LETTER SENT TO SENATOR LOTT REGARDING THE CHEMICAL WEAPONS CONVENTION

September 6, 1996 wp=”br1″>

Hon. Trent Lott
Majority Leader
United States Senate
Washington, DC 20510

Dear Senator Lott:

As you know, the Senate is currently
scheduled to take final action on the
Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) on or
before September 14^th. This
treaty has been presented as a global,
effective and verifiable ban on chemical
weapons. As individuals with considerable
experience in national security matters,
we would all support such a ban. We have,
however, concluded that the present
Convention is seriously deficient on each
of these scores, among others.

The CWC is not global since
many dangerous nations (for example,
Iran, Syria, North Korea, and Libya) have
not agreed to join the treaty regime.
Russia is among those who have
signed the Convention, but is unlikely to
ratify — especially without a commitment
of billions in U.S. aid to pay for the
destruction of Russia’s vast arsenal.
Even then, given our experience with the
Kremlin’s treaty violations and its
repeated refusal to implement the 1990
Bilateral Destruction Agreement on
chemical weapons, future CWC violations
must be expected.

The CWC is not effective
because it does not ban or control
possession of all chemicals that could be
used for lethal weapons purposes. For
example, it does not prohibit two
chemical agents that were employed with
deadly effect in World War I — phosgene
and hydrogen cyanide. The reason speaks
volumes about this treaty’s impractical
nature: they are too widely used for
commercial purposes to be banned.

The CWC is not verifiable as
the U.S. intelligence community has
repeatedly acknowledged in congressional
testimony. Authoritarian regimes can be
confident that their violations will be
undetectable. Now, some argue that the
treaty’s intrusive inspections regime
will help us know more than we would
otherwise. The relevant test, however, is
whether any additional information thus
gleaned will translate into convincing
evidence of cheating and result in the
collective imposition of sanctions or
other enforcement measures. In practice,
this test is unlikely to be satisfied
since governments tend to look the other
way at evidence of non-compliance rather
than jeopardize a treaty regime.

What the CWC will do,
however, is quite troubling: It will
create a massive new, UN-style
international inspection bureaucracy
(which will help the total cost of this
treaty to U.S. taxpayers amount to as
much as $200 million per year). It will
jeopardize U.S. citizens’ constitutional
rights by requiring the U.S. government
to permit searches without either
warrants or probable cause. It will
impose a costly and complex regulatory
burden on U.S. industry. As many as 8,000
companies across the country may be
subjected to new reporting requirements
entailing uncompensated annual costs of
between thousands to
hundreds-of-thousands of dollars per year
to comply. Most of these American
companies have no idea that they will be
affected. And perhaps worst of all, the
CWC will undermine the standard of
verifiability that has been a key
national security principle for the
United States.

Under these circumstances, the
national security benefits of the
Chemical Weapons Convention clearly do
not outweigh its considerable costs.
Consequently, we respectfully urge you to
reject ratification of the CWC unless and
until it is made genuinely global,
effective and verifiable.

SIGNATORIES ON
LETTER TO SENATOR TRENT LOTT
REGARDING THE CHEMICAL WEAPONS CONVENTION

As of September
9, 1996; 11:30 a.m.

Signatures on letter and other
former Cabinet Members:

Richard B. Cheney,
former Secretary of Defense

William P. Clark,
former National Security Advisor to the
President

Alexander M. Haig, Jr.,
former Secretary of State (signed on
September 10)

John S. Herrington,
former Secretary of Energy (signed on
September 9)

Jeane J. Kirkpatrick,
former U.S. Ambassador to the United
Nations

Edwin Meese III,
former U.S. Attorney General

Donald Rumsfeld,
former Secretary of Defense (signed on
September 10)

Caspar Weinberger,
former Secretary of Defense

Additional Signatories (retired
military):

General John W. Foss,
U.S. Army (Retired), former Commanding
General, Training and Doctrine Command

Vice Admiral William Houser,
U.S. Navy (Retired), former Deputy Chief
of Naval Operations for Aviation

General P.X. Kelley,
U.S. Marine Corps (Retired), former
Commandant of U.S. Marine Corps (signed
on September 9)

Lieutenant General Thomas
Kelly, U.S. Army (Retired),
former Director for Operations, Joint
Chiefs of Staff (signed on September 9)

Admiral Wesley McDonald,
U.S. Navy (Retired), former Supreme
Allied Commander, Atlantic

Admiral Kinnaird McKee,
U.S. Navy (Retired), former Director,
Naval Nuclear Propulsion

General Merrill A. McPeak,
U.S. Air Force (Retired), former Chief of
Staff, U.S. Air Force

