War and Peace in the Nuclear Age; Interview with Herbert York, 1986

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Transcript

WAR AND PEACE IN THE NUCLEAR AGE - TAPES C03008-C03010 HERB YORK

INTERVIEW [1]

Tactical Nuclear Weapons

Interviewer:

I WANT TO ASK YOU ABOUT THE TIME WHEN YOU WENT BACK TO LIVERMORE AND

ESPECIALLY THE BOMB AS A TACTICAL WEAPON. AND ALSO ABOUT THE ATMOSPHERE

OF THE TIME... WHAT WAS YOUR ATTITUDE TO THE RUSSIANS, TO SECURITY AT

THE TIME?

York:

Yeah. It was during -- you know, we started Livermore -- Livermore was

one of the consequences of the Korean War, as well as the first Soviet

nuclear test. And there was great concern about what --

Interviewer:

DON'T START YET. I'LL JUST BRIEFLY GO THROUGH THINGS. A LITTLE BIT

ABOUT THE VON NEUMANN COMMITTEE'S DECISION TO GO AHEAD WITH THE ICBMS.

AND I'D LIKE YOUR STORY ABOUT THE SORT OF ARBITRARINESS--

[TAPE CUTS]

York:

...to defend ourselves just wasn't promising.

Interviewer:

THEN WE WANT TO GET A BIT MORE SPECIFIC TO YOUR EXPERIENCE AT ARPA AND

THE DDR&E. I'D LIKE TO GET YOUR VIEW ON THE LONG RANGE MISSILE

PROGRAMS. HOW THEY CAME ABOUT. WERE THEY ALL NECESSARY? AND HOW DID

INTER-SERVICE RIVALRY CONTRIBUTE TO THE FACT THAT THERE WERE SIX, AND

SO ON. A QUESTION ABOUT THE ROLE OF STRATEGIC THINKING AS OPPOSED TO

TECHNOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENT IN THE ARRIVAL OF THESE MISSILE SYSTEMS,

ESPECIALLY THINGS LIKE POLARIS. WAS IT BUILT BECAUSE SOMEBODY SAT DOWN

AND SAID "WHAT WE NEED IS AN INVULNERABLE--"?

York:

Both, because it's just a continuing stream of discussions involving a

fairly small group of people with minor changes in the players as you

go along.

Interviewer:

OKAY, AND A QUESTION ABOUT--

[TAPE CUT]

York:

That's probably the best that made... of the ones that--

Interviewer:

IN A WAY THE B-70 IS MORE RELEVANT NOW, GIVEN THAT THE B-1 IS WITH

US...

[TAPE CUT]

Interviewer:

The AMP was almost entirely a technical driver. And the B-70, like the

B-1. There are plenty of people who believe that's the right way to...

you know, that's the airplane you need for some fairly well determined

missions. But it's certainly true that the press and the politics and

labor and everybody else team up together to make sure that it happens.

Interviewer:

WHEN YOU TOOK OVER AS DIRECTOR OF THE LAWRENCE LIVERMORE LABORATORY,

CAN YOU DESCRIBE TO ME THE MOOD OF THE COUNTRY, YOUR OWN MOOD ABOUT THE

NATIONAL SECURITY, ABOUT THE SOVIETS AND SO ON?

York:

Yes. The Livermore Laboratory was formed in the wake of three major

events. One was the first Soviet atomic bomb. The second was the Korean

War. And the third was the creation of the Peoples Republic of China

and, more important, of the Sino-Soviet block with the leadership of

both of those countries proclaiming eternal solidarity with each other

and essentially hostility towards us. It really looked as though we

were in for some bad times.

Interviewer:

DID YOU BELIEVE THERE WAS A REAL THREAT TO THE SECURITY OF THE UNITED

STATES?

York:

Well I don't -- I can't say that I, at any time, I thought war was

coming. But I did think that we were going to have a lot of problems.

That there was going to be pressure on our allies and probably other

parts of the world. Not so much on North America, but in other parts of

the world. The Korean War was a specific example of that. And remember

that in 1952 that's only four years after the last coup in

Czechoslovakia, and the Berlin Blockade. Those things were fresh

events. So the notion of the Sino-Soviet bloc applying pressure

everywhere, expanding with a force behind it involving practically half

the population of the world, it did seem to me as to I'm sure a lot of

others that American technology -- our technological advance was...

something we needed to exploit. It was our only important advantage.

Interviewer:

DID YOU HAVE ANY THOUGHTS... DID YOU BELIEVE THAT TACTICAL NUCLEAR

WEAPONS WERE A GOOD IDEA. THAT THEY WOULD BE USED OR WOULD BE USABLE IN

A BATTLEFIELD SITUATION?

