SUMMARY STATEMENT OF MR. COLBY Mr. COLBY. I do not have a prepared statement. I have some material I would like to submit to the committee for its attention. I just found out about this hearing yesterday afternoon. Mr. CHAPPELL. We apologize for that. Mr. COLBY. I am privileged to be here, Mr. Chairman. I am not objecting in any way. You know my background, I was a career intelligence officer and eventually became Director. I have been a private citizen for the past eleven years. I have become associated with the arms control process and interested in it out of my experience of monitoring the SALT II provisions while I was in office and have been very interested in the strategic balance between ourselves and the Soviet Union. I have been associated with the Committee for National Security, which is a private organization concerned that we focus on the real dangers to our country rather than only the arms problems that we face. There are many other dangers that I think deserve equal attention, and we, therefore, take a critical idea of building up a Goliath kind of approach to defense. We believe that David won that battle by having the right weapon, using in on the right target despite the preponderance of force of Goliath. On the two bills before you, with respect to the SALT II limits, I think the question here is, is it appropriate for the Congress to do this? And I think the answer is yes, it is. It is clearly within the constitutional authority of the Congress to limit expenditures of this nature, and I think it is also appropriate for the Congress to indicate its concern over the trend of recent developments by the administration, building up to a break out of the SALT II limits. NEGOTIATIONS WITH THE SOVIET UNION We are engaged in a delicate negotiation with the Soviet Union. That is why the Congress agreed to abandon this matter before Reykjavik so the President could go without his hands tied. I do not think that particular meeting was any great success. It is appropriate for the Congress again to assert its concern that we not be the unilateral breakers of the SALT II limits. We talk about the desirability of going ahead with further negotiations, and we certainly agree with that. We have put out some suggestions as to how we might bridge the gap between the American and Soviet positions on the SDI. I think that it is appropriate, however, to express concern that the U.S. is gratuitously breaking out of SALT II. SALT II COMPLIANCE Has SALT II been a perfect treaty? No, no treaty is ever perfect. Has SALT II been in the interest of the U.S. and compliance with SALT II been in the interest of the U.S.? The Soviets have complied with the essential elements of SALT II. There is debate and concern about compliance with some of the minor elements of SALT II. Some of these are ambiguous, and there are arguments on both sides as to whether there was compliance by the Soviets or a violation. But the key to SALT II was the numerical limits to the weapons systems deployed aimed at the United States. In order to maintain those limits the Soviets have destroyed some 1,396 nuclear vehicles and weapons systems. They don't have that many less than they did before, but by the Treaty they have been compelled to destroy that number of nuclear weapons or nuclear missiles aimed at us in order to remain within the Treaty. A treaty that takes 1,396 weapons out of the hands of our enemy is a good treaty. It is a net benefit to the security and safety of the United States. REINTERPRETATION OF THE ABM TREATY If you look at recent developments you have to say that Administration in the past year or two has given some very unfortunate signals as to its interest in arms control: The decision to break out of SALT II, the decisions to reinterpret the ABM Treaty in a fashion which can only be called creative lawyering to relieve us of the requirement that we not develop new space-based defensive systems, or even test them as the Treaty prohibited. Most of the people who negotiated it believed this was the real intent of the Treaty. The idea that we would make a treaty to bar testing old systems but not bar new systems is I think on its face absurd; that we would only bar the testing of obsolete systems and not the testing of new systems. If the object of the ABM Treaty was to stop an ABM race, then its function was to stop testing new kinds of ABM systems. That is what Article V of the Treaty says. The text of Agreed Interpretation D is subject to the two different interpretations, no question about it. This is the subject of a great deal of debate, but I think there is a good argument for the prevailing interpretation. But if you look at this situation as I like to look at these relationships, you reverse the parties. If the Soviets in the last two years had declared their decision to break out of SALT II, the numerical limits, the key to the Treaty, if the Soviets had reinterpreted the ABM Treaty so that they could conduct space-based testing, if the Soviets had decided to develop a whole new weapons system, the SDI, which they hoped would change the balance of power between the United States and the Soviet Union, the United States would be outraged at that situation. Now, I am no apologist for the Soviet Union, I don't trust them, I don't believe you need to trust them. I think you can watch them and that is what we have been doing. But I think the idea of our gratuitously breaking out of SALT II is a totally unnecessary action for our security and is a dangerous one in the relationships that it establishes. We all know that if the Soviets decide to break out of SALT II, they can very substantially increase their arsenal of nuclear weapons aimed at us. In a very short time we will not be facing some 8,000 nuclear weapons, we will be facing many more thousands. I hardly think that is a contribution to the safety of the United States. LIMITATION ON TESTING With respect to a one kiloton limit on testing, again we have a situation where there is a debate as to why we are testing. The Soviets undertook a unilateral moratorium on testing a year-and-ahalf ago, and stuck to it despite the American rejection of it. We have had a whole series of arguments as to why the Americans insist on continuing testing. First we couldn't verify. Then that didn't seem to work out very well because it appears we can verify, at least all the experts say we can. And the Soviets have offered cooperative measures to help us to verify. They even invited a team into the Soviet Union to take the necessary geological soundings that would help us to verify that situation. The next argument was that we needed these tests to guarantee the reliability of our force. And now we discover that in fact, we have conducted very, very few tests over the past years designed for