This Is Only Test How Washington Prepared for Nuclear War (32 page)

Compared to the Supreme Court, Congress was doing well. In February 1954, the Court’s marshal, T. Perry Lippitt, asked the FCDA for help in putting together a civil defense program. A Bell and Light system was installed, and basement rooms were designated as shelters. Lippitt organized an elaborate warden service and assigned detailed responsibilities, right down to the filling of 30-gallon water drums. Then in April 1956, the Court signed a contract with the Grove Park Inn in Asheville, N.C., to house the Justices and Court personnel during an emergency. Unlike the Greenbrier, the Grove Park Inn didn’t modify its facilities; no underground bunker was built. Each spring, the Marshall sent microfilmed payroll records to the clerk of the U.S. District Court in Asheville; otherwise, no records or supplies were cached in Asheville. In 1957, a preliminary relocation plan was drafted, apparently at the ODM’s request, but as Court Clerk James R. Browning admitted, “[i]t was not implemented in any way.” Meanwhile the contract with the Grove Park Inn sat in a filing cabinet, forgotten. In April 1966, the inn’s owners asked if the Court wished to continue the agreement, much to Chief Justice Earl Warren’s surprise. “I have no knowledge of this situation even to the extent of knowing whether the Governments [
sic
] wants this arrangement continued,” he told the court clerk.
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10

The Satchel Has Been Passed . . .

We do not expect that there will be a war but no one can tell when or if an

attack might come.

Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, November 29, 1961
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I want to say—and this is very important—at the end, we lucked out. It was luck that prevented nuclear war.

McNamara, in the 2003 film
fog of war: eleven lessons from the life of robert s. mcnamara

W
e see Kennedy’s right arm raised straight, his stance firm, taking the oath of office. Behind Chief Justice Earl Warren stands Eisenhower, a white scarf pulled tight round his neck. Suddenly he looks very old. We see Kennedy forcefully delivering his speech, his exhales visible, as if the very words are shots fired into the bitter cold.

