HOW DID YOU FIRST COME TO HEAR ABOUT THIS THING CALLED MISSILE...?

I think I read newspaper accounts of what McElroy had said about the missile gap and what Tom Gates when he was Secretary of Defense had said during hearings that were published or referred to in the newspapers before the 1960 election.

AND WHAT WAS IT?

Well, they, the thrust of what those two Secretaries of Defense had said was that our capabilities as far as strategic weapons were concerned were inferior to those of what the Soviet Union had developed and at that time I didn't have access to the sources I subsequently had available to me. And so I believed along with other members of the general public that this so-called missile gap was in favor of the Russians and not the US

WHAT IS THIS PHENOMENA KNOWN AS THE MISSILE GAP? CAN YOU TELL ME WHAT IT WAS AND WHEN YOU FIRST HEARD ABOUT IT, WHAT YOU DID ABOUT IT?

Well my first knowledge of the missile gap or the first time it registered itself on my consciousness was during the years, I think, '56, 7 and 8 when McElroy was first Secretary of Defense and then Tom Gates. And their testimony is reported and written up in the press, sort of came through to me. And I was then working on the Rockefeller Brothers report and so we discussed it with people who didn't have access to classified information. But it was a subject of considerable interest and concern to those of us who were who were following the arms race between the Soviet Union and this country.

WHAT WAS IT BASICALLY?

Well, the position that those two secretaries took was that the Russians were more advanced in their strategic weapons technology both in terms of quality and quantity then was the US And while I didn't read the exact wording of their statements at that time, they were, they were basing that upon Soviet intentions, Soviet goals and objectives rather than on any hard intelligence, as it turned out. But, there was a feeling that we were, we were falling behind the Russians, as we had, prior to Sputnik and, in the space race. So that during the Kennedy campaign in 1960, one of the themes that was struck was the fact that we had to do something to remedy, to turn the tables on this, on this unfavorable equation.

AND WAS THIS ACCURATE? ...THE WHOLE MISSILE GAP, THE WHOLE ACCESSMENT OF IT? DID THAT TURN OUT...

Well after McNamara and I came into office, one of, one of the first things we established with Al and Dulles was an access to the national intelligence estimates, the group under Sherman Kent, who pooled all the sources of the military intelligence and we wanted to be able to use that, we didn't then have the Defense Intelligence Agency set up as our source of underlying basic data, and what the dimensions the threat were and were we stood vis-a-vis each other in this military equation. And it wasn't very long before we came to the conclusion, I think it was either February or March of '61 that the missile gap concept was a hundred and 80 degrees off, that it was in our favor, in the terms of who was, who was ahead, and whether it was measured by megatonage or numbers of missiles or the reliability and accuracy and all the others tests and standards by which you evaluate strategic weapons. And that was when McNamara at an informal meeting with the Press and the Pentagon stated what he'd found to be the fact and of course it was sort of a 3-day wonder because the White House was initially very embarrassed. Now, following that and it's reflected in statements, the speech is made by McNamara, Paul Nitze and myself, culminating in the talk I gave down at Hot Springs, Virginia in October 21, 1961. We began to get the word out that we actually had a margin of superiority. Not, it wasn't a static condition but it was a dynamic condition and we wondered on reassure our allies but we also particularly after the Bay of Pigs, we wanted to present a posture to Khrushchev that we didn't feel we were in a weak position, vis-a-vis the Soviet Union.

...WERE YOU SURPRISED WHEN YOU FOUND THIS OUT OR ANGRY?

I was surprised because as I as I indicated earlier I didn't, didn't -

WHAT WAS YOUR REACTION TO HEARING THAT?

Well, I was surprised to find that the Soviet Union hadn't made further advances and their strategic weapons. The impression I'd had when I was out of government and didn't have access to th—the kind of classified information we got in the Pentagon, was that they were more advanced that we, than we had expected. So it came as a, to me a very reassuring development in my responsibilities and in McNamara’s that while we, that we didn't have a catch-up game to play was a, it was a matter of maintaining our opposition and it affected later on our judgment as to you know how many, how many minute men should be procured, what we should, what number of Polaris missiles and submarines should be added to the program we inherited from the Eisenhower administration. In a, in effect it eased the pressures on the Kennedy administration more than they'd anticipated prior to the change in administration.

WHAT WAS THE CAUSE OF THE MISSILE GAP? WHO WAS RESPONSIBLE FOR BASICALLY GIVING INFORMATION THAT TURNED OUT TO BE WRONG?

All, all I can say about the sense of the missile gap as being a factor that, was against us, was not in our favor, was that the prior administration believed what the Soviets had proclaimed to be their goals and objectives, without having the underlying information to show the gap between what was their hope and their aspirations and their actual state of accomplishments in those areas. I think the gap was just one of those periods in American intelligence assessment and appreciation where we misread the signals. We gave them credit for having what they had talked about wanting and in fact hadn't achieved.

