# SALT II at Risk

Soviet rejection out of hand of the latest American strategic arms limitation (SALT II) proposals appears to rule out the agreement and the visit to Washington that Leonid Brezhnev wanted before the quinquennial Congress of the Soviet Communist Party next February. It throws into serious risk completion of the November 1974 Vladivostok nuclear arms accord and, with it, the future of détente.

The Soviet leader evidently was unwilling to make a crash effort to settle the difficult SALT issues still outstanding with his back against the February deadline. Those issues would have had to be settled by early December to permit the drafting of a detailed treaty by mid-January, the latest possible date for a Washington visit to sign it.

But postponement of serious SALT negotiations until March or later puts President Ford in the position of exchanging concessions with Moscow while preoccupied with a series of tense primary struggles with Ronald Reagan and the Republican right.

Secretary of State Kissinger has announced an Administration decision to continue the SALT negotiations "next year" regardless of "the political circumstances," if Moscow will offer some "reasoned response" to Washington's proposals. But chances for an agreement before the Republican convention would now appear to be slim.

If the SALT II negotiations thus are delayed until 1977, the continuing arms race by then undoubtedly will have altered many of the fundamentals upon which the Ford-Brezhnev Vladivostok understandings were reached. A new basis for negotiation may have to be found by new Soviet and American Administrations. By October 1977, the SALT I interim agreement on offensive strategic arms will have expired, bringing into doubt the chief accomplishment of a decade of SALT negotiations, the treaty limiting antiballistic missile (ABM) systems.

By then, at the present rate of construction, the Soviet Union may have deployed 600 to 700 of its large new intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM's), carrying MIRV multiple warheads. It may then be too late to head off a Soviet "first strike" capability against the American land-based missile forces, or the matching American capability that the Ford Administration seeks to achieve. The ultimate nuclear danger of "crisis instability"—with every confrontation raising fears in Washington and Moscow that the other side may shoot first, unless pre-empted—may then become unavoidable.

The present SALT hang-up over the new Soviet Backfire bomber and the newer American cruise missile would be infinitely more difficult to resolve in 1977, after substantial numbers are deployed. At the moment, only about 25 Backfires have been deployed and the long-range cruise missile, which has not yet been flight-tested, could still be halted by a test-ban agreement. Once significant testing has occurred, verification of a cruise missile limitation agreement will be virtually impossible.

Backfire need not be a serious issue. The United States has offered to exclude it from the Vladivostok ceilings if the Soviet Union will pin down its claims about the medium bomber's non-strategic role.

The essential transaction that is needed is an American offer to delay flight-testing of the long-range cruise missile in return for a slowdown in the rate of deployment of Moscow's big new MIRVed ICBM's, thus gaining time to negotiate a SALT II agreement before a point of no return is reached. The alternative is an uncontrolled nuclear arms race in which even the limited détente the world has begun to know could hardly survive.

Part II—Main Edition—19 September 1975

THE NEW REPUBLIC

20 September 1975 (19)

# Kissinger's Options

Old cold warriors aren't the only ones who think Brezhnev and Kosygin mean far less by détente than Henry Kissinger does. Obstreperous about arms control, callous about the human rights provisions of the Helsinki accords, the Kremlin leadership has yet to understand that conciliation between Washington and Moscow must go two ways. Til now, with his pragmatic appreciation of the long-range risks of a lapse into the kind of Soviet-American enmity that the world lived with for a generation, Kissinger has tried to keep up the momentum of détente—as if it were a matter of keeping a stiff upper lip—by giving economic incentives to the Russians and by keeping the US out of crisis areas like India and Portugal. Nevertheless it is neither Henry Jackson nor George Meany who is the most serious impediment to the Secretary's policy, but his negotiating partners in the USSR.

A telling statement of their intentions is the Soviet response to Dr. Kissinger's achievement in peace-building between Israel and Egypt. Incendiaries during the October 1973 war, the Russians are in the same role today, even as the two main adversaries in that conflict move away, tentatively, from the reflexive violence that has characterized the Middle East. The symbols of politics reveal its content, and the Russians have done what they could symbolically to have this second interim agreement begin as inauspiciously as possible. Expected to preside, along with a representative of the United States, at the initial signing of the pact in Geneva, the Russians announced in Damascus that their delegate would boycott the proceedings. Although the US saw this act for what it was—a sign of reproach and disapproval, Assistant Secretary for Near Eastern Affairs Alfred Atherton stayed away too "not to embarrass the Russians." Playing along with the Russians in this way downgraded the accords, which are precarious enough as it is. The ceremony, unattended by the big powers, showed just how precarious. The Israeli delegation was headed by a high ranking diplomat, the Egyptians by a general, and they sat at separate tables. For Jerusalem, the occasion was of political importance, a fragile augury of normal relations between Jew and Arab. Cairo wanted it to seem military in character, another disengagement of forces. If dispatching a decorated uniform to Geneva eases extremist pressure on Sadat, perhaps we should not begrudge him his own manipulation of symbols. Nonetheless the suspicion remains that Sadat himself is reluctant to accept fully the political consequences of the Kissinger diplomacy.

The Russians are not dealing in symbols alone. They have set themselves against the agreement, and they are doing what they can to undercut it. They have their reasons to be unhappy by the pact: they will not participate in policing it and the Americans will; they feel frozen out: They froze themselves out. Nothing in Russian behavior since before the Six-Day War gives them credentials as peacemakers, or peacekeepers. First they mobilized Israel's enemies, then along with other Communist governments broke off diplomatic relations with the Jewish state, and finally joined the egregious chorus for a cordon sanitaire against it in international organizations. Their most stable relations

satisfied with nothing less than the ultimate destruction of Israel, compose the "rejection front." The USSR is not an acceptable broker or guarantor in the Middle East. (It would be as if the US, having responsibility for the carnage in Southeast Asia, were to insist that it still reap political benefits there.)

