I WILL BEGIN BY ASKING YOU TO COMMENT ON -- I THINK THOSE WHO WERE OUTSIDE OF THE GOT A SENSE IN THAT REALLY A CRUSADE HAD COME TO WASHINGTON. THAT BIG CHANGES HAD TO BE MADE IN THE AREA OF STRATEGIC WEAPONS -- (TAPE CUTS OFF) -- MAYBE SURROUNDING THE PRESIDENT'S PROPOSED STRATEGIC MODERNIZATION PROGRAM.

Well, the basic -- (Tape Cuts Off) -- of our strength was consequence of the President's judgment that until we restored this foundation of deterrence, that the Soviet Union would continue to test wherever possible, and as they had in the late '70s, continued to expand from Angola to Ethiopia and Nicaragua and places like that. And the basic character of our renewed strength had to span the entire spectrum, from strategic nuclear forces to soldiers and so forth. The President was left personally preoccupied with the kid of hardware that was chosen, which he left to his Cabinet officers and the Defense Department -- than to assuring that it would be as good or better than what the Soviet Union had. So, revolution for the President was one of stemming the tide of Leninist expansion, less so one of being an advocate of a particular kind of hardware. In my mind the renewal of our strength had to be first and foremostly in the traditional kinds of weapons, submarines, land based missiles, bombers. But it seemed to me that after we had restored those -- call it traditional -- underpinnings -- that we needed to find a way to compete with the Soviet Union to deter them -- that struck our comparative advantage. We had been playing the game, building missile for missile, submarine for submarine on their rules really, in a competition that they were bound to win it seemed to me. Because they could turn out land based missiles without the restraint of a Congress and a concerned public that we had to face. And to me our own advantage in high technology was the natural domain into which we ought to put most of our resources. That's why -- especially when we began to see in 1982 -- that the new Russian missile, the SS-24, was to be a missile that would be mobile, with multiple warheads -- would pose a problem that we really couldn't deal with; that is, we couldn't count it from the sky as we always had other systems. We couldn't find it and, therefore, we couldn't know if they were cheating or not. So, we needed to find a new way to deal with it and I was very drawn to finding that answer in high technology and that really was what in my own mind -- was the genesis of the SDI program. But I emphasize that it was designed first and foremostly, in my mind, to deal with a military problem; that is, to counter the SS-24 which was something we really couldn't deal with any other way.

PART OF WHAT YOU ARE DESCRIBING, THE WINDOW OF VULNERABILITY, DOES -- COULD YOU EXPLAIN THAT TERM TO US.

Well, the notion grew up in the late '70s that we should never allow our President to be put in a condition where he didn't have any credible options for dealing with the Soviet threat. Well, what that means is -- or what it meant to devotees at the time was that if the Russians ever became able to destroy our missiles, the only missiles that were capable of hitting a fixed point target accurate enough to deal with Soviet missiles, then that would be intolerable. Intolerable, because it would leave the President with no credible options. He would have options. That is, he could send all of our submarine missiles back at the Russian people -- people. But, in the mind of these theoreticians, for our President to have no other option than to destroy society and to expect that our own would also be destroyed is not credible for a Western Judeo-Christian leader. Therefore, we have to find a way to restore the survivability of our counter military missiles or land based missiles and that's what we've been trying to do for over ten years now.

(UNINTELLIGIBLE) ADMINISTRATION '81-'82, IN ADDITION TO THE STRATEGIC MODERNIZATION PROGRAM, THERE WAS A GREAT DEAL -- (TAPE CUTS OFF) -- USE OF NEGATIVE RHETORIC AGAINST THE SOVIET UNION -- I MEAN, POLITICALLY SPEAKING, OR SPEAKING IN THAT KIND OF GENERAL SENSE, WHAT WAS THE MOOD THEN? WAS THERE A SENSE THAT WE WERE BUILDING UP?

