The copyright laws of the United States (Title 17, U.S. Code) governs the making of photocopies or other reproductions of copyrighted material. If a user makes a request for, or later uses a photocopy or reproduction (including handwritten copies) for purposes in excess of fair use, that user may be liable for copyright infringement. Users are advised to obtain permission from the copyright owner before any re-use of this material.

Use of this material is for private, non-commercial, and educational purposes; additional reprints and further distribution is prohibited. Copies are not for resale. All other rights reserved . For further information, contact Director, Hoover Institution Library and Archives, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305-6010

©Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Jr. University.

FIRinG Line GUESTS: NICHOLAS VON HOFFMAN, JOSEPH KRAFT,

ROBERT NOVAK

SUBJECT: #405 "AMERICA ACCORDING TO THREE 'l'OP JOURNALISTS AND WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY JR."

SOUTHERN Et ICATIONAL COMMUNICATIONS ASS0CIATION

The FIRING LINE television series is a production of the Southern Educational Communica~ions As~ociation, 928 Woodrow St. , P.O . Box 5966, Columbia, S.C., 29250 a_nd 1s transm1tted through the facil ities of the Public Broadcasting Service. Product1on of these programs is made possible through a grant from the Corporation for Pub I ic Broadcasting. FIR I.NG Ll N E can be seen and heard each week through public television and radio stations throughout the country. Check your local newspapers for channel and time in your area.

SECA PRESENTS ®

FIRinG Line

HOST: WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY, JR. GUESTS: NICHOLAS VON HOFFMAN, JOSEPH KRAFT,

ROBERT NOVAK SUBJECT: #405 "AMERICA ACCORDING TO THREE TOP

JOURNALISTS AND WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY JR."

FIRING LINE is produced and directed by WARREN STEIBEL.

This is a transcript of the FIRING LINE program taped in Alexandria, Virginia, on January 15, 1980, and originally telecast by PBS on February 17, 1980.

SOUTHERN EDUCATIONAL COMMUNICATIONS ASSOCIATION

©Board of Trustees of the L land Stanford Jr. University.

©1980 SOUTHERN EDUCATIONAL COMMUNICATIONS ASSOCIATION

MR. BUCKLEY : It is time for the semi-annual reversal of roles, only this time around the host of Firing Line has persuaded the producer of F iring Line to permit him halfway through the pro­gram to do some interrogation of his own, the circumstances being so tempting , because our guests today are three of the most formidable men of u . s . journali sm--reporters , columnists, authors , pundits, skeptics, bel i evers, agnostics - -skilled even in their impieties .

Joseph Kraf t i s the we ll known columnist born in New Jersey , schooled at Columbia and Princeton. He began in jour­nalism as an editorial writer for the Washington Post , went on to The New York Times and Harper's before launching his own column. He fought during the World War and has written several books , the most recent of which was The Chinese Difference .

Robert Novak went to the University of Illinois and in due course became a political correspondent for the Wall Street Journal. He fought in the Korean War: teamed up with Rowland Evans Jr . to float their inf luential column: wrote books, the most recent of which was Nixon i n the Whi t e House : The Frustrations of Power .

Nicholas von Hoffman was born in New York where he attended the Fordham Prepara t ory School. He went on to the Chicago Daily News , then to the Wash ington Pos t for which he writes a column. He, too, has written several books , the last two in collabora­tion with Garry Trudeau.

Gentlemen , I'm as ready for you as I'll ever be . Mr. Kraft .

MR . KRAFT: First question to me, Bill. It's a w.ulti - part ques­tion natura lly. But the first part of it is, what do yqu think of the principle of a UN tribunal to look into the crimes of the Shah and American complicity , and since you are a well known diplomat as wel l as a journalist, why aren't you serving on that commission? If nominated, would you run , and if chosen, would you serve?

i'iR . BUCKLEY: 1-lell, I think that the tribunal will find the Shah guilty , deliver him to the Ayatollah, who will cut off his feet and his legs--his legs and his arms--and publicly execute him, in which case justice will have been vindi cated . But to answer your question more seriously, i t' s impossible to set up a tribu­nal that will look into the record of the Shah with reference to any other than totally surrealistic criteria. I think it would be hard to take any chief of state and submit him to a world court which is real l y unguided . There i -s no way in which one can actually judge the nature of temporal cha l lenges in situa­tions that don't have bills of rights or governing traditions. The Nure mberg principle might be invoked, but there'd have to be an awful lot of improvisation, since the Nuremberg tradition defined aggression and defined genocide, but those are probably the only two crimes that the Shah has not been charged with, so they're going to have to come up with some kind of ex post facto l aw . My own feeling is that the whole business of a tribunal is simply a face saver , and I suspect that's your feeling about it

1 ©Board of Trustees of the L land Stanford Jr. University.

also. Only James Reston takes it seriously.

MR. KRAFT: Well, now you're answering my question with a ques­tion, I guess. What do you think of the principle--you've avoided the issue of judging American complicity, American guilt for this--what do you think of the principle of the United States legitimizing an inquiry which looks at what three or four past presidents did?

MR. BUCKLEY: I think it's impossible to define the relevant criteria. It was not we who came up with the notion of the legitimacy of the Peacock Throne. It was a thoroughly Persian institution before we ever got around to founding a CIA. There is a c e rtain commitment implicit in mere membership in the United Nations to maintain the power of people who are in power, i.e., to recognize them as sove reign rather than to recognize a coup d'etat. So as I say , anything that comes out of a "tribu­nal" will not have been baptized by a kind of a juridical pro­cess--

MR. KRAFT: You're really not--

MR. BUCKLEY: --that will render any indictment more grave than any indictment than can be improvised in tomorrow's column.

MR . KRAFT: You don't think thi~ is rewarding the Iranians for taking hostages?

MR . BUCKLEY: I think it's a tactic. I liken it to what President_ Johnson did to get the Pueblo back. You remember he floated an apology. He said, "We're terribly sorry for transgressing your territorial waters, " which we hadn't. We had a radar fix that proved beyond a doubt that we hadn't done so. But he finally figured that an apology which he could later withdraw on the grounds that it was made under duress was worth getting our mu­tilate d sailors back, and it worked, and nobody thought much about it. l'ly guess is tha-t nobody will pay any attention what­soe v e r to the tribunal once it cranks up. Bob.

