WHAT DID THE UNITED STATES HOPE TO ACHIEVE WITH ATOMS FOR PEACE?

Well the general idea of the Atoms for Peace program was to export peaceful nuclear technology in hopes of persuading other countries that they would use that technology only for peaceful purposes. In addition to that, the United States hoped that through its exports it would have some leverage on those countries to keep them using those uh, things that had been exported for peaceful purposes only. In addition to that, where there was a period of competition with the Soviet Union that it was regarded as good public relations. Uh, but that was the secondary dimension to it.

CAN YOU JUST GO INTO THAT A LITTLE MORE, ABOUT THE PUBLIC RELATIONS?

Well, the United States was worried about the Soviet Campaign against nuclear uh, technology generally. It was felt that this was going to be something, which was going to prevent the Americans for using nuclear weapons to defend Europe or nuclear deterrence to defend Europe. And so the idea of using the peaceful atom uh, was a way of showing that nuclear had a benign side as well as a malign side. And uh, thereby taking the edge off the Soviet anti-nuclear campaign.

HOW USEFUL WAS THE PARTIAL TEST BAN TREATY OF '63 IN PAVING THE WAY FOR A NON-PROLIFERATION TREATY DO YOU THINK?

Well the Partial Test Ban Treaty was the first arms control agreement uh, of any significance. And in that sense it was important in paving the way. It also was something that Kennedy and Khrushchev had both justified in part in relation to its effects on slowing proliferation. But it was only a step. There was plenty of hard bargaining left to do on actually getting a non-proliferation treaty after that.

HOW DID NON-PROLIFERATION BECOME A KEY ISSUE IN THE ELECTION CAMPAIGN OF '76?

Well President Carter felt strongly about the issue of non-proliferation. Indeed, it was probably the, the prime issue uh, which he uh, uh, used in his '76 campaign. It was also an issue which had worried the American public. 1974 you'd had the Indian explosion. Uh, in 1975 and six the efforts to prevent the export of reprocessing plants to Pakistan and to Brazil. So there was a good deal of public attention to the issue. The Democrats in the Congress had used the issue to criticize the uh, administration, the Republican administration at the time. And President Carter uh, in addition to that felt strongly about it himself and uh, with his background in the nuclear branch of the Navy felt that he knew something about the issue.

HOW DID YOU GET INVOLVED AS THE ARCHITECT OF THE CARTER PROLIFERATION POLICY?

Well I had been involved in a project that had been sponsored by the Ford Foundation to look at the overall problems of nuclear energy, including its overlap with weapons proliferation. That project, so-called Ford Mitre Project, produced a report in early '77 that uh, President Carter received and uh, actually tended to agree with. But the, at the point of '76, during the period of the Carter transition uh, I was asked by Secretary of State designate Vance if I would uh, come into the administration and help to develop the policy on non-proliferation.

WOULD YOU ANSWER GENERALLY WHY THE US WASN'T ABLE TO DO MORE TO PREVENT INDIA GOING AHEAD WITH THAT EXPLOSIVE TEST?

Well the United States had indicated to the Indians in the early 1970s that they would regard the use of American supplied materials for a test or an explosion uh, as a violation of the agreement. The Indians replied they didn't see it as a violation of the agreement. The Americans therefore saw it as essentially violation the spirit of the agreement. The agreement had bitin... been written so loosely that you could make a case that it didn't violate the letter of the agreement. So each side chose to interpret this rather ambiguously written agreement in the terms which it preferred and essentially the two talked past each other. So our leverage was uh, was not reinforced by having an absolutely clear cut agreement. We said what we thought it meant but the Indians said they didn't believe that.

DID IT SEEM THEN THAT THIS MIGHT TRIGGER OFF A CHAIN REACTION?

Let me make sure I understand it. The chain reaction of the Indian explosion to other states exploding? Or inside US politics?

I'M SORRY. TO PAKISTAN.

The Indian explosion was something which was bound to affect Pakistan. Uh, then Prime Minister Ali Bhutto vowed that Pakistan would eat grass rather than uh, allow the Hindus alone to have the bomb. So there was a great deal of concern that an Indian explosion would be followed by efforts by the Pakistanis to keep up or to catch up.

HOW DID THE ARAB OIL EMBARGO CONTRIBUTE TO THE PROBLEM OF PROLIFERATION IN THE '70s?

The 1970s was a period of uh, great buoyancy about the use of nuclear energy and the oil embargo just added to that buoyancy. The view was that uh, there was going to be uh, enormous demand for energy and what's more, when oil was cut off that there would have to be nuclear energy to fill the bill. So in that sense people looked at the, at the numbers of reactors that were projected. This is before they knew how costly they were going to be, and asked how much uranium was there likely to be. Said, my goodness, there won't be enough uranium. Therefore, we should turn quickly to using plutonium, which you can take out of the spent fuel and which has the distinction that it's a weapons usable material. Plutonium can be used either for the, producing energy or for producing bombs. So when the projections were that there was going to be enormous need for nuclear energy and not enough uranium to mis... to fuel all those reactors, then essentially uh, there was the view that everybody had to get quickly into plutonium which immediately meant they'd have their hands on weapons usable material.

