THE REAGAN ADMINISTRATION CAME IN CLAIMING THAT THE MILITARY STRUCTURE WAS FALLING APART. HOW ACCURATE WAS THAT JUDGEMENT?

Well, I don't think the military structure was falling apart but it is true that we had uh, underinvested primarily during the Vietnam years. And so uh, to the extent that long-term investments show up as new equipment, uh, new strategic forces and the like. It is true that had been drawn down in the '60s and the early '70s and then the— when you get into the early '80s you were feeling the effects of that. So I think it was correct to assess that we needed some investment in our military capacity, but it's certainly not true that we were in dire straits.

THEY ALSO PAINTED A PICTURE OF THE RUSSIANS REARMING AND GOING AHEAD BY LEAPS AND BOUNDS... WAS THAT ALSO AN ACCURATE PICTURE?

Well, I'm more prone to agree with what uh, Henry Kissinger said uh, twenty years ago, that in this domain what does nuclear superiority mean. But it certainly is true that the Soviets just consistently built up their forces. Nothing terribly exciting that happened, nothing unexpected that happened. Uh, it was true that people were concerned particularly about the vulnerability of our land-based missiles but they had seen that coming for a long time. And uh, now indeed that uh, with, with the coming of the SS-18s that at least was a, a theoretical possibility. But I don't think there were leaps and bounds. Rather, it was almost the opposite. It was more the, the Harold Brown line that when we build they build, when we stop they build. Uh, they just kept on going whereas where as we go in fits and starts. And during the Vietnam years uh, we were in one of our fits uh, and not doing very much.

WHAT WAS THE OVERALL ATTITUDE THAT THE ADMINISTRATION BROUGHT IN...

Well, I do think it really was an uh, evil empire in their uh, eyes. I don't think it was just a, a careless choice of words. They really were perceived as the, the threat to freedom and the threat to the west and the, and a threat to mankind and the uh, enemy. And if you stop to think of the years just before the Reagan administration came in, you do have Afghanistan. You do have Angola. You do have the disenchantment with detente generally. You do have uh, the human rights expectation somewhat dashed. And and you do have people that have strongly held ideological view in opposition to communism as well as an opposition to the Soviet Union. So with regard to the Soviet Union it was a very strongly negative view and a view that these were people with whom you indeed could not work to achieve cooperative uh, goals because you had virtually no goals in common. And then when you combine that with the perception that we were in military trouble because remember if you take somebody like uh, Caspar Weinberger, the then Secretary of Defense, the briefings he was used to getting were briefings when he was director of the office of management and budgets back in the Nixon days when the United States clearly had "superiority" to the extent of larger numbers of warheads, even if not usable. And now the briefings he was getting, and many areas showed that not only did we not have superiority, but indeed the Soviets had more of this or more of that. And he was quite shocked and upset with that. He felt that something had to be done.

THE FIRST COUPLE OF YEARS THEY'VE FOUND IT FAIRLY EASY TO GET THINGS DONE. WHY WAS THE MOOD IN CONGRESS COOPERATIVE DURING THAT PERIOD OF TIME?

Well, first of all, the mood in Congress had shifted during the Carter administration. Uh, in the last years of the Carter administration the defense budget was increasing. And Jimmy Carter said he thought that the defense budget should increase in average of five percent per year in real terms. Congress, too, being quite cooperative in light of uh, the behavior of the Soviets in that recent period. Anger over Iran and the hostages. Whether the Soviets had anything to do with that or not is irrelevant. Uh, it set a political mood that people can't push the United States around anymore and therefore we have to build up our military forces, as if that might have had anything to do with the hostages uh, in Iran. Um, so there was somewhat of a honeymoon. Secondly, there was a feeling there was this mandate for Ronald Reagan who had run on uh, on that premise, that we needed a large military build-up. Third, Caspar Weinberger was extraordinarily successful. People tend to forget that this was the largest number of consecutive years had had since World War II in increases in defense budget. Before the Reagan administration, since World War II, once we had an increase three years in a row. Once. Then we had two years of increases under Carter and the Reagan administration kept them for four more years of increases. Six years in a row. Unheard of. Partly a mandate, partly views about the Soviets, partly a conservative ideology, party an economy doing reasonably well, partly not having the demands of the Vietnam War anymore. All of those things uh, together. And uh, Caspar Weinberger refusing to give an inch and refusing to compromise in the budget, and therefore requiring members of Congress on their own to make the cut despite what the secretary said. And they just weren't going to do it.

BUT BY 1982 AT LEAST SOME THINGS HAD BEGUN TO CHANGE. THERE WAS THE BEGINNINGS OF THE FREEZE. WHAT LED TO THAT?