MR . NOVAK : Bill, Congre ssman Bob Bauman of Maryland, the chair­man of the American Conse rvative Union, has been saying that the conservative movement in America is on the brink of a disaster, and h e 's r e ferring to the increasingly likely possibility that Ge orge Bush will be the Republican nominee--Ronald Reagan will not b e --a nd that this, he believes, will be a disaster for Ame rican conservatism. And per haps more colorfully, your fellow conserva tive , William Loeb, the publisher of the Manchester Union-Le ade r, has referred to--

l'ffi . BUCKLEY : Is h e not your fell6w conservative? (laughter)

MR . NOVAK : Certainly no t. (laughter) --has referred to Mr. Bu s h a s an e litist, an Ivy Le aguer, a country clubber, a member of the charity ball set--a clean fingernails Republican--who is in fact a liberal and once in office , will r e turn to what Mr. Lo e b cons i der s liberal principles. Do you consider the possi­b ility o r the prospect of a Bush nomination as great a disaster

2 ©Board of Trustees of the L

as those two gentlemen?

MR. BUCKLEY: No. As you probably know, the most solemn exegete of that thesis is that--the fellow, his name escapes me, who wrote The Coming Republican Majority--

MR. KRAFT: Is it Kevin--

MR. BUCKLEY: Kevin Phillips. And he, having advertised the coming Republican majority shortly before two successive Democratic landslides, is now rehearsing this particular script. I haven't seen Bob Bauman's actual elaboration. I think, of course, it's nonsense. I don't think Bush is an ideologue, but I think he is conservative, and I think that he indulges conservative presump­tions. What people-- What I have found conservatives resenting most is the notion that by some sleight of hand, it will have been taken away from Reagan, and it is rather a shock reaction to taking it away from somebody who is clearly senior in the Republican party that causes them to be anti-Bush rather than anything that they can actually ~oint to Bush having d~ne: I~ seems to me that Bush is highly experienced and that h~s ~ncl~­nations are pretty much those of Bob Bauman.

MR. NOVAK: Do you think there is also a class struggle going on in this--that this is the Yale--if you'll pardon the expression (laughter)--and the country club, the upper class, against the conservative populace of the prairie in southern California?

MR. BUCKLEY: Yes. I think there's a lot of that in it, not­withstanding that Bush's emigration to Texas theoretically ex­posed him to the world outside of Andover and Yale. Bush has very -little trouble getting along with people, as you know, and getting along with people from coast to coast. He happ~ns to be innately gregarious and innately amiable. So my guess ~s that all that will wash away. But consider this if you will, and . that is the probability, if Bush prevails, of a Bush-Reagan t~c­ket. on the whole, I think, Mr. Reagan, if it came to that, · would prefer to be Vice President than to . go back to th~ farm, and Mrs. Reagan certainly would. That be~ng the case, ~t seems to me that you'd have a pretty formidable combination and some symbiosis there.

MR. NOVAK: Let me just ask one other thing on that, and that is: Mr. Bush's positions on some issues are not what would be called conservative. He supports the Equal Rights Amendment. He op­poses a constitutional amendment which would negate the Supreme court decision on abortion--he opposes that. He voted for a 1968 gun control law which, I believe, would have barred the mail order sale of all weapons. There are a few issues such as that in which he takes the non-conservative position. Do you think those are irrelevant issues essentially to the present--

l'ffi. BUCKLEY: I would say--

l'ffi . NOVAK: --national debate?

l'ffi . BUCKLEY: I would say the first and the third are irrelevant.

3

University.

If I were running for Fresident, for purely instrumental rea­sons, I'd come out for ERA , since I know it's not going to pass. As for the gun control law, it's not going to pass. On the abortion, I think that you've got a fundamental moral question, and one which I happen to think he comes out on the wrong side of. But if one is to exclude from one's political patronage everybody who opposes an abortion law, you're going to end up pretty much of a political solipsist. So I think that-- There are one-issue voters on the issue of abortion even as there were one-issue voters on the Missouri Compromise, and they are, I think morally related in a perfectly plausible sense, but I don't think that they come near to making a critical majority. Nick?

~ffi. VON HOFFMAN : Kraft says I can't ask you about the gold standard because it's too dull. (laughter) Tell us about what you think about the draft and the registration and the women in the draft--all that sort of thing.

MR. BUCKLEY: I think the draft-- I think that there ought to be a registration because although there are arguments about whether it would take two months or six months, there is no rea­son that I can think of to put off the clerical drudgery involved in finding out where in fact are the 18- and the 19-year-olds. Now Jerry Brown said yesterday , "Why 18- and 19-year-olds?" He turned to Tom Brokaw and said, "You jog every da.y. Why shouldn't we draft you?" Well, that 's quaint. (laughter) But the fact of the matter is that--

MR. VON EOFFMAN : It's oP.e way to get him off the air. (laughter)

MR . BUCKLEY: The fact of the matter is that conceivably we would need a pool of manpower, not person power--

1'lR . VON HOFFMAN: Not person power.

MR. BUCKLEY : By the way, I ran into--at Alta, would you believe it, three weeks ago--a note at the bottom of the menu that said, "When you are ready to order, please call the wait person." (laughter) So it's there. It's there. (laughter) So I think that we should have registration in the event that we do need manpower that we can't get, so to speak, from the free ma·rket, and this is extremely important in terms of mobilizing western Europe to make corresponding commitments. On the matter of women, it seems to me that all of these schematic efforts to translate equality into the notion that women ought to be in the trenches simply collapses under its own preposterous weight. The more time you spend dwelling on it, the sillier you sound. It's just something that wasn't meant to be. Can't we leave it that way, do you think?

MR. VON HOFFMAN: What would you say about the proposals to draft everybody and then have some people serve in the trenches and other people serve in the insane asylums?

~ffi. BUCKLEY : That's okay. That's okay. It ' s a question of which ones would be fuller.

4

MR. VON HOFFMAN: It's a hell of a choice. (laughter)

MR. BUCKLEY: The drafting of women to the extent that you need service personnel doesn't offend me at all.

MR. VON HOFFMAN: Well, does it offend ynnr. free market princi­ples about free labor?

MR. BUCKLEY: "Salus publica suprema lex--"

MR. VON HOFFMAN: All right. But let me put it this way--

MR. KRAFT: No Latin either. (laughter)

MR. VON HOFFMAN: "The safety of the state is supreme."

MR. BUCKLEY: That's right.

MR. VON HOFF~~N: But let me ask you this: Do you see any dif­ference in principle between people drafted to perform civilian tasks, such as waiting on patients in a mental hospital, and people convicted and put to work making license plates in a penitentiary?

