MR. NEWMAN: Welcome to "The Fourth Annual Conference of Secretaries of State.
Today we have with us four former Secretaries.

DEAN RUSK, who served the longest term, (eight years), from 1961 to 1969 in the Kennedy
and Johnson administrations. His years of government service date back to 1946, when he
joined the State Department during the Truman administration. Mr. Rusk has also served as
President of the Rockefeller Foundation, and is currently a professor of law at the
University of Georgia.

HENRY KISSINGER served as Secretary of State in the Nixon and Ford administrations, from 1973 to 1977. Before that Dr. Kissinger was President Nixon's National Security Advisor. He continued to hold that post until 1975 during the Ford administration, while also serving as Secretary of State. He shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 1973 for the cease fire agreement in Viet Nam. Dr. Kissinger is currently chairman of Kissinger and Associates, an international consulting firm.

EDMUND MUSKIE succeeded Cyrus Vance as Secretary of State in May 1980 under
President Carter. He served two terms as Governor of Maine before being elected to the
United States Senate in 1958. He was in the Senate for twenty-two years. In 1968 he was
the Democratic nominee for Vice President. Secretary Muskie currently practices law in
Washington, D. C.

ALEXANDER HAIG was President Reagan's first Secretary of State and served until his
resignation in June 1982. In 1969 he was named Military Advisor to Henry Kissinger and
was then appointed Deputy Assistant of National Security Affairs to the President. General
Haig served as President Nixon's Chief of Staff in 1974 and then as NATO Supreme
Commander in Europe from 1974 to 1978. Secretary Haig is now a consultant in
Washington, D. C.

WILLIAM ROGERS, Secretary of State under President Nixon from 1969 to 1973, Attorney
General under President Eisenhower, Chairman of the commission that investigated the loss
of the space shuttle Challenger, was to have been with us today. Illness, unfortunately, kept
Secretary Rogers away.

For more than twenty years, the Southern Center for International Studies, (SCIS), has
provided the Southeast with perspectives and information on international affairs. In 1983
the Southern Center presented its first Annual Conference of Former Secretaries of State.
That meeting marked the first time these men had gathered to discuss American foreign
policy. Today, the Southern Center is convening its fourth annual conference. The
purpose is to bring to the American public the collective experience and wisdom of these
men, who represent an extraordinary national resource.

The last few weeks have seen a tremendous amount of discussion, gentlemen, of how United
States foreign policy is made, because of the dealings with Iran. Are there any lessons to be
learned about the way that policy is made or should be made?

Secretary Rusk?

SECRETARY RUSK: Thank you, Ed Newman. I'm sure I speak for my colleagues in
saying that we're delighted to be under your fine professional guidance for our discussion

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today.

I have not joined the hue and cry on this so called "Iranian caper." I have told reporters that I consider myself silenced by one of the greatest sentences ever spoken - "Let him who is without sin cast the first stone."

We live in a very complex and turbulent world situation with more than a hundred and sixty nations out there, no one of which simply snaps its heels and salutes when we speak. Every administration has had to do things which in retrospect appear to have been a mistake. And every administration has become accustomed to the fact that disappointment and frustration are built in to the very nature of our relations with the rest of the world. After all, these "funny foreigners" just don't always act as we would like to see them act.

As far as I'm concerned, the present problem is one of what some people have called damage control. I'll mention two points: One is that the President must move firmly and directly to establish without any question the authority of the Secretary of State to speak for the United States. It's not just a matter of what happens to our present Secretary of State, but it's important to the nation as a whole: Otherwise, our diplomacy will be severely limited. The other problem is relations between the President and the Congress. This could be of critical importance because we're at the beginning of a two year period where we have a Republican President and a Democratic Congress. The necessity for these two branches to work together is overriding.

I would like to say to my colleagues in Congress something about what happened twenty-five years ago. President Kennedy was faced with the failure and the tragic mistake of the Bay of Pigs. It fell to me to go down to Congress to talk to some of the key committees on Capitol Hill. I remember very well that the prevailing mood was regret, sadness, and a certain amount of compassion. The Republicans on those committees did not bare their fangs in order to rip the President to pieces. There was a general feeling that we should somehow put this behind us and get on with the public business of the nation.

Now, I hope, as we face these next two years, that we shall not see foreign policy and defense policy become an object of partisan bickering as each party jousts for position for the election of 1988. The American people have the right to be better served than that. I would hope that the President and the leaders of Congress would spend a great deal of time with each other - not only talking to but listening to each other - in order that we might fashion that kind of national policy towards world affairs that our safety and our well being demands.

I hope that we can put this behind us and get on with the great tasks that lie ahead.

MR. NEWMAN: Secretary Kissinger?

It was not, in my view, a mistake to try to improve relations with Iran. Iran is a country of decisive geo-strategic importance in that region, and a prudent President and administration would want to improve relations. But where it got off the rails, it seems to me, was in the means. The sale of arms to a radical, revolutionary government is not the best way to prove American good faith. Nor am I convinced that the obligation to show good faith lay primarily upon the United States.

Much of the public discussion has been on organizational questions. Which element of the

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government should have preeminence? In determining that, one really should know
whether, let us say, the State or Defense Departments were excluded, or whether they
excluded themselves; whether their complaint is that they were overruled, or whether their
complaint is that they were kept in ignorance.

No cabinet member has the right to complain about being overruled. He has a right to
resign when he is, but if he stays, he cannot then complain about being overruled. That's
part of the game. He has a right to complain if something in his area is deliberately kept
from him.

So, as a general proposition, I would think the lesson to be learned from this particular period
is partly an organizational one if people were kept in ignorance, but largely a conceptual one.
What did the various people think they were doing? Why did they think it? What was
wrong about that thinking? And, where it was wrong, what was right, (because the major
elements of that policy were also right, and that must not be forgotten). That seems to me to
be the key question, rather than the prerogatives of individual members of the
administration.

MR. NEWMAN: Secretary Haig, you were part of President Reagan's administration.
Perhaps you could shed a different kind of light on this.

SECRETARY HAIG: Well, do I have a chance to tout my book again?

MR. NEWMAN: Tout your book again? Is it still in print?

(Laughter)

SECRETARY HAIG: Because I wrote it -- the new publication is.

I would share the observations made by both Secretary Rusk and Secretary Kissinger. I
would, however, suggest that their admonitions with respect to responsibility and
bipartisanship is a direct reflection of their concern that that in fact will not happen.

One need only flip on the tube in any hour of the day. Mr. Reagan must have gotten up
thinking he put on Mr. Boesky's uniform. Clearly, this is a politicized issue and
unfortunately while I fervently share the observations of Secretary Rusk, I'm afraid it will
become that and we're going to witness many, many months of precisely that.

Now, that's unfortunate, because the historic struggle between the Congress and the
Executive Branch on who is responsible, I think, is clearly outlined in the Constitution; with
the obligation of the Executive Branch to keep the Congress informed, but at the same time
the right of the Executive Branch to take these initiatives.

If one looks back on our history, during the period that Dr. Kissinger and I were working
together, it was the ability of the President to take initiatives in secret that opened the doors
to China, that led to the peace treaty in Viet Nam. It's unfortunate that it was
Congressional mischief that, I think, lost that peace treaty and its effectiveness.

So I would be very concerned in the weeks and months ahead that we not cripple the
institution of the Presidency, which is after all a floating crap game in cycles of four years.
There's a great tendency in the American Congress to legislate permanent solutions to

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temporary problems. One might even debate that the War Powers Act was such a piece of legislative action. So I share the views of both. I also share Henry's comment that I wish our Cabinet would support our President; and like one Secretary of State that I know, if they cannot, to leave.

MR. NEWMAN: Would you care to tell us what you meant by that?

(Laughter)

SECRETARY HAIG: Not a thing. I'm not encouraging any action on the part of anyone. I am suggesting that if you disagree with a policy, and your conscience tells you that you cannot live with it, then you must make a decision before the act is committed.

SECRETARY RUSK: Perhaps it should be said that there are six former secretaries, and we're not trying to recruit George Shultz as number seven any time soon.

(Laughter)

(Applause)

SECRETARY HAIG: Dean, I'm sick and tired of being the last man to enter this stage.

(Laughter)

MR. NEWMAN: Secretary Muskie, you were in the Senate. Perhaps, again, you have a unique point of view to offer us here.

SECRETARY MUSKIE: Yes. I've been involved in both ends of this process.

You know, your question was: What lessons are there to be learned out of this incident? Unfortunately, most of the lessons that we need to learn whenever out country goes through a crisis of this nature are lessons that have been taught before but forgotten. Forgotten by the President forgotten by the Congress, and forgotten by others. Because operating this democratic system of ours and the system of checks and balances means taking the risk of disagreement, taking the risk of fouling up, but also achieving great things.

The responsibility of the Senate, for example, in the foreign policy field, is described best by three Constitutional words, "advise and consent." Presidents are very conscious of the consent part of it and in the name of consent preach their definition of bipartisan foreign policy. They tend to overlook the "advise" part of that Constitutional mandate, which has led them into a great deal of difficulty. Among other things, it has led the Congress to do the sort of thing that Secretary Haig just decried a moment ago. When Presidents do not consult or do not advise effectively, the Congress is likely to take the initiative into its own hands. It has happened before. I have not always agreed with those Congressional initiatives, but on the other hand, as a member of the Senate for twenty-two years, I've understood it. When I was Secretary of State. (I was Secretary for such a short time - I remember precisely, eight months and twenty days - very busy eight months and twenty days). I was never plagued with that, probably because I came out of the Senate. If I had served as Secretary for four more years, I have no doubt that I would have had to face similar situations.

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But the other word that I would emphasize here regarding these most recent events is the word "accountability." In a democratic system such as ours, based on the idea of freedom and a free society and a free people, policy makers must always be sensitive to the fact that, at some point, they are going to be accountable for the consequences of their policies and their initiatives. There's a tendency to think, when you're at the highest level, that somehow it should be possible for you to do something worthwhile, provided you don't have to bring the public in on it. You may get away with not bringing the public in on it, either directly or through their institutions, for a while. But, eventually, the consequences become evident, and accountability sets in. In this most recent affair, I have the sense that that was not sufficiently on the minds of those who were involved.

Now, I agree with Secretary Rusk that our concerns should be how do we repair the damage. But in order to repair it, no one of those involved in this incident can be excluded from the responsibility of repairing the damage, including the President and the President's White House staff, where perhaps the responsibility lies heaviest as well as the Congress.

I'm sure that we'll get into other implications of these questions, Mr. Newman, but I think maybe that's a sufficient start.

MR. NEWMAN: Let me pick up, if I may, something that Secretary Kissinger said, and ask Secretary Kissinger about something that he did, in fact, when he was National Security Advisor.

You went to China, as a result of which diplomatic relations were opened between the United States and government of Mainland China. Now, in the discussions of the last few weeks there has been a great deal of talk about how that was somewhat similar to what President Reagan was trying to do with Iran. Therefore, he deserved the same sort of, shall we say, confidence and the same sort of secrecy that existed at the time you went to China. Do these two things seem to you to be comparable?

SECRETARY KISSINGER: Of course, in any administration the President must have the scope to do some things that are very sensitive on a secret basis. I think, there is a big difference between a diplomatic initiative, whose practical consequence will become public as soon as it is consummated, and the shipment of several thousand tons of arms. That seems to me to be a matter that inherently, one should know, cannot be kept secret. Too many people are involved, and third countries are involved. That is one aspect of the recent events. The second is: if you take publicly one position and encourage other governments to pursue the same or a certain policy, while privately you do exactly the opposite, you are no longer in the area of secret diplomacy. I believe, in the opening of China, which was at first attempted to be handled in regular channels, and then we received staff memos that recommended that we begin negotiating immunities, transportation, consultation, and we thought we'd be spending three years on the internal issues, then the President moved it into different channels. But as soon as that act -- as the opening had been made, it had to become public in the nature of things. Also we had not induced other governments to do the opposite of what we were doing.

So, in this case, I don't think it was exactly comparable. Secrecy shouldn't be abused, and the objection to the arms part of the present policy in my mind is not only the secrecy, or primarily the secrecy, but the fact that something was trying to be kept secret that really put us into the hands of people who did not wish us well, where the secrecy couldn't be controlled and where the publication did not give them impetus, as it did in the China, to a new

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development, but would get us into deep trouble. So, I don't think it's exactly comparable.

MR. NEWMAN: Did the machinery for making United States foreign policy break down in this Iran matter?

SECRETARY HAIG: Well, it would depend a great deal on what facts emerge in the post-mortems before one could answer that definitively. It is clear, and I suppose I wrote at length about it in my book --

(Laughter)

SECRETARY HAIG: -- that there is -- Henry, I'm going to outsell you yet.

(Laughter)

SECRETARY HAIG: It is essential that there be a disciplined structure for conducting foreign policy and national security policy. It frequently matters less as to how it is structured. Like Dean Rusk, I think I'd much prefer the primary role for the Secretary of State, but I have on my left here Dr. Kissinger a very, very splendid example of the fact that it will work the other way, too, and work well.

This administration on occasion has looked like a revolving crap game. One day Mr. Weinberger is talking foreign policy, one day Mr. Baker or Mr. Regan is talking foreign policy, and the next day the Secretary of State. This Iranian affair had all of symptoms of anything but a disciplined system, and I think it's unfortunate. Probably this brouhaha, which I do think is somewhat over dramatized, is a product of it.

SECRETARY RUSK: Perhaps we ought to step back a moment and recognize that we in this country have the most complicated constitutional and political system that one can find, perhaps anywhere in the world, deliberately made complicated by our founding fathers in the interest of imposing restraints upon the exercise of the raw power of the state.

Now, the separation of powers at the federal level is a very important concept, but there are some limits. The late Chief Justice Earl Warren visited our Law School here at Georgia shortly before his death, and on that occasion reminded us that if each branch of the Federal government were to pursue its own Constitutional powers to the end of the trail, our system simply could not function; it would freeze up like an engine without oil. Impasse is the overhanging threat to our Constitutional system.

The other side of the coin of the separation of powers is a Constitutional necessity for comity among the branches of government that in turn requires the most effective communication between the two that we can devise. Perhaps I'm tilted on the side of the Executive Branch, having lived with that, but it is not easy to consult with five hundred and thirty-five members of Congress. In the first place, they don't have the time to spend to get deeply into the most of the major questions of foreign policy. The public has little understanding, I think, of the pressures of time upon a Senator or a member of the House of Representatives. Also, the Congress itself is not too organized for purposes of consultation. Almost literally, every committee of Congress becomes involved in our foreign relations, ranging from the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations to the House Committee on the District of Columbia. I have long thought it would be desirable if the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations and the House Foreign Affairs Committee would have the privilege of calling before themselves

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any matter pending before any other committee of Congress in order to comment on it from an overall foreign policy point of view. But relations among the committees of Congress would probably make that impossible.

I do think it is especially important where the White House has one party and the Congress has a majority of the other that they spend a great deal of time with each other trying to eliminate unnecessary misunderstandings and try to build as solid a common basis for our international policies as they can possibly find. This can be done. Look back to the days of President Truman and the Eightieth Republican Congress under the leadership of Senator Arthur Vandenberg - a great creative period in our foreign policy with the Marshall Plan and NATO and the launching of the United Nations and Point Four Technical Assistance. A great creative period because they were willing to put in the time and effort required to come together on it.

So, I hope, my dear friend Ed Muskie, that somehow we can find better ways to facilitate serious consultation between the Executive Branch and the Congress. Some of that responsibility should arise on Capitol Hill.

MR. NEWMAN: May I put in a question here to Secretary Rusk, Secretary Muskie, before you speak?

The period you were speaking about, Secretary Rusk, after the Second World War, was a period in which the Soviet threat was seen as extremely serious, extremely powerful; and some of what was done between the Congress and the administration in the late 'Forties came about for that reason. Is it fair to say that there is not now thought to be a similar threat, and that this may be one reason that there isn't the same degree of cooperation?

SECRETARY RUSK: Well, we have to look carefully at the nature of that threat. We've had a number of crises with the Soviet Union since 1945, many difficult and some of them dangerous. But we have put behind us now forty-one years since a nuclear weapon has been fired in anger - perhaps the most important single thing that can be said about this postwar period - because there is, in this relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union, a bottom line.

First, we and the Soviets share a basic common interest in preventing nuclear war. No one in his right mind in Washington and Moscow could deny that. Second, the two of us share a primordial responsibility to the entire human race, because we and they are perhaps the only two nations who, if engaged in mortal conflict, could raise a serious question about the survival of the human race. And third, whatever we think of the Russians or they think of us, somehow at the end of the day we and they must find a way to inhabit this spec of dust in the universe at the same time. Though there are flat out differences, it has been possible to manage these problems within certain limitations.

Now, a lot flows from that. We have to watch the level of rhetoric on both sides, otherwise one side or the other will begin to believe its own rhetoric, and we could have some problems. We have to watch not to play games of chicken with each other to see how far one can go in a particular venture without crossing that lethal line. So, there are many things to be drawn from it. But my impression has been that where these things are discussed fully and candidly, usually in executive sessions, I must say, with the key committees of Congress, there develops a pretty broad common understanding of the nature of the problem and where we should be going.

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**SECRETARY MUSKIE:** I think there are other forces at work that distinguish the present period from the creative period to which Dean Rusk has referred - the late 'Forties and early 'Fifties. Among other things, in the Congress there has been a fractionating of the authority and areas of responsibility of Congressional committees. When Dean Acheson was Secretary of State as well as George Marshall, they could go to key members of the key committees in the Senate and in the House and achieve consensus. The authority of chairmen at that time in the Congress was not challenged. They were able to agree to a great deal and command a following in the Senate and in the House behind the policies. It was a much simpler day. That has changed. That kind of authority is no longer concentrated in committee chairmen. Committee chairmen are lucky if they can hold on to their jobs now from one Congress to the next.

What is responsible for that? I suspect that television as much as anything, because any member of the Senate or the House today can get a nationwide audience the day after he's elected to the House or to the Senate. The media take advantage of that instinct of politicians to get visibility and to get headlines, and, of course, the politicians take advantage of it as well. Every member of both houses considers himself a foreign policy expert. At least he does once he gets a headline or gets on the highlights of the evening television news. So, fractionating of authority in the Congress, I think, is partly responsible for the difference and the difficulty today of achieving a Congressional consensus.

But this also happens in the Executive Branch for a different reason. People with different points of view in the Executive Branch undertake to develop Congressional constituencies. They will see individual members of Congress to whose ears they can tell their point of view, and give each member of Congress whom they contact a basis for getting a story, for getting on the news, for getting visibility.

I hope I am not suggesting that this is too cynical a process, and I don't think really that it is the driving mode of this cynicism. I think, it's the natural inclination of people to seek visibility for their point of view and to pursue it. That's more possible today in our political system than ever before.

I like Dean Rusk's use of the word "comity." I agree with him that comity is the glue which holds the Constitution together and which holds our system of checks and balances together. But there are these other centrifugal forces which work counter to that. It is going to require, I think, a greater exertion of restraint, will and cooperativeness to make the system work than ever before.

**SECRETARY KISSINGER:** First, I'd like to illustrate the point that Ed Muskie made about the impact of television. There's a big difference if one testifies before a committee when television cameras are present or when they're not. There was one Senator on the Foreign Relations Committee who was actually a good friend of mine and who would often ask helpful questions. When television cameras were in the room he would ask those questions with a red face, a vein was throbbing on his forehead, pointing a finger at me, and it sounded as if he had extorted the most reluctant confession from me when I was saying something that I was really most eager to say, and he knew I was eager to say it -- but that would get him on television. While if he had asked a philosophical question and I had given a philosophical answer, you know as well as I do that it would not have received any television coverage.

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LC

One result of the fractionation of which Ed Muskie spoke, is that the nature of the consultation has changed somewhat on the fundamental philosophical issues, the nature of the consensus on the broad strategy on how to deal with it. There must be consensus -- comity is the better word -- between the Congress and the Executive Branch. The system would not work badly in achieving that if both sides keep Earl Warren's injunction in mind of not pushing their prerogatives to the ultimate conclusion.

But fractionation has the tendency of leading to endless involvement in tactical decisions, and that puts the United States often into the position of playing a game of chess with an opponent who can make his moves with one coherent approach. While on the American side somebody precipitously starts moving a piece for you every once in a while; and no matter how brilliant that individual move is, it loses the coherence. The essence of foreign policy - of good foreign policy - is the accumulation of nuance. It is very rare that you can do something that makes a decisive difference. It is the gradual transformation of the situation, that gets lost when you get too much obsessed with tactical issues. I think there self restraint by the Congress is important.

Another element that I think is new in the last decade or so under the impact of Watergate, television and other things is the growth of the Congressional staffs. In my observation, many frustrated foreign service officers who were not made Secretaries of State rapidly enough for their tastes would migrate to the Hill and try to implement from the platform of a Congressional committee the brilliant policies that they had failed to get adopted by the man who had been imposed on them as the Secretary of State or the President. And then liaisons form between the Congressional staffers and the lower levels in the State and Defense Departments that makes the management, both by the Senators or the Congressmen and by the Executive Branch, much more difficult than it was even at the time that I first came to Washington.

MR. NEWMAN: Is there a solution to this problem that you've been setting out?

