Jesse Helms

Mr. HELMS

Mr. HELMS. I yield back all time under the control with the exception of 45 minutes. This action, again, makes the time remaining equal on both sides.

Mr. HELMS. If they want to object to that, let them try.

Mr. HELMS. Mr. President, I yield 2 minutes to the Senator from New Mexico, Mr. Domenici.

Mr. HELMS. I am going to ask speakers on both sides to have no conversation because we have very little time. I say to the Senators on my side, we are limiting ourselves as far as it will go to 5 minutes per Senator. I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record a letter from the distinguished former Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger.

Mr. HELMS

Mr. HELMS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Subcommittee on East Asian and Pacific Affairs of the Committee on Foreign Relations be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, October 12, 1999, at 2 p.m. to hold a hearing.

Mr. HELMS. Mr. President, I ask unamimous consent that the Select Committee on Intelligence be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, October 12, 1999, at 2 p.m. to hold a closed hearing on intelligence matters.

Mr. HELMS

Mr. HELMS. Mr. President, at the close of business Friday, October 8, 1999, the Federal debt stood at $5,660,032,556,386.77 (Five trillion, six hundred sixty billion, thirty-two million, five hundred fifty-six thousand, three hundred eighty-six dollars and seventy-seven cents). One year ago, October 8, 1998, the Federal debt stood at $5,534,496,000,000 (Five trillion, five hundred thirty-four billion, four hundred ninety-six million). Fifteen years ago, October 8, 1984, the Federal debt stood at $1,572,268,000,000 (One trillion, five hundred seventy-two billion, two hundred sixty-eight million). Twenty-five years ago, October 8, 1974, the Federal debt stood at $477,151,000,000 (Four hundred seventy-seven billion, one hundred fifty-one million) which reflects a debt increase of more than $5 trillion--$5,182,881,556,386.77 (Five trillion, one hundred eighty-two billion, eight hundred eighty-one million, five hundred fifty-six thousand, three hundred eighty-six dollars and seventy-seven cents) during the past 25 years.

Mr. HELMS

Mr. HELMS. Mr. President, I yield time to the Senator from Kentucky.

Mr. HELMS. I have been following the amendment.

Mr. HELMS. Mr. President, I have no objection to that.

Mr. HELMS. If the Senator will yield.

Mr. HELMS. Very well. I thank the Chair for the information.

Mr. HELMS. I don't want the Senator to yield at an improper time----

Mr. HELMS. Mr. President, I compliment the Senator on the explanation of his amendment. I have been following him as he has been going along. We are far from being opposed to the amendment. We do not have any problem with the safeguards. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the pending amendment No. 2291 be agreed to and the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table.

Mr. HELMS. Mr. President, the distinguished Senator from Maine is here. I yield 15 minutes to the gracious Senator.

Mr. HELMS. Will the Senator yield?

Mr. HELMS. I think the Senator has forgotten many times when he was correct.

Mr. HELMS. I ask the Parliamentarian for his views on it now, to get that settled.

Mr. HELMS. I did not think it would be four questions.

Mr. HELMS. I ask the distinguished Senator from Montana, who has been awaiting a chance to speak, be recognized for such time as he may require.

Mr. HELMS. Mr. President, I yield to the Senator from Arizona.

Mr. HELMS. Mr. President, parliamentary inquiry, please. Somewhere down the line we are going to find it wise to yield back time. That would not forbid a Senator on this side from suggesting the absence of a quorum or any other routine motion of the Senate. Is that correct?

