Initial reactions to the Cuban Missile Crisis
Inside the Cuban Missile Crisis
Handling the Cuban Missile Crisis and the reasons for Russia's actions in Cuba
The end of the Cuban Missile Crisis
The Berlin Crisis, 1961
Decisions on strategic and conventional forces in the Kennedy administration
Flexibility, Counterforce and Mutual Assured Destruction
The importance of an effective strategic deterrent

 
 

Initial reactions to the Cuban Missile Crisis

Interviewer

Let me start with a non-Cuban Missile Crisis question. It was clear to the administration that there was no missile gap. Why did the administration go ahead with the military buildup, "in spite of the non-missile gap?

Bundy

Well, the first decisions of, uh, acceleration of, uh, particular and impressive new weapons systems -- Polaris, for example -were, uh, made before it was all that clear, and as a result of a general feeling that uh, improvement in the, uh, basic strategic position was still desirable. And, uh, uh, as time goes on in the Kennedy administration the... question becomes ah, a rather different one, and it is the limits that the president finally sets -- uh, the limits below which Mr. McNamara does not think he can hold the deployments without, uh, real political opposition on the Hill.

Interviewer

Could you just pull down the back of your jacket -- it looks kind of....

Bundy

Why don't you leave that in the script?

Interviewer

So this, it ended up being more of a political reason than a military...

Bundy

Put it another way -- there was a limit on the number of deployments desired by, uh, one for... one service or another that you could cut out, without rebellion on the Hill. And in that first year, we cut way back on, uh, the new bomber system, which was what the Air Force wanted most. And that involved the president in a very complex political negotiation, with the chairman of the House Armed Services, which seemed to him and to the secretary of defense, as much of a war as they wanted on that issue at that time.

Interviewer

Let's begin in August-September, '62. Did you think there was any chance the Russians would put defensive missiles in Cuba?

Bundy

Well... "Any chance" is a rather sweeping way of putting it. I think, I thought and I think most of us thought in the administration that they were not likely to do that.

Interviewer

We're not going to use my questions, so if you could....

Bundy

Oh, I see. Well, I'll just start again. I think that, Uh, until we actually found the missiles by photography, most of us thought that there would not be that kind of deployment in Cuba.

Interviewer

Why?

Bundy

We, uh, had seen no deployment at any time on Soviet nuclear capabilities, outside the Soviet Union, and we simply did not think that the evidence we had seen of increasing Soviet assistance to Cuba, ah, was sufficient to lead us to believe that they would change from the very prudent policy that they had followed thus far.

Interviewer

You were on <>Issues and Answers</>, the ABC TV program, the Sunday when those first U-2 prints were made, and I think you said more or less what you said just now. You knew those plates were being made that day.

Bundy

I certainly knew that they'd, they were being ordered, and were either going or about to go, yeah.

Interviewer

Could you answer this question for me by referring to that interview?

Bundy

Oh, I know about the interview, but I don't have it in front of me.

Interviewer

No, but just "when I was on..."

Bundy

Why, are you planning to print the interview?

Interviewer

Well, we might use part of the interview and then have you comment on it.

Bundy

Well, what do you want me to say? If...

Interviewer

If you could....

Bundy

I can say, "That's a legitimate interview; that happened...."

Interviewer

Maybe if you could start by saying, when I was on <>Issues and Answers</> that day...

Bundy

Well, we continued to hold that view, uh, until we got the definite photographic evidence and so, when I was on, uh, one of the Sunday TV programs, uh, on the, what, the 14th of October, I said, uh, what I've just said. I -- I'm sorry, you, you know, you're trying to create an enactment, and I don't think it's a very easy way for me to talk.

Interviewer

Yeah, okay. Let's go on. When you first heard of the U-2 photos, what was your initial reaction? How did you hear about them?

Bundy

I heard about them by a phone call from, uh, Ray Cline, who was one of the senior officers of the CIA, and he told me, uh, in some kind of indirect language, "The thing we have been worried about is something we now have to worry about," or something like that.

Interviewer

And your immediate reaction, what did you think?

Bundy

My immediate reaction was, "What do we do about it?" and I decided that what we'd do about it was... nothing until the morning, because, ah, it was clear from what he'd told me, that the intelligence people were fully occupied in organizing the material, that they would not have it in a form which would be clear to laymen until the morning -- that if I, uh, broke up a dinner party to go and tell the president or call the president on the telephone, either one of two things would happen: either he would get on the telephone himself, to anyone that he thought it important to talk to, and that the risk in that process of some sort of alert to a very attentive town was undesirable, and in any event there wasn't much that could be done that night. So I decided to wait and tell him in the morning.

Interviewer

What was your own personal sort of immediate thought about what should be done?

Bundy

Well, I really don't recall what I thought that evening. I do recall that when I, ah, talked to the president in the morning, we... got to that question, "What do we do?" And one or the other or both of us said, "Well, we'll probably have to take them out." That was our first reaction. Obviously our minds changed.

Interviewer

Can you paint that picture a little more?

Bundy

Not very well. Well, I went over to, ah, see him, and, ah... he was still in his bedroom. I think probably reading the papers -- he often did in the morning -- and I told him quickly why I'd come over, and, uh, that, uh, the pictures would be availablefor a full intelligence briefing, when he was ready. And, ah, he said, ah, something like, "What do you think we're going to have to do?" and I said something like, "I guess we'll have to take them out." I don't want to say that these were the exact words, 'cause I don't have that recollection. Ah... and then we began to talk, and he began to tell me, uh, who he wanted at a meeting that we... he wanted me to set up, and, ah, that was about it.

Interviewer

That morning there were other things on the president's agenda -- I think he had to see Wally Schirra for a photo opportunity. Can you talk a little about the need to keep things...

