Word: abm
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This sharp attack was typical of the controversy Sofaer has triggered by his attempt to reverse an almost universally held understanding of the 1972 ABM treaty so that the Reagan Administration would be able to test SDI components in space. It was not the first time he has come under fire. In nearly two years as the top legal adviser to Shultz, Sofaer has offered a series of aggressive can-do opinions on a range of foreign policy issues. Democratic Senator Joseph Biden calls Sofaer's work an "unconscionable politicization of the office...
...opinion on the ABM treaty is particularly vulnerable. Sofaer queried nobody from the original negotiating team except Paul Nitze, the President's special adviser on arms control. A recognized authority on the pact, Nitze supported Sofaer's conclusion that the agreement did not forbid research and testing of "exotic" weapons such as lasers and particle beams. Senators savaged Sofaer for relying heavily on the negotiating record, ignoring assurances made to the Senate during ratification. Special irritation was reserved for the way Sofaer quoted documents and sources out of context. In a courtroom, says Georgia Democrat Sam Nunn, such sleight...
Deeply shaken, Sofaer yielded to the threat of a Senate subpoena last week to explain his opinion. Although he still believes the ABM treaty permits Star Wars testing, Sofaer conceded that his methodology had been flawed, a failure he attributed to young staff lawyers. Some Senators rallied to the defense of Sofaer. Democrat Ernest Hollings of South Carolina criticized his colleagues for "rushing to judgment" and argued the "record shows no ambiguity that the Soviets refused again and again to agree to prohibit future systems...
...suffering from laryngitis. But the Georgia Democrat, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, had a lot to say, so he stocked up on throat lozenges. In a series of speeches in the Senate, he addressed one of the most important arms-control questions today: Does the 1972 Antiballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty permit the U.S. to develop and test a space-based Star Wars system...
...scale strategic defenses, lest the accumulation of shields on one side provoke a proliferation of nuclear spears on the other. Secretary of State George Shultz and his chief arms-control adviser Paul Nitze got President Reagan to declare that the SDI program is a research program permitted by the ABM treaty. But in 1985 other officials -- particularly Assistant Secretary of Defense Richard Perle and State Department Legal Adviser Abraham Sofaer -- launched a campaign to "reinterpret" the pact. According to them, nothing in the treaty impinges on the right of the U.S. to go beyond research and actually test space-based...