THE CHANGING GOALS OF CIVIL DEFENSE
Part II The Changing Goals of Civil Defense Sometime in I960 the Pentagon called a top secret meeting of twelve or fourteen highly influential national leaders. Among them was Governor Nelson...
...The Cuban fiasco left Administration leaders unsure of themselves, fearful of committing another blunder that might give the opposition still more ammunition...
...Presumably it will also reduce the volume of Soviet aid to neutralist countries, thus making our own aid to such countries loom that much larger...
...Any shelter system short of one that places the nation's entire population and industry permanently underground can be negated by a corresponding increase in the attacker's power...
...America has been spending as much as $45 billion a year or more on a military program based on the belief that the enemy is rational enough to understand that attacking us would be fatal to him...
...The consensus of the meeting was that the State Department needed "muscle" in its negotiations with the Soviet Union...
...But if the very act of pursuing a civil defense program made the Russians edgy and led them to initiate war, the "insurance" would obviously have greatly increased the danger of catastrophe rather than provided protection...
...In the sixteen years since, the size of available weapons has about doubled every year...
...Rockefeller was a potential Presidential contender for 1964 and the shelter program—or absence of one —might turn out to be an important issue...
...It eased the pressures from Representative Holifield...
...At one point there was a tug-of-war between the Yarmolinsky-Pittman team and the White House staff over implementation of the program...
...Whether shelters could or could not save lives was considered secondary to making our military position "believable...
...It called for education on individual fallout shelters, some literature to be prepared, and a $17 million fund to be available for shelters in government buildings...
...It is for this reason, said the President, that we need "an insurance for the civilian population . . . insurance we trust will never be needed—but insurance which we could never forgive ourselves for foregoing in the event of catastrophe...
...in that message and in another on July 25, he asked for additional arms totalling $6 billion...
...Engineers were to survey cities and towns to find usable spaces for fifty million people in existing buildings, in subways and quarries, and to stock them with water, food, and other necessities...
...But apparently the Administration spokesScientists Speak "The destructive power of modern weapons is increasing geometrically...
...civil defense becomes, instead, an integral and vital force in our military strategy...
...There are some grave consequences implicit in the implementation of such a theory: ¶ The augmented emphasis on shelters, by being transformed into a part of the calculus of war, thereby magnifies the arms race...
...But even if it is no good, it says something of the attitude of the people...
...With an adequate civil defense program, he maintained, "We could evacuate our cities and place our forces on a super-alert status, and thus put ourselves in a much better position to strike first and accept the retaliatory blow...
...It provides further unmistakable evidence of serious determination on our part...
...The first nuclear bombs exploded in 1945 released energy equivalent to about 20 tons of TNT...
...Unless we could prove to the Russians that we were ready to fight, they might disregard our deterrent might and our diplomats would have no bargaining leverage...
...As deputy to Defense-Secretary Robert S. McNamara he held all the needed administrative reins...
...It presents the following general questions: (1) What lasting effects would the great fires and radioactivity have on the biological system (soil, water, air, plants, and animals) on which man depends...
...3) Would the immediate destructive effects of a nuclear war cause major irreversible changes in the economic, social and political organization of our society...
...The President, who has a habit of testing political winds, decided that this one was blowing too hard for comfort...
...There was also pressure from quarters other than the military...
...It creates its own necessities for large-scale deception of the American public...
...Among them was Governor Nelson Rockefeller of New York, one of the nation's most aggressive exponents of shelters...
...Does a program deliberately designed to increase Soviet armed strength make military sense...
...why not invest a few hundred dollars in a shelter that might save him from the perils of radiation that would follow nuclear attack...
...Shelters had now been endowed with a purpose that went far beyond the simple insurance concept...
...But an opponent can be expected to respond to such a defensive move by stepping up the intensity of attack...
...If the President wanted citizens to build shelters, they were determined to translate that exhortation into reality...
...Perhaps this shift was inevitable, for Yarmolinsky and Pittman are resolute and competent men, who could be expected to push any program entrusted to them to its logical conclusion...
