THE WASHINGTON POST THE SS19 LOOPHOLE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP88-01315R000400360046-2
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 16, 2016
• Document Release Date: December 8, 2004
• Sequence Number: 46
• Publication Date: July 27, 1979
• Content Type: NSPR

Approved For Release 2005/01/12 : CIA-RDP88-01315R000400360046-2
THE WV ASHINGTON POST
Article appeared 27 July 1979
on page A-19
Rower . 'yc its and Robert Nora*
e SSS19 Loophole..
A -reading of the fine print in the
S:\LT 11 treaty after it went to the Sen-
ate has revealed, to the horror of sup-.
porters of the arm*control pact, an un-
canny repetition of the worst U.S.
blooper in the 1972 SALT I treaty.... -.-
The 1972 mistake, not die=. tit long after ratification, failed to.
pin down specific limits on the size of a.-
raplacement for the SS11 intercon?
: tire w's noway' stop SS19 de?
17eloom nt. Moscow blithely kept insist-
hag ita new missile was just a slightly
updated model of the old SS11. Now,
following S .ALT II, the x nssians have a
loophole to sustain their own version of
a ? legal' follow-6n. m ule? to the SS19
by claiming that the U.S. definition of
the SSl.9's size is simply wrong, and that
Moscow never agreed to it.
This would not come up if the. Rim.
a new negotiating blooper discovered, cally refused to agree or disagree wit',- suns played fair and square. But they
as the Senate. ratification debate be. the U.S deter. play, to win they take advantage of
;mss, SALT U does not clearly define: The State Departnteat v y admftr whatever opportunity is granted..
the size of Moscow's mainstay SS19",that It could not nail dowwn the Soviets. ' Discovery of Soviet deception on the
ICB I, which it sets as the limit on the..: its "detailed analysis"' of the treaty, sent. SS19 by the 2iixon-l' ord arimm istrZion.
size of any new missiles. to all senators, spells out this country's long after S.ALT I took effect depended
That history should be so sadly es-.. pcdtioxn. the.. United States "considers" on Americas ally, Iran. But the true
played Is explicable only by this fact: , the SS19 to have a launch-weft (weight size of * "*e SS' 9 -almost certainiv would
The Russians simply refused to agree in the silo) of 9Q,CCO kilograms and a have eluded U.S. intelligence :tor even
on a specific definition of the size of throw-wed twe ght of the warheads) of longer lad it m been
the SS19. This adds new evidence that;.. 3,60 kilograms. These are key zaewaa-
U.S. negotiators, under orders from, ments of size- ~, .
Washington for an agreement at almost : "These figures are based on otw esd-
any cost, bowed to the iron will of their ;Hate for the SS19," the senators were :
Soviet counterparts. told. "The Soviet Union did not respond
ironically, the 1979 mistake ~ - to this statement [butj the United
nn an effort to correct the effect of the- States- will. regard these fl?gures.as the.
x'72 negotiating blunder. By failing to...: limits for the one new type of ... ICBM.
Tin down the size of the new Soviet permitted to the United States."
ICBMs, SALT I contributed to the vul- - But will the r` ians? Realists here
nerability of land-based U.S. missiles. doubt it, anymore than in 1972 Kissinger
Limiting future Russian ICBMs to the- learned the hard truth slowly, as U.S.
size of the SS19 is an effort to protect monitors in Iran began to accumulate
the land-based U.S. missile force.,-- ; data on the true size-of the new SS19
But if there was no agreement on the-:: being tested to replace the cld SSfL -
fqze. of the SS19, how can Moscow le- Trapped: by Soviet. duplicity three'
gally be held to the terms of the treaty?.. years later, Kissinger., found himself'
The answer. It cannot, any more than lamely explaining away the sudden ap-
xt could be forced to comply with the pearance,of the big: SS19. "We obviva-
elear understanding of limits on "new" ously did not know in 1972 what mis-
missiles in- the- 1972 treaty; negotiated .siles the Soviet Union would be testing,
by Henry Kissinger.. in 1974," Kissinger told a State Depart-:
of ;he maul ~o e* test rang -
'T'hose stations no longer and
the United States is not close to du
plicating. {!hem. This enhances the
strong prcaabii.ity that the one- new
Soviet missile permitted under the
treaty will not only greatly exceed lizn.
its set forth by U.S. ,negotiators but also
that the Soviets w ll not reveal its full
launch-weight and throw weight until
it has been tested repeatedly-ready to i
enter the Soviet missile force.
This undermines the SALT sellers' ar-}
gument that the treaty, while not ac-,
complishing all that much, dces no i
harm. On the contrary, this new revela-
tion of non-Yankee bargaining suggests:
that the Soviet Union, under S_T.I1 as.
under SALT I, will loophole its.-way tot
nuclear supremacy whtler. Americans'
play by the rules.
Kissinger relied, to his later dismay, on went press ^onf erence on Dec. 9,19
whathe+tallea e; r-d of scq~et
assurance "that no miles larger than
the heaviest light missile that now ewrs a
can be substituted." In 197Z that was the
SS11. But after SALT I took effect, the
8511. was replaced by th}e.;ig~,SSI9, which
was almost three times as w.
President Carter's negotiators
retraced'KI ger'a slippery footsteps,
relying on their own understanding of.
the size of the SS19. The Soviets typi-
Approved For Release 2005/01/12 : CIA-RDP88-01315R000400360046-2