YOU WENT TO LOS ALAMOS AND STARTED TAKING RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE PRODUCTION OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS, AND YOU NOTICED THAT MOST OF THE MATERIAL WAS GOING TO THE AIR FORCE, WHAT WAS YOUR REACTION TO THAT?

Well, when I got to the Army staff in 1957 and was put in charge of Army planning for the use of nuclear weapons, it quickly became apparent that virtually all the nuclear weapons in the United States were at that time being con-, being used as bombs for SAC, and a few for the Navy, and that the Army was getting practically no nuclear material, and that, uh, in view of the fact that the the military strategy at that time was to put main, but not sole, reliance on nuclear weapons, but the Army was not getting what looked to us and the Army as our fair share of nuclear weapons to pull our load in the nuclear war when it came. At that time, and I think quite properly, the, the National Administration had decided to use nuclear weapons mainly, because we had superiority in nuclear weapons; the Soviets had practically none, and we had a lot, or substantially a lot, and it made sense at that time to minimize our expense defend-, to ex-, um, defense expenditures, by using nuclear weapons if necessary and facing the great hordes of Soviet forces. And, we in the Army began to study in more detail what use is gonna be made of all these bombs that the Air Force is getting, and all this nuclear material that's being used by SAC, and we gradually got involved in a big study that looked at what their plans were, and how many weapons they were gonna use against each target and so forth, and we found that, uh, compared to the relatively few weapons that we would have to use against those masses of Soviet tanks and ground forces facing us, particularly in Europe, where we could really use a number of nuclear weapons to really decimate them and spread them out, that we weren't getting very many, compared to what the Air Force was getting, to use many ti-, many weapons against individual targets. And we began to argue, within the JCS structure, that we think we should get more nuclear weapons. Uh, we did begin to get some, but we did not think that they were commensurate with the, uh, what the Air Force was getting, and it ended up with the deci-, uh, decision made in the JCS in 1960 to set up the JSTP organization in Omaha, in which they had representation from the Army, the Navy, and the Air Force, to review and make recommendations concerning how those strategic nuclear warheads should be used. I guess our concern was more against the...relative balance of, uh, warheads between strategic nuclear purposes which included the Navy later with the Polaris, and also with their Navy bombers, and Air Force, versus what we on the ground would have to use to cope with the tactical type confrontations which, uh, meant that we were eyeball-to-eyeball with the Soviets.

WHEN YOU FIRST STARTED BECOMING RESPONSIBLE FOR PLANNING IN THE ARMY, WHAT WAS THE STATUS OF NUCLEAR DOCTRINE?

I left, uh, the Command General Staff College in 1957, and was ordered to the Army staff in Washington, to set up the first Army planner position for the use of nuclear weapons. And when I came in and looked around to see what is the state of, of US Army doctrine, and planning for the use of nuclear weapons, I found that it was, as you'd expect, rather primitive. We'd just gotten these nuclear weapons, and, uh, we were not very far along on how to use this tremendous increase in firepower; uh, you might say we were comparable, in terms of using... weapons in those days, to what it might be like handing a hand grenade to a, a caveman. Up until that time, a caveman, when he fought with fellow cavemen, you know, they fought with clubs or sticks or spears, but they couldn't kill more than one man at a blow, and... he had to be in very close. Well, the same way with the nuclear weapon with us in the Army; we could cope with the enemy within eyesight of each other — that is, close eyesight, two or three hundred yards rather readily with our rifles and machine guns — but anyone beyond that we couldn't get; and also, uh, we couldn't get them en masse, and now with a nuclear weapon you'd throw 'em out there, a nuclear weapon against them, you could take out a whole company, a hundred, 200, 300 men at a time... and in fact the damage was so great that you might knock yourself out too; so we had to start thinking about not only the effects on the enemy, but as a man throwing a hand grenade, he has to be sure he gets down before those fragments go off and hit him as well. So, we were coping with, uh, um, tremendous increase in, in, in, in firepower capability, and we were just groping towards it. At first, during the, uh, late '50s, when it was the administration doctrine to rely primarily on nuclear weapons, and... we had a superiority in nuclear weapons, we were able to rather quickly decide in the Army to organize for nuclear war, which in effect means that whenever you have any massing of enemy forces against you on the ground, you just throw a nuclear weapon against them, and once it goes off then you charge in there with your conventional weapons, and mop them up. But we had to be careful because of that power, to be sure that we'd duck down when we set the weapon off, so we trained our soldiers how to do that, to stay down, and we could only use small weapons, not large ones, because the large ones would hurt us as well. We developed an entirely new division structure, the pentonic division, where we had smaller numbers of troops in any one place, and they were able to spread out quickly, or if we lost one group we still had others available to deploy, and we really, we organized the Army to adapt to the nuclear age. But towards the end of the '50s, we began to see that the Soviets were beginning to develop nuclear weapons -- they'd actually set off the H-bomb and they were gonna be able to wipe out us, in company and battalion-sized units. And we began to worry about how would that fighting go then, where they had nuclear weapons and we were no longer so superior to them? And, uh, a word that many people said we shouldn't use at first began to crop up: the word "nuclear parity." We began to think out 10, 15 years from now, we only need so many weapons to be able to have nuclear capability against the Soviets; after that, any more weapons we have don't give us that much additional advantage, but if they get that many against us, then we are at parity and they can do as much damage to us as we to them, and what happens to the decision-makers then? Whereas in the '50s, it would not be too difficult for a decision-maker to say, "If the Russians attack across Europe, we'll respond with nuclear weapons and we'll wipe out their greater numbers of forces with weapons. But in the forthcoming '60s and '70s, if the nuclear, if the Soviets were to attack with nuclear weapons...with, uh, conventional weapons, and we responded with nukes and they responded to us, they might wipe us out as well as they, and it would just be a, a disaster. And we began to realize that then the decision makers would have a harder time deciding to meet the Russians with nuclear weapons, and how should we in the Army structure ourselves to cope with that? And over time we began to evolve what is now called the flexible-response doctrine. Actually in the late '50s, the Chief of Staff of the Army, General Maxwell Taylor, actually set up a, set up a special study group, up in his office, to study the problem: I was one of the consultants to it from the Army staff. And, by the time that he ended up being chief of staff, he wrote a book on this called The Uncertain Trumpet, which in effect said, in the foreseeable future, the major response and role of the US Army in warfare is gonna be primarily in conventional forces again, because of the problem of deciding whether or not to use nuclear weapons. And we'd better be sure that we strengthen our capability to fight with conventional means, rather than just putting all of our eggs in one basket, which is the nuclear basket.

