FRED IKLE: The reasons for establishing ACDA that were valid in the early sixties are now overtaken.

JOHN TIERNEY: My proposition is to break the agency up and move its expertise into other parts of the government.

NARRATOR: Others think the agency still has vital work to perform.

JOHN HOLUM: Many people think with the end of the Cold War the arms control challenge disappeared. But, in fact, we still have to implement the arms control agreements of that era, and that's a daunting job. We've got to take down the over-armaments of the Cold War. Plus, we've got the new challenge of proliferation of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and missiles which my agency has turned its attention to, and that's a growing concern.

NARRATOR: Can the United States do without an independent government agency that promotes arms control solutions to enhance America's security?

This week, "AMERICA'S DEFENSE MONITOR" looks at "Threat Control Through Arms Control."

ADM JOHN SHANAHAN (USN, Ret.): I'm Vice Admiral Jack Shanahan, Director of the Center for Defense Information.

We face two key and urgent dangers in the civilized world today. The first danger is the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, in particular nuclear weapons. The second danger is the sale and distribution of conventional arms throughout the world. For the United States, the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, ACDA for short, has been the lead shop in dealing with these two major problems.

However, today, in efforts to reduce the size of our government, there is consideration that we should close down ACDA and transfer its responsibilities to the Department of State. Our program today looks at this particular issue from both directions. Should or should we not close down ACDA?

NARRATOR: During the Cold War, the United States spent over $12 trillion on military equipment, training soldiers, and fighting wars, all in the quest to enhance America's security. In 1961, President Kennedy recognized that an alternative to building up large, expensive military forces lay in arms control, in negotiating limits on military forces with our adversaries. Kennedy signed legislation creating the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, or ACDA, so there would be one agency within the government that would be an advocate for arms control and would be capable of negotiating treaties.

Ambassador FRED IKLE: I think forming ACDA was essential or very vital at that time for two reasons.

NARRATOR: Fred Ikle was the director of ACDA in the mid-seventies and argues that Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko and his team used to out-negotiate the US until ACDA was created.

Amb. IKLE: There was not enough continuity in the arms negotiations with the Soviet Union. Each time -- I remember attending some of those as a young consultant at the time. Each time we had a new negotiation, some new lawyer was brought in from Wall Street or somebody from the State Department who had been in charge of Latin America and had to handle the next negotiations. While Gromyko and his deputies and arms control specialists remembered every detail, our people did not. So, just to have the memory and the continuity, having a separate agency in the early 1960s helped.

NARRATOR: The demilitarization of the South Pole was guaranteed when the Antarctic Treaty was signed in 1959. This was the only major arms control treaty signed during the Cold War before the creation of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. After ACDA's creation, the US entered into numerous agreements:

...The Limited Test Ban Treaty, signed in 1963, prohibits nuclear weapons tests like this one, which took place above ground. It also prohibits nuclear testing underwater and in outer space.

...The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty of 1968 helped prevent countries from acquiring nuclear weapons.

...The 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty slowed down the arms race in offensive ballistic missiles like this Titan II by preventing the United States and the Soviet Union from building nationwide defenses.

In addition, numerous other treaties were negotiated.

JACK MENDELSOHN: I think it's a very important part of US security.

NARRATOR: Jack Mendelsohn worked in the State Department for 22 years as a foreign service officer and five years at ACDA. Today, he's at the nonpartisan Arms Control Association, a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting support for arms control policies.

Mr. MENDELSOHN: It's not just building up your weapons, it's also trying to get a handle on other people's weapons, on the threat that faces you. And it saves you an awful lot of money, too. If you don't have to plan for exorbitantly large or extravagantly large budgets and a growing threat on the side of a potential adversary, I mean you're much better off.

NARRATOR: How effective has the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency been?

Mr. MENDELSOHN: ACDA's importance and power and role in any administration is derivative. It derives from the kind of importance that the White House, the center administration, wishes to give to it. It derives from whether its voice will be listened to or whether it will be asked for its opinion. It derives from the working relationship that the director of that agency can establish with the other members of the national security establishment.

JOHN TIERNEY: But by and large, it as an agency hasn't really had the impact that it probably was thought to have had when it was first brought in.

NARRATOR: John Tierney worked at ACDA from 1981 to 1993 and was a visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C.

Mr. TIERNEY: I don't want to belabor it, but it hasn't been as effective as its more rabid supporters thought it would be when it was first brought into being in '61. Nor has it been as wildly a rogue, pursuing all kinds of disarmament initiatives, as its detractors thought it might be. It is laying somewhere in the middle.

