President Clinton signed the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) along with a number of other world leaders at the United Nations in September 1996. When it came up for a vote in 1999, the U.S. Senate failed to ratify the treaty. Nevertheless, it still remains on the Senate’s agenda. Ratifying a treaty requires the Senate to pass it by a two-thirds vote and the president to then sign it. Those countries that have signed but not ratified it are nonetheless still bound by the Vienna law of treaties to obey the terms of the CTBT. None of the signers has violated the terms of the CTBT by conducting nuclear tests since September 1996. This was a considerable accomplishment.
ACTIONS PRIOR TO SENATE DEBATE
Several developments in 1997 and 1998 preceded the Senate’s vote on the treaty. On September 22, 1997, President Clinton submitted the CTBT to the Senate for what is termed its advice and consent. He also included the following six safeguards with his submission:
1. A Science-Based Stockpile Stewardship program to ensure a high level of confidence in the safety and reliability of U.S. nuclear weapons in the active stockpile, including the conduct of a broad range of effective and continuing experimental programs.
2. The maintenance of modern nuclear laboratory facilities and programs in theoretical and exploratory nuclear technology that will attract, retain, and ensure the continued application of our human scientific resources to those programs on which continued progress in nuclear technology depends.
3. The maintenance of the basic capability to resume nuclear test activities prohibited by the CTBT should the United States cease to be bound to adhere to this treaty.
4. The continuation of a comprehensive research and development program to improve our treaty monitoring capabilities and operations.
5. The continuing development of a broad range of intelligence gathering and analytical capabilities and operations to ensure accurate and comprehensive information on worldwide nuclear arsenals, nuclear weapons development programs, and related nuclear programs.
6. The understanding that if the President of the United States is informed by the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of Energy (DOE)—advised by the Nuclear Weapons Council, the Directors of DOE’s nuclear weapons laboratories, and the Commander of the U.S. Strategic Command—that a high level of confidence in the safety or reliability of a nuclear weapon type that the two Secretaries consider to be critical to our nuclear deterrent could no longer be certified, the President, in consultation with the Congress, would be prepared to withdraw from the CTBT under the standard “supreme national interests” clause in order to conduct whatever testing might be required.
Similar safeguards had been adopted when the Limited Test Ban Treaty was submitted to the Senate in 1963.
In September 1997, Senator Joseph Biden made a major speech emphasizing the value of the treaty to U.S. national security. He said, “The time has come, Mr. President, to move ahead on the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, as well as other arms control initiatives and NATO enlargement.” Several other senators spoke in favor of the CTBT later that fall.
The Congress Daily reported on November 25, 1997, “Key Senator, Pete Domenici, Hesitates In Supporting CTBT”…A key Republican senator this week said his support for a nuclear test ban treaty depends on increased funding for federal energy laboratories, two of which are located in his home state of New Mexico.” Richard Garwin, a physicist who has long been involved in the control of nuclear weapons, and I visited Domenici’s Senate office shortly afterward to discuss the seismic event of August 1997 and to assure him that it was not a Russian nuclear explosion. Nevertheless, Domenici followed party discipline and voted against the treaty in 1999.
In February 1998, President Clinton visited the Los Alamos nuclear weapons lab, where he told employees, “The test ban treaty will hold other nations to the same standards we already observe.” He visited a day after proposing additional funding to the weapons labs for work to assure that the U.S. stockpile of nuclear weapons would work in the future without nuclear testing. That program, Stockpile Stewardship, called for $4.5 billion per year to be spent at the labs on the fastest computers in the world, new major high-energy facilities to retain capabilities in nuclear science, and better documentation of existing weapons and past tests. Clinton also proposed a package of safeguards to expand intelligence and the monitoring of other countries’ nuclear programs. He pledged that the United States would reserve the right to resume nuclear tests if the safety of the nuclear stockpile could no longer be certified.
Clinton’s trip to New Mexico, an attempt to pacify hard-line opponents, was regarded as a respite from Washington, where he faced a barrage of questions about his sexual affair with Monica Lewinsky. That affair and the subsequent attempt to impeach him undoubtedly negatively affected many of his proposals, including ratification of the CTBT. The Senate’s negative vote in 1999 has aspects of attacking Clinton when he was weak politically. Some people commented that all Republicans hated Clinton whereas only half hated the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.
