WHAT WAS THE ATTITUDE ON THE FLOOR OF THE HOUSE WHEN YOU FIRST CAME INTO CONGRESS ABOUT THE REAGAN ADMINISRATION'S STRATEGIC PLANS?

There was unfortunately a willingness to buy into their strategic plan on the part of a majority, and obviously they got most of what they wanted in the first couple of years. I don't think they had much of a strategic plan and I think a lot of members will now acknowledge that they didn't. The plan was to spend as much as they could get Congress to vote, and that was unfortunately a large amount. Their strategic plan was more. More on land, more on sea, more in the air. It did not, I think, seem very well thought out. It now appears to be that there was a conscious policy on the part of some, maybe more...than on some others. In fact to force the pace. They, I think, understood that defense funding as been somewhat cyclical in the past. They were riding a wave. They were riding a wave of American frustration because of the Iranian hostages. And that was an outrageous thing, for the Americans, innocent Americans who have been mistreated the way the Iranians did. They were riding a wave of outrage against...and again, justifiable outrage, against the very brutal Russian invasion of Afghanistan. Unfortunately, American nuclear weapons weren't relevant to the hostage taking or the Russians being in Afghanistan. If they were and we could have just built more nuclear weapons and stopped it, I suppose I would have been tempted. But there was really no connection. But they knew that they had a majority at that point ready to build. And I think the, many of them were consciously saying, "Look, let's commit ourselves all across the board. Let's make this very hard to undo." And I think they, they did that with an unfortunate degree of success, and that we have finally reached the point where we are cutting them back. And there was an unfortunate willingness on the part of a lot of members to vote for it. I don't think that meant that most members thought they made sense. I think it was that most members were afraid to stand up against Ronald Reagan and appear to be weak on defense. There were a lot of people who felt, gee, if we look like we're weak on defense, we're going to get hurt. So the strategic plan was more.

WAS THERE A SENSE REAGAN WAS TALKING REALLY DANGEROUSLY?

No, no, I don't think that was ever a real idea on the part of the President or Caspar Weinberger. As a matter of fact, while I disagreed very much with the spending policy of Caspar Weinberger, he was during most of his tenure a fairly strong advocate of restraint. As were a lot of people in the Pentagon. Because they had seen what happened to them as an institution, the armed services, as an institution, when they got into an unpopular war like Vietnam. I don't think there was ever any realistic prospect of them fooling around with limited nuclear war. I don't think so. I think they were, they were dead wrong in wanting to spend so much, but I don't think they were on the verge of starting a war at all.

ASKS ABOUT DENSE PACK PROPOSAL?

Silly. What happened was, Reagan got himself in a box. If you believe that you have to make your intercontinental ballistic missiles survivable, you run into real problems. Jimmy Carter's proposal for the mobile missile on the train track looked the most silly to people, but, it's interesting that the Reagan people are now coming back to it. I don't think it made any sense. I don't think you needed that kind of mobile large missile. I think the cruise, air-launched cruise missiles from Stealth bombers, Trident submarines, a more accurate warhead in the existing ICBM areas, I think those made some sense. I think committing ourselves to a large amount of money for the mobile missile was a big mistake. And I thought it was a mistake under Carter. Reagan came in and he had agreed with the mistake under Carter. Remember the politics of that were that a lot of Reagan's supporters out in the West didn't like the missile because it was going to be bad for Utah, and Wyoming, the Mormon Church, as I remember, came out against it. So Reagan, when he came in, as I recall, this is six years ago, seven years ago now, had a kind of a difficult position, because he was committed to a new survivable land-based missile, but not the Jimmy Carter mode. Well, probably, if you were going to do that, I don't think it made sense to spend all that money for that, but if you were going to do that, the Carter mode was probably the most sensible one. So Reagan was then in this bind to come up with a new mode. And dense pack was an effort by him to kind of get himself out of a box he had gotten himself into. The box was that he was committed to a mobile missile but he had opposed, for political reasons, because it was Jimmy Carter's, the way to do it. So he came up with his other very silly idea and it soon became clear how very silly it was.

