Guest: Admiral Elmo Zumwalt, Jr. (USN-Ret.) , Author

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II FIRinG Line I' Guest: Admiral Elmo Zumwalt, Jr. (USN-Ret.) , author

Subject: "U.S. DEFENSE AND THE POLITICAL CAMPAIGN"

SOUTHERN EDUCATIONAL COMMUNICATIONS ASSOCIATION \/ ( 1 1'1\/ \/ \/ \ @) FIRinG Line

WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY, JR. Guest: Admiral Elmo Zumwalt, Jr. (USN-Ret.), author Subject: "U.S. DEFENSE AND THE POLITICAL CAMPAIGN" S~m The FIRING LINE television series is a production of the Southern Educational Panelists: Roberts, New York Daily News Communications Association, 928 Woodrow St., P.O. Box 5966, Columbia, S.C., L11a Coleburn, Legal Action Center 29250 and is transmitted through the facilities of the Public Broadcasting Service. Mike Kramer, MORE Production of these programs is made possible through a grant from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. FIRING LINE can be seen and heard each week through public television and radio stations throughout the country. Check FIRING LINE is produced and directed by WARREN STEIBEL your local newspapers for channel and time in your area. :his is a tra~script of the FIRING LINE program taped 1n New York C1ty on May 14, 1976, and originally tele cast on PBS on May 29, 1976. sou TH~ RN f DUCAT IONAL COMlVlUNICA TIONS ASSOCIAT ION

© Board of Trustees of the L land Stanford Jr. University. MR. BUCKLEY: A few weeks ago Ronald Reagan, campaigning for the Republican presidential nomination, shocked publjc opinion by quoting an assessment of U.S.-Soviet relations allegedly made in private conversation by our secretary of state. Kissinger had said to Admiral Zumwalt that the United States was fated to be the second-ranking power in the world and that it was the re sponsibility of the secretary of state to see to it that in our negotiations the U.S. came out as strong as possible under the circumstances of a second rate power. He went further, it was said, comparing the United States to Athens and the Soviet Union to Sparta. In denying that he had ever said such a thing to Admiral Elmo Zumwalt, Jr., Mr. Kissinger triumphantly asserted that in fact Athens had outlived Sparta and how could he as a scholar have com mitted such ~ historical solecism, leaving other scholars perplexed given the indisputable fact that Sparta defeated Athens in the Pelopennesian War and that, though it is true that Athens survived, as much can be said of Hiroshima. Admiral Zumwalt's much awaited book On Duty [sic] indeed attributed that statement· to Mr. Kissinger, and Admiral Zumwalt, now retired from the Navy and running for the post of senator from Virginia, insists that he heard those words uttered and others congruous with them during the four years that he served as chief of naval operations during which Mr. Kissinger was first at the White House, then secretary of state. A great debate has been sparked· focusing on the question: Is the United States in fact suffering a military debilitation owing to a failure of the national will or of congressional or of Executive forethought? Admiral Zumwalt believes that this is exactly what is happening, and there are, of course, few people better equipped than he to pass professional judgment on the matter. Mr. Zumwalt is a graduate of Annapolis, who served in the Navy in myriad capacities, becoming commander of U.S. naval forces in Vietnam until, in 1970, he was selected by the secretary of defense--leaping over 33 senior ©1976 SOUTHERN EDUCATIONAL admirals--to serve as chief of naval operations in which capacity he revolu tionized naval life. His book, On Duty [sic], is an account of his service . COMMUNICATIONS ASSOCIATION as chief of naval operations and a stern, not to say apocalyptic, critic of the course of foreign policy based on detente. I should like to begin by asking Admiral Zumwalt whether he feels any scruples about relating the substance of conversations he was privy to in his capacity as chief of naval operations. ADM. ZUMWALT: First, Bill, if I could make one correction, the name of the book is On Watch. MR. BUCKLEY: On Watch. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. ADM. ZUMWALT: With regard to the scruples, the problem is a tough one. There are others to whom Kissinger has related these same views who have elected not to come forward and report them publicly. But in my view the higher re quirement is to get the debate out on the terms we need to debate it on; namely, this tragic view of the future which is leading us on a policy· course for which there is a rationale if one understands the tragic view of the future but a course which is very hard to understand in the light of the public explanation of it being given by Kissinger. Bather than to dissemble in the public vi.ew as he does, I think it's important to raise openly the question of his tragic view of the future and to have it debated. There's no doubt in my mind that the American public would reject overwhelmingly his own perception of our future. MR. BUCKLEY: Well, I think that we should touch on that in due course, but I do want to clear the underbrush here. In what sense is what you say dif ferent from the defense made by Daniel Ellsberg? ADM. ZUMWALT: I think a couple of points might be made. First, there was no specification that what he was saying to me was classified. MR. BUCKLEY: Wasn't it implicit? ADM. ZUMWALT: I think not. The first time it was on an Army-Navy game train on the 28th of November, 1970, in a car where there was-- MR. BUCKLEY: It doesn't matter where it is, does it?

