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efforts, some special skills such as test con-

tainment reside in only a few individuals today,

and some of the special equipment is no longer

maintained or available from private industry.19

It should be noted that the United States previously

learned the hard lesson of not being ready to conduct a

nuclear test.  President Kennedy's address to the American

people in March 1962 summed up the U.S. experience with

the 1958-61 moratorium:

On September 1 of last year, while the United

States and the United Kingdom were negotiating in

good faith at Geneva, the Soviet Union callously

broke its moratorium with a two-month series of

more than 40 tests.  Preparations for these

tests had been secretly underway for many months.

. . . Some may urge us to try it [a moratorium]

again, keeping our preparations to test in a

constant state of readiness.  But in actual

practice, particularly in a society of free

choice, we cannot keep top-flight scientists con-

centrating on the preparation of an experiment

which may or may not take place on an uncertain

date in the future.  Nor can large technical

laboratories be kept fully alert on a stand-by

basis waiting for some other nation to break an

agreement.  This is not merely difficult or

inconvenient.  We have explored this alternative

thoroughly, and found it impossible of exe-

cution.20

Although that quotation is decades old, it makes a

point pertinent today: keeping highly skilled, knowledge-

able people at hand will be virtually impossible absent

testing.  At present, the United States is two years or

more away from being able to conduct a nuclear test.  This

lack of readiness will inevitably worsen as skilled

experts retire and die, equipment ages or becomes obso-

lete, and financial support erodes.

A Decision to Test Would Be Extraordinarily Difficult

President Carter consistently maintained a policy that

any CTBT must be of limited duration, such as three years.

His purpose was to ensure that testing could resume when

the treaty expired.  Not only would cadres of scientists

and technicians be kept together and functioning, but,

more important, there would be the domestic and interna-

tional expectation that testing could resume.  The test