Part made his reputation on this and his participation in ensuring a smooth transition for president fords move into the white house, we at have the library know from our experiences that researchers ,com,com ma scholars, Civil Servants and curious citizens will find ways to learn from his collection that we cannot really imagine today. The continuing interest in technology, its free flow with the subject of a book that we reviewed yesterday in the wall street journal. This particular collection, the whitehead papers, gives us all gathered here today much pride. Under the leadership of librarian of congress j. H. Billington and with great assistance from chief of the Manuscript Division and his extraordinary staff, allen koltai tom studs and janice ruse, dr. Whitehead, toms widow has developed a web site containing digitized copies of much of the collection. Knowing that there are jams her to be discovered by future generations, she has explored the last and most effective ways to organize the materials and use the semantic descriptions of specific items to assist those who will mind these riches in the years to come. The web site also provides links to other collections containing relevant materials produced by others or by toms own hand, memos given to others in the course of communication and thus becoming part of their history but where everything will be connected. We are celebrating these new collaborations of all kinds that can only benefit the quest of knowledge. The library of congress is all about this quest. Manuscripts, musical scores, movies, maps and frankly any medium from the past or present are yet to be invented in the future that will contain knowledge finds a safe and will coming home here. These many diverse things are connected by the thousands of people who come through our doors literally or virtually every day. And these collections form the foundation of the library of congress as a library but also its role as classroom, lecture hall, performance based and venue for enlightenment and discovery of new things. It is with this in mind that it is a pleasure to turn the podium over to dr. Margaret whitehead who will say a few remarks and introduce our program for this evening. Thank you dr. Whitehead. [applause] i hope after robertas remarks that many of you are worried about the i will say that its all there however. Dr. Billington and associate library and Roberta James hudson, library officials, government officials, colleagues, new friends, old friends, i am simply thrilled and honored to see each of the year tonight. Thank you for coming to this library from across the street and from all over the country. It is a joy that to think because of your connection to tom into each other that you are here. Finding many of you and your addresses it became a heartwarming experience to learn just how connected you are to each other. And indeed how connected we all are through family, the white house, astra, george mason, the Prudential Mutual Fund board, the hudson institute, the fight for Internet Freedom and toms favorite Great American pastimes dr. Billington thank you for leaving the library with all what we we all recognize as the distinction and tear the 21st century and to your great judgment in bringing Roberta I Shaffer here. During the months of her chairman she has been a wise and important support. I have learned that she is the library and and the executive charge by dr. Billington and in fact congressional and National Library of the 21st century needs to be. Her resume is reminiscent of het and positions across the world that were aid her in helping dr. Billington make the library into the digital age. It is a privilege to have Tom Whiteheads statements here and i thank you both. I also thank the Manuscript Division, the curator of the eisenhower papers for several years whose idea was, who originated the idea of having toms papers here and also john kaine who bears the honor of also being the coauthor of the papers and the most elegant and graceful procurement officer that a library could ever have. I also extend my very warm thanks to ken weiss 9 weinstein where tom served and where i now serve on the board. Canned has given his wise counsel. I think with my whole heart christopher muse, distinguished fellow at the institute for moderating, supporting and applying his famously great line in so many hours to Tom Whitehead as the topic. Now let me turn to you and tom now. If he were here he would surely thank you extravagant way. Yes he got better at thinking people as he garbled or per that the creative thinking that went into the papers and hope to make them significant enough for them to be here. I hope you will forgive me because there are so many examples of this. There are two that i would particularly like to examples would be that bruce owen is credited with advising, baathist direction of the duration of at t. And the revolutionary concept of of [inaudible] and now lets get to tom, my husband. Throughout the entire time i was married to tom a date never went by without him saying to joined phrases and they were, if you could just fill in the blank, ill bet you could, fill in the more glorious blank. In other words proposals set up an action. While you could call this the framework for anyones thinking, if you could just, and though that you could, seemed to have seem to have been treated to for thought and analysis and this was the case. It led to some remarkable results. It could lead to home repairs and practical jokes that belongs in the guinness book of World Records or could lead to the boosting of the entire lead or the liberation of the state of television. The evidence of this, and