CONGRESS REFUSED IT AND CREATED SCOWCROFT COMMISSION. HOW DID THAT LOOK TO YOU?

I'm unhappy with the commissions. I think they are a way to fuzz up major issues. We were doing so many things with commissions. We put social security into a commission, we put the strategic missile into a commission. There were proposals for other commissions. It looked to me for a while like we were just going to have to vote to create a commission on commissions and then, and then go home. And the Scowcroft Commission gave us what you could have expected. You put all these national security types on there, and they fuzzed it up and they came up with something that I don't think made a great deal of sense. It was a political compromise. Basically I think they showed that we really did not need that massive expenditure for new a land-based missile. They pretty much said that. But they didn't want to say it straight out. And I think that was what was going on in Congress. It is very difficult for some members of Congress, apparently, to bring themselves to vote to cancel a major weapons system over a President's objection. It has happened very rarely in our history. Members of Congress, particularly in the early '80s, were afraid of Ronald Reagan — I'm talking now about the marginal members. People from Massachusetts, we were all against it and that wasn't a problem for any of us. But...and others. There were large numbers against it. The critical bloc on the MX and on Nicaragua, the two issues by the way had a lot in common in that the House was sort of split with about 90 percent against and 90 percent for them and 10 percent in the middle who just couldn't make up their minds. They didn't want to just take on Ronald Reagan head on. So Scowcroft kind of was seized upon by some members as an out. Also, the Scowcroft people made a very clever tactical move. They had Jim Woolsey on there who had been an ally of some of the Democrats who while skeptical of Reagan were worried about the need for a new land-based component. So Scowcroft gave them what they wanted, which was the Midgetman. And that was very important to that group of Senator Gore, who was then Congressman Gore, Congressman Dick, Congressman Aspin, that group who had I think kind of made a mistake by buying into the MX when we could have killed it outright and saved a lot of money, because they got support for the Midgetman.

WITHOUT THE DEAL ASPIN AND DICKS MADE, THE HOUSE MIGHT HAVE KILLED THE MISSILE. HOW WERE THEY ABLE TO DO IT?

They weren't, there were votes. They didn't influence anybody else but themselves. But...it was closely balanced. Remember I said you had about 90 percent on one side and 90 percent on another. What they were able to do — I mean they didn't influence any large number of people. I don't think that Midgetman instead of the MX deal ever had the support of 15 percent of the House. But the 7 or 8 percent that did buy into it, maybe 5 percent, were a swing bloc. And so they were able to do that. I think the Administration frankly suckered them. I think the Administration gave lip service to the Midgetman to get them locked into the MX and is now trying to get out from under the Midgetman. But I think they got, they got taken.

ADMINISTRATION SAID WE NEEDED THE MX AS A BARGAINING CHIP IN ARMS CONTROL TALKS.

I didn't think that that made a great deal of sense. In fact, as it shows, really, in the intermediate nuclear force treaty, or as you will see, I think, on the strategic arms talks if we get to them, you don't have to get into a one-for-one reduction. Where you need parity is in what's left, not in what's reduced. And what we need to have the Russians be serious about arms reduction were two things. One, apparently, we needed Gorbachev. We needed a Russian leader who understands that it is in his interest to reduce the level of arms spending in the Soviet Union. And you need, on our side, a credible deterrent. The notion that the Russians aren't worried about Trident submarines with their MIRVed missiles and they're not worried about B-1 bombers or now in a few years, Stealth bombers with air-launched cruise missiles, I think is wrong.(INAUDIBLE WORD) they're not worried about the existing ICBMs, the warhead of which, and there was always support for improving the accuracy of those warheads. Not to the point where they'd really be first strike weapons but improving them. I just think that's nonsense, the notion that you can't negotiate unless you have absolute parity before. And it's also terribly expensive. People won't understand that. If your argument is that the MX is a bargaining chip, you're talking about billions and billions of dollars, you are talking about adding to the deficit, you are talking about cutting into cancer research, you are talking about denying old people adequate medical care and keeping people homeless, because of some bargaining strategy with the Russians which I think is not proven by any means.

HAVE WE EVER TRADED AWAY ANY OF OUR BARGAINING CHIPS?

