JACK, HAS DEFENSE AGAINST AIR ATTACK EVER BEEN EFFECTIVE? BEFORE THE NUCLEAR AGE?

Well sure. I think defense systems generally have been effective and before the nuclear age, and defenses against aircraft or against almost any offensive weapons. And if you look at some particularly successful defenses and the Battle of Britain is one example that people talk about frequently, in that particular case, the British using this modern technique of radar—using radar, were able to on the average, destroy about eight to ten percent of ah--German aircraft, per raid. And although one can see that ninety percent, or ninety two percent got through, nevertheless, eight percent destroyed each time meant that any given airplane could only be used on the average of perhaps ten, twelve or thirteen times. The amount of destruction any one airplane can do per raid is very small. The amount of destruction that any airplane can do, even over the course of its life, if it only lasted for thirteen raids wasn't all that great. And therefore by having a defense, which limited aircraft destructive capabilities, you had a rather effective defense. And Battle of Britain we know is very successful for the British point of view.

WHAT ABOUT AGAINST V-2 ROCKETS?

Well V-2 rockets also were, or let's take V-1s to start with. In the V-1 rockets, the British finally, after some experience with the V-1s were very successful in firing V-1 rockets, because remember, they came in always in exactly the same profile in exactly the same place and British anti-rocket or anti-air defenses were finally, at the end, very successful at shooting down V-1s. V-2s, where there was no success in destroying V-2s, but they didn't do much damage at all. So that you didn't need much for defense because it wasn't much of an offensive weapon. It was a scare weapon, but in terms of damage capability, in terms of effectiveness from a military point of view it wasn't all that important.

WHAT IS THE WORLD WAR II EXPERIENCE, SAY THE BATTLE OF BRITAIN EXPERIENCE IN DEFENSE, WHICH MAY HAVE BEEN ROCKETS BUT IT WAS BEFORE THE NUCLEAR AGE.

Yes.

HOW MEANINGFUL IS THAT WHEN WE GET AN ATTACKER WITH MISSILES ARMED WITH H-BOMBS?

Well, it's only H-bombs, you might even carry it over to A bombs, is that the amount of damage again, any airplane, the amount of damage that an airplane can do, if its loaded with weapons is extremely large, so that let's just translate some of the numbers from an effective defense against...bombers with conventional weapons to a defense, that same defense if it was operating against a bomber with nuclear weapons. Think of a hundred bombers attacking a city, or a country or an area. And if you had a ten percent air defense that can destroy ten percent of the bombers per mission, ah in the case of conventional weaponry, you say only ninety percent would have gotten through. The next round, only ninety percent of ninety percent, or that means eighty percent of the original amount, eighty one percent would have gotten through. You carry that on and you find that sure enough, the total amount of damage you can do is strongly limited by the fact that the air defense is there. Whereas if the air defense were ten percent effective, its a very good air defense it was five percent effective, it would still be good... the damage would be greater. Even at two percent defense, does a tremendous amount in limiting the amount of damage. Just imagine the same situation if there were a hundred bombers coming in with a single H-bomb, a single one mega-ton bomb attacking a major city, and your defense effectiveness was ten percent. Well let's make it fifty percent, sort of an unheard of number, fifty percent. So fifty bombers would have come through with single mega-ton bombs. Just imagine the damage it would do to any city. In fact, from my way of thinking, one mega-ton bomb on one city would destroy the city effectively. So that the defense, even in ninety nine percent effective defense, would not have protected you.

SO THE IMPORTANT THING ABOUT DEFENSE IS THAT IT'S POROUS?

The thing is that every defense will be porous because equipment cannot work perfectly at all times and the porosity that's tolerable is very different if the amount of damage that a single airplane, or a single bomb can do is as great as it is with nuclear weapons. Now, I'm not suggesting it'll ever be, that it'll always be impossible to build an effective defense. I'm suggesting the kinds of technology we now foresee or have and the kind of damage nuclear weapons do, makes that situation, makes the possibility of an effective defense extremely remote.

LET ME ASK YOU ABOUT THE BATTLE OF BRITAIN THING AGAIN. IT WAS EFFECTIVE, BUT HOW MANY GOT THROUGH? WHAT'S NOTABLE IN TERMS OF DEFENSE ABOUT THE BATTLE OF BRITAIN?

Well in that particular case... In the Battle of Britain, we have a situation where the defenses were rather effective. And that is because they were able to destroy perhaps ten, perhaps eight, ten, twelve percent of bombers that were raiding Britain at the time. So if you think of a hundred bombers coming in on an attack on Britain, and only ten were shot down, and ninety came through, you would have thought the defense isn't very effective. But in fact it was. Because ninety bombers in a single raid couldn't do that much damage. It was very bad. But it didn't destroy the country. It didn't destroy a city. With a ten percent shot down, there were only ninety bombers left for the next raid. And with ten percent of those shot down, there were only eighty-one left for the next raid. Therefore in totality, the number of bombers that can be used, when you start out with a hundred, and the number of bombers, and the number of raids, just doesn't end up with that much damage. In the case of nuclear weapons, the situation is very different. A single bomber with a single bomb penetrating can destroy a city. And that's just, the arithmetic is so very different than it was in the case of conventional weapons.

HOW EFFECTIVE WAS OUR DEFENSE SYSTEM THAT WE HAD BUILT UP THAT WAS IN EXISTENCE IN THE LATE '50S, EARLY '60S AGAINST SOVIET BOMBERS?

Well, we never got to build up the system completely... the... an air defense system completely. OK, let me start again. The US embarked on a major air defense program in the early '50s. And the idea was to use sort of the radar techniques that were developed in World War II and the computer techniques that were being developed at the time, in combination to build a defensive system that would be to protect the US as a whole, and then, in particular some very special areas. At that time remember, we were dealing with—the threat itself was a Soviet bomber force which had very few bombers that can really reach the US on 2-A missions, in fact, that didn't come until much later, that was very expensive. So the Soviets were limited in how many bombers they can build... any defense would limit damage, although the amount of damage it can limit maybe wasn't all that great, but it would be, you'd have less damage done with a defensive system than without a defensive system. Nevertheless when that defense system started being built, it became clear that with ballistic missile defense, ballistic missiles, I'm sorry, ballistic missiles coming into existence, and that they're very likely, the technology of ballistic missiles looked very likely to succeed. That one can, with very little notice, each side can destroy the air defense system of the other side.

