FACE THE NATION: GUEST: SENATOR EDMUND S. MUSKIE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00552R000404480009-4
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 19
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: June 21, 2010
• Sequence Number: 9
• Publication Date: February 17, 1980
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

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CBS NEWS
2020 M Street, N.W.
Washington, D. C. 20036
FACE THE NATION
as broadcast over the
CBS Television Network
and the
CBS Radio Network
Sunday, February 17, 1980 -- 11:30 AM - 12:00 Noon, EST
Origination: Washington, D. C.
GUEST: SENATOR EDMUND S. MUSKIE
(D. - Maine)
REPORTERS:
George Herman, CBS News Moderator;
Phil Jones, CBS News;
Morton Kondracke, The New Republic
Producers: Joan Barone and Mary 0. Yates
EDITORS: All copyright and right to copyright in this transcript
and in the broadcast are owned by CBS. Newspapers and periodicals are
permitted to reprint up to 250 words of this transcript for the purpose
of reference, discussion or review. For permission to reprint more than
this, contact Director, CBS News Information Services, 524 West 57 Street,
New York, N. Y. 10019 [phone].
Transcript By: Milton Reporting, Inc.
1601 Connecticut Avenue, N.W.
Washington, D. C. 20009
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MR. HERMAN: Senator Muskie, do you as a member of the
Senate Foreign Relations Committee agree that Senator Kennedy
damaged the national interest with his charges about the Iranian
negotiations?
SENATOR MUSKIE: I don't believe so with the qualifier
that I of course am not in full possession of the negotiating
difficulties that may be involved, but I doubt very much that
campaign statements which are recognized everywhere as campaign
rhetoric have that kind of foreign policy implication. Now it
might be damaging to get into the actual public discussion of some
of the delicate negotiations that are going on but I am not aware
that he got involved in those.
ANNOUNCER: From CBS News Washington, a spontaneous and
unrehearsed news interview on Face the Nation with Senator Edmund
Muskie of Maine, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Senator Muskie will be questioned by CBS New Congressional
Correspondent Phil Jones, by Morton Kondracke, Executive Editor of the
New Republic and by the moderator, CBS News Correspondent George
Herman.
Face the Nation is produced by CBS News which is solely
responsible for the selection of toda;~'s guest and panel.
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MR. HERMAN: Senator Muskie, listening to your first
answer makes me go on and say do you think that perhaps President
Carter overreacted in his news conference where he said that
Senator Kennedy had damaged the national interest, damaged the
cause of peace in his discussion of the negotiations over the
Iranian hostages and over the situation in Afghanistan?
SENATOR MUSKIE: Well, I would say that both the candidates
have overreacted which is a tendency in bitterly fought campaigns.
I recall that even I have overreacted as a candidate from time to
time. And so the rhetoric gets a little strong and that is partly
because of the need to get the attention of the media as well as
the voters. And so ones own position is always the rightous one
and the opponents is always irresponsible. That rhetoric is
customary. We are not going to change it. So the voter has
to sift through.
MR. KONDRACKE: Up to now, Senator, you have declared
neutrality in the presidential race. Are you ready to drop that
stance and declare for one or the other?
SENATOR MUSKIE: At an appropriate time I may.
MR. KONDRACKE: What is going to decide you?
SENATOR MUSKIE: What I have said quite some months ago
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now to both Senator Kennedy and President Carter was that I was
looking for the candidate who I thought was most likely to
provide the kind of leadership the country needs in the next four
years. I recognized the responsibility of my party to choose a
candidate who meets those qualifications and that when I was
satisfied I would make a choice.
MR. JONES: Senator, you have indicated in your view
both candidates have overreacted. Do you feel that they have
reacted to the point that they are causing the Democratic Party
very serious divisiveness?
SENATOR MUSKIE: It depends upon how long the personal
slams continue and how soon the contest in the Democratic Party
continues. I think that once the hostage situation is behind us
that you will find a more open kind of a debate. I think the
President will get out on the stump and will debate and that will
be a more normal kind of a situation in which the rhetoric still
could be hard-hitting but it need not be as personality oriented.
MR. JONES: Senator, you have also talked about the
hostages here. Do you feel that President Carter is hiding behind
the hostages and refusing to debate Senator Kennedy?
SENATOR MUSKIE: I don't believe so, no. What is involved
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right now, delicate negotiations involving perhaps wording of an
agreement, timing of the release of hostages, what to do about
the Iranians' persistent demand for return of the Shah and his
wealth and how each side somehow saves face on its original position.
And I don't think you can really discuss those kinds of details in
public. And so to a certain extent he is a prisoner behind the
negotiations in which he is involved and I think in his press
conference he revealed that the combative Carter who is more than
anxious to get out on the campaign trail and begin facing his
opponent face to face.
So I don't think he is hiding in the sense that he is
afraid to debate or afraid to get out on the campaign trail. As a
matter of fact he must be aware that to some extent he was hurt in
the Maine caucuses. I think the margin would have been greater,
but for the emphasis that Senator Kennedy placed upon the fact
that President Carter was not there in Maine actually debating the
issues. So he is paying a price politically for this and I am
sure he is aware of it.