YOU USED A PHRASE THAT SUMMED UP THE CHANGE IN DOCTRINE THAT MAXWELL TAYLOR STARTED.

If I were to try to, to express in, uh, one sentence what the true change that was proposed in The Uncertain Trumpet, from the previous policy, it was as follows: under the previous policy, where we were gonna put the primary emphasis on nuclear weapons, you could say the emphasis was main, but not sole reliance, on the use of nuclear weapons. The Uncertain Trumpet said it should be the other way around: it should be main, but not sole, reliance on conventional forces.

BY 1957, TACTICAL NUCLEAR WEAPONS ARE IN PLACE IN EUROPE. BUT THEN IT WAS DECIDED TO DEPLOY THEM IN COLLABORATION WITH OTHER EUROPEAN COUNTRIES. WHAT WAS THE THINKING BEHIND THAT MOVE?

Beginning about 1957, we began to get some nuclear weapons for ground forces, and of course we deployed our first ones for ground forces to Europe in support of the US Army forces in Europe. But the US Army forces were only a part of the alliance of forces facing the Russians in Europe, and our German friends on our left and right, and the British friends to the north, and our other allies to the north, were not protected on the ground to the extent we were with the option to rely on nuclear weapons.; Therefore initially we set up a couple of special units of US, uh, nuclear-weapon supply people and maintenance people, in support of our Allied friends, so that we could provide some nuclear support to them, that they could call on for nuclear fires in case, uh, ground warfare began. As time went on, it became apparent that we had more and more nuclear weapons becoming available; we were beginning to get some of our share versus... SAC. And the US began negotiating bilateral agreements with each of our allies in Europe to set up nuclear stores behind each of those forces, put a US team with those nuclear weapons, so the weapons were always in US hands, but responsive to the use of those respective countries, once the new... release for, of use of nuclear weapons was made.

THERE WAS A MAJOR BUILDUP THAT OCCURRED...WHAT WAS THE REASON FOR THAT AND WHO WAS THE PERSON WHO DECIDED?