I WANT TO TALK ABOUT BOMBER DEFENSE.

But that's what killed the air defense, was the fact that you can, you said, gee, if we cannot protect ourselves against ballistic missiles, the ballistic missiles can destroy the air defense system, why continue?

BUT THERE'S SOME MARVELOUS FOOTAGE OF THE NIKE, AJAX OR HERCULES...

Shooting down bombers...

YEAH...THIS...

The Nike Hercules, the air defense system we built, which consisted of sort of two parts, a area defense to protect the whole country, which was the responsibility of the Air Force primarily, and the point defense, which was to protect certain areas, cities and air bases and so on, that were of special interest... in combination, the defense maybe was, could have been rather effective against the bomber force that the Soviets could deploy at the time. But remember, even then, the number of effective bombers the Soviets had, those that were capable of 2-A missions in the US, the number of nuclear weapons the Soviets had and so on, was such that the, whatever, whatever destruction of this attacking force you can have, limited the amount of damage in the United States. It wasn't easy for the Soviets to say, we'll just add a few more bombers to compensate for the defense. So that air defense made some kind of sense, although in no way could their country think that it would have been protected.

WE'VE SEEN FILM OF THESE BOMBERS GETTING BLOWN OUT OF THE SKY AND IT LOOKS QUITE EXCITING. DIDN'T THAT EXCITE YOU? DID YOU HELP DEVELOP THIS SYSTEM?

I came in at the tail end. When I came in we were seeing the demise of the air defense system.

BUT ISN'T THAT ENCOURAGING?

Undoubtedly. You've seen pictures of elements of the US air defense system tested, then shows destruction of bombers. What you didn't see is those bombers that were not destroyed or those missiles that were not destroyed and were able to get through. And so that to think that you had a perfect defense or anywhere near a perfect defense was a distortion. With any air defense we could have built at the time, there would have been some leakage, as—some bombers would have gotten through and there would have been massive destruction of the United States. Nevertheless, I want to point out, it made sense to build air defense systems or it made more sense to think in those terms than I think we could later on. Because the Soviets couldn't just easily overcome the air defense system by just building more and more and more. Bombers were expensive. They were limited in their resources and so any defense could have given you an element of protection. A degree of protection.

WELL WHAT ABOUT WHEN THE SOVIETS STARTED DEVELOPING MISSILE DELIVERY CAPABILITY? HOW DID THAT CHANGE THINGS?

Well with ballistic missiles, the world changed substantially. And the reason for it is ballistic missiles were able to with very short notice, attack is just twenty-five minute flight time, half-hour flight time attack military targets successfully. Soft military targets like airfields, like defensive systems. And simple calculation on our part about how a ballistic missile defense system can destroy the air defense system, this rather elaborate and complex air defense system we were building indicated that the investment in air defense didn't make much sense. To start with, ballistic missiles did not at that time have a—we were not able to counter ballistic missile defenses. The United States did not have any technology in hand to counter ballistic missiles. Item One. And secondly, the ballistic missiles therefore had a free ride themselves and were also able to destroy the air defense so that the bombers had a free ride as well. And the end combination, you'd say this combination, destructive capability of ballistic missiles made this elaborate air defense system obsolete before it was finished.

WHAT ARE WE TALKING ABOUT?

We're talking about late '50s.

I WANTED REMARKS UP TO THE NIKE PROGRAM, FROM THE BOMBER DEFENSE TO THE...

Well the Nike Program was the only part of the air defense system. That was the point defense component. That was the army component. We start out with the Nike Ajax and the Nike Hercules which technically were both rather successful programs. And that was one of the components of the air defense system. A component the Air Force didn't particularly like. The Air Force part of it, which was the more elaborate part in many ways, was the area defense system. We were going to have radars all over the country, that were... to be able follow whatever aircraft was coming into the country. Whatever threatening aircraft that may have been. Feed that information to sort of a highly centralized control centers which would then control the battle. A range for interceptors to intercept these air craft and sign interceptions and so on, And that would have covered the whole perimeter of the country. So you had the first layer, the area defense and then any that penetrated, the particulars targets of importance, air fields, cities would then have to face the terminal defense system, which were the Nike batteries, Nike--first Nike Ajax and subsequently, replaced by Nike Hercules.

IT'S THE NIKE HERCULES AND AJAX THAT ARE SHOOTING DOWN THE DRONE BOMBERS?

The Nike Hercules. So were the interceptors. Those are army films you saw. If they shot down the--the demonstrations of the success of the Nike Hercules would have been shown by the army. Had you seen the air force films you would have seen how people sit at the displays, see the attacking air craft, assign interceptors to go meet them and shoot them down. And there were such films.

WHAT IS THE NAME OF THIS EARLY AIR FORCE PROGRAM?

It was the air defense program and in fact, to show you the relative importance of these two, you might consider the fact that I believe at all times the man in charge of the North American air defense was an air force general. And Colorado Springs is the major center. Called NORAD—North American Air Defense. And involved the Canadians also, because the radars were out of Canada. A lot of the intercepts were placed in Canada...would have taken place in Canada.

WHAT ABOUT NIKE? WHAT WAS THE NEXT EVOLUTION IN THE TECHNOLOGY OF DEFENSE?

