have terrorists to worry about on Soviet territory and they have a prodigious quantity of land on which they can deploy offensive

weapons.

We suffer disadvantages in every area where the Soviets possess advantages. It seems to me foolish to compete with the Soviet Union in an area where they are strong and we are weak.

It makes a great deal of sense to compete in an area where we are strong and we hope they will prove to be weak, and that area of our great strength is the technological base on which we are building and attempting to bring the SDI to fruition.

Finally, let me say a word about the interpretation of the ABM Treaty. It may strike you as remarkable—it struck me as remarkable-that in the dozen or so years after the ABM Treaty was signed in 1972, largely because there was no U.S. strategic defense and, therefore, the issue was not forced to the surface, the executive branch in successive administrations did little or nothing to look back to the treaty and the record of those negotiations to determine whether statements made at the time of the treaty in 1972 about what the treaty provided were in fact correct and supported by the negotiating record.

Call it carelessness or inattention, if you like, that would not be unfair; it was shared by many administrations. Owing to questions put to the executive branch by this committee, particularly by Senator Levin, we went back and took a hard look at precisely what the treaty provided.

As you know, a great many statements have been made that build upon earlier statements without independent corroboration. Some of the statements made about what the treaty entailed were made by this administration which did not do its homework.

In responding to the very specific question put by Senator Levin to Dr. Hicks at his confirmation hearing, we found it necessary to go back and look at the treaty because in the interagency review process so many people held different views as to what the treaty provided.

We were all presumably reading the same treaty. I asked a young Defense Department lawyer, who recently came to the Department of Defense from another agency of the Government, who was unfamiliar with the history of the interpretation of the ABM Treaty and who could be counted upon to take a fresh look, to review the treaty and the negotiating record and report to us his view of the interpretation of many terms which had been used, sometimes loosely, by successive administrations-terms like prototype, subprototype, breadboard model-the sorts of terms about which we were questioned by Senator Levin.

I was struck to discover that most of the terminology the Senator referred to, and we were asked to comment upon, appeared nowhere in the treaty and in some cases not even in the negotiating record. It was as though we had been having a conversation with ourselves about what the treaty meant independent of what the Soviets had said to us or what we had said to them during the course of the negotiation.

A young Defense Department lawyer prepared a paper that came to a conclusion that seemed startling at the time, but which is not now, in retrospect. That is that the 21⁄2 years of negotiation of the

ABM Treaty entailed an effort by the United States to persuade the Soviet Union to abandon not only the defenses that were then available, but the prospect of future defenses as well; that the Soviets had resisted to the end any such sweeping prohibition, in particular with respect to research, development and testing.

The final result of that difference was expressed in an agreed statement, a part of the treaty, that envisioned the creation of ABM systems and their components based on other physical principles, physical principles not understood at the time.

Over and over again, when one goes back and looks at the negotiating record, one finds the Soviets saying, sometimes in exasperation, "How can we agree to limit things we cannot even define? We cannot do that and we will not do that."

In the end the agreed statement bridged the differences between us by banning deployment but permitting research, development and testing of defensive systems based on other physical principles. On this, I believe the treaty is clear.

Now, as you might imagine, there were others in the Government who had coasted for years on the strength of the reputation of the earlier interpretation to which I referred who were taken back by this new interpretation.

They did the normal thing in such circumstances; they went to their lawyer for a second opinion. Their lawyer in this case was the new legal adviser to the Department of State, the distinguished circuit court judge, Abraham Sofaer, who, like the young Defense Department lawyer, was unfamiliar with the negotiations and could, therefore, examine the treaty and record with a fresh eye.

To the astonishment of my colleagues across the river in the State Department, the State Department legal adviser came essentially to the same conclusion that Phil Kunsberg had come to in this research.