In May 1998, Clinton criticized India and Pakistan soon after their nuclear tests, citing the dangers they posed to one another and to the rest of South Asia. In July 1999, he congratulated Brazil on its ratification of the CTBT. Clinton stated, “Brazil’s action today to ratify the CTBT makes it all the more important for the United States to do the same. I call on our Senate to act expeditiously to approve the CTBT—already signed by 149 nations and supported by the Joint Chiefs of Staff—so that the United States can lead in this vital endeavor.”
Republicans controlled the Senate in 1998 as well as during the debate and vote on the CTBT in 1999. In the wake of India’s and Pakistan’s nuclear tests of May 1998, Senate majority leader Trent Lott and Foreign Relations Committee chair Jesse Helms claimed that a ban on nuclear testing was “irrelevant” and that the Senate should not even debate the CTBT. Helms served notice that he would not move toward ratification of the CTBT until amendments to the Anti–Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty were debated. He hoped the ABM Treaty would be defeated by the Senate. Lott also suggested that U.S. policy should shift from pressing for a CTBT to the construction of “effective missile defenses,” claiming that “the Administration’s push for the CTBT led to the [Indian and Pakistani] nuclear tests.” Helms also called for the defeat of the Kyoto agreement on global warming.
Many articles supporting the CTBT were published in the United States during 1999. Several senators, scientists, and arms control specialists refuted the views of Lott and Helms in the media and in the Congress. Among them was an op-ed article in the Washington Post on June 11 titled “This Treaty Must Be Ratified,” by Sidney Drell of Stanford and Paul Nitze. Nitze was a former arms control negotiator and an ambassador-at-large in the Reagan administration. They noted that other arms control treaties had been brought before the Senate, whereas that body had failed to consider the CTBT for two and a half years after Clinton signed it at the UN. They commented, “The president rightly has referred to the CTBT as the ‘longest-sought, hardest-fought prize in the history of arms control.’”
Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger stated at a hearing chaired by Senator Helms on May 26, 1999, that he was positive on missile defense. Senator Frist then asked him about the test ban, noting the “constraints” it would place on the United States. Kissinger said, “I think we have an arms control objective, and must have, to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons. And anything that makes it more difficult to develop more nuclear weapons, I would, in principle, favor.” He later said he thought the CTBT was a poor treaty.
Daryl Kimball of the Physicians for Social Responsibility became the executive director of a task force on the CTBT, called the Coalition to Reduce Nuclear Dangers. It represented a number of arms control organizations in the United States. On June 15, 1999, Kimball sent a letter to President Clinton signed by thirty-five heads of organizations and former government officials urging a substantial presidential campaign on behalf of the CTBT. The letter asked the president to do the following:
1. Present your case for CTBT ratification directly to the public and invite bipartisan support for its consideration and approval on a frequent and consistent basis.
2. Appoint a high-level, full-time CTBT coordinator to strengthen and focus administration-wide efforts and to signal the seriousness with which you plan to pursue ratification.
3. Direct key cabinet members and high-profile CTBT supporters to pursue a sustained, public campaign to increase support and win Senate approval for the treaty.
While Clinton himself seemed to be familiar with the main test ban issues during the period leading up to the Senate vote, his administration unfortunately did not adopt any of these measures. Likewise, the Obama administration did not adopt any of the three suggestions despite making general statements about the need for the Senate to ratify the treaty and its value to national security.
Many proponents of the CTBT cited polls indicating wide public support in the United States for the treaty, some as high as 82 percent. In a speech on July 27, 1999, Senator Biden, the ranking minority member on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said, “Listen to the American People. I know that some of my colleagues have principled objections to this treaty. I respect their convictions, even though I strongly believe they are wrong on this issue. Some of my colleagues believe nuclear weapons tests are essential to preserve our nuclear deterrent. Both I and the directors of our three nuclear weapons laboratories disagree. The $45 billion [for ten years] ‘Stockpile Stewardship’ program enables us to maintain the safety and reliability of our nuclear weapons without weapons tests.” He also noted, “Support for ratification is not limited, moreover, to the current Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The four previous Chairmen also support ratification.”
The Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) was established in 1972 to provide Congress with assessments of various scientific and technical proposals that were relevant to hearings and legislation. OTA was defunded during the period of Newt Gingrich’s Republican majority rule in the House of Representatives, often referred to as the “Contract with America.” OTA closed in September 1995. Its demise was a blow to further scientific and technical assessments of the CTBT and other arms control issues. In July 2010 the House voted 235 to 176 to reject a proposed amendment to restore OTA.
The New York Times reported on August 30, 1999, that Democrats were threatening to bring the Senate to a standstill when Congress returned the following month from summer recess unless Republicans agreed to hold hearings that year on the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. The article quoted Senator Biden: “But the President has to play a major role. He could affect this more than he has.” The Times went on to state, “Administration officials say that in the coming weeks, Clinton and top foreign policy aides, like Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright and national security adviser, Samuel R. Berger, will push the treaty more publicly.”
SHORT SENATE HEARINGS AND DEBATE
Many Democrats and other supporters assumed the treaty would readily pass the Senate if Helms and Lott released their lock on it. Unfortunately, that was not the case. As Senate majority leader, Lott had major control over bringing bills and treaties to the floor of the Senate. On September 30, he suddenly proposed short hearings, ten hours of debate, and a vote as early as October 5 on the CTBT. Early October gave the Clinton administration too little time to push more actively for the treaty. Lott claimed that he had the votes to defeat the treaty, which soon turned out to be correct.
Senators Helms and Lott argued on the Senate floor on October 1, 1999, that the Foreign Relations Committee had held hearings in which the treaty was mentioned. They offered a unanimous consent resolution [my italics] for a vote on final passage of the CTBT on October 7, 1999. Unanimous consent requires that all senators present vote for such a resolution. In an exchange in the Senate, Democratic minority leader Thomas Daschle objected to Lott’s offer, saying it gave short shrift to a landmark pact. He requested more time for debate and a later date for the vote.
Some senators, however, urged Daschle to accept the offer to bring it to a vote. Senator Biden told reporters, “This is not the best way to deal with this, but it’s better than nothing.” He urged the president to “pull out all the stops” and to hold a news conference and a nationally televised address. Some senators feared that a vote now would doom the treaty, while others said they were ready to “roll the dice,” even if they lacked the votes. A number thought that votes against the treaty would reflect badly on Republican senators who were up for reelection in November, but this proved not to be the case. In retrospect, the vote to defeat the treaty a week later turned out to be worse than nothing.
On October 1, Senators Lott and Daschle agreed to a revised unanimous consent resolution that included fourteen hours of general Senate debate on the CTBT, starting on October 8 and resuming on October 12, with a vote taking place that day or soon thereafter. Every Democrat in the Senate endorsed the timing, a major mistake. The Democrats, probably unaware of how dire their situation was, were trapped by their own rhetoric. How could they back out now? Senator Jon Kyl, a treaty opponent said, “It was plain arrogance…. They didn’t have any idea they wouldn’t win.”
Attempts were made soon after passage of that resolution to postpone the vote and to have more time for testimony and debate. Senators John Warner, a Virginia Republican, and Patrick Moynihan, a New York Democrat, released a letter to their two leaders, endorsing efforts to delay Senate action on the treaty until the next Congress convened in 2001. About a dozen senators signed the letter. Most Democratic senators and the president, though, seemed to have been caught off guard about changing the unanimous consent resolution. It was soon clear that senators James Inhofe and Jon Kyl, who wanted to defeat the treaty, would not accept postponements. Hence, unanimous consent could not be reached to postpone the vote, and it went ahead.
The New York Times reported the day after the vote, “In a last-ditch effort to save the treaty, Clinton called the Republican leader, Trent Lott, two hours before the vote and asked that he delay action for national security reasons. In a blunt rebuff, Lott said the President had offered too little, too late, and he pushed ahead with an action that he knew would humiliate Clinton.”
In the weeks before the vote, I talked several times by phone with Daryl Kimball, who headed the CTBT task force of nongovernmental organizations, and suggested that he enlist the support of Republican moderates, such as the two senators from Maine. He thought that was not needed. In retrospect, it is clear that many senators who were thought to be undecided had already made up their minds to vote against the CTBT. Democrats and other supporters of the treaty were unaware of that development.
