Paul Warnke Complete Oral History Package (1.16 MB)

Oral History Project The Historical Society of the District of Columbia Circuit United States Courts District of Columbia Circuit PAUL C. WARNKE, ESQUIRE Interviews conducted by: William W. Ross, Esquire January 23, January 27, January 30, February 13, February 19, February 24, February 28, March 4, March 12, March 18, April 1, April 14, April 17, June 3,2003 TABLE OF CONTENTS Preface ……………………………………………………………. i Oral History Agreements … Paul C. Wamke, Esquire . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111 William W. Ross, Esquire . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . v Oral History Transcript of Interviews March19,2001 ………………………………………………… 1 March22,2001 ……………………………………………….. 27 March27,2001 ……………………………………………….. 55 March29,2001 ……………………………………………….. 89 April3,2001 ………………………………………………… 106 April5,2001 ………………………………………………… 117 April12,2001 ……………………………………………….. I24 April18, 2001 ………………………………………………. 144 IndexandTableofCases …………………………………………….. A1 Biographical Sketches PaulC.Wamke,Esquire ………………………………………… B-1 William W. Ross, Esquire . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . B-3 Appendix 1 “Legends of the Law: A Conversation with Paul C. Warnke,” published in Bar Report, JuneiJuly 1998 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . , . C-1 Interviews of Paul C. Warnke during his service as Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs, January 8, 15 and 17, 1969. The interviews were donated to the United States in 1975 and are available in the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . C-2 Appendix 2 NOTE The following pages record interviews conducted on the dates indicated. The interviews were electronically recorded, and the transcription was subsequently reviewed and edited by the interviewee. The contents hereof and all literary rights pertaining hereto are governed by, and are subject to, the Oral History Agreements included herewith. 0 1998 Historical Society of the District of Columbia Circuit. All rights reserved. PREFACE The goal of the Oral History Project of the Historical Society of the District of Columbia Circuit is to preserve the recollections of the judges who sat on the U.S. Courts of the District of Columbia Circuit, and judges’ spouses, lawyers and court staff who played important roles in the history ofthe Circuit. The Project began in 1991. Most interviews were conducted by volunteers who are members of the Bar of the District of Columbia. Copies of the transcripts of these and additional documents as available – some of which may have been prepared in conjunction with the oral history – are housed in the Judges’ Library in the E. Barrett Prettyman United States Courthouse, 333 Constitution Avenue, N.W., Washin on, D.C. locations. Such original audio tapes of the interviews as exist, as well as the original 3.5” diskettes of the transcripts (in Wordperfect format) are in the custody ofthe Circuit Executive ofthe U.S. Courts for the District of Columbia Circuit. Inquiries may be made of the Circuit Librarian as to whether the transcripts are availab F e at other -1- INTERVIEWEE ORAL HISTORY AGREEMENT Historical Society of the District of Columbia Circuit Agreement Respectin? Oral History of Paul C. Warnke 1. In consideration of the recording and preservation of the oral history memoir of my father, Paul C. Wamke, by the Historical Society of the District of Columbia Circuit, Washington, D.C., and its employees and agents (hereinafter “the Society”), I, Steuhen A. Wamke, as representative of the estate, do hereby grant and convey to the Society and its successors and assigns all of my rights, title, and interest in the tape recordings, transcripts and computer diskette of interviews of Paul C. Wamke, as described in Schedule A hereto, including literary rights and copyrights. All copies of the tapes, transcripts and diskette are subject to the same restrictions herein provided. 2. I also reserve for myself as the executor of my father’s estate and for my mother and my siblings the right to use the tapes, transcripts and diskette and their content as a resource for any book, pamphlet, article or other writing of which any of us is the author or co-author. 3. I authorize the Society to duplicate, edit, publish, including publication on the internet, or permit the use of said tape recordings, transcripts and diskette in any manner that the Society considers appropriate, including placement on internet, and I waive any claims the estate may have or acquire to any royalties from such use. S ORN TO A D SUBSCRIBED before me this & day of ,?$ ,200&. ‘ Qual My Commission expires ACCEPTED this E day of President of the Historical Society of the District of Columbia Circuit. ,2000&, by E. Barrett Prettyman, Jr., E, Barrett Prettyman, Jrr , … 111 Schedule A Tape recording(s) and transcript resulting from eicrht interviews of Paul C. Warnke on the following dates : (Interviewee) Date (Month, Day, Year) & Title Number of Tapes March March March March Apr i 1 Apr i 1 Apr i 1 Apr i 1 2001, 2001, 2001, 2001 , 2001, 2001, 2001, 2001, Interview Interview Interview Interview Interview Interview Interview Interview #1 #2 #3 #4 #5 #6 #7 #8 1 2 1 1 1 1 1 1 1′ (number) Pages of Transcript 33 34 43 21 14 08 24 14 The transcripts of the eight interviews are contained on one diskette. – 1/ The March 22, 2001, interview continues on Side A of the tape cassette for the March 27, 2001 interview. The March 27, 2001 interview begins on Side B of the March 22, 2001, tape cassette and continues on Sides A & B of a second tape. Accordingly, there are nine tapes. iv Historical Society of the District of Columbia Circuit Interviewer Oral History Aareement 1. Having agreed to conduct an oral history interview with Paul C. Warnke for the Historical Society of the District of Columbia Circuit, Washington, D.C., I, William W. ROSS, do hereby grant and convey to the Society and its successors and assigns, all of my right, title, and interest in the tape record- ings, transcripts and computer diskette of interviews, as described in Schedule A hereto, including literary rights and copyrights. 2. I authorize the Society, to duplicate, edit, publish, or permit the use of said tape recordings, transcripts and diskette in any manner that the Society considers appropriate, and I waive any claims I may have or acquire to any royalties from such use. the information contained therein until it is concluded and edited, or until I receive permission from the Society. 3. I agree that I will make no use of the interview or state of Marvkmld/commission expires -ires Aug, 22,2008 E . gaur<* f’e*-,~r ACCEPTED this Zk day of , 20oJ-, by lSwe++I. G+&.be~, President of the Historical Society of tz District of Columbia Circuit. V Schedule A Tape recording(s) and transcript resulting from eisht (number) interviews of Paul C. Warnke on the following dates : (Interviewee) Pages of Date (Month, Day, Year) & Title Number of Talses Transcript March March March March Apr i 1 April Apr i 1 Apr i 1 2001, 2001, 2001 2001, 2001, 2001, 2001, 2001 , Interview #1 Interview #2 Interview #3 Interview #4 Interview #5 Interview #6 Interview #7 Interview #8 1 25 11’ 31 37 17 11 07 20 15 The transcripts of the eight interviews are contained on one diskette. – 1f The March 22, 2001, interview continues on Side A of the tape cassette for the March 27, 2001 interview. The March 27, 2001 interview begins on Side B of the March 22, 2001, tape cassette and continues on Sides A & B of a second tape. Accordingly, there are nine tapes. 1 ORAL HISTORY OF PAUL C. WARNKE – FIRST INTERVIEW MARCH 19, 2001 This is the first interview of the Oral History of Paul C. Warnke as part of the Oral History Project of the D.C. Circuit Historical Society. It is being held by William Warfield Ross on Monday, March 19, 2001. The tape and any transcripts made from the tape are confidential and governed by the wishes of Mr. Warnke which ultimately will be made in the form of a written donative instrument. Mr. Ross: If you don’t mind, I will call you Paul. Mr. Warnke: Please. Mr. Ross: You can call me Bill. Mr. Warnke: Right. I had planned to. Mr. Ross: You were born I believe — Mr. Warnke: January 31, 1920. Mr. Ross: 1920, and was it in Connecticut? Mr. Warnke: It was in Webster, Massachusetts. Mr. Ross: Massachusetts, pardon me. Tell me about your birthplace and the — Mr. Warnke: My father ran shoe factories, and he was running one in Webster, Massachusetts, so I was born there in 1920. My mother came from Maine, and they met in Massachusetts, and I was the second child. I had an older sister named Ruth, who died on January 1 of this year, and two other siblings; one other sister, who is still alive, lives here, and a brother, Frank, who was killed in Antwerp back in 1988, hit by a car. 2 Mr. Ross: So, you have one living — Mr. Warnke: One living sibling. Mr. Ross: And do you have any memories of your grandparents? Where did your people come from on both sides? Mr. Warnke: My grandfather Warnke was born in Germany, I think, in Marienwerder, Germany, which is now part of Poland, but he was from a German Catholic family, and they were pushed east during the war. Mr. Ross: That was the war being World War I. Mr. Warnke: No, no, it was long before that — the religious wars of the 17th century. Mr. Ross: All right. Mr. Warnke: He came to the United States and married a girl by the name of Bridget O’Grady. Mr. Ross: So, you have Irish — Mr. Warnke: She was the first one of her family born here rather than Ireland. So, I’m one quarter German and three quarters Irish. Mr. Ross: Tell me about those origins. Give me a sense of how you think they affected you. I mean, we’re all immigrants or the sons and daughters of immigrants. Mr. Warnke: Right. Mr. Ross: And, in subtle ways, the kinds of persons we are depends on whether we came from Thailand or Germany or Ireland. Mr. Warnke: Right. Well, my grandmother, Bridget O’Grady, Bridget O’Grady 3 Warnke, was the only grandparent I ever knew, and she was great. She used to tell me stories, some true, although quite a bit invented, and she died fairly old. She was about 73, which back in those days was old. My mother came from Canada, and her family was Canadian and Scotch Irish, and her name was Culliton. Mr. Ross: Did your grandmother, that would have been your grandmother on your father’s side — was she an educated woman? Mr. Warnke: No. Self-educated. Mr. Ross: Self-educated, and were you very close to her? Mr. Warnke: I was. She was fun. Mr. Ross: What are your memories and your feelings about your mother and father? Mr. Warnke: Dad died quite young. Dad was only about 53, and Dad was great. He was very warm hearted, and he had never graduated from high school, but ended up running a chain of factories. I think he had one factory in Webster, two in Marlborough and a couple in Maine. And he was very successful, very literate, great reader, and whenever he went on a trip, he’d bring back a book for each of us. Mr. Ross: Do you think that some of your intellectual interests, your emotional drives, and so on come from him? Mr. Warnke: Come from him and from Mother. Mr. Ross: What was she like? Mr. Warnke: Mother was quite opinionated and quite strong, sort of hard to describe. They were both deeply insistent on our being well educated, and I was brought up a 4 Catholic, so I planned to go to Boston College, and one day my father came home and said, “Why don’t you go to Yale?” That had never occurred to me, but it turned out that one of his suppliers was a fellow by the name of Lapham. The Lapham Field House at the Yale Bowl is named after him. So he said, “Why don’t you consider Yale?” Mr. Ross: I’d like to wait on your college. Tell me what was it like to be growing up and your first schooling. What can you capture about the atmosphere of the life that you and young people of your age had in, what was it, Webster? Mr. Warnke: I was brought up in Marlborough. Mr. Ross: Marlborough. Mr. Warnke: As I say, I was born in Webster and when I was about four, I think it was, Dad became head of the factories and moved to Marlborough. So, I was brought up in Marlborough. And Marlborough was strictly a factory town. There were a lot of Italians, a lot of French Canadians, a lot of Irish, and some old line Yankees. And, I went first of all to the Immaculate Conception School, which was a Catholic grammar school, and I was regarded as sort of teacher’s pet because Dad was a big employer in town, and he was very nice to the nuns, so the nuns were very nice to me. Mr. Ross: That’s a good thing. Mr. Warnke: That’s right. It was very interesting. My eighth grade teacher by the name of Sister Maureen — she read an article in a magazine one time just before the Carter Administration, and it was an article written by a friend of mine, Les Gelb, and it listed various people that might be Secretary of State, and it listed me, George Ball, and Cyrus Vance. And, among the other things, it said “religious preference: nonsectarian,” and I got a letter from Sister 5 Maureen, which said, “I’m happy to see that you haven’t become a Protestant.” Mr. Ross: Did you have some best friends? Mr. Warnke: Yes, I had a lot of friends. Two of my best were Jackie Soldani, who obviously was Italian, and the other one was Anastosius Diamantis, who was Greek. Mr. Ross: So, you got some very cultural — Mr. Warnke: Oh, very, yes — multicultural, no question about it. Mr. Ross: Apart from your schooling and the nuns, what were the things you liked to do? Mr. Warnke: I was very interested in sports and followed it all very closely, including things like golf, which I’ve never played. Golf, tennis — Bill Tilden was the big tennis player — and football, which I followed very carefully. And baseball, I was a real baseball enthusiast. Mr. Ross: Did you play any of these? Mr. Warnke: I was a lousy, lousy athlete. I played most of them, but I was very poor. Mr. Ross: So was I. Mr. Warnke: I had very poor coordination. Mr. Ross: I have bad “hand to eye.” Mr. Warnke: Yes, yes, that’s right. Mr. Ross: I’m going to move on to the high school in just a minute. Did you have feelings while you were in grade school about what you wanted to do with yourself? Mr. Warnke: Really nothing that made an awful lot of sense. I had a lot of friends 6 who were sons and daughters of doctors, so I assumed I was going to be a doctor. I even took premedical in college. I always knew I was going to go to college. Mr. Ross: Why is that? Mr. Warnke: Because there was no question about it, I mean, my mother and dad were just insistent that we all go to college. Mr. Ross: And, neither of them — Mr. Warnke: Neither one of them had gone to college. They were both great readers. Mr. Ross: Do you remember a book you read in the grade school years that made a big impact on you? Mr. Warnke: I read so many, Bill, that none of them made that much of an impact. Mr. Ross: When did you start reading? Mr. Warnke: I started reading the year before I went to grammar school. My sister Ruth decided I should read, so she had me read. I can remember reading, I forget what it was, Jack and the Beanstalk, I think it was, and I couldn’t understand why father was “father” rather than “fat her.” Mr. Ross: Good point. Mr. Warnke: As far as schooling was concerned, as I say, I went to the Immaculate Conception School, and that was pretty good. There were some very, very good nuns. A lot of them were Irish born and a lot of them had become nuns to be educated. Mr. Ross: Well. Mr. Warnke: Yes, and they were quite good. Sister Adanada, I can recall, was 7 very bright. A few of them were beasts. Sister Joseph Catherine, I thought, was a real sadist, but Sister Maureen was a good friend. Mr. Ross: Do you feel that that experience of a Catholic boyhood marks you in any way? I don’t mean bad or good, I just mean influenced you. Mr. Warnke: Not really. I always had my doubts about religion from a very early age on, so it never really took. Mr. Ross: So, you are not a practicing Catholic. Mr. Warnke: Oh, no, no. Mr. Ross: You’re secular as you say. Mr. Warnke: I am, that’s right. Mr. Ross: Are there other things that come into your mind at that period of your life that you’d like to memorialize or say anything about? Mr. Warnke: One thing that was difficult was that the Depression came along, and, as a consequence, Dad had to shut down the factory from time to time, and since many of my classmates were people whose fathers worked in the factories, that made it kind of a traumatic experience. Mr. Ross: I bet it did. Mr. Warnke: Yes. Mr. Ross: And you were aware, you were sensitive to that. Mr. Warnke: Oh, yes, very sensitive. I had to fight my way home a lot of times. Mr. Ross: What was your dad into in 1941? Mr. Warnke: Shoes. 8 Mr. Ross: And, did you go to the factory and watch — Mr. Warnke: Yes, yes, right. I tried to get a job there, but Dad figured that jobs were too hard to get, so he wasn’t going to have one of his sons taking a job that somebody else could take. Mr. Ross: You went to high school. What happened? Mr. Warnke: It was a lousy high school. Marlborough was a lousy high school. There were all kinds of grammar schools in town. There was a French Catholic. There was the regular Catholic. There was the public school. And there was a Greek school. And they all had separate grammar schools, and we all got together in high school. I can recall still with great delight when the French Canadian girls showed up. Mr. Ross: When they what? Mr. Warnke: When the French Canadian girls showed up. Mr. Ross: Showed up. Mr. Warnke: They were so pretty. Mr. Ross: You liked those. Mr. Warnke: I liked them. Mr. Ross: Did you have a girl friend? Mr. Warnke: Yes, I had a couple of girl friends. My principal girl friend was not from Marlborough. We went in the summertime to Scituate, Massachusetts, on the South Shore and I had a girl friend by the name of Miriam Flynn. She was a red head with green eyes. Mr. Ross: Sounds good. Mr. Warnke: Yes. 9 Mr. Ross: Do you know where she is now? Mr. Warnke: She still lives in the Boston area. Mr. Ross: So, you had one girl friend, and you had others that you were interested in. Mr. Warnke: Yes. Mr. Ross: When you started in high school, this was no longer a Catholic school. Mr. Warnke: Oh, no. Mr. Ross: It was a general public — Mr. Warnke: A general public school. Mr. Ross: And, your impression, obviously lasting impression, was that this was not a particularly good school. Mr. Warnke: Oh, it was a very poor school. Mr. Ross: Tell me about that. Tell me about how you lived in that experience and things that you think were significant about those four years for your development. Mr. Warnke: I think that the principal thing was that it never really was a big part of my education. Most of my education was brought about by the fact that I was a great reader, and that when we were very young my family bought something called the Books of Knowledge. Mr. Ross: Oh, yes. Mr. Warnke: Which was an encyclopedia for younger people. I read that voraciously, and I learned a great deal from that — a lot of history, a lot of English literature. Mr. Ross: So, you were, in a sense, being self-educated while you were going 10 to this high school. Was there a teacher or even a fellow student who was significant in your feelings? Mr. Warnke: I can’t recall any of the teachers. There were a couple of women teachers who were pretty good, but by and large it was a very, very poor school. The students were principally factory kids. A lot of them spoke very poor English and ended up after four years still speaking very poor English. Very few of them went to college. I think that — I doubt that less than ten of my graduating class went to college. Mr. Ross: How large was the class? Mr. Warnke: A couple of hundred. Mr. Ross: That’s a very small ratio. Mr. Warnke: That’s right. Mr. Ross: And, yet you became a brilliantly educated man, if I may say so. Mr. Warnke: I almost flunked out my first year at Yale. I had no idea how to study. I’d sit there in class and see everybody scribbling; I thought they were writing notes home. They were taking notes instead. So, when it came to the first exams, I had no notes, and I flunked every one. Mr. Ross: That’s an interesting experience. Mr. Warnke: Yes, very interesting experience. The question was: Was I going to be able to stay at Yale? And Dad came down, and it was sort of touch and go, but then I discovered the thing to do was to take notes. So, I took notes, and the next term I got on the Dean’s List, and found that the Dean’s List meant that you could go to class when you wanted to, you could stay home when you wanted to. 11 Mr. Ross: Wow. Mr. Warnke: So, I stayed on the Dean’s List from that time on. Those are called incentives. Mr. Ross: Did you play sports? Mr. Warnke: I played baseball very poorly. Mr. Ross: Sounds like me. Mr. Warnke: I played so badly that they put me in left field against left-handed hitters and right field against right-handed hitters. Mr. Ross: Did you enjoy that? Mr. Warnke: I did. I loved sports, loved them. I tried playing football. I didn’t even stay on the junior varsity. Mr. Ross: Think back and tell me — you were growing up, you were interested in girls, of course, you were interested in sports, you were obviously reading, as you say. How did you put this all together? Mr. Warnke: How did I put it all together? Mr. Ross: Yes. Mr. Warnke: I don’t think I ever did. Mr. Ross: When you were coming out of the chute at the end going to Yale, you were a certain kind of person, and that was the result of many things, including your high school experience. You have any thoughts about that. Mr. Warnke: I was sort of a rube, but Yale had a lot of rubes back in those days. Most of the class at that point went to private schools, an awful lot from Andover, Exeter, St. 12 Mark’s, and a minority went to high school. Mr. Ross: You were in the minority. Mr. Warnke: I was in the minority. Mr. Ross: How did you feel about that? Mr. Warnke: It didn’t bother me much. Mr. Ross: Did you enter a secret society? Mr. Warnke: I didn’t even know what they were. Someone came around one night and asked me if I was going to be rushed, and I had no idea what they were talking about. So, I missed my opportunity. Mr. Ross: Such as it was. You could have been “Bones.” Your life would have been very different. Mr. Warnke: I don’t think so. I don’t think it would have made a damn bit of difference. Mr. Ross: Well, I think we’re moving on to Yale. Tell me what it felt like to be a freshman at Yale. Mr. Warnke: I enjoyed it thoroughly, I really did. For one thing I liked being in what to me was a big city. So, at night I walked around the entire city, and reveled in it. And I enjoyed my classmates. I made a number of friends. Mr. Ross: Did you find that the educational experience at Yale — I’m talking now about both the informal and the formal — meshed with the better life you had constructed for yourself? Mr. Warnke: I thought it great, yes. 13 Mr. Ross: Did you think Yale was a good school? Mr. Warnke: I thought it was a very good school. It had very good professors back in those days. Mr. Ross: I had a classmate in the law school, Eddie Rockefeller, who was a long-time partner of mine in law practice — Mr. Warnke: Right. I know him well. Mr. Ross: He says all the really important things he learned in Yale he learned out of class. Mr. Warnke: I didn’t feel that way. I learned a lot in class. Mr. Ross: Did you have any romantic attachments in Yale? Mr. Warnke: Yes. Mr. Ross: Were these with girls who went to other colleges in New England? Mr. Warnke: Oh, yes. Yale was not coeducational at that point. Mr. Ross: Tell me a little bit about that. What are your memories, good or bad? Mr. Warnke: All good. I liked girls. Mr. Ross: Can you be a bit more detailed? Mr. Warnke: I was in the Yale Glee Club. And we used to travel quite a bit, and we’d go up to places like Vassar and Smith and Wellesley, and they had a female glee club, and we mingled fairly closely. Mr. Ross: I’d like you just to go ahead in free association about college years. Mr. Warnke: As I say, when I went there, I was totally unprepared. The only thing I had going for me was that I had been a very voracious reader. And I loved that about Yale. 14 And the Linonia Brothers Room at the Yale Library. Mr. Ross: I spent a lot of time there. It’s right across the street from the Law School. Mr. Warnke: That’s right. So, I spent a great deal of time there. Mr. Ross: Reading French novels. Mr. Warnke: Reading almost anything. Anything that came to hand — Mr. Ross: — you could pull down from the shelf. Mr. Warnke: That’s right. That’s right. Right. And I had a good friend by the name of John Schreiner, who lived a floor below me during my freshman year, and he and I used to spend a great deal of time at the gym. So, every afternoon we’d go to the gym, and try to knock one another down with a medicine ball. Mr. Ross: The “Temple of Health.” Mr. Warnke: That’s right. And then, he had a sister, and she was quite a bit younger, but she and I became very good friends. In fact, I was going very steadily with her when I met Jean. Mr. Ross: Did you meet Jean while you were still in Yale? Mr. Warnke: Oh, no. I met Jean when I went to law school. Mr. Ross: Tell me about law school. Mr. Warnke: I went to law school because I had countless years of free education under the GI Bill of Rights. And I had taken pre-med at college and had planned to go to medical school, but then it turned out among other things I have a tremor that’s sort of an inborn tremor, known as the “Warnke shake.” And I figured that anybody who saw me with that shake 15 wouldn’t want me as a doctor. So, after the War, I did not go to medical school, and I went up to Columbia to join the School of Journalism. And I went up there and they said, “Sorry, the class is full.” So, I said, “What other schools do you have?” They said, “The law school is across the street.” So, I went across the street and became a lawyer. Mr. Ross: Please go on. Mr. Warnke: One of my good friends in my freshman year at law school was a guy by the name of George Rowe and when we both got on Law Review, he said, “I think I’ll ask my sister up for the party.” So, he invited his sister up, and I looked across the room and said, “Gosh, she looks just like George.” And then I looked again and thought, “No, better.” That was Jean. So, then I had to break off my engagement. No, I got her to break it off. And then Jean and I became very good friends. I got married. My entire life has been actually that woman. Mr. Ross: Before we go any further I would like to talk about the donation which we discussed earlier — Mr. Warnke: Feel perfectly free. Mr. Ross: We’re supposed to put this on the tape. My understanding — you correct me if I’m wrong — is that you are agreeable in the event of your death or illness — Mr. Warnke: Right. Mr. Ross: — that prevents you from approving all or any part of this tape, you are agreeable to allowing the Historical Society of the D.C. Circuit, the freedom to publish or not publish, withhold or not, in their best judgment any part of this tape. Mr. Warnke: That’s right. Mr. Ross: All right. Thank you very much, sir. 16 Mr. Warnke: What I would say is that, if I haven’t reviewed it, I would hope that you would point out that I had not reviewed it. Mr. Ross: We would certainly do that. Mr. Warnke: Apart from that, feel perfectly free. Mr. Ross: It sounds like you had what the British call a “good war.” Mr. Warnke: A very good war, yes. You see, I was single, and as a consequence, I didn’t really worry. Mr. Ross: I understand. Life is less complicated — Mr. Warnke: There weren’t any kids; I’ve been scared stiff ever since. Fortunately, I’m now 81, so it doesn’t matter, but when I was young, I had high blood pressure, and I was turned down for insurance, and I figured “Holy Cow,” and I ended up with five kids — Mr. Ross: And a lot of years when you weren’t insured. Mr. Warnke: That’s right. A lot of years. Mr. Ross: You came out of the service, went to the Harvard Law School — Mr. Warnke: No, I went to Columbia Law School. Mr. Ross: Columbia Law School, pardon me. How did you decide to go to Columbia? Mr. Warnke: I lived in New York. My family lived in New York. And, as I said, I took a subway up to Columbia, tried to join the School of Journalism, they said it was full, they said the law school was across the street, so I went across the street. My life is an entire series of accidents. Mr. Ross: Tell me about your first year in law school. 17 Mr. Warnke: Well, I had to take an exam to get in because my marks in college had been too up and down. So, I took an exam and got in. And everybody was surprised that at the end of the first term, I had two A’s and two A+’s. Mr. Ross: Wow. Mr. Warnke: So, I figured I’d stay. Mr. Ross: What were your impressions of Columbia? This is again another world. Mr. Warnke: It was great. The professors were very good, and the class was very good. We were all fairly old in our late twenties. Mr. Ross: Very mature. Mr. Warnke: Yes, almost everyone had been through the war. I think there was one girl and one guy who was a prodigy. Mr. Ross: Was this ’48 that you went in? Mr. Warnke: ’46. I got out in ’48. Mr. Ross: Right. What were your feelings about the law school curriculum? Mr. Warnke: It was great. I was perfectly satisfied with law school. There were very good professors and a very good class. I made a lot of friends, including Jean’s brother. Mr. Ross: Let me see if I can stir you up a little bit. What were the bad times about that experience? Mr. Warnke: I can’t recall anything bad. Mr. Ross: You’re pretty resistant. Mr. Warnke: No, I don’t. 18 Mr. Ross: I used to work for a man, Lee Rankin, whom you might know. One of his best friends asked me how did I like working for Mr. Rankin — he was Solicitor General — Mr. Warnke: I know. I recall. Mr. Ross: I was very tactful, but he finally dug it out of me. He said, “Well, what kind of a lawyer do you think he was?” And I said, “He was a special kind of lawyer” and so forth. We finally agreed that he had a magnificent temperament, which he did. I suspect you have that kind of temperament, or do you? Mr. Warnke: What do you mean? Mr. Ross: A magnificent temperament? Mr. Warnke: I have no idea. Mr. Ross: You were comfortable with yourself. Mr. Warnke: No, we had very good professors in law school. Herbert Wechsler was very good and Walter Gellhorn. Mr. Ross: I knew him quite well. And did you make some good friends? Mr. Warnke: Oh, yes. Mr. Ross: Friends you’ve had. Mr. Warnke: Yes. The guy who was the chairman of the Law Review before me was Larry Latto. And Larry is still a very good friend. Mr. Ross: A smart guy. Mr. Warnke: Very smart guy. And Arthur Murphy was in the class below me. Mr. Ross: Oh, my. Mr. Warnke: Yes. A good friend. And, then there’s George Rowe and Wally 19 Dempsey. Mr. Ross: Columbia in those days was oriented towards business law in preparation for working in a large New York law firm. Mr. Warnke: Yes, I think so. Mr. Ross. What was your career orientation when you were in law school? Mr. Warnke: I really had no idea. When I went into Columbia, I was still very interested in the foreign service, and I interviewed for the foreign service, and then all of a sudden, I took the law exams and did very well. Then, I went to the law school and did very well, so I became a lawyer instead of a foreign service officer. Mr. Ross: A foreign service officer or a doctor. Mr. Warnke: That’s right. Right. Oh, I had given up the idea of a doctor long before that. Mr. Ross: You were on the Law Review as I recall. Mr. Warnke: Right. Mr. Ross: What is the piece of writing you did during those years, writing or scholarship that you remember? Mr. Warnke: I don’t really recall. I had to write an article to get on Law Review, and then I was an editor-in-chief, so I principally supervised —- Mr. Ross: — writing. Mr. Warnke: That’s right — rather than writing. Rather than writing, I re-wrote. Mr. Ross: Let me ask you — I’m going to try to be a little bit more penetrating because I think you’re a tough, old dog. Will you describe your success in becoming editor-in- 20 chief and your success in law school. Mr. Warnke: I did very, very well in my writing. And, I think that, plus the fact that I’m not unpleasant. Mr. Ross: Do you have a good people sense? Mr. Warnke: Yes. And I enjoyed being on Law Review. I enjoyed my colleagues. Mr. Ross: And that’s followed you, I think, all through your career. Mr. Warnke: It was fun. I liked it. Mr. Ross: Well, we’re going to pick up some dark shades as we go along, but I think it’s going to be difficult. Mr. Warnke: Right. I’ll try. Mr. Ross: When did you marry your wife? Mr. Warnke: When did I marry her? Mr. Ross: Yes. Mr. Warnke: Let’s see. I came down here in 1948. And we were engaged by that point. And we got married in September of 1948. Mr. Ross: And you went into Covington? Mr. Warnke: Covington & Burling. Went to work for Tommy Austern. Mr. Ross: I know him well. Everybody who has had an association with Tommy has Tommy stories. Mr. Warnke: Yes. Mr. Ross: Tell me about him. Tell me about how you worked with him. Mr. Warnke: Well, when I started work with him, everyone said, “Oh, my God, 21 you’re going to hate it. He’s impossible to get along with.” We became very close friends. In fact, my oldest son is named Tommy. Mr. Ross: Brilliant guy. Mr. Warnke: Yes. And very nice. Mr. Ross: Well, I wouldn’t say that. Mr. Warnke: Oh, yes. Mr. Ross: You think so? Mr. Warnke: Oh, yes. Mr. Ross: My work was on the cigarette legal committee with Tommy. We represented Lorillard. You represented Reynolds, and also the — Mr. Warnke: — Tobacco Institute. Mr. Ross: Tobacco Institute. Very interesting experience. Mr. Warnke: Yes. Mr. Ross: I think we’re close to concluding this session. You obviously had a knack then (and now) in being yourself in a very complete sense, and yet working out a way of relating to other people that was always successful. This is partly in temperament I would assume. It’s obviously partly a calculated skill. Talk to me about that, because this is a motif in your life. Mr. Warnke: I really don’t know what to say. I haven’t consciously striven to be anything except myself. Mr. Ross: Right. Maybe that’s one of the keys. I was in Covington as a law clerk, working for Paul Shorb. 22 Mr. Warnke: Oh, really. Mr. Ross: ’50 and ’51. Paul died, so I didn’t stay. So, I have a little bit of familiarity with the atmosphere. Old Mr. Burling and some other characters — Mr. Warnke: John Lord O’Brian. Mr. Ross: O’Brian gave me some advice when I needed it. And then those blazing personalities, Sapienza and Barlow. Mr. Warnke: Oh, yes. Mr. Ross: When I worked for Shorb, I found out after he died that we weren’t in the same firm as the other tax — Mr. Warnke: That’s correct. That’s right. Mr. Ross: And I understood for the first time why my instructions were never to show anything to Barlow’s people — I couldn’t understand it. I was naive. Mr. Warnke: Yes. Mr. Ross: Talk about that, because that was an interesting place. Mr. Warnke: I thought it was a very pleasant place. It was the only place I applied to and I didn’t like Wall Street. And I came down here. Covington & Burling, which was then Covington, Burling, Rublee, Acheson & Shorb, was then a very friendly place and everybody got along. At least I thought they got along. And the young people were fun. And the people I worked with were a lot of fun, like Tommy, Graham Claytor — Mr. Ross: Yes, smart guy. Mr. Warnke: Yes, he was. What was funny was when Graham Claytor and John Lord O’Brian represented the Commissioner of Baseball and neither one of them knew anything 23 about baseball. I remember watching a game on television with them. Graham Claytor — the guy stood up at the plate, and the ball went by and it went by again and it went by again and it went by again; then, he went to first base — said, “Why did he go to first base, he didn’t even swing?” The concept of a base on balls was totally alien to him. Mr. Ross: When you were working with Austern, you could have been working on antitrust matters or drug matters or — Mr. Warnke: Both of them. Mr. Ross: Who were the other partners that you worked with? Mr. Warnke: Well principally, Tommy, and Graham Claytor to some extent, who was then sort of a young partner. Mr. Ross: Right. Mr. Warnke: But, principally Tommy. And then when time came to be up for partnership, Gerry Gesell insisted that he had never worked with me, he couldn’t vote for me until he had worked with me. So, I worked with Gerry for awhile, and we became rather good friends, too. Mr. Ross: That would have been a valuable experience. I never worked with him, but I have many friends who have. Mr. Warnke: He was a very, very good trial lawyer. Mr. Ross: Highly intuitive in an interesting time. Mr. Warnke: That’s right. Mr. Ross: Very disciplined. Mr. Warnke: Yes. 24 Mr. Ross: Mr. Burling, Sr., whom I barely met, was at the end of his career. George Rublee, do you remember him? Mr. Warnke: He was not there when I came. Mr. Ross: I see. Mr. Warnke: I met him, and I knew his son or grandson, George Rublee, who was with the firm for awhile. Mr. Ross: And, of course, Dean Acheson, you probably knew. Mr. Warnke: Yes. Mr. Ross: Well, you’re a young fellow right out of law school. You’re going to a very good law firm, largest firm in Washington at that time, and very competitive, no women significantly — Mr. Warnke: We had one — Eleanor something. Mr. Ross: — and very genteel in a way, all those oriental rug runners, prints of horses and funny looking men with funny looking clothes. Mr. Warnke: That’s right. That’s right. Mr. Ross: This had some feelings for you. What were you thinking about in terms of your career? Where did you want to go? What were your aspirations during those years? Mr. Warnke: I really don’t recall. I came down here, went with that law firm, liked the law firm. I came down with the idea of getting into the government. I’ve always wanted to be in the government, and was very disappointed when the Democrats didn’t win for a long time. And I was even more disappointed when the Democrats did win, and I wasn’t offered 25 anything I wanted. Mr. Ross: We all wanted to be Attorney General — Mr. Warnke: I wanted to be in the Defense Department, and the only thing I was offered was — I’ve forgotten — it was something that was so poor I really had no interest in doing it. Mr. Ross: You were very successful. You became partner. What year was that? I’ve got it right down here, but I’d have to dig it out. Mr. Warnke: 1956. Mr. Ross: And what law did you specialize in? Mr. Warnke: I did antitrust and food and drug. We represented the American Can Company, and American Can Company had a lot of lawsuits at that point, including one in California. I spent a lot of time on that. Mr. Ross: You were a litigator at that point, and most of your litigation was in the antitrust field and food and drug. Mr. Warnke: Yes. Mr. Ross: Did you think you were a good litigator, a good senior litigator at that point. Mr. Warnke: I thought so. Mr. Ross: I’m trying to stir you up. Mr. Warnke: I enjoyed it. When a person joined Tommy, Tommy didn’t do any litigation. In fact, for some reason he was sort of fearful of it. For one thing Tommy was not extemporaneous. He wrote everything out. Everything. 26 Mr. Ross: Must make it hard for a litigator. Mr. Warnke: Very hard for a litigator. So, litigation I learned principally from Gerry Gesell, who was very, very good. Mr. Ross: And you were a bag carrier, I suppose, for some time. Mr. Warnke: Oh yes, sure. Mr. Ross: I’m almost through this session, not through with Covington, but did you ever have any aspirations towards the judiciary? Mr. Warnke: No, not at all. I never had any desire to be at all. At the end of the Johnson Administration when I was in the Defense Department, I was asked whether I had any interest in going on the Court of Appeals, and I said no. Mr. Ross: Your life might have been different. Mr. Warnke: I never had any desire to be a judge. None. Mr. Ross: Well, we’ve been going almost an hour and a half, and I appreciate this very much. Mr. Warnke: Thank you very much, Bill. I appreciate your coming. Mr. Ross: I look forward to the next one. Mr. Warnke: Very good. 27 ORAL HISTORY OF PAUL C. WARNKE – SECOND INTERVIEW MARCH 22, 2001 This is the second interview of Paul C. Warnke as part of the oral history project of the Historical Society of the District of Columbia Circuit. The interview is being taken by William Ross on Thursday, March 22, 2001 at 10:20 a.m. The persons present are Paul Warnke and William Ross. Mr. Ross: Paul, my cassette omitted some of your war history and rather than try to piece that together, I’d like to pick that up and go over it now before we return to your law practice in Covington and so on. You told us that you got into the service by subterfuge because of your blood pressure. Mr. Warnke: That’s right. Mr. Ross: And that you were in the Coast Guard which, at that time, was an integral part of the Navy and had been on a subchaser and subsequently on an LST. Mr. Warnke: After the subchaser, first a tanker and then an LST. Mr. Ross: Could you just run through that and I’ll pick up and ask you to amplify at certain points. Mr. Warnke: When I first got to the Pacific, I was on the U.S. Army Y19. The Coast Guard had been directed to take over from the Merchant Marine when we invaded the Pacific and, as a consequence, I was on an Army ship, it was a 167-foot tanker carrying aviation gasoline. Mr. Ross: Was the reason for that takeover that these ships were going to be 28 operating in war time and under fire in close coordination with other military forces? Mr. Warnke: Yes. Well, as I say, I was on the U.S. Army Y19 and let’s see — where did we go? Principally around New Guinea. We were in a Biar and in Noumea and then fighting in the invasion of the Philippines. I invaded the Philippines under tow. My tanker broke down. Mr. Ross: Oh, I see. So you had a seagoing tug or two? Mr. Warnke: That’s right. We had no steam and the tug pulled me in the middle of the harbor. Mr. Ross: I wasn’t in the invasion of the Philippines. I was in a fleet destroyer and they kept the carriers pretty far off shore. They were always afraid they were going to get one sunk. You were subject to air attack during that — Mr. Warnke: That’s right. Mr. Ross: The Japanese still had some — Mr. Warnke: Oh yes. They had planes right up to the very end. We invaded Borneo, Balikpapen and Papua, New Guinea, and at that point, I had the LST, and we carried ammunition for the cruisers. We had one cruiser on one side and one cruiser on the other side when the Japanese flew over. I gave instructions, “Don’t ever fire at them, they might fire back.” So they tried to hit a couple of the cruisers and were shot down. Mr. Ross: It’s fortunate that they were after the war ships because, of course, while carrying ammunition, your ship was pretty vulnerable. Mr. Warnke: That’s right, but they didn’t know that. Mr. Ross: They didn’t know that. The cruiser, of course, has some armor in it. 29 Mr. Warnke: That’s right. Mr. Ross: Give me a sense of your responsibilities. In effect, you were in command of a floating barge with a very dangerous cargo. Mr. Warnke: Well, I was not the skipper. Mr. Ross: You were number two? Mr. Warnke: I was one of the top officers. The number one was a guy from California who basically didn’t like being in the service, so he pretty much relinquished control to us. Mr Ross: That can be a very awkward thing. Mr. Warnke: It was awkward. It was very awkward because the crew didn’t like him. He didn’t like the crew and I had to pretend that I liked him. Mr. Ross: You liked him and got along with him. We had a skipper on the destroyer, a very fine man, Academy graduate, whose entire Navy career had been lighter than air, and his first surface command was a fleet destroyer, and that created a lot of problems. Mr. Warnke: I’ll bet it did. Mr. Ross: It worked out because of his personality and integrity. We would get into some difficult situations in handling. A destroyer is a hard vessel to handle in a lot of wind because of the high bow. He dealt with that very well and in certain circumstances he would say to our number two, “Mr. Freeze, I want you to take this boat. You’ve had a lot more experience than I have.” The interesting thing was that everybody respected that because of who he was. Go ahead a little bit and tell us what was it like. You were under fire, you were supporting these two war ships, you were close in — did you come in to the beach? 30 Mr. Warnke: They came alongside us and took it off. Mr. Ross: But you anchored? Mr. Warnke: Yep. Mr. Ross: And subject to whatever they could get in there to get you. Mr. Warnke: Right. Mr. Ross: That’s real war. What was your rank then, were you Senior Lieutenant? Mr. Warnke: Senior Lieutenant. Mr. Ross: You were not hit? Mr. Warnke: I was not. Mr. Ross: I mean your ship was not hit? Mr. Warnke: No. Mr. Ross: How long did that — I’m just trying to get a little feel — Mr. Warnke: Oh, not very long. The entire invasion didn’t take that long. Mr. Ross: We came into Samboanga in that area. Mostly to get water. Our watermaker had broken down. It was about eight months, nine months after those invasions. Samboanga was quiet with some facilities that the seabees had thrown up. It was basically just a little village. Very pretty at night — I remember that so well. What happened after this stint, where did you go and what did you do? Mr. Warnke: You mean after Borneo? Mr. Ross: After Borneo, yeah. Mr. Warnke: Well, as I think I mentioned before, they used the LST to pick up 31 Japanese who had been abandoned on the various islands, so we went to places like Biak. We had a couple of Japanese officers, and they would go through the jungle saying, “The Emperor wants you to return. The war is over.” They would all but drag the Japanese out of the forest. I think I mentioned that I had a picture at one point of me standing on the tank deck surrounded by these Japanese. They were very small back then. Mr. Ross: Some of them quite wide. Mr. Warnke: A matter of diet. I was startled on the way back when we stopped in Hawaii, and I had a Japanese girlfriend who was 5’7″, 5’8″, and I said, “What happened?” She said, “Diet.” And that of course was it, because now the Japanese are a fairly decent size. Back then they lived on rice. Mr. Ross: Not much protein. After you left this cargo ship, this ammunition carrier — Mr. Warnke: I never left it. Mr. Ross: You finished the war in it? Mr. Warnke: I finished the war in it and then, as I say, we were stationed in Leyte and were picking up Japanese and bringing them for shipment back to Japan. Instead of having tanks on the tank deck, we had ammunition. And we only had one casualty. The chief radio man. Lost his mind. He just lay in bed and couldn’t get up, and he wouldn’t talk. He kept rolling over and they kept trying to find out what was wrong with him. Another member of the crew said that he would lie there at night and hear the ammunition rattling around and it just got to him. We brought the destroyer back. We brought it back to Pearl and didn’t drydock it, 32 but they looked at some things that’d been giving us trouble, then we came back to San Diego, and my number wasn’t nearly as good as yours, so I was in San Diego for nine to ten months. We didn’t do much. My number was very poor. I didn’t get out of the service until a month before law school. Mr. Ross: Really? Mr. Warnke: Yeah, I was single through college, and I was in no hurry to get out. Mr. Ross: You were enjoying yourself. Mr. Warnke: I was enjoying myself, yeah. Mr. Ross: The girls. Mr. Warnke: The girls, yeah. Mr. Ross: And the uniform. Mr. Warnke: Right. Mr. Ross: Being a combat veteran. Mr. Warnke: That’s right. I had a very nice girlfriend in Charleston. God, I can’t remember her name now. Huh. Funny. Mr. Ross: It comes back. Mr. Warnke: Yeah, it will come back sometime at night. But she was very pretty and very nice. Mr. Ross: Let me ask you a meatball question. How much do you think that experience has stayed with you and has shaped you in any way? Mr. Warnke: It was not a very traumatic experience for me. The most traumatic experience was trying to get in the service. And once I was in, I was delighted, and I was in no 33 hurry to get out. I even gave passing thought to staying in. Mr. Ross: That was going to be my next question. Mr. Warnke: I enjoyed it and it was somewhat of a pleasant service. I liked the Coast Guard Academy. Mr. Ross: When you thought about staying in — Mr. Warnke: I didn’t really think seriously about it, it’s just that I enjoyed it much more than I had enjoyed banking before the war. Mr. Ross: I don’t know enough about your personal life. Were you a boater in your younger years? Mr. Warnke: We spent every summer at the beach when I was a child, and I spent a lot of time off the water — principally in motorboats. Later, after the war, we had a sailboat for a number of years. A lightning that we used to sail in the Potomac and I used to tow up to Cape Cod, up to Wellfleet. Mr. Ross: So you really were a sailor? Mr. Warnke: I was always a poor sailor. I wasn’t very good at it. Mr. Ross: Did you race the lightning? Mr. Warnke: Yeah. The principal ones who raced it were my kids. Maggie and Georgia were great racers, and we belonged to the Wellfleet Yacht Club, and they enjoyed that a lot. Mr. Ross: You had a cottage? Mr. Warnke: We rented one. Mr. Ross: How many years were you going up there? 