WE HAVE BEEN TOLD THAT YOU WERE INSTRUMENTAL IN GETTING THE REDUCTION INTO THE COMPREHENSIVE PROPOSAL OF MARCH 7TH. WHAT WAS YOUR REACTION TO THE REJECTION BY THE SOVIETS, AND WHAT DID YOU THINK WOULD BE THE NEXT STEP THAT THE UNITED STATES SHOULD TAKE AFTER THAT REJECTION?

I was disappointed; I wasn't entirely surprised, because it was a rather far-reaching proposal... it had been aimed, among other things, at reducing the threat to US land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles, by limiting the accuracy of Soviet ICBMs that might attack them. That was done, the proposal would have done that by... sharply limiting the number of tests that could be allowed, would be allowed, during the development of ICBMs. So, It was asking the Soviets to give up something that they had in prospect, although they didn't have, at the time, the ability to threaten US intercontinental ballistic missiles. That's why I wasn't surprised. But I was disappointed, and concluded that we would then probably have to go for a rather more limited arms-control agreement, that would at any rate attempt to limit the number of warheads that the Soviets would point at us. Those would be limited indirectly by what we call fractionation rules; that is, limiting the numbers of warheads that could be on any individual missile. That had been contained in the original proposal, and even though the original proposal was rejected, it seemed important to me to try to get that kind of limitation, even in a more limited arms agreement.

WHAT ABOUT IN TERMS OF THE U.S. ARSENAL? DID YOU AT THAT TIME COME TO THE CONCLUSION THAT YOU HAD TO GO AHEAD WITH DEVELOPMENT AND DEPLOYMENT OF THE MX MISSILE?

I concluded that a follow-on ICBM was going to be necessary. There had been plans for such a follow-on ICBM, something beyond the Minuteman Three, ever since the late 1960s which in 1977 was eight years, or nine years, in the past. But nothing had come of it because a basing mode had not been decided on. Many had been examined, none had been accepted, both in the executive branch and in the Congress. But since the Soviets clearly were in process of developing a new generation of ICBMs, I believed that we would have to find a follow-on to the Minuteman which was both more capable and more survivable, in the event that it proved easy to make it more capable, but very difficult to meet the political criteria that were associated with survivability.

YOU MENTIONED THAT AT THE TIME OF THE MARCH PROPOSAL, ONE OF THE THINGS YOU TRIED TO LIMIT WAS THE IN-FLIGHT TESTING, SO THEY COULDN'T HONE IN THE ACCURACY OF THE SS-18. ALSO, THERE WERE SOME INTELLIGENCE REPORTS AT SOME POINT BETWEEN 1977 AND 1978, WHICH INDICATED THAT THEY HAD REACHED THIS ACCURACY, DO YOU REMEMBER WHEN THESE REPORTS BECAME AVAILABLE?

Well, the reports were not to the effect that they had increased the accuracy, but that they had a program going that could be expected to improve the accuracy substantially, to the point where an individual SS-18 would have a reasonably high kill probability against a, the existing Minuteman silos. And that happened, I think, sometime in... late '77, or early 1978. That's when the intelligence people came up with that conclusion.

AND WAS THAT CONCLUSION INSTRUMENTAL IN... DID YOU BECOME MORE AND MORE CONCERNED ABOUT THIS VULNERABILITY...

Well, on the basis of that intelligence report, it was possible to project a time at which the US ICBMs would become vulnerable if the report were borne out by subsequent events. And that time was in the early 1980s. Five years later, about. That meant that... a program to actually develop and deploy a survivable system... ought to be begun soon, not... that didn't mean that you had to have... a survivable system in place by the early 1980s, because the... nature of US strategic forces was then and is now such that to a degree, vulnerabilities in survival of one part of the force are offset by the capabilities of other parts of the force. But if you wanted to continue to have a vigorous triad of forces, three different kinds of forces which could not all be attacked at the same time or... made vulnerable by a single Soviet offensive or defensive capability then it was important to make the ICBM leg of the triad healthy again, and that gave additional impetus to doing something about the ICBMs.

DID YOU GO OFF TO CAMP DAVID IN AUGUST '78 AND TALK TO PRESIDENT CARTER ABOUT THE VULNERABILITY PROBLEM?