I think the President's rhetoric in '81 and '82 and beyond was very sharp, shrill, toward the Soviet Union -- was strategic in the sense that he believed that it was possible to deal with the Soviet Union. But before you could do it or should do it, he wanted to have the country behind him -- behind him in the sense of their having a realistic understanding of Russians, of the Soviet government. To establish that realistic understanding, he thought it necessary to put two or three or four years into -- in filling this rather sober appreciation of a country whose government has expanded at the rate of about one Vermont every year for the last 200 years. So, he used some very extreme language in the first term not so much to express his eternal enmity as it was to elevate the public view of the Soviets to a more realistic level. Because he thought then that in a second term, now, in fact, that that would form a better background of support for actually reaching out to and dealing with the Soviets.

-- (TAPE CUTS OFF) -- FOR THE PRESIDENT INITIALLY. AND HE CAME IN ON A GROUND SWELL OF SUPPORT AND PART OF THAT SUPPORT WAS FOR HIS FOREIGN MILITARY BUILD-UP. PEOPLE WERE WORRIED AND WANTED THAT. APPARENTLY, AT THE SAME TIME THAT WAS HAPPENING, THERE WAS ANOTHER STRAIN GOING ON IN THE COUNTRY THAT'S REPRESENTED BY THE NUCLEAR FREEZE MOVEMENT, WHICH -- (TAPE CUTS OFF) -- BUT IS GIVEN SOME KIND OF IMPETUS AND STRENGTH, I THINK, UNDER -- (TAPE CUTS OFF) --

Well, it was quite a substantial concern. It's immediate impact on the Administration's program was to defeat the centerpiece of the strategic modernization, the MX. And dating from the Spring of '82, we -- I realized that we had to devote much greater effort to a public information program to try to inform Americans about the truth of the fact that the nuclear genie is out of the bottle and you're simply not going to be able to un-invent it. And, so, we convened the experts in public affairs and promotions from the State Department and Defense and... and elsewhere and began in the Fall of '82 to require that every deputy assistant secretary and above go to one of the 14 major media markets in the country and spend at least four days. In which time, they had to participate in a talk show, meet with the editorial board of a newspaper, spend a day on a campus some place and also meet with the combined civic clubs, so as to reach as many people as you could with the truth about what really could be done to alter the strategic balance of the nuclear age. And I believe that it was successful to an extent and, yet, there was a larger problem here. And for me that problem was not only that there was a community of people against nuclear weapons, but that no one of any size or number in our country really has ever had a grasp of the fundamental concept behind nuclear deterrence. And that it seemed to me that until the government, this one, and all its predecessors and all the future ones, began to deal seriously with the American people about why deterrence works and why it can be effective -- that we deserve this freeze movement. And if we're going to sustain the policy, you had to take it to the grassroots. I still think that's true. And it hasn't really been done yet.

THE PRESIDENT BEGAN IN '82, I BELIEVE, AT EUREKA -- (TAPE CUTS OFF) -- MADE A SPEECH AT EUREKA COLLEGE. HE BEGINS TO TALK ABOUT STRATEGIC REDUCTIONS. CAN YOU TELL US ABOUT THAT SPEECH A LITTLE BIT, OR MAYBE ANY ONE OF THOSE SPEECHES. WAS THAT PART OF YOUR -- THE STRATEGY YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT?

Yes, although the President believed that arms control had been misguided in the past -- is well-known. It predated Eureka. But at Eureka, it had been stimulated further by the freeze movement and he believed that his own proposition about reductions instead of using arms control to simply control the speed at which they grew -- would be appealing to the freeze community. And I think that it was. But at the bottom, you have to give him credit for an idea that was sensible and that is reductions make sense as long as you reduce the right systems. And he had a concept behind the reductions that would make sure that they improved stability.

THERE WAS A MEASURE MAYBE -- AT LEAST TO MY EYES -- THE CONCERN THAT THE PRESIDENT MUST HAVE FELT ABOUT THE FREEZE WHEN HE -- (TAPE CUTS OFF) -- THE ACCUSATION THAT THE FREEZE MOVEMENT WAS INFLUENCED -- (TAPE CUTS OFF) -- CONSIDERED POSITION. WAS THERE ANY -- I MEAN, HE DROPPED THAT AGAIN PRETTY QUICKLY. BUT THERE WAS A FEW SPEECHES -- THERE WERE A FEW PRESS CONFERENCES WHERE HE RETURNED TO THAT THEME.

