This Is Only Test How Washington Prepared for Nuclear War (30 page)

Eisenhower Gets His Way

Fulfillment of Eisenhower’s instructions took more than two years. Despite Flemming’s request to executive agencies for Emergency Action Papers (EAPs), the White House didn’t possess a complete set during
OPAL
56, or even by March 1957. “The importance to national security of having Emergency Action Papers immediately available to the President cannot be overemphasized,” Eisenhower’s Assistant Sherman Adams testily reminded Gordon Gray, the new director of the ODM. Gray wasn’t entirely to blame. He was waiting on individual agencies, none of which “moved with alacrity,” according to Roemer McPhee, Assistant (later Associate) Special Counsel to the President. In the meantime, Edward Beach devised procedures to store the papers in a satchel to be carried by the naval aide.
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The ODM fared better in finishing
Mobilization Plan C
and
Federal Emergency Plan D-Minus
. Based on a scenario in which the United States was involved in overseas military operations during an “international situation of the utmost gravity,”
Plan C
outlined steps to prepare for an attack on the United States and to wage general war. The measures included imposition of wage, production, and resources controls; establishment of “National
Emergency Agencies” for food, transportation, labor, and many other areas; and activation of the Arc.
Plan C
drew its authority from Executive Order 10346, issued in April 1952 (see chapter 5); the Federal Civil Defense Act of 1950 (P.L. 920); and presumed Congressional approval of legislative and appropriations requests.
Plan D-Minus
—so-called because ODM prepared it before “D-Day,” the date of an attack on the United States—outlined postat
tack federal actions. It assumed “little or no warning” of an attack “so crip
pling in effect as to impair governmental control, seriously reduce military strength, produce millions of casualties, disrupt industrial and agricultural production and endanger the existence of the nation and the free world.” Its somber projections, delivered in unadorned prose, belied the benign
OPAL
scenarios.
Plan D-Minus
envisioned 48 million Americans dead (the 1955 population was 162 million) from the blast, heat, and radiation of atomic and hydrogen detonations. It imagined desperate survivors scurrying from shel
ters in search of food and water, only to die from exposure to fallout. The Soviet bombs in
Plan D-Minus
destroyed Washington, collapsed the econ
omy, and cut rail lines; they shattered society into small groups; worst of all, more were coming, for the Soviets carried out additional attacks with what remained of their military forces. And yet: “Restoration of our society and its economy is possible in spite of the existence of confusion, despair, bereave
ment and psychological deterioration.”
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Eisenhower wasn’t so sure. When Robert Cutler read
Plan D-Minus
damage projections at a NSC meeting, “the President interrupted to ask Mr. Cutler why he felt it was necessary to go any further, since by this time we would all be dead (laughter).” Joking aside, Eisenhower wanted to use
OPAL
57 to test both
Plan C
and
Plan D-Minus
. Although still lacking a full set of EAPS, he planned to issue a variety of mobilization and postattack directives. Accordingly,
OPAL
57, which cost $1.7 million to stage, had three phases: the first, held in June, envisioned rising tensions leading to overseas war; the second, a presidential declaration of a national emergency on June 20 (M-Day); and the third, an attack on the United States on Friday, July 12 (D-Day), involving 156 nuclear detonations totaling 374 megatons. On M-Day, advance cadres of relocators dispersed throughout the Arc to ready relocation sites, and then on D-Day, the sites activated to work on problems arising from
Plan D-Minus
. Also on D-Day, the Warning Yellow sounded at noon in Washington, but no public action was taken. For Phase I, Eisenhower hypothetically approved step 10 of
Plan C
, an increase of the armed forces from their current size (approximately 3.3 million) to 5 million. An “exercise” record of action duly noted the measure as well as the creation of nine National Emergency Agencies for matters such as labor, production, food, and energy. Eisenhower strongly believed that if established agencies took sole responsibility for emergency tasks, these functions “would tend to become permanent and could not be got rid of after the emergency was over.” However, the heads of the emergency agencies came from established agencies. For example, Undersecretary of Agriculture True D. Morse became the acting administrator of the National Food Agency.
