MR. KAUFMANN, WHAT DID YOU GET YOUR DOCTORATE IN?

International relations at Yale.

WHAT DID YOU GET YOUR DOCTORATE IN?

I got my PhD in international relations at Yale in 1948.

HOW DO YOU CHARACTERIZE YOURSELF PROFESSIONALLY? MOST PEOPLE INVOLVED IN THIS FIELD ARE GENERALS. ARE YOU A GENERAL?

I'm certainly not a general. I never got higher than first lieutenant. I suppose eclecticism would be the best answer to that. I've dabbled in a lot of things.

YOU WERE AT RAND FOR A LONG TIME IN THE '50S. WHAT WERE YOUR CHIEF CONCERNS AT THAT TIME?

I started out first of all being very involved with studies as to nuclear proliferation. And became very opposed as I think most people do. And this was the time when people — a lot of people thought it was the solution to what was expected would be the decline in the credibility in the US deterrent would be to share nuclear weapons with allies. And that set off a considerable controversy within RAND and subsequently in governmental circles. And so really, that was the first major project that I became involved in there.

WERE YOU INVOLVED IN THE CONCERNS ABOUT VULNERABILITY AND THE NEED FOR SECOND STRIKE CAPABILITY?

No. Most of that work — which had been done under the aegis of Albert Wohlstetter and Henry Rowan and Fred Hoffman and others — had really been pretty well completed by the time I got there. In fact, as best as I can recall they just completed or were completing a study on missile vulnerability. They'd done a lot of work on bomber vulnerability prior to my coming there. I...I got in there I guess it was January of 1956. And as best I can recall they really essentially completed that work.

YOU WERE SO GOOD WHEN YOU CAME AND TALKED TO US ABOUT THESE CONCERNS. I WONDERED IF THIS WAS PART OF YOUR CONCEPTUAL WORK OR...I'D LIKE TO TALK TO YOU ABOUT IT UNLESS YOU THINK IT'S SOMEBODY ELSE'S PROVINCE.

Oh. I don't think I made — well I'm not sure how much of a contribution I made in any of this, but I don't feel that I had any particular thing that I had to offer in the sort of...the second strike arguments. I think those were pretty well developed and articulated by the time I got there

AND FORESTRUCTURE DECISIONS, THE SAME...?

There wasn't that much work that I can recall that was done on forestructure. In fact when I finally did get very heavily involved in studies on strategy and forestructure, I had a lot of difficulty trying to get suggestions as to just what changes if any should be made in forestructure.

WHEN MCNAMARA BECAME SECRETARY OF DEFENSE, WHAT WAS OUR POLICY FOR DEFENDING EUROPE AT THAT TIME?

At that time it was what's known as MC-14/2 which was a document that had been issued back in the 1950s and which in effect said that the United States and its allies would resist any attack with nuclear weapons. And although there was no specification to my recollection as to the precise time, everybody understood that to mean that it would be almost immediately. And there was considerable consternation — I think it was in 1957 or '58 when General Norstead, who had become supreme allied commander, suggested that there might be what he called a 'pause' before the weapons were used. And it was generally assumed at that time that not only would nuclear weapons be used tactically in Europe, but they would be accompanied by a major strike by the strategic air forces.

IS THAT WHAT WE MEAN BY MASSIVE RETALIATION?

Yes.

WHAT WAS THE WAR PLAN? BEFORE MCNAMARA AND HIS PENTAGON REVISED IT, WHAT WOULD HAVE BEEN THE SCENARIO?

The general assumption, at least in so far as I was familiar with it was that the Soviet Union and its cohorts would engage probably in a major attack in Europe. Uh.., that it would start off as a conventional attack and that the United States and its allies would respond with nuclear weapons both tactically and strategically. And that it would immediately become an all out war — nuclear.

AGAINST EASTERN EUROPE, CHINA, THE WHOLE WORKS?

I'm trying to remember. It...the first single integrated operational plan, which is the war plan for the strategic nuclear forces wasn't really promulgated until 1960. So, in the '50s no such integrated plan existed. But basically I think they could exclude China, but I'm not certain about that. But bombs were essentially going to fall on just about every other satellite and country and the Soviet Union.

WHAT WAS WRONG WITH THIS PLAN?

I...I would say a number of things were wrong with it. First of all it just unleashed the entire force regardless of how anything started and who was involved. It just was a...a very massive unloading of every bomb that the strategic air command could carry. And in those days we were talking strictly about bombers. Secondly it the...didn't give the President any kind of choice as to what he might want to target or how he might want to target or when he might want to target. It was just this massive and intentionally meant to be a very crushing blow delivered at a whole range of targets including both military and urban industrial targets. So that there was no sense of attempting to win at anything and it meant just enormous immediate destruction. All the weapons were meant to be ground burst so as to maximize the amount of fallout that would be created. Furthermore, there was always this question of whether given various presidential declaration—not firm statements of policy, but declarations that the United States would never strike first with these strategic forces. There was a question, well, were we really abiding by that kind of presidential declaration. Finally as Soviet nuclear capabilities developed questions began to arise both in the United States and among our allies as to the credibility of this kind of an attack given their ability presumably, or so it was thought, to do roughly comparable damage both to our allies and to the United States.

I THOUGHT THE ANNOUNCED POLICY WAS THAT THIS WAS WAY WE WOULD RESPOND EVEN IF IT WAS ASSUMED THAT WE WOULD GO FIRST.

In the tactical use, yes. That was and remains United States declaratory policy, however much one really believes it. As far as the strategic forces, though presidents, I think starting with Mr. Truman, said, you know, we would not use those first. Although there were various alarms and excursions as to the possibility of their being used. But there was always this rather controversial issue — I remember discussing it with General White when he was Chief of Staff of the Air Force — as to what the interpretation of the second strike was to be and particularly when talking in public about these issues. And he wanted to downplay the notion that, well in some formal sense the United States would be attacking with its strategic forces first, conceivably, and wanted to sort of blur the issue. And we used to talk about, Well after all, the assumption was that the Soviet Union had attacked first even though it might have been with conventional forces. And therefore this was a second strike even though it was a second strike with nuclear capabilities. So there was a lot of hair-splitting that went on about that issue. But there was never any doubt in my mind that as far as the senior military were concerned the intention was to unleash the strategic forces right off the bat. And in effect, even though SACEUR had his plan and... and SAC had its plan, they were meant to operate jointly.

DID YOU PARTICIPATE IN EFFORTS TO REEVALUATE THE WAR PLANS?

My...my original involvement with all of this was not with the intention of... changing the war plans because, among other things, I wasn't that knowledgeable at the time.

(QUESTION INAUDIBLE)

No it really — Again, ones memory gets hazy here — But to the best of my recollection there had been a number of discussions ongoing at RAND among people who had differing motives for wanting to see whether it wasn't possible to change the general attitude about the use of nuclear weapons. And particularly to see whether it was feasible to fight something corresponding, if you will, more to a traditional war than this all out kind of attack on both military and urban targets which was, as it turned out, characteristic of the earlier war plans. And a number of people were concerned about this from Herman Kahn to Andrew Marshall and a number of people. I stepped into this discussion — Jim Digby was another...

I WAS THINKING IN 1961...

Oh...in 1961 by the time...

...YOU INHERITED A PLAN OF MASSIVE RETALIATION. THERE WERE EFFORTS TO CHANGE IT. WHAT ROLE DID YOU PLAY IN THE EFFORTS TO GET AWAY FROM THIS?

