NASA to Study Information Policy Breach

NASA Administrator Richard H. Truly ordered an investigation Friday of the space agency’s Freedom of Information Act procedures after a congressman charged that NASA had told workers how to avoid disclosing controversial information.

Truly said in a statement he was “extremely concerned” about a document released by Rep. Howard Wolpe (D-Mich.) that is reputed to be official NASA instructions on how to evade some provisions of the act.

“NASA is strongly committed to full compliance with the law and we repudiate the portions of this document that are inconsistent with our policy,” Truly said.

He said he was countermanding the document and was circulating to all senior managers a letter to “remind them that NASA places the utmost value on openness and honesty in government.”

Truly also named a team of National Aeronautics and Space Administration executives to investigate the charges.

Wolpe on Thursday circulated a letter he sent to Truly in which NASA was accused of teaching employees to avoid disclosing information with such tactics as rewriting documents and destroying them.

He said congressional investigators looking into a program to develop the SP-100 nuclear space reactor had found a two-page set of instructions on how to deal with Freedom of Information Act requests. The document, dated Nov. 20, 1989, was unsigned, was addressed to “director’s office” and bore the title “Suggestions for anticipating requests under Freedom of Information Act.”

Wolpe furnished a paper that indicated the document had been prepared by Lawrence Ross, director of NASA’s Lewis Research Center in Cleveland. George Reese, a NASA lawyer, called the document “a misrepresentation.”