4. Editorial Note
On March 4, 1961, the President met a number of officials to discuss resumption of the test ban talks at Geneva, scheduled to begin March 21. Seaborg’s journal entry for this meeting reads as follows:
“From 10:35 a.m. to about 11:45 a.m. I attended a meeting with the President to discuss the U.S. position on the forthcoming test ban negotiations to be held in Geneva. It was held in the Cabinet Room of the White House and present were: President Kennedy, Mr. Bundy, Mr. Fisher, Mr. Arthur Dean, Mr. McCloy, Mr. Paul Nitze, General Lemnitzer, Mr. Dulles, Dr. Wiesner, Mr. Spurgeon Keeny, Mr. Rusk and myself.
“Mr. McCloy made the opening statement by saying that there had been general agreement on the instructions to be given to the U.S. Delegation, as brought out in a meeting of the Principals, and others (total people present, according to Mr. Bundy, were 32), held on Thursday, March 2nd; however, a difference of opinion had developed on the point of the number of on-site inspections, with the AEC holding a different point of view from the others, and we thought this was important enough for the President to resolve.
“Mr. McCloy proceeded to explain the present U.S. position, with its formula of a minimum of ten on-site inspections and the possibility of ten more with a proportionality factor of one per five suspected events to a [Page 11] maximum of 20. In the course of this he mentioned the AEC position, although I had the impression that he referred to it more in the way of opposition to an upper limit, rather than to AEC preference for strict proportionality with no ceiling.
“Mr. Bundy and Dr. Wiesner, and others, supported the point of view of 10 minimum, plus 10 additional on a proportional basis; Mr. Bundy made the point, supported by statistical arguments, that if you inspected some 10 or 20 events, even though each had a probability of only one in three or four of uncovering a clandestine operation, after you had done 10 or 20 of them, the chance that you had missed a true event is very small.
“The President asked General Lemnitzer for his point of view, and he said, but not very forcefully, I thought, that he thought the Joint Chiefs of Staff would prefer the concept of strict proportionality with no ceiling.
“Mr. Nitze made some comments, but they were not of the nature that threw much light on the subject of on-site inspections. He said that the Department of Defense didn’t regard the matter of on-site inspections of paramount importance, but they were more concerned with the composition of the Control Commission and the methods by which certification of an event for inspection was made. DOD sees loopholes there that might negate the purposes of the treaty.
“I then said that I wanted to be sure that the difference of point of view of the AEC and the rest of the group was completely understood: that we felt that the position of settling on some arbitrarily negotiated number like 20, 3, 10, or 17 was a political solution; that we thought a more logical and scientific basis existed for adopting the principle of proportionality throughout, and that this would lead to more support by the American public, by Congress, and by scientists. I said that the average number of detectable seismic events per year appeared to be about 100. On the basis of an inspection ratio of one to five, this would result in 20 inspections. But this varies from year to year by something like a factor of 2; that is, you might have as few as 50, or as many as 200 detectable seismic events. Therefore, according to our formula, in some years, there would be less than 20 inspections.
“As the discussion began to move into other channels, Mr. McCloy brought it back to the issue of the differences on the number of on-site inspections, and the President then said that he thought that we should stay with the position of 20, as defined.
“At this point, and also at various times earlier, there was discussion of the importance of approaches to the Members of Congress. In this connection I mentioned specifically the great importance of correct approaches and approaches at the right time to the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy. I mentioned specifically the difficulty last summer when a discussion with them revealed their stand that they would require reciprocity, [Page 12] whereas the present U.S. position is unilateral disclosure in connection with seismic experimentation.
“Mr. Bundy pointed out that there was a luncheon set up for next Tuesday on this matter to discuss it with a number of Democratic Members of Congress. The President asked whether it wouldn’t be better to include Republican members. In answer to Mr. Bundy’s observation that this would make the group unmanageably large, the President suggested that it could be divided into two luncheons.
“In the discussion of who might attend—and I am not particularly sure who will attend which of the two luncheons—the names of Holifield, Pastore, James Van Zandt, Anderson, Jackson and Hickenlooper of the JCAE were mentioned, as well as other key members of Congress, such as Mansfield, John McCormack, Charles Halleck, etc.
“This was followed by a discussion of the question of the duration of the negotiations. The President, and many of us, had noticed the article in this morning’s Washington Post by Murray Marder, pointing out that President Kennedy was departing from his campaign promise that he would set a definite time limit on the negotiations. The President observed that the article was rather vague on this point. It seemed to be agreed that there wouldn’t be any hard and fast time limit; but, on the other hand, the negotiations would, in effect, come close after a reasonable time.
