Command and Control (84 page)

Mattocks managed to jump through the escape hatch
:
Mattocks should have been killed immediately by the tail of the plane. But the plane was breaking apart as he left it, and the tail was already gone. The B-52 exploded right after his parachute deployed, briefly collapsing it. He landed on a farm in the middle of the night, assured its frightened owners that he wasn't a Martian, got a ride to Seymour Johnson Air Force Base—and got arrested by the guards at the front gate. They had not been informed of the accident, and he couldn't produce any military identification. One of the other crew members who safely escaped from the plane, Captain Richard Rardin, found a ride to the base and arrived at the gate not long afterward. When the guards threatened to arrest Rardin, too, Mattocks managed to convince them that the two men were indeed Air Force officers and that a B-52 had just fallen from the sky. See Dobson,
Goldsboro Broken Arrow
, pp. 55–60.

The Air Force assured the public
:
See Noel Yancey, “In North Carolina: Nuclear Bomber Crashes; 3 Dead,”
Fort Pierce News Tribune
(Florida)
,
January 24, 1961.

The T-249 control box and ready/safe switch . . . had already raised concerns at Sandia
:
Interviews with Peurifoy and Stevens. Some of the limitations of the T-249, known as the Aircraft Monitor and Control Box, had been addressed two years earlier in “A Survey of Nuclear Weapon Safety Problems,” pp. 19–23.

all of the weapons were armed
:
Stevens interview. See also Stevens, “Origins and Evolution of S
²
C at Sandia,” p. 60.

A seven-month investigation by Sandia
:
See ibid.

“It would have been bad news—in spades”
:
“Goldsboro Revisited,” p. 1.

“
One simple, dynamo-technology, low
-
voltage switch
”
:
Ibid., p. 2.

the groundburst of that 4-megaton bomb in Goldsboro
:
The amount of fallout would not have been as great as that produced by the far more powerful Bravo test. But the Goldsboro bomb could have spread deadly radioactive material across a large area of the northeastern United States.

“pay any price, bear any burden”
:
“Text of Kennedy's Inaugural Outlining Policies on World Peace and Freedom,”
New York Times
, January 21, 1961.

The story scared the hell out of him
:
Interview with Robert S. McNamara.

A B-47 carrying a Mark 39 bomb had caught fire
:
Peurifoy and Stevens interviews. See also
Airmunitions Letter
, June 23, 1960, p. 37, and Maggelet and Oskins,
Broken Arrow
, pp. 113–18.

A B-47: . . . caught fire on the runway at Chennault Air Force base
:
See
Airmunitions Letter
, June 23, 1960, p. 53.

In the skies above Hardinsburg, Kentucky
:
See
Airmunitions Letter
, Headquarters, Ogden Air Material Area, No. 136-11–56B, June 29, 1960 (
SECTET/RESTRICTED DATA
/declassified, pp. 13–46, Maggelet and Oskins,
Broken Arrow,
pp. 129–32.

a “crunching sound”
:
Quoted Maggelet and Oskins,
Broken Arrow
, p. 132.

At an air defense site in Jackson Township
:
For details of the BOMARC accident, see “Report of Special Weapons Incident . . . Bomarc Site, McGuire AFB, New Jersey,” 2702nd Explosive Ornance Disposal Squad, United States Air Force, Griffiss Air Force Base, New York, June 13, 1960 (
SECRET/RESTRICTED DATA
/declassified);
Airmunitions Letter
, No. 136-11-56C, Headquarters, Ogden Air Material Area, September 8, 1960 (
SECRET/RESTRICTED DATA
/declassified; and George Barrett, “Jersey Atom Missile Fire Stirs Brief Radiation Fear,”
New York Times,
June 8, 1960.

An Air Force security officer called the state police
:
See
“Jersey Atom Missile Fire.”

Fallout from the BOMARC's 10-kiloton warhead
:
See “Civil Defense Alerted in City,”
New York Times,
June 8, 1960.

The accidents in North Carolina and Texas worried Robert McNamara the most
:
McNamara interview. See also “Memorandum of Conversation (Uncleared), Subject: State-Defense Meeting on Group I, II, and IV Papers,” January 26, 1963 (
TOP SECRET
/declassified), NSA, p. 12.