York:

Yes. And of course I wasn't alone on that either. The the VISTA

committee of which Robert Oppenheimer was a key player had pushed the

idea of tactical weapons. That doesn't necessarily just mean

battlefield weapons. It means short-range missiles. It means bombs of a

type that are particularly useful in tactical situations. And so we at

Livermore did push the development of weapons of this kind. Very

small... physically small. Lightweight, small diameter, relatively low

yield weapons that might conceivably be used in a tactical situation.

Interviewer:

THERE WAS OF COURSE A DIFFERENT ATTITUDE THEN ABOUT THE DIFFERENCE

BETWEEN NUCLEAR WEAPONS AND OTHER KINDS OF WEAPONS AS OPPOSED TO

TODAY...

York:

Well. We thought of them as being very different. The sort of a special

aura that they acquired by being so new and so much more powerful was

still very much a part of the thinking of everybody. But you know, we

saw it as the. We saw it as the way of handling essentially those

hordes. I mean there was the Sino-Soviet block with all the pledges of

solidarity and as I said, also all of the virtually pledges of

permanent hostility and these high technology devices seemed to a lot

of people, certainly including me, as a way of balancing that off.

Reactions to Sputnik and Soviet ICBMs

Interviewer:

CAN YOU REMEMBER WHAT YOUR OWN PERSONAL REACTION WAS WHEN THE SPUTNIK

WENT UP?

York:

Well, it was quite mixed. I would say that it included a very large

element of surprise. I mean, I just didn't expect the Soviets to do

that first. If I had been carefully reading all the documents and

newspapers I might very well have not been so surprised. In addition,

it was one even of elation. I, you know, as a small -- as a boy I had

been reading the comics about the space travel, and Buck Rogers, and

all those sorts of things. So the notion of actually getting a

satellite up there struck me as being something wonderful, even though

it was the Russians who did it. Beyond that I saw something of the

significance that it held in connection with other Soviet

accomplishments of a more military nature, although I never shared the

general nervousness of so many member of the American body politic

about what this meant. But that I think is because I really did know

more of the details. Even though I was at Livermore, I'd been on the

Von Neumann committee and had other connections so that I did have a

good grasp of what was going on. And I knew that we were doing much

better than it seemed.

Interviewer:

IF YOU COULD DESCRIBE TO US WHY THE VON NEUMANN COMMITTEE TOOK THE

DECISION TO GO ALL OUT FOR ICBMS IN THE EARLY '50S.

York:

Well, the Von Neumann Committee -- and there actually several

committees-- Johnny Von Neumann was the central figure on all of them

-- kept constant track of what intelligence we had about what the

Soviets were doing. Kept constant track of what the possibilities were

that were beginning to come out of American technology and putting all

of these things together. Pushing the ICBM. Maybe one would say three.

Interviewer:

REPEATS QUESTION.

York:

There were two or three reasons for promoting ICBMs. One was that we

were aware the Russians were building ICBMs and we felt it was

necessary to match them in this particular field that seemed to have so

much potential importance. The second was that the Soviets were

building air defenses--had been ever since the end of the war. And

although we were fairly confident about our airplanes being able to

penetrate them, we didn't know what the future hale and it did seem

widely to us and others that ICBMs were the sure answer to Soviet air

defenses. We'd just be able to en route them and they'd never be able

to stop. So that was the second reason. And the third reason is

probably it's fair to say, the technological imperative. The capability

for doing all of this was coming out of technology. The engines were

being developed. We understood more about how to build the air frames

for them. The nuclear weapons...the suitable nuclear weapons were in

the offing, and so was a suitable guidance system. So there was a kind

of a technological imperative as well. But the strategic reasons, I

think, probably were dominant.

Interviewer:

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE H-BOMB MADE A BIG DIFFERENCE, DIDN'T IT? TO THE

SIZE OF THE WARHEAD.

York:

Yes. Interestingly enough in retrospect, we could have done it with the

atomic bomb. But at the time, when the people who put together all

these factors concluded that the A-bomb really wasn't quite big enough

given the accuracy and the weight of the bomb itself. And therefore,

when the H-bomb came along that did play a major role in pushing people

towards Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles.

Interviewer:

COULD YOU JUST EXPLAIN EXACTLY WHY...?

York:

Well, it was it was seen early on as providing a much larger explosion

for a given weight. And the judgment was made by Von Neumann and the

people who advised him, including myself and Edward Teller and others,

that you could get a megaton in a package that could be delivered to

its target by an ICBM that was within reach.

Interviewer:

AND YOU COULD RELAX THE ACCURACY NEEDED AS WELL.

York:

Yes. Although...that's true. You could relax the accuracy requirement.

And the accuracy requirement that the Air Force was putting on the ICBM

was much too tight. You could have relaxed it anyway. But it is the

advent of the H-bomb that really settled that question for once and for

all; removed the controversy over the question of how accurate it had

to be.

