INTERVIEW WITH GENERAL VERNON WALTERS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP88-01070R000301420003-7
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 14
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 8, 2010
• Sequence Number: 3
• Publication Date: October 14, 1984
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

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RADIO TV REPORTS, INC.
4701 WILLARD AVENUE, CHEVY CHASE, MARYLAND 20815 [phone]
FOR PUBLIC AFFAIRS STAFF
AMERICAN INTERESTS STATION WETA-TV
PBS Network
DATE October 14, 1984 6:00 PM CITY Washington, DC
Interview With General Vernon Walters
PETER KROUGH: He spoke for this man, and for this
man. This President depended on him, as did this one.
He served six presidents in all, Republican and
Democrat alike. At critical junctures in recent history, he
worked with this leader, this leader, and this leader. The
master of discretion, he successfully smuggled Henry Kissinger
into Paris 15 times for secret negotiations with Le Douc Tho of
North Vietnam.
To this day, he keeps a low public profile, yet
continues to operate at the highest levels of global diplomacy.
His name is Vernon Walters, and on this special edition of
"American Interests" he talks about the crisis in Central
America.
Welcome to "American Interests." I'm Peter Krough.
Our guest is Vernon Walters, President Reagan's
Ambassador-at-Large. Ambassador Walter's career in government
spans four decades. He has served in the Army, in the Central
Intelligence Agency, and most recently in the State Department,
where he travels widely, meeting privately with world leaders.
Trouble in Central America has commanded much of
Ambassador Walter's attention these past four years. His
efforts are not publicly discussed, but State Department
watchers keep a careful eye on his itinerary because they know
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that when Ambassador Walters travels diplomatic action is
likely to follow.
[Film clip]
KROUGH: Vernon Walters began his service for the
United States Government in 1941, when he enlisted in the Army.
After the war, military attach Walters went to Rio de Janeiro
as a translator for Secretary of State George Marshall and
President Truman at the 1947 Conference of the Organization of
American States.
Thus began a long career as interpreter for United
States presidents.
The OAS Conference reconvened a year later, this time
in Bogota, Colombia. As the Conference began, the streets of
the city errupted in violence and bloody civil strife. But the
conferees were determined to continue, and so was Walters. He
performed his duties as an interpreter for Marshall, virtually
under fire.
Walters later accompanied Ambassador Avarell Harriman
to to Iran in 1953 for consultation with the government of
Prime Minister Mosadeq. Later, now as a Lieutenant Colonel,
Vernon Walters served as an aide to President Eisenhower.
The new President traveled widely, and Walters, master
of seven languages, was usually at his side.
In Rome, they met with Pope John XXIII, only the
second meeting in history between a U.S. President and Pontiff.
In Paris, Walters translated as General DeGaulle
extended a warm welcome to his old comrade in arms.
Travels with President Eisenhower were victory tours.
But, in 1958, Walters accompanied Vice President Nixon on a
trip to Latin America. Some nations received them well but, in
Peru, Nixon and Walters got their first taste of anti-American
demonstrations. And in Venezuela, angry crowds exploded in
violence.
As Walters and Nixon sat in their car, angry Vene-
zuelans hurled rocks. At the urging of Walters, Nixon con-
tinued his Latin American tour as planned.
Conflict of a different kind awaited the U.S. at the
Big Four Conference in Paris, 1960. President Eisenhower and
Vernon Walters listened as Premier Khrushchev denounced the
U.S.
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Vernon Walters continued to serve his presidents
assigned as a military attach across Europe.
In 1969, President Nixon called on him for a highly
sensitive mission. Walters was to smuggle Henry Kissinger into
France for secret peace talks with the North Vietnamese. The
President's confidence was rewarded. The meetings were not
discovered until after they ended.
President Nixon transferred Walters, now a General,
from Army duty to the Central Intelligence Agency in 1972.
When President Ford took office, he promoted Walters to Deputy
Director.
General Walters retired from active service in 1976.
Returning to government duty at President Reagan's
request, Vernon Walters now serves as Ambassador-at-Large and
trouble-shooter in Latin America, North Africa, Europe and
elsewhere.