AND WHAT WAS YOUR REACTION TO THAT, BEING A MEMBER OF THE FORD MITRE STUDY?

In the Ford Mitre Study we looked at this and felt that the economics were grossly exaggerated; that the costs of nuclear reactors was going to be much higher than expected, and that the price of uranium, which shot up very rapidly after the oil embargo because everybody thought there'd be this great shortage of supply, was probably not likely to stay up for very long. Because as the price goes up people are likely to mine more. And when they mine more price goes down again. So we felt that this period in the early to mid-'70s was a period of artificial exaggeration of the demand for uranium and demand for nuclear energy, and the demand for plutonium, and that what was important was to try to dampen down this exaggeration so that you didn't put in place this uh, system where everybody had their hands on weapons usable material, in a form which basically uh, you couldn't monitor and couldn't inspect very well.

WHAT WERE THE FIRST EFFORTS YOU MADE TO ACTUALLY DO THAT?

Well when we first uh, started out in the early days of the Carter administration, we had a uh, policy review memorandum where all the agencies in the government came together and tried to set what the policy was going to be. And that raised several issues. One was the question of, "Were we going to go ahead with reprocessing," that is, taking the plutonium out of the spent fuel ourselves. And uh, basically we decided the answer to that would be no, even though there was a partially completed plant in Barnwell, South Carolina which uh, there was strong industry pressure to turn on. Uh, we argued that in fact if we thought that using plutonium was a bad idea; that it was A) uneconomic and B) dangerous, we probably shouldn't do it ourselves if we're going to try to persuade others of that. So we took a stand saying, "Let's not go quickly into plutonium economy. Let's uh, look at it much more carefully and study it before you have everybody rushing in this direction." So very early on in the administration President Carter announced this policy, uh, which had come out of this interagency review group, but it created a good deal of consternation on the part of other countries which were planning to go ahead with uh, plutonium reprocessing.

THE GERMAN AND FRENCH CONTRACTS. CAN YOU TELL ME SOMETHING ABOUT THE CONCERNS, PARTICULARLY AMONG YOURSELVES AND THIS COUNTRY?

Well the French had made an agreement with the, both the Korea and with Pakistan to sell them reprocessing plants. And the Germans had made an agreement with Brazil to sell them both reprocessing plants and enrichment plants that would raise the level of enrichment of uranium to potentially to weapons grade levels. The uh, the United States felt that this was a dangerous type of trade to get into. Indeed the uh, the Nixon administration and Ford administration had already begun to worry about this but uh, without any success. They, they'd had some success in persuading the Koreans not to go ahead with this but not much success with the Pakistanis and the Brazilian case. Uh, we continued to feel that both these deals were uh, poor precedents and dangerous. For example, in the Brazilian deal it made the Argentines feel that they had to keep up. So it made the Argentines press ahead to do a reprocessing plant of their own. And you had the prospect then of both countries having weapons grade materials and the beginnings of a nuclear arms race uh, essentially in South America which made us very uncomfortable. And in urn, East Asia, or s... rather South Asia you had a situation where the Pakistanis, by getting a reprocessing plant would be uh, essentially trying to build or make the components that they could build a bomb for keeping up with the Indians. So the prospect of a nuclear arms on the sub-continent was not uh, uh, very comforting either. In East Asia it was a little bit better in the sense that the Koreans had been persuaded that if they wanted the security of American uh, guarantees for their overall situation on the Korean peninsula it meant that they couldn't go ahead and get a nuclear weapon. And another case that was somewhat worrisome was Taiwan. It was similar in which we said to the Taiwanese, "If you want us to continue to try to protect you, uh, we're not going to be so happy about that if you're trying to develop nuclear weapons. So don't uh, try any of that." So the East Asian cases were uh, were a little bit uh, quieter and a little bit uh, easier to uh, to handle.

WHAT ROLE DID YOU PLAY IN THE EFFORTS TO DISSUADE THE FRENCH FROM GOING AHEAD WITH THE REPROCESSING CONTRACT?

Well the United States uh, had already been talking to the French before the Carter administration came into office. Uh, when we came into office we made a number of representations to the French that we thought that this was a bad idea. The French at first said, "Well no, it's perfectly legitimate. It's for civilian purposes. It's for peaceful purposes." And they said, "We cannot change this plan. We can't cancel it because it would be extremely damaging to our ability to be a reliable exporter of nuclear technology and nuclear equipment." So they were very resistant to the idea. Uh, we then uh, encountered some pretty good information that the Pakistanis indeed were trying to develop a nuclear weapon. Uh, I was able to persuade the intelligence people to sanitize the information so that you wouldn't know how it uh, had gotten into uh, our hands. And then at a meeting in Paris in uh, in July I guess it was of 1977, I presented that information to a... key French official. And I remember his saying to me, "If this is true, we'll have to change our position." So sometimes say that it was American pressure that changed the French view. I don't think that's right. It's basically it was provision of information that made the French realize that what they'd been saying was inconsistent with their long-term interest.