Well, the freeze movement had been around for a while but I believe they were to some extent uh, galvanized by uh, Ronald Reagan's rhetoric. Um, the evil empire rhetoric, the loose talk about uh, limited nuclear war. Um. Just the general attitude about the Soviet Union, about the military build-up, the talk about prevailing in a nuclear war which sounded an awful lot like winning. It was difficult to uh, tell some subtle difference between those terms. I think did get those who were concerned about the prospects for nuclear war and felt that nuclear is uh, caused at least as often by provoking the other side as it is by weakness, uh, were concerned and wanted to do uh, something about it. And I think the freeze movement was uh, uh, in essence uh, a plea to do something about this rather than a specific arms control proposal.

YOU MENTIONED THE LOOSE TALK. WHERE DID THAT COME FROM?

Right. Well there were several uh, pieces of this. Uh. I, I...Certainly there's the president's evil empire speech. That term. And his uh, clear views toward the Soviet Union which were reflected in that speech. Secondly, the terms prevailing in nuclear war were indeed used in the annual reports to the Congress from the Secretary of Defense as one of the objectives of the United States. And that was quoted uh, uh, often. Uh, there was in order to um rationalize the defense budget was increasing at an n extraordinary rate. If you speak in uh, uh, 1989 dollars, between--When the Reagan administration came into office the defense budget was $213 billion. Four years later it was $326 billion in equivalent dollars. Uh. So this is growing at an enormous rate. There had to be some reason uh, for this. And, and the reason turns to be how important it is to have these weapons and how uh, wonderful they are for uh, preventing a Soviet victory in war, and indeed fighting limited wars and prevailing.

WHAT ABOUT THE T.K. JONES INCIDENT? DO YOU THINK THAT IT WAS SIGNIFICANT?

Well, the "With Enough Shovels" interview that he did with uh, with, with Shear I guess. With Los Angeles Times. That kind of book was not uh, very helpful. I know T.K. Jones. Um, uh, T.K. is an honest analyst. And in point of fact uh, I think it did, it did hurt because it sort of gave a view— T.K. Jones essentially said in response to the question, gee, but wouldn't a nuclear war be horrible? Would people survive? He's a believer very much in civil defense and particularly is alarmed at the Soviet civil defense program, and was trying to say that well, if people are far enough from the point of impact and they're just covered by earth and if they have a door over their foxhole and cover it with earth, uh, a large number of people would survive. And uh, with enough shovels we'll make it. Um. And I think what, what T.K. was talking about was that nuclear war needn't be the end of mankind or the end of US civilization. But it sounded like, ah, nuclear war wouldn't be all that bad and could uh, survive it. And I think that too uh, uh, reinforced this image that these people thought that a nuclear war was something you could fight and win and therefore might conclude that somehow it was in the nation's interest to do so.

I REMEMBER YOU TELLING ME ONCE BEFORE THAT YOU SHARED A RENEWED INTEREST IN THE PROSPECT OF DND AT THAT TIME, TECHNOLOGY ... WAS THERE A GROWING INTEREST IN THE POSSIBILITIES OF STRATEGIC DEFENSE AMONGST THE TECHNICIANS?

In the early '80s there was some renewed interest in uh, ballistic missile defense. There were uh, two important strands of the renewed interest. One important strand that I actually think the most important was the concern about the vulnerability of the land based missiles and what were you going to do to deal with that problem? Uh, Soviet uh, ICBMs had become sufficiently accurate. And with high enough explosive power in the individual warheads that it seemed that they could destroy the hardened concrete silos in which we keep our ICBMs and that in a race between concrete pores and accuracy improvers, uh, we would lose. So people were looking for alternatives. You may recall Jimmy Carter had the multiple protective shelter system to try to have the missiles moving around into a number of different possible shelters so that the Soviets would have to target 23 shelters for each missile. Well that was interesting unless you happened to live in the vicinity of the shelters, in which case uh, being part of this nuclear weapons sponge may not have been overly attractive. So people were considering, well, what about defending the missiles? Uh, perhaps it was worthwhile to consider modifying the ABM Treaty just to provide for defense of the missiles. The other strand was uh, technological advances in uh, censors uh, to some extent. Space based censors. And just a growing little bit of excitement over this new scientific rather than really than technological achievement, which as that time was the x-ray laser. That gee, it might be possible to use a nuclear explosion to power a laser which in turn could destroy the adversary's missile or re-entry vehicles. It was a very early stage but had excited some interest. But that was the long-term prospect. That was still a research program. Nobody thought of deploying anything like that in the near term. So it would have been more the traditional kinds of technology to defend the missiles that got some people's interest.

BUT DIDN'T YOU SORT OF PREDICT FOR YOURSELF THAT THERE MIGHT BE A REVISION AND REVIVAL OF INTEREST AND HOW DID THAT COME ABOUT?

As I uh... I've been a consultant really in every administration uh, since the Nixon administration. And during the Carter administration I had been working primarily on the problem of proliferation of nuclear weapons. And at the end of the Carter administration I was trying to think of all right, what do I work on next? What do I think is going to be the, the hot issue next? And in light of these dual strands of uh, ICBM vulnerability and uh, new ABM technology, I wrote an article in 1981 called "Reviving the ABM Debate" because I thought that was going to be uh, hot again. And got involved in a study indeed in 1982 in the Pentagon um, on, that was called National Security Implications of Ballistic Missile Defense that we uh, started. So I uh, I did indeed think that was going to be, uh, of major issue and uh, we had finished that internal study which was a classified study and had briefed the results around town, as they say, but hadn't quite completed the final report when the president gave the speech in March of 1983 on the strategic defense initiative.