[End clip].
KROUGH: Ambassador Walters, in a recent speech, you
described Central America not as our backyard, but as our front
lawn. What -- what do you mean by that?
GENERAL VERNON WALTERS: Well, I think most people
tend to take too close a view of Central America. Central
America is part of the broad Soviet strategy of discrediting
the United States as a reliable ally.
I believe their principal purpose is to drive a wedge
between us and our European and Japanese allies, and the best
way they see to do that is to show people that we are an
unreliable ally. They point to Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, the
Shah, Haile Selassie, and so forth. And they say if now the
United States cannot defend its small nearby neighbors a
thousand miles from American borders, it is not going to defend
you Europeans or you Japanese. And isn't it time, if that is
true, to accommodate with the Soviet Union?
It is not just a question of Cuban influence in the
Caribbean Basin or possible bases. The whole strategy is
designed to discredit the United States and separate it from
its allies.
KROUGH: By describing it as our front lawn, you
suggest that very vital interests are at stake in that region.
What -- what vital interests specifically do you point to?
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GENERAL WALTERS: The one I just described. It's not
economic. I believe it's something like .05 of our trade. It
is not that, nor do we derive any particular income or revenue
from the area.
It is the fact that the vital interests -- if it can
be proved that we cannot defend Central America -- why should
the Europeans and Japanese think that we can defend them? And
what is significant about that is that at the end of the war,
when we started our economic aid program, those countries' GNP
was maybe 10 percent of ours. Today, the Gross National
Product of the countries comprising the European Common Market
is already larger than ours.
If they accommodate and the Soviets obtain some sort
of control over the enormous pool of skilled labor in Europe,
the enormous industrial plant, the whole equation of power in
the world will be upset.
KROUGH: How are the Soviets pursuing in invisible
ways, in concrete ways, the discrediting of our credibility
with our nearest neighbors? How are they mounting their
threat?
GENERAL WALTERS: They don't have to -- the world is
watching. They don't have to do a great deal. The world
watched Vietnam. And the only reason why hostages were taken
in -- in Tehran was that we had bugged out of Vietnam.
You will notice that nobody takes Soviet hostages.
Nobody attacks Soviet embassies. They know something very
unpleasant would happen. So it doesn't happen. And that
contrast is fairly evident. They point to the respect with
which their diplomatic premises are treated as to the way ours
are treated. And these are very subtle. They're doing this
very skillfully. It's being done very subtle, and they don't
have to do much.
The Europeans reasoned this out for themselves. At
the risk of taking up some of your time, I was in the room when
the U-2 Conference was held after our spy plane was shot down.
DeGaulle was presiding over the conference, Khrushchev
at the end in a flurry got up, slammed the door and went out.
DeGaulle went to Eisenhower and said, I don't know what he's
going to do or what's going to happen, but whatever he does
we're with you to the end.
Six years later, I came back to France as military
attach to a France which had withdrawn from the military
structure of NATO, which had taken considerable distance from
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us, which had asked us to evacuate the line of supply across
France and the bases we had there. And I tried to find out
what had brought us from the declaration of unconditional
support in 1960 to this rather different situation in 1967, and
I came to the conclusion that when President Kennedy sent Dean
Acheson to see DeGaulle with the pictures of the Cuban mis-
siles, DeGalle, unlike other leaders, did not say this is the
end of the world. He said take them out.
When we did not take them out, he said, "If they're
not going to fight for Cuba 90 miles from the United States,
why should I believe they're going to fight for France 3,500
miles away. I've got to develop my own nuclear capability."
And the real danger of the success of this business in
Central America is that if people lose faith in the American
guarantee that they'll be protected by the United States, they
will do one of two things. They will accommodate the Soviet
Union, or they will develop their own nuclear capability. And
who wants to live in a world with 30 nuclear powers? That's
what's at stake in Central America, and that's why it's vital.
KROUGH:- You have said that Central America is under
attack by outside forces. What are these outside forces? It
is something more than a wish in the Kremlin that we would be
discredited in Central America. They are doing something, are
they not?
