American Spectator American Spectator - The Nuclear Test Ban Hoax

...On the strength of this the NRDC published a report in January 1986, "Unannounced U.S...

...It was not published by the NRDC, but by the Center on the Consequences of Nuclear War, whose offices are at the same address and on the same floor as the NRDC and whose executive director, S. Jacob Scherr, heads the NRDC's Nuclear Winter Project and co-directs its test ban \"project" in the Soviet Union...

...When the Pentagon failed to come up with the "proper" conclusions, the NRDC, unable to sue, came up with the next best solution—make them do it again...

...The Soviets, looking for a way to step up pressure on the U.S...

...Summer would be transformed into winter, winter into an incredible freeze...

...Alston Chase points out that for a long time the focus of the environmental movement was on what it opposed, for it lacked a vision of what is to replace the existing order...

...The NRDC claims, apparently with good cause, to have received encouragement from State Department officials...

...It took the United States a long time to put its testing program back together, with the result that then President Kennedy warned in 1962: "Some may urge us to try it [a moratorium] again, keeping our preparation to test in a constant state of readiness...

...From the Administration's standpoint this was a smart maneuver, since in effect it postponed ratification until the Soviets had accepted verification measures—which had been the Administration's position all along...

...by extending the moratorium for short periods...

...The NRDC, on the contrary, acting on its own initiative, set out to force the United States administration to accept a Soviet proposal which, it was fully aware, the Administration had already rejected as contrary to the security interests of this country...

...The acknowledgments reveal that the entire anti-defense think tank network was involved, from IPS's Nuclear Weapons Research Project, which Arkin heads, to the Center for Defense Information and the Council on Economic Priorities...

...Ultimately, of course, arms control agreements that bind us and require only Soviet lip service become untenable for any U.S...

...While such common sense received no hearing, further computer modeling showed, as Russell Seitz pointed out in the National Interest, that a worst-case nuclear exchange would result in "patchy overcast cooling" for a period lasting "two to six weeks...

...For the Soviet Union the value of its agreement with the NRDC lay in defusing the verification issue...

...The study pointed out the uncertainties of the data underlying Nuclear Winter...

...Instead it distributed a newsletter entitled Nuclear Winter...

...For the NRDC there was no more question about the policy implications of Nuclear Winter than there was concerning the policy implications of a laboratory study showing that high doses of a chemical produced tumors in rats...

...Based on new seismological assessments, the CIA has revised downward its estimates of the extent of violations, with the largest test, earlier estimated at 300 kilotons, revised down to 250 kilotons...

...Under the leadership of House Speaker Irving Stolberg (who was one of 57 Americans named as members of the Soviets' premier front organization, the World Peace Council, for the 1980-83 term), the Connecticut legislature passed such a resolution on February 18 of this year...

...They were shown shafts tunneled into hillsides and told tests had once been made there...

...By the time the Administration, spurred by the Defense Department, put its act together, the media had broadcast the NRDC's claim of State Department backing...

...Although nothing improper had been done, Arkin complained to newsmen: "Every aspect of every kooky idea in SDI is trumpeted...

...It further declared that the theory, even if accurate, had no implications for U.S...

...From the Administration's standpoint this was a smart maneuver, since in effect it postponed ratification until the Soviets had accepted verification measures—which had been the Administration's position all along...

...Nuclear weapons were now "immoral" and to be "outlawed," scientific findings, however dubious, that served its purposes were endorsed, and the culprit became the Reagan Administration...

...And it helped assure that, as Ted Koppel put it to the Pentagon's Frank Gaffney on "Nightline," "from a propaganda point of view, the U.S...

...He was ordered to do it...

...The NRDC claimed that the Tennessee Valley Authority's purchases of strip-mined coal for its power plants required an environmental impact statement, and that the "devastating effects" of strip mining should be calculated in the true cost of coal...

...The Soviets made it clear from the outset that the stations might have to be closed down when tests were resumed, i.e., when there was anything to monitor...

...nuclear weapons production...

...As an "honest broker" it might have been expected to be indignant to find that its "monitoring agreement" was a sham, and to pack up and return home...

...The NRDC certainly has no intention of advocating a drastically stepped up conventional defense to counter the strong Soviet superiority in that area...

...Moreover, the media, which focused so much attention on the NRDC-Soviet agreement while the Soviet moratorium was in effect, were virtually silent when it turned out to be meaningless...

...The project was initiated by Oleg Sokolov of the Soviet embassy, who attended a LANAC meeting and suggested a delegation travel to the Soviet Union to engage in arms control negotiations...

...Indeed several of those who initiated the NRDC as attorneys and board members were involved in the struggle against Consolidated Edison's planned pumped storage plant at Storm King, in which the desires of an elite with large estates on the Hudson triumphed over the needs of city dwellers for electricity at peak periods...

...The NRDC sees the EIS as a weapon against SDI...

...But the groundwork for actually negotiating an agreement with the Soviet Union was laid by the NRDC's Adrian DeWind...

...And while the NRDC pays the requisite verbal homage to "renewable energy," in fact the only alternative it has offered is "conservation...

...The NRDC seems to have felt it could employ the same strategy to ban nuclear weapons that it used to achieve bans on pesticides: obtain a government "study" showing adverse health effects, and then use a variety of pressure tactics (e.g., congressional lobbying, public hysteria, and law suits...

...But realizing that this passion to expose U.S...

...The Soviet Union's choice of the NRDC for its "citizen agreement" proved a master stroke...

...and a series of its allies...

...The NRDC encouraged this kind of misrepresentaRael Jean Isaac's most recent book (with Erich Isaac) is The Coercive Utopians (Regnery Gateway...

...The CTBhad become the centerpiece of Gorbachev's foreign policy...

...Traditional Soviet reluctance to permit verification produced skepticism, even among many who found the notion of a test ban appealing...

...so as to select a "joint station" near the Nevada test site, Cochran announced: "American scientists have been granted more freedom to work in the USSR than Soviet scientists now have in the United States...

...The Pentagon's second report reflected these developments...

...The Soviet Union used the period of the 1958-1961 "ban" to plan a huge series of tests...

...And although mainline environmental organizations continue to practice what the new philosophers of environmentalism dismiss as "Shallow Ecology," treating "symptoms" and not "causes," they were in fact influenced by the new philosophers of nature in turning toward a more radical global activism...

...The NRDC found the Nuclear Winter apocalypse an appropriate means to rally support for "outlawing" nuclear weaponry...

...Adrian DeWind, chairman of the NRDC's board, called the agreement "the most significant citizens arms control initiative ever undertaken...

...In 1983 De-Wind went with a delegation from LANAC, Lawyers Alliance for Nuclear Arms Control, whose New York chapter he had founded, to the Soviet Union...

...Robert Baltzell, the head of Lawrence Livermore laboratories, recently told a House Armed Services panel that the existing U.S...

...While the U.S...

...The arms control lobby directs all its efforts to signing agreements, none to securing their enforcement by the Soviets...

