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HISTORY OF THI COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY 



reserve space for peaceful purposes and to study related problems." 

 The committee unanimously declared that the United States should 

 lead in establishing world policy toward outer space by formulating 

 "a positive national policy" at the earliest possible moment. 



The committee's report was also designed to coincide with the 

 opening of United Nations deliberations, which the Soviet bloc 

 nations at that time were boycotting. The committee stressed that 

 despite the boycott of the Ad Hoc U.N. Committee on the Peaceful 

 Uses of Outer Space, this should not be taken as an excuse for the 

 western world "to sit back and do nothing." The committee report 

 commented: 



The most likely area for a beginning process of space control is the commercial 

 and scientific uses of space. 



The committee suggested that first steps might include negotiating 

 for space agreements in such areas as notice of launches and identifica- 

 tion of space vehicles — which were eventually included in the space 

 treaty ratified by the Senate in 1967. 



Many committee reports gather dust and are not unearthed until 

 future historians discover them. Chairman Brooks may not have been 

 the most popular individual among some members and staff, but you 

 had to say one thing for him, he had a finely tuned sense of public 

 relations. Two days before the official release date of the committee 

 reported entitled "U.S. Policy on the Control and Use of Outer Space," 

 the full text found its way into the hands of John W. Finney, the pipe- 

 smoking science correspondent on Capitol Hill for The New York 

 Times. Result: A front page article in the Times, headlined: "House 

 Panel Urges U.S. Lead in Shaping World Space Policy." 



FULTON PUSHES COOPERATION 



The contrasting attitudes within the committee were well ex- 

 pressed at the first hearing on international cooperation. Fulton took 

 the position that our policy should be greater dissemination of in- 

 formation, while Chairman Brooks felt differently, as expressed in 

 the following exchanges: 



Mr. Fulton. In the bill that we passed last year, one provision proposed by- 

 many of us on the Select Committee on Space and Astronautics, said that our aim in 

 the United States should be to make public these scientific facts of discovery in the 

 space field, really for the benefit of the whole world. 



Chairman Brooks. My own judgment is perhaps tempered by 22 years on the 

 Armed Services Committee, and I don't believe in the space age there is any second 

 place in a war between two major powers 



Mr. Fulton. But certainly, Mr. Chairman, if you would yield, this committee 

 has jurisdiction of the entry into space by peaceful means and to use it for peaceful 

 purposes. 



Chairman Brooks. We would prefer it all be for peaceful purposes. 



