250. Memorandum for the Record1
SUBJECT
- Debrief of NSC Meeting, 28 Apr 1960
MR. GORDON GRAY—Said questions had been brought up in the planning group about the 48-hour warning and about the relocation of the government people, during those 48 hours. With all the military on full alert and with all of this being known, would the Soviets attack then or would they not?
—The second question was what should be done in regard to warning and instructions to the civilian population?
There was a lot of discussion as to difficulties in calling off an attack once it has been ordered, and the possibility that if they tried to call it off somebody wouldn’t get the word and it would be launched anyway. Then, the war would be on and they would have lost their initial advantage of a heavy initial attack. In other words, if the Russians tried to call it off and if they weren’t successful in calling it off, they would have really lost their nation and not have gained anything by it. It was decided that it was very unlikely that once the Russians decided to launch an attack that they could afford to call it off. The decision had to be made once and for all.
—The next question as to whether to tell our people. A lot of people said that it would be better if the people were not unduly excited and were told it was an exercise, that you wouldn’t know for sure that an attack was coming, and that if you told them that an attack was coming for sure, they would probably panic. However, the President said that you should tell the people. I agree, even though a lot of people would panic. It they are not told completely about what is happening, it is going to leak and they will lose confidence in the integrity of their own government in periods of crisis and they will desert and be wholly selfish. In a time of crisis if you told the people the whole business, as much as you possibly can tell then, they would realize that their government is doing everything it possibly can to protect them and that their government is going to fight like hell. You can’t play games with people in periods of crisis.
[Typeset Page 1026]COMMENT: This was not brought out at the meeting.
[Facsimile Page 2]THE PRESIDENT—Then discussed in general the vulnerability of SAC land-based equipment. He asked how long does it take to fire Minuteman and when the research would be done on Minuteman? He asked when Hound Dog would be operational? Then, he noted that the reserves for Polaris were very few, and he thought we should have 100% reserves of Polaris missiles in coastal areas where we could possibly get them.
ADM BURKE—Told him we had 33% reserves in tenders.
THE PRESIDENT—Said he didn’t think that was enough, that it should be 100%.
ADM BURKE—Said thank you.
—Then said we had thought of putting reserve missiles in tenders and sending them into safe waters such as Trinidad or African or South American ports.
THE PRESIDENT—Said well, you would have to send a submarine a long distance to get reserve missiles and he thought it would be wise to have some reserves right in the United States.
I heard Mr. Douglas whisper to Andy Goodpaster that it would take weeks to get reload on this basis.
THE PRESIDENT—Then said, in answer to a question, that he wanted to have some residual power left so that he wouldn’t be helpless—that, if he had started a war like that, he wanted to be able to finish it, and he was interested in having a capability after the initial strikes were over.
MR. GATES—Asked him if he thought the follow-on strike capability would have any deterrent effect.
THE PRESIDENT—Said no, he just wanted to have military capability afterwards.
MR. MC CONE—Then asked if we had studied the growing intercept capability of the Russians against aircraft. He pointed out that the Russians had been improving their surface-to-air missiles. They had good interceptors, good communications, and there was a lot of intelligence information which indicated that the Russians were really stressing air defense, particularly against high altitude aircraft. With the introduction of missiles into the Soviet arsenal, aircraft were becoming [Facsimile Page 3] increasingly vulnerable while missiles were not, and yet 90% of our stockpile was now for aircraft delivery and only 10% was for other types of delivery—and, I think he said only 2% was for missile delivery.
[Typeset Page 1027]It was then brought out there would be a gradual shift from aircraft to missiles, but this would have to be continuously re-examined. The vulnerability of missiles was discussed a little bit but that was not important.
THE PRESIDENT—Then asked about an air alert.
GENERAL LE MAY—Said that, if they had 15 minutes warning, it was not profitable to have an air alert, that the only mission of an air alert was when you didn’t have any warning. He then mentioned blind takeoffs in which they had cut down their take-off time to one-third what it had been previously, and that the intervals between aircraft takeoff was now 15 seconds. He said he had some movies which he offered to send to the President.
THE PRESIDENT—Accepted.
COMMENT: This was the first time I had heard of this.
THE PRESIDENT—Then discussed the dispersion of SAC, and again the answer was that it wasn’t necessary to disperse SAC much further if they were able to achieve their takeoff capability.
There was then a long discussion as to the amount of long term fallout hazard, particularly Strontium-90 and similar elements. For example, the study said there would be about 3 million additional leukemia and bone cancer cases directly due to Strontium-90 after a 6,000-megaton yield delivery by both sides.
THE PRESIDENT—Thought this was probably low.
They are going to look into it. Nobody knew what they were talking about.
GORDON GRAY—Said he would like to discuss what they would do at the next NESC study.
THE PRESIDENT—Said that doesn’t have to be decided here.
- Source: Debrief of the NSC meeting of April 28: Polaris reserves, Soviet intercept capability against aircraft, SAC dispersal, fallout. Top Secret; Hold Closely. 3 pp. Naval Historical Center, Burke Papers, Originators File, 1 March to 30 April, 1960.↩