Interviewer:

ONCE THAT DECISION CAME ABOUT, TO WHAT EXTENT WERE THE MANUFACTURERS

INVOLVED IN THAT DECISION EARLY ON?

York:

Well, they were involved, but they were also part of the problem. And

therefore they were less involved than they might otherwise have been.

In other words, Von Neumann, and several of the other key advisers to

Von Neumann, felt that Convair was part of the problem and therefore

they were not as intimately involved as they might have been.

Interviewer:

HOW DID YOU KNOW THEY WERE PART OF THE PROBLEM?

York:

The feeling was that they didn't have the right design. That they were

pushing an obsolete design. That perhaps they didn't have the right

people. At any rate they were perceived as part of the problem and not

just as part of the solution. And that's why so many changes in the

organization were made: the establishment of the Western Development

Division of the Air Force; the establishment of the Ramo-Wooldridge

corporation to provide advice and so on.

Interviewer:

TO GO BACK TO SPUTNIK, WHAT WAS THE REACTION? YOU BECAME VERY INVOLVED

IN THIS A YEAR OR SO LATER IN TRYING TO CONTROL IT. BUT WHAT WAS THE

REACTION OF THE DEFENSE ESTABLISHMENT TO THAT?

York:

Well, a lot of people were much more worried about what it meant than I

was, for example of... perhaps because they were less informed about

our own programs and the fact that we really weren't as far behind as

it looked. And there were exaggerated ideas about the importance of

space and the military dimension. And so there were a tremendous number

of ideas being cooked up by people who just were plain nervous and even

scared. At the same time there were a lot of people including many of

the same ones who saw this as a great opportunity to do things they'd

been dreaming about, thinking about, proposing. And they saw this as a

trigger that would release a lot of money that they felt a conservative

administration had been withholding. So that also played a role. And

both among civilians among people in industry and within the military

itself, there were a lot of people who saw this as

getting...eliminating a lot of things that had been inhibiting the

exploitation of these great ideas they'd been proposing for sometime

past.

Interviewer:

A BIT OF A KEY TO THE TREASURE CHEST?

York:

Yes. But, you know, in terms of opportunity as well as in terms of

money.

Interviewer:

YOU USED IT YOURSELF IN THAT WAY AT LIVERMORE DIDN'T YOU?

York:

Yes. In a very small way. I did have a visit from the man in Washington

whom we dealt with immediately, the Director of Military Applications.

And I had arranged to have a tape recording of the beep that Sputnik

made played. We had it set out on the conference table and played it

while he was there as you know, our way of reinforcing the message that

we really needed to change what we were doing and our way of

approaching things.

Science Advisors in White House

Interviewer:

YOU WERE CONNECTED WITH THE VON NEUMANN COMMITTEE AND THE GAITHER PANEL

AND THEN LATER ON INVOLVED IN THE ADMINISTRATION IN GIVING SCIENTIFIC

ADVICE. WHAT WAS THE ROLE OF SCIENTIFIC ADVISERS IN THE EISENHOWER

ADMINISTRATION AND DID IT CHANGE?

York:

Well it was I think it was It was an especially important period. That

is the role of scientific advice peaked at that time, I think. It was a

time when the main threat was seen as having just taken on a new

technological dimension. A threat which originally had been in terms of

manpower and numbers was now taking on a technological dimension. Was

beginning to threaten us in the area where we were--

Interviewer:

SO YOU WERE DESCRIBING THE ROLE OF SCIENTISTS...

York:

Well, I think the role of scientists really peaked during the

Eisenhower administration, especially the late Eisenhower

administration and the Kennedy administration which followed, because

we suddenly found ourselves faced with a technological problem of a

kind we hadn't faced before. We had seen the Russians as a potential

enemy that was going to outnumber us and maybe out gun us with

low-grade equipment. But now, suddenly, they show up as having a

technological capability beyond what we had been expecting. And so

people turned. It was natural that the political leadership would turn

to scientists for advice. And happily, the people they turned to a

number of people who happened to be the kind that developed a good and

easy working relationship with both political leaders and the military

leaders. And I'm thinking of Killian and how well he fitted with

Eisenhower. And Kistiakowsky also. And then Von Neumann and Von Karman

and others who fit so well with the leadership in the Air Force. It

became a good, effective, easy, working relationship in which people

relied on each others views and judgments. So the judgments of these

scientists with respect to this new technological problem was well

received, was sought and well received.

Interviewer:

SOME SCIENTISTS HAVE DESCRIBED TO ME KIND OF A SEA CHANGE THAT TOOK

PLACE TOWARD THE END OF THE '50S. DID THAT HAPPEN TO YOU?

