An Anxious Peace: A Cold War Memoir 2018049607, 9781623497279, 9781623497286, 1623497272

Table of contents :
Cover
Title
Copyright
Dedication
Contents
Acknowledgments
1. Early Years, Escape from Europe, and the End of World War II
2. The Beginning of the Cold War, Nuclear Weapons, and Graduate School at MIT
3. Edward Teller, the Nuclear Weapons Laboratory at Livermore, and Cold War Crises
4. The University of California, the Middle Eastern Wars, and the War in Vietnam
5. 1967 and 1968: Years of Changes, Setbacks, and Decisions
6. The NASA–Ames Research Center and the Cold War
7. Nelson Rockefeller, the End of the War in Vietnam, and the Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons
8. The National Reconnaissance Office and the US Air Force
9. Long-Range Bombers, Missiles, and a Space Command for the Air Force
10. Other Duties as Assigned and the Election of Ronald Reagan
11. The Interregnum and the Return to NASA
12. The Space Shuttle, Air Force Bombers, and a Long-Range Plan for NASA
13. Spacelab, Columbia, and Fundamental Changes in Cold War Policy
14. Defense against Ballistic Missiles and Two Important Firsts in Spaceflight
15. The Space Station, the President, and Leaving Washington
16. The Loss of Challenger, Crucial Summit Meetings, and Defense-Related Research at the University of Texas
17. The Reunification of Germany and the Collapse of the Soviet Union
18. Encore in Washington
Index

Citation preview

An Anxious Peace

Number 162

Williams-Ford Texas A&M University Military History Series A Davis Ford Book

An Anxious Peace A Cold War Memoir

Hans Mark T EXA S A & M U NIV ER SITY PRE SS C O L L EGE STAT ION

Copyright © 2019 by Hans Mark All rights reserved First edition This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/​NISO Z39.48–1992 (Permanence of Paper). Binding materials have been chosen for durability. Manufactured in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Mark, Hans, 1929– author. Title: An anxious peace : a Cold War memoir / Hans Mark. Other titles: Williams-Ford Texas A&M University military history series ; no. 162. Description: First edition. | College Station : Texas A&M University Press, [2019] | Series: Williams-Ford Texas A&M University military history series ; number 162 | Includes index. Identifiers: LCCN 2018049607| ISBN 9781623497279 (book/cloth : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781623497286 (e-book) Subjects: LCSH: Mark, Hans, 1929– | Aerospace engineers—United States—Biography. | United States. National Aeronautics and Space Administration—Officials and employees—Biography. | Cold War—Biography. | Aeronautics, Military—United States—History—20th century. | LCGFT: Autobiographies. Classification: LCC TL789.85.M32 A3 2019 | DDC 629.4092 [B] —dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018049607

Cover photo: Mushroom cloud courtesy of Los Alamos National Laboratory.

To all Americans who prevailed in World War II and in the Cold War

Contents Acknowledgments

ix

1. Early Years, Escape from Europe, and the End of World War II

1

2. The Beginning of the Cold War, Nuclear Weapons, and Graduate School at MIT

34

3. Edward Teller, the Nuclear Weapons Laboratory at Livermore, and Cold War Crises

74

4. The University of California, the Middle Eastern Wars, and the War in Vietnam

120

5. 1967 and 1968: Years of Changes, Setbacks, and Decisions

141

6. The NASA–Ames Research Center and the Cold War

164

7. Nelson Rockefeller, the End of the War in Vietnam, and the Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons

237

8. The National Reconnaissance Office and the US Air Force

279

9. Long-Range Bombers, Missiles, and a Space Command for the Air Force

324

10. Other Duties as Assigned and the Election of Ronald Reagan

373

11. The Interregnum and the Return to NASA

416

12. The Space Shuttle, Air Force Bombers, and a Long-Range Plan for NASA

434

13. Spacelab, Columbia, and Fundamental Changes in Cold War Policy

479

14. Defense against Ballistic Missiles and Two Important Firsts in Spaceflight

508

viii

Contents

15. The Space Station, the President, and Leaving Washington

551

16. The Loss of Challenger, Crucial Summit Meetings, and Defense Related Research at the University of  Texas

583

17. The Reunification of Germany and the Collapse of the Soviet Union

617

18. Encore in Washington

627

Index

643

Acknowledgments The very first idea for this book dates from 1977, when my wife and I moved to Washington, DC, so that I could take up my new post as under secretary of the air force. While unpacking, Marion pulled out a book of dark leather with “Journal” in embossed gold letters on the cover. She said, “This is a book of 190 blank pages, and I thought that you might be doing something worth recording!” That was the beginning of my daily diaries, which reflect day-to-day happenings as well as my thoughts. As one diary filled up, Marion would buy me another, and those diaries formed the basis of this book. Marion has always been my most valuable collaborator. Two other people were invaluable in helping me write this memoir. Therese Larson, who has been my assistant since 2002, endured many iterations of this book. She is a multitalented person with good judgment and a good sense for what is right. Her sense of humor has helped us get through some tough times together. Another person important to the crafting of this book was Kip Keller, a fine writer who was invaluable in fixing my sometimes garbled writing. Kip is also a sought-after editor, and I am honored to have had him work on my memoir. These three people have been around for the entire production of this volume. But I must also acknowledge that my father, Prof. Herman F. Mark, was instrumental in developing my interest in engineering, science, and their applications. On my twelfth birthday, he gave me Rockets through Space: The Dawn of Interplanetary Travel, by P. E. Cleator. He inscribed the book on June 17, 1941: “The phantasy of today is the reality of tomorrow.” The first time I read this book, I did not understand much except the pictures. But I persevered, and by the time I entered high school, I knew what I was going to do.

An Anxious Peace

1 Early Years, Escape from Europe, and the End of World War II

On December 25, 1991, Boris Yeltsin hauled down the red hammer-and-sickle flag that had flown over the Kremlin for more than seventy years. In its place, he raised the old Russian white, blue, and red tricolor that symbolized what Russia had been and, more importantly, what it might become. There was real hope that Russia would join the community of democratic nations. The Cold War was over. Many decades prior, when World War II ended, I did not realize that the geopolitical conflict eventually known as the Cold War would become my war—for that was still hidden behind the curtain of the future. Looking back at the twentieth century, there is not much doubt that the two great political evils with which the human race had to contend in that period were the ideologies of fascism and communism. Both had in common a contemptuous disregard for human life. They shared the operating philosophy that a small, largely self-selected group of people could and should be in charge of humanity’s fate. Furthermore, a strong case can be made that the United States of America successfully orchestrated the efforts to purge the world of these despicable political doctrines. Many people disagree with these statements. There are those who believe that the Cold War was not necessary, because they consider communism not to have been as dangerous as fascism. It is not my purpose to argue this point; this is a memoir, not a history. What is important is that the great majority of people I knew during the almost half century of the Cold War believed that it was necessary to destroy communism, and I agreed with this judgment. To those who argue that

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the Soviet Union would have collapsed in any event, even without effort on our part to make it happen, I have only one answer: there is no doubt that communism was a flawed political system that could not sustain itself in the long term. It failed to meet too many human needs, and most of us who were involved in the Cold War saw that. What we—the United States and our allies—did was hasten the end of the Soviet Union by pushing the country hard on many fronts. We prevented massive human suffering by destroying the communist system perhaps thirty or fifty years before it would have fallen by itself. I cannot prove this statement because we cannot replay the record of history. But I believe that it is the truth. Most of my students were toddlers when the Cold War ended. They often asked me whether we, in the United States, are better off today than we were during the Cold War. The answer is a resounding yes, for two reasons. First, during the Cold War there was one nation, the Soviet Union, capable of destroying the United States at a moment’s notice. We could have retaliated with equal force just before their strike hit. This state of affairs, called “mutually assured destruction,” created a level of fear that is hard to describe to people who did not experience it. Three times during the Cold War, US administrations put our strategic nuclear weapons systems on hair-trigger alert: in 1962 during the Cuban missile crisis, during the Yom Kippur War between Israel and the Arabs in 1973, and in 1983 when the Soviets put their forces on full wartime alert because of erroneous signals. Enough people on both sides kept their heads during these crises that people are around to tell the tale. It was, as the Duke of Wellington said of his victory at the Battle of Waterloo, “the nearest run thing you ever saw in your life!” Second, the ideology of communism required a command economy, and its failure was a major cause of the demise of the Soviet Union. The West’s victory in the Cold War means that market economies are now being developed vigorously in most of the nations that once had communist governments. Some of these nations—the most important being China—still have what they call “communist” governments, but also have flourishing market economies. My feeling is that an authoritarian, communist-style government is inconsistent with a market economy. Communism is a top-down system that does not value the individual initiative required in a market economy. I expect that even China will eventually be forced to adopt a democratic political system if it wants to maintain economic prosperity. This, then, is the legacy that my generation, which fought the Cold War, leaves to our successors. We have freed the world from the fear of a massive nuclear holocaust. We have created an international political climate that permits the development of market economies in many places where they did not previously exist. These economies, together with free trade, have substantially increased the standard of living in the former communist world and elsewhere.The world would not be in this condition if not for our victory in the Cold War. We have redeemed the promise that Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill wrote into the Atlantic Charter. They promised “freedom from fear and want.” From my perspective,

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having been around for more than eighty-five years, what I have just said is at least very plausible. The effort took longer than either Roosevelt or Churchill expected at the time. We had to fight and win both World War II and the Cold War. And by 1991, both these objectives had been achieved. With the West’s victory in the Cold War, a new era began. Prof. Samuel P. Huntington of Harvard University, whom I knew in passing when he was a member of President Carter’s National Security Council Staff in 1977 and 1978, published an article in the summer 1993 edition of Foreign Affairs titled “The Clash of Civilizations.” The second paragraph states his thesis: “It is my hypothesis that the fundamental source of conflict in this new world will not be primarily ideological or primarily economic. The great divisions among humankind and the dominating source of conflict will be cultural. Nation-states will remain the most powerful actors in world affairs, but the principal conflicts of global politics will occur between nations and groups of different civilizations. The clash of civilizations will dominate global politics. The fault lines between civilizations will be the battle lines of the future.” Given what has happened since 1991, this prediction seems astonishingly accurate. Are there any lessons that the Cold War provides for those who will have to engage in the conflicts that beset us now? I believe that there are, and Prof. Huntington’s paragraph provides guidance. First and foremost, we have to identify the enemy. Pres. George W. Bush called for a “war on terrorism” following the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001. I have always been uncomfortable with this formulation. Terrorism is a military tactic, not an enemy. My opinion is that the enemy is Arab-Islamic extremism. Note that I did not say Islamic extremism. There are about a billion and a half Muslims in the world and some three hundred million Arabs. Since 2001, almost all the attacks on targets related to the European civilization of which the United States is an element have been carried out by Arabs who happen to be Muslims. In addition, we must assess in a hardheaded way what the United States can contribute. In past conflicts, it was the ability to improvise and to meet military challenges with the rapid development of new strategies and new technologies. These have often provided a decisive margin of superiority. Also critical is America’s ability to absorb people from all the world’s civilizations, and this includes Arab Americans. Nearly all of us have shared experiences with people who have immigrated to the United States from other traditions and civilizations. Most of these people come to identify as Americans first—at least from what I have seen. Lastly, the United States is the only nation in the world based on an idea rather than on religious or ethnic traditions. This idea is embodied in a few sentences in our Declaration of Independence and in the Constitution. It is these few words that have provided the reason why it is that people from all over the world yearn to live in the United States rather than somewhere else.

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There is one final point that needs to be made. Our enemies have often assumed that we are soft and vulnerable, that we love luxury and tolerate dissent and argument to the point that it weakens us.They are mistaken. In the Cold War, we persevered for almost fifty years (1946–91), often against strong domestic opposition. It is because our democratic institutions tolerate—no, encourage—debate and dissent that we found the resolve and the will to prevail. I am confident that our successors will show the same determination.

Escape from Europe I was too young to serve in the military during World War II. In 1945, when the war ended, I was a sixteen-year-old third-year student at Stuyvesant High School in New York City. Stuyvesant was, and still is, a highly selective high school with a curriculum focused on science and technology. I graduated in 1947, ranking thirteenth in my class of 586 students. I felt on top of the world. I had just celebrated my eighteenth birthday. I had been admitted to the University of California, Berkeley, which even in 1947 was among the best public universities in the nation, and I had qualified for admission to the Naval Reserve Officers Training Corps (NROTC) unit at the university, which would fulfill my military obligation. (Conscription was still on the books in 1947, even though very few people were being drafted.) I thought that all this was slightly miraculous—I had been in the United States for only a little more than six years. In fact, I became a naturalized citizen only eighteen months before arriving in Berkeley in August 1947. That a virtual foreigner should receive these magnificent gifts was a bit astounding. I should explain why I felt that way. I was born in Mannheim, Germany, in 1929. My father, Prof. Herman F. Mark, was the supervisor of a chemical laboratory at the I. G. Farben factory located across the Neckar River in Ludwigshafen. In 1933, when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party took power in Germany, my parents returned to their native city,Vienna, taking their children (my younger brother, Peter, and me) with them. Growing up in Vienna during the 1930s was a pleasant experience. My father became a prominent chemistry professor at the University of Vienna, and he and my mother had a wide circle of friends with children, many of whom became my friends and playmates. What was not so pleasant was the low-level conflict between the “reds” (communists) and the “blacks” (fascists). There were fairly frequent street fights between red and black gangs that were units of the private militias that each side maintained. Occasionally there would be mortar fire and even artillery exchanges. In 1934, when I was five years old, the Austrian Nazis (with German support) organized a massive incident during which they murdered the head of the Austrian government, Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss, and created havoc in the streets for some days before regular Austrian Army troops restored order. My father had served in the Imperial Austro-Hungarian Army in World War I, and Dollfuss was in the same unit. They were good friends, and my father was very upset about

Early Years

5  Figure 1.1. My father, Prof. Hermann Franz Mark, 1935. He wears the uniform of a reserve first lieutenant, his rank in the AustroHungarian Imperial Army at the end of World War I. He was the most decorated company-grade officer in the army.

the assassination. All of us attended the funeral service, which is still one of my clear early memories. Four years later, on March 11, 1938, German troops crossed the border and occupied Austria. I remember that my father advocated for at least token resistance, since that would alert the rest of the world to the dangers posed by Nazi Germany. Unfortunately, the Austrian authorities did not listen. My father was arrested by the new, Nazi-dominated Austrian government. He had been a vocal opponent of attempts to Nazify Austrian politics. More than that, my father was vulnerable because his father was Jewish, which put him in danger. My mother, a Catholic, was also vigorously opposed to the Nazi doctrine. She had high-level connections in the Viennese Catholic Church. When I was old enough to understand, she told me that she had requested an audience with the then-incumbent cardinal archbishop of Vienna, Theodor Innitzer, to seek help in obtaining my father’s release. Innitzer refused her request, and she refused to kiss the cardinal’s ring at the end of the interview. She never entered a Catholic church again.

Figure 1.2. My first time in an airplane, circa 1935. Figure 1.3. My mother, Maria (Mimi) Schramek Mark, me, and my brother, Peter, 1936.

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The events of the first ten or eleven years of my life left me with two very strong impressions. First, I saw no difference between the way the fascists and the communists operated. Second, if I were ever again to be in a situation such as existed in Vienna in the 1930s, I would want to be able to shoot back when I was shot at. These impressions remained with me and became stronger as the years passed. Thus, almost inadvertently at first but with increasing determination later on, I have spent my life helping develop weapons that would enhance the military capabilities of the United States. Our eventual escape from Austria and Europe was a combination of luck and foresight. Luckily, one of the officials in the prison where my father was held was one of his former students. This man, after receiving a bribe, released my father with a pass to leave the country, provided that we would depart within forty-eight hours. I remember my mother coming to the school where my brother and I were students. She took us home and told us that we would be going on summer vacation early this year. (It was then only April.) The foresight belonged to my father, who, after the attempted coup d’état in 1934, saw the handwriting on the wall. He started to buy platinum, which, as a chemist, he could do without attracting undue attention. It was drawn into wire and bent into coat hangers. So when we left the country, our clothes were hanging on our wealth. Our most important advantage was that my father owned a car. It was an American car, a 1934 eight-cylinder Hudson sedan, which caused quite a stir in Vienna when my father acquired it. I vividly remember that late in April 1938 we crossed the border into Switzerland, the old Hudson festooned with a Nazi flag mounted on the radiator. We told the border guards that we were headed for a skiing vacation. We got away with the ruse, and a few miles farther on, my father stopped the car and, together with my mother, ceremoniously burned the Nazi flags. At this point, it seems reasonable to provide some of my parents’ history. Both were children of immigrants who came from outlying provinces of the far-flung Austro-Hungarian Empire. Their migration to Vienna was a common story in the years before 1900. Vienna, the glittering imperial capital, had many attractions for bright young provincials. My father’s family originated in Timisoara (Temeschwar), a city in the Banat region of what is now Romania. The family was Jewish, and they were tradesmen in town. My great-grandfather was a glazier (glassmaker), and family lore has it that he was also something of a Talmudic scholar. My grandfather Hermann Mark was born in 1861, the eldest of four boys. He moved to Vienna and studied medicine at the University of Vienna. In 1891, he married Lili Mueller, who was of German-Bavarian decent and a Lutheran. He established a medical practice in the same year and soon acquired a reputation as a highly competent physician. In his memoir (From Small Organic Molecules to Large: A Century of Progress, 1993), my father wrote about my grandfather:

8

Chapter 1 Another interesting and, later, exciting “outside” influence came from my father’s medical studies. For several years, he was a classmate and colleague of Sigmund Freud. After they both had graduated, they remained good friends, and I remember that several alumni of the Old Viennese Medical School (Tandler, Schnitzler, Freud, and my father) frequently had dinner in our house, where my mother, an excellent cook, took care of them. Most of my father’s friends were Jewish, and a few of them were even Zionists (Otto Weich and Wilhelm Korwin).

Grandfather Hermann Mark died before I was born, so I never knew him. My grandmother Lili I remember well as a large jolly lady with a remarkable sense of humor. She was accidentally killed in 1945 by a Soviet tank during the fighting in Vienna. My father had a brother, Hans—after whom I am named—who was a year younger and eventually took over their father’s medical practice. He died in 1974. There was also a younger sister, Elizabeth (Lisl), who married a distinguished professor of civil engineering, Eugen Czitary. She died in 2001 at the age of ninety-six. My mother’s father, Franz Schramek, was born in Moravia in the region north of Brno, near the Polish border. I do not know exactly when he decided to move to Vienna, but it must have been at about the same time as Grandfather Mark. He had married a local girl and become an apprentice in a tailor shop. He did very well and eventually joined the staff of tailors in the imperial household. My maternal grandmother died before I was born, but I remember Grandfather Schramek very well. Following the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1919, he lost his job. He established his own shop and also became a socialist. My father was amused, but my mother, who was still a Catholic at the time, was scandalized. My brother, Peter, and I were real street urchins in 1936 and 1937, and we used to roam around downtown Vienna. One of the highlights was the annual May Day parade, and we used to look for our grandfather marching with the socialists and sporting a blazing red carnation. Tall and thin, he was always busy in his small shop. During those years, he made all our clothes; many years later when we were living in New York, my father still had several suits with the Schramek label. My mother had two sisters, Aunt Lina and Aunt Hanna. Lina was two years older than my mother, and she married a gentleman named Walcher. I remember that their son, Robert, was my age and was one of our playmates. Aunt Hanna was eight or ten years younger; she also married and had children, but they were born after we left Vienna. We were on the road from late April 1938 to the end of the year, staying in Switzerland and France for extended periods. My father, as a prominent scientist, had many contacts in those countries. We lived on the successive sale of the coat hangers. My memory is a bit hazy, but I think we arrived in England late in 1938. My father had arranged to take a position in Canada with the Canadian International Paper Company, a Norwegian-owned concern. He left my mother, my

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brother, and me in England to establish himself in Canada before bringing us over to join him. During the tense time that followed, my mother was a tower of strength. She was shrewd in her judgment of people, and she was a street fighter. The following incident illustrates this point. Shortly after my father was arrested by the Nazis in Vienna, two Gestapo agents arrived at our apartment one evening and demanded to search the place. My mother, aided by our housemaid, Hannah, furiously scolded the two young agents. They eventually left, deciding that they could not deal with the two “hysterical” women. As far as I know, they never returned. I remember hiding under the piano in our living room while all this was going on. My mother displayed the same pragmatic tough-mindedness during our months in England. Many years later, we found out that Hannah had been a secret member of the Communist Party in Austria. I like to think that the eventual alliance between the Western democracies and the Soviet Union during World War II was presaged by this incident. There was no doubt that at that time the Nazis were worse than the Soviets, which became the rationale for forming the wartime Allied-Soviet alliance. During the months in England, I became a confirmed, lifelong Anglophile. There was a view among the British that German-speaking refugees from the continent should be well treated, which contrasted favorably with the treatment we received from the Italians, the Swiss, or the French. For instance, when gas masks were handed out, our local air raid warden in London saw to it that my brother and I, though we spoke no English, were moved to the head of the line, along with the other children. He wanted to make certain that we would get our gas masks before the supply ran out. We were both grateful and completely surprised. Late in 1938, the British decided to evacuate all German-speaking refugees in England—there were about 100,000—because Nazi agents had clearly been able to infiltrate the group. We were given the choice of being interned on the Isle of Man or going to Canada or Australia. Since my father was already in Canada, we embarked on the Duchess of Richmond, a Canadian Pacific passenger steamer that had been converted to a troop ship. It took Canadian troops to England and carried refugees on return trips to Canada. We arrived in Montreal late in 1938—I remember that I was wearing short pants when we arrived, and I was terribly cold! We spent almost two years in Canada.The pulp and paper factory where my father worked was located in the small town of Hawkesbury, Ontario, about halfway between Montreal and Ottawa. We spent a very happy time in Hawkesbury because we were free from the fear that had been pervasive since 1933. But my parents were dismayed by events transpiring in Europe during our tranquil interlude in Hawkesbury. Norway and Denmark fell to German armies in April 1940. The Netherlands, Belgium, and France were invaded on May 10. The two small countries surrendered quickly, but the really big shock was the collapse of France. I remember my father, the old soldier from World War I, telling us that somewhere in northern France, General Weygand had a huge army that would cut

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off the German forces around Paris from their supply sources and destroy them. It was not to be, and France surrendered to Germany on June 22, 1940. The surrender ceremony itself was held in the Forest of Compiègne in the same railroad car that had been used by the French to accept the surrender of Germany in 1918. My brother, Peter, and I were vaguely aware of all of this but not in detail. One of my memories from this period is that we listened to the radio for news. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation would rebroadcast the speeches of Winston Churchill. My brother and I had learned English rapidly, but I cannot say that we really grasped what he was saying. What I do remember is his sonorous and powerful voice. I also remember at one point during dinner in 1940 my father telling us that there was a good chance that Nazi Germany would win the war. This statement brought us up short. In spite of the tranquil setting of Hawkesbury, we were still in danger. Early in 1940, my father was offered a post as adjunct professor of chemistry at the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn. He accepted, and we moved from Ontario to New York that summer. My father was welcomed into the United States because of his expertise in the field of synthetic rubber—a shortage of natural rubber was a major problem at the time. German U-boats had cut off supplies of rubber from South America, and the Japanese would shortly conquer the rubber-producing countries of Southeast Asia. Thus, synthetic rubber became a crucially important element in the American war effort. My father was brought in to help. He eventually established and directed the Polymer Research Institute at Brooklyn Polytechnic, which had a major impact on the development of synthetic materials around the world. He was awarded the National Medal of Science by Pres. Jimmy Carter in 1980 in recognition of his scientific achievements.

A New Life in New York From early 1941 to 1947, I lived in a large apartment at 325 Ocean Avenue in Brooklyn with my parents and my brother. School was the center of attention for Peter and me. We were enrolled in Public School 92 on Parkside Avenue, which was about a ten-minute walk from our apartment. Our first priority was to perfect our knowledge of English. Peter and I were determined to speak it without an accent, because what we wanted most was to become accepted as Americans. During the summer of 1940, a few months after we had arrived in New York, my father acquired a new car. It was another Hudson, a blue 1940 “Super Six” four-door sedan. He decided that we would take three weeks off and drive across the country to California and back. This trip was another seminal experience for me. The car was crowded because, in addition to my mother and father and Peter, there were two graduate students, Turner Alfrey and Albert Bartovics, who shared the driving. The vacation was strenuous but fascinating. The most important impression that I was left with was the vast expanse of the country and all the great

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empty spaces in the West—the great North American desert. In addition, there was California. I was overwhelmed by California. My father had two important friends there, Joel Hildebrand, who was a distinguished professor of chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley, and Linus Pauling, who held a similar position at the California Institute of  Technology, in Pasadena. We visited both men. In June 1940, I had just passed my eleventh birthday, and my experience in California was so incredible that I decided one day I would live there. I felt that Hawkesbury and New York were quite similar to familiar European scenes. But the American West, especially California, was something new, and I wanted to be part of that. Our Brooklyn apartment was spacious, and part of the rent was paid by the Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee. In exchange, we always had one or two recently arrived refugees living with us for up to six months. Some of these people were friends from Vienna who had been able to escape from Europe in part through my father’s influence. One of these was Oskar Karlweis, who had been in the army with my father and had become prominent in the Viennese theatre following the war. Karlweis later enjoyed a good acting career in Hollywood, appearing in movies such as 5 Fingers (1952) with James Mason. Our social life revolved around the refugee community. We would visit one another’s apartments for European meals and also to play tarok, which is a favorite Viennese card game that is usually accompanied by much vigorous shouting. On December 7, 1941, my parents, Karlweis, Peter, and I were on a subway train from Brooklyn to Forest Hills in Queens to visit another refugee family for dinner. At about five o’clock in the afternoon, the train stopped at one of the stations on the way, and newsboys with loads of papers entered the train. The headline was that Japanese aircraft had bombed the US naval base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. We were stunned by the news. By the time we reached our friend’s apartment, the consequence of the Japanese attack was clear: the United States was now in the war, which meant that eventually Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan would be defeated. Our dinner party that evening turned into a quiet celebration with prayers of thanks. We knew that much hard work would have to be done, and much suffering endured, but the outcome of the war was clear. Winston Churchill felt the same way. In The Grand Alliance, the third volume of his history of World War II, he said the following about the attack on Pearl Harbor: “I do not pretend to have measured the martial might of Japan, but now at this very moment I knew the United States was in the war, up to the neck and in to the death. So, we had won after all! . . . Being saturated and satiated with emotion and sensation, I went to bed and slept the sleep of the saved and the thankful.”

The United States Enters World War II Things changed with the US entry into the war. Even for us in grade school, the pace quickened. P.S. 92 became the meeting place for Battalion 11 of the Junior

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Bluejackets of America, which today would be called the Navy Junior ROTC. Both Peter and I joined, and we began to learn about the US Navy. The Bluejackets had a summer camp near Sag Harbor, a few miles from the eastern tip of Long Island. For three or four years, Peter and I spent a month every summer at Camp Bluejacket. We learned close-order drill, which I believe is important to master when you are very young. More importantly, we developed a passion for sailing. Camp Bluejacket was located on Gardiners Bay, and the camp owned a dozen small sailboats that we learned how to handle and race. (My friends and I still sail my twenty-six-foot sloop on Lake Travis near Austin!) In the autumn of 1943, when I was fourteen, I left P.S. 92 to enter Stuyvesant High School. There were three all-city high schools in New York at the time. To gain admission, I had to pass an entrance examination, but it was well worth the effort to jump that hurdle. The Stuyvesant curriculum was organized around science and mathematics, but the humanities were not ignored. In fact, the humanities faculty had some true superstars, such as Joseph T. Shipley, who was also a prominent literary critic; Edward Coyle, a distinguished historian and Latin-language scholar with whom I studied Latin for four years; and Samuel Steinberg, who headed the Social Studies Department and also held an adjunct faculty appointment at the City College of New York. The science and mathematics faculty was equally distinguished. Students at Stuyvesant High School experienced a concentrated education in Western civilization and values.There were large doses of European and US history, together with the ancient traditions on which these histories were based. Equally important was the in-depth treatment describing how modern science and engineering grew out of the European intellectual tradition. We learned about the development of navigational techniques in Portugal, Spain, and Britain during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. For the first time, I gained a comprehensive knowledge of the world’s geography.We learned about Nicolaus Copernicus, Galileo Galilei, and Isaac Newton, who unraveled the behavior of the solar system and in the process invented the science of mechanics. The creation of modern chemistry (by Boyle, Priestley, Lavoisier, Bunsen, and Fischer) and electromagnetics (by Coulomb, Ampere,Volta, Faraday, Henry, and Maxwell) were important parts of the curriculum. Finally, we had our first exposure to modern science, which included relativity (Albert Einstein) and quantum mechanics (Max Planck and Niels Bohr). Much of this was not yet coherently set in my mind. Early in 1943, I started to pester my father about allowing me to work in one of the laboratories at the Polymer Research Institute for a few hours after school. After some argument, I convinced him. Working at a genuine research institute at age fourteen was an eye-opening experience. My mentors were Isidor Fankuchen, a renowned physicist and crystallographer, and Walter P. Hohenstein, a chemist and chemical engineer. Both were excellent teachers, and both tolerated a young fellow following them around like a puppy dog. The first thing I discovered about Brooklyn Polytechnic was that many of the distinguished faculty members were refugees from Europe.