I guess, first of all, there was a foundation of work that had already been done at RAND that had never really been pulled together in a way that could be presented to individuals in Washington. And I along with 2 other people, Frank Trinkle and David McGarvey, started working on preparing a series of briefings in response, initially to a request from a General Parish who was close to the Air Force chief of staff and who recognized--and this may sound cynical--but he recognized first of all that the approach that the Air Force was taking to the war plans and the forces was coming under increasing attack, particularly from the army and the Navy and that there was a serious possibility that a position would be taken within the Pentagon and by the Secretary of Defense and even by the President which said, We're wasting our money buying all these large forces when, especially with the anticipated introduction of the Polaris submarine and missile with a relatively small force you could do enormous damage to the Soviet Union and save a lot of money in the process. And the Air Force saw itself as losing a very large share of the market, as it were. And so that was a very great concern to them. And General White, who was then Air Force Chief of Staff and a very thoughtful person, was generally concerned on other grounds as to whether indeed the policy, the programs, the plan; that the Air Force had been advocating and in fact implementing had become obsolete partly as growth of the Soviet — or assumed growth — of the Soviet capability. And he was genuinely looking for alternatives and in fact, started asking questions at a grand — I think it in 1958 — And this led to a big study at RAND which sort of fell apart. A number of individuals went off mad. And that... then in when General Parish got in touch with me, through a mutual friend in Washington, George Tannham at the RAND Corporation, I started picking up some of the pieces from this study that had been worked on in, I think, 1958, 1959. And along with the two other people, we began first providing analyses to General Parish showing him that there were other ways in which you could operate these forces and trying to show how damage both to the Soviet Union and the United States would vary as a function of the way you targeted and... how many weapons you sent and so on and so forth. So we worked on this for approximately a year. And this gradually got presented to different audiences primarily within the Air Force. And General white became very interested in it, although there was a great deal of opposition to it within the Air Force for that it would upset a variety of ongoing programs with no guarantee that it would provide an adequate substitute for those programs. And then finally, I think in December of 1960, I was authorized by General White, first to start talking to Paul Nitze, who I had known for some years, about this, and who was about to enter the new administration. And then in February, I believe, of 1961 I was asked to present this story to Mr. McNamara. And...

WAS THIS THE NO CITIES...

IF THE MCNAMARA PENTAGON REJECTED MASSIVE RETALIATION, WHAT FAITH DID YOU HAVE THE RELIANCE ON CONVENTIONAL FORCES, SAY IN A WAR IN EUROPE, WOULD BE SOUND AND FEASIBLE?

When I first got involved in the Pentagon itself I had no such confidence, although I had some feeling along with others that the size of the threat had been exaggerated and that in any event it was always the question of the reliability of the some of the key members of the Warsaw Pact including Poland, East Germany, and Czechoslovakia. But in any event, Mr. McNamara, who had earlier commissioned studies to see whether we could get a...a full scale effective conventional capability was not very happy with the initial results. So additional work began. And I got involved in that by, I would say, in the early Spring of 1961. We were very short of information at that time both about the Warsaw Pact and its capabilities and about our own allies. And it was very difficult to get information about either. Now, I'm somewhat inhibited here as to what I guess I'm allowed to say, but as you probably know the intelligence picture began to change in the latter part of 1960. But as it did change, and resources that we previously had not had came into play. They were devoted initially primarily to finding out more about Soviet nuclear capabilities. And it became very difficult to allocate any time to finding out more about their conventional capabilities; however, gradually, we did get considerably more information about them. And they turned to be much less ferocious, if you will, than had been the standard view. So that I would say, by 19...early 1962, while we still had a way to go in getting more data and certainly a very long way to go in trying to persuade both US and allied commanders that this was an interesting option. None the less we had enough data so that it really looked like a...a manageable proposition to deal with even a very large scale Warsaw Pact attack by conventional means.

BUT BEFORE YOU HAD THAT KIND OF DATA OR CONFIDENCE, IN THE SUMMER OF '61 THERE WAS A THREAT TO ACCESS IN BERLIN. NOW DID YOU HAVE CONFIDENCE AT THAT TIME? DID THAT MAKE YOU NERVOUS?

At...at that time, I...personally felt that the allied conventional weaknesses were exaggerated again for some reasons that I'm not allowed to... still just talk about. But I... certainly the conventional wisdom was that we didn't have conventional capabilities to deal with, say a new blockade of Berlin or a...a Soviet attack coming out of a blockade which we then tried to breech. And it's certainly the case that the Kennedy administration felt very beleaguered in a number of ways. There had been the failure in the Bay of Pigs that there was great concern about the possible fall of Laos and an imminent attack Vietnam. There was the very difficult conversation that he'd had with Mr. Krushchev over... Berlin in the spring of, I guess it was the spring of 1961. And the threats that Krushchev was making was making about a possible separate peace treaty with East Germany and at least the implication of another blockade of Berlin. And so people were really searching around very desperately at that time for ways in which possible Soviet moves could be countered.

WHAT ROLE DID YOU PLAY IN THAT KIND OF SEARCHING? DID YOU MEET WITH MAC BUNDY AND CARL KAYSEN TO DISCUSS BERLIN OPTIONS?

No I did not. I had individual conversations which I still regard as classified whatever other people may have said. I think the first one was Dean Acheson whom I had come to know...uh...over the years. And then with Henry Rowan and I had one conversation that I can recall with Carl Kaysen with along with Henry Rowan. And several conversations with senior air staff officers, but beyond that no, I never talked with Mac Bundy about this nor... that I can recall... nor to General Taylor who was then the military assistant to the President.

WERE YOU CALLED UPON TO HELP PREPARE SOME OPTIONS IN CASE THERE WAS GOING TO BE FURTHER DIFFICULTIES IN BERLIN?

I don't recall whether I was called upon or volunteered, but in any event yes, I prepared some options.

TELL US ABOUT THAT. WHAT OPTIONS DID YOU SEE IF OUR ACCESS WERE RESTRICTED IN BERLIN?

It depends on what time period you're talking about. But...

HERE IT IS, IN THE SUMMER OF '61.

Right...well actually in the spring of..in the spring of 1961 people were already getting extremely concerned given what would seem to be an awful lot of fires either breaking out or about to break out. And where again it was felt very much, I think, as it was felt in the late 1970s with President Carter, that the United States really had to take firm stands on something — something or other whatever And so there were really two phases to this. One was in the spring of 1961 and I'm referring to that when I'm talking about the conversations with Acheson and Rowan and Kazin and... other people, but not to my recollection with Mac Bundy or Maxwell Taylor. And we were looking at some pretty desperate kinds of possibilities then. But I really don't feel that I have rather ever been authorized to go beyond that and never have discussed those publicly with anybody.

WHAT WAS PHASE 2?

Phase 2 — Well, as the...as events evolved President Kennedy not only ordered deployments of forces to Europe, call-ups and reserve forces an requests to Congress for supplemental increases to the defense budget. We then had the Berlin Wall in August of 1961 and there still remain... not only a concern about a renewal of a blockade but also that there might just be a shoot out somewhere in the vicinity of checkpoint Charlie because which was — I forget which one of the entry points between East and West Berlin. But, I mean, tanks were literally lined up there sort of muzzle to muzzle. And one couldn't quite be sure that something would not go wrong and you know, Murphy's law usually works in these conditions as it did in the Cuban missile crisis. And we had all sorts of things that weren't supposed to happen that did happen. And they could very easily have happened in connection with Berlin. In fact at the... subsequently and I think to this day, I thought that was a more dangerous really confrontation than the Cuban missile crisis. But at that point then the question arose in a very operational way, How do we respond to various .., contingencies. And it was decided —uh...I assume by the President — that there should be what were known as the quadrapartite meetings among the United States, Britain, France, and the United States in Washington to discuss contingencies and how they should be...dealt with. And I was very much involved in that particular array of plans that involved initially conventional responses and then gradually moved up the ladder, if you will, to the point where the issue of using nuclear weapons was raised. And none of the allies showed understandably the slightest bit of interest in any nuclear options.

WHAT WERE THE CONVENTIONAL OPTIONS? IS THIS THE THREE SUCCESSIVELY PROGRESSIVE PROBES DOWN THE AUTOBAHN?

Right. Yeah. It was geared to the assumption of another blockade.

IF...THERE ARE THE TANKS CONFRONTING EACH OTHER AT CHECK POINT CHARLIE...NOW WHAT IF THE TANKS HAVE JUST BLOCKED OFF OUR ACCESS TO EAST BERLIN OR THE AUTOBAHN...

The...the fear was that they would —not so much they would block us from East Berlin — they were doing that already despite certain agreements. The real fear was that once again they would try and cut us off from West Berlin. And also that such a blockade might result from an incident along the wall or the beginnings of the wall as they were building it up. And there were a lot of funny things going on. Not only the tanks sort of ...muzzle to muzzle, but they were buzzing our transport aircraft going in and out of West Berlin and really causing, you know, minor but worrisome kinds of disruption along the aircorriders. They were stopping and holding up convoys along the autobahns. So there were a wad of indications that they might indeed move towards another blockade. And it was a pressure point that they could always exert pressure on and that a very worrisome for us. So it was in that context that these various options were examined.

WHAT WERE THE OPTIONS?

Well, basically they were...

