DEFENSE: Second Thoughts on SALT I

IN Pentagonese, it would be described as "first strike" strategy. For weeks the Administration heavyweights have been out all over Washington working to head off a possibly acrimonious debate over the two agreements that Richard Nixon brought home from Moscow a month ago. They are a treaty sharply limiting defensive anti-ballistic missile sites and an agreement to freeze offensive missiles at roughly current levels for the next five years. National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger has endorsed them as "without precedent in the nuclear age, indeed in all relevant modern history."

Skeptical. Secretary...