WHAT WERE YOUR NATIONAL SECURITY CONCERNS WHEN YOU FIRST MOVED INTO THE WHITE HOUSE?

Well, I guess my first concern was to learn the job. And I mean that because the process by which the President is assisted depends on the President, on the assistants and who the other people in the government are. And it just plain takes time to learn that.

WHAT WERE THE REAL WORLD THREATS OR CONCERNS?

The most immediate international issue that I can recall at the beginning of the Kennedy administration was uh. . .uh Laos. There was difficulty there. The government was threatened. The Communist influence appeared to be growing and there seemed to be need for an early American decision. So Laos was on our minds and so unfortunately was the problem of whether or not to support a landing by a force created by the CIA in Cuba. The second of these led to the Bay of Pigs. And that episode led to a much more cautious attitude toward decisions with that kind of risk to them.

WAS THERE A BERLIN CRISIS AS YOU TOOK OFFICE?

The Berlin crisis had been going on for two years, but Khrushchev in... when he broke up the summit in the summer of 1960 said that he would leave Berlin to be considered with the new administration. So we expected him to raise the question with us, but we asked him to wait. And it was not the first...order of business requiring a decision at the beginning. It did require and...an early effort to plan and to think about our position in Berlin and how to maintain it.

WHY DID THE PRESIDENT GO TO VIENNA IN JUNE OF '61 TO MEET WITH KHRUSHCHEV?

Well I would say that the President's decision to go to Vienna was governed primarily by his feeling that it would be to his advantage to have a direct experience of the mind and behavior of the Soviet leader. It's really as simple as that.

IT WASN'T DIRECTLY RELATED TO... THE PRESIDENT MIGHT HAVE BEEN CONCERNED THAT KHRUSHCHEV WOULD THINK THAT WE ARE ALL MILITARY MINDED AND NOT WILLING TO...

That's all in his head, as far as I can make out.

WHAT TRANSPIRED IN VIENNA IN RELATION TO THE BERLIN SITUATION?

Well, at Vienna, Khrushchev did indeed reopen the Berlin crisis by giving us...giving the President a document in which he restated the Soviet insistence that there be a new status of Berlin — that there be a peace treaty and if we would not join in a peace treaty with East Germany, he would proceed in his own way. And then when he signed the treaty with the East Germans the rights of the west in West Berlin would come to an end.

WAS HE THREATENING?

He was simply stating that there had to be a change in the status of Berlin in this manner?

HOW DID PRESIDENT KENNEDY REACT TO THIS?

The President made it very clear then, and indeed more and more clear as the weeks went by, that the United States along with the other Western occupying powers, France and Great Britain, was fully committed to the maintenance of a position in West Berlin, which the Soviets had accepted ever since the end of World War II.

DID THE PRESIDENT MAKE IT CLEAR THAT WE WOULD GO TO WAR IF OUR ACCESS WAS CUT OFF?

Well, I think the point was to make it clear that we would safeguard our position in Berlin and not to engage in threats of any kind so far as that could be avoided. It was simply that we were not prepared to give up our recognized rights and responsibilities for the freedom of the state citizens of West Berlin and for the survival of that West Berlin Society.

DID YOU AS THE NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER OR DID THE PRESIDENT HAVE ANY CONCERNS THAT THIS WAS REALLY A THREATENING SITUATION, THAT THIS MIGHT MEAN A MILITARY MOVE ON OUR PART?

Well, the first military move would have to be an interruption of our legitimate sustained rights of presence and access and supply with respect to West Berlin. No such interruption ever occurred.

DID YOU THINK OUR REPLY MIGHT BE IF IT...

Well, obviously that was what contingency planning was about or one of the things it was. One of the things that contingency planning was about was what do you do if there is some form of interference with the Western position in West Berlin. So there was, indeed, a lot of thinking and planning about that. And there was a difference. In that it seemed very important --difference from the Eisenhower administration --in that it seemed important in the Kennedy administration that there should be a capability for believable responses up to a really quite substantial level of conventional action. And that we should not rely as heavily as General Eisenhower had done on an asserted readiness to move very promptly to large scale nuclear engagement.

THIS WAS VERY EARLY IN THE KENNEDY ADMINISTRATION. AND YOU HADN'T HAD A CHANCE TO REVISE THE WAR PLANS IN OMAHA...

