I WANT TO ASK YOU ABOUT THE TIME WHEN YOU WENT BACK TO LIVERMORE AND ESPECIALLY THE BOMB AS A TACTICAL WEAPON. AND ALSO ABOUT THE ATMOSPHERE OF THE TIME... WHAT WAS YOUR ATTITUDE TO THE RUSSIANS, TO SECURITY AT THE TIME?

Yeah. It was during -- you know, we started Livermore -- Livermore was one of the consequences of the Korean War, as well as the first Soviet nuclear test. And there was great concern about what --

DON'T START YET. I'LL JUST BRIEFLY GO THROUGH THINGS. A LITTLE BIT ABOUT THE VON NEUMANN COMMITTEE'S DECISION TO GO AHEAD WITH THE ICBMS. AND I'D LIKE YOUR STORY ABOUT THE SORT OF ARBITRARINESS--

...to defend ourselves just wasn't promising.

THEN WE WANT TO GET A BIT MORE SPECIFIC TO YOUR EXPERIENCE AT ARPA AND THE DDR&E. I'D LIKE TO GET YOUR VIEW ON THE LONG RANGE MISSILE PROGRAMS. HOW THEY CAME ABOUT. WERE THEY ALL NECESSARY? AND HOW DID INTER-SERVICE RIVALRY CONTRIBUTE TO THE FACT THAT THERE WERE SIX, AND SO ON. A QUESTION ABOUT THE ROLE OF STRATEGIC THINKING AS OPPOSED TO TECHNOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENT IN THE ARRIVAL OF THESE MISSILE SYSTEMS, ESPECIALLY THINGS LIKE POLARIS. WAS IT BUILT BECAUSE SOMEBODY SAT DOWN AND SAID "WHAT WE NEED IS AN INVULNERABLE--"?

Both, because it's just a continuing stream of discussions involving a fairly small group of people with minor changes in the players as you go along.

OKAY, AND A QUESTION ABOUT--

That's probably the best that made... of the ones that--

IN A WAY THE B-70 IS MORE RELEVANT NOW, GIVEN THAT THE B-1 IS WITH US...

The AMP was almost entirely a technical driver. And the B-70, like the B-1. There are plenty of people who believe that's the right way to... you know, that's the airplane you need for some fairly well determined missions. But it's certainly true that the press and the politics and labor and everybody else team up together to make sure that it happens.

WHEN YOU TOOK OVER AS DIRECTOR OF THE LAWRENCE LIVERMORE LABORATORY, CAN YOU DESCRIBE TO ME THE MOOD OF THE COUNTRY, YOUR OWN MOOD ABOUT THE NATIONAL SECURITY, ABOUT THE SOVIETS AND SO ON?

Yes. The Livermore Laboratory was formed in the wake of three major events. One was the first Soviet atomic bomb. The second was the Korean War. And the third was the creation of the Peoples Republic of China and, more important, of the Sino-Soviet block with the leadership of both of those countries proclaiming eternal solidarity with each other and essentially hostility towards us. It really looked as though we were in for some bad times.

DID YOU BELIEVE THERE WAS A REAL THREAT TO THE SECURITY OF THE UNITED STATES?

Well I don't -- I can't say that I, at any time, I thought war was coming. But I did think that we were going to have a lot of problems. That there was going to be pressure on our allies and probably other parts of the world. Not so much on North America, but in other parts of the world. The Korean War was a specific example of that. And remember that in 1952 that's only four years after the last coup in Czechoslovakia, and the Berlin Blockade. Those things were fresh events. So the notion of the Sino-Soviet bloc applying pressure everywhere, expanding with a force behind it involving practically half the population of the world, it did seem to me as to I'm sure a lot of others that American technology -- our technological advance was... something we needed to exploit. It was our only important advantage.

DID YOU HAVE ANY THOUGHTS... DID YOU BELIEVE THAT TACTICAL NUCLEAR WEAPONS WERE A GOOD IDEA. THAT THEY WOULD BE USED OR WOULD BE USABLE IN A BATTLEFIELD SITUATION?

