Jerome Weisner, now president of MIT. and George Kistiakowsky, professor emeritus of Chemistry at Harvard, were science advisors to Presidents Kennedy and Eisenhower, respectively, and were among the leading spokesmen for the scientific community during the period covered by the Pentagon Papers. The interview took place in mid-August at Woods Hole. Massachusetts. in the offices of the National Academy of Sciences. Wiesner and Kistiakowsky retained the right to edit their remarks, a right both have exercised. The few places where the printed version truncates the actual discussion, or where amplification is required, are indicated in italics. Elinor Langer

Langer. (Let me start by saying that) the assumption behind this interview is that the Pentagon Papers may have more serious implications than the level of public discussion so far has really indicated. It was conceived as a kind of fishing expedition to see what people like yourselves, who were in positions of some power--at least we were led to believe at the time--(and of) relative knowledgeability when some of the events were going on, made of the Papers...You were not familiar, at that time, with the plans and projections that were being made about the bombing campaign in North Vietnam?

Wiesner. I certainly knew nothing about it.

Kistiakowsky. Well, you were already out of office.

Wiesner. I had been out of Washington since March '64 and the war blew up after that. In addition, I haven't studied newly released papers sufficiently to be able to talk about what was just contingency planning that is necessary and what was, in effect, government policy. I think that one has to be very careful in making such interpretations.

Kistiakowsky. Yes, I must say for myself that by that time I was already, I think, sophisticated enough to sense the internal workings of the government: the fact that not everybody speaks the same language, not everybody has the same objectives. The Pentagon, for instance, is very different from the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, and so on. But I was naive enough to think that when the President of the United States was running for election and made quite a flat, public statement that he was for peace as contrasted with his opponent--I was naive enough to believe him.

Wiesner. Well, I believed him for other reasons, too, in spite of the fact that, as I said earlier, I was not on good terms with the President. I had seen him push for disarmament initiatives inside the White House: press on the White House staff, including myself. I was not involved in Vietnam discussions because they were not a prominent part of the government business during the first months that he was President and I was still working there. There were other issues that were much more important. But in the contacts we had with him and with his senior staff during the campaign, he certainly gave us the impression of very different views about Vietnam than those that emerged later. And I suspect that neither of us would have worked for him to the degree that we did, or at all, if we had been able to anticipate the way the war was going to go.

Langer. Does it strike you in retrospect as surprising that in your position you didn't know very much? I'm struck by the way you both sound like ordinary citizens, like the "man on the street," when in fact you both were in and out of Washington, knew a lot of people, and presumably had some power.

Kistiakowsky. I think you exaggerate my position. By then I ceased to be--not that I was fired or anything--I ceased to be a member of the President's Science Advisory Committee (PSAC). Jerry, you still were a member, weren't you?

Wiesner. Yes, I attended meetings, but even so, strategy issues were not discussed in PSAC. The point is, the thing that appalled us about Goldwater was his threats to use nuclear weapons and his very strong jingoism. Johnson never talked like that, and the contrast was attractive. We never asked the President about Vietnam specifically, so we can't say we were deceived in any literal sense. On the other hand, we were given the impression that we were supporting a peace platform: there is no question about that.

Langer. In preparing for meeting with you today, I reread a story I wrote for Science in 1967 based on telephone interviews with everybody who had been on Scientists and Engineers for Johnson. The range of disaffection then was certainly very great, but the article ended up by commenting on the feeling of powerlessness of all the people who had been on that committee, and I remembered wondering to myself, if those people felt powerless, who was feeling powerful at that time? Who was feeling in control?

Wiesner. I don't know.

Kistiakowsky. As a reward for my services during the election campaign. I was appointed a member of--as it turned out--a fictitious organization called something like the President's advisors or board of advisors on foreign policy. It met once or twice during the campaign for a briefing and never met afterwards. But I was never formally dismissed. Hence, I wrote a letter to the President urging him to de-escalate the war in the fall of '65, about Christmas of '65.

Kistiakowsky. I must say my first strong, explicit disappointment with President Johnson was in January or early February '65, when the so-called Gilpatric (Roswell Gilpatric, Deputy Secretary of Defense, 1961-1964) committee (appointed by the President) of which I was a member, orally recommended to him that he should place great emphasis on the issue of nonproliferation of nuclear weapons. The recommendation was immediately buried. There was hardly a "thank you" to the members of that committee.

Wiesner. Well, you remember what happened to us on the ABM issue? In '67 we were invited by Secretary McNamara to come to the White House to discuss the ABM.