“bankruptcy in both strategic policy and in the force structure”
:
“Robert S. McNamara Oral History Interview—4/4/1964,” John F. Kennedy Oral History Collection, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, p. 5.

“The Communists will have a dangerous lead”
: Quoted in Desmond Ball,
Politics and Force Levels: The Strategic Missile
Program of the Kennedy Administration
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980), p. 18. Although Ball's work was written before the declassification of many important national security documents from the Kennedy era, the book's central arguments are still convincing. I also learned a great deal about the Kennedy administration's aims from
How Much Is Enough? 1961–1969: Shaping Defense Program
(Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 1971), by Alain C. Enthoven and K. Wayne Smith. Enthoven was one of McNamara's most brilliant advisers. For Kennedy's attacks on the strategic thinking of the Eisenhower administration, see Christopher A. Preble, “‘Who Ever Believed in the “Missile Gap”?': John F. Kennedy and the Politics of National Security,”
Presidential Studies Quarterly
, vol. 33, no. 4 (December 2003), pp. 801–26.

“We have been driving ourselves into a corner”
:
Quoted in William W. Kaufmann,
The McNamara Strategy
(New York: Harper & Row, 1964), p. 40.

General Maxwell D. Taylor's book,
The Uncertain Trumpet
:
Taylor argued that the United States needed “a capability to react across the entire spectrum of possible challenge, for coping with anything from general atomic war to infiltrations and aggressions.” He was later a major architect of the Vietnam War. See Maxell D. Taylor,
The Uncertain Trumpet (
New York: Harper & Brothers, 1960), p. 6.

“The record of the Romans made clear”
:
“Summary of President Kennedy's Remarks to the 496th Meeting of the National Security Council,” January 18, 1962 (
TOP SECRET
/declassified), in United States Department of State,
Foreign Relations of the United States
,
1961–1963, Volume VIII, National Security Policy
(Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1996), p. 240.

The chief of naval operations, Admiral Arleigh Burke, warned
:
Western Europe would suffer
radiological effects from a massive American attack on the Soviet Union, but South Korea was likely to receive even worse fallout. See “Chief of Naval Operations Cable to Commander-in-Chief Atlantic Fleet, Commander-in-Chief Pacific Fleet, Commander-in-Chief U.S. Naval Forces Europe,” November 20, 1960 (
TOP SECRET
/declassified), NSA, p. 1.

“whiz kids,” “defense intellectuals,” “the best and the brightest”
:
David Halberstam's book on this highly self-confident group remains authoritative:
The Best and the Brightest
(New York: Ballantine Books, 1992).

WSEG Report No. 50
:
“Evaluation of Strategic Offensive Weapons Systems,” Weapon Systems Evaluation Group Report No. 50, Washington, D.C., December 27, 1960 (
TOP SECRET/RESTRICTED DATA
/declassified), NSA.

the annual operating costs of keeping a B-52 bomber on ground alert
:
See ibid., Enclosure “F,” p. 19.

America's command-and-control system was so complex
:
Long excerpts from Enclosure “C,” the section of WSEG R-50 on command and control, can be found in Wainstein, et al., “Evolution of U.S. Strategic Command and Control,” pp. 239–47.

By launching a surprise attack on five targets
:
Ibid., p. 243.

By hitting nine additional targets
:
Ibid., p. 242.

a 90 percent chance of success
: Cited in ibid.

only thirty-five Soviet missiles
:
Cited in Ibid.

Four would be aimed at the White House
:
Ibid., p. 243.

“Under surprise attack conditions”
:
Quoted in ibid., p. 239.

“
a one-shot command, control, and communication system”
:
Ibid., p. 284.

the warning time would be zero
: Cited in Ibid., p. 241.

During a tour of NORAD headquarters in Colorado Springs
:
My account of this false alarm is based on “‘Missile Attack' Terror Described,”
Oakland Tribune,
December 11, 1960; “When the Moon Dialed No. 5, They Saw World War III Begin,”
Express and News
(San Antonio)
,
December 11, 1960; John G. Hubbell, “You Are Under Attack!, The Strange Incident of October 5,”
Reader's Digest
, April 1961, pp. 37–39; and Donald MacKenzie,
Mechanizing Proof: Computing, Risk, and Trust
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001), pp. 23–4. MacKenzie obtained an oral history interview with General Kuter that largely confirmed the contemporary accounts of the incident.

a 99.9 percent certainty
:
Cited in “‘You Are Under Attack!'”

