Historical Dictionary of United States Intelligence

were initiated on 17 November 1969. The first round of talks, alter-

nating between Helsinki and Vienna, produced a set of agreements

(SALTI) on 26 May 1972—theAnti-Ballistic Missile(ABM)Treaty

and the Interim Agreement on Strategic Offensive Arms, both of

which restricted the parties in the type and quantity of weapons each

could possess. For example, the Interim Agreement limited the

United States to 1054 intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) and

the Soviet Union to 1607 ICBMs. The second round of negotiations

resulted in a set of agreements (SALT II) restricting the number of

each side’s strategic weapons. The U.S. Senate did not ratify SALTII

because of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistanin 1979, but both

sides observed its major limitations until 1986.

Both SALT I and SALT II provided verification regimes that in-

cluded the use of national technical means, consisting of overhead

reconnaissance, imagery intelligence (IMINT), andsignals intelli-

gence (SIGINT) activities. The agreements specified that neither side

could obstruct monitoring activities. SALT II prohibited the use of

telemetryencryption if it impeded verification compliance with pro-

visions of the treaty.

STRATEGIC ARMS REDUCTION TREATY (START). The first

agreement, START I, signed in 1991 by President George H. W.

Bushand Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev, reduced the num-

ber of U.S. and Soviet ballistic missiles by about one-third and

one-half, respectively. Because of the dissolution of the USSR in

1991, implementation was delayed until 1994 when agreements

were reached with former Soviet republics. The second agreement,

START II, signed in 1993 by President George H. W. Bush and

Russian president Boris Yeltsin, proposed more intense reduction

in strategic warheads than START I, but could be implemented

only after START I targets were met. The Russian parliament

eventually ratified STARTII, and the U.S. Senate ratified START

II in January 1996.

The two sides agreed in late 1990s to negotiate STARTIII, which

would address Russian concerns with STARTII. The goal of START

III is further to reduce the strategic arsenals of each party to a level

of 2,000 to 2,500 deployed strategic nuclear warheads. This lower

level supposedly is to assist Russia in avoiding a massive missile

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