Representative Asks End to Littauer Ban

A Congressman has protested security blocks to World War II research material now stored in the basement of Littauer.

John E. Moss (D-Cal.) wrote Defense Secretary Charles E. Wilson last week, forwarding a University request to have material accumulated during the war declassified. Moss, chairman of a House sub-committee on Government Information, said the material occupied "badly needed library space equivalent to a room 100 by 70 feet, packed tightly from floor to ceiling." He said storage costs amounted to $1200 per year.

Moss asserted that the material includes "not only administrative and personal records, but also notebooks and reports of the scientists who did the work." The classified data were not only papers relating to scientific research done here during the war, but also contract and personnel records.

The Congressman said that "no one presently at Harvard has security clearance to look at the material," and asked early action by the Defense Department to clear up the problem of what was to remain classified, what could be disposed of, what could be returned to the government and what could be made available to scientists.

Moss wrote directly to Wilson, "in the hope that a solution can be found to unravel the maze of red tape hiding a wealth of such material not only at Harvard but at other universities and in government warehouses."

The material has been stored since World War II, and the security classifications range all the way up to Top Secret. Some has probably been declassified in the last twelve years, but library officials do not know which documents they may make public.

Moss' sub-committee has conducted an insistent series of inquiries into executive department secrecy policies in the last few years.