HOW DID THE JAPANESE RESPOND TO YOUR NEW STAND ON NON-PROLIFERATION?

The Japanese were very unhappy about the Carter administration position. Uh, they had a plant for reprocessing materials that was about to come on stream at Tokaimura. And the Carter administration felt that if we had just gone through the pain at home of not uh, going ahead with this Barnwell reprocessing plant uh, it would be extremely difficult for us to turn around and tell the Japanese, "Yes. Go right ahead with this Tokaimura reprocessing plant." One of the problems was that in the agreement for cooperation between the United States and Japan there was a clause by which we had to give permission. In some ways it would have been easier for us if the, if like the French, the Japanese had been able to do it on their own. But because of this legal agreement uh, we had to give permission. So we were stuck. Uh, either we said we can't do it at home but yes, we permit you do it. Or we could say uh, uh, look, let's both of us not do it. And it took quite some time to work that out. Uh, when President Carter said uh, let's both not do it, the Japanese were pretty unhappy and it became a major cause celebre inside Japanese politics.

CAN YOU RECALL ANY OTHER OF THE DISCUSSIONS WITH IMAI... OR OTA?

Well in the, in trying to work this out we realized that the most important thing in the long run from, for slowing or stemming proliferation is to maintain alliances and security Jap... uh, guarantees. In other words, Japan was a close ally. Japan was not a problem in the sense of going nuclear itself. So the question we had to do was to find some way in which you could smooth this over. Uh, and what we did was devise a scheme by which we would study whether their ways to develop and use this reprocessing plant in a safer way. And that would then be a way of buying time and getting over this period where the contradiction between the two policies was so sharp. Our options were either to say absolutely no to the Japanese and suffer a considerable rupture into US-Japanese relations, which would have perhaps uh, prevented or made the proliferation problem worse. I mean, it might have not only created resentment in Japan but might have made the Japanese less willing to cooperate with us on other things such as their export policies. Uh, so that was one possibility. The other possibility was to just give in right away. Uh, that essentially would be very difficult for Carter and for the administration. And the middle way that was chosen was to find a way to study this problem to ask are there ways in which reprocessing plants can be made safer by for example, co-processing the uranium and the plutonium at the same time. And we evolved uh... or developed a set of studies of this which were later reported to the international nuclear fuel cycle evaluation, which was a large international study of the problems of the overlap between... civil and military uses of nuclear energy.

LET ME SEE IF I'VE GOT IT RIGHT. THEY WANTED TO BE TREATED AS A SPECIAL CASE.

The Japanese said you know, "Just give us permission." Uh, and we said, "Yeah, but if we give you permission how does it look to everybody else?" And it was the difference between a country who was trying to develop and maintain an international regime and a country that wants to say give me a special exception from the rules. Uh, so there was a difference between the large country and smaller country perspective on this. Uh, what we did was sort of try to bridge that by having this special study.

THEY DID SEEM TO ALSO NEED THE ENERGY.

Well, the actual energy importance of the Tokaimura plant was pretty trivial. It uh, it was not something which was going to produce a major input to Japanese uh, uh, reactors. They would use some of they might recycle some of the plutonium. They might use some of it for their breeder reactor development program but these were pretty far off. The major thing the Japanese needed for energy was to continue developing their existing generation of light water reactors.

HOW ABOUT THE DOMESTIC NUCLEAR INDUSTRY? HOW DID THEY RESPOND?

The domestic nuclear indust...

OKAY.

The domestic nuclear energy industry was very unhappy about Carter's policies. In fact uh, the industry began to run into problems about that time for reasons that had nothing to do with Carter. It had to do with costs and uh, and uh other issues. But uh, when the Carter policy came along the industry regarded this as terrible. In fact there was an international conference at...in Iran which passed a resolution condemning the Carter administration's policies. Uh, I'm told by pretty good sources that the first draft of that resolution was actually written by some people from the American nuclear industry. And I know uh, from direct experience in one of the early days uh... a person from one of the large nuclear companies telling me he was going to do his best to get me fired.

SPEAK TO ME A LITTLE BIT ABOUT YOUR HOPES FOR INFCE?