Mr. HELMS

Mr. HELMS. Mr. President, yesterday President Clinton sent a written request to the Senate asking that we ``postpone'' a vote on the CTBT. In light of the President's outburst on Friday lashing out at Senate Republicans, and his adamant declaration that he would never submit a written request asking the Senate to withdraw the CTBT from consideration, his decision to send just such a letter is interesting. His letter, was a baby-step in the right direction, insufficient to avert a vote on the CTBT today. The President is clearly playing poker with the Senate, but he doesn't have a winning hand, and I think he knows it. The President sent this letter only because he realizes he has failed to make a compelling case for the treaty, and failed to convince two- thirds of the Senate that this treaty is in the national interest. He knows that if we vote on the CTBT today, the treaty will be defeated. His letter did not meet both the criteria set by me and others. For example, he requested: (a) that the treaty be withdrawn and (b) that it not be considered for the remainder of his presidency. The President has repeatedly dismissed the critics of this treaty as playing politics. Look who's talking. In his mind, it seems, the only reason anyone could possibly oppose this treaty is to give him a political black eye. Putting aside the megalomania in such a suggestion, accusing Republicans of playing politics with our national security was probably not the most effective strategy for convincing those with substantive concerns about the treaty. The fact is, we are not opposed to this treaty because we want to score political points against a lame-duck Administration. We are opposed because it is unverifiable and because it will endanger the safety and reliability of our nuclear arsenal. The White House and Senate Democrats have failed to make a compelling case to the contrary. That is why the treaty is headed for defeat. Of course, treaty supporters want to preserve a way to spin this defeat into a victory, by claiming that they have managed to ``live to fight another day.'' That's probably the same thing they said after President Carter requested the SALT II Treaty be withdrawn. But they will be fooling no one but themselves. Before this debate is over, it must be made clear that to one and all this CTBT is dead--and that the next President will not be bound by its terms. The next administration must be left free to establish its own nuclear testing and nuclear non-proliferation policies, unencumbered by the failed policies of the current, outgoing administration. Without such concrete assurances that this CTBT is dead, I will insist that the Senate proceed as planned and vote down this treaty.

