MEMORANDUM THE WHITE HOUSE WASHINGTON December 24 1980 MEMORANDUM FOR ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI FROM WILLIAM E ODOM SUBJECT History of the Transformation of Our Strategic Doctrine You asked for an essay of about 20 pages which traces what we have done in strategic doctrine over the last four years I am attaching a paper which reviews the key Presidential Directives and cites a number of key memoranda It gives you a view of the bureaucratic play as it appeared to me It is not a detailed assessment of the change in strategic doctrine but rather a chronological account of how things were accomplished inside the Administration It points you to the key documents in the files when you examine the record to write your own account I am puzzled about how to handle classification Some of the material could be considered fairly sensitive e g the substance of PD-18 the vulnerability of our Federal Arc the PD-58 references about our vulnerabilities and our sceam for fixing them and the PD-59 changes Although I am not classifying the paper itself you should treat it as fairly sensitive something not to go beyond your files PRM-10 PD-18 Chapter The new administration's basic strategy and force posture review was initiated by PR M-10 February 18 1977 but related tasks It prescribed two separate First the Secretary of Defense was charged to conduct a force posture review Second a comprehensive net assess- ment of East-West relations was directed led by the NSC staff Huntington Odom The purpose of the net assessment was to tell us how we are doing in the world vis-a-vis the Soviet Union July the response was complete and after an sec By and a PRC on the recommendations PD-18 was drafted and finally signed on August 24 1977 The net assessment concluded that -- The military balance was essential equivalence but the trends in all categories of forces was adverse -- In all other categories of power technology economics intelligence diplomacy political-ideological action and adaptability of political institutions the U S and its allies enjoyed a significant lead In key areas of technology however the gap was closing -- In the regions of competition Europe was marked by political uncertainty in both its East and West parts an equilibrium had developed in East Asia the Persian Gulf region had become vital to the West and also vulnerable to the combination of internal fragility and growing Soviet power projection into the region the Third World states most recently experiencing decolonialization and national liberalization struggles were particularly susceptible to Soviet influence Africa and the Caribbean islands being the primary areas for this development while other states which were beginning - - - - - - ---- -- ------'-- -- - -c ---- iiiiiil - 2 - to succeed economically the local influentials like Mexico Brazil Venezuela Nigeria Iran India South Africa and Saudi Arabia would be more enthusiastic for access to the industrialized West Based on this assessment PD-18 directed that we maintain a strategic posture of essential equivalence•• that we reaffirm NATO strategy as expressed in MC-14 3 i e a forward defense in Europe that we maintain a deployment force of light divisions with strategic mobility for global contingencies particuarly in the Persian Gulf region and Korea PD-18 retained the nuclear weapons employment doctrine of NSDM-242 pending a targeting review The interagency debate over the PD-18 draft revealed a sharp dispute within the administration about the implications of PRM-10 net assessment One s i e preferred to limit our strategic forces to an assured destruction capability and to consider general purpose force economies in Europe and Korea The Indian Ocean Persian Gulf region would be addressed by arms control efforts with the USSR The other side pointed to the momentum and character of Soviet military programs ---L the criticality of the oil-rich region around the Persian Gulf and the growing Soviet projection of power in Africa Southeast Asia and possibly the Caribbean The final version of the PD reflected NSC Defense preferences for NATO and Korea the NSC preference for a rapid deployment force and a stalemate on the strategic forces issue Actually PD-18 directs that the U S not become inferior to the USSE in strategic forces that a secure reserve force be maintained and that limited nuclear options be prepared In this respect i t did not regress from NSDM-242 but left the final policy decision on nuclear employment doctrine open for continued analysis and study · - 3 Many of the parts of the PRM-10 net assessment inspired later PRMs and policy decisions How to use our economic and technological advantages in the competition with the USSR as PD-18 directed became a question for debate in East-West economic policy The imminent dangers to the Persian Gulf region and our oil supplies cited by the net assessment inspired petroleum vulnerability studies and a number of other actions in 1977 and 1978 It was not until 1979 and 1980 however after the PRM-10 predictions were vindicated by events in Ira n and Ethiopia that genuine progress was possible in two areas fghanistani a East- West economic policy and b a security system for the Persian Gulf r _e gion The follow-on targeting review prompted two studies in Defense the targeting review the Secure Reserve Force study both of which were to contribute to PD-59 in 1980 basis for that