Interviewer: COULD YOU FIRST OF ALL DESCRIBE WHEN YOU WHEN YOU WERE IN THE JOINT STRATEGIC PLANNING STAFF IN THE LATE FIFTIES, AND THE ISSUE CAME UP OF QUEMOY AND MATSU, AND WHETHER AND HOW THE US COULD DEFEND THOSE OFFSHORE ISLANDS IF NECESSARY.
Interviewer: WHAT ARE YOUR RECOLLECTIONS ABOUT THAT INCIDENT?
La Rocque: Well, in the matter of Quemoy and Matsu, we were trying to find a way to become involved...
La Rocque: Let me start again.
La Rocque: In the matter of Quemoy and Matsu, it looked to us at that point that it might be necessary for us actually to go to war with China.
La Rocque: And so we sent instructions out to the commander and chief in the Pacific and, Pacific fleet, and said, make some plans to use conventional weapons on the mainland of China.
La Rocque: And we got a message back to the Strategic Plans Division in the Joint uh, area of the Navy, and he said uh, uh, oh shit, I blew it...
La Rocque: Let me start again.
La Rocque: In the matter of Quemoy and Matsu, when we had guaranteed the sanctity of Quemoy and Matsu, we were going to prevent an invasion from the Chinese on those islands, it was thought possible for those of us in the war plans part of the Pentagon, that we might have to go to war with China.
La Rocque: So we said, eh, to the commander in chief of the Pacific, be prepared to make some conventional attacks on China.
La Rocque: And he sent a message back to us and said, I don't have any plans to make a conventional attack on China, only nuclear plans.
La Rocque: So we sent him a message and said make some plans.
La Rocque: He said, all right, I'll make some plans.
La Rocque: But, he said, I have to tell you that I have only one-third of a sortie of conventional weapons on our aircraft carriers.
La Rocque: Our aircraft carriers, at that time, in the late '50s, were completely loaded with nuclear weapons.
La Rocque: We made a survey of all of our aircraft carriers in the world, and we found that all of our aircraft carriers were in a similar situation.
La Rocque: Gradually, over a period of time, we had begun to remove our conventional weapons from our warships and replace them with nuclear weapons.
Interviewer: SO IN EFFECT, THERE WOULDN'T HAVE BEEN A WAY OF GOING TO WAR CONVENTIONALLY AT THAT POINT?
La Rocque: There was no way to go to war conventionally at that point using our aircraft carriers or to carry a war to some other country.
La Rocque: Uh, some years later, we made some adjustments and reversed the process and put more conventional weapons in our aircraft carriers.
Interviewer: WAS THE SAME TRUE, DO YOU THINK, OF THE TACTICAL AIR FORCE AT THAT TIME?
La Rocque: The emphasis in the 1950s was to shift from conventional to nuclear weapons.
La Rocque: Because all of us knew that that was the best weapon that had ever been invented.
La Rocque: Nuclear weapons destroy and kill more efficiently than any other weapon.
La Rocque: And we in the military were pursuing in the '50s the, uh, the uh goal of getting the best weapon we could get.
La Rocque: So the Air Force, the army, the Navy, was uh, building and uh demanding more and more nuclear weapons.
La Rocque: Also you have to remember that in the '50s, the Soviets were beginning to build up their conven-uh, their uh, nuclear forces, and we felt it very important that we stay ahead of the Soviet Union.
La Rocque: Because many of us in the '50s felt that sooner or later we're going to have a war with the Soviets.
La Rocque: And our goal in the military is always to fight and win wars.
La Rocque: And to do that, we felt we needed more and more nuclear weapons.
La Rocque: And of course we built up a huge arsenal of nuclear weapons in preparation for a nuclear war with the Soviets.
Interviewer: DID THAT IN EFFECT LEAVE YOU IN A SITUATION — NOT ONLY THE NAVY, BUT AS FAR AS YOU KNEW ABOUT IT IN THE JOINT PLANS DIVISION, THE ARMY AND THE TACTICAL AIR FORCE AS WELL, IN A POSITION WHERE YOU COULDN'T CONDUCT A LIMITED CONVENTIONAL WAR?
La Rocque: In the 1950s, our only enemy was the Soviet Union.
La Rocque: And that was the era of massive retaliation.
La Rocque: We were going to obliterate the Soviet Union.
La Rocque: We looked at them as a huge country with a lot of resources, a very effective military force, particularly on the ground and in the air.
La Rocque: And in order to counter that capability of the Soviets, we were planning to fight a nuclear war.