34 Mr. Warnke: Oh Lord, let’s see. About, I’d say, more than 10 years. Mr. Ross: Well, let’s go on. I don’t want to talk about your children yet. I do want to talk about them in some length. We had been at the point where you had joined Covington and you’d spent some time as an associate lawyer and had become a partner and that was in 1957, I believe, that you became a partner in the firm. That’s at least the date I’ve got. You were with the firm from ’57-’66. Mr. Warnke: That’s right. Mr. Ross: And as a partner, and you had joined the firm in ’48. Mr. Warnke: ’48. Mr. Ross: So, you said that you’d work with Austern and Gesell and that you’d been in litigation and other matters. Can you give me a sense of who were the figures in the bar, both practitioners and judges, as well as inside your law firm, that were most significant to you personally and in your practice? Mr. Warnke: Primarily, Tommy Austern. He became not only my boss but a very good personal friend, and Gerry Gesell. And of course I thoroughly enjoyed Dean Acheson. He was not only famous, but he was fun. Mr. Ross: Yes. Mr. Warnke: Hugh Cox was also a very good lawyer. Mr. Ross: Let me pursue this a little bit more. Was there a judge, particularly one located here, that you remember either well or poorly or played a role in your life? Do you have any thoughts or memories of that sort? Mr. Warnke: I’m trying to think of a judge who was a local judge and who I tried 35 my first case before and I remember him saying, “Stand up straight, Mr. Warnke, and button your coat.” Mr. Ross: Sounds like Alexander Holtzoff. Mr. Warnke: It was. Mr. Ross: Or Walsh. Another one would be Judge Walsh. Mr. Warnke: No, it was Alexander Holtzoff. Mr. Ross: Holtzoff had a reputation (I certainly saw this in action) of developing a very firm opinion about a lawyer and his case early in day, and then you had two kinds of problems — one when he was against you, and then another problem — when he was too much for you. What experience did you have before him? Mr. Warnke: Not bad as a matter of fact. He was egotistical, but we got along perfectly alright. Mr. Ross: Well, that’s a credit to your hard work with him. Don Green, my partner, and I were trying a fairly important case — to a client, to an important case — before him — he developed an inexplicable liking for Donald Green. Mr. Warnke: Oh really? Mr. Ross: He was a charming fellow, but most of our strategic planning from then on was to try to avoid reversible error, which we did. Mr. Warnke: Right. Mr. Ross: So that was Judge Holtzoff. Were there other judges? Let me ask you this. Did you ever appear before your former partner, Judge Gesell? Mr. Warnke: No. I was in the government before that. 36 Mr. Ross: He could be quite an experience. I mean in a good way — an enormously sharp mind. Mr. Warnke: I liked Gerry. We got along quite well. We did a lot of work for DuPont, and he was pretty full of himself, but he was very good. He was almost as good as he thought he was. Mr. Ross: My partner, Steve Truitt, who clerked for him and also tried a number of cases before him said exactly the same thing. He certainly wasn’t afraid of anybody or anything. Mr. Warnke: No, not a thing, not a thing. Mr. Ross: How about government lawyers? Department of Justice, or in the agencies. Are there any that stick out in your mind? Mr. Warnke: I did a lot of work with Sigmund Timberg. Mr. Ross: Oh, I knew Sig very well. Go ahead. Mr. Warnke: We had settled a case for the American Can Company and Sig Timberg was the guy that sort of supervised that, and he and Tommy didn’t get along very well. I got along with him very well indeed. I thought he was a very, very decent guy. Mr. Ross: I knew Sig very well both personally and professionally, and I would say that the problem there might have been that they were too much alike. Mr. Warnke: They were too much alike. Mr. Ross: Did you ever have any run-ins with Vic Kramer in the Antitrust Division? Mr. Warnke: My principal contact with Vic Kramer was when I was representing 37 the Institute of Shortening and Edible Oils Inc., and he represented one of the big edible oils, but he was in private practice at that point. Mr. Ross: Arnold & Porter probably. Mr. Warnke: Yeah, Arnold & Porter. Who was it he represented? Oh well, in any event, we were on the same side, and he was convinced we were going to lose the case, so he tried very hard to settle it. Mr. Ross: I can see him in that role. I tried a private Article II case against him, and I was a much younger lawyer than he was, and one day he asked me to have lunch with him and this is right in the middle of the case. He said, “Ross, I’m going to tell you how this case is going to go and I’m going to tell you what we’re going to do.” He proceeded to describe what was going to happen, what the judge was going to do, and what so forth, the weaknesses in my case and the weakness in his and he said, “Why don’t we cut the tall and short and settle it right here?” Mr. Warnke: So did you get — Mr. Ross: No, but I thought about it long and hard and I met him again and I said, “Vic, I think you’ve got it right — everything except the damages.” We were the plaintiffs. He said, “Oh, I’ve got that all figured out. I’m going to put it in this envelope and seal it up and it will be what the damages should be.” I said there’s only one problem — our clients hate each other. My client hates your client, and this goes all the way back to high school and they want to fight. And I said I’ll do everything I can to promote it. Well, we settled the case and I opened the envelope, and he was within $25,000 of what we’d agreed to. I had not opened the envelope before that. 38 Mr. Warnke: I liked Vic. He was a nice fellow. He was shattered when his wife died. Absolutely shattered. Mr. Ross: How about the Solicitor General’s Office? Do you know any of those fellows up there? Mr. Warnke: Well, there was a good personal friend, Phil Elman. Mr. Ross: I worked with Phil in that office and when I was the senior partner in my law firm, he came in there as a counsel. I said, “Phil, now you work for me.” He made a bad noise in response to that. I liked him a lot. I also worked for Oscar Davis. Mr. Warnke: He was a nice fellow, too. Very very able. Died young as I recall. Mr. Ross: Fairly young. He was a judge of the Court of Claims. Mr. Warnke: Yeah, I know. Mr. Ross: Quickest mind I ever saw. Mr. Warnke: Yeah, he was very good. Mr. Ross: Think back a little about various cases — you’d mentioned the American Can case. How about Wonder Bread, Continental Baking Company? Tell me about that if there’s something to tell. Mr. Warnke: I’m trying to remember how I got into it. The Assistant General Counsel at that point was a fellow by the name of Roy Anderson, and he came in first of all to see Tommy Austern, and then he and I became quite good friends. It was principally food and drug cases, and the Food and Drug Administration was very concerned about the fact that Wonder Bread advertised in a way that was inconsistent with their standards. They wanted Wonder Bread to admit that it was white bread, and Wonder Bread’s advertising intimated it — 39 indicated it was something better than white bread, so we litigated that for a while. Finally settled it. I was trying to remember who it was that represented the government at that point. Mr. Ross: Was that a Trade Commission matter or a Department of Justice? Mr. Warnke: Could be with both, Trade Commission and then the Department of Justice and then a state court. It was first state court case I ever tried. Mr. Ross: Where was that? Mr. Warnke: I’m trying to remember. It was some local trial court in Indiana or Ohio — they’re all the same to me. Mr. Ross: Did you settle that case? Mr. Warnke: Yeah, we settled it. The judge came up with a proposed settlement which was so good, there was no reason in the world not to accept it. Mr. Ross: Then Procter & Gamble. That was some criminal involvement, ’62 and ’63. Mr. Warnke: I’m trying to remember just what we did do for them. Mr. Ross: What you say in this oral history is you represented in those years P&G in connection with some criminal antitrust cases in California involving shortening and edible oils. Mr. Warnke: That’s right. Mr. Ross: And the contention was that they were in a price fixing conspiracy. Mr. Warnke: That’s right. Mr. Ross: And you mentioned Warren Christopher. Mr. Warnke: Yeah, Christopher and I represented the same company. 40 Mr. Ross: Right. So you were co-counsel. Mr. Warnke: We were co-counsel. Mr. Ross: That sounds like a serious case — a big company. Mr. Warnke: A number of big companies. Mr. Ross: A number including P&G. Mr. Warnke: Lever Brothers. Mr. Ross: That’s probably called the edible oils case or something. I don’t have any familiarity with it, and price fixing. Put your mind back in that time to the extent you can and how did that work out? Mr. Warnke: I think the case was settled, and on terms that were very favorable. Mr. Ross: That would have been the Department of Justice? Mr. Warnke: The Department of Justice. I’m trying to remember the Department of Justice lawyer. I can see him, but I can’t remember his name. Mr. Ross: You also mentioned the Congress of Micronesia. That sounds fascinating. You represented the Congress of Micronesia. Mr. Warnke: That’s right. Mr. Ross: Tell me about that. Mr. Warnke: Well, the question was what was going to be the status of Micronesia. Was it going to be an independent country, was it going to be affiliated with the United States, and there was somewhat a split of opinion about it. There were really a number of different races. They had a collection of islands, but not very many people, but they were quite different, and there was one big group that was centered in Saipan. 41 Mr. Ross: That’s the Marianas? Mr. Warnke: The Marianas, that’s right. The Marianas split off from the rest of Micronesia and became really a territory of the United States. I remember it well because I had the Micronesians here one night and Howard Willens, who lived down the street, was there and became friendly with the guy who was the chief negotiator for the Marianas, and then he represented the Marianas. He and his wife recently wrote a book about the Marianas. Mr. Ross: I haven’t read it. Mr. Warnke: Diane Siemer. Mr. Ross: I know her and I know him. Those islands have had a checkered history. Mr. Warnke: Oh, very checkered. Well, of course, they were occupied by Japan during the war and then the question was were they going to be independent or were they going to have some kind of continuing relationship with the United States. They eventually opted for independence. Mr. Ross: So you were advising them. Mr. Warnke: That’s correct. Mr. Ross: And also perhaps negotiating for them. Mr. Warnke: That’s right. Mr. Ross: And that would involve a lot more than legal consideration. Mr. Warnke: Oh yeah, right. Mr. Ross: A sense of what they needed. Mr. Warnke: Right. 42 Mr. Ross: What their future would be. What their capabilities were. Mr. Warnke: Right. I spent a fair amount of time there. Mr. Ross: Did you go out there? Mr. Warnke: Oh, yeah. Mr. Ross: They’re quite different. You can’t lump them together. Mr. Warnke: Oh yeah, but they’re quite different. I remember one time Jean and the kids and I were in Mexico and I had to go from Mexico to Micronesia — one of the longest trips known to man. When you get to Hawaii you’re half-way there. Mr. Ross: Have you had in more recent years any association with people or entities that were involved in that, or is that just something that — Mr. Warnke: That’s something in the past. Mr. Ross: In the past. Mr. Warnke: Yes. A colleague of mine at Clifford & Warnke, a fellow by the name of Jim Stovall, worked with me on the case. My memory fails me, but as I say I went from Mexico to Micronesia. I’m trying to remember where I went in Micronesia. It wasn’t even the main part of Micronesia. It was one of the places we bypassed. Mr. Ross: Truk, you bypassed. Mr Warnke: Yeah, Truk, and this was sort of south of Truk. Mr. Ross: You say that in 1970 you represented the Iranian government in connection with creating a telecommunications system. This involved negotiating some agreements? Mr. Warnke: Yeah, that’s right. 43 Mr. Ross: Could you tell me about that? Mr. Warnke: I’m trying to remember who it was I negotiated with. Mr. Ross: Siemens is the German. Mr. Warnke: They were part of the consortium that was going to put together the telecommunications system. Mr. Ross: The Shah was still there. Mr. Warnke: The Shah was still there. I met with the Shah from time to time, but my principal contact was the Prime Minister Hoveida who was a very nice fellow who after the Shah was deposed, was in prison, and then executed. Mr. Ross: Oh, my. That must give one a funny feeling. Mr. Warnke: It did. He was a very decent fellow. Mr. Ross: Did this result in the creation of a telecommunications system? Mr. Warnke: I think it did. But I think it was in the midst of that that I went into the Carter Administration. Mr. Ross: You had this interesting international involvement. A few years before you actually went into the government, you were involved with a Department that, of course, has all kinds of international involvement. Is it the case that you became general counsel and then a year or so later became — Mr. Warnke: Assistant Secretary. Mr. Ross: After you left Covington, were there some significant professional associations or continuing associations with that firm? Mr. Warnke: Not while I was in the government. They were very scrupulous 44 about that, and so was I. Never talked about anything that had to do with my professional work. Of course I worked for people I thought the world of, Bob McNamara and Cy Vance, and they were very scrupulous too. Extremely. We remain very good friends. Of course I went back into the government at Cy’s request when he was Secretary of State. Mr. Ross: Well, let’s move on to your first involvement in the government. You went into the Department as General Counsel. That must have been quite an experience, maybe not for you, but just the experience — Mr. Warnke: It was a great experience, but you realize that the General Counsel as far as Bob McNamara was concerned was sort of a utility infielder. There was a Deputy General Counsel, Leonard Niederlehner, and Len really ran the legal department. He was very, very good, very easy to work with, and a nifty fellow. I became personally very fond of him. Mr. Ross: So you were working closely with — Mr. Warnke: Cy Vance and with Bob McNamara. Mr. Ross: And this was your first taste — first government position? Mr. Warnke: Oh, yes. Mr. Ross: You started high. Mr. Warnke: Well, I was fairly old by that point. Mr. Ross: How old were you do you think? Mr. Warnke: Let’s see, that would have been in — Mr. Ross: The date would be ’67. That’s easy enough. Mr. Warnke: Late ’40s. Mr. Ross: Peak of one’s abilities for most people. What were the reasons for 45 your appointment, first as General Counsel, and then subsequently — Mr. Warnke: Well, I was very interested in getting into the government when Kennedy was elected, and they offered me the job of General Counsel of the Army, and I figured I was too old not to have a position that required confirmation, and that was a non-confirmation position, so I turned that down. Then I was offered Assistant Secretary of Defense for Civil Defense, and Bob McNamara called me about it. I said, “Bob, you’ve come up with the one job that I can’t take.” The idea of a civil defense makes me presume there were triggers in the United States which there were not. Mr. Ross: Telling people to get under desks. Mr. Warnke: That’s right. That’s right. So then I waited and John McNaughton was the General Counsel, and then became the Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs, and I was named to replace him when I was General Counsel, when he was named Secretary of the Navy. Then he was killed in a plane crash. Mr. Ross: I had forgotten that. Mr. Warnke: It was I think in the Carolinas, and the plane was hit by a private plane, so he was killed, his wife was killed, and one of their boys was killed. Mr. Ross: So you came in and worked, as you say, closely with McNamara. Mr. Warnke: And Cy Vance. Mr. Ross: What was the political atmosphere there in those two years. We’re talking about ’67-’69? Mr. Warnke: Right. Mr. Ross: Johnson was President. 46 Mr. Warnke: That’s correct. Mr. Ross: What were you concerned about particularly in those two positions? Mr. Warnke: As General Counsel I was primarily concerned with whatever it was that Bob and Cy asked me to do. As I say I was a utility infielder. Len basically ran the legal part of it. Mr. Ross: You must have had a fair amount of dealings with the President’s staff and, at some extent with the President. Mr. Warnke: Not much with the President. Mr. Ross: Not much with the President. Who on the staff can you recall that you’d deal with on a day-to-day basis. Mr. Warnke: Harry McPherson. Mr. Ross: And you were getting involved, I suppose, to some significant extent, in arms control. Mr. Warnke: Yeah. Mr. Ross: What can you tell me about the flavor of your experience, putting it in a personal context and the people who were most important to you, obviously McNamara was very important to you. Mr. Warnke: Yeah. Mr. Ross: And Vance. Search your mind in that area if you will. Mr. Warnke: Well, Harry McPherson was very much involved. Mr. Ross: Let me stimulate you a little bit. In the interview that we referred to that’s going to be attached to this transcript, you talk about foreign policy being made in what 47 was known as the Tuesday lunch, when Johnson would have lunch with the Secretary of State and so forth, including the Secretary of Defense. Much of your job was getting McNamara ready for the Tuesday lunch. And then you said NATO was very important and, of course, there was the Vietnam War. Mr. Warnke: Overriding — Mr. Ross: Overriding concern. Were you very much involved in that? Mr. Warnke: Quite a bit, yes. Mr. Ross: What can you recall was the most salient thing? Mr. Warnke: Well, when I was asked by Bob McNamara to join the Department, I said I’d be delighted to do it, but he had to realize that I was strongly opposed to the Vietnam War. I thought it was a terrible, terrible mistake. He said that that doesn’t matter, would you take the job? I hadn’t realized that Bob felt very much the same way about it. But he felt a great sense of guilt. He thought, and to some extent he was right, that when Lyndon Johnson took over as President, he really didn’t know a thing about foreign policy. As a Senator, it had not been a field in which he had any real interest, and as a consequence, he depended very heavily on Bob, on Dean Rusk — Maxwell Taylor was also very important at that point, and that was basically the Tuesday lunch. Walt Rostow was also involved and he believed until the very end, in fact beyond the very end, that was a very noble cause and we were perfectly right to go on. Mr. Ross: I was asking you about the relationships that you had in your Assistant Secretary job which was a very key position at that point, and about the Vietnam War, and you were talking about McNamara’s sense of guilt, and if you could pick up on that. Mr. Warnke: Well, I think that he had basically been one of the ones that 48 persuaded Johnson that the war was a very good idea. Many people at that time had changed their mind. Dean Rusk never did. Went to his grave convinced that this was a worthy thing to do. But he was strongly marked by the loss of China. He was in the State Department at that time and worked for whoever was the Assistant Secretary of State. Mr. Ross: Oh, it was — I’m remembering what he looked like. Mr. Warnke: So can I. Mr. Ross: Let me pause just for a minute. We’re now going to be going into — I hope with some detail — very important things in the public sphere which you participated in. You’re a reflective man who had extraordinary public service. From a standpoint of a historian reading your oral history, the most useful thing they look for is off-the-record, personal kind of recollections that perhaps would never appear even if you wrote memoirs. People are sensitive about such matters. It may be that you can bare your bosom on individuals without concern because time has passed. Or it could be that there are things that you would say but that you would want to put a hold on. Say I’ll ask you about Paul Nitze. You have a public position on Nitze, you’d probably start out by saying he’s a very fine fellow. You may also have some private thoughts about him. I’m not suggesting there would be anything negative there — he’s a very fine man. You may feel a little ill at ease about putting those private thoughts on the record, but obviously to someone looking at this 25 years from now, that sensitivity would be very muted. So you can put this line of questioning under wraps, which means that it’s marked, and does not appear in the public transcripts, but it will be released and go into the file at a later time that you designate — 5 years, 10 years, or “after my death.” So keep that in mind as we go on. Were you involved in politics during this period? 49 Mr. Warnke: Involved in what way? (Start of Tape 3) Mr. Ross: You were concerned as the Secretary of State for the Department of Defense with the impact of something like the Vietnam War on your day-to-day activities with the Department, but in terms of the national politics in the nation, were you consulted? Did you have significant conversations? Did you take a stance, or — Mr. Warnke: Well, of course I dealt with McNamara and with Vance. Mr. Ross: And so, your role here was as a legal and political advisor — Mr. Warnke: Advisor, that’s right. I think I told you that when Bob asked me to become General Counsel, I said I would be delighted, but you had to realize that I was against the war. He said that didn’t matter, and I did take the job. So, I came in with everybody knowing that I was opposed to the war. And I was not alone. The Defense Department, by and large, was antiwar. Mr. Ross: This is getting into what’s going to be, I think, some of the most interesting areas. I’m going to want to pursue it to the extent that your patience will permit me. In other words, you had a Department with a civilian staff at the higher levels that had considerable doubts. Mr. Warnke: That’s right. Mr. Ross: Not all of them, but many of them. Were you constrained, or you and they constrained as to talking about these things? Mr. Warnke: No, we talked quite freely with McNamara. Mr. Ross: So, you were saying to them on this a background basis, we think — 50 Mr. Warnke: We’re too much involved; could we get less involved — Mr. Ross: What we’re trying to accomplish perhaps is not practically the thing available to us. Mr. Warnke: I think of the time when I first went to Vietnam. I was still General Counsel, but had been named to succeed John McNaughton. So, basically I had nothing I had to do in Vietnam. So, the guy who was then in charge of Vietnam for the White House, Bill somebody or other, said, “Why don’t we get a helicopter, and take a tour?” So, we got a helicopter and took a tour. I think I may have told you this before. Mr. Ross: That’s all right. Mr. Warnke: I went down to the IV corps, which was at the Delta. I think I mentioned that the first place we stopped was a little village. I got out and looked in one of the houses, and there were two pictures on the wall. One was Jack Kennedy. The other was Ho Chi Minh. So, when I came back McNamara asked me to write up my impressions, and I wrote up my impressions, and said basically that we’re waging a successful occupation of Vietnam. Mr. Ross: That’s a good way of describing it. Mr. Warnke: But, as far as making a real difference, I said there isn’t any South Vietnam, which there was not. There was Saigon and there were the people that were in it, heading up Saigon. Let’s see, who was the chief guy then, at that point? Mr. Ross: I’d like to help you there, and I remember two names but I can’t come up with them. Was it your feeling that the leadership which was cooperating with the U.S. in the war activities did not have sufficient support from its people to make this whole operation feasible? 51 Mr. Warnke: That’s right. Mr. Ross: Or, how would you describe it? Mr. Warnke: I would say that they ran Saigon, and that was it. Mr. Ross: That was it, and they ran Saigon because we had over 100,000 troops in the country. What was the feeling in the uniform military? Mr. Warnke: They were doing what they had been told to do. And they convinced themselves that it was right. Mr. Ross: Was there a significant figure in the military that you were involved with? It probably would have been a general, because of the nature of it. It probably could be an air general or land general. Mr. Warnke: It was the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. Mr. Ross: Was basically opposed to the war and took that position — Mr. Warnke: He was doing what he was told to do. Mr. Ross: Didn’t question it. Mr. Warnke: That’s right. What was his name? Earle Wheeler? Mr. Ross: Did you ever have any private conversations with the military that — Mr. Warnke: Well, I met every Thursday morning with the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs with the idea of trying to come up with a common position because then we had the “nongroup” that met on Thursday evenings. It was convened by Nick Katzenbach, and it consisted of Bill Bundy, McGeorge Bundy, the General, Walt Rostow, the head of the CIA and me. Mr. Ross: That’s a pretty substantial group, and what kind of policies or 52 agreements were coming out of that group? Mr. Warnke: Well, we talked about everything, and the problem was that there was just a deep division. For Walt Rostow was convinced that we were perfectly correct. And, the principal advisor to Dean Rusk — Dean was not part of the Thursday group — his deputy was Nick Katzenbach, and it was Nick’s idea. Mr. Ross: What was Nick Katzenbach’s position on the war? Mr. Warnke: Very much the same as mine. Mr. Ross: As yours. Mr. Warnke: Yes, he just thought it was a terrible mistake. We never should have gotten into it. Mr. Ross: Did you have a grasp at that point of the President’s position and any direct knowledge or indirect, for that matter, coming through, since the President’s views on this were obviously of great importance? Mr. Warnke: Well, what I gathered from Bob McNamara was that the President had deep reservations about the war until he got into it, and then he was committed. Mr. Ross: Once he was committed, the door was closed. Mr. Warnke: That’s right. We had to win. Mr. Ross: To win. Mr. Warnke: Yes. Mr. Ross: It couldn’t be the first war that the United States never won. Mr. Warnke: Which is what you said. He wasn’t going to be the first American President to lose a war. 53 Mr. Ross: Did you read McNamara’s book, the last one he published? Mr. Warnke: Yes. Mr. Ross: Does that jog anything? Mr. Warnke: Not really, but for the real sense of guilt about the war. Mr. Ross: Clearly. Mr. Warnke: He was one of the ones who shaped Johnson’s thinking, which was true. Johnson thought very highly of him. Mr. Ross: He had a close personal relationship in some ways with Johnson. Mr. Warnke: He did. He did. Mr. Ross: As much as anybody did. Mr. Warnke: It’s sort of interesting. Have you heard Michael Beschloss’s recording? Mr. Ross: Some of it. Mr. Warnke: It’s very interesting. The ones between Johnson and McNamara are very good. I’m proud of McNamara anyway, but when you listen to them, you’re even prouder because a lot of the others were really ass kissers, he was not. Mr. Ross: He was not. Mr. Warnke: Even McGeorge Bundy was sort of subservient. Bob felt a deep sense of responsibility for having Johnson get into it. Mr. Ross: Let me press on this a little bit because of the public significance. Did McNamara to your knowledge ever make specific recommendations to Johnson on how you could get out of the war? 54 Mr. Warnke: I don’t know. Mr. Ross: Don’t know that. Mr. Warnke: McNamara never said anything about his conversations with the President. He had a strong sense that this was inappropriate. Although we prepared him for the Tuesday lunch, he would never give me a report as to what happened. Mr. Ross: That’s interesting because another man might be discussing those things with you in detail. Mr. Warnke: That’s right. Mr. Ross: So, you never saw a memorandum from McNamara to the President saying, “Mr. President, I appreciate the political problems, but here’s how you can get around them and get yourself extricated.” Mr. Warnke: He asked me to help write a memorandum to Johnson toward the end of — when was it that he left — I guess at the end of ’67? In November of 1967 he asked me to help him write a memorandum to Johnson, and we wrote a memorandum to Johnson, which basically said the war is a mistake. And the question is how do we get out of it. And Johnson read the memorandum and promptly named him the head of the World Bank. Mr. Ross: Strong personality, that President. Mr. Warnke: Very strong. (End of Interview #2) 55 ORAL HISTORY OF PAUL C. WARNKE – THIRD INTERVIEW MARCH 27, 2001 This is the third interview of the Oral History of Paul C. Warnke as part of the Oral History Project of the D.C. Circuit Historical Society. It is being conducted by William Ross on Monday, March 27, 2001. The tape and any transcripts made from the tape are confidential and governed by the wishes of Mr. Warnke which ultimately will be made in the form of a written donative instrument. Mr. Ross: We were talking, Paul, about your service in the Department of Defense which was essentially 2 years and about your relationship with, particularly, Secretary McNamara. Mr. Warnke: Was it only 2 years? Mr. Ross: Well, I have the dates ’67-’69. That could run 2 1/2 years. Mr. Warnke: I think it started in September of ’67, and I got out in — I stayed for several weeks with Mel Laird. In fact, I think I’m probably the only person whose resignation was accepted by two Presidents. Mr. Ross: Good. Mr. Warnke: When Johnson was President, I got a letter thanking me for my service. And then I got back in, so I got a letter from Richard Nixon also thanking me for my service. Mr. Ross: Well, that means that you’re acceptable to all sides. 56 Mr. Warnke: Right. Mr. Ross: Well, we’ll say up to 3 years. Mr. Warnke: About 2 1/2 years. Mr. Ross: Len Niederlehner, whom I knew, was rather prominent in your life. Mr. Warnke: Oh, yes, Len was Deputy General Counsel longer than anybody. Mr. Ross: And did you meet with him almost on a daily basis? Mr. Warnke: Oh, yes. Sure. We had offices across from one another. Mr. Ross: He was a very sagacious person. Mr. Warnke: Yes, he was. Mr. Ross: I remember being involved with him in various ways when I was on the Presidential staff, and so on. Were there one or two other people other than the Secretary who were of significance to you? Mr. Warnke: Of course. Cy Vance was and then Paul Nitze. Mr. Ross: Tell me a little bit about Cy, about your personal relationship with him. Mr. Warnke: Well, he was the reason I was in the Defense Department. We met during the campaign and then he became General Counsel of the Department of Defense, and I was very interested in going with the Department, so I went over and talked with him on a couple of occasions. And I think I said the only job I was offered was General Counsel to the Army. Mr. Ross: Right. Mr. Warnke: And I felt at that point, being a partner in Covington & Burling that not to get a Presidential appointment was just something I was not prepared to do. 57 Mr. Ross: I can understand that. And, so the time came when you became General Counsel. Mr. Warnke: It was quite a bit later. What happened was that Cy Vance was General Counsel, and then Cy became Secretary of the Army, and the post of General Counsel became open, and actually Bob McNamara was for Adam Yarmolinsky. Adam had worked very closely with him, and he wanted Adam to become General Counsel. And the Senate for some reason was very strongly opposed to Adam. He was red meat to an attacker. Mr. Ross: He was one of my oldest friends. Mr. Warnke: Oh, really? Mr. Ross: He had an abrasive personality. Mr. Warnke: Well, it wasn’t that so much. I think it was a combination of things. In the first place — his looks. He did not look like the average human being and he was rather small. I first met Adam when we were both in law school. He was editor-in-chief of the Yale Law Journal; I was editor-in-chief of the Columbia Law Review; and we had the so-called blue book, which was the standard form of citations. Mr. Ross: I hated it. Mr. Warnke: Yes. And Adam had the feeling that the various law review boards who were responsible for the blue book should get to know one another. So, he invited the editors of Columbia, Harvard and Pennsylvania to meet with the Yale Board. We met in New Haven and had a very good time. And then he was down here when I came down, and we renewed our friendship. And we were really very good friends. But he was just regarded by people like Barry Goldwater, among others, as a pinko. And he looked like a pinko. Adam 58 looked as though he had a bomb in his back pocket. It was odd because he was really rather conservative, much more conservative than I was. Mr. Ross: But you looked like a Wall Street banker when you wanted to. Mr. Warnke: So, he and I became friends and McNamara kept hoping he could get to be General Counsel, so he kept the position of General Counsel open for quite awhile, and then gave it to John McNaughton, and then John became the Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs. Mr. Ross: Right. Mr. Warnke: And the job of General Counsel remained opened until I was offered it in 1966. And Cy Vance asked me whether I would be willing to take it, and I said I would jump at it, which I did. Mr. Ross: At that time what do you think were the things that you were doing that were most important to the Department? Mr. Warnke: You mean when I first got in? Mr. Ross: When you first got in. Mr. Warnke: Well, the thing was that McNamara really regarded the General Counsel as kind of a utility infielder. Mr. Ross: Right. Mr. Warnke: What you did was whatever it was that he was interested in doing at that particular time, and among other things there was the Secretary’s Committee on International Affairs — I forget whatever they called it — but Johnny Foster was the principal guy from the Department dealing with it, and so I worked with them for some period of time. That’s where I 59 first got to know Dick Garwin. Dick was on that committee and he couldn’t really understand why the Secretary’s lawyer was attending meetings. I tried to explain to him that I was not the Secretary’s lawyer, I was the Secretary’s utility infielder. Mr. Ross: Right. Mr. Warnke: And he was interested in what the Committee was doing, but Dick could never get it quite straight. Mr. Ross: For the record, Dick Garwin. Mr. Warnke: Well, Dick Garwin I think at that time worked for IBM. He was a scientist and very interested in the government, and of course I worked with Dick very recently when we were both on the Arms Control Committee. Mr. Ross: Right. Mr. Warnke: ACNAB. Arms Control Nonproliferation Advisory Board. Mr. Ross: You mentioned Yarmolinsky. What was Adam’s role at that time in government? Mr. Warnke: Well, he was a special assistant to McNamara, and McNamara always wanted him to be an Assistant Secretary, specifically General Counsel, but there was just too much animosity towards Adam, which I could never quite understand. Mr. Ross: I wanted to ask you about this, because I’ve known Adam way back. Harris Wofford and I were working together on some matters for Kennedy’s transition, and I got to know Yarmolinsky quite well. He had many capacities, and one of them was to seemingly be aware of a whole complex of things at one time and to be able to poke through into a significant thing. I’ve had many, many conversations with him. Of course, we served on the LAWS Board 60 in later years, and Adam almost always would come up with some point of view or some point that nobody else had thought of and it was very impressive. At the same time you perhaps didn’t see the side of him that I saw. He had a gift of antagonism. Mr. Warnke: I could never see that. Mr. Ross: Well, you might have if you’d worked for Barry Goldwater. And I talked to a number of people of that political ilk, because I was interested. Adam was a friend of mine, and I could see what was happening to him politically. And it was puzzling, as you say. It’s always puzzling, but you keep telling me he could start out being more conventional. I never said because of the way you look and so on, but he was well aware of the way he looked, and his background and his mother and his father were always an element, always one sensed that they were there in some strange way, but he was defiantly with himself. Mr. Warnke: Very much so. Mr. Ross: Were you ever in a meeting with Adam which you felt epitomized the role that he was playing in the Department with McNamara and with you and other people? Mr. Warnke: I think that he had left the Department by the time I joined. Mr. Ross: I see. Mr. Warnke: So we didn’t work together in the Department. I met with him very often because he was in trouble with the Congress, and Mark Schlefer and I were basically his lawyers, and I worked with him. I think it was his appearance more than anything else. Mr. Ross: You mentioned Paul Nitze. He’s a very prominent figure. What was Nitze’s role at the time when you joined and served in the Department of Defense? Mr. Warnke: He at that point was Secretary of the Navy. 61 Mr. Ross: I had forgotten that. Mr. Warnke: For some reason he was regarded as a pinko by some of the people in the Senate. I think it had to do with some international organization that he had been connected with. I’ve forgotten what the name of it was, but he had attended a couple of their meetings. And particularly Barry Goldwater thought of him as being a lefty, which was not — never was so. So, he had difficulty getting appointed to a Senate confirmation job. McNamara finally was quite insistent that when Cy Vance left, that he was going to be Deputy Secretary of Defense. And he managed to use some of his brownie points and got Paul confirmed. Mr. Ross: Did you get along with Paul Nitze? Mr. Warnke: Very well. As a matter of fact, we were quite close. We met on a daily basis and usually shared very much the same position. I’d say he was a little more apprehensive about the Soviets than I ever was. He thought of them as being a malignant power that was out to get us, and I never could quite have that feeling. I thought they were a problem of course, a very severe problem, but the fact of the matter was that we were very highly regarded by the rest of the world. They were not. They had associates but not friends. I mean the Warsaw Pact was an involuntary organization. And to compare it to NATO is absolutely absurd. Mr. Ross: Jumping ahead a little bit, I want to come back to Nitze. Have your relations with him continued to be cordial over the years? Mr. Warnke: Oh, no. I was named to be Arms Control Director at the beginning of the Carter Administration. The first time I realized that there was a problem between Paul and me was when we went down to Albany, Georgia, where we met with the nominee, Jimmy Carter. We had a discussion about foreign affairs and disagreed really quite firmly about foreign affairs, 62 and from that point on, our relationship soured. And then when I was named to the ACDA job, Paul Nitze, of course, actively opposed it. And he managed to get Scoop Jackson intimately involved in it. Scoop Jackson, according to what I’ve heard since, really said “if he doesn’t appoint Warnke, he’ll appoint somebody equally susceptible to influence from the Soviets so it didn’t really matter.” But Paul Nitze actually got him to hold hearings, and then much to my surprise testified very strongly against me, and I could never really quite understand that because I thought we had a good relationship. I mean we — they were here for dinner several times, I was at his house with Phyllis several times. We traveled together and I thought we were friends. Mr. Ross: What did he say to criticize you? Mr. Warnke: Basically that I was soft on the Soviets, really didn’t understand them, would be just easily chewed up by the Soviets. Mr. Ross: That the Soviets were getting stronger. Mr. Warnke: Yes. Mr. Ross: And we were getting weaker. Mr. Warnke: We were getting weaker. Mr. Ross: Actually, it was just the opposite. Mr. Warnke: It was totally the opposite. There’s no comparison. I had a fair amount to do with the Soviets when I was with the Defense Department because, of course, the Assistant Secretary for International Security Affairs was sort of — well, referred to as the Secretary of State of the Defense Department. And, it’s where I first had contact with NATO. And McNamara was great to work with. He gave you a great deal of leeway. He either liked you and cooperated fully with you, or he couldn’t stand you. And if he couldn’t stand you, you were 63 just sort of pushed over to one side and nobody paid any attention to you. And he and I for some reason got along very well and became personal friends and have remained personal friends. He and Nitze had a craggier relationship. Paul Nitze of course expected that he was going to be Secretary of Defense. Mr. Ross: Well, that does make it more difficult. Mr. Warnke: It does. Mr. Ross: Do you have any sense why the ground shifted under you and Nitze? I know you can’t probe his unconscious — but I am asking you this to get the feel of – Mr. Warnke: We were at the Defense Department together. And, as I said, we got along very well. I thought we were friends. Mr. Ross: So, your views were not — Mr. Warnke: Not that different. Mr. Ross: What happened in the world that moved you two apart? Mr. Warnke: I’m not really quite sure. I always thought it was a personal thing that Paul always thought he was going to be a more important figure in politics than he was, and I don’t think he realized his personality was aggravating to a number of people. Never to me, but a lot of people just thought he was very intolerant, that he looked down on them. I could never figure out why it became so personal. I mean he was just determined that I was not going to get that job. Mr. Ross: Well, people then build on that in their own minds to justify their positions. Let me go back to the Vietnam War. McNamara has written a whole book about his progress. You were, of course, Assistant Secretary during a critical period in the war, and you 64 were opposing the war I think you said — a continuation of the war. Mr. Warnke: Yes. When I was approached at long last to take the job with the Defense Department, Cy Vance was the one who called me, and I said that you’ve got to realize that I think the Vietnam War is a big mistake, and what he said was I will tell that to Bob and it will make no difference. And that was the first time I heard that Bob McNamara had very serious doubts about the war. Mr. Ross: Yes, let’s get that on tape. Cy Vance said it will make no difference, it doesn’t matter and that at least suggested to you — Mr. Warnke: — that they had their deep reservations about it. Mr. Ross: McNamara had deep reservations about it. Mr. Warnke: The problem — I think I mentioned this before — when Bob took over as Secretary of Defense, he had a great background as far as education was concerned, as far as being a top executive was concerned. He had no government experience and no familiarity with foreign affairs. And he was part of a group that included Dean Rusk, Maxwell Taylor, McGeorge Bundy, Walt Rostow, people that were supposed to be experts in the field of foreign affairs. And, like Lyndon Johnson, who also had his deep reservations about the war, he was just persuaded that these guys had to be right, that they knew so much more about it, and not only were they very familiar with foreign affairs, they certainly did not lack self-appreciation. They were people with very, very strong feelings that what they felt was right. And, one of the key ones was McGeorge Bundy. McGeorge Bundy was a particular favorite of JFK. And JFK actually wanted him to be the Secretary of Defense or the Secretary of State, either one, but he just didn’t have that background at that point. But McGeorge was (a) very self-confident and (b) 65 very persuasive. Mr. Ross: This is a very critical thing, of course. You must have been very well aware of the history of these men. They came in with Kennedy and were called the “whiz kids,” and of course they were very smart, very well educated, and I gather from what you’re saying that you had doubts and had had them for some time about our getting involved in a land war in Southeast Asia. Now, what was the chemistry between you and them, and when you were in a meeting with these people — Mr. Warnke: It seemed to me that the Defense Department at that time was full of nonbelievers. Mr. Ross: That’s interesting. Mr. Warnke: Basically, there were just an awful lot of people who had deep reservations about the Vietnam War. Mr. Ross: And the government was full of these people, and the war was going on. Mr. Warnke: There were unfortunately many more of them in the Defense Department than there were in the State Department. And in subsequent writings Bill Bundy, for example, indicates, which was the case, that he had strong reservations about the Vietnam War. But he became persuaded and then became a very strong advocate. In fact, he and I had a rather craggy relationship because of that. We had known one another for some time. We were young lawyers together in what was then Covington, Burling, Rublee, Acheson & Shorb and he went with the CIA. Mr. Ross: Yes. Yes. 66 Mr. Warnke: He and Mary and Jean and I, back when we first met, were really friends. We went out to dinner together and stuff like that, so this was really a case of beliefs interfering with friendship. Mr. Ross: You say there were plenty of people in Defense — these were mostly the civilian people. Mr. Warnke: The military always goes along. Mr. Ross: Well, they have to. Mr. Warnke: That’s a tradition. That’s what they have to do. So, if they had their doubts, they kept them under cover. Mr. Ross: And you have then the people over in State who were strong believers. We had to control the situation. Mr. Warnke: And if we didn’t, that China would take over the Far East. That’s what I could never get through my head was the idea that somehow China was that kind of a political force, which they weren’t. They were a large country and that’s about all I could say for them. But some people in State had reservations. When I was Assistant Secretary, I used to meet with Nick Katzenbach, who was then the Deputy Secretary of State, which was the number two job. The military just figured that civilians were in control and there was never any effort on their part to try to change politics. Who was the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs? Earle Wheeler. And at McNamara’s direction I met with Bus Wheeler every Thursday morning. We’d meet in preparation for the non-group — (End of Tape #3) (Start of Tape #4) Mr. Ross: You were talking about meeting with the non-group when I had 67 changed the tape. Go ahead. Mr. Warnke: They met on Thursday evenings, and Bus Wheeler and I would get together on Thursday morning to see if we could come up with more or less a common position, which was difficult because with Bus, whatever the President said was his command. A very nice guy. A combat veteran during World War II, and he I think was always a little surprised that my position was sort of a rebel, and he thought of me as being a rebel. Mr. Ross: Well they were military people in a difficult position. They were fighting a war that nothing seemed to work. Mr Warnke: That’s correct. Mr. Ross: And casualties were mounting, weren’t they? Mr. Warnke: They were. Mr. Ross: They could sense it was becoming, at least to some extent, more controversial in the country. Mr. Warnke: Yeah. And I think that they ended up feeling that we were pulling our punches. Mr. Ross: Yes, of course. Mr. Warnke: We just weren’t going all out. And that was my fundamental point of disagreement. I think I mentioned to you that after my first trip to Vietnam, my feeling very strongly that there wasn’t any South Vietnam, and as a consequence, you couldn’t win the war. Mr. Ross: You couldn’t win. Mr. Warnke: You could wage a successful occupation, but there was no way of winning the war. 68 Mr. Ross: It wasn’t a country that you back. Mr. Warnke: I think I mentioned the two pictures on the wall. Mr. Ross: Right, right. And what was Wheeler’s reaction to this? He must have been causing to think. Mr. Warnke: Yes, but in common with what they say of all of the military, they were just sure the United States was right. Mr. Ross: They sort of get trained that way at West Point — Mr. Warnke: They get trained that way. The idea that the military represents an independent force that’s of danger is totally absurd. They’re totally under control. Mr. Ross: Well, that’s a good thing in a way. Mr. Warnke: A very good thing. And they always have been. And, of course, my own feeling was Johnson had very deep reservations about the war. In fact, Bob told me that. But once he was in the war, he was President of the United States, and we had to win. Mr. Ross: Right. Your main feeling about how the President decided came from talking with McNamara. Mr. Warnke: Oh, yes. See, they had the Tuesday lunch, and that’s when an awful lot of things got decided, or not decided. And Dean Rusk, of course, was totally convinced that we were on the right side; we had to win; we could win. That came from — I think I mentioned to you — he was with the Department of State and worked for — who the hell was the Assistant Secretary of State at that point? Mr. Ross: That white-haired man was Secretary. What was his name? He had a white — Stettinius or am I in the wrong — 69 Mr. Warnke: Yes, that’s right. Mr. Ross: Stettinius. I don’t remember whether he was a professional diplomat or not. Mr. Warnke: No, he was not. He was a businessman. Mr. Ross: So Rusk was a true believer. Mr. Warnke: Yeah. He was fighting China. Willard Robinson? He was an Assistant Secretary of State at the time that we “lost China.” And that just had a permanent mark on him, and he was totally persuaded that we had to win because otherwise China would just dominate us. He believed when Vietnam “fell,” then Burma would fall, Thailand would fall. But the only domino, in fact, was Laos. If Vietnam should fall, Laos would fall, and who would know the difference? Mr. Ross: Exactly. How did you feel about the domino theory? Mr. Warnke: I thought it was nonsense. I didn’t think that there was any South Vietnam. That South Vietnam was really an illusion. It was an American concoction and Burma was totally independent of that. Laos was a non-country. Mr. Ross: Well, you’ve certainly been proved right in history that China’s ability to project power beyond its own borders has been very limited. Mr. Warnke: And I think that they knew it. Mr. Ross: Who is they, China? Mr. Warnke: The Chinese. Maxwell Taylor was very influential. He was a very impressive guy physically, and very sure of himself, and he had a very big impact on Johnson. Mr. Ross: He had been a general in World War II. 70 Mr. Warnke: Yes. Mr. Ross: A decorated hero. Mr. Warnke: And a very nice man. Very pleasant. He and I could not have disagreed more on this particular subject, but we remained friends. Mr. Ross: What was his position during this time in the government? Mr. Warnke: It think he was no longer officially in the government. Mr. Ross: I see. He was a public figure. Mr. Warnke: He was a close advisor to Johnson. Mr. Ross: Right. Did he come from Texas or not? Mr. Warnke: I don’t think so. If he did, he didn’t have a Texas accent. Mr. Ross: And he was a real hawk. Mr. Warnke: Yes. Mr. Ross: Walt Rostow. Mr. Warnke: Total hawk. Mr. Ross: Total hawk? What kind of a relationship did you have with him? Mr. Warnke: Well, we had a perfectly friendly relationship. I had known Gene Rostow. We were fellow lawyers. Mr. Ross: Dean of Yale Law School. Mr. Warnke: That’s right. Mr. Ross: Well maybe we can move on. I think we were going to come back at times to some of this. You left the Department of Defense at the end of ’68. Mr. Warnke: No. After about 3 months of ’69. 