SO CAN YOU EXPLAIN TO US WHY THE GAITHER COMMITTEE WHICH STARTED TO LOOK AT CIVIL DEFENSE DECIDED TO LOOK ALSO AT THE QUESTION OF SAC VULNERABILITY, HOW DID THAT COME ABOUT?

Well, it came about because when Ron Gaither finally accepted becoming the director for this study, and he didn't do that until the middle of May there had been completed a RAND study identified as our 290. And the chairman of that had been a man by the name of Albert who was a distinguished scientist and also a recognized strategist in military affairs. He'd been in this game for now, I guess about 40 years. Well, his the report of his committee showed that it came as a conclusion that protecting SAC and eliminating or maybe reducing the vulnerability was very much more important to saving people than Program. And the reason for this was that if SAC is adequately protected nobody probably is going launch an attack and of course that's maximum safety that these people can have. So when he heard that Ron Gaither had accepted the directorship and Gaither at that time was also a chairman of the board of the RAND Foundation, he briefed Gaither and the other trustees of RAND with what his committee had come up with. And he thought it was very important that the assignment to the Gaither Committee be expanded to include both passive and active means of protecting the population. And all of us bought this suggestion and that's why the scope of it was broadened and that's indicated by the title of the report when it was finally delivered which was Deterrence and Survival in the Nuclear Age.

SO WHAT DID THE GAITHER REPORT FIND IN THE INITIAL STAGES OF ITS INVESTIGATION ABOUT SAC VULNERABILITY? HOW VULNERABLE WAS SAC?

Well, the Gaither Committee tried to find this out by arranging a visit to LeMay's headquarters in Omaha, Nebraska. And it was a larger, quite a large group that went out the first time. It was the whole steering committee which was 11 people and some of the other members of the project. And we had a very unsatisfactory meeting with LeMay. He really treated it as if it was, he was talking to the Chamber of Commerce. So, when we get back, got back the fact that we were dissatisfied was brought to the President's attention by Bobby Cutler who was the President's special assistant for military affairs and also chairman of the National Security Council. And it was arranged that a sm— much smaller group which included Bill Foster, my co-director and I as director and the heads of the two of the groups that had particular responsibilities, and this was Jerry Wiesner and Bill Webster. Jerry Wiesner was head of the active defense group and Bill Webster the passive, the active being things like missiles and the passive being things like fallout shelters. And when we got out there, and I believe as I remember that this was mid September I think it was September 16th. LeMay had we found out that LeMay had a very large display of the United States in which were located on the map of the United States, the 30-line SAC bases which we had at that time. And at each of these SAC base identifications on the map, there were figures which showed the number of bombers on each SAC base, the type of bombers and also had some figures and I asked him what these figures were and he said, well that was the time it took us to get SAC planes off their bases, on a very recent exercise. So we looked at it for a few minutes and I finally said to LeMay, I said, "This is complicated map, I don't know if I really understand it." But I said, "If I do understand it, I come to the conclusion that in the event that we only have tactical warning, that is actually identifying Russian bombers attacking the United States, crossing the due line in Canada or the seaward extensions not one of our planes would be able to get off the ground before they were destroyed. And he didn't seem to be concerned. So I said to the General you don't seem to be concerned about it. He said, I'm not. And I said, "Why not." Well, he said, "Come with me, Mr. Sprague." So he took me into a room which was fairly near the display, where he was receiving his own intelligence. In other words he had his own intelligence system with a lot of equipment there and he pointed out to some of the machines that were reading off messages that were coming in from various SAC planes that were flying various places around the world. And particularly flying around the parameter of Soviet Russia and actually a number of them are overflying Russia. And he said, "I will know from my own intelligence, whether or not the Russians are massing their planes presumably for massive attack against the United States. And if it's I come to that conclusion," he said, "I'm going to knock the shit out of them before they get off the ground. "Oh, I said " that isn't national policy," I said, "You know that." He said, "No it's not national policy, but it's my policy."

NOW WHAT WAS YOUR REACTION TO THAT?

Well this will probably surprise you I was very much concerned about SAC's vulnerability because if the Russians were willing to make a one-way attack if they didn't have the range of that time to get back to Russia and land for example in Canada or Mexico they could re—destroy our entire retaliatory capability on one strike. And then what would we have left. So, I was amazed that was his, he would take that position, but I was relieved, because I was really concerned about the safety of the United States and its citizens, and its military. And I thought if we've got a man here that if willing to do that I'm glad that we have one. 'Cause I'm concerned that otherwise that we may be in great danger. And I also remembered at the time, which was the reason I said nothing about it to anybody else and didn't report when I got back to Washington, was that when a general disobeys orders if he's got, if he's defeated and a makes a mistake, then he's a bum. But, if he disobeys orders of policy and wins, then he's a hero.

