Ernest Graves
defense." That was always his pitch. But he didn't want us to be wasteful, to have more
than we needed.
The issue was to be careful in what we needed. But the point is, he didn't know much,
because we lost.
Q:
Is that what you were primarily concerned with when you were in Resor's office? Is
that what you worked with primarily?
A:
The whole matter of managing the Vietnam War was the top subject. Of course, the
Secretary of the Army gets into a lot of things. Incidentally, he didn't get into civil
works. In those days, the General Counsel handled that. Al Fitt handled that. Resor had
almost nothing to do with it.
It was amusing because, later on, there was a huge court suit over the
TennesseeTombigbee Canal. Resor had signed a paper respecting the authorization,
and there was a big issue about whether he exceeded his authority. I was actually in the
Secretary of the Army's office at the time this took place. Either Al Fitt or his
successor, Bob Jordan, was handling it.
I remember that Resor put his mind to it. They took care of it in less than an hour, as
I remember. That was nothing compared to issues like ammunition supply for Vietnam
or personnel, where Resor would work on the problems for months to get them right.
His focus was on the war, properly, and not on these other things.
Q:
And so was yours?
A:
And mine was, too.
Another issue at the time was the issue of ballistic missile defense. Allen Enthoven, the
Army, and others were looking at what would be the effectiveness or ineffectiveness
of a ballistic missile defense.
In September of 1967 MacNamara made his famous speech announcing that we were
going to proceed with an ABM [antiballistic missile] system. That was a political
decision because MacNamara and his whole crew were violently opposed to this. But
President Johnson decided to go ahead with deployment. The result was the ABM
treaty with the Soviet Union. In spite of the bias of MacNamara against this, it was a
good decision.
You are seeing a replay of these two sides now in President [Ronald R.] Reagan's
Strategic Defense Initiative [SDI]. You can get out the articles and look down the
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