This Is Only Test How Washington Prepared for Nuclear War (33 page)

Kennedy soon rued the crisis atmosphere he helped create. People and pundits were debating shelter ethics such as the right to shoot neighbors trying to gain entry. Some White House advisers proposed finishing the 50-million person survey, and then dusting off the do-it-yourself National Shelter Policy put forth in 1958. The administration did issue a new civil defense pamphlet that included guidelines on home shelters, but it also sought $460 million for a Shelter Incentive Program encouraging nonprofit institutions to designate public fallout shelters within their buildings. This time Congress balked at the high costs and only granted funds to continue the ongoing survey and stocking. The President didn’t fight for the Incentive Program and fell silent about civil defense. In Washington and across the nation, interest in shelters faded as fast as it had flared. Newspaper columnist Inez Robb spoke for many when she wrote: “Please—No Civil Defense Yak.”
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It was thus easy to overlook a January 1962 statement from Steuart Pittman: “Probable short warning time in the missile age and the increasing danger of fallout require that first priority in State and local survival planning be given to movement to shelters; or lacking shelters, to taking the best cover which is immediately available.” Civil defense officials were finally admitting evacuation wasn’t possible. The Warning Yellow, the steady blare, now meant turn on a radio or television, wait for instructions, and
prepare
to take cover. The meaning of Warning Red, the undulating siren, remained the same— take cover
now
.
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From shelter to evacuation to shelter—civil defense attack instructions had come full circle, back to the early 1950s. The only problem was that weapons technology hadn’t reverted to the early 1950s, as the world was reminded on October 22, 1962.

Washington and the Cuban Missile Crisis

These were the Cuban missiles: the Luna, range 31 miles, designed for bat
tlefield use; the “Kennel,” as the United States dubbed it (FKR to the Soviets), a surface-to-surface cruise missile with a 100-mile range; and the medium range SS-4 (R-12 to the Soviets), measuring 74 feet in length, with
a range of 1,100 nautical miles. To build and protect bases for these missiles, more than 40,000 Soviet servicemen, officers, and technicians came to Cuba beginning in July 1962. To arm these missiles, a Soviet freighter secretly transported weapons to Mariel, Cuba, on October 4. For the Kennels, there were 36 twelve-kiloton warheads; for the Luna tactical missiles, 12 two-kiloton warheads; and for the SS-4s, 45 one-
megaton
warheads. Fired from San Cristóbal, one of the base sites, an SS-4 missile could just reach Washington.
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Fidel Castro, Cuba’s fractious communist leader, wanted the missiles and warheads to protect his dictatorship and his life. He had good reason to fear for both. The very day the Soviet ship docked at Mariel, U.S. covert opera
tions planners met with Robert Kennedy, the attorney general, to review Operation Mongoose, an omnibus sabotage initiative that sought the end of communism in Cuba and the removal of Castro. Khrushchev and the Soviet military wanted the weapons in Cuba not only to defend a junior ally, but also for strategic and deterrent reasons. The Soviet Navy envisioned building a base for its new submarines armed with ballistic missiles. From Cuba, the submarines could foray the entire U.S. East Coast, and with the land-based missiles pointed at Florida and beyond, “no general in the Pentagon would again dare consider a nuclear first strike against the Soviet Union or an attack on Cuba.”
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Nor would the President dare consider tolerating the deployment of missiles and nuclear warheads less than 100 miles from America. From the moment National Security Adviser McGeorge Bundy told Kennedy of the photographic evidence of the bases, obtained from a U-2 reconnaissance flight, he resolved to force their removal. Everyone he consulted agreed; the challenge was to uproot the missiles without sparking World War III. For guidance, the President looked to 15 of his most trusted advisers, including his brother Robert. Known as the ExComm (short for the Executive Committee of the NSC), these men spent the better part of two weeks work
ing day and night to resolve the crisis. At their first meeting, held mid-day on October 16, most ExComm members urged Kennedy to swiftly order a military response such as an air strike or an invasion. A naval blockade of the island nation was also proposed. Over the next two days, the ExComm, prod
ded by McNamara, tilted toward the blockade, although an air strike still had advocates. On the morning of Friday, October 19, the ExComm broke into small groups to devise separate plans for an air strike and a blockade. On Saturday, Kennedy convened the ExComm at the White House. During heated discussion, General Maxwell Taylor again urged the President to order an air strike on Tuesday, when U.S. forces would be in full readiness, but Kennedy decided on the blockade.
