Freedom to Test

Through the cold, predawn darkness of Washington one day last week, a small group of high U.S. officials known informally as the "Committee of Principals" drove to the Military Air Transport Service terminal. There they boarded a silver Douglas C-118, took off for Augusta, Ga. to keep an 8:30 a.m. appointment with the President. Within three days the U.S.'s self-imposed, 14-month suspension of nuclear tests was due to expire on its deadline of midnight Dec. 31. The urgent question to be decided that morning: Should the U.S., or should it not, renew the nuclear-test moratorium?

In the group were Secretary of State Christian Herter and Under Secretary C. Douglas Dillon; Defense Secretary Thomas Gates and General Nathan Twining, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; Atomic Energy Commission Chairman John McCone; Presidential Assistants (for national security) Gordon Gray and (for science) George Kistiakowsky. They were in rare unanimity on a general proposition. They intended to put it to the President that 1) the U.S. ought to continue the 14-month-old talks with Britain and the U.S.S.R. at Geneva on how to inspect and control any permanent test ban; 2) the U.S. should not promise to extend the test moratorium any longer.

New Doubts. The President's advisers carried with them to Augusta new evidence to reinforce their conclusions. It was the latest 41-page report on technical discussions among the U.S., British and Russian scientists at Geneva on the feasibility of checking underground test shots.

In this report, U.S. and British scientists led by the U.S.'s Dr. James Fisk and Britain's Sir William Penney set down their revised findings (TIME, Jan. 12, 1959 et seq.) that known techniques of seismic detection of underground tests were completely unreliable. The U.S. had gone into the Geneva talks 14 months before on the basis of a single seismic detection of a single underground test explosion--the Rainier shot in September 1957--but had pulled up short after the Hardtack shots in Nevada in October 1958 could not be distinguished from small earthquakes. The Russian scientists had agreed to consider the evidence. Instead, the U.S.S.R.'s Evgeny Fedorov charged in the Geneva report that it was "the brink of absurdity." Fedorov went on to charge the Western scientists with deliberate "misrepresentation . . . manipulation ... a tendentious use of one-sidedly developed material for the purpose of undermining confidence." The President's advisers concluded that the Russians, in their assault on the integrity of Western scientists, were raising new doubts about the Kremlin's good faith in the whole series of nuclear negotiations.

Next question: Were Kremlin scientists to be trusted for objective studies on any phase of disarmament? Herter, though an original advocate of the test moratorium, was now convinced that the moratorium was giving a nuclear advantage to the U.S.S.R. with no return to the U.S.

New Debate. In the President's office, Chris Herter told Ike that on the basis of the record no agreement was in sight. Dr.

Fisk, home from Geneva, summarized the technical aspects of the talks. In nontechnical and blunt terms, AEC Chairman McCone read out Fedorov's attack on the U.S. scientists, whereupon the President's face reddened with anger. Together the President and the committee drew up the toughest diplomatic statement to appear since Khrushchev's visit to the U.S.

"The prospects for agreement have been injured by the recent unwillingness on the part of the politically guided Soviet experts to give serious consideration to the effectiveness of seismic techniques for the detection of underground nuclear explosions," it read. "Indeed, the atmosphere of the talks has been clouded by the intemperate and technically unsupportable Soviet annex to the report.

"We will resume negotiations [at Geneva next month] in a continuing spirit of seeking to reach a safeguarded agreement.

"In the meanwhile, the voluntary moratorium on testing will expire Dec. 31.

"Although we consider ourselves free to resume nuclear-weapons testing, we shall not resume it without announcing our intention in advance. During this period . . . the U.S. will continue in its active program of weapons-research development and laboratory-type experimentation." Peril on Path? Thus last week the President resolved the tricky problem of what to do when the test moratorium ran out with the old year. But he postponed into 1960 his decision on what the basic trend of U.S. nuclear policy ought to be --and on this broader decision his advisers were still divided. On the one hand, the Pentagon's civilian and military leaders, AEC Chairman McCone and most Senators on Congress' Joint Committee on Atomic Energy now argue specifically that the moratorium has dangerously slowed important U.S. weapons development--especially the development of tactical weapons, second-generation missile warheads and the "clean" neutron bomb (TIME, Nov. 30). Since there is no way of knowing whether the Russians have violated their test-suspension promise, they argue, any great delay in resuming the tests will jeopardize U.S. national security.

Said New Mexico's Clinton Anderson, Joint Committee chairman: "I don't think we can go on forever without any decision . . . Either we ought to get quickly some decision on the scientific data or we should just drop the whole business and resume testing." On the other side, White House Science Adviser Kistiakowsky, and U.S. Ambassador James Wadsworth, senior U.S. diplomat at the Geneva talks, argue that nuclear-test suspension is still the most promising path toward world disarmament and that the U.S. should regard the risk of Russian cheating, and the greater risk of weakening U.S. defenses, as the lesser of evils in a world of mounting armaments. The President, deeply moved by the cries for peace on his trip through Asia and North Africa, is inclined to side with Wadsworth and Kistiakowsky as long as he can feasibly do so--even though he has long insisted that no agreement with the Russians is worth anything unless results can be checked and inspected.

In any event, the U.S. does not intend to sit on its hands while the talks go on.

Last week the order was passed among U.S. military and civilian scientists to crank up for a new series of underground, fallout-free nuclear tests in Nevada, which, if the President chooses, can get operational in May, June or July.

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