By requiring a launch vote from at least two crews, SAC hoped to prevent the launch of Minuteman missiles without proper authorization. But Rubel was surprised to learn that SAC had also installed a timer in every Minuteman control center. The timer had been added as a backup — an automated vote to launch — in case four of the five crews were killed during a surprise attack. When the officers in a control center turned their launch keys, the timer started. And when the timer ran out, if no message had been received from the other control centers, approving or opposing the order to launch, all the missiles lifted off. The problem with the timer, Rubel soon realized, was that a crew could set it to six hours, six minutes — or zero. In the wrong hands, it gave a couple of SAC officers the ability to wipe out fifty cities in the Soviet Union. An unauthorized attack on that scale, a classified history of the Minuteman program noted, would be “an accident for which a later apology might be inadequate.”
In 1959, Rubel sent a copy of Red Alert to every member of the Pentagon’s Scientific Advisory Committee for Ballistic Missiles. He thought that the Minuteman launch control system needed much stronger safeguards against unauthorized use, as well as some sort of “stop-launch” capability. The committee agreed with him. But the Air Force fought against any modifications of the system, arguing that they would be too expensive and that the Minuteman, America’s most important land-based missile, was “completely safe.”
Rubel’s concerns were taken seriously by the Kennedy administration, and an independent panel was appointed to investigate them. The panel found that Minuteman missiles were indeed vulnerable to unauthorized use — and that an entire squadron could be launched, accidentally, by a series of minor power surges. Although that sort of mistake was unlikely, it was possible. Two young SAC officers might be sitting innocently at their consoles, on an ordinary day, their launch keys locked away in the safe, as small fluctuations in the electricity entering the control center silently mimicked the pulses required by the launch switch. The crew would be caught by surprise when fifty Minuteman missiles suddenly left the ground.
“I was scared shitless,” said an engineer who worked on the original Minuteman launch control system. “The technology was never to be trusted.” Secretary of Defense McNamara insisted that a number of command-and-control changes be made to the Minuteman, and the redesign cost about $840 million. The new system eliminated the timer, allowed missiles to be launched individually, and prevented minor power surges from causing an accidental launch. Minuteman missiles became operational for the first time during the Cuban Missile Crisis. To err on the side of safety, the explosive bolts were removed from their silo doors. If one of the missiles were launched by accident, it would explode inside the silo. And if President Kennedy decided to launch one, some poor enlisted man would have to kneel over the silo door, reconnect the explosive bolts by hand, and leave the area in a hurry.
While the Department Of Defense publicly dismissed fears of an accidental nuclear war, the Cuban Missile Crisis left McNamara more concerned than ever about the danger. At a national security meeting a few months after the crisis, he opposed allowing anyone other than the president of the United States to authorize the use of nuclear weapons. A secret memorandum on the meeting summarized his views:
Mr. McNamara went on to describe the possibilities which existed for an accidental launch of a missile against the USSR. He pointed out that we were spending millions of dollars to reduce this problem, but we could not assure ourselves completely against such a contingency. Moreover he suggested that it was unlikely that the Soviets were spending as much as we were in attempting to narrow the limits of possible accidental launch…. He went on to describe the crashes of US aircraft, one in North Carolina and one in Texas, where, by the slightest margin of chance, literally the failure of two wires to cross, a nuclear explosion was averted. He concluded that despite our best efforts, the possibility of an accidental nuclear explosion still existed.
The supreme commander of NATO should not be granted any type of predelegation “to fire nuclear weapons,” McNamara argued — and even the president should never order their use without knowing all the details of a nuclear explosion, whether it was deliberate or accidental, “whether or not it was Soviet launched, how large, where it occurred, etc.” Secretary of State Rusk agreed with McNamara. But their views did not prevail. The head of NATO retained the authority to use nuclear weapons, during an emergency, on the condition that “every effort to contact the President must be made.”
