177 



WTiether it's politically driven, whether there are real issues out 

 there, I don't know. But I do know that the DCI took it seriously, 

 moved rapidly, and was able to dov/ngrade satellite information 

 very rapidly, much as the CNO has just done recently on GEOSAT 

 data. 



It's very valuable to researchers. 



So I think it's an important issue for the National Security Sub- 

 committee here, members of the National Security Subcommittee, 

 to focus on in their full committee hearings. And let's get serious 

 about doing it in a more accelerated way because we can cut costs 

 tremendously. We don't even know the value. But we know in just 

 that MEDEA report for Navy data or environmental data alone, 

 there is tremendous excitement in the research community that if 

 we can get this data, we can do research faster, better, and we can 

 avoid the kind of costs v/here we're now going out individually and 

 trying to find the alternate systems. 



Mr. Farr. Mr. Chairman, this is key. This is without having to 

 spend any more money. This is taking existing data and existing 

 facilities and using them more collaboratively. 



Admiral Watkins. But in all fairness to the Navy, I think that 

 we did have reason prior to the demise of the Evil Empire to pro- 

 tect a lot of that data that I think now, with a good hard look by 

 technologists who really understand these systems and what alter- 

 natives are available to the Ghadaffis and Rhafsanjanis and the 

 North Koreans of the world, we can still protect ourselves and do 

 the job better. 



And I think this is one of the areas where our collaboration has 

 focused and our report, our report that we just came out with, fo- 

 cuses on this as one of the key areas on declassification, and do it 

 sensibly, but do it more in an institutional process with the Con- 

 gress involved in this, with intelligence joint committees, whatever 

 is necessary. 



But move expeditiously. We've really got some leaps to make 

 here right now and we're not m.oving fast enough. 



Mr. Farr. Mr. Chairman, just an anecdote. 



The Monterey Bay, which has this big submarine canyon. It's as 

 big as a Grand Canyon. It goes down 12,000 feet and about 270 

 miles long. It's a mile offshore. 



DOD contracted with the academic community to map it locally. 

 That information was classified. So when David Packard opened up 

 his Deep Ocean Research Center, the former Undersecretary of De- 

 fense, he couldn't get access to the information about mapping the 

 canyon. He had to go through a real lengthy process back here to 

 get it all declassified. 



It was essentially data that everybody there in the marine 

 science community needed to have. Now we've got maps out and 

 we're selling them to the public. 



But that kind of classification of that material was just ridicu- 

 lously private, I thought, in our military, in a sense. So I appre- 

 ciate that. 



And lastly, Dr. Bsdter, you closed the office in Monterey that was 

 translating all that data into the private sector. How are we going 

 to do this dual-use if those types of offices, the ocean branches, the 

 ocean research branches, close? 