reliability testing, and most of the tests have been for the development of new weapons. We then had the argument that, well, we want to develop new weapons, which is exactly what a test ban is designed to stop, i.e., we have had enough of the development of new weapons, let's stop where we are. If we had passed the Comprehensive Test Ban in 1963 when President Kennedy and Mr. Khrushchev were debating it and the responsibility is even on both sides as to why we did not go to that stage; I am not justifying the Soviet position on that we would not have many of the new weapons that we are now concerned about today. If we had stopped the development of the MIRV, the multiple warhead in the 1972 SALT I Treaty we would not be faced with the Soviet MIRV today which is the most dangerous thing we face. The fact is that arms control agreements, mutual and verifiable, are in the interest of the safety and security of the United States. To recklessly go ahead and tear these up is something that the Congress should have a voice on. Congress can legitimately ask that we hold for a bit until we see how these new treaties can be negotiated that the Administration is working on. The Congress can fully support the idea of these negotiations and I do and hope that they can lead to better treaties in the future. But let's not go in the wrong direction at the same time as we are trying to go in the right direction. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have two things I would like to submit to you, sir. Both are put out by the Arms Control Association. One is a list of the Soviet SALT compliance record, the numbers of different kinds of weapons they have destroyed or otherwise gotten out of the picture so as to remain in compliance with SALT, the other is an analysis of the recent Presidential Report on Soviet Noncompliance with Arms Control Agreements, which analyzes the various elements of that discussion and points out that some of the statements of noncompliance are at least ambiguous if not really a little further than that. Mr. CHAPPELL. They will be placed in the record. [The information follows:] Total Number of SALT-Accountable Soviet Strategic Nuclear In order for the Soviet Union to remain within SALT numerical limits, older delivery vehicles must be dismantled or destroyed as new ones are deployed. ** Since SALT prohibits the construction of new, fixed ICBM launchers, new silo-launched land-based missiles must be deployed in existing launchers and the older missiles removed from the operational forces. Analysis of the WITH ARMS CONTROL AGREEMENTS April 1987 Executive Summary The President's latest Report on Soviet Noncompliance of Arms Control Agreements, dated March 10, 1987, charges the seven arms control agreements, and a "likely" violation of an eighth. The report closely follows last year's noncompliance report, reaffirming every charge while offering neither new charges nor new evidence. Moreover, the report concludes that the Soviet Union has "made no real progress toward meeting our concerns," and states that "compliance with past arms control commitments is an essential prerequisite for future arms control agreements." The administration's most significant charge is that the Soviet Union may be "preparing an ABM defense of its national territory," in violation of the ABM Treaty's fundamental purpose of banning the deployment of a territorial defense against strategic ballistic missiles or the base for such a defense. A Soviet breakout from the fundamental limits of the ABM Treaty could threaten U.S. security and would provide a clear basis for U.S. withdrawal from the ABM Treaty. The administration's charge that the aggregate of Soviet ABM-related activities suggests that the Soviet Union may be preparing a nationwide defense is simply not supported by the evidence. The administration uses the Krasnoyarsk early warning radar, the one clear Soviet violation of the ABM Treaty, in a very misleading fashion, suggesting it is in fact a battle-management radar. The new report also presents as evidence three new Soviet early warning radars, even though it acknowledges they are in themselves "consistent with the ABM Treaty's provision on ballistic missile early warning radars.” The other supporting evidence, described as "likely," "probable," or "ambiguous" violations, are all old issues of marginal military significance, based on contentious interpretations of the available data and the treaty language. This collection of activities does not support the administration's suggestions that the Soviet Union may be preparing a territorial defense against ballistic missiles. As discussed in our analysis, the administration continues to distort the overall compliance picture, exaggerating problem areas of little military significance while ignoring the undisputed positive record of Soviet compliance with most treaty provisions, including the areas of central importance. Moreover, the administration's report ignores recent Soviet actions that have reduced the potential for controversy in several areas: the Soviet Union has removed equipment possibly related to the SS-16 ICBM from the Plesetsk test range, reduced production of the Backfire bomber, agreed to a new Common Understanding on concurrent operations of air defense and ABM components, and dismantled a number of disputed radars at ABM test ranges. In addition, the Soviet Union has continued to dismantle strategic systems to remain in compliance with SALT II even after the United States formally repudiated and intentionally exceeded the SALT II lim its. The administration's report does not discuss SALT II compliance issues in detail, because the United States has repudiated SALT II and no longer considers it to be an existing agreement. Nevertheless, the administration's report cites several Soviet SALT violations as part of the alleged pattern of Soviet noncompliance and offers them as the principal rationale for the U.S. abandonment of SALT II. Considering the gravity and consequences of these charges, our analysis examines the three principal SALT II compliance issues and finds that it is by no means clear that the Soviet Union has in fact violated that agreement. The report fails to take into account new evidence that casts even greater doubt on some of its charges. In the areas of chemical and biological warfare and the Threshold Test Ban Treaty, significant new evidence throwing doubt on the administration's charges has come to light since the last report was issued, yet the administration's charges remain the same. The administration's distortions of the compliance problem undermine confidence in the arms control process, thereby dimming future prospects for arms control agreements. Arms Control Today April 1987 -An Arms Control Association Staff Analysis 1A |