During the brief Senate debate, lack of verifiability and concern about the U.S. stockpile of nuclear weapons were cited repeatedly. Not emphasizing verification surprised many of us because an elaborate International Monitoring System (IMS) had been set up under the 1996 treaty. In addition, the United States possessed many other monitoring tools, so-called National Technical Means (NTM).
The negative views should have come as no surprise given repeated claims by treaty opponents stretching back to 1954 that other nations, particularly the Soviet Union and China, would cheat and the United States would not be able to detect their nuclear tests, especially those conducted evasively. I said in my FAS article, “Concerns about verifiability as well as the reliability of weapons in the U.S. stockpile, in fact, have long served as proxies for the larger issues of what best ensures U.S. national security and prevents nuclear war.”
On October 3, 1999, the Washington Post published on its front page one of the most damaging articles to ratification of the treaty by Robert Suro. In “CIA Is Unable to Precisely Track Testing,” he stated that the CIA had concluded that it could not monitor low-level nuclear tests by Russia precisely enough to ensure compliance with the CTBT. He went on to say that twice in September 1999, “the Russians carried out what might have been nuclear explosions at its Novaya Zemlya testing site in the Arctic.” Bill Gertz of the Washington Times also published allegations of nuclear tests at Novaya Zemlya in 1999 just as the CTBT debate was heating up. Gertz’s comments at a critical time in the CTBT debate have much the same flavor as his claims that the Kara Sea earthquake of August 1997 was a Russian nuclear explosion, which it clearly was not. Suro said congressional staffers [all of whom worked for Republicans] were briefed on the new CIA assessment before Lott scheduled the vote on the CTBT. Those giving false information to Suro obviously had little knowledge of how well Novaya Zemlya was being monitored.
In my FAS article of March 2000 I stated, “We know now that Senators Cloverdell and Kyl, who strongly opposed the Treaty, and their staffs worked in secret for months to compile briefing books of materials opposing the CTBT before Lott’s sudden announcement. Marshall Billingslea of Senator Helm’s staff stated he worked exclusively for two years on arguments to defeat the Treaty. His materials, which were not reviewed, were made available to Senators likely to vote against the CTBT but not to Democrats or other Republicans who were either likely to vote in favor or leaned toward ratification. Letters opposing the Treaty that were obtained from several former national security and defense officials were cited repeatedly in the Senate debate.” Helms and Lott worked long and hard in secret to gather votes against the CTBT. In essence, they conducted a successful ambush.
Although officials in the Clinton administration cited the CTBT as one of the president’s top foreign policy priorities, little was done until after Lott’s announcement to aggressively promote the treaty in the Senate, especially among moderate Republicans, or to describe its main benefits. No high-level official in the executive branch was designated to promote and organize support for the CTBT. Most proponents of the treaty only began active efforts on its behalf a few days before the short Senate hearings.
The hearings before Senate committees did not do justice to accomplishments in stockpile stewardship and especially to nuclear verification. Physicists Sidney Drell and Richard Garwin spoke about the stockpile. Only one witness, General John Gordon, deputy director of the CIA, testified about verification, and that was in a closed secret session. I am not aware that he was an expert on verification, especially seismic identification and evasive testing. My colleague Paul Richards wrote to me, “Current unclassified methods monitor that site [Novaya Zemlya] down to about 0.01 kt. It would not surprise me to learn that a much larger number was indicated to Sen. Warner’s committee last Tuesday.”
Drell stated, “This treaty can be effectively verified. With the full power of its international monitoring system and protocols for on-site inspection, we will be able to monitor nuclear explosive testing that might undercut our own security in time to take prompt and effective counteraction.” In contrast, Paul Robinson, director of the Sandia National Laboratory, testified, “If the United States scrupulously restricts itself to zero-yield while other nations may conduct experiments up to the threshold of international detectability, we will be at an intolerable disadvantage.” Intolerable is a strong word. Robinson, in fact, is not an expert on verification but on the design of weapons. It is highly likely he was not aware of how good verification was in 1999.