WHAT WERE THE OPTIONS?

I really don't remember the details of the options, but they involved successive probes down

IF THERE HAD BEEN SOME PROBLEM...IF OUR ACCESS HAD BEEN CUT OFF WE MIGHT HAVE... RESPONDED...

We...Right. The United States and the allies we hoped, would engage in successively heavier armored probes down the Autobahn — the Helmsted, I think it was, Autobahn which was the key route in from West Germany into West Berlin And that if we were stopped we would send a bigger probe down and until this reached a point where it was clear that they were just going to block us no matter how much force we tried to put down the corridor. And at that point, I think we had successive levels of force -- conventional force — that we contemplated using trying to break through to...into West Berlin and not so much expecting that we could militarily. But by showing this increased determination to break through, they would finally decide that they'd better let us through or things would really get out of hand. And that they would lift the blockade. But if they didn't do that, and if they really stood firm and that the forces that were committed were now large enough so that you were involved in a substantial military engagement, then...what did you do? And that opened the fourth option: Would we or and How would we use nuclear weapons to try and persuade them that we were determined to get through to West Berlin. And so these were really in very broad fashion, the 4 options that were presented actually to the ministerial meeting in Washington of which Paul Nitze was the chairman. And it was the ambassadors, as I recall, from Britain, France, and Germany who at least did the initial negotiating over these options.

WHAT WERE THE NUCLEAR OPTIONS? WOULD YOU DROP A BOMB ALONG THE AUTOBAHN?

Well, we had a great debate over that in which really starting in the summer of 1961... if we were going to make what was thought of, at least initially, as a demonstration use of nuclear weapons. How would you go about doing that? One person even suggested that we might drop a weapon on a Soviet test site and have it go off only it would be one of our weapons being tested on their test site and which was a great big island of Novaya Zemlya up off the Soviet Union. That was rejected as not showing sufficient seriousness. Then it was talked about, Well, maybe we should use them in some naval capacity and where we might destroy a few ships and a lot of fish, but would not really do a great deal of damage to population. I...and I'm sure others, argued Look, if we keep trying to avoid the central issue, which that the Soviets are not allowing us to break into West Berlin and if we keep dropping weapons, even if they are nuclear weapons off in Novaya Zemlya or our at sea. I don't see how they can take that seriously. We've really got to do something at the point of contact which is in the in the corridors leading into Berlin. And we've got to do it against their military forces if that's what we're going to do. And so it was finally agreed that's indeed was the quote "SCENARIO" unquote and that I can't even remember how many weapons we talked about, but we were going to drop weapons on... nuclear weapons on Soviet forces blocking our access. And so that was the fourth stage in the plans that were presented by Mr. Nitze to the allies. They agree to the first three and then reserved on the fourth even though the drum beat was that you rotten Americans are never going to have the courage to use nuclear weapons and therefore, we don't trust the credibility of your deterrent. Which in turn led to some of the statements that subsequently were made by Mr. McNamara in particular, to the alliance in 1962 and so on.

...WHAT WAS THEIR REACTION? LET'S GO OVER THAT.

Oh their reaction was...

(QUESTION INAUDIBLE)

The reaction of the allies was first of all, that they accepted the first three conventional responses as valid contingency plans that would then be developed. But all of them, without exception, the British, the French, and the Germans, said, Well, we'll cross that nuclear bridge when we come to it and we'll have to consult with our governments. And we won't sign anything in advance about that one where as they were willing to sign in advance on the conventional option. I found it ironic because almost simultaneously, and in fact previously and subsequently, lead primarily by the French and General DeGaulle, they were saying how unreliable the United States was because they United States probably wouldn't be willing to use nuclear weapons in a crisis. Now all of this was probably bluff, and we sort of called their bluff in this particular situation. I mean, they have hoped and still hope that somehow or other if we make horrible enough faces and terrible enough threats with nuclear weapons, no crisis will arise and therefore no decisions will have to be made. Here was one of the exceptions where indeed we were asking them to make decisions and be serious and not just bluff about the use of nuclear weapon, And then it turned out that they weren't at all interested. In fact, I think it was about a year later a whole group of us went marching up to Camp David — you may have heard about this from others — and it was the first, and as far as I know, the only time in which we actually played one of these political military games simulating a blockade of Berlin in which we had German, British, French participants along with Americans. And Tom Schelling was the director of the game and he did just all kinds of horrible things along the Helmsted Autobahn to try and stir up a major crisis. And nobody was having any of that. I mean, they were shooting up our trucks. They were shooting up our...tanks and so on. And yet, we never could get any real fight going. Because whether, no matter who was captain of the blue team, whether it was an American, a German, a Brit, or a Frenchman, unanimously they said, Let's negotiate. See if we can't resolve this problem. And I think that was sort of a nice indicator of the real attitude that undulated the bluff, which simply reinforced my view, that whatever one might think about the efficiency and effectiveness of nuclear weapons --Forget it! We'd better just get on with the business of building up the conventional capability

WHEN KENNEDY APPEARED ON TELEVISION AND CALLED OUT THE RESERVES AND SAID THAT AN ATTACK ON BERLIN IS AN ATTACK ON NATO OR AN ATTACK ON ALL OF US— WHAT WAS YOUR REACTION TO THAT? DID YOU THINK IT WAS A BLUFF?

No. I think he meant it. I...I must confess my principle reaction was waiting to see whether he said anything that I'd written...for him. And he didn't. So, I lost interest in the speech. Ghostwriters feel that way. But No I don't think it was a bluff. In fact, to the best of my knowledge, he was bound and determined even though we were just abysmally prepared to call up reserves or sent additional forces to Europe. He was bound and determined to do it even though General Norstead kept telling him, Don't do it, because the Russians aren't doing anything. Which was I think substantially correct. And General Norstead said, And wait! You'll just have one hell of a time getting those forces out. And he was absolutely right because it took us...until about 1967 to get any of those forces out that we put in as a special augmentation for the Berlin crisis. I think we sent over about 40,000 people.

WHAT WAS THE EFFECT OF THIS ON YOUR THINKING?

As far as I was concerned, the principal lesson of the Berlin crisis was that while we had to maintain the nuclear deterrent the main business really had to be the...to make sure that we had sufficient conventional forces so that we didn't keep running into this problem of what do we do when we run out of these forces. I wanted, and I still would like to put that monkey on the other side's back because that is the most impossible de...decision, I think, that anybody could possibly make. It...it was one thing in 1945, in the middle of the war, with the monopoly, however small it was, of nuclear weapons for President Truman to order a weapon to be dropped. Two weapons to be dropped. That change completely once the number got large and once another side had those weapons. And...and the decision is appalling. And I...I just don't think one should sort of force the President into having to face that unless somebody else uses them first. And so...I...that became one of my main purposes and subsequent involvement is to try and see that he...didn't have to face that kind of choice.

LET'S TALK ABOUT THE NO CITIES COUNTERFORCE BUSINESS. IN FEBRUARY 1961, DID YOU SEE SECRETARY MCNAMARA AND WHAT SUGGESTIONS DID YOU GIVE TO HIM ABOUT OUR NUCLEAR WAR FIGHTING PLANS?

I did see Mr. McNamara. I think it was February 10th. I subsequently looked it up. Of 1961 and I was scheduled to talk with him, I think, it was for about half an hour. He'd originally wanted the document to read — He much preferred to read things than to be briefed, and only I'd...All I had was about 54 charts which I had developed to show to a variety of people going through an argument which effectively said: First, there are many targets in any country. They're not just cities. There are counterforce targets, if you will, i.e. military targets, and there are strategic nuclear forces that one can target. There are other types of forces that one can target. There are economic targets. And so there's a very large array of targets that can be broken down, classified and given our improving intelligence identified very explicitly. But secondly that cities are not targets that...you really want to attack for at least initially, for a number of reasons. First if you believe in the more traditional views of warfare, civilians should not be considered as targets. That you are trying to limit conflict as unfortunately we didn't do all that much in World War II. But there are certain laws of war which say, don't attack civilians which we have subscribed to. Second given the difficulty of eliminating the forces of the other side, the nuclear forces of the other side the attacks, especially right off the bat, on cities virtually guaranteed that your own cities would be attacked. Therefore you really wanted to avoid those cities in order not just to be a nice guy. Nuclear weapons don't sort of go along with being a nice guy. But because you wanted to try and limit damage to your own cities, and given that we didn't have very good defenses and we're unlikely to get very good defenses the best way to limit damage was not to hit Soviet cities. And third, that it might be possible, although there still were many uncertainties, to fight and actually destroy the other sides forces. And come to a...a conclusion to even a nuclear conflict that bore some resemblance to a conventional conflict and without causing the enormous kind of damage that would inevitably result if cities were directly attacked. So basically that was the initial presentation that I gave to Mr. McNamara and was based on what I had been working on with others for at least a year.