Well when, as soon as it became clear that ballistic missiles can be built, and would undoubtedly be built, the United States embarked on a major program to build, to explore the possibility of building a defensive system against ballistic missiles. The army, which had this very successful program of first Nike Ajax, followed by its big brother, Nike Hercules, then was given the responsibility to build a ballistic missile defense system. And they--the army had it s contractor, Bell Labs, an extremely competent technology laboratory, designed a Nike, a system for ballistic missile defense, which was modeled after the system against air defense in the sense that it had radars to first ah—survey the corridors where ballistic missiles might enter, radars to track whatever targets might be coming in, interceptors to attack the missiles that are coming in, computers that would manage the whole battle, or help managing the whole battle. The fundamental difference, there are several differences, but one is of course, all the equipment was much more advanced than the Nike Hercules equipment. The radars were much bigger. It was much more difficult to see a small reentry vehicle, a small bomb coming into the United States, which may have been no larger than a large garbage can, than a large bomber. Also you had to see it much sooner because you didn't have that much time. It was coming in at fantastic speeds. The interceptor, the defense interceptor that was to be fired to intercept the incoming object, had to be very fast. The computers that were going to control this whole battle had to be very rapid and be able to handle this rather complicated engagement. The other--all the equipment was much more advanced. More powerful, bigger and so on. Also very important, is there is no man in the loop (??). Whereas in the Nike Hercules and Nike Ajax, there was a man in the loop of operating the system. He was the man who pressed the button, so called to say fire, and a man who said, destroy. In ballistic missiles, the reentry—everything was taking place so quickly, only a few minutes, man could not be in the loop, and everything had to be handled by computer. And remember that not only was there nuclear weapon thought to be in the attacking missile, but there was a nuclear weapon in the interceptor to destroy it. So we had a nuclear engagement immediately without man in the loop. The computers had to make all of the decisions. Of course, a man can override, a man can press the buttons and say, stop, breakdown. Someone can always pull the plug, so to speak. But the engagement and how it was going on had to be done by computer. And that was a new idea that was a little bit frightening in itself.

IS THIS THE NIKE ZEUS PROGRAM YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT?

That's the Nike Zeus Program,

WAS NIKE ZEUS SUCCESSFULLY—THE SYSTEM SUCCESSFULLY TESTED?

Well in a certain sense, it was very successful. The sense that the components worked, the radar worked just as we expected it to. The interceptors worked. The intercepts were demonstrated. In the 1960s in tests in Enewak Island in the Pacific against full range ballistic missiles, the interceptors worked and were able to destroy re-entry vehicles. So in a technical sense, in a narrow technical sense, the system worked and was a great achievement in engineering. From an operational point of view, it was found very seriously wanting, because it could handle only a limited number of targets and it seemed so easy for the enemy, for the Soviets in this case, to load up their ballistic missiles with a lot of junk, decoys, jammers, a lot of bombs, and the Nike Zeus can easily be saturated, exhausted and deceived.

WAS THE NIKE ZEUS SUCCESSFULLY TESTED?

The Nike Zeus system was in many ways a very successful technical program. In the sense that the components of the system work very well. The radars which were rather novel and were very powerful worked quite well. The interceptor was a very successful interceptor. The system was put together extremely intelligently. The problems with the Nike Zeus system were sort of fundamental problems of ballistic missile defense and they dealt more with operating or working against the kind of threat we felt the Russians could readily mount. By that I mean that we didn't think that the issue was whether you can destroy a single reentry vehicle with a nuclear weapon on board, on reentry or attacking a target. That was rather clear. It could probably be done rather easily. The issue is can you handle ten coming in simultaneously? Can you handle ten coming in simultaneously at the same time with decoys that look like those... a hundred more objects. Can you handle that if at the same time the Russians had jammers to jam the radar and so on. And at least from a simple analysis, it looked like it would be very easy for the opponent, the Soviets, to complicate the attack so that you'd have to handle many targets at once. You'd have to handle many coming, you know, very close in time. You'd have to be almost perfect against all these because you didn't know which was which. And it was very cheap to do all those things. Decoys, rather good decoys weighed only a pound or two. So that with two hundred pounds of payload you can put on hundreds of decoys. And the ability of the system to be able to do all this sorting in the short time and figure out what's going on, that's where it was found wanting.

DID YOU BRIEF PRESIDENT KENNEDY ON THIS MISSILE DEFENSE PROGRAM AT THAT POINT, AND WHAT WERE YOUR RECOMMENDATIONS?

Well, by... circumstance, I was the person who was asked to talk to the President to describe technically what the Nike Zeus system can and cannot do. And my role was strictly on the technical end of things. So that I didn't have recommendations. It came up in discussion, of course. But that my responsibility was to point out how the system worked, in what ways it worked well and what were its deficiencies. And it became rather clear in the course of that discussion that the Nike Zeus system was very limited and if we were to deploy it, it would be of marginal utility.

LET'S TRY THAT ONE AGAIN...

Yes, I remember very well. It was the day, the day before Thanksgiving in 1961, when I was asked to come to the White House in a very small meeting, a rather informal meeting to discuss with the President just what the Nike Zeus system was, how it worked, what its strengths were and what its deficiencies were. Technical deficiencies. It was not my responsibility to recommend whether we should or shouldn't deploy, but only to discuss its technical characteristics. It was a very lively discussion and the President asked many, many questions. And it was rather clear before it was all over that he wasn't inclined to be a strong proponent for the deployment of this system. Its limitations were so clear and so obvious that it would have been easy for the Soviets, we can deploy systems, but it would be very easy for the Soviets to overcome this system and more. At a very low price compared to the price of the Nike Zeus system.

WHO ELSE WAS THERE?

It was this meeting... and only the President was there and Dr. Wiesner, who was the President's Science Advisor, and Harold Brown, who was the Director of Defense Research and Engineering. Later on in the middle of the meeting, the President thought that perhaps Max Taylor, who was then the military assistant in the White House, should join us. And General Taylor did join us but he came in at the very end.

WAS ANYBODY AT THAT MEETING IN FAVOR OF MISSILE DEFENSE SYSTEM?

