Todd Jacobson
NS&D Monitor
5/30/2014
Ten Republican Senators are asking the State Department’s Inspector General to investigate how much Assistant Secretary of State for Arms Control, Verification, and Compliance Rose Gottemoeller was aware of possible Russian violations of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty during the ratification process of the New START Treaty. In a May 23 letter, the Senators asked State Department IG Steve Linick for an interim briefing on the IG’s findings by Sept. 30. Gottemoeller is now the Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security. "We are concerned that the then-Assistant Secretary was either not aware of such compliance concerns or chose not to present this information to the U.S. Senate," Sens. Jim Risch (Idaho), John Cornyn (Texas), Marco Rubio (Fla.), Ron Johnson (Wisc.), John Barasso (Wyo.), Deb Fischer (Neb.), Jerry Moran (Kan.), Jim Inhofe (Okla.), David Vitter (La.), and Mike Lee (Utah) wrote in a May 23 letter to State Department IG Steve Linick.
The Senators also said they were concerned that the potential violations had not been included in any of the State Department’s annual compliance reports, urging the IG to find out "whether the Assistant Secretary or any of the AVC bureau’s staff were aware of the compliance concerns regarding the INF Treaty during the preparation and submission of the [July 2010 compliance report] as well as during the process of the U.S. Senate’s consideration of the New START Treaty that was ratified on December 22, 2010."
Growing Concern From GOP
The INF Treaty that was signed by the Soviet Union and the United States in 1987 required each country to get rid of missiles with ranges of 300 and 4,000 miles, and the accord also prevents each country from testing or building such weapons. But reports earlier this year suggested that top State Department officials met with NATO allies in January to provide info on alleged Russian tests of a new land-based cruise missile that violates the treaty.
The letter comes on the heels of a separate request from Sens. Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.) and Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) to have the Department of Defense’s Inspector General examine the Pentagon’s awareness of possible INF violations during the New START ratification process, and growing concern from Republicans about the Administration’s knowledge of the possible violations. In April, House and Senate Republicans introduce legislation designed to hold Moscow accountable for the potential cheating, and provisions in the House version of the Fiscal Year 2015 Defense Authorization Act limit nonproliferation spending and block the implementation of the New START Treaty contingent on certification that Russia is not violating the INF Treaty, as well as other provisions.
Sens. Also Ask About State Dept. Reorg.
The Senators also asked the Linick to examine how a decision to combine two previously separate bureaus, the arms control bureau and the verification and compliance bureau, into one organization. The State Department moved to consolidate the bureaus under then-Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Ellen Tauscher at the beginning of the Obama Administration, and the Senators questioned whether the move allowed for the "full, independent and non-biased consideration" of arms control and verification and compliance issues. "In your opinion, is there any potential for loss of focus on either of these important matters with having them combined into one bureau as compared with the arrangement of these two subject matters in two separate bureaus prior to the Department’s reorganization in late 2010?"
