OKAY, 1969 MEL LAIRD APPOINTED YOU TO BE A REPRESENTATIVE ON THE SALT DELEGATIONS. THE QUESTION IS WHAT WAS LAIRD'S VIEW OF THE ARMS CONTROL, OF THE PROPOSAL OF ARMS CONTROL NEGOTIATIONS AND HOW DID IT DIFFER FROM THE POINT OF VIEW OF THE ARMS CONTROL DISARMAMENT AGENCY IN THE STATE DEPARTMENT?

I wasn't really appointed by Mel Laird. It's a more complicated story than that. I was asked, called up by Bill Rogers who was Secretary of the State. And I came in to see him and he asked me whether I would be prepared to accept a position as Mel Laird's representative on the arms control delegation to be headed by Gerard Smith. And I consulted with my wife and finally came to the conclusion, yes, I would be prepared to do that if they really wanted me. And so I saw Bill Rogers again and he asked me to go and see the President and Henry Kissinger. And he made an appointment for me to go over and see them so I went to see Kissinger and Mr. Nixon. And Mr. Nixon had a very dim view of Gerard Smith and of Bill Rogers. And said what he really wanted me to do was to be his eyes and ears on the delegation, to report directly to him. And I said, That's impossible. You know, a delegation doesn't work that way. If you're on a delegation, you can't have any different point of view than that of your boss. You've got to work with your boss and everything has got to be done as a team and what's more, Gerard Smith has to report to Bill Rogers and to nobody else. And he gets his orders from Bill Rogers and so it isn't going to work that way and I won't do it. And we argued about this and finally it was agreed that in any case, they wanted me to do this. And then I asked whether or not really Mel Laird wanted me. And I was assured that he did and I went to see Mel Laird and he said, yes, he did want me. Even though Mel Laird and I had been on opposite sides when I was a Democrat and testifying before his appropriations committee. But we got along well. So that it wasn't really a, a question of differences of point of view at that stage of the game. It was a question of trying to help develop the position which would be intelligent for the United States with respect to a negotiating position with the Soviet Union.

WHY DID PRESIDENT NIXON AND HENRY KISSINGER HAVE MORE TRUST IN YOUR PERCEPTION AND PARTICIPATION IN THE SALT TALKS THAN THE REST OF THE DELEGATION?

I don't know. I'd known Mr. Nixon for a long period of time, since the time that he was a congressman. And he'd -- I think he had some degree of confidence in me. I'd had differences of opinion with Henry Kissinger for many years but I think he was sure that I'd worked on the problem and worked seriously on it.

WHAT WAS THE SPECIAL CONCERN THAT YOU REPRESENTED ON THE SALT DELEGATION THAT REPRESENTED THE CONCERN OF THE DEFENSE DEPARTMENT AND WHAT ITS AIMS WERE IN THE SALT I?

You see, I don't think that was the issue. It really wasn't a special concern on the part of the defense department. Although it is true that the secretary of defense is responsible for a different, different focus on world problems than is the secretary of state. The secretary of defense does have to look at the military and defense aspects of those problems that are both political and military, while the secretary of state has to put primary attention on the military. But they both look at the same problems and it isn't that diverse a point of view.

WELL WHAT WAS SEEN AS THE NEED IN THE DEFENSE DEPARTMENT -- WHAT WAS YOUR MOTIVATION? WHAT DID YOU WANT TO GET OUT OF THE SALT TALKS? AND WERE WE IN A STRONG POSITION TO ACHIEVE THOSE GOALS?

Well I can remember very well the discussions within the delegation. And it's ad... advisers prior to the time that we went to Helsinki, trying to figure out exactly what it was we should try to accomplish. And what our initial statements to the Soviets should be. In fact I think I was the primary drafter of first three or four statements to the Soviets when we got to Helsinki. But there wasn't really that much difference between the various participants at that stage of the game. Just to outline what the main points we had in mind were: The first point was that under any circumstances, arms control agreement or no arms control agreement, we proposed to maintain a thoroughly adequate deterrent to anybody who might wish to think of ta... attacking either the United States or its allies. And we were sure that the Soviets had a similar point of view about themselves and about their allies. The second point was that we thought it was possible to work out some of a, a regime of limitation upon strategic arms, which would make this basically different this not confrontational but opposed relationship. Make it much more workable and satisfactory for both sides if we tried to work at it. And the third point was that the depth of an agreement would depend upon the degree to which we were to give, were willing to give information to each other, not only about our forces, but about our intentions for the future. That if, -- we for instance certainly did not wish the Soviets to have any misconception as to what we had or what we, what the purpose of the weapons was that we had. And we hoped that that was reciprocated by the Soviets. They took quite a different view of it. Their view was that if anybody attacks the USSR or any of our allies, they will be utterly destroyed. They chose to look at from the standpoint of exchange of threats or threats from their side. They didn't understand what I was saying or what we were saying was in fact, in this essence the same as what our first point had been, that we didn't propose to let our own defenses deteriorate to a point where we didn't have a fully adequate deterrent.

