ASKS HOW SHE HEARD ABOUT THE MX.

As a member of the state legislature I was serving on the federal research committee which was a statutory committee that's assignment was to deal with, with the balance of government employment in the state, and federal government employment in the state. The first time that I heard anything about the MX was in a special meeting that was called by the governor's administrative assistant, a special meeting of that Federal Research Committee. And we were called together to be briefed, that was in November of 1979 I believe, and is that right?

SOUNDS LATE TO HER—THEY DISCUSS.

So the Federal Research Committee was called together to be briefed on the MX and on the Air Force's plan to base the MX in the western desert of Utah. And because, because I was a member of that committee I was one of the handful of people who first learned about the MX here in Utah. The Governor knew and apparently when we were briefed and we were briefed by a senior scientist from Thiokol, by a retired Air Force general, and by the Governor's administrative assistant. It was a committee, that committee that I served on was a committee that included the publisher of the newspaper here, the head of our job service and the speaker of the House of Representatives of the Utah legislature who was then Jim Hanson who is now Congressman Hanson from Utah. And I was, he was representing the House of Representatives and I was there representing the state Senate in Utah.

DIRECTS HER.

So in the meeting the, the Air Force general started describing a system for hiding missiles in our desert. And he described a system that would have 200 racetracks aboveground that would carry a carrier with an MX missile on it. And the MX missile and the carrier would weigh about a million pounds. So these racetracks, these 200 racetracks that were going to be ...

INTERRUPTS.

As a member of the Federal Research Committee, as a member of the legislature and that was a committee that I was on, I was involved in a briefing about a new defense system and went to a meeting where we heard from an Air Force, a retired Air Force general and a senior scientist from Thiokol, describing a system that was planned for the west desert of Utah. They talked about 200 racetracks. They called them something else. But they were in the shape of racetracks. And 200 of them on the deserts. And each of them would have had 23 hiding places for an MX missile and a carrier that would go around this loop, would go around this loop periodically ducking down into one of those 23 hiding places. The MX and the carrier together were going to weigh a million pounds, so this was a massive, massive installation. The racetrack would have been the consistency of an airline runway in order to hold that million pounds. And what they told us was that the 20, each, each of the 23 hiding places for the carrier to duck down into would be, they would be 7,000 feet apart. And, you know, so that if, if one of the missiles were struck in its hiding place or if a hiding place was struck and the missile was in another hiding place, that it would be safe, 7,000 feet apart. And 200 of them. And I said, "How much land are you talking about?" and the Air Force general said "We don't like to talk about that." And I said, "I bet you don't." And I pulled out my calculator, I carry a calculator in my handbag and I pulled it out, and I multiplied 200 racetracks times 23 hiding places on each, times 7,000 feet and I divided by 5,280. And I said, "You're talking about more than 6,000 miles of, of these highways running through our deserts. I can't believe that. "Of course it turned out that it would have been a lot more than that because there were railroad tracks that would have connected the racetracks and roads to service the racetracks. It was unbelievable. And we all were stunned. All of us in the meeting. And I walked out of that meeting between two of the other members of this small committee ...do you want to know who they were? OK. One on each side of me and one of the people who walked out with me, we all had our heads hanging, we were, you know, just kind of stunned. And the man on my left said "Frances, there's got to be a better way. "Well let me tell you that, that during that meeting, during that meeting it was obvious that I was not happy about it. And the executive, the executive of that committee leaned over and whispered to me, and he said, "Frances, the Governor has invited them in. The President is going to announce this as the, as the preferred method of deployment in a few weeks. There's nothing you can do about it. "And I really felt kind of sick to my stomach. And we all did.

WHAT DID THE GENERAL SAY? DISCUSS HER CALCULATIONS

So I pulled out my calculator and knowing there would be 23 shelters on each of the loops and they'd be about a mile and a half apart, I calculated that that would be about 35 square miles. And then with 200 loops, as I multiplied out and divided by, by the number of feet in a mile, I came up with pretty close to, well over 6,000, 6,000 miles of road.

DISCUSS.

And I said I bet you don't. So I pulled out my calculator which I always carry in my purse and I, I multiplied out the number of loops times the number of miles between the shelters and I came out at the end of my calculations with what looked like over 6,000, somewhere between 6 and 7,000 miles of super-missile highway spread out on our deserts.

AND THEN YOU SAID...