Well, I think, the President, like many people, is given to promoting an idea that reinforces his own point of view. His instincts concerning welfare and its abuses lead him to focus upon stories that may not always be quite true, but seem to personify the issue well. In this case, he had heard about an example of the Soviet Union funding a movement in a foreign country that had connections with one of the movements in our country. And, thus, the linkage to -- although indirectly -- Soviet support was one that I think he probably magnified in his own mind, but it did serve the purpose of saying that the interest of the Soviet Union happens to be the same as the interest of this group.

LET'S TURN TO THE SDI SPEECH ITSELF. I'VE GOT AN ACCOUNT FROM ADMIRAL WATKINS OF -- (TAPE CUTS OFF) -- YOUR INVOLVEMENT WITH THAT MARK TWAIN SORT OF SPEECH.

Well, I think the genesis of the speech was in the Fall of 1982, when Admiral Poindexter and I began to talk to each other about this new military problem that the Soviet Union posed with the mobile multi-warhead missile, a missile that we couldn't counter in the traditional way, that is by building one of our own like it or in the same numbers. And the reason we couldn't was because Americans would have gotten tired of the ideas of having ballistic missiles in your backyard or close by. And the more we thought about it, the more it seemed to us that if you have an imbalance, with the Russians here and the United States here. And through arms control, you're not able to get them to reduce. And because of the U.S. Congress and the American people, you can't get our side to build up, then the only you can restore that balance or compensate for this difference is to be able to intercept or prevent this number of warheads from reaching our side; that is, to use defense. And so, we began to ask questions of the scientific community, since this is quite an old issue -- and 15 years ago when I was in government, the question had been asked, can we do this, can we defend against ballistic missiles, the answer was no, the state of the art really won't make it possible. So, we asked the question again and in the late Fall and Winter of '82 and '83, we began to get answers, well, yes, there have been substantial breakthroughs, notably in your computers that would have enabled you to compute the trajectories of thousands of missiles in very little time and to determine interceptor courses and to guide systems to intercept them. And, so, we began to talk to the President about the idea and to encourage him to request the military to comment both upon the technological risk, the cost and their own judgments about the military applications. So, the President was very enthused about it. He had, of course, been approached on the issue before ever coming to the White House by Edward Teller and others from California. So, he had a very receptive view of it and he invited the Chiefs -- the Joint Chiefs -- over to the White House in January of '83. And the Chiefs, who were giving the beginning of the year summary of what they though we should be spending money for the following year, went through several things. And Admiral Watkins then pointed out that he thought it timely to being to investigate the -- our capacity to protect or defend against ballistic missiles. And that he believed the scientific and technological realities would make possible such a defense and that we would have to rely or might be able to rely less upon as many nuclear weapons as we had. And I interrupted him at that point to make sure that the point was made and that everyone grasped it and I said "Are you really saying that you believe that it may be possible for us to shift away from exclusive reliance on nuclear weapons toward less reliance and ultimately to rely more on defense, so that nuclear weapons might have a lesser role. Are you saying that?" He said "Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying." And the President began to be much more attentive to the issue and I said, "Well, let's be very clear here. Do others in the military agree?" He went to the Air Force Chief of Staff and the Army Chief of Staff and General Vessey, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and I asked each in turn, "Do you agree with that?" And each one in turn said "Yes I do." And I said "Mr. President, I'm sure you understand the significance of what's being said here and that it that there may be --" So, I said, "Mr. President, do you understand that the Chiefs are saying that the technology may be at hand, which will allow us to rely less on nuclear weapons and perhaps some day defend against their arrival in the United States?" By that time the President was very much on top of the point and he said, "Yes, and I would like the Chiefs to define that further, tell me what the risks are in terms of technological risks and the other problems that attend integrating that kind of defense into our military force structure and do it promptly." So, after that meeting, I drafted a directive which he signed that requested that they report back, I think, within a month and they did and it basically said, yes, there is a sound basis for investing in this. And while the Chiefs said that, anticipating that the studies would require several weeks and months that would precede a decision to commit to a program, the President recognized once you allow something to be studied, especially when the budget is already being devoted to things that have their constituency throughout the Pentagon -- that to introduce something new, especially an expensive new item, may very well sink into the sand, simply because it has no constituency. Well -- so, he said, "Look, let's get this before the public to give them a basis for hope that maybe there is an alternative some day to exclusive reliance on nuclear weapons. And I want to do it right away." So, I thought right away might be at least three or four months, but as it turned out in a little more than six weeks, he wanted to make the speech and he didn't want anyone involved other than carefully selected scientists, until the announcement was made. So, the NSC staff did all of the work on it. We edited it with a carefully chosen group of scientists and engineers who did validate the basic legitimacy of asking the question and finding the answer. And the President determined to go ahead with it on the 23rd and so it was inspired by concern over a military problem -- but also the President's rather moral motive of trying to find out if there is an alternative to weapons of mass destruction.