(INAUDIBLE QUESTION)

Well, there are, there are always uh, drives for any president to do something about the, the situation, which he finds himself with regard to the national security and his responsibility for it. And indeed responsibility for security of uh, many others in the world who rely on our military forces to deter aggression. And uh, it happens at various points in different uh, president's careers uh, but in essence it's not hard to uh, imagine the conversation that something like this with the advisers. And that is that the president asks in the middle of a meeting when they're talking about some new offensive weapon to deter the Soviets, he says, “Well, let me make sure I understand this. You're telling me I'm responsible for the lives of all these Americans?” That's about 240 million people or whatever it is at the time. "And indirectly I'm responsible for the lives of our allies and others" who total a number even more than that. "And you also tell me that if the Russians want to kill them they can and there's nothing that I can do about it other than kill some Russians in return. Is that right?" And if the advisers are honest, and they generally are, they'll say, "Well, yes, Mr. President. That's right." And the president says, "Change that. That's no good. I don't want the lives for which I am responsible to be in the hands of somebody else and my not being able to do anything about it. And so what can you do?" And depending on which advisers are there and depending upon the proclivities of the president he'll hear everything from, "Well, I guess the only solution is eventually to get rid of these nuclear weapons," or "I guess the only solution is to a political accommodation with the Soviet Union so that our relationship with the Soviet Union is very much like our relationship with Great Britain in which case we needn't worry about nuclear weapons.” Or others saying, “Well what we would have to do is have a magic shield, some wonderful defense such that the Soviets could not attack us or our friends.” And depending upon the president's proclivities he'll pick one or all of the above and President Reagan chose the last one. Build the magic shield.

HE AND SOME OF HIS ADVISERS, NOW IN SORT OF RETROSPECT, SAID THAT HE WAS ALWAYS AN ABOLITIONIST AT HEART. DO YOU THINK HE WAS?

Well, I don't, I think everybody is at heart. There is uh, It's not just President Reagan who's uncomfortable with the situation of relying on deterrence and large numbers of nuclear weapons with which we can destroy our planet uh, that find that simply abominable and unacceptable and seek an alternative. The left traditionally, its magic solution has been make the nuclear weapons go away. The right, by and large, in the past had not had that magic solution. Their magic solutions either were have overwhelming superiority so that the adversary wouldn't dream of using nuclear weapons against you or, more recently, it's have a magic shield. Um. But everybody, everybody wants to do something about this sort of Damocles that hangs over all of us. My general uh, observation is that those that have strong technical backgrounds look to political solutions. Those that have strong political backgrounds look to technical solutions to solve the problem. President Reagan, not being a technician, looked more to the technical solution.

TO WHAT EXTENT DID THE IMMEDIATE POLITICAL CLIMATE OF THE WINTER OF 1982 CONTRIBUTE TO THE SPEECH? WHAT SORT OF THINGS WERE GOING ON THERE THAT MIGHT HAVE AN INFLUENCE AND DID THEY HAVE MUCH INFLUENCE?

Well, I think there were a couple of things that contributed uh, to the environment that would have made uh, the m... uh, more amenable for the president to give such a speech. One was people were starting to worry about where was this defense budget going. Uh, continual increase and enormous increase in the first year of the Reagan administration. Uh, and was it expected that this was just going to go on forever and drain all resources? Uh, so just general concern economically. Secondly, the freeze movement was uh, gaining uh, influence um, not so much in the sense that it was going to freeze US weapons programs but rather that it might have an influence in Congress and reduce some funding for things, and even more so amongst our allies. The freeze movement in Europe was a much stronger motivating force with greater political clout in the governments of Europe. And so I think those two things together uh, other than anything technological or anything military in itself meant that you had to get something to the people that showed that you had some vision that this was going some place. This wasn't just an ever increasing uh, defense expenditure uh, culminating in "a victory in nuclear war." Um, and indeed the, the strategic defense initiative speech, the president's so-called Star Wars speech, was not a speech on that subject. The subject was a, was a general defense speech and about the, the need for uh, uh, for the defense budget and some other programs that were to go ahead. And at the end of the speech came the part about the SDI. It was almost as if it was a... Let me tell you, this is not going to go on forever. I have a vision so that I won't have to keep on giving speeches like the first half of this speech.

[MISC. DISCUSSION].

Yes, at the uh, after this uh, half of the speech asking for uh in essence, more money for...

START AGAIN.

Okay. After the first one? After the first uh, half of the speech is when the president re... really gave the part about star wars where the notion was I have a vision that will get us beyond more speeches like the first half of this speech. This is all going to change so that in the future presidents will not have to be asking for more and more.

