War and Peace in the Nuclear Age; Interview with Stansfield Turner, 1987

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Transcript

WAR AND PEACE IN THE NUCLEAR AGE - TAPES A12050-A12052 STANSFIELD

TURNER

ICBM Modernization Debate

Interviewer:

HOW DID HE FIRST BECOME AWARE OF PROBLEM OF VULNERABILITY IN ICBM

FORCE?

Turner:

The vulnerability of ICBMs had become increasingly apparent as we went

into the late '60s and early 1970s for two reasons. First the improving

accuracy of weapons on all sides, the American and the Russian, and

secondly the advent of the MIRV, the multiple independent re-entry

vehicle warheads, so that we could put up to 10 warheads on our

missiles and we expected the Russians would put even more because their

missiles were larger. That meant that one incoming missile from the

Russians could take out 10, 12 maybe even 20 American ICBMs with great

accuracy. In my time as director of Central Intelligence we

improved...we changed the estimate of Soviet accuracy to where they had

improved in our opinion, or were going to improve, thereby increasing

the vulnerability even more during that particular time.

Interviewer:

HOW COULD HE TELL THEY WERE MAKING THEIR WARHEADS MORE ACCURATE?

Turner:

Because of good intelligence work, good sleuthing on our part, some

very, very sophisticated techniques that the Central Intelligence

Agency had developed and which I think they're to be commended for.

Interviewer:

DISCUSSES ANSWER FORMAT. REPEATS.

Turner:

The Central Intelligence Agency used its sleuthing techniques, used

some very sophisticated analysis to deduce that the Russian accuracy

was improving. I think they are to be very much commended for doing

that.

Interviewer:

WHEN DID HE NOTICE THE INCREASED SOVIET ACCURACY?

Turner:

It was not a surprise. Everybody anticipated it would come. Perhaps it

came a little sooner than we expected but no, everyone knew that

accuracy was one of the trends in technology that was affecting all

weaponry, not just ICBMs. Every weapon practically in the arsenal of

mankind today has become more accurate than its predecessor.

Interviewer:

WAS ACCURACY SOURCE OF DISPUTE?

Turner:

Well always there are differences between analysts on this but

everybody agreed I believe that the trend was in the direction that we

estimated, it was just a question of how fast we thought the Russians

would get there.

Interviewer:

ASKS ABOUT 1978 INTELLIGENCE REPORTS - HE WON'T RESPOND. WAS THERE A

TURNING POINT IN THE 1970S WHEN WE REALIZED WE HAD TO ACT QUICKLY?

Turner:

I don't believe there was a marked turning point. There were different

times when we changed the estimates but I think that it was always part

of a steady progression.

Interviewer:

ASKS HIS RECOMMENDATIONS TO CARTER.

Turner:

A Chief of Intelligence should not make recommendations on policy

matters but in the critical meeting in which President Carter addressed

whether he would proceed with the MX missile as our response to the

Soviet buildup in their ICBM force, I presented an intelligence

estimate of what the Soviets would do if we built the MX. At that time

we were talking about building I believe it was 50 MXs to be put in 200

shelters.

Interviewer:

ASKS IF THOSE ARE THE NUMBERS.

Turner:

President Carter held a meeting of the National Security Council to

make his final decision on whether to proceed with the MX missile. Our

new ICBM. At that meeting it was my task not to make any

recommendations but to give the intelligence estimate, in this case,

what would the Soviets do if we built an MX missile? The proposal for

for some 200 MXs to be scattered about between some 4000 or so

shelters. I told the President that within the limits of SALT II the

Soviets could proliferate warheads on their existing missiles without

breaking any rules to the point where they wouldn't worry about which

of the 4000 some shelters had MXs in them, they would just hit all of

them. In short, I believed we were vulnerable even if we tried to hide

these 200 missiles in some 4000 hiding places. They would just knock

all 4000 of them out and they had enough warheads to do that. Later in

that meeting the President said he believed he should go ahead with the

MX and that everybody at the table agreed. And although it was not my

role as chief of intelligence to agree or not agree with a policy

decision, since he put it in those terms, I spoke up and said "No, Mr.

President, I do not agree. I believe the Soviets will respond in some

way that will just make this new MX as vulnerable as the old

Minuteman".

Interviewer:

WHY WERE THEY NOT MORE CONCERNED?