...President Reagan may hope that the prospect of a treaty with the Soviets on intermediate range missiles may serve as a sop to the congressional Cerberus for this session, much as the prospect of the Reykjavik summit held it off from pressing the testing moratorium issue further last year...

...the NRDC would set up similar stations near the Nevada test site...

...They could now counter that they had proved themselves prepared to achieve the loftier purpose of eliminating tests altogether...

...A comprehensive test ban, should it be achieved, will almost certainly prove equally counterproductive for the NRDC's ostensible goal of sharply reducing nuclear arsenals...

...The project was initiated by Oleg Sokolov of the Soviet embassy, who attended a LANAC meeting and suggested a delegation travel to the Soviet Union to engage in arms control negotiations...

...The NRDC warned that not only would human civilization be destroyed, but Homo sapiens could become extinct...

...Nuclear Warhead Facility Profiles, again with Arkin as co-author, but so far the databook on the Soviet Union has not materialized...

...How far to the left the NRDC was prepared to go was apparent from its choice of William Arkin of the Institute for Policy Studies as co-author (with the NRDC's Thomas Cochran and Milton Hoenig, a physicist and, like Arkin, an NRDC consultant...

...The Senate would vote for ratification contingent on the U.S...

...nuclear weapons and systems...

...If the NRDC is allowed to maintain its mainstream liberal image, it may well succeed in simultaneously destroying the credibility of the American nuclear deterrent and ending SDI, if not during this Administration, then during the one that follows...

...defense efforts: the environmental impact statement (EIS...

...In addition to the shock of that electoral victory and the emergence of disarmament as a glamour issue for the major foundations upon which the NRDC depends for funds, Adrian DeWind's appointment as chairman of the board in 1980 was also an important factor...

...But by this time Nuclear Winter was unraveling and the NRDC's bullying backfired...

...For while Leonid Brezhnev might lend his rhetorical support, the Soviet Union had no intention of freezing all research, testing, development, and building of nuclear weapons...

...As Congress, under the NRDC-fostered illusion that a "verification breakthrough" had been achieved, pressed for a moratorium on all testing, the Administration tried to contain the damage by granting concessions to the activists...

...Robert Baltzell, the head of Lawrence Livermore laboratories, recently told a House Armed Services panel that the existing U.S...

...While such common sense received no hearing, further computer modeling showed, as Russell Seitz pointed out in the National Interest, that a worst-case nuclear exchange would result in "patchy overcast cooling" for a period lasting "two to six weeks...

...administration...

...There is even the requisite actor to give glamour to the board, in this case Robert Redford...

...policies were designed to avoid it—through deterrence, weapons modernization, negotiated arms reductions, and the Strategic Defense Initiative...

...One reason may be that the NRDC has little to gain from a volume that would analyze the even more extensive Soviet nuclear production complex...

...The freeze movement considered cutting off production of fissionable materials as a way of indirectly stopping U.S...

...The Administration has failed to respond effectively to the NRDC's challenge...

...Two treaties on nuclear testing, the Threshold Test Ban Treaty (limiting underground explosions to 150 kilotons) and the Peaceful Nuclear Explosions Treaty (permitting nonmilitary testing up to 1.5 megatons), both signed in the mid-1970s, still awaited ratification because of Soviet refusal to cooperate on verification...

...Judges, reading the laws the It was the type of agreement the Soviet government finds increasingly attractive: a controlled contact with a private U.S...

...Its first suit, in 1970, was designed to provide the groundwork for prohibiting strip mining of coal (over half the coal used in the United States is obtained by strip mining...

...They rejected the old political ways, but lacked a new plan...

...The first joint SovietLANAC paper was an endorsement of a comprehensive test ban, "A Test Moratorium—A First Stage Toward a Nuclear Freeze and Reductions...

...They were to be a tool for U.S...

...The acknowledgments reveal that the entire anti-defense think tank network was involved, from IPS's Nuclear Weapons Research Project, which Arkin heads, to the Center for Defense Information and the Council on Economic Priorities...

...peace organizations, polls show that 60-70 percent of the American public supports SDI...

...Arkin published articles and gave interviews on the purloined document, even appearing on Canadian television to warn against nefarious U.S...

...In1983 the NRDC served as a co-sponsor of the World After Nuclear War Conference and launched its own "Nuclear Winter Project...

...At the same time that the lobby denies, obfuscates, or dismisses as insignificant Soviet violations, it demands that the U.S...

...At least in part, his desire to negotiate on a CTB seems to derive from the determination of the Soviet Union to stop the Strategic Defense Initiative...

...With or without Nuclear Winter, nuclear war How did Gorbachev come to pluck out this small organization to represent the United States in arms control negotiations...

...Started in 1982 in Boston as a lawyer's version of the anti-nuclear Physicians for Social Responsibility (LANAC director Wayne Jacquith had worked for the latter), it was dedicated, as Jacquith informed an executive board meeting of the radical-left National Lawyers Guild in November 1982, to looking "beyond the freeze...

...On the other hand, almost as large a number supports an end to all nuclear testing...

...it threatened the Energy Department with a lawsuit if it tested laser beam weapons without an environmental impact statement...

...The immediate precipitant of theSoviet-NRDC agreement was yet another NRDC "study," once again co-written by Arkin, designed to undercut the U.S...

...policies were designed to avoid it—through deterrence, weapons modernization, negotiated arms reductions, and the Strategic Defense Initiative...

...If the Soviets had installed on their territory the Institute for Policy Studies, the Center for Defense Information, or any of the plethora of admittedly radical groups, the move would readily have been seen as a propaganda ploy...

...nuclear weapons policy...

...But they don't want people to think about the fact that they are also working on the next generation of nuclear weapons...

...nuclear deterrent...

...Arkin published articles and gave interviews on the purloined document, even appearing on Canadian television to warn against nefarious U.S...

...The NRDC's method has been to use its strong connections in Congress to help write environmental laws mandating targets impossible to achieve, at least -without closing down American industry...

...It demanded that the Department of Defense fundamentally reexamine its nuclear weapons policies in light of the new "scientific evidence" on a looming Nuclear Winter...

...Honest brokers are intermediaries, accepted by both sides, who bring parties together but do not deal on their own account...

...He returned there with representatives from the NRDC in May 1986 arid within a day the agreement, ostensibly with a "private organization," the SoviAlthough the NRDC now stresses that its concern with disarmament reaches back to its inception, it was not until Reagan's election that the NRDC transferred the full weight of its moral wrath to nuclear weapons...

...When it brought suit to stop logging on private lands near Redwood National Park, the loggers, who stood to lose their jobs, reacted bitterly...

...The CTBhad become the centerpiece of Gorbachev's foreign policy...

...It was of course nothing of the kind...

...But the NRDC was not acting, as its executive director John Adams claimed, as an "honest broke?' between the U.S...

...Nuclear Tests," charging that the U.S., in addition to the 82 tests it had publicly announced during that period, had conducted 12-19 tests which it had not declared...

...and a series of its allies...

...tion by blandly announcing that its private treaty with the Soviets proved that "private enterprise works...

