This Is Only Test How Washington Prepared for Nuclear War (24 page)

Evaluations of
OPAL
55, both internal and external, noted numerous deficiencies. Telescoping proved confusing. The ODM expressed disappoint
ment that some departments, including Commerce and Defense, hadn’t solved their assigned problems. Meanwhile some agencies wasted time on absurd problems: “It appeared incongruous and unrealistic that communica
tions during the early stages of Operation Alert (June 15, 1955) dealt with such matters as . . . legal questions on the essentiality of the brewing indus
try rather than being directed to the more important national considerations of supporting immediate military requirements, taking care of the displaced and burying the dead.” Almost every agency lacked personnel who could efficiently operate communications equipment. The participating agencies had their own criticisms. Many found their relocation sites to be inadequate. They recommended that future exercises test wartime organization of the executive branch rather than its peacetime structure. Relocated personnel also asked for plans for the evacuation and care of their families.
⁵⁶
This request underscored another major flaw: the unreliable assumption that wartime essential personnel would evacuate Washington without their loved ones. An Interior official spoke for many when he flatly declared: “Directive or no directive, fallout or no fallout, I am going to hunt for my wife and either live or die with her.”
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Finally,
OPAL
55’s planners had drafted damage patterns using outmoded bombs and had repeated the dubious practice of
assigning one bomb per city. Willard Bascom of the National Academy of Sciences was especially critical, asking why the FCDA designated Washington’s lone atomic bomb at 200 kilotons when recent public testimony had focused on the likely effects of a 10-megaton weapon.
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With its warden corps num
bering just 5,000—and most of these “volunteers” were just names on old rosters—DCD occupied itself by assessing damage reports. However, this benign activity was overshadowed by the criticisms of Deputy Director John Garrett Underhill, who disparaged
OPAL
55 as a “fiasco.” Fondahl promptly “fired” him (Underhill was a volunteer). Unchastened, the former military intelligence officer kept up a barrage of complaints, calling the exercise a waste of taxpayer’s money.
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The White House’s own evaluation was far less harsh: “This test lasted for three days, showed up the inadequacies of our plan, and pointed up the things that had to be done in order to make our relocation sites operational.”
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In other words,
OPAL
55 was just the beginning.

8

Capital Confusion

. . . if there is an atomic attack on Washington . . . there are only three things

you can do—there are three alternatives: dig, die, or get out.

Val Peterson
¹

. . . when I picture myself in the midst of danger, then I insist with clenched

teeth and all my will that the burrow should be nothing but a hole set apart to

save me, and that it should fulfill that clearly defined function with the greatest

possible efficiency, and I am ready to absolve it from every other duty. Now the

truth of the matter—and one has no eye for that in times of great peril, and only

by a great effort even in times when danger is threatening—is that in reality the

burrow does provide a considerable degree of security, but by no means

enough, for is one ever free from the anxieties in it?

Franz Kafka, “The Burrow”
²

O
n the night of September 22, 1955, Edward Beach took the presidential pleasure boat
Barbara Anne
on the Potomac for a cruise. The 25 guests enjoyed a buffet dinner as they talked about civil defense in the capital region. Officials from the FCDA, Defense Department, and NSC were aboard, joined by John Fondahl and suburban officials such as Hal Silvers, the direc
tor of Civil Defense for Prince Georges County, Md. Beach proposed they discuss ways in which overlapping jurisdictions might cooperate with one another to ensure the continued functioning of the federal government and the safety of the area’s population. Maryland director of Civil Defense Sherley Ewing found the meeting both productive and encouraging. As he told the President, this “direct evidence of your interest and leadership will be a real inspiration to all of us for the future.”
³

Eisenhower didn’t personally answer Ewing. Just two days later, he suf
fered a heart attack while on a working vacation in Colorado and didn’t return to Washington until November 11. His recovery was complete, how
ever, and in February 1956 he announced he would seek a second term.
⁴
Victory for Eisenhower that fall meant ongoing continuity of government preparations advanced steadily, yet it also meant civil defense and dispersal remained proverbial stepchildren, legally bound to, but spurned by, the national security state. At the same time, Soviet technological advances spurred fears that the United States was rapidly losing ground in the arms
race. In August 1957, the Soviet Union successfully tested an ICBM; two months later, it launched the Sputnik satellite. These breakthroughs, as well as the ongoing development of submarine-launched ballistic missiles, begged for difficult, informed decisions about the future of civil defense, but Operation Alerts continued to conjure scenarios based on low-yield bombs and detection of Soviet aircraft hours before they reached their targets.

This “missile gap” exposed further the implausibility of evacuation. Warning times soon to be measured in minutes rather than hours gave pause to even the most optimistic evacuation advocates. Should urban residents stay or go? Val Peterson had long favored evacuation, but in late 1956 he changed his position and presented a national plan to build blast and fallout shelters. He wasn’t alone; calls for shelters came from many quarters. Lacking presidential and Congressional support, however, Peterson’s plan went nowhere. The lack of consensus and decisive action sowed confusion, and nowhere else was this more evident than in the nation’s capital.

"Get Out"?