Mr. MENDELSOHN: I think most administrations, with some exceptions, have been rather ambivalent about ACDA. Sometimes it's useful, sometimes it's not. If it's not useful, then they've tried to downplay its role, they've tried to downplay the role of the director. They've tried to pick less than the strongest characters for its leadership as a way of making sure that ACDA doesn't become too powerful in the councils.

The interesting exception to this was under Kissinger and Nixon, where it was very useful to have a powerful ACDA that was very, very outspoken, because it allowed the administration, the White House, to then position itself somewhere between a very outspoken ACDA and a very conservative defense establishment.

NARRATOR: Arms control negotiations involve more than the United States bargaining with foreign countries. Very often, intense negotiations take place within the US Government. Very often each department has their own agenda.

The Defense Department is usually reluctant to allow limits to be placed on the kinds of weapons it can deploy. The State Department is usually concerned about maintaining good relations with foreign countries. The Commerce Department wants to promote US exports of weapons.

Only ACDA is specifically charged with enhancing America's security through arms control agreements.

Jack Mendelsohn points to how the Nixon administration was able to use a strong and powerful ACDA to bring about a consensus within the US Government.

Mr. MENDELSOHN: They let it speak freely, and then they hid behind it, by saying, 'Well, that's very interesting. On the one hand, we have' -- I'm making this up. This is not exactly what happened. 'On the one hand, we have ACDA that says we should get rid of all these; on the other hand, we have Defense that says we should keep all of them. The president has decided we'll keep half.' I mean, that's just sort of a demonstration of how it is you can use agencies to help you form policy.

So, you bring -- use ACDA as sort of a leading wedge, but you don't take its position, but it allows you to take Defense and say, 'Listen, you know, there's division in the council here. We've got a long spectrum. You guys are going to have to move a little bit. We're going to move towards the center.'

ACDA Staff:

"Well, they don't understand what the issue is, but that -- that's one of the things we're going to have to hammer out on them is what the issue is, so..."

NARRATOR: Today, the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency employs about 250 highly trained specialists. Scientists, engineers, regional specialists and diplomats not only negotiate treaties, but make sure they get implemented and are complied with over the long haul.

ACDA's annual budget is approximately $45 million, which is less than what the Pentagon will spend this year buying just one F-15.

How has the Clinton administration used the small agency?

Mr. MENDELSOHN: This administration, in its sort of early organizational enthusiasm, in the first year or so of the Clinton administration, thought it might try to eliminate ACDA. But I think it was opposed in that case by the Congress, which basically -- at that time, a Democratic Congress, supported ACDA's continuation. So, this administration reluctantly agreed to keep ACDA and, finally, after a year or so, appointed a director.

NARRATOR: In 1993, President Clinton decided to revitalize ACDA as the nation's lead agency for negotiating, implementing and verifying arms control agreements.

Member of the House of Representatives (January 1995): "I now have the high honor and distinct privilege to present to the House of Representatives our new Speaker, the gentleman from Georgia, Newt Gingrich."

NARRATOR: However, when the Republicans became the majority party in the Senate after the 1994 election, Senator Jesse Helms became the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee. Helms set out to abolish ACDA and two other agencies -- the United States Information Agency, which produces radio and TV news programs for broadcast in foreign countries, and the Agency for International Development, which provides economic assistance to foreign countries. These agencies were to be brought under the control and management of a newly expanded super-State Department.

But is there still a need for an independent Arms Control and Disarmament Agency?

JOHN HOLUM: Well, I think the main reason is that we've got a growing arms control agenda in this country.

NARRATOR: John Holum is the director of the embattled Arms Control and Disarmament Agency.

Mr. HOLUM: Many people think with the end of the Cold War, the arms control challenge disappeared. But, in fact, we still have to implement the arms control agreements of that era, and that's a daunting job. We've got to take down the over-armaments of the Cold War. Plus, we've got the new challenge of proliferation of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and missiles, which my agency has turned its attention to, and that's a growing concern. So, we have, as the president has said, the biggest arms control agenda, literally, in the history of the agency and the history of the country.

Amb. IKLE: The reasons for establishing ACDA that were valid in the early sixties are now overtaken. We do have a body of expertise in the agency and in the State Department that can be easily preserved without having a separate agency. And the case that arms control can complement our own unilateral strategy is so well understood, in a way it's almost exaggerated. People want to reach for arms control solutions where arms control cannot help. So, there is no danger that the case for arms control will not be made in the US Government.

NARRATOR: Can the disarmament work that ACDA does be done by the State Department? John Holum believes that the State Department's primary responsibility, which is to maintain positive relations with foreign countries, would prevent it from effectively pursuing and enforcing arms control agreements.