My recollection is that I made a special trip up to Camp David in the midst of the Egyptian-Israeli negotiations; I'd been up there anyway, although not continuously as a participant in those negotiations, but I'd gone back to Washington, and, as part of the preparation of the budget which would have been the fiscal 1980 budget, I guess, which was going to be submitted in January of 1979, I did make a special trip up to Camp David, and go over, with President Carter, some of the same issues, the vulnerability question, the need for, the argument for, a modernized US ICBM, and the need to find a way of basing it that would make it relatively invulnerable to Soviet attack. We had been looking at the vulnerability question for a year and a half by that time, and although there was no ideal method, we had come up with a, what we considered a reasonable method of basing.

WHAT WAS PRESIDENT CARTER'S REACTION? DID HE, WAS HE CONCERNED, WAS HE...?

Well, I think he was uncomfortable both with the threat to vulnerability of US ICBMs, and with the thought of a new program, expensive program to address it; that is, of course, part of the problem of having to make these decisions. There is no simple, easy, inexpensive solution, or if there is one, it's almost always wrong. The, the budgetary pressures were substantial: he was concerned about starting a big new program; to some extent, he and I both had been pushed into a, an even more difficult decision, because the previous year, in 1977, we had decided to cancel the B-1 program, and delay the modernization of the bomber force until a more advanced bomber with greater certainty of being able to survive Soviet air-defense systems, was available for development and deployment, and having failed to modernize in that way, the bomber force, although we had approved and indeed accelerated, and improved greatly the part of the bomber force that depends on cruise-missile launches from bombers by creating a long-range, cruise-missile program that would come in earlier than the B-1 could, we nevertheless were under some pressure because we had cancelled that particular modernization of the bomber force, that made it... more difficult to try. That made less appealing an alternative decision on the ICBM force that would have said the same thing: well, we're not going to modernize.

WHERE WAS THE PRESSURE COMING FROM?

Well, it came both from the events, that is, from the overall comparison between US and Soviet forces, that is from the, from the actual situation, and it also came from people in Congress, and, among some defense analysts, and from the uniformed military who felt that, believed that the US strategic forces needed to be modernized, all of them needed to be moder-, needed to be modernized, and that the Soviets were building up, very rapidly, a capability which such analysts and such members of Congress believed and such military people, believed would erode the US retaliatory capability, and thus erode US capacity for deterrence. That same group of people had been very upset with the cancellation of the B-1, and in politic-, in politics the last decision... the previous decision influences, perhaps inordinately the attitudes of protagonists and opponents, of the next... weapons program.

LET ME TAKE ONE GROUP OF THOSE PEOPLE YOU MENTIONED: THE MILITARY. WERE YOU TALKING TO DEFENSE ANALYSTS...WHAT WE HAVE BEEN ABLE TO GATHER IS THAT THE MILITARY WAS, IN THE FIRST PLACE, NOT VERY HAPPY WITH THE TERMS OF THE SALT AGREEMENT, AND THE MILITARY WANTED TO HAVE ASSURANCE THAT THE FORCES WOULD BE MODERNIZED, AND THAT THE APPROVAL OF SALT, OR THE ENDORSEMENT OF SALT, WAS CONTINGENT UPON THIS MODERNIZATION.

I would not, I wouldn't, I wouldn't make the judgment quite that way. The, the way I would make it is this: the military were not opposed to the emerging terms of the SALT II agreement. They saw some real benefits in them. They also saw some risks. When you negotiate something with another sovereign country, you are not in a position, if you really want to get them to agree to something, to say that you will not allow any changes in what you're going to do. And I would say that the Joint Chiefs of Staff, at least, this doesn't speak to every individual military officer; still less does it speak to retired military officers were in favor of every provision in the SALT II agreement as it then emerged. By and large, though, the Joint Chiefs were supportive. On the other hand, they were also in a position to recognize that their support was worth something, that it would have an effect on the ability to get public support and Congressional support for a strategic arms limitation agreement and to get ratification in the Senate so they realized that they had something to bargain with, to get something that they wanted, something that was connected with the terms of SALT, but which in the absence of a strategic arms agreement, might or might not take place. So they... not unnaturally made this not a condition, but a topic of... concurrent discussion. And that was also true of certain members of the, of the of the Congress. What they were talking about, however, was not limited to strategic weapons; in the end, it turned out to be, and not inappropriately a matter of the entire Defense budget. But certainly some members of the military, those that wanted a modern ICBM program, that would be specifically the Air Force, but not only the Air Force, did say, What's acceptable in a SALT agreement depends on what we're going to do... in modernizing our own forces. It's one thing to have an agreement that says the Soviets can do certain things, and we can have, we can do certain things, if we're gonna do those things. It's another thing to say, the Soviets can do certain things, and we can do certain other things, if we're not going to do those other things. So, it was a, you can say it was a trade... or a political maneuver, but it was not completely unreasonable.

