Engineer Memoirs
The agreement talked about the Ministry of Defense, the program manager, and the
construction manager. We thought about trying to get the Air Force to agree that the
Corps man would be the program manager. I'm sorry. I just can't think of what the
chronology was when all of these ideas came up.
I don't remember taking a strong position on the issue of moving the thing away from
North Atlantic Division to OCE. I think I was against that, but I don't remember taking
a very strong position with Jack against doing this. Again, I didn't really think it was
up to me to tell him how to do that.
Q:
The agreement that you made in 1979 seemed to be under frequent pressure for
modification from both the Israelis and the Air Force, both in our department and
outside. How did the U.S. government handle these pressures? I'm talking about the
embassy and the program manager, in particular.
A:
I think that basically what Paul Hartung tried to do was to be evenhanded and,
therefore, to dispel any basic reason for changing the agreement. If the project was
going ahead and if the Israeli needs were being met, some piece of paper that talked
about who talked to whom and so forth wasn't worth reopening.
They would have gotten nowhere if they wanted to reopen it. I'm sure [Ambassador
Samuel W.] Sam Lewis was smarter than that. He might have been unhappy with what
it said. But I think the notion of reopening that would have been a loser.
Q:
When it came down to specific details like changing the Israeli involvement, changing
the amount of money that went to Israeli contractors, or that sort of thing--
A:
That wasn't hard because the agreement wasn't ironclad on that. As far as the work
going to the Israeli contractors, for example, the agreement set up limited obligations
to do procurement in Israel and to give work to Israel. As long as the U.S. was willing
to give them more work, there was no issue. The agreement was not written in such a
way that we couldn't give them more work. The agreement was written in such a way
that we didn't have to give them more work, if the U.S. managers didn't want to.
It was quite easy to accommodate the Israelis on that. From a legal point of view, it
might have been difficult to carry out. But what we had to say was, "We're not going
to make a big thing of this. If you want more work, we'll allow it."
Concerning Bar-Tov's having a larger say, if he wrote all these letters and had all these
meetings, they could pay attention to what he would say to do, instead of saying,
"Look, the agreement doesn't provide for you to have any say in this. Therefore, we're
going to leave the meeting." They didn't do that. The way they met it was to say,
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