Office of the Historian

21. Memorandum From the President’s Assistant for Domestic Affairs and Policy (Eizenstat) to President Carter1

Washington, June 20, 1977

SUBJECT

  • B–1 Decision

I would like to add the following points to your deliberations on the B–1:

1. Attached is a memorandum from Congressman Les Aspin, prepared privately at my request.2 As you remember, he briefed you before the second debate in San Francisco on defense matters.3 He is a respected defense expert with a generally liberal reputation on defense matters. For that reason his recommendation to build 90 B–1s is interesting.

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2. During the course of other conversations with Governor Harriman Sunday,4 he made the following points:

a)
the B–1 is an unnecessary weapons system which he has long opposed.
b)
the decision on the B–1 should not be made until after the current SALT talks conclude because it can be effectively used as a bargaining chip to achieve a reduction in Russia’s SS–20 missiles, because of the B–1’s own throwweight.
c)
the B–1 is viewed by Brezhnev as a “new weapons technology” which the U.S.S.R. would want to match, and Brezhnev’s pride in achieving technology parity with the U.S. might lead him to trade postponement of the B–1’s development for reductions in SS–20s. (The Soviet Backfire bomber is not a comparable plane to the B–1.)

3. As for my personal views, they were made evident during the campaign in the position we then took against the B–1. There is little reason for me as a non-military person to attempt to set forth military and cost implications with which you are more familiar. At this point I would urge you to oppose the B–1 to help maintain the credibility of your campaign promises (now extraordinarily high)—unless there are overriding national security implications which do not appear readily present to me.

If it is necessary to go ahead, I would hope you might consider a very low buy with a stretched out schedule, for use as a bargaining chip in SALT.

  1. Source: Carter Library, Plains File, Subject File, Box 17, B–1 Bomber, President’s File, 5–6/77. Confidential; Not for Circulation. In the upper-right corner of the first page in the source text, Carter wrote, “Susan—w/ B–1 file. J”.↩
  2. Attached but not printed is a June 18 memorandum prepared by Aspin, who concluded that 90 B–1s, in addition to the existing B–52 force, would be “more than enough for any reasonable security requirements.” (Ibid.)↩
  3. Reference is to the October 6, 1976, presidential debate between Carter and Ford.↩
  4. June 19. Reference is to W. Averell Harriman.↩