Who Conceded What to Whom

Last week's announcement of agreement on a SALT II treaty between the U.S. and the Soviet Union capped 6 1/2 years of negotiations. Jimmy Carter and Leonid Brezhnev hope that when they sign the treaty next month, they will be keeping alive a process that began with SALT I a dozen years ago and will continue--in SALT III, IV and V--for decades to come. The Strategic Arms Limitation Talks have been called the most important negotiations of the postwar era. But whether SALT II ever becomes the law of the land, indeed whether the SALT process is to continue, depends on the U.S. Senate, which must ratify the treaty by a two-thirds majority. The debate in the Senate over ratification will cover a range of questions, including one of history: Who conceded what to whom in exchange for what in the course of the negotiations? Attention has already begun to focus on the confused but climactic phase of SALT II, from the beginning of the Carter presidency until last week's announcement. Believing that one way to grasp SALT is to understand its evolution, TIME Diplomatic Correspondent Strobe Talbott has spent much of the past year reconstructing the Administration's conduct of SALT, based on exclusive interviews with key officials. His report:

Jimmy Carter had just been elected President, and the Kremlin was nervous. After eight years of dealing productively with Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, the Soviets found themselves confronted in January 1977 with a largely unknown quantity. Would this new American Administration finish the work on a Strategic Arms Limitation treaty begun by Nixon and continued by Ford? The SALT I interim agreement limiting strategic offensive arms, signed by Nixon and Brezhnev in 1972, was due to expire in October 1977. Brezhnev and Ford had agreed at Vladivostok in 1974 on the framework of a new treaty to run until 1985: each side would be allowed 2,400 strategic, or intercontinental-range, weapons, 1,320 of which could have MIRVs. In January 1976, Brezhnev and Henry Kissinger had nearly reached an understanding on how to fit into the Vladivostok framework two new weapons, the Soviet Backfire bomber and the U.S. cruise missile, which had not been defined at Vladivostok. But by then detente, SALT and Kissinger himself had come under attack from presidential candidates in both parties, including Democratic Dark Horse Jimmy Carter.

After the Inauguration, Carter ordered the National Security Council to prepare for renewed strategic arms talks between Secretary of State Cyrus Vance and Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko. The NSC drafted Presidential Review Memorandum No. 2, an interagency study of the options available to the President. There was a loose consensus that the U.S. should seal the deal Gerald Ford had made at Vladivostok, and swiftly. Then the Administration could get on with more ambitious initiatives in the next round of talks, SALT III.

However, Defense Secretary Harold Brown, National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, his deputy, David Aaron, and Carter himself were all dissatisfied with the Vladivostok accord. Its subceiling of 1,320 multiple-warhead launchers allowed the two sides "freedom to mix" land-based and submarine-launched MlRVed missiles. The Soviets could concentrate their MIRV force on land, where their delivery systems were most powerful and accurate. Soviet land-based missiles, or ICBMS, fall into "heavy" and "light" categories. The 1972 SALT I agreement left the Russians with more than 300 heavies, much bigger than anything the U.S. has or, under the interim agreement, would be allowed to have. The remainder of the Soviet ICBM force is made up of many rockets classified as light, but still bigger than the mainstay of the U.S. deterrent, the Minuteman ICBM.

American strategists have long feared that the land-based Soviet rocket force, with its core of Hydraheaded heavy monster missiles, might some day be able to destroy all 1,000 Minutemen in a preemptive strike. Brown and Aaron were tantalized by the idea of using SALT II to restrain the MlRVing of Soviet ICBMS in general and to reduce the number of heavy rockets in particular.

There was also a compelling political imperative for seeking to lower the Vladivostok ceilings. Congressional critics had been warning for some time that they might oppose ratification of any treaty that left the Vladivostok ceilings in place. The leading critic, Senator Henry Jackson, had breakfast with Carter at the White House two weeks after the Inauguration and argued that SALT II must come to grips with the twin problems of Soviet heavy missiles and Soviet land-based MIRVs. Afterward Jackson sent the President a detailed, 23-page memo, drafted by his right-hand man for strategic affairs, Richard Perle. "If further negotiations were to begin where the Ford-Kissinger negotiations left off," the memo concluded, "you would unnecessarily assume the burden of past mistakes."

Carter and his top advisers wanted, if possible, a Strategic Arms Limitation treaty that would be acceptable both to the Kremlin and to the junior Senator from Washington. Moreover, the new President's men were eager to do more than just finish Henry Kissinger's work for him. On a loftier plane, the Carter inner circle had an idealistic commitment to "real arms control"--measures to halt the arms race rather than merely establish rules for competition--and they felt that in the postInaugural honeymoon they had a unique opportunity to move boldly in that direction.

In early March, Brzezinski chaired a meeting of the Cabinet-level Special Coordination Committee in the windowless Situation Room in the basement of the White House. David Aaron suggested that the U.S. negotiating position include a proposal for an equal limit on the number of MlRVed ICBMS that both sides could deploy, plus a drastic reduction in the number of Soviet heavy missiles already deployed. The plan would have rolled back some Soviet programs and slowed down others, while leaving the American arsenal intact, although it would have been coupled with an offer to sacrifice some American weapons still on the drawing board. As Aaron later put it, "We would be giving up future draft choices in exchange for cuts in their starting lineup." Brown seconded the idea, adding that there might also be a limit on the number of missile tests each side could conduct in a year. Such a limit would further inhibit the Russians from improving their rockets.

Two days later, a Saturday, Brzezinski, Brown, Vance and Aaron met in the Cabinet Room with Carter, Vice President Walter Mondale and Paul Warnke, who had just been confirmed as chief SALT negotiator. The President reiterated his preference for a position far beyond the Vladivostok accord. Brown explained the idea he and Aaron had discussed earlier. Carter nodded vigorously and said, "Good. Let's do that." Warnke did not oppose the ambitious proposals, but cautioned: "If they're shot down by the Soviets, we'll be criticized for retreating."