DO YOU THINK IT WOULD BE POSSIBLE FOR A GENERAL TO TAKE THE SAME ATTITUDE TODAY?

I don't think there is ever a General like LeMay. I think he was—he'd be my role model of a general.

DO YOU THINK HE WAS GOOD?

I think he was excellent. Superb. His training, he gave he was training his people all the time. And if they did well, he made promotions on the field even though we weren't at war. And I don't anything about the our military forces today, except what I read in the newspapers but I'm convinced it's that time, he was the supreme military officer we had.

DOCTOR WIESNER'S RECOLLECTION OF THAT VISIT AND WE ASKED HIM ABOUT THIS PARTICULAR INCIDENT AND HE SAID HE RECALLS SOMETHING SIMILAR, BUT HE SAYS, THAT HIS RECOLLECTION IS THAT WHAT LEMAY SAID TO YOU WHEN YOU SAID "BUT THAT'S NOT NATIONAL POLICY..." WAS WELL IT'S MY JOB TO MAKE IT POSSIBLE FOR THE PRESIDENT TO CHANGE HIS MIND", NOW OBVIOUSLY THAT'S A VERY DIFFERENT ACCOUNT.

Well Jerry Wiesner wasn't even with me when General LeMay made this comment to me. So he may be talking about some comment that he made to Wiesner, or somebody else. But nobody else went with me to the intelligence at that time. I was alone with LeMay.

AND YOUR IMPRESSION DEFINITELY WAS THAT WHAT GENERAL LEMAY WAS SAYING IS THAT HE WOULD DO IT OFF HIS OWN BACK WITHOUT REFERENCE TO HIGHER AUTHORITY IF NECESSARY. OKAY. CAN WE MOVE ON TO THE LUNCH THAT YOU HAD WITH THE SECRETARY OF THE AIR FORCE AND GENERAL LEMAY SHORTLY AFTER THAT VISIT, COULD YOU DESCRIBE WHAT HAPPENED AFTERWARDS.

Well, we were to make our report to the National Security Council, on November 7th. And on November 6th, the day before that Jim Douglas, Secretary of the Air Force, was courteous enough to have a meeting for the Steering Committee, obligate their committee and some of his top military and civilian personnel in his private dining room. And I knew Douglas quite well, and I could just imagine his position of being faced with this kind of information. Uh after our meeting with the, after the meeting that Bill Foster and I had scheduled, to have alone with the President after the briefing, the Security Council. So finally I decided to say something, at least give them a warning, so as we were getting towards the desert I turned to Douglas. I was sitting on his right and said LeMay was sitting on his left. And I said, " Mr. Secretary I presume that you know, that if we had a surprise attack against LeMay with only tactical warning," I said, "that we would not be able to make a retaliatory strike against the Russians as is national policy. And he looked me up from his surprise, as if I was an idiot and he turned to LeMay, and he said, "Well you've heard what Mr. Sprague said, and it's my knowledge and I guess general knowledge in the event of a surprise attack of that kind that we would have at least 168 bombers which would not be destroyed." And I interrupted him with that point before LeMay had a chance to answer. And I said, "Mr. Secretary”, I said, "that is not the question." I said, "The question is not how many planes could be saved, the question is how many would be in the position to make a retaliatory attack with full crews aboard, full gas load and weapons aboard. I said, the SAC bases do have auxiliary civilian bases to which they can go in the event of an attack. But I said, "that they go with a limited crew, skeleton crew, no not enough gas on board to reach the enemy". And I said most importantly "they wouldn't have any weapons aboard." And the weapons would have been destroyed because the weapons were all at the SAC bases. And before, this is where I give LeMay top credit. And before, Douglas had a chance to ask LeMay whether I was still nuts LeMay said, "Mr. Sprague is correct."

SO THEN YOU TOOK YOUR REPORT TO THE NATIONAL SECURITY COUNCIL ON NOVEMBER THE 6TH. COULD YOU JUST DESCRIBE...

No November the 7th.

NOVEMBER 7TH, I'M SORRY. COULD YOU DESCRIBE THE MAIN GUTS OF WHAT THE REPORT SAID, WHAT THAT RECOMMENDATION WAS TO THE NEC AND ALSO WHAT THE REACTIONS OF THE FULL MEETING OF THE NEC WERE?

