HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

DEFENSE POLICY PANEL OF THE

COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES,

Washington, DC, Tuesday, November 25, 1986.

The panel met, pursuant to call, at 10:10 a.m., in room 2118, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Les Aspin (chairman of the panel) presiding.

STATEMENT OF HON. LES ASPIN, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM WISCONSIN, CHAIRMAN, DEFENSE POLICY PANEL OF THE HOUSE COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES

The CHAIRMAN. The meeting will come to order this morning. We are continuing our series of hearings that concern the Reykjavik Summit. Last Friday we heard from Richard Perle. Yesterday we heard from Ken Adelman, today we hear from Admiral Crowe and Monday we hear from Paul Nitze, and after that we hear from some outside witnesses.

We are very pleased this morning to have with us two gentlemen that I invited to attend from the Senate, the ranking majority member and the ranking minority member and the new chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee in the 100th Congress. We welcome, and are happy to have you here, the new chairman, Sam Nunn, and the new ranking minority member, John Warner. Welcome, gentlemen, we invited you to come here and listen and have a chance to ask questions. This is an informal process we have, no time limits.

Let me welcome for all of us here a gentleman for whom I have very great respect, I think all of us have tremendous respect, a person that we have come to admire greatly in the little over a year that he has been Chairman of the Chiefs, it seems like yesterday, Admiral Crowe, welcome to the committee. We would like to hear from you as an opening statement and would like to ask you some questions, particularly about the Reykjavik Summit and undoubtedly there will be questions about Iran.

Welcome to the committee and you may proceed as you wish. STATEMENT OF ADM. WILLIAM J. CROWE, JR., USN, CHAIRMAN OF THE JOINT CHIEFS OF STAFF

Admiral CROWE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

With your permission I will read my very short statement.

I appreciate the opportunity this hearing affords me to contribute to your review of the arms reduction proposals made at Reykjavik. I believe it would be helpful this morning if I sketched some of the background regarding JCS participation in this process before addressing specific queries.

The Joint Chiefs of Staff have been closely involved with the arms reduction process since its inception, and I believe have his

torically had an influential voice in shaping U.S. proposals. In turn, the JCS have consistently supported this administration's efforts to reach equitable, verifiable and militarily sufficient agreements. This included initiatives to reduce Soviet INF missiles in Europe and worldwide, the 50-percent proposal first put forward in November 1985 and also the President's July 1986 letter to General Secretary Gorbachev. This last communication proposed negotiations which could hopefully lead to the ultimate elimination of ballistic missiles, but mentioned no specific timeframe.

Throughout the short 10-day workup to Iceland the Joint Staff participated in the presummit preparations. I should stress that this process involves not merely NSC or NSPG meetings but a variety of every day informal staff contacts with other agencies and scheduled meetings with a number of interagency groups, which are part of the National Security Council's supporting structure. Incidentally, the security consultative mechanisms in the Government are richer and much more pervasive than I believe they are often given credit for in the media. As far as process goes, I do not know of any of the regular presummit preparations in which the Joint Chiefs of Staff did not participate in some fashion. Moreover, I had a representative, General Moellering, who went with the team to Reykjavik and participated as an adviser.

As to Iceland itself, obviously the discussions concentrated more on arms control details and went much further with arms reduction proposals than had been anticipated in the preparations. While no agreements were reached, it is important to note that an unusually wide range of issues were considered and in my view unprecedented progress was made in narrowing the differences between the two sides on a number of thorny questions-some of which have frustrated negotiators for several years. I suspect this was possible only because the two heads of government were present.

In evaluating the outcome, I think it is fair to point out that the President has an obligation not only to be cautious in these matters but also to seize opportunities when they arise. Given the turn of events at Reykjavik, the U.S. side appropriately seized the opening to break new ground and move the arms reduction process forward. In the final analysis, it should be kept in mind no agreements were reached and despite some public handwringing and gnashing of teeth, our fundamental interests are still intact. At the same time, I would suggest that the whole arms reduction dialog has taken a significant and historic step forward as a result of Iceland.

