Open Skies, Open Lands: Open Season On US Security

The Center for Security Policy today expressed grave misgivings about the elimination of most travel restrictions on Soviet diplomats and journalists in the United States. This initiative has been dubbed "Open Lands" and reportedly has been agreed to as part of a reciprocal U.S.-Soviet arrangement during the Wyoming ministerial meetings between Secretary of State James Baker and Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze.

The Open Lands proposal comes on the heels of a similar proposal unveiled by President Bush in May involving the resuscitation of the Eisenhower Administration’s idea of "Open Skies." Open Skies would involve periodic reconnaissance overflights of Soviet bloc and NATO territory by the other side’s aircraft; it is now the subject of East-West negotiations.

"The Open Lands proposal — like the earlier Open Skies initiative — is a dangerously ill-considered public relations gambit which should not be confused with a serious, sustained effort to increase freedom of movement in and the transparency of the Soviet Union," said Frank J. Gaffney, Jr., the Center’s director. "Instead, it amounts to an invitation to the USSR to exploit unprecedented opportunities for espionage and technology theft."

Gaffney remarked, "This proposal is all the more regrettable for its coming at the very moment that the Director of Central Intelligence, William Webster, and the Chairman and Vice-Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Senators David Boren and William Cohen, among others, are expressing alarm at the awesome spying campaign already being mounted by the Soviet Union. Experts from across the political spectrum agree that U.S. counter-intelligence resources are woefully inadequate to meet even the present challenge — to say nothing of what will result should Open Lands materialize."

Ken DeGraffenreid, a nationally recognized authority on intelligence matters and member of the Center’s Board of Advisors, observed, "The Open Lands initiative fails to take into account fundamental differences between the Soviet and American societies — differences that ensure a proposal like this will have asymmetrical and adverse effects for U.S. interests."

"Ours is an open society in which relatively few things are secret," DeGraffenreid noted. "Those that are, however, tend to be essential to preserving the qualitative edge upon which U.S. security relies. Accordingly, the Soviets place a high premium on targeting and compromising such secrets; greater proximity to classified sites and adjacent communities in the United States would greatly facilitate these tasks."

De Graffenreid added, "By contrast, glasnost notwithstanding, excessive secrecy remains a hallmark of the Soviet Union. Even matters that have no bearing on the actual security interests of the USSR are concealed from both the Soviet people and foreign observers. Travel limitations on U.S. personnel do not contribute appreciably to the resulting, sizeable uncertainty about real Soviet military capabilities and intentions."

The Center for Security Policy believes that under such circumstances, travel restrictions on Soviet citizens in the United States represent an indispensable device for limiting Soviet espionage and technology theft — a purpose that must be served whether or not U.S. diplomats and journalists are permitted to travel freely in the Soviet Union. Irrespective of the Soviets’ decision to impose or rescind comparable restrictions on American travel in the USSR, it would not be in the United States’ interest to give Soviet nationals greater access to presently restricted areas of the United States.

The Center urges the Congress to examine the "Open Lands" proposal with care and, if necessary, to adopt legislation that would prevent this ill-conceived initiative from being implemented to the detriment of American security. At the very least, hearings should immediately be held to assess the additional burden that greater Soviet access to currently denied regions of this country will impose on U.S. counter-intelligence resources and the budgetary impact of addressing that shortfall.