YOU WERE AWARE AND THEY WERE, OF COURSE, AWARE THAT THIS WAS GOING TO BE A VERY CONTROVERSIAL PROPOSAL TO MAKE. IT HAD BEEN LAUNCHED BEFORE -- (TAPE CUTS OFF) -- YOU WERE AWARE OF THE FACT THAT THIS WAS CONTROVERSIAL.

Oh, yes. There's no question about it. It had been controversial in the late '60s when the ABM debate had only carried the US Senate by one vote, I think.

IT SEEMS TO ME LOOKING BACK -- (TAPE CUTS OFF) -- SPEECH -- MAKES WHAT MAY BE EXAGGERATED CLAIMS. I DON'T KNOW. HISTORY WILL TELL. BUT USES THE LANGUAGE IN THE SPEECH, "I WANT TO RENDER NUCLEAR WEAPONS OBSOLETE," -- (TAPE CUTS OFF) -- "YOU JUST WANT TO FREEZE THEM. I WANT TO RENDER THEM OBSOLETE." WAS THERE ANY POLITICAL CONSIDERATION GIVEN -- AND, OF COURSE, THIS TAKES PLACE AT A TIME WHEN THE FREEZE RESOLUTION WAS ON THE FLOOR OF THE HOUSE. WERE THERE POLITICAL CONSIDERATIONS IN TERMS OF THE NUCLEAR FREEZE MOVEMENT, IN TERMS OF THE TIMING OF THE MARCH 23RD, TO YOUR KNOWLEDGE?

Well, there wasn't on my part and I don't think there was on the President's. But I would admit at the same time that in order to succeed in getting the President to give a speech on any subject -- that it has to be (unintelligible) and approved by and supported by those who care about politics and public affairs and imagery and things like that. So I don't pretend that the speech would ever have been given if Jim Baker, Mike Deaver, Ed Meese and others had not supported the idea. And, yes, they did. And I believe probably that Jim and Mike in particular probably saw the pressure from the freeze movement and this was a way to undermine some of their arguments.

IN TERMS OF THE CONTENT -- I KNOW IN HINDSIGHT THAT -- A LOT OF PEOPLE I TALKED TO WHO ARE STRONGER SUPPORTERS OF SDI WILL LOOK AT THE SPEECH AND POINT OUT CLEARLY THAT THIS DOES NOT CALL FOR SUCH A COMPREHENSIVE DEFENSE AS PEOPLE SEEM TO THINK IT DID AT THE TIME. NONETHELESS, WHEN YOU LOOK AT THE SPEECH, IT DOES SEEM TO CALL -- IT DOES SEEM TO HOLD OUT THE POSSIBILITY THAT EVENTUALLY WE WOULD FIND SOME WAY OF REALLY PROVIDING AN UMBRELLA DEFENSE FOR ALL OF US, CIVILIANS AS WELL AS MILITARY INSTALLATIONS. YOU -- IN THAT REGARD, DO YOU HAVE A COMMENT TO MAKE ABOUT THE SPEECH?