Brzezinski then directed NSC Staffer William Hyland, a veteran Government Sovietologist and former close aide to Kissinger, to draft negotiating instructions for Vance. Hyland produced what became known as "the comprehensive proposal." It would have held Soviet MlRVed ICBMS to 550, a level equal to the number of MlRVed ICBMS on the American side, cut the Soviet heavy force in half, from about 300 to 150, and allowed the U.S. to deploy all forms of cruise missiles with ranges up to 2,500 km (1,550 miles)--a much higher range limit than the Soviets had said they would accept.

At an NSC meeting in mid-March, Vance suggested that if the Soviets rejected the comprehensive proposal, the U.S. should be prepared instead to ratify the Vladivostok ceilings immediately and defer to SALT III the resolution of the Backfire bomber and cruise missile as well as deep reductions in the ceilings. Carter approved, as long as the Soviets understood that the comprehensive proposal was the "preferred" U.S. position. The deliberations over the comprehensive proposal were so secret that even the top layer of the bureaucracy was largely ignorant of what had happened until the eve of Vance's departure for Moscow.

When, just before leaving, Vance gave Soviet Ambassador Anatoli Dobrynin a briefing on the proposal, Dobrynin commented pointedly that it seemed to have little to do with the Vladivostok accord, which the Soviet leadership was determined to enshrine in a new treaty. In Moscow, during a chilly "welcoming session" at the Kremlin, Brezhnev dwelt on the importance of consummating the Vladivostok accord as a precondition to further arms-control measures. Then, at the first business meeting, Gromyko hinted in his opening statement--before the Americans had even formally presented their proposal--that his government knew what was coming and would reject it.

Despite these warning signals, the U.S. team expected the Russians at least to respond with a counterproposal. Vance had come to Moscow with top-secret "fallback" instructions for a compromise. These were hidden even from members of his own entourage. When some middle-level officials arrived early at the U.S. embassy for a briefing on their side's negotiating position, they found William Hyland at work with a pair of scissors, clipping out the fallback instructions before showing the document to the rest of the party. That evening at the VIP guesthouse in Lenin Hills, there was much grumbling about how "Hyland got caught shredding our orders."

Vance was never able to use his fallback instructions. Instead of making a counteroffer, the Soviets curtly, categorically rejected both the U.S. comprehensive proposal and the "Vladivostok deferral" alternative--the first because it would have sharply cut existing Soviet programs while leaving U.S. forces unscathed; the second because it deferred the issue of the cruise missile, which the Soviets wanted to constrain right away.

In a press conference at the U.S. ambassador's residence, Vance announced that his mission had failed. Carter and Brzezinski publicly defended the proposals back in Washington. No sooner was Vance airborne than Gromyko gave a press conference too, accusing the U.S. of a "cheap and shady maneuver" aimed at achieving "unilateral advantage." As a stunned Cy Vance headed home, SALT II seemed to have degenerated into an intercontinental shouting match.

After the Moscow debacle, both sides set about quietly picking up the pieces. In early April, Dobrynin's limousine whisked him around Washington for private meetings with Carter, Vance, Brzezinski and Warnke. The permanent U.S. SALT delegation in Geneva (led when Warnke was in Washington by his deputy, Ralph Earle) renewed biweekly "plenaries" with the Soviet negotiators. The press was rarely told anything.

The Soviets in Geneva never even hinted at the Kremlin's resentment of the Carter human rights policy, and the Americans were equally careful not to echo their Government's criticism of Soviet human rights abuses. Unaware of this rule, a newcomer to the U.S. team brought up the dissidents in an informal tete-`a-tete with his Russian opposite number. When he reported the exchange later in a "memcon," his superiors told him never again to mix business with displeasure.

Back in Washington during the spring of 1977, there was an intensive round of SALT-salvaging brainstorming sessions within the U.S. Government. One of the most important was a 2 1/2-hour meeting between the State Department arms control director, Leslie Gelb, and the NSC's William Hyland over lunch. Hyland drew several columns on his paper napkin. He and Gelb then divided the tangle of SALT issues into three categories: 1) those that could be couched in terms of the Vladivostok accord; 2) interim measures that would allay Soviet concern over the cruise missile and U.S. concern about the upgrading of Russian ICBMS; and 3) goals for future, more ambitious agreements.

The sketch on Hyland's napkin became the basis for a three-tier proposal: a treaty to run till 1985, a three-year protocol, and a statement of principles for SALT III. Gromyko accepted that framework when he next met Vance in Geneva in May. Gromyko also agreed in principle to lower the Vladivostok ceiling from 2,400 total strategic launchers during the life of the SALT II treaty. But the meeting left open the knotty questions of which weapons would be dealt with in each tier--and how the U.S. could be sure the Soviets did not cheat. Before answers could be hammered out with the Russians, there had to be a united position within the U.S. Government.

It took nearly four months in mid-1977 for the Administration to settle on how to repackage past U.S. proposals in a way that would be negotiable when Gromyko and Vance met again. Somehow the Vladivostok subceiling of 1,320 multiple-warhead weapons, which the Russians considered sacrosanct, had to be preserved. Within that subceiling, a way had to be found of restricting the most dangerous component in the Soviet arsenal, MIRVed land-based missiles. The Soviets had already served notice they would reject any new provision that singled out heavy missiles per se. In May, Vance had proposed, and Gromyko had brusquely rejected, a freeze on MIRVed heavies. Besides, Pentagon and CIA analysts had been saying for some time that the Soviet SS-19 rocket, technically classified as a light launcher, was more accurate and therefore at least as threatening as its brutish big brother, the heavy SS-18.

