The Doomsday Machine

by Daniel Ellsberg

  Chapter 3: Delegation

  At that time, no system of Permissive Action Links (PALs) Peter Douglas Feaver, Guarding the Guardians: Civilian Control of Nuclear Weapons in the United States (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992).

  Chapter 4: Iwakuni

  As Admiral Eugene LaRocque later testified U.S. Congress, Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, Hearing before the Subcommittee of Military Applications, Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1974), 93rd Congress, 2d Session, September 10, 1974, 18.

  Chapter 6: The War Plan

  “In general war, Annex C will be executed” All quotes from my notes, 1960. Emphasis added.

  “The meeting took place near mid-December 1960” John H. Rubel, Doomsday Delayed: USAF Strategic Weapons Doctrine and SIOP-62, 1959–1962 (Lanham, MD: Hamilton Books, 2008), 23–39. Rubel was at the time Deputy Director of Defense Research and Engineering, later sole director and Assistant Secretary for Research and Engineering.

  Kistiakowsky reported to him David Alan Rosenberg, “The Origins of Overkill: Nuclear Weapons and American Strategy, 1945–1960,” in Steven E. Miller, ed., Strategy and Nuclear Deterrence: An International Security Reader (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984), 118.

  Chapter 7: Briefing Bundy

  Some forty years later On the issue of delegation, see the National Security Archives Electronic Briefing Books on the subject, specifically “Newly Declassified Documents on Advance Presidential Authorization of Nuclear Weapons Use,” National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book, August 30, 1998, nsarchive.gwu.edu/news/predelegation/predel.htm; see also Peter J. Roman, “Ike’s Hair-Trigger: U.S. Nuclear Predelegation, 1953–1960,” Security Studies 7, no. 4 (Summer 1998): 121–64. Eisenhower’s permission of sub-delegation appears in “First Declassification of Eisenhower’s Instructions to Commanders Predelegating Nuclear Weapons Use, 1959-1960,” National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 45, May 18, 2001, nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB45/.

  inside Raven Rock mountain See also the highly revealing book by Garret M. Graff, Raven Rock: The Story of the U.S. Government’s Secret Plan to Save Itself—While the Rest of Us Die (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2017), which came out too recently to be adequately reflected in the account presented here.

  refused to send combat troops to Vietnam Daniel Ellsberg, Papers on the War (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1972), especially chapter 1, “The Quagmire Myth and the Stalemate Machine,” in particular, 52–71.

  Chapter 8: “My” War Plan

  we could not afford to deprive the Soviets Joint Staff and USAF planners were not merely skeptical of and resistant to the proposal to have a withhold option for Moscow in initial attacks, they could scarcely imagine postponing an opportunity to “decapitate” Soviet central command at the outset of general war. The question I raised repeatedly to such officers was: How long would fighting against Japanese forces have continued, beyond August 1945, if the first, second, or third atomic bomb had been targeted on Tokyo (as some had proposed) and killed the Emperor, precluding his order to surrender?

  That seemed to be an unanswerable challenge to them in discussion, and indeed, according to Desmond Ball in Politics and Force Levels: “Moscow was taken off the list of initial targets in late 1961” (191). But later accounts (see pages 299–308 in same text, and General George Lee Butler’s memoirs) indicate that neither my argument nor the option of withholding against Moscow were ever taken seriously by SAC (or by civilian officials who publicized an emphasis on decapitation under presidents Carter and Reagan). Desmond Ball, Politics and Force Levels: The Strategic Missile Program of the Kennedy Administration (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981); George Lee Butler, Uncommon Cause: A Life at Odds with Convention (Denver: Outskirts Press, 2016).

  as Fred Kaplan has ably shown Fred Kaplan, The Wizards of Armageddon (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1983), 203–19, 260–62.

  my first draft of the general war section of the BNSP For full text, see ellsberg.net/Pentagon. This applies as well to the other memos by me mentioned or quoted in this chapter.

  roughing out “options” in line with my guidance Ball, Politics and Force Levels, 190–191. William Burr, “New Evidence on the Origins of Overkill,” National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 236, November 21, 2007, updated October 1, 2009, nsarchive2.gwu.edu//nukevault/ebb236/index.htm.