Well, the war plans in Omaha are not quite the same thing as the plans for contingency action in Berlin. Because strategic warfare was not anyone's idea of what you would do on the second day after an interruption of traffic or some other interference with western rights in West Berlin. But the question was, What would you do if there were a new Berlin blockade or if there were some wider interference as there could be in that en... encircled area so far within Soviet area of power.

WERE YOU NOT A MEMBER OF A CONTINGENCY PLANNING WITH NITZE AND MCNAMARA IN CHARGE?

I don't remember being on a contingency planning staff, but I may be mistaken.

WHAT WERE THE CONTINGENCY PLANS THAT WERE SET UP...

Well, I'm not really a very good witness on that. I haven't reviewed them and I don't remember them clearly.

CARL KAYSEN SENT YOU A MEMO ON JULY THIRD SAYING THAT HE HAD SEEN THE JOINT CHIEFS PLAN. DO YOU REMEMBER WHAT THAT WAS?

No.

THAT IT WAS NOT ESSENTIALLY ANY DIFFERENT FROM THE OMAHA PLAN.

Oh, well I think you're talking now about plans for nuclear war. Not about plans for meeting a particular contingency.

WELL THIS CAME UP IN THE CONTEXT OF...

Well, I have no doubt it did. But I don't...I'm not able to give you the speech you're asking for.

WELL CARL KAYSEN DEVELOPED A PLAN OR HIS NAME IS ASSOCIATED WITH A PLAN AND YOU WERE ON THE DISTRIBUTION LIST. DO YOU REMEMBER WHAT THAT WAS?

No. No...

DO YOU REMEMBER ANY TALK OF A FIRST STRIKE PLAN?

I don't. I just...I think I've now answered that question three times.

SO AS FAR AS YOU KNOW, A FIRST STRIKE PLAN NEVER WENT TO THE PRESIDENT?

No, I didn't say that. I said I don't have a recollection of it.

DO YOU HAVE A RECOLLECTION OF ANY DEFENSE DEPARTMENT PLANS -- BILL KAUFMANN'S PLANS.

I really don't have direct recollection of the specific details of Berlin contingency planning.

NUCLEAR OR NON–NUCLEAR?

Or nuclear or non–nuclear. And I think that's interesting. You know. I think what that really means is that the execution of these plans never became urgent Presidential business.

YOU DON'T REMEMBER A FIGHT BETWEEN CARL KAYSEN AND MARCUS RASKIN...

Oh, I remember that because I've been reminded of it, but I don't think it matters much.

IT WASN'T IN YOUR OFFICE?

I don't recall.

WHY DID THE PRESIDENT AUTHORIZE ROBERT KENNEDY TO STATE PUBLICLY THAT THE US MIGHT CONSIDER NUCLEAR WEAPONS IN THE CONTEXT OF BERLIN?

I don't recall that he did.

DO YOU REMEMBER ROBERT KENNEDY'S STATEMENT?

No. And I don't remember it making a big fuss either.

DO YOU REMEMBER SECRETARY MCNAMARA SAYING THAT WE WOULDN'T RULE OUT NUCLEAR WEAPONS?

Well, I'm sure people said that. Because that... the President said that himself.

WHAT'S THE PURPOSE IN SAYING THAT?

So that the Soviets would understand that there is that kind of risk associated with an interference with Western rights in West Berlin.

IS THIS A BLUFF?

It's an...it's an assertion of a risk.

IS THIS WHAT THEY MEAN BY NUCLEAR DIPLOMACY?

No. I think it was the real situation in 1961 that the United States might well have been forced to take measures that could lead to a need to make...to take...to use nuclear weapons. That was the understood position about the defense of all Western positions in Europe. And in...and this was no more than a reassurance that the United States was resolute in West Berlin in the language that was customary at the time. It's not a new departure in US policy. It is what had been United States policy with respect to Berlin in the previous administration.

PEOPLE FIND THE OCCASION TO PUBLICLY MAKE THESE ASSERTIONS EVEN IF IT'S ALWAYS BEEN POLICY. SOMETHING MUST HAVE BEEN AT STAKE. WHAT WAS AT STAKE?

Well there was a problem of persuading Khrushchev not to carry out his threats. To let a situation develop in which he made a direct challenge to the Western position in West Berlin. There's nothing new about the relation between a challenge to that position and a nuclear danger. That was the situation from 1958 onward. What would have been a very great change would have been to say that this is not a matter which can be defended by any kind of resort to nuclear weapons. That would have been a profoundly important shift of position which would quite possible have had very debilitating effects on the position of the alliance. The habit of reliance on nuclear strength was very deep in all of western Europe and in the United States by 1961. Kennedy was not in 1961 of a mood to make a sharp change in that.