I said, "You're, you're talking about almost 7,000 miles... "And I said to the general, you're talking about almost 7,000 miles of super-missile highway spread out over our deserts. And he didn't argue with me. He didn't deny it. And it turned out of course to be a lot more than that. Because if you add in all of the service roads and the railroads that were going to be moving among those loops it was a lot of, a lot of territory that was going to be covered.

ASKS HOW SHE FELT THEN.

Well I was, I was horrified. I felt terrible. And the...

ASKS HER AGAIN

I really felt terrible. I couldn't believe that anyone would do that. I couldn't believe that our deserts would be covered with that kind of installation. And it was obvious how I felt. And the, the executive of the committee leaned over and he said, he said, "Frances, the Governor has invited this in, and the President is going to announce that this is the preferred system in a few weeks and there is nothing you can do about it."

AND THEN WHAT DID YOU DO?

Well when we walked out of the room and I walked out between two of the other members. It was a small committee. I walked out between the man who was the Speaker of the House and the man who is head of jobs Service and we all had our jobs hanging. And the man on my left said, "Frances, there's got to be another way.”

ASKS HER TO PROTECT

The. A retired Air Force general and a scientist from Thiokol made a presentation to the committee and they described to us a defense system which was proposed to be...

NOISE INTERRUPTION

An Air Force, a retired general from the Air Force and a scientist from Thiokol, came to our committee meeting to present us with, with a defense proposal that was to be located in the Western deserts of Utah. It was a proposal to locate the MX... An Air Force general, a retired Air Force general and a scientist from Thiokol came to our committee meeting to tell us about a proposal to locate missiles in the western desert of Utah. And it was a proposal that involved the MX missile. And they were to be located in a series of racetracks that were located on the flat places, among the mountains on the racetracks. They described it to us and there would be 200 of these racetracks, each of them with 23 hiding places, so that this missile on its carrier would...and this is above ground, would go around this loop, periodically ducking down into one of the 23 hiding places, presumably so that any enemy, any enemy would never know which of the 23 hiding places the missile was in. After the system was described to us I said to the general, "How much land are you talking about?" And the general said, "We don't like to talk about that." And I said, "I bet you don't." And I pulled my calculator out and I started multiplying 200 racetracks times 23 hiding places and, and they were going to be about a mile and a half apart. And then I, I made a calculation that came out for me to be between 6 and 7,000 miles of super-missile highways spread out on our deserts. And I was stunned. I was absolutely stunned. And the chairman of the committee could see that I was. And he leaned over to me. It was the executive of the committee and he leaned over and he said, "Frances, the governor has invited it in, and the President is going to announce this system out here in the next few weeks. And there is nothing you can do about it."

HOW DID SHE DECIDE TO FIGHT IT?

Well. I went back to work that day and I, I felt, I really felt ill. I couldn't believe anyone would do that. It didn't make any, any sense at all. You can't cover over the desert, you can't do that. And... I talked with a few of my friends and one of them was Chad Dobson and he said, "Well we can't let that happen." So he started calling people in Washington. He had worked in Washington and he knew some of the people there and he started looking for someone who had information on this thing. We knew... no one knew anything about it at that point. Our committee that had heard about it was, was the only, we were the only people except for the Governor and his staff, we were the only ones in the state who knew anything about it. And we had to have information.-The newspaper did a poll and the poll, the poll said, "Do you have, would you have any objection to a few missiles being put in the remotes deserts of western Utah? "Well of course nobody had any objection to that. The poll came out 67 percent had no objection. Well they didn't know, they didn't understand, they didn't have any idea that every flat place among mountains was going to be covered with these mammoth, mammoth racetracks. So we had to get information, you know, we had to, we had to educate. We had to bring information in and let people know what it really meant.

ASKS HOW SHE WENT ABOUT EDUCATING PEOPLE.

