Engineer Memoirs
default on all these contracts because the contracts were between the U.S. government
and the suppliers. But the only legal source of money for the program payments was
the money from Iran.
What we did was to go to work to get new purchasers. Israel had wanted earlier
delivery of its F16s. So they took the first F16s. Iran had been ahead of Israel in the
queue. What we did was to have Israel take over the Iranian F16s.
But the biggest thing that occurred concerned the four ships being built for
Iran--cruisers or destroyers, the same size ship as the present Aegis ship. Not the same
cost, but basically the same hull. They were being built in a shipyard in Pascagoula,
Mississippi.
We asked the U.S. Navy whether it was interested in taking these ships. The U.S. Navy
wanted the ships, but the whole business of rearranging the Navy program to factor in
these ships, worth about 0 million apiece, was very difficult. Senator Stennis was
very interested in it because the shipyard was in his state.
We managed to get authorization and appropriations for the U.S. Navy to take over the
four ships by about July. The Iranian program never went in the red. The balance got
down to about 0 million. It got to the point that if we did not get this ship money
in July, we were going to be broke. But we got it.
Q:
Didn't you go to the Middle East with Harold Brown as a result of this?
A:
The trip with Brown was completely different. In conjunction with Camp David, we had
a large program involving Israel and Egypt. Brown made a trip that included Saudi
Arabia, Jordan, Israel, and Egypt. I went on that trip with him. This was after the Camp
David "framework" negotiations in August of 1978 and before the final treaty
negotiations in Washington in March of 1979.
Q:
Was that February of '79?
A:
February of '79. I mentioned that arms sales were an instrument of policy. There was
a lot of discussion about strategy on this trip. But what these countries were interested
in was what the U.S. would agree to in the way of arms sales.
I had an interesting experience. We flew straight over there. That's a long flight. We
stayed up all night, redoing Brown's talking papers. We left from Washington in the
evening, and we got there at about five in the afternoon the next day.
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