I KNOW THIS IS A LOT TO ASK YOU, BUT COULD YOU GIVE ME A STATEMENT AS TO WHAT YOU BELIEVED THE TRADE OFF OF THE MILITARY WAS...

I, okay, yeah, well, I think, well, I think it was modernization of the strategic force and continued attention to the need to build up the US military capability beyond the strategic force. I would not say that it was very specific to the MX system, because different segments of the military were more or less supportive of the MX system. The Air Force was quite supportive of it; the Army didn't particularly care; and the Navy, at least some parts of the Navy, saw it as a competitor for certain of their programs. As a consequence, what the military was able to get together on, which is what the military, and other interested groups in our society can usually get together on, was the thought that, if you'd fund all of their programs, they would be happy. That's why the whole Defense budget came into it. There is always, there's always competition between different strategic systems in which different military services have an interest and there's always competition between the Defense budget as a whole, and the rest of the budget. Well, they were able to agree that the Defense budget as a whole should go up and that would improve the prospects of being able to fund individual programs, strategic and conventional.

PRESIDENT CARTER SEEMED TO FIND THE PROSPECT OF APPROVING THE MX NAUSEATING, AND YET HE WENT AHEAD AND APPROVED IT IN... 1979. THE TIMING SEEMS TO HAVE BEEN POLITICAL. WERE THERE ALSO STRATEGIC CONSIDERATIONS?

Well, in a general way, of course all nuclear weapons are distasteful and we... would prefer...most of the time that they would go away. Since they can't go away, since they won't go away, either by universal denuclear-, nuclear disarmament, or by unilateral nuclear disarmament or by trying to defend against them with a strategic defense initiative, you have to make choices about them, and those choices are also distasteful, and I think that may be what President Carter means. There were, I think... military and strategic reasons, as well as political, SALT-ratification-connected reasons for the decision to have been taken in June of '79, which was actually the same month as the, as the signature of the SALT II agreement. There had been very considerable internal discussion in the administration as to what was the right basing mode, what was the right size what was the right development program for an MX missile, and those were not resolved, in fact, until the spring of 1979. It... really would not have made sense for President Carter to approve an MX development program without having settled those questions, because there has... there had, after all, been a development program on an MX for years and years and years. But until the size, the throw weight the number of warheads, and the basing mode, most of all, were settled, there wasn't a real decision to go ahead, and those, that became ripe during the spring of 1979.

WHEN YOU WENT OFF TO CAMP DAVID IN AUGUST '78, WAS PRESIDENT CARTER AT THAT POINT CONVINCED THAT THERE WAS SUCH A THING AS A VULNERABILITY PROBLEM, AND DID YOU THINK HE MADE UP HIS MIND TO GO AHEAD WITH THE MX AT THAT TIME?

I believe that after our discussion of August '78 at Camp David, he was convinced that there was a problem of... would be a vulnerability problem in the Minuteman III force, in fact the whole US ICBM force. I do not believe, I do not recall, that he made a decision at that time to go ahead with full-scale development and deployment of an MX. I think that didn't really come until some time into the following year, 1979, although during the fall of '78, a decision was made to include substantial amounts of money in the budget for a missile development of a particular size and of a particular throw-weight capability.

WE HAVE LOOKED AT PRESIDENT CARTER'S EVOLUTION, FROM THE TIME HE CAME INTO OFFICE... THROUGH TO THE TIME HE LEFT, AND THERE SEEMS TO US TO HAVE BEEN A HARDENING OF HIS POSITIONS ALL ALONG.