HOW COULD DAMAGE HAVE BEEN LIMITED IF A WAR HAD BEEN FOUGHT ACCORDING TO THESE GUIDELINES?

First of all, I should say, part of our thinking was that we would always... Part of our thinking was that you would always hold a force in reserve. And given that we were then beginning to deploy the Polaris submarine, we didn't have to fire those missiles. And that meant that if we laid off their cities they would have an incentive, we believed — we couldn't guarantee anything — to lay off our cities because they would know that we had still this reserve force which if they did start attacking our cities would be available to attack theirs. And therefore, we felt that while we couldn't give any guarantee — you know, nobody could — there was a nontrivial probability that cities just could not be attacked. But we also felt — and I felt very strongly on this matter — that even if there was a rather low probability that cities would be spared, it was worth trying because, by every calculation that we were able to make given the imperfections both of the data and the calculations—-.while any nuclear war is...just bad news, there are distinctions among different types of nuclear wars or attacks or exchanges. And that while I personally find it very difficult to believe that any nuclear exchange, however carefully targets are chosen, etc., would result in fewer than millions of fatalities. And I mean 5, 10 million. I think it's extremely difficult to limit the damage from a...a substantial exchange of nuclear weapons to lower that 5 or 10 million early fatalities. That's a far cry from a...an exchange which results in, say a hundred million fatalities on either side or on both sides. And while those are very difficult distinctions to make, none the less, I think they're — I did then and I still so believe that they're very important distinctions that a world which has suffered 10 million fatalities is still a better world than one that has suffered 200 million fatalities.

THIS DAMAGE LIMITATION, IT SEEMS TO ME IT WOULD BE MORE EFFECTIVE IF WE TRIED TO KNOCK OUT THE SOVIET WAR MAKING CAPABILITIES FIRST...

There's no doubt that — and particularly at that time when Soviet forces, let's face it, were both small, very vulnerable and very sluggish in the sense that it would have taken a substantial amount of time just to get ready to do anything. There's no doubt in my mind that at that time a force that could go second in retaliation against a...a range of targets, could do even better, obviously, going first. And I think that has almost always been true and remains true to this day. I still, then and now hold the view that it's not my job to try and tell the President what he should do. I would not, and I still would not, preclude having the plans to go first. But I would always try to design the forces and...put the weight of the effort towards a second strike. Because we have no assurance and we haven't had for 25 years, if you will, that we would have the choice of going first, whether tactically or strategically, that the notion that some how or other we can choose — don't know that. They may choose and they may beat us to the punch.

AT THAT TIME IN 1962, IF WE HAD CHOSEN TO ABSORB A FIRST STRIKE, WHAT'S THERE LEFT TO COUNTER? HOW COULD YOU LIMIT DAMAGE WHEN THEY'VE ALREADY SHOT OFF THEIR STRATEGIC FORCES?

First of all, we didn't know then and I doubt that we know now, how much of the force they would try to launch in a first strike. How much they would try to withhold. Second there's always the problem that you, figuratively push that button and maybe 80 percent of the missiles take off and 20 percent go nnn. And so there are a lot of targets. There may be bombers. There may be other shorter range missiles that could threaten allies. There may be conventional forces which are targetable and that you would want to strike. So there are a great many second strike targets that would still be worth going after. And that in fact, was very much the argument that I and I'm sure others presented... in 1960 and 1961.

IN ONE OF THESE WARS, HOW DO YOU END IT?

That I think has been one of the...

NOT THAT.

That question has been...

WHAT QUESTION?

Ending one of these wars — I think, that has been one of the biggest problems from the outset. And to my mind, we did not have very good answers to it then. And to the best of my knowledge, we don't have very good answers to it now. I would say though, that in 1961 and maybe for three or four years thereafter Soviet forces really were just so bad, professionally, I was offended by how badly they were designing their forces. They really just should have done better. But given that, there was a — I would say --a significant chance that on a second strike you could knock out whatever else they still had and that you could then make very evident to them — you could just fly bombers over them and show that you were in control of the situation, that they would understand that they'd better stop whatever they had left to do anything with. Now...that was a really quite transient sort of a situation -- by the mid-'60s it was already substantially changing.

IN MCNAMARA'S INTERVIEW IN THE DECEMBER OF '62 SATURDAY EVENING POST, HE SAID THAT THE LIKELY-HOOD OF A COUNTERFORCE WAR WAS MORE LIKELY IF SOVIET UNION HAD A SECURE RETALIATORY CAPABILITY. WAS YOUR CONFIDENCE IN A COUNTERFORCE CITY-AVOIDANCE STRATEGY DEPENDENT UPON THE TRANSIENT US SUPERIORITY AT THE TIME OR WAS IT SOMETHING YOU COULD HAVE CONFIDENCE IN AS THERE WAS MORE OF A STRATEGIC PARITY?

I think I would want to phrase the question, if I might, just a little bit differently in the sense that at no time did I believe that the Soviet Union was in a...in a position to or likely to attack the United States directly with nuclear weapons. And I felt then...as I do now, that we had a very powerful deterrent. The issue, in some sense you could say, was hypothetical that supposing that the unimaginable did happen, how did you want your war plans to be set up in order to respond? And I don't believe, and I didn't believe at the time, if in that tiny probability that the Soviet Union might choose to attack that they would have any chance whatsoever of .. succeeding in whatever they were accomplishing. I think what Mr. McNamara was really trying to say there was that if anybody was crazy enough to attack with such a poor force, they might as well attack all out and do as much damage as they could because otherwise, they were just going to get rolled over in the US retaliation. Whereas once they got more secure forces — of course I would argue first — then the probability of anybody attacking goes down even further. But they then would at least have the option of withholding forces and making attacks on cities by either side less attractive. I suspect, but I don't recall talking with him about it that was what he was driving at. But I think as both sides developed more secure second strike capabilities that the probability of either using them declined very dramatically.

YOU HAD A HALF HOUR BRIEFING SCHEDULED WITH SECRETARY MCNAMARA. WHAT WAS HIS REACTION TO IT?

My recollection is that he asked me to come in and talk for half an hour. I had, as I recall, about 54 charts which had built up over a period of a year as I commuted back and forth between Santa Monica and California and Washington. And it would take me something on the order -- if anybody was willing to sit there long enough -- two hours to go through these charts. And I started showing them to Mr. McNamara and...it was just obvious from the outset that he understood these in a flash. And I was just flipping these charts very rapidly. And I would say where as it might have taken me two hours to go through the briefing with a lot of people, I...I can't recall, but I went through it in I would guess about an hour. And he was very animated and asking questions as we went along. And then he's...when we finished he said, let's sit down and start thrashing out some of the issues that I still have. And we must have spent another hour or two going over the various issues that he wanted to discuss in more detail. But I frankly don't recall anybody ever having sort of learned this thing so fast. It was a...just very impressive performance on his part.

DID HE BUY IT? DID THIS BECOME POLICY?

To the best of my knowledge, yes it did. I mean he...continued to raise questions with me about various aspects of it. And one of his concerns which was not unique to this area, but particularly keen was... he always wanted to know whether he was entering an area where there was going to be an endless open ended kind of expenditure or whether one, in his terms, would ever get into an area of diminishing returns and therefore that wouldn't make...there wouldn't be that much sense in continuing to spend on a particular force or capability and that was and remained a very great concern with him. And I think much of what subsequently happened was a result of that concern. But to the best of my knowledge, although I was not directly involved — yes...he accepted the main arguments. Not necessarily all of them, but from the standpoint of revising the...from the standpoint of changes in the force structure. Yes, as far as I know, he did, and changes were subsequently made.

BUT THIS STRATEGY WAS ANNOUNCED TO THE NATO ALLIES IN ANN ARBOR WASN'T IT?

