Ernest Graves
She came into this with a different idea of the management than we had at the time she
came in. The agreement with Israel was already signed--thank God--because I think
if she had gotten into that, she probably would have tried to change it so that it was
more in Israel's court. She was very concerned that we had set this up so that we
wouldn't pay adequate heed to Israel's needs.
Q:
That's a peculiar concern for--
A:
You have to consider the fact that she and her husband are prominent in the Jewish
community in the United States and they're part of a group that believes very strongly
in the role that the U.S. must play in helping Israel mature as a country and be capable.
She was concerned that a bunch of U.S. bureaucrats not be allowed to neglect Israel's
basic needs.
She felt we had set this up so that Israel wouldn't necessarily have an adequate voice
in what we did. She didn't necessarily believe that out of the goodness of our heart we
would take care of everything. She became active in this, and several things happened
that were important in terms of negotiating back and forth. One thing happened which
I told Jack Morris at the time was a big mistake, but he didn't agree with me.
Bill Gilbert, Bill Wray, and I had this U.S. internal interagency agreement ready to be
signed. Toni Chayes was out of town. There was some aspect of it that wasn't crucial
that Jack wasn't entirely happy with. So he said that he wanted to hold up and he
wanted to talk to Toni Chayes about this.
Q:
Do you remember when this was?
A:
No. I could look it up. So we didn't sign it. Toni came back and rewrote the whole
agreement. We were in much worse shape when she got through than we were before.
It took us another month or so to get it back to where it had been. In fact, I don't think
we ever got it back to where it had been. We should have signed it before she got into
it and started rewriting it, trying to give the Air Force more voice in things and get
things so complex so that you couldn't tell who was in charge.
Q:
I saw that in her work, that she was trying to give the Air Force a greater role. And I'm
having trouble tying that to an interest in seeing that Israel has a stronger voice. Is that
merely because she was in the Air Force?
A:
I don't think you'd ever see that. But I think that was a factor in her view.
Q:
I see.
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