Ernest Graves
This, of course, was an Air Force special-mission plane, Brown's own plane. We
stopped at Torrejon [Air Force Base] near Madrid in Spain, just a fuel stop on the
ground for a couple of hours. We got to Riyadh about supper time. The Saudis
immediately wanted to have a meeting. I had to meet with the Saudis over what was
going to happen the next day. That meeting lasted three or four hours.
I did get a little sleep. Then the next day we went through the whole thing again with
Brown. There was a long litany of turn downs of things the Saudis wanted. It was
pretty tough. Knowing what I know now, I think I could have handled it better than I
did then. At the time, I'd been on the job about a year. I was in the job for about three
and a half years. I learned more about the way these things worked.
There were a lot of bruised feelings over the unwillingness of the United States to agree
to these sales. Carter did not want to supply all these weapons. And there was another
big problem with Saudi Arabia. Israel objected to sales to Saudi Arabia, and whenever
they were sent up to Congress, it caused a big brouhaha over whether or not the Saudis
should receive them.
The Carter administration didn't want to agree to sell weapons to Saudi Arabia and
then get into the kind of fight that occurred, for example, when the Reagan
administration tried to sell the AWACS and did, in the end, sell the AWACS. That was
a very tough fight. That was one of the reasons that the Carter administration stood off
from supplying everything that the Saudis asked for.
Q:
You went to Jordan and Saudi Arabia and Egypt and Israel?
A:
We went first to Saudi Arabia. Then we stopped over in Jordan. That was a brief trip,
but a very interesting trip because we went to dinner with King Hussein in his palace.
Again, there were talks about arms.
Then we took off and flew towards Cyprus, then turned and flew toward Athens, then
flew back to Israel. You couldn't fly directly from Jordan to Israel because of the
airspace problem. The Israelis really rolled out the red carpet for us. Ezer Weizman was
the Minister of Defense of Israel at that time. And he and Brown were quite compatible.
Q:
He was kind of a charismatic figure, wasn't he?
A:
Very. Weizman was very charismatic. But he knew how to conduct himself with
Brown. And Brown had a great deal of respect for him.
They gave excellent briefings on what they were doing and wanted to do. Of course,
they wanted aircraft and other weapons.
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