Turner:

Because you don't make these decisions on, totally on logic and

military rationale. The President had the problem of getting the SALT

II treaty through the Senate and I believe, although I've never heard

him say this or had any indication it was the case other than my

intuition, that the President felt he had to approve the MX missile in

order to get the conservative Republican votes out of the Senate in

order to secure passage of the SALT II treaties. I don't think the

debate we had in the National Security Council was a very meaningful

debate. I think the President was boxed in politically and knew that

and had made his decision even before we talked about it.

Interviewer:

COMMENTS.

Turner:

It's very unfortunate when political factors overrule logic. But that's

because the United States for many years has been obsessed with the MX

type land-based intercontinental ballistic missile. We have a fixation

in our country that we need power, we need largeness, we need speed and

so on. We have misunderstood the nuclear equation, we have

misunderstood the fact that nuclear weapons are not really usable other

than to threaten massive destruction. We have traditionally said to

ourselves, if the enemy has a weapon that can seriously injure our

country, we must have some way to counter it. So we have gone about

since the 1950s when the Soviets first began to have an

intercontinental nuclear weapon capability, a capability to strike the

homeland of the United States, we have gone about countering that

weapon. It's not capable of being countered, at least until we get an

SDI or some purely defensive system if we ever can. In short, because

those Soviet ICBMs were sitting there, our military and our political

military leaders felt we must have a capability to strike those weapons

that could strike us. If you're talking about infantry tanks or troops

or tanks or artillery, it's not a bad logic. When you're talking about

ICBMs it doesn't work because you cannot have any assurance that you

can strike all of an enemy's ICBMs before he launches them at you.

Because he has 20 minutes or so notice once you've aimed at him and

launched. And he may counter launch while your missiles are en route.

If he launches first, you have no way of stopping that. Therefore we

have misled ourselves in feeling that if they have ten ICBMs, we have

got to have ten that can hit them, or some such calculation. That's not

applicable in the nuclear age with nuclear weapons because those

weapons are so powerful, because they can be launched so quickly.

Nuclear Strategy

Interviewer:

ASKS IF THE ARGUMENT IS NO LONGER OVER PRACTICAL MATTERS BUT SYMBOLISM

AND THEORY.

Turner:

What we have fallen error to.. Where we have made a mistake in the

United States and in the Soviet Union, is in thinking that you treat

nuclear weapons the same way you treat conventional weapons. If the

enemy has ten of those, he's going to have an advantage over you, if

you don't have ten. If the enemy has weapons that he can launch at you

but you can't counter, that he's got some advantage. That's not really

the case with nuclear weapons. They are just not usable other than in

retaliation or in deterrence.

Interviewer:

DOESN'T LIKE HIS ANSWER. RECALLS THE CREDIBLE DETERRENT ARGUMENT FOR

MX.

Turner:

The argument for the MX was totally fallacious in my opinion. What the

Soviets hold dear is not their ICBMs nor their leadership bunkers, it's

their society. And we don't need accurate missiles to destroy their

society. We don't need MX type missiles to deter them from attacking

us. They don't want to lose their whole society, their whole economic

value. I think what we are doing here is saying to ourselves that what

we want is a capability to threaten a first strike. Threaten an ability

to knock them out without our being endangered. I don't believe there's

one chance in a million that we could do that. That is, that we could

target every Soviet nuclear weapons in a submarine, in a bomber, in a

cruise missile or in an ICBM and hope in a matter of minutes to knock

them all out so the United States would not receive any damage in

response. There are people who talk about, well, we might just receive

a few hundred nuclear weapons and we might lose only 10 or 20 million

people and I think that's just sheer nonsense. All you have to do is

look at the nuclear accident in Chernobyl in the Soviet Union. Here was

a case of a very, very small nuclear detonation. The impact of that.

Interviewer:

INTERRUPTS HIM.

Turner:

All we have to do is look at the nuclear accident in Chernobyl in the

Soviet Union and...

Interviewer:

DID PENTAGON WANT FIRST STRIKE IN MX?

Turner:

Oh yes the Pentagon has never renounced a first-strike capability. I

think the Pentagon feels that if you're going to defend the United

States you've got to be able to take out any threat that is posed

against us. Unfortunately I don't believe there's any way to take out

this kind of nuclear threat against us. But we talk openly in the

United States. I think foolishly, but openly, about the possibility of

a first-strike against Soviet Union. We do it on the grounds that we

would be persuaded that the Soviets were about to strike us, and

pre-empting would be the way to limit damage to the United States. I

would suggest you put yourselves in the shoes of a President of the

United States and ask whether you think he would ever pre-empt. I don't

believe there's any logic that would lead him to do that. If he

pre-empts, he has a 99 percent probability that the Soviets will hit

the United States with nuclear weapons, with substantial numbers,

because we have no ability to target all of their nuclear weapons. We

don't know where all their submarines are for instance at any given

time. And therefore the chances are very, very high, 99 percent in my

opinion, that the Soviets if we attacked first, would respond. And we

would lose New York or Washington or Chicago or San Francisco and maybe

all of them. Now the President, if he decided to pre-empt would have

that as a near certainty. Whereas what would he gain by pre-empting? He

would hope to lessen the damage on the United States but it only takes

half a dozen nuclear weapons to do irreparable damage to any country.

