Office of the Historian

374. Memorandum From the Staff Director of the National Security Council Under Secretaries Committee (Hartman) to the Members of the Under Secretaries Committee1

NSC-U SM 94D
Washington, May 13, 1971.

TO

  • The Deputy Secretary of Defense
  • The Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs
  • The Director of Central Intelligence
  • The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
  • The Under Secretary of Treasury
  • The Under Secretary of Commerce
  • The Special Trade Representative
  • Mr. Hendrik S. Houthakker, Council of Economic Advisers
  • Mr. James R. Schlesinger, Assistant Director, Office of Management and Budget
  • The Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission
  • The Director of the Office of Science and Technology
  • The Director of the United States Information Agency

SUBJECT

  • Sale of British Computers to the Soviet Union

The President has decided that on the basis of the Acting Chairman’s memorandum to the President of March 18,2 we should lift our objection to the sale of two British computers to the Serpukhov Laboratory on the conditions that (1) the U.K. agree to effective implementation of the proposed safeguards, particularly joint procedures for the inspection and random core dump provisions including the transmission of the core printouts to the U.S., and (2) the U.K. agree to support continuation of tight controls on computers and technology at the next Coordinating Committee List Review.3

The U.K. Government has been informed of this decision.4 The Acting Chairman has asked Assistant Secretary of State for Economic Affairs, Philip Trezise, to chair an inter-agency group to consider questions of implementation.

A.A. Hartman
  1. Source: National Archives, RG 59, S/S Files: Lot 81 D 309, NSC-U/SM 94D. Confidential. A copy was sent to Peterson (CIEP). On May 13 Samuels sent a copy to Trezise, with a request that Trezise chair an interagency group to consider questions of implementation. (Ibid., S/S Files: Lot 73 D 288, NSC/USC Memos)↩
  2. Document 372.↩
  3. The President’s decision, including the language in conditions (1) and (2), was forwarded to the Department of State in a May 12 memorandum from Kissinger to Irwin. (National Archives, RG 59, S/S Files: Lot 73 D 288, NSC/USC Memos)↩
  4. See Document 373.↩