This is the concluding part of the interview by Elinor Langer with Jerome Weisner, President of MIT and George B. Kistiakowsky, Lawrence Professor of Chemistry emeritus that began in yesterday's Crimson.

Wiesner. You see, what is important to McNamara is how the information is distilled.

Kistiakowsky. He gets a short summary. The President gets a summary of a few pages and the Secretary gets 50 pages, but it is that kind of thing. By the time those papers were prepared, there was so much selection and value judgment and so-called agency position--in other words, you don't admit when you are wrong--that, in effect, the top-level papers were bearing very little resemblance to the basic background data.

Wiesner. And this is very important--they didn't show the true uncertainty. That was particularly striking. They simply appeared as if they had real validity. Of course, this problem isn't particularly unique to this situation. I remember that, after I became science advisor, I set out to see where some of the data we were given came from: information that was given as hard intelligence, like the number of Soviet missiles, or the number of tanks the Soviets had, or the number of divisions. And as I penetrated into the raw material I discovered that it often wasn't based on solid basic information. In fact, we caused the intelligence people to modify their estimates extensively by making them throw out the raw data they couldn't justify.

Langer. Well, did you feel obligated for political reasons in the summer study to include something about a barrier, or was that McNamara's previous idea?

Kistiakowsky. No.

Langer. How did that proposal come about?

Kistiakowsky. In our agenda proposal one of the topics we wanted to look into was a way of minimizing or reducing the flow of supplies and manpower from the north in a way that would lead to de-escalation of the war rather than escalation and bombing.

Wiesner. You see the avowed purpose of the bombing effort was trying to stop...

Langer. To stop infiltration.

Wiesner. To stop the flow of munitions. And we wanted to see whether there was an alternate way to achieve that end.

Langer. Was there no possibility of arguing about that objective?

Wiesner. We did that too, but first of all we looked at the question of whether the bombing was an effective way of achieving that objective, and it became clear that it was not. In fact, that's one of the things we said. But we also then asked whether the material coming in was significant. I think the general impression was that there was a significant flow of munitions. Isn't that correct? As I recall it, the amount of munitions coming along the trail could sustain the VC (Vietcong) although a good deal of munitions were coming in other ways too. So then the question was whether there were any technical means that we could see that might do a better job and be much less destructive. We wanted a more benign way of achieving the same end.

Kistiakowsky. We were looking for ways of minimizing the casualties and minimizing...

Wiesner. The destruction.