WHAT WAS SENSE ON THE FLOOR CONCERNING BASING MODES DISCUSSIONS, THE PERIOD WHICH CULMINATED IN DENSE PACK?

Well yes, the Administration I think made a very serious mistake in judgment by giving up on the MPS, the multiple protective shelter, of the Carter Administration. And I don't think they did it on, on very sound ground and after that they struggled for two years to try and come up with their own basing mode. And they basically failed and the ultimate failure was when they set up dense pack which was rejected overwhelmingly in the House of Representatives and of course, after that, some senior members of Congress and senior members of the Administration convinced the President that he had to name a national commission on ICBM modernization, which became known as the Scowcroft Commission, to deal with the chaos that existed in the strategic ICBM program.

HAD THERE BEEN A CONSENSUS ON CARTER'S BASING MODE?

Well at least we were able to get the money for it. Well there was always, there were always problems. You had problems politically out there in the states of Nevada and Utah. But there was the votes, in both the House and the Senate to go forward with that approach. But the problem was a political one. The Reagan Administration had campaigned against MPS and because it had been thought up during the Carter Administration, it was, it was rejected almost at will when they came to power. Over the objections of the Joint Chiefs and particularly Gen. Jones who very strongly argued that this, that there was a consensus built around this approach and that if the Administration attempted to come up with a new approach, they were going to have problems. And they did.

ASKS LAXALT'S ROLE.

Well I... I, no one knows for sure just what was said but obviously Paul Laxalt was Chairman of the Reagan campaign. And he was very much opposed to this being in Nevada. So when the President, you know, rejects the approach, one has to wonder whether the Senator has had some influence there or not. I assume that they did.

WHY WAS DENSE PACK REJECTED?

Well because... well what you basically had were 200 missiles in a very tight configuration and there were all kinds of issues raised about what would happen if you barraged over, the Soviets kept exploding warheads right above that dense pack. That you probably wouldn't be able to get missiles launched. Now the whole thing is highly scientific and very technical. But it looked like you might, you know, spend all this money to get 200 missiles and have them all destroyed before they were ever launched. Plus bringing down a huge attack on the United States itself. So it just didn't go anywhere and it was basically on technical grounds that people just weren't convinced that it was going to work.

WAS IT TOO THEORETICAL FOR CONGRESS TO UNDERSTAND?

It's always difficult on the Hill because Congressmen... Well I mean Congress could understand it. The problem was that the scientists and the people from the Administration who tried to explain it weren't very convincing. I mean, you have to come over here and persuade a lot of people who are pretty bright that something is going to work. And this thing just didn't sound right. And you had a lot of outside experts saying that there were grave reservations and doubts about it. Plus it didn't, just didn't ring true. How could you put 200 missiles together closely spaced and create survivability? It just counter to common sense. And maybe it's true. Maybe the Congress couldn't understand the impacts of fratricide and other things. But it just didn't sell up here. It was defeated overwhelmingly.

PERHAPS BECAUSE BASING MODES ALL HAD INVOLVED DISPERSAL?

That's right. And all of a sudden we're coming together with something that's, you know, a tight configuration, and it just didn't sell.

ASKS ABOUT TOWNES' LETTER TO WEINBERGER ABOUT THE SYSTEM?

I can't remember that specific letter. Do you remember Terry?

DID JOINT CHIEFS HAVE DOUBTS?

I think there were enough reservations that this thing just never got off the ground. It looked like the Administration was desperately searching for a way to base the new missile. The MX. And, you know, they had, the Senate had, the summer before, basically told them that they had to start over and come back with something new and different. And they just couldn't do it. That's why the mistake was made originally, in rejecting the multiple protective shelter system. Because there was a consensus around that and it was moving ahead. So what they really did is they killed an approach that had been accepted by the Congress and the American people, and they didn't have a new replacement. I mean they had Big Bird and the Ditch and all kinds of different approaches, a lot of very funny speeches made on the House of Representatives floor. There was a House representative by the name, by Congressman Dellums, about the various basing modes. But this one just didn't sell.

ASKS FOR ANECDOTES.