Well we just did, if you think of them as bargaining chips, we just trade away the Pershings and the, and the cruises. But they were never part of anybody’s strategic view of the world. They were always put in there to kind of satisfy the Europeans. The problem is that we haven't traded, we haven't previously negotiated away...anything. What we have been able to do in the future with negotiations is to agree not to do something new. We haven't destroyed anything.

ASPIN AND DICKS ARGUE THIS IS THE ONLY WAY DEMOCRATS CAN PRESSURE ADMINISTRATION TO GO TO THE TABLE AND NEGOTIATE WITH RUSSIANS. THAT SCOWCROFT DEAL WOULD PRESSURE THEM INTO SERIOUS ARMS CONTROL.

I don't even think they would claim that any more. It was, it was wrong when they said it, it's been proven wrong. We didn't get any kind of deal over that. We still haven't. What's changed the situation is Gorbachev. That has led us to be able to get some kind of negotiations. But the argument that we were able to get the Russians into that kind of deal because of the MX or the Midgetman I think is just nonsense. I think my Democratic friends, they have just got themselves in an untenable situation, that frankly what they were motivated by, I think, in part was that the Democrats would look soft on defense and that would hurt us politically. I think frankly the arms control specialist, or the defense theory specialist, gets so rarified that they're talking only to each other and, and depart sometimes from reality, with the bargaining chips and with the this and with the that. I think more basic forces drive people. I think Reagan and Gorbachev were driven by much more basic forces to get an agreement. Once you get into negotiation, then some of the specifics become relevant. But this, there was a whole theory that has been...it's almost a theology of arms control. In which people talk only to each other. And I don't think it makes a lot of sense. On the whole it's harmless but when it begins to cost billions and billions of dollars, I think it becomes harmful.

DICKS TAKES CREDIT, THAT THE SCOWCROFT DEAL HAD WORKED, THAT WE'RE MOVING TOWARD THE MIDGETMAN, AND THAT HE MOVED THE PRESIDENT TOWARDS ARMS CONTROL.

Oh, I think that's nonsense.

ASKS FOR MORE ON THIS.

In the first place, the Administration isn't for the Midgetman. So, and they are still trying to...

ASKS HOW IT LOOKED TO HIM AT THAT TIME.

Oh, I told them I thought when they said that they had, that by giving the President the MX, secured his agreement to go to an arms control talk, I said I thought they had gotten a deal without verification. You can't force someone to negotiate. You can force someone to sit down at a table, but forcing someone to negotiate is like pushing on a string. We can keep the President from doing bad things. We can't make him do constructive things. That had nothing to do with the current negotiations over the INF. I mean, the Midgetman is irrelevant to the INF. The one treaty we've got now is the INF. And I don't think that had anything to do with it. What has happened I think is that Gorbachev has come in now and he's serious because of the economy. I think the Democrats in Congress can take some credit for moving Reagan. But it wasn't that deal, which Reagan never cared about. He was not for the Midgetman. I mean, I think they just suckered themselves. Or rather, Reagan suckered them. He got their support for the MX in return for nothing. In return for absolutely nothing. Because he did not get serious in my judgment about arms control the way they had seen it. The...basic problem was that they got from him an agreement that he would go and talk and that doesn't produce anything at all.

WAS IT CLEAR THAT SCOWCROFT WAS FORMED TO FIND A RATIONALE FOR GETTING SOME MXS?

Oh of course. I don't think anybody doubts that. Of course they were and it was obvious that they were going to come up with them.

ASKS FOR ANSWER IN FORMAT.

Oh, I think it was always clear that the Scowcroft Commission was intended to provide a rationale to provide a weapon. They had a weapon without a, without a justification, or without a place to put it. I mean all this stuff about basing mode, which is a fancy way to say a place to put it. They were committed to do something for reasons that they thought were relevant to the way the Russians would perceive us. They thought we had to spend a lot of money on a land-based missile to worry the Russians. And I think they're nuts if they didn't think the Russians didn't know what we knew about...we know where we were going to put it and it wasn't all that relevant, I thought, overall, in terms of defense. But it was clear that the Scowcroft Commission was put together by Reagan to give him a justification for that missile.