MR. BUCKLEY: Yes. I think the auspices are what matters. If the auspices are a common effort required for the survival of the state, a certain dignity attaches to it that distinguishes it from the former. switzerland is the most highly mobilized state outside of Israel in the world, and they h aven' t had a war for 700 years, but one of the reasons why they haven't had a war is because--

MR. VON HOFFMAN: They haven't cried ahou'.: jokes either . (laughter)

MR. BUCKLEY: Well, the-- I wouldn't sell Switzerland short in that way. My favorite game when I go over there is to ask some­body what the name of the president is, and he whispers to some­body else and tries to get a little help and, with any luck, they'll find somebody' in the room who knows. But, anyway, you can't sell short a society whose president goes around with that kind of anonymity, can you? You certainly couldn't.

MR . VON HOFFNAN: No . No. Hear! Hear! I'm for much more anony -mous presidents.

~R . KRAFT: Who is the president?

MR. BUCI<LEY: (laughter) I don't know. I forget. (laughter)

~ffi. VO~ HOFFI~N: He runs a chocolate bar factory. (laughter)

MR . BUCKLEY: The resistance to the draft is interesting for several reasons. You may or may not remember that--(to audience ) you wouldn't, (to guests) but you a ll would--25 years ago a thing called Ul•iT was a very hot issue . It was backed by Harry Truman on the extraordinary thesis that because he had served in

5 ©Board of Trustees of the L land Stanford Jr. University.

the army--and look what it had done for him--everybody else ought to have Universal Military Training--and it is true that George Washington recommended it--but the idea was shot down for, I think, correct libertarian reasons. Still , to shoot it down is not, unhappily , to transform the Sovi et Union to Switzerland and for so long as there is a Soviet Union--for so long as we'd like to exclude the thought of an apocalyptic nuclear exchange-­there's going to have to be a conventional army, and we're going to have to contribute to it.

~ffi. KRAFT : Isn't the critical point there--the point that you made by writing off Novak and me and yourself as old men-­(laughter)

NR . BUCKLEY : \Yel l, he looks old.

l'lR . KHAF1': Yes , he looks mature. The kids know something that we just say , wh ich is that government really can't manage any­thing very well. And if there is universal military service, while it sounds good in terms of 1950 or 1940 principles, in fact, as many know from experience and as you know as a conserva­tive, that really is a terrible waste.

I··1R . VON IIOFFi"lAN : Or even as a recipient of a letter.

MR. KPJ\F'I' : Or a grant.

NR . BUCKLEY : A terrible waste--

~'m . • 1~?~"\FT : 1-laste of tale nt, ability, hope, enthusiasm-- I mean, to have people go to work for the government just destroys a lmost every aspect of idealism.

1-'iP.. . BUCKLEY: Well, we happen to share in this case the same antipathies. I have my self proposed that no college should matriculate someone who hasn't spent a year doing social work of some sort, but in that case the pressure would be by the indivi­dua l college and the form of social work performed would be some kind of a union of market needs, especially old people, and the desires of the 18-yea r-old, but to keep it out of their hands is a positive--

l' ;R . KRAFT : The government really does have a debilitating impact on people , and the resistance of young people to the draft, it seems to me, is not solely grounded in a refusal to serve.

M..t< . NOVAK: Dut on the other hand, there is a feeling that I find by some young people--more college age and just immediately af ter college rather than high school--that the government really does not have a right to call on your services in time of emer­gency, which I think is an attitude which if pervasive , is the death of our state--

1·1£< . BUCKLEY : I do , too.

~m . l':ov,;K : --and I think that-- Let me ask you this--

6

~lR. VON HOFFMAN: Well, what•s · an emergency, though? I mean--

~R . NOVAK : Well, I think--

~. VON HOFFMAN : --these emergencies tend to go on for decades.

MR . NOVAK: Unfortunately. But I think--

NR . VON HOFFMAN: Normality is an emergency.

MR . DUCKLEY : You certainly wouldn't have won the 100 Years War. (laughter)

~. NOVAK: Let me ask you this--

~lR . VON HOFF~!A~ : I'm only good for the first 10. 1 just fag out. (laughter)

~ffi . NOVAK : About two weeks ago on a television program with Representative Phil Crane, who is the--underline "the" --.conser­vative candidate for President--the most conservative--he re­ferred to a peace time draft of any kind as prohibited by the Constitution as involuntary servitude, and I jus t wonder if con­servatives aren't getting themselves in a terrific box on this issue, because they all seem to be--perhaps in l ess dogmatic terms--taking that position.

HR . BUCI<LEY: Well, that, as you know, is an article of faith in the Libertarian Party, and there's a certain osmosis there. It is plain that if you are conscripted into the army and you don't want to go to the army, this is involuntary servitude, but tra­dition reconciles rights in such a way as to permit the draft. Now, the declaration of an emergency is something that results from a political process on which we all pass. There have been, for instance, in 1975--in '73, '74, '75--certain powers taken away from the President and even now, as I understand it, you'd need congressional appropriations even to register. So I thihk that Phi l Crane is not wrong to stress the gravity of the draft, but wrong to sugges t that every individual ought to have the personal authority tq decline to serve.

~·!R . 1-mAF'I' : Let me ask a question that's really based on both sets of q uestions that Bob and Nick have asked. I have the im­pression that the questions Nick is asking have a lot more emo­tional content--that there is just a lot of passion about egali­tarian questions and whether women should go· into combat or .not: whether you should have rationing or not and who should pay-­than there is in the kind of conservative questions that get asked about gun control. Is that your impression, and if that's right, doesn 't it mean that the divisions inside the Democratic Party--the liberal-radical divisons--are a lot more salient than the conservative-moderate divisions inside the Republican Party, which, at l east in my view, are almost unfindable. You really have to take a magnifying glass to be able to find specks on 3eorge Bush. I mean--

~. VON HOFF~!AN : Yes, and I think, for example, Crane's position

7

© Board of Trustees of the L land Stanford Jr. University.

on that is very deviant in the Republican Party.

MR. NOVAK: On draft?

MR. VON HOFF~ffiN : Yes.

MR . NOVAK: Oh, no. I would say that Reagan is very close to that, and most of the presidential candidates at least are very close to that.

MR. KRAFT: For different reasons, though.

MR . NOVAK: I think Reagan's position is very close to Crane's. I think that is the--

MR . VON HOFFMAN : Then I misread Reagan's position.