LET'S GET TO THE MEANING OF THE SPEECH ITSELF... WHAT DO YOU THINK REAGAN WAS TRYING TO SAY?

No, I think most of the experts thought he was talking about a magic shield. And that was part of the reason for concern about it. Uh, but they also thought that was unachievable. And those that were particularly interested in moving forward with strategic defenses then tried to push their favorite real defense program under the president's broader umbrella of the magic shield because it's the magic shield that had the public support. When the ev… And it's what the President clearly believed in. When he would be asked the question isn't it true that these defenses would be to protect our missiles he would say no. These defenses are to defend our people, to destroy missiles. He never implied it was to enhance deterrence early on. He always implied it was to transcend deterrence, to move be-beyond it. Later on is when he started to talk about a whole host of objectives for defenses. But in those early years the president, and indeed the Secretary of Defense. The Secretary of Defense when asked about this system said he thought it could be thoroughly reliable and total. Quote, unquote. This does not sound like a partial defense intended to strengthen deterrence. Now, the program, the actual defense program under the rubric of the strategic defense initiative had all kinds of things in it, varied from things that would be useful only for very limited defense, and things that were sort of contemporary tech... tech... technology to some of the far out scientific uh, notions that one might dream could some day provide the magic shield. But I think the president was consistent in the magic shield for several years.

HAVE YOU EVER SEEN ANYTHING LIKE THAT BEFORE?

Like the magic shield?

LIKE SETTING UP SUCH A DRAMATIC VISION...

Well, I think perhaps in that now or in the military domain—I can't think of examples like that—but certainly in the domestic sphere presidents are providing visions all the time. I mean, remember, our presidents are our king. They're not just our prime minister. We only have one fella to do both of those jobs. And so we look to our president to set visions for the future, to s... establish a tone for where we're going, to establish our ideals, our aspirations. Our president just doesn't run our government. He's our king. Um. And largely it's been in the domestic realm in terms of economic wellbeing, in terms of full employment with everybody uh, working. It's, it's never been said of a president if he said something like that, "C'mon, that's unrealistic. We won't be able to really achieve that in the short-term." And yet, people know well that's not really what we're going to do at the end of his presidency. But that's the vision. That's what we're aiming for. So it's unique. Now, what is I must confess somewhat different here is the amount of money that the president would have liked to have spent on this vision. But if you look at what was actually was spent given the constraints imposed by Congress, it's a very small part of the defense budget. Some people feel it might be...been more than was necessary but the moderates believe we probably should have been spending recently, say, two billion a year on research and development for strategic defenses. At least at the time of the speech we were already spending one billion a year. The next year, uh, when it jumped to $1.8 billion that was really done with no new programs. It was just taking other programs that were under way and bringing them under the rubric of the strategic defense initiative. And at the end of President Reagan's term we were spending four billion a year. So it doubled. But that's out of a defense budget of three hundred billion, number one, so the, the, the talk about how much money was being, going to be spent turned out not to be the case after all.

IT SORT OF LAY THERE FOR A WHILE, THE SPEECH. I MEAN, IT DIDN'T GET A LOT OF ATTENTION. ALMOST A YEAR LATER THAT IT STARTED TO GENERATE A LOT OF ATTENTION. WHY WAS THAT?

Well, I do believe that initially people thought that of this as a vision. This was a you know, two chickens in every pot instead of one chicken in every pot. And that's a worthwhile vision. Indeed, if you look at the speech, the speech was quite modest. The speech called for a long-term research and development program to try to see if we could develop systems that would make nuclear weapons impotent and obsolete. The speech said that it was recognized this could not be done quickly, uh, that it would take uh, decades and perhaps uh, never. It— The speech did not mention space. The speech did not mention lasers. It really was a quite visionary sort of thing. I have a vision. And people viewed it that way. Some sort of snickered at it. Some thought it was a good idea. Some were rather surprised because their first thought was the ABM Treaty. Wait a minute. What is this thing for the ABM Treaty? But that sort of uh, went away. But then, as the administration found it had a political winner on its hands, that this vision was very popular and that you could minimize opposition to this vision by always portraying it as opposition to the vision rather than to the program. So that anybody objected to your increased funding would be portrayed as somebody who preferred that the United Sates be vulnerable rather than invulnerable. People liked invulnerability. So it was a winner. It also was having its effect on the freeze movement. Well, now people had an alternative to this difficult one of getting rid of the weapons or stopping. We were going to make a shield. Um. And so I think it gathered momentum politically both by hurting "the left" so to speak and uh, providing the right with uh, a rallying point so they had a way to deal with this problem of the Russians. And so I think it uh, it, it was a snowball effect uh, that grew from initially just its visionary speech to a program to pressures for deployment, uh, to spend more money quickly. Uh, when the president first spoke there were no budget numbers. It was later that the numbers came out where he wanted to spend $26 billion over five years. But that was almost a year after the speech.