SECRETARY KISSINGER: Well, I actually think that it is better for the Senators to rely less on their staff and more on their own judgment. That's what they were elected for. One solution is to make sure that the consultation focuses on the fundamental national issues - Where are we trying to go; What is the broad strategy; rather than, what should we say next week to Gorbachev? That is something that is difficult to handle. Of course, there should be information about that as well. That is the broad outline of the solution. How to do it? That's another matter.

MR. NEWMAN: Secretary Muskie was suggesting, if I understood him correctly, that in the White House, for example, you would have a number of White House staff people who would be funneling ideas to particular friends on the Hill, particular groups on the Hill, so as to get those ideas out in the open.

I was reminded as you said that, Secretary Muskie, of something that Secretary Rusk said about yet another Secretary, Dean Acheson, who was asked, "What is the first quality that a Secretary of State needs?" And his reply, according to Mr. Rusk, was, "the killer instinct." Now, does a Secretary of State need a killer instinct? Does he have to be able to say, "No, there will be no National Security Advisor," or "If there is, he will take orders from me?" Does he have to be able to say, "The White House Chief of Staff does not get into foreign policy affairs?" How has all of this, in other words, affected what the country has just learned about in connection with Iran?

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**SECRETARY MUSKIE:** If the NSC hadn't been created, I suppose it might still exist in the White House in some informal, uncreated way. Part of the answer, part of the reason for that, is the geography. I have a theory -- I'd be interested in whether my colleagues agree with this -- that when the State Department was moved from what is now the Executive Office Building, next door to the White House, to its present house, quite a ways distant, that the geography which separated the Secretary of State from the President tended to enhance the inclination of the President to look around the White House and to find that advice there. The President, for whatever reason in the morning, may be interested in a particular foreign policy issue. He knows that the Secretary of State is busy, in any case on the other side of town, and so it's easy to turn to somebody in the White House.

I remember that when I first went to the Senate, I was assigned to a subcommittee of the Government Operations Committee, which was chaired by Senator Henry Jackson, and his interest that year was conducting hearings on the newly created National Security Council. It had been created in President Truman's administration, and the question that was before us was the fact that nobody could seem to find any use for the National Security Council. President Eisenhower hadn't used it very much, and the testimony that came before us as to the efforts to make it a useful instrument would make very interesting reading today, after the fact.

But with time and imaginative occupants in the seat of the National Security Advisor -- and we have a very imaginative one present here today in Henry, who was a good National Security Advisor on institutional grounds, there was a vacuum. You know what the old law of physics says; if there's a vacuum, something steps into it. I think that the National Security Council issue has emerged as a result of that over the years. Perhaps the fact that the National Security Advisor is not confirmed by the Senate or anybody else makes him a tempting repository of Presidential advice and initiative.

Some Advisors have resisted that or tried to control it or channel it or emphasize the National Security Advisor's cooperative functions, and it has worked out all right. Other times it hasn't. It depends a great deal on the personality and inclinations of the occupier of that office, and has geography working for him.

**SECRETARY HAIG:** Let me suggest that the killer instinct of a Secretary could very rapidly become a suicidal instinct if he was working for a strong President, because the President decides how he wants to formulate the policy. We've talked about the impact of television, it's pervasive; the collapse of discipline within the legislature -- and that's true; the proliferation of staff; and the separation of State from the White House. But I think one of the most important contributors to the new challenges of policy making in America is the globalization of America's responsibilities, and this is perhaps one of the most significant factors in modern America, and the increasing complexity associated with that globalization, in which economic affairs, political affairs, security affairs, commercial affairs are all now part of a cloth -- the mosaic of which is the threads of the various departments and in which if there were not a National Security Council, by God, we'd have to invent one to bring these various departments together.

Now, the role of that council can be one of high profile, public spokesman, the driving force, or something a little more faceless, more staff like, heard of less often. But the need to coordinate the various agencies and departments in the conduct of coherent foreign policy, which is political, economic, as well as security related, cannot be talked away. The

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problem comes in establishing a disciplined system for doing it, which the bureaucracy
knows and understands and adheres to and which the Congress feels comfortable with
because it has those lines that it certainly must have.

SECRETARY RUSK: I think, it might be well to remind ourselves of two elementary points here. The first sentence of Article II of the Constitution reads, "The executive power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America." It is the President, and only the President, who is elected by all of the people to give direction to the Executive Branch of the government within the laws and the Constitution. There's only one President in the White House. I would hope that Constitutional sentence would be framed and put on the walls of the White House mess so there will be no confusion over there in that building about who is President.

Now, by the way --

(Laughter)

(Applause)

SECRETARY HAIG: I left that for you to say, Dean.

SECRETARY RUSK: Now, along side of Dean Acheson's remark about the killer instinct, he also said that in the relations between the President and the Secretary of State it is of the greatest importance that both of them understand at all times which one is President. Of course, I'm biased on this, but I think we ought to note just a thing or two about the office of Secretary of State, of which Thomas Jefferson was number one: The Secretary of State has a five foot shelf of statutory law organizing his Department and setting many of the main policies that we are expected to follow. A good many of those laws delegate specific responsibilities to the Secretary of State, even though it is generally understood that he exercises those delegated responsibilities under the general direction of the President. But that doesn't mean that every Tom, Dick and Harry who has an office over in the White House or the Executive Office Building. It is the Secretary who goes down and meets regularly with committees and subcommittees of the Congress, taking their questions. It is he who holds press conferences from time to time. It is he who goes out across the country, making foreign policy speeches and getting the pulse of those to whom he is speaking in terms of question periods and things of that sort. None of that is true of these White House staff.

I think, when you proliferate staff in the White House and in the Congress, there's a bureaucratic syndrome that begins to operate. These staff members have to find some way to earn their "brownie points" for the year in order to justify their jobs, and one of the ways they do that is to tinker with something. Since it's fun for a lot of these people to tinker with foreign policy, because it's exciting and all the rest of it, they tend to want to tinker with foreign policy far beyond their competence, experience or responsibility. So, I would hope that we could streamline these organizations, ranging from Congressional staffs right over to the White House.

(Applause)

SECRETARY KISSINGER: Well, both Dean Rusk and Al Haig have said much of what I can contribute to this subject. I would like to make two points: One is that one does not achieve influence in the policy making process by insisting on prerogatives. The President

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will consult whoever makes, in his mind, the most significant contributions. So there is no substitute for a close relationship between the President and the Secretary of State. The minute somebody has to walk into the President's office and say, "I'm entitled to be heard," he has already lost; because if he wanted to hear him, he would have called him in to begin with. And if the relationship were well established, it's inconceivable that the Secretary of State isn't heard.

Secondly, there is an important role for a National Security Council for a Presidential staff. As the Department has grown in size, the head of the Department must be conscious of the morale of his subordinates, and the subordinates in turn will judge his effectiveness by the degree to which he gets their policies implemented.

I've been National Security Advisor and Secretary of State, so I have seen it from both ends. I used to say when I was Secretary of State that the various bureaus in the Department, at the end of the day when they send up the eighty to a hundred cables which they want you to approve, always give you three choices: nuclear war, unconditional surrender, or their preference.

(Laughter)

**SECRETARY KISSINGER:** Nobody really can get on top of that machinery totally; because if you send that cable back, the odds are that you'll get back a variation of it the next day with the same basic thrust and just a slight modification, so it's a hard struggle even within the Department.

But the President needs a group that makes sure that the fundamental issues are being addressed. That's the fundamental job of the National Security Council. When it goes off into operations, or when it gets off into its own tactics, that's when one gets into a questionable area. Sometimes the questionable area arises when the President feels very strongly about a policy and a Department feels dubious about it - which is its prerogative - but, then having been heard, is reluctant to implement it. Then the President, having the authority that Dean Rusk spoke about, must find somebody to do it. So it is important. I agree that the staff should not be given -- should be trimmed of-those responsibilities that are self-serving and unnecessary. At the same time, the Department must be kept focused on fundamental national issues and not on issues of prerogative. The purpose of the exercise is not to establish the prerogative of the Department, but to achieve good national policy.

**MR. NEWMAN:** Should the National Security Advisor be a public figure? Should he be perhaps -- or she, when that time comes -- forbidden to appear in public, forbidden to make speeches, forbidden to give interviews?

**SECRETARY KISSINGER:** As a general proposition, I agree with Dean Rusk that the public explanation of foreign policy should overwhelmingly be left either to the President or to the Secretary of State, however, I must tell you that in my day when I used to brief on Viet Nam issues, I did not have to beat off competitors for the platform.

(Laughter)

**SECRETARY KISSINGER:** And I don't remember ever a complaint about White House prerogatives as long as I stuck to unpopular issues.

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(Laughter)

SECRETARY KISSINGER: So, this has to be kept in mind: If the Department wants greater responsibilities, they must also be prepared to take greater heat. That is surely the ideal arrangement. Certainly, the Secretary of State must be the public spokesman, and he must also be prepared to speak on things --

SECRETARY RUSK: Now, there are variations on this. When Pierre Salinger was the press spokesman for President Kennedy, he told us over in the State Department that if there was any good news to report, he wanted to report that from the White House; but if there was bad news, he expected us to do that in the State Department.

(Laughter)

SECRETARY HAIG: That's a confirmation of the wisdom of a President who doesn't want to be perceived to be responsible, day to day, for everything, and to have a strong Secretary of State who, when things do go awry, can be expendable. Presidents are not expendable. Presidents must maintain their credibility. Sometimes an overly centralized, overly powerful White House policy making machine can risk that.

MR. NEWMAN: On that point, Secretary Haig, in connection with what has been discussed here, what is the proper function of a White House Chief of Staff? How public a position, if indeed public at all, should that be?

SECRETARY HAIG: It should be totally unpublic. Only in a dire emergency should a White House Chief of Staff be forced into a public position. He should be a faceless servant of communications between the various bureaus and departments of government and the President, and a coordinator of that gaggle which has become this White House staff, and a protector of the President -- his time, his energy -- and a setter of priorities for those energies.

SECRETARY RUSK: By the way, there's one very useful function for a National Security Advisor, and that is, the President could receive conflicting recommendations from, say, the State Department, the Defense Department, the Joint Chiefs of Staff or whatever it might be, not simply a habit of bureaucracy to resist any kind of deference on a horizontal basis. One can defer vertically. There have been times in the past when the White House staff can help bring these departments together in a way which the departments could not, perhaps, just achieve just working alone. So, there's some very important roles for that person to play.

MR. NEWMAN: Can we go back to the question of the power of Congress in foreign affairs? Recently Congress voted to impose sanctions against South Africa. The House voted to extend a moratorium on the testing of anti-sattelite weapons. The House cut the SDI budget which the President had sent up. It proposed, resolved, in fact - that he should abide by the limits set in SALT II, which has never been ratified. Does this go too far? Does this go too far in impinging on the President's power?

SECRETARY MUSKIE: Well, to quote a President, "That's not illegal." Certainly within the constraints which you've described, it's within the prerogative that the Congress has assumed increasingly in recent years. Not just recent years, but over the period since I was first elected in 1958.

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There are a number of reasons for this which we've already discussed, and I won't belabor them. The fact is that if we have a strong President whose policies, whose initiatives have the support of the country, his policies will prevail over these kinds of Congressional initiatives that you've described. For example, with respect to the limitations on appropriations for SDI, before the Reykjavik Summit, the Congress enacted that and backed off under pressure from the President when the President indicated, and apparently got public support for, the notion that his hands would be tied at the Summit on this issue. Congress backed off. At the same time, I'm sure that Congress feels that it made a point, and that was the way for it to make the point. What the Congress was interested in was not influencing the Summit on this issue, but influencing our long term policy on this question. That is a responsibility of the Congress if the Congress has a specific view about it.

Now, it's not an easy sort of thing to deal with from the President's point of view, but it -- the Constitution doesn't intend that the Presidency should be an easy job. The President is supposed to be a leader. He's supposed to lead the country and he's supposed to be so effective that he can impress the correctness of his policies and his initiative on his following, who are the entire people of the United States. The lessons of the last six years indicate that the Congress tends to back off a strong President and a popular President, as it has in my judgment in the last six years, at times, in ways that I did not approve as an individual citizen. So, you have this clash between the Congress and the President. It's a healthy thing. The founders intended it.

As a matter of fact, Norman Orenstein, who is a noted and well known expert on our Federal system and our Constitutional system, has taken the position that the relationship between the Congress and the President on foreign policy has probably been practiced more consistently with the ideas of the founders than at any time in recent years. I think that's a persuasive point of view.

**SECRETARY RUSK:** Congress clearly has enormous power in foreign relations under the Constitution. The President does not have a man or a dollar not provided by the Congress. Many of the things which a President or Secretary of State wish to do in our relations with other nations will require legislation or appropriations or both. So in a real sense, the Presidency is a license to persuade. Some Presidents are better persuaders than others but that element of persuasion is always there. The question is whether there is an inclination at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue to be persuaded, or whether they will sit there pouting saying, "Persuade me." They too have a responsibility in foreign affairs and they too have a share in the search for a kind of foreign policy that would be good for the nation.

**SECRETARY KISSINGER:** It's not easy to make hard and fast rules, but among that list that you read, I would think, whether I agree with it or not, that cutting the budget for SDI, for example, is a way that Congress would indicate the priority it attaches to a program. Prohibiting space testing -- that seems to me to get into the area of making the tactical moves. Sanctions seem to me in the area of general direction of policy in which the Congress and the Executive must achieve some comity. The continuing SALT II limitations, that seems to me, again, a tactical move -- especially, since it is continuing the limitations of an unratified treaty. I agree, it isn't easy to make clear cut distinctions. I'm simply trying to make the illustration of what subjects seem to me in a policy of self-restraint on both sides, what approach might be taken.

**SECRETARY HAIG:** Let me suggest something else, beyond what has been discussed here that I certainly am in accord with. It seems to me that in carrying out this usage of the

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"Bully Pulpit," which Presidents must do -- they must convince; they must sell their program - that every administration is well served by a very detailed articulation of an overall framework of a foreign policy and the objectives and goals of that administration. It doesn't mean that it does that job for you, but it provides a benchmark for assessment along the way in which there's a tendency in the Congress, as the major issues are understood and accepted, not to get into the tactical manipulation which some of these issues clearly amount to.

MR. NEWMAN: I want to change our subject now slightly and talk about the power of the press as it affects foreign policy. And here again I'm quoting Dean Rusk. He and some others said this. "Americans should always respect the need for a period of confidential and careful deliberation when dealing with a major international crisis." If this is desirable, Mr. Rusk, how can it be obtained?

SECRETARY RUSK: I think that are certain myths that our friends in the press indulge in.

MR. NEWMAN: Surely not.

(Laughter)

SECRETARY RUSK: I think the American people are better served by their news media than are the people of any other country I know. But nevertheless, there are some things that we ought to watch.

For example, I'm rather astonished to hear people in the news media talk about the people's right to know, because the news media can't live with that. They're stuck with the notion that whatever our right to know, we have a right to know only what they choose to tell us; otherwise, the First Amendment is dead. Surely, the American people have a right to have their public business conducted in a responsible fashion. Where do you draw the line between that and the so called people's right to know?

Well, drawing the line is one of the Constitutional arts that we've had a lot of experience with. One aspect of the press that bothers me is that it is the principal channel of communication between officials of government and the people. But it's a rather and uncertain channel. There are only a limited number of column inches, only limited moments of breathless radio and television news. You're always snatching at sixty seconds worth of a problem; otherwise, they'll start shuffling their feet and accuse you of filibustering to avoid more questions.

Most of their questions are about the future. They do such a good job of keeping us up to date that when you have a press conference, I found that eighty percent of my questions were about the future. Well, providence has not given us the capacity, it appears, to tell the future with accuracy. But I couldn't sit there before six hundred reporters and a battery of television cameras and answer eighty percent of my questions by saying, "Damned if I know."

(Laughter)

(Applause)

SECRETARY RUSK: So there are some problems. I think the increasing competition within the media is presenting some problem of context and balance and understanding.

15

Despite that, let me say that I think our media serves us better than do the media of any other country. But I sometimes use my First Amendment right of free speech to comment on some of these things involving the exercise of the right of free press.

SECRETARY MUSKIE: And you're always willing to use the press to send your own message.

SECRETARY RUSK: Well, there's a limit to that. I never used the press to float "trial balloons." I never used the press. You can search my press conferences and Congressional testimony, you'll find it very hard to find any instance in which I would think one thing and say another. I think that's poison. But you do, of course, try to get your position out. It is a position of advocacy. After all, the Secretary of State has a client - the United States, represented primarily by the President in his particular job. We should not expect public officials not to be advocates of the positions which they support.

Now, there is such a thing as advocacy with integrity, and we ought to expect that. But everybody else in the country is an advocate; used car salesmen, preachers of the Gospel, insurance salesmen, politicians, we're all advocates. So we ought not to expect out public officials to be men from Mars, taking a balanced approach toward everything that's going on in our public life.

MR. NEWMAN: What about this period of confidential and careful deliberation when dealing with a major international crisis? Is that still a possibility? Can you get it?

SECRETARY MUSKIE: I can tell you this. It isn't possible if you're a candidate for President in the Presidential primaries. People expect instant wisdom.

MR. NEWMAN: Do administrations believe that they have to have a position ready for the evening news every night? Let me put the question differently. When I got to Washington a good many years ago, it was not at all uncommon for Presidents or Secretaries of State or whoever it might be to say, "No comment." It seems to me that for at least twenty-five years it has not been possible for anybody in public life to say, "No comment." Am I correct about this?

SECRETARY MUSKIE: I think you are. I don't know that Presidents target the evening news every day for use to advance their own programs or their own policies, although sometimes it seems that way.

But it is true that the Executive Branch and the Congress are very conscious always, whether they're conducting a hearing on the Hill or whether they are in the White House preparing an announcement or trying to make an announcement, at such a time that it will get as little notice as possible. I mean, people do play to the media in terms of timing, in terms of advantage, and using it. I think that's permissible, given the existence of the media.

SECRETARY HAIG: If anyone doesn't think that an astute White House doesn't address every day a series of issues which they seek to exploit in the media to keep the momentum of their popularity, their programs, to divert heat from issues that they don't want discussed - let me tell you, they do. They'd be rather fumbling today, in the era of modern television, were they not to do so. When it gets out of hand and this end of the business begins to crowd out substantive attention, you've got a problem.

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LC

SECRETARY KISSINGER: I think the fundamental problem that exists is not so much that there should be more restraint by the media. It has to do partly with the values of the media and the values of the administrations or departments.

American media, following the traditions of such a place as "The Front Page," focus on getting some piece of news that nobody else has - getting some terrific news break. So, some top secret document that they can elicit from somebody has a tremendous effect for them, even though there are ten thousand of those floating around at any given moment - and the author probably classified it "top secret" to attract attention.

(Laughter)

SECRETARY KISSINGER: At any rate, you cannot judge the significance of events by documents. The importance of documents is in their relation to each other. Administrations are sorely tempted to try to put a spin on stories. They try to do what Al Haig mentioned - influence short-term popularity. That's unavoidable. All of us have done it at one time or another.

Fundamentally, it would be helpful if the media in the field of foreign policy understood that real news is to understand the trend of events. The great statesmen were not those who were smarter than anyone else, but they like Churchill or DeGaulle had a sense of history. I think the best service a Secretary of State can render in presenting foreign policy is to keep briefing the press, when there is no crisis, on what he's thinking and to be honest about it, so that when he does something, they can interpret it themselves. That is easier to do with the State Department press corps than with people that write on it from the outside. Still, it seems to me that there should be more emphasis on the conceptual basis of foreign policy on the part of both the media and on the part of those who explain foreign policy on behalf of the government.

SECRETARY HAIG: What Henry is talking about is the essence of leadership. When a leader communicates regularly, consistently, both with the Congress and with the American people through the media, they know what he's doing and what he's about. On those occasions when that luxury is not provided, he has built a well of confidence and credibility. They tolerate a great deal during times when those homilies can't be shared because of the character of the crisis themselves. But if he doesn't, then you have this uncertainty and loss of or lack of credibility.

SECRETARY MUSKIE: There is a classic recent example of the interplay between the White House and the media. That is the after-effects of the Reykjavik Summit. There is no question that the initial impression that, I think, the public thought immediately following the adjournment of that Summit was that it had been a failure. The White House obviously didn't want it to be perceived in that way. So, almost immediately, they undertook to put a spin on it. For the next several days, the administration was able to put it's spokesmen on the morning shows, and on the evening shows. They're able to do that - Presidents do that. They did it when I was in office as Secretary of State during the Iran hostage crisis. I have no fault to find with that, but we're examining the process. I think, of course, the Presidents use the media in this way. They have succeeded at least so far as the public perception is concerned and so far as the polls and the reaction of the public. They've turned that one around.

SECRETARY KISSINGER: Yes, but I think a price will be paid for that success. Because,

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I think that Reykjavik presents as serious problems as Iran in the long term. Incidentally, that was not a case where the National Security Council broke down.

As these negotiations resume, both the excessive pessimism of the immediate aftermath and the excessive optimism that was then produced by that spin will be unhelpful. We need a discussion of what we are trying to achieve in East-West relations and what we are trying to achieve in arms control. If that is not clarified, the public will be confronted with endless numbers games that even the experts don't understand. So, that is an example of where the "tactical" has undermined the "long-term" basis of foreign policy.