BUT HE DID...I MEAN HIS MAIN RELIANCE...

I mean the change that he made -- and I think this is the important point -- what was noticeable and what was a revision was the increased reliance in the early stages of any confrontation over Berlin, on an increased conventional capability. That's the important change between the two administrations.

HE ANNOUNCED A CALL OUT OF THE RESERVES OR A DOUBLING OF THE DRAFT ON JULY 25th.

That's right. And that's something that would never have happened in the Eisenhower administration.

DID YOU CONCUR ON THAT?

Yes, indeed.

DID YOU FEEL THAT THAT COULD HAPPEN IN TIME? WHAT WAS YOUR SENSE OF A TIMETABLE OF A SOVIET MOVE?

Well we didn't know the timetable, obviously. But it was clear to us that...uh...there would be a pronounced -- we could hope for a pronounced impact on Khrushchev's understanding of our determination from the decisions announced in the July speech. But we didn't know, at the time, and what I think was very important in the eventual resolution of the crisis was that the increasing sense of tension and the increasing sense that matters were coming to a head. And that Khrushchev was quite likely to act, produce the very rapid increase in the flow of refugees from East Germany through Berlin, which became the precipitating force in Khrushchev's decision to build the wall.

DID BUILDING THE WALL TAKE YOU BY SURPRISE?

That he built it between East and West Berlin was not what had been predicted. That he would do something to stop the flow of refugees that seemed an increasingly probable in the weeks before.

DID YOU SEE THAT, AT THE TIME, AS ADDING TO THE TENSION OR RELIEVING IT?

I think it added to the tension. Or we thought it added to the tension at the time. It was a... an act of unilateral power which was a shock. Really quite a deep shock to citizens of West Berlin and to the people in the government of Germany and it required immediate actions, or at least very prompt actions of a sort that could give reassurance to those people The question that is sometimes raised now -- should we somehow have challenged the wall -- that did not seem to us a practicable alternative. I think correctly.

WHEN MOSCOW CUT OFF AIR ACCESS, DID THAT CONCERN YOU?

Yes, very much, but they never did.

AND THEN THEY ANNOUNCED THE RESUMPTION OF NUCLEAR TESTING AT THE END OF AUGUST. WHAT DID YOU MAKE OF THAT?

Now that was a great shock. Starting with the President. He had really believed that it ought to be possible to make progress in nuclear arms control and that the continuing observance of the moratorium was to the advantage of everybody. And therefore when Khrushchev decided to go ahead with a series of tests, some very large, it was a shock and a disappointment. And presently the President decided that he really had no alternative but to have some tests on the American side.

WERE YOU AWARE THAT KHRUSHCHEV WAS THREATENING THE UNITED KINGDOM AND FRANCE WITH NUCLEAR WEAPONS?

Well, Khrushchev regularly made these blustery remarks about what a few weapons could do. Especially to the United Kingdom. We were well aware of that.

WHAT DO YOU MAKE OF THAT?

Well, we made it nuclear bluster. Uh. . . we were not more worried than their governments and their governments never thought that he in fact meant that he was going to start a nuclear war.

IT WAS AFTER THESE THREATS THAT WE MADE A PUBLIC ANNOUNCEMENT THAT WE KNEW THAT THERE WAS NO MISSILE GAP. WHAT WAS IMPORTANT IN THE TIMING OF THAT?

Well, I think that Gilpatric's speech was a carefully considered matter and that it had several audiences. It was intended in part as reassurance to allies that the strategic nuclear position of the United States was very strong -- a matter which was regarded as politically important in those countries. And it was intended as...by some others who supported this presidential decision — intended to be a clear notice to the Soviet government that we were fully aware of the real state of the nuclear balance about which there had been doubt ever since...

BERLIN CRISIS... BOTH SIDES WERE MAKING STATEMENTS ABOUT THE USE OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS AND SO ON. SOMETHING WAS AT STAKE BUT IT DIDN'T DEVELOP INTO A NUCLEAR WAR. WHY DO YOU SUPPOSE THAT IT...