WHY DID THE RUSSIANS GET SO UPSET?

Because President Reagan was fond of saying this can't be such a bad idea, otherwise why are the Russians so opposed to it? Uh, I can think of several reasons why the Russians would be opposed to this uh, notion of…Uh, first there is the argument that if we're going to build extensive defenses they're going to have to build up their offenses. And even, by the way, if it would be cheaper for them to build up their offenses than it would be for us to build a defense which I believe based on current technologies would certainly be the case. So let us assume for the moment--I'll just use round numbers, the number that uh, James Schlesinger, former Secretary of Defense used for what it would cost for a full-blown strategic defense — he used a trillion dollars. Of course the administration then attributed that to a Russian general who had quoted Secretary Schlesinger. But let's say it would cost us a trillion dollars. And let's say the Soviets could defeat it for only half of a trillion dollars. Well, some might say, gee, they should love it. They would only have to spend half a trillion dollars and we'd have to spend a trillion. Wrong. I mean, if they have to spend a half a trillion dollars just to wind up back where they started out, given the state of their economy that is not very attractive. By the way, it's also not very attractive to us to have to spend a trillion dollars, only to wind up back where we started off. So this is a scenario where we should both be opposed if that scenario is realistic. And the fact that the Soviets are opposed doesn't mean it's a good idea for us to spend a trillion dollars. I think that's the number one reason, was the resource concerns uh, that they had. Secondly, it's an arms competition all over again, not just in terms of resources. Remember, people tend to forget that for most of the nuclear age, the Russians were indeed overwhelmingly inferior and we superior. They finally felt they had caught up and now maybe they could have a breathing spell, and instead was this a possibility that now we were going to start a new phase in both offenses and defenses? Third, if there's anything the Russians don't like it's uncertainty. And gee, where is this all going? This is changing the whole game. Here we have this ABM Treaty that supposedly configured the game. Is the whole game going to change? What does this all mean? And then finally, is the Soviets do think American technology is ten feet tall. And so you do have to worry that it is not inconceivable that the Americans really will come up with something that's sufficiently effective as defense, that it might be very difficult for the Soviets to be able to overwhelm it or penetrate it, and that the resource demands for them to do so might be extraordinary. Now it's true that that would be quite unlikely but it's consequences would be so high that it's something they have to worry about.

YOU MADE THE POINT THAT IT TOOK A WHILE FOR IT FULLY TO SINK IN... BUT NOW IT'S ALL GOT SCALED BACK AGAIN. I'M WONDERING IF THERE WAS A MOMENT DURING THAT FIVE YEARS WHERE IT WENT FROM BEING A GRANDIOSE VISION WHICH PEOPLE WERE STRUGGLING TO ACHIEVE TO BEING WHAT IT'S BECOME ESSENTIALLY?

Yes. Well, there's no moment but you know, that one can identify, but I can identify some uh, trends or factors that uh, that resulted in this outcome. One was the Reagan administration had a two-pronged strategy realizing that you can't just maintain a high-level research program and put more and more money into it unless you've got something to show. So therefore in part, the ABM Treaty stands in the way. They made a major effort to see, number one, can we either get political consensus in this country to get out of the ABM Treaty or can we get consensus that there's some sort of test that we have to conduct that we the administration would claim as consistent with the treaty under this so-called broad interpretation but that the Soviets unequivocally would believe is a violation of the treaty? Uh, Congress would have no part of either of those things. Then they tried another approach. Talked about early deployment as something. Can we make some early deployment, deploy something very soon, look sufficiently attractive that Congress and the services, the army, navy, air force, and marines would be willing to sacrifice some of their money for? And they were also unsuccessful with that, not only with the Congress but with the services. As things turn out, the Air Force will not give up one plane for early deployment of strategic defenses. The navy will not give up one ship. The army will not give up one tank. The marines will not give up one bayonet for an early deployment of strategic defenses because they think it's not militarily useful, and therefore, not worth the hundred billion dollars or so that it would cost for some deployment that would really serve very little military purpose. So they failed inside the Pentagon as well as failing outside of the Pentagon. That plus the recognition of the budget pressures that supplied, economics were not going to have a continuously increasing defense budget for all times. Indeed, in the s…the defense budget grew every year in President Reagan's first term. It declined every year in President Reagan's second term in real terms. So the services realized they had to cut back and the notion of deploying this vision just so you could get out of the ABM Treaty, even if it had no military purpose uh, was unattractive to them. No service would take responsibility for it. It still sits as a little office off on the side, the Strategic Defense Initiative Organization, reporting directly to the Secretary of Defense, no real bureaucratic support. So to some extent it is withered.

AT THE TIME, PARTICULARLY AROUND REYKJAVIK, THERE WAS ENORMOUS... DO YOU THINK THAT PERSPECTIVE AT THE TIME IN RETROSPECT IS TRUE? DO YOU THINK IT WOULD HAVE MADE ANY DIFFERENCE? DID IT MAKE A DIFFERENCE TO...?