MR. NEWMAN: Let me ask you a point arising out of this - and I don't mean this to be a wisecrack or anything of that sort: Did the administration representatives at Reykjavik themselves fully understand what had been done at Reykjavik? Was the confusion in telling the American people what had happened a reflection of their own.

SECRETARY KISSINGER: No. I don't think that's a wisecrack. I think that goes to the heart of the problem. I believe Reykjavik exposed the absence of a consensus in the administration and the absence of a concept that is applicable to the existing situation in East-West relations and in technology. Therefore, I think, we have to go back to the drawing board and come up with such a concept. Then, explain it and achieve agreement within the government, if these negotiations are not going to be shipwrecked or disastrous.

MR. NEWMAN: On that point, I'd like to ask all of you this. In conducting foreign affairs, is it easier to do are you better able to do it - if the American people know a great deal about what you're doing or know only a little about what you're doing, and tend to stay out of things?

SECRETARY KISSINGER: I think, about the aims of foreign policy they should know a great deal. Every once in a while a tactical move comes along, like the opening of China, where a too early revelation would defeat the objective. But as a general proposition, the greatest candor is the best support of foreign policy in a democracy.

(Applause)

SECRETARY HAIG: Let me just add, that that's the point I made a moment or two ago about the need to have an articulated foreign policy with goals and objectives to which the people can relate, understand, and agree with or disagree with. But, I think the point Henry made about Reykjavik is a very, very important one. To me, this is the most significant event which has occurred in this administration, and it's not positive, but negative. It dwarfs any significance of the Iranian brouhaha in every respect.

MR. NEWMAN: Why do you think it was so negative, specifically?

SECRETARY HAIG: Because the profound was trivialized. A non Summit Summit emerged from a non deal deal. The agenda was not fixed beforehand, and the unspeakable was spoken. The glue that has held the Western Alliance together since the dawn of the nuclear age has been rather seriously damaged. The post-mortems distorted the reality, focusing exclusively on our manhood and preserving SDI, rather than the fundamental implications of a world without nuclear weapons in which the alternatives have not been properly considered.

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LC

(Applause)

**SECRETARY HAIG:** One can understand that some of the hoopla associated with the Iranian crisis as an unnerving factor in our lives. I think that's terribly overplayed. I don't think Mrs. Thatcher even raised the issue. What she wanted to talk about was Reykjavik. Now we have reversed our position.

**SECRETARY RUSK:** With respect to my friend Al Haig - it's my impression that Reykjavik has been exaggerated in importance by both sides. We should not have expected very much to come out of it, partly, as a matter of time. They met for ten hours. Divide that in half for interpretation, that's five hours. Divide that in half for equal time, and that's two-and-a-half hours. The most that could have come out of that would have been an "agreement in principle," so called.

Secretary of State George Marshall used to tell us, "Never agree in principle because all that means is that you've not agreed yet. Wait until you get the fine print spelled out before you know whether or not you have an agreement." Henry Kissinger has had some experience with this in the detailed negotiations that had to follow the agreement in principle at Vladivostok. You just can't do business within that span, unless the agreements have been negotiated carefully in advance or unless at the Summit, they can give any kind of fresh instructions to negotiators to get on with the job somewhere else.

But let me add another thought, and that is that the role of secrecy in these matters has been, I think, greatly exaggerated. Yes, at any given time-there are a few secrets in the nuclear field perhaps, a few secrets in the electronic field - there may be some temporary secrets about your negotiating position or upcoming negotiations. But, by and large, the idea that there are a lot of secrets back there that would affect your judgment is wrong. I personally do not know of any secret which would get in the way of any member of this audience making a responsible judgment about an important foreign policy matter if he or she would take a little time to get the information that is readily available on the subject. These are not the decisive things.

It's the duty of the reporter to bore in to try to get the story. At times, it is the duty of the officer in government to keep his mouth shut. This creates a tension. That tension should never be relieved because - unless the reporters were trying to get the story the abuse of secrecy in the bureaucracy would be very substantial.

But there are some issues here to which there is no answer. For example, if a man goes into the Department of State and wrangles out a top secret and takes it down the street and gives it or sells it to the Soviet Embassy, he goes to prison. But if a man goes in there and wrangles out a top secret and gives it to the press and the rest of the world at the same time, he gets a Pulitzer Prize.

(Laughter)

**SECRETARY RUSK:** There's a problem there, but there's no answer. Leave it alone. Leave it alone. Let's just work it out - work with it.

**MR. NEWMAN:** Gentlemen, this is not a confessional, but I have a question to put to all of you. Has any of you ever engaged in what is now grandly called "disinformation?"

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An answer is not compulsory, not required.

SECRETARY HAIG: It's like one of Henry's press briefings during the Viet Nam war. I don't think there are any volunteers.

Let me see if we can first define what disinformation is. I take the definition of disinformation to be that you make a statement that you know to be false in order to bring about a certain effect in foreign governments. If you use disinformation as a tool of foreign policy. I think, that is a grave mistake. I cannot remember any instance where that was done in the period in which I served. I'm not saying we always told everything, but we never said something we knew to be false for the purpose of producing an effect in a foreign government.

SECRETARY RUSK: I take it, Henry, that you're talking about the State Department.

SECRETARY KISSINGER: Yes.

SECRETARY RUSK: Because there may be a little disinformation that crops up here or there in other places.

SECRETARY KISSINGER: Of course.

SECRETARY HAIG: A bodyguard of lies, so to speak. 3:48:37

MR. NEWMAN: Secretary Haig, you said that there has to be something in the nature of "a well of information" that the American people have about foreign policy. Is so called disinformation deception, consistent with that?

SECRETARY HAIG: No. Of course, not. But I do know that historically the United States and our allies in times of conflict and other occasions - has intentionally fed disinformation. There are many recorded instances of it after World War II. But I share very fundamentally what Henry said a few moments ago. That is, that any public official that knowingly takes a fact known not to be true, unless in combat or in the conditions of war - and promulgates it, I think, is not only wrong in moral terms, but risking - great disaster in practical terms.

MR. NEWMAN: You were saying it was done after the Second World War?

SECRETARY HAIG: It was done during the Second World War.

MR. NEWMAN: During the Second World War?

SECRETARY HAIG: Yes. There have been books written about the phony invasions and things that were put out to divert the enemy with respect to where we might land or what we might do. These things are justified in the overall interest of the nation and of the moral standards of the nation.

But at a time of peace or what passes for peace, no?

SECRETARY HAIG: No. I don't think so. I think it's wrong, and you come a cropper in any event in this world today.

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MR. NEWMAN: No volunteers on this subject?

SECRETARY MUSKIE: Well, I think you'll find no challenge on this side.

SECRETARY RUSK: As a practical matter, it just doesn't work.

MR. NEWMAN: You mean it's bound to come out sooner or later?

SECRETARY RUSK: Yes.

MR. NEWMAN: There was an assistant Secretary of Defense, a former newspaper man named Arthur Sylvester a friend of mine - who said that any government has a right to lie for its own survival.

SECRETARY MUSKIE: I remember that. I disagreed with it at the time, and it hasn't improved with age.

(Laughter)

SECRETARY RUSK: Of course, John Locke and Thomas Jefferson both remarked that there may be times when a government must act beyond the law in order to maintain the very structure of the constitutional system. It's a little hard to be completely categorical about something of this sort, but I agree with what Al Haig has said as a matter of general principle and approach.

SECRETARY KISSINGER: Technically, the disinformation issue that is now being discussed is when the government is alleged to have considered pretending that there was a military tension arising with Libya, when, in fact, it knew that wasn't the case. The strange thing about it is that we could have produced it simply by moving the Sixth Fleet. There was no need for disinformation. So, any government official confronted with a usury of facts is capable of saying something that is factually incorrect. That, I don't consider disinformation; it can be "confusion." Obviously, with respect to secret things like covert operations, he may not tell everything he knows. But to state a factual matter, in order to produce an effect in foreign policy known to be false, that is what we all are talking about here.

MR. NEWMAN: Is it fair to assume that some covert activities that have taken place over the years have never been revealed to the public?

(Laughter)

SECRETARY KISSINGER: I don't think one should comment on that.

(Laughter)

SECRETARY KISSINGER: I really don't.

MR. NEWMAN: Well, I must say that I assume it to be the case.

SECRETARY KISSINGER: On the other hand, there were Congressional hearings which

21

were pretty thorough. I just don't think one should state as a factual matter something like that.

SECRETARY RUSK: If I'm asked a follow up question, I would have to say, yes. There have been certain things which have not become public, but I'm not going to identify which ones those were.

MR. NEWMAN: Suppose you were asked a follow up question. Will you then identify them?

SECRETARY RUSK: No. Not at all.

(Laughter)

SECRETARY RUSK: You see, now that I'm a private citizen I have a First Amendment right of silence.

(Laughter)

(Applause)

MR. NEWMAN: I'm trying to reach a larger point, which is that the United States takes a certain position - call it a moral position - in world affairs. We state our aims, and at the same time we are conducting or have conducted certain clandestine, covert operations that may have involved not very savory activities. In fact, Congress at one point thought it was necessary to pass a law saying that assassination should not be used, might not be used, as a United States practice.

SECRETARY KISSINGER: But it also found that no assassination had ever been carried out.

MR. NEWMAN: But what I'm asking is. "Does the fact that we sometimes engage in clandestine or covert operations in any way damage our moral position?"

SECRETARY HAIG: Let me comment on this, Ed, because it's a very, very touchy issue. I think it's very naive for the United States to set standards in its conduct abroad which are exclusively ideological and moral, as important as that aspect of our foreign policy must be.

The conduct of foreign affairs historically must be a balance between ideals and democratic values in full cognizance of the world in which we must conduct our affairs. So long as other states are entitled to conduct covert action, we must be. Heaven help the President who is deprived this fundamental asset of our security matters. The problem is maintaining this balance, if you are exclusively dominated by Realpolitik and the intrigues of the power politics, you will lose the support of the American people, because they'll consider your policies not representative of our democratic values. On the other hand, if you pursue policies exclusively in a moralistic framework, you'll also lose the support of the American people because your policies simply will not work.

So, there's a constant balance of subjective judgment in which you have to give the weight to both.

22

SECRETARY RUSK: There's an element of philosophical conflict here. When I joined President Kennedy, I did not find anything called the "State" in the drawers of my desk or in my coat closet that I was supposed to be Secretary of. I found men and women who had been set aside, under our laws and Constitution, to act for all of us with respect to certain designated responsibilities. These individuals cannot escape ordinary moral standards by something called "state action" as though raison d'etre were an excuse for doing almost anything. As a practical matter, if you're trying to influence the actions of others, you've got to take into account their basic moral commitments because most people act with respect to those moral commitments.

When I look back over this postwar period, we've been greatly strengthened by what I would call the relatively decent and simple purposes of the American people. In our relations with the rest of the world, despite occasional mistakes and disappointments, we've conducted ourselves, I think, with responsibility, restraint and generosity. I think, that's a very important element of strength for us.

(Applause)

SECRETARY MUSKIE: I think, it's very human for people holding power to tend to try to expand it, and for people holding power to be corrupted by it. That surely applies not only to actions which are visible publicly, but especially to covert actions. Of course, I would agree with the premise that there are occasions when covert actions are justifiable in the national security interest, but one has to watch carefully the expansion of that idea. And that, of course, is why the two intelligence committees of the Congress - the Intelligence Committee of the Senate and of the House - were created.

Henry has made reference to hearings which disclosed many covert actions, which up to that time had never been made public. If one wants examples of such actions - which I think ran counter to what the American people thought were their values - one could find it in those hearings. There were many of them. They made headlines at the time. Many people have forgotten them since. But those hearing, to me, were an illustration of what I said at the outset - to grant this premise is to carry risks that, from time to time, have to be checked.

MR. NEWMAN: That leads us more or less logically into the question of human rights and how far human rights should play a part in American policy. For example, President Reagan has made human rights a very considerable issue in the arms control talks with the Soviet Union. He has said that human rights is at the core of our foreign policy. Is it a good idea for human rights to be given such prominence?

SECRETARY HAIG: I'll answer that by saying that, of course, human rights is a fundamental aspect of our foreign policy. I would not suggest that Reykjavik put human rights high on the agenda. It was hardly discussed. I am suggesting that you must give due attention to that as well as the national interest, and sometimes they clash.

SECRETARY KISSINGER: I would make a different point. Human rights are obviously an important element of American foreign policy, reflecting, as they do, our fundamental values. I do not believe they have anything to do with arms control policy. In other words, if the Soviet Union lets out more immigrants, that is no reason for us to ease our arms control conditions. Arms control has to be related to national security and national strategy. Those conditions should neither be tightened or eased on the basis of the Soviet human rights record.

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An argument could conceivably be made that if the Soviets behave outrageously in oppression, no agreements of any kind should be made with them. That is something I can understand. I cannot understand saying that the terms that might be set for arms control will be influenced by Soviet behavior on human rights.

SECRETARY RUSK: I yield to no one in my interest in human rights, but I'm concerned about how we go about it. There are only about thirty constitutional democracies in the world in which human rights are in good condition. More than a hundred and thirty nations have varying degrees of Dictatorship. If we make human rights a condition for our participation with others in other major problems such as arms control, this could be a self selected road to isolation, as we withdraw into this community of constitutional democracies.

I think, we ought to work at it continuously, sympathetically, even compassionately, behind the scenes, and be a little careful about public confrontations with countries all over the world, and also without any element of sanctimony.

Twenty-five years ago, a Black ambassador coming to Washington to represent his country had great difficulty finding office space or quarters in which his staff could live. He did not know where he could have lunch or dinner in Washington, D. C. except in another embassy. He couldn't go to private clubs. He would drive his family down to a Maryland beach on a Saturday afternoon and be turned away. If he went to another part of the country, the State Department had to send somebody along in advance to make every possible detailed arrangement to see that there were no incidents.

We had one ambassador to the United Nations coming in from south of the border - a person of dark complexion. The plane stopped in Miami for a refueling, and while the other passengers were taken into the terminal to be served lunch, he was put on a folding canvas stool in a corner of the terminal and brought a sandwich wrapped in wax paper. Then he got back on the plane and went on to New York. We were supposed to get his vote up there.

I have not yet recovered from what I felt when a Black ambassador sitting with your Secretary of State turned to me and said, "Mr. Secretary, where can I get a haircut?" And I could not tell him except to say, "You can get yours cut where I have mine cut, in that next little room. Anytime you want to come by, there will be a barber here in sixty minutes."

So, we have not earned the right to be sanctimonious. We've got to work with others on these matters diligently and persistently, but let's be a little careful.

(Applause)

SECRETARY MUSKIE: Probably the most visible current illustration of the problem is, of course, South Africa. We moved, I think, as a country, not only through our government, but through the private sector, very carefully over a long period of time in accommodating our view of what the situation in South Africa represents and what it ought to be. We've moved progressively to tougher positions because we've seen little or no evidence of any move on the part of the government of South Africa to move away from apartheid. The recurring question has been, through these years - and I think I can go back in my own recollection at least twenty to twenty-five years in the evolution of our attitude - about what, if anything, we should do to intervene or influence the internal affairs of South Africa? I suspect, as this time has unfolded, that increasingly we see the situation there as a destabilizing element

24

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in the relationship of African states to each other. That does make it of concern to the entire world, because a totally destabilized situation there could lead to regional destabilization and bloodshed. So, there is an international concern about what happens in South Africa.

I think, over the years, we've done our best to leave it to the South Africans to solve it. But when we become convinced that they are not moving to solve it, then public opinion in this country pushes us to go further.

**SECRETARY HAIG:** Let me suggest that reasonable men can differ. One of the great problems of the recent controversy over South Africa has been the labeling of those who were opposed to sanctions and opposed to disinvestment as somehow favoring apartheid. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

As wise a woman as Mrs. Thatcher and our own President have had deep reservations about this. I, too, have. Not because I'm favoring apartheid, but because I'm looking for realistic ways. Here is this constant conflict between national interests and morality, but I'm looking for constructive ways through which reform can be achieved. Because, believe me, reform will come, either through bloody revolution or peaceful evolution and rule of law. I've been there, and I've spoken to the Black leaders of the Black majority, from Bougelaise of the Zulus to the leader of Soweto district. These are the responsible leaders of Black Africa who have worked their way into positions of respect in their own community. They've been opposed to sanctions.

**MR. NEWMAN:** How far should we -- I'm sorry.

**SECRETARY HAIG:** They've been opposed because they felt that their own people would be the first victims of this finger wagging, holier than thou American attitude. I think, that's wrong. I think it's also well to remember that our multi-nationals - European and American - have been the compelling force of pressure on the Botha government to achieve change. I would challenge the contention that they have not changed.

They have made many changes although not enough - not anywhere near enough. But if the practical consequences of this "feel good" policy here in America are to revolutionize their society - the Black leadership of which will be the first victim - and turn the southern region of Africa over to Soviet mischief, then I don't care what morality we're talking about, we've created more problems than we've solved.

(Applause)

**SECRETARY MUSKIE:** May I make this point: all of the arguments you've made in support of the position you've stated - at least more clearly then I could, have been made for the last twenty-five years, looking for the -- I think your phrase was - the "realistic" opportunities to change the situation there. I've used those arguments myself. I'm a member of a college board. I can remember that in the initial stages of discussion of that issue I made the arguments you've made. The finance committee of the college on its own, without any advice from the board of trustees, finally, totally divested because it did not want to be.

**SECRETARY MUSKIE:** I understand, and I'm not elevating the discussion beyond one of presenting all points of view.

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MR. NEWMAN: But how can we decide how far to go? For example, we exchange intelligence information with South Africa. Is this a proper thing for us to do? How do we weigh a country's human rights policies against ours?

SECRETARY HAIG: Let me explain one of the great, great mistakes of recent years. When we started out in 1981, it was a two track policy. The first was to insist relentlessly on change, but quietly, recognizing that while South Africa is not a democracy by our standards although it is governed by a democratic process. When we in the United States start this process of bludgeoning from abroad, we make it more difficult for incumbent leaders of whatever stripe to achieve the reform we are seeking. We ought to learn that in a number of areas around the world.

Secondly, we must understand that a nation that's being asked to make sacrifices for social justice at home cannot afford to be preoccupied by external threats from abroad. We had an obligation to get the Cubans out of Angola. We failed. Had we done so, I really feel that the progress achieved thus far would have been far more dramatic and led by the government being pressured by western standards and values.

SECRETARY MUSKIE: I think with respect to that situation, Al, if the South Africans had done in Libya what we thought we had set in motion -- by "we" I mean the other countries of the special group, which was working on their problem -- and if Libya had been tied to Angola, then I think there was a first step that might have had a salutary effect.

SECRETARY HAIG: Only (inaudible) --

SECRETARY MUSKIE: Once South Africa backed off from the Libyan solution, any prospect in getting the Cubans out of Angola vanished.

SECRETARY HAIG: No, no. You have the horse before the cart.

SECRETARY KISSINGER: Ed, you're the moderator, but it seems to me that we can spend an hour on this easily, and more, discussing the tactics of South Africa. But without getting to the question really which you raised, which is the influence of human rights, of which South Africa is an example. It seems to me that there are a number of questions one has to ask. One, since we cannot do everything simultaneously, as Dean Rusk suggested, what is the national interest of the United States in a particular area of the world? Secondly, what is the objective we are trying to achieve in that part of the world? Three, what price are we willing to pay to achieve that objective?

To take the case of South Africa or any one of these situations, it isn't enough to say -- let's talk about South Africa, the end of apartheid - unless you can define what you mean by the end of apartheid, because there is the aspect that here in this region would have been called segregation, and there is the aspect of political participation in government.

The first has a conceptually relatively easy solution. The second is extremely complicated when you have a White community, a Black community that is itself divided into at least eight major linguistic groups, an Indian community and a colored community. If one is attempting to change the system, one owes it to oneself to define what a democratic solution is in such a context. One has no right just to throw a match into a powder keg and then say, "Okay. You deserved this."

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It seems to me that we have not given an answer to that question when we promote upheavals in countries that we consider non-democratic. One ought to remember that revolutions are started by bringing together all those who oppose the existing system, but the test of a revolution is what you build afterwards. If we're not going to pay the price of stabilizing the upheaval we have ourselves created, then a human rights policy can contribute to chaos rather than to progress. It seems to me those are the criteria, or at least some of the criteria that ought to be applied to these questions.

(Applause)

SECRETARY RUSK: I wonder if I could add a brief postscript to what Henry Kissinger said.

Regardless of the attitudes of the various sides that seem to be pointing toward confrontation, I would like to see a stronger effort being made in the direction of trying to find a solution. So far as I can tell, the Whites will not accept Black rule in South Africa without major violence; the Blacks will not accept White rule without major violence. But, surely that need not be the end of the question. Surely, it is not beyond the reach of constitutional creativity to find an answer with which everyone could live.

