Ernest Graves
Q:
I never knew that Mr. McGiffert worked for Mr. Resor. Of course, I knew that's who
you worked for.
A:
Well, McGiffert is very much a Democrat stalwart. He started out when he came to
work for McNamara as his head of congressional liaison. That job was the Assistant
Secretary of Defense for Congressional Relations. He had had that job for some time.
When Resor first came down, he was the Under Secretary of the Army. Stephen Ailes
was the Secretary. After three or four months, Ailes left and Resor became Secretary.
Then McGiffert was to come down.
Resor came in March or April and became Secretary in July. McGiffert didn't come
down as Under Secretary until late that fall because McNamara had him doing several
important things. But I knew him very well from those days.
Q:
He survived the change to the Reagan administration, if I am not mistaken.
A:
No. Nobody survived.
Q:
I thought maybe he did.
A:
No. [Robert W.] Komer had become Under Secretary [of Defense] for Policy. They
weren't interested too much in what Komer had to say, or McGiffert either. No, when
the Reagan administration came in, they had a very strong view that most of these
things had been controlled by the Democrats for too long. They wanted a change.
Q:
While you were DSAA, one journalist--is Michael Klare's name familiar to you?
A:
I don't remember him, no.
Q:
Actually, he's not really a journalist. That's not fair. I think he was a fellow at the
Center for Policy Studies and he has a recent book called American Arms Supermarket.
It was in a Harper's article that he referred to you as the nation's top arms export
official.
A:
Well, that was right. But I think that job has gone through many evolutions. If you go
back to the McNamara era, the man who had that job was a civilian named Henry Cuss.
McNamara had the view that the foreign sale of U.S. weapons was an important way
to distribute the fixed costs. The larger the production base, the less each weapon
would cost. He had Henry Cuss going around the world selling U.S. weapons. That was
an economic view of the world.
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