NARRATOR: Senator Mark Hatfield of Oregon is not known for mincing words. His words and actions reflects values formed in the hellish crucible of war. As someone who witnessed firsthand the destruction and carnage that war brings, he has spent nearly 50 years trying to make the world a safer and more peaceful place. So persistent has he been in these efforts, that he has frequently been called "the conscience of the Senate."

Even for a politically independent state like Oregon, well-known for bucking the national political trends, Mark Hatfield is legendary for marching to the beat of his own drummer, a characterization he somewhat reluctantly acknowledges, although he sees it as entirely consistent with the heritage of the Oregon Republican Party.

David ISENBERG: Would you say it's safe to perhaps characterize you politically as a maverick?

Senator MARK HATFIELD: I would say in the context of the national party, that could be perhaps a classification. First of all, I think when you say Republican Party, like when you say Democratic Party, in our country, these are not like the British, where you have the conservatives in one party and the liberals in the Labor Party, but we have moderates, and liberals and conservatives in both parties.

You have to understand, I've been 46 years in public office. I can remember when anyone with a southern accent out here in Oregon was a Democrat automatically. In the context of Oregon and the traditional, progressive, Western populist kind of Republican, no. This is historically the position of our party. Bear in mind that the Democratic Party of Oregon historically, going back to our statehood, 1859 -- the first governor was from North Carolina, a slave-holding Democrat.

Don't forget that in 1860, if Oregon had not voted for Abraham Lincoln by a coalition of northern Democrats and Republicans -- and Lincoln only carried Oregon by a little over 200 votes -- it would not have gone to the northern party candidate, Douglas of Illinois. It would have gone to the southern candidate, John Breckinridge, senator from Kentucky, whose running mate was a senator from Oregon, Joe Lane.

Our party -- The Democratic Party, traditionally was the western kind of mountaineers and southern sympathizers here in Oregon. The Republican Party was the one that was infused with the northern trend of populism in the late 1800s and early 1900s; the Democratic Party was the conservative party.

NARRATOR: It is no surprise to the people of Oregon, but the rest of the country may not know Senator Mark Hatfield has had a truly extraordinary political career. After service in the Navy during World War II, he taught political science and was dean of students at Willamette University in Salem, Oregon. He started his political career back in the Oregon legislature back in 1950.

He served two terms in the Oregon House of Representatives, two years in the Oregon Senate, and in 1956 became the youngest secretary of state in Oregon history. Two years later, at the age of 36, he was elected governor. When reelected in 1962, he became the state's first two-term governor in the 20th Century. In 1966 he was elected to the United States Senate as an outspoken critic of the Vietnam War. He served there for 30 years, five terms, and was the longest-serving senator in Oregon history.

Senator Hatfield is a member of the Republican Party, but has consistently voted against military appropriations, voted to end the war in Vietnam, co-sponsored a nuclear freeze resolution and, most recently, introduced legislation calling for a Code of Conduct to regulate US arms sales. As such, he compiled a consistent and distinctive voting record.

After 46 years of public service, at the end of last year he retired. We talked with im shortly before his final term ended and asked him for his thoughts on the war and peace issues that he experienced and on which he worked.

Mr. ISENBERG: I guess I would start off first by asking you, are you out of step with the Republican Party or is the Republican Party out of step with you?

Senator HATFIELD: I consider I'm an old guard Republican. Old guard meaning that I track my philosophy back to Abraham Lincoln, our first president. More recent years -- You have to understand, I've been 46 years in public office. I can remember when anyone with a southern accent out here in Oregon was a Democrat. There's been a shift in my party. So, I'm still right on that target of being what I call a historic, classical Republican. Our party's becoming almost a party of converted confederates, when you think in terms of the new wave of conservatism that tends to dominate at least the Senate scene and the national party.

Yes, I'm of the old guard, liberal Republican. I have to confess that I am a product much of my environment, by my heritage, by my experiences and so forth. Growing up in a time prior to World War II, it was very easy to be an isolationist. Why should we become involved in European wars? And I was a true isolationist in that sense at that time. Pearl Harbor made the difference, of course, in all of our thinking.

