Foreign Relations of the United States, 1964–1968, Volume XI, Arms Control and Disarmament

32. Letter From the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs (Solbert) to the Deputy Director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (Fisher)¹

I-25047/64

Washington, June 9, 1964.

Dear Butch:

I have reviewed the rewritten paper on the cutoff of fissionable material and find that the changes which you and the AEC made are a distinct improvement to the paper.² As you know, the Chiefs have not commented on the verification annex in its present form³ but I feel they are now in general agreement with the paper with the following exceptions:

a. They desire overflights and some monitoring of atomic explosions for peaceful purposes. As the Secretary said last week, we believe that the question of overflights need not be decided at this time, and therefore a policy of conscious ambiguity is appropriate on this matter.⁴ As for the matter of monitoring atomic explosions for peaceful purposes, the Secretary made it clear that we believe this is a subject more appropriately discussed in the context of the test ban.

b. The JCS have also stated that: “Until the IAEA safeguards organization and procedures are strengthened and the concept of IAEA inspection of a US/USSR cutoff agreement can be evaluated, adversary resident inspection of declared facilities is required as one of the safeguards against Soviet cheating.”⁵ It is our understanding, based primarily on Section I of the verification annex, that this requirement is adequately recognized in the cutoff paper, and that we are not at this time firmly committed to an IAEA role.

c. As neither the Chiefs nor the Government as a whole have studied the problem of cutoff and transfer together, I would appreciate it if you would not authorize discussions now of transfer of over 60,000 kilograms for the United States and of a US/USSR ratio greater than 2. The Chiefs’ study on this subject should be available some time next month. At that time the Secretary will forward his views on any possible increase in our transfer proposal.

If these suggestions are acceptable to you, we have no objection to the use of the revised paper in the Geneva negotiations, or elsewhere, as appropriate.

Sincerely,

Peter Solbert

1. Source: Johnson Library, National Security File, Subject File, Disarmament, Vol. 1, Box 10. Secret.
2. Entitled “Cutoff of Fissionable Material Production and Transfer to Peaceful Uses as Separable Measures,” June 4. (Ibid.)
3. Entitled “Inspection of a Fissionable Material Cutoff,” June 4, and attached as Annex A to the above referenced paper.
4. McNamara expressed these views in his letter to Foster, June 3. (Ibid.)
5. The quotation is from the memorandum from the Joint Chiefs of Staff to Secretary of Defense McNamara, May 28, JCSM-449-64. (Ibid.)