January 31, 1973
Page 2778
CURTAILMENT OF ARMS RACE
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, in recent weeks I have voiced doubt on several occasions about the commitment of the second Nixon administration to curtail further the arms race. On Monday of this week, the administration released its proposed budget for fiscal year 1974. If accepted by Congress, this budget would have the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency lose one-third of its operating funds next year – a cut from $9.9 million to $6.7 million. Yesterday, the White House announced that the resumption of SALT II has been delayed from February 27 until March 12. Today, there is a report that the Nixon administration is taking steps to concentrate all phases of disarmament policy in the White House.
All these developments are deplorable. If there is to be a change in America's arms control policies, if there is to be a dismemberment of the Arms Control Agency as we know it, if there is to be a concentration in the White House of arms control policymaking, the President has an obligation to tell us. If the President is so intent on making things perfectly clear, let us all hope he does so soon in the arms control field.
I ask unanimous consent that an article from today's Washington Evening Star-News be printed in the RECORD.
There being no objection, the article was ordered to be printed in the RECORD, as follows:
[From the Washington Evening Star and News, Jan. 31, 1973]
WHITE HOUSE MOVES IN – ARMS CONTROL UNIT BYPASSED
(By Oswald Johnston)
As the strategic arm limitation talks with the Soviet Union enter a new and crucial phase, the Nixon administration is taking steps to concentrate all phases of disarmament policy in the White House.
In a series of moves culminating in this week's budget, the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency has been stripped of many of its resources and much of its authority to do its job.
The budget announced Monday shows that ACDA, a semi-autonomous agency housed in the State Department, would lose a third of its operating funds next year – a cut from $10 million to $6.7 million.
Much of the cutback, it is understood, is in the agency's research budget. It used to let out contracts for up to $2 million a year. Next year, the research fund will be only $500,000.
WHITE HOUSE PROJECT
At the same time, informed sources disclosed that the White House itself has quietly let out a research contract on disarmament to a former president of the Hudson Institute who is an outspoken opponent of last summer's arms-control agreements with the Russians.
The researcher is Dr. Donald G. Brennan, a strategic arms specialist who testified in Congress against the agreement to curb an anti-ballistic missile and against its interim five-year freeze on offensive nuclear weapons. Brennan has been engaged by Henry A. Kissinger's foreign policy apparatus in the White House, the National Security Council, to assess the political impact of the arms agreement on American allies in Western Europe.
SYMPTOMS OF MISTRUST
These developments are only the most recent symptoms of a mistrust in the White House of ACDA professionals that has been apparent since the first arms-control agreement were concluded in Moscow last May.
One arms expert close to the administration viewpoint explained it this way: "The principle at stake is whether the responsibility of negotiating these arm treaties should be in the hands of an interested agency – one whose mission is to promote arms control."
Kissinger himself moved publicly to take over from ACDA in Moscow last May, when he took charge of a press briefing scheduled to explain the details of the treaty and left Gerard C. Smith, the ACDA head and chief negotiator during two-and-a-half years of talks, standing in the background.
Smith's sudden relegation to the shadows has been cited by sources close to ACDA as a factor in his decision Jan. 3 to resign from the agency.
ACDA, has remained without a chief since. But a new chief negotiator to SALT was quickly named in an evident move to keep the SALT negotiating team separate from the arms control experts.
The new chief negotiator is U. Alexis Johnson, the former undersecretary of state, who has also been designated ambassador-at-large in President Nixon's second term.
The White House announced yesterday that the next round of SALT negotiations with the Soviets will begin March 12.
Johnson has been characterized as much more receptive to hard-line Pentagon views on arms control than any of the ACDA professionals.