Well we found out who in Washington knew about it and we discovered that this man named Pete Scoville who had been a deputy director of the CIA and had been their military expert, and he knew, he had information on the MX. And we discovered Admiral Gene Larocque who was head of the Defense Information Center and who was informed. And we heard about Richard Garwin who is a physicist and who was then at Harvard and that he had an alternate suggestion for basing the MX. So we did was decide which of those folks to ask to come out first and we got one of our, well one of the people here who was able to, one of the media people here actually, owner of one of the stations was able to contribute enough to us so that we could pay the way of some of these folks out here, to educate. And what we did, the first, we selected Pete Scoville as the first person and I'll tell you why we did it. We selected him because he had been with the CIA and we thought that no one would worry about him not being a patriotic American. So we had Pete come first and we took him to see the Governor, we took him to see the officials of the Mormon Church. And a group of the Mormon elders met with us in the, in the church office building. And were very grateful for the information. And then we brought Admiral La Rocque out we took him. And well we also took Dr. Scoville to see all the media people, took him to see the editors of the newspapers and the, the news chiefs of the television stations. And we took him to the radio stations. We did the whole, the whole thing of getting him exposed to the public so the public could learn about the MX. Then when we brought General, brought Admiral La Rocque out we did the same thing with him. And took him to see, I think some members of the First Presidency of the Mormon Church. It's been a long time and I've forgotten exactly who went where. But we took him through, the Admiral through the same process and everyone was grateful for information.

WHY DID SHE TAKE THEM TO THE ELDERS?

Well. What it. It would have had a tremendous, tremendous impact on the lives of the people in Utah. Because it would have been the biggest construction project in the history of the world. And when I saw the Bureau of Engineer's report, it said there probably wouldn't be enough earth moving equipment in this country to do the job. We would have to import earth moving equipment. So to disrupt the small towns on the desert and to, it would have changed the way of life of everyone in the western part of Utah. And most of the people of Utah are members of the Mormon Church. And it was a societal problem as well as a military problem. And also by that time some of us were beginning to see that it was going to be a provocative system, one that, you know, there was no, the Senate had not approved the... and I'll have to stop a minute here because if you want to go into that...

DISCUSS...

And by that time we had learned enough about arms control from the people we had had out here that we discovered that it would be a, a provocative system, provoking attack. And it was, it was set up to fall in with the SALT II treaty so that there wouldn't be enough missiles on the other side to knockout the system. But we had no SALT II treaty. And all that the Soviets would have had to do was to target all 4,600 hiding places and knock the whole thing out. And we were a prime target then. So there was that concern too.

ASKS ABOUT THE MAP.

One of the problems about this whole thing was that people couldn't visualize, they couldn't visualize the magnitude of the project. I had somehow been able to do that by my calculations when I first heard about it. And I knew if people could visualize it, that it would help. And one day a friend of mine called me and he said, "Frances, I've got something that you need to see, it's a map, it's a Corps of Engineers map of where the 200 racetracks will be located. And he said, you've got to see it.

TALKS WITH INTERVIEWER.

A friend of mine called me one morning and he said he had a map...

RESTARTS.

A friend of mine called me one morning and he said he had something to show me. He had a map that he had to show me. A map of where the MX missies would be placed in the desert. We had to go to his office on a Sunday morning and look at it because his partner was involved in something and shouldn't have had, I don't know, didn't want anyone to know he had the map. And when I saw it, when I saw that Corps of Engineers map, I knew if I had that map everyone would understand, everyone would understand the magnitude of the project. I couldn't release it. We made copies of it but I couldn't release it without getting my friend into trouble. So I tried to get it under a freedom of information and I was refused because it was an interoffice document and they don't have to give those out. So my friend Chad started calling around to the Air Force bases in the country and he called Nellis Air Force Base and a captain there said "Oh, I know that map you're talking about. I'll send it to you," and he did. And it came in the mail a couple of days later. And at the first opportunity, I think within a day or two, I took it up here to the Senate chamber, and I laid it out on a table and the senators looked at it. I took it to the newspapers and the newspapers laid it out on their, on their city desk. And were horrified. The newspaper did a huge page with the map on it. Everyone who saw the map suddenly understood. They understood what was going on. They understood that it was going to cover the desert. And people, that helped, that helped tremendously. It was one of the factors. By then we had a whole citizen's movement going to stop it. But my feeling is that the map helped tremendously because people finally could see what was intended.

ASKS HER TO SUMMARIZE

Before we had the map people really couldn't visualize it, but once we had the map, people could see that almost every flat space among the mountains, you see, it was a topographic map. You couldn't really tell from a flat map with lines drawn on it. But a topographic map, every flat space among the mountains in our western desert and a third of the way into Nevada covered with this mammoth, mammoth, heavy duty racetrack with a million pound missile going around. 200 of them. And people understood.