Oh, I think you're quite right, that the speech gave us the cast of a crusade. A crusade to eliminate nuclear weapons from the face of the earth. And in that sense, it was surely overselling the product. Certainly anything that was in the mind's eye of me or anyone else -- I believed -- I believe now that one can imagine the day when technology could enable us to so complicate an attack for the Soviet Union that they would choose not to attack at all. But that's quite different from saying that you can build a foolproof system and I don't believe that you can. But the President is a man who when seized with an idea does have a tendency to introduce a romantic element; that is, that the power of an idea can overcome the obstacles before it and often lose -- used to lose sight of some real problems. Not least that once an idea has occurred, in the case of nuclear weapons, that lot of people can build nuclear weapons, and you simply cannot put them back in the bottle. The same thing with other weapons of mass destruction like chemical weapons in World War I. Well, they are still around. We have not been able to get rid of them for as an intelligent human being can read a book in the ninth or tenth grade and learn how to build these things -- that's probably unrealistic. On the other hand, you may come across new technologies that will make it imprudent to use those weapons and that's what we're really talking about.

LET ME MOVE ON TO THE 83 AND -- (TAPE CUTS OFF) -- OVERALL COMMENT ON THAT VERY VERY LOW POINT OF AMERICAN-SOVIET RELATIONS. WERE WE -- WAS THE ADMINISTRATION SATISFIED? DID THEY SEE IT AS A TEMPORARY PHENOMENON?

Well, I would put this trend of decline -- and you're quite right about it -- into the context of Soviet practice historically. That is that they have tended under Stalin or Khrushchev or Brezhnev to promote a certain strategy and to do so until there is -- demonstrably failing -- but not to change once they have set off on a particular course. Well, in the late '70s, I believe, honestly, that they saw the United States as a country in decline. A country also that could be intimidated by threats or the use of force. They had seen us lose a war. They had our economy get into a very perilous state. They'd seen us allow our own military balance to shift very much against us. So, they saw all these fundamental elements of a society that had lost its way. And the strategy they adopted, for accelerating that decline, even after President Reagan was elected, was to intimidate, to shout, to walk out of talks, to posture, believing that even though this election of 1980 seemed to indicate some wish on the part of the American people to reverse course -- believing that ultimately our decline being inevitable -- would only lead to momentary lapses in this trend. And, so, for the first three or four years, they continued the same strategy. But by the time the end of 83 came and we began to have very concrete evidence of success in stemming the tide, such as our ability in Europe to deploy the INF missiles and the success with the U.S. Congress in getting three straight years of enormous investment in defense and a willingness to go into Grenada and to succeed dramatically in a military incursion, all of these were evidence of a country that was not in decline. But that had begun to rally and pull its socks up. So, at that point, I believe that even had Brezhnev not passed from the scene, that there would have been a serious reconsideration in the Soviet Union of whether or not their policy was working. And I think there was.

LET ME GO BACK AND ASK YOU FOR A BRIEF COMMENT ON THREE LITTLE SPECIFIC THINGS THAT YOU MENTIONED -- (TAPE CUTS OFF) --

Well, at the time I was in the Middle East -- when the Soviet Union shot the KAL down -- but it seemed to me an example of the left hand not knowing what the right hand was doing. Although, left and right would have probably pursued the same course had they known. It was a stupid thing to do. Stupid in terms of their own self-interest. For it was bound to have legitimized President Reagan's criticism of them in this country and among allies and to have reinforced our position. But it seemed to me at the time, from Beirut, that the Soviet Union had given us a windfall that could only help us improve the coherence of the NATO Alliance and our own efforts with the Congress to sustain the defense build-up.

ANY COMMENT ON THE SOVIET WALK-OUT OF THE START TALKS?

