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In remarks to the National Newspaper Association on March 23, Secretary of State Colin Powell drew special attention to John Reppert, BCSIA''s Executive Director for Research, who introduced him. Excerpts from his remarks follow.
SECRETARY POWELL: I am especially touched that General Reppert introduced me. I want to thank him for his 33 years of service where he covered himself with great distinction serving us in a number of capacities in international affairs, being an expert in Russian matters, serving as our attaché in Moscow, and also serving in a wonderful organization that I helped create, which very few Americans know about, but it has done a remarkable job.
It is a little organization in the Pentagon known as OSIA. It is called the On-Site Inspection Agency, and he led it for a while. This little organization has for years gone around validating and making sure that all the arms control agreements we entered into were, in fact, lived up to by the other side - those days of the Soviet Union and now Russia. [. . .] The OSIA was created to monitor a treaty that many people don''t remember any more, called the INF Treaty, Intermediate Nuclear Force Reductions, which we signed in late 1987 with the Soviet Union.
It was the first time ever the United States and the Soviet Union came together and declared a whole class of nuclear weapons gone - off the face of the earth: SS- 20s on the part of the Soviet Union; on the part of the United States, we got rid of our Pershing IIs and our ground launch cruise missiles.
And this year, after some 14 years of work by OSIA and people like John, that agreement is now executed and we will be removing some of our presence at those Soviet, now Russian, facilities. And it is a great agreement. And, John, I thank you and all the others that you served with over the years for that.