VAN CLEAVE AS SALT NEGOTIATOR?

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000301900082-2
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: September 24, 2012
• Sequence Number: 82
• Publication Date: December 29, 1980
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/09/24: CIA-RDP90-00965R000301900082-2
THE WASHINGTON POST
29 December 1980
Rowland Evans and Robert Novak
Van Cleave as SALT
The confidential recommendation to
? President-elect Reagan for "a pause" in
? new SALT talks, coupled with the possi-
bility of defense strategist William Van
Cleave's becoming Reagan's arms con-
trol negotiator, points to a decisive break
with arms control philosophy that any
SALT treaty is a good SALT treaty.
The unpublicized proposal for Reagan
to go slow in new superpower nuclear
arms talks came 10 days ago from the
transition team turned lose on the Arms
Control and Disarmament Agency. Now
required reading by Reagan's national
security strategists, the report is de-
scribed by those who have studied it as'
"exactly what - the president-elect
wants."
It espouses full linkage, advocates
complete disclosure of widely alleged
Soviet violations of !last agreements and
ir).4ts that the rek.,ilding of U.S. mili-
tary strength to provide a "margin of
safety" should precede a new SALT
treaty.
That happens to coincide with arms
control philosophies long held by Van
Cleave, the brilliant iconoclast whose un:
diplomatic candor has cost him the Rea-
gan administration posts he most want-
ed: the second or third top Pentagon job
under Defense Secretary Caspar Wein-
berger. ? During the presidential cam-
paign, Van Cleave was Reagan's princi-
pal adviser on arms control, a policy area
intimately known to the University of
Southern California professor.
What Weinberger and other top-level
Reaganites have found abrasive about
Van Cleave both during the campaign
and more recently in the poet-election
transition could be his greatest asset as
chief American negotiator with stony-
faced fr?viet bargain-hunters in the
Kremlin. "Bill as our nuclear arms nego-
tiator," a Reagan insider privately re-
marked, "would be exactly right in send-
ing Moscow the memege that Reagan is
one president who won't be rolled over
on SALT."
Van Cleave was a member of the 1971-
72 arms control negotiating team but re-
signed before the Nixon administration
accepted and signed SALT I in Moscow
in 1972. But in testimony before a Sen-
ate subcommittee headed by Sen. Henry
Jackson, he warned that the treaty con-
tained weaknesses that might prove dan-
gerous in the future--,a prophecy that
has come all too true in the past eight
years. -
Van Cleave also served On Team B,
the famous group of outside experts' ap-
pointed in 1976 by then-Central Intelli-
gence director George Bush as a check ?
on t'm CIA's own expert assessment of
U.S. and Soviet military strength.
Conceivably, Van Cleave, whose repu-
tation for intellectual honesty emerged I
unscathed from his battles with Wein-
berger and other Reagan insiders, might
decide that being chief arms control
negotiator is a challenge not large
enough for him. Reagan agents sounding
him out on the prospect think he can be
won over, mainly with the argument that
no one else could have as much symbolic
impact on Moscow.
An equal argument might be found in
the strong tone of the ACDA transition
team's report to the president-elect and
the fact that it is having an enthusiastic
reception by senior Reagan advisers. The
team was headed by James Malone,
ACDA's general counsel during the
Nixon-Ford administration. Its central
proposal: that until completion of a
"thorcowgh, interagency reassessment of
egotiator?
all arms control and national security
strategy. . . a pause in all arms control
negotiations" is essential.
If, as expected, that becomes the
president-elect's policy, the Reagan ad-
ministration would follow an arms con- .
trol strategy exactly opposite that of
Jimmy Carter four years ago. Carter
rushed into SALT talks with Moscow,
but when he got an agreement 21/2 years
later, opposition ran so high that he did
not even try to push it to a vote in the
Senate.
Reagan's transition team warns
against "unilateral arms reductions" by
the United States in hope of enticing
Soviet reciprocity. That is a deliberate
reminder of the Alice-in-Wonderland
arms control theory of the Carter admin-
istration during its blinkered days when
Carter claimed the West no longer need
have l'1.n "inordinate fear" of commu-
nism. The report's strongest argument
for going slow is that SALT has become 1,
"a permanent excuse for Western failurel
to come to grips with the Soviet military ,
challenge," a dictum Van Cleave himself]
might have written.
1-1
The shrewd move to confront the So.-!
viets with the cold-steel will and deter-
mination of Bill Van Cleave as chief;
American SALT negotiator could help;
put arms control, which is clearly an im-
portant aspect of the superpower rela-,-
tionship, into proper perspective after
years of dangerous experimentation. 31
Senate critics who would try to shoot
down Van Cleave would soon learn thit
fact: Reagan wants a new SALT treaty;
but a treaty that is good, not bad or only
fair, for the United States. With Van,
Cleave as his negotiator, he would no
lose any sleep worrying.
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/09/24: CIA-RDP90-00965R000301900082-2