I think that in order to, I think the most interesting thing about the Berlin crisis is that Khrushchev never put his threats to the test. He never interrupted in anything but a temporary and fragmentary was any part of the Western access to Berlin. He never turned over... authority over Berlin...Soviet authority to the East German government. Never signed the peace treaty In operational terms, this four year contest over the future of West Berlin was not as acute as the Berlin blockade of 1948, '49. Why did he not do that. I think that there was certainly an element of nuclear deterrence that was a finite danger. That if there were a direct encounter over Berlin, one way or another it might get larger and might become nuclear. And I'm sure he didn't want that. I think he was also deterred because he didn't want the lesser level of conflict that had occurred in the case of the Berlin blockade. The Berlin blockade had political consequences in uniting the West, in leading the West to rearmament, in not succeeding in interrupting the support of West Berlin. It was not something that the Soviet government remembered as a success. They didn't want to repeat it. Khrushchev's crisis in the end forced him to act in a defensive way. To cut off the blood flow of the life of East Germany and refugees which he, by his actions, and we by our responses, had stimulated. When he had done that, he had defended his position and he did not any longer see any good way to advance his position. The crisis was created, in a sense, by his belief that his new nuclear strength gave him a means of improving his position. But he was not prepared to go beyond bluff and his bluff didn't work.

WAS THERE A COORDINATION PROBLEM WITH OUR ALLIES?

There is indeed. There's a great problem of coordination in response to any challenge from the Soviet Union. And in Berlin there were four governments involved: the three occupying powers, The United States, Great Britain, and France and the Federal Republic because there was the obviously very close and intimate connection between the West Germans and the citizens of West Berlin. They were the free Germans. The West Berliners regarded themselves as a part of the Federal Republic. But the power of the West in West Berlin was the power of the three occupying governments which had troops there and which had occupying responsibility for West Berlin. And the governments all had different views. Sometimes changing view within any given government as to the way of responding. Should one press for further negotiations? Should one simply make it clear that there could be no change without our consent? Should one rely on a direct and apparently rapid resort to nuclear weapons if the crisis was tested by acts of force. Or should one have, as the Kennedy administration thought, a more credible ability to resist any such interference by conventional means. These were deeply debated subjects. The formulation of an agreed three or four power position at each stage was not always easy. And Kennedy as a beginner in these matters and a man with a desire for rapid and effective action found that process of consultation trying.

LET'S TALK ABOUT FORCE LEVELS. WERE YOU INVOLVED [IN] THE CONSIDERATIONS OF HOW LARGE A NUCLEAR ARSENAL WE SHOULD DEVELOP? HOW MANY ICBM'S?

I was involved but not on very intense or a continuous basis in the process of thinking about procurement policy in nuclear weapons, yes.

WAS THERE A WHITE HOUSE POSITION AS OPPOSED TO AN AIR FORCE POSITION OR...

Well...there was a certain amount of White House staff thinking which was similar. I would say that in the White House staff Jerry Wiesner, who was the science adviser and Carl Kaysen and I had essentially similar views. Namely that we believed that the overall size of the American strategic deterrent was ample. And that the important question was to make sure that we had good modern survivable second strike forces in adequate quantity. We tended, in the annual discussion of strategic posture, to take a somewhat more moderate position than the one that the Secretary of Defense recommended to the President.

WHAT WAS THE DIFFERENCE?

I think the difference was that we were thinking about it as staff officers and he was thinking about it as the man who would have to defend the budget on Capitol Hill. I don't think we ever had a large substantive difference with Secretary McNamara about the basic choices he was making In his Pentagon the analytic capability of the secretary's office and the Secretary's staff was enormously increased. And very thoughtful and careful choices were made. And I think on the balance very good choices about the strategic weapons systems that would be encouraged and the ones that would be delayed or cancelled like the B-70 or the nuclear airplane. Or the Skybolt. The ones that were encouraged, the B-52s and their new models, the Minuteman, the Polaris, became presently known as the American triad. And those forces or their direct successors are still the American strategic deterrent today. Our difference with McNamara were matters that would be trivial by the standards of the present strategic stuff. 100 or 200 warheads. One, two, or three submarines in a given year. That kind of thing. Not a big issue.

DO YOU REMEMBER HOW MANY MISSILES THAT YOU AND THE WHITE HOUSE...

No, but I assure you that these are small numbers by modern standards. Or even by the standards of the overall strategic stockpile as it stood in 1960... in the early 1960s.

