THE ABM ISSUE AND THE SECURITY OF THE NATION

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP80-01601R000300340059-1
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 3
• Document Creation Date: December 9, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 8, 2001
• Sequence Number: 59
• Publication Date: November 19, 1971
• Content Type: OPEN

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Pressed-to explain his current. reputation, There being no objection; the article
the, Congressman cites "a built-in advantage, was ordered to be printed in the 1Zi;coav,
as a moderately successful football player," as follows:
and a popular hunger for stronger political
-
leadership. "I learned long ago," he declares, [Prom the Washington Post, Nov. 8, 1971]
"that you can't quarterback a football team MISLEADING SCIENTISTS .
by taking a poll and following the consensus. The clamor surrounding the underground
You have to weigh risks, make judgments, nuclear test at Amchitka is P. very good reason
take chances:"
for offering an extremely solemn warning.
Mr. Kemp campaigned as a "let's tell On such occasions, a great deal of the more
what's right about America" Republican; and leftwing "scientific" evidence must now be
his House record thus far Is rated as 100% by expected to be as crooked as a ram's horn.
the American Conservative Union and 15% by Some attention has already been given to
the Americans for Democratic Action. Yet in the so-called ORSA report that contains the
recognition of Buffalo's high unemployment, proofs of the foregoing extremely grave state-
he has supportccl several spending pleasures anent, But no one has even begun to grasp
for larger than the White House wanted. the full seriousness of this solid, stolid, un-
Mr. Kemp is at some pains to deny as "ab- Impeaehably factual report. So It deserves
surd"- rumors that he'll be the Conservative re-.examination.
Party, challenger against Republican Sen. OI.ZSA, in brief, Is the Operations Research'
Jacob Javits in 1974. "1 have a forum here to Society of America, with a membership of
exert some leadership, and that's exactly _ about 8,000 scientists doing defense and In-
where I want to be," he says. Clearly, though, dustrial research and a.ntlysis. One of the so-
a?'Senate seat some clay is well within his ciety's stated original elms was to establish
downfielcl vision. uniform standards and guidelines for this
It's not going to be all clear going, of new and growing branch of research.
course. First re-elections are normally con- Hence the society was interested when one
slderod the toughest, though a coming reap- of its members, Dr. Albert Wohlstetter of
portioriment plan will probably make his dis- the University bf Chicago, asked for a panel
trict more Republican. More seriously, some to judge the standards of research and analy=
colleagues rate Air. Kemp still naive and sis displayed in the bitter debate about the
prone to error. For example, they say, it may "Safeguard" antiballistic-missile system in
flatter his ego to debate Air. McCloskey on the Senate in 1969. Essentially that meant a
television or to have Mr. Agnew speak for panel to judge between ABAI supporters like
hits, but these may not be such good politics Dr. Wohlstetter, Mid its chief scientific op-
ill a district where many svell-educated sub- ponents, such as the new president of MiT,
urbanities dons particularly like the war or Dr. Jerome Weisner, and Drs. George Rath-
the Vice President. Other House nlelnbors jells and Stephen Weinberg.
complain that he skimps on the nasty nitty- Tho ADM opponents were invited to make
gritty of committee work, and that his fist, any contribution they chose, and also to
purposeful pace often leaves bruised feel- nominate a mcnlber of the proposed panel.
ings behind. They haughtily refused to hr.vc anything to
,It usually takes three or four terms to do with the inquiry. And they added a wholly
know whether the comers actually live up t,;, groundless charge that the inquiry- "could
their early billing. A good many people wilt well appear to the nation .s all ugly resur-
be watching to see whether Quarterback genco" of McCarthyism-but they ducked
A six-man panel of industrial and Be,-t_
denlic scientists wgs none the less formed,
HIT? OF THE NATION past president of ORSA. The Panel Included
. men who had opposed the A11Af in. 1969, as
IVlr. STEVENSON. N'r. President, the well as men who had been for it. At least
charges inside by Dr. Albert ~W'ohlstetter one former panel mcnlber, Dr. Howard H.
n #er~,er, of Xerox, "still hasn't made up his
find the
society
.
against the intellectual integrity of Dr. "'Ind.,,
GeOrg'e Rathjens and Dr. Jerome Nxlir-s- The results v: ere devastating. "Analysas"
per and other eminent scientists oppes- that were "often inappropriate, misleading,
lug the A131%11 were revived in a recent morentary tary standards !nndards f err-for proper failure e most "ele-
presentation of
? column by the estimable Joseph Alsop. results to permit verification"; failure to
The AYx2 issue is of undoubted impor- "distinguish properly between the roles of
Lance to the security of the Nation.-It is analyst and advocate"--these were the main
'difficult enough to evaluate the claims phrases In the summary of find ings.
made on behalf of the expensive and po- Dr. Rathjens was held guilty of "specific
tentially destabilizing-AI317 without the abuses of professional standards" in the ABM
intrusion of such regrettable charges to debate. He was further condemned for se-
clear the ail'. - - letting his material in a most peculiar man-
"
ner, mostly by omitting
data (that) would
I ask unaninlotts consent that the . have substantially weakened his case". Other
column by Joseph Alsop, published in highly partisan inaccuracies were also found
1971, and. two letters in reply, one by Dr. exchanges with Dr. Wohlstetter.