Well I mean it was just, I mean, it was just one after another. You had Big Bird, you know, you were going to put this thing up in an airplane and you had it in a Ditch and it went on and on and on. There were just so many different approaches that had been thought about and rejected. And that's why this was a very major mistake in judgment by the Reagan Administration. One, one of course, the one that, that supposedly they showed the President a card of a cartoon and you had the MX system and it actually was three...different...like shelters and in one of the shelters the missile is supposed to be. And it showed the Bear going boom, boom, boom. And a base, based on that apparently President Reagan rejected the MPS system. Well, that's not what we call systems analysis but that's about what happened in this Administration. The President's understanding of these issues early on was not extensive.

WHEN HE ANNOUNCED THE DECISION WAS IT NOT TO PUT THEM IN SILOS?

Yeah, and that was rejected by the Senate. You see, I never had a problem with that. I mean, I think the MPS system was a better system, but putting them in silos, there is a stability question but the question is, will the other side pre-empt and attack those silos because they are vulnerable. Because they are at a fixed location. They can be attacked. And my own assessment was that you had a synergistic relationship between your bomber force and your submarine force that made it impossible for the Soviets to consider a pre-emptive attack. But, but a lot of people rejected that, wanted the ICBMs to be survivable in their own right, so that they wouldn't draw fire and wouldn't create crisis in stability. And, and so that was the reason why you were looking for a more survivable system. And that's the reason why today we're looking at this Midgetman mobile missile, because it does give you enhanced survivability.

DOES IT SUGGEST THE MISSILE WAS THE THING NEEDED BY THE AIR FORCE — AND THE BASING MODES PRESENTED AS RATIONALES?

Well, I mean, but, the problem was, it's one thing to build a missile, but you've got to base it. And the difficulty is that an ICBM is vulnerable and what you're trying to do is create less vulnerability by using one of these various basing modes. And obviously the Administration, and you had certain rules under SALT, the SALT agreements about making these systems verifiable. So you had to have lid and you had to build a...show, you know, you only had one missile within the 23 silos. And all those things. All those kind of complicating things, and searching for a, a basing mode. But the basing mode is very important because it affects the survivability of the missile and has a major effect on stability. So there was valid reasons for trying to come up with a survivable basing mode. And we're still doing it. We're on rail garrison right now. We're taking a look at that as a potential way to...to base an MX in a mobile fashion.

DID THE AIR FORCE HAVE TO MEET THE CRITERIA OF CONGRESS?

Well that certainly was part of it. Congress was insistent that if we could come up with a credible basing mode that we ought to do it. And that's very expensive. It's much cheaper to put the missile in a fixed silo than to come up with a very complicated basing system that is SALT compliant and at the same time survivable. It was a much more expensive proposition. So Congress knew what it was doing and way trying to, you know, enhance survivability for stability purposes.

WAS THERE SYMPATHY FOR UTAH AND NEVADA OBJECTING TO BEING TARGETS?

Well certainly I mean people understood that, you know, I have a...in my district at the time I had the Trident submarine base and so we became a target because of that. And it's probably one of the very top targets. So I had a sympathy for that, but everybody has to do, as I said to Senator Laxalt one time, we were down at the Greenbriar, talked about this, I said, we, you know, Senator Jackson and I had to accept the responsibility of going forward with the Trident base even though we knew it complicated things in our area. And that all of us have certain responsibilities. And I frankly felt that if we'd a pushed ahead on this thing we could have worked out an impact assistance program of sorts that would have compensated the people for the problems associated with that base. I went out there, heard the hearings. And you always have opposition. Anytime you talk about something like a strategic weapons, you're going to have opposition, inherently. And there really wasn't any more in Nevada or Las Vegas... or, I mean, Utah, than there was, would have been anywhere else in the country. In fact, there might have been even a little less.

WHAT WAS SCOWCROFT'S CHARGE?

Well I think the, they, their charge was to see, to try to come forward with a blueprint for modernizing our strategic weapons and trying to rebuild a bipartisan consensus be, behind a policy of the Administration. And that's what they attempted to do. They tried to work with the Congress and get input from leaders in the House and the Senate. People who were, understood these issues. They went outside of the government. They had their own people. Were a very distinguished panel. And I think they came up with a basic framework for kind of a policy that could be, that could receive bipartisan support in the Congress. And it could be implemented. I think they did a very good job.

