Eric Schlosser - Command and Control

The Pentagon task force found that NATO had done little to prepare for the devolution of command in wartime:

It is imperative that each commander knows when a higher headquarters has been erased or isolated from command; that he knows his own responsibilities as the situation degrades; that he knows the status of similar commands at his level elsewhere; and that he knows the status of lower echelons, and what responsibilities they can assume. It appears that this is not the case in Europe today.

The absence of early-warning capabilities, the poor communications, and the lack of any succession plan at NATO posed a grave, immediate risk. “Not only could we initiate a war, through mistakes in Europe,” McNamara was told, “but we could conceivably precipitate Soviet preemptive action because of a loose C & C [command and control] in Europe.” The situation was made even more dangerous by the predelegation authority that Eisenhower had secretly granted to the military. NATO units under attack were permitted to use their nuclear weapons, without awaiting presidential approval. The new national security adviser, McGeorge Bundy, succinctly explained the rules to President Kennedy: “A subordinate commander faced with a substantial Russian military action could start the thermonuclear holocaust on his own initiative if he could not reach you (by failure of the communication at either end of the line).”

Any use of nuclear weapons in Europe, McNamara now believed, would quickly escalate to an all-out war. And the more he learned about America’s nuclear deployments in Europe, the more he worried about such a catastrophe. Three weeks after the Goldsboro accident, Congress’s Joint Committee on Atomic Energy sent Kennedy and McNamara a top secret report, based on a recent tour of NATO bases. It warned that the risk of an accidental or unauthorized nuclear detonation in Europe was unacceptably high — not just in wartime, but also during routine NATO maneuvers. NATO’s command-and-control problems were so bad, the bipartisan committee found, that in many respects the United States no longer had custody of its own nuclear weapons. Within months the NATO stockpile would include atomic bombs, hydrogen bombs, thermonuclear warheads, nuclear artillery shells, nuclear depth charges, nuclear land mines, and the Davy Crockett, a recoilless rifle, carried like a bazooka by an infantryman, that fired small nuclear projectiles. But none of these weapons, except the land mines — formally known as Atomic Demolition Munitions — had any sort of lock to prevent somebody from setting them off without permission. And the three-digit mechanical locks on the land mines, like those often found on gym lockers, were easy to pick. According to one adviser, when Secretary of Defense McNamara heard that hundreds of American nuclear weapons stored in Europe were poorly guarded, vulnerable to theft, and unlocked, “he almost fell out of his chair.”

THE JOINT COMMITTEE on Atomic Energy had been concerned for almost a year that NATO’s custody arrangements were inadequate — and in violation of American law. The Atomic Energy Act of 1946 strictly prohibited the transfer of nuclear weapons, as well as classified information about them, to foreign countries. The act was amended in 1954 so that NATO forces could be trained to use tactical weapons. After the launch of Sputnik, President Eisenhower asked Congress to change the law again and allow the creation of a NATO atomic stockpile. “I have always been of the belief that we should not deny to our allies,” Eisenhower said, “what your potential enemy already has.” His proposal was opposed by many in Congress, who feared that it might be difficult to retain American control of nuclear weapons based in Europe. The Soviet Union strongly opposed the idea, too. Hatreds inspired by the Second World War still lingered — and the Soviets were especially upset by the prospect of German troops armed with nuclear weapons. In order to gain congressional approval, the Eisenhower administration promised that the weapons would remain, at all times, under the supervision of American military personnel. The nuclear cores would be held by the United States until the outbreak of war, and then the cores would be handed over to NATO forces. Secretary of State Christian A. Herter assured the Soviet Union that “an essential element” of the NATO stockpile would be that “custody of atomic warheads remains exclusively with the United States.”

On January 1, 1960, General Lauris Norstad, the supreme allied commander in Europe, placed all of NATO’s nuclear-capable units on a fifteen-minute alert, without consulting Congress. Every NATO air squadron was ordered to keep at least two fighter planes loaded with fuel and a nuclear weapon, parked near a runway. And thermonuclear warheads were mated to the intermediate-range Jupiter missiles in Italy and the Thor missiles in Great Britain. The new alert policy had the full support of President Eisenhower, who thought that NATO should be able to respond promptly to a Soviet attack. Eisenhower had faith in the discipline of NATO forces. And he had, most likely, a private understanding with Norstad similar to the one made with LeMay — granting the permission to use nuclear weapons, if Washington, D.C., had been destroyed or couldn’t be reached during a wartime emergency. The supreme commander of NATO reported directly to the president, not to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Norstad was fiercely protective of his authority. He disliked General Thomas Power, the head of the Strategic Air Command, and wanted to preserve NATO’s ability to destroy the Soviet Union without any help from SAC. The thermonuclear warheads atop NATO’s Jupiter missiles were aimed at Soviet cities. With those missiles, and the hundreds of other nuclear weapons under NATO command, Norstad could conceivably fight his own war against the Soviets, on his own terms.

Members of the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy visited fifteen NATO bases in December 1960, eager to see how America’s nuclear weapons were being deployed. The group was accompanied by Harold Agnew, the Los Alamos physicist who’d come up with the idea of attaching parachutes to hydrogen bombs and later helped to develop one-point safety standards. Agnew was an expert on how to design bombs — and how to handle them properly. At a NATO base in Germany, Agnew looked out at the runway and, in his own words, “nearly wet my pants.” The F-84F fighter planes on alert, each carrying a fully assembled Mark 7 bomb, were being guarded by a single American soldier. Agnew walked over and asked the young enlisted man, who carried an old-fashioned, bolt-action rifle, what he’d do if somebody jumped into one of the planes and tried to take off. Would he shoot at the pilot — or the bomb? The soldier had never been told what to do. The wings of the fighters were decorated with the Iron Cross, a symbol that powerfully evoked two world wars. Agnew realized there was little to prevent a German pilot from taking a plane, flying it to the Soviet Union, and dropping an atomic bomb.

The custody arrangements at the Jupiter missile sites in Italy were even more alarming. Each site had three missiles topped with a 1.4-megaton warhead — a weapon capable of igniting firestorms and flattening every brick structure within thirty square miles. All the security was provided by Italian troops. The launch authentication officer was the only American at the site. Two keys were required to launch the missiles; one was held by the American, the other by an Italian officer. The keys were often worn on a string around the neck, like a dog tag.

Congressman Chet Holifield, the chairman of the joint committee, was amazed to find three ballistic missiles, carrying thermonuclear weapons, in the custody of a single American officer with a handgun. “All [the Italians] have to do is hit him on the head with a blackjack, and they have got his key,” Holifield said, during a closed-door committee hearing after the trip. The Jupiters were located near a forest, without any protective covering, and brightly illuminated at night. They would be sitting ducks for a sniper. “There were three Jupiters setting there in the open — all pointed toward the sky,” Holifield told the committee. “Over $300 million has been spent to set up that little show and it can be knocked out with 3 rifle bullets.”