Ernest Graves
the negotiation came along fairly late. I don't think that I knew that I was going until
a week or two before we left.
Q:
Is that right? You had a lot to catch up on, I suppose?
A:
I had read some of the reports. I don't have a clear recollection of how that came
about. But I think McGiffert finally decided that I should head up this team. Paul
Hartung was a little disappointed in that, but he was a gentleman about it. We got a
team from OCE. Of course, [Frederick B.] Fred McNeely went. Nancy Saunders went
as the secretary and did a great job. We got some lawyers. We got an Air Force lawyer.
We also got an OSD lawyer to help us to get the treaty negotiations.
Q:
You had Colonel Haywood Hansell along, as I remember, who had been with this
Middle East Task Group in ISA [Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for
International Security Affairs]. Do you remember him? I just ask that because I'm
curious about that Middle East Task Group. It seemed to have been kind of an ad hoc
nucleus that did a lot of the early assembling of data and coordination of that. Do you
remember that?
A:
The Middle East Task Group was a mechanism that was used to try to cut through the
normal bureaucratic structure to get quick action.
Q:
So it was kind of an ad hoc organization just for this?
A:
It was an ad hoc organization that had gone on. They'd turn it on and off. If they had
something they wanted to do in a hurry for Israel or for Saudi Arabia or another
country, they would turn this group on. When they said that it would handle it, in
theory they could then talk to everybody directly, then present their paper to McGiffert.
They didn't have to spend as much time coordinating and getting all the bosses to sign
off on it. It was a mixed blessing. Sometimes it was good. Sometimes it was responsible
for some hurried and not necessarily well-thought through schemes. But in ISA, you
had the regional groups.
Q:
That was [Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Near Eastern, African, and South
Asian Affairs Robert J.] Murray, in this case?
A:
Bob Murray in this case. Then you had the functional groups. There was a policy
group, which was a functional group, and there was DSAA, which was a functional
group for managing arms sales. Another functional group worked on base rights
agreements and that type of thing.
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