71 Mr. Ross: After about 3 months of ’69. Mr. Warnke: Actually I mentioned to you that I’m one of the few people who has letters of resignation accepted by two Presidents. Mel Laird had wanted me to stay on. Mr. Ross: Could you stay into Nixon’s term? Mr. Warnke: Well, I did. Mr. Ross: You did. But I mean beyond 3 months. Mr. Warnke: No. I had agreed with Clark that we were going to practice law together and I was totally out of money. Totally. I had five kids, and I went from making about $200,000 a year, which back in 1966 was a fair amount of money for a lawyer, to making $29,000, which made it rather difficult. Mr. Ross: Sure did. Mr. Warnke: When Jean heard that I had been offered the job of General Counsel for the Department of Defense, she said, “What a shame you can’t take it.” And my daughter Maggie was in town interning on the Hill, and she and I drove home together. Maggie said to Jean, “I think he already has.” Mr. Ross: She knew you. Mr. Warnke: Yes. Mr. Ross: How old was Maggie roughly at that time? Oh, she was probably 21. Mr. Ross: So there was Clifford, Warnke, Glass, McIlwain. Mr. Warnke: McIlwain. Mr. Ross: McIlwain, I’m sorry. I’ve got it spelled here. 72 Mr. Warnke: (spells name) M-c-I-l-w-a-i-n. Carson Glass and Sam McIlwain had been with Clark when he got the firm going. Tom Finney was also there. Tom had been on the Hill, and then with a subcommittee. Tom was very bright. Basically, he and I were the forces that tried to keep Clark in line and usually succeeded. He very tragically developed ALS. Died quite young. Mr. Ross: What was the composition of the law firm when you joined it? Mr. Warnke: Well, let’s see. There was Clark, there was Sam McIlwain, there was Carson Glass, there was Tom Finney, a fellow by the name of Larry Williams who had been with the Department of Justice, Antitrust Division, and that was about it. David Granger, who was an associate. Mr. Ross: Were all of the people that you mentioned partners in one way or another other than Granger? Mr. Warnke: Other than David Granger, right. Let’s see, who else? David Granger, Dick Spradlin, and Jim Stovall, and that was it. And they were associates. Mr. Ross: Give me those names again. Just say them again. Mr. Warnke: Richard Spradlin, Jim Stovall. Mr. Ross: So you had three associates and six partners. Mr. Warnke: Yes. Mr. Ross: And when you joined the firm — when you had the conversations with Clark Clifford and the other partners — what was the concept, the strategic concept? Mr. Warnke: Well, my reason for going with the firm was very simple that had nothing to do with the firm. Hubert Humphrey, when he was defeated, said that if he had been 73 elected, he would have named Clark Clifford as Secretary of State. And Clark Clifford assured me that if he became Secretary of State, I would be the Deputy Secretary of State. Mr. Ross: I see. Mr. Warnke: So I basically joined with Clark not because of the law practice, but because of the fact that I was so enchanted with being in the government, that the idea of being in there again was more than I could resist. Mr. Ross: And in the meantime, you could make some money so you could pay those college expenses. Mr. Warnke: Oh yeah, I could make some money, but of course I could have made that kind of money with Covington & Burling, too. Mr. Ross: So that’s why instead of going back to Covington, you — Mr. Warnke: It was because of the fact that I figured that Clark would get back into the government, and he and I had become quite close, and, I don’t want to sound immodest, but he had relied very heavily on me when he was Secretary of Defense. I had been there for a couple of years, and we’d meet every morning, along with Paul Nitze. Mr. Ross: The Deputy? Mr. Warnke: Paul Nitze and Bob Pursley. Bob was an army colonel and very good, very bright guy. You must know Bob, he’s on the Arms Control Association Board. Mr. Ross: I just know his name. Let’s talk a little bit generally about Clifford. I want to, of course, go into his associations with you, but one way of getting into this is why do you think Clifford became Secretary of Defense? He didn’t have any prior relevant experience. Mr. Warnke: He was very close to Johnson, and Johnson had offered him a 74 number of jobs, including Attorney General. Clark turned them all down, but he said he just couldn’t see how he could turn down being Secretary of Defense because he felt very strongly about the Vietnam War, he felt very strongly about military affairs generally. He said that he had to take that job. He was good at it. Mr. Ross: I gather he was. Mr. Warnke: His relationship with Paul Nitze was always a little craggy. Paul had the belief that he, rather than Clark, should have been Secretary. Mr. Ross: Besides Clark was soft too. He was hard. Mr. Warnke: Nobody knew Clark was soft at that point. That’s one of the reasons that Johnson named him. He figured he was a real, real cold warrior, which, in a sense, he was. He went to the Far East — it would have been — let’s see, when did he become Secretary of Defense — ’67? Mr. Ross: That’s about right. Mr. Warnke: This was in the fall of ’66, and he and Maxwell Taylor went to Asia and the principal purpose of their trip was to try and rally support from the Asian countries to put more people into the Vietnam War. It had the opposite effect on Clark. The more he talked with people, the more he realized that nobody thought it was a very important war except for the United States. He had talked to the Australians, the New Zealanders, the Thais, and they thought it was really not that important, but they went along with it because the United States — . So that trip really solidified Clark as their guy. But Johnson didn’t realize that. Then there were a series of meetings — this was when McNamara was still Secretary of — Mr. Ross: You were talking about Clifford and DOD, and I didn’t get enough 75 of what you were starting to say to be able to cue you. Mr. Warnke: As I say, Johnson really asked him to be Secretary of Defense because he thought that McNamara had gone soft on the war, and he wanted to get someone in who was a strong believer in the war. He picked Clark. As it turned out, Clark was just as opposed to the war. He was quieter about it for a while. Mr. Ross: Let’s go back to the time when you first walked into the Clifford Warnke offices. Where were they? Mr. Warnke: They were right there on Connecticut Avenue. They were one block of Connecticut between K Street and H Street. Mr. Ross: K and H. One of those buildings there. Mr. Warnke: That big building right across from the park. Mr. Ross: Farragut. Mr. Warnke: Yes. Mostly occupied by Hogan & Hartson. We had the top floor. Mr. Ross: You probably had a meeting with your partners soon after you came in. Mr. Warnke: No, before I came. Mr. Ross: And do you remember much about that? Mr. Warnke: I think that Carson Glass and Sam McIlwain tended to be quite receptive because they knew that Clark wanted this. I think Tom Finney has his strong reservations as to whether or not I was going to try to take over and write Ralph Earle in. It turned out, I did not, and he and I became good friends. Mr. Ross: Would you say that Clark, prior to your coming in, was the 76 dominating figure? Mr. Warnke: Oh, totally. The only one who had a streak of independence at all was Tom Finney, and he was quite a bit younger than me. Mr. Ross: Yes. He was the young turk. What, in the first quarter of the time — you see I’m trying to just get you into that period — the first 3 months after you came into the firm, what did you do? What did you do when you came to the office? You’d been in the government for quite a while — Mr. Warnke: Not very long. Mr. Ross: You’d been in a very different law firm. Mr. Warnke: Oh, very different law firm. The first thing I tried to do was find something to do. The one thing that I was quite clear on was that, even if I could have, I would not have taken the clients that I had with Covington & Burling. My relationship with Covington & Burling was a very, very warm and very good one. My leaving had nothing to do with any sort of animosity. Mr. Ross: They were some of your best friends over there. Mr. Warnke: Oh, still are. Stanley Temko. Mr. Ross: Oh yeah. I worked with him because he did a lot of work with Tommy when we were both cigarette lawyers. Mr. Warnke: Right. Yes. Mr. Ross: So you were looking for something to do, of course, and a lot of people called you on the phone, and you must have had some choices at the point. What happened? 77 Mr. Warnke: Well, a couple of firms, one that Clark had done some work for in Illinois, and he thought that this could develop into a good plan. So, Murray and I went to Toledo and met with the then-new general counsel, a fellow by the name of David Ward, and we hit it off. So that Owens Illinois became a very good client of mine. Mr. Ross: What did you do? Antitrust? Mr. Warnke: Antitrust, anything they wanted me to do. Mr. Ross: I’m going to go back a little bit and talk about certain aspects of the time when you were in the Department of Justice and you were working with Bob McNamara and other — Mr. Warnke: Department of Defense. Mr. Ross: Department of Defense, pardon me, working with Bob McNamara, and I’ve been looking at some books in that area, some of which mention you, and I wanted to start out reading you out of the book, but I will do that next time, because I didn’t bring it. Mr. Warnke: What book is that? Mr. Ross: It’s a book by Doris Kearns, now Doris Kearns Goodwin, and she, as you know, was hanging around and taking notes, and she has a long quote — she claims that her reportage on what Johnson says is virtually verbatim because she took shorthand and she always wrote her notes up right afterward. Mr. Warnke: She was very close to Johnson. Mr. Ross: And very close to Johnson. And there’s a lengthy quote in which Johnson is saying things about a number of people, including you, which are not complimentary. Mr. Warnke: He didn’t know me. 78 Mr. Ross: Of course he didn’t. And, in any event, that would be a good starting point next time for your comment. There are two other figures that I wanted to ask you about and see if you will pick up on them. I’m interested in Dean Acheson’s role — after he was out of the government, he was just a private citizen, and with particular focus on the Vietnam War and the Presidential office’s role in that war, and you must have at least indirectly been aware that he was around. Mr. Warnke: Yes. He was one of the Advisory Committee that Johnson had from the Vietnam War. Mr. Ross: And apparently, although Johnson didn’t take his advice, he had many opportunities to offer it because of his position. He was not a person at that time that even a President could even exclude. Mr. Warnke: He was impossible to exclude. Mr. Ross: Do you have some recollections of any face-to-face involvement with Acheson during that time? Of course he’d been your senior partner. Mr. Warnke: Not at all. Mr. Ross: Just because of the way things were set up structurally? Mr. Warnke: That’s right. Mr. Ross: In terms of indirect information, I know you were absorbed in this, talking about it a great deal, do you have any thoughts on Acheson’s role or how he fitted into the mosaic? Mr. Warnke: Well, he was obviously a very senior man, and I think Johnson had a lot of respect for him. Dean started off being very thoroughly in support of the war, and as I 79 recall it, he became quite disenchanted. There was a period — I’m trying to remember — there was some group with which he was connected that looked to the war back in 1967 I guess it would have been. Mr Ross: I think that’s about right. Mr. Warnke: And all of the sudden he became totally disenchanted. He and Clark had a fairly good relationship. Clark had consulted with Dean when Clark left the Truman Administration to go into private practice, and Clark told me that at that point, Dean said there was no way in the world they could start a new law firm. There were too many law firms in Washington already, and what he ought to do was come with him, and Clark ignored that advice. Mr. Ross: Probably wise. He wasn’t a Covington personality was he? Mr. Warnke: He was not. Mr. Ross: He wouldn’t have fit in well with John Sapienza. Mr. Warnke: Newell Ellison was very much in favor of it. Mr. Ross: George Ball was Undersecretary of State who was mentioned, with Acheson and others, as being sort of the peacenicks, the people who were trying to figure out a way out that would give the President some cover and would be tolerable to him. Did you have any dealings with — you must have had dealings, of course, with the Department of State. Mr. Warnke: Oh, yes. Mr. Ross: Was Paul Nitze involved in any prominent way? Mr. Warnke: He was. As I recall it, though, he had left fairly shortly after I became Assistant Secretary of Defense, and I think was replaced by Nick Katzenbach, so I had more to do with Nick than I did with George. But I did have some contact with George. My 80 principal contact there was Chip Bohlen. Chip, I think, was in charge of political and military affairs, so he was the logical point of contact. Mr. Ross: What did you think of him? Mr. Warnke: Very highly. He was very, very bright. Didn’t have a strong opinion one way or another about the rightness or wrongness of the Vietnam War, but was very realistic, and a very bright guy. Mr. Ross: Who was the — refresh my recollection — Dean Rusk was Secretary of State. Mr. Warnke: That’s right. Mr. Ross: During the entire time you were in the DOD was he the Secretary? Mr. Warnke: I believe so. Mr. Ross: During the entire time that you were in DOD, the Secretary of State was a man who was a strong supporter of the war. Mr. Warnke: Very strong supporter. Mr. Ross: And so you had the interesting situation of McNamara who had become disillusioned and more and more disillusioned, and the two principal advisors to the President at that point — nominally at least of the Secretary of State and Defense — were on opposing sides on — Mr. Warnke: Bob, of course, was — he didn’t become a strong opponent of the war I would say until he left the Department. Well, basically, it would have been the fall of ’66 when we wrote a memorandum — I don’t know whether that memorandum is available — but it was a memorandum to Johnson, and I worked with Bob on it, and that’s what got Bob to be head of the 81 World Bank, because Johnson was appalled that he was not a strong supporter of the war. Mr. Ross: When he found out, in other words. Mr. Warnke: Yeah. Basically what the memorandum said is that, pretty much what I had said before, that we had a successful occupation of the territory of South Vietnam, but as far as creating the government was concerned, we couldn’t do it. It was nation-building, and I don’t think anyone has ever been successful at nation-building. I remember talking to Hubert Humphrey after he had been defeated for President talking about nation-building and how he is totally convinced that we are in the right on Vietnam and that we could in fact create a successful country, but he became totally disillusioned. Mr. Ross: I was going to ask you about Humphrey in a little bit — why don’t I do that right now. One of the more popular issues — at least at one time — was question Humphrey’s position on the war before his Presidential campaign and then during the campaign, and I’m not sure of this, but that Humphrey had come to your position on the war by this time in effect, but he didn’t say so. Mr. Warnke: That’s right, because he had this commitment from — he had made a commitment to Johnson that if Johnson took him as his Vice Presidential partner that he would not oppose Johnson’s policy. I don’t know that, but it’s entirely consistent. Mr. Ross: I was going to ask you whether you had any thoughts about that. Mr. Warnke: I know he had strong reservations about the war, because from time to time he would call me. Mr. Ross: That’s Humphrey? Mr. Warnke: Right. 82 Mr. Ross: Let me ask you sort of a difficult question. Do you think that Humphrey would have been successful in his Presidential bid if he had opposed the war? Mr. Warnke: I think there’s a good chance he might have been because really I thought that he was winning until Johnson backed off of him. And I think if he had been a strong opponent of the war, people would have realized why Johnson backed off of him. Mr. Ross: Well, we’ll probably come back to the war, everybody does, but I’d like to go now into some things that, as I said, we haven’t really gotten into very much. You have really had two careers — you can argue with me — one you were a very important government official at a very critical time in several jobs, at least three. Mr. Warnke: Right. Mr. Ross: And indeed in the disarmament field it might be said that you were one of the two or three key figures, and at the same time you had a long, quite long and very successful, experience in private practice. I have not, and this is not said critically of you — it’s said to stir you up a little bit, I’ve not gotten a sense about that practice at all. You obviously enjoyed lawyering very much. Mr. Warnke: I did. Mr. Ross: And you were successful at it, and it’s a high pressure, stimulating, interesting career all in itself. But you said a couple of things that suggested to me that your main eye was on government service. Mr. Warnke: I came to Washington because I was very interested in getting a job in the government. I didn’t want to get one right away — I didn’t have any money — Jean and I had gotten married — she had promptly gotten pregnant. 83 Mr. Ross: She got pregnant. You didn’t have anything to do with that. Mr. Warnke: But we had had our first child 9 months and 10 days after we were married. Mr. Ross: That’s pretty good. Mr. Warnke: We were married on the 9 of September, and Maggie was born on th the 19 of June. th Mr. Ross: That’s perfect. Mr. Warnke: So we had a family. I was interested in getting enough money so that I could get a good job in the government and still be able to support my family well. I happened to go with what was then Covington, Burling, Rublee, Acheson and Shorb because I was top of my class at Columbia, but I had no difficulty getting a job, and I had gone through the New York firms Sullivan Cromwell, Simpson Thatcher, and none of them appealed to me. I talked with Walter Gellhorn and Harold Wechsler, who were key professors at Columbia, and they both knew Dean Acheson, so they suggested I come down to Washington. Mr. Ross: You were talking about your interests when you came down from law school in government and in public life and how you felt that you needed to establish yourself. When you got into — let’s talk about the Clifford, Warnke, Glass period. That was eight years. Mr. Warnke: Let’s see — I went in there in ’69 and left in ’77. Mr. Ross: Right, because you went to the ACDA. Mr. Warnke: Right. And then came back. Mr. Ross: Of course, although it was a different firm, at least it had a different 84 name. Mr. Warnke: Well, it had been Clifford, Warnke, Glass, McIlwain and Finney, then Carson Glass retired, and Sam McIlwain semi-retired, and Tom Finney got ALS and died. Mr. Ross: Oh yes, that’s right. Mr. Warnke: So that when I came back the name was changed to Clifford & Warnke. Mr. Ross: Was your practice — what I called two firms and realize they weren’t two firms in an important way — essentially the same or was it different, and how can you describe it? Characterize it. Mr. Warnke: I did a lot of antitrust work, both with Covington & Burling and with Clifford & Warnke. Not with the same clients because I felt very strongly that I was not going to want to take clients away from Covington & Burling. So I had done an awful lot of work for the American Can Company when I was with Covington & Burling and a lot of Food & Drug work, Pfizer, Merck. Mr. Ross: Food & Drug work is quite different. I’ve done both, the antitrust, generally speaking, and I want to get you involved in this a little bit — get you thinking about it — were you primarily in what’s called an agency practitioner before the FDA or were you primarily a litigator, or both? Mr. Warnke: Both. Mr. Ross: You did both. Mr. Warnke: I did both. Mr. Ross: So you would file NDAs and — 85 Mr. Warnke: See, when I went to Covington & Burling, the one they assigned me to work with was Tommy Austern. Did you know Tommy? Mr. Ross: I knew him very well. Mr. Warnke: And Tommy was, I think, one of the original Food and Drug lawyers. Mr. Ross: Yes. Mr. Warnke: So I entered that through Tommy. He had become a very good friend of Bill Stolk, and Bill Stolk became the head of the American Can Company, and the principal lawyer for the American Can Company was Whitney North Seymour who was, I think, with Simpson, Thatcher & Bartlett, I believe. Mr. Ross: That’s correct. Mr. Warnke: Basically Tommy took the client. The one time that Bill Stolk and Whitney North Seymour didn’t get along very well. Whitney said at one point that it is too bad that Bill Stolk wasn’t a college graduate because if he was he might be the head of the American Can Company. Mr. Ross: You never made that mistake I’m sure. Mr. Warnke: So, Bill Stolk was a very good friend, and very good client, and I did a lot of work for the American Can Company. One of the things was that Tommy didn’t like to litigate. Tommy was a great speechmaker, but Tommy had to prepare everything in advance. When he gave an extemporaneous speech it was a memorized speech, and getting up in court was very, very painful for him. As a consequence, I was sort of a good complement to Tommy. He had the business, and I was able to get up in court. Mr. Ross: And he needed you for that reason. 86 Mr. Warnke: And we became good friends. And we became very good personal friends. Mr. Ross: He had a very quick mind. Mr. Warnke: He had a very quick mind. He had the reputation of being a real tyrant and very difficult to work for. I found him a total breeze, a very sweet, easygoing guy. Mr. Ross: Well, he may have been to you, but there were some of the rest of us who’d say the sandpaper — Mr. Warnke: He could be very tough in dealings. Mr. Ross: Were you able to go to Tommy’s memorial service that was held at the Synagogue? Mr. Warnke: I did. Mr. Ross: The Dean gave a little talk — Mr. Warnke: Erwin Griswold. Mr. Ross: — gave a little talk about him which I thought was delightful. Mr. Warnke: It was delightful. Jean’s reaction was that nobody had to make a speech about Griswold when he died because he had said it all. It was a very good speech about Tommy. It was Tommy through the eyes of Erwin Griswold. Mr. Ross: Well, of course, yes. I can understand that. Mr. Warnke: But I thought it was very good. I thought the entire service was very good. Mr. Ross: Gene Littman, who was a very close friend, and I worked with at the ACLU for many years was, I thought, excellent in talking about Tommy, including the fact that 87 he never came to the service — or practically never did. Mr. Warnke: That’s right. Mr. Ross: I know you may think these are too detailed, but were you more of a Sherman Act person or a Clayton Act, or God help us, even the Robinson-Patman Act person? Mr. Warnke: I did an awful lot of Robinson-Patman Act work. Mr. Ross: Right. Mr. Warnke: I’d never even heard of the Robinson-Patman Act until I came to work with Tommy, but he had a lot of Robinson-Patman Act cases, and I would say that a good chunk of my practice was Robinson-Patman Act. Mr. Ross: I see. And over time, that must have fallen off because — Mr. Warnke: Oh, when I got back after — Mr. Ross: It just almost went away. Mr. Warnke: It was gone. Mr. Ross: All your expertise? Mr. Warnke: All my expertise. Mr. Ross: Did you ever try a major jury criminal case? Mr. Warnke: Yes. With the American Can Company. Oh, no, no, it was for the Institute of Shortening and Oils, Inc. Mr. Ross: Right. Tell me a little bit about it. Mr. Warnke: It was a lawsuit brought in California, and it just charged that some of the big firms in the Shortening and Oils field were monopolists and also were conspirators and therefore violated the antitrust laws, and the case was tried for a long, long time. The grand jury 88 was up for six to eight months. So I spent an awful lot of time in California in those days, and I represented the Institute of Shortening and Oils, Inc. and also Proctor & Gamble. How I could do both, I don’t know — would be difficult today — but back then I could do it. Mr. Ross: It was difficult. Mr. Warnke: And the case went to trial, and at the end of the government’s case, we moved to dismiss, and the judge granted the motion, so it never went to a jury. Mr. Ross: That’s a triumph. You must have had a good judge. Most of those federal judges didn’t like to do that. Mr. Warnke: I’ve forgotten what his name was, but he was quite independent and, obviously, a very good judge. Mr. Ross: You remember the government prosecutors? That was a government case? Mr. Warnke: Yes. Mr. Ross: Was he a good prosecutor? Mr. Warnke: A very good lawyer. In fact, everybody was startled when they dismissed the case. Mr. Ross: He didn’t expect that? Mr. Warnke: I didn’t expect it. None of us expected it. Mr. Ross: I hope the client was duly grateful. Mr. Warnke: The client was absolutely delighted. Mr. Ross: During this time, this case was in what law firm? Mr. Warnke: That would have been Covington & Burling. (Tape Ends) 89 ORAL HISTORY OF PAUL C. WARNKE – FOURTH INTERVIEW MARCH 29, 2001 This is the fourth interview of Paul C. Warnke in the taking of his oral history as part of the oral history project of the Historical Society of the District of Columbia Circuit. The interview is being taken by William Ross on March 29, 2001. The persons present are Paul Warnke and William Ross. Mr. Ross: You had some involvement with the local bar. You were on the board. Do you recall who was chairman of the — was this the old bar association? The private bar association? Or was it the District? Mr. Warnke: No, it was the District. Mr. Ross: The District of Columbia Bar. The official one. Mr. Warnke: Not the Bar Association of the District of Columbia. Mr. Ross: Right. What was your role — I’m trying to get you back into that period. What role did you play on the board? Mr. Warnke: I really don’t remember much about it at all. Mr. Ross: Did you have an important project? Many people don’t. Mr. Warnke: No, I don’t think I did. Mr. Ross: And you attended meetings? Mr. Warnke: I did. Yeah. I was a very faithful member. 90 Mr. Ross: Do you recall who was the president at that time? Mr. Warnke: I don’t. Mr. Ross: And you enjoyed it? Mr. Warnke: Yes. I left when I went into the government. Mr. Ross: Yes, I understand you’d have to. Mr. Warnke: I was on the Grievance Committee for a period of time. Mr. Ross: I wanted to ask you about that. Mr. Warnke: I’ve forgotten who was chairman of the Grievance Committee, a very nice fellow, who since died. Mr. Ross: Do you recall specific grievances or cases or matters that you were concerned with or engaged you? Mr. Warnke: No, not really. Mr. Ross: Does that develop a sense in you about self-government in the bar, in the way in which it’s handled, and — Mr. Warnke: I thought it was done quite well. Mr. Ross: The question is always the issue between the lawyers’ privacy and rehabilitation and the need for the public to be protected and also to have confidence. Mr. Warnke: I really had the feeling that the cases were by and large very clear cut. Mr. Ross: Because they don’t get that far. Mr. Warnke: Yeah. There was no — I can’t remember there being shades of gray. Mr. Ross: Right. According to Who’s Who, you were on an Advisory Commission to U.S. Commission on Civil Rights from ’62 to ’66, if I’ve understood this 91 correctly. Do you recall that? Mr Warnke: Yes. Mr. Ross: Tell me about that if you can. Mr. Warnke: I remember being on the committee. An awful lot of the issues were black and white. Really black rights. Mr. Ross: What was the role of this committee, as you recall it? Mr. Warnke: It was basically an advisory committee. Mr. Ross: And did you deal with things that the Commission referred to you? Mr. Warnke: Yeah. Mr. Ross: So you’d give them advice, you’d give them a reflection no doubt that was cross-sectioned. Mr. Warnke: That’s right. Mr. Ross: And then you were later on a member of the Governing Board of Common Cause. That was an interesting organization, particularly at one time. Do you have a sense or recollections about that service? Mr. Warnke: One thing I thought the board was much, much too big. So as a consequence, meetings at the board tended to be very prolonged, and I didn’t really enjoy it a great deal and did not accept reappointment. I thought it was very worthy, but rather dull. Mr. Ross: Looking over this list, and rather than going any further into this, there’s quite a number of organizations, but I’m going to take you back generally to the bar and to the judges and lawyers in the bar. You started out in practice three years before I did. I started in ’51, and the bar at that time was very different from what it’s become. 92 Mr. Warnke: Oh, yeah. Mr. Ross: If you got around, you knew just about everybody or knew of them. Mr. Warnke: You did. It was a much smaller community. Mr. Ross: And is it your sense that there was more civility in the bar at that time. Mr. Warnke: Oh, much, much more. Mr. Ross: That’s certainly mine. Mr. Warnke: People would call you up — the other lawyer would call you up and say I’d like another 2 days, and you’d say fine, and that was it. And people were very civil to one another in court. I find it revolting, the change. We all had the feeling of being in a common practice and having basically more in common than you had opposed. You didn’t identify the client with the lawyer. And now it’s quite different. Mr. Ross: Have you ever thought about what the reason for that change is? Mr. Warnke: I’m afraid it’s money as much as anything else. Back when we first started practicing law, Bill, people didn’t make anywhere near as much money — not close. I think that I started with $3,800 a year, and when I finally made $10,000 a year, that was a lot of money. And when I made $50,000, I was rich. Mr. Ross: You have a lawyer who was partner in Covington and was reputed to be one of the highest earning lawyers in the United States, and I think you know who he was, Paul Shorb. I know something about that because one of the things I did was work on his estate which was somewhat complicated by the fact that he had died intestate. He didn’t mean to. Mr. Warnke: No, he always planned to write a will. As I recall he was running for 93 a plane and had a heart attack. He was a nice fellow. Mr. Ross: Oh, he was a lovely guy, and listening to him on the phone with Alfred Slone, who happened to be a client of his, who worshiped the ground he walked on, or seemed to, and he would give Slone advice about his delinquent daughter or anything and everything, and it was all good advice. Mr. Warnke: He was a bright fellow. Mr. Ross: And even a little bit of tax law got into it. I used to sit in his office and hear these subjects, as did many of these people who worked for him. One of the things that bothered me — I was an active litigator for many years — the nature of the litigation changed, but I was always doing it, so when I started out there were (I’m exaggerating) four men in the District of Columbia Bar whose word you could not trust on a procedural matter. You had to get everything in writing. And when I stopped litigating, there might have been dozens, just dozens of such people. Mr. Warnke: I really have the feeling that the big change came about with billable hours, and why clients accepted that, I could never understand, because what it did was put a premium on inefficiency and loading up a case with lawyers. Back when Tommy [Austern] and I practiced law, one lawyer was regarded as being plenty. And Tommy just would never accept the idea of billable hours, nor did I, even when I went back into practice. What I did basically was do it on a retainer basis. I had to tell the client what I thought it was going to cost, and if it turned out to be more or less, it made no difference, and I got that from Tommy. And of course from Clark. And the idea of Clark sitting down at the end of the day and saying I spent 15 minutes doing this and 20 minutes doing that — 94 Mr. Ross: I recall him saying like an English bishop or lord, addressing a client in a conference the few times that I associated with him, that he did not keep time records. If you wanted him, you paid for him. Mr. Warnke: That’s right. Mr. Ross: Well, it’s a change. It didn’t happen to the doctors, just legal practice changed, but it happened to us. I’m going to take you back to the courts now. One of the things that happens to D.C. litigators who do federally related work is that most of the cases are tried out of town. Is that your experience? Mr. Warnke: Very much so. Mr. Ross: Because, for various reasons — Mr. Warnke: I tried cases out of town almost all the time. Mr. Ross: So you don’t get the experience with the local courts. Mr. Warnke: No. Mr. Ross: And that’s really a characteristic of the bar. Mr. Warnke: Very much so. I had a couple of cases here in town. One before Alexander Holtzoff. Mr. Ross: Go ahead. Tell me about that. Mr. Warnke: When I first got up, he said, “Mr. Warnke, stand up straight and button your coat.” Mr. Ross: Did he ever say this to you, “Take your briefcase off the table”? Mr. Warnke: Yes. Mr. Ross: People would warn you. Sometimes the clerks would warn you 95 before you’d be sitting around waiting for the judge to come in and the clerks would come up and suggest that you put the cases on the floor. Are there other judges that you remember? Mr. Warnke: Pat Wald. I was trying to think what case that was. She was on the Court of Appeals. I’ve forgotten who the heck the client was. And the judge at the trial was a black female judge. Mr. Ross: Was it Norma? Mr. Warnke: I think it was Norma. What was her last name? Mr. Ross: Norma — I’ll think of it, go ahead. Norma Johnson. Mr. Warnke: I won the case before her, and it was appealed, and it went to the Court of Appeals and Pat Wald was the Chief, and being a very good lawyer, she held in my favor. Norma Holloway Johnson. I’m trying to think — Holtzoff, Norma Holloway Johnson, another female judge — white. Mr. Ross: I don’t recall that name. Mr. Warnke: I think Joyce Hens Green. Mr. Ross: Because of the nature of the work I did, I was fairly often in the local Federal Court of Appeals. I argued a lot of appeals, mostly agency or antitrust matters, and my experience over part of that time was I would have to tell the client I’m going to do my best of course, but when the panel walks in, we may have a pretty good idea of whether we’ve won or lost. It was very striking. Did you experience that? Mr. Warnke: Yeah. Very frequently. I’m trying to think of a case I had with Joyce Hens Green. The Federal Trade Commission brought a suit to block the acquisition. Owens Illinois was my client. They wanted to buy another glass company, and they brought a 96 suit in the District Court to try and bar the acquisition. Their main contention was that Owens Illinois had practically a monopoly on soft drink containers, and they did practically make all of the glass containers, but what we concluded was that we ought to prove that glass competed with metal, tin or plastic, so what we did is to bring a whole exhibit into court in which we had shelves with all of the various kinds of bottles. I later had lunch one time with Joyce Hens Green when they had one of those Legends of the Law lunches, and she was talking about — she remembered that so well. So she turned down the injunction, and of course the Federal Trade Commission brought the case. We tried the case at some length and eventually won it. Mr. Ross: Who was on the Commission at that point, if you can recall? Was Phil Elman on the Commission then? Mr. Warnke: Phil was not at that point. Phil had left at that point. I did appear before the Commission several times when Phil was there. Phil was a good friend. We met up at Wellfleet when we were both young. Mr. Ross: I didn’t know that. I worked with Phil in the Department of Justice, more with Oscar Davis than with Phil, then later, much later, he came to my firm and worked as a compensated lawyer. I always found him stimulating and liked him very much. Mr. Warnke: Yeah. Earl Kintner? Mr. Ross: I remember Earl. Did you know Jack Howrey? Mr. Warnke: Not well. I remember I met him first of all when he was with that — what firm was he with? Mr. Ross: Well, he was with his own firm, Howrey & Simon. Mr. Warnke: I know, but this was before Howrey & Simon, and he was arguing, I 97 think, a 2(f) case before the Supreme Court and he talked with Tommy Austern about it. Tommy and I met with Earl Kintner and Jack Howrey. Mr. Ross: Jack Howrey, yeah. He was in practice with Lou Gravelle and, who was the other man? Then he went into the government and then he came out and found his firm. Mr. Warnke: And Paul Simon had been counsel to some antitrust subcommittee. Mr. Ross: Right. When I was a candidate for admission to the Metropolitan Club, I had been very active in the ACLU and the club had gotten a reputation of turning people like me down, and so I was told by Roger Nelson who was one of my sponsors, that I should talk to Jack Howrey. We had lunch at the Club, and he was polite to me, but I thought he was a little cold and distant. It didn’t go very well, and he questioned me about my activities with the ACLU and so forth, and other organizations I might have been in. I figured, well, you win some and lose some. Then his whole demeanor changed. He put his hand on my shoulder and said, you know who was in the office when I first started practicing law? I said, no sir, I don’t. He said it was your father, Warfield Ross, and he was the kindest man to me. I was so young and so — Mr. Warnke: I didn’t realize he was your father. Warfield Ross was? Mr. Ross: William Warfield Ross, yes. I’m a Junior. He was so kind to me and he just took me by the hand and so forth and he looked at me and said, Bill, you can join any club I’m in. It was all an act up to that point. Paul, I think we’ve covered the Department of Defense period pretty well and your period of 8 years or so practice with Clifford, Warnke, Carson, etc. firm, and we’re about to go into the ACDA/arms control and disarmament period, which is 1977 to 1978. Before I do that, I wanted to, just as a matter of interest, just read you a fairly short section from the then Doris 98 Kearns book called “Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream,” which I’m sure you’re quite familiar with. This is on page 320, and this is said to be a verbatim account of something that Johnson said to her in ’67. It starts out in the paragraph, and I won’t read it entirely: “In 1967, McNamara began to move away from the President’s policy of escalation.” That’s a quote and that refers, of course, to Vietnam. Then the next paragraph which is what I’m going to read, and these are in quotations: “McNamara’s problem” and this is Johnson speaking “was that he began to feel a division in his loyalties. He had always loved and admired the Kennedys, he was more their cup of tea, but he also admired and respected the Presidency. Then when he came to work for me, I believe he developed a deep affection for me as well, not so deep as the one he held for the Kennedys, but deep enough, combined with his feelings about the office itself, to keep him completely loyal for 3 long years. Then he got surrounded by Paul Warnke, Adam Yarmolinsky, and Alain Enthoven. They excited him with their brilliance. All the same cup of tea. All came to the same conclusion after old man Galbraith. Then the Kennedys began pushing him harder and harder. Every day Bobby would call up McNamara telling him that the war was terrible and immoral and that he had to leave. Two months before he left he felt he was a murderer and didn’t know how to extricate himself. I never felt like a murderer, that’s the difference. Someone had to call Hitler, and someone had to call Ho. We can’t let the Kennedys be peacemakers and us warmakers simply because they came from Charles River.” (Appendix attached). As you listen to it, could you comment on it? What reactions does it produce decades later? Mr. Warnke: Well, in the first place, Adam was not in the government at that point. Had not been for some time. 99 Mr. Ross: That’s Yarmolinsky. Mr. Warnke: Adam and I were good friends. I never thought of him as being particularly against the war. Along with most Americans, he eventually began to decide that it was a mistake, but early on, I know we had some arguments about it right toward the beginning. I was not in the government at that point, but I thought the entire idea of getting involved made no sense because I didn’t see any American interest being jeopardized there. And Alain Enthoven was, of course, another one of McNamara’s people. He and I were friendly. We were not particularly in collusion with one another, and I can’t recall talking much. I knew he had his difficulties about the war. Mr. Ross: The instinct of the whole paragraph is Johnson’s concern about the Kennedys. Mr. Warnke: That’s correct. Mr. Ross: And dislike of them in some way. Mr. Warnke: Intense dislike. Mr. Ross: And feeling competition and also a kind of word — is this correct — a kind of sense of Johnson that he was southern boy, Texas boy, below the track. They were New England aristocrats. Mr. Warnke: Yeah. And there was some basis for that. There’s no question that Bobby Kennedy didn’t think much of Lyndon Johnson, and Johnson didn’t think much of Bobby Kennedy. Mr. Ross: Johnson, of course, is one of the world’s most interesting and mysterious politicians. 100 Mr. Warnke: And he and I had almost no contact. I think I mentioned that to you before. Mr. Ross: Here he’s putting the whole question of Vietnam in the context of his differences with the Kennedys when he is President of the United States — one of the most powerful men in creation. Mr. Warnke: That’s right. Mr. Ross: I know history is very much interested in this, and it will go on being fascinating and books and books written about it, but I just thought I might get you on record — what does this say — you didn’t have a lot of close association with Johnson, but you were close to one of the most important men, if not the most important man. Mr. Warnke: I was very close to McNamara. Mr. Ross: What is your reaction to this. What does this say about this man? Mr. Warnke: I think the problem was that when he became President of the United States, he didn’t know anything about foreign affairs. That had not been his field, and I think that he was afraid that he was going to make some kind of ghastly mistake and he relied very, very heavily on people like Bobby Kennedy, like McNamara, like Dean Rusk. Kennedy put together a foreign policy team. Johnson had heard them, and he thought they had to be right, and as a consequence, he made a lot of mistakes. Mr. Ross: Another person, perhaps, would have said, well, there’s some good, smart men in there, but I need my own man, and have gotten his own group of experts, but Johnson did not do that. Mr. Warnke: He did not do that. The closest thing to it was — who was that guy 101 who was his administrative assistant for many years — a young fellow. Mr. Ross: Well, it was McPherson and — I don’t want to guess. At any rate, there was an administrative assistant that he relied on in the foreign policy area? Mr. Warnke: In every area. But he really had a feeling that people like McNamara and Dean Rusk really knew exactly what they were doing, and it very badly troubled McNamara. Mr. Ross: McNamara had, over time, developed some understanding of the President’s psychology, would you say? Mr. Warnke: Yeah. Mr. Ross: And being as intelligent and experienced as he was, you’re saying that he realized that the President was perhaps not in the position to have the kind of judgment about foreign affairs as he so clearly did in the domestic field. Mr. Warnke: That’s exactly true. Mr. Ross: And what you do about that if you’re the Secretary of the Department of Defense is rather hard to see. Mr. Warnke: Very difficult. And part of the problem, of course, was that Dean Rusk was a true believer until he died. I used to see him down at the University of Georgia because my brother taught down there and I’d go down there from time to time, and we got so that we were on friendly terms, but he never quite got over the idea that I had been a traitor because I turned against the war. Mr. Ross: Well that’s a very curious point of view, but seems to me there’s still people today who had the idea. 102 Mr. Warnke: But the idea that somehow Adam and I were in cahoots just is not true. Mr. Ross: Why do you think Johnson identified the three names? Mr. Warnke: I don’t know. I can’t figure out why he brought in Alain Enthoven. Mr. Ross: Tell me about him. Mr. Warnke: Alain was very, very bright. He was the Assistant Secretary in charge of systems analysis and was very highly regarded by McNamara and he was very good. Mr. Ross: Had he been a prior associate of McNamara? Mr. Warnke: No. Mr. Ross: Was he an academic or a scientist? Mr. Warnke: I guess he was a scientist. He came from California, went back to California, I think went back to the University of California. He was a devout Catholic. Mr. Ross: There’s a sense here that I get that Johnson, for whatever reason, thought that McNamara was being misled by the three of you. Mr. Warnke: Yeah. Mr. Ross: Led astray. Bad influence. Mr. Warnke: To the best of my recollection, the three of us never met and never had any close conversations about the war. I knew that Alain had his doubts about the war. That became clear because I did meet with him along with the other Assistant Secretaries on quite a regular basis, and Alain had the same view that almost everybody did. The only one I can recall that had a different view was Johnny Foster. Johnny was a true believer in the war and continued to be. But most of the others had concluded it was a terrible mistake, and I think were a little 103 reserved in pointing out just how strong they felt about it because they figured poor Johnson had been led into this. The President assumed Kennedy knew what he was doing and we were Kennedy’s close advisors. Mr. Ross: And he perhaps needed time to come to these conclusions himself. Mr. Warnke: But it seems to me that what he ignores is that I get in fairly late. I was not involved in the early part of even Johnson’s Administration. I got in, I think it was in — Mr. Ross: Well, you came in in ’67 according to this summary I did. Mr. Warnke: I think I was first approached — Mr. Ross: Well, you became General Counsel. Mr. Warnke: That’s right. In ’66, and I think in the Fall of ’67 I became General Counsel. So that was fairly well along. Mr. Ross: Well why don’t we turn to or move ahead from ’69 to ’77, and in the interval, you’d been practicing law. We talked about that. Then you become the Director of ACDA in Carter’s Administration. Can you tell me how that happened? Mr. Warnke: Yeah. I met with Carter — well I met with him first before he was elected, when he was a nominee, and he invited a group down to Georgia, and we met with him in his hometown in Georgia, and that would have been Paul Nitze — I’m trying to think of who else — the guy who became Secretary of Defense in the Carter Administration — the guy had been Secretary of the Navy in the Johnson Administration. Harold Brown. And Cyrus Vance. Mr. Ross: And so the three or four of you got together with Carter. Mr. Warnke: Yeah. Mr. Ross: Were you talking about arms control? 104 Mr. Warnke: We were talking about foreign policy generally, including arms control. Paul and I expressed different points of view, and I think that’s where Paul first began to resent me, and I believe that then Paul was very interested in getting a high position in the Carter Administration, and was bitterly disappointed when he didn’t get a big job. He didn’t get along with Carter, and Carter didn’t like him. It was just as simple as that. Paul had a — I don’t know quite how to call it, but — not a snobby streak, but his shoes were a lot whiter than Carter’s, and I think Carter had a feeling that he really kind of looked down on him, which was not true. But that was the beginning of the friction between Paul Nitze and me. Mr. Ross: Could you summarize what was the difference — you both were saying things — Carter was asking questions. Very intelligent things. Quick study, but with limited background in this area. And you were speaking up, as were the others, you and Nitze. How would you frame the difference between what you said, the two of you, you and Nitze? Mr. Warnke: Well, I think Paul had much more of a feeling that we were properly involved in Vietnam and that it had not been a mistake. I think to some extent he saw it as part of the conflict between the United States and China, and I didn’t see it that way at all. It turned out that the Vietnamese and Chinese had always been enemies. They didn’t like one another, and they didn’t think there was any type of plan by Peking to undermine us. I think that to some extent they were intrigued that we got so involved and weren’t unhappy about that. Mr. Ross: Sorta coming into their neighborhood. Mr. Warnke: And not knowing what we were doing. Mr. Ross: Did you talk about the Cold War and about the Soviet Union, as you can recall? You probably did. 105 Mr. Warnke: Yeah. Paul Nitze saw everything in terms of the U.S./Soviet relationship, and anything that was bad for us was good with the Soviets, and vice versa. I think he had the feeling that if we drew back on Vietnam, that would be regarded as a victory for the Russians. Mr. Ross: And this was then in the context of, among others, the ongoing efforts in arms control, and so I would think that must have come up to some extent. Mr. Warnke: It did. Mr. Ross: Did Carter have any views about arms control at the times he came into office that you’re aware of? Mr. Warnke: I think he was very much in favor of reaching some kind of accord with the Soviets. 106 ORAL HISTORY OF PAUL C. WARNKE – FIFTH INTERVIEW APRIL 3, 2001 This is the fifth interview of Paul C. Warnke in the taking of his oral history as part of the oral history project of the Historical Society of the District of Columbia Circuit. The interview is being taken by William Ross on April 3, 2001. The persons present are Paul Warnke and William Ross. Mr. Ross: Carter had, of course, been a naval officer, and he’d been involved in the nuclear submarine program. He had a sense that, if I understand you, it was necessary or desirable to engage the Russians. Mr. Warnke: Oh yes, very much so. Mr. Ross: So that one could sense when he came into office, he was at least potentially a supporter of an — Mr. Warnke: Of an agreement, that’s right. Mr. Ross: All right. Go ahead and describe, if you will, you had this conversation with Carter in Georgia, and then if you could pick it up there. What happened in this area? How did the events move so that you ended up being the Arms Control Director and the negotiator? Mr. Warnke: I was very interested, of course, in being Secretary of Defense. It became clear at a fairly early junction that that was not in the cards, that that was going to be Harold Brown. 107 Mr. Ross: Did Carter have an association with him earlier on? Mr. Warnke: I don’t know. To some extent, but see, my first contact with Carter was through the Trilateral Commission. I think I mentioned this before. Mr. Ross: Yes, you mentioned it. Could you describe that a little bit? Mr. Warnke: Well, the Trilateral Commission was, to a large extent, the idea of Zbig Brzezinski. Mr. Ross: Well, just describe whoever you’re referring to because we can get these names. Mr. Warnke: David Rockefeller was deeply involved too, and J.D. Smith. When we were putting the Trilateral Commission together, Zbig, who is one of the founding fathers, and a southern governor — I’ve forgotten who was then the Governor of Florida, but he was a democrat, and Zbig made a try at getting him interested, and he was not interested, and so I remember being at the Trilateral Commission and all of the sudden this guy came up and said, hello, my name is Jimmy Carter. That’s my first contact with Jimmy Carter who was then the Governor of Georgia, and he and Zbig, as a consequence, became good friends, and then Carter went to a Trilateral Commission meeting in Japan, and that’s where he made basically his first speech as a candidate. This again was under Brzezinski. Then I got a call from Carter after he got the nomination, and he wanted to know whether I’d be interested in going with the Administration, and I said very much so. Then Cy was named the Secretary of State, and I got a call from Cy Vance who said he would like me to work with him, and would I be interested in either being the Deputy Secretary of State or in charge of the Arms Control Agency. I said I’d love to be Deputy Secretary of Defense. He said it’s between you and Warren Christopher, and 108 to my regret, he picked Chris as the Deputy and asked me to be head of the Arms Control Agency, and I turned it down. I thought, it’s not what I wanted. Then at some point I think Jean was at a party with Cy Vance, and Cy said how much he regretted that I would not become head of the Arms Control Agency, and Jean said you haven’t tried hard enough. So the next thing I remember is that I was at lunch and somebody said the President is on the phone. I got on the phone and it was Jimmy Carter and he said would you come on by and see me? And I went by and saw him. He said, I am now personally asking you to be head of the Arms Control. I said you can’t turn down a President who puts it in those terms. Mr. Ross: Very hard. Mr. Warnke: So I took it. Mr. Ross: This would have been then 1977? Mr. Warnke: Yeah. Early ’77. Mr. Ross: And do you recall who your predecessor was in that Agency? Mr. Warnke: Yeah, Fred Ikle. Mr. Ross: I don’t know him. Mr. Warnke: Well, he was later involved with other Republican administrations in the Department of Defense. I think he was the Deputy Secretary of Defense. A bright guy — I had met him because Ralph Earle, of course, who had been in the Democratic Administration with me, stayed in. He went back to practicing law in Philadelphia and couldn’t stand it. Mr. Ross: He was in the firm that I was in for a while. Morgan, Lewis & Bockius. Go ahead. Mr. Warnke: So he went back into the government. 