York:

Well, you're speaking with respect to the question of confidence in

science as the solution to these problems. And yes, I think I shared in

that. In two stages. In '58, I came to realize that political

questions, such as those associated with the test ban could be every

bit as important as the technical questions that made nuclear testing

necessary. And that the technology was not... could not be the

overriding consideration. Then a little later, as I got more deeply

into questions of defense and explored the possibilities that people

hoped might be there, that we would find a technical means for

defending ourselves against nuclear attack, it became evident to me

that we were not going to find such a means. And that we had to seek

solutions otherwise than just in military technology.

Military Procurement and Nuclear Strategy

Interviewer:

CAN YOU DESCRIBE THE SITUATION YOU FOUND WHEN YOU BECAME CHIEF

SCIENTIST AT ARPA AND LATER DDR&E ESPECIALLY WITH RESPECT TO THE LONG

RANGE MISSILE PROGRAMS.

York:

Well there was a certain amount of there were some problems having to

do with the fact that the office of the Secretary of Defense did not

have a lot of technical competence at its command. And therefore

activities in the services connected with fights over turf,

inter-service rivalry, unnecessary duplication and so forth, were

causing problems. And holding back the American technological program

from moving as forward moving forward as well as it could. I would say

that in the long range missile program though, that's probably one of

the best areas. There were a lot of different missiles being developed

all at the same time. But there was a certain rational for that in that

when they were started -- when, which was 3 years earlier -- there were

a lot of uncertainties about which ones would work and therefore we

probably tried more: different varieties than we needed to. And as it

turned out, they all worked. So, you know, in retrospect there was an

excess, but it didn't seem like that in the beginning. It was in the

area of space that we had the most chaotic situation in which

inter-service rivalry was playing the most serious role. And confusing

and making it difficult to make the right decisions and choices.

Interviewer:

YOU DESCRIBE IN YOUR BOOK THE VARIOUS CLAIMS THAT THE SERVICES LAID TO

SPACE. CAN YOU GO THROUGH THOSE?

York:

Well, the Navy said that obviously we should be first in space, because

after all, they call them space ships don't they. And the army thought

of long-range missiles as being similar to artillery and the moon as

being high ground. And the Air Force, and I think more logically

regarded space simply as an extension of the atmosphere and therefore a

spaceflight as being a logical extension of a flight in the air.

Interviewer:

SO THEY ALL WANTED TO BUILD...

York:

The all wanted to build satellites. They all wanted to launch

satellites. They all wanted to either play the key role or at least a

key role and there was intense competition among them and duplicating

proposals and duplicating activities.

Interviewer:

DO YOU THINK, IN RETROSPECT, THE JUPITER MISSILE PROGRAM WAS JUSTIFIED?

York:

Certainly not in retrospect. In fact of all of the missiles that's the

one which I believe, even before hand we should have recognized as

being unnecessary.

Interviewer:

DID YOU HAVE ANY PROBLEMS AS A COMPARATIVELY YOUNG MAN TRYING TO EXERT

YOUR POWERS?

York:

Well, I may have, but, you know, I really didn't notice them. I mean I

did have a lot of problems with various people. But but they were

always over substance. I mean, I never thought of them as involving

personality or youth or even civilians versus military. But as

involving questions of substance. And I was fairly confident that I

under...that in most cases I understood the situation well enough to

uphold my end of these arguments.

Interviewer:

YOU HAD A LITTLE DIFFICULTY WHEN YOU HAD TO TELL THE ARMY THAT THE

JUPITER WASN'T GOING TO GO UP.

York:

Yes, we had some very particular problems. And cancelling the Jupiter

was one of them. And getting the Army out of space was another closely

related one. And I had a lot of difficulty there with General John

Bruce Medaris, and Secretary of the Army, Wilber Brucker who were

dedicated to continuing those programs long after they were not

necessary and played no useful role at all in the American national

defense program.

Interviewer:

CAN YOU GIVE ME SOME EXAMPLES THE WAY THE SERVICES AND CONGRESS AND

SOME OF THE ELEMENTS OF THE PRESS WOULD GET TOGETHER TO TRY AND FORCE

ONTO THE ADMINISTRATION DECISIONS IT DIDN'T WANT TO MAKE.

York:

Well, I suppose cases are as good as anything. And I think of the

nuclear propelled aircraft as being one in which a group within the Air

Force and the Atomic Energy Commission combined with a group in

industry at the General Electric jet engine facilities and also at

Pratt and Whitney, and certain people in the press--what I called the

missile press at the time, Aviation Week and other journals of that

kind--joined together to just create a picture of the possibilities for

a nuclear airplane that were unreal. Create pictures of a threat that

were false. Impressions that the Soviets were just on the verge of

producing one. That we had to have one...something that would match it.