Yes. And of course I wasn't alone on that either. The the VISTA committee of which Robert Oppenheimer was a key player had pushed the idea of tactical weapons. That doesn't necessarily just mean battlefield weapons. It means short-range missiles. It means bombs of a type that are particularly useful in tactical situations. And so we at Livermore did push the development of weapons of this kind. Very small... physically small. Lightweight, small diameter, relatively low yield weapons that might conceivably be used in a tactical situation.

THERE WAS OF COURSE A DIFFERENT ATTITUDE THEN ABOUT THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN NUCLEAR WEAPONS AND OTHER KINDS OF WEAPONS AS OPPOSED TO TODAY...

Well. We thought of them as being very different. The sort of a special aura that they acquired by being so new and so much more powerful was still very much a part of the thinking of everybody. But you know, we saw it as the. We saw it as the way of handling essentially those hordes. I mean there was the Sino-Soviet block with all the pledges of solidarity and as I said, also all of the virtually pledges of permanent hostility and these high technology devices seemed to a lot of people, certainly including me, as a way of balancing that off.

CAN YOU REMEMBER WHAT YOUR OWN PERSONAL REACTION WAS WHEN THE SPUTNIK WENT UP?

Well, it was quite mixed. I would say that it included a very large element of surprise. I mean, I just didn't expect the Soviets to do that first. If I had been carefully reading all the documents and newspapers I might very well have not been so surprised. In addition, it was one even of elation. I, you know, as a small -- as a boy I had been reading the comics about the space travel, and Buck Rogers, and all those sorts of things. So the notion of actually getting a satellite up there struck me as being something wonderful, even though it was the Russians who did it. Beyond that I saw something of the significance that it held in connection with other Soviet accomplishments of a more military nature, although I never shared the general nervousness of so many member of the American body politic about what this meant. But that I think is because I really did know more of the details. Even though I was at Livermore, I'd been on the Von Neumann committee and had other connections so that I did have a good grasp of what was going on. And I knew that we were doing much better than it seemed.

IF YOU COULD DESCRIBE TO US WHY THE VON NEUMANN COMMITTEE TOOK THE DECISION TO GO ALL OUT FOR ICBMS IN THE EARLY '50S.

Well, the Von Neumann Committee -- and there actually several committees-- Johnny Von Neumann was the central figure on all of them -- kept constant track of what intelligence we had about what the Soviets were doing. Kept constant track of what the possibilities were that were beginning to come out of American technology and putting all of these things together. Pushing the ICBM. Maybe one would say three.

REPEATS QUESTION.

There were two or three reasons for promoting ICBMs. One was that we were aware the Russians were building ICBMs and we felt it was necessary to match them in this particular field that seemed to have so much potential importance. The second was that the Soviets were building air defenses--had been ever since the end of the war. And although we were fairly confident about our airplanes being able to penetrate them, we didn't know what the future hale and it did seem widely to us and others that ICBMs were the sure answer to Soviet air defenses. We'd just be able to en route them and they'd never be able to stop. So that was the second reason. And the third reason is probably it's fair to say, the technological imperative. The capability for doing all of this was coming out of technology. The engines were being developed. We understood more about how to build the air frames for them. The nuclear weapons...the suitable nuclear weapons were in the offing, and so was a suitable guidance system. So there was a kind of a technological imperative as well. But the strategic reasons, I think, probably were dominant.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE H-BOMB MADE A BIG DIFFERENCE, DIDN'T IT? TO THE SIZE OF THE WARHEAD.

Yes. Interestingly enough in retrospect, we could have done it with the atomic bomb. But at the time, when the people who put together all these factors concluded that the A-bomb really wasn't quite big enough given the accuracy and the weight of the bomb itself. And therefore, when the H-bomb came along that did play a major role in pushing people towards Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles.

COULD YOU JUST EXPLAIN EXACTLY WHY...?

Well, it was it was seen early on as providing a much larger explosion for a given weight. And the judgment was made by Von Neumann and the people who advised him, including myself and Edward Teller and others, that you could get a megaton in a package that could be delivered to its target by an ICBM that was within reach.

AND YOU COULD RELAX THE ACCURACY NEEDED AS WELL.

Yes. Although...that's true. You could relax the accuracy requirement. And the accuracy requirement that the Air Force was putting on the ICBM was much too tight. You could have relaxed it anyway. But it is the advent of the H-bomb that really settled that question for once and for all; removed the controversy over the question of how accurate it had to be.

