Command and Control (87 page)

“lead to the destruction of our hostages”
:
“Statement at Athens,” p. 7.

“the catastrophe which we most urgently wish to avoid”
:
Ibid.

“Not targeting cities—how aggressive!”
:
Quoted in Fursenko and Naftali,
Khrushchev's Cold War
, p. 442.

“To get the population used to the idea”
:
Ibid.

If Khrushchev's scheme worked
:
Dozens of books have been written about the Cuban missile crisis. I found these to be the most interesting and compelling: Aleksandr Fursenko and Timothy Naftali,
“One Hell of a Gamble”: Khrushchev, Castro, and Kennedy, 1958–1964
(New York: W. W. Norton, 1997); Graham Allison and Philip Zelikow,
Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis
(New York: Longman, 1999); Ernest R. May and Philip D. Zelikow,
The Kennedy Tapes: Inside the White House During the Cuban Missile Crisis
(New York: W. W. Norton, 2002); Max Frankel,
High
Noon in the Cold War: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and the Cold War
(New York: Ballantine Books, 2005); and Michael Dobbs,
One Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War
(New York: Knopf, 2008). Fursenko and Naftali skillfully include material from the Soviet archives. Frankel covered the crisis for the
New York Times
and brings a firsthand feel to the drama. Allison and Zelikow use the crisis as a means of understanding larger questions of leadership and government behavior.
The Kennedy Tapes,
although based on edited transcripts, allows many of the principal actors to speak for themselves. And Dobbs conveys the simple fact that this is an incredible story, with stakes that couldn't possibly be higher.

twenty-four medium-range ballistic missiles, sixteen intermediate-range ballistic missiles
:
Cited in Fursenko and Naftali,
“One Hell of a Gamble,”
p. 188.

forty-two bombers . . . and about 50,000 personnel
:
Ibid.

triple the number of Soviet land-based missiles that could hit the United States
:
The Soviet Union had about twenty long-range missiles in 1962. Cited in Allison and Zelikow,
Essence of Decision
, p. 92.

“We have no bases in Cuba”
:
“Letter from Chairman Khrushchev to President Kennedy,” April 22, 1961, in U.S. Department of State,
Foreign Relations of the United States
,
1961–1963, Volume VI, Kennedy-Khrushchev Exchanges
(Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1996), p. 12.

“Our nuclear weapons are so powerful”
:
“Text of Soviet Statement Saying That Any U.S. Attack on Cuba Would Mean War,”
New York Times,
September 12, 1962.

their strategic purpose seemed to be a decapitation attack
:
Regardless of Khrushchev's actual motive for deploying the missiles, they had the capability to destroy American command-and-control centers with little warning. And that made their presence in Cuba all the more unacceptable for the Kennedy administration. See May, et al., “History of the Strategic Arms Competition,”
Part 2,
pp. 663–68.

“It doesn't make any difference if you get blown up”
:
“Off the Record Meeting on Cuba,” October 16, 1962, in U.S. Department of State,
Foreign Relations of the United States
,
1961–1963, Volume XI, Cuban Missile Crisis and Aftermath
(Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1996), p. 61.

“If we attack Cuba . . . in any way”
:
May and Zelikow,
Kennedy Tapes
, p. 111.

“We've got the Berlin problem staring us in the face”
:
Ibid., p. 113.

“almost as bad as the appeasement at Munich”
:
Ibid.

“LeMay: I think that a blockade”
:
Ibid., p. 117.

“I just agree with you”
:
Ibid., p. 122.

“eliminate this clandestine, reckless and provocative threat”
:
“Text of Kennedy's Address on Moves to Meet the Soviet Build-Up in Cuba,”
New York Times,
October 23, 1962.

“move the world back from the abyss”
:
Ibid.

Nearly two hundred B-47 bombers left SAC bases
:
Cited in “Strategic Air Command Operations in the Cuban Crisis of 1962,” Historical Study, vol. 1, no. 90 (1963) (
TOP
SECRET
/declassified), NSA, p. 49.

Every day about sixty-five of the bombers circled
:
Cited in ibid., p. 97.

“I am addressing you for the purpose”
: Quoted in ibid., p. vii.

The American custodians of the Jupiters were ordered
:
“The Jupiters,” according to the historian Philip Nash, “continued to represent one of the gravest command-and-control problems in the Western arsenal.” McNamara was so concerned about unauthorized use of the missiles that he ordered they not be fired, even in response to a Soviet attack on Italy or Turkey. See Nash,
Other Missiles of October
, pp. 125–127.

“an act of aggression which pushes mankind”
:
“Letter from Chairman Khrushchev to President Kennedy,” October 24, 1962, in
Foreign Relations of the United States
,
1961–1963, Volume VI, Kennedy-Khrushchev Exchanges
, p. 170.

“Your action desperate”
:
Quoted in Al Seckel, “Russell and the Cuban Missile Crisis,”
Russell: The Journal of Bertrand Russell Studies,
vol. 4, no. 2 (Winter 1984–1985), p. 255.

“As I left the White House . . . on that beautiful fall evening”
:
Robert S. McNamara,
Blundering into Disaster: Surviving the First Century of the Nuclear Age
(New York: Pantheon, 1987), p. 11.

almost one hundred tactical nuclear weapons on the island
:
See Fursenko and Naftali,
“One Hell of a Gamble,”
p. 188.

“Absolutely not . . . the Soviet Government did raise the issue”
:
Quoted in Nash,
Other Missiles of October,
p. 157.

In order to deflect attention from the charge
:
Nash does a superb job of describing how the Kennedy administration covered up the truth and spread the fiction that no secret deal had been with Khrushchev. See Nash,
Other Missiles of October,
pp. 150–71.

