Memo Misfire

A disputed passage of arms

Ronald Reagan's arms control negotiators face an immensely difficult task in trying to push their Soviet counterparts toward an agreement. But a secret memo seen last week by a few Senators suggests that Ambassador Edward Rowny, chief negotiator at the Strategic Arms Reduction Talks in Geneva, may spend nearly as much time suspiciously eyeing his own colleagues as he does watching his adversaries across the table.

The five-page memo contains Rowny's assessment of some 18 members of the START delegation and the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. Rowny gave it to Kenneth Adelman, President Reagan's controversial choice to be the new director of the agency. The document is just short of a "hit list," expressing sharp criticism and mistrust of almost everyone it mentions.

It contends, for example, that James Goodby, a highly respected career Foreign Service officer and former Ambassador to Finland, who is Rowny's deputy in Geneva, and Jack Mendelsohn, the former ACDA representative on the delegation, are too eager to reach an arms agreement. It complains that Thomas Graham, a veteran ACDA lawyer who helped draft the U.S. proposals now under discussion, is suspect because he has been spending time with aides to Senate Majority Leader Howard Baker. Why that troubles Rowny is puzzling; Graham is in charge of the agency's congressional relations. The memo also suggests that certain members of Congress, including Colorado's Democratic Senator Gary Hart, be kept away from the arms talks in Geneva. Hart, who has frequently visited the negotiations, angrily called for Rowny's dismissal last week: "He's trying to subvert the arms control process," and "has outlived his usefulness."

Rowny, not very plausibly, deflected the blame for the memo to an aide, Samuel Watson, who had drafted it, and contended that it does not reflect his thinking. Under questioning at his Senate confirmation hearings last Feb. 3, Adelman said he had never heard "anyone" in the Administration suggest any kind of housecleaning or purge of the agency.

TIME has learned that Adelman actually discussed the memo with Rowny face to face in January and that Rowny later telephoned Adelman with more comments about personnel. Adelman jotted some notes on the memo, and then sent a copy to his friend J. Robinson West, Assistant Secretary of the Interior, seeking advice on how to manage the arms control agency. Adelman also attached a memo of his own that, says one Senator who has seen it, "has a lot of reflection on what they ought to be doing about personnel."

For its part, the White House was glum and annoyed about these developments, but stood by Adelman. Continuing to stand fast may require cleats: last week the Senate Foreign Relations Committee issued a report contending that Adelman lacks the "stature, experience, knowledge and commitment" for the job. This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.