It was discussed in more detail, certainly, than before in I guess it was May of 1962 Yes. At...at Athens. At one of the NATO defense ministers meetings. And then that speech he gave at Athens became the basis of a a graduation speech he gave at the University of Michigan — I guess it was in June of 1962. I'm probably off on the dates, but it was something like that. I never quite understood that, but

YOU DIDN'T UNDERSTAND WHY HE WOULD TALK ABOUT IT IN PUBLIC?

Right.

WHY? WHAT'S WRONG WITH THAT?

First of all. There were some things said to the allies which were somewhat unpalatable. But...there are a lot of things that you can say privately to your friends which they will accept, but if you say them in public and then have a world wide audience — and particularly audiences for...in those particular countries and the 2 most sensitive countries were Britain and France at that time, you create a number of political problems for the officials in those countries and ...

WAS THE ANN ARBOR SPEECH AIMED AT THE FRENCH AND THE BRITISH. WAS IT TELLING THEM THAT IF YOU WANT TO FIGHT A WAR, YOU HAVE TO HAVE ONE FINGER ON THE BUTTON.

To this day...I don't know why that speech was given other than that he had to give a speech at a graduation ceremony. But that's... I'm...I'm perhaps being frivolous. I thought it was a mistake. I refused to work on it and said that somebody else should do it, And then it I was asked to review what was finally being produced and recommended a number of changes in the Ann Arbor speech but I...I just couldn't understand and I...I still don't understand...

IF YOU WANT TO FIRST A CONTROLLED WAR, DOESN'T THIS HAVE CONSEQUENCES FOR OTHER COUNTRIES THAT ARE DEVELOPING THEIR OWN INDEPENDENT FORCES. YOU CAN'T HAVE THREE FINGERS ON 3 DIFFERENT BUTTONS...

Certainly, and that was what we were saying among other things.

WHAT WAS?

In Athens on presumably on a top secret basis and were trying to explain to particularly the British and the French, but potentially the Germans who after all in 48 hours can become the third nuclear power in the world. That what we believe this is the right way to think about the use of these forces if it ever comes to that. And therefore we really have to have agreement among ourselves as to what are the targets. The United States can't have its doctrine of say, no cities, while the British and the French are off bashing Soviet cities. And therefore, we really have to have a centralized command and control over both the planning and the execution of these plans if it ever comes to that. And it was a not very subtle suggestion that independent nuclear forces were no damned good. And you know, I think some of my friends have since said, and I think they're probably right that...you know, the speech was too scatter shot in that it was trying to explain this...concept to the allies at the same time it was taking a shot at proliferation and also indirectly at all the people in the United States who were pushing multi-lateral nuclear forces and other sort of cardboard ideas such as that. And it was also arguing for a conventional build up. And it was probably not one of the greatest balancing acts in the world trying simultaneously to talk about all those things. All the...all the more reason not...to do it in public.

BRIEFLY, WHAT WAS THE REACTION OF THE GERMANS?

I was not present at Athens. I would sort of scribble drafts at these things and then somebody else would cart them off. I don't know whether McNamara knows to this day that I was drafting these things for him. But, anyway, in private while there were a lot of arguments about the details, the reports I was given -- which may have been quite inaccurate — were that uniformly there was a rather enthusiastic reception of the Athens speech. In part because it was seen as the first time that the United States had really spoken in a moderately detailed way about all of these issues, particularly the nuclear issues. I may have mentioned before that I think in early...in the spring of 1961 Chancellor Adenauer was due to come over to the United States for one of his periodic visits. And I was asked to prepare a briefing for him which was then going to be translated into German. And I decided, in my usual irresponsible way, well this might be a good time to start spilling some of the beans about what we were up to and... to giving him sort of a preview. And so I wrote something out that would have taken about 45 minutes to deliver. And a friend of mine in the State Department, Roger Hillsman, said, You can't do that. And told McNamara that he'll go to sleep after 15 minutes and you got to shorten. McNamara refused and there was a lot of argument back; and forth that McNamara and the talk with charts was given to Adenauer and he stayed awake the entire 45 minutes not only by some major effort of will, but because again, he had never heard anything that was this detailed. It wasn't all that detailed, but we had persistently told our allies, up until 1961, Don't worry about any of these things. We're taking care of them. And you know, we....we'll do all that's necessary. But with-their undermining of their confidence and our willingness to live up to these alleged commitments — and I say alleged advisedly — We've never formally said we'd do any of these things. It seemed essential that we tell them more. And really that was the genesis of what subsequently became the nuclear planning group and much more candid discussions with the allies about our nuclear policies. Which I think, was perfectly appropriate.

IS THIS WHOLE PACKAGE INCLUDING THE CONVENTIONAL BUILD-UP AND THE COUNTERFORCE OPTIONS WHAT WE MEAN BY FLEXIBLE RESPONSE OR DO YOU THINK OF FLEXIBLE RESPONSE OR DO YOU THINK OF FLEXIBLE RESPONSE AS MAINLY RELYING ON THE VARIOUS OPTIONS FOR A WAR IN EUROPE?

I never...cared much about the...terminology. I just at one point in — always looking for the jazzy phrase — I called it 'full options.' And McNamara said, That's really overdoing it. Let's call it 'multiple options.' And we were talking about nuclear, non-nuclear We wanted options all along the line, but obviously as a function of how much the President was willing to pay for them. Which meant how large a defense budget.

WHEN THESE OPTIONS WERE ANNOUNCED TO OUR NATO ALLIES IN ATHENS AND TO THE WORLD, WAS THE MOTIVE IN PART II TO TRY AND OVERCOME THE CREDIBILITY GAP THAT HAD GROWN UP WITH MASSIVE RETALIATION?

That...was certainly a major motive if you...

WHAT ABOUT THE CREDIBILITY PROBLEM?

The credibility problem was certainly a major factor in not only the Athens/Ann Arbor speech to the extent that I understand the latter. But in the whole approach, I would say, of the early '60s — It's worth recalling, I think, that it's not just the massive retaliation strategy by itself, but also that starting — what — in August of 1957 the Soviet Union launched the Sputnik. And then shortly there after began demonstrating a genuine ICBM capability. And Mr. Krushchev not long after that began talking about producing ballistic missiles like sausages and owing to deficiencies in our intelligence capabilities it was very hard to say that...they were not developing this very powerful force. And this led first to the Gaither Committee in, I think, '57 or '58. And the gradually to increasing stories in the United States about the vulnerability of the Strategic Air Command and about the possibility that any nuclear attack on our part would resolve in mutual destruction. And that in turn began to lead our allies led as usual by General DeGaulle to say, What makes anybody think that the United States is going to sacrifice New York for Paris. Or Los Angeles for Bonn. And all of these trades. And so there was this growing concern in Europe and among Americans that the US strategic nuclear force was no longer the kind of deterrent to any kind of attack on our allies that it had thought to have been in the '40s and through most of the '50s. And at that point the issue arose and this was how I got involved in RAND in 19...early 1956. The issue arose, Well, if we no longer can depend on the US Strategic Force, maybe the solution is to share some how or other these capabilities with our allies either by providing them with the technology and letting them develop it themselves or by arranging some other form of sharing. And...which was what led to the multilateral farce...force, or whatever you wanted to call it. Debbie Reynolds should have acted in that. It looked like the unsinkable MLF, you know. It was...weird thing. It's. I mean its weirdness has only been exceeded by the weirdness of putting Pershing IIs and ground launch cruise missiles in Europe. I... supposedly they just like to pack these things

BUT IF MASSIVE RETALIATION WAS INCREDIBLE IN LIGHT OF SOVIET ICBM CAPABILITY, WAS THE OFFER OF RELYING MORE ON CONVENTIONAL WEAPONS ETC. DESIGNED TO REASSURE OUR ALLIES.

That was the intent. Yes. Whether it in fact succeeded is another question. But what we were trying to argue, although this argument had to be muted somewhat as a result of Kennedy's seeming acceptance of the MLF Proposal. But what we were trying to argue to the allies was what? Any nuclear use is just bad news. And don't forget that. So your best bet is still to have a good conventional capability. And don't put all your eggs in the nuclear basket. Have...have a good strong non-nuclear capability so that you don't have to get tested as to your willingness to use nuclear weapons. But if it comes to that, the United States, owing to these large diversified, flexible forces will be able to exercise options such that it will not be paralyzed if there is no choice but to use nuclear weapons or surrender. So...we want options all along the line because these are terrible decisions. But we want flexibility and even in the nuclear forces.