There are many other cases as well in which you find those groups I

mentioned and then also of course the labor--sometimes the labor unions

cutting in. Especially when you had something going that was threatened

with cancellation. The nuclear airplane didn't really... was still sort

of ahead of us when we cancelled it. Some other things like the B-70

which came up at that time were projects that were well under way when

the authorities decided to cancel them. And there you had the groups I

described plus the labor unions entering into the struggle to keep them

going.

Interviewer:

ON THE WHOLE, DO YOU THINK THAT STRATEGIC CONSIDERATIONS WERE MORE

IMPORTANT IN DECIDING WHAT WEAPONS TO PRODUCE OR WAS IT BASICALLY JUST

"WHAT CAN WE DO?"

York:

It really was both and they were tightly interwoven because it was a

relatively small group of people who dealt with each other directly. A

group of technical people who knew what it is that could be done. And a

group of military people who had ideas about what ought to be done. And

each of them knowing something about the field of the other that worked

together over, you know, many years, slowly changing personnel on each

side that developed all of these things. That set the characteristics,

set the numbers, set the types. You know, invented the triad by

accident.

Interviewer:

WHEN YOU SAY BY ACCIDENT?

York:

Well the triad happened, and then after it happened people recognized

that it had a lot of virtues.

Interviewer:

BUT IT DIDN'T START FROM PEOPLE SAYING, WELL, WHAT WE NEED IS

FLEXIBILITY, INVULNERABLE DETERRENCE, AND SO ON.

York:

Well, no. And yet people did, and yet those were all recognized

military virtues. Especially the question of survivability having

various types so as to assure survivability and also having various

types so as to assure penetration of any defenses. Those were

recognized, but the notion that there should be just three and somehow

coequal branches to a triad--that just happened. I mean, when it

happened with the creation of the naval system because the other two

predated it.

Interviewer:

WHAT IS YOUR RECOLLECTION OF HOW POLARIS CAME TO BE?

York:

Well, I don't remember all the factors. But the Navy had always been

involved in carrying war to the enemy through carrier, task forces and

so on. And that included nuclear war. There were nuclear weapons on

carriers. The Navy was developing short-range missiles, cruise missile

types to go on submarines for attacking the shore and for attacking

other ships. And so it was natural to think of putting missiles on

submarines or other vessels. The first idea that I remember was to put

Polaris sub...was to put Jupiters on... In the early '50s the Navy saw

the Air Force as running off with the whole strategic mission which

they had previously shared. And began searching around for ways to get

back in, stay in. And I don't know who got the idea, but the notion of

putting Jupiter missiles on submarines was born in conjunction these

considerations. Everyone recognized that was a... not such a hot idea.

Big, enormous, liquid fueled missiles on submarines just didn't appeal

to anyone. And so from the very beginning people sought a way to avoid

that. To find some other better solution. The army, of course, liked

it. Because it provided a rational, an additional rational for the

Jupiter which, from the very beginning was under fire. But the notion

of a solid propellant rocket was already in the air. The... the

efficiency of such rockets was rapidly improving. And the laboratories,

and in particular at the Livermore Laboratory, we had reached the

conclusion that we could build a war head suitable for such a mission

that was much lighter than...the previous ones. And putting all those

things together made the Polaris program possible. Which meant a solid

fuel rocket of a size that could conveniently fit on a submarine with a

warhead that could conveniently be lofted by such a rocket.

Interviewer:

BUT NOBODY AS FAR AS YOU'RE AWARE SAT DOWN AND SAID, WELL NOW THE

PROBLEM IS THAT SAC MIGHT BECOME VULNERABLE. WHAT WE NEED IS SOMETHING

ON A SUBMARINE WHICH IS INVULNERABLE TO ATTACK...?

York:

Well, I think that idea... The idea of the SAC aircraft.... Air Force

being invulnerable was always in the wind. I don't remember anybody

associating with this particular question. But the notion that SAC

might be surprised on the ground was alive since 1950. And the idea

that we had to--and the idea that survivability of the deterrent was

important was also very much in the air at the time. So the connection

was certainly implicit even if I don't know of any explicit case in

that regard. So the idea was there that the survival was an issue. That

putting missiles on submarines was a way of coping with that... with

that issue.

Interviewer:

IF WE COULD JUST TALK ABOUT NUMBERS FOR A BIT. IT'S NOTICEABLE THAT

WHEN THE NAVY TALKED ABOUT HOW MANY POLARIS MISSILES IT NEEDED IN THE

LATE '50S WOULD TEND TO ARGUE BY HOW MANY WERE NEEDED BASICALLY TO

ACCOMPLISH MASSIVE RETALIATION ON ITS OWN. IS THAT THE CASE? AND

DOESN'T THAT MEAN THAT IF YOU TAKE ALL THE FORCES TOGETHER YOU ENDED UP

WITH OVERKILL?