MIS. III-,ItMnN; T1I i :, i.:; ti 1. 1 I1.Ipp 'li i I 'l i ii 11 1)() at least off to one side, not in the world forum but in our own
forum. Can a President who is a candidate in an election year
afford to reach some kind of settlement over the hostages which
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involves the United States saying meaculpa, it was our fault, we
did something wrong?
SENATOR MUSKIE: Whether or not the settlement involves
that kind of a mea culpa is an interesting question and we don't
know the answer to it. Certainly I do not know the answer to it.
I suspect that is one of the finesses that must be worked out in
this agreement. I can't imagine the President doing that in so
many words.
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MR. KONDRACKE: Senator, are you satisfied that the American
people and you yourself understand the origins of this Iran crisis?
Why did the President let the Shah come into the country, for example?
It is quite clear now that he could have gotten his medical treatment
in MexicQ. Is that a subject that ought to be investigated by Congress
when this is all over?
SENATOR MUSKIE; I think it is an interesting question to
investigate. I suspect that the President might have asked for more
medical back-up to the Shah.'s claim.that the only treatment he could
get, would meet his requirements., is in the United States, but even if
the answer to that question is that he could have gotten medical treat-
ment elsewhere, there is also involved the question of can a band of
terrorists in Iran veto the entry of anyone into this country we choose
to permit to come in? And I think that is a very important question
and we should never yield on that point. Otherwise, terrorist groups
all over the world might try to veto the entry of people they regard
as controversial whom they would like to keep out of the United SLaLes
and we cannot accept that as a principle.
MR. KONDRACKE: But is it legitimate for Senator Kennedy to
raise questions about that and about how the President treated the
warnings that he had in advance that the embassy might be overrun if
he let the hostages is?
SENATOR MUSKIE: I think those are legitimate questions and
they are relevant to the President's management of foreign affairs.
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And I am sure that when the right time comes, he will be prepared
to explain his position.
MR. HERMAN: When you say "legitimate questions," do you mean
legitimate questions for Senate inquiry?
SENATOR MUSKIE: Legitimate to be raised in a campaign. Whether
or not there ought to be a Senate inquiry, I am sure that without
casting any reflection at all upon either Senator Kennedy or President
Carter or their motivations, that the Senate being what it is will
try to get the full story in appropriate hearings of what happened
during this whole period. And that will not be in response to campaign
charges or countercharges, but simply in fulfillment of the Senate
Foreign Relations Committee's notion of what its responsibilities are.
MR. KONDRACKE: Senator, the Iranians still think somehow they
are going to get the Shah back. The Shah is off in Panama. Do you
as a member of the Foreign Relations Committee understand the terms
under which Hamilton Jordan negotiated the entry of the Shah
and is the Shah safe and if the Panamanians should serve up the Shah
to Iran, haven't we submitted to blackmail by second-hand means?
SENATOR MUSKIE: Your question involves a number of hypothetical
assumptions to which one must agree in order to come out with a yes or
a no. The Panamanians have indicated publicly -- and so far as I know,
their public position is their private one, as well -- that they did
not have in mind giving up the Shah, that they would not respond to
any demand for him. Now whether or not there might be some effort
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on the part of the Iranians to institute the legal process of seeking
extradition is one question. What the Panamanian response to that
is another question. But I have no reason to believe that the
Panamanians will yield up the Shah nor do I have any reason to believe
that that was part of our understanding of what would happen if the
Shah went to Panama.
MR. JONES: Senator, in your view, should the United States
Government accept any kind of settlement that would keep the
Americans in captivity until after this commission has reported its
findings?
SENATOR MUSKIE: I think until I see the complete agreement
that that would be a very difficult if not impossible question to
answer.
MR. HERMAN: T.,et me rake you back to your words of a few
moments ago when we were talking about the meaculpa and American
confession or whatever it is that the Iranian hostages, people who are
keeping Iranian hostages wanted: from us. You:'said, as,far as I can note
from my notes, "I can't imagine the President doing that," in so many
words. Will you expand on that a little bit? Are you saying we can
have some kind of implicit meaculpa or do you think it is improper for
the United States to admit guilt? I am trying to find exactly what
you meant by that answer.
SENATOR MUSKIE: Let {ne try to answer it by calling your attention
to what is a matter of record. There is no question as a matter of
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record and a matter of history that the CIA was party to the overthrow
of Mossadegh and the enthronement of Pahlavi on the throne of Iran.
It is a matter of record. Now, acknowledging that kind of a fact
is not a meaculpa to me. Denying it would be to deny an historical
truth. So that it depends upon what the so-called meaculpa is designed
to be.
My impression is that the Iranians have been -- and maybe I
shouldn't even say this without throwing a monkey wrench into the
works -- but it seems to me the Iranians are softening their rhetoric
with respect to return of the Shah, softening their rhetoric with
respect to admission of guilt or a meaculpa on the part of the United
States, but I get that impression only from the press, which I think has
done a pretty responsible job by and large in reporting developments.
So again, we have to see what the agreement is before we judge whether
or not the President has taken on an onus with respect to the American
people and the American Government which he should not have done.