WERE YOU AWARE OF WHAT SOME OF THE OTHER CONTENDING FACTIONS WERE? OF HOW MANY THE SAC WANTED...

Oh, I suppose we heard about it. But the issue that we would come down to each year was what did we think of McNamara's proposals to the President. We did not get into the direct warfare with people in the Air Force who wanted as many as 10,000 Minutemen.

KAYSEN AND WIESNER WERE REALLY QUITE UPSET THAT IT GOT UP TO 1,000. YOU'RE NOT AS UPSET.

No, because I think if you look back, I think if you look back closely at the procurement of ICBMs that was authorized in the Eisenhower administration, it was on the order of 600. I don't have that number straight in my head, but The eventual deployment of Minutemen was not at all what the Chiefs would have liked. Still less what the Air Force commander would have liked. Still less what SAC would have liked. Still less what has since happened with multiple warhead missiles. So I think this is a pretty small war.

DO YOU THINK THAT IF WE HAD SHOWN MORE RESTRAINT THE SOVIETS WOULD HAVE FOLLOWED SUIT?

Well, you can always argue that. You'd have to take it in terms of the whole force, however. And the total strategic strength of the United States was so very much larger than these 200, 300 or 500 warheads that I don't think one can say that that disagreement is in and of itself a very large issue.

THE...

In other words, I don't really think that Desmond Ball has it right.

I THOUGHT YOU LIKED HIM.

I do like him. I just don't like that argument.

IT'S INTERESTING THAT THE KENNEDY ADMINISTRATION APPROVED MORE ICBMs THAN EISENHOWER HAD ENVISIONED.

Not very many.

BUT AT A TIME WHEN THE MISSLE BATTLE WAS SEEN...

No, but this is part of a...

THE EISENHOWER ADMINISTRATION HAD ENVISIONED 600 ICBMs AT A TIME WHEN THERE WAS SOME CONCERN THAT A MISSILE GAP WAS NOT IN OUR FAVOR. THE SITUATION WAS REVERSED...

It seems to me that a comparison of Eisenhower's missile estimates and Kennedy's missile recommendations, decisions is incomplete if you don't take account of the fact that in these same years, there was a very great reduction in the amount of deployed nuclear strength in strategic aircraft, so that the deliverable number of megatons in the American strategic arsenal went way down in the Kennedy years. That's left out of a good deal of discussion and I think should be included.

YOU CONSIDERED THIS AS PART OF THE CAMPAIGN PROMISES CONCERNING WHAT THE PRESIDENT WAS PREPARED TO SAY WHEN HE WENT BACK TO DALLAS.

Oh, that's a different question. Sure.

WAS I RIGHT IN UNDERSTANDING THAT IT WAS IN RELATION TO THE FORCE LEVEL DECISIONS THAT HE WAS HOSTAGE...

Well, I think, let me just talk about it and you can see whether it is the comments you want and if not, tell me what it is you do want. Kennedy campaigned for the presidency, in part on an argument that the position of the United States and the world had declined in the later Eisenhower years. One part of this was that in his view, the basic strategic strength of the United States had not been effectively modernized. He had even argued that there was a missile gap. There never was a missile gap, but there was fear of a missile gap and he joined him. So that right away when he became President he moved to improve the position. And there was an early McNamara proposal. The President requested it. It came. It was acted on. And repeatedly in his years the President submitted proposals for continuing improved modernization of the strategic forces and especially for improvement in their survivability and their capacity to retaliate. The...their second strike strength. He promised that he would do this kind of thing in the campaign. And he continued to believe until the day he died that it had been a major and important and constructive achievement to make the United States once again, clearly the first in strategic nuclear strength. I think, looking back on it, that he missed an opportunity to use that very achievement as a way of arguing that it didn't matter all that much. But in fact, that is not the position he held at the time of his death. And indeed the very last speech in his public papers is the text of the speech that he was going to give later in the day on November 22nd in Dallas in which he planned to say, I promised you in 1960, here in Texas, that I would make America number 1 again. Not number 1. If not number 1. But number 1 period. And in making that point in that speech he was going to speak precisely of his achievements in making a more alert, a larger and stronger second strike force. And he was not at all going to discuss, as we have, the fact that in reality, the overall destructive strength of the strategic forces of the United States had been dramatically reduced.

IT HAD BEEN BY THAT TIME?

The warhead strength... Not the second strike strength, but the overall first strike strength that General LeMay counted on so much was greatly reduced.

