TRANSCRIPT AVAILABLE - The 50th Anniversary of the Limited Test Ban Treaty (LTBT)

Transcription

1 TRANSCRIPT AVAILABLE - The 50th Anniversary of the Limited Test Ban Treaty (LTBT) Events Looking Back on Its Legacy and the Future of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Organized by Green Cross International, the Arms Control Association, the Embassy of Kazakhstan Thursday, September 12, 2013, 1:30pm-3:30pm Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1779 Mass. Ave. NW Concluded by Presidents John F. Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev only months after the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Limited Test Ban Treaty (LTBT) was an historic first step toward reining in the U.S.-Soviet nuclear arms race. The LTBT, which banned nuclear test explosions above ground, underwater, and in space, led to the end of the most visible and strongly opposed aspects of the arms race: hundreds of open-air explosions that spewed dangerous levels of radioactive contamination far beyond the test sites of the nuclear powers. Fifty years ago, the Senate debated and approved ratification of the LTBT. Negotiations of a global, comprehensive test ban were finally concluded in 1996, but the treaty has not yet entered into force. This special event will explore the origins, the negotiations and the legacy of the LTBT and the role of the CTBT in curbing further nuclear competition. Introductory Remarks - Transcript His Excellency Kairat Umarov, Ambassador of Kazakhstan to the United States Dr. Paul F. Walker, Program Director, Green Cross International Panel One: The Legacy of the 1963 Limited Test Ban Treaty - Transcript Chair/Discussant: Thomas J. Putnam, Director, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library & Museum Speakers: Ambassador James Goodby, Nonresident Senior Fellow, Brookings Institution, former U.S. LTBT negotiator Dr. Timothy Naftali, former Director, Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum Panel Two: The Role and Future of the Test Ban Treaty - Transcript Chair/Discussant: Daryl G. Kimball, Executive Director, Arms Control Association Speakers: Ambassador Thomas Pickering, Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations and Russia Linton Brooks, Committee on "Technical Issues Related to the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty," National Academy of Sciences Roman Vassilenko, Ambassador-at-Large, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Kazakhstan Karipbeck Kuyukov, Honorary ATOM Project Ambassador, Kazakhstan Anita Friedt, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Nuclear and Strategic Policy, U.S. Department of State Page 1 of 30

2 Transcript by Federal News Service Washington, D.C. PAUL WALKER: So welcome to all of you. Welcome to our distinguished speakers. If you look at the program, you ll see that we have two panels. We have a panel on the Limited Test Ban Treaty, which is three individuals you see sitting in front of you here now, and we have a second panel on a comprehensive test ban treaty. So we re doing a bit of a historical adventure here from prior to 1963 up through 1963, when the Limited Test Ban Treaty was signed, on up, of course, to 1996, when the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty was signed, and then up to today, talking about the prospects for ratification. We re really fortunate to have a good number of expert panelists. And I really thank a couple of the panelists who came a long way to Washington to be with us today. Let me also when we start off, thank the host of this event and the organizers, particularly the Embassy of Kazakhstan, and I ll subsequently introduce Ambassador Umarov; and also, the Arms Control Association and Daryl Kimball, who is here; and my own organization, Green Cross International. And as you know, in Washington, D.C., we re or in the United States, our affiliate is called Global Green USA. So there s loads of confusion around branding, whether we re Green Cross or Global Green or Global Green or Green Cross. But it s all the same the same organization. And we just celebrated, actually, our 20th anniversary in Geneva, Switzerland, just a week ago, with a fellow, whose name you ll all recognize, Mikhail Gorbachev, who came in he s now 82 years old, he chaired three days of meetings with us. And we were actually very involved with the sort of RussianAmerican discussions on the topic of the day, Syria and chemical weapons. Let me first extend apologies from Senator Edward Markey. He can t come today. We ran the risk of organizing this this week; it was the best for everyone s schedule, including Senator Markey, and then, of course, we were all hit with a small issue like Syria and chemical weapons and the threat of Western attacks. So Senator Reid apparently a couple of hours ago, called a Democrat Caucus meeting in the Senate around Syria and chemical weapons. So Senator Markey just called me half an hour, apologized, said to say hello to everybody, and he s very supportive of this issue, would like to do something in the future in the Senate when it s better timing. But he s very sorry he can t be here. So with that oh, let me first say, this panel will go to about 2:30. We ll break for five minutes; there will be actually a video while you re having a slight coffee break on Kazakhstan and Semipalatinsk I believe. And then and then we ll come back for the second panel, switch seats and move forward. So it s my pleasure now to introduce Ambassador Kairat Umarov, the ambassador of the Republic of Kazakhstan to the United States. Ambassador Umarov has held a number of posts some of you, I m sure, know him in the Kazakh foreign ministry, including ambassador to India, to Syria and has served actually twice before here in Washington, D.C., right in early to mid-1990s. Also of interest to all of us, I think, because the fact that he was very active in the NevadaSemipalatinsk movement and to close both the U.S. and Soviet weapons test sites in the late 1980s. And I think, as many of you know, this led to the closure of Semipalatinsk some of you actually were involved in that, I know, in the audience on August 29th, 1991, 22 years ago. So we re here also, I think, a bit to celebrate the closure of Semipalatinsk; we ve done that the last couple of years too. And you also know that that date is the annual United Nations Day Against Nuclear Testing, so it s sort of a combination of 50th anniversary of the of the Limited Test Ban Treaty, U.N. Day Against Nuclear Testing, closure of the Semipalatinsk site, and also, moving forward on the Comprehensive Test Ban. So with that, I turn it over to you, Mr. Ambassador. (Applause.) Page 2 of 30

