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

the current “fictional” custody arrangements: “Report on U.S. Policies Regarding Assignment of Nuclear Weapons to NATO,” p. 39.

A lone American sentry … was bound to start “goofing off”: See ibid., p. 32.

Agnew brought an early version of the electromechanical locking system: Agnew interview.

The coded switch … weighed about a pound: A weapon often contained two of these switches as a redundancy, to ensure that at least one would work. See “Command and Control Systems for Nuclear Weapons,” p. 13.

the decoder weighed about forty: Ibid., p. 14.

anywhere from thirty seconds to two and a half minutes to unlock: Ibid., p. 13.

“No single device can be expected to increase”: Quoted in “Subject: Atomic Stockpile, Letter, From John H. Pender, Legal Adviser, Department of State, To Abram J. Chayes, Legal Adviser, Department of State,” July 16, 1961 (TOP SECRET/declassified), NSA, p. 4.

“adequately safe, within the limits”: Quoted in ibid.

“all is well with the atomic stockpile program”: Ibid.

Wiesner was deeply concerned about the risk: See Carl Kaysen, “Peace Became His Profession,” in Walter A. Rosenblith, ed., Jerry Wiesner: Scientist, Statesman, Humanist (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003), p. 102.

the locks might help “to buy time”: The quote comes from “Memorandum for the President, From Jerome B. Wiesner, May 29, 1962,” in “PAL Control of Theater Nuclear Weapons,” p. 84.

“individual psychotics”: Ibid.

prevent “unauthorized use by military forces”: Ibid.

Known at first as “Prescribed Action Links”: See Stein and Feaver, Assuring Control of Nuclear Weapons, pp. 36–37.

the broad outlines of his defense policies: “The decisions of March 1961,” Desmond Ball has written, “determined to a very large extent the character of the U.S. strategic-force posture for the next decade.” The most important decisions had been made during the first two weeks of the month. See Ball, Politics and Force Levels, pp. 107–26. The quote is from page 121.

five of them would inflict more damage: The comparison was made between five 1-megaton weapons and one 10-megaton — with the larger number of small weapons achieving more blast damage. See Enthoven, How Much Is Enough? pp. 179–84.

the Navy had requested a dozen Polaris subs: See Ball, Politics and Force Levels, pp. 45–46.

Kennedy decided to build 41: See ibid., pp. 46–7, 116–17.

about half of SAC’s bomber crews, if not more: Cited in “Statement of Robert S. McNamara on the RS-70,” Senate Armed Services Committee, March 14, 1962 (TOP SECRET/declassified), NSA, p. 12. This document somehow escaped the black pen of a Pentagon censor — it discloses the nuclear yield and accuracy of the major strategic weapon systems at the time. That information can be found on page 18.

“pipe-smoking, tree-full-of-owls type”: I first encountered this quote in Fred Kaplan’s superb Wizards of Armageddon: The Untold Story of the Small Group of Men Who Have Devised the Plans and Shaped the Policies on How to Use the Bomb (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1991), p. 255. It comes from an article by White about the whiz kids running the Pentagon, “Strategy and the Defense Intellectuals, Saturday Evening Post, May 4, 1963.

the proportion of SAC bombers on ground alert … on airborne alert: Policies that Eisenhower had strongly resisted became routine early in the Kennedy administration. During the presidential campaign, Kennedy had promised that SAC would have a round-the-clock airborne alert. For the details of SAC’s new alert policies, see “History of Headquarters Strategic Air Command, 1961,” SAC Historical Study No. 89, Headquarters, Strategic Air Command, Offutt AFB, Nebraska, January 1962 (TOP SECRET/declassified), NSA, pp. 58–65. For Kennedy’s campaign promise, see Ball, Politics and Force Levels, p. 18.

“one defense policy, not three”: Quoted in Jack Raymond, “M’Namara Scores Defense Discord,” New York Times, April 21, 1963. McNamara had made his opposition to interservice rivalry clear from the start.

the Army was now seeking thirty-two thousand nuclear weapons: Cited in “Memorandum from Secretary Defense McNamara to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (Lemnitzer),” May 23, 1962 (TOP SECRET/declassified), Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961–1963, Volume VIII, National Security Policy, p. 297.

as urgently needed … as intercontinental ballistic missiles: See “History of the XW-51 Warhead,” SC-M-67-683, AEC Atomic Weapon Data, January 1968 (SECRET/RESTRICTED DATA/declassified), p. 10.