Robinson continues his long opposition to a CTBT today, even though detection and identification thresholds have continued to get much better. When seismic and other monitoring technologies improved significantly at various times during the past forty years, Robinson and others claimed in hearings that we still must do better. While Robinson and some others apparently believed that a few kilograms of nuclear explosive yield would be of great military advantage to some countries, other scientists with similar high-level clearances strongly disagreed.
On October 8, 1999, the three directors of the U.S. nuclear weapons labs issued the following joint statement about the U.S. stockpile: “We, the three nuclear weapons laboratory directors, have been consistent in our view that the stockpile remains safe and reliable today. For the last three years, we have advised the Secretaries of Energy and Defense through the formal annual certification process that the stockpile remains safe and reliable and that there is no need to return to nuclear testing at this time. We have just forwarded our fourth set of certification letters to Energy and Defense Secretaries confirming our judgment that once again the stockpile is safe and reliable without nuclear testing. While there can never be a guarantee that the stockpile will remain safe and reliable indefinitely without nuclear testing, we have stated that we are confident that a fully supported and sustained stockpile stewardship program will enable us to continue to maintain America’s nuclear deterrent without nuclear testing. If that turns out not to be the case, Safeguard F—which is a condition for entry into the Test Ban Treaty by the U.S.—provides for the President, in consultation with the Congress, to withdraw from the Treaty under the standard ‘supreme national interest’ clause in order to conduct whatever testing might be required.”
In 1999 Fred Eimer of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency stated that, by presidential directive, an effective verification system “should be capable of identifying and attributing with high confidence evasively conducted nuclear explosions of about a few kilotons yield in broad areas of the globe.” That yield is far larger than that of a hydronuclear explosion with a nuclear yield of a few kilograms—that is, a few millionths of a kiloton. In his Senate testimony in 1999, Garwin stated, “Without nuclear tests of substantial yield, it is difficult to build compact and light fission weapons and essentially impossible to have any confidence in a large-yield two-stage thermonuclear weapon or hydrogen bomb. Can one be certain that a nation has not tested in the vast range between zero and the magnitude of tests that would be required to gain significant confidence in an approach to thermonuclear weaponry—say, 10 kilotons? No, but the utility of such tests to a weapons program has been thoroughly explored and found to be minimal.”
On October 8, 1999, during the debate, Senator Lott cited many reasons for opposing the CTBT. On verification he said, “We know, however, that it is possible to conduct a nuclear test with the intention of evading systems designed to detect the explosion’s telltale seismic signature. This can be done through a technique known as ‘decoupling,’ whereby a nuclear test is conducted in a large underground cavity, thus muffling the test’s seismic evidences.” Lott went on to state, “In a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations last year, Dr. Larry Turnbull, Chief Scientist of the Intelligence Community’s Arms Control Staff, said, ‘The decoupling scenario is credible for many countries for at least two reasons: First, the worldwide mining and petroleum literature indicates that construction of large cavities in both hard rock and salt is feasible, with costs that would be relatively small compared to those required for the production of materials for a nuclear device; second, literature and symposia indicate that containment of particulate and gaseous debris is feasible in both salt and hard rock.’”
Lott added, “So not only is this ‘decoupling’ judged to be ‘credible’ by the Intelligence Community, but according to Dr. Turnbull, the technique can reduce a nuclear test’s seismic signature by up to a factor of 70. This means that a 70-kiloton test can be made to look like a 1-kiloton test, which the CTBT monitoring system will not be able to detect.” Senator Helms made similar remarks about evasion with a 60-kiloton nuclear test. He said, “Every country of concern to the U.S.—every one of them—is capable of decoupling its nuclear explosions…without detection by our country.”
Lott also cited James Woolsey, Clinton’s first CIA director, “I do not believe that the zero level is verifiable. Not only because it is so low, but partially because of the capability a country has that is willing to cheat on such a treaty, of decoupling its nuclear tests by setting them off in caverns or caves and the like.” No one challenged these claims during the very short Senate hearings and debate. The general sense among the senators and their staffs who opposed the treaty was “just put it in a hole” and you can defeat the monitoring system. Examples of large underground facilities, such as the Washington, DC, metro stations, created the impression that such an undertaking was well within any group’s capability.