Well, I believe that as the term proceeded President Carter became more convinced of a growing Soviet military capability, that could, if not responded to, erode the US comparative strategic nuclear military position and the strategic balance between the US and the Soviet Union. I believe also that the MX decision, was one milestone in this evolution of view that clearly a decision to go ahead with a new US ICBM would be seen as a response to a Soviet modernization, and additional threat. I think he came to it reluctantly but I think he was forced to it by the series of events involving Soviet military modernization, the perception that this might give the Soviets a political edge, even if not a, an edge that would matter as to the outcome of nuclear war, and the need to do something about that, both with respect to perceptions of the US abroad, in terms of this US-Soviet military balance, and in terms of domestic political issues.

THE STROBE TALBOTT BOOK, IN PARTICULAR, MAKES IT SEEM THAT THE ZBIG "RAMMED" THE MISSILE DOWN CARTER'S THROAT.

I think that Brzezinski's advice, which... had let me say it a little differently: I think, I think, I think that, on the issue of perceptions of the military balance, and the effect on foreign policy, Zbig was, and I think deservedly so, influential. He also gave a lot of advice on basing schemes, size development programs, and so forth, and on that he was, and deserved to be, much less influential. Bit I think that, that first set of issues, the international perceptions, and also the perceptions among the domestic national-security constituencies, was very important and in that sense, he played an important role. I should add that Cy Vance also played an important role because he also gave advice with respect to the international effects, and the constituencies, domestically as well, and that advice was really rather similar. He also had some different concerns about basing modes, having to do largely with arms control and that had some influence, perhaps an unfortunate influence, because it forced, well, it didn't force, it influenced the cost of the system that we finally came up with, and the nature of the system that we finally came up with and that probably had a negative effect on the political acceptability of the system, in terms of its so-called public interface. The president and the secretary of state both felt very strongly that a multiple-protective shelter system with vertical holes was very bad for arms control. I was much less convinced of that but I recognized that they had a point. That made, that produced what was called the racetrack system whose name, and whose nature and the great amount of area that it would have required for the deployment, had a very negative effect on perceptions of it in the areas where it would be deployed, and I think was in part responsible for... the, then candidate Reagan's negative attitude toward it, which has persisted and indeed, in my judgment, has denied any deployment; there hasn't been any deployment, as a result, in a, in a mobile and survivable mode. But, to be much more brief about it, Brzezinski had something to say about international perceptions of the military balance and that was influential. He had a lot to say, also, about the nature of the system, and he was less influential in that. Vance, as secretary of state also agreed on the international perceptions; he had some reservations on arms control grounds, which did influence the nature of the system design that we came up with. And of course I, as Secretary of Defense, weighed in on both these issues, and I suppose also had some effect.

IN THE MIDDLE OF THE CAMP DAVID NEGOTIATIONS, WOULD YOU GO THERE AND SHIFT PRESIDENT CARTER'S ATTENTIONS TO THE PROBLEM OF MX VULNERABILITY? WHAT WAS THE URGENCY?

Well, my recollection was that it was largely the initial preparation of the budget and what guidelines should be sent out to the Air Force, as to what sort of program it should budget for. As it happens, the Camp David negotiations were at an impasse on that particular day, and so his attention was not really being diverted; in fact, it was during that visit that an incident, described both in Vance's memoirs and Carter's memoirs, took place. The incident of Sadat's announcing that he was going to leave. So in a sense this was a diversion, I mean... something which President Carter and Secretary Vance very skillfully were able to reverse. But my point is that in a way this may have been a welcome diversion for him from something that at that partic-, on that particular day was not going very well.

DO YOU REMEMBER WHAT YOU TOLD HIM AT THAT OPPORTUNITY?