ONCE THAT DECISION CAME ABOUT, TO WHAT EXTENT WERE THE MANUFACTURERS INVOLVED IN THAT DECISION EARLY ON?

Well, they were involved, but they were also part of the problem. And therefore they were less involved than they might otherwise have been. In other words, Von Neumann, and several of the other key advisers to Von Neumann, felt that Convair was part of the problem and therefore they were not as intimately involved as they might have been.

HOW DID YOU KNOW THEY WERE PART OF THE PROBLEM?

The feeling was that they didn't have the right design. That they were pushing an obsolete design. That perhaps they didn't have the right people. At any rate they were perceived as part of the problem and not just as part of the solution. And that's why so many changes in the organization were made: the establishment of the Western Development Division of the Air Force; the establishment of the Ramo-Wooldridge corporation to provide advice and so on.

TO GO BACK TO SPUTNIK, WHAT WAS THE REACTION? YOU BECAME VERY INVOLVED IN THIS A YEAR OR SO LATER IN TRYING TO CONTROL IT. BUT WHAT WAS THE REACTION OF THE DEFENSE ESTABLISHMENT TO THAT?

Well, a lot of people were much more worried about what it meant than I was, for example of... perhaps because they were less informed about our own programs and the fact that we really weren't as far behind as it looked. And there were exaggerated ideas about the importance of space and the military dimension. And so there were a tremendous number of ideas being cooked up by people who just were plain nervous and even scared. At the same time there were a lot of people including many of the same ones who saw this as a great opportunity to do things they'd been dreaming about, thinking about, proposing. And they saw this as a trigger that would release a lot of money that they felt a conservative administration had been withholding. So that also played a role. And both among civilians among people in industry and within the military itself, there were a lot of people who saw this as getting...eliminating a lot of things that had been inhibiting the exploitation of these great ideas they'd been proposing for sometime past.

A BIT OF A KEY TO THE TREASURE CHEST?

Yes. But, you know, in terms of opportunity as well as in terms of money.

YOU USED IT YOURSELF IN THAT WAY AT LIVERMORE DIDN'T YOU?

Yes. In a very small way. I did have a visit from the man in Washington whom we dealt with immediately, the Director of Military Applications. And I had arranged to have a tape recording of the beep that Sputnik made played. We had it set out on the conference table and played it while he was there as you know, our way of reinforcing the message that we really needed to change what we were doing and our way of approaching things.

YOU WERE CONNECTED WITH THE VON NEUMANN COMMITTEE AND THE GAITHER PANEL AND THEN LATER ON INVOLVED IN THE ADMINISTRATION IN GIVING SCIENTIFIC ADVICE. WHAT WAS THE ROLE OF SCIENTIFIC ADVISERS IN THE EISENHOWER ADMINISTRATION AND DID IT CHANGE?

Well it was I think it was It was an especially important period. That is the role of scientific advice peaked at that time, I think. It was a time when the main threat was seen as having just taken on a new technological dimension. A threat which originally had been in terms of manpower and numbers was now taking on a technological dimension. Was beginning to threaten us in the area where we were--

SO YOU WERE DESCRIBING THE ROLE OF SCIENTISTS...

Well, I think the role of scientists really peaked during the Eisenhower administration, especially the late Eisenhower administration and the Kennedy administration which followed, because we suddenly found ourselves faced with a technological problem of a kind we hadn't faced before. We had seen the Russians as a potential enemy that was going to outnumber us and maybe out gun us with low-grade equipment. But now, suddenly, they show up as having a technological capability beyond what we had been expecting. And so people turned. It was natural that the political leadership would turn to scientists for advice. And happily, the people they turned to a number of people who happened to be the kind that developed a good and easy working relationship with both political leaders and the military leaders. And I'm thinking of Killian and how well he fitted with Eisenhower. And Kistiakowsky also. And then Von Neumann and Von Karman and others who fit so well with the leadership in the Air Force. It became a good, effective, easy, working relationship in which people relied on each others views and judgments. So the judgments of these scientists with respect to this new technological problem was well received, was sought and well received.

SOME SCIENTISTS HAVE DESCRIBED TO ME KIND OF A SEA CHANGE THAT TOOK PLACE TOWARD THE END OF THE '50S. DID THAT HAPPEN TO YOU?

