...ABOUT THE DAWN OF THE MISSILE AGE, WHEN YOU ALL FIRST CAME INTO THE PENTAGON WELL THIS IS REALLY THE CUSP OF A NEW AGE. CURTIS LEMAY WAS YOU KNOW...DID HE... HOW DID HE REACT TO THE DECISIONS TO PHASE OUT BOMBERS?

LeMay's attitude was that bombers were a proven capability. They'd been proven in World War II where he had been the commander of a very large and very effective bomber forces. I can recall even in the late '50s when LeMay laid down what were his priorities for new weapons systems a replacement for, a successor for the B-52 was very high on his list and ballistic missiles were lower on his list. He considered that they had not really been proven out and he tended to rely more on the large payloads that bombers could deliver and a belief that main forces had advantages.

DID LEMAY OBJECT TO THE PHASING OUT OF B-47S, B-58S?

The B-58 was always a marginal weapon system although it was a faster than the B-47 its range was not appreciably different and its numbers were so small compared to the B-47s that it never did constitute a major weapon system. There were if I remember correctly well over a thousand B-47s and on--less than a hundred or something like a hundred, B-58s. LeMay I think was concerned about the schedule at which the B-47s were phased out. It happened over a relatively few years. It happened after the submarine launch ballistic missile had already come into the force and while the solid fueled minute man intercontinental ballistic missile was coming into the force. He would have preferred to keep them in longer. As to whether he would wan-- wanted to keep them in indefinitely that's another matter, I doubt it.

WELL WHAT ABOUT THE B-70, WHAT WAS HIS REACTION TO THE...?

Well, the B-70, the B-70 of course was the apple of the eye of many of the Strategic Air Command generals and alumni of which LeMay is I guess he was vice chief of staff, and then soon after became chief of staff and then soon after became chief of staff soon after the decision of the incoming Kennedy administration to cancel the B-70. I think he didn't like that decision at all, because the B-70 was after all the ah, the new intercontinental bomber. It could fly faster and higher and carry a big payload, and those were the criterion, the criteria by which ah, bomber advocates in the Air Force tended to judge the efficacy of a bomber system. So LeMay didn't like that at all. Nor did most of the other Air Force people.

HOW DID YOU FEEL EITHER WHEN YOU WERE IN RESEARCH AND ENGINEERING OR SECRETARY OF THE AIR FORCE, ABOUT THE NEED FOR FOLLOW ON BOMBERS?

Well while I was ah the B-70 cancellation decision was made just about as I became director of defense, research and engineering. I did not enter on that post until May of 1961, and my recollection is that the decision had been made a couple months before. And, the Air Force, although very unhappy had by that time, I guess accepted the decision. From then on, through the rest of the '60s from 1961 to the beginning of 1969, when I left the ah, Defense Department after serving for four years as director for defense, research and engineering, then four years as secretary of the Air Force, the bomber question was always a very important one for the Air Force. They wanted to have a bomber follow on. Partly because there were still many ah, people in the Air Force who had an attachment to bombers. But more important because they supported, as did the rest of the ah, US defense establishment, the idea that it would be a good thing to have a diversity of strategic retaliatory capability, so that there would be no single ah, program on the Soviet side. No single technological breakthrough on the Soviet side, that could put the whole of the US strategic retaliatory capability at risk. And thus undermine ah, deterrence or ah, counterforce, or any other purpose that US strategic forces might have. As a result, during that whole period from 1961 on through the end of the '60s, and of course, it's actually continued right to this day... ah the Air Force has advocated modernization of the bomber force replacement of old bombers with new ones, not because they wear out and the wings fall off, although that argument is sometimes made, but because such ah, weapons systems become more vulnerable to Soviet preemption for example, that is destruction before they can be launched in retaliation, and because such bombers ah, also tend to become more vulnerable to active defenses on the other side in the continued interplay between measure and counter measure and so forth. The Soviets, with a massive commitment over the past three decades, at least, to ah, air defense have invested in newer and more effective and more modern air defenses. As a result, bombers which can be reasonably sure of being able to penetrate such defenses at a certain stage, become, ten years later, fifteen years later, twenty years later more vulnerable to intercept and, if you're going to keep a bomber force, and there are reasons to keep it, as I indicated having to do with diversification of your retaliatory capability the bomber force has to be able to adapt and have different characteristics so as to be able to penetrate. What those characteristics are, depends upon what the air defenses are on the other side, and how effective they are. The bomber characteristics that are involved are speed, altitude detectability by ah, radar or by infrared or by some other means. The ability to carry counter measures. The ability to carry short range missiles, which can suppress defenses, or occasionally long range air to surface missiles, which can suppress defenses. And so the bomber force if it's to remain as part of the strategic force needs to have those characteristics reexamined and new designs put forward. And all during the period of the Sixties the Air Force was looking at what characteristics a new bomber should have in order to be able to survive, to penetrate, and ah, thereby to deter.