I can't really remember it. I can imagine it, but I would be imagining it. I mean, I think I did speak to the issue of vulnerability, and to the fol-, I'm sure I spoke to the following general proposition, that although the vulnerability of ICBMs to a preemptive attack is not by itself disabling, because the Soviets could not attack bombers, our bomber force and our ICBM force simultaneously simply because the bombers take off on warning, and therefore the best Soviet attack on them is from submarines close by; but that means that the submarine-launched ballistic missiles either arrive earlier, if they're launched first, and therefore provide a basis for knowing that the US, not is going to be attacked but has been attacked, or if they're launched at the same if they're launched so as to arrive at the same time, the launch of the ICBMs against our ICBMs gives our bombers warning time to get off. So, there's not an immediate catastrophic degradation of US retaliatory capability; moreover, the submarines are separate retaliatory capability, not vulnerable to attack by ICBMs. Nevertheless, it's important to keep a survivable ICBM force, survivable in some sense, against some kind of attack because one can't be sure that at some future time, the Soviets will not be able to both barrage the bomber force, in other words, launch so large an attack that even though the bombers take off before the ICBMs arrive the ICBMs are spread over a large enough area so that the bombers are destroyed after they take off, and that the Soviets might, at some future date, be able to begin to erode the survivability of the submarine-launched ballistic-missile force. Now, there are a lot of "ifs" in there, which means that it's not an urgent matter, but that it's important to take out insurance against that, by making, by assuring that the ICBM force does not become a sitting duck. In other words, assuring that it retains some sort of survivability in its own right. And I'm sure I made that case, because that is the case for a survivable ICBM force. Then I'm sure I talked a lot about questions of whether the, an MX should be the same missile going into a submarine and moving around on land as to what the accuracy should be and so forth, but those are details that I don't remember.

DO YOU REMEMBER YOUR TRIP TO CHINA, AROUND THE TIME OF THE AFGHANISTAN INVASION?

Well, it was after the Afghan invasion, and it was essentially during the month of January, I may, I don't, I'm not sure, I may have been in the air. No, I wasn't. I remember, I remember when it was: we left, we left for China on January 4th, if I remember correctly, 1980.

HAD YOUR TRIP BEEN PLANNED BEFORE THE SOVIETS INVADED AFGHANISTAN?

In fact, the vice president Mr. Mondale, during his visit to China, which I think took place in August of 1979, had discussed with the Chinese leaders the prospect of my visiting China at some time during the next nine months or so. So it was not initiated on the basis of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, or the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, which took place actually only about 10 days before may have ensured that it take place. But that time, that time lapse is so short, that there's no way that it, the Afghan... invasion by the Soviets could have been the reason for my visit.

WHAT DID YOU TELL THE CHINESE LEADERS AT THAT POINT? DID YOU DISCUSS MILITARY ASSISTANCE TO CHINA?

Only in a very tentative way did I discuss the provision of military equipment. I, and no specific military systems were talked about. Attention... on military cooperation, or militar... cooperation on military-related matters, was devoted much more to reciprocal visits, discussions of parallel strategic interests visits by military officers to discuss tactics, military training, and so forth. There were discussions on technology transfer, but those were, those were principally on dual-use transfer. That is, technologies that had both military and civilian applications. For example space tracking capability, or readout stations for earth resources satellites, that take pictures and say what earth's resources... are, in various regions of the world. We talked about port visits, for example. But mostly it was a discussion of the way... we and the Chinese saw the political-military situation, both in the world, and particularly in the Far East. The Chinese did provide me with a long shopping list of potential of technologies with potential military applications, that they would like to have. And what I said, what I said was, we would discuss those; in fact, we'd divide them into three categories: one category, yes, you can have these, but we'll have to discuss the arrangements, and those arrangements always proved to be long and frustrating, because after we said we were willing to in principle,' to transfer some of those technologies, the Chinese lost interest. There was a second category, in which we said no, those are not appropriate for transfer, and then there was an intermediate category, a negotiable category. So, there was discussion of the principles, and of some specific technologies. There was essentially no discussion of transfer of weapon systems, such as antitank systems, or antiaircraft defense systems, although we did indicate that as part of an evolutionary process technologies, or even weapons systems, that could be described as primarily defensive could be a subject for discussion.

WAS THIS A TILT TOWARD CHINA AND AWAY FROM THE SOVIET UNION IN THE STRATEGIC TRIANGULAR RELATIONSHIP?

It was part of a change that took place during the late '70s of a...and actually had been begun in the early '70s by the Nixon visit to Beijing, of the US trying to improve relations with China, in the certain knowledge that such improved relations would per se affect the US-Soviet political-military balance, that the existence of China as an independent force not necessarily strongly hostile to, although they were, to the Soviet Union, but certainly independent and something that the Soviets would have to be aware of, if they were to engage in military ventures elsewhere, was very useful to the United States strategically, and this was part of an appreciation and development of that process.