Well, you're speaking with respect to the question of confidence in science as the solution to these problems. And yes, I think I shared in that. In two stages. In '58, I came to realize that political questions, such as those associated with the test ban could be every bit as important as the technical questions that made nuclear testing necessary. And that the technology was not... could not be the overriding consideration. Then a little later, as I got more deeply into questions of defense and explored the possibilities that people hoped might be there, that we would find a technical means for defending ourselves against nuclear attack, it became evident to me that we were not going to find such a means. And that we had to seek solutions otherwise than just in military technology.

CAN YOU DESCRIBE THE SITUATION YOU FOUND WHEN YOU BECAME CHIEF SCIENTIST AT ARPA AND LATER DDR&E ESPECIALLY WITH RESPECT TO THE LONG RANGE MISSILE PROGRAMS.

Well there was a certain amount of there were some problems having to do with the fact that the office of the Secretary of Defense did not have a lot of technical competence at its command. And therefore activities in the services connected with fights over turf, inter-service rivalry, unnecessary duplication and so forth, were causing problems. And holding back the American technological program from moving as forward moving forward as well as it could. I would say that in the long range missile program though, that's probably one of the best areas. There were a lot of different missiles being developed all at the same time. But there was a certain rational for that in that when they were started -- when, which was 3 years earlier -- there were a lot of uncertainties about which ones would work and therefore we probably tried more: different varieties than we needed to. And as it turned out, they all worked. So, you know, in retrospect there was an excess, but it didn't seem like that in the beginning. It was in the area of space that we had the most chaotic situation in which inter-service rivalry was playing the most serious role. And confusing and making it difficult to make the right decisions and choices.

YOU DESCRIBE IN YOUR BOOK THE VARIOUS CLAIMS THAT THE SERVICES LAID TO SPACE. CAN YOU GO THROUGH THOSE?

Well, the Navy said that obviously we should be first in space, because after all, they call them space ships don't they. And the army thought of long-range missiles as being similar to artillery and the moon as being high ground. And the Air Force, and I think more logically regarded space simply as an extension of the atmosphere and therefore a spaceflight as being a logical extension of a flight in the air.

SO THEY ALL WANTED TO BUILD...

The all wanted to build satellites. They all wanted to launch satellites. They all wanted to either play the key role or at least a key role and there was intense competition among them and duplicating proposals and duplicating activities.

DO YOU THINK, IN RETROSPECT, THE JUPITER MISSILE PROGRAM WAS JUSTIFIED?

Certainly not in retrospect. In fact of all of the missiles that's the one which I believe, even before hand we should have recognized as being unnecessary.

DID YOU HAVE ANY PROBLEMS AS A COMPARATIVELY YOUNG MAN TRYING TO EXERT YOUR POWERS?

Well, I may have, but, you know, I really didn't notice them. I mean I did have a lot of problems with various people. But but they were always over substance. I mean, I never thought of them as involving personality or youth or even civilians versus military. But as involving questions of substance. And I was fairly confident that I under...that in most cases I understood the situation well enough to uphold my end of these arguments.

YOU HAD A LITTLE DIFFICULTY WHEN YOU HAD TO TELL THE ARMY THAT THE JUPITER WASN'T GOING TO GO UP.

Yes, we had some very particular problems. And cancelling the Jupiter was one of them. And getting the Army out of space was another closely related one. And I had a lot of difficulty there with General John Bruce Medaris, and Secretary of the Army, Wilber Brucker who were dedicated to continuing those programs long after they were not necessary and played no useful role at all in the American national defense program.

CAN YOU GIVE ME SOME EXAMPLES THE WAY THE SERVICES AND CONGRESS AND SOME OF THE ELEMENTS OF THE PRESS WOULD GET TOGETHER TO TRY AND FORCE ONTO THE ADMINISTRATION DECISIONS IT DIDN'T WANT TO MAKE.