You know, the question is often asked, why did we deploy so many of these nuclear weapons to Europe? And I think it's useful to, uh, consider what was the basis of such decisions; how many nuclear weapons were there? We in the Army that, uh, in a typical Soviet division you have so many companies of men and you want to, in the end, be able to knock out at least half of those companies of men, each with a nuclear weapon. And for each nuclear weapon that you aim at them you may miss them a little bit, so you probably need two against each one but then you've lost some nuclear weapons, so you put several multiple factors in. And, we came up with some recommended numbers of nuclear weapons, which were up in the field of, of several thousand nuclear weapons that would be needed in Europe, to cope with the threat that we saw there, the number of individual company-sized enemy units that would be coming across, against us on the ground. Now to give you some perspective, as to what the real lethal effect of the nuclear weapons in Europe would be, it's interesting to, uh, consider the, what we call the "lethal area effect." How far out from, uh, the burst of a weapon, whether it's a conventional artillery weapon or a nuclear weapon. Will people be killed if they're exposed to that weapon, a given weapon? And, they say an artillery shell, for example, may kill people out to five yards away, and that has an area, and that would be the lethal area of that artillery shell. A nuclear weapon may be killing people out to several hundred yards away, and that's a much larger lethal area. If you were to look at the sum of nuclear — uh, of, uh, lethal area of conventional bombs and munitions used in World War II, in Europe, conventional weapons, you find that the lethal area of the nuclear weapons that were be-, de-, being deployed to Europe, the sum of it was less, of the nuclear weapons, than was the total number of lethal areas of weapons used in World War II. Likewise, it was less than the amount of conventional weapons that we used in Korea, in the Korean War, and the same can be said, less than the amount of, uh, lethal area of weapons that were deployed against... North Vietnam. It's a tremendous amount of damage., if you look at the damage that was done in World War II you can see that it was tremendous, but some people seem to think that the amount of that lethal area of nuclear weapons is enormously higher. That's not so. So to give you some perspective as to how they compare... that was the way the numbers were arrived at, and in the late '50s... the US and the various NATO allies negotiated numbers of weapons to put be-, behind these. Now, this was the time that we were gonna respond with nuclear weapon from the outset. By the time that the Kennedy Administration came in, most of those bilateral agreements had been completed or within, were within their final stages. And then the Kennedy Administration, who were very much influenced by reasoning of the sort that was in General Taylor's Uncertain Trumpet, began to say, "Why do we need all these nuclear weapons? We want, we want to rely more on conventional weapons rather than nuclear weapons." And, the question arose as to whether or not we should deploy all the, uh, weapons that had not yet gotten over there, but which had been agreed to, to, in accord with the agreements between the, the countries. And... where I was, sitting in the staff then of, of the, Secretary McNamara's staff, I recommended to our people that were trying to sell the, the flexible-response idea of using conventional forces first... that if we're gonna get our NATO allies to go along with the flexible response... we're gonna hurt that case if we suddenly say, "Well, we had agreed to give you so many nuclear weapons, but now we're only gonna give you a half or a third of those." That would get their backs up and they'd be far less likely to go along with the, the flexible response, than if we let those weapons that have already been entrained to go over there, go on over there, even though frankly, from a military sense, many of us felt that we probably didn't need to deploy more than, say, half of 'em -- we'd still have the other half, 'cause they'd already been built, paid for, stored in the US, which could be flown over quickly when needed, but the... the political aspect of this, the diplomatic aspect of this, governed, as in my mind, does the whole question of the use of nuclear weapons; it's governed by the political aspects far more than... the... the narrower military aspects.

WOULD YOU SAY THAT THE REASON FOR THE BUILDUP BEYOND MILITARY NEEDS OF WARHEADS IN EUROPE, WAS ACTUALLY A POLITICAL DESIRE TO LIMIT THE IMPACT OF THE FLEXIBLE-RESPONSE DOCTRINE?

Uh, in recent years I've had a number of people approach me, and ask me why was it that the big buildup in nuclear weapons underground in Europe came after present came into office, President Kennedy came into office, rather than before, because President Kennedy was against having all those nuclear weapons. And I, uh, had to reflect on this, and concluded that really it wasn't the Kennedy Administration that, uh, arranged for those deployments, it was really the earlier administration. And the Kennedy Administration, uh, accepted the view that in order to... provide the political climate in which the flexible response strategy could be accepted, it was necessary to permit the prior agreements for deployments of nuclear weapons to continue, even though, uh, it could be argued that they were not fully, that such deployments were not fully in consonance with the flexible-response, uh, doctrine. For purely political reasons, it was found expedient to accept that, and per-, permit them to be deployed.

TO WHAT EXTENT DO YOU THINK THE ROLE OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS IS GOVERNED BY POLITICS, RATHER THAN MILITARY CONSIDERATIONS?

