Engineer Memoirs
Israeli Air Base Program, 1981
Q:
General Graves, Secretary Brown first offered military aid to the Israelis in the fall of
1978 during the Camp David negotiations. Were you involved in discussions of that
before he made that offer?
A:
I don't remember that I did anything more than help them cost out some things. In the
case of aid to Israel, usually Israel would come up with some program that they wanted
to pursue.
There was a good relationship between Brown and Ezer Weizman, who was then the
Minister of Defense of Israel. Weizman would have these briefings, and I attended most
of them, in which he would describe Israel's defense plans, and their programs, and the
aircraft and the tanks and other weapons that they needed to fill out their force
structure.
The briefings would include the rationale when they wanted more advanced weapons
such as the AIM9L, which was then the latest version of the Sidewinder missile. I was
involved with helping put these papers together as to what the program would cost and
what delivery dates we could undertake.
I almost never sat in on the nitty-gritty. Maybe once or twice I did when Brown would
tell Weizman what he could and couldn't do. Usually they had discussed that in private
beforehand because neither side wanted, if you will, to have an awkwardness in a
meeting with a lot of people there.
So it wasn't all that big a meeting, but if Brown was going to tell Weizman he couldn't
give him something, he usually had let him know in advance. Although I was there a
couple of times when he first told Weizman what we could and couldn't do.
Q:
That seemed to be a critical thing in the negotiations, the offer of that aid.
A:
I don't think there is any question about it, that the offer of aid to both Israel and Egypt
was a major inducement in the Camp David process.
I think that was the turnaround in the Carter administration as far as security assistance
was concerned. They had come in with a very strong bias against military assistance.
A number of people felt strongly about this--for example, Jessica Tuchman, who was
the daughter of the famous historian Barbara Tuchman and was a member of the Carter
administration. She served on the National Security Council staff.
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