process They were not however the whole Already in the spring of 1977 when you directed me to provide NSC staff participation in the review of the White House Emergency Procedures a process began which had as much if not more to do with your own the President's and Harold Brown's recognition of the need for an even more flexible targeting policy When we began to examine how in practice we might exercise LNOs and the SIOP the realities of our operational capabilities were not comforting It became clear that we were organized with no defense not even moderate civil defense and continuity of government so-called ''escalation control and related concepts in our doctrine simply could not be adapted to our operational capabilities We could recommend SIOP options to the President probably execute them without significan coordination with theater forces and then lose control of the - 4 - forces and the federal government for an indefinite period in face of a well-designed limited or major Soviet nuclear strike You sent Harold Brown a memo on March 31 1977 as a result of my WHEP review which asked him for three things ment of our nuclear war doctrine a a succinct state- b a brief statement of the proce- dures for conducting war beyond the initial stage particularly the location for the President and the c 3 I capabilities in light of the Blue Ribbon Defense Panel Report of 1970 which cited great deficiences c a statement of the basic objectives to be achieved through LNOs including the military and political assumptions regarding specific LNOs I cannot determine the full impact of these questions but they apparently stirred Brown sufficiently for him to recommend the IVORY ITEM exercise the following fall in answer By__ June t- however he sent a memo My memo to you Secretary Brown's Answer to Your Questions on Nuclear War Doctrine June 9 1977 provided a critique and a memo the- President -for---- - It called into question the realism of our doctrine particularly so-called escalation control and the assumptions about LNOs You will find in both memos the earliest sense of where the changes in doctrine needed to be made Apparently this memo from Brown with your cover comments never got to the President David Aaron held it all summer Defense queried me and I got calls warning that Brown would go directly to the President if the memo did not move You and David apparently diffused this problem and a later version was sent by Defense which did go forward in August This was most unfortunate because it prevented an early clarification of the doctrinal issues through the operational requirements for an effective WHEP That approach held more promise for preventing endless interagency debate and obfuscation - 5 - of the nuclear employment issues than any other The WHEP implications were key in clearing my mind on the issues Some of these same implications were vaguely apparent from the net assessment The agencies including Defense were reluctant to allow us to net assess U S and Soviet civil defense capabilities mobilization capabilities and c 3 I for an enduring conflict involving nuclear weapons We insisted on including these categories of military power and the assessment revealed a balance very adverse for the u s FEMA Reorganization Chapter Upon review of the White House Emergency Procedures I discovered that the ''continuity of government responsibility including providing for Presidential successors had been placed in the Federal Preparedness Agency which was tucked away inside GSA Our civil defense agency Defense Civil Preparedness Agency was in the Department of Defense Natural disaster assistance responsibility resided with the Federal Disaster Assistance Administration within HUD of responsibilities come about How had this dispersion It disconnected closely related activities tucked them away aeep within other larger agencies and insured that they would contribute little or nothing to our overall strategic defensive posture They had been together at the beginning of the Nixon Administration in 1969 The Office of Emergency Preparedness controlled all three of these smaller agencies FPA DCPA and FDAA The Director of EOP- was a statutory member of the National Security Council This arrange- ment was what was left from the war mobilzation and civil defense structure from World War II In the l950s under Eisenhowerr it - 6 - received a significant modernization under the lable ·continenta l defense The FPA underground facility and a hardened government com- munications net were constructed along with a number of alternate hardened sites in the so-called Federal Arc'' a few hundred miles around the District of Columbia During the Kennedy Administration a report was rendered to the President which judged the system increasingly inadequate to meet Soviet offensive nuclear capabilities assessment In 1970 Nixon received a similar Neither President acted to correct the inadequacies Quite the contrary Nixon took active measures to reduce our capabilities even further by splitting up the OEP in 1973 and putting the residual pieces in GSA Defense and HUD Under the assumptions of mutual assured destruction ' the op erative doctrine both for U S force structure at the time and for the SALT negotiations defense of the U S mainland from nuclear attack made no sense Neglect and active reduction of such capabilities by the Nixon Administration are a fundamental example of the effect