Mr. HOLUM: A good example -- and it happens more and more in the era of non-proliferation -- happened during the previous administration when ACDA was frozen out of consideration of export licenses to Iraq. Meanwhile, the State Department was interested in protecting our relationship with Iraq. And so, as a consequence, a lot of exports that we thought -- or would have thought had we had an opportunity to review them shouldn't have gone, actually went there. And when the Persian Gulf War broke out, there were a lot of questions about why we had been so generous or so open in our trading relationship with Iraq in the months leading up to the war.

Mr. TIERNEY: I think arms control can exist inside the State Department. I think it would profit greatly from the expertise ACDA offers. But to criticize the Department of State for an alleged inability to follow a singular path of arms control, to me, is a sine qua non. It doesn't make any sense. The department is structured to do foreign policy and it can juggle two balls simultaneously.

NARRATOR: Consider the president's decision to back a worldwide ban on testing nuclear weapons.

President BILL CLINTON (State of the Union, 23 January '96):"...We must end the race to create new nuclear weapons by signing a truly comprehensive nuclear test ban treaty this year...."

NARRATOR: How did President Clinton come to believe that this was in the best interests of the country?

Mr. MENDELSOHN: The State Department didn't have a true arms control position on the test ban. ACDA did.

You need to clear the way through arms control because often you won't get it from the State Department because it has mixed interests on particular issues. In the case of the test ban, some of our closest allies -- Britain, France -- were not that ecstatic -- that's an understatement -- about a test ban. And so, the department was trying -- and also the Defense Department was trying. So, the State Department was trying to sort of walk a line between interested allies, other bureaucracies and was not a clear, strong voice for a test ban. ACDA was.

NARRATOR: But even some ACDA opponents agree that a comprehensive test ban treaty is good for the country and good for the world.

Amb. IKLE: Now to the extent that a complete test ban, a nuclear test ban is being observed, I think it would do some good. It would make it more difficult to develop a major arsenal, to increase an arsenal with new types of weapons, say in China, or in India, or Pakistan, or what have you, or Russia. And it would also somewhat inhibit the competition among regional powers, such as Pakistan and India for advancing their own nuclear programs against each other.

NARRATOR: Some who want to eliminate ACDA believe that all arms control agreements that can be achieved have already been negotiated.

Mr. TIERNEY: Perhaps one of the reasons why the Clinton administration has not pursued new and bold initiatives in arms control negotiations is that they were already done during the 1980s and early 90s. The point from here on out for the next 10 years, at least the foreseeable future, is to ratify, implement, improvise and perhaps even renegotiate some of the treaties already signed. In that respect, the strategic, the conventional, the chemical weapons have already gone through the process of beginning, middle and end, in terms of negotiation and signature. The idea now is to implement these treaties.

NARRATOR: ACDA director, John Holum, agrees that implementing treaties already negotiated is a top priority for his agency. But he adds that ACDA has additional arms control work to do.

ACDA Staff: "...breeder reactors. And therefore, because of its sensitivity, it should be denied regardless of the particular dollar value, or the availability of the concept..."

NARRATOR: One major priority is controlling conventional weapons, such as tanks, aircraft, and missiles.

Mr. HOLUM: We are a very effective advocate and very active in the process by which exports of individual arms are reviewed to make sure that new capabilities aren't introduced into a region, to make sure that there is not an excessive economic impact, to avoid destabilizing transfers.

NARRATOR: However, many observers believe the Clinton administration has not done a good job at trying to slow down the worldwide arms race in conventional weapons. Many believe the administration is more concerned about keeping weapons production lines open and keeping allies happy by selling them aircraft and ships rather than limiting weapons exports.

Mr. MENDELSOHN: My sense is that the administration has had a very permissive set of policies on conventional arms sales, more interested in retaining the military-industrial base, if you will, and more interested in being sure that it can satisfy demands of particular clients. This is a big problem.

NARRATOR: Bill Clinton is not the only president to encounter pressures from defense contractors who want to profit from weapons sales and from the trade unions that want to protect jobs. And he's not the only president who has been unwilling to convince allies that selling weapons fuels local rivalries, makes regional wars more deadly, and siphons off resources that could be better spent on improving the people's lives.

Amb. IKLE: The sale of conventional weapons is an old issue for arms control experts and it is a very hard one to tackle. We in the United States Government have tried on and off in the 50s and the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s now, and there's commercial competition that gets in the way.

It's not just that countries we had hostility towards, like the former Soviet Union, or we have conflicts with, as with China, it's also our closest allies and friends, the British, the French. They want to export weapons to keep their arms industry going, to make money. And our own industry wants to export. So, it runs counter to these strong economic incentives.