LET'S TALK ABOUT THE AIR FORCES REACTION TO COUNTERFORCE. SHORTLY AFTER ANN ARBOR, MCNAMARA DOWNPLAYED THE TERMINOLOGY ANYWAY OF UH... THE RHETORIC OF COUNTERFORCE AND HE BEGAN TO TALK ABOUT ASSURED DESTRUCTION INSTEAD. WHAT WAS THE AIR FORCES REACTION IN TALKING ABOUT COUNTERFORCE?

There were a number of problems with talking publicly about ... counterforce because among other things, one of the sort of major components of it — at least as it was originally presented was a...a substantial civil defense program which indeed was started and then dropped because of so much opposition to it. But beyond that there was always a question as far as I knew in Mr. McNamara's mind about how open-ended a thing this was. And how much would he really have to buy. And whether there was any end in sight to the amount of capability he would have to acquire— Would the target system keep expanding? Would the number of missiles or bomber that you needed to cover individual targets keep going up. Or...would it stabilize somewhere. It was hard to answer that question as it is in most military affairs where if there is a competition things to change and forces tend to grow. But unfortunately the airforce, in my view, began making very large scale demands once they realized that this had become national policy. And the target list expanded and the number of weapons that they felt they need in order to cover the targets went up very dramatically. And while I've never talked with Mr. McNamara about this, I assume not only did he begin to have reservations on other grounds — at least about publicly talking about all of this. And particularly seeing the demands not only for civil defense, but for anti-ballistic missile defenses and so on you know, the costs and the sort of endless competition became a very great concern to him.

DID YOU HAVE ANY PERSONAL EXPERIENCES OF THE AIR FORCES INTEREST IN ACQUIRING NEW WEAPONRY TO COUNTER ALL THESE NEW TARGET?

The Air Force interest was really three-fold. One — bombers. They had bought, I think, as many of the B-52 bombers as they really wanted. We had over 600 of the B-52 at their peak. They had agreements, they thought, for at least 1200 Minuteman although they ended up with 1000. But they wanted many more Minuteman missiles and they wanted a new bomber And they also wanted an air-launched ballistic missile, the Skybolt. So they had a very rich menu of weapons that they hoped to acquire. Replace the B-52s with the B-70. Continue the Minuteman force and expand it. I've heard various stories, but I can't vouch for any of them about how many they really wanted. And they wanted to go well beyond 1000 and they wanted to put the Skybolt missile on the B-52 bomber. It was sort of a ballistic missile precursor air of air-launched cruise missiles. And so the costs were obviously if they were allowed to have their own way, going to be enormous. And it became increasingly clear to me in 1962, I think, that if they kept pressing these very large demands on Mr. McNamara he might decide just to scuttle the whole business of options, no cities counter force etcetera. So...uh...in conjunction with a friend of mine in the Air Force we arranged to have me talk to a group of senior Air Force generals saying essentially, Look fellows. We got a good thing going here. Don't spoil it by making these excessive demands because you're just going to drive the secretary into a serious resistance. And they...they listened to me. And as far as I know nothing changed and that in turn — not that alone, but I mean — You then got the switch to what I would call the planning device of assured destruction.

DID YOU SEE THIS AS A PROCUREMENT CRITERION MAINLY OF A WAY TO DETERMINE HOW MUCH IS ENOUGH? IS THAT ACCURATE?

Yes. I...that's certainly how I saw it because . ..

WAS THIS A PROCUREMENT CRITERION?

I saw it as a procurement criterion. Yes. Because first no change in the PSYOP occurred, i.e., the same options, if you will, that had been introduced in 1962 remained in there. Second, if you look carefully at the size of the force that the secretary was trying to acquire under the assured destruction rubric you...very simple calculations demonstrated that it was going to be large enough to cover all the targets that you wanted to cover in the...anyway. But it had the advantage of his standpoint of putting a lid on the size of the forces because the services were told very flatly, Look we believe or The secretary believes that we should not need to cause more than 32 percent prop...uh...fatalities in the Soviet Union and that's the sort of upper 32, 34 percent. I forget which. That's the upper limit. And...and the forces are to be bought so as to be able to achieve that level of damage. Now, if you look carefully, you saw that he was also saying that each leg of the triad, i.e. the bombers, the ICBMs and the submarine launch ballistic missiles — Each should have the capability to deliver 400 equivalent megatons against these targets in the Soviet Union. And if you looked at what that actually meant, that meant that you could cover the...target system. So it was kind of a planning device and maybe somewhat of a deception of some people. But it did serve its purpose and it was used until Jim Schlesinger threw it out in 1973.

THE ASSURED DESTRUCTION CRITERION — TELL US AGAIN WHAT THAT WAS.

What was done first of all — and I don't know whether Alain Enthoven did it or who did it —was to rank order of Soviet cities by a combination of population and industry. And Moscow always was number one. Leningrad number two. Kiev-three. Etcetera etcetera. And it was calculated that if you started with Moscow at the top of your list and went down this list by rank order of population and industry, by the time you got to about 34 percent of the population, you were starting to hit cities that were not only relatively small in population, but didn't have all that much industry. And you were getting down to cities on the size of 25,000. Secondly, it turned out that while there was no nice knee in the curve — it sort of rolls over like that and gradually flattens out — that by the time you get up to about 400 megatons — which cover 200 cities, or it did then — you would get about, if I remember the numbers correctly, 34 percent of the population very promptly. Which meant it would be much worse than that. By just blast alone you would very promptly kill 34 percent of the Soviet population and would probably destroy about 50 percent very promptly of their industry. So that was the basis for saying, Alright...that's...that's enough. Only there was this little footnote that most people didn't notice which said, you know. Each leg of the triad should be able to deliver 400 megatons. So...the planning was done — It was argued very conservatively so that even if 2 legs of the triad failed, one leg would still be able to deliver the 400 equivalent megatons. But in fact, that was simply a way of putting a lid on the size of the force and simultaneously enabling you to cover the targets in the PSYOP.

THIS LISTING OF THE SOVIET CITIES AND OF MAINTAINING A CAPABILITY FOR DESTROYING THE SOVIET CITIES — THAT LEAVES THE IMPRESSION THAT THIS WAS OUR PLAN. THAT ASSURED DESTRUCTION IS A POLICY RATHER THAN A CAPABILITY. WAS THAT THE POLICY?

Assured destruction to the best of my knowledge never was the policy. At all times the President had the option in the football as it came to be known — the briefco...the briefcase with the codes and the options in it which are carried around by an officer wherever the President goes. He could choose as an option to blow up Soviet cities any time he wanted to. And that, as far as I know, is true to this day. But...the option not to do that, and to attack a range of other targets was put into effect in 1962 and remained in effect despite this criterion of assured destruction. As far as I'm able to tell and was able to tell at the time and...I won 500 dollars on this that never got paid me on a bet First, the PSYOP did not change. And second, we were able despite the assured destruction name to keep covering the necessary targets in the SIOP. So I saw it first as a procurement device to put a lid on what was seen as excessive demands for forces. And second, my impression is that by 1963, Mr. McNamara very understandably was fed up with this subject. It's not a very charming subject. And people were beginning to think much more especially with the success of the limited atmospheric test ban to think much more seriously about arms control. And I...I don't know this for a fact, but I think he perhaps felt that by talking about assured destruction as the policy, even though he kept exploring these various damage limiting possibilities that might help the atmosphere in which it would be feasible to go forward with some further agreement beyond the...these test ban agreement. And he...to the best of my knowledge, was really at the forefront of the efforts to develop what then became the SALT agreements. So...I think all of these things were wrapped up in his attitude. But that... That's my speculation. I can't -- You'd have to talk to him about it. I was very sympathetic to it, I should add.

IN THE LATER PART OF HIS TERM HE DID BECOME INTERESTED IN ARMS CONTROL AND HE BARGAINED AWAY ABM DEFENSES AND SO ON. DOES THIS MEAN THAT YOU'RE TURNING TO AN INTEREST IN DETERRENTS ONLY OR DOES IT MEAN THAT YOU'RE AVOIDING THE QUESTION OF WHAT TO DO IF DETERRENCE FAILS?