of the MAD doctrine on our defense posture In April 1977 we received a bill which Proxmire and Percy were sponsoring in the Senate S 1209 the OEP It in effect would have restored These Senators were responding to state and local pressures for Federal funding in the emergency preparedness area not to awareness of our defense inadequacies on April 11 Seetng I reported this to you by memos and April 15 1977 a chance to use the local demand for funding to drive a re-organization project of importance to national security I opened a dialogue with the President's re-organization staff particularly - 7 - Harrison Wellford and Christopher Davis In a memo to you on May 3 I recommended that you support the reorganization of FDA FDAA and DCPA into one agency to pull together those diverse functions for defense of the civil sector and in support of mobilization The Pru did decide to undertake the project and Greg Schneiders took charge In the re-organization process we did not keep as much control as we should but the issues were not considered very exicting By March 1978 the plan was put to the President who approved and then it was submitted to the Congress and written into law Delay on implementing the re-organization debates about how to tie FEMA to the White House and the NSC and delay in appointing a director kept this re-organization achievement from having the impact it might otherwise have enjoyed on strategic doctrine and defense policy c nly by late spring 1979 did John Macy take charge Your memo to the President on February 22 1979 Director for FEMA is a good summary of our expectations for FE even if they were not fulfilled Nonetheless the implications of the r eorganization are large This agency could be vitalized given more responsibility for influencing defense policy and invited to participate more often in NSC delibera tions The structure is in place The resources and leadership however have not yet been provided but the historical trend from Eisenhower s second term- toward abandonment of strategic defense -and the concept of a long general wa r int he nuclear age was reversed in an organizational sense - 8 - PD-41 Civil Defense Policy and PRM-32 Chapter The need for a review of our civil defense policy became clear in the course of the PRM-10 net assessment As soon as PD-18 was signed in August Huntington and I began drafting a PRM Utgoff and Molander became engaged in civil defense in July 1977 in light of the U S offer to engage in civil defense talks with the Soviet Union They were therefore invited to discuss the PRM drafts Molander I was generally negative on the matter citing the previous administration's NSSM on civil defense and the pointlessness in his view of civil defense as a serious program In a memorandum of September 23 1977 Civil Defense P RM Huntington gave you our proposal which you signed for action on September 30 1977 That launched the year long inter- agency debate which produced -- 365 days later -- PD-4 the first significant civil defense policy since President Kennedy's momentary enthusiasm for civil defense in the early 1960s Almost everyone except Huntington and me entered the rRM 32 process with a negative attitude about its effectiveness I had seen the Soviet program first hand 1972 74 and had managed to get a report all the way to SecDef posture statement Laird in 1972 which he used in his The intelligence community struggled with the evidence for the next five vears trying to ignore it even as it accumulated and indisputably indicated serious one that the Soviet program was a The doctrinal implications of course were unacceptable to the arms control community and to Secretary of State Kissinger We drove the review 9rocess wtth two questions Cal Doe·s c tv ' l defense make a difference Cbl What modes of c tvil defense a-re -most effective - 9 Analyses in Defense by the JCS's SAGA repeatedly demonstrated that the number of initial fatalities from a U S SIOP option could be reduced by several scores of millions of people if they dispersed according to Soviet evacuation plans Similar findings resulted for U S losses based on assumed and feasible U S evacuation Reallocat ing weapons in an effort to target relocated Soviet population did not significantly reduce the initial fatalities We simply do not have enough weapons to chase the dispersed population Soviets Nor do the This finding was the fulcrum on which we pryed loose a lot of interagency resistance It inspired Harold Brown to develop D S civil defense program options eventually presented to the PRC meeting in August J 978 The answer to the second question was not seriously disputed Sheltering against blast without dispersal promised little protectiont Dispersal of population with fallout sheltering was agreed to be th most effective method of civil defense On longer term effects of nuclea r strikes no firm evidence was available problem _ Thus the PRM did not try to mak e recommendations on that The response to the P RM did report however the consideral5le a i fference population relocation ca n ma ke 7 and the proposed program ''Option D Prime 11 · wa s designed to exploit tha t finding by a five to seven year schedule of 'bris ts relocation plqnning l 1 1 There were two PRC meetings on PRM-32 August 3 and August 18 The first recommended Brown's program but could not agree on civil defense policy The second recommended a wordy and confusing PD onpolicy reflecting