MR. KRAFT: Easy to do. (laughter)

~ffi . BUCKLEY: Why, I thought your line was that his position never changed. (laughter)

HR . NOVAK : It's always impenetrable. (laughter)

~ffi . BUCKLEY : I think that the re is a fusion between the princi­pal opposition t9 arbitrary power by the government and ·an em­pirical disillusionment with the exercise of that power during the Vietnam War. That is to say, an awful lot of people who are 20 years old doubt the executive capacity of the United States to wage effe ctive war. Peter Drucker's book, The Age of Discontinuities, says there are only two things the government can do better than the private sector. One is to inflate the currency, and the second is to wage war. One doubts even, after Vietnam, whether they can do the latter. We probably would have done better to give blood as a mark in reprisal than send people off to Indochina, and it is for that reason, I think, that a lot of people who were perfectly prepared to sign up the day after Pearl Harbor are less anxious to do so now because of the built in ambiguity of the executive --

NR . NOVAK: I was in a high school in New Hampshire yesterday, and Teddy, following the practice of his brothers, asked ques­tions of the students. And he asked them, "How many of you are for registration or against registration," and most of them were a gainst registration, but there were enough who were for that made me a little bit surp rised. Let me ask a question--

t-lR . BUCKLEY: These were girls and--

~m . NOVAK : Yes. Girls and boys.

!ViR . BUCKLEY : Girls and boys. And was there an obvious differ­ence in the ir response?

~ffi . NOVAK: No. I did not detect any . And then he asked a que stion which I am sure he expe cte d to get no hands up, and he said, "How many of y ou would be willing to fight--to go .off and

8

be d raft ed a nd f i ght--in the Per s i a n Gulf "--a n d I think he put a ki ck e r in-- "t o keep the OPEC o il r unning . " (laughte r)

MR. KRAFT: For Exxon. (la ughter )

MR. NOVAK: Ab o ut, out of an as s emb l y of 300 or 4 00 or 500, 50 kids r a i sed the i r hand s--and h e a lmost fainted , you s ee . So I don't think it' s a cut a nd dr i ed popul a r i s sue , one way or the other , p a rticularl y among the --

MR. VON HOFFMAN: \Jell, I think the r e a re two is s u e s h e re. One is whe ther , a s Bill s ays, the peop l e who s a y , "Look, the gov­e rnme nt i s jus t a mess , a nd they c a n' t r eally do it, and I don't want to wo rk for peo p l e who are that ine ffici e nt." Th e re are othe r peop l e who a r e sma ller in numbe r--and I think this ge ts to wh a t J oe was saying --who do d i v i de the Democratic Party--p roba• b l y 90-1 0--tha t i s the peop l e that are s erious b acke r s of Gove rnor n rown of Cali f ornia, who is, I think, q uantitative ly d ifferent f r om Carter a nd Kenne dy --who e sse ntially , I think, are the same k inds of s t a ndard b r a nd !1me rican politicia ns, and those peopl e b l eed right o ut into the Liberta riah Party, and I think they have a d iffe r e nt social and pol·itical vision th?-t is based on much more tha n "Oh, the governme nt is no good because they have so much t roub l e delivering the 'ma il." It's that "We simply don't like that kind of s tructure a s it's curre ntly molded."

MR. NOVAK: Nick, don't you s ee an awful l o t of difference b e ­t ween a c a ndidate who wants the governme nt to ~ontrol p rofits, wages , p rices , inte r es t rate s--which take s a lot o f gove rnme nt a ctiv ity --a nd a c a nd i dat e who doe sn't?

MR. VON HOFFMAN: You me an Mr. Carte r and ~1 r. I<enne dy .

MR. NOVAK: Yes .

MR. VON HOFFMAN: Hell, I think that's the diffe rence now. Sl,x months from now I have s ome r e al-- I don 't think the r e 's any principa l d iffe r e nce . I mean, I think those guy s are like but­terflies in a ga r den l eaping from f lowe r to flow e r, each flower named "position. "

MR. KRAFT: Yes. I think tha t' s --

MR. VON HOFFMAN: 'l'h e ir p oll r e a ders t e ll them, "Say this this week." You know.

MR. KRAFT: Nothing tha t Bill Buckley would call an empirical diffe r e nce .

MR. NOVAK: Don't the y get stuck on a flower sometime, though, and it becomes--whe the r they reached it through some principled opinion or through expediency--it becomes their position, and a position of gre at diffe r e nce .

MR. VON HOFFMAN: Every so often--you're right. The y have to do something, and they end up in one place or another. But I think that the people that I'm talking about don't see the difference

9 ©Board of Trustees of the L land Stanford Jr. University.

between a Kennedy and Carter as anything but the butterflies.

MR. BUCKLEY: I tend to disagree with you. I think the worst thing you can say about Ted Kennedy is the truth, which is that he is a very principled man, and he really wants the Kennedy family to have been the last upwardly mobile family in American cultural history, and I think he's very sincere about this.

MR. KRAFT : It seems to me to be an arcane fight.

MR. VON HOFFMAN : It's among the wealthy Irish. (laughter)

MR. BUCKLEY: It's inconceivable to me that anybody giving him political advice that seeks to be sound would encourage him in the perverse lengths to which he has recently gone to alienate the overwhelming majority of the American people, who don't want to appease in the Persian Gulf and who don't want more inflation in the United States or more dirigibilism.

MR. NOVAK: But they do want wage and price controls.

MR. BUCKLEY : Well, the--

MR . NOVAK: They say they do.

MR. BUCKLEY: Look, as whatchamacallit said to Nixon in--

MR . VON HOFFMAN: Which whatchamacallit?

MR. BUCKLEY: The head of the Federal Reserve Board .

~ffi. VON HOFFMAN: Oh. Arthur Burns .

MR . BUCKLEY: Arthur Burns. Look, if the people want snake oil, you give them snake oil. And then you take the snake oil and then it doesn't work, then you stop giving them snake oil.

MR . KRAFT: But at least you know it's snake oil.

MR. BUCKLEY: Probably once every 15 years--

MR. KRAFT: You don't think it's--

MR. BUCKLEY: Yes . It's a superstition, it's mischievous, it has bad effects, but probably every 10 or 15 years we'll have wage and price controls for a year or two and then we'll stop, and-- But I think that wage and price controls appeals to Kennedy in the same way it appeals to Kenneth Galbraith, that they really would like a society in which, as you say, interest rates and-- -

MR. NOVA!<: Profits .

MR. BUCKLEY: --profits and so on and so forth are permanent l y regulated. This I think appeals to Kennedy whereas Carter's experiment with it would be comp l etely Nixonian , i . e., opportu­nistic·.

10

MR. KRAFT : I really don 't think so, Bill . First of all, I think that Nixon knew that when he talked about creative feder­alism it was snake oil. I think when Carter talks about zero­based budgeting, he really doesn't know it's · snake oil. So I think there is a difference . I also think that as between Kennedy and Carter the distinction is empirical rather than principle because while I might be prepared to accept the Kennedy position as principle, it seems to me Carter could easily get over to wage controls--! think that's the point you were making--

MR. VON HOFF~~N : Yes.

l'iR . KRAFT: --in fact, it would be real surprising to me if, re­elected, he wasn't on controls very, very quickly .