© Board of Trustees of the L land Stanford Jr. University. .dissemb1ing, and then it gets tougher and tougher to make yardage. And I ADM. ZUMWALT: --a large number of people in a completely informal environ think we're in the position where Kissinger is now being tackled behind the ment and it had to do with his basic philosophy. Nor, to the best of my line time and again because he no longer is believed as a result of this dif knowledge, has he put a similar requirement of ~lassification on it as he ference between his public and private views. expressed that view to others. . MR. BUCKLEY: Well, doesn't this really mean that his private views tend to MR. BUCKLEY: Well, is it your position that when you as chlef of naval be more accurate than his public views? operations spoke with other people and told them things that you would no~ ADM. ZUMWALT: No. It means that he has made a self-fulfilling prophecy of tell to Barbara Walters you would have prec1assified your conversations wlth his private views, because he believes that our future is tragic; he comports them as confidential if you had expected them to maintain their silence? For himself in accordance with that philosophy. And that's why it's desperately example, you told me things when I was on a U.S.I.A. commission without important that he be dismissed from office and we get someone who is more telling me that they. were classified, but I just sort of knew they were. representative of the American psyche. ADM. ZUMWALT: I think I was always rather careful when I wanted to ensure MR. BUCKLEY: Well, how would somebody more representative of the American that the information was treated as not for attribution or as not to be made psyche deal with a Congress which just sat there and trimmed its fingernails public to specify, and where it didn't seem to me it made all that much dif when Ford was reading a speech written by Mr. Kissinger asking for emergency ference, I was less careful. And I think that Kissinger has been the same help to South Vietnam? It wasn't Kissinger but Congress who turned down that way. He's been very careful, for example, to make it clear that he was not appropriation. to be attributed for the various poisonous remarks that he has made about ADM. ZUMWALT: No. It was a Congress reacting to a man who had dissembled public figures. He prefers to have that written as coming from the author with them for a large number of years. It was a Congress keeping in mind that rather than being identified with him. .. this was the same man, Kissinger, who had failed to inform them of the written MR. BUCKLEY: Well, the reason I think this is important is that men ln pub11C commitments made to President Thieu and who was now seeking to have them per life tend to be of different temperaments. We now know, twenty years after form on written commitments which he undemocratically did not inform the his death, approximately, that Lord Reith hated everybody--despi~ed.Churchi11, Congress and the people about. . despised most of the big men of power--and yet managed to be a brl111ant MR. BUCKLEY: Well, you do say that in your book, On Watoh. But it is true executive in charge of BBC giving it its traditions and so on and so forth. that the public accords between Thieu and Nixon included a very specific pro He internalized all of his complaints. Other people, of which Mr. Kissinger vision for American backing of Thieu in the event that the North Vietnamese is one and certainly Mr. Churchill another, tend to speak very openly. But broke those accords. Right? So in what sense was Congress not privy to that? in the course of exercising themselves in that way, while being indiscreet ADM. ZUMWALT: Congress did not know that the price of South Vietnam's going they count on the discretion of others. Perhaps that's unfair, but perhaps along with the truce was a formal written commitment from the president of the also it tends to be an exercise on the basis of which you work out your United States that we would react vigorously in the event of a truce violation frustrations over certain problems as you see them. The fact that he is un and provide one-for-one equipment replacement. Congress has a rather holistic willing to make the statement that he made to you publicly suggests--does it view of written commitments, and had they been informed at the time, before not--that his public view of the matter differs from his private view of the truce was signed, this is what we've got to do to get our prisoners home the matter, and isn't that itself important? and our forces out, the Congress would, I think, have supported those written ADM. ZUMWALT: Yes. That's the single most important issue that needs to be commitments in order to achieve that end. Nixon and Kissinger in the midst demonstrated publicly. I find it rather shocking, Bill, that you would com of the Watergate crisis elected to deceive them. pare Churchill and Kissinger, because I think the record is quite clear that MR. BUCKLEY: Well, of course our forces were out by that time. We were talk Churchill said exactly what he believed publicly. And I think the record is ing about the prisoners, weren't we? quite clear and known to be quite clear to large numbers of the press that ADM. ZUMWALT: No. Our forces still remained. There were still U.S. forces Kissinger says one thing publicly and another thing privately. in at the time the truce was signed. MR. BUCKLEY: Well, I don't think really that's true actually. There were MR. BUCKLEY: Of an insignificant-- people in the studio when he finished his great "we have nothing to give them ADM. ZUMWALT: Americans were still being killed in action, and there was great but blood, sweat, and tears" speech in which he nevertheless said that Great political pressure to get them home. And the politicians in Congress would, Britain would win no matter what the Nazis did, and he finished that speech I am confident, have supported the need for those commitments if that's what by muttering in front of the studio audience, "We have nothing to fight them it took to get them home. with on the beaches except our bloody beer bottles." (laughter from Zumwalt) MR. BUCKLEY: And your position is that Congress would have lived up to that Now, this he would not have said precisely to everybody-- commitment? ADM. ZUMWALT: I would suggest that-- ADM. ZUMWALT: Certainly, in my view, if the Congress and its leadership had MR. BUCKLEY: --because he would not have confessed to his actual pessimism. assured support of those commitments, it would have been delivered. ADM. ZUMWALT: I would suggest that that shows what a born fighter and op MR. BUCKLEY: Why didn't Congress live up to its commitments based on the timist he was. I don't think there was anything inconsistent about that private Tonkin Resolution rather than repeal that resolution? and public expression, and I think in the case of Kissinger that it's demon ADM. ZUMWALT: Well, the Tonkin Resolution was a very loose umbrella with strably the case that he speaks .one way publicly and a completely different