War and Peace in the Nuclear Age; Interview with Michael Mawby, 1987

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WAR AND PEACE IN THE NUCLEAR AGE - TAPES A12085-A12087 MICHAEL MAWBY

MX Missiles as a State Issue

Interviewer:

ASKS HOW HE GOT INVOLVED?

Mawby:

I guess I was, I was lucky in a way in that I came to Washington to

work for a small peace group called SANE in, late 1977. And it was an

organization that had sort of not been that strong as a result of the

anti-war years sort of coming on. And we were sort of scouting around

for an issue in a certain kind of way, and the B-1 bomber campaign had

just ended as a major peace movement campaign and the MX seemed to

present itself as the perfect sort of issue, something that clearly

people felt was a move in the wrong direction strategically for the

country. It was something that we considered clearly dangerous and

destabilizing and costly. But it had a special added potential, and

that was the fact that they wanted to move it around in some fashion in

people's backyards. And it was a perfect backdoor, backyard sort of

issue. The kind of things that Americans have traditionally never

accepted, somewhat similar to the ABM fight of the late '60s and early

'70s.

Interviewer:

SO FIGHT IN UTAH PUT HIDDEN ISSUE RIGHT INTO PUBLIC CONSCIOUSNESS?

Mawby:

Yeah, in a big way that's exactly what happened. I think that for, for

many years, the, the atmosphere testing had stopped with the

atmospheric test ban. We were building up, the Soviets were building

up, but nobody was really seeing these things very much. It was out of

peoples' consciousness. And I guess more than any other single weapon

system that had been in development for the last 20, 25 years, the MX

pushed itself into the, into the consciousness of the American people.

Most specifically in Utah and Nevada, but it clearly had residual

effects throughout the West and in fact ultimately all over the

country.

Interviewer:

HOW DID THE FIGHT GO FROM FRANCES FARLEY...TO WASHINGTON?

Mawby:

Well, I was, I was lucky. I mean, in a way we started looking at the

issue in Washington and decided very specifically to take it on as a

major focus of our attention. Our membership which was back on the

upswing clearly supported that effort. And we just started making phone

calls to people out in Utah and Nevada. And what we found was a real

disparate group, a couple of people in Reno, a few down in Las Vegas,

some up in central Nevada and in central Utah where the system was

actually going to be deployed. A few, probably the strongest core of,

of people looking for a way to oppose this thing in Salt Lake City

where Frances Farley who ultimately became one of the leaders of the

state fight out there was already in the state senate. And in late,

late '79, I took a 3-week trip out there and I was the first person

aside from the Air Force, I was the first opponent of this missile

system to go into those two states, and began to link people up with

one another.

Interviewer:

AIR FORCE SAYS OUTSIDERS STIRRED UP PROTEST. IS THAT WHAT HAPPENED?

Mawby:

Well, citizen action is often an indigenous thing but it always needs

help from people who have more information. Because everything we do in

this society relies upon information. There were a lot of people who

were concerned, who were frightened, who were wary of the MX system and

they had no where to turn. They were getting a snow job from the Air

Force out there. The people in Utah and Nevada called it Gen. Guy

Hecker and his Dog and Pony Show. The Air Force was out there, they

were telling them it was going to be great, they were great neighbors,

they had nothing to worry about, don't sweat it, this thing isn't going

to have any impact on your life at all. You'll never know we're here.

And that just wasn't the case. And so there were plenty of people in

Utah and Nevada who had concerns about the, about the MX system. They

were dying for good solid information about this program, the kind of

information that was going to let them evaluate for themselves the kind

of impact it would have on their life. And that was the only purpose

that I served in going out there. And very quickly and very early on we

made a conscious decision not to, not to be out there in any big public

sort of way. This was an indigenous fight, it was something that had to

be done by people in Utah and Nevada, and ultimately it was something

that was done by those folks.

Interviewer:

WHAT DID THEY ACHIEVE?

Mawby:

Well they ended up preventing the MX missile from being deployed in

their states. The, the Air Force, you know, in those early years was

scrambling for a basing mode. They ultimately looked at over 30

different basing modes to see how they were going to deploy the MX. And

for one reason or another every one of them had major drawbacks.