ASKS STORY OF THE MAP AGAIN

When I saw the map, and when I had it and... When I saw the map I knew that people had to see that map in order to understand the magnitude of this project. And I wanted to show that map desperately but I couldn't because it would have gotten my friend into trouble. So I requested it under freedom of information and I was refused. It was not classified but it was interoffice. And they can refuse under interoffice. So ray friend Chad started calling around the country, calling the air bases around the country, and he got a captain at Nellis Air Force Base who said, "Oh I know that map, I'll send you a copy." Which he did. And it came within a couple of days, it came I think on a Saturday, on a Friday night. It came on a Friday night and on Saturday morning I took it down to the Salt Lake Tribune and spread it out on the city desk. And everybody in the press, everyone there at the paper came running over and crowded around that map. And they gasped and they understood for the first time. They understood what it was about. I took it to the Senate chamber when we met.

INTERRUPTS. FALSE STARTS.

I brought the map to the Senate chamber, laid it out in the Senate lounge and showed it to the Senators. The television stations were there, the television stations filmed the map, talked about it. So it was on television, it was in the newspapers, people suddenly understood. And the next opinion poll that was taken was 50, 51 percent opposed, and I really believe that people had to see that map before they understood.

ASKS HOW SHE FELT ABOUT THE MAP.

When I saw the map I knew how important it was, I knew how important it was for people to be able to see exactly what was happening.

ASKS WORST THING ABOUT DEPLOYMENTS?

Well my first reaction that the worst thing about it was that it would destroy the desert. And it would destroy the western desert from just below the Salt Lake airport down to Cedar City, the length of the state. And then the desert over into a big portion of Nevada. And that was my first reaction. The more I learned about it the more I realized it was a very bad thing to do as far as the arms race is concerned, and I had to, that was when I had to start learning about the arms race. And so that was a consideration. What it would do to the social climate of the rural areas of Utah was a concern. Because they'd have been boom and bust towns.

ASKS GOVERNOR'S ROLE, LAXALT'S.

I don't know Senator Laxalt felt when he first heard about it but by the time I got to Washington to talk to him he really didn't want it and he told me that the President didn't want it either. And that was when, the first hope I'd had that it wouldn't happen.

ASKS HOW SHE FELT AFTER TEN YEARS STUDY PRESIDENT AND OTHERS THOUGHT IT WAS THE BEST IDEA.

I don't think I even thought about what I was facing at first. I just knew I had to do everything I could to make people understand. I was absolutely sure than when people knew what it meant that they would, they wouldn't let it happen. And all I thought about was that my job was to get the information out. And that's how it happened. Once people heard all sorts of groups started forming and people simply opposed it. And it became, the opposition became so great that no one could withstand it.

WHAT DID IT MEAN?

The system meant the destruction of the west desert in Utah. And a great deal of the desert in Nevada. It meant a, it meant an escalation of the arms race and a very provocative way that would have made this area a target, the number one target in the world. That wasn't what I thought at first. What I thought about at first was the destruction of the land. You know, people on the East Coast think there's nothing out here. You know, they fly over, they fly from the East Coast to the West Coast and they look down and they see nothing, and they think that's a great place to put anything they want to put there. And they don't understand, they don't understand about the West, they don't understand. They don't understand the deserts and they don't understand the beauty and they don't know people live here and that's there's small towns that would be impacted by a mammoth project like that. A boom and a bust project.

CITES AIR FORCE REMARKS ABOUT THAT.

They truly don't think there's anything here and they cannot understand why we wouldn't want to have a big military installation on the deserts because there's nothing there. And that of course is not true.

ASKS HER TO REPEAT.

The people on the East Coast think there is nothing out here. They get on the airplanes and they fly from the East Coast to the West Coast or they look down and they see nothing. And they say Why not? You know, here is a wonderful place to make, to put a huge military installation. But there is something here and there is something here worth saving. And in addition to that it was idiocy as far as arms control is concerned.

BUT THERE ARE MILITARY RESERVATIONS IN UTAH. WHAT DOES THAT SAY ABOUT THE STATE?

Well the state has a large portion of, more than its share probably of military reservations. We also, about 60 percent of the state is owned by the federal government.

DO PEOPLE FEEL THEY'VE DONE THEIR SHARE?

ASKS ABOUT GENERAL HECKER.