LET'S TALK FOR A MINUTE ABOUT THE NIKE SYSTEM AND MISSILE DEFENSE JACK RUINA TOLD US THAT YOU ACCOMPANIED HIM TO BRIEF KENNEDY ON ABM AROUND THANKSGIVING OF '61. DO YOU REMEMBER THAT?

Yes. What happened was that ah, Eisenhower ah, had during his tenure several times rejected the ah, Army's and to a lesser extent the Secretary of Defense's, that was then Tom Gates proposals for anti-ballistic missile system deployment. That was so-called Nike Zeus system, which was a primitive ah, anti-missile system. When Kennedy ah, came in, he ah, was pressed again by some of the military, but not at that time by Secretary McNamara, to ah, consider deployment of a Nike Zeus system. Ah, my recollection is that during the summer of 1961 Jerry Wiesner, who was Kennedy's science adviser, thought it was time to bring Kennedy up-to-date on this matter. So that in preparation for the budget decisions to be made around Thanksgiving of 1981, Kennedy would be informed of these, these issues. To that end I, who was the chief research and engineering individual in the Defense Department, and Ruina, who had been assistant director for ah, defense, research and engineering for defensive systems, but had since become director of the advanced research projects agency, went over and talked with Kennedy about this. Ah, I remember the occasion quite well, because he was going of, I'm not sure whether to ah, Hyannis Port or Camp David. It was a summer after, afternoon, and ah, Mrs. Kennedy kept coming into the ah, Oval Office and urging him to ah, join her on the helicopter and he was too interested to do so. And it lasted an extra half-hour or so. At any rate, at that time no decisions were made, but ah, I think Kennedy began to understand some of the difficulties that accompany ah, an attempt to defend, ah urban populations and industry from a ballistic missile attack. These are a natural consequence of the extreme destructiveness of nuclear weapons...the extreme vulnerability of urban society, and the ability of an attacker to ah, concentrate his forces and, on a particular target ah, to overwhelm or to use up, exhaust the defense. Whereas the defense has to be able to defend everywhere, the attacker only has to be able to attack one place at a time. I'm sure that stuck in his memory, because ah, there was a further exposition of this issue in around Thanksgiving of 1961. McNamara at that time instituted the ah, the practice of briefing the President on the budget issues before the budget decisions were made. They were usually made during December, and he would go and brief the President. He did it first with Kennedy at Hyannis Port, and then later when Johnson became President, he did it at the Johnson ranch. Always at about Thanksgiving, and he generally took people along with him. On this occasion the Army was making a ah, pitch for ah, deployment of an anti-ballistic missile system. The ah Secretary of Defense McNamara did not support that, but he believed it useful and ah, President Kennedy believed it useful to give the advocates their turn. This is particularly so because at that time ah, General Taylor Max Taylor, who had been chief of staff of the Army back in the Eisenhower days had left the service and retired, had subsequently been called back by Kennedy to be his personal military adviser. And Taylor's Army connections were such that he was prevailed upon to urge that at least, that Kennedy at least hear the Army's presentation. Well, they they brought their presenter up to ah, Hyannis and ah, McNamara said, well since the Army is making it's technical presentation, we'll have our people there too. And ah, I recall sitting around the room in ah, in Hyannis, the living room, of the Kennedy house in the compound and ah, going through these arguments. It was part of a much bigger budget presentation. I remember the presentation was made on the rest of the defense budget, a presentation was made on civil defense, and so forth. To some extent this may have been just pro-forma. I think Kennedy had probably already made up his mind, but he was exposed to the arguments as to how anti-ballistic missiles could ah, save ah, the population in case of a war, and the counter arguments as to why it wouldn't, providing that the other side took prudent measures to make sure that they could penetrate the defense. And that then came out that he, like all of his predecessors, and all of his successors, until the present time, up until the present President of the United States concluded that anti-ballistic missile-defense ah, although, was a self, was not feasible... like all the other president's he continued research and development on the basis that some new developments might occur, that it was important not to allow the Soviet Union to surprise us and that working ballistic missile defense would provide us ah, with a way of being able to penetrate and thereby defeat any ballistic missile defense that the Soviet Union might mount and so preserve our deterrent capability.