I would like to see a group of constitutional experts, drawn from countries with complex ethnic and constitutional situations, like India, Yugoslavia, Nigeria, Switzerland, the United States, Canada and Australia to see what can be done and try to get away from sloganizing this slogan "one man one vote." There would not have been a United States had we tried to pursue the basis of one man one vote. We still don't have it at the Federal level in the way we select Senators and the Electoral College System for choosing our President. But I would like to see some people working hard on what can be done. After all, in the old League of Nations days they had enormous experience in the protection of minorities in all sorts of countries. I'd like to see somebody working on an answer and not just preparing for confrontation.

(Applause)

SECRETARY MUSKIE: I couldn't agree more with what Dean Rusk has said, but I would like to make the point that what's happening in South Africa is not an upheaval that we created at all. It was created by the forces there. Secondly, this period of restraint that I think goes back at least twenty-five years and our own attitude towards intervening at all in the country of South Africa has included a search to the extent that that search would be accepted by the government of South Africa for a reasonable way to do what we're all talking about.

The Sullivan Principles clearly were advocated by Reverend Sullivan years ago as a way for American multi-national corporations doing business in South Africa. They, by their own policies, within their own organizations and their own plans, through their own employees, began to demonstrate the viability of human rights in their own operations and thus hope to influence the policies of the country. Well, they did not work. Even companies which subscribed to the Sullivan Principles did not all measure up to their own commitment, to the extent that those principles suggested.

Now we are seeing companies pulling out. Bell and Howell, the other day, pulled all of its

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operations in South Africa out. They said in their statement that they had given up on any
prospect for movement on apartheid. I agree with Henry and with Dean Rusk that we have
to have in mind a definition of what kind of progress we would like to see. Of course, we
should. That's the responsible way.

MR. NEWMAN: I would like to raise just one more point about human rights, and when I say, "one more point," you may take that as a cue.

Is it possible to weigh our human rights policy against our strategic interests in a country? Let's say South Africa, Chile, Korea, Guatemala. You've said more than once today -- it's been said around the table more than once in certain connections - that there are no hard and fast rules. Is this another situation in which there are none?

SECRETARY KISSINGER: I don't know how one would really define the question. If the question is, would we rather see South Korea join the communist world or be taken over by North Korea than be associated with a less than democratic government, I would have to say no. I say that foreign policy has to begin with insuring the survival of the United States; because if we don't survive, our values will go down as well.

The art of foreign policy, however, in the vast majority of cases is to prevent such stark choices from having to be made. If one gets down to such a stark choice, it is often a failure of one's foreign policy. So, as a general principle, I would say if it gets down to it, I would have to choose the fundamental strategic interests. I would also hope that one can avoid getting down to that question.

SECRETARY MUSKIE: That's a particularly difficult situation in South Korea because it's own domestic tranquility affects its ability to protect its survival and security as well as affect our national security interests. It's very difficult to find the ways to apply pressure or influence, whatever benign word you want to use, upon the government of South Korea to move toward the democratization of their political processes which they have promised. But they have been very slow to move in that way. They have argued that the protection of their security interests governs the pace of their movement.

SECRETARY KISSINGER: I'd like to say two things. First, I'm reasonably optimistic that Korea will evolve in a more democratic direction. Secondly, it is important, especially in non-western societies, for us to understand the cultural background and history before we apply American criteria too literally.

(Applause)

SECRETARY KISSINGER: Because the end result of excessive literalness could be an upheaval at the end of which there is not more democracy but either chaos or a new form of dictatorship. All I'm saying is one should understand the historical process and deal with it with great sensitivity.

MR. NEWMAN: I want to turn now to relations with the Soviet Union. There are, I think it's fair to say, two opposing interpretations of the Soviet Union. One is that it is an evil empire, responsible for much of the unrest in the world. The second view is that the Soviet Union is somewhat frightened, somewhat scared, and a somewhat isolated nation, fearful of enemies real and imagined. Which of these is more accurate?

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SECRETARY HAIG: All of the above.

In many respects, Ed, these may be irrelevant questions, irrelevant labels. We have to be guided in our assessment of the Soviet Union by not theology, but objective reality. And that objective reality, of course, would suggest that we have an expansive society, the internal arrangements of which are totally alien to the human rights values that have outraged us so much in South Africa. But somehow we seem to overlook when it comes to Moscow.

(Applause)

SECRETARY HAIG: It is a question always of recognizing that despite these value judgments of the heinous character of the Soviet system and their motives, they're going to be as dominated by self-interest as they are by ideology. The challenge for American statecraft is to create a calculus of self interest in Moscow which would lead them, however briefly, to more moderate conduct abroad, the rejection of bloodshed, terrorism and so called "wars of liberation," and some acceptance of peaceful change through rule of law.

Now, I happen to believe that that's always a direct outcome of the correlation of forces at a given moment in history, and that's why I'm optimistic about our ability to do this.

MR. NEWMAN: You mean, you think, we have superior forces at the moment?

SECRETARY HAIG: When I say, "correlation of forces," I'm not talking about tanks and guns. I'm talking about economics, moral, ideological, political and security assets. Today, the West and Western industrialized societies are moving, I think, far more positively in the correlation of forces if they have the good sense to stay together. The Soviet system is in a state of historic collapse. It won't happen in your lifetime or mine, but this correlation of forces is available to conduct enlightened statecraft.

SECRETARY RUSK: We're all about to be wrestling with things which we ought to forget, but there are some things I cannot forget. Just after V-J Day, the United States demobilized almost completely, almost overnight. By the summer of 1946, the staff of the Joint Chiefs were telling us in the State Department that we did not have one division in our army, nor one group in our air force that could be called ready for combat. The ships of our navy were being put into mothballs almost as fast as we could find berths for them, and those that remained afloat were being manned by skeleton crews. Our defense budget for three fiscal years came down to just a little over eleven billion dollars a year.

Now, Joseph Stalin sat over there in Moscow, looked out across the West, and saw the divisions melting away. He tried to keep the northwest province of Iran, Azerbaijan - the first case before the U. N. Security Council. He demanded two eastern provinces of Turkey, Karzan and Aderhand. He supported the guerillas going after Greece, using bases in places like Albania, Yugoslavia and Bulgaria. He brushed aside some of the wartime agreements that would seem to have given the peoples of eastern Europe some say in their political future. He had a hand in the communist coup d'état in Czechoslovakia. He blockaded Berlin. He gave the green light to the North Koreans to go after the South Koreans. And this all in a period when we were disarmed.

Now, to me, those were the events that launched the Cold War. I think we may have contributed to the Cold War in that we may have subjected Mr. Stalin to intolerable

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temptations through our own weakness. So, I think, we have to be careful that we do not put
ourselves in that kind of position again.

But on the other side, during the very serious Berlin crisis of 1961 - 1962 and the Cuban
missile crisis, President Kennedy and his chief associates felt that it was just too late in
history to pursue a policy of total hostility toward that other nuclear superpower. Things
were put in motion which produced the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, a civil air agreement, a
consular agreement, a nonproliferation treaty, an important space treaty, improvement in
trade, et cetera.

On one hand, we have to be careful not to tempt thieves, but on the other hand we have to try
to resolve outstanding problems in order that we can live on this earth at the same time and
that requires some doing. It's not easy sometimes for the general public to understand how
these two things work parallel. But I'm relatively optimistic, because we've learned in the
last forty-one years that the fingers on the nuclear trigger are not itchy, just waiting for a
pretext to launch these dreadful weapons.

I think we've learned that the Soviet leaders have no more interest in destroying Mother
Russia than our leaders have in destroying our beloved America. I must confess -- and my
colleagues may disagree with me -- that despite all the doomsday talk going around these
days, I myself cannot put my finger on a single real situation in the real world that is
pointing toward nuclear war. I believe that the Cuban missile crisis was the last occasion
when there was any significant possibility of nuclear war. I hope we can continue to work
at it with these people, difficult as they are, however angry they might make us at times, to
see if we cannot resolve some of these problems without that mortal conflict which simply
must not occur.

(Applause)

SECRETARY KISSINGER: The question as you put it, seems to me to illustrate the way
Americans often look at foreign policy, either identifying it with psychiatry on the one hand
by analyzing the intentions of the Soviet Union, or with a theology on the other hand, by
judging its moral qualities. So periods of confrontation are in the hands of theologians, and
periods of relaxation are in the hands of psychiatrists. Therefore, we oscillate back and
forth. Yes, I will agree that the Soviet Union feels threatened, but the question is not
whether they feel threatened, but what it takes to reassure them. If the only way they can
be reassured is by the impotence of everybody else, then their search of security has the
consequence of making everybody else insecure. The question is: Will they be willing to
live with relative security rather than absolute security, which is what every other nation has
to live with?

Russia under the Tsars and commissars has expanded in every century. Any look at a
historical atlas will show this. Yes, they've been invaded, but at the end of the process
they've expanded. That is a fact one has to deal with.

This problem of freezing oneself into a posture of confrontation is that democracies cannot
sustain this and will not sustain it. Then it doesn't show a way out. The difficulty, we'll
see with what I call "the psychiatric approach," is that it gives us no criteria for progress. I
agree that we are condemned to coexistence by nuclear weapons. We must find a way of
coexisting, but we must also be precise. There is a tendency -- and I've been a part of it;
Dean Rusk mentioned some examples -- where in periods of relaxation you sign cultural

30

agreements, consular agreements, exchanges. But at the end that does not do much more
than improve the atmosphere, and there has to be an end to expansionism. There has to be
precise criteria for arms control. Arms control is now trapped in the position that the
theory was developed thirty years ago, and the technology has advanced enormously since
then, and that many of the concepts that were valid thirty years ago no longer apply. We
haven't developed new ones for many reasons. There is, in my view, a great opportunity in
the fact that the Soviet governmental system is in difficulty and that the Soviet economic
system is a shambles. By any objective analysis, the Soviets need agreements more than we
do. But if we cannot translate this into specific conditions in our own mind, then
opportunity will be missed.

MR. NEWMAN: May I ask you to apply what you've just said to the strategic defense initiative?

SECRETARY KISSINGER: Well, I am a supporter of the concept of strategic defense, maybe not with all of the justifications that have been given by the administration, but as a basic concept and for these reasons. One, I believe nuclear weapons will be a component of strategy for the indefinite future. They cannot be abolished for many practical reasons. Two, I do not see how a democratic leadership can tell its public that its own extermination is the key to its security and will make no effort to protect it. Three, I believe we are in this sense in a precarious situation, that if a nuclear war ever starts and I agree with Dean's analysis that it is highly unlikely and that the calculations are almost engineering calculations - the Strategic Defense Initiative would add an element of considerable uncertainty to the calculations of an aggressor. To be sure, the Strategic Defense Initiative should be negotiated in its magnitude, in the same relationship and in the same way, as offensive weapons. The lower the offensive, the fewer need be the defensive weapons.

The Soviet pressure at the moment to abolish the Strategic Defense Initiative bothers me, because under any agreement they will continue to work on research. The reality in this country is that once we have put it under an extended moratorium, we will slacken our efforts because the country which does not want to devote money to its services, will not want it. I am prepared -- I would be prepared to inhibit deployment in relation to offensive weapons, but not technology.

It makes no sense to begin the process of arms control with weapons that are aimed at weapons, and to preserve the weapons that are aimed at people.

(Applause)

MR. NEWMAN: Why is the Soviet Union so opposed, at any rate in public, to SDI? Is it for economic reasons?

SECRETARY KISSINGER: Because they know that the very groups abroad that today march against SDI will march tomorrow against a contest of deterrents based on undefended civilian populations. It is a way to promote pacifism and unilateral disarmament. Secondly, it adds an element of uncertainty to their calculations. Third, it will deflect resources from their offensive weapons to other weapons. They're always very sensitive to defense by the United States. They were so in '69. But one should ask oneself why that is.

SECRETARY HAIG: Let me add two other considerations. The one, of course, being the currently touted one, is that they fear America's ability and technology. But I would

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suggest through the twenty years lead they have on us in certain of these areas, especially ground laser systems - they are very, very fearful of not only the defensive potential of SDI, but it's offensive potential. They have, probably, firsthand knowledge through applied research.

SECRETARY KISSINGER: Once again, one has to keep in mind that the offensive potential is not now banned by any treaty and is not under negotiation. This is the ironical aspect of this negotiation that if we wanted tomorrow morning to place offensive weapons in space, there is no existing international agreement, no any ongoing negotiations, that would ban this.

SECRETARY RUSK: I would have to say that I disagree in certain nuances with my friends across the table. I support research on SDI as a hedge against a breakthrough in the state of the art by someone else and because I see no practical way to verify a ban on research. But I'm appalled by the prospect of moving the arms race into outer space. Surely the most economical, quickest, easiest way to get rid of a missile is with a wrench and a screwdriver, and not by spending hundreds of billions of dollars to put these things in outer-space that can shoot down these missiles after they have been launched.

(Applause)

SECRETARY RUSK: I would predict myself -- I probably won't be around to collect on it - that a future President and a future Congress will simply not go down that trail. I fault the Russians for not taking a little more of a gamble here - because they too have scientists and technical people, and they know that this is a very hypothetical possibility - with a major chance that it simply won't work out from a scientific and technical point of view. Therefore, they ought to get on with the serious and real problems of putting some limits on the arms race and not let SDI become an obstacle.

If we had just gone ahead with research that was already in progress without making it a major, public issue on top of the table with Mr. Reagan's speech of 1983, then I think we'd have had no problem. But I see very grave problems if we're going to allow this particular issue to get in the way of significant arms reduction discussions.

I myself would hope that the United States, the Soviet Union, and other space launching powers would agree as soon as possible to ban the placing of weapons in outer space. I do not believe that either the Soviet Union or the United States would accept a significant number of space stations in space, hovering above us in stationary orbit with the capability of firing lasers or particle beams or anything of that sort.

It seems to me that moving the arms race into outer space would be politically inflammatory, militarily futile, economically absurd, and aesthetically repulsive.

(Applause)

SECRETARY KISSINGER: When President Reagan made his speech on SDI, I actually was not in favor of it because I was imprisoned in the traditional categories. I must say that without his speech we would not now have the negotiations that are going on. I do not see what else we have in our program that the Soviets have raised any particular issue about. Secondly, the deployment of space-based weapons and offensive weapons can be reduced and eliminated to the degree that offensive weapons are also eliminated or reduced.

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It seems to me that everything you have said about space-based weapons is true of city busting weapons (that are now in the armories of the major companies) and the multiplication of warheads put on these missiles. These two problems have to be solved together. Your objection is as valid on Earth as it is in space.

**SECRETARY MUSKIE:** Might I throw in here? This is too important an issue for me to be silent on. I have two or three reservations about SDI. Number one, I share Dean Rusks reservations about whether or not it can be done scientifically, and I'm prepared to go ahead with research. Secondly, the history of the technology of nuclear weapons is that each new development triggers another round at a higher level in the arms race. This is true of the MIRV development, which more than any other single development up to now has created many of the problems that are so difficult to resolve today, and we ought to recognize that. Thirdly, once we are able to put weapons in outer space, the difference between defensive and offensive weapons would disappear, because having achieved that technology, we can apply it to offensive weapons as well as defensive.

But then I'd like to say this: I think this is an issue that can be resolved in undertaking to structure and arms control agreement. I understand the Russian position, I think, and I understand the administration's position. If what we're talking about is defining, in point, the beyond mere laboratory research and testing in outer space, let alone deployment, then there are very logical ways to identify such points. If both parties are interested in doing so. I think that the dialogue ought to go beyond the discussion of this issue in Reykjavik, and undertake to identify such points. I would hope that there is such a point because I think it important that each of the super powers exercise restraint on the other in developing technology. It moves so fast and so rapidly that unless there is a point of restraint applied to both, it can overwhelm us before common and true perception of our national security interests are protected.

**SECRETARY KISSINGER:** Ed, what bothers me in the shifting positions is that if you analyze the Soviet proposals at Reykjavik or at Geneva, they carefully maintain every existing threat. In their version of the fifty percent cut, their threat to our land based missiles is not reduced; the threat to our sea based missiles is increased; the threat to our population is maintained. It is primarily a symbolic gesture. If they were willing to abolish their heavy missiles; if they would agree, mutually, that we do away with multiple warheads and put single warheads on our missiles so that the danger of surprise attack or a first strike is reduced, then the problem of SDI would take on a different connotation. But as long as they keep proposing percentage cuts in categories where they are numerically superior, therefore, a fifty percent cut or any percentage cut is relatively more disadvantageous for us then for him. We are in an area of symbolic agreements and not substantive agreements. What we have to do is to get them to agree to something that we can actually say changes the situation.

Of course, any agreement must be to the mutual benefit. We can't get something that is only to our benefit. But, so far, the Soviet proposals, propositions, have been that we should give up SDI - or, in effect, give up SDI - while every other threat is maintained at a slightly less costly level to themselves. That cannot be the basis of an agreement.

(Applause)

**SECRETARY MUSKIE:** I understand the proposals that were tabled at Reykjavik.

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There's a range there that makes it possible, if both sides are interested in doing so, to arrive at an agreement. Of course, we wouldn't agree to the kind of hypothetical proposal that you posed.

SECRETARY KISSINGER: I know, but that's the actual proposal. That is --

SECRETARY MUSKIE: I'm not suggesting compromising I'm talking about --

SECRETARY KISSINGER: I understand what you're saying on SDI. You are saying that we can move it out or the testing past of the testing out of the laboratory and come to a definition of testing that we can live with.

SECRETARY MUSKIE: No, I think so, but we need to go beyond that, obviously. I'm not going to give them a blank check on offensive weapons. For example, out of Reykjavik, we could agree on a five year basis -- not that they agreed to this -- to a limitation of sixteen hundred launchers and six thousand weapons. The sublimits would have to be worked out.

SECRETARY KISSINGER: It depends on what we pay for it.

SECRETARY MUSKIE: It depends on what we pay for it. That kind of objective, I think, could be worked out. It hasn't been worked out. One of the things that I am unhappy about with Reykjavik is the implication or suggestion that because these items were put on the table that there was agreement when in fact there wasn't agreement. There's been no agreement at Reykjavik. These things have to be worked out.

SECRETARY HAIG: Let me add just a little irony here, because I share precisely the view of Dr. Kissinger as expressed. The irony of this is that SDI has become important because of American reluctance to cope with emerging Soviet threats. You know, for years we've been debating whether or not we, as a nation could afford to deploy ballistic counters to the Soviet's three to one ballistic superiority in ballistic systems. I don't have to tell you about the MX debate and the debate over the mini missile. We've created a vacuum in our own vulnerability that makes this SDI so amazingly significant. And let me suggest, also, that some of the arguments I'm hearing against SDI are the same arguments I heard against deploying MX's in the face of Soviet deployments of SS-19's, 18's, 24's and 25's, while we have sat and neutralized ourselves with internal debate here in America.

I also think, there's another lesson from SDI. The Soviets will never negotiate meaningful reductions until we pose to them the alternative of America having the guts and the unity to match them if we have to.

(Applause)

SECRETARY MUSKIE: May I say we have now posed that in SDI. No one around this table has advocated backing off from SDI. What I've advocated is finding a way to agree on SDI. Henry referred to SDI as though it were a bargaining chip. Well, if it is that, to the extent that it is - then let's use it to work out an agreement on SDI and, at the same time, work out an agreement on offensive weapons.

MR. NEWMAN: Somebody has to have the last word, and I have now decided that it has been had. We're going to take a couple of questions from the audience, and I don't want to keep the people who are going to be asking the questions standing, but there is one subject we

34

ought to get to, and I ask you to be brief on it if there's something you want to say, and that is
Nicaragua. Is the Sandinista regime in Nicaragua a threat to the vital interests of the
United States? Does anybody want to say anything about that? And, as I say, if you can be
brief, please do.

SECRETARY HAIG: I don't think we would really care whether by free choice the people of Nicaragua selected a communist regime. Frankly, we shouldn't put ourselves in the position of saying, "We have the right to determine."

What gives Nicaragua its strategic dimension is the Cuban presence in Nicaragua and the
Soviet manipulation of that presence. I would also make the outrageous statement that if it
were not for those two elements, the Nicaraguan people would take care of Marxism
overnight. They'd throw them out on their ear.

(Applause)

SECRETARY HAIG: And that's why we simply haven't been going about the problem right in that region.

SECRETARY RUSK: My views on that are not typical of many Democrats. I think, the administration has a problem in that it has not presented to the public, or to other governments, a clear, convincing, factual case as to just what it is that the Sandinistas are doing in countries like El Salvador and Costa Rica and Honduras. From such facts would flow many consequences.

Secondly, I think that they suffer from the fact that there is so little solidarity in the
hemisphere with respect to these issues. But, I must say that if the facts are as alleged, then
I myself would be very serious about Nicaragua. Back in 1964, Castro was caught red-
handed landing men and arms on the coast of Venezuela. The foreign ministers of the OAS
met at that time and imposed upon Castro all of the sanctions that are available out of the
Rios Pact, with the exception of use of armed force. At the time, the OAS said to Castro, "If
these activities continue, we do not exclude the use of armed force." So, I would be very
serious about it. But I must confess that I am still somewhat puzzled about just what the
facts are and what we can do to build up solidarity in the hemisphere where it's a problem
for everybody and not just a unilateral problem for the United States.