...But they don't want people to think about the fact that they are also working on the next generation of nuclear weapons...

...There is even the requisite actor to give glamour to the board, in this case Robert Redford...

...televisioncrew through a rugged region 90 miles west of Semipalatinsk, close to where the NRDC's monitoring equipment had been set up...

...military establishment is...

...According to the agreement, Soviet scientists would establish three monitoring stations, to be operated jointly by American and Soviet seismologists, within 100 miles of their chief nuclear weapons testing site at Semipalatinsk...

...The NRDC was created in 1970, one of many environmental organizations that sprang up in response to the newly discovered "environmental crisis...

...Arkin achieved notoriety in December 1985 when he distributed to the press in Iceland, Puerto Rico, Bermuda, and Canada copies of what he admitted was a top-secret document: a 1975 U.S...

...Two treaties on nuclear testing, the Threshold Test Ban Treaty (limiting underground explosions to 150 kilotons) and the Peaceful Nuclear Explosions Treaty (permitting nonmilitary testing up to 1.5 megatons), both signed in the mid-1970s, still awaited ratification because of Soviet refusal to cooperate on verification...

...We are private citizens and do not speak for our governments...

...Judges, reading the laws the It was the type of agreement the Soviet government finds increasingly attractive: a controlled contact with a private U.S...

...Despite Soviet propaganda efforts, and the accompanying chorus from U.S...

...Testing is crucial if SDI uses, as it may, a nuclear-powered x-ray laser...

...10910Rilt THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MAY 1987 23 would be catastrophic, and U.S...

...Nuclear Warhead Production and US...

...From its inception the NRDC has acted as if any consideration of costs was beside the point...

...Newsweek hastened to trumpet the arrangement as a "private accord" between Soviet and American scientists...

...As "conservation" is supposed to supply our future energy needs, so "trust" is presumably to provide an unlimited fund filling all our future defense needs...

...From specific concerns with plant and wild life, air and water pollution, and toxic chemicals, environmental attention has shifted, as Chase notes, to become "riveted on the ecological effects of Armageddon," with solutions to environmental problems sought in ideology rather than biology...

...By the beginning of 1987 even the Center and its newsletter were gone, victims, according to Russell Seitz, of a credibility gap too big for the foundations that funded them...

...The network also sees a CTB as a backdoor to the moribund freeze...

...If the Soviet stake in the monitoring agreement seems clear, how did Gorbachev come to pluck out this small organization to represent the United States in arms control negotiations...

...The Soviet policy proposal which the NRDC sought to ram down the Administration's throat was a comprehensive nuclear test ban (CTB...

...One of the American seismologists, Brian Tucker, reported that he was told by Igor Nersesov, who headed the Soviet team, that "he had no interest in this project whatsoever...

...Indeed not...

...They were to be a tool for U.S...

...In its eagerness to hound the Admin- istration for engaging in "secret" tests, the NRDC decided to set up its own seismic stations on private land near the Nevada test site...

...Then there are individuals of great inherited wealth, like Laurance Rockefeller (whose son, also Laurance, is a long-time attorney on the NRDC staff...

...By 1985 retiring Audubon Society President Russell Peterson could describe as his chief contributions making Audubon "more of an activist group" and making it "face up to global issues like overpopulation and nuclear war...

...24 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MAY 1987 ment: "If we don't control nuclear arms, why worry about the quality of the environment...

...A leader in the nuclear freeze movement in Connecticut, a member of Helsinki, Asia, and Americas watches, DeWind founded the New York Chapter of the Lawyers Alliance for Nuclear Arms Control (of which more shortly...

...One of the American seismologists, Brian Tucker, reported that he was told by Igor Nersesov, who headed the Soviet team, that "he had no interest in this project whatsoever...

...And how did the NRDC, more familiar to the public as an organization concerned with initials like DES, PCB, and EDB, with aerosol sprays, acid rain, and the height of smoke stacks, come to assume a role so at variance with its popular image...

...nuclear weapons and systems...

...It was of course nothing of the kind...

...group that presents an opportunity to appeal directly to the American public over the head of its government on behalf of a Soviet policy proposal...

...nuclear deterrent...

...There is not a single economist on its 107-member staff, and it is genuinely taken aback when confronted with the reality that costs matter to those directly affected by its actions...

...At least in part, his desire to negotiate on a CTB seems to derive from the determination of the Soviet Union to stop the Strategic Defense Initiative...

...the NRDC would set up similar stations near the Nevada test site...

...What was distinctive about the NRDC (and the Environmental Defense Fund founded the previous year') was the view that the law and lawyers should play a central role in environmental action...

...And when the United States refused to give Soviet scientists authorization to travel freely in the U.S...

...It produced a mere five-page "update" in March 1986, pointing out that there was "an emerging consensus" that the effects would be "considerably less severe" than originally thought...

...THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MAY 1987 25 ment: "If we don't control nuclear arms, why worry about the quality of the environment...

...moratorium on testing...

...Not only has EDF "stuck to its last," contenting itself with environmental issues, but it has become increasingly receptive to market approaches to dealing with pollution...

...Chase points out the extent to which ideological environmentalism has been counterproductive at Yellowstone National Park, as the park's rich animal and plant life die, victim to the concept of preserving the "purity" of some abstract nonexistent eco-system...

...The NRDC's method has been to use its strong connections in Congress to help write environmental laws mandating targets impossible to achieve, at least -without closing down American industry...

...George Weigel points out in the Wilson Quarterly that foundation funding in the area of "peace" studies and action rose from $16.5 million in 1982 to $52 million in 1984...

...before the International Court of Justice), DeWind was able to give the project greater credibility by including NRDC trustees John Culver and Shirley Hufstedler, a former U.S...

...On the other hand, almost as large a number supports an end to all nuclear testing...

...The NRDC sees the EIS as a weapon against SDI...

...While the newsletter sharply attacked the Pentagon's follow-up report, the grounds had shifted...

...The irony of the NRDC, which resists market solutions to any problems, passing off its arrangement with a Communist government in these terms was presumably lost on most readers...

...Actually, although the Soviet Union and NRDC repeatedly refer to a comprehensive test ban, what is really at stake is a moratorium on testing...

...More and more environmental organizations echo Adrian DeWind's arguThe NRDC seems to have felt it could employ the same strategy to ban nuclear weapons that it used to achieve bans on pesticides...

...The NRDC did not give up...

...The first volume, US...

...and the Soviet Union coming to an agreement on verification...

...In any event, for the Soviet Union, these joint stations would be of little practical interest, since seismic data are routinely published in the United States...

...In the Soviet Union, which until this year never announced its tests, Tass picked up the theme, noting approvingly that "NRDC staff member William Arkin" had attacked Washington for concealing underground tests from the public...

...Honest brokers are intermediaries, accepted by both sides, who bring parties together but do not deal on their own account...

...The NRDC encouraged this kind of misrepresentaRael Jean Isaac's most recent book (with Erich Isaac) is The Coercive Utopians (Regnery Gateway...

...nuclear weapons production...