Well, the recommendations of the report, were broken down into two parts. The first part was items of top priority. And in the second group was items of next to top priority. The items in the top priority had to do mostly with SAC. Hardening SAC, further dispersing it providing anti-air craft protection to SAC and so on. It had to do with eliminating the vulnerability of SAC and included in that was improving the capabilities of our radars. So that they, radars at that time had 2 weaknesses, one was a very high altitude and the other was a very low altitude. And it was very important that our radars could not be avoided simply when we were flying very low or very high. In the—in the second group, were fallout shelters. A nationwide fallout shelters were recommended, no blast shelters. And the remainder of the recommendations had to do with the changes in the civilian and military organizations to have better control in an emergency, more flexibility and less reaction time. Now, the was only one person at the meeting which included the members of the National Security Council, except the Vice-President, he wasn't there, I don't know why, he's a member, a statutory member, but he wasn't therewith about 65 other be, top people in government. And the only one who commented, the President didn't comment, was John Foster Dulles. And John Foster Dulles comment was, "Well," he said, "it's my experience that in a study of this kind the group always over estimates the capabilities of Russia and under estimates our capabilities.

DO YOU THINK IN RETROSPECT HE WAS RIGHT ON THIS OCCASION?

No, I don't think so. I did—I did spend and hour and a half with him after the meeting the Secretary, I don't remember whether he was a secretary, no, the under Secretary of State was a former governor of Massachusetts, his name was Herter and I knew Herter quite well, I had been on one his committees. And I asked him if he would arrange a meeting with Secretary Dulles, and he said he did. And he and I went to see Dulles in his, in his offices. And I spent an hour and a half trying to persuade him that his opinion in this particular case was an error. That our report was very factual, we had done good intelligence and I don't believe I was very successful. He listened very politely for an hour and a half, but I don't think that I persuaded him.

YOU SAID IT WAS BASED ON GOOD INTELLIGENCE BUT OF COURSE IT DID SUBSEQUENTLY EMERGE SOME YEARS LATER THAT MUCH OF THE—MANY OFTHE ESTIMATES THAT WERE BEING MADE BY THE INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY IN THE 1956-57 TURNED OUT LATER TO BE VERY OVER PESSIMISTIC ESPECIALLY WITH REGARD TO SOVIET MISSILE AND BOMBER MANUFACTURE, DO YOU STILL SAY THAT THE REPORT WAS BASED ON GOOD INTELLIGENCE?

Well, when I say that the intelligence was accurate enough for the Gaither Committee to make intelligent the recommendation I'm talking about that. I'm not talking about the accuracy--ex-act number of missiles of military intelligence. The thing that we were interested in at particularly was what was the--in US equivalent dollars what was the Russian effort in the military area. And I think these figures were quite accurate. And what our estimates were that after World War II, in 1946, we had a—we demonized almost entirely. And at that time, the Russians had tremendous ground forces, great supremacy in that area. They didn't have anything to offset our air force or our navy. And they set about and shortly after '46, they set about remedying this. And the, our estimate effort was that you, the Soviets military effort in 1950 was three times our military effort here as a result of our complete demobilization. The Russians continued to increase their effort year by year until in 1957, at the time of the Gaither Report we estimated that we were spending about 40 billion dollars a year on the military and we also estimated that the Russians were spending about the same amount. Now, the reason ours has gone up substantially during those 7 years was the Korean War. An during the Korean War, our actually, our actual military effort here, wound up beyond what the Russians were spending, but then it dropped back. It had gone up to somewhere around 50 million dollars a year, a billion dollars a year, and it dropped back to about 40. So at 1957, our estimate was, and this is a basis of a lot of conclusions in the report that we and the Russians were spending about the same equivalent dollars in the military effort. And that the Russians were continuing to increase annually by a steady rate. But our estimate was all we knew here. That we were not going to increase, we had dropped back our military effort from the Korean War we were spending about 14 percent of our gross national product to 1957, when we were only spending 8 1/2 to 9 percent. And our estimate was it'd be difficulty, difficult if there wasn't immediate threat to sustain more than about that percentage of gross national product annually, and that's true today. And we further estimated that will the greater percentage that the Russians were spending and we estimated they continue, that we and the Russians would have about a balanced military posture in 1972. And that came out on the timetable which is included in the in the report. And as a matter of fact it turned out to be very accurate. And the study that the Harvard group made you've seen the book, is that in 1972, I, and their military, our military organization and theirs were about equal. Although were very different, the Russians had emphasized their ground forces much more than we did. But we had off setting strengths and submarine missiles and so on.

