War and Peace in the Nuclear Age; Interview with Roswell Gilpatric, 1986 [1]

You know. I think i read newspaper accounts of what mcelroy had said about the missile gap and what. Tom gates when he was secretary of defense is said. During hearings that were published. Overheard to in newspapers before. The nineteen sixty election. Well the. The the thrust of what. Those two sectors of defense it said was that. Our capabilities as far as strategic weapons for concern. Where inferior to those of. What the soviet union had developed and. That time i didn't have access to the sources i subsequently had available to me and so i believed along with a members of the general public

that this so-called missile gap was in favor of the russians and not. The us. Or my my first. Knowledge of the missile gap with the first time it registered itself on my consciousness was. Was during the as. I think. Fifty six seven eight when macca mcelroy was first secretary of defense and then. Tom gates and their testimony is reported and written up in the press. So they came through to me. And i was then working on the rockfeller brothers. Report. And so we discussed it with people who didn't have access to classified information but it was a subject of considerable interest and concern to those of us who were who.

Following the arms race between the soviet union in this country. Well. The position that. Those two sectors took was that. That the russians were more advanced in their strategic weapons technology both in terms of quality and quantity than than was the u.s. and. While i didn't read the exact wording of their statements at that time they were. They were basing that upon. Soviet intentions soviet goals and objectives rather than on any hard intelligence. As it turned out. But. There was a feeling that we were. We were falling behind the russians as we had prior to sputnik and in in the space race. So that during the. Candy campaign in one nine hundred sixty. One of the themes that i was struck by was the fact that we had to do something

to remedy to turn the tables on this. This. Unfavorable equation. Well after a macron i came into office when one of the first things we established with with alan dali's was an access to the national intelligence estimates. The group under sherman can't who. Who pool all the sources of military and other intelligence and we want to be able to use that we didn't then have they do. Fence intelligence agency set up as ah sauce of underlying basic data and. What the dimensions of the threat were and where we stood viz of each other in this military equation. And it wasn't very long before we came to the conclusion. I think it

was a five word monster sixty one. That the missile gap. Concept was one hundred eighty degrees of. Off that it was in off a verb. In the terms of who was who was ahead and. Whether it was measured by measured by megatonnage or number. Numbers of missiles or. The reliability and accuracy and all the of those tests and standards by which you. Value ways to teach. Weapons. And that was when. Mack tomorrow i had an informal meeting with the press and the pentagon. Stated. What he'd found to be the fact and of course that was thought about three day wonder because the white house was initially very embarrassed. Now following that and. Reflected in. Statements and speeches made by actor america. Paul nets and myself culminating and. Talk i gave down a top springs agenda here on october twenty eighth one thousand nine hundred sixty one.

We began to get the word out that. We actually had a margin of superiority. Not it wasn't a static condition but it was a dynamic condition and. We want to naani reassure allies but we also particularly after the bay of pigs we want to present a posture to. Khrushchev that we didn't feel. We were in a weak position be the be the soviet union. I was surprised because as well as i indicated earlier. I didn't. Didn't. Yes. Yes yeah. Well i was surprised to find that the soviet union and. Made further advances and their strategic weapons. The impression i had when i was out of government and didn't have access to

the kind of classified information we got in the pentagon. Was that they they they were more advanced than we than we had expected. So it came as a to me a very reassuring. Development in my. My responsibilities in the mcnamara's that that. While we that we didn't have a catch up game to play with them. As a matter of maintaining our position and. It affected later on our judgment as to you know how many how many minutemen. Should be procured what we should. What number of. Polaris. Missiles and submarine should be added to the program we inherited and eisenhower ministration. In effect it eased the pressures on the kennedy administration. More than they had anticipated. Prior to the change in administration. All.