CAN YOU GO THROUGH THE CAMP DAVID STORY ONCE MORE? BUT FIRST, LET ME ASK YOU ABOUT PD-59. WAS IT A RADICAL DEPARTURE FROM US STRATEGIC DOCTRINE?

Yes, I think it was I think PD-59 was a development of pre-existing US strategic doctrine, which was that the US needs to deter the Soviet Union from a nuclear attack, and that you deter the Soviet nuclear S-, Soviet Union from a nuclear attack, by making it clear to them, the Soviet leaders, that they would be putting at risk by any nuclear attack on the United States things that they themselves hold so high in value that they couldn't possibly expect to gain from a nuclear war, nearly as much as they would lose. Now, put in those terms, that's almost an obvious truism. On the other hand, the Soviet growth of strategic capability, over the 1970s, suggested to us that the Soviets needed to be reminded of that, and how would we remind them of that? Well, what we would have to do is develop a strateg-, further develop our strategic policy, our doctrine, our declaratory policy, our targeting capability, so as to make it clear to the Soviets, and then say it, so that the Soviets would be clear on this point. And that's what I always considered, and still consider, PD-59 to be about. When we talk about a countervailing strategy, we mean something that is exactly what I said: a strategy that will assure that at any level of attack, nuclear attack, be it a very limited attack or an all-out attack, or any level in between the Soviet Onion's leaders would be losing more in such a war than they could hope to gain. That's what PD-59 was meant to be about.

WAS PRESIDENT CARTER'S ENDORSEMENT OF PD-59 ANOTHER MILESTONE IN HIS EVOLUTION?

I think it was part of that general evolution. He'll have to speak for himself, but it's my own view that it did not mean in his mind, or in my mind, a major change in, or a sharp, did not mean in his mind or in my mind a sharp departure from previous policies, with respect to nuclear deterrence. It is, it is the case, probably, that some of the people in some parts of the government who were involved in drafting PD-59 believed that it was connected with a strategy of winning a nuclear war, or prevailing in a nuclear war, or being able to fight a nuclear war over a protracted period, with the expectation that everything would come out all right. That was not my view; I don't believe it was President Carter's view, and in the end, it is not what PD-59 says. People who worked on it for me ensured, I think, that it reflected the views of it that I described before, that you need, at every level, to be able to persuade the Soviets that they can't gain an advantage in a nuclear war, and that means you have to be able to target the things, and threaten the things that they want to preserve.

IN THE MIDST OF THE EGYPTIAN-ISRAELI TALKS, YOU WENT UP TO CAMP DAVID...

I had been involved... to some degree, although not centrally, in the Camp David talks between the Israelis and the Egyptians. I'd been up and back during August of 1978, at a point during those talks when, as it happened, the Israelis and Egyptians were having a very difficult time, and the US intermediaries and negotiators were also therefore having a difficult time. I went up to Camp David to talk, not about any of that, but to get an hour or so with President Carter, to talk about the vulnerability of land-based US ICBM, the prospective vulnerability of US land-based ICBM, and the desirability of approving a program which did something about that, by modernizing the... US ICBM force with a new missile, the MX, which we had been discussing for a year and a half, and which had been on the drawing boards probably for seven or eight or nine years and of basing it in a mode that would be survivable. I presented that consideration to him... I pointed out that Soviet advances in ICBM accuracy, and test programs that they had going, which our intelligence people had interpreted as meaning that by the early 1980s, sometime in the early 1980s, the US ICBM force would be vulnerable to a Soviet pre-emptive attack with their I-, by their ICBMs, meant that we ought to do something about it, all along the lines that I had described. At the end of that conversation, I believe President Carter was convinced that the vulnerability problem was a real one, that something probably ought to be done about it and that it made sense to proceed with a missile-development program, and to work hard on settling on a particular one, some basing mode that would ease or, one would hope, solve the vulnerability problem. He did not at that time make a deployment decision, or even a full-scale engineering development decision, but he did agree that we probably should include in the budget for the fiscal year for which the budget would be presented to the Congress the following January, that would have been, I think, the fiscal year 1980, funds for development of such a system.