192 



Mr. Fascell. Thank you. That is a very thorough and complete 

 answer to the question. 



Can you desecribe, now, some of the Navy undertakings and legal 

 issues which might be involved, here in open session ? 



Mr. Frosch. Admiral Hearn might describe some of the legal issues 

 with regard to navigation on the high seas. With regard to special 

 undertakings that are of interest, I would prefer to defer them to an 

 executive session if I might, Mr. Chairman, just making the remark 

 in open session that the Navy has used the sea bottom for many pur- 

 poses for many years, and it is incorrect to assume that we are not us- 

 ing the sea bottom. Any attempt to deal in a radical legal way with 

 the sea bottom would interfere with some national security enterprise. 

 I will be happy to describe some of those to the subcommittee in ex- 

 ecutive session. 



Mr. Fascell. Thank you. 



Admiral Hearn. 



Admiral Hearn. I am not aware at the moment of any special legal 

 problems being encountered now other than to apply the various con- 

 ventions, the High Seas Convention and the Continental Shelf Con- 

 vention to actual fact situations. I am not aware of any special problem 

 that has arisen since the adoption of those conventions in relation to 

 the subject matter that we are discussing this morning. 



Mr. Fascell. Mr. Gross, do you have any questions ? 



Mr. Gross. I believe I will reserve my questions and pass on to Mr. 

 Frelinghuysen. 



Mr. FRELiNGHTJYSEisr. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 



Admiral Hearn, you referred to establishment of rules of the road 

 for high seas traffic and also to the importance of knowing more. The 

 Secretary also talked about the importance of knowing more than 

 we do about the deep oceans. Even though we might not be able to 

 make any decision now as to whether or not there should be national 

 sovereignty in the deep seabeds, and even though vesting of jurisdic- 

 tion in an international body might be inadvisable, I should think 

 that we might establish some rules of the road with respect to the deep 

 seabed, without going so far as to make any decisions about the actual 

 jurisdiction. 



Wliat would be wrong about exploring, on some kind of coopera- 

 tive coordinated basis, these problems, problems as you point out we 

 need to know more about? Would this be interference in some way 

 with what we might consider our national interests, if we should en- 

 courage international cooperation and coordination? 



Admiral Hearn. Of course, the rules of the road and the convention 

 on the high seas really were a codification of customary international 

 law, a law that had developed by practice and acceptance, over hun- 

 dreds of years, based upon factual situations as they arose. 



We are not equipped, today, to resort to factual situations because 

 we don't know enough about the area to know what the factual prob- 

 lems are going to be. Generally, the law follows the facts. You don't 

 create law in a vacuum in anticipation of what you don't know. 



Mr. Frelinghuysen". I am not suggesting that. But we might, in 

 establishing rules of the road, say that the deep seabed should not be 

 used for aggressive military purposes or some such thing. You could 



