In a January 28, 1974, letter to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, former Defense Secretary Laird corrected his testimony of April 18, 1972, in which he stated, "We have never engaged in that type of activity over North Vietnam." Laird admitted that just such activities were conducted over North Vietnam in 1967 and 1968. It was clearly one of the most useless programs ever conceived by the Government. The rainmaking effort accomplished nothing except washing $21.6 million down the drain, and it was undertaken with no thought as to the very dangerous situations which could evolve from such a policy.

EFFECTS OF WEATHER MODIFICATION RESEARCH

There is no question that much valuable research is now being done under the heading of weather modification. Airport fog dispersal operations, cloud seeding in farm areas threatened by drought, efforts to increase the winter snow pack, and experiments in hurricane control are all legitimate scientific efforts that can meet important domestic and international needs. This work into peaceful applications of environmental modification technology should continue. Unfortunately, Pentagon involvement in weather modification researchwhether classified or for peaceful purposes-has serious consequences for the U.S. civilian scientific community, the American public, and the international community.

Geophysical warfare, to use a figure of speech, can poison the atmosphere surrounding legitimate international programs such as the global atmospheric research program, the international hydrological decade and meteorology in general. We have already seen that it caused the U.S. delegation at the Stockholm Conference to water down a recommendation on climate changes. The potential for embarrassment is great.

Our scientific community could come under suspicion or attack at these international meetings. The fine work and trust built up over the years by our excellent atmospheric scientists could be dispelled in one stroke of Pentagon experimentation.

But it is not only our scientists who lose credibility-it is the Defense Department itself. Through its involvement in research which may have military applications, even though it is intended for peaceful purposes, the Pentagon has laid itself open to allegations of a variety of clandestine activities.

Two cases will illustrate the point. The Defense Department engages in considerable medical research, some of which is related exclusively to military needs, while some parallel research carried out by civilian institutions. The Navy, for example, has had a research unit in Egypt studying equatorial diseases for many years. By conducting such research "in-house," so to speak, instead of obtaining it through civilian research agencies, the Navy leaves itself open to charges that it is actually studying or developing germ warfare or the like. As unfounded as such charges may be, they are very difficult to combat, especially in the current climate of suspicion about many Pentagon activities. Yet, there is no reason why this kind of research could not be conducted by the civilian agencies of Government and its results made available to the Defense Department. In cases where Defense required information on subjects not currently under investigation, it could levy requirements on the

National Science Foundation which would in turn conduct or contract for the needed research, thus reducing the opportunities for controversy to develop, controversy which might itself hamper research, especially abroad.

In the area of weather modification, I have been assured that Air Force interest in these techniques is limited to developing methods for airfield fog dispersal or suppression and other life-saving measures. These techniques are just as important to business and civil aviation and the general public, and there is no reason why such research cannot be conducted by a civilian agency.

As a general principle, therefore, I would urge that wherever an adequate scientific base exists for conducting specific types of applied research outside of the Department of Defense and associated agencies, it would be wise policy to conduct all such research through nondefense agencies, such as NOAA, NIH, NSF or private institutions. In addition to helping resolve Pentagon credibility problems, such a procedure will tend to reduce duplication of effort and may therefore produce some cost savings.

Thus, although the subject of this hearing is an international treaty banning the use of weather modification techniques as weapons, it is important that we go beyond that and deal directly with the development of such research within our own Government, so as to clearly divorce all weather modification activities from the military and leave no doubt that American interest in this field is strictly peaceful and humanitarian.

CONCLUSION

We learned at the dawn of the atomic age that no military potential will long remain in the sole control of one power. It may be possible, for example, that as the Soviets develop their computer technology, their weather control technology will progress correspondingly. But we should not be forced into this field due to some possible Soviet interest and neither should we encourage the U.S.S.R. to increase its capability because of our experiments. It is in the best interest of both countries to avoid a technology race that could culminate in environmental disasters.

Many authorities have testified that weather modification is a Pandora's box. This is true in more ways than one. We not only do not know how far our technology will take us, but we also have no idea of what may be the permanent consequences of the experiments we have conducted thus far.

