Ernest Graves
Q:
You were satisfied with how that agreement was originally written?
A:
I was definitely satisfied. I thought we got most of what we went after. We were
successful because Weizman didn't want his people messing around. Of course, I
wasn't privy to their internal conversations. But they had all these different things they
wanted, and at one point I thought it was going to take weeks. I said to them, "Well,
I think I'll just leave and go back to the States and come back when you all are further
along."
The next day, they dropped most of their demands. Whether they consulted Weizman,
I don't know. But I can only conclude that they either consulted him, or more likely,
they thought about how they would explain to him why I had left and decided that was
one they didn't want to get involved in.
Q:
Were the Israelis as satisfied with the agreement as you were?
A:
I think at the time, the people that we were working with were not that unhappy. They
were very courteous to me. [Richard M.] Dick Viets, who was the U.S. deputy chief
of mission at the time, was very complimentary about the agreement. He said he was
amazed that we had been as successful as we had in getting this agreement from them.
But I also got the distinct impression that he felt that there was no great discomfort on
their part.
Granted, certain people didn't get a voice. But, of course, there wasn't at that time an
actually appointed Israeli project manager. That came later. That was one of the things
that led to a change in the Israeli attitude--when they had a man that felt that he was
in charge, or at least responsible. He ran into the fact that the agreement between the
two governments didn't provide much leverage for him to get his way. Then, of course,
he was unhappy.
Q:
He's the one that called the agreement a disaster. We can see why.
A:
My view is that [Brigadier General] Moshe Bar-Tov was a good man. But we never
agreed that there would be an Israeli that would have the kind of authority he sought.
He came along and he had a different concept of his role from ours. We never agreed,
and I never felt at any point in time that the Israelis should have the voice in the way the
job was done that Moshe wanted.
Q:
That's an important point. That doesn't come through in a lot of the records of the
project.
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