If the Arab-Israeli conflict is in fact the most likely setting for a Russo-American military confrontation, the Soviets have, irresponsibly and shortsightedly, increased the risks that it will happen. What, then, is left of détente? What, moreover, could détente have implied in the first place?

Russian mischief affects adversely more than the future of Soviet-US détente; it threatens also the implementation of the present Middle East agreement and the prospect of further progress toward peace among the various antagonists. While the Soviet Union cannot produce concrete gains for its Middle East allies, it is hardly without cards to play. The capacity to obstruct is highly regarded among partisans of Arab revanche, and Egypt will bear the brunt of their pressure. The Soviets, who already have thousands of "advisers" in Syria of the sort we had in South Vietnam, will continue arming whoever toes the bellicose line. Already, an unlikely alliance has emerged between Moscow and the virulently anti-Communist, oil-rich clerical reactionaries in Libya; and the two of them together may succeed in reconciling the hitherto irreconcilable Syrian and Iragui Ba'aths. The Russians, moreover, obliged only to disrupt, will make common cause with both Hussein and Arafat, whose goals also are not compatible.

Such Soviet gains among the Arabs will not enhance the climate of negotiations. Dr. Kissinger will try to retard those gains, among other means by the enticement of American aid. Friends of Israel should not disdain the need or the tactic: leaving Russia's hand in the region strengthened serves neither the interests of Israel nor those of peace. Amidst the early euphoria of the second stage agreement, the Secretary has revived his aborted scheme to sell 14 batteries of Hawks to Jordan. The response of Congress is uncertain.

If he succeeds this time, he will tell us that he has kept Hussein from Moscow. He will, however, have provided the king not merely with the wherewithal for defense, but also with inducements to join another war. This is the difference between the three to six batteries our Joint Chiefs of Staff say Amman may need for its protection and the 14 batteries which constitute a massive aggressive potential. Arnaud de Borchgrave, Newsweek's resident amanuensis for any Arab ruler who'll see him, is contemptuous of such fine distinctions. In one of his periodic favors for the gracious host of the moment, he urged that whatever the friendly monarch wants should be granted. There would then follow quickly demands for an arms package for Egypt; and the US would find itself on a blackmail treadmill, arming everyone just so that the Russians don't.

But what then happens to the Secretary's hopes for peace between Arabs and Israelis? The leverage we have over Israel is nearly complete; that is what really defends Jordan from attack. But we can have no comparable influence with any Arab power which, though armed by us, could at any point turn to the ever-willing Russians for assistance and launch another war.

NEW YORK—Talk, talk, and more
alk—that's the message Secretary Kis-
inger is pounding into his colleagues
his week as the United Nations opens
its 30th annual General Assembly amid
grave doubts about its future.

Talk about the Middle East. At-
tempt to bridge the gap between purely
bilateral talks and a formally structured
Geneva conference. That's the idea be-
hind Kissinger's proposal before the
U.N. for "informal" consultations cover-
ing the whole Mideast conflict.

Talk about the arms race, the
spread of nuclear energy, the danger of
mankind blowing itself up in nuclear hol-
ocast. Solve just two or three more
issues, say American officials, and
you're likely to have an agreement be-
tween the United States and the Soviet
Union on the limitation of strategic
weapons. Agree on measures to control
nuclear processing plants, says the sec-
retary of state, and you'll reduce the
temptation to make your enemies.

Talk about the potentially explosive
Korean peninsula. Find a successor to
the 1953 Korean armistice—one that
would let the United States pull its
38,000 troops from South Korea without
exposing the South to invasion by the
North. Consider a whole new Korean
"peace" conference.

The Middle East, nuclear arms, Korea
—those are just three of the topics in
Kissinger and other American diplomats
are talking about within the U.N. con-
fines. Whatever they are discussing,
however, they stress their interest in

words rather than arms, and they strip
their public speeches and private re-
marks of intimidation or insult.

No allusions to "dictatorial tyrannies," to "totalitarian regimes," to "containment of communism." The catch phrases of previous years have disappeared as Kissinger pursues what might be described as a global peace offensive.

It is significant, moreover, that Kissinger is opening this offensive in the U.N.—a forum that many observers believe has outlived its usefulness and might fall into disuse entirely. In fact, American officials themselves were making just such dire predictions only a couple of weeks ago as they braced for another round of invective from Communist and "Third World" nations.

Kissinger, however, seems to have confused the "Third World" of much of its military by the presentation earlier this month of a complicated economic and social program aimed at closing the gulf between rich and poor nations.

True, American officials were less than enthusiastic about the resolution that finally emerged from that session, but they were convinced that it provides a basis for discussions.

The beginning of a real answer on the
Middle East peace question may
emerge next week when Kissinger
meets with Syrian Foreign Minister Ab-
del Halim Khaddam at the U.N. Among
all the bilateral talks in which he is
engaged, the one with Khaddam may be
the most significant in terms of seeing if

Syria can consider serious discussions
on an accord with Israel on the Golan
Heights. No one—not even Kissinger—is
particularly optimistic about Syria's
response. The most the Americans ex-
pect is possibly assent to an "informal"
get-together.

As he confers privately with foreign
ministers, semi-publicly at diplomatic
dinners, or on display at the General As-
sembly, however, Kissinger leaves the
impression that he is at least postponing
disaster if not quite solving all problems.

This conclusion emerged from the pro-
nouncements of American officials on
two of the relatively less publicized is-
sues with which the secretary is coping.

On the question of American bases
in Spain, the impression emerged that
Kissinger had almost magically per-
suaded the Spanish foreign minister to
agree to let the Americans remain after
expiration of the lease on Friday. Some-
how Kissinger would arrange a compo-
mise by which Spain got some, but not
all, of the American military aid funds
it wanted in exchange.