OKAY. WHEN YOU WERE IN HELSINKI AND VIENNA AND AT THE SAME TIME THE US CONGRESS WAS DEBATING WHETHER OR NOT THEY WOULD BE FUNDING THE PRESIDENT'S ABM PROPOSAL, DID THAT CREATE SOME CONCERN FOR YOU THAT YOU WOULD LOSE SOME SORT OF POWER OR LEVERAGE IN THE BARGAINING SESSIONS?

That had all preceded the first negotiations at Helsinki. In the Spring of '69 there had been an important debate in the Senate on the question of the authorization bill with respect to the ABM program. And during that period, I had ere-created together with Dean Acheson and Albert Wohlstetter a little committee called the Committee for a Prudent Defense Policy. And we rather spearheaded the effort to support the idea of the ratification of the government's proposal, the executive branch's proposal, that it be authorized to go forward with an ABM, a limited ABM system of our own. And one of the reasons that I advanced at that time for supporting this proposal was that I thought Mr. Nixon was quite right in saying that he wished to negotiate with the Soviets in the limitation of strategic arms including defenses, ABM defenses. And I did not see any way in which one could usefully negotiate with the Soviet Union unless the United States was prepared to have an ABM system of its own. If we were, if the S-senate determined that this was not to be, then there wasn't anything for the Soviets to negotiate about. They would have then -- be assured of a monopoly of defenses. So the only way we could have a negotiation was if the Senate were to authorize this program to go forward. And we won by only one vote. It was a very close thing.

THERE WAS A FLAP OVER THE BACK-CHANNEL AGREEMENT THAT PRODUCED THE COMPROMISE OF MAY, 1971 AND LATER ON THAT RESULTED IN THE SLBMS -- THE FLAP WAS OVER SLBMS BEING LEFT OUT OF THAT AGREEMENT WITH THE SOVIETS. THAT WAS MADE WITH DOBRYNIN. AND LATER ON HENRY KISSINGER, CLOSE TO THE '72 SUMMIT WAS PUT IN THE POSITION OF SORT OF EXPLAINING TO THE SOVIETS THAT THE 950 SUB-LAUNCHERS WAS NOT GOING TO ALTER THEIR PLANS. AND ALSO EXPLAINING TO THE NSC AND PEOPLE HERE THAT IT WAS A SIGNIFICANT ACHIEVEMENT, THAT IT WAS GOING TO BE SLOWING THEM FROM BUILDING FURTHER. WHAT DID YOU MAKE OF THAT?

That doesn't correspond to my recollection at all. My recollection is that the -- I think Mr. Dobrynin proposed to Henry Kissinger that we solve the, the or that they solve the stalemate that had arisen in the negotiations in Vienna at that stage by concentrating upon the ABM Treaty and dropping any thought of a c... of a parallel agreement limiting offensive forces. And that Henry wouldn't agree with that. And it insisted that their, that they, he was prepared to have the focus be upon the ABM part of it, but that there must concurrently be some kind of an agreement with respect to the offensive forces. And then Dobrynin asked Dobrynin asked him whether or not this should include both ICBMs and SLBMs and he finally, after consulting with Mr. Nixon, said that well, it was a matter of not that much importance to us. And the upshot was that the Soviets from that point on felt there was no necessity to include any restriction upon the SLBMs. The Joint Chiefs of Staff took a quite a different view and they were actually adamant that if there's to be a limitation on ICBMs, there must also be a limitation on SLBMs. So that that became a very difficult negotiating point for us, not only in Vienna and Helsinki, but subsequently when Mr. Nixon and Kissinger went to Moscow in the week before May 12th I guess it was.