  The final version For texts of all these memos and drafts, see ellsberg.net/BNSP.

  my draft portion of the proposed BNSP President Kennedy chose, eventually, not to issue a presidential BNSP in 1961 nor in his remaining years in office (rejecting, also, a long proposed draft BNSP by Walt Rostow in 1962). According to Desmond Ball, Richard Neustadt “managed to persuade President Kennedy that a BNSP would limit his flexibility,” an opinion shared by McGeorge Bundy. Ball, Politics and Force Levels, 190n40.

  a critical influence on U.S. strategic war planning Fred Kaplan traces this lineage of later directives and guidance back to “McNamara’s SIOP-63 guidance of 1961–62” and the earlier RAND studies repeatedly in The Wizards of Armageddon, in particular pages 383–84 for the Carter administration and page 389 for Reagan.

  Chapter 9: Questions for the Joint Chiefs

  my rough notes on questions for them See ellsberg.net/Pentagon.

  an attack intended to maximize population loss My draft of April 1961 (see ellsberg.net)—which was sent without change to the JCS in May by Gilpatric, for McNamara, as Secretary of Defense Policy Guidance for war planning—stated: “It is in the interest of the United States to achieve its wartime objectives while limiting the destructiveness of warfare, whether it be nuclear or non-nuclear, local or global. Specifically, the United States does not hold all the people of Russia, China, or the Satellite nations responsible for the acts of their governments. Consequently, it is not an objective of the United States to maximize the number of people killed in the Communist Bloc in the event of war.”

  revealed in Whole World on Fire Lynn Eden, Whole World on Fire: Organizations, Knowledge, and Nuclear Weapons Devastation (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2004).

  This would reduce sunlight and lower temperatures See endnotes in the introduction referencing scientific studies from 1983 and especially since 2007.

  such catastrophic “major attack options” Fred Kaplan, The Wizards of Armageddon (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1983); Janne E. Nolan, Guardians of the Arsenal: The Politics of Nuclear Strategy (New York: Basic Books, 1989); Janne E. Nolan, in An Elusive Consensus: Nuclear Weapons and American Security after the Cold War (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 1999); General Lee Butler, Uncommon Cause: A Life at Odds with Convention, vol. II (Denver, CO: Outskirts Press, 2016); Janne Nolan, “Cold Combat: The Memoir of a Nuclear Convert,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 73, no. 3 (2017), 192–195.

  A few years after leaving the White House McGeorge Bundy, “To Cap the Volcano,” Foreign Affairs, October 1969, quoted in Herbert F. York, Race to Oblivion: A Participant’s View of the Arms Race (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1970), 168.

  In the last year in the Cold War Herbert F. York, “ ‘Remarks’ About Minimum Deterrence,” paper presented at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory workshop “The Role of Nuclear Weapons in the Year 2000,” October 22–24, 1990. This paper was reprinted in Herbert F. York, Arms and the Physicist, as “Minimum Deterrence,” (Melville, NY: American Institute of Physics, 1995) 273–277.

  total of 63,836 weapons Max Roser and Mohamed Nagdy, “Nuclear Weapons,” (2016), Our World in Data, ourworldindata.org/nuclear-weapons/. See also Hans M. Kristensen and Robert S. Norris, “United States Nuclear Forces, 2017,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 73, no. 1 (2017): 48–57, and Hans M. Kristensen and Robert S. Norris, “Russian Nuclear Forces, 2017,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 73, no. 2 (2017): 115–126.

  Chapter 10: Berlin and the Missile Gap

  Khrushchev renewed an ultimatum Important account
s of the Berlin Crisis include Michael Beschloss, The Crisis Years: Kennedy and Khrushchev, 1960–1963, (New York: HarperCollins, 1991); Marc Trachtenberg, History and Strategy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991), especially chapter 5, “The Berlin Crisis,” 169–234; Marc Trachtenberg, A Constructed Peace: The Making of the European Settlement, 1945–1963 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999); Aleksandr Fursenko and Timothy Naftali, Khrushchev’s Cold War: The Inside Story of an American Adversary (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 2006). And for a bold, fascinating argument about the centrality of Germany to the origins of the Cold War and U.S. nuclear strategy, see Gar Alperovitz and Kai Bird, “The Centrality of the Bomb,” Foreign Policy no. 94 (Spring 1994): 3–20; Gal Alperovitz and Kai Bird, “A Theory of Cold War Dynamics: U.S. Policy, Germany, and the Bomb,” The History Teacher 29, no. 3 (May 1996): 281–300.