which to keep out the rain of activity that was initiated under it. I think way, on a completely different set of facts, privately. the case can be made that the Tonkin Resolution did not nearly provide for the MR. BUCKLEY: How does it surprise you? Isn't it true that a football coach series of actions that were initiated under it and that there should have been will always at the half time, even if he's losing 50 to nothing, deliver the fuller and deeper consultation between the Executive and the Congress during regular pep speech in which he says, "Nothing happened the first half time that period. that the second half time can't cure"? MR. BUCKLEY: Well, what would be the motives of Mr. Kissinger or of Mr. Nixon ADM. ZUMWALT: I think the best coaches say what they mean. I think that in in keeping confidential the promises made to Thieu if in fact it wasn't their a democracy a secretary of state has got to say what he means. I think that political fear that the publicizing of these documents would result in their you can make great progress the first few times you carry the ball while

3 2 © Board of Trustees of the L land Stanford Jr. University. repudiation by Congress? ADM. ZUMWALT: No. Nor do I contend, Bill, that there is anything traitorous ADM. ZUMWALT: I think that the problem Mr. Nixon faced was that he tasted or treasonous about having the view that the United States is inevitably impeachment and was reluctant-- destined to be inferior. But what I do contend js undemocratic is an un MR. BUCKLEY: We're talking about--what?--December '72? January '72? '73? willingness to debate this fact, a willingness to hide this fact, a disin ADM. ZUMWALT: Yes. The Watergate crisis had-- clination to be accurate in reporting to the people that that is his philos MR. BUCKLEY: He tasted nothing but the biggest political victory in the ophy. history of America in those days. MR. BUCKLEY: Well, I think that's a terribly interesting observation of yours. ADM. ZUMWALT: Well, by December the first ruminations of Watergate were be Somebody who holds a pessimistic view about America is in a sense debating it ginning to come along, and by January it was clear that there was deep all the time if his mind is active, if he consents to read the work of people trouble, and by the time the actual debate went forward, my recollection is who disagree with him; if he consents to listen to them, he is in a sense con it was the summer of '73 and he was very much in trouble by then. stantly debating. But I don't see how you can expect a secretary of state MR. BUCKLEY: Well, as I remember the Democratic Caucus in January of 1973 whose professional calling almost requires him to be optimistic, even as a voted that they woul d attempt to introduce and enact a bi 11 denyi ng to the general is required to be optimistic under certain circumstances, constantly president further rights to spend funds on Indochina beginning in July. Now, to be putting his own misgivings on the line when the effect of doing so is whether they would have succeeded in doing so in the absence of Watergate, completely demoralizing. one doesn't know. ADM. ZUMWALT: No, I think-- But haven·'t we shifted grounds here? We began by saying the defect was MR. BUCKLEY: Are you saying he really is incapacitated to lead effectively? the pessimism of Henry Kissinger, but now we're talking about the opportunism ADM. ZUMWALT: I think that his unwillingness to debate as a central issue of Richard Nixon. Or did it just happen that they coincided? whether or not Americans are willing to do what is necesSary to make detente ADM. ZUMWALT: No. I think I'd only gotten half an answer out. work as a process of mutual adjustment instead of to pretend it is working MR. BUCKLEY: Sorry. when it is a process of unilateral accommodation, his disinclination to de ADM. ZUMWALT: The other half was that I think Kissinger right along had the bate that because of his view that he knows better than the people what is view that he would just paper over a deal, collect his Nobel prize, and let good for them is undemocratic and makes him an ineffective secretary of state. the dust settle; and that he really didn't have a deep and abiding concern MR. BUCKLEY: Well, what if he puts it differently? Suppose he says, "I don't about the future of South Vietnam which in any sense matched the fulsome think I know better than the people what's good for them. But I think that c?mmitment that he made in writing to President Thieu. It was again a prac the people, in their present mood, are not going to respond to the challenge tlce of one thing privately and another thing publicly in support ·of his necessary to do that which is"-- For instance, nobody was more in favor of tragic view that his job is to get the second best relationship he can get. ABM than Kissinger, right? He argued with everybody, day and night, in favor MR. BUCKLEY: Well, but somebody who doesn't feel a considerable commitment of ABM. It finally squeaked through the Senate with a single favorable to V~etn?m a) to write the article he wrote in the September issue of Foreign vote. I don't know what went on through his mind but I know that at that point Affa~rB ln 1968, b) to approve of the incursion into Cambodia, c) to approve the editors of National Review predicted that with that kind of support, i.e., of ~he carpet bomblng of the North, d) to approve of the blockade of Haiphong support that narrow, you could not count on the kind of appropriations that strlkes me as somebody whose motivations under the circumstances are very you would need to make it a truly effective program. Under the circumstances, hard to explain. one looks for other means of maneuvering. Is this intelligent? Is this re ADM. ZUMWALT: I think it's completely consistent with his tragic view of the sponsible? future. They were temporary tactical initiatives designed to cover·his stra ADM. ZUMWALT: I think that one has to look at the long course of history as tegic withdrawal from support of South Vietnam with a paper rubric of honor secretary of state and as president, and one has to say to himself, "Believing that would last just long enough that, in his hope, the United States could as I"--Kissinger--"do that America is inevitably destined to be second best, not be held accountable for the subsequent disaster. and because I believe in a democracy and believe in a free and open selection ~R. BUCKLEY: And what do you call it when Lyndon Johnson suspended the bomb of policy, I've got to have that debated. I've got to report it. And I'm lng? willing to see my president and myself lose office on those issues." The ADM. ZUMWALT: I think that in his own mind at that time he felt that there business of bringing it out into the political debate and permitting a new was a ~ood chance to ~ring off a peace with honor in fact. I'm not sure by president to be elected if he must be because it's turned down by the people the tlme he left offlce whether he still adhered to that view. I wasn't in is the essence of democracy rather than taking a policy course