202 



the U.S. Senate to ratify [sic] an agreement on the cessation of testing. This con- 

 dition, as we understand it, ties your hands and is preventing the signature of a 

 treaty which would enable all of us to turn our backs forever on the nuclear weap- 

 ons proving grounds. Very well : if this is the only obstacle to agreement, we are 

 prepared to meet you on this point in the interest of the noble and humane cause 

 of ending nuclear weapons tests.*^ 



Divisions of opinion on test tan scope 



It seems likely that by early 1963 there were divisions of official opin- 

 ion in both the'United States and Soviet Union on test ban questions. 

 The evidence of Premier Khrushchev's statements to Norman Cousins 

 appears to indicate that there were two schools of thought in the Soviet 

 leadership, one willing to tolerate a small but yet astonishingly un- 

 precedented invasion by an external authority, and the other against 

 anything of the sort. In the United States the differences extended all 

 the way from those who wanted no test ban at all to those who were 

 prepared to advocate a cessation of nuclear tests with little or no as- 

 surance against covert violation. 



At about this same time (February 10) a Eepublican "Committee on 

 Nuclear Testing," chaired by Representative Craig Hosmer of Cali- 

 fornia, ranking Republican member of the Joint Committee on Atomic 

 Energy, issued a report questioning the value to the United States of 

 any test ban treaty whatsoever, denying the capability of existing sen- 

 sors to detect remote nuclear detonations, and urging that data con- 

 cerning these capabilities be made public to stimulate free and open 

 discussion of the entire issue. The report opposed any moratorium 

 on nuclear testing in view of the past unhappy experience with such 

 an arrangement.^^ 



President Kennedy strongly preferred a comprehensive test ban 

 treaty. But to some persons, including some of those in leadership roles 

 in the President's own party, this was going too far. A strong body of 

 opinion had arisen in opposition. One leading opponent, Senator 

 Thomas J. Dodd (Democrat of Connecticut) , chairman of the Internal 

 Security Subcommittee,^^ delivered a painstaking analysis of the com- 

 prehensive test ban issue to the Senate, February 21, in which he said 

 that the ITnited States had gone from one concession to another (he 

 identified 10 of these), that the problem of inspecting a closed society 

 (the U.S.S.R.) was central to the test ban issue, and that scientific op- 

 portunities inherent in nuclear technology should be sought unhindered 

 as long as "mutual security based on mutual confidence" remained out 

 of reach.^^ 



At the beginning- of April 1903, prospects for a test ban treaty of 

 any kind looked dark. France had exploded a nuclear device in the 

 Sahara, March 18. Senator Dodd's warning against bargaining away 

 U.S. nuclear superiority under an unenforceable treaty had been 

 placed before the Senate. The Soviet Union was at odds with the 

 United States over numbers of onsite inspections. The Joint Chiefs 

 of Staff were thought to be dissatisfied with the degree of safegitards 



»8 "Documents on Disarmament. 1962." II. p. 1241. 



39 "Administration in Center of Test-Ban Crossfire." Congressional Quarterly Fact Sheet 

 (Feb. 27, 1963), pp. 7-9. 



« Or more correctlv. "Subcommittee To Investigate the Administration of the Internal 

 Security Act and Other Internal Security Laws, to the Committee on the .Tudiciary." 



« "The Nuclear Test Ban Negotiations and the Ouest for Peace," Thursday, Feb. 21, 

 1963, reprint supplied by the office of Senator Dodd, 40 pages. 



