LEGISLATIVE INTERDEPARTMENTAL GROUP FRIDAY, JUNE 16, 1972

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: Library of Congress
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): LOC-HAK-302-1-12-1
• Release Decision: RIFLIM
• Original Classification: S
• Document Page Count: 8
• Document Creation Date: January 11, 2017
• Document Release Date: October 14, 2011
• Sequence Number: 12
• Publication Date: June 16, 1972
• Content Type: MISC

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LEGISLATIVE INTERDEPARTMENTAL GROUP
Friday, June 16, 1972
Time and Place: 9:32 - 10:15 a.m. ,
Subject: SALT Legislation
Participants:
Chairman - John Lehman
State - Marshall Wright
Charles B rower
Robert Martin
Defense -
CIA-
White House Situation Room
Col. George L. Dalferes
Col. Zane Finkelstein
Jack Maury
Bruce Clarke
ACDA - Spurge on Keeny
William Hancock
USIA - Charles Ablard
OMB - William Gifford
AEC - ? Thomas R. Clark
White House- Torn Korologos
Richard Cook
Gerald Warren
Fred Fielding
NSC Staff -
NSS, OSD, State Dept. reviews
completed
Philip Ode en
William Hyland
David Aaron
James T. Hackett
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Mr. Lehman: Jack (Maury), what's your view of the possibility of the
Director coming back and giving testimony in an open session of the
Senate Foreign Relations Committee?
Mr. Maury: Well, I think he'll be opposed to that. It would be a serious
matter of precedent for the Director of Central Intelligence to give
testimony in an open session. If he did, everyone in town would be after
him to testify on all kinds of things. It would be especially bad to have
him? teatify openly on this subject (SALT).
Mr. Clarke: Also, he is charged with the responsibility of avoiding public
disclosure of intelligence matters. What is the need for him to testify
publicly?
Mr. Lehman: The question of verification is going to be a key issue on the
Hill and it would be helpful if he could make a positive statement on the
record.
Mr. Korologos: He can do that in closed session.
Mr. Maury: I don't think he can do it publicly without getting into some
serious security problems.
Mr. Wright: A real problem here is that the things he can say publicly
are not going to be sufficient to bear out the Administration's position that
our verification is adequate. To do that he will have to get into sensitive
areas. So if he makes a public presentation that is incomplete, it will
just give the critics of the agreements a new argument that our verification
is inadequate.
Mr. Korologos: I don't see any problem with an executive session before
the SFRC, and if Scoop Jackson isn't happy, he can do it again before the
Armed Services Committee. Fulbright would love to have an open session with
Helms. What he wants is to get on TV. He'd like an open session with
Kissinger, too. Either one of them would put Fulbright and his committee
on national television.
Mr. Maury: I am convinced it would do lasting damage to the Agency to
have the Director appear in open session.
Mr. Lehman: O. K.
Mr. Hancock: What is the schedule for next week?
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Mr. Lehman: The Secretary of State goes before the SFRC on Monday,
followed by Smith.
Col. Dalferes: Secretary Laird will go on Wednesday.
Mr. Korologas:
on Tuesday?
Isn't Laird testifying before the Armed Services Committee
Col. Dalferes: Yes, that's their first day of hearings.
Mr. Brower: They're going to hold simultaneous hearings?
Col. Dalferes: Yes. Senator Stennis wants a piece of the action.
Mr. Odeen: The Joint Chiefs are going to testify, aren't they?
Col. Finkelstein: Yes, but not all together. I don't think they have ever
testified jointly.
Mr. Hancock: Yes, they have. Onthe test ban hearings they were all there
with their square jaws lined up in a row.
Col.Dalferes:
Adm. Moorer will go with Laird,
Mr. Wright: Morgan said his committee can't have hearings until after
the Democratic convention.
Mr. Keeny: Stennis originally said the same thing. Why did he change his
mind?
