 Yeah, that's right. Is that right? The area is it? I mean, they ask questions during the photo op. It's legitimate. That's what I'm saying. I can't. Looking forward to the ranch and all the chances of wax. I've got that. Yeah, it's true. We're hoping you don't have much to do. We're hoping you don't have much to do. I thought we were meant to. Isn't the storm up there at the ranch? Are you not here? I haven't heard of any exceptions. Of course. When we were there at the time. When we were there. And the queen coming up. We'd had a much more than normal kill sign. So I just, I don't know. Oh. They said a lot of people were going to do that, David. They said a lot of people were going to do that. This is last one? This is, this is being able to benefit the people. That's mine. Okay. There's anything or you didn't get that one. Did he get one? Tom. No, I don't get one. President, could you give us a little advanced word on your arms talk proposal? Which one of you? Really caught here. This is a photo opportunity, but it's up to you and you. You're weird of working, sir. She can tell us that. No, I really can't. I mean, I can't give any advanced word. Proceed with deployment of purzing and cruise missiles beginning at the end of this year. We have never retreated from our position that we are going to deploy on schedule. And it is true. I will be speaking to the NATO ambassadors tomorrow. And at that time making a statement about this whole matter, could I just volunteer that a lot of the speculation that I've been reading, however, is we have yes, we've been in consultation and as we promised from the very first in this administration that we would be on everything with our NATO allies, but there has been no change in my position or ultimate goal. So you are going to go forward with deployment? Deployment? I've said we've never retreated from that. Okay. Regardless of what you tell us tomorrow, it seems like judging from your past statements and the statements of some of your advisors, any sort of a deal would involve the dismantling of some SS20s on the part of the Soviet Union. Is there any reason to believe the Soviets were at all interested in that sort of a deal? Can Mr. Andropov get his generals to buy off on that sort of an arrangement? Well, there is one thing you have to remember that as they themselves made public that while they made a proposal that we could not find acceptable, it was based on their making a sizeable reduction in the number of their missiles. Mr. President? Mr. President, while we're on the subject of arms control, we seem to be entering a period of a new Cold War with the Soviet Union, with the escalation, with the rhetoric escalating on both our side and their side. In that sort of atmosphere, is it realistic to think we can reach any sort of arms control agreement? Yes. I've seen these remarks also as to the return to a Cold War. We remain in communication with them and the very fact that we're sitting in three separate negotiating tables with them on three different subjects of disarmament. I don't think there's anything particularly new in the rhetoric that was used by Andropov and has been used by other Russian leaders before him. In the United States, we have to be used to be called imperialists and several other things and charges made that we're trying to seek some advantage or something. I don't think there's really been any escalation of that at all. Of course, some critics would say there has been escalation on your part in recent speeches in calling the Soviet Union an evil empire and in some of the language that you've used. Do you think that's done any harm in the effort to reach an agreement with the Soviet Union? No. I think the thing that I said in speaking to that audience was that in pointing out on the basis of the comparison of our two social structures or the traditions and what our ideologies were that in contrast to what we viewed as proper religious freedom and even belief in religion and in the God as contrasted to their own anti-religious position, their own refusal to believe in individual rights and so forth, I didn't think that there were many polemics in that particular message. Mr. President, back to the interim proposal that you're going to make tomorrow without asking you to reveal the details further, I'd like to ask a little bit about how we got there because as recently as your last press conference in the East Rim, which was the 16th of February, you rather firmly rejected any idea of an interim proposal. Both Larry Barrett and I asked you questions and you indicated that you were not at all or did not at all intend to make any new proposal that if it was an interim proposal it would have to come from the other side. What's changed to lead you to change that? Well, I think when you refer back and that other question and the way it came at the time, had to do with asking things that would have required me to state in advance negotiating positions and I've had a lot of years' experience in negotiating before I was ever in public life. I negotiated for about a quarter of a century the basing contracts of our union, the Screen Actors Guild, with management, and you can't talk about negotiating positions because if you do then there are no longer positions. You've compromised your own strategy and this is what caused me and has caused me in the past to make answers about that you're really making the answer with the knowledge that the other fellow is going to read it or hear it. Well, are you saying you were headed