MR . NOVAK: Could you--

!VlR . KRAF'l': Just let me return to this main point, because I think it's one where we probably do have disagreement, which is an interesting one. That is, if you make a distinction between empirical differences on the one hand and principle differences on the other, isn't it true that the principle differences are for more divisive in the Democratic Party than in the Republican Party?

MR . BUCKLEY : Yes . Yes.

~ffi . VON HOFFMAN : Right. But not betwixt a carter and a Kennedy.

MR . BUCKLEY: I disagree.

MR. NOVAK: I disagree with that also. That is where !--Because I really believe, just following up what Joe said, I do believ~ that Kennedy is very comfortable with the idea of an . all-controlling federal government which decides how much money-­Someone asked him just this week, in a private conversation, how are you, in the Kennedy tradition, calling for sacrifice--asking what you can do for your country--when you're even against reg­istration for the draft? And he said , "I am for sacrifice. I want the American businessman to sacrifice his profits and to reduce his profits," and I think that is something that he is very comfortable with as a principle, while I think that when Carter attacks the profits of the oil companies after reading Pat .Caddell's polls, I think it's strictly politics. I think it's expediency.

MR. KRAFT: But the critical determinant is not the candidates but the constituencies, and it does seem to me that on the Democratic side there is a fairly large group that is very, very sensitive to a range of questions that Nick has been talking about and that Kennedy is by no means foolish--maybe he is--to be raising those questions. I think that he is deliberately appealing to that constituency, and he's forcing carter, I think, to move in the same direction. I would say that Carter, while he may have looked very, very tough in his last press conference,

11 ©Board of Trustees of the L land Stanford Jr. University.

actually was moving from green to amber in terms of his posture toward the Soviet Union and the Persian Gulf .

MR . BUCKLEY: Well, you wrote an article in which you revealed in all its naked confusion his Persian Gulf policy, which is indecipherable, with different emissaries saying different con­flicting things to different countries.

MR. KRAFT: Well , it's now-- I mean, since the press conference, since then, he's changed his stance , I would say, on the draft, and seems to be saying that he's for registration but against the draft, and I think has slightly altered his stance on the Olympics, so that it's not clear what the cutoff date is. It's a pretty sloshy stance, as you skiers say, and it's not clear what the cutoff date is as to whether it's qoino to be F~hrunry 20th or ~iay-- ·

MR . VON HOFFMAN : But on the other hand, he's stiffened in Yugoslavia . (laughter)

MR. KRAFT : But that's only a stiffening that he took--that's just because Yugoslavia ' s new. That's the stiffening that he took in order to soften later on. (laughter)

MR. NOVAK : One question that's asked a lot is that if this had happened--if Afghanistan had been invaded by Soviet troops-­let's say, in the spring of 1978, or even better, in December of 1978, would much fuss be made about it? And it's my opinion · there wouldn't be . 'l'here's no question that Ham ilton Jordan, the President's political--

MR . BUCI<LEY: I think the Shah of Iran would have mad e a fuss about it.

l<iR . NOVAK : Yes, but I don't think the Pr es ident would have because I think that he--Hamilton Jordan has never made any' secret that they were going to find a crisis as we came into the 1980 election that would rehabilitate the President politically and this was the one that came along . '

t<IR . BUCKLEY : Well, I'll tell you why I disagree with YOll a lit~ tl7 bit on th~s. It_is, I think, or has been axiomatic in the ~h1nk1ng of l1beral_1ntellectuals who specialize in foreign pol-1CY that ~he_expans1onary phase of Sov iet activity was over, that H7ls1nk1 and the validation of the eastern empire was it. Schl es1nger, for ins tance, was very strong on this point. And to have_them strike a fresh salient ruptures that theory and makes d1scordant an analysis on which a lot of people have re­lied •.. ~ow I don't think it would have been the political fuss that 1t became, save for Carter's reaction to it, but it was and would have been considered, I think, a major event in foreign policy.

l~R. NOVAK: But when you have the ~Jarxist coup d'etat in Kabul -­

r<lR. BUCKLEY: In April.

12

MR. NOVAK: ~o.

MR . VON HOFFMAN: Which one?

MR. NOVAK: In '78. The first one. There was nothing said when they--

MR . VON HOFFt<lAN : ·rhey murdered the ambassador--

MR . BUCKLEY: Sure .

MR . VON HOFFMAN : --apparently at the orders of the Russians.

t<lR. NOVAK : And , in fact, in December--

l'1R. BUCKLEY: It was just one more South Yemen .

r,m . NOVi\K : In early December when I was in the Persian Gulf and the people from the Persian Gulf states that I talked to were saying, "Why don't you-- Why doesn't the u.s. government--" They always say "you"--I'm sure not the u.s. government--but "Why don 't you--"

MR . VON HOFFMA~: You want to run?

MR. NOVAK : "Why don't you say something about the airborne Soviet division , that it's moved into ;,fghanistan." They said, "That is interference in a sovereign country's affairs and there was nothing said about that, " and of course the u'. s. gov­ernment knew about it. So I think there was a long line of things that were ignored until, I think, the politically propi­tious moment, and certainly it has been very good politics for the President .

MR . VO~ HOFHIAN: Well, but let me ask you a question here. How much of that has also been created by--well, particularly the television? I'm thinking of--almost putting any President in · a situation where he's got· to behave at least somewhat like Carter . I mean, here we have the American Broadcast ing Company for a hundred and some consecutive days running a headline saying, "America Held Hostage . " P.nd you know if the Washington Post or

.The New York Times ran a headline that inaccurate for more than three months what would be said . So we have the example of al­most a war pep rally every night on ABC . Isn't that bound to have some kind of effect on the political maneuvering of a President? Isn ' t he pushed in one way or another by that?

~JR. BUCKLEY : You mean that it excites or that it cloys?

hR . VON IIOFF!VlA~: It cloys a few of us, but I think it excites a lot more.

l':R . I<W'IFT : Are you trying to say that this crisis is real?

JYiR . VON HOFn·~\i~ : I'm saying that it-- Of course it is real.

!ViR . Knl~F'r: Not adventitious.

/ 13

©Board of Trustees of the L land Stanford Jr. University.

JVlR. VON HOFFMAN: I'm saying that the crisis--to some extent ob­viously is real. I mean, these troops are there, people are held in the embassy, but what you make of it, the hysteria, the patriotic gore--

JViR. BUCKLEY: Yes, you can make a Quemoy and Mat sue out of it.

HR. VON HOFF~1AN: Right. Have we seen anything quite like this since William Randolph Hearst went to war against Spain in 1898?