Yes. Back during the time when the US had full nuclear superiority, and it was the declared policy of the United States to respond to Soviet aggression with nuclear weapons from the outset, it was very easy for us, from the military point of view, to integrate these powerful new nuclear weapons into our fighting capabilities, compared to what it is now. Once it became uncertain as to whether or not the release for nuclear weapons would be coming soon, we began to having, having to posture our forces to fight conventionally, until the time that a nuclear release was given, and, we military men... who respond to the direction of our political leadership, knew that, uh, we would not be able to use the nuclear weapons until the President of the United States told us we could use them. And the President of the United States, depending on his particular circumstances, may want to consult with the leaders of the various NATO allies an extreme example of what this did to us, I guess, can be, uh, exemplified by the atomic demolition munition, a device that we engineers found, uh, particularly useful to destroy enemy bridges, let's say, against the, across the Vesa River, which the Soviets could use for high-speed attack... against our forces; if we could blow out those bridges with an atomic demolition, very quickly, we'd like to do that, and we had plans to, to lay the ABMs, as we call them, along, or in the... in the foundations of these bridges, and when the Soviets crossed to blow them up. But when we d-, this worked fine as long as we knew we'd, we'd set 'em off immediately when the enemy attacked, but when the uncertainty of the decision began to sink in, we began to realize that, if we put a nuclear weapon, or atomic demolition, in the foundation, and we didn't get the release, the enemy would overrun it, and they would capture one of our nuclear weapons, and the next thing we'd know, they might be using it against us. So it's vastly, this, this question of when the decision would, would come, vastly complicated our ability to plan on the use of atomic demolitions. In a like manner, but probably less so completely, it complicated our ability to use artillery-projected weapons, missile-projected weapons and so forth.

DURING THAT TIME, HOW DID YOU ENVISAGE THE USE OF THESE TACTICAL NUCLEAR WEAPONS?

In the late '50s, when the plan was to use nuclear weapons from the outset, it was clear to us that we would start using nuclear weapons the instant the enemy ground forces began coming in against our ground forces. Now, when that might be depended on the way the war started. If the war started with, uh, the enemy, uh, air attacks against us, and we're rushing out of our concerns, and having what we call a meeting engagement, uh, that would be, um, uh, more ragged type of, of use of nuclear weapons on our part, than if there had been a period of tension between the two forces, and we'd deployed and were facing each other eyeball to eyeball, you know, much like the military forces in Korea had been facing each other across the DMZ for many, many years. In that case, of course, we would have had all of our targets zeroed in, our nuclear weapons ready to go, and the instant they started a crossing in, in,.. mass in any particular sector, then we would implement pre-planned nuclear fires against that particular sector, in mass; now, that would not necessarily be in conjunction with a strike from SAC in our air forces, which would be striking targets deeper, and not so directly involved in, in striking the enemy forces that were threatening our ground forces.

WHY WAS THERE THAT DISCONTINUITY?

There was a distinct discontinuity between the air forces, and the ground forces, for a couple of reasons: they're two forces, and whenever you have two forces, uh, you have two different minds directing them; they're not going to be done exactly the same; but beyond that, the army moved towards the flexible-response, uh, strategy, more rapidly than did the Air Force. In Europe, for example, in 1961, '62, '63 time frame, when I was there, whereas we in the army were planning to respond initially to enemy attack with conventional response at first, always ready to fall back on nukes when released, the Air Force was still planning to respond with nukes as soon as possible, and to the extent that their airplanes were all designed to deliver high-speed, high- speed delivery of nuclear weapons, their armaments were virtually all nuclear, had practically no iron bombs, of the sort that we use in conventional war; and this disturbed us in the Army very much, because when we considered how we would be facing the Russians initially, which would be conventionally, we would like to have some airplanes, which are very powerful support for us, behind us and supporting us with their firepower, conventional firepower. But they didn't have it; in the early '60s there were virtually no iron bombs in Europe. And so the structure between the Air Force and the Army, at that particular time, was not consistent.

YOU BECAME THE PLANNER FOR THE SEVENTH ARMY IN 1962. YOU DESCRIBED A CONVERSATION YOU HAD WITH YOUR COMMANDING OFFICER. WHAT WAS THAT?

In, uh, 1962, I was, uh, sent to Seventh Army Headquarters, in Germany, to be the planner — that's both conventional and nuclear-war planner — and we, uh, were in the process of reviewing the Seventh Army plan for how we would deploy our forces in time of war. And I remember my initial courtesy call on the commanding general, in which I said, "General, we are preparing to revise the emergency... defense plan, for the Seventh Army, aid I need guidance from you on one important aspect, which concerns our initial assumption concerning the use of nuclear weapons. I find that the plans, as they're written now, assume that the instant we start fighting with the Russians, that we'll use nuclear weapons from the outset," because that was the Eisenhower Administration's policy, "but now we're in a new administration" (the Kennedy Administration). "I've just come from the Army staff, where we were developing the flexible-response policy, which assumes that at the outset we will fight conventionally, but be prepared to use nukes. But, sir, I would like to know what guidance do you have? Shall we use nukes from the outset, or shall we use conventional forces from the outset?" And this commanding general said, "Frank, you and I have both just come from the Pentagon, the Army staff; we are both sold on the flexible response option initially, so I want you to write the plan that way." So we reoriented the plan completely; we actually moved the 24th Division from the right flank over to the left flank, and structured our initial fighting posture to be conventional rather than nuclear. That was beginning to reflect, if you will, the change in strategic policy from the Eisenhower Administration to the Kennedy Administration.