La Rocque: We did not have the capability then to fight a war with tie Soviets using non-nuclear, so-called conventional weapons.
La Rocque: We could have fought some other little countries in the world.
La Rocque: We could have invaded Nicaragua or or uh, Angola or some other place.
La Rocque: But we could not have fought a war with the Soviets with conventional weapons and hoped to win.
Interviewer: WERE THERE PEOPLE AT THAT TIME, IN THE FIFTIES, WHO HAD DOUBTS ABOUT ALL THIS, ESPECIALLY IN THE NAVY? I MEAN, WERE THERE THOSE WHO THOUGHT THIS WAS A BAD IDEA?
La Rocque: Very few of us thought that uh, nuclear weapons was a bad idea.
La Rocque: Uh, we in the military want the best weapon we can get.
La Rocque: And the Navy is certainly no exception.
La Rocque: We wanted powerful, destructive weapons that would kill a lot of people at one time.
La Rocque: That's the name of the game in the military.
La Rocque: I don't know anybody, really, that said no, we shouldn't go for this better weapon, that is, the nuclear weapon.
La Rocque: We were all for it.
Interviewer: WAS THERE A DIFFERENT ATTITUDE TOWARD NUCLEAR WEAPONS? I MEAN, WAS THERE THE SAME DIVISION THERE IS NOW, TODAY, BETWEEN NUCLEAR AND CONVENTIONAL WEAPONS, THAT VERY THICK LINE THAT'S DRAWN MENTALLY NOW BETWEEN THE TWO.
Interviewer: DID THAT EXIST IN THE FIFTIES?
La Rocque: In the 1950s, we had several kinds of war plans.
La Rocque: We had the, eh, uh, war plans for limited war, which was non-nuclear.
La Rocque: We had war plans for so-called general war, which included nuclear weapons.
La Rocque: But the situation uh, changed a good bit over the years.
La Rocque: Uh, nowadays, conventional weapons are the nuclear weapons.
La Rocque: Nuclear weapons have become our conventional weapons of this era, with 80 percent of our warships routinely carrying nuclear weapons, our army divisions are nuclear-ized, our air wings are nuclear-ized.
La Rocque: The things we sought in the 1950s to get more nuclear weapons into our forces, has come to pass today.
Interviewer: I WANT TO REPHRASE IT...CONVENTIONAL WEAPONS, INDEED THE EISENHOWER ADMINISTRATION SAID WE COULD USE SOME TACTICAL NUCLEAR WEAPONS LIKE BULLETS, AT ONE POINT EISENHOWER SAID THAT AT A PRESS CONFERENCE.
Interviewer: THAT THERE WASN'T THE SAME KIND OF SENSE THAT ONCE YOU CROSSED THAT BOUNDARY, YOU WERE CROSSING INTO UNKNOWN TERRITORY, AND IN FACT THEY WOULD BE REGARDED MORE AS CONVENTIONAL WEAPONS IN THE FIFTIES THAN THEY ARE NOW, OR AT LEAST MORE USEABLE.
Interviewer: IS THAT SOMETHING YOU'D GO ALONG WITH OR NOT?
La Rocque: Absolutely not.
La Rocque: I would dispute the point.
La Rocque: In the 1950s there were uh, uh, nuclear weapons and there were conventional weapons.
La Rocque: And we used to have a chart which I drew in the Strategic Plans Division of the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations, which simply showed a meter going from right, from left to right, showing, first we fought the cold war, then we fought limited war using nuclear weapons, and then we fought a limited tactical uh, war with nuclear weapons, then a general war.
La Rocque: But it was a gradual movement in to the use of nuclear weapons, starting with conventional weapons.
La Rocque: Well we're doing essentially the same thing today, with one major exception.
La Rocque: And that is that we are putting more and more emphasis today on nuclear weapons than we did even in the '50s.
La Rocque: Because we've integrated nuclear weapons into all of our army divisions, our air wings, and most of our warships.
La Rocque: I would dispute the fact this, that, there was a uh, marked, there is a marked difference today, and there wasn't then.
La Rocque: I think if anything, the reverse is true.
La Rocque: We were fear, we were afraid of nuclear weapons in the 1950s.
La Rocque: We knew that what would happen if we ever used them.
La Rocque: Uh, we knew that we were talking about literally the destruction of both the United States and the Soviet Union.
La Rocque: As a matter of fact, the definition for a general war included the survival of one or both, of the participants in the war.