Ultimately, they came upon the multiple aim point system, and people in

Utah and Nevada didn't take too kindly to be called aim points so they

changed that to multiple protective structures, the MPS, and they were

going to deploy MX missiles in the ar..in numbers at least 200 and

probably ultimately more. But they were going to deploy 200 MXs out

there, shuttling around 2,400 different shelters, in an area five times

the size of ... They were going to deploy 200 missiles, roaming between

4,600 shelters, in an area five times the size of the state of

Connecticut. Now that is a huge, huge area and there were going to be

all sorts of restrictions placed on peoples' access to that land. There

was going to be water usage, and of course water was a tremendous issue

already out there and remains so. And what the people of Utah and

Nevada ultimately succeeded in doing was raising the consciousness of

the entire country about issues of strategic doctrine, and land-based

missiles and mobility, and prevented specifically this monstrous MX

program from being deployed in their states. They considered it a great

victory and it wasn't a victory of radicals from anywhere. These

were...this was Utah and Nevada for goodness sake. I mean it's the

Cattlemen's Association, it was the wheat growers, it was the sheep

association out there, it was the Mormon Church. And ultimately it was

Jake Garn and Paul Laxalt, two very conservative senators who were

giving very clear backdoor messages to the Reagan White House that they

could not deploy this system out in their states.

[END OF TAPE A12085]

MX Missiles as a National Issue

Mawby:

What made it a national issue was the education that had gone on during

those early years. People from all over the country had begun to fear

MX deployment in their own backyards. And the fact was, when the Reagan

Administration chose, decided not to put the MX in Utah and Nevada,

nobody exactly knew where they were going to put it. It was clear they

still wanted it on land, it was clear they were still looking for

mobility. But nobody really knew where they were going to put that

missile. And all of a sudden it became a national issue because

everybody had to worry about it going into their backyard. And over the

next six months the process was such that Congress had rejected, that

Reagan had decided not to deploy the MX missile in Utah and Nevada, he

decided to harden the fixed silos that the Minuteman was in and to take

six months to look for a new basing mode. And through 1982 they were

coming up with various new basing modes and ultimately came up with

something called dense pack which was, was sort of counter-intuitive in

its face. It was a system in which they were going to pack all these MX

missiles in a small area because somehow they were going to survive a

Soviet attack because each Soviet warhead coming down and exploding

would, would not destroy the missiles on the ground, but would destroy

the incoming Soviet warheads behind them. So it was, it was sort of the

ultimate aim point. It was the ultimate target for a Soviet attack. It

was so clearly ridiculous and, and moving in the wrong direction that

Congress for the first time during this whole fight in fact voted not

to fund the proposed basing mode that the Reagan Administration had put

forward, dense pack. So by the end of '82, Congress was fully involved

in this thing because even Congress had decided at that point they were

right in the middle of basing modes and dense pack wasn't going to make

it.

Interviewer:

ASKS ABOUT STRUGGLE IN CONGRESS.

Mawby:

Well, the bitterness probably came later. This was...

Interviewer:

[INTERRUPTION AND TAPE STOP]

Mawby:

This was a long fight. This was a fight that constituted many, many

vote in Congress, many votes in committees, many votes on the floor,

members were revisiting it year in and year out. It was a fight that we

were insistent would not end with deployment of those missiles. We

simply felt they were moving this country in the wrong direction, that

they were in fact destabilizing, too costly, dangerous and... and over

time some members did get frustrated with the fact that they were

constantly forced to revisit this. It was also a fight that the

constituents felt very, very strongly about. And over time a lot of

members got fed up with going home and hearing nothing but questions

about the MX missile system and why they were voting the way they were.

But that's the beauty of our system, it's the way our system works. And

people were in fact asking very real and legitimate questions about US

national security policy, really for the first time in the nuclear age.

And one of the major impacts of this whole fight has been to give the

American public a sense that it does in fact have a role to play in

the, in the discussions about nuclear strategy and nuclear weapons and

strategic policy, and it is not something that they can afford to leave

simply in the hands of the experts.

Interviewer:

ASKS LOBBYING TACTICS.

Mawby:

Well we used virtually every tactic that, that's ever been written

about and probably a few that haven't been. Of course one of our, one

of our big, big efforts on the Hill revolved around getting experts

involved. Members of Congress clearly are, are prone to listen to

expert advice. Traditionally the Pentagon has a bit of a monopoly on

the question of nuclear and strategic policy. But we were able to find

plenty of national security experts who had serious, serious questions

about the MX program and the direction that it was taking this country.

