Chairman FASCELL. Thank you, Mr. Gore.

I find that a well-reasoned statement. I don't know where we go with specifics, however. That seems to be our problem.

Mr. GORE. I would be glad to explore specifics to the level of detail you find most helpful.

Chairman FASCELL. Well, let's hear from the rest of the panel and then we will get back to that.

Our next witness is Mr. Jim Courter, a Representative in Congress from the State of New Jersey.

STATEMENT OF HON. JIM COURTER, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF NEW JERSEY

Mr. COURTER. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, for permitting me to come here and testify. I think it is very important that you have these hearings, and I congratulate you for holding them. I would like to focus on an issue which I think is of critical importance to the future of arms control and that is the issue which is very often ignored, and when it is brought up it is sometimes brought up in a cavalier way-the issue of Soviet compliance with the existing arms control agreements and commitments that they have entered into.

Without compliance, arms control agreements can't serve the interest of national security, which is their highest objective. In fact, it can be argued that agreements which are routinely violated can actually be detrimental to security to the extent to which they create the illusion of mutual military restraint and reduced political tensions between the signatory parties.

A nation's compliance record also reflects on the prospects for new arms control agreements, because it is a direct indicator of a nation's trustworthiness. In negotiating new treaties with a nation that has violated existing agreements, it becomes necessary to account for the possibility that the new treaty may be violated as well, and to plan for a response in the event that a violation does

occur.

I think Mr. Gore would agree with that, and I think he expressed that in his prepared statement, as well.

If, as a result of the current diplomatic activity, the United States and the Soviet Union enter negotiations on antisatellite weapons and other weapons in space, several of these compliance issues will come into play.

On June 20, 1984, Assistant Secretary of Defense, Richard Perle, appeared before this committee and confirmed that the Soviet Union has used electronic interference to, in effect, jam the electronic intelligence satellites that the United States uses to monitor missile telemetry.

It is my understanding, Mr. Chairman, that that was the first public statement along those lines, the first public revelation of that fact.

This is a vital element of SALT verification, and the Soviet interference is a clear violation of the SALT II Treaty's ban on interference with national technical means of verification. I have been briefed in detail on this subject and I can attest to the gravity of this pattern of Soviet conduct.

Of course, I urge the members of this committee to receive the same briefings that I have received.

What does this mean in the context of the ASAT negotiations? First, it gives a distinctly hollow ring to Soviet statements of peaceful intentions in space.

I say that regrettably, but I think it does.

Second, it imposes the requirement that ASAT talks encompass Earth-based actions which disable or destroy satellites.

I don't think it is good to have the ASAT negotiations only deal with weapons or the physical presence of objects in space when it has been shown that there has been the jamming of monitoring satellites by ground-based stations. They are as much ASAT weapons as ASAT weapons floating in space. So any type of ASAT negotiation must deal with those weapons or those items or hardware stationed on Earth that have, in fact, ASAT capabilities.

Lastly, as a violation of a SALT II obligation, this raises the question of whether the Soviets would comply with a future agreement to protect communications and intelligence satellites from harm.

Mr. Chairman, satellite interference is one aspect of Soviet noncompliance which happened to be confirmed before your committee. Two reports available to your committee show that there is a broad pattern of Soviet violations of arms control agreements.

One is the report issued by the President on January 23, 1984. It lists seven initial areas in which violations or probable violations of arms control agreements have occurred.

The violated agreements range from the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention of 1972, to the Helsinki accords' provisions on notification of military exercises, to the SALT and ABM treaties.

The second is the report of the President's General Advisory Committee on Arms Control and Disarmament, entitled "A Quarter Century of Soviet Compliance Practices Under Arms Control Commitments: 1958-1983." This report has been made available to Congress in the form of oral briefings and numerous briefings have taken place before Members, committees, and cleared staff of the House and Senate.

I might also add that the recent defense authorization bill that passed the House and the Senate, and now is in conference, contains language that would make public in a sanitized form that particular report on 25 years of arms control practices by the Soviet Union.

So the public, as well as all Members of Congress, will have an opportunity to review the compliance record of the Soviet Union when that report is made public.

The value of this report is its historical perspective. It focuses on patterns of Soviet behavior, not just on incidents, both in negotiations and in military development. After being briefed by the General Advisory Committee, I was left with the conclusion that in some instances the Soviet Union has planned to violate agreements, even as they were being negotiated.

I left those private briefings with, as I say, a clear belief that the Soviet Union during the time that they were negotiating agreements, knew that they were going to be violating them. And after

they were signed, they continued to actually violate those agreements in a premeditated, direct way.

I would strongly recommend that this committee be briefed on those reports if the committee has not been briefed on those reports.

The patterns of Soviet violations, Mr. Chairman, are clear. What do they mean and what purposes do they serve-it is very difficult to determine precisely what they mean and precisely how they serve the Soviet Union.

The ABM radar at Krasnoyarsk, which violates the ABM Treaty of 1972, has obviously a clear purpose. Granted, there is a disagreement as to what that particular Krasnoyarsk phased array radar is constructed for, but there is no haziness in my own mind. I personally believe it is for the breakout of an ABM capability by the Soviet Union.

I believe this fact is best appreciated when one looks at this radar in the context of overall Soviet ABM development and understands the important role that it fulfills.

Obviously, therefore, the ABM violation, the Krasnoyarsk radar, has to do with giving the Soviet Union a unilateral advantage in strategic capabilities.

Other violations seem to carry relatively little military significance or purpose. And we wonder then what is the Soviet Union up to, why are they doing these things, why are they violating these treaties if there is no direct military consequence and advantage to them.

The failure to provide notification of the 1981 Soviet military exercise which is a violation of the Helsinki final act is one example of those. It is peculiar as to why they violated it, when it didn't give them any type of unilateral military advantage.

