Mr. TESCHE. Yes, talking about the possible effects of detonations or leakage or the gas or of the propellant becoming more sensitive. Problems with the vaults, yes.

Mr. DOWNING. Maybe we are talking with the wrong person, but it seems to me there is someplace in this country near your scene of operation where these vaults can be stored while you prepare the facility. A railroad tunnel, would that do it? Stop up both ends?

Mr. TESCHE. I believe this question should be put to the Army.

Mr. LENNON. Let me ask you, sir, and then we shall not continue to be cheaters. You saw the Gross report, I believe, this week for the first time. You know the membership of that committee of seven, don't you, sir?

Mr. TESCHE. I have the membership list here.

Mr. LENNON. You know who the committee is?

Mr. TESCHE. Yes.

Mr. LENNON. They are radiation experts, they are explosion experts, people who have been involved in this thing for years. Do you think that the laboratory or the Atomic Energy Commission would have been influenced in any degree whatever in their urgent appeal that this is a method that ought to be pursued?

If the Army just took the trouble at the time to send it along to you and said, here is what the experts we selected say ought to be done, this is what we urge, this is what our experts advised us to do by all means, take this and see whether or not you agree, and AEC gets it almost over a year later.

I read from part of it:

There appear to be only two practical procedures which will minimize possible extra hazard to man. The first method, and the one the Committee urges be vigorously pursued, involves the use of an underground detonation of a nuclear device to destroy completely all the vaults in a single explosion. The size of the nuclear device required would be relatively small. Disposal by this means could be incorporated in an on-going or scheduled test program. The results would be completely predictable with all the agent and explosive destroyed. No additional hazard will result from the inclusion of this material in the underground nuclear shot.

Now that is just one paragraph out of their report back to the experts that the Army selected to advise them. Why they don't send that to you and say, now consider this and come back and give us your views. Paper must have been short and they did not quote it at that time.

Do you think that there is a possibility that the Commission, when it met on October 3, would have given any serious consideration to the urgent appeal of this panel of explosive and munition and ordnance and radiation experts to do it this way? Do you think they would have any effect on them at all?

Mr. TESCHE. They would have, I am certain, called for the conventional safety analysis of the whole program. They would have called for the same types of safety studies that are done customarily for our program, and if everything turned out well, they could have conceivably instructed Nevada to proceed.

Mr. LENNON. AEC members are human beings.

Mr. TESCHE. Pardon me?

Mr. LENNON. We sit and listen to the experts representing the Army, the Navy, the Air Force, the Marine Corps or the Coast Guard, this agency, various other agencies. Now what bothers me is the fact that the Army didn't take the trouble to furnish you with the findings

and recommendations and conclusions of the group that they selected themselves to make a decision.

Unfortunately they didn't agree with that decision, so they didn't take the trouble at least to be frank enough to report it to the AEC and say here is what those experts we hand picked recommended. What do you say? Can you implement their recommendation?

Here over a year later you read it for the first time, the people who were asked to make a finding as to whether or not people do what their group recommended. That is the thing that the American public will never understand. We are after the facts.

Now, you mentioned in your report the findings of the ad hoc committee of 12.

Mr. TESCHE. Yes, sir; we knew of this.

Mr. LENNON. Did you get a copy of that report?

Mr. TESCHE. No, sir.

Mr. LENNON. You didn't get a copy of it? But you just heard that they had studied it, I guess, because you mentioned it in your report.

Mr. TESCHE. Yes, we knew. This is the way the Army came to us, is that the National Academy of Sciences has proposed this as one of the possible techniques, "Will you please help us out?"

Mr. LENNON. You didn't actually see the National Academy of Sciences report?

Mr. TESCHE. No, sir.

Mr. LENNON. You didn't see where they urged the Army to select a panel of radiation and ordnance and explosive and radar experts and the Army immediately convened such a panel, but they were unwilling to submit to the AEC the recommendations of this panel. I do believe that if the AEC had gotten it, that very likely you would have accepted the responsibility of this project, and we would not be here today, America would not be concerned.

And I believe something else: I believe if you had sent a copy of your report to the Under Secretary of the Interior, Mr. Train, at that time and to Mr. Finch at that time, the Secretary of HEW, and to the still Secretary of State, that they might have gotten in the act at the Cabinet level, but they didn't do it.