WHAT ABOUT THE ARGUMENT NOT SOLVING THIS PROBLEM SHOWS NO NATIONAL RESOLVE? THAT THE SOVIETS COULD THREATEN OUR ASSETS, WE WOULD NOT BE ABLE TO THREATEN THEIRS?

Well that's argument is preposterous, that if we didn't have the MX we wouldn't have a deterrent. I talked about that earlier. The MX was no essential part of a deterrent. The argument that we couldn't threaten the Russians if we didn't have an MX, what are the Tridents? Chopped liver? What are B-1s with air-launched cruise missiles? Pop guns? That's just not true.

BUT THEY ARGUED THE RUSSIANS HAD ACCURATE WEAPONS TO TARGET OUR COMMAND CENTERS, ETC.

I don't think you need to be able to hard target their command centers and silos if you're talking about a second strike. If you are talking about a first strike, a pre-emptive strike, then you've got to be able to take out with great accuracy their most protected weapons. If you are talking about a second-strike strategy which says if you attack us, we will destroy your society in return, then you don't need to have these kind of capacities. In fact, we were moving...now the Trident D-5 missile is controversial among a lot of people on the ground (?). But that one's going ahead and the Trident D-5 is a much more sophisticated and precise weapon. So the notion that we needed the MX, if you read the Scowcroft Commission report, they don't make a case that we need an MX. And the argument that we have to do it to show our national resolve is the most preposterously circular argument that I've ever heard, in which you say, "Well, we're going to commit ourselves to do this silly thing," and then you say, "We have to do this silly thing because we committed ourselves to do it." We would show much more national resolve, it would seem to me, to say, "Well, let's not do silly things." But the notion that you set yourself a task that doesn't make any sense, and you therefore commit yourself to carry that task out, at the cost again of billions and billions of dollars. People ought to always keep in mind that we are talking about one of the major components of the deficit, the one area where military, where budget spending, military spending, went way up. All of this costs a lot of money.

DID HE SUPPORT MIDGETMAN?

No. I don't think we need a major expenditure of dollars for a whole new land-based deterrent.

WHY DID MANY IN CONGRESS....

I'm not in charge of anybody but myself. If you want to know what other people think, you ought to ask them.

THEY DISCUSS. ASKS ABOUT PROPOSAL FOR 50 MX IN RAIL GARRISON.

The notion for 50 MXs is crazy. There's no mission for it. When I got on the floor of the House and said, "Look, I can understand if you're asking for 100 MXs because you would at least have some idea of what you would do with them," but nobody's got an idea for 50. Fifty was purely a political compromise, again so that people wouldn't think, I guess, that we weren't building nothing at all, and that we were weak, which I think is a nonsensical argument. When you look at what else we have. I... before that, where's the strategic justification for 50? No one came forward with one. They, it just doesn't make any sense.

DID YOU OFFER AMENDMENTS?

For the last few years I've offered amendments to cut out all MX spending altogether. Once, I guess it was '85, it passed the House. They weren't ready for it. We didn't do a lot of debating on it. I just got up during the appropriation and offered the amendment. And won by about three votes. Under the rules of the House that was eligible for a revote a couple of hours later, and the Administration dropped everything, I am told, for a few hours and really worked people over and twisted arms and, and changed about four or five votes. I don't think most members of the House believe that the MX makes much sense. And I think now when you look to Carlucci, talking about his major cutbacks, that the MX is probably on the chopping block.

COMMENTS ON ADMINISTRATION'S VIGOROUS EFFORTS ON THIS ISSUE.

It's not unusual for the Administration to lobby hard on things and President Reagan if you think back to '81, '82, '83, a lot of his argument was "I am an effective President." Carter was not, Ford was not, Nixon and Johnson. And we haven't had a really effective President since John Kennedy was murdered and one of Ronald Reagan's important appeals was "I'm effective, I can make this Presidency work, we don't have a crippled Presidency." So that's one of the reasons he lobbied. The other is it's very deeply rooted in America that you simply do not say no to the President when he needs a major weapon. And it's rarely happened. And the Administration reacted very, very strongly when it was threatened that way. I think they felt that, my god, if they start turning down major weapons systems, they may get the idea that they can run this place.

