Arms-Control Agency Retains Value in US Security System

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DURING the cold war, the term arms controller was pejorative throughout the United States national security bureaucracy. Controllers, Housed in the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (ACDA), were considered soft and suspect. Hence the agency's policy role was circumscribed, especially in conservative administrations. But liberals, too, faulted the agency - for its supposed timidity in confronting critics of arms control. No wonder Paul Warnke, Jimmy Carter's beleaguered ACDA director, characterized arms control as "an unnatural act."

Still, prior to the Reagan years, ACDA constituted the largest, most capable body of arms-control expertise in government and, probably, …