Office of the Historian

123. Memorandum From the President’s Special Assistant for National Security Affairs (Bundy) to President Kennedy0

Washington, January 17, 1962.

MR. PRESIDENT:

These two papers are really of high importance. One is by Kaysen, with help from a lot of others.1 Kaysen says:

1.
You can safely offer an atmospheric test-ban, because without atmospheric tests we can be sure of a nuclear stand-off, and even with them we cannot get anything better after 1963.
2.
If Russians accept, you get a real step toward arms control—though further steps would be needed.
3.
If Russians reject, you shift much of the weight of our test series to them.

This paper rests on evidence provided by Defense, AEC, and Science Adviser. Defense and AEC would accept its facts but not its conclusions—but only because neither is prepared to say a stand-off is all we can expect. This is the gut issue.

Those who want atmospheric tests think there is a real prospect that one side or the other can get decisively “ahead” in strategic nuclear power. This paper says they are wrong, and the argument is one that is of great importance; you should read it and then expose it to discussion.

The other paper is a summary of a Teller-dominated report to LeMay in favor of much more massive testing than anything you now plan.2 It gives the flavor of the sentiment on the other side. The document is probably of high political importance, because men like Bethe and Baker have also signed it,3 and because it is already being leaked privately to the Hill.

McG. B.4
  1. Source: Kennedy Library, National Security Files, Subjects Series, Nuclear Weapons Tests, 1/16-22/62. Top Secret.↩
  2. Neither paper was attached. Kaysen’s paper is Document 120.↩
  3. Only an undated fragment of the summary was found. (Kennedy Library, National Security Files, Subjects Series, Nuclear Weapons Tests, 1/16-22/62) The report is presumably “Military Implications of 1961 Soviet Nuclear Tests: Report by the Twining Committee to The Chief of Staff, U.S. Air Force,” dated January 5 and known as the Twining Report after its Chairman, General Nathan F. Twining (Ret.). Bethe, Teller, and Dr. William O. Baker were among the 14 members of the committee. (Ibid., Twining Report 1/5/62)↩
  4. Bethe signed the Twining Report but submitted some partial dissents in a memorandum to Twining on January 26. He did, however, agree with the Twining Committee that a nuclear test ban treaty at that time would not be to the military or technological advantage of the United States, and agreed also that some atmospheric testing was necessary. (Washington National Records Center, RG 330, OSD/AE Files: FRC 69 A 2243, 58 AWT USSR Tests (1961-1965))↩
  5. Printed from a copy that bears these typed initials.↩