SO FIRST OF ALL, CAN YOU TELL ME WHAT YOUR RECOLLECTION OF THE MOOD IN WASHINGTON AND THE KINDS OF DISCUSSIONS THAT WERE GOING ON AT THE TIME OF THE BERLIN CRISIS IN 1948?

Well, you have to go back a bit, Jonathan. Everyone had, or a great many people in government and even more people in the newspaper business had thought the Soviets were going to be lovely and friendly and nice after the war. And what we were confronted with after the war was Mr. Molotov and chums. At conference after conference I went to them telling us, and Bevin, and everybody else to go to hell in a hack. And meanwhile grabbing all of Eastern Europe. Flagrantly disregarding the Yalta bargain with regard to Eastern Europe. Everybody forgets that Yalta did call for some form of democratic procedure. And so that people were a little cross. On the other hand, being cross had not prevented shameful and very inefficient and very wrong hurried demobilization. And leaving us in a military situation in Western Europe with the most deplorable weakness. And...and this in turn, in my judgment, was the invitation to which Stalin responded by ordering the Berlin blockade. In fact, going to your subject, if we hadn't had nuclear weapons at that time, Stalin might well have responded to our weakness in Western Europe by ordering his divisions forward. He'd ordered his Communist parties forward. That's why we had the Marshall Plan.

WAS THERE ANY DISCUSSION AT ALL AS FAR AS YOU RECALL OF A REAL TEST OF STRENGTH OVER BERLIN? WERE THERE DISCUSSIONS ABOUT PUTTING A BATTALION THROUGH TO SEE WHAT THE SOVIETS...

I have no doubt there were, because some people always suggest things that are desirable but impractical or undesirable and impractical. There are a lot of damn fools in this kind of world. But you can't put divisions forward when the strength relationship is 1-to-10. Or at least if you do you deserve to go to the loony bin.

DO YOU THINK THERE WAS A ROLE PLAYED IN THAT PARTICULAR SITUATION BY THE AMERICAN NUCLEAR MONOPOLY? AND IN WHAT WAY WERE SIGNALS BEING SENT ABOUT THAT?

Well I don't think signals had to be sent. As far as I know, they weren't sent. I don't know. In any case, I...you don't have to send signals about something that everybody knows about. I would say that the role of the American nuclear monopoly at that time was, (a) to put it entirely out of the question for the Soviets to do something ten times worse than the Berlin blockade. In other words, to their enormous post-war strength and advantage, 10-to-1 to overrun the whole of Western Europe. Why not?

AND SECONDLY?

Secondly, of course on a lesser scale, it made it highly unlikely that the so...the Russians would do more than fly around in an intention...intending to be frightening manner when we started the Berlin airlift.

THERE'S A LOT OF COMMENT ABOUT THE MOVEMENT ABOUT A SQUADRON OF NUCLEAR CAPABLE BOMBERS OVER TO EUROPE AT THE TIME.

I don't recall. In...in any case, if it happened it was a kind of thing that is desirable to do in times of crisis, but not the kind of thing it's desirable to do seriously.

I WANT TO MOVE ON TO THE PERIOD AROUND ABOUT THE END OF THE KOREAN WAR AND ASK YOU TO DESCRIBE FOR US WHAT PEOPLE'S OPINIONS -- THE CLIMATE OF OPINION ABOUT THE SOVIET UNION AND THE SOVIET THREAT?

