WAR-MAKING POWERS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP73B00296R000200040069-1
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 12, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 4, 2002
• Sequence Number: 69
• Publication Date: March 12, 1971
• Content Type: MISC

' Committee - 8
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U.S. SST will n t be approved or production unti ese en-
vironmental committees are satisified."
The recent breakthrough in noise reduction, due to im-
proved engine characteristics, better aircraft aerodynamics
and advanced suppression technology, "gives me great con-
fidence that the production SST will comply with the same
noise regulations as future subsonic jets."
The program is essentially on schedule and within cost.
"However we are now faced with crucial options, depending
on our allotted funding for this year and next. I believe the
urgency of this program (requires) that we press for the $290-
million amount for 1971.... With this amount we can move
ahead with a strong program."
Henry S. Reuss (D Wis.):
"I urge that federal financial support for the SST be
ended...for the following reasons:"
? Continued federal financing of a luxury commercial air-
craft will establish a precedent which could haunt the federal
government in years to come.
? An end to federal financing would not kill the American
SST, but would simply delay it.
? The adverse consequences of such a delay have been
exaggerated, since foreign SSTs are not as formidable a
competitive threat as has been claimed.
? A delay would permit the SST program to be financed
by private money in response to true market demand, and
would allow time for the resolution of environmental prob-
lems and uncertainties.
William D. Ruckelshaus, director, Environmental
Protection Agency:
The key issue in continuing development of two experi-
mental SSTs is economics. "It appears most of the environ-
mental questions can be answered without the two proto-
types...but the prototypes can answer them better."
Technological projects can be stopped if continuation is
found to be environmentally unsound. In the past, the
momentum of large-scale programs has had a way of ensuring
the perpetuation of those programs regardless of their merit.
"If we subscribe to the inevitability of history being repe-
titive, then the momentum argument is unassailable. I do not
so subscribe."
March 3
Dr. S. Fred Singer, chairman, SST environ-
mental advisory committee, Department of Transpor-
tation:
There is no question that many human activities are af-
fecting the environment, are changing the atmosphere and
are putting out pollutants that are spread throughout the
world. There is no question that the SST is going to release
some pollutants into the atmosphere, but it is doubtful
whether they will be of any significance.
"I believe that the question of whether we should or
should not have an SST must be decided on the basis of
economics and national priorities, with the environmental
effects having a very small weight indeed. If the SST is
going to be turned down, let's be sure that it is turned
down for the right reasons."
Dr. William W. Kellogg, associate director,
National Center for Atmospheric Research:
"I have found no environmental basis for delaying
the government's SST program. The best estimate we
have today regarding the climatic aspects of large-scale
SST operations indicates that the effects will be generally
imperceptible and trivial when compared to the changes
we experience from natural causes."
The conclusions now available regarding the climatic
impact of the operation of 500 SSTs are:
? There will be a global increase in stratospheric water
vapor of about 10 percent, somewhat more in regions of heavy
flight activity.
negligible influence on
he ea a ance o e g o a s Ir~re.
? It will only cause increased cloudiness at SST altitudes in
the polar wintertime, if at all.
? Carbon dioxide increase will be negligible and will cause
no special problem.
e The added water vapor will decrease the total ozone in
the atmosphere by one or two percent, and "this is trivial"
compared to the natural fluctuations of ozone. The same
can be said of the corresponding changes in ultraviolet
radiation reaching the ground.
Dr. Leo L. Beranek, chairman, SST community
noise advisory committee, Department of Transportation:
There does not appear to be any technical reasons why
a commercial supersonic transport cannot be built which will
be acceptable with regard to noise. The airlines are presently
evaluating two SST configurations which can meet noise
standards.
Floyd E. Smith, international president, In-
ternational Association of Machinists and Aerospace
Workers:
"If we do not build an American SST, we will: Eliminate
50,000 jobs directly, and at least 100,000 jobs indirectly;
reduce the nation's tax sources and add to it its welfare and
unemployment compensation rolls; allow a technological
gap that will reduce our ability to create more jobs, and
better jobs, for our citizens in the decades ahead.
Karl G. Harr Jr., president, Aerospace Industries
Association of America Inc.:
The SST program is of such vital importance, not only
to the entire aerospace industry but also to the technological
leadership and economic health of the nation, that the in-
dustry's membership considers it a top priority. V
WAR-MAKING POWERS
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee held
hearings March.8 and 9 on S 731, S J Res 18 and S J
Res 59, defining the war-making powers of the Presi-
dent.
References. 91st Congress action, 1970 Weekly Re-
port p. 2817,? National Commitments Resolution, 1969
Almanac p. 178.
Testimony March 8
Henry Steele Commager, professor of history at
Amherst College:
"This is not the first time this committee has considered
proposals of this nature, proposals designed to reassert and
vindicate the constitutional role of the Senate in war-making
and treaty-making powers, and to curb the pretensions of the
executive in those areas. Your concern-and that of many
Americans-is not hard to understand. Five times in the past
10 years presidents have mounted major military interven-
tions in foreign nations without prior consultation with the
Congress: The Bay of Pigs, the invasion of the Dominican Re-
public, the attacks on North Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos.
None of these now appears to have represented a genuine
emergency; none was in response to attacks upon the United
States which implacably required immediate military reac-
tion. None therefore appears to meet the requirements for
the exercise of war powers by the President formulated by
the makers of the Constitution."
Some specific recommendations:
"First, needless to say I endorse Senate 85 which the Sen-
ate adopted in June 1969 by an overwhelming majority, but
which has so far been ineffective, and the proposed Senate
731.
