Command and Control

“The first duty of the command and control system”: Paul Baran, “On a Distributed Command and Control System Configuration,” U.S.A.F. Project RAND, RM-2632, Research Memorandum, December 31, 1960, p. 19.

Messages would be broken into smaller “blocks”: See Paul Baran, “On Distributed Communications Networks,” The RAND Corporation, P-2626, September 1962.

a “logical, survivable node in the control structure”: “Memorandum for the President, Subject: National Deep Underground Command Center as a Key FY 1965 Budget Consideration,” Robert S. McNamara, November 7, 1963 (TOP SECRET /declassified), NSA, p. 2, 4.

“austere” version or one of “moderate size”: Ibid., p. 3.

“withstand multiple direct hits of 200 to 300 MT: Ibid., p. 1.

While heading a committee on the risk of war by accident: Thomas Schelling described his concern about the lack of secure communications between the White House and the Kremlin, his role in creating the “hot line,” and his admiration for the novel Red Alert in an e-mail exchange with me.

The Brink

“Mankind must put an end to war”: “Text of President Kennedy’s Address to the United Nations General Assembly,” New York Times, September 26, 1961.

“Today, every inhabitant of this planet”: Ibid.

“peace race”…“general and complete disarmament”: Ibid.

“Such a plan would not bring a world free from conflict”: Ibid.

“Together we shall save our planet”: Ibid.

“If a general atomic war is inevitable”: Quoted in “Memorandum of Conference with President Kennedy,” September 20, 1961 (TOP SECRET/declassified), in Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961–1963, Volume VIII, National Security Policy, p. 130.

Kennedy had just received a memo:… summarizing how an American first strike: See “Memorandum from the President’s Military Representative (Taylor) to President Kennedy,” September 19, 1961 (TOP SECRET/declassified), in ibid., pp. 126–29.

“There are risks as well as opportunities”: ibid., p. 128.

once again, Berlin was at the center of the crisis: For the events in Berlin during the Kennedy years, see McGeorge Bundy, Danger and Survival: Choices About the Bomb in the First Fifty Years (New York: Random House, 1988), pp. 358–90; Vladislav M. Zubok, “Khrushchev and the Berlin Crisis (1958–1962),” Cold War International History Project — Working Paper Series, Working Paper No. 6, Washington, D. C., May 1993; Trachtenberg, Constructed Peace, pp. 251–351; Aleksandr Fursenko and Timothy Naftali, Khrushchev’s Cold War: The Inside Story of an American Adversary (New York: W. W. Norton, 2006), pp. 338–408; and Frederick Kempe, Berlin 1961: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and the Most Dangerous Place on Earth (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 2011).

“It is up to the United States to decide”: Quoted in Fursenko and Naftali, Khrushchev’s Cold War, p. 364.

“Then it will be a cold winter”: Quoted in ibid.

the Joint Chiefs of Staff seemed to have few options: The historian Marc Trachtenberg suggests that Eisenhower’s nuclear strategy may have been more “flexible” than was later claimed. But the pressure to launch a full — scale nuclear attack on the Soviet Union — once American and Soviet troops were fighting on a battlefield in Europe — would have been enormous. See Trachtenberg, Conflict & Stragegy, pp. 209–12.

It would be “explosive”: Quoted in Trachtenberg, Constructed Peace, p. 289.

“This is the time to create strength”: “Telegram from the Supreme Allied Commander, Europe (Norstad) to Secretary of Defense McNamara,” April 25, 1961 (TOP SECRET/declassified), in United States Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961–1963, Volume XVI, Eastern Europe; Cyprus; Greece; Turkey (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1994), p. 699.

“If a crisis is provoked”: Quoted in Kempe, Berlin 1961, p. 129.

“and we have given our word”: “Text of Kennedy Appeal to Nation for Increases in Spending and Armed Forces,” New York Times, July 26, 1961.

“Tell Kennedy that if he starts a war”: Quoted in Zubok, “Khrushchev and the Berlin Crisis,” p. 25.

“[T]he current strategic war plan”: Quoted in Kaplan, Wizards of Armageddon, p. 297.

“spasm war”… a “ridiculous and unworkable notion”: “Memorandum of Conversation with Mr. Henry Rowen, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs,” May 25, 1961 (TOP SECRET/declassified), Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961–1963, Volume VIII, National Security Policy, p. 82.

“We should be prepared to initiate general war”: “Memorandum for General Maxwell Taylor, Military Representative to the President, Subject: Strategic Air Planning and Berlin,” September 5, 1961 (TOP SECRET/declassified), NSA, p. 3.

more than half the people in the Soviet Union — millions more in Eastern Europe and China: See ibid, “Annex B, SIOP-62 An Appreciation,” Table IX, p. 12.

it would “inevitably” tip off the Soviets: “Strategic Air Planning and Berlin,” p. 3.

“no more than fifteen minutes”: Ibid., “Annex A, An Alternative to SIOP-62,” p. 3.