Well there again you have to move back, Jonathan, because we'd not only had the Berlin blockade, we'd had Communist coup d'etat in Czechoslovakia, including poor old Jan Masaryk being thrown out a window. We'd had a lot of disillusionment. And then we'd begun to rearm. And then the theory of rearmament was justified then -- I beg your pardon. We began to rearm after Czechoslovakia and the blockade. But then, Truman, and his intended Secretary of Defense, Louis Johnson, put their heads together and said, "Let's go back to normalcy." Mr. Harding's word. And Forrestal's last budget had called for a total defense expenditure of $18 billion and a half. And Truman told Johnson go ahead and cut. Acheson, who was the new Secretary of State went along with that because it was believed that we had a complete nuclear monopoly. And professor Kistiakowsky, for example, wrote a book about the nuclear question... The Nuclear Age, in fact, in which he said that the American monopoly would endure for another 13 years, as I recall. They had to tear a chapter out of the book before putting it on the newsstand. Then BANG...the first Soviet bomb went off in September of '49. And Acheson, greatly to his credit, changed sides. He said, we can't without the umbrella of a nuclear monopoly, we cannot afford to go on with disarmament. There was a fearful fight in the government. At one point, Louis Johnson, the Secretary of Defense threatened to strike -- or was thought to threaten to strike -- Dean Acheson, the Secretary of State. And the decision was to rearm. Spring of '50. Didn't mean a damn thing because Johnson remained as Secretary of Defense. In fact Johnson went on cutting his defense budget. And so what happened? We got the Korean War. Every time we started down on the defense end, Stalin started forward. And it happened all over again. We had it happen before, after all. And and that was the essential background; that was the experience of everyone.

THERE WAS NO DOUBT IN PEOPLE'S MINDS THAT WITHOUT THE UNITED STATES MILITARY STRENGTH, WHETHER IT BE CONVENTIONAL OR NUCLEAR, THE SOVIET UNION WOULD CONTINUE TO EXPAND UNTIL SOMETHING STOPPED IT…

Well, certainly... I dare say there was a doubt in some peoples minds. I remember one of my less respected colleagues adopted the Soviet propaganda story about our using...dropping poisoned insects in North Korea. You can believe anything, you know... But the average common sense American who thought about these things, I think thought about them as much as I did.

IN A NUTSHELL, WHAT WAS THAT?

What... the lesson was that if you let your guard down, somebody took a crack at you. There no great difference between foreign affairs and a high school exercise yard. I don't see why anyone's surprised by what they...why they should expect any difference, huh?

LET ME MOVE ON...

You said...I didn't understand. What do you man about the end of the Korean War though?

THAT OUR PROGRAM IS GOING TO START REALLY, WITH THE ...PAINT A PICTURE OF THE MOOD OF AMERICA AT THE END OF THE KOREAN WAR...

Oh, well that's quite a different...But let me tell you one more thing about the beginning of the Korean War. The decision was taken, I was here at the time. I remember vividly. In fact the... Dean Rusk who was acting at the State Department got the information that there was what they called a serious border incident in Korea at dinner in my house. A very nice summer dinner party outdoors. And finally the decision was taken and Chip Bohlen and Dean Acheson were told off in Paris to go inform the French Foreign Minister who was a very great and now forgotten man called Schuman. He was a marvelously brave who, was Robert Schuman. Wonderfully nice man. And they told Schuman what we were going to do had nothing to do with France. It did have to do with the strength of the western alliance. And they went along the Quai d'Orsay and told Schuman what they...what we were going to do. And the first thing that happened was that Schuman surged up from behind the Bureau de Vergennes, the historic desk of the French foreign minister, rushed forward and kissed Averell Harriman on both cheeks, following up by kissing Chip on both cheeks. Tears streaming down his face and saying, "We have always depended on you, now we know we can." A very moving story. And it tells you where you really are. And at the end of the Korean War, of course there's nothing worse in a democratic society than a war that you don't appear to be serious about. And and that goes on too long. Particularly -- well we didn't have really television in the Korean War. Ed Murrow went out there and reported it. That was when he went out just after I went out. And I saw him. He was a friend of mine. But well the mood was obviously, well we'll never have anything more like that again. That... that had a lot to do with McCarthyism.

LET ME MOVE ON TO 1957, WHEN YOU AND YOUR BROTHER DISCOVERED THAT THE AMERICAN GOVERNMENT KNEW, OR AT ANY RATE THE INTELLIGENCE KNEW, THAT THE SOVIETS HAD TESTED OR WERE TESTING AN ICBM. CAN YOU TELL ME WHAT YOU DID WITH THAT INFORMATION, AND WHAT THE AMERICAN GOVERNMENT'S REACTION WAS TO YOUR HAVING IT?