Well, I suppose cases are as good as anything. And I think of the nuclear propelled aircraft as being one in which a group within the Air Force and the Atomic Energy Commission combined with a group in industry at the General Electric jet engine facilities and also at Pratt and Whitney, and certain people in the press--what I called the missile press at the time, Aviation Week and other journals of that kind--joined together to just create a picture of the possibilities for a nuclear airplane that were unreal. Create pictures of a threat that were false. Impressions that the Soviets were just on the verge of producing one. That we had to have one...something that would match it. There are many other cases as well in which you find those groups I mentioned and then also of course the labor--sometimes the labor unions cutting in. Especially when you had something going that was threatened with cancellation. The nuclear airplane didn't really... was still sort of ahead of us when we cancelled it. Some other things like the B-70 which came up at that time were projects that were well under way when the authorities decided to cancel them. And there you had the groups I described plus the labor unions entering into the struggle to keep them going.

ON THE WHOLE, DO YOU THINK THAT STRATEGIC CONSIDERATIONS WERE MORE IMPORTANT IN DECIDING WHAT WEAPONS TO PRODUCE OR WAS IT BASICALLY JUST "WHAT CAN WE DO?"

It really was both and they were tightly interwoven because it was a relatively small group of people who dealt with each other directly. A group of technical people who knew what it is that could be done. And a group of military people who had ideas about what ought to be done. And each of them knowing something about the field of the other that worked together over, you know, many years, slowly changing personnel on each side that developed all of these things. That set the characteristics, set the numbers, set the types. You know, invented the triad by accident.

WHEN YOU SAY BY ACCIDENT?

Well the triad happened, and then after it happened people recognized that it had a lot of virtues.

BUT IT DIDN'T START FROM PEOPLE SAYING, WELL, WHAT WE NEED IS FLEXIBILITY, INVULNERABLE DETERRENCE, AND SO ON.

Well, no. And yet people did, and yet those were all recognized military virtues. Especially the question of survivability having various types so as to assure survivability and also having various types so as to assure penetration of any defenses. Those were recognized, but the notion that there should be just three and somehow coequal branches to a triad--that just happened. I mean, when it happened with the creation of the naval system because the other two predated it.

WHAT IS YOUR RECOLLECTION OF HOW POLARIS CAME TO BE?

Well, I don't remember all the factors. But the Navy had always been involved in carrying war to the enemy through carrier, task forces and so on. And that included nuclear war. There were nuclear weapons on carriers. The Navy was developing short-range missiles, cruise missile types to go on submarines for attacking the shore and for attacking other ships. And so it was natural to think of putting missiles on submarines or other vessels. The first idea that I remember was to put Polaris sub...was to put Jupiters on... In the early '50s the Navy saw the Air Force as running off with the whole strategic mission which they had previously shared. And began searching around for ways to get back in, stay in. And I don't know who got the idea, but the notion of putting Jupiter missiles on submarines was born in conjunction these considerations. Everyone recognized that was a... not such a hot idea. Big, enormous, liquid fueled missiles on submarines just didn't appeal to anyone. And so from the very beginning people sought a way to avoid that. To find some other better solution. The army, of course, liked it. Because it provided a rational, an additional rational for the Jupiter which, from the very beginning was under fire. But the notion of a solid propellant rocket was already in the air. The... the efficiency of such rockets was rapidly improving. And the laboratories, and in particular at the Livermore Laboratory, we had reached the conclusion that we could build a war head suitable for such a mission that was much lighter than...the previous ones. And putting all those things together made the Polaris program possible. Which meant a solid fuel rocket of a size that could conveniently fit on a submarine with a warhead that could conveniently be lofted by such a rocket.

BUT NOBODY AS FAR AS YOU'RE AWARE SAT DOWN AND SAID, WELL NOW THE PROBLEM IS THAT SAC MIGHT BECOME VULNERABLE. WHAT WE NEED IS SOMETHING ON A SUBMARINE WHICH IS INVULNERABLE TO ATTACK...?

Well, I think that idea... The idea of the SAC aircraft.... Air Force being invulnerable was always in the wind. I don't remember anybody associating with this particular question. But the notion that SAC might be surprised on the ground was alive since 1950. And the idea that we had to--and the idea that survivability of the deterrent was important was also very much in the air at the time. So the connection was certainly implicit even if I don't know of any explicit case in that regard. So the idea was there that the survival was an issue. That putting missiles on submarines was a way of coping with that... with that issue.