There is a growing consensus that the time is ripe for an international agreement on weather modification. The First Annual Report of the National Advisory Committee on Oceans and Atmosphere (NACOA) urged the U.S. Government to present a resolution to the United Nations General Assembly limiting weather modification activities to peaceful purposes. The Third Annual Report of NACOA expanded on that recommendation and suggested that:

We overcome the existing fragmentation of Federal R. & D. programs in weather modification by assigning a lead-agency role to NOAA.

Greater emphasis be placed on research on the physics of cloud formation and the science and technology of rainfall augmentation.

That legislative and public policy issues governing the proper use of a new technological capability be examined, and in particular, that the United States

take the initiative in establishing international agreement to insure that weather modification efforts be devoted to mutually beneficial programs * * *.

Earlier, the 18th Annual Session of the North Atlantic Assembly adopted a resolution supporting an international agreement prohibiting military uses of this science. And, as I pointed out at the beginning of my testimony, the recent United States-Soviet agreement to meet on this issue is the latest hopeful sign.

In closing I should emphasize that the future potential of weather modification is much greater than what we have the power to do now. But unless we act now to prohibit weather modification warfare and to separate weather modification research and development from military control, technology will once again outstrip our social structures, leaving us open to those flaws of human nature which have in the past turned scientific wonders into military nightmares.

Mr. Chairman, I appreciate your making it convenient to have these hearings.

Mr. FRASER. Thank you very much, Mr. Gude.

I think I will hold most of my questions until the question period. for other witnesses.

I just wondered if you had any impressions as to the significance of the request by the Soviet Union to have this matter placed on the agenda of the General Assembly, and whether that is inconsistent with the understanding between the United States and Soviet Union to pursue some kind of an effort to deal with this problem.

Mr. GUDE. I don't know whether that is inconsistent. It certainly is an opportunity. I think the idea that we should go ahead and have this matter discussed by the General Assembly is good. The technology is such that we can't pretend that the Soviet Union and the United States can have a monopoly on it as in the case of other more sophisticated and expensive military techniques, and so I think it is something that would be good to have a debate on, and I think a debate and discussion on issues where we can come to an agreement such as this, we hope with relative ease, will lead to agreements in other areas.

Mr. FRASER. I think your point is well taken. This is not technology that is limited to just two countries. If the U.S.-Soviet talks were to have much meaning, they would have to be in the context of a possible multilateral undertaking at some point.

Well, thank you very much, Mr. Gude. I appreciate your statement and the fact that you brought this matter before the House and before the committee. And if you would be willing to participate in the questioning, that would be very helpful.

I would like to ask our next two witnesses to come forward to the witness table, Admiral Davies and Dr. Weiss.

Will you proceed, sir.

STATEMENT OF REAR ADM. THOMAS D. DAVIES, ASSISTANT DIRECTOR FOR NUCLEAR AND ADVANCED WEAPONS TECHNOLOGY, ARMS CONTROL AND DISARMAMENT AGENCY

Admiral DAVIES. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I am pleased to appear before you today to testify on the subject of arms control and environmental modification, especially the concepts and practices known as weather modification, which is the subject of se Resolution 329, the focal point of these hearings.

I would like to start by a brief technological description of the machinery that is the subject of this discussion, the oceans of air and water that surround the Earth. From the fact of their relatively unchanged existence over the eons, we can conclude that they are of the nature of a gigantic heat engine, extremely complex, but in all likelihood very stable. There are many processes within each, in which stable balances have been established for millenia. Our knowledge of the details of these systems and their functioning is far from complete. For example, even our rather extensive weather measurement and forecasting system experiences difficulty in forecasting, with a high degree of certainty, what the future action of the atmospheric machine will bring in terms of weather.

There exists a concept that there could be various techniques which would shift the atmospheric and environmental balances and produce substantial near-term results, such as causing rain, clearing fog, even controlling the force of hurricanes. This concept has acquired a substantial community of supporters and advocates, as a result of which trial efforts have been carried out during the past quarter century. The results of these trials have been almost without exception ambiguous. The precision of the basic measurements of the forces observed, such as wind, and of course the precision of predicted values, is of such low order that many of the apparently affirmative statements of results that have been made (such as "a 15-percent reduction of wind velocity") represent values the derivation of which exceed the specificity of the raw measurement data. Thus the results can only be judged over an extended period of time.

