-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Open letter to NGA Director
Date: Fri, 28 Jan 2005 14:42:43 -0600
From: McEathron, Scott R <[log in to unmask]>
To: Maps and Air Photo Systems Forum <[log in to unmask]>

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609 N. Eagle Pass Dr.
Lawrence, KS  66049

January 28, 2005

In reply to: Media Release NGA-04-11

James R. Clapper, Jr.
Lieutenant General, USAF (Ret.)
Director
National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency
Mail Stop D-111, Attn: Public Release of Aeronautical Products
4600 Sangamore Road
Bethesda, MD  20816-5003

Dear General Clapper:

Thank you for providing this opportunity for public comment on the
National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) proposal to remove
aeronautical information from public sale and distribution.  Several
excellent reasons are evident for NGA keeping these geospatial data
products publicly available.

As a map librarian at the T. R. Smith Map Collections at the University
of Kansas (KU), I see many of these maps used regularly for educational
and scholarly purposes.  For example, during the past year, faculty and
graduate student researchers mapping the distribution of species
specimens from the KU Natural History Museum and Biodiversity Research
Center have used the Joint Operations Graphic-Air (JOG-A) series maps
from this library.  Furthermore, industry, the public, and service
people from Fort Leavenworth, also use the NGA maps and data from this
library on a regular basis.  Currently, a local engineering firm is
using JOG maps from KU for the reconstruction of a dam across a
tributary of the Tigris River.

I encourage you to think more broadly in your assessment of "the
threat," and the collaboration that will be necessary to prevail in this
"war of terror."  If the roots of terrorism are ignorance, poverty and
selfishness, librarians have long been working to end these problems at
the frontlines.  In your Pathfinder article "A Sense of Urgency," you
state that neither the NGA "or the broader Intelligence Community (IC)
"as a whole, can do it on our own."  I agree, yet would also include
higher education, not just industry within that effort.  I urge you to
recognize and exploit the informal collaboration that is already
happening between government, industry and higher education in the
production, analysis and distribution of geospatial intelligence
(GEOINT).  Withdrawal of information and data products from the public
will only serve to cripple these collaborative efforts.

A basic tenet of our republic is that free people must be well informed
to govern themselves.  Cooperation between agencies of the United States
Government and American libraries has been a foundation stone within the
building process of an informed public.  We need to carry forward and
expand this partnership and not detract from it.

Sincerely,
Scott R. McEathron

C:      The Honorable Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense
        The Honorable Peter Goss, Director of Central Intelligence
        The Honorable Pat Roberts, United States Senate
        The Honorable Sam Brownback, United States Senate
        The Honorable Dennis Moore, United States House of
Representatives

The views express here represent those of the author and not necessarily
those of the University of Kansas or the State of Kansas