Well the idea of the international nuclear fuel cycle evaluation was to get other countries to realize the concern that we had which was that there was an important overlap between civilian uses of nuclear energy and military uses, where it should be a top item on their agenda. So we didn't hope that INFCE was going to get other countries to come out and say exactly what we said about plutonium or breeder reactors. What we did hope was that we could get them to focus on the issue because for a long time the nuclear energy area was left to, to uh, ministries of nuclear energy or atomic energy uh, which were strongly influenced by their industries and uh, which thought everything was fine. What we hoped was that by a large international diplomatic gathering, you could break it out of these ministries of energy or ministries of atomic energy and get the foreign ministry people and get the President's offices into it, and get a broader realization in these other governments that there really was a problem. So in that sense I think INFCE was a success. The major part, point of INFCE then was to set the agenda of getting countries to pay attention to the issues that we were concerned about. In addition to that, secondary point, which was important, is that INFCE tended to smooth over some of the acrimony that had grown in the early period of the Carter administration. The Carter administration came out and, and laid out some of these plans, created turmoil in other countries. Uh, mainly the reactions were from these narrowly based uh, uh, nuclear energy ministries. And uh, there was a great deal of tension. Uh, by developing this broad international study of whether this was a real issue and what should be done about it, we were able to defuse some of that acrimony while getting our issue on the broader agenda of these other governments.

AND THIS WAS YOUR IDEA.

This was an idea that I had thought about to some extent before I joined government but uh, in the idea of trying to use international institutions and studies. It was a p... uh, something that I had worked on as a professor before I joined the administration. Uh, I didn't realize I would need this idea so quickly... until we ran into some of this backlash against the early pronouncements of the administration.

DID THE NON-NUCLEAR STATES SEEM TO UNDERSTAND WHAT YOU WERE TRYING TO ACCOMPLISH?

To some extent uh, the non-nuclear states realized what we were doing. Uh, by and large one of the things you have to realize is when you look at some of these other countries uh, some of their policies were determined very heavily by a small cadre of people in the nuclear area. Others uh, had very little policy at all. They were, they were not uh, didn't have strong views one way or another. So in that sense it, it's hard to generalize. Some states knew what we were doing. Others, we were trying to essentially bring them up to speed to get them interested, to see this in a broader perspective.

CAN YOU TELL ME A LITTLE BIT ABOUT PRESIDENT CARTER'S VISIT TO INDIA?

President Carter visited India uh, trying to persuade the Indians that they should put their nuclear facilities under international safeguards. We didn't ask them to sign the...President Carter visited India to try to smooth over the difficulties we were having with India. Uh, the Congress uh, was requiring that we have uh... can't send exports of materials or uranium to a country unless all its nuclear facilities were under safe-guards, i.e. they had international inspection. And uh, we realized the Indians were not going to sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty but we hoped to persuade them that it would not be very difficult for them to add a few more facilities under the inspection list and be there. Essentially be able to meet the requirements of uh, what's called full scope safeguards; that is, having everything under inspection. And the President suggested that we would be willing to help the Indian nuclear program if they were willing to put everything under safeguards. Indeed, at one point he even suggested that we would help them with a plant that produced heavy water. Uh, they just had a difficulty with one of their plants so that there was a positive carrot as well as the negative stick of uh, the threatened congressional cutoff...

WHAT WAS THE OUTCOME?

Well alas, uh, it was not one that was, that worked. Uh, the, the, there was some misunderstanding about what the karat was and the issue of, of full scope safeguards had become associated in the Indian mind with signing the Non-Proliferation Treaty which they associated with discriminatory treatment. And uh, so in that sense they, they... reacted from a rather broad and ideological viewpoint rather than uh, than saying, "You know, this might be a good practical solution."

HOW DID YOU VIEW THE NPT AND WHAT WAS YOUR INVOLVEMENT IN THAT?

Well the Non-Proliferation Act uh, was on the books in the Congress — or, not on the books. It had been discussed in the Congress before the Carter administration came in. There'd been numbers of efforts to produce legislation. Uh, the Carter administration, when it first came into office, drew up a draft law of its own. Uh, it was somewhat more flexible than the law that the Congress wanted. And there's a typical pulling and hauling between the legislature and the executive in the United States. The I... executive tends to say, "Give us leeway for diplomatic bargaining." The legislature says, "No. Nail everything down with absolute uh, provisions so that the executive can't slide off what we want." And in that sense there was a good deal of bargaining back and forth between the administration which wanted a more flexible act than eventually came out...

SPEAK OF THE TIME, NOT RETROSPECTIVELY.

This, this was in the, the, the... Carter administration produced its own draft of what it thought would be good legislation at about the same time that it produced this presidential review memorandum that set the policy in March of '77. And the uh, the Senate and House committees were pressing for, for me and others to go up and testify uh, right from the beginning; I mean, from February of '77. We asked for a little bit of time to develop our own legislation. Uh, in the meantime the, the Congressional committees had put in their own legislation and there was a gap The administration bill was uh, more flexible. The congressional bills, both in the House and the Senate side, were more rigid. And we spent a good deal of time over the next year uh, trying to bargain out those differences. Uh, you give a little here and you take a little there. Uh, that took a lot of time.

HOW DID YOU VIEW THE NNPA AT THE TIME?

Well I thought the NNPA was a, a, a good step overall but it was, it was overly rigid. I mean, it tied our hands in some areas where it would have been better to have had a bit more flexibility. So I think the fact that there was legislation was good. Uh, I still wish we'd won a few more of those bargaining sessions to put a little bit more flexibility in.

IN SOME WAYS IT PREEMPTED YOUR INFCE AS WELL.