Bundy

Well, it was apparent right at the beginning that, uh, until the President had a chance to make up his own mind as to what he was going to do, it was really very important that there not be ah... any leaks, and in order not to have leaks, there had to be no evidence that anything startling or different was happening in the processes of presidential decision making, and it followed at once that there should not be visible changes in the president's calendar or schedule, which included, of course, campaigning, because we were in the October of a congressional election year.

Interviewer

One of the first things you asked in the initial ExComm meetings was, what is the strategic impact on the position of the United States? Could you kind of lead into that?

Bundy

What do you want me to lead into, my question or McNamara's answer?

Interviewer

Your question.

Bundy

Wel.... One of the many questions presented by this, uh, new fact was whether it really changed the, uh, strategic nuclear balance. And so that question came up in that first meeting.

Interviewer

What was your feeling about it, initially?

Bundy

I never thought, at any stage, that changes in the strategic balance as such were the critical question.

Interviewer

Why?

Bundy

Well, because, ah, I did not think that, ah, the question of, uh, how badly one or the other side would... ah, do in a strategic exchange was the way the two governments really looked at a strategic exchange -- both sides would have been losers before, during, and after any such installation.

Interviewer

That was not, I understand, the opinion of everyone in the room.

Bundy

Well, uh... I can't, uh, reconstruct for you the exact views of... all the people in the room, but, one very important set of views was that of the, uh, uh, military forces, and their commanders, and of what you might, for want of a better word, call the, uh, uh, strategic-analytic community, which would ordinarily take the view that, ah, a new deployment of this kind had a significant effect on the strategic balance, and therefore, ah, did make a difference in those terms.

Interviewer

What was the tone of these ExComm discussions?

Bundy

Well, different tones at different moments, all the way from laughter to uh, very great tension. But, in the broader sense, I think, ah, as I recollect it and as I get it back from tapes like the one that has now come off, it was quite cool, quite orderly, somewhat repetitive, because of the difficulty of... sharpening clear answers to some of these questions that really are freshly presented; but the, uh, discussion was, ah, was, ah, I think, on balance, good, clear, and very serious, of course.

Interviewer

Were there strong positions held by both sides?

Bundy

Well, there weren't two sides, except in the sense that any time you had a question and there was a division, there were two sides, but there wasn't a hard-boiled camp and a soft-boiled camp, or anything that retained the same numbers of persons doing the s-, taking the same opposed positions, so it isn't a two-sided enterprise.

Interviewer

Did your position change during the...

Bundy

More than once, sure.

Interviewer

Can you say that and describe a little bit how?

Bundy

Well. .. ah, I think the particular role that, that I thought I ought to try to... ah, to play, ah, was that of making sure that important possibilities were, ah, not prematurely discarded, that... discussions that... we might know -- I might put it , another way, that, uh... what we had here was a question of such gravity that... the service I could help to play for the President was to make sure that all the really important questions got looked at with as much thoroughness as time allowed. And that necessarily had the effect of making me pay attention to and call for attention to, ah, different issues at different times, and that was more important, I thought, for my own role in the affair, than how I might myself come out on a particular point, because I was not representing any service or any particular military or political interest in the government, I was representing, in a sense, or trying to represent, the process by which the president came to his own decisions.

Interviewer

That's why I'm interested in what your own feeling was, since you weren't identified with any camp.

Bundy

Ah, but I don't know what, what thing do you want to focus on? There's two weeks of work here.

Interviewer

I know. But I get the sense that your feeling about what had to be done went through two or three stages.

Bundy

I can't. I, I, I just am not understanding you. What, what do you mean about what had to be done?

Interviewer

ou said your initial feeling, or the president's initial feeling, was that you had to take them out. Obviously, you eventually felt that the blockade was the answer...

Bundy

That's right, but quite a lot had gone on before we got there.

Interviewer

Can you... encapsulate that first week?

Bundy

Not very easily, but I can try.

Interviewer

Okay.

Inside the Cuban Missile Crisis

Bundy

Um... Well, I remarked that the first reaction on Monday morning in the president's bedroom -- I don't remember who said what to who first, was "We'll probably have to take them out." Uh... after a day or so of discussion, it was clear that there were, ah, enough difficulties with that enterprise so that alternatives ought to be thought about, and, ah, the alternative which rapidly became, ah, the most impressive was, ah, the notion of beginning with a, ah, naval blockade -- it came to be called a naval "quarantine." And, ah, I thought that that had risks to it, and I thought that it was being accepted without, ah, a thorough examination or re-examination of the air attack option, and so I urged such a reconsideration, and the president, ah, I think with some reluctance, but, ah, seeing the point, that we still had time, said, "Well, let's have it looked at again," -- this is, I think, on, ah, Friday morning, and we did look, on that Friday, we had disagreements in the executive committee -- the president was out campaigning -- there was a decision to have, to break into two groups and study both more carefully, and I became the straw boss of the air attack group, which was really because there wasn't anybody else to do it, ah, the man who had most energetically advocated that course of action was Dean Acheson, but he didn't think a former Secretary of State should be in this kind of ah, staff work -- I think probably rightly. In any event, that study demonstrated to, ah the president, and I must say to me too, that, uh, there were such questions remaining in the air strike as then proposed, that, uh, the, uh, naval action was the best first step.One very important element in the emerging... agreement on that point was the fairly obvious point, first I think made to me at least, by Douglas Dillon, that you were in no way giving up, ah, the possibility of further action, ground or air or both, by, uh, beginning with the quarantine

Handling the Cuban Missile Crisis and the reasons for Russia's actions in Cuba

Bundy

The second one, but, ah...

Interviewer

You spoke very strongly about the role of Thompson. What was the contribution of Tommy Thompson?

Bundy

Well, this is from the context of -- where are we now? -- the whole crisis?

Interviewer

In these ExComm meetings. In his understanding of how Khrushchev might react.

