As in the case of other disarmament agreements, there will always be the possibility of the hidden development of military technology under the guise of civilian technology. We should recognize this possibility but not be deterred from proceeding with securing an agreement.

House Resolution 28 properly places a ban on weather modification in an international forum. Because of the international and open tradition that has characterized the development of meterology, this forum is much more appropriate than a bilateral agreement which I understand is under consideration by the United States and the Soviet Union.

My only reservation about House Resolution 28 is that weather modification is only one form of environmental warfare. While weather modification is in some ways the most advanced form of environmental modification, technologies of other forms are and will be developed. Some of these can be used as weapons of war. Because of this, I would favor either a unilateral rejection of these methods since they bring no perceptible advantages to the United States or the broadening of House Resolution 28 to include all techniques of geophysical warfare.

The latter approach, however, raises some difficult political issues. The Soviets tabled a proposed convention at the 29th session of the General Assembly. Their proposal is both vague and general, containing prohibitions that I am sure would not be acceptable to this country.

In my view, the best approach today would be a resolution along the lines of Senate Resolution 71 passed by the Senate in 1973, but one that is more specific and not containing the extraneous elements that reduce the usefulness of the Soviet proposal.

House Resolution 28 is important in that it emphasizes the longrange consequences of developing a new technology and the use of that technology for other than peaceful purposes.

The lesson of the Vietnam experience is not that rainmaking is an inefficient means for slowing logistical movement in jungle trails. Rather, the lesson is that one can conduct covert operations using a new technology in a democracy without the knowledge of the people. This lesson has far-reaching implications as the technology for environmental modification makes rapid progress. House Resolution 28 represents a significant step in banning any future application of that technology for military purposes.

In summary, I would first advocate an environmental warfare convention specific enough to include the principal technologies that could be developed for destructive purposes but not to ban the legitimate use of the atmosphere and oceans.

If this proves impossible, then I would support a narrower ban on weather modification as proposed in House Resolution 28. Finally, if an agreement on a permanent ban cannot be achieved, then I would strongly support a ban on weather modification for military purposes until the experiments proposed for GARP are completed.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. FRASER. Thank you, Dr. MacDonald. That is a very elucidative

statement.

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I would like to tell our colleague, Mr. Gude, that I want to apologize for beginning without him. In his absence, I thought it would expedite matters if we went ahead.

Mr. GUDE. We will probably have some more bells.

Mr. FRASER. Before you start, I want to express my appreciation for your interest in this subject. You are one of the few people in the House who has really made a study of this problem and made it a point to raise this issue in a way that should command attention.

STATEMENT OF HON. GILBERT GUIDE, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF MARYLAND

Mr. GUDE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate your leadership and persistence in pursuing the enactment of legislation in this area. It is a real pleasure for me to be before your subcommittee once again and to testify in support of House Resolution 28 calling for agreement among the members of the United Nations to prohibit the use of weather modification as a weapon of war.

Last year, many of our colleagues joined in cosponsoring a similar resolution, House Resolution 329. This year's effort has 39 cosponsors. In my previous testimony before this subcommittee, I commented at length on the potential of weather modification research and technology and the dangers they pose in terms of control, identification, and detection. It was because of those dangers that I urged adoption of the resolution, to put further impetus behind Government efforts to draft a treaty with the Soviet Union to ban weather modification as a weapon of war.

Today we find ourselves somewhat farther along the road to effective control of weather modification activities. I consider the case. for a treaty and for better control over weather research to be thoroughly established, and I do not intend to replow that same ground at this time.

Further, our Government has indicated that significant progress has been made in the development of a draft treaty with the Soviet Union on weather modification. Hopefully, such a treaty will serve as a model for a more general treaty to which many nations will be signatories.

The specific details of this treaty which have not been made public, however, raise the first important question which I hope the subcommittee will consider. This is the question of its inclusiveness.