Well, again, this was the last ditch effort to vindicate their strategy of intimidation and they did it in the belief that the West would become so frightened by this preemptory behavior that the continuation of the deployment would cease and that the American people would rise up against the President for allowing the arms control talks to break down. It didn't happen that way at all. Perhaps because our economy was getting better. By 1984, the American people were feeling that things were better than they had been four years before. And the spin-off, vis-à-vis the Russians, was Reagan must be right. Things are better. It is "Morning in America." And so the Soviets had to reckon with the fact that all of their posturing and intimidation hadn't worked either on the alliance or the American people and as it turned out Reagan was elected by, whatever, 49 states.

THERE WAS, HOWEVER, ONE SMALL -- WAS THERE NOT -- BUT IN '84, MOVING TOWARD THE ELECTION -- (TAPE CUTS OFF) -- THE PRESIDENT BEGINS IN A MUCH MORE SYSTEMATIC WAY, I THINK, UP TO THAT POINT TO BEGIN TO TALK ABOUT ARMS CONTROL AGREEMENTS WITH THE SOVIET UNION. IN THE SUMMER OF '84, I THINK HE MEETS WITH GROMYKO AND EVEN -- THERE'S SOME SUGGESTIONS THAT A SUMMIT MAY BE COMING UP. AND PART OF THE REASON FOR THAT, CONVENTIONAL WISDOM WOULD HAVE, IS THAT THE PRESIDENT'S POLLSTERS FIND HIM VULNERABLE TO THE DEMOCRATS ONLY ON THE ISSUE OF PEACE, BY WHICH I THINK THEY MEAN ARMS CONTROL TALKS OF SOME KIND. BECAUSE BOTH CONGRESS AND THE PEOPLE SEEM ENTHUSIASTIC ABOUT THE MILITARY BUILD-UP, BUT CONGRESS AND MANY PEOPLE SEEMED CONCERNED THAT WE AREN'T TALKING.

Well, I think that's a plausible point of view, but the truth behind why the President began to be more interested in engaging the Soviet Union in a dialogue was that from the beginning, he thought that the United States had a responsibility to establish a framework, a set of ground rules for dealing with the Soviets that could lead to a stable peace and unless we could do that, we wouldn't be able to hold together the alliance of industrial democracies nor to continue the trend of the late -- of the early 1980s toward democracy both in the developing countries of Latin America and beyond. But he believed that the first term had to be devoted to getting ready for those negotiations. But the reason why, starting in late '83, and in his speech, I believe, of January of 1984 -- where he laid out the basis for talking with the Soviet Union. That is, realism, strength and dialogue. That was given because he believed that in the previous three years we had established that foundation of strength, to be able to bargain in a way that we could win. That we had restored the strength of our alliance, that we had demonstrated in Grenada a will to confront and that all of these together ought to have had an impression in the Soviet Union that we could not be intimidated, so the time was right. But I don't think it was so much a reaction to public opinion. This had been Reagan's strategy form the beginning.

YOU KNOW, IT'S INTERESTING. YOU GIVE AN INTENTIONALITY (?) TO THESE EIGHT YEARS THAT I REALLY HADN'T THOUGHT ABOUT BEFORE, THE FACT THAT THE AGREEMENT SIGNED VERY RECENTLY AND POSSIBLY THE START AGREEMENT WERE IN THE PRESIDENT'S MIND FROM THE BEGINNING. WITH THAT IN MIND, LET ME ASK YOU A BROAD QUESTION, BECAUSE THE SENSE YOU HAVE FROM LOOKING AT IT FROM THE OUTSIDE IS THAT HERE'S A GUY WHO COMES INTO OFFICE, DOESN'T WANT TO TALK, WANTS TO BUILD UP, STRONG SUPPORT FROM A VERY CONSERVATIVE CONSTITUENCY IN AMERICA. BY THE END OF THE EIGHT YEARS, THAT CONSERVATIVE CONSTITUENCY FALLS AWAY AND HE LEAVES PUBLIC OFFICE AND HE GETS CO-OPTED BY THE CENTRIST REPUBLIC PARTY, BEGINS TO MAKE AN AGREEMENT, ALMOST AS IF AN UNWILLING PERSON IS DRAGGED TO THE NEGOTIATING TABLE. YOU'RE GIVING QUITE A DIFFERENT INTERPRETATION.