But having served in the Pacific and in landing craft operations, you were exposed to some very bloody operations. Iwo Jima: I was there on D-Day, H-Hour, first waves into Iwo Jima. We would take the Marines in and bring the wounded and the dead out in our trips to and from the beach. It was a very, very moving experience. Having seen war, you obviously learned to hate war.

I suppose the most significant was in the trip into Hiroshima a month after the bomb had been dropped, when they had not recovered all of the bodies yet and you had not only the visual, utter, total destruction in every direction, but you had the visual, you had the silence, the quietness of the situation, you had the smell of decomposition. All the senses reflected that experience. And I have to admit, that formed my view about nuclear war and nuclear weapons. But I committed myself to the proposition that I would try to do everything in my power to prevent that from ever happening again in any part of the world. So, that did have a great deal of influence.

After the war with Japan ended, I was also then in an assignment going into what we called French Indochina, which was Haiphong and Hanoi, we call Vietnam. And I had some very, very strong impressions about the reflection of the French colonial system in which there was a -- coming into the harbor at Haiphong early in the morning, there were these multiple colors, a reflection in the sunlight. It was sort of the Monte Carlo of Southeast Asia. It was a gambling casino up on this hillside overlooking the harbor.

And here were these gambling tables, and the French, and all of their people who represented that class, the imperialists. Hovering around that hillside were these poverty-stricken, starving Vietnamese people. Along the road into Haiphong, dead people alongside the road. Not because of bullets, but because of starvation.

So, consequently, it made a tremendous impression about imperialism and colonialism of the European style that was over with that affected my view about the Vietnam War. People thought I was out of my mind in not supporting the Vietnam War, stop communism.

Mr. ISENBERG: You were one of only two senators to oppose it, I believe, at the time.

Senator HATFIELD: No, that was my colleague, Senator Morse, who preceded me in the Senate. But he voted no on the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, as well as Senator Gruening of Alaska. My no vote at the same time was in the Governors' Conference, where I was the only governor voting against the Johnson policy, a 49-to-1 vote. But people thought I was out of my mind.

Well, I could remember those situations because we cheered Ho Chi Minh in 1945. He was an ally against the Japanese military. And we could see there was no way the French were going to come back in there and reestablish their colonial status. And we did not see it as a war of communism -- He was a communist, of course, so was Tito. But it was a nationalistic movement from my perspective to get rid of the French, to get the colonial status out of their life and its misery that it imposed.

So, I did not buy in on this proposition that Vietnam was a threat to the United States or that somehow this was world communism in a domino effect that was going to take the Philippines, and then Hawaii, and then the West Coast of America. To me, that was outlandish. So, those experiences in the war and immediately following the war did have a great impact on my political thinking and my political positions.

Mr. ISENBERG: From what you're saying, especially your description of what was going on in French Indochina, it seems that you see a direct connection between expenditures on the military establishment and human resources and domestic needs. Is that a fair characterization?

Senator HATFIELD: I do, and the way we have used our military. We've put our military into a situation to really try to retrieve the French marbles that they had lost, their imperialism. We also did so to try to placate France in terms of NATO and Europe. And then when Eisenhower left office and said we're not going to get involved in a land war -- we had 600 advisors. And unfortunately, when President Kennedy came back from Vienna and his first meeting with Mr. Khrushchev and felt that he had been embarrassed by that meeting, decided that he was going to show that he could stand up to communists and sent 17,000 combat troops into Vietnam. And from there, it escalated up to 530,000.

All of that to me was sending military to try to solve basically the social, economic, political issues of a new state emerging out of a colonial period, and the military was not equipped to make those remedies or to establish those resolutions. And it was wrong. Our military has been used many times to try to deal with a social problem or an economic problem of militarism, or of class distinction, or of oppression and you can't solve that with strictly military action, and it was proven in Vietnam.