Bundy

It's when Khrushchev begins to react that he's particularly valuable, obviously. But, ah, well. We -- one of the most important, ah, and valuable and constructive members of the, uh, Executive Committee and of the whole process, in those two weeks, was, ah, Llewellen Thompson, who had been the ambassador in the Soviet Union, ah, had become very well acquainted with Khruschev personally, had had perhaps more direct access to Khrushchev over a longer period of time than any other American. And was in addition a very serious and experienced student of uh, Soviet behavior and Soviet government's behavior. And, at more than one point during the crisis, as the president considered what he would do next, the... or what a particular Soviet move meant, it was, ah, Thompson's analysis, and Thompson's counsel that was of particular importance. He was, for example, ah, right about one of the questions that troubled many of us in the first week, which was... What is the likelihood that if we take an active step in Cuba, the Soviets will take a parallel counterstep in Central Europe and particularly in or around Berlin. He thought not. He turned out to be right. He, uh, also thought, uh, at the critical moment on Saturday the 27th, that, uh, the president should keep the pressure on Khrushchev, that the overall picture that he had, he thought he saw in Soviet behavior was that the Soviets were on the defensive and that they were not going to do something, uh, dangerous and aggressive, that they were looking for a way out, and that it was safe, therefore, to press for the point that mattered most to us. A third case, not as important as these first two, but not trivial, is that in completing the work on the crisis, it was important for us politically, if we could, to get the, uh, IL-28 bombers out, even though we had not asked for that at the beginning, and, uh, Thompsontold the president that he thought that, uh, they would come out, the Soviets would take them out if we made it clear that that was essential before we lifted the blockade.

Interviewer

I assume you were in on the meeting with Gromyko that week.

Bundy

I don't think I was in that meeting, no.

Interviewer

But you must have spoken with the president and then Rusk shortly after they did.

Bundy

Are you not going to talk to Rusk, because he was there.

Interviewer

Yes, yes. Maybe we should skip that, okay. What do you think was the most critical moment during the crisis, for you and the people in the ExComm.

Bundy

Oh, I think the, uh... crisis had the way of getting... worse right up until the end, that is to say the worst day was almost surely Saturday, the 27th. Because that was the day when, ah, ah, the Soviets changed from their first message to the second message, which put upon us the burden of deciding what we were going to do about the missiles in Turkey, it was the day in which uh, Major Anderson was shot down, it was the day in which an American U-2 wandered off course over the Soviet Union, and in which pressure for prompt additional military action, a direct recommendation from the Joint Chiefs of Staff, ah, became strong, so that a sense that there wasn't much time left began to be ah, very strong among us.

Interviewer

Was it a sense that the "hawks" on that Saturday were sort of gaining strength?

Bundy

Some people have said that, but I don't myself think that was the case. Ah... no, it was simply that, uh, events were, uh, beginning to create their own pressure. If your, uh, reconnaissance flight is shot down and it is your general feeling, as it was the general feeling, the president's own feeling, that we would have to keep up our reconnaissance over Cuba and keep track of what was going on, because work on the missile sites was continuing, then, uh, you faced a very early decision as to how you were going to protect your reconnaissance process, and your reconnaissance people, and that's going to involve military action of one kind or another, and once one side moves to that kind of action, as they seemed to have done, by shooting down the U-2 with Major Anderson in it, ah, things may get worse pretty fast, and the requirements of ah... the military enterprise can become very strong and very compelling. So there didnt seem to be very much time.

Interviewer

Why was there not a retaliatory strike? Was it a decision that someone in the ExComm made?

Bundy

Well, the decisions you plan to make and the decisions you make are not necessarily the same thing, and what seemed to the president, I think, ah, after he had considered, uh, this one action...

Interviewer

Sorry.

Bundy

Oh, I see what you mean. University Place is bothering us.

Interviewer

That's a very good point. So please if you could....

Bundy

Well. Ah... the decisions, the act- actions you plan to take, and the actions you actually, decide to take, are not always the same; you can put yourself in a planning position to do something quickly, and then when the time comes to say, go, or no go, you may well feel that you should wait. That's what happened on Saturday. Ah, it wasn't clear, ah, we still don't really truly know, who gave the order that fired the missile that shot down the U2. Uh... it wasn't essential to... make a blow back until we had, uh, uh, let another day go by, and even decided what particular reconnaissance we wanted to send on the Sunday, and so the president decided that the question of retaliation could wait.

Interviewer

What do you think would have happened on Sunday or Monday if the news hadn't come.

Bundy

Well, ah, one advantage of, ah, taking this kind of decision a day at a time is that you can see what the other side is doing. More and more, as the crisis went on, people would say, "Well, what did, what does he mean by that?" or "What is he going to do next?" and that always meant Khrushchev. So, there either would be an answer, or there would not be an answer to the messages that... Bobby and Scali had delivered on Saturday. There would or would not be a military action against a reconnaissance flight. Ah... we were considering -- the president had specifically instructed McNamara to plan -- for a strengthening of the blockade, as a possible early step; that is, ah, ah, one of the clear results of the day of deliberation on the 27th, and, ah, my own guess is that we would have taken limited military actions to safeguard or to insist upon uh, the necessary reconaissance, but that before we moved to anything like the full air attack or invasion which were the, uh, recommendation of the chiefs less Taylor, uh, we would have, uh, probably, I think, found it better to, uh, take it more slowly, and to strengthen the blockade.

Interviewer

Did President Kennedy's attitude toward the military change during the crisis?

Bundy

Well, you know, "the" military is an abstraction; uh, you're really talking about military men, different ones. Uh, the military man who was present in the discussions all the way through, was Maxwell Taylor, the chairman of the joint chiefs, a man for whom the president had great respect going in, and greater respect coming out. I think the President, on the other hand, felt that indeed there was a tendency for, ah, military organizations and the military process, considered in a general way, to lean toward military solutions, and not to be alert, as he had to be, to the political consequences of particular military, or the possible consequences of political military steps, so that the sense that it ah, it was very, very important to keep political control over decision-making that had a military component was certaintly reinforced in his mind by the crisis.

