236 



Mr. Drewry. Yes, you have, and I think in an important contribu- 

 tory way. 



You mentioned that so much of your work has been for the Navy, 

 much of it has been classified, and after a while much of it becomes 

 declassified. Do you in your position at Woods Hole take any initia- 

 tive, in saying to the Navy about something that was classified when 

 it was started or carried out, "Look, it is time to declassify this 

 project"? 



Of course, the Navy is excluded from NOAA. Yet, obviously, there 

 has to be a working relationship between what the Navy is doing and 

 what the civilian side is doing, and you at Woods Hole and other sim- 

 ilar institutions are certainly in the position where they could advise 

 the Department of Defense that it is time to let this get out into the 

 public domain, that is an important work but the reasons for classifi- 

 cation are no longer valid and therefore let it go. 



Dr. Fye. Yes; certainly as the originator of a great deal of data 

 which has been classified, we are in an appropriate position to take 

 such action, and we do. I indicated earlier a shift in the total amount 

 of classified work from 10 years ago. Then maybe a third of the total 

 work was classified, now about one-tenth of that or 3 percent is 

 classified. 



I should expand on that to indicate that this is largely due to the 

 fact that the Navy no longer finds that it is necessary to classify much 

 of the oceanographic data that formerly was classified. This circum- 

 stance gives us a very legitimate basis for suggesting declassification. 



This change in policy, which I think has been a very wise one, has 

 expedited the whole study of the oceans. All of oceanography has been 

 helped by this. In large measure, the policy change took place when 

 Dr. Wakelin was Assistant Secretary of the Navy, and I give him a 

 great deal of credit for this. I think it has resulted in a much better 

 total integration of what the Navy is supporting together with what 

 the civilian agencies are supporting. 



Mr. Dkewry. I wonder if I could ask you to comment on what has 

 happened to the submersible leasing program. I guess right at the 

 moment Woods Hole is not in the market for any of that work, but I 

 understand that the submersible leasing program has been drastically 

 cut back within the Department of Defense. I don't remember the fig- 

 ure, but I am told that as many as 1,600 requests are pending for use 

 of the various submersibles which are in being, on which I believe pri- 

 vate industry has spent at least $100 million to develop, like the Star 

 3 and so on. 



Would you mind commenting on how you view that cutback as to the 

 effect it might have on a forward program or encouraging this funda- 

 mental technology that you were speaking of earlier ? 



Dr. Fye. Mr. Drewry, I don't have any up-to-date information 

 about the cutback in the chartering program for submersibles. I think 

 it is a good program. I think the idea of doing this is great. Industry 

 did go a long way to stick its neck out and made a major contribution 

 through the submersibles, and I think we should use them. 



We had occasion last fall to charter the Dowh from General Motors 

 in our search for Alvin. We only made one dive because of the weather, 

 but we are very familiar with the submersibles that have been built in 