Toward the end of the summer, the policymakers began looking for a way to build into the Vladivostok limit of 1,320 total MIRVed systems a new subceiling just for land-based MIRVs, both heavy and light. This was a crucial shift in negotiating tactics. It meant that the U.S. was finally giving up on cuts in the Soviet heavy force. But it also meant, if it were accepted, that the Russians would have less "freedom to mix" between land-based and submarine-launched MIRVs. Aaron and Hyland first sounded out the Soviets on the possibility of a MIRVed ICBM subceiling at a lunch in the Russian embassy in late August. The Russians were noncommittal but seemed interested.

Such a subceiling would make it all the more important that the U.S. be confident its spy satellites could keep an accurate count as the Soviets MIRVed more and more of their ICBMS. The Administration knew that the fate of the treaty in the Senate would depend largely on whether the U.S. could monitor Soviet compliance with the various restrictions. The issue of verification had become the grand obsession of SALT II.

During the summer and early fall of 1977 there was a heated, secrecy-shrouded debate over how to verify the number of Russian MIRVed ICBMS. The debate went on at the negotiating table in Geneva and within the Carter Administration. At issue were two ICBM fields near the Ukrainian towns of Derazhnya and Pervomaisk. American officials dubbed both the towns and the issue "D-and-P."

The two fields contained a total of 180 underground silos, or launchers. One-third of the silos housed SS-19 rockets with multiple warheads; the other two-thirds housed older, less formidable SS-11s with single warheads. By satellite reconnaissance, the U.S. had kept careful count as the Soviets installed the SS-19s into one-third of the D-and-P silos. Nonetheless, officials in Washington--and particularly at the Pentagon-- were worried about their future ability to distinguish MIRVed from unMlRVed rockets when mixed together as they were at D-and-P. The reason: except for a telltale domed antenna, the MIRVed SS-19 silos were virtually identical to the unMlRVed SS-11 holes.

The U.S. SALT negotiators had been trying to get the Russians to accept a rule whereby once a given type of launcher had been tested with a MIRVed missile, all launchers of that type had to be counted as MIRVed, regardless of what kind of rocket they contained. Vance and Warnke felt it was more important for the Soviets to accept that rule for the future than it was to resolve the potential ambiguity that existed at D-and-P, especially since a similar ambiguity existed in a U.S. missile field at Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana, where MIRVed and unMlRVed Minutemen were poised in indistinguishable silos.

But Harold Brown felt that any meaningful counting rule must apply retroactively to D-and-P. In other words, the Soviets would have to agree to count all the silos there under the U.S.-proposed subceiling for MIRVed ICBMS. Warnke and Brown got into a debate on the issue at a meeting of the Special Coordination Committee in August. Their disagreement was partly responsible for Vance's postponing his next scheduled session with Gromyko from early to late September. Finally the President sided with Brown.

When Gromyko arrived in Washington, he was wearing his most dour poker face. His first meeting with Vance was unproductive. The Secretary of State was deeply concerned that the talks were headed for another impasse and possible collapse. Vance took Gromyko into his mahogany paneled office with only their interpreters present and told Gromyko that he had better be more forthcoming with Carter the next day. If he was not, said Vance, there was no point in going through with the audience. Only then did Gromyko's stone wall crack: the Soviet government might "respond favorably" to an American proposal for a MIRVed ICBM subceiling, he said.

A suddenly optimistic Vance called Harold Brown on the special, secure telephone line connecting the State Department with the Pentagon. The two men arranged to meet with Brzezinski and the President to plan for the next day's bargaining. They decided to seek two new subceilings: 1,200 for a combined total of land-based and submarine-launched MIRVs, and 800 for land-based ones alone (i.e., MIRVed ICBMS).

The huddle went on into the early morning, with Aaron and Hyland assigned to hone the details. To make the idea of a new, lower MIRV maximum and an even more restrictive MIRVed ICBM subceiling palatable to the Kremlin, the U.S. coupled it with a partial concession to the longstanding Russian insistence that bombers armed with cruise missiles be counted in the Vladivostok limit on multiple-warhead launchers. The American scheme involved subtracting 1,200 --the new MIRV missile total--from 1,320, the old Vladivostok MIRV missile total. That left 120, which would become an allowance for bombers on each side armed with cruise missiles. Any more than 120 would have to be at the price of one MIRVed missile given up for every cruise-missile carrier added.

he next day's meeting between Carter and Gromyko was promising but inconclusive. Carter spelled out the proposal for counting MIRVed ICBMS under a new subceiling. Gromyko indicated interest. Carter stressed, however, that the plan was contingent on Soviet acceptance of a strict retroactive counting rule for MIRVed launchers: D-and-P must count as fully MIRVed. On that score, Gromyko reverted to his familiar recalcitrance. But the meeting had gone well enough for Carter to say he would like to get to know Brezhnev personally at a summit. In heavily accented English, Gromyko replied, "I think there are chances."

The chances looked even brighter the next week when Gromyko, attending the U.N. General Assembly in New York City, notified Vance he wanted to see Carter again. He had received new instructions from the Kremlin. Brzezinski asked Hyland to forecast the Soviet response Gromyko would be bringing with him.

Hyland's prediction: Gromyko would concede on D-and-P and accept the American formula for counting MIRVed missiles, but would ask for slightly higher limits on the number of MIRVed ICBMS and on the combined maximum for land-based and submarine-launched MIRVed rockets. Hyland's recommendation: accept the Soviet numbers if they were within reasonable bounds.