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(One exception: the
Emergency Censorship Agency, which wasn’t “created” during
OPAL
57. In March 1955, Eisenhower had asked CBS Vice President Theodore Koop to lead this agency, and Koop had agreed.)
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On D-Day, Eisenhower flew aboard his new helicopter from the White House to Camp David, where the closed circuit television network displayed damage maps drafted at Mount Weather. He spent Saturday and Sunday at his Gettysburg farm. On Monday, he flew to Mount Weather, then back to Washington. Throughout the day, he interjected various unannounced problems into the exercise. He asked the State Department how allies would react to restrictions of exports of “essential survival items.” Was the Postal Service ready to deliver essential wartime items, how would the emergency energy agency get petroleum to the East Coast? What were the long-term requirements for feeding survivors? He asked Treasury how the nation would pay the tremendous costs of recovery when the tax base had all but disappeared. The responses were mixed. State emphatically replied that the proposed restrictions threatened U.S. alliances, but the problem was passed to an emergency agency; no decision was made. The Postal Service outlined specific actions, including an embargo on nonessential mail, but noted its dependency on fuel for surface and air transport. Treasury said it would bor
row money from the Federal Reserve Board, issue short-term bonds once banks were open, and submit legislation for more taxes. The emergency National Food Agency recommended a document the President’s staff hadn’t even received.
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Damage estimates compiled at Mount Weather raised serious questions about the ability of the Arc to even respond to such queries after an attack, let alone execute these actions. Using the Univac computer that anchored the new National Damage Assessment Center (NDAC), Mount Weather staff plotted blast ranges, fires, and fallout patterns, then projected the effects on federal facilities nationwide. This analysis determined, for example, that 29 of 48 FBI field offices received severe blast and fire damage. All told, only one-third of the federal government’s field offices could resume operation. The seat of government was leveled, uninhabitable, unusable. Although only 12 sites within the Arc were damaged, “resumption of government controls [depended] largely upon the effectiveness of the personnel” who actually arrived at the relocation sites, and they could carry out only the “most essential activities and even then in very limited fashion.”
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This “rock bottom” assessment meant that both the Arc and
OPALS
still lacked realistic planning assumptions. Most emergency planners didn’t as yet grasp Eisenhower’s basic point that the destructive effects of nuclear weapons went far beyond blast, heat, and radiation. They included panic, fear, uncer
tainty, social and economic disintegration, rumormongering—in a word,
chaos
: the nothingness, the disorder, the abyss out of which order formed. When a Treasury official mentioned ways to ease postattack inflationary pres
sures, Eisenhower interjected that currency itself would be worthless. He reiterated the need for martial law in order to “make and enforce regulations on even such subjects as what work would be done by whom without regard
to pay.” As a democracy, not “an armed camp,” the government would want to quickly return to “customary procedures,” but immediately after an attack, normal operations and rules were impossible. He added that legal objections didn’t concern him: in a D-Minus scenario, “even the lawyers would be put out of business.”
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Eisenhower’s prodding yielded some results. By June 1958, most of the EAPs were finished. According to Goodpaster, many “reflected the idea that martial law, martial rule would have been declared.”
⁴⁰
The naval aide kept the President’s set, handing the satchel to his relief when leaving duty. The contents, which addressed dozens of problems, included versions of the directives issued during
OPAL
56; orders concerning control of the Panama Canal, publication of the
Federal Register
, and use of civilian meteorological facilities; also proclamations regarding the convening of Congress, detention of alien enemies, and civil liberties. Executive agencies possessed only those EAPs germane to their functions, keeping copies either at their relocation sites or else in the personal emergency kits of agency heads. Goodpaster, Gray, and Evan Aurand (who had replaced Edward Beach as the naval aide) devised a code word system for execution of emergency actions. Say the pres
ident authorizes suspension of the writ of habeas corpus. The White House Army Signal Agency transmits a code word to the Department of Justice’s site; relocated personnel match the code word to the correct EAP and then take the required action. Code word lists and the EAPs were stored sepa
rately. In the “not unlikely” event that agency heads weren’t present (read: dead), each agency was supposed to set lines of authority so relocators could act immediately. Eisenhower also asked the NSC to store a complete set of EAPs in its space at Site R. By October 1958, 41 agencies and departments had EAPS; 29 had extra copies at their relocation sites.
