Ex-Admiral Sees Hope for Nuclear Arms Pact : Gayler Says Treaties That Fulfill the Interests of Both the United States, Soviets Are Possible

Noel Gayler, a retired Navy admiral, told 150 people gathered Thursday night at UC Irvine that the only hope for a comprehensive East-West nuclear arms pact is if “both sides believe that the risks of an arms-control agreement are smaller than the risks of not having it.”

Gayler, standing alone on the starkly lighted stage of UCI’s Fine Arts Concert Hall, cautioned that “it’s entirely possible in dealing with the Russians that they will not appreciate their self-interest.” At the same time, he added, “We at the government level in this country don’t appreciate our self-interest, which is to reduce the risk of nuclear war. . . . “

Gayler, 70, was the first speaker in the university’s Global Peace and Conflict Studies Colloquia, part of a new academic concentration offered jointly by the School of Social Sciences, the Program in Social Ecology, and the School of Humanities.

“It is my conviction,” Gayler said, “that treaties can be drawn that will follow the interests both of the Soviet Union and ourselves, and that if they are properly drawn they can be observed with a high confidence.”

Selected Targets

In the course of his 45-year career in the military, Gayler earned three Navy crosses and at one time commanded all U.S. forces in the Pacific. He once held the title of “Gray Eagle,” given to the oldest active flier in the Navy. Between 1967 and 1969, as part of the U.S. weapons program, Gayler selected potential Soviet targets for American nuclear weapons.

Gayler said provisions of treaties with the Soviets “can be adequately verified,” and “we shouldn’t confuse these issues of verification . . . with issues of compliance.”

Increasingly sophisticated methods for detecting nuclear weapons tests, such as satellite photography and seismic measurements, Gayler said, have changed the shape of previous discussions over methods of verification. “Seismic detections are accurate to a kiloton of underground testing,” he said, “accuracy so dramatic as to neutralize the benefit of underground testing.”

A possible sticking point in upcoming negotiations, this one coming from the American side, he said, is the role of space.

Satellites Key Issue

“(It is) because the U.S. is more dependent on satellites than (the Soviets) are. If we get into the anti-satellite business, the Soviets will match us, and we’ll up the ante, and the Soviets will match that. And it doesn’t much make any difference which starts first. So if they offer a ban on anti-satellite development, we should grab it and run, because it is very much in the interest of the United States that we do so.”

Gayler is more critical of political leaders than of the military.

“Policy-makers have an enormous responsibility, which they have not always met, not to conduct deliberations in such a way that the public does not understand what is at stake,” he said. “Policy-makers have not always resisted the temptation to invoke secret information unjustifiably to support the policy without public examination.”

In a question-and-answer session that followed his remarks, Gayler was asked whether he thought there was an “Armageddon mind-set” on the inevitability of nuclear war among high-ranking military officers.

‘Committed Ideologues”

“We don’t have it,” he said. “I think that the military professionals are not the people that are pushing this nuclear arms race, but it’s certain committed ideologues in the Department of Defense and elsewhere--civilians--most of whom have never been shot at or have seen a nuclear explosion.”

Seated in the first row of the Fine Arts Concert Hall was Thomas Tierney, who recently donated $100,000 to UCI for a proposed international peace research institute on the campus. Tierney, a retired Air Force officer who also worked with nuclear weapons, expressed his admiration for Gayler after the speech. “He had to travel a lot of paths to get here,” Tierney said.