Critical Mass: Woolsey, Lehman Cite Concerns with C.T.B.T.

(Washington, D.C.): Evidence continues to mount that President Clinton’s intention,
announced
in his State of the Union address last January, to press this year for Senate ratification of the
Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) is in trouble. First, there have been the revelations
about a security meltdown at the Department of Energy and the Nation’s nuclear
laboratories — arguably exacerbated in critical respects by the Administration’s reckless
campaign to consummate and sell this treaty. Now, a growing chorus of respected
security
policy-makers is emerging to express their opposition to the zero-yield test ban
negotiated by
the Clinton Administration in 1996. 1

The most recent additions to the eminent company of CTBT critics are R. James
Woolsey,
President Clinton’s first Director of Central Intelligence (1993-95), and Ronald F. Lehman, who
served throughout the Bush Administration as the Director of the Arms Control and Disarmament
Agency. In testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on 5 May, Messrs.
Woolsey and Lehman focused on two of the CTBT’s fatal flaws: 1) its
unverifiability (a sure-fire formula for low-level, yet militarily significant,
cheating) and 2) the adverse impact it will
have on the U.S. deterrent (i.e., on the safety, reliability and credibility of our own
nuclear
forces). Their respective remarks included:

Jim Woolsey

I do not believe the zero[-yield] level [test ban] is verifiable. …partially because of the
capability [of a foreign] country…to cheat on such a treaty, [by] decoupling its nuclear
tests by setting them off in caverns or caves and the like. I think I might have felt
differently about a comprehensive test ban that was at a level of a kiloton, or even a
few kilotons perhaps; that I think we had a reasonable chance of verifying. But I think
the level of zero is, in my judgement, not verifiable. And that makes it
a treaty
that we have to observe because of our open society, and the countries like China
probably will not. And to my mind, that makes it worse than a weak reed on
which to rely.

Ron Lehman:

I am concerned about the ability to maintain our deterrent without
testing….
[W]hen I was in government, we viewed [the CTBT] as a long-term objective. But the
conditions were considerably different than what we experience today. There have
been some positive developments, but there have also been some negative
developments.

The Bottom Line

In the course of the hearing, the reservations expressed about the CTBT by Directors
Woolsey
and Lehman were seconded by Dr. Keith Payne, a founding member of the
Center for Security
Policy’s Board of Advisors who serves as President of the National Institute for Public Policy.
The Senate should heed such sound advice and resist the pressure tactics of an Administration
increasingly desperate for a foreign policy “win” — no matter how empty or how great the cost to
U.S. security.

1 For example, see the National Defense University and Lawrence
Livermore Laboratory study
entitled U.S. Nuclear Policy in the 21^st Century; as
well as the Center’s Decision Briefs entitled
Third Time’s A Charm? Yet Another Blue-Ribbon Group Warns Against Clinton’s
‘Denuclearization Agenda (No. 98-D 195,
4 December 1998) and Giving ‘Clinton’s Legacy’
New Meaning: The Buck Stops at the President’s Desk on the ‘Legacy’ Code, Other D.O.E.
Scandals (No. 99-D 52, 29 April 1999).