Senator TUNNEY. On page 5 of the GAO report, it is mentioned that the Nation has not achieved an integrated minerals resources policy.

Now, GAO must have known about your modeling capabilities with regard to copper and coal at the time this report was written-unfortunately we can't ask them because they are gone but I'm curious to know what you feel, insofar as the Department of the Interior is concerned, they were referring to when they made that criticism and how do you respond to it?

Dr. CARLSON. They referred to the inventory of R. & D. Our inventory shows 1.1 billion. They are operating off a small base of the information now available, I think. There is a moving target.

Because of the oil cartel experience, there is a major move on to make improvements across the board, not only in the case of energy, but in nonenergy areas.

So I would have to say that the data base on which that conclusion was based obviously had to be changed. I dare say there is considerable improvement in the capability we have there now. We have issued studies on materials that are most critical to us in terms of possible cartels being able to jack the price up and hold back the supply.

We rank bauxite, aluminum and alumina the most serious, and then chromium and platinum next.

We have made studies to overcome the threat of a cartel being made against us. For example, I have the March 1975, Aluminum, Chromium. Platinum. Palladium Report. These analyses are going on. They are improved over what they were in the past, but we still have a long way to go before we are completely satisfied.

I would not argue we are there in terms of analyses. There has been a major step forward in the last year. It is not only in terms of the resource materials, but it is associated with where they are coming from. When I was at the World Petroleum Congress, I was impressed in talking with the people from the People's Republic of China. I talked to many of our Embassy personnel and people associated with keeping up on this. and I was impressed by the fact that the information is fragmented and is not being brought together.

Accordingly. I ordered a special study of the People's Republic of China and their strong mineral base.1 showing where they are and where they will go in the later years. I am sure the oil supply they will give to the Asian countries and fertilizers and ores will have impact on our basic foreign policy as well as our economic policy.

This information will be helpful. It helps in terms of cartels, by the way. If the People's Republic of China becomes a supplier of crude oil, it does affect the cartel's ability to operate worldwide.

I should bring to your attention the Federal Council on Science and Technology, which is an instrumentality to bring together coordination of Federal activities. You mentioned the COMAT Committee which I chair for the Federal Council of Science and Technology. We are in the middle of inventorving the materials R. & D. We should have it completed in January. We will look forward to sharing it with the National Commission on Supplies and Shortages as well as other interested groups. We have an effort going showing what the materials limitations are to energy supply in the future, and materials solution to the environmental problems in the future.

I think this has been a helpful and useful effort. I think as opposed to my talking further. Mr. Chairman, perhaps it would be best if I responded to your questions.

Senator TUNNEY. Thank you very much. Mr. Carlson.

I have heard that Interior has done a lot in the last 2 years to develop a greater capability. Isn't it true that Interior's primary concern and responsibility is with the development of domestic supplies? This emphasis does not facilitate a broad look at materials availability questions, including international supply questions and trade policy.

Mr. CARLSON. That is not correct.

We have expanded the number of mineral attachés. They are State Department employees who work in close association with our Department. We have the basic responsibility for data collection worldwide to fit into what the mineral situation is around the world.

We basically collect that information. We have facilitated that capability by reorganization of the Bureau of Mines earlier this year. For instance, the China study that I cited obviously is not a domestic study. Soon we will have one coming out on Africa, and the inter

1 "The People's Republic of China-A New Industrial Power With a Strong Mineral Base." U.S. Bureau of Mines, Stock No. 024-044-01801-1. Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C. 20402, $3.75.

national volume of the Bureau of Mines "Minerals Yearbook" covers every nation.

We have had this responsibility, this input. The basic input on minerals that goes to the State Department and other Federal and State agencies comes from the collection capability of the Bureau of Mines. This is the backbone of our mineral information.

Senator TUNNEY. Is the Department of the Interior responsible for coordinating materials policy, or at least mineral policy?

Dr. CARLSON. We have the primary responsibility for minerals and materials, at least for all materials of mineral origin, up to the point where they lose identity as such.

The Department of Commerce has responsibility in terms of the materials that goes to manufacturing, and finally to the ultimate con

sumer.

That is how we split up our responsibilities in the Federal Govern

ment.

Senator TUNNEY. The GAO report says at the base, information is fed in by a variety of agencies. At the apex exists a decisionmaking capability-the Economic Policy Board, for example. What is lacking is an institutional capability, transcending individual agency concerns for, one, monitoring all aspects of the materials supply problem; two, anticipating issues requiring policy decisions; and, three, accomplishing necessary analysis of alternatives in a timely fashion. In the absence of a permanent institution, decisionmakers are likely to rely on an information force-feeding process whereby issues reach the top on a random basis.

Present arrangements prevent decisionmakers from having a complete and timely analysis. That, of course, seems to contradict what you have just suggested in your testimony is the case.

Dr. CARLSON. I think there has to be recognition that there is a need for the information. We don't always anticipate what the Antitrust Division would find is useful information in terms of the structure of an industry, until we have feedback as to where they are going with vertical, horizontal, and conglomerate integration.

