From Bloomberg on May 14:

U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu signaled his lack of confidence in the industry experts trying to control BP Plc’s leaking oil well by hand-picking a team of scientists with reputations for creative problem solving.
Dispatched to Houston by President Barack Obama to deal with the crisis, Chu said Wednesday that five “extraordinarily intelligent” scientists from around the country will help BP and industry experts think of back-up plans to cut off oil from the well, leaking 5,000 feet (1,500 meters) below sea-level.
Members of the Chu team are credited with accomplishments including designing the first hydrogen bomb, inventing techniques for mining on Mars and finding a way to precisely position biomedical needles.
“I don’t think there is a lot of confidence in BP in Washington right now,” David Pursell, a managing director at Tudor Pickering Holt & Co. LLC in Houston, said by phone. Chu’s decision to bring in additional scientists may reflect that concern, he said.

Feel safer yet? I missed this, but one of the “experts” has been fired:

May 18 (Bloomberg) — Jonathan I. Katz, a physics professor at Washington University in St. Louis., said he was fired from the team of scientists chosen by U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu to help BP Plc control the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
“Some of Professor Katz’s controversial writings have become a distraction from the critical work of addressing the oil spill,” Stephanie Mueller, a spokeswoman for the Energy Department, said in an e-mail today. “Professor Katz will no longer be involved in the department’s efforts.”
Chu brought Katz to Houston last week along with four other experts, Richard L. Garwin, a physicist and IBM Fellow Emeritus, George Cooper, a civil-engineering professor at the University of California at Berkeley, Alexander Slocum, a professor of mechanical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, and Tom Hunter, president of Sandia Corp., which manages research for the Energy Department’s National Nuclear Security Administration.
While Katz’s early work focused on astrophysics, he now consults on a variety of physics puzzles, he said. Katz wrote articles on his personal website, including, “What Is Political Correctness,” “In Defense of Homophobia” and “Why Terrorism Is Important.”