President, the extent that it alters or changes that situation will be a matter for consultation between OCDM and the DOD and the Bureau of the Budget. And if you would like me to analyze my determination of the effect of the Executive Order on these delegations, I will do so, and it might shed some light on the appropriation

matter.

Mr. ROBACK. Mr. Ellis, the chairman is inquiring about the statement, on page 20 of your presentation, a declarative statement that the practice of consolidated budgeting in OCDM for delegated civil defense functions will now revert to the former situation where each agency is responsible for its own budgeting. It is not clear in the statement whether they are going to absorb civil defense functions in their regular budgets, or do separate budgeting for civil defense. In either event, the chairman is inquiring as to your understanding and your arrangement and your anticipation of whether the Appropriations Committees will go for a situation which heretofore they were unwilling to go for; namely separate agency budgeting for civil defense.

Mr. ELLIS. I would be inclined to believe that to supply the budg etary needs of the various agencies, in order to adequately perform their delegations, the appropriations should be made to the agencies direct, or to the President of the United States, and that the distribution would be made by him. We would probably follow this up with a substitution of the delegate powers now outstanding from Emergency Preparedness Orders issued by the OCDM for directions issued by the Chief Executive himself. We feel that that would strengthen the delegate authority, and give a greater sense of responsibility to agencies, and it would be a part of their direct obligation to the President, and not a part of their direct obligation to the OCDM. Mr. ROBACK. It is your testimony that a civil defense budget would be requested by the President for allocation by him under such authority as he may have?

Mr. ELLIS. I would think that that would be a determination to be ultimately made by the Bureau of the Budget after consultation with the Congress, because whether it would go to the agencies direct or be an appropriation to the executive department would be a matter for determination. I think that something can be done to improve the situation as it presently exists. I think that vitality is needed if these agencies are to do a better job. As the chairman has pointed out, the committee has many misgivings about these delegations. However, I think they can be improved. Furthermore, we should expand them. There are 18 additional delegations that can be given to the agencies.

OVERALL AUTHORITY OF OCDM (OEP)

Mr. HOLIFIELD. The thing that alarms me is, I can see here an extensive delegation of authority which will result in a hodgepodge of contradictory planning and contradictory evaluation of programs which will bring on chaos in this whole plan. Somebody somewhere has to do the planning. And I would assume that the Office of Emergency Planning would plan an overall program and recommend it to the President. And I would assume that in that overall program

there would be definite delineation of areas of function based upon the funding, of course, which each agency would follow.

Now, if the Office of Emergency Planning does not have the authority to do overall planning for the complete program and make recommendations to the President for the whole program, subdivided into those areas of function which would go to the different departments, then the Office of Emergency Planning becomes merely a talking society and a reading society. But if the Office of Emergency Planning has the authority to develop a national plan, to subdivide the functions to the appropriate agency, to recommend the amount of budget which that agency should have to carry out its assigned tasks, to follow up that agency and find out if it does request in its overall budget the specific amount recommended by the Office of Emergency Planning, and if it does not, to go to the President and say to the President "Well, the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare is now asking the Budget Bureau for $25 million. In our opinion there should be $50 million requested, and we base that upon the analysis that we made”—and you can at that time present your supporting documents as to why it should be $50 million rather than $25 million-then at that point, if the President sustains the Office of Emergency Planning's overall plan, and that specific part of it, he would then immediately execute an Executive Order to the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare for them to raise their sights from $25 million to $50 million.

Now, of course, this would be done and the Budget Bureau would naturally scrutinize it, but they would scrutinize it on the basis of an overall plan which we make the assumption you had already cleared with the President and he had approved.

Well, let's carry this analysis one step forward. I am trying to find out what your Office of Emergency Planning is going to do, outside of talking and possibly complaining. Would you then, assuming that you had gone through that procedure, follow up the work of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, and go into that agency and see how they had carried this function out, and if you found that although they had received the money they hadn't carried it out, or they were not storing the material properly, do you conceive it to be your duty to call to the attention of the President that this particular agency and I am just taking Health, Education, and Welfare as an example—is not carrying out its function in an expeditious manner?