IN A SENSE, THERE YOU WERE IN EUROPE; NATO HAD BEEN INTRODUCED TO THE FLEXIBLE-RESPONSE CONCEPT IN 1962. BUT IT WASN'T UNTIL 1967, AFTER THE FRENCH VETO WAS REMOVED, THAT IT ACTUALLY BECAME OFFICIAL NATO DOCTRINE.

Whenever there is a change in strategy from one policy to another, there is an inertia, among the various forces involved, as to when each takes the switch over to the new policy, as evidenced by what I said before about the Air Force; they were much later in swinging over to the flexible-response doctrine than we were. In the Seventh Army, the southern half of the NATO front in central Europe was under the command of, of Seventh Army, under Seventh, Central Army Group. And we in effect were the people who were developing the, the tactics and doctrine that would be deployed against the forces there, and I guess what we were doing in revising the Seventh Army war plan, which involved not only US Army forces but also the two German corps that were in support as well of Seventh Army, is that we were... in the forward edge of that transition from one policy to another; we had not yet had articulated from NATO forces on high, uh, that there was this definite change in policy; but we were facing reality, and we were the US element of the NATO forces. We were the people who were most cognizant, even though not completely cognizant, of the effects of nuclear warfare, because we had 'em, and our other NATO allies did not. And we recognized that if, for some reason, we didn't have release of those nuclear weapons, we'd be in a bad fix if we started fighting the enemy from a posture designed for nuclear weapons. You see, when you structure yourself for nuclear warfare, you spread your forces out; you thin them out so that you present less desirable targets to the enemy, but when you thin yourself out, it's sort of like a football team: where you don't have many men on the line, it's easier for the attacker to go through you there, than when you have a lot, so it's a question of mass or not, and so we didn't want to be thinned out for a nuclear posture, and then have the enemy attack and not be able to use nuclear weapons, so we were facing reality as what we would have to do, and let's face it, when the enemy is facing you, and you have to fight him, you're gonna fight him in the best way you can with the means that you are permitted to use. And we anticipated, at this stage, that we were not likely to be permitted to use those nuclear weapons immediately.

BUT THE FACT THAT YOU WERE INTRODUCING A POLICY CALLED FLEXIBLE RESPONSE, DID YOU EVER COME UP WITH DIFFICULTIES IN DEALING WITH GERMAN OR NATO ALLIES IN WHAT YOU WERE DOING?

In using this, uh, approach, main but not sole reliance on conventional weapons, uh, we weren't using the term flexible response at that time; that's a name that, that came up later as it was introduced through the, the NATO structure. Uh, our dealings with, uh, the German corps commanders, concerning how we were going to deploy this, this issue never came up. At that time — this was in the early '60s -- the US were the ones who had the nuclear weapons, and, uh, our NATO allies had not really been exposed very much to the import of the use of nuclear weapons, and since we had them, there was, seemed to foe a general acceptance that, uh, the doctrine that we were proposing made sense. I don't remember having any difference of view with my German planning colleagues over this policy at all? all I had to do was point out, "Look, if we don't get the release for these nuclear weapons, what can we do? How can we fight? What's the best way to structure ourselves?" And they would say, "Well, that's right; if we don't get that release right away, we'd better... do it this way, rather than that." So there was no problem at the working level. In my memory, concerning how to do this.

DID YOU EVER GET A PROBLEM AT A HIGHER LEVEL?

At the level I was working, I had no problem in dealing with this with any, uh, group of people; we had, uh, Seventh Army exercises in which we would implement assumed attacks by the Soviets and how would, we would respond, and the response would be conventionally, initially, and then they would press it to the point that we would go nuke just to see how we would operate when we went nuke, but, I'm not aware of any, uh, policy issues within the US Army, or the...German army that we worked with directly, or the French army who was behind us, uh, concerning how we were doing this.

THERE WAS QUITE A LOT OF CRITICISM OF WHAT EVENTUALLY BECAME KNOW AS THE DOCTRINE OF FLEXIBLE RESPONSE IN EUROPEAN DEFENSE CIRCLES. AND IN FACT SOME PEOPLE HAVE PUT TO US THAT ACTUALLY WHAT YOU WERE DOING WAS GETTING PREPARED TO FIGHT BACK TO THE PYRENEES BEFORE ACTUALLY USING NUCLEAR WEAPONS. AND THAT IN A SENSE THAT STARTED TO DESTROY THE CONCEPT OF DETERRENTS. NOW WHAT WOULD YOU SAY.... HOW WOULD YOU ACCOUNT TO THAT ARGUMENT?

