COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS J. W. FULBRIGHT, Arkansas, Chairman JOHN SPARKMAN, Alabama GEORGE D. AIKEN, Vermont CARL MARCY, Chief of Staff ARTHUR M. KUHL, Chief Clerk (II) Note.-Sections of this hearing have been deleted in the interests of national security. Deleted material is indicated by the notation "[Deleted]." Statements by: Laird, Hon. Melvin R., Secretary of Defense... Helms, Hon. Richard, Director, Central Intelligence Agency. Excerpts from Secretary McNamara's posture statements... Defense Department memorandum on total ABM costs__ Defense Department memorandum on electronic switching system__ Dr. Albert Wohlstetter's supplement on purported proofs that the Minuteman will be safe without further protection---- Defense Department memorandum on the effect of proliferating Minuteman versus providing defense of Minuteman__ Extract from Senate Appropriations Committee hearing, Department of Defense Appropriations for Fiscal Year 1970... Defense Department memorandum on reliability of Minuteman.. III PREFACE Set forth below is an exchange of letters between Senator J. W. Fulbright, Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and the Secretary of Defense, Melvin R. Laird, relating to the subject matter of this hearing. Hon. MELVIN R. LAIRD, JULY 8, 1969. DEAR MR. SECRETARY: Thank you for your letter of July 1 regarding the transcript of your testimony before the Committee on Foreign Relations on June 23, 1969. You ask that your letter be made part of the public record and inserted at the beginning of the transcript. I will, of course, accede to your request. I would not, however, want your letter to stand without comment, and so I am also having this response inserted. In the first paragraph of your letter, you express concern at the possible inferences that could be drawn from the fact that the public record is left incomplete because of "the wholesale deletion of Mr. Helms' testimony." I am sure you remember that, originally, you were invited to appear in open session before the Committee on Foreign Relations to discuss your statement of May 22 before a closed session of the Committee on Appropriations of the House of Representatives which was subsequently made public. You took the position that you preferred to come in executive session and that you wished to be accompanied by the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Mr. Helms. I acceded to your request. At the conclusion of our June 23 meeting, when 1 expressed the hope that it would be possible to release a sanitized version of the transcript of the meeting, you were the first to say that everything Mr. Helms had said would have to be deleted. The deletion of all Mr. Helms' testimony, and of certain portions of your testimony, were made by the executive branch and not by the committee. If this procedure has resulted in what you consider to be an "incomplete" record which "creates grave obstacles to a balanced understanding of what transpired," to quote your letter, the responsibility for having brought about this result is surely yours and not mine. You also say in the first paragraph of your letter that since the major purpose of the hearing was to explore whether any differences existed within the intelligence community, or between the Department of Defense and the intelligence community, you feel that the reader of the record should be warned that no conclusions should be drawn from the printed testimony with regard to the position taken by Mr. Helms on any particular aspect of the intelligence estimates. I would agree that the deletion of Mr. Helms' testimony-and, I should add, of certain portions of your testimony-does create an obstacle to a balanced understanding of what transpired at the meeting on June 23. In fact, as the record now stands it leaves the impression that there have been no disagreements within the intelligence community as far as certain recent developments in Soviet weaponry are concerned. I felt that I had no choice but to agree to the deletions requested by the executive branch on the grounds of national security. But the fact of the matter is that there have been disagreements within the intelligence community on such recent developments, although all the testimony given at our June 23 meeting indicating such disagreements has been deleted from the public record. As for the second matter you find troublesome, which you refer to as a "problem of semantics," I do not agree with the implication of the statement in your letter that these "semantic difficulties" apparently trouble some of the members of the committee when "first strike terminology" is used. The problem of semantics, as you call it arose in the course of the June 23 hearing when you were questioned about your statement at a public hearing of the Subcommittee on International Organization and Disarmament Affairs on March 21, that "with the large tonnage the Soviets have they are going for our missiles and they are going for a first-strike capability." When you were asked on June 23 whether this statement did not mean that you ascribed to the Soviets a desire to achieve a capability to deliver "a knockout blow" against the United States, you denied that you meant to imply that was the Soviet intention and you appeared to redefine "first-strike capability" as meaning, simply, the ability of a weapon to destroy a missile in a hardened site. I think that a reading of even the sanitized transcript shows that semantic difficulties seemed to trouble you at least as much as, if not more than, members of the committee and that the points at issue are far more serious than mere semantics. Turning to the second and third pages of your letter, you say that you base your judgment that the Soviet Union could achieve a capability to reduce our surviving strategic offensive forces below that critical minimum level required for assured destruction on three conclusions. It strikes me as somewhat simplistic to imply, as you do, that if the Soviet Union continues to build up its strategic offensive forces to the point where they could threaten to reduce our strategic offensive forces below the critical minimum level required, we would not and could not increase our strategic offensive forces. You seem to argue in your letter that the only thing that can be done to offset an increasing Soviet capability to reduce our strategic offensive forces below a "critical minimum" level is to begin deployment of an ABM system to defend Minuteman. For the reasons I have given, I find that argument specious on its face. I also find it questionable on the ground that you seem to take it for granted that the Safeguard system would be able to operate effectively and could do so in the face of a Soviet attack. As you know, questions have been raised by many of the most eminent scientists in this country as to whether the system is far enough along in its development to be deployed or whether further research and development are necessary. Others have raised questions regarding the vulnerability of the radar components. Still other questions have been raised as to whether the system could not be over |