Images of the inauguration of John Fitzgerald Kennedy on January 20, 1961, reinforce a key theme of his address, that the torch had just passed to “a new generation of Americans,” one that promised to “bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and success of liberty.”
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True, Kennedy was almost 30 years younger than his predecessor. True, he and his administration, led by “The Best and the Brightest,” brought to Washington much-heralded glamor and excitement.
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True, they chafed to apply new theories such as flexible response to the Cold War. We shouldn’t belabor the contrasts, however; there was much continuity between the generations as well as the administrations. The Berlin airlift and the Korean War, the development of thermonuclear weapons and missiles— surely these actions met the Kennedy litmus test for liberty. Contrary to candi
date Kennedy’s accusations, there was no missile gap; in 1960, the United States possessed many more ICBMs than did the Soviet Union. The ill-fated Bay of Pigs invasion grew out of plans inherited from Eisenhower, and when Walt Rostow, chair of the State Department’s Policy Planning Council, said the United States must never shirk from using nuclear weapons, he sounded like John Foster Dulles discussing “nuclear brinkmanship.”
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The day before his inauguration, Kennedy got a top secret introduction to another form of continuity. The customary transition meeting included a
briefing about nuclear war and postattack plans. Eisenhower began this part with a dramatic demonstration: as Kennedy watched, he telephoned for the White House’s fleet of evacuation helicopters, and then had Evan Aurand time their arrival. They set down on the White House’s south lawn in exactly five minutes, rotors whipping the air. Meanwhile Andrew Goodpaster opened up the naval aide’s satchel. He showed Kennedy
Federal Emergency Plan D-Minus
and the binder of EAPs. He pulled out the first document. Like all the EAPs, Eisenhower had initialed it to indicate he had read and approved the order, but the signature line was blank. Goodpaster summa
rized the order regarding the convening of Congress and told Kennedy about “the extra document—not a part of the Emergency Action Paper series—included in the satchel which would authorize the use of atomic weapons in an emergency.” Then Kennedy was shown another book explain
ing the prior authorizations Eisenhower had given to military commanders to use atomic weapons if the president was incommunicado while a nuclear attack was underway. Finally Goodpaster reviewed the White House Emergency Plan (WHEP), the military’s Joint Emergency Evacuation Plan (JEEP), and the underground facilities at Mount Weather and Camp David.
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The meeting made quite an impression. Kennedy and Goodpaster even discussed “how these procedures would work in the event of a surprise emergency” during the inauguration. Kennedy had traveled far from his days as a junior Congressman. As president he presided over a vast nuclear arsenal; close to his side, 24 hours a day, were orders giving him sweeping emergency powers; in a mere five minutes, he, his family, and select staff could scramble aboard helicopters for transport to any one of several underground sites. But one thing hadn’t changed since October 1949, when Kennedy first com
plained about the “deplorable” state of civil defense: the deplorable state of civil defense. Then, he had asked Truman to guarantee “that the civil popu
lation of our country will be ready to protect itself in any unlooked for and unhoped for emergency”; now, Kennedy wielded the power to make good on his 11-year-old request.
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He wasted no time. He instructed Frank B. Ellis, the new director of the OCDM, to review civil defense and mobilization programs. Ellis was reminiscent of Louis Johnson, Truman’s second secretary of defense. Like Johnson, his appointment was political reward—in this case, for get
ting out the Democratic vote in his home state of Louisiana—and he was blunt and brash. The OCDM was insufficient vessel for Ellis’s ambition, prompting him to unsuccessfully insist on cabinet rank. He noisily stumped for a “revival for survival,” centered on fallout shelters. Just as Johnson had proved no match for Truman, Kennedy effortlessly outmaneuvered Ellis by giving the shelter issue to White House aide Carl Kaysen, who recommended either abandonment of civil defense altogether or its trans
fer to the Defense Department. With Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara’s support, Kennedy chose the latter. The new Office of Civil Defense was created on July 20, 1961, and was headed by Assistant Secretary Steuart L. Pittman. The OCDM, less than three years old, was recast as the
Office of Emergency Planning (OEP) that same month. Ellis stayed on for a short time and then took a federal judgeship.
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It looked like another civil defense shell game. Eisenhower had folded civil defense into his mobilization agency; now civil defense was across the Potomac at the Pentagon. This time, however, the President used the “bully pulpit” to spark the revival for survival and wring funding from Congress. On May 25, 1961, he delivered a speech exhorting America to finally accept the challenge of civil defense, specifically shelters. Kennedy echoed the logic put forth ten years earlier by leaders such as Stuart Symington and Millard Caldwell—the best defense is an overwhelming offense—but he added an alarming twist: fallout shelters were “insurance for the civilian population” in case of “an irrational attack, a miscalculation, an accidental war which cannot be either foreseen or deterred.” Imagine Eisenhower, who dedicated consid
erable effort to establishing rational controls over America’s nuclear weapons, or Truman, who sugarcoated news of the Soviet atomic test with assurances that all was well, publicly uttering such words—right before meeting the Soviet premier, no less. (Kennedy met with Nikita Khrushchev in Vienna in early June.) Two months later, Kennedy went a step further. The summit hadn’t gone well, a showdown over divided Berlin was underway. On July 25, in a televised address, Kennedy promised the United States would defend West Berlin, if necessary; ordered draft quotas doubled, even tripled; and reiterated the call for a national fallout program, including stockpiling of provisions.