York:

Well, that there's always this factor in planning the strategic forces

that you're never sure how many I'm going to -- You're always afraid of

a surprise attack and that you're going to have to deal...you're going

to have to use the surviving forces. That deterrence has to be based on

the survivors, not on the original deployed forces. And so conservatism

does enter in...planning them and so it's probably true that the Navy

had in mind a force big enough to accomplish the mission all on its

own. But that was...but that idea was a generally... was a general idea

that was alive at the time. The the Navy's problem was that from the

first it was recognized that the Polaris system was especially

expensive.

Interviewer:

HOW WERE THESE NUMBERS ARRIVED AT? WHY WAS IT NECESSARY TO HAVE ENOUGH

MISSILES JUST IN THE POLARIS FORCE TO ACCOMPLISH MASSIVE RETALIATION

WITHOUT ANY REGARD TO THE OTHERS?

York:

Well, when the...when the Polaris first was first being planned, all

missiles were new and there were a lot of uncertainties with them. And

it was plausible for the people planning Polaris to imagine that they

might be the only force that would live after some kind of a surprise

attack. And so they wanted to plan a course which could produce

as...the same as closely as possible the same kind of threat, the same

level of damage as the Air Force elements could produce. But at the

same time everyone knew that Polaris missiles were much more expensive

per missile. And so there was always a conflict between having enough

to make...to make a real contribution to the strategic force and at the

same time have them affordable -- have the whole program be affordable.

And so it was compromises between those two counterbalancing forces

that led to the...that ultimately led to the kind of force we have. The

further considerations that entered were that while the missiles, the

intercontinental ballistic missiles and the aircraft could...were

weapons that would be ready all the time. These Polaris systems in the

beginning had to steam from America -- if I can use that for a nuclear

submarine -- had to steam from an American port to a position close to

the Soviet Union. The range was quite short. It was even only 900 miles

in the first generation system. So that only a fraction of them would

be on duty stationed. Less than half was the original concept. And that

provided another multiplier that forced...that you know, made the force

bigger than might otherwise have been necessary.

Interviewer:

BUT IN GENERAL, YOU SAID BEFORE THAT THERE WAS A SORT OF ARBITRARINESS

ABOUT FORCE LEVELS. I MEAN THE FACT THAT WE ENTERED WITH A THOUSAND

MINUTEMEN IN THE EARLY '60S...

York:

Yes. Well, the rough size of the force was determined by the

alternative forces that it competing with, being compared with. And we

already in the early '50s had 2,000 strategic bombers. They were not

all intercontinental range. Only a few of them were. But nevertheless

we had advanced bases and we had refueling and so on. So the bomber

force that we were starting with was a force of a couple thousand

airplanes. That meant that any force that was intended to do a

comparable job had to be of comparable size. So that meant you couldn't

have a hundred missiles. You had to have a number which was comparable

with 2,000. And the round number that fits that criterion is 1,000. So

right from the very beginning, and not based on any particular attack

plan or anything like that, or even any particular set of targets, the

notion that there should be 1,000 Minutemen was in the air. There was

also some proposals that it would be 10,000, but it was realized early

on that although that's a nice round number, that was just beyond the

pale. It was too expensive and we really didn't need that many. And 100

is too small. So a thousand was a nice round number. So the very

earliest plans that I'm aware of which go all the way back to '52 and

'53 called for a force of 1,000.

Interviewer:

AND AFTER ALL THE BACKING AND FILLING THAT'S WHAT...

York:

After all the systems analysis and operations analysis and the

invention of a lot of language to explain all these calculations we

ended up with the same number we started with, yes.

Interviewer:

ROBERT MCNAMARA SAID THAT A THOUSAND WAS THE MINIMUM HE COULD GET AWAY

WITH IN CONGRESS AND THAT WAS VERY LARGELY BECAUSE OP THE POLITICAL

CLIMATE INTRODUCED ESPECIALLY BY THE MISSILE GAP DO YOU HAVE ANY

RECOLLECTIONS AS TO WHAT YOUR ATTITUDE WAS TO THE INTELLIGENCE THAT WAS

COMING THROUGH AND THE CLIMATE OF THE MISSILE GAP IN THE LATE '50S?

York:

Well, it changed early on. At the time of the Gaither Panel, I thought

that the... that the Soviets would soon face us with a very large

number of missiles. Then after I got deeper into things, and that

includes deeper into the intelligence world, I came to realize that

those prospects were not likely. And further more the more we looked

for Soviet missiles in '58, '59, and '60, the -- well we looked very

hard. We never found any except for a few at the missile test site. And

while proving a negative was impossible under the circumstances -- I

mean the Soviet Union is huge and closed -- Proving there were do

missiles was impossible. On the other hand, the fact we were not

finding them where we thought...in the few places we could look and

where we though they ought to be was beginning to persuade me and

others, especially President Eisenhower, that indeed, the missiles

probably aren't there...that Khrushchev is bluffing and that the

American experts who claimed that there are lots of Soviet missiles are

also in some sense serving their own purposes in claiming so.