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A partial list includes Ernst Weber, from Germany, who headed the Electronics Research Center and later succeeded Harry Rogers as president of the school; Hans Reissner, Nicholas Hoff, and Antonio Ferri, who initiated the school’s strong aeronautics program; Paul Peter Ewald, a world-renowned crystallographer from Germany who joined the physics department; and one of my mentors, Walter P. Hohenstein, and his friend Frederick Eirich, who came from Austria. I began to realize that many of the people who represented the European scientific tradition had, like my father, been forced to leave Europe. Many of them were Jewish. We were living through the wholesale transfer of European science and technology from the Old World to the New. I spent the summer of 1944 working in Professor Fankuchen’s laboratory and started to build my own X-ray diffraction system.There was plenty of surplus equipment, and I had a grand time scrounging around for things to make the system work. A year later, World War II was drawing to a close. On August 6, 1945, we heard that a powerful new weapon had been used to destroy the Japanese city of Hiroshima. Pres. Harry Truman, who had succeeded to the office upon the death of President Roosevelt on April 12, 1945, issued a statement that said, in part, “Sixteen hours ago an American airplane dropped one bomb on Hiroshima. . . . It is an atomic bomb. It is a harnessing of the basic power of the Universe.” The president went on to say that by using this weapon, “we shall completely destroy Japan’s power to make war.”

The Development of the First Nuclear Weapons The bombing of Hiroshima was sensational news. Along with everyone else working in Professor Fankuchen’s laboratory that summer, I began asking him questions about what had happened. I was far enough along at Stuyvesant to understand that there was such a thing as the atomic nucleus, and I knew about Einstein’s famous equation that defined the equivalence of mass and energy (E = mc 2 ), but I did not understand what all this really meant. Fankuchen took mercy on us and agreed to spend one hour a day for the next week explaining what he could about how atomic bombs might be made to work. Appropriately enough, the story that he told began with Albert Einstein. The relationship between mass and energy explains the source of the energy for what Truman called an atomic bomb. The second important discovery that led to the development of the bomb was the identification of the atomic nucleus by Ernest Rutherford. Finally, there was the work of James Chadwick, who discovered the neutron, which, along with the proton, was one of the two important constituents of the atomic nucleus that had been identified at that time. In late 1938, two German chemists in Berlin, Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann, bombarded a sample of uranium with a beam of neutrons. They expected to see elements with

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atomic numbers beyond 92, which was the number of the last known element at the time, uranium. Instead, they found traces of elements with about half the atomic number of uranium. They concluded that the neutrons had induced fission in the uranium nucleus and split it into two smaller fragments with atomic numbers between 40 and 50. Two months after this startling discovery, two Austrian theoretical physicists, Otto Frisch and his aunt Lise Meitner, calculated on the basis of known mass-spectroscopic data that an enormous amount of energy must be released during the fission of uranium.The combined mass of the fission fragments is smaller than the original mass of the uranium nucleus, and Einstein’s equation predicts that the “missing” mass is converted into a large release of energy. Frisch and Meitner speculated that additional neutrons would be emitted during each fission reaction. This was the truly important point. If, indeed, neutrons were emitted following each fission reaction, then it might be possible to create a chain reaction during which enormous amounts of energy would be released in an instant. The first person to realize that nuclear chain reactions might be possible was a Hungarian physicist, Leo Szilard. Shortly after Chadwick’s discovery of the neutron in 1933, Szilard understood that neutrons could be used to easily initiate nuclear reactions. Because the neutron carries no electric charge, it can easily penetrate ordinary matter and, more importantly, penetrate the positively charged atomic nucleus. In 1935, Szilard, a Jewish refugee from Europe, spent some time in England. He concluded that large-scale nuclear reactions could become a practical source of energy. In 1935, Szilard actually took out a US patent in which he listed thorium, uranium, and beryllium as possible nuclear fuels and then also made a list of possible applications of large-scale nuclear reactions, including nuclear explosives and nuclear reactors to generate electric power. In 1935, Szilard’s patent bordered on science fiction. But by early 1939, he had become the principal person initiating the US program to create nuclear weapons. In that year, three research efforts were under way to determine how many neutrons were emitted in each fission reaction. If the answer turned out to be any number greater than one, then large-scale nuclear reactions were possible. At Columbia University in New York, Leo Szilard and Walter Zinn, a Canadian postdoctoral student, constituted one of the groups. A second group, also at Columbia, was headed by Enrico Fermi, the brilliant Italian physicist who had just arrived in the United States after picking up the 1938 Nobel Prize in Physics in Stockholm. Finally, in Paris, Frédéric Joliot, son-in-law of the famed Madame Curie, and his collaborators, Hans von Alban (from Austria) and Lew Kowarski (from Russia), made up the third group. The answer to the neutron question came promptly: all three teams found that between two and three neutrons were emitted in each fission reaction. This was ominous news. Not only was a nuclear-fission chain reaction possible, but given the large excess of neutrons produced, it might turn out to be relatively easy to build a uranium fission bomb. Szilard was thoroughly alarmed. He was

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aware that the Germans, because of their earlier discovery of nuclear fission and their great competence in science and engineering, could easily be ahead of the United States in the development of nuclear explosives. The prospect that such a weapon might fall into the hands of Adolf Hitler terrified him, and so he decided to take the initiative. Szilard was blessed with acute political judgment. He realized that to get things going, he would have to attract the attention of people at the highest level of the US government—and that meant Pres. Franklin Roosevelt. In addition, he realized that the only scientist who had worldwide fame and who could also understand the implications of the discovery made by Szilard, Fermi, and Joliot was Albert Einstein. To persuade Einstein to approach the president, Szilard turned for advice to two Hungarian scientists who had also recently arrived in the United States, Eugene Wigner and Edward Teller. The three agreed that they would draft a letter for Einstein to sign and send to President Roosevelt. In August, they asked for an appointment with Einstein. The great man had a vacation home on the eastern end of Long Island. The appointment was made for August 2, 1939. Einstein listened to the Hungarians’ arguments, agreed with them, and signed the letter. This was the important paragraph: “In the course of the last four months it has become probable—through the work of Joliot in France as well as Fermi and Szilard in America—that it may become possible to set up a nuclear chain reaction in a large mass of uranium, by which vast amounts of power and large quantities of new radium-like elements would be generated. Now it appears almost certain that this could be achieved in the immediate future.” Delivering the letter to the president presented another problem—simply putting it in the mail would not do. Szilard decided to entrust delivery of the letter to Alexander Sachs, a friend whom he had consulted earlier about the problem. Sachs was an economist and a member of the Wall Street firm Lehman Brothers. He was also a campaign contributor and a part-time speechwriter for Roosevelt. Szilard gave the final version of Einstein’s letter to Sachs on August 15, and Sachs promised to deliver it as soon as possible. Two weeks later, on September 1, Nazi Germany invaded Poland, starting World War II. It was not until October 11 that Sachs was received at the White House. He met with the president and then provided a short summary of Einstein’s letter. He emphasized civilian power generation, the production of radioactive materials for medical applications, and as Sachs put it in a memorandum to FDR, “bombs of hitherto unenvisaged potency and scope.” Sachs strongly recommended that the president make arrangements with Belgium to secure the largest-known uranium ore deposits, in what was then the Belgian Congo. He also urged the president to establish a knowledgeable group to coordinate nuclear efforts. President Roosevelt saw precisely what Sachs was driving at. After the meeting, Sachs met with members of the White House staff, which resulted in the establishment of the Advisory Committee on Uranium, chaired by Lyman Briggs, the

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director of the National Bureau of Standards, and containing members from the military and interested agencies. The most important move made by the committee was to recommend that six thousand dollars be allocated to buy uranium ore for research in nuclear science and technology. It soon became apparent that people with recent, direct experience in nuclear physics had to become involved. Accordingly, in June 1940 the president established the National Defense Research Committee (NDRC) and asked Vannevar Bush, the dean of engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of  Technology, to come to Washington to head it. The Advisory Committee on Uranium was absorbed by the NDRC. For the remainder of World War II, Bush reported directly to the president and served as his principal adviser on science and technology. He later headed the White House Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD), which coordinated all wartime scientific efforts. Szilard’s effort to start the program to develop the first nuclear weapons had succeeded. On January 9, 1941, Prof. Glenn Seaborg and two of his colleagues, Arthur C. Wahl and Joseph W. Kennedy, bombarded a large sample of a uranium compound for a lengthy period. They used the sixty-inch cyclotron at the University of California, Berkeley, which had been built by Ernest O. Lawrence the year before. After careful chemical analysis and separation, they were able to identify two new elements, atomic numbers 93 and 94. In March 1941, they were able to assert that they had isolated a new element (which they later named plutonium) that had a long half-life (24,000 years) and was likely to be a more useful nuclear fuel than uranium-235. This new element, plutonium-239, is chemically different from uranium and can therefore be separated from uranium by chemical means rather than by cumbersome physical methods. Plutonium-239 is produced by the capture of a neutron by uranium-238, which becomes uranium-239. This isotope decays rapidly to form plutonium-239. Thus, plutonium-239 can be made in quantity, provided that an intense source of neutrons is available. Finally, in that momentous month of March 1941, Seaborg, Kennedy, and a new member of the group, Emilio Segre, who was a refugee from Italy, proved experimentally that, indeed, plutonium-239 worked as well as (or even better than) uranium-235 as an initiator of nuclear-fission chain reactions. During 1940 and 1941 there were rumors of progress on the German nuclear weapons program. The Nazis’ best theoretical physicist, Werner Heisenberg, was in charge, and many of the best German scientists, including Carl Friedrich von Weizsacker, Walter Bothe, and Karl Harteck, were involved. The German work increased the urgency of the US nuclear weapons effort. A program was established to build a nuclear reactor that would eventually provide the neutron source to make plutonium-239 in quantities large enough to produce nuclear weapons. A laboratory was established at the University of Chicago. It was called the Metallurgical Laboratory, and Fermi and his collaborators were moved from Columbia University to Chicago, where he was in charge of building the reactor. The US

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Nobel laureate Arthur H. Compton (physics, 1927) was put in overall charge of the Metallurgical Laboratory. The nuclear reactor that Fermi planned to build was a graphite pile that would moderate (that is, slow down) the neutrons. The pile was full of holes that would be filled with fuel elements made of natural uranium. Fermi’s reactor was successfully operated for the first time on December 2, 1942.

The Manhattan Project While the achievement of the Chicago team was the single most important technical advancement in 1942, several other developments that year were equally portentous. A formal military organization was chartered to develop and build a nuclear weapon (“atomic bomb” was then and is still a colloquial term for a nuclear weapon). In September 1942, a “district” of the US Army Corps of Engineers was established for the purpose of managing the project. It was called the Manhattan Engineer District, at the suggestion of the temporary army chief of the program, Col. James C. Marshall, who had his office in Manhattan. There was a sharp struggle between the army and the OSRD over who would be in charge. Since this was a line management job rather than a coordinating function, OSRD’s Vannevar Bush lost the argument. (Line management involves administration of a specific functional area; a coordinating function, such as human resources, involves broad-based planning and oversight.) The army was put in charge, and its leadership chose Col. Leslie R. Groves to command the Manhattan Engineer District. Colonel Groves was promptly promoted to brigadier general, and he commanded what eventually became the Manhattan Project until the end of the war. In July 1942, University of California physics professor J. Robert Oppenheimer organized a meeting of leading theoretical physicists in Berkeley to consider the design of a nuclear bomb. A group of “luminaries,” as Oppenheimer called them, gathered in a room on the fourth floor of LeConte Hall, the physics building on the UC campus. Included in this group were Hans Bethe of Cornell University, John H.Van Vleck of Harvard, Felix Bloch of Stanford University, Edward Teller of George Washington University, Emil Konopinski of Indiana University, and Robert Serber, a postdoctoral fellow working for Oppenheimer in Berkeley. Two graduate student assistants, Stanley Frankel and Eldred Nelson, also attended. Although all the luminaries were American citizens, three (Bethe, Teller, and Bloch) were recent refugees from Europe. Oppenheimer’s group performed a series of calculations that became the first rough design estimates for nuclear explosives using uranium fission as a source of energy. Aware that plutonium might be a fuel, they made similar calculations for that possibility. Finally, Teller and Konopinski advocated a serious look at the use of deuterium fusion as an energy source for what they called the “super bomb.” The report that Oppenheimer produced for General Groves was submitted in August 1942, and it was optimistic. Leaders of the Manhattan Project decided to

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establish a laboratory where the new “atomic” bombs would be designed, developed, built, and tested. The site selected was a high mesa in central New Mexico where there was a small, exclusive boy’s school called the Los Alamos Ranch School. Oppenheimer had spent time there as a young boy and later bought a summer retreat some miles to the east, so he was familiar with the place. The Los Alamos location provided precisely the kind of isolation necessary for such highly secret work. The Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory was activated in April 1943. Another critical decision reached as a result of Oppenheimer’s optimistic report was to initiate an all-out effort to produce the fuel for the atomic bombs, uranium-235 and plutonium-239. All methods of separating uranium-235 from uranium-238 would be carried out in parallel, and a large nuclear reactor facility based on Fermi’s reactor in Chicago would be built. Given the state of knowledge at the time, this was a way of reducing the risk involved in the program. Pursuing all the options was expensive, but the possibility that the Germans might win the race to produce a nuclear weapon was a strong motivation. A site near Oak Ridge, Tennessee, was selected for the large-scale uranium-separation facility. Two huge plants were built. One used a gaseous diffusion process developed by Robert Dunning and his collaborators at Columbia University. The other was a magnetic separation plant based on the work of Ernest Lawrence and his team at UC Berkeley. The large nuclear reactors for producing the necessary quantities of plutonium were located in central Washington State, near Hanford on the Columbia River. An enormous industrial complex had to be created quickly in order to accomplish the objectives of the Manhattan Project. The story of what happened at Los Alamos and the production plants between the spring of 1943 and July 1945 has been extensively documented. Nevertheless, it is still important to say a few words. The production complex succeeded in producing enough highly enriched uranium-235 to produce at least one bomb. The detonation mechanism for the uranium-235 weapon was relatively simple. A cut-down naval eight-inch gun was used to bring together two subcritical masses of uranium-235 rapidly enough to trigger the nuclear detonation. The problem with this approach was that the rate of uranium-235 production was very low. On the other hand, the nuclear reactor complex at Hanford was capable of producing weapon-grade plutonium-239 much faster.Thus, there was an incentive to develop a bomb using plutonium-239 as a fuel. It is much easier to induce a nuclear fission reaction with neutrons in plutonium-239 than in uranium-235. This circumstance makes it impossible to use the gun mechanism for assembling the critical mass; the plutonium-239 would melt and lose its shape before the critical mass was attained. This phenomenon is called “pre-heat.” If the plutonium-239 is assembled rapidly enough, then pre-heat can be avoided. One of the major achievements of the work at Los Alamos was to solve this problem. The leader of this effort was George Kistiakowsky of Harvard

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University, who devised what is called an “explosive lens,” which is capable of compressing a shell of plutonium-239 into a sphere very rapidly, allowing a critical mass to be achieved before pre-heat occurs. At the very heart of the Los Alamos Laboratory was the Theoretical Division (T-Division). Its function was to perform all the calculations necessary to make a nuclear weapon.T-Division was headed by Hans Bethe, and his deputy was Victor F. Weisskopf of the University of Rochester. One of the senior members was Edward Teller, and another member was a young US Army private named Richard Feynman. I mention these names because T-Division contained a truly brilliant galaxy of scientific talent. Feynman received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1965, Bethe in 1967. Weisskopf became the leading theoretical physicist at MIT, and Teller eventually led the effort to develop a US hydrogen bomb. Emilio Segre, a leading member of the Physics Division, was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1959. I would be remiss if I did not mention the work of Oppenheimer, who headed Los Alamos from April 1943 to late 1945. There is no doubt that Oppenheimer’s leadership was essential to the success of the entire enterprise. He enjoyed the respect of the entire staff. And he was able to establish a relationship with General Groves that was essential to the success of the project. Oppenheimer’s performance was a tour de force. The culmination of the work at Los Alamos came at a test site called Trinity in the New Mexico desert near Alamogordo, about two hundred miles south of Los Alamos. On July 16, 1945, the world’s first nuclear explosive was successfully detonated. It was a plutonium bomb.

The Decision to Use a Nuclear Weapon A few weeks after the bombing of Hiroshima, Henry D. Smythe published a book called Atomic Energy:The Military Applications of Atomic Weapons. It was written at the request of General Groves and published by Princeton University Press. The book was the first unclassified, published account describing how the nuclear bomb was created. My friends at Brooklyn Polytechnic bought several copies, and I got hold of one. All of us in Professor Fankuchen’s laboratory devoured the book. At the time, I had only a very vague understanding of the technical details, but I began to take an interest in the names of the people involved in the Manhattan Project. Leo Szilard’s name was mentioned several times in the book, and this led to an amusing incident. At dinner one night in our Brooklyn apartment, Peter, a friend, my mother, and I were at the table (my father was out of town). I was talking about Smythe’s book and mentioned some of the names he cited, Szilard’s among them. My mother said, “I know Leo Szilard. He spent much time with us when we were living in Berlin in the 1920s. He worked with your father. I knew him well; he used to bite his

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fingernails!” Now I was really interested, so I went to the Brooklyn Polytechnic library a couple of days later. I found two papers that Szilard and my father had written together (“A Simple Attempt to Find a Selective Effect in the Scattering of Roentgen Rays,” Zeitschrift für Physik 33 [1925]: 688–91, and “The Polarization of Roentgen Rays by the Reflection from Crystals,” Zeitschrift für Physik 35 [1926]: 743–47). I tell this story for two reasons. The first is to demonstrate once again the tightly knit nature of the community of refugee European scientists in the United States. The second is that when I came to know some of the people who worked on the Manhattan Project (Wigner, Teller, Weisskopf, and others), I was amazed by how many of them knew and had worked with my father. I had never really considered pursuing any career other than one in science and technology, because of the powerful role model my father provided. At age sixteen, such incidents as the ones just described involving my father’s work confirmed my earlier plans to become a scientist. Franklin Roosevelt died on April 12, 1945, and Harry Truman was sworn in as the new US president. Strangely enough, as vice president he had not been on the list of people cleared to know about the Manhattan Project. Two days after he was sworn in, the secretary of war, Henry L. Stimson, briefed him on its status. There then ensued an extended debate about what should be done with the new weapon if it worked. Such a debate was, of course, already going on among the scientific and technical people at Los Alamos and elsewhere in the institutions of the Manhattan Project. It is safe to say that many, perhaps most, of the scientists at Los Alamos were opposed to using the new weapon because of the appalling human consequences. Several leading people at Los Alamos held the opinion that the bomb was being developed for use against the Germans before they could build one. But with the collapse of Germany, the question was the use of the weapon against Japan. The debate involved people at the highest levels of the American and British governments and scientific establishments. There were three factions in this argument. People in the Allied military establishments urged immediate use of the bomb against select targets. But there was at least one notable exception: General Eisenhower, the commander in chief of Allied forces in Europe, had reservations. It is worth repeating the account from his memoir of what he said when told by Stimson that the bomb would be used against Japan: The cable was in code, you know the way they do it. “The lamb is born” or some damn thing like that. So then he told me they were going to drop it on the Japanese. Well, I listened, and I didn’t volunteer anything because, after all, my war was over in Europe and it wasn’t up to me. But I was getting more and more depressed just thinking about it. Then he asked for my opinion, so I told him I was against it on two counts. First, the Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing. Second, I hated to see our country be the first to use such a weapon. Well . . . the old gentleman got furious. And I can see how

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he would. After all, it had been his responsibility to push for all the huge expenditure to develop the bomb, which of course he had a right to do, and was right to do. Still, it was an awful problem.

Eisenhower was an exception. His immediate superior, US Army chief of staff Gen. George C. Marshall, appalled by the American casualties that had been sustained during the Iwo Jima and Okinawa campaigns—approximately 21,000 killed and 74,000 wounded—was opposed to Eisenhower’s view. The overall US casualty rate of these first campaigns against the Japanese homeland was about 17 percent. For comparison, the figure for casualties suffered by US troops in Europe was a little less than 10 percent. The next operation, Operation Olympic, would have involved 700,000 US troops. Marshall, extrapolating from Iwo Jima and Okinawa, estimated that there would be about 120,000 casualties, with about 40,000 killed. Operation Coronet, which was the plan for the invasion of the main island, Honshu, in the Tokyo area, would involve more than 1.5 million troops. Quantitative casualty estimates were never made for that operation. If using the nuclear weapon could prevent these casualties from occurring, then Marshall was all for it. Winston Churchill, not surprisingly, sided with those favoring immediate use. As he wrote in his history of World War II: “To avert a vast, indefinite butchery, to bring the war to an end, to give peace to the world, to lay healing hands upon its tortured peoples by a manifestation of overwhelming power at the cost of a few explosions, seemed, after all our toils and perils, a miracle of deliverance.” Another argument for using the nuclear weapon, which, it was hoped, would end the war rapidly, concerned the Soviets’ entry into the war against Japan. There were those in the US government who argued vigorously that the Soviets should not be allowed into Japan. Truman’s close friend and confidant Supreme Court Justice James F. Byrnes was the most vigorous advocate of this view. Byrnes, who would soon become secretary of state, thought that the Soviets would not hesitate to invade Japan. The Soviets had an army on the Manchurian border strongly reinforced by troops no longer needed in Europe. Byrnes felt that the United States had to make a decisive move—the use of nuclear weapons against targets in Japan—as rapidly as possible in order to forestall the Soviets. On the opposite side were people who argued that the bomb should not be used at all. Eisenhower’s argument was one of the reasons given by this faction— namely, that the international stature of the United States would be harmed if it became the first nation to use such a terrible weapon. As mentioned, some scientists at Los Alamos were opposed to using the atomic bomb, and the same was true of ones working at other institutions associated with the nuclear weapons project. A petition urging that the bomb not be used, drafted, ironically enough, by Leo Szilard, who had played an important role in the initiation of the nuclear weapons program in 1939, was circulated among Manhattan Project scientists. The petition

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was signed by many of them, including Hans Bethe and Victor Weisskopf. Robert Oppenheimer sympathized with his former colleagues, but ultimately joined the group of senior scientists, including Vannevar Bush, Ernest Lawrence, and Luis Alvarez, who favored immediate use of the bomb. The two most distinguished scientists who had made important scientific contributions leading to the development of nuclear weapons, Niels Bohr and Albert Einstein, were both opposed to using the bomb, but neither was involved in the decision. Bohr later became a vigorous advocate of the international control of nuclear weapons. Einstein, when asked what he thought about the use of the nuclear weapon, said, “If I had known that it would be used against the Japanese, I would not have lifted a finger to get the thing built!” Perhaps the largest group of people involved in the decision was those who favored some kind of demonstration before the bomb was used, or at least a warning that it would be used. This group was headed by Secretary Stimson, who had immense prestige. He had commanded an army regiment in France during World War I and had served as secretary of state in the Hoover administration. Thus, he knew both war and diplomacy. President Roosevelt had appointed Stimson, a Republican, secretary of war in 1940 to form a “national unity” government that would reduce partisanship as long as the war lasted. Stimson wrote a memorandum to President Truman that outlined the things he thought needed to be done: I believe Japan is susceptible to reason in such a crisis to a much greater extent than is indicated by our current press and other current comment. Japan is not a nation composed wholly of mad fanatics of an entirely different mentality from ours. On the contrary, she has within the past century shown herself to possess extremely intelligent people, capable in an unprecedentedly short time of adopting not only the complicated technique of Occidental civilization but to a substantial extent their culture and their political and social ideas. Her advance in these respects . . . has been one of the most astounding feats of national progress in history . . . It is therefore my conclusion that a carefully timed warning be given to Japan . . . I personally think that if in (giving such a warning) we should add that we do not exclude a constitutional monarchy under her present dynasty, it would substantially add to the chances of acceptance.

There were two problems with the ideas of giving a warning or a demonstration. The United States had only a small number of bombs. Specifically, following the test at Trinity, there were three existing bombs and one being assembled. The production rate was about one a month. Thus, using even one weapon for a demonstration seemed to be a risk that no one wanted to take.Would the awesome nature of the new weapon really be obvious to people in a demonstration? What would happen if the weapon used in the demonstration failed? The same argument applied to the warning proposal. If the purpose of using the new weapon was to end the war, then the risk involved in these options seemed unacceptable.

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President Truman made the final decision, which was to use the bomb on an appropriate target of military value without warning. After the war was over, he was asked why he made that decision. Here was his answer: “How would I explain to a mother whose son was killed in the invasion of Japan that we had this weapon and did not use it to end the war?” When all of the diplomatic maneuvers were made and the strategic issues were considered, to Harry Truman, it was as simple as that.

The Potsdam Conference and the End of World War II The conference between Harry Truman, Winston Churchill, Clement Attlee, and Joseph Stalin at Potsdam convened on the evening of July 16, 1945. Britain was in the midst of a general election, so both the current and future prime ministers attended. Nuclear weapons were not formally mentioned at Potsdam. President Truman, during a break in the conference, approached Stalin. The president mentioned that the United States had a very powerful new weapon. Stalin nodded and then walked away. Truman was surprised because he had expected Stalin to ask some questions. Stalin, however, knew about the Trinity test because Soviet spies had penetrated Los Alamos and had reported the event. One focus of the conference was the war in the Pacific and the future of Japan. On July 12, four days before the conference convened, the Japanese foreign minister, Shigenori Togo, sent the following message to the Japanese ambassador in Moscow: “It is His Majesty’s heart’s desire to see a swift termination of the war. . . . However, as long as America and England insist on unconditional surrender, our country has no alternative but to see it through in an all-out effort for the sake of survival and the honor of the homeland.” Togo instructed Ambassador Sato to seek a meeting with Soviet foreign minister Molotov and to persuade him to intercede with the Americans and the British to begin negotiations. The sticking point with the Japanese was clearly the term “unconditional surrender.” But Molotov refused to see Sato. One wonders why the Japanese chose the Soviets to act as intermediaries instead of traditional neutrals like the Swedes or the Swiss. It should have been obvious that the Soviets had designs on Japan in order to recover the losses that Russia had suffered in the Russo-Japanese War in 1905. The most likely explanation is that Togo apparently trusted the Soviets to adhere to the nonaggression pact of 1941 and that the Soviets could contact the Americans or the British quickly, whereas it would take time for a neutral intermediary to do the job. US intelligence units had picked up Togo’s message to Ambassador Sato, so senior leaders knew that the Japanese had put out a peace feeler. After the surrender of Germany, President Truman had reiterated the necessity of “unconditional surrender” in a strong speech to Congress about Japan. Privately, Truman was closer to Stimson’s opinion that keeping the emperor on the throne might be the best way to get a peace agreement as soon as possible. Truman sought a formula that might

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deliver that message without saying so explicitly. Significant time was spent at the Potsdam Conference hammering out a satisfactory formula. The final document, the Potsdam Declaration, was issued on July 26 and signed by Truman, Attlee, and Chiang Kai-Shek (president of Nationalist China). The Soviet leader, Stalin, did not sign because the Soviet Union was not at war with Japan. Here is the partial text: The following are our terms. We will not deviate from them. There are no alternatives. We shall brook no delay. There must be eliminated for all time the authority and influence of those who have deceived and misled the people of Japan into embarking on world conquest. . . . Until such a new order is established . . . points in Japanese territory . . . shall be occupied. . . . . . . Japanese sovereignty shall be limited to the islands of Honshu, Hokkaido, Kyushu, Shikoku and such minor islands as we determine. The Japanese military forces, after being completely disarmed, shall be permitted to return to their homes with the opportunity to lead peaceful and productive lives. We do not intend that the Japanese shall be enslaved as a race or destroyed as a nation, but stern justice shall be meted out to all war criminals. . . . Freedom of speech, of religion, and of thought, as well as respect for the fundamental human rights shall be established. Japan shall be permitted to maintain such industries as will sustain her economy. . . . The occupying forces of the Allies shall be withdrawn from Japan as soon as these objectives have been accomplished and there has been established in accordance with the freely expressed will of the Japanese people a peacefully inclined and responsible government. We call upon the government of Japan to proclaim now the unconditional surrender of all Japanese armed forces. . . . The alternative for Japan is prompt and utter destruction.