in that direction but just didn't want to? Well, I want to point out that and by real intention, back when I made at the Press Club, public, the first statement about the 00 option, I very specifically said that we would negotiate in good faith on any legitimate proposal. Now, we had stated our goal and what it was that we would like to have but I made that other statement deliberately so that it would not be taken by everyone as, well, a complete taker to leave a proposition. In that instance then there is no negotiation. They either give in or you go home. So to that extent, I don't think that, well, let me just put it this way, we've made no change in our ultimate goal but beyond that I can't speak before tomorrow. On that same subject, Mr. President, do you subscribe to the view held by some Europeans, leaders, and by some in your other administration that the Russians won't bargain in earnest until we deploy the Persian and Kurdish missiles in Europe? Well, I believe one of our problems in the past and why during a period of decade or so in the 70s when we were unilaterally disarming and they were at the fever pitch in the rebuilding or the building of probably the greatest buildup of military strength in world history that one of the reasons why there was no prospect, if you remember, President Carter sent his Secretary of State to make an arms reduction proposal in Moscow and he was home in 48 hours and I have always felt that there's no reason for the other side to negotiate if they're out ahead and we are apparently disarming ourselves without asking any compensatory reduction on their part and I believe that the reason we have three negotiating teams now at three different tables negotiating with them has been our determination over these more than two years to refurbish our own military and I said before, I think it was summed up in a cartoon about the late Leonard Brezhnev when he was cartooned in one of your publications, the cartoonist had him speaking to a Russian general and he said, I like the arms race better when we were the only ones in it. I think that you have to, if you're going to negotiate, you have to have some strength on your side, you have to have some reason for them to look at and weigh the value of reducing their own weaponry. Mr. President, on that general subject of defense, won't your plan to develop any missile weapons in outer space set off a new round in the arms race? Won't it just be a destabilizing force? I think to the contrary. I think that, and I try to make it as plain as I could in that address. I've been amazed at some of the fevered rhetoric in editorials that I've been reading and I think some of them are quite irresponsible. But no, I made it plain that we are going to continue and I am determined to continue doing everything I can to persuade them that legitimate arms reduction is the only path to follow. To look down to an endless future with both of us sitting here with these horrible missiles aimed at each other and the only thing preventing a Holocaust is, just as long as no one pulls the trigger. This is unthinkable. In my opinion, if a defensive weapon could be found and developed that would reduce the utility of these or maybe even make them obsolete, then whenever that time came a President of the United States would be able to say now we have both the deterrent, the missiles, as we've had in the past, but now this other thing that has altered this and he could follow any one of a number of courses. He could offer to give that same defensive weapon to them to prove to them that there was no longer any need for keeping these missiles. Or with that defense he could then say to him, I am willing to do away with all my missiles, you do away with all of yours. What would you expect the Soviets to do in this period while we are developing this weapon? They're not just going to sit idly by and let ourselves, let the United States make itself invulnerable to their missiles. On the other hand, I think that there's every indication that they've been embarked on this same kind of research themselves. Mr. President, you said some of the editorials that you had read criticizing your new defensive initiative had been irresponsible. What did you mean by that? How irresponsible? Well, oh, I've just been reading a collection of them over there. There have been charges that this was a smokescreen on my part to avoid a discussion of the arms build up. There have even been some of them have charged that in my speech the other night on television that I did not give any facts that I obscured the truth. Well, I think those charts were pretty factual and based on actual account and actual figures. Other statements that I was proposing something that never was and never could be a defensive weapon. And I had to remember that Vanavar Bush, one of our truly great scientists, was asked by President Eisenhower with regard to the feasibility of creating a missile in which the delivery of an atomic weapon could be by missile. And this great scientist, after his own study said to the President that the image of a missile that could be launched from a silo pre-targeted on a target on another continent just was an impossibility and could never happen. Well, today the thing we're talking about are thousands of those on both sides of the ocean targeted on each other. And so for someone to say that what I was talking about was a fairy tale. They even used that term that it could never take place. I think you're responsible. Mr. President, can I ask you