based on facts nearly such close contact with him. about which the public is being misled. MR. BUCKLEY: Well, what is there that can be said about Kissinger in Vietnam MR. BUCKLEY: Isn't that a little schematic? Suppose you're president of the tha~ can:t be said about Lyndon Johnson in Vietnam, considering that the great United States and you desire course A, and the man who was running against you vaclllatlons of Johnson led to the indecisiveness and led to the internal re or was going to run against you desires course C, which you consider to be sistance in respect.of Vietnam that greeted Mr. Nixon when he was inaugurated? catastrophic on the face of it. By surrendering course A, you can stay on A~M. ZUMWAL~:. I thlnk that about Mr. Johnson one can say that at no time did as president with course B which, although not as good as course A, is in hlS great V1Slon of the future of this country waver and that he considered finitely to be preferred over course C. What are your diplomatic and demo South Vietnam a tactical dilemma .to be solved. I think his decision not to cratic responsibilities? A or bust? run for reelection was in part the result of his view that a new president ADM. ZUMWALT: My responsibility is A or bust. Indeed, in my political race could pull the people together and get on with a solution that would be in Virginia, I'm being told that if I want to be elected I should take course esse~tially useful to t~e Unit~d States. I can't, in my wildest imagination, B and I'm insisting on sticking to course A. credlt Lyndon Johnson wlth havlng the tragic view of the future that I have MR. BUCKLEY: And you may not be elected. heard firsthand proclaimed by Henry Kissinger. . ADM. ZUMWALT: That's correct. And that's the way the political process ought MR. BUCKLEY: Well, is it your general position that people who are philo to work·. sophically pessimistic are ineffective? MR. BUCKLEY: Well, that may be true when you're running for senator of Virginia,

4 5 © Board of Trustees of the L land Stanford Jr. University. but it may not be true when you're running for president of the United States ADM. ZUMWALT: In my judgment they are, and they ought to be admitted instead when course C would be the equivalent of national suicide. of denied by the president and secretary of state. ADM. ZUMWALT: The judgment you're making is that the country in selecting MR. BUCKLEY: Well, in a sense they·are admitted because they were drawn from course C-- DOD papers used as they were presented to Congress earlier· this year, right? MR. BUCKLEY: Course-- Yes. .ADM. ZUMWALT: The president is campaigning on the issue that we're still ADM. ZUMWALT: --would be worse off than- number one. MR. BUCKLEY: B. i MR. BUCKLEY: Yes. ADM. ZUMWALT: --having course A driven home in a misleading fashion. And I ADM. ZUMWALT: Very inaccurately, in my judgment. think we're already seeing that that leads to disaster. You have a Congress MR. BUCKLEY: Yes. Well, he goes on to say that the navy outnumbers two to which refuses to believe almost anything they're told by this secretary of 11 one the United States in surface ships. Is that a simplistic statement or state now. You have a press which is increasingly aware of the fact that not? they have been used by this secretary of state. And you have a public which ADM. ZUMWALT: I would describe it in more detail than that to make it ac now to a level of 52 or 53 per cent understands that they have been misled. curate. I would say that the Soviets have about four times as many ships as And this makes it very difficult for the country. the United States; that if one eliminates the smaller craft--and that's dan MR. BUCKLEY: Well, the ratings of the secretary of state are actually higher gerous to eliminate because they carry a big punch in their cruise missiles- than those of the president. . they have about twice as many as we have. They have two and a half times ADM. ZUMWALT: That's correct, but they nevertheless demonstrate that over as many ·submarines. We have more tons of ships. Overall they have more tons half the people now are aware that he's more nearly spinach than ice cream. of warships. And then I would finally add that all those citations are ir MR. BUCKLEY: Well, I don't know whether that's what they are aware of, but relevant; that what really counts, again, is the bottom line: Who would win they are aware of the fact that the foreign policy is not giving them what and who would lose? The Soviets have the easier job; they merely have to cut they hoped it would. On the other hand, these are the same people who elect sea lines in order to win. We have the tougher job of keeping sea lines open. congressmen who refuse to come forward for help in Angola, who denounce any Viewed in that light, when you do the war game calculations, the odds are attempt to overthrow a totalitarian government in Chile, and so on. quite clearly against us, and the odds are high that the United States would ADM. ZUMWALT: Well, now, let me say just a word about that, Bill, and I lose a conventional war at sea today. And that's I think the more accurate mention this in my book. There are, I think, in Congress three roughly equal formulati on. groups. One-third, I used to find, was--on the case of defense issues--right MR. BUCKLEY: I think it is. Schlesinger's formulation was: "The basic issue with us and willing to get out and fight for the same kinds of issues. One that needs to be debated and resolved is not whether the United States is third was totally against us but was willing also to get out and fight on the superior or inferior militarily but rather what role the United States wants merits. And then there was a middle third--and that's the immoral third- to play in the world and thus what military forces it should maintain to carry that were ~Iilling to say, "Look. I believe you. I'm worried. But if I out that role." Now, that satisfies you. vote for defense, 1'm going to lose my seat." And within that third there ADM. ZUMWALT: That satisfies me. was a subset that would say, "Look. I need a 70 per cent antidefense record. MR. BUCKLEY: Well, what sort of a role might we have played in frustrating You tell me which 30 per cent to vote for." And they didn't care what they the Cuban panzer division in Africa had we elected to frustrate it? voted for as long as we racked up 30 for, 70 against. Now, that's the third ADM. ZUMWALT: In my judgment we lacked the capability to playa role in a that needs to be dismissed, in my judgment, by the electorate. military way. MR. BUCKLEY: Do you have a program for that? MR. BUCKLEY: Would we have lacked that capability if we had had the kind of ADM. ZUMWALT: Public education. armed services that you think we should have had? (laughter) ADM. ZUMWALT: Yes. In my judgment we had the capability as recently as 1970. MR. BUCKLEY: I would call it genocide. (laughter) MR. BUCKLEY: What would we have done in 1970? I'd like to ask you, if you would, Admiral, to run down the foremost ADM. ZUMWALT: In 1970 we had the military capability to playa role. I'm