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THE ICAO STAFF 7 October 197'

MEMORANDUM FOR DR. WADE, OSD(ISA)

SUBJECT: DOD/HASA Interface

A few days ago, you asked me to provide you a memorandum

which would associate the activities of the interagency Space

Policy Committee and the •technically oriented Program Review

Board.

The NSC Space Policy Committee is supposed to provide overall national space policy recommendation for the compatible

operation of the so-called military and civil oriented space

programs.

As we had suspected, the State Department, internally, has

a lot to learn in order to facilitate wise policy judgments.

Thus far, there have been two meetings of the Space Policy

Working Group. We understand that Jim Goodby will be replaced

as Chairman by Leon Sloss. Goodby started out by attempting

to bring in too wide a scope for the first study. At this

'point, it appears that OMB will not press to make the initial

study a cost oriented one. We had support from Dave Elliott

in moderating that aspect.

As is usual, the fact of" appears to be emerging as a

ignificant issue in terms of driving future civilian oriented

arth observation programs. Were the "fact of declassified

nd the reconnaissance product declassified, there would be a

esser need for parallel dedicated civilian programs. NASA'

rceives this threat and has enlisted the help of NOAH, of

e Commerce Department, to "balance' the working group. We,

in turn, are eneourageing ACDA to participate directly, since

ACDA is hawkish about unconstrained civil programs.

It is clear that the issues will need to be sharpened

since there will be so many subjects addressed in the first

draft. The draft should be out in a week or so and it remains

to be seen whether or not State will attempt to synthesize the

inputs and isolate the issues to make a cohesive strawman paper.

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Thus far, there has been reasonable accord between your office,

JCS and ourselves and also with CIA on the first input. DIA •

was difficult to work with for some unexplained reason and JCS

was forced to submit additional comments rather than confronting

DIA.

The Space Policy Committee will find it extremely difficult

to work through the paper, mainly because of the myriad of issues

involved and also because Secretary Sisco has indicated that the

first paper should have options for Presidential decision. What

these options will be, remains to be seen.

The Program Review Board mechanism is supposed to provide

a reasonable management of technology and data between the

classified programs and the openly conducted civil programs.

On the positive side, the mechanism is drawing together the

knowledgeable players from the Pentagon. NASA is supremely

well organized to cope with the mechanism mainly because they

perceive that the burden of the situation is on them institutionally and they know that if the Program Review Board goes

against their judgment then an appeal can be made to the Space

Policy Committee. The Space Policy Committee may not be adept at

addressing technically sophisticated problems which will, of course

be to NASA's advantage.

The major advantage of the Program Review Board mechanism

is that NASA will be less likely to surprise the Pentagon with

a last minute announcement on their programs. If there are,

indeed, any problems for the Pentagon, there should be sufficient

time for the mechanism to function. I think that the first meeting

of the Program Review Board, which you attended, was indication

of the style of the Board we will see during the next few months,

or years, if it is successful. The Committees are now active on

the various action items generated during the first meeting on

SEASAT and LST.

In summary, there needs to be a good interface between the

politically oriented Space Policy Committee and the technically

oriented Program Review Board. The Policy Committee should be

able to set a broad framework of philosophy such as in the data

management area for the technical people to work with in adjudicating problems and the Board should keep NASA honest and working

more above board than has been the tradition.