...The immediate destruction expected from a full-scale nuclear war has been the subject of fairly detailed study...
...The men attending the secret Pentagon meeting were persuaded to go along with the military's concept of civil defense...
...If we have that strength, civil defense is not needed to deter the attack...
...It seemed better, therefore, to hedge any bets...
...we're ready to die for our objectives...
...It seems incredible that the Administration and the Defense Department would attempt, as part of their military strategy, to persuade the American people that nuclear war is tolerable...
...It appeased those in the Pentagon who wanted a more drastic program, for they considered this a favorable first step...
...If we force the Russians to spend more money on arms, the argument went, it will weaken their economy and create difficulties for the government with its people...
...Another top Defense Department official—who refused to let me use his name—told me: "One of the possible consequences of our new civilian defense is to make the Soviet Union increase its offensive preparations...
...It has fashioned a new and important lobby that generates a further growth of militarism...
...In general, the development of a shelter program cannot greatly influence the conclusion that a massive nuclear attack would have the immediate effect of destro\ing the social structure...
...f It has unleashed a wave of hysterical and sterile anti-Communism...
...The Berlin crisis acted as the springboard...
...The same number of dead, or more, might result...
...Here, in the executive offices, the staff evolved a moderate formula which they felt would hold the dikes...
...We had to make our deterrence "credible" and the only way to do it was to commit our people to a large-scale shelter program...
...Pittman honestly believes that ten or fifteen million lives can be saved by fallout shelters, but the impression he left with me was that saving lives was not his main concern...
...But both the White House staff and Defense Secretary McNamara became alarmed at the prospect...
...A home owner buys fire insurance, the reasoning went, to save himself from the financial loss that would follow a fire...
...The letter was to be followed by the appearance of the President on radio and television to emphasize the urgency...
...Yet such is the nature of America's mood that President Kennedy proposed the very escalation in arms of which he expressed fear, and the very civil defense program which seemed, in the context of his own words, so unreasonable...
...We will deter an enemy from making a nuclear attack," said Mr...
...Now the President was admitting that there is, after all, a chance that he may not be rational, and that war may come anyway...
...It is patent nonsense," he said, "to claim that this program has no value...
...The insurance thesis was gradually dropped, and in its place there emerged the thesis of "indirect deterrence" and "hardening the national will...
...That triumvirate of scientists, Herman Kahn, Edward Teller, and Willard Libby, who have been given extraordinary opportunities to shape public opinion by a pliant press, began to pump a new theme into the stream of national consciousness—You can survive...
...This is a remarkable message in at least two respects...
...One nation arms to deter a possible attack from the other, fearing that these arms may be for aggression rather than defense, the second nation responds by an even greater armament and the process continues...
...The mass media, with Henry Luce's Time and Life in the vanguard, drummed out variations of the theme with dogged intensity...
...In pursuing such a course, we drift a long way from the original dike-building plan of buying "insurance...
...The scientific evidence that can be marshaled to answer this formidable array of questions is very limited and uncertain...
...Frank B. Ellis, director of the Office of Emergency Planning, soon saw in the shelter program a means of "strengthening our leadership at the conference tables of the world...
...On the very clay that McNamara was testifying, General Lyman L. Lemnitzer was taking an opposite tack: "Civil defense is an essential element of our overall deterrent...
...It widens the opening to the garrison state...
...A reasonable human being neither wants nor expects a fire, but he knows one can occur, so he protects himself against loss...
...For the moment, at least, he was able to set limits to an all-out shelter campaign...
...A person buys fire insurance only if he knows the company will be able to pay a claim in case of disaster...
...The shelter spaces would offer little protection against these, McNamara said, but they could "save at least ten to fifteen million lives" from the fallout danger...
...Any doubt in the mind of a potential enemy with respect to his capability to deal us a decisive blow makes less likely the possibility that he will initiate a nuclear attack against us...
...The former urged the President to send a fallout shelter instruction booklet to every American family along with a letter urging prompt action...