Regarding American relations with
China, Kissinger pledged to live up to
the terms of the "Shanghai communi-
que" of 1972—in which the U.S., among
other things, pledges a solution to the
Taiwan issue. Kissinger deliberately did
not say, however, just when the U.S.
would cut its ties with the anti-Commu-
nist Nationalist regime on Taiwan.

It was Kissinger's way of placating
both sides—something he clearly hopes
to achieve on all other diplomatic fronts.

(DEFENSE...CONT'D.)

The committee said its
usefulness has been re-
duced by developments in
missiles and that operating
the site for a full year would
not provide experience
benefits commensurate
with the costs.

THE BIG over-all cut in
the defense budget was
generally in line with the
budget plan adopted earlier

this year by the
Democratic-led Congress.
It contemplated reducing
defense and international
expenditures below admin-
istration recommendations
and increasing some
domestic programs.

Ford has insisted on
holding the deficit for the
current fiscal year, ending
next June 30, to $60 billion,
although Democrats con-
tend this figure already has
been made unrealistic by

developments outside the
control of either the execu-
tive or Congress.

The amount recommend-
ed by the committee for the
present year, not including
the three-month transition
period following it before
fiscal 1977, was $90.2 billion,
or $7.6 billion under Ford's
request and about $700 mil-
lion above the congression-
al budget plan.

The size of the deficit,
however, will be deter-

mined not by appropri-
tions, which results in
expenditures over several
years, but by actual out-
lays.

Defense outlay estimates
for the present fiscal year
were roughly $1 billion over
the congressional budget
estimate, suggesting that,
further cuts may have to be
made if Congress is to
maintain its $68.8 billion
deficit target.

(DETENTE...CONT'D)

smart. He is not one of those conserv-
atives who claim that we have to build
a lot more missiles and get tougher
with the Russians. He has a clearer
view than many conventional liberals
of the kind of international environ-
ment needed to sustain liberal values
here and abroad.

To Kissinger's constant challenge
to his critics. "What is your alterna-
tive to detente?", he replies. "Oceans
alliance." Here's what I think he
means:

The United States still possesses
great power but lacks a consensus on
how to use that power and lacks also
a strong national will. The earlier
"buoyancy and vigor" of American
policy, until the early 1960s, has
yielded to "national uncertainty, in-
decisiveness, and self-doubt." The pub-
lic, eager to reduce the burden of
world care, and American officials,
who may know better but who cater to

that public, ask too much of detente.

For Kremlin leaders continue to
profess belief in a fundamental con-
flict between capitalism and commu-
nism, and they practice "detente" as
"a strategy by which the U.S.S.R. ex-
pects ultimately to gain total strategic
superiority over the U.S." Cline
distrusts China, too.

He feels that the proper way to
counter the current U.S. "strategic
drift" is by an "oceans alliance"—an
alliance of the United States with im-
portant countries sharing our political,
economic and strategic interests
around the world. The larger coun-
tries of Europe, Israel, Taiwan, Japan
and Australia would comprise the
alliance's core. Others wh. shared the
alliance's basic anti-totalitarian pur-
pose could also join.

Such an alliance, he believes, could
muster the requisite power and soli-
darity to fulfill the traditional post-
war American strategy of making the
world safe for diversity and self-deter-
mination and for an economic system

compatible with those political goals.

Cline's concept, it seems to me, is
open to criticism on various grounds:
He downplays the Sino-Soviet conflict.
He underestimates the pull of domes-
tic preoccupations. He overestimates
the capacity and taste of the United
States to return to its earlier style of
alliance management. He skips too
lightly over the risk that an "oceans
alliance" could fall victim to narrow
anti-communism, as the United States'
oceans alliance of the postwar years
did in fact succumb in Vietnam. He
does not give Kissinger enough credit
for conducting an oceans alliance of
sorts already as a backup to detente.

The Cline concept nonetheless has
a kind of large consistency, and an
availability to quick public under-
standing, that may make it or some
variant of it a viable contender in
foreign policy debate in an election
year. That his book was introduced at
a party hosted by Sen. Lloyd Bentsen
(D-Tex.), a declared candidate for
the Democratic presidential nomination,
underlines the point.

3-F

ANALYSIS

U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT 6 OCTOBER 1975 (30 SEPTEMBER) Pg. 61

# Another Arms Pact With Loopholes?

Is Secretary of State Kissinger repeating in the SALT II arms talks with Russia the blunders his critics claim he committed in SALT I?

In the view of these critics, the U.S. was in such haste to get agreement in 1972 that it ignored loopholes that enabled Russia to gain a significant advantage over this country in the on-going arms race.

Mr. Kissinger wrapped up that first accord in a frantic round of personal diplomacy concluded only hours before Richard Nixon arrived in Moscow for the first-ever visit by an American President to that capital.

Now, at another critical point in negotiations with Moscow, the Secretary of State again appears to be in a hurry. He has taken personal command of the talks in an effort to break an impasse that has blocked a second SALT agreement and a visit to Washington by Soviet Communist Party leader Leonid Brezhnev.

But this time, Mr. Kissinger must also convince a skeptical U.S. Senate that the SALT II agreement he works out is foolproof—one that Russia cannot exploit to its advantage.

The full consequences of American errors committed in haste during SALT I negotiations only now are coming to light.

The Russians, for example, have been able to carry on a massive arms build-up, even though Secretary Kissinger three years ago assured Congress this could not happen.

Moscow is replacing its light intercontinental ballistic missile—the SS-11—with a new rocket that is three times more powerful and armed with multiple warheads. This increased “throw weight” will, if unchecked, pose a serious threat to America’s Minuteman missiles.

**Differing interpretations.** Are the Russians cheating? No—at least not in technical terms. They are only taking advantage of the loopholes in the SALT I agreement.