MR . KRAFT : Not even then. Answer, I think, no. I think that's one of the things that's very, very hard here. I think this is a new kind of crisis--

MR. BUCKLEY : A genuine crisis.

HR . KRAFT: I think it's--

MR . VON HOFFIVlAN : A television crisis.

MH. KRAFT: I think it's genuine, but I can see how-- lt's not a television crisis, or at least I think you can argue--

l~R. VON HOFFMAN : Partially.

MR. Klij1FT: What's different about this one, it seems to me, is that the heart of the matter is Islamic fundamentalism, and that is a curve ball nobody knows how to hit. And the draft isn't going to do you any good on that, and the Olympics aren't going to do you any good. We're going through a series of exercises that I think have almost no relevance to the problem, which doesn't mean that it's not a problem.

1'> ~"< . NOVAK : Well, what it has relevance to is presidential poli­tics, and I don't think you can blame ABC or even credit them with much share in this. When you had the President who was in a very, very low. state--he was running behind Kennedy in the polls, his job rating was going below the inflation rate (laughter), and he was-- We had severe economic difficulties in this problem for a long double-digit inflation, a possible recession ahead, great productivity problems, the trade question is terrible--I mean, he is in terrible shape economically, and what better to do than to turn attention 100 percent away from these problems toward the international scene?

l':R . VOh HOFF/IJAN : No, I think you're right.

~m .• BUC!<.LEY: A classic maneuver.

f·:R . Vot' HOFFl"lAN : I think you're ·right. I'm not saying that he didn't do that, but I'm saying-- Look, let me say I quite agree with you. I think he cashed in on it. I think they were looking for something to cash in on. They were in exactly the kind of trouble you described. But he· still had to have an opportunity created. Compare the kind of reaction between this and the Pueblo, and I think part of the difference is there was ·no way for the television networks to get the cameras in to cover the

14

. I

beatings and, in effect, they were able to do it--and have we not noticed since the Iranians, bless them,threw all the hacks and hackettes out of Iran, look at how the crisis there has dropped down--

MR. KRAFT: That isn't what did it. What did it was the possi­bility of retreating forward, because Afghanistan is--

MR. VON HOFF~!AN: Well, you're right. They had another crisis to come along.

JV!R. KRAFT: No. The President, I think, was beginning to go down on Iran--

MR. NOVAK: That's right. Exactly.

MR. VON HOFFMAN: Then the Russians saved him.

MR. KRAFT: --and I would agree with Bob, and I think this is the centr~l point, that in almost any other circumstances we would have been looking the other way--

MR. NOVAK: Exactly.

l'lR . KRAFT: --than at the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

MR. VON HOFFMAN: I don't disagree with you. I am simply saying that the television and the way it handled it is another impor­tant factor in the equation. I agree with all the things that you have said. I just factor in this one more thing.

rvm . BUCKLEY : May I ask Joe something? Joe, may I ask you this? You seem to be say ing that the Afghanistan event ignited this new tension, but you said a moment ago that Islamic fundamental­ism is the . great new factor. Now, are you say ing that the Afghanistan intervention was required as a result of a revival of Islamic fundamentalism, i.e., that the Soviet Union salient was in response to that? Or how do you connect those--

~1R. KHAFT : P.. s a liberal intellectual who specializes in foreign policy, but somehow finds it in himself to disagree with Arthur Schlesinger, I reject your notion that all of us seem to think that Soviet expansionism died. It seems to me that the--and I've been saying it for some time--

l'lR . BUCI<LEY : Well, no--

ME . KHJ\FT : Rea lly it's been going on for a long time--

~m. BUCKLEY : i'lilitarily defined. l'l ilitarily defined.

r.m . KHl\F'.r: r·1o, I don't think that Ethiopia was non-military. I don't think Angola was non-military. I don't think--

~iR . NOVAK: They just used surrogates.

!ViR . KW\ J•"r : --Vietnam-- So I think it's been fairly consistent,

15

©Board of Trustees of the L land Stanford Jr. University.

and they take opportunities . I t h ink Afghani stan fell within a continuum of Sov i et policy where they ma i ntain internal security in an iron way , and when opportunities for expansion open up, they take them . ~nd ~fghanistan was both of those . It seemed to me t here was a rea l threat to Soviet control in that area , and the n e utrality of a sta t e that had been pro- Soviet-- 'l'here was a r e al threat, and they moved in to suppress that threat. ,., t the same time , by being there the y now have e normous opportu­nities which they are utilizing in Iran , Pakistan , a ll through the ne i ghborhood . So Islamic fundamenta li sm enters into it in t hat sense --that the-- I think ·Afghanistan become both an op­oortunity and a probl e m for the Soviet Union because of Islamic fun damenta li sm , and that's the common denominator between Islam-­! ' m sorry t o go on so long--between ~·. fghani stan and I ran .

I·:R . vo;.. !IOFn;.'.i'- : c;o what do we do about the Imam, kid?

1-Tc . ;-:;z. - ~·".l' : \:e p r"ly . (laughter) wha t to do about the Imam . 1l,hat ,

I don't think anybody knows I think, i s a probl e m.

l·•i< . NOV.\!: : I was t o l d by a 'rlhi t e 1-iouse aide that Pr es i dent Car t er p rays fo r the Imam e v e ry day .

~~ . CUCKL2Y : i mong others?

:--,P . • KtV.l''l' : ·,·,ithout the Imam you ' r e not like l y to get the hos­tages out , but n e ithe r do you sol ve what is the heart of the prob l em , wh i ch is t errifi c in s t ability in an area that is vita l t o ~merican security .

hH . ::·UCKL~'.Y : hel l, now--

r- ;·z. J>CChLEY : --le t me ask you this q uestion: Is it reasonable to suppose that whatever the cause of it, the i'lme rican p ub lic is aroused on the matter of I ran fol l owed by Afghanistan fo llowed b y Sakharov: that :::enator J-;ennedy ' s apparent insouciance in the matter--his sort of !Je nry \iallace type approach to this--i s bad politics? J.ow , if it i s bad politics, i s it s i mply a mistake in juclgment , or i s i t simply an express i on of a compulsive anal ysis that h e c a n ' t throttle , or does he simply want t o hang on to a · sma ll constituency so that when h e goes down, h e c an qo down with a s o r t of a ~'. cGovern ped i gree?

i··iE . vo;'- IlOFFr-,;,r- : I ' m not s ure it's bad politics yet . I mean , it may be . vi e don't know that. But, I mean , his problem at the moment is to get a nomination.

r<R. :::uci-ZLL';y : You just unde rmined my question, because I asked you t o accept that assumption--that it was bad politics.

