Defense: Of Treaties & Togas

The witness arrived in Washington unheralded and drove straight to Capitol Hill, where Senator John Stennis’ Preparedness Investigating Subcommittee was meeting in a closed-door session. Nobody in the Administration’s upper echelons, none of the Pentagon’s top civilian officials, not even Defense Secretary McNamara had been forewarned that he was going to testify. But it was not long before everybody in town knew that the Strategic Air Command’s General Thomas S. Power had been around. “The Old Man,” said a McNamara aide after Power finished speaking his mind on the nuclear test ban treaty, “will blow a gasket when he hears this.”

No doubt about that. Power, who has bucked his bosses often during his career, expressed outright disagreement with the Administration’s position on the partial test ban. “The treaty,” he told the Senators flatly, “is not in the best interests of the U.S.” What bothered Power, said Stennis after the secret hearing, was a gnawing doubt on whether “the U.S. can or would maintain its present undisputed superiority in nuclear power if it ratified the treaty. General Power believes this is the only present deterrent to war.”

Among those disagreeing with Power were the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Their official position, as expressed in a statement approved by all of them: “While there are military disadvantages to the treaty, they are not so serious as to render it unacceptable.” The senators posed a question: If the treaty had not already been initialed, would you be for it? Said Army General Earle G. Wheeler, “I would probably have come up with the same decision.” The Navy’s Admiral David L. McDonald claimed that it “was not a decisive element.” Declared Marine General David M. Shoup, “I had access to the words of the treaty before it was initialed and I was in favor of its being initialed.”

Only Air Force General Curtis E. LeMay, Power’s predecessor as commander of SAC, demurred to any degree: “I would think that I would have been against it.” Among the things bothering LeMay: lack of an effective U.S. anti-ballistic missile, failure of the U.S. to develop a 50-to-100-megaton bomb. Said LeMay, whose blue uniform set him apart from his three khaki-clad colleagues: “There are net disadvantagesfrom the military standpoint.” Still, since the treaty had been initialed, LeMay was now willing to go along.

A Clay Pigeon. When the chiefs stepped down, it was the scientists’ turn. Dr. Edward H. Teller, one of the developers of the hydrogen bomb and strong advocate of intensive atmospheric test ing, told the Senate that “the signing was a mistake. If you ratify the treaty, you will have committed an enormously greater mistake.” Teller’s chief objection was that the U.S. would be un able to perfect an anti-ballistic missile. Though he admits that a workable system would probably cost an astronomic $50 billion, he declared: “Missile defense may make the difference between our national survival and the end of the U.S. as a nation.”

The Pentagon’s research and development chief, Dr. Harold Brown, a 36-year-old Whiz Kid who ran the Livermore Lab at 33, challenged Teller, noted that while he was “a dear personal friend of Edward’s, in this case I disagree with him.” But Lewis Strauss, Dwight Eisenhower’s Atomic Energy Commission chairman for five years, seconded Teller. The treaty is “a clay pigeon,” he said. “It is made to be breached. I think it will be breached to our disadvantage.”

A Plaintive Plea. By week’s end, the parade of pro and con witnesses had some Senators bobbing their heads from side to side faster than spectators at a Wimbledon tennis match. Admitting his confusion, California Republican Thomas Kuchel addressed a plaintive appeal to Nobel Prizewinning Chemist Dr. Willard Libby:

Kuchel: Let me put my tattered senatorial toga over your shoulders for a moment. How would you make a decision when some scientists urge that we approve it and others that we disapprove it; when the Joint Chiefs of Staff approve and when other renowned military leaders disapprove?

Libby: Well, Senator, you have no choice but to make up your own mind.

Kuchel: You can give me my toga back.