HOW DID...WE JUST HAD A LONG TALK WITH GENERAL KENT ABOUT THE DAMAGE LIMITATION STUDY. TELL ME, HOW DID THAT GET UNDERWAY?

Secretary McNamara, during the first couple of years of ah, his term as Secretary of Defense had gone through several stages ah, in his views about nuclear strategy. He came in, I think, perhaps ah, believing that ah, deterrence was the most that could be done and that if a nuclear war, that is, that nuclear weapons could at best, deter nuclear war, and that if a nuclear war occurred civil populations would almost certainly ah, be destroyed and ah, the countries engaged in such a war destroyed with them. There were all sorts of estimates of casualties, but the one I remember best comes from early 1961 from a National Security Council meeting that said, depending on the circumstances of a war, the US could at the very least suffer ten or twenty million casualties, although the US could be pretty sure of inflicting eighty million deaths in the Soviet Union. And I remember that ah, President Kennedy did not find that very reassuring as evidence of ah, usable US superiority. Although, I think there's reason to believe that the Soviets at that time very much felt themselves inferior facing the same figures. Subsequent to that, McNamara, influence by some of the bright systems analysts, whom he had brought in, ah, people from the RAND Corporation in particular concluded that perhaps it would be possible to adopt a doctrine of military targets only. US ah, nuclear strategy had always been directed primarily at nuclear targets, although everyone knew that ah, attacks on military targets, particularly ones involving centers of military command and control, would produce very large numbers of civilian casualties. But there were alternatives that would at least not target civil populations and might even withhold some military targets to minimize civilian casualties that would go with them, with attack on military targets. But McNamara went further and in a, in one of his speeches said, "Why don't we adopt a nu--a military strategy that ah, says military targets only." Thus perhaps endowing nuclear weapons with some military meanings. Since if you could avoid ah, a massive exchange on urban industrial targets that might make military, make nuclear weapons usable as instruments of war aimed at other instruments of war.

...ONE OF HIS LINES WAS TO ASSURE 70 PERCENT SURVIVAL OF THE POPULATION...

That's right, well.

BEFORE WE GET INTO THE REACTION, ASSUMING THE SOVIETS DID NOTHING, DID THE STUDY SHOW ANY CONFIDENCE THAT WE COULD LIMIT DAMAGE TO THE EXTENT THAT 70 PERCENT OF THE POPULATION WOULD SURVIVE?

Well, if the US were prepared...well, the study showed that if the US were prepared to invest enough money and the Soviets kept their forces what they then were, and didn't do anything to try to ah, restore the situation, from their point of view, the US could limit damage so that seventy percent of the population survived. That, however, is not realistic if the Soviets have, as their goal, to destroy say, forty percent of the population, and can do so by building their forces and spending only a third of a fourth or a tenth as much money as the US needs to spend. In other words, there is, in other words, a ratio of offense expenditure and defense expenditure that goes with any level of survival. You pick a level of survival, and I'll tell you what the ratio of what the defense and offense have to spend to produce that percentage of survival. And ah, that ratio will depend upon how wise the choices are that the two sides make, and what the state of technology is.

WELL, 70 PERCENT SURVIVE. DID THIS GIVE YOU, JUST ASSUME THE SOVIETS DID NOTHING. MY UNDERSTANDING IS THAT'S ABOUT 60 MILLION DEAD. WAS THAT A...?