Lieutenant General T.H. Miller,
U.S. Marine Corps (Retired), former Fleet
Marine Force Commander/Head, Marine
Aviation

General John. L. Piotrowski,
U.S. Air Force (Retired), former Member
of the Joint Chiefs of Staff as Vice
Chief, U.S. Air Force

General Bernard Schriever,
U.S. Air Force (Retired), former
Commander, Air Research and Development
and Air Force Systems Command

Vice Admiral Jerry Unruh,
U.S. Navy (Retired), former Commander 3rd
Fleet (signed on September 10)

Lieutenant General James
Williams, U.S. Army (Retired),
former Director, Defense Intelligence
Agency

Additional Signatories
(non-military):

Elliott Abrams,
former Assistant Secretary of State for
Latin American Affairs (signed on
September 9)

Mark Albrecht, former
Executive Secretary, National Space
Council

Richard Allen, former
Assistant to the President for National
Security Affairs (signed on September 11)

Kathleen Bailey,
former Assistant Director of the Arms
Control and Disarmament Agency

Robert B. Barker,
former Assistant to the Secretary of
Defense for Nuclear and Chemical Weapon
Matters

Angelo Codevilla,
former Senior Fellow, Hoover Institute
(signed on September 10)

Henry Cooper, former
Director, Strategic Defense Initiative
Organization

J.D. Crouch, former
Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of
Defense

Midge Decter, former
President, Committee for the Free World

Kenneth deGraffenreid,
former Senior Director of Intelligence
Programs, National Security Council

Diana Denman, former
Co-Chair, U.S. Peace Corps Advisory
Council

Elaine Donnelly,
former Commissioner, Presidential
Commission on the Assignment of Women in
the Armed Services

David M. Evans,
former Senior Advisor to the
Congressional Commission on Security and
Cooperation in Europe

Charles H. Fairbanks, Jr.,
former Deputy Assistant Secretary of
State

Douglas J. Feith,
former Deputy Assistant Secretary of
Defense

Rand H. Fishbein,
former Professional Staff member, Senate
Defense Appropriations Subcommittee

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.,
former Acting Assistant Secretary of
Defense

William R. Graham,
former Science Advisor to the President

E.C. Grayson, former
Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of
the Navy

James T. Hackett,
former Acting Director of the Arms
Control and Disarmament Agency

Stefan Halper, former
Deputy Assistant Secretary of State
(signed on September 10)

Charles A. Hamilton,
former Deputy Director, Strategic Trade
Policy, U.S. Department of Defense

Thomas N. Harvey,
former National Space Council Staff
Officer (signed on September 9)

Amoretta M. Hoeber,
former Deputy Under Secretary, U.S. Army

Charles Horner,
former Deputy Assistant Secretary of
State for Science and Technology

Fred Ikle, former
Under Secretary of Defense for Policy

Sven F. Kraemer,
former Director for Arms Control,
National Security Council

Charles M. Kupperman,
former Special Assistant to the President

John Lehman, former
Secretary of the Navy

John Lenczowski,
former Director for Soviet Affairs,
National Security Council

Taffy Gould McCallum,
columnist and free-lance writer

James C. McCrery,
former senior member of the Intelligence
Community and Arms Control Negotiator
(Standing Consultative Committee)

Bruce Merrifield,
former Assistant Secretary for Technology
Policy, Department of Commerce

Philip Merrill,
former Assistant Secretary General of
NATO (signed on September 10)

J. William Middendorf II,
former Secretary of the Navy (signed on
September 10)

Laurie Mylroie,
best-selling author and Mideast expert
specializing in Iraqi affairs

Richard Perle, former
Assistant Secretary of Defense

Norman Podhoretz,
former editor, Commentary
Magazine

Roger W. Robinson, Jr.,
former Chief Economist, National Security
Council

Peter W. Rodman,
former Deputy Assistant to the President
for National Security Affairs and former
Director of the Policy Planing Staff,
Department of State

Edward Rowny, former
Advisor to the President and Secretary of
State for Arms Control

Carl M. Smith, former
Staff Director, Senate Armed Services
Committee

Jacqueline Tillman,
former Staff member, National Security
Council

Michelle Van Cleave,
former Associate Director, Office of
Science and Technology

William Van Cleave,
former Senior Defense Advisor and Defense
Policy Coordinator to the President

Malcolm Wallop,
former United States Senator

Deborah L. Wince-Smith,
former Assistant Secretary for Technology
Policy, Department of Commerce

Curtin Winsor, Jr.,
former U.S. Ambassador to Costa Rica

Dov S. Zakheim,
former Deputy Under Secretary of Defense