Interviewer:

AND THAT WOULD THEREFORE BE PARTICULARLY THE AIR FORCE INTELLIGENCE AND

SAC INTELLIGENCE?

York:

Some yes. But there were civilians as well. And why some of them, you

know, I really have no explanation for some of them. Why was Joseph

Alsop so certain that all those missiles were out there. Well, somebody

in the Air Force was leaking to him. But why did he believe them and

someone else. I don't know.

Interviewer:

WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT THE WAY THE DEMOCRATS USED THAT ISSUE IN THE

ELECTION?

York:

Well, there again, I think it's a mixture of real sincerity. There were

reasons to believe that there might be a lot out there. And the

Russians were trying to make us think so. I remember Khrushchev talking

about turning them out like sausages. I had this mental picture of this

huge piece of tubing ten feet in diameter coming down on an assembly

line. They'd pinch it off at each end, you know, like a sausage, and

put engines at one end, a warhead at the other. So there was there was

a basis for these fears. And then as far as the democrats are

concerned, it's very conveniently fit for their political purposes

which were to win the next election and one of the... one of the means

for doing that was to claim that Eisenhower had paid insufficient

attention to this very difficult important problem.

Interviewer:

DID YOU KNOW ABOUT THE U-2 AT THE TIME?

York:

Well, I came to know it during that period. When I was on the Gaither

Panel I did not, but when I became...when I went into ARPA and in the

Defense Department, then of course, I did. And... but the U-2 was a

very important tool and a useful one. But the coverage was...that it

could obtain of the Soviet Union was a tiny, fraction of an enormous

closed country.

President Eisenhower

Interviewer:

WHAT DO YOU THINK THAT EISENHOWER MEANT WHEN HE TALKED ABOUT THE

MILITARY-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX AND ESPECIALLY WHEN HE TALKED ABOUT

UNWARRANTED INFLUENCE OR THE DANGER OF UNWARRANTED INFLUENCE? DO YOU

THINK THERE WERE INDIVIDUAL EPISODES THAT HE WAS THINKING OF WHEN HE

MADE THAT SPEECH?

York:

Well, yes I do. I don't want to speculate on which persons and which

episodes those were, but I believe that he had in mind episodes

involving the missile program, the space program, and some in the

nuclear program as well. But Eisenhower...

Interviewer:

...BUT HE SAYS THAT HE'S BEEN TOLD THAT EISENHOWER HAD HIM IN MIND

AMONG OTHERS WHEN HE MADE THAT SPEECH...

York:

He may have. He was not my favorite candidate, but...

Interviewer:

WHAT DO YOU THINK EISENHOWER HAD IN MIND WHEN HE TALKED ABOUT

UNWARRANTED INFLUENCE? WHAT PARTICULAR INSTANCES IF YOU CAN TELL ME.

York:

Well, I think he did have some particular instances in mind having to

do with missiles, space, and nuclear weapons in which people were

pushing, and telling him that if you didn't do this the nation was in

peril and so on. But Eisenhower believed we needed a

military-industrial complex. He simply,he didn't say... That we needed

a military industrial complex. The warning was not that we should get

rid of it, but that we should see to it that it didn't acquire

unwarranted influence. And the same way with what he spoke of as the

scientific technological elite. He very definitely felt that we needed

a scientific technological elite, but he also felt we had to make sure

that somehow they didn't run away with policy on the basis of judgments

which were too narrow.

Interviewer:

DO YOU THINK HE WOULD HAVE FELT THAT HAS HAPPENED SINCE THEN IF HE WERE

AROUND TODAY?

York:

I believe that he would...that he would have a longer list of instances

in mind whether he would believe that it happened in the net or not,

I'm not so sure.

Interviewer:

A LOT OF PEOPLE IMMEDIATELY AFTER THE EISENHOWER ERA LOOK BACK ON HIM

AS A COMPLACENT, LAZY PRESIDENT THAT WASN'T IN CONTROL OF WHAT WAS

GOING ON.

York:

Yeah, not me.

Interviewer:

HOW DO YOU LOOK AT HIM?

York:

Well, I look at him as an extraordinarily fine president who did who

did a...who did compared to predecessors and successors a very good

job.

Interviewer:

DO YOU BELIEVE THAT IT'S APPROPRIATE THESE DAYS TO TALK AS YOU DID WHEN

YOU WROTE YOUR BOOK ABOUT AN ARMS RACE? AND IF IT IS APPROPRIATE, DO

YOU THINK THAT...HOW DO YOU THINK THAT EISENHOWER AFFECTED IT?