“There was also discussion here, as well as at other times during the meeting of the John Finney article (New York Times, March 3, 1961, ‘U.S. Easing Stand on Atom Test Ban’) and of the Marder article, in which discussions of the U.S. position, including the statement that we had decided to fall back to 17 inspections, were disclosed. There was much speculation as to the origin of these leaks. These articles indicated that a high official in the State Department had made these statements.
“Mr. McCloy then went on to describe very briefly the Fisk Report, and raised the question of whether it should be made available to the JCAE, pointing out the need for keeping them informed if their subsequent support is to be forthcoming. President Kennedy said he would like to study the Fisk Report over the weekend before deciding on this matter.
“The President then remarked on the time remaining before Mr. Dean’s departure for Geneva, and therefore, on the need for rapid progress. He asked Mr. Dean who was going with him to Geneva, and Mr. Dean mentioned, among others, Messrs. Stell, Popper, Doyle Northrup, etc.
“The President asked whether Mr. Dean had passed on to Dr. Fisk his request that he (Fisk) be with the delegation. Mr. Dean replied that Dr. Fisk has requested that he come after the start of negotiations, on invitation, [Page 13] as needed, so that if he couldn’t remain for the entire time, it wouldn’t appear that he had lost interest in the negotiations.
“After the meeting I took Mr. McCloy and Mr. Dean aside and said there were three broad areas of possible pitfalls, or at least potential points of public attack upon the treaty that I think they should call to the President’s attention even before he met with the Members of Congress. These are areas which I would have identified at the meeting had the opportunity presented itself.
“I pointed out that the upper limit of 4.75 (on the seismic detection scale) in the treaty, below which there would be a moratorium on testing, left the possibility of cheating in the development of small weapons, and even of rather large ones in the event decoupling was resorted to. I told him I thought this would be a matter of much public comment.
“I pointed out what was basically a point of illogicality in the treaty in the area of high altitude explosions. I said that here we have in the treaty itself a prohibition for which there are in certain cases no enforceable safeguards, and hence we have deviated from a principle which might come back to plague us. I pointed out that a way out of this might have been to have a moratorium for explosions above a certain altitude, below which we could definitely police the treaty provisions.
“I pointed out that some people, and I cited Teller as an example, would disagree with the statements made earlier in the meeting that a treaty of this sort couldn’t place the U.S. in a very vulnerable position with respect to its future existence vis-à-vis the Soviet Union because only certain small changes, factors of 2 or 3, could be made in relation to yields, weight ratios, etc. I said that there are those who would disagree with this, that there is the possibility of the next large step—or possibly you might call it the third stage of weapons development—namely, that in the course of a few years such weapons systems as the Polaris-carrying nuclear submarine might be negated (for example, by the Soviets having a sufficient number of submarines to put them on the tail of each of ours, in cooperation with surface ships, and effectively rendering them inoperative). Concomitant with such steps to negate our striking power, the Soviets would continue to develop new concepts which could, in fact, take the next step as breakthrough in a decisive way in their ability to wage war on us.” (Seaborg, Journal, volume 1, pages 58, 60-62)
Seaborg’s published Journal is an edited typescript prepared in the mid-1980s, based on handwritten notes recorded daily during Seaborg’s chairmanship. An account of the methodology of this transcription appears in the preface to volume 1. A briefer account of this meeting appears in Glenn T. Seaborg with Benjamin S. Loeb, Kennedy, Khrushchev and the Test Ban, pages 44-45.
The Committee of Principals had been established by President Eisenhower in 1958 to coordinate review of U.S. arms control and disarmament [Page 14] policy. It originally comprised five members: the Secretaries of State and Defense, the Director of Central Intelligence, the Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, and the Science Adviser to the President. Kennedy added the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Director of the U.S. Information Agency, and, later in 1961, the Director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency.
A memorandum by James Goodby of the U.S. Disarmament Administration of the Principals’ meeting held March 2 and the Report of the Ad Hoc Panel on the Technical Capabilities and Implications of the Geneva System (the Fisk Report), comprising 62 pages plus amendments and charts are in the Supplement. Kennedy did release the Fisk Report to the JCAE. Other accounts of the Principals’ March 2 meeting and a description of the March 7 meeting with the congressional leaders are in Seaborg, Journal, volume 1, pages 65 and 70-72, respectively, and Seaborg, Kennedy, Khrushchev and the Test Ban, pages 38–43 and 46–48, respectively.