I THOUGHT YOU WERE GOING TO SAY THAT HE SAID, I'VE COME BACK TO TELL YOU THAT WE ARE NOW #1.

I did. I did say that. I thought I just said that.

BUT IT WAS IN CONVENTIONAL AND...

No. In his view, the way of being number 1 was to have the best possible, and the strongest second strike force. Now all I'm saying is that nobody discussed at the time except General LeMay in the campaign of '68, the reductions in the raw first strike megatonnage of the United States strategic forces.

THAT WAS REDUCED BY GETTING RID OF A LOT OF THE B-47s?

Well, the B-47s and their warheads.

HOW WAS THE SAC WAR PLAN CHANGED TO MAKE MASSIVE RETALIATION LESS MASSIVE?

Oh, I don't think that...this Strategic Integrated Operational Plan, the SIOP ever cut out the option of a very large general first strike or preemptive strike. Let me start that over again. The Strategic Integrated Operational Plan, the SIOP, as we found it was essentially a plan for the largest possible attack by the Strategic Air Command upon the Soviet Union in the event of aggressive war by the Soviet Union. And to make that attack as complete and as successful as possible was the primary object of the SAC planners. And that was the plan that existed. It seemed to President Kennedy very important if he ever had to consider a use of nuclear weapons as a serious option. And that message was duly conveyed and plans were... other plans were included in the capabilities of the Strategic Air Command. But I think it's very far from clear, looking back, that anything like the kind of variety and flexibility that Kennedy would have liked was ever in fact introduced into strategic planning.

WHAT WOULD KENNEDY HAVE WANTED THE SIOP TO BE?

I don't think you know, Kennedy really didn't spend a great deal of time asking himself what the ideal SIOP would be because his notion of what he wanted was never to have to come to that choice. But he certainly recognized himself and McNamara did, that it was wrong to have only one enormous strike everything plan. But I cannot say that he went back insistently and required that he get detailed explanations of what the more moderate or more limited strategic plans were. That simply never became an urgent question in his own mind, because of his own feeling that any decision to use nuclear weapons would be a terrible failure.

WHERE MIGHT FLEXIBILITY HAVE BEEN USEFUL?

Well, one has to imagine situations that never in fact arose. But the question at...the point at which the President of the United States might wish to use nuclear weapons rather than accept a large scale defeat was...the most obvious place where this might happen was in central Europe. And I remember a conversation between Mr. Acheson who was our senior adviser on the Berlin problem from outside the government and the President in which the President said to Acheson, You know, at what point do you think we should use nuclear weapons? And Acheson said to the President I think that on that subject, Mr. President, you should think very hard. Make up your own mind. And tell no one what you decide. By which he meant, I think, that that was such a large decision that the President should ask himself very hard whether there was any condition in which he would in fact turn to nuclear warheads. But if he had been ready at any point to make that decision, then he would surely have wanted to be able to make a decision that responded to that situation which would always be both a military and a political situation. And I do not, myself, think that that kind of contingency planning for the limited use of nuclear warheads happened in a way that seriously included the President during the Kennedy administration.

WHAT WAS SECRETARY MCNAMARA'S MESSAGE AT ANN ARBOR?

Well, it was a complex message, the Ann Arbor speech. It was, of course, the public version of the speech that he had given to NATO in Athens earlier in the year. And it had a number of purposes. One was to make it clear that the nuclear strength that the United States was already adequate. Indeed ample, for the purposes of the alliance. And that this American nuclear strength was a better, more reliable strategic deterrent than one could hope to get if smaller members of the alliance put great emphasis on their own separate nuclear forces. That part of the message was not particularly welcome in London or Paris. But it was certainly a large part of Secretary McNamara's purpose. There was also an effort in that speech to make the point, that if you ever had to have a nuclear war, there were wiser and less wise ways of fighting it that you could have targets that made more sense in military terms, and simply to make a... general assault on the whole fabric of the society with which you were in conflict. That part of the speech had rather a short life in McNamara's mind because the difficulty of limiting a nuclear exchange to counter force, to an attack on opposing military and nuclear forces was very great by the very nature of the destructiveness of the weapons. And because also the requirements for an effective counterforce nuclear establishment turned out to be constantly multiplying as the number of Soviet military installations and warheads and missiles in place went up...