...There is insight in perceiving that if each side continues to go on increasing its armaments we will ultimately reach a point of "maximum danger" which cannot be "foreseen or deterred...
...Pittman, a good-looking man of sparse words and unhurried manner, sees in the present shelter campaign a means of "hardening the will of the people...
...This year 30,000 and 50,000-kiloton bombs were exploded...
...It cut the ground, seemingly, from under Nelson Rockefeller...
...In the in-fighting that preceded the President's announcement, it was decided to put the program under the Department of Defense, rather than under the independent agency, Office of Civil and Defense Mobilization...
...General Lyman L. Lemnitzer, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that it "bears an essential relationship to military strength . . . The extent to which we have the ability to defend against an attack, particularly the initial attack, or to minimize the effects of an attack, is an essential element of our overall deterrent...
...Representative Chet Holifield, a powerful figure in the nuclear field on Capitol Hill, had been agitating for a shelter program for some time...
...As proof that this thesis was correct, the civil defense budget was quickly tripled to $207 million, and this year's plan calls for $700 million...
...Instead of concentrating essentially on saving lives, the General was saying that shelters were to be used primarily as a means of proving to the Soviets that "we mean business...
...Yet the attempt has been, and is being, made, and the story behind it is grimly fascinating...
...The matter was turned over to Presidential Assistant McGeorge Bundy, and from him down the line to a deputy, Carl Kaysen...
...It is transformed from an instrument of peace, or a tool for relieving tensions, into a weapon of the existing cold, or the possible hot, war itself...
...OCDM had always had trouble getting funds...
...its requests were usually trimmed to a paltry $60 million a year...
...Steuart L. Pittman, a prominent lawyer and former Marine hero, was later chosen to direct the program...
...From the Report of the Committee on Science in the Promotion ok Human Welfare of the American Association for the Advancement of Science December, 1961 men failed to estimate accurately the power and the arrogance of the professionals in the Pentagon...
...They proposed a fallout shelter program not to make deterrence credible nor to give our diplomacy "muscle," but merely as "insurance...
...But can an effort to lower the living standards of the Russian people by increasing their nuclear stockpile be identified with the purpose of a mature and democratic foreign policy...
...But McNamara was quick to point out: "This docs not mean the program will save fifty million lives...
...Civil defense is not a short-term program for Pittman, but one which will last at least a decade, or even decades...
...It will work itself into the fabric of American life, and Americans will become less tense as they live in it longer...
...Herman Kahn, the former Rand Corporation physicist and mathematician who wrote the widely quoted book, On Thermonuclear War, had been saying this for some time...
...How this switch of emphasis— from the insurance concept of saving lives to the military's strategy of civil defense as strengthening our deterrent—took place is open to conjecture...
...Few Administration officials were happy with the analogy, for it has flaws as big as a bomb crater...
...The rest of the program, to use I. F. Stone's phrase, was "warmed-up Eisenhower...
...The obvious implication of this astonishing statement is that our own civil defense efforts will force the Soviets to increase their supply of nuclear arms, a process which could only multiply the risk of triggering a nuclear war...
...Thus, we gain sizable cold war victories with a relatively small effort— domestic fallout shelters...
...You can defend yourself...
...We might then present the Soviets with an ultimatum...
...The heart of the project —to which $93 million was allotted —was the indentification of community shelter "spaces...
...We must find ways," he told me, "to sustain their sense of obligation to do these things...
...It is generally concluded that a massive nuclear attack on the United States could destroy most of the nation's major' cities...
...But such deterrence, the President continued, assumes that the enemy is "rational...
...All social and economic processes which depend on large cities would be massively disrupted: communications, transport, finance, a considerable part of light and heavy manufacturing, major medical facilities, centers of government...
...The insurance analogy became a momentary catch-phrase...
...Kennedy, "only if our retaliatory power is so strong and so invulnerable that he knows he would be destroyed by our response...
...The nation's leaders could not continue their threats indefinitely without making the public queasy about its own chance for survival...