This is what happened: The interim accord ostensibly freezing Soviet-American missile strength allowed an increase of only 10 to 15 per cent in the dimensions of missile silos. U.S. officials assumed that this applied to but one measurement—either the diameter or the depth of silos. Not so, the Russians now argue. The term used in the agreement was “dimensions”—plural, not singular—and on

that basis, they have been expanding their silos both in depth and diameter to accommodate bigger missiles.

Even more glaring is a second loophole. The 1972 agreement stated categorically that light missiles may not be replaced by heavy ones. But Russian negotiators adamantly refused to define either. Rather than risk a breakdown on the eve of the Nixon-Brezhnev Summit, Mr. Kissin-

"NOW—ABOUT THAT OTHER LEG..."

ger accepted the agreement and then issued a unilateral statement outlining the U.S. definition of a heavy missile: anything significantly bigger than a Soviet SS-11.

He subsequently told Congress that this statement—plus the limitations on the size of expanded silos—“give us an adequate safeguard against a substantial substitution of heavy missiles for light missiles.”

As it turned out later, even as Mr. Brezhnev was signing the SALT I agreement, his scientists were developing powerful new missiles. Among them was the SS-19, now being installed in enlarged silos as a replacement for the much lighter SS-11—an action which U.S. Defense Secretary James Schlesinger asserts is “wholly inconsistent with the American unilateral statement.”

In at least one other critical area, Moscow has exploited an ambiguity in the 1972 SALT agreement to strive for strategic advantage. This involved testing of radar for use in

antimissile defenses even though such tests are barred by the treaty. When the U.S. protested, the Soviets invoked a technical loophole in the pact to justify their action. After nearly a year of steady testing, they abandoned their work—presumably having acquired valuable data for designing any future antimissile defense system.

**Lessons to learn.** Out of this experience in SALT I emerge three important lessons for the U.S.:

* Moscow may not cheat outright, but it will exploit any ambiguity to the maximum to gain an advantage.

* Anything that is not nailed down in an accord is not considered binding by the Soviets.

* Negotiating against a deadline—such as a scheduled superpower summit—can push the U.S. into giving unwarranted concessions.

How effectively are these lessons being observed by Americans in SALT II? That depends on what the U.S. settles for on the three key issues that President Ford and Mr. Brezhnev left unresolved at their Vladivostok summit last November.

At that meeting, they accepted provisionally a 10-year ceiling of 2,400 strategic bombers and missiles, and a subceiling of 1,320 on those armed with multiple warheads.

But American and Soviet negotiators after nine months have yet to agree on how to verify which missiles are armed with multiple warheads, whether to count the Soviet Backfire bomber as a strategic weapon, and whether U.S. cruise missiles should be covered by the agreement.

All three of these issues are highly technical and complex but crucial in determining the balance of power in the future. Independent analysts fear that in a last-minute rush for agreement, Secretary Kissinger might settle for the same kind of ambiguities that he accepted in 1972—and with the same adverse results for the U.S.

Whether that happens or not will depend in the end on how determined President Ford is to hold out for an ironclad SALT II agreement—even at the risk of calling off the planned Washington summit with Mr. Brezhnev this year.

The foregoing analysis was written by Joseph Fromm, an Associate Executive Editor of the magazine.

“ESSE NOST LOUIS GLOBE-DEMOCRAT”

## DEFENSE SPACE BUSINESS DAILY 26 SEPTEMBER 1975 (30)
### SOVIET SU-19 FENCER BEING DEPLOYED IN EASTERN EUROPE.
The deputy secretary of Defense, William Clements Jr. says evidence of the deployment of the Soviet Sukhoi SU-19 Fencer fighter-bomber "is already visible in Eastern Europe." The aircraft has reportedly been sighted in Poland.

The SU-19's deployment was announced earlier this year by the Pentagon and was previously referred to as the advanced variable-geometry wing (VGW) fighter-bomber. It carries guided and unguided air-to-ground weapons and is apparently the first Soviet fighter specifically designed for ground attack.

WEDNESDAY MORNING, 3 SEPTEMBER 1975

Rowland Evans and Robert Novak

WASHINGTON POST 3 SEPTEMBER 1975 Pg. 15

SALT Confrontation: Jackson and Kissinger

When Secretary of State Henry Kissinger returns from his Mideast triumph, he will find on his desk an extraordinarily harsh letter demanding his presence at a long-delayed confrontation with Sen. Henry M. Jackson (D-Wash.) over SALT.

Since March, Jackson has sought Kissinger to testify on Strategic Arms Limitations Talks (SALT) before the Arms Control Subcommittee of the Senate Armed Services Committee. On Aug. 22, with Kissinger shuttling between Jerusalem and Cairo, subcommittee Chairman Jackson wrote him (but did not publicly release) a letter that reads like a subpoena. In language seldom used by a senior senator to a Secretary of State, the letter concludes:

"Your persistent failure to appear before the committee in the face of Soviet (missile) deployments inconsistent with your assurances to the Congress (about SALT I agreement) raises serious doubts about the manner in which that agreement was negotiated. Accordingly, I must again request that you provide the subcommittee with a list of dates on which you are prepared to appear and respond to these and other questions."

That leaves Dr. Kissinger with two unattractive options:

Option No. 1: Stonewall, Ignoring Jackson's letter. But that could extend Kissinger's vendetta with Jackson to the chairman of the parent Armed Services Committee, the immensely prestigious Sen. John Stennis (D-Miss.), who might rise in defense of senate prerogatives.

Option No. 2: Capitulate, joining in a confrontation with all advantages held by Jackson, who as subcommittee chairman will control questioning. Although the hearings would be behind closed doors, Jackson would push for quick publication of a transcript.

Either option guarantees escalation in the political debate over detente. While Kissinger is intent on a SALT II agreement, President Ford is finding detente a diminishing political asset. Jackson, seeking the democratic presidential nomination, will insure that SALT and detente are political debating points.