IF WE COULD JUST TALK ABOUT NUMBERS FOR A BIT. IT'S NOTICEABLE THAT WHEN THE NAVY TALKED ABOUT HOW MANY POLARIS MISSILES IT NEEDED IN THE LATE '50S WOULD TEND TO ARGUE BY HOW MANY WERE NEEDED BASICALLY TO ACCOMPLISH MASSIVE RETALIATION ON ITS OWN. IS THAT THE CASE? AND DOESN'T THAT MEAN THAT IF YOU TAKE ALL THE FORCES TOGETHER YOU ENDED UP WITH OVERKILL?

Well, that there's always this factor in planning the strategic forces that you're never sure how many I'm going to -- You're always afraid of a surprise attack and that you're going to have to deal...you're going to have to use the surviving forces. That deterrence has to be based on the survivors, not on the original deployed forces. And so conservatism does enter in...planning them and so it's probably true that the Navy had in mind a force big enough to accomplish the mission all on its own. But that was...but that idea was a generally... was a general idea that was alive at the time. The the Navy's problem was that from the first it was recognized that the Polaris system was especially expensive.

HOW WERE THESE NUMBERS ARRIVED AT? WHY WAS IT NECESSARY TO HAVE ENOUGH MISSILES JUST IN THE POLARIS FORCE TO ACCOMPLISH MASSIVE RETALIATION WITHOUT ANY REGARD TO THE OTHERS?

Well, when the...when the Polaris first was first being planned, all missiles were new and there were a lot of uncertainties with them. And it was plausible for the people planning Polaris to imagine that they might be the only force that would live after some kind of a surprise attack. And so they wanted to plan a course which could produce as...the same as closely as possible the same kind of threat, the same level of damage as the Air Force elements could produce. But at the same time everyone knew that Polaris missiles were much more expensive per missile. And so there was always a conflict between having enough to make...to make a real contribution to the strategic force and at the same time have them affordable — have the whole program be affordable. And so it was compromises between those two counterbalancing forces that led to the...that ultimately led to the kind of force we have. The further considerations that entered were that while the missiles, the intercontinental ballistic missiles and the aircraft could...were weapons that would be ready all the time. These Polaris systems in the beginning had to steam from America — if I can use that for a nuclear submarine — had to steam from an American port to a position close to the Soviet Union. The range was quite short. It was even only 900 miles in the first generation system. So that only a fraction of them would be on duty stationed. Less than half was the original concept. And that provided another multiplier that forced...that you know, made the force bigger than might otherwise have been necessary.

BUT IN GENERAL, YOU SAID BEFORE THAT THERE WAS A SORT OF ARBITRARINESS ABOUT FORCE LEVELS. I MEAN THE FACT THAT WE ENTERED WITH A THOUSAND MINUTEMEN IN THE EARLY '60S...

Yes. Well, the rough size of the force was determined by the alternative forces that it competing with, being compared with. And we already in the early '50s had 2,000 strategic bombers. They were not all intercontinental range. Only a few of them were. But nevertheless we had advanced bases and we had refueling and so on. So the bomber force that we were starting with was a force of a couple thousand airplanes. That meant that any force that was intended to do a comparable job had to be of comparable size. So that meant you couldn't have a hundred missiles. You had to have a number which was comparable with 2,000. And the round number that fits that criterion is 1,000. So right from the very beginning, and not based on any particular attack plan or anything like that, or even any particular set of targets, the notion that there should be 1,000 Minutemen was in the air. There was also some proposals that it would be 10,000, but it was realized early on that although that's a nice round number, that was just beyond the pale. It was too expensive and we really didn't need that many. And 100 is too small. So a thousand was a nice round number. So the very earliest plans that I'm aware of which go all the way back to '52 and '53 called for a force of 1,000.

AND AFTER ALL THE BACKING AND FILLING THAT'S WHAT...

After all the systems analysis and operations analysis and the invention of a lot of language to explain all these calculations we ended up with the same number we started with, yes.

ROBERT MCNAMARA SAID THAT A THOUSAND WAS THE MINIMUM HE COULD GET AWAY WITH IN CONGRESS AND THAT WAS VERY LARGELY BECAUSE OP THE POLITICAL CLIMATE INTRODUCED ESPECIALLY BY THE MISSILE GAP DO YOU HAVE ANY RECOLLECTIONS AS TO WHAT YOUR ATTITUDE WAS TO THE INTELLIGENCE THAT WAS COMING THROUGH AND THE CLIMATE OF THE MISSILE GAP IN THE LATE '50S?