SECRETARY KISSINGER: I was Chairman of a bipartisan Commission for Central America, a position for which like the briefings on Viet Nam there were not very many applicants at the time. That commission, unanimously, agreed that Nicaragua, with its Cuban and Soviet connection, was a major threat to all surrounding countries and to the stability of the region. I think that Al Haig has pointed out the real alternatives we have. Do we insist on overthrowing the Sandinista government, or should our primary national objective be to separate it or to remove the Cuban and Soviet influence from Central America?

I would think that a Nicaraguan government that had Latin American advisors rather than
Cuban advisors; whose army was on the same level as that of other Central American
countries rather than a size of ninety thousand; that took its economic help from democratic
nations rather than six hundred million dollars from the Soviet Union; that if conditions
such as this could be achieved, then what form of government exists in Nicaragua is not a
vital interest of the United States, although we would have a preference.

35

However, as long as there are ten thousand Cuban so called, "advisors" there, plus thousands of others from Bulgaria, Libya (whose only common feature is hostility to the United States and who surely wouldn't be in Nicaragua on any other basis) East Germany, and so forth -- as long as they have an army nearly as large as Mexico's, they are a major threat. We have to face that.

MR. NEWMAN: Mr. Muskie, the last word before the questions.

SECRETARY MUSKIE: I don't know what to do with the last word, but the question was whether any vital interest of the United States is involved. I agree with Secretary Haig's answer to that question. No. What troubles me about Nicaragua -- and I'll try to make this two or three sentences -- is that here we are; we have normal diplomatic relations with Nicaragua; recognize their government; they recognize ours. Yet, we are investing another hundred million dollars supporting a rebel faction undertaking to overthrow that government, or at least to change its policies in ways which give them a role in that government. I find that an inconsistent position for us to be in.

I think, Al Haig has put his fingers on what we need to attack, to get at, and that is the Cuban and Russian involvement there, whatever the dimensions of that, (and I really don't know because I don't have access to the intelligence). As Dean Rusk has said, I think, that that's what we ought to focus on. But I am concerned about the over-emphasis, or the almost total emphasis, on a military solution to the problem.

(Applause)

SECRETARY HAIG: Let me just add one observation. What's happened to derail our Central American policies is this: On the one hand, concern about expansionism, and on the other an expression that somehow we claim the right to determine the kinds of regimes that will exist in Central America and we'll take direct action in those countries to overthrow Marxism.

To me, the United States should be an advocate of rule of law, and as an advocate of a rule of law, we have every right to insist that Castro's Cuba and the Soviet Union butt out of the internal affairs of Central American republics. When we start the same, we create these ambiguities and confusions, which are the overtones of your answer.

MR. NEWMAN: Thank you, gentlemen. We'll go now to the audience.

UNKNOWN VOICE: (Inaudible)

MR. NEWMAN: This was not quite the question I had in mind, but okay, you go ahead.

UNKNOWN VOICE: (Inaudible)

SECRETARY RUSK: Beginning with the days of Franklin Roosevelt, the United States transformed the Monroe Doctrine into a multilateral instrument through the charter of the Organization of American States and the Rio Treaty. It becomes especially important for us therefore to have as much hemispheric solidarity as possible in any action taken. Remember, the Organization of American States was infinitely and unanimously in support of the idea that the missiles in Cuba were a threat to the security of the western hemisphere,

36

and demanded that they be removed. So it would be very (inaudible) for us to proceed unilaterally on the basis of the Monroe Doctrine, but it's entirely possible for us to move through the Organization of American States. After all, in January, 1962, the Organization of American States expelled the Castro government from participation in the OAS on the grounds that Marxist/Leninism was simply contrary to the political traditions of the western hemisphere; so I hope we can move in that direction and not leave this matter in effect a unilateral problem for the United States.

MR. NEWMAN: We are going to get questions now from the audience, questions from two distinguished members of the audience, the first of whom is Mayor Andrew Young of Atlanta.

MAYOR YOUNG: Let me thank you very much for some exciting discussion of foreign policy, and let me thank this audience who really has been very, very attentive, and I think you've really been a big hit for all of us today.

(Applause)

MAYOR YOUNG: My question is the choice between aggressive approaches to human rights, which we did, I think, to some extent and with some success starting with Secretary Kissinger in Zimbabwe, later in the Philippines. Are those two situations in any way relevant to the situation we now find in Korea and in South Africa? Would a similar aggressive approach by the Executive Branch, supported by our allies, possibly have the same possible successful result?

SECRETARY RUSK: I'm concerned that we could drive the Afrikaners in South Africa into a logger mentality, circle the wagons and fight it out with the enormous power they have on their side, without moving appreciably toward a decision.

I happened to have a conference with the present foreign minister of South Africa, Mr. Botha, just as he was leaving his post as ambassador in Washington, and I told him I thought that they should put aside their reactions to international opinion on these matters, because that pressed them into developing this logger mentality, and deal with the problem they have at their doorsteps, mainly these millions of Blacks who cannot possibly live under the present circumstances. So, again, I would hope that somehow we could contribute to a solution, but I don't see that at the moment except in terms of violent confrontations, and I have very deep misgivings about the results of that.

MR. NEWMAN: The next questions comes from Governor Gerald L. Baliles of Virginia.

Governor?

GOVERNOR BALILES: Gentlemen, I would add my thanks to that of Mayor Young for your participation this afternoon, but I would add our collective thanks for your years of service for the development of foreign policy choices for this country.

My question is this. According to a recent front page report in the *Washington Post*, a study commissioned by Secretary Shultz found a serious lack of language ability in our foreign service. This coincides with a recent report issued by the Southern Governor's Association. Doesn't this hurt the ability to conduct foreign policy? For example, isn't this partly responsible for our difficulties in dealing with the Iranian situation during the fall of the

37

Shah? And aren't there other examples where the lack of language competence has impaired the ability of this country to deal with foreign emergencies?

SECRETARY KISSINGER: First, with respect to the fall of the Shah, my impression is that what went wrong there was a real conceptual breakdown in this sense. When people said we should have more contact with the opposition, what they really meant was with politicians in Teheran. I was in office for eight years. I never heard - the name of Khoumeini in any intelligence report. I never realized -- nobody ever told me that the mullahs were a political force in Iran. I think this was true of our successors as well, and under whom the revolution actually took place. This was a case where the problem had been totally misunderstood.

Would more Farsi speakers have enabled us to understand it better? Certainly. A better understanding of the history and culture of Iran would surely have helped us. As a general proposition - I don't know the statistics, but if these reports are correct - it certainly complicates the conduct of our foreign policy. As a general rule, we should have many linguists in these countries in our embassies, and not just linguists, but people who understand their culture and their social borders. That is an absolute prerequisite for foreign policy.

(Applause)

SECRETARY RUSK: I think the Governor has raised a very important point. We've been making steady progress in this direction over a period of time. I remember at one point seeing a figure that sixty percent of our foreign service officers spoke the language of the country in which they were assigned, and that included many of the "weird" languages in the world. But I've heard very recently that the foreign language program of the Department of State has been abandoned for budgetary reasons. I personally feel that that would be an unmitigated disaster, and I appreciate the Governor's raising this question with us.

MR. NEWMAN: Gentlemen, Secretary Haig, Secretary Kissinger, Secretary Rusk, Secretary Muskie, thank you all for your participation today.

(Applause)

MR. NEWMAN: And thanks also to the audience here in the Civic Center in Atlanta.

38

"INDIVIDUALS AND INSTITUTIONS THAT
INFLUENCE U.S. FOREIGN POLICY"

Fourth Annual Conference with the
Former Secretaries of State
Atlanta Civic Center, November 21, 1986

Dean Rusk
Henry Kissinger
Edmund Muskie
Alexander Haig
with
Edwin Newman, Moderator

This publication is a transcript of a conference held in the Atlanta Civic Center on November 21, 1986. It was made possible by grants from the James S. McDonnell Foundation and BellSouth Corporation, and co-sponsored with the City of Atlanta.

(c) 1986 by The Southern Center for International Studies, Inc.
Atlanta, Georgia

All rights reserved.

[L]

MR. NEWMAN: Welcome to "The Fourth Annual Conference of Secretaries of State." Today, we have with us four former Secretaries.

DEAN RUSK, who served the longest term, eight years, from 1961 to 1969 in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. His years of government service date back to 1946, when he joined the State Department during the Truman administration. Mr. Rusk has also served as President of the Rockefeller Foundation, and is currently a professor of law at the University of Georgia.

Secretary Rusk?

1

[L]

today.

As far as I'm concerned, the present problem is one of what some people have called "damage control." I'll mention two points: One is that the President must move firmly and directly to establish without any question the authority of the Secretary of State to speak for the United States. It's not just a matter of what happens to our present Secretary of State, but it's important to the nation as a whole. Otherwise, our diplomacy will be severely limited. The other problem is relations between the President and the Congress. This could be of critical importance because we're at the beginning of a two year period where we have a Republican President and a Democratic Congress. The necessity for these two branches to work together is overriding.

2

[L]

So, as a general proposition, I would think the lesson to be learned from this particular period is partly an organizational one if people were kept in ignorance, but largely a conceptual one. What did the various people think they were doing? Why did they think it? What was wrong about that thinking? And, where it was wrong, what was right? Because the major elements of that policy were also right, and that must not be forgotten. That seems to me to be the key questions, rather than the prerogatives of individual members of the administration.

(Laughter)

SECRETARY HAIG: Because I wrote it -- the new publication is....

I would share the observations made by both Secretary Rusk and Secretary Kissinger. I would, however, suggest that their admonitions with respect to responsibility and bipartisanship is a direct reflection of their concern that in fact will not happen.

One need only flip on the tube in any hour of the day. Mr. Reagan must have gotten up thinking he put on Mr. Boesky's uniform, because I don't know who was the winner in the affection of American people. Clearly, this is a politicized issue and unfortunately while I fervently share the observations of Secretary Rusk, I'm afraid it will become that and we're going to witness many, many months of precisely that.

3

[L.C.]

great tendency in the American Congress to legislate permanent solutions to temporary problems. One might even debate that the War Powers Act was such a piece of legislative action. So I share the views of both. I also share Henry's comment that I wish our Cabinet would support our President and like one Secretary of State that I know, if they cannot, to leave.

(Laughter)

(Laughter)

(Applause)

(Laughter)

You know, your question was: What lessons are there to be learned out of this incident? Unfortunately, most of the lessons that we need to learn whenever our country goes through a crisis of this nature are lessons that have been taught before but forgotten. Forgotten by the President forgotten by the Congress, and forgotten by others. Because operating this democratic system of ours and the system of checks and balances means taking the risk of disagreement, taking the risk of fouling up, but also achieving great things.

The responsibility of the Senate, for example, in the foreign policy field, is described best by three Constitutional words, "advise and consent." Presidents are very conscious of the "consent" part of it and in the name of consent preach their definition of bipartisan foreign policy. They tend to overlook the "advise" part of that Constitutional mandate, which has led them into a great deal of difficulty. Among other things, it has led the Congress to do the sort of thing that Secretary Haig just decried a moment ago. When Presidents do not consult or do not advise effectively, the Congress is likely to take the initiative into its own hands. It has happened before. I have not always agreed with those Congressional initiatives, but on the other hand, as a member of the Senate for twenty-two years, I've understood it. When I was Secretary of State (I was Secretary for such a short time - I remember precisely, eight months and twenty days - very busy eight months and twenty days), I was never plagued with that, probably because I came out of the Senate. If I had served as Secretary for four more years, I have no doubt that I would have had to face similar situations.

4

[L.C.]

But the other word that I would emphasize here [regarding] these most recent events is the word "accountability." In a democratic system such as ours, based on the idea of freedom and a free society and a free people, policy makers must always be sensitive to the fact that, at some point, they are going to be accountable for the consequences of their policies and their initiatives. There's a tendency to think, when you're at the highest level, that somehow it should be possible for you to do something worthwhile, provided you don't have to bring the public in on it. You may get away with not bringing the public in on it, either directly or through their institutions, for a while. But, eventually, the consequences become evident, and accountability sets in. In this most recent affair, I have the sense that that was not sufficiently on the minds of those who were involved.

Now, I agree with Secretary Rusk that our concerns should be how do we repair the damage. But in order to repair it, no one of those involved in this incident can be excluded from the responsibility of repairing the damage, including the President [and] the President's White House staff, where perhaps the responsibility lies heaviest, [as well as] the Congress.

SECRETARY KISSINGER: Of course, in any administration the President must have the scope to do some things that are very sensitive on a secret basis. I think, there is a big difference between a diplomatic initiative, whose practical consequence will become public as soon as it is consummated, and the shipment of several thousand tons of arms. That seems to me to be a matter that inherently, one should know, cannot be kept secret. Too many people are involved, and third countries are involved. That is one aspect of the recent events. The second is: if you take publicly one position and encourage other governments to pursue the same or a certain policy, while privately you do exactly the opposite, you are no longer in the area of secret diplomacy. I believe, in the opening of China, which was at first attempted to be handled in regular channels, and then we received staff memos that recommended that we begin negotiating immunities, transportation, consultation, and we thought we'd be spending three years on the internal issues, then the President moved it into different channels. But as soon as the opening had been made, it had to become public in the nature of things. Also, we had not induced other governments to do the opposite of what we were doing.

5

[L.C]

and where the publication did not give them impetus, as it did in the China, to a new
development, but would get us into deep trouble. So, I don't think it's exactly comparable.

(Laughter)

(Laughter)

The separation of powers at the federal level is a very important concept, but there are some limits. The late Chief Justice Earl Warren visited our Law School here at Georgia shortly before his death, and on that occasion reminded us that if each branch of the federal government were to pursue its own Constitutional powers to the end of the trail, our system simply could not function; it would freeze up like an engine without oil. Impasse is the overhanging threat to our Constitutional system.

6

[L.C]

the House Foreign Affairs Committee would have the privilege of calling before themselves any matter pending before any other committee of Congress in order to comment on it from an overall foreign policy point of view. But relations among the committees of Congress would probably make that impossible.

7

[L]

we should be going.

**SECRETARY MUSKIE:** I think there are other forces at work that distinguish the present period from the creative period to which Dean Rusk has referred - the late 'Forties and early 'Fifties. Among other things, in the Congress there has been a fractionating of the authority and areas of responsibility of Congressional committees. When Dean Acheson was Secretary of State along with George Marshall, he could go to key members of the key committees in the Senate and in the House and achieve consensus. The authority of chairmen at that time in the Congress was not challenged. They were able to agree to a great deal and command a following in the Senate and in the House behind the policies. It was a much simpler day. That has changed. That kind of authority is no longer concentrated in committee chairmen. Committee chairmen are lucky if they can hold on to their jobs now from one Congress to the next.

What is responsible for that? I suspect that television as much as anything, because any member of the Senate or the House today can get a nationwide audience the day after he's elected to the House or to the Senate. The media take advantage of that instinct of politicians to get visibility and to get headlines, and, of course, the politicians take advantage of it as well. Every member of both house considers himself a foreign policy expert. At least he does once he gets a headline or gets on the highlights of the evening television news. So, fractionating of authority in the Congress, I think, is partly responsible for the difference and the difficulty today of achieving a Congressional consensus.

8

[L]

One result of the fractionation of which Ed Muskie spoke, is that the nature of the consultation has changed somewhat on the fundamental philosophical issues, the nature of the consensus on the broad strategy on how to deal with it. There must be consensus -- "comity" is the better word -- between the Congress and the Executive Branch. The system would not work badly in achieving that if both sides keep Earl Warren's injunction in mind of not pushing their prerogatives to the ultimate conclusion.

But fractionation has the tendency of leading to endless involvement in tactical decisions, and that puts the United States often into the position of playing a game of chess with an opponent who can make his moves with one coherent approach. While on the American side somebody precipitously starts moving a piece for you every once in a while. No matter how brilliant that individual move is, it loses the coherence. The essence of foreign policy - of good foreign policy - is the accumulation of nuance. It is very rare that you can do something that makes a decisive difference. It is the gradual transformation of the situation, that gets lost when you get too much obsessed with tactical issues. I think there self restraint by the Congress is important.

9

[L]

**SECRETARY MUSKIE:** If the NSC hadn't been created, I suppose it might still exist in the White House in some informal, uncreated way. Part of the answer, part of the reason for that, is the geography. I have a theory -- I'd be interested in whether my colleagues agree with this -- that when the State Department was moved from what is now the Executive Office Building, next door to the White House, to its present house, quite a ways distant, that the geography which separated the Secretary of State from the President tended to enhance the inclination of the President to look around the White House and to find that advice there. The President, for whatever reason in the morning, may be interested in a particular foreign policy issue. He knows that the Secretary of State is busy, in any case on the other side of town. So, it's easy to turn to somebody in the White House.

I remember that when I first went to the Senate, I was assigned to a subcommittee of the Government Operations Committee, which was chaired by Senator Henry Jackson, and his interest that year was conducting hearings on the newly created National Security Council. It had been created in President Truman's administration, and the question that was before us was the fact that nobody could seem to find any use for the National Security Council. President Eisenhower hadn't used it very much. The testimony that came before us as to the efforts to make it a useful instrument would make very interesting reading today, after the fact.

But with time and imaginative occupants in the seat of the National Security Advisor -- and we have a very imaginative one present here today in Henry, who was a good National Security Advisor -- on institutional grounds, there was a vacuum. You know what the old law of physics says: if there's a vacuum, something steps into it. I think that the National Security Council issue has emerged as a result of that over the years. Perhaps the fact that the National Security Advisor is not confirmed by the Senate or anybody else makes him a tempting repository of Presidential advice and initiative.

Some Advisors have resisted that or tried to control it or channel it or emphasize the National Security Advisor's cooperative functions, and it has worked out all right. Other times, it hasn't. It depends a great deal on the personality and inclinations of the occupier of that office, and he has geography working for him.

10

[L.C.]

which is political, economic, as well as security related, cannot be talked away. The problem comes in establishing a disciplined system for doing it, which the bureaucracy knows and understands and adheres to and which the Congress feels comfortable with because it has those lines that it certainly must have.

Now, by the way --

(Laughter)

(Applause)

SECRETARY RUSK: Now, along side of Dean Acheson's remark about the killer instinct, he also said that in the relations between the President and the Secretary of State it is of the greatest importance that both of them understand at all times which one is President. Of course, I'm biased on this, but I think we ought to note just a thing or two about the office of Secretary of State, of which Thomas Jefferson was number one. The Secretary of State has a five foot shelf of statutory law organizing his Department and setting many of the main policies that we are expected to follow. A good many of those laws delegate specific responsibilities to the Secretary of State, even though it is generally understood that he exercises those delegated responsibilities under the general direction of the President. But that doesn't mean that every Tom, Dick and Harry who has an office over in the White House or the Executive Office Building. It is the Secretary who goes down and meets regularly with committees and subcommittees of the Congress, taking their questions. It is he who holds press conferences from time to time. It is he who goes out across the country, making foreign policy speeches and getting the pulse of those to whom he is speaking in terms of question periods and things of that sort. None of that is true of these White House staff.

(Applause)

11

[L]

achieve influence in the policy making process by insisting on prerogatives. The President will consult whoever makes, in his mind, the most significant contributions. So there is no substitute for a close relationship between the President and the Secretary of State. The minute somebody has to walk into the President's office and say, "I'm entitled to be heard," he has already lost; because if he wanted to hear him, he would have called him in to begin with. And if the relationship were well established, it's inconceivable that the Secretary of State isn't heard.

(Laughter)

**SECRETARY KISSINGER:** Nobody really can get on top of that machinery totally; because if you send that cable back, the odds are that you'll get back a variation of it the next day with the same basic thrust and just a slight modification. So, it's a hard struggle even within the Department.

But the President needs a group that makes sure that the fundamental issues are being addressed. That's the fundamental job of the National Security Council. When it goes off into operations, or when it gets off into its own tactics, that's when one gets into a questionable area. Sometimes the questionable area arises when the President feels very strongly about a policy and a Department feels dubious about it - which is its prerogative - but, then having been heard, is reluctant to implement it. Then the President, having the authority that Dean Rusk spoke about, must find somebody to do it. So, it is important. I agree that the staff should not be given - should be trimmed of - those responsibilities that are self-serving and unnecessary. At the same time, the Department must be kept focused on fundamental national issues and not on issues of prerogative. The purpose of the exercise is not to establish the prerogative of the Department, but to achieve good national policy.

**MR. NEWMAN:** Should the National Security Advisor be a public figure? Should he be perhaps - or she, when that time comes - forbidden to appear in public, forbidden to make speeches, forbidden to give interviews?

**SECRETARY KISSINGER:** As a general proposition, I agree with Dean Rusk that the public explanation of foreign policy should overwhelmingly be left either to the President or to the Secretary of State. However, I must tell you that in my day when I used to brief on Viet Nam issues, I did not have to beat off competitors for the platform.

(Laughter)

12

[L.C.]

(Laughter)

**SECRETARY KISSINGER:** So, this has to be kept in mind: If the Department wants greater responsibilities, they must also be prepared to take greater heat. That is surely the ideal arrangement. Certainly, the Secretary of State must be the public spokesman, and he must also be prepared to speak on things --

**SECRETARY RUSK:** Now, there are variations on this. When Pierre Salinger was the press spokesman for President Kennedy, he told us over in the State Department that if there was any good news to report, he wanted to report that from the White House; but if there was bad news, he expected us to do that in the State Department.