GENERAL WALTERS: Oh, indeed they are. I don't know
what the daily figures are. They vary at various times. I
would say they have 5,000 people either from Cuba, Eastern
Europe or the Soviet Union in Nicaragua, which in a country of
two million people is a pretty healthy injection of people.
There is in Cuba a Soviet brigade. There is all kinds
of intelligence being given to the Sandinistas and to the
Cubans by the Soviets. In fact, in Cuba, the Soviets have the
largest electronic intelligence installation in the world
outside the Soviet Union.
So, these are some of the advantages they derive, the
corollary advantages, the ancillary advantages to the major one
of discrediting the United States and showing not just to the
peoples of Central America but of South America that relying on
the United States is useless.
And, of course, there is a certain unwillingness to
see both sides of the question. The death squads are always on
the right, never on the left. D'Aubison himself was shot
through the neck in two elections ago. His number two man was
killed in this election.
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In Peru right now there are several hundred Soviet
military advisers, of whom no one says anything. But our 55 in
El Salvador is the subject of continuous comment. There's a
disproportion in the consideration of the thing which plays
into their hands without their having to do anything. The
world is watching, and they know it.
KROUGH: What do you think explains, if it is true,
this predisposition to find fault with our side but -- but not
with theirs?
GENERAL WALTERS: I don't know, except that we
Americans have a tradition that all other people regard us as
being obsessed with guilt, and we did have it at the end of the
war. Everybody else -- the Russians had suffered tens of
millions of casualties. Their cities were in ruins. The
Europeans had been occupied or destroyed. We were intact,
relative to them. We had very few losses. We had developed
the atomic bomb. We used it on people of another race, and we
were ripe for guilt. And I think this is the thing that gave
them courage in the dark days for them of '45 and '46, the
knowledge that we had this guilt complex.
You know, General DeGaulle once said the guilt sense
of the Americans doesn't prevent them from sinning. It just
prevents them from enjoying their sins, and that's quite
correct.
We always tend to -- whether, there's an earthquake or
a tidal wave -- I'm exaggerating for the purposes of illustrat-
ion to say, "you think the CIA did that?" "No, I think it was
the Department of Defense."
We just -- if we had that kind of clout, we wouldn't
be in the situation we're in.
KROUGH: In addition to our -- our sense of guilt,
which may make us more critical of our own actions than those
even of our adversaries from time to time, clearly, Cuba is
--is part of the problem here. How much a part of the problem
is -- is Cuba?
GENERAL WALTERS: Oh, I think very much a part of the
problem because Cuba gives Communism in the Americas an
acceptable Latin face. I mean, Russian Communism is so alien
there's no possibility of it being [word unintelligible]. It
also appeals to the Latin sense of the little guy standing up
to the big guy, and so forth and so on. Part of our problem is
we realize we're the big guy.
But, as for the guilt feeling, I wonder if there's any
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other nation in history that's ever financed its competitors
back into competition with us.
I was there when we put machine tools in the roofless
factory at Volksburg where Volkswagens were made. We didn't
just do it there. We did it in Japan. We did it in England.
We did it in France, and we did it in Italy.
KROUGH: Do you think we also ought to be willing to
do it in Cuba? That is to come to some arrangement with
Castro, which involves his ceasing and desisting from revolut-
ionary activities in Central America in exchange for some sort
of a hopeful economic relationship with this country? Is that
the makings of....
GENERAL WALTERS: No, that again moves toward economic
determinism which, as you know, I do not espouse.
The Soviet Union gives Castro between four and six
billion' dollars a year, and I just don't think there's any way
the American taxpayers are going to give Castro four to six
billion dollars. I don't think there's any way the Russian
taxpayers would, if they had anything to say about it, but they
don't.
Castro is the leader of a country of nine million
people -- maybe ten -- but he's got extraordinary world
prominence by doing what he's done. And he's killed enough
people that I just don't see how he could liberate his regime,
how he could liberalize his regime and survive.
KROUGH: Does this mean there is no basis for making a
deal with him?