Any other questions, gentlemen?

We will excuse you not from the room, because we may call you back to the stand.

Mr. LENNON. Now we are delighted to have with us, and apologize for the lateness in bringing to the witness stand, the Honorable Russell Train, Chairman of the Council on Environmental Quality and the former Under Secretary of the Department of the Interior.

We would appreciate it if the gentlemen representing the Army would remain, because we may want to go back to them.

Mr. Chairman, I have read in substance your statement made before the committee in the Senate yesterday and I saw you had expressed concern about this matter on which you have reached the conclusion

that this would have to be done.

I will ask you the question, sir, that as the Under Secretary of the Interior if you had received a copy of the Gross Committee's report when you were there and a copy of the report of September 15 by the Radiation Laboratory, would you not have reached the conclusion that this could have been done as the AEC Radiation Laboratory said it. could be done safely?

Have you read this report of September 15?

STATEMENT OF HON. RUSSELL E. TRAIN, CHAIRMAN, COUNCIL ON ENVIRONMENTAL QUALITY; ACCOMPANIED BY LEE M. TALBOT, SENIOR SCIENTIST, AND WILLIAM K. REILLY, OFFICE OF THE GENERAL COUNSEL, COUNCIL ON ENVIRONMENTAL QUALITY Mr. TRAIN. Yes, sir, I have. That is the second AEC report. Yes, I have read that.

Mr. LENNON. If you had gotten that report and you had gotten also the Gross report, do you feel that you would have taken the position you do now that, well, it is too late now, water over the dam, might as well go down the dam to the ocean and to sea?

Mr. TRAIN. The chairman is asking me a hypothetical question. It is always risky to speculate on what you might have done under a different set of circumstances.

Mr. LENNON. I believe you acted vigorously. Let's just pursue this matter of destroying this nerve gas through an underground relatively small nuclear explosion rather than taking the risk that we are taking for the future now. How do you think you would react?

Mr. TRAIN. That is a possibility, sir.

Mr. LENNON. I would hope to think that you would have taken it seriously.

Mr. TRAIN. Thank you.

Mr. LENNON. I am sure you didn't come here with a prepared statement after yesterday.

Mr. TRAIN. I do have a prepared statement.

Mr. LENNON. Thank you. I apologize. You go right ahead.

Mr. TRAIN. I will state for the chairman that it represents practically word for word the statement which I gave before the other body yesterday.

Mr. LENNON. All I read was just your spectacular statements in the headlines.

Mr. TRAIN. Then I shall proceed with my statement, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the opportunity to discuss certain of the environmental questions associated with the proposed Project CHASE. As you are aware, this plan calls for the deep ocean disposal of 418 concrete vaults in which are embedded M-55 rockets filled with GB nerve agent and propellant and dispersal explosives.

Mr. LENNON. Just a minute. Every witness has said what you just said, but that is not so. Who do you think we have to get that information from? Not the Army: no, no. Not DOD; no, no. We had to get it from the Commissioner of Fisheries. It has two caskets that do not contain this particular type of nerve gas. One of them contains an entirely different type of nerve gas, VX. One contains something that does not contain any gas.

We had to go all the way around the world and finally get back to the Commissioner of Fisheries before we found that out. It can leak just like this gas is leaking now.

Go ahead.

Mr. TRAIN. Mr. Chairman, to be fair to the Army, I believe the environmental impact statement which was filed by the Army with the Council on July 7 in draft form, and certainly the final statement, which I have before me filed on July 30, on page 3 does refer to one of the munitions containing VX agent.

Mr. LENNON. I knew we got it through the Department of the Interior, but it was never furnished to us.

Mr. TRAIN. This was in the impact statement filed by the Army within the past month, so that we did have that information. Mr. LENNON. Thank you. I am glad you did.

Mr. TRAIN. The vaults are to be moved by rail from the Anniston Army Depot in Alabama and the Lexington-Bluegrass Army Depot in Kentucky to Southport, N.C. At Southport they will be loaded onto a hulk and transported to a point 245 nautical miles east of Cape Canaveral. At this point, the hulk containing the vaults will be sunk. The ocean floor is over 16,000 feet deep and the area has previously been used for dumping munitions.