So I don't see there's any logic that a President would come to which

would accept the near certainty of nuclear destruction on the United

States against the probability that the Soviets really were going to

strike us first. When he turned to his Chief of Intelligence and said,

"Chief, how certain are you that the Soviets are about to launch

against us?" The Chief would have to say, "Well, 80 percent, 90

percent." Not 99 percent. He would never information that was that

persuasive in my opinion.

[END OF TAPE A12050]

Interviewer:

QUOTES OTHERS ON DETERRENCE (PART OF QUESTION ON TAPE).

Turner:

The threat of American retaliation for a convention attack on Western

Europe by striking the Soviet Union's homeland with nuclear weapons is

meaningless. No President of the United States in my opinion, is going

to strike let's say Odessa in the Soviet Union and accept the fact that

the Soviets will almost certainly strike let's say Chicago in the

United States, in order to defend Bonn. And that's what the doctrine of

nuclear retaliation for a conventional attack on our allies in Western

Europe actually says. The Europeans don't really believe we're going to

do that any more. We certainly don't really want that to happen. What

advocates of that doctrine resort to them is. Well, we won't strike

Odessa but we might strike Prague or Warsaw or the Soviet troops

themselves in East Germany as they were marching towards West Germany.

And I think a President might make that decision and might use nuclear

weapons in that way to respond to such an attack on Western Europe. But

ask yourself then, do the Western Europeans want that as a way of

defending themselves? Because if the United States strikes Prague, the

response is likely to be on Bonn or Paris or London. What we've been

kidding ourselves with since the 1960s is a fiction called the nuclear

umbrella. Now the Europeans see the United States as having put this

nuclear umbrella over Western and Eastern Europe. And if a war,

conventional, starts inside that umbrella, the United States they

believe will use nuclear weapons outside that umbrella to strike the

Soviet Union. If there is a response as there almost certainly would

be, it would be outside that umbrella on the United States. And from

the European point of view, this is perfectly fine. Since the 1960s the

United States has seen the umbrella quite differently. We've placed

these shorter-range nuclear weapons inside the umbrella. Our concept is

that if war starts conventionally inside the umbrella, we will strike

Eastern Europe inside the umbrella. If there is a response, it will be

inside the umbrella against Western Europe and that's not so bad from

our point of view. So we're kidding ourselves. We and the Western

Europeans see this nuclear umbrella in totally different perspectives.

We don't want the one, they don't want the other. It really is not a

viable deterrence. Now, there is uncertainty today in the Soviet mind

as to whether we're going to be foolish enough to do either one of

these things. And so it does have a deterrent effect, there's no

denying that. But it's a dangerous form of deterrence for several

reasons. The first is that the Western Europeans are increasingly

coming to understand it's not a good deal from their point of view,

because we're not going to do the one and they don't want the other.

And pretty soon they'll realize that they are an emperor with no

clothes, they don't have a deterrent. And their only recourse will be

to make political concessions. Not really their only recourse. Their

other recourse will be to buildup their conventional defenses. But one

way or the other, they are going to have to do something and there's

the risk that it will be political concessions. Beyond that, playing

with nuclear deterrence when it really is not sensible or logical is

dangerous because we are likely to find in a crisis we believe what

we've been saying. In particular I'm very concerned about the tactical

nuclear weapons in position in Western Europe, because if our forces

were being overrun and the nuclear weapons were about to be captured,

for instance, what would an American military commander do? After all,

he's been... had it drilled into him for years that our national policy

is to use those weapons if we're being overrun in Western Europe. And I

would not be surprised if he found a way to use them whether or not in

the chaos he actually had instructions to do so. So I think it's a

dangerous doctrine to continue. We should get away from it and realize

that nuclear weapons are good for deterring nuclear war. They are of no

use for deterring conventional war. The intermediate range nuclear

treaty is a sign that we understand that better today. When we can

withdraw a whole category of nuclear weapons which we used to say were

essential, were a critical part of our deterrent. Weapons that we

designed especially for this purpose. And now we've said, Oh, suddenly

we don't need them. It indicates there's a basic flaw in the overall

thesis. It's only a matter of time until we understand that we cannot

use the threat of nuclear response as a way of deterring a conventional

attack.

