Command and Control

Project RAND became one of America’s first think tanks: For an unsurpassed account of RAND and its influence on postwar strategic policy, see Fred Kaplan, The 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, CA: Stanford University Press, 1983). For a more recent look at the history, see Alex Abella, Soldiers of Reason: The RAND Corporation and the Rise of the American Empire (New York: Harcourt, 2008.)

“It is not a pleasant task”: Iklé, Social Impact of Bomb Destruction, p. viii.

The casualties were disproportionately women: Cited in ibid., p. 205.

Even in Hiroshima, the desire to fight back survived: Ibid., p. 180.

“the sheer terror of the enormous destruction”: Ibid., p. 120.

“It is my conviction that a peaceful settlement”: Quoted in Hansen, Swords of Armageddon, vol. 2, pp. 85–86.

“the policy of exterminating civilian populations”: Quoted in May et al., “History of Strategic Arms Competition,” Pt 1, p. 65.

“a weapon of genocide”: Quoted in Hewlett and Duncan, Atomic Shield, p. 384.

“a danger to humanity… an evil thing”: For the full text of the statement by Fermi and Rabi, see “Minority Report on the H-Bomb,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, December 1976, p. 58.

a “quantum leap” past the Soviets: Quoted in McGeorge Bundy, Danger and Survival: Choices About the Bomb in the First Fifty Years (New York: Random House, 1988), p. 204.

“proceed with all possible expedition”: Quoted in “View from Above,” p. 203.

“total power in the hands of total evil”: Quoted in Hewlett and Duncan, Atomic Shield, p. 402.

most likely “psychological”: Quoted in Herken, Winning Weapon, p. 316.

“In that case, we have no choice”: Quoted in Robert H. Ferrell, Harry S. Truman: A Life (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1994), p. 350.

Albert Einstein read a prepared statement: See “Einstein Fears Hydrogen Bomb Might Annihilate ‘Any Life,’” Washington Post, February 13, 1950.

the “hysterical character” of the nuclear arms race: For the full text of Einstein’s statement, see “Dr. Einstein’s Address on Peace in the Atomic Era,” New York Times, February 13, 1950.

the “disastrous illusion”: Ibid.

“In the end, there beckons more and more clearly”: Ibid.

“psychological considerations”: “Effect of Civilian Morale on Military Capabilities in a Nuclear War Environment: Enclosure ‘E,’ The Relationship to Public Morale of Information About the Effects of Nuclear Warfare,” WSEG Report No. 42, Weapons Systems Evaluation Group, Joint Chiefs of Staff, October 20, 1959 (CONFIDENTIAL/declassified), p. 53.

“Weapons systems in themselves”: Ibid.

“information program”: Ibid., p. 54.

“What deters is not the capabilities”: Ibid.

“Any U.S. move toward abandoning or suspending work”: Quoted in Hans Bethe, “Sakharov’s H-Bomb,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, October 1990, p. 9.

the transfer of eighty-nine atomic bombs: See Wainstein et al.,“Evolution of U.S. Command and Control,” p. 31: and Feaver, Guarding the Guardians, pp. 134–36.

the transfer of fifteen atomic bombs without cores: Wainstein et al., “Evolution of U.S. Command and Control,” p. 31.

personal responsibility for the nine weapons: Ibid., p. 32.

the United States had about three hundred atomic bombs: Ibid., p. 34.

more than one third of them were stored: Eighty-nine were in Great Britain, fifteen on the Coral Sea, and nine on the island of Guam.

the AEC had eleven employees: See “History of the Custody and Deployment of Nuclear Weapons: July 1945 Through September 1977,” Office of the Assistant to the Secretary of Defense (Atomic Energy), February 1978 (TOP SECRET/RESTRICTED DATA/declassified), p. 13.

“Our troops guarded [the atomic bombs]”: Quoted in Kohn and Harahan, Strategic Air Warfare, p. 92.

“If I were on my own and half the country”: Quoted in ibid., p. 93.

applied for a patent: Innovations in nuclear weapon design had been secretly patented since the days of the Manhattan Project. For a fascinating account of how a legal procedure originally created to ensure public knowledge became one used to deny it, see Alex Wellerstein, “Patenting the Bomb: Nuclear Weapons, Intellectual Property, and Technological Control,” Isis, vol. 99, no. 1 (March 2008), pp. 57–87.

“a bomb in a box”: Quoted in Hansen, Swords of Armageddon, Volume 1, p. 182.

“In addition to all the problems of fission”: Quoted in Anne Fitzpatrick, “Igniting the Elements: The Los Alamos Thermonuclear Project, 1942–1952,” (thesis, Los Alamos National Laboratory, LA-13577-T, July 1999), p. 121.