Jackson never liked the 1972 SALT I agreement negotiated by President Nixon and Kissinger. Early this year he charged that Soviet deployment of the huge SS-19 missile violates Kissinger's assurances in seeking congressional ratification of SALT I that the Soviets would not replace old missiles with larger ones.

The Jackson subcommittee heard closed door testimony about this from CIA Director William Colby on Feb. 11 and Defense Secretary James Schlesinger on March 3. While refusing to charge violations of understandings, each confirmed Jackson's SS-19 facts.

Jackson next sought Kissinger's appearance. Subcommittee aides repeatedly ("at least a dozen times," claims one Jackson man) asked the State Department to schedule Kissinger. A tentative date of May 15 was once set but was cancelled because of the visit here by the Shah of Iran.

In truth, Kissinger feels Jackson's insistence that he testify under oath is a

gratuitious indignity. His appearance as a sworn witness before the subcommittee on June 24, 1974, led to an unpleasant scene. When asked by Kissinger in May whether to risk a repetition, one of the secretary's shrewdest advisers told Kissinger his relationship with Jackson had so deteriorated that he should duck out.

Instead, Kissinger operatives have tried to give Congress his views on SALT without confronting Jackson. One possibility is testimony before the friendly Arms Control Subcommittee of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, headed by Sen. Stuart Symington (D-Mo.) (where Kissinger would not testify under oath). Besides that, Kissinger is also considering sending Congress a State Department white paper on SALT.

To avoid preemption by the Symington subcommittee or a white paper, Jackson wrote his Aug. 22 letter, bearing the formal salutation of "Dear Mr. Secretary" (The old first-name days of "Scoop" and "Henry" being long gone).

Jackson's letter leaves no doubt what he wants: "As the only member of the administration present at the negotiations of the SALT I agreement ... you alone are in a position to tell the subcommittee ... why the administration has chosen to ignore its pledge to regard the deployment of the new Soviet SS-19 missile as a heavy missile and therefore one whose deployment contravenes the U.S. interpretation of the agreement."

That has the tone of a challenge, not an invitation. How Kissinger reacts to it could cast a long shadow over future political and diplomatic events.

© 1975, Field Enterprises, Inc.

NEW YORK TIMES
3 SEPTEMBER 1975
Pg 52

Khashoggi Says He
Kept Lockheed Gift
Intended for General

WASHINGTON, Sept. 2 (UPI) —Adnan Khashoggi, the entrepreneur, has admitted he pocked a bribe that the Northrop Corporation wanted to give the commanding general of the Saudi Arabian Air Force.

In an interview in Beirut, Lebanon, Mr. Khashoggi told The Washington Post that it was Northrop, not he, who had "cooked up" the idea of paying $250,000 to Gen. Hashim M. Hashim in a 1971 attempt to buy his cooperation in approving arms contracts for the corporation.

"I stopped a bribe," the newspaper quoted him as having said. "I put it in my pocket." Mr. Khashoggi said he acted to keep Northrop from "putting themselves in a bad position for the general, who since has retired."

The company has told a Senate subcommittee it later paid $200,000 more to Mr. Khashoggi than the United States government has paid.

WASHINGTON POST
3 SEPTEMBER 1975
Pg 4

South Vietnamese
Rebuff Humphrey

PARIS, Sept. 2 (AP)—Sen. Hubert E. Humphrey, (D-Minn.) said today that he had been rebuffed in his attempt to see South Vietnamese diplomats here to inquire about the fate of a number of Americans who have been unable to leave South Vietnam.

Humphrey said he had requested an appointment at the South Vietnamese Embassy and was told he would be received. But when he arrived here, the senator said, he was told that the man he was supposed to see was out of town and no one else could substitute.

WASHINGTON STAR
2 SEPTEMBER 1975
Pg 2
(3)

Schlesinger Hit
By North Korea

TOKYO (AP) — North Korea claimed yesterday that Defense Secretary James Schlesinger visited Japan last week to work on plans to "attack the Korean people with Japanese territory as a base."

A commentary in the official newspaper Rodong Shinmin said Schlesinger and Japanese officials reached agreement on secure use of U.S. military bases in Japan in case of an "eventuality in Korea."

It called this "an open expression of the unfriendly and hostile policy toward our republic" by Japan.

man of the Triad Financial Es-

THE SINAI --CONTINUED

shuttle started, for instance, have been accused by some administration sources of stiffening Israel's backbone in a manner which greatly complicated Secretary Kissinger's job.

Since it might be dangerous for Congress to risk killing that interim agreement by preventing the American presence, perhaps there may be an "out." That presence could be recommended, but with a clause to the effect that, should peace momentum slacken, the force should be withdrawn immediately. Congress probably also should state clearly that it recognizes the new Israeli-Egyptian agreement as only an interim step which must lead to efforts at achieving a broader peace.

Then the administration should utilize the American presence as another tool to work for broad peace in the area. There's probably nothing wrong with any American presence solicited by both sides if the Mideast is really working toward peace. The danger lies in having that American presence in the Sinai should the present peace momentum stall.

Perhaps the analogy between the Sinai American presence and Vietnam is misrepresented. In the 1960s there was no great debate as the U.S. thrust a tiny fin-

THE NEW YORK TIMES, WEDNESDAY, APRIL 7, 1976

Social Security Numbers Will Track Runaway Welfare Fathers

WASHINGTON, April 6 (AP)
The Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare has ordered the release of Social Security numbers to help track down runaway welfare fathers who lost taxpayers more than $1 billion annually.

The decision by Secretary David R. Mathews ends a running dispute between two agencies within the department and opens the way for confirmation to a high government post of a member of the Taft family.