Interviewer:

CITES BROWN'S CONTENTION MX WAS NOT A FIRST STRIKE WEAPON.

Turner:

The MX is a first-strike weapon, there's no question about that. It has

the ability to hit the Soviet Union in maybe 30 minutes. From a Soviet

point of view, that's a first strike potential. The fact that the MX is

viewed by some as survivable, and I don't think there's any chance it's

survivable in any form that's been presented so far, but even if it

were survivable, what would you do with it after the first strike came?

You would strike their counterforce capability, their remaining ICBMs?

Nonsense. I don't believe we have the capability to determine which

silos are empty and you don't want to go hit 1400 of them in order to

find 10 percent that didn't get launched in some... in the first

strike, for instance. And besides, if the Soviets have launched a big

strike at us, but still have some reserves and we go launch at those

reserves, even if we know precisely where they are, the Soviets are

certainly going to be very alert under those circumstances and they are

going to launch those reserves out from under our attack before it can

hit them. I mean there is no way you can hit their remaining

counterforce capability once that kind of war gets started. You either

are not going to find it or they're not going to let you strike it,

they're going to launch it out as soon as you launch your attack on it.

Interviewer:

ASKS ABOUT WINDOW OF VULNERABILITY?

Turner:

Oh that's like... The thesis that they could blackmail us after making

a limited nuclear attack on us is a, game of nuclear chicken. And

they're not that dumb. The risks are too high in that kind of a

contrived scenario. To begin with they do not know what American, an

American president would do when he was told "Here comes a first launch

from the Soviet Union. It's only 50 missiles, Mr. President, but it's

coming." The president might launch out from underneath that. He might

launch the whole thing and say, "Well, I'm not going to take that. And

my best thing is to launch everything I've got and hope we can knock

out as much of their retaliatory force as possible. "Not a good

strategy but maybe the best he can do under the circumstances. At least

a president might decide that and the Soviets have to count on that.

The games they would have are not commensurate with the potential loss

they would have if we just launched 100 or more weapons out from

underneath this. Even if that didn't happen and the President absorbed

that let's say 50 weapons first, the Soviets still don't know what he

would do next. And they have no way of stopping it if he launches 50

back, 100 back. Or 10,000 back. No, it's a gamble that you would have

to be extremely desperate in the Soviet Union to take. And you'd have

to assume that the American president was gutless enough to just take

that and sit back. It would mean capitulating entirely. No president I

believe is going to be that chicken.

Interviewer:

CRITICS FEEL THAT SOVIETS DON'T HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT THEIR PEOPLE

TELLING THEM THAT THEY WOULD HOLD THEIR MILITARY RESOURCES AND

THEMSELVES DEAR, NOT THEIR PEOPLE. WE COULD THEREFORE PINPOINT THEM IN

THEIR BUNKERS TO DETER THEM.

Turner:

The idea that the Soviets don't care about anything but their

leadership and their military assets is jejune. It's not meaningful.

The Soviets probably have a greater concern for physical destruction of

their country and their people and their cities than do American. We've

never had destruction in this country outside the Civil War. We have

not suffered that kind of invasion that they have, repeatedly, in the

100 some million people killed in World War II. I'm not trying to take

the Soviet point of view, I'm trying to understand the Soviet

mentality. They know what it is to have cities destroyed. They have a

lower standard of living than we and they are just beginning to get to

the kinds of nicer life that we've known for decades. And so they've a

greater stake in not having their society and their economy destroyed.

No. I don't think a Mr. Gorbachev is going to be happy or willing to

accept the idea that hundreds of millions of Russians die but he and

Raisa are living fine in a bunker someplace. No. And he's got lots of

missiles that are still safe.

Nature of Nuclear Warfare

Interviewer:

WHY WERE CARTER AND YOU MINORITIES AGAINST THIS MISSILE?

Turner:

Because nuclear sanity is catching up with the world slowly. And for

many years now, both we and the Soviets, have accepted the idea that

you treat nuclear weapons very similarly to conventional weapons.