All i can say about the. The the the sense of the missile gap is being a factor. That note that. That was a against us was not enough a what was that the prior administration. Believed. What the soviets said. Or claimed to be. Their goals and objectives. Without having the underlying information to show the gap between what was their hope and their aspirations and their actual state of the state of accomplishments in the areas. I think. I think the gap was just one of those periods in american intelligence assessment an appreciation. Where we misread the signals we gave them credit for having what they had talked about wanting. And in fact. Hadn't achieved. You.

In weighing the credibility to be given to various intelligence estimates. One of course must be. Be conscious of the sauce and there's no. No doubt that the. The military things particularly those of the of the air force. Presented a much harsher much more threatening light than what we got from the cia estimates and. And those days. This is again. Prior to nine hundred sixty. Are our satellite based reconnaissance wasn't as wasn't as accurate. Wasn't as reliable as it. As it was no process of becoming. So you had to sauces for this. What turned out to be misinformation a misconception. One was the. The natural tendency of

the of the military to to overstate the threat that they had to meet and the other was our intelligence gathering capabilities were not as good and fifty's as they turned out to be in the sixty's. Right now. Why couldn't this. At this stage you know twenty five years after the event give you a very detailed or. Accurate reading on my impressions and. At the time. I was first exposed to these briefings. With the joint chiefs of staff of the joint staff. On contingency plans particularly psyop. The general. The general sense that i recall at this.

At this much later stage is that. I was never as. As comfortable with with their methodology in making these estimates i didn't think their planning process as. To me as a lawyer. Where was convincing. And i. I just wasn't comfortable with the. With these with these briefings that we were given the early stages before we knew enough to ask the right questions. I doubt that. That's the right verb to use with mcnamara he he i was rarely seen him horrify during all he as we work together in all the situations that we were involved. I think he was taken aback. But you must remember that for two civilians even one who had been in the

military establishment. Before. Much of what we saw was seen for the first time and. And so it took us a while that was similar. And to become aware of what. Where the weaknesses that turned out in the in the in the whole process of drawing up these. Dziedzic contingency plans. Well we had the typical jot poynter briefings by. Staff not by the members of the joint chiefs themselves they brought in their briefing offices and. Right away. We got off on the wrong foot. Because back when i was very impatient with that kind of. Stereotype conventional briefing he wanted to get quick responses to. You know on rehearsed. Questions that he wasn't going to wait to the end of the briefing to bring forward so. We didn't we

didn't establish the kind of rapport with the joint staff at that time that we laded with with. With general taylor and with those who came along and who got to know macnamara's methods and were prepared to deal with them. Yes it was not a good show that first. That first meeting over the strategic plans. But we as i recall what we felt it. It was based on a classic. Command and staff school. Military planning and. It wasn't related to the actuality of specific targets for example it it just made some broad assumptions. The planning process. As

to what would have to be taken out. And the soviet heartland. And it it wasn't it wasn't. Of a character that impressed me as a lawyer or mcnamara as a. As a business executive management specialist. With any. Any real conviction. We guessed. It was a. It was a sort of a textbook exercise. Well it's the difference between. If you're a student in the. Graduate school. Of having a hypothetical situation whether it's in business or in the law that you're supposed to address just sell to unusual skills and. In assessing. And dealing with an actual real life. Where you. You know that you're dealing with facts and conditions that exist and not.

Not a hypothetical situations. It was. We just didn't feel. Or i didn't feel i was dealing with with the realities of the conditions that existed and. In the spring of one nine hundred sixty one. I i really can't. Call up from my recollection you know some specific instances. Is simply that. Always the. The classic dinners the plans all the war plans has been variously called. Word done inside of an academic. Removed from reality setting i mean. Assignment given to some member of the joint staff to prepare. A plan on a given set of assumptions. But. But no. None of it seemed to us and this was it but came even true when we got

into specific situations like laos and. And vietnam that. That the military. Those days were really not prepared to give you a real real life real. Existence set of facts and. Wish to base their plans they had a lot of theories they learned in academies. And they command staff schools. But they were. They were not the kind of plans that those of us who have been in the business a professional world were used to dealing with. It was just a departure from reality. You know they were overplayed in some cases. The. Where where we were. So let down i think. Least i was. Was by the fact that. There are assumptions. Couldn't be translated into any scenario that we found.

