1466 



oversight of agencies under their jurisdictions, and specific legislative 

 issues of immediate current concern. Both committees have recruited 

 able staffs, and both appear to have made effective use of the Con- 

 gressional Research Service. However, a large effort is involved in 

 the review of broad policy, in the selection of appropriate witnesses 

 and consultants, in planning and structuring symposia and hearings, 

 and in distilling the essentials from the testimony and prepared 

 statements. The value of these reviews seems compelling, but the 

 limitations of member time and staff resources may prevent wider 

 use of them. Among the possibilities to enlarge the utility or increase 

 the scope or frequency of such reviews might be the following: 



—Enlist the Foreign Service Institute to manage occasional 

 seminars and prepare reports on them ; 



— Arrange briefings by selected members of the Policy Planning 

 Staff; 



— Contract studies on subjects of continuing interest to the 

 committees, acting individually or jointly; 



— Construct a library of policy studies of enduring value for 

 joint use by the two committees; 



— Publish sets of invited papers with staff or CRS commentary ; 

 — Have CRS conduct an annual seminar series on foreign 

 policy issues ; and 



— Make more use of the scientific attaches as policy informa- 

 tion sources, aside from home leave, through invited reports and 

 special studies to meet committee needs. 



Implications for the Congress of Science in State 



The cultural and organizational situation in the Department of 

 State with respect to science and technology presents the Congress 

 with two relateil problems. One is the need of Congress for informa- 

 tion and analysis. The Congress, speaking broadly, needs to know what 

 is going on in order to decide what to instruct the executive branch 

 to do about it. The interactions of science and technology with 

 diplomacy are demonstrably of commanding importance. But the 

 Congress is faced with difficulties in securing information and analyses 

 in this field because of the persistent cultural lag in technical literacy 

 and a lack of organizational coherence and discipline of the Depart- 

 ment, which is after all the main source of diplomatic information for 

 Congress. The second problem is how to strengthen the resources of 

 the Department of State to collect, analyze, and report to the Congress 

 on the technical aspects of diplomacy. Recent events suggest that 

 reform is already underway. But it is also possible that further con- 

 gressional encouragement might be found necessary. As time goes on, 

 it is to be hoped, the departmental deficiencies will be corrected. 



But pending such correction and even after, it would seem desirable 

 for the Congress to strengthen its own arrangements for information 

 anal^'sis and filter, and option identification and evaluation. 



The past structure and staffing of congressional committees, as 

 Secretary Johnson has pointed out, has tended to compartmentalize 

 problems in the same way that they are divided up in the Department 

 of State.^^* Similarly, the political realities — like the diplomatic reali- 



"' On February 3, 1575. Chairman Thomas E. Morgan announced a rporganization of the subeomniittees 

 of the House Forcien Affairs (now fnlernational Relations) Committee, designed to improve the Com- 

 mittee's ability to deal \\-\X\\ international problems. The principal change was to assign all subcommittees 

 according to functional topics. Earlier five of the subcommittees had covered geographic areas corresponding 

 to the five regional bureaus of the Department of State. 