General Hecker had been down in Delta talking to a public meeting about the MX and some of the media people who had been there said that he had cast some aspersions on my character. And I didn't like what he had said about me. And one day, we were having a meeting over here in one of the committee rooms in the capitol and I heard that General Hecker was down in the Governor's office. So I went down and said I want to talk with General Hecker. And he, when he...then I went back to my committee meeting. And when he, he came out of the Governor's office, they sent a note up to me and asked me to come down. And I went down to see him and he had one of his aides with him and I said "Don't you ever say anything like that about me again. I am as patriotic as you are. I don't want to hear anything like that." And I think I shook ray fist under his nose. And as far as I know he didn't do it again. But the General was, the General was very helpful to us in the MX fight. But the General was really very helpful to us in the MX fight because he was so ridiculous. He made some terrible mistakes. When he was in Delta he saluted the flag and announced to the, to the people there that the Mormon Church was supporting the MX which was not true. And they did make a statement then following that saying that it was not true that they were supporting the MX coming in.

ASKS HER TO REPEAT.

General Hecker really was one of the best things that happened to the opponents of the MX because he, he made some errors in judgment. When he was in Delta for instance he told the group down there that he was speaking to that the Mormon Church supported the MX coming into Utah, and that was not true. And the Mormon Church then issued a statement saying that what the general had said was not true. The general misjudged the people of Utah. He thought because he was in a little town in a western desert that there was no sophistication there at all. And he smartly saluted the flag and called on their patriotism and they thought he was funny.

WHY FUNNY?

Well he was so obviously using the old "Do this for your country ploy" and they didn't think it was going to be good for their country at all. Good for their, their home.

WHY NOT?

Well they had, they were well aware of what it was going to do to the area where they lived. They knew there was the boom and bust that would occur. They knew it was going to destroy the deserts and they loved the deserts out there. And they are bright people who know about the nuclear arms race. Just because you live in a little town in Utah doesn't mean that you're not sophisticated.

ASKS ABOUT BOOM AND BUST CONCERNS.

Well they were concerned about what would happen to their way of life with thousands of workers coming into those tiny towns and destroying the social structure of their town.

AIR FORCE SAID THEY WOULD TAKE CARE

Well the Air Force said they were going to build barracks for the workers and that didn't sound very appetizing.

ASKS FOR MORE ON THIS.

Yeah I think it started out that way. But all of us who were involved--

ASKS FOR ANSWER FORMAT.

I think that that's how it started out. No...

INTERRUPTS HERSELF.

In the beginning when we first heard about the MX, I think we were thinking about what it would do to us here in Utah, we were thinking about what it would do to the desert, what it would do to the whole social fabric here in Utah. But the more we learned and we had to learn and there were hundreds of people involved in learning everything they could and working against this project, thousands before it was over, and we had to learn about the arms race. And before we were through learning we had come to the conclusion that land-basing missiles was not a good idea anyplace in this country. And actually the Mormon Church's statement against it that they finally made against it was that they were against land basing.

WHY?

My friend Ed Firmage says that it's not good strategy to base missiles in your home, on your home ground. Much smarter to put them out to sea under the water where they're easier to hide...

WHAT IS WRONG WITH LAND BASING?

Well as my friend Ed Firmage says, it isn't good strategy to make, to base a target in your home, near your homes, on your land. Poor strategy. Much better to put the missiles out to sea, under the water where they can be hidden. Harder to hit. Or in the air, but not where you make your population a target, that's very bad strategy.

WHY NOT USE THE DESERT?

The desert is not...People think that the desert is dead. They need to come out and look at it. It takes a while, take a while to understand the desert. I lived here five years before I knew what was there. You have to sit down in it. And see what's there. And there's a lot of life on the desert. There's animal life and plant life and absolutely unbelievable beauty.

HOW DID YOU FEEL ABOUT CHALLENGES TO YOUR PATRIOTISM?

I didn't think General Hecker was very smart and I was really glad that he was here because it was obvious that he wasn't very smart. I didn't like, I didn't like what the Air Force and the military industrial ...I didn't like what the military industrial complex did as far as trying to, to persuade people in the state to support the MX. They went to the schools, they went to the grade schools, to the high schools, and they had a little mock up and interesting apparatus that they showed to the children. I had telephone calls from mothers around the state saying this is a terrible thing. That the Air Force and industry are doing, trying to sell this thing. They're trying to brainwash our children.

