220 



Mr. Lennon. Thank you. 



Let me ask this question: 



I take it that you four gentlemen have written a report. Since you 

 represent the Department of the Interior, all four of you in fact, I 

 take it that you have written a report which you all agreed on to a 

 substantial extent in which you make known to the Department of the 

 Interior up to the distinguished Secretary, who is here today, just 

 what you implied or indicated here this morning. Your superiors in 

 turn certainly would take that to the other cooperating agencies in this 

 particular project and for that matter all agencies of the Federal Gov- 

 ernment for any project in the future. 



I reiterate what the gentleman from Florida has indicated, that I 

 don't know whether you will have to get permission to do it or not, but 

 I hope that if that is what it takes you will be able to get it and submit 

 to this committee a report in which you set forth in detail just your 

 basic feelings about this matter with respect to equipment. 



All of us express some concern as was indicated by the gentleman 

 from Washington about the possibility that there might have been 

 more advance in the technological field of the breathing equipment 

 in some other place in the private sector of our total oceanographic's 

 effort as well as the fact that this had not yet been approved by the 

 Navy and, therefore, was not acceptable for this mission. 



I believe that if there is going to- have a meaningful impact it is 

 inexorably related to this committee's consideration of the Commis- 

 sion's report related to the sea. 



I don't know w^hen and I don't know what position the administra- 

 tion is going to take with respect to the recommendations of the 

 Commission report. 



I am pleased to observe to you gentlemen and all of you interested 

 in it that we do know that the National Marine Sciences Council has 

 been authorized to make a study and make recommendations to the 

 administration with respect to the implementation of the recommenda- 

 tions of that Commission report. 



We expect that sometime after mid- June Dr. Wenk will appear, and 

 we assume that he will speak for the administration. 



We had the pleasure yesterday of hearing the Chairman of the Com- 

 mittee on Oceanography from the National Academy of Engineer- 

 ing who spoke quite eloquently to the subject, but he did not make any 

 definitive recommendation with respect to the implementation of this 

 program so far as two aspects of it were concerned, namely, the Com- 

 mission's recommendation for NACO and the establishment of a Gov- 

 ernment structure referred to previously as NOAA. Yet, at the same 

 time yesterday afternoon at 6 o'clock I received a communication from 

 the Chairman of the Committee on Oceanography of the National 

 Academy of Sciences in which they did definitely make a recommenda- 

 tion for the necessity of a new governmental structure. 



So that I find that these two parallel organizations, the National 

 Academy of Engineering and the National Academy of Sciences, both 

 of them housed in the same building, one committee makes a definitive 

 recommendation with respect to the report and the other holds back, 

 and I am going to try to find out why. 