Well, it changed early on. At the time of the Gaither Panel, I thought that the... that the Soviets would soon face us with a very large number of missiles. Then after I got deeper into things, and that includes deeper into the intelligence world, I came to realize that those prospects were not likely. And further more the more we looked for Soviet missiles in '58, '59, and '60, the — well we looked very hard. We never found any except for a few at the missile test site. And while proving a negative was impossible under the circumstances — I mean the Soviet Union is huge and closed — Proving there were do missiles was impossible. On the other hand, the fact we were not finding them where we thought...in the few places we could look and where we though they ought to be was beginning to persuade me and others, especially President Eisenhower, that indeed, the missiles probably aren't there...that Khrushchev is bluffing and that the American experts who claimed that there are lots of Soviet missiles are also in some sense serving their own purposes in claiming so.

AND THAT WOULD THEREFORE BE PARTICULARLY THE AIR FORCE INTELLIGENCE AND SAC INTELLIGENCE?

Some yes. But there were civilians as well. And why some of them, you know, I really have no explanation for some of them. Why was Joseph Alsop so certain that all those missiles were out there. Well, somebody in the Air Force was leaking to him. But why did he believe them and someone else. I don't know.

WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT THE WAY THE DEMOCRATS USED THAT ISSUE IN THE ELECTION?

Well, there again, I think it's a mixture of real sincerity. There were reasons to believe that there might be a lot out there. And the Russians were trying to make us think so. I remember Khrushchev talking about turning them out like sausages. I had this mental picture of this huge piece of tubing ten feet in diameter coming down on an assembly line. They'd pinch it off at each end, you know, like a sausage, and put engines at one end, a warhead at the other. So there was there was a basis for these fears. And then as far as the democrats are concerned, it's very conveniently fit for their political purposes which were to win the next election and one of the... one of the means for doing that was to claim that Eisenhower had paid insufficient attention to this very difficult important problem.

DID YOU KNOW ABOUT THE U-2 AT THE TIME?

Well, I came to know it during that period. When I was on the Gaither Panel I did not, but when I became...when I went into ARPA and in the Defense Department, then of course, I did. And... but the U-2 was a very important tool and a useful one. But the coverage was...that it could obtain of the Soviet Union was a tiny, fraction of an enormous closed country.

WHAT DO YOU THINK THAT EISENHOWER MEANT WHEN HE TALKED ABOUT THE MILITARY-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX AND ESPECIALLY WHEN HE TALKED ABOUT UNWARRANTED INFLUENCE OR THE DANGER OF UNWARRANTED INFLUENCE? DO YOU THINK THERE WERE INDIVIDUAL EPISODES THAT HE WAS THINKING OF WHEN HE MADE THAT SPEECH?

Well, yes I do. I don't want to speculate on which persons and which episodes those were, but I believe that he had in mind episodes involving the missile program, the space program, and some in the nuclear program as well. But Eisenhower...

...BUT HE SAYS THAT HE'S BEEN TOLD THAT EISENHOWER HAD HIM IN MIND AMONG OTHERS WHEN HE MADE THAT SPEECH...

He may have. He was not my favorite candidate, but...

WHAT DO YOU THINK EISENHOWER HAD IN MIND WHEN HE TALKED ABOUT UNWARRANTED INFLUENCE? WHAT PARTICULAR INSTANCES IF YOU CAN TELL ME.

Well, I think he did have some particular instances in mind having to do with missiles, space, and nuclear weapons in which people were pushing, and telling him that if you didn't do this the nation was in peril and so on. But Eisenhower believed we needed a military-industrial complex. He simply,he didn't say... That we needed a military industrial complex. The warning was not that we should get rid of it, but that we should see to it that it didn't acquire unwarranted influence. And the same way with what he spoke of as the scientific technological elite. He very definitely felt that we needed a scientific technological elite, but he also felt we had to make sure that somehow they didn't run away with policy on the basis of judgments which were too narrow.

DO YOU THINK HE WOULD HAVE FELT THAT HAS HAPPENED SINCE THEN IF HE WERE AROUND TODAY?

