agree again, information about government operations, to wit, where the money is going and who is doing what, and how many employees, and so forth, should certainly be available to the public at all times in a reasonable manner.

Mr. CORNISH. Would you agree with me that we shouldn't have a situation where a bureaucrat is asking a citizen, a taxpaying citizen, why he wants to find out information about his Government.

Mr. KNISELY. Not about his Government, but perhaps about his neighbor. In this country how much a man makes is considered very private information, yet how much his house is worth is quite public. There are a number of cities, such as Dayton, Ohio, that have city income taxes and that tax information is considered rather confidential in Dayton.

I can understand and appreciate the concern expressed in this ordinance, so a person would not be able to come in and find out how much income his next-door neighbor has.

Mr. CORNISH. Do you know for a fact this "need to know" test is put solely to information being sought on individuals or normally of a private nature?

Mr. KNISELY. Yes; requests for purely public information are put through a different administrative process.

Mr. CORNISH. Thank you.

Mr. ERLENBORN. Thank you, Mr. Knisely.

The next witness will be Mr. Ren F. Read, the Assistant Director for Technical Services, Defense Civil Preparedness Agency, Department of Defense.

I understand, Mr. Read, you are accompanied by Robert B. Martin, Assistant Director for Telecommunications, Defense Civil Preparedness Agency, Department of Defense.

STATEMENT OF REN F. READ, ASSISTANT DIRECTOR FOR TECHNICAL SERVICES, DEFENSE CIVIL PREPAREDNESS AGENCY, DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE; ACCOMPANIED BY ROBERT B. MARTIN, ASSISTANT DIRECTOR FOR TELECOMMUNICATIONS; AND CHARLES MANNING, GENERAL COUNSEL

Mr. READ. Yes. And by General Counsel, Charles Manning.

Mr. ERLENBORN. Mr. Manning, you can also, if you like, join the witnesses at the table.

For the record, all three of you have had the oath administered, have you not?

Let the record show that they have.

Mr. Read.

Mr. READ. Mr. Chairman, we filed yesterday a brief statement by Director Davis. Is it your wish I read it or just leave it for the record? Mr. ERLENBORN. The statement will be, in its entirety, inserted in the record. You may either read it or summarize it, as you deem best. [Mr. Davis' prepared statement follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF JOHN E. DAVIS, DIRECTOR, DEFENSE CIVIL

PREPAREDNESS AGENCY

Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, we are pleased to have the opportunity to appear before the Foreign Operations and Government Informa

tion Subcommittee of the House Committee on Government Operations to describe a system which the Defense Civil Preparedness Agency has under development, the Decision Information Distribution System, and its potential for improving the Nation's warning capability.

The responsibilities of the Defense Civil Preparedness Agency are set forth in the Federal Civil Defense Act and Executive Order 10952, July 20, 1961, as amended. This includes "the development and execution of all steps necessary to warn or alert Federal military and civilian authorities, State officials, and the civilian population." This mission includes use of the systems for warning of natural disasters in consonance with Sec. 210 of the Disaster Relief Act of 1970 and Executive Order 11575 of December 31, 1970, and other life-and-death emergencies where the DCPA warning systems can be useful.

At present, this responsibility is being discharged through a combination of Federal and State networks and procedures to alert local officials with voice messages and the public through outdoor warning devices-notably sirens. Follow-on information concerning the emergency would be given to the public by way of the mass media of the broadcast radio industry.

Construction of DIDS began in the spring of 1972 on the first element of a new, nationwide radio communications network. The system was designed by the Defense Civil Preparedness Agency to improve the present system-the National Warning System-on which the Nation now depends for warning of enemy attack, and to provide a more versatile communications network for dissemination of emergency information.

The principal advantages of the combined systems would be: Faster warning; wider coverage; greater reliability; greater survivability; more complete information to citizens; capability of eventually including direct warning to citizens in their homes; and capability of eventually being integrated with the Safeguard antimissile system so that communities in the target areas would receive advance warning of the imminent danger.

The nationwide installation of the DID System including home receivers could save from 10 to 17 million additional lives in event of nuclear attack; and further expansion and refinement of the system could increase this to as many as 27 million.

In 1971, the Office of Telecommunications Policy conducted a thorough review of means to provide home warning. This resulted in a statement of policy that "the acquisition and use of a warning receiver by any citizen for use in his home or automobile shall be a voluntary decision on the part of the individual. The Federal Government will pursue a program to *** bring the cost of a warning receiver within the reach of every American household." It would appear we are on the threshold of achieving that goal. The next step will be to field test the low-cost receivers and make them available in the DIDS midAtlantic area, where we are currently constructing our prototype system at Edgewood, Md. A survey sponsored by DCPA indicates that 69 percent of the public favors or strongly favors such a device, 12.6 percent are undecided, 8 percent oppose, and 2.6 percent strongly oppose.