“Chief, this is a hot one”
:
Quoted in MacKenzie,
Mechanizing Proof
, p. 23.

“Where is Khrushchev?”
:
Quoted in “‘You Are Under Attack!'”

He recalled a sense of panic at NORAD
:
Percy later wondered what sort of decision might have been made if the radar signals hadn't been recognized to be a false alarm. See Einar Kringlen, “The Myth of Rationality in Situations of Crisis,”
Medicine and War, Volume I,
(1985), p. 191.

“There is no mechanism for nor organization charged with”
:
Quoted in Wainstein, et al., “Evolution of U.S. Strategic Command and Control,” p. 243.

“No other target system can at present offer”
:
Quoted in ibid., p. 246.

“We have been concerned with the vulnerability”
:
McNamara learned within weeks of taking office that the command-and-control problems in Europe were severe. These quotes are taken from a report submitted to him in the fall of 1961 by General Earle E. Partridge, a retired Air Force officer who'd been asked to head an investigation of command-and-control issues. “Interim Report on Command and Control in Europe,” National Command and Control Task Force, October 1961 (
TOP SECRET
/declassified), NSA, p. 2.

All of NATO's command bunkers . . . could easily be destroyed
:
See ibid.

At best, NATO commanders might receive five or ten minutes of warning
:
See ibid., p. 4.

the NATO communications system was completely unprotected
:
See ibid., pp. 3–4.

the president could not expect to reach any of NATO's high-ranking officers
:
See ibid., p. 5.

“It is imperative that each commander knows”
:
Ibid.

“Not only could we initiate a war, through mistakes”
:
Ibid., p. 6.

“A subordinate commander faced with a substantial Russian military action”
:
“Memorandum from the President's Special Assistant for National Security Affairs (Bundy) to President Kennedy,” January 30, 1961 (
TOP SCERET
/
declassified)
,
in
Foreign Relations of the United States
,
1961–1963
,
Volume VIII,
National Security Policy, p. 18.

a top secret report, based on a recent tour of NATO bases
:
See “Report of Ad Hoc Subcommittee on U.S. Policies Regarding Assignment of Nuclear Weapons to NATO; Includes Letter to President Kennedy and Appendices,” Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, Congress of the United States,” February 11, 1961 (
SECRET/RESTRICTED DATA
/declassified), NSA.

“he almost fell out of his chair”
:
The adviser, Thomas Schelling, is quoted in Webster Stone, “Moscow's Still Holding,”
New York Times,
September 18, 1988.

The Joint Committee on Atomic Energy had been concerned
:
My description of the committee's tour of NATO sites and the development of Permissive Action Links is based on “Report on U.S. Policies Regarding Assignment of Nuclear Weapons to NATO”; “Letter, From Harold M. Agnew, to Major General A. D. Starbird, Director of Military Applications, U.S. Atomic Energy Commission,” January 5, 1961 (S
ECRET
/R
ESTRICTED
D
ATA
/declassified); Clinton P. Anderson, with Milton Viorst,
Outsider in the Senate: Senator Clinton Anderson's Memoirs
(New York: World Publishing Company, 1970), pp. 165–73; “Command and Control Systems for Nuclear Weapons: History and Current Status,” System Development Department I, Sandia Laboratories, SLA-73-0415, September 1973 (
SECRET/RESTRICTED DATA
/declassified); “PAL Control of Theater Nuclear Weapons,” M. E. Bleck, P. R. Souder, Command and Control Division, Sandia National Laboratories, SAND82-2436, March 1984 (
SECRET/FORMERLY RESTRICTED DATA
/declassified); Peter Stein and Peter Feaver,
Assuring Control of Nuclear Weapons: The Evolution of Permissive Action Links
(Cambridge, MA: Center for Science and International Affairs, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, and University Press of America, 1987); Stevens, “Origins and Evolution of S
²
C at Sandia,” pp. 50–52; and my interview with Harold Agnew, who went on the European trip and played an important role in the adoption of PALs.