3 AMBASSADOR KAIRAT UMAROV: Thank you very much, Paul, for organizing and helping all to organize this event. I would like to thank all the panelists who are right now here and who will be coming for the next session. I think it s a very important session, just once again, to highlight the importance of everyone to struggle and fight for the ban of nuclear weapons. I think that everybody has already heard today the news that the DPRK has restarted the nuclear reactor, and I think it brings again to the focus of attention the dangers of nuclear testing and nuclear weapons development. So I think that it s very timely, and I would like just to say that we have a special say in this particular issue, because for us, it s an emotional and political issue. And I think today, you will have a chance to talk about both political issues and emotional side of the story. Sixty four years ago, a tragic page was turned in the history of my nation. The Soviet Union conducted the first test of nuclear device at the Semipalatinsk testing ground in eastern Kazakhstan. In the course of the next more than 40 years, there were 450 tests of over than 600 nuclear devices with the cumulative capacity of around 2,500 Hiroshima bombs, which, you know, were dropped on Japan. About ½ million citizens of Kazakhstan have suffered from the effects of radiation and continue to suffer today. Vast territories comparable to the size of Germany have been exposed to radioactive contamination, and you know, we cannot use this territory for another thousand of years. I am telling all these facts because, you know, at some point, someone has to say no to nuclear testing and nuclear weapons development, and Kazakhstan actually did a good example of it. Being still a part of the former Soviet Union, fresh from the Cold War era, President of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev, by his decree, shut down the world s second largest nuclear testing site. And it was done because of his own conviction and because of the strong popular movement in Kazakhstan to close the testing ground. It was mentioned that I was really involved with this movement. It was really a huge first, huge grassroots movement to close the testing sites and to show to the world to the world that it is possible; it needs to be done. And Kazakhstan succeeded in this. On August 29, 1991, unconditionally, the testing site was closed. That is a good demonstration that by political will, some good things could happen in this world. And we, today, call upon other countries to follow our suit, to follow our example, and show this political will. It was an initiative of Kazakhstan that in the U.N. General Assembly on August 29th was proclaimed as an international day of against nuclear tests, and this year, we the fourth time observing this day all over the world, with different events. And today s event, we also wanted to dedicate to this particular date. The historical act it was a historical act made by the will of people of Kazakhstan, 21 years ago, and I think it has a great civilizational significance. Throughout all those years, Kazakhstan has been strongly committed to the principles of nonproliferation. The reasons for that are quite obvious: We have first-hand experience of how deadly and appalling the consequences of nuclear tests could be. The radioactive fallout left, as I mentioned, 1.5 million people in Kazakhstan with nightmarish health problems, horrific tumors, radiation-caused genetic mutations and defects, and this is going on up till now. On that ground, we have every right to stress the need for further decisive actions aimed at reducing nuclear threat. We have strong reasons and we have a strong record of our own laws toward that direction. Kazakhstan was the first to close down the nuclear test site, we voluntarily renounced the world s fourth largest nuclear missile nuclear missile arsenal from the territory of Kazakhstan, the leftover from the former Soviet Union. We declared a nonnuclear status, we were the founding members of the nuclear weapon-free zone in Central Asia, and we initiated this international day of against nuclear tests. And it is a good reminder of the horrific consequences of the nuclear test. We continue to urge all nuclear weapon states to start developing international, legally binding Page 3 of 30

4 document on providing security assurances to nuclear weapons-free states. It is time that some countries overcome the misperception or illusion that acquiring nuclear capability will bolster their security, national security. We think it s a very great delusion and we very strongly believe that what we lack today is not the any more nuclear weapons or weapons of mass destruction, but what we lack today is the mutual trust and understanding. We lack political will. And whatever initiatives Kazakhstan today has come with, it comes from the genuine belief of Kazakh people that we have to overcome the lack of trust and to build a safer, nuclear weapon-free world. An early entry into force of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, which could serve as a catalyst of process of nonproliferation, effective implementation of NPT, is among the steps in that direction. We welcome the progress made by CTBTO since 1996, and in increasing global support of the concepts of the summit on nonproliferation. At this juncture, the international community should, through joint efforts, convince eight states that have yet to either sign or ratify the treaty to do so. We are encouraged by U.S. President Barack Obama s intention to give a new impetus to that process during his speech in Berlin, casting nuclear reductions as the centerpiece of his address. Kazakhstan itself continues to contribute significantly to disarmament and nonproliferation, as reflected not only in our active antinuclear position, but also in recent progressive actions. Our country is actively engaged in settlement of situation of Iranian nuclear