York:

Yes, I think it's appropriate to speak of an arms race. There are

things that need to be explained when one says that. The nature of the

arms race in recent years has been primarily with... qualitative where

it's been a continuous effort to improve things rather than increase

their numbers. At least on our side. But, you know, we started out in

1945 with two weapons on our side and none on their side -- nuclear

weapons. No means for intercontinental delivery. And we ended up today

with 25,000 on each side and with a great variety of means for

delivering them in as little as a half an hour half way around the

world. And that, you know, the difference between those two end points

is one hell of a big arms race as I see it. Sometimes we have been

coasting. Other times we've been marching...we've been charging forward

furiously. But averaged over the time since 1945, there's been an arms

race.

Interviewer:

BUT THE BULK OF THAT HAPPENED IN THE EISENHOWER ERA.

York:

In terms of numbers, the big build up in nuclear weapons in the

American side was essentially over by 1960, '61. And since then the

numbers have somewhat decreased. And the number of delivery vehicles

has remained about the -- the big build up was even before 1955 and

it's been more or less steady since. But the types have changed. And

the characteristics of those things. And the ability to do damage and

to penetrate defenses and to accomplish the mission in ever shorter

times -- that's been continuously changing. That's why I...

Interviewer:

BUT I GUESS WHAT I"M ASKING IS...

York:

...qualitative ratio and a quantitative one...

Interviewer:

BUT GIVEN THAT QUANTITY OF EXPANSION IN THE 1950s NOT JUST IN STRATEGIC

DELIVERY VEHICLES AND NOT JUST IN STRATEGIC WEAPONS BUT IN TACTICAL

ONES AS WELL, IS THE VIEW THAT EISENHOWER WAS A BRAKE ON THAT PROCESS

-- CAN THAT REALLY BE SUSTAINED IF YOU LOOK AT WHAT HAPPENED DURING

THOSE YEARS?

York:

Yes. Well, I think it can, but I suppose the opposite case can be made.

I mean, you don't know would have been otherwise. The pressures and the

ideas as they existed in those times lead to these numbers in a general

way; and yes, it could have been held to lower levels in theory, but I

don't know that any president would have done any better. I don't

believe any other president would have done any better given all the

factors involved including the great uncertainties that dominated our

knowledge of the Russians.

Interviewer:

CAN YOU SAY THAT AGAIN?

York:

Especially in view of the great uncertainty in the information that we

had both about Soviet capabilities and about Soviet intentions in that

period.

Interviewer:

IN A WAY, THE BIGGEST DIFFERENCE BETWEEN 1980 AND 1955 IS WHAT? IS WHAT

WE KNEW?

York:

That is certainly one of the biggest differences. The fact is that at

the beginning of the Eisenhower administration the Soviet Union was

still almost completely closed with essentially no tourism. The thaw

came during the Eisenhower administration; the coming of Khrushchev and

the changes from Stalin. But it took time to interpret those. You can

in retrospect say we missed some opportunities and we should have

recognized earlier that there was a change. It was characterized by one

friend of mine as saying that in the late '40s, American foreign policy

towards the Soviet Union consisted of waiting for Stalin to die. And

then when he did, refusing to believe it. We should have recognized

sooner that Stalin had died and that there was a change. And we should

have recognized sooner that the Sino-Soviet split was real. And that

therefore, we were not faced with this Sino-Soviet bloc that was

pledged to eternal solidarity and eternal hostility. So we failed to

recognize some of these things as soon as we might have. But I do not

believe that another one of the other post-war presidents would have

done it any better than Eisenhower did.

[END OF TAPE C03010 AND TRANSCRIPT]

Transcript

Transcript

Series: War and Peace in the Nuclear Age

Raw Footage: Interview with Herbert York, 1986

Contributing Organization: WGBH (Boston, Massachusetts)

AAPB ID: cpb-aacip/15-h707w67b79

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Description

Credits: Interviewee2: York, Herbert F. (Herbert Frank)
Publisher: WGBH Educational Foundation

AAPB Contributor Holdings: WGBH
Identifier: e1a5dc8412fe03969aab88a1059358f44ffc7f73 (ArtesiaDAM UOI_ID)
Format: video/quicktime
Color: Color
Duration: 00:00:00

Citations: Chicago: “War and Peace in the Nuclear Age; Interview with Herbert York, 1986,” 1986-03-07, WGBH, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC, accessed November 18, 2024, http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-15-h707w67b79.; MLA: “War and Peace in the Nuclear Age; Interview with Herbert York, 1986.” 1986-03-07. WGBH, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Web. November 18, 2024. <http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-15-h707w67b79>.; APA: War and Peace in the Nuclear Age; Interview with Herbert York, 1986. Boston, MA: WGBH, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Retrieved from http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-15-h707w67b79