(Laughter)

**SECRETARY HAIG:** That's a confirmation of the wisdom of a President who doesn't want to be perceived to be responsible, day to day, for everything, and to have a strong Secretary of State who, when things do go awry, can be expendable. Presidents are not expendable. Presidents must maintain their credibility. Sometimes an overly centralized, overly powerful White House policy making machine can risk that.

**MR. NEWMAN:** On that point, Secretary Haig, in connection with what has been discussed here, what is the proper function of a White House Chief of Staff? How public a position, if indeed public at all, should that be?

**SECRETARY HAIG:** It should be totally unpublic. Only in a dire emergency should a White House Chief of Staff be forced into a public position. He should be a faceless servant of communications between the various bureaus and departments of government and the President, and a coordinator of that gaggle which has become this White House staff, and a protector of the President -- his time, his energy -- and a setter of priorities for those energies.

**SECRETARY RUSK:** By the way, there's one very useful function for a National Security Advisor, and that is, the President could receive conflicting recommendations from, say, the State Department, the Defense Department, the Joint Chiefs of Staff or whatever it might be, not simply a habit of bureaucracy to resist any kind of deference on a horizontal basis. One can defer vertically. There have been times in the past when the White House staff can help bring these departments together in a way which the departments could not, perhaps, just achieve just working alone. So, there's some very important roles for that person to play.

**MR. NEWMAN:** Can we go back to the question of the power of Congress in foreign affairs? Recently Congress voted to impose sanctions against South Africa. The House voted to extend a moratorium on the testing of anti-sattelite weapons. The House cut the SDI budget which the President had sent up. It proposed -- resolved, in fact - that he should abide by the limits set in SALT II, which has never been ratified. Does this go too far? Does this go too far in impinging on the President's power?

**SECRETARY MUSKIE:** Well, to quote a President, "That's not illegal." Certainly within the constraints which you've described, it's within the prerogative that the Congress has assumed increasingly in recent years. Not just recent years, but over the period since I was

13

[L]

first elected in 1958.

There are a number of reasons for this which we've already discussed, and I won't belabor them. The fact is that if we have a strong President whose policies, whose initiatives have the support of the country, his policies will prevail over these kinds of Congressional initiatives that you've described. For example, with respect to the limitations on appropriations for SDI, before the Reykjavik Summit, the Congress enacted that and backed off under pressure from the President when the President indicated, and apparently got public support for the notion, that his hands would be tied at the Summit on this issue. Congress backed off. At the same time, I'm sure that Congress feels that it made a point, and that was the way for it to make the point. What the Congress was interested in was not influencing the Summit on this issue, but influencing our long term policy on this question. That is a responsibility of the Congress, if the Congress has a specific view about it.

Now, it's not an easy sort of thing to deal with from the President's point of view, but the Constitution doesn't intend that the Presidency should be an easy job. The President is supposed to be a leader. He's supposed to lead the country and he's supposed to be so effective that he can impress the correctness of his policies and his initiative on his following, who are the entire people of the United States. If Congress is disposed to challenge what he does, the lessons of the last six years indicate that the Congress tends to back off a strong President and a popular President. It has done so in my judgment in the last six years, at times, in ways that I did not approve as an individual citizen. So, you have this clash between the Congress and the President. It's a healthy thing. The founders intended it.

**SECRETARY KISSINGER:** It's not easy to make hard and fast rules, but among that list that you read, I would think - whether I agree with it or not - that cutting the budget for SDI, for example, is a way that Congress would indicate the priority it attaches to a program. Prohibiting space testing -- that seems to me to get into the area of making the tactical moves. Sanctions, seems to me, in the area of general direction of policy in which the Congress and the Executive must achieve some comity. The continuing of SALT II limitations, that seems to me, again, a tactical move -- especially, since it is continuing the limitations of an unratified treaty. I agree, it isn't easy to make clear cut distinctions. I'm simply trying to make the illustration of what subjects, seem to me need a policy of self-restraint on both sides and what approach might be taken.

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**SECRETARY HAIG:** Let me suggest something else, beyond what has been discussed here that I certainly am in accord with. It seems to me that in carrying out this usage of the "Bully Pulpit," which Presidents must do -- they must convince; they must sell their program that every administration is well served by a very detailed articulation of an overall framework of a foreign policy and the objectives and goals of that administration. It doesn't mean that it does that job for you, but it provides a benchmark for assessment along the way in which there's a tendency in the Congress, as the major issues are understood and accepted, not to get into the tactical manipulation which some of these issues clearly amount to.

**MR. NEWMAN:** I want to change our subject now slightly and talk about the power of the press as it affects foreign policy. And here again I'm quoting Dean Rusk. He and some others said this. "Americans should always respect the need for a period of confidential and careful deliberation when dealing with a major international crisis." If this is desirable, Mr. Rusk, how can it be obtained?

**SECRETARY RUSK:** I think that are certain myths that our friends in the press indulge in.

**MR. NEWMAN:** Surely not.

(Laughter)

**SECRETARY RUSK:** I think the American people are better served by their news media than are the people of any other country I know. But nevertheless, there are some things that we ought to watch.

For example, I'm rather astonished to hear people in the news media talk about the people's right to know, because the news media can't live with that. They're stuck with the notion that whatever our right to know, we have a right to know only what they choose to tell us. Otherwise, the First Amendment is dead. Surely, the American people have a right to have their public business conducted in a responsible fashion. Where do you draw the line between that and the so called "people's right to know?"

(Laughter)

(Applause)

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**SECRETARY RUSK:** So there are some problems. I think, the increasing competition within the media is presenting some problem of context and balance and understanding. Despite that, let me say that I think our media serves us better than do the media of any other country. But I sometimes use my First Amendment right of free speech to comment on some of these things involving the exercise of the right of free press.

**SECRETARY MUSKIE:** And you're always willing to use the press to send your own message.

**SECRETARY RUSK:** Well, there's a limit to that. I never used the press to float "trial balloons." I never used the press. You can search my press conferences and Congressional testimony, you'll find it very hard to find any instance in which I would think one thing and say another. I think that's poison. But you do, of course, try to get your position out. It is a position of advocacy. After all, the Secretary of State has a client - the United States, represented primarily by the President in his particular job. We should not expect public officials not to be advocates of the positions which they support.

Now, there is such a thing as advocacy with integrity, and we ought to expect that. But everybody else in the country is an advocate; used car salesmen, preachers of the Gospel, insurance salesmen, politicians. We're all advocates. So we ought not to expect out public officials to be men from Mars, taking a balanced approach toward everything that's going on in our public life.

**MR. NEWMAN:** What about this period of confidential and careful deliberation when dealing with a major international crisis? Is that still a possibility? Can you get it?

**SECRETARY MUSKIE:** I can tell you this. It isn't possible if you're a candidate for President in the Presidential primaries. People expect instant wisdom.

**MR. NEWMAN:** Do administrations believe that they have to have a position ready for the evening news every night? Let me put the question differently. When I got to Washington a good many years ago, it was not at all uncommon for Presidents or Secretaries of State or whoever it might be to say, "No comment." It seems to me that for at least twenty-five years it has not been possible for anybody in public life to say, "No comment." Am I correct about this?

**SECRETARY MUSKIE:** I think you are. I don't know that Presidents target the evening news every day for use to advance their own programs or their own policies, although sometimes it seems that way.

But it is true that the Executive Branch and the Congress are very conscious, always, whether they're conducting a hearing on the Hill or whether they are in the White House preparing an announcement or trying to make an announcement, at such a time that it will get as little notice as possible. I mean, people do play to the media in terms of timing, in terms of advantage, and using it. I think that's permissible, given the existence of the media.

**SECRETARY HAIG:** If anyone doesn't think that an astute White House doesn't address every day a series of issues which they seek to exploit in the media to keep the momentum of their popularity, their programs, to divert heat from issues that they don't want discussed - let me tell you, they do. They'd be rather fumbling today, in the era of modern television,

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**SECRETARY KISSINGER:** I think, the fundamental problem that exists is not so much that there should be more restraint by the media. It has to do partly with the values of the media and the values of the administrations or departments.

American media, following the traditions of such a plays as "The Front Page," focus on getting some piece of news that nobody else has - getting some terrific news break. So, some top secret document that they can elicit from somebody has a tremendous effect for them, even though there are ten thousand of those floating around at any given moment - and the author probably classified it "top secret" to attract attention.

(Laughter)

**SECRETARY KISSINGER:** At any rate, you cannot judge the significance of events by documents. The importance of documents is in their relation to each other. Administrations are sorely tempted to try to put a spin on stories. They try to do what Al Haig mentioned - influence short-term popularity. That's unavoidable. All of us have done it at one time or another.

**SECRETARY HAIG:** What Henry is talking about is the essence of leadership. When a leader communicates regularly, consistently, both with the Congress and with the American people through the media, they know what he's doing and what he's about. On those occasions when that luxury is not provided, he has built a well of confidence and credibility. They tolerate a great deal during times when those homilies can't be shared because of the character of the crisis themselves. But if he doesn't, then you have this uncertainty and loss of, or a lack of, credibility.

**SECRETARY MUSKIE:** There is a classic recent example of the interplay between the White House and the media. That is the after-effects of the Reykjavik Summit. There is no question that the initial impression that, I think, the public thought immediately following the adjournment of that Summit was that it had been a failure. The White House obviously didn't want it to be perceived in that way. So, almost immediately, they undertook to put a spin on it. For the next several days, the administration was able to put it's spokesmen on the morning shows and on the evening shows. They're able to do that, Presidents do that. They did it when I was in office as Secretary of State during the Iran hostage crisis. I have no fault to find with that, but we're examining the process. I think, of course, the Presidents use the media in this way. They have succeeded at least so far as the public perception is concerned and so far as the polls and the reaction of the public.

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They turned that one around.

SECRETARY KISSINGER: Yes, but I think a price will be paid for that success. Because, I think that Reykjavik presents as serious problems as Iran in the long term. Incidentally, that was not a case where the National Security Council broke down.

As these negotiations resume, both the excessive pessimism of the immediate aftermath and the excessive optimism that was then produced by that spin will be unhelpful. We need a discussion of what we are trying to achieve in East-West relations and what we are trying to achieve in arms control. If that is not clarified, the public will be confronted with endless numbers of games that even the experts don't understand. So, that is an example of where the "tactical" has undermined the "long-term" basis of foreign policy.

SECRETARY KISSINGER: No, I don't think that's a wisecrack. I think that goes to the heart of the problem. I believe Reykjavik exposed the absence of a consensus in the administration and the absence of a concept that is applicable to the existing situation in East-West relations and in technology. Therefore, I think, we have to go back to the drawing board and come up with such a concept. Then, explain it and achieve agreement within the government, if these negotiations are not going to be shipwrecked or disastrous.

(Applause)

SECRETARY HAIG: Let me just add that that's the point I made a moment or two ago about the need to have an articulated foreign policy with goals and objectives to which the people can relate, understand, and agree with or disagree with. But, I think the point Henry made about Reykjavik is a very, very important one. To me, this is the most significant event which has occurred in this administration, and it's not positive, but negative. It dwarfs any significance of the Iranian brouhaha in every respect.

SECRETARY HAIG: Because the profound was trivialized. A non-Summit Summit emerged from a non-deal deal. The agenda was not fixed beforehand, and the unspeakable was spoken. The glue that has held the Western Alliance together since the dawn of the nuclear age has been rather seriously damaged. The post-mortems distorted the reality, focusing exclusively on our manhood and preserving SDI, rather than the fundamental

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(Applause)

SECRETARY HAIG: One can understand that some of the hoopla associated with the Iranian crisis as an unnerving factor in our lives. I think that's terribly overplayed. I don't think Mrs. Thatcher even raised the issue. What she wanted to talk about was Reykjavik. Now we have reversed our position.

SECRETARY RUSK: With respect to my friend Al Haig - it's my impression that Reykjavik has been exaggerated in importance by both sides. We should not have expected very much to come out of it, partly, as a matter of time. They met for ten hours. Divide that in half for interpretation, that's five hours. Divide that in half for equal time, and that's two-and-a-half hours. The most that could have come out of that would have been an "agreement in principle," so called.

It's the duty of the reporter to bore in to try to get the story. At times, it is the duty of the officer in government to keep his mouth shut. This creates a tension. That tension should never be relieved because - unless the reporters were trying to get the story - the abuse of secrecy in the bureaucracy would be very substantial.

(Laughter)

SECRETARY RUSK: There's a problem there, but there's no answer. Leave it alone. Leave it alone. Let's just work it out - work with it.

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MR. NEWMAN: Gentlemen, this is not a confessional, but I have a question to put to all of you. Has any of you ever engaged in what is now grandly called "disinformation?"

SECRETARY KISSINGER: Let me see if we can first define what disinformation is. I take the definition of disinformation to be that you make a statement that you know to be false in order to bring about a certain effect in foreign governments. If you use disinformation as a tool of foreign policy. I think, that is a grave mistake. I cannot remember any instance where that was done in the period in which I served. I'm not saying we always told everything, but we never said something we knew to be false for the purpose of producing an effect in a foreign government.

SECRETARY KISSINGER: Yes.

MR. NEWMAN: Secretary Haig, you said that there has to be something in the nature of "a well of information" that the American people have about foreign policy. Is so called disinformation or deception, consistent with that?

SECRETARY HAIG: No. Of course, not. But I do know that historically the United States and our allies in times of conflict and other occasions - has intentionally fed disinformation. There are many recorded instances of it after World War II. But I share very fundamentally what Henry said a few moments ago. That is, that any public official that knowingly takes a fact known not to be true - unless in combat or in the conditions of war - and promulgates it, I think, is not only wrong in moral terms, but risking great disaster in practical terms.

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SECRETARY RUSK: Yes.

MR. NEWMAN: There was an assistant Secretary of Defense, a former newspaper man named Arthur Sylvester - a friend of mine - who said that any government has a right to lie for its own survival.

(Laughter)

SECRETARY KISSINGER: Technically, the disinformation issue that is now being discussed is when the government is alleged to have considered pretending that there was a military tension arising with Libya, when, in fact, it knew that wasn't the case. The strange thing about it is that we could have produced it [the effect] simply by moving the Sixth Fleet. There was no need for disinformation. So, any government official confronted with a usury of facts is capable of saying something that is factually incorrect. That, I don't consider disinformation; it can be "confusion." Obviously, with respect to secret things like covert operations, he may not tell everything he knows. But to state a factual matter, in order to produce an effect in foreign policy, known to be false, that is what we all are talking about here.

(Laughter)

(Laughter)

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SECRETARY KISSINGER: On the other hand, there were Congressional hearings which were pretty thorough. I just don't think one should state as a factual matter something like that.

SECRETARY RUSK: If I'm not asked a follow up question, I would have to say, yes. There have been certain things which have not become public, but I'm not going to identify which ones those were.

(Laughter)

(Laughter)

(Applause)

MR. NEWMAN: But what I'm asking is: Does the fact that we sometimes engage in clandestine or covert operations in any way damage our moral position?

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**SECRETARY RUSK:** There's an element of philosophical conflict here. When I joined President Kennedy, I did not find anything called the "State" in the drawers of my desk or in my coat closet that I was supposed to be Secretary of. I found men and women who had been set aside, under our laws and Constitution, to act for all of us with respect to certain designated responsibilities. These individuals cannot escape ordinary moral standards by something called "state action" as though raison d'etre were an excuse for doing almost anything. As a practical matter, if you're trying to influence the actions of others, you've got to take into account their basic moral commitments because most people act with respect to those moral commitments.

(Applause)

**SECRETARY MUSKIE:** I think, it's very human for people holding power to tend to try to expand it, and for people holding power to be corrupted by it. That surely applies not only to actions which are visible publicly, but especially to covert actions. Of course, I would agree with the premise that there are occasions when covert actions are justifiable in the national security interest, but one has to watch carefully the expansion of that idea. And that, of course, is why the two intelligence committees of the Congress - the Intelligence Committee of the Senate and of the House - were created.

**MR. NEWMAN:** That leads us more or less logically into the question of human rights and how far human rights should play a part in American policy. For example, President Reagan has made human rights a very considerable issue in the arms control talks with the Soviet Union. He has said that human rights is at the core of our foreign policy. Is it a good idea for human rights to be given such prominence?

**SECRETARY HAIG:** I'll answer that by saying that, of course, human rights is a fundamental aspect of our foreign policy. I would not suggest that Reykjavik put human rights high on the agenda. It was hardly discussed. I am suggesting that you must give due attention to that as well as the national interest, and sometimes they clash.

**SECRETARY KISSINGER:** I would make a different point. Human rights are obviously an important element of American foreign policy, reflecting, as they do, our fundamental values. I do not believe they have anything to do with arms control policy. In other words, if the Soviet Union lets out more immigrants, that is no reason for us to ease our arms control

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**SECRETARY RUSK:** I yield to no one in my interest in human rights, but I'm concerned about how we go about it. There are only about thirty constitutional democracies in the world in which human rights are in good condition. More than a hundred and thirty nations have varying degrees of dictatorships. If we make human rights a condition for our participation with others, in other major problems such as arms control, this could be a self selected road to isolation as we withdraw into this community of constitutional democracies.

(Applause)

**SECRETARY MUSKIE:** Probably the most visible current illustration of the problem is, of course, South Africa. We moved, I think, as a country, not only through our government, but through the private sector, very carefully over a long period of time in accommodating our view of what the situation in South Africa represents and what it ought to be. We've moved progressively to tougher positions because we've seen little or no evidence of any move on the part of the government of South Africa to move away from apartheid. The recurring question has been, through these years - and I think I can go back in my own recollection at

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least twenty to twenty-five years in the evolution of our attitude - about what, if anything, we should do to intervene or influence the internal affairs of South Africa? I suspect, as this time has unfolded, that increasingly we see the situation there as a destabilizing element in the relationship of African states to each other. That does make it of concern to the entire world, because a totally destabilized situation there could lead to regional destabilization and bloodshed. So, there is an international concern about what happens in South Africa.

**SECRETARY HAIG:** They've been opposed because they felt that their own people would be the first victims of this finger wagging, holier than thou American attitude. I think, that's wrong. I think, it's also well to remember that our multi-nationals - European and American - have been the compelling force of pressure on the Botha government to achieve change. I would challenge the contention that they have not changed.

They have made many changes although not enough - not anywhere near enough. But if the practical consequences of this "feel good" policy here in America are to revolutionize their society - the Black leadership of which will be the first victim - and turn the southern region of Africa over to Soviet mischief, then I don't care what morality we're talking about. We've created more problems than we've solved.

(Applause)

**SECRETARY MUSKIE:** May I make this point: all of the arguments you've made in support of the position you've stated - at least more clearly then I could have been made for the last twenty-five years, looking for -- I think your phrase was - the "realistic" opportunities to change the situation there. I've used those arguments myself. I'm a member of a college board. I can remember that in the initial stages of discussion of that issue I made the arguments you've made. The finance committee of the college on its own, without any advice from the board of trustees, finally, totally divested because it did not want to be....

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SECRETARY HAIG: (inaudible).

SECRETARY MUSKIE: No. I understand, and I'm not elevating the discussion beyond one of presenting all points of view.

SECRETARY HAIG: Let me explain one of the great, great mistakes of recent years. When we started out in 1981, it was a two track policy. The first was to insist relentlessly on change but quietly, recognizing that while South Africa is not a democracy by our standards although it is governed by a democratic process. When we in the United States start this process of bludgeoning from abroad, we make it more difficult for incumbent leaders of whatever stripe to achieve the reform we are seeking. We ought to learn that in a number of areas around the world.

SECRETARY MUSKIE: I think with respect to that situation, Al, if the South Africans had done in Libya what we thought we had set in motion -- by "we" I mean the other countries of the special group which was working on their problem -- and if Libya had been tied to Angola, then I think there was a first step that might have had a salutary effect.

To take the case of South Africa or any one of these situations, it isn't enough to say -- let's talk about South Africa -- the end of apartheid unless you can define what you mean by the end of apartheid. Because there is the aspect that here in this region would have been called "segregation," and there is the aspect of political participation in government.

26

It seems to me that we have not given an answer to that question when we promote upheavals in countries that we consider non-democratic. One ought to remember that revolutions are started by bringing together all those who oppose the existing system, but the test of a revolution is what you build afterwards. If we're not going to pay the price of stabilizing the upheaval we have ourselves created, then a human rights policy can contribute to chaos rather than to progress. It seems to me, those are the criteria, or at least some of the criteria that ought to be applied to these questions.

(Applause)

I would like to see a group of constitutional experts, drawn from countries with complex ethnic and constitutional situations, like India, Yugoslavia, Nigeria, Switzerland, the United States, Canada and Australia to see what can be done and try to get away from sloganizing - this slogan of "one man one vote." There would not have been a United States had we tried to pursue the basis of one man one vote. We still don't have it at the Federal level in the way we select Senators and the Electoral College System for choosing our President. But I would like to see some people working hard on what can be done. After all, in the old League of Nations days they had enormous experience in the protection of minorities in all sorts of countries. I'd like to see somebody working on an answer and not just preparing for confrontation.