The department's Social and rehabilitation Service, which is responsible for administering the new "Federal parent/cater service" to help states

track down fathers and collect child-support payments, said it needed the Social Security numbers. The numbers would be given to the states for use in tracking missing parents through state records such as motor vehicle registrations.

If a state has exhausted all avenues open to it, the state can ask the department to try to trace the missing parent through Internal Revenue Service, Pentagon or Veterans Administration records.

But the Social Security Administration had contended that Federal privacy laws protected the confidentiality of Social Security numbers of about 100 million wage earners and that it was obligated to furnish only

the last known address of the missing parent and his employer.

After months of arguing against the release, the Social Security Commissioner, James B. Cardwell, reversed his position under heavy pressure, sources said.

Dr. Mathews issued a memorandum to his subordinates that said he was acting on the basis of legal advice of departmental lawyers and the Justice Department. "that she intent of the parent locater

service law is for the Social Security numbers to be provided and that that authority is not canceled by the privacy act."

The department estimates

that 2.8 million of the 3.4 million families receiving Aid to Families With Dependent Children have absent parents and that about 1.4 million of those parents are financially able to pay for their family's support. When the program is fully implemented nationwide, the department says about $1 billion in child support payments will be collected annually, with a comparable savings to Federal and state taxpayers.

A sign that the impasse had been resolved came yesterday when the Senate voted to confirm the nomination of William Howard Taft IV, great-grandson of President William How-

ard Taft and nephew of the late Senator Robert A. Taft Jr. of Ohio, as general counsel of H.E.W. The nomination had been held up for more than a month by Senator Russell B. Long, Democrat of Louisiana, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, who had argued that the numbers should be released.

## 6 Seized in Belfast Bombing

BELFAST, Northern Ireland, April 6 (UPI)—Six suspects in Irish Republican Army bombings in downtown Belfast were arrested today and two explosive-laden vehicles were seized.

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DEPARTMENT OF STATE

December 9, 1975

No. 596

#79

PRESS CONFERENCE OF
THE HONORABLE HENRY A. KISSINGER
SECRETARY OF STATE
DEPARTMENT OF STATE
WASHINGTON, D.C.
DECEMBER 9, 1975

SECRETARY KISSINGER: Ladies and gentlemen, before I go to your questions I thought it would be helpful to review some of the SALT issues that have been raised.

I will not get into a debate with aspirants to political office, either state-wide or national. Therefore, I will not deal with specific testimony that may have been given except to note that no opportunity was presented to any member of the Administration to present the truth.

What I would like to do is to deal with categories of assertions that have been made and then to explain the real state of affairs with respect to them.

PR #596

2

The assertions have been made that there have been
massive Soviet violations; that the Administration colluded
with the Soviet Union in masking these violations; that the
Administration has not pursued the issue of violations
diplomatically; and that senior officials, especially the
President, have not been kept informed about the facts with
respect to these violations.

I would like to discuss with you the procedures
that the Government is following with respect to SALT
compliance and illustrate them with one or two examples.

First of all, it is important to keep in mind
that with respect to SALT or with respect to the strategic
forces on both sides we are dealing with military establish-
ments of great technical complexity, that are constantly
engaged in military activities. These military establishments,
moreover, on both sides are in the process of constant change
so that there is great fluidity in what one observes. We
are not dealing with a static situation; we are dealing with
a fluid situation. Therefore, too, the information that is
obtained has to go through various stages of analysis.

The first information about any event is usually extr
ordinarily illusive and ambiguous, and one part of the process
the Government is to refine the information until we reach a
point at which senior officials can make a reasonable

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decision. I believe it is a good working hypothesis to assume that government is not run by conspiracy but by serious people trying to come to serious conclusions about difficult topics, especially when the charge of a violation of a formal agreement is not a minor matter to be introduced into the diplomatic discourse.

Now, first of all, what is meant by a violation?
There are several meanings that can be attached to the notion of violation that are being used interchangeably in the current debate. A violation can be a deliberate violation of a SALT limitation, aimed at increasing the Soviet strategic capability in ways which the agreement was intended to preclude.

Second, a violation can be an action inconsistent with the sense or the spirit of the agreement and tending to undermine its viability even though it is not prohibited by the agreement. There can be borderline situations where a technical violation cannot be established but where the activity strains the interpretation of particular provisions.

Third, there can be unintended violations occurring, for example, through negligence of higher officials

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responsible for insuring compliance by their subordinate
organizations.

Fourth, there can be actions not banned by an
agreement but which complicate verification of the agreement.

Fifth, there can be ambiguous activities resulting from
differing interpretations of the provisions of the agreements.

Sixth, there can be activities that are assessed
as ambiguous due to inadequate information or misinterpretation
of information which suggests a violation where in fact none
exists.

I want to repeat that many compliance issues will
arise initially as ambiguous activities which could apply to
any of these categories. Our policy is to seek clarification
of ambiguous situations as soon as there is a tangible basis
for doing so and to resolve ambiguities as quickly
as possible in order to preclude development of a more
serious situation.

Now, to go to the procedures for handling allegations
of violations. Any one of these categories would be
initially reported in intelligence channels, either from
the Central Intelligence Agency or from the Department of
Defense. The Department of State and the White House have
no independent means of acquiring any of this information.

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5

There is no instance in which a reported violation was not immediately -- an alleged violation -- was not immediately reported to the President. And we have searched all the files of all the incidents.

I will in a minute discuss the handling of intelligence, and I would like to talk now about the procedures that are followed.

In order to deal with the problem of compliance, there are four institutions. There is a special intelligence committee, which was established by the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency in the summer of 1973. This committee makes a quarterly report on the problem of SALT compliance. This committee -- I'm looking now for how many meetings it has held; well, it has met quarterly since July '73, so you can figure it out for yourselves -- and all of its reports have gone directly to the President as well as to every senior member of the Administration that is dealing with the problem of strategic arms.