not conspicu?us categories of American national military weakness as alleged by suggesting that that would necessarily have been the right thing to do; nor do one candldate, Mr. Reagan, in order to have your professional analysis of I suggest that if we had the capability today it would be the right thing to them. The sentence he likes to use is that "Soviet investment in the strate do. What I do suggest is that it's much less likely that we would be even gic and conventional weapons is 50 per cent ahead of ours." Is that correct? called upon to make the choice if we had the military capability because the ADM. ZUMWALT: Yes. I think that the figure that Schlesinger had used is 60 Soviet calculation to put their Hessian troops in Angola was undoubtedly the per cent greater than ours since 1971. result of their absolute knowledge that we lacked the capability militarily M~. BUCKLE~: Now, is there anything embedded in that generality an elabora- to prevent it. tlon of WhlCh helps us to understand the meaning of it? . MR. BUCKLEY: Well, how were the Cuban troops transported to Angola? ADM. ZUMWALT: Well, I think always one has to look at the bottom line, and ADM. ZUMWALT: In Cuban lift. I mean, in Soviet lift. And the nearly $400 the best bottom line analysis has been written by Paul Nitze--who, you recall, million worth of equipment there that the Cubans and Angolans are using is appe~red on ~our pr?gram with me about a year or so ago--in his January 1976 Soviet equipment. Fore~gn Affa~rs artlcle where he lays out chapter and verse of the decline in MR. BUCKLEY: You're talking about airlift? our strategic nuclear capability and reports that the Soviet Union will have ADM. ZUMWALT: Both airlift, and I think there was some sealift. That needs ~ strategic nuclear war-winning capability by 1977--next year--and will improve ; to be checked. But largely airlift. lt every year thereafter. Now, the obverse of that r Bill, is that we will MR. BUCKLEY: And you say that we lacked the military capability of keeping lack by that time the capability to deter, and that's a very serious situa people from flying from Cuba to Angola? tion for the United States. ADM. ZUMWALT: No. I'm saying that when one takes on a military action like MR. BUCKLEY: So that the figures are every bit as grim as one would suppose that, he has to look at all the consequences of it, including the likely by drawing the obvious elaborations from them? counteractions of the Soviets. And when you view their options elsewhere,

6 7 © Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Jr. University. . ADM. ZUMWALT: No. it's a losing proposition to take it on given the debilitation of our mili MR. BUCKLEY: Why don't they therefore bring you in the way they brought in tary capability. MR. BUCKLEY: Well, how do you reconcile the figures of Mr. Rumsfeld--the ones the Watergate people, hear them out, and make a national case against the we just went over--and those released by Mr. Aspin a week ago in which he says dissimulators? that the CIA records that we spent, between 1971 and 1975, $4.9 billion on ADM: ZUMWALT: Bill, I don't want to get in a position of defending every major surface vessels while the Soviet Union spent $2.5 billion or that we aCt10n of Congress, because I'm deeply dedicated to trying to do my bit to spent almost twice as much? In what sense are those distorted? improve it. And indeed, as you yourself will well recall, Congress had to ADM. ZUMWALT: I don't know the basis for Mr. Aspin's figures. I do know be prodded by an increasingly concerned public before they got into Water ~ate. ~n~ Congress traditionally shirks the tough problems until the public that CIA has continually revised upward their estimate of Soviet military 1S suff1c1ently aroused to demand that they be looked into. So it seems to expenditures and has confessed that they were grossly underestimating and me that those of us who are in opposition have got to continue to work hard that the Soviets have outspent us by about 5D per cent in the field of naval to try to arouse the public which will in time lead to the investigations I construction for a decade. am suggesting are necessary. MR. BUCKLEY: So that your answer to the next figure would be identical? The ~R. B~CKLEY: CIA says that between '71 and '75 the Soviet U~ion spent $3.3 billion on subs Well, if your analysis is correct, then we live in a society 1n w~lch Congress has really a minor role. It simply becomes the certified while we spent $4.4 billion. ADM. ZUMWALT: I don't know those numbers, Bill. They may well be right. The PU~11C accountant that looks into the figures after suspicions have been Soviets have built a larger number of submarines in that period than we have, ra1sed from the broader constituency. Therefore, you view it as your re and it would puzzle me if they have spent less for them. sponsibility not to get into the Senate of the United States for the purpose MR. BUCKLEY: Do you have a feeling, on the basis of your association with of maneuveri~g w~thin th~ Se~ate to crank up a concern over national security. it however indirect, about the International Institute for Strategic Studies? You really V1ew 1t as pr1mar11y your concern to crank up public opinion-- ADM. ZUMWALT: I have seen them do some good work, and I've seen them do some ADM. ZUMWALT: No. bad work, even as those of us in the Navy have been capable of each. And I MR. BUCKLEY: --for the sake of exerting yourself on Congress. No? A~M. ZUMWALT: No, I'm saying with ~egard to the opposition that I and others don't agree with their latest analysis. llke former Secretary of Defense Schlesinger and Paul Nitze are bringing to MR. BUCKLEY: Their latest analysis is pretty optimistic- bear, we need to arouse public opinion in order to get Congress to take the ADM. ZUMWALT: Yes. right actions. With regard to my own race to become a member of the Senate MR. BUCKLEY: --in saying that our direct security commitment to Western i~terested Europe is stronger than ever. I am as a member of the Senate in seeking to broaden the Senate' ADM. ZUMWALT: Yes. role 1nto,the one you have suggested; namely, looking at where we're going MR. BUCKLEY: Well, what is it that is lacking then in your judgment? A true and measur1ng how that relates to where the administration said it was going understanding by the American people or a true understanding by Congress or and reporting to the people. MR. BUCKLEY: Well, when you sit in front of a congressional committee as you what? so often have and you tell them such things as that we need a 600-ship navy ADM. ZUMWALT: What is lacking is an accurate auditing of Soviet violations some~ of detente agreements around the globe; an accurate evaluation of both the do,You find that you:re talking to people for whom that term expresses pluses and minuses of foreign policy as it is being conducted; a false eu th~ng concrete? Or 1S there now such an absence of training in the military, phoria being created by reporting only the good news and straining out the Wh1Ch has become so complex, as to make it