Well, there were, there were two parts. I think the SDI has been a stumbling block to significant reductions and will be to the extent that, ah, there isn't any military man I've ever met who believes that the appropriate response to increased defense is on the other side, is to decrease your offense. I meant that's just, ah, not likely to be in the cards. So the notion that the Soviets are going to make marked in, ah, decreases in their offensive force in the face of substantial increases in our defenses, I just think is, silly and not likely to happen. That doesn't mean you can't have any decreased because right now we both have so many nuclear weapons on both sides that if you, you can have rather substantial reductions without it mattering much militarily. It does matter politically so if both decide to do it, it's, it's alright. But if you start to talk about really doing away with, ah, strategic weapons or all nuclear warheads I think, my own view is, that's never never land in today's world. How Gorbachev and Reagan wound up there is, ah, not too difficult to imagine. They were trying to out peacenik each other at some point. But I don't imagine that that could actually have resulted in an agreement that would have eliminated the nuclear weapons. So I do not really believe that SDI was an obstacle to that. But I do think SDI has been an obstacle to the kinds of reductions we've been talking about in the strategic arm reduction talks. Even down to, what supposedly is six thousand weapons. Fifty percent reduction. Of course it's not 6,000 weapons. They hired a wonderful accountant and they have they counting rules that enable you to count them at six thousand weapons when it will really be closer to nine thousand. Indeed the number of weapons after the deep reductions will be larger than the number of weapons that we had when President Reagan took office initially. So, ah, so the reductions we're talking about are not all that deep but even there the SDI has been an obstacle. But not for nuclear disarmament. Nuclear disarmament wasn't serious. It might have been serious in the per, in the two leader's minds but I don't think it was serious in terms of what might reasonably have happened.

WELL THE SDI SURVIVED THE...WILL THE SDI SURVIVE THE ABSENCE OF PRESIDENT REAGAN ON THE POLITICAL SCENE. WILL IT OUTLIVE HIM OR WILL IT BE VIEWED AS AN ODD ABERRATION OF THE REAGAN PRESIDENCY?

I think the SDI will, will live on as a research and development program at a higher level than it would have been had President Reagan not been President, ah, and not given that speech and endorsed that, ah, program. Also, I think it is likely to be for some time taken more seriously. The possibility of trying to defend against strategic weapons and of defense playing more of a role in our strategic policy. I think that's the case. There was a while after the ABM treaty of 1972 where people just sort of wrote that off, that this was going to go on for the indefinite future. Now I think the question will constantly come up. But I do not see any change in the sense of are we likely to move quickly to, from this current system of deterrence based on offensive retaliation to one that's based largely on defense. No, I see no movement in that direction. Will it move it quickly to some sort of limited deployment defense of defenses? No, I believe not because of the financial pressures to do so and the only way that I could imagine this happening is if the electoral politics in the United States should become such that the, the far right influence is so great that, ah, that we're pushed in that direction to a premature non cost effective, ah, deployment. So it's not beyond the realm of imagination but I don't foresee it.

COULD YOU CHARACTERIZE FOR ME,FAIRLY BRIEFLY, WHAT THE SDI BECAME DURING IT'S EVOLUTION? WHAT IT CHANGED FROM? WHAT IT BECAME AT THE END? I'M PARTICULARLY THINKING OF THE MOST RECENT $69 BILLION VERSION. HOW DID IT EVOLVE FROM THE GRANDIOSE VISION, TO HOWEVER YOU WOULD CHARACTERIZE IT TODAY? AND HOW WOULD YOU CHARACTERIZE IT TODAY?

There are several ways to characterize the SDI. First of all you could characterize it by what has the program been? What have been people been doing? Which has been essentially a research and development program with some testing. By the way entirely consistent with the ABM treaty and at levels slightly higher than they would have been had there never been a star wars speech. We'd probably would not be spending three billion a year instead of four. Lots of rhetoric but that's about all in terms of the program. The other way which is changed is people's images of what it is that we would actually deploy and for what purpose. Initially, I believe the vision that was held out there was the President's vision. This was going to be the magic shield. That's what we were working on. We weren't ready to deploy yet but that's what we were working on. Then, the next notion was, well you couldn't get there all at once and so this would come at phases. There would be several levels of defense but the most important new piece would be our ability to destroy enemy boosters, their missiles in the boost phase, in the very early phase of their flight before their multiple warheads had been released. And that was essential and that was the new technology. Then a little more time went on and we found, well that was very interesting but we didn't know how to do that. Ah, or at least we didn't have the kinds of laser weapons that might do it. And so we started to retreat to older technologies, things that had been looked at 25 years ago, shooting rockets from satellites to try and hit the boosters. This clearly could not be the magic shield but maybe it could help. But even that doesn't, so now we seem to be, at still more reduced notions that lie someplace between a very thin defense to defend against accidental, very small launches, having nothing to do with deterrence, nothing to do with the magic shield, but against accidents or unauthorized use or third countries that may happen to be attacking with ballistic missiles rather than by the hundred other ways that they could get the nuclear weapons to the United States. That's at the one extreme. But even the other extreme, the far end, is a very limited system that would reduce the number of Soviet warheads attacking our missile bases, perhaps reduce them by a fourth or so to make it more difficult for the Soviets to launch a first strike. Or since a first strike is so, already so extraordinarily difficult, it's hard to believe that anybody is going to spend 70 billion dollars to deploy that kind of a system.