109 Mr. Ross: So you took this position over and you were confronted with what had been an ongoing interrelationship, diplomatic relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union. Mr. Warnke: Right. Mr. Ross: And you were stepping into a moving stream. Mr. Warnke: Very much so. And then, of course, the fact that my appointment was so controversial and so deeply opposed. Mr. Ross: Why do you think that happened? Mr. Warnke: I gathered from what people had said later that the prime mover was Richard Perle. Richard and I had known one another and had quite distinct differences of opinion. He was then working for Scoop Jackson and he managed to get Scoop Jackson deeply, deeply involved in opposing my confirmation. Mr. Ross: Why do you think Dick Perle zeroed in on you? I think I have an idea myself, but I’d like to hear yours. Mr. Warnke: I think that we had very different views. He knew that I had very different views, and we had been on the same organization, but had different approaches to it. I think that — it may sound egotistical, but — he thought I would be a formidable adversary. Mr. Ross: That was going to be my explanation. Mr. Warnke: And he would have preferred somebody else. Mr. Ross: Somebody else with your views but not nearly as articulate or effective politically. I recall being in a small meeting with Perle as a result of my involvement with LAWS, and Perle was letting his hair down, and I was trying to figure the guy out. Finally 110 at one point he said, you know I don’t think the United States should ever enter into any kind of arms control agreement with the Soviet Union. That’s my basic position. Politically that’s not a tenable or useful position, so I’m not going to come out with that. Mr. Warnke: That was basically his point of view. Mr. Ross: And you must have heard something like that from him. He could be quite — Mr. Warnke: He never put it that way to me. Mr. Ross: He may have regretted saying this to us. Of course, it was all off the record. So, I gather you collected a lot of ideological baggage which perhaps didn’t fit very well to you. Mr. Warnke: Like what? Mr. Ross: This baggage may have been not entirely of your choosing, and you became identified as a spokesman for extreme points of view which, in fact, were not your own views. They had some fundamentals about which you felt very strongly, but yours were much more flexible. Is that a good account? Mr. Warnke: Yeah. I could never really quite understand why I was characterized as being so far out, which I really was not. I believe in a strong defense. I believe that the Soviets did represent a problem for us, as did China, but I thought that we could afford to negotiate with them, and I thought we were better at it than they were. Dick Perle had the feeling that if we dealt with them, they were so much cannier than we were. As a consequence, he was afraid of doing anything with the Soviets. Mr. Ross: Even getting in the same room with them. 111 Mr. Warnke: And I had the opposite feeling, and it became conflicting the more I dealt with him. The more I dealt with them, the more I realized that they were much, much more afraid of us than we were of them and that they thought we were out to do them in. It wasn’t entirely incorrect. Mr. Ross: Or at least some of us were out to do them. Did you ever get from Carter officially or informally a statement of his views and his policies in this area, say toward the beginning of your service? Mr. Warnke: No. Mr. Ross: Never did? Mr. Warnke: No. Mr. Ross: I assume that there were one or more people close to Carter in the Executive Office who you talked to and related to during your time of service. The assistants who might have been charged with this arms control area. Mr. Warnke: Well, of course, it was primarily Zbig. And then David Aaron worked for Zbig, and I think began to think of me as the Antichrist, just as Zbig did. Mr. Ross: Why do you think he did that? Was it just because he was a hardliner, his temperament was –? Mr. Warnke: I think David was very ambitious and he could see Zbig moving on and he saw it as a way of moving up himself. Mr. Ross: How about Brzezinski himself? Why did he adopt this stance rather than, let’s say, the stance of a cautious arms controller? Mr. Warnke: I think in part was that he was a Pole, and the Poles hate the 112 Russians. They’ve been kicked around by the Russians. Mr. Ross: With reason. Mr. Warnke: That’s perfectly correct. And as a consequence, I think he found it very difficult to deal with them on kind of a urbane dialogue. I know that that’s the way Gromyko felt. Mr. Ross: I always got the sense that Brzezinski was a strange foreign policy advisor for a president like Carter. Interesting that he would have picked and retained someone not of his temperament as opposed to Paul Warnke. Mr. Warnke: I think that Carter had a sense of gratitude toward Zbig. I think he figured he never would have been President of the United States had it not been the fact that Zbig picked a southern governor, put him on the Trilateral Commission. As a consequence, it was a sense of gratitude and also if you have that sense of gratitude, I think you tend to exaggerate the good qualities of the person to whom you’re grateful. As a consequence, I think that in debates between Brzezinski and Cy Vance, that Jimmy Carter’s impetus was to side with Brzezinski. Mr. Ross: Is Brzezinski a Roman Catholic? Mr. Warnke: I don’t really know. Mr. Ross: It didn’t come up? Mr. Warnke: No. I think probably he probably was. I have difficulty identifying the faiths of the principal people I’ve worked with. Mr. Ross: Very often it’s not much of an issue with Milquetoast Protestants, but sometimes with people who have very strong religious affiliation it can be quite an issue. 113 Mr. Warnke: Certainly Carter was a devout Protestant. I know the first time I had lunch alone with him, I was back from Geneva and he invited me to the White House for lunch, and we sat down and I was reaching for my fork and all of the sudden I realized that he was saying grace. So I joined him in saying grace. Mr. Ross: I’m glad. Let’s go to the Congress. Your nomination to this position, did it require Senate — what’s the term — approval? Mr. Warnke: Yeah. But not two-thirds. Mr. Ross: Oh, just a simple majority. You were lucky. Mr. Warnke: Yep. I remember saying one time that I’m glad I’m not a treaty. I’d never make it. Mr. Ross: Did you lobby actively with the Senate? Mr. Warnke: I did. Mr. Ross: You felt you had to. Mr. Warnke: Yeah. Mr. Ross: And of course there was Jackson who was opposing you. Mr. Warnke: Yeah, strongly. Mr. Ross: And he was very powerful. Mr. Warnke: He was. Mr. Ross: Who were the key people in the Senate who you think supported you effectively? Mr. Warnke: Certainly Ed Muskie. Hubert Humphrey, who I don’t think was in the Senate at that time but was still a prominent figure. Alan Cranston. Gary Hart. John Culver. 114 John Culver was a strong supporter. I think those were the principal ones. Mr. Ross: How was the question framed for consideration in the Senate? Usually a couple of issues pop out when something controversial is going to come to a vote. Did it come to a vote on the floor? Mr. Warnke: Yes. Mr. Ross: Did it have to do with the fact that you were considered not sufficiently hawkish or hard-core? Mr. Warnke: I was said to be soft on the Soviets. Mr. Ross: Do you think that, or can you comment on the impact of this nomination fight on your performance? Mr. Warnke: It was a big help. Mr. Ross: Because certain things had — Mr. Warnke: No, it made me and my job look to the Russians as much more important than it was. Mr. Ross: Maybe the President would have paid more attention, too. Mr. Warnke: That’s right because I remember the first time I met him. Semenov was my counterpart in the SALT talks. He said, I’m glad to meet you. I’ve read so much about you. Mr. Ross: So you just weren’t an obscure bureaucrat, but one who’d been in the limelight? Mr. Warnke: Yeah. And Gromyko and I get along quite well. Mr. Ross: He was an interesting — 115 Mr. Warnke: He was a very interesting guy. He was very important back then too because, of course, at that point Brezhnev had had his strokes. Mr. Ross: Gromyko had been around forever, wasn’t he, and because of the Brezhnev illness, he came forward. Mr. Warnke: Very much so. If you were in a meeting with Brezhnev and Gromyko, Gromyko would take charge. I gather that was not the case until Brezhnev had been ill for quite some time, and I know that reading some of the transcripts of top level conferences even at the beginning of the — if not the beginning of the Carter Administration, certainly in previous Administrations — that he was very much in charge. He was very quick witted. He had a good sense of humor. Mr. Ross: Would you call him a career Russian foreign service man? Mr. Warnke: Yeah. Mr. Ross: His background had been coming up in the ministry. Mr. Warnke: That’s right. Mr. Ross: He’d been very successful. Was he ever a member of Politburo? Mr. Warnke: I don’t think so. Mr. Ross: So when you were dealing with him, did you have a sense you were talking with someone who’s important in the Russian concept? Mr. Warnke: As I say at that point, he really was in charge of foreign policy. Very much so. Mr. Ross: Did you ever have any one on one conversations with him? Mr. Warnke: With an interpreter. Which was not necessary because he spoke 116 perfectly good English. I remember one time that I was in Moscow without Cy, I think when Cy knew I was leaving, and I think he wanted to give me a shot at being the top guy in the meetings with the Soviets. At a lunch with — I think it was just the four of us, two interpreters and he and I — and it was very interesting. We got along very well. Mr. Ross: When you were talking with him, did the conversation stay strictly within the framework of your formal negotiations, or did you get off on other things? Mr. Warnke: We sort of got off on things like U.S./Russian relations. Sort of a consistent concern as far as Gromyko was concerned is why aren’t we friends? We don’t have anything that you want, and you don’t have anything that we can take from you. Mr. Ross: All very true. What was your answer? Mr. Warnke: I said there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be. We ought to be friends. And we two did become friends. So did he and Cy. In fact when he was very sick, Cy went over there basically to say goodbye. Mr. Ross: Did you get a sense of the mix of Russian political opinion on arms control? There must have been people who didn’t share Gromyko’s views. Mr. Warnke: Oh, very much so. 117 ORAL HISTORY OF PAUL C. WARNKE – SIXTH INTERVIEW APRIL 5, 2001 This is the sixth interview of Paul C. Warnke in the taking of his oral history as part of the oral history project of the Historical Society of the District of Columbia Circuit. The interview is being taken by William Ross on April 5, 2001. The persons present are Paul Warnke and William Ross. Mr. Ross: We were talking about Gromyko and the Russians. Some of the more sophisticated arguments against arms control were that formal agreements for reduction were unlikely to produce any permanent valuable consequences simply because nuclear arms were here to stay, and that the quantity of nuclear arms (whether the Russians had 10,000 or 100 bombs, they could destroy the United States with 100 if they were the right kind) and that there was a danger in these agreements to the U.S. I won’t go on any further. You were working intensively in this area and have thought about it for such a time. What was your feeling about that? What do you think you were trying to accomplish of value with the SALT II agreement and the things that would follow from it? Mr. Warnke: Really try to avoid the kind of accident that would result in widespread destruction. I couldn’t believe that we or the Soviets would start a nuclear war on purpose, but I thought we could blunder into it. Mr. Ross: That would involve state safeguards. Mr. Warnke: That’s right. Mr. Ross: And the number of nuclear weapons—how does this relate in your 118 mind? Reductions in nuclear weapons and in forces? Mr. Warnke: I guess that I was never a strong believer in numbers as being the key. If you had a couple rather than several thousand, you could still destroy one another. It was really a question of not making a miscalculation ending up with a kind of imbalance that might in a crisis lead either side to feel, okay, if I go first, I win and they lose. Mr. Ross: Is there a psychological component involving the extent to which a nation’s defense psychology and posture relies on large-scale nuclear forces and the extent it doesn’t, that has an effect on the danger of an inadvertent — Mr. Warnke: Not really. See by the time I got involved in nuclear affairs, this was fairly far along. At the beginning, I think the first one who began to think seriously about this was Bob McNamara. Prior to that time, you just followed the flow. They built more, you built more. I think Bob was the first one who gave some serious thought to just policy as such, and what we could and couldn’t do to prevent what would otherwise be a disastrous mistake on somebody’s part. Mr. Ross: I sometimes felt during the time when I was very active with LANAC and LAWS — of course we were on the outside — that we made a mistake in not answering the more cogent arguments against our pro-agreement, pro-reduction positions. I recall an article by Henry Kissinger — very long, very convoluted, but potent — arguing against arms control agreement, and I recall similar arguments by other people. I would talk with Ralph Earle and other people about this. “We were always writing op eds in The New York Times (if we can get them in) or in The Washington Post, but nobody answers Kissinger.” Earle’s comment was interesting. He’s a very highly intelligent guy. One of the few in this area who can 119 be compared to Paul Warnke. He said something to the effect, “Well, you know, it’s a very complex subject, and if you take Kissinger on, then he comes back at you and you turn the whole thing into an argument with Kissinger, and on Henry’s own ground, you’re not going to win that argument.” Mr. Warnke: I think that’s basically very true. For one thing, he is revered by so many people. He writes these long, long articles. Op ed pieces which are three times the size of anyone else’s op ed case. Everyone automatically prints it, and sometimes it’s dull, repetitious, and not terribly to the point. Mr. Ross: Well, I got a sense that events moved through that period. You were dealing with other countries, as well as the Russians? Mr. Warnke: Yeah. Mr. Ross: How important was that — your sense of your job — Mr. Warnke: In dealing with other countries? Mr. Ross: Yeah. What the British thought, the French — Mr. Warnke: The British and we, of course, worked very closely together. I’m trying to think of the guy that I dealt with for the most part, but there were a couple of them that I dealt with. And they were very, very good and very helpful. Oh God, I can’t remember their names anymore. One was a Navy-type. We became personal friends. And I would say that they were consistently helpful. The French we tried to engage but had no success in doing it at all. They wanted to be uninvolved. And the Japanese just hated even to be asked. They’d just leave it all to the United States. Mr. Ross: Being asked created political problems for them? 120 Mr. Warnke: Yeah. They were afraid they’d say something wrong. Mr. Ross: They’re not so reticent these days. Mr. Warnke: No, they’re not. Mr. Ross: How about Germany? West Germany? Mr. Warnke: Again, I think that they felt sort of dependent on the United States. They wanted to be sure they didn’t do anything to ruffle our feathers. Mr. Ross: Were there any points during these 2 years which were turning points for you where things shifted or took different roads, either in your own life or in the country’s activities in the arms control area? Mr. Warnke: Let me think about that, Bill. Nothing comes to mind right away, but I’m sure there was something. No, I thought it went pretty much — Mr. Ross: Would you consider that your time in that position was basically successful in terms of what you accomplished? Mr. Warnke: I’d say on the whole, yes. I had very, very good support. I mean no one could have gotten better support than I got from Cy Vance. Cy Vance made sure that Carter supported me, so it worked out alright. Mr. Ross: That was a critical relationship. Mr. Warnke: That’s right. But I took the job at Cy’s request, and Cy and I were and remain good friends. Mr. Ross: He knew who and what he was getting when you — Mr. Warnke: I’d worked for him for a period of time, and we got along fine. Mr. Ross: Who were the people on your administration, on the agency that you 121 were the head of that were most important in your work? Mr. Warnke: Well, of course, Ralph Earle was deeply involved. Spurgeon Keeney. Mr. Ross: Did you have a technical advisor? Engineer or scientist? Mr. Warnke: Yeah, lots. Mr. Ross: Who was the senior, if you recall? Mr. Warnke: I don’t. I can look it up. Mr. Ross: Let me get into a subject that’s always interested me, and that’s balance of forces. I recall that Jonathan Dean, who was later with the Union of Concerned Scientists, became an expert on this and wrote big huge studies of balance of forces. Then years passed and I was in a meeting with a Russian major general who was identified by political and diplomatic people as important, who blew up at the meeting and I think genuinely, not in a nasty or mean way, but just sheer exasperation, saying to the effect that you Americans keep talking about the balance of forces. There’s no balance in Europe. They keep counting Warsaw Pact soldiers and tanks. He said it should be obvious to you that for every non-Soviet or Warsaw Pact soldiers we need two Soviet soldiers to watch him night and day. When you talk about our tanks (this would have been in ’89 maybe), a tank that has been sitting in a field for 2 years without maintenance is not a tank. You can’t repair it. You have to send it back to a factory to re-build, and in Russia, that takes at least 2 years. He said, “We can no more invade Western Europe than the U.S., and we haven’t been able to invade Western Europe for 10 years, and none of your people understand that.” Mr. Warnke: That’s right. 122 Mr. Ross: There was silence. Then he apologized. But it was a cry from the heart. Do you have a thought about that? I told that to Jonathan Dean and he said in effect, you’re saying that everything I’ve done for the past 10 years is worthless. Mr. Warnke: Just the fact of doing it is important. Mr. Ross: What is your reaction to the Russian general, who’s name I cannot remember. Mr. Warnke: Oh, he’s perfectly correct. Mr. Ross: Let me ask you before we break, in thinking back over this 2 years in this light of where the world is today and where arms control is today, the ABM Treaty, ______ Proliferation Agreements. Do you have some thoughts about where we are right now? Mr. Warnke: Well, I think we’re more realistic about it all now. I don’t think there’s a psychotic feeling about the Russian menace that there was for many years. I think we realize that Russia is not a first-rate power, and maybe not even a second-rate power. Mr. Ross: Of course they’ve got a lot of nukes. Mr. Warnke: They’ve got an awful lot of nukes, and they don’t know quite what to do with them. But I think that — I forget who it was — but there was some Russian I dealt with at one point and he said, what you don’t take into account is that we don’t have any friends. Mr. Ross: Yes, I read that too. We’re encircled. Suppose your country like ours was entirely surrounded by hostile nations? I was talking with Ralph Earle not too long ago and he said, “Jesse Helms makes me very uneasy because he has been saying different things. I always knew where Jesse was. He was a reality. Now I don’t know where Jesse’s head is.” Do you have a thought about that? 123 Mr. Warnke: Not really. Mr. Ross: Well, we’ll go into this question of where arms control in some length. You can be thinking about it. I think it’s about time to go out. Could we go on Thursday at 10:00? Mr. Warnke: Thursday at 10:00 would be great. Mr. Ross: I’ll try to be on time. 124 ORAL HISTORY OF PAUL C. WARNKE – SEVENTH INTERVIEW APRIL 12, 2001 This is the seventh interview of Paul C. Warnke in the taking of his oral history as part of the oral history project of the Historical Society of the District of Columbia Circuit. The interview is being taken by William Ross on April 12, 2001. The persons present are Paul Warnke and William Ross. Mr. Ross: You left ACDA, as I understand it, about half-way through Carter’s term. Mr. Warnke: That’s right. Mr. Ross: Could you explain the circumstances of that? Why did you leave that position? Mr. Warnke: I had made it clear at the beginning of the Carter Administration that if I had that job instead of a Washington-based job, I would not stay for 4 years. It was just too hard on Jean. We had no kids left at home, and I was in Geneva most of the time and she was here, and I didn’t like it, and she didn’t like it. Mr. Ross: Who succeeded you in the head of ACDA? Mr. Warnke: I think that was George Stitenzeous who was an Army General. Mr. Ross: Did you think of him as arms controller? Mr. Warnke: Yeah, because he had been with me for a couple of years and had been interested in it and had become a — 125 Mr. Ross: A disciple. Mr. Warnke: Yeah. You have to remember that a lot of the military were very very much in favor of arms control. I mean there were some that weren’t, but I’d say that most of them were. Mr. Ross: Well, it’s understandable that they would be knowledgeable about the subject. Mr. Warnke: They were knowledgeable about it; they hated war; and they particularly hated the idea of a nuclear war. Mr. Ross: I don’t want to go too far into the minutia of arms control because, of course, it’s very, very well recorded in history. I know that you have an enormous recollection in that area, but I want to focus more on some things that are more personal. But I do want to ask you about the Standing Committee and your relations with that and any thoughts you had about the effectiveness of that committee during the Carter years and thereafter and its role in national affairs. I’m giving you, in other words, an opportunity to talk about it in any way you want. Mr. Warnke: Well, I think the Standing Committee had started before the Carter Administration. In fact, it may have started a couple of Administrations before. It consisted of the Secretary of State, Secretary of Defense, the President’s National Security Advisor, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, the head of the CIA, and the deputy head of the CIA. I think that’s about it. Mr. Ross: How does this relate to the so-called “Tuesday meetings”? Mr. Warnke: Well, the Tuesday meetings were during the Johnson Administration. Mr. Ross: Johnson and they did not continue. 126 Mr. Warnke: They did not continue to the best of my knowledge. Mr. Ross: And so this was the operative group of high-level officials? Mr. Warnke: High-level officials that met reasonably often. I didn’t find it terribly helpful. There was a lot of friction between Zbig and Cy, and that sort of minimized the overall value. And then Harold Brown was trying to decide which side to be on, whether it was Cy or Zbig. Carter was there most of the time. Mr. Ross: He actually attended. Mr. Warnke: Yes, he did. Mr. Ross: Did he play an active role or was it more that just he was monitoring it? Mr. Warnke: I’d say he played an active role. He was very interested in arms control. I mean he was a true believer and was very interested in having it come out the right way. He was very torn between Zbig and Cy. Zbig had been the one that basically introduced him to the federal government. I think I’ve gone into that before. Mr. Ross: Right, you mentioned it. Mr. Warnke: So as a consequence, Zbig was important to him and of course Zbig being in the White House had very ready access to him. Mr. Ross: Did you get a sense in Carter’s Administration that Vance could pick up the phone and reach the President if — Mr. Warnke: I think he could. Mr. Ross: There are times I gather when that isn’t the case. Mr. Warnke: There are times when that is not the case. 127 Mr. Ross: There was something that was called a Committee on the Present Danger that was set up quite early and, as I understand it, during the Carter Administration there was a continuation of that committee called the Second Committee on the Present Danger and Paul Nitze was very much involved in that. I guess that Eugene Rostow was another very important — Mr. Warnke: Oh, very important. Mr. Ross: Richard Perle and others. At the time I’m focusing on you had left the government and you were practicing law, but I get the sense that you were still very much involved. And you certainly were involved in the minds of the people who thought you were the arch antichrist. Mr. Warnke: That’s right. No, I kept all my clearances and, of course, the guy that took over negotiations, Ralph Earle, had been somebody I’d brought into the government back in the Pentagon days, so he and I remained good friends — still are. The Committee on the Present Danger was basically against arms control. There was just no question about it. They thought that the Soviets were an unadulterated danger, that you couldn’t deal with them; it was crazy if you tried, and Gene Rostow was, I think, almost preoccupied with the menace of the Soviets. And Paul Nitze became more-so, I think in part because he didn’t get a job in the Carter Administration that he badly wanted. At one point, I went down to Albany, Georgia with a group, including Harold Brown, Paul Nitze, and Paul was making quite a strong pitch to be high up in the Carter Administration. For some reason, Carter didn’t take to him, so then Paul was a strong figure in the Committee on the Present Danger. I don’t know how often they met; they didn’t tell me. 128 Mr. Ross: They were very active politically. Mr. Warnke: Yeah. Mr. Ross: And they appeared to have access to substantial funds. Mr. Warnke: I think they did. Mr. Ross: And, would it be fair to say that they were leading the charge from what might be called the conservative or anti-arms control? Mr. Warnke: Yeah, I’d say that’d be entirely fair. Mr. Ross: And, of course they continued to be active up into Reagan’s first term. Mr. Warnke: And then sort of disappeared. Mr. Ross: Do you recall a term called “Team A” and “Team B” which debated? Mr. Warnke: Yeah, vaguely. Mr. Ross: That was set up inside the DOD, was it? Mr. Warnke: I think inside the Administration. I don’t think it was entirely DOD. Mr. Ross: And was it one of the pro-arms control and the other one negative, or is that too — Mr. Warnke: I would say that one was neutral and one was highly partisan. Team B really did not want an agreement. Mr. Ross: These people were supposed to debate, consult and provide advice. Mr. Warnke: Now who was the prime mover there? Oh, Lord. Mr. Ross: Were there outsiders involved on those teams? Mr. Warnke: Yeah. 129 Mr. Ross: Were you a member of either team? Mr. Warnke: No. Mr. Ross: Richard Perle, was he on Team B? Mr. Warnke: Team B. Mr. Ross: And Gene Rostow, was he involved? Mr. Warnke: Right. Mr. Ross: Were there other names that come to mind? Mr. Warnke: I’m trying to think of the — oh God — I think he was a former military man. He was very prominent in the entire thing. Have you got some names? Mr. Ross: Well, I’ve got some names. There’s Charles Walker, Richard Allen, Lane Kirkland who, of course, later — Mr. Warnke: Yeah, he was not very active. Mr. Ross: Admiral Zumwalt. Was he a pro-arms control? Mr. Warnke: He was a skeptic. Not violently anti. Mr. Ross: Henry Fowler, he was the lawyer. Do you think this committee had a real impact on government policy? Mr. Warnke: I’d say not anywhere near as much as they figured they would have, but it certainly had some impact. For one thing, they had strong Congressional support. Mr. Ross: Was there a change in the overall balance on this broad issue in the Congress in moving from Carter’s Administration to Reagan’s Administration? Mr. Warnke: As far as the Congress is concerned, not much. Those who were pro were still pro; those who were anti, of course, had much more support within the government 130 than they had before. Mr. Ross: That was key. Mr. Warnke: My God, I wish I could come up with that name. He was not in the government at that point. I think he had been an academic. Mr. Ross: I wish I could help you. Maybe it will come while we’re talking. At one point you made a comment which is frequently commented in the literature that I looked at, with reference to Richard Perle, that it was like having the fox guarding the hen house. Do you recall that? Mr. Warnke: I sort of recall that, yeah. Mr. Ross: What was the sense there with putting Perle in charge of any part of the arms control? Mr. Warnke: He was so violently anti-Soviet and against anything that was involved with the Soviets. Mr. Ross: Let me ask you something that you may not think is terribly appropriate, but you must have over the years thought about the origin of the positions that many of your opponents developed on nuclear arms and weapons and mass destruction, particularly the extreme version of it that we should build a wall around the Soviets and arm ourselves and forget about dealings with them. I know you must have thought about, where does that come from? What is the kind of background and experience and education and temperament that produces a Richard Perle or a Paul Nitze in his last phase? Mr. Warnke: I don’t recall. It came as quite a surprise to me because I really thought that the Soviets were making a genuine effort all during the Carter Administration to try 131 and come to some sort of an agreement. By that point, Brezhnev was old, tired, a little gaga. Andrei Gromyko was very much in charge of things like arms control, and he and Cy Vance hit it off right away — became, as a matter of fact, quite good friends when Andrei Gromyko was in his final illness, Vance went over and saw him in Russia. I found, much to my surprise, that Gromyko could be quite amusing. He had sort of a pixie sense of humor, and I really had the feeling that he wanted to deal, and I certainly felt the same way about Vladimir Semenov, who was my counterpart. Semenov very definitely wanted a deal, and tried his best and would meet us more than half-way. We would seem the more intransigent always. Mr. Ross: During this period, it was a commonplace observation that principal problems with obtaining significant arms control, whether it was SALT II, or whatever lay in the United States of America and in our political system and not in Soviet Russia. There has been the difference of opinion as to whether the United States should try to use the power that nuclear weapons gives it to advance its interests in the international sphere, and this would include, for example, the threats to use nuclear weapons in circumstances which don’t involve the defense against nuclear attack, just as — Mr. Warnke: Some people had felt that way. That never was a feeling that I thought had much currency within the government. Mr. Ross: It was mostly people outside — Mr. Warnke: It was mostly people outside the government. Mr. Ross: Certainly Reagan talked that way at times. Mr. Warnke: Yeah, but then he talked exactly the other way at times, too. Mr. Ross: Right. Didn’t Carter at one point threaten to use nuclear weapons? 132 Mr. Warnke: For what purpose? Mr. Ross: I’ve forgotten what the purpose was, but it was in some position where we were being crowded or under attack or something like that. Mr. Warnke: I don’t recall. Mr. Ross: It may have been in the Middle East. Mr. Warnke: I don’t recall it. Mr. Ross: And it was conditional and so on, but I recall being shocked at that, coming from him. Mr. Warnke: Certainly Zbig from time to time would make a comment that I regarded as sort of leaning in that direction. But I remember during the Reagan Administration — to my surprise and considerable pleasure — at one point Reagan said the only purpose of either side having nuclear weapons is to see to it that they were never used. I said that was very strongly my view and the view of people like Bob McNamara, and I think of people like Jimmy Carter, and I was delighted to hear that. Mr. Ross: How do you contrast that with the refusal of the United States to adopt a no first-use principle. Is it inconsistent? Mr. Warnke: It is inconsistent. Mr. Ross: I’ve been told that the military were very easy with that policy because they thought — Mr. Warnke: The military was strongly against. They said you should never foreclose the use of anything — Mr. Ross: — the use of anything because you reduce your bargaining power and 133 the defensive posture. Mr. Warnke: That’s right. I can never recall it being that much of an issue. They felt that way, and that was basically American policy. The closest that was a repudiation of it was the statement by Reagan. It was quite a surprise to his friends. Mr. Ross: Well, he surprised a lot of people like the Iceland meeting. Mr. Warnke: No, the funny part was that I think Reagan, when he came into office, had a very strong feeling that the Soviets would be antichrist and there was nothing good you could do with them. You just had to be prepared to go to war, and I think that two things happened. One was he went to Geneva and he met the new Soviet leader Gorbachev. Mikhail Gorbachev. So he found this guy with the funny birthmark and a big smile and they became rather friendly and that made a tremendous change in Reagan’s opinion and his entire position. He became very different after that. He figured he was someone you could do business with and somebody who didn’t want to blow us up, and equally important, didn’t want to be blown up. Mr. Ross: It says much about Reagan’s make-up, personality as anything else. Mr. Warnke: He had no background in this at all. And he went in just believing all the hard myths that people like Gene Rostow had been perpetrating for quite some period of time. And then all of the sudden he found himself in a world that was different than he thought it was going to be. Mr. Ross: I’ll be coming back to arms control on several points, but do you have — looking at the situation today, in the light of your law experience — do you have any thoughts about it, about where we are and where the whole question of these weapons is going to go in the next 5 years? 134 Mr. Warnke: Well, I really have a feeling that the strong anti-Russian sentiment disappeared with the Soviet Union, and it’s very hard now for anybody to take the position that this represents a terrible threat for the United States. They’ve become a second-rate power, and all the first-rate powers are on our side, so as a consequence it’s very hard to get up the kind of feelings of concern and animosity that existed at one point, and you look at the present leaders and the prospective leaders, and they’ve got so many problems of their own that for them to be concerned with being number one internationally is something totally beyond their comprehension. Mr. Ross: How does that translate into things like reduction of armaments and safeguards and proliferation? Mr. Warnke: Well, I think we are, in fact, reducing our arms. We aren’t making a big deal about it, but in fact we are, and I think that we are far less able to go to war than we were 10 years ago, much more than 20 or 30 years ago. Mr. Ross: And we’re changing also the nature of our armament. Our trident submarine isn’t very good in dealing with the border. Mr. Warnke: No. Mr. Ross: The incident in West Africa. Mr. Warnke: That’s right. That’s why it strikes me as being such a throwback to the old times to have this plane of ours shot down. What was it doing there? What purpose does it serve to have that surveillance of China? Mr. Ross: Other than to annoy the Chinese. Mr. Warnke: It annoys the Chinese, yes. But is that a sufficient reason? 135 Mr. Ross: I can’t comment usefully on that. China apparently is considered at the moment not to have the power to project major power capability outside its borders. Mr. Warnke: And not acquiring it. Mr. Ross: Although they have this bee in their bonnets about Taiwan. Mr. Warnke: Oh, yeah. That’s a big issue. Almost the only issue between us at this point. Mr. Ross: Well, we sit in a way on the top of the world as military power in your and my lifetime. The country basically disarmed itself or started out World War II with so weak a military that we couldn’t threaten the Japanese and try to get them to do what we wanted them to do, or get them to stop doing things we didn’t want them to do, in Southeast Asia. They were very realistic about our capabilities and they said these people don’t have the military capability to step up. You look at the map 2 years later, why, pretty much all of Asia is under their control. Now it’s just the opposite. We have enormous power in conventional weapons. You’ve been thinking about these things for a long time. What do you think this means to the rest of the world? To ourselves, and so on? Mr. Warnke: Well, I think our friends and allies like that we’re as strong as we are and they like being affiliated with us, and they think we serve as a real safety valve. I think they are no longer concerned about us triggering World War III against China or anybody else. Mr. Ross: They get kind of nervous though we we’re talking about this trivial episode — Mr. Warnke: Of course. That worries them, but I think by and large they realize that (a) we’re very, very strong and (b) we’re very, very constrained, and not about to use that 136 strength. Mr. Ross: Let’s move on a little bit. 1978, I guess it was, in calendar ’78, you left the government and went back with Clark Clifford in a new law firm. Mr. Warnke: Not a new law firm, new name. Mr. Ross: A new name, Clifford & Warnke. Was that pretty much a continuation of the old Clifford & Warnke, Glass and so on? Mr. Warnke: That’s right. Mr. Ross: And with some of the same people in it? Mr. Warnke: Yeah. Tom Finney had died. Tom had ALS, so he died when I was in the government, and Carson Glass had retired, Sam McIlwain was almost inactive at that point, and we had some younger people, people like Harold Murray and David Granger. Mr. Ross: Where were your offices? Mr. Warnke: Right across the street from — right there on Connecticut Avenue — one block up Connecticut Avenue between 18 Street — th Mr. Ross: And I? Mr. Warnke: No. Between I and — Mr. Ross: K? Mr. Warnke: I and H. Mr. Ross: And how did your practice develop? You’d have a 2-year interruption. Did you sort of pick up? Mr. Warnke: I sort of picked up and got some new clients. Clark had contacts with an awful lot of corporations and an awful lot of people. And until I joined him, he really 137 couldn’t exploit that. He was much more dealing with top level people at the government, but not trying cases. So companies like Owens Illinois or companies that he had done kind of lobbying work for. All of a sudden I was trying cases. Mr. Ross: How did you staff your practice because my sense is that you would have needed this. Mr. Warnke: We brought in people. Mr. Ross: You were doing Federal Trade Commission, Department of Justice antitrust work? Mr. Warnke: Yeah. Mr. Ross: Did you do any Food and Drug work during that period? Mr. Warnke: Not as much as I had at Covington & Burling, but I did anytime it came along. Mr. Ross: Did you miss the government? Mr. Warnke: Always did. Mr. Ross: And, of course, you kept active in arms control and other issues. Mr. Warnke: Right. I was a member of the Arms Control Association and the Committee for the Present Danger — no not the Committee for the Present Danger — Committee for National Security. Mr. Ross: Committee for National Security, Yarmolinsky. That was a period of considerable upheavals in government policy, what was called by some people, Reagan’s preventive nuclear war. Remember that speech he made? That was the early Reagan. That got a lot of people, turned on a lot of people. Backtracking a minute, did you have any government 138 involvement during Nixon’s Administration that you can recall? I don’t mean employment, but you were actively involved in some aspect of government. Mr. Warnke: Well, at Mel Laird’s request, I stayed on for about 4 months into the Nixon Administration. I had resigned, but Mel asked me if I would stay on and go to Vietnam with them. So I stayed on until April, I think it was. I think I mentioned I have letters accepting my resignation from both Johnson and Nixon. Mr. Ross: Very good. Frame them. What did you think of Laird? Mr. Warnke: Very good. He ran the Department very well. He had a tendency to talk in a very exaggerated prose about the danger of the Soviet Union, but when it came actually to actions, he was very restrained and he and I got along very well together. I always thought it was a sad mistake he wasn’t taken back into one of the Republican Administrations. He would have been so much better. Mr. Ross: Well, let’s talk a little bit more about your practice. How long did you stay — I’m giving you a base point of termination of Clifford & Warnke. You came back to them in ’78. Mr. Warnke: Right. Mr. Ross: And at some point, subsequently, you moved to Howrey & Simon. Mr. Warnke: Well, basically, the firm fell apart. There was — some of this may be off the record — but Clark had become quite close to Robert Altman, and they both got involved with BCCI, and with First American. And Clark got more and more involved with them and, as a consequence, the practice suffered and really the firm started to fall apart. Mr. Ross: Did people leave? 139 Mr. Warnke: Yeah. Mr. Ross: He was becoming more of a businessman than he was a lawyer. Mr. Warnke: That’s right. Mr. Ross: And that left you in a way the only senior lawyer in the firm. Mr. Warnke: No. Just the most senior. And I was no kid. And Clark was, of course, in his 80’s — well in his 80’s — and your practice falls off when you get to be that age anyway. Mr. Ross: I’ve heard that. I’ve had that experience. Mr. Warnke: The heads of the clients are just so much younger, so they’re looking for younger people. Mr. Ross: They want contemporaries. Mr. Warnke: So then some people started getting offers from other firms, and I think it was Harold Murray who had the offer from Howrey & Simon and he figured he would try and bring as many people as he could along with him. Mr. Ross: Tell me his name again. Mr. Warnke: Harold Murray. He’s not with Howrey & Simon anymore. He left because there was a conflict of interest, and I forget what the name of the firm is now. It’s one of the bigger firms. He was quite good, and a lot of us went with him. Most of them have moved on. Mr. Ross: That happens. Mr. Warnke: Howrey & Simon, of course, has changed so much and become so big. 140 Mr. Ross: But you remained active on some business? Mr. Warnke: I did for a while. Mr. Ross: Approximately when did you make the move from Clifford to Howrey? I don’t have a date, I haven’t been able to find it. Mr. Warnke: That would have been 1991. Mr. Ross: Did your practice just sort of trail off in a more or less natural way that it does with an older man? Mr. Warnke: Yeah, it had been for some time. The people I was closest to and some of my best clients had retired. And even though we frequently kept the account, I was nowhere near as active as I had been. Mr. Ross: When did you retire from Howrey & Simon approximately? Mr. Warnke: I’d say about — I don’t really recall. Mr. Ross: 1995? Mr. Warnke: 1995 or 1996. I kept an office. Still have one. Mr. Ross: Let me ask you about — during the period of practice, you could almost say it extended from 1978 to 1996, that’s a long time. Mr. Warnke: Yeah. Mr. Ross: It’s almost a career in itself. What were the things that were most noteworthy about that practice? I know you were involved with the government and you had a lot interactions and so on, but in terms of just practicing law, being a member of the bar of the District of Columbia. I’m going to ask you to search your memory and think about it in terms of lawyers and judges and lawyers, including government lawyers, the legal culture, any 141 involvement in the bar organizations. You were going into the office every day pretty much. Mr. Warnke: I did. I had been on the Board of the D.C. Bar when I went into the Arms Control Agency and I had resigned from that and I never became that active in the bar from that point on. Mr. Ross: Did you have any involvement with the American Bar Association? Significant involvement? Mr. Warnke: I was on committees for many years. Mr. Ross: Do you recall any interesting judges nominations that you were concerned on those committees? Was there a Supreme Court Justice position or a local court of appeals here? Mr. Warnke: I don’t think anything terribly controversial. Mr. Ross: You weren’t involved in the Bork nomination, for example? Mr. Warnke: I don’t think officially. Mr. Ross: Did you have some unofficial involvement. Mr. Warnke: Yeah, I thought it was a very poor idea. Mr. Ross: Did you know Bob Bork? Mr. Warnke: Yeah. Mr. Ross: What did you think were his limitations? Were they personality or policy? Mr. Warnke: I think policy. Mr. Ross: Mainly policy. You didn’t like some of his views? Mr. Warnke: Yeah. I didn’t like some of his opinions on the Court of Appeals. 142 Mr. Ross: Did you have some interesting oral arguments during this fairly long period — now I’m going all the way back to when you started again with Clark Clifford. Mr. Warnke: I never had a Supreme Court argument. That was always to me a big gap. I had a number of cases that got to the Supreme Court, but all the ones that I was really counting on, the Court conceded. Mr. Ross: That can be very annoying. Mr. Warnke: I had Court of Appeals cases, but I’d have to look them up. I’d forgotten what they were. Mr. Ross: Well, things come back. I think it’s time to break now. Mr. Warnke: Let me check my records. I had a couple of arguments before Pat Wald. Mr. Ross: Well, she is a good person. Mr. Warnke: She was great. Mr. Ross: She’d give you some intense questioning. Mr. Warnke: That’s right. But very fair. Mr. Ross: Oh, yeah. When she first went on the court, she decided that she would not recuse herself for any lawyer in our firm except for Bob and me, and I felt badly about that, but then she changed her mind about me, but she never changed her mind about her husband of course; but Bob didn’t do very much appellate arguing. I did a lot. I was before her four or five times, and I did accuse her, and still accuse her, of giving me hell just because of who I was. We were law school classmates, and life-long friends, and a partner of her husband. She took a course on economic regulation, and she’s one of the fastest studies in the bar. 143 Mr. Warnke: Very bright. 