STEVE SAPIENZA: My question to you is how are issues of -- issues covering nuclear disarmament covered in the media. How do we see them reflected and why are they reported the way they are?

MR. WALTER PINCUS: Well, nuclear issues, particularly nuclear disarmament issues are not a major focus of mass media right now. The Cold War's over. The immediate fear is gone. And people have turned to other issues just like they've turned to other issues than foreign policy. Foreign policy, disarmament, rank very low now in the public's mind. If there's a crisis, if there's an event, the testing by the Indians and the Pakistanis was an event, it's an event that passes by very quickly because there's no follow up to it. There's -- this is not something that threatens the United States. And we're essentially on these great global issues insular country. If it doesn't involve us, it -- it sort of fades from the public screen.

The reverse is true on something like the effort that's being made by some members of Congress to create fear out of the Chinese missiles and what they may or may not have learned from our launching of satellites in their country. And that notion, that the Chinese have missiles that can hit the United States sends a ripple and people get somewhat nervous and then forget it because the truth of the matter is that we have more nuclear missiles in submarines off the shore of China than they will ever build. So, there's no great worry. So, it's just an issue for a day, even when they're involved.

So, the short answer is this is not a major focus of the American people, so the mass media -- radio, television, newspapers, magazines, are not going to deal with it and if they deal with it, they won't deal with it enough to make it come to the forefront of the public's mind.

MR. SAPIENZA: What do you see as some barriers or impediments to reaching -- to these groups that are advocating reducing nuclear weapons down to zero? What do you see are some barriers or impediments that are out there right now that they will have to overcome?

MR. PINCUS: Well, I mean, main barrier is that they're going to have get public interest. And I don't know in many ways how you're going to go about doing that short of a crisis. And the crises that I foresee are crises that we'd work in opposition to this kind of approach. Nuclear weapons were built out of fear. That's what kept them going. That's what made them much too large, but to a great extent the public as a whole saw them as a very important step in winning the Cold War. And I think you can't overcome that very easily.

MR. SAPIENZA: What do you think would be some examples of political barriers to the abolition of them right now?

MR. PINCUS: Well, Congress starts -- you can start with Congress. You started essentially with the politics of it. It is not a politically important issue right now. I mean, it's hard to say and it's hard to believe, but that's the truth of the matter. There are a lot of other issues are upper most in not just the public's mind but when you have a President that's a Democrat and a Congress that's Republican, you've got to find things that they can both agree on. And certainly the leadership of the Republican Party is not interested in cutting down on nuclear weapons. Probably they'd like to go the other way. So, is this a fight that a Democratic President's going to take on when he has many more issues that are much more vital to the public at large?

MR. SAPIENZA: Why are you interested in these issues? What has drawn -- always drawn you to the issue?

MR. PINCUS: Well, I began covering it when it was the central issue. In the Cold War, nuclear weapons were key, I thought, to how we dealt with the Cold War. They became not just military weapons, but they were terribly important political weapons. And the whole strategy was slightly irrational which also appealed to me because I got to know a lot about nuclear weapons and therefore you found an opening to write about to try to get people to become better educated as to what nuclear weapons are, what they can do, both plus and minus. But when they were central, to me that was a very important thing to write about and I've kept writing about it ever since mainly because I've got a twenty some odd year history of it.

MR. SAPIENZA: Great. Thank you very much. Appreciate it.