121. Electronic Message From Peter Rodman of the National Security Council Staff to Robert Linhard of the National Security Council Staff1
SUBJECT
- S-W-P Breakfast: SDIO Study of ABM Treaty
Whitehead raised this subject, complaining that Perle was not allowing anyone at State to see any of the results or progress of SDIO’s study of the effects of the restrictive vs. broader interpretation of the ABM Treaty. (The Admiral noted that this was a study he had asked for.) Will Taft replied that so far it’s only a preliminary study; Cap got a preliminary briefing in March and sent it back for more work; no results would be in until next month. Whitehead said fine; could they have an interim briefing? Ikle noted that the study had been treated as very close-hold because of the danger of leaks.
Taft said he would “take the question” and get back to them.
On the substance, Ikle said the study was likely to come to the common-sense conclusions that under the restrictive interpretation we would bump up against the limits earlier and have less information on which to base a deployment decision. The Admiral noted that the main difference had to do with the possibilities for integrated testing of systems.
- Source: National Archives, PROFS system, Reagan Administration, ID 28677. Secret. Copies were sent to McDaniel, Matlock, Sestanovich, Kraemer, and Mahley. No minutes of the breakfast meeting were found.↩