The MacNeil/Lehrer Report; 6183; Interview with Caspar Weinberger

[Tease]

ROBERT MacNEIL [voice-over]: With President Reagan raising defense spending to one quarter of the federal budget, we talk to the man whose job it is to spend it, Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger.

[Titles]

MacNEIL: Good evening. The United States is reported today to be urging NATO allies to follow President Reagan`s lead with a major boost in defense spending. The Reagan budget sent to Congress yesterday includes the largest increase in military spending in peacetime history. The buildup will add $200 billion over and above what President Carter asked for for the next five years, in sharp contrast with drastic pruning of domestic-civilian programs. Mr. Reagan is asking for a new manned bomber, a nuclear aircraft carrier, reactivated battleships, and other measures to redress the military balance with the Soviets. Today, Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger met Britain`s Defense Minister John Nott, and reportedly urged him to raise British defense spending beyond the 3 percent agreed upon by the NATO allies several years ago. Tonight, Secretary Weinberger tells us how the Pentagon will spend such colossal amounts of money and why. Jim?

JIM LEHRER: Mr. Secretary, welcome.

CASPAR WEINBERGER: Thank you. It`s nice to be here.

LEHRER: The Christian Science Monitor, in a Monday editorial, posed this question about your request for increases in the defense budget. "Are these requests based on meticulously thought out plans, or are they designed in large part to set a national tone of toughness vis-a-vis the Soviet Union?"

Sec. WEINBERGER: No, they`re based on carefully thought out plans. We think that all of the signals that need to be sent with respect to the new resolve and firmness and resolution of the American people come with the increased request. But I`ve never be-lieved in simply asking for money for any purpose other than to buy what you needed. And we think that everything that we are seeking in this budget is needed. We have not had as much time as I would like to go through all of the existing programs, and see if we can make additional savings. I think we can. We`ve made about $4 5 billion in savings in this first examination. But we`ve done what normally takes about eight months` work in about four weeks to go through not just simple revisions, but completely revise our budgets for Fiscal 1981 and for 1982. Now when we get into the normal business cycle of `83, we will have a little more time. But what`s in this budget is what we urgently think we need.

LEHRER: And are you suggesting that you know now how you want to spend every dime of that?

Sec. WEINBERGER: Well, yes, generally for the acquisitions and for the improved pay; for the -- doing a lot of maintenance that has been deferred over the years; for two broad, general categories: readiness -- meaning to bring to combat readiness the various units, and the equipment, the ships, the planes, and the guns that we have now; and at the same time, to start on the redressing of the very substantial strategic imbalance that has been allowed to develop over the years.

LEHRER: Is the overall goal, Mr. Secretary, to catch up with the Soviet Union in a military way, or to be superior to them?

Sec. WEINBERGER: Well, the overall goal is to have a sufficient balance with the Soviets -- both of conventional and strategic forces -- so that they will never feel that they can with any impunity or at very low cost, deliver a first strike against us. It is essential that we have enough credible forces and enough credible strength to deter any kind of attack of that sort, and to make it clear that our response would be such that it would be an unacceptable cost to them to deliver a first strike. So whether you call it equivalence or superiority or supremacy or any of those terms - - I think those are more or less catchwords -- what we need is to have enough of that kind of deterrence, and I don`t think we have at the moment, and I think we need to get it very shortly.

MacNEIL: Mr. Secretary, put very simply, what precisely is the message you`re sending to the Kremlin with all this?

Sec. WEINBERGER: Well, I suppose the message of course depends on how anybody who receives it wants to read it, but it would seem clear that what we are saying with this increased budget is that the mood, the resolution, the will of America has changed very drastically; that the election last fall was indeed a watershed election; that we`ve changed direction economically; we`re determined now not just to talk about it, but to do something about inflation; and at the same time, we`re resolved to repair what appears to us to be years of neglect in the maintaining of the kind of balance I was speaking about just a moment ago. So I think we have a lot to do. And I think the fact that we`re willing to embark on so much all at once at the same time we`re reducing domestic spending is not just a message, but is a very clear statement of what we intend to do.