And yet along comes the Gulf War and we were sold a bill of goods that this was a war to save a poor little Czechoslovakia in the Middle East called Kuwait. It was no cause -- That was an oil war, pure and simple. That was the only reason we could mobilize 25 other countries. We all had a dependency on the oil in the Middle East, from my perspective. So consequently, we were using the military again to save our oil supply rather than engaging in conservation, and renewable resources, and doing some tertiary drilling of our own, and not being so dependent on the Middle East for that oil supply.

Mr. ISENBERG: As someone from the state of Oregon, where energy has traditionally been a big issue, do you still think that we are over-reliant on foreign sources of oil and energy?

Senator HATFIELD: We are, definitely. In fact, we have more dependency today than we had during the Arab boycott in the seventies. Our oil dependency has increased, not diminished. Now we have options, in my view, that we have failed to take. We have the options of developing the wind, solar, geothermal, renewable sources. We have options of engaging in comprehensive conservation and reducing our consumption we have not really undertaken.

President Carter, to his credit -- President Carter was the only president that really saw this picture and attempted to try to create a lesser dependence. Unfortunately, he was not able to do it in the four-year period before he was turned out of office. But we have not learned from the past, in my view.

We haven't learned from the Vietnam experience. We still think that we can solve issues of tribal warfare in Africa, or that we can solve oppressive government problems elsewhere by sending our military in, always sending our military in. Why don't we address the causes?

We don't look at the causes of conflict: Hunger, militarism, racism. All of these things are all part of the cause. I would say send in the troops, but send in scientists, agriculturalists, teachers, nurses and address the health, and the food, and the housing, and the people needs of these areas in the world and we'd be able to reduce the conflict.

Mr. ISENBERG: You've kind of seen the rise and the fall of the US military establishment, which is still historically at very high levels, I think 85 to 90 percent of Cold War-level highs. As you look at the international situation now and you look at the plans for the US military in the future, what's your reaction? I mean, you probably obviously think it should go down. What would you look at in terms of perhaps military spending or military force structure levels?

Senator HATFIELD: First of all, I think the quantitative factor of military spending is too high. It's as if we still had the Soviet Union and we're using the fear complex there -- "the Russians are coming, the Russians are coming" if we don't build bigger and better bombs. That's one part of it, and a small part of it really. The fundamental part is, only one president in my memory has understood national security, and he happened to be a five-star general, and that was Dwight David Eisenhower.

Eisenhower launched the interstate highway system as an interstate defense highway system. He said part of our national security is a linkage of our people, community with community. When -- He launched his education programs, the National Defense Education Act. Unless we have a well-educated people, we're vulnerable on our national security. He saw national security as more than just military hardware.

Now I'm not a pacifist, I'm not anti-military. I think there's a very legitimate, important role the military plays in our overall security. What I'm saying is until we see our national security made up of a number of components -- education, housing, diet, job opportunities, etc., etc. -- they're all part of our national security. But every president has been seduced into believing that you measure your national security by the megatons in your arsenal and ignore these people needs, and the spiritual needs, and all the other parts that make up a total nation. I don't understand why that is so elusive in people's thinking.

So, when we are undertaking to strengthen a bomb, or a tank, or an airplane at the same time we're cutting down on education and not meeting the housing needs of our people, or the fundamental needs of people, health and so forth, we're creating a vulnerability that all those tanks cannot substitute for that vulnerability.

Mr. ISENBERG: Clearly, your experiences during World War II and especially in Hiroshima explain some of the positions you've taken during your Senate career: Your advocacy of a Comprehensive Test Ban. The Nuclear Freeze Resolution that you co-sponsored with Senator Kennedy back in the eighties.

But more recently, you have also co-sponsored a piece of legislation known as the "Code of Conduct for Conventional Arms Transfers," which would sort of reverse the prevailing assumption that arms transfers should automatically go through unless proven otherwise. Why have you done that?

Senator HATFIELD: Well, first of all, the nuclear weapons program began to make headway in terms of getting control. You see, testing was the fuel that drove the arms race in the nuclear weapons, the testing, always testing. So, when we got the underground test ban, which I tried for 26 years and finally on about the 28th year, we got it -- Now we have the Comprehensive Test Ban that America has signed-on to, along with other countries of the world. That was only one part of the problem. The other part is the conventional weapons.