hopeless for them really to under bad news. In a democracy, in my judgment, that's the course toward disaster; stand? Do they have to rely more and more on admirals and on generals to it's the same course that Chamberlain followed when he pronounced peace in make these concrete estimates? our time after the greatest accommodation or appeasement in history. ~DM. ZUMWALT: ,No: There is of course a range of competence in the Congress MR. BUCKLEY: And do you have a suspicion or do you have knowledge of sys Just as there 1S 1n all other professions, but there are members of Congress tematic violation by the Soviet Union of the provisions of SALT 17 who understand very well indeed the very serious problems we face. Your own ADM. ZUMWALT: I have what in my judgment is irrefutable knowledge of vio brother happens to be one of them. Senator Jackson is another one who comes lations by the Soviet Union of the SALT I agreements as they were under imm~diate1y to mind. There are other members of the Congress who sincerely stood by the administration and as they were certified by the administration be11eve ~hat any ~xpen~iture for defense is bad and that we ought to infuriate in urging the Congress to ratify the treaty and approve the interim Executive t~e,Russ1ans by d1sarm1ng ourselves and embarrass them into doing something slm11a~. An~ then t~ere is that middle third that I cited who just count agreement. noses 1n the1r const1tuency and vote in accordance with what they think their MR. BUCKLEY: Well, why doesn't Group I or Group III, as you described them constituency is thinking. in the Congress, call you and hear your testimony on these matters and act MR. BUCKLEY: So there is a capacity to learn and to understand the implica on it? ADM. ZUMWALT: I think that one of the great failures of Congress has been tions of these figures? an unwillingness on the part of the Armed Services Committee to call those ADM. ZUMWALT: Absolutely. who are advocating that we be aware and those who are advocating that we press MR. BU~KLE~: Now, when you wrote in your book that you were opposed to our on with these disastrous agreements and listen to both sides and come up with entry 1n V1etnam, were you opposed because you anticipated the public reaction a balanced set of conclusions. I think they have shirked their responsibility ?r because.y?u felt that even then, in the heyday of our military superiority, there. And I think in part they have done so because they have been misled 1t was a m111tary venture we could not consummate? by the euphoric descriptions from the secretary of state about the outcomes ADM. ZUMWALT: It was some of each. It was clear to me that that was one of of these negotiations. those rare periods in our history when we had sufficient military capability. MR. BUCKLEY: But if it's true that they are disillusioned with the secretary' In World War I, World War II, and Korea we were caught with our defenses way of state, it would presumably follow that their confidence in people like down, and thousands of Americans were killed that didn't need to have been you increases. killed. Indeed we wouldn't have gotten into those wars if we'd had adequate

8 9 © Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Jr. University. military capability. But in the case of Southeast Asia, we had the option to make the decision or not to make it. And tragically, we made the de intelligent support of foreign policy, there has got to be an accurate rendering cision to go into an area where our vital national interests were not at of the data to the public and the Congress. And I contend that recent adminis stake. And I felt for those reasons that we shouldn't have gone in. But I trations have increasingly departed -in their public expressions from the facts. also felt that if we were goi ng to embark upon it the strategy that was bei ng MR. ROBERTS: Well, once that accurate data is available, what do Americans discussed was undoubtedly going to lead to a situation similar to Korea where , or the American public have to do, what is necessary for them to do either by the end of that long, drawn-out land war the people were getting very . emotionally or otherwise to make detente work? frustrated with it, and that we needed a strategy which would make a truce ADM. ZUMWALT: I think what it requires is that the consensus that will be come quickly, not one which would take nine or ten long years. generated out of such accurate reporting will permit the tougher negotiating MR. BUCKLEY: Therefore, having gotten into it, we should have won it? stance, which is the only thing that works with the Soviet Union. That is, ADM. ZUMWALT: With the use of conventional power against North Vietnam quick our grain, our technology, our trade have got to stop being free goods and ly applied-- have got to be delivered in response for an appropriate quid. And detente MR. BUCKLEY: Yes. has got to be what it was originally intended to be: a process of mutual ad ADM. ZUMWALT: --if we got in, as you said. I don't think we should have justment, not unilateral accommodations. gotten in. MR. ROBERTS: Well, how far do you think the public would be willing to go, MR. BUCKLEY: And in what sense would Angola be a vital interest to the United say, on grain? I mean, if it's clear that there're people in the Soviet States in which Indochina is not? Union who are actually starving because of the lack of grain, should we hold ADM. ZUMWALT: I am among those who think that the policy advocated by Kissinger that up in effect as a blackmail weapon? of getting involved in Angola was wrong. I believe that he himself probably ADM. ZUMWALT: No. The people in the Soviet Union will not starve if we cut didn't expect that he would get support for that. I believe that it was a off all the grain. Their protein diet will go down. They have sufficient political gimmick to put the monkey on Congress's back at a time when the grain to provide for themselves. They have used the additional increases in Cuban Hessian troops were already 10,000 of the 15,000 there; $300 million of grain to feed livestock to improve the protein diet, which is a laudable the $400 million worth of equipment on hand; the MPLA was on the move led by thing for the leadership to do. But we're not going to starve Russians when Cuban troops; and the disaster was happening. I believe that the effort there we cut the grain off; we're just going to increase the domestic political at best was merely to treat the symptom of a disease rather than to cure the pressure on their leadership to abate the violence of their violations. disease by reporting it to the patient and treating it. The patient is the MR. ROBERTS: One thing that you also said before was that-- Obviously you U.S. public; the disease is the violation of detente all around the globe; feel Kissinger should be removed, but then you said he should be replaced and the cure is to rais~ the level of negotiations to include the question by someone more representative of the American people. Who is that? I mean, of whether our whole