MacNEIL: Is there a corollary message implied in this, that if over the five years spanned by these requests, the Soviets do certain things that we would like, we would cut back on these increases, or respond in some way?

Sec. WEINBERGER: Well, I think a great deal depends on the whole attitude and behavior of the Soviets. If, for example, they invaded Poland, I don`t think there`d be the slightest point whatever in any nation sitting down to negotiate with a country that took action of that kind. And if on the other hand they demonstrate in all of the ways they can -- not just send a message, but actually do things -- that they are able to live in the world family of nations and not engage in aggressive adventurism, and follow a course in which it`s clear they can be trusted, and do not try to achieve enormous offensive superiority -- all of these leads that they`ve built up in submarines and tanks and things of that kind are not just to defend the Soviet Union. If they change course, and follow the direction of that kind, I think we would be delighted to have an opportunity to sit down at the various council tables and negotiating tables, and review all of our programs.

MacNEIL: Just a moment --

Sec. WEINBERGER: It takes a long time to do catch up, and we have to start.

MacNEIL: Sure. But is there built into the idea that if the Soviets did sit down, take arms talks more seriously, if they withdrew from Afghanistan, if they did send us a few other signals we liked, that this increase needn`t go through the full five years?

Sec. WEINBERGER: No. I don`t think there`s anything of that kind because I think the increase is an increase that is necessary to get us to the position where the Soviets might conceivably follow the kind of attitudes and behavior patterns that you`ve just indicated. I think that as long as we are as far behind as we are in many areas, and as long as we demonstrate as we have in the last few years that we have no real intention or national resolve or will to utilize our capability to catch up. then I think we can expect more Soviet adventurism, more Afghanistans, more threats to Poland, and things of that kind.

LEHRER: Let`s run through some of the specifics, Mr. Secretary.

Sec. WEINBERGER: There is one thing I would like to correct if I could, and that is the statement that your good colleague made right at the start reporting -- or he didn`t make it, he was reading a report -- that I had urged the Secretary of State for Defense for the United Kingdom to increase their contributions. Actually, what we did was commend the United Kingdom for exceeding the 3 percent goal that had been set, and expressed a hope that some of the other NATO nations and allies would follow suit.

LEHRER: You didn`t specifically ask Britain to go any further?

Sec. WEINBERGER: I just said that we were doing a lot more -- we would all have to do more -- but that we were very appreciative of the contribution that the United Kingdom I had been able to make given their own internal problems.

LEHRER: I see. But you didn`t add, "And we`d certainly appreciate it even more if you`d do it a little more?"

Sec. WEINBERGER: I don`t believe anything even remotely resembling that.

LEHRER: Okay. All right. All right, to some of the specifics. The budget includes $5.5 billion to be spent on the defense of the Persian Gulf area. That`s an increase of $2.5 billion over what President Carter had asked for. How is this money going to be spent?

Sec. WEINBERGER: Well, basically it would be spent to improve the readiness and the rapid-deployability of some of our forces so that we would have an ability to project into that very vital area, an area vital for our interests, and for the interests of our NATO and other allies -- a credible force that could then be sustained and reinforced and constitute, we would hope, a substantial deterrent to any possible Soviet plans to move down through Iraq and Iran, and try to gain access to the oil fields, and deny the West access to the oil fields.

LEHRER: Where would this force be stationed? Would it be stationed in that area?

Sec. WEINBERGER: No. At the moment, no. We would plan -- and that is the essence of the rapid deployment force -- we would plan to deploy it from the United States. It`s a very long projection of our force -- 7000 miles - - and it would be extremely helpful and indeed necessary to have some kind of presence -- with the permission, with the consent, with the agreement of the host nations in that area -- to enable us to resupply and sustain it.