The challenge now is to capitalize on these events in ways that do not jeopardize our security, but also that do not return to the depressing stalemates which have characterized so much of our past history. I am confident that the President wants to do just that and also that it can be done if we keep our heads and don't permit self-criticism to consume us. I genuinely hope that the Congress and this committee will be looking for constructive ways to work with the President in this process.

That concludes my statement, Mr. Chairman. With that, I will be happy to address your questions.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Admiral. I want to give other Members here a chance to ask some questions, but I would like to lay out for the record the extent and ask you to answer some questions about the extent of the Joint Chiefs of Staff involvement in this process. Let me start with that.

I think the whole process probably begins with the July 25th letter that the President sent to Mr. Gorbachev in response to his letter in June, and I was curious as to the extent of the Joint Chiefs of Staff involvement in that response. Did the Joint Chiefs of Staff see the letter before it went out?

Admiral CROWE. I saw the letter and discussed it with the Chiefs. The CHAIRMAN. And you were involved in formulating that letter?

Admiral CROWE. There was quite a dialog back and forth and, yes, I was involved in the process.

The CHAIRMAN. Let me ask this: When we went to the minisummit, the decision was made to go to the minisummit in the midst of the Daniloff brou-ha-ha. Were the Joint Chiefs of Staff consulted about the decision to go to the minisummit?

Admiral CROWE. No, sir; they were not.

The CHAIRMAN. The JCS was not asked for its opinion on whether it was a good idea to go to the summit at all.

Admiral CROWE. There was a meeting after the decision was made and we were in that meeting.

The CHAIRMAN. But that was after the decision was made?
Admiral CROWE. Yes.

The CHAIRMAN. What was your understanding of what would happen at the minisummit. What preparations did the Joint Chiefs of Staff make for the minisummit specifically?

Admiral CROWE. I think this is a very important question. First of all, you understand there is an ongoing dialog on arms control today in Geneva. Preparation for Reykjavik, of course, was overlaid on the top of that once a decision was made to go and, as I said in my opening statement, there were a number of staff contacts, a number of meetings in the preparatory groups. There was also an NSPG meeting to talk about the Reykjavik meeting-what would occur, how we would deal with it.

And the Joint Chiefs of Staff participated in those activities. We had an opportunity to express our views and give our advice and to participate in the development of positions.

The CHAIRMAN. You say this is part of the ongoing arms control process as opposed to-

Admiral CROWE. This is also the pre-Reykjavik preparation which was overlaid on the top of the ongoing-

The CHAIRMAN. All right. There were several substantial proposals and ideas kicked around at the summit. And I am asking whether the Joint Chiefs of Staff studied these before our negotiators agreed to them at the summit. Had you done a study of the bomber counting rules?

Admiral CROWE. Frankly, we have been dealing with the bombercounting rule problem for years, Mr. Chairman.

The CHAIRMAN. But was there any special preparation for a change in the bomber-counting rule?

Admiral CROWE. We have been agitating to change it in the Geneva negotiations.

The CHAIRMAN. Our position on the bomber counting?

Admiral CROWE. Yes. I felt that we were very prepared on the bomber-counting rule but it was a subject discussed time and time again.

The CHAIRMAN. Did you expect the zero/zero INF proposal to be discussed at the Reykjavik Summit and did you do any special preparation for the zero/zero proposal?

Admiral CROWE. I think it is important to talk about the climate before Reykjavik in assessing our preparations. We, of course, in the July 25th letter, did come down and support the principle of going to zero ballistic missiles. There was no specific timeframe mentioned in the July 25th letter and the President laid out, in his speech to the United Nations in September, his general approach to this subject, which I think is in accord with our whole course. The general belief was, based on the track record of arms control negotiations and on the frustrating experiences that we have had and the many stalemates, that there would be some addressal of arms control issues at Reykjavik although probably not much progress.

