937 
Dr. Tripus. Well, this material has been in preparation now I guess 
for about a month. 
Mr. Lennon. From the time this was being prepared and to the time 
you gave it here today, you did not know that the Ash Commission to 
which the President had referred the Marine Commission report had 
advised us on September 11 that they hoped to begin their study within 
the next month or 2? 
Dr. Trizus. I was unaware of that 
Mr. Lennon. When you say that “its program and organizational 
recommendations are being seriously studied,” by whom did you mean 
it was being seriously studied ? 
Dr. Trisus. Well, I was under the impression that it was being 
seriously studied by the Ash Committee. 
Mr. Lennon. We were, too, Mr. Secretary. That is the reason, having 
been advised that the President issued the memorandum and having i in 
our files the memorandum of the President to the Ash Commission 
requesting their study on May 19, we thought it reasonable to assume 
that they would at least look at this matter casually because you can 
certainly read this report in 4 months. So that when we called them 
on September 10 in anticipation of your testimony and testimony of 
the other gentlemen representing the other agencies. We thought they 
would tell us something, and we were a little shocked when they : advised 
us that they hoped to. begin this study within the next month or 2. 
We hoped after they got ready to start to begin to commence the study 
in the next month or 2 that at that time they would be in a better posi- 
tion to say how long it might take to do this serious study that you have 
said flatly here in your statement they made. 
It is certainly not your fault because you believed actually what we 
did. 
If we had not done what we did, we would have accepted your state- 
ment in absolutely good faith because you made it in absolutely good 
faith, so that you see when statements are made before this committee 
just as statements are made by Members before the House and Senate, 
they are not always factual because they just don’t have the facts. That 
disturbs us a little. 
We would like so much if you would help us get this study moving 
down there. We don’t know what the problem is, but we can’t just sit 
here and wait until next January for the Ash Commission to tell us, 
“Well, we hope to get the report back to the President and from the 
President back to the agencies and back to you sometime next spring.” 
We did that in 1961 and 1962 and it never came about. I believe it 
is the concensus of the majority of the members of this subcommittee, 
I am almost sure it is, to move along in this direction. We want to 
move in concert with not what is in the best interests of the Depart- 
ment of Transportation or the Department of Commerce or the De- 
partment of the Interior, or any other agency of the Federal 
Government, but what is in the national interest. That is what we are 
concerned with. 
We rather believe, and you agree, that generally speaking the Com- 
mission’s recommendations are in the national interest in this field. 
We do appreciate your appearance here, gentlemen. You have been 
a great help to us as has been indicated by other members of the 
subcommittee. 