LEHRER: All right--

Sec. WEINBERGER: We`d never want to talk about having any bases in any of these nations unless that was their desire. And we have a lot of indication that they don`t wish, and they don`t feel at this point they need to grant American bases or European bases, for i that matter, in their country. We do have a presence in some of these countries. We have some use of facilities; we have, through the cooperation of Great Britain, use of some of the facilities on the island of Diego Garcia which has great strategic value; but we need some sort of presence in the Mideast.

LEHRER: All right. There`s a $2.4 billion item to build a successor to the B-l bomber. What kind of successor?

Sec. WEINBERGER: Well, we`re examining two or three options at the moment. The B-52 -- as the cliche goes -- is older than the men that fly it, and it has been a very fine and a very useful airplane. The Soviets have greatly increased their air defenses. We need some kind of a more modem aircraft that can -- representing this third leg of the triad, our strategic triad - - that can deliver either from a standoff situation cruise missiles, or be able to penetrate the Soviet defenses in the event that unhappy circumstance was required. And so we would have possibly a variant of the B-1. We might have a plane that would for a short time vary into the FB- 111, or we might have a plane with a much more modem technology. All these decisions --

LEHRER: But no decision has been made on this specific stuff?

Sec. WEINBERGER: The exact one. no. No. what we`ve done is put the money in the budget that is necessary to carry out the decision when it is made, and we expect it would be made early in the summer.

LEHRER: Well, that goes to my first question. How do you know it`s going to cost $2.4 billion if you don`t know what it`s going to be?

Sec. WEINBERGER: Well, sadly, it`s going to cost a lot more than that. This is a perfectly solid figure for starting the development of the kind of manned bomber that we need. You know, it`s a little -- perhaps a historical footnote, but when I was here before, and running the budget in 1971. we put in the funds for the B-l, and it should have been delivered and on the line in 1977. It was redesigned two or three times -- people trying to get even better technology -- and then, quite wrongly to my mind, the Carter administra-tion canceled it, and now we have nothing, and we still have a seven- or eight-year period before any bomber can be delivered. But this is the amount necessary to get us started this year for the bomber that ultimately will replace the B-52, and will take at this point at least five, six years to do,

MacNEIL: Mr. Secretary, what`s the purpose of reactivating two battleships -- the Oriskany and the New Jersey -- when many defense theorists believe that battleships are anachronisms today, too vulnerable to modem missiles?

Sec. WEINBERGER: Well, the Oriskany is a carrier, an aircraft carrier, and the battle-ship -- of the Iowa class -- - we do want to reactivate one or two of those. And basically the idea is that they aid greatly in improving the readiness of our conventional forces, and with some refitting so that the battleship could use cruise missiles, you could add greatly to the ability of the United States to project forces in areas at very considerable range in numer-ous types of conventional situations. We could also have an increased capability of safe-guarding our interests in the Mideast. And again, you have to bear in mind that the Soviets will probably become an energy importing country in a very few years, and that will certainly increase the pressures and the possibilities of their trying some adventurous tactics into the oil fields.

MacNEIL: Is it just the mere size and impressiveness of these things that are meant to discourage? Is it showing the flag in the old-fashioned way?

Sec. WEINBERGER: No. No. No. Not at all. We can show the flag a great deal sooner and a great deal less expensively than this. No, this is part of the idea that we have a substantial number of existing forces. Not nearly enough of them are ready to be used or are capable of being used. We can get this vast increase in firepower in a far shorter time -- two and a half years -- compared to something like six to eight for a new carrier in the case of the Oriskany -- or a new method of delivering this amount of firepower in the case of the Iowa class battleship. And we can gel it a lot sooner, and we can get it with a lot lower investment. But it is a desirable and, we think, essential addition to our strength in this rather uncertain time.

MacNEIL: Will they be converted to nuclear power?

Sec. WEINBERGER: No. I don`t think there`s any need or any plan to do that.

