Cross-examination: Weinhardt questioning Alberty
Weinhardt: OK. You give us a host of reasons why the military might oppose these PAL systems and other sort of accident prevention systems, right?
Alberty: Right.
Weinhardt: Do any of these reasons apply to something other than fears of decreased force readiness?
Alberty: That's one.
Weinhardt: What else?
Alberty: The other one is lack of control over the system by their personal hands.
Weinhardt: I see. OK. Now, do any of these reasons bear on whether or not they would want to take the vulnerability assistance offered in the plan?
Alberty: I don't know.
Weinhardt: Well, does vulnerability assistance affect their ability to use these weapons with respect to readiness or personal control?
Alberty: I don't know.
Weinhardt: OK.
Weinhardt: The evidence you read on the military hates it on the first response is Manchester Guardian in '62, Larus in '67.
Alberty: Uh, huh.
Weinhardt: Now, in those years they weren't looking at the same potential proliferant states as we are in 1981, were they?
Alberty: I don't know what the differences have been.
Weinhardt: Well, one of them, for example, was China. About that time a couple of the European nations were getting those forces, right?
Alberty: I have no idea.
Weinhardt: I mean-the thing is, it is your evidence
Alberty: The evidence says that they view every switch and safety lock each as an infringement upon their rights.
Weinhardt: OK. So there's a tug of war between the civilians and the military-
Alberty: Right, and the evidence doesn't delineate between whether they are good safety locks or they are bad safety locks.
Weinhardt: Right, but, for example, when the European nations got those weapons-about the time vour evidence came out-who won the tug of w~r?
Alberty: In the European nations?
Weinhardt: Yes.
Alberty: Probably the European nations, the bureaucratic leaders in favor of the controls?
Weinhardt: Why was that?
Alberty: Uh-
Weinhardt: What's different about them?
Alberty: There's a big difference, though, between the developed countries like our N.A.T.O. allies accepting these things and getting people like Hanafi (?] and all of that in the third world.
Weinhardt: Now, the third answer on accidents, Quester says they ignore optimism. He just says that they overestimate the risk a little, right? The words "a little" are in the card, aren't they?
Alberty: I'm not sure if the words "a little" are in the card-"so we all predict a little worse than happens."
Weinhardt: "a little"!
Alberty: Right.
Weinhardt: OK
Weinhardt: Now, do any of your cards from like Javits and Deibel actually have the three words, "foreign military commitment," appearing together in that sequence?
Alberty: Two of them, the title of the book is Foreign Military Commitments Abroad. The actual card does not say that.
Weinhardt: The cards don't talk about that?
Alberty: No. The title of the books do. I mean they come pretty darn close to what the topic is supposed to-
Weinhardt: Who's Deibel?
Alberty: Visiting professor of international security and strategic affairs at the National War College-or University, or what- \er it is
Weinhardt: OK. Now, your third answer under B is that it is only a domestic action, right?
Alberty: Yeh.
Weinhardt: In other words, it's only by effects topicality that anything happens to the foreign governments. Does this mean that a foreign government must take an action for the adoption of a plan on this topic to be topical?
Alberty: Well, it would be like signing a foreign military treaty with a foreign nation, like if you signed a treaty with Israel to accept these PALs.
Weinhardt: So, if we invaded El Salvador with troops, that wouldn't be a foreign military commitment, because we didn't make a treaty with them.
Alberty: Well, you could break a treaty too.