109. Memorandum of Conversation between the President and Gray1
MEMORANDUM OF CONVERSATION WITH THE PRESIDENT
(Wednesday, November 19 at approximately 3:45)
I reminded the President that the upcoming meeting of the NSC on Thursday, 20 November, would be devoted to the 1958 Net Evaluation Subcommittee report. I indicated to the President that in my judgment [Typeset Page 371] this meeting could be an important springboard for proposing vital questions looking to the future of our defense posture.
I recalled to the President’s attention that the current study was based upon an attack pattern not addressed strictly to military targets but was based upon his directive that the attack pattern be designed to paralyze the Russian nation without, however, excluding military targets which would contribute to this objective. Thus, the study was an urban industrial-military mix with the emphasis on industrial urban resulting in effective paralysis with fewer weapons and less kilotonnage than used in the 1957 attack pattern. Incidentally, I reported to the President that in my judgment, he would not find the 1958 study “too academic in nature” as he had feared and had indicated to me in an earlier conversation.
Inasmuch as our military force requirements, including numbers and types of weapons and delivery systems were based entirely upon the purposes of our retaliatory force, the targeting system was central to our long-range planning with overwhelming implications for future defense budgets.
I then said to the President that I felt this was very closely related to the review of 5410/1 now in process. I reported that Robert Cutler had started this review in April and I had carried it forward at innumerable meetings of the Planning Board without an agreement as to the kind of paper that should go to the Council. I indicated to the President that in my judgment, we could not separate the question of effective deterrence from the question of war objectives and neither could be separated from our targeting plans. I then posed for the President the first problem in connection with 5410/1, which was whether we needed such a paper at all, expressing the judgment that the paper, as written in March 1954, was out of date and should either be updated or rescinded.
[Facsimile Page 2]The President expressed his doubt as to our ability to do effective planning against a situation of mutual devastation. However, he approved the notion of bringing a discussion paper to the Council.
I suggested to him then that he might wish, following the presentation by the Net Evaluation Subcommittee, to ask for a study of the targeting system for his consideration.
The President felt that I should raise this question and that I had a sufficient basis for it by reason of the directive he gave for the different targeting system to be used in this year’s exercise. I then told him that I would make the effort to relate such an appraisal to the question of war objectives and seek to pull all of these matters together, which would also include weapons requirements.
I then reported to the President that with respect to the Defense budget, one of the recommendations he might have to face was one to cancel out the TITAN program. I reminded him that this might present [Typeset Page 372] personal difficulties for him because the Glenn L. Martin Co. was reported to have spent $30 million in Denver getting into the TITAN program. The President thanked me for bringing this to his attention but observed that “we must be selective or we will be broke.”
cc: Mr. Lay
- Source: Nuclear targeting. Top Secret. 2 pp. Eisenhower Library, White House Office Files, Project Clean Up, Meetings With the President. Drafted on November 22.↩