DID THEY ASK YOUR ADVICE? WHAT DID YOU TELL THEM?

Well, I was one of a whole host of people that were consulted. Congressman Aspin played a very major role here in the House. Congressman Foley. You know, basically my message was that what we were looking for up here was a commitment from the Administration that they were going to have reasonable and credible positions in the arms control talks, that they were going to do more, that they were going to negotiate seriously. I also was interested in seeing us go forward with a small ICBM, with the single warhead, because that weapon is, enhances stability, compared to an MX, for example, and I was prepared to support modernization, building some additional MXs, and building the small missile, if the Administration was prepared to make a commitment to vigorously pursue arms control as a rational choice.

What a lot of us were worried about at the time was that the Reagan Administration was really, you know, they were, it was the Administration of the "Evil Empire" and they were taking a very harsh and very aggressive approach towards the Soviets. They were not approaching arms control in, in a traditional way. And there was a lot of concern up here about whether we could have a bipartisan consensus behind any policy of this Administration.

[INAUDIBLE QUESTION]

Well there was a concern up here whether there could be support for a bipartisan kind of an approach.

WAS MX USED AS BARGAINING CHIP DOMESTICALLY, WITH THE WHITE HOUSE?

Yeah. I think what we tried to do was say, you know, when there was a group, we met in this room many times, of kind of moderate Democrats and Republicans who said, basically, that we're prepared to go ahead with modernization of the MX, 50 to 100, if you are going to commit yourself to a more credible arms control policy. And that was basically the deal. And here we are now, 7 years, or actually 5 years later, and I think it was worth the effort. Because, one, we've got an INF agreement, two, we could well be on the verge of getting an agreement on a 50 percent reduction in strategic weapons. There were certain elements in the House that said, Don't cooperate with the Reagan Administration, don't work with them. Because they'll never do anything on arms control. They are just totally opposed. And we rejected that. We said, you know, you don't give up on an American president. You try to work with him, you try to see if you can convince him to move in a traditional approach to these issues. And after a while and with a lot of help from say, Nitze and Kampelman and Schultz, I think this Administration is on the verge of making major accomplishments. And part of it was because we did modernize our forces, both in this sense, both our Pershing IIs and our ground-launch cruise missiles. We went ahead and built those. There was tremendous opposition in the House to those two systems, and we went ahead with MX and D-5 and research on SDI. All of which gave us leverage in the negotiations with the Soviets. And what I have argued is you can build a strong defense posture and at the same time be willing to negotiate. So I basically support the approach that this Administration was taking. I didn't support what Mr. Perle and Mr. Weinberger were doing because I thought they were undercutting the President at every step in his efforts to try and make some progress in the arms control area. So until... their leaving now makes the prospects much better for getting something done.

WHAT WAS HIS ROLE IN FIGHTING THE DENSE PACK IDEA?

Well basically I led the fight along with Congressman Addabbo as members of the Defense Appropriations Committee. He was Chairman, I was one of the ranking members. And basically we put together the votes on the Democratic side along with some Republican support, to defeat this overwhelmingly in the House of Representatives. And that's what really caused the crisis, and the creation of the Scowcroft Commission, was that the Administration after a good year and some months of struggling, you know, had been repudiated and, in the Congress on its approach to basing the MX missile.

ASKS HIM TO REPEAT ANSWER.

Well, Congressman Addabbo and I led the fight on the dense pack proposal. And basically lined up the votes on the Democratic side with about 50 Republicans, as I recall. And that gave us the votes to defeat the Administration's newest basing mode, dense pack. And that's what created the crisis and the necessity for the creation of the Scowcroft Commission recommendation. The Administration's basic policy on basing the MX had been repudiated.

WAS THIS FOR PRESSURE ON THE ADMINISTRATION TO TAKE ARMS CONTROL SERIOUSLY? DID YOU RECEIVE A LETTER FROM THE PRESIDENT ON THIS?