the evidence of this is all around this room. Even today some people believe that toms major accomplishment was hiring and brian lamb but very seriously the results are in the paper that will reside here in the library. Those are mostly the two sets of white house papers, those of special assistant to the president director of the office of telecommunications policy. His personal papers as director of the four Transition Team and those of his failed venture National Exchange. Parenthetically, i fear that the galaxy of Hughes Committee geishas who were part of the story the cable revolution arent and the ses luxembourg papers which bore the story of the concept of the novel sunlight dish he carried to europe and the Free EnterpriseBusiness Plan he devised for it. Are under review. So you ask, how did tom, if you could just and ill bet you could mentality spirit the papers to this treasured library . First, he took his papers with him when he left the white house. Second, during the jurassic area buying domains he bought. Com. Third, he accepted allens and invitation to be a distinguished visiting professor at the loss school at george mason decided to write a book and in preparation invited his esteemed teacher colleagues and friends. They were don baker, henry geller, dale hatfield, ryan lamb, Thomas Hazlett, glenn robinson, and wiley. Fourth, he brought his papers from the basement and put them right in the midst of our lives. Fifth, bringing Susan Burgess into our lives to do a search with him meant the production of the large archive. Sixth, he wrote some of the book lastly, he he trained of a Telecom Policy journal on the bath and as an afterthought he said, i would like to include my papers in the background for scholarly research. Meanwhile the calm tom that we all knew was doing is hardly ever before for two things. These were his deep opposition to the regulation of the internet and his upset, and i do mean upset over the lack of Internet Freedom in close regime societies. With all of this turmoil and telecom eight days before he died he called a friend to interview him. That was john eager, to interview him and spoke at length about the arc of telecom history to which i believe he had contributed. I had seen the whole of his life long before and it made me want very much to donate his papers. Then i knew that tom did not like attention. I am sure that as no surprise in the view. He would stand at the back row pedigree photograph and i would catch mentored using himself as a small businessman whenever he could get away with it. Were he here though, he would be the first to say that during down phases of his entrepreneurial career he was actually a very small businessman. But then by betting but then by betting that he could he himself had somewhat paradoxically set the stage for the donation of his papers. The two sets of white house papers in the george mason transcripts awaited. The bills were coming and from go daddy and the unfinished essay in his research were poised as scholarly tools. His concern for the evolution of Telecom Policy and Internet Freedom sealed my conviction. It seemed a very short leap indeed to have the papers reside in the library of congress, to have them on clay t. Whitehead. Com and to link them to institutions and somehow compensate for the lack of the galaxy and astro papers with my parttime multiyear project of background resource a background and resource guide. See it on clay t. Whitehead. Com. Channeling tom, the bet was made but there was one more bad and that was that id might accept the librarys generous invitation to come to this magnificent building with their families, our good friends and his wonderful colleagues to celebrate the panel. And lastly, ill bet that i could as the most accomplished moderator in washington and perhaps anywhere to lead it. Christopher demuth has been a force of the Power Centers of policy making for almost all of his career. Six months after graduating from Harvard College in 1968 he found himself working for Daniel Patrick moynihan and the Nixon White House on urban affairs and environmental issues. Following law school at the university of chicago, and several years practicing law and teaching at harvard, chris returned to washington where he was the deregulation czar at the white house and at a lan beef. He cuts of his leadership in the last quarter century and transforming aei where he was president and ceo to the most prominent Public Policy institute in the world we now recognize him as a giant in the industry. Im delighted to introduce him as the moderator of our panel. Thank you so much for being here. [applause] [applause] thank you margaret. This wonderful evening is all youre doing. I speak for everyone present an offering profound gratitude for your generosity, grace, care and intensity of purpose that have brought us all together. [laughter] and we extend hearty thanks and congratulations to jim billington, Roberta Schaefer and their colleagues at the library of congress for undertaking to preserve toms papers for posterity. Politics consists of the competition of interests and the competition of ideas. Among interests, the advantage lies with those that have already got themselves politically entrenched, farmers, teachers, retirees. Among ideasthe ideas, the advantage lies with those that mobilize tangible constituencie, homeownership, too big to fail finance. New interest and abstract ideas however worthy, operate at a disadvantage. At the very back of the pack is the idea that is good but hypothetical and that not only lacks a large constituency but is actively of posed by entrenched interests. And yet there are cases where such ideas