When Gromyko arrived for his second meeting with Carter, the suspense in the Cabinet Room was palpable. But it quickly gave way to relief. Brown, who had picked up a smattering of Russian in earlier SALT negotiations, understood that Gromyko was delivering a positive response even before Interpreter Victor Sukhodrev began translating. Brzezinski, who has a good command of Russian, knew as soon as Gromyko began reading his statement that the answer, for a change, was da. Sensing from Brzezinski's and Brown's expressions that he was missing something important, Hamilton Jordan whispered to his neighbor, Hyland, to translate Gromyko. Mondale, meanwhile, was carefully studying Hyland's memo. It was as though the Vice President were getting ready to grade the paper on the basis of what Gromyko said.

The grade would have been an A.* Gromyko accepted the American position on D-and-P as well as the U.S. proposal for a lower total ceiling and for new limits within the 1,320 subceiling. Also, just as Hyland had predicted, Gromyko made a counterproposal with slightly higher numbers. But instead of accepting the Soviet figures, Jimmy Carter tried a bit of poker himself. Carter told Gromyko he welcomed the progress that had been achieved and expressed the hope that the remaining differences could be narrowed. (The Soviets ultimately got their way on the overall aggregate of 2,250 for total strategic systems, while the U.S.got its way on the MIRV aggregate of 1,200. The two sides compromised on 820 for the MlRVed ICBM sublimit.) At the end of the meeting, which both sides considered a major breakthrough, Carter showed Gromyko a plastic scale model of U.S. and Soviet ICBMS. The Russian behemoths, painted black, both outnumbered and dwarfed the graceful white Minutemen. "Now you see why it's so important to limit these things," said the President.

Another factor in the SALT equation, the Soviet Backfire bomber, also seemed within the realm of compromise. Gromyko had brought with him to Washington a draft letter from the Kremlin listing measures the Soviets would undertake to assure that the Backfire was not upgraded to a strategic weapon that could strike the U.S. American officials considered the assurances inadequate, but Gromyko and Vance agreed to relegate the Backfire letter to its own negotiating channel between Leslie Gelb and Alexander Bessmertnykh, one of Dobrynin's deputies. Bessmertnykh's name is derived from the Russian word for immortal, leading Harold Brown to joke that the Soviets must have been signaling their willingness to let the Backfire issue drag on forever.

The Soviet Foreign Minister left in his wake a swell of American optimism. One reason: shortly after Gromyko's visit, the Soviet negotiators in Geneva agreed to cancel altogether the development of the SS-16, a particularly worrisome missile because it would have been readily convertible into a mobile ICBM. Carter placed great importance on that concession. He told an audience in Des Moines that SALT II could be concluded "in a few weeks." Even his more cautious advisers hoped out loud for "SALT by Christmas"--a phrase that would have a melancholy ring when it was echoed a full year later.

The winter of 1977-78 turned out to be a frigid one for the treaty talks. Congressional critics, led by Jackson, howled "betrayal" when they learned that the Administration had abandoned its pursuit of a subceiling exclusively for heavy missiles. The Russians, meanwhile, did little to improve the atmosphere of SALT. The KGB intensified its crackdown on dissidents, and the Soviet-backed Cuban legions stepped up their intervention in Africa. Meanwhile Christmas 1977 had come and gone. So had the October expiration of SALT I. Moscow and Washington promised to adhere to the old agreement until a new one could be reached.

The Carter Administration realized it had underestimated the difficulty of the outstanding issues. One of the most troublesome, and certainly most important, involved a ban on new types of ICBMS. The bane of SALT has been that new weapons and the modernization of old weapons have had an insidious way of rendering arms-control agreements obsolete if not unequal. The Carter Administration, to its credit but also to its frustration, had been trying ever since the ill-fated proposal of March 1977 to use SALT II to slow the juggernaut of technology. The Soviets were receptive--but not for altogether idealistic reasons. They wanted a ban on new ICBMS that would prevent the U.S. from getting its own MlRVed superrocket, the "Missile-Experimental," or MX, off the drawing board and onto the launching pad. Moreover, the Russians wanted the ban on new ICBMS to contain an exemption so that they could proceed with a new single-warhead, solid-fuel missile to replace the aging, less reliable liquid-fuel SS-11 of D-and-P fame.

From early 1977 until mid-1978, the superpowers churned out a dizzying array of proposals and counterproposals on the same theme: the Soviets were trying to protect their new type of single-warhead ICBM while seeking to block development of the MX during the three years of the protocol that would accompany the treaty. The issue dominated the April 1978 Vance-Gromyko meeting in Moscow. Even the jokes at the negotiating table reflected the tension. A Vance aide picked up an electronic gavel and accidentally set off a clanging bell. Smiling broadly, Gromyko's normally humorless deputy, Georgi Kornienko, said, "Well, there goes Washington!" "Quick," added Dobrynin, "somebody call Zbig and tell him it was a mistake!"

Finally, last May, Gromyko came to Washington with a bold new suggestion: the U.S.S.R. would give up its own new type if the U.S. would give up the MX until the treaty expired in 1985. This was significant--first because it would have done away with exemptions in the new-types ban; second because it elevated the ban from the protocol to the treaty; and third because it was extremely rare for the Soviets even to hint at sacrificing a weapon system that the Kremlin had apparently already promised the military.

However, the offer was unacceptable to the U.S. The reason: the Carter Administration was determined to preserve the option of developing the MX as a replacement for the increasingly vulnerable Minuteman. The U.S. was willing, however, to hold off deployment--but not development--of the MX until 1985 if the Soviets would refrain from deploying their single-warhead new type. Nyet, said the Russians: they wanted to kill the MX program, not merely impede it.

There was further progress in Geneva in July. Gromyko told Vance the Kremlin would agree to a ban in the treaty with an exemption for one new type of ICBM; each side would be free to choose either a MlRVed or a single-warhead version. Thus the U.S. could proceed with its MX replacement for Minuteman and the U.S.S.R. with its solid-fuel replacement for the SS-11. But Gromyko made his proposal conditional on American acceptance of the Soviet position on a variety of other unresolved issues. The U.S. was not about to concede on all those points, but Vance and his party flew home from Geneva with renewed encouragement: the "end game," or "tradeoff phase" of SALT II had begun.