The significant change was in the final paragraph, which called for “the government of Japan to proclaim the unconditional surrender of all Japanese armed forces.” The implication was clear: this was not a call for the destruction of the nation—“Japanese sovereignty” would be preserved, and the formula of “unconditional surrender” was limited to the armed forces. The response from the Japanese came during a press conference held by Prime Minister Suzuki on July 28. Here is what he said: “I believe the Joint Proclamation [the Potsdam Declaration] of the three countries is nothing but a rehash of the Cairo Declaration [which called for “unconditional surrender”]. As for the government, it does not find any important value in it, and there is no other recourse but to ignore it entirely and resolutely fight for the successful conclusion of the war.” Strangely enough, a major controversy among historians about this statement

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surrounds the phrase “ignore it entirely.” Suzuki used the Japanese word mokusatsu to express the concept, but some claim that the correct translation is “treat it with silence.” Some historians assert that if that translation is used, Suzuki’s statement could be interpreted as an invitation for further negotiations. My own opinion is that this debate is academic pettifoggery. It is still treated as a live question because many of the people who write history books strongly condemn the use of the nuclear bomb. To me, the issue is clear: even if you ignore the matter of mokusatsu, the rest of the statement is still very clearly a rejection of the Potsdam Declaration. Following Suzuki’s press conference, Truman directed implementation of the operational order issued on July 25 to the US Army Air Force commander in the Pacific Theater.The order specified that the first “special bomb” would be dropped, weather permitting, after August 3 on Hiroshima, Kokura, Niigata, or Nagasaki. Furthermore, “additional bombs will be delivered on the above targets as soon as made ready by the project staff.” The interesting point about this order is that it did not require presidential approval for additional use of a “special bomb” following the first employment. The first nuclear weapon ever used “in anger” was detonated over the city of Hiroshima at about 8:00 a.m. local time on August 6, 1945. The bomb was carried by a B-29 aircraft specially designed for the task. The aircraft was named Enola Gay after the mother of the pilot, Col. Paul Tibbets. The city was destroyed, and more than 70,000 people were killed. The bomb dropped on Hiroshima was the uranium bomb “Little Boy,” which had been built at Los Alamos. The people who built it were so certain that it would work that no test was required. The weapon had an explosive yield equivalent to 12,500 tons of high explosives. The next day at 11:00 a.m., the White House issued the following statement in the name of the president. (Truman was still at sea on the USS Augusta.) Sixteen hours ago an American airplane dropped one bomb on Hiroshima. . . . It is an atomic bomb. It is a harnessing of the basic power of the Universe. . . . We are now prepared to obliterate more rapidly and completely every productive enterprise that the Japanese have above the ground in any city. We shall destroy their docks, their factories, and their communications. Let there be no mistake, we shall completely destroy Japan’s power to make war. . . . . . . If they do not now accept our terms, they may expect a rain of ruin from the air, the like of which has never been seen on this Earth.

On the same day, three hundred B-29s dropped leaflets (six million in all) conveying the gist of the president’s message on every Japanese city with a population of more than 100,000. There was no response from Japan. The operational order still in force required that “additional bombs will be delivered on the above targets as soon as made ready by the project staff.” A second bomb, a plutonium weapon, was ready on August 9, 1945. Maj. Charles W. Sweeney was the pilot. When the primary target turned out to be obscured by clouds, Sweeney flew to the secondary

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target, the city of Nagasaki. “Fat Man” was dropped on Nagasaki at about 11:00 a.m. local time. About 40,000 people were killed instantly. The bomb detonated with an explosive power equivalent to 22,000 tons of high explosives. The day before the Nagasaki attack, Ambassador Sato finally got his meeting with Soviet foreign minister Molotov. Molotov curtly informed him that the nonaggression pact was null and void, and that Soviet troops would move into Manchuria the next morning. Following the attack on Nagasaki, there was a meeting of Japan’s Supreme War Council to hold another vote on whether to accept the Potsdam Declaration. Incredibly, the vote was still 3–2 to continue the war. Even two attacks with the terrible new bombs had not persuaded the military members of the council to change their minds. Years later in his memoirs, General Marshall attributed this to the “fog of war.” Japan’s leaders were no longer connected to reality and had become so used to disastrous events that additional ones no longer registered with them. On August 13, V. Adm. Takijiro Onishi, the man who had organized the kamikaze corps and was now the vice chief of the naval staff, suggested, “with tears in his eyes,” that twenty million Japanese should be armed with bamboo spears and slingshots and should be prepared to confront the invaders in one great mass and to suffer one hundred deaths for every one inflicted on the enemy. Sanity in Japan was restored by two people, Marquis Koichi Kido and his friend Emperor Hirohito. Following the Supreme War Council meeting, Kido suggested to the prime minister that the matter of war and peace should be laid before the emperor. At a meeting with the Supreme War Council on August 13, the emperor stated that it was necessary to make peace by accepting the Potsdam Declaration. The next day, the cabinet, the chiefs of staff of the army and the navy, and members of the juchin (top authorities) and the genro (retired elder statesmen) attended a large formal meeting in the emperor’s palace. In spite of the terrible destruction around them, the military people turned up in full dress uniform, and the civilians wore their morning dress. The emperor appeared shaken but firm: there would be peace, and the people assembled would have to accede to his wishes. So on August 14, 1945, the final decision to surrender was made. It was decided that the emperor would make a recording to be broadcast to the Japanese people the next morning. Kido held the recording for safekeeping. When news of the decision to surrender reached the officers of the palace guard and the infantry division stationed in Tokyo, they decided to stage a coup. They invaded the palace compound and tried to find the emperor’s recording so that it could be destroyed. But they could not find Kido, who had hidden himself and the recording in a secluded corner of the palace library. The attempted coup was over by the next morning, but several people had been killed during the attempt to occupy the palace. Mortified by the behavior of the mutinous army officers, war minister Gen. Korechika Anami committed ritual suicide—seppuku.

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On the morning of August 15, the people of Japan heard the voice of their emperor for the first time. Here, in part, is what he told them: Despite the best that has been done by everyone . . . the war situation has developed not necessarily to Japan’s advantage, while the general trends of the world have all turned against her interest. Moreover, the enemy has begun to employ a new and most cruel bomb, the power of which to do damage is, indeed, incalculable, taking the toll of many innocent lives. . . . This is the reason why we have ordered the acceptance of the provision of the Joint Declaration of the Powers. . . . . . . The hardships and sufferings to which our nation is to be subjected hereafter will be certainly great. We are keenly aware of the inmost feeling of all ye, our subjects. However, it is according to the dictate of time and fate that we have resolved to pave the way for a grand peace for all generations to come by enduring the unendurable and suffering what is insufferable. . . . . . . Let the entire nation continue as one family from generation to generation.

And so World War II ended. Two important objectives were achieved by the way the war was concluded. It obviated the need for an invasion of the Japanese mainland, which would have cost hundreds of thousands of lives, both Japanese and American. The casualties sustained in the Okinawa campaign are the best evidence that this is the case. The rapid use of nuclear weapons prevented the Soviets from establishing a position from which they could have demanded a large postwar role in the occupation of Japan. I have gone to some lengths to describe the events that led to the end of World War II, and this deserves an explanation. I wanted to describe the origins of the technologies that led to the Allied victory, and nuclear weapons in particular, because they were decisive in bringing the war to a close. There is still debate about whether this statement is true. For example, a recent book claims that the Soviet invasion of Manchuria alone would have caused the Japanese to surrender. This assertion may be true, but the world would look very different today, because the Soviet Union would have been in a much stronger position at the end of the war than it was. There is not much doubt that by using the bomb, the United States forced the rapid surrender of Japan. I take Emperor Hirohito at his word: because the “enemy has begun to employ a new and most cruel bomb, the power of which to do damage is indeed incalculable,” he was forced to capitulate. The second important point is that the Soviet Union ended up being the primary challenger to the international supremacy of the United States. The Soviets had demonstrated that they could build and use a modern war machine effectively and had made the major contribution to the defeat of Germany. After the war, they mounted a campaign to become the world’s dominant power, and they used the

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ideology of communism as the intellectual rationale. This campaign came to be called the Cold War, and I wanted to describe as best I could its starting point.

The Final Two Years at Home in New York In the fall of 1945, I began my junior year at Stuyvesant High School. At the time, the school’s building was too small to house its three thousand or so students. Therefore, the school was divided into two sessions: a morning session (7:30 to noon) for the juniors and seniors, and an afternoon session (1:00 to 5:30) for the freshman and sophomores.The morning session had the great advantage of making it much easier to participate in the school’s extracurricular activities. There were so many things to do that it was often hard to choose. A favorite spot for after-school expeditions was the Museum of Natural History, at 86th Street and Central Park West. The Hayden Planetarium was a particularly interesting unit of the museum for those of us interested in the physical sciences. What made roaming around Manhattan in the afternoons feasible was the New York subway system. During the 1940s, a ride cost five cents. At Stuyvesant, we had clubs devoted to both scientific and literary activities. The Physics Club, for example, had a magazine called the Vector, which was published once a semester and to which students would contribute articles. In my junior year, I was elected to the Arista—the school’s honor society—which opened additional windows for me. During my years at Stuyvesant, I maintained my membership in the Junior Bluejackets, in which I eventually achieved the rank of chief petty officer. Early in 1946, two very important events occurred that were crucial in determining the conduct of the future Cold War. A young diplomat (the chargé d’affaires) stationed in the US Embassy in Moscow, George F. Kennan, sent a lengthy message to his superiors in Washington in February. In response to a routine request from the State Department to comment on the current state of relations between the Soviet Union and the United States, Kennan provided a comprehensive analysis of the situation as he saw it. He predicted that the Soviets would pursue an aggressive policy of undermining and subverting noncommunist regimes around the world and would promote their ideology aggressively via propaganda. To achieve their ends, the Soviets would use deceptive front organizations, economic pressure, and military means, which would be calibrated to preclude Western retaliation. He recommended that the United States respond on every front, starting with economic aid to all and sundry, which was (and still is) our great strength, and with military means if necessary. Kennan’s report was contained in the so-called long telegram, which he sent to the secretary of state. The text of the long telegram was published in Foreign Affairs in 1947, but the author’s identity was hidden. The article outlined the containment policies that would be followed during the Cold War. But Kennan’s positions were initially controversial,

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coming less than a year after the end of a great war in which the Soviets were our allies. Equally controversial was a speech that Winston Churchill delivered on March 6 at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri. Churchill had lost his post as prime minister in 1945 during the Potsdam Conference. President Truman invited Churchill to speak (in Truman’s home state) because he thought that the American people should know what he was thinking now that he was out of office. In the speech, he introduced a term that encapsulated the Cold War in Europe: From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the continent. Behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of Central and Eastern Europe. Warsaw, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Bucharest and Sofia; all these famous cities and the populations around them lie in what I must call the Soviet sphere, and all are subject, in one form or another, not only to Soviet influence but to a very high and in some cases increasing measure of control from Moscow.

This statement was controversial for the same reason that Kennan’s long telegram was not popular. The American people were not ready to believe in 1946 that the Soviet Union would be their next enemy. Churchill’s prescription for the future was even more controversial: If the population of the English-Speaking Commonwealth be added to that of the United States, with all that such cooperation implies in the air, on the sea, all over the globe, and in science and industry, and in moral force, there will be no quivering, precarious balance of power to offer its temptation to ambition or adventure. On the contrary, there will be an overwhelming assurance of security. If we adhere faithfully to the Charter of the United Nations and walk forward in sedate and sober strength, seeking no one’s land or treasures, seeking to lay no arbitrary controls upon the thoughts of men, if all British moral and material forces and convictions are joined with your own in fraternal association, the high roads of the future will be clear, not only for us but for all, not only for our time but for a century to come.

There was still enough anti-British sentiment in the United States that this call for close cooperation caused an uproar in the press and among those political leaders who had opposed the entry of the United States into the war before the attack on Pearl Harbor. Churchill’s warning about the Iron Curtain was clearly the same as that contained in Kennan’s long telegram. Both texts were eventually recognized as prescient statements by knowledgeable people about international politics in the near future. I read Churchill’s speech in the newspapers, and I generally agreed with what he said. Based on my very early experiences in Vienna, I was under no illusions about

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the communists and their allies. But I did not really appreciate Churchill’s point about what he thought the “English Speaking Peoples” should do—after all, I was a newcomer to the United States. This portion of his speech turned out to be the most important one. It affirmed what later became known as the “special relationship” between Great Britain and the United States, which began in 1941 when Churchill and President Roosevelt met on the HMS Prince of Wales in Placentia Bay. The special relationship was extremely important during the Cold War, and it is still alive and well today in the second decade of the twenty-first century. The first test of the special relationship was not long in coming. When the Germans conquered Greece in 1942, they were fought by an underground resistance led by communists and supported by the Soviets. Churchill was upset by this incursion of the Soviets because he felt that British influence in the Mediterranean should not be compromised. Over Roosevelt’s objections, Churchill wanted to establish postwar “spheres of influence” in Eastern Europe with Stalin. At a meeting in Moscow in 1944, Churchill and Stalin “agreed” on the percentages of “influence” in the nations of Eastern Europe that would protect British interests in the Mediterranean. Churchill wrote these percentages down on what he later called the “naughty document.” In Greece, the percentages were supposed to be Britain 90 percent and the Soviet Union 10 percent. Following the end of the European war in May 1945, the communist forces in Greece mounted a full-scale insurgency. The British committed troops to quell it, which Churchill thought was necessary because Stalin had clearly violated their agreement. An election in Greece in March 1946 was won by the royalists, primarily because the communists refused to participate. The bitter and destructive Greek conflict continued to the point that the British realized their forces were not adequate to deal with it. On March 12, 1947, President Truman announced that the United States would assume responsibility for defeating the communist insurgency in Greece. This action was an example of what became known as the Truman Doctrine, which pledged the United States to combat and contain communism around the globe. The new president did not share his predecessor’s commitment to self-determination. The Pax Britannia would be succeeded by the Pax Americana. In truth, I did not pay too much attention to the first rumblings of the Cold War. I was surprised, however, that a number of my contemporaries at Stuyvesant who were political activists tried to convince me that the Soviet Union represented the wave of the future and that I should join with them in building “socialism in the United States,” as they liked to put it.This was said in a friendly manner, with none of the bitterness that would characterize the debate over these issues in the 1950s and the 1960s. One of the most important results of my attendance at Stuyvesant was the forming of lifelong friendships that later became very important to me. Probably the most exciting thing that happened in our senior year was the competition for awards in the Westinghouse Corporation’s Sixth Annual Science Talent

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Search. Several of my classmates were selected, and three were finalists: Leonard Taylor, Charles Zemach, and Gary Felsenfeld. Raphael Burnstein was recognized with an honorable mention. The finalists were invited to the White House to receive their awards and were honored by President Truman. I was pleased to be in such distinguished company, but also disappointed and chagrinned that I was not selected for any of the awards. Both Ray Burnstein and Chuck Zemach have remained close friends to this day, and both have had distinguished academic and scientific careers. In my last year at Stuyvesant, I began to suspect that I was perhaps not really qualified to reach the highest level in the field of pure science. A few weeks after the Science Talent Search awards were announced, I was notified that I had been selected for a Westinghouse Corporation Cooperative Engineering Scholarship at the Carnegie Institute of  Technology (now Carnegie Mellon University) in Pittsburgh. The letter invited me to come to Pittsburgh and to interview with members of the faculty. During the visit, I was very impressed by the Westinghouse facilities in the vicinity of Pittsburgh and by the Carnegie Institute. The people who interviewed me told me that it was my submission in the Science Talent Search that resulted in my selection for the scholarship. They told me that they were particularly impressed by the X-ray diffraction equipment I had put together in Professor Fankuchen’s laboratory at Brooklyn Polytechnic. It began to dawn on me that applied science or engineering might be a better choice for me than pure science. The visit to Pittsburgh was an eye-opening experience that had long-term consequences. By the time of my graduation, I had decided to attend the University of California, Berkeley. At the time, the university had a ban on admitting out-of-state students. Fortunately, my father’s friend Joel Hildebrand, who was a distinguished professor of chemistry, was able to get a waiver for my admission. The fact that I had already signed up to join the Naval ROTC unit in Berkeley also helped. Between Professor Hildebrand and the US Navy, I managed to gain admission. One final story belongs in this chapter. My father had been invited to visit England in the summer of 1947 to lecture on polymer chemistry at several universities. As a graduation present, he invited me to accompany him as his personal assistant—quite a title for an eighteen-year-old. Later, my father told me that he had to provide a title in order to get a visa for me. In New York we boarded the Cunard liner Queen Elizabeth, which had just been reconditioned from her service as a troop ship and now featured luxurious quarters for the passengers. This trip would be much different from the one we took seven and a half years earlier on the Duchess of Richmond. The Queen Elizabeth reached Southampton in three and a half days. We took a train to London and then a taxicab to the Royal Institution on Albemarle Street. We were the guests of its president, Sir Eric Rideal, and his wife; their residence was an apartment in the institution. Sir Eric was a polymer chemist like my father.

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We spent two weeks in England, half of it in London and the other half making visits to universities in Cambridge, Oxford, and Bristol. Fortunately, my duties as a personal assistant were not very demanding, so I had time on my hands. The Royal Institution, whose building also houses the headquarters of the Royal Society, was a gold mine for me. In the basement there is a re-creation of the laboratory rooms in which Michael Faraday did his monumental work on electromagnetism a century earlier. In the library, I spent some time looking at old books and manuscripts by the likes of Edmund Halley, James Clerk Maxwell, William Thomson (Lord Kelvin), James Prescott Joule, and many others. Fortunately, London had, and still has, an excellent public transportation system, so for a few pennies I could go wherever I wanted. I visited museums and government buildings, and the one that was most impressive was the Royal Observatory in Greenwich. The building is an eighteenth-century creation of Sir Christopher Wren. It was in this building that Edmund Halley as astronomer royal determined the orbit of the comet that is named after him, and it was there, in the courtyard, that I saw the brass line that marks the Greenwich meridian of zero longitude. There the chronometers were tested that were used for reliable determination of longitude. On our final day in London, my father delivered a lecture before a meeting of the Royal Society in the auditorium of the Royal Institution. I was very proud to see my father stand at the same lectern that had been used by Michael Faraday, Thomas Huxley, J. J. Thomson, Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac, and many other distinguished scientists. We spent the second week of our visit on the road. The only really strong impression that remains in my mind was our visit to Cambridge University. Cambridge, a small city about sixty miles northeast of London, is dominated by one of the world’s great universities. My father and I were houseguests of Sir William Lawrence Bragg, who was a contemporary of my father and the Cavendish Professor of Experimental Physics at Cambridge University. Our host and his father, Sir William Henry Bragg, were jointly awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1915 for their seminal work in determining detailed crystal structure by using X-ray diffraction. I had, of course, heard about the work of the Braggs from my work on the X-ray project at Brooklyn Polytechnic. I was very impressed that my father was on close terms with this famous scientist. I was also impressed by the university and its elegant colleges. Our visits to Oxford and to Bristol are only a blur. We were back in London soon enough and preparing for our trip home on the Queen Elizabeth. The overwhelming impression I was left with from our trip was the damage from the air and missile attacks on England during the war. Even though the war had been over for more than two years, many areas of London were still in ruins. Even in Cambridge and Oxford there were bombed buildings, and in Bristol, which is an industrial city, there was heavy destruction of the kind I had seen in London. All this reinforced my Anglophilia. There is no doubt that it was British courage and

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endurance during the hard years when the country stood alone (1939–41) that eventually led to victory. For that, I shall be forever grateful to the people who lived on Shakespeare’s “sceptered isle” during that difficult time. We returned to New York a few weeks before I was scheduled to leave for California. My six years in this great city were exciting and useful, and I took as much advantage as I could of what New York had to offer. As things turned out, these formative years in New York were excellent preparation for what was to come. I did spend some hard days wondering about the decision I had made to go to California. It would be difficult to leave New York, my family, and all that they meant to me. On the other hand, I was ready to do something new.

2 The Beginning of the Cold War, Nuclear Weapons, and Graduate School at MIT

In August 1947, my parents put me on a train for Chicago at Grand Central Station in New York. It was an emotional parting, but at age eighteen I was ready to be on my own—or at least I thought I was. The first hundred miles of the New York Central Railroad track were very familiar. Since 1943, our family had owned a summerhouse near Peekskill, about fifty miles north of New York City. As the train passed the familiar station, the fine times that we had enjoyed on Lake Peekskill flooded my mind. I would miss all this. Also, I would miss the friends that I had made in high school. There was Bob Feldmann, a brilliant mathematics student, who would die a year later in a tragic accident during a test in a hyperbaric chamber while on a summer exercise as a member of the Naval ROTC unit at Columbia University; Norbert Volk, a neighbor with whom I rode on the BMT subway from the Parkside Avenue Station in Brooklyn to Union Square in Manhattan near Stuyvesant High School every day; Ariel Charles Zemach, who would become a colleague on the faculty of the University of California, Berkeley, many years later; Raphael Burnstein, now a retired professor at the Illinois Institute of  Technology, who still visits us for two months every winter in Austin; and Burt Feinerman, who later became a prominent physician and with whom I shared my first scientific prize, the Gilbert Chemistry Prize, in 1943. (We each received $500!) Thinking about Peekskill and all my friends, I began to have second thoughts about leaving home. But it was too late now. In Chicago, I changed to a Southern Pacific train that took me to the old railroad station in Berkeley, just south of the point where University Avenue meets

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San Francisco Bay. When I got off the train and walked north to University, the waters and the magnificent bridges of the bay were on my left, and on the right were the Berkeley hills and the two dominant features of the city at the time, the Claremont Hotel and the University of California’s Campanile—a truly inspiring view. Since the sun was shining and it was only ten o’clock in the morning, I decided to walk the two-plus miles to the campus. During my short journey up University Avenue, I reflected on the course that World War II had taken. As a newly minted US citizen, I was very proud of my adopted country’s role in the war. Fascism had been destroyed. Furthermore, the university I was about to join had played a major part in securing the victory. People associated with the university had created the nuclear weapons that decisively ended the conflict. Fundamental discoveries by Ernest Lawrence, Edwin McMillan, Glenn Seaborg, and their colleagues on the University of California faculty had made nuclear weapons a practical proposition. Robert Oppenheimer, another distinguished member of the faculty, had created and led the laboratory at Los Alamos, where the first nuclear weapons were designed, built, and tested. Several important younger faculty members had joined Oppenheimer in that effort. In fact, the Los Alamos laboratory itself had recently become a unit of the university. I badly wanted to join this group of people and to learn the new technology that had profoundly affected the outcome of the war. Furthermore, I was anxious to become a member of an institution that had the power to support national objectives so decisively. I was not at all certain that I had what it took to join such distinguished company. What I wanted very much was the opportunity to try. As things turned out, I spent three and a half years as an undergraduate student at Berkeley. It was a matchless educational experience because I soon met the people who would teach me how to do physics and then how to apply the results. But the first order of business was to make sure that I would be admitted to the Naval ROTC unit for which I had signed up. Conscription was still in effect in 1947. Even though very few people were being drafted, I wanted to choose the service I would join, and given my previous experience in the Junior Bluejackets, the navy was it. Almost the first thing I did after arriving in Berkeley was to take the old F train across the Bay Bridge and walk to the naval infirmary on Fell Street in San Francisco, where the physical examinations were performed. A few days later, I learned that I had passed, so I went to the Naval ROTC offices in Callahan Hall to pick up my uniforms and books. Callahan Hall was the university’s International House, but it had been taken over for the navy’s V-12 program in 1942 and was still being used partly by the navy in 1947. I want to discuss briefly the navy’s connection with Berkeley, because it was to shape my subsequent thinking and career much more than I realized at the time. Our Naval ROTC unit was much larger than is customary today at major universities. It included several hundred midshipmen and a staff of forty or so regular navy

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Figure 2.1. In my uniform as a midshipman, US Naval ROTC, University of California, Berkeley, 1948.

instructors. As a member of the unit, I learned about the military and also much about the weapons technology of the time. In the late 1940s, the navy, in an effort to maintain training, organized a large number of World War II–vintage ships into a large force called the Pacific Reserve Fleet. The ships, manned by small cadres of regular navy people, were based at ports up and down the California coast. They would be taken out for occasional cruises with crews made up of the Naval Reserve units and the ROTC contingents located in California.Three destroyers were based on Treasure Island in San Francisco Bay in 1947: the USS Loftberg, which was an Allen M. Sumner–class ship, and two Fletcher-class destroyers, the USS Shields and the USS Colahan. These ships had a displacement of about 3,000 tons and carried crews of 250–300 people. In addition, there were a couple of submarines at the Mare Island Naval Shipyard and two or three YMS-class minesweepers tied up at a navy dock in the Alameda Estuary. These were small wooden ships about 136 feet long with a displacement of about 280 tons. They were powered by two large Packard 400-horsepower diesel engines, which drove them along at fifteen knots. The members of our ROTC unit would occasionally cruise up and down the California coast on the destroyers. In this way, I acquired a nodding acquaintance with naval operations aboard the USS Colahan, the ship to which I was assigned. In addition, a group of us were sometimes taken out into San Francisco Bay on one

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Figure 2.2 The USS Shields anchored in Monterey Bay in 1948. The Shields and her sister ship the USS Colahan were the two Fletcher-class destroyers in the Pacific Reserve fleet used for training cruises. I took this picture standing on the deck of the Colahan, the ship to which I was assigned.

of the little minesweepers to learn the rudiments of ship handling. At age eighteen, I was truly fascinated by all of this. The executive officer of our unit was Cmdr. Chester W. Nimitz Jr., who had served with distinction as a submarine captain in the Pacific and who became an early mentor to me. He was the son of Adm. Chester W. Nimitz, who had led the US Navy’s Pacific Fleet during the war and had then retired to Berkeley. (Many years later, I met retired R. Adm. Chester W. Nimitz Jr. again. He had become the chief executive officer of the PerkinElmer Corporation in 1968. During my term of service as director of the National Reconnaissance Office [1977–79], I visited the PerkinElmer plant in Danbury, Connecticut, to inspect the facility that built mirrors for our photographic reconnaissance satellites. Nimitz was there to welcome me, and it was a fine reunion for both of us.) At the time, I never met or personally talked with the old fleet admiral, but I did attend the lectures that he delivered once or twice a year to our ROTC unit. The admiral had a soft spot for us because in 1926 he had been named the first professor of naval science at UC Berkeley. I learned later from his son that the admiral and his wife had so enjoyed Berkeley in the 1920s that they decided to retire there. In addition, Gov. Earl Warren had appointed Admiral Nimitz to the Board of Regents of the University of California, so he had a university connection as well. To hear Admiral Nimitz

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speak about the events that he experienced during the Pacific War was a formative experience for me.

