22 OCEANOGRAPHY 



Dr. Revelke. This is not the way I read this. You may very well 

 be right, but the way it is stated, I would regard it as permissive: 



The Secretary of Commerce may conduct activities authorized by this Act in 

 comiection with projects designated as essential to the national interest by the 

 head of an executive department or agency. 



In other words, the Coast Survey will have to fit whatever projects 

 are decided as essential by any executive head of a department or 

 agency into its overall plan. 



Mr. Drewry. But the decision is in the Secretary of Commerce and 

 even though the request may ask the Department of Commerce to go 

 into a held which has heretofore been in the hands of the Depart- 

 ment of Defense, the Secretary of Commerce may, for instance, say, 

 "I would be delighted to ask the Coast Survey to do this deep ocean 

 job for you," and let us say it does relate to planktonic studies or some- 

 thing and then out comes the data and it is published far and wide and 

 the Department of Defense has not had their views requested on it 

 and there has been a disclosure of information that may be had best 

 not be so widely disseminated from a defense standpoint. 



Dr. Revelle. Are you not changing the subject here? Maybe I do 

 not understand this. 



Mr. Drewry. I say that decision for the Coast and Geodetic Survey 

 to depart from its present jurisdictional field is in the Secretary of 

 Commerce. It is his sole decision. Are there not some possible dan- 

 gers in that the Secretary of Commerce, a civilian, in making such 

 a decision, might run afoul of or result in the disclosure of informa- 

 tion that it would best remain classified at the time 'I 



Dr. Re\tlle. I am sorry that I do not really understand this because 

 this is true of all scientific activities by any department of the 

 Government. 



Are you saying that the National Science Foundation, for example, 

 or the Bureau of Standards or the present work of the Coast Survey on 

 magnetism and gravity, that this sliould not be done except by the 

 Department of Defense because of the danger of disclosure of infor- 

 mation which should be classified ? 



Mr. Drewry. No; I am not saying that. As a matter of fact, my 

 questions are questions that have been put to me as objections to this 

 bill, and I wanted to get your views on them. 



Dr. Revelle. I would think the same objection would apply to any 

 research conducted by any department of the Government or sup- 

 ported by any department of the Government, and this is a separate 

 matter. 



Mr. Drewry. Or any private institution. 



Dr. Revelle. Or any private institution. This is a separate prob- 

 lem, the problem of security, quite apart from the problem of doing 

 the work. I must say that I have never really quite understood how 

 this problem is handled in the Government. JFor example, su])pose a 

 discovery is made by the University of California, not at the Radia- 

 tion Laboratory but at some other laboratory of the university dealing 

 with nuclear physics. In that case, I think it is rather clear that the 

 Atomic Energy Commission does have the authority to classify it, but 

 this is the only field that I am aware of where such explicit authority 

 exists and, obviously, this is something which perhaps should be 

 clarified. 