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Meanwhile press and public speculation was growing. On Monday evening, October 22, Kennedy addressed the nation in a television broadcast from the White House. Just hours before, Soviet leaders had decided to authorize their commander in Cuba, General Issa Pliyev, to use his Luna and FKR missiles in the event of a U.S. attack, then had suddenly hesitated—they would wait to see what the American president said. After briskly reviewing
the danger posed by the weapons in Cuba, Kennedy reminded viewers of a historical lesson from the 1930s, that appeasement of aggressors only led to war. “Our unswerving objective, therefore, must be to prevent the use of these missiles against this or any other country, and to secure their with
drawal or elimination from the Western Hemisphere.” Kennedy explained the “strict quarantine” the U.S. Navy would impose against the shipment of offensive weapons to Cuba. He also promised that should the Soviet Union and Cuba continue the buildup, he was ready and willing to order the use of military force. The outcome of the crisis now hinged on two contingencies: whether the Soviet Union would respect the blockade, and what the United States would do if it didn’t. With the world watching, the crisis was entering a very dangerous phase.
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The next morning, phones at DCD headquarters and suburban civil defense offices began ringing with queries about shelters. Rodericks prom
ised to keep DCD’s phones manned until 1 a.m., if needed, but this was a symbolic gesture—callers were being told that public fallout shelter space was “non-existent or minimal.” Although the building survey had been under
way for months, only 103 of some 1,000 suitable structures in the District were “licensed” fallout shelters (meaning owners permitted use of the buildings as shelters). None of the buildings, licensed or not, were marked and stocked with emergency supplies. Neighboring communities faced the same deficiency. Alexandria, Va., had 61 shelter sites, but they lacked signs as well as the water canisters, enriched biscuits, and sanitary kits that counted as provisions. Prince Georges County, Md., went into the crisis with 500 unmarked, unstocked shelters. Pittman admitted the rest of the country hadn’t progressed much further than the nation’s capital. By Thursday, October 25, just five D.C. shelters were marked and stocked. They included Union Station and the Departmental Auditorium, which, ten years earlier, had hosted Alert America. Located in the center of Washington, these structures stood absolutely no chance of protecting occupants from the effects of a one-megaton warhead.
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Evacuation wasn’t an option for the public, either. The “probable” reduced warning time to which Pittman had referred in January was now very real. An SS-4 fired from Cuba could reach Washington in less than 15 minutes, while the travel time for an ICBM fired from the Soviet Union was about half an hour. Rodericks and District officials said nothing about trying to evacuate the city; instead, they reissued the revised warning signals. To concerned parents, D.C. School Superintendent Carl F. Hansen could only say: “If an ‘alert’ or ‘take cover’ signal is sounded while your children are at school, they should remain there under the supervision of the principal and teachers . . . If the parent were to attempt to go to the school to get a child a hazardous and confusing situation would be created.”
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City stores reported increased sales of bottled water, transistor radios, and pemmican (a canned concentrate of raisins and nuts), but no “panic buying in response to the Cuban crisis.” Tourists continued to visit the Capitol, where plasterers and painters were taking advantage of the Congressional recess to do routine
maintenance work.
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Kennedy asked the ExComm what protection could be provided for the 92 million Americans within range of the SS-4s, but the ensuing discussion about posting shelter signs and stockpiling only proved to CIA Director John McCone “that not very much could or would be done; that whatever was done would involve a great deal of publicity and public alarm.”