WAS THERE SOMETHING ABOUT THE TIMING OF THE VOTES? WITH THE FREEZE COMING UP, AID TO CONTRAS.

Well anybody who didn't try to do that would be nuts, of course. I mean. Anybody, on both sides, who has any control over the timing will try and make the timing work to both, to his best advantage. We did neither.

ASKS HOW THAT WORKS.

Well I think it's overrated, frankly... If you look you will find that every vote is always described as being at a bad time or at a good time. That's time. It's like the notion, well, this is in an election year. It's always an election year for members of Congress these days. I think those things are exaggerated. I mean, everybody manipulates, but I don't think they switch many votes.

DOES VULNERABILITY OF OUR LAND-BASED MISSILES UPSET HIM?

Well I already talked about that. I already said that ...

DO WE NEED ALL THREE, SURVIVABLY?

(HE HAS BEEN ASKED THAT AND DOES NOT WANT TO REPEAT)

DID CONGRESS WIN OR LOSE THE FIGHT OVER THE MX?

It was a compromise. But in the first place, Congress won because Congress is in the majority, and voted that way. I mean, Congress is the majority of the House and Senate, it's not me. I wish it was all the time, but it isn't. So, I mean I couldn't say that Congress lost because a majority voted for the foolish thing. Now if you're saying, were the pro-MX people, did the pro-MX side win or the anti-MX side win? It was a compromise, I would say, as of a month ago I would have told you, the MX issue got split pretty much down the middle. Now, with the new budget cuts, it may be that the MX may be out altogether, in which case the taxpayers all lost significantly by spending a lot of money for a turkey that isn't going to get used. But up until now I would say it was about a 50-50 split on the MX.

WHAT IS DRIVING FORWARD THE DEVELOPMENT OF THAT MISSILE?

The fear that we needed to have a land-based leg of the triad for deterrence that was invulnerable to Russian attack. And the problem, I think, is that it's much harder to make a land-based invulnerable. Air-based and sea-based can be made invulnerable much more cheaply, much less threateningly. Because as you make the land-based invulnerable, you make it more of a first strike I think. I think that was never as necessary as they thought.

DID YOU SUSPECT AIR FORCE WANTED A FIRST-STRIKE WEAPON?

No, oh no. I don't think that was their major concern. But I think some of the military people wouldn't mind having that. But I think survivability against their first strike was more their motivation.

IS IT A DESTABILIZING WEAPON?

Yeah. I think it's unnecessarily destabilizing. Not in a major way. I mean, I think that the deterrence system is frankly fairly stable. But, I think it, it had some nervous-making elements to people...My main objection, I should say, to the MX was very simple. It was an enormous waste of money. If we could have gotten one for free I wouldn't have fought it so hard. But when we've got kids going hungry and old people can't pay their medical bills, spending those tens of billions on that MX for so dubious a military value was what really motivated me.

ASKS HIM TO REPEAT.

What, what motivated me primarily in the MX frankly, was not that it was destabilizing or that it was going to jeopardize arms control, because I think that theology gets so rarified that they're only talking to each other. The MX is an extraordinarily expensive piece of business from the day Ronald Reagan started talking about it until now, it has already consumed billions of dollars. It will, if they get their way, consume billions more. And that's money that's taken away from hungry children and old people who need medical care. And that adds to the deficit. And it's just a prime example of absolutely unnecessary money. Serious money that we spend and get no return for. No return that isn't provided by Trident submarines, and B-1 and then Stealth bombers, and even a land-based missile. You know, the notion that the Russians will say, "Oh, well, after all those American ICBMs, we don't think they're all that accurate, so we think we can launch an attack on them and we can probably take out a lot of them and therefore it's a limited deterrent force." That's nonsense. Rational people are not going to launch an attack on the United States with nuclear weapons and totally discount the ICBMs we have now. That's why I say this arms control theorizing gets so rarified that I think it's disassociated from reality.

