“Verification” is the principal issue to be resolved before the SALT II Treaty has a chance to be ratified — or so goes the prevailing wisdom in Washington. It now appears, however, that the question really is whether the Carter Administration is to be believed in its claim that SALT II can be verified.
A sensational news scoop by the New York Times indicates that the Carter Administration simply cannot be believed on the issue of verification. Thanks to the great American institution of freedom of the press, that newspaper uncovered and published a vital piece of information that had been suppressed for two years by the Carter Administration.
Two years ago this spring, Andrew D. Lee and Christopher J. Boyce were convicted of attempting to sell the Russians some secrets about a proposed U.S. satellite system called Pyramider. Since Pyramider was never built, the convictions were not | treated as major news and the two men went quietly off to prison.
Now the truth is out about the additional evidence which was suppressed at the time of the trial. Lee and Boyce, sold the Soviet K.G.B. the secrets of our most modern functioning satellite systems, including the major ones called Rhyolite, Argus, and Keyhole for $80,000.
Rhyolite and Argus are used to intercept telemetry signals transmitted by Soviet missiles during their test launchings. They, along with the on-ground monitoring stations in Iran (which are now lost), were the primary means by which our country planned to help verify Soviet compliance with SALT II. Rhyolite can also monitor Chinese missile tests.
Russian knowledge of the workings of Rhyolite and Argus make it easy for them to code or camouflage their missile tests and sites and to transmit erroneous data to deceive us, thereby diminishing or eliminating the ability of U.S. satellites to discover what the Russians are doing.
The thousands of documents which Lee and Boyce sold to the Soviets also contained information about another photo reconnaissance system called Keyhole. Young CIA employee William Kampiles completed the Soviets’ information about this system by selling the top-secret Keyhole technical manual to a K.G.B. agent in Greece for $3,000.
CIA security restrictions are supposed to prevent any one person from having access to several intelligence gathering systems. But somehow, “inadvertently,” a youth named Boyce was permitted to have access to many intelligence gathering systems.
Boyce was employed by TRW Systems Group, a California aerospace company, at $140 a week. He worked in a communications vault transmitting coded messages between the TRW plant and the CIA. His good friend, Andrew Lee, was a heroin addict.
What do you suppose motivated the Carter Administration to suppress all this at the trial of Boyce and Lee? Obviously it was not to protect national security or to keep secrets from the Soviets. The Russians already knew the secrets which were sold and delivered to them by Boyce, Lee, and Kampiles.
Only the American people were denied the right to know. Why? So the Carter Administration could mislead us into believing we have SALT verification capabilities when we have not? An Administration that would keep us in the dark about something so crucial to our national security as this is simply not worthy of belief about SALT verification.
But hiding the truth from the American people is only part of the problem. What about the coverup and protection of the higher officials who allowed security to be so lax that one minor employee sold for $80,000, and another minor employee sold for $3,000, top defense secrets that cost us hundreds of millions of dollars to develop, and may have irreparably damaged our nation’s chance for survival?
The Watergate coverup sent many men to jail and removed President Nixon although it was no threat to national security. Why doesn’t the Justice Department prosecute the higher-ups who were responsible for the sale to the Russians of our space miltary satellite secrets?