program, by providing Almaty platform for the 5-plus-one negotiations. We actively participate in the CTBTO Preparatory Commission, promoting the development and functioning of International Monitoring System and onsite inspections. Five stations functioning in Kazakhstan have been integrated into the International Monitoring System, and used to provide a 24-hour monitoring of natural and manmade seismic events in the region. They demonstrated their effectiveness and quality performance when they had timely detected and located nuclear explosions carried out by the Democratic People s Republic of Korea. We strongly condemned the nuclear tests of May 2009 and February 2013, and called upon the DPRK to take note of our positive track record of nuclear disarmament and successful, peaceful development in cooperation with the national community. Our example becomes very actual today, as I ve mentioned, since the North Korea is starting again its nuclear program. At the Global Nuclear Security Summit in Washington in April, 2010, Kazakhstan introduced a concrete proposal: In exchange for the nuclear club guarantee for non-use of nuclear weapons and the protection in case of an attack, the entire world must abolish abandon its nuclear ambitions. The president also called for U.N. to adopt a universal declaration on the achievement of a nuclearweapon-free world and we re currently working on it in the U.N. to advance the commitment to Global Zero. Kazakhstan today works with IAEA to prevent the countries to acquire nuclear technologies by allocating the International Nuclear Fuel Bank, under the auspices of IAEA, on its territory. We also call upon the states not to delay the drafting of a fissile material cutoff treaty, which will become an important step towards nuclear disarmament and prevention of proliferation of nuclear weapons. We are very much sure that even more decisive steps have to be made in the area of nonproliferation. With the political will and mutual understanding, mutual trust, it could be done. The ATOM Project, which you will see today it will be presented today, is an initiative of President Nazarbayev coming on top of the more than 22 years of commitment and actions to achieve global nuclear disarmament. The ATOM Project reminds the world of the tragic consequences of nuclear tests. We call on the global community to take more decisive action to a final and irrevocable ban of these tests. Today it is my great pleasure to welcome you all to see the exhibition of the artist who is among us today whose life is a testament how the human spirit can overcome the physical disabilities. He is using his works to speak clear and loud that nuclear testing and nuclear weapons are the very harmful for the entire world community. I would like him, of course, today to talk about his Page 4 of 30

5 experiencing and his ideas. And it is Mr. Karipbek Kuyokov, who is among us today and who will give his words in order to speak about sad story which stands behind nuclear testing. With this, I would like to say thank you, and if at any time anyone would like to talk to us, we will be ready to continue asking and answering questions. Thank you. (Applause.) MR. WALKER: Thank you very much, Mr. Ambassador, and also welcome to Karipbek Kuyokov. This the signs you see here you ll see him on the second panel and hear from him, and also the video from the break will also be on what the ambassador has talked about as the ATOM Project, Abolish Testing: Our Mission, which is a Kazakh-led project. Before I turn the panel over to Tom Putnam, let me just say a couple of words about nuclear testing, remind ourselves what s been done to date. There have been 2,055 nuclear tests that have taken place since 1945, the Trinity test and Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The United States has tested, by my count, 1,032 times. They top the list. The Soviet Union tested 715 times. And then of course we have the British, French, Chinese. And the only recent tests have been the North Korean. So there s been a de facto moratorium on testing in the United States and in Russia since And some of us were involved, actually, in putting that moratorium in place. The North Korean tests, of course, were 2006, 2009 and 2013, and then there s a question about a test some time ago, whether it was an Israeli and/or South African test that some of you may know about. So the Limited Test Ban Treaty was an enormous accomplishment in 1963, and I know it took years under the Eisenhower administration and finally the John F. Kennedy administration to put in place. But we ll hear more about that in a in much more detail, I m sure. But I want to remind everybody, it was actually signed in Moscow on August 5th, 1963, so just over 50 years ago, by Dean Rusk you all know that name Andrei Gromyko and Alec Douglas-Home, the British representative. And it was ratified, after some considerable debate in the U.S. Senate, on September 24th, 80 to 19 votes. So I think all of us are hoping that we can get close to that vote count for the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty in the foreseeable future. And it was signed in a very famous picture you ve probably all seen the photo, with many political luminaries around by John F. Kennedy in the Treaty Room of the White House on October 7th, and it entered into force on October 10th. So we re in between all of these dates right now, so this is actually a very appropriate time. And the reason that I think, in the end, it came about was because of the outrage in the United States and elsewhere, but particularly the United States, over the radioactive fallout and strontium-90 in children s teeth do you remember that back then, particularly from the enormous thermonuclear tests that were taking place atmospherically, and both by the United States and by the Soviet Union. We had the Threshold Test Ban Treaty in 1974, didn t enter into force until 1990, so very slow process, to limited underground tests to 150-kiloton or lower, and then the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which was voted on September 10th so we re just two days off that anniversary in 1996, by 158 countries in the United Nations General Assembly. And today the CTBT we ll hear a lot more about it in the second panel has 159 states parties who ve signed and ratified. So we still have 37 countries that have not joined, although a number of those are signatories; they just haven t ratified. And you probably all recall that the first Senate vote on the treaty was on October 13th, 1999, here in the United States, and it was voted down 51 to 48. So it was 19 votes short of a 67-vote two-thirds majority. And as Ambassador Umarov has said, the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty requires the 44 nuclearcapable states to join the treaty regime for entry into force. And those eight countries of those 44 that are still outstanding are China, Egypt, India, Iran, Israel, North Korea, Pakistan and the United States. So I m very much looking forward to this panel and the second panel to see how in fact our lessons learned from 1963 interact with our efforts these days to ratify and enter into force the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. Page 5 of 30