In May 1955, Eisenhower signed an NSC directive ordering a full evacuation of Washington on Warning Yellow. Although District Commissioner Samuel Spencer soon publicly announced the decision, the White House said little about the policy until October. Washington, one of 18 cities selected by the FCDA to write a comprehensive evacuation and recovery plan, had recently formed a Washington Area Survival Plan (WASP) committee. Beach declared that the President himself had high expectations for the WASP. “White House plans depend tremendously on the District,” he said, stating that staff would join the “evacuation traffic stream” and that Eisenhower had ordered automatic evacuation because the sight of White House staff leaving the city prior to a public warning would cause panic.
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Beach also implied that the executive branch had thrown its fate in with the city. This wasn’t entirely true. Although the White House Emergency Plan (WHEP) instructed some staff to join the public evacuation, it certainly didn’t call for the President and his entourage to leave by motorcade. Helicopters already waited to pluck them from the South Lawn; Beach was also working on plans to use boats for an evacuation down the Potomac. The Department of Defense also had a detailed plan at the ready, the Joint Emergency Evacuation Plan (JEEP), which outlined procedures for using air- and water
craft to remove 627 Defense personnel and 41 non-Defense officials from Washington upon receipt of Warning Yellow or by order of the President. Said Secretary of Defense Charlie Wilson: given the likelihood of traffic jams, Defense needed “a special plan to transport certain key officials out of the Washington target area to emergency relocation sites” (figure 8.1). Accordingly, 132 individuals from the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Departments of the Army, Navy, and Air Force would rendezvous at the Pentagon’s heliport. From there, Army helicopters would carry them to Fort Ritchie, Md., just a few miles from Site R. Air Force
helicopters outside the Pentagon Mall entrance would fly 36 Air Force per
sonnel to Fort Ritchie as well, while 306 individuals from the Army, Air Force, Office of the Secretary of Defense, and Joint Chiefs of Staff would hurry to the Pentagon’s boat docks. Small craft operated by the Navy would ferry them to Bolling Air Force Base to board flights for Martinsburg, West Virginia. (Martinsburg was a site for the Air Courier Service that would take personnel to relocation sites and provide document delivery between the sites.) Another set of boats awaited 105 Naval personnel, who were directed to the Anacostia Naval Air Station for flights to Martinsburg or the Marine base at Quantico. The 41 non-Defense personnel had seats aboard Army helicopters headed to Mount Weather. The roster included Arthur Flemming (ODM director), Allen Dulles (CIA director), Lewis Strauss (chairman of the AEC), J. Edgar Hoover (FBI director), and Val Peterson (FCDA administrator).
⁶

Missing from Beach’s announcement was an explanation of how Washingtonians would swiftly remove themselves beyond the District line. Pointing out the glaring gap between city and capital, Willard Bascom and Kenneth Brickner of the National Academy of Sciences questioned the motives for the new policy. They conceded the merit of beginning evacuation
of Washington as soon as possible but noted the White House cited no such reason. Rather, the “logic of how evacuation can best be accomplished is submerged in the simple truth that various government employees (includ
ing the president) have for some time been ordered to ‘relocate’ at the first (Yellow) warning. The government does not want it said that its people get a head start (that would ‘look bad’); so the entire population is instructed to leave.” That “head start,” officially secret yet commonly known, did indeed “look bad.” In May 1955, widespread rumors that “certain classes of employees and persons” would receive special treatment during an alert had compelled Fondahl to issue a firm rebuttal and declaim that the “evacuation plan when completed will equally affect Government and privately employed personnel.”
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When completed
. Written by Fondahl in January 1956, the city’s evacuation plan was tellingly labeled “interim” and “voluntary.” It served up a hash of preposterous advice, byzantine instructions, and conspicuous omissions. Stuck without a ride when the sirens wail? “Walk out on Evacuee Routes if you have to.” Driving alone? “Pick up passengers to the capacity of your car.” Hear the Take Cover signal but no shelter is available? “[O]pen the windows of your car and crouch below the window line.” Basements were described as useful fallout shelters; so were “foxholes” and cars. The plan called for evacuation to a distance of 16 miles from the District, yet it failed to identify any of the “Reception Areas.” Nor did it explain that the city would auto
matically evacuate on Warning Yellow. Instead, Fondahl provided a confusing description of the city’s six “traffic drainage areas.” The boundaries of area three, for example, included eleven different streets, McMillan Reservoir, Rock Creek, and even an “imaginary line,” but only during daytime—at night, a portion of area three bounded by five of those streets was assigned to area six. Hal Silvers called the plan “suicidal” because it failed to account for traffic bottlenecks in Prince Georges County and wondered why Fondahl hadn’t solicited his input.
⁸

Despite its flaws, several executive agencies endorsed the plan or simply told employees to find their own way out of town. The ODM told executive personnel to “follow the instructions given to the public by local civil defense authorities.” Assistant Secretary of Defense Carter L. Burgess informed Defense employees that “[p]rimary responsibility rests with the individual for evacuating the Washington area.” (Of course, this didn’t apply to those on the JEEP roster.) Family care was also the obligation of individuals. The United States Information Agency merely directed its personnel to “proceed” to its relocation site, East Carolina College in Greenville, N.C., after a warning. The National Security Agency told its employees to use newspapers to stay abreast of local civil defense plans. The Personnel Chief also distributed a map—of Fondahl’s “suicidal” traffic drainage areas.
⁹
Even if employees memorized the complicated evacuation routes, would they follow them to their relocation sites? Overlooked was the likelihood that wartime essential employees would put their obligations as parent and spouse above those of civil servant, especially during off-hours. So far, this problem had received scant attention.