the successful effort of DOD ISA State and ACDA to fog the policy issues and prevent a decision -10 - You forwarded this recommendation with ACDA's dissenting alternative on September 19 1978 The President responded by not signing he wrote adding that at least Zbig it says nothing some of ACDA's specifics be included You asked me to revise accord- ingly I prepared two alternatives one including some ACDA language in the original PRC recommendations The other was much shorter It took my original three points for policy added Brown's caveat on retaining the emphasis on strategic offensive forces and included dualuse of natural disaster and civil defense programs decided to push the second alternative You apparently How the decision to sign it came about I am not sure but the PD that emerged was ·· the short version which said something '' PD-4l 's implicatioQ --------·-·----- · of course included abandonment of the view that strategic defense is impos5 Jble _ _ destabilizing __ T- • clearly never held that view - • - • -- • The Soviets ---- Now the US official r olicy acknowledged that strategic defense -- including civil defense -- is part of the overall strategic balance Previously we considered only offensive forces as relevant to that balance One part of PRM-32 was left uncomplet·ed Continuity of Govern- ment was also included in the review but FPA 1 s work left Harold Brown unable to make a choice among recommended al tern a ti ves was too weak to exploit the PR'l 1 ---32 opportunity· FPA s staff Thus the change in COG policy had to await further efforts before we got to PD 58 Press leaks about PD --4l were dela yed for a few weeks When they came they included th e fa ls e assertion that the President had approved a $2 billion a year civil defense program - · In fact the - 11 D Prime program required an addition of only $1 billion spread over five to seven years The President's reaction to hysterical editorials in the Washington Post and New York Times in December 1978- and 0MB opposition prevented the D Prime program from surviving in the FY 1980 budget You made a separate appeal to the President in a late December memo encouraging him to approve both MX and civil defense funds Of the $40 million recommended increase he_ a PEC VE d $10 million Bardyl Tirana the DCPA Director told the Congress in budget hearings that if all $40 million were not voted the $10 million was of no value That caused Congress to vote no increase but to try to pass a law mandating the D Prime five-year program 0MB and Defense refused to support this strong House support for civil defense As late as 1980 we still have had almost no increase in civil defense funding and the proponents of civil defense in Congress are angry that we do not take PD-41 seriously 3 PD-53 and Telecornmunications C I Policy Chapter One of the first steps of the President's Reorganization Project was the abolition of the Office of Telecommunications Policy in the EOP At once a problem emerged in reassigning the OTP functions which included emergency management for wartime and national security telecommunications policy oversight In the fall of l977 NTIA c1-t· Carnine tee Henry Geller made a strong effort to take both of these functions The context of the debate was de-regulation tration was generally committed to de-regulation in other areas The adminis- It was doing this Telecommunications was naturally another possible de-regulation success to score Moreover the antipathy to the AT T monopoly was large and the Communications Act of 1934 seemed too old - 12 ' to still be useful Congressman Van Deerlin introduced a new bill for communications which had de regulation as its main goal The structure of the Defense telecommunications o ganizati on is not tidy DR E 3 · A new Assistant Secretary of c I has been created tn A Deputy Under Secretary for Policy has c3 r policy · And th e National Communications System established in l962 by PreSident Kennedy after he discovered the lack of interagency interoperability of corn ' I munications during the Cuban Missile Crisis is still active managed by the Defense Communications Agency OSTP became alarmed about NTIA taking over the policy· role for national security issues and proposed that the policy function be placed with the NSC SCC function to the ---------- sec Because PD gave the crisis management it was argued that emergency and crisis cominuni - cations policy should be kept the1 e as well - - -- -- The emergency management functions restoration of telecommunications prioritiesl could not be given the sec however because Brzezinski is not confirmed by the Senate a requirement for a •rrnana gement '' function A joint meniora ndum- of understanding was worked out between the NCS on the one hand and Press and Brzezinski on the other This began the move toward a settlement with 0MB in writing the Executive Order J 2046 ressi gning OTP functions NTIA lost and Press and Brzezinski picked u p the telecommunications functions as they affe ct national security This was a mystery issue for me at f i rst I' was told by the NCS and DR E DOD th a t they would provide staff support and warn me of issues A visit to ColJlillerce to see Henry Geller produced nothlng He evaded any· discussion of upcoming issues Bolicy Council staffer So did 'Ri ck Neustadt Dornest1 and proponent of de - regulation 1A visit with Gerry Dinneen Assistant Secretary for that viewpoint c 3 r shed