The Joint Chiefs of Staff were advising prior to Reykjavik that we should hit very hard on the 50-percent proposal, on which Chairman Gorbachev and the President had previously agreed, at least in principle. There was some optimism that if we made progress on anything, it would probably be INF. We have been analyzing both these areas for quite some time. We had analyzed the 50-percent proposal in some detail earlier when it had been made, and we have done a number of excursions on the 50-percent proposal.

While we might not have examined the exact version of the 50percent proposal which was discussed at Reykjavik, we did have a lot of background in that area and the people at Geneva, including my representative, were versed in that. The same with the INF proposal. We have been dealing with that for some time.

I might mention that the idea of zero INF in Europe has been around for some time. The President first laid that forth in 1981. The Chiefs have been aboard on the proposal since 1981, and we have analyzed the INF area in some detail. We did not analyze zero/zero in Europe just before Reykjavik. We didn't feel it was acceptable, but our analytical background was sufficient that I don't think there was a problem there.

We had many people familiar with the work that we had done and the conclusion that we had come to and that we were aboard on that we being the JCS.

The CHAIRMAN. How do you explain General Rogers' total unhappiness with it, he being the commander in chief of one of the principal commands? Let me quote for the record, General Rogers said that the "zero option would leave NATO in a worse position than in the 1970's before the alliance decided to deploy mediumrange missiles in Western Europe." He said, "Getting rid of medium-range missiles would bring a considerable risk to Western Europe." This is one of a series of quotes.

If the JCS bought onto this, how come it hasn't filtered down to General Rogers?

Admiral CROWE. I am sure you wouldn't want to start an argument between me and General Rogers.

The CHAIRMAN. There does seem to be a slight difference of opinion

Admiral CROWE. Obviously he has made some statements on the subject. I understand he will be back to testify before you on the 10th, and knowing General Rogers very well, I am sure he will repeat those statements when he comes here.

The CHAIRMAN. How can it be that the JCS bought onto a proposal that General Rogers feels so strongly against?

Admiral CROWE. Are you suggesting to me that we do everything he wants?

The CHAIRMAN. I wondered why it hadn't been worked out beforehand.

Admiral CROWE. It had been worked out. We know what he thinks. He is very familiar with our position. We have been aboard on zero INF missiles, if we could engineer it, since 1981. He knew that; I have not heard a great deal from him on the subject since the decision was made. I suspect he held his fire because he didn't think it would be acceptable to the Soviet Union. He lives in Europe. He has very heavy responsibilities in that area, and we were familiar with his views on both the political and military reaction.

Let's face it-he has essentially expressed the same concern as some Europeans have that this would give the Soviet Union, if it was carried out in isolated form, a marked superiority in shortrange INF. We are aware of that. Part of the agreement at Reykjavik was to address that question immediately to try and get equal rights on SRINF and to eliminate the SRINF ultimately. We support that and think it is important and that General Rogers' concerns in that regard are well-founded. He is worried about decoupling. We are worried about decoupling, but we feel it is manageable.

General Rogers may not agree with the Joint Chiefs; that may be

accurate.

The CHAIRMAN. Let me ask about the other proposal, the most important and interesting proposal, the zero ballistic missile proposal. At least in the other two, the bomber counting rules and the zero/zero INF-those were provisions within the general ball park of what had been discussed before. The most unusual proposal that we made at Reykjavik was the zero ballistic missile proposal. That was something not put in any form associated with any particular timetable, but was more associated with a general goal in other communications. Then we put a proposal on the table to go to zero ballistic missiles within 10 years.

Were you consulted about that proposal before it was actually tabled?

Admiral CROWE. Let me say that on the general principle of zero ballistic missiles, when we chopped off on the Gorbachev letter, we had had a discussion at some length among the Chiefs which was just a continuation of a long series of discussions on the general va