Well, the point I think, the point I think is that ah, the US could presumably, by being willing to spend three times as much as the Soviets, assure seventy percent survival, no matter what the Soviets did. However, looking at that in realistic political and strategic terms, the question is is that a sensible arrangement from the US point of view? And I believe that Secretary McNamara concluded and it was, and remains my conclusion that under those circumstances ah, the public is not going to be well served and the Congress will not support, and I think it's unlikely that any ah, president will support the expenditure of, well, what were then billions and would now be tens or maybe hundreds of billions of dollars simply to ah, assure that seventy percent of the US population survived. That only 60 million people were killed instead of 80 or a 100 million people. What that has to be weighed against is the question of how much all of this affects the likelihood of nuclear war and, again, I can't speak for anyone else, but I suspect that Secretary McNamara's conclusion was, it's worth more, the money is better spent to reduce the likelihood of nuclear war, than it is to spend ah, to assure that only 60 million instead of 80 or 100 million Americans get killed if there is a nuclear war.

DO YOU REMEMBER WHEN GENERAL KENT FIRST SHOWED YOU HIS STUDIES, WHAT WAS YOUR REACTION...?

Well, when Kent showed me his charts, I, you know, this always, this sort of thing always happens over a period, this sort of thing always happens over a period of hours or days, it doesn't happen in five minutes. I'd been kept informed of what the study results were as they came in. When he had them finished, I said this is an extremely instructive ah, set of results. It say, it tells, it says, it confirms civil defense is more cost effective than active defense. It confirms that ah the offense can penetrate the defense at a lower cost. It says something about the trade-off between bombers and missiles, let's go show this to the Secretary of Defense. So we did. I called McNamara up and we went down and saw him and he was very interested in the results too. And I think ah, as was characteristic of him, and ah, he drew some conclusions from those results, and those conclusions stuck in his mind very hard. And I think ah, persisted through the rest of his tenure as Secretary of Defense. A strong conclusion that against a determined and technically comparable, doesn't have to be equal, but comparable, ah adversary, it is not feasible to defend populations against a massive nuclear attack delivered by ballistic missiles ah, or bombers, in fact.

DO YOU REMEMBER WHAT HE SAID TO YOU AT THE TIME? AFTER THAT BRIEFING?

My recollection is that he concluded, what he said was a damage limitation strategy pursued by active defense if these numbers are right is going to be so expensive and so unrewarding in terms of still allowing many tens of millions of Americans to be killed, that ah, it is not going to be acceptable ah, politically.

DID HE EVER...KENT SAID "HAROLD, I'M NOT PREPARED TO BELIEVE THE AMERICAN PEOPLE WILL SUPPORT EXPENDITURES THREE TIMES MORE FOR...

Well, I don't remember the exact words, the tenor was what I suggested and I think ah, it may well have been some more colorful version.

WELL NOW IF YOU GIVE UP EXPENDITURES FOR LIMITING DAMAGE, DOESN'T...THAT LEAVE US PRETTY DEFENSELESS, PRETTY HELPLESS?

It leaves us in a situation in which ah, every American president beginning in 1961 has found himself as he entered office, a situation in which the United States can be destroyed by decisions taken elsewhere, and in which a decision to destroy the United States is prevented by rational calculations that such an action would result in the destruction of the Soviet state. That's what one means by mutual, by deterrence. And the Soviets have to make the same calculation about us, which is what you mean by mutual deterrence. It is not, as I said, a satisfactory situation, and every president has, therefore tried to find a way out of it by each one by his own combination of unilateral force deployment decisions, arms control negotiations, and ah, an attempt to alter or ease or resolve the political differences, fundamental political differences. Differences of system, of ideology, of goal, between the United States and the Soviet Union, that makes the situation dangerous, that make the situation dangerous. Ah...

WHEN WE GOT INTO THE POSITION WHERE WE WERE NO LONGER TALKING ABOUT DAMAGE LIMITATION AND STRESSING ASSURED DESTRUCTION, WAS THAT A REAL CHANGE IN STRATEGY. DID ASSURED DESTRUCTION MEAN A...PROCUREMENT CRITERION BECAUSE THE AIR FORCE WAS GETTING GREEDY FOR MORE MISSILES OR WAS IT A CHANGE IN STRATEGY?