Part of the maddening dynamic of SALT is that the resolution of a general problem often confronts the negotiators with a MlRV-like cluster of specific problems of definition and detail. The ban on new types of ICBMs was a case in point. The tentative agreement on such a ban intensified the disagreement over what constituted a new type. The U.S. wanted to define a new type as any existing rocket tested with more warheads than before. This definition would force the Soviets to freeze the number of warheads on their three big MIRVed rockets; the SS-17 at four warheads, the SS-19 at six, the heavy SS-18 at ten. The U.S., for its part, would hold its one existing MIRVed missile, the Minuteman III, to three warheads.* At the same time, Washington wanted the option of eventually MlRVing its one new type, the MX, with ten warheads.

Nothing doing, said the Russians. They wanted to define new types in a way that would allow them to raise the SS-17 from four to six warheads and that would limit the U.S. to six warheads on the MX.

However, in Geneva last July, the Soviets ventured the most explicit linkage to date between two issues: Gromyko indicated thai his government would accept a freeze on warheads at the number already tested on each existing type of ICBM if the U.S. accepted the longstanding Soviet position on another matter--the number of cruise missiles allowed on each of the special bombers the U.S. planned to develop. The Russians wanted a limit of 20 cruise missiles per plane. Under their formula, a B-52 with 20 cruise missiles would count as one launcher against the subceiling of 1,320; a modified Boeing 747 armed with 80 cruise missiles would count as four launchers. The U.S. wanted an "averaging approach" pegged to the number 35, so that taken together, a B-52 with 20 cruise missiles and a 747 with 50 would count as two launchers, since 20 and 50 average out to 35 per plane. After relentless haggling, the Soviets inched up to 25 and the U.S. inched down to 30 as the base number.

In September, Gromyko came to Washington with an important concession on air-launched cruise missiles: the Soviets conditionally offered to drop their insistence on a 2,500-km limit on the range of air-launched cruise missiles. A month later Vance set off on his third visit to Moscow as Secretary of State, and his aides were billing the mission in advance as "the last mile," "the final round," "the climactic meeting." The seasonal motto "SALT by Christmas!" was again in the air along the Potomac. But the Soviets do not believe in Christmas. At the negotiating table in the Kremlin, Gromyko told Vance that the Russians agreed to accept the U.S. "averaging approach" on limiting air-launched cruise missiles. But, Gromyko reminded his guest, earlier Soviet acceptance of a MIRV freeze on ICBMs had required American acceptance of a strict limit, rather than an averaging approach, on cruise missiles aboard bombers. Since the Russians were yielding to the U.S. on the averaging approach, Gromyko continued, their earlier concession on the MIRV freeze was no longer operative. Sighed a haggard American official, paraphrasing Lenin, "One step forward, one step backward."

Actually, there was at least a step and a half forward at that meeting. While the Soviets now claimed the option of MlRVing their existing types of ICBMs with up to ten re-entry vehicles--an unacceptable proliferation from the American standpoint--they did finally concede that the U.S. had the right to put ten warheads on the MX. Since the U.S. was barred by SALT I from building anything as big and powerful as the SS-18 heavy rocket, it was politically important to the Carter Administration that SALT II allow the U.S. at least to match the SS-18 in number of warheads on the MX. That point would be critical when it came to selling the treaty on Capitol Hill.

As the negotiators zeroed in on an agreement, the policymakers tended to look more and more over their shoulders at Congress. The White House fired off a cable to Geneva ordering the U.S. delegation to insert an asterisk after the first reference to "treaty" in the Joint Draft Text that was being negotiated. The asterisk called attention to a footnote stipulating that the document, in its final form, might be an agreement for approval by a simple majority of both houses instead of a treaty requiring ratification by two-thirds of the Senate. The Soviets never took the asterisk terribly seriously. To them, it was a symbol of the basic capriciousness of American democracy.

Much more serious was another typographical feature of the Joint Draft Text. The U.S. and Soviet definitions of cruise missiles were set apart from each other, and from the mutually agreed treaty language, by brackets. Brackets signified disagreement. The Russians had long maintained that range limits on ground-launched and sea-launched cruise missiles in the protocol and restrictions on the number of air-launched versions per aircraft in the treaty should apply simply to "armed" cruise missiles; there should be no distinction between nuclear-armed cruise missiles and conventionally armed ones. The reason: it was extremely difficult for spy satellites and other "national technical means of verification" to distinguish between nuclear and conventional warheads on cruise missiles. Therefore on the same principle that the U.S. had made stick in the case of D-and-P, where unMlRVed launchers were "deemed" to be MIRVed for purposes of counting under SALT, all cruise missiles should be deemed to be nuclear-armed.

For once, the logic of the Soviet position was difficult to refute. The politics, however, was more complicated. Pentagon planners were uneasy with the prospect that SALT II--which was supposed to restrain strategic nuclear arms --might end up, willy-nilly, restricting the development and deployment of some conventionally armed tactical weapons as well. West European strategists and politicians were even more concerned. The West Germans, banned by international agreement from having nuclear weapons, were particularly anxious to have access some day to conventionally armed, ground-launched cruise missiles -- latterday buzz bombs. Throughout SALT II, NATO has had a vigilant, knowledgeable and highly influential watchdog in the U.S. Senate, Georgia Democrat Sam Nunn. He lobbied both Carter and Defense Secretary Brown to "protect" conventionally armed cruise missiles in SALT.

In 1977 the U.S. proposed a definition of cruise missiles that would contain a proviso: once the protocol expired, either side would have the right to deploy conventionally armed cruise missiles on airplanes other than heavy bombers without those planes counting against the 1,320 subceiling. Thus the precedent would be established that the treaty had no jurisdiction over conventional as opposed to nuclear weapons.

