350 Nixon Safeguard rationale: John Newhouse, Cold Dawn: The Story of SALT (New York; Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1973), p. 152; and interviews.
350 Bethe on ICBM defense: Hearings, Senate Foreign Relations Committee, op. cit., p. 39.
350 critics on Safeguard: See various testimony in ibid, and Hearings, Senate Armed Services Committee, op. cit; and interviews.
351 MRV or MIRV and pressure on CIA: Lawrence Freedman, U.S. Intelligence and the Soviet Strategic Threat (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1977), chap. 8; John Prados, The Soviet Estimate (New York: Dial Press, 1982), chap. 13.
351 “defense would be”: George Rathjens and Herbert York, “Comments on Safeguard—1970,” Apr. 5, 1970, privately distributed, summary p. 1 (provided to author).
352 one-quarter of Minuteman: Rathjens, Hearings, Senate Foreign Relations Committee, op. cit., p. 359; Senate Armed Services Committee, op. cit., p. 1252.
352 Wohlstetter on Rathjens’ analysis: Wohlstetter, letter to Sen. John Stennis, May 23, 1969, reprinted in Senate Armed Services Committee, ibid., and see p. 1264.
352 “familiar, well-known”: Quoted in Paul Doty, “Can Investigations Improve Scientific Advice? The Case of the ABM,” Minerva, Apr. 1972, p. 286.
352 Rathjens’ reply: Ibid.; Senate Armed Services Committee, op. cit; Letter to Editor, New York Times, June 15 and 22, 1969; interviews.
353 Wohlstetter battle: See letters between the two, New York Times, June 15, 22, 29, 1969.
353 Wohlstetter and ORSA: “Guidelines for the Practice of Operations Research,” Operations Research, Sept. 1971, pp. 1246, 1248. This entire issue was devoted to the resulting ORSA report.
353 “absurd”: Letter, Rathjens, Wiesner and Weinberg to Caywood, Dec. 22, 1969 (provided to author).
353 six-to-five vote: The report and “minority report” are reprinted in Operations Research, op. cit.
354 “could actually turn”: Laird, Hearings, Senate Armed Services Committee, Authorization for Military Procurement, R&D, FY71, Feb., Mar. 1970, pp. 36–37.
354 “The Administration”: Rathjens and York, op. cit., p. 1.
354 “bargaining chip”: Newhouse, op. cit., pp. 187–88; Gerard Smith, Doubletalk: The Story of SALT I (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1980), p. 149.
354 narrow margins: On amendments to delete funding of ABM, the vote lost 50–50 in 1969, 47–52 in 1970.
354 ABM Treaty: Text in U.S. Arms Control & Disarmament Agency, Arms Control & Disarmament Agreements (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office).
355 Rathjens on Wohlstetter’s turf: Rathjens later conceded most of the math errors, but noted, “Obviously, my greatest error was in responding, even to the extent I did, to Mr. Wohlstetter’s questions and charges, for it is clear that he and the [ORSA] Committee lacked the capacity or inclination or both (a) to understand what I had done, and (b) to discriminate between errors that make a difference and those that do not.” G. W. Rathjens, “Errors Made By Me in the ABM Debate,” Dec. 7, 1971, privately circulated memo, p. 5 (provided to author).
355 Morse comments: Letter by Philip Morse, Congressional Record, Feb. 17, 1972, p. S-1938.
25: THE NEW GENERATION
362 number weapons against air bases: DPM, McNamara to Johnson, “Recommended FY 1965-FY 1969 Strategic Retaliatory Forces,” Dec. 6, 1963, p. 1–37 (FOIA/DoD).*
362 MIRV space technology: Herbert York, “The Origins of MIRV,” SIPRl Research Report#9 (Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, Aug. 1973), pp. 9–14, 19–20.
363 “I intend”: DPM, McNamara to Johnson, “Recommended FY 1966–70 Programs for Strategic Offensive Forces, Continental Air and Missile Defense Forces, and Civil Defense,” Dec. 3, 1964, p. 48 (FOIA/DoD).*
363 Minuteman III: DPM, McNamara to Johnson, “Recommended FY67–71 Strategic Offensive and Defensive Forces,” Nov. 1, 1965, p. 2 (FOIA/DoD).*
363 “the probability”: DPM, McNamara to Johnson, Dec. 3, 1964, p. 48.*
364 “much greater”: DPM, McNamara to Johnson, Nov. 1, 1965, p. 34.* See also John Foster, quoted in Ralph E. Lapp, Arms Beyond Doubt (New York: Cowles Book Co., 1970), p. 21: Gen. John Ryan, quoted in Philip Karber, “MIRV: Anatomy of an Enigma,” Air Force & Space Digest, Feb. 1971, p. 83; DoD statement, quoted in Alton Frye, A Responsible Congress (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1975), p. 69.
364 “was arrived at”: DPM, McNamara to Johnson, “Recommended FY68–72 Strategic Offensive and Defensive Forces,” Nov. 9, 1966, p. A–3 (FOIA/DoD).*
364 2,100 Minutemen: Desmond Ball, Politics and Force Levels (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1980), p. 192.
365 requires couple of thousand weapons: James Schlesinger, Hearings, Senate Foreign Relations Committee, U.S.-U.S.S.R. Strategic Policies, Mar. 4, 1974, p. 9; and interviews.
365 Enthoven for options: See, e.g., DPM, McNamara to Johnson, “Strategic Offensive and Defensive Forces,” January 15, 1968, pp. 6, 9 (FOIA/DoD).*
366 “reviewing our military”: Memo, Henry Kissinger to Secretaries of State and Defense and Director of Central Intelligence, Jan. 23, 1969 (provided to author).
366 “Up to now”: NSSM-3, revised version, May 8, 1969 (provided to author).
367 “Should a President”: Richard Nixon, Report to Congress, U.S. Foreign Policy for the 1970s: A New Strategy for Peace, Feb. 18, 1970, p. 122.
370 “a more flexible”: NSDM-242, Jan. 17, 1974 (provided to author).
373 “change in targeting”: “Remarks by Secretary of Defense James R. Schlesinger, Overseas Writers Association Luncheon, International Club, Washington, D.C., Thursday, January 10, 1974,” DoD Public Affairs Office, pp. 5, 6.
374 “The Soviet Union”: Schlesinger, Annual Defense Department Report, FY 1975, p. 4; that Kaufmann wrote it comes from interviews.
375 different trajectory, different error: It was with this in mind that Schlesinger testified before Congress in 1974:
“I believe that there is some misunderstanding about the degree of reliability and accuracy of missiles…. [I] t is impossible for either side to acquire the degree of accuracy that would give them a high confidence first-strike because we will not know what the actual accuracy will be like in a real-world context.
“As you know, we have acquired from the western test range a fairly precise accuracy, but in the real world we would have to fly from operational bases to targets in the Soviet Union. The parameters of the flight from the western test range are not really very helpful in determining those accuracies to the Soviet Union.
“We can never know what degrees of accuracy would be achieved in the real world….
“…if you have any degradation in operational accuracy… counterforce capability goes to the dogs very rapidly.
“We know that and the Soviets should know it, and that is one of the reasons that I can publicly state that neither side can acquire a high confidence first-strike capability.”