APPARENTLY ALONG WITH THE LAST MINUTE NEGOTIATIONS THAT OCCURRED ON DETAILS OF THE AGREEMENT AT THE SUMMIT, WE'VE HEARD THAT YOU WROTE A SOMEWHAT FACETIOUS BUT SOMEWHAT SERIOUS PIECE CALLED THE LAST 20 MINUTES OF THE NEGOTIATION ARE THE MOST IMPORTANT AND THAT YOU'RE A LITTLE PERHAPS DISTURBED BY SOME OF THE IMPORTANT DETAILS THAT WERE BEING WORKED OUT IN THE LAST MINUTE WITHOUT SOME OF THE EXPERTS THERE. CAN YOU DESCRIBE WHY YOU WROTE THAT, WHAT THE SETTING WAS AND HOW YOU WERE FEELING?

I wrote two pieces. One was an entertaining piece on all the details of what happened during the last week, not the last 20 minutes. And you know, just the mechanical problems that arose. Another piece about the serious part of it, about the negotiating difficulties that we faced at that time. You're asking me, I guess, to comment on the second one --

I UNDERSTOOD THAT YOU WERE A LITTLE BIT ANNOYED AND WORRIED THAT IN THE LAST MINUTE NEGOTIATIONS WITH THE DELEGATION IN HELSINKI, AND HENRY KISSINGER TRYING TO WORK OUT SOME OF THE TECHNICAL LAST MINUTE COMPROMISES ON HIS OWN, THAT WE WOULD BE GIVING MORE AWAY TO THE SOVIETS UNDER THAT POINT OF PRESSURE.

I was not somewhat worried. I was furious.

CAN YOU ACTUALLY DESCRIBE THAT? SAY I WAS FURIOUS AND DESCRIBE WHY AND WHAT SHOULD HAVE HAPPENED?

Well... there were the phrase twenty min... the last twenty minutes comes from a remark which was made to me by Ambassador Semenov who was then head of the Soviet delegation. The year before I'd become concerned about the amount of time we were s-spending, that we weren't making the progress that I thought we should make in arriving to a useful conclusion on these issues. And Ambassador Semenov tried to comfort me. And he said, no, Mr. Nitze, you know, it isn't that bad. In a negotiation of, of this kind, you know, normally one makes about 30 percent of the progress in the first two months. And then normally it takes another two, three years to make the next 30 percent of the progress. And the last third of the progress generally is, is made in the last 20 minutes when the important issues just have to be decided." So I'd borne in mind and Semenov was more or less correct because the important -- and we worked out all the lesser issues at our level in Geneva, I mean in, in, in Vienna and in Helsinki. But s...

CAN YOU START THINGS OVER AND SAY -- WE WORKED OUT ALL THE...

We worked out all the lesser issues at Vienna or Helsinki because the delegations moved from -- we spent some time in Vienna and then we'd go to Helsinki for some time. Then we'd go back to Vienna. But we worked out d-during the negotiations at that level, we worked out most of the reasonably easy issues to solve. And the ones that were really very difficult go put off. Got put off. And they were all accumulated for the last period. Now some of those most important ones we did in the last few days work out at our level in Helsinki 'cause the last negotiation between the delegations was at Helsinki. In fact we worked out some of them after Mr. Nixon had arrived at Moscow for the final five days of negotiation there. But af... but some of them were dealt with directly by Mr. Nixon and Kissinger. Now they sent us a telegram telling us what they'd worked out. And Gerard and I and the rest of us felt that the agreement that they'd worked out was improper and not good for the United States. And so we sent back a message saying we recommended against signing of the interim agreement on offensive forces. We thought it was unfair, so that we were not happy with that. But then, subsequently there was an all night session, well, not an all night session, but a session from I think eight o'clock to, in the evening to eleven o'clock at night in which Kissinger and a man by the name of Smirnov, whom none of us had -- well, I guess I was the only one who'd ever heard of him before -- appeared to negotiate on the Soviet side. And the upshot of that was that they, Henry and he finally worked out the final details. Now I was, I was not happy with those final details although they were an improvement upon what had earlier been suggested. So that the final agreement in my view, that the ABM Treaty, even though it had difficulties and it was not a perfect agreement by any means. But I felt that was net --

START THAT OVER. I THOUGHT THE ABM TREATY...