WHAT ABOUT SUPPORTS OF MX WHO FEEL THAT IN TIMES OF BRINKMANSHIP THIS IS HOW WE GET THEM TO BACK DOWN?

When? I mean, you tell me, I mean, you tell me, you cite the argument that people say, "Well, this is how we get the Russians to back down." Well, I suppose it was relevant to John Kennedy in 1962 in Cuba. That was 25 years ago. We had a degree of superiority over the Russians. That ... we will never have again, no matter what, how hard we try. So I'm trying to think in the last ten years has that worked. When did it work under Ronald Reagan? I mean Ronald Reagan got his way from 1981 until about a year ago. Congress basically gave him everything he wanted in the strategic weapons system. Where did the Russians back down? Did I miss something? Was there a time in 1985 that Reagan said, "Get out of Afghanistan?" I mean, are those not Russians that are still in Afghanistan? I mean, are they, I don't know, actors? I mean, have they allowed Solidarity its freedom in Poland? Are there not Cuban troops in Angola? What has this brought us? I think we have had some fairly stable deterrence and on the other hand, when we were, under Jimmy Carter or Gerald Ford, when Ronald Reagan said we were very weak, when did the Russians back us down? In what instance did Jimmy Carter or Gerald Ford say to the Russians, "Oh I give up because you have more missiles than us"? I mean, these people are talking about things that don't happen. I asked Admiral Turner, who was head of the CIA under Carter, mid-8Os, if he could think of any case where the outcome of a major world issue, or even a minor world issue, would have been changed if we had been significantly stronger strategically, the Russians strategically weaker. I'm not talking now about if you go back to the point where one side or the other had total dominance over the other. Nobody thinks that's ever going to come back. So, was there a time under Ford or Carter when we were unable to accomplish a goal because we lacked enough missiles? The answer is no. And there hasn't been a time under Reagan where we accomplished a goal because we had enough missiles. The role of missiles is to cancel each other out. The role of nuclear weapons is to make sure that neither side uses them. They are a successful deterrent in that regard. Other than that, now, I'm not talking about 1962, when the balance of forces was very different, but in the '70s and '80s, I would love someone to explain to me how they have made any major difference in world affairs. I don't see it.

REAGAN SAYS THAT'S WHAT BROUGHT THE SOVIETS BACK TO THE TABLE IN GENEVA.

The fact is that we are, we have just negotiated the intermediate nuclear forces treaty, which are not part of the strategic weapons. And that is just nonsense. I think what brought the Russians to the table to accept an offer now that they didn't accept before was that Gorbachev is a lot smarter than Brezhnev and Andropov and Chernenko. He understands that those things cost him a lot of money. He's got a need, I think, politically to raise the standard of living of the Russians. And I think he understands that reality. The notion that the MX missile got the Russians to agree to remove intermediate nuclear weapons from Europe has to be something that somebody made up to kid Reagan and he took it seriously.

HE SPEAKS OF 1983 WHEN THE SOVIETS WALKED OUT...

Well you tell me, would we have gotten back to the table to do what? Nothing. And as a matter of fact, the Russians walked out and they walked back, and nothing happened. Until Gorbachev came into power and decided for his own reasons that he had to make some changes. And the balance of forces in the United States changed. And I think what Reagan and the others understand is no. Congress finally said to him, a year ago, "Hey, Buster, genog, enough." There isn't all the money in the world. You can't keep wasting billions and billions of dollars on these things. You'd better get sensible. And both sides, I think, are now motivated by yes, their sense of a place in history which is all very nice. But they are able to sell that I think domestically because both sides have this overpowering need to stop wasting this enormous amount of money.

SINCE SCHLESINGER THE GOVERNMENT HAS ARGUED WE NEED THESE WEAPONS TO MAKE CREDIBLE OUR THREAT TO USE THEM FIRST IN EUROPE. THE SCOWCROFT COMMISSION GAVE THAT JUSTIFICATION FOR THE MX, A CREDIBLE DETERRENT THAT DOESN'T ESCALATE INTO TOTAL WAR AGAINST CITIES.

I don't think anyone believes that the role of the MX is to touch off what, a limited nuclear war?

CLARIFIES...

That is the kind of rarified...