Well General Taylor had a previously been thought that the Nike Zeus system had not been given a fair hearing. And, but I think he wasn't an enthusiast by that time. This was, he had felt that way before the Kennedy administration, but at that time, he didn't argue with the issues at all. In fact, I had discussed the whole issue with General Taylor just the week earlier, and he didn't come through as an enthusiast for Nike Zeus. He recognizes limitations and wasn't quite sure it was, at least he gave the impression that he wasn't all that sure it was the right thing to do.

IF IT'S SO OBVIOUS THAT IT WASN'T GOING TO WORK, WHY DID ANYBODY WANT IT? WHAT WAS THE CASE FOR IT?

Well the basic case for it was the argument that said if the Russian threat, Russians build a certain number of missiles, then if we built the defense, we'd be able to stop some fraction of them. And people made up, exaggerated perhaps, in their enthusiasm what that fraction might be. But let's say fifty percent. They stop fifty percent then of course the US would suffer less destruction with one half the Soviet nuclear weapons coming than if they got the full brunt of the total force. And the argument was, one could make some rather simple calculations which were probably meaningless, but to demonstrate the fact that with ballistic missile defense, perhaps, you know the number of Americans that might be saved would be, under certain conditions, might be ten or twenty million Americans, you say. And then the argument was made, isn't it worth saving ten million Americans or twenty million Americans at a cost of twenty billion dollars or whatever the number may have been at the time. And that was a hard argument to counter, except from our point of view, those who thought that the Nike Zeus was not a good idea, the argument was if we built the Nike Zeus, the Soviets would very easily more than compensate for it. And in fact the threat may even be larger and the amount of destruction the US would suffer would be even larger than we would have otherwise. And the cost in dollars for building the system would have been large and it would have intensified the arms race. They would have built more offense, we would have built more defense, and there was no limit in sight. And all for no protection whatsoever. So both the arguments, one side and the other were made on assumptions. One assumption was the Soviets wouldn't change anything. We would build defense and the world stayed the same. And the other argument, the counter argument is if we build a defense, it would be very easy and undoubtedly they would build more offensive.

WHAT IF THE SOVIETS DIDN'T DO ANYTHING? DIDN'T THE ARMY THINK THAT THEY--WHAT WAS THE ARMY'S POSITION ON THIS?

Well the general assumption is that the Soviets either would choose not to do anything, or they would find it very difficult to. The army, or the proponents of the ABM system said it wouldn't be all that easy for them to put decoys and after all, simple decoys we'll in time know how to handle and so on. But I think from looking at it, at least my position was it was rather easy to see that it would not be easy to handle decoys and especially as the decoys got a little more complicated. Instead of making them one pound decoys, you were willing to make them ten pound decoys, which after all, isn't all that much. And if you were willing, and finally, the analysis which made Nike Zeus look extremely ineffective was when it became clear that with the large Soviet rockets, you could put on many warheads. You don't even need decoys. Just load them up with warheads. Thirty warheads on a large rocket and then it would saturate the system.

SO DID YOU GIVE UP? IF NIKE ZEUS WAS DEEMED TO BE INEFFECTIVE, WAS THAT THE END OF...

Well, I think there was a strong feeling, and very few people argued against the sentiment that said although we shouldn't deploy it, we should always have a good system on the drawing board. We should always have a good system ready for deployment in case we were wrong. In case something, the world was different than we thought it was. Or in case the Soviets deployed and we want to counter it politically. We also thought that we would only learn about how to penetrate a Soviet defense system if we really had hands on experience with defense. Not just paper studied, but hands on experience. So proceeding full speed with a development program, to learn about the technology, to counter—to learn about the technology so that we can counter any Soviet activities in this field. To deploy system if indeed if we politically or for any other reason, we decided to deploy... have a good one (??). And the arguments therefore for development were so powerful that I never heard any objection to the argument that we should continue full-scale development. But then the question came up, what should we be developing? Nike Zeus seemed so inadequate and technology was advancing. New kinds of radars were being developed. Better computers were being developed. Interceptors were being made better. The faster boosters, the faster interceptors. And so with time, and I think around 1962, and Mr. McNamara agreed to give up the development of Nike Zeus in favor of a newer system, which was later called Nike X. And it was essentially the same kind of system only the radars were better, more agile, more powerful. The interceptors were better. Computers were certainly better.

DID YOU EVER SUCCESSFULLY TEST NIKE X?

Components of Nike X were tested and, successfully and there was no question the Nike X system could perform as advertised, but the issue remained, could it do the job? Because it can handle more targets more quickly than Nike Zeus. Remember that the offense rocketry advanced also. And multiple warheads came into the picture so that one at least can think that a large Russian rocket can...put on so many warheads and if you fire several rockets at once, we thought at one time that perhaps thirty warheads can be put on a Soviet large rocket. In that case, if you fire three or four of these things simultaneously, any given area might be attacked by sixty, seventy warheads in a very short time, within a minute or two. And the poss—even the Nike Zeus system, Nike X system was found wanting. They'd (??) be able to handle that kind of attack.

SO YOU CAME TO THE CONCLUSION THAT WE'RE ESSENTIALLY DEFENSELESS IN THE AGE OF NUCLEAR MISSES. FORGET ABOUT DEFENSE...

Well the combination of the fact that missiles were cheap, that nuclear weapons were cheap to make, it was easy for a country, in the case of the superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union, it was so easy for each to destroy the other, that the defensive systems which were relatively expensive and ineffective in being able to handle the large threats that the other side could mount, it looked the defense of people. The defense of people and cities looked impossible. Now you must remember that defending small targets, hardened targets is a somewhat different story.

WHAT DOES THAT MEAN WHEN YOU COME TO THE RECOGNITION THAT YOU CANNOT DEFEND YOUR POPULATION? WAS THIS A CHIEF CONTRIBUTION TO THIS WHOLE NOTION OF MUTUAL ASSURED DESTRUCTION?

Well the idea—it's hard to accept the fact, obviously that you're hostage to another country (??), not only hostage to some destruction, but to total destruction. If you look at the arsenals that the Soviets were building at the time, then the arsenals the United States had. We were talking about essentially, total destruction of the other side. And accepting that is very hard. On the other hand, being realistic in accepting a real situation seemed far less dangerous than taking it--than considering the situation where you thought you had a defense and you really didn't have one.

