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now and for the foreseeable future the needs tliat we believe exist ri^ht 

 now. Tliere is at tlie moment a tremendous series of problems to wliicli 

 this Nation must address itself. 



That would include tlie wide field of pollution, of fisheries, of the 

 Continental Shelf, the extraction of various minerals, and at the 

 moment we felt that this was the most effective way of getting at it 

 and we wanted to make it an independent agency because we did not 

 feel that at this particular moment in time and Avithin the governmental 

 structure as it iiow exists that we would want its effort to be diluted. 



Further down the road, of course, if you were to have a much larger 

 reorganization of the Government, then it would become a totally 

 different matter, but we felt that we had to operate within the context 

 of the here and now, what exists as a governmental structure, what 

 exists as a series of problems that must be tackled, and we felt that by 

 bringing these agencies together we would have a maximum impact 

 upon the problems that are affecting people today. 



Dr. Geyer. As you recall, early in the history of the Commission 

 Ave broke up into seven panels each one dealing with a major area. 

 There was no panel on organization, this was something which would 

 be taken up by the Commission as a whole because of its importance ; 

 but more important than that there was no thought given essentially 

 or emphasis to worrying about the organization until we were well 

 down the road, until we had some idea from the results of the panel 

 reports what the national program might be in its broad framework. 



Then, instead of just taking a bunch of building blocks or organiza- 

 tional charts of all of the Government agencies involved in oceanog- 

 raphy and trying to shuffle them in a jigsaw puzzle ; this was the other 

 approach. 



Knowing w^hat the national program would be, that we would rec- 

 ommend on the basis of the work of the panel on so on, we looked at 

 these agencies and saw "which ones would be best apt to do the job and 

 attain the objectives that we had in mind for the national program. 



One other point if I may comment, Mr. Keith, is on the Russian 

 situation as to their organization. Last February I was at the Inter- 

 national Oceanology Conference and one program there at the entire 

 conference was on government programs in Oceanography, and there 

 are about seven or eight different countries that gave their programs 

 and none of them came within the same sort of idea that we have here. 



But more important, the Russian representative gave his report on 

 the oceanographic progress and plans for his particular department 

 for that year and for the following year, and he said that his budget 

 the following year would be half again as much as it was the previous 

 year and then during the question period one of the reporters said : 



But is this for the entire oceanography effort of Russia or just your depart- 

 ment? 



And he said just his department, which happens to be the hydro- 

 meteorological department, and said he had no idea of what the total 

 oceanogTaphic effort was. 



So, apparently the coordination under the system they have there 

 is not too effective. 



Mr. Baird. Mr. Chairman, our chairman in his earlier remarks, in- 

 dicated that as a Government member of this Commission, I, along 