6 So with those few words, let me turn the program over to Tom Putnam. And I want to thank Tom for coming down from Boston from the he s the director of the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum. And I also want to welcome Ambassador James Goodby, in the middle of the table there, who was a negotiator of the Limited Test Ban Treaty, so we have a firsthand a firsthand account here, and also Dr. Timothy Naftali, who s a historian and co-author of the 2001 book on JFK, John F. Kennedy: The Great Crises. So the podium s all yours, gentlemen. Panel 1 THOMAS PUTNAM: Well, I know I speak on behalf of my colleagues. It s an honor to be here. We thank you for inviting us. It looks like we have about a half an hour, so we re each going to speak for about 10 minutes, and if one of us is short, you ll have a few minutes to ask questions. It s no secret that for John F. Kennedy, really, he his greatest accomplishment, he felt, was the signing of that first nuclear test ban treaty. And I want to just give a few opening comments to set that achievement in context, and I hope I can kind of paint, actually, a very general picture with wide brushstrokes and perhaps use a few of President Kennedy s words to just capture that moment, and then my colleagues, I think obviously Ambassador Goodby, who was there, will give us really that internal view, and then my colleague Tim Naftali will give us a little bit more of a historical analysis. I always remind people that to understand John F. Kennedy, you really have to go back to World War II. His father was ambassador to England. He actually traveled through Europe as a young man and visited both pre-war Germany and the Soviet Union and made his own impressions, came back to Harvard, wrote his honors thesis, which became a book called Why England Slept. And the essential thesis there was that in the contest between democratically elected governments and totalitarian ones that when competing militarily, the totalitarian regimes will always have an advantage because they re able to conscript their citizens into military service, and they can spend as much money on their military as their budgets will allow without the consent of their citizens. And in my mind, that s really the essence of his famous inaugural address when he spoke it s very much a Cold War address. He spoke to the American people, and he was saying the only way that the U.S. could compete in the Cold War against the Soviet Union were if Americans were willing to sacrifice and care as much about the common good and the national interest as they were about their own individual well-being. The second essential feature of JFK s life experience was actually his service in World War II, where he really developed a skepticism of military authority. Again, this was not only forged during his service on the PT-109, but it s captured by his comical remark at the height of the missile crisis. When an errant U-2 pilot mistakenly flew into Soviet airspace and really almost set off a nuclear catastrophe, JFK quipped, There s always one son of a bitch who doesn t get the message. (Laughter.) He was of course both devastated and disappointed in himself that he actually followed the advice of his military generals in the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion, but the world avoided catastrophe when he disregarded their advice during the Cuban missile crisis. And it s such a remarkable story, and one we ll hear more about from the panel, of how in less than a year s time, we went from the Cuban missile crisis, the highest level of nuclear brinkmanship in world history, to the historic signing of the nuclear test ban treaty. Really, the over-arching theme of both the missile crisis and JFK s quest to sign the test ban treaty was his fear that humanity was being gripped by forces it could not control, and he endeavored to do what he could to be sure that that didn t happen. A couple of observations. In the aftermath of the Cuban missile crisis, he sees the nuclear issues as the greatest threat to the world and the greatest challenge for him and other world leaders to solve. He gives a press conference in May of He said, If we don t get an agreement this year, I would think the genie is out of the bottle, and we will never get him back again. Personally, I m Page 6 of 30

7 haunted by the feeling that by 1970, unless we re successful, there may be 10 nuclear powers instead of four. I regard that as the greatest possible danger and hazard, and I think we ought to stay it. He believed that the arms race was not only costly but was inherently unstable to the world, and he gives a famous address at American University, really the first presidential address in 18 years to reach beyond the Cold War. And that speech began with a commitment to genuine, lasting peace, and I would like to quote from it: Not a Pax America enforced on the world by American weapons of war, not merely peace for Americans, but peace for all men; not merely peace in our time, but peace for all time. And he goes on to say, Our problems are man-made, and therefore they can be solved by man. Some say it s useless to speak of a world peace until the leaders of the Soviet Union adopt a more enlightened attitude. I hope they do. I believe we can help them to do it. But I also believe we must re-examine our own attitude towards peace and the Soviet Union. There s two other lines