Interviewer

How concerned was the president about the possibility of an accident?

Bundy

What do you mean by an accident?

Interviewer

Something going wrong, something going out of control...

Bundy

Well, I think the notion -- you know, he did say, about the uh, U-2, that, uh, got off course: "There's always some son-of-abitch who doesn't get the word." So that he had that on his mind, but I don't think he had any, ah, ah, very large fear that some commander of a bomber squadron, or some, even... still less, that any senior military officer was going to take it into his own head to decide what to do, and there was no reason to suppose that a condition of alert would increase the risk of accident.

Interviewer

But there was, I understand, a great concern with McNamara and the president with talking to the people on the ships, keeping communications and so on...

Bundy

Well, there no question but what the way of conducting any direct encounter with the Soviet, with a Soviet vessel, ah, or, or anything of that sort, was a matter of great concern to the president, and to McNamara as his, uh, uh, senior man at the Pentagon, so that there was, ah, it was, after all, a naval quarantine with a political objective -- it wasn't a, an ordinary, everyday blockade as part of a war already existing, and it was important to... have that in mind, as quite understandably that people, dealing with the President on a daily basis did, and as some of those operating the quarantine maybe did not.

Interviewer

Do you remember any of those...

Bundy

I was not that closely involved in those direct processes of management, no.

Interviewer

Have you got a theory now, about why the missiles were put there by Khrushchev?

Bundy

Well...Khrushchev had been engaged in a game of, uh, uh, nuclear diplomacy, of, uh, trying to make Soviet nuclear power, ah, work to achieve Soviet political ends, most conspicuously, but not uniquely, in the, ah, Berlin crisis, which had been going on since, uh, late 1958, intermittently. Um... in the course of, ah, 1961, ah, it had become clear that, ah, if anybody had a strategic nuclear advantage, the United States did...

Interviewer

Excuse me, sir. Okay.

Bundy

So, we want to go back to the question of...

Interviewer

Why.

Bundy

Why did he do it? Well... ah, I guess... we can begin with the point that, ah, Khrushchev believed in nuclear diplomacy in the, this period, he had been working on it since 1958, most conspicuously in the Berlin crisis that he created and kept going intermittentl... In 1961, it had become very clear that, ah, there was no Soviet nuclear advantage, that if anyone was ahead we were ahead, and by quite a lot in numerical terms. Ah... he tells us, in his memoirs, that, ah, all this came to him while he was visiting Bulgaria, and one of the lessons of the Cuban Missile Crisis is that great leaders should not be left alone in Bulgaria. Ah... that, there he worried, he had a worry and a hope. The worry was that Castro might not last, and the hope was that he could bring home to the Americans the, ah, reality of a present nuclear threat. And, in effect, that both of these, and underneath them, the overall strategic balance, ah, that... could be helpfully affected, if he could get missiles into Cuba.

Interviewer

How much of that notion was clear to you at the time?

Bundy

You mean, what did we think about why he had done it?

Interviewer

At the immediate ... time.

Bundy

I'm not sure that I can reconstruct just how we felt about it, it was... I think our feelings were governed, or heavily affected by our own feeling that this was quite simply something that, that we really could not, ah, accept. And, the question of exactly why he had done it, ah, how far it was to reinforce Castro, how far it was to strengthen his position -- for example, at Berlin -- these were less important questions to us than, Why did he think, ah, we would let him do it?

Interviewer

This is one of the controversial questions of the crisis, and I know you must have a strong opinion about it: what role did nuclear weapons play?

Bundy

I think, ah nuclear weapons played a very, very important role on both sides; ah, but what I think, ah, they did was simply to bring it home to both sides, that the conflict must not become nuclear. I therefore believe that it was the existence of ah, very powerful forces in both countries, and not the balance of nuclear power between those two forces, that was ah, important in the crisis. I think that what gave the Americans crucial advantage was not whether they had more and better bombs and bombers, but that, at the level below the nuclear level, in the Caribbean, American air and naval and ground superiority was simply overwhelming.

Interviewer

How much of this notion of the "unexpected consequence" is involved in the deliberations at this time, when you're planning for something and something else happens?

The end of the Cuban Missile Crisis

Interviewer

So let me get you into it by saying, you know often when one reads these books you get the sense that everything has been carefully thought through and logically progression of events is... Is that the way it was or was it more of a haphazard, ad hoc type of thing?

Bundy

Well, I think uh, I think the crisis as a whole demonstrates uh, that uh, uh, when you get very tense situation involving uh, political diplomatic military considerations for both sides and in a very important way the reaction of other countries, other governments, uh, you cannot expect that you'll have a day then, which something unexpected doesn't happen. So that while in the broad sense I think you can say that this was a carefully considered series of responses by the American Government to an unexpectedand dangerous situation from its point of view. You have to be struck also by uh, startling events along the way that nobody really predicted. Uh, some of them happy events, nobody crosses the naval patrol line. It's not really challenged in any way that we find directly dangerous. Uh, on the other hand who knows who shot down the U-2 that created such particular tension on Saturday the 27th. People had suggested that the Turkish question might come forward. Why does it come forward on Saturday morning and not earlier and why does it go away on Sunday. There are a whole series of moments of this sort at which the government of the United States is required to confront uh, an unexpected or at least previously uncertain new situation. None of them I think on the American side, is as large as the problem that was posed to Krushchev by Kennedy's speech of October 22nd. And while Krushchev al-- certainly he deserves rank as one of the uh, bad guys of the crisis because decisions, of his precipitated it, in another sense he deserves very high rank as a good guy because of the care and good sense with which he responded to the situation he--that was forced upon him.

Interviewer

How close do you think the world came to nuclear war?

Bundy

Well, in the sense that we were ever at point where either government was about to give a nuclear order, I don't think we came close at all. And I think one of the things that the crisis demonstrates...