Mr. HELMS. Mr. President, the incredible and contrived rhetoric pouring forth constantly from the White House for the past few weeks has at times bordered on absurd and futile efforts to sell to the American people the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. For example, only this administration could attempt to put a positive spin on a Washington Post article reporting that the CTBT is unverifiable. It didn't work and once again it was demonstrable that you can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. No administration, prior to the present one, has ever tried to argue with a straight face that a zero yield test ban would or could be verifiable. A treaty which purports to ban all nuclear testing is, by definition, unverifiable. In fact, previous administrations admitted that much less ambitious proposals, such as low-yield test ban, were also not verifiable. This is not a ``spin'' contest. This is a fact. There is one hapless fellow, at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, who is bound to know this, and he should not be lending his name to such shenanigans. I am not referring to the President. This is his treaty--the only major arms control agreement negotiated on his watch--and its ratification is entirely about his legacy. No, I am talking about Vice President Gore, who took the correct, flat-out-position--when he was a United States Senator--he was opposed to even a 1-kiloton test ban. According to then Senator Gore, the only type of test ban that was verifiable was, in his estimation, one with no less than a 5-kiloton limit. He was quite clear, Mr. President, in saying that anything less--such as the CTBT treaty now before the Senate--would be unverifiable. On May 12, 1988, Senator Gore objected to an amendment offered to the 1989 defense bill which called for a test ban treaty and which restricted nuclear tests above 1 kiloton. Then-Senator Gore declared: Mr. President, I want to express a lingering concern about the threshold contained in the amendment. Without regard to the military usefulness or lack of usefulness of a 1 kiloton versus the 5 kiloton test, purely with regard to verification, I am concerned that a 1 kiloton test really pushes verification to the limit, even with extensive cooperative measures. . . . I express the desire that this threshold be changed from 1 to 5. In other words, the Vice President knows full well that a 1-kiloton limit--to say nothing of 0-kiloton ban--was unverifiable. In fact, at his insistence, the proposed amendment was modified upwards to allow for all nuclear tests below 5 kilotons. Why then, is the administration, of which he is now a part, claiming that a zero-yield ban is ``effectively verifiable''? Numerous experts have cautioned the Senate that a ``zero-yield'' CTBT is fundamentally unverifiable. Other nations will be able to conduct militarily significant nuclear tests well below the detection threshold of the Treaty's monitoring system, and even below the United States' own unilateral capability. President Clinton's own former Director of Central Intelligence, Jim Woolsey, testified before the Foreign Relations Committee, on May 13, 1998, that ``With the yield of zero, I have very serious doubts that we would be able to verify.'' On August 5, 1999, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger noted: ``When I was involved in test-ban negotiations, it was understood that testing below a certain threshold was required to ensure confidence in U.S. nuclear weapons. It also was accepted that very low-yield tests would be difficult to detect, and an agreement to ban them would raise serious questions about verifiability.'' Most significantly, Fred Eimer, former Assistant Director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency and chief verification expert for both the Reagan and Bush administrations, wrote to me this past Sunday stating his opposition to the CTBT. Dr. Eimer noted that: ``Other nations will be able to conduct militarily significant nuclear tests well below the verification threshold of the Treaty's monitoring system, and well below that of our own National Technical Means.'' Now, of course, the Administration has claimed on a variety of occasions that the CTBT is ``effectively verifiable.'' It seems, however, that this administration is saying one thing to the Senate and the American people, and admitting quite another thing overseas. I will read into the Record the criticism that was leveled against the CTBT on August 1, 1996, by Mr. John Holum--President Clinton's ACDA Director-- when he was in Geneva. Mr. Holum stated: The United States' views on verification are well known: We would have preferred stronger measures, especially in the decision-making process for on-site inspections, and in numerous specific provisions affecting the practical implementation of the inspection regime. I feel no need to defend this view. The mission on the Conference on Disarmament is not to erect political symbols, but to negotiate enforceable agreements. That require effective verification, not as the preference of any party, but as the sine quo non of this body's work. . . . On verification overall, the Treaty tilts toward the `defense' in a way that has forced the United States to conclude, reluctantly, that it can accept, barely, the balance that Ambassador Ramaker has crafted. ``Reluctantly''? ``Accept, barely''? Does this sound like a ringing endorsement of the CTBT's verification regime? I would say this is tantamount to ``damnation by faint praise''. The fact of the matter is that the CTBT's much-vaunted international monitoring system (IMS) was only designed to detect ``fully coupled'' nuclear tests down to one kiloton, and cannot detect evasive nuclear testing. Any country so-inclined could easily muffle its nuclear tests by conducting them in natural cavities (such as salt domes or caverns) or in man-made excavations. This technique can reduce the seismic magnitude of a test by a factor of 70. In other words, countries can conduct tests of up to 60 kilotons without being detected by the IMS. Every country of concerns to the United States is technically capable of decoupling its nuclear explosions. In other words, countries such as North Korea, China, and Russia will be able to conduct very significant work on their weapons programs without fear of detection by the IMS. I point out to Senators that, according to Department of Energy data, 56 percent of all U.S. nuclear tests were less than 20 kilotons in yield. Such tests, if decoupled, would all have been undetectable by the IMS. In other words, one out of every two nuclear tests ever conducted by the United States would not have been detected by the IMS--had the U.S. chosen to mask its program. I fail to see how the administration does not think this monitoring deficiency is not militarily significant. Moreover, claims that the IMS will provide new seismic monitoring capabilities to the United States are ludicrous. The vast majority of seismic stations listed in the CTBT already exist, and were funded by the U.S. taxpayer; 68 percent of the ``Primary Seismological Stations,'' and 47 percent of the ``Auxiliary'' stations called for under the treaty already are in place because the United States put them there years ago. I repeat, the only reason the IMS has any value to the United States is because it was already U.S. property long before the CTBT was negotiated. So where are the additional 32 percent of the stations going to be located? In places such as the Cook Islands, the Central African Republic, Fiji, the Solomon Islands, Cameroon, Niger, Bolivia, Botswana, Costa Rica, Samoa, and so on and so forth. There is no benefit to having seismic stations in these places. In other words, Mr. President, the CTBT will provide zero benefit to our nuclear test monitoring. In fact, it is going to make life more difficult for the United States. The same ``overselling'' of the IMS that is going on here in the United States is also occurring internationally. Ultimately, this is going to cause great problems for the United States in arguing that a country has violated the treaty when the much-vaunted IMS has not detected anything. Few nations are likely to side with the United States in situations where the IMS has not detected a test. Moreover, the IMS also will complicate U.S. efforts by providing false or misleading data, which in turn will be used by countries to conceal treaty violations. Specifically, the CTBT fails to require nations to ``calibrate'' their regional stations to assess the local geology. Naturally, countries such as Russia and China have refused to volunteer to do so. By consequence, these stations will record data that will be inconsistent with U.S. national information and will be used to argue against U.S. on-site inspection initiatives. While it is important to realize the deficiencies of the CTBT's seismic monitoring regime, it also is a fact that several treaty provisions will severely impair the ability of any on-site inspection, if launched, to uncover credible evidence of a violation. First, the aforementioned failure to calibrate regional stations will introduce inaccuracies in the location of suspicious events, creating a broader inspectable area than otherwise would be the case. Second, if the United States requests an inspection, no U.S. inspectors would be allowed to participate, and the country in question can refuse to admit other specific inspectors. Third, the treaty allows for numerous delays in providing access to suspect sites, which will cause dissipation of most of the best technical signatures of a nuclear test. Indeed, in the case of low-yield testing, there are few enough observable signatures to begin with, and on-site inspections are unlikely to be of use at all. Finally, the inspected party is allowed to restrict access under the treaty and to declare up to 50 square kilometers as being ``off-limits.'' As UNSCOM found with Iraq, any time a country is given the right to designate sites as off-limits to inspectors, the inspection regime is undermined. In conclusion, the IMS and the inspection regime is likely to be so weak that I would not be surprised if countries such as Iraq and North Korea did not ultimately sign and ratify. Because of the technical impossibility of verifying a zero-yield test ban, such rogue regimes can credibly claim to adhere to a fraudulent, unverifiable norm against testing without fear of ever getting caught. The only puzzling question for me, Mr. President, is why, with a Vice President who knows the truth quite well, does the Clinton administration continue to insist otherwise?