LET ME MOVE ANYWAY TO THAT SECOND MEETING THAT HAPPENED AFTER YOU PRESENTED YOUR REPORT TO THE NSC. CAN YOU DESCRIBE WHAT HAPPENED NEXT AND HOW YOU HAD A PRIVATE MEETING OR MORE PRIVATE MEETING WITH THE PRESIDENT IMMEDIATELY AFTER THAT...

Yes. Well after we got back from Omaha I talked with Foster at incredible length and he was the only one I talked with, he was my deputy. And I said, what we learned, what I learned in Omaha, was so dangerous that I thought it, would not be safe to include it in information given to 60 or 70 people at the November 7th meeting. So we got a hold of Bobby Cutler again telling the problem, why we were not going to include it, and asked for a private meeting with the President after the main meeting. Bobby Cutler agreed. He arranged it, the President accepted it. So immediately after the report had been given, five of us were involved in giving the report, Bill Foster and I left the group and were taken to the Oval Office. When we got there, the President was seated his desk, but he also had in the room which I hadn't realized he was going to have, he had the chiefs of staff for the four services, the army, navy, , the army, and navy, the Air Force and the marine corps. Also the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and in addition to that Don Quarles who was Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Development. They were standing at the wall, there were only two chairs in the office, so and Bill Foster joined the group and I sat down, opposite the President. And I spent 15 minutes explaining why in our opinion SAC planes could not make a retaliatory attack at that time if we only had tactical warning. And to my somewhat amazement, he didn't any of his military men whether Sprague, he I was crazy or not. And nobody made any comment. There were no comments made, no questions asked. And I've never been more uncomfortable in my entire life. Perspiration began to run down my face, I was sitting there in front the President telling him that his national policy couldn't be implemented in the event of a surprise attack. And nobody said anything. I think I suffered for about a minute, not more than 2 minutes, with the perspiration running down my face when I finally said to well, "Mr. President I don't think Mr. Foster and I can contribute any more to this meeting. And I'd like permission to leave." He didn't even respond to that. So without waiting more than about 15 seconds, I got up, walked out, Foster followed me and that was the end of the meeting. Now, apparently, something did happen. And that was the good part of it, in spite of the leaks to the press, and the President was very disturbed about that. Within a very few days, it was less than a week SAC had a third of their planes in the air, 24 hours a day. And of course could have retaliated because it couldn't have been destroyed. And that every meeting of the National Security Council on continental defense, and I attended both meetings on continental defense because I was adviser to the National Security Council. Bobby Cutler, very first thing, stated too to the National Security Council, how many planes SAC had they could get off the ground within the time allowed by tactical warning. And in nine months the number got to over a 168, which was, which was the figure that Dulles had given me at that luncheon meeting. So something was done about it.

BUT YOU AND BILL FOSTER MUST HAVE BEEN RATHER BAFFLED AND HURT BY THE PRESIDENT'S RECEPTION. WHAT DO THINK HE WAS THINKING...?

Yeah...Well, there's a fact of life which has always existed, and still exists, and was reason he did so well, so poorly in the Korean War. No subordinate will have to tell the boss that he's wrong. And if you tell the head of the Kremlin, you'd probably sent to Siberia. And that's a national trait and that happened in the Korean War. The top generals in Korea and the administration in Washington were never told how bad things were going and what could be done there to correct them. And I know this because, Hermann Kahn you've probably heard of him, the Institute made for—he's a man that wrote... talking about the—

YEAH.

He made four trips out Korea himself at his own expense. And he came back and said, he said that he had talked with top people there and the colonels and the captains and he said, the colonels and the captains knew what we wrong and knew how to correct it. But the generals or the top never did, and neither did the ones back in the United States. This is just illustrating the point. Well, supposing you're president of the United States, and you've got Army, Navy, you've got a big military staff and costing billions of dollars and a character, not even—not even a military man north from a civilian comes in and the national policy for Christ's sake. So I wasn't surprised, no. I wasn't disappointed or surprised I expected it.

BUT THERE WAS SOME DISAPPOINTMENT BY SOME MEMBERS OF THE REPORT OF THAT...

Oh that's a different matter. You're talking—

WELL I'M ASKING YOU WHAT...

