Command and Control

“The Communists will have a dangerous lead”: Quoted in Desmond Ball, Politics and Force Levels: The Strategic Missile Program of the Kennedy Administration (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980), p. 18. Although Ball’s work was written before the declassification of many important national security documents from the Kennedy era, the book’s central arguments are still convincing. I also learned a great deal about the Kennedy administration’s aims from How Much Is Enough? 1961–1969: Shaping Defense Program (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 1971), by Alain C. Enthoven and K. Wayne Smith. Enthoven was one of McNamara’s most brilliant advisers. For Kennedy’s attacks on the strategic thinking of the Eisenhower administration, see Christopher A. Preble, “‘Who Ever Believed in the “Missile Gap”?’: John F. Kennedy and the Politics of National Security,” Presidential Studies Quarterly, vol. 33, no. 4 (December 2003), pp. 801–26.

“We have been driving ourselves into a corner”: Quoted in William W. Kaufmann, The McNamara Strategy (New York: Harper & Row, 1964), p. 40.

General Maxwell D. Taylor’s book, The Uncertain Trumpet: Taylor argued that the United States needed “a capability to react across the entire spectrum of possible challenge, for coping with anything from general atomic war to infiltrations and aggressions.” He was later a major architect of the Vietnam War. See Maxell D. Taylor, The Uncertain Trumpet (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1960), p. 6.

“The record of the Romans made clear”: “Summary of President Kennedy’s Remarks to the 496th Meeting of the National Security Council,” January 18, 1962 (TOP SECRET/declassified), in United States Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961–1963, Volume VIII, National Security Policy (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1996), p. 240.

The chief of naval operations, Admiral Arleigh Burke, warned: Western Europe would suffer radiological effects from a massive American attack on the Soviet Union, but South Korea was likely to receive even worse fallout. See “Chief of Naval Operations Cable to Commander-in-Chief Atlantic Fleet, Commander-in-Chief Pacific Fleet, Commander-in-Chief U.S. Naval Forces Europe,” November 20, 1960 (TOP SECRET/declassified), NSA, p. 1.

“whiz kids,” “defense intellectuals,” “the best and the brightest”: David Halberstam’s book on this highly self-confident group remains authoritative: The Best and the Brightest (New York: Ballantine Books, 1992).

WSEG Report No. 50: “Evaluation of Strategic Offensive Weapons Systems,” Weapon Systems Evaluation Group Report No. 50, Washington, D.C., December 27, 1960 (TOP SECRET/RESTRICTED DATA/declassified), NSA.

the annual operating costs of keeping a B-52 bomber on ground alert: See ibid., Enclosure “F,” p. 19.

America’s command-and-control system was so complex: Long excerpts from Enclosure “C,” the section of WSEG R-50 on command and control, can be found in Wainstein, et al., “Evolution of U.S. Strategic Command and Control,” pp. 239–47.

By launching a surprise attack on five targets: Ibid., p. 243.

By hitting nine additional targets: Ibid., p. 242.

a 90 percent chance of success: Cited in ibid.

only thirty-five Soviet missiles: Cited in Ibid.

Four would be aimed at the White House: Ibid., p. 243.

“Under surprise attack conditions”: Quoted in ibid., p. 239.

“a one-shot command, control, and communication system”: Ibid., p. 284.

the warning time would be zero: Cited in Ibid., p. 241.

During a tour of NORAD headquarters in Colorado Springs: My account of this false alarm is based on “‘Missile Attack’ Terror Described,” Oakland Tribune, December 11, 1960; “When the Moon Dialed No. 5, They Saw World War III Begin,” Express and News (San Antonio), December 11, 1960; John G. Hubbell, “You Are Under Attack! The Strange Incident of October 5,” Reader’s Digest, April 1961, pp. 37–39; and Donald MacKenzie, Mechanizing Proof: Computing, Risk, and Trust (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001), pp. 23–4. MacKenzie obtained an oral history interview with General Kuter that largely confirmed the contemporary accounts of the incident.

a 99.9 percent certainty: Cited in “‘You Are Under Attack!’”

“Chief, this is a hot one”: Quoted in MacKenzie, Mechanizing Proof, p. 23.

“Where is Khrushchev?”: Quoted in “‘You Are Under Attack!’”

He recalled a sense of panic at NORAD: Percy later wondered what sort of decision might have been made if the radar signals hadn’t been recognized to be a false alarm. See Einar Kringlen, “The Myth of Rationality in Situations of Crisis,” Medicine and War, Volume I, (1985), p. 191.

“There is no mechanism for nor organization charged with”: Quoted in Wainstein, et al., “Evolution of U.S. Strategic Command and Control,” p. 243.

“No other target system can at present offer”: Quoted in ibid., p. 246.