These claims were in stark contrast to a joint public statement by the American Geophysical Union and the Seismological Society of America on October 6, 1999. It said in part, “The decoupling scenario, however, as well as other evasion scenarios, demand extraordinary technical expertise and the likelihood of detection is high. AGU and SSA believe that such technical scenarios are credible only for nations with extensive practical testing experience and only for yields of at most a few kilotons. Furthermore, no nation could rely upon successfully concealing a program of nuclear testing, even at low yields.”
Woolsey had long been an opponent of a CTBT and other arms control agreements. His claim about setting off decoupled nuclear tests successfully in caves was incorrect. As already discussed in chapter 4, caves are typically too shallow to contain the radioactive particles and gases produced by even very tiny nuclear explosions. Large and deep caves are typically filled with water and would be difficult, if not impossible, to pump dry. Explosions in a water-filled cave or cavity are very well coupled, not muffled. Most caves have many openings to the atmosphere, some of which may not be known to a potential evader. A proposal to use an old salt mine at Lyons, Kansas, for the long-term storage of high-level radioactive waste was abandoned because all of the openings to the atmosphere could not be identified with confidence.
Turnbull’s assertions cited by Senator Lott about decoupled testing—its feasibility, containment, and detection—are false for yields larger than one kiloton. Claims by Lott and Helms in 1999 that decoupled explosions of 60 and 70 kilotons are even feasible, let alone undetectable, were huge exaggerations.
Turnbull’s opinions and great negative influence on the test ban debate were well known. He revealed his title at the CIA as early as 1992 in the published program for an international conference at Princeton on nuclear verification. I have known him, his professional background, and his views for decades and strongly believe that he should have been fired decades ago for his incompetence. One of my professional colleagues observed, “The bottom line is that in an important sense Turnbull is right. The U.S. cannot do a good job of CTBT verification. The reason is that people like Turnbull are in charge.”
Among those who supported the treaty were French president Chirac, British prime minister Blair, and German chancellor Schroeder. They coauthored an op-ed article in the New York Times on October 8, 1999, in which they stated, “Failure to ratify the treaty will be a failure in the struggle against nuclear proliferation.” They contended the test ban treaty was verifiable.
Kidder, von Hippel, and I wrote an op-ed article, “False Fears About a Test Ban,” in the Washington Post on October 10, 1999, during the Senate debate. We said in part, “More than 80 percent of the American people want a permanent ban on nuclear weapons tests, and support outside the United States is at least as high. This public support has powered the movement that persuaded the governments of 154 nations to sign a Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. The arguments against the test ban treaty today are the same as those that opponents used to slow its progress for 40 years: the fear that other countries will cheat and be able to reap advantages from small clandestine tests, and the belief that the only way to make sure that a nuclear weapon works is to test it.
“Still there is a possibility that a small nuclear test, carried out secretly away from monitored test sites, might escape detection. But what could be gained from such a test? Very little could be gained below the threshold for the ‘boosting’ of fission explosives. [Boosting] the yield with the fusion of a small amount of tritium-deuterium gas was the key step in the development of modern compact warheads, a ‘secret’ that has been officially declassified for decades. Testing boosting requires a nuclear explosion with a power of at least a few hundred tons of TNT, and full boosting gives yields of thousands of tons. This is beyond the level that could plausibly be concealed from U.S. seismic monitoring stations. The United States has done almost no testing for nuclear weapons development below 1,000 tons of TNT, so we can be comfortable with a ban on nuclear tests of all sizes.
“The analyzed classified record shows that since the U.S. nuclear establishment mastered the art of designing boosted thermonuclear weapons more than two decades ago, there have been virtually no failures. On the surface, the debate over the nuclear test ban is about technical uncertainties. Below the surface, it is about competing priorities. Many test ban opponents care only that the United States be unconstrained in the development of nuclear weapons. If this country resumed testing, however, other countries would as well. They would improve their nuclear weapons much more than we would and the world would be pushed back closer to nuclear weapons use.”
Senator Kyl of Arizona spoke first against the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty during the Senate debate, which started on October 8. He said that if the treaty were passed, the United States would not be able to test to assure the safety and effectiveness of American nuclear weapons. He also said, “Our intelligence agencies lack the ability to confidently detect low-yield test[s].”