Yeah, well we, our group sent a letter to the President, and I, we had, I would say, about 25, 30 signatures, I think. A group of moderate Democrats and Republicans. Basically laying out some questions that we wanted answered before we agreed to go ahead and support the basic recommendations of the Scowcroft Commission. And it included whether they were committed to going ahead with the small ICBM, what their approach would be in the arms control area, and...and that letter was sent to the Administration, and then they sent back a response. And it happened to be that my subcommittee was marking up on the defense bill and on the MX in particular. And so the letter came to me. It was "Dear Norman," and it was published in the New York Times and the Washington Post in full. And was considered a very important letter because in a sense was a policy statement by the Administration about what they would do to implement the recommendations of the Scowcroft Commission, and to answer the questions that we had raised.

WAS THE DEBATE BITTER?

Yes. I was, I was attacked personally. Al Gore, Les Aspin, on the House side. We all were, we became very unpopular with the liberal wing of the party. I mean I had one member from Ohio walk up to me and say, "I hope that your children can forgive you for what you've done to our country." And so it was, and I was, you know, I was censured by the Democratic Party in the state of Washington. In my own district they had the state meeting and they censured me because of my support for MX modernization. Now maybe it was my own fault for not explaining my position better. What we were trying to do was say we were prepared to give the Administration some support. But out of that we received a commitment to the small missiles, single warhead missile, which I think adds to stability in the long run and is the right approach in the long run. Both for ICBMs and SLBMS eventually. And...we got them to commit to treat arms control in a more traditional way. And I thought it was worth trying to bring the Administration around and I think we will be vindicated if we get the 50 percent reduction in strategic weapons.

QUOTES STATEMENTS OPPOSING HIM.

Right. I mean there was just a belief by some members of Congress that this Administration would never be serious about arms control. And it was my assessment that just like the Nixon Administration, the Reagan Administration had enormous potential. Because, you have a conservative president who has a much better chance dealing with the Congress of getting, one, the things that he needed in terms of building up our defense credibility. But also, to get any agreement he negotiated through the Senate. So I didn't feel you ought to, you ought to waste that opportunity. Plus, some of the people in this Administration I felt from the start were, were very committed. One was Paul Nitze. Who I thought had the kind of talent and ability to, to get agreements with the Soviets, along with the, the Soviets. Along with Max Kampelman who I also had a great respect for.

ASKS ABOUT OTHER BARGAINING CHIPS.

Well I don't think necess... I don't believe in bargaining chips either. I think what you're talking about is leverage. And at some point you, the other side, you know, if they see that you're following a steady, prudent policy, or keeping your strategic weapons modernized. In this case I think one of the driving forces has obviously been the Strategic Defense Initiative research, you know, all of a sudden the other side says, "Let's, let's sit down. And work out some accommodations." And that's basically where we are today. And, but I think it takes a commitment to modernization. The same people who were saying that you couldn't get the Reagan Administration to deal, were also opposing every part of the program to increase our overall military strength. And so, you know, my view was that was wrong. And that the only way you make real progress in this country is through bipartisan cooperation. It takes sensible moderates in both parties to get together and provide the votes for a credible approach. And if the Reagan Administration was willing to move away from the rhetoric of the Evil Empire and start talking about double build downs and different, you know, creative approaches to arms control, then I thought it was worth taking the risk of supporting a program which had been started under the Carter Administration. I mean, people think MX was a creation of Ronald Reagan. It was Jimmy Carter's missile, in a sense. In fact, I think it was started during the Ford Administration. The early work on it. And it was a, it was just another modernization step. And so, you know, if we're going to make any progress in this country, get anything done, and that's what we're here to try to do in the Congress is accomplish something, you have to work in a bipartisan way. And there are some in Congress who come here to, to oppose and there is a role for opposition. When the other side is wrong you oppose them. But when they're willing to compromise and you can find a consensus position, then I think you have a better chance to achieve something. So that's why we got a group of about 40, 50 members who made the difference. We could make the difference. We could defeat the MX missile. Or we could provide the votes to see that it was funded. But we weren't going to do it unless there was a quid pro quo. And the quid pro quo in this case was, you know, a commitment by this Administration to arms control that they had not been making up to this point, up to that point. And a commitment to develop the small ICBM. And I thought it was a deal worth...taking the risk to pursue.

