180 



more sensitive than what had been available by the old ocean floor 

 mapping from a fleet. 



Obviously, there are many different forms of that that are out 

 there and obviously, we could have an extremely high sensitivity 

 map on this wall which would probably keep everybody awake and 

 maybe distract them completely from what was going on at the ta- 

 bles, which might not be such a bad idea sometimes. 



I shouldn't say that because, really, the data that comes in and 

 the information that you've put forward today is extremely fas- 

 cinating, at least to me. 



So data that would allow us to know some things about where 

 tectonic plates are that are changes in the thinking, obviously, the 

 scientific community knew that and I'll bet major portions of the 

 scientific community knew it. 



Why didn't everybody know it? There's no reason why it 

 shouldn't have been available I think much earlier to anybody who 

 might be interested in knowing where volcanic acti\aty and sea 

 mounts and other things at much greater discrimination than had 

 been known before. 



Maybe I'm exaggerating. 



I suspect that they must — if that's true, they must have been 

 able to see the TITANIC. We must have been able to see the TI- 

 TANIC with some of these data. Or maybe it was in terrain that 

 wouldn't permit that. 



Dr. Ballard. Unfortunately, it was in terrain that wouldn't per- 

 mit that. 



Mr. Olver. Okay. 



Admiral BOORDA. If I can respond to that just for a second. 



What you're talking about is the GEOSAT data that we released 

 in July. 



Mr. Olver. GEOSAT data. 



Admiral BoORDA. And the map you're talking about is that one 

 [indicating]. And of course it can be much more detailed and it's 

 a real different view of the earth because the land part isn't the 

 part of interest here. It's the oceans. 



Mr. Olver. Why did NASA take credit for it if GEOSAT was the 

 Navy? 



Admiral BoORDA. It's not importemt. You may be talking about 

 something a little bit different. That's not my real point. That's 

 gravity data. And why do we care about that? 



Why do we care about that? Now we've declassified that. Why we 

 care about that is because we want our strategic ballistic missiles 

 to hit their targets, particularly the hardened targets which require 

 a very tight circular error of probability. 



We don't want their nuclear weapons to hit our targets with that 

 circular error of probability. We need to be carefial what we do. We 

 were careful as the Cold War ended, as we looked at things, we re- 

 leased that data. 



It's fun, I think, to talk about declassification and look back on 

 times when people were extremely careful and cautious and sen- 

 sitive, I think kind of words you'd like in different hearings. You 

 might say you need to be extremely cautious, careful, and sensitive. 

 Admiral. And in other hearings we might say, my God, just open 

 it up. 