I thought the ABM Treaty was not a perfect agreement. One of the principle points in the ABM Treaty was that there be a precise definition of what was testing at an ABM mode, because everything else depended upon that concept. That's the only way in which one could know whether a radar was an ABM radar, was whether it was tested in an ABM mode. And then an ABM interceptor -- it was an ABM interceptor because it was tested in that mode. But we had g... we had presented a unilateral statement as to what we considered to be testing in an ABM mode, but the Soviets wouldn't agree to that.

CAN I JUST INTERRUPT YOU HERE? WHAT I WANT TO GET BACK TO IS A MORE CONCISE STATEMENT ABOUT WHAT MADE YOU ANGRY ABOUT THE LAST --

This is exactly what made me angry.

BUT INSTEAD OF THE DETAILS MAYBE TALK MORE IN THE TERMS OF THE GENERALITIES, THAT IMPORTANT DETAILS WERE BEING WORKED OUT WITHOUT THE EXPERTISE OF THE DELEGATION THERE.

But that isn't what made me angry. It was the substance that made me angry. I have trouble.

IF YOU COULD MAKE A CONCISE STATEMENT ABOUT IT STARTING WITH WHAT MADE YOU ANGRY AND WHY YOU WROTE THE PIECE THAT YOU DID AT THE SUMMIT.

Well, what I was angry about was that there, in the last two or three days, when Mr. Nixon and Mr. Kissinger were in Moscow and we were in Helsinki the communications between Helsinki and Moscow were difficult. We presented our de... and we spent messages back giving our views on these issues. But the final upshot was an agreement which, certainly I felt, represented a misunderstanding on Henry's part as to what he was really agreeing to and it was not correct and that it was disadvantageous to the United States as far as the interim agreement on offensive forces were concerned.

It's not unusual to use a back channel in an important negotiation, particularly at the final stages of such a negotiation. The two sides got locked in to some very important positions on both sides. How does one explore some way of resolving those important issues? The usual way in which that is done that some, somebody on one side together with somebody on the other side gets together and tries to informally, without rep... giving away his side's position negotiate with the other fellow who's not giving away his side's position, and see whether they can't get to some compromise which then both sides can agree upon. So that this is not an unusual way of doing it. It is, however, important that the person who does that really understand the problem. I think the difficulty involved here was that on our side Henry was not quite adequately versed in all the details while Mr. Smirnov, who was the person on the other side who worked out these details, was in charge of the entire nuclear weapons production program for the USSR, and knew every detail to h-his fingertips. And so that the agreement that finally resulted was in some respects different than what I think Henry understood it to be. Subsequently it was corrected, but I think at some cost to ourselves by a subsequent corrective agreement.

I JUST WANT TO JUMP AHEAD TO 1974. AT THIS POINT YOU REMAIN ON THE DELEGATION, YOU'RE BEGINNING THE NEGOTIATIONS ON SALT II AND THE UNITED STATES IS A LITTLE BIT IN CRISIS BECAUSE OF WATERGATE. AND YOU HAD SPECIFIC CONCERNS THAT LED TO YOUR RESIGNING FROM THE DELEGATION. AND I'D LIKE YOU TO TELL US WHY. WHAT THOSE CONCERNS WERE.

I'd spent a good deal of time worrying about what the objectives of an arms control agreement between the US and the USSR should be. And this is a very complex problem, that it is not right that there's just one single objectives, objective -- there are a whole series of objectives and there are whole series of restraints and difficulties involved in actually getting to an agreement. And I'd spelled all that out in a piece of paper. And that paper had cleared with the Joint Chiefs of Staff, with Laird, with people in ACDA, with others in the government. But I was unable to get that piece of paper approved by highest authority in the government. And I continued to argue these points and the points that flowed there from to the best of my ability. And when it became evident that... that highest authority was not going to pay any attention to this, then it seemed to me I had exhausted everything I could do within the government and that I'd had the feeling that Mr. Nixon wanted to maintain negotiations with the Soviet Union and get to some kind of agreements. Primarily because of the fact that his relationship with the Russians was his best defense against impeachment. And I thought that this was going to lead to a, an improvident agreement on the part of the United States. And I'd done everything I could to prevent that. And I felt I'd better get out. So I resigned.