...The NRDC's reaction was revealing...

...The Administration sent the two unratified treaties on limiting the yield of nuclear tests to the Hill and asked for the Senate's "advice and consent" in two steps...

...The Soviet policy proposal which the NRDC sought to ram down the Administration's throat was a comprehensive nuclear test ban (CTB...

...Not only has EDF "stuck to its last," contenting itself with environmental issues, but it has become increasingly receptive to market approaches to dealing with pollution...

...Alston Chase points out that for a long time the focus of the environmental movement was on what it opposed, for it lacked a vision of what is to replace the existing order...

...The NRDC's second major involvement in peace movement politics was in the Nuclear Winter campaign...

...For the NRDC there was no more question about the policy implications of Nuclear Winter than there was concerning the policy implications of a laboratory study showing that high doses of a chemical produced tumors in rats...

...It withdrew its pamphlet on Nuclear Winter, which could bring ridicule on the scientists on its staff...

...Presumably to maintain "balance," the NRDC promised that a companion databook on Soviet nuclear weaponry would follow shortly...

...Arkin's campaign, which wasenthusiastically publicized in the Soviet press, seems to have been an attempt to renew difficulties in the Western alliance that had eased following installation of Pershing and cruise missiles in Europe beginning in late 1983...

...Since the NRDC correctly sees availability of energy as the lifeblood of industrial expansion, it has sought to cut back on that availability...

...But the less reliance each side can place upon its arsenal, the more it will feel compelled to make up in quantity for the loss in "quality...

...That the Soviets should target LANAC in their quest for congenial private groups with which to make "people's treaties" is not surprising...

...And the report reiterated that regardless of the outcome of any technical studies "the most basic elements of our national policy remain unchanged...

...Unlike the freeze, which originated in a 1979 brainstorming session held by far left groups ranging from the American Friends Service Committee to the Institute for Policy Studies, a CTB had been the subject of negotiations by prior American administrations, most recently the Carter Administration...

...DeWind, a former president of the New York City bar association and a prominent tax attorney, was primarily interested in foreign policy...

...But the groundwork for actually negotiating an agreement with the Soviet Union was laid by the NRDC's Adrian DeWind...

...In the Soviet Union, which until this year never announced its tests, Tass picked up the theme, noting approvingly that "NRDC staff member William Arkin" had attacked Washington for concealing underground tests from the public...

...To further assuage congressional desire for a totaltesting ban, the Administration promised that, once the two steps were completed, it would "immediately" negotiate with the Soviets for further testing limitations, although these were left vague...

...When members of the LANAC delegation visited the Pentagon, Douglas Feith, then Deputy Assistant Secretary for Negotiations Policy, pointed out to them the fallacy in this statement only to be told impatiently that of course they realized that the Soviet delegation spoke for the government...

...citizen-activists to demonstrate against their government's nuclear deterrent...

...The purpose of the project, according to the preface, was to show "just how `nuclearized' the U.S...

...Nuclear weapons were now "immoral" and to be "outlawed," scientific findings, however dubious, that served its purposes were endorsed, and the culprit became the Reagan Administration...

...There are names once familiar on the political scene, like former Iowa senator (now practicing attorney) John Culver and former Occupational Safety and Health Administration head (now dean of the University of Cincinnati medical school) Eula Bingham...

...26 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MAY 1987 Rael Jean ] THE NUCLEAR TEST BAN HOAX Brought to you by the NRDC and its Soviet friends...

...Chase says that environmentalists have been moving toward a new faith with the emergence of so-called "Deep Ecology," according to which all things have equal rights to "self-realization...

...It has already conceded "the much more limited availability of data on the Soviet nuclear weapon system" and in the introduction to its first databook sought to head off potential criticism by arguing that while "an appearance of imbalance" might persist even after the Soviet databook was published, this was irrelevant because the volumes were "not intended to be another document on the assessment of the U.S.-Soviet Military balance...

...Its first suit, in 1970, was designed to provide the groundwork for prohibiting strip mining of coal (over half the coal used in the United States is obtained by strip mining...

...Although the NRDC now stresses that its concern with disarmament reaches back to its inception (one of its early actions was to oppose the Clinch River project on the grounds that the breeder could lead to nuclear weapons proliferation), it was not until Reagan's election that the NRDC transferred the full weight of its passionate moral wrath to nuclear weapons...

...The NRDC warned that not only would human civilization be destroyed, but Homo sapiens could become extinct...

...While the delegation included such predictable members as Harvard law professor and disarmament advocate Roger Fisher and Abram Chayes (who represented the Nicaraguan government against the U.S...

...The NRDC has been particularly proficient in wielding the EIS to that end, seeking, for example to prevent the restarting and expansion of DOE's Savannah River Plant, which produces nuclear materials for weapons programs, and the renovation of the Feed Materials Production Center in Ohio, which enriches uranium...

...Most numerous are attorneys, ranging from David Sive, whose firm pioneered in environmental lawsuits, to partners in traditional law firms...

...Summer would be transformed into winter, winter into an incredible freeze...

...Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Frank Gaffney reports that the Pentagon remains convinced that the Soviets have repeatedly violated that treaty...

...Since the NRDC correctly sees availability of energy as the lifeblood of industrial expansion, it has sought to cut back on that availability...

...Greenpeace, Environmental Action, and Friends of the Earth were among the first to do so...

...Although both the New York Times and Washington Post treated this revelation as a major story, in fact the U.S...

...In addition to their zeal, financial strength, numbers, expertise in the ways of Congress and the bureaucracy, and seal of legitimacy, environmentalists have been able to provide the peace movement with a powerful tool for obstructing U.S...

...tests might seem a little onersided, the NRDC decided it would look better to ask the Soviets—with whom DeWind now had relations through LANACfor permission to set up a similar station in the Soviet Union...

...and Soviet governments...

...Nor was the project, as the New York Times and the Washington Post's Mary McGrory sarcastically claimed, an instance of the U.S...

...group (religious and peace groups have been prime targets) that presents an opportunity to appeal directly to the American public over the head of its government on behalf of a Soviet policy proposal...

...In the words of the jointly signed document: "We share a common desire to improve the process of nuclear arms control negotiations...

...and the Soviet Union coming to an agreement on verification...

...The freeze movement considered cutting off production of fissionable materials as a way of indirectly stopping U.S...

...They were shown shafts tunneled into hillsides and told tests had once been made there...

...Feith says he was taken aback at this open acknowledgment that LANAC was premised on a falsehood...

...It withdrew its pamphlet on Nuclear Winter, which could bring ridicule on the scientists on its staff...

...22 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MAY 1987 NRDC helped draft, have agreed with its contention that neither costs nor even feasibility can be considered in the setting of standards...

...has experience of such a moratorium...

...There are names once familiar on the political scene, like former Iowa senator (now practicing attorney) John Culver and former Occupational Safety and Health Administration head (now dean of the University of Cincinnati medical school) Eula Bingham...