WEREN'T THERE THOUGH DIFFERENT PREDICTIONS? WHAT ROLE DID AIR FORCE INTELLIGENCE PLAY IN THIS?

In weighing the credibility to be given to various intelligence estimates, one of course must be conscious of their source. And there's no doubt that the military readings, particularly those of the of the Air Force, presented a much harsher, more threatening light than what we got from the CIA estimates. An in those days this is again, prior to 1960, our satellite base reconnaissance wasn't as wasn't as accurate, wasn't as reliable as it, as it was in the process of becoming. So you had two sources for this would turn out to misinformation of misconception. One was the natural tendency of the of the military to overstate the threat that they had to meet. And the other was our intelligence gathering capabilities were not as good in the '50s as they turned out to be in the '60s.

YOU WENT WITH MCNAMARA TO THE FIRST SIOP, I BELIEVE. I'M CURIOUS ABOUT WHAT YOU FOUND THERE. AND ALSO YOU WERE BRIEFED ABOUT AN EARLIER SIOP?

Well, I couldn’t, this, at this stage, you know 25 years after the event give you a very detailed or accurate reading on my impressions and at the time I was first exposed to these briefings and with the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the joint staff on contingency plans, particularly SIOP. The general sense that I recall at this, at this much later stage is that I was never as comfortable with their methodology in making these estimates. I didn't think their planning process as to me as a lawyer were was convincing and I just wasn't comfortable with these, with these briefings that we were given in the early stages, before we knew enough to ask the right questions.

I HEARD IN FACT THAT WHEN MCNAMARA WENT DOWN FOR THE FIRST TIME HE WAS HORRIFIED AT WHAT HE FOUND, AND I'M WONDERING IF YOU REMEMBER ANYTHING?

I doubt that's the right verb to use with McNamara. I've rarely seen him horrified during all these years we worked together in all the situations that we were involved. I think he was taken aback. But you must remember that for two civilians, even one who had been in the military establishment before, much of what we saw, we'd seen for the first time and so it took us awhile to assimilate and to become aware of what were the weaknesses as it turned out in the in the whole process of drawing up these strategic contingency plans.

WHAT IN FACT DID YOU SEE?

Well, we had the typical chart pointer briefings by staff, not by the members of the Joint Chiefs themselves, they brought in their briefing officers and right away we got off on the wrong foot because McNamara was very impatient with that kind of stereotype conventional briefing. He wanted to get quick responses to you know unrehearsed questions that he wasn't going to wait to the end of the briefing to bring forward so...It, we didn't, we didn't establish the kind of rapport with this, the joint staff at that time, that we later did with General Taylor and with others who came along and who got to know McNamara's methods and were prepared to deal with them. It just was not a good show, that first that first meeting over the strategic plans.

CAN YOU EXPLAIN TO ME THE SENSE OF WHAT YOU SAW, WHAT THAT SIOP WAS?

We, well we, as I recall it, we feltm it was based on a classic command and staff school military planning. It wasn't related to the actualities of specific targets for example, it just made some broad assumptions, the planning process, as to what would have to be taken out in the Soviet heartland and it wasn't, it wasn't of a character that impressed me as a lawyer or McNamara as a business executive and management specialist with any real conviction. You, we just, it was, it was a sort of a textbook exercise.

CAN YOU GIVE SOME EXAMPLES…?

Well it's the difference between the if you're a student in the, in a graduate school of having a hypothetical situation, whether it's in business or in law, that you're supposed to address yourself to, and use your skills, in accessing and dealing with an actual real life where you know that you're dealing with facts and conditions that exist and not a hypothetical situations. It was, we just didn't feel, or I didn't feel that I was dealing with the realities of the conditions that existed in the spring of 1961.

CAN YOU GIVE ANOTHER EXAMPLE…?

I really can't call up from my recollection you know specific instances. It's simply that all the classic ...plans, all the war plans as they've been variously called, were done in sort of an academic removed from reality setting. I mean it was an assignment given to some member of the joint staff to prepare a plan on a given set of assumptions. But none of it seemed to us and this was it became even truer when we got into specific situations like Laos and Vietnam that the military in those days, were really not prepared to give you a real life, real existing set of facts and which to base their plans. They had a lot of theories they learned in academies and in the command and staff schools. But they were, they were not the kind of plans that those of us who had been in the business of professional world were used to dealing with. That was just a departure from reality.

WERE THEY UNDERPLAYED?

No they were overplayed in some cases. The where the we were so let down I think, at least I was by the fact that their assumptions couldn't be translated into any scenario that we found reasonable in the light of the conditions that we were considering. Whether it was Berlin as I say, whether it was Southeast Asia later, whether it was Cuba. And I think in the very beginning we just lost confidence in the whole contingency planning process and decided that's not the basis in which we were going to make recommendations to the President or budget proposals or any of the other issues that we had to face in those first months of the Kennedy administration.