no more light from Thus the matter rested into the spring of 1978 In June l978 I -made a trip to SAC to examine many of the assertions about our c3 r vulnerabilities and to learn more about how our WHEP ties in with SAC 1978 I gave you a trip report by memo June 15 You accepted the ecommendation that you also make such a trip and you did so August 20-2l l978 You gave the President a memo ''RepoJ t o My SAg NQRAD Tri p on Augu st 30 in which you summed up the - observations you made of our - c3 r vulnerabilities to a Soviet - '---- c3r - -- - strike You also drew a number of doctrinal qonclusions about the way our forces ·are organized for war one large response lack of ICBM silo reload capability a_na weakness in our DSP and other tactical warning systems My memo to you of September 22 1978 Follow-up on Your Report to the President on Your SAC NORAD Trip outlined a number of additional doctrinal issues and made staff assignments for various parts of the follow up tasks You will find in these memos a clear forecast of where we were to come out with pn _53 pn 58 and Pn 59 I had the feeling that you basically doubted many of the points I had been making since 1977 beginning with WHEl fully This SAC trip appeared to remove that doubt It appeared to give you a better grasp of the realities of our forces and their strengths and weaknesses and greater confidence i 1 _ debat i n g Brown on the f _9 5 tru ture and doctrinal issues --·- -·-·· - I recall the trip as a turning point in your determination to transform our doctrine You took another specific follow-up step after your SAC trip based on the E O l2046 authority for telecommunications policy - 14 - rn 3 You sent Charles Duncan a memo C I Sep_t mp _ r __ _78 telling l _ __ 3 him of your concern over our c I vulnerability to a relatively small Soviet attack and our lack of c3 I endurance in the event of a war You asked him to look into corrections for both problems This is the first action you took which clearly asked Defense to think about programs that could support a protra_cted general war in which nuclear -- ---weapons were employed - - - • · - - ----· ' -- PD-37 on satellite hardness may be an earlier step but I was not involved and do not know how consciously the longwar issue was raised in that context Duncan give you a bureaucratic response on November 17 1978 but it at least announced that several Defense studies on the matter were in progress Board was also discovering the c 3 I problem c 3 I panel under John McLucas The Defense Science I held a meeting with its Their terms of reference were narrow and I tried to re-orient them toward our findings and to expand them for more programmatic implications Duncan's answer also raised the Congress's attempt to write a new Communications Act HR 13015 The Van Deerlin bill for de-regulating telecommunications brought Defense alive In the fall of 1978 I found myself chairing meetings and refereeingdisputes between Commerce and Defense Implicitly Defense was defending AT T The needs of national security for a centrally managed system nation-wide interoperability and blast resistance were said by Defense to be met if AT T were left unbothered Commerce argued that this remained unproven Moreover they declared that AT T to the extent that it does those things for national security passes the costs onto the private ratepayer This it was argued is taxing telephone subscribers to subsidize the Defense budget - 15 - Tom Leney an Army Captain at Harvard in the JFK School asked in late 1978 to become a summer intern at the NSC in 1979 him and put him to work on this problem I took I told him that it is not clear that AT T does all those things for Defense that Dinneen and others claim Nor was it clear that de-regulation will destroy our c3r system if certain parameters are established for the market action He went to work and by mid-summer it was clear that AT T was very vulnerable to Soviet attack that no hardening or upgrading had ------ ----· - ---- --- been done by AT T for years because Defense gave no guidance Not analyzing the system's vulnerability Defense was ill-prepared to tell AT T how to fix the problems t the same time it became clear that de-regulation without explicit limits and helpful FCC decisons could leave us facing an enormous degradation of the national security telecommunications capabilities Leney discovered a fact that I knew vaguely but had never verified nowhere were there national objectives set down in unambiguous language for c3r and telecommunciations capabilities Commerce could - argue that Defense did not need ''endurance and connectivity Presidential directive specified these capabilities No I had long realized that the J-3 in the JCS had a responsibility to aggregate the CINCs needs for c3r and give them to Dinneen in DR E for budget and program purposes But these requirements were never accepted as rigid or directive I also knew from my continuity of government review efforts an FPA Program Review was started in January 1979 and the PEADs for the WHEP that there were analogous problems of no clear statement of requirements in related emergency areas ' · 16 - - I sent you a long memo on August 1979 entitled • -c 3 r Poli c y It summed up Leney s work all of -my e-xpe-rience w rth 3 telecommunciations COG and the WHEP as they affect c I It recommended and Programs 11 ' some limited actions and it gave you a memo for Defense which