A number of people have, uh, questioned the soundness of the, uh, flexible response doctrine as saying that it, uh, weakens deterrents that, uh, it uh, implies that we're willing to fall back not only to the Rhine but across the Rhine perhaps even as far back as the Pyrenees. And uh, those of us who believe in flexible response have found that, uh, our thinking feels that whereas maybe from one point of view it weakens deterrents it actually strengthens deterrents in the fact that, uh, when you recognize flexible response is accommodating to the increased, uh, number of nuclear weapons that the Soviet Union has. When the time comes that they have as many nuclear weapons as we had, and we were anticipating that that could occur in the sixties or seventies. And I would say by now that probably has happened. The question of how well we were deterred .... we were able to deter the enemy from attacking because we would use nuclear weapons. If he had as many nuclear weapons as we have to use against him that he could use against us, that could operate in a very powerful way to deter us from using nuclear weapons in the first place. The enemy calculating the likelihood of our using nuclear weapons and so forth were to say as time goes on and we get more nuclear weapons, the NATO allies are less likely to respond with nuclear weapons. If we had the so called trip wire defense concept that we're going to use nuclear weapons at the outset, the Soviets might calculate that we would not respond with nukes and they could just walk over us. Whereas if we strengthen our conventional capability so that when they attacked us conventionally, we had sufficient strength to hold them and force them to decide whether or not their objectives were worth the risk of going to nuclear war, uh, the pause might indeed cause them to foe more deterred from the outset. So those of us who were pushing for at least an initial conventional option felt that we were strengthening deterrents in the forthcoming period of, of nuclear parity rather than weakening it.

GENERAL GALWELL WHO IS PERHAPS THE MOST OUTSPOKEN CRITICS OF FLEXIBLE RESPONSE SAID THE REAL FUNDAMENTAL...IN THE THEORY AND IN THE DOCTRINE IS THAT THE SOVIET UNION DOESN'T RESPECT ANY RULES. IF THEY'RE GOING TO DECIDE TO INVADE, THEN THEY'RE GOING TO DO IT WITH ALL THE MEANS THAT ARE AVAILABLE TO THEM AT THE OUTSET. IT DOES SEEM THAT THERE'S A CERTAIN LOGICAL ELEMENT TO THAT. THAT IT DOES RELY ON THE SOVIET UNION RESPECTING IF YOU LIKE THE RULES OF ENGAGEMENT. AND THERE'S NO EVIDENCE THAT THEY EVER HAVE DONE SO. DO YOU THINK THAT'S A FAIR POINT?

What I've tried to do in assessing the relative impact on the Soviet nuclear planner of these alternative strategies is to try to put myself in his place and say I want to attack central Europe. And what is the circumstance that I would prefer the NATO alliance to present against me... what confrontation would I rather have from them to succeed. Now frankly, I'm not able to conceive of a circumstance that the Soviet planners find it worth attacking. As long as they see that there's the likelihood or the possibility that nuclear... it'll escalate the nuclear war and whatever they're attacking can be destroyed to the point of not only thats(?) attack whatever they're trying to cease is destroyed, but also a good number of their forces and capabilities are destroyed. I'm not able to... at this time to conceive of a situation that's that grave that pushes them to that. After all, we chose not to intervene in Hungary or Czechoslovakia. Now if we had, maybe they would be confronted with that as long as we don't push into their area, I'm not able to conceive of a circumstance which they find it worth their while to attack and take that risk of increasing nuclear weapons. On the other hand if I'm a Soviet planner, and I'm not going to make one great big massive attack which would bring this nuclear confrontation I still want to knock the NATO allies down. I want to destroy their self confidence. I want to reduce their cohesion. I might say well the best way to do that is to nibble them to death. You know, let's grab a little enclave here. Just dash across the border with some conventional forces and cease a few hundred square miles here and what happens. And the best way to do that is with my conventional forces. Now the question is, would I be deterred more from trying that dash if I was confronting a strong conventional capability that would make it hard for me to make that in one dash than if I wasn't. You know, again it's sort of like the football team.... football team that faces a very strong front line has difficulty crossing that front line to get across unless it has a great passing capability.

...THE FACT THAT THE SOVIET UNION NEVER PLAYS GAMES. NOW THE FIRST HALF OF YOUR ANSWER WAS FINE IN WHICH YOU SAY LISTEN, I CAN'T CONCEIVE OF ANY SITUATION WHERE A SOVIET PLANNER OR GROUP OF PLANNERS WOULD BE PREPARED TO RISK EVERYTHING WITH A MASSIVE ONSLAUGHT. BUT ON THE OTHER HAND, IF I WANTED TO NIBBLE THEM TO DEATH...AND THEN YOU STARTED TO TALK ABOUT THE ...CAN YOU JUST START AGAIN BY SAYING IF ON THE OTHER HAND I WANTED TO NIBBLE THEM TO DEATH...I WOULD DO THIS...