Well let me begin by the was... explaining the way my brother and I dealt with so-called classified information. We...never published classified information about operational matters, because once it's operational, right or wrong, your government is...your country is involved and you'd better not get in the way, huh? You can criticize afterwards, but don't put spokes in the wheel at the time. And as an extension of that we, and again as a matter of principle we never wrote about how any information came to the government. And I still think that this is a wrong thing to do too. In the case that you named, what really happened, if you don't mind my giving you a little lecture. Everybody talks about newspapermen getting leaks. It's absolute balderdash unless newspaper men are willing to be used like prostitutes, which is not too uncommon. The way that you find out what the government doesn't want you to find out is to know the subject backwards and forwards yourself. It takes a lot of god damned hard work. And when you know it yourself, and when you know all the people who know it too, and when you can discuss in a rational manner, then it isn't very hard by further hard work to come across the extra five percent that makes everything else fall into place. And once it all falls into place, then you know what's up. And you...there may be some other things that you also discover because you know what's up, but at least you know what's up. And that's what happened to us. And both Stu and I were very concerned that we had this information coming to our government that the Soviets were testing intercontinental missiles or beginning to test intercontinental missiles, I'm not sure they'd gotten quite as far as intercontinental, but major long distance missiles. We were very, very concerned that... what is know as... what is known in the business as "HUMINTEL" was not involved. In other words, if we published it, we wouldn't be dooming to death an invaluable source of the American government in Moscow. We also felt very strongly that the country had a right to know, because this was in our opinion a life and death matter. And you...it's a matter of life and death by extension for a democracy to know about life and death manners. Otherwise you find yourself in the situation that the British were in with Hitler. And so we went to Allen Douglas and we put it up to him. And in effect he said No, we would not be endangering any human life. And we then said, Well the country had a right to know. And he said, "Well OK. But don't tell how we know about it." The other way they knew about it, which I didn't know, was radars the size of about two... football fields in Turkey. I couldn't help but feel that the Soviets might have noticed radars the size of two football fields. But if that was what they wanted, that was what they wanted. And it didn't serve our purposes particularly to be writing about Turkish radar, so we didn't.

SO YOU PUBLISHED THE STORY ABOUT THE ICBMs?

Well as I say, I'm not so sure that there were ICBMs. They were...testing long-range missiles...and I guess they were starting on the ICBMs.

DO YOU RECALL THE REACTION TO THAT ARTICLE. WAS THERE MUCH?

Well, no, actually, there wasn't. Because it's very hard to get a big reaction right away to something that's desperately important but abstruse, remote.

WHEN SPUTNIK CAME ALONG PEOPLE...

When Sputnik came along then people damned well knew that something awful had happened. And they went around, ran around in circles barking like dogs and changed the whole American educational system and goodness knows what...

DO YOU THINK THAT WAS AN OVERREACTION?

No. Well there's always some overreaction, but the important thing it seemed to me was for us to get off our fat behinds and start...building something of the same sort that would neutralize, because that's the way it works, would neutralize Sputnik.

WHAT DID YOU THINK ABOUT THE AMERICAN MISSILE PROGRAM AT THAT TIME?

Oh, it was ridiculous. It was essentially designed not to have missiles. You know, I mean, armed forces are very strange things, you have to... institutions. You have to have them, but to expect them to be rational, is to expect the Moon. The Air Force, which is in charge of missiles, was to the last man, big bomber-minded, but no big bomber general has ever wanted missiles to work. It's like the cavalry and tanks... This is really true. These people don't think about that sort of thing.

WHY DO YOU THINK THERE WERE SO MANY DIFFERENT PROGRAMS GOING ON AT THE TIME, JUPITER, AND THOR, ATLAS...?