So, the administration did the only thing available to it, in my judgment, having become aware that we had for years misstated the agreement reached between the United States and the Soviet Union. Anxious not to continue, with the knowledge it then possessed, to misstate the obligation between us, it adopted as a matter of law and legal entitlement the only interpretation that it at that point considered to be valid.

As a matter of policy, the President has indicated that we will respect the narrow and wrong interpretation of the treaty because our program has been configured with that interpretation in mind and the issue for now is, therefore, moot, as to which interpretation applies.

As a matter of law and entitlement, it is the view of the administration that agreed statements clearly envision and permits research, development and testing of ABM systems or their components based on other physical principles.

The only prohibition, and even this is technically arguable, but the only prohibition we are prepared to accept as legal requirement under the ABM Treaty is prohibition on deployment, except pursuant to the amending procedures and the consultative procedures laid down in the treaty.

Finally, a word or two about questions raised by Senator Hart.

I think the open labs proposal attempts to get at that minimum level of confidence that we need if we are going to negotiate arms control agreements with the Soviet Union, any arms control agreement with the Soviet Union, because as we sit here, it is still the official policy of the Soviet Union that it has no SDI program; and we know that to be a lie.

How we can hope to negotiate agreements with a negotiating partner across the table who refuses to acknowledge a multibillion dollar program that reaches back into the 1960's and that they are aggressively pursuing, is beyond me.

So, the President has proposed that the Soviets drop that pretense and he has invited the Soviets to participate in exchange visits to labs so that we can once and for all clarify that the Soviet Union does indeed have a program and a very vigorous one.

Senator THURMOND. The President has done what now?

Mr. PERLE. He has proposed that the United States and the Soviet Union permit exchange visits to each other's labs so that we can at the very least settle for once and for all the fact that the Soviets have a sizable strategic research defense program of their own, something they have officially denied right up to the present. Senator THURMOND. He will pass that recommendation on to them?

Mr. PERLE. That is correct.

With respect to the circumstances under which we would or would not deploy a strategic defense-

Senator HART. Are you going to require security clearances for these Soviet scientists to get into Livermore and places like that? Mr. PERLE. I think we have procedures for one-time exceptions to the normal security rule. Obviously, what has been proposed is a broad concept. We would not implement such a proposal in a manner that is prejudicial to our security.

There is a great deal to be discussed, both with the Soviets and to be arranged internally before the visit takes place. I do not see how we can negotiate with a partner who denies

Senator HART. That is a separate question, whether the Soviets wish to negotiate.

I am asking a mechanical question about throwing open the gates of Livermore lab, letting them bring a hundred scientists

over.

Mr. PERLE. NO. I think this clearly has to be a matter of negotiation as to what facilities and under what circumstances. We will insist on a degree of reciprocity that would make it worthwhile from our point of view.

Senator WARNER. Please continue with your direct testimony.

Mr. PERLE. With respect to the circumstances under which we would deploy a strategic defense, the President has said on many occasions that that is a decision, a deployment decision, which is one that we would discuss with our allies, and with the Soviets, but that it would not give the Soviet Union a veto over American deployment.

The Senate did not give the Soviets a veto when it ratified the ABM Treaty and I think it would be both unwise and consitutionally unsound for this or any other President to do so.

Finally, a word about Secretary Weinberger's remarks and this question of cost effectiveness at the margin. It is one of many criteria. It is a criterion that is firmly embedded in the thinking of many of us who went through the debate on the deployment of ABM systems of the classical sort in the early 1970's.

It seemed to us then that if the Soviets could simply add reentry vehicles at a cost significantly lower than the cost of adding interceptors, that it would be unwise to deploy a system in which that was the case.

We are now looking at quite different approaches to defense, approaches in which there is not a one-to-one relationship between interceptors and reentry vehicles. It is not clear to me that one should be mechanistic in applying the principle of cost effectiveness at the margin.

I believe what Secretary Weinberger has been saying is that it would be foolish for us not to deploy a strategic defense if our calculations showed that it cost us a bit more to defend against an RV than it costs the Soviets to produce an RV.