DIDS will be interconnected directly with State and local governments and with local siren systems, but connection with other systems, such as broadcast stations, would be activated for public broadcast only through an independent, deliberate act of station personnel.

DCPA has no request for funds pending before the Congress to extend DIDS beyond the prototype installation at Edgewood. It is my intention to evaluate its performance during the upcoming test period before making a recommendation to expand the system further.

I must however, emphasize that with the present day weapons and delivery threat, our warning time could diminish drastically or possibly vanish in places using the present system. Therefore, I consider it imperative that we have an effective, viable defense and warning system which will lessen materially the transmission time of the warning message to the people of this nation.

I realize my statement permits reference only to some of the highlights of the DID System features and implications. My technical staff will be glad to explore these further if you desire.

Mr. READ. I will summarize it briefly. It speaks of our statutory responsibility of taking all steps necessary to furnish warning to the American public of impending attack. And it describes briefly the system we have had to do that, the obsolescent 23-year-old National

Warning System, which we feel is not up to the job of meeting the statutory requirement in a timely way in the missile age. I use the word "obsolescent" here in its strict meaning of "in process of becoming obsolete" rather than the often inferred meaning of "obsolete."

For this reason, we are proposing and have developed a proposal to deploy a system called "Decision Information Distribution System," or "DIDS." The statement describes this briefly as a lowfrequency radio system, of which system we are currently building only the first states, as a prototype test. The first station being constructed is at Edgewood, Md., and would provide this improved warning service to the 10 Atlantic Seaboard Coast States, where roughly 50 million people live.

With respect to the system and its potential for delivering faster warning direct to homes, we got the recent study of the Office of Telecommunications Policy, 1971 study, which took the position-we can file a full copy of that statement, if you wish, for the record-that first, among candidate systems, DIDS appeared to be the most cost-effective way to carry a nationwide warning and, second, that the procurement of a home receiver would be a voluntary act on the part of the individual citizen.

We speak briefly of a rather large survey which looked into the acceptability to the public of procuring home receivers and mentioned that statistically, 69 percent of the public favored such an idea, 12.6 percent were undecided, 8 percent opposed, and 2.6 percent strongly opposed.

We point out in closing that again this is a prototype installation, that no funds have been budgeted for further deployment at this time, and that we await performance testing which will commence next month, to indicate the direction we will take in the future.

Mr. Chairman, that really doesn't describe in much detail what the system is, and if you would like, I can offer a brief booklet with pictures that does describe the DID system, which is a rather elaborate apparatus, and take you very quickly through that to give you a feel and understanding of what DIDS is.

Mr. ERLENBORN. Fine, if you would proceed in that manner, and furnish copies of the booklet to the committee member and staff present. Mr. READ. If you turn to page 3, we show in schematic form the Nation's present system which I just described as obsolescent. It was installed in the early 1950's and it is a "Hot Line" system, the largest in the world, they say, which emanates from the underground NORAD, North American Defense Command Center, buried in the mountains at Colorado Springs and has, as you see, many, many terminals in the major cities throughout the country.

There are about 1,000 active terminals on this wire-line system and it can distribute a warning to those terminals, not to the public, but to those terminals, in something less than a minute.

It is, however, as you can imagine, highly vulnerable to nuclear attack. And if you would turn to the next page, page 5, we illustrate briefly the problem about the present warning system.

We show here the segment of the system as it exists in Tennessee, and those round circles represent terminals on that nationwide network. As I have said, the warning information arrives at those points within a minute. But at those points, manual transferrence has to

occur from the National Warning System to some kind of local or State warning system. It may be a State police patrol network; it may be a city fire dispatch system; or it may be, and often is I am afraid, a simple list of telephone numbers to call to alert outlying towns.

So the conclusions from studies made of the time response of the system are shown at the bottom of the page. When we activate this system and deliver this message within about a minute, nationwide, it doesn't reach the public in the rapid way you would hope. We show that 40 percent of the population would receive a warning-and in this case a warning means they would hear a siren sound-40 percent of the public receives warning in 5 minutes, which sounds quite good. Fortyfive percent in 10 minutes, and you reach about 75 percent of the public in 30 minutes.

But bear in mind the public has heard a siren sound in those elapsed times.