I believe that he would...that he would have a longer list of instances in mind whether he would believe that it happened in the net or not, I'm not so sure.

A LOT OF PEOPLE IMMEDIATELY AFTER THE EISENHOWER ERA LOOK BACK ON HIM AS A COMPLACENT, LAZY PRESIDENT THAT WASN'T IN CONTROL OF WHAT WAS GOING ON.

Yeah, not me.

HOW DO YOU LOOK AT HIM?

Well, I look at him as an extraordinarily fine president who did who did a...who did compared to predecessors and successors a very good job.

DO YOU BELIEVE THAT IT'S APPROPRIATE THESE DAYS TO TALK AS YOU DID WHEN YOU WROTE YOUR BOOK ABOUT AN ARMS RACE? AND IF IT IS APPROPRIATE, DO YOU THINK THAT...HOW DO YOU THINK THAT EISENHOWER AFFECTED IT?

Yes, I think it's appropriate to speak of an arms race. There are things that need to be explained when one says that. The nature of the arms race in recent years has been primarily with... qualitative where it's been a continuous effort to improve things rather than increase their numbers. At least on our side. But, you know, we started out in 1945 with two weapons on our side and none on their side — nuclear weapons. No means for intercontinental delivery. And we ended up today with 25,000 on each side and with a great variety of means for delivering them in as little as a half an hour half way around the world. And that, you know, the difference between those two end points is one hell of a big arms race as I see it. Sometimes we have been coasting. Other times we've been marching...we've been charging forward furiously. But averaged over the time since 1945, there's been an arms race.

BUT THE BULK OF THAT HAPPENED IN THE EISENHOWER ERA.

In terms of numbers, the big build up in nuclear weapons in the American side was essentially over by 1960, '61. And since then the numbers have somewhat decreased. And the number of delivery vehicles has remained about the — the big build up was even before 1955 and it's been more or less steady since. But the types have changed. And the characteristics of those things. And the ability to do damage and to penetrate defenses and to accomplish the mission in ever shorter times — that's been continuously changing. That's why I...

BUT I GUESS WHAT I"M ASKING IS...

...qualitative ratio and a quantitative one...

BUT GIVEN THAT QUANTITY OF EXPANSION IN THE 1950s NOT JUST IN STRATEGIC DELIVERY VEHICLES AND NOT JUST IN STRATEGIC WEAPONS BUT IN TACTICAL ONES AS WELL, IS THE VIEW THAT EISENHOWER WAS A BRAKE ON THAT PROCESS — CAN THAT REALLY BE SUSTAINED IF YOU LOOK AT WHAT HAPPENED DURING THOSE YEARS?

Yes. Well, I think it can, but I suppose the opposite case can be made. I mean, you don't know would have been otherwise. The pressures and the ideas as they existed in those times lead to these numbers in a general way; and yes, it could have been held to lower levels in theory, but I don't know that any president would have done any better. I don't believe any other president would have done any better given all the factors involved including the great uncertainties that dominated our knowledge of the Russians.

CAN YOU SAY THAT AGAIN?

Especially in view of the great uncertainty in the information that we had both about Soviet capabilities and about Soviet intentions in that period.

IN A WAY, THE BIGGEST DIFFERENCE BETWEEN 1980 AND 1955 IS WHAT? IS WHAT WE KNEW?

That is certainly one of the biggest differences. The fact is that at the beginning of the Eisenhower administration the Soviet Union was still almost completely closed with essentially no tourism. The thaw came during the Eisenhower administration; the coming of Khrushchev and the changes from Stalin. But it took time to interpret those. You can in retrospect say we missed some opportunities and we should have recognized earlier that there was a change. It was characterized by one friend of mine as saying that in the late '40s, American foreign policy towards the Soviet Union consisted of waiting for Stalin to die. And then when he did, refusing to believe it. We should have recognized sooner that Stalin had died and that there was a change. And we should have recognized sooner that the Sino-Soviet split was real. And that therefore, we were not faced with this Sino-Soviet bloc that was pledged to eternal solidarity and eternal hostility. So we failed to recognize some of these things as soon as we might have. But I do not believe that another one of the other post-war presidents would have done it any better than Eisenhower did.