144 ORAL HISTORY OF PAUL C. WARNKE – EIGHTH INTERVIEW APRIL 18, 2001 This is the eighth interview of Paul C. Warnke in the taking of his oral history as part of the oral history project of the Historical Society of the District of Columbia Circuit. The interview is being taken by William Ross on April 18, 2001. The persons present are Paul Warnke and William Ross. Mr. Ross: Paul, you have just read a section from your January 1969 oral history that was taken under the auspices of the L.B.J. Library [attached as Appendix, hereto]. At that point, as I recall, you were in your last days as the Assistant Secretary, having held over under Richard Nixon’s regime. Mr. Warnke: Melvin Laird. Mr. Ross: Melvin Laird. The reason I said Clifford is that one point you said we’ve got to recess now because Clifford wants me. This was January of ’69. Mr. Warnke: Oh yeah. We didn’t leave until sometime in January of ’69. Mr. Ross: So that Clifford might still have been — Mr. Warnke: But then I stayed beyond that. Mr. Ross: But then you stayed beyond that into Melvin Laird. Mr. Warnke: Right. Sometime I think in March. Mr. Ross: As I said, I think this is a remarkable statement, both for its clarity and what might be called its succinctness and eloquence, but it’s also interesting because of its 145 prescience. You say certain things will happen and then the following will happen, and it more or less happened that way. In fact, I think the only thing that did not work out (although I’d be careful to say you didn’t know whether it would work out) is that the Paris Talks and subsequent events did not lead to a settlement. And you were expressing the hope that it would. I wanted you to elaborate on one or two things in this part of your oral history which is quite interesting in many ways. You say something that the motivations and objectives of those managing the war were unblameworthy. They were meritorious. But that the process or the means and the realities on the ground were what was wrong with it. Had we had an entirely different situation, facing an entirely different enemy in a different part of the world, it might work. Could you comment on that concept? Mr. Warnke: Well, my feeling, when I first went to Vietnam, would have been I guess in 1967? I came in ’66, and it would have been in ’67, and Bob McNamara asked when I came back if I would write a brief account of what I thought, and basically what I said is that we were engaged in a successful occupation, but that as far as being anything that was going to work in the long run, it would work only as long as we occupied South Vietnam because there was no South Vietnam. There was no separate country. There was Saigon. And the various people that we helped to install there. So my sense was that once we got out of Vietnam, North Vietnam would automatically take over. That there only was one Vietnam. Mr. Ross: And the premise was that the North Vietnamese government and society, whatever its limitations from our standpoint, had more reality. It was more legitimate in some way. Mr. Warnke: They’re the ones who were seeking freedom for Vietnam. They 146 didn’t want to be part of the French Empire anymore. Mr. Ross: And they looked on — Mr. Warnke: Ho Chi Minh was the leader. Mr. Ross: And the people down in Saigon who were attempting to run South Vietnam were not — Mr. Warnke: Running anything but Saigon. Mr. Ross: Anything but Saigon. And a little bit like the Chinese parallel between Chiang Kai-shek and the Communists? Does that appeal to you? Mr. Warnke: Yes, it was totally accurate. But certainly as far as the average Vietnamese was concerned. Ho Chi Minh was the leader and was trying to seek independence for Vietnam. Mr. Ross: Whether or not he was “a Communist” was — Mr. Warnke: It was irrelevant. Mr. Ross: And, as you said before, there was not the majority here. In hindsight, it looks so obvious. Mr. Warnke: Well, there were quite a few people in the Defense Department who felt the way I did. There really were. Not as many in the State Department. Have you read the book about the Bundys? Mr. Ross: No, I did not. Mr. Warnke: Well, Bill Bundy obviously was conflicted. Some of the time he thought what we were doing was great; some of the time he thought what we were doing was stupid. At the time that I was in the government, he was a strong defender of our participation in 147 Vietnam, and in the non-group that usually met on Thursday nights, he and I frequently had words. Mr. Ross: I had an encounter with Bundy, not of any significance. He was at that time in the government. The issue was the war, and I think this was around 1970. I made the case that it was hopeless and we should cut our losses and so on, and he said to me in a very emphatic way, not a rude way, you don’t know what’s going on. No one outside of the government can know what we know. And from what we know, it’s clear we’re going to succeed. That shut me up. Mr. Warnke: He was totally wrong. Mr. Ross: And I thought at the time, that’s a hell of a way to run a democratic society. Mr. Warnke: He knew better than that. Mr. Ross: I assume he did. And I think it was just perhaps the tension — Mr. Warnke: That was it. Mr. Ross: He may have been conflicted. Mr. Warnke: Yeah. Part of the problem was McGeorge Bundy and Maxwell Taylor were in Vietnam when there was a bombing of Pleitzu, I think it was, and that persuaded Bundy that this was a war that we would definitely personally engage in and we had to win. Mr. Ross: We had to win because they bombed there. Mr. Warnke: That’s right. Mr. Ross: Now in your analysis of the situation in Southeast Asia, which is very prescient, you’re talking about China’s interests, China’s long history of not going outside 148 its borders, and being inept when it did so. The fact that there are lots of other countries there that have their own internal problems, but joining the Russian or Chinese Empire is not high on their list. Let me push you a little bit. Of course there were other people who were saying this, but there were so many people in and out of the government that seemed to be oblivious to these considerations. They didn’t seem to be looking at the reality at all of our taking sides. What it is going to do to our society if Indonesia becomes Communist? Well what, well what? Mr. Warnke: Nothing. Mr. Ross: Would you comment on why that was so? Mr. Warnke: I think there was a widespread sense of failure that all Communists were the same, if Communists took over South Vietnam, it was going to prove the domino theory. Mr. Ross: So it wasn’t that South Vietnam was Westchester County, it was that it would lead to other things. Mr. Warnke: That’s right. Burma would fall. Mr. Ross: And one after another and we’d be confronted with this armed colossus that was knocking on the door of Pearl Harbor. Mr. Warnke: I can recall that at one point John F. Kennedy was asked about the domino theory and he said, “I believe it.” And the curious thing was that the CIA had come out with exactly the opposite conclusion. The CIA said that if South Vietnam falls, nothing will fall with it except for possibly Laos. Mr. Ross: And who cares? Mr. Warnke: Laos is a non-country. And what they ignored, of course, is that the 149 Vietnamese hate the Chinese, and vice versa. Not as much vice versa, but the Vietnamese just had no use for the Chinese at all. Mr. Ross: Where did most of our Ho Chi Minh’s aid come from? A lot of it came from China? Mr. Warnke: Oh, it did. Mr. Ross: But it didn’t mean that he liked them. Mr. Warnke: No. Mr. Ross: Or had any desire to become a puppet of the Chinese. Mr. Warnke: No. But he never wanted South Vietnam to be a puppet of the United States. It was more the other way around. Mr. Ross: I remember reading when I was in college a book by a man named Homer Hart — I may have this name wrong — written around World War I. The title of it was The Valor of Ignorance, and it had several theses. One was that Japan was going to become a world power and would not necessarily be friendly to us. Another thesis was the worst mistake we could make in the next 15 years was to get involved in a ground war in Southeast Asia. This was a man who had been in the State Department, but was an academic at the time. I take it that few of your comrades have read that book. Mr. Warnke: I don’t think anybody has read it. Mr. Ross: The Valor of Ignorance. Mr. Warnke: Yeah. We really thought in cliches. Mr. Ross: One of the worst things the government can do for people or a group or anybody is start to believe their own rhetoric. So you say certain things because of a complex 150 political situation. As long as you don’t start believing them, you might be all right. Mr. Warnke: That’s right. Mr. Ross: Do you think that there’s anything that could have been done to persuade Johnson to stop the war? I think that he was the person who was in the best position to do so, or was he? Mr. Warnke: I think he was in the best position to do it, yes. I think the problem was that he came into office with absolutely no background in foreign affairs. He knew nothing about world politics, and he assumed the people that Kennedy put together were the world’s greatest experts — Dean Rusk, McGeorge Bundy, etc., Maxwell Taylor knew everything about the world, so he took their word for it, and then he began having his doubts, and that made him more and more unhappy. Mr. Ross: And that that moved into the political mix where he was going to be the first President to lose the war and he would be discredited and he had all these young men killed on his watch and so on. Mr. Warnke: It became personal. And, of course, when he took office, Bob McNamara was a firm believer in the war, too. He changed, but it was a big change. Mr. Ross: Timing must have been very critical. If Johnson had confronted a different pattern of opinion among his advisors when he came there — Mr. Warnke: It could have been a very different result. Mr. Ross: Which conditioned him. Mr. Warnke: But he didn’t. Mr. Ross: Why weren’t people paying attention to the CIA? 151 Mr. Warnke: I have no idea. Mr. Ross: Did you see those reports? Mr. Warnke: I did right from the first. Mr. Ross: It must have been of some interest to you. Mr. Warnke: Oh, of great interest to me. See, I came into the government strongly opposed to the war. When Bob McNamara and Cy Vance asked me to come to the Department of Defense, I said I’d love to, but they had to realize that the war was a terrible, terrible mistake. And I remember Bob McNamara saying that doesn’t matter. So as far back as that, he obviously had his distinct doubts. Mr. Ross: At least he was willing to tolerate it, because he knew you’d be a spokesman for a different point of view. Let me highlight this. This part of your oral history is interesting enough that I think it could well stand publication, and I’m going to explore the possibility of getting an article written on it. At this point from where you sit, do you have any thoughts about this long history? What is our situation vis-a-vis China and Indonesia in Southeast Asia? What do you think is going to happen out there in the next 10 to 20 years? Mr. Warnke: I suspect that China will become increasingly democratic. I think that the population has been more educated, and I think that they realize that being a totalitarian country is not necessarily the best way to live. I think that the example of the United States and democracy is more and more taking over, and I think it’s the wave of the future, and I think they recognize that. They’re intelligent enough so that they’re going to have to do the right thing. Mr. Ross: That’s an optimistic view about the Middle Kingdom. Mr. Warnke: Yeah, it is. If they take a look at Japan, for example. Look what has 152 happened in just one lifetime. Mr. Ross: Or even Taiwan. Mr. Warnke: But during World War II , the Japanese were totally subjugated people. I think I told you at the end of the war, I had an LST, and I didn’t have very many points. I wasn’t married. I wasn’t in any hurry to get out. So we used the LST to pick up Japanese off the islands that we had bypassed, and all these people would pour out of the forests. Compare them with the Japanese today. Totally different people. They were tiny, they were uneducated, they believed in the Emperor as being the word of God, the only word in fact, of God. Mr. Ross: So you’re not one, I take it, that worries about the Japanese’s ability to maintain a true democracy. Mr. Warnke: No, not at all. They love it. Mr. Ross: Even though they make noises somewhere different. Mr. Warnke: Yeah, but they thrive democratically, and they’ll continue to thrive. Mr. Ross: You’ve had a long and fascinating career. Mr. Warnke: I’ve enjoyed it. Mr. Ross: And I think from my standpoint an awfully good one and valuable one. Let me ask you a sort of a softball question. When you were graduating from law school and looking around for something to do as a lawyer, did you ever imagine that you would end up in positions with responsibility that you had both in and out of the government? Mr. Warnke: Oh yes, certainly. Mr. Ross: You did. Mr. Warnke: I had a very strong ego. 153 Mr. Ross: You were not a shrinking violet. Mr. Warnke: I was not a shrinking violet. Mr. Ross: Could it be said that your life is a good example of success selfdirection, conceptualization and then direction? Mr. Warnke: I’d say it’s a series of fortunate accidents. Mr. Ross: But they were accidents along the road that you set out for yourself. We’ve all got to rely on fortunate accidents. Mr. Warnke: No, I came to Washington hoping to go into the government right away. Mr. Ross: And you followed the wise path, I would say, in joining Covington & Burling. Mr. Warnke: Very wise. Mr. Ross: Which gave you an excellent — Mr. Warnke: Yeah. Mr. Ross: Did you find, as I did, that Covington for 3 years or so, or whatever it is 3 to 5, was really like a graduate school of law honing your skills and — Mr. Warnke: To some extent, yes. Mr. Ross: Learning how to practice? Mr. Warnke: I worked from the beginning with Tommy Austern, and Tommy was very bright, and a nifty guy to work for. Mr. Ross: Did not suffer fools. Mr. Warnke: Did not suffer fools gladly. 154 Mr. Ross: And I know that firm, having been a clerk in it, had a pretty high standard. Mr. Warnke: Oh, it did. It was a fine firm, and I enjoyed it thoroughly. Mr. Ross: Said you enjoyed it — I would have to say that one of your predominant characteristics is you enjoy things? Mr. Warnke: I do. Mr. Ross: You’re a happy warrior. Mr. Warnke: Yeah, I’ve had a good time. Mr. Ross: That’s delightful. So many people can’t honestly say that. Mr. Warnke: I’m sure you can. Mr. Ross: My career was much less directive than yours. Did you ever read Barbara Tuchman, the historian’s study of the five examples in monumental folly? Mr. Warnke: I don’t believe so. Mr. Ross: Very well written, as all of her books are. This is a short one. She takes five examples and tries to show the elements that lead up to folly. One is Adolph Hitler’s management of his almost successful conquest of Europe; another is Vietnam, and it’s a brilliant, fairly short analysis. I think you’d find it a great reading. I’ll bring it next time. Mr. Warnke: Thanks. That would be great. -A1- INDEX Note: Paul C. Warnke is referred to in the index entries as PCW. Aaron, David (aide-Zbigniew Brzezinski), 111 Acheson, Dean, 24, 34, 78-79, 83 Adanada, Sister (grammar school teacher), 6 Advisory Commission to U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, 90-91 Albany, Georgia, 61, 127 Allen, Richard (arms control), 129 Altman, Robert (D.C. attorney), 138 American Can Company, 25, 36, 84, 85, 87 American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), 86, 97 Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS-Lou Gehrig’s Disease), 72, 84, 136 Anderson, Roy (Asst. General Counsel), 38 Andover Preparatory School, 11 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM), 122 Antwerp, Belgium, 1 Arms Control, 46, 103-105, 117-123, 124-136 Russian political opinion on, 116 See also individual agencies. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (ACDA), 83, 97, 103, 141 Arms Control Association (Board), 73, 137 Arms Control Nonproliferation Advisory Board (ACNAB), 59 Army, U.S., 27, 124 General Counsel (office), 45, 56 Arnold & Porter (D.C. law firm), 37 Asia(n), 74, 135 Austern and Gesell (D.C. law firm), 34 Austern, Thomas (“Tommy”)(D.C. attorney), 20-21, 22, 23, 25, 34, 36, 38, 76, 85-87, 93, 97, 153 Australian, 74 Balikapen, 28 Ball, George Presidential advisor, 4 Undersecretary of State, 79 Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), 138 Bar Association of the District of Columbia, 89 Barlow, Joel (D.C. attorney), 22 Baseball, Commissioner (office), 22 Beschloss, Michael (historian), 53 Bohlen, Charles (“Chip”) (State Department), 80 Books of Knowledge, 9 -A2- Bork, Judge Robert, 141 Borneo, 28, 30 Boston, Massachusetts, 9 Boston College, 4 Brezhnev, Leonid (Russian minister), 115, 131 British, 16, 119 Brown, Harold (Secretary of Defense), 103, 106, 127 Brzezinski, Zbigniew (“Zbig”) (Trilateral Commission), 107, 111-112, 126, 132 Bundy, Mary (wife-William Bundy), 66 Bundy, McGeorge (Presidential advisor), 51, 53, 64-65, 146-147, 150 Bundy, William (“Bill”) (Presidential advisor), 51, 65-66, 146-147 Burling, Edward, Sr. (D.C. attorney), 22, 24 Burma, 69, 148 California, 25, 29, 39, 87, 88, 102 Canada, 3 Canadian, 3 Cape Cod, Massachusetts, 33 Carolinas, 45 Carter, President Jimmy, 61, 103-108, 111-113, 120, 124-125, 127, 131-132 Carter Administration, 4, 43, 61, 103-104, 115, 124, 126-128, 130-131 Second Committee on the Present Danger, 127 Catholic(s), 8, 9, 102 French, 8 German, 2 Grammar school, 4 Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), 51, 65, 125, 148, 150 Charleston, South Carolina, 32 Chiang Kai-shek (exiled Chinese leader), 146 China, 48, 66, 69, 104, 110, 134-135, 147, 149, 151 Chinese (ethnic), 104, 134, 146, 149 Chinese Empire, 148 Christopher, Warren Deputy Secy.-Defense Dept., 107-108 D.C. attorney, 39-40 Claytor, Graham (D.C. attorney), 22-23 Clifford & Warnke (D.C. law firm), 42, 84, 136-140 Clifford, Clark (PCW law partner), 71-75, 93, 136-139, 142, 144 Secretary of Defense, 73, 74, 75, 79 Clifford, Warnke, Glass, McIlwain & Finney (PCW law firm), 71-77, 83-88, 97, 136 Coast Guard, U.S., 27 Coast Guard Academy, 33 Cold War, 104 -A3- Columbia University Law Review, 15, 18, 19-20, 57 Law School, 13, 14-15, 16-20, 32, 57, 83, 152 School of Journalism, 15-16 Committee for National Security, 137 Committee on the Present Danger, 127, 137 Common Cause, 91 Communist(s), 146, 148 Congress, 60, 113 Connecticut, 1 Covington & Burling (D.C. law firm), 20-26 Covington, Burling, Rublee, Acheson & Shorb (D.C. law firm-later Covington & Burling), 20-26, 27, 34-43, 56, 65, 73, 79, 83-86, 92, 137, 153 Cox, Hugh (D.C. attorney), 34 Cranston, Senator Alan, 113 Culver, Senator John, 113 Davis, Judge Oscar, 38, 96 Dean, Jonathan (scientist), 121-122 Defense Department, 25, 26, 43, 44-54, 55-71, 106, 108, 129, 146, 151 Civil Defense, Asst. Secretary (office), 45 Deputy Secretary (office), 61, 107, 108 General Counsel (office), 43-46, 50, 55-71 International Security Affairs, Asst. Secretary (office), 45, 58, 62 Secretary’s Committee on International Affairs (office), 58 Secretary (office), 44-47, 49, 50, 52-55, 57-64, 74, 75, 101 Delta, Vietnam, 50 Democrat(s), 24, 108 Dempsey, Wally (PCW law school classmate), 18-19 Depression, U.S., 7 Diamantis, Anastosius (PCW friend), 5 District of Columbia, 24, 79, 82, 83, 124, 153 Bar, 140 Bar association, 89, 93, 141 Litigators, 94 Domino theory, 69, 148 Du Pont Corporation, 36 Earle, Ralph (D.C. attorney), 75, 108, 118-119, 121-122, 127 Ellison, Newell (D.C. attorney), 79 Elman, Philip (“Phil”) (Solicitor General’s office), 38, 96 Enthoven, Alain (advisor-Robert McNamara), 98-99, 102 Europe, 121, 154 -A4- Exeter Prepatory School, 11 Far East, 66, 74 Federal Trade Commission (FTC), 95-96, 137 Finney, Thomas (“Tom”) (PCW law partner), 72, 75-76, 84, 136 First American Bank, 138 Florida, 107 Flynn, Miriam (PCW friend), 8-9 Food and Drug Administration, 38, 84 Foster, John (“Johnny”) (Defense Department), 58, 102 Fowler, Henry (attorney-arms control), 129 French, 119 French Canadian(s), 4, 8 French Empire (Vietnam), 146 Galbraith, John Kenneth (Presidential advisor), 98 Garwin, Richard (“Dick”) (Defense Department), 59 Gelb, Lester (“Les”) (PCW friend), 4 Gellhorn, Walter (law school prof.), 18, 83 Geneva, Switzerland, 113, 124, 133 Georgia, 106, 107 German, 43 Germany, 2, 120 Gesell, Judge Gerhard (“Gerry”), 35-36, (D.C. attorney), 23, 26, 34, 36 GI Bill of Rights, 14 Glass, Carson (PCW law partner), 71-72, 75, 84, 136 Goldwater, Senator Barry, 57, 60, 61 Goodwin, Doris Kearns (author), 77, 97-98 Gorbachev, Mikhail (Soviet leader), 133 Granger, David (PCW law firm), 72, 136 Gravelle, Lou (D.C. attorney), 97 Greek, 5, 8 Green, Donald (“Don”) (PCW law partner), 35 Green, Judge Joyce Hens, 95-96 Griswold, Erwin (eulogist), 86 Gromyko, Andrei (Russian minister), 112, 114-117, 131 Hart, Homer (author), 149 Hart, Senator Gary, 113 Harvard Law School, 16 Law Review, 57 Hawaii, 31, 42 Helms, Senator Jesse, 122 -A5- Hirohito (Japanese Emperor), 31, 152 Hitler, Adolph (German dictator), 98, 154 Ho Chi Minh (Communist leader-Vietnam), 50, 98, 146, 149 Hogan & Hartson (D.C. law firm), 75 Holms, Richard (head-CIA), 51 Holtzoff, Judge Alexander, 35, 95 Hoveida, Prime Minister Amir Abbas (Iran), 43 Howrey & Simon (D.C. law firm), 96, 138-140 Howrey, Jack (D.C. attorney), 96-97 Humphrey, Vice President Hubert, 72-73, 81-82, 113 Iceland, 133 Ikle, Fred (head-Arms Control Agency), 108 Illinois, 77 Indiana, 39 Indonesia, 148, 151 Institute of Shortening and Edible Oils, Inc., 37, 87-88 International Business Machines (IBM), 59 Iranian government, 42 Ireland, 2 Irish (ethnic), 2, 4, 6 Italian(s), 4, 5 Jack and the Beanstalk, 6 Jackson, Senator Henry (“Scoop”), 62, 109, 113 Japan(ese), 28, 31, 41, 119, 135, 149, 151 Johnson, Judge Norma Holloway, 95 Johnson, President Lyndon B., 45-48, 52-55, 64, 68-70, 73-75, 77-78, 80-82, 98-100, 102-103, 125, 150 Library, 144 Johnson Administration, 103 Joint Chiefs of Staff, 51-52 66-68 Joseph Catherine, Sister (grammar school teacher), 7 Justice Department, 36, 39, 40, 96 Antitrust Division, 36, 72 Attorney General (office), 18, 25, 74 Solicitor General (office), 38 Katzenbach, Nicholas (“Nick”) Deputy Secretary of State, 66, 79 Justice Dept., 51 Keeney, Spurgeon (arms control), 121 Kennedy, President John F., 45, 50, 59, 64-65, 98, 100, 103, 148, 150 -A6- Kennedy, Robert (Attorney General), 98, 99-100 Kintner, Earl (Federal Trade Commission), 96-97 Kirkland, Lane (arms control), 129 Kissinger, Henry (Secretary of State), 118-119 Kramer, Victor (“Vic”) (Justice Dept.), 36-38 Laird, Melvin (“Mel”) (Secretary of Defense), 55, 71, 138, 144 Laos, 69, 148 Lapham Field House (Yale), 4 Latto, Larry (Columbia Law Review), 18 Lawyers Alliance for Nuclear Arms Control (LANAC-1992 changed to LAWS), 118 Lawyers Alliance for World Security (LAWS), 59, 109, 118 Legends of the Law lunches, 96 Lever Brothers Co., 40 Leyte, 31 Litigation Antitrust, 23, 25, 77, 84, 87, 97, 137 Criminal antitrust, 39 Food and drug, 23, 25, 38, 84, 85, 137 Price fixing conspiracy, 39, 40 Littman, Gene (eulogist), 86 Lorillard Tobacco Company, 21 Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream (Doris Kearns Goodwin), 98 Maine, 1, 3 Marianna Islands, 41 Marienwerder, Germany, 2 Marlborough, Massachusetts, 3, 4, 8 Maureen, Sister (grammar school teacher), 4-5, 7 McIlwain, Saumel (“Sam”) (PCW law partner), 71-72, 75, 84, 136 McNamara, Robert (“Bob”) (Secretary of Defense), 44-47, 49, 50, 52-55, 57-64, 66, 68, 74-75, 77, 80-81, 98-102, 118, 132, 145, 150-151 McNaughton, John (General Counsel-Defense Dept.), 45, 50, 58 McPherson, Harry (LBJ admin. asst.), 46, 101 Merchant Marines, 27 Merck (drug company), 84 Metropolitan Club (D.C.), 97 Mexico, 42 Micronesia, 41, 42 Congress, 40 Middle East, 132 Middle Kingdom (China), 151 Morgan, Lewis & Bockius (Phila. law firm), 108 -A7- Moscow, Russia, 115 Murray, Harold (PCW law partner), 139 Murphy, Arthur (PCW law school classmate), 18 Muskie, Senator Edmund (“Ed”), 113 Naval Academy, 29 Navy, 29, 119 Secretary of, 45, 60-63, 103 Nelson, Roger (D.C. attorney), 97 New England, 13, 99 New Guinea, 28 New Haven, Connecticut, 57 New York City, 16, 83 Law firms, 19, 83 New York Times, The, 118 New Zealand(ers), 74 Niederlehner, Leonard (“Len”) (Deputy General Counsel-Defense Dept.), 44, 46, 56 Nitze, Paul (Secretary of the Navy), 48, 56, 60-63, 73, 74, 79, 103, 104-105, 130 Nitze, Phyllis (wife-Paul Nitze), 62 Nixon, President Richard M., 55, 71, 138, 144 Nixon Administration, 138 “No First-Use” principle, 132 North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), 47, 61, 62 North Vietnam(ese), 145 Noumea, 28 O’Brian, John Lord, 22 Ohio, 39 Owens Illinois Company, 77, 95-96, 137 Pacific Ocean, 27 Pahlavi, Mohammed Reeza (Shah of Iran), 43 Papua, New Guinea, 28 Paris, France, 145 Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, 31, 148 Peking, China, 104 Pentagon, 127 Perle, Richard (“Dick”) (aide-Senator Henry Jackson), 109-110, 129, 130-131 Pfizer (drug company), 84 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 108 Phillipines, 28 Plains, Georgia, 103 Pleiku, Vietnam, 147 -A8- Poland, 2 Polish (ethnic), 111 Politburo, 115 Potomac River, 33 Proctor & Gamble Co., 39, 40, 88 Proliferation Agreements, 122 Protestant(s), 5, 112 Pursley, Robert (“Bob”) (Defense Department), 73 Rankin, Lee (Solicitor General), 18 Reagan, President Ronald, 129, 131-133, 137 Reagan Administration, 129 Republican(s), 108, 138 Reynolds Tobacco Company, 21 Robinson, Willard (Asst. Secretary of State), 69 Rockefeller, David (Trilateral Commission), 107 Rockefeller, Edward (“Eddie”) (PCW law school classmate, law partner), 13 Roman Catholic(s), 112 Ross, William Warfield (interviewer’s father), 97 Rostow, Eugene (“Gene”)(Dean-Yale Law School-Presidential advisor), 70, 129, 133 Rostow, Walt Whitman (Presidential advisor), 47, 51-52, 64 Rowe, George (PCW law school classmate), 15, 18 Rublee, George (D.C. attorney), 24 Rusk, Dean (Secretary of State), 47, 48, 52, 64, 68, 69, 80, 100-101, 150 Russian(s), 105, 106, 112, 115, 117, 119, 121-122, 131, 134, 148 Saigon, Vietnam, 50-51, 145-146 Saipan, 40 Samboanga, 30 San Diego, California, 32 Sapienza, John (D.C. attorney), 22, 79 Schlefer, Mark (Atty.-Defense Dept.), 60 Schreiner, John (PCW friend), 14 Scituate, Massachusetts, 8 Scotch-Irish (ethnic), 3 Second Committee on the Present Danger, 127 Semenov, Vladimir (SALT talks), 114, 131 Senate, 57, 61, 113-114 Seymour, Whitney North (atty.-American Can Co.), 85 Shorb, Paul (D.C. attorney), 21-22, 92 Siemens Co., 43 Siemer, Diane (author), 41 Simon, Paul (D.C. attorney), 97 -A9- Simpson, Thatcher & Bartlett (N.Y. law firm), 83, 85 Smith, J.D. (Trilateral Commission), 107 Smith College, 13 Soldani, Jackie (PCW friend), 5 Southeast Asia, 65, 135, 147, 151 South Shore, Massachusetts, 8 South Vietnam, 50, 67, 69, 81, 145-146, 148-149 Soviet Union-Soviets, 61, 62, 104, 109-110, 114, 117, 121, 131, 133-134, 138 Spradlin, Richard (“Dick”) (PCW law firm), 72 St. Marks Preparatory School, 11-12 Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT), 114 Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT II), 117, 131 State Department, 66, 68, 146, 149 Assistant Secretary, 43, 47, 48, 63-64, 66 Deputy Secretary of State, 66, 73 Secretary of State, 4, 44-47, 49, 56, 58, 61, 64, 68-69, 73, 80 Stettinius, Edward (diplomat), 68-69 Stitenzeous, General George, 124-125 Stolk, William (“Bill”) (head-American Can Co.), 85 Stovall, James (“Jim”) (PCW law partner), 42, 72 Sullivan & Cromwell (N.Y. law firm), 83 Taiwan, 152 Taylor, General Maxwell, 47, 64, 69-70, 74, 147, 150 Temko, Stanley (D.C. attorney), 76 Texas, 70, 99 Thailand-Thais, 69, 74 The Valor of Ignorance (Homer Hart), 149 Tilden, William (“Bill”) (tennis champion), 5 Timberg, Sigmund (“Sig”) (D.C. attorney), 36 Tobacco Institute, 21 Toledo, Ohio, 77 Trade Commission, 39 Trilateral Commission, 107, 112 Truitt, Steven (“Steve”) (PCW law partner), 36 Truk, 42 Truman Administration, 79 Tuchman, Barbara (historian), 154 U.S.-Soviet relationship, 105, 116 U.S. Courts Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, 26, 95, 141-142 Court of Claims, 38 -A10- District Court for the District of Columbia, 96 Supreme Court, 97, 141-142 U.S Constitution, Article II case, 37 Union of Concerned Scientists, 121 University of California, 102 University of Georgia, 101 University of Pennsylvania, Law Review, 57 Vance, Cyrus (“Cy”) General Counsel-Defense Dept., 57 Secretary of State, 4, 44-47, 49, 56, 58, 61, 64, 103, 107-108, 112, 115-116, 120, 126, 131, 151 Secretary of the Army, 57 Vassar College, 13 Vietnam(ese), 50, 67, 69, 98, 104-105, 138, 147, 149, 154 Vietnam War, 47, 49, 63-64, 65, 74, 78, 80-81, 100, 104, 145-153 Paris Peace Talks, 145 Presidential Advisory Committee, 78 Wald, Judge Patricia (“Pat”), 95, 142 Wald, Robert (D.C. attorney), 142 Walker, Charles (arms control), 129 Wall Street (NYC), 22 Walsh, Judge Leonard P., 35 Ward, David (attorney), 77 WARNKE, PAUL C.-PERSONAL Birth, 1 Brother-in-law, 17 Catholicism, 7 Childhood, 7 Children, 16, 33, 34, 42, 71, 83 Columbia Law School, Law Review, 15, 18, 19-20, 57 Culliton (mother), 1, 3-4 Education Columbia Law School, 13, 14-15, 16-20, 32, 57, 83, 152 Immaculate Conception (grammar school), 4, 6-7 Marlborough High School, 5, 8-10 Yale University, 10-14 Dean’s List, 10-11 Father, 1, 3-4, 7-8, 10 Grandfather (paternal), 2 Grandparent(s), 2 Health -A11- High blood pressure, 16 “Warnke shake,” 14 Marriage, 15, 20, 82-83, 152 Military service, 16, 27-33 O’Grady, Bridget (grandmother, paternal), 2 Sister(s), 1 Warnke, Frank (brother), 1, 101 Warnke, Georgia (daughter), 33 Warnke, Jean (wife), 14, 15, 20, 42, 66, 71, 82, 108, 124 Warnke, Maggie (daughter), 33, 71, 83 Warnke, Ruth (sister), 1, 6 Warnke, Thomas (“Tommy”) (son), 21 WARNKE, PAUL C.-PROFESSIONAL Advisory Commission to U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, 90-91 American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), 86, 97 Arms Control Association, 137 Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (ACDA), 61-62, 83, 97, 103, 106-107, 124, 141 Arms Control Nonproliferation Advisory Board (ACNAB), 59 Clifford & Warnke, 42, 84, 136-140 Clifford, Warnke, Glass, McIlwain & Finney, 38, 71-77, 83-88, 97, 136 Committee for National Security, 137 Common Cause, Governing Board, 91 Covington, Burling, Rublee, Acheson & Shorb, 20-27, 34-43, 56, 65, 73, 76, 83-85, 88, 92, 137, 153 D.C. Bar Association, 89, 141 Defense Department, 26, 43-54, 66, 97 Assistant Secretary, 43, 47, 63-64, 66, 79, 80, 144 General Counsel, 43, 44, 45, 46, 50, 55-71, 77, 79, 103 Howrey & Simon, 138-140 Judicial aspirations, 26 Justice Department, 77, 96 Lawyers Alliance for Nuclear Arms Control (LANAC), 118 Lawyers Alliance for World Security Board (LAWS), 59, 109, 118 Metropolitan Club, 97 Secretary of State, 49, 62 Trilateral Commission, 107 Wars, 17th century religious, 2 Warsaw Pact, 61, 121 Washington Post, The, 118 Webster, Massachusetts, 1, 3, 4 Wechsler, Harold, 83 Wechsler, Herbert (law school prof.), 18, 83 Wellesley College, 13 -A12- Wellfleet, Mass., 33, 96 Wellfleet Yacht Club, 33 West Africa, 134 Westchester County, New York, 148 Western Europe, 121 West Germany, 120 West Point Military Academy, 68 Wheeler, Earle G. (“Bus”) (Chmn.-Joint Chiefs), 51, 66-68 White House, 50, 113, 126 Who’s Who, 90 Willens, Howard (D.C. attorney), 41 Williams, Larry (PCW law firm), 72 Wofford, Harris (Kennedy transition team), 59 Women Black, 95 Judges, 95 Lawyers, 24 Wonder Bread Co., 38 World Bank, 54, 81 World War I, 2, 149 World War II, 15, 27-33, 67, 69, 135, 152 Yale University, 10-14 Glee Club, 13 Library, Linonia Brothers Room, 14 Yale Bowl, 4 Law School, 70 Law Journal, 57 Yankees (New England ethnic), 4 Yarmolinsky, Adam (Special Asst.-Robert McNamara), 57-58, 59-60, 98-99, 102, 137 Zumwalt, Admiral Elmo, 129 -A13- TABLE OF CASES CASES American Can, 38 Proctor & Gamble, 39 Wonder Break, Continental Baking Company, 38 STATUTES Clayton Act, 15 U.S.C. § 12, 87 Robinson-Patman Anti-Discrimination Act, 15 U.S.C. § 13, 87 Sherman Anti-Trust Act, 15 U.S.C. § 1, 87 -B2- WILLIAM WARFIELD ROSS Resume Ross was born in Washington D.C. in 1926. He graduated from St. John’s College, Annapolis and the Yale Law School, and served in President Truman’s and Eisenhower’s Executive Offices, the Department of Justice and the Federal Power Commission. He was in private practice in the District from the late 1950s with the firms of Morgan, Lewis and Bockius, Wald, Harkrader and Ross (where he was a founding partner), and Pepper, Hamilton and Scheetz. His principal practice areas were antitrust, public utility regulatory law, and appellate litigation. He retired from practice in 1992. Ross has been active in bar, civic and political affairs both nationally and in the District. He served as Chairman of the Administrative Law Section of the American Bar Association as well as a standing Committee of the Association and as Chairman of the American Civil Liberties Union of the National Capitol Area during the 1960’s riots. He served on the Board of Directors of the D.C. Bar Association and as Chairman of its Administrative Law Section. During the 1970s he also was chairman of a Commission which authored a report recommending revisions in the appellate procedures of the D.C. government, and as head of a committee which prepared a practice manual for D.C. regulatory agencies. Ross has served for many years on the Executive Committee of the Lawyers Alliance for World Security, the principal legal organization in the arms control field. He has written extensively on legal and public policy issues. October 1998 -B3 – A CONVERSATION WITH PAUL C. WARNKE Bar Report June/July 1998 – c1- Legends in the Law A Conversation with Paul C. Warnke (Appeared in Bar Report, June/July 1998) Paul Culliton Warnke, 78, was assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs for President Lyndon B. Johnson. Later, he became director of the U.S. Arms Control & Disarmament Agency and chief negotiator in strategic arms talks with the Soviet Union during the Carter Administration. He currently is a retired partner at Howrey & Simon. Bar Report: You graduated from Yale College in 1941, and then joined the US. Coast Guard where you served from 1942 to 1946 in the Atlantic and the Pacific. What was that experience like? Paul C. Warnke: I did anti-submarine work in the Atlantic, and in the Pacific I was first on a small tanker carrying aviation gasoline and later on a landing ship, and LST, for the invasion of the Philippines and Borneo. The nice thing about being on a ship is that if you’re not dead you’re quite comfortable. It’s not like fighting in the jungles because you’ve got a bed and a pillow. I had trouble getting into the service because I had high blood pressure. My mother, who was a widow, befriended a doctor in the U.S. Public Health Service, which did the examinations for the Coast Guard. Without taking my blood pressure, he wrote the necessary numbers on my exam so I could get in. BR: After the war you went to Columbia Law School. Is it true that you were originally headed to journalism school? PCW: Yes. After the war my family was living in New York so I took the subway to Columbia with the idea of joining the school of journalism, but it was full. I asked what other schools they had and they said the law school was across the street. So I crossed the street and became a lawyer. Careful planning, that’s the secret of my life. I thoroughly enjoyed law school. It was a very good class. Practically everybody was a war veteran and as a result we were older than most law school students prior to that time. It was a very good faculty, and I liked it very much. BR: But you did manage to do some journalism as editor-in-chief of the Columbia Law Review? PCW: Yes. I met my wife, Jean, at a party on the evening I got on the Law Review. And come September we will be married for 50 years. BR: After law school you went to work with Covington & Burling where you became a partner in 1957. How did you get that position? PCW: I looked around New York and wasn’t too enthusiastic about the Wall Street firms. One of my professors, Walter Gellhorn, said there was a fine law firm in Washington where he had a friend by the name of Dean Acheson. So I went down and interviewed. It was Covington, Burling, Rublee, Acheson & Shorb then. I liked the firm right away. It was the only Washington firm I looked at and it was the biggest firm in town. I was only the 49th lawyer. BR. What are some of the cases you are most proud of? -2- PCW: I did a lot of antitrust work. When I first went to Covington & Burling, I worked with a partner by the name of H. Thomas Austern and he was primarily involved with antitrust and food and drug law. I worked with him for several years and got deeply involved with antitrust cases. He had a new client, the American Can Company, which was one of two big can companies. They had a lot of antitrust problems. The first case I worked on was a government case against American Can where we negotiated a settlement. Then I represented the Continental Baking Company, the one that makes Wonder bread. They were busily involved in buying up other bread companies. I tried a couple of Federal Trade Commission cases that involved those acquisitions. Back in 1962 and 1963, I represented Procter & Gamble in connection with some criminal antitrust cases in California that involved shortening and edible oils. The contention was that they were involved in price fixing conspiracies. My co-counsel was Warren Christopher, who later became secretary of state. He’s a very highly regarded lawyer. Because the case was in California, we had to have local counsel. Warren was with the best firm I knew of out there and I had known him when he worked here in town. so he was a logical choice as co-counsel. There were a number of cases I enjoyed where I was involved as a negotiator. Before I got into the arms control business, I represented the Congress of Micronesia. The Micronesians were involved in negotiations with the United States on terminating the trust relationship. In that part of the western Pacific a United Nations trust territory was established after World War II and the United States was appointed by the United Nations to be the trustee over the islands that include the Marshalls, the Marianas, Truk, Ponape, Palau and Yap. The Congress of Micronesia wanted an American negotiator to negotiate with the American Government team to help them work out a new relationship with the United States. We established what became known as ‘Treeassociation.” Micronesia became an independent country, with representation in the United Nations, but it is “freely associated” with the United States so that the U.S. handles its foreign affairs and defense. That was good fun. Then in 1970 I represented the Iranian government in connection with the creation of a telecommunications system. One of my colleagues when I was in the Defense Department was Henry Kuss who had developed a good relationship with some of the Iranians and he brought me in to help negotiate this contract with the international consortium headed up by Siemens. That was interesting. It was at a time when the Shah was still in control. BR: What was it like when you went over there? PCW: At that point Iran and the United States were allies. But it was a little dismaying because it was obvious from talking to the Iranians that there was widespread corruption in the government. BR: What led to your appointment as general counsel of the Defense Department? PCW: After Kennedy was elected, I worked in the Democratic National Committee on staffing the Department of Defense, and got to know Robert S. McNamara. I was offered a couple of government jobs that I didn’t have any enthusiasm for and then eventually was offered the job of general counsel at defense. BR: Less than a year later, you succeeded John McNaughton as assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs. Tell me about that position? PCW: It was known then as the “Defense Department’s State Department” and it worked closely with the State Department. Back then a lot of foreign policy was made at what was known as the “Tuesday lunch,” when Lyndon Johnson would have lunch with the secretary of state, the secretary of defense, the director of Central Intelligence, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, and the national security advisor. Much of my job was getting McNamara ready for the Tuesday lunch. He’d be interested in certain topics that he would want to raise with the President, so we’d put together information on them. Then, of course, NATO, the Northern Atlantic Treaty Organization, was very important to our security and Secretary McNamara developed what was -3- known as the “nuclear planning group” which set NATO’s nuclear policy. We spent a lot of time on that. And then of course there was the Vietnam War. BR: What was it like working with Robert McNamara? PCW: It was great. He was a very good guy to work for, very accessible and as a consequence you had an advantage over your colleagues at State because Dean Rusk was not as accessible as McNamara. BR: Many people back then questioned McNamara’s position on arms control. Did you ever discuss that with him? PCW: He basically invented strategic nuclear arms control. There was the so-called Glassboro Conference in June 1967 with Aleksei Kosygin, who was the premier of the Soviet Union and who was in this country for a United Nations meeting. President Johnson arranged a summit meeting at Glassboro, New Jersey. McNamara went to that meeting and tried to talk the Soviets into getting serious about nuclear arms control. At that particular point, the big problem was the development of anti-ballistic missile defense system and McNamara recognized that by increasing the number of offensive missiles you could always overwhelm any available defensive technology. Therefore if both sides went ahead with extensive anti-ballistic missile defenses it would just fuel the offensive arms race, which is in fact what happened. Then after the Glassboro Conference, McNamara asked me to meet on a regular basis with Yuli Vorontsov, the minister counselor of the Soviet Embassy and now the Russian ambassador to the United States. He said I should try to persuade Vorontsov that it was important to control the arms race. BR: What influenced your strong views on arms control? How did they develop? Was it solely through your work at the Defense Department? PCW: Yes. It was obvious to anyone who studied the subject that the one ultimate disaster would have been a nuclear war between the Soviet Union and the United States. So what we had to do was develop policies and reach agreements to eliminate the risk that one side or the other might start a nuclear war. The risk was that one side would panic. If one side figured that unless they struck first they would be attacked and annihilated that would provide a dangerous incentive for a first strike. What you had to have was what became known as “mutual assured destruction,” which I always preferred to call mutual assured deterrence. This was after the Cuban missile crisis in 1962 when the Soviets tried to station nuclear missiles in Cuba. Florida is only 90 miles from Cuba, so that would have been a very serious threat to the security of the United States. Those were very, very critical negotiations that led to the Soviets removing the missiles. Having had that experience we recognized in 1966 and 1967 that nuclear war was a genuine risk and that we had to work out some kind of arrangement with the Soviets that would eliminate any serious chance of nuclear war. BR: When you were nominated by President Jimmy Carter in 1977 to be director of the Arms Control & Disarmament Agency, critics said you would be too soft on the Russians. How did you feel about that? PCW: I wasn’t too worried about it. I thought I would get confirmed because I had some strong support and unlike a treaty I didn’t have to get two-thirds approval. All I needed was a majority and I figured I could get a majority. The real problem was that one of my major opponents was Sen. Scoop Jackson of Washington, who was a Democrat. If he’d been a Republican it would have been less of a problem. But because he was a Democrat he could carry a certain number of Democratic votes along with him. -4- BR: Was it personal? PCW: No. The principal problem was that he was not a believer in arms control. He thought that I was, and he was right. BR: Only two weeks after taking office you went to Moscow with Secretary of State Cyrus Vance. Who did you meet with then and did you feel ready for negotiations? PCW: I had followed the subject very carefully and had been involved in arms control since 1967. Once you get the bug it never leaves you. I followed all of the SALT I talks closely so I didn’t feel unprepared. There had been an agreement reached at Vladivostok in 1974 when President Ford met with President Leonid I. Brezhnev. They agreed in principle as to what the totals would be in the SALT II agreement. When President Carter took office, he wanted to move more rapidly. He wanted to leap frog SALT II and get lower nuclear weapon totals, which was a perfectly commendable thing to try to do but it turned out that the Soviet position was locked in. At the March meeting in 1977 Secretary of State Cyrus Vance dealt principally with Andre Gromyko. At that point Brezhnev had had a series of strokes so he was no longer the alert guy he had been in 1974. Gromyko was a very experienced foreign minister. After that March 1977 meeting, Gromyko’s deputy, Georgi M. Kornienko asked if I would ride with him to the airport. During the ride he said, “I do not understand you Americans.” He pointed out that “Comrade Brezhnev spilled a lot of political blood at Vladivostok” and therefore they could not consider anything else until a treaty was reached based on the Vladivostok agreement. What we did in response was to put the Vladivostok totals in the draft treaty, but nonetheless provided for a subsequent reduction in the overall missile numbers and the subtotal for MIRV’s (multiple independently-targetable re-entry vehicles). The subtotal would apply not only to MIRVed missiles but also to strategic bombers with long range cruise missiles. So we managed to get an agreement with better, somewhat lower totals than the Vladivostok agreement. BR: That must have been a challenging experience. PCW: It was difficult but it was fascinating. I had no doubt that my Soviet counterparts were seriously interested in reaching an agreement. I came in at a fairly late stage. The SALT talks had been going on since 1969 and we had already reached a SALT I agreement. The chief Soviet negotiator, a fellow by the name of Vladimir Semenov, had been head of the Soviet delegation dealing with our first SALT negotiator, Ambassador Gerard Smith. I found Semenov to be a worthy foe and we became quite friendly. What people frequently ignore is that arms control is not a zero sum game. It’s not one in which somebody’s going to win and somebody’s going to lose. Either it’s good for both sides or it’s good for nobody. Any arms control agreement contains a clause that if either side concludes that continuing with the arms control regime is contrary to it’s supreme national interests it can opt out. So you’ve got to have an agreement that is satisfactory to both sides. It’s not like buying a used car. BR: What were some of the problems you saw negotiating with the Soviet Union? PCW: Part of the difficulty was that the Soviet Union didn’t have any friends. They had a Warsaw Pact just as we had NATO but it contained countries such as Czechoslovakia, Poland, and Hungary, that would have much preferred to have been part of NATO. l always thought it was much, much easier to be the American negotiator than the Soviet negotiator. There was more bargaining power on our side. BR: Did you get the sense that the Soviet Union was on the verge of collapse? -5- PCW: I had the feeling that something had to change. Given modern communications you could not have a totalitarian government of a country that large over an indefinite period of time. As more and more Russians became more familiar with the outside world, I think they realized that their country was not operating under the optimum system. But did I predict that collapse? No. I thought it would take much longer than it did. BR: Did you keep in touch with some of the Russian contacts you made? PCW: At times. On a couple of occasions Mr. Kornienko, when he was in the United States, would come by and we would talk. I had gotten to know Anatoly Dobrynin, who was the long-time Soviet ambassador to the United States and I was in touch with him from time to time. We would meet occasionally at parties given by Averell Harriman, who had been the U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union. Dobrynin and Harriman were good friends. BR: How did your relationship with Clark Clifford begin? PCW: He succeeded Robert McNamara as secretary of defense in March 1968. He was very close to Lyndon Johnson and Johnson had asked him to go to East Asia with Maxwell Taylor in August, 1967 to try to get further support for the Vietnam effort. I met him in McNamara’s office before they went on that mission. Our friendship grew from working together. Clifford became absolutely persuaded that the Vietnam war was a big, big mistake. I think he began to feel that way because of his trip, where he found that those countries, the potential “dominos,” were no where near as concerned about what was happening in Vietnam as we were. He felt that if the people in the region didn’t think it made that much difference, then why were we sending 500,000 American troops to Vietnam and suffering heavy casualties. A lot of people in the Defense Department felt the same way. Many people criticized the recent book that Robert McNamara wrote about our mistakes in Vietnam, asking why he didn’t feel that way when he was Secretary of Defense. Well he did, but he was very loyal to President Johnson. He felt justifiably that Johnson had relied on the advice of the Kennedy foreign affairs team, which included him and some other very impressive people: Dean Rusk, McGeorge Bundy, Maxwell Taylor. McNamara figured that they were the ones who got Johnson so deeply committed. In the latter part of 1967, McNamara sent a memorandum to President Johnson explaining that he felt we were getting nowhere and that we ought to consider some solution other than trying to win a military victory. As a result, he was replaced as Secretary of Defense and made president of the World Bank. BR: You spoke out very strongly against the Vietnam war. Were you ever afraid that your opinions would adversely affect your career? PCW: The nice thing about being a lawyer is that you don’t have to worry about being fired from a government job. You automatically increase your income very substantially by going back to the practice of law. So it gives you a degree of independence. What was the point in being in government unless you could espouse the positions that you believed in? BR: Looking back what are your thoughts now on the Vietnam war? PCW: It was a tragic mistake. We went into it with perfectly commendable motives. We genuinely felt we had to contain China and we had successfully contained the Soviet Union at a period of time when they were trying to take over all of Europe. The trouble is that you always tend to set foreign policy by precedent and the precedents in many instances are not apposite. At that particular time we were saying no more Munichs, the idea being that at Munich Chamberlain caved in to Hitler, and as a result we had World War II. Then after Vietnam, we said no more Vietnam. It’s interesting, if you look back you find that Franklin Roosevelt felt that Ho Chi Minh should -6- win in Vietnam, that it was a fight for independence. The trouble was the State Department was concerned about France. After World War II there was a strong communist movement in France and if it had become a communist country it would have had an adverse effect on the United States. The feeling was that if France lost its lndochinese empire, that would create a greater chance that the communists would take over the French government. So our initial involvement in Vietnam was dictated by our concern about France more than by any concern about China. The interesting thing is that now we are perfectly willing to live with a Communist government in Hanoi. It hasn’t adversely affected us. BR: You served on the presidential advisory board on arms proliferation policy, which was established in 1995. What was the purpose of the board and what were its findings? PCW: The purpose was to consider what control there ought to be on sales of conventional weapons overseas. Our basic conclusion was that we should not sell weapons overseas for the purpose of keeping a production line going, that there are more important policy considerations. You should only sell weapons if it will improve national security. BR: What are your thoughts on selling arms overseas? PCW: I think the arms trade is much too excessive. There ought to be a priority on the international agenda for the big arms producers to get together and be much more restrained. BR: Will that ever happen? PCW: I think it will at some point because it’s contrary to international security to have all these arms floating around. At present one question we’ve faced is, Should we try to sell more sophisticated military equipment to South America? The South Americans don’t have any external threats. Their problems are internal-things like disparity between rich and poor, drugs, faltering national economies. They ought to be devoting their resources to things that make a difference, rather than buying sophisticated jet fighter aircraft. Who are they going to use them against? Unfortunately, we’re under strong pressure to make sales of expensive equipment overseas. It represents a lot of profit inside certain Congressional districts. BR: In August of last year, the Clinton Administration ended a 20-year moratorium on the sale of high-tech arms to Latin America. What are your thoughts on that? PCW: It’s a mistake. We should continue to have that moratorium. The theory is that if we don’t sell them the sophisticated weapons ourselves somebody else will. William Fulbright, when he was chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said the same rationalization was used for the slave trade. Don’t do something bad just because someone else does. I think it would be useful if international agreements could be reached among major producers of sophisticated military equipment to exercise restraint. Even from an economic standpoint, the industrialized countries would be much better off. The developing countries could just as easily provide a better market for peaceful goods, like automobiles. BR: What are your thoughts on the events now unfolding in Pakistan and India? Was this inevitable? PCW: It was not inevitable. The problem is that the government of India is weak and as a matter of pride the Bharatiya Janata Party Platform kept saying that India should become a declared nuclear power, that they should institute a nuclear test program. And they have. BR. We see Pakistan responding. Where do you see this going? -7- PCW: Well, being an optimist I like to think that it may end up all right. The reaction of the rest of the world will be so adverse to these nuclear tests that there is some chance that India and Pakistan will now sign some arms control agreements like the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. The thing we have got to do is get across the idea that having nuclear weapons doesn’t make you a big shot. Some of the most powerful countries in the world don’t have nuclear weapons. Japan and Germany don’t have them, and Japan and Germany are much more important economically and politically and than India or Pakistan. BR: Will there be a day when we’ll get rid of nuclear arms? PCW: It’s going to be very hard to get rid of all of them. The problem is that you can’t make the nuclear secret a secret again. Even if we got rid of all nuclear arms people would still know how to make them. The real risk is that in a time of crisis there might be a race to see who got nuclear arms back first and that would be very destabilizing because the one that gets them first may feel compelled to use them first. What can be done is substantially reduce the numbers and get them down to a point where they don’t represent that much of a threat. That’s the response we ought to have to India and Pakistan’s testing. One of the things they say is that the nuclear powers are hypocritical because they want to maintain their nuclear arsenals but prevent other countries from entering the nuclear club. So we have to start living up to our commitments and make substantial reductions, then make it clear that we regard nuclear weapons as not being useful military weapons. Oddly enough Ronald Reagan put it about as well as anybody when he said: “The only purpose for either side to have nuclear weapons is to see to it that they are never used.” There won’t be anything again like World War I or World War 11. Circumstances have changed so dramatically and the countries that are capable of engaging in a world war are not possibly going to do it. The problems today are regional and internal conflicts. The break up of Yugoslavia and the consequence of ethnic cleansing-that sort of thing will continue to occur. It’s not a perfect world by any means, but the industrialized countries of the world are not going to wage World War 111. BR: How would you compare the mood of the world today regarding the threat of nuclear arms with the Cold War era? PCW: We aren’t yet used to the fact that the Cold War is over. There are still thoughts of, “What if Russia becomes aggressive again?” But I think the chances of that are nonexistent. I mean, under what circumstances would Russia want to attack western Europe? BR: If there was anything in the world you could change, what would it be? PCW: The big thing you want to get rid of is intolerance. If you look at the bad situations in the world today it’s because people don’t recognize our common humanity. Look at the former Yugoslavia, ethnically they are all the same; they’re all Slavs. The difference is religion. Why should that religious difference breed violent intolerance? Then in Africa, some of the dreadful things that take place are due to historic tribal and ethnic disputes. People have got to learn to live with one another. BR: That sounds simplistic. PCW: What’s wrong with that? The recognition of our common humanity is the most important thing that needs to take place. January 1969 INTERVIEWS OF PAUL C. WARNKE Interviewer: Dorothy Pierce – c2 – GENERAL SERVICES ADMINISTRATION NATIONAL ARCHIVES AND RECORDS SERVICE Gift of Personal Statement By Paul C. Warnke to the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library In accordance with Sec. 507 of the Federal Property and Administrative Services Act of 1949, as amended (44 U.S.C. 397) and regulations issued thereunder (41 CFR 101-lo), I, , hereinafter referred to as the donor, hereby give, donate, and convey to the United States of Americ? for.eVentua1 deposit in the proposed Lyndon Baines Johnson Library, and for administration therein by the authorities thereof, a tape and transcript of a personal statement approved by me and prepared for the purpose of deposit in the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library. The gift of this material is made subject to the following terms and conditions: Paul C. Warnke 1. Title to the material transferred hereunder, and all literary property rights, will pass to the United States as of the date of the delivery of this material into the physic31 custudy of the Archivist of the United States. 