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Continuity of government planners had long anticipated such a crisis. The buildup to war envisioned in
OPAL
57, for example, eerily mirrored the current situation, but readiness of the Federal Relocation Arc and emergency plans brought mixed results. On Wednesday, October 24, OEP Director Edward McDermott briefed Naval Aide Tazewell Shepard on the status of the EAPs. The satchel held 24 EAPs prescribing
Plan D-Minus
actions; how
ever, prior to the crisis Kennedy had approved a recommendation to replace
Plan D-Minus
with a “more comprehensive and logical arrangement,” still unfinished. McDermott cautioned Shepard that the presence of the 24 orders in the satchel merely proved “they ran the clearance process—not that they are necessarily the 24 most important actions to be taken.” Some were obsolete, others were of “doubtful legality.” Accordingly, the OEP and White House staff were considering “possible legislative action to enhance Presidential authority.”
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Considering possible action? At 10 a.m. that same day, the naval blockade went into effect and the ExComm met in the Cabinet Room of the White House. McNamara explained that two Soviet ships and their submarine escorts were approaching the blockade line, creating “a very dangerous situ
ation.” A minute or so later, an aide handed a note to McCone, who said, “we’ve just received information through ONI [Office of Naval Intelligence] that all 6 Soviet ships that are currently identified in Cuban waters—and I don’t know that that means—have either stopped or reversed course.” McCone hurriedly left to verify the report. As McNamara explained how the Navy would fire practice depth charges to force Soviet submarines to surface, Robert Kennedy looked at his brother: “these few minutes were the time of greatest worry by the President. His hand went up to his face & covered his mouth and he closed his fist. His eyes were tense, almost gray, and we just stared at each other across the table.” The time available for updating the EAPs was fast expiring.
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And McDermott, an attorney from Dubuque, Iowa, had plenty else to do. Right after the President’s speech on October 22, the OEP instructed wartime essential executive agencies and departments to send additional employees to Mount Weather to supplement the cadres already there on permanent assignment. McDermott reminded the new arrivals that the “full activation of the Classified Facility [Mount Weather] will be under stress conditions” and enjoined them to “observe the same restraint” they showed at home. McDermott also asked executive agencies to ready their relocation sites and ordered 24-hour operation in Washington and at OEP regional cen
ters, only one of which (Denton, Tex.) was in an underground protected facility by this time. The vulnerability of the regional centers to blast, fire, and
fallout called into question their ability to stand-in for the federal govern
ment; and across the nation, regional offices of the federal government revealed a near total lack of readiness. Few had relocation sites, reliable com
munication lines, or ways to remove valuable records from target zones.
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Among the new arrivals at Mount Weather were members of the new White House Emergency Information Program, which McDermott had begun assembling in June 1962. McDermott and Press Secretary Pierre Salinger wanted to permanently place information officers in Mount Weather’s Protected Facility and two other presidential relocation sites. Mount Weather already possessed impressive communications capabilities— by 1962 it could produce audio and video programming; record and retrans
mit color video broadcasts delivered from another point; and feed audio and video broadcasts to the major networks—but McDermott and Salinger believed too little attention had been given to content. Who would craft mes
sages on behalf of the President? Although Mount Weather had personnel trained in speaking and writing, they weren’t White House staff. The crisis forced activation of the program earlier than planned. On October 16, Salinger asked the OEP to create a “senior editorial board” at Mount Weather, but nine days passed before the involved agencies or departments (Defense, State, USIA, CIA, and OEP) designated their representatives. Instead, on October 23, McDermott and Salinger dispatched several OEP information officers to the Protected Facility for “standby emergency pur
poses.” Permanent staff at Mount Weather also activated teletype links with the wire service bureaus in New York and Atlanta, and the OEP designated technicians at the major television and radio broadcast networks to operate the Emergency Broadcasting System.
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