MR. HERMAN: You on the committee are not getting regular
briefings on the progress of the negotiations, I take it?
SENATOR MUSKIE: The entire Senate gets regular briefings, but
we have not during this period -- and may I step back just a moment?
For so much of the 100-plus odd days that the hostages have been held,
there was no one really in Iran to whom we could talk. It wasn't clear
that there was agovernment, or that there was someone there in a
position to speak for the government. It wasn't until Bani-Sadr was
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elected that we had even the semblance of a government and he got a
75 percent vote which gives him, I suppose -- even in the country of
the Khomeini -- considerable authority. So now there is someone
with whom we can talk and that has been fairly recent. And it is only
in that period that I think the talks which now become delicate, because
there is some prospect they could produce an agreement, must by
definition, in my judgment, be conducted in private.
MR. KONDRACKE: If we can go back to politics for a minute,
you declined to make a choice between the two, but you said on
previous occasions that you thought President Carter was doing a
good job and that you hoped to see him succeed. I want to ask you
about that. The inflation rate is 13 percent, the misery index is
higher than it was when the President took office, and the President
seems to have changed his foreign policy views almost completely.
Under those circumstances, can you say he has done a good job?
SENATOR MUSKIE: First of all, I have been more specific than
that in referring to positive achievements of the President. Secondly,
with respect to inflation, the principal cause of inflation is not
management of the Federal budget, although that is part of it, and a
very important part of it, but the increase in energy prices which origi-
nates outside our borders, which has something to do with the management
of foreign policy, but by dnd large it has more to do with the tact
that the oil-producing countries who have felt for a long time that
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they were abused by American oil entrepeneurs are now getting
what they regard as full value for their declining resource. And that
is the principal element in the inflationary pressures that have
climbed to 13 percent and apparently threaten to go higher.
And it is for the American people to judge whether or not the
President could have done something about that source of inflation
that he hasn't done. I haven't heard any of the presidential
candidates up to this point, and I followed it quite closely because
as Chairman of the Budget Committee, I am looking for solutions
to this inflationary problem, and I have heard none of them propose
answers to that particular source of inflation.
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MR. KONDRACKE: Two things: first, the Germans and the
Japanese suffer more from imported oil hikes than we do yet their
inflation rate is lower; secondly, the Republicans do have an
alternative which is to cut taxes and improve productivity and the
economy and cut inflation that way. Would you respond to those
two points?
SENATOR MUSKIE: With respect to Japan and Germany,
of course they are more dependent on imported oil than we are.
On the other hand, they have built societies which have to a certain
degree been more responsive to the fact that they are than we have.
I mean we have built an infrastructure since World War II almost
totally based on the notion of cheap energy continuing forever.
Neither the Germans nor the Japanese, for example, have built the
monsters of automobiles that we have built since World War II as
though cheap oil were never going to run out. That makes an enormous
difference in oil consumption. The automobile consumes, I think,
at least 40 percent of the oil that we consume in this country.
And the average automobile 40 years ago in America consumed half
that. So that we have contributed to our own problem in a way that
Germany and Japan have not.
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Now with respect to the Republican proposals for tax
cuts, those are not designed nor have I heard them described as
ways to control OPEC or the risinc causes of inflation. It is
their way of reducing the size of the government and they argue
that that kind of a cut now would not only reduce the size of the
government but stimulate the economy so quickly that the revenues
apparently lost would be fully recovered and the economy stimulated.
Well, there is nothing in our economic experience to
support that kind of a conclusion. A tax cut of that magnitude
this year would increase the deficit at the very time that we are
contemplating much heavier defense expenditures which would
themselves add to the deficit and deficits of that kind at this
point would exacerbate inflation and not reduce it.
MR. JONES: Senator, we have been talking about the
job performance of the Democrat in the White House. I would like
to ask you about the job performance of the Democrats in Congress.
While the Democrats have been in majority control we have had
scandals like Koreagate. We now have ABSCAM, where more Democrats
are involved than Republicans. We have had the energy crisis that
hasn't been resolved. We have had a period of voting crippling
restraints on the intelligence community. Democrats have done a
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very good job of fighting Presidents be they Republican and Democrat.
Why should the Democrats retain majority control of
Congress in view of this record?
SENATOR MUSKIE: Well, if that were the total record, I
would suppose I would come over and join you if that is your vote
or anybody else.
MR. JONES: That is my question.
SENATOR MUSKIE: That is not the total record. Of course
we have had periods of great prosperity under Democratic Congresses.
After President Kennedy was elected in 1960 inflation went down I
think to a rate of about 4.5 percent, unemployment went down to a
rate of about 3.2 percent, and we are in pretty good shape until
we failed to finance the Vietnam War which stimulated the present
round of inflation which has continued ever since.
Now with respect to the inflation pressures in the '70s,
they were stimulated by two things: one, wage and price controls
initiated by President Nixon which were so badly managed, then
followed by devaluation of the dollar which again was an executive
decision, followed by the export of grain to the Soviet Union beyond
on r rOs(Irvcs LThtus boost-_i n