ASKS IF WEINBERGER AND OTHERS REALLY WERE OPPOSED TO THE SMALL MISSILE AND ONLY AGREED IN ORDER TO GET THE MX.

Well I don't know. I never saw a weapons system that Cap Weinberger didn't like, but maybe that's true...

HAVE THEY LIVED UP TO THEIR PART?

Well I think there's been a kind of a lukewarm approach to this whole thing by this Administration and the fact that they put down in Geneva a proposal to ban mobile missiles certainly wasn't in my view a good faith...keeping of their promise to develop a small single warhead ICBM. And that was something that we jumped on them about. Now, maybe that was a negotiating ploy because of the fact that the Soviets had already moved ahead on the SS-24 and SS-25, that's a debatable point. But, you know, things kind of fell apart when Congress capped the MX at 50. Which I supported. In fact I told...Bud McFarlane in this very room that I didn't think and Al Gore was here, that we could, we probably would only get 50 out of Congress. Because after that there wouldn't be the political support to go forward. And we wanted the Administration to understand that going in. That, you know, we were committed to a hundred but we might have to set, settle for 50. So, but I would say this. I think it's going to be the next Administration that has to make the final decision on ICBM modernization. And I can understand the problem here. Because if you add, you know, 50 more MXs, you get 500 more warheads deployed. It's a lot less expensive than building 500 single warhead systems. But the 500 single warhead systems restore survivability to the land-based leg, and when you consider survivable warheads, it's a much better bargain. So even though it's more expensive, it does what we need to have accomplished. And therefore it's worth the investment in my view.

IF BECAUSE OF BUDGET CUTS CHOICES HAD TO BE MADE, WHAT WOULD HIS PRIORITIES BE?

Well I, I'm committed to the small ICBM and I would vote to, to cut out the funding for the rail mobile garrison. The only way I would even consider rail mobile garrison was if you were going to take the 50 MXs that had already been deployed, and put, make them mobile. Now that might be a more attractive venture because then it enhance the survivability of those, those 50 MXs. But, but I don't think that's going to happen either. I think the best thing to do here is just not go forward with rail mobile garrison and just commit ourselves to staying with the...the legislation cap of 50 MX, and that's it. No more.

CITES SEN. WILSON'S DERISION OF MIDGETMAN AS "CONGRESSMAN."

Well I just... don't agree with that at all. First of all, we're nowhere near a time when we're going to be able to deploy the Strategic Defense Initiative or Star Wars. - We're not anywhere near that. And so we need to make decisions now about what to do about modernization in the context, hopefully of a 50 percent reduction in strategic weapons. And clearly in that context, if we're talking about 6,000 warheads, then going to a single warhead system which increases the number of aim points and improves crisis stability, is the correct way to proceed. So ...you know, as we make progress in arras... control I think the case for a small single warhead system becomes stronger, not weaker. And let's face it: SDI is a long ways down the road. Sen. Wilson and other true believers think it's just around the corner, but people who are out there doing the work at Los Alamos and Sandia and Livermore who I have talked to personally say this thing is a long term venture, that there are major technological breakthroughs that need to be made. So I don't want to rest my case on a fantasy at this point.

DOES HE LIKE THE RAIL GARRISON IDEA?

Not particularly. I think we, I think we can live with 50 MXs in existing silos. I don't think we need to go further on that area. I don't think there's a support for it in Congress. I think it's wishful thinking on the part of the Reagan Administration to even be pursuing that. So if I were in their shoes I would settle in now and do the work to get the ICBM, small ICBM program moving ahead and, and make that the modernization program of the future.

CITES GENERAL MAY'S WISH FOR RAIL GARRISON FIRST.

Well they haven't got the votes in either the House or the Senate to accomplish that. That is politically impossible. Short of a, a total breakdown in US-Soviet relations. And in fact things are going the other way. Things look better in terms of overall US-Soviet relations. So I don't see any support up here for...I mean some support, obviously, but not nearly enough to create a majority in the House for 50 additional MX missiles.

WHY SUPPORT ANY MX?