Your question was directed toward this particular meeting.

YEAH I KNOW THAT'S FINE...WHAT WAS THE REACTION AMONGST OTHER MEMBERS OF THE PANEL TO THE WAY THAT IT HAD BEEN ACCEPTED?

It...Some of the members of the panel, because of Dulles comment at the end of the we begun, November 7th and because it was generally known that Eisenhower was not in favor of a fallout shelter program felt that the some of the main recommendations of the report were not going to be carried out. And they took it upon themselves to try and the President. The report was top secret. There was no announcement to the Press that there even was a report or there had been the meeting or any of the recommendations. And they leaked this information and the recommendations out to the public very shortly after the Gaither Report. And the President was very much upset. And I don't blame him. And I wasn't a part of that, because it's important I think for the President to be able to get a group of qualified citizens to make an objective study. And there's no strings to any of the particular services. And it's up to him to do what he wants to do with that report. It's his report. He was the one that approved it. And it's up to him to decide whether he wants to tell the public about it or not. It's up to him to decide what he wants to implement and what he doesn't want to implement. Now, you may not like it, and I was very concerned, that this having happened, that Eisenhower would never have another committee of that kind and possibly other presidents wouldn't.

WHO WERE THE PEOPLE WHO DECIDED TO LEAK IT?

Well, I know this is pretty well known, uh. The two that implemented this was my co-director Bill Foster, who felt very strongly about it and Paul Nitze. Paul Nitze was not a member of the steering committee, but he was a very knowledgeable and important member of the project staff. And was one of the project staff that attended many of th— morning meetings of the steering committee. And it was Nitze and Foster who decided that something ought to be done about this. And this was implemented by a dinner at Foster had at his home, with Nitze and others were similarly sympathetic and felt that there was—things wouldn't be done, well they were done. And this certainly delayed to some considerable extent implementing some of things that were finally, implemented. The best if anybody wanted to go into this was a man by the name of Roberts, who initially released a lot of the information. But then there was a Harvard professor by the name of Halpertman, who in July 1960, which was say nine months after the meeting, prepared a paper, was 33 pages long, that went into this whole business of leaking the report and the President's upset about it and what happened.

WHAT WAS YOUR IMPRESSION OF THE ATMOSPHERE BETWEEN THE SERVICES AT THIS PERIOD?

I think it's a good news and bad news story. There had always been rivalry between the services. It begins of course with each service wanting the maximum amount of money from Congress. Well in order to get the money, the way everybody wanted a big in the atomic nuclear act. And the army wanted to be, have it's own air force, and so on. I think that as one very good point and that is that the only real competition that you get over military service is during an armed conflict. That's the ultimate result. So the only competition you can have in peacetime is competition between the services, And I'm sure if there hadn't been competition between the services, that the submarine missile program would never have been implemented. That was the Navy's answer as to how to get in the nuclear act in a big way. And a lot of people thought that was impossible because the Navy did a wonderful job. And that was, I think entirely the result of competition for money for the Navy. Now the bad part of it is that each of the services have their own intelligent service. We have the CIA which is the, it to be a centralized objective intelligence organization. But the Navy had it's separate intelligence, the army has it, SAC has it as you've heard. And each of these, the inclusion of each of a service intelligence agency is to emphasize or de-emphasize targets which will give their service a more important position.

DO YOU THINK THAT WAS GOING ON WHEN THE ESTIMATES WERE PROPHESYING THE SO-CALLED MISSILE GAP?

No, that would not, give you the answer on that one. And that is the most fantastic thing that was done in that period. At one of the meetings of the Pilling Committee which was called the Technical Capabilities Panel, Dr. Land of Polaroid suggested that if we could build an airplane which would fly say at 70,000 feet, beyond, Russian then existing missiles could bring it down, and supply it with sophisticated photographic equipment that in this way we could break the iron curtain and tell exactly where the Russian air bases were and were their missiles were. And how many they were. The chief engineer of Lockheed at that time had designed a highflying airplane that could fly over 70,000 feet. It never had been built. It was slow, it had large wings and presumably could fly over Russia without being brought down. Land had decided that he could build or his company could build, design and build sophisticated photographic equipment which could take pictures from 70-80,000 feet, with fine enough definition so that they could tell what the Russian military installations were, where they were located and also and find enough definition to detect their missiles above ground missiles. And the Russians had them all above ground by that time, because of the iron curtain wall. This recommendation of Lands was made at one of the morning meetings of the above the I'm sorry...It was the steering committee. The steering committee and I was a member of the steering committee met every morning. In other words, to me had a steering committee just as the Gaither Committee did. So was supposed to supervise what was being done. And Land made this suggestion at; one of the meetings, early mornings of the steering committee of the Committee. And of course it was enthusiastically approved. I think it was through Goodpaster who was a military adviser to the President about that time. General Goodpaster. The Killian and Land...

