NASA's new 'straight talk' express

Back in the day, some members of Congress were so suspicious of NASA's then-administrator Daniel Goldin they required Goldin and his deputies to stand before each committee hearing, raise a right hand and swear to "tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth."

That all ended when the Bush White House brought in Sean O'Keefe. The long-time bureaucrat was a by-the-book NASA administrator. And, the book was Webster's Unabridged. So fond of the spoken word was O'Keefe that a well-respected aerospace writer once described him as "logorrheic," a label that stuck until he left NASA for a top position at Louisiana State University.

Now comes the new administrator, Michael Griffin, and his team.

After nearly a year in the role, Griffin has shown himself to be candid and brief. He clearly has more valuable things to do than sit around giving two-dollar answers to fifty-cent questions.

On the hot seat Thursday here in Washington, though, was Mary Cleave, a former astronaut and now associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, the division straining under the Bush administration's proposal to trim its spending by $3.1 billion through 2010.

Looking very little like a Washington bureaucrat, Cleave, who holds a doctorate in civil and environmental engineering, appeared before the House Science Committee with her salt-and-pepper hair a tidy braid and wearing a colorful quilted blazer.

She looked more like someone's friendly aunt from Minnesota, a really smart aunt who could come over and help the nieces and nephews with their microbiology and calculus homework.

Rep. Bart Gordon, of Tennessee, and the ranking Democrat on the committee, took one look at Cleave and decided he had enough.

"I do feel compelled to share one concern," Gordon said, tongue planted firmly in cheek. "NASA seems to be taking a devious new approach to dealing with Congress and with the public. That is they send us likeable, knowledgeable individuals up here that give open and honest answers and admit the problems that they face. That's very clever. But we still have to do our job here."