GENERAL WALTERS: I -- I talked to him at length, and
I don't think there is anything that will make him give up his
revolutionary activities in the Caribbean Basin. I think he
thinks that's part of his heaven-sent mission. I think he
thinks it's his duty. I think he thinks it's his duty to the
unliberated people of the world.
As I say, he's a true believer.
KROUGH: Does this mean that we wait around for Castro
to be replaced before there is any prospect for an improvement
in our relations with Cuba?
GENERAL WALTERS: Well, you know, there are a lot of
situations that we can't control, and I think that this is
probably one of them. If you didn't have the nuclear weapon,
it might be different, but the alternatives to the use of this,
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are such that it would be very difficult. The British and
French, fearing poison gas, were very reluctant to do anything
about Hitler while he reoccupied the Rhineland, took the Czar,
took Austria, took Czechoslovakia, because they feared there
would be gas attacks and thousands of people would die. And
now, there's almost a certainty of that.
KROUGH: What do you believe set Castro off on a
course which has been so confrontational with the United States
and so productive of threats to our interests in the Caribbean
and Central America?
GENERAL WALTERS: First, I think his intellectual
conviction as a Communist that our system is the antithesis of
theirs, and the proof that there is a good life for the working
people under another system, which is an outrageous contradict-
ion, the principles of Marxism which, after all, was directed
at a Dicken's type society which doesn't any longer exist. But
they are so conservative that they don't recognize that the
world has changed that much.
And I think he enjoys the center of the stage activity
which his kind of behavior and conduct gives him.
KROUGH: I know you don't like to speak of economic
determinism, but isn't it true that -- that socialism has been
rather unrewarding for those leaders in charge of socialist
systems? And isn't it possible that Castro might see economic
benefits for his country and some closer relationship with this
economy which -- for which he may have to pay some prices in
restraining himself internationally?
GENERAL WALTERS: I think that's why the Soviet
brigade is in Cuba -- make sure there are no surprises.
KROUGH: Fidel Castro or any other foreign leader
which suffices as an example may understand our political
system. He may be impressed with your knowledge of history and
your fluency in foreign languages, but isn't his behavior and
his decisionmaking ultimately going to be controlled by his own
domestic political system and by his own ideology?
GENERAL WALTERS: I would say more by his ideology.
He makes his political system there by his ideology, and hen is
a true believer.
KROUGH: You've said that he's maybe more of a true
believer in Marxism than some of the top leaders in the Soviet
Union.
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GENERAL WALTERS: Sure. That's right. They've lived
with it for 60 years. He's only lived with it for 25.
You know, when you look at history and you see that
the Russian empire was the largest exporter of wheat and
cereals in the world in 1913, and after 67 years of bad weather
and bad harvests, it is now the largest importer of grains and
cereals in the world, you begin to wonder how the system works.
Fidel Castro has not had that experience long enough.
He is a true believer. He thinks -- he said to me -- he said,
I wasn't pushed by you into the arms of the Communist. He said
a careful study of history, economics and sociology convinced
me that Marxism-Lenninism offered the only answer.
I said, but has it ever struck you that it's irrevers-
He said, No, everything is reversible. I'm revers-
ible. I said, when are you reversible, Mr. President? He
said, when the people no longer love me. I said, Mr. Presi-
dent, when that time comes who do you expect to have the
courage to break the news to you? And even he laughed.
KROUGH: We are opposing a revolution in -- in
Nicaragua which suggests that perhaps it is the requirement of
this country to oppose revolutions when they develop particu-
larly close at home. Is this -- is this something that is
inevitable for us to oppose revolution in neighboring count-
ries?
GENERAL WALTERS: I think it's nonsense. We don't.
We co-sponsored the resolution in the Organization of American
States calling for the overthrow of the Samoza regime. We
don't oppose revolutions.
There are three great myths about American foreign
policy in Central America.
The first is that the United States regards all
movements against oppression and injustice, poverty and hunger
as Communist plots hatched in Moscow. We don't. Not until
they tell us so.
On the sixth of June, 1960, Fidel Castro said I became
a Communist at the age of 17. I am one and will be one until
the day I die. That's about as explicit as you can get.