In terms of recognition of the problem, I think we should recognize we have basic uncertainties. Most people did not expect a cartel to be as effective as the oil cartel we saw in October of 1973, and especially when it increased prices in December of 1973. That was not anticipated.

The suppliers of information did not necessarily anticipate that. There will be those shocks that cannot be predicted with accuracy. There is a basic uncertainty we have to deal with, and we will miss data collection that it would have been nice to have if we didn't have that uncertainty.

Yes there is a need in terms of the central part of the Government to be able to cut across different looks at different kinds of policies. Materials themselves sometimes have policy issues associated with them, but they are often just part of the data process that feeds into other objectives. We have to be careful in handling it as an entity because it is not an end itself. It fits in with other objectives; say, energy policy. Some of that conclusion—and I haven't had the benefit of the report, so based on your quote here I would take exception to

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I stenstore foit 13—for a person whose mind is as orderly # JONA COTONET's 10 zrasani kiy va vald object to a means of aminating so much of the replicatice of reporting and requests for reports that presently exists with these runs agencies for getting energy and materials information, with the various agencies responsible for materials policy in this commry.

Doesn't it make sense to have something like a National Commission on Supplies and Shortages that is able to eat across these various institutional responsibilities and fefdoms, if you will. for the purposes of establishing broad policy, not specific detailed policy as it relates to the development of an ore resource, but in establishing general policy.

Dr. CARLSON. Taking specifically your staf working draft, the role in the Federal Government. I look at that as another competing agency. You will have an additional fragmentation. I don't think that gets you anywhere. You may be worse of. You would be better off putting that information somewhere else and reducing the fragmen

tation

In terms of setting up mechanisms such as a Council on Material Management or materials R. & D. coordinating committee the President has complete authority to set up his Executive Office any way he wishes by Executive order-that could be set up and agency representatives could be assigned to it easily.

I think the mechanism you have wouldn't necessarily improve the situation. You would have fragmentation and you would have another agency in the Federal Government clamoring for funds and playing a similar role that the other mission agencies are now doing.

I agree that there is some fragmenting of data collection that should be reduced. However, the pluralism on use, I think, is appropriate. We have objectives, different ones in Government, and the data has to feed to them.

I recommend that we find out where in the Government the basic information is collected and then build that up and lean against efforts to fragment it.

Part of the problem is ours in the executive branch. Every time we have new crises, we set up a new agency and we fragment it for emphasis. But the other part of the problem is the one you raise in your book-namely that each committee of the Congress wants to get into each of the new objectives being emphasized and have a piece of the action.

So they help with the fragmentation.

Senator TUNNEY. That is right.

I don't think there is any question that the finger can be pointed at both branches. We are all part of it, so we can take our fair share of the blame. But I am disturbed. I understand what you are saying, and you are making it very clear, but I'm not sure that I understand the implications of what you are saying, unless you are going to turn the Department of the Interior into this data collection agency that you have referred to as being needed to coordinate information gathering, analysis, and dissemination as it relates to materials policy.

Personally, whether it is the Department of Interior or the National Commission on Supplies and Shortages, the name doesn't make any difference. A rose by any other name smells as sweet. What is important is you have an agency that is capable of collecting that information, analyzing it, and disseminating. The one problem that I have with the Department of Interior in collecting the information, being completely responsible, is that it has a line of responsibility. It has a functional responsibility which, in my view, would at times be competitive with the objectivity that I think that any such data collection and analysis agency ought to have if it were going to be totally objective in its approach.

I think there would be a tendency, if anything, to perhaps secret information or to develop information with a bias in order to show how well the Department was doing in its functional responsibilities. I just think that there is a difference between the data collection responsibility and a functional materials responsibility.

Dr. CARLSON. Any time you set up organizations within Government, you have to take account of the objectives and insensitivities. Basic data collection is the mission of the Bureau of Mines and the Geological Survey. It has been for a hundred years. There is considerable ignorance about what is being done. The Congress has passed the Mining and Minerals Policy Act of 1970, pursuant to which we give an annual report. We update where every mineral is in terms of the supply and demand situation. We have also formed interagency minerals coordinating mechanisms, with 95 different interagency organizations associated with each of the minerals. We issue information on a monthly basis in "Mineral and Materials"1 and we have a hot line, a telephone number that anyone can call to pick up the latest information on anything that deals with minerals (Office of Mineral Information, Bureau of Mines, Washington, D.C. 202–634–1004).

When you talk of mineral supply and demand, your chances for bias in that data collection is less than when you are talking about judgmental factors that can enter a policy area that is not science fact oriented. Your bias is probably less than what you may have in other institutions that you might set up for that purpose.

Senator TUNNEY. Getting away from the highest level of abstraction and getting down to specifics, what about the situation that existed at the time the decision was made to join the International Tin Agreement. The State Department was the sole agency in Government pushing for the United States to sign. DOI opposed it.

It is my understanding the GAO wanted to have access to the decision papers on how the policy question was resolved and what the

1 "Minerals and Materials-A Monthly Survey," U.S. Bureau of Mines, Publications Branch, 4800 Forbes Ave., Pittsburgh, Pa. 15213.