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

He authorized the detonations: George B. Kistiakowsky, the president’s chief science adviser, was not convinced, at first, that these experiments were necessary. He thought that “no reasonable amount of safety testing could prove a weapon to be absolutely safe” and that the military should just “accept the responsibility for operational use of devices that had a finite, even though exceedingly small, probability of nuclear explosion.” Kistiakowsky later agreed that the one-point safety tests should be done. See George B. Kistiakowsky, A Scientist at the White House: The Private Diary of President Eisenhower’s Special Assistant for Science and Technology (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1976), pp. 33, 79.

“not a nuclear weapon test”: Quoted in Thorn and Westerveldt, “Hydronuclear Experiments,” p. 5.

“Are we becoming prisoners of our strategic concept?”: Quoted in “Memorandum of Conversation,” April 7, 1958 (TOP SECRET/declassified), NSA, p. 4.

a “bitter choice”: Quoted in ibid., p. 9.

a strategy of “flexible response”: My description of Kissinger’s strategic views in the late 1950s is based on his book Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1957), and his journal article that preceded it, “Force and Diplomacy in the Nuclear Age,” Foreign Affairs, vol. 34, no. 3 (April 1956), pp. 349–66. For an interesting contemporary critique of limited war theory, see P.M.S. Blackett, “Nuclear Weapons and Defence: Comments on Kissinger, Kennan, and King-Hall,” International Affairs (Royal Institute of International Affairs), vol. 34, no. 4 (October 1958), pp. 421–34.

Rules of engagement could be tacitly established: For the proposed limits on nuclear war, see Kissinger, Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy, pp. 227–33.

a strategy of “graduated deterrence”: Kissinger’s phrase for such a doctrine was “the graduated employment of force.” See Kissinger, “Force and Diplomacy,” p. 359.

“pause for calculation”: Kissinger, Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy, p. 226.

“daring and leadership”: Ibid., p. 400.

a retaliatory, second-strike weapon: The vulnerability of Strategic Air Command bases to a Soviet missile attack gave the Navy an opportunity to expand its nuclear role. And the Army eagerly sought to do so as well. In 1959, the Army came up with a plan, “Project Iceworm,” that would hide six hundred missiles under the Greenland ice cap. The missiles would be deployed on trains, and the trains would be constantly moved along thousands of miles of railroad track hidden in tunnels almost thirty feet beneath the ice. Hiding the missiles would protect them from a Soviet surprise attack and facilitate their use as retaliatory weapons, like the Navy’s Polaris submarines. Despite the Army’s enthusiasm for deploying these “Iceman” missiles, none were ever built. See Erik D. Weiss, “Cold War Under the Ice: The Army’s Bid for a Long-Range Nuclear Role,” Journal of Cold War Studies, vol. 3, no. 3 (Fall 2001), pp. 31–58.

“finite deterrence”: For the historical and intellectual framework of the dispute between the Air Force and the Navy over nuclear targeting, see David Alan Rosenberg, “U.S. Nuclear War Planning, 1945–1960,” in Desmond Ball and Jeffrey Richelson, Strategic Nuclear Targeting (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1986), pp. 35–56. Admiral Burke’s opinion on the subject is succinctly conveyed in his memo “Views on Adequacy of U.S. Deterrent/Retaliatory Forces as Related to General and Limited War Capabilities,” Memorandum for All Flag Officers, March 4, 1959 (CONFIDENTIAL/declassified), NSA.

“Nobody wins a suicide pact”: “Summary of Major Strategic Considerations for the 1960–70 Era,” CNO Personal Letter No. 5, Office of the Chief of Naval Operations, July 30, 1958, NSA, p. 1.

“the public mind” … “the professional military mind”: “The Operational Side of Air Offense,” remarks by General Curtis E. LeMay to the USAF Scientific Advisory Board, at Patrick Air Force Base, May 21, 1957 (TOP SECRET/declassified), NSA, p. 2.

“the most humane method of waging war”: “The Air Force and Strategic Deterrence 1951–1960,” George F. Lemmer, USAF Historical Division Liaison Office, December 1967, (SECRET/RESTRICTED DATA/declassified), NSA, p. 57.

“weapons must be delivered with either very high accuracy”: “Operational Side of Air Offense,” p. 4.

a hydrogen bomb with a yield of 60 megatons: LeMay argued that such a bomb would have enormous value as a deterrent — and, if used, could wipe out several targets at once. He and General Power wanted to equip SAC’s B-52s with these Class A weapons. But Eisenhower refused to test or build them. See “History of the Strategic Air Command, 1 January 1958—30 June 1958,” pp. 85–88.

Until 1957 the Strategic Air Command refused to share: See Ball and Richelson, Strategic Nuclear Targeting, p. 50.

hundreds of “time over target” conflicts: See Wainstein, et al., “Evolution of U.S. Command and Control,” p. 182.

“atomic coordination machinery”: See ibid., p. 179.