Last year, Umberto Ortega said Marxism-Lenninism is
the guide Sandinismo. Without Marxism-Lenninism there is no
Sandinismo. That's about as clear as you can get.
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In El Salvador, the Farabundo Marti is the name for
the guerrillas. Who was Farabundo Marti? He was the founder
of the Salvadorian Communist Party. He fled El Salvador and he
went to Nicaragua where he worked for Sandino until Sandino
discovered he was a Communist and threw him out of Nicaragua.
Now, when these people tell us who they are, we're
very imprudent not to believe them. We didn't believe Adolf
Hitler and we paid a terrible price for it.
The second great myth is that the United States,
because it opposes these Marxist-Lenninist regimes, support the
right wing regimes, the right wing dictatorships.
The United States sold no arms to Argentina, Brazil,
Chile, Guatemala and El Salvador until the last days of Jimmy
Carter, in the case of El Salvador. , There isn't another
European country who can say the same thing.
When we do ordinary business with Czechoslovakia or
Romania, no one says look at the United States shoring up those
Communist dictatorships. But if we do business with Pinochet
or Marcos, everybody says there are the Americans supporting
their right wing friends.
And the third myth, and maybe the most sinister of
all, is that the United States, by its implacable hostility,
has pushed what were once true liberation movements into the
arms of the Communists. You know that the Sandinista National
Anthem calls the United States the enemy of all mankind.
In the case of the three of them, and Castro -- when
Castro came to power, the American Ambassador told the Cuban
armed forces we would no longer supply arms to defend Batista,
he came to the United States. I took him to see Vice President
Nixon, Secretary of State Herter, and up on the Hill to see the
appropriate committees.
KROUGH: He had a ticker-tape parade.
GENERAL WALTERS: He had a ticker-tape parade...
KROUGH: Down Fifth Avenue.
GENERAL WALTERS: ...down Fifth Avenue. He then went
to Harvard and addresssed the student body. Now, if that's
implacable hatred, I don't understand.
In the case of the Sandinistas, both Robello and
Ortega were received at the White House by President Carter.
In the first three years, we gave Nicaragua $113 million. This
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is for a country of two million people, mind you -- $113
million. In the subsequent period, we've made available to
Nicaragua a total of $258 million, twice as much as we gave
Samoza in the 17 years of his rule.
The Nicaraguans right now are selling 90 percent of
their bananas to the United States, I think 60 percent more
than they did before the revolution. Now, if that's implacable
hatred, I don't understand the meaning of words. And yet these
myths are widely believed and, unfortunately, widely used
within the United States for political purposes.
KROUGH: People who are concerned about our efforts to
-- to counter or at least contain the Nicaraguan revolution and
are concerned that we risk another Vietnam, that we risk
getting mired down in -- into a situation that ultimately we --
we cannot really affect....
[Confusions of voices].
GENERAL WALTERS: ...the Vietnam situation when we drag
down Germany with one hand and Japan with the other. It's
nonsense. We could have if we had the resolution, and the
decision, and the consensus to do it. We did not have that,
unfortunately.
I would simply point out that in Vietnam what we were
trying to do was help a small people retain the limited -- yes,
there were limite.d freedoms, but they were infinitely greater
than what they have now. There were 20 daily newspapers in
Saigon. There's only one now. That's not progress in the
field of freedom of the press.
KROUGH: And there's one in Nicaragua, I gather.
GENERAL WALTERS: Well, there's one in Nicaragua, but
it gets suppressed all the time -- La-Princep.
The other important thing, I think, is that one of the
features of these leftist regimes, these Communist regimes, not
leftist, Communist regimes, is the flood of refugees.
In Hungary, we had 400,000. From Cuba, we had
800,000, winning for Cuba the title of the largest country in
the world. The administration's in Havana, the government's in
Moscow, the army's in Africa and the population is in Florida.
In Vietnam, when American bombs were falling every-
where, there was fighting in every village and all the young
men were drafted into the South Vietnamese Army, there were no
boat people. Since the Northerners took over, two
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million people have put out to the South China Sea in open
boats and, as far as we can tell, 200,000 of them were lost at
sea.