would ask for telecommunication c 3 r national objectives and tie this effort with the continuity of government and NCA survivability effort signed it to Defense on August 10 -- That memo led in the short run to PD-53 and in the longer run to PD-58 ___ You By November we had an inter- agency response to the first part of that August 10 memorandum We had suggested na ional telecommunication objectives which included not only SIOP connectivity but also for management of a protracted nuclear conflict We added the objectives of diplomatic and intelli- gence support COG and mobilization The agencies accepted them all slightly revised in style of statement not one whit in substance They also added some telecommunications guidelines on dealing with common carriers Defense insisted that the PD be unclassified so that it could be used with common carriers The implications of PD-53 were monumental in principle a time I could not believe it had all gone so easily document for use with the For Here in a public we had as clear a statement of the need for a capability to manage a protracted nuclear conflict as could be asked for At the same time it recognized the supporting activities so critical in such a conflict but usually ignored mobilization continuity of government intelligence established national'' objectives for c including all parts of the government For the first time we had 3 r transcending Defense and We had also created a basis for forcing NTIA and the Domestic Policy Staff to face the national security issue in legislation for de-regulation For a time we had - 17 - the lead in national telecommunications policy not just the security side of it Prior to PD-53 of course you had faced the intercept issue and given the President PD-24 to be involved This all transpired before I was permitted It was a very small part of the larger PD-53 concern In trying to implement PD-53 I have returned to the PD-24 experience but it is so narrow that the analogy is limited use Defense should have taken the lead in PD-53 implementation but they simply sat on it except for occasions when they wanted to fight H R 13015 and de-regulation Two things needed doing First Defense should have insisted that PD-53 influence all their internal c 3 I programs for budget review Second through the NCS for which Defense is the Executive Agent they should have generated guidance for AT T as well as any other common carriers with national security significance Dinneen Perry and Dan Murphy managed to igngr_e t ie l 'atter Brown The JCS has focussed all its attention on the___ _ short-warning proble n and SIOP connectivity To try to overcome this bureaucratic obstructionism I created a PD-53 working group early this fall and tasked the NCS to tell us what is wrong with the common carrier network in the way of vulnerabilities to attack and to recommend what we might ask the common carriers to do about these problems The new Director of DCA and Manager for the NCS LTG Hilsman has made some progress in providing answers -- the first ever since the 1950s The issues of who pays and ''can de-regulation be made compati- -- ble with national security requirements will surface bitterly if - 18 PD-53 implementation is pursued The signing of the Paperwork Reduction Act of course is a major step backwards in light of PD-53 And it will make NSC policy oversight virtually impossible if 0MB exercises its new authority and resources PD-57 Chapter Charlie Stebbins carried through on this effort I had little to do with it after the FEMA re-organization and the NIFTY NUGGET exercise That exercise led to some NSC mobilization scenario studies They in turn became the basis for the PD-58 guidance Stebbins and I stayed in touch and I considered this effort as com3 plementary to my COG c I effort which led to PD-58 ble Both are compati- In fact the exercises prescribed by PD-58 should in time include the mobilization scenarios and the work of PD-57 The significance of PD-57 is that this is the first national level -- - -guidance on mobilization planning ---··-- -· - · in more than two decades -· Defense FPA Commerce and other relevant agencies have abandoned even their legal responsibilities to keep up mobilization planning and wartime surge capacity information for industrial production Although the beginning is all we can claim credit for the first step was the hardest Finally however the military services by agreeing to a no-fault bilization exercise in NIFTY NUGGET produced the information and stimulated the conditions that made Stebbins able to persevere with PD-57 Stebbins provided the direction and conceptual work for the overall effort It was quite an achievement - l9 PD-58 Chapter The inadequacy of the continuity f government programs were apparent with the earliest days of the administration come them however was not clear or simple How to over- Twice in the past twenty years major studies were completed which led to no concrete improvements After NSSM-58 in l970 OEP did make some internal pro- gress on COG but Nixon and the NSC did not take effective interest PRM-32 included continuity of government but the study results offered by FPA did not address the central problems effectively Therefore the PRC meeting in August l978 refused at Harold Brown's request to take a decision You however insisted that followup on COG be continued as rapidly as possible One possibility of a major COG review of course was