...Now under that definition, we did not then, do not today, and never had had a first strike capability.

Did you feel that the SAC or the airforce at the time you came into the Pentagon had a first strike plan?

The Strategic Air Command was perhaps the most highly disciplined element of the military force. General LeMay did a fantastic job in shaping that command uh...to a standard of perfection that was unequaled elsewhere in the military and that included a very very high standard of discipline which means that uh... the strategic air command operations were...were uh...managed to conform to the directions it received from the highest political authority, the president. However, given the then balance of force - uh...say at 20 to 1 numerical advantage for the US -- there were certainly some in the Strategic Air Command that thought we should...they should develop what might be called a first strike plan, which would be a plan uh...targeted...uh... targeting our whole force against the Soviet retaliatory force and designed to inflict such damage on it that the uh...the uh...force that survived would uh...not have sufficient power to inflict unacceptable damage on us. And there was such...such a plan. But, it didn't meet the requirement. The President's requirement or my requirement as to... or call it acceptable damage. Even a small number of surviving Soviet nuclear weapons if delivered on targets in this country, particularly uh..cities uh... would cause such uh...numbers of fatalities as to be totally unacceptable to any responsible political leader. And surely uh...that particular SlOP plan was unacceptable to uh... to the president as it was to me.

Let's talk about the SIOP. Do you remember your first briefing in Omaha in February 1961, when you first learned what the war plan was?

In...in 1961, after having concluded that there was no missile gap or if there was a gap, it was a gap in our favor uh...i visited the uh... headquarters of the strategic air command at Omaha with some of my associates, met with the commander of uh...of the air command at the time and went through the SlOP alternatives. I wanted to understand the targeting. The numbers of weapons that would be brought on the targets. The operational plans. The degree of control that the political authorities could exercise over those plans. And I can recall to this day my shock and amazement uh...because basically they were uh...all out plans. Designed to unleash our total force against uh...particular targets. Uh... and that would carry with it, so it seemed to me, the results that uh... the joint evaluation subcommittee -- this committee of four 4-star officers had pointed to. That is to say the destruction both of the Warsaw Pact of nations, particularly the Soviet Union, but also the uh...destruction of the...of the United States. Uh...and hence, the plan, from my point of view was totally unsatisfactory. Moreover it carried with it uh...uh...an extraordinary amount of peripheral damage. Damage to countries on the periphery of the Soviet Union across which our bombers would have to fly. Uh...endangering the bomber uh... because of the air defenses in those countries which led our targeters to plan to take out those air defenses either by missiles or by bombers in advance of the time that our bombers would pass over. And that caused immense uh..damage to the surrounding nations. So I... I found the plans quite...quite unsatisfactory. And it led me to conclude that it was going to be necessary to introduce flexibility into the plans -- what I'll call flexible retargeting. So that very quickly, following a presidential decision to launch a part of the uh...or all of the strategic air command, targets could be changed in accordance with whatever wishes the president uh...proposed to follow and apply at the time.

As I understand it, the entire SIOP would go off and not only the Soviet Union, but China and Europe...

Well I don't...I don't recall this. And if I did uh...I wouldn't wish to remember the specific coutries that would have been involved in a SlOP attack. Uh...even in an attack that was planned as far back as 1962, '61.

We...

....By...by the way, I don't think that China was included, I don't recall that at all. But certainly, as you might expect, it was one might think reasonable when you're sending in an attacking force to attack targets in the Soviet Union, if it had to pass over anti-aircraft sites on the way in uh...it would only be thought to be reasonable to take out those anti-aircraft sites and they might or might not be within the Soviet Union.

Were you horrified?

Well, I was horrified because uh...it seemed so senseless to me. There was no way that I could conceive of our nation uh...coming out a winner from such an exchange. There was no way in which I could conceive of our nation benefitting from such an exchange. And it...it led me to conclude then there could be no way to either limit or win a nuclear war.

When you first understood what the war plan was, weren't you convinced that this was simply too massive a response without -- I mean Tony Power didn't convince you what they were going to do back to us?

No, he didn't, but the joint evaluation subcommittee did.

Were you privy to that at that time?

I think so. I think I became privy to that before I went to SAC -- I don't recall exactly. But one didn't have to be a -- didn't have to read the joint evaluation subcommittee report to know that the Soviets would launch all out. There's no question about that. So you could make your own judgement. It was a, you know, they went through extraordinarily uh...onerous uh... approach to obtaining the results. You could do it in two hours on the back of an envelope. It would be just about as accurate.

But you were horrified?

Abolutely.

I want you [to] say that.

Well uh...I was shocked at the uh...approach that was being taken. Or let me phrase it differently, I was shocked at the...the uh... result that would accrue from initiating any one of the SlOP plans each one of which was certain to lead to Soviet retalliation with all the power at their disposal. Now, the power at their disposal, after we had struck them, would be less, substantially less of course, than the power before we struck them. But the power that they very possibly would have after we had struck them was more than any responsible US leader would voluntarily accept directed against his country. It was more than any US leader would draw upon himself by a decision to launch against the Soviets. And it convinced me then that there was no set of circumstances in which we could benefit by uh...initiating an attack on the Soviet Union. A nuclear attack on the Soviet Union.

What was your message to the Soviets in your commencement address at Ann Arbor in 1962?