Well, if you looked at the specifications of all these different programs, what they boiled down to was building a missile about the size for which would have to be about the size of the Woolworth Building. To carry a horrifying warhead and land it with impossible accuracy. And... as I say, is like the cavalry with tanks. I mean, they'd design specifications that would make a big bomber a preferable alternative, I can't help but suspect. I don't say that it was done consciously, but I'm sure it was unconsciously done. And when the ICBM went up, in that climate, more sensible American programs were at length launched, although, for example, the Secretary of Defense, that...old fool Charlie Wilson, was very much against the whole thing.

DO YOU RECALL THE DATE OF WHICH YOU BEGAN TO FEEL THAT UNITED STATES INTELLIGENCE ESTIMATES OF SOVIET MISSILE STRENGTH WERE BEING DOWNGRADED FOR POSSIBLY BAD REASONS.

Well, let me begin at the beginning. The original estimates were based on capability. What the Soviets could build if they put their minds to it, and used their resources well. These were the estimates put before the Gaither Commission. I remember Bob Lovett telling me about the Gaither Commission, that it was like "peering into the abyss of hell." And in those days, Jerry Wiesner, who is the great ...of disarmament nowadays, he was a member of the Gaither Commission. He signed the report. And as far as one could tell, he felt just as strongly as Bob Lovett... And tinkering with the estimates in the Eisenhower administration, had to be suspected. Because you had a Secretary of Defense, who was a fat-faced fool. You had a Secretary of the Treasury, who genuinely believed that the profits of M.A. Hanna and Company were more important than the missile program. And you had a President who was permanently cross because he'd made his military judgment and he thought nobody should argue with him. And he believed very strongly, Eisenhower believed very strongly, that if you spent too much on defense, it would interfere with business. And so you had to suppose that there was a great deal of political pressure to tinker with the estimates. And I knew the evidence they had, most of it, which came from the U-2. The U-2 Program was started, in effect, by a great friend of mine in the CIA, a fellow called Dick Bissell, my oldest friend in the world. The U-2, he didn't tell me this, but I knew, the U-2, with all it's boldness, could only cover a really tiny portion of the Soviet Union. And decoding what was being done in the whole of the Soviet Union by looking at the U-2 photographs is rather like deducing the American way of life by looking at Greenwich, Connecticut, where nobody lives but the very rich. Or at least used to. And, I believed then, and I believe now, in going on what they call a worst case estimate, where you're dealing with matters of life and death. Let me illustrate: I know the analysts in the CIA. The dominant group were wrong about Czechoslovakia. Before that they were wrong about Hungary, and they were so wrong about the missiles in Cuba that they fought like tigers against the overflights of Cuba, that told us the missiles were there. Now, in the first two cases, it would have been foolish to. I mean you were arguing anyway about intentions and intentions that you couldn't do anything about. Hungary and Czechoslovakia, we weren't going to interfere. We might wring our hands. We might write editorials, but we weren't going to interfere. Whereas the missiles in Cuba, that was a serious matter. And it was a very misguided, even a shockingly misguided posture to take to try to prevent the overflights that showed the intentions estimate was dead wrong. And we'd have had a lot of trouble later in my judgment if we'd not found the intentions estimate was dead wrong. Now, in this case, the intentions estimate ended by proving to be right. I mean we're talking about the ICBMs. But, this was not discovered until the November after President Kennedy was elected. I talked to him. Now supposing it had gone the other way, the worse case estimate had been correct, that the reconnaissance satellite, the first one, had not shown that the worst case did not exist, what would you have done? What would you have done at Vienna where you were faced with an ultimatum for example. He said, "Don't talk to me about that, Joe. I've thought about it before and every time I do, it makes me lose a night's sleep."

NEVERTHELESS THE FACT IS THAT THE INTELLIGENCE ESTIMATE IS ON THIS OCCASION, PROVED, THE CIA, IN FACT, PROVED TO HAVE BEEN OVERESTIMATING CONSIDERABLY THEMSELVES...