So people like former CIA director William Colby, former CIA director

Stansfield Turner, former Department, Secretary of Defense Harold

Brown, ultimately in some way all participated in this, in this fight,

and we relied heavily on experts for both their willingness to address

the issue on paper and in some cases to go up and meet with members of

Congress. Ultimately it was something that was won by the rank and

file, by the American people if you will. It was something that members

simply couldn't avoid when they went home. There's one story that we

think about, about one member who had become so fed up with the issue

that he instructed his staff to...to set up no meetings during a

particular Congressional recess with anybody in his home district who

wanted to talk about the MX. He simply didn't want to talk about it. So

they set up a meeting with a group of farmers and agriculture issues

were hot at the moment. It was clear that that was something he was

going to have to address in Congress. And he got home to his home

district and he went into this meeting and found himself faced by a

dozen farmers who had all signed and brought signatures from many other

farmers, a letter urging him to vote against the MX missile. I mean he

was absolutely flabbergasted, and even more so when the farmers

proceeded to involve themselves in a debate. Not just to give them the

letter and talk then about agriculture. But to spend the bulk of their

meeting time with him talking about strategic issues and the MX. It was

that sort of intensity that members were feeling back home, that

ultimately made the difference in winning and losing this battle.

Interviewer:

HOW DID ALL OF THESE CONSTITUENTS GET INVOLVED?

Mawby:

Well you have to remember this whole period was one in which the

Nuclear Freeze Movement had grown in the country. It had sort of sprung

up. The MX fight tracked that development for quite some years,

although end the end I think it continued on a little afterwards. And

what prompted the growth of the Freeze Movement was the fact that this

Administration was talking about lobbing nuclear weapons across the bow

of Eastern Europe, they were referring to the Soviet Union as the Evil

Empire, Administration officials were suggesting that if everybody had

enough shovels in their office door, they could go out, dig holes,

cover it, and survive a nuclear war. I think the American people were

scared to death that we were moving in the direction of nuclear war.

And I think that the nuclear war came to symbolize that direction and

it was something that people decided to get involved with.

Interviewer:

ASKS ATTITUDE ON HILL TOWARD SCOWCROFT COMMISSION REPORT?

Mawby:

Well those members who were looking for a way to support the MX quickly

embraced the Scowcroft Report. Those members who were not looking for a

way to embrace the MX, quickly painted it for what we thought it was,

and that was a pretty bald-faced attempt to legitimize moving forward

with the MX missile program. And basically discarding a lot of the

arguments that had been put forward up until that time as the rationale

for the MX. That is to say, the Scowcroft report basically closed the

window of vulnerability and proceeded to suggest that 100 MXs should be

placed in fixed silos, in silos in which there'd be no movement. And it

was those very missile silos, the silos containing the Minuteman

missiles, that had prompted strategic experts to cry wolf for five or

six or ten years before that, because they were quote vulnerable. So on

the Hill I think there was a group who were looking for a way to

embrace the MX program. And they took the Scowcroft Commission and used

it to justify that position. For most members and I guess by that time

we were talking about a core of probably 180 members who were

absolutely opposed to the MX under virtually circumstances. They

weren't, they weren't moved by it at all. It clearly got them over an

initial hurdle. The Scowcroft Commission was the rationale used by a

core of centrists to support MX development, and they did vote for that

and they did succeed in getting some of those early MX missiles based,

I think, directly on the Scowcroft report. But by the end of the year

it came out. By the end of 1983 the support had dwindled from a 53 vote

margin in support of MX to only nine, nine votes more supporting it

than opposing it by the end of the year. And it was clear that it was

not going to hold back the effort to stop the program.

Interviewer:

ASKS ABOUT REAGAN'S PRESSURES LOBBYING.

Mawby:

Well certainly it was through this time that they were, they were

negotiating again. They had, they had come back to the table with the

Soviets and one of their big arguments throughout the '82, '83 period

was that the MX could not be stopped because it was absolutely

necessary are a bargaining chip. On the one hand they'd say it was a

bargaining chip and every other day Ronald Reagan would, would take to

the airwaves and say, "We are not going to bargain away the MX. It is

not a bargaining chip." And so they were trying to have it both ways.

One of the things that they did quite effectively before votes was to

bring back the Geneva negotiators. I remember that John Tower who was

negotiating the strategic weapons at one point came back just before,

just before vote. They brought Max Kampelman back before another vote.

