Office of the Historian

125. Memorandum From R.C. Bowman of the National Security Council Staff to the President’s Special Assistant (Rostow)1

Washington, April 13, 1966.

SUBJECT

  • The McMillan Report

Attached are what appear to be some afterthoughts by two members of the nine-man scientific committee which turned out the McMillan Report.2 These comments will be distributed to the Committee of Principles in the near future.

Last fall General Wheeler persuaded the JCS to make a more thorough evaluation of test ban questions. Among other actions, we established a scientific panel under Dr. McMillan which rendered a report that was distributed to the Committee of Principles with the understanding that it would be very closely held.

The McMillan Report noted very serious weaknesses in the present US nuclear deterrent forces stemming from the following critical vulnerabilities:

(a)
in-silo vulnerability to blast, shock and possibly EMP
(b)
launch phase vulnerability to gamma and X-rays
(c)
vulnerability of re-entry vehicles

The panel concluded that this was a particularly bad time for the US to consider entering into a comprehensive test ban. The Soviets were seen to have a considerable advantage in any test ban situation: greater internal security, greater manpower control, larger payload capacity of ICBMs, and ability to advance through clandestine testing.

In my judgment, the attached comments further underline the seriousness of the situation, since these two men who were disposed against testing from the beginning indicate agreement with the technical vulnerabilities highlighted by the basic panel report. Further, the basic report had already been softened considerably in the process of obtaining the original approval of these two gentlemen.

[Page 314]

On 17 March the JCS forwarded a study to SecDef3 recommending increases in manpower and funding for research and weapons effects testing in our effort to eliminate the vulnerabilities cited by the McMillan report.

RCB
  1. Source: Johnson Library, National Security File, Subject File, Disarmament, Test Ban Treaty, Box 11. Top Secret; Eyes Only.↩
  2. A March 9 letter from Marvin L. Goldberger and Franklin A. Long, members of the McMillan Panel, to General J.P. McConnell, USAF Chief of Staff, enclosed their comments on the McMillan Panel report (Document 110), concluding that the report correctly identified vulnerabilities of the U.S. strategic deterrent, but that it did not properly relate these weaknesses to the problem of the credibility of U.S. deterrence. They added that the possibilities of a crash program in advance of a new treaty, or failing this, “experimental simulations” had not been adequately considered by the McMillan Panel as means of coping with U.S. deterrence problems. (Department of State, S/S-RD Files: Lot 71 D 171)↩
  3. Not further identified.↩