Rathjens and the other' by George Ibis- Drs. Wiesner and Weinberg were found to
tiakoa'sky, Herbert Scoville and kIer_ have "ascribed official validity" to calcula-
bert E. York be printed in the RECORD tioihs which had no such validity. They were
at the conclusion of those remarks.AClDl'- , further found to have made extremely nasty
KiStiakO,'sl.y lugs fel'nlerly Science false charges against the chief scientist of_
the Defense Department, Dr. John S. Poster.
visor to President Eisenhower' and a Drs. Wiesner, Rathjens and Wernher; were
chairman of the President's Science Ad- jointly held to have been guilty of "misuse
visory Colnlhlittee. Dr. Scoville was for- of source material" in the study of the ADM
nlor'ly Deputy Director for Research, in a critique of the Pentagon's- A13AI posl-
CIA, and Assistant Director at the Arins tion that was circulated by Senator Edward
Control and hiss?ina]Ile?.lt Agency, Dr, Kennedy. The same "misuse'- was also found
York was fornlel'1y Director, Defense in the work clone for Senator I ennedly by
Research and Engineering, DOD finder Dr. Wiesner and ABAI charges tI11 OLlghoub
the ORSA report.
President Eisenhower and a nlernbor of Thus placed in the dock and found guilty
the President's
.Science Advisory Conn- and crooking the evidence and purposeful
1111 Lice. varication, the' anti-ABM scientist; finally
They issueTa reply, admitting sonic nlio-
takes, yet claiming they were right about
what mattered. To this Dr. Rathjens added
.the charge that the neutral panel member,
Dr. Herbert Berger, secretly harbored per-
sonal animus against himself. -
To this charge, Dr. Berger has hoot re-
piled, in effect, that Dr. Rathjens is again
prevaricating, anti again, Dr. Forger's evi-
dence is solid, stolid and unimpeachably fac-
tual, like the ORSA report itself. No open-
minded person can fail to read either report
without concluding it is all too true, both
in detail and in broad. outline.
It needs only to be added that the sup-
posed "mistakes" proven in the report were
at the very heart of the ABM debate. In sum,
warning.
[From the Washington Post, Nov. 17, 19711
LE?rvsrcS TO THE EDITOR OP7 vm s OPERATIONS
RESEARCH COMMITTEE REPORT AND THE ABM
DEBATE -
Joseph Alsop's column of November 8 for
the most part 'accurately reflects the find-
ings and tone of the recent critique by the
Operations Research Society of America of
the role of myself and others in the ABAI
debate. What Mr. Alsop failed to appreciate
or convey to his readers was the fact that
the ORSA report Is a technically incompe-
tent critique--based on bizarre procedural
arrangements, selective use of evidence, and
remarkably uncritical acceptance of admin-
istration assumptions, many of which had
little or no foundation in fact.
This is not the place to discuss all of the
deficiencies of the ORSA report-we have
done that in some detail elsewhere--but lest
readers be misled by Air. Alsop's column It
is perhalis useful to comment on two issues
in the ABM debate: the possible vulnerabil-
ity of the U.S. Minuteman force to a Soivet
S&-9 "first strik.e" in the mid-70's, and
whether the Safeguard AI:AM deployment
would make a significant difference in Alin-
utettlan survivability. '
Although the second question v/sa really
what the AIMI debate sum's all about, ORS A
focused Its attention almost exclusively on
the first, a hardly surprising fact since Al-
bert Wob1stett.et? who instigated the inquiry,
and whose load It slavishly followed, had
largely avoided commenting on Safeguard's
utility in both his testimony and his specifi-
cation of changes. - - -
As regards Minuteman vulnerability, I
would point out that estimates necessarily
had to he based on interpretation of. intelli-
gence Information and technical Judgment
of what the situdtion 'would be six years
later. Various participants in the debate mach
quite different judgments, and such dift'er-
encce, riot mathematical manipulation which
was essentially trivial, nor the application of
esoteric operations research techniques, ac-
counted for my estimating that 25 per cent
of the Minuteman force would survive while
Air. Wohlstetter and Defense Department
spokesmen estimated 5 per cent. I leave it to
the reader to draw his own conclusion as to
whose judgments were more reasonable,
pointing out that I would note revise my esti-
mates of Minuteman survivability upward
as it now seems even less likely than it did
two years ago that the U.S.S.R.' could fully
equip its SS=9 force with highly .effective
multiple independently targettable reentry
vehicles (MIFtV's) by the mid-70's. Reports
such as those by Michael Getler of a recent
DOD/CIA sponsored study by TRW (The
Washington Post, June 17), General Ryan's
March 9 testimony before the House Ap-
propriations Committee, and Secretary Pack-
ard 's remarks of October 21 lead me to be-
lieve that the administration too might now
estimate very substantial survivability.