La Rocque: But today, we're talking about fighting a war using nuclear weapons as an integral part of our battle uh, field arrangements.
Interviewer: WHAT WAS THE ATTITUDE OF THE NAVY IN PARTICULAR TO NUCLEAR WEAPONS AT THAT TIME? WAS THERE A SENSE THAT THEY HAD TO GET INTO NUCLEAR DELIVERY CAPABILITIES, EVEN STRATEGIC NUCLEAR DELIVERY CAPABILITY, IN ORDER TO KEEP THEIR END UP AS IT WERE WITH THE AIR FORCE?
La Rocque: We knew that the nuclear weapons and the nuclear era was coming very fast.
La Rocque: And we knew that if we were going to maintain a position of uh, playing a very active role in the military forces of the US, we were going to have to get into the nuclear era.
La Rocque: And that's why we quickly put nuclear weapons into all of our aircraft carriers.
La Rocque: Eh, shortly after the '50s, we even began to put nuclear weapons in some of our smaller ships, even though we knew they were useless, but we simply wanted to stake out our right to use nuclear weapons and to demonstrate our uh, presumed knowledge of how to use them.
Interviewer: ONE OF YOUR OPPOSITE NUMBERS FROM THE ARMY ON THE JOINT STRATEGIC OPERATIONAL PLAN STAFF WAS JOHN EISENHOWER, THE PRESIDENT'S SON.
Interviewer: WHAT WAS YOUR, YOU AND HE, I BELIEVE, GOT TOGETHER AT SOME POINTS, NOW, WHAT WAS YOUR ATTITUDE COLLECTIVELY AS ARMY AND NAVY ABOUT THE, WHAT YOU KNEW ABOUT THE SAC WAR PLAN? THE SORT OF BIG MASSIVE RETALIATION PLAN? DID YOU HAVE A JOINT ATTITUDE TO THAT?
La Rocque: Well, John Eisenhower and I worked very closely together in the '50s, when he was on the army staff and I on the Navy staff.
La Rocque: And we met at least twice a week for long periods of time, ample time to discuss our war plans.
La Rocque: Uh, I was of the opinion that John eh, felt as I did at that time, uh, that nuclear weapons were here to stay, and that we might just as well uh, integrate them into our war plans.
La Rocque: I think both of us supported at that time this idea of uh massive retaliation.
La Rocque: Uh, there were darn few mavericks in that era who said nuclear weapons are very dangerous, they're abhorrent things, we shouldn't have them.
La Rocque: On the contrary, we all went along with it.
Interviewer: WAS THERE ANY SENSE, THOUGH, ON THE PART OF THE NAVY AND THE ARMY — I MEAN, CERTAINLY THERE WERE CRITICS IN THE ARMY, BIG ONES, I MEAN MAXWELL TAYLOR, JAMES GAVIN, ALL THESE PEOPLE, WERE VERY CRITICAL OF THE SAC WAR PLANS.
Interviewer: SAYING THAT IT WAS OVERKILL, THE RADIATION WAS GOING TO BE VERY DANGEROUS, THOSE KINDS OF THINGS.
Interviewer: DO YOU REMEMBER ANY OF THOSE KINDS OF CRITICISMS AT YOUR LEVEL? NUCLEAR AGE
La Rocque: Sure.
La Rocque: The, the problem was, as it is in any era, the army and the Navy and the Air Force were all competing for supremacy, all competing for leadership in this nuclear era.
La Rocque: And each of us was envious of what the other services might get.
La Rocque: So when the Navy and the army criticized the SAC plans, we were criticizing the Air Force because we were fearful they'd get too much of the money, too much of the uh, new weapons.
La Rocque: So— and the same thing was true with all of them.
La Rocque: It really had nothing to do with our capability to fight and win a war.
La Rocque: With one exception.
La Rocque: And that is, the navy always felt that it could almost fight and win the war single-handedly on the seas and with its marines.
La Rocque: And the army felt another land battle was certainly going to be decisive, and they needed the weapons for that.
La Rocque: And the Air Force thought they were in a new era which they could use nuclear weapons and win the war single-handedly.
Interviewer: SO ALMOST IT GOT TO THE STAGE WHERE EACH SERVICE RECKONED THE OTHERS WERE UNNECESSARY?
La Rocque: Well, uh, that is, it's very true that in that era each of the services began to think that the other services were unnecessary.
La Rocque: And this partly grew out of the fact of the devastation which would occur when you use nuclear weapons.
