NSC Prober Scowcroft Faults Reagan on Arms

President Reagan’s nuclear arms control policies were sharply criticized today by Brent Scowcroft, a former national security adviser and a member of a commission recently named by Reagan to investigate the National Security Council.

Scowcroft, a retired Air Force lieutenant general and head of Reagan’s 1983 commission on the MX nuclear missile, made his comments during a House Armed Services subcommittee hearing on Administration arms control policies.

Scowcroft was critical of a proposal by Reagan at the Iceland summit meeting with Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev which would have eliminated all ballistic nuclear missiles within a decade.

“His vision, no matter how grand it may be, is flawed and unrecognizable, at least in one step,” Scowcroft said.

During the two-hour hearing, Scowcroft declined to discuss with subcommittee members his separate role as a member of the commission appointed earlier this week by Reagan to investigate the NSC. That three-member panel was named in the wake of controversy over the NSC’s role in the sale of arms to Iran and the diversion of profits to Nicaraguan rebels.

Scowcroft, a national security adviser to former President Gerald R. Ford, refused to say how the NSC commission plans to do its work. But he did say he thought a staff director might be named soon.

He also declined to answer questions about whether his criticism of Reagan’s arms control policies would affect his work on the NSC commission.

Scowcroft said Reagan’s proposal to Gorbachev at Iceland “was designed to give a lift to the American people.”

But he said it was not well thought-out because he noted that the Soviets have a large advantage in a wide variety of non-nuclear weapons and thus it makes no sense to eliminate them “without a convincing replacement.”