Assured destruction was a codification of what had always been the strategy. The strategy of deterrence by the threat of retaliation. Retaliation against military targets, but with the understanding that in the extreme, in the ultimate, you could actually, you would also be destroying, or could destroy ah, people and industry. That had always been the strategy. It remained the strategy. Assured destruction gave it a name and was an attempt to quantify what could be counted on to deter a rational decision to attack the United States. And McNamara rather arbitrarily came up with these numbers. I mean that you could deter any rational decision to destroy the United States -- to attack the United States, if the Soviet leadership ah, understood that no matter what the course of a nuclear war, the United States would be able to destroy fifty percent of the Soviet urban population and a comparable fraction...more actually, of Soviet industry. That size is a force, not a going in force, but a force that would, would survive almost no matter what attack could be made on it by a preemptive Soviet attack. And ah, that was what McNamara occasionally called the 'worst case scenario'. In other words, the US would have enough forces surviving no matter how successful a Soviet attack could be expected to be. No matter what the circumstances of the attack and allowing for all sorts of ah, reliability errors on the US side, and ah, accuracy errors, and attrition of the forces by Soviet air defenses in the case of bombers, for example. And the Soviets knew that no matter what happened, the forces that could hit them after the, the worst they could do to US forces would reap destruction of that size. You know, and again, it's the order of fifty million deaths, and most of industry gone. Then there could be no rational ah, decision to attack the United States. That however, did, it's only when you put in the attrition factors and the uncertainties, that you could derive the appropriate size of the peacetime US force. Bombers, cruise missiles, I mean, bombers, ballistic missiles,...submarines, ballistic missiles, ICBMs. The corollary of that was that at anything less than a worst case situation, and of course, when you're dealing, when you're procuring forces, you're talking about what you'll have five years from now when the Soviet forces will be different and presumably less than you project in your worst case projections. That meant that the US would have much extra capability, beyond what it needed and therefore, that was what would be applied to the ah, military ah, targets. In other words, you size the force so as in the worst case, worst case of Soviet force procurements, as most unfavorable for the US, most unfavorable case for attrition, for accuracy, and so forth, ah, you have enough left after a surprise attack to do ah, unacceptable damage to the Soviet industrial and urban structure. But since you don't have the worst case, the US can instead in this approach, target military targets and use that to reduce damage to the United States. So you procure the forces to assure ah to have assured destruction capability, but you target so as to minimize damage to the United States.

AFTER SECRETARY MCNAMARA SPOKE OF A CITY AVOIDANCE COUNTERFORCE POLICY AT ANN ARBOR IN 1962, WHAT WAS THE AIR FORCE'S REACTION TO THIS? DID THIS TRIGGER A DEMAND FOR MORE AND MORE HARDWARE?

Well the... counterforce approach, the city avoidance approach, military targets only approach, certainly opened the door to unlimited requests for force. Because although, what it takes in the way of surviving and penetrating forces to do the assured destruction job is really not small, but certainly limited. If 400 one-megaton bombs can do the job then even after attrition through destruction by the other side and attrition through defense some thousands of warheads should be enough. But if you're going to target lots of military targets, then you need as many warheads as there are military targets. At least. Even if there's no destruction before launch, and even if there's no attrition by defense. As a consequence a military targets approach tends to open the door to unlimited force size. And this indeed may also have played some role in a shift from military targets only strategy to an assured destruction strategy. Because with an assured destruction strategy, you say, we will procure a force efficient to do the assured destruction job under the most unfavorable assumptions. That will leave us, under any real situations, with many more warheads than we need for the assured destruction function. And what we will do then, is do our targeting by targeting the bulk of the warheads on military targets reserving enough survivable and penetrable warheads to the assured destruction task which can also then operate to assure deterrence. So that if there is a nuclear war, and by some evolution of events, the two sides do attack military targets principally on the other side, we can reserve enough warheads and have them survive so as to deter a deliberate attack on our urban complexes and on our industry. It's a -- you know, it is a plausible theory, but I think no one can be certain that it would have very much chance of working in the fog of war after many nuclear weapons had been launched. So it cannot be in -- I don't think that secretary McNamara ever put it forward as a way of preventing nuclear war from causing catastrophic and terminal destruction on the two sides. It is at best a way of saying, if a nuclear war happens, perhaps it can be kept from inevitably destroying both sides.

BUT THE WAR PLAN NEVER CHANGED. WASN'T IT REALLY MORE OF A RHETORICAL SHIFT FROM COUNTERFORCE TO MUTUAL DESTRUCTION THAN IT WAS A CHANGE IN STRATEGY?