HOW WOULD YOU ACCOUNT FOR THE FACT THAT THE ESTIMATES THAT WERE BEING MADE IN 1957 OF PROBABLE SOVIET MISSILE CAPABILITY IN THREE OR FOUR YEARS TIME TURNED OUT TO BE SO WRONG LATER ON?

I'm going to ask you to ask me that again.

ALL RIGHT. I'LL ASK YOU A DIFFERENT WAY. DO YOU THINK IT WAS THE U-2, THE ACQUISITION OF THE U-2 THAT MADE THE BIG DIFFERENCE AS FAR AS SOVIET ICBM DEPLOYMENT WAS CONCERNED IN THE LATE '50S. IS THAT THE MAIN FACTOR AND IF SO, WHY?

I...it's my personal opinion that was the reason and the only reason. And I think that because prior to that time we had no success in CIA, in breaking through the Iron Curtain. We didn't know where the Russian missiles were located. We didn't know exactly what they consisted of, and we didn't know how many they had. When powers started to, well, when the U-2 overflew Russia's for four years, they knew we were getting that information. And they...their program was stopped, I think for about two years until they could place their missiles on the ground. They were then on the surface where they could be destroyed with two to three pounds over pressure.

SO IT WAS THEIR KNOWLEDGE THAT WE KNEW WHERE THE MISSILES WERE THAT IN YOUR OPINION STOPPED THE SS-6 PROGRAM WITHIN ITS TRACKS AND THEY WAITED UNTIL THEY HAD A MISSILE THEY COULD PUT UNDERGROUND?

Well, they certainly knew we were overflying them for four years. And they're intelligent people. And they must have known we were doing it for a reason, and that reason was to find out what was behind the Iron Curtain.

BUT YOU DON'T THINK THERE WAS ANY ELEMENT OF AIR FORCE SELF-INTEREST FOR EXAMPLE, AS YOU WERE DESCRIBING EARLIER ON INVOLVED IN THE WAY — IN THE ESTIMATES THAT AIR FORCE INTELLIGENCE WAS PRODUCING?

Well, there may have been but I don't think that was, and I don't think in that, in this case that was the important element.

OK. JUST TO GO BACK TO SOMETHING THAT YOU SAID EARLIER WHEN YOU DESCRIBED GENERAL LEMAY'S POLICY FOR PREEMPTIVE ATTACK ON THE SOVIET UNION, DO YOU THINK THAT WAS THE PRESIDENT'S POLICY TOO SECRETLY?

I certainly do not. The President was a very organized man and he was used to having plans made for large organizations and he carried that through to the Presidency. And I'm absolutely certain that the President...

YOU DON'T THINK THAT GIVEN THE PERHAPS POLITICAL IMPOSSIBILITY OF HAVING FORMALLY A PLAN FOR PREEMPTIVE STRIKE THERE MIGHT HAVE BEEN SOME UNDERSTANDING BETWEEN THE PRESIDENT AND THE GENERAL AS TO WHAT WOULD REALLY HAPPEN?

No, I don't think there's any possibility of it.

SO THE UNITED STATES...

I sat...I sat in on too many meetings with the President on continental defense, and I also was very close to the senior executive in the staff of the NSC, and I'd read all the... all the important papers, and I'm absolutely certain the President had no at all.

AS FAR AS YOU KNOW WOULD IT HAVE BEEN PHYSICALLY POSSIBLE FOR GENERAL LEMAY TO UNDERTAKE THAT POLICY? TO, OFF HIS OWN BACK, ON HIS OWN AUTHORITY TO AUTHORIZE AN ATTACK ON THE SOVIET UNION?

Well, he had the planes and he had the missiles, and I can't really speak with authority on that because it may have been leaked. You know, though, it was always my opinion, with the question, if the Russians ordered a massive attack against the United States whether the people massing the muscle, or the people manning the missiles would carry it out....Because they knew if there were a retaliatory attack they would be subject to being killed and their families. So we're talking about anything as devastating as that toward the... Will it be carried out? I have some doubt whether it would be. That's just a personal opinion, but...