Mr. ERLENBORN. May I interrupt at this point to ask you about the percentages. Apparently, they are cumulative? Forty and 45, if you added them together, would be 85 percent. But that apparently isn't true if you are only getting 75 percent in 30 minutes.

Mr. READ. Yes, they are cumulative.

Mr. ERLENBORN. In other words, 40 percent of the population gets this in 5 minutes and only an additional 5 percent in the next 5 minutes? Mr. READ. Right, sir.

Mr. ERLENBORN. Thank you.

Mr. READ. Unfortunately, research has shown when people hear the sirens sound, they don't know what they mean. We have had public education for almost 20 years on this subject, that the steady siren sound means, "Something is up, something is wrong; turn on your radio for information." And that the other sound, a wavering sound, means, "Attack has been detected and you should seek immediately protective shelter."

Mr. ERLENBORN. Could I interrupt there for a moment, too?

Mr. READ. Yes, sir.

Mr. ERLENBORN. I notice on Wednesdays at 11 o'clock, here in Washington, we have a siren sounding and the bells ring in the House and I suppose the Senate; I haven't been over on that side at 11 o'clock on Wednesday. It has occurred to me, if we had an enemy with 1 ounce of sense, a sneak attack could be launched at 11 o'clock on a Wednesday, don't you think?

Mr. READ. Yes, I have heard that. It is the second Wednesday of every month at exactly 11 o'clock.

Mr. ERLENBORN. That reduces our exposure to only 12 times a year. Mr. READ. There are 300 sirens in the Washington metropolitan area and just to make sure they are working, it was felt they needed to be sounded at least monthly.

So the time elapsed to cause people to hear a siren sound is more than you would want in the missile age and the fact they don't understand how to behave when they hear the sound is a serious shortcoming. So, quite obviously, they need more than a sound; they need a voice, or information message to connect the alert, which represents the siren, to a meaning of how they should protect themselves.

That is exactly why we have undertaken to develop the so-called DID system. If you turn to page 7, you see in picture form what the system comprises.

At the bottom center of the page, we call for, nationwide, 10 large, powerful distribution transmitters at low frequency, just below the broadcast band, and to the right you see the kinds of receivers that these transmitting stations would activate. There are three in nature. At the top, the most common would be the voice receiver, for the smaller city, for the mayor, perhaps in his office where there is no need for hard copy message.

Next down is another type of receiver, which receives the alarm and voice message by radio teletype, where there is need for hard copy, such as in the command center of a large city where you wanted to be absolutely certain the message was properly received and understood before taking further action.

Finally, at the bottom, is a receiver which activates sirens directly. This would mean, in effect, that DIDS, when installed, would be able to sound all sirens with the rising and falling sound that means "to take immediate protective action," all sirens in the Nation, which in the missile age again, with only 10 to 15 minutes available after the launch of a missile from enemy soil, only that amount of time available to take action, seems to call for national sounding of all sirens.

Now, the two large stations shown at left center would come later on and they merely serve to control the 10 distribution stations. Meanwhile, the 10 distribution stations are activated by commercial lines through secure routing and military-type circuits.

That is the backbone of the DID system.

If you will turn to page 9, you see where these 10 distribution stations would be positioned and this map results from a great deal of field investigation, which shows that you would get the kind of coverage shown by those contours, from putting a station at those locations. This being low frequency provides great coverage compared with high frequency of FM, as you would know. So 10 stations would cover the continental United States. A separate solution would be necessary for Hawaii and Alaska, and the studies on those two States are underway. Passing quickly over 10 and 11, those would take some study but they make the point from war gaming that we have done by computer, the survivors added by reason of the faster warning afforded by DIDS, range from 10 to 27 million. That is, survivors added compared with not having the DIDS rapid response warning system.

Now, the wide range of 10 to 27 million is accounted for by different shelter postures over the years, the nature of different attacks, so it is a range of likely survivors added resulting from the installation of DIDS.

Turning to page 13, we see the coverage afforded by the station ready to go on the air in a few days at Edgewood, Md. As I have said, there are roughly 50 million people residing in the shaded area, and the metropolitan areas are shown by crosshatch. Ten States are affected in the coverage area, and we are at work now installing 500 of the 3 different kinds of receivers that I mentioned on an earlier page. These would be typically installed in city fire dispatch offices, State police radio offices, and other places where, when the warning is received on the DIDS receiver, a man could translate quickly that warning to other systems he might have. These receivers are entirely to be in the hands of government, so DIDS is defined briefly as a government-to-government system. All the terminals, which would number 40,000 in full deployment, nationwide, would be in the hands of either