You've got to match the other side. We've talked occasionally about

sufficiency as opposed to superiority or equality. But we haven't

really meant it or understood it. Sufficiency means enough to make the

other side realize that he will receive an irreparable amount of damage

if he starts a nuclear war. That has nothing to do with how many

weapons he has. It doesn't do a Soviet leader any good to say to

himself "I can destroy the United States three times over and in

response they're only going to destroy my society once." That's not a

good trade from his point of view. In the old days a political leader

of any country turned to his military chief of staff and said, "If I

start a war with country X, can I do more damage to them than they're

going to do to us?" And if the answer was yes and if there was some

real political advantage, he might well start a war. You can't ask that

question in the nuclear age. You ask the question, "Chief of Staff, if

we start a nuclear war against the United States, what damage are they

going to do to us in response? Is it acceptable? Can I accept that

amount of damage in order to do whatever you can do against the United

States?" I believe the answer is always going to be no. Barring the

advent of an SDI and a total defense system some time in the distant

future. If it ever comes. Today we are infinitely vulnerable to

retaliation, infinitely because individual nuclear weapons are so

powerful. Go back to the example of Chernobyl. When a very small

nuclear detonation took place in the Soviet Union. Very small compared

with what we are talking about. Within weeks they were killing reindeer

in northern Sweden, they were destroying milk in Western Germany from

the fallout... alone... from that destruction, from that detonation.

Imagine that that detonation had been a megaton, ton bomb placed there

intentionally by NATO. The fallout might not have been just damaging

reindeer and cows and milk. Way back in NATO that launched that would

have launched the weapon at Chernobyl, there might have been very

serious radioactive fallout. We have totally underestimated the effects

of nuclear weapons, the destruction and particularly the long term

radiation impact. In this case the winds were such that some of the

fallout, a substantial part of it, fell on Western Europe. Not with the

prevailing winds that would go in the other direction. So NATO really

has to think twice before it launches a nuclear weapons at the Soviet

Union and risks the fallout coming back on itself. These weapons are

just not usable other than to deter or if deterrence fails, then you've

got to launch them in retaliation.

MX Basing Modes and Alternatives

Interviewer:

ASKS ABOUT DECISION OVER THIS MISSILE...HOW BROWN AND CARTER RESPONDED

TO HIS ARGUMENT THAT A DECEPTIVE BASING MODE WOULD NOT HELP MAKE IT

SURVIVABLE.

Turner:

I don't remember a specific response but the tenor of it was that I

don't believe that they thought the Soviets would go to that extreme of

creating that many more warheads, 4000 and you really would want two

for each hiding place. So it would be 8000 more warheads. They had

probably only 8 or so thousand at that time, so it would have been a

substantial increase, though as I said, it was achievable within the

limits of the SALT II agreement that we were about to sign. So I think

there was skepticism as to whether I was creating a theoretical but an

impractical response here. That's all a matter of opinion and they may

be right, although I don't think so. I believe the Soviets would have

that capability and it wouldn't be all that costly to them. It wouldn't

require building new missiles. It would require refitting the warheads

or adding warheads in places that were already built for those

warheads.

Interviewer:

ASKS IF HE FEELS RUSSIANS STILL COULD HAVE OVERWHELMED US, EVEN WITH A

SALT AGREEMENT.

Turner:

I believe that they could have within the SALT agreement, and I made

that statement to the National Security Council at that time. Yes. Now

that you know, depends on how many warheads you think they need for

other purposes. There are variations here and there are judgments that

have to be made. But considering the fact that we had, would have had

4000 aim points for the MX, and 1000 aim points for Minuteman missiles,

and you know, a few hundred more for command and control. If you add

all that up you don't come to more than about the 10,000 warheads that

the Soviets have today. And they haven't gone to any accelerated

program. They haven't broken any, any rules of SALT II or anything

else. So I don't think it's all, at all inconceivable that our adding

4000 aim points put it out of range of their being able to destroy

them, them all. I think the funniest one if I can tell you a anecdote

is those MPS, those shelters, multiple aim points that we were going

these in, the 4000 some, were going to be out in the deserts of Nevada.

And there was to be an oval racetrack with these shelters place around

it, I forget how many for each racetrack but lots of the racetracks.

But in order not to offend the enthusiasts for ecology, they were

saying that all this territory would be open to the public, in fact

youth might use the racetracks for drag racing.

[END OF TAPE A12051]

Interviewer:

ASKS HIM TO REPEAT ANECDOTE.

Turner:

If I could tell you a little anecdote about the development of the MX.

In order not to offend the ecology people, the Pentagon decided that

the areas in which these missiles would be located would be open to the

public and there would be a racetrack road with 23 of these shelters

and one missile. And therefore the missile would move around that

racetrack between these different shelters. And the Soviets wouldn't

know which one it was located in. But they said, you know, it's open to

the public, young people might even use the racetracks for drag racing.