MAKE A LITTLE MORE OF THAT POINT. BECAUSE THE SYSTEM THEY OCCUPY ( ).... I MEAN MOST OF THOSE PEOPLE WHO WERE CHARACTERIZING IT IN ITS LATTER YEARS THAT WAS EXACTLY THE PURPOSE OF IT, IT WAS ( ).... THE SOVIET LEADER WOULD TURN TO HIS ADVISERS AND SAY, CAN I DO IT? AND THEY WOULD SAY, NO, YOU CAN'T. SO THAT IS USED AS A JUSTIFICATION, BUT YOU'RE SAYING.

One of the principle arguments for the current notions of what we would deploy is that it would complicate a Soviet first strike and, and increase the uncertainty that they would face and therefore would add to deterrence because they wouldn't conduct a first strike. I would argue this is really a rather weak argument because right now it is true there's very little uncertainty in the Soviet contemplation in the first strike. They're certain that they can't do it successfully. The only way in which you could contemplate that this would be taken seriously analytically by somebody who is being rational, is if the Soviets made the mistake of thinking that all of the US nuclear weapons were in our ICBMs and then it is theoretically possible and it is conceivable that they could destroy them in a first strike. Provided of course, by the way, that we didn't launch those ICBMs on warning, in which case, they would then destroy empty silos. Now there are, at least, there's at least one other logical error in that argument. One, as I say, is we could launch them on one end, they can't be sure that we wouldn't. The secondly, is that they are not all of our nuclear weapons, not even all of our nuclear weapons that can reach the Soviet Union are in ICBMs. As a matter, less than 20 percent, of the nuclear weapons that can reach the Soviet Union are ICBMs. This brilliant first strike will have no effect on submarines at sea that have ballistic missiles on them with thousands of nuclear weapons that can reach the Soviet Union. This brilliant first strike will not get the bombers that are on alert, that also carry hundreds, if not thousands of weapons, that can reach the Soviet Union. This brilliant first strike will not got the cruise missile carriers that could reach the Soviet Union. It would not get weapons in Europe that if push came to shove, could reach the Soviet Union. So you have to have an awfully narrow view of a first strike, namely focusing on a very small part of the American force. And if Mr. Gorbachev and his advisers are that stupid they will not even notice that we have deployed a defense of that very small fraction of our strategic force.

INDEED IS IT WORTHWHILE TRYING TO DEPLOY… OTHER WAYS OF INSURING SURVIVABILITY. IN OTHER WORDS ( ).

The argument is sometimes used that the reason for defending the ICBMs with ballistic missile defenses, with ABMs systems is that that's cost effective. That's it better than the other ways we've been thinking of. And this is a hard problem by the way. I would never argue that vulnerable ICBMs are better than invulnerable ones. I would like to see the ICBMs invulnerable even though it's only 20 percent of our force I don't want to count forever on the bombers being invulnerable and able to penetrate Soviet air defenses. And the, ah, submarines being invulnerable. So it is a problem to be concerned about. And defenses might, in the future, offer some partial solution to that, conceivably be cost effective although they do not appear to be now. But there's an important dimension here that most people when they do this analysis forget about and that's the ABM treaty. In order to deploy extensive defenses to defend our ICBMs we would either have to modify or withdraw from the ABM treaty. That would free the Soviets to deploy extensive defenses. Now, and let's just assume they get the same amount of defenses we do. I'm not going to do some worst case scenario. We deploy these defenses and now more of our ICBMs survive but now those ICBMs that survive would have to penetrate Soviet Defenses that do not now exist. By the way, so would our submarine launch missiles have to penetrate defenses that would not now exist. And our bombers would have a harder time because generally we depend on missiles to destroy some of the air defenses, to open corridors for the bombers. So I believe the cost to us, so to speak, of increased Soviet defenses far outweigh the benefit to us of increased American defenses. So I would look hard at other ways to improve the survivability of our ICBMs on which we do not incur the cost of increased Soviet defenses that we would then have to penetrate.

WHAT HAPPENED TO PRESIDENT REAGAN IN HIS EIGHT YEAR POLICY, COMING IN SPEAKING ABOUT THE EVIL EMPIRE. GOING OUT WITH HIS ARMS AROUND GORBACHEV WHAT CAUSED THAT CHANGE DO YOU THINK?

