. . . And I'll Show You Mine

"It's unbelievable," declared a Pentagon official. "We'd never allow something like that to happen here." He referred to the astonishing Soviet decision to let three Democratic Congressmen prowl for four hours through the secret radar facility near Krasnoyarsk in Siberia. The Kremlin permitted the lawmakers and a few aides to snap 1,000 photographs inside the facility, which has been the focus of U.S. charges that the Soviets are violating the 1972 treaty limiting antiballistic missile systems. Predictably, the visit served to intensify debate in Washington about Soviet intentions.

The Reagan Administration contends the station is meant to close a gap in the Soviets' early-warning radar network. To prevent longer-range tracking of missiles, the ABM treaty requires that such stations be on the perimeter of the U.S.S.R. Krasnoyarsk is 480 miles inland. This location and the type of radar under construction, says the Pentagon, would be suitable for a Soviet Star Wars system in which the station could direct interception of incoming missiles. The Soviets have claimed the radar would be used only to track satellites in deep space, which would not violate any treaties.

The Congressmen (New York's Thomas Downey, Wisconsin's Jim Moody and Michigan's Bob Carr) were accompanied by Anthony Battista, a House Armed Services Committee technical expert. He concluded that the facility is not designed to use the frequencies most effective for space tracking -- a point that Soviet technicians conceded. The radar is also pointed toward the northeast, where the Soviet radar gap exists, rather than the south, where much more space activity could be followed.

Battista also found Krasnoyarsk ineffective as an ABM site: it is poorly constructed and not hardened against shock waves or electromagnetic pulse effects. "If this radar were turned on today," he said, "it would be an early-warning radar -- not a very good one." Yet it cannot be switched on soon, the U.S. visitors concluded, because the facility lacks essential electronic equipment. They predicted it will take two years to complete.

The Administration rejected the legislators' contention that the station violates only the "letter of the treaty -- not its purpose." Frank Gaffney, acting Assistant Secretary of Defense, insisted that the radar is a "significant military project which fundamentally undercuts the ABM treaty." If the Soviets want to convey a new openness on verification, said Gaffney, the proper signal would be the "total dismantling of the illegal installation."

Although U.S. officials could only speculate on why the Soviets put Krasnoyarsk on display, Downey noted that a "precedent has now been set about verification that cannot be undone." Still, the field trip did not answer the real question posed by the radar: Do the Soviets intend to abide by arms- control treaties?