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

a network of underground bunkers: For a description of the bunker system, see Soviet Military Power: An Assessment of the Threat (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1988), pp. 59–62.

Kissinger was astonished by his first formal briefing on the SIOP: See Burr ‘“Horror Strategy,’” pp. 38–52. For the strategic thinking of Nixon and Kissinger, I relied largely on Burr’s fine article and on Terry Terriff’s The Nixon Administration and the Making of U.S. Nuclear Strategy (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995).

The smallest attack option … almost two thousand weapons: Cited in “U.S. Strategic Objectives and Force Posture Executive Summary,” National Security Council, Defense Program Review Committee, January 3, 1972 (TOP SECRET/declassified), NSA, p. 29.

the largest with more than three thousand: Cited in ibid., p. 28.

a “horror strategy”: Quoted in Burr, “‘Horror Strategy,’” p. 63.

“how one rationally could make a decision”: Kissinger was wondering how the Soviet Union could launch such an attack on the United States; but his doubts about the sanity of such a move applied equally to the American war plans of the time. “To have the only option that of killing 80 million people,” he said at another meeting, “is the height of immorality.” For the first quote, see “Review of U.S. Strategic Posture,” NSC Review Group Meeting, May 29, 1969 (TOP SECRET/declassified), NSA, p. 12. For the second, see “Memorandum for Mr. Kissinger, Subject, Minutes of the Verification Panel Meeting Held August 9, 1973,” August 15, 1973 (TOP SECRET SENSITIVECODE WORD/declassified), NSA, p. 8.

It was called QUICK COUNT: For information about the computer model, see N. D. Cohen, “The Quick Count System: A User’s Manual,” RAND Corporation, RM-4006-PR, April 1964. I learned about Quick Count from another report, one that was “designed to be of use to those who have only a rudimentary knowledge of targeting and the effects of nuclear weapons but who need a quick means of computing civil damage to Western Europe.” See “Aggregate Nuclear Damage Assessment Techniques Applied to Western Europe,” H. Avrech and D. C. McGarvey, RAND Corporation, Memorandum RM-4466-ISA, Prepared for the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense/International Security Affairs, June 1965 (FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY/declassified). Between pages 19 and 23, you will find a guide to potential blast mortalities in the twenty-four largest cities in Western Europe, derived using Quick Count. The table listing the likely “Incremental Mortalities,” “Weapon Order,” and “Cumulative Mortalities” is a good example of calm, efficient, bureaucratic madness.

the “obstacle course to recovery”: “Recovery from Nuclear Attack, and Research and Action Programs to Enhance Recovery Prospects,” Jack C. Greene, Robert W. Stokely, and John K. Christian, International Center for Emergency Preparedness, for Federal Emergency Management Agency, December 1979. The chart outlining the postattack obstacle course appears on page 7.

“No weight of nuclear attack which is at all probable”: Ibid., pp. 22–23.

NATO nuclear policy “insists on our destruction”: See “Minutes of the Verification Panel Meeting,” p. 2.

“I must not be — and my successors must not be”: Quoted in Terriff, Nixon and the Making of U.S. Nuclear Strategy, p. 76.

General Bruce K. Holloway … deliberately hid “certain aspects of the SIOP”: Quoted in Burr, “‘Horror Strategy,’” p. 62.

“with a high degree of confidence”: Another top secret report found that, before the Soviet missiles hit, “it is possible that no President could be sure, with the present warning configuration, that an attack was in progress or that a retaliation was justified.” The first statement is quoted in Wainstain, et al., “Evolution of U.S. Strategic Command and Control,” p. 424; the second, in ibid., p. 408.

The World Wide Military Command and Control System had grown to encompass: Cited in “The Worldwide Military Command and Control System: A Historical Perspective (1960–1977),” Historical Division, Joint Secretariat, Joint Chiefs of Staff, September 1980 (SECRET/declassified), NSA, p. 121.

The National Emergency Airborne Command Post … did not have a computer: See “Countervailing Strategy Demands Revision of Strategic Forces Acquisition Plans,” Comptroller General of the United States, MASAD-81-355, August 1981, pp. 24–25.

the entire command-and-control system could be shut down: See “Strategic Command, Control, and Communications: Alternative Approaches for Modernization,” Congress of the United States, Congressional Budget Office, October 1981, pp. 15–16; and May, et al., “History of the Strategic Arms Competition,” Part 2, pp. 605–6.