Well none of us will ever know just what it was because I think there are several factors you could imagine. One is the arrival of Gorbachev. I mean it is important to recognize that in the early part of President Reagan's Presidency there essentially was no Soviet leader with whom he could deal. Ah, certainly no, ah, ah, figuratively live leader, although they may have been literally, ah, alive. So there was nobody with whom you could have meaningful interaction. And the arrival of Gorbachev, number one, may be seen as an opportunity in that sense. Secondly, Gorbachev himself stole the initiative. He went on a peace monger campaign. Suddenly the United States was perceived as the obstacle to progress in improving US Soviet relations or in arms control. This is very important in the United States and in Europe and put pressures on the President. Thirdly, I'm sure he thought about his place in history and where was this all going. Probably had come to realize that the magic shield wasn't going to do it all by itself and maybe we do have to reach some degree of political accommodation with this adversary no matter how unpleasant that adversary, ah, might be. Ah, so I think all of those forces, ah, led to it and there may have been others as well. How important Nancy Reagan, ah, may have been in that. Again, in a place in history, not just a military build up but to what end? Ahm, I think all of those contributed.

WHAT WILL THE REAGAN LEGACY BE?

Well are we speaking narrowly in the military sphere or more broadly?

IN 20 YEARS TIME WHEN WE LOOK BACK WHAT WILL CHARACTERIZE IT IN TERMS OF THE RELATIONSHIP, IN CONTEXT OF OUR PROGRAM, THE NUCLEAR AGE?

Well I think perhaps the most important part of the legacy, it's hard to tell how long it will last, is the rise of conservatism in the United States. People tend to forget when Barry Goldwater was running for President, conservative was a dirty word. When Michael Dukakis was running for President, liberal was a dirty word. That's a big change in our country and a lot of it can be attributed to the Presidency of Ronald Reagan. How long that will endure, I do not know. But it will be a while, I believe. And that has important implications for the security domain. It's become more respectable to think in terms of strong defense that that's the solution to the problem and being willing to, ah, devote a larger fraction of our assets to that. In terms of its affect on the military establishment, a positive one would be the pride of the military themselves in what they do. And therefore, people being more willing to serve and to stay in the military. Both President Reagan and Casper Weinberger deserve a lot of credit for that. In budgetary terms, while the budget leveled of at the end of the Reagan Administration, at a level far lower than they expected, it will level off. In the last year the defense budget is essentially three hundred billion dollars, the planning only two and half years ago, was for four hundred billion dollars. Three hundred billion dollars is a lot of money. So is one hundred billion dollars which is the difference between the two. This has important implications for defense planning. We cannot buy the things that were planned to buy. The Reagan strategy early on in the nuclear weapons realm is what I call, the camel's nose strategy, was get as many camel's noses under the tent as you can. Start buying everything, not only in the nuclear realm, everywhere. And later supply side economics will provide for a continuously increasing defense budget forever and will buy all the camels. We can't buy the camels. We may be able to buy a few camels but not all of them which means we'll have wasted a lot of money on noses and you can't fight wars with camel's noses. So those are just wasted except for those few noses who will be able to buy the rest of the camel. I believe we will pay important prices in the structure of our forces because we spent so much money on modernization and planned on having more money available. I believe you will see the size of the army decrease, the size of the Navy decrease, the size of the Air Force decrease and probably the size of the Marine Corps decrease to levels lower than they were when Ronald Reagan took office but perhaps with more modern equipment. So the legacy, even though he spent an extraordinary amount of money, because it was up and down, ah, will not be as positive as any of us as citizens would have hoped.

IS IT SHOCKING TO A PRESIDENT RAISING HIS HAND AND SITTING DOWN AT HIS DESK FOR THE FIRST TIME TO DISCOVER THE REALITY OF THE STRATEGIC RELATIONSHIP WITH THE SOVIET UNION? IS THAT A SHOCK AND HOW DO THEY REACT TO THAT SHOCK?

Ah, Presidents that do not have experience in the nuclear weapons area generally are always upset when they learn what the situation, first, just the shear numbers, the damage they could do, the damage that could be done to us. The number of facts and details that people are trying to pump into them, that their initial reaction is generally is, that's enough, can I stay away from this and work on other things and just know what I need to know so that that guy that's following me with a black bag calls me I know what to do. And then after a couple of years it settles in, and then you can just, you can see the change and you can imagine the meeting in the White House and there's more discussion of this stuff and the President looks up and says, “Wait, wait a minute. Let's stop all this technical talk for a minute. Let me make sure I understand this. You're telling me I'm responsible for the lives of the two hundred forty million Americans and at least as many million allies and if the Russians want to kill them, they can. And that there's nothing I can do about that. Is that right?” To which the advisers say, “Yes, Mr. President that's right”. And which the President says, “Change that. That's no good. Change that”. And then the advisers come up with alternatives. They say, “Well we don't know how but maybe we can make the nuclear weapons go away or maybe we could change the Soviet American relationship so it's more like the British American relationship, or maybe we can build a magic shield”. And generally the President will try and pick one of those and make that his theme so even if he can't change that during his term, maybe it will be for his successor or his successor's successor.