War and Peace in the Nuclear Age; Interview with Jerome Wiesner, 1986 [1]

It states. Well the bundling committee existed because it was a new under-secretary Air Force research and development trigger who believed in missiles up to that point the Air Force had very reluctantly gone along with missiles. The atlas and others were missed things they didn't really believe in fact that wants her general the main argument that led up to the I mean committee say that missiles didn't have loyalty. All the other things that a bomber pilot many on the say something which made good sense to me but through had to be wrong and that it was who go to guide them for who would throw a 10 story building at each other. But the Gardner became convinced or was convinced but somebody may have been Newman that with the advances in age with what we thought was a Russian

development missiles. That we should put a stronger emphasis on ballistic missiles. And so the so-called And I mean committee or teapot committee was created. We looked at the existing U.S. missile systems didn't like him very much and began to speculate with a team of technical people that was wrong. So I remember the in Woodridge different configurations in fact I think the record will show that Randy had. Designed on paper an earlier version of a smaller missile. But Newman was involved in the development of the H bomb and believed that you could make very small h bomb compared to what anyone else had thought that time and kept insisting that we design a missile around it. Fifteen hundred pound warhead which was very much smaller than I think existed. That had the advantage of

allowing the smallness of which allowed a solid fuel missile which made for a very different kind of missile. We also made a very major change in the guidance system. I think that guy was responsible for that because the Atlas and the other missiles had used what so called Radio guidance which was very vulnerable we thought to jamming. And I got Stark gripper at MIT who was then working on air navigation systems for airplanes to take on the development of guidance systems for missiles. That's what makes me strong. All right. You know it. And we didn't. At least that's how you view things. The climate

Well there are a variety of things that I believe. I believe the intelligence first of all Later on I as I worked I was a young man you have to remember that I had come out of World War Two. I had gone from being a full corps collector to the Library of Congress to being a weapons manufacturer developer at MIT. I went back to trying to do. I had worked at Los Alamos for about a year. Things that lead to the H-bomb come back to MIT was trying to do civilian research using the things that I learned during the war particularly on information theory. So I've been at Aix with Norbert Wiener the Korean the outbreak of the Korean War cause a tremendous fright in our country and the

people who had been advocating a much larger air forces use that occasion to argue with the intelligence they had that the United States was ultra vulnerable to bombing by the Soviet Union. And I had no basis for it. Questioning intelligence didn't occur. I think most of us to question it at that time. And so we all went to work trying to defend the country. My first efforts were on the big air defense system called SAGE that we worked on at the Lincoln Lab. And then later on and early in 1960 53 I joined the von Neumann committee and I worked on ballistic missile. I also spent a lot of time looking at Russian intelligence or U.S. intelligence of actually German defectors returning. Having been sort of briefed by the Russians they were not

allowed to work on the systems in the way bun Brown's group was here. They were sort of drained of what they knew trained training Russian technicians and then sent home. And from what they said a number of us are trying to construct some model of the Russian missile. I couldn't quite believe that the Russians were making a missile that seemed to be as big as it was but it turned out in fact to be the case now. In retrospect I've done a lot of thinking about what I thought what I was. I was always slightly puzzled about some of the things that occur that people were saying I couldn't understand how the Soviet Union had been so thoroughly devastated in World War Two could be turning out hundreds of bombers when it took such a big job for us to do it. But somehow it never quite crystallized and I was in no position to ask the

questions to get the answers I was a piece of the machine. And that was a pretty good technical expert. So I was invited in on all these new things in the scuffle. So I was very deeply involved initially in the technology and the other thing that I think and I've actually argued with the Russians about this and was this was the era of Stalin. And I think one looks back at what Stalin was like and what Stalin didn't have to conclude that at least at the end of the war and after the war he was paranoid about the West and did a lot of things that were frightening to us and pointed up to Russian. The things that were pretty upsetting to them too so they ought to understand what happened to us. But during that period there was a period of Stalin with a period in which John Mazur

was murdered so that I think there were many good reasons to worry about the Soviet Union. My own view is that we went the wrong way in imagining things that didn't exist because we started an arms race which we have had to continue to play an important part in. We want to be like in the 50s when you were really good. That's right. It's so good. Well you know that was 30 years ago so I couldn't describe the detail. If I wanted some point stood out. And this visit followed an earlier one in which some of the few of our colleagues had come back and said they

thought that Sprague followed an earlier visit which a few of our colleagues had returned from say and said that they did not believe that SEC had the capability of getting its airplanes off the ground and in a tech condition has what was generally believed by everyone including the president of the United States and other words that they did not have a secure second strike capability. And so a larger group of us went out to try to explore that and we explored it largely by asking questions of readiness and. Pilots and so on. And we concluded that it was probably so that the SEC would be lucky to get a dozen properly equipped unmanned planes off the ground in the first several hours. And we then went to visit General let me