The war plan remained directed at military targets with the ability to withhold, if it was so decided at the time by the President, attacks on cities. But you did need a... a doctrine that would be understandable to the public. That would be effective internationally and that would provide a basis for force procurement. And the assured destruction approach did that.

BUT IT DIDN'T MEAN THAT IF DETERRENCE FAILED WE WOULD TAKE SUCH ACTION AS TO ASSURE OUR OWN DESTRUCTION?

The assured destruction approach was a criterion. It was not a targeting doctrine. It remained important to reserve enough forces to that the threat for assured destruction in retaliation for destruction of the United States' society would be a credible one. But it never became — and of course it's been misused by critics both of the right and of the left to suggest that it was -- but it never in fact was the approach for the US targeting schemes. The targeting schemes did not say, if a nuclear war starts or by whatever route the US action will be to assure destruction of the Soviet Union. The doctrine was in fact to assure retaliation and to reserve enough forces so that the threat of as... of destruction of industry and of cities remained.

WERE YOU FAMILIAR WITH THE SIOP TREATY?

Yes, I'd been briefed. I had been briefed on the SIOP in the '60s.

MCNAMARA WANTED OPTIONS. DID HE EVER GET THEM?

McNamara came in and was appalled by the relative lack of options and he insisted on options. Gradually they evolved. But very gradually. The SIOP...changing the SIOP is a lengthy and elaborate process and although options were produced, they were never as elaborate or as detailed as McNamara or his civilian successors in the Secretary of Defense's job, including myself or as presidents might have wished. Now, there's a reason for this. Military people understandable don't like to be asked to produce a very large number of different plans. Because the more plans you produce with a given amount of effort, the less certain you can be of each plan. Moreover, they always suspect, and not without reason, that their civilian superiors will say, I'll take this much of this plan and this much of this plan and this much of this plan and this much of another plan without recognizing that it doesn't work that way. That you need a single integrated operational plan which is what SIOP means and that multiplication of options introduces more and more chance that things won't work.

BUT IS IT BUREAUCRATIC INTRANSIGENCE? IT'S NOT A TECHNICAL PROBLEM, CARL KAYSEN SAID YOU COULD CHANGE THE SIOP IN A MATTER OF HOURS...

You can make choices in a matter of hours, but you cannot improvise strategic plans. I think that the--sure you can do the computer calculations quickly. But you do need considerable care in assuring that things happen in the right sequence. That you don't get in your own way. And that you've considered all the implications of a change. That cannot be done quickly. And I think also, military. Senior military people have a concern that in a time of crisis a civilian decision maker can keep in his head only a certain number of options and understand them. It's -- and again you have to consider that in a time of what may be seen as imminent nuclear war people may not be at their best in careful calculations and rational decisions. There's another side to this, of course. The military people often want to have just a single approach or as small a number of approaches as possible because they don't want to be governed in detail. Well they say, all right, if we're going to go, tell us to go, and don't get in our way.

DID MCNAMARA GIVE UP ON USE OPTIONS, ON THE KINDS OF REFINEMENTS YOU MIGHT NEED TO MAKE DETERRENCE CREDIBLE? AND WHAT DO YOU DO IF IF DETERRENCE FAILS?

I don't think... I...well -- I think that while he was Secretary of Defense, I don't think he did get...give up. He may have given up subsequently, but I believe that during his tenure as Secretary of Defense, he continued to try and get more options. And that approach actually continued after he left and certainly continued to my knowledge through the end of the 1970s.

PEOPLE CRITICIZE HIM FOR NOT MOVING MORE IN THAT DIRECTION. THAT HE USHERED IN A DECADE OF NEGLECT. DO ANY OF THESE CRITICISMS STRIKE YOU?

I think this is I think that complaints that development proceeded too slowly in the '60s is the result of faulty hindsight. In fact, the US then and subsequently made the qualitative improvements first. Oh quantity the US tended to lag behind in numbers of missiles for example. But given the choice between important new qualitative changes and grinding out systems like sausages, I think probably the US made the right decisions. If we --It is true, I think, that we could have had several additional generations of land based intercontinental ballistic missiles than we did have. However, given the US tendency to to be sloppy on some of these things, it is probably just as well that the US kept some of its systems for a long time. It allowed their reliability to improve. And it meant that when we did make changes, they were not small changes. They were enormous changes as for example going to multiple independently targeted reentry vehicles which was a falloff...which multiplied the number of targets that could be hit. We made changes in accuracy that were very very substantial as between Minuteman Is, say Minuteman III, and MX. I think that probably made more sense. But I understand that there could be other judgments. In the case of anti-ballistic missile systems, if the advocates of of deployment had had their way we probably would have had a completely useless and a very expensive anti-ballistic missile system deployed not on one occasion, but on two or three. That could still happen.

