Ernest Graves
One of the elements of this agreement was a report that was to be sent and was to come
to McGiffert. McGiffert had charged me with receiving and reviewing this report for
him. I don't know whether that memo is somewhere around or not. But he had
definitely charged me with keeping track of this thing for him.
He said to me that he wanted a chain of responsibility so he could assure Brown that
we were going to finish the airfields on time and that the Department of Defense would
not be in the position of having failed to deliver on these airfields. They were very
concerned that, if there was any pretext, this might cause backsliding on the Camp
David accords. If the fields weren't ready, then Israel would not complete the
redeployment out of the Sinai in accordance with the dates, and then the peace treaty
could come unraveled. They did not want the Department of Defense to be responsible
for any shortcoming that would lead to an adverse impact on the peace process.
Q:
Did you ever get a sense that there were Israelis who had interests in not having the
bases done on time?
A:
No. I didn't get any such sense. As a matter of fact, the actual redeployment to the
fields took place early. Of course, [Major General David] Ivry, who was the
commander of the Israeli Air Force, was absolutely top-flight. The Israeli Air Force is
really good.
Ivry knew he had to get his planes out of the Sinai. Although they had their own ideas
about the way they wanted the fields, there was never the slightest hint that I saw that
the Israeli Air Force was trying to do anything but get this job done.
Q:
Were you involved in whom the Corps sent over and whether there should be a general
or a colonel, or stuff like that?
A:
Yes. Jack had different ideas at different times about this. He talked to me early on
about the fact that as long as Hartung was there and was a general, it wasn't necessary
for the Corps to send a general.
I agreed with that. I think he and I probably talked about the fact that Jack Gilkey was
going to be his nominee for that job. But, of course, it wasn't a question of getting my
agreement to that. It was a question of sounding me out as to what I thought.
I said I thought it was all right to start out without two generals. But then later on, it
became evident that it wasn't working too well and that it would have to be changed.
I know that at one point my attitude on the thing was simply that we really didn't need
an Air Force general. At one point in this whole discussion, there was an idea that we
might try to persuade the Air Force to let the Corps man be the project manager.
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