Now, if you do not have this complete power to plan, observe, supervise-I mean to supervise not from the standpoint of going in and doing their work for them, but at least scrutinizing-and then report back to the President, this whole thing is going to fall between the cracks of these 15 or 18 different agencies that you talk about. There has got to be somebody that supervises and coordinates this overall plan. And if it isn't your agency, then I want to know where that responsibility of supervision and reporting back to the Commander in Chief and the President is.

Mr. ELLIS. Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, I think you placed your hand on the pulse of a very critical matter. I have read the testimony of the Secretary of Defense before this committee, and I would agree that certainly the Secretary of Defense, as to those

matters and things assigned to the Defense Department under the Civil Defense Act, would need to coordinate with the other agencies of Government performing similar or related civil defense problems. But my concept of this thing is that there exists a matter of comity between agencies of Government operating at the same level, and that the President's Executive Order places in the Office of Emergency Planning the overall role of coordination which you say is essential, and which I am inclined to agree is essential. Thus the Office of Emergency Planning, operating by virtue of advice to the President, would execute overall authority and complete coordination in this entire

area.

Now, to back that up, sir, I would like to call attention to the Executive Order of July 20. And this is Executive Order 10952 about which there was considerable testimony yesterday. And I suggest that the committee consider section 2 of that Presidential Executive Order where the duties and responsibilities of the Office of Civil and Defense Mobilization are assigned. Under section 2, is a subdivision, and under that subdivision this little (ii) reads

Mr. HOLIFIELD. I have a copy.

Mr. ELLIS. This little (ii) reads:

there shall be this assigned to the Office of Civil Defense Mobilization, reviewing and coordinating the civil defense activities of the Federal departments and agencies with each other, and with the activities of the States and neighboring countries in accordance with section 201 (b) of the act.

So that power under the Executive Order is granted to the Office of Emergency Planning.

Now, what is 201(b) of the Federal Civil Defense Act of 1950? Section 201(b) is this:

There shall be in OCDM the authority to delegate with the approval of the President to the several departments and agencies of the Federal Government appropriate civil defense responsibilities, and review and coordinate the civil defense activities of the departments and agencies with each other, and with the activities of the States and neighboring countries.

Under this Civil Defense Act, and that provision which I have just read, is the delegation of the authority which is possessed by OCDM to make these emergency preparedness orders. And here, under the Executive Order that authority is clearly reserved.

Now, to back up what I have said about this, I call your attention, sir, to the page of the Executive Order under section 3. On page 3 of the Executive Order it says:

Excluded functions. Those functions which are excluded to the DOD.

What is excluded to the DOD? There is excluded section 201(b). In other words, the DOD is specifically, by the terms of this order, prevented from making any assignments to other agencies. And that power is under the other section which I first read reserved to the OCDM.

Mr. HOLIFIELD. Which would be the OEP.

Mr. ELLIS. Which would be the OEP. And that power is the basic inherent power in the Civil Defense Act of 1950.

Consequently, I am of the opinion that under the terms of this Executive Order that there remains in the Office of the President the coordination right which is so important to the chairman, and I am sure to this committee, in keeping this matter operating in its proper

relationship and injects the position throughout the entire program. Mr. HOLIFIELD. Then I am going to assume, in view of the Executive Order and the act which you have cited, and in view of your testimony, that the Office of Emergency Planning will be the arm of the President as far as overall national planning is concerned, give advice as to the delegation of authority and function, retain the power to follow up those delegations and scrutinize their implementation, and report back to the President that delegations A, B, and C are being carried out by the agencies, and delegation D is not doing a good job, it needs the President's attention. And the President then can utilize his judgment as to whether he calls in agency D on the carpet and says to them, "Why are you not implementing the function that has been assigned to you under the delegation of this Executive Order?"

Is my assumption your understanding?

Mr. ELLIS. With this reservation, sir, that I feel that for DOD to perform in the area of defense, the overall job which it is going to be required to perform, it should have, certainly, a right to correlate with the other agencies the various functions and to bring them into balance.

