1994 Congressional Hearings
Intelligence and Security

Mr. Chairman and members of the Committee, I welcome the opportunity to appear before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence to provide you with the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency's views on intelligence support to arms control policy. This Committee's responsibilities concerning important intelligence assets make it a key participant in the arms control verification process.

The Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, with its central role in arms control and nonproliferation policy formulation and implementation, relies heavily upon the technical and analytical capabilities located in the Intelligence Community (IC). In ACDA's efforts to develop arms control agreements that are highly verifiable and rigorously complied with, robust and appropriate U.S. intelligence capabilities and the data derived therefrom are critical to our ability to do our job. ACDA generally, and our Bureau of Intelligence, Verification and Information Support in particular, with its responsibility for verification implementation and compliance assessment, has a relationship with the Intelligence Community that has multiple layers and channels for tasking intelligence assets and using IC input.

With the revitalization of ACDA, staff members have been renewing their relationships with members of the Intelligence Community, reinforcing good working relationships and building new ones. This increased cooperation has taken place in several areas, which I wig address subsequently.

ACDA is receiving strong support from the Intelligence Community through their supply of information needed to assess the effectiveness of verification measures during arms control negotiations and in assessing compliance with existing arms control treaties. Indeed, the Intelligence Community has, over the last several years, taken a number of steps to ensure strong support to the arms control policy making community. For instance, the Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) has broadened the scope of his Arms Control Intelligence Staff (ACIS) and his Non-Proliferation Center (NPC) to provide better intelligence support to arms control and non-proliferation policy makers. Also, ACIS and NPC represent the IC on interagency committees involved in arms control and nonproliferation policy, respectively.

ACDA has also recently established, with the assistance of the CIA's Deputy Director of Intelligence, a new Intelligence Research and Analysis Division, which is staffed by career intelligence officers detailed to ACDA and fully integrated with its workforce. The purpose of this new division is to draw upon the best analytical skills in the Intelligence Community to support arms control intelligence requirements. The new division will have unique capabilities with access to aR sources of intelligence information and will be able to produce detailed analytical reports tailored to ACDA's needs. This has pern-dtted ACDA's existing Intelligence Resources Division to focus on Intelligence Community liaison and coordination. This division represents ACDA on a number of Intelligence Community Committees and Subcommittees as well as supporting ACDA's negotiations and diplomatic staff requirements.

POLICY COMMUNITY TASKING

Arms control policy makers normally task arms control requirements through ACIS, just as they task non-prolfferation requirements through NPC. For example, ACIS supports all arms control delegations and usually has a representative on all policy making working groups in Washington that address negotiating policy or verificafion and compliance issues. Intelligence requirements are conveyed through these working groups to the ACIS representafive on the group. Their parficipation has been critical to our efforts and, I believe, facilitates IC awareness and anticipation of policy community needs.

Tasking to the Intelligence Community is accomplished routinely by ACDA's Intelligence Resources Division which directly contacts the ACIS staff or NPC staff for informafion and analysis. Also from time to time on detailed technical issues, ACDA will surface requirements directly with other entifies in the Intelligence Community. These would include the CIA Office of Slavic and Eurasian Analysis, the CIA Office of Scienfific and Weapons Research, the Air Force National Aerospace Intelligence Center, the Army National Ground Intelligence Center, the Navy's Office of Naval Intelligence, the Defense Intelligence Agency and the Nafional Security Agency.

Another means of tasking the Intelligence Community is through ACDA's representation on various Intelligence Community Committees and Subcommittees. While ACDA is not a full member of the Intelligence Community, these Committees and Subcommittees are responsive to ACDA's needs. We are in the process of examining ways to enhance coordination between ACDA and the IC.

I should also highlight the close working relationship that ACDA Director Holum has established with DCI Woolsey and Deputy Secretary Deutch in coordinafing arms control requirements. This dose working relafionship has resulted in the retention of technical collection systems that are so vital to our verification of treaty provisions.

With regard to the tasking and coordination of efforts with the IC, I will identify three intelligence-related verificafion quesfions that we seek to answer. I will then indicate the existing mechanisms through which we coordinate efforts with the IC and the effectiveness of IC and policy community cooperation in addressing these verification questions.

VERIFICATION QUESTIONS REQUIRING POLICY COMMUNITY TASKING TO IC

ACQUISITION AND RETENTION OF TECHNICAL CAPABILITIES

The first question is: to what degree wig arms control opportunities be enhanced by existing and planned intelligence capabilities?

The United States seeks arms control agreements that have a level of verifiability that is sufficient to provide an acceptable level of confidence regarding other parties' compliance. The process of making the judgment about the level of verifiability requires a clear understanding of the capabilities and limitations of U.S. intelligence assets to observe declared activities and detect prohibited activities. These capabilities and limitations, once clearly understood, can be used to tailor specific treaty obligations to maximize verifiability. The policy community, then, has a direct interest in being knowledgeable of U.S. intelligence capabilities and ensuring that they are robust and will improve over time to offer the requisite flexibility for achieving verifiable agreements that enhance U.S. national security.

In the past, ACDA has not always been a full participant in the process that governs decisions concerning the acquisition of new collection systems, nor has ACDA been fully involved in the decisions concerning the continued operation of systems that provide information necessary to verify arms control agreements. Fortunately, the process has generally resulted in decisions favorable to arms control verification needs.

