OCEANOGRAPHY 1961 — PHASE 3 221 



lias not yet been implemented, recent hearings conducted by the 

 House Committee on Science and Astronautics have disclosed that 

 the Kennedy administration is in the process of activating the au- 

 thorized staff, in order to give the Space Council an effective lease 

 on life. 



The experience of the Space Council to date confirms the view 

 that any high level coordinating committee which attempts to operate 

 without an appropriate staff is for all practical purposes impotent. 

 The staff need not be a large one and in my opinion should not exceed 

 more than 18 to 20 personnel in all categories combined, professional 

 and clerical. It should, however, be capable of providing responsible 

 leadership and synthesizing the interests and activities of profes- 

 sional oceanographic personnel throughout the Federal Government 

 and in our universities, industry, and other nongovernmental 

 organizations. 



The Kennedy administration's decision to ci'eate a staff for the 

 Space Council somewhat along these lines in the space field is the 

 most promising step in its efforts to revitalize the lagging Space 

 Council and highlights the soundness of making similar provision for 

 a staff to the proposed National Oceanographic Council. 



The third recommendation being presented for your considera- 

 tion is prompted by much the same reasoning that underlies this 

 recommendation for an appropriate staff. The establishment of an 

 appropriate staff would facilitate program development and program 

 monitoring, which are the essential continuing responsibilities of the 

 Council, but these in themselves do not provide adequate assurance 

 that a fully balanced national program will be prosecuted. 



The only program that can be prosecuted is the one that evolves 

 out of the vagaries of the budget process in more than 18 separate 

 agencies. These agencies operate at different levels within the Gov- 

 ernment and are affected by varied budget considerations. Their 

 oceanographic interests and oceanographic funding are submerged in 

 their respective primary program areas and inevitably are subject to 

 policies devised for the primary programs involved, with little at- 

 tention to possible oceanographic import. 



The existence of a National Oceanographic Council would assist 

 in eliminating duplication of effort and would contribute to more 

 effective program orientation, but much more than this is needed 

 if there is to be in fact the "national program in oceanography" 

 which your committee seeks to have established and which the na- 

 tional interest requires. 



Although oceanography is integrally related to many agency pro- 

 grams and is substantially advanced througli numerous agency 

 projects established in furtherance of these primary programs, the 

 aggregate of separate agency projects dealing Tvith phases of oceano- 

 graphy does not become a balanced national program of oceanography 

 other than by fiat. The projects may be fully coordinated and may in 

 the aggregate contribute to a balanced national program, but a bal- 

 anced national program comes into being only when all of the 

 projects needed to advance oceanography imiformly are prosecuted 

 systematically in their proper sequence. 



There must, then, be some mechanism for establishing and financ- 

 ing the necessarj^ complementary projects to give substance to the 