Undergraduate Education at Berkeley My first impression of Berkeley was of the crowds. There were about twice as many students in attendance, including a large number of veterans financed by the GI Bill (formally, the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944), than the campus had been designed to accommodate. There were long lines to register, to buy books, and to find rooms to rent. In the first few days of my stay, the school arranged a freshman mixer to welcome new students. Several hundred students attended the reception, which was held on the basketball court at the Edwards Field athletic complex. It was at this event that, quite by accident, I first met Prof. Ernest O. Lawrence, the inventor of the cyclotron, for which he was awarded the 1939 Nobel Prize in physics. Lawrence cared about undergraduate education, so he made a practice of attending events like this. I spotted him across the hall, walked over, and introduced myself. He had an attractive young lady with him, and it was his job to introduce her to young gentlemen. Which he did. This event is so well fixed in my mind that I still remember her name: Norene Alexander. My father’s friend Joel Hildebrand—the chemistry professor who had hosted our family in Berkeley in 1941—attended the mixer, too. He told Lawrence about my background, and as a result, both men became teachers and mentors during my years at the University of California, first as a student and later as a member of the faculty. The University of California had an excellent policy at the time: its most distinguished faculty members delivered the lectures for the large freshman classes and also led the freshman laboratory sections in chemistry and physics for the honors students. I was lucky to have Hildebrand as a lecturer in the first chemistry course, and Robert Connick as the laboratory section leader. Connick was later elected to the National Academy of Sciences and become a distinguished vice chancellor for research on the Berkeley campus. The professor who taught the freshman physics lecture course was Leonard B. Loeb. An expert in the physics of gas discharges, he was also an excellent, meticulous lecturer. And he had a navy connection. A major problem in the early days of World War II was electromagnetic mines, which were detonated by the change in the magnetic field of the earth as ships passed over them. Loeb was one of the people who developed the technique of degaussing, which involved neutralizing the magnetic field produced by a ship. He ran the degaussing station in San Francisco Bay, and he wound up holding the navy rank of commodore (equivalent in rank to an army brigadier general). Chemistry, physics, and mathematics were the important courses that I attended during my first two years at the university. I have already mentioned that thousands of returning veterans crowded the campus and overloaded the university’s facilities.

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Focused and very hardworking, they also provided intense academic competition. In addition, many were married, so their motivation to do well was much higher than for many other students. Perhaps as a result, my class ranking at the university was never as high as it was at Stuyvesant High School. I came to realize that I was playing in a much bigger league.

The First Shot in the Cold War: The Blockade of Berlin in 1948 and 1949 During my undergraduate years at Berkeley, the outlines of the Cold War began to take shape. Germany, the driving force behind the instigation of World War II, likewise played an early role in the subsequent conflict. The system of “zones of occupation” under which military officers of the four victorious Allied powers (the United States of America, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, Great Britain, and France) governed Germany started to disintegrate in 1947. President Truman decided to name former army chief of staff George Catlett Marshall, who carried the rank of general of the army, as secretary of state to succeed James F. Byrnes. Dean G. Acheson, a distinguished diplomat and longtime State Department official, became under secretary of state. Their most important task was to oversee the economic recovery of Europe. The United States, as the only major power that had not suffered serious damage during World War II, had to take the lead in that gargantuan project. A plan developed by Acheson, State Department planning head George Kennan, and special assistant Paul Nitze called for the United States to provide massive aid to all the nations in Europe—former foes as well as allies. In all, the United States ended up spending more than twenty billion dollars (in today’s value) on the recovery of Europe. It was a huge success. On July 17, 1947, European foreign ministers convened in Paris to consider the US proposal, which by then was being called the Marshall Plan. A Soviet delegation led by the foreign minister, Vyacheslav Molotov, showed up to participate in the discussion. Although some Eastern European nations supported the proposal, Joseph Stalin decided otherwise. This move by the Soviet leader spelled the end of joint management of Germany by the four-power system that had been established in 1945. Under the Marshall Plan, the three Western powers began the economic merger of their zones. Specifically, they introduced a common currency—the new German mark. The Soviets objected to this move because it highlighted the differences between free and command economies. The Allied Control Commission, which had governed Germany since 1945, ceased to exist on March 20, 1948, when the Soviet representative, Marshal Vasily Sokolovsky, walked out of a commission meeting and did not return. In response to these developments, the Soviets began to put pressure on the enclave of Berlin. Although jointly controlled by the four Allied powers, the city lay entirely within the Soviet zone. The Soviets moved to isolate Berlin, at first by

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restricting coal deliveries by rail. But by June 24, a complete blockade was in place. Since, under international law, a blockade was an act of war, this act of aggression became the first shot in the Cold War. President Truman acted quickly and decisively. He rejected a suggestion by Gen. Lucius D. Clay, the commander in the US zone of occupation, to send an armored column 110 miles down the autobahn from the border post at Helmstedt to Berlin; the fear of starting another world war was simply too strong.The US military commander in Berlin, Col. Frank Howley, speculated whether it might be possible to supply Berlin by air. Howley’s musings reached the ears of air force general Curtis LeMay, the US air commander in Europe. LeMay in fact started supplying Berlin by air one day after the blockade was imposed—without seeking approval from Washington. He quickly mobilized several hundred transport aircraft and, along with the Royal Air Force, began regular supply flights. LeMay selected Maj. Gen. William Tunner of the air force, the officer who had organized the airlift to China during World War II, to command the operation. The United States astounded the Soviets (and the rest of the world) by mounting an airlift that kept a city of two and a half million people alive and working. The magnificent technical achievement was based, among other things, on an invention by a young Berkeley physics professor, Luis W. Alvarez. This was the radar-based ground-controlled approach system, which made it possible to land an airplane at Tegel, Gatow, or Tempelhof airfield every three minutes on average, so a supply aircraft could land in Berlin on the average of once a minute, day and night, in fair weather and foul. Alvarez had received the Collier Trophy (the highest award in American aviation) in 1946 for this achievement. He was subsequently awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics (1968) for his work on elementary particles. It was the first time, but by no means the last, that a faculty member of the University of California played a critical part in a Cold War confrontation. At some point during the airlift, the Soviets sent fighter aircraft to buzz the transports participating in the supply operation. The Soviets’ message was that they would eventually shoot down the aircraft that were supplying Berlin. President Truman responded by ordering the deployment of sixty B-29 bombers to air bases in England. The president’s message was also clear: “Don’t start anything that you cannot finish.” One of the more amusing incidents during the airlift operation was initiated by a young American transport pilot, Lt. Gale Halvorsen. He saw a crowd standing near the threshold of the runway of the Templehof airfield to watch the airplanes land. Seeing many children among the spectators, Halvorsen began to drop candy bars and chewing gun packages out the cockpit window. Thus started the “candy bombers,” which attracted worldwide attention. This simple gesture turned out to be a major propaganda victory. On May 12, 1949, the Soviets lifted the blockade of Berlin following a short negotiation. Stalin realized that the success of the airlift was a major victory for the United States and for President Truman, so he cut his losses.

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President Truman Takes Charge: The Election of 1948 and the Creation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization As the Berlin airlift reached its climax in the summer and autumn of 1948, the presidential election campaign was in full swing. It was the first one that I followed with great interest. I was nineteen years old in 1948, so I could not vote—it would be more than twenty years before the voting age was lowered. Berkeley was a good vantage point to observe what was happening.Truman was nominated by the Democratic National Convention for a second term, but it was a very contentious move. Southern Democrats were concerned that he would interfere with racial segregation in the South. Truman signaled his intention with an executive order in July 1948 that called for complete desegregation of the military. Many southern delegates, led by Gov. Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, left the convention as a result.They formed their own splinter party, quickly named the “Dixiecrats” by the press, and Strom Thurmond was their presidential candidate. There was also opposition from the left. Former vice president Henry A. Wallace, who had served in President Roosevelt’s third term, announced that he would run for president as the candidate of the newly formed Progressive Party. The principal plank in the Progressive Party’s platform was that the United States should make overtures to the Soviets and should not oppose their moves to establish communist regimes around the world. In his very feisty acceptance speech at the convention, in which he promised that he would win the election hands down, President Truman pledged continued opposition to the Soviets’ efforts to expand their influence. The Republicans nominated Gov. Thomas E. Dewey. He was a very competent and highly regarded governor of New York who had also been a crusading, crime-fighting district attorney. Dewey led in all the polls, and was supported by most of the press and the opinion-making pundits. Although Truman had made some hard and important decisions such as the decision to aid anticommunist forces in Greece and Turkey and to end World War II by ordering the use of nuclear weapons against Japan, he had one problem: he was not Franklin Roosevelt. Roosevelt was such a gigantic figure that any successor would look small by comparison. Truman met this challenge with an aggressive campaign that included crisscrossing the country on a special railroad train. In hundreds of small towns he made speeches from the rear platform of the last car. This whistle-stop campaign was quintessential retail politics. He reached thousands of people in their own hometowns, and they were apparently not counted in the polls. Dewey ran a “high road” campaign because he and his advisers were certain that he would win. But Truman’s strategy worked, and on November 2, 1948, he won the election, outdistancing Dewey by more than two million votes. One of the most famous and amusing pictures of the election shows President Truman holding up a copy of the Chicago Tribune with the headline “Dewey Defeats Truman.” The editors had jumped the gun, caught up in the foolish sense of inevitability that infected Dewey’s campaign.

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I watched the campaign from Berkeley and attended some speeches by the candidates, including one by Wallace. He was a persuasive orator, but I simply could not agree with his assertion that the Soviet Union presented no significant danger to the United States. Truman made several speeches in the Bay Area, including one addressing the 1948 graduating class of the University of California at Berkeley, where he also received an honorary degree. In his commencement speech, he discussed world affairs and the “hope for a world order based upon law and for lasting peace based on justice.” He focused on the attitude of Soviet Union and their actions in the United Nations—coercion, obstruction, and open aggression in international affairs—and implored the Soviets to “show its good faith by proper action.” This was a call for all nations and peoples of the world to join the crusade for lasting peace and freedom. I was satisfied with the outcome of the election. President Truman had done well, and the hope was that this would continue into his second term. An argument can be made that the 1948 election was a referendum on the Cold War. The fact that Wallace could garner only a million votes out of about fifty million cast demonstrated that Americans were not ready to follow his advice. The blockade of Berlin was ongoing during the election. It was a good example of the kind of Soviet behavior that Wallace, in effect, asked voters to ignore. The Berlin blockade accelerated the formation of a military alliance among the western European nations. This was the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which is still in existence seventy years after it was founded on April 4, 1949. It had been preceded a year earlier by a military alliance between Belgium, the Netherlands, Great Britain, France, and Luxembourg, established by the Treaty of Brussels. The formation of NATO arose from the fragmentation of agreements reached at Yalta for the occupation of Germany.The Berlin blockade sharpened the need for an extensive alliance to defend against future Soviet military actions in Europe. The North Atlantic Treaty added the United States, Canada, Italy, Portugal, Norway, and Denmark to the Treaty of Brussels alliance. Three years later, in February 1952, Turkey and Greece joined NATO. NATO was the centerpiece effort for achieving ultimate victory in the Cold War—and probably the most significant foreign policy achievement of the Truman administration. What made this possible was the key statement in the original charter: The Parties of NATO agreed that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all. Consequently, they agree that, if such an armed attack occurs, each of them, in exercise of the right of individual or collective self-defence will assist the Party or Parties being attacked, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area.

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In short, the members of the alliance pledged “all for one and one for all” and promised to help militarily any member under attack. As things turned out, NATO was strong enough that this provision was never implemented during the Cold War. At its peak there were about 500,000 American military people (army, navy, and air force) on NATO assignments.

The First Soviet Nuclear Explosion and the Hydrogen Bomb On August 29, 1949, the Soviets detonated their first nuclear explosive device. The explosion was detected a few days later by a modified B-29 flying at high altitude and carrying instruments that could measure the concentration of radioactive materials in the atmosphere. There was no doubt about what had happened. There was, however, great surprise and consternation. Everyone familiar with the technology of nuclear weapons recognized that the Soviets would eventually develop them, but no one had expected it to happen as soon as it did. The history of this event is well known and thoroughly documented, but I want to review it a bit here because several of the key players in the US response to the Soviet detonation later played a large role in my life. The explanation for the Soviets’ rapid development of nuclear technology soon became apparent: the Los Alamos Laboratory had been penetrated by Soviet agents. During the early days of World War II, refugee scientists from Germany had started to work on nuclear weapons in England. When the United States entered the war in late 1941, the British and American nuclear programs were merged, and a number of British scientists worked at Los Alamos and other US nuclear laboratories. Among these was Klaus Fuchs, an immigrant from Germany living in England. A talented theoretical physicist, Fuchs was also a member of the German Communist Party. In 1933, he had been forced to leave Germany because of his communist connections, and he went to England.When the Los Alamos Laboratory was established in 1943, Fuchs, by then a British citizen, was sent to work there. He learned about the “explosive lens,” which could drive a spherical plutonium structure critical. Motivated by his belief in communist ideology and by his desire to help Soviet Russia in its epic struggle against Nazi Germany, Fuchs stole the plans for the plutonium bomb and gave them to the Soviets. Thus, the first Soviet nuclear detonation (called Joe I, after Stalin) was essentially a copy of the device tested at Alamogordo on July 16, 1945. In addition to Fuchs, two or three other Soviet spies had access to important technical data about nuclear explosives. The most important of these was Alan Nunn May, a British nuclear physicist working at Canada’s Chalk River Nuclear Laboratory. There he had access to highly classified nuclear data necessary for the design of nuclear explosives, which he provided to the Soviets. Both Fuchs and Nunn May became suspects when the Soviet KGB colonel Oleg Gouzenko de-

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fected in September 1945 and revealed a number of Soviet espionage operations to US counterintelligence agents. Fuchs and Nunn May were tried and convicted for espionage in 1950, and both spent some years in prison. The Joe I detonation triggered a nuclear arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union. From the time of Oppenheimer’s Berkeley meeting of “luminaries” in the summer of 1942, there had always been a group of nuclear scientists who thought that the fission reaction was only a step toward finding a way to ignite hydrogen fusion reactions. These involve the heavy hydrogen isotopes, deuterium and tritium. The basic idea of the hydrogen bomb was to heat a deuterium-tritium gas mixture somehow with a nuclear-fission detonation. The fusion of deuterium and tritium yields about five times the energy per weight of a fission reaction. More importantly, fusion reactions release large quantities of high-energy neutrons that can fission uranium-238 and the uranium-235 isotope. Thus, by surrounding a hydrogen fusion bomb with a “blanket” of natural uranium, explosive yields in the range of many megatons of high explosives could be achieved. The problem was that creating fusion reactions on a large scale required enormous activation energies or temperatures, which is why large-scale fusion reactions are sometimes called “thermonuclear” reactions. The hope was to find a configuration that would allow the energy of a fission detonation to create the high temperatures necessary to initiate a large fusion reaction. The two of Oppenheimer’s luminaries who were most interested in the prospect of developing a weapon based on hydrogen fusion were Edward Teller and Emil Konopinski. In 1942, they worked out a configuration to create a large-scale fusion reaction, which they called the “Super.” More accurate calculations revealed that the proposed configuration would not work. But when Teller went to work at Los Alamos a year later, Oppenheimer, who had been appointed director, allowed him to continue to work part-time on the Super, although their first priority was the creation of a successful fission bomb. Following the surrender of Japan, most of the senior people who had created the first nuclear weapon left Los Alamos to pursue peacetime careers. Only a corporal’s guard was left at the laboratory, where the remaining staff members continued to develop nuclear weapons as best they could. The US Atomic Energy Commission was established in 1947 with a charter to develop the technology of nuclear weapons and nuclear reactors. David Lilienthal, the director of the Tennessee Valley Authority and an experienced manager of large government-sponsored organizations, became its chairman. Oppenheimer, who had left the University of California to become the director of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, became chairman of the commission’s General Advisory Committee (GAC). The laboratories, including the one at Los Alamos and the facilities of the Manhattan Project, were all turned over to the commission. There was a debate over what sort of nuclear weapons programs the Atomic Energy Commission should pursue.The majority of the nuclear weapons commu-

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nity, led by the new director of Los Alamos, Norris Bradbury, advocated a program for achieving a better understanding of the science of nuclear explosives in order to engineer fission bombs that would have greater military value. A minority of researchers advocated the immediate development of thermonuclear fusion weapons. This group, led by Edward Teller, argued that the Soviets would eventually develop nuclear weapons, including fusion weapons. The arguments of the minority group were not accepted, primarily because no one really knew how to make a usable fusion bomb. But in 1948, a group of people began to agree with Teller’s contention that there should be a research program devoted to the Super, including two Hungarian friends of  Teller, John von Neumann, a mathematician who was responsible for creating the architecture of the first electronic computer, ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Calculator), and Eugene Wigner, who was later awarded a Nobel Prize for his work in neutron physics. Both taught at Princeton University. They were joined by John Wheeler, a member of the Princeton faculty who had worked with Niels Bohr on the early theoretical models of nuclear structure. This Princeton group was ready to play a major role in the Super effort when the time came. Like most of the academic people who had worked at Los Alamos during the war, Teller left the lab in 1947, and he returned to his academic post at the University of Chicago.The ongoing work at Los Alamos, on fission devices, was of no real interest to him. He did spend his summers there, and he kept up his advocacy of work on the Super, both in Washington and within the scientific community. This state of affairs in the US nuclear weapons community ended with the Joe I detonation. The demonstration of Soviet nuclear prowess created considerable alarm. President Truman asked AEC chairman Lilienthal for advice about how to respond to the Soviets. Lilienthal asked the General Advisory Committee to prepare a report responsive to the president’s request. The committee submitted its report in November 1949. It dismissed the idea of initiating a program to develop the Super as a response to the Soviet challenge, citing the formidable technical difficulties to be overcome and questioning the military value of an explosive yield up to one hundred times as powerful as that of a fission bomb. None of the committee members dissented from these conclusions. In addition, two of the committee members, I. I. Rabi and Enrico Fermi, both Nobel laureates and both major contributors to the recent war effort, submitted a separate opinion. Besides the reasons given in the majority report, they raised an important moral question. The final sentence of their statement asserts: “It [the Super] is necessarily an evil thing considered in any light.” The negative report spurred Teller and his friends to overcome the “formidable technical difficulties.” His most important allies in this effort were his friends at Princeton and their powerful computers. The program had by then acquired the title Project Matterhorn. Teller’s first conception of the Super involved a nonequilibrium configuration akin to a conventional shock tube. This proved to be a

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failure. He then began to look at using configurations in which the deuterium was in equilibrium while being compressed. The Matterhorn computers were used to test the configurations. Lilienthal forwarded the recommendation of the General Advisory Committee to the White House, along with his endorsement. In a statement issued on January 31, 1950, President Truman chose to ignore the committee’s (and Lilienthal’s) advice. After stating the reasons for his decision, he ended as follows: “Accordingly, I have directed the Atomic Energy Commission to continue into work on all forms of atomic weapons, including the so-called Hydrogen or Super Bomb.” In consequence, Lilienthal resigned as AEC chairman. He was replaced by commission member Gordon Dean. The ball was now in Teller’s court. The president had told the AEC to work on the Super, so now Teller and his group had to produce. Von Neumann’s computers had shown the infeasibility of several equilibrium-compression configurations developed by Teller. Finally, Teller, with critical help from the mathematician Stanislaw Ulam, developed the idea that made huge thermonuclear detonations possible: use the radiation (essentially X-rays) emitted by a nuclear fission device in an appropriately designed configuration to compress the deuterium by radiation pressure. A small-scale test, the “George” shot, was performed on May 9, 1951, as part of Operation Greenhouse at Eniwetok Atoll. The shot was successful, and the principle of radiation implosion was proved to be sound. The results of the George test were presented early in June 1951 at a meeting of the General Advisory Committee. Most of the people in the room had opposed work on the hydrogen bomb, so there was some wrangling before Teller was permitted to speak. In a fifteen-minute lecture, Teller explained what had been done. Chairman Oppenheimer said that Teller’s result was “so sweet” that it could not be rejected. There was not much more to say, so the General Advisory Committee recommended that Los Alamos should go ahead and build a thermonuclear bomb using Teller’s radiation implosion principle.

Student Life in Berkeley in the Late 1940s and Early 1950s At the time, of course, I was not aware of all the events I have just described. Most of them occurred during my freshman and sophomore years at Berkeley, and I had neither the maturity nor the access to the necessary information to understand the issues in detail. But I did start to read newspapers and magazines in an effort to follow the major events. The Berkeley campus during the years I was there (September 1947–January 1951) was pervaded by a sense of optimism. Much of this was due to Robert Gordon Sproul, the president of the University of California since 1930. Sproul was not a scholar; he graduated with a degree in civil engineering from the univer-

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sity and then worked as an engineer for the university’s construction department. (He never earned a doctorate.) He drifted into financial work and wound up as comptroller of the university. He was so effective in this position that he was eventually named president. I first saw Sproul when he addressed the freshman class in September 1947 at the Greek Theater on campus. Sproul had the loudest voice I have ever heard. He spoke to the class—all four thousand of us—without a microphone, and we could clearly hear every word he said. In fact, there is a perhaps apocryphal story about the power of Sproul’s voice. As comptroller, he had an office a few doors down the hall from the president, William Wallace Campbell. One day Campbell heard a particularly loud conversation coming over the transom while dictating letters to his secretary. He asked his secretary to find out what the racket was all about. When she returned, she said, “It is Mr. Sproul talking to Sacramento,” whereupon Campbell growled, “Well, tell him to use the telephone!” Sproul was president of the university for twenty-eight years. When I arrived in 1947, there were four campuses: UC Berkeley, UCLA, the UC Medical School in San Francisco, and the Agricultural College in Davis. There were also three “institutions”: the Scripps Institute for Oceanography in La Jolla, the Citrus Experiment Station in Riverside, and the Lick Observatory on Mount Hamilton, just east of San Jose. Also, a very influential state senator ( Jack Tenney) had just persuaded the California Legislature to take over the land and facilities that the marine corps had built at Goleta just outside Santa Barbara, with a view to turning the Santa Barbara State Normal School into the fifth campus of the University of California. (This move was followed by turning the Scripps Institute into UC San Diego, the Citrus Experiment Station, into UC Riverside, and then the formation of two new campuses at Irvine and Santa Cruz.) Sproul’s great achievement was to change the University of California from a good regional university into a great national institution. He did that by raising huge quantities of money wherever he could find it and by being a shrewd judge of people. He delegated the running of the university to a truly stellar group of scholar-managers. Among these was Clark Kerr, who became the first chancellor of the Berkeley campus, in 1952, and later the leading “statesman” in American higher education. Kerr was one of Sproul’s protégés. Another was Franklin Murphy, who was a young medical doctor from Kansas when Sproul tapped him. As UCLA’s first chancellor, he transformed the campus from the “southern section” of the university into an institution that now rivals Berkeley. Not content with that, Murphy became the CEO of the Times Mirror Company after leaving the university, and by the time he retired, the Los Angeles Times was a national newspaper in the same league as the Washington Post and the New York Times. There was the redoubtable Emil Mrak, who changed the Davis Agricultural School from a “cow college” to what is now a high-quality general university. Finally, there were J. R. Oppenheimer and Ernest Lawrence, who created the great laboratories where the nuclear weapons were

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developed that ended World War II and contributed significantly to winning the Cold War. The laboratories at Los Alamos and Livermore would not exist were it not for the leadership provided by Sproul. To this day, Sproul’s legacy lives on in these institutions. Shortly after the end of World War II, California embarked on a golden era of creativity and economic expansion that lasted for more than forty years. The state was relatively underpopulated in 1945, compared with the East Coast, so there was plenty of room to maneuver. A significant force in the dynamism of postwar California was Gov. Earl Warren. A native Californian, he was elected governor in 1942. I remember seeing him during one of his periodic visits to the Berkeley campus, where one of his daughters, Nina, was a student. He was a handsome, distinguished-looking man whose open face and sunny disposition exuded confidence. Governor Warren was what was then called a liberal Republican, which meant that he was liberal on religious and social matters but fiscally conservative. Warren stimulated the economy of California by supporting and expanding the aeronautical and electronics industries, which had been founded or greatly expanded during World War II. He kept taxes low and state regulations benign. These measures created the conditions that made possible Silicon Valley in Santa Clara County and the burgeoning aerospace industry in Southern California. Most important from the viewpoint of the University of California was that Earl Warren and Robert Sproul were both members of the university’s class of 1912. They were close friends, and their long-term relationship was a major factor in the development of the school. Both Sproul and Warren came from relatively modest backgrounds, and they understood clearly how important a high-quality public university was to a state’s development and growth. I wish that the current political leadership of the country understood this. In 1953, President Eisenhower appointed Warren chief justice of the US Supreme Court. It was a strange appointment because Warren had no judicial experience. But Eisenhower felt that the cases likely to come up would have more political content than usual, so political judgment might be more important than legal background. And that is how things turned out. Chief Justice Warren persuaded the Supreme Court to vote unanimously to strike down the “separate but equal” doctrine established fifty-eight years earlier by the court, and the ruling in Brown v. Board of Education (1954) called for an end to racial segregation in US public schools. The Warren Court went on to hand down many landmark decisions during the civil rights revolution of the 1960s. Both Sproul and Warren helped create the positive atmosphere that existed in the nation during the years following World War II. I count it as a great privilege to have lived through this period as a young student at a great university. During my years at Berkeley, I had the opportunity to take courses taught by truly dedicated educators. I have already mentioned Joel Hildebrand, whose chemistry lectures I attended and who became a friend and mentor during my years as a

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student and later as a member of the Berkeley faculty. August Carl Helmholz gave crystal-clear lectures on modern atomic physics (quantum mechanics), which was, for me, one of the most important courses because it was both interesting and new. Edwin McMillan, who would share a Nobel Prize with Glen Seaborg in 1951 for the discovery of plutonium, taught elementary nuclear physics. Chester O’Konski, in the Chemistry Department, taught me thermodynamics and some statistical mechanics. Harvey White lectured on geometric and physical optics. In mathematics, my most memorable teacher was Alfred Tarski, who was a world-renowned expert on symbolic logic. Probably the most interesting professor I met in Berkeley was Harold W. Lewis, who taught a course in methods of theoretical physics. Lewis had been a student of Robert Oppenheimer a few years earlier, just before Oppenheimer left Berkeley. He was very interested in students, and for some reason he took a particular liking to me; in fact, Hal Lewis and I remained in regular contact for decades after I left Berkeley. He had eclectic interests in everything from aircraft safety (he was a private pilot for many years) to the public perception of the danger of events that are catastrophic but have a very small probability of occurring. Hal wrote two books on the latter subject. I was truly blessed by having access to this galaxy of academic stars. My courses in science and mathematics were the focus of my academic work. Added to the naval science course that I had to take every semester, these made for a heavy load. I attended humanities classes as well, with special emphasis on English literature and politics. I felt that I had to learn more about the language, culture, and politics of my adopted country. Two English courses were of particular interest: a small course (20 students) on Shakespeare in the spring semester of 1949, taught by Prof. Merle A.Tuveson, and a large lecture course (150 students) that was a broad survey of American literature. In addition, I audited a number of courses in political science and history. I particularly remember Robert Scalapino, a political scientist, talking about the communist revolution in China, and Todd LaPorte explaining the history of scientific discovery. One of the important differences between my science and English literature courses was that there were very few women in science courses sixty years ago. In fact, the only woman I remember in my undergraduate courses was Nina Byers, who was in Hal Lewis’s class and eventually became a distinguished professor of physics at UCLA. It was quite different in the English courses, which usually contained an equal number of male and female students. After my first semester at Berkeley, during which I lived in the naval barracks in Richmond, about ten miles from the campus, I found a room in a boardinghouse near campus. I joined a fraternity (Sigma Pi), but I never lived in the fraternity house. I took my meals there and went to parties and social events in which the fraternity participated. I cannot say that I had a very active social life, but I did make several friends with whom I am still in touch. At a large coeducational campus, it is inevitable that you will