Well, there were in a sense, 3 messages. Uh... the first and the main purpose of the speech was to say, as I had said, I think, a month previously in Ann Ar...in Athens that uh...the US had proposed to NATO a massive shift in nuclear strategy away from massive retalliation to flexible response. And that we believed that this would greatly reduce the risk of nuclear war. It raised the threshold of the initiation of the use of nuclear weapons very substantially. It thereby uh...reduced the risk that those weapons would be used and reduced the risk that uh...the two sides would be destroyed as a result of a nuclear exchange. B, it was to say to the Soviets that uh...it wasn't phrased exactly this way - it was to say that uh...given the tremendous uh...force imbalance, the tremendous force superiority that the US has today of superiority in the ratio of 20 to 1. 6,000 US warheads to 300 strategic offensive nuclear Soviet warheads. We believe it's very much in the interest of both powers were we ever to find our way in a...into a nuclear war that we seek to limit that nuclear war. And that uh...certainly it would be our hope and intention to try to limit it by holding the numbers of warheads launched to far below the total we had available and launching then solely at military targets and we would hope that the initial exchange could be limited to a relatively small number of warheads focused on military targets. And that after that, in some fashion, the uh...the war can be terminated. And thirdly it was to say to the Soviets that uh...we thought uh...independent nuclear forces, such as those possessed by France, could be dangerous. Uh...and uh...while we didn't put it quite this way, in the speech there was a strong indication that we would not permit the US nuclear forces to be triggered by an independent decision made by France which was withholding its nuclear force from NATO at the time. An independent uh... decision by France to launch uh...part or all of its force against the Soviet Union.

This is a direct message to De Gaulle isn't it?

Well, it...it was more a statement perhaps, than a message. Uh...and it was a statement for which I was severely criticized at the time. And as a matter of fact, it's a statement that the French haven't forgotten to this day.

But you couldn't hope to limit damage in a war if there are rowdy people with their fingers on the button.

There was then and I think, to this day, there is danger that if allies take independent decisions with respect to initiating the use of nuclear weapons, there will be unintended responses uh... And uh...any decision to use nuclear weapons in defense and alliance, whether they by French nuclear weapons, or British nuclear weapons, or US nuclear weapons uh...should uh...represent a decision by the alliance.

Some people have interpreted this speech as an indication that a war could be fought in a tidy little way by avoiding cities.

Aboslutely....absolutely not. Uh...with hindsight I'm not even certain uh...that the speech was appropriate for the time. I'm inclined to think on balance it was. But uh...if it was appropriate for the time, it was a very uh... narrow window in the nuclear age -- a very small window in the nuclear age and a very peculiar uh... period in the nuclear age. It was the period when we had this 20 to 1 nuclear superiority uh...and it was a period when uh...we wanted to make clear that it would be in their interest and ours to avoid an all out nuclear exchange by either side. And that was in effect the theme of... one of the three themes of the Ann Arbor speech.

So was it damage limiting?

It was damage limiting, in that sense. It was -I don't like to use the term damage limiting because it has other connotations. But it was an attempt to...to ensure that a nuclear war once started would be limited. And as I suggest, I'm not even certain with hindsight that uh...that was possible at that time I know it is impossible today -- not with the huge numbers of forces and the wide deployment of forces and the detailed war plans uh...for their use that exist today. It's absolutely impossible. I don't know anybody who thinks that a nuclear war once started today can be limited. But that was our hope then.

But a few months after Ann Arbor you told Stewart Alsop that you thought that a counterforce move would be more likely if the Soviets -- when they developed a secure retaliatory capability...

Well...

...It was sort of a long range strategy...It wasn't centered on the imbalance...

Stewart Alsop came in to see me one day and said, Bob, I have word that the CIA had information that the Soviets are uh...beginning to harden their missile sites. Isn't that a heck of a mess? And I said, Stu, I never comment on CIA reports, but I'll tell you this: If the Soviets are beginning to harden their missile sites, thank God. He thought that was absurd. He went ahead and printed my statement. And uh... I remember Senator Dirksen and perhaps with his tongue in his cheek, uh...demanding my resignation. He said, My god, we have a Secretary of Defense that's pleased when the Soviets become stronger. Get him out of there. Of course that isn't what I meant at all. What I meant was -- that what I believed then and believe today is that we must seek to increase what I call crisis stability. And let me take a second to tell what I mean by crisis stability. There's a great danger that in a period of crisis, one side or the other may fear that the other's about to initiate a nuclear attack. And the person who is likely to be the recipient of that attack may feel that in the face of a high probability the attack will be directed against them, they would be better off to launch what's known as a preemptive attack. Seeking to blunt the attack that they expect will be initiated. Now that was exactly the situation that we the US faced in the early 1960's because we had this numerical superiority of 20 to 1. The Soviet missiles that were part of their strategic offensive nuclear force were what were called soft. They were unprotected. They were highly vulnerable to both our missiles and our bombers. Andd if you had been a Soviet political or military leader sitting there, facing 20 uh. ..US strategic offensive uh... warheads for every one of yours inferring that those 20 would be directed to your 1 and you knew your one could be destroyed by one, or two, or three of those 20 you'd be scared to death. And you would think, Well it would be a horrible thing to have a nuclear exchange, but I will be much better off if I launch my 300 before their 6,000 are launched against me. And that's what I call crisis instability. Uh...a stimulant to preemtion. And what I was trying to convey to Stu Ar...Stewart Alsop was that if the Soviet 300 uh... warheads uh...were less vulnerable to our attack there was less likelihood that in a crisis they would fear our attack and less likelihood they would preempt. And more likelihood that together we could avoid a nuclear war. And I believe that was exactly the correct judgement then. And I believe it's the correct judgement today.

You also said that when the Soviets have the security of a stable retalliatory force, then a counterforce war would be more likely because they wouldn't have to go for cities.

Well, if they felt that they had uh...weapons that were going to survive, there was less likelihood they'd direct them initially against cities. They might be willing particularly if we were -- as we were suggesting at Ann Arbor - using only a small portion of our force against their military targets, there was greater likelihood they would direct their surviving force against our military targets. Particularly if they could hold in reserve some survivable force which they later could direct against our cities if this limited exchange didn't prove limited.