Reason why in the light of the conditions that we we were we were considering whether it was burrow in as i say whether it was south east asia. Later on well it was cuba. And i think. From the very beginning we just lost confidence in the whole the whole contingency planning process and. Decided that's not the basis on which we were going to make recommendations to the president or. Budget proposals or any of the other issues that we had to face in those first months of the county administration. And i talked to dozens of strike a familiar you know with me. That

doesn't ring a bell with me either. Let me correct you. I wasn't an advisor but. Bill foster who who is at the job that i automatically had the sectary defense. He got a group of us who were not in government including jack mccoy i think and we. And we came down and we were briefed and. In the presence of vice president nixon had foster's house. And they gave the report. And that was my first exposure to it. And that was one of the contributing factors to my concern when i when i heard the testimony of the defense officials. The missile gap because the gaither report also put put us in in what appeared to be an inferior position that we would we'd fallen behind in this. In this military equation.

In the light of what we learned a couple of years later. The situation either wasn't accurate at the time of the gaither report or. Conditions it changed. Adding been involved in over my career and government and national security matters with a number of assessments and appraisals. Things often evolve differently from what your hypotheses are at the time and. And many of your conclusions on. Is valid two or three years later is as you felt. Honestly. With conviction they were at the time so i wouldn't i wouldn't. I wouldn't condemn or criticize the gaither report. Except that we found two years later. Was it was a different set of facts. Simply because the the.

What we. I think is partly the way we went at. The responsibilities that we took on and. In the early part of sixty one. We didn't just rely on taking. These classic conventional briefings and assessments. We insisted on going through to the sources of the information and we would talk to the chairman cance. And the others over in the national intelligence. Board and this. By exposure to a military intelligence gathering and assessment. Has changed over the over the years. When you go back to the period prior to the formation of the defense intelligence agency which was recommended by the. Under the eisenhower administration but which was not actually set up until the county administration.

You had two different sets of methodology of formulating intelligence estimates. Before. Before you had the defense intelligence agency each service had its own. G two was its own intelligence officers and they would proceed to come in in support of whatever. Program or whatever. New weapons system or whatever. Issue was before. The civilian authorities of that time and. There's no question and. I mind that the reliability of those service estimates were nowhere near as reliable as the as the. What the national intelligence board of the cia and the defense intelligence agency came up with. And it to me it's. It's just a natural condition of human nature that. If the air force for example. Wants. Two thousand minutemen. Instead of one thousand. They're going to.

In the lodge and amplify on the threat that. That exists for which those minutemen are needed and. We felt like man i felt that as gates had before it was very important to separate the. Function intelligence function from the. Advocacy of particular programs and and procurements. Well the. The reason for that the changes took place since world war two. Our course manifold but. What counted. By the time of the new deal a of the time. Getting into intercontinental ballistic missiles. Was the new form of. Of intelligence. You didn't have. You didn't have the kind of classic.

Intelligence gathering in espionage that you had in earlier periods. And you would you would dealing with a new medium with a new ata new technology and just. Just reading the pictures that came down from the satellites was was was something that nobody had had any experience with and you could get to people who could read. Pictures differently. So what. It wasn't a conscious effort. In my opinion on the part of the of. The military services to distort or. Or. Or otherwise. Characterize their. Their needs. But it was more a question of not having had the experience with this new medium. In the in the period we're talking about the late fifty's and early sixty's. I think it's become much more of a. Of an art. Now

than it certainly was then. I think the same way that it can happen under. Any administration and certainly can happen under the present administration. When when you're. When you when you have very firm beliefs about the importance of. The application of military power. And you have to justify it not only before congressional committees but before the. The court of public opinion as it were. You tend. As any good advocate does as i do when i go into a courtroom. To. You know. Stress.

All the elements that. Tend to prove my case. And i think that's one of the basic reason.