77. Memorandum From Ronald Lehman of the National Security Council Staff to the President’s Assistant for National Security Affairs (Clark)1
SUBJECT
- Howe START Group
Each of the departments and agencies recognizes that pressures to alter our START position will build in the weeks ahead as Ed Rowny prepares to return to Geneva for Round V in early October. Each sees the politics of MX and the build-down accelerating this process. At present the formal interagency work is focused on flexible approaches to throw-weight and on SLCM. However, State, ACDA, and DoD are all developing more far reaching proposals in house.
In order to insure that some of the basic analysis is completed on components of some of these far reaching approaches, Jon Howe has set up a special sub unit of the interagency working group to analyze such concepts as special MIRV ceilings and rules, weapons or platform aggregation, etc. All of which serve as building blocks for some of the department options. The working group consists of one senior person from each agency.
Ken Adelman believes that, despite the care taken by Jon Howe, such a working group would lead to leaks. Instead he proposes that someone from State or the NSC be designated to sit in on the various agency and department discussions of their own proposals and then, when the time is right, prepare a paper with options.
I am sympathetic to Ken’s concerns, but I don’t believe that it will fill the bill. The danger with Ken’s proposal is that we will be faced with unnecessary conflict as departments and agencies rally behind their own proposals whose components have not been subjected to vigorous analysis. I believe that Jon’s group can safely handle this potentially volatile material as long as we keep the analysis to concepts and components rather than complete packages. I think it would be dangerous to enter the highly politicized month of September without the discipline of the interagency process. When you return, these building blocks will be useful to you in focusing the Senior Arms Control Policy Group on START options right away. It is not in the President’s interest to see agencies locked into positions in a manner which will [Page 273] inevitably spill into the press as an example of internecine warfare. In the end, I would like to see us work both START and the build-down the way we handled the recent INF package.
RECOMMENDATION
That Jon Howe be permitted to proceed with a special working group to examine concepts and components of possible changes in our START position, but that no formal packages be prepared in that group. Instead, the Senior Arms Control Policy Group should meet when you return to discuss possible changes in START building upon Jon’s work.2