Mr. HELMS. I feel obliged to observe that the United States has already flirted with an end to nuclear testing--from 1958 to 1961. It bears remembering that the nuclear moratorium ultimately was judged to constitute an unacceptable risk to the nation's security, and was terminated after just three years. On the day that President Kennedy ended the ban--March 2, 1962--he addressed the American people and said: We know enough about broken negotiations, secret preparations, and the advantages gained from a long test series never to offer again an uninspected moratorium. Some urge us to try it again, keeping our preparations to test in a constant state of readiness. But in actual practice, particularly in a society of free choice, we cannot keep top flight scientists concentrating on the preparation of an experiment which may or may not take place on an uncertain date in the future. Nor can large technical laboratories be kept fully alert on a standby basis waiting for some other nation to break an agreement. This is not merely difficult or inconvenient--we have explored this alternative thoroughly and found it impossible of execution. This statement is very interesting. It makes clear that the fundamental problems posed by a test ban remain unchanged over the past 27 years. The United States certainly faces a Russian Federation that is engaging in ``secret preparations'' and likely is engaging in clandestine nuclear tests relating to the development of brand-new, low-yield nuclear weapons. The United States, on the other hand, cannot engage in such nuclear modernization while adhering to the CTBT. Likewise, the Senate is faced with the same verification problem that it encountered in 1962. As both of President Clinton's former intelligence chiefs have warned, low-yield testing is undetectable by seismic sensors. Nor does the United States have any reasonable chance of mobilizing the ludicrously high number of votes needed under the treaty to conduct an on-site inspection. In other words, the treaty is unverifiable and there is no chance that cheaters will ever be caught. This is not my opinion. This is a reality, given that 30 of 51 countries on the treaty's governing board must approve any on-site inspection. Even the President's own senior arms controller--John Holum--complained in 1996 that ``treaty does not contain . . . our position that on-site inspections should proceed automatically unless two-thirds of the Executive Council vote ``no.'' Instead of an automatic green light for inspections, the U.S. got exactly the opposite of what it requested. But most importantly, in 1962 President Kennedy correctly noted that the inability to test has a pernicious and corrosive effect--not just upon the weapons themselves (which cannot be fully remanufactured under such circumstances)--but upon the nation's nuclear infrastructure. Our confidence in the nuclear stockpile is eroding even as we speak. Again, this is not my opinion. It is a fact which has been made over and over again by the nation's senior weapons experts. In 1995, the laboratory directors compiled the following two charts which depict two simple facts: (1) that even with a successful science- based program, confidence will not be as high as it could be with nuclear testing; and (2) even if the stockpile stewardship program is completely successful by 2010, the United States will not be able to design new weapons, and will not be able to make certain types of nuclear safety assessments and stockpile replacements. Senators will notice that, on both charts, there is mention of ``HN'' (e.g. hydronuclear) and 500 ton tests. The laboratory directors, in a joint statement to the administration in 1995, said: ``A strong Stockpile Stewardship and Management Program is necessary to underwrite confidence. A program of 500-ton experiments would significantly reduce the technical risks.'' This judgment has not changed over the past several years. Both weapons laboratory directors stated in 1997 that nuclear testing would give the United States greater confidence in the stockpile. So as I listen to these claims that the United States is ``out of the testing business,'' I make two basic observations. First, we are only out of the testing business because President Clinton has taken us out. There is no legal barrier today to conducting stockpile experiments. The reason is purely political. Indeed, the White House is using circular logic. The United States is not testing because the White House supports the test ban treaty; but the White House is claiming that because we are not testing, we should support the treaty. Second, I remind all that the United States thought it was out of the testing business in 1958, only to discover how badly we had miscalculated. President Kennedy not only ended the 3-year moratorium, but embarked upon the most aggressive test series in the history of the weapons program. If Senators use history as their guide, they will realize that the CTBT is a serious threat to the national security of the United States.