2. It is the donor’s wish to make the material donated to the United States of America by the terms of :he instrument available for research in the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library. At the same time, it is his wish to guard against the possibility of its contents being used to embarrass, damage, injure, or harass anyone. Therefore, in pursuance of this objective, and in accordance with the provisions of Sec, 507 (f) (3) of the Federal Property and Administrative Services Act of 1949, as amended (44 U.S.C. 397) this material shall not, for a period of five years, be available for examination by anyone excspt persons who have received my express written authorization to examine it. This restriction shall not apply to employees and officers of the General Services Administration (including the- National Archives and Records Service and the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library) engaged in performing normal archival work processes. 3. A revision of this stipulation governing access to the material for research may be entered into between the donor and the Archivist of the United States, or his designee, if it appears desirable. 2 4. The material donated to the United States pursuant to the foregoing shall be kept intact permanently in the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library. Archivist of the United States Date March 11. 1975 .. Oral His tory Collection Tape Index continuation sheet ?age or estimated time on tape 14 15-16 16-17 17-18 19 20-23 23-26,32,33 27 ..– 28-32 33-38 ,. Tape #2 1-4 4-13 13-16 16-17 17-19 21-24 26-29 29-31 31-32 32-33 33-35 35-36 36-37 ~ – 37-38 Narrator Paul C. Warnke Subject (s) covered First meeting with Lyndon Johnson Chairman of the Department of Defense Prisoner of War Advisory Comittee Meetings with President Johnson Served on task force to study Pueblo crisis Task force dealing with labor disputes Interpretation of International Security Affairs Military Assistance Program Controversy over “Country-X Loans” Criticism of arms supply policy American foreign policy Assessment of the Military Assistance Program Views on the course and strategy of the Viet Nan war Domino theory National interest in Southest Asia Bombing of North Viet Nam Limited wars Seizure of the Pueblo Tet Offensive Chairman of thi POW Committee Coordinating with State Department Effectiveness Importance of Disarmament ABM of the National Security Council NATO in regard to national security Oral History Collection Narrator Paul C. IJarnke Tape Index continuation sheet Page or estimated time on tape 1-2 2-6 6-7 7-10 10-11 11-13 13-14 ,. . ,. 14 Subject(s) covered Tape 83 Nonproliferation Treaty Future pressure points in the world National Security geared to the impact and respc from other superpowers Assessment of the relations of the Defense Dept. with Congress Comparison of Secretaries McNamara and Clifford Effect of Viet Nam on the Johnson Administration Sinking of the U. S. S. “Liberty” Transition INTERVIEWEE: PAUL C. WARNKE (TAPE #I) INTERVIEWER: DOROTHY PIERCE January 8, 1969 P: W: P: W: P: W: P: W: P: This interview is with Paul C. Warnke, Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs. Today is Wednesday, January 8, 1969. It’s three -thirty in the afternoon. We are in Mr. Warnke’s office in the Pentagon, and this is Dorothy Pierce. Mr. Warnke, I would like to begin our interview with brief background information on you that I’ve gone into and see if I have got the correct information. of Defense for International Security in June of 1967. You were nominated and confirmed as Assistant Secretary That is correct. Your first government appointment had been just eight months earlier in September 1966 as General Counsel to the Department of Defense. That’s also correct. And prior to that you were an associate and partner in a Washington, D.C., law firm. Yes. And since 1948. And I do have all correct information so far? Yes, you do. Mr. Warnke, your predecessor in this office, Mr. John MacMaughton, also served as General Counsel of Defense. with these positions, or reasoning, that the two of you have had a similar background? Is there any relationship here 2 W: I would say that the only comparison is the fact that Bob McNamara had the feeling that the General Counsel’s spot was a good spot into which to introduce new people into the Department of Defense. the General Counsel’s office was as a sort of a utility infielder; that you could utilize somebody who had been legally trained in a variety of sort of special missions. How, in addition to that of course, the Deputy General Counsel, Leonard Niederlehner, has been around the Department of Defense for many, many years. As a consequence, the general law work of the Penta.gon is very competently handled, .which leaves the General His concept of Counsel free to undertake special tasks for the Secretary and the Deputy Secretary of Defense. So, as a consequence, Bob McNamara first brought Cy Vance in as General Counsel, then after a period made him Secretary of the Army, and then eventually Deputy Secretary of Defense. days, John was made General Counsel after having served, I believe, in Arms Control. him to the Secretary of the Navy job before he was killed. Mr. Warnke, who brought you in originally? Actually, I think it was more Cy Vance’s idea than anybody else’s. had known Cy and, of course, Cy himself was a lawyer. reason was that he and Bob McNamara anticipated that Senator ElcClellan was going to hold an extensive hearing on the F-111; so I was brought in to defend the F-111 program. never held, or at least they have not been held as yet. In John MacNaughton’s And then he moved John to this job, and then had moved P: W: I The principal 3 As a matter of fact, those hearings were P: That may happen soon. What made you decide to come to work for the government ? 3 W: I’d say a couple of reasons. First of all, I practiced law in Washington for about eighteen years. I think I probably would have taken on a government assignment prior to that tine if it hadn’t been for the vast wasteland of the Eisenhower years. would have been eligible for a more junior position. Then when Kennedy cane in in 1960 I was quite available, but nobody ever offered me the kind of a job that I wanted. the Department of Defense because I had net McNamara, knew Cy, and was very impressed with the caliber of the people here and the nature of the problems. and this struck me as being an ideal opportunity. As a lawyer, did you find government work a different type of discipline or requiring different techniques? That cane at about the tine when I I was particularly interested in going with My specific interest was in the field of national security, .. P: W: I would not say so. You have to first of all understand something about It’s not like the law practice You’re dealing very the nature of a Washington law practice. in New York City or in any other part of the world. basically with sort of the interrelationship between big American business and the United States government so that an awful lot of your contacts are government contacts. long hours in a Washington law practice that you find that you work in the United States government. Not only that, but you get used to working the As far as the techniques are concerned, it seems to =–and this is terribly parochial on my part–that a lawyer’s training really puts you in a good position to cope with governmental problems on a policy basis. In other words, your job as a lawyer is to take a look at an overall situation, try and isolate the salient facts, and then come to the best possible conclusion, or the best possible recommendation for your client. SO, essentially, it seemed to me that what I was doing was changing clients, rather than changing techniques. The big change however, apart from the change in client, was the nature of the problem. Your approach to the problem was the same. The only difference, and a very cardinal difference, was that the problem made an awful lot more difference. significance, so that it made the challenge greater and, also, the at tractions greater . You’ve somewhat answered this for me already, but do you find the demands of public service distinguish themselves from private practice in any other ways than what welve covered? Yes. I’d say that one other way is that you can approach them with a greater degree of objectivity because of the fact that you’re trying to represent the national interest. a client, you kncw in advance where it is that you want to come out. Then it’s the question of trying to do the best possible job of advocacy in order to promote your client’s obvious selfish interests. It was a problem of infinitely greater P: ,. W: If you’re dealing with a problem of Now if you’re dealing, instead of that, with a problem in the field of national security, it’s more important that you endeavor to be objective, at least until you reach the point At which your superior has come to his conclusions. At that point it again turns into an advocate’s role because then you do the best possible job you can of marshaling the facts to support the conclusion. Are you in effect saying that there’s room for greater development of idealism in the government? P: 5 W: Oh, of course there is–obviously so. lures of government service. period of my years in Washington who have found it impossible to leave government service even though they could make infinitely more money I think that’s one of the great I’ve had a great number of friends over the practicing law on the outside, just because of the fact that they had the appeal and the infinite attraction of working for what they regarded as being the best interest of the United States rather than the inevitably selfish interest of a large corporate client. p: Of course, power is rather attractive. W: Yes, but Rower in the United States Government is sufficently centralized in the President, and in his Cabinet advisers, so that you don’t have that illusion of omnipotence yourself. You have a certain amount of authority, but as far as power is concerned, your only real power is the power to recommend, and hence the influence. outside. smaller magnitude. Mr. Warnke, you’ve already mentioned that in coming on as General Counsel you believed you were going to work at the beginning on the F-111 series. Would you give me your views on how this case developed? On how the case developed? would have to say that it originated in a personality conflict. entire matter since the initiation of the contract award developed because of the fact that there was a clash of personality between two very strong and two very stubborn men. hand, and Senator McClelland on the other. Apart from that, it’s hard to distinguish that contract, except in size, from any of the awards You have that degree of parer on the It’s just that the affairs you’re influencing are of a far P: W: Well, if you look at it as a case, I think you The That was Secretary McNamara on the one 6 that take place. Anytime you make a decision on a major weapons system there are, quite clearly, competing contestant to whom it makes a great deal of difference whether or not they get the award. . There aren’t that many big weapons systems contracts open at any one time. In this instance you had two competitors, both of whom had come up with what appeared to me to have been quite comparable proposals. decision was made to give the award to General Dynamics. Senator McClellan, I think largely at the instigation of Senator Jackson, A At that point asked that the award be held up. his position to determine who should get the award. had been made and he wasn’t going to let the Legislative Branch interfere Bob McNamara figured that it was The determination with the prerogatives of the Executive Branch. As a consequence Senator McClellan’s nose got very far out of joint, and has remained so, and I think the pain has increased over the years. P: Did you have any views as a lawyer before you came to Defense on the developments as they had been so far because, of course, all of this was back in ’62, I believe–’61. W: On the F-111 contract? P: Yes. W: I had never had any acquaintance with the facts at all, so that I had no views except for my instinctive bias that Secretary McNamara was probably correct. 1 P: Did you actively play any role in reviewing the contracts and the–? W: Yes, I did. A good bit of my time during my first months in the Department was devoted to trying to deal with the investigation. And in that connection, of course, it was necessary to review the documents; to talk 7 to the people who participated at that time; and to try and form some sort of opinion of what the issues would be in this hearing, which as yet has not been held. So that I became quite familiar with the background. Then, in addition to that, as you probably know, Secretary McNamara had set up what was initially a weekly review meeting with the contractors. That was with General Dynamics, who was responsible for the airframe, and Pratt and Whitney, who were responsible for the engine. purpose of those was not to deal with the McClellan investigation, but to solve some of the highly complex technological problems that are inherent..in the development of a weapons systems of this complexity. You spoke of sort of isolating the issues involved here. see them as–the major ones? First of all, you’ve got to sort them into the objective ones and the subjective ones. I’ve referred to the subjective ones. The subjective one was a clash in strong personalities. Now the – P: What did you W: The objective ones were, I would suppose, basically three in number. The first one was whether there had been any impropriety with respect to the award itself. order to come to a preordained conclusion. that there had been no abuse of the procedural techniques employed. In other words, had procedures been subverted in It was pretty obvious to me A second issue was whether the entire project was a bad idea in terms of do- ability. In other words, the concept was one of comrmonality. That here you have the Air Force with one particular requirement- the Navy with another requirement- and the conclusion made that whichever of these two proposals–by Boeing and by General Dynamics–was accepted, each one of them was to be evaluated in tenus of whether or not you did 8 have a common airplane. have endeavored to arrive at a connnon airplane for the two missions: one Air Force and one Navy mission. The real key technological issue was should you And then the third issue, as I saw it, was the competence and efficiency with which the contract had been carried out by the contractor under government management. What was your view on the practicality of a common plane for these two services? 1 never arrived at any really satisfactory conclusion because I was never sure that the missions which were contemplated by the two services had been adequately defined. In other words, if you look at it in the abstract, there is no reason why you should not have a cmon airplane for certain missions where the objectives are reconcilable. In this But those were the basic issues. P: w: .. instance, viewed in the abstract, the two missions were reconcilable. Both services wanted a plane which would be capable of flying very fast, flying very high, also flying very low at supersonic speeds, and with an appreciable range and loiter time. could see, sufficient elements of similarity in the original concepts, so that you could aim at a single airplane. Therefore, there were as far as I After all, we do have instances of commonality at the present time. You have the F-4 which is utilized very extensively both by the Air Force and by the Navy. which can be both land-based and carrier-based. Accordingly you do have already a prototype of a plane But the question that still remains in my mind is whether you don’t end up with a problem–when you start out trying to reconcile two missions–because the chances are very great that either or both missions will 9 be revised during the development process. And those revisions in mission may really frustrate your initial objective of arriving at a common airplane because the missions are no longer reconcilable. I think that that, to some extent, happened in this case. P: There has been recent publicity that, in effect, this series has cost the American taxpayer a loss of about one billion dollars. there’s any validity in that? No, I think there’s no validity at all. I think it’s also impossible to prove or to disprove–except in the Sense that you cannot say that there has been a LOSS, because the loss is compared to what! Do you feel W: It’s sort of like a client’bf mine who told me one year that he lost five hundred thousand dollars. thousand dollars, and he anticipated making three million; so he lost five hundred thousand dollars. What he meant was that he made two million, five hundred In this particular instance, what they are saying is that Bob McNamara initially said that by having a cmon airplane we could save one billion dollars. maybe not even approximate–let’s say that the contract had cost us to date two billion dollars more than you initially anticipated. you could I think by wholly flagistic reasoning come to the conclusion that your total loss had been one billion dollars? or three billion dollars, Now let’s say, and these figures aren’t exact– Well, then or you name it. It’s just sort of playing with numbers. P: Did you feel any pressure from any area regarding your assessment of this contract award of the program? W: None whatsoever. P: Just a general question. Were there some major legal problems that you. N : 10 faced during your appointment as General Counsel to the Defense Department that come to mind? Yes. problems. Tbt has to do with the issue as to how you treat contractor personnel, or, let’s say, merchant seamen who are caught engaged in illegal activity in Viet Nam. We had a variety of what I regarded as being quite interesting legal One of them has not as yet been satisfactorily resolved. As you probably know, there are two sections of the Uniform Code of Military Justice which initially gave court martial jurisdiction over civilians under some circumstances. because it provided that in peace time people, such as dependents of members of the Armed Forces stationed overseas, could be tried by court martial. decide that they would do in their husbands on foreign soil, and the Supreme Court held that the court martial jurisdiction was not applicable under those circumstances. >* One was held to be unconstiKutiona1, In a couple of instances there were service wives who would There’s another provision that states that in time of war court martial jurisdiction exists over civilians who are accompanying an Armed Force into the field. which you have a number of American civilians who are in fact accompanying an armed force in the field. in addition to that the contractor personnel who make–my be working on building something like an Air Force base. they engage in black market activities; sometimes they beat up on one another; sometimes they murder one another. cular reason why they should try and prosecute an American who has Now, in Viet Nam, You’ve got a situation in You have the Merchant Seamen. You’ve got In some instances regrettably The Vietnamese see no parti- 11 comitted a crime against the United States Government or against another American, so that you’re faced with the question that whether under those circumstances you should exercise court martial jurisdiction. There has been a difference of opinion between the State Department and the Department of Defense on this issue. I felt as General Counsel, and still feel, that there is no nore reason why you should shrink from bringing court martial proceedings against the civilian contractor personnel employee who is engaged in black market activities in Viet Nam than you should about bringing court martial proceedings against somebody who is aGinvoluntary member of the Armed Forces. yo^ could make the argument that morally there is more reason to take the position that the contractor employee has submitted himself to court martial jurisdiction. He’s there on purpose. In many instances the nineteen or twenty-year old kid, who happens to be a member of the Armed Forces, is there very much against his will. As a matter of fact, Then we did have a number of very interesting questions with respect to the law of the sea, which I think is much too technical for me to get into at the present time. Another one that we did have that I thought was a very interesting . problem had to do with whether you could declare segregated housing near Army bases, or Air Force bases, or Naval installations to be off-limits. Secretary McNamara wanted very much to insure that the colored serviceman did not encounter discriminatory treatment in endeavoring to find housing Y for himself and his family near a service base, so that over a period ! that real estate owners– trailer camps, anything of of time we developed a policy of requiring by that I mean people who owned apartments 12 a multiple housing nature–open up their facilities to all servicemen regardless of color, or else their particular facility would be declared off-limits. There was some considerable doubt, I think, in the minds of lots of people as to whether or not that was legal. could you tell one serviceman, “You may not rent from a particular proprietor because he discriminates against other servicemen because of their color.” of the other Southern legislators would not have been very enthusiastic about any such policy. In other words, Also, which you might anticipate, Chairman Rivers and some ~ We decided that it had to be attempted because it was getting to be a very inflamatory issue. which the State of Maryland, in connection with open housing legislation, called upon the Secretary of Defense to take action to insure that no discriminatory practices existed. We were able to point to this provision in the Maryland law as sort of the opening wedge, so that initially we evolved the policy of requiring that any housing near bases in Mary – land be open to all service personnel or else be open to none. Not only that, we ran into a situation in As a matter of fact, since that time the policy has been made generally applicable and has been accepted, I think, with considerable cooperation of both the realtors and our service personnel. P: Has it been challenged? W: It has not. And of course now, it cannot be because of the Fair Housing provisions that have been enacted into law since then. We were a little ahead of the Fair Housing Legislation, but were able to use the Maryland precedent to make it applicable on a nationwide basis once the Fair Housing provisions went into effect. 13 P: W: P: W: P: W: P: W: Was your work as the General Counsel strictly legal, or in this position did you also get involved in policy matters? As I’ve already indicated, Secretary McNamara did not visualize the General Counsel’s job as being completely a legal position; so, as a consequence, I did get into policy matters of various types. What are some of the major ones that come to your mind? Well, for one thing I was in charge of a review of the tactical aircraft study that had been put together by a panel of the President’s Scientific Advisory Council. Then, frequently, I was asked by Secretary McNamara to consider various problems that arose with respect to the Viet Nam war. What were these at that time? I think that the first one arose out of a series of articles that had been written by Harry Ashmore and Bill Baggs based on their visits to North Viet Nam and certain allegations that had been made either by them or by North Vietnamese to them with respect to the bombing of North Viet Nam. So I was asked to talk with Ashmore and Baggs, and then to find out what I could about the facts which had been reported either through or to them. In some other instances, I was asked to review various memoranda that had been prepared, again in some instances dealing with the efficacy of the bombing; in some other instances dealing with other aspects of the military campaign in South Viet Nam. What were your conclusions from your meetings with Mr. Ashmore and Mr. Baggs? It was really impossible to come to any kind of a conclusion about which 14 YOU could have a real degree of confidence. and they admit it, that the North Vietnamese were reporting to them in a highly colored basis. evitability of some attacks on civilian targets in the course of any sort I think it was very clear, But at the same time you had to concede the inof a bombing campaign. Typical, for example, was a charge with respect to a particular town, somewhat south of Hanoi. The North Vietnamese used that town as an illustration of an indiscriminate bombing attack that was designed to terrorize rather than to neutralize any sort of military facilities, or . facilities that might have been more war supporting. Now I think that .. both Ashmore and Baggs, in all good faith, accepted that because, for one thing, some of the facilities that had previously been war supporting had been totally destroyed so that even their on-the-scene review did not put them in a position where they could assess the validity of the charge that was made by the North Vietnamese. But at the same time, it was very clear from some of the pictures that they had received and from some of their eye-witness accounts that some civilian targets had been attacked. Now, you never know whether that’s inadvertence, or whether it’s recklessness on the part of a particular pilot. well under the pressures of war. Mr. Warnke, on what occasions have you met with President Johnson, beginPeople .don’t always behave terribly P: ning with the first? Let’s see. when he came by and shook hands with the people who were sitting at my table at a luncheon intended to raise funds for Senator Wayne Morse. Third party: (This is Capt. Robert Pace, Military Asst. to the Asst. W: I think the first occasion was back in 1950, and that was Secretary of Defense.) 15 Did you want to interject the chairmanship of the Defense POW Policy Committee as a General Counsel, or pick it up later? W: B: W: P: W: P: W: P: W: P: I don’t think that I took over that as General Counsel, did I? I think that came afterwards. I think, Bob, that that was after I became Assistant Secretary for ISA, wasn’t it? (Indistinguishable) You’re right. I did become that as General Counsel. While I was General Counsel, I was asked to become chairman of the committee which had been established by Paul Nitze. That was the Department of Defense Prisoner of War Advisory Committee. That consisted of representatives of the various services–the Secretaries of the Army, Navy, and Air Force; Defense Intelligence Agency; Joint Chiefs of Staff. The objective was to coordinate all of the Department of Defense activities dealing with prisoners of war and to act as the point of liaison with the Department of State where Averell Harriman had primary responsibility as the President’s representative on prisoner of war matters. This is primarily, of course, concerned with Viet Nam? Primarily concerned with Viet Nam. Also, of course, it Concerned itself with the Pueblo crew, and with the occasional detainees in Cambodia; and also the pilots–1 think there are three of them now, aren’t there, Bob–who are being held by the Communist Chinese. When was this appointment? It was in the early summer of 1967. Until when? It’s still continuing. And are you still the General Counsel? 16 I’m still the chairman of the committee, right. I probably will come back to that. I do have some questions later on on the Pueblo, and we can draw on that. We were talking about occasions when you have met the President. The occasions on which I have met President Johnson have been just about as intimate as that first one. directly. I think I sat in on possibly two meetings at which the President was present. I can’t think of more than two, can you, Bob? I’ve had almost nothing to do with him W: P: W: Bob : Of course, he recognized you when you came to OSD. W: P: W: P: W: P: Yes, but my contact has always been with the President through the Secretary .of Defense. question of whether or not to try and sell F-5’s to Brazil and Peru in order to forestall their purchase of French Mirages. I think I participated in one meeting on the I was an attendant at a meeting that the President held with respect to the Middle East crisis back in June of 1967, and I think one meeting in connection with the Pueblo. at which I’ve even been present when the President was in the chair. Did you offer any information or conclusions, or were any opinions requested of you in these meetings? On the Middle East one, no–1 was there purely as an observer. In the case of the jets for South America, yes–1 interjected a remark or two of monumental triviality. What was your position? That there wasn’t a darned thing we could do about it. to buy Mirages, they were going to buy Mirages, that we shouldn’t get ourselves in a demeaning position by trying somehow to bribe them not to. And the Pueblo meeting? Was that a recent–? I think those are the only three meetings If they wanted 1J : B: W: P: W: P: W: P: W: B: W: B: W: 17 NO, this was immediately after the seizure. yes we were on our Far East trip at the time of the seizure. We were called back by the Secretary of Defense at the time of that crisis. And there was a task force that was set up, wasn’t there, Bob? I think, you and I, Bob,– Yes, sir. The task force was set up. I think that Sam Berger, who is now Deputy Ambassador in Saigon, was in charge of the task force. of the initial meetings the President was a participant; and I was there in one of them. Were you a member of the task force? Yes. How many were on that task force? I’d say that the regular members during the fairly brief period of time in which it was in existence were Ambassador Berger; Walt bstow; Clark Clifford, who had been named to succeed McNamara but who had not yet taken over the job; McNamara; Rusk; and I think Max Taylor was in at some of the early meetings. How long did you meet in this capacity? I’d say for about a week, and after that period of time the task force-. The task force at really the Secretariat level then disbanded. just, you know, to determine what the immediate steps might be that the United States should take. . It was to collect the facts in chronology. Yes. It was a task group lower echelon. But then the task group continued at the working level. At some ,. This was 18 Did you participate in that? No. point. who went over and talked with Ambassador Brown, who succeeded Ambassador Berger as head of that task group, was Dick Steadman. He participated as much as we participated through you to the Secretary. That’s right. With whom do you deal primarily on the President’s staff? I would say more with Walt Rostow than with anybody else except on things like balance of payments problem in which I deal with Ed FrLed. Occasionally with Bromley Smith, but usually more directly with Walt. In your very few occasions–this is kind of a general question–of your associations with the President, do you have any impressions of him– This is not meant to be a loaded question. The finest President I have ever worked for. Over the almost year-and-a-half now, two years-and-a-half–that you’ve worked in Defense, have you been on call; or what is your status in a crisis situation? I’ve got a gray phone in my house, so I guess I’m on call. He’s on call twenty-four hours a day. And when they develop, you come to the Pentagon? Yes. Stay here? We’re usually here anyway. Do they develop during the day primarily? partially answered this–appointed you to any other committees or panels I think that one of my deputies, Dick Steadman, participated at that Charlie Grosjean was in on it too, but I think that the one ,. Has the President–Well, you’ve P: W: B: W: P: W: P: W: P: W: B: P: W: P: W: P: W: P: W: P: W: P: W: P: W: P: W: 19 or task forces outside of this one on the Pueblo crisis? Yes. I was on a task force for the President when I was General Counsel that had to do with how you deal with labor disputes that affect the national security. Participating from Defense angle? Participating for the Department of Defense, yes. Was this a very extensive panel, and was it for any Presidential messages? It was called for a specific purpose in trying to determine whether there was a mor6 efficient, more comprehensive way, of dealing with such things as steel strikes, railroad strikes, other types of strikes, that might: have an immediate adverse impact on the security interests of the United States. and came to the conclusion that there is no good solution to dealing with human problems . Have YOU ever traveled with Mr. Johnson? Never. Ever been asked to travel for him? No. We went through the usual changes on compulsory arbitration etc., As I say, I’ve always worked for the Secretary of Defense, so that if I was traveling €or the President, then it would be through the Secretary of Defense. Do you travel much in your position? Not a great deal. I found it very difficult to leave town unless the Secretary leaves town, so that that has been primarily on NATO meetings and on a trip to Viet Nam with Bob McNamara back in July 1967, and one with Clark Clifford in July 1968. The other occasions have been NATO meetings You did mention a Far East trip. 20 with the Secretary–in one instance with Paul Nitze. This was after Bob McNamara had accepted the appointment to the World Bank and before he had left. attend a Security Committee meeting with the Japanese. Then on one occasion I went, without the Secretary, to That was interrupted about half way through with McNamara telling me to come on home. I haven’t tried to get away alone,since. This is sort of a duplication here, but have you been given any special assignments or responsibilities beyond what would be encompassed in International Security Affairs? We’ve always interpreted International Security Affairs, Miss Pierce, sufficienLly broadly so that nothing would be outside of the scope. take a very expansive view of the charter. Then can you briefly give me an idea of what this broadly encompassed position is? P: W: We I P: W: Well, I think that the charter, as far as the establishment of ISA is concerned, reads something along the lines that the function of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs is to identify emerging and existing problems throughout the world that may be of interest to the security of the United States. narrow-minded, you can expand that to take in just about anything. And how do you interpret it? Very broadly. really impossible €or any aspect of our foreign policy, for any international development, not to affect, one way or another, the national security. Now, under those circumstances, of course you’ve got to take a very broad view as to what is intended by the words that I’ve just , And unless you’re very P: W: What I mean by that, to be serious about it, is that it’s P: W: P: W: P: W: P: W: 21 recited. Now, as a consequence, also the Secretary of Defense very fre – quently finds himself in a position where he is examining the exact same problem that the Secretary of State is examining so that unless you’re quite careful, you’re going to get your signals crossed. it’s important that there be such a position as the Assistant Secretary of Defense in International Security Affairs, because he must act as a liaison with the Department of State and see to it that we are pursuing consistent policies on the various situations that arise. That’s what Does this type of interpretation and this coordination with the State Department make any difficulty in making effective and quick decisions on critical situations? No, I’d say it certainly makes no difficulty. that otherwise would develop. You have a great many bases to touch here, though, don’t you? No, because there’s no official clearance procedure that has to be followed. But what you have to do is just make sure that the positions which you are taking on behalf of the Secretary of Defense don’t run in conflict with the positions that are being taken on the part of the Secretary of State. Has this occurred? No, because I’ve done the job so efficiently. Between the State and the Defense Department, in reaching an agreement on your policy decisions regarding foreign affairs,’are you always Ln agreement? Well, of course, we’re not always in agreement. There’d be no reason for the President having a multiplicity of advisers if they’re always It eliminates difficulties 22 going to be in agreement at all times. And no two human beings find themselves consistently in agreement, even on simple matters. These are matters of immense complexity, and there are often differences of opinion. But what you want to do is to expose those differences rather than to submerge them, and, if necessary, bring them to the President for resolution. And that frequently occurs. Does it come to a point of a determination of whether this is a military or a diplomatic strategy that should be considered? I would say that on any problem that’s of sufficient significance to be brought to the President of the United States, it’s going to be both–if it’s either. p: W: ,. Take for example such a question as, as anything arising out of the Middle East crisis. options are in connection with the Middle East without looking at it from the standpoint of what’s going to affect the foreign policy interests of the United States and also what’s militarily feasible. let’s say that we were to conclude–which we won’t–that the thing to do at this stage would be to threaten the United Arab Republic. don’t sign a peace treaty with Israel, then we’ll invade you.t’ Now, obviously you can’t look at what the American In other words, “If you Now, you have two questions on that. One of them would be, politically, is that a desirable thing to do? Would that tend to protect American interests in the area? Now that question as to whether it would be politically desirable would have to be one that would be primarily determined by the Department of State. I’m quite confident that they would determine that the answer is 18N01′ , that it would not be in our interests. But let’s say that they were to lose their mind and say thae 23 the answer is “Yes.” Well, then you’d have to make a military determination as to whether or not this could be done. In other words, do you have the capability of invading and occupying the United Arab Republic and, also, in the event the Soviet Union were to take exception to your contact, are you in a position where you can repel any connected counteraction on the part of the Soviet Union! . So on any question of that sort, you’ve got political matters which are primarily the determination of the Department of State, but on which the Department of Defense certainly would express a position. have ‘to express a position because we would have the fundamental responsibility for military implementation of that policy in the final analysis. Is the order in which you’ve given these the way you would address the situation, politically and then militarily? It would, I would suppose, be that more often than the other way around. it would not be the inevitable order. We would P: W: But In other words, there would be come instances in which it would be so clear that your military capability was inadequate so that you would never resolve -the political question as to whether or not it would be in your interests to take that kind of overt military action. Oh, I might cite for example something like Czechoslovakia. I would say that nobody ever really addressed the political question as to whether it would be in the American interest to try and repel the Russian invaders because of the fact that it was so apparent from the military standpoint that you couldn’t do it! P: I believe that our Military Assistance Program comes within your area of 24 of responsibility. W: That is correct. P: I’d really like to just let you talk a little about your views on it in tenns of its having done what it is meant to do, and in the light of the fact that it has been sort of a continuing controversy. Well, let’s start out by trying to state what it is that military assistance is intended to do. Part of the trouble, of course, is that it’s intended to do a variety of things, not all of which are consistent. W: The general genesis of military assistance was in the post-World War I1 period, where it was important to us to restore the military capability of Western Europe. World War I1 their economies and their military machines were virtually decimated. provide for their own defense. was clearly, at that time, in an expansionist mood. .. You had a situation where in the aftermath of Not only that, but they didn’t have the economic capacity to And you had the challenge of Russia which Now, under those circumstances, what you were doing was to shore up the defense of Western Europe. in the twentieth century that the security of Western Europe was vital to our security. of that objective; and that that program at that time received very widespread support, even from quarters that were opposed to the economic programs that they regarded as being “give-away” programs. In other words, the relationship of our own national security is sufficiently clear so that even opponents of foreign aidwouldsupport a military assistance program. And we had already discovered twice I don’t think anybody had any doubts about the validity Now you’ve got elements of that classic motivation in military assistance 25 still. We still have Greece and Turkey who are members of the NATO Alliance, and who don’t have the economic self-sufficiency to provide for their own defense. Now on other elements that are involved in the Military Assistance Program–the second one, let’s say, are base rights. In some instances our military assistance enables us to enjoy access to bases throughout the world. We are not, in the case of Ethiopia, for example, primarily concerned about Ethiopia’s ability to defend itself. is not crucial to the security of the United States. they are Rot subjected to the kind of threat that Western Europe was subjected to subsequent to World War 11. But we have certain facilities in Ethiopia which are of value to the United States of America. So in those instances military assistance constitutes a quid pro quo for base rights– again not very controversial. Ethiopia’s security Not only that, but And then a third type of military assistance involved training programs, which are designed to preserve American influence over the military machines of foreign countries. into a more controversial area, You’re beginning at that stage to get You get people who maintain, for example, that our military training programs and our small materiel aid programs in Latin America have the effect of shoring up military dictations. I think they’re totally irrelevant to the existence of the military dictatorships. countries in the absence of any military aid whatsoever. recent examples of that. program in Peru, but nonetheless you had a military coup. In the case of Argentina, certainly the Ongania coup was, in no respect, subsidized by They would exist because of the internal problems of those And we’ve had We don’t have any substantial military aid 26 military aid. But those who quite rightly look with dismay at the existing internal situations in Latin America tend in some instances to attribute the shortcomings–that are totally indigenous shortcomings–somehow to our very small aid programs. ‘valuable, and they’re good value for the amount of money that is involved I happen to think that the aid programs are in them. controversial. But they are controversial, and we have to recognize that they’re And then finally you’ve got military assistance, which I think everybody,.accepts, to such countries as Korea , or–maybe everybody doesn’t accept it–to Taiwan, the countries that border on the Conrmunist world; and where we feel that their ability to defend themselves is important to our security–not as directly to our security in those instances as it is with respect to Western Europe. But nonetheless experience has indicated that if the Cornrmnist nations in Asia try any sort of expansion we tend to be drawn in, and from that standpoint it’s certainly in our interest to see to it that they’ve got their own self defense capability rather than our being faced with the very tough decision as to whether to intervene on their behalf as we’ve done in the past. So that you’ve got a whole collection of different kinds of things under the overall head of military assistance. itself, the military Grant Aid program, has gone down very substantially in the past several years. a comparable basis, something like one-and-a-half billion dollars. Now the Grant Aid program I think at one point, Bob, it was what?–On B: 1.532. 