They brought their negotiators back and had them directly appeal to

members to support the President's program, otherwise they would be, be

losing their, their ability to bargain from a position of strength,

they argued. It was, it was that sort of thing. To be perfectly honest

we didn't pay a lot of attention to what the other side was doing. We

were too busy trying to gin up our own support for what we were doing,

for our position, and looking for every way that we could to bring

members around too our side.

Interviewer:

ASKS ABOUT WHITE HOUSE DINNER THE NIGHT BEFORE THE HOUSE VOTE ...

--ASKS ABOUT ASPIN.

Mawby:

Well that was pretty clear. It was, it was pretty clear, the MX as I

mentioned, as I mentioned earlier, was tracking the Freeze pretty

closely. Both at the grassroots level where people were becoming more

and more involved with these issues, but also Congressionally where

there was a non-binding Freeze resolution that was moving its way

through Congress at the same time that MX funding was being raised. And

there was an explicit decision made by the, by the supporters of the MX

who were also Freeze supporters, at least supporters of this

non-binding resolution, to try to set it up so that they could vote

first for the Freeze resolution and, and claim their credits for being

supportive of, of arms control and a reduction in tensions. And then to

turn around and vote for the MX. They succeeded in that. I mean they

set the vote up so that the MX vote followed on the Freeze and they

could move back and justify their doing so on the basis of their having

supported the Freeze. It backfired in a certain sort of way because it

really raised the ire of local people all over the country. I mean,

here was a situation where the Freeze resolution had just passed the

House of Representatives and less than a couple of weeks later the

House of Representatives votes to fund the MX missile. And a lot of the

members who voted for the Freeze, end up voting for the MX. People at

the grassroots level were horrified at that. And it did nothing but,

but move them to redouble their efforts to, to influence the members.

And it caused a lot of them to call a lot of these guys traitors, and

you know, never having been serious about arms control, and make a lot

of threats. I mean, ultimately that, that died down, but, but that

feeling, that tension, that understanding that ultimately you had to

get at the money for these systems and that it wasn't enough just to

pass non-binding resolutions, held throughout the rest of the fight.

Interviewer:

ASKS IF PEOPLE FELT BETRAYED BY LES ASPIN, NORM DICKS, AND THAT GROUP.

Mawby:

Well, I guess, I mean, you...you talk about the leaders of the, the

Freeze Movement and you'd have to number Les Aspin and Norm Dicks as

part of that, as part of that contingent. They clearly helped frame the

debate on the floor, they did in fact participate all the time. They

were leaders in that fight. It goes back to what I was saying, that on

the one hand they were leading the Freeze fight in Congress, and on the

other hand they were leading the fight for the MX. People couldn't

understand that. They did not understand the rationale. Frankly, most

of us didn't understand the rationale either. There were various

discussions. Aspin's argument was that this was a fight that was never

going to end, and the only way to end it was to build it. Dicks'

argument was, you know, I can't throw all my votes that way. I voted

for the Freeze, now I have to, now I have to support a, a weapons

system. It never sold at the local level and I think that decision on

their part of set those votes up that way almost as much as anything

helped solidify that sense of betrayal by people at the local level.

Interviewer:

HOW DID CONGRESS' VOTE FOR 100 GET REDUCED TO 50?

Mawby:

No, Congress did not... The, the, the 50 cap finally was how this thing

finally ended. It really was a situation where I think both sides

wanted this, this fight to end. From our perspective a couple of those

early votes, when the system moved from basing mode to production,

clearly indicated to us...Let me back up a minute. When the system

moved from R and D to production that was one of the major fights that

we faced. And that vote we lost in a tight vote of 218 to 213 in early

1984. And it was at that point, when we lost that and the first 21

missiles for production were agreed to, some of us went to our leaders

in Congress and said, "We want to go back after those missiles. We want

to cut those off, we want to reverse the position we had just taken."

And our leaders on the issue looked at us like we were crazy and said,

you know, "It just isn't the way the place operates. It can't be done."

