Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety

“plunge heavily” into the missile controversy: For a fine account of how Sputnik affected political and bureaucratic rivalries not only in the United States but also in the Soviet Union, see Matthew Brzenzinski, Red Moon Rising: Sputnik and the Hidden Rivalries That Ignited the Space Age (New York: Henry Holt, 2007). The quote by George Reedy can be found on page 213.

“blast the Republicans out of the water”: Quoted in ibid., p. 182.

putting “fiscal security ahead of national security”: Quoted in 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), p. 806.

“The United States does not have an intercontinental missile”: These quotes can be found in a report prepared by the CIA for the newly elected president, John F. Kennedy: “Compendium of Soviet Remarks on Missiles,” February 28, 1961 (SECRET/declassified), NSA.

More than twenty thousand Hungarian citizens were killed: Cited in Mark Kramer, “The Soviet Union and the 1956 Crises in Hungary and Poland: Reassessments and New Findings,” Journal of Contemporary History, vol. 33, no. 2 (April 1998), p. 210.

hundreds more were later executed: Cited in ibid., p. 211.

He was particularly irritated by a secret report: The report was “Deterrence & Survival in the Nuclear Age,” Security Resources Panel of the Science Advisory Committee, November 7, 1957 (TOP SECRET/declassified), NSA.

“It misses the whole point to say”: Quoted in Robert J. Donovon, “Killian Missile Czar: Ike Picks M.I.T. Head to Rush Research, Development,” Daily Boston Globe, November 8, 1957.

“we have slipped dangerously behind the Soviet Union”: Quoted in “Excerpts from the Comments of Senator Johnson, Dr. Teller, and Dr. Bush,” New York Times, November 26, 1957.

“just about the grimmest warning”: Stewart Alsop, “We Have Been Warned,” Washington Post and Times Herald, November 25, 1957.

“locate precise blast locations”: Wainstein, et al., “Evolution of U.S. Command and Control,” p. 218. For the science behind the Bomb Alarm System, see “Operation Dominic II, Shot Small Boy, Project Officers Report — Project 7.14: Bomb Alarm Detector Test,” Cecil C. Harvell, Defense Atomic Support Agency, April 19, 1963 (CONFIDENTIAL/FORMERLY RESTRICTED DATA/declassified).

The logistics of such a “ground alert”: For the origins and workings of SAC’s ground alert, see “The SAC Alert Program, 1956–1959,” Headquarters, Strategic Air Command, January 1960 (SECRET/declassified), NSA, pp. 1–79, and “History of the Strategic Air Command, 1 January 1958—30 June 1958,” pp. 25–57.

a mean son of a bitch: In his memoir, Power belittled the military’s role in peacekeeping, defending national security, and maintaining deterrence. “Putting aside all the fancy words and academic doubletalk,” he wrote, “the basic reason for having a military is to do two jobs — to kill people and to destroy the works of man.” See Thomas S. Power, with Albert A. Arnhym, Design for Survival (New York: Coward-McCann, 1964), p. 229.

“sort of an autocratic bastard”: Quoted in Coffey, Iron Eagle, p. 276.

The basic premise of SAC’s airborne alert: For the origins of this bold strategy, see “The SAC Alert Program, 1956–1959,” pp. 80–140, and “History of Strategic Air Command, June 1958—July 1959,” Historical Study No. 76, Volume I, Headquarters, Strategic Air Command (SECRET/RESTRICTED DATA/declassified), pp. 107–36.

The mission would “fail safe”: The idea of relying on fail-safe procedures to send bombers toward the Soviet Union was first proposed by RAND in a 1956 report. See “Protecting U.S. Power to Strike Back in the 1950’s and 1960’s,” A. J. Wohlstetter, F. S. Hoffman, H. S. Rowen, U.S. Air Force Project RAND, R-290, September 1, 1956, (FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY), pp. 59–62. For SAC’s adoption of fail safe, see “History of the Strategic Air Command, 1 January 1958—30 June 1958,” pp. 66–74.

“Day and night, I have a certain percentage of my command”: Quoted in “Alert Operations and Strategic Air Command, 1957–1991,” Office of the Historian, Headquarters Strategic Air Command, December 7, 1991, p. 7. Power made the remark at a press conference in Paris, and the boast unnerved some of America’s NATO allies. See “Lloyd Defends H-Bomb Patrols by U.S.,” Washington Post and Times Herald, November 28, 1957.

Designers at the weapons labs had been surprised: Peurifoy interview. See also “A Review of the US Nuclear Weapon Safety Program—1945 to 1986,” R. N. Brodie, Sandia National Laboratories, SAND86-2955, February 1987 (SECRET/RESTRICTED DATA/declassified), p. 11.

“nuclear safety is not ‘absolute,’ it is nonexistent”: “A Survey of Nuclear Weapon Safety Problems,” p. 53.