RESTARTS HIM.

I don't think that we need MX missiles to keep the Warsaw Pact from overrunning Western Europe. By the way, I think one of the greatest hypes in the world today are the Western strategic thinkers who try to scare us with the overwhelming balance of conventional forces on the side of the Warsaw Pact. For a Russian leader to decide to launch a conventional attack on Europe, he has to decide among other things, that the Hungarian, Czech, and Polish armies will be totally reliable. It puzzles me that some of the conservatives who are the most articulate in referring to the captive nations, who correctly point out that the Hungarians and Czechs and Poles, at the very least, have frequently shown how much they dislike the Russians, who dislike being under Russian control. How anyone would think that in a war, when there was a real chance that it would go either way, that they would be loyally carrying out Russian orders, baffles me. So no, I do not think that in the absence of nuclear weapons the Russians with that very unruly group there, potentially would be marching to the Atlantic.

SHOULD WE NOT HAVE BEEN CONCERNED THAT ALL WE HAD WAS OUR OLD, LITTLE MINUTEMAN WITH THREE WARHEADS....

(HE FEELS HE HAS ANSWERED THIS).

(THEY DISCUSS).

I'm saying that I believe that you have sufficient deterrent when you have got a, well the B-52 then they had the B-1, but with the Stealth coming, when you've got a Stealth bomber with air-launched cruise missiles, you have Trident submarines with more accurate weapons. We can fight about how accurate they have to be. We you've got the Tridents with its MIRVed capacity, when you've got the air-launched cruise missiles off the Stealth, and you have some land-based capacity. Yes, I think you have a sufficient deterrent. I don't think you have to get the land-based missiles at a cost of tens and tens of billions of dollars to a point where they can survive totally a first strike, because they are not going to be the brunt of our response. The Russians cannot be sure that they can take them out. Some land-based capacity, even if it's not a very technically sure response, given that we have got the superiority that we have got in submarines and given the air-launched cruise missiles, I think is enough to deter any rational individual. And if a person on the other side isn't rational, nothing is going to help us.

SO THE FACT THEY HAVE LARGE, MANY HEADED WARHEADS...

(HE FEELS HE HAS ANSWERED IT.)

DID ASPIN AND DICKS MAKE A MISTAKE IN PUSHING THE COMPROMISE?

(HE HAS ANSWERED THAT).

DID CONGRESS GET SUCKERED AS A WHOLE?

No. You're missing the point. Whose Congress as a whole... there is no Congress as a whole. There are 435 members of the House and 100 Senators. The people who voted against it didn't get suckered. The people who voted for it... Well, I really think you have to focus on this. About 90 percent of the House was pretty clear where it was on the MX missile. 45 percent against it, 45 percent in favor of it. The ones who got suckered were the swing votes, I think. There were people who said, "We'll vote for the MX if you'll support Midgetman and go forward with these major nuclear disarmament talks." They're the only ones who got suckered because they're the only ones who believed it. The people who were for the MX didn't get suckered because they would have voted for the MX without that. And those of us who voted against the MX even with it didn't get suckered because we voted against it. So the only people who got suckered were the people who switched their votes based on support for the Midgetman which was insincere, and support for nuclear talks, which was meaningless.

WHAT WILL CONGRESS DO IN THE FUTURE?

Well the MX battle before Carlucci said that he was going to look at it again under the $33 billion cut, was pretty much over, that is I think Congress was kind of going to just continue to 50 and not either more or less. Now, with the need finally of getting across that, that we got to cut...and the only rational way to cut is to cut systems rather than just stretch everything out which costs more. I think the, the MX is a prime cut item. And so is the Midgetman. I think massive amounts of new land-based systems is the best thing to cut. Getting the land-based missile a little sharper, a little tougher, given that we've already gotten further along with with the Stealth, the Cruise, and with the Trident, I think the land-based is the one strategic area where you can save.

SOME ARGUE REAGAN ADMINISTRATION WAS DISGUSTED WITH ARCANE ARGUMENTS OVER SURVIVABILITY, AND THAT WAS A MOTIVATION FOR THE SDI.

I have no basis to judge that one way or another...