Vance, Warnke and Earle were never happy with this provision. All three men are attorneys, but they found the U.S. cruise missile definition too legalistic even for their lawyerly blood, and they privately sympathized with the Soviet view that it was essentially unverifiable. But they kept their misgivings away from the negotiating table, where they argued the case of their White House and Pentagon clients as best they could. The Russians, however, were adamant. "We see this as a pretext to gain unilateral advantage," said Chief Soviet Negotiator Vladimir Semyonov--and he said it repeatedly. "Each time we address this subject, we are trying to find stronger words."

Two key arbiters on the American side turned out to be Brzezinski and Mondale. Originally they had been skeptical about the Pentagon position. Then they became concerned that it might some day be important to preserve the nuclear/conventional distinction if the West Europeans were going to support the treaty--and, more important, if Sam Nunn were going to vote for its ratification. Finally, last November, Brzezinski and Mondale reassessed the matter again and now sided with Vance.

At the end of November, Vance, Brzezinski, Brown, Mondale, Carter and Jordan met at the White House to review SALT. They decided to back off the U.S. insistence on an explicit clause exempting conventionally armed cruise missiles. Brown decided not to hold out for the exemption partly because he had come to worry about what the Soviets might do with air-launched cruise missiles aboard the Backfire bomber. The U.S. had recently agreed neither to count the Backfire as a strategic weapon nor to demand restrictions on where it could be deployed. Instead, the Carter Administration had settled for restrictions on the number of planes that could be produced and for the right to build a comparable American bomber. Since it was almost impossible for either side to distinguish between different types of warheads on cruise missiles, Brown was ultimately swayed by the argument that the Soviets might some day arm Backfires with long-range nuclear-armed cruise missiles disguised as conventional ones and thus have a strategic nuclear weapon uncounted by SALT.

The U.S. softened its position on the definition of cruise missiles in hopes that the Soviets would reciprocate with concessions of their own on at least two other outstanding issues: the number of warheads per ICBM (the U.S. wanted a minimum on Soviet rockets) and the number of cruise missiles per aircraft (the U.S. wanted a maximum on its own bombers). Vance, Warnke and Marshall Shulman, Vance's adviser on Soviet affairs, stressed this linkage in a series of meetings with Dobrynin in December. The Soviet ambassador indicated that his government was prepared to make reciprocal concessions when Vance and Gromyko met in Geneva later that month.

That left some relatively minor problems--and one very big problem: Soviet encryption of missile telemetry. Telemetry is the remote electronic means by which a rocket or a warhead sends back to earth data about its performance during a test flight. One way the U.S. monitors Soviet compliance with SALT is to intercept and analyze Soviet telemetry. Last July the Russians transmitted in code --encrypted--the telemetry from an SS-18 test, including the telemetry about the performance of the warhead--data that are helpful to the U.S. in determining throw weight or payload. The incident assumed political importance, for it went to the heart of the American obsession with verification. Ohio Senator John Glenn, the former astronaut, had already staked out this as "his" issue, on which his vote for or against ratification would largely depend.

CIA Director Stansfield Turner took a hard line at a number of meetings of the Special Coordination Committee: SALT II should forbid the Russians to engage in any encryption whatsoever in their ICBM tests. Vance and Warnke felt Turner went too far. After all, they reasoned, SALT entitles the U.S. to some but not all information about Soviet missile tests. For instance, the number of warheads on a rocket and its payload or throw weight would be governed by SALT II, but not the nature of the guidance system. Therefore encryption should be constrained but not banned altogether.

The President came down in favor of a modified restriction on encryption. The practice should be considered a violation of SALT "whenever it impedes" verification. (U.S. intelligence usually knows what information is contained on various channels of telemetry and which channels it must have access to for purposes of verifying compliance--and therefore which channels must not be encrypted, or transmitted in code.) Warnke and Earle were instructed to raise the issue with Semyonov in Geneva. Semyonov complained that the U.S. was trying to use SALT for purposes of espionage rather than verification. Just before Vance was due to meet with Gromyko in Moscow last October, Warnke and Earle raised the issue with Semyonov again: a common understanding accompanying the treaty must spell out that some telemetry is relevant to some provisions of SALT, and therefore encryption of that telemetry would constitute a "deliberate concealment measure." Without such a provision, said Warnke sternly, the treaty could not be properly verified; moreover it could not --indeed, should not--be ratified. "I'm prepared to be criticized," said the much criticized Warnke, who had announced that he was resigning from his post and returning to private law practice, "but I'm not prepared to be ridiculed." This time Semyonov conceded the point.

But an extraordinary thing happened in Moscow a few days later when Vance arrived to negotiate with Gromyko: Semyonov was repudiated by his bosses. Gromyko stuck to the Soviet refusal to include even a limited ban on encryption in SALT. Over lunch, he said in English, "On this question I am like a stone wall." Kornienko said acidly that Semyonov "didn't understand our position." Vance and his colleagues could only hope that the Soviets were holding out on the issue for bargaining leverage.

When Vance returned to Europe in late December for his ninth meeting with Gromyko on SALT, the suspense was heightened by Carter's surprise announcement less than a week before of the opening of diplomatic relations with China. Now that the famed China card was finally on the table, would the Soviets up the ante in SALT? Brzezinski said absolutely not. Vance and some of his advisers were not so sure.

The first two days of the negotiations were marked by a stiffening of the Soviet position on some minor issues but by major progress on some more important ones. Gromyko dredged up an old complaint: protective shelters for workmen hardening Minuteman silos at Malmstrom made it impossible for Soviet satellites to distinguish the MIRVs from the non-MIRVs, so the U.S.S.R. might have to insist on treating Malmstrom as an American D-and-P after all. Gromyko also raised for the first time with Vance a number of unresolved issues that had previously been considered secondary and had been dealt with exclusively by the permanent delegations, most notably cruise missiles. The Russians wanted, among other things, a ban on multiple-warhead cruise missiles--an exotic drone that the Pentagon had no intention of deploying during the treaty period but wanted to be free to test.