In the period since the last hearing, some questions of definition. of terms have been raised which need clarification. A number of observers, including Stephen Rosenfeld of the Washington Post, following comments made at the last hearing, have drawn a distinction between weather modification and climate modification, the former being, generally, shorter term specific acts seeking to temporarily modify specific weather conditions, and the latter being longer term. more permanent changes.

Dr. Edith Brown Weiss of the Brookings Institution pointed out quite clearly the significance of this distinction in her testimony before the subcommittee last September. I quote from a brief section. of it:

We also need to recognize the limits of the U.S.-Soviet statement. The statement calls only for the "most effective measures possible to overcome the dangers of the use of environmental modification techniques for military purposes" in acceptable ways. The problem is that the statement explicitly refers to climate modification in the text and not to weather modification which is the more imminent problem. It is left ambiguous in the statement, whether the use of weather modification techniques raises "dangers" which need to be

Overcome.

It is quite possible that this distinction is an artificial one, serving only to create doubts and fears where none exist. Nonetheless, the question has been raised, and the Government response thus far has done nothing to answer it. Today's hearing provides an excellent opportunity to do just that.

But I would like to say, at this point, that when this statement was prepared, it was before it was announced that no witness from the executive agencies would be appearing. This is unfortunate, in my view.

I can understand that there is a need for certain specifics in the draft of a treaty to remain confidential. Agreement has been reached, but I can't help but feel that the administration should have a statement at this time. A minimum statement of the U.S. intent could do much to clear the air and resolve the ambiguities of the various terms that are being considered.

In this context, the value of House Resolution 28 is in its effect of reinforcing the Government's intent to negotiate an agreement and in making clear the congressional conception of what such a treaty should contain.

As presently phrased, the resolution seeks an agreement on the prohibition of research, experimentation, or use of weather modification activity as a weapon of war. This is clearly terminology designed to be broadly inclusive of both the long- and short-term definitions as outlined earlier, and the legislative history of this resolution should leave no doubt about that.

In a statement to me, Admiral Davies indicated that when he was testifying before this subcommittee on September 24, 1974. he made clear that the United States had already renounced the use of climate. modification techniques for hostile purposes and that when he was using the term "environmental modification," that this was designed to include both what we have discussed as climate modification as well as earthquakes, tidal waves, and other phenomena which might not fall into that category.

There is considerable semantic confusion at this point which the administration is amplifying by neither discussing the treaty text or commenting on its own intentions.

Under the circumstances, it might be appropriate for this committee to consider amending the resolving clause of the resolution to read, "use of weather and climate and environmental modification as a weapon of war" so as to eliminate any doubt as to congressional intent.

To get away from semantics, however, the operative phrase in the resolving clause is "weapon of war." This indicates that it is the use to which weather modification activity will be put that is the determining factor, not the type of such activity.

Obviously, a short run tactical move like the creation of floodinducing rainfall or a drought at a key time in the crop year are acts of war.

Far more devastating in the long run, though much more difficult to detect as intentional are long-range climatic changes. Prolonged drought-perhaps over a period of years-changes in rainfall patterns, changes in temperature, would have a major impact on the agriculture of a country of an entire region over the long term.

Such an action would be difficult, if not impossible, to perceive as deliberate, leading to a situation where a country would not even know it had been attacked. Though possibilities such as these are technologically more remote-at least, I think they are-they are not inconceivable and must be covered by any treaty.

Any meaningful treaty, therefore, must include both short- and long-term weather modification activities, and it should be the purpose of this hearing to ascertain whether that is the case with the agreement now in draft.

Beyond the question of the scope of any projected treaty, however, is the equally important question of its credibility. Since weather modification activity-used here to include both meanings-is difficult to identify as different from normal weather changes and since it does have legitimate uses, cloud seeding to increase rainfall for agricultural purposes, and airport fog dispersion, to mention two, it will always be difficult to determine adherence to a treaty.