ASKS ABOUT VISITS TO ELDERS OF CHURCH

When I first took one of the experts down to see the Mormon Church hierarchy, they were really very grateful. And said we really appreciate your wanting to do this Frances.

NOISE INTERRUPTS.

When I first began taking experts down to visit the members of the Mormon Church hierarchy they indicated they were very grateful that I was bringing information to them. On the first two or three visits with people like Adm. LaRocque and Dr. Scoville, the Mormon Church leadership explained that the church only takes moral positions. I suggested maybe this was a moral position but they didn't quite see it that way at that point. But then of course later on, the more they learned about it the more they really began to feel that it was a moral position. And they, they did finally come out with this wonderful statement. And it was a statement against the MX. Not just in Utah, but against it's being based on land anyplace.

ASKS IMPACT OF STATEMENT

It was a wonderful impact. It brought everybody who wasn't already against the MX, pretty much everybody around. It, it influenced our members of Congress who had not been willing to oppose the MX until then. But by the time the Mormon Church made the statement, the opinion polls public had already turned around.

ASKS ABOUT SEEING ELDERS AGAIN.

On the first visit to the Mormon Church leadership...

INTERRUPTS.

I made appointments and brought experts to visit with the Mormon Church leadership. And they were very gracious and said, "Frances we appreciate your wanting to share this information with us." But with the first, oh first two or three folks I brought in, they explained that they of course only take positions on moral issues and that they felt this was not a moral issue. But as time went on apparently they changed their minds. And then did finally come out in opposition, in opposition to this MX system in the deserts. By then the public had already then a majority of them turned around and public opinion was opposed. But what happened when the Mormon Church took the public position against it was that our Congressional delegation fell in line.

ASKS ABOUT MOYERS DEBATE.

During this whole period, it was a period of almost two years be forfeit was over, we gradually here in Utah became, we became news to the whole country and then finally to the whole world. I had an English television crew over to interview me and a number of countries in addition to the national television from here came to visit. The Bill Moyer's show as very important. One of the things, there were two wonderful things that came out of it. One was Cecil Garland's memorable remark and the other one was that Antonia Shays said something that made everybody in Utah very angry. She said one of the good things that will happen from what we're doing for you is that we're going to be digging into your desert and putting holes down and discovering what's out there. And you don't even know what you've got out there. Well. You know, nobody, nobody in Utah wants to be condescended to. And she was condescending. And she helped bring further opposition against the MX.

WHAT ABOUT WATER PROBLEM? THEY CHAT ABOUT IT FIRST.

Well water is a very scarce commodity in Utah and that's another reason why it would have been devastating for this dry state to have all of that influx of, of people and equipment and construction. It was too much.

HOW DID SHE FEEL AFTER IT WHEN PRESIDENT ANNOUNCED AGAINST MX?

I had a pretty good idea that's what he was going to do because I had a pretty good idea when the President made the announcement that that was what he was going to do. Because of a conversation he had had with Sen. Laxalt in Washington shortly before that. And how did I? No...

RESTARTS HERSELF

I had a pretty good idea from Senator Laxalt, from my visit to Washington to talk with him, I had a pretty good idea of what the President was going to do before he did it. And so it wasn't such a surprise to me when it happened. But when the President announced that he was, that he was cancelling that racetrack basing mode for the MX, it was a very nice day. And I think I ran down to the Governor's office and there was a lot of hugging and joy.

THROUGHOUT THE STATE?

Of course not everyone was pleased because there were, there are always people who are thinking about how much it's going to put in their pockets instead of what it's going to do to the state.

WHAT WAS BEHIND THE ONES WHO SUPPORTED IT?

Well it would have been great. Having the MX here would have been very good for the cement makers. A lot of cement out there. So there were some people who, who were disappointed.

BEFORE THE ELECTION, DID PEOPLE THINK REAGAN MIGHT CANCEL IT? THEY CHAT ABOUT IT.

I don't remember. We were just going to stop it. We just, it didn't, we were just going to stop it. And we were going to do whatever we had to do to stop it. And I don't think we thought about, I didn't think about Reagan at that point. When I went in on the lobbying trip I did.

ANY CLUES BEFORE REAGAN'S ELECTION?