do somehow prevail and shower society with unanticipated benefits. It is for this reason that we should document, study, celebrate and emulate Tom Whitehead and the amazing subsequent career as a pathbreaking entrepreneur. That history will not be lost thanks to the library of congress and to the web site that margaret has established and launched today. But it does take some explaining. Tom was a reserved and cerebral man. He was preoccupied with the deep structure of things rather than their surface appearance, with a hard engineering and economic facets of the situation rather than its transient political manifestations. He could be confident and incisive in analyzing problems and strategies and warm and witty and conversation, but in the face of the talking point diatribes so common to washington, he would sit saying nothing at all, staring at his careless interlocutory sick and unsettling silence. He was occasionally somewhat mysterious and indirect in its methods so that no one knew exactly where he was going until suddenly he was there. Anyone who met him in the late 1960s would have judged him as somewhat frighteningly brainy academic who would be a complete disaster as a political operative or business promoter. And yet toms practical accomplishments were not only great but also transforming, so much so that they risked being obscured by the nobel prize fallacy. When the nobel of economics is announced each october, newspaper readers everywhere explain, what . He got the nobel prize for that . But its completely obvious. What they fail to see is how strange and errant the idea had appeared to be one first propounded decades earlier and how it had been roundly denounced and contemptuously dismissed until it triumphed so completely that it became the new conventional wisdom and then penetrated the wider culture. So, our aim this evening is to provide perspective and perhaps a bit of personal color to the days of yore when the young nixon aide coolly advance a set of policy ideas that were denounced and dismissed and forcefully and sometimes ferociously opposed by the entire telecommunications establishment. That would be the ma Bell Telephone monopoly, the three television networks, that together control the airways in the evening news, nbc, cbs and abc. The old folks will remember them. [laughter] and oh i should mention the pentagon, the federal communications division, the department of commerce and powerful quarters in the richard Nixon White House itself. In a few crowded years tom and his merry band dispatch them all with a competitive open skies policy in place of a post office style Communication Satellites monopoly. With the first launch of a private commercial satellite in 1974, with the manifesto and government industry accord that laid the groundwork for a cable system that was no longer a long extension cord for broadcast television but instead a robust alternative with hundreds of channels suited every taste and interests. And it would be essential first steps towards today system the universal 24 7 wireless, voice and data communications, practically available to every home, office and handbag on the planet. Tom was working in a white house where intellectual bandwidth was appreciated ,com,com ma dominated by the likes of henry kissinger, Daniel Patrick moynihan, george shultz, arthur byrnes, james questions are. In his companys reputation had risen so high by the spring of 1974 that he was tapped to chair the secret effort to plan an hourbyhour transition of government in the event that president nixon should resign his office to Vice President ford and effort that even they did not know about or in any event did not acknowledge. And then, this exception the secession accomplished tom walked away from it all, never thinking to parlay the prestige and connections of Public Office into a look rid of private purge. Instead, he began afresh, taking his talents for Creative Destruction to the Business World where he saw more clearly than others that his new policies that opened new avenues for radical innovation. As founder and president of Hughes Communications his galaxy satellite system pioneered the now standard model of cable tv providers owning and managing their own spacebased distribution channels. And then he conceived, founded and chaired cornet ses asked her later on and the little luxembourg, today one of the worlds two largest commercial Satellite Companies along with bear, he pioneered the idea of direct to consumer small dish Satellite Communications which all the smart guys that could never work and ingeniously used use the scheme of National Allocation of the electromagnetic frequency spectrum to obliterate the european state television monopolies that the allocation system had spawned. Toms Business Career recapitulated his government career and at first baffling and confusing the status quo establishment and then transforming it. He died at the age of 69, much too young but hey it was 2008 and the new world of pluralistic, democratic, dynamic user Centric Communications was a reality and already he was busying himself at the next margins of disruption such as promoting Internet Freedom totalitarian nations. Tom whiteheads voided and smalltown kansas was devoted to photography, ham radio rocketry and chemistry. As an undergraduate at m. I. T. In the late 1960s 50s, he spent 10 months working on Experimental Electronics designs at bell labs in murray hill. His bachelors and masters masters degrees were in Electrical Engineering but his interests were turning to economics, systems and decision analysis and defense policy. These led to several years at the Rand Corporation and in the u. S. Ar