Ernest Graves
A:
I think they probably did see it coming. But I don't remember, and I sat in on most of
the discussions. In fact, I had to take notes on several of them. Although I did not sit
in on the discussions with King Hussein, I did sit in on some of the discussions in Saudi
Arabia, particularly the ones between Brown and Prince Sultan, the Saudi Minister of
Defense and Aviation.
In the Saudi discussions, there was some allusion to the relations with Israel. But the
preoccupation was more on military cooperation between Saudi Arabia and the United
States. I don't know about Hussein. I think that we were always trying to persuade
them that if they would accept Israel into the family of nations, we would have a much
better chance of influencing Israel's behavior. The policy of confrontation with Israel
weakened the chances of the United States to moderate Israeli behavior. But countries
like Saudi Arabia were so vehement in their opposition to Israel that it was very hard
to make any progress with them on any of this.
Q:
You've mentioned President Carter trying to make arms transfer the exception rather
than the rule. But quantitatively did that really work out?
A:
It didn't work at all. It was an unsound proposition from the word go.
Q:
And he never could implement it, either, could he?
A:
He had a ceiling the first year. I was the one that had to administer the program during
that first year of the ceiling. Howard Fish, my predecessor, had been there when it was
first established. But the ceiling was a fiscal year ceiling. And the first year that the
ceiling was to apply was from October of '77 through September of '78.
This policy was not one that had been particularly advocated in the Department of
Defense. But interestingly enough, the political leadership in the Department of Defense
did not want to be perceived by the State Department and the National Security Council
[NSC] staff as dragging its feet.
Therefore, my political superiors in the Pentagon were very careful not to take actions
that appeared to undercut the President's policy. But Howie Fish, who was very
knowledgeable in this, had helped to set up the ceiling so that it wasn't going to really
pinch that much. The way he'd done that was to make all kinds of arguments about the
size of the program. The arithmetic came out in such a way that the final amount agreed
on for the ceiling, which was .6 billion, was not a very restrictive program.
It did have one impact. It was a factor in discouraging Iran from ordering more big
ships. Iran had an idea of going on to another class of ship. The U.S. was resisting this.
They told the Shah that just wasn't consistent with the U.S. policy of arms restraint.
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