WELL WHAT IS A COUNTRIES DEFENSE IN THIS AGE OF TOTAL VULNERABILITY TO ATTACK?

Well to my mind I think the important thing is each side recognizes that use of nuclear weapons is just impossible. Not that it's impossible technically, but it's just an impossible choice and that we have to back off from any coming even close to the possible use. That's it's catastrophe for all.

THERE ISN'T A DETERRENT…I MEAN IF WE CAN'T DEFEND OURSELVES AGAINST ATTACK BY A DEFENSE SYSTEM, WHAT IS OUR DEFENSE?

Well if both sides recognize they cannot defend themselves, not only cannot they defend themselves against each side, the other side attacking first, but cannot even defend itself if the other side was responding to an attack by the first side. If you're in that situation and you say that it's just impossible to escape, no matter what you do it's impossible to escape damage. If you can think of damage, limiting damage to yourself two ways. One is by defending yourself with defense systems and the other is to attack first, and destroy his offensive capability. This has been done in warfare for years. But in the case of nuclear weapons, if you can arrange it so that since the defense doesn't work that the— even your offensive weapons could not be destroyed by the other side attacking first, you're in a situation that neither side would see any advantage in of attacking first, or using nuclear weapons at all.

DOES GIVING UP ON DEFENSE NECESSARILY MEAN THAT IF DETERRENCE FAILS THERE ARE NO WAR FIGHTING OPTIONS?

There are theoretically war fighting options, but any time one tries to think through what these war fighting options, nuclear war fighting options there might be, it's hard to see where a nuclear war, as it escalates might stop. That's not to say it wouldn't stop. But that you can't count on it stopping. In other words, each side, in escalating and intensifying the exchange, would not be at all sure that the other fellow would stop. It'll be hard for each side to see how the other side stops. So that although you can think that a nuclear war might be limited, it's hard to see a situation where you can count on it being limited.

DO YOU ACCEPT THE NOTION OF MAD. IS IT A POLICY, A STRATEGY, IS IT SOMETHING WE JUST FELL INTO?

Let me go back to missile defense. Remember that those of us who were working on ballistic missile defense, my responsibility was for making the best ballistic missile defense we could make for understanding what happens in reentry of ballistic missiles so he can shoot down reentry vehicles as best we can. We try to make the best system we knew how to make. It wasn't that we were trying not to make the system, we're trying to do the best system we could. And yet when seeing what this best system looks like, it just wasn't good enough. There was no shortage of priority or of scientific skill or of interest in the United States to make the best system we knew how to make at the time.

WERE YOU DISAPPOINTED? DID YOU FEEL AS IF YOU HAD SORT OF KILLED YOUR BABY? THIS WAS YEARS AND YEARS OF YOUR LIFE EFFORT.

No. Because it wasn't a matter of developing something where in the test it failed. I mean all along we knew these limitations existed. We knew we had to work on it and we knew it was limited. And so the situation evolved rather than surprised us. It's not a matter of a single test that said you haven't made it, it was an evolutionary situation. And as far back as when ballistic missile defense was first being worked on, it's limitations were rather clear. I mean study after study, the Pentagon pointed after these limitations. The proponents said, with time we can overcome some of them and besides that the Russians won't respond as I men--I was about to say as I mentioned earlier.

YOU WEREN'T INVOLVED IN GENERAL DAMAGE LIMITATIONS ?

Not at all.

DID YOU...

I was involved only in the technical areas. My responsibility was purely technical.

DID YOU THINK IT WAS A GOOD IDEA, RECOGNIZING THE LIMITATIONS OF DEFENSE, AND THE EXPENSE OF IT, WHERE DID THIS LEAD YOU? DID THIS LEAD YOU TO WANT TO GET AN AGREEMENT WITH THE SOVIETS?

Well the first thoughts, some of us who lived all our lives, our whole professional life at that time was ballistic missile defense and defensive systems generally. The first thought was that one of the motivating forces for the United States to proceed with ballistic missile defense deployment was the fact that the Russians seemed to be very interested in deployment. In fact, started a deployment in Leningrad, which they later took down and started a deployment in Moscow, which we thought would be a full-scale, nation-wide deployment. And it was, although the technical and military answer to a Soviet ballistic missile defense is not to build ballistic missile defense ourselves, but to learn how to penetrate it. The political answer is in good part saying if the Russians are doing it, we cannot look like we're not interested and we're not doing it. And we knew, therefore if the Soviets build ballistical defense, however inadequate ours might be, we'd be forced to do the same. And so a few of us would always, would talk, and Jerry Wiesner was the first person that I've heard propose it and I think half in jest, saying if only the Soviets didn't build their ballistic missile defenses. Why didn't we tell them not to build theirs, then we won't have to build ours. It was said in jest in a small conversation in the White House, probably around 1961 or '62. And then some of us thought that perhaps it shouldn't be a jest and we should think in those terms. I think in those terms if I remember correctly, politically, the thought of having an agreement, a treaty, not to build defense was so remote that what we thought about was a tacit agreement, just sort of giving each other signals. Look, you cool it and we'll cool it on this. Rather than a formal treaty. A formal treaty... on something that we're not going to build defense against the other fellow seemed rather remote, as it does to many people to this day.

SO YOU HAVE THIS COFFEE...IDEA AND YOU WERE THINKING THAT, OF THESE SORT OF SCANDALOUSLY TRAITOROUS NOTIONS OF TALKING TO THE RUSSIANS? DID YOU ACT ON THEM?

Well, obviously that was in the air. I mean I don't know who invented the idea but it was in air amongst a rather small group. Wiesner as I said, suggested it, I think half in jest. That was the first time I heard it mentioned. I learned later that there were some people in the White House and in the White House staff that may have thought in those terms, but most thought it was a ridiculous idea. Most...