DID THE AIR FORCE... WHY DID MCNAMARA BEGIN TO TALK ABOUT ASSURED DESTRUCTION AND DOWNPLAY COUNTERFORCE. WAS IT BECAUSE THE AIR FORCE GOT SORT OF GREEDY?

I think it was because I think McNamara turned to the criterion, not the theory of assured destruction, but to that criterion as a way of measuring adequate survivable strategic forces because the theory of counterforce fully applied was going to produce absolutely unmanageable requirements for endlessly expanding strategic procurement. That in order to get that kind of capability, you would simply never come to an end. And indeed the contest on both sides, if both sides has this theory, was by definition one without limit. That's clear to me still that that's the case. And he decided that he would adopt a different requirement that there be at all times a strategic force such that even after receiving a first strike, even a surprise first strike from some hypothetical enemy, nobody ever thought that this was what the Soviets would in fact do, but nonetheless as a matter of elementary national prudence, we must be able to give that kind of punishing retaliation that would be in effect be a sure destruction of the opponent. Now what you mean by destruction, a matter that you can estimate in different ways, and McNamara did estimate in his way, and I would say with an ample margin of safety. He added, of course, to that, as far as I know throughout his time as Secretary a requirement that there be also some capacity for limiting the total damage to the United States, which means in effect some level of counterforce strength in addition. And beyond that, he never interfered with the settled policy of the military of targeting military installations, and military capabilities and recovery capabilities, and not cities as such. But of course the difficulty with that and it's a crucial difficulty about the notion of nuclear warfare is that the military target sometimes the most military target is also right in the middle of a large human population. The Pentagon, an obvious military target. It's in the middle of greater Washington. The White House even more so. And there have been studies of military attacks on Soviet targets which show that military planners picking military targets may put, may want to put in the terrible event, as many as 60 warheads on Moscow. So what is that? Is that assured destruction? Or is that counterforce?

SO THIS ISN'T JUST A PROCUREMENT CRITERION? THIS IS --

I don't myself think there's that much difference. General nuclear war is a two–way catastrophe no matter what targeting theory governs the delivery of the warheads.

SO, SOME PEOPLE SAY THAT ASSURED DESTRUCTION BECAME A STRATEGY.

Well, I don't think that's true. I think that simply never happened. In fact that is not the way in which the target... targeting of the Strategic Air Command has ever been carried out to my knowledge.

SO THAT BACK WHERE WE STARTED TALKING ABOUT ASSURED DESTRUCTION, WAS THIS ACCOMPANIED BY THAT MANY NEW INSTRUCTIONS AS TO --

Not to my knowledge.

WHAT WERE YOU GOING TO SAY?

Not as far as I know, the assertion of the strategic criterion that there be a capability for assured destruction was never carried through to instructions to SAC as to what targets it should pick. Those targets before, during and after the announcement of the assured destruction criterion were governed by the military view of what were military targets. But I must underline that you can hit nothing but military targets and kill hundreds of millions of people because nuclear weapons are large and they kill more than what they are aimed at.

SO THAT THIS WAS MORE OF A RHETORICAL SHIFT?

No, it's a very important shift in the criterion for adequate procurement, from one which could not be met, namely overall counterforce capability to one which could.

WHAT DOES MAD MEAN?

MAD is a phrase for Mutual Assured Destruction. In my view, mutual assured destruction is an inescapable reality of the relationship between powers with the kinds of strategic capabilities that the United States and the Soviet Union have now had each for more than 20 years.

THERE'S NO ESCAPE. YOU CAN'T ESCAPE?

I do not believe that we know how to prevent the delivery by one side upon the other of enormously destructive weapons, in the event of a nuclear war between the two countries.

WHEN THIS CONDITION OF SECURE SECOND STRIKE CAPABILITIES AROSE ON BOTH SIDES, DID THAT NECESSARILY RULE OUT A LIMITED USE OF --?

I don't think you can say that, I don't think you can say that the strategic capabilities which are enormous and inescapable of the two sides tell you anything for sure about whether there would ever be some more limited exchange. I think myself that the existence of the large scale danger is a very powerful force inhibiting both governments from any use of nuclear weapons. I think that is in broad brush terms one of the most basic lessons of the age of nuclear weapons so far, that as far as I know, neither side has ever come close to a decision to make a limited use of nuclear weapons. And one major reason for that is nobody can say with any assurance what would happen next.

IS THERE... DOES THIS LEAVE US WITH A SENSE OF HELPLESSNESS?

