It's better--

Vanden Bout: 01:54:49

--the optical piece--

Kellermann: 01:54:50

It's better than the--

Vanden Bout: 01:54:51

Everybody.

Kellermann: 01:54:51

--simulations. Right.

Vanden Bout: 01:54:52

Oh, yeah. Yeah. It was huge. I think I--

Kellermann: 01:54:56

That was very early on.

Vanden Bout: 01:54:57

Yes. I don't know if I put it in the book or not, but I always-- and afterwards, regrettably agreed to serve on these Academy panels, a huge pain in the ass to do this, I mean. And this one was just ill-conceived. It was Wayne van Sitters that asked the Academy to form a panel to advise on how they could improve the optical IR ground-based system in the US. And so, this is a collection of university observatories who didn't get along with each other.

Kellermann: 01:55:44

I was on such a panel some years earlier. [laughter]

Vanden Bout: 01:55:47

Well, I mean, it was horrible. And the committee did what all advisory committees come to in the end, which is to say if there were more money, there wouldn't be a problem. We just have to throw money at this. And there is no money because ALMA has eaten our lunch. And they started beating up on ALMA. So, I said, "Hey, wait a minute. You wanted this thing. It was a top priority. You asked for it. We delivered," and blah, blah, blah. And at this point, the guy from Arizona--

Kellermann: 01:56:37

Strittmatter.

Vanden Bout: 01:56:38

No. No. The successor to Strittmatter, Italian guy [Buell Jannuzzi]. I don't know. Think of his name. But he said, "Wait a minute, folks." He said, "If somebody had asked me, had showed me this image of HL Talk and said, 'You can have this for a billion dollars,' I would have said, 'It's a bargain.'" And that shut them up. Januzzi.  Buell Januzzi it was.

Kellermann: 01:57:10

I know.

Vanden Bout: 01:57:12

Yeah. That was great. That was a memorable meeting because in the middle of the meeting, my good friend from Texas, I just saw him too, wrote books. He's written a lot of books, books on theory of supernovae, and so forth [Craig Wheeler]. And the guy turned as white as a piece of paper. And I thought, "You don't look good." And I said, "Are you okay?" "Well, I'm feeling a little bad." I thought, "Shit, the guy's having a heart attack. He's going to die at the Academy." "I think I better go home." "Okay. We'll take you home. We'll call the cab. We'll go with you." I said, "I'll go all the way to Austin with you if you want." "No, no, no, I'll be okay. I'll be okay." Well, he did make it home, and he was having a big problem. And I don't know. They put in stents or something like that. And he's still steaming along now. And the committee couldn't agree. They didn't do their homework. The chair was this sweet, sweet gal from-- she's the IAU president.

Kellermann: 01:58:26

Debra Elmegreen?

Vanden Bout: 01:58:27

Debra. Debra Elmegreen. She cried three times in the course of events. Finally, they came out with a report that was just tossed in a wastebasket, I think, and nothing came of it. Yeah. But that image really did it, I think. Now, it's produced a huge amount of stuff since then, and I think people might debate what's the most interesting thing. There's been a lot of stuff done on the high redshift sources and a lot of things on structure of galaxies and all these programs. And we've learned a lot. But as a sort of blowout early on result, that got everybody's attention. It had to be HL Tau, I think.

Kellermann: 01:59:28

Okay. Well, is there anything else that you want to tell us about the status of radio astronomy, the future of radio astronomy, or how do you see the current culture, and where we're going?

Vanden Bout: 01:59:47

Well, I was fascinated to go to the Zoom meeting on open skies. This was gospel for so long. Open skies. And now people are kind of taking advantage of open skies, and we've got to change it. And I thought Tony had come--

Kellermann: 02:00:10

Oh, you mean the NRAO meeting a few weeks ago? Right.

Vanden Bout: 02:00:12

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think Tony came up with five pretty good actions to take. I'll be interested to see how this goes. But the thing that I'm really interested to see is how it plays out with the SKA. I mean, they've got a pretty solid no pay, no play program. And I think they're stuck with it. If they're going to come up with the operating money, I don't know where they're going to get all this operating money, frankly. And my guess is we'll get the ngVLA in the end. We've got to get rid of Trump first, probably. Or else make it part of Make America Great Again somehow. But anyway--

Kellermann: 02:01:07

It might work.

Vanden Bout: 02:01:08

I think we'll get that in the end, but then we'll have our own issues operating that. It takes a bunch of money to run that thing. Where will it come from? And so, it would be interesting to see how that plays out, as well as the optical telescopes. I'm, sort of, of a mind now that neither of them will get built.

Kellermann: 02:01:32

That's what Tony thinks, I think.

Vanden Bout: 02:01:35

Yeah. Of course, I'm in Texas, and they're very keen on the Magellan telescope there. And I go to-- I'm a booster. I'm a member of the board of advisors for the department there. And they are building things. I mean, they've got [inaudible]. Maybe in the end, they'll pull it off. I don't know. But--

Kellermann: 02:02:00

I mean, it looks like they're hung up in Hawaii. And it seems to me the decision is easy.

Vanden Bout: 02:02:08

So, if the Magellan thing gets built, I think it might have to get built without the NSF. And so, I don't know if that's possible.

Kellermann: 02:02:17

Well, it's the operating fund. [crosstalk]--

Vanden Bout: 02:02:19

There's the operating money, too. Yeah. Fortunately, there are in Texas, or Texas alums, that could just pay for it. Mr. Musk comes to mind. So, it's kind of fun to watch that. I'm enjoying meeting some of these people. Yeah.

Kellermann: 02:02:44

Okay. Anything else, Ellen?

Bouton: 02:02:47

I don't think of anything.

Vanden Bout: 02:02:48

Okay. Well, a pleasure.

Kellermann: 02:02:49

All right. Well, thank you, Paul.

Bouton: 02:02:50

Thank you.