MacNEIL: It takes thousands of skilled personnel to operate the likes of those huge ships. The Navy is not exactly flush with such personnel at the moment. Where are you going to get all those people?

Sec. WEINBERGER: No, we`re short of personnel, but we do believe that as the additional benefits that we are seeking also as part of this increase - - funding the 11.7 percent salary increase for the uniformed services that went in last fall; we`re asking an additional 5.3 this June and another 9 percent in October, approximately -- we believe that this plus some of the additional benefits that we are talking about will prove a sufficient attraction to draw a number of people in on a volunteer basis, a sufficient number of people to man the ships and planes that we`re seeking. We believe that it is far better to go on an all-volunteer capacity just as long as we possibly can.

LEHRER: That`s the so-called quality of life enhancement part of the budget. Is that not -- many people have said, Mr. Secretary, that this is the last-ditch effort to save the all-volunteer army. If this doesn`t work then maybe you may have to go to a draft. Is that true?

Sec. WEINBERGER: Well, I wouldn`t phrase it quite that way, but I certainly would say that if we do not get by the various means that we hope to attract and retain the kind of people that we need -- - if we didn`t get enough people in that category -- then I wouldn`t hesitate to recommend that we do move to some form of draft. I`m opposed to it; I`d much rather not do it. I know the President`s opposed to it. and we would like to see if it isn`t possible to get the number of people -- quality people -- that we need by the volunteer method. I think it`s a lot better if we can.

LEHRER: How long are you going to give it before you --

Sec. WEINBERGER: Well, until it`s demonstrated that we need more, and I don`t know just at what point that would be. As these new ships come on the line, or the older ships are reconditioned, and the need for manpower develops, it`ll be very apparent whether we`re getting enough or not, and at that point we would make a decision. As I say, we would infinitely rather go with the volunteer system just as long as we possibly can, and I hope that the new inducements and the new benefits, which incidentally are rather long overdue, will prove sufficient to attract enough people.

LEHRER: On the MX missile, Mr. Secretary, the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment said yesterday that putting those missiles underground out in Utah and Nevada was just not a very good idea, and it suggested that they be put on submarines. What do you think of that?

Sec. WEINBERGER: Well, we have constituted and will announce in a very few days a separate group of extremely qualified people with impeccable scientific credentials -- and so far as we know, without having people who haven`t actually made up their minds on this subject, and an awful lot of people have made up their minds because it has been studied a long time -- to look at it and not ask whether the MX missile is necessary -- we think that it is necessary. It`s a strengthened warhead; it has got 10 re-entry vehicles as opposed to three, and it generally is an attempt to match the enormous additional missile strength that the Soviets have developed in the last few years. So we think that`s necessary. Where we put it is the basic question. We need some son of mobile basing. The existing holes or silos are known to the Soviets; the existing -- this leg of the triad the ground- based missiles -- is more vulnerable than any of us would like to a first strike, and so what we`re looking for is a better method of basing this new and strong missile. And we will look at the sea-based option; we`ll look at a number of land-based options because this is a very big. very expensive system, and we are now under the responsibility for it. We want to be sure we`re right.

LEHRER: Is the administration committed to the MX no matter what? I mean, you`re going to find something to do with it; either it`s on land or on sea, is that right?

Sec. WEINBERGER: Well, we are committed to the idea that a strengthened missile of this type is essential to keep up with the enormous development, indeed proliferation, of the Soviet missile system now.

LEHRER: But there is no chance that the whole thing could be scrubbed?

Sec. WEINBERGER: No. No. It`s just a matter of where it should go.

LEHRER: I see

MacNEIL: Mr. Secretary, the United States is going to send $25 million in increased military aid to EI Salvador. Today, the former ambassador there, Robert White, told a congressional committee he didn`t see how the Salvadoran military could absorb that $25 million worth of material. He said the military had more arms than ever and the ware-houses are full there. Do you have a comment on that?

