NATIONAL OCEANOGRAPHIC PROGRAM LEGISLATION 451 



that a security clearance has been granted to the individual by another Govern- 

 ment agency based on the investigation and report. Under this procedure, the 

 Commission has been able to authorize the necessary access to restri( t( d data 

 by officers and employees of various agencies such as the State Department, 

 Coast Guard, and the Central Intelligence Agency. In this connection, our 

 comments ou the bills mentioned above also suggested providing the Council, 

 if it is created, the authority to arrange with the Federal Bureau of Investi- 

 gation for the necessary investigation of its officers, employees, and consultants. 

 With this authority, the Council would be in a position to take advantage of 

 the expedited clearance procedures now available under the Atomic Energy Act 

 and which were not available at the time NASA was established. 



In this connection, when the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency was 

 created, authority to provide access to restricted data similar to that in the 

 NASA Act and in the bills mentioned above was considei-ed. The Congress 

 rejected that proposal and substituted provisions under which employees of 

 the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency may be cleared for access to 

 restricted data only by the Commission. 



The suggestion in our comments on these bills is, therefore, consistent with 

 the most recent action of Congress with respect to providing access to restricted 

 data by agencies other than the Atomic Energy Commission. 



Dr. Kavanagh. Mr. Chairman, it is a pleasure to be here this 

 morning to comment on these bills. I would like to say that accom- 

 panying me are Mr. Franklin Parks of our General Comisel's Office, 

 and Mr. Arnold Joseph, of our Division of Biology and Medicine, 

 who is directly involved with our oceanography program. We also 

 have present Dr. Jolm Wolfe, who is our member on the Interagency 

 Committee on Oceanography. 



We as an agency would like to make clear that we feel also, as do 

 the other witnesses, that oceanography is a most important fields 

 deserving continued and greater emphasis on the paft of the Federal 

 Government. 



In talking about our specific interest in the field, I have tried in my 

 prepared statement to go through the nature of the work wliich w© 

 do in oceanogi'aphy, to show how an agency whose primary mission 

 is elsewhere can have substantial programs in oceanography which 

 relate to our mission and which are directed and funded according 

 to that relation. 



We have several different types of work, each of which is related 

 to our nuclear energy activities. That most directly rela-ted to ocean- 

 ography is a series of studies that we carry out on radioactivity in 

 the environment. It is obviously part of the Atomic Energy Com- 

 mission's concern to see that the radioactivity which has been intro- 

 duced into the oceans, largely through nuclear device testing in the 

 past in the atmosphere, and the activity which conceivably could 

 come from accidents of different kinds, will not become a hazard to 

 man. So, we have supported for a period of time a growing program, 

 extending back over 10 years, of studies of the transport of radio- 

 activity and the interaction of radioactivity in the ocean with the 

 biological species present. 



This is a program which we support directly because of our major 

 mission. We coordinate it through the Interagency Committee on 

 Oceanography in order to see that there is not inadvertent duplica- 

 tion witli work by other agencies, and in order to do our part toward 

 the general problem of seeing that all sorts of approaches to ocean- 

 ogi-aphic studies are covered in a general way. The program is not 

 managed through that group, as you people are well aware. It is 

 managed as part of the nuclear energy program. 