I think that this condition of mutual vulnerability is uncomfortable. But I think we have as a country faced in a number of ways the difficulty of doing anything decisive about it. In the Kennedy Administration there was a serious effort to see if we could get a, in the Kennedy Administration there was a serious effort to see if we could get better civil defense arrangements and public support for that broke down almost immediately. Similar effort has been put forward in the Carter Administration, the Reagan Administration, not seriously, no serious support. I think that the large part of the political support for the Star Wars proposal is people's hope that this might happen. But I think that the more people look at it the less they believe that there can really be safety for citizens. There can only be a somewhat greater survival for warheads, which is a very different thing.

SOME OF THE PEOPLE THAT, MCNAMARA HAD SOME CRITICS, MOST ...FEEL THAT THE ASSURED DESTRUCTION BECAME MORE THAN A PROCUREMENT CRITERIA. IT BECAME A POLICY BECAUSE, ONE BECAUSE OF THE RHETORIC THAT LED PEOPLE TO BELIEVE THIS IS WHAT WOULD HAPPEN, AND TWO BECAUSE HE GAVE UP ON THE KINDS OF USE OPTIONS AND REFINEMENTS THAT MIGHT MAKE IT POSSIBLE...AND INITIATED A DECADE OF NEGLECT IN OUR STRATEGIC ARSENAL. DOES THAT MAKE ANY SENSE?

Well, I know that very able people have been greatly interested in limited nuclear options. I don't myself think that they have ever made a persuasive case that those are or should be a very important priority for procurement. I think that it does make sense to take the existing stockpile and the existing set of capabilities and think about it in a very hard way. And that in the process of learning by doing that, which I think has never properly been done one might easily find a specific requirement for a specific warhead and a specific delivery capability that may not exist. But I do not myself believe that the students of limited, carefully designed nuclear war have been very persuasive or that any of them has ever dealt effectively with the very great, and I think inescapable risk that a nuclear war of that limited sort might be expanded in the event by the decision of either side.

HOW DID YOU FEEL WHEN YOU LEFT THE WHITE HOUSE ABOUT OUR SECURITY COMPARED TO WHEN YOU CAME IN? THE SOVIETS HAD BEEN DOING A LOT OP BUILDING UP. DID YOU FEEL MORE OR LESS SECURE AS WE APPROACHED THIS SITUATION?

I think in fact, what I learned when I got into the White House or very soon after I got there was that each side had a nuclear capability, a strategic nuclear capability, which the other side was bound to respect, and while I think we improved the second strike capability and the modernity and the overall effectiveness of the strategic deterrent of the United States in the Kennedy years and through part of the Johnson years that I stayed, I do not believe that there was a...change in the strategic balance in those years in either direction. I think the strategic nuclear balance has been stable in the, it's ultimate meaning to both governments for all of the '60s, all of the '70s and all of the '80s so far.

GIVEN THE MAD CONDITION WHAT DO YOU SENSE... WHAT SHOULD BE THE GOAL IN HARDWARE CHANGES?

Well, the most important single requirement is the maintenance of a plainly survivable strategic deterrent. That's essential. And if we ever did get into the kind of situation that some have asserted in which one side could make a believable strategic threat against the...

WHAT SHOULD BE THE GOAL OF HARDWARE IMPROVEMENT? SHOULD IT BE TO MAXIMIZE USE OPTIONS, OR BE TO MAINTAIN A DETERRENT OR...

I think the primary requirement on the people who plan the future American strategic capabilities is to make sure that we always have a survivable strategic force which can reply to anybody's first strike. And can do so at a level and with an effectiveness that will be amply deterrent. So that it never happens. I think that that test has been met by each administration since the time when both sides developed deliverable thermonuclear weapons in the 1950s and that the basic decisions of the 1960s and the 1970s, the 1980s so far are... Sometimes they have been excessive in that forces which are larger than are needed or that do not, have not really been measured against this basic criterion, have been developed and deployed often for a particular service interest. And I think that we have not developed a, either a good theory or a good practice for the more limited missions which indeed in some particular crisis at some point a president might wish to consider. I don't think that one can say that only the strategic deterrent mission matters, but I think it is the most important and I think that the forces procured for that purpose are also in very large measure adaptable for more limited purposes if we think about it carefully. And plan accordingly.

DO YOU THINK WE SHOULD DO THAT?

I do.