SALT SABOTAGE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000301890046-4
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: September 25, 2012
• Sequence Number: 46
• Publication Date: December 18, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/09/25: CIA-RDP90-00965R000301890046-4
9e
ARTICLE A:X.52
ON PACE
Rowland Evans and Robert Novak
SALT Sabotage
- Testimony secretly given to the House Intel--
ligence Committee by Gen. Richard Ellis that
the Soviet Union has a "good" SALT treaty
compliance record helps sabotage President
Reagan's five-year battle for a new arms con-
trol policy.
As the administration's man on the U.S.-
Soviet compliance commission, former
Strategic Air Commander Ellis is presumably
well-qualified on Soviet treaty performance,
or nonperformance. Yet his Nov. 20 testi-
mony seems a direct contradiction of charges
Reagan himself has often 'made publicly over
the last two years about Soviet violations.
Ellis' testimony helps explain strong hints
of SALT treaty continuity that Secretary of
State George Shultz has given U.S. NATO
allies. Shultz has virtually assured them the
president will continue to adhere to basic
SALT II provisions after Dec. 31, the date
the treaty would have expired had it ever
been ratified. SALT It, once stigmatized by
Reagan as "fatally flawed," is becoming Rea-
gan's tar baby: the harder he attacks it, the
faster he is stuck.
Ellis' testimony angered Pentagon officials at
the command level. But its implication?that
the United States should stick with the treaty
despite Soviet misconduct?fits a despondent
new mood imposed on the three services by
unprecedented spending cuts that were ap-
proved by Reagan himself when he signed the
Gramm-Rudman budget-balancing legislation
last week
Sticking to SALT II means that by late
spring the Navy will probably be compelled
to cut up two more of its Poseidon subma-
rines to make way for one more Trident mis-
sile-firing sub destined to enter sea trials by
then. Navy Secretary John Lehman has qui-
etly passed word that given the extraordi-
nary spending cuts of Gramm-Rudman, he
would prefer to retire the aging Poseidons
and use the money saved for more urgent
purposes.
The same mood threatens to conflict With
a series of sensible proposals soon to come to
the president's desk from Defense Secretary
Caspar Weinberger. Weinberger and his top
SALT adviser, Assistant Secretary Richard
Perle, have completed major work on recom-
mendations for "proportionate" U.S. re-
sponses to Soviet violations, leaving SALT II
theoretically intact while the U.S. attempts
to compensate for Soviet violations.
One of these is likely to be a proposal for
WASHINGTON POST
18 December 1985
costly improvement of "pen-aids," shorthand
for a whole series of devices to give U.S. war-
heads a better chance to penetrate Soviet de-
fenses. But pen-aids are expensive; the Air
Force and the Navy, caretakers of the strategic
missile forces, would not be likely to sacrifice
pilot flying hours or ship steaming days, consid-
ered the heart and core of readiness, for pene-
tration aids that may or may not work.
Another "proportionate" U.S. response
under consideration is encryption of testing
data, a Soviet violation that has become rou-
tine. But the United States knows that Moscow
already. has good intelkence on American
strategic weapons, much ri of it availableAu..,
unclassified sources. Moreover. the United
States has no new weaixxis_to testicKlav.
The president will be informed early next
year by the arms control agency that there
were no "overall" improvements in Soviet
treaty compliance during 1985 and some evi-
dence of cheating in new areas not noticed
before. That would counsel no easing of any
kind in the president's determination not to
let Soviet noncompliance off scot-free.
But SALT II may have claimed Reagan as its
victim beyond recall. The one new political in-
gredient?Adm. John Poindexter, who suc-
ceeded Robert McFarlane as Reagan's national
security adviser?is regarded is axisidera
more hard-line on some issues than his p
cessx. The president's tough an
'radio address last Saturday might never thiysi
passed muster with McFarlane.
But Poindexter was far removed from SA Lf
matters and maneuvers during McFarlane's'W
cendancy. It would take formidable talent for '
him to turn back the momentum of bureau-
cratic pressure now aimed at forcing the presi.o
dent to abide by SALT II.
The implications for Ronald Reagan as chief,
architect of his own second-term policies
profound. Instead of mustering the poll
strength of his own judgment and the prolifif
record of Soviet cheating and honorably endingl
American compliance with a treaty that 'has
never been ratified, he seems compliantlylfg
the grip of forces operating against his own mr
terests.
What makes that doubly wounding for him is ?
that the Dec. 31 treaty expiration date was set
by President Carter. If Reagan extends SALT
II beyond that, he can no longer pass it off as
Jimmy Carter's. It then becomes Ronald Rea-
gan's tar baby.
s-,1985, News American Syndicate
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/09/25: CIA-RDP90-00965R000301890046-4