from that speech I like. In regard to the Soviet Union, he says, No government or social system is so evil that its people must be considered lacking in virtue. And he describes peace as based not on a sudden revolution in human nature but on a gradual evolution in human institutions. But of course, he had to overcome many obstacles to get the test ban treaty signed. First he had to convince the Soviets themselves, and he had a kind of a difficult dance. He was both extending an olive branch to them, but he also gives that famous speech in Berlin at the time where really he excoriates communism, and McGeorge Bundy, after the speech, worried that Kennedy had gone too far and could have actually damaged the effort they were making to try to sign the test ban treaty with that speech. Even after the treaty was initialized, it needed to be ratified, and the American people needed to be convinced. Congressional mail at the time, like the White House mail, was running 15 to 1 against the treaty, and JFK was truly worried that he would face the same failure that Woodrow Wilson had with the League of Nations. So he did what he did best, and he addressed the American people. Again, they continued to believe what their leaders had been telling them, that for years the U.S. was in imminent danger of a massive nuclear attack by the Soviet Union and that the communists were evil liars never to be trusted. So the treaty was very high politics and a tough sell. And let me just read briefly from the famous address he gave to the American people in August of He said, I speak to you tonight in a spirit of hope. Since the advent of nuclear weapons, all mankind has been struggling to escape from the darkening prospect of mass destruction on Earth. But yesterday a shaft of light cut into the darkness. This treaty is not the millennium. It s an important first step, a step toward peace, a step toward reason, a step away from war. This treaty is for all of us. It is particularly for our children and our grandchildren, and they have no lobby here in Washington. And according to the ancient Chinese proverb, a journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step, and he challenges the country to take that step. He made four points in that speech. The reasons that he was for the test ban treaty was that it would reduce world tension, prevent radioactive fallout, prevent the spread of nuclear weapons, and he argued that limiting the arms race with the Soviet Union would actually strengthen American security, not weaken it. The treaty, nevertheless, encountered tremendous attack. There were nuclear scientists, like Edward Teller, who were against it. He was facing a growing militaryindustrial complex that had an inherent interest in continuing to build and test weapons. Influential senators like Senators Stennis, Goldwater and Russell all came out against the treaty. And JFK was truly worried that a coalition of conservative Southern senators who were especially angry with him over the civil rights legislation he had proposed would band together with Republicans to prevent the two-thirds needed for ratification. The heroes of the story were Scoop Jackson and especially Everett Dirksen. Dirksen was known to have said, when he endorsed it, that he would not like it written on his tombstone that he knew what happened at Hiroshima but did not take the first step. And while I wish I could play the tapes for you and my colleague Tim Naftali s an expert on the tapes there s a fascinating tape where Everett Dirksen is in the Oval Office working with the president to figure out which votes they could get to be Page 7 of 30

8 on their side, and in the end, they did get a number of Republican votes. And it s hard to imagine, for instance, President Obama and Mitch McConnell in the Oval Office working together on figuring out which senators could vote on a piece of legislation they both agreed on. So as was mentioned, in the end 11 Southern Democrats and eight Republicans were opposed, and 35 Democrats and 25 Republicans supported. So it was essential to have that Republican support to get it passed. Again, JFK stated that no other accomplishment gave him greater satisfaction. And as was mentioned, he signed it in a newly restored Treaty Room, and he probably did that because the desk in the Treaty Room belonged to him and he wanted to sit at his own desk and sign the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. We actually have it on display now at the library because it is one of his greatest accomplishments. Tim was there last week and we went and looked at it together. It s on loan to us from the National Archives and Records Administration. I just want to make a couple more points and to conclude. After he gave that speech, he actually went out and gave almost a pre-campaign tour. He was getting ready for his re-election campaign. He went out to some Western states. And the thing that surprised him was it was supposed to be a tour about the environment and conservation, but he was getting the greatest applause lines when he actually talked about the Test Ban Treaty. And he discovered that there he felt that there really was a thirst amongst the American people for this for the Test Ban Treaty and for a call for peace, and that s why he decides to run his re-election campaign on peace and prosperity. And this, I think, is captured and this is my last remark in the final address he gives to the United Nations, which literally was 50 years ago this week, and I just wanted to read that speech for you. He s addressing the United Nations, and he calls for, quote: further agreements which spring from our mutual interest in avoiding mutual destruction, for a new approach to the Cold War on both sides and for changes in the U.N. Charter to enable conventions of peace to pull abreast and then ahead of the inventions of war. But peace and this is what I want to conclude with does not rest in charters and covenants alone; it lies in the hearts and minds of all people. And if it is cast out there, then no act, no pact, no treaty, no organization can hope to preserve it. So let us not rest all our hopes on parchment and on paper; let us strive to build a desire for peace in the hearts and minds of all our people. So I thank you for listening to me. And I ll now turn the panel over again