NARRATOR: Another top arms control priority is continuing the effectiveness of the Anti-Ballistic Missile, or ABM, Treaty, originally signed between America and the Soviet Union in 1972 and which Russia has agreed to adhere to. This treaty prohibits the deployment of nationwide defenses against long range intercontinental missiles, like these.

However, the treaty does not address the deployment of theater missile defense systems, like the Patriot missile, shown here being used during the Persian Gulf War in 1991.

Theater missile defenses are meant to defend against intermediate range missiles. But the ABM Treaty does not give a clear definition of what differentiates a theater missile from a long range missile.

Mr. MENDELSOHN: People focus around the ABM Treaty and they focus around should we have missile defenses or not. That's not the real debate. Theater missile defenses are permitted. We've got them, like Patriot. We're going to have some lower-tier defenses, which are not threatening to strategic forces. That's fine.

The point is where on this spectrum between theater defenses and strategic defenses, capabilities of these interceptors -- where on that spectrum are you going to say this is okay, it doesn't threaten my strategic forces; this is not because you're calling them theater, but they look pretty good to me. Somewhere in there you've got to draw a line. That's what we're trying to do.

NARRATOR: Some think the United States ought to find a way out of the ABM Treaty altogether and build the kind of nationwide missile defense system that the agreement prohibits.

Amb. IKLE: Here, I clearly disagree with the arms control agency position today and the administration position, that this treaty is the cornerstone of arms control, as it has been called by administration officials. It is not. It is a principal piece of Cold War relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union. And while it may be too difficult to arrange an easy jointly agreed exit with Russia and the United States in the short term, it is something we ought to work on for the longer term.

Mr. MENDELSOHN: I think what's important is on the ABM Treaty or on missile defenses is you don't want to disturb the US-Russian relationship in the strategic sector. You don't want to provoke the Russians to think that they have to deploy more nuclear weapons in order to overcome missile defenses than they've already got.

So, missile defenses in the national strategic sense are provocative. They drive up the size of deterrent forces. So, you don't want to deploy national defenses because you don't want to disturb that relationship.

Theater missile defenses: It's okay to have reasonably capable ones for protection of expeditionary forces if you think that's important.

Senator JESSE HELMS (R-NC): "Now I'm going to talk a little bit about what it means to put American interests first."

NARRATOR: In December 1995, Senator Helms, who wants to dismantle the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, and Senator John Kerry, whose support for the agency can best be described a luke warm, agreed to a compromise: ACDA would remain independent. But its budget, along with the budgets of the State Department and other foreign policy agencies, like USIA, would be significantly cut over the next five years.

What impact will this have on ACDA?

Mr. HOLUM: We are a very small agency already operating on a lean budget. Since the late 1960s, we've had a five-fold increase in the number of missions we've had to perform. We're doing about 54 separate lines of business now. That's implementing arms control agreements, negotiating in the Conference on Disarmament, a variety of others. Yet our funding since that period has stayed essentially flat in real dollars. So, this is an agency that has constantly streamlined. That means that we're very vulnerable to any cuts in our budget.

NARRATOR: ACDA was expressly created so that the president and the secretary of state would hear directly from an independent and articulate advocate for arms control. Those who want to get rid of the agency think arms control should not play a prominent role in ensuring America's security.

Mr. TIERNEY: It is not the lead instrument, nor should ACDA be the lead agency in terms of a national security agenda. It's supportive, but it is definitely on the second or third level. The obvious level of supporting national security is traditional. That is, military defense and alliance systems, and a coherent decision structure.

Mr. HOLUM: What we're engaged in is reducing threats to the United States, to this country, its interests and its people. We do exactly the same thing that our defenses do, but in a different way. They defeat or deter threats to our security, we try to eliminate them through diplomatic means by negotiating them away.

NARRATOR: The Helms-Kerry compromise, if it sticks, could result in what Senator Helms and opponents want -- the weakening and eventual abolition of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency.

Mr. HOLUM: It's very difficult to say, 'Well, we aren't going to implement the START treaty, we aren't going to negotiate diligently in the Joint Compliance and Inspection Commission to make sure that the Russians live up to their obligations.'

It would be very difficult to say to the Congress, 'I'm sorry, we don't have the resources to give you an honest report every year on the status of compliance with arms control agreements.' And ACDA's the agency that has an independent statutory responsibility to do that. So, we just have to start cutting back.

It's a back doorway of accomplishing much of the same thing, which is to undercut arms control and try to eliminate the agency in pieces.

[End of broadcast.]