We've already bought them. They're already purchased. Most of them are in the ground, and frankly the MX does do one important thing: It gives us some prompt, hard target capability, that has already moved the Soviets out of their vulnerable silos into a more survivable configuration. That's one of the things, one of the lessons of Scowcroft was, you needed a certain amount of MX capability in order to get the Soviets to go mobile. And, cause mobility creates, enhances survivability on their side. And what you want is both sides to be secure. Not threatened. So that there is in a crisis no reason to pre-empt. So even with 50 MXs we have accomplished what we intended and that is to get them into a more survivable posture. Which they will do over a period of years.

AND IN ORDER TO THREATEN WHAT THEY HOLD DEAR?

Well I mean yeah, it's not just to, to go after their silos. I mean it's also leadership, command control, and communication. You want to be in a position where they, you know, they're deterred from attacking us because they know that we have a capability to, to attack what they hold dearest to them, to their society. And a lot of this is all theoretical. I frankly believe that the kind of capability that we have out there has deterred both sides for 40 or 50 years and I think, you know, slight changes in either side really won't make that much difference. But I do think what we should be looking at long term is to move towards these single warhead systems. Because, that way, there is no reason to pre-empt. Now, if you can destroy an MX, or let's say an SS-18, with two incoming RVs, and you can, and therefore, you can kill ten of their RVs in the, in the ground, that's a 5-to-1 return on investment. And so it gives you an incentive to attack. If you had single warhead systems on both sides. Let's say the United States and the Soviet Union both had single warhead systems, on the theory that it either takes one or two to kill one of the other ones or you couldn't even find it if they were mobile, maybe. Then there is no incentive to attack. And, and it creates a situation where in a crisis no one feels the necessity to pre-empt. That's what we need to move away from. That's where the MIRVed systems are more, are more provocative and more dangerous. And...so, you know, I think that's where our long term, approach should be.

ASKS ABOUT DEMOCRATIC PARTY AND ITS RELATIONSHIP TO NUCLEAR FREEZE AND THE INFLUENCES THERE ON VOTES.

Well, you know, we modified the Freeze. It was the Freeze that basically said until we reach an agreement that's both mutual and verifiable, the modernization will continue. A lot of people here wanted a unilateral freeze on our side only. And that was rejected overwhelmingly in the House. Once that was in place, once there was a...well a...an accommodation reached on the floor of the House which I was involved in seeing happen, then, then you could basically say that we would, you know, we could go along with the idea that both sides would hold at current levels. I've been arguing the same thing in a sense under SALT II. That we ought to have interim restraint. That if we're really trying to get a 50 percent reduction in offensive weapons, we don't need to be adding to current levels. We can, as we add new systems, take old systems out. In a sense, that kind of a freeze...I thought made sense. You know, some people want to freeze technology and they want to do a lot of other things that may not be in our security interest if it isn't mutual between the United States and the Soviet Union. And so it was a modified freeze. But it did give political impulse in the country that there were people very concerned about the arms race. And I think to put pressure on the Reagan Administration to be a little more reasonable and rationale and forthcoming in terms of the positions that were taken at the negotiating table. And I think it helped put pressure on the Administration to get back in the mainstream of traditional American thinking on these issues.

RECALLS LOBBYING EFFORTS.

Right. Well I'd seen it used very effectively during the Carter Administration. President Carter had brought down about 40 or 50 Congressmen. He had Clark Clifford, Harold Brown, Cyrus Vance, Zbigniew Brzezinski, the top people in the Administration and they made an incredible pitch about the necessity of restoring military assistance to Turkey. So, when we were down to one of the very crucial votes on MX, I thought it would be worthwhile to have that same kind of a dinner at the White House, where you have the Secretary of Defense Mr. Weinberger, and Secretary of...State, Mr. Schultz, and I can't remember who, I guess it was McFarlane who was the National Security Advisor or Bill Clark, Jim Baker, and the President, of course. And Brent Scowcroft representing the Commission. And then there was a whole series of members there. And unfortunately when the members got up to start asking the President questions about strategic stability, the kind of answers they got back were well to put it as kindly as possible, were not very helpful. And so that the dinner kind of turned into a fiasco. The President made it very clear that he was going to build the MX no matter what. We needed it and we were going to go ahead with it. And even if the Russians unilaterally disarmed, we were still going to build it almost. I mean, it was almost that bad. So, it didn't help our cause but...but at least it showed a willingness, and this was during the first term, of the Administration during those first three or four years, to try and work with the Congress. And that they did get actively involved and they brought members down and they worked the problem. Once Mr. Baker went to Treasury and Donald Regan came to the White House, there was very little effort by the White House during the second term to try to work with the Congress on strategic policy issues...