...When members of the LANAC delegation visited the Pentagon, Douglas Feith, then Deputy Assistant Secretary for Negotiations Policy, pointed out to them the fallacy in this statement only to be told impatiently that of course they realized that the Soviet delegation spoke for the government...

...22 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MAY 1987 NRDC helped draft, have agreed with its contention that neither costs nor even feasibility can be considered in the setting of standards...

...Originally due to end on December 31, 1985, it was extended first for three months, then until "the 'It is interesting that Edward Teller, in 1963 testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, argued against the treaty banning atmospheric testing (which of course was ratified) on the grounds that banning such tests could fatally hamper development of a missile defense system by the U.S...

...A leader in the nuclear freeze movement in Connecticut, a member of Helsinki, Asia, and Americas watches, DeWind founded the New York Chapter of the Lawyers Alliance for Nuclear Arms Control (of which more shortly...

...Ironically, as Dr...

...On the basis of these laws the NRDC then successfully sues the agency responsible for enforcement (usually the EPA, in which it too has allies, ready to leak information) in appellate courts...

...The NRDC's reaction was revealing...

...the effect of nuclear attack upon SDI defenses must also be tested...

...Since all they saw in the way of current activity, as one member of the group noted, was "a herd of mountain goats scrambling over the crumbled granite hilltop," New York Times correspondent Philip Taubman observed that the Russians' purpose in allowing journalists to visit the site seemed to be primarily "to encourage renewed coverage of the moratorium...

...contingency plan according to which, should nuclear war with the Soviet Union occur, nuclear depth charge bombs would be dispatched to these (and other) locations in order to destroy or deny access to Soviet nuclear submarines...

...has experience of such a moratorium...

...By the beginning of 1987 even the Center and its newsletter were gone, victims, according to Russell Seitz, of a credibility gap too big for the foundations that funded them...

...The irony of the NRDC, which resists market solutions to any problems, passing off its arrangement with a Communist government in these terms was presumably lost on most readers...

...Even scientists who were part of the disarmamentmovement were sufficiently embarrassed to speak openly...

...focus on alleged violations of existing treaties was wholly unreasonable given "the unanimous findings of leading seismologists and other scientists, including the State Department's own advisers, that there is no evidence of Soviet cheating...

...The second joint Soviet-LANAC paper, initially prepared by LANAC to allay American concerns about Soviet treaty compliance, focused on "strengthening and improving" that commission, which has been described by Secretary of Defense Weinberger as "a diplomatic carpet under which Soviet violations have been continuously swept, an Orwellian memory hole into which our concerns have been dumped like yesterday's trash...

...The culprit responsible for pollution, as well as for a host of threats resulting from the "chemical revolution," was the American corporation, seeking profits and expansion, regardless of environmental damage or hazard to public health...

...Teller argued that the intensive Soviet series of tests in 1961 and 1962, when the Soviets broke out of a three-year moratorium, had given them observations crucial to planning an effective missile defense...

...The culprit responsible for pollution, as well as for a host of threats resulting from the "chemical revolution," was the American corporation, seeking profits and expansion, regardless of environmental damage or hazard to public health...

...It thus becomes essential to maintain the credibility of thatdeterrent...

...The NRDC seems to have had no difficulty in raising the $2.4 million which the monitoring project is costing in the first year alone, although this means it has had to raise a third more than its normal annual budget on short notice...

...DeWind, a former president of the New York City bar association and a prominent tax attorney, was primarily interested in foreign policy...

...But the motives of a respected environmental organization, dedicated to the survival of the eco-system, were beyond suspicion...

...But the Senate Foreign Relations Committee voted for one-step ratification, also weakening the language on verification requirements...

...The NRDC claims, apparently with good cause, to have received encouragement from State Department officials...

...Since testing uncovers normal deterioration in nuclear warheads, missiles, and their safety systems, a test ban lowers the confidence that can be placed in nuclear stockpiles...

...was by treaty under no obligation to announce any of its underground tests...

...contingency plan according to which, should nuclear war with the Soviet Union occur, nuclear depth charge bombs would be dispatched to these (and other) locations in order to destroy or deny access to Soviet nuclear submarines...

...As an "honest broker" it might have been expected to be indignant to find that its "monitoring agreement" was a sham, and to pack up and return home...

...TEST NtoN rrog..-6 A FrARATRus VEP PC A PP" tom l iy THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MAY 1987 21 first nuclear blast by the U.S.," then until August 1986, then until the end of the year...

...But the NRDC merely expressed "disappointment" and announced that it was continuing its program of installing "state of the art" measuring devices that it was bringing to the Soviet Union...

...In describing their reaction, the tone of the NRDC's Newsline was one of concerned surprise: "One might say that jobs are a preoccupation with them—a preoccupation which is difficult to fathom from within the relative security of deskbound, white collar society...

...William Tucker, in his book Progress and Privilege, describes the worldview of these wealthy environmentalists under the rubric "the politics of aristocracy": sheltered from economic stress, they are unresponsive to the need for further growth of soci'It is interesting that the two organizations, so similar at the start, should have diverged so much...

...Environmentalists "rejected traditional science, but had not yet developed a new one...

...Although it lost that suit, the NRDC went on to sue against all forms of energy development: to stop off-shore oil leasing, to stop coal leasing on federal lands, to stop hydroelectric projects, and, of course, to stop nuclear power plants...

...So when the NRDC announced that its "in-country seismic monitoring stations demonstrate that verification is no longer an obstacle to a CTB," the Soviets were in a position to dismiss demands for verification of existing treaties that limited the yield of tests...

...The Soviet Union used the period of the 1958-1961 "ban" to plan a huge series of tests...

...Then there are individuals of great inherited wealth, like Laurance Rockefeller (whose son, also Laurance, is a long-time attorney on the NRDC staff...

...But the less reliance each side can place upon its arsenal, the more it will feel compelled to make up in quantity for the loss in "quality...

...As "conservation" is supposed to supply our future energy needs, so "trust" is presumably to provide an unlimited fund filling all our future defense needs...

...Two further volumes on the U.S...

...agrees to stop testing...

...Testing is crucial if SDI uses, as it may, a nuclear-powered x-ray laser...

...Since all they saw in the way of current activity, as one member of the group noted, was "a herd of mountain goats scrambling over the crumbled granite hilltop," New York Times correspondent Philip Taubman observed that the Russians' purpose in allowing journalists to visit the site seemed to be primarily "to encourage renewed coverage of the moratorium...

...The group established a committee with what it described as "Soviet counterparts" to prepare joint position papers...

...deterrent were published early in 1987, US...

...defense efforts: the environmental impact statement (EIS...

...Policy on going public had varied between administrations, and in April 1982 the Reagan Administration decided not to announce some tests with very low yield, on the grounds, as a spokesman for the Department of Energy put it, that the Soviets might not detect such tests from seismic data and there was no need to hand our adversaries national security information for the price of a newspaper...

...Ultimately, of course, arms control agreements that bind us and require only Soviet lip service become untenable for any U.S...

...But it failed to create massive public pressure on the Reagan Administration to follow suit...