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meet many young women. My heavy academic schedule meant that I had relatively light social calendar. In 1947 and 1948, I met several nice young women, and I took them to concerts, parties, or dinners. Social events organized by the NROTC unit were especially enjoyable. Aside from acquainting me in detail with some of the works of William Shakespeare, Merle Tuveson’s English class was where I met my future wife. This course met three times a week at 8:00 a.m. I am a morning person, so the early start time was not a problem for me. A young lady sat behind me. It was my habit to ask questions, and every time I did, the lady in the row behind me chimed in with more questions and comments. Professor Tuveson wound up spending much of his time adjudicating debates between us. I never turned around to look at my competitor, but I saw her before the end of the semester and found out that she was Marion Thorpe, an English major from Hayward, California. During the summer of 1949, I was dating another girl, and we both signed up to take an American literature course taught by Prof. S. R. Jayne. (S. R. stood for Sears Roebuck, believe it or not!) I promised to sit next to her during the lectures. When I walked into the lecture hall, I saw, much to my chagrin, that Marion Thorpe was also in the class. I was in a quandary! Even though I did not see Marion after the end of the spring semester, I had enjoyed our debates in Tuveson’s class, and I wanted to see her again. I quickly walked out of the hall, went around the outside of the room, and found a seat in the top row. I decided that the best policy would be to concentrate on Professor Jayne’s lectures and not to sit next to either one of the young ladies! In the years between the end of the war and the Soviets’ Joe I test, President Truman and Louis A. Johnson, the secretary of defense, felt that because of the US monopoly in nuclear weapons, drastic reductions could be made in conventional forces. Furthermore, the creation of NATO and the lifting of the Berlin blockade bolstered their confidence that future military confrontations with the Soviets seemed unlikely. Specifically, their target for reductions was the navy, which had been greatly expanded to win the Pacific War against Japan. The air force, which had been created in September 1947, operated the aircraft that would deliver the nuclear weapons, and thus it was relatively immune to cuts. Major reductions had already been made in the army in 1945 and 1946. In the spring and summer of 1949, a bitter dispute between the navy and the civilian leadership ended in the resignation of navy secretary John L. Sullivan and the dismissal of Adm. Louis Denfeld, the chief of naval operations. This incident has been dubbed the “revolt of the admirals.” The reductions in the navy’s budget had consequences for the Naval ROTC unit at the university. We were told that not all of us would automatically receive commissions in the navy or the naval reserve, or equivalent marine corps commissions. Captain White, our commanding officer, urged our unit to consider

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resigning from the navy reserve. I spent much of the summer thinking about my options. Those ruminations were affected by a book that I ran across in the Physics Library, titled The Science and Engineering of Nuclear Power (1948), edited by Prof. Clark Goodman of MIT. One article in the book described a submarine propelled by a nuclear power plant, which would make it possible for the submarine to cruise submerged for very long periods of time. I was so fascinated by this prospect, as well as by some of the others in the book, that I decided to concentrate on nuclear science and technology. By the time the fall semester of 1949 began, I was still trying to decide whether to resign from the NROTC. I consulted Professor Hildebrand and Commander Nimitz about the decision. Both were helpful in outlining the pros and cons. But it was Nimitz who made the critical suggestion. He told me that Capt. Hyman Rickover would be visiting the San Francisco Bay area. Nimitz had asked him to talk with some NROTC students about working on a new project he was developing. On the appointed day, five or six of us who were members of the NROTC unit met with Rickover. He was a small, spare man in civilian clothes, and he had a no-nonsense manner. Far from the crusty martinet he later became, he was a quiet and very impressive visionary. He told us how he wanted to develop nuclearpowered submarines that could remain under the surface for long periods of time—the same concept that I had read about in Goodman’s book a month or so earlier. In addition, he told us that these submarines would be armed with missiles carrying nuclear warheads. Rickover felt that such a weapons system would help maintain the peace, since the United States would be able to field an overwhelming nuclear force at sea. These submarines would cruise slowly deep underwater and therefore would be very hard for the Soviets to detect. Such a force, Rickover told us, would not be vulnerable to a first strike by the Soviets and would thus deter any potential Soviet attack. A decade before the doctrine of “mutually assured destruction” became official US policy, Rickover had developed it in his mind. Finally, Rickover told us that several universities were working on this program with him, the most important being MIT. He told us that the MIT program he was funding would be initiated early in 1950 and would provide support for the reactor development program. Rickover added that he wanted all the officers of the future nuclear submarines to go through MIT in order to learn about nuclear technology. And that eventually happened. The meeting with Rickover made a very strong impression on me—it was a watershed event. Even though I was just starting my junior year, I was already beginning to think about graduate school, and MIT was high on my list. If I wanted to enter the program that Rickover mentioned, I would have to graduate in January 1951 rather than in June 1951 as originally planned. I would have to attend summer school, which meant that I could not fulfill the navy’s senior-year cruise requirement in 1950. After some hesitation, I decided that I would apply for admission to the graduate school at MIT and try to get into the research group

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that Rickover mentioned. In addition to the prospect of attending MIT, I felt that there would be no shooting wars in the foreseeable future—and no need for me to be active in the navy or the reserve.The breaking of the Berlin blockade, among other events, had convinced me that the position of the United Sates was so strong that armed conflicts were unlikely. Thus, rather reluctantly, I turned in my uniform and resigned from the NROTC unit. Just before Christmas 1949, my fraternity, Sigma Pi, had an exchange party with the sorority Theta Upsilon, which was just up Haste Street from our house. In those days, we always wore coats and ties to such events, so we all looked pretty good when we walked into the Theta Upsilon house. We were greeted by the housemother and several sorority members who had been designated as greeters. I was one of the last ones to go in, and once past the entryway, I was in a large room where a number of people were milling around and talking. At a baby grand piano in the corner, none other than Marion Thorpe, my debating partner in Merle Tuveson’s class a year earlier, was playing background music. I hung around the piano, and when we were going in to dinner, I made sure that we could sit together and talk. By the end of the evening, I had learned that her home was in Hayward (which I already knew), a city about thirty miles south of Berkeley; that she was majoring in English; that she had season tickets to the San Francisco Symphony, as did I; and that her parents were both medical doctors. I invited her to come with me to the symphony concerts for the rest of the season. (I had a car.) She readily accepted, and although I did not know it at the time, this was the beginning of a yearlong courtship that would lead to marriage thirteen months later. After the first of the new year, I saw Marion Thorpe frequently. She was a night editor on the staff of the Daily Californian, the student newspaper at the university. So on certain days she would work in the newspaper offices in the Stevens Union building from six to nine in the evening. I would make a point of studying in the physics library on those nights, and at nine o’clock I would walk across the street to the newspaper office, pick up Marion, and then walk to Blum’s ice cream emporium on Shattuck Avenue, where we would consume large ice cream “floats” before walking home back up the hill. It was during our first or second trip to Blum’s that I discovered that Marion’s family nickname was “Bun.” The story is that her mother’s second pregnancy was unexpected. So when the baby finally arrived, her mother dubbed her the “bundle from heaven,” which was soon shortened to “Bun.” Blum’s was a hangout for members of the Daily Californian night staff. Several times I forgot to bring enough money to pay our bill, so Bun would extract a loan from one of her colleagues. After this happened a couple of times, Bun’s friends began to think that I was a cheapskate. Actually, I was only absentminded! I eventually learned not to forget money. Bun’s work on the paper gave us something else in common, which was that we both wrote articles for student publications. I did not participate extensively in

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extracurricular activities during my undergraduate years in Berkeley, but one that I valued and spent some time on was my work as a staff writer for California Engineer, a magazine published by the students of the College of Engineering. I wrote several articles and edited others.This activity provided me with good contacts among engineering students and faculty members. The years 1948 and 1949 were marked by communist victories that, even though expected, created fear and apprehension in the United States. One was the destruction of the democratic regime in Czechoslovakia in 1948, which moved communist influence deep into central Europe. The second was the defeat of the Nationalist Chinese government under Chiang Kai-Shek by the communist armies led by Mao Zedong in October 1949. These were real setbacks, and influential people in the United States began to believe that there were many communists in the US government. There were accusations that the United States had “lost” Czechoslovakia and China, even though we had never “had” them. The resulting atmosphere of suspicion in American institutions was extremely unhealthy and destructive. The name usually associated with this period is that of Sen. Joseph McCarthy, an obscure junior senator from Wisconsin. McCarthy, by making baseless charges about large-scale communist influence in the US government, was able to distract the American people and disrupt the political scene for a number of years. A patina of respectability clung to people like McCarthy because the Soviets did indeed conduct espionage in the United Sates. A very small number of Soviet agents held high-level positions in both the Roosevelt and the Truman administrations. Among the most prominent were Alger Hiss, a senior State Department official, and Harry Dexter White, who had served as an assistant secretary in the Treasury Department and had been appointed to head the International Monetary Fund by President Truman. Hiss and White were identified as Soviet agents in 1948 during open congressional hearings. These hearings were organized by congressional opponents of the Truman administration and were conducted in the full glare of publicity. Thus, there was a clear political motive for them as well as a concern for national security. Great controversy surrounded these accusations. White died shortly after his hearing, but the Hiss case remained controversial until his own death in 1996. Both Hiss and White were, in fact, Soviet agents, as was revealed in the Venona papers, part of a secret Soviet archives that became available after the end of the Cold War. Neither Hiss nor White provided any information of value to the Soviets. But the bipartisan Commission on Government Secrecy, chaired by Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, concluded in 1997 that “the complicity of Alger Hiss of the State Department seems settled as does that of Harry Dexter White of the Treasury Department.” What was more important was that the “hundreds” of communists mentioned by Senator McCarthy never turned up in the Soviet archives. But the poisonous atmosphere created by McCarthy and his colleagues was real.

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The University of California was not immune to McCarthyism’s baleful effects. In the fall of 1949, the Board of Regents of the university, at the urging of Regent John Neylan, decided to impose a loyalty oath on all employees of the university. The oath, as it finally evolved, required every employee to affirm that he or she was not a member of the Communist Party. The oath was imposed in addition to the standard oath required of all California state employees to protect and defend the Constitution. The imposition of the new oath caused great concern among members of the Berkeley faculty. Ernest Lawrence wrote an open letter to his faculty colleagues, urging them to sign the oath. On the other hand, two of the best young faculty members, John Wilcox and Harold Lewis, whom I have already mentioned, were extremely upset about the oath. Both were assistant professors whom I knew well.Wilcox and Lewis were first-class educators, and both refused to sign the oath. I asked them why they refused to sign, because they had told me that they were not communists. Both told me that it was a matter of principle with them, which, I confess, I did not understand. Eventually they left the university, Wilcox to join the US Naval Ordnance Test Center in Southern California, where he participated in the development of the Sidewinder air-to-air missile, and Lewis to join the physics faculty at the University of Wisconsin. I learned much about science and technology from Wilcox and Lewis, and they also taught me a lesson about American political sensibilities. The latter was important because I had been in the United States only eight years and I had much to learn about my adopted country. The Berkeley campus was in turmoil over the oath controversy for about a year, until the regents rescinded the requirement in September 1950.The great majority of faculty members and nonacademic employees had signed the document. Forty to fifty members of the faculty had refused to sign it. The controversy over the oath died out quickly, but aftereffects remained. The dispute created deep divisions in the faculty, and when these resurfaced fifteen years later, they led to a collapse of faculty authority during the student rebellion in 1964. By that time, I was a member of the Berkeley faculty, and I learned firsthand how harmful the oath controversy really had been.

The Korean War: The First “Hot War” of the Cold War The seeds of the Korean War were sown in the final days of World War II. In August 1945, Soviet troops occupied the northern half of the Korean Peninsula, and US troops landed in the south. Japanese troops had been stationed in Korea since the end of the Russo-Japanese War in 1905, and in 1910 Japan annexed the country. For thirty-five years, Japan exercised harsh control over the peninsula. In August 1945, the Soviet and American militaries rounded up the remaining Japanese troops in Korea. The thirty-eighth parallel, which cuts the Korean Peninsula roughly in half, was selected as the arbitrary dividing line between the two zones of influence. A joint Soviet-American Control Commission was established to plan

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for a unified Korea, but the negotiations ended in deadlock, as had similar talks in Europe. Late in 1947, the US began to make plans for an independent government in South Korea.The Soviets responded by halting all traffic across the thirty-eighth parallel in January 1948, completing the separation of the two Koreas. On May 31, 1948, Syngman Rhee, a US-educated politician, was inaugurated as president of the Republic of Korea. The Soviets quickly installed a former guerrilla leader, Kim Il Sung, as president of the Democratic Republic of Korea. The National Security Council, clearly reflecting White House opinion, made a fundamental error. In April 1948, it issued a directive, NSC-8, that stated, “Everything should be done to create conditions for the withdrawal of American troops by December 31, 1948.” Although the United States promised to provide help to build a strong South Korean military, all American troops were withdrawn from the peninsula in January 1949. The road to war was clear. The Soviets interpreted the American moves as signaling that the US had no vital national interest in Korea. After giving up on the Berlin blockade, Stalin and his marshals looked for other areas in which to exert their influence. After the American withdrawal, South Korea was an obvious place for such an exercise. On June 24, 1950, ninety thousand North Korean troops occupied Seoul, the South Korean capital. The troops had been equipped by the Soviets and were advised by a number of high-ranking Soviet officers. The conquest of the whole Korean Peninsula would be a pushover for them. The American response was quick and occurred on two fronts. First, Truman authorized air support for the South Korean Army. Second, he ordered Gen. Douglas MacArthur, the US commander in Japan, to visit Korea and then make recommendations about what military forces would be necessary to defeat the invading North Koreans. Finally, President Truman asked for an emergency session of the UN Security Council. The council called for an immediate cessation of hostilities and the withdrawal of the North Koreans north of the thirty-eighth parallel. In addition, the council authorized UN member nations to provide military assistance to the South Koreans. These actions were possible only because the Soviet representative was absent, and thus unable to exercise his veto. The Soviets were boycotting the Security Council because the UN had not recognized the new regime in China. US air support slowed the North Korean advance somewhat, and was now sanctioned by the UN Security Council. MacArthur recommended that US ground forces be deployed to aid the South Korean military. On July 7, the Security Council authorized the establishment of a UN military command in Korea, and MacArthur was appointed supreme commander of all UN forces in Korea. The first American unit to be deployed in Korea was the California National Guard’s 24th Infantry Division. After being hastily put on the front line, the unit was mauled. The North Koreans captured Maj. Gen. William Dean, the division commander. Eventually several other divisions were deployed, and a defense perimeter was established

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around the port city of Pusan on the southeastern corner of the peninsula. The US Army in Korea was constituted as the Eighth Army, with Lt. Gen. Walton Walker in command. MacArthur realized that just holding the Pusan perimeter would not drive out the North Koreans.While Walker held the perimeter, MacArthur collected enough troops to mount a landing at the port of Inchon, a few miles northwest of Seoul. The plan was for the landing force to march due east across the peninsula and cut off several hundred thousand North Korean troops to the south. The Inchon operation was carried out on September 15, 1950, by five thousand American and South Korean troops.The operation was a brilliant success, and thousands of North Korean prisoners were taken. A few weeks following the landing, South Korea was cleared of all North Korean troops. After the successful Inchon operation there was a debate within the Truman administration and in military circles about what should be done next. Some argued that the military objective of the original UN Security Council resolution had been achieved. Therefore, the thing to do would be to negotiate a more defensible boundary between North and South Korea and declare victory. Others felt that the opportunity to unify Korea as a result of MacArthur’s victory was there for the taking and should be exploited. The most important question that had to be answered was “What would the Chinese do if American troops moved toward the Yalu River?” Truman wanted to discuss this question directly with MacArthur. MacArthur was the best-known and most distinguished soldier in the US Army at the time. His father, Arthur MacArthur, had served in the Civil War and had been awarded the Medal of Honor for heroism at Missionary Ridge. He eventually reached the rank of major general and was the commander in the Philippines following the Spanish-American War. Douglas followed in his father’s footsteps. He graduated first in his class at West Point. He saw combat in 1915 and 1916 when US Army troops campaigned against the Mexican rebel army headed by Pancho Villa. During World War I, MacArthur quickly compiled an outstanding combat record. He was promoted to brigadier general at age thirty-five—the youngest in the army—and finished his wartime service as commander of the famous Rainbow Division. MacArthur’s service in the Pacific War from 1941 to 1945 as commander in chief of the southwestern Pacific area is well known. His supreme moment came on the deck of the battleship Missouri on September 2, 1945, when he signed the Japanese surrender document on behalf of all Allied forces in the Pacific. Following the Japanese surrender, MacArthur remained on active duty with the five-star rank of general of the army and supreme commander of Allied forces in Japan. In that position, he deftly and firmly led the recovery of that nation from the terrible effects of World War II. Truman, who had never met MacArthur, believed that the general was arrogant and vainglorious and that these traits might cloud his judgment. The two

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finally met on Wake Island on October 15, 1950. The question uppermost in the president’s mind was what the Chinese would do if UN forces crossed the thirty-eighth parallel and occupied the rest of the Korean Peninsula. Some argued that a unified Korea was, in fact, the objective of the UN-sponsored, but now defunct, control commission established in 1945. MacArthur assured the president that the Chinese would not intervene unless US forces crossed the Yalu River and invaded Manchuria. As a result of the Wake Island conference, MacArthur was authorized to cross the thirty-eighth parallel but was forbidden to cross the Yalu River or to order warplanes into Manchurian (Chinese) air space. The weakened North Koreans were in no position to resist MacArthur’s forces. US troops captured Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, on October 29, and then reached the Yalu River, north of the capital, on November 21. At this point, the Chinese intervened. Between November 25 and 27, about 400,000 Chinese troops crossed the Yalu and inflicted an extensive defeat on MacArthur’s troops.The US and UN troops retreated to the thirty-eighth parallel, and had stabilized the military situation by December 15. MacArthur was stung by this defeat and especially by his mistake in judgment about the likelihood of Chinese intervention. He publicly blamed his defeat on the orders that limited his operations along the Yalu and his inability to use airpower to bomb Chinese positions in Manchuria. During an unauthorized visit to Taiwan, he publicly encouraged Chiang Kai-Shek to send troops to help reconquer North Korea. Finally, MacArthur sent an open letter to the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Joseph Martin, advocating the unification of the Korean Peninsula. All these actions were contrary to US and UN policy, so President Truman finally decided to relieve MacArthur of his command by reasserting the principle of civilian control of the military. MacArthur was very popular at the time, and Truman was not, so there was a major public outcry. Cooler heads prevailed, however, and MacArthur went into a peaceful and relatively obscure retirement. The new supreme commander in Korea was Gen. Matthew Ridgway, who had been a successful and prominent commander in Europe during World War II. Ridgway halted a new offensive by the North Koreans and the Chinese along the thirty-eighth parallel by inflicting huge casualties on the attacking forces. On June 21, 1951, the Soviets suggested that truce negotiations should be initiated, and this overture was accepted. The negotiations were conducted in the small village of Panmunjom, a few miles north of Seoul. While negotiations dragged on for the next two years, low-level fighting took place along the line of demarcation. A permanent truce, one that is still in force, had to wait until the next administration.

Courtship and Marriage In the spring of 1950, the relationship that I had developed with Marion Thorpe blossomed into something more—first infatuation and then love. Our lives be-

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gan to have a regular routine. We saw each other frequently, and on Sundays we would visit Bun’s parents in Hayward, a town of about five thousand. Her parents conducted what was, at the time, the largest private medical practice in Northern California. Both came from relatively modest backgrounds, and both had attended the University of California, Berkeley, for their undergraduate studies. Both also went to UC’s Medical School in San Francisco for their medical degrees. To me, their story was a living example of how important the University of California was to the citizens of the state. My future father-in-law was very much more than a physician—he was a true healer. I remember visiting his office and marveling at the entire operation. There were always at least two dozen people waiting to see Dr. Thorpe. He presided over all of it with a small entourage of assistants. Each waiting patient was treated with a joke or two, a lighting diagnosis, and then a quick “You’ll be fine—do this and that and the other thing—and then go home and kiss the wife.” My future mother-in-law, on the other hand, was very different. She was an intellectual and a linguist. She had earned a master of arts degree in English literature before turning her attention to medicine. In the spring of 1950, I had to take a course in tensor analysis, and the textbook, Les Tenseurs by Tullio Levi-Civita, was written in French. During one of my visits to Hayward, I was struggling through my homework, and she saw the French textbook. Without batting an eye, she sat down next to me and translated the passages I was struggling with, mathematics and all! Dr. Jennie Altgeld Thorpe was an awesome person. She kept up with the current medical literature and consulted with her husband every day. I learned that these consultations permitted him to make the lighting diagnoses I saw him perform on his patients. I was always just a little bit afraid of her. I had the sneaking suspicion that she believed I was not good enough for her daughter. After more than sixty-eight years of marriage, there have been times when I think she was right! Bun’s family background was fairly typical of native Californians. On her father’s side, her ancestors had lived in California for about 150 years, which made her a sixth-generation Californian. Her father’s people were English, Scottish, and Irish, with a more recent addition of German. They had settled in Northern California near Ukiah and started working in the lumber business. They eventually ran a sawmill for some time. Bun’s paternal grandmother, Eida Thorpe, was still alive in 1950. She was born in Virginia City, Nevada, in 1876 at the height of the silver-mining boom. Her father was a German immigrant, Friedrich Birke, who had come to Nevada and run a German-style beer hall, which did very well. Eida lived to be 103 years old, and I vividly remember her hundredth birthday party in Hayward in 1976. She talked about her youth in Virginia City and was very proud of the personal letter of congratulations she had received from President Ford. As a teenager, she moved to San Jose with her sister and mother. There she met and married William Thorpe. She had four sons and a daughter. The eldest son, Milton W. Thorpe, was Bun’s father.

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Bun’s maternal grandfather, Michael Schwab, was probably the best known of her ancestors. He was born in Germany in 1853 and lost his parents at an early age. He became apprenticed to a bookbinder. As many people in similar situations have done (Michael Faraday, for example), Michael Schwab educated himself by reading the books he worked on. He became interested in radical politics, and probably to escape conscription, he left Germany in 1879. He settled in Chicago and joined the American labor movement, becoming a member of the International Working People’s Association. He was very active as a writer and an editor. On May Day 1886, the IWPA and other labor organizations called for a mass meeting on May 4 in Chicago’s Haymarket Square. The purpose of the gathering was to advocate the eight-hour workday; their slogan was “Eight hours to constitute a day’s work!” The meeting turned into a large demonstration. Someone threw a bomb, killing a number of people, and the demonstration became a riot. The police arrested eight of the labor leaders, including Michael Schwab, who had left Haymarket Square before the bomb was detonated. The eight were convicted for conspiring to murder. Seven of the eight were sentenced to death, and one was sentenced to fifteen years. During the lengthy appeals process, one of the people sentenced to death committed suicide, and two, including Schwab, had their sentences commuted to life imprisonment. The remaining four were hanged. Some years later, it was discovered that the bombing had been carried out by people opposed to the union movement. The governor of Illinois, John Peter Altgeld, thereupon set aside the convictions of Michael Schwab and his colleague, and they were released from prison in 1893. Schwab returned to his family, and a daughter named Johanna Altgeld Schwab was born in 1895. Michael Schwab died in 1898 of tuberculosis, which he had contracted during the seven years he spent in prison. His widow and her four children moved to San Francisco shortly afterward. Johanna became known as Jennie and worked for a while in the Ghirardelli chocolate factory to help finance her university education. In 1928, while in medical school, she met and married Milton Thorpe. Bun was their second child, born in 1930. There was also an older sister, Angela, and a younger brother, John. The spring of 1950 was a make-or-break time for me because I had to raise my academic standing in order to be admitted to MIT. It was a tough grind. My fondest memories of the time when I was courting Bun were the family dinners every Sunday at the Thorpe residence at 159 Prospect Street in Hayward. The spacious house was built on a small ridge. Looking east, one could see the southern end of San Francisco Bay, where the bridge crosses to San Mateo. Between the house and the shoreline of the bay were a number of orchards and truck farms.The Hunt tomato cannery, which was a major industry in Hayward, was also visible. The dinners were large ones, often with ten or fifteen people from the immediate and extended family around the table. There was always spirited conversation and good-natured argument, sometimes even shouting—no shrinking violets in the Thorpe clan. Dinner was usually topped off by a rich fruitcake (prunes were the

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favorite ingredient) provided by Bun’s Aunt Marion (or Merrilly, as we all called her). I very much enjoyed these get-togethers as a relief from my studies. The ritual at the end of dinner was that I would help Milton wash the dishes. He always insisted on doing that; not many houses, even expensive ones, had dishwashers in those days. At the end of the spring semester in May 1950, I learned that I had done well enough to be admitted to MIT as a graduate student in physics. I was also offered a research assistantship in the Neutron Physics Group, headed by Prof. Clark Goodman, who had edited the book that initially drew my attention to nuclear engineering. I would start at MIT in the spring semester of 1951. A month later the Korean War began, shattering my illusion that there would not be a shooting war in the near future. It meant that conflict with the Soviets was real and would probably be long and hard. In addition, the war put me in a quandary: should I go to MIT, or should I try to rejoin the navy and serve on active duty in some capacity? I consulted my mentors at the university and also people that I had known in Brooklyn. The decisive arguments came from Commander Nimitz and from Prof. Leonard Loeb. Both said the same thing, words to the effect that “there are a great many people who can man the navy’s ships at sea, but not many have the opportunity to work at a place like MIT on a project likely to change the nature of naval warfare.” I decided to take their advice, but I did so with some regret, which has lingered to this day. The ship I had cruised in, the USS Colahan, did participate in the Korean War. Maybe I should have joined its crew and some of my friends who served in it with honor. Not least, the Korean War stimulated my thinking about marriage. It was clear to me that Marion and I would get married, but the question was when. Should I go to MIT alone and wait for Bun to graduate before marrying her, or should we get married before leaving California and then move to Cambridge together? We decided to go east together, but I have to confess that there is still some dispute about just how we made the decision. I know for sure that I proposed sometime after school started in September. Bun claims that I mumbled something that she did not understand. So I thought things were settled, but Bun’s brother, John, did not believe that I was serious. He called me and asked me to tell him what I had in mind. I told him that Bun and I would be getting married sometime before going east in January. He then made the sensible suggestion that Bun and I visit Hayward for a conversation with the Drs. Thorpe to clarify things. The visit went well, and the explanation that Bun and I provided about our future plans was approved by all concerned. The only regret that both Bun and I still have is that she had to give up graduating from the University of California. She eventually completed her education, up to the doctorate level, at excellent universities in the East. My parents were not involved in any of these discussions. In 1951, air travel was both expensive and inconvenient. My parents visited me three times during my undergraduate years at Berkeley. They would come by train and stay for a

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few days at the old Durant Hotel on Bancroft Way. Two of these visits were before I developed my friendship with Bun, and during the final one, in the fall of 1950, Bun and I were already making plans to get married. During my years at Stuyvesant, I did not go on many dates, but my mother had made a point of introducing my brother, Peter, and me to the young ladies who were daughters of her friends in the Austrian refugee community in New York. She made it clear to us that she would prefer to have us meet (and later marry) girls with European— preferably Austrian—backgrounds. Thus, their third visit turned out to be rather stilted. While my mother had no particular problem with Bun as a person, she was definitely against my getting married to an American. Unfortunately, she never reconciled herself to the fact that both Peter and I chose to marry American girls. On January 25, 1951, the University of California, Berkeley, awarded me a bachelor of arts degree in physics. In addition, I received a certificate awarding me “honors” in physics, which was the least of the distinctions, following “highest honors” and “high honors,” that the university bestowed. And at the end of my senior year, I had been elected to Phi Beta Kappa in the Alpha of California. Thus, I was barely in the top 10 percent of the graduating class. Berkeley was indeed more difficult than Stuyvesant High School! What I treasured most was the diploma itself, which still hangs in our bedroom. It bears the signature of Earl Warren, because the sitting governor of California is also the president of the university’s Board of Regents, and of Robert Gordon Sproul, the president of the university, whose great work I have already mentioned. Three days later, Marion and I were married in the Methodist church by the Reverend Myron Herrell. It was a family affair, with about thirty or forty people present. Afterward, we had a fine reception at 159 Prospect Street to celebrate our love and the future. Two of my Berkeley classmates, Robert Fisher and Watson Alberts, were present to help us celebrate. I am still in contact with Robert;Watson passed away a few years ago. The only person who represented my time in New York was Turner Alfrey, the graduate student I had worked for at Brooklyn Polytechnic seven years earlier. Turner had earned his PhD in 1949 and gone to work for the Dow Chemical Company as a senior research scientist. He happened to be at Dow’s facility in Novato and was therefore able to attend the ceremony, whereas all our other East Coast friends were unable to come. Back then, travel was not as easy as it is today. In any event, it was a great day for all concerned.