TASKING ASSETS AND STATING REQUIREMENTS

The second question is: to what degree can and will U.S. collection Assets be tasked to collect data required for arms control verification?

Intelligence assets may have diverse applications for IC requirements and must be tasked to collect data of concern to arms control obligations. Here it is important to understand that the tasking of the IC by the policy community for arms control verification can require substantial technical and manpower resources. START, for example, contains obligations requiring silo ehniination down to a certain depth. Monitoring compliance with this obligation will place high demands upon U.S. technical capabilities- Monitoring compliance with other START limitations are even more challenging. In order to achieve a high monitoring confidence, the IC must have sufficient assets to meet all of its tasking and to place arms control monitoring at a high enough priority to ensure that the needed data is supplied to the policy community.

In response to ACDA's conveying its arms control verification requirements, the IC tailors the actual tasking of specific arms control monitoring requirements to individual collection systems. This system usually works very well, but it should be emphasized that arms control verification-related tasking is in competition with other tasking of intelligence assets. The higher priorities are frequently given to collection activities in support of warfighting and threat assessment requirements. Maintaining our current levels of verification confidence will require giving adequate priority to personnel and technical resources to be applied to arms control and non-proliferation requirements.

ASSESSMENT OF DATA

The third question is: to what extent is the data available to the United States sufficient to determine with a high degree of confidence whether other parties are complying?

A high degree of confidence is required before the United States will publicly charge another party with violation of an international agreement. The Intelligence Community participates closely with the policy community in providing data, and is challenged to acquire the type of data, often redundant and incontrovertible, necessary to make firm compliance judgments.

ACDA has a statutory responsibility for coordinating United States compliance assessments for all arms control treaties and agreements. In acquiring data, analyzing all available data, and recommending judgments to the President, ACDA therefore works closely with the IC, and ACIS in particular. Since we are judging other nations' behavior concerning their treaty obligations, our standards of evidence must be extremely high.

ACDA also requires high quality analysis for other critical nonproliferation projects and reports. For example, the NPC is developing an intelligence support plan for the NPT Review Conference which directly supports ACDA's leading role in this effort. ACDA has found ACIS and NPC to be responsive to our tasking, expeditious in their responses and crucial to the analysis process.

FUTURE ARMS CONTROL AGREEMENTS SUPPORT

The United States faces significant arms control and nonproliferation challenges. At the same time, resources and funding for these areas will remain constrained. Pursuing these policy areas successfully while remaining within resource limits will require vigorous, creative and coordinated approaches to research and development (R&D) programs and the application of resultant technologies. START I and U, CTBT, NPT, CWC and BWC, as well as denuclearization and regional concerns are among major areas in which the United States must optimize its retum on R&D efforts. Historically, the elaboration of guidance for R&D to support the verification, monitoring and implementafion of agreements or initiatives took a back seat to their negotiation. In recent years, several studies and analyses, including the recently completed "Report on Nonproliferation and Counterproliferation Activities and Programs," cited the need for better coordination and communication among the departments and agencies performing R&D. While separate programs (including ACDA's Arms Control Research Coordinating Committee, DOD's Forum on Arms Control Technology and the CNPC's Research and Development Subcommittee) existed within departments and agencies to identify existing technologies and initiate new R&D programs, there was no single forum which presented the opportunity to integrate technology assessment, requirement generation, R&D project management, technology implementation, and policy and budget priority recommendations necessary for effective coordination of arms control and nonproliferation R&D.

As part of ACDA's reinvigoration process, one of the Director's goals has been for ACDA to more fully and effectively execute its statutory responsibilities for the coordination of arms control and nonprohferation R&D. Over nine months ago, the Director tasked ACDA to initiate a review resulting in a proposal for a mechanism that would: exchange information and coordinate arms control and nonproliferation R&D; advise agencies on nonprohferation and arms control R&D priorities; facilitate the conduct of cooperative interagency programs; review arms control and nonproliferation R&D programs and identify overlaps and gaps; frame interagency issues and differences for decisions by adjudicating bodies; advise policy Interagency Working Groups on R&D capabilities and limitations; and report recommendations to the National Science and Technology Council's Committee on National Security on coordination of all arms control and nonproliferation R&D programs in the President's budget submission.

The results of the ACDA review were provided to the President's National Security Advisor and for the last four months the Interagency has examined current practices associated with the coordination of arms control and nonproliferation R&D; assessed existing mandates and coordinating mechanisms; reviewed recent recommendations; identified coordination issues; and developed options and recommendations for improving the current structure. The recommendations of this comprehensive review will begin to be implemented over the next few weeks.

This will give greater voice to arms control needs when systems are being developed and when critical budgetary decisions are being made. It will also provide ACDA a voice, through the Working Group's recommendations, on research and development priorities.

In closing, I would note that the Senate has recently confirmed President Clinton's nomination of Dr. Amy Sands, from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory to become ACDA's Assistant Director of the Bureau of Intelligence, Verification and Information Support. She will bring with her considerable expertise on arms control and nonproliferation issues. I know that she looks forward to meeting with the Committee and Staff and developing a positive and mutually beneficial relationship.