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In early 1947, Sen. Arthur Vandenberg (R-Mich.) reportedly told Truman he needed to “scare hell” into Congress and the American people if he wanted a $400-million anticommunist aid package for Greece and Turkey. We don’t know if Kennedy was thinking about the subsequent “Truman Doctrine” speech when he delivered the Berlin speech, but he certainly frightened people. “I don’t want a war. I don’t want to build a bomb shelter, but I don’t see what else we can do about it,” said one disheartened woman, expressing the sentiments of many Americans. Had they known the President and the military were drafting a detailed contingency plan for a nuclear first strike against the Soviet Union, their fears would probably have deepened. As it happened, the Soviets added to the crisis by ordering East Germany to seal off their sector of Berlin on August 13; construction of
der Mauer
, the Berlin Wall, began within days. Requests for shelter information inundated Washington. Concerned citizens filed into church basements to listen to civil defense speakers, and manufacturers such as the Peace-O-Mind Shelter Co. of Stephenville, Tex., rushed to offer affordable kits.
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Shelter fever finally caught up with Congress, which appropriated $207.6 million for Kennedy’s shelter program. Most of the money paid for surveys to designate fallout shelter space for 50 million people in public and private buildings and to salt away emergency food, water, and first aid kits. Overseen by the Army Corps of Engineers and the Navy’s Bureau of Yards and Docks, the surveys were carried out during 1962 and identified possible fallout space for 104 million people. Approximately 34 million “slots” had a Protection
Factor (PF) of 250 to 1,000; the remaining slots’ PF ranged from 40 to 250. (According to this formula, a PF of 1,000 meant the sheltered person received a dose of radiation 1,000 times smaller than the person outside the shelter. In 1956, the FCDA had calculated a healthy person could be exposed to 200 roentgens of radiation without needing medical care.) Eventually, dis
tinct black and yellow signs designated a total of 46 million slots. Legislators also proved that civil defense began at home by opening up the Capitol buildings to shelter surveyors.
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In Washington, the Berlin crisis and the shelter program revived the city’s moribund civil defense. In April 1959, Sen. Henry Jackson (D-Wash.), chair
man of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, had held a hearing on the District’s civil defense program. John Fondahl again found himself explaining the reasons for the city’s woeful preparedness: lack of funding, a skeleton staff, and inconsistent federal guidance. This time, though, he also had to defend himself. One of Jackson’s investigators had poked around the DCD office at Fort Reno, where he found cartons of undistributed pam
phlets, warden armbands, and shelter signs. A D.C. government audit had uncovered shoddy inventory methods.
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The massive Washington Area Survival Plan project, which dated back to 1955, still wasn’t finished. Although the
District of Columbia Survival Plan
finally appeared later that year, almost a decade of playing Sisyphus was enough for Fondahl. In September, he retired and George R. Rodericks from the District’s Department of Public Health took his place. Rodericks, who had served as a staff officer for General George Patton during World War II, brimmed with energy, but his first year on the job was marked by stagnation and setbacks. In 1960, Rep. Chet Holifield (D-Calif.) asked about the state of civil defense in the District. He learned that no public buildings, including schools, had been modified to offer fallout protection; the city had just issued its first building permit for a home fallout shelter; and evacuation reception centers in neighboring states were designated but far from ready.
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By October 1961, however, Rodericks could effuse that the “tempo of public interest in Civil Defense continues to increase at a rate never before demonstrated in this city.” The Veterans of Foreign Wars partnered with DCD to build a fallout shelter prototype in its national headquarters at 200 Maryland Avenue NE. Local papers and broadcasters were willingly dissemi
nating public service announcements about civil defense. Wallace and Barbara Luchs opened their newly finished home shelter at 3633 Appleton Street NW for public tours. Socialite and Kennedy supporter Marjorie Merriweather Post paid $20,000 to build and stock five fallout shelters at Hillwood, her expansive estate in Northwest Washington. Civil Defense courses resumed. In a three-month period, DCD gave lessons to 87 teachers and 196 other residents. Subjects included nuclear detonations, the basics of radiation and fallout, and shelters.
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DCD also helped carry out the citywide shelter survey, and Rodericks wrote a pamphlet on proper shelter management. (He admonished shelter managers to never allow pets, rumor-mongering, or fighting.)
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Kennedy’s support for civil defense also inspired suburban communities and residents. A Silver Spring (Md.) developer had the recreation rooms in his new apartment building designed to shield against fallout. According to a shelter expert, this was the first structure in the Washington area to include fallout protection in the blueprints.
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Montgomery County began construct
ing a $500,000 underground communications center next to the County Building in Rockville.
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In November 1961, the Fairfax Elementary School “Fun Fair” displayed a domed shelter and invited a physicist to answer ques
tions, most of which came from well-informed young boys. “The foot of concrete surrounding the shelter is equal to four inches of lead, isn’t it?” asked one. A six year old named Tommy George wanted to know if the shelter offered both blast and fallout protection. (It did.) Clearly adults weren’t the only ones wondering where the current Cold War crisis might lead, but civil defense veterans had witnessed such surges of interest before.
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