  When JFK asked Acheson privately McGeorge Bundy, Danger and Survival: Choices about the Bomb in the First Fifty Years (New York: Random House, 1988), 375.

  Thirty years later, McNamara revealed Robert McNamara, In Retrospect (New York: Vintage Books, 1996), 345: “In the early 1960s … In long private conversations, first with President Kennedy and then with President Johnson, I had recommended, without qualification, that they never, under any circumstances, initiate the use of nuclear weapons. I believe they accepted my recommendations. But neither they nor I could discuss our position publicly because it was contrary to established NATO policy.” See also James G. Blight, Bruce J. Allyn, and David A. Welch, Cuba on the Brink: Castro, the Missile Crisis, and the Soviet Collapse (New York: Pantheon, 1993), 262. Also, McNamara interview by Deborah Shapley, Promise and Power: The Life and Times of Robert McNamara (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1993), 595–596.

  The words “less than ten million deaths” Three years later in Dr. Strangelove, General “Buck” Turgidson, to the President, after recommending a first strike on the Soviet Union: “Mister President, I’m not saying we wouldn’t get our hair mussed, but I’d say no more than 10 to 20 million tops, depending on the breaks.” Stanley Kubrick, Terry Southern, and Peter George, Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, directed by Stanley Kubrick. Los Angeles, CA: Columbia Pictures Corporation, 1964, www.visual-memory.co.uk/amk/doc/0055.html.

  50 to 100 ICBMs as of mid-1961 “The Soviet ICBM Program—Evidence and Analysis,” Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961–1963, Volume VIII, National Security Policy, ed. David W. Mabon (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1996), Document 29, June 7, 1961, history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v08/d29.

  McNamara told the president Desmond Ball, Politics and Force Levels: The Strategic Missile Program of the Kennedy Administration (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980), 246.

  “death-beam gap” John Pike, “The Death-Beam Gap: Putting Keegan’s Follies in Perspective,” October 1992, www.fas.org/spp/eprint/keegan.htm.

  McNamara had said in February that there was no gap Desmond Ball, Politics and Force Levels, chapter 4, “The Kennedy Administration and the Demise of the ‘Missile Gap,’ ” especially 90–94.

  “believes that Soviet determination” “Soviet Capabilities for Long Range Attack,” Foreign Relations of the United States, National Intelligence Estimates and Related Reports and Correspondence, 1950–1985 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office), 20, June 7, 1961, research.archives.gov/id/7327101.

  It was correct, as Horelick and Rush themselves acknowledged Arnold L. Horelick and Myron Rush, “Deception in Soviet Strategic Missile Claims, 1957–1962,” R-409-PR, Rand Corporation, May 1963. See also Arnold L. Horelick and Myron Rush, Strategic Power and Soviet Foreign Policy (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1965).

  bluffing his own Warsaw Pact allies See “Khrushchev’s Secret Speech on Berlin, August, 1961,” Cold War International History Project, www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/khrush.htm [quote from this on the web].

  Chapter 11: A Tale of Two Speeches

  One of the memos I gave him Links to my memos on ellsberg.net. (These read very badly to me, now. They are definitely part of my “confessions.”)

  Gilpatric gave the speech on October 21, 1961 Speech text: Roswell L. Gilpatric, Deputy Secretary of Defense, Speech Before the Business Council at the Homestead, Hot Springs, Virginia, nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB56/BerlinC6.pdf. Joseph A. Loftus, “Gilpatric Warns U.S. Can Destroy Atom Aggressor: Puts Nuclear Arms in ‘Tens of Thousands’—Doubts Soviet Would Start War,” New York Times, October 22, 1961. See also “First-Strike Options and the Berlin Crisis, September, 1961: New Documents from the Kennedy Administration” National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 56, edited by William Burr, released September 25, 2001, nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB56/.