Yes, I think President Reagan realized that the United States is a romantic society basically. We are a people that believe in the perfectibility of human kind. We have a very primitive understanding of Leninist doctrine and as a consequence, we can assume that Brezhnev is as potentially right minded as Ronald Reagan. It's a silly notion, but it is real. And the President recognized that the best you can hope for in this country is to be able to negotiate on good terms where you have the strength and you can avoid losing, but you can't pretend that you won't negotiate at all. That's just not a feasible course of action in the United States. Negotiation has seemed to be the way in which you influence the Soviet leadership to come to its natural condition, which is peace. A silly notion. But it is a political reality in this country that one can only minimize the damage of dealing with by doing it from strength and that's what the President did.

-- (TAPE CUTS OFF) -- IT DOES LOOK FROM THE OUTSIDE THAT HE'S KIND OF BEING -- I MEAN, ARE THEY DISILLUSIONED, IS IT JUST THE NATURAL WINDING DOWN AT THE END OF HIS ADMINISTRATION AS PEOPLE GO OUT AND SEEK TO RETURN TO THEIR OWN PERSONAL CAREERS? IS IT COINCIDENCE? IS IT --

Well, I think the departure of some of the more conservative Cabinet members is understandable in the context of their awakening to the President's long-term strategy. And that is that -- in the case of Cap Weinberger -- Cap came to understand, I think, that President Reagan really did want an accommodation with the Soviet Union. The President believed he could do it on terms that protected our national interest. I think Cap disagreed with that, but I think he was probably the most loyal Cabinet officer in the Cabinet and, thus, he didn't want to be a part of being in the way of something his President wanted. But he didn't believe he could personally endorse it, so he left. It was a position of integrity that I respect.

AS A MAJOR STUMBLING BLOCK IN WHAT APPEARED TO BE THE OPPORTUNITY FOR BIG AGREEMENTS --

Well, I think first of all we recall that in 1983, in the Fall, the Soviet Union walked out of arms control talks and took a very belligerent stand. Versus today, in 1987, '88 or '89, where we're talking about reducing the level of nuclear weapons and already have one treaty that does. We began to see SDI in its true context but its context of value has been leveraged. The prospects viewed from the Kremlin of the United States investing heavily in something they know we are better at than they is so coercive that it leads them to make concessions they wouldn't normally make. And it has given us an INF treaty. It has kept them at the table on START and producing what I think is a good outcome there involving reductions for the first time in the post war period. But SDI, far from being an obstacle, in hindsight, we can see is probably the ultimate negotiating leverage we've ever had!

YOU'RE NOT SUGGESTING ARE YOU, THAT IT IS ONLY LEVERAGE. DO YOU THINK THE PRESIDENT MIGHT ABANDON AN AGGRESSIVE PURSUIT -- I MEAN, SDI, THE STRATEGIES HAVE- I MEAN, THAT'S NOT GOING TO GO AWAY. WE'RE GOING TO KEEP RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT, BUT WOULD HE ABANDON AN AGGRESSIVE DEVELOPMENT OF SDI IN EXCHANGE FOR A START AGREEMENT?

Well I'll answer this in a hypothetical sense, that I believe will prove real. You see, the casting of the question "Is SDI leverage?" or is it "a real system?" Is to misunderstand the issue. SDI was conceived, in my mind, as a way to deal with a military problem posed by a military piece of hardware. Now, if you get rid of that military piece of hardware that worries you, then you have no need, or less need surely, for SDI. Now that is not exactly to say that SDI has been a bargaining chip. It has been something that you are willing to put into the field to deal with a piece of hardware on the other side. If the hardware goes away, then you don't need it. I suppose that's a bargaining chip but it isn't something we would have given up for anything else. Now whether the President sees it the same way, we'll know by the time this airs. But in my judgment, it will be to his credit that he served throughout his stewardship, never having given it away until, he could see, clearly that, the system it was designed to deal with was no longer going to be a problem. Now that can be achieved by doing away from that -- doing away with that system, the SS-24, or by getting such good verification measures, such as have just come out of the INF treaty, as to make it no longer a problem.