...The moralistic zeal, careless of consequence, with which the NRDC approached environmental problems was to make it prone to accept the simplistic formulae of the peace movement a decade later...

...ety's other classes...

...n May 28, 1986 the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), the largest environmental "public interest" law firm in the U.S., entered into an agreement with the Soviet Academy of Sciences to monitor underground nuclear tests...

...By failing to make any effort to educate the public on what lies behind the NRDC's "public interest" facade, the Administration paves the way for further defeats...

...Originally due to end on December 31, 1985, it was extended first for three months, then until "the 'It is interesting that Edward Teller, in 1963 testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, argued against the treaty banning atmospheric testing (which of course was ratified) on the grounds that banning such tests could fatally hamper development of a missile defense system by the U.S...

...Policy on going public had varied between administrations, and in April 1982 the Reagan Administration decided not to announce some tests with very low yield, on the grounds, as a spokesman for the Department of Energy put it, that the Soviets might not detect such tests from seismic data and there was no need to hand our adversaries national security information for the price of a newspaper...

...Indeed not...

...This again represented an advantage for the Soviets, who were eager to purchase the equipment, superior to what they already possessed, in order to monitor American tests...

...Nuclear Winter was now defined as "Nuclear Winter in its broadest sense," as the newsletter argued that the Pentagon had failed to take into account the findings of a Royal Society of Canada study that "even without major climatic changes" there would be "major disruptions in world food supplies and distribution system...

...But Congresswoman Pat Schroeder has announced that she will lead the fight to secure passage of a test moratorium in 1987, a fight that may prove easier to win now that both houses have Democratic majorities...

...For example, Alston Chase, author of Playing God in Yellowstone, points out that the environmental coalition, the Northern Rockies Action Group, established or helped to establish Western Solidarity (a peace and disarmament organization), the Tri-State MX coalition, the Wyoming Nuclear Freeze Coalition, the Last Chance Peacemakers Coalition, and Montana Citizens to End the Arms Race...

...The NRDC, which in a recent survey of Washington environmental policy professionals was voted "the most influential" and "most effective" of organizations concerned with environmental management programs, was immediately made a promoter of a major Soviet policy initiative...

...Journalists and publishers are well represented, both on the board (with people like John B. Oakes, formerly of the New York Times, and a member of the Ochs-Sulzberger clan) and in a special "publications advisory committee" which includes not only such predictable members as Adam Hochschild, who runs the radical-chic Mother Jones, Hamilton Fish of the Nation, and Robert Bernstein of Random House, but also Gilbert Grosvenor, president of the staid National Geographic...

...In addition to the shock of that electoral victory and the emergence of disarmament as a glamour issue for the major foundations upon which the NRDC depends for funds, Adrian DeWind's appointment as chairman of the board in 1980 was also an important factor...

...But in actual practice, particularly in a society of free choice, we cannot keep topflight scientists concentrated on the preparation of an experiment which may or may not take place...

...And when the Pentagon balked, it successfully mobilized supporters in Congress to incorporate into the Defense Authorization Act for 1985 the requirement that such a study be prepared...

...The enthusiasm with which the foundations traditionally most supportive of environmentalism have moved into "peace" funding has encouraged environmental organizations to fall in line...

...The NRDC study team had obtained an article by an official of Lawrence Livermore laboratories, which mistakenly had not been classified, providing a breakdown of the yield of all American nuclear tests from 1980-1984...

...Yet the NRDC's presence was purely symbolic...

...designs...

...But the motives of a respected environmental organization, dedicated to the survival of the eco-system, were beyond suspicion...

...The Soviet Union reaped a rich global propaganda harvest and repeatedly galvanized proponents in the U.S...

...Richard Wagner, Jr., a former assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Atomic Energy, pointed out in 1986 hearings on nuclear testing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, safety systems would be the most severely compromised by a CTB...

...And the report reiterated that regardless of the outcome of any technical studies "the most basic elements of our national policy remain unchanged...

...While the individuals on the NRDC's board have of course changed over time, the kinds of people who are represented on it remain the same...

...It thus becomes essential to maintain the credibility of thatdeterrent...

...10910Rilt THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MAY 1987 23 would be catastrophic, and U.S...

...While the newsletter sharply attacked the Pentagon's follow-up report, the grounds had shifted...

...In 1983 De-Wind went with a delegation from LANAC, Lawyers Alliance for Nuclear Arms Control, whose New York chapter he had founded, to the Soviet Union...

...With or without Nuclear Winter, nuclear war How did Gorbachev come to pluck out this small organization to represent the United States in arms control negotiations...

...The first joint SovietLANAC paper was an endorsement of a comprehensive test ban, "A Test Moratorium—A First Stage Toward a Nuclear Freeze and Reductions...

...As Congress, under the NRDC-fostered illusion that a "verification breakthrough" had been achieved, pressed for a moratorium on all testing, the Administration tried to contain the damage by granting concessions to the activists...

...T n addition to its importance for advancing a major Soviet policy initiative, the NRDC-Soviet monitoring pact is significant in dramatizing the extent to which the environmental movement is becoming integrated into the anti-Western defense movement...

...designs...

...The Senate would vote for ratification contingent on the U.S...

...From its inception the NRDC has acted as if any consideration of costs was beside the point...

...Administration policy in Central America has already fallen victim to a series of pro-Marxist groups that have been able to pass themselves off as "human rights" advocates...

...There is not a single economist on its 107-member staff, and it is genuinely taken aback when confronted with the reality that costs matter to those directly affected by its actions...

...And in the summer of 1986 the House duly passed an amendment to the defense appropriations bill mandating a one-year moratorium on nuclear tests over one kiloton...

...The NRDC vigorously defended the Soviet Union's record of compliance with existing treaties...

...Moreover, the media, which focused so much attention on the NRDC-Soviet agreement while the Soviet moratorium was in effect, were virtually silent when it turned out to be meaningless...

...administration...

...The NRDC was created in 1970, one of many environmental organizations that sprang up in response to the newly discovered "environmental crisis...

...He was ordered to do it...

...The Pentagon's second report reflected these developments...

...Nuclear Warhead Facility Profiles, again with Arkin as co-author, but so far the databook on the Soviet Union has not materialized...

...And while there was division within the Sierra Club on whether to make prevention of nuclear war a priority issue—the compromise was to make it an "unfunded priority"—it seems only a matter of time before funding follows...

...One reason may be that the NRDC has little to gain from a volume that would analyze the even more extensive Soviet nuclear production complex...

...The NRDC did not give up...

...The study pointed out the uncertainties of the data underlying Nuclear Winter...

...The purpose of the project, according to the preface, was to show "just how `nuclearized' the U.S...

...In 1984 it issued a pamphlet, Nuclear Winter: Silent Spring, which set forth the theory: firing "just a fraction of the superpowers' nuclear arsenals" (the pamphlet suggested one-fifteenth might be sufficient) would inject enough smoke and dust into the atmosphere to plunge the Northern and part of the Southern hemisphere into months of freezing cold...