Of course I don't support President Reagan but there was, there was some hope with his being elected, some hope in the possibility of his being elected, that he would understand what it meant to this part of the country, because he's a westerner. Somebody from the East, Jimmy Carter, much as I liked him, he really didn't understand what was out here, he didn't understand the desert, and there was some hope that a president who would have some sensitivity to the West would realize it was a bad idea.

HOW DID THE CONGRESSIONAL STRUGGLE WITH THE MX ISSUE LOOK FROM UTAH?

Well it looked like a mistake. After two years of opposing that racetrack basing mode for the MX, I really, I really couldn't spend any more of my life fighting the MX installations in other parts of the, you know, in the, in the silos. I thought it was wrong and whenever I was asked and whenever I was interviewed I said it was wrong and I thought we ought to scrap the MX, forget about it, we didn't need any more intercontinental ballistic missiles. But it was, it was a long, long hard battle here.

ASKS ABOUT POLITICAL CARTOONS.

The best political cartoon and we were very grateful to all of the cartoonists around the country and to the national media for the way they described this bizarre system, there was a cartoon of Khrushchev...

INTERRUPTS HERSELF.

We were very grateful to the political cartoonists all around the country...

INTERRUPTIONS.

We were very grateful to the political cartoonists all around country. They have a lot of fun with this bizarre system, Rube Goldberg for instance. But the very best cartoon I thought was the one of Brezhnev and Carter playing the shell game. There were three walnut shells, and they were, they represented the MX system that was going to hide the missile in one of the hiding places in the racetrack basing mode, and Brezhnev looked, there were three, three pictures in this cartoon. And in the third one Brezhnev looked down and took a hammer and smashed all three walnuts, which was a perfect example of what could happen without a SALT II treaty, the Soviets could simply smash all 4,600 hiding places.

COACHES HER.

The best political cartoon was the one of Brezhnev and Carter sitting together, playing a shell game. There were three, three walnut shells and Brezhnev was supposed to guess which shell the missile was under. But he simply took up his fist and smashed all three shells.

COACHES AGAIN-DISCUSS ANSWER.

The best political cartoon was the one of Brezhnev and Carter sitting at a table playing a shell game with three walnut shells. And Brezhnev looked at Carter and Carter said, "You decide where the missile is hidden." Brezhnev gave him a look and lifted his fist and destroyed all three of the walnut shells.

AND WHAT DID THAT?

That indicted that the 4,600 hiding places were useless because there was no SALT II treaty and the Soviets, all the Soviets had to do was destroy all 4,600 hiding places.

ASKS HER HOW SHE THOUGHT IT WOULD BE.

I didn't think about that.

DISCUSS. ASKS HER FIRST REACTION TO SCHEME.

When I first heard about the system I thought it was absurd.

RESTARTS HER.

In the meeting where I was first told about the system I thought it was absurd. I, I. The description of 200 racetracks with 2,300 hiding places on each and each one of those 2,300 hiding places had a sunroof that slid back so that the Soviets could verify that we only had, in case SALT II were passed, it was designed to fit with SALT II and we had no SALT II. So that they could verify that there was only one missile on each of the tracks. And it, it was...it was loony.

ASKS HER TO REPEAT.

When I first heard about this system I thought it was absolutely bizarre. Here are all these racetracks out in the desert, with hiding places and the missile ducking down into the hiding places. Every hiding place had a sunroof that slid back so the Soviets could verify that there was only one missile on each of the racetracks. It was, it was a crazy idea.

ASKS ABOUT THIOKOL STORY.

During this whole, during the MX years, I sponsored a bill in the legislature to require an environmental impact statement for going out into the desert to construct the MX. And the only thing that the, the only thing that my bill required was, was... I introduced a bill that would have required all of the folks who were out in the desert drilling holes to abide by state law while they were doing it. And my bill passed the Senate with no problem at all. Came over to the House of Representatives and it was at...we were getting very near the end of the session. It got to the top of the calendar, it was going to be heard, and suddenly, like that, the Speaker of the House adjourned the meeting. Well my bill was dead then. It was dead because it would have had to start at the bottom the next day and it would not have made it to the top before the end of the session. And I was...I was horrified. And one of my Democratic friends from the area, from the Thiokol area came running over to me and he said, "Frances we had to do that because the big boss at Thiokol didn't want you bill to pass. "And the young lawyer who had helped me on the bill standing beside me said, "Why don't you have the big boss at Thiokol come and sit in your seat in here."

