The Foreign Service Journal, December 2009

D E C E M B E R 2 0 0 9 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 25 liferation and verification. However, ACDA maintained its focus on bilateral nuclear arms control, a nuclear test ban and other multilateral issues. The implementation of agreements (beginning with the NPT and its establishment of the IAEA), support for bilateral forums (such as the Standing Verification Com- mission for the INF Treaty) and leadership of delegations (to, for instance, the Geneva Conference on Disarma- ment, the U.N. General Assembly’s First Committee and periodic review conferences of the NPT) were other im- portant functions supported by ACDA. The agency’s statutory authority also provided for the appointment of Senate-confirmed ambassadors and special representa- tives of the president. From the 1960s until its 1999 merger with the State Department, the agency took the negotiating lead on many arms control issues. As a separate bureaucracy working together with the State Department and other agencies in the interagency framework under the National Security Council, it made important, if not unique, con- tributions to successful negotiations. To cite an example from personal experience, ACDA was the key agency in gaining Soviet acknowledgement that there is no reliable distinction between nuclear ex- plosions in a weapons testing program and nuclear explo- sions for peaceful purposes, so that both would need to be banned under the CTBT. The Merger with State In the early 1990s, several studies evaluated ACDA’s continuing role as a separate agency. Ambassador Thomas Graham, who served as acting director of ACDA in 1993, has given a detailed account of how these stud- ies played out, leading to the Clinton administration’s de- cision to maintain ACDA’s separate status, in his book, Disarmament Sketches (University of Washington Press, 2002). Also of particular note is the study requested by Secretary of State James Baker and carried out by a panel led by Amb. James Goodby. This report endorsed the re- vitalization of ACDA or, failing that, its consolidation with F O C U S