“genuine peace” with the Soviets
:
“Text of Kennedy Speech to Class at American U.,”
Washington Post and Times Herald
, June 11, 1963.

And a hot line was finally created
:
For the history and workings of the hot line, see Desmond Ball, “Improving Communications Links Between Moscow and Washington,”
Journal of Peace Research
, vol. 8, no. 2 (1991), pp. 135–59; and Haraldur Þór Egilsson, “The Origins, Use and Development of Hot Line Diplomacy,”
Netherlands Institute of International Relations
, Issue 85 in Discussion Papers in Diplomacy, No. 85, March 2003.

“We at the embassy could only pray”
:
Quoted in Egilsson, “Origins, Use and Development of Hot Line,” pp. 2–3.

2,088 airborne alert missions . . . almost fifty thousand hours of flying time
:
Cited in “Strategic Air Command Operations in the Cuban Crisis,” p. 48.

The case was settled out of court
:
For details of the legal battle between Peter George and the creators of
Fail-Saft
, see Scherman, “Everbody Blows UP.”

“The whole point of the doomsday machine is lost”
:
The full title of the film is
Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.
The screenplay was written by Stanley Kubrick, Peter George, and Terry Southern.
Strangelove
was directed by Kubrick and released in 1964 by Columbia Pictures.

“The probability of a mechanical failure”
:
Sidney Hook,
The Fail-Safe Fallacy
(New York: Stein and Day, 1963), p. 14.

“the Communist determination to dominate the world”
:
The quote appears on the back cover of
The Fail-Safe Fallacy
.

“‘fail safe,' not unsafe”
:
Roswell L. Gilpatric, “
‘
Strangelove'? ‘Seven Days'? Not Likely,”
New York Times,
May 17, 1964. A similarly reassuring article had appeared the previous year in a Sunday magazine carried by the
Los Angeles Times
and dozens of other large newspapers. See Donald Robinson, “How Safe Is Fail Safe? Are We in Danger of an Accidental War?,”
This Week Magazine,
January 27, 1963.

“The very existence of the lock capability”
:
“Cable, To General Curtis E. LeMay, From General Thomas S. Power” (
SECRET
/declassified), NSA, February 17, 1964.

John H. Rubel—who supervised strategic weapon research and development
:
Rubel went to work at the Pentagon during the Eisenhower administration and remained there for the first few years of the Kennedy administration, eventually serving as assistant secretary of defense for research and engineering. He spoke to me at length about the trouble with the Minuteman launch procedures and his criticisms of the SIOP. For a man of ninety-three, his memory is astonishing. In a recent book—
Doomsday Delayed: USAF Strategic Weapons Doctrine and SIOP-62, 1959–1962, Two Cautionary Tales
(New York: Hamilton Books, 2008)—Rubel describes his first briefing on the SIOP. He calls the experience a “descent into the deep heart of darkness, a twilight underworld governed by disciplined, meticulous, and energetically mindless groupthink aimed at wiping out half of the people living on nearly one third of the earth's surface.” That feeling never entirely left him. Rubel also discussed nuclear weapon issues in an oral history for the John F. Kennedy Library. The entire transcript has been classified, and I've requested it under the Freedom of Information Act.

“an accident for which a later apology”
:
“The Development of the SM-80 Minuteman,” Robert F. Piper, DCAS Historical Office, Deputy Commander for Aerospace Systems, Air Force Systems Command, April 1962 (
SECRET
/
RESTRICTED DATA
/declassified), NSA, p. 68.

“completely safe”
:
The quote comes from an Air Force historian's summary of the Air Force position. See ibid., p. 70.

an independent panel was appointed to investigate
:
The panel was headed by James C. Fletcher, who later became the head of NASA. For the Fletcher committee's work, see ibid., p. 71, and Rubel
,
Doomsday Delayed
, pp. 17–21.

a series of minor power surges
:
The Minuteman launch switches relied on notching motors that rotated a single notch when the proper electrical pulse was sent. The turning of the launch keys transmitted a series of specific pulses—and once they were received, the notching motors rotated the notches, completed a circuit, and launched all the missiles. But a series of small power surges could mimic those pulses and activate the motors. The motors might silently rotate, one notch at a time, over the course of days or even months, without the launch crews knowing. And then, when the final notch turned, fifty missiles would suddenly take off. Rubel interview.

“I was scared shitless”
:
The engineer was Paul Baran, later one of the inventors of packet switching. Quoted in Stewart Brand, “Founding Father,”
Wired,
March 2001.

the redesign cost about $840 million
:
Cited in Ball,
Politics and Force Levels
, p. 194.

To err on the side of safety
:
See Dobbs,
One Minute to Midnight
, pp. 276–79; and “Strategic Air Command Operations in the Cuban Crisis,” pp. 72–73.

“Mr. McNamara went on to describe the possibilities”
:
“State-Defense Meeting on Group I, II, and IV Papers,” p. 12.

“to fire nuclear weapons”
:
Ibid.

“whether or not it was Soviet launched”
:
Ibid.

“every effort to contact the President must be made”
:
The predelegation policy from the Eisenhower era was largely retained. See “Memorandum from the President's Special Assistant for National Security Affairs (Bundy) to President Johnson,” September 23, 1964 (
TOP
SECRET
/declassified), in U.S. State Department,
Foreign Relations of the United States, 1964-1968, Volume X, National Security Policy
(Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 2002), p. 158.

a strategy of “Assured Destruction”
:
“Draft Memorandum from Secretary of Defense McNamara to President Johnson,” December 6, 1963 (
TOP SECRET
/declassified), in
Foreign Relations of the United States
,
1961–1963, Volume VIII, National Security Policy,
p. 549.

“30% of their population, 50% of their industrial capacity, and 150 of their cities”
:
Ibid.