But I said, "This missile, every once in a while pulls out of one

shelter and at high speed moves to another one. We have to keep doing

that every so often to keep the Soviets from knowing which one it's in.

What if the kids are drag racing and this great big million pound

missile comes charging down the racetrack to go from one shelter to the

other?" And they said, "We only do that if we know the Soviets have

launched a missile at us, and therefore it doesn't make any difference

because the kids will be dead anyway if the missile lands somewhere in

that general vicinity, not on a particular shelter." It seemed to me

they were going to wild extreme to do this. I also raised the point,

well how are you going to find the manpower to be on alert there, to

move this missile on short notice, because they were going to move it

in the event the Soviets launched. And we had 20 minutes notice. We

could move that missile from one shelter to the other. So even if they

knew where it was when it was launched, it would be someplace else by

the time the missile landed. And I said, "How are you going to find the

manpower to do this and be there 24 hours a day, 365 days a year..."

And they told me, "No body is going to be there." This million pound

missile, on command from a bunker somewhere miles away is going to go

out on a track and move at high speed from one place to another. It's

Rube Goldberg. It just was out of the question that this thing would

work physically in my opinion.

Interviewer:

COULD WE PRESERVE LOCATION UNCERTAINTY?

Turner:

Yes I think so. Yes, I think we could have preserved location

uncertainty, but as I have said, I don't think it made any difference.

In each racetrack if there were 23 locations, they'd just hit all 23.

There was a marvelous cartoon in the newspaper, you know. They had Mr.

Carter sitting there and Mr. Brezhnev sitting there and there was a

three peas under the pod game they were playing, and Mr. Brezhnev went

like this... and hit all three and Mr. Carter said, "Oh no, that's not

fair." And that's I think what would have happened with the MX multiple

basing system.

Interviewer:

SAYS A UTAH RANCHER WERE SURE THEY WOULD HAVE TO HAVE SUCH TIGHT

SURVEILLANCE THAT THEY'D HAVE NO FREEDOM. IS THAT CONCEIVABLE?

Turner:

Oh I think that's stretching things a bit to think that there's going

to be a Soviet agent out there trying to keep track of these. You're

going to have just so many racetracks out there. There's going to be

4600 shelters. That's 200 racetracks. I don't... I think that's

stretching things too much. And that each agent's going to have a

satellite radio system to go back to Moscow and say "It's now on number

ten," and no. No. I think the system was all right from that point of

view. It was just too much of a Rube Goldberg to really be practical.

Can you imagine a million pound...

Interviewer:

INTERRUPTIONS.

Turner:

Can you imagine a million pound missile suddenly disgorging itself with

nobody there, out of a silo and running around a race track 20 or 30

miles and disappearing into another one, all by itself? I raise the

question, "Well isn't it going to run right over the kids who are drag

racing out there?" and they said, "No, no that doesn't make any

difference because we only do that if an incoming missile is headed

this way and that missile will kill the kids anyway." And I... that's

just, that's just an absurd concept. There is no way in the modern age

of satellite reconnaissance and in the modern age of technology that

let's you have great accuracy with weapons, of defending, protecting, a

large, vulnerable, visible system like the ICBM. The ICBM is on its way

out. There is only one reason to keep the ICBM and we must keep some.

And that is that what we called the triad has two aspects to it. The

first aspect is you had three different methods of basing the triad,

bombers on airfields, ICBMs in silos, and what we call SLBMs,

sea-launched ballistic missiles in submarines. So there were three

different kinds of bases to avoid the possibility that one or the other

of those basing modes became vulnerable. Now the one mode has become

vulnerable. The ICBM in the fixed silo. But there's a second aspect to

the triad. In order to be an assured retaliatory force you have got

also, not only to survive, you've got to be able to penetrate. You've

got to be able to make a convincing case that if you had to launch, you

would get there. You would destroy the Soviet Union. To do that you

have to worry about his defenses. And one defense is anti-ballistic

missile defenses, SDI, another are air defenses. Now if you rely only

on bombers or cruise missiles that fly through the air and he builds a

good air defense, you are out of business, you can't penetrate. So we

always want to keep some ballistic missiles that cause him to create

two kinds of defenses so that you have a greater assurance that you

will be able to retaliate and penetrate. So therefore you need some

ballistic. Now those should be primarily in the submarines. But again

you don't want to count on one basing mode. And so you will keep some

ICBMs and I think the Midgetman mobile missile is probably the best way

to do that, not the big, fixed ICBM. Let me suggest that the one other

argument I made with the National Security Council was that instead of

building the big MX we should build a smaller MX, less capability,

fewer warheads, but one that was mobile, one that could fit on a

transporter, on a railroad. But no, the quest of the military for the

most powerful, the most accurate weapon with the largest number of

warheads was too great. And they argued with the President that they

wanted the big one. They wanted one that was in fact approaching what

the Soviets had. Whereas I think we would have been much better off and

here we are now spending more money, to build a Midgetman that is

mobile. So I think we really went down the wrong track.