just one question about that program that you announced last week? The cost of it. Everybody seems to be sort of moving around it. Nobody's really getting into what it's going to cost. And we spend a billion dollars, but we don't know what it's going to cost in the out years. One, do you know what it's going to cost in the next few years or what kind of money's been put aside for it? And two, because of the trouble you've been having on the hill with the defense budget as it is being too high, why should the Congress go along with approving a program like this it's going to cost a lot more money presumably. Do you have a cost figure on it? No, because first of all this is not a crash program. There I think you would have to have as such what a crash program was the development of the atom bomb in wartime. I have said I don't know how long this would take. I don't know what direction that research would go to all of those who also editorialized that this was truly outer space and so forth. I don't know. I'm not a scientist. But to start you're going to have to put some money with it. What kind of money you're going to put on? Yes, well we already have about a billion dollars that is in the budget for research in the defense budget now and some of that would be diverted to this research. Now you would have to see what direction this took and what was needed to further that research. But I don't think that it would be the tremendous immediate cost that a crash program would be. You mentioned just a minute ago Mr. President that some future president might have the option of providing this defensive weapon to the Soviets if he so chose. What about some sort of an interim arrangement now? Do you think there's any merit to the idea of some sort of a joint venture where the United States might be willing to share the research data on this system with the Soviets so that to reduce any chance of escalating tensions in this area? I have to tell you I haven't given that any thought. That's something to think about and look at. And incidentally Gary as for our defense budget being too high I think your paper editorialized that it isn't. Well that may be sir but the Congress has to vote on it and I'm still curious on what you think the congressional reaction will be to a program like this that some have said including the Speaker and others that it's pie in the sky. Why should we vote for funding for a program like this? They're going to be called on to do it and you can propose it but they may dispose of it as fast as you do that. Well I would assume that it would take the same place in the budget. It would be part of the in every defense budget as some as I've said before there's already in this one about a billion dollars in various research and it's just a case then of the direction of the research and where you direct it to go. Would you like to see it doubled or tripled or do you think? I don't see any need for that no. Mr. President could we move on to another area Central America. You've consistently refused to discuss reports of covert USA to anti-government forces in Nicaragua. In recent days a number of our allies have indicated at the UN that they believe the United States is working to overthrow the Nicaraguan government. My question is why don't you either acknowledge or deny these reports of U.S. activity? Aren't you in danger of losing credibility in the same way that the U.S. government did with its secret war in Cambodia? Well I think this is something intelligence matters and covert or overt activity whatever are things that are never discussed and not going to discuss them now. But we have tried to get along with the government of Nicaragua and tried from the first. As a matter of fact they had in these efforts some time ago when the new revolutionary government was installed they made pledges to us that they would not involve themselves in El Salvador and we found them in direct violation of that which they could not deny that they were arming the guerrillas in El Salvador. Now what we're seeing in Nicaragua is the fact that it was a revolution by a coalition of groups that were all opposed to the dictatorial Somoza rule and has happened so often in that kind of a coalition when the revolution was over. One faction and it turned out to be the extreme leftist faction simply took control and ousted the other revolutionary partners and created a Marxist, Leninist government openly acknowledging their ties to Cuba and the Soviet Union openly arming and providing weapons and supplies to the training to the guerrillas in El Salvador and what we're seeing now are the other revolutionary factions totally ousted from any participation in the government now fighting back on that. My question was don't you think that the recent events at the UN in which our allies have indicated that they don't believe that we are not involved and this continued proliferation of reports from the area that say that there is some involvement, isn't this damaging the credibility of the U.S. government? I don't think so because some of the few allies who have been critical of this, others of them understand very well what's going on in El Salvador and all but some of the others have even been critical of what we're doing in El Salvador. We have made every effort to point out to them that they've been subjected to quite a wave of worldwide propaganda based on the Salvadoran conflict and I think we have convinced a number of them of what we're doing is valid. Mr. President, if I could jump back to