No provision in UNCLOS threatens work of U.S. intelligence community

Myth: The convention would interfere with the operations of our intelligence community. Having either chaired or participated in the 18-agency National Security Council interagency process that drafted the United States' negotiating instructions for the convention, we found this charge so bizarre that we recently checked with the intelligence community to see if we had missed something. The answer that came back was that they, too, were puzzled by this charge, as there was absolutely no truth to it. We are confident that there is no provision in the convention which will, if approved by the Senate, constrain the operations of our intelligence community. In this regard, the United States is already bound by the 1958 convention, and since 1983, pursuant to President Reagan's order, we have operated under the provisions of the 1982 convention, with the exception of deep seabed mining issues associated with Part XI.