Well the danger was that uh, it looked like we were going to have Congress legislating the outcomes before the results of this international study. So from the state department and the administration's point of view we would have preferred to have had a little bit more flexibility on that point.

FOLLOWING THAT THERE'S A PERIOD OF CONCERN OVER THE PAKISTAN PROGRAM, THE... CAN YOU TELL ME YOUR RECOLLECTIONS OF THE WORRIES THAT AMERICA HAD ABOUT THAT PLANT?

Well the Pakistan plant at, at Chasma was a uh, this is the one, sorry.

I'M SORRY. I'M ON THE NEXT ONE, KAHUTA.

The... In... I believe it was... around January of '78 —

LATE '78 I THINK, '79...

In, in early '78 we discovered that the Pakistanis were trying to build a centrifuge enrichment system.

I'M SORRY. ONE MORE TIME.

In the early part of 1978 we discovered that the Pakistanis were trying to develop a centrifuge system for enriching uranium, which could bring it up to weapons usable levels. And we tried to discover where they were getting the equipment, what they were doing. We began to discuss this with other members of the Nuclear Suppliers Group. Uh, I remember flying to London and talking to the British about this and then going to other countries in Europe, trying to put together, piece together what was going on. And our feeling was that uh, that Pakistan really had very little need for this enriched uranium for civil purposes. After all, they had a heavy water reactor, which doesn't require enriched uranium. So the purposes of uh, of this plant uh, struck us as odd and uh, much more likely to be related to weapons than to uh, to civil purposes. They were also — the Pakistanis were going to other countries and buying equipment and saying it was for things like textile plants and so forth. And uh, so what we had to do was to persuade other governments that uh, this was in fact not going to textile plants but was going to go toward a nuclear plant for enriching materials, which didn't fit into Pakistan's civil program very well and was probably for weapons purposes. And we were able to slow down the exports to this but it was not a leak-proof system.

DID YOU VISIT PAKISTAN, DID YOU GET INVOLVED?

I did. I... I had gone to Pakistan actually earlier than that in the middle of '77 and the effort was to go there quietly and to propose to them that we would be willing to help them on many dimensions of their uh, energy program uh, generally uh, if they would be willing to forego the parts of the program that looked like they were developing uh, weapons or were aimed at that purpose. Uh, they treated me very cordially but I cannot say that I had any success.

AT THIS TIME THERE WAS A LOT OF TALK IN THE PRESS ABOUT AN ISLAMIC BOMB. HOW MUCH CREDIBILITY DID YOU ATTACH TO THE NOTION OF AN ISLAMIC BOMB?

I did not attach a lot of credibility to the idea of an Islamic bomb. It struck me that that was a label, which probably mislead more than it helped. Uh, in the sense that the Pakistanis were worried very much about India. And in, they were not I think trying to spread this weapon to all other Islamic nations but they were getting some aid from other countries that had oil money. Uh, there'd be uh, Saudi Arabia, so forth. One of the things we tried to persuade the Pakistanis is that we would feel very strongly against uh, the idea of any spread of this i... uh, of this weaponry. Uh, and in that sense I think uh, there was a background concern that it not become an Islamic bomb. But we saw it motivated primarily by the Indo- Pakistani rivalry.

WHAT EVIDENCE WAS THERE FOR ANY LIBYAN FUNDING?

Well I believe the Libyans uh, provided some funds. I don't think they got much for their money. In other words, I don't think there was a reversed transfer of technology to Libya.

CAN YOU GIVE ME ANY INFORMATION ABOUT LIBYAN FUNDING? THE PAKISTANIS DENY IT AND ALWAYS HAVE.

I don't know that I know anything that's in the public domain about that that I can say.

DID YOU PLAY A ROLE IN THE DECISION TO CUT OFF THE AID TO PAKISTAN?

Let me try to remember. There were two decisions. Uh, one was in September or Fall of '70... Yeah. There was, that was ear... There was one in early '79 and there was one in... there was a brief ex... The AID people came in and talked to us about cutting off aid but I don't think we did it in late '77. But I don't, I think the, I think the cutoff was in '70... spring of '79 and I had already left the government then. I was a consultant. Tom Pickering was then in charge of the policy.

SO THE...THAT LET THE US TO CUT OFF AID, WOULD YOU BE ABLE TO ADDRESS THAT?

Uh, something. Yeah, I mean I was, I was going down one day a week as a consultant so I knew what was going on. But I wasn't officially in charge of the policy any longer,

WHAT LED THE US TO CUT OFF AID IN APRIL '79?

The cutoff of aid to Pakistan was required by the legislation. Uh, basically once you discovered and it was absolutely clear that the Pakistanis were trying to develop an enrichment uh, uh, plant as well as a, a, a small reprocessing plant uh, the legislation required you to uh, to cut off the aid. Uh, and essentially one of the problems at that point was that the size of the aid that we were providing to Pakistan was so small that the Pakistanis reacted to it in terms of "well, so what". So it, it uh, didn't have a very great affect.