The Massachusetts Institute of  Technology On the day after our wedding, Bun and I packed all of our belongings in the 1949 Oldsmobile that we had acquired a few months earlier. Since it was winter, we decided to take the southern route. This was US Highway 66, which ran from Los Angeles to St. Louis. We drove south on US Highway 99 in the Central Valley and spent the first night in the little town of Needles on the California-Arizona border.

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Chapter 2 Figure 2.3. Marion Thorpe Mark on our wedding day, January 28, 1951.

From Needles we drove to Gallup, New Mexico; after that, we drove to Amarillo, Texas. It was the worst time of the trip, with more than four hundred miles of traveling each day. It was snowing heavily and bitterly cold when we arrived in Amarillo. We were lucky to be able to get lodging late at night. The next morning, everything was frozen. We could not get the car started, so we relaxed and waited out the storm for two days before continuing the trip. We arrived in Boston on February 3 on a bleak and rainy day. Our opinion was that our trip east had not made for a good honeymoon, but eventually we regained our equilibrium. We found an apartment in an old building that was once one of the so-called gold coast dormitories for wealthy students at Harvard University. It was called Ware Hall, which was carved in stone above the entrance to the building. Ware Hall was just off Harvard Square at the corner of Ware and Harvard Streets, about a mile and a half from the MIT campus, so I could commute by bicycle. Bun would enroll at Boston University, which was close to downtown Boston on Commonwealth Avenue across the Charles River.

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My brother, Peter, had been admitted to Harvard after graduating from Stuyvesant High in 1949. By the time Bun and I arrived in Boston in February 1951, Peter was in the middle of his sophomore year. He lived at Elliott House, one of the great Harvard “houses” in which most of the undergraduates lived. Peter had three roommates (roomies, he called them) and a large, comfortable suite of rooms. He knew his way around Boston, so for the first few weeks, he was our guide and mentor. Since I was entering MIT in the spring semester, I had some trouble working out a course schedule. I decided to sign up for the required courses even though I had missed the first half of each. I have never worked so hard in my life! I did not do very well, but at least I passed muster. As time went on, I discovered that I was no longer anywhere close to the top of the class of students. I got used to this situation because it did not change significantly during the next year. I passed my courses, but somewhere in the middle of the pack. The professors who taught the courses were extraordinary. Probably the most important was Philip Morse, who taught methods of theoretical physics. That course would apply to anything I would do in the future.Victor Weisskopf, whom I have mentioned in connection with his work at Los Alamos, was the professor of nuclear physics, and another Los Alamos alumnus, Bernard Feld, taught quantum mechanics. They formed truly a stellar array, and I felt fortunate to have all these great scholars as teachers. Many of my graduate school contemporaries were people who later made critically important contributions to the world and science. The best among these was Henry Kendall, who in 1990 would share the Nobel Prize for establishing the substructure of the atomic nucleus by the scattering of very-high-energy electrons. My friend and poker companion Norman Rasmussen wrote a landmark report on nuclear reactor safety that eventually earned him membership in both the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering. George Field became a distinguished astronomer, John King made a great contribution in atomic physics, and both stayed at MIT for their entire academic careers. I mention all of this to emphasize what I have already said: at MIT I was at best an average graduate student, and given the competition, I was both proud and pleased to be in that company. In the summer of 1952, following a year and a half of intensive coursework, I started on thesis research in the Neutron Physics Group. We had a suite of offices in Building 20 on Vassar Street, which had been built during World War II to house the legendary MIT Radiation Laboratory. Here in this building, the sophisticated radar systems that were critical to the Allied victory in World War II were developed. The principal laboratory of the Neutron Physics Group was just across Vassar Street in Building 46, which was a low, single-story structure along with a two-story tower that housed the group’s principal piece of equipment, a large electrostatic particle accelerator. This machine was invented and developed

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by MIT professors Robert J. Van de Graaff and John G. Trump in the late 1930s. It was capable of producing well-collimated (i.e., made parallel) beams of protons with energies between 0.7 and 4.0 million electron volts. Our machine, one of the more advanced accelerators of this type, was built shortly following the end of World War II, with funds provided by the Rockefeller Foundation. It was thus called the Rockefeller Accelerator. Buildings 20 and 46 would be my professional homes at MIT for the next three years.

Eisenhower, Oppenheimer, and the Hydrogen Bomb The presidential election dominated the news for most of 1952. The Democrats nominated the governor of Illinois, Adlai E. Stevenson, at their convention in Chicago on July 26, 1952. The most interesting incident at the convention was the contest for the vice presidential nomination between Senators Estes Kefauver of Tennessee and John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts. Although Kennedy lost the contest, it marked his first nationwide exposure, and the favorable impression he made eventually led to his nomination for the presidency in 1960. In the Republican Party, the contest was between Sen. Robert A. Taft of Ohio, the son of Pres. William Howard Taft and eventually the Republican majority leader in the US Senate, and Dwight D. Eisenhower, the retired general who had commanded the victorious Allied armies in Europe in World War II and the current president of Columbia University. Eisenhower was selected on the first ballot as the Republican candidate. I was twenty-three years old in 1952, so this was the first presidential election in which I could vote. I followed the campaign carefully, and I was quite conflicted. On the one hand, I had great admiration for Presidents Roosevelt and Truman because of what they had accomplished in fighting both fascism and communism. In addition, our family had been admitted to the United States in 1941 under a provision in the immigration law that permitted exceptions to the national (Austrian, in our case) quotas for people with certain professional qualifications. President Roosevelt had supported this provision, and it is not clear whether we would have been allowed in the country without it. So I owed a personal debt to this great president, who was a Democrat. On the other hand, Eisenhower was a tested leader and a man with a distinguished record of achievements. In addition, there was the clear impression that President Truman was not entirely happy with his party’s candidate. After some hesitation, I decided to vote for Adlai Stevenson because I thought the Democrats had been able to organize competent administrations during the eleven years that I had lived in the United States. Eisenhower was elected president with a large majority of the popular vote and an overwhelming number of electoral votes. He turned out to be an excellent president, and in the 1956 presidential election I voted for him with enthusiasm.

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But it was another event that made headlines and completely captured the attention of the scientific community, of which I was now an apprentice member. This was the case of J. Robert Oppenheimer. The election of a new president always triggers a personnel turnover in Washington. The Atomic Energy Commission was no exception. AEC chairman Gordon Dean was replaced by Lewis Strauss, who was a talented entrepreneur and also a rear admiral in the US Naval Reserve. I have already mentioned Oppenheimer’s initial opposition to the proposal to develop the hydrogen bomb. Strauss was one of the original members of the AEC, appointed by President Truman in 1947. He had been an early proponent of building the hydrogen bomb, and he had a long memory. He remembered the advice that the General Advisory Committee, led by Chairman Oppenheimer, had provided in November 1949 not to proceed with the Super and how, over Strauss’s objections, the commission had agreed. Strauss was now ready to remove Oppenheimer as chairman of the advisory committee and replace him with someone whose views were more compatible with his own. Oppenheimer had been chairman since January 1947, more than six years, which Strauss probably thought was long enough. Strauss pressed Oppenheimer to resign, in view of the change of administration, but Oppenheimer did not take the hint. Strauss, apparently taking this as a declaration of war, became determined to destroy Oppenheimer’s reputation. It is interesting that when Albert Einstein, who was a member of the Institute for Advanced Study, which Oppenheimer headed, was asked what Oppenheimer should do about his troubles with Strauss, he replied that Oppenheimer was a “fool” if he did not just resign. Strauss decided to remove Oppenheimer’s security clearance. Because of Oppenheimer’s past problems with his communist associations, Strauss probably thought that this was the path of least resistance and would also tarnish Oppenheimer’s career. Oppenheimer was very vulnerable on this point. Both his brother Frank and his wife, Kitty, had been members of the US Communist Party during the 1930s. Although Oppenheimer was never a party member, he was, as he had put it, a member of every “communist front outfit in California” in the 1930s. Oppenheimer had experienced difficulties with all this in 1942 when he had to be cleared before being allowed to work on nuclear weapons. But General Groves, the leader of the Manhattan Project, was thoroughly convinced that only Oppenheimer could successfully lead the development of a nuclear bomb, so he insisted that Oppenheimer be cleared. The story of what eventually happened between Strauss and Oppenheimer has been told often enough that I need not repeat it here. The episode ended with Oppenheimer’s clearance being revoked on May 23, 1954, after a lengthy series of legal and extralegal procedures. The principal result of the Oppenheimer verdict was that the scientific community divided into those who sided with Oppenheimer and those who believed that Strauss had done the right thing. A large majority of scientists were in the former

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group, and so there was much activity in support of Oppenheimer via petitions, magazine articles (“We Accuse!” by the Alsop brothers), books, and newspaper columns. Much of the antagonism was centered on the group of scientists who testified against Oppenheimer during the almost yearlong hearings.These included Luis Alvarez, David Griggs, and, above all, Edward Teller. Others sympathized with the position taken by Teller and other people who advocated the development of the hydrogen bomb. I was somewhat surprised by the heat of the arguments among my contemporaries at MIT about the Oppenheimer case. My own view was that Strauss’s treatment of Oppenheimer was unnecessary and vindictive. Strauss used a sledgehammer to kill a gnat. He should simply have relieved Oppenheimer of the chairmanship and not interfered with his security clearance. But I also felt that Oppenheimer and his friends were profoundly wrong about the hydrogen bomb problem. If the United States wanted to play a leading role in the world, then it was imperative for us to know whether or not a hydrogen bomb could be built. To me, this was the real reason for going ahead with the program. What surprised me was that very few of my graduate student friends felt as I did. I began to realize that on this issue, I was in a small minority. It was at this time that a number of organizations were formed to represent the views of the American scientific community. One of these was the Federation of American Scientists. The federation strongly supported Oppenheimer, but I was not able to do this. So I never joined the group, even though some of my best friends vigorously urged me to do so. Unfortunately, the division in the American scientific community into opposing camps persisted for some years. It caused me some pain, both at MIT and later in California, because I felt that building the hydrogen bomb was the right thing to do. The proof of the principle that Edward Teller, Stanislaw Ulam, and their associates had proposed and developed came to fruition with the Mike shot carried out on November 1, 1952. This shot was part of Operation Ivy. The world’s first thermonuclear device was detonated on Elugelab Island, which was part of the Eniwetok Atoll in the Marshall Islands. I use the word “device” deliberately because it was not yet a weapon, but a test to prove the concept of radiation implosion. The explosive yield of the detonation was the equivalent of 10.4 million tons of high explosives. Elugelab Island did not exist after the explosion; only a crater a mile wide and two hundred feet deep was left. The first actual thermonuclear (hydrogen) bomb was the Bravo shot during Operation Castle at Bikini Atoll on March 1, 1954.The first Soviet hydrogen bomb was detonated on August 12, 1953. It produced an explosive yield of four hundred kilotons. It was not a thermonuclear device, which accounts for the small explosive yield (compared with that of the Mike device). The Soviet shot, however, was a true weapon because it was detonated after being dropped from an airplane.We were definitely in an arms race with the Soviets, and it would continue until serious steps were taken to control the testing and then manage the deployment of nuclear weapons.

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Figure 2.4. The mushroom cloud produced by the Mike shot of Operation Ivy, November 1, 1952. The top of the cloud reached an altitude in excess of sixty thousand feet. This photograph was taken a minute or so after the blast, from an airplane about twenty miles away. Photo courtesy of Los Alamos National Laboratory.

The Death of Stalin and a Truce in Korea In January 1953, several Soviet newspapers carried stories about an alleged “doctor’s plot” to kill senior Soviet leaders. Nine distinguished medical specialists were arrested, and some confessed to the existence of the plot. This bizarre episode preceded the death of Joseph Stalin on March 5, 1953. The doctor’s plot turned out to be Stalin’s final attempt to control his henchmen in the Kremlin. Stalin had ruled by fear since the purges of the 1930s, when dozens of senior communist (then sometimes called Bolshevik) leaders were killed after a number of show trials. By concocting the doctor’s plot, Stalin hoped to strike fear into the hearts of his closest collaborators so that they would stay in line. Only the cerebral hemorrhage that killed this bloodstained dictator stopped the latest Soviet madness. In February 1956, Stalin’s eventual successor, Nikita S. Khrushchev, revealed the truth about Stalin’s final crime in a speech before the Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party. He told the congress that several of the accused doctors had died as a result of the torture to which they had been subjected to elicit confessions. In addition, he revealed the names of the Politburo members and senior ministers who had been targeted for murder.

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The death of Stalin had several immediate consequences. The most important was the arrangement of a truce in Korea that, in effect, ended the war. Stalin’s successors realized that continuing the Korean War would not be productive for the Soviet Union. In early 1951, Gen. Matthew Ridgway prevented the Chinese– North Korean forces from advancing southward in the peninsula. In an operation called Ripper, which began on March 7, 1951, Ridgway succeeded in stabilizing the front along the thirty-eighth parallel by March 31. The communist forces initiated a spring offensive but failed to dislodge the UN forces. Following these military activities, armistice negotiations between the two sides began at Kaesong in July 1951. For the rest of 1951 and all of 1952, fighting broke out periodically along the front line, but there were no significant changes in the military situation. In July 1952, serious negotiations were initiated at Panmunjom, and an armistice was finally concluded on July 27, 1953. The armistice has now been in force for more than half a century, and it does not look as if there will be any changes to it in the near future. The contrast today between North and South Korea is perhaps the strongest visible evidence of why the communists lost the Cold War.The South has a large population (forty-nine million), whereas the North’s population is only twenty-three million. The South enjoys a vibrant economy and a democratic government. The North is a true “hermit kingdom” with a brutal dictator, no freedoms, and a foreign policy that depends only on the possession of nuclear weapons. The contrast could not be more vivid. One outcome of the Korean War has been to create what might be called a living monument demonstrating why we won the Cold War.

The Neutron Physics Group at MIT In the fall of 1952, shortly after finishing my coursework, I had to start studying for my written qualifying examinations. Since I was also part of the Neutron Physics Group, I started to work on research, too. The group studied nuclear energy levels. Specifically, we were looking for elements that had large inelastic neutron cross sections. As part of our work on the nuclear submarine program, we hoped to find structural materials that would both slow down neutrons and reduce the size of the reactor. As in many small research groups, the graduate student with the least seniority is assigned to help the graduate student closest to completing the research for his dissertation. I was therefore assigned to help Robert Kay, who was just finishing his work on the proton-neutron reaction in the isotope carbon-14. Bob was an active duty lieutenant commander in the US Navy and a staff member in its Bureau of Ships. As a result of our work, my name appeared for the first time in the scientific literature, at the annual meeting in Washington, DC, of the American Physical Society in May 1952. At the meeting, I was both pleased and proud to hear Bob discuss the results of the experiments we had performed. Bob left MIT early in

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1953 when his dissertation was complete. We decided to use the equipment we had built to perform a similar experiment on the isotope oxygen-18, with a view to develop the findings into my dissertation. Clark Goodman and I published the results of this experiment in 1956, but by then my dissertation, on another subject, had already been finished. When I joined the Neutron Physics Group there were eight members. Bob Kay was the senior graduate student. Robert M. Kiehn, next in line, was doing experimental work on the inelastic scattering of fast neutrons. Clyde L. McClelland was working on a project to develop ways of detecting the gamma rays that would be emitted by atomic nuclei following the excitation of energy levels by fast neutrons. The junior graduate student was Janet Guernsey, who was a professor of physics at Wellesley College. She was assigned to help Kiehn with his experiment. In addition to the graduate students, there was Matti K. Salomaa, the supervisor of the machine and electronics shop; Mary E. White, our group secretary; Paul Stelson, a postdoctoral fellow on the staff of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory; and our group leader, Clark Goodman, an associate professor of physics at MIT. The years 1952 and 1953 were difficult for me. First came the qualifying examinations. In the courses I had taken so far, I was generally in the middle of the pack and sometimes lower than that. I was therefore very worried about the written examinations. I turned to Clark Goodman for help in studying, but this was not successful. Clark was a very bright person who had a very successful consulting practice that applied nuclear methods to the logging of oil wells. He had worked full-time for the Schlumberger Corporation, and he had many patents to his credit. And he was good at putting together books such as The Science and Engineering of Nuclear Power. Clark suggested that I go to some of the graduate students in Victor Weisskopf ’s group for help, because, as he freely admitted, he could not assist me. I resented his advice at the time. Another circumstance made life difficult for me. Early in 1953, Clyde McClelland made a fundamental discovery. He showed that higher energy levels in atomic nuclei could be excited even if the high-energy protons used to excite the levels could not penetrate the nucleus. Rather, the nuclei were excited through the electric field existing between the nucleus and the energetic proton. At first we called this “electric excitation,” but it later came to be called “Coulomb excitation” because the electric field was, mathematically, a Coulomb field. Because of the importance of this discovery, Clark asked me to help Clyde with his thesis. So once again I would be playing second banana to a senior graduate student. I seriously thought about leaving the Neutron Physics Group and going to work for someone else. I had several conversations with Clark about my problems. He was patient, kind, and shrewd in dealing with me. The upshot was that I stayed with Clark’s group and did the best I could. The first thing I did was to take Clark’s advice and contact some of my fellow graduate students who could help me understand what I needed to learn for

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the qualifying exam. The people who agreed to help were Earle Lomon, Kurt Gottfried, and Charles Schwartz. All were very sharp, top-level graduate students. Earle was married and thus did not have much time, but the other two were valuable tutors. I passed the examination on the first try, but it was clearly not a sterling performance. Second, I started to work with Clyde McClelland. I very quickly changed my mind about playing second banana to him. He had served as a paratrooper during World War II and had come to MIT afterward. Clyde was an excellent experimentalist, and I learned a great deal by working closely with him. We became close friends. My own thesis turned out to be an extension of Clyde’s, and we published two papers, one based on his dissertation and one based on mine, with both our names on them. In my dissertation, I also acknowledged the help of Kurt Gottfried and Charles Schwartz. Without their help, I do not think I would have passed the qualifying examination. Early in 1954, Clark Goodman informed us that he would be going on sabbatical during the 1954–55 academic year. Bob Kiehn had finished his thesis six months earlier, so Bob, Clyde, and I would all receive our doctoral hoods at the same ceremony. In addition, Clark asked me to stay on as acting group leader of the Neutron Physics Group while he was gone. I was astonished by this request because there were many others at MIT who could have done the job more effectively. In fact, I was picked because both Bob Kiehn and Clyde McClelland had already accepted other positions, Bob in Houston and Clyde in Washington. Bob eventually became a distinguished professor of physics at the University of Houston. Clark joined him at the University of Houston, and the two ran a first-class, nationally recognized program. Clyde joined the US intelligence community. Many years later in 1978, when I was the director of the National Reconnaissance Office, I saw Clyde again, and we had a good time talking about old days at MIT. Early in June, Bob Kiehn, Clyde McClelland, and I walked across the stage at the MIT auditorium and were awarded our doctoral hoods by Pres. James Killian. It was also in 1954 that the first nuclear-powered submarine, the USS Nautilus, was launched and commissioned; Captain Rickover was promoted to the rank of rear admiral. Even though our connection with the nuclear submarine program was somewhat tenuous, we were proud to be associated with such an important effort. When I took over the Neutron Physics Group in the summer of 1954, it was considerably smaller than when I had first joined it. Janet Guernsey had not yet finished her thesis. We also acquired a new graduate student, George T. Paulissen. Even though I was not a member of the faculty, I was his de facto thesis adviser. He and I published his results in the Physical Review under both our names. Heading the Neutron Physics Group for a year was an excellent experience. I learned that I was good at organizing and running things, and this knowledge made up, to some extent, for the fact that I was not as academically good as Bob Kiehn, the best graduate student in our group.

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During the years we spent at MIT, Bun was always my strongest supporter and helper. We stayed in our apartment in Ware Hall for about eighteen months, and late in 1952 we rented a small house (a Cape Cod cottage) in the town of Saugus, about eight miles northeast of Boston. It was a long commute for both of us, but it was worth it. A small creek behind the house was occupied by a family of otters, and they became our temporary pets. Bun finished her BS in education at Boston University in 1953 and then earned a master’s degree in education in 1955. For two years she taught school in Natick, a town about fifteen miles west of Boston. In May 1953, my brother, Peter, graduated from Harvard. We threw a fine party at our house in Saugus for him and his friends who had also received their degrees. Things got just a little wild, but it was a unique event. Peter went on to Yale University for a master’s in physics and then earned his PhD at New York University in 1958. In early 1954, we moved to an apartment in Brookline at 82 St. Paul Street, within walking distance of MIT. Another tenant was Sidney Drell, an assistant professor at MIT, and we became strong friends. He became something of a mentor to me. Later, at Stanford, he became influential in both physics and national policy. He and I would often walk over the bridge crossing the Charles River to MIT, especially during the winter. During the years at MIT, Bun’s and my marriage grew and matured. My early infatuation had grown into solid love. I was truly delighted when Bun informed me sometime in January 1955 that she was pregnant. My (so far) success at managing the Neutron Physics Group encouraged me to think about applying for a National Science Foundation fellowship to study theoretical physics with Victor Weisskopf. He was the leading theoretician at MIT, and I thought that it might be a good idea to acquire some understanding and skills in that area. Weisskopf promised to take me into his research group if I qualified for the fellowship. But I received word early in January 1955 that my application had been rejected. I was devastated by the news. For several days, for the first time in my life, I was in a real blue funk. I did not know what to do. As I would find out more often in the future, Bun made a very sensible suggestion: talk to my father. I called him in Brooklyn and then got in the car, drove to New York, and met him in our old apartment. He told me that a former student of his, Edward Teller, was a theoretical physicist at the University of California in Berkeley. He suggested that I write to Teller and see whether there was a vacancy in his department. I did so, and much to my surprise, Teller’s secretary called a week later and asked me to submit a résumé. On March 18, 1955, I received a letter from Teller offering me a position as a junior research physicist at the University of California in Berkeley with an annual salary of $4,980. So with some help from my father, things turned out well after all. Teller was a theoretical physicist in the same league as Victor Weisskopf. He had, in fact, been a

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student of my father’s in 1927 at the University of Karlsruhe, where my father was teaching a course in quantum chemistry. An added plus was that Bun and I would be returning to California. Although we enjoyed Boston and Cambridge, we—and especially Bun—were looking forward to returning. So I accepted the offer with enthusiasm and gratitude.

A French Colonial War in Indochina While Bun and I were living in Boston, events were taking place on the other side of the globe that would have long-term consequences for the future. Japanese troops had invaded Indochina at the outset of World War II, in June 1940. The Japanese divided Indochina back into Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam, and established local governments under Japanese control. In Vietnam, Bao Dai was retained as emperor. At the same time, Ho Chi Minh (this was a nom de guerre; his real name was Nguyen That Tanh) returned to Vietnam. From 1940 to 1945, Ho organized the Viet Minh to fight the Japanese. In August 1945, he led Viet Minh troops into Hanoi after the defeat of Japanese forces in the area. On September 2, 1945, the same day that General MacArthur signed the Japanese surrender documents on the deck of the USS Missouri, Ho proclaimed the Republic of Vietnam in Hanoi. More than 400,000 people crowded into Hanoi’s main square to listen to him. He began his speech with words written by Thomas Jefferson 169 years earlier, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights and that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” It was an auspicious beginning that was not destined to last. The French government under Charles de Gaulle moved to reestablish its control of Vietnam, which had been a French colony since the 1860s. The Eisenhower administration adopted a policy of supporting France’s efforts. The French set up a puppet government in Saigon. Bao Dai was brought back as the titular head of state. The Eisenhower administration gave some of the US military equipment left in the Pacific in 1945 to the French to help them fight the Viet Minh. The French sent about fifty thousand troops to Indochina, almost all to Vietnam.There was bitter fighting between the French and the Viet Minh for several years. In late 1953, the newly appointed French commander, Gen. Henri Navarre, adopted a strategy of “strong points.” The idea was to turn strategic places into fortresses from which the countryside could be controlled. The first of these was Dien Bien Phu, which was located in the northwest corner of the country. In November 1953, the French brought in an additional ten thousand troops. The Viet Minh’s new commander, Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap, besieged Dien Bien Phu with fifty thousand troops. By using a cautious strategy to minimize casualties, Giap forced Dien Bien Phu to surrender on May 7, 1954. The Viet Minh captured twenty thousand French soldiers. At the very end of the battle, the French appealed to Eisenhower for American

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military help. They wanted US aircraft to help break the siege so that the French troops could escape capture. President Eisenhower, in many ways a staunch anticolonialist, rejected the appeal. The United States, the Soviet Union, Great Britain, France, and China called a conference in Geneva to negotiate peace in Vietnam. On July 21, 1954, an agreement was reached that forced France to leave Indochina. This agreement was doomed from the start. The United States and South Vietnam did not sign it. Eisenhower continued to support South Vietnam, but the support was limited to equipment. The elections scheduled for 1956 were never held, and so the war, this time between North Vietnam and South Vietnam, resumed. Ngo Dinh Diem, knowing that he would lose the nationwide election called for in the Geneva Accords, renounced the agreement on July 16, 1955, with support from the Eisenhower administration. After a rigged election, he became president of the Republic of South Vietnam, which came into existence on October 23, 1955. Bao Dai abdicated and spent the remainder of his life in France. Early in 1956, Eisenhower decided to provide assistance to South Vietnam. On April 28, 1956, a US Military Assistance Advisory Group (MAAG) was established, with Col. Edward Lansdale of the US Air Force in charge. Eisenhower specified that the membership of the group could not exceed a thousand people. The function of the MAAG was strictly limited to training the Vietnamese military; no combat troops would be involved. Vice President Nixon visited South Vietnam to signal US support. Why did the Eisenhower administration provide support to the Republic of South Vietnam? Secretary of State John Foster Dulles had developed what came to be called the domino theory, which held that if one of the newly established states in Southeast Asia fell to the communists, then a domino effect would result, with others falling as well. Clearly, this theory could not be proved. I believe that Eisenhower anticipated that both the Soviets and the Chinese would provide military assistance to Ho Chi Minh and the new Democratic Republic of Vietnam. Ho vigorously protested the unilateral action of Diem in repudiating the election provision of the Geneva Accords, but in 1956 he did not have the military means to do anything about it. My feeling is that given Ho Chi Minh’s independent political history, a direct appeal from President Eisenhower might have changed the situation. There was little room for maneuvering, but at least the attempt should have been made. But no attempt was made, and no negotiations were held. Thus, the tragedy of Vietnam began. Ho and his brilliant military commander, Giap, started to develop a plan to conquer South Vietnam. There were two facets: establish a modern regular army of 400,000 to fight a modern conventional war, and organize an equally strong guerrilla force in the South to undermine Diem’s government.This force would be called the Vietcong. Both the USSR and communist China would provide massive military assistance to Ho in order to accomplish these objectives.

