Soviet Nuclear Intentions

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32018, 19 June 1969, Page 17

Soviet Nuclear Intentions

PETER GROSE,

(By

of the New

York Times News Service, through N.Z.P.A.)

WASHINGTON, June 18. United States intelligence authorities are reported to have concluded that the Soviet Union is not now striving for the capability to launch a first nuclear strike against this country, but is probably aiming for more than parity with the United States in missile strength. At meetings last week of the United States Intelligence Board, chaired by the Direc-

tor of Central Intelligence, Mr Richard Helms, the various civilian and service intelligence agencies are believed to have reached a consensus estimate of Soviet strategic strength for the coming two or three years. Sent to the White House as the official judgment of the intelligence community, the detailed and secret survey seems bound to become embroiled in the controversy over the opening of strategic arms talks with the Russians and the proposed deployment of an anti-ballistic missile system. The White House announced yesterday that a National Security Council meeting would be held today on arms ' policies. President Nixon is - expected to disclose at a news . conference on Thursday night when and where the Administration proposes to open the new round of dis-

armament talks. Administration critics fear that the Defence Secretary (Mr Melvin Laird) and Pentagon strategists have drowned out the Secretary of State (Mr William Rogers) and other potentially restraining voices—including the Central Intelligence Agency—in pushing for a stern negotiating position and for costly defence programmes by exaggerating Soviet nuclear capabilities.

Among Congressional opponents of the safeguard A.B.M. system, there is particular resentment at what they see as the Pentagon’s highly selective, if not actually distorted, use of raw intelligence data to promote the proA.B.M. position. The same resentment has been voiced privately by intelligence officials themselves. It is in this context that the high-level consensus estimate of the entire intelligence community assumes special significance.

The United States Intelligence Board is a high-level co-ordinating group that meets weekly to correlate all the data available to the Government. Sitting on the board under Mr Helms’s chairmanship are representa-

fives of the C.1.A., the Pentagon’s defence intelligence agency, intelligence branches of the Army, Navy and Air Force, the State Department, the Atomic Energy Commission and the National Security Agency. These agencies concurred last week that the Russians appear to be moving rapidly, more so than expected a year ago, to strengthen their nuclear forces as a deterrent, and are probably aiming for more than equality of missile strength with the United States. But, in the board’s judgment, this drive falls short of the capability to destroy enough United States missiles in a first strike to prevent the United States from launching an effective retaliatory blow, in strategic shorthand, a “first-strike capability.”

The “desire” ultimately to acquire such a capability may be present in some Soviet policy-making circles, the board concluded, but both the capability and the specific intention to achieve it were ruled out for the foreseeable future. This conclusion was reportedly stated in the formal “national intelligence estimate” without any dissenting footnotes from any of the participating agencies.