On July 8 of this year the Department of the Army forwarded to the Council on Environmental Quality a draft statement of the environmental impact of CHASE in response to the requirements of the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969. On July 30, the Army submitted its final draft and the Council sent its comments on the statement to the Army on August 4.

In his April 15 message on "Great Lakes and Ocean Dumping," the President directed the Council on Environmental Quality to prepare a comprehensive study on ocean dumping. The study will be submitted to the President by September 1 and will recommend further research needs and appropriate legislation and administrative actions. In that same message and in specific reference to the ocean disposal of sewage and sludge, the President declared:

We are only beginning to find out the ecological effects of ocean dumping and current disposal technology is not adequate to handle waste of the volume now being produced.

While the Council has not completed its study of ocean dumping, we have already concluded that it is clearly inappropriate to use the oceans for the disposal of any toxic material. The oceans are a precious resource and our knowledge of them is still so limited that we cannot confidently predict the consequences of placing in them any dangerous materials.

However, with regard to Operation CHASE, the Council does not know of any more desirable means at disposal. Given the present set of circumstances and accepting the recommendations of the Gross committee and the National Academy of Sciences, we agree that the proposed plan is the least undesirable of the available alternatives.

Mr. LENNON. Mr. Chairman, I go back to what I stated earlier. What would have been your reaction as Under Secretary of the Interior-were you Under Secretary of the Interior in September of last year?

Mr. TRAIN. Yes, sir, I was.

Mr. LENNON. You were. I have been advised that you were.

With your constant and persistent concern about the ecology and environment and these things which have become so important to most people, hopefully with some degree of reasoning, don't you think that you would have reacted when you read this September 15 report of the Atomic Energy Commission? Not knowing, of course, until today that the Atomic Energy Commission until October 3 after they let this report go to the Army and then they get on the phone and say, "Disregard what we sent down there, that is in writing, that

might get out," call you over the phone and say, "We are opposed to this." That is exactly what happened.

Let's suppose you had gotten a copy of this on September 22 when it was made available to the Army and knowing what the Gross report urged to be done, don't you think, sir, that you would have reacted that this is the way to do it?

Mr. TRAIN. I certainly would have asked some questions, Mr. Chairman, of why we could not proceed with that alternative means of disposal.

Mr. LENNON. And if we could just forget the lapse of almost 12 months or more than 12 months since this thing began to fuze a little, would you favor now the detonation underground by a small nuclear blast in the light of what the laboratory said that there would be no relative danger?

Mr. TRAIN. I understand the chairman to be posing the question in the terms that time would not be an element, that we would have plenty of time; also no problem of instability of the materials, the munitions involved. So we would have a simple case of the alternative between nuclear disposition and ocean disposition.

I feel very strongly against ocean disposition. I am not personally any sort of an expert in nuclear power, nuclear disposition. I would have to rely completely upon the report of the Atomic Energy Commission, which I will state to the chairman I do not believe I ever saw at that time.

Mr. LENNON. You do not believe what at that time?

Mr. TRAIN. I did not see the AEC report at that time. That was made available to our Council on the 4th of this month, Tuesday. Mr. LENNON. Would you not agree, Mr. Chairman, that laymanand we are laymen, we are not scientists or chemists or radiation experts. You read the summary and conclusions: "These obsolete chemical munitions can be reliably destroyed by an underground nuclear explosion," and so forth.

Now here is a finding by the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory. They make this conclusion. If we cannot rely upon the judgment and knowledge, background and integrity of those people out there, we are in trouble, are we not? Yet I am sure that when they convened the AEC board or commission on October 3 and they reviewed what they sent out, they began to think in the terms of public reaction of using those facilities for the destruction of these kinds of weapons.

I can almost see them now, "We better not write that to the Army, because it might someday get out, so we just do it by phone."

Mr. TRAIN. Mr. Chairman, there is another element in the picture, of course, which is not included in the AEC report, which would have had to have been taken into consideration, and that would have been the matter of transportation. If one had been confronted with that decision at that time, I suppose there are relative merits and indeed merits between shipment to the east coast and shipment to the atomic energy site in Nevada. I don't know what those merits are.

Mr. LENNON. One to the southwest, one to the middle west and now a year later we are going to ship them. The propellant has been deteriorating for another year and we are going to have to ship them

east.