THREE MILE ISLAND. HOW MUCH DID THE ACCIDENT THERE HAVE AN INFLUENCE ON PROLIFERATION POLICY IN GENERAL?

I don't think that Three Mile Island had a very large uh, uh, direct effect. It may have had an indirect effect in the sense of requiring additional safety measures as more people became worried about the nuclear energy. Uh, when you require additional safety measures you make reactors more expensive. And since we had argued that reactors were already pricing nuclear energy out of the competitive market uh, it did have the effect of slowing down the boom in the nuclear industry. But it didn't have a direct effect. Uh, it was more of an indirect effect

WERE YOU INVOLVED AT ALL IN THE DECISION TO RENEW AID TO PAKISTAN AFTER THE AFGHAN INVASION?

No, that was uh.

DID YOU FEEL THAT US PROLIFERATION GOALS WERE BEING COMPROMISED BY THE DECISION TO RENEW AID?

I think the renewal of aid was justifiable if it had been tied more clearly uh, to proliferation policy. I think it had a heavy uh, tie to the Afghan policy. One of the things about using aid as a sanction is that it's... works best when you are threatening to cut it off but not after you've cut it off. Or another way of putting it is that if you want to have a carrot uh, to dangle there has to be a real carrot. So it makes sense to have aid but then you have to tie the aid to the fact that the Pakistanis not develop the bomb. So I don't begrudge the idea of renewing aid. What I begrudge is the fact that the ties to their slowing down their nuclear program weren't clearer.

WHAT WAS YOUR ROLE IN THE DISCUSSION SURROUNDING THE TARAPUR AGREEMENT AND THE DECISION TO WAIVER, AND THAT THE NNPA IN THAT CASE THEN CONTINUE THE SHIPMENTS?

Well at that point I had, again was out of the government. That was, I believe, 1980 that those waivers uh, were, were made. The uh, but the argument for uh, making a waiver uh, and giving fuel to TarapuR rested to some extent on a legal technicality. The question is when did the clock start ticking before you had to cut off aid. The administration argued there were two shipments involved. The administration argued that the shipments essentially could fit within the grace period that the nuclear Non-Proliferation Act allowed. Uh, Senator Glenn and others argued no, that the clock had already run out. From a diplomatic point of view I think the administration wanted to try to stretch this out and look at the broader interpretation of the, of this grace period as a way to buy more time to keep negotiating with the Indians.

BUT WHY WASN'T THE SAME PRESSURE APPLIED TO INDIA THAT HAD BEEN APPLIED TO PAKISTAN?

Well the pressure was applied to India in the sense that there was in the background a threat of the cutting of the fuel supply for these reactors. Uh, the question though is always once you cut things off there's not that much left to negotiate about. So the art of diplomacy is trying to get agreements before the uh, guillotine has fallen or before the uh, the carrot has been removed from the scene.

ALL THE WAY THROUGH THE CARTER PERIOD THEY'D BEEN TALKING A LOT ABOUT PAKISTAN. WHAT ABOUT ISRAEL DURING THIS PERIOD? WHY WASN'T ISRAEL A GREATER CONCERN?

Well there are two problems uh, regarding Israel. One is that uh, the information about Israel was not as good as one might like. The Israelis had, had stopped the Americans from uh, continuing their inspections in the, I guess it was mid or late '60s. And the second point was that it was widely believed that uh, that Israel had probably already developed a nuclear capability and that there wasn't much chance of walking that back that it was uh, uh, it was done. Uh, and that it had been an event that had occurred probably in the late sixties or early seventies. So in that sense uh, the Israeli position, which was that they would not be the first to introduce nuclear weapons into the Middle East was to some extent a diplomatic fiction or a useful diplomatic fiction of saying that even though they might have the capability they weren't going to...it- And they weren't going to essentially develop big nuclear arsenals. And we tended to support that view- But we didn't feel that there was anything we could do to reverse something that had happened ten years earlier.

WOULD IT BE TRUE TO SAY THAT ISRAEL WASN'T A PROLIFERATION CONCERN AS SUCH OR....

Israel was a proliferation concern, in the sense that we were concerned about any country that had weapons. But it was a case where, essentially, the horse... out of the barn already, uh, and we were trying to concentrate on those where the horse hadn't yet got out.

WHAT ABOUT SOUTH AFRICA?

South Africa was very much a concern in, in, I believe it was the summer of 1977. We were, uh, tipped by the Russians that they had that their satellites had found a bore site that looked like an underground test site in the Kalahari Desert and we looked for it with our satellite and found it. And we went to the South Africans with very strong representations that, uh, we felt that they should not go ahead and develop nuclear weapons, and, or have a nuclear test. And the uh, for some period we negotiated with them about that. During the period that I was in the government, during the Carter administration, I don't believe that the South Africans did develop nuclear weapons. It's a little harder to know what they've done since.

WHAT ABOUT THE LINKS? IT IS SPECULATED BETWEEN ISRAEL AND SOUTH AFRICA?

