Article: 785 of sgi.talk.ratical From: (dave "who can do? ratmandu!" ratcliffe) Subject: U.S. Nuclear Weapons Labs: A Bulwark Against Test Bans Summary: nuke wep labs are quiet, powerful force, driving the arms race forward Keywords: nuclear weapons lab lobby washington in blatant and subtle ways Organization: Silicon Graphics, Inc. Date: Wed, 26 Aug 1992 18:22:04 GMT Lines: 256 "The laboratories have given to themselves the task of deciding which nuclear forces and arms-control approaches are appropriate for U.S. policy," said Christopher Paine, an arms-control specialist working for U.S. Senator Edward Kennedy, D-Mass. "And their preferred objective is an endless technical competition in nuclear arms." . . . [During Carter's administration t]he directors corresponded with lawmakers like conservative U.S. Rep. Jack Kemp, R-New York, urging opposition to the [Comprehensive Test Ban] treaty. Paine . . . said such letters--and similar testimony before Congress--suggests the laboratories are overstepping their responsibility to offer technical advice. "They have unilaterally taken it upon themselves to declare before congressional committees that U.S. treaty commitments regarding nuclear testing should be made obsolete, should be forgotten and dispensed with," he said. "They did this even when the president of the United States was attempting to negotiate a comprehensive test ban. I consider that conduct reprehensible." There has never been a more propitious opportunity to end the nuclear weapons "race" than at the very time our dedicated singular adversary for more than four decades has ceased competing and existing. WHY do we blindly continue testing and developing better ways to incinerate evermore surface area of the planet in a single burst? How are we made more "secure" by continuing to threaten the entire biosphere with absolute toxification and obliteration of biological life? Continual psychic numbing practiced by all of us is not solving this primary problem. Rather than simply debating which of the evil of two lessors to choose this November, we MUST begin to question the very foundations of the system itself that produces such "leaders." -- ratitor from "The Sacramento Bee" August 2, 1987 ____________________________________________________________________________ Nuclear Labs: Bulwark Against Test Bans By Deborah Blum Bee Science Writer Since President Eisenhower first tried to end testing of nuclear bombs, the California-run weapons laboratories have taken on every president through Carter who pursued that goal. The labs stand undefeated. Despite arms-control treaties, dating back to 1963, declaring it national policy to achieve an end to weapons testing, the United States still explodes a nuclear bomb beneath the Nevada desert at least once a month. Physicists from within the laboratories and arms-control experts from without say the labs are a quiet--but powerful--national force, driving the arms race ceaselessly forward. Three federal investigations are now under way into alleged lobbying activities by Livermore and Los Alamos national laboratories in favor of nuclear testing. Their angriest critics accuse them of increasing the odds of nuclear conflict. "The labs have made an enormous contribution toward setting the stage for nuclear war," said Charles Schwartz, a University of California, Berkeley, physics professor. "They may have made it unavoidable." Lab offlcials flatly deny that. "What we perhaps differ in is the approach to avoiding nuclear war," said Paul Brown, Livermore's assistant associate director for arms control. Brown upholds the laboratory position that a strong arsenal is the best way to preserve peace. Lab officials say that in raising objections to a test ban treaty, they are simply doing their jobs as the country's designated experts on maintaining nuclear weapons. The position of the weapons labs-- and it has not faltered before one president--is that nuclear tests are essential to a first class weapons program. "We should either do the job the country has asked us to do or change it," said Robert Selden, director of national security studies at Los Alamos. "Lab statements provoke huge furor and disagreement and charges that the labs are making national policy. But we're simply doing what we've been asked to do." Unlike that of previous administrations, Reagan's policy has been to encourage nuclear weapons testing and development. Both laboratories--U.S. Department of Energy facilities managed by the University of California--have almost doubled their budgets in the past seven years. This year's budget for each was $835 million. The recent challenge to test explosions has come, instead, from Congress. For the last two years some frustrated legislators have tried to block the tests. This year, the laboratories responded to that with a vigorous "education" effort. An internal memo from a Los Alamos Weapons expert recruiting the best lab scientists to "brief congressmen about the importance of nuclear testing" was recently made public. Three congressional investigations, including a formal query from the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, are now trying to determine if the laboratories have gone beyond technical advice into political lobbying, which is forbidden by law. No results are expected before fall, but the initial facts have angered arms-control supporters. "The laboratories have given to themselves the task of deciding which nuclear forces and arms-control approaches are appropriate for U.S. policy," said Christopher Paine, an arms-control specialist working for U.S. Senator Edward Kennedy, D-Mass. "And their preferred objective is an endless technical competition in nuclear arms." He and other critics also complain that Livermore and Los Alamos have influenced national policy more subtly. They say that despite a series of treaties urging an end to nuclear testing, the labs have not produced the kind of sturdy weapons that would do well under such an agreement. Those treaties began with the 1963 Limited Test Ban Treaty with the Soviets forbidding nuclear testing anywhere but underground. Its preamble states that a principal aim of both countries is a complete test ban. Later treaties--signed by Presidents Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter--have reaffirmed that. Still, Livermore's director, Roger Batzel, recently testified before Congress that the labs have continued, for the last several decades, designing weapons with the assumption that they would be tested. Bill Scanlin, Livermore's deputy associate director for defense systems, said that experts at the laboratory, with their better understanding of nuclear explosives, consider the old treaty language "a little naive." "We're smarter now about weapons than they were then," Scanlin said. "The philosophy then was that we could do away with nuclear weapons. The idea that we could do that--complete elimination--is naive." But John Jungerman, head of the University of California, Davis, physics department and a member of the scientific team that developed the first atomic bomb, said the labs