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since the basic 1959 report of the National Academy of Sciences Committee on 
Oceanography (NASCO) which, in a sense, initiated the inquiry in which the 
Committee is engaged today. It was set out, and adopted, in legislation origi- 
nating in this committee in 1961 and vetoed by the President. 
The need was made evident in the Long-Range National Oceanographie Plan, 
“Oceanography—the Ten Years Ahead” published by the Interagency Committee 
on Oceanography (ICO) in 1968, and in several internal reports of ICO over the 
next two years. 
I recommended similar legislation to this committee myself in testimony on 
the National Oceanographie Program Legislation in 1965 (Serial no. 89-18, 
pp. 407-488). Senator Muskie submitted comprehensive legislation to establish 
such a machinery on behalf of himself and a number of other Senators in 1965. 
The need for reorganization was given a strong push by the Report of the 
Panel on Oceanograply of the President’s Science Advisory Committee in 1966 
“Effective Use of the Sea,” and in the 1967 report of NASCO “Oceanography 
1966. Further strength has been added to the need in the three annual reports 
of the National Council on Marine Resources and Engineering Development in 
1967, 1968S and 1969. 
Finally it was recommended in essentially the form expressed in H.R. 13247 
in the report “Our Nation and the Sea” of the Commission on Marine Science, 
Engineering and Resources, 1969. Testimony in favor of this general concept 
before this Committee, and in the literature on the subject, has been strong, 
broadly-based and copious for the past five years. In particular, broad sectors 
ort the United States industry, the State Governments and the scientific com- 
munity have proclaimed for it. Opposition has come almost entirely from within 
the Executive Branch of the Federal Government. 
The ideas which I expressed in testimony on this subject before this Com- 
mittee in 1965 were by no means original. They arose out of the scientific and 
government community dealing with marine affairs during the course of the 
broad studies which led to the NASCO 1967 report “Cceanography 1966”. The 
ICO had done such excellent work in the short years of its existence that the 
nation’s marine affairs had grown beyond the capabilities of that mechanism 
of government to move them further at the pace the nation required them to move. 
The reason why I presented those views to the committee in 1965, and that they 
Were not presented then by NASCO or others associated with it, was that these 
views had drawn criticism from elsewhere within the Federal governmental 
structure and I was the one involved whose independence of position made it 
practical for me to present them to your committee. 
The opposition in the Federal structure to such a consolidation of civilian 
marine affairs in 1965 came from four main sources (a) the Bureau of the 
Budget, (b) the Office of Science and Technology, (c) The Departments that 
would lose functions to the new agency. and (d) the Department of the Navy. 
Because of the latter there was modest opposition also within the academic 
scientific community, especially from those elements which drew considerable 
funding support from the Navy. 
The Bureau of the Budget opposition was (and perhaps still is) simply that 
it did not wish imposed on it another large entity like NASA that would have 
so much Congressional support that the Bureau could not control its funding 
support with ease. With the civilian ocean establishment split between several 
Departments the Bureau could (and did, and Gces) control (or stifie) growth in 
ocean-oriented activity with considerably greater ease, on the tried and true 
basis of divide and conquer. 
The Office of Science and Technology opposition was the effective outward 
one in 1964 and 1985, when that office delayed by effective lobbying the passage 
of the Marine Resources and Engineering Act of 1966 as long as it could, set up 
the Panel on Oceanography of PSAC to study the matter (an action which back- 
fired. because the Panel convinced itself during its study of the need for a more 
vigorous United States ocean affairs stance), and intervened at the National 
Academy of Sciences by use of the Academy’s Committee on Science and Public 
Policy (COSPUP) to delay the completion of the NASCO 1967 report until after 
the PSACPOO report could be published, and the National Marine Commission 
established. 
The motive of the President’s Science Advisor at that time were never quite 
clear, but seemed to lean in the direction of not wishing marine affairs to slip out 
of the grip of his office, as it would do with the erection of a National Oceanic and 
Atmospheric Agency. This was ridiculous parochialism because oceanography 
had already broadened to ocean affairs in the minds of Congress and the public, 