and this is intercourse interesting part of the story. I don't remember the number of us who went but I do remember the discussion which Sprague who was the leader of our group said General in May. We do not believe that you can get the airplanes off the ground as the president does. Domi looked at him and said You're right. And sprigs said well what does that mean. The mayor said Well. My intelligence is very good. I don't know if we can advance when the Russians are going to be doing something and will knock the shit out of them. All right you want me to say something it's. OK. General Sprague said no we don't believe you can get those airplanes up as the president

does. And you may said Well that's right but I don't really have to Sprague's that what you mean. Let NE's answer was My intelligence is so good that I don't know if we can advance when the Russians are going to try something and I'll knock the shit out of them. Somewhat startled Sprague's said that's not the president's policy. Then they said but it's my job to make it possible for the president to change his policy makes sense. Well. I wouldn't swear on a Bible that's not what he said but I remember my words very vividly. I know Bob Sprague very well and he and I have talked about this since we've never talked in detail about the

words. I think I've been I was shocked by this by the fact that the president Congress secretary of state all said we had a retaliatory kape policy if the Russians attacked we would retaliate. Now that's not a very sensible policy is Matter fact if you if you are open to retaliation so it's not surprising that there might have been a private policy. Nonetheless the discovery that the U.S. that had been so morally standing on a policy of second strike had been spending my life trying to help reinforce and build the system discover that it was built on the falshood was really very upsetting to me. Obviously other people took different conclusions from this.

Oh yes. Not very enthusiastically actually the president had indicated to us along the way that there were many elements of it that made no sense to him he dedicated the Gaither panel I think he indicated it to a meeting of the science advisory committee when they met. I recall his using the words. We don't have enough. We can't have that war. We don't have enough bulldozers the scrape the bodies off the streets. I must say I agree. I gave her panel conclusions were. Ones that were hard for me to understand the meaning of. The president President had asked us to look at the following question he had

a long way he forgot how we got into this. Namely if you make the assumption that there's going to be a nuclear war what should I as president have done to protect the American people. Now if you start with the assumption that there's going to be a nuclear war in three or five or 10 years you sure work. Singlemindedly to try to minimize. The results but you're never sure. And one of the things that was pointed out in by John Paul Auster Dulles. In the presentation was you know this makes a war war more likely. Russian sea is building all of children. They're going to suspect we're up to something. What's more he said very forcefully you'll scare the devil out of our allies if they see us getting ready to protect ourselves and unable to protect them. So there was a pretty negative reception which I didn't find surprising because by then I

myself was very skeptical even though I signed the Gaither report. They gave the report was accurate in the sense that it answered the president's question what should you do. And it told how many lives you would see. It didn't say we should do with it. On the other hand they were enthusiastic Gaither panel staff particularly the non-technical people who became so caught up in the intelligence and so fearful of Russian attack on the U.S. nuclear missiles but from other things that they really became convinced that we should implement the report I never thought its implementation was practical. It was in one. Yes well I had made a considerable amount of the. Presentation technical presentation. There was this

rather a noisy dialogue discussion afterwards which just sort of faded out and it must have been pretty clear to everybody that president himself and his principle government supporters cabinet members were pretty much against it. And as I walked out of the office I was I suppose reflecting on what had happened. I must have looked very sad to him and he put his arm around my shoulder and he said you know if I thought this would do any good I'd be for it. Then he said of course the people of the United States wouldn't let me do it anyway. And I said well I thought people the United States would let him do anything he wanted to do. But it wasn't recommending this. And he said well in good conscience I don't believe that. He said Well it's true. Mr. President. He looked at me and so why do you think so.

When I said I think people have enormous confidence in you and believe you. And he said rather interestingly they didn't pass my budget last year and I said you allowed the secretary of treasury to contradict you in public. Humphrey it's some may recall said that if one passed the president's budget there'd be a depression that would curl people's hair and. Yes it did. So that people didn't know what you really believe or what you wanted but that he sort of shrugged a shoulder and I want all of you. Well the president must've thought that I was upset by the meeting. He put his arm around my shoulder as we walked down the hall.