Interviewer:

IS AIR FORCE MORE CONCERNED WITH FRONT END OF MISSILES RATHER THAN

SURVIVABILITY?

Turner:

Yes I think so. I think that's because again we talk about...

Interviewer:

INTERRUPTS.

Turner:

I think the Pentagon was more interested in the front end, the warhead

and accuracy end of the MX than they were about the vulnerability. And,

you know, when you do sit around and talk about a pre-emptive first

strike, vulnerability is not an issue.

Interviewer:

ASKS ABOUT SMALL MX ON SUBMARINES

Turner:

I've always been in favor of smaller ballistic missile submarines. We

have a lot of talk about will the submarine ever become vulnerable. The

submarine is the real backbone of our triad. The real backbone of our

nuclear weapons deterrent posture. All the rest of these things,

bombers and ICBMs are useful but...when the crunch comes the Soviets

know they have not the capability of finding and destroying those

submarines. They might do the ICBMs, they might do the bombers, but

they haven't a prayer of doing the submarines. We worry though that

that could change. It will change but I don't think it will change

night and day but we don't want the submarines to become vulnerable.

One doesn't know today how a submarine might become vulnerable

tomorrow. Would it be because they detect its weight as it moves slowly

through the water? Because they can with satellites detect some other

phenomenon like its nuclear radiation from its reactor or its heat, or

anything else. But the chances are that if they do find a way of

detecting submarines, it will be easier with a big submarine than a

small. There will be more nuclear radiation, there will be more weight,

there will be more heat. Whatever. And therefore, although it's more

costly, I believe we should be moving toward smaller ballistic missile

submarines. Because it isn't quantity of weapons that we want, it's

quantity of platforms so they are spread around and so they

individually have less signature we call it, less ability to be

detected. And we're moving in a very dangerous direction today. We're

moving towards fewer and fewer hulls, fewer and fewer submarine

platforms. We used to have 42, I believe we're down to about 30 and I

think we're going down to the low '20s. And only a little more than

half of those are out at sea at a given time. So that means maybe we've

got 12 submarines out there in the future if we go to these smaller

numbers. That could get dangerous because if they find some little

clue, they're not going to find out how to pinpoint each one exactly

very soon, but maybe they get a little clue. And if we only have a few

of them out there, they could do things like send up a barrage of

nuclear weapons to hit the ocean and just, you know, destroy a whole

big area. If we had just the handful of submarines they had to find.

So, as we move on in the arms control field, it's extremely important

that our reductions in weapons not be taken proportionately with

bombers, ICBMs and submarines. That submarine element must have

priority and it must leave us with enough hulls out there that we don't

have to worry that they may be able to find them all at once.

Interviewer:

WAS HE RESPONSIBLE FOR DESIGNS TO REQUIRE SALT VERIFIABILITY--WINDOWS,

SUN ROOFS?

Turner:

No. When they came up in the Pentagon with these different schemes for

making it invulnerable but still verifiable, they came out to me in the

CIA to say, "Is this verifiable?" I had to put a sort of stamp of

approval on it and say, "Yes, I believe the Soviets, with their kinds

of capability that we believe they have, would be able to verify under

these circumstances." I also had to say, "If the Soviets then responded

and had this same kind of a system, would we be able to verify it?" And

so that was my role, was checking on the probability of Soviet

verification and my confidence in our ability to verify if they

responded in like kind.

Interviewer:

DID HE WORRY ABOUT A SOVIET ADVANTAGE?

Turner:

No I didn't, I didn't think so.

Interviewer:

DID HE SYMPATHIZE WITH UTAHANS?

Turner:

No I don't, I don't believe the people of Utah and Nevada were a

primary consideration in my thinking. I feel sympathetic to them of

course. Our country has to make sacrifices if we're going to have a

military system. Somebody has to have a base here and there. Somebody

has to have something else. If it's the people of Utah and Nevada have

to have these because that's what's necessary to defend the country, I

think that's unfortunate but necessary.