There are also those who believe that the long term stability of the ocean atmosphere system is rather more fragile and that attempts to achieve temporary alterations may have more lasting and dangerous effects. While the evidence of actions to date tends to contravene this, there could well be effects not yet completely examined or understood which could support this view.

The most promising specific technique to date has been the seeding of supercooled clouds to initiate rain. This is usually done by aerial distribution of silver iodide or other particles which serve as freezing nuclei in the cloud. They trigger the freezing of the water into ice particles which liberates heat and promotes the dynamic processes inside the cloud, thereby stimulating the production of snow or rain. Even this technique suffers from uncertainties. Of course it only works on a particular type of cloud-"supercooled"-which might be described as a cloud "ready to rain" anyway, and since controlled and quantified experiments are exceedingly difficult with clouds, the occasions on which the technique doesn't work go unexplained and the question of whether or not the cloud would have nucleated and rained shortly anyway goes largely unresolved.

Fog clearing has been the objective of many years of effort and now seems to be possible in the case of "cold" fogs, by the utilization of a technique similar to that I have just described. The reduction of wind intensity in hurricanes by cloud seeding is postulated as a possibility. It has been attempted on a few occasions with one claimed success. "Hurricane steering," through seeding certain areas which might hopefully reduce the energy in an asymmetric way so that the system might turn, is additionally postulated as a longer term possibility.

The war use of these concepts is mostly technologically the same as the peaceful use. Rain as an inhibitor of the passage of troops and supplies is one concept and has been attempted in Southeast Asia. The attempts were not startlingly successful. There is a theory that if a hurricane could be steered it might be aimed at an adversary. Turning to the behavior of the atmosphere as a whole, as contrasted to the more transient phenomena described above, I should point out that distinctions between various aspects of the environment, such as the weather and climate, are often a matter of semantics, although we generally conceive of the climate to be the longer term average manifestation of the atmospheric environment, which is constituted by those elements we call the weather. At this scale, aside from the inadvertent effects man is causing, any attempts to modify the Earth's climate, or the climate of a region, for peaceful or hostile purposes are simply theoretical.

Similarly of a theoretical nature are capabilities to divert ocean current, cause tsunamis or tidal waves, trigger earthquakes, or modify the ionosphere in any large-scale way.

Given the theoretical nature of most of these activities, it is difficult to realistically discuss their potential military usefulness. Our lack of knowledge about them, and, more fundamentally, about the environment itself and the interaction of its various components, dictates caution and prudence in proceeding with any modification attempts. In this context, it should be pointed out that in July 1972, and again in January 1974, at Senate hearings on the Pell resolutions, which were similar in intent to House Resolution 329, administration witnesses have stated that the United States would not use climate modification techniques for hostile purposes, even should such techniques come to be developed in the future.

In summary the environment can be said to be complex, in all likelihood very stable, and far from totally understood. While the concept that manmade efforts can modify it has gained popularity, there are still mostly ambiguous and uncertain data to support such a view. However, the possibilities of success have been evaluated as high enough to warrant continued research.

The joint statement on environmental warfare signed in Moscow on July 3 by the President of the United States and General Secretary Brezhnev advocates the most effective measures possible to overcome the dangers of using environmental modification techniques for military purposes, and expresses the intention of the two countries to discuss steps to bring about such measures. This is a most desirable course of action. Additionally, the Soviet Union has proposed that the United Nations General Assembly address this subject this fall. While the joint statement refers to a bilateral meeting to explore the problem and discuss steps to be taken to attain the stated objectives, the Soviet U.N. proposal, of course, moves this issue into a multilateral forum, and advocates action to prohibit efforts to influence the environment for military and other purposes "incompatible with the maintenance of international security, human well-being, and health." Thus their proposal appears to broaden the issue substantially.

The U.S.S. R. goes on to point out that many nations are engaged in research in this area and that consultations and cooperation between them are necessary to insure compliance with an international conven