Senator HART. That RV can have penetration aids?

Mr. PERLE. Yes, the whole array of hardware necessary to overcome the defense. The point at which it becomes a foolish proposition cannot be anticipated now.

Clearly, we would not deploy a $100 billion defense that could be overwhelmed by a $10 billion offense.

On the other hand, it is far from clear that it would be unwise for us to deploy a $100 billion defense that could be overcome by a $120 billion or an $80 billion offense because that $80 billion offense might well come at the expense of a variety of other equally or more menacing Soviet developments.

So, I don't think one can be mechanistic about this.

Mr. Chairman, that is all I wish to say.

Senator WARNER. We will proceed with a round of questioning for 5 minutes by each member. We will invite our guests to participate in questions at the conclusion of the questions by all members of the subcommittee.

Mr. Perle, the President in discussions about Geneva raised the proposal by this country to have both sides abandon the mobile ICBM. For some time now the Congress of the United States has been working on the President's strategic force modernization program under the framework laid down by the Scowcroft Commission.

Will you address the Scowcroft Commission report, what is left of it, and should this proposal be banned in Geneva?

Mr. PERLE. The question of what is left of the Scowcroft Commission report has occurred to some of us, as we watched the MX development cut back from 100 missiles to 50 missiles.

I think I ought to be candid about this, although it was not an element in the decision to propose the banning of mobile missiles. Senator WARNER. I missed your point. It was not what?

Mr. PERLE. It was not an element of the decision to propose to the Soviets that we ban mobile missiles.

If faith has been broken with the Scowcroft Commission, it has been broken in the scaling back of the MX program. As I understood the understanding that was reached at the time of the Scow

croft Commission report, the administration accepted the report in its totality, although there were points in it about which we had reservations, on the understanding that it was also accepted by the Congress in its totality, although there were points about which the Congress was not in full agreement.

I believe that was the understanding reached at the time. Here we are in 1985, with only one-half of the MX program, maybe, and it seems clear to me that the departure from the Scowcroft Commission understanding began in Congress and not in the executive branch.

I want to say a word about why we think it is in our security interest to propose banning mobile ICBM's. There are several rea

sons.

The first is that the Soviets have them and we do not. While there is, in a number of places in the Congress today, an enthusiasm for the development of the Midgetman, our experience has shown that you cannot anticipate what future Congresses will decide with respect to a weapons system like this.

It is one thing to have a mobile missile in the abstract and quite another to put it down in someone's State, as we have discovered in the past.

I do not think that anyone will argue that the future of the Midgetman is assured either from a technical or budgetary or political point of view.

While we continue to develop it and hope and expect it will be possible to bring it to fruition in the absence of an arms control treaty banning it, there is no certainty about it.

There is enormous certainty about the Soviet's mobile missile program. One is deployed, the other is about to be deployed. We believe there are follow-ons to both the SS-24 and SS-25 and, in my view, we face over the long term a very sizable, perhaps a massive, Soviet deployment of mobile missiles.

Now, just a few years ago it was generally understood, and particularly by those who were more enthusiastic about arms control than I am, that you cannot verify mobile missiles in a number of important respects. You certainly cannot tell how many have been produced and it is not even clear how you can tell how many are actually deployed.

The Soviets with their current mobile missile, the SS-20, have made it easy for us by associating those missiles with large fixed installations, so we are able to count the minimum number of SS20's.

There is no reason why they have to associate those missiles with large observable fixed installations. The prospect exists and will continue that in the absence of a ban on missiles, they could have many more than the treaty limitation will provide for.

So, we are particularly vulnerable to Soviet cheating with respect to mobile missiles, and the record of Soviet cheating in areas where they must have known they would be observed has alarmed and concerned us about the prospects that they will show the restraint necessary to comply with the agreement.

So, for all of those reasons we think it is good for the United States if mobile missiles are banned on both sides.