Well, I don't, if you'll allow me to say so, I don't think that matters. I mean, the question is, what, in what kinds of situations must you, have you a duty to use worst case estimates? It doesn't matter whether they're right or wrong, you can't play Russian roulette with your national future if you can afford not to. And, if there's, if the, in the three cases I cited to you earlier, the same damn people were dead wrong with their intentions estimates. Cuba, Hungary and the missiles, and, Czechoslovakia. Now, I call it playing Russian roulette, to accept intentions estimates in the very narrow category of cases where life and death, national interests are probably involved.

...WE EVEN TALKED TO ONE OF THESE ANALYSTS, AND HE SAYS THAT WHAT HAPPENED IN 1958, WAS THAT THEY SIMPLY FELT THAT THEY HAD SUFFICIENT EXTRA INFORMATION AVAILABLE TO THEM, NOT ONLY FOR THE U-2, ALTHOUGH THAT CERTAINLY WAS SIGNIFICANT, TO BE ABLE TO MAKE A MORE EDUCATED GUESS, OR TO BE ABLE TO DISCOUNT THE WORST CASE ANALYSIS...

But that's just nothing but playing Russian roulette. You probably talked to the same damn man that was wrong about Hungary. Well there were very many of them, so you'd have been darn lucky to miss them wrong about Hungary, wrong about Czechoslovakia and wrong about Cuba. I don't give a damn what he says. That's what they felt. I didn't say they were dishonest. And of course, the President of the United States had a right to have an intentions estimate as well as a capabilities estimate. And of course you go crazy if you base you national policy in dealing with the Soviet Union or any other power solely on capabilities. There are very few cases when you have to do that. And those are the cases, what you may call the Russian roulette cases. Which I don't think is allowable for a rich and powerful country to play.

WHAT DO YOU SAY TO THOSE WHO ARGUE THAT IF WE ALWAYS OPERATED IN TERMS OF STRATEGIC WEAPONS ANYWAY ON THE WORSE CASE ESTIMATE, WHAT THE SOVIETS HAVE AND IF THEY ARE ALWAYS GOING TO OPERATE ON THE WORST CASE ESTIMATE OF WHAT WE HAVE THAT THAT IS GOING TO FUEL AN ARMS RACE TO USE A WORD THAT I KNOW YOU DON'T CARE FOR...

Well I say when they invented the god damned term arms race, one of the results, and it was between the First and Second World War, was an interval between world wars of only 21 years. Now, the people that advocate balancing Russian strength with American strength, which is the way I look at it, have won so far, thank the eternal God, and we've had 41 years since the last world war ended and I see no danger of a world war or a nuclear conflict or any of these awful things happening unless, which is quite possible the Soviets choose someone who, to lead them, who goes mad. And at that we'd have a darn good chance of his being stopped by the arms services. Stalin was obviously crazy. Just as Hitler was. So was Mao, for that matter. And, you don't murder the millions of people without cause that those three men each did of their own people too, their own citizenry, unless you're crazy. Now that's something you cannot, you cannot safeguard against. But if you keep a balance, you have a much better change of at least the armed services will say to the mad man, well, really I don't think we better do that, huh. If you have a situation in which they have overwhelming predominance, even a man who's not mad may yield to the temptation to exploit predominance.

WHY WAS THE SITUATION SO CRITICAL AS YOU UNDERSTAND IT IN 1959, 1960?

As I said, what we were doing was exactly like playing Russian roulette. The Gaither Commission had been told, and the reasons for this estimate had not changed, that the Russians needed only 160 workable ICBMs at that period when our, to take out the American strategic deterrent. This was because at that period the bases were very concentrated and the deterrent itself was extremely vulnerable. There was no way to keep it going except by an airborne alert, which in fact we advocated. And until you knew that they hadn't built those 160 weapons, and that's not very many after all...it seems to me there was every reason to be apprehensive. Because people you knew had been frequently wrong at least I knew had been frequently wrong, were...about intentions, but they'd never doubted the, change the capabilities estimate. And it looked to me as though that was like, I thought to myself what I'd have done if I had been the Soviet Union, with the intention toward the world that they had, and I'd have built the damn things. That was a great mistake not to from their standpoint. But thank God, they didn't. I suppose that what happened was it was a tremendous row about, for once...they had a budget ceiling. They had a tremendous row about military investments in which the senior services won.