27 w: Yes. And itls now down to something like three hundred and seventyfive million dollars. Of that amount some one hundred and sixty million is for Korea; another almost one hundred million is for Turkey; and some thirty -five to forty million is Greece–So that you can see there’s not a great deal left in military assistance. P: In grants. W: In grants. Now, the more controversial part of the program in recent years has been military sales. And that’s what has taken most of the heat. The reasons, I think, are probably more psychological than they are pract5cal. Really, the controversy back in 1967 originated in the hearings on the Export-Import Bank legislation, because at that point the Banking and Currency Committees stumbled over the facts that the Export-Import Bank had a category of loans that they referred to as “Country X loans.” And some of the members of Congress thought that this was an effort on the part of the Export-Import Bank, and more importantly on the part of the Department of Defense, to hide the fact that the Export-Import Bank was making loans to finance sales of military equipment to lesser-developed countries. As a matter of fact, that was not the case. The Country X Loans were thoroughly known by the Armed Services Conunittees, and the purpose of classifying them as Country X Loans had to do more with the bankers’ caution than it had to do with anything else. wanted them classified as Country X so that neighboring countries would not recognize that their neighbors were receiving credit assistance. But nonetheless this is what started the particular controversy back in the The Export-Import Bank 28 summer of 1967. And I think that essentially what it showed was the great sensitivity of Congress, reflecting the great sensitivity of the people of the United States, with respect to American involvement. influenced by the experience in Viet Nam. And some Congressmen have even said to me, in hearings at which I’ve testified, that the way we got drawn into Viet Nam was first of all through military assistance. as far as they were concerned, all military assistance was bad because it had the potential of dragging us into another Viet Nam. We had all become, I think, So Now,fhe fact is that no military sales on either a credit or a cash basis can be made without the approval of the Secretary of State. the Department of Defense is not in the position where it’s an unfettered arms merchant. with as a part of the total foreign policy of the United States. The area that I think comes to mind concerning this most strongly right now, of course, is your Middle East situation. I would take it this would be like what you were referring to in your Latin American countries, except that welve seen a rather dynamic explosion of our arms being used against each other. And it comes down to the question, and I think you may have partially answered this, but that in supplying arms are we not running the risk of generating conflict and not ju’st promoting security? I’d say the answer there is a categorical %o.” That OUT supply of anns cannot be blamed for any of the conflicts that have existed during our time. that are cited most often in criticism of our arms supply policy. first of them is India-Pakistan, and the second om is the Middle East. So It never has been. Our military transfers are all dealt P: W: Let me give you two examples, and they’re the two examples The 29 Now let’s take India and Pakistan. Prior to 1965 the United States supplied major end items both to India and to Pakistan. because of our view that it was important that both of these countries have the capacity to deter any aggression by either Communist China or by the Soviet Union. foreign policy. It’s sometimes referred to as “close-in containment.” It’s sometimes referred to as “shoring up the defense of the free world.” I don’t think anybody really objects to it. We did so That’s a classic consistent ingredient of our Now the problem, of course, is that the traditional hostility between the Moslems and the Hindus makes the Indians and the Paks look at one another as the other’s greatest threat, rather than the Soviet Union or Communist China. Back in 1965, after a series of border incidents, you ended up with a shooting war; and they were both utilizing to a considerable extent American military equipment. One of the reasons that we could help bring it to a halt was that we were the supplier, and we could shut off the tap. That war was brought to a halt. What sort of situation do we have at the present time? You’ve got one in which the major supplier of Pakistan is Communist China. supplier of India is the Soviet Union. to shooting at one another! The major Now, let’s say that they got back Are we any better off because India is firing Soviet bullets, and the Paks are firing Chinese bullets? Or haven’t we just put ourselves in a position in which we have lost the ability to influence the conduct of each country to a considerable extent. NOW, I don’t happen to advocate a restoration of our role as a major supplier of arms to either the Pakistani or the Indians. But I don’t think that that has lessened the degree of tension between the two 30 countries, nor has it diminished the risk that they may shoot at one another. anything by being a major supplier of arms to either country. give us the ultimate control, but our position as an arms supplier or as a non-arms supplier is really irrelevant as to whether or not there’s going to be a further outbreak of hostilities between the Indians and the Paks. enough to supply them, so that our role in that connection–where you’ve got this sort of a traditional rivalry–is a matter of irrelevance. a matter o€.fact you could contend that you had some marginal. greater influence by continuing to supply arms. It’s just that I feel that from our standpoint we don’t gain It doesn’t There are bullets enough in the world, and there are people Or as .. Now the second instance, of course, is the Middle East. But again you have to look at it in terms of what the alternative is. supplying the Jordanians with sme military equipment. We are supplying some to Saudi Arabia. And we’re supplying Israel. We are presently And there’s no question of the fact that the possibility exists–a real possibilty–that military arms will be used by one side against the other side. alternative? or not to supply any of the Arab nations. But what’s your The alternative obviously would be not to supply Israel, Now let’s say that it were politically possible, which it is not, to cut off Israel at the present time. Would that, in fact, diminish the risk of a flareup in the Middle East? it almost certainly–encourage the Arabs to feel that they could now overrun Israel, or try to overrun Israel? Wouldn’t they be the less deterred than they are at the present time. We would then be in a position where France has cut off Israel, where we’ve cut of€ Israel, and where the Or mightn’t i t–in fact, wouldn’t 31 Soviet Union is continuing to supply the radical Arab States. So that I would say that the chances of a really prolonged bloody war in the Middle East would be increased. All right then, your other alternative is to continue to supply Israel, but to say that it’s silly €or us to supply Israel and also supply Jordan which is shooting at Israel which is returning their fire, then what happens? But All that then happens is that the Jordanians also begin to receive arms from the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union now supplies the UAR; it supplies Syria; it supplies Iraq. Do we want really to add Jordan and Saudi Arabia to the list of the Soviet’s clients? the chances of peace? tion in the area so that all of the Arabs are looking toward the Soviet Union, and only Israel is looking to the United States. that in turn increase the risk of confrontation between the Soviet Union and the United States? Would that promote Or wouldn’t it instead just increase the polarizaAnd wouldn’t So that obviously none of us likes the idea that the Jordanians may be firing American bullets at the Israelis and possibly at planes that have been supplied by the United States to Israel. native is that the Jordanians are going to fly Russian planes, drop bombs on Israel , and the Israelis are going to be flying American planes and drop bombs on Jordan, and then you end up with Soviet military advisers in Jordan and American military advisers in Israel, and then you’re of€ to the races! So you just have to consider what will happen if you don’t continue to pursue a policy which admittedly has got distinct limitations and distinct objections. But if the alterv 32 p: That answered my other question. although it wouldn’t weigh the balance of the fact that it would take us out of the atmosphere of being the ” big brother” dictating and supplying. But as long as you approach it in the terms that you accept this as a thing we must do in order to keep a balance of– I’m not saying it’s good. other option which is available to us. In your judgment could there be any changes in this arrangement, or do you see that as the way it is, as it has to be? In which arrangement specifically would that be? Middle East specifically? Yes, sure! All you’ve got to do is to get the cooperation of the Soviet Union! lot of problems of the world. If we could get the cooperation of the Soviet Union with respect to Viet Nam, we could bring the conflict to an end quite rapidly. Union with respect to the Middle East, we could certainly do a great deal to dampen down the tensions that exist in that area at the present time. But in our own MAP (Military Assistance Program) program you don’t see any areas that should be changed? Oh, I think that there are probably a lot of areas that should be changed, and I would hope that there will continue to be a.very careful review. All I’m saying is that it is under very careful review at the present time, and if we make mistakes it’s not because we’re not trying not to make mistakes. will continue to. imperfections in our anus supply program doesn’t necessarily mean that . You could make a pretty strong case, w: All I’m saying is that it’s less bad than any P: W: With regard to the .. That’s the answer to an awful If we could get the cooperation of the Soviet P: W: I’m sure that we do make mistakes, and I’m sure that people But the question still is the fact that because there are 33 we would be better off with no arms supply program. to pay the price of making some mistakes to get the benefits that, in my opinion, very clearly outweigh the mistakes, I think you’ve got / ‘ P: Do you see any change in this posture in both military assistance and , f foreign aid in the future? W: I would imagine that the Military Assistance Program as a grant aid program will virtually fade out of existence within the next several years. I think we will continue to supply arms on a sales basis and on a credit sales basis. P: You mentioned, of course, the military bases in this. Due to events that have happened within the last couple of years, I know there has been considerable talk about re-thinking or re-evaluation of the need for bases, especially in Europe. What is your assessment of this? W: First of all, of course, it depends upon what you feel is a sound American foreign policy. There are some people who feel that the United States ought to withdraw essentially from its foreign commitments–that our intervention causes more harm than it brings about good. your view, then obviously we should withdraw from bases to implement that view. Now if that’s But let’s say that instead of that you feel, as I feel, that it’s important that the United States continue to try and exercise some influence on world events; that on the whole our record is good rather than bad; and that, although as we have in the case of military assistance-we’ve obviously made mistakes–our batting average is pretty good. the question is, do we have more bases, or bases in places that are unnecessary to protect the security interests of the United States. ) Then 34 Let’s start off with Europe. The fact of the matter is that our bases in Europe have helped preserve the peace now for some twentythree years. I think that most of our allies in NATO feel that the principal check on Russian ambitions is the presence of a substantial number of Americans overseas; and that if there were to be any marked change in that posture, that that would encourage the Russians into a more aggressive policy than they have been following by-and-large. that might lead them to feel that they could with impunity take over Hungary, Romania, even Yugoslavia, conceivable Austria; and bring additional-pressures to bear on West Germany. Now under those circumstances obviously the security and independence of the rest of Western Europe would be threatened, which would impinge unfavorably on our own security posture. And that ,. Now the real issue, and I think it’s an issue that is real and ought to be debated, is how many Americans does it take in Europe to continue to deter the Russians. answer to that. hundred thousand. I would say that if you could wave a wand and create a situation in which you didn’t have three hundred thousand there and hadn’t had three hundred thousand there, but had instead something like two hundred thousand, that we’d be in just as gooC position as we are now; that that would be regarded by the Russians as a sufficient number of Americans to indicate American concern about the security of Western Europe and American willingness to put American lives on the line. But we don’t have two hundred thousand there. We have three hundred thousand. If you had two hundred thousand instead of three hundred thousand, you And I don’t think that there’s any good At the present time, we’ve got approximately three 35 could cut down on the number of bases. But if we were to take one hundred thousand troops out of Europe and cut down on the number of bases, what sort of an impression would that give to the Soviet Union! cut as indication of American intent eventually to make a sixty -six percent cut, and then a ninety-nine percent cut and wnuldn’t our NATO allies feel–that this was evidence of an American adoption of what I’ve referred to as the first of these theories as to American foreign policy–that America ought to disengage, become noninvolved!, . . So that I don’t think that under existing circumstances you could Wouldn’t they regard a thirty -three percent and wouldn’t they feel– safely make any substantial reduction in the American presence in Europe, and particularly in the aftermath of Czechoslovakia and the evidence of the Soviet willingness to employ military force to achieve what they regard as their political objectives. Then you look at the bases in the rest of the world, and you’ve got quite different atmospherics insofar as our other bases are concerned. You’ve got some bases which are important because of their location and the intelligence gathering potential that they have–bases such as those in Ethiopia, some of those in Turkey, and so forth. So that in evaluating the continued necessity for those, you’ve got to take another look what the technological state of the art is, and whether there’s any acceptable substitute for the intelligence gathering potential of these bases. That, of course, was the issue with respect to Peshawar in Pakistan. Now at one point, Peshawar was very important from the standpoint of the intelligence that we were gathering, particularly about the 36 Communist Chinese missile activities. It has over a period of time, because of technological advances, become less important. So that this is the sort of base that you can evaluate strictly in technological terms and find out whether the existence of the base, the economic cost, sometimes the political liability, is worth incurring because of the value of the intelligence that you cannot gather through any satisfactory subs ti tute . Then, finally, you’ve got the bases primarily in the Pacific. And you’d have to split those into two categories. There are obviously some bases whiPh are of crucial importance as long as the Viet Nam conflict continues. So we can put those to one side for the time being. Obviously we’re not going to pull back from them. Then you have other bases such as most of those in Japan, which are important for many of the same reasons that our bases in Europe are important. willingness to become involved in any sort of a security situation that develops in that area. Now your determination as to whether those bases should be retained or whether they should be reduced or whether they should be eliminated, turns on your view of the importance of Asia to the security of the United States. Now again, I suppose from where I sit I could not be expected to have They are evidence of American interest in the area, of American , any other kind of a position–I regard them as important! that it’s desirable that the United States continue to indicate its interest in the area. our posture with respect to Pacific bases would be misread, primarily by our allies. do if we were to eliminate our bases in the Pacific. I think And I think that any sort of a sudden change in I wouldn’t even attempt to guess what the Chinese would They might very 37 well do nothing. They’ve not exhibited, since Korea any particular inclination to try and expand beyond their own borders. it would terrify the other independent nations of the area. ready yet for us to go home. I think some Japanese would immediately begin to press for some sort of an accommodation with Cnina; and that this might impact adversely on the security of the area. But I think that They’re not So the net of what I think I’m saying is that obviously bases are expensive. bring about a whole lot of unfortunate political situations. arouses the-leftist students in Japan. because there’s more Americans in evidence. price to pay–net–in tenns of our overall security. They cost us heavily in tenns of balance of payments. They It sort of There’s more anti-Americanism ,. But to me it’s a pretty cheap Entirely apart from your views of Viet Nam it’s clear that the Malaysians, the Indonesians, the Thais, the Japanese, the Australians, the New Zealanders, all take great comfort from American presence in the Pacific. fortable they’re going to expand. They’re going to be in a position where eventually they can take over regional security with our playing a very subordinate role. we were to pull out now this would discourage growth, progress, expansion, on And I like to have them comfortable, because if they’re comThey’re going to get stronger themselves. I think if the part of these stronger independent countries iq Asia. So I have come out very.strongly for a retention of a substantial American presence and substantial American bases in the Pacific, as well as in Europe. whether there are ways in which you can diminish our expense and our exposure. I think we should; I think we are; I think we will continue to. Now that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t study to determine 38 But as far as the overall is concerned, I think it’s got to continue to be important for the foreseeable future that we maintain a very evident American presence. I’m sorry. Mr. Clifford is calling for me. INTERVIEWEE: PAUL, C. WARNKE (TAPE #2) INTERVIEWER : DOROTHY PIERCE January 15, 1969 P: Mr. Warnke, this is our second interview; and today is January 15, Wednesday, 1969. We are in your offices, and it’s just a little before three p.m. in the afternoon. We had concluded our first discussion talking about Military Assistance Program. more or less a concluding question of your assessment on this program as to what you think the future is for military assistance and foreign aid. I’d like to pick up with that point and ask you W: I think if you take military assistance as meaning just some degree of subsidization of military equipment for foreign countries that the future is quite dim. I think that you’ve got two basic problems. foreign aid has become a highly unpopular subject with the American public. One is that Another one is that when you’re dealing with foreign aid at the present time, you necessarily are dealing with the lesser developed countries; so that the normal supporters of foreign aid are the normal opponents of military aid to countries whose econ&ies are lesser developed. So that much of the support’that you would anticipate receiving is, in fact, opposition. Now from that standpoint I would anticipate that within the next several years we will find that military assistance in the traditional sense, that is the actually furnishing of hardware either on subsidized credit terms or a grant basis, will be restricted to the instances in which there is a current military situation involving the 2 security of the United States. You see, the way we stand now, military assistance is basically concentrated in four countries. you’ve got Greece; you’ve got Taiwan. have a direct American interest in the defensive capabilities of the You’ve got Korea; you’ve got Turkey; In each of those situations we country. Now the parts of our program that receive major criticism at the present time involve military aid to such countries as Ethiopia and to countries in Latin America. military assistance in Ethiopia is basically the payment of rental for an intelligence installation. I think I’ve explained earlier that our .. Latin America is basically not directed toward an American security interest in the sense of our fearing that the security of these nations is endangered by external attack, or that this would in any sense jeopardize our security. Instead, the purpose of our military assistance is, quite frankly, to maintain American influence in those countries. Military assistance has been important in that regard because the countries unfortunately are dominated by military regimes. more important that, since there is going to be some military influence on them from the outside, that it be our military influence rather than somebody else’s. Therefore it becomes But when you use that as a rationalization for a military assistance program, you imediately invite the criticism that what your military assistance program does is to preserve military dictatorships. Now that doesn’t happen to be the fact, because the military dictatorships obviously would be able to exist whether they received any 3 military assistance from us or not. But nonetheless it does involve us with regimes which are unpopular with the American public. consequence, every time you have something like a coup in Panama or a coup in Peru or a coup in Argentina or a reversion by the Brazilian government to a military dictatorship and a turn away from parliamentary democracy, you add fuel to the fire, and you give ammunition to those who oppose military assistance. So I would anticipate that within the next several years you will As a have phased out on our military grant aid programs and the soft credit terms on saies of military equipment to most of the lesser developed countries. I would think that, in view of the continued importance of NATO to the national security of the United States, that you will have some grant aid programs for Greece and Turkey. Certainly unless the North Koreans decide that they want to wear white hats instead of black hats, you’re going to have military assistance programs to South Korea. I think certainly that as long as the Generalisimo survives that we’re going to have some sort of a military assistance program in Taiwan. I think over a period of time whether or not that continues depends upon the activities and, perhaps even more, the pronouncements of Conmrunist China. .. Then, of course, we have certain programs which are not at present time legislative encompassed within military assistance. They’re the ones where we’re involved in shooting wars, and that’s South Viet Nam, Thailand, and Laos. In those instances, military assistance has been transferred from the Foreign Assistance Act to the Department of Defense budget. I think that’s appropriate because I don’t think the military 4 assistance should be used to finance wars. That’s not its purpose. Now those programs, of course–and their duration and magnitude–will depend upon what happens in Southeast Asia. satisfactory political settlement in Paris, then you would be able to phase those down, and I would imagine that there would be a good chance that they would be transferred to regular military assistance programs of much smaller magnitude, and would belong more in the category of If hopefully we end up with a Korea. P: Mr. Warnke, one of your responsibilities is as advisor to the Secretary of Defense on Viet Nam. What are your views on the course and the strategy of the war and the There are so many things to ask really on this. ,. cost to the U.S. with our own resources and our relations abroad? Well, I would suppose that I should respond to that question on the assumption that this is going to be tightly held–is that correct? w: P: Yes, it is. W: And that it only gets revealed to those people to whom I authorize its revelation? P: Yes. W: Let’s also take into account the fact that I am five days before leaving office. So as a consequence I can speak, I think, without in any way reflecting adversely on the views of any of my colleagues; and without intending at least in any way to be critical. I have regarded our Vier Nam policy as constituting a massive mistake by the United States–an understandable mistake, but nonetheless a miscalculation. easy to say it before the fact, and I’m quite confident that I would have Now, it’s easy to say that in hindsight. It was not 5 participated in making the same mistake that was made. we should learn from our mistakes, and that we ought also to face up to a mistake when one has been made. The mistake, I think, came in two parts. One was conceptual and one was tactical. But I think that I’d say that the conceptual mistake was that we reasoned–as we always tend to–from analogy; and analogy is very treacherous in foreign policy. emulate Captain Queeg. could do was to hark back to his experience with the cheese–where earlier there had been a theft of cheese. He had found out then that somebody had copied a key, aid therefore anytime anything else disappeared from the wardroom, as did the frozen strawberries, he immediately assumed that somebody had duplicated the key. I’ve said before that to some extent in foreign policy we You’ll remember in the Caine Nutiny that all he Now in the case of Viet Nam, I’ve always had the feeling that we reasoned from the analogy of our experience in post-World War I1 Europe. Ne looked at Conrmunist China as though it were Russia; we looked at SEAT0 as though it were NATO; and we looked at South Viet Nam as though it were West Germany. And the analogy just turned out not to be apposite. In the first place, I think experience has shown that Connnunist China does not have the same apprehensions as Russia had about being surrounded, and about wanting to create friendly buffer states. The Communist Chinese have not really dominated North Korea even to the extent that Russia continues to dominate Eastern Europe. North Vietnamese they have not in fact been submerged by China. the well-founded apprehensions of the Nationalist Chinese on Taiwan, there really has never been any sort of a determined effort even to take Despite the apprehensions of the And despite 6 over the offshore islands. I think what it reflects is that China is so big and so amorphous and so impossible to conquer that they don’t entertain quite the really disproportionate fears that Russia entertained, and to some extent still entertains. The other mistake in the analogy, looking at it from the conceptual point of view, was that we had in South Viet Nam a sufficient social and political structure so that reasonable amounts of American assistance would enable us to create a viable permanent functioning government. Now that again turned out to be incorrect. There had never been a country of South Viet Nam. and the less developed part of just a portion of the French Indochinese empire, so that we were working with less than we thought we were working What it had been was the more agricultural .. against a threat which was less than we thought the threat was. And as a consequence, in my opinion, in terms of American security interests we invested more money than the objective was worth. Now having made that miscalculation of course, it’s awfully difficult to change course. “Enough is enough; the auction has now reached the point at which I am not going to raise my bid anymore.” It’s awfully difficult at some point to say: So in this particular instance I think that we have in fact devoted more of our resources than the prize was worth, because you have to recognize that our objective was a very limited objective. Now, to me, the vice of the criticism of our effort in Viet Nam has been that it has been directed towards our intentions, rather than towards our, I would suppose, evaluation of its actual importance. Our intentions have been laudable. IJe haven’t wanted anything in the 7 way of bases, further territory. some college students, including some Congressmen, say, “Just what is our strategic interest in South Viet Nam.” interest is limited to the present war. to us except as bases from which we can fight the war in South Viet Nam. We would have no intent to ever use them in any kind of an aggressive campaign, and we don’t apprehend any sort of a threat: emanating from that particular region for which those bases would be of any strategic importance of us.” I’ve had a number of people, including I’d say, ‘The strategic Those bases aren’t worth anything Similarly I’ve had college students and some Congressmen ask me, .. What’s our interest in the natural resources of Viet Narn?” And there is one school of thought, which I think is represented by some of the left wing press, that says that really what we’re doing in Viet Nam is protecting American business interests–that we’ve got some kind of an interest unspecified in the rubber or in the minerals or in something else. obviously you could never recoup the amount of money that we have spent with respect to Viet Nam. Now if that were our objective, we’re darned fools, because So our objective, it seems to me, was totally unexceptionable. We I believed in what we announced that we were trying to do; and that was to preserve the independence of a small country against external aggression. But, in my opinion, it was a miscalculation, because there was not something there that you could identify as a small independent nation in that sense. did not have the apparatus which could be extended into the countryside to exercise control and provide services to the people in the country. All that they’ve ever really had have been city governments that 8 But then, tactically, it seems to me that the trouble with our policy in Viet Nam has been that we guessed wrong with respect to what the North Vietnamese reaction would be. respond like reasonable people. We anticipated that they would respond, if you will, the way the Russians respond–that when it becomes apparent to the Soviet Union that we will exact a price which is disproportionate to the goal that they’re seeking to achieve, then they change their goal. They don’t worry about saving face. They did an about-face in the Cuban missile crisis because it was apparent to them that it was going to cost them too much, and that having missiles in Cuba was not worth facing the risk of a nuclear exchange with the United States of America. The Russians in the various Berlin crises have responded the same way. We anticipated that they would There was thus reason to believe, again reasoning from experience and from analogy, that the North Vietnamese would react in that fashion too. They were smaller. They were infinitely less strong than Russia; therefore when faced with the fact that the United States really meant it and was going to exert its power, they should have responded differently than they did. So, as a consequence, following the Tonkin Gulf episodes when we began first of all a reprisal bombing of North Viet Nam, that should have been enough. It should have persuaded them to cease and desist from their effort to take over South Viet Nam. But what we could not understand was the importance that they set on that goal, and the amount of hardship and loss that they were willing to endure in order to achieve that goal. So, as a consequence, we had constantly to raise the ante, and eventually–as I say in my opinion 9 and it’s certainly an opinion with which my colleagues would differ–we raised the ante too high. more than we should have. We were betting on this particular episode Then let‘s look at it in terms of where we go from here. My ex post facto conclusion that it was a miscalculation doesn’t mean that at this point we just abandon the game, and accept the fact that we have lost over thirty thousand American lives [and] a very substantial number of billion dollars, in a game that was not worth it, because I think something cam be salvaged out of it and something should be salvaged out of it. Having done what we’ve done, Viet Nam has now assumed an importance – that it”did not have ab initio. achieve something in the way of the original American objective than it was when we first started, because a total American failure and a It’s more important now for us to palpable American failure in Indochina at the present time could impact adversely on our ability to do those things that in my opinion we ought to continue to do. In the first place, the American public is not used to failure. If this were to be regarded as a failure, then there would be a tendency again to reason from analogy and to find in every other world situation another potential Viet Nam. Because I think that what we have to recognize is that a power of the size of the United States,’ and with an influence as pervasive as that of the United States–we’re bound to make mistakes and it’s better to make Now I think that would be calamatous. mistakes than it is not to engage in world affairs. After all, if you again reason from analogy and experience–which 10 I’ve just said you should not do–then you have to look at the example of the other powers that have dominated the world really in the world’s interest. For example, the experience of the United Kingdom. Great Britain over a period of years, I would say, exerted on the whole a benign influence. It prevented more misery than it caused–which is really about all you can expect a world power to do. obviously made some very serious mistakes. But at least she did not let herself become discouraged until she had, for reasons beyond her control, to give up her empire, and then found that she could no longer support on an,econ&ic basis her continued involvement in world affairs. Nonetheless, she .. But what would concern me would be that a palpable acknowledged failure in South Viet Nam would prevent us from doing those things in the Middle East, for example, or would prevent us from continuing to do those things in Europe that are important to our national security and to world peace and progress. factory can be worked out at a political level in Paris. So that what I would hope is that something satisI say at a political level because it, to me at least, seems apparent that from the military standpoint you aren’t ever going to be able to achieve any kind of a meaningful objective. the fact that we never lose any military engagements, we don’t have any military way of bringing the conflict to a conclusion. By that I mean that despite Now that’s because, certainly, of self-imposed limitations. It’s because of the fact that the enemy forces, if they get the hell beat out of them in South Viet Nam, can always retreat across the borders into either Cambodia, where they get a total sanctuary; North Viet Nam, where they now have a total sanctuary; or Laos, where they’ve got a partial sanctuary. 11 And it’s also attributable to the fact that you can’t restore security because in many of the areas security in that sense never existed. you any kind of effective security unless you’ve got continued occupation. So driving the North Vietnamese intruders out does not give So that really from a military standpoint, you’d only have two possible courses of action. which I don’t think would be supported by the Anerican public and which would pose a severe risk of extending the war by bringing Communist China in. Or, alternatively, maintaining a large scale American occupation of-.South Viet Nam for a protracted period of time while you painfully nurse along the political processes so that the indigenous forces could themselves maintain security. American public will support that sort of a long range effort. One would be the geographic expansion of the war, .. Again I don’t think the A further problem which you’ve got is that, as far as Southeast Asia is concerned, a total resolution on favorable terms of the situation in South Viet Nam would not in fact achieve our objectives. objectives are to promote stability in the area and permit the independent countries in Southeast Asia to remain independent. Our basic Now supposing that the North Vietnamese were to say, ‘lOkay, you’ve licked us; we quit; we’re going home; you can put in UN troops lining the border all at arms length.” And you will end up with an independent autonomous anti-Communist South Viet Nam. of that the North Vietnamese really lived up to their word, pulled every troop out of South Viet Nam and brought them all to bear in Laos. they could obviously overrun Laos within–It might not be a period of hours, but it wouldn’t be much more than a period of days, particularly And supposing that as a result Now, 12 if they took their battle trained forces from South Viet Nam and applied them against the Royal Laotian government forces. And then you’d have a situation in which Thailand and Cambodia would be in even greater jeopardy and in greater fear than they would be if North Viet Nam were to take over South Viet Nam, but were to leave Laos as at least sort of a pale neutral state. political settlement that will permit a resolution of the situation in So that what you need is a Laos, and will eliminate any kind of external threat to Thailand and hopefully to Cambodia. Now that can only be done politically, because I don’t think that ,. the will of the American people would be exerted to permit the introduction of ground forces in either Laos or Thailand. So that I have to look at the Paris talks as representing not only the best, but really basically, the sole hope of achieving American objectives in Southeast Asia. P: In achieving these objectives the way you are speaking, that includes the complete removal of our presence in South Viet Nam? No, I don’t think it does necessarily at all. we need to do that except as part of a total political solution in which there is some other form of assurance of continued stability in the area. support a continued American military presence until then, and that it would. W: And I don’t think that I would think that the American public should But I’m saying that it won’t support either an increased effort or the indefinite prolongation of the present effort, particularly under circumstances in which between one hundred and two hundred American boys 13 are being killed each week. is that the American public would pay, but I would think that if you could scale down gradually the cost of our effort in Viet Nam, and could scale down dramatically and permanently our casualties, then the American public would support it for quite a long period of time, and it would be in our interests to do so. I couldn’t set for you just what the price . In other words, what I’m saying is that, on the question of Viet Nam, I am neither one who says that what we have tried there was totally ridiculous, nor one of those who says that it’s vital that we achieve our initi?l’objectives. you look at anything else, and that’s in terms of the overall security interests of the United States. an independent South Viet Nam. concerned, is not over principle at all. The argument is over price. And what value you set on achieving a single one out of the entire shopping list of American objectives. I think that there are other interests of the United States that are of greater value than having our way in Southeast Asia; and that we have to take those other interests into consideration in determining what our course of action should be in Viet Nam. To go back to what you said about wrong analogies that we’ve perhaps applied in this area, the domino theory comes in this light, too? That again is a purely subjective kind of an issue. yes, the domino theory would be an instance of using inapposite analogy. First of all, what’s going to be the moving force that’s applied To me you have to look at Southeast Asia the way It’s worth something to us to preserve And really the argument, as far as I’m P: W: In my opinion, against the so-called dominoes? our experience with Communist China indicates that Communist China would I’ve already suggested that: nothing in 14 be that force. What about Indonesia? Indonesia, as the applier of the force? It’s hard for me to see how Indonesia would be able to mount that kind of an aggressive campaign against any of its neighbors. I’m sorry–1 meant the Chinese threat that occurred in Indonesia a couple of years back. There again, I think I would have to disagree that that was a Chinese threat. I’d say that the threat to Indonesia arose because of the erratic nature of its own ruler; and that certainly Indonesia is no stronger in P: w : P: W: P: W: P: W: terms of materiel resources now than it was under Sukarno. had is a change of leadership, and a collection of leaders who A, are strongly anti-Communist; and 2, are not subject to some of the personal eccentricities that Bung Sukarno was. I thought that this was a Chinese Communist attempt to take over the government that was failing. No, I would not say so. within Indonesia which was backed very substantially by Indonesians of Chinese origin who happened to be Conarmnists. indicate that you had either any substantial number of Conrmunist Chinese who had infiltrated into Indonesia or that the motivating force came from China rather than from within Indonesia. Now obviously it was encouraged by the Communist Chinese; it was applauded by the Cormrmnist Chineses; it was supported to some extent by the Communist Chinese. And it would have set up an alignment with Communist China. That’s correct. But that still would have been done by Indonesians. So What you’ve I would say that what you had was a movement But there’s nothing to 15 a different group of Indonesians got in control, and they were oriented in directions other than towards Communist China. you have to make a distinction between native Communists and Communist In other words, I think aliens. Now you could say certainly that with respect to Cuba, that this is something that was encouraged and applauded by the Soviet Union, as well as by Comunist China. that the Castro take-over and the overthrow of Batista was either inspired or executed by either the Soviet Union or Communist China. did it for themselves. But you could not say with any degree of veracity They There’s a difference between suicide and homicide. Maybe you’ve got a responsibility to prevent homicide; certainly to try and prevent homicide. he’ll pull it off. This is what I was thinking about in terms of the domino theory. didn’t mean to interrupt you. But if somebody’s determined to commit suicide, eventually P: I w: Well, I say it depends really on what you mean by the domino theory. what we mean by it is that, were the United States to withdraw its military presence from Asia and the United Kingdom were to withdraw its military presence from Asia, a number of changes would take place; those changes would have an escalating effect; they would feed on one another. you would have, I would suppose, quite radical changes in both the composition and the disposition of the governments. If And Under those circumstances you would have to anticipate that Thailand and Cambodia and Laos would be more oriented towards Counnunist China. Communist China would then be the strong physical presence in the area. 16 I don’t think they’d be occupied by Communist China. become provinces of China. But I think that they would look toward China as being the one great power left in the area. And in that sense they would be “dominoes” because they would fall more and more under Communist China’s influence. I don’t think they’d But I think that the usual meaning of the domino theory is one of aggression–and of external aggression. post-World War I1 experience that East Europe fell like dominoes under Soviet Russia’s pressure. in Indochina. And again we reason from our Now I don’t see a similar development occurring _. You also would have opinions that would vary as to what would cause the dominoes to fall. Now I’ve already suggested that I have not seen any evidence that China,–as China and as an external force–would try and take over the Indo-Chinese peninsula. I think there’s more question as to whether the North Vietnamese might. the Thais would have would be that if North Viet Nam were to succeed in uniting Viet Nam under Hanoi’s control, that then the Vietnamese have And certainly one of the apprehensions that the Cambodians and traditionally been more aggressive than anybody else in Indochina. But then also you’d have to consider what would that mean in American interests. Would you really feel that San Francisco was jeopardized because of a North Vietnamese-dominated Indochinese peninsula! Let me ask you that question. or strategic value in Southeast Asia? P: What do you think our national interests W: I’d say it resides in two separate things. First of all, it certainly would not be in our interests to have Communist China control the 17 entire peninsula. That would give them really almost the entire seaboard, and it would I think represent a real threat to the independence, and the western orientation, of not only Japan but also Indonesia, the Phillippines, and potentially even Australia and New Zealand. But what I’ve suggested is that our fear of aggressors is directed not only at Communist China, but also at North Viet Nam. suppose that North Viet Nam were in fact to dominate the Indochinese peninsula. national security of the United States. have to find out what way the Vietnamese hegemony evolved, and whether it constituted perhaps the best buffer against China; or whether it was going, instead, just to be the prelude to Communist China’s takeover in the area. And what I submit is nobody can be quite sure which of the two is true. What were your opinions and views of our bombing? you play in it, and also do you think we could have stopped the bombing of North Viet Nam sooner? Now let’s I’m nowhere near as sure that that would be adverse to the Under those circumstances you’d P: What activities did W: Now, let’s break it down chronologically. As I’ve said, I think that the real purpose of the bombing, initially, was to show North Viet Nam that it was going to be very expensive for them to continue on their course of action. It didn’t work. And I don’t think it ever would work, because I think that once it became apparent that they were willing to pay a disproportionately high price, that then we had to find some other rationalization for the bombing. Now the other rationalizations turned out to be inadequate. You can look at the purposes of the bombing campaign, it seems to me, in basically three separate ways. One of them is this idea of 18 exacting a toll; showing the other side that it’s going to be very costly for him to continue aggressive conduct. Okay, we tried that. I think it was worth trying. It turned out they were willing to pay that price. A second possible objective is to destroy their war-making potential. We destroyed their war-making potential, but it didn’t put them out of the war because of the fact that the war supplies did not emanate from North Viet Nam. They emanated from cities that we weren’t bombing. we were prepared to bomb the Chinese cities and the Russian cities where the war supplies were in fact manufactured, we couldn’t destroy the warmaking potential of the other side. of occasions, North Viet Nam was not a source of supply, it was a conduit. And unless As I’ve put it, I think, on a number ., Okay, that brings you to the third possible purpose of bombing. Can you so impede and block the conduit as to prevent the flow of men and materials to the battlefield? And I say the answer to that has been proven to be “no.” You cannot. You can make it more difficult. You can make it more costly. But you can’t prevent it. Now when I say “can’t,” I would have to amend that and say that you can’t do it by any means that you are willing to utilize. possible that you’d be able to do it with nuclear weapons. It’s But there we would be paying what everybody would concede would be too high a price to achieve our objective. > Now as to whether the bombing should have been stopped sooner; again, that’s just a kind of a question on which you’re going to get as many different answers as you interview people. I would say that I personally felt for some time that we ought to stop the bombing. I thought we ought to stop the bombing because I thought the greatest value of the 19 bombing was that it was something you could stop. And stopping it, you could demand a price. So that the question you had to ask yourself was at what point would you get the best possible quid pro quo for stopping the bombing. Now, I think it’s pretty clear that, at some point of time in the past, stopping the bombing would not have brought us anything at all. all, we did have a bombing pause of I think it was thirty -five days back in 1966–early ’66. prepared at that time to make the kind of a deal that would have any After That didn’t buy us anything because they weren’t appeal to .us. Now, no one will ever know whether if we had stopped the bombing maybe a year before we stopped it, it would have brought us something. I personally thought it was worth trying, and that it might have bought us something. of public and world opinion in support of our position in Viet Nam. And that it would, in any event, have prevented some erosion As it was, when we did stop the bombing, it seems to me that it worked. twentieth parallel; and that brought the North Vietnamese to Paris, and The bombing first of all was dropped down geographically to the to, at least, preliminary discussions about peace talks. Then when the President on October 31st stopped the rest of the bombing, it certainly brought them to the position where they were willing to get into substantive negotiations, and I’ think those substantive negotiations will take place and that they will eventually succeed. So in that sense the bombing campaign could be said to have been a success. It achieved a fourth objective. As I said, you could have three possible immediate objectives: One, to raise the price; the second, to 20 destroy war-making potential; the third, really to interdict the flow of men and supplies. A fourth one is that it can be used as a bargaining tool. It has proven, in my opinion, to be an effective bargaining tool. P: Along this line, thinking in terms of Viet Nam, do you think that our commitment there has caused us to sacrifice other interests in the world that we should have been pursuing? W: No, I don’t think it has. But I’d say it could. And the consequences of it could be adverse to our interests in other parts of the world. That’s why it’s important that we salvage something out of it that can be looked at as having been a success. ,. If you look at what we’ve done elsewhere in the world while we’ve been conducting the war in Viet Nam, I think you’d have to say that we have protected our position. Take for example, the situation in Europe. We’ve maintained over three hundred thousand American military personnel in Europe during this period of time. That has continued, I think, to serve as a very effective deterrent to any sort of overly ambitious ideas on the part of the Soviet Union. As far as the Middle East is concerned, I doubt like the devil that we would have taken any direct action in advance of the June 1967 wareven if there had been no Viet Nam–because I don’t think that our interests would have led us make any kind of direct intervention by military personnel or that it would have been effective. ” And as far as other areas of the world are concerned, it’s hard for me to see how we have in any respect shirked either any responsibility or failed to take any kind of military acts that might have been called for. say, up to the present time it hasn’t cost us in terms of other interests So as I 21 in other parts of the world. The real risk is that if we don’t end up with a solution that the American public accepts as satisfactory, this might eliminate, or at least impede, the appropriate public support for other courses of action that we should take in the future. What is your opinion of the idea of our involvement in limited wars? I’m not sure I understand the question. ways: ought to be limited, or whether we ought to apply the full force of American power, I would say that the wars should be limited. wars are infinitely better than unlimited wars, and you’re going to have many more of them. the last. P: W: Let me handle it in two different First of all, if what you’re asking is whether I think that wars Limited ,. You’ll have only one unlimited war, and that’ll be Secondly, as far as whether the choice is between limited war and no war at all for the United States, we still have to pick our cases. I don’t think that we can assume that our interests can always be protected if we are unwilling ever to apply military power. I can conceive of just a whole variety of situations in which I think you’d have very widespread American support for the application of our military power. Now maybe opinions would vary on most of them; but let’s suppose, for example, that the Soviet Union were again to tty to establish a power base in the Western hemisphere. some place like Guatemala. Guatemala. would respond? And let’s say that they picked And they actually intervened physically in Is there any real doubt in your mind that the United States We’d respond, I’d say, for a whole host of reasons. First