Mr. Korologos: Stennis didn't want to be left out. He wants to get in on the
action and is talking about holding hearings on everything, SALT, the ABM,
you name it. By the way, you know there are two offensive agreement
resolutions circulating, the Scott/Mansfield Resolution and one submitted
by Fulbright. Our people should understand that they are to testify to the
Scott/ Mansfield Resolution.
Mr. Lehman: Does everyone understand that the resolution we are to testify
to is the one sponsored by Scott and Mansfield in. the Senate and Boggs and
Ford in the House?
Mr. Hancock: I have a copy of both of them right here.
Mr. Lehman: have copies made and circulate them. Our witnesses
should make favorable noises about the Scott/Mansfield Resolution and avoid
discussing the differing texts of the two resolutions.
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?Mr. Keeny: The Secretary of State can't avoid such a discussion if he is
? asked.
Mr. Cook: What are the main differences?
Mr. Lehman: The Fulbright Resolution says "authorize" instead of "approve"
and the lawyers tell us to avoid that wording.
Mr. Brower: What lawyers? The Secretary of State is a lawyer and a
former Attorney General. He shouldn't duck this question or sit up there
and say he can't fathom the difference. What the Secretary should say is
that this is a very important agreement that has been negotiated with
painstaking care and that he wants a simple, broad expression of congressional
approval. He shouldn't get into an argument over the wording of the
resolution. The word "authorize" is used in congressional resolutions
all the time without causing us any serious problems.
Mr. Lehman: That sounds good. Can you write up an explanatory paragraph
on this issue that we can circulate to this group?
Mr. Brower: I'll:do a talking paper on this today and send it to you
(Lehman) for distribution.
Mr. Hancock; How about some Q's & A's for our witnesses?
Mr. Brower: Well, Pll pi pare something in one form or another.
Mr. Lehman: The next item is our position on amendments, reservations,
etc. The tendency now is to act in a generally negative way toward them.
Charlie (Brower), what is the legal effect of a reservation on a bilateral
agreement? Does a reservation require you to go back to re-negotiate
with the other party?
Mr. Brower: If the treaty is changed you have to go back. It is always
tougher to justify opposition to reservations on a bilateral treaty than on
a multilateral one. With the latter you can argue that seventy countries
have approved it and it can't be changed, while with a bilateral you only
have to renegotiate with one country. The President said yesterday that
he is not adopting an attitude that Congress should "swallow it whole,"
but at the same time the argument can be made that this treaty was pre-
pared through the most deliberate negotiations ever held, on a highly com-
plex subject. The best minds in the country spent years of effort on every
detail of the treaty and it received more continuing Presidential attention
than any treaty ever has. Consequently, the Congress should approach
any reservations with great trepidation.
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Mr. Wright: Another point is that SALT II is to begin in October and
if reservations require us to go back and re-negotiate with the Russians,
it could delay the follow-on negotiations for a long time.
Mr. Brower: We also can argue that any problems the Congress has
with the agreement can be discussed with the Russians and ironed out in
phase two. I think the current posture on reservations can be maintained.
Mr. Lehman: At present, Ron Ziegler is postured to take a negative
attitude toward suggestions on reservations. What would be equivalent
in an executive agreement to a reservation to a treaty?
Mr. Brower: You get into some real problems here. If we get into a
legal hassle on reservations to the executive agreement, the whole question
of the President's right to do it as an agreement and not a treaty may arise
and Congress may insist that it be resubmitted as a treaty requiring Senate
approval. We will have to make a careful distinction between amendments
of the preambular clauses and the agreement itself.
Mr. Cook: By the way, would you (Lehman) please remind Ziegler to stop
calling this an. executive agreement?
Mr. Lehman: Yes, he should avoid that.
Mr. Brower: There are 411 kinds of technical, legal pitfalls in this
exercise and I want to urge all of you to keep in close touch with your
lawyers. -
Mr. Hancock: The Senate may want to include the initialed agreements or
even the unilateral statements as part of the treaty. This has to be avoided,
or we may find ourselves forced to go back to the Russians.
Mr. Lehman: What about including some of these unilateral statements
in the whereas clause?