AFTER ALL THE EISENHOWER ADMINISTRATION WAS BUILDING THE POLARIS SYSTEM, FOR EXAMPLE, AS FAST AS IT COULD. IT WAS A VERY SUCCESSFUL PROGRAM AND A FAIRLY FAST AND EFFICIENT ONE.

I don't think it was right by 1960.

THE FIRST ONE WAS LAUNCHED IN THE FALL OF 1960...

The very, very first.

WHAT I'M SAYING IS THAT IT WAS PRODUCED QUITE FAST FROM 1955, '56...

Well I know, but we're talking about 1960. We'd only had one of the damn Polaris missiles even tested.

WHAT I WANT TO ASK YOU IS EVEN IF THE INTELLIGENCE ESTIMATES HAD BEEN HIGHER, WHAT COULD THE UNITED STATES DO ABOUT THAT SITUATION OTHER THAN WHAT THEY WERE DOING BY THE END OF '50s?

Well, there was no quick fix, as I said earlier, Jonathan, except to have an airborne alert. Actually, the situation, our programs, on the way had been corrected, partly because they became a little bit sensitive about what people like myself were saying, but mainly because Tom Gates was a very exceptional Secretary of Defense. And if you look at his record, you'll find, I think, I've never really looked it up myself, that the programs on which we later depended very heavily, and still depend to this day, were in large, in earnest, I mean properly funded and got going under Tom Gates.

WHAT DO YOU THINK...

I mean there was a chalk-from-cheese when you got rid of old fat face Wilson, and brought in Tom Gates, who knew the world he was living in.

YOU HAD MCELROY BETWEEN THE TWO...

We had Bubbles, I used to call him.

WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT PRESIDENT EISENHOWER'S HANDLING OF NATIONAL SECURITY OVERALL?

Eisenhower reminded me of no one so much as a steward of a very self-indulgent rich family. And he kept saying, "OK, OK, here's the money, here's the money. Don't worry about the...roof, it's leaking a little bit but the moss will grow over the hole." And then when they got, when he went away, and somebody read the books, the balance was seriously impaired. Sorry, I wish you would cut out when I squeak. Ah...

SHALL WE JUST START THAT ONE AGAIN ACTUALLY?

Eisenhower was obviously a very able man, and a very shrewd politician. When you're talking about him in connection with national defense, or indeed, I'd say with other things, it seems to me he was like the kind of administrator of a great estate, who tells the owner of the estate, "Go along, spend, gamble at Monte Carlo. Go to the French dressmakers for your wife. Drop in at Cartier and order what you want." And meanwhile, the house, the stocks are going down and the roof is coming off the family house. In other words, when Eisenhower was elected in '52, the American national situation worldwide was 30 times better than it was when Eisenhower left office in 1960. And this really was mainly because of weak leadership and wont of necessary investment. Because the maintenance wasn't paid for, in short.

DESPITE THE FACT THAT THE UNITED STATES HAD -- AS DEPUTY SECRETARY OF DEFENSE ROSWELL GILPATRIC SAID AS LATE AS THE FALL OF 1961 -- IT HAD A GREATER SECOND-STRIKE CAPABILITY IN THE END OF 1961, THEN THE SOVIET UNION HAD A FIRST-STRIKE CAPABILITY. IN OTHER WORDS IT HAD MASSIVE SUPERIORITY.

Yes, you don't have any kind of superiority if the other guy can take you out.

BUT HE COULDN'T...

Well that was because, but all through Eisenhower's administration we were gambling that he wouldn't, that he wouldn't build what he might easily have built. And on top of that, strategic power is, that kind of calculation of strategic power is completely wrong. Strategic power, if there's some kind of rational balance, that's all that's needed. The very important point with a strategic power is to have enough so it's not used. That's what you want. Nothing more...We had it in the 1950s, but if they'd had 160 ICBMs at the time when we'd not dispersed calculating, I won't say what I think of your source, but calculating on a second strike capability would have been just as silly as a great many other things I've heard.