3 Edward Teller, the Nuclear Weapons Laboratory at Livermore, and Cold War Crises

After the spring 1955 semester, Bun and I flew to California. She was visibly pregnant, so I did not want to risk a long car trip. We arranged for a student to drive our car to California, and we flew there on one of the new Douglas DC-7 aircraft that had just come into service. The nonstop flight was long in those days—more than nine hours. The saving grace was that the airplanes were truly luxurious; air travel in 1955 was available to only a small fraction of the population. We stayed in Hayward for a couple of weeks while we looked for a rental house in Berkeley. We finally found a fine small house on Shasta Road perched on a steep hillside on the north side of the University of California campus. My first meeting with Edward Teller occurred shortly after we moved into the Shasta Road house, sometime in July 1955. His office was on the third floor of the new annex to the physics building, LeConte Hall, which was built after I graduated from the university. I showed up at the appointed time, but Teller was not there. There were two rooms and an alcove for a secretary, Gen Greteman, who was not there either. Teller had another office, at the Livermore Laboratory, and Gen split her time between the campus and the laboratory. I would share an office with Robert D. Lawson, who was Teller’s research associate. Teller showed up a few minutes later and apologized profusely for not being there when I arrived. He immediately got down to business, and he did not mince words. He told me that I was not really qualified for the job, because I had only a very sketchy background in theoretical physics. My job would be to act as his teaching assistant in the graduate quantum mechanics course (Physics 221A and 221B), and I told him that I would do my best. Teller then told me that he had had

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only a few applicants this year, probably because of his problems as a result of the Oppenheimer case. A shadow of sadness crossed his face when he said that. Then he laughed and told me that even though I was at the bottom of the barrel, he was confident that I could climb out of it. He went on to say that I might not be able to help him, but then he laughed again and said, “But I know I can help you!” I did not know this at the time, but what he said proved to be true. It was the beginning of an association that lasted until his death, forty-seven years later. Edward Teller was a very impressive person. He had bright blue eyes set in a swarthy complexion. His voice was deep and gravelly with a thick Hungarian accent, and he always was direct and firm in conversation. In his youth, Teller had been an excellent tennis player, but in 1928, while a student in Munich, he jumped off a streetcar as it was moving and was caught underneath the wheels. His right foot had to be amputated. In spite of this, he still had a powerful physique. Teller was one of the world’s great physicists, and when I met him in 1955, he was fortyseven years old. By that time, he had already made major contributions to molecular physics, cosmology, and nuclear physics. He had an instinct about how the world was put together, and he was at the height of his intellectual powers. When confronted with a problem, he would always start from a well-established basic principle and work his way through to the answer. I saw him do this numerous times in numerous settings. He was especially good at this when a blackboard was available—he always had one in his campus office, as did all the faculty members. And he insisted on having a board put in his Livermore office and later in his office at the Hoover Institution on the Stanford University campus. Teller’s lectures were always dramatic performances. He never used notes and would pace back and forth in front of the room. At the beginning of each new topic, he would return to basic principles. At the end of my first meeting with Teller, he gave me books on quantum mechanics by Leonard Schiff, Paul Dirac, and Walter Heitler. He told me to read them closely and to understand the material. I spent much of the summer of 1955 reading and then rereading them. I have never concentrated on anything as intensely as I did on these books. The book by Heitler, The Quantum Theory of Radiation (3rd ed., 1954), turned out to be particularly important. A couple of weeks after my first interview with Teller, I flew back to Boston. I had to spend some time at MIT finishing the articles for the Physical Review based on work that had been performed while I headed the Neutron Physics Group. These included my experiments involving the proton-neutron reaction on oxygen-18 and the work that underlay George Paulissen’s master’s thesis, which he had completed during the summer. Also, I wanted to be there to return leadership of the group to Clark Goodman when he got back from his sabbatical in late August. In hindsight, I should never have made this trip, because our first child, Jane, was born on September 4, 1955, while I was still in Cambridge. Jane arrived at the old Hayward Hospital, and it was a difficult delivery. Fortunately, my father-in-law was

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an expert in obstetrics. He delivered Jane, and there were no long-lasting aftereffects. Jane was a small, well-formed baby and had a full head of jet-black hair. Both Bun and I were both quite startled when we first saw her, but we also thought that she was the most beautiful child ever—no doubt about it! I talked with Bun on the telephone both before and after the birth, but it was not enough. A few days later, at my in-laws’ house, I saw Bun with young Jane for the first time. The name “Jane” was chosen because we wanted to honor Bun’s mother, and “Jane” is the best English equivalent of “Johanna.” It was a transforming moment for me, but it was too late for Bun. I have always regretted that I was not near Bun on the day of Jane’s birth, and this incident has been a small but important blemish on our lives ever since. We moved into our Shasta Road home a couple of weeks later, and I started my new job. The class met twice a week from 9:00 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. The usual routine was something like this:Teller would show up five minutes before class was supposed to start, breathless, his open overcoat flying as he walked rapidly down the hall. His first question was always “What should I talk about today?” With less than five minutes to answer the question, I could only mumble. Then Teller would go to the blackboard and, with a few strokes of the chalk, outline the lecture he had in mind. For the first week or two, I attempted to say something useful in response to his standard question, which he roundly ignored. I finally realized that he did not want an answer, just a warm-up minute before going down the hall to the classroom. I kept pretty good lecture notes for the course, made up homework problems, and prepared the problems for the final examination. My real test came when I had to deliver a lecture. I was unnerved by the prospect, but there was nothing to do but plunge ahead. I knew what Edward (by this time we were on a first-name basis) wanted to talk about, so I made up a set of meticulous notes and then delivered the lecture carefully from them. It seemed to work—at least no one walked out of the class! This happened a few times during the first semester, and eventually Edward began to trust me to deliver some lectures. During the second semester, he was out for two weeks because of an operation for a hernia. I delivered four lectures in succession, and although this was a little more difficult, I got the hang of things. All this happened long before there were student evaluations of their professors, so I did not know what the students thought about my work. Many years later in 1990, one of the students in the class, Donald Langenberg, after a distinguished academic career, was selected to become the chancellor of the University of Maryland system. By that time, I had been chancellor of the University of  Texas System for six years, and I had some experience. Shortly after his appointment, Don asked me to stop in on one of my trips to Washington. During our visit, he asked me many good questions about university management, which I tried to answer as best I could. After our discussion, I could not resist asking him what he and his colleagues in Teller’s class thought about my lectures. Don laughed and

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told me that at the end of the second semester, the students took a straw poll. Edward received an A with first-class honors, and I got and A for effort and C for performance. I asked Don how he was able to remember that after forty years. He went over to the bookcase, pulled out his lecture notes, and sure enough, the results of the student poll were listed on the last page. Well, at least I did not fail! My original reason for going to work for Teller was to learn something about modern theoretical physics. Taking a crash course in quantum mechanics with Edward Teller as a mentor was definitely a good start. So things turned out much as I had hoped. My real mentors, however, in the arcane art of developing theories about physical phenomena were Teller’s graduate students. I have already mentioned Bob Lawson, who had preceded me as Teller’s academic assistant. Bob, who had a very solid scientific background, was patient with me and answered many of my naïve questions. Hans-Peter Duerr was the student with whom Teller spent the most time, because he was clearly the most brilliant member of the group. Hans-Peter was a young postwar German from Munich who had been too young to serve in the German military during World War II. He was very conflicted about the role that his homeland had played during the war. I had many conversations with him, primarily because he was interested in what I had to say as a refugee from Nazidominated Europe. We always spoke German, which gave me a good opportunity to maintain competence in my native language. Hans-Peter eventually earned his PhD by developing a relativistic version of a theory of nuclear structure that had been developed by Teller and his friend Montgomery Johnson. Hans-Peter married an American girl and then returned to Germany to hold a professorship at the University of Munich, where he later succeeded Nobel laureate Werner Heisenberg as director of the Theoretical Physics Institute at the university. Walter Beckham was an active-duty air force colonel who was working on his dissertation with Teller. A decorated fighter pilot in World War II, Walter later became the chief scientist at the Air Force Weapons Laboratory at Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque. Eugene Canfield, another World War II veteran who was studying for his PhD with Edward, was a full-time employee at the Livermore Weapons Laboratory. Canfield and I eventually became colleagues at Livermore. Both Beckham and Canfield were first-class chess players. I remember watching them play at a table on the patio of the Stevens Union Building. I would occasionally play one or the other, but I usually lost. My own research in Teller’s group was related to the thesis work of Ann Auriol Ross, who was the fourth graduate student in Teller’s group. Auriol—as she liked to be called—was British. She had earned a first in physics at Oxford University and had arrived in Berkeley a year before I returned. Bob Lawson had taken a special interest in Auriol’s work, and the three of us soon formed a research team. Our work involved a theoretical study of nuclear energy levels according to the nuclear shell model, which had recently been developed. People had noticed that

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periodic regularities called nuclear “magic numbers” of neutrons and protons were somewhat analogous to the regularities in the properties of the atoms in the periodic table. Using a nuclear force potential function developed by David S. Saxon and R. D. Woods, we calculated the sequence in which nuclear energy levels were occupied by nucleons. We then compared those results with ones from a modified force potential function developed by Montgomery Johnson and Edward Teller, and found that the Johnson-Teller model agreed more accurately with the available experimental evidence than did that of Saxon and Woods. Our conclusion, together with the work of Hans-Peter Duerr, was strong support for the validity of the Johnson-Teller model. For a few years, this work attracted some modest attention, but was eventually superseded by a more comprehensive theory. My function in our little research group was to help with the computation of the forms and shapes of the nuclear wave functions that defined the positions of the energy levels as determined by the binding energies of the nuclear particles. Doing this involved working with a Nordsieck-type analog computer that belonged to Ernest Lawrence’s Radiation Laboratory. The Radiation Laboratory had been moved from the campus to a hill directly to the east. Through Edward’s influence, Bob Lawson, Auriol Ross, and I gained access to this computer. But the access time we were given was between midnight and eight o’clock in the morning. The first months of 1956 were thus quite difficult because none of us were getting enough sleep! Since I had played a relatively small role in the mathematical formulation of the problem, I volunteered to shoulder much of the computer work. But this arrangement put strains on our marriage. Our daughter was just a few months old and required much attention. The major burden fell on Bun, and she suffered from a temporary depression. In addition, we had just moved to Berkeley, and Bun had few friends who could spend time with her and relieve her loneliness. The period I am describing was relatively short, but it was painful for both of us. In 1956, two papers describing our work were published in the Physical Review. They attracted some attention for a few years. The nuclear force potential function that we developed became known as the Ross-Lawson-Mark potential, or the RLM potential. It was quite satisfying to help solve a problem that involved developing a theory and then calculating the consequences. I was mostly an observer, and I learned that I was not very good at this kind of work. Both Bun and I wanted to stay in California, so in the spring of 1956, I began to talk to Edward about moving to Livermore. Before going on, I should say a few more words about Edward Teller and his family. The Tellers lived in a house on Hawthorne Terrace, which was on the north side of campus, within walking distance. Their two children, Wendy and Paul, were nine and seven when I went to work for Edward. Edward’s wife was petite, attractive, and very sharp. She was well educated and a strong supporter of her husband.

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Augusta Maria Harkanyi had had roughly the same background in Hungary as her husband, and the two had known each other since childhood. Everyone called her “Mici” because she did not like her given name. Edward and Mici liked to entertain, and they hosted several parties during the 1955–56 academic year. His students and collaborators were always included. Bun and I were sometimes invited to dinner, and afterward we would all play Monopoly, with much vigorous argument. Teller genuinely enjoyed these sessions. At other times, the party would be in honor of a distinguished visitor. Many of these people were friends from Europe (Werner Heisenberg, for example) or Los Alamos (Harold Agnew, Nick Metropolis, David Inglis, and others). Teller always treated those of us who worked with him as equals. He was kind and helpful, and he loved to debate and argue over matters he thought were important. He saw to it that his students would receive scholarships and financial help if they needed it. He worked to secure them good positions once they had finished their work with him. Both Bun and I were pleased and honored to become longtime friends and associates of the Tellers. Figure 3.1. Edward and Mici Teller as I like to remember them. He was a man of great intellectual power, and she was a lady of charm and common sense. Their marriage lasted from December 1933 until Mici’s death on June 4, 2000. Photo courtesy of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, original Life photo by N. R. Farbman.

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The Nuclear Weapons Laboratory at Livermore My term of service as Teller’s academic assistant ended in June 1956. I had agreed a month earlier to join the research staff at what was then called the Livermore Branch of the University of California Radiation Laboratory (UCRL). Ernest Lawrence had founded the Radiation Laboratory in 1936 after the successful operation of the first large cyclotron. The lab was housed in a wooden building on the Berkeley campus that contained Lawrence’s thirty-seven-inch cyclotron. (Thirty-seven inches was the diameter of the pole faces of the large magnet that was the principal component of the machine.) Using the cyclotron, the physicist Edwin McMillan had produced the new element plutonium in large enough quantities that the chemist Glen Seaborg and his students could determine its chemical properties. In June 1956, Bun and I decided to leave Shasta Road and find a house in Livermore. I would be working there full-time, and I did not want to commute from Berkeley, which is forty miles away. Since I had received a substantial salary increase, we could afford to rent a much bigger house. Bun wanted a house with a fenced yard because Jane would soon be a toddler, and she wanted a garden too. We found a nice house at 2074 Fourth Street, which was only four miles from the

Figure 3.2. Aerial view of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, circa 1960. Photo courtesy of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

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laboratory. The house was in a small tract of “Altadena” craftsman-type residences and was only a few years old. (Altadena is the Los Angeles suburb where these types of houses were first built.) Another item we could now afford was a second car. We acquired a yellow 1950 Studebaker convertible, which we very much enjoyed. When I joined the Livermore Laboratory in the summer of 1956, the institution had been in business for four years. It was located on the site of Camp Shoemaker, a naval aviation replacement depot constructed during World War II. In 1956, most of the buildings at the laboratory were still converted barracks. Before the university acquired the site, it was used by the California Research and Development Corporation, which had been established by the Atomic Energy Commission to build a very large particle accelerator. It was to be used to produce large quantities of radioactive isotopes for the nuclear weapons program. By 1952, the program had been abandoned because other, less expensive means had been developed to accomplish the same objective. But one of the very large accelerators was still at the Livermore site. In 1956, Ernest Lawrence was still the director of the Radiation Laboratory. There were branches in Berkeley and in Livermore.The large high-energy accelerators that Lawrence built were located in Berkeley, and the high-current machines were at Livermore. In September 1952, when the university took over the site, the first thermonuclear explosion based on the Teller-Ulam radiation implosion principle was about to be detonated at the Eniwetok Atoll test site in the Pacific. As mentioned in chapter 2, this was the Mike shot of Operation Ivy. The Mike device had been developed at Los Alamos. Both Lawrence and Teller felt that given the need to stay ahead of the Soviets in the development of nuclear weapons, a competing institution should be created. In addition, as I was to learn shortly, Lawrence and Teller did not quite trust the people at Los Alamos to work vigorously on the design of novel nuclear weapons. This attitude was one of the legacies of Robert Oppenheimer’s original opposition to the creation of thermonuclear weapons.The Atomic Energy Commission, led by Lewis Strauss, agreed with this argument, and so the Livermore Laboratory received the charter as the second institution for the design of nuclear weapons. In the early summer of 1956, shortly after my twenty-seventh birthday, I drove to Livermore to be interviewed by Herbert F. York, the director of the site and one of the associate directors of the Berkeley branch. York’s office was in one of the World War II–era structures at the laboratory. York was young—thirty-five—and had been the director for four years. He was also very informal. When I was ushered into his office, he was wearing a brightly colored Hawaiian shirt and khaki trousers. It was hot that day, so I could understand his wardrobe choices. Nevertheless, I definitely felt out of uniform in my jacket and tie, which in 1956 was still standard attire for research staff members on a major university campus. York got right to the point. He told me that I had been highly recommended by Edward

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Teller and that I would be hired to become a research physicist at the laboratory. He then stood up and asked me to come along with him. We got into his car, an elderly, prewar Chevrolet, drove about a mile to the east, and parked in front of a huge windowless building with corrugated metal walls. It was about 200 feet long, perhaps 100 feet wide, and as tall as a ten-story building (about 120 feet). We walked inside the cavernous space. There was a large structure made of standard concrete shielding blocks used in nuclear reactors. A technician opened a heavy sliding door, and inside there was a huge metal structure consisting of two large cylinders about the size of tanker trucks. This was the A-48 accelerator. The designation “A-48” described a linear resonance particle accelerator (the “A”), which operated at a frequency of forty-eight megahertz. It was designed to accelerate hydrogen and deuterium ions to energies of about four million and eight million electron volts (MeV), respectively. Uniquely, this accelerator was capable of producing ion beams with very high currents, a design maximum of a quarter of an ampere. For comparison, the Van de Graaff particle accelerator that I had worked with at MIT could deliver a maximum current of about ten microamperes. The A-48 thus could deliver a beam current twenty-five thousand times as large as the machine at MIT. As someone who had worked with particle accelerators, I found these capabilities truly awesome.York told me that this machine was what was left over from the work done by the California Research and Development Corporation a few years earlier. It had been designed, at the instigation of Ernest Lawrence, by two of his young protégés, Luis Alvarez and Wolfgang K. H. Panofsky. Impressed by the awesome size of the machine, I asked a few questions about how it worked and how many people were required to run it. At this point,York popped the question, “Do you think that you could develop a good research program for the A-48?” He went on to say that no one at the laboratory had proposed any good ideas, and if I could come up with something, the laboratory would put together a small research group to work on it. I was startled by this proposition. The director of the Livermore Radiation Laboratory had just offered me, a twenty-seven-year-old, the opportunity to lead a research group to work with this unique machine if I could recommend a program that would be useful and acceptable to the management of the laboratory. So now I had to produce an idea. I went home and began to think about what to do. The A-48 operated at about the same particle energy as that of the Van de Graaff machine at MIT. I thought that it might be possible to do something that would take advantage of the huge difference between the beam currents of the A-48 and the Van de Graff. It might be possible to learn something more about the “collective” model of nuclear structure. This theory was being developed by a group at the Bohr School in Copenhagen. The leader of this group happened to be Aage Bohr, the son of Niels Bohr. By making precise measurements, we might make a contribution to the development of this new theory of nuclear structure.

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First, I had to select a method of accomplishing this objective. My knowledge of X-ray diffraction turned out to be the key. Some literature research led me to Jesse W. M. DuMond at the California Institute of  Technology. DuMond had already done what I was contemplating—namely, he had developed a method for using diffraction techniques to measure the quantum energies of the gamma rays released when nuclear energy levels emit their characteristic radiations. DuMond had used strong radioactive sources to make measurements using a focusing spectrometer with a quartz crystal as the element to diffract the nuclear gamma rays. The only difference between what I was proposing and what he had done was that the source of the nuclear gammas would be produced by the very intense beam of protons from the A-48 accelerator. Sometime during the summer of 1956, I went to visit DuMond in Pasadena. During the day I spent with him, I learned in detail what he had done, and we both agreed that the techniques he had developed could be applied to what I had in mind for the A-48. In addition, I developed personal respect and a genuine affection for DuMond, and we became strong friends. In 1956, Professor DuMond was sixty-nine years old, so there was something of a father-son element to our relationship. When I returned to Berkeley, I told Edward about my meeting with DuMond, and he suggested that I make an appointment with Edwin McMillan. He felt that even though York had more or less offered me the job, the ultimate decision on my proposal would be made by Ernest Lawrence, who was still in charge of both sites of the Radiation Laboratory. Edward felt that McMillan was Lawrence’s closest adviser on research matters of this kind. I made an appointment to see McMillan. I had met Nobel Prize winners before, but this was the first one who would make a decision on a proposal that might very well decide my professional future. So I was somewhat apprehensive about the meeting. In contrast to Teller and York, who were charismatic characters, McMillan was very precise and penetrating. He asked a number of questions and insisted on getting thorough and complete answers. In addition to talking about my proposal for the A-48, McMillan asked me questions about MIT and about what I wanted to do at Livermore other than working with the A-48. I was surprised and pleased by his interest in my future at the Livermore Laboratory. In his quiet way, McMillan was a very impressive person. A couple of weeks later, Herb York called me and told me that I had the job. I did not realize it at the time, but by accepting the position, I would come to know the truly brilliant galaxy of young people who had been collected at Livermore by Lawrence and Teller. York, the first director of the laboratory, was only thirtyone years old when he was selected for the post in 1952. Six years later, Herb was named the first director of defense research and engineering in the Pentagon. At the time, this was the third-highest position in the Department of Defense, following the secretary and the deputy secretary. The rest of us were even younger. Harold Brown and John S. Foster Jr. were the two most talented and important of

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the young people I met when I joined the Livermore Laboratory. Both had arrived in its first year; both later served as directors, Harold starting in 1960 when he was thirty-three, and Johnny in 1961 at age thirty-seven. Both wound up in Washington, where Harold eventually became the secretary of defense in the Carter administration. Before that, he was director of defense research and engineering and secretary of the air force in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. Johnny Foster succeeded Harold as director of defense research and engineering in 1965 and was a member of both the Johnson and the Nixon administrations. He left office in 1972, and since then has pursued a distinguished career in the defense industry. In addition, he is a longtime member of the Defense Science Board and served as board chairman from 1989 to 1993. He was also a member of the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board from 1981 to 1983. By any measure, Johnny has been the single most influential adviser to successive defense secretaries over the years. Several other contemporaries of mine who were at the laboratory when I was there—Duane Sewell, Gerald Johnson, and Philip Coyle—served as associate directors of the laboratory and later received presidential appointments, Sewell in the Department of Energy, and Johnson and Coyle in the Department of Defense. The Livermore Laboratory turned out to be a unique incubator for those of us who later spent time in Washington.

Figure 3.3. Left to right: E. O. Lawrence, Edward Teller, and Herbert F. York, the three men most responsible for shaping what is now the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Photo courtesy of Jon Brenneis.

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Chester Van Atta was the associate director of the laboratory responsible for several large facilities. In his office, which was located in one of the World War II–era buildings (Building 121), he introduced me to the people who would be working with me. Arnold Clark was the nominal supervisor of the A-48. The others were Robert C. Jopson and Frank J. Gordon. Both would become strong friends and collaborators in the coming years. Later, Edward L. Chupp joined our group. At this meeting, I was assigned an office in the suite occupied by Dr.Van Atta. We spent the rest of 1956 collecting the equipment to replicate one of Jesse DuMond’s quartz crystal spectrometers and then to adapt the equipment to make it work in the target area of the A-48. By December, we were able to perform our first experiment. The target was a sheet of tantalum metal, and we were looking for energy levels in the isotope tantalum-181, which the Neutron Physics Group had identified at MIT in 1953. The data were reported in George Paulissen’s thesis, which we had published in 1955. Sometime in December, we exposed the tantalum plate to a ten-milliampere, 2.5 MeV proton beam for ten hours. We used Ilford photographic plates, which were especially suited to detect nuclear gamma rays. After exposing the plate, I carried it over to the building where it would be developed. I looked at the developed plates the following morning. I was anxious, but when I put the plates in the film holder, I was elated to see the two gamma ray lines that were characteristic of tantalum-181. They were located at 136.12±0.06 keV and 165.13±6.11 keV quantum energy. This is where we expected them to be, based on George Paulissen’s thesis. It was the first time I had seen an experimental result for which I had been responsible. It was a truly great feeling. A week later, Bob Jopson and I prepared a short report with the pictures of our equipment and the results of the tantalum experiment. We showed Teller our results. He called McMillan to tell him what we had accomplished. He told us to make an appointment to see Professor McMillan. Our meeting with McMillan was a great event for Bob and me because we could see that he was impressed. He told us that Ernest Lawrence would be very pleased with the results, and that we should expect a visit from him in Building 157. He finished by telling us to continue with our program. Lawrence was one of the great figures of twentieth-century science. He had studied the works of the German physicist Rolf Wideroe, who conceived the idea of using radio-frequency alternating electromagnetic fields to accelerate electrons and protons. Lawrence added the idea of bending the particles into circular orbits and then applying the alternating potential across the diameter of the orbits. He realized that the orbital frequency was independent of the energy, so a constant-frequency electromagnetic field could be used to accelerate the particles to very high energies, millions of electron volts, in small increments. Lawrence’s idea, and his first machine, which he had built in 1929, spawned hundreds of models throughout the world, leading to an explosion of knowledge about the structure of the atomic nucleus.

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Lawrence was born in 1901 in Canton, South Dakota, to parents who were descended from Norwegian immigrants. He spent two years at St. Olaf College in Minnesota and finished his undergraduate degree, a BA in chemistry, at the University of South Dakota. He earned a PhD in physics from Yale University in 1925. Upon graduation, he was offered a junior faculty appointment at Yale. He accepted the offer, but a tug-of-war soon began between Yale and the University of California. Raymond T. Birge, the legendary chairman of the physics department at Berkeley, was determined to have Lawrence join his faculty. Birge won by offering the twenty-eight-year-old Lawrence a full professorship. Many eyebrows were raised over this move, but Birge’s judgment was vindicated when, in January 1932, the first cyclotron became operational. It had pole pieces eleven inches in diameter and produced a beam of protons with a kinetic energy in excess of one million electron volts. Lawrence was a tall, handsome man. I did not know him very well, but an infectious grin and unquenchable optimism were his hallmarks. In conversation, he always talked about possibilities for the future. Lawrence’s most important advice was always to urge us to try something new. We started a campaign in the fall of 1955 to look at all the elements we had examined at MIT with the Van de Graaff accelerator. We worked two shifts on the A-48 machine because it took between ten and twenty hours to get a satisfactory exposure of the materials. One night when I had the watch, I was startled to see Ernest Lawrence walk into our control room. He came over and started to ask questions. Lawrence was intensely interested in what we were doing, and eventually I understood that it was not only because of the science. He had started the A-48 project in order to make radioisotopes for use as initiators of nuclear explosions. But a better way to initiate a nuclear detonation had been found. As a result, the great accelerator he had promoted and built became a white elephant. He was therefore strongly hoping to get something useful from this machine, and our work might achieve this goal. During the next year, Lawrence would visit the control room regularly and pass the time with us—and all of his visits were at night. He would spend the day at Livermore for other reasons, have dinner in our cafeteria, and then come over to the control room. He loved to tell us to “to turn up the wick,” which meant turning up the power to see how high we could get the beam current to go. Generally we would operate the machine at ten to thirty milliamperes, but one time we threw caution to the wind and raised the beam current to above a hundred milliamperes. When we burned through the target, Lawrence laughed and told us, “Well, you have set a world record!” Ernest Lawrence was a truly great man. He loved to associate with young people and to inspire them. He would pick people like Herb York, Harold Brown, and Johnny Foster when they were in their late twenties and early thirties for highly responsible jobs. I think that this policy was

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what made the Radiation Laboratory at the University of California so successful. Unfortunately, Ernest Lawrence died in 1957 of internal bleeding following an operation for ulcerative colitis. He was only fifty-seven years old.