relationship is going to continue--whether grain and who is representative of that position in your point of view? technology and trade should continue to be free goods to the Soviet Union, ADM. ZUMWALT: Well, as a good Democrat I'm hesitant to suggest who the et cetera. _ Republican president should select from the Republican party to replace MR. BUCKLEY: Well, do you also interpret Mr. Kissinger's latest venture in Kissinger, but I can think immediately of three that would be bound to be Africa--namely, the elevation of Rhodesia as what would appear to be our better both based on experience and philosophy. prime policy commitment in Africa--as in any way a reflection of his concern MR. ROBERTS: Who are those three? for the Cuban troops on the continent? ADM. ZUMWALT: I would say James Schlesinger, Elliot Richardson, and Melvin AD~. ZUMWALT: I think it is, and I think it's typical of foreign policy in Laird. thlS era that after the house is on fire we send for the inadequate fire engine. MR. ROBERTS: Would you also recommend them to a Democratic administration if The proper course of policy, in my judgment, was to have dealt with the that comes into office next year? Rhodesian situation years earlier in a way designed to make it possible for ADM. ZUMWALT: No. I think that there is a large number of very fine Demo the large majority to participate in their system rather than to be excluded. crats of deep foreign policy background who would make very fine secretaries And.now Kissinger finds himself initiating policy at the pcint of a gun with of state. Sovlets and Cubans involved in training the insurgents who will next go into MR. BUCKLEY: Paul Nitze? Rhodesia and bring about a radical black regime in opposition to the much more ADM. ZUMWALT: Paul Nitze is the name that comes first to mind. moderate regime that could have been there. MR. BUCKLEY: Miss Lila Coleburn is from the Legal Action Center. MR. BUCKLEY: You mean, you believe that the Cuban troops are going to be used MS. COLEBURN: Mr. Zumwalt, stripped of rhetoric it sounds as though you're as the principal instrument for the "liberation" of Rhodesia? advocating nothing more than a return to cold war policies. Could you comment ~DM. ZUMWALT: I don't think that decision's yet been made. I think it's go on that? - lng to depend on the Soviet evaluation of how much they can get away with in ADM. ZUMWALT: No. I don't think that that's a fair assertion. I'm advo the light of our -foreign policy failures over here. cating that we return to detente, which the president has declared inoperative MR. BUCKLEY: Mr. Sam Roberts is with the New York Daily N~s. Mr. Roberts. because it really became a process of unilateral accommodation. MR. R?BERTS: Admi~al, you said that the United States lacked the military MS. COLEBURN: I see you've defined detente-- capaclty to deal wlth the Angolan situation, or at least deal with it effective ADM. ZUMWALT: I define detente as a process of mutual adjustment between the ly. What about the psychological or emotional capacity? What do Americans su perpowe rs . have to do, in your opinion, to deal with detente? What should the American MS. COLEBURN: It sounds like a euphemism for a higher defense budget to me. public be prepared to do? ADM. ZUMWALT: No. I don't even advocate at the present time that we increase ADM. ZUMWALT: Well, as I've already suggested, I don't think that they should our budgets. I advocate that Congress stop cutting them and that the United have been asked to deal with Angola in the way in which they were asked to Stat~s be told what the facts are; that we toughen our negotiating posture, deal with it. But in order for the Americans to understand what it is they ~nd If that doesn't improve Soviet behavior--and I think it will--then we may can and cannot hope for in the world ahead and in order for us to have ln the future have to consider greater defense budgets. The improved Soviet performance should consist of two things: obeying the agreements they have

10 11 © Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Jr_ University_ signed rather than violating them; and reducing their defense expenditures so not fit the description that the newspapers were currently giving him in that that they do not exceed our own. era of being a drunken wreck. But he did appear to be a man who was on an MS. COLEBURN: Since what you consider most important seems to be an accurate adrenaline high, and it was a stream of consciousness kind of discussion- reporting of Soviet violations of detente, as you describe it, to the American monologue, not a discussion. people, do you think that you would be, as secretary of state, in a better MR. KRAMER: Was that new for him in your experience? position to do this than as a senator? You seem to be advocating yourself ADM. ZUMWALT: Yes. Yes, it was different than any earlier experiences I'd as secretary of state. had \~ithhim. ADM. ZUMWALT: No. I am not advocating myself as anything but an American MR. KRAMER: Well, did you ever hear any other comments from, for example, w~o b~lie~es that our process should be made to work by using it instead of Secretary Kissinger who's not particularly reluctant to talk to you candidly ml sus 1 ng 1 t. that would support the notion that he was a drunken wreck or in some other MS. COLEBURN: Well, how would you gain the information that you need to make way unstable? this accurate reporting as a senator? ADM. ZUMWALT: I, like everybody else, heard rumors. I had nothing really to ADM. ZUMWALT: I'm not suggesting that I as a senator should make accurate support firsthand the kind of talk that I'm reading about in the newspapers. reports of Soviet violations but rather that the secretary of state who is MR. KRAMER: I see. charged with that responsibility should. However, as a member of the Senate MR. BUCKLEY: We're really not interested on this program in whether Nixon if I ~ere on the appropriate committees that had cognizance, I would certainiy was a drunken wreck except insofar as his having been so led to our parlous be dOlng my best to ensure that the committees got accurate rather than inac military circumstances, you understand? curate reports, and I believe that I have-- ADM. ZUMWALT: I understand. MS. COLEBURN: How would you do that? MR. BUCKLEY: This is not a gossip show. ADM. ZUMWALT: --a good competence to judge the accuracy of those reports be ADM. ZUMWALT: I understand. cause I have seen the data firsthand and know how it is both used and can MR. BUCKLEY: Mike. Excuse me. be misused. ADM. ZUMWALT: I just might add in that regard that I think that it's quite i~S. COLEBURN: Then you feel that your technical expertise as an officer of clear that Mr. Nixon disaffiliated from his responsibilities during that the Navy is what's given you a competence in evaluating defense reports that last dreadful year and really' entered a cocoon in which the only effort was other senators might not possess? Do you think this is the unique qualifi to survive both politically and emotionally; and that as a result his re- , cation