The administration seems also to have
largely come around to the views of its op-
ponents with regard to the question of Safe-
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By JAMES RES'I'GN
Almost everybody seems to be
moaning low these days about wages
aihd prices, but one of the good things
coming In, he is sticking on the Pay
Board with .thy outrageous argument
that the fat cats are trying to drive
him off it. Nevertheless, what pros-.
perity failed to do, adversity is doing.
George is putting up a big smoke screen
but is retreating into common sense.
Similarly, the business conservatives
have been proclaiming the glories of
Adam Smith, the free market place and
the wonders of competition; but now
that the Japanese and the Germans
have mated the arts of the comliuter
and the scientific revolution with low-
er wages, the welfare state and the
planned economy, they are slowly ad-
justing, like Mr. Meany, to controls.
If it didn't hurt so much, it would be
funny,. for the Republicans are now
backing controls, and the old Demo-
cratic New Dealers, who instituted
them, are arguing for more freedom.
President Nixon has led this parade
back to reality. It is easy to demon-
strate that he has no clear political
phllosophy---which is a troubling
thought;-but at least he ' Is not a
prisoner of his past prejudices. lie has
made the historic and strategic open-
Ing to Pekin-, though following it
with a dance of doubt and clumsy
tactical moves to protect his right
wing 'Republican flank, but still he
has made it.
And now, confronted with a poten
tially disastrous financial and trade
problem in the world, lie has finally
scrapped his ideological approach to
the Soviet Union and has sent off See
retary of Commerce Stans and a ten-
man delegation to seek a substantial
increase in trade with Moscow.
;:,Like. Mr. Meany, Mr. Nixon knew
about the bad economic news is that
at brings men in power back to reality.
This is one of the uses., of adversity:
It compels long-delayed thought and
action; it strips away slack practices,
and enables institutions to face the
awkward problems they usually evade
in more prosperous clays.
George Meany of the A.F.L.-C.I.O
knew all along that America couldn't
afford his hawkish Vietnam policy,
his policies on welfare, social security
and wages, 'without pricing the na-
tion out of the increasingly competi-
tive world markets and running his
workers out of jobs. He is no fool,
but prosperity tolerates foolishness,
and now that the consequences are
all along that the ideological approach
to trade didn't keep the Soviet Gov-
ernment from getting even the most
sophisticated computers and scientific
equipment from West Germany and.
Japan. After Willy Brandt made hisl
peace with Moscow, and the Japa-
nese started flying their commercial
planes and sending their diplomatic
and commercial agents to Moscow, the
point was clear. . ? -
Even the most intricate American
computers and other modern devices
were going from Europe and Japan to
the Soviet Union-all with the knowl-
edge of the C.I.A., and years ago. But /
only when the American economy got
into serious trouble in the world was
it possible to face the fact.
Mr. Nixon reads the returns---eco=
nomic as well as political. In the third
quarter of 1971, the United States had
the largest balance of payments defies
cit--the difference between what the
country takes in and what it spends
abroad-in the history of the Republic.
Ile is a traditional Republican.
Lvery party lias its nightmare, and the
'nightmare of the Republican party is
economic trouble----after all, the Re-
:puhlieans were out. of power for 2S
out of 36 years because the Democrats"
,exploited and ran successfully against
"the Hoover Depression," and nobody
knows this better than Richard Nixon.
Accordingly, it is no accident that
the President has just approved $528
million in export licenses to ship
American equipment and technology
to the Soviet Union's big new truck
factory on the Kama River.
Not so long ago, he vetoed a deal
to have Henry Ford enter into . simi-
lar cor.'tract with the Soviet Govern-,
mcnt, but that was when the eco-'
nomic slump at home didn't seem
quite so ominous. .
The objective facts are not really
very different. Germany, Japan and
Britain, among others, have been ship-
ping sophisticated modern scientific
and industrial equipment to the So-
viet Union for years. Washington re-
fused to do so, when it was prosper-
ous, on ideological grounds; but since
the recession and the unehnployinent,
with an election coming up, it is tak-
ing a different view.
It is looking for business and votes.
It is being forced by the bad economic
news to do the things that it wanted
to do, but could not quite do In good
times, but is now forced to do when
'things are tough,
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