SPACE TREATY RIFT?

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP88-01315R000400390137-8
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 16, 2016
• Document Release Date: December 3, 2004
• Sequence Number: 137
• Publication Date: January 1, 1979
• Content Type: MAGAZINE

Approved For Release 2005/01/12 : CIA-RDP88-01315R0004003PO137-8
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ARTICLE APP? tLIJ
ON PAGE /
AIR FORGE MAGAZINE
January 1979
BY EDGAR UL SAME R, SENIOR EDITOR
Washington, D. C., Dec. 6
Space Treaty Rift?
There is evidence of considerable
pc?arization within the Administra-
tion concerning national policy on
space weapons and electronic war-
fare related to military spacecraft.
The point at issue is a treaty that is
being negotiated between the US
and the Soviet Union barring the
deployment of antisatetlite intercep-
tors, or ASATs. Several sticky,
gravely consequential points are in-
volved, beginning with the fact that
the Soviet Union has fully opera-
tional ASATs that clearly are capa-
ble of blowing up---by nonnuclear
means-spacecraft at low to medi-
urr, attitudes,
The US has no such systems in
being although there can be no
doubt that launchers with nuclear
warheads are readily available to
destroy Soviet spacecraft, if, in case
of war, the National Command Au-
thorities should decide to disown
the 1967 Outer Space Treaty that
prohibits -,!acing in orbit objects
that carry nuclear weapons.
This prohibition probably be-
comes academic in case of nuclear
war between the superpowers. But
there are operational drawbacks to
using nuclear weapons--especially
those meant to protect US military
spacecraft from attacking intercep-
tors-since nuclear effects in space
propagate over great distances and
don't differentiate between friend
and foe. Even relatively low-yield
r,;~rheads would disable most if not
Wi L.-;arcor,ed spacecraft within a
several hundred miles.
Thus. the cestruction of a Soviet
ASAT at t?~e cost of dooming the US
spacecraf'. that is to be protected-
at least until US spacecraft can be
full/ hardened-would be a Pyrrhic
victory.
A strong case is being made by
th,3 Defense Department and other
elerner.'s of the Executive Branch
a iain-t halting the embryonic US
AS,T pr :jra,-n :,;'fore it has demon-
obviously is tantamount to granting
Moscow a fundamental advantage in
perpetuity. Such a condition would
enable the Soviets to break out from
the agreement since they have all
required technologies, if not oper-
ational hardware, while the US
would need years to reach that
point.
Arrayed against the reservations
of the Defense community is a loose
liaison of Arms Control and Dis-
armament Agency (ACDA) and top-
level State Department officials,
tacitly supported by the National
Security Council's Victor Utgoff. The
latter group seeks to dilute Presi-
dent Jimmy Carter's guidelines con-
cerning the US position on a space
weapons treaty--such as the in-
struction not to perpetuate existing
asymmetries and not to agree to
terms that can't be verified-by urg-
ing that Soviet promises and good
will be taken at face value.
The State Department/ACDA
group has proposed further that the
US commit itself to a policy of com-
prehensive "noninterference" with
Soviet military satellites. The term
"noninterference" in the context of
an anti-ASAT treaty tends to take on
extremely broad meaning. At stake
are prohibitions against jamming
hostile satellites, inspecting them by
visiting Space Shuttle crews, hinder-
ing their operation by placing for-
eign objects in the paths of their
transmissions and their fields of
view, incapacitating them in various
ways-such as overheating or over-
loading their sensors with ground-
based high-energy lasers-and
either "pirating" them through elec-
tronic means or causing them to
'"self-destruct" through spurious
command signals.
The Defense community-whose
views a this writing seem to have
greater leverage in the White House
than do ACDA's views--believes
that a space-weapons treaty should
be treated as a two-step process.
J
/,,q
~~('/ sr
for the second, permanent phase of
such an accord.
The "Sullivan" Affair
The New York Times's November
13, 1978, revelation that Son. Henry
M. Jackson (D-Wash.). chairman of
the Senate's Arms Control Subcom-
mittee, was furnished a bootlegged
copy of a secret, highly informative
CIA report on Soviet SALT tactics
and duplicity leads to a story behind
a story.
Attributed to "Administration and
intelligence sources," the report
contains misstatements and omis-
sions, the latter including informa-
tion disclosed in our December "In
Focus , . ." (p. 25) under a November
3, 1978, dateline. A good case can
be made for the proposition-widely
circulated on Capitol Hill-that Ad-
ministration sources leaked the story
to Seymour Hersh of the New York
Times in order to embarrass Senator
Jackson, one of the Congress'
pivotal and most uncompromising
and knowledgeable SALT experts,
and his influential staff advisor on
SALT matters, Richard Perle.
Well-connected congressional
sources also view the leak as part
of the opening round of a brass-
knuckle campaign-patterned after
but far more energetic and refined
than the selling of the Panama Canal
Treaties last year-to ram SALT If
ratification through the Senate. Key
protagonist in the New York Tim.et
story is former ClA strace^,ic ar'alvst
David S. Sullivan, a former Mar-,-;,?
Corp:, captain who served in Viet-
nam and is the son of retired Air
Force Maj. Gen. Henry R. Sullivan.
Jr.
Sullivan improperly but not it-
legally furnished to Senator Jack-
son's staff a copy of a highly classi-
fied CIA report-authored princi-
pally by him-that demonstrates the
near-absolute control over Soviet
SALT policies exerted by that r.a-
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