TWO MORE QUESTIONS I THINK ARE ABOUT IT: GORBACHEV GOES TO- I WANT TO ASK YOU ABOUT GORBACHEV. GORBACHEV GOES TO ENGLAND BEFORE HE BECOMES GENERAL SECRETARY AND HE TAKES ENGLAND BY STORM. MAGGIE THATCHER, A STRONG PRESIDENTIAL SUPPORTER, AND ANOTHER CONSERVATIVE IS- APPARENTLY, ACCORDING TO PRESS ACCOUNTS, JUST- PRACTICALLY COURTSHIP TERMS TO DESCRIBE THEIR RELATIONSHIP. THE TWO IT SEEMS TO ME, PRESIDENT REAGAN AND GORBACHEV BEGIN ENGAGING WHAT IS ALMOST AN INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION FOR "MR. NICE GUY" OR "MR. PEACENIK" IN THE LATE 1980S IN WESTERN EUROPE AND TO SOME EXTENT WITH THE AMERICAN PEOPLE. A CONTEST THAT, UP UNTIL RECENTLY, HE SEEMS TO HAVE DONE VERY WELL, AND MAYBE EVEN TO HAVE WON. I THINK I READ POLLS THAT GORBACHEV WAS CONSIDERED MORE INTERESTED IN PEACE THAN REAGAN IN WESTERN EUROPE. A COMMENT UPON GORBACHEV ON YOUR PART?

Gorbachev is in, now, four years of his stewardship, proven himself, a much different kind of politician. Someone who is confident that he can co-op the West rather than overpower it. And that our own freedom, in the media, within a free society, is an instrument that can be used to their advantage. And he is quite good at it. To his credit, however, I think he is also a man who understands how dysfunctional the Soviet society's central management is. And as a self-serving politician, he understands that unless he can do something about that, he won't survive. So he is trying to alter the way his own system functions, and he is trying to get our help to do it. Well, one way of getting access to our help, is through good behavior. So good behavior, plus a fairly artful use of vocabulary, smiling, and not invading new countries like Afghanistan anymore, all combine to create the image, of what we in the West would like to think Russians are. As I have said, we have a very romantic view of people everywhere. But he is quite good at exploiting that romantic vision of the West, and I think requires a far greater dexterity on the part of our own political leaders. And its not clear that our system is capable of producing that good a leader.

FIFTY YEARS FROM NOW, HISTORIANS ARE WRITING HISTORY BOOKS OF LATE 20TH CENTURY. THE REAGAN YEARS ARE MAYBE A CHAPTER, AND A VERY SMALL PART OF THAT CHAPTER DEALS WITH THE PRESIDENT'S CONTRIBUTION TO OUR STRATEGIC RELATIONSHIP WITH THE SOVIET UNION IN TERMS OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS. WHAT WILL THEY SAY HIS CONTRIBUTION, OR LACK OF CONTRIBUTION HAS BEEN? WHAT WILL THEY- HOW WILL THEY CHARACTERIZE HIS STEWARDSHIP?

Well, I think to his credit, it has to be said, that during his eight years that he did indeed deter. The fact that he campaigned on a slogan of not having lost one more square inch of territory, is not a cliché. Its true. We even got some back. Beyond that, I think that he did turn the course of history away from ever-greater buildup of nuclear weapons, into a downward trend of reducing them. And that's to his credit. Apart from that I think that a number of things have gone wrong and have gotten worse. Terrorism. Risk of a collapse of the international financial system, owing to the great exposure of American banks. Trading system much more in doubt as to whether we can maintain it in an open way. But on the fundamentals that determine our safety against violence, that President Reagan has done quite a good job. He deserves credit for it.