The most serious sticking point during the first two days of the talks concerned how much smaller the Soviets could make a modified version of an existing type of ICBM without that modification being classified as the one "new type" that each side was to be allowed under the treaty. In April 1978 the U.S. had proposed a limit of plus or minus 5% on any change in the length of the rocket booster, the diameter, the weight of the rocket at launch and the throw weight of an existing type of ICBM. The U.S. proposed some additional parameters as well. The Russians wanted a shorter list, but in May they indicated they would accept plus or minus 5% as the bounds of permissible change within whatever parameters were finally agreed upon.

However, two weeks before Vance met Gromyko in Geneva, the Soviet delegation took a big step backward: the Kremlin would still accept an upper limit of 5%, but now it wanted no limit at all on "downsizing." Gromyko improved slightly on that position, offering to settle for plus 5%, minus 20%. Vance replied that the U.S. would hold firm to a lower limit of 5%. At issue was whether the Soviets would be free to proceed with one or more new, smaller, more fuel-efficient, more accurate ICBMs under the guise that they were merely modified versions of old ICBMs. The U.S. felt that a 20% limit on downsizing would constitute an unacceptable loophole in SALT II; it would make a mockery out of the claim that the treaty banned all but one new type on either side. Gromyko's apparent willingness to compromise made the American negotiators hopeful that the Soviets would eventually return to their original acceptance of the U.S. position.

One reason for their confidence: on the major unsettled issues, Gromyko seemed to be under instructions to make concessions. The Soviets accepted, once and for all, a freeze on the number of warheads on existing ICBMS at the number already tested, and reaffirmed that the U.S. had the right to put ten warheads on the MX. The two sides further narrowed their difference on the average number of cruise missiles per bomber.

There was also considerable progress on the "common understanding" to govern encryption of telemetry. Vance and Gromyko worked out a compromise stipulating that any method of transmitting telemetry, "including its encryption," would be banned "whenever it impedes" verification--but that any method that did not impede would be permitted. Vance cited the encrypted telemetry of the SS-18 test in July as an example of what the U.S. would consider itself entitled to monitor under SALT II. Gromyko replied that the common understanding on encryption would be adequate to cover any case that might arise. But because Gromyko had not contradicted him, Vance felt the Soviet's response was satisfactory.

Stansfield Turner, Harold Brown and Zbigniew Brzezinski, however, did not agree. They were following the negotiations closely in Washington. During a meeting in Brzezinski's White House office the evening after the second day of the Vance-Gromyko talks, Turner objected strenuously, to the compromise wording of the common understanding; he did not like the fact that it explicitly permitted encryption under some circumstances. All three men felt that the common understanding left the Soviets with too much latitude to decide for themselves when they could encrypt and to what extent. It might even allow them to claim that in actual practice encryption never impeded verification and therefore was never forbidden. Brzezinski suggested that Vance should go back to Gromyko again on the July test, this time stating bluntly that the U.S. would consider a repetition of the encryption used in that test as a violation of SALT. Gromyko should be told that if the Soviet government disputed that position, he must speak now or forever hold his peace. Brzezinski telephoned President Carter in Plains, Ga., to get his approval, then cabled the new negotiating instructions to Vance.

Vance, who received the cable on his third day in Geneva, was furious. He telephoned Brzezinski from the U.S. SALT headquarters, protesting that it would be pointless and provocative to try to pin down Gromyko any further on the issue of the July test. After checking with Brown, Turner and Carter again, Brzezinski called Vance back to tell him the order stood. Brzezinski's call caught up with Vance when he was already at the Soviet mission, beginning a private session with Gromyko. Because they were talking on a Soviet phone, with the Russians very likely listening in, the Secretary of State and the National Security Adviser referred only to "that matter we discussed earlier." The President, said Brzezinski, considered it "critical for ratification" that Vance elicit a satisfactory response from Gromyko.

Vance did as he was told, and Gromyko's response was testy and ambiguous. The Foreign Minister then had an unpleasant surprise for Vance: the Kremlin would not proceed with summit plans until all outstanding issues had been resolved, including the provision for multiple-warhead cruise missiles and other sticking points that the U.S. had previously considered too minor to delay a signing at a mid-January Carter-Brezhnev summit, to which the Soviets had already tentatively agreed. Soviet diplomats indicated in private conversation that their government was unhappy about the timing of Deng Xiaoping's (Teng Hsiao-p'ing) forthcoming visit to Washington in late January. They did not like the idea of Brezhnev preceding Deng and very likely being eclipsed by him. Therefore Gromyko might have been using these eleventh-hour wrangles over third-rate issues as a pretext to postpone the Carter-Brezhnev summit.

Vance came home exhausted, just in time for Christmas with his family--another Christmas without SALT. Ralph Earle and the permanent negotiators based in Geneva were ordered to go back to work until they resolved the remaining problems. Earle raised the July SS-18 test, plus the similar one that had taken place in December, with the newly promoted Soviet chief negotiator, Victor Karpov, who had taken Vladimir Semyonov's place. Karpov first seemed to acquiesce in the American position that a repetition of the encryption used in either of those tests after SALT II was in force would be a violation of the treaty. Then, in February, he told Earle he was under instruction to state that the Kremlin considered the agreed common understanding on encryption adequate to cover any case that might arise, and "no further interpretation was necessary." Nor was there progress on the equally vital issue of downsizing. Karpov held out stubbornly for the 20% limit that the U.S. considered an unacceptable loophole. Meanwhile, Vance and Dobrynin were conducting intensive negotiations in Washington. But the diminutive figure of Deng Xiaoping cast a long, dark shadow over even the "back channel" of SALT.