Interviewer: CAN WE STOP A MINUTE? SO YOUR JOB WAS BASICALLY PLANNING WHAT THE SERVICES WOULD NEED IN THE WAY OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS IN PLANS TWO OR THREE YEARS DOWN THE TRACK.
Interviewer: WERE YOU GIVEN ANY INSTRUCTIONS BY THE JCS OR THE NSC OR THE WHITE HOUSE OR WHOEVER AS TO WHAT THE OVERALL OBJECT WAS.
Interviewer: I MEAN, DID YOU HAVE ANY YARDSTICK BY WHICH TO MEASURE, WELL, HOW MUCH IS ENOUGH?
La Rocque: As military war planners over here in the Pentagon, we never got any instructions as to exactly what direction we were heading, except to fight and win a war with the Soviet Union.
La Rocque: And that simply meant that we always needed more and more weapons.
La Rocque: And the fight in the Pentagon always was as to which service was going to get the most.
La Rocque: And each of the service uh, chiefs directed their people to fight with the other services to make sure the other services didn't get as much as they wanted, so there'd be plenty left over for our service.
Interviewer: YOU HAD A STORY THAT YOU TOLD US ABOUT HOW THERE'S THIS KIND OF SECRECY BETWEEN THE SERVICES AND HOW YOU...THE STORY ABOUT HOW YOU WENT AND SAW JOHN EISENHOWER AND CAME BACK WITH THE INFORMATION ABOUT WHAT THE ARMY WAS DOING AND THE NAVY WERE AMAZED.
Interviewer: YOU KNOW THAT STORY?
La Rocque: Sure
Interviewer: CAN YOU JUST TELL US THAT ONE?
La Rocque: Every year at budget time, each of the services puts together a team to sort of counter the other services.
La Rocque: I was on the army team, although I was a naval officer.
La Rocque: And we were to try to get information from the United States army so that we could counter whatever they were going to come up with.
La Rocque: I came up with some wonderful data on the United States army, and my superiors were absolutely flabbergasted because I had all the details.
La Rocque: And they said, how in the world were you able to dig that out? I said, I didn't, it out, I simply went down and asked the army for it, and they gave it to me.
La Rocque: And it just never occurred to us to ask each other for information, so competitive were our relationships.
Interviewer: WHAT WERE THE ORIGINS AS YOU REMEMBER IT OF THE POLARIS SYSTEM? HOW DID THAT EMERGE?
La Rocque: Well, uh, in the late '50s we found ourselves with a lot of nuclear powered fuel, sorry.
La Rocque: In the late '50s we found ourselves with some nuclear powered submarines, and we tried to figure out what to do with them.
La Rocque: At the same time, we were developing a solid-propelled missile.
La Rocque: And somebody happily thought of the idea of putting the missile in the submarine, and developed the Polaris submarine program.
La Rocque: We didn't have any idea how many submarines we needed.
La Rocque: And we arbitrarily talked about 40 submarines.
La Rocque: And when we presented that to Admiral Burke, the chief of naval operations, he said, forty, that's no good.
La Rocque: Because if you make it forty, people will think we don't know what we're doing.
La Rocque: It has to be 41 or 39 or something like that.
La Rocque: So he said, let's make it 41.
La Rocque: So that's how we got 41 Polaris submarines.
La Rocque: Now, we at that time began to realize that the Air Force had a tremendous number of these bombers, and they were running the Strategic Air Command.
La Rocque: And we wanted to play a major role in the strategic bombing, but we didn't want the Air Force to control our submarines.
La Rocque: We wanted to do our own targeting.
La Rocque: Because we were fearful that if the air force controlled the targeting, they would also ultimately control our submarines and maybe kill the program.
La Rocque: So to make sure that we could control our own submarines, we arbitrarily put a couple of submarines, arbitrarily put a couple of torpedoes in the forward part of each of each of the submarines, the Polaris submarines, so that they could be dual purpose.
La Rocque: In other words, they were designed for naval warfare as well as strategic, and that reason holds today.
La Rocque: And that's why the Navy still controls its strategic missile submarines, because they have torpedoes in them, which will never be used in war.
Interviewer: I'LL ASK YOU A QUESTION AND YOU CAN TELL US THE SECOND PART OF THAT STORY.
Interviewer: WHAT WAS THE ORIGINS OF THE JOINT...
Interviewer: THE JOINT STRATEGIC TARGETING PLANNING STAFF? HOW DID THAT COME ABOUT?
La Rocque: Well, up until the late '50s, the United States Air Force really controlled all the strategic bombing.