Interviewer:

CARTER'S VERSION WAS CRITICIZED BECAUSE IT ADDED COSTLY MEASURES TO

GUARANTEE VERIFIABILITY. HOW DID YOU RESPOND TO IT'S BEING DESIGNED FOR

SOVIETS AND ARMS CONTROL?

Turner:

I think the system was designed to be verifiable. And the sunroof idea

at first sounded to me like it was crazy but I think it was do-able.

One finds that it's being revived today in conjunction with the

projected START talks or other arms control talks today. I mean they

are talking about opening silos or opening other shelters again in a

similar way.

Interviewer:

SO YOU AGREE AND THINK THAT WAS A GOOD THING?

Turner:

Yes, yes. It was. I think the system of the multiple basing was

reasonably verifiable by the Soviets. But I think in those days the

Soviets would not have accepted it because it was too Rube Goldberg,

they would have counted...it would have required too much confidence on

their part that we would play the game right, that we wouldn't find

ways to put dummies in and to hide things and so on. So I don't think

it would have sold to the Soviets had we really gone forward with it. I

think they would have been too suspicious. Whether now under Gorbachev

with a Adm. Stansfield Turner greater desire for an arms control

agreement, he'd be willing to accept that risk that we would have been

very, very devious, I don't know. I'm inclined to think he would have

today. But I don't think Brezhnev would have.

Interviewer:

ASKS ABOUT PRESERVATION OF LOCATION UNCERTAINTY? ASKS HOW HE THINKS

REAGAN ADMINISTRATION HANDLED THE ISSUE AND WHAT LESSONS HE WOULD DRAW?

Turner:

Well I think the Reagan administration came in having criticized the

Carter basing mode, searched and searched and searched and searched and

still is searching and hasn't found anything any better. I'm not

advocating the Carter mode, I'm simply going back to the point that

with satellite surveillance, with technology giving you high accuracy

with all kinds of weapons, there is no way to hide, conceal, to make

invulnerable a fixed, large, visible land-based missile. The Reagan

administration came in with a fixation that these were important and

made us tough and strong and bigger and better. They are beginning to

understand as is the whole country that this whole theory of nuclear

superiority is meaningless. There is no such thing as superiority as

long as the enemy can retaliate with huge amounts of power against us

we have no ability to use nuclear weapons. We can only use them in

great desperation if they've been used against us first. Or we use them

as a threat to deter. There is nothing immoral as Mr. Reagan has

contended about threatening nuclear destruction of the other side. The

most moral thing we can do in the world today is to prevent nuclear

war. For the years since World War II, there has been no other way to

prevent nuclear war than to threaten nuclear destruction. Achieving

that moral objective of stopping nuclear war is a very good thing, and

we've done it through mutual assured vulnerability, I think to call it,

others call it mutual assured destruction. But it's not destruction,

it's vulnerability, and it's threatening by...holding that other side

vulnerable, that prevents nuclear war from breaking out. Now if we can

find a different way of doing that, like SDI, that's all fine and good,

but until that looms as a reality, we don't look on mutual assured

destruction as immoral. It's the most moral way to prevent the most

immoral act that man could perpetrate. A nuclear war.

[END OF TAPE A12052 AND TRANSCRIPT]

Transcript

Transcript

Series: War and Peace in the Nuclear Age

Raw Footage: Interview with Stansfield Turner, 1987

Contributing Organization: WGBH (Boston, Massachusetts)

AAPB ID: cpb-aacip/15-n872v2cn3r

If you have more information about this item than what is given here, or if you have concerns about this record, we want to know! Contact us, indicating the AAPB ID (cpb-aacip/15-n872v2cn3r).

Description

Credits: Interviewee2: Turner, Stansfield, 1923-
Publisher: WGBH Educational Foundation

AAPB Contributor Holdings: WGBH
Identifier: af38d12f118ef67720d9e71c520fe43902891ad7 (ArtesiaDAM UOI_ID)
Format: video/quicktime
Color: Color
Duration: 00:00:00

Citations: Chicago: “War and Peace in the Nuclear Age; Interview with Stansfield Turner, 1987,” 1987-12-01, WGBH, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC, accessed September 16, 2024, http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-15-n872v2cn3r.; MLA: “War and Peace in the Nuclear Age; Interview with Stansfield Turner, 1987.” 1987-12-01. WGBH, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Web. September 16, 2024. <http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-15-n872v2cn3r>.; APA: War and Peace in the Nuclear Age; Interview with Stansfield Turner, 1987. 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-n872v2cn3r