...If we should ever lack it, civil defense would not be an adequate substitute...
...Unfortunately, however, he added, "the history of this planet, and particularly the history of the Twentieth Century, is sufficent to remind us of the possibilities of an irrational attack, a miscalculation, an accidental war, or a war of escalation in which the stakes by each side gradually increase to the point of maximum danger which cannot be either foreseen or deterred...
...The long-range problem is vastly more complex than the immediate one...
...This, then, is the important way in which civil defense contributes to deterrence...
...4) How would the foregoing effects influence the behavior of human beings...
...The purpose of a civil defense program, these men believed, was primarily to enhance military and diplomatic power...
...2) How would the increased death rate, widespread disease, and genetic effects of the war affect the validity and viability of the survivors...
...Nonetheless, McNamara succeeded only in slowing the process of transforming the purpose of the civil defense program from "insurance" to making the military deterrent credible...
...Even more remarkable is the prophecy of "a war of escalation...
...But if the project were under Defense there would be unlimited funds, for Congress seldom questions a Pentagon proposal...
...McNamara had hardly finished his testimony when the whole theory of "insurance" was subverted to what the Pentagon wanted in the first place— a civil defense that would make our military deterrent credible...
...Defensive measures such as shelters follow the same pattern, for they too will tend to elicit a more powerful offense...
...A particular shelter system is designed to resist a certain assumed intensity of attack, and its success depends on the validity of this assumption...
...Thoughtful Americans sensed there was a gaping hole in our nuclear reasoning...
...The insurance concept behind the shelter proposals was rooted in a sincere desire to save people's lives...
...But this is all to the good, for one of the ways we can win the cold war is to get the Soviet Union to enlarge its costs of operations...
...But if shelters forced the Russians to change their strategy—for example, by exploding bombs in such a way that the fallout danger decreased but the fire danger increased —the shelters would serve little purpose...
...The Cuban invasion debacle in April indirectly added to the mounting pressures...
...Making the deterrent "credible" was not a new idea...
...When Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara outlined his program at the Holifield hearings August 1, 1961, there was little flamboyance in his words...
...It makes the deterrent credible...
...By the same reasoning, it is argued everyone should build a fallout shelter...
...When I asked Assistant Secretary of Defense Pittman to express this purpose, he put it this way: "Our willingness to stand firm and ready to create the risk of war carries a message...
...If he is sane enough to assess objectively what he would lose in a retaliatory strike by our missiles and air-borne weapons, he will not attack us in the first place...
...If we could deliver the kind of death and destruction we were promising the Soviets in the event of war, couldn't they reciprocate—at least to a limited extent...
...Neither the Secretary of Defense nor the White House attempted to minimize the clanger of nuclear war, or to downgrade the Holifield estimate that a quarter of the nation would perish in a relatively small attack of 1,446 megatons...
...Saving lives, while desirable, was decidedly subsidiary...
...he did not stop it...
...Nonetheless, the "insurance" concept was good politics, an easy straddle...
...Here is a formidable agrument in favor of disarmament and against civil defense...
...Nor does fire insurance affect the probability of a house burning down...
...According to Marquis Childs and many other Washington observers, McNamara is convinced that war would be far more destructive than most people believe, and that recovery "would be a matter of centuries rather than years...
...On May 25, 1961, President Kennedy presented his theory to Congress...
...Adam Yarmolinsky, who had written a report on loyalty oaths for the Fund for the Republic and who dispensed high posts for the New Frontier in its early days, was given the task of bringing the program alive...
...Again, as the 1959 [Holifield] study had pointed out, nearly seventy-five per cent of the deaths from the hypothetical attack would have resulted from blast and thermal effects combined with immediate radiation effects...
...When President John F. Kennedy took office in January, 1961, the pressures for a shelter program had increased to the point that the White House felt action was essential...
...Had this proposal been adopted, the momentum of the shelter program would have been greatly accelerated...
Vol. 26 • February 1962 • No. 2