WHAT IS THE POWER REVEALED HERE?

So there is a good deal of power, there is a good deal of power in this state that is exerted by the military industrial complex, because we have a great deal of it in Utah.

ASKS HOW IT FELT TO BE IN THIS PROTEST AGAINST SUCH A POWERFUL ESTABLISHMENT.

Well there were times when I really, I felt nervous. There were times when I'd hear an airplane going over and I'd think Oh, they're coming after me. Because ...here I was, a woman, and...a little state senator, taking on the President of the United States, the Air Force, the Department of Defense. We brought a suit which I signed on against all those folks. And it was, it was kind of scary on occasion. But I don't remember, I don't remember being scared very much. I was angry.

WHAT MADE HER SO ANGRY?

I was angry. They had no business doing it. It was a ridiculous thing to be doing. It made no sense at all. It wasn't going to help our country. It would have hurt our country. It would have spent billions of dollars that we shouldn't have spent. It would have destroyed the land. It was a crazy thing to do. And I was more angry than frightened.

WHAT WOULD YOU THINK IF THE AIR FORCE CAME BACK AND SAID WE HAVE SMALLER MISSILES, USING LESS LAND AREA, AND WANT TO PUT THEM HERE? WHAT WOULD YOU SAY?

I am opposed to land-basing under any circumstances.

ASKS ABOUT MIDGETMAN.

The Midgetman is land basing too, and the Midgetman is...

INTERRUPTS HERSELF. RESTARTS.

I asked the general how much land he was talking about... I asked the general how much land he was talking about. And he said "We don't like to talk about that." And I said, "I bet you don't." And so I pulled my calculator out of my purse and I started figuring and my calculations using the information he had given me, indicated that it would be almost 7,000 miles of racetracks going through our deserts.

DISCUSS. SHE WANTS TO STARTS OVER.

I asked the general how much land he was talking about. He said, "We don't like to talk about that." And I said, "I bet you don't. "I pulled my calculator out of my purse and I started doing some calculations that showed that it would be almost 7,000 miles of, of super-missile highway laid on our deserts. And I said, "You're talking about 7,000 miles of... racetracks out there! "And he didn't argue with me, he didn't contradict me. It turned out later it was more, that it would have been more than that.

SHE WILL REPEAT

I asked the general how much land he was talking about. He said "We don't like to talk about that," and I said, "I'll bet you don't." And I pulled my calculator out of my purse and started doing some calculations from the information he had given me, and I said, "You're talking about almost 7,000 miles of super-missile highway being laid in our deserts. And he didn't argue with me. He didn't contradict me. Eventually, as I learned more about it, it would have been more than that.

WHAT IS GREATEST LESSON SHE LEARNED?

We learned a lot of lessons and some of them are that you simply can't trust your government to do everything right, and that people have to have information, and have to have something to say about what the military and about what the highest officials in our land do. We can't be left out. We have to know what's happening.

DISCUSS. WILL DO IT AGAIN.

We learned a lot of lessons in this MX fight. One of the most important of them was... We learned a lot of lessons... We learned a lot of lessons ...We learned a lot of lessons in this MX fight. One of the most important for me was that we can't... all... We learned a lot of lessons in this MX fight. One of the most important for me was that we can't always trust our military and our federal officials to do what's best for us. People have to know about what's being planned, and they have to know about what's going on and there has to be input to the federal government from the people.

ASKS HER TO REPEAT.

We learned a lot of lessons in this MX fight. One of the most important for me was that we simply can't have complete trust in our military and in our federal government to do what's best for the people of the country. The people have to be involved in what's happening and they have to respond and complain and work against things that they know are not good for them.

ASKS HOW SHE REACTED TO LIMITED NUCLEAR WAR TALK.

It doesn't matter, it doesn't matter what kind of rationalization...

RESTARTS.

It doesn't matter what kind of rationalizing is done about the ability for us to withstand maybe one nuclear weapon or two nuclear weapons. All of us know that we can't have even one nuclear weapon sent in either direction. It can't happen because if it does that's it.

ASKS HER TO REPEAT.

It doesn't matter how much rationalizing people do about a limited war. There isn't going to be any limited nuclear war. One weapon going in either direction is going to be the beginning of the end.

ASKS HER TO POSE WITH AND DISCUSS MAP.

And this is the map that we showed to the citizens of Utah.