Interviewer

You know with Sorenson quotes Kennedy saying the changes of war were between 1 and 3...

Bundy

Uh huh. Well, it's true, that uh, Sorenson reports conversation with the President that the risk of war is between 1 and 3 and even. And that the critical point on the 27th of October, he says to somebody else, "Now it can go either way." I don't think that means if we are at that level of risk of nuclear war. I think it means that we are at that level of risk in his head. Of having to have a further encounter uh, by reconnaisance that may be contested and may lead to attacks on mis--SAM sides, the anti air craft missile sides or that we may have to move toward a stronger action of a more general sort including perhaps a ground landing, uh, those things are very much in the air uh by Saturday. No decision has been made to go in that direction but it's very much a possibility. I think that's the sort of thing that the President's remarks relate to. It is not the same as saying that those actions themselves would have led with the same high risk to an exchange of nuclear weapons. I think that that was not close and that what we now know about the crisis suggests pretty strongly at least to me that uh, that was a very strong determination to avoid that last step in escalation by both sides.

Interviewer

Did the knowledge that nuclear weapons were available to both sides, you knew that the Soviets had...

Bundy

We certainly had to assume that they were. We didn't ever know for sure that nuclear warheads arrived in Cuba but neither did we know they did not.

Interviewer

But how much did that feeling of it--knowledge that nuclear weapons were available to both sides sort of hang over your thoughts?

Bundy

I think it hangs over behavior on both sides and makes it that much more cautious. Because there is always a risk that a direct military encounter between the United States and the Soviet Union uh, can get steadily thicker or rapidly thicker. And therefore there is nuclear danger every time there is a direct confrontation of Soviet and American forces and in that sense, the Cuban Missile Crisis is the most dangerous of the nuclear age. But that isn't the same thing as saying that the risk of a nuclear war was as high as 1 and 3 or even I don't myself think it ever was.

Interviewer

We're you...how you got the news and how you passed it on to the president and what his reaction was.

Bundy

Well the news came in a public broadcast from Moscow which was reportedly better that the speed of sound I would think to uh, a Situation Room in the White House and then to me. And so I telephoned it to the president. Uh, it was a--it' s very good--it's--it's uh, one of the great rewards of being assistant to the president is that uh, sometimes you get to convey good news and this was certainly one of those occasions.

Interviewer

Did you go over and see him or was it uh...

Bundy

Well I think I telephoned it to him and then I think I met him with the text uh, he was going out uh, to church. And uh, He said uh, "Well what do you think made him do that?" BUt he was obviously delighted.

Interviewer

How did the Cuban Missle Crisis this whole period affect you, personally? Did it change your notion of the Soviets, notion of Kennedy, or way of operating?

Bundy

I think uh, I think it's obviously not possible to go through a--an episode of this intensity without having things change. I think a lot of things changed, uh, the most important in terms of what I observed and was uh, the degree to which the experience made uh, the president himself uh, confident of his own understanding of his role and responsibilities and confident of his uh, relation to uh, members of the administration and his relation to other governments and in a sense his relation also to Nikita Krushchev.

Interviewer

How important was the crisis in leading to the test ban?

Bundy

Well it's--there's a period of several months there in which uh, first we have continuing tension over the exact terms of the settlement of the Cuban affair. Uh, we have a reser--residue of uh concern as to what kind of decent relations can you have with people who have in our view deceived us, tried to embarrass us as greatly as Krushchev did in this case. But then you have a renewal of concern for arms control. The principal change which occurs is not an American change, although there is indeed a uh, uh, a real--a really new tone and uh, a--one which is heard in Moscow in the president's American University speech in June. But the big change, the one that permits the test ban agreement is uh, Krushchev's decision that he will now accept such a treaty--limited test ban treaty which had been offered first by Eisenhower uh, and rejected. Now, Kennedy made a major contribution to that himself in that he decided on his own that he would not continue uh, weapons testing, atmospheric weapons testing, even though there had been 2 series by Krushchev and only one in relatively small one by ou--our side since uh, Krushchev broke the moratorium of 1958, by his tests in early '61. That was very much a Kennedy decision and there is I think a--not much doubt that that decision announced in the American University speech helped Krushchev reach the conclusion that it would be to his advantage to have a test ban at that stage. So uh, uh, I would add that Kennedy'S ability to make that kind of decision and announce it as a matter of his own decision and without an internal debate in the government required a kind of confidence which was in part the product of uh, this enormous political success, the successful resolution of the missile crisis

Interviewer

I guess that's a positive consequence and negative possibly...some of that might have been planned before...

Bundy

Well, I--I don't know what--on what basis they think that the Soviet's would have uh stood still which ever way the missile crisis came out... Maybe me... that's me. I don't myself believe believe that uh, the particular way the Missile Crisis comes out uh, is what determines the Soviet strategic build-up over the next well, 10 years. I think that it was uh, always the Soviet intent not to be second in uh, nuclear strength and that it--just as soon as they were able to build intercontinental missiles that were affordable, reliable, uh, good systems, uh, it was clear that they would do so. Now, they did go on and build more than most people expected that they would during the middle 60s, but I think it very doubtful that uh, uh, they did this by uh, of course they kept saying to themselves, look what happened in the Missile Crisis and uh, uh, I don't myself believe that uh, uh, it would have been a good idea to say keep your missiles in Cuba. And then please don't build any intercontinental missiles. I think that's an unlikely result.

Interviewer

Let's deal with the question of the Jupiters. Was it not a deal?

