Welcome to POLITICO’s West Wing Playbook, your guide to the people and power centers in the Biden administration. Send tips | Subscribe here | Email Alex | Email Max Last Friday at a voluntary all-hands meeting within the White House science office, chief of staff MARC AIDINOFF and the temporary director of the office ALONDRA NELSON told staffers they needed to stop recording internal meetings. We’ve obtained a recording of that meeting. “I just want to be clear that recording conversations or our meetings is not okay,” Nelson said during one of the exchanges (West Wing Playbook actually obtained two recordings of two separate meetings). “We have to be able to communicate openly to do policy work and to do the collaborative work that we need to do across the many teams here. I also want to say that the recording, in part, I think is happening because that kind of conduct, you know, speaks to a broken workplace culture.” Since POLITICO reported that an internal investigation found former Biden science adviser ERIC LANDER had bullied and disrespected colleagues, leaders of the office have been trying to conduct a “reset” to improve the office culture, according to the recordings shared with us. That has included weekly, voluntary all-staff meetings, smaller meet-and-greets, and anonymous tools for filing complaints. But the recordings of these meetings, which in some cases have been shared with reporters, underscore an ongoing lack of trust among the office’s roughly 140-person staff, even after Lander’s departure last month. An OSTP spokesperson told West Wing Playbook: “It’s kind of a riddle wrapped inside a mystery inside an enigma that you’re asking us to comment on a leaked audiotape of a meeting where we addressed how upsetting it is for our staff that meetings keep being taped and leaked.” Former NIH Director FRANCIS COLLINS has since taken over as the president’s top science adviser, while Nelson has been charged with overseeing the day-to-day operations of OSTP, which is responsible for leading Biden’s “Cancer Moonshot” initiative, working on future pandemic preparedness, and some artificial intelligence issues. At last Friday’s meeting, Aidinoff acknowledged there were unaddressed questions about the workplace culture. “One that I know is top of mind for people, myself included, there were questions about OSTP meetings being recorded and shared outside of government,” she said. Nelson added that “this has come up a lot” in her recent conversations. “We can't not afford to fix things because you know, the country is really counting on us," Nelson said in the same meeting. But some current and former staffers remain uncertain or skeptical about the path forward for the White House science office. They note that the investigation into Lander also implicated at least some of the leaders around him. The White House found “credible evidence of disrespectful interactions with staff by Dr. Lander and OSTP leadership,” according to an internal briefing of the report’s findings that POLITICO reported on last month. The briefing did not name the other people within OSTP leadership. Nelson addressed this, in part, at the meeting last Friday. “I know that some people are feeling very hurt, I know that some colleagues are feeling quite anxious, because we already know and I think that we can agree, no matter how we feel about the events of the last couple of weeks that we do not have the workplace that all of us as human beings deserve. And we need to do better, a lot better.” She added: “It starts at the top, of course. It starts with me and the colleagues on the senior leadership team, and then the front office and other senior staff.” TEXT US — Are you RACHEL COTTON, the current general counsel at OSTP? We want to hear from you (we’ll keep you anonymous). Or if you think we missed something in today’s edition, let us know and we may include it tomorrow. Email us at westwingtips@politico.com or you can text/Signal/Wickr Alex at 8183240098 or Max at 7143455427.
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