WE HAVE ABOUT FIVE IT'S HERE

Yeah. Most people I encounter to talk to, even those who are very negative about the deployment of Nike Zeus and thought it was a bad idea, thought the possibility of doing anything with the Russians on this tacit or formal, was inconceivable. And one of the reasons they thought that way is because the Russians were making a lot of claims about how their ballistic missile defense system, how successful it was. The Russians were well known to be interested in defensive systems. It was--the world seemed to think that the Russians are ahead because they're beginning to deploy while we're not deploying. And the argument is made the Russians have every advantage, why would they listen to anything that is both politically such a difficult, so unorthodox, as well as from a perceptual point of view, they'd be giving up sort of something that they may have--be seen to have an advantage. I went back to the Pentagon and gathered a small group.

START THAT AGAIN?

Start where?

“I WENT BACK TO THE PENTAGON...”

I went back to the Pentagon and assembled a small group, two or three of us and kept talking about this and wrote a small paper, about a four page paper on why ballistic missile defense, an agreement not to have ballistic missile defense might be a good idea, and showed it to Harold Brown who was then my boss. And he looked at it and was sort of a little bit intrigued by it, but he thought it was, it was not a winner. Nevertheless I remember he said why don't you show it to Ross Gilpatric. He might like it. And Mr. Gilpatric was then the Under Secretary of Defense, and I did go to him and he did like it. He said this is an interesting idea we ought to pursue. I don't remember why it wasn't pursued much further because I had my days in the Pentagon, were not much longer than that. I left to come back to the university in the summer of 1963, but did carry this idea, and there was, it gathered more momentum. More and more people thought it wasn't that senseless. And as I said the same thing was being seeded in several places around government. When I left government, I was invited to a meeting in India, in January of 1964, a meeting where Russians were present. And three of us, Carl Kaysen, and Murray Gell-Mann, who was then a professor at Cal Tech, and I were either assigned or asked to talk on the subject of ballistic missile defense with the Russians. I was the presenter, chosen to be the presenter. And I discussed essentially the arguments as to why deploying ballistic missile defense, given the state of technology, on offense and defense, would have been bad for the arms race, would have both intensified the arms race, would be costly and actually add an element of danger. The Russians when they heard this, and the Russians were led by a Dr. Millionshchikov, who was the Vice President of the Soviet Academy, when they heard this, said something to the effect, they said the translation, the interpreter must have done something bad because what you say sounds so unreal, that why don't you write it down on paper, and then we'll read it and we'll understand what your proposal is and we'll react to it. And so that very night, I worked on writing and putting it all down on paper and in the morning I remember Murray Gell-Mann helped me and, he was the coauthor, the two of us had this paper, which was published in the Pugwash proceedings of January, '64, and presented it to the Russians in writing this time. And therefore you could see all the arguments there.

THIS WAS LONG BEFORE...

It was long before the government was involved at all and we had no idea how the government would react to it. We knew that there were elements of government that would look favorably to this and sort of liked the idea of this exploration. Surely, the people in the arms control agency, some people in the White House, but by and large, I didn't know how Mr. McNamara would react to it, for example. I had no idea. At any rate, the Soviets when they read the paper also said, well there's a strange logic here. We see the logic but it's very strange and we think politically, it would make no sense at all to proceed along those lines. But they said it's an intriguing logic you have. So there was a spark of acceptance. Just a spark. After that, they were meetings that Russian scientists met with American scientists, much smaller meetings. On our side it was chaired by Paul Doty. The Soviets had Millionshchikov as their chairman and we met about once a year. And ballistic missile defense and what to do about it was always high on the agenda. Again, the idea was rejected, but not out of hand. That each meeting... it was always on the agenda of each meeting. Finally, in around 1966, '67, there's was beginning to get acceptance. And one of the Russian scientists, a man named Artsimovich, at one of the meetings...at a large...meeting gave a talk on the danger of new weapons and he slipped in, he talked about new and dangerous weapons that we have to worry about. And he slipped in ABM as one of them. And we felt, ah, TV message came through. That was the formal acceptance that ABM has it's problems. But Artsimovich was a very enlightened fellow and a most unusual Russian. For a Russian scientist. Rather independent as compared to many of the others.

BUT IT DIDN'T GET INTO...HEAD...

No. It didn't get into... I think the first indication that we had that it got into the highest political levels was at a meeting in Moscow in the winter of 1967. It was a meeting that, if fact, Henry Kissinger was at as well. It was a meeting that ABM was again discussed and the Russians told us several times, don't think that your message isn't getting through, you're message is getting through. And we had the impression that, we didn't know what the future was but clearly, the message was getting through. That ballistic missile defense was at least mischievous if not outright dangerous, given the state of technology. It's not a statement you make out of context of the state of technology-in defense and offense.

YOU LOST ME ON THAT LAST WRAP UP...

Well, if one can build a perfect defense then ballistic missile defense would be fine. The prospect of building an effective defense (??), which meant near perfect, just seemed extremely remote, with any technology we had, or can conceive of.

DO YOU THINK THESE IDEAS FILTERED INTO MCNAMARA'S HEAD THROUGH DR. BROWN?

I don't know. I don't know how...

AFTER YOU LEFT

No, by that time it was more and more, it became kind of a topic and I know that the meetings we had with the Soviets, we always reported to the government what we thought were the general Soviet reactions. So that these were reported...you might ask Doty. He could look up records as to who, whether we met with McNamara. It was called SADS, the Soviet American Defense Studies, or something. That was then out of the American Academy. And Doty was our chairman and the records of those meetings still appear, still exist.

DURING THE KENNEDY ADMINISTRATION, DID YOU HAVE ANY ENCOUNTERS WITH JOINT CHIEFS OF STAFF OR WITH ARMY ADVOCATES OF THE BALLISTIC MISSILE SYSTEM?

Well certainly with the army advocates... the army was the greatest and the strongest force in promoting ballistic missile defense. And it was an army program, the army was dedicated to make the program succeed. From a narrow technical point of view, it was going quite well. And the army was promoting it very strongly.

