Engineer Memoirs
Cartoon from San Francisco Chronicle of START negotiators Edward Rowny and Viktor Karpov.
The Kerry Waghom drawing is reprinted by permission of Chronicle Features, San Francisco, California.
prior discussion. Had he done so, I think the Congress would have killed the
program before it was born.
We were in Geneva when the President made his speech on the strategic defense
initiative. As a matter of fact, I headed the five-year review of the ABM treaty,
which was then in progress. The treaty review was divided into two parts. The
first part was a philosophical discussion which I carried on with Karpov at my
level. The second part dealt with details and was carried out by the Standing
Consultative Commission [SCC].
I was in the act of discussing the philosophical underpinnings of offense and
defense when the President made his speech. The speech created a firestorm in
Geneva. Ambassador Karpov, my opposite number, became agitated and accused
the United States of having violated the ABM treaty by proposing theSDI [strategic
defense initiative] program. I told him right off that we were not violating the
ABM treaty. Karpov criticized me for making such a statement without having
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