SO YOUR FEELING WAS THAT BECAUSE OF THE DOMESTIC PRESSURE AT HOME THAT NIXON WOULD BE WILLING TO GIVE TOO MUCH AWAY TO THE SOVIETS JUST TO BE ABLE TO HAVE A MAJOR FOREIGN POLICY VICTORY?

I think. In fact, I think he did a few months later when he met in Moscow and entered into the Moscow Agreement which gave up on the idea of having an agreement with respect to limiting offensive forces of indefinite duration. And settled on the idea that we, the two sides would agree on merely an agreement that would cover ten years from that date and that's after all what SALT II did. It was scheduled to expire in 1985 and that period of time to my view was not adequately long, cause it takes you at least ten years to develop and deploy a new weapons system and restrictions which last for only ten years would really have no useful effect that I could see.

WHAT, IN A NUTSHELL WOULD YOU SAY WAS THE MAJOR EFFECT OF WATERGATE ON THE SALT NEGOTIATIONS.

Well it... Are you referring to the fact that Mr. Nixon was under the threat of impeachment, or are you referring to...?

YEAH. THE CLOUDS GATHERING OVER HIM. I DON'T IF THE SOVIETS ACROSS THE TABLE--

I've just said what I think was the major thing.

OKAY. JUST TAKE YOU BACK TO ONE OTHER CONCERN. I KNOW THAT IN DEVELOPING PROPOSALS FOR SALT I, YOU WERE VERY CONCERNED ABOUT THE LARGER SOVIET MISSILES AND THAT THAT CONCERN WAS ROOTED IN THE FACT THAT SEVERAL YEARS DOWN THE ROAD, THOSE MISSILES COULD CARRY LARGER PAYLOAD OF WARHEADS, AND THAT WOULD MAKE OUR LAND-BASED MISSILES -- PUT THEM IN EXTREMELY VULNERABLE POSITION. AND YOU ADVOCATED DEEP CUTS IN THE LARGER MISSILES. I WAS WONDERING IF YOU COULD ADDRESS THAT AND ALSO, WHAT I DON'T UNDERSTAND ABOUT IT MYSELF IS WHY YOU WERE OPPOSED TRYING TO PURSUE SOME SORT OF LIMITATIONS ON MIRVS TO SOLVE THAT LAND-BASED VULNERABILITY PROBLEM.

That's two entirely different questions. We better separate those two questions. First of all you've asked me why was I opposed to the deployment of large, fixed ICBM missiles which could be MIRVed. I had a very strong feeling about that, because it was clear that the threat to the survivability of our ICBMs depended upon whether or not the Russians could develop warheads which were sufficient size and weight so that their yield was large, and also develop sufficient accuracy so that when those weapons hit, they would destroy the silos in which our missiles were deployed. This would be a very destabilizing threat to the survivability of what I considered to be an essential leg of our deterrent on which our security depended. Therefore it seemed to me to be much better if one could get an agreement which would limit the weight and the size of the missiles on each... on each side. I felt strongly that this was the way in which to reduce the instability, the danger to both sides which would occur if we both had these big missiles which could threaten the silos of the other side.

OKAY.

And I think everybody agrees with that. This was not a unique view to me. It's a perfectly obvious consideration which everybody has agreed with. The difficulty has been could you get the Soviets to agree to that. And we all tried, including Henry Kissinger.

OKAY. JUST A CONCISE ANSWER TO HOW DID YOU FEEL AFTER THE TREATIES WERE CONCLUDED? DID YOU SUPPORT THEIR RATIFICATION IN THE SENATE AND SUPPORT THE JACKSON AMENDMENT?

I felt that net, the virtues or the advantages of the ABM Treaty were such as to outweigh the defects in the interim agreement which in any case was supposed to last only a few years. It expired by its terms in five years. And it was agreed by both sides that it was to be replaced by a permanent of indefin... a treaty of indefinite duration to be promptly negotiated between the sides. So that if that really had no long term merit, no long term commitment on either side, then one could forget about its, or take lightly, more lightly, its defects. While the ABM treaty was a treaty of indefinite duration and if it had merit and could be further improved in the future which it was, then that was something that merited being for. You couldn't get one without the other so I did testify on behalf of the package.