We have killed millions of people since World War II, more people than were killed in World War II in these dirty little wars going on all over the world. We have not addressed the fact that America is the largest arms peddler in the world. When the Soviet Union existed, we'd alternate. We had the dishonor of being number one when they'd be number two, and when they'd be number one and we'd be number two, on an annual basis analysis. But all of these little wars going on are basically now supplied with no competition America -- American arms.

We are selling American arms and where they can't buy them, we're giving American arms. And as a consequence, here are Third World countries with overwhelming majority of their GNP going for arms when they can't even produce the food to feed their own people. And yet we have this lust for arms. We've infected the whole world. And it's not a hard thing to infect the whole world because dictators and power people are always interested in being able to support their positions with a military.

So consequently, we have peddled arms into the Third World when they, as I say, don't have agricultural production to feed their people, they don't have health factors to even immunize their children, they don't have housing, they don't have decent standards of living, and most of these are autocratic regimes that are running those countries. So, my point is, why should America then be talking about helping bail out some country that has an autocrat running the country with giving more arms to that autocrat to shoot and kill their own people? And not only that, we've had them turn back upon us from Panama and other places in the hemisphere --

Mr. ISENBERG: Boomerang.

Senator HATFIELD: -- our own arms being turned against us once we had peddled them when those regimes have changed. It's not only -- It's an economic factor. It's the arms manufacturers. We used to read in my generation books about the Krupp family in Europe, how they'd stimulate conflict just to sell their arms.

Mr. ISENBERG: The merchants of death.

Senator HATFIELD: Merchants of death.

Mr. ISENBERG: Senator, let me ask you because, unfortunately, we're getting close to the end of this -- Military spending too high, forces too large. We still project our forces around the world. We still seem to be intervening. The Cold War is over, but we still seem to be operating on the Cold War basis.

What do you think we ought to have in the way of a military establishment? What would you like to see us reduce either in terms of spending or forces? Where would you like to see us ten years down the road?

Senator HATFIELD: I would like to see two things. I'd like to see an adequate Navy, Air Force and Army -- the Marine Corps, which as a Navy man I consider part of the Navy anyway. But I'd like to see all those services fully volunteer positions. In other words, I'm opposed to the draft; I've always opposed the draft. Make them commensurate to the pay they would receive in the private sector, so that you can build, as we have today, an all-volunteer military.

Secondly, I would like to see a military that can defend the continental United States. I'd like to see the United Nations Charter amended that would create an international police force to put out the brush fires and I would like to see the Americans a participant, but not to make America the world policeman, with others contributing tacit or token support. That's the type of military I would like to see. But I'd like to see also a comprehensive analysis of the hunger factor, and the poverty problem, and the health problems of these trouble spots that have been traditionally troubled and begin to address them and to solve those problems, so military action is not called for later on.

Mr. ISENBERG: Senator, we're coming up on our final minute here and I think, unfortunately, we're also kind of witnessing the last days of what has been a truly outstanding and extraordinary political career. Any final thoughts for us as we sort of face the future in the upcoming millennium?

Senator HATFIELD: Yes. I read recently in our papers here and the news media in Portland, Oregon of analysis made by students in high schools, students, saying that their greatest concern about the future of America is a lack of moral, spiritual values. And I think many times we're looking for answers that we think we can legislate or appropriate, when actually they deal with the fundamentals of the human spirit, and we can't legislate that.

And so, I would think that if I had anything to say for the future it is let us address these problems that somehow the moral fabric of this country seems to be tearing apart, but even high school students are deeply concerned about their future. That should be a pretty good signal to us.

Mr. ISENBERG: Senator, thank you. And I can tell you honestly and with great emotion, it's been a rare honor and pleasure and you are going to be deeply missed.

Senator HATFIELD: Thank you, David.

Mr. ISENBERG: Thank you.

[End of broadcast.]