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360 during the next decade, neither the Department of State nor the world’s other foreign ministries showed any institutional interest in the question."® In 1977, the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space held a brief discussion on the scientific search for extraterrestrial intelligence. The Chairman suggested that the COPUOS should not con- tinue to ignore this question, but should give it at least preliminary consid- eration. Two members of the COPUOS listed the search among the possible future tasks of the committee, and one proposed that the task be assigned to a COPUOS Subcommittee. Although the U.N. Secretariat prepared a brief background paper on the question, no further action was taken. United Nations member states had concluded a treaty in 1967 governing the behavior of states in outer space, but that document did not address contact with extraterrestrial intelligence. In March 1985, Professor Allan Goodman of Georgetown University began circulating drafts of a paper titled “Diplomatic Implications of Dis- covering Extraterrestrial Intelligence,” which included a proposed interna- tional “Code of Conduct” for contact. That code had four principles: (1) Anyone who discovers evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence will pub- licly report the contact; (2) any response will be formulated by a process of international consultation; (3) visiting extraterrestrials will be regarded as envoys entitled to diplomatic immunity, protection, and aid in the event of accident; (4) in the event that extraterrestrials appear to pose a threat to human health or peace, no nation shall act without first consulting the U.N. Security Council. During the same year, Paul Ney published a brief article proposing an extraterrestrial contact treaty." Meanwhile, Billingham was stirring up interest in the social and cultural aspects of contact. At the International Astronautical Congress in Stock- holm in October 1985, he proposed that a session at the next Congress address the question of international agreements on four points: the need to distribute the details of a discovery to all nations; the establishment of a mechanism to distribute this knowledge; how to determine if a response should be made and who should make the response; how to determine the natant Af content of the response. Goodman and others presented their thoughts on this subject at the next Congress in Innsbruck, Austria in October 1986. This ideation continued at the October 1987 Congress in Brighton, England. Noticing considerable overlap among these papers, I synthesized the basic elements of various proposals into a single text. As the issues associ- ated with handling a detection appeared to be different from the issues associated with sending a communication, I then separated the relevant language into two draft agreements. When these texts were discussed at an informal meeting of 25 interested people in Brighton, it became clear that it would be much easier to get agreement on how to handle a detection than on how to prepare and send a reply. Annex: Preparing