Well, you know, the question comes up about, you know, was this, was all the concern about the basing mode or the missile. My view is that one of the major concerns was how much hard target capability the United States was actually going to deploy between the MX and the Minuteman III. Were we going to present the Soviets with the threat of a first strike? And that, that was another major issue in this debate. And when you look at MX, Minuteman III, and the D-5 on the submarines, all of a sudden we develop a tremendous amount of hard target capability. That could give the Soviets the impression that we were trying to, to develop a first strike potential. Especially if we then would have a limited defensive capability to soak up a ragged response to a, a US first strike. I don't think that's our policy and that's one of the reasons why we limited MX to 50. We did not want to present... Well I don't think our policy is to have a first strike against the Soviets. But they are going, they look at us the same way that we look at them. They look at our capabilities and all of a sudden they see 100 or 200 MX missiles with ten warheads each and they see a whole host of Trident submarines with D-5 missiles with hard target capability, and they are going to think that we are trying to achieve a first strike capability. And it's not our policy but they are going to look at what we've got, not what we say.

AND THAT'S WHY YOU...

And that's one of the reasons why the Congress limited the MX to 50 missiles, because with 500 warheads, I mean, you're talking about the ability to take out 250 Soviet launchers. And they have far more than that. So we wouldn't present them with a first strike capability.

WITH RESISTANCE FROM AIR FORCE, SENATE, ETC., WILL WE GO AHEAD WITH MIDGETMAN?

I think that's a question that's up in the air at this point in time. I think there's tremendous support for it in Congress. The Administration has basically blessed it. But there are certain forces within the Congress who don't want to build it. And that's going to be an on-going struggle. In fact just the other day the Senate Armed Services, the Senate Appropriations Committee zeroed the money for it. So that's a serious problem. And one that we'll have to face when the House and Senate has its conference. But my gut instinct is we're going to go ahead with the small missile program. There is enough support for it.

ASKS IF HE DRAWS A LESSON FROM THE PROTRACTED STRUGGLE?

Well, I mean, I think there's a couple of lessons here. One, that if you're going to modernize your weapons system you'd better think very carefully about how you're going to base those systems. And you have to take into account the necessity for having as survivable a basing mode as is possible. And that any kind of new program is going to be highly controversial. I think also there's another lesson, an important lesson. And that is try to develop a bipartisan consensus behind your policy. I mean in the next Administration, I think the first thing they should try and do is to sit down with leaders in both parties in the House and the Senate and try and come up with a kind of a consensus policy about what needs to be done in terms of modernizing these strategic forces, to try and avoid the kind of divisive debate that we've had, during the Reagan years. And also I think you've got to be, start thinking long term. What kind of a, you know, force structure do we really want to see both the United States and the Soviet Union have 20 or 30 years from now. And that's where I would hope that we would start thinking about moving away from these highly MIRVed systems, either on submarines or on land-based missiles, towards the single warhead system. Which takes away the incentive to pre-empt. And in my view we could possibly see a world 50 years from now where maybe the United States and the Soviet Union only have say 500 of these systems when, total now, I'm talking about bombers, I'm talking about ICBM warheads, SLBM warheads, and you know, and configured in such a way that it would be purely for deterrent or defensive purposes. And now in that kind of a world, some form of limited defense to deal with an accidental launch wouldn't be out of the question. But, you know, this, these are the kind of things we need to be thinking about as we move into the, hopefully the new Democratic Administration in 1989.

WON'T THERE BE SOME IN THE PENTAGON RELUCTANT TO GIVE UP THE IDEA OF BEING ABLE TO THREATEN THE SOVIETS WITH A PLAUSIBLE FIRST USE SCENARIO?