our original subjects of relations to the Soviets for the minute, something that you said a couple of times that we have three different sets of negotiations going with them. I've been told that in one of these sets negotiations the United States has proposed modifications of the Nuclear Test Plan Treaty and the Peaceful Nuclear Exchange Treaty to make verification in particular and other procedures of carrying those treaties out more effective and that their response was very disappointing to us. Can you confirm that? This is not one of the three I was thinking of. I was thinking of START, the INF and then our negotiation on conventional weapons. But yes, we had proposed some improvements to the testing treaty and so forth and they rejected our proposals. What's your reaction to that? Well, I think the treaty we're talking about is the Test Plan Treaty. It isn't all that important because the treaty as it is now and this is what we want to strengthen is so restricted as to verification that we have reason to believe that there have been numerous violations and yet because of the lack of verification capacity, we could not make such a charge and sustain it. We just were wanting to improve it so that maybe both sides could be sure. Are you considering letting that treaty lapse since that treaty has not done what it's supposed to be doing because of verification problems? Are you considering letting the treaty lapse? No, as a matter of fact, I think that we've extended it. Mr. President on defense spending, you recently were quoted by your aides and by Senator Menachee saying while you couldn't promise anything you might be able to show some, you might be willing to show some flexibility on defense after the Easter break. The houses cut real growth from 10% their proposal to 4%. For Menachee's people are talking about 7.5%. They're talking about maybe a compromise with a house of 5% and 6%. Could you settle for that? Could that be flexible enough? Could you be flexible? I think it would be violating what the government is intended to do. The one prime responsibility of government is to protect the lives and freedom of its citizens. The budget we submitted and the budget figure we believe was the absolute minimum was necessary to continue redressing our defensive capability which had been allowed to deteriorate so badly in the previous decade. When I spoke to the Senators with regard to some flexibility this was because we were still reviewing every possibility and some things that without actually reducing our capability that there might be some reason to believe that we could come up with a changed figure, not to the extent they're suggesting changing it. And I don't have the answer and I can't comment yet. We will by the time they come back I think know whether there is any flexibility or not. I was very careful not to make a promise. And whatever, if we have been able to find this flexibility we certainly will give them the figure on it. Just a follow-up and I couldn't, I mean this might be decided for you in a sense and if the mood of Congress is that we have to cut below the 10 percent. You're not going to have any choice are you, sir? Well I'm going to fight as hard as I can for what we've proposed in the line of a defense build-up. We could not go back down to those figures without reducing our readiness, reducing even the size of our military, the number of men and without eliminating, cutting back on weapon systems that I believe are necessary. Let me switch back to domestic policy, Mr. President. I want to ask you about your support for withholding of interest and dividends. Stories running around or circulating I should say that the Republican leaders came down here last week and almost pleaded with you to bail out on that one. There are some stories of the effect that they told you that if you persist and if you persist in vetoing it that you'll you'll lose an override vote. Is that what they said and what's your reaction to that? Well they were telling me what the reaction that they were getting, many people, the mail count and so forth. We have to recognize that there was a very successful lobbying effort going on, still going on for that matter. The truth of the matter is and I told them that probably the majority of the people that they were hearing from as opposed to this were people who were actually so misled that they believed that either this was a new tax being imposed or that they were all going to be victimized in great losses in their interest and so forth. Well it isn't a new tax. Interest and dividends are taxed now. We're only asking for withholding of this tax in order to close a gap through which people who legitimately owe a tax are able to avoid payment. But Mr. President, if it looked like you were going to lose on that fight and you would veto it and it would be overridden, would you agree to some other way to close that gap for instance to hiring more IRS agents? Well the thing is before we ever came up with the proposal was when we explored all those ways and the cost was so tremendous it gets down in this age of computers to a really hand to hand personal comparison of reports and so forth. We're talking anywhere from five to seven and a half billion dollars a year that is being lost. But the other thing that the people don't realize yet and we're going to try to inform them as much as we can, they don't realize that the bulk of these people who are protesting are not going to be affected. We're not withholding on the bulk of dividend and