BUT CAN YOU RECALL ANY PARTICULAR ENCOUNTERS WITH GENERAL X, OR Y...

Lots of them. The strongest encounter, let me just go off. The most interesting encounter didn't deal with the subject directly. It dealt with the fact of where to put the army sight to test the system. And the army wanted to put it on Jupiter Island, sorry, on Johnson Island, which is only a few thousand miles off the coast of the United States, whereas we wanted them to put it on Kwajalein, where the Air Force was going to test, fire it's missiles from Vandenberg. And the reasons for having it in Kwajalein would be full-scale test, full range tests. Also we were already firing into the place, so it would be an easy place to test. And the army said, no they can't trust the Air Force and how the Air Force will fire or their schedule, so they've got to be in control of the full experiments. And there was a real battle on that one and it was a battle that the Secretary of Defense, Mr. Gates didn't think he was up to resolving. So he asked George Kistiakowsky to put together a committee to resolve this issue, and Kistiakowsky put together a committee and there was this big meeting in the White House and on the army side, you know, the secretary of the army came with ten generals, and staff and so on, and on the other side, just Herbie York came with me. And we presented our case and they presented their case, and we won.

YOU WON?

Well their idea was a little bit silly because they—it was--and part of the interest the army had was not only that they wanted to be in full control, but they had a missile called Jupiter and they didn't, and it was great pressure to close down the Jupiter line in favor of the Thor, the Air Force missile. And the army found another reason to keep Jupiter going. They were going to use Jupiter to fire into Johnson Island. And so they were motivated by lots of bureaucratic reasons. They wanted to control their own tests, which had some justification. It's understandable, but also they wanted to keep Jupiters going. They didn't want to rely on the Air Force and it's Atlas and Titan.

HOW DID YOU FEEL CONFRONTING ALL THOSE GENERALS?

Well, in that period of time, sort of starting with Sputnik and afterwards, in any dealings with the Congress and the public, the military always came with a large staff of analysts and, who tended to be more colonels and majors. And briefers who tended to colonels and majors and generals who were there. So was always a large crowd when they came to Congress to testify or they came within the Pentagon where there were meetings. The civilian side, on the other hand, at least my experience, was always a very small group. When Herb went to testify in Congress for the budget, he came and the only reason I went with him was because I was the next witness. I just waited by. Otherwise there was just two of us. And generally as compared to the large military group, they were just used to operating with a much larger group, whereas we were used to operating in front of a blackboard and just knew, you know, we talked ourselves. We didn't feel we needed lots of experts for lots of subjects, all very handy.

DID YOU HAVE ANY CONFRONTATIONS WITH THE MILITARY DURING THE MCNAMARA YEARS, WITH ARTHUR TRUDEAU.

Well, there were meetings. There were always meetings and Trudeau was a particularly strong advocate and made his feelings known. He wasn't always the most civil person in... in promoting the Nike Zeus system. So we had lots of meetings with the army. But most of the meetings were actually, they were technical meetings. Those that I was involved in, so they were with the army contractor, which was Bell Labs. A very outstanding organization. And when they dealt with technical questions, they were very conservative, to my mind a little bit too conservative, and they dealt with operational questions that seemed naive to me.

[BACKGROUND COMMENTS]

He just was a nasty guy. I'll tell you the one story, don't tell...you're not on.

YOU'RE ON.

Then I won't say it.

C'MON, WE GOT TO HAVE A GOOD STORY.

No because it involves a man who would not...

JUST SIMPLY RECALL THE CONVERSATION OR AN ENCOUNTER YOU MIGHT HAVE HAD...

Well, let me just give an encounter saying that before I left the Pentagon in 1963, in the summer of '63, when I left to go back, to come to MIT, I had a meeting with Mr. McNamara. It was the only meeting I remember me being with him alone, and we spent about twenty minutes essentially. It was... he wasn't prone to have social meetings. This tended to be more of a social meeting. To say goodbye and say I'm leaving and going back— leaving government service. And we talked a little bit about experiences we had. And my dealings with Mr. McNamara only were on two subjects since my responsibilities tended to be on the technical areas and his concerns were mostly deployments and production and so on, and bureaucratic responsibilities in the services and what not. I didn't have that much to do with him except on two items. One was ballistic missile defense research, where it stood, what could it do, what can't it do. And the other was a nuclear test detection and we talked about both those topics and our experiences. And I remember Mr. McNamara feeling particularly negative about some of the army presentations that were given and how inadequate they were to facing up to the problems the country had to face. And he mentioned particularly General Trudeau thinking that it was, he always found encounters with General Trudeau rather difficult to deal with... Now what he said was 'I never could stand that sucker. When I tell my wife that, she says, McNamara didn't say that.

WHAT DID YOU THINK OF MCNAMARA?

Oh, I thought that he was a great Secretary of Defense. The biggest...I had with his is he was always, it pure business with him. It was... he...come through at that period of time which changed later, but as sort of a warm human being, because he was so involved and so busy and so occupied. And I remember my first encounter with him came with tremendous to me because I was quote, the ballistic missile defense expert and one morning at seven o'clock in the morning, my young son woke me up and said there's somebody on the telephone. I said, who is it. He said his name is McNamara. And I got to the phone sort of sleepy. He was or course, already in the office preparing to testify, preparing some testimony for Congress and he asked me two technical questions. One was how fast the Nike Zeus tracking radars, how fast you can rotate them, because that was an indication of how limited they were in moving from one target to another. And he asked me another technical question and neither one did I know the answer and I said, my God, here I'm the technical expert, first of all sleeping when he's working, and didn't know the answer to either of those questions. I said my days are finished, but it worked out very, very well. And my encounters with him was always that of a man who knew what he was about. He was extremely rational. He was very analytical. The answers—his answers to the serious defense problems that I was involved in I thought were right in line with the answers, with the conclusions I would have come to myself. So of course, I felt very positive. But he wasn't, he didn't mingle with the crowd on a easy, you know, off the record, off the cuff way that others did.