(Applause)

The Sullivan Principles clearly were advocated by Reverend Sullivan years ago as a way for American multinational corporations doing business in South Africa. They, by their own policies, within their own organizations and their own plans, through their own employees, began to demonstrate the viability of human rights in their own operations and thus hope to

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Now we are seeing companies pulling out. Bell and Howell, the other day, pulled all of its operations in South Africa out. They said in their statement that they had given up on any prospect for movement on apartheid. I agree with Henry and with Dean Rusk that we have to have in mind a definition of what kind of progress we would like to see. Of course, we should. That's the responsible way.

(Applause)

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(Applause)

SECRETARY HAIG: It is a question always of recognizing that despite these value judgments of the heinous character of the Soviet system and their motives, they're going to be as dominated by self-interest as they are by ideology. The challenge for American statecraft is to create a calculus of self-interest in Moscow which would lead them, however briefly, to more moderate conduct abroad, the rejection of bloodshed, terrorism and so called "wars of liberation," and some acceptance of peaceful change through rule of law.

Now, Josep Stalin sat over there in Moscow, looked out across the West, and saw the divisions melting away. He tried to keep the northwest province of Iran - Azerbaijan - the first case before the U. N. Security Council. He demanded two eastern provinces of Turkey, Karzan and Aderhand. He supported the guerillas going after Greece, using bases in places like Albania, Yugoslavia and Bulgaria. He brushed aside some of the wartime agreements that would seem to have given the peoples of eastern Europe some say in their political future. He had a hand in the communist coup d'état in Czechoslovakia. He blockaded Berlin. He

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gave the green light to the North Koreans to go after the South Koreans. And this all in a period when we were disarming.

Now, to me, those were the events that launched the Cold War. I think, we may have contributed to the Cold War in that we may have subjected Mr. Stalin to intolerable temptations through our own weakness. So, I think, we have to be careful that we do not put ourselves in that kind of position again.

But on the other side, during the very serious Berlin crisis of 1961 - and the Cuban missile crisis, President Kennedy and his chief associates felt that it was just too late in history to pursue a policy of total hostility toward that other nuclear superpower. Things were put in motion which produced the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, a civil air agreement, a consular agreement, a nonproliferation treaty, an important space treaty, improvement in trade, etcetera.

(Applause)

SECRETARY KISSINGER: The question as you put it, seems to me to illustrate the way Americans often look at foreign policy, either identifying it with psychiatry on the one hand by analyzing the intentions of the Soviet Union, or with a theology on the other hand, by judging its moral qualities. Periods of confrontation are in the hands of theologians, and periods of relaxation are in the hands of psychiatrists. Therefore, we oscillate back and forth. Yes, I will agree that the Soviet Union feels threatened, but the question is not whether they feel threatened, but what it takes to reassure them. If the only way they can be reassured is by the impotence of everybody else, then their search of security has the consequence of making everybody else insecure. The question is: Will they be willing to live with relative security rather than absolute security, which is what every other nation has to live with?

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sustain this and will not sustain it. Then it doesn't show a way out. The difficulty, we'll see with what I call "the psychiatric approach," is that it gives us no criteria for progress. I agree that we are condemned to coexistence by nuclear weapons. We must find a way of coexisting, but we must also be precise. There is a tendency -- and I've been a part of it; Dean Rusk mentioned some examples -- where in periods of relaxation you sign cultural agreements, consular agreements, exchanges. But at the end that does not do much more than improve the atmosphere, and there has to be an end to expansionism. There has to be precise criteria for arms control. Arms control is now trapped in the position that the theory was developed thirty years ago, and the technology has advanced enormously since then. Many of the concepts that were valid thirty years ago no longer apply. We haven't developed new ones for many reasons. There is, in my view, a great opportunity in the fact that the Soviet governmental system is in difficulty and that the Soviet economic system is a shambles. By any objective analysis, the Soviets need agreements more than we do. But if we cannot translate this into specific conditions in our own mind, then opportunity will be missed.

SECRETARY KISSINGER: Well, I am a supporter of the concept of strategic defense, maybe not with all of the justifications that have been given by the administration, but as a basic concept and for these reasons: One, I believe nuclear weapons will be a component of strategy for the indefinite future. They cannot be abolished for many practical reasons. Two, I do not see how a democratic leadership can tell its public that its own extermination is the key to its security and will make no effort to protect it. Three, I believe we are in this sense in a precarious situation that if a nuclear war ever starts - and I agree with Dean's analysis that it is highly unlikely and that the calculations are almost engineering calculations - the Strategic Defense Initiative would add an element of considerable uncertainty to the calculations of an aggressor. To be sure, the Strategic Defense Initiative should be negotiated in its magnitude, in the same relationship and in the same way as offensive weapons. The lower the offensive, the fewer need be the defensive weapons.

(Applause)

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**SECRETARY HAIG:** Let me add two other considerations. The one, of course, being the currently touted one, is that they fear America's ability and technology. But I would also suggest -- though the twenty years lead they have on us in certain of these areas, especially ground laser systems -- they are very, very fearful of not only the defensive potential of SDI, but it's offensive potential. They have, probably, firsthand knowledge through applied research.

**SECRETARY KISSINGER:** Once again, one has to keep in mind that the offensive potential is not now banned by any treaty and is not under negotiation. This is the ironical aspect of this negotiation that if we wanted tomorrow morning to place offensive weapons in space, there is no existing international agreement, no any ongoing negotiations, that would ban this.

**SECRETARY RUSK:** I would have to say that I disagree in certain nuances with my friends across the table. I support research on SDI as a hedge against a breakthrough in the state of the art by someone else and because I see no practical way to verify a ban on research. But I'm appalled by the prospect of moving the arms race into outer space. Surely the most economical, quickest, easiest way to get rid of a missile is with a wrench and a screwdriver, and not by spending hundreds of billions of dollars to put these things in outer space that can shoot down these missiles after they have been launched.

(Applause)

**SECRETARY RUSK:** I would predict myself -- I probably won't be around to collect on it -- that a future President and a future Congress will simply not go down that trail. I fault the Russians for not taking a little more of a gamble here -- because they too have scientists and technical people, and they know that this is a very hypothetical possibility - with a major chance that it simply won't work out from a scientific and technical point of view. Therefore, they ought to get on with the serious and real problems of putting some limits on the arms race and not let SDI become an obstacle.

(Applause)

**SECRETARY KISSINGER:** When President Reagan made his speech on SDI, I actually was

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It seems to me that everything you have said about space-based weapons is true of city busting weapons that are now in the armories of the major countries and the multiplication of warheads put on these missiles. These two problems have to be solved together. Your objection is as valid on Earth as it is in space.

**SECRETARY MUSKIE:** Might I throw in here? This is too important an issue for me to be silent on. I have two or three reservations about SDI. Number one, I share Dean Rusk's reservations about whether or not it can be done scientifically, and I'm prepared to go ahead with research. Secondly, the history of the technology of nuclear weapons is that each new development triggers another round at a higher level in the arms race. This is true of the MIRV development, which more than any other single development up to now has created many of the problems that are so difficult to resolve today, and we ought to recognize that. Thirdly, once we are able to put weapons in outer space, the difference between defensive and offensive weapons would disappear, because having achieved that technology, we can apply it to offensive weapons as well as defensive.

But then I'd like to say this: I think this is an issue that can be resolved in undertaking to structure and arms control agreement. I understand the Russian position, I think, and I understand the administration's position. If what we're talking about is defining, in point, the beyond mere laboratory research and testing in outer space, let alone deployment, then there are very logical ways to identify such points. If both parties are interested in doing so. I think that the dialogue ought to go beyond the discussion of this issue in Reykjavik, and undertake to identify such points. I would hope that there is such a point because I think it important that each of the super-powers exercise restraint on the other in developing technology. It moves so fast and so rapidly that unless there is a point of restraint applied to both, it can overwhelm us before common and true perception of our national security interests are protected.

**SECRETARY KISSINGER:** Ed, what bothers me in the shifting positions is that if you analyze the Soviet proposals at Reykjavik or at Geneva, they carefully maintain every existing threat. In their version of the fifty percent cut, their threat to our land-based missiles is not reduced; the threat to our sea-based missiles is increased; the threat to our population is maintained. It is primarily a symbolic gesture. If they were willing to abolish their heavy missiles; if they would agree, mutually, that we do away with multiple warheads and put single warheads on our missiles so that the danger of surprise attack or a first strike is reduced, then the problem of SDI would take on a different connotation. But as long as they keep proposing percentage cuts in categories where they are numerically superior, therefore, a fifty percent cut or any percentage cut is relatively more disadvantageous for us than for them. We are in an area of symbolic agreements and not substantive agreements. What we have to do is to get them to agree to something that we can actually say changes the situation.

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(Applause)

**SECRETARY MUSKIE:** As I understand the proposals that were tabled at Reykjavik, there's a range there that makes it possible, if both sides are interested in doing so, to arrive at an agreement. Of course, we wouldn't agree to the kind of hypothetical proposal that you posed.

**SECRETARY KISSINGER:** I know, but that's the actual proposal. That is --

**SECRETARY MUSKIE:** I'm not suggesting compromising I'm talking about --

**SECRETARY KISSINGER:** I understand what you're saying on SDI. You are saying that we can move it out of the testing, past of the testing out of the laboratory and come to a definition of testing that we can live with.

**SECRETARY MUSKIE:** No. I think so, but we need to go beyond that. Obviously, I'm not going to give them a blank check on offensive weapons. For example, out of Reykjavik, we could agree on a five year basis -- not that they agreed to this -- to a limitation of sixteen hundred launchers and six thousand weapons. The sublimits would have to be worked out.

**SECRETARY KISSINGER:** It depends on what we pay for it.

**SECRETARY MUSKIE:** It depends on what we pay for it. That kind of objective, I think, could be worked out. It hasn't been worked out. One of the things that I am unhappy about with Reykjavik is the implication or suggestion that because these items were put on the table that there was agreement when in fact there wasn't agreement. There's been no agreement at Reykjavik. These things have to be worked out.

**SECRETARY HAIG:** Let me add just a little irony here, because I share precisely the view of Dr. Kissinger has expressed. The irony of this is that SDI has become important because of American reluctance to cope with emerging Soviet threats. You know, for years we've been debating whether or not we, as a nation could afford to deploy ballistic counters to the Soviet's three to one ballistic superiority in ballistic systems. I don't have to tell you about the MX debate and the debate over the mini-missile. We've created a vacuum in our own vulnerability that makes this SDI so amazingly significant. And let me suggest, also, that some of the arguments I'm hearing against SDI are the same arguments I heard against deploying MX's in the face of Soviet deployments of SS-19's, 18's, 24's and 25's, while we have sat and neutralized ourselves with internal debate here in America.

(Applause)

**SECRETARY MUSKIE:** May I say we have now posed that in SDI. No one around this table has advocated backing off from SDI. What I've advocated is finding a way to agree on SDI. Henry referred to SDI as though it were a bargaining chip. Well, if it is that - to the extent that it is - then let's use it to work out an agreement on SDI and, at the same time,

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MR. NEWMAN: Somebody has to have the last word, and I have now decided that it has been had. We're going to take a couple of questions from the audience, and I don't want to keep the people who are going to be asking the questions standing, but there is one subject we ought to get to, and I ask you to be brief on it if there's something you want to say, and that is Nicaragua. Is the Sandinista regime in Nicaragua a threat to the vital interests of the United States? Does anybody want to say anything about that? And, as I say, if you can be brief, please do.

(Applause)

Secondly, I think that they suffer from the fact that there is so little solidarity in the hemisphere with respect to these issues. But, I must say that if the facts are as alleged, then I myself would be very serious about Nicaragua. Back in 1964, Castro was caught red-handed landing men and arms on the coast of Venezuela. The foreign ministers of the OAS met at that time and imposed upon Castro all of the sanctions that are available out of the Rio Pact, with the exception of use of armed force. At the time, the OAS said to Castro, "If these activities continue, we do not exclude the use of armed force." So, I would be very serious about it. But I must confess that I am still somewhat puzzled about just what the facts are and what we can do to build up solidarity in the hemisphere where it's a problem for everybody and not just a unilateral problem for the United States.

[L.C]

(Applause)

UNKNOWN VOICE: (Inaudible)

UNKNOWN VOICE: (Inaudible)

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transformed the Monroe Doctrine into a multilateral instrument through the charter of the Organization of American States and the Rio Treaty. It becomes especially important for us therefore to have as much hemispheric solidarity as possible in any action taken. Remember, the Organization of American States was infinitely and unanimously in support of the idea that the missiles in Cuba were a threat to the security of the western hemisphere, and demanded that they be removed. So it would be very (inaudible) for us to proceed unilaterally on the basis of the Monroe Doctrine, but it's entirely possible for us to move through the Organization of American States. After all, in January, 1962, the Organization of American States expelled the Castro government from participation in the OAS on the grounds that Marxist/Leninism was simply contrary to the political traditions of the western hemisphere. So, I hope we can move in that direction and not leave this matter, in effect, a unilateral problem for the United States.

(Applause)

Governor?

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My question is this: According to a recent front page report in the *Washington Post*, a study commissioned by Secretary Shultz found a serious lack of language ability in our foreign service. This coincides with a recent report issued by the Southern Governor's Association. Doesn't this hurt the ability to conduct foreign policy? For example, isn't this partly responsible for our difficulties in dealing with the Iranian situation during the fall of the Shah? And aren't there other examples where the lack of language competence has impaired the ability of this country to deal with foreign emergencies?

**SECRETARY KISSINGER:** First, with respect to the fall of the Shah, my impression is that what went wrong there was a real conceptual breakdown in this sense. When people said we should have more contact with the opposition, what they really meant was with politicians in Teheran. I was in office for eight years. I never heard - the name of Khomeini in any intelligence report. I never realized -- nobody ever told me -- that the mullahs were a political force in Iran. I think this was true of our successors as well under whom the revolution actually took place. This was a case where the problem had been totally misunderstood.

(Applause)

**SECRETARY RUSK:** I think the Governor has raised a very important point. We've been making steady progress in this direction over a period of time. I remember at one point seeing a figure that sixty percent of our foreign service officers spoke the language of the country in which they were assigned, and that included many of the "weird" languages in the world. But I've heard very recently that the foreign language program of the Department of State has been abandoned for budgetary reasons. I personally feel that that would be an unmitigated disaster, and I appreciate the Governor's raising this question with us.

**MR. NEWMAN:** Gentlemen, Secretary Haig, Secretary Kissinger, Secretary Rusk, Secretary Muskie, thank you all for your participation today.

(Applause)

**MR. NEWMAN:** And thanks also to the audience here in the Civic Center in Atlanta.

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MR. NEWMAN: Welcome to "The Fourth Annual Conference of Secretaries of State." Today we have with us four former Secretaries.

DEAN RUSK served the longest term, eight years, from 1961 to 1969 in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. His years of government service date back to 1946, when he joined the State Department during the Truman administration. Mr. Rusk has also served as president of the Rockefeller Foundation and is currently a professor of law at the University of Georgia.

ALEXANDER HAIG was President Reagan's first Secretary of State and served until his resignation in June 1982. In 1969 he was named Military Advisor to Henry Kissinger and was then appointed Deputy Assistant of National Security Affairs. General Haig served as President Nixon's Chief of Staff in 1974 and then as NATO Supreme Commander in Europe from 1974 to 1978. Secretary Haig is now a consultant in Washington, D. C.

For more than twenty years, the Southern Center for International Studies (SCIS) has provided the Southeast with perspectives and information on international affairs. In 1983 the Southern Center presented its "First Annual Conference of Former Secretaries of State." That meeting marked the first time these men had gathered to discuss American foreign policy. Today, the Southern Center is convening its fourth annual conference. The purpose is to bring to the American public the collective experience and wisdom of these men, who represent an extraordinary national resource.

The last few weeks have seen a tremendous amount of discussion, gentlemen, of how United States foreign policy is made because of the dealings with Iran. Are there any lessons to be learned about the way that policy is made or should be made?

Secretary Rusk?

SECRETARY RUSK: Thank you, Ed Newman. I'm sure I speak for my colleagues in saying that we're delighted to be under your fine professional guidance for our discussion today.

Every administration has had to do things which in retrospect appear to have been a mistake, and every administration has to become accustomed to the fact that disappointment and frustration are built in to the very nature of our relations with the rest of the world. So, as far as I'm concerned, the present problem is one of what some people have called "damage control." I'll mention two points.

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One is that the President must move firmly and directly to establish without any question the authority of the Secretary of State to speak for the United States. It's not just a matter of what happens to our present Secretary of State, but it's important to the nation as a whole. Otherwise, our diplomacy will be severely limited.

The other problem is relations between the President and the Congress. This could be of critical importance because we're at the beginning of a two-year period where we have a Republican President and a Democratic Congress. The necessity for these two branches to work together is overriding.

I would like to say to my colleagues in Congress something about what happened twenty-five years ago. President Kennedy was faced with the failure and the tragic mistake of the Bay of Pigs. It fell to me to go down to Congress to talk to some of the key committees on Capitol Hill; and I remember very well that the prevailing mood was regret, sadness, and a certain amount of compassion. The Republicans on those committees did not bare their fangs in order to rip the President to pieces. There was a general feeling that we should somehow put this behind us and get on with the public business of the nation.

Now, I hope that as we face these next two years, we shall not see foreign policy and defense policy become an object of partisan bickering as each party jousts for position for the election of 1988. The American people have the right to be better served than that.

SECRETARY KISSINGER: It was not, in my view, a mistake to try to improve relations with Iran. Iran is a country of decisive geo-strategic importance in that region, and a prudent President and administration would want to improve relations. But where it got off the rails, it seems to me, was in the means. The sale of arms to a radical, revolutionary government is not the best way to prove American good faith; nor am I convinced that the obligation to show good faith lay primarily upon the United States.

Much of the public discussion has been on organizational questions. Which element of the government should have pre-eminence? In determining that, one really should know whether the State or Defense Department were excluded, or whether they excluded themselves; whether their complaint is that they were overruled, or whether their complaint is that they were kept in ignorance.

So, as a general proposition, I would think the lesson to be learned from this particular period is partly an organizational one if people were kept in ignorance, but largely a conceptual one. What did the various people think they were doing? Why did they think it? What was wrong about that thinking? And, where it was wrong and what was right because the major elements of that policy were also right and that must not be forgotten. That seems to me to be the key question rather than the prerogatives of individual members of the administration.

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SECRETARY HAIG: Clearly, this is a politicized issue, and while I fervently share the observations of Secretary Rusk, I'm afraid it will become that and we're going to witness many, many months of precisely that.

Now, that's unfortunate because the historic struggle between the Congress and the Executive Branch on who is responsible, I think, is clearly outlined in the Constitution with the obligation of the Executive Branch to keep the Congress informed, but at the same time the right of the Executive Branch to take these initiatives.

If one looks back on our history during the period that Dr. Kissinger and I were working together, it was the ability of the President to take initiatives in secret that opened the doors to China and that led to the peace treaty in Viet Nam. It is unfortunate that it was Congressional mischief that, I think, lost that peace treaty and its effectiveness.

So I would be very concerned in the weeks and months ahead that we not cripple the institution of the Presidency, which is after all a floating crap game in cycles of four years. There is a great tendency in the American Congress to legislate permanent solutions to temporary problems. One might even debate whether the War Powers Act was such a piece of legislative action. So I share the views of both. I also share Henry's comment that I wish our Cabinet would support our President in a time of crisis; and like one Secretary of State that I know if they cannot, to leave.

SECRETARY HAIG: Not a thing. I am not encouraging any action on the part of anyone. I am suggesting that if you disagree with a policy, and your conscience tells you that you cannot live with it, then you must make a decision before the act is committed.

SECRETARY MUSKIE: You know your question was: What lessons are there to be learned out of this incident? Unfortunately, most of the lessons that we need to learn whenever our country goes through a crisis of this nature are lessons that have been taught before but forgotten. Forgotten by the President, forgotten by the Congress, and forgotten by others.

The responsibility of the Senate, for example, in the foreign policy field is described best by three Constitutional words, "advise and consent." Presidents are very conscious of the consent part of it, and in the name of consent they preach their definition of bipartisan foreign policy. They tend to overlook the "advise" part of that Constitutional mandate, which has led them into a great deal of difficulty. Among other things, it has led the Congress to do the sort of thing that Secretary Haig just decried a moment ago. When Presidents do not consult or do not advise effectively, the Congress is likely to take the initiative into its own hands, and that happens.

In a democratic system such as ours, based on the idea of freedom and a free society and a free people, policy makers must always be sensitive to the fact that at some point they are going to be accountable for the consequences of their policies and their initiatives.

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But in order to repair it, no one of those involved in this incident can be excluded from the responsibility of repairing the damage, including the President, including the President's White House staff, where perhaps the responsibility lies heaviest; but also in the Congress.

**SECRETARY HAIG:** This administration on occasion has looked like a revolving crap game. One day Mr. Weinberger is talking foreign policy. One day Mr. Baker or Mr. Regan is talking foreign policy, and the next day the Secretary of State. This has all of the symptoms of anything but a disciplined system, and I think it's unfortunate.

**SECRETARY RUSK:** Perhaps we ought to step back a moment and recognize that we in this country have the most complicated constitutional and political system that one can find, perhaps anywhere in the world, deliberately made complicated by our founding fathers in the interest of imposing restraints upon the exercise of the raw power of the state.