However, it signals, I think, a disregard for the letter and spirit of agreements and acts as a minor irritant in East-West negotiations and relations.

In yet another case, such as the encryption of missile telemetry, it is difficult to ascertain the military significance of the violations because we are denied the information on the missiles being tested and are prevented from knowing whether they violate SALT limits. Denial of this information is in itself a very serious violation of SALT II. In June 1979, referring to the possibility that a violation of this type could occur, then President Carter said, and I quote, "A violation of this part of the agreement which would quickly be detected-" that is the encryption- "would be just as serious as the violation of the limits on strategic weapons themselves."

That was said by Mr. Carter and I think it is as true today as it was then. It is clear to me that the entire pattern of Soviet violations poses the single greatest threat to the arms control process today.

So, Mr. Chairman, by way of footnote, I am not here today to discourage honest and good faith attempts for negotiated arms control agreements with the Soviet Union or any other country.

I encourage them. What I am suggesting is the fact that a pattern of violations by the Soviet Union detected by us, but not taken seriously by us, is a threat to the arms control process.

It also poses two challenges-one often stated and one seldom stated. We often hear that we need to negotiate new treaties which are absolutely verifiable.

That, I believe, is true. But it is not enough for us to merely ensure proper verification in future agreements. If we take these agreements seriously, we must also answer the following question. How will we respond when we verify that existing agreements are being violated by the Soviet Union? How have we responded to date?

Those are very grievous, very important questions, which simply have not been answered by this administration or, to my knowledge, any other.

To try to answer them is to reveal that the United States has no clear policy of response.

If we monitor violations, we can talk about the violations in private. But neither this administration, nor any administration, nor the Congress, has talked about a policy which would result from those violations, what type of actions do we take.

Look at the situation from the Soviet perspective, if you would, Mr. Chairman.

The violations can serve a number of purposes, some of which I mentioned. One is to gain military advantage. Another is to test U.S. intelligence capabilities.

They constantly calibrate their intelligence gathering capabilities by perhaps making these violations to see if we will respond.

Political resolve can also be tested in the same manner as the Soviets wait to see how far their actions will be tolerated by the United States. That may be another reason they are violating some of these agreements that do not have clear military significance upfront.

It is often argued that ironclad verification provisions in treaties will act as a deterrent to violations. That is true if you assume that a verified violation will elicit a response from the offended party. If no response is forthcoming, the entire deterrent effect of our elaborate and expensive verification apparatus is forfeited.

Today our failure to respond to the broad pattern of Soviet violations risks sending a very serious signal to the Soviet Union: That we take compliance as lightly as they do. That, unfortunately, is the signal that this Congress, the House, the Senate and the administration heretofore has given the Soviet Union.

If the now beleaguered arms control process is to perish, it is surely this attitude that will deliver its fatal blow.

If we all agree that compliance is essential to arms control, let's consider a hypothetical situation. Suppose that none of the doubts about verifying any provision of an ASAT ban, a START agreement or a nuclear freeze existed-there was no doubt whatsoever that we could totally verify to a 100-percent assurance in our own minds. Assume universal agreement that these treaties would be completely verifiable.

Then assume that we reach agreement with the Soviets in each of these areas. Given the lack of a U.S. response to violations of SALT, ABM, the Threshold Test Ban Treaty, Geneva protocol of 1925, 1972 Biological and Toxic Weapons Convention, the Helsinki

accords and other important agreements, what would provide the Soviet Union with an incentive to comply with a new treaty?

As far as I am concerned, the Soviet Union lacks an incentive to comply with future treaties because we have not given them an incentive to comply with the existing treaties that they have heretofore violated.

Mr. Chairman, I can probably finish my statement in about 4 minutes. Should I proceed?

Chairman FASCELL. By all means.

Mr. COURTER. Thank you.

Looking to the future, Mr. Chairman, it is clear to me that our attitudes toward arms control must change.

First, our body politic must learn to come to terms with the issue of Soviet violations which it clearly has not. The difficulty in doing so is often a bipartisan phenomenon and it must change.

It is demonstrated by the administration's reluctance to deal with the issue except when prodded by Congress.

It is demonstrated by the widely held perception that arms control is more threatened by public discussion of violations than by the violations of the treaties themselves.

I read with great interest when the President revealed some aspects of Soviet violations in January. The greatest outcry of criticism was directed at the President for talking about the violations and not at the perpetrator of those violations.

It is demonstrated by the relative absence of the compliance issue in the House's recent defense authorization debate, which was largely focused on arms control questions.

It is demonstrated by statements that these compliance concerns are overstated and based on vague treaty language. These statements ignore the many clearcut violations, such as the chemical and biological weapons matter, or the telemetric encryption, about which there is no ambiguity at all.

It seems to me, Mr. Chairman, if the Soviet Union has an incentive to violate an arms control agreement where there is no military significance, and that is very clear, no strategic significance, for example, let's say in chemical weapons, they then would have a greater incentive to perpetrate a violation where there is a clear military significance that would be gained by them.

And it is most clearly demonstrated by the widespread adherence to the notion that arms control agreements have an intrinsic value, almost without regard to compliance concerns-I say that because I really believe that for whatever reason a great number of Americans believe that arms control is important because of the process of arms control. I believe that arms control is important because of the results and the agreement that you get out of it.

The process may be fine. But what keeps peace, what increases the nuclear threshold is, in fact, hammering out an agreement that increases the prospect of peace on both sides.

The U.S. should not relish the idea of being released from treaty commitments when the treaties have been broken by the Soviet Union. All efforts should be made to bring the Soviet Union into a posture of compliance and to keep the agreement in force.

The classified version of the President's January report details the unsuccessful record of U.S. diplomatic efforts in the Standing