H.R. 14135, 'TO ESTABLISH A NATIONAL RESOURCE INFORMATION SYSTEM, AND FOR OTHER PURPOSES.'

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP80B01495R000500050044-7
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 19, 2016
• Document Release Date: November 30, 2006
• Sequence Number: 44
• Publication Date: April 30, 1974
• Content Type: MF

Approved For Release 2006/12/01: CIA-RDP80B01495R000500050044-7
OLC 74-0835
0 APR `1,J1 fl- - -
MEMORANDUM FOR: Aeputy Director for Intelligence
Deputy Director for Operations
Deputy Director for Management and Services
Deputy Director for Science and Technology
General Counsel
Director of Security
Information Systems Analysis Staff/DDM&S
NIO/Energy Office
SUBJECT : H. R. 14135, "To establish a National Resource
Information System, and for other purposes. "
1. Chairman Staggers, House Committee on Interstate and
Foreign Commerce, has requested our comments on H. R. 14135,
introduced by Representative Peter W. Rodino, Jr. (D., N. J.), which
establishes a National Resource Information System to maintain a
central information bank on all natural resources affecting the
United States. The purpose is to provide Government, industry and the
public information to assist in developing national policies, to conserve
resources, to aid the economy and technology, to protect the environ-
ment and to better operate regulatory systems. A Bureau of National
Resource Information is established within the Department of Commerce.
Natural resource companies would be required under the bill to provide
information upon demand. Refusal or providing false information can
result in fine and imprisonment.
2. The bill establishes three categories of information, public,
confidential and secret. The confidential files would contain information
provided by a private company if the information concerns national
security or might benefit a competitor. The secret library concerns
that information which for reasons of national security or competitive
equities must be wholly suppressed or published only in statistical form.
Only employees of the new Bureau and of Commerce as designated may
have access to secret files. Confidential files are open to all branches
of Government. Under established criteria, information may be trans-
ferred from one category to another. All information, under section 208(e),
is to be released at the end of twenty-five years unless a hearing is
requested. Under section 208(f) any information must be made public
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if it in any way .has come into public domain. Section 209 provides
penalty of $2, 000 fine and two years imprisonment for the unauthorized
disclosure of information by an employee. If the disclosure is made
with intent to harm the U. S. national security; to affect a company
competitively; or to invade a right of privacy, the fine is increased
to $20, 000 and imprisonment to twenty years.
3. Section 702 of the bill amends the Freedom of Information
Act to provide that nothing in that Act shall prevent any agency from
providing the new Bureau of National Resource Information any natural
resource information, regardless from whom or when it was obtained.
4. Section 703 amends the Federal Reports Act of 1942, -title 44
U. S. C. sections 3504-8, and establishes the Bureau of National
Resource Information as the collecting agency for national resources
information. The collecting program is to be established in coordination
with other agencies having a need and interest in the information. There
is a proviso that requests upon any agency for resource information must
not prevent or unreasonably delay any agency from collecting any
information which it is expressly directed to collect by law.
5. It is requested that you review H. R. 14135 and submit your
comments no later tan 10 May for the preparation of a reply from
the Director to Chairman Staggers. An immediate reaction is the
apparent conflict with the Director's responsibility to protect intelligence
sources and methods and the effect upon intelligence collection programs,
particularly those under the Domestic Contacts Division.
Legislative Counsel
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