"Second, I suggest that the Senate meet the argument of
emergency, hypothetical as it is, by creating a permanent
RIGH INC.
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committee, a quorum of whose members would remain per-
manently in Washington, with authority to require that the
President consult with the Senate or the Congress before
taking any action that might involve the nation in armed
conflict....
"Third, I suggest that the Senate create a standing com-
mittee to consult with the President on all executive agree-
ments, and with authority to designate those of sufficient im-
portance to require submission to the Senate as treaties.
"Fourth, I suggest that the Congress reinvigorate
power of the purse...."
March 9
Richard B. Morris, professor of history at Columbia
University:
"I am impelled to support this prudent and well-conceived
bill, S 731, 'to regulate undeclared wars,' not only by the
urgency of Congress's acting promptly to define and delineate
the war-making powers under the Constitution, but as an
historian of the founding years of the republic I am especially
concerned that so awesome a power should not be exercised
in derogation of the letter of the Constitution and in contra-
vention of its spirit....
"Indeed, it is a fair inference from the debates on ratifi-
cation and from the learned analysis offered by the Federal-
ist papers that the war-making power of the President was
little more than the power to defend against imminent in-
vasion when Congress was not in session....
"If John Adams were here today I am confident that he
would give his wholehearted support to the proposed bill S
731....No one today can presume to speak for the Founding
Fathers on this grave issue, but to a lifelong student of the
early days of the republic the proposed bill, considered in
conjunction with Senate Resolution 85 of the 91st Congress,
first session, defining 'national commitments,' is calculated to
provide those safeguards for the exercise of war-making in-
tended by the drafters and ratifiers of the Constitution with-
out hampering the President in his capacity as commander in
chief to act in defense of national security......
Alfred H. Kelly, professor of history at Wayne
State University:
"It would be' too much to label the various senatorial and
congressional resolutions since 1950 which represent attempts
to recoup the congressional discretion in the war declaratory
power as exercises in futility, but they certainly have not suc-
ceeded to any important degree in restoring the constitutional
balance which existed in the matter before that time....
"...And while the Tonkin Gulf Resolution of August 1964
represented a certain recognition of congressional constitu-
tional right, its ultimate effect was to weaken rather than to
strengthen congressional prerogative, since the President used
what amounted in force to nothing like a full declaration of
war to mount a full-scale war in Southeast Asia. And as for
the National Commitments Resolution of June 1969 declar-
ing it to be the sense of the Senate that no further overseas
military commitments be undertaken without the consent of
Congress, not only is it in force disturbingly like the abortive
Senate Resolution of 1950, to the same general end but also
it has had so far no perceptible effect upon the executive-
legislative constitutional balance with respect to war-peace
decisions....
"A measure which does no more than give the Executive
pause in such situations will have, justified itself. In any
event, the Javits bill (S 731) expresses a belief which seems
to me to be cherished rather widely by the American people
today, regardless of any immediate opinions they may enter-
tain about the present situation in Vietnam: that the exigen-
cies of modern technology, diplomacy, and power have dis-
torted rather too much the constitutional balance between
HIGHER EDUCATION
Senate and House subcommittees held hearings
March 3-4 on various proposals for programs of aid to
higher education.
The Senate Labor and Public Welfare Subcom-
mittee on Education began hearings March 3-4 on S 659
and various other proposals for aid to higher education.
Reference. On the issues, Weekly Report p. 530.
Testimony March 3
Elliot Richardson, Secretary of
tion and Welfare (HEW):
"We are proposing nothing less than
basic federal support for every student
family who is qualified to enter college.
an assured level of
from a low-income
"It has been charged that our proposal ignores the prob-
lems faced by middle-income families in putting their
children through college." But, under the Administration bill:
? A family with $12,000 income and three children in college
could receive almost $1,000 per child in basic grants and
loans.
a Children from large families with over $15,000 income often
would be eligible for up to $1,500 per student in subsidized
cost-of-education loans.
? Each child from a family with only two children, both in
college, and with medical expenses of $2,400, would be eligible
for basic subsidized loans of almost $400 per student and sub-
sidized cost-of-education loans.
Sidney P. Marland Jr., Commissioner of Educa-
tion, explained the provisions of the Administration bill,
introduced March 4 in the Senate by Winston L.
Prouty (R Vt.), ranking minority member of the educa-
tion subcommittee, as S 1123. (Details, Weekly Report
p. 530)
Richardson and Dr. Peter Muirhead, executive
deputy commissioner of education:
The plan of student aid (S 659) proposed by Claiborne
Pell (D R.I.), subcommittee chairman, would cost $7.7-bil-
lion in fiscal 1972. Of the total, $3.7-billion would be used for
student aid, including cost-of-instruction grants to colleges
and universities.
The Office of Education will furnish comparative figures
for the Administration bill and the number of additional
students each would enable to attend college.
Pell:
Has the Administration considered providing federal aid
directly to colleges and universities through some type of
cost-of-instruction grant?
Richardson:
"We have no specific thought on this, although we are
aware of the problem and feel that it needs more thought. We
don't want just to underwrite the status quo by such aid."
March 4
Richardson:
The proposed National Foundation for Higher Education
would provide leadership for basic reform in higher education.
It will not operate any existing program but will innovate,
stimulate, sponsor and encourage change and experimenta-
tion in higher education.
Although in 1970 Mr. Nixon proposed that the foundation
be created as an independent agency, he now feels it would
best be located within the Department of HEW so that it
Congress and the Executive with respect to those fateful might have the benefits of full coordination with other major
decisions invo ving peace ~Dd In its a t t to correct staff would be exempt
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