Well no, I think, well I don't think there's many people over there who really think we're going to have a first strike approach. I mean that is not a policy that's ever been accepted. I mean I think some people like to have the capability because they feel that that kind of capability is the best kind of deterrence. It's when the Soviets feel threatened that they feel the happiest. I disagree with that I think you want a situation where either now or in a crisis, neither side feels that they're going to be hit with a pre-emptive attack. That there's no incentive to pre-empt. In fact, in the kind of world that I envision, the attacker would be actually in a worse position. Because it would take more warheads to destroy a certain portion of the other side's force, thus leaving the attacker in a worse position. And that's the kind of stability that we're trying to build into any kind of a modernization program.

WHY DID YOU AND LES ASPIN, WHY DID YOU TAKE ON PERSONALLY, SPEARHEADING THIS CAMPAIGN TO GET THIS COMPROMISE THROUGH THE CONGRESS?

Well because we made a commitment to work with the Administration and we felt that it was worth the risk. That we thought that there was a prospect of getting the Reagan Administration to be serious about arras control and that we could make real progress. And that you shouldn't write off an American President. And that's what some of our colleagues were saying. They were saying that there was no hope of the Reagan Administration ever doing anything on arms control and that we were being suckered in. Well I think the proof is quite the contrary. I think right now we're going to see the President in a few...near term signing an INF agreement and we may get an agreement in principle on a 50 percent reduction in strategic weapons. Those are real, significant accomplishments. And so I felt that there was a chance to make that kind of progress and that we shouldn't give up on Ronald Reagan just because he'd made a lot of bad speeches before he ran for, well when he was running for President and when he became President. That you still needed to move him in the right direction and that's what this is all about. And I think we accomplished that.

WAS THERE A TURNING POINT WHEN THERE WAS A CONSENSUS, THAT THE FIGHT HAD BEEN WON?

Well, I mean, I think, the first vote we had after the dense pack went down in the spring of, of 1983 when we clearly established that we had the votes. Now that margin got narrower and narrower, but, you know, as each vote became narrower and narrower, our influence with the Administration became greater and greater. So it was always a difficult situation and then of course when the Soviets walked out of the INF talks and things kind of broke down in terms of the arms control talks for a while, then, and the election occurred. Then, you know, things changed in the next several years. And frankly in the last few years we've been putting a lot of pressure on the Administration. The same people, Aspin, myself, on a series of arms control amendments, to try and make sure that the Administration lived up to its commitment to pursue arms control vigorously. Now I never give them much credit for what they did. I just think as, you know, as things evolved and you had good people like Nitze and Schultz and Kampelman there that, and opportunities started to...you know, present themselves, and Gorbachev's ascendency of the Soviet Union, as someone who could deal, and had the political strength to, to make proposals. That all of a sudden the opportunities were there. But I would argue, had we not modernized our, our intermediate nuclear weapons in Europe, had we not gone ahead with a strong defense policy, that those opportunities might not ever have presented themselves. And so I would say that we were right and they were wrong. On this particular issue.

IS THERE SOMETHING WRONG WITH SOLVING A LARGELY TECHNICAL, SCIENTIFIC PROBLEM ON PURELY POLITICAL GROUNDS?

Well I don't think it was purely political. Obviously there were technical capabilities of an MX missile that were certainly not just political symbols. But my own assessment is that part of deterrence is the ability to execute a policy, to...to go ahead and say, hey, we're going to go ahead and modernize. And we're going to get the votes in the House and the Senate to accomplish that. Because it leads us to a stronger deterrent policy. And by not being able to, let's say we had fallen apart. Let's say under the pressure of the Soviet Union we had not been able to go ahead and deploy the intermediate weapons in Europe, then, then our whole NATO policy, our whole policy of, of containment and deterrence in Europe would have collapsed. The same thing is true here. If we had not been able to modernize our strategic forces and there had been disarray in the Congress, the Soviets might not have felt any necessity to negotiate with us because we were self-destructing in front of the entire world. But what we showed here I think was that good people in both parties can pull together after a major defeat on dense pack, on the merits. It was defeated because it was not the right way to go. Come up with a credible policy. Yes, part of it was political. But execute it and, and because of that I think we are now on the verge of getting what all of us who supported it wanted in the first place, and that was a, some solid agreements with the Soviets that are going to make the world a little safer in the future.