The President
The White House
Washington, DC 20500
Dear Mr. President:
Your policy of forswearing nuclear weapons tests has brought important results. We urge you, in the strongest terms, not to agree to demands from some within your Administration to conduct additional tests or to change the U.S. negotiating strategy from our current insistence on a truly comprehensive treaty to ban all tests.
Not only have you provided strong political leadership to counter proliferation around the globe, but you have also set a powerful moral example to the other nuclear weapons states by continuing the U.S. moratorium on all nuclear tests and by pursuing a permanent ban on all tests, regardless of size. Through your concerted efforts, the U.S. secured extension of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), and we are now closer to completing a Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty than we have been in 30 years.
You have the distinction of being the first U.S. President since the dawn of the atomic age not to conduct a nuclear weapons test. You should continue that policy, especially since your own scientific experts have concluded that additional nuclear tests are not necessary to maintain the safety and reliability of the U.S. arsenal. Any weakening of the U.S. CTB negotiation position to permit low-yield nuclear weapons tests would directly undercut the NPT's disarmament provisions, jeopardize the trust the U.S. has just engendered among non-aligned nations at the NPT conference, and provide a loophole for countries wishing to acquire nuclear weapons in the future.
Halting all nuclear testing now and for the future is in our national interest. We can still maintain a sufficient and strong nuclear deterrent without nuclear tests, and retain the moral authority needed to deter nuclear proliferation around the globe.
Again, we appeal to you to remain firm in your current nuclear testing policy and press other nations to support it.
Thank you for your leadership on this important security issue.
Sincerely,
Paul Simon (D-IL) Carl Levin (D-MI) Jim Exon (D-NE) Mark Hatfield (R-OR) Dale Bumpers (D-AR) Tom Harkin (D-IA) Patrick Leahy (D-VT) Paul Wellstone (D-MN) Herb Kohl (D-WI) James Jeffords (R-VT) John Kerry (D-MA) Russ Feingold (D-WI) Jeff Bingaman (D-NM) Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) Paul Sarbanes (D-MD) Bill Bradley (D-NJ) Claiborne Pell (D-RI) Barbara Boxer (D-CA) John Glenn (D-OH) Patty Murray (D-WA) David Pryor (D-AR) Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) Edward M. Kennedy (D-MA) Thomas A. Daschle (D-SD)