the formation of FEMA and the appointment of a new director who might take the opportuhity to initiate a new departure in COG candidacy held promise in this regard delay in search of a FEMA director Ham Jordan on the matter The Posvar All fall however there was You sent a number of memos to inally on February 22 l979 you sent a memo to the President Director for FEMA which made the case for exploiting the re-organization for a COG upgrade To make sure that time did not run out on us I encouraged you to initiate a continuity of government program review to be conducted by FPA The new director Joe Mitchell discovered how out of date his programs were but had no clear idea of what to do about them Your memo to him Program Review '' January 26 l979 asked him for a comprehensive assessment of all COG programs in five areas - 20 - protection of national leadership continuity of essential functions of the Federal Government protection of state and local government emergency telecommunications resource allocations mobilization and recovery FPA worked all spring and summer accomplishing nothing FEMA became operative in the process and the FEMA director John Macy began to take hold The major stumbling block however remained the lack of innovation by the FEMA FPA staff and the inability of anyone to gather empirical evidence which would help us judge how austerely a government can be in wartime how small the civil staff for the President can be how small the military staff can be Thus the FEMA report in response to your memo of January 26 1979 was a thick study of no practical use for decision-making Seeing this to be the case I searched for a way to bring Defense's analytical skills to deal with FEMA's problems Your memo 3 of August 10 Telecommuncations and c I Policy Issues to Harold Brown became the vehicle Its second part concerns the problem of NCA survivability beyond 72 hours in the NEACP help Macy in finding a solution and it asks Brown to It uses the analogy between NCA vulnerability and ICBM vulnerability to try to get Brown's attention His obsession with the latter while the former is more critical has always perplexed me Key parts of your memo follow The vulnerability of our 'continuity of government' system as well as our 'NCA survivability system' is growing no less rapidly than the vulnerability of some of our weapons systems i e land-based ICBMs I request therefore that you give special assistance to - 21 John Macy the Director of FEMA in working out a new concept of basing of the NCA for both of the leadership responsibilities in an emergency commanding the armed forces and governing the country I am also particularly concerned that military contingency planning for less than all-out nuclear war be fully integrated with the basing and protection of our civil leadership in emergencies Crisis stability in the future could depend on managing a conventional conflict from a leadership posture which could survive a surprise attack Furthermore a number of vulnerabilities revealed by the recent JCS connectivity studies can be dealt with only through a significantly different approach to leadership protection Defense did not react effectively this part of the August 10 memo Brown more or less ignored 3 I put together a small CI COG working group and gave them direction for treating the NCA survivability problem more or less like the MX basing issue had been treated I worked out a scheme for mixing hardness redundancy and mobility and let the group develop it further could not succeed The Defense membership still When Shoemaker came on board the NSC staff I did a draft of the concept paper with him He caught on fast and for the remainder of the spring 1980 he followed the issue with the working group which finally brought PD-58 to be signed in June 1980 PD-58 itself does not solve the problems but it establishes a Joint Program Office FEMA and Defense under an NSC steering group Furthermore it gives a concept of a system and directs that a testbed be established to determine how austere a staff the - 22 - President needs for a general war And it foresees the establish ment of ten small surrogate White Houses at the ten Federal Regional Centers supported by a nucleus Federal government and a nuclear national military staff presumably the JCS Heretofore the plan of emergency staffing of the President has been concerned only with military assistance for making SIOP decisions On the civil side the old plans of the 1950s and 1960s have not been updated significantly particualrly the economic mobilization scheme under the concept of the Office of Defense Resources which would be established by the present set of Presidential Emergency Action Documents Until a new and survivable basing system for the President and his civil and military support staffs is designed none of the operations plans can be brought up to date PD-58 is aimed at getting through this mess and it provides a sound road map if it is followed PD-59 Chaoter You will find my ec1-rliest concerns- with targeting tn the memo of March 31 which you sent to Brown asking three questions about I our war doctrine and procedures My memo of June 9 19-7'7 to you with Brown's first answer explained once again that we have a highly unrealistic doctrine of escalation control In the cover memo you gave to the President on Brown's response the second one handcarried to the President September 16 1977 says To sum up we