We talked about a variety of things and suddenly he said to me you fellows are working on the wrong problem. I'm trying to do something about nuclear test ban and slow down the arms race and nobody in the government will help me the Defense Department isn't interested the American Energy Commission isn't interested why do you people on the science advisory committee help me with this and I said well Mr. President we will help you with anything you want. We did this job because you had asked us to these so and it wasn't too long after that that the science advisory committee really became his main agency for getting technical preparation for the test been negotiations in Geneva for the meeting to limiting the dangers of nuclear war. Monitoring In fact what went on in the Pentagon. Well you

know what. Shame on you. Well I really became very much convinced that the United States was in some sense and still is running an arms race with itself because as I got into a position in the White House where I could ask to be filled in on intelligence I discovered that so much of the intelligence was just a reflection of what we were capable of doing or planning to do or might do. In other words we gave the Russians credit for having capabilities not unlike ours before Sputnik for example. We usually thought they would do what we were capable of doing but two years later after Sputnik we. Changed the sign and thought they would do everything before us and then that take that demonstrated for example in the

so-called missile gap. But the hard facts that were available until the U2 began flying for example were essentially nonexistent. And when you dug into a piece of intelligence you'd usually find that the intelligence data they were given were the compromise of the veriest the fence department agencies vested interests. For example if it had to do with bombers the Air Force would make a big assessment of Russian bomber capability. The Navy would say it was trivial. Army was always in the middle somewhere between the two extremes. Defense Intelligence Agency was hard to predict. And then the CIA and its integrated intelligence would try to bring all this together. But when you take Air Force extreme on the one hand the Navy extreme on the other you always got a kind of mishmash that made for a serious effort

but never permitted one to undertake to do with the Air Force wanted or relax as sufficiently as the Navy would have relaxed. But eventually when I personally got to not believe any intelligence and I could always predict what the intelligence agencies of the departments were going to say by just asking myself the simple question What is their vested interest. I was terribly disillusioning and that my experience discovering that the United States was in fact maintaining a purse strike capability while we were innocently saying we would never think of doing that and many other things but mostly I'd say the influence of President Eisenhower himself and I think he was undergoing a change of heart from the time when he became president. It was really quite hawkish if that's the right expression he certainly supported big military build ups to the time when he became

convinced that there was no military solution to the nuclear bomb. I think people have been saying over and over again that this is not a weapon that has a military use. And I guess his conversion. Lead mine in a sense because I like most Americans I developed enormous both affection and sense of real strength in the president. One thing that's a lot. Of people like yourself present yourself as someone that seems to be a saint. Hard to see why you. Sat right there.

Is it true that this is what was going. Well of course. I think that history would show that the sack build up was really generated or created under Truman and in the big fights about how many oh. Let's stop and let's talk about this. Member of the film Lottery Commission and. Yes that said. That there were build ups that were set there were targets that were created. Now I certainly went along with it partially because they were there personally because he was involved in doing something about the Korean war partially as I said earlier because I think he believed that this

was a solution ultimately. Well my own sex. Well. Just a question again. Let me see if I can do it. Let's get a little complicated. So. You or anyone else. That's why. There was some attention but not a great deal to the question of what's called psi up the street just did YOU can you graded her.

War plan operational plan set over there. There was some attention to the so-called psyop the strategic integrated operational plan and most of us were rather skeptical about how much sense it made. But I think we were much more concerned with the presence concerned who were working for him and maybe we should have been more concerned with this trying to rationalize how you could make a test ban that was safe for the country. The number of changes that you talk about were also reasonably logical in the abstract. Back in the early period of nuclear weapons went first of all we had only fission weapons. But we didn't understand the power of these weapons our bombers would carry ten

megaton bombs. People began to realize that there weren't very many targets that justified a 10 megaton bomb. And as a matter of fact you could show that if you had an area that you wanted to destroy you were better off to hit it with a number of smaller bombs than one enormous. Because the fall off of the energy was so fast that you're better off peppering the area with small bombs so all of this is all logical and while everyone knew it was going on no one protested it. It was a conversion of large bombs to small bombs. It was the fact that we had materials plants that were turning up material. Something had to be done with them with the stuff that was being made and so they just went in the bombs. But the number of airplanes didn't change very much what they carried changed. And then with increased materials that we had they found their way into

aircraft in the Navy. The game then made tactical weapons to put in your thank you weapons being the way we avoided putting in more troops every time it was a crisis we did a thousand tactical bombs although nobody knew what would be done with them. They somehow reassured the Europeans. And so the material was flowing out I guess we were all conscious of the fact that there was this big build up. We also believe that there was a comparable build up in the Soviet Union. At least I think about what I thought. You know you see I suppose that the Joint Chiefs to the degree that anyone who is making the decision was doing it.

