General Lyman Lemnitzer, head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was not overly impressed by the plan. At a meeting the following week, Lemnitzer told President Kennedy that the United States still lacked the command-and-control capabilities for a limited nuclear attack. Any forces withheld from a first strike might never be available for a second one. And there was no guarantee that Khrushchev would understand, amid the chaos of nuclear war, that only his military targets had been attacked. Kaysen’s plan left the Soviet Union’s medium-range and intermediate-range missiles untouched — and if Khrushchev didn’t get the message and capitulate, Great Britain and most of Europe would be destroyed. Lemnitzer opposed any changes to the SIOP:
The plan is designed for execution as a whole, and the exclusion of attack of any category or categories of target would, in varying degree, decrease the effectiveness of the plan.
General Curtis LeMay wholeheartedly agreed with Lemnitzer. Indeed, if war came, LeMay thought the Soviet Union should be hit by more nuclear weapons, not fewer, to guarantee that every strategic target was eliminated. Despite strong political and philosophical differences, President Kennedy had recently promoted LeMay to Air Force chief of staff, out of respect for his operational skills. “If you have to go, you want LeMay in the lead bomber,” Kennedy later explained. “But you never want LeMay deciding whether or not you have to go.”
The underlying logic of both nuclear war plans was inescapable: kill or be killed. General Lemnitzer said that regardless of how the SIOP was executed, “some portion of the Soviet… nuclear force would strike the United States.” By the fall of 1961, the Soviet Union had about 16 long-range missiles, 150 long-range bombers, and 60 submarine-based missiles that could hit North America. It would be hard to find and destroy every one of them. Kaysen estimated that the number of American deaths stemming from his plan, “while small percentage wise — between three and seven percent [of the total U.S. population],” would nevertheless range between 5 million and 13 million. Just a handful of high-yield weapons, landing on New York City and Chicago, could produce that many deaths. “In thermonuclear warfare,” Kaysen noted, “people are easy to kill.” But the alternative to launching a surprise attack on the Soviet Union might be a lot worse. A Soviet first strike could kill as many as 100 million Americans.
President Kennedy was wrestling with these issues in the days leading up to his U.N. speech. The recommendations of the young civilians at the Pentagon seemed, in many ways, to contradict those of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The president would have to decide who was right. Neither superpower wanted a nuclear war. But neither wanted to back down, alienate its allies, or appear weak. Behind the scenes, all sorts of formal and informal contacts were being made between the two governments, including a secret correspondence between Kennedy and Khrushchev. And yet their positions seemed irreconcilable, especially with a deadline approaching. For the Soviet leader, West Berlin was a “rotten tooth which must be pulled out,” a center of American espionage, a threat to the future of East Germany. For Kennedy, it was an outpost of freedom, surrounded by totalitarian rule, whose two million inhabitants couldn’t be abandoned. The Berlin Wall, at least, had preserved the status quo. “It’s not a very nice solution,” Kennedy said, the day the barbed wire went up, “but a wall is a hell of a lot better than a war.”
On September 19, the day before the White House meeting on whether to launch a surprise attack, Kennedy sent a list of questions to General Power:
Berlin developments may confront us with a situation where we may desire to take the initiative in the escalation of the conflict from the local to the general war level…. Could we achieve surprise (i.e., 15 minutes or less warning) under such conditions by examining our current plan?… How would you plan an attack that would use a minimum-sized force against Soviet long-range striking power only, and would attempt to achieve tactical surprise? How long would it take to develop such a plan?… Is this idea of a first strike against the Soviets’ long-range striking power a feasible one?… I assume I can stop the strategic attack at any time, should I receive word the enemy has capitulated. Is this correct?
The president also wanted to know if the missiles aimed at Europe could be destroyed by an American first strike. During the meeting on the twentieth, General Power expressed concern that Khrushchev was hiding many of his long-range missiles. Without better intelligence, a limited strike on the Soviet Union would be too risky. The choice was all or nothing — and Power advocated an attack with the full SIOP.