If as a Soviet planner, I wanted to nibble the NATO alliance to death primarily either to reduce their self confidence or to create dissension among the NATO allies as to how to respond, I could well conceive setting up some sort of attack to grab a few square miles of territory or something sufficient to slap them in the face and create the issues among the various NATO allies about how to respond. And if I have a good strong conventional capability I reach out and grab that if there isn't much conventional capability against me. On the other hand, if our NATO allies have a fairly strong conventional capability facing me, it's a lot harder for me to guarantee that I can break through and achieve that nibbling. And uh, the stronger that conventional defense against me, the more I'm deterred from trying a conventional nibble. Because if I tried it and didn't succeed, then just think I would be the one who loses face rather than they.

NOW WHEN YOU WERE WITH THE PENTAGON EARLIER ON AT THE START OF YOUR INVOLVEMENT WITH NUCLEAR WEAPONS IN THE ARMY. IN A SENSE YOU WERE TRYING TO GET MORE NUCLEAR WEAPONS AND SUFFICIENT NUCLEAR MATERIAL FOR THE USE OF THE ARMY AND FOR THE ARMY TO ADOPT A NUCLEAR STRATEGY. WHEN YOU WERE IN EUROPE AND YOU WERE TRYING TO IMPLEMENT THE DOCTRINE OF FLEXIBLE RESPONSE, IN A SENSE YOU WERE ALMOST DOING THE REVERSE. DO YOU ACTUALLY...WOULD YOU SAY THAT THERE WAS A CHANGE IN EMPHASIS OR CHANGE IN YOUR VIEWS OR POLICY OVER THAT PERIOD?

Someone could say that the fact that when I was in Europe I was arguing for the conventional response was diam... diametrically different from my earlier position when I was trying to get nuclear weapons for the Army, get more of them. I don't consider to be different at all. The flexible response puts main but not solo reliance on conventional forces. But it, you can't operate it unless you've got some nuclear weapons behind you to fall back on in case it fails. Back in the early or mid-fifties when we were trying to get more nuclear weapons, we didn't have enough nuclear weapons available to have any substantial effect on the ground in Europe once the Soviets had a substantial number of nuclear weapons. And to me, what we were doing, once we did get enough nuclear weapons in the Army, to implement the nuclear response if needed, then the flexible response was feasible. Until that time we had to concentrate on having the nuclear response first.

BASICALLY, WHO WAS DECIDING THE NUMBER OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS TO BE DEPLOYED IN EUROPE? THE NUMBER OF TACTICAL NUKES THAT WERE GOING TO BE THERE?

The decision concerning how many tactical nuclear weapons should be deploy...deployed to Europe, was based on a number of factors. Number one, of course, was the number of Soviet forces, and how many targets there would be. And the Army and the JCS were calculating this in all many ways, and they were making recommendations to the Secretary of Defense, and the President concerning how many weapons should be needed to solve that problem. The second issue concerned how much nuclear material there was. The Atomic Energy Commission was producing nuclear weapons and producing only so much plutonium and uranium, and from that there were only so many weapons of different sizes available. So the decision makers had to take that into account. And for, well all during the '50s I believe, it was that availability of critical nuclear material that governed how many nuclear weapons for us. We couldn't get enough to even partially meet the JCS demands. But beginning in the early '60s the amount of material began to become more and more available and the numbers of weapons, uh, available. Another aspect had to do with what our NATO alliance wanted to do. The NATO ground forces, which is what I was interfacing with, of course want to be with the state of the art. The wanted to have nuclear weapons behind them as well as us, so they were negotiating with the US, given numbers of various types of ground nuclear weapons, and the total synthesis of this was negotiated, uh, I guess at the Secretary of Defense level, International Security Affairs offices, as an integration of these various competing demands.

DID YOU EVER GET THE FEELING THAT WAS AN ELEMENT OF OVERKILL ABOUT ALL OF THIS? THAT ACTUALLY, IN THE END THERE WERE TOO MANY?

It's my belief that the number of weapons that were actually built and produced to cope with the demands in Europe, but not only in Europe, we were also facing possible demands out in Korea particularly, were not necessarily too many, uh, given the massive numbers of Soviet divisions that faced us. On the other hand the number that we deployed to Europe, if anything, if I were the master decision-maker I would probably have deployed somewhat less, probably it made about the same number the US kept them back here probably in sanctuary to be sent forward in a limited nuclear war if it developed. If you have too many sitting in Europe when the war starts, the enemy may be able to knock them out, just hit a few of our nuclear storage depots in Europe, and take out more than, than makes sense. So that we're less vulnerable having them back here.