There's a good deal of speculation that the Israelis may have helped the South Africans because the Israelis did indeed have conventional weapons transfers with South Africa. And a number of Israeli scientists visited South Africa. So there's speculation on that but, so far as I know, it's all I know about is speculation.

SO THAT, ALTHOUGH ISRAEL WASN'T A PRIORITY... SOUTH AFRICA WASN'T A SORT OF, YOU COULDN'T SEE A SORT OF SECONDARY PROLIFERATION GOING ON HERE THAT WASN'T...

Well South Africa we were, we did focus a good deal of energy and effort on South Africa trying to find various packages and, and of carrots and sticks to persuade them not to develop nuclear weaponry. And working also with the other countries like the French and so forth. So we spent a good deal of effort on the South African case.

YOU DIDN'T WORK WITH THE ISRAELIS ON THE SOUTH AFRICAN...

Well we did but, on the Israelis we didn't have any good information that the Israelis were actually helping the South Africans. We had speculation and rumors but not solid evidence.

JUST GENERALLY, A GENERAL POINT: PEOPLE CRITICIZE THE CARTER PROLIFERATION POLICY FOR BEING ONE OF DENIAL, A POLICY OF DENIAL, TECHNICAL DENIAL. DID YOU FEEL AT THE TIME THAT IT MIGHT ENCOURAGE PEOPLE TO GO ELSEWHERE FOR THEIR NUCLEAR MATERIALS? FOR COUNTRIES TO GO SELF-RELIANT? HOW DO YOU...

Well the criticism of Carter's policy as being one of denial is only partly true. For one thing, a good non-proliferation policy has to walk on two legs: one of which is to focus on denying capabilities, and the other is to reassure intentions. And there were many instances where we tried to reassure intentions. Some of the compromises we made with allies were to, essentially, reassure intentions. On the denial point it's worth noticing that countries may have intentions to get nuclear weapons as Libya's had for a long time—and not be able to do it because they're denied the capabilities. So this, this argument that the policy is denial versus intentions is silly. You have to work on both sides and I think the Carter administration did work on both sides. If you look at our policy toward Taiwan, for example, or Korea, the reassurance on security was to effect their intentions. It was a lot harder on a case like South Africa to give any sorts of guarantees. In that sense, the denial part was perhaps higher than in other cases. But there was an effort to look at both intentions as well as capabilities in the policy.

DO YOU THINK THAT IF YOU HAD ALLOWED THE CHASMA REPROCESSING PLANT TO HAVE GONE AHEAD THAT THE PAKISTANI'S MAY NOT HAVE GONE AHEAD WITH THE ENRICHMENT PLANT?

Well, by stopping the Chasma reprocessing plant, we prevented the Pakistanis from taking their first best option to get their hands on a lot of weapons usable materials quickly. That then, I think, encouraged them to speed or try to take the next route which was if you want the side door, after we'd closed the front door, I think it helped to buy time. It also prevented a direct violation of international safeguards, which would, might have been very damaging to the safeguard system as a whole.

BUT THE POLICY OF DENIAL—DO YOU THINK THAT ENCOURAGED THEM TO GO AHEAD WITH THE ENRICHMENT PLANT?

The Pakistanis were keen on going ahead with getting access to weapons-usable materials by one route or another and so when we stopped the Chasma plant, it essentially took away their first best option. That encouraged them, I believe, to speed up the work on the enrichment plant. They had already had the stolen plants, plans from the URENCO plant and were planning to go ahead in this direction anyway as a back up. But when they lost their first choice, they then turned to their second choice.

THAT WAS INEVITABLE.

Yes, I think it was inevitable.

DO TELL ME WHY YOU THINK...

Because, I believe it was inevitable because the Pakistanis had this very strong feeling that they had to keep up with the Indians. I think the pressures toward a Pakistani bomb were extraordinarily great once the Indian explosion when off.

A COUPLE OF MORE RECENT THINGS, FIVE MINUTES. YOUR REACTION TO THE OSIRAK ATTACK IN 1981 COULD YOU JUST TELL ME YOUR VIEWS ON THAT.

The Israelis attacked the Iraq reactor because they felt that it could be used for making nuclear weapons. I don't think at that stage that it could be used for making nuclear weapons. Our intelligence didn't suggest that it was being misused that way. But I think the Israelis were closer to the scene and more nervous. Indeed, if you were in that situation you would probably be more nervous too. And I think that made them to evaluate certain information as suggesting that the Iraqis were going ahead sooner with a nuclear plan, weapons plan than we believed to be the case. And I think that's why the Israelis attacked when they did. So, in that sense I think they jumped the gun, I think that they didn't need to attack at that point. But I, I think from the Israeli point of view, they believed that they were, indeed, in dire straits.

DO YOU THINK IT DAMAGED THE NON-PROLIFERATION REGIME?