I don't I was not involved the tall Eisenhower is the National Security Council and I would imagine. But I can tell you for sure that these things must have been discussed there. Those of us who are in a sense on the sidelines even though we were working on some of the problems. Just thought it was ridiculous that these numbers build up in such a way. For example one of the arguments was that A1 option of psyop was probably still is purely military targets but there are 50 military targets in Moscow. So imagine what dropping 50 independent nuclear weapons on Moscow would do to a city. Even though you were not aiming at civilians Well there are a lot of inconsistent seas of this kind in the plant but it was not my responsibility. Maybe I should have undertaken to

understand it more. But. There are just many many issues for people to get themselves are going through it again with what I know now I probably ask more questions sonny. OK. You think that good. You. Know you never can tell what a lost opportunity I have the impression. That Khrushchev was seriously intend one trying to do something. I also believe that Eisenhower was and they were fencing in such a way that. To bring about off a meeting without giving political advantage to each each to the other

by then I think Eisenhower was convinced that the missile gap was not there. It certainly wasn't serious. I was in the Soviet Union shortly after the u to. Shoot down and one Russian scientist friend said to me you know Khrushchev really wanted that meeting to go on and he said he gave Eisenhower and out by saying well the president really didn't know what was going on this was done by the military. But he said your president spit in his face Eisenhower probably felt that he did not dare admit that he didn't know what was going on. So he took full responsibility for it but it's a scene from Khrushchev point of view it was a kind of a slap at Khrushchev's attempt to patch up the situation.

I really can't say. I can say that I believe that Khrushchev was serious this is my personal belief. I can say that I know that I was serious. I also know that I was not a terrible opposition and probably so. Well the evidence we have that Khrushchev had equal troubles maybe not as serious although it's hard to say in the United States in any negotiation I was involved in either in the Eisenhower Kennedy administration. We always felt that our toughest negotiation was at home. Trying to get agreement on anything that would be meaningful and acceptable to the Russian very frequently would get to a conference and find that our area of agreement where we are allowed to negotiate and the Russians were miles apart. And so that there was no king no possibility. And from what I got the impression the Russians were having just as much trouble. Both sides trying to preserve maximum

advantage while reaching an agreement. Clearly that's an impossible situation. Oh yes. I thought that maybe it's you. I think it's well it was good. Yeah well. It it was concern. Let me try. I know I know what your question is but let me answer it. I believe is. That gardener was concerned. You're not recording anyway. I'm expecting a phone call from either side of you.

So. Gardner I don't know why you became convinced. Maybe but but I know I mean that the U.S. was not taking missile seriously enough. Well and so we must. I don't care. Let's record it I may say some extraneous things but there I start by saying something which is useful to you I think there are people who can give you the precise working statement of the committee. I could probably find it in my files but I think people at the Aerospace Corporation. There's an historian. He probably knows the full history. My recollection of the creation of the Tea Party Committee.

Was that Trevor Gardner who was the new assistant secretary for research and development. The Air Force became convinced that the Russians were working very hard on missiles and the US Air Force was not taking very seriously. And I know that to be the case because I once heard my. Talk against missile saying that they were they didn't have loyalty like liars and the variety of other things and besides what nation would be hoosh enough to throw 10 story building said another nation. This was the general attitude of most people in the Air Force. Nonetheless we were indeed building something called the Atlas which was a very large missile and the teapot committee was asked to review the U.S. missile program and make a judgment about it. In the course of that we became pretty much convinced that

Atlas was far from what one could do. If you went all out in a whole variety of areas for example an area that I was particularly knowledgeable about was guidance and I thought the system they had was really obsolete. Von Neumann who was the chairman of our group was also involved in development the H-bomb and he was convinced that we could make small H-bombs and it was perfectly obvious to us that the smaller the payload we had to carry the smaller her rocket would be and in fact when he began to predict that we could make a fifteen hundred pound warhead at a half megaton which was a little bit unbelievable. People began to calculate what we could do and it became obvious that solid fuel

rockets at that size might be feasible but actually been a Rand study I think earlier that would indicate much the same thing. So while we didn't start out to design a Minuteman or anything it became clear that there was a rocket missile that would be a much more effective missile from the point of view of our deterrent force. Then the atlas. Yes you are right. Well we did but I think I'll speak for myself I never took the Atlas seriously once it became obvious to us that we could make very much better and smaller rockets. One of the problems with the Atlas was it was so large that it couldn't be hard. If you want a second strike weapon you want something that can

ride through an attack. In fact it's my view that the Russians gave up their first rocket when they discovered we had reconnaissance because it was so vulnerable that it wouldn't survive with bombs landing five miles away so that they were very good technical reasons if you believe that what we wanted was a second strike capability of first strike capability. They have something that could be protected.