...Joining with the disarmament lobby, it mobilized its congressional connections, and following two days of hearings by the Senate Armed Services Committee in October 1985, the Pentagon was ordered to produce another report by March 1986...

...The NRDC seems to have felt it could employ the same strategy to ban nuclear weapons that it used to achieve bans on pesticides: obtain a government "study" showing adverse health effects, and then use a variety of pressure tactics (e.g., congressional lobbying, public hysteria, and law suits...

...Environmentalists "rejected traditional science, but had not yet developed a new one...

...Thus when it broke the moratorium, it conducted over 40 tests in two months, including one over 50 megatons, the largest nuclear explosion in history...

...The NRDC, along with the rest of the freeze network, could not fail to see that in the CTB they had a more salable issue than the freeze...

...Tambora erupted in 1815 with a force 2,400 times what astronomer Carl Sagan declared sufficient to create Nuclear Winter, ejecting 25 cubic miles of debris into the atmosphere, the average global temperature dropped by less than one degree centigrade...

...group (religious and peace groups have been prime targets) that presents an opportunity to appeal directly to the American public over the head of its government on behalf of a Soviet policy proposal...

...In the NRDC worldview, pollution (immoral) was to be outlawed (by the legislative process) and the ban would be enforced (by the courts...

...Two further volumes on the U.S...

...As Congressman Ed Markey noted in his book Nuclear Peril, which called for a merger of the environmental and peace movements, the environmentalists' opposition to nuclear energy provides a bridge to cross over into opposing nuclear weapons production...

...It specified those implications in its pamphlet on Nuclear Winter: a comprehensive nuclear test ban, a cut of over 90 percent in nuclear arsenals, an end to SDI, and "citizen action...

...nuclear deterrent was not designed so as to enhance endurance in a no-test environment...

...In1983 the NRDC served as a co-sponsor of the World After Nuclear War Conference and launched its own "Nuclear Winter Project...

...The NRDC claimed that the Tennessee Valley Authority's purchases of strip-mined coal for its power plants required an environmental impact statement, and that the "devastating effects" of strip mining should be calculated in the true cost of coal...

...Nuclear Winter was now defined as "Nuclear Winter in its broadest sense," as the newsletter argued that the Pentagon had failed to take into account the findings of a Royal Society of Canada study that "even without major climatic changes" there would be "major disruptions in world food supplies and distribution system...

...The NRDC certainly has no intention of advocating a drastically stepped up conventional defense to counter the strong Soviet superiority in that area...

...In its eagerness to hound the Admin- istration for engaging in "secret" tests, the NRDC decided to set up its own seismic stations on private land near the Nevada test site...

...To be sure, the concessions were as cosmetic as the NRDC's monitoring agreement...

...The Ford Foundation served as catalyst, bringing together young activist attorneys with people of established wealth...

...administration was reluctant to allow the technology transfer, neither was it eager to provide the NRDC (and its formidable media allies) with another issue on which to do battle...

...As in the subsequent NRDC-Soviet monitoring pact, the agreement was presented as one between private citizens of the two countries...

...Most numerous are attorneys, ranging from David Sive, whose firm pioneered in environmental lawsuits, to partners in traditional law firms...

...More and more environmental organizations are crossing that bridge...

...The NRDC found the Nuclear Winter apocalypse an appropriate means to rally support for "outlawing" nuclear weaponry...

...They rejected the old political ways, but lacked a new plan...

...The enthusiasm with which the foundations traditionally most supportive of environmentalism have moved into "peace" funding has encouraged environmental organizations to fall in line...

...The Soviet Union reaped a rich global propaganda harvest and repeatedly galvanized proponents in the U.S...

...The Soviets made it clear from the outset that the stations might have to be closed down when tests were resumed, i.e., when there was anything to monitor...

...televisioncrew through a rugged region 90 miles west of Semipalatinsk, close to where the NRDC's monitoring equipment had been set up...

...The DOD duly issued its report in March 1985...

...The immediate precipitant of theSoviet-NRDC agreement was yet another NRDC "study," once again co-written by Arkin, designed to undercut the U.S...

...Adrian DeWind, chairman of the NRDC's board, called the agreement "the most significant citizens arms control initiative ever undertaken...

...Thus MIT's George Rathjens, president of the Council for a Livable World, declared: "Nuclear Winter is the worst example of the misrepresentation of science to the public in my memory...

...Ironically, as Dr...

...And SDI, with its promise of removing the nuclear sword of Damocles by other means, did indeed derail the freeze movement...

...This again represented an advantage for the Soviets, who were eager to purchase the equipment, superior to what they already possessed, in order to monitor American tests...

...When the thesis was first advanced, Petr Beckmann, whose newsletter Access to Energy specializes in puncturing the pretensions of politicized science, pointed out that after Mt...

...The Western alliance has chosen, for good or ill, to rely primarily on the nuclear deterrent for its defense...

...Thus MIT's George Rathjens, president of the Council for a Livable World, declared: "Nuclear Winter is the worst example of the misrepresentation of science to the public in my memory...

...Nuclear Forces and Capabilities, which appeared in 1984, is a handbook providing information, much of it in tabular form, on the development, size, design, and performance of U.S...

...But by this time Nuclear Winter was unraveling and the NRDC's bullying backfired...

...Ironically SDI, which the CTB campaign is designed to head off, had received much of its impetus from the success of the freeze movement...

...The first volume, US...

...Newsweek hastened to trumpet the arrangement as a "private accord" between Soviet and American scientists...

...Even such a blatant violation of the ABM treaty as the great radar station at Krasnoyarsk is shrugged off by the lobby...

...In addition to their zeal, financial strength, numbers, expertise in the ways of Congress and the bureaucracy, and seal of legitimacy, environmentalists have been able to provide the peace movement with a powerful tool for obstructing U.S...

...In Congress the NRDC's aura of le- gitimacy and its extensive ties to congressmen and their staffs gave the Soviet's CTB campaign a major boost...

...The project was initiated by Oleg Sokolov of the Soviet embassy, who attended a LANAC meeting and suggested a delegation travel to the Soviet Union to engage in arms-reduction negotiations...

...The U.S...

...Nor was the project, as the New York Times and the Washington Post's Mary McGrory sarcastically claimed, an instance of the U.S...

...But it failed to create massive public pressure on the Reagan Administration to follow suit...

...before the International Court of Justice), DeWind was able to give the project greater credibility by including NRDC trustees John Culver and Shirley Hufstedler, a former U.S...

...On the basis of these laws the NRDC then successfully sues the agency responsible for enforcement (usually the EPA, in which it too has allies, ready to leak information) in appellate courts...

...The NRDC enjoyed high prestige as an organization devoted to that highest of purposes, "the public interest...

...government permitting the "privatization" of even such a fundamental responsibility as arms control negotiations...

...The Western alliance has chosen, for good or ill, to rely primarily on the nuclear deterrent for its defense...

...The U.S...

...But the NRDC merely expressed "disappointment" and announced that it was continuing its program of installing "state of the art" measuring devices that it was bringing to the Soviet Union...

