Command and Control

“We have been concerned with the vulnerability”: McNamara learned within weeks of taking office that the command-and-control problems in Europe were severe. These quotes are taken from a report submitted to him in the fall of 1961 by General Earle E. Partridge, a retired Air Force officer who’d been asked to head an investigation of command-and-control issues. “Interim Report on Command and Control in Europe,” National Command and Control Task Force, October 1961 (TOP SECRET/declassified), NSA, p. 2.

All of NATO’s command bunkers… could easily be destroyed: See ibid.

At best, NATO commanders might receive five or ten minutes of warning: See ibid., p. 4.

the NATO communications system was completely unprotected: See ibid., pp. 3–4.

the president could not expect to reach any of NATO’s high-ranking officers: See ibid., p. 5.

“It is imperative that each commander knows”: Ibid.

“Not only could we initiate a war, through mistakes”: Ibid., p. 6.

“A subordinate commander faced with a substantial Russian military action”: “Memorandum from the President’s Special Assistant for National Security Affairs (Bundy) to President Kennedy,” January 30, 1961 (TOP SCERET/declassified), in Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961–1963, Volume VIII, National Security Policy, p. 18.

a top secret report, based on a recent tour of NATO bases: See “Report of Ad Hoc Subcommittee on U.S. Policies Regarding Assignment of Nuclear Weapons to NATO; Includes Letter to President Kennedy and Appendices,” Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, Congress of the United States,” February 11, 1961 (SECRET/RESTRICTED DATA/declassified), NSA.

“he almost fell out of his chair”: The adviser, Thomas Schelling, is quoted in Webster Stone, “Moscow’s Still Holding,” New York Times, September 18, 1988.

The Joint Committee on Atomic Energy had been concerned: My description of the committee’s tour of NATO sites and the development of Permissive Action Links is based on “Report on U.S. Policies Regarding Assignment of Nuclear Weapons to NATO”; “Letter, From Harold M. Agnew, to Major General A. D. Starbird, Director of Military Applications, U.S. Atomic Energy Commission,” January 5, 1961 (SECRET/RESTRICTED DATA/declassified); Clinton P. Anderson, with Milton Viorst, Outsider in the Senate: Senator Clinton Anderson’s Memoirs (New York: World Publishing Company, 1970), pp. 165–73; “Command and Control Systems for Nuclear Weapons: History and Current Status,” System Development Department I, Sandia Laboratories, SLA-73-0415, September 1973 (SECRET/RESTRICTED DATA/declassified); “PAL Control of Theater Nuclear Weapons,” M. E. Bleck, P. R. Souder, Command and Control Division, Sandia National Laboratories, SAND82-2436, March 1984 (SECRET/FORMERLY RESTRICTED DATA/declassified); Peter Stein and Peter Feaver, Assuring Control of Nuclear Weapons: The Evolution of Permissive Action Links (Cambridge, MA: Center for Science and International Affairs, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, and University Press of America, 1987); Stevens, “Origins and Evolution of S2C at Sandia,” pp. 50–52; and my interview with Harold Agnew, who went on the European trip and played an important role in the adoption of PALs.

“I have always been of the belief”: The president’s news conference of February 3, 1960, in Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Dwight D. Eisenhower, Containing the Public Messages and Statements of the President, January 1, 1960 to January 20, 1961 (Washington, D.C.: Office of the Federal Register, 1961), p. 152.

“an essential element” of the NATO stockpile: Quoted in Anderson, Outsider in the Senate, p. 170.

a private understanding with Norstad: See Trachtenberg, Constructed Peace, p. 170.

“nearly wet my pants”: Agnew interview.

“All [the Italians] have to do is hit him on the head”: Transcript, Executive Session, Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, Meeting No. 87-1-4, February 20, 1960, NSA, p. 73.

“There were three Jupiters setting there”: Ibid, p. 66.

“Non-Americans with non-American vehicles”: Ibid, p. 47.

“The prime loyalty of the guards, of course”: “Report on U.S. Policies Regarding Assignment of Nuclear Weapons to NATO,” p. 33.

French officers sought to gain control of a nuclear device: I first learned about the attempt from Thomas Reed, a former secretary of the Air Force and adviser to President Ronald Reagan. Reed briefly mentions the episode in a book that he wrote with Danny B. Stillman, a former director of the Los Alamos Technical Intelligence Division: The Nuclear Express: A Political History of the Bomb and Its Proliferation (Minneapolis: Zenith Press, 2009), pp. 79–80. The story is told in much greater detail by Bruno Tertrais in “A Nuclear Coup? France, the Algerian War and the April 1961 Nuclear Test,” Fondation pour la Recherche Stratégique, Draft, October 2, 2011.

“Refrain from detonating your little bomb”: Quoted in Tetrais, “A Nuclear Coup?” p. 11.