No. You always have choices. They're very difficult choices in this business. You can say, Look, I will depend on my offense only to do whatever damage limiting I can. And hope that by a combination of suppressing his...the enemy's megatonnage and by a mutual avoidance of cities we can limit damage and then hope and pray somehow or other to stop this thing. You can go a step further. And the next most effective step in terms of limiting damage has been, and to the best of my knowledge, still is, a major civil defense program in terms of its cost and its effectiveness assuming you can persuade people to use the civil defense system. And it's remarkable, as we discovered during the Cuban missile crisis how interested people suddenly become in civil defense even though they may have been great critics of it before. Third, you can try to develop a very comprehensive missile, anti ballistic missile and bomber defense. You don't do one without doing the other. Which is why talking things such as the Strategic Defense Initiative as though it could do everything — You still would have to worry nowadays about both bombers and cruise missiles. Similarly you had to then. Now, all of those get increasingly expensive. There's a limit to how much, especially once the enemy's offense gets well protected and he get a better and better second strike force — There's a limit to how much you can do with your offense. There's quite a bit you can do with civil defense. But at some point, if an enemy is really determined to slaughter people, he can kill people no matter how good your civil defense is. Although Herman Kahn believed that somehow or other if you created new cities underneath old cities, you might be able to save very large numbers of people. But it was kind of a fantasy. But there's a limit to how much I think you can really do with civil defense however effective it may be. Then you can start going to the very expensive anti-ballistic missile and antibomber defenses. And those were the things that McNamara was looking at and having studies conducted in...starting in the early and going on through the mid-1960s.

HE ASKED GENERALKENT, DIDN'T HE? TO...

I don't know that he ever directly asked .. . General Kent, but I'm sure that he asked Harold Brown or whoever then was the director of research and engineering to look into this and look into it very carefully. Because the army had been pressing for the deployment of a ballistic missile defense since the late 1950s.

DO YOU THINK THAT WHEN MCNAMARA GAVE UP ON DEFENSE AND THOUGHT THAT THE ABM WAS SOMETHING THAT WE SHOULDN'T BUILD — DID THIS MEAN THAT HE WAS TURNING TOWARDS THINKING ABOUT NUCLEAR WEAPONS AS GOOD FOR DETERRENCE ONLY OR WAS ALL THAT INTEREST IN OPTIONS AND FLEXIBILITY GONE BY THE TIME HE LEFT THE PENTAGON?

I don't believe that he ever fully renegged, if you will, on his original interest, although I think from the outset it was an interest of the head rather than the heart. I think a very understandable reaction. I would say though that he did a number of things .. which led to substantial developments in the '70s and even in the 1980s in connection with options. I mean it was Robert McNamara, however much he may subsequently regret it, who agreed to fund multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles. It was Robert McNamara who commissioned the study that led to the MX Missile. It was Robert McNamara who continued to put money into research and development into anti-ballistic missile defenses. And so on. It was Robert McNamara who paved the way for the development of the airborn warning and control system aircraft which was to be the heart of a new antibomber defense system and so on. Bob may no longer want to be reminded of some of these things, but if you look carefully at the record not only did he feel that pursuing these so called damage limiting measures would be simply conducive to a further escalation of the competition with the Soviet Union. He also felt A — they were going to be very expensive as indeed they turned out to be, and B — that they weren't going to be very effective. And I think most of the technical people at the time were not at all prepared to certify that these things were going to work very well. So I don't think that his attitudes at the time demonstrated anything more than a rather cold realism about what was feasible and what might or might not contribute to this crazy competition.

DID PEOPLE LIKE WOLLSTEADER AND HENRY OWEN REALLY THINK THAT BECAUSE MCNAMARA DIDN'T PUT ENOUGH EFFORT INTO THE DEVELOPMENT AND REFINEMENT OF WEAPONS AS THE YEARS WENT ON WE DIDN'T HAVE ANY MORE FIGHTING OPTIONS OTHER TO DO THE CITY BUSTING? DO YOU BELIEVE IN THIS?

No. I really don't accept that. Furthermore you know, I think it's very important to be careful about defining what we're talking about when we're talking about these options. I don't want to get into disputes with old and friends to whom I owe a great deal. But there's always that but. I think people really delude themselves about just how fancy and how surgical you can get with these capabilities. I repeat what I said earlier. I think there are very important distinctions between 10 million deaths and a hundred million deaths. And I think they're worth trying to preserve. But I think that's the sort of thing we're talking about. These are very blunt instruments. Just as one example of the problem I think that one faces in trying to develop options and why it's so difficult to be very surgical with these terrible weapons. We keep on a day to day basis, 30 percent of our bomber on a...on a ground based alert. They're supposed to be and I believe can get off the ground in 15 minutes with bombs on board and ready to go up north to their so called positive control lines. I would say right now we would have something on the order of 90 of those of our bombers on that kind of ground alert. So that if they were ordered to take off you would have not only 90 bombers and their tankers going north, you would have, on the average about 720 weapons up there. And if then the question arises Do we order them across their positive control line, I doubt very much that the President of any commander is going to say, Well, I think I'll send 3 of them over and I'll call the others 717 or whatever back. It's go or no go. And that means 720 pretty high yield weapons by any standard are going to go or they're going to get called back. I mean 720 weapons at a minimum each say on the average around 200 Kilotons — that's not a very surgical option even if you're trying to be very careful about what they attack and how they attack and so on.

ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT TODAY OR IS THIS WHAT WOULD HAVE HAPPENED IN THE '60s?

Yeah. It would have happened in the '60s. Yes. I mean, people have said, Oh well. They had those options, but they were these big blunderbus options and whereas we'll do all these fancy options that people have talked about in the '70s with Schlesinger and then again with Carter and now in the '80s. I think people are just kidding themselves about how much flexibility you can really introduce into these for...forces. They... they're not flexible forces. They're very rigid forces and the way you introduce any degree of flexibility into them is primarily by buying so many of them that you can withhold some and send others on. It isn't as though these forces can dance around and do lovely little minuets with nuclear weapons. No. That's not the way these things work at all.

HENRY ROWAN WAS SAYING THAT YOU CAN GET SUCH ACCURACY THAT WE COULD IF WE DEVOTED OURSELVES TO IT THAT YOU CAN PUT NONNUCLEAR WARHEADS AND JUST KNOCK OUT THE REFINERY AND LEAVE THE CITY...

For certain types of targets, I would say the technology is just about in hand so that...yeah. I would agree. No...if we get the reliability — and that's the big problem and it has been the big problem all along as we have demonstrated with the tragedy of the Challenger — that yeah, you can get accuracies good enough with a lot of special and expensive equipment to do that sort of thing. To knock out certain types of targets with high yield explosives I mean conventional explosives. There's always an argument at what point it's worth making the trade from the — Look they're very efficient. Nuclear weapons are very efficient They're just awful weapons, but they really do a job much more efficiently than say a high explosive, nonnuclear. And there's a question: At what point is it worth trading from a...a nuclear weapon to a non nuclear weapon unless you believe somehow or other you can do this whole job with non-nuclear warheads. I don't — to my knowledge, there are certain types of targets that would...you just couldn't destroy with high explosive weapons as we know them now. That doesn't mean you can't in the future.

...SOME PEOPLE LIKE IT. SOME PEOPLE DETEST IT. SOME PEOPLE SAY IT DOESN'T EXIST. WHAT DOES "MAD" MEAN TO YOU?

'MAD' to begin with, as I'm sure you know, means mutual assured destruction. It's the acronym for those 3 words. It is...the notion of mutual assured destruction is based I think on the view that in effect in the '60s Mr. McNamara shifted to assured destruction and that meant that our...since our strategy was going to be counter city, inevitably the Soviet strategy would be counter city and therefore you would have this situation of mutual assured destruction. I do not know what the Soviet targeting was at that time, just as I don't know what it is now. So...I can't say that they might not do that and attack cities right off the bat. Uh...

BUT MCNAMARA DIDN'T CHANGE TO A STRATEGY OF ATTACKING CITIES?