In addition, there are three other bodies. There is the Verification Panel of the NSC. There is the Verification Panel's Working Group. And there is, of course, the NSC itself.

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The Verification Panel Working Group of the NSC has met on SALT matters eleven times since the middle of 1973. The Verification Panel has met four times on SALT matters -- has met four times on compliance issues exclusively since 1973. But, in addition, it has met forty times on SALT matters since 1973. Each of these meetings, each of these forty meetings, is preceded by a CIA briefing that includes all compliance issues. So that, in addition to the four formal meetings, there were forty meetings of the Verification Panel where whatever compliance issues existed at the time were brought to the attention of the Verification Panel.

The President has been briefed on compliance matters ten times since the middle of 1973, six times in the Administration of President Ford. There has been one NSC meeting solely devoted to compliance issues and parts of others.

The procedure is that the Working Group will attempt to determine what is going on and will devise either options or recommendations for consideration by the Verification Panel. The Verification Panel then reviews it and makes a recommendation or defines options. In all the meetings that I have described of the Verification Panel there was never a

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split decision. The allegation that individuals or departments have held up consideration of compliance issues, have obscured consideration of compliance issues, have refused to deal with compliance issues, is a total falsehood. All the decisions of the Verification Panel with respect to compliance have been unanimous. That is to say, they were agreed to by the Department of Defense, by the Chiefs of Staff, by the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, by the Central Intelligence Agency, and by the State Department.

There is no doubt that there may have been differences of opinion in the Working Group as these papers were being considered. I am not familiar with these disagreements because unless they are passed on to the Verification Panel there would be no particular reason for me to deal with them.

Let me now turn to the handling of intelligence. First of all, I think it is important to understand how the flow of information to the President is handled, because it is a rather grave matter if it can be alleged that information is being kept from the President of the United States. The flow of information to the President is handled in the following way:

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The President receives daily, unabbreviated and
without a covering summary, the President's daily brief and
the daily intelligence bulletin of the Central Intelligence
Agency. These are placed on his desk together with separate
notes from various departments every morning and waiting for
him when he comes to his office.

In the period of the Presidency of President Ford
he has had, until recently, the practice of reading those
two intelligence summaries in the presence not of a member
of the National Security Council staff but in the presence
of a representative of the Central Intelligence Agency.
Therefore, any intelligence item that would deal with
compliance would come to his immediate attention. And
in compiling a list of the various compliance issues it is
apparent that the President's daily bulletin would reflect
the information of the Central Intelligence Agency, as you
would expect, within no more than two weeks of its first
appearance on a technical level.

Secondly, any memorandum from a Cabinet member
or from the head of an agency is transmitted to the
President, usually in those cases with a summary by the
NSC staff on top of it. But never is the summary alone
sent to the President. Therefore, any Cabinet member, any

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9

member of the Joint Chiefs, the Chairman of the Joint
Chiefs, the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency,
all have the opportunity, and know they have the opportunity,
to address the President directly. Never has the Assistant
to the President held up any memorandum from any of these
individuals, or any other memorandum addressed to the
President by the head of an agency.

However, there is no memorandum in the files by
any of these individuals, by any Chief of Staff of any of
the services, by any head of any department raising any of
the issues that have been alleged in recent testimony.
There is nobody who has claimed that the issue of compliance
was not being adequately pursued. There is nobody who has
objected to the handling of the information. There has been
no reclama of any of the decisions of the Verification Panel,
except in one case where one department that had first
recommended one course of action -- that course of action being
not to protest a seeming issue of noncompliance because it
wanted to protect its sources of intelligence--later changed
its mind and recommended that the issue be raised in the
Standing Consultative Commission.

When that Department changed its mind, the
President agreed with that new position, and the decision

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of the Verification Panel was changed.

The reason there have been so few NSC meetings on the subject is because the decisions of the Verification Panel have always been unanimous, and because no member of the Panel has ever appealed to the President with a contrary view.

With respect to the handling of intelligence, all intelligence concerning alleged noncompliance was immediately distributed to all the members of the Verification Panel and by them to those of their senior members that were concerned with SALT.

For the period that a preliminary investigation was going on, the intelligence was not distributed in the technical publications that were addressed to those whose primary responsibility was not concerned with SALT at a level below the Cabinet level. The longest time this ever took place was a period of two months, and usually the so-called hold has been for a period of about a week or two to permit the refinement of intelligence.

There has been no case in which the intelligence was not distributed in the quarterly intelligence publication that was concerned with the question of SALT monitoring. And in no case was intelligence kept from members of the Verification Panel.

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Even during the period that this refinement was going on, the United States did not feel itself precluded from taking diplomatic action. For example, in one instance, which I will get into in a minute in greater detail, in one instance there were reports of unidentified construction in Soviet missile fields. We received this report on June 20 at a time when Brezhnev was in the United States. It seemed improbable that the Soviet Union would violate the agreement by blatantly building additional missile silos; and therefore, a further study of the subject was ordered.

Nevertheless, on June 26 the United States sent a note to the Soviet Union in the Presidential channel raising the issue of that construction, even before we had begun our detailed examination of the issue. In that case the distribution of that information was kept out of those journals that went to individuals not concerned with SALT matters, until August 8 when it was generally distributed. In that interval two American notes had been sent to the Soviet Union in the Presidential channel, raising that issue.

Now, as I have pointed out, the issue of compliance is an extremely complicated one, and in rummaging through the files of various departments it is not difficult to find memoranda written by subordinates who have no idea of what

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is going on in the overall picture, who will write down their own perceptions of what they think is happening.-- usually in the modern form of memoranda of conversation to themselves that nobody ever sees, on which no one can ever comment, and which appear three years later in a context that no one can ever discover.

But let us take the case of these missile silos. There appeared in the summer of 1973 in a number of Soviet missile fields, the beginning of some construction that clearly looked like additional silos. If these had been converted into missile silos, there was no question that they would have represented a clear violation of the agreement.