Mr. HOLIFIELD. But those are agencies with which they deal under this delegated authority. Now, there is an overall obligation, as I understand-first, there is the primary obligation of the Department of Defense to report back to, I assume, the Office of Emergency Planning of the President, I am not quite clear on that, that they fulfilled their delegation in the following way.

But I am also assuming that if you are going to function as the overall Office of Emergency Planning for the whole Nation, that you have not only an interest in what the Department of Defense does, at least the power to evaluate it for the benefit of the President, but you also have all these other areas which are outside and excluded from the Department of Defense.

Mr. ELLIS. That is right, sir.

Mr. HOLIFIELD. You have the same power to scrutinize these other delegations of functions, and to bring back a report to the President. Now, if you don't have that power, why this thing is going to fall between the cracks of all these different delegations just like it did before. I called it diffusion of responsibility and diffusion of function and loss of effectiveness, because in most instances, following that diffusion of function and responsibility, there was no adequate funding for them to even carry out the limited missions that they were given to carry out.

So unless the Office of Emergency Planning has this overall power of evaluation and reporting back to the President, then I would say that you are engaged in a futile exercise.

Mr. ELLIS. Sir, you understand that whatever the meaning of Executive Order No. 10952 is, it is binding upon my office, and I have such authority as I receive under that order. And I will not either expand, enlarge, or interpret that order other than in the way I think the President intended it to be.

Mr. HOLIFIELD. I understand that. And I understand that you may not yet be clear on some of these points. But I think the committee wants to stress some of these points of danger which we see and which we have seen exhibited in the previous delegations of authority.

Mr. ELLIS. Might I read, sir, the President's own words in respect to this matter, which might give some clarification?

Mr. HOLIFIELD. All right.

Mr. ELLIS. The President stated:

The civil defense, like other elements of the total nonmilitary defense program, reaches into virtually every phase of our Government and our national life. I shall, accordingly, be actively concerned with the problem of coordinating civil defense preparations with other nonmilitary defense preparations required to achieve a strong position for our Nation. In this I shall be represented and assisted by the Director of the Office of Civil Defense and Mobilization.

That seems to me very clear.

Mr. HOLIFIELD. That sounds very clear. But I have heard statements like that before, and I am going to explore it further. I am going to have the Budget Bureau up here to get their understanding. All I am asking you for today is your understanding. Your understanding may be right and it may be wrong. You may be upheld in a wide scope of exercise of authority which I think the Office of Emergency Planning should have, or you may be deprived of that power. I don't know how this is going to work out. And I am going to request the Director of the Bureau of the Budget to come up and give his interpretation of this, too, because I want it to be on the record that this committee is going to look at this thing with a magnifying glass. The fact that it happens to be a Democratic administration which is in power doesn't mean a thing to the chairman of the subcommittee. I am only interested in one thing, and that is in the protection of the people of the United States. And if this program proves to be inadequate, I am going to say so on the House floor, and I am going to say so in the report of this subcommittee, even if I have to write an additional view. But I don't think I will have to do that, because I know that the members of the subcommittee have the same intense interest in this subject that I have, and I am sure they feel the same way about it. If they don't, they will have an opportunity to express their views.

Mr. RIEHLMAN. May I make just a brief statement.

Mr. Chairman, I want to say to Mr. Ellis that the presentation he made this morning is probably one of the boldest approaches to the program this committee has had. It is wide in scope and very comprehensive.

I think that my main feeling along this line would be the same as my chairman, that it sounds good.

And I think that the approach that you have made is excellent as far as I am concerned.

But we are more concerned, as the chairman said, as to whether or not you are going to have the authority to carry out the program which you have outlined to us because, after all, the committee has seen-we have heard testimony in the past that has been very interesting and constructive, but we have seen no results.

And the problem that-or the fear that I have, may I put it that way is that you may not have the opportunity to carry out this expensive program and to ride herd over these different agencies which you are going to give authority to carry out the program. The question of complication arises in my mind between your responsibility and that delegated to the DOD, how far you can go in riding

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