to my two colleagues, as been introduced before, historian Tim Naftali, who I promise, because I ve heard him speak many times, is one of the most engaging speakers on JFK that I know and Tim is in the process of writing a new biography and Ambassador James Goodby of the Brookings Institution, but most importantly, again, he was a true eyewitness to this history, having served as the officer in charge of nuclear test ban negotiations at the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency from 1961 to So Ambassador Goodby. JAMES GOODBY: Thank you very much. And thanks to all the sponsors of this. I think it s very important to commemorate these days of the Limited Test Ban Treaty s anniversary. I d like to say that I actually began working on the Test Ban Treaty in And you say: What? It didn t really get underway until 1958, at least. But I really see the scientific miscalculation, as I call it, of March 1, 1954, as the beginning of the test ban negotiations. That scientific miscalculation was the Bravo shot in the Castle series thermonuclear device, which instead of having something like six megatons, as they had expected, turned out to have 15 megatons and threw debris over a sizable part of the Pacific Ocean, resulting in the sickness and the death of at least one Japanese fisherman and fairly dangerous levels of radioactivity over a lot of the islands in that area. So I really think the serious talks about should we continue to do this began in that year and continued really throughout that period. Page 8 of 30

9 The legacy of the Test Ban Treaty has been mentioned already. I don t need to dwell on it. Children don t have to drink strontium-90 in their milk, at least that caused by fallout. Had the Limited Test Ban Treaty not been put into effect, maybe people would have done something unilaterally, but the fact of the matter is it did cause us to stop doing something that was devastating to human health. So that s an important legacy in itself. But there s another legacy, a lesson, if you will, that I think people don t take note of, and I was glad to hear Dr. Putnam mention this today. It is that in a sense, I think I ll underscore this what it proved was that adversaries can cooperate. It doesn t have to be a zero sum game between two adversaries. That lesson, I think, is very relevant today. If you think about what happened in the year 1961, we had the Bay of Pigs disaster; we had a terrible summit meeting between Khrushchev and Kennedy; we had the building of the Berlin Wall; we had the breaking of a moratorium that had been started by Eisenhower, with a 50-megaton-yield Soviet nuclear bomb; and finally, a termination of the talks which looked as though that might in fact be the end of it. In 1962, we saw the Cuban missile crisis, and yet by January of 1963, I was in New York with Bill Foster and others, Charlie Stelle, talking with the Russians and the British came later about how can we revive these talks. So I think if you think about today and we think about then, there seemed to be a greater willingness in those days to negotiate with adversaries, to do something that would be in the interest of both countries even if it was only limited in scope. So I regard that as really one of the major lessons of that time, and I think we ought to keep that in mind. We had leaders in those days who were ready to, you know, turn their attention fully to getting something done that would benefit all of humankind. I attended the 25th anniversary of the Limited Test Ban Treaty. It was at the Kennedy Library in And of course on that occasion, all the veterans of the Test Ban Treaty were there. My colleagues at that time were Ted Sorensen and McGeorge Bundy and Carl Kaysen and Ros Gilpatric, a number of others. I mention that because I think Ted Sorensen, Ros Gilpatric, former defense deputy defense secretary and I were the only people there among the group of eight or 10 who thought we had really done as much as we could do when we arranged this Limited Test Ban Treaty. Most of the others were saying, oh we could have done more. I thought they were kind of bellyaching about their hopes that were unfulfilled. Even McGeorge Bundy said, you know, I wish you really had done more, and maybe we should have done better at trying to convince Kennedy to go this route. Well, my sense of it, frankly, is we re very, very lucky that he got even that much. And I say even that much in the sense that I think we did a great deal of good through that treaty, because there were innumerable obstacles. Bear in mind this whole thing started in 1958 under a Republican president, Dwight Eisenhower, who convened a scientific conference held in Geneva, which resulted in an agreement between the Soviet Union and others, ourselves included, about a verification system that became known as the Geneva system. And it included virtually all those things we are now talking about in terms of verification seismographs and detecting fallout and what have you. The talks began later that year. And at that same time, Eisenhower, to his great credit, declared a moratorium, which continued until But almost immediately there was resistance to it, and so rather than smooth sailing and negotiating, there were backs and forths, new data came up and so forth. I say this because that was really the story of the negotiations. I can go through each of these years and show you that it was a very close call. Even the speech of June 10 at the American University that Dr. Putnam just mentioned, a very, very important speech, was fortunate, in a sense, in that it had two items in it that I think Ted Sorensen basically collected and put into it. I don t think that President Kennedy had in mind initially putting those things into it. One was the idea of a mission to Moscow. He was able to announce that the Russians had accepted that and it would be a mission to Moscow, which became the place where the treaty was actually finished. That ran into a lot of trouble with the State Department, to be blunt. I had come up with the idea. We talked to the British. The British came back and said it s a great idea. And then we found that the Soviet people the Soviet experts in the State Department didn t think it was a good idea at all. Page 9 of 30