of all, 22 because we could respond quite easily. our ball park, and with a real hometown audience and with all of the umpires really hornetowners. would intervene successfully; and you would intervene in a matter which was crucial to the security of the United States. They’d be playing the game in S O that you would be able to intervene; you Okay, then you can pick a whole lot of closer cases. Let’s take the present situation in Europe, and let’s take a whole series of examples in sort of ascending order of importance. We did not intervene when the Russians moved into Czechoslovakia. I think that that was just an eminently correct decision. have been playing in their ballpark under the most unfortunate of circumstances, and we would not have been successful. We then would All right, supposing that they were encouraged by this, and were to say to themselves, %et’s clean out all the heretics; let’s really make it a clean sweep!” So the next move is against Romania. Again, I would say that the American public would not and should not support American military intervention under those circumstances. Again, you’d be dealing with a Russian occupation of a contiguous country. would be minimal unless you were willing to brandish the nuclear weapon. Then you might provoke nuclear preemptive strike on their part. we don’t owe Romania anything. and its basic display of independence has been of an economic rather than of an ideological nature. So that in no sense would there be any commitment, either implied or explicit. Your chances of success Moreover, It’s essentially still a Stalinist regime, But then you start getting into the harder cases. How about Yugoslavia? And on that, I think you’d begin to find a number of Americans 23 that would say, “Yes, we have to do something.” Tkt would be because of a whole variety of factors again. First of all, the Yugoslavs would fight, so you’d be confronted by the situation of an independent country willing to fight for its existence against a powerful aggressor. lt would have tremendous emotional appeal. A second reason would be that the strategic situation of Yugoslavia is of much greater importance to Western Europe than is the case of Romania or Czechoslovakia. So I would think that there would be some cause for actual American military intervention, All right, then, Austria! Austria is a neutral nation. And we have, .. although no security commitment, nonetheless we were one of the occupying powers and one of the participants in the arrangement that restored Austria’s independence. power closer to Western Europe and to the jeopardy of the security of Western Europe which we’ve always regarded–and which I still regard– as integral to our own security. €or American military intervention. And there once again, you’d be bringing Communist So you’d have pressure there again All right then, take it a step further. Supposing that instead of picking on any of these, they pick on their real Bete Noire and pick on West Germany. I I That would be regarded as an attack on the United States. Now I for one under those circumstances would support inrnediate American mili – tary intervention and the utilization of the American forces that are presently in Germany. And the standing instructions, of course, for the American cmanders there are to fight under those circumstances, and I think we would. And I think that we’d have American support. Then your question would be–is that a limited war, or is that an 24 unlimited war! as I could. I would do my best to keep it a limited war for as long So that I think that the issue is as between unlimited war and limited war, I’m a limited war man. under any circumstances, I’m still a limited war man. Mr. Warnke, when the world stops fighting over what land belongs to As between limited war and no war P: whom–which pretty soon they’ll have to do–do you view the world in terms of spheres of influence, even if the influences haven’t quite been determined .in some cases? .. W: Meaning no insult, that’s a kind of meaningless cliche: always spheres of influence, but the question is what do you mean by spheres of influence. Now normally when people talk about spheres of influence, what they are doing is justifying at least a partial isola – tionism; that what they’re saying is, graphically. The world is “We ought to look at this geoWe’re in the Western hemisphere. We include Latin America as under our sphere of influence–and Canada (although with some unwillingness I would suppose on the part of the Canadians), and give up everything else.” Mr. Warnke, my question was prompted by what you’ve used as ” ball parks.” I’m talking about a ball park in terms of logistics rather than in terms of either cultural or physical assimilation. P: W: ? – What I’m just saying is that it’s an awfully lot easier for the Russians to fight a war in Romania than it is for us to fight a war in Romania. that as a sphere of influence, I don’t. geographical fact of life. Now if you recognize I recognize that as being a But this sphere of influence theory, as I say, is really an excuse for P: W: P: W: P: W: P: 25 doing nothing in instances in which you probably ought to do something. Because if you were going to draw any sort of a circle showing the logical sphere of influence of the Soviet Union, it would encompass, I submit all of Western Europe. And I don’t think that would be acceptable to It’s not an excuse then to sort of cut up the world and say, We don go there, and we can go here.” us. L L No. I think that geography is one of the factors that you have to take into consideration in determining the permissible limits of the extension of American military power. up the world into spheres of influence, and recognize some kind of an inherent right on the part of the great powers to exercise dominion in But that is not the same as saying you cut ,. the contiguous countries. And the other great power is to exercise a hands-off. I think that great powers ought to keep their hands off whenever they can, yes. Mr. Warnke, have you expressed these views to the two Secretaries of Defense that you’ve served under regarding Viet Nam? I would say never in that sort of detail, no. I think that I have expressed to both Secretaries of Defense, at repeated instances, what I would regard as the practical consequences of those views. words I have advocated courses that were consistent with those views. But nobody has ever seen fit to draw me out at quite the length that you have, Miss Pierce. I don’t think that that exposition of my views would come as any surprise to either Mr. McNamara or Mr. Clifford. I’d like to ask you about a couple, in the last few years, just specific events that happened in terms of crisis situations. This is the seizure In other of the Pueblo and the Tet Offensive. is your assessment of themand view of them, and what did you consider . the impact both militarily and psychologically? These were all early in 1968. What W: Let’s’deal first with the Pueblo because I think it’s the simplest. The Pueblo I regard as being sort of a security sport. resemblance to anything that came before and had very little impact on anything that came afterwards. It bore no I can’t of course, know what the motivation was of the North Koreans in seizing the Pueblo. I suspect that it was not planned out in advance. impulsive decision. And I suspect that they were surprised that it turned out to be such a coup. I think that it, on the whole, up to the present point has hurt us more than it has hurt them; and as a consequence, they probably still regard it as quite a coup. do them no good because it was really irratibnal and motivationless. I suspect that it was an on-the-spot .. I think long-range it will At the time, actually, I was in the Far East. We were coming from Japan where I had been at a secutity subcommittee meeting, and we were landing in Okinawa just as the planes were taking off in the totally vain effort to see if there was anything they could do about the seizure. Something as irrational and outrageous as the seizure of the Pueblo presents a country like the United States with a problem for which there is no satisfactory answer. There is really nothing intelligent that you can do about it. happening any more than you can prevent episodes such as the assassination of Bob Kennedy or snipers getting up in the tower of the University of Texas. But if people behave badly enough and with no motivation that you can discern, then you can’t predict their conduct; and it’s almost J In the first place, you can’t prevent that sort of thing , 1 : , 27 impossible to deter their conduct. In the case of the Pueblo, of course the immediate impulse is to do something to them in return. Now the question is, what can you do! Immediately after the seizure, there was really the highest level concentration on the available courses of action. There were lots of things that you could do. Pueblo; you could launch some sort of an attack across the DMZ; you could try and seize a North Korean ship. could have done. You could bomb Wonsan Harbor; you could sink the There were a lot of things that you The question is, what would any of them have achieved! .Now, we had found in our experience in the bombing of North Viet ,* Nam, and our previous experience for that matter in the bombing of North Korea, that a relatively undeveloped Asian country with a surplus of men can stand an awful lot of bombing without saying “uncle!” that the net result probably would have been to increase the plight of the Pueblo crew without really achieving any sort of a realistic American objective. So Another thing that you could do would be try and retaliate against the Soviet Union. In other words, supposing that you were to adopt the thesis that all of these Communist ploys are part of an overall orchestrated effort aimed against the Free World, which some people believe and which in some instances may be the case. What you then might be able to do is to seize a Soviet intelligence ship. Now, if the United States were to seize the Soviet intelligence ship, you would immediately create a confrontation between the Soviet Union and the United States; and I would suspect would convene a court of public inquiry in which we would lose because the world as a whole would say, 28 “Here you’ve jeopardized the peace of the world on a thesis which is unproven and unprovable,” namely that the Soviet Union inspired the North Koreans to do it. An alternative I would suppose would be to have the South Koreans seize a Russian ship. in that be worth the chances of any kind of gain or profit from it! I would submit that they would not be. But there again, would the risks that are implicit And So, as a consequence, about the best that you could do–and an unsatisfactory best it was–was to negotiate with the North Koreans over a protracted period of time and eventually secure their release under less than’ I would regard as magnificent circumstances. – But looking back at it, it’s impossible for me to see what could or should have been done. But I think that what we did was correct. All right, then the question is, what can you do about it! Well, you can do a variety of things. In the first place, once outlandish conduct of that sort has occurred, you can no longer regard it as unthinkable. You have to assume that if they had behaved that egregiously at one time, they’re apt to behave that egregiously again, and you have to take steps to protect yourself against the consequences of such conduct. The other thing that you can do is to try to leave them worse off – than they were before. Now that involves, of course trying to strengthen the Republic of Korea. tion–if there is any kind of a rational explanation of the seizure of the Pueblo–was that this would somehow advance their cause against the Republic of Korea. Whether it was their intent in the first place Their real objective, and the only possible motiva- 29 or not, obviously they sought to capitalize on the seizure of the Pueblo by worsening relations between the Republic of Korea and the United States; and to drive a wedge between the two; and really to weaken the respect of the Republic of Korea for the United States; and possibly to bring down the government. Now it didn’t have that consequence. It didn’t have that consequence because I think we behaved intelligently. The President sent a high level Ambassador, Mr. Vance, over to Korea to deal with the government, to try and calm them down, to try and show America’s continued support for the Republic of Korea; and to show that we viewed with just as great distaste the Blue House raid–which was designed to assassinate President Park–as we did the seizure of the Pueblo. ,. The other thing that we did was to get a one hundred million dollar supplemental for military assistance to the Republic of Korea SO that instead of appropriating one hundred and sixty million dollars in fiscal 1969, we appropriated two hundred and sixty million dollars. left, I would say, North Korea at least one hundred million dollars worse off in its confrontation with the Republic of Korea–so that they succeeded, it seems to me, on the whole in winning kind of a propaganda battle up NOW that to this point. But in terms of military actualities, they lost ground. I ‘think also that eventually we can make them lose the propaganda value by showing that their conduct was totally unjustified; by showing that the Pueblo did not intrude on their claimed territorial waters, and by showing their abuse of the American prisoners. Now the Tet Offensive, it seems to me, is an entirely different species of event. The Tet Offensive of course has to be placed in the 30 context of the Viet Narn interlude. And to me what the Tet Offensive was, was really just the corroboration of the military and political facts of life –that you were engaged in a war that could not be brought to a satisfactory military conclusion within any sort of a reasonable period of time. apparent to more people. really just hastened the realization of the ultimate facts of the Viet Nam predicament. Now all Tet did was to confirm that fact, and make it more So long range I would say that the Tet Offensive It showed that although you could make progress in pacification, that – this progress could be reversed by the enemy making that kind of a large scale offensive. It showed, also, that whatever your ability to beat the enemy on any kind of a sustained basis, the enemy would still retain the capability of launching this kind of an attack; and that you could not provide the sort of continued security in South Viet Nam that would enable the gwernment to make steady progress as far as extending its control where the countryside was concerned. was to make us face up to where we were in Viet Nam; and what OUK prospect was of achieving a wholly unilateral military solution. a consequence of course, it had a great deal to do with the President’s decision first to cut back the bombing, and then eventually stop it. During the course of this answer, you spoke about things being sort of related to orchestration of events. crisis situations that have arisen? Is there a relation between something like the Pueblo and Viet Nam? So that the net impact As P: Do you see that in any of the W: I have not been able to find any satisfactory evidence that this is part of the coordinated, worldwide Communist plan. It may be. But if so, 31 certainly the evidence is unpersuasive to me at the present time. I think there are some people who quite rightly speculate as to whether or not there is some relationship between, say the seizure of the Pueblo and the Tet Offensive; and whether this is all being coordinated in Moscow. If that’s the case, they do a better job in security than we do. p: During crisis events such as this, do you work with the White House; do you contact them, or do they contact you, on stand by–? W: Well, I think as I said in our first interview my participation is almost exclusively through the Secretary of Defense and through the Deputy Secretary 0.f Defense. So in most instances somebody like Walt Rostow will be directly in contact with the Secretary or with the Deputy Secretary. of course, I do work directly with my counterparts over in the State Department. You mentioned earlier that you were Chairman of the POW committee? Could you tell me a little bit about what you were doing in that area? W: Well, the Prisoner of War Committee was set up by the Deputy Secretary In some instances I have wbrked directly with the White House, And, But the White House contact is at the Secretarial level. p: of Defense, Mr. Nitze, and I think it was in July 1967. The idea was to coordinate the various activities of the Department of Defense in the prisoner of war field and to provide sort of a regular group that could coordinate these policies and do what we could to promote the welfare of our prisoners. tact with Governor Harriman over in the State Department, who of course was appointed by the President as the overall supervisor of prisoner of war matters. It also gave the Department of Defense a point of conNow what we’ve endeavored to do is to, of course, do what we could 32 to promote the release of American prisoners of war, and see if we couldn’t take advantage of any kind of openings that did exist. We’ve had very limited success in that regard. Another thing that we’ve endeavored to do is to bring to bear such pressure as could be martialed to achieve some betterment in the conditions under which the prisoners of war were being held. know what our success has been in that regard. All we know is that We don’t really prior to the formation of our committee I think that Governor Harriman’s public affairs campaign against the proposed war crimes trials of the prisoners of the North Vietnamese was successful. I think that it did ,. indicate to the North Vietnamese that this would be an unfortunate development for them, and would cost them in terms of world opinion. Therefore they did not proceed with those trials. I would hope that the various efforts that we have made to get them to live up to the Geneva Conventions may have had some impact on their treatment of our prisoners of war. present time that we just have no evidence in that area. YOU spoke about working and coordinating with your counterpart in the But so few have been released at the P: State Department. How does this work? Is there any overlapping, or is there any difficulty in arriving at decisions when you need to touch base in the various areas, and yet formulate your own? I would say no difficulty in reaching decisions, if by that you mean is there some sort of a procedural impasse. with a direct wire to the State Department. of the Assistant Secretaries or the Under Secretaries or anybody else, and they will usually answer the telephone. If by difficulties you mean I ) W: – There is not. I have a telephone It’s very easy to dial any 33 are there differences of opinion, there frequently are, of course, just as there are differences within this building and within the Department of State. I have found that the relations on the whole have been quite harmonious, and that we’ve been able to resolve any of these issues. Can you generalize in saying that the position of the Defense Department and the State Department is such, or has differed on these occasions? No, I couldn’t say that there has been any sort of a consistent pattern of difference. Clifford, having come into office in 1968, was not as personally committed to the course of events in Viet Nan, as say, Secretary Rusk, who had been P: W: There’s no secret of course of the fact that Secretary 1 in office’since 1961. Now that frequently has been reflected in positions taken, but that’s just really a chronologically inescapable situation. But if by your question you mean, do we reflect essentially the military point of view, or a Defense security point of view, whereas State represents a diplomatic point of view, I’d say “no” that we’re both working after all in the interests of national security, and that really there is a degree of similarity between the approaches of almost everybody in the national security field which insures that there are going to be many more coincidences of view than there are disparities of view. P: I believe in your capacity in this position that you worked with the National Security Council. tiveness of this institution? Could you give me your opinion of the effecW: I’m a tremendous iconoclast when it cmes to organizations. it really matters a darn what sort of an organization you have. National Security Council is effective if you utilize it effectively I don’t think And a 34 with effective people. organization is indispensable. But it would not be indispensable, and no formal An awful lot of the national security decisions have been made at the so- called Tuesday lunch. States elected to meet on Tuesday with the Secretaries of State and Defense and with his National Security Advisor and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. President Johnson was concerned, worked. Now if President Ni-xon wants That’s because the President of the United Now that was a ” institution” that, as far as to have regular meetings of the National Security Council at which he brings together those people and some added starters and he in fact uses that as an institution in which differences of opinion can be aired, worked out, and resolved, then he’ll have an effective National Security Council. just as effective an institution. .. But you could have a Friday night tea party and it might be I’d say one of the problems of something like a National Security Council is that it acquires sort of an institutional life of its own, and builds up a momentum that sometimes continues beyond the period of utility. Cabinet, as a working group, years ago outlived its usefulness. At one point of time the Cabinet consisted of the President’s closest advisors; and therefore you could get the Attorney General and the Postmaster For example–here I really demonstrate my iconoclasm–the General and the Secretary of Interior and the Secretary of State and the Secretary of War and the Secretary of the Navy–get them all together– and hash out issues of national security. The Cabinet at the present time, as an institution dealing with national security, would be a terrible anachronosm. There’s just no way why the Postmaster General would have 35 anything pertinent to say about what you do in response to the Pueblo seizure, for example. Now the National Security could–I’m not saying it ever has–but it could acquire some Cabinet status. You might find that some of the people who participated in the regular deliberations were just making no contribution, and that, as a consequence, the existence of a national security council and the necessity for undergoing its meetings and living through them turned out to be an irrelevancy, and even a diversion in the orderly administration of the national security. I think it would have to do with the experiment and not be committed to any particular organizational structure, and then, finally, find some sort of formula and some way of working which in fact works. Has President Johnson used the National Security Council much in order to make his decisions? I don’t believe he has, at least not during the period of time that I’ve been with the Federal Government. I think it has been used more as a body which endorses decisions which have previously been reached. I have a nice broad question for you. the importance of NATO in regard to our national security? Certainly as far as the immediate future is concerned, NATO is going to have very direct relevance to our national security. conduct of the Russians during the past sunrmer indicates that they’re not really housebroken yet. but NATO as a defense alliance does serve a direct purpose in preventing the Russians from doing things that they might otherwise be motivated to do. ,. P: W: P: What do you see as the future in W: I think that the As a consequence NATO is not an anachronism, 36 Now as far as its future is concerned, it depends of course on what happens in Russia. And that’s something I just plain could not predict. I don’t know enough about the power structure in Russia to make any kind of a guess as to how decisions are made, by what sort of majority they’re made, and whether this majority is one which is firmly entrenched or whether it’s one that’s apt to be supplanted. We can’t even tell whether these supplanters would be more militant or less militant, so that I couldn’t make a guess at the present time. All I can say is that under this present circumstance of uncertainty, it’s certainly in our interest to contihue.to maintain a strong NATO. I’m afraid I’ve only got about five more minutes. p: In your judgment why are we having such slow progress on the question of disarmament? W: There again, you’d have to ask the Russians. It’s, in my opinion, totally imprudent for the United States to disarm unilaterally, and we have never really been able to engage in any sort of a meaningful dialogue with the Russians on bilateral disarmament. which they have indicated a willingness to talk, as you know, is in the strategic missiles field, and I would hope that some progress could be made at a very early date in those discussions. The one area in I think that they’ve recognized that in terms of any kind of realistic application of military power, strategic missiles don’t buy you anything– that their one value is in their ability to prevent somebody else from using their strategic missiles to achieve their political and military objectives. Now I would suppose that they have become sufficiently sophisticated in the strategic field so that they would recognize that 37 you can achieve this same mutual deterrence at less cost. In other words, it doesn’t matter whether each side has got one thousand ICBM’s, or whether each side has got fifty, as long as they’re in a position to inflict on one another the same degree of damage. circumstances, it’s going to create the balance of terror which exists at the present time. But it would be less costly and really less dangerous; because even then the nuclear exchange, although it would inflict commensurate degrees of damage, would not be so totally devastating to one another’s society. Then. your views on the deployment of something like the ABM missiles are that we should continue negotiations before we escalate our use of them? I’d say my view on the ABM is a somewhat a schizoid one. The ABM really doesn’t buy you anything long range vis-a-vis the Soviet Union. And under those P: ,. W: By that I mean that all that it does is force the Soviet Union to increase its offensive strength so that they can neutralize your deployment of the defensive system. will really be enough to meet the Russian offensive potential. There is no effective system that you can build that All right, then the question is why do you build an ABM! Well, I can think of two good reasons. The first one is that vis-a-vis the short range and even reasonably long range Chinese threat, it is effective. So here for something like five to six billion dollars you can buy an insurance policy. unlikely disease. worth our while to buy that sort of an insurance policy. So vis-a-vis the Chinese threat I agree completely with the decision, to deploy what we refer to as the Sentinel system. NOW it’s, an insurance policy against a relatively But nonetheless, if the premium is not excessive, it’s It costs five billion dollars, and I 38 think it’s five billion dollars well spent. Then what you have to consider is whether buying that insurance policy has got any kind of negative implications insofar as our relations with the Soviet Union, the possibility of strategic talks, a SovietUnited States arms race, etc., are concerned. Ad that really depends upon whether you’re able to engage in any sort of meaningful dialogue with the Soviet Union. Now the Soviets themselves have deployed a limited ABM system. The only one that can be identified as such is around Moscow. won’t”work against an American threat, but nonetheless they have one. Now if you were going to have talks with the Russians, you are probably better off if you’ve got an ABM system that you can trade off against their ABM system in terms of limitations. So, again, as a bargaining tool, it’s useful vis- a-vis Russia. useless against Russia. It really As a defensive system, it could be rendered But 1 don’t think that our decision to deploy an ABM lessens the chances of getting into a meaningful dialogue with the Soviet Union. I’d say that the real risk of a decision to deploy an ABM is that those who have not thought the problem through may be encouraged to the illusory view that you can build a better system that would be effective against the Soviet threat; and thattt may result in pressures to spend forty or fifty billion dollars when that additional thirty -five to forty-five billion dollars will really be wasted. P: Would you like to cut here? W: I’m afraid that’s it. INTERVIEWEE: PAUL C. WARNKE (TAPE #3) INTERVIEWER: DOROTHY PIERCE January 17 , 1969 P: Mr. Warnke, we had left off in our last interview discussing deployment of ABM systems. which is Friday, January 17. We’re in your offices. It is around quarterof-four in the afternoon. our national security and international security affairs relating to the Nonproliferation Treaty. I want to continue and conclude our interview today, I’d like to ask you about your views regarding W: Well, obviously, the Nonproliferation Treaty is very much in our interests. Now, I don’t think that it’s a substitute €or some type of agreement with the Russians over the control of strategic weapons. it provides you with an insurance policy against proliferation. you can say for it is that it’s about the best you can do under the I don’t really think that I What circumstances. Now, obviously, any treaty is just as good as the will of its adherents to live up to it, and I think that you would have to anticipate that pressures could develop in various parts of the world that could lead to repudiation of the treaty by the countries affected. The great advantage of the NPT is, in my opinion, that it takes political pressure off such contries nuclear capacity. They can point to the Nonproliferation Treaty. They can point to the fact that it does contain some guarantees insofar as the nuclear powers are concerned. Therefare, they can avoid doing something which might be regarded by them as undesirable, but might prove to be as the Federal Republic of Germany to acquire a 2 politically necessary in the absence of an NPT.. I think, similarly, countries such as India, which again would be one of the threshold countries, can rely on the NPT as eliminating a political push to do something which the leaders of the country might want to resist. The same perhaps to a lesser degree would be true of Japan because, of course, the political pressures would take longer to build up because of the Japanese aversion to all things nuclear. the NE, it does seem to me, will have the effect of deterring the entry of other countries into the nuclear field. in eliminating the danger that nuclear weapons pose, not only to us but to the rest of the world. So that Now, that’s only one step ,. p: W: Of course, we have China to consider at this point, too. You have to consider China, but fortunately the Chinese are still several years away from having a deliverable nuclear weapon. that, but we have the capacity at the present time to develop and deploy an ABM system which would put them several more years away from any capacity to strike us with nuclear weapons. that time wounds all heels and, as a consequence, the Communist Chinese Not only What you have to hope is may acquire a degree of political maturity which muld make them more willing to enter into such things as an NPT. really. In international security, all you can do is live from year to year. But consider the alternative. Mr. Warnke, what do you see as our future pressure points in the world? That’s all you can do, P: W: Well, a major one, of course, at the present time is the Middle East. I say the Middle East because, although there are a lot of other areas which are of tremendous importance to the people of that area, the 3 Middle East is the potential cockpit for the confrontation between the Soviet Union and the United States. are concerned, they’re much more concerned about the Nigerian civil war than they are about the Middle East. But from our standpoint, and from the standpoint of third countries and non-participants in present combat, the Middle East has to rank easily first on the scale. Now certainly as far as the Biafrans As far as Southeast Asia is concerned, that’s really sort of elimi – nated as a source of potential confrontation between the Soviet Union and the United States. Union and the United States, probably, in the long run will develop a common interest. in the Soviet Union. Whatever the Soviet Union is doing there now will not provoke us into an extension of that war. threat, and the basic threat, the ultimate threat–that of a confrontation between the Soviets and ourselves–Southeast Asia has now been canceled Instead of that, it’s an area in which the Soviet .. But whatever we are doing there now will not bring So in terms of the overall out. As far as Europe is concerned, that would have to rank number two, because I think we said the other day that although the United States has to recognize the geographic facts of life and cannot intervene effectively in either Czechoslovakia or perhaps in Romania, there are points beyond which the Soviets could not push without bringing about a confrontation. of the great powers than the Middle East is. We know the limits of permissible activity in Europe. We know, for example, that were we now to try and free the captive nations that, obviously, the Soviets could not stand for it. I think, hoyever, that Europe is more within the control You don’t hear anybody anymore talking about Latvia, Estonia, 4 and Lithuania. threatening gestures towards the Federal Republic of Germany, I think there’s no realistic expectation that they would push to a point at which the NATO guarantee would be called into play. ground rules are pretty much in Europe. we know what they will stand. On the other hand, although the Soviets make occasional We know what the They know what we will stand; In the Middle East, however, we don’t have the ground rules established, or sufficient control Over that which the indigenous people do, to avoid this ultimate risk of confrontation. potentially.the most incendiary issue that we’ve got. That’s why that is ,. As far as other pressure points go, it’s pretty hard for me to identify any that I regard as being terribly serious. Again, they’re serious for the people of the area, but they’re not really serious for American security. are not. doesn’t really pose any immediate risk to our security. The chances are that if you had a confrontation between India or Pakistan at the present time both the Russians and we would want to see it end. That’s what happened in 1965 in Tashkent, and I think it would happen nw . They could become so, but under the present circumstances they The traditional enmity of the Moslem and the Hindu, for example, I don’t think that the Communist Chinese pose any inmediate threat to their neighbors on the west. either India or Pakistan. factory relationship with Pakistan. And as far as India is concerned, I would think the last thing in the world the Chinese would want would be the job of trying to administer India. I don’t think that they’re apt to invade After all, they’ve worked out quite a satisIt’s no more likely than 5 than India wanting to try and administer China. enough as it is, and why should they buy more! with fifteen children going into the adoption business and seeing if they couldn’t acquire another fifteen. They’ve both got troubles It would be like somebody So that you don’t really have in that part of the world anything of immediate concern to our national security. a long range threat, and that’s that any area like that–teeming as it is with people–represents at a minimum a very poor market for American products. And the long range ability of the United States to maintain our standard of living requires a peaceful and prosperous world, so that we do retain a distinct interest in the area. is immediate military threats. You do have, of course, What I’m talking about As far as Africa and South America are concerned, I remember George Ball, I guess it was, said, “Their problems are impossible, but not serious.” not serious from the standpoint of national security interests of an immediate nature. America. Certainly the Russians, as I say, recognize that as one ground rule that has been in effect for some time. challenge the Monroe Doctrine. There is, of course, the threat of Cuba’s effort to export revoluAnd you say that there’s a good bit of truth in that. They’re There is no real prospect of widespread war in Latin They’re not faced with any threat from outside the hemisphere. I And they’re not about to tion, but that’s a threat really of internal security within each of the Latin American countries. of those countries should, by their own decision, go Communist, it’s a situation that we could tolerate with no real risk to our national And even if the worst should happen and some 6 security. We again would be faced with the possibility that the Russians might try and exploit that situation, to bring Russian power closer to US the way they did in the Cuban missile crisis, and we would have to respond to that. But if you have just a native Communist state in, for example, Bolivia, it would be a matter of concern to us, but not a matter of security danger. In Africa, I think that the best you can say is that over a period of time they’llwork out their own destiny, but I think that they will have to do it without our military intervention. without our being concerned except on humanitarian grounds. Mr. Warnke, do you see our national security geared to the impact and response from the other superpowers, mainly Russia? coming along. Well, I’m not quite clear what your question is. taking an aggressive stance in almost any part of the world, could intimately involve our security interests. If Russia were to try and seek to extend its influence, as I say in Latin America, clearly we’d have to respond and respond imediately and respond strongly. don’t think that we could look with any equanimity on an effort by the Soviet Union to take over any country in Africa. aggression would be something to which we would have to respond. What I’m saying is that there is no indication of that at the present time. There’s no indication even that the Soviet Union intends to try and take over any country in the Middle East. risk that they would try and occupy the UAR or Syria or Iraq, which are the three countries– And they can do it .. P: China is, of course, W: Certainly Russia, by And I That sort of external I don’t think there is any 7 P: Their presence is in the Mediterranean very strongly. W: Yes, but, really, do you have to look with terrible apprehension at the fact that the Russians have got forty -five ships operating in international waters in the Mediterranean. operating in international waters in the Mediterranean for a long the, and that particular lake is a lot further from our shores than it is from iiussian shores. can’t regard it as being either unnatural or necessarily evidence of incipient hostility. We’ve had more ships than that It’s something that we would prefer not to see but you Again;’Cyprus is the kind of area in which we’ve got an interest .. from the standpoint of not wanting to see hostilities break out any place in the world. of the fact that the potential adversaries are both members of NATO, and it would certainly not do much for the eastern flanks of NATO to have Greece and Turkey fight one another, particularly since they would utilize American military equipment in that combat. look at it in terms of immediate impact on our national security, you’d have to rank it behind, I think, the fiddle East because it’s not an area in which the Russians would have really any great chance of either immediate exploitation or immediate involvement. I can’t see Russia coming in in any sort of a Cyprus dispute on the side of either Greece or Turkey. I’d like to shift from this area and ask you what your assessment is of the relations of the Defense Department with Congress, and whether it has hurt, helped, hindered, our progress either in national security or international security affairs. Also, we’ve got a unique interest in Cyprus because But if you P: 8 IJ: You really can’t isolate or identify in any one category the relations of the Department of Defense with Congress because you’re dealing with too many different things. Obviously each of the Services has relations with Congress, and the Office of the Secretary of Defense does. And these are very delicate, very close, and very constant relations. say that by-and-large we get along pretty well with Congress, considering that we’re spending so much of the total federal budget and considering the fact–which we do–that this will affect so closely both the national welfare and also the individual welfare of the particular states. awful- lot 0-f money. on the constituents of every member of Congress. never going to be totally happy with what we do. I think, as Mr. McNamara put it once, is to try and build up a certain store of good will, recognizing that you’re going to draw very heavily on it, and recognizing that at some point you’re going to become overdrawn with any individual member of Congress. I’d I We’re spending an The way in which we spend it has direct impact .. So consequently they’re All you can really do And that does occur. One of the conttnuing problems, of course, is the fact that the members of the Armed Services Comittee acquire a degree of expertise and acquire strong opinions on Defense matters. those opinions running contrary to those of the current incumbents in the civilian slots in the Office of the Secretary of Defense. And they’re never persuaded that they would not make better Secretaries of the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Secretary of Defense than those current incumbents. But I think that it works reasonably satisfactorily. Do you feel it has deteriorated at all over the last few years? No, I’d say that during the last ten-and-a-half months, during Mr. Clifford’s They don’t like to see P: W: 9 term, that they have improved greatly. But some people would say that they had no way to go except up at that point. Defense is in office as long as Mr. PlcNamara was in office, his relations with Congress are just bound to worsen. During that period of time he becomes overdrawn in the good will account with just about every Senator that there is, because he is bound during that period of time to have done things that have stepped on their particular toes, and Congressional toes are extraordinarily sensitive. But when a Secretary of ., Now Mr, Clifford, I think, has profited both by the fact that he was new and by the fact that he is extraordinarily good at getting along with- people. issues that were of major importance to the more powerful members of the Armed Services Committee. the overall objectives of the Department of Defense. that Mr. Laird, because first of all he cmes from Congress himself and is familiar with the way they operate–the way in which they think– and also because he too will be new, will be able to get along quite well with Congress for a period of time. years that he will be in about the same parlous state with respect to And he has been able to reach accommodations on certain He has been able to do so without compromising I would anticipate I would say that if he stays for seven his Congressional relations as Mr. McNamara was at the end of that time. It’s a great argument for rapid turnover in Cabinets. P: You spoke of certain issues. in regard to Mr. McNamara’s having problems with Congress? What were they? Oh God, I couldn’t conceivably go through the inventory. there are a variety of chronic things. the attack submarine fleet, or the extent to which you’re going to go for W: But, you know, For example, like the size of 10 nuclear propulsion on surface vessels. And then a whole host of things that fortunately belong under the jurisdiction of Assistant Secretaries other than me. Since you’re speaking of two Secretaries of Defense and you’ve served under them both, I’d like to ask you how you would compare these men in terms of style, pace, decision-making relations with their staff and the Services, P: W: I would say that the similarities far exceeded the differences; that, in the first place, both of them have been prodigious workers. think that it would be easy to find any two men who have worked as hard as both Mr. McNamara and Mr. Clifford worked. The only two that come to mind immediately are Hr. Vance and Mr. Nitze. I don’t As far as their relations with their staff are concerned, in both instances they were men with a talent for human relations. They had an ability to draw, I think, the devotion and the dedication from their subordinates; and had an awareness of people as people. There’s a great difference in style. Mr. Clifford is a much more deliberate man insofar as his manner of speech and his manner of approach is concerned. I think oddly enough, and quite contrary to the public image, that Mr. McNamara had a tendency to shoot from the hip to a greater extent than Mr. Clifford. He was more apt to reach a decision on a spot basis and on the -basis perhaps of less information. But the basic similarity is that they are both great human beings, men of extraordinary intelligency, extraordinary comprehension–and that both have served their country, I think, superbly. 11 P: Have you had any changes in this particular office with the changeover in Secretaries? id: No. I would say that the basic work of the office has continued pretty much without change. There are, of course, certain differences in the demands that any Secretary places on any part of his total empire. In the case of Mr. Clifford, one thing that we’ve had, of course, is the fact that he has had a morning staff meeting every morning at which I was one of the participants. So as a consequence that has changed my daily schedule–And also the fact that there has to be preparation for that’; P: Every morning? W: Yes, every morning. This has made some change in the operation of ISA, wouldn’t you say, John? John : Yes. W: But that’s the principal difference. John : Yes, sir, I think so. And of course the gap was filled by the presence W: P: W: P: of Mr. Earle to pick up a lot of things which you could no longer That’s right. Would you repeat that? Well, what Colonel Conlee [Lt. Col. John Conlee, U.S. Army, Assistant Executive Officer to the Assistant Secretary of Defense (ISA) ] has brought up–and it is a fact–is that because of the fact that every morning for about an hour-and-a-half I sit down with Mr. Clifford, this means that a lot of the functions that I would have performed during that period of time have been performed by my principal deputy, Nr. [Ralph] Earle [II]. Xr. Warnke, how much do you think that our commitment in Viet Nam has That won’t be on the tape. 12 affected this Administration in terms of reputation and popularity both here and abroad? W: That’s an awfully difficult question. I would say that it has affected it very dramatically, and very adversely; that there’s no question in my mind of the fact that it brought about the premature retirement of president Johnson from public life; that were it not for Viet Nam he would have run for re – election and been re- elected. only affected the Administration, it changed the Administration! So in that sense, it not As far as world opinion is concerned, I think that the impact has been far less dramatic. as a consequence changes in American public opinion bring about direct political change. of dramatic change politically in the United States. withstand unpopularity abroad over a period of our total history. After all, we’re quite a responsive democracy, so .. Changes in world opinion do not bring about that kind We’ve been able to What it has done, I think, is to bring about certain changes in the reactions of our allies. I would say, for example, that it did have for a period of time somewhat of an adverse effect on NATO, because the Danes, for example, found our Viet Nam effort to be unpalatable–and because of the fact that there was great criticism within some of the other NATO countries about America’s participation in Viet Nam and accordingly, some resistance to the continued participation of these countries in NATO. Those pressures, however, did not have any lasting effect for two reasons. became more important to its participants. of the President to cut down the bombing drastically in March of last First of all, the Russian’s misbehavior, and the fact that NATO And secondly, the decision P: W: P: W: P: W: P: W: year. Tiiat took an awful lot of the public opprobrium away from our Viet Xam effort. So that I would say that the principal impact has been a domestic one; and what it did is really put a premature end to the career of President Johnson. I don’t think I’ve asked you what your activities were in the assessment of the Middle East crisis as being a particular crisis situation that erupted furing your tenure. Could I have your views on that? My views as to what my participation was. Your activities, and your assessment of it. Well, ISA, of course, acted as the principal adviser to the Secretary of Defense during the June 1967 crisis. were because that was two months before I took office. I was General Counsel at that point. I knew there was a reason for not asking it. I did, however, participate on certain task forces as General Counsel at the request of Mr. McNamara. brief period of time that he was dam here helping the President’s evaluation of the crisis. Wnat was your view of the sinking of the [U.S.S.] “Liberty”? Obviously, it was the kind of inexplicable and indefensible action that occurs in wars: I found it hard to believe that it was, in fact, an honest mistake on the part of the Israeli air force units. I still find it impossible to believe that it was. I suspect that in the heat of battle they figured that the presence of this American ship was inimical to their interests, and that somebody without I can’t say what my own reactions I worked with McGeorge Bundy during the 14 P: W: P: w : P: ;? : P: W: 2 : W: Y: L’ : authorization attacked it. It’s a reason why you should try and avoid wars. ~’m afraid that we’re going to have to terminate this now. Could I ask you a final question? Yes. Have you been interviewed by any other historic group, another Presidential history program, or anything along that line? No; In any sort of public statements that you’ve been quoted, do you have any changes or corrections or additions? I can’t think of any now. read all of my speeches before I delivered them, and as a result they were consistent with my views. You’ve got an exclusive on this, Miss Bierce. I think that I can say safely that I had The only thing I haven’t asked you about is your activity surrounding the transition of government. Do you have a moment to answer that? That’s my final question. Well, of course, neither Mr. Laird nor Mr. Packard has been able to spend a tremendous amount of time over here. I have had the opportunity to talk with both of them to give them my views as to the functioning of the operation; and I have undertaken to spend the next ten days at this job. extent that I can. And I will endeavor during that time to ease the transition to the ) Do you have any further comments? I have no further comments. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Xiss Pkrce.