John Glenn: “I want to back up his views on this. We worked together a long, long time on nonproliferation matters, and we have over…”

“I want to back up his views on this. We worked together a long, long time on nonproliferation matters, and we have over 148 nations now signed up around the world on the nonproliferation regime. It has not been perfect, but it has been very good through the years. It has had a positive impact. The Pressler amendment is applied to one nation, Pakistan--who through the years was developing nuclear weapons, and we knew that. But every year because of the situation in Afghanistan, the President needed a special, country-specific waiver of the Glenn-Symington amendment so we could ship material through Pakistan over to Afghanistan. Despite waiver after waiver in the 1980s, Pakistan continued and even accelerated its pursuit of the bomb. Facing these facts, the Pressler amendment became law in 1985 without any loopholes or waivers. It is just hard to see how we can change this now. In effect, what the administration apparently wants to do is say: OK, they lied to us all this time and went ahead and developed nuclear weapons anyway.”