Bundy

It was a one-sided decision that was communicated to them. Uh and you can call it, I don't think it matters too much what you call it. Uh, the uh, president had wanted those missiles out of there. The uh, crisis made it even clearer to him that they were a nuisance, not an advantage. He spent most of the day in the discussions on Saturday the 27th, saying you know these things are in the way. These things are a danger, they're not a help. We've known that they're out of date, uh, he was reminded during the day by Douglas Dillon that that had been the opinion of the Eisenhower adminstration. So when it was suggested to him that we could say to Krushchev that those missiles--we could get this crisis satisfactorily resolved, the president is determined that those missiles won't be there, it seemed to him entirely logical that that assurance should be given, because he didn't want them there. And they were not doing any good. And once that suggestion was made by Secretary Rusk in a meeting toward the end of the day it was extremely clear to everyone in that meeting that uh, to give this private assurance uh, if it had even a ten percent chance of helping to resolve the matter, was well worth it as against the intensification of the crisis. Did we really want to increase the risk of direct military engagement with the Soviet Union in order not to say something about these missiles that we deeply believed which was that they were a damn nuisance and they ought to come out of there.

Interviewer

Do you think--what are the essential lessons of the Cuban Missile Crisis...can you boil it down to...

Bundy

One . . . half a lesson. Well, there are lots of lessons in the Cuban Missile Crisis, but if I had to pick out uh, now, two of the most important, they would be, first that uh, uh the avoidance of uh, a situation in which the game takes control is of enormous importance in anysituation which has a risk of direct conflict between the Soviet Union and the United States. And the second would be that when you have decided what you must achieve you then must give the best you can equal attention to what uh, you must not ask beyond that. That standard led to leaving Castro in place being ready to--given assurance that get out of this risk, those stupid Jupiters will come out, that we were not tryingto do more than we said, but that we did have to insist on what we did say.

Interviewer

Do you think the missile crisis was a watershed in any sense?

Bundy

Yes, I do. I think that it's a--not an accident that neither side has come anything like that close to a nuclear danger uh, since then.

Interviewer

Can you elaborate a little bit more on that?

Bundy

Well, I think the direct experience of real danger of a conflict that could go out of control without a control means more than any other one thing the use of weapons, the direct experience of that riskand the recognition of the fact that in this crisis, there was the evident possibility of action by the other side, uh, that could lead in that direction. That came home, I think to both governments and is part of the memory of both governments and has uh, contributed to uh, the absence of any such challenge by either government to the other uh in what is now almost 25 years.

The Berlin Crisis, 1961

Interviewer

What were your national security concerns when you first moved into the White House?

Bundy

Well, I guess my first concern was to learn the job. Uh...and I mean that because uh. ..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.

Interviewer

What were the real world threats or concerns?

Bundy

The uh...most immediate international issue that I can recall at the beginning of the Kennedy administration was uh...uh Laos. There was uh... difficulty there. The government was threatened. The Communist influence appeared to be growing and there seemed to be need for an early American decision. Uh...so Laos was on our minds and so unfortunately was the problem of whether or not to support a...a landing by uh...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.

Interviewer

Was there a Berlin crisis as you took office?

Bundy

The Berlin crisis had been going on for two years, but uh...Krushchev in...when he broke up the summit in the summer of 1960 uh...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 re... order of uh... business requiring a decision at the beginning. It did require and...an early effort to plan and to think about uh...our position in Berlin and how to maintain it.

Interviewer

Why did the president go to Vienna in June of '61 to meet with Krushchev?

Bundy

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

Interviewer

It wasn"t directly related to... The president might have been concerned that Krushchev would think that we are all military minded and not willing to...

Bundy

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

Interviewer

What transpired in Vienna in relation to the Berlin situation?

Bundy

Well, at Vienna Krushchev did indeed reopen the Berlin crisis by uh...giving us...giving the president a document in which he uh...restated the Soviet insistance 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 uh...when he signed the treaty with the East Germans uh...the rights of the west in West Berlin would come to an end.

Interviewer

Was he threatening?

Bundy

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

Interviewer

How did President Kennedy react to this?

Bundy

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 uh...a position in West Berlin which the Soviets had accepted ever since the end of World War II.

Interviewer

Did the president make it clear that we would go to war if our access was cut off?

Bundy

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 uh...that uh...West Berlin Society.

Interviewer

Did you as the national security advisor or did the president have any concerns that this was really a threatening situation, this that might mean a military move on our part?

Bundy

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

Interviewer

Did you think our reply might be if it...

Bundy

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 uh...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 uh...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 uh... General Eisenhower had done on uh...an asserted readiness to move very promptly to uh...large scale nuclear engagement.

Interviewer

This was very early in the Kennedy administration. And you hadn"t had a chance to revise the war plans in Omaha...

Bundy

Well, the war plans in Omaha are not quite the same thing as the plans for contingency action in Berlin. Because uh...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 uh...Berlin Blockade or if there were some wider interference as there could be uh...in that en...encircled area so far within uh...Soviet area of power.

Interviewer

Were you not a member of a contingency planning with Nitze and McNamara in charge?

Bundy

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

Interviewer

What were the contingency plans that were set up...

Bundy

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

Interviewer

Uh...Carl Kaysen sent you a memo on July third saying that he had seen the joint chiefs plan. Do you remember what that was?

Bundy

No.

Interviewer

That it was not essentially any different from the Omaha plan.

Bundy

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

Interviewer

Well this came up in the context of...

Bundy

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

Interviewer

Well Carl Kaysen developed a plan or his name is associated with a plan and you were on the distri bution list. Do you remember what that was?

Bundy

No. No...

Interviewer

Do you remember any talk of a first strike plan?

Bundy

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

Interviewer

So as far as you know, a first strike plan never went to the president?

Bundy

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

Interviewer

Do you have a recollection of any defense department plans -- Bill Kaufmann's plans.

Bundy

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

Interviewer

Nuclear or non nuclear?

Bundy

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.

Interviewer

You don't rmemember a fight betwee Carl Kaysen and Marcus Raskind...

Bundy

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

Interviewer

It wasn't in your office?

Bundy

I don't recall.

Interviewer

Why did the president authorize Robert Kennedy to state publicly that the US might consider nuclear weapons in the context of Berlin?

Bundy

I don't recall that he did.

Interviewer

Do you remember Robert Kennedy's statement?