OK.

Too much is better than too little. Beyond that, I cannot go.

TOO MUCH IS TOO BETTER THAN TOO LITTLE.

What I'm trying to say is this, Jonathon. Anyone who bases national policy on anything but the intention never to use these weapons if humanly possible, ought to be taken out and hung on the nearest lamppost. The question is not whether to use them, the question is how to avoid a situation in which the question might arise. And the way to do that is to look strong. If you remember your school days, the big people, the big guys didn't get bullied, unless they were fat and cowardly. Well, even the ones that were in fact cowardly, as long as they were big, didn't get bullied until they went too far and somebody showed them up as cowardly, huh?

SO WHAT YOU'RE REALLY SAYING IS...

You have to look all right.

YOU DON'T THINK THE UNITED STATES LOOKED ALL RIGHT?

We lost all over the world, that's all I know. I mean, you think of that story I told you about Schuman. You wouldn't have had anyone say that sort of thing about the reliability, dependability of this country, or the usefulness, dependability of the western alliance at the end of Eisenhower. You can't expect people to do that. If you... presently the United States goes on in effect saying that "What's good for General Motors is good for America."

OK, LET'S CUT THERE. WHAT... WHAT WAS THE REASON?

Well, I don't think you can... understand the decisions that people made about defense policy when they began making serious defense policy, which was actually when the Soviets got aggressive... I don't think you can understand the decisions that were made about defense policy without remembering how every single person that made defense policy was formed. I don't know anybody of any importance at all, either English or French or above all American who didn't in those days believe that the failure to rearm when Hitler came to power was what got the British and the French into a war. If they'd had stayed ahead of Hitler, there wouldn't have been a Hitler, in effect. Or he wouldn't have mattered. He might have been very cruel or horrible at home, but that's different from a world war. And everybody in those days, believed that the balance of power was in effect, the mainspring that determined everything else. And that if you kept the balance true, you had a very good chance, an enormously high chance, in fact of keeping everything else true. So far, although nobody ever says so, But this is a very important point to remember. We were talking about the change from the Soviets going on their capability to build ICBMs between the Sputnik in 1960, and what they actually did, which was not build ICBMs. They built middle range missiles Intelligence community, originally agreed on the capability estimate. They could build so and so many. Actually the total was 160 as I recall by the end of 1960, which would have been very, very bad in the way we were set up in those days. Why did a large part of the intelligence committee, it wasn't all by any means, abandon this capability estimate, you asked. Well, first of all they were under very severe political pressure. Neither the head of the defense department nor the President of the United States wanted to...an unpleasant estimate. And particularly an estimate that would cause them to spend money on defense. In the second place, as I said, we had the U-2 evidence. Well, to be sure it was like basing your, because the U-2 saw very little of the Soviet Union it was like basing an estimate of what was...what the United Stated was like on air photographs of Greenwich. Then, I've heard later that I've heard later the argument that they had a lot of other data. What they mean is the perfectly miserable I hate to use the word, manure, let's say that the intelligence analysts are always making of Soviet economic and such like statistics. It's worthless. I've seen the official estimate of Soviet defense expenditure go overnight, from one day to the next, from 6 percent of GNP, 6.5 percent I guess it was, to 13 percent. In shorter than 24 hours, the estimate doubled. Now do you think an estimate that can be doubled in 24 hours is a dependable estimate? Because I don't.

SO ON THE BASIS OF THIS INFORMATION AND OF THIS PRESSURE, WHAT EXACTLY HAPPENED AS YOU UNDERSTAND IT?

Well, they came up with an intentions estimate which by chance was accurate... Which by chance was accurate or nearly accurate. But when I say by chance, I mean by chance. Because if you look at the record of the American intentions estimates or rather the American estimates of the intentions of the Soviets around the world, you will find that they're about as dependable as -- using them as the basis for policy rather, is exactly like playing Russian roulette. I mean, you may not shoot yourself, but you can put a bullet through your head.