...Under DeWind's leadership the NRDC began its Nuclear Weapons Databook project in 1981...

...The NRDC study team had obtained an article by an official of Lawrence Livermore laboratories, which mistakenly had not been classified, providing a breakdown of the yield of all American nuclear tests from 1980-1984...

...And indeed in February o f this year, when the Soviets renewed testing, they disconnected the NRDC equipment...

...Actually, although the Soviet Union and NRDC repeatedly refer to a comprehensive test ban, what is really at stake is a moratorium on testing...

...24 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MAY 1987 et Academy of Sciences, was signed...

...scrupulously abide by the terms of treaties, rigorously, interpreted (note the lobby's fury at President Reagan's interpretation of the ABM treaty as permitting deployment of SDI...

...He thereby single-handedly managed to strain relations between the U.S...

...And although mainline environmental organizations continue to practice what the new philosophers of environmentalism dismiss as "Shallow Ecology," treating "symptoms" and not "causes," they were in fact influenced by the new philosophers of nature in turning toward a more radical global activism...

...Secretary of Education and Justice of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals...

...If the Soviets had installed on their territory the Institute for Policy Studies, the Center for Defense Information, or any of the plethora of admittedly radical groups, the move would readily have been seen as a propaganda ploy...

...It produced a mere five-page "update" in March 1986, pointing out that there was "an emerging consensus" that the effects would be "considerably less severe" than originally thought...

...The NRDC has been particularly proficient in wielding the EIS to that end, seeking, for example to prevent the restarting and expansion of DOE's Savannah River Plant, which produces nuclear materials for weapons programs, and the renovation of the Feed Materials Production Center in Ohio, which enriches uranium...

...Thus when it broke the moratorium, it conducted over 40 tests in two months, including one over 50 megatons, the largest nuclear explosion in history...

...government permitting the "privatization" of even such a fundamental responsibility as arms control negotiations...

...Joining with the disarmament lobby, it mobilized its congressional connections, and following two days of hearings by the Senate Armed Services Committee in October 1985, the Pentagon was ordered to produce another report by March 1986...

...n May 28, 1986 the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), the largest environmental "public interest" law firm in the U.S., entered into an agreement with the Soviet Academy of Sciences to monitor underground nuclear tests...

...T n its Nuclear Winter pamphlet, the NRDC had called for a comprehensive test ban...

...According to the agreement, Soviet scientists would establish three monitoring stations, to be operated jointly by American and Soviet seismologists, within 100 miles of their chief nuclear weapons testing site at Semipalatinsk...

...That the Soviets should target LANAC in their quest for congenial private groups with which to make "people's treaties" is not surprising...

...Arkin achieved notoriety in December 1985 when he distributed to the press in Iceland, Puerto Rico, Bermuda, and Canada copies of what he admitted was a top-secret document: a 1975 U.S...

...As in the subsequent NRDC-Soviet monitoring pact, the agreement was presented as one between private citizens of the two countries...

...the effect of nuclear attack upon SDI defenses must also be tested...

...ety's other classes...

...When the Pentagon failed to come up with the "proper" conclusions, the NRDC, unable to sue, came up with the next best solution—make them do it again...

...Chase points out the extent to which ideological environmentalism has been counterproductive at Yellowstone National Park, as the park's rich animal and plant life die, victim to the concept of preserving the "purity" of some abstract nonexistent eco-system...

...By failing to make any effort to educate the public on what lies behind the NRDC's "public interest" facade, the Administration paves the way for further defeats...

...A comprehensive test ban, should it be achieved, will almost certainly prove equally counterproductive for the NRDC's ostensible goal of sharply reducing nuclear arsenals...

...But in actual practice, particularly in a society of free choice, we cannot keep topflight scientists concentrated on the preparation of an experiment which may or may not take place...

...It has already conceded "the much more limited availability of data on the Soviet nuclear weapon system" and in the introduction to its first databook sought to head off potential criticism by arguing that while "an appearance of imbalance" might persist even after the Soviet databook was published, this was irrelevant because the volumes were "not intended to be another document on the assessment of the U.S.-Soviet Military balance...

...In some regions of the country environmental organizations have spun off a whole network of "peace" groups...

...It demanded that the Department of Defense fundamentally reexamine its nuclear weapons policies in light of the new "scientific evidence" on a looming Nuclear Winter...

...In, part the network, like the Soviet government, sees a test ban as a way to stop SDI...

...The Federation of American Scientists' Frank von Hippel, who had written the introduction to the NRDC's first Nuclear Weapons Databook, paved the way with a trip to Moscow...

...for their CTB campaign, jumped at the proposal...

...it threatened the Energy Department with a lawsuit if it tested laser beam weapons without an environmental impact statement...

...The NRDC seems to have had no difficulty in raising the $2.4 million which the monitoring project is costing in the first year alone, although this means it has had to raise a third more than its normal annual budget on short notice...

...administration was reluctant to allow the technology transfer, neither was it eager to provide the NRDC (and its formidable media allies) with another issue on which to do battle...

...Although it lost that suit, the NRDC went on to sue against all forms of energy development: to stop off-shore oil leasing, to stop coal leasing on federal lands, to stop hydroelectric projects, and, of course, to stop nuclear power plants...

...It is ironic that the only arms control treaty to win universal approval (even outgoing Assistant Secretary of Defense Richard Perle, asked by the New York Times if any current treaties were good, replied, "The atmospheric test ban"), if Teller is right, should have postponed work on strategic defense—underground testing eventually proved sufficient for moving ahead with the program—to a period when Congress had become much less supportive of defense programs and a domestic network of "peace' organizations had become far more influential...

...Although at its peak then, Jacquith warned that the freeze could not retain long-term backing...

...The amendment died when the Senate agreed to White House pleas not to tie the President's hands at the Reykjavik summit...

...In describing their reaction, the tone of the NRDC's Newsline was one of concerned surprise: "One might say that jobs are a preoccupation with them—a preoccupation which is difficult to fathom from within the relative security of deskbound, white collar society...

...The arms control lobby directs all its efforts to signing agreements, none to securing their enforcement by the Soviets...

...Rather it was the type of agreement the Soviet government finds increasingly attractive: a controlled contact with a private U.S...

...Even scientists who were part of the disarmamentmovement were sufficiently embarrassed to speak openly...

...And when the Pentagon balked, it successfully mobilized supporters in Congress to incorporate into the Defense Authorization Act for 1985 the requirement that such a study be prepared...

...Should this resolution be approved on the Senate floor, it would open the way for a future President (since Reagan would presumably not sign a treaty lacking verification provisions) to sign these treaties in the absence of any provision for effective verification.4 In the meantime, although at this writing hearings have not yet been scheduled for the Schroeder bill mandating a testing moratorium, the prospects are strong that it will pass the House again this year, and its chances in a Democratic Senate have of course improved...

...In an interview published in Pravda, the NRDC's Thomas Cochran was quoted as saying that the agreement demonstrated that claims that the Soviet Union was unwilling to satisfy U.S...

...bombing of Hiroshima...