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Problems with the Arc remained, as
OPAL
1958 showed. In Phase II of the exercise, which began on Tuesday morning, July 15, White House messen
gers quietly delivered sealed envelopes to department and agency heads, who were instructed to deliver a second envelope, also sealed, to the person in charge of the agency’s alert cadre, that is, the first team of relocators. Signed by Goodpaster, this message told the cadre leader to directly take his team “immediately to the agency relocation site.” Leaders confirmed their arrival by sending a message to the “Operational Capability Task Group” at Mount Weather, then answered a long list of questions. What agency records were present? Were office, sleeping, and eating facilities sufficient? Had each leader made plans for his family? Goodpaster also asked what the cadres would do if a “significant portion of the local community has become panic-stricken and threatens to enter” their site.
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For their part, ODM telecommunication employees decided to prognosticate “what would really transpire” if reloca
tors tried to evacuate. Their scenario wasn’t encouraging. All routes out of the District are congested, forcing thousands of residents to flee on foot. Some employees still try to reach the relocation site in private vehicles; some hitch-hike. Others “rush from the building when the alert sounds, plunge into the throngs of people milling about the streets and will not be seen or
heard from again.” Those with families ignore their instructions and speed off to collect their loved ones. Some succeed, and then find their way to U.S. Routes 50, 7, or 240 (the three main routes out of Washington into the Arc). Of the 28 people who make it to the site within two weeks, fallout will kill or incapacitate 14.
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This wasn’t the only pessimistic appraisal of
OPAL
58. A briefing for the President and the Cabinet on July 7 surmised that at D plus 14 only 35 of 90 relocation sites were operational, demonstrating that the entire Arc needed “careful review.” The NDAC proved inadequate due to difficulties collecting national data on bomb detonations and deficiencies in the information stored in the computer. Analysis of the attack patterns and damage suggested that only at D plus 90—three months after the attack—could the relocated federal government “effectively direct the national economy toward recovery.”
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This prognosis underscored the point Eisenhower had made during
OPAL
56: the Arc needed continual staffing.

Leo Hoegh finally made that happen.
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On July 1, 1958, the ODM and the FCDA were combined into a single agency in order to consolidate the nonmilitary defense tasks of the executive branch and to end the “considerable confusion” about overlapping responsibilities. Hoegh, the FCDA’s adminis
trator, became director of the new Office of Civil and Defense Mobilization (OCDM).
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In one of his first actions, Hoegh asked 12 departments and agencies to send cadres of at least 5 employees to Mount Weather. He asked another 5 to assign 1 or 2 liaison officers to represent their agencies at Mount Weather. The objective was plainly stated: “To establish a continuous emer
gency operating capability within the Executive Branch to carry out immediate emergency actions.” Responsibilities for the cadres included readiness to exe
cute EAPs, participation in tests, and workaday duties assigned by the sponsor
ing agency. OCDM eventually wanted the agencies to permanently assign selected employees to Mount Weather, but it permitted rotation for one-month periods. Though the cadres worked regular hours, 9 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., one “rotator” had to be onsite at all times.
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The first cadres, totaling 69 employees, arrived at Mount Weather’s above-ground buildings on September 22, 1958. They rep
resented each of the 17 selected departments and agencies as well as the OCDM.
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Continuous staffing of Mount Weather didn’t, however, solve the problem of the Arc’s vulnerability to fallout. Furthermore, the cadres were too small to administer the postattack functions of their respective agencies. If wartime essential employees couldn’t reach the Arc, as more and more planners were beginning to admit would be the case, then who would help them?