It did and it didn't. It may have done some damage by the fact that you had an attack on a safeguarded reactor. But, on the other hand, it may have done some good by saying that when countries think that they can creep up toward a nuclear weapons capability, other states may preempt, may essentially decide to take unilateral action what you might call an affirmative action non-proliferation policy.

HOW MUCH CREDIBILITY DO YOU ATTACH TO THE RECENT PRESS REPORTS ABOUT HE VANUNU CASE, THE TECHNICIAN AT THE DIMONA PLANT, AND THE SPECULATION THAT ISRAEL HAS TEN TIMES AS MANY NUCLEAR WEAPONS THAN PREVIOUSLY ESTIMATED?

Well I've read the Sunday Times report... that Vanunu contributed to, I think there's some exaggeration, perhaps, in the amount of nuclear weapons that it implies that Israel has but I think it does tend to suggest that the Israelis have more than a modest, or more than a very minor capability.

THE NON-NUCLEAR STATES TODAY MAKE A VERY PERSUASIVE ARGUMENT, AND THEY HAVE TO ASK THAT WHY SHOULD THEY GIVE UP THE NUCLEAR OPTION WHEN THE SUPERPOWERS ARE NOT ADDRESSING THEIR OWN PROLIFERATION, THEIR VERTICAL PROLIFERATION AS SUCH. WHAT'S YOUR VIEW ON THAT?

I think that it's going to be hard to maintain support for the Non-Proliferation Treaty in the long run, and remember it has to be renewed by a majority of states in 1995. If the Superpowers have done nothing to reduce their reliance on nuclear weapons. On the other hand, it's also worth noticing that a number of states decide that it's in their interest to adhere to The Non-Proliferation Treaty because they want to have a system of keeping their neighbors non-nuclear and having inspectors there to see it. So there is a symbolic element to the worry about the superpowers arsenal, but there is a practical element about worrying about your neighbor's arsenal. And I think what you need is some progress on the superpowers moving in the direction of arms control. But it's not the only step that's needed or that holds The Non-Proliferation Treaty together.

WHAT ARE THE PROBLEM AREAS TODAY, DO YOU THINK, FOR PROLIFERATION? WHAT ARE THE KEY... WHAT ARE THE BIG PROBLEM AREAS?

I believe that the non-proliferation problems today are dealing with states which are getting right up under the threshold of nuclear weaponry. In other words, what you have is five states in the NPT that are listed as nuclear weapon states, but you have four others which are either just below or just above the threshold, India, Israel, South Africa, Pakistan. And that raises interesting puzzles of how do you deal with states which are either not openly declared or haven't had an explosion but have the reputation. And I think one has to think of proliferation as a staircase, perhaps with a broader landing at the point where the first explosion occurs but in which you want to try to persuade states to stay many steps below that first landing, and after they've crossed that landing, to think of ways to prevent them from keeping going up the staircase. Its better to be like in India to have one explosion but not develop an arsenal than to develop an arsenal of unreliable and unsafe nuclear weapons which may blow up not only them but their neighbors or smuggle into our harbors on a freighter us as well.

LAST QUESTION: YOUR ROLE AT THE LONDON SUPPLIERS GROUP? IF YOU DON'T MIND JUST TELLING ME A LITTLE BIT ABOUT THE LONDON SUPPLIERS.

Well, the Nuclear Suppliers Group was in response to the Indian explosion, in a sense, a belated response, but the idea was to get the countries that supplied nuclear equipment and materials to agree on a common set of guidelines so that the nuclear trade would not be a competition in risk taking of who could sell the most dangerous thing to get the contracts. And it took some hard bargaining to work out the details. We met in the River-walk House along the Thames in London. I remember going as head of the delegation twice in '77 and we finally got an agreement in September of '77 on a common set of guidelines which were then published through the International Atomic Energy Agency the following year.

I JUST REMEMBERED. THE US AND SOVIET PERCEPTIONS OF THE PROLIFERATION PROBLEM AT THE LONDON SUPPLIERS GROUP WERE DIFFERENT. WHAT, CAN YOU REMEMBER SOME OF THE...

Well the Americans and the Soviets actually were...

SORRY, ONE MORE TIME.

The United States and the Soviet Union cooperated quite well in the Nuclear Suppliers Group. There were some differences of view on details. The Soviets, I think, might have wanted to hold out longer for full scope safeguards as a formal requirement but we knew the French would never agree to that. And we felt it was better to compromise on that and get agreements on the guidelines as a whole rather than to take the purist position. So there were some differences but, in fact, the Soviets were happy to go along with the final compromise and get agreement on a set of guidelines that all fifteen countries could adhere to.

IT'S A GREAT ACCOMPLISHMENT TO EVEN GET THE FRENCH THERE, ISN'T IT?

It was the French position changed considerably over time. I think you could argue that they learned that they had an interest in security terms as well as an interest in nuclear energy terms.

HOW DID THEY BECOME A MEMBER OF THE LONDON SUPPLIERS?

Well they first agreed to participate when it was kept—on the grounds that it was kept quiet. Gradually it became known and they decided not to withdraw.