Command and Control (91 page)

“You get to know what you can handle”
:
Quoted in “Ex-GI Says He Used Hash.”

thirty-five members of an Army unit . . . using and selling marijuana and LSD
:
See Flora Lewis, “Men Who Handle Nuclear Weapons Also Using Drugs,”
Boston Globe
, September 6, 1971.

Nineteen members of an Army detachment were arrested on pot charges
:
See “GI's at Nuclear Base Face Pot Charges,”
Los Angeles Times
, October 4, 1972.

Three enlisted men at a Nike Hercules base in San Rafael
:
See “3 Atom Guards Called Unstable; Major Suspended,”
New York Times
, August 18, 1969; and “Unstable Atom Guards Probed,”
Boston Globe
, August 18, 1969.

“people from the Haight-Ashbury”
:
Quoted in “Unstable Atom Guards.”

More than one fourth of the crew on the USS
Nathan Hale
: Cited in “Men Who Handle Nuclear Weapons.”

A former crew member of the
Nathan Hale
told a reporter
:
See ibid. The crew member of another ballistic missile submarine thought that smoking marijuana while at sea was too risky, because of the strong aroma. The tight quarters of the sub inspired an alternative. “I do uppers most of the time, but as a special treat, like when I'm on watch, I'll do a little mescaline,” the crew member said. Quoted in Duncan Campbell,
The Unsinkable Aircraft Carrier: American Military Power in Britain
(London: Michael Joseph, 1984), p. 224.

The Polaris base at Holy Loch, Scotland
:
See G. G. Giarchi,
Between McAlpine and Polaris
(London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1984), p. 197.

Nine crew members of the USS
Casimir Pulaski
: See “Pot Smoking Sailors Go Home,”
Ocala
[Florida]
Star Banner
, January 24, 1977.

a local nickname
: the
USS
Cannabis: See Andrew McCallum, “Cowal Caught Between Polaris Sailors and McAlpine's Fusiliers,”
Glasgow Herald
, April 26, 1984.

“a hippie type pad with a picture of Ho Chi Minh”
:
Quoted in Lewis, “Men Who Handle Nuclear Weapons.”

151 of the 225 security police officers were busted
:
See Clancy and Horner,
Every Man a Tiger
, p. 135.

Marijuana was discovered in one of the underground control centers of a Minuteman missile squadron
:
See Bill Prochnau, “With the Bomb, There Is No Answer,”
Washington Post,
May 1, 1982. According to Prochnau, the arrest occurred in the late 1970s.

It was also found in the control center of a Titan II launch complex
:
See “Marijuana Discovery Leads to Missile Base Suspensions,”
New York Times
, July 14, 1977; and “15 Suspended After Marijuana Is Found in Titan Silo,”
Los Angeles Times
, July 15, 1977.

roughly 114,000 people . . . cleared to work with nuclear weapons
:
Cited in Herbert L. Abrams, “Sources of Instability in the Handling of Nuclear Weapons,” in Frederic Solomon and Robert Q. Marston, eds.,
The Medical Implications of Nuclear War
(Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, 1986), p. 513.

1.5 percent lost that clearance because of drug abuse
:
Of the 114,000 people certified that year under the Personnel Reliability Program, 1,728 lost their certification because of drug abuse—roughly 1.5 percent. See ibid., p. 514.

Colonel John Moser had supervised a major drug bust
:
Moser interview.

More than 230 airmen were arrested for using and selling
:
See “Drug Probe at Whiteman Air Base,”
St. Joseph Missouri News Press
, September 9, 1979; and “Enlisted Airmen Suspended,”
Hutchinson
[Kansas]
News
, November 21, 1980.

Marijuana had been found in the control center at a Titan II complex
:
Moser interview.

“inaccurate and unreliable”
:
“Memorandum from the President's Assistant for National Security Affairs (Kissinger) to President Nixon,” August 18, 1970, in United States State Department,
Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969–1976, Volume XXXIV: National Security Policy, 1969–1972
(Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 2011), p. 555.

a weapon system . . . “which the Pentagon had been wanting to scrap”
:
Henry A. Kissinger,
White House Years
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1979), p. 1221.

Kissinger had offered a deal to the Soviet Union
:
See Pincus “Aging Titan II Was Time Bomb.”

“You Americans will never be able to do this to us again”
:
Quoted in Trachtenberg,
History & Strategy,
p. 257.

increased the number of its long-range, land-based missiles from about 56 to more than 1,500
:
See Zaloga,
Kremlin's Nuclear Sword
, p. 241.

Its arsenal of submarine-based missiles rose from about 72 to almost 500
:
See ibid., p. 244.

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
/
SENSITIVE
/
CODE WORD
/declassified), NSA, p. 8.

It was called Q
UICK
C
OUNT
:
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.

The system had already proven unreliable
:
For the growing problems with the WWMCCS, see “Worldwide Military Command and Control System: Historical Perspective,” pp. 93–112; and the chapter entitled “Three WWMCCS Failures,” in David Pearson,
The World Wide Military
Command and Control System: Evolution and Effectiveness
(Maxwell Air Force Base, AL: Air University Press, 2000), pp. 71–92.

“A more accurate appraisal”
:
Quoted in Wainstein, et al., “Evolution of U.S. Strategic Command and Control,” p. 432.

“confused and frightened men making decisions”
:
May et al., “History of the Strategic Arms Competition, Part 2, p. 607.

Nixon tried to end the Vietnam War by threatening the use of nuclear weapons
:
The details of this risky and unsuccessful plan can be found in Scott D. Sagan and J. Suri, “The Madman Nuclear Alert,”
International Security
, vol. 27, no. 4 (2003), pp. 150–83.

“I call it the Madman Theory, Bob”
:
Quoted in ibid., p. 156.

nuclear weapons were once again utilized as a diplomatic tool
:
For the DEFCON 3 alert in 1973, see Scott D. Sagan, “Nuclear Alerts and Crisis Management,”
International Security
, vol. 9, no. 4 (Spring 1985), pp. 122–31.

the administration's bold diplomacy
:
The DEFCON 3 alert was part of a complex strategy aimed not only at the Soviet Union but also at the leadership of Egypt and Israel. Kissinger was pleased by the outcome, noting in his memoirs that “we had emerged as the pivotal factor in the diplomacy.” See Henry A. Kissinger,
Years of Upheaval
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1982), p. 612.

“What seems ‘balanced' and ‘safe' in a crisis”
:
Quoted in Sagan, “Alerts and Crisis Management,” p. 124.

He argued against the adoption of a launch-on-warning policy
:
Iklé's opposition to launching missiles quickly was part of a larger critique of American strategic policy. See Fred Charles Iklé, “Can Nuclear Deterrence Last Out the Century?,”
Foreign Affairs
, January 1973, pp. 267–85.

“Launching the ICBM force on attack assessment”
:
“The U.S. ICBM Force: Current Issues and Future Options,” C. H. Builder, D. C. Kephart, and A. Laupa, a report prepared for United States Air Force Project RAND, R-1754-PR, October 1975 (
SECRET
/
FORMERLY RESTRICTED DATA
/declassified), NSA, p. 81.

“accident-prone”
:
See “Minutes, National Security Council Meeting, Subject, SALT (and Angola), December 22, 1975” (
TOP SECRET
/
SENSITIVE
/declassified), NSA, p. 9.

“the Soviets must never be able to calculate”
:
Ibid., p. 9.