I DON'T KNOW IF YOU KNOW ABOUT THIS OR NOT, I HAD READ SOMEWHERE ABOUT A STATEMENT THAT TOMMY POWER MADE TO MCNAMARA REGARDING ALBANIA. DO YOU KNOW ANYTHING?

That doesn't strike a familiar note with me.

THE OTHER ONE I DON'T KNOW IF YOU KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT ALSO IS COMMANDER SHUPE HAD ASKED A QUESTION TO TOMMY POWER ABOUT WHAT IF WE DECIDED NOT TO TARGET CHINA, WHAT THAT WOULD DO TO THE WAR PLAN. IS THAT?

That doesn't ring a bell with me either.

WERE YOU AN ADVISER TO THE GAITHER PANEL?

I wasn't an adviser but Bill Foster who is at the job that I ultimately had, Deputy Secretary of Defense, he got a group of us, who were not in government including Jack McCloy I think and we and we came down and we were briefed in the presence of vice-president Nixon, at Foster's house, on the, on the Gaither Report. And that was my first exposure to it. And that was one of the contributing factors to my concern when I heard the testimony of the defense officials on the missile gap. Because the Gaither Report also put us in what appeared to be an inferior position, that we'd fallen behind in this, in this military equation.

AND WAS THAT ACCURATE?

In the light of what we learned, a couple of years later, the situation either wasn't accurate at the time of the Gaither Report or conditions had changed. Having been involved in, over my career in government and national security matters with a number of assessments and appraisals, things often evolve differently from what your hypothesis are at the time and many of your conclusions is valid two or three years later as you felt honestly with conviction they were at the time. So I wouldn't, wouldn't wouldn't condemn or criticize the Gaither Report except that what we found two years later, was a different set of facts.

AND WHY WAS THAT?

Simply because the what we I think it's partly the way we went at the responsibilities that we took on and in the early part of '61. We didn't just rely on taking these classic conventional briefings and assessments. We insisted on going through to the sources of the information. And we would talk to the Sherman camps and the others over in the National Intelligence ward and the CIA...

WHAT DO YOU HAVE TO SAY ABOUT THE RELIABILITY OF AIR FORCE INTELLIGENCE?

My exposure to the military intelligence gathering and assessment has changed over the, over the years. When you go back to the period prior to the formation of the Defense Intelligence Agency which was recommended by the, under the Eisenhower administration but which was not actually set up until the Kennedy administration. You had two different sets of methodology of formulating intelligence estimates. Before you had the Defense Intelligence Agency, each service had its own G-2s, its own intelligence officers and they would proceed to come in and support of whatever program or whatever new weapon system or whatever issue was before the civilian authorities at that time. And there's no question in my mind that the reliability of those service estimates were no where near as reliable as the, as the what the, National Intelligence Board of the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency came up with. And it, to me it's, it's just a natural condition of human nature that if the Air Force for example wants two thousand minute men instead of one thousand they're going to enlarge and amplify on the threat that exists for which those minute men are needed. And we felt, McNamara and I felt, as Gates had before, it was very important to separate the function, intelligence function from the advocacy of particular programs and procurements.

IT'S CURIOUS TO ME THAT SOMETHING LIKE THAT WOULD HAPPEN IN A DECADE WHERE BASICALLY THE PRESIDENT ALSO WAS A GREAT MILITARY LEADER. HOW DO YOU ACCOUNT FOR THAT?

Well, the reason for the changes that took place since World War II, are of course manifold, but, what counted by the time of the Nuclear Age, the time when we were getting into intercontinental ballistic missiles was the, was a new form of intelligence. You didn't have, you didn't have the kind of classic intelligence gathering and espionage that you had in earlier periods, and you were dealing with a new medium, with a new art, a new technology, and just reading the pictures that came down from the satellites was something that nobody had any experience with. And you could get two people who could read pictures differently. So what, it wasn't a conscious effort in my opinion on the part of the of the, of the military service is to distort or otherwise characterize their needs, it was more a question of no having had the experience with this new medium in the, in the period we're talking about, the late '50s and early '60s. I think it's become much more of an art now than it certainly was then.

DURING THE EISENHOWER ADMINISTRATION THERE WAS A TREMENDOUS INCREASE IN OUR NUCLEAR ARSENAL, AND THERE ARE MANY WHO HAVE SAID THAT PART OF THIS INCREASE HAS TO DO WITH TWO FACTORS, THE INTELLIGENCE ESTIMATES THAT DROVE NEW WEAPONS TO BE PRODUCED, AND INTER-SERVICE RIVALRY. HOW COULD PRESIDENT EISENHOWER LET THAT HAPPEN?

I think the same way that it can happen under any administration, it certainly can happen under the present administration when you're, when you have very firm beliefs about the importance of the application of military power, and you have to justify it not only before congressional committees but before the court of public opinion as it were, you tend as any good advocate does as I do when I go into a court room, to you know stress all the elements that tend to prove my case. And I think that's one of the basic reasons...