In mid-February the U.S. offered a compromise to break the deadlock. Vance told Dobrynin that the U.S. would agree to ban the testing of multiple-warhead cruise missiles if the Soviets would return to their original acceptance of plus or minus 5% as the permissible change in the size and weight of an existing ICBM.

FOR two weeks Moscow blared complaints about American policy--particularly policy toward China--in public while emitting no positive signals through the back channel. American officials began to fear that the Kremlin might be fundamentally reassessing whether it wanted to conclude a SALT II treaty with the Carter Administration after all. Then, during the week of Feb. 26, Dobrynin delivered an encouraging message to Vance: the Kremlin would accept a 10% to 12% limit on the downsizing of ICBMs. Vance held out for 5%, but the Soviets were moving in the right direction. The Secretary of State took Dobrynin to see Carter in the Oval Office. The President told the ambassador that despite disagreements over Indochina, Afghanistan, Iran and other trouble spots, the U.S. and the Soviet Union must salvage SALT and improve bilateral relations. A few days later, in a surprisingly moderate speech, Brezhnev said he agreed.

The final weeks of the negotiations were among the most secretive and suspenseful of the past two years. Vance and Dobrynin were meeting regularly now, sometimes every few days, usually in Vance's hideaway study behind his formal office on the seventh floor of the State Department. On the problem of encryption, the Administration sought to do in writing, in the form of a letter from Carter to Brezhnev, what Vance and Earle had tried to do orally in exchanges with Gromyko and Karpov. The letter set forth the American contention that a repetition of the encryption used in the July SS-18 test and in a similar test in December would be a violation of SALT II. The Carter letter elicited a quarrelsome Brezhnev response, also in writing: while not categorically rejecting the U.S. position, the Soviets objected to the citation of specific tests as examples of impermissible encryption; they challenged the U.S. to spell out exactly what it was about those tests that impeded verification. That was something the American side did not want to do because the more it told the Kremlin about what it knew of those tests and what it needed for verification, the more it revealed about the workings of American intelligence. Brezhnev's testy response also accused the U.S. of seeking eventual prohibition of all telemetry.

Such was not the American intent. Rather, the U.S. wanted the Soviets to acknowledge that some telemetry is relevant to SALT and therefore that some encryption should be forbidden. References to the July and December tests were intended only as illustrations of the general principle. So the NSC decided to try again with a second Carter letter to Brezhnev, this time concentrating on a restatement of the general principle that some telemetry is necessary for verification. Largely at the urging of Brown, this second Carter letter was accompanied by a note, which Vance was instructed to give to Dobrynin, reiterating the U.S. position on the two 1978 SS-18 tests. The combination of the letter and the note worked. Dobrynin, at a meeting with Vance in early April, stated that the issue had been "resolved on the basis of these exchanges."

At that same meeting Dobrynin also accepted, once and for all, 5% as the limit on the increase or decrease in the length, diameter, launch weight and throw weight of an existing type of missile (this was a shorter list of parameters than the U.S. had originally sought). Nor could there be a change in the fuel type of an existing rocket, the number of stages, the maximum number of warheads or the minimum weight of individual warheads. These last two provisions were meant to prevent the Soviets from developing an SS-18 with a capacity to launch as many as 40 smaller warheads--four times as many as the ten-MlRV maximum for the SS-18 stipulated by the treaty.

But the Carter Administration felt it needed an additional rule to assure that the Soviets would not cheat on the warhead freeze. The rule would govern how many warhead-dispensing maneuvers the top stage of the missile could engage in as it re-entered the atmosphere. In December 1978, the Soviets had twice tested the SS-18 with its full complement often warheads but with two feints--or "release simulations"--as well. Pentagon and Senate skeptics suspected that the Russians might be developing an SS-18 with a capacity to carry more warheads than allowed. The Soviets, however, claimed that the feints were merely intended to make it easier for the warheads to penetrate antiballistic missile defenses. To complicate matters, the U.S. had tested decoys of its own, and the Navy had designed the Trident I submarine-based missile to engage in almost exactly the sort of feints that the SS-18 had demonstrated. In the end, the U.S. negotiators insisted that release simulations above the maximum number of warheads allowed on a given type of missile would have to be distinguishable from the procedure used to dispense MIRVs. In other words, no more tests like the ones in December. Two weeks ago, Dobrynin told Vance that the Kremlin agreed.

That left Vance and Dobrynin faced with only a pair of mostly symbolic problems involving the American Minuteman ICBM: a loophole in the warhead freeze that would have left the U.S. free to increase the Minuteman's MIRV load from three to seven, and the lingering Soviet complaint about the protective shelters over the Minuteman silos at Malmstrom Air Force Base, which the Soviets claimed blinded their spy satellites. Vance and Dobrynin might have announced an agreement two weeks ago. But the Soviets were not yet ready to commit themselves to a time and date for the Carter-Brezhnev summit, and the Administration wanted to enhance the impact by making both announcements in the same week. So the two negotiators drew out their final round over three meetings. At their last meeting on Monday, Vance told Dobrynin the U.S. was willing to relinquish the option of seven warheads on the Minuteman--an option the Pentagon had no intention of exercising anyway. Shortly afterward, Vance telephoned Harold Brown and asked him to order the Air Force to remove the shelters at Malmstrom. Soon after that, the two Secretaries met at the White House to announce the agreement.

*It also would have been Hyland's final grade. He was about to resign from the Government to take a job helping his old boss, Henry Kissinger, write his memoirs. *However, technically the U.S. would have had the right of MlRVing the Minuteman with seven warheads, since the missile had been tested with that number on two occasions during the Ford Administration.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.