La Rocque: But when we came along with the Polaris submarines and the missiles in the submarines, we wanted to get into the strategic bombing also, uh, with our submarines.
La Rocque: We had it to a small extent in our aircraft carriers.
La Rocque: But we did not want to give up control of our submarines to the Strategic Air Command.
La Rocque: So we hit on the happy idea of putting torpedoes in the bow of our missile submarines so that we could say they were dual-capable, that we really intended to use them for sort of conventional naval warfare, so that we could maintain control of the missiles And that has persisted until today with every submarine we have built; even though they carry missiles, we put submarines in the bow so that we can control them and not let them fall into the hands of the bad Air Force.
Interviewer: THE SINGLE INTEGRATED OPERATIONAL PLAN, THE SIOP, WAS THAT A SAC IDEA? I MEAN, DID IT COME FROM SAC?
Interviewer: DURING THIS PERIOD, IN THE FIFTIES AND ESPECIALLY IN THE LAST FIVE YEARS BETWEEN SAY 1957, 1961, THE STRATEGIC ARSENAL GREW ENORMOUSLY, I THINK IT TRIPLED.
Interviewer: DO YOU THINK THAT WAS NECESSARY IN RETROSPECT AND WHAT WAS EISENHOWER, THE PRESIDENT EISENHOWER DOING ABOUT IT..?
La Rocque: The growth of nuclear weapons in the '50s was like the growth of topsy completely uncontrolled, uncoordinated, everybody built as many nuclear weapons as we could get money for.
La Rocque: Nevertheless during the whole nuclear weapons era since we exploded the first nuclear weapon in Hiroshima, President Eisenhower knew better how to control the military than any president we've had since.
La Rocque: President Eisenhower was not the least bit impressed with military brass.
La Rocque: When he wanted the Joint Chiefs of Staff opinion he sent for them, got their opinion and sent them back.
La Rocque: And he didn't hesitate at any time to get into the details of even their day to day functioning.
La Rocque: On one occasion he even ordered the cancellation of some internal committees that we had working of the Joint Chiefs of Staff area because his son John and I had recommended that the committees be abolished.
La Rocque: Uh, we simply formed new committees in the joint arena and continued on pretty much as before, but in the broader aspects of it we knew General Eisenhower, President Eisenhower was the boss and ran things and we really couldn't put much past him.
Interviewer: YES THERE WAS THIS HUGE GROWTH IN NUCLEAR WEAPONS WHICH HE DIDN'T SEEM TO KNOW A GREAT DEAL ABOUT OR...
La Rocque: John Foster Dulles of course was the major exponent of building this huge military arsenal and as I say though, it sort of grew like topsy and even those of us in the military uh, were not totally aware of this vast increase in the numbers of nuclear weapons, we assumed that it was a good idea always to acquire more and more of the best weapons we could get and nuclear weapons were certainly the best we could get.
La Rocque: There wasn't any overall strategic plan.
La Rocque: It wasn't clear what their purpose was to be.
La Rocque: All we knew was that sooner or later we were going to fight a war with the Soviet Union and we might need all the weapons we could get.
Interviewer: THERE'S A FEELING THAT IT WAS ONLY WHEN MCNAMARA CAME TO THE PENTAGON DOWN THERE THAT ANY REAL CIVILIAN CONTROL OVER THE GROWTH OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS, WEAPONS PROCUREMENT WAS BROUGHT IN AND THAT EISENHOWER HAD REALLY ALLOWED THE MILITARY IN THAT AREA AT LEAST TO DO PRETTY MUCH AS THEY LIKED, IS THAT WRONG DO YOU THINK?
La Rocque: Mr. McNamara came in and said enough is enough.
La Rocque: President Eisenhower tended to accept the growth of the military I think partly because he wasn't aware of this tremendous growth in the number of systems and of course it was a different era where we had planes based in a lot of areas in the world with the, the Air Force's B-47s.
La Rocque: Our carriers were dispersed in various areas of the world.
La Rocque: And it didn't look like so many until you sat down and counted them.
La Rocque: And I think the President just didn't uh, know the extent of the growth of our nuclear stockpile.
La Rocque: Mr. McNamara came in and said, enough is enough, we don't need anymore.
La Rocque: Uh, but I think it came along at a time when we had begun to realize that.
La Rocque: Whereas in Mr. Eisenhower's time, the uh, feeling was that we ought to acquire as many of these nuclear weapons as we could as quickly as we could and find different vehicles to carry them to the Soviet Union to counter the Soviet perceived capability for conventional warfare.