Now, that may be an improvement on Thieu government.
That's what we were trying to save the Vietnamese people from,
and because we did not have the will, we were not able to do it
for them.
KROUGH: But, bascially, you do not see a Vietnam type
trap for us in Central America?
KROUGH: Do you see the possibility of -- of our
envolvement there leading there, essentially, to a wider war?
GENERAL WALTERS: No, I don't see any possibility of
our use of force -- direct use of American forces there unless
there is intervention from the outside.
KROUGH: Do you basically believe, as you cast your
eye around the globe, in Southeast Asia and in Central America
-- do you basically believe in the domino theory? Well, as one
country goes Communist, it neighbor goes, too?
GENERAL WALTERS: It's been proved. It's been proved.
Vietnam fell. Cambodia fell. Laos fell. Three dominos roled
up.
KROUGH: How is it likely to work in Central America
if it's not....
GENERAL WALTERS: It's not going to work in Central
KROUGH: But, if it's not stemmed in Nicaragua, what
is the scenario?
GENERAL WALTERS: Well, I would say the scenario would
be to move north. If I were a Soviet -- let me put it this
way: if I were a Soviet planner, the dream of my life would be
to destabilize Mexico. If Mexico were destabilized, the United
States would be so concerned with this they would have very
little time to waste on Europe, Asia or Africa. So, if I were
a Soviet planner, I would move north to Guatemala, which has
oil. As you know, two of these states, Mexican states, were
once Guatemalan, and you then start a movement going and you
try and destabilize Mexico. But I think the Mexicans are very
much putting their house in order. I think they have a real
understanding -- although they will not admit it publicly -- of
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the true nature and the threat in Central America.
KROUGH: But this is an interesting thing. The -- the
Mexicans do not seem to admit it publicly. In fact, we seem to
be more concerned about their security than they are. Why?
GENERAL WALTERS: Because I -- I would guess that
they, you know, that it would be very difficult for us to
standby and watch the Communists takeover a sweep up to the
United States.
Also, I think probably, genuinely they don't think
they have the same contrasts of poverty and wealth that exist
in Central America, because I'm not sure this is true. I
think, certainly, the poverty is as great, and I think that
sometimes there are larger fortunes in Mexico than there are in
very small countries in Central America.
But I think that Mexico is a strong and cohesive
state. It's much harder to subvert a state the size of Mexico
with nearly 70 million people, and they have a very strong
nationalistic feeling.
They do not have large armed forces. I mean, they
have very small armed forces, and I think they don't feel
threatened yet, but I think that if the other Central American
countries were to fall they would then realize that the threat
was at their door.
KROUGH: This seems to be a situation in which the
United States has decided to, in its own light, come to the
rescue. Why haven't we been able to make better use of
multilateral machinery in this area? Is it -- is it just too
weak to be relied upon?
GENERAL WALTERS: Well, I think Ambassador Kirkpatrick
said that in the United Nations, for instance, they vote
against it 73 percent of the time.
You know, you can vote against the United States and
nothing bad happens. If you vote against the Soviet Union
there's some sort of retaliation. But there's none from the
United States which accepts the fact that people differ with
it. That's the difference between a totalitarian view of the
world and a democratic view of the world.
KROUGH: What would you describe as our ultimate
objective in Central America? What do we want to see there?
GENERAL WALTERS: We want to see pluralistic democra-
cies. If they want to have a socialist government,
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that's their business. If they want to have a mixed economy,
that's their business. If they want to have a capitalistic
economy, that's their business.
We just look at history and we see that, basically,
democracies do not attack their neighbors and, basically,
dictatorships, whether they be right or left, are almost
invariably tempted by military adventures abroad.
We feel one of the greatest guarantees of peace is the
existence of pluralistic democracies, not just in Central
America, but anywhere.
KROUGH: Thank you Ambassador Walters.
For "American Interests," I'm Peter Krough.
Approved For Release 2010/01/08: CIA-RDP88-0107OR000301420003-7