On the same day, President Clinton, visiting Canada, said, “I hope that the Senate will reach an agreement to delay the vote and to establish an orderly process, a non-political orderly process, to systematically deal with all the issues…. we’ve been trying to have a debate on this for two years, but it is clear now that the level of opposition to the treaty and the time it would take to craft the necessary safeguards to get the necessary votes are simply not there.” I think he should have been in Washington during the CTBT debate. Nevertheless, three officials in his administration spoke at length at a news conference about the advantages of a CTBT. They did not cover verification or the possibilities of cheating very well.
Former secretary of defense and former CIA director James Schlesinger called those who wanted to move away from nuclear weapons unrealistic “abolitionists” who did not grasp the importance of maintaining a reliable deterrent for decades to come. Schlesinger, who testified against the treaty and has long been an opponent of test bans, said it might not pose a substantial threat to American security for some years, “but the real questions come after about 2020,” when America’s overwhelming conventional military superiority may have eroded and new players on the world stage could threaten the United States. If the U.S. military were locked into a permanent test ban treaty, Schlesinger complained, its options could be dangerously limited. He argued that it was vital to retain the right to test and improve the U.S. nuclear arsenal. Only actual test explosions, he said, could confirm the dependability of the American deterrent and convince both friends and foes in decades to come that U.S. nuclear weapons remained operational. The high-level positions he held made him a strong voice in defeating the CTBT. He died in March 2014.
Writing in the Washington Post on October 13 just before the Senate vote, Robert Kaiser said that Brent Scowcroft, national security adviser to President George H. W. Bush and a weathered veteran of the arms control wars, complained, “We still think of arms control in Cold War terms. We have not changed at all, and yet the world has changed dramatically.” Kaiser continued, “The debate in the Senate, Scowcroft added, ‘is pathetic.’ Scowcroft said he hoped for a debate some day that would connect the test ban treaty to a realistic assessment of what the United States can do to ensure ‘security and stability.’ That means looking carefully at how various policies will affect the thinking of potential rivals or potential nuclear powers, and deciding what kind of U.S. arsenal best suits national interests. Scowcroft had formally recommended that the Senate put the treaty aside. ‘Let’s wait until after this partisan period has passed and we can debate it sensibly,’ he said, hopefully.”
The treaty went down to defeat on October 13, 1999, by a majority vote of fifty-one to forty-eight, far fewer than the two-thirds, or sixty-seven votes, needed for the Senate’s advice and consent. It was largely, but not completely, a party-line vote, with forty-four Democrats voting for the treaty. No Democrats voted no, but Senator Byrd voted present. Republicans Chafee, Spector, Jeffords, and Smith voted for the CTBT. Jeffords and Spector, moderate Republicans, each gave long, thoughtful speeches and wrote op-ed articles on the value of the treaty. Jeffords later switched to the Democratic Party.
The CTBT is likely the most important treaty to be defeated since the Senate’s vote against the Versailles Treaty in March 1920 and against U.S. participation in the League of Nations. The day after the Senate’s defeat of the CTBT, presidential candidate Al Gore, then the vice president, vowed to push for its ratification.
Secretary of State Madeleine Albright announced on November 11, 1999, that the Clinton administration “will establish a high-level Administration task force to work closely with the Senate on addressing the issues raised during the test ban debate.” While Albright reiterated many of the arguments for a CTBT, she and others said nothing about the leaks of information to the press about alleged nuclear tests by Russia and China prior to and during the Senate debate. A strong rebuttal was needed, but not given, to the Washington Post article of September 1999 stating that the CIA had concluded it could not monitor low-level nuclear tests by Russia precisely enough to ensure compliance with the CTBT.
I have saved electronic copies of many letters to editors, communications among treaty supporters, speeches on the Senate floor, and copies of a letter I sent in November 1999 to Senators Biden, Levin, and Moynihan about misleading and incorrect statements about verification during the CTBT debate of 1999. They will be deposited at the Rare Book and Manuscript Library of Columbia University. Speeches in the Senate can be found in the Congressional Record, Senate.