WHAT WAS THE RATIONAL FOR THE MIRVING DECISION? WAS IT TO REVIVE THE COUNTERFORCE OPTION? HAD WE SAW THAT THE SOVIETS WERE BUILDING MORE...

The MIRV decision really was a way of covering a target list. The the desire to be able to hit Soviet targets, Soviet missiles for example, which at that time were sufficiently soft so that simply adding reentry vehicles on the same missile would allow the US to cover many many more Soviet missile launch sites made a considerable amount of sense. At that time, I think, we were very largely concerned with the Soviet threat to Europe. Soviet medium range ballistic missiles. And the MIRV was...the MIRVING of ICBMs was designed to be able to say to the Europeans, We are covering the target that threatens you without our having to build a great many additional missiles. It also served to improve the US capability to penetrate what were then seen as possible Soviet anti-ballistic missile systems. In 1964 and '65 the Soviets were deploying what proved to be an air defense system, but which was seen by many analysts and the more alarmed intelligence analysts and the more alarmed strategists as a Soviet ballistic missile defense. One way to penetrate a ballistic missile defense it to increase the number of warheads that you fire at it and to be able to put those warheads precisely the right place. MIRVing a system does that. Both of these reasons for multiplying warheads on the Minuteman and subsequently on the submarine launched ballistic missiles were therefore responses to perceived Soviet threats. One Soviet threat of medium ranged missiles against Europe. Another Soviet threat, their anti-ballistic missile system.

PEOPLE GET MAD OVER THE TERM MAD WHAT ARE SOME OF THE MYTHS THAT MAD SUGGESTS TO YOU?

When people use the acronym MAD to denigrate mutual deference — by saying MAD stands for mutual assured destruction they are in effect, railing at the way the world is rather than trying to improve it. Indeed it's the case, very probably, that if a nuclear starts, the US and the Soviet Union will be destroyed. It's not certain, but it's... very very probable. Very likely. That is what mutual deterrence means. And many believe – I tend to believe it myself – It's an unprovable matter – that had it not been for deterrence by the threat of retaliation there would very likely have been a war between the US and the Soviet Union. Uh. . . there hasn't been one for 40 years. It would be a mistake to throw that away. That deterrence away before we have something better. And what that something better is, no one has been able to say. There have been various claims. Some think unilateral disarmament is better. Some think that a perfect defense is better and achievable. But no one's been able to show that anything better is achievable. We therefore... ought not to discard it lightly. But that does not mean that the situation is a comfortable one because deterrence may fail. And as I've indicated before, every president comes to office asking whether there isn't some better solution. Up until now, they've all decided that it has...there is no better solution. That deterrence by the threat of retaliation is the way to prevent nuclear war. While we try to manage the adversarial relation with the Soviet Union which it...is bound to extend as far as we can see. That doesn't mean it will last forever, but no one can say when it might end.

THEORETICALLY, USE OPTIONS AREN'T AN ESCAPE FROM THE ASSURED DESTRUCTION CAPABILITY?

I think that aside from active defense an effective active defense and an invulnerable active defense and an invulnerable active defense and a cost effective active defense Use options don't solve the problems because even if they are confined to military targets the threat of an escalation to cities and industry and people will always remain. So you would have what's called intra-war deterrence by the threat of attack of cities. So there doesn't seem to be any military solution. People have claimed various political solutions, as I say. Arms...disarm... unilateral disarmament, arms control, political negotiation. And I myself believe that deterrence of nuclear war is not solely a military matter. It's not solely a matter of deterring by the threat of nuclear retaliation. It also is a matter of political negotiation of a political situation. Of the way each side feels, whether it feels so threatened that it's sure that a nuclear war is coming. Because it seems to me that the most likely failure of deterrence will come if one side or the other feels so sure that nuclear war will happen that it determines to strike first...