have a limited nuclear war doctrine and targeting capability but seem to lack some of the defensive capabilities which would make it practical Of course the PRM-10 process which led to PD-18 faced the targeting issue but left it unresolved and tasked Defense to do - 23 - a targeting study Thus we saw the problems in 1977 set in motion a number of efforts to deal with them and let it proceed in Defense for the next two years The Security Analysis Cluster and David took these issues for the most part I was denied access to almost all of the proceedings that led to a series of three secs April 24 25 26 1979 From staffers in the Pentagon however I followed the process and it appeared that Brown had dismissed the reservations about Hard Target Kill and our acquisi ti m of the MX in light of Soviet programs which he said make the HTK issue moot Defense studies NSC staff In any event David asked for more The issue was left there until Welch came to the I encouraged you to ask him to give highest priority to -- drafting a PD on targeting because from what 1 could see we were-drag ging our feet with re-studies of old an essentially resolved issues In March 1980 you asked me to comment on Welch's memo from you to Brown asking more questions on targeting At the meeting with you and Welch I offered an outline of a PD and recommended against the memo to Brown day You asked me to draft a PD for a meeting the next I did but also found myself confronted with an expanding coalition of people who did not want to see a draft go out To clarify the issues I gave you a memo March 21 Draft PD on Nuclear --- Targeting in which I made the arguments for my version In the series of exchanges that followed my draft was accepted with a few modifications largely the inclusion of the section on pre-planned options Brown's response was to stuff our draft with a lot of assured destruction rhetoric nothing new whatsoever Surprisingly he - 24 - fell off his points when we pointed out that most of his additions were redundant Thus the final version was distinguished by nothing from Brown but a small effort to downgrade and blunt the innovations of the draft you gave him To some extent we got him on board by using his countervailing term for describing our innovations Thus he was in a difficult position of having to deny his own label The process of getting it signed of course is recorded in the Chronology of the PD 59 Decision dated September 4 1980 The implications of the new targeting directive are spelled out in your memo to the President August 26 1980 The Carter Transformation of Our Strategic Doctrine Flexibility was expanded beyond pre-planned options to include targeting mobile as well as fixed forces Targeting emphasis is on all military c 3 r and war-supportin industries only on economic recovery insofar as the SIOP is retained c3r is treated as a broader requirement for control of both strategic and general purpose forces in a protracted conflict and calling for a look-shoot-look'' capability for identifying new and moving targets The secure reserve force is to be increased for influencing campaigns not only for psychological coercion Acquisition policy is tied to employment policy for the first time Conclusions With the drift from assured destruction as a budget device under McNamara to mutual assured destruction as a doctrine as the backdrop for SALT in the 1970s all doctrinal basis for concern with - 25 a long war and attendant requirements for mobilization command and control and adaptation to the conditions of new technologies and weapons disappeared syndrome We had come to what might be called the 1914 At that time every general staff in Europe expected that war would be short -- a few weeks maybe months -- that no economic mobilization would be necessary that peacetime war stocks would be enough Each major continental power also had one big war plan which if initiated could not be reversed without total chaos At the same time it was not clear that these war plans were designed for any particular war aims The war started the plans were imple- mented and governments were carried along trying to decide their war aims as the war unfolded dragging them into coalitions and conflicts they hardly dreamed of entering before hand Our SIOP is our one big war plan be reversible Once implemented it will not It presumes a short war a few days at most presumes no mobilization requirements It It even presumes no defense What war aims it will support is difficult to determine It might well leave the bulk of Soviet general purpose forces unharmed and free to roam the Eurcpean continent after we have expended the bulk of our forces in execution of the SIOP against Soviet economic recovery targets The series of PDs you have managed to get accepted breaks radically from this 1914 syndrome The new directives are concerned with mobilization defense command and control for a long conflict and flexible use of our forces strategic and general purpose for war aims we choose as we decide to go to war - 26 These directives however remain essentially a paper policy -------- - They have not significantly affected the budget process program designs in Defense or operational procedures in the JCS and unified commands occur The dialectical unity of_ h9ggh -- nd practice has yet to We can only hope that the next administration may grasp th same realities and be willing to work out the program implications