Sec. WEINBERGER: Yes I do. I think that`s one of the principle reasons he`s the former ambassador. I think that he has not really appraised the situation in any way consistent with the appraisals that we`ve had from other sources who have been down there, and is certainly not consistent with the Salvadorian government that we believe is preferable to the fairly Marxist-dominated guerrilla forces who are being supplied from Cuba and ultimately from the Soviet Union. And we think that this victory of that faction -- that guerrilla faction -- would constitute a basic threat to the United States. Not an island in Cuba, but actually on the mainland. That traditionally has been resisted in this country ever since the Monroe Doctrine was promulgated.

MacNEIL: Well, is Mr. White wrong? Are the warehouse not full?

Sec. WEINBERGER: We know of no surplus equipment in El Salvador, and we also know that they have requested and tell us they urgently need people to train and people to advise, and primarily our aid does consist of advisors and trainers who are strictly under injunction not to get near combat situations, but simply to train. And that`s essentially what they are doing. They are about 50 people who are in this category. We`ve been advised that no more are needed, and we certainly have no desire or intention to fob off on EI Salvador, so to speak, any aid that they do not need. But we are trying to give them what they believe they need, and we think they -- and our other teams that have been down -- there are making a correct assessment as opposed to the one that you just mentioned.

LEHRER: Has a limit been set beyond which the United States will not go in terms of military personnel and equipment for El Salvador?

Sec. WEINBERGER: Well, we have not any rigid line or anything of that kind. But we have now sent to that country what the government there has invited us to send, has asked us to send, and has said is sufficient for their purposes. And I know of no plans to do anything more.

LEHRER: I see. You`re going to take it one step at a time, in other words?

Sec. WEINBERGER: Well, we hope there are no more steps. We hope that if this Salvadorian government is correct, and the advice and help and training they get. and the usefulness of the military assistance that we send, that the guerrilla forces will be dis-persed, and we will not need to do any more.

LEHRER: I see. Back to the whole issue of the defense budget and increased defense spending. What do you say to those who suggest it`s going to be like Christmas over at the Pentagon for awhile -- that every pet project of the generals and the admirals is going to finally get all the money it wants?

Sec. WEINBERGER: Well. I would point to them the $4.5 billion savings that we have already made, the approximately $1.9 billion in programs that were requested that we turned down, and to the very searching examination and revision of the whole budgetary process that we have in prospect for 1983. Nobody`s best interest will be served by buying a single bullet or a single weapon, or employing a single person that is not necessary, and we believe that there is a consensus in the country now for increased defense spending; we want to serve that consensus properly, and we think it will not be well-served if we permit any waste.

LEHRER: When you were first appointed. Mr. Secretary, as I`m sure you are aware, some skeptics suggested that you were going to be at a disadvantage sorting all of this out because you didn`t have a big. strong background in defense. How has it worked out this far?

Sec. WEINBERGER: Well, there are always skeptics on the announcements of any appointments. All I can say is that we have worked very hard and very rapidly to make a complete revision of the kind we felt necessary in Mr. Carter`s last budget. We`re getting very good cooperation. We`ve made major reductions in some programs; we`ve got a lot of good advice from the General Accounting Office -- from Elmer Staats -- as to additional ways to proceed, which we want to adopt. And thus far. it`s working out somewhat the way my previous incarnations have worked out here.

LEHRER: You`re not having any trouble sorting out the Christmas-tree items from the necessary items?

Sec. WEINBERGER: Well, we certainly don`t want to boast about anything, and we`ve only been there a very short time, but we have eliminated some things that we felt were not necessary, and I anticipate we`ll be doing much more of the same as the months go on.

LEHRER: Thank you. sir. Robin?

MacNEIL: Thank you. Mr. Secretary, for joining us this evening. Good night. Jim.

LEHRER: Good night. Robin.

MacNEIL: That`s all for tonight. We will be back tomorrow night. I`m Robert MacNeil. Good night.