were opposing test limits before the first treaty was signed. In 1957, the Soviets proposed a several-year moratorium on testing as preparation for a possible ban. Eisenhower liked the idea, according to Glenn Seaborg, a presidential adviser and later director of U.S. energy programs. But Edward Teller, then director of Livermore, and two fellow nuclear scientists visited the White House and discouraged him, Seaborg said in his book, "Kennedy, Khrushchev and the Test Ban." "The scientists stated that with continued testing, U.S. laboratories could develop `clean' (fallout-free) weapons within seven years and that the Soviets could negate any test moratorium by undetectable clandestine tests," Seaborg recalled. Jungerman, who became--and remains--a strong arms-control advocate, said the laboratory arguments included the suggestion that the Soviets might hide nuclear tests behind the sun. "Of course, that was ridiculous," Jungerman said. "And, of course, the clean weapon never happened. But the point is, that it was political lobbying and that they took it all the way to the top." Eisenhower never arrived at a treaty--chiefly because of questions about Soviet cheating--but did agree to a moratorium on testing, which lasted from 1958 to 1961. President Kennedy then picked up the question. Two years later, he approved the Limited Test Ban Treaty. Herbert York, the first director of Livermore, credits laboratory scientists with successfully keeping underground tests out of the treaty. But even with that exclusion, lab scientists worked against its approval. Jungerman, who supported the treaty, recalled visiting Washington, D.C., shortly before the vote. He was riding a shuttle bus in from the airport and discovered a fellow passenger was the powerful Democratic senator, Russell Long of Louisiana. "So I said, `Senator Long, I'd like to put in a good word on the test ban treaty,'" Jungerman said. "And he said, `Well, Edward Teller has already told me that it's a bad idea.' And this was just a random meeting. So, obviously, he'd been out there lobbying senators about it." That treaty marked a critical time when halting nuc1ear tests might have halted the arms race, according to York, who now heads the Institute on Global Connict and Cooperation at the University of California, San Diego. York said that in the 1950s and early 1960s, weapons development drove the race. Now, it is paced by new and exotic missiles to deliver the warheads. "Was it a missed opportunity? Probably," he said recently. "It might very well have come unstuck due to all the problems in our relationships with the Soviets. But, on the other hand, it might have worked." _________________________________________________________________________ | | | [2 photographs and their captions:] | | | | A hole melted through a rock by a nuclear particle beam at Los Alamos | | shows the potentially destructive power ot the weapon. At right, a | | technician works at the control panel ot the accelerator, which is | | part ot the particle beam experiment. Los Alamos is an empire built | | on some four decades of refining and expanding nuclear weapons. | |_________________________________________________________________________| Still, president after president has indicated support for ending nuclear tests. And Carter reopened negotiations on a full-scale Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. The laboratory response was immediate. The directors corresponded with lawmakers like conservative U.S. Rep. Jack Kemp, R-New York, urging opposition to the treaty. Livermore researchers insisted that the Soviets would cheat. And Harold Agnew, then director of Los Alamos, in a 1977 letter to Kemp, also warned that a lack of tests could give the untrustworthy Soviets an advantage in number of weapons. "As Custer found out, there comes a time when there is no substitute for quantitative advantage," Agnew wrote, referring to the American general killed with his troops in 1876 when he attacked an encampment of Indian warriors who outnumbered him more than 3-to-l. Paine, Kennedy's staffer, said such letters--and similar testimony before Congress--suggests the laboratories are overstepping their responsibility to offer technical advice. "They have unilaterally taken it upon themselves to declare before congressional committees that U.S. treaty commitments regarding nuclear testing should be made obsolete, should be forgotten and dispensed with," he said. "They did this even when the president of the United States was attempting to negotiate a comprehensive test ban. I consider that conduct reprehensible." Los Alamos's Agnew took credit for talking Carter himself out of the treaty negotiations. He and Roger Batzel of Livermore were invited to appear before the president to explain their views on a comprehensive test ban. According to Agnew, it was their resistance that persuaded Carter in 1978 to drop the idea. York, who was then Carter's chief negotiator on the treaty, said the labs were only one voice in a chorus of opposition. "The labs are a substantial political force," York said. "But they aren't the only ones dedicated to a nuclear future. I think some of the groups working more directly with the Pentagon may have even greater influence." Still, in Washington, D.C., the recent discovery that David Watkins, Los Alamos defense program manager, drafted a memo this March lining up pro-weapons speakers to brief lawmakers has raised new concern--and the official probes. Investigators with the House Energy and Commerce Committee, chaired by U.S. Rep. John D. Dingell, D-Mich., have collected more than eight boxes of correspondence between lab employees and federal lawmakers. Five legislators have requested a General Accounting Office investigation. And U.S. Rep. Fortney Stark, D-Oakland, is looking into laboratory activities. Federal regulations bar the use of government funds by contractors to influence matters before Congress. The weapons labs fall under that provision because the University of California operates them under a contract with the federal government. DOE spokesman Jack Vandenberg said a preliminary inquiry by the department suggests the lab employees acted legally, within their charge to provide information. And lab representatives say they did nothing wrong. "The real issue is, are DOE and the administration right to go out and inform Congress on nuclear tests," said Livermore's Brown, who said he talked with several lawmakers at the department's request. "I believe they are." -- I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. . . . Corporations have been enthroned, an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money-power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until the wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed. --- Abraham Lincoln (quoted in Jack London's "The Iron Heel"). -- daveus rattus yer friendly neighborhood ratman KOYAANISQATSI ko.yaa.nis.qatsi (from the Hopi Language) n. 1. crazy life. 2. life in turmoil. 3. life out of balance. 4. life disintegrating. 5. a state of life that calls for another way of living.