for-- sponsibilities fell to others to carry out. ADM. ZUMWALT: Yes. I think that the United States Senate could use one of MR. KRAMER: I think you would say that the degeneration in our defense posture its 100 members who knew something about the military budgets that they're antedated that focus of the president's-- being asked to approve every year. ADM. ZUMWALT: Yes, but I think that we lost a year and a half of time when MS. COLEBURN: And you would be that one person? it could have begun to turn around. ADM. ZUMWALT: I would bring a new set of insights to that subject, yes. MR. BUCKLEY: Do you believe that the verification committee, if it's going to MR. BUCKLEY: Mr. Michael Kramer is with MORE magazine. Mr. Kramer. survive, ought to be headed by the secretary of state? MR. KRAMER: Admiral, in order to make detente work--which is your phrase- .ADM. ZUMWALT: You're referring to the verification panel? you advocate a deterrent capability that is credible. Is that right? MR. BUCKLEY: Panel. Sorry. ADM. ZUMWALT: That is correct. ADM. ZUMWALT: I don't think it makes too much difference who heads it as long MR. KRAMER: And you've also said that the bottom line is who will win and as it is structured in a way that makes it possible for every member to record w~o.will lose. Is .that necessarily a decent equation, or is there a capa his views unharassed and to be sure that they get to the president. And I blllty that the Unlted States could possess that would make winning so un do not believe it has worked in that way at all. acceptable from the Soviet Union's point of view that they would never launch MR. BUCKLEY: Now, what do you mean unharassed? Do you know of somebody who an attack in the first place? has been harassed? ADM .. ZUMWALT: Now, the ~atter is, I think, the most that any responsible ADM. ZUMWALT: Oh, I think that Kissinger has made it extremely difficult for Amerlcan has advocated Slnce going way back to President Kennedy'·s time: that the intelligence community to get its honest and accurate concerns to the we need enough to ensure that there is mutual assured destruction. The fear- president, for the Defense Department to get its honest and accurate concerns . some thing that is happening to us is that by next year we will not have to the president. While I was there, there was a period of time as·the last enough to ensure that, which means that the Soviets will have a strategic Summit meeting was arriving--June and July of 1974--when no positions from the nuclear war-winning capability. secretary of defense or Joint Chiefs of Staff were wanted in the White House, MR. KRAMER: I want to turn just for a second to something you didn't touch and they were not to be delivered. They stacked up at one time some 10 or 12 on. You are ~resenting yourself as a candid person who tells us everything deep until Senator Jackson held a hearing which flushed them out and got them he,knows and 1S not too shy to report conversations that have been held in delivered to the White House. pr1vate. You were close to the Nixon White House, and there's a great con MR. BUCKLEY: And what is the procedure in situations like that? Do they t~oversy now a~out the president's condition, especially in those close to reach Congress? f1nal days. Dld you ever witness any of the degeneration or instability that ADM. ZUMWALT: To the best of my ability and knowledge, they did not. I think others claim they saw? it would not at all be amiss for there to be a requirement that if a paper is ADM. ZUMWALT: I ~ave not read The Final Days. I think I have a rough idea withheld from the president that Congress be informed. I think there was a ·of what they s~y 1n there as a result of the newspaper write-ups. The book violation of the National Security Act involved in cutting out the access of the president to the secretary of defense and the Joint Chiefs of Staff on that.I have.wr1tten reports my last sort of personalized meeting with these issues. Indeed I think there were violations of the National Security Pres1dent Nlxon--although there were some other occasions when I was with Act in·the way in which the positions were arrived at, bypassing the legally him--as having occurred in December of 1973 at a breakfast among the Joint responsible authorities--the secretary of defense and Joint Chiefs of Staff. Chiefs of Staff and the secretary of defense. And there he certainly did MR. BUCKLEY: Would you consider it to be the duty of someone in the defense

12 13 © Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Jr. University. structure to pass along such intimation to a senator or a congressman? ADM. ZUMWALT: In normal times, no. At a time when a president of the United States has entered a cocoon and is no longer functioning as a president, I think every man had to make decisions for himself. I, on one occasion, made a decision to inform Senator Jackson of a matter that I considered so central to the future of our country and so unlikely to be addressed by the president of the United States that I thought it would be important and helpful to the country for him to be informed. MR. BUCKLEY: And did he act on it? ADM. ZUMWALT: To the best of my knowledge and belief he did. And as a re sult aid began to flow to Israel at a time when it was the policy of the secretary of state to pretend that it was going to flow while ordering the secretary of defense not to send it. MR. BUCKLEY: Mr. Roberts. MR. ROBERTS: You've complained before that because of his clout in the Congress, Admiral Rickover has been able to tilt the Navy, as you said, toward almost exclusive use of nuclear power. Admiral Rickover has been very close to Jimmy Carter, who is the front-runner for the nomination for president of your party. Are you concerned at all that if Carter wins that this tilt will move even further? ADM. ZUMWALT: Traditionally, Admiral Rickover starts off extremely well with each new policy appointee, and traditionally the half-life of good relations is relatively brief. I believe that an effective president--and I believe that former Governor Carter will be a very effective president if he becomes president--would move briskly to correct the anarchic organizational problem that makes it possible for Admiral Rickover to bypass the secretary of defense and the president. I believe that Mr. Ford has been weak in not doing so. MR. ROBERTS: Do you think that a President Carter would ask Admiral Rickover to retire? ADM. ZUMWALT: I think he would start off trying to work with him. think over time he might very well ask him to retire. MR. KRAMER: Are you supporting Carter now, sir? ADM. ZUMWALT: I'm taking the public position that I will support the Demo cratic nominee. And I think that it's still-- MR. BUCKLEY: Even if he chooses alternative C? (laughter) ADM. ZUMWALT: I believe that the next Democratic president of the United States will inevitably choose alternative A. MR. BUCKLEY: Thank you very much, Admiral Zumwalt. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen of the panel. And thank you, students from Cathedral Prep.