CAN YOU MAKE A STATEMENT OF ABM RELATED TO TECHNICAL ARGUMENTS USED AS POLITICAL ARGUMENTS THAT PROPONENTS AND OPPONENTS USED? AND WHO THEY MIGHT HAVE BEEN AT THE TIME.

Well I think one thing you have to recognize is when an issue, when a policy issue involves technology, and in that case, it's always one where there's a element of uncertainty in the technology, if it's a simple measurement like what's the density of the atmosphere, you know, that never gets to a policy level and scientists by and large agree. But when it comes to issues where there are judgments about technology. It isn't technology, but judgments about technology and there's enough uncertainty, then very often what seems to be happening is your driven basically by your value system or political views. And I find it interesting that one can almost predict which scientists will stand of which side of an issue were there is a strong element of uncertainty in the technical data, or in the technical judgment. After all, even in the case of a ballistic missile defense, it wasn't the question of measuring how fast something worked, how well something worked in sense of detail, how big was that radar, what's the power output, those are numbers that everybody agrees on. The question is how useful is it under certain circumstances. Then that is a question of judgment. And the political, once political biases, almost always could predict where you'd stand and what technical arguments you'd be more ready to accept, what technical arguments you'd be more ready to reject and therefore come to conclusions that are more in line with maybe your political views and I think you can see that again and again and again. And let me just compare it to something like an automobile. I mean nobody argues what the size of tires are, how fast cars can go, what the nature of the internal, the temperatures in the internal combustion engine are, and so on. The argument is will you use a car to do grocery shopping or would you walk if it's a mile away? How often will you use the car versus how often you use public transportation? Those are not technical arguments. Those are judgments about the use of technology and therefore different, quote, technical experts, will come to different conclusions. But you can well see that a member of the Sierra Club will tell you that walking to the grocery store is the right thing to do, rather than to drive your car. You could have predicted that ahead of time. No matter how much he knows about cars one-way or the other. And the arguments we see about ballistic missile defense or air defense or more missiles or whatever are in the category. It's judgments about the use of technology. It's judgments about how technology with certain limitations, what it's utility might be. Then of course you can press the uncertainties, unconsciously, inadvertently. You can press the technical uncertainties to be more supportive. And there's always a tendency of course, all of us have which is to leave out. We distort the technological arguments by leaving out facts that are not supportive, including only those facts that are supportive of our arguments, and therefore, although the facts may not be distorted in themselves, the distortion comes which, how you select the facts to present and which facts you leave out.

WHAT WAS THE ESSENTIAL DISAGREEMENTS...YOU AND THE ARMY PROPONENTS OF AN ABM SYSTEM?

Well the... the proponents of the ABM system, by and large, to our...to those who felt the the system was inadequate, we felt exaggerated its capability or its potential capability...that was one thing, and the opponents tended to think that the system technically might not work that... that well. But more important was that the opponents of the system thought that for sure the Soviets would react to deployment by building more. Adding more missiles. Adding more sophistication to their missiles. All could be done cheaply and that the US would be therefore subject to more destruction in case there was a nuclear confrontation rather than less. And besides that would be involved in a rather intensive arms race. The opponents took... took basically the position that the Soviets would find it both hard and/or for political reasons would not react to deployment and therefore...

AND THE PROPONENTS . . .

The proponents of ABM... who wanted the ABM system argued basically that the Soviets would find it both more difficult and or not likely for other reasons to react to our... deployment of ballistic missile defense. And therefore, given a certain size Soviet force with defense shooting down some of that force in a case of an attack, we would suffer less damage than we would otherwise. And wouldn't that be an advantage.

WASN'T ALBERT WOHLSTETTER ONE OF THOSE PEOPLE WHO THOUGHT THAT?

Uh... the arguments that I got involved or watched carefully were both that are dealt more with a specific system intended to defend missile silos. There there was a question of not so much defense of the population as a whole where he wasn't an actor. But later on when the issue came up...much later on by '67 when the question was whether we should deploy the sentinel system which was a safeguard system... the safeguard was intended to defend missile silos--Wohlstetter was arguing for deployment. I don't remember him involved in the population defense. Incidentally, you'd want to make a big issue of the difference between population defense and silo defense — technically the difference and strategically the difference. That's a very important point and somebody's got to make that..

IS SILO DEFENSE MORE POSSIBLE THAN AREA DEFENSE?

Well I think... I think you should remember that most of the arguments — all the arguments essentially in the early '60s had to do whether we should defend the country, defend cities and industry. The arguments that... that uh... later came up was whether a defense system should be built which would defend only missiles, our own missile silos. So the Soviets cannot destroy our missile silos. Now technically, the defense of missile silos is much easier than defense of cities. First of all, missile silos are hard in the sense that you have to have an explosion very near by to destroy them. Also, if you lose a few missile silos, unlike losing a few cities, it would not be catastrophic. Loss of even half our missile or two third of our missile would still leave enough left over to destroy the Soviet Union. So the system didn't have to work very hard to defend the missile and it didn't have to defend many of them to be useful. And so from that point of view it was considered the ballistic missile defense system to defend missiles was considered sort of the good ballistic missile defense. The one that was going to defend people was considered the bad one because that would --was thought, you know... intensify the arms race and so on. The army realized that this was a good argument and a... and an argument that might be effective in getting deployment. And what the army kept saying is we don't have to develop a new system for defending silos. The Nike Zeus or the Nike X is fine. We can just rearrange it in such a way. But it was so clearly not fine because the components were just much too expensive. I mean the radars were a...cost a fortune. And besides that the radars were very vulnerable. So once you destroyed the radar, which was easy to destroy, you destroyed the system. A ballistic missile defense system to protect silos would have had very small hardened radar so they're not easy to destroy. The army just always said, We're not interested in defending silos. We're interested in defending people. Later on they exceeded to the possibility when the safeguard uh...system came along which was really taking all Nike X components and rearranging them so that it defended silos. They said, Fine, we'll do that. But always the ambition was to move into — it was opening the doors to a nation wide defense.