NR . ;jON HOFFMAN: I have to accept it, huh? Okay . (laughter)

t•;rz . K!?.J,;c•r : Let me do a little further undermining, because I d id not accept the assumpt i on--

16

MR . VON HOFFNAN : (laughing) Well, you're supposed to.

~1R . KRAFT: (laughing) I'm not going to. That the American people are really alert and on the qui vive and ready to go.

MR . BUCKLEY: I said "aroused."

t1R . KRAF'r: Or even aroused.

MR . BUCKLEY: You don't?

MR . KRAFT : I think, on the contrary, that when it comes to pay ­ing or bleeding, the country is not aroused; that it is big, fat, dumb and happy; that it doesn't want to accept either higher--

MR . VON HOFF~~N : Boo.

r~JR . KRAFT: --gas taxes or rationing or any kind of sacrifice at all: that it is by and large prepared to swallow--it wants to have the wool pulled over its eyes--it's prepared to swallow--

HR . BUCKLEY: How do you account for the fact that 78 percent of the people of Iowa were in favor of the grain embargo?

HR . KRAJ.;T : First of all, they were being-- There was no c 9 st--

~ffi . NOVAK : Oh yes, Joe, there's a cost.

~lR . KRAFT : Not to the people of Iowa.

MR . NOVAK : Yes. To the small town merchants, to the bankers, there was almost an immediate cost with the warehouse situation. I agree with--basically--with your premise. The only question I have is I don't know how long they're going to be aroused.

MR . BUCI<LEY : Yes .

~JR . NOVAK : As for your question--

r•IR . BUCKLEY : Well, as long as Carter can continue to be m';'-la­droit, which s upposes an infinite length of time, doesn't ~t? ·(laughter)

MR . NOVAK : But I have to say why I think this. I think that the basic question, or the basic problem in the interest of the American people is r eally not this: I thi~k it is the fact . that their standard of living is declin~ng, the~r take home pay ~s going down, and they want so~ebody who'~ 9oing to g ive them an answer for that . And Republ~cans are g~v~ng them one sort of an a nswer, Teddy Kennedy is giving them one sort of an answer, and so far Pres i dent Carter i s giving them no answer at all as to how h e :s going t o improve the ir situation. But jus t to answer your question--

f•1i<. . VON HOFF HAN : cri s i s is over.

(laughing) He say s he can't t a lk until the

17 © Board of Trustees of the L land Stanford Jr. University.

l'iR. t-< OVAK: But just to answer the '!'eddy Kennedy question: Everybody--all my col'leagues and Kennedy watchers--have always said that Teddy, at heart, is an opportunistic politician--a guy who can go either way--and I really think that a case can be made that he is the first Kennedy ideologue.

!'JR . J.: UCKLEY: Ye s. I do, too.

t:i i<. . NOVAK : I saw him in Iowa, and he was trying to be a moder­ate--and if he's bad in New Hampshire, he was terrible in Iowa-­because he had nothing whatever to say.

l'iR . VON HOFFMAN : Do you realize, gentlemen, what the tone of all of this is? (laughing) !-Jere 's this man that's suspect be­cause he-- !-Jere 's a major politician who may actually believe what he's saying.

l·lR . BUCKLEY : Yes , that's right.

HR . KRAr"l' : I' 11 rescue him from that by saying that that's what the constituency believes.

!'JR . NOVl\K: But I think he had to find something to say in New Hampshire .

t-!R . CUCELEY: Yes . Something that would distinguish him from Carter.

~m . NOVA!<: I mean, he's gut something to say now. Pardon?

JV.R . BUCKLEY : Something that would distinguish his position from Carter's, you mean?

NH . NOVAK : Yes, and I think it had tq be something that he was comfortable with. You know, Scoop Jadk,son wanted him to come out for a strong defense policy and a-r

1'\R . :C UCKLEY : He could have taken the ~ack Kennedy route.

JV:R . NOW1K : --Jacksonian domestic policy, and he just couldn't do that.

r-m. KRAFT: But there is no-- I shpuldn' t say no constituency-­but I don't think there's a big c?nstituency in primaries for that kind of message. So I think \that one can say that he is still proof against this charge of .being an ideologue. We can claim him for the opportunist camp.

I'IR. BUCKLEY : \~ell now, wait. Let me ask you this question then: Why is it so that the alleged missile gap turned out to be a pro­fitable political tool for Kennedy to deploy in 1960, but would not be profitable for Teddy to deploy in 1980? Is it because the United States has moved massively away from any desire to maintain strategic parity or superiority?

~1R . VON HOFFMAN: Oh, I think it's because he's running in the primaries now. That, you know--you're talking about a political

18

tactic that was used in the general election. He's got to get himself nominate d. 'I'hen he can turn around and embrace other principles.

l'iR . NOVAK: 1-iell, I · think-- I think maybe--

!'JR . VON I!OFFf<l1~N : You know, whatever looks more promising.

l'lR . NOVAK: I think that's a misreading of the Democratic pri­mary vote in an awful lot of places, including l"iew Hampshire -­not Massachusetts--but t'.ew Hampshire and Florida and a good num­ber of other places. I think that the Jackson i an line might run very well. I think if Scoop Jackson had run in t< e\v Hampshire in 1976, it would have changed the course of history. I don 't think J'immy Carter would have been nominated.

l'IR . VON I-JOFFf•IAt · : I'm not saying that Kennedy's decision h e r e will wor k . I'm just saying that he had to do some thing to d if­ferentiate himself from carter, and they p robably figured, "Look , Carter's already saying arms, arms , arms. You' d better say no arm'S, no arms, no arms.''

MR. NOVAK: \-/e ll, let me just make one point to try to make my case: Everybody who trave l ed with h im--the press--noted the treme ndous exhilara tion after the George t o wn speech--that whil e in Iowa he had been kind of moping a round and unhappy being a moderate. He was just full of himself, particula rly in the first few days after tha t . And that doesn 't sound like an oppor­tunist. 'l'hat sounds like a guy who's finally come back to wha t he really b e lieves in.

MR. VON HOFFMAN: Or it sounds like a g uy who has made his big last-in-the-ninth pitch and al l his advisors are coming , saying "You hit the curve ball, chief . You knocked it o ut of the park . v; e' re going." You know.

MR. BUCKLEY: viell, having just come back from t; ew hampshire which you told us you did , is it simp l y generally accept ed by the Kennedy forces there that he 's going to lose?

MR. NOVAK: They think h e ' s going to lose . Their hope and the f ear of the carter people is th€ se kind of bedroom t:ew Hampshire men who only s l eep in New Hampshire a nd work in 1'-lassachusetts and are very volatile. They voted for conservative Senator Humphrey for the Senate and for the liberal Governor r:;a.llen for Governor last time. Th ey ' re swing vot ers . They ' re ticket splitters . i''. nd they really don 't-- You never really can t e ll what they' re going to do . Th a t's the only dynamic pa rt in t he Democratic race . The polls ind icate that Carter is rather well ahead~ but as you know, polling in primaries is a very chancy and iffy business .