Now, the separation of powers at the Federal level is a very important concept, but there are some limits. The late Chief Justice Earl Warren visited out law school here at Georgia shortly before his death and, on that occasion, reminded us that if each branch of the Federal government were to pursue its own Constitutional powers to the end of the trail, our system simply could not function. It would freeze up like an engine without oil. Impasse is the overhanging threat to our Constitutional system.

Now, the other side of the coin of the separation of powers is a Constitutional necessity for comity among the branches of government, and that, in turn, requires the most effective communication between the two that we can devise. Now, perhaps I'm tilted on the side of the Executive Branch, having lived with that, but it is not easy to consult with five hundred and thirty-five members of Congress. In the first place, they don't have the time to spend to get deeply into most of the major questions of foreign policy. I have long thought it would be desirable if the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations and the House Foreign Affairs Committee would have the privilege of calling before themselves any matter pending before any other committee of Congress in order to comment on it from an overall foreign policy point of view, but relations among the committees of Congress would probably make that impossible.

**SECRETARY MUSKIE:** I think there are other forces at work in the Congress. There has been a fractionating of the authority and areas of responsibility of Congressional committees. When Dean Acheson was Secretary of State and George Marshall, they could go to key members of the key committees in the Senate and in the House and achieve consensus. The authority of chairmen at that time in the Congress was not challenged, and they were able to agree to a great deal and command a following in the Senate and in the House behind the policies. It was a much simpler day. That has changed. That kind of authority is no longer concentrated in committee chairmen. Committee chairmen are lucky if they can hold on to their jobs now from one Congress to the next. So that factionating of authority in the Congress, I think, is partly responsible for the difference and the difficulty today of achieving a Congressional consensus.

**SECRETARY KISSINGER:** The essence of foreign policy, of good foreign policy, is the accumulation of nuance. It is very rare that you can do something that makes a decisive difference. It is a gradual transformation of the situation, and that gets lost when you get too much obsessed with tactical issues, and there, I think, self restraint by the Congress is important.

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Another element that I think is new in the last decade or so under the impact of Watergate, television and other things is the growth of the Congressional staffs. In my observation, many frustrated foreign service officers who were not made Secretaries of State rapidly enough for their tastes, would migrate to the Hill and try to implement from the platform of a Congressional committee brilliant policies that they had failed to get adopted by the man who had been imposed on them, as the Secretary of State or the President. And then liaisons form between the Congressional staffers and the lower levels in the State and Defense Departments, and that makes the management both by the Senators or the Congressmen and by the Executive Branch much more difficult than it was even at the time that I first came to Washington.

SECRETARY KISSINGER: Well, I actually think that it is better for the Senators to rely less on their staffs and more on their judgment, their own judgment. That's what they were elected for. One solution is to make sure that consultation focuses on the fundamental national issues. Where are we trying to go? What is the broad strategy. Rather than what should we say next week to Gorbachev.

MR. NEWMAN: Now, does a Secretary of State need a killer instinct? Does he have to be able to say, "No, there will be no National Security Advisor," or if there is, "He will take orders from me?" Does he have to be able to say, "The White House Chief of Staff does not get into foreign policy affairs?" How has all of this, in other words, affected what the country has just learned about in connection with Iran?

SECRETARY MUSKIE: Well, if the NSC hadn't been created, I suppose it might still exist in the White House in some informal, uncreated way. Part of the answer, part of the reason for that, is the geography. I have a theory -- I'd be interested in whether my colleagues agree with this -- that when the State Department was moved from what is now the Executive Office Building, next door to the White House, to its present house, quite a ways distant, that the geography which separated the Secretary of State from the President tended to enhance the inclination of the President to look around the White House for advice and to find that advice there. The President, for whatever reason in the morning, may be interested in a particular foreign policy issue. He knows that the Secretary of State is busy, in any case on the other side of town, and so it's easy to turn to somebody in the White House.

SECRETARY HAIG: Let me suggest that the killer instinct of a Secretary could very rapidly become a suicidal instinct if he was working for a strong President, because the President decides how he wants to formulate the policy. We've talked about the impact of television -- it's pervasive; the collapse of discipline within the legislature -- and that's true; the proliferation of staffs; and the separation of State from the White House. But I think one of the most important contributors to the new challenges of policy making in America is the globalization of America's responsibilities -- and this is, perhaps, one of the most significant factors in modern America -- and the increasing complexity associated with that globalization. Economic affairs, political affairs, security affairs and commercial affairs are all now part of a cloth, the mosaic of which is the threads of the various departments and in which if there were not a National Security Council, by God, we'd have to invent one to bring these various departments together.

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SECRETARY RUSK: Along side of Dean Acheson's remark about the killer instinct, he also said that in the relations between the President and the Secretary of State it was of the greatest importance that both of them understand at all times which one is President. Now, of course, I'm biased on this, but I think we ought to note just a thing or two about the office of Secretary of State, of which Thomas Jefferson was number one.

The Secretary of State has a five-foot shelf of statutory law organizing his Department and setting many of the main policies that we are expected to follow. A good many of those laws delegate specific responsibilities to the Secretary of State, even though it is generally understood that he exercises those delegated responsibilities under the general direction of the President.

None of that is true of the White House staff. They tend to want to tinker with foreign policy far beyond their competence, experience or responsibility. So I would hope that we could streamline these organizations, ranging from Congressional staffs right over to the White House.

SECRETARY KISSINGER: Well, both Dean Rusk and Al Haig have said much of what I can contribute to this subject. I would like to make two points.

One is that one does not achieve influence in the policy making process by insisting on prerogatives. The President will consult whoever makes, in his mind, the most significant contributions. So there is no substitute for a close relationship between the President and the Secretary of State. And in fact if the relationship is well established, it's inconceivable that the Secretary of State isn't heard.

Secondly, there is an important role for a National Security Council for a Presidential staff. The President needs a group that makes sure that the fundamental issues are being addressed. That's the fundamental job of the National Security Council. When it goes off into operations or when it gets off into its own tactics, that's when one gets into a questionable area. Sometimes the questionable area arises when the President feels very strongly about a policy. A Department feels dubious about it, which is its prerogative, but then, having been heard is reluctant to implement it. Then the President, having the authority that Dean Rusk spoke about, must find somebody to do it. I agree that the staff should be trimmed of those responsibilities that are self serving and unnecessary. At the same time, the Department must be kept focused on fundamental national issues and not on issues of prerogative. The purpose of the exercise is not to establish the prerogative of the Department but to achieve good national policy.

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MR. NEWMAN: Secretary Haig, what is the proper function -- in connection with what has been discussed here -- what is the proper function of a White House Chief of Staff? How public a position, if indeed public at all, should that be?

SECRETARY HAIG: It should be totally unpublic, and only in a dire emergency should a White House Chief of Staff be forced into a public position. He should be a faceless servant of communications between the various bureaus and departments of government and the President and a coordinator of that gaggle which has become this White House staff and a protector of the President -- his time, his energy -- and a setter of priorities for those energies.

MR. NEWMAN: Can we go back to the question of the power of Congress in foreign affairs? Recently, Congress voted to impose sanctions against South Africa. The House voted to extend a moratorium on the testing of anti-satellite weapons. The House cut the SDI budget which the President had sent up. It proposed that he resolve the fact that he should abide by the limits set in SALT II, which has never been ratified. Does this go too far? Does this go too far in impinging on the President's power?

SECRETARY MUSKIE: There are a number of reasons for this, which I think we've already discussed, and I won't belabor them. The fact is that if we have a strong President whose policies have the support of the country -- his policies will prevail over these kinds of Congressional initiatives that you've described.

For example, with respect to the limitations on appropriations for SDI before the Reykjavik Summit, the Congress enacted that and backed off under pressure from the President when the President indicated, and apparently got public support for, the notion that his hands would be tied at the Summit on this issue. Congress backed off. At the same time, I'm sure that Congress feels it made a point, and that was the way for it to make the point. Because what the Congress was interested in was not influencing the Summit on this issue but influencing our policy long term on this question.

And surely the lessons of the last six years indicate that the Congress tends to back off a strong President and a popular President, as it has in my judgment in the last six years, and at times in ways that I did not approve as an individual citizen. So you have this clash between the Congress and the President. It's a healthy thing. The founders intended it.

SECRETARY RUSK: Congress clearly has enormous power in foreign relations under the Constitution. The President does not have a man or a dollar not provided by the Congress. Many of the things which a President or Secretary of State wish to do in our relations with other nations will require legislation or appropriations or both. So that in a real sense the Presidency is a license to persuade, and some Presidents are better persuaders than others. But that element of persuasion is always there. The question is whether there is an inclination at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue to be persuaded.

SECRETARY HAIG: Let me suggest something else beyond what has been discussed here that I certainly am in accord with. It seems to me that in carrying out this usage of the Bully Pulpit which Presidents must do -- they must convince and they must sell their program -- that every administration is well served by a very detailed articulation of an overall framework of a foreign policy and the objectives and goals of that administration.

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press as it affects foreign policy. And here again I'm quoting Dean Rusk. He and some others said this: "Americans should always respect the need for a period of confidential and careful deliberation when dealing with a major international crisis." If this is desirable, Mr. Rusk, how can it be obtained?

MR. NEWMAN: Surely not.

SECRETARY RUSK: I think the American people are better served by their news media than are the people of any other country I know. But, nevertheless, there are some things that we ought to watch. For example, I'm rather astonished to hear people in the news media talk about the people's right to know. They're stuck with the notion that whatever our right to know, we have a right to know only what they choose to tell us; otherwise, the First Amendment is dead. And surely the American people have a right to have their public business conducted in a responsible fashion. Where do you draw the line between that and the so called people's right to know? Well, drawing the line is one of the Constitutional arts that we've had a lot of experience with.

One aspect of the press that bothers me is that it is the principal channel of communication between officials of government and the people. But it's a rather limited and uncertain channel. There are only a limited number of column inches and only limited moments of breathless radio and television news, and you're always snatching at sixty seconds worth of a problem. Otherwise, they'll start shuffling their feet and accuse you of filibustering to avoid more questions.

Most of their questions are about the future. They do such a good job of keeping us up to date that when you have a press conference, I found that eighty percent of my questions were about the future. Well, providence has not given us the capacity to pierce the fog of the future with accuracy; but I couldn't sit there before six hundred reporters and a battery of television cameras and answer eighty percent of my questions by saying, "Damned if I know."

American media, following the tradition of such plays as "The Front Page," focus on getting some piece of news that nobody else has, getting some terrific news break. So some top secret document that they can elicit from somebody has a tremendous effect for them, even though there are ten thousand of those floating around at any given moment, and the author probably classified it top secret to attract attention.

SECRETARY KISSINGER: At any rate, you cannot judge the significance of events by one document. The importance of documents is their relation to each other. Administrations are sorely tempted to try to put a spin on stories and to try to do what Al Haig mentioned -- to influence short term popularity -- and that's unavoidable. All of us have done it at one time or another.

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Fundamentally, it would be helpful if the media in the field of foreign policy understood that real news is to understand the trend of events. I think the best service a Secretary of State can render in presenting foreign policy is to keep briefing the press when there is no crisis on what he is thinking and to be honest about it so that when he does something, they can interpret it themselves.

**SECRETARY HAIG:** What Henry is talking about is the essence of leadership. When a leader communicates regularly and consistently, both with the Congress and with the American people through the media, they know what he's doing, and what he's about. On those occasions when that luxury is not provided, he has built a well of confidence and credibility, and they tolerate a great deal during times when those homilies can't be shared because of the character of the crisis itself. But if he doesn't, then you have this uncertainty and lack of credibility.

**SECRETARY MUSKIE:** There is a classic, recent example of the interplay between the White House and the media, and that is the aftereffects of the Reykjavik Summit. There is no question that the initial impression that I think the public got immediately following the adjournment of that Summit was that it had been a failure. The White House obviously did not want it to be perceived in that way, so almost immediately they undertook to put a spin on it. For the next several days the administration was able to put it's spokesmen on the morning shows and on the evening shows.

I have no fault to find with that, but we're examining the process. Of course, Presidents use the media in this way, and they have succeeded at least so far as the public perception is concerned and so far as the polls and the reaction on the public. They turned that one around.

**MR. NEWMAN:** Did the administration representatives at Reykjavik themselves fully understand what had been done at Reykjavik? Was the confusion in telling the American people what had happened a reflection of their own?

**SECRETARY KISSINGER:** No, I think that goes to the heart of the problem. I believe Reykjavik exposed the absence of a consensus in the administration and the absence of a concept that is applicable to the existing situation in East-West relations and in technology. And, therefore, I think we have to go back to the drawing board.

**SECRETARY HAIG:** I think the point Henry made about Reykjavik is a very, very important one. To me this is the most significant event which has occurred in this administration. And it's not positive, but negative. It dwarfs any significance of the Iranian brouhaha in every respect.

**SECRETARY RUSK:** With respect to my friend Al Haig, it's my impression that Reykjavik has been exaggerated in importance by both sides. We should not have expected very much to come out of it, partly as a matter of time. They met for ten hours. Divide that in half for interpretation, that's five hours. Divide that in half for equal time, and that's two-and-a-half hours. The most that could have come out of that would have been an agreement in principle, so called.

You just can't do business within that span unless the agreements have been negotiated carefully in advance or unless at the Summit they can give any kind of fresh instructions to negotiators to get on with the job somewhere else.

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SECRETARY KISSINGER: I don't think one should comment on that. I really don't.

MR. NEWMAN: What I'm asking is, does the fact that we sometimes engage in clandestine or covert operations in any way damage our moral position?

The conduct of foreign affairs historically must be a balance between ideals and democratic values and full cognizance of the world in which we must conduct our affairs. So long as other states are entitled to conduct covert action, we must be. Heaven help the President who is deprived this fundamental asset of our security matters.

The problem is maintaining this balance. If you are exclusively dominated by Realpolitik and the intrigues of power politics, you will lose the support of the American people because they'll consider your policies not representative of our democratic values. On the other hand, if you pursue policies exclusively in a moralistic framework, you'll also lose the support of the American people because your policies simply will not work. And so it's a constant balance of subjective judgment in which you have to give due weight to both.

SECRETARY MUSKIE: I think it's very human for people holding power to tend to try to expand it, and for people holding power to be corrupted. That surely applies not only to actions which are visible publicly, but especially to covert actions.

I would agree with the premise that there are occasions when covert actions are justifiable in the national security interest, but one has to watch carefully the expansion of that idea; and that, of course, is why the two intelligence committees of the Congress, the Intelligence Committee of the Senate and of the House, were created.

MR. NEWMAN: That leads us more or less logically into the question of human rights and how far human rights should play a part in American policy. For example, President Reagan has made human rights a very considerable issue in the arms control talks with the Soviet Union. He has said that human rights is at the core of our foreign policy. Is it a good idea for human rights to be given that much prominence?

SECRETARY KISSINGER: Human rights are obviously an important element of American foreign policy, reflecting as they do our fundamental values. I do not believe they have anything to do with arms control policy. In other words, if the Soviet Union lets out more immigrants, this is no reason for us to ease our arms control conditions. Arms control has to be related to national security and national strategy, and those conditions should neither be tightened nor eased on the basis of the Soviet human rights record.

An argument could conceivably be made that if the Soviets behave outrageously in oppression, that no agreements of any kind should be made with them. That is something that I can understand. I cannot understand saying that the terms that might be set for arms control will be influenced by Soviet behavior on human rights.

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SECRETARY RUSK: I yield to no one in my interest in human rights, but I'm concerned about how we go about it. There are only about thirty constitutional democracies in the world in which human rights are in good condition. More than a hundred and thirty nations have varying degrees of dictatorship. Now, if we make human rights a condition for our participation with others in other major problems, such as arms control, this could be a self-selected road to isolation on our part as we withdraw into this community of constitutional democracies.

I think we ought to work at it continuously, sympathetically, even compassionately, behind the scenes, and be a little careful about public confrontations with countries all over the world, and also without any element of sanctimony.

SECRETARY KISSINGER: It seems to me that there are a number of questions one has to ask. One, what is the national interest of the United States in a particular area of the world? Second, what is the objective we are trying to achieve in that part of the world? Third, what price are we willing to pay to achieve that objective?

To take the case of South Africa or any one of these situations, it isn't enough to say "let's talk about South Africa -- the end of apartheid" unless you can define what you mean by apartheid, because there is the aspect that here in this region would have been called segregation, and there is the aspect of political participation in government.

The first has a conceptually relatively easy solution. The second is extremely complicated when you have a white community, a black community itself divided into at least eight major linguistic groups, an Indian community, and a colored community; so if one is attempting to change the system, one owes it to oneself to define what a democratic solution is in such a context. One has no right just to throw a match into a powder keg and then say, "Okay. You deserved this."

One ought to remember that revolutions are started by bringing together all those who oppose the existing system, but the test of a revolution is what you build afterwards. If we're not willing to pay the price of stabilizing the upheaval we have ourselves created, then a human rights policy can contribute to chaos rather than to progress. It seems to me those are the criteria, or at least some of the criteria that ought to be applied to these questions.

EDWIN NEWMAN: Is it possible to weigh our human rights policy against our strategic interests in a country? Let's say South Africa, Chile, South Korea, Guatemala. You've said more than once today -- it's been said around the table more than once in certain connections -- that there are no hard and fast rules. Is this another situation in which there are none?

SECRETARY KISSINGER: Foreign policy has to begin with insuring the survival of the United States because if we don't survive, our values will go down as well. The art of foreign policy, however, in the vast majority of cases is to prevent such stark choices from having to be made. If one gets down to such a stark choice, it is often a failure of one's foreign policy.

So as a general principle, I would say if it gets down to it, I would have to choose the fundamental strategic interests. I would also hope that one can avoid getting down to that question.

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**SECRETARY MUSKIE:** That's a particularly difficult situation, South Korea, because it's own domestic tranquility affects its ability to protect its survival and security as well as affect our national security interests. It's very difficult to find the ways to apply pressure or influence, whatever benign word you want to use, upon the government of South Korea to move toward the democratization of their political processes, which they have promised, but they have been very slow to move in that way. They have argued that the protection of their security interests governs the pace of their movement.

**MR. NEWMAN:** Somebody has to have the last word, and I have now decided that it has been had. But there is one subject we ought to get to, and I ask you to be brief on it if there's something you want to say. That is Nicaragua. Is the Sandinista regime in Nicaragua a threat to the vital interests of the United States?

**SECRETARY HAIG:** I don't think we would really care whether, by free choice, the people of Nicaragua selected a communist regime, and frankly we shouldn't put ourselves in the position of saying, "We have the right to determine."

What gives Nicaragua its strategic dimension is the Cuban presence in Nicaragua, and the Soviet manipulation of that presence. I would also make the outrageous statement that if it were not for those two elements, the Nicaraguan people would take care of Marxism overnight. They'd throw them out on their ear. And that's why we simply haven't been going about the problem right in that region.

**SECRETARY RUSK:** My views on that are not typical of many Democrats. I think the administration has a problem in that it has not presented to the public or to other governments a clear, convincing, factual case as to just what it is that the Sandinistas are doing in countries like El Salvador, Costa Rica, Honduras; because from such facts would flow many consequences.

Secondly, I think that they suffer from the fact that there is so little solidarity in the hemisphere with respect to these issues. But I must say that if the facts are as alleged, then I myself would be very serious about Nicaragua.

**SECRETARY MUSKIE:** What troubles me about Nicaragua is that here we are. We have normal diplomatic relations with Nicaragua. We recognize their government. They recognize ours. And yet we are there investing another hundred million dollars supporting a rebel faction undertaking to overthrow that government or at least to change its policies in ways which give them a role in that government. I find that an inconsistent position for us to be in.

Now, I think Al Haig has put his fingers on what we need to attack, to get at, and that is the Cuban and Russian involvement there, whatever the dimensions of that. I really don't know because I don't have access to the intelligence, as Dean Rusk has said. I think that's what we ought to focus on. But I am concerned about the over emphasis, or the almost total emphasis, on a military solution to the problem.

**SECRETARY HAIG:** Let me just add one observation. What's happened to derail our Central American policies is this: on the one hand concern about Soviet expansionism and on the other an expression that somehow we proclaim the right to determine the kinds of regimes that will exist in Central America and that we'll take direct action in those countries to overthrow Marxism.

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[LQ]

To me, the United States should be an advocate of rule of law. As an advocate of a rule of law, we have every right to insist that Castro's Cuba and the Soviet Union butt out of the internal affairs of Central American republics. When we start the same, we create these ambiguities and confusions which are the overtones of your answer. I may say.

SECRETARY KISSINGER: I would think that a Nicaraguan government that had Latin American advisors rather than Cuban advisors, whose army was on the same level as that of other Central American countries rather than the size of ninety thousand and that took its economic help from democratic nations rather than six hundred million dollars from the Soviet Union -- if conditions such as these could be achieved -- then what form of government exists in Nicaragua is not a vital interest of the United States, although we would have a preference.

However, as long as there are ten thousand Cuban so called advisors there, plus thousands of others from Bulgaria, Libya whose only common feature is hostility to the United States and who surely wouldn't be in Nicaragua on any other basis, East Germany and so forth -- as long as they have an army nearly as large as Mexico's -- they are a major threat, and we have to face it.

(Applause)

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