10 I was astonished to hear that, because generally they favored the test ban. But what they thought was that Khrushchev was too busy with the emerging split with China to pay much attention to it; we didn t want to bother him. Fortunately, he was overridden and we did go ahead and propose this, and Khrushchev eventually accepted. But it could have gone the other way. And the same thing with this idea of not testing in the atmosphere, which is the other big thing, I think, in that speech. That was a proposal that we had made a couple of times in We even had begun consultation with Congress about it. But for one reason or another, it was put aside. It was lying in the White House, and nobody was pushing it at that particular time in 1963, but Sorensen picked it up and put it in the speech. And so a lot of good luck, along with a lot of bad luck, is what I m saying to you. And it was certainly not an easy thing to get even a limited test ban treaty. A little bit about the characters involved. It was interesting to me how much the scientific community got involved in this, I think perhaps more so than any other negotiation that I m aware of. And it was both good and bad. In a way, they were kind of re-fighting the Oppenheimer-Teller argument about should we go into thermonuclear or not. Bitter, bitter fights between the scientists, which reflected in the ups and downs of negotiations. So that was one of the major elements I saw. People in the State Department connected with John Foster Dulles, many of whom had actually served in the Atomic Energy Commission, as I had, were very supportive; I think, frankly, during the years 59-60, the latter two years of the administration of Eisenhower, managed to keep the thing afloat. Beyond that, looking at Eisenhower, he deserves a lot of credit for getting this done. Kennedy was able to say, look, my predecessor wanted this done very badly and which was true. A man who doesn t ever get much of any credit in this country, Harold Macmillan, Macmillan was close both to Eisenhower and Kennedy and kept pushing both of them to keep on working on this test ban treaty. At one time or another, I think he was probably the key to keeping this whole thing on the tracks. Khrushchev, to me, is kind of an enigma. He supported the he did really support the test ban treaty when it first began. By 1961, he had turned against it. He began to link the Test Ban Treaty to general and complete disarmament, which meant basically turning his back on it. In some point in the spring or summer of 1963, he began to say, OK, maybe this is a good idea. People attribute this Russians do, as well to the experience of the Cuban missile crisis, but I m not so sure about that. I saw the Soviet negotiating team close up in January of 63 in New York, and they didn t show any signs of that whatsoever, and there was no evidence to me that there was a willingness to negotiate. So I put it down more to other factors Khrushchev s internal position, break with China and so forth. Anyway, I think that s probably enough time for me to talk, and I ll turn it over to my friend here. TIMOTHY NAFTALI: Thank you very much, Ambassador Goodby. When we commemorate the 50th anniversary of a world-historical event, it makes sense to take time to see what we have learned about the event since its initial reporting and also to highlight some elements of the event that have current relevance. In that spirit today, I will focus on three aspects I promise, quickly now of the history of the Limited Test-Ban Treaty of And I m focusing on them because you won t know these stories: the personal commitment of John F. Kennedy to banning nuclear tests this is not a matter of idolatry but history the role that the Soviets and the British actually played in the achievement of the test ban, one crucial and one peripheral; and the ugly political environment in 1963 that President Kennedy faced Candide s evil seems everywhere today; it is so easy to fall into the habit of assuming we now live in the worst of all possible political environment. Although members of the president s inner circle have long said that the test ban treaty was John F. Kennedy s most treasured White House achievement, it was not until the opening of Russian Page 10 of 30

11 archives that we had a sense of not only the depth of the president s commitment to achieving a test ban but the political risk he was willing to take. Funny that it took the archives of an adversary for us to understand U.S. history better. But this was the case. And I am pleased to say that my Russian co-author, the late Aleksandr Fursenko, and I were able to bring this information to light for the very first time, and the material is still astounding. Three weeks after the Bay of Pigs, John F. Kennedy asked his brother to initiate secret talks with the Soviets to conclude a comprehensive test ban with Moscow that Kennedy and the Soviet leader, Nikita Khrushchev, could conclude at a summit in a neutral country. Lest you think that all he wanted was a political victory after the defeat in Cuba, the decision reflected a mature assessment of the Cold War. Kennedy had just learned that the United States was not in fact behind the Soviet Union in missiles; the infamous missile gap that had helped JFK get elected was a chimera. But Kennedy did not yet know that the United States was far, far ahead of the Soviets. As far as he knew, the Cold War was a military stalemate, and Kennedy s goal was to freeze it there to reduce the chances of World War III. Since 1958, as Ambassador Goodby not only described but knows very well, the United States and the Soviet Union had been observing a moratorium on atmosphere tests while negotiating a treaty banning all tests. Verification was the sticking point in these negotiations. Given the number of seismic events in the Soviet Union, which could easily be mistaken for underground nuclear tests, the United States had requested a set of annual on-site inspections to confirm that the Soviets had not broken the agreement. Senate confirmation, as you can imagine, depended on reaching whatever threshold number was required to build confidence that the Soviets could not cheat. The outgoing Eisenhower administration position was 20 on-site inspections a year, and the Soviets seemed prepared to offer three. Without notifying any other member of his national security team, including National Security Adviser McGeorge Bundy or Secretary of State Dean Rusk or Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, Kennedy sent RFK to tell the Soviets that if Khrushchev increased the number of acceptable on-site inspections, the United States would be willing to accept 10, and he would sign an agreement in the neutral country, which later turned out to be Austria. Imagine the political storm if these backchannel negotiations had leaked. RFK told the Kremlin secretly, quote, improving U.S.