THERE'S ONE OTHER QUESTION YOU ANSWERED UNFORTUNATELY WITHIN THE ANSWER THE ANSWER TO ANOTHER QUESTION, AND I'D LIKE TO ASK YOU AGAIN, AND THAT IS IN 1957, YOU GOT A VIEW OF THE STRATEGIC AIR FORCE'S PLANNING AND STRATEGIC PLAN, WHAT DID YOU THINK IF THEM, WHAT WAS YOUR OPINION OF THEM ONCE YOU BECAME AWARE OF THEM?

Once I had reviewed the, uh, SAC plan, for the use of strategic nuclear weapons, of course I was highly impressed with the professionalism of, of the Air Force and the SAC planners. They're way ahead of the rest of us, the Navy and the Army, in terms of nuclear planning back then because they have the only...been the only people who had done that planning. And for a while, of course, they felt they knew so much more about it that they dominated, if you will, the JCS decision of how many such weapons there should be in various categories. But after a while, as we studied it further, uh, we in the Army concluded that if anything they were dominating too much over the other services in terms of the allocation of nuclear materials. And so we developed a special study capability in the Army to study more carefully the needs of nuclear weapons not only for the Army, but also for the Air Force and the Navy. And once we concluded them, I don't think we were being too parochial, but we did think that we should get a bit higher share than we were getting.

NOW, WHEN WE WERE TALKING, SETTING UP, YOU TALK ABOUT THE PROBLEM, SOME OF THE PROBLEMS YOU HAD IN INTRODUCING THE PERMISSIVE ACTION LINKS, THE (?), WHATEVER. AND WE DIDN'T QUITE COVER IT ADEQUATELY. DID YOU, WERE YOU RESPONSIBLE FOR DESIGNING AND WORKING OUT SOME OF THOSE PERMISSIVE ACTION LINKS, AND WHY DID YOU THINK THEY WERE NECESSARY? AND DID YOU FEEL ALARMED BY PROBLEMS OF COMMAND AND CONTROL, OR DECISION-MAKING PROCESSES?

Yes, when the, uh, Kennedy administration came in, Secretary McNamara and his people came in, and were asking, I think, very sound questions about the military planned use of nuclear weapons, they began to emphasize much more than we had before the need for control of nuclear weapons, to be sure that the people, the troops who have the weapons in their hands are ready to comply completely with the restrictions on them for their use. And some technical devices call PAL, it's P-A-L, Permissive Action Link, were developed which you could put on a nuclear weapon, and the man who has a nuclear weapon to deliver, whether he's an artillery-man or bomber or whatnot, uh, must dial in a certain code number before it's activated and can be used. And the code number could be put in the hands of the decision-maker, rather than the man on the ground, and therefore the man on the ground couldn't use the weapons until then. Uh, when this idea was first broached, an number of working people in the field, the Army as well as the Air Force, the Navy, didn't like the idea of having PALS injected on them. They said, You know, we can be trusted." Uh, "We won't use the na..nuclear weapons unless it's directed." Or alternatively they said, uh, "Suppose all of our communications are knocked down, and it's clear to us that we're in nuclear war with Soviet Union, but this particular unit which has nuclear weapons can't use them because it doesn't have the communication with its higher headquarters." We can have a breakdown in, uh, our military effectiveness in that particular area. Now those of us that were becoming more and more aware of the politic import of nuclear weapons began to realize that we would have accept those inefficiencies if necessary, in order to be sure the command authority was absolutely certain that nuclear weapons deployed out in the field would not go off until they were directed to be going off. And probably the convincing argument had to do not with whether or not our own troops who had custody of the weapons would set them off at the wrong time, but really more about what happens if a terrorist group succeeds in grabbing some of our weapons. We want to be sure that they can't use those weapons. They don't have the PAL code, they can't set 'em off. And so over time we began to get the people on the ground to realize that it was better and probab; guaranteed better access by them to our nuclear weapons in the field if they had PAL systems than if they didn't because the higher-ups might cause those weapons to be pulled back to more central control if they didn't have PAL systems on them.

WAS THAT MORE OF A PROBLEM, I MEAN DID YOU GET THAT RESISTANCE, PERHAPS, FROM SOME OF THE ALLIED FORCES IN NATO, WHO WERE DETERMINED, DEPENDENT UPON THAT COMMUNICATION WITH THE UNITED STATES TO BE ABLE TO MAKE THAT WEAPON EFFICIENT, AND CAPABLE OF BEING USED?

I don't remember our lives being concerned about PAL at all. The, um, US custodians of nuclear weapons in their hands that were supporting our NATO allies, had to be in communication with their US authorities, and if that communication broke, we wouldn't want to allow some lieutenants and captains to be making that US decision. So I don't think our NATO allies were concerned about it. This is really more in terms of a US problem, I believe.