Reprinted from The Washington Times , 5am -- April 9, 1998
State Department seeks a 'major say' on weapons
By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
State Department diplomats want a major say in what high-technology weapons systems the Pentagon develops.
Opponents of the plan argue that giving the State Department and U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (ACDA) their way will hobble work on missile and other defense programs.
John D. Holum, ACDA director and acting undersecretary of state, said in a letter to the Pentagon that its compliance review group should "coordinate" all important decisions with him "to avoid unexpected diplomatic and policy consequences stemming from compliance decisions."
Pentagon officials opposed to the plan said the new proposal is the latest in a string of efforts by anti-defense "arms controllers" in government to limit new weapons programs they think might violate agreements or complicate negotiations.
Similar disputes dating back to the 1970s led to the "dumbing down" of weapons systems -- missiles, sensors or equipment that were made less effective militarily than their technology potential, they said.
Mr. Holum wrote in the March 13 letter to Walter Slocombe, undersecretary of defense for policy, that "my office" should be notified of controversial issues "at the earliest stages" of the group's evaluations, and then again before final decisions are implemented.
"It's not going to happen," said an administration official familiar with the Holum letter. "There is no good reason for it."
The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said all controversial issues are already discussed fully with other agencies.
"But at the end of the day the decision on how a weapons systems is going to be built and what attributes it will or won't have is a decision for the Department of Defense, not some bunch of bureaucrats who are arms controllers," he said.
Allowing arms control political decisions to enter into weapons development could delay development and boost costs of weapons systems, the official said.
"It also, in the worst case, would allow a target-rich environment for people who are trying to hobble our programs," the official said.
A spokesman for Mr. Holum had no immediate comment.
Pentagon officials say the Holum plan is a bad idea because it would dramatically alter the focus of the compliance review group.
"Compliance determinations are essentially legal findings -- determinations of whether a given program, test or design is permitted by a treaty, not whether it's a good idea from a policy standpoint or whether it has any military utility," said one official.
"The net effect would be to ensure that compliance determinations will reflect not what is permitted by U.S. treaty obligations but what the interagency groups believe are advisable in light of a myriad of other considerations, including arms control ambitions and diplomatic efforts," the official said.
The cumbersome bureaucratic approval process under the Holum plan would give the State Department, ACDA and White House National Security Council staff the ability to "dress up their policy desires as legal compliance determinations," the official said.
"This in turn would enable the administration to claim that certain activities are noncompliant when in fact they're merely undesired by the administration," he said.
Mr. Holum is seeking to alter the compliance process because his agency in the past was embarrassed by Pentagon compliance determinations that ACDA was trying to negotiate away in arms control talks, officials said.
"Holum's power grab here is intended to ensure that future compliance determinations don't declare any activity legal if it would impede his ability to make arms control agreements," the official said.
An internal government controversy erupted in 1993 over the testing of the Pentagon's Theater High-Altitude Area Defense, or THAAD, which the Pentagon initially declared could not be tested until after an agreement was reached with Russia clarifying the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.
Then in 1994 the compliance group declared that THAAD could be tested with modifications. The determination took pressure off the Pentagon to accept Russian demands for limits on regional missile defenses and stretched out the talks.
Mr. Holum wrote to Deputy Defense Secretary John Deutch in 1994 asking that THAAD testing be halted while negotiations with Moscow were underway. The appeal was rejected by Mr. Deutch, who has since retired, in order to keep the program moving. It is the Pentagon's first dedicated missile defense system and is needed by field commanders to defend against a growing missile threat.
Pentagon sources said Mr. Slocombe has not responded to Mr. Holum but is expected to do so in the next two weeks.
The letter came after a March 9 discussion between the two officials that Mr. Holum said produced "a positive reaction" from Mr. Slocombe to the plan.
The administration official said that State Department and ACDA officials have been seeking to take control of the compliance review group for decades, and that during the Carter administration they attempted to interject themselves into the development of ground-launched cruise missiles.
"They are not engineers, and if they are engineers, they are not real engineers. They are arms control engineers," the official said. "The bottom line is the system ain't broke, and we ain't going to fix it."Copyright 1998 News World Communications, Inc.
Reprinted with permission of
The Washington Times.
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