One important indicator of a nation's commitment to a ban on weather warfare is the nature of its weather modification research and the manner in which it is conducted. If weather modification research is open and aboveboard, if it is conducted domestically by domestic agencies, then a fairly high level of credibility can be established. If, on the other hand, weather modification research is conducted in secret, frequently outside the country by military or intelligence agencies, then I would suggest that any treaty would not be worth the paper it is printed on.

Unfortunately, the latter situation is what exists at this time, as Senator Pell, Congressman Frazer, and I indicated in a recent letter to the President.

The text of that letter is appended to my statement. Regrettably, the administration's response to our suggestion, also attached, totally ignored the question of military weather research activities, concentrating instead on other points raised in our letter, thereby emphasizing the question of the Government's real commitment to a weather warfare treaty and raising further doubts as to our credibility. We must understand that civilian control of weather modification research is integrally connected to the development of any kind of treaty. No treaty will be meaningful unless all signators are confident that its terms are being honored and adhered to scrupulously.

It is both proper and desirable for this committee to point out to the administration the concern it has about the scope of Defense Department activities in the field of weather modification and to emphasize the effect of such activities on the successful construction of a treaty.

After receipt of the administration's answer to our letter on this subject. I wrote the chairman of the Appropriations Committee De

fense Subcommittee, Congressman Mahon, urging his subcommittee to delete weather modification funds in the fiscal 1976 Defense Department budget. That subcommittee has previously shown some concern about this same subject, as can be seen in the subcommittee hearings of last year, "Department of Defense Appropriations for 1975, Part 4, Research, Development, Test, and Evaluation."

This year, I have asked the subcommittee to consider not only that question, but whether such activities are properly within the scope of the military budget or whether they should be placed in one of the several civilian agencies also undertaking weather modification research and development: Department of Transportation, Department of the Interior, Department of Commerce-NOAA, Department of Agriculture, National Science Foundation.

In conclusion, Mr. Chairman, on the surface, the Government's pursuit of a weather warfare treaty is most impressive. It is the purpose of this hearing to determine whether that pursuit is more than superficial and whether the treaty that is in the process of development is truly meaningful in terms of the various distinctions I have made. Since no substantive statements have been made yet about the details of the draft, various rumors abound, and I am anxiously awaiting an official statement from the Government.

Second, it is my hope, Mr. Chairman, that you will solicit views of the other witnesses on the other important questions I have raised, particularly that of the relationship between military involvement in weather modification and the credibility of the developing treaty. A treaty which, to use the words of Dr. Weiss, "bans the techniques neither side was planning to use and legitimizes the use in warfare of the weather modification techniques that are more nearly ready for use," and a treaty which lacks credibility because of the ongoing secret military activities of the signatories is not a treaty at all.

The adoption of House Resolution 28 will serve a valuable purpose in this regard by affirming the desire of Congress to see a meaningful treaty and specifying the congressional intent as to what that treaty should contain.

Mr. Chairman, I have not read my entire statement, and would hope that the statement, including the attached correspondence, will be made a part of the record.

Mr. FRASER. We will include it all in the record. Thank you, Mr. Gude. That was very helpful.

[Mr. Gude's prepared statement follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF HON. GILBERT GUDE, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF MARYLAND

Mr. Chairman, it is a real pleasure for me to appear before your subcommittee once again to testify in support of House Resolution 28 calling for an agreement among members of the United Nations to prohibit the use of weather modification as a weapon of war. Last year many of our colleagues joined in sponsoring a similar resolution, H. Res. 329. This year's effort has 39 cosponsors.

In my previous testimony before this subcommittee (September 24, 1974) I commented at length on the potential of weather modification research and technology and the dangers they pose in terms of control, identification, and detection. It was because of those dangers that I urged adoption of the resolution, to put further impetus behind government efforts to draft a treaty with the Soviet Union to ban weather modification as a weapon of war.

Today we find ourselves somewhat farther along the road to effective control of weather modification activities. I consider the case for a treaty and for better