And we took them at their word. In fact, it would have been

unprecedented. It would have been ground breaking. And we couldn't

assure them that we had the votes to reverse the decision to produce

the first 21 missiles. So once that bridge was crossed we had to look

for a way to stop this thing without just throwing in the towel. And

ultimately the decision to, to move towards a cap of the program was

what we developed as our strategy. I think it was one that made a lot

of sense because the real threat to this thing, the threat from MX, was

of course the fact that it was a, a counterforce system, that it was

going to be destabilizing, that it would threaten the Soviets to the

extent that they would continue their buildup and we would continue to

be on that treadmill. Capping it at 50 prevented the MX from becoming

the sort of first strike threat that it would have been had there been

100 or 200 MXs. And also, thereby made it less attractive a target, so

that the Soviets could look at, at what we had and not feel as if they

were compelled to continue their buildup and could still look for ways

to, to come to agreements with us. We could look for ways to come to

agreements with them. We fought in the strategy of course in the House

first. We usually fought our fights in the House, where we started to

move to cap it permanently at 40 missiles. That was a fight that we

knew we could in the House. We did early work on it. It was clear that

we were going to have the support for it. But what we didn't know was

where we'd be in the Senate. And it was at this point that the Senate

became absolutely integral to, to closing this chapter of the fight.

Because without their support it could have just been a fight we won in

the House, a pyrrhic victory, winning it in the House, losing it in the

Senate. And then having the thing go on. We turned our attention to the

Senate in a very big way and succeeded in arriving at more of a

compromise that Sam Nunn who is perceived as probably the pre-eminent

Democratic spokesperson for strategic and foreign policy and military

affairs, bought into. Rather than 40, he wanted 50. Rather than a

permanent cap, he wanted a one-year cap. We were willing to go with

that in the Senate. We won it on a big vote of 78 to 20 or something.

And in the House-Senate Conference the agreement was reached to move

the, the missile numbers from 40 to 50 and to make the cap a permanent

one. It was a tremendous victory and it, it is one that I think-

[END OF TAPE A12086]

Mawby:

The 50 cap was and is a victory. It may not be a fight that's over but

the imposition of that cap was the first time that a sitting president

had ever been stopped from getting the sort of major weapons system

that he had ever wanted. And this was the centerpiece of the Reagan

Administration buildup. And they did not get what they wanted. As I

said, this fight may not be over, it clearly isn't over. There are

already indications that there will be a move made next year to come

back in and attempt to lift the cap, to deploy more missiles in yet

another basing mode. One that has been looked at and virtually

discarded in the past. And we'll see. There are still a lot of people

left from that fight who are prepared to continue and to take that

battle on again. And Common Cause is one of those places. But in and of

itself, in that timeframe of 1985, the imposition of the 50 cap was a

major setback for the President. It was a major victory for arms

control. And I would argue that it has helped engender the sort of

relationship between the US and the Soviet Union that's moving us

towards the arms control that seems on the horizon now.

Interviewer:

WHY DID ASPIN AND DICKS ACCEPT THE 50 CAP?

Mawby:

It was a way out. I mean, they, they...

Interviewer:

[INTERRUPTION]

Mawby:

Aspin and Dicks supported the 50 cap in the end because for them it was

a way to close the issue as well. They were not going to get 100

missiles. They feared they would get no missiles. And in the spirit of

compromise they felt that the 50 cap was, was better than no missiles

at all. It had been a long fight. It had been one that that had taken

some, some, some real hits on. And I think they wanted to see the issue

closed.

Interviewer:

DICKS TAKES CREDIT FOR MOVING PRESIDENT TOWARDS ARMS CONTROL

Mawby:

Well one of the nice things , when, when things are going well and we

have a President who appears now to be interested in arms control is

that everybody can take credit for having him do what, what he's doing.

I don't know that, that those guys deserve credit for, for what the

President's doing any more than, than our side does. I am grateful for

what he's doing but I'm not sure that, that, they can make that claim.

[END OF TAPE A12087 AND TRANSCRIPT]

Transcript

Transcript

Series: War and Peace in the Nuclear Age

Raw Footage: Interview with Michael Mawby, 1987

Contributing Organization: WGBH (Boston, Massachusetts)

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Writer: Mawby, Michael

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Citations: Chicago: “War and Peace in the Nuclear Age; Interview with Michael Mawby, 1987,” 1987-12-04, WGBH, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC, accessed November 18, 2024, http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-15-xk84j0bd6t.; MLA: “War and Peace in the Nuclear Age; Interview with Michael Mawby, 1987.” 1987-12-04. WGBH, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Web. November 18, 2024. <http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-15-xk84j0bd6t>.; APA: War and Peace in the Nuclear Age; Interview with Michael Mawby, 1987. Boston, MA: WGBH, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Retrieved from http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-15-xk84j0bd6t