MR. VON HOFF~N: Almost as much as the general e l ectio ns.

MR. NOVAK: l•mch more so. l'·mch more so . Yes .

MR. BUCKLEY: He only have a f e w minutes . I' d like to ask Joe ,

19 ©Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Jr. University.

since he's a I·,iddle East expert among other things, whether the rather thunderous denunciations of Israel by The t':ew York •rimes suggest that the policy on the \ves t Bank is something that the United States is going to be very, very active in rejecting as not in the spirit of the Camp David agreement.

MR. KRAFT: I would think you'd have to revert back to the ori­gin a l n eeds of internal politics--and the point !Job Kovak was making--that they are going to be using foreign policy and for­e i gn policy crises as the instrument for domestic politics. Ny sense is that the present cri s is in the Persian Gulf is probably going to run down for political usage by April or 1>\ay--the hos­t ages will be out, and you' ll be asking a lot of embarassing questions about that; i.fghanistan won't be settled, but that'll wear away--and I think there will Le a need for the administra­tion to have a new tough issue around which people can gather to support the lJresident, and I wouldn't be surprised to see a new departure in the Israel-;. rab business , and there, I think quite c l e<l rly, the administra tion wou l d want to come down pretty hard-­but I \·:oul d trust 1;ob ' s judgment more than my own on this--in p ushing the Israelis to make more concessions on the West Dank.

MR . BUCI~EY: In order t o try to make that rapprochement conta­g i ous and get a few more peopl e in t he act.

t<lR . KRAFT: ;·,nd to make it look as t hough there was an e l ement of t ension and crisis and that the--

~1R . BUCKLEY : ; .nd progress .

MR. KRAFT : --!' resident was moving.

MR. NOVAK: I'm not sure of t hat because Car t er has had such a hard time winning back the Jewish l eadership from r·;e nnedy from a pos ition of opposition to Car t er--i f not of support of Kennedy-­~ha t I don 't know if h i s politi cal people woul d want him to risk that at the moment . So I think that ' s a very t o ugh one politi­cally .

MR . vm; HOFFHAN : ' .. ell , then , El .3alvadore 'd better watch out . (laugh t er)

~1R . NOVAK : Don 't kid al.oou t tha t.

MR . VOK HOFFMAN: (lo.u<Jht e r)

( l aughing) I'm not . You ' re up. El Sa l vadore .

MR . BUCKLEY: Is it anyone ' s op inion here--to finish with the f irst ques tion that Joe asked--that the United Na tions is a solid benef iciary of this crisis if it ends up actually being the aqent through which the hostages are released? Is this a real ;hot in the arm for the United Kat i ons?

MR . KRAFT : I guess my answer is I'm afra i d so , and I do not . take the li qht view you take of tha t hanging jury they 're ge tt1ng toaeti1er . i think it will do the United ~ations some - good , and itrll make o. further indent for tha t kind of i nternational way

20

of doing international business, which as I've learned from your book, Bill, is a pretty bad way to do it.

MR. NOVAK: Except that the, I think-- I kind of look a~ th~ whole process, as I think Joe does, with tremendous tr~p~dat~on. The whole question is, as we sit here, it's not deter~~ne~ \.Jhether the hostages will be released before the verd~ct ~s de­livered , and that is really-- They are really hostages then, in the sense of what kind of verdict is going to be demanded. I think it's a very, very uneasy situation, and I don't know if the m; will come out on top of it.

MR. BUCKLEY: lvell, is it your opinic;m that a part of the agree­me nt requires i-\merican acauiescence ~n the verdict in the same sense we acquiesced in l•,orth Korea' s demands on the Pueblo? Or do you think this would be absolutely intolerable as far as the public is concerned?

MR. KRAFT: the Pueblo.

I think we have _ to acquiesce far more than we did in We are legitimizing the tribunal.

MR. BUCKLEY: Well, we're legitimizing the tribunal, which does not, however, commit us to agreeing with its verdict.

MR. KRAFT: But we've accepted the people who are on it. I think we're signing up for an inquisition.

MR. BUCKLEY: At our own ·expense.

MR~ NOVAK: 'rhat' s right.

MR. KRAFT: Largely at our own expense.

MR. BUCKLEY: Well, is this something that will go down with the public, o~ will they consider that a form of capitulation?

MR. NOVAK: I would think that if we get to a position where thi s tribunal is mee ting and those 50 Americans are still in the embassy in Teheran, it will go down very badly. If they are out and in their homes, I don't think that there will be much oppo­sition to it.

MJl,. VON HOFFMAN: Vlell, I don't know. It seems to me if the tribunal says whatever it wants to say about events that took place in Iran 25 or 30 years ago, I don't think people really care very much. I think the only thing that will be important is to the extent that signing the conclusions of the tribunal are regarded as a token of what we're going to do in the future. In other words, if we say and it is interpreted that our refusal to s ign it means that we do intend to fool around with the in­ternal affairs of Iran in the future, then I think we have a problem. Put otherwise, I think it's just words, and once you get the people out, you say , "\o/ell, it's just all that jazz."

MR. NOVAK: \oiell, once you get the people out, it's--

MR. BUCKLEY: ~/ell, is it your prediction that in the next few

21

© Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Jr. University.

months the l eadership of Iran is going to actual~y attempt a considerabl e seduction of the United St ates since it is face t o face with an obviously grisl ier a lternative which they've seen operate in Afghanistan ? Is there going to be a revi val , a t the initiative of the mad ayatollah , of American-Iranian friendship?

MR. KRAFT: I do not see that at al l. I don't see that a t all.

MR. BUCKLEY: For temperamental reasons?

MR. KRAFT: Partially for temperamental reasons, but mainly for empirical politica l reasons which are that the l ef t wing there has real power, and I would think that the militants , whether they be-- The mil~tants, l et ' s say, have real power , whether they be l eft wing militants or religiou s militants, are going to do very, very well in the elections. 'l'hey ' 11 probabl y dominate that new parliament . So that I think you're in a small window of time when you can cut a deal , and I think the possibilities for Iranians turning pro- i'>merican are extremely slight for do- · mestic reasons of a very for ceful character .

MR . BUCKLEY: Thank you , Joe Kraft. Thank you very much , Bob Novak . '.i'hank you , Ni cholas von Hoffman. Ladies and gent l emen of Georgetown, thank you .

22 ·. © Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Jr. University.