interest holdings because we have set a limit below which we don't go. And where the senior citizens are concerned and they are very much concerned because so many of them now are counting on savings and so forth, where they're concerned they're not going to be affected at all, they're exempt. So there's only a limited number of people. Now the other thing is this fear of some loss of return and their interest, someone with ten thousand dollars of savings and a 9% interest rate, the withholding of their interest a little in advance as this would do, thus maybe reducing the compound interest return would amount to about four dollars and a quarter a year on a savings account of ten thousand dollars, nine percent interest return. Do you talk to going on television to make your case on this as you did on another subject the other night? Well, I don't know. We haven't, we've talked about all the things we can do. We're trying to refute this. I've been encouraged by some surveying that's been done that revealed that the people out there are more evenly split than they seem to realize. The only trouble is they're only hearing from one side. We're trying to get them to hear from the other side. We're down to some short time here, sir. I wonder if you could tell me, one, do you consider Jim Watt a political liability? As Ferenkoff said yesterday we had lunch and he said that on a scale of one to ten Watt was a political liability right now, do you see Jim Watt as that? No, I don't. And what I see is very necessary is that a perception that has been created that is absolutely false. I will match this administration's record with regard to environmental matters against that of any other administration. And we have been far more successful. We're spending more money on parks and on acquisition of parks and so forth than the previous administration had spent in all its four years in these two so far. And I think what Jim Watt is the victim of is not the rank and file out there of environmentalists, I think I'm one. But the victim of those professionals in some of the various organizations who make me wonder sometimes whether they really want the problem solved or whether they haven't recognized that as long as they can keep the people impressed that there is a problem, their careers will go on. One other quick one, Mr. President, on the decontrol of natural gas, you want that. But utilities are really legal monopolies. There is no competition, so to speak. I mean prices don't come down only for sugar or coffee or anything else. Would you be opposed to the legislation that is now going around on the Hill to postpone from 1985 to 1987 the decontrol of half the natural gas supply and also rollback the prices? No, we've made a proposal and it's based on the fact that we decontrol. They went down because it was an immediate upsurge of exploration and development of oil. We think the same thing is going to happen because today there are great supplies of natural gas that under controls are sealed or kept there in the ground and they're not utilizing them because of the price controls and they're low-priced gas. And we also have in our legislation a provision against passing on any increases. Somebody's went click, well, this one will get it, that we have a provision in it that they cannot pass on a tax increase. But you'll also find out there at the state level, most states recognizing utilities are basically a monopoly. You have public utilities commissions with authority at the state level to regulate prices. If I could just ask one quick question. Without talking about your own reelection plans, do you think that it does it cause you any concern that this country has had a succession of presidents who have not been reelected to a second term, the succession of one-term presidents? Is that the cause of any concern, do you think? I have read many people who say it is and I have to say yes. I think it is because I think it creates an instability and it should be, the whole subject should be looked at. Having been eight years as a governor and this isn't in any way to tip off what I may or may not do because it's going to have to depend on each individual and whether that individual thinks they continue to be effective in the job. But you really can't in four years carry through programs that may be necessary. One super quick question here. Since you've just talked a little bit about POWs and MIAs signed a proclamation for next week, do you personally believe any American servicemen from Vietnam are still alive in Southeast Asia? I don't think we can afford to believe there aren't and I know that this is the attitude that the Defense Department is taking also. We do know that there are some more than 2,000 close to 2,500 around there, names of individuals missing in action but there's no record and a number of those there have been returned prisoners who say that they had seen them, they saw them alive, they knew they were there and I think we just have to keep on following every lead. I think also there may be some people who might have voluntarily chosen to stay and all of this we just have to keep after it with every resource that we can devote to it. We're not going on this subject, we appreciate it very much Mr. President, the chance to chat with you. I hope some of our colleagues will have a chance to do it again. Oh, I hope so too and I look forward to do it myself. I know there's a lot of subjects we didn't get to but I know also that we're over time aren't we? Thanks again Mr. President.