Foreign Relations of the United States, 1981–1988, Volume XI, START I

14. Memorandum From Robert Linhard and Sven Kraemer of the National Security Council Staff to the President’s Assistant for National Security Affairs (Clark)¹

Washington, May 3, 1982

SUBJECT

• START—Follow-Up Actions

Following today’s meeting, certain steps should be taken with all deliberate speed.

Frame a Presidential Decision Package. All the basic arguments are now in place. We should expect a flurry of follow-up memoranda from Agency heads to the President late today/early tomorrow. What we need most, certainly prior to the President addressing himself to the issue and deciding, is some short, but essential, amount of time for internal NSC staff reflection leading to the preparation of a Presidential recommendation/decision package.

Such a package should lay out the most basic arguments once more in their simplest form. It should also provide a short summary of the JCS assessment of military sufficiency, which was never briefed to the President, and does impact on some of the proposals.

Such a package could be available for your review and to support internal NSC staff discussion as appropriate by COB Tuesday.² It could then be made available to the President early Wednesday to support his decision on Wednesday or Thursday.

Until such a package has been developed, we should discourage situations or discussions that may precipitate premature Presidential action.

Recommend that you authorize the internal NSC staff preparation of such a recommendation/decision package.³

Speech Insert. Only one change needs to be made to the insert prepared for the May 9 speech⁴—the inclusion of a reference to consultation with Allies “and Congressional leaders.” This change should be made, and the speech insert released to the speechwriters.

At the same time, we must take steps to make the consultations come true. State should immediately be tasked to prepare a plan for contacting Allies. The NSC staff should develop a similar plan for Congress. Both are needed for approval by May 5, if we are to have sufficient time to implement them prior to the speech.

Recommend that you approve the tasking necessary to accomplish the above.⁵

Loose Ends. At the “special SIG,” chaired by NSC staff on Saturday, General Rowny posed three questions for further study:

(1) How do we explain the looser constraints on bombers?

(2) What do we do with TLAM–N?

(3) How do we explain our approach to ALCMs?

All agreed that these questions need attention, but action on them was deferred until after the NSC meeting. All other follow-up tasking leading to the NSC meeting (i.e., developing the charts that were used and redrafting the paper as necessary) was accomplished under NSC lead. State took the position that the SIG/IG work on the paper was complete when provided to the NSC on Thursday, and that it was now an NSC Staff paper. To ensure rapid and thorough treatment of the remaining three questions above, we should treat them as “loose ends” still under NSC control.

With your approval, we will call a Working Group-level meeting, chaired by NSC, on Wednesday⁶ to address these remaining three questions.

Recommend that you authorize us to proceed as outlined above.⁷

1. Source: National Security Council, National Security Council Institutional Files, Box SR—101, NSC 00049, RWR 5/03/82 START. Top Secret. Sent for action.
2. May 4.
3. McFarlane initialed approval on behalf of Clark.
4. See note 5, Document 11.
5. McFarlane initialed approval on behalf of Clark.
6. May 5.
7. McFarlane drew a curved line downward from the “approve” option, and wrote: “Task as part of NSDD RCM.” Linhard wrote to the right on McFarlane’s note: “All actions completed May 20 RL.”