Bundy

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

Interviewer

Do you remember Secretary McNamara saying that we wouldn"t rule out nuclear weapons?

Bundy

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

Interviewer

What's the purpose in saying that?

Bundy

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

Interviewer

Is this a bluff?

Bundy

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

Interviewer

Is this what they mean by nuclear diplomacy?

Bundy

No. I think it...it was the real situation in 1961 that the United States might well have been forced to take measures that could lead to uh... a need to make...to take...to use nuclear weapons. That was the understood position about the uh... defense of all Western positions in Europe. And in...and this was no more than a reassurance that uh...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.

Interviewer

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?

Bundy

Well there was uh...uh...a problem of persuading Krushchev 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 uh... uh...nuclear weapons. That would have been a profoundly uh...important shift of position which would uh...quite possible have had very debilitating effects on the posibon 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.

Interviewer

But he did...i mean his main reliance...

Bundy

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.

Interviewer

He announced a call out of the reserves or a doubling of the draft on July 25th.

Bundy

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

Interviewer

Did you concur on that?

Bundy

Yes indeed.

Interviewer

Did you feel that that could happen in time? What was your sense of a time table of a soviet move?

Bundy

Well we...we didnt know the time table, obviously. But it was clear to us that...uh...there would be a pronounced -- We could hope for a pronounced impact on Krushchev'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 Krushchev was quite likely to act, produce the very rapid increase in uh...the flow of refugees from East Germany through Berlin which became the precipitating force in Krushchev's decision to build the wall.

Interviewer

Did building the wall take you by suprise?

Bundy

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 a increasingly probable in the uh...weeks before.

Interviewer

Did you see that, at the time, as adding to the tension or relieving it?

Bundy

I think it added to the tension. Or we thought it added to the tension at the time. It was a... an act of uh...unilateral power which uh...was a shock. Really quite a deep shock to uh... 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 uh... 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.

Interviewer

When Moscow cut off air access, did that concern you?

Bundy

Yes, very much, but they never did.

Interviewer

And then they announced the resumption of nuclear testing at the end of August. What did you make of that?

Bundy

Now that was a great shock. Uh...starting with the president. He had really believed that uh... it ought to be possible to make progress in nuclear arms control and that the continuing observance of uh...the moratorium was to the advantage of everybody. And therefore when Khrushchev decided to go ahead with a series of tests, some very large, uh...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.

Interviewer

Were you aware that Khrushchev was threatening the United Kingdom and France with nuclear weapons?

Bundy

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.

Interviewer

What do you make of that?

Bundy

Well, we made it uh...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.

Interviewer

It was after these threats that we had a public announcement that we knew that there was no missile gap. What was important in the timing of that?

Bundy

Well, I think that Gilpatric's speech was a carefull 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...

Decisions on strategic and conventional forces in the Kennedy administration

Interviewer

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 is?

Bundy

I think that uh...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 uh...interrupted in anything but a temporary and fragmentary was any part of the Western access uh...to Berlin. He never turned over...authority over Berlin... Soviet authority to the East German government. Never signed the peace treaty uh... 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 uh...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 occured 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. Uh... 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 postion. The crisis was created, in a sense, by his belief that 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.

Interviewer

Was there a coordination problem with our allies?

Bundy

There is indeed. THere's a great problem of coordination in response to any challenge from the Soviet Union. And in Berlin there were uh... 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. Uh...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. Uh...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 uh...there could be no change without our consent? Should one rely on a direct and apparently rapid uh...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 uh...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 uh...not always easy. And uh... Kennedy as a beginner in these matters and a man with a desire for rapid and effective action found that process of consultation uh...trying.

Interviewer

Let's talk about force levels. Were you involved in the considerations of how large a nuclear arsenal we should develop? How many ICBMs?

Bundy

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

Interviewer

Was there a White House position as opposed to an air force position or...

Bundy

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

Interviewer

What was the difference?

Bundy

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 uh...basic choices he was making uh... In his Pentagon uh...the analytic capability of the uh...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 uh...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 uh... by the standards of the present strategic stuff. Uh...one or 200 warheads. One, two, or three submarines in a given year. That kind of thing. Not a big issue.

Interviewer

Do you remember how many missiles that you and the White House...

Bundy

No, but I...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.

Interviewer

Were you aware of what some of the other contending factions were? Of how many the SAC wanted...

Bundy

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

Interviewer

Kaysen and Wiesner were really quite upset that it got up to 1000. You're not as upset.

Bundy

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 uh... The eventual deployment of Minutemen was not at all what the chiefs would have liked. Still less what the uh...air force commander would have liked. Still less what SAC would have liked. Still less what has since happened uh...with multiple warhead uh...missiles. So I think this is a pretty small war.

Interviewer

Do you think that if we had shown more restraint the Soviets would have followed suit?

Bundy

Well, you can always argue that. You'd have to take it in terms of the whole force, however. And the total uh...strategic strength of the united States was so very much larger than these 2, 3 or 500 warheads that I don't think one can say that that disagreement is in and of itself a very large issue.

Interviewer

The...

Bundy

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

Interviewer

I thought you liked him.

Bundy

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

Interviewer

It's interesting that the Kennedy administration approved more ICBMs than Eisenhower had envisioned.

Bundy

Not very many.

Interviewer

But at a time when the missle battle was seen...

Bundy

No, but this is part of a...

Interviewer

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...

Bundy

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 uh... 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.

Interviewer

You considered this as part of the campaign promises concerning what the president was prepared to say when he went back to Dallas.

Bundy

Oh, that's a different question. Sure.

Interviewer

Was I right in understanding that it was in relation to the force-level decisions that he was hostage...