  “addressed a meeting of the Business Council” Michael Beschloss, The Crisis Years: Kennedy and Khrushchev, 1960–1963 (New York: HarperCollins, 1991), 332. Italics in original.

  “The President, Bundy, Rusk, and McNamara collaborated with Gilpatric” Ibid., 329–330.

  “the Gilpatric speech seemed to be Kennedy’s response” Seymour Hersh, The Dark Side of Camelot (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1997), 262. See also Aleksandr Fursenko and Timothy Naftali, Khrushchev’s Cold War: The Inside Story of an American Adversary (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2006), 399–400.

  “By asking Gilpatric to make this speech” Beschloss, The Crisis Years, 331–332.

  “The thirty-megaton blast and Malinovsky’s tough language” Ibid., 332.

  “Khrushchev almost certainly wondered” Ibid., 351.

  McNamara had decided for this occasion Robert McNamara, Speech to NATO Ministerial Meeting, Athens, Greece, May 5, 1962, nsarchive2.gwu.edu//NSAEBB/NSAEBB159/usukconsult-16c.pdf.

  A scholar as authoritative as Richard Rhodes Richard Rhodes, Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995), 570.

  Ann Arbor speech Robert McNamara, Speech, Ann Arbor, Michigan, July 9, 1962 robertsmcnamara.com.files.wordpress.com/2017/04/mcnamara-1967-22no-cities22-speech-p.pdf.

  “what McNamara said irritated the Soviet leader” Fursenko and Naftali, Khrushchev’s Cold War, 442.

  Ten days later, Khrushchev attacked Pravda, July 11, 1962, quoted in Arnold L. Horelick and Myron Rush, Strategic Power and Soviet Foreign Policy (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1965), 91.

  Chapter 12: My Cuban Missile Crisis

  We have an unusual record of the Cuban missile crisis Timothy Naftali and Philip Zelikow, eds., The Presidential Recordings of John F. Kennedy, Volume I-III: The Great Crises (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 2001).

  “I’ll be quite frank” Timothy Naftali and Philip Zelikow, eds., The Presidential Recordings of John F. Kennedy, Volume I-III: The Great Crises: September–October 21, 1962 (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 2001), 464.

  The deployment obviously did confront Kennedy My notes from my internal study in 1964 of the Cuban crisis (see ellsberg.net) record that Adam Yarmolinsky told me that at the time McNamara told him about the presence of the Soviet missiles, about 7:30 A.M. on October 16, 1962, McNamara’s reaction to the impending crisis was: “This shows how stupid it was to draw that line; I advised against it.” According to Yarmolinsky (May 16, 1964) McNamara thought, that Tuesday morning in 1962, “there might not have had to be a crisis if JFK hadn’t drawn the line.” I noted that Adam (in 1964) “thinks it unlikely that JFK would have made the firm, precise commitment he did if he had thought there was much chance it might be called. He made it public only for political reasons.”

  Dean Acheson, for one, did not In an interview, Theodore Sorensen, who served as White House Counsel to the President during the period of the Cuban missile crisis, noted: “I remember very clearly when we brought in former Secretary of State Dean Acheson to talk to our group, expert on the Russians, expert on the Cold War, and he recommended the air strike. And someone said, ‘Mr. Secretary, if we bomb these Soviet missiles in Cuba, what
will their reaction be?’ And he said, ‘I know the Soviets very well,’ he said, ‘they will feel compelled to bomb NATO missile bases in Turkey.’ And somebody else said, ‘And then what would we do?’ ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘under our NATO covenants, we would obligated to bomb Soviet missile bases inside the Soviet Union.’ ‘Oh, and then what will the Soviets do?’ ‘Well,’ he said, ‘by that time we hope cooler heads will prevail and people will talk.’ There was a real chill in that room.” See interview with Theodore Sorensen: nsarchive2.gwu.edu//coldwar/interviews/episode-10/sorensen2.html.