-Soviet relations was job number one for the new administration. But he also explained the domestic political situation the United States president was in and why he couldn t say these things publicly. A later administration would use the term reset and probably now regrets having admitted this goal publicly. The secret backchannel negotiations continued until JFK boarded Air Force One for Europe at the end of May 1961 for the summit in Vienna. But as we know, they were unsuccessful. The Soviet leader, as we know from Soviet records now, had no interest in achieving an arms control agreement so long as in his mind, the problem of Berlin remained unresolved. What we also only learned with the opening of Soviet records is that Khrushchev consciously withheld a test ban from Kennedy, seeing it as a reward for good behavior and not as a strategic need for the Soviet Union. As he told the Kremlin, no test ban until Berlin is solved. Kennedy s other key partner was Great Britain. Although Kennedy s commitment to achieving a test ban can be explained in terms of his general desire to reduce what one might call nuclear danger, one must also take note of the supportive role played by family friend and later British ambassador to the United States, David Ormsby-Gore, or Lord Harlech, the British Conservative Party s expert on arms control, who did lobby John F. Kennedy to give test to put test ban on the forefront of his agenda once he became president. Until 1963, however, the Soviets and the British were pulling Kennedy in opposite directions. Khrushchev toyed with Kennedy by unleashing a powerful set of nuclear tests in 1961, breaking the informal moratorium that the two sides had been observing after he did not get the agreement he wanted on Berlin in the summer during the Berlin crisis. Meanwhile, the British placed increased pressure on Kennedy not to resume testing in response Page 11 of 30

12 Meanwhile, Kennedy faced enormous pressure at home to resume testing in 1961 in light of the Soviet challenge. Quote, personally, I hate the idea of resuming atmospheric tests, Kennedy told Arthur Schlesinger in late 1961 in some unpublished diary. In response to these pressures, in April of 1962 Kennedy once again used his brother RFK to make a secret test ban offer to the Kremlin. If Khrushchev would accept a partial test ban and give up seeking an agreed number of on-site inspections to verify underground testing, Kennedy would not go ahead with the nuclear tests that he was planning for the summer of Again, imagine the political cost to the president of the United States if the U.S. military, U.S. nuclear laboratories, elements in State and CIA and Congress, all of which supported a resumption of U.S. testing, had learned of this secret offer to the Kremlin. Kennedy had tried to make this offer publicly. It was in the first draft of his State of the Union message. But Dean Rusk and McNamara had forced it out of the draft, January of So Kennedy had to maneuver secretly using Bobby. Once again, Khrushchev turned Kennedy down. Instead, he decided to put missiles in Cuba and push for a Berlin agreement once again in So why did JFK get the partial test ban in 1963? It was, I believe, because of his deft handling of the Cuban Missile Crisis. It particular, it was because Kennedy had tried to help Khrushchev save face by agreeing again, secretly, using Bobby to remove the Jupiter missiles in Turkey. The Kennedy brothers struck a deal with Khrushchev: If he said nothing publicly about the offer, it would happen within three to four months of the end of October Both sides stuck to the bargain. From Soviet records, we know how obsessively the Soviets followed events in Turkey, sending their ambassador constantly to check whether the missiles had been removed. And in March of 1963 the Soviet leadership learned that indeed, the missiles had been removed. And so in late April Khrushchev announced to the Kremlin in a top-secret session we only learned about 10 years ago that he was ending the hold he had placed on the partial test ban. He would no longer block the agreement because of Berlin. When the time was right, he would tell Kennedy he could have it. As Kennedy had hoped in 1961, the test ban became for Khrushchev a symbol of a better working relationship with Washington. And so when was the time right? When Kennedy gave his American University speech, Khrushchev said, OK, he can have it now. He had already prepared his colleagues for a test ban. He said, Kennedy has now done what we need him to do; he has earned the right to a test ban. And that s why it happened. Most of the test ban story, the real story, took place in secret and involved a handful of the very top leaders of the two superpowers. And for that reason, we didn t know it until a few years ago. Why did it happen in secret? Why was it not the product of a somewhat more public discussion of what international mores and humanitarian interests ought to be? It was not because test ban negotiations were a political problem for Khrushchev or for his political standing or because he had opponents in the military. Khrushchev had fired all the opponents in the military in 1960; he could do whatever he wanted. The problem was us. It was our side. And now, with the few minutes I have left, I d like to explain to you why John F. Kennedy felt he could not publicly be as pro-test ban as he was secretly with his brother Bobby. The U.S. military, especially the Joint Chiefs, opposed a test ban. The nuclear scientific community was split, but the scientists who ran laboratories most famously, as you mentioned, Edward Teller against the test ban. The director of the CIA, John McCone, the president s director of intelligence, opposed the test ban. The secretary of state, Dean Rusk, was actually cynical about what arms Page 12 of 30