The construction of a silo generally takes two years to complete. And it is important for you to keep in mind in any event that almost any of these noncompliance events extend over a time span that, to be significant, is months and usually years, so that those of us who are engaged in policy making, and not rhetoric, must have an opportunity to study the problem before we draw any final conclusions, and we do have this opportunity.

Now, when we approached the Soviet Union within six days of receiving that information in the White House, we were told that these would be command and control silos.

PR #596

·13

and that as the construction proceeded it would become increasingly evident that they would be command and control silos.

This, incidentally, was also the judgment of our intelligence community. Our intelligence community believed that almost certainly these were command and control silos. The question being raised was whether, at some later time, they could be converted into missile silos.

It is also fair to point out that the Soviet Union in reply raised certain questions about certain ambiguities in American practices which we were not excessively anxious to have publicized, and which accounted for the fact that these exchanges were conducted in a rather less dramatic manner than some people might have thought appropriate.

There were six exchanges in this channel of increasing specificity, in which we began to advance criteria which could be met in order to assure us that these silos were, in fact, intended for command and control. This extended over a period of a year. At that point in 1974 we moved the discussion from the Presidential channel to the Standing Consultative Commission and made formal representations building on the previous exchanges. We have since received assurances, and I believe it is the

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unanimous opinion of all agencies, that we are dealing with command and control silos. We have been given criteria which seem to us for the time being adequate; and there is no agency that today disputes that this issue is for the time being quiescent, though we will be vigilant in making certain that any unusual construction activity at these silos would raise profound questions.

For a variety of reasons, including the fact that the information about alleged noncompliance inevitably involves sensitive intelligence, I cannot go through all of the allegations that have been made; though I would perhaps mention one other, which is the most serious one and which comes closest to the borderline of a possible violation which has to do with the testing of certain antiaircraft radars in what might be considered an ABM mode.

The issue is complicated by the fact that, at American insistence, the ABM treaty includes a provision that antiaircraft radar could be used -- could be tested -- in a manner in space for range instrumentation purposes. I might point out that this was our idea, and if we had not included that, that issue of the SA-5 radar could have been more rapidly resolved.

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We received information that some testing was going on with respect to the SA-5 radar in 1973. At that time it was routinely distributed and nobody paid any attention to it because it was not put into connection with a possible ABM testing program. Between April and June 1974 some more tests took place which at least raised the problem that the radar might be tracking incoming missiles. That clearly is not permitted by the treaty, though it raises an ambiguity with respect to whether this is done for range instrumentation purposes.

In any event, several meetings of the working group and the Verification Panel took place. The first decision in December 1974 was, on the recommendation of the Defense Department and the Central Intelligence Agency, that this issue not be raised because we did not wish to reveal the source of our intelligence.

In January 1975 the Defense Department reversed itself and recommended that the issue be raised. As a result, the issue was raised in February 1975. Since then, within a 17-day period after we had raised the issue, this activity has stopped, has not since been resumed. It was at the borderline of violation, but it has now stopped.

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There are other issues, some
having to do with unilateral American statements which
the Soviet Union specifically disavowed. I think it is at
least open to question whether the United States can hold
the Soviet Union responsible for its own statements when
the Soviet Union has asserted that it does not accept that
interpretation. Therefore, the issue of SALT compliance
has been handled in a serious manner. It stands to reason
that no responsible U.S. official could wish to make an
agreement with the Soviet Union and permit the Soviet Union
to violate it with impunity. It stands to reason that the
United States would not accept noncompliance with an
agreement that had any conceivable impact on the strategic
equation.

I would, in fact, suggest that this debate of the
allegation in which some violations are invented, and in which
the lack of vigilance of the Administration is asserted, may
tempt the very noncompliance which it claims to seek to
avoid, because it may create the impression that the United
States Government would make a serious agreement on a matter
affecting the survival of the United States and that its
senior officials would then collude in a violation of this
agreement.

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17

Let no foreign government believe that this is
conceivable. And I think the time has come that we deal
with each other more seriously.

I want to make just one other point before I go to
your questions. That point concerns the endless allegations
that a secret agreement was made with the Soviet Union
respecting seventy missiles to be placed on submarines that
by now are thirty years old, or twenty-five years old, that
have not been off the coast of the United States since 1967.

On the face of it this charge should be too absurd
to require any commentary. I dealt with it at great length
in a press conference on June 24, 1974, and June 26, 1974.
It concerned a highly technical issue: which missiles were
eligible for retirement as part of those that had to be
dismantled in order to shift from land-based to submarine
missiles and whether and what kind of new missiles could
be placed on submarines without being counted.

I refer you all to this press conference if you
want to go into the technical complexities of this issue,
except to say there was no secret agreement, that whatever
there was in that interpretative statement was stated
publicly by me at the press conference that I gave in Moscow
the night the SALT agreement was signed on May 26, 1972. It

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18

was repeated in a discussion of the Verification Panel on
June 5, 1972. It was contained, practically verbatim, in
a note distributed to all the agencies on June 19, 1972,
and it was testified to by Gerard Smith before the Jackson
committee in July 1972. There was no secret agreement.

Some overawed technocrats found what they thought
was a loophole by which, if the Soviets wanted to design a
missile that they didn't have anywhere for just that one
category of Diesel submarines that was twenty-five years
old, they might conceivably place it on that submarine. We,
of course, would never have accepted this.

When we raised this loophole with the Soviet
Union, even though they thought it was -- shall we put it
kindly -- a rather strained interpretation, they nevertheless
closed the loophole, and despite some rather excited
testimony last week, let me say flatly that no price was
paid for closing a loophole that did not exist and that
we would never have accepted and that ran counter to the
whole record of the discussion.

I think I can stop at this point and take
your questions on this or any other topic.