Mr. Martin: That wouldn't be helpful; it would be throwing mud in the
Soviets' faces.
Mr. Hyland: I don't agree with that view. I don't think the Russians give
a damn what Congress does. The German Parliament gutted the Berlin
treaty and then wrote 55 pages of interpretation. They went back to the
Russians with it and the Russians went ahead and signed it. We have
discussed a number of interpretations with the Russians, and they can
always say that these were what we agreed to, regardless of what the
Senate does.
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Mr. Wright: I want to register a reclama on Ziegler's posture of
being negative to any reservations. I don't think that's wise.
Mr. Lehman: No, his instructions are not to be negative, but rather
not to encourage reservations and to indicate that they will be considered
on a case by case basis. Does everyone agree with that approach?
Mr. Wright: That's Q. K. with me.
Mr. Cook: I'd like to move away from the President's position on this as
much as possible.
Mr. Lehman: Now, for the schedule, we have the Secretary of State on
Monday, followed by Smith.
Col. Finkelstein: And Laird before the Senate Armed Services Committee
on Tuesday, with Admiral Moorer.
Mr. Lehman: I need the statements the Secretary and Smith are going to
make.
Mr. Aaron: The Secretary's statement is coming over today. There
won't be a statement by Smith.
Mr. Maury: Mr. Helms is on Tuesday morning with the Foreign Relations
Committee, and the Armed Forces Committee wants to get him later.
The Director plans to stick to his knitting and not get into other people' s
business, except that the Committee has asked to be updated on the Soviet
Strategic situation.
Col. Finkelstein: That area is supposed to be covered by Adm. Moorer.
That's what Dr. Kissinger's memo said!
Mr. Maury: I know that, but the Committee has asked Helms to do it, so
he will present an update first and then get into verification afterwards.
I understand Foster will follow Helms on Tuesday.
Col. Dalferes: No, Foster is not going to testify before Laird, so he won't be
going on Tuesday.
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Mr. Wright: So to summarize, we have the Secretary of State and Smith
before the Foreign Relations Committee on Monday, Helms before the
SFRC on Tuesday, Laird and Moorer before the Armed Forces Committee
on Tuesday, Laird and Moorer before the Foreign Relations Committee
on Wednesday and Foster before SFRC at some time to be determined.
Mr. Cook: We will have to make private arrangements to get copies of
the transcript of the executive sessions for our use as soon as possible
after they are held. The committees only make one or two copies, so
we'll have to make duplicates.Jack (Maury) can you take care of that?
Mr. Maury: Sure, I'll do it. Do you think many witnesses will have
executive sessions?
Mr. Cook: I don't know. Helms for sure. There may not be any- others.
I just want to make sure we get transcripts of the testimony quickly.
Is Helms going to make a statement?
Maury: I don't know.
Mr. Hyland: We should have a prepared statement, very brief, saying
that verification is not a problem. It should be something that can be
released publicly and used or referred to by the other witnesses ai
necessary.
Mr. Maury: I'll talk to him about it.
Mr. Lehman: When can I get a copy- of Laird's statemene
to make
Mr. Odeen: He's planning' very different statements before the two
committees on Tuesday and Wednesday.
Col. Dalferes: I'll find out when they'll be aVa,ilable.
Mr. Lehman: Pastore said he would ask Fulbright to let his committee sit
in on the hearings of the Foreign Relations Committee. Perhaps we should
offer the Secretary of State and Smith to the Armed Forces Committee
as witnesses.
Mr. Clark: When is Schlesinger to testify before the Joint Atomic Energy
Committee?
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Mr. Clark: I think they asked him to appear on Wednesday, but I'm not
sure.
Mr. Lehman: I'd like a copy of his testimony by Monday. We also want
him to testily before the Stennis Committee.
Mr. Clark: I'll get the testimony to you.
Mr. Cook: It's very important for Schlesinger to stay close to the Joint
Atomic Energy Committee. They could give us a lot of trouble if we're
not careful.
Mr. Clark: I understand.
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