Bundy

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 uh... campaigned for the presidency, in part on uh...an argument that the position of the United States and the world had uh...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 uh...improve the uh...position. And there was an early uh... McNamara proposal. The president requested it. It came. It was acted on. And repeatedly in his years the president uh...submitted proposals for continuing improved modernization of the strategic forces and expecially for improvement in their survivability and their capacity to retalliate. The...their second-strike strength. Uh...he promised uh...that he would do this kind of thing in the campaign. And he continued to believe until the day he died that uh...it had been a major and important and constructive achievement to make the United States once again, clearly the first in uh...strategic nuclear strength. I think, looking back on it, that he missed on opportunity to use that very achievement as a way of arguing that uh...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 uh...in his public papaers 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 strkie force. And he was not at all going to discuss, as we have, the fact that in reality, the overall destructive strength of the stratigic forces of the United States had been dramatically reduced.

Interviewer

It had been by that time?

Bundy

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

Interviewer

I thought you were going to say that he said, I've come back to tell you that we are now number 1.

Bundy

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

Interviewer

But it was in conventional and...

Bundy

No. In his view, the way of being number one 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.

Interviewer

That was reduced by getting rid of a lot of the B-47s?

Bundy

Well, the B-47s and their warheads.

Interviewer

How was the SAC war plan changed to make massive retalliation less massive?

Bundy

Oh, I don't think that...this strategic integrated operational plan, the SlOP uh...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 SlOP, as we found it was essentially a plan for the largest possible uh... attack by the strategic air command upon uh...the Soviet Union in the event of aggressive war by the Soviet Union. And uh...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. Uh...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 uh...variety and flexibility that Kennedy would have liked was ever in fact introduced into uh...strategic planning.

Flexibility, Counterforce and Mutual Assured Destruction

Interviewer

What would Kennedy have wnated the SIOP to be?

Bundy

I don't think uh...you know -- Kennedy really didn't spend a great deal of time asking himself what the ideal SlOP would be because his notion of what he wanted was never to have to come to that choice. But he certainly uh...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 uh...he get detailed explanations of what the more moderate or more limited strategic plans were. That simply never became uh...an urgent question in his own mind, because of uh... his own feeling tht uh...any decision to use nuclear weapons would be uh...a terrible failure.

Interviewer

Where might flexibility have been useful?

Bundy

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 advisor 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 uh... said to the president uh..."I think that on that subject, Mr. President, you should think very hard. Make up your own mind. And tell no one waht you decide." By which he meant, I think, that uh...that was such a large decision that uh... 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.

Interviewer

What was Secretary McNamara's message at Ann Arbor?

Bundy

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 uh... it had a number of purposes. One was to make it clear that the nuclear strength that the United States was already uh...adequate. Indeed ample, for the purposes of the alliance. And that this American nuclear strength was a better, more reliable strategic deterrent than uh... one could hope to get if smaller members of the alliance put great emphaisis on their own separate nuclear forces. Uh...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...uh... general assault on the whole fabric of the society with which you were in conflict. Uh...that part of the speech had rather a short life in McNamara's mind because uh...the difficulty of limiting a nuclear exchange to counterforce, 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 numbers of Soviet military installations and warheads and missiles in place went up.

Interviewer

Why did McNamara begin to talk about assured destruction and downplay counterforce? Was it because the air force got to the treaty?

Bundy

Ithink it was because uh... 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 unmanagable 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 had this theory, was by definition one without limits. Ah, 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?

Interviewer

So this isn't just a procurement criterion? This is--

Bundy

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.

Interviewer

So, some people say that assured destruction became a strategy.

Bundy

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.

Interviewer

So that back where we started talking about assured destruction, was this accompanied by that many new instructions as to--

Bundy

Not to my knowledge.

Interviewer

What were you going to say?

Bundy

Not -- as far as I know, the assertion of the strategic ah, 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.

Interviewer

So that this was more of a rhetorical shift?

Bundy

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.

Interviewer

What does MAD mean?

Bundy

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.

Interviewer

There's no escape. You can't escape?

Bundy

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

Interviewer

When this condition of secure second strike capabilities arose on both sides, did that necessarily rule out a limited use of --?

Bundy

I don't think you can say that -- I don't think you can say that the ah, strategic capabilities ah, which are enormous and inescapable of the two sides, ah, 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.

Interviewer

Is there -- McNamara gave up on [sension] damage limitation... giving up on ABM and civil defense and large-scale appropriations and deployment... doesn't this leave us with a sense of helplessness?

Bundy

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 ah, better civil defense arrangements and public support for that broke down almost immediately. Ah, similar effort has been put forward in the Carter Administration, the Reagan Administration, not seriously, no serious support. Ah, 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.

Interviewer

Some of the people that -- McNamara had some critics, Albert Wohlstetter, Henry Rowen 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 to have a more limited exchange and initiated a decade of neglect in our strategic arsenal. Does that make any sense?

Bundy

Well, I know that very able people have been greatly interested in limited nuclear options. I don't myself think that ah, they have ever made a persuasive case that ah, those are or should be a very important priority for ah, 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 ah, ah, 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.

Interviewer

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 of building up. Did you feel more or less secure as we approached this situation?

Bundy

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 sea 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 ah, all of the '60s, all of the '70s and all of the '80s so far.

Interviewer

Given the MAD condition what do you sense... what should be the goal in hardware changes?

Bundy

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 believeable strategic threat against the --

The importance of an effective strategic deterrent

Interviewer

What should be the goal of hardware improvement? Should it be to maximize use options, or be to maintain a deterrent or...

Bundy

I think the primary requirement on ah, 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. Ah, I think that that test has been met by each administration since the time when both sides developed deliverable thermonuclear weapons in the ah, 1950's and that ah, the basic decisions of the 1960's and the 1970's, the 1980's 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. Ah, and I think that we have not developed a, either a good theory or a good practice ah, for, ah the more limited missions which indeed in some ah, 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 procurred for that purpose, ah, are also in very large measure adaptable for more limited purposes if we think about it carefully. And plan accordingly.

Interviewer

Do you think we should do that?

Bundy

I do.