No. That is correct. And in fact, the United States never in any formal sense has had a...a strategy, if you can even call it a strategy of hitting cities only. It is true that in the late 1950s and into the first version of the PSYOP before McNamara came in that the...there was something that got called 'the optimum mix' — and to put it in one of those charming terms whereby you were going to target because you had very high yield weapons — 15, 20 megaton weapons — You could simultaneously target that airfield there, that city there, that command center there and get all 3 for one weapon. So that...there was a tendency just to bunch all these targets. So it was...as the name implied, an optimum mix of military and urban and economic targets. Now, what really happened in the early '60s was nothing all that original, conceptually at least. It was sort of separating the targets which one could do partly as a matter of choosing what you didn't want to hit and partly because you were getting improving accuracies and you could have lower yield weapons as a result of the higher accuracies. And so we really were pulling apart the target system. It wasn't that the target system as a whole underwent such a dramatic transformation, but rather that we said, All right. There are N targets on this list and we're going to cut 'em up and say here are these military or counterforce targets. Here are these economic targets. Here are these logistic targets and here are these urban industrial targets. We're going to treat them separately and have options as to whether we do or do not attack one or more of these types of targets. And that continued up, as far as I know, to the present time. Whether the Soviets have a similar policy I really can't say. So I don't think in any formal sense mutual assured destruction, whatever one may think of it, ever has existed. But I think the debate is somewhat academics... said the1 academic. Because you know, both sides, I would say since the mid 1960s have had increasingly good second strike capabilities so that you know it's a...each side has a very strong deterrent. And while, you know, I'd be the first to wish we knew how to get rid of all of these things it would also mean getting rid of a lot of my friends who know how to build these things. Otherwise we'd be right back in the business again. And I think therefore keeping this kind of stability, minimizing the competition as much as we can and trying to limit our dependence on these capabilities is what makes sensible objectives for us.

SO THERE'S AN ASSURED DESTRUCTION CAPABILITY ON BOTH SIDES?

Correct.

BUT THIS DOESN'T NECESSARILY LEAD TO AN ASSURED DESTRUCTION STRATEGY?

That is correct. Again I have to say: I don't know and I doubt that anybody really knows what the Soviet strategy would be in terms of both the targets they would attack and the sequencing of the targets they might attack. But what I do feel very confident of is that the President has a range of choice available to him as I believe he should have. That the military machine should not make decisions for the President and that one of those choices is not to attack cities. And one of those choices is to attack cities.

BUT GIVEN THIS SORT OF RESTRICTIVE FRAMEWORK OF ASSURED DESTRUCTION CAPABILITIES ON BOTH SIDES, DO YOU THINK THAT THIS MEANS THAT ONE SHOULDN'T ASK ANY LONGER THE QUESTION OF WHAT HAPPENS IF DETERRENCE FAILS AND SHOULD GIVE UP ON OPTIONS AND INTEREST IN REFINEMENT SO THAT IF A WAR HAD TO BE FOUGHT WE WOULD LOSE OUR CAPACITY FOR A DISCRIMINATING WAR. WHAT DOES 'MAD' MEAN IN TERMS OF AN INTEREST IN TRYING TO REFINE WAR FIGHTING OPTIONS.

I...I would have to answer — first of all, I think these are all matters of degree. It's...it's very hard for me personally to imagine a a highly credible deterrent that is...will really work under the most intense stress unless it's also something you're prepared to execute if somehow or other it doesn't... it fails as a deterrent. So I'd, in my own mind, find it hard to make a distinction between what you want for deterrents and what you want for war fighting. But I do think there is a very strong distinction between how much you want to pay and how much confidence you think you can achieve with these payments in war fighting — which I think has rather limited application in this area. It's...it's sort of damage limiting, really. How much you want to pay given the great uncertainties about how effective you can be in limiting damage and conducting something like a traditional campaign. Furthermore, if I could just add one thing, these force, quite apart from the weapons involved, the nuclear weapons — They're air missile space systems and all they can do is blow things up. Whether they're military targets or urban industrial areas or a bridge or whatever. They don't manoeuver really. They don't occupy anything and therefore it...they are not in my view anything more than an adjunct to a really serious war fighting capability. However the weapons themselves are so damaging that... it's hard to imagine say the United States and its allies and the Warsaw Pact conducting anything like a traditional conventional campaign at the same time that lots of nuclear weapons are going off. So you know, I'm not even sure war fighting is the way I would want to think about it. I mean, if we could get rid of the nuclear weapons, what we'd be using these forces, these strategic forces for is just the way we used them in say, World War II although I would hope with more discrimination and restraint. Namely for attacking — and this is where the word strategic originally came from — the types of targets such as war production and so on that have a long term affect on the campaign that say, is taking place on the ground somewhere. And that the tactical targets are the targets that have an immediate impact on that battle and campaign such as reinforcements, lines of communication and the forces themselves. And...now that isn't the way we think about these strategic nuclear forces any more. We started off thinking about them that way back in the 1940s when they first came into being. They've become a sort of independent, kind of catastrophic force. Just this enormous accident waiting to happen. You can, I think, control the degree of the accident but I...I think war fighting is not quite the right way to describe what these forces can do. It...it suggests that there are fewer limits on them...in their ability to do things than in my view is the actuality. So, I think we always have to ask ourselves, not Do we want a credible deterrent — which means a deterrent that we're — or a capability that we're prepared if necessary to use, but how far down this road do we want to go in terms of both cost and in all the other by-products of going down that road. And I don't, myself, at this juncture, see that there's a very persuasive case for going very far down that road. It's very expensive. I mean, if we look at right now what we're having to pay to explore. Simply to explore the potentiality of newer technologies in strategic defense. In over 5 or 6 years it's going to cost us nearly 40 billion dollars. ...

CAN WE IMAGINE A CONTROLLED ESCALATION SCENARIO IN EUROPE WHERE WE MOVE FROM — ESSENTIALLY IN THE '60S THEY SHOWED A PROGRESSION FROM CONVENTIONAL FORCE ETC... HERE WE ARE IN THE '60S WITH A BIG INTEREST IN CONVENTIONAL BUILD UP. SOMETHING HAPPENS. THE HEEPED UP CONVENTIONAL FORCES DON'T HOLD. WHAT MIGHT HAVE OUR OPTIONS BEEN THEN?

We're...we're really in the soup. I mean, again, I believe that even with the so called tactical nuclear capabilities which are really a miscellaneous bunch of rather poorly protected, poorly designed weapons that we should have options there. But there's some terrible dilemmas that I think anybody talking about controlled escalation, once you decide to use these things are just tremendous. And the pressures on commanders on both sides are going to be enormous to start demanding not only for more of these weapons used less and less discriminately, but also on going deeper and deeper into enemy territory in order to get other weapons that threaten them. Just as 2 examples. On...on the NATO side, there's a whole array of Soviet weapons that are based in the Soviet Union, that if they have any function at all, they're to attack targets in Western Europe, not in the United States. Now does the supreme allied commander, Europe say, Well I'll take out these forces neatly in East Germany and Poland being careful not to kill all those good people who are basically friends. But I'll ignore the 400 SS-20s the 500 Badgers, blinders, backfires and so on and so forth even though at any moment they could just come whizzing over and could destroy all my forces and most of Western Europe if the Soviets were so inclined. On the other side, the Soviet Union cannot preclude a decision by the United States to take a bunch of B-52s and suddenly, even though they knocked out our capabilities in Western Europe, start flying them over and attacking targets in Eastern Europe. They can not preclude our taking say, some Poseidon Missiles which can do — commit at least formally to NATO — and using those against targets in Eastern Europe. Furthermore, one final point, neither side is going to be, under these conditions, very good at telling where these things came from.

WHEN ALL THESE OPTIONS WERE DEVELOPED IN THE '60S, AS HORRIBLE AS THEY ARE, THE IDEA WAS TO HAVE AN ALTERNATIVE OTHER THAN TO UNLEASH EVERYTHING AGAINST THE SOVIET UNION, CAN YOU OUTLINE WHAT HAPPENS IF WE CAN'T MEET THE WARSAW PACT. WHAT IS THE NEXT OPTION?

That the first option would be either to make what's known as a demonstration use of nuclear weapons just to show how serious we are about it. And that has a lot of problems associated with it. So I would say the first really serious option would be to use enough nuclear weapons to destroy what ever force was in the process of penetrating allied lines. Making a breakthrough.

IS THAT TACTICAL?

Yes. So that would be the tactical use against forward elements of Soviet or Warsaw Pact ground forces.

AND THEN WHAT COULD YOU EXPECT IN EXCHANGE?

Oh. I think they'd blow a big hole in the NATO line.

WITH TACTICAL WEAPONS?

With nuclear weapons. Yes. And if you know, again, I can't second guess them, but I would think they would immediately try to take out all our airfields and get as many of the missiles that they could in order to minimize a...another strike on our part.

IN EUROPE OR IN THIS COUNTRY?

In Europe.