MEMORANDUM No Objection To Declassification in Full 2013 11 15 NLC-12-28-4-21-1 OFFICE OF THE VICE PRESIDENT WASHINGTON TOP SECRET SENSITIVE November 17 1977 MEMORANDUM FOR THE VICE PRESIDEN'l' l 'ROM SUBJECT then_y 3 2 00 p m Meeting with the President and Secretary of Defense As you know the President Zbig and Harold Brown are meeting today at 2 00 p m to talk about wartime emergency procedures Bill Odom of Zbig's staff was kind en h to ive us a copy of Brown's memo which includes th scussion Tab A Briefly the President indicated during a recent exercise in which you participated that his decision handbook was much too cumbersome and that he wished Defense to design a more succinct checklist to use The initial Defense response is attached to Brown's memo The President also indicated that he was concerned about how· to factor in the destruction of Soviet and Warsaw Pact conventional forces during a strat egic exchange Wl -th the Soviet Union He indicated that perhaps some sort of a decision matrix with respect to his current options would be an appropriate way to approach the· problem The bar graphs provided by Defense at clip attempt to address these two·co cerns by depicting the considerations involved in each case _The discussion·could become q ite technical but the main points to keep in mind are as follows If submarine launched ballistic missiles SLBMs are inbound then the· President has roughly 5 minutes to shape our response If only ICBMs are involved he could have as much as 17 minutes to do so However included in a response to Soviet ICBM launches would be a decision as to whether or not to risk destruction of a large portion of our own ICBMs ·If the President considers such a risk unwarranted then his decision time shrinks to that comensurate with the amount of our missiles he wishes to save The two scenarios S LBMs vs ICBMs are interrelated and would most likely occur simultaneouslr Therefore the President probably has only a few minutes to decide 1 whether or not to strike Warsaw Pact conventional forces 2 whether or not to launch our ICB ·is before they come under attack and 3 the resultant nature of our overall response TOP SECRET SENSITIVE ••• ' No Objection To Declassification in Full 2013 11 15 NLC-12-28-4-21-1 -- - ' a'••• ' - ••• - • ••• '