Foreign Relations of the United States, 1981–1988, Volume XLIV, Part 1, National Security Policy, 1985–1988

200. Memorandum of Conversation¹

Washington, January 28, 1987, 3–5 p.m.

PARTICIPANTS

• Senator Malcolm Wallop
• Senator Pete Wilson
• Congressman Jack Kemp
• Congressman Jim Courter
• Ambassador Paul H. Nitze
• Mr. Norman G. Clyne

The Congressmen were accompanied by some 8–10 members of their staffs. Senator Wallop began by saying that they wished to find out what I thought about early SDI deployment, and that they also wished to present to me their ideas on the subject.

I emphasized that I had been briefed on this subject on Thursday, January 22nd, and the Secretary and I had been briefed on Saturday, January 24th.² Both the Secretary and I felt it was necessary that we do considerably more work to fully understand what the Pentagon had in mind before we could come up with a definitive view. I followed the attached talking points. I, told them what I understand to be the Pentagon-approved procedure for making major acquisition decisions and that the Pentagon has decided to follow that procedure with respect to acquisitions related to the deployment of SDI. I said that from the briefings I had received I was not certain as to what stage in the process they consider the program to be.

Senator Wallop said that his group had spent some 7 to 10 days going from laboratory to laboratory being briefed on individual weapon systems and it was their opinion that the entire program was ready for a decision on prompt deployment. I said that was not the impression I had received. Senator Wallop then questioned whether the procurement procedure which I outlined was necessary with respect to SDI. They thought only a political decision was required. I asked whether they thought that Congress would permit money to be spent on prompt deployment. They argued that if the Pentagon and the State Department were strongly behind the program, and if the President used his full powers of persuasion, the Congress would not stand in the way.

I said I thought an ability persuasively to answer the full range of questions applicable to such a decision would be necessary to win such a debate.

Attachment

Talking Points Prepared in the Department of State³

Washington, undated

TALKING POINTS FOR MEETING WITH CONGRESSMAN COURTER JANUARY 28, 1987

1. Have been briefed twice by General Abrahamson and have talked to others in Executive Branch about the Pentagon concept. Secretary Shultz briefed last Saturday.

2. Pentagon has not yet developed a program or project one can get one’s teeth into and fully understand. Therefore, it is premature to have a final opinion on the issue.

3. The Pentagon has, some time ago, developed a procedure for making major acquisition decisions. As I understand it, it involves a number of prescribed milestones.

— The first is milestone 0, a decision that the idea underlying the project seems to be good enough to warrant exploration.

— Milestone (1) is validation of the technology involved.

— Milestone (2) is a decision that full scale development is justified and should be approved.

— Milestone (3) is a decision that production of the system and its components for actual deployment should be and is approved.

4. As I understand it, the Pentagon has decided that Abrahamson’s SDI early deployment concept is to be subjected to these procurement decision procedures.

I am not informed as to what portions of the concept have yet to pass Milestone 1 and which are ready for Milestone 2, and if any are ready for a Milestone 3 decision.

5. No serious interdepartmental staff work has yet been done on a program to embody the concept of early-phased deployment.

QUESTION: What are your present views on the concepts of phased early deployment.

ANSWER: (a) I believe the Soviets are obtaining certain potential advantages from their work on their Moscow-based ABM system, on their relatively dense phased-array early warning system, and on the elements of what could become an ATBM system. Whether those potential advantages are worth the substantial costs involved is not demonstrable one way or the other. The more important question is whether a roughly comparable effort on our part would produce capabilities and give us experience worth more than the alternate uses to which comparable resources could be applied.

(b) There is a separate problem with respect to tests and deployments requiring us to deviate from the broad interpretation of the ABM Treaty, or from the so-called narrow interpretation.

(c) The broad versus narrow interpretation may not go to the heart of the problem. At the time the Treaty was being negotiated we had little idea as to what systems based on OPP might be. We certainly did not then know how to define “components” of such systems with the same precision with which we defined in Article II of the Treaty “ABM components” based on the then understood technologies. This is a problem we need to think through.

(d) Work needs to be done before a definitive view on a program to implement the phased-early deployment concept is possible.

1. Source: Department of State, Ambassador Nitze’s Personal Files 1953, 1972–1989, Lot 90D397, 1987. No classification marking. Nitze initialed the memorandum beside his name on the list of participants. The meeting took place in Wallop’s office.
2. See Document 197.
3. No classification marking.