Sputnik 1, Defense against Ballistic Missiles, and the Argus Experiment In the spring of 1957, Dr. Van Atta called me into his office in Building 121. He introduced me to a rather swarthy and stocky man by the name of Nicholas Christofilos.Van Atta told me that Christofilos had just arrived at Livermore from the Atomic Energy Commission’s Brookhaven National Laboratory. He would be staying in our office suite until his clearance came through, because the controlled thermonuclear reaction project (called Sherwood) and the A-48 were not in a classified area. He asked me to help initiate Christofilos into the ways of Livermore and to help him with the technical work that he was doing. So in addition to measuring nuclear energy levels with the A-48, I now had another job. Nicholas Christofilos had a very interesting history. He was born in Boston, where his parents had a prosperous Greek restaurant. In 1940, Nick’s mother decided that she and her son would visit relatives in Greece during the Christmas holidays and stay for a few months. When the German invasion of Greece was mounted in April 1941, Nick and his mother were trapped. They could not return to the United States, because even though nineteen-year-old Nicholas was an American citizen, his mother was not. Nick spent the remaining war years in Greece, studying mathematics and electrical engineering at the Athens Polytechnic. After graduating, he went to work for a company in Athens that specialized in the maintenance of elevators in high-rise buildings. In his spare time, he worked on the design of high-energy particle accelerators. One of his designs turned out to be a breakthrough. He had the foresight to take out a US patent on his concept, which would serve him well in the future. In 1952, two Americans, Ernest Courant and Stanley Livingston, discovered the same principle while working on the Cosmotron at Brookhaven. Christofilos saw the paper that they published about it. He wrote a letter to Livingston, who saw that, indeed, Christofilos had done the same thing earlier. Livingston thereupon arranged for Christofilos to come to Brookhaven. While there, Christofilos came up with an idea that had military applications. The management at Brookhaven thought that he should go to one of the nuclear weapons laboratories, where he could develop the idea further. Thus, I wound up meeting and working with Nicholas Christofilos during my time at Livermore. All of us who worked at the nation’s nuclear weapons laboratories were always thinking about how to defend the nation against an attack by ballistic missiles carrying nuclear weapons. In April 1957, Nick Christofilos told me about the

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Argus project, which he had conceived while at Brookhaven. In 1957, the United States had just fielded its first true ballistic missiles, the Atlas and the Titan; the navy would deploy the Polaris in nuclear-powered submarines in 1960. These missiles’ guidance and firing control systems used transistors—only recently developed—in their electronic system packages. The early transistors were very sensitive to ionizing radiation, which would disable them. Christofilos reasoned that this vulnerability could be exploited. He told me that if a few small nuclear weapons were detonated above the atmosphere, the electrons and the ions emitted would be trapped in the earth’s magnetic field at altitudes of 100–700 kilometers (62–435 miles). These, Christofilos claimed, would create a radiation field strong enough to disable the electronics of Soviet ballistic missiles, whose trajectories would reach altitudes in excess of 300–500 kilometers (186–311 miles). It was well known that charged particles produced by cosmic rays could go into trajectories in Earth’s geomagnetic field and follow complex paths around the planet before escaping again. These were the so-called Stoermer orbits. Christofilos was the first one to realize that if the particles were injected into the Earth’s dipole field by a source inside the field, then some of these particles would be trapped.They would execute spiral orbits around the dipole field lines and would remain in these orbits for long periods of time. During the early months of 1957, I began to help Christofilos with calculations about the lifetimes of the trapped particles. We began to think about how to perform an experiment to test his hypothesis. We estimated how many kilotons of nuclear explosives it would take to create a field strong enough to disable the electronics of a nuclear warhead and thus render them useless. It turned out to be a remarkably small number: a few hundred kilotons. The principal diagnostic would be to observe the artificial auroras created in extreme northern and southern latitudes. We estimated that some tens of kilotons of nuclear explosives would create measurable auroras. At the same time, I was measuring the energies of nuclear gamma rays with the A-48. On the morning of October 5, 1957, Dr.Van Atta told our team that the day before, the Soviets had launched an artificial Earth-orbiting satellite, which they called Sputnik 1. The full impact took some time to sink in. A few days later, when we knew that Sputnik would be visible, Bob Jopson, Frank Gordon, Ed Chupp, and I climbed to the roof of Building 157 to look for it. Sure enough, at the appointed hour a spot of light moved above the trees to the south and across the sky. It took five or six minutes for Sputnik to move from one horizon to the other. All of us standing there that evening realized that this event would change our lives. By being the first to put a satellite into Earth orbit, the Soviets had demonstrated that they were very competent technically and that in this particular area, they were ahead of us. Sputnik 1 was a small object that carried only a radio beacon. Two months later, the Soviets launched Sputnik 2, a much larger spacecraft weighing

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more than five hundred pounds. In addition, there was a small dog on board. All this created great public concern about our position in advanced technology. How had the Soviets managed to be the first to put an artificial “moon” around the Earth? The United States already had in place a program to develop Earth-orbiting satellites. It had been initiated as part of a program that designated 1957 as the International Geophysical Year. The program, called Vanguard, was, at the insistence of the Eisenhower administration, strictly a civilian enterprise. On December 6, 1957, the first Vanguard was ready for launch, but it failed. This failure, coming on the heels of the Soviet successes, forced Eisenhower to change the policy of civilian control of space satellites. After the end of World War II, many of the leaders of Germany’s advanced development programs in nuclear technology and rocketry were either captured by or surrendered to British and American forces in western Europe. The effort to detain these people was referred to as Operation Paperclip. Members of the group had developed the first large military rockets. Those weapons were the Vergeltungswaffe, or vengeance weapons. The V-2 rocket was the world’s first military missile. It could carry a payload of 1,000 pounds for 250 miles. Wernher von Braun, who was a rocket pioneer before Adolf Hitler seized power, led the team that developed it. This group was captured by US soldiers in Germany and, along with 200 V-2s, was brought to Fort Bliss, near El Paso,Texas.There, the Germans began to develop US military rockets in 1945, using V-2s in their early experiments. By 1950, the von Braun group, about one hundred people, was moved to the army’s Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Alabama. Over the next five years, they developed the first intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM), called the Jupiter. It was based on the V-2 and could carry a 2,000-pound payload for 1,500 miles. Von Braun realized, long before the Soviets launched Sputnik I, that a modified Jupiter missile could place a substantial payload into an orbit around Earth. Since official policy forbade the military from developing satellites, von Braun asked the commander of the Redstone Arsenal, Maj. Gen. John Medaris, to allow the modification of a Jupiter to make it capable of putting a satellite in orbit. The general eventually acceded to von Braun’s request, and a Jupiter rocket was duly modified. After the failure of the first Vanguard launch, on December 16, 1957, von Braun persuaded Medaris to advise the people in Washington that an American satellite could be launched sometime in January. In view of the circumstances, von Braun was permitted to organize a team to accomplish this objective. William Pickering, of the army’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, was enlisted to produce a fourth stage for the Jupiter rocket; it would become the satellite. Pickering thought that the launch would provide an opportunity to do some scientific research, too. He asked James A.Van Allen of the University of Iowa, a well-known expert on the physics of the upper atmosphere, to provide some instrumentation for the fourth

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stage. Van Allen provided some radiation detectors to measure cosmic rays. In this way, the fourth stage of von Braun’s Jupiter rocket became Explorer I, the first American Earth-orbiting satellite. True to his word, von Braun’s Jupiter rocket was launched on January 31, 1958, and Explorer I was successfully placed in Earth orbit. The launch of Sputnik 1 and Sputnik 2 by the Soviets shocked Americans. During the 1950s there was great pride in the country’s ability to develop and use new technology. Being beaten by the Soviets in this important technology led to strident demands for change. The Livermore Laboratory was affected immediately in several ways. One of the Defense Department responses to the Sputnik crisis was to establish the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA); Herbert York became its first director. He was succeeded as director of Livermore by Edward Teller in April 1958. Another change at Livermore was that Christofilos’s Argus project was put into high gear. Harold Brown, the former division leader who had the responsibility at Livermore for hydrogen bombs, was now an associate director of the laboratory. He was put in charge of Argus and asked me to become a member of an oversight group that would help coordinate the laboratory’s activities. My friend George Bing was the chairman of the group. The plan for the Argus experiment was to detonate three small nuclear devices with an explosive yield of 1.5 kilotons at an altitude of 300 miles. These would be put on rockets and launched from the USS Norton Sound, which was stationed in the South Atlantic. The existence of Earth-orbiting satellites presented the possibility of using them for measuring the radiation fields produced by trapped particles. Explorer IV would be instrumented to detect the radiation field created by the nuclear detonations. This entire complex operation would be carried out in complete secrecy. Van Allen and two of his students, George Ludwig and Carl McIlwain, would design and build the payload for Explorer IV. My job as a member of the oversight group would be to help McIlwain calibrate his detectors. Two of the four detectors on board Explorer IV were scintillation detectors, and I had acquired expertise in them at MIT. Thus, I could make myself useful. The Argus operation was carried out in August and September 1958. Everything worked as expected. Explorer IV was successfully launched on July 26, 1958. It was the third American satellite to be placed in Earth orbit, Explorer II having failed. The three nuclear explosions were carried out at the appropriate altitude. The measurements made with the satellite-mounted detectors were extremely beneficial to our knowledge. Everyone associated with the program was very proud of the effort. The improvement of transistor electronics was very rapid, and in 1959 it became apparent that transistors could be easily hardened against radiation. We calculated that it would eventually take the detonation of many hundreds of megatons in the earth’s geomagnetic field to disable a missile. Thus, the Argus idea was eventually

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abandoned. The Argus operation was declassified in the spring of 1959, and the results were published in the August 1959 issue of the Journal of Geophysical Research. In 1958, I was peripherally involved in another nuclear test series in the Pacific. This was Operation Hardtack, in which thirty-five nuclear detonations were conducted at a number of test sites. Two of these shots, code names Teak and Orange, were high-yield devices—each about 3.8 megatons of high-explosive yield—detonated on August 1 and 12, 1958. These detonations took place at high altitudes, Teak at 252,000 feet (48 miles) and Orange at 141,000 feet (27 miles). The nuclear explosives were carried by Redstone rockets launched from Johnston Atoll. One of the physicists involved in the planning of these shots, Albert Latter, knew that I was involved in the Argus series. Sometime late in 1957, he asked me whether the two shots he was planning would release energetic charged particles in the geomagnetic field, as Argus was meant to. I did not know how to answer this question. It would be a very involved calculation to estimate the leakage of charged particles out of the atmosphere. I expressed some concern that the leakage of charged particles from the Hardtack shots might mask the effect that we were expecting from Argus. After making some rough estimates of the possible leakage of energetic charged particles, Latter concluded that the Teak shot would likely result in some leakage. But because the lifetimes of the trapped particles would be very short, there would be no interference with readings from the Argus shots. Latter’s estimate turned out to be correct, even though the Teak burst showed an artificial aurora emitted by the fireball. The Teak and Orange shots were also the first ones to emit large electromagnetic pulses (EMPs), which were capable of doing damage to electrical systems on the ground over large distances. These pulses occur because the pressure gradients in the upper atmosphere are such that the energy of the nuclear explosion is deposited asymmetrically instead of spherically, as in the case of detonations closer to the ground. This asymmetric deposition of energy causes a large dipole moment that results in the emission of a powerful electromagnetic pulse. Our life in Livermore in 1956 and 1957 was active and pleasant. Bun worked part-time and made a number of good friends. She was also active in local politics, having been elected president of the Livermore Chapter of the League of Women Voters. In 1957, the Livermore Radiation Laboratory was in a rapid growth phase, so there were many newcomers in town from all over the country. Therefore, there was a two-tiered society in Livermore, the old-timers and the newcomers.The first family in Livermore was the Wente clan, who were famous vintners. They were gracious people and large landowners in the Livermore Valley. Bun and I attended one of the parties that the Wentes hosted for those of us new to town. Although we counted as newcomers, Bun was born in Hayward, which was just ten miles

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west of Livermore over a low range of hills that divided the Livermore Valley from the southern end of San Francisco Bay. Not only that, her ancestors had lived in California for six generations. One of the old-timers at this party asked questions about her background and in general tried to tell her about the neighborhood. Finally, Bun said to him, “I really appreciate your kind explanation of how things go here,” and then she pointed out the window to the west and said, “You see those hills over there? My ancestors ran cattle on those hills long before all the houses were built!” We all laughed. Bun was both a newcomer as well as an old-timer. Our house on Fourth Street was very comfortable, and Bun, an expert gardener, soon had the garden filled with colorful plants. Our daughter, Janey, was thriving, and we especially enjoyed living close to Bun’s family. In April 1957, Bun informed me that she was pregnant again. I was delighted, especially because this time I would not be out of town for the great event. A few months later, we learned that the new baby would be a boy. Bun decided that she would like to have a redheaded boy, so she began to call him “Rufus” in hopes that she could nudge the Good Lord to give us a redheaded son. We expected our new son in December, and Dr. Thorpe would again be attending the birth. In the two years since Janey’s birth, a new hospital, the Mount Eden Hospital, had been built in Castro Valley, a small community a few miles east of Hayward.We celebrated Christmas with the family at 159 Prospect, and as usual, it was a great party. The next day, I took Bun to Mount Eden and checked her into a nice room to await Rufus. Janey and I were staying in Hayward, and I went over to Mount Eden on December 27 to spend a few hours with Bun. Rufus was taking his time; there was no sign of labor. I visited Bun again on December 28 at about ten in the morning, but there was no labor. Bun was in fine shape, sitting up in bed and writing out birth announcement cards. I had spent an hour or so with Bun when Dr.Thorpe came in for a look. Since there were still no labor pains, he thought that there was still plenty of time. I decided to go to a small restaurant across the street to have lunch. Much to my surprise, when I returned to Bun’s room, she was gone. The nurse at the desk told me that Bun was still in the delivery room, but that I had a fine young son. I was elated, and a couple of hours later, I had my first look. He was a big, healthy-looking baby. Unfortunately, he did not have red hair, or any hair for that matter. An hour later, Bun was returned to her room. We were both very pleased with the new arrival, and I was very relieved that Bun had had an easy delivery. We decided that we would name the boy James Randall.

Nuclear Energy Levels and a Short Sojourn at MIT In late 1958, we were informed by Livermore’s management that the A-48 would be shut down.We were disappointed, but the move had been expected.We had done what we could with the machine, and we had managed to make a small scientific contribution. By measuring accurately the energies of the first two levels in tanta-

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lum-181, holmium-165, and terbium-159, we were able to ascertain the strengths of the nuclear rotation-vibration interaction and the nuclear spin-orbit coupling. We had a good run with the A-48. I got to participate in the Argus effort, which had been concluded by the successful launch of Explorer IV and the successful mission of the USS Norton Sound. For some months in 1958, I began to think about embarking on a more academic career. The work we had done with the A-48 accelerator had attracted some attention among my friends at MIT. Nathaniel Frank, the head of the MIT Physics Department, had asked me whether I would be interested in returning as a member of the physics faculty. I did not make an immediate decision, so he made what was essentially a standing offer. With the successful conduct of the Argus shots and the shutdown of the A-48 accelerator, I was somewhat at loose ends at the end of September 1958. I consulted my friends, both in California and at MIT, about the possibility of returning to MIT as an assistant professor of physics. By this time, Edward Teller was the director at Livermore, and he listened carefully to my arguments. He urged me not to go to MIT, and so did Bun. Bun’s arguments were especially compelling. She had developed a number of friendships in Livermore, and we had a fine house. Most importantly, we were living close to Bun’s family. I agonized over this decision for some time and finally decided that I would accept Frank’s offer and that we would move to Cambridge. Edward was unhappy about my decision, but he was also very generous. He knew that I was still interested in Argus and in other activities at the Livermore Laboratory. He arranged for MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory to hold my security clearances so that I could continue to maintain my connection with Livermore. Sometime in the fall of 1958, we closed up our Livermore house and prepared to move our small family to Cambridge. Before leaving, I went to tell Edward Teller good-bye. Edward and I were unhappy about the circumstances that influenced my decision to leave. At the end of the meeting, Edward expressed the hope that I would eventually come back to California. It was a sad parting, and I felt then that I was making a mistake. We flew to Boston, and a few days later rented a nice house in Belmont, a suburb just west of Cambridge. It was a nice fieldstone house with a fenced yard in the back for our two young children. Once past the painful part of leaving California, we began to feel a little better. One strongly positive element in our new life was the presence of my brother, Peter; his wife, Delia; and their young daughter, Katherine. Peter had earned his PhD in solid-state physics at New York University. After spending a postdoctoral year in Germany, he had accepted a position at the Polaroid Corporation as a senior research scientist. He was working on surface physics, which was vitally important for the development and production of the innovative picture-in-a-minute cameras that Polaroid’s president, Edwin H. Land, was developing. Peter and his family lived in a rented house in Arlington, a Boston suburb just north of Belmont across Route 3. In addition, we were only a three-hour drive from the apartment

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in Brooklyn where my parents still lived. Finally, there was the house on Lake Peekskill, sixty miles north of New York. By 1958, my mother had developed the property to the point that it consisted of two houses, one on the lakefront and the other across the street. For us, it was a great place to spend mini vacations during the spring, summer, and fall when we had the time. While I was away from MIT, a large new nuclear research reactor had been built. I had some familiarity with nuclear research reactors of this kind because of the one we had at Livermore. Additionally, Norman Rasmussen, my old friend from graduate school, had a research project at the reactor. As an assistant professor of nuclear engineering, he had access to the facility. After a couple of conversations, Norman and I agreed that we would embark on a project to measure the wavelength of the nuclear-capture gamma rays emitted when protons capture neutrons. This would permit us to make the most accurate determination of the neutron mass that had ever been attempted. To measure gamma ray wavelengths, we would use the techniques that we had developed at Livermore for the A-48 accelerator. Norman and I designed and built a six-meter-focal-length bent crystal spectrometer. The MIT reactor had a horizontal beam tube that went through the shield from one side of the reactor to the other. The beam tube was placed so that it passed very close to the center of the reactor core. We placed a large block of polyethylene at the center of the tube, which produced an intense source of the neutron-proton-capture gamma rays necessary to be measured. The focusing bent-crystal spectrometer was located on the outside of the reactor shielding. The gamma rays were collimated in the tube and then diffracted by the spectrometer. A graduate student, Abdul Halim Kazi, from Pakistan, was hired with the money that Norman and I had raised from the National Science Foundation for his PhD thesis. The project turned out to be quite successful. Our spectrometer resolved the captured gamma rays, and late in 1959 we had the first results. I was very pleased with this outcome. At some point early in 1960, Nathaniel Frank called me in for a performance review. He said that I probably had the potential to be a successful faculty member at MIT, but I would have to make up my mind about what to do. I conceded that he was right: all my work had been done in the Department of Nuclear Engineering, but I had been hired as an assistant professor in physics. Realizing that I had a serious problem, I decided to consult people who had both wisdom and an interest in helping out. First and foremost was my father, so I drove to Brooklyn and spent the weekend at the Ocean Avenue apartment. My father’s most important suggestion was that I should call Edward Teller and listen to what he had to say. When I returned to Cambridge on Monday, I called Edward in Berkeley and explained my dilemma. He told me that he did not think that he could help me much on the substance of my problem. He had one suggestion, though: he asked me whether I knew Morrough P. O’Brien. I told him that I did not. Teller then said that “Mike” O’Brien was a former dean of engineering at the University of California, Berkeley. Furthermore, Teller told me that O’Brien, currently on a leave of absence from

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the university, was spending some months at MIT while writing a book. Teller told me that he did not know O’Brien very well, but thought that a conversation with him would be useful. A day later, I called O’Brien’s office at MIT. He said right away that Teller had told him to expect a call from me. O’Brien then asked me whether I could come and see him right then. I walked over to the civil engineering wing of the MIT main building and knocked on the door of the office reserved for visiting faculty. Mike O’Brien was a short, stocky man with a broad, open, and very Irish face. Flashing a wide smile, he cordially invited me to sit down across from him at his desk. I was somewhat on edge and did not quite know how to start the conversation. O’Brien began to tell me about the book he was writing, which concerned engineering education. He started with some broad statements of principles and then led me through an eloquent description of what needed to be done. It was an interesting lecture, and I began to forget my own problems. He answered some questions of mine well and in detail. After an hour, he told me that he had another appointment and had to leave. During the entire conversation, questions about my own position at MIT never came up. I felt that O’Brien was clearly a man of substance and that I would see him again. Sure enough, he called me again a few days later. He invited me to have dinner with him and to continue our discussion. We met at the Locke-Ober Restaurant, which was an elegant establishment in downtown Boston. Following a few minutes of small talk, O’Brien returned to the topic of engineering education. The fundamental change, he told me, in engineering education in the past decade was that science was now a much larger part of the engineering curriculum than it had been before World War II. The reason was that applications of new scientific discoveries were now used for practical purposes much more rapidly than they had been in the past. O’Brien cited the growth of nuclear power and of transistor electronics, both of which were based on scientific principles developed during the 1930s and 1940s. He added that engineering schools were hiring people with scientific backgrounds, in order to reflect what was happening in the engineering profession. O’Brien had a point. I told him about my friend and colleague Norman Rasmussen. Norman had earned his PhD in physics at the same time I did, in 1954. Shortly thereafter he joined two MIT professors of chemical engineering, Manson Benedict and Thomas Pigford, to establish the Department of Nuclear Engineering at MIT. Finally, O’Brien got down to business. Pigford had joined the faculty of the University of California, Berkeley, and founded the Department of Nuclear Engineering there. Would I be interested in joining Pigford as a faculty member? O’Brien went on to tell me that he had also approached Edward Teller about a connection at Livermore for me. He said that Teller’s response was positive, and he suggested that I call Teller. That dinner with O’Brien provided me with much food for thought. I had a long discussion with Bun about the prospect of returning to California. She knew

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that things were not going well for me at MIT, but pulling up stakes so soon after arriving was something that had to be carefully considered. In spite of my problems at MIT, life in the Boston area was pleasant and rewarding. A little less than a year after renting a nice large house in Belmont, we bought a beautiful old house, also in Belmont, right next to Route 3. Both Bun and I loved the “new” house, which was actually more than a hundred years old. It was a comfortable white New England clapboard style with the obligatory black window shutters. Our two children were thriving, and it was hard to think of moving again. And Peter and his family were living less than a mile from us. During the spring of 1960, Bun and I went back and forth while trying to decide what to do. One of the things I did—at Mike O’Brien’s suggestion—was to visit California and meet Tom Pigford early that year. I had not met him before, so this interview was important.The department office on the Berkeley campus was in one of the temporary buildings that had been built during World War II. Pigford, who was from Mississippi, still had a trace of a southern accent. He had served in the navy during World War II and then earned an ScD at MIT in chemical engineering. As mentioned, he spent a few years at MIT as one of the founders of the Nuclear Engineering Department. After that, he joined the General Atomic Corporation in San Diego as one of the corporate vice presidents. He joined the Berkeley faculty in 1958 to become the founding chairman of nuclear engineering. Tom was cordial and began by describing his plans for the department. He told me that there would be a new building, Etcheverry Hall, which would house the department, the shops, and the laboratories. He was negotiating with General Atomic to acquire a new nuclear reactor designed specifically for university research. The reactor was similar to the one that I was working with at MIT, so the prospect of working at this new facility was enticing.The final subject that Pigford raised was the experience I had gained at Livermore. He thought that it would be very useful for the department to establish a connection with the Livermore Laboratory and that I could help establish it. Finally, he told me about his plan for staffing the new department. There would be some people from mechanical engineering, chemical engineering (Pigford himself  ), and applied mathematics who were already members of the faculty. The plan was to add people who were experts in nuclear reactor theory, neutron physics, and nuclear instrumentation. It was clear to me that the department would be a serious enterprise and that Pigford had a clear vision of where he wanted it to go. At the end of our meeting, he told me that Teller wanted to see me the next day at Livermore for further discussions. I was impressed by all this, and after the meeting I felt very positive about a possible career in California. My meeting with Teller took place in his office, and Gen Greteman brought in lunch trays from the cafeteria. Edward got straight to the point. He told me that Jack Peterson, the P-Division leader, would be retiring early in 1960. Jack had been in that position since the founding of the laboratory, in 1952, and he was ready

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to do something else. Edward told me that Harold Brown would shortly move to Washington and that he (Teller) would succeed him as director. The implication was clear: I would be asked to become P-Division leader. I was truly astonished at this prospect because I had just passed my thirtieth birthday in 1959. Before going on, I should explain what heading a division at Livermore meant. The laboratory was organized along lines that Robert Oppenheimer had established at Los Alamos in 1943. The fundamental unit was the division. The divisions were mission-oriented groups, and were supported in a matrix organization by technical departments, which provided help when required. At Livermore, the principal weapons divisions were A-Division (high-yield nuclear weapons), B-Division (low- to medium-yield nuclear weapons), N-Division (neutronics and criticality measurements), L-Division (nuclear-weapons testing), T-Division (theoretical physics), and P-Division (experimental physics). In addition, there were three support departments—chemistry, engineering, and administration. The six division leaders and the three department heads reported to the director (Edward Teller) and his deputy director, Mark Mills. Shortly after I met with Edward in early 1960 to talk about heading P-Division, a new layer of management was formed. The heads of A-Division and B-Division and the head of the chemistry department were given the title “associate director.” Also, two new associate director positions were established, one to head the program in controlled nuclear fusion (M-Division) and another to head the program for the Pluto high-temperature gas-cooled reactor (R-Division). Thus, the laboratory’s associate directors became the second level of management, and the division leaders eventually became the third. These changes were all being made while I was negotiating my possible return to the University of California. But I was told that the T-Division leader (Sidney Fernbach) and I, as the P-Division leader, would still report to the director rather than to one of the newly minted associate directors. This arrangement was eventually changed. When I returned home to Belmont, Bun and I had several long conversations. I also consulted my father. After visiting my father in Brooklyn, I had another long conversation with Bun to decide what we should do. We elected to return to California. Bun, in effect, was going home, and I would be reestablishing a connection that I had broken in 1958.

P-Division Leader at Livermore and Professor of Nuclear Engineering at Berkeley And so we returned to California in May 1960, two weeks short of my thirty-first birthday. The arrangement that I eventually negotiated was to spend two-thirds of my time at Livermore and the other third at the university as a lecturer in the Department of Nuclear Engineering. An important part of this arrangement was that I was promised an appointment as associate professor of nuclear engineering

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in 1961. As far as I was concerned, this was almost the perfect position for me. I would have an academic post at my alma mater and also occupy a leading position at Livermore. Jack Peterson had done an excellent job as P-Division leader, so the group was a going concern. There was a price to pay for this, since we would have to move again, which would be hard on the children and Bun. The saving grace was that we were moving back to California, where we all wanted to live in the longer term. As for me, I had to reconcile myself that I would not be a physicist, which was what I had planned when I entered Stuyvesant High School in 1943. During the time that I had spent in the Physics Department at MIT, I realized that I would never be better than a journeyman as a pure physicist or physics professor. It was hard to let go, but I realized that it would be better professionally for me in California. What I remember best about the two years at MIT was my association with Norman Rasmussen. We completed the experiment to measure the wavelength (and hence the energy) of the gamma rays emitted when a proton captures a neutron. Since mass spectroscopy provides very accurate measurements of the masses of protons and deuterons, with an accurate measurement of the binding energy of the neutron and proton in the deuteron, and the help of E = mc2, the mass of the neutron can be accurately determined. A few years after the publication of our paper, the new solid-state gamma ray detectors being developed were able to measure the energy of the captured gamma rays more accurately than the cumbersome diffraction technique that we had developed. Abdul Halim Kazi was awarded his PhD and went on to a distinguished research career at the Army Research Laboratory at Aberdeen, Maryland. I stayed in touch with Norman Rasmussen as well. He achieved fame and recognition for his landmark report on the safety of nuclear power reactors. He was one of the very few people to be elected to both the National Academy of Engineering and the National Academy of Sciences. We arrived back in California in August 1960 and decided to rent a house in Livermore for a year. I had much to do to get on top of my job as P-Division leader, and I thought that it would be best to live close to the laboratory. I would have to commute to Berkeley to fulfill my responsibilities there. In 1960, P-Division had a complement of about fifty physicists, about half with PhDs and the remainder in supporting positions. The division also had the resources to draw on another hundred people from the laboratory’s supporting organizations.The first step that I took was to learn about the division’s research efforts. Traditionally, the P-Divisions, in both Livermore and Los Alamos, had programs with a major focus on nuclear processes related to the performance of nuclear weapons. This research meant creating tables of neutron reaction cross sections and studying the details of nuclear fission and nuclear fusion reactions. The principal facility operated by P-Division in 1960 was a cyclotron with a pole-piece diameter of ninety inches. By the time I assumed responsibility for P-Division, many of the questions regarding nuclear processes had

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been resolved. Weapons designers told me that a focus on atomic physics would be valuable, particularly an emphasis on processes that govern radiation transport in materials at very high temperatures and pressures. Since I was very much aware of Cold War requirements, we initiated a program to study atomic processes at energies (that is, temperatures) that exist inside a nuclear device at the moment of detonation. In addition, we began a program to perform very accurate calculations of atomic wave functions. In this case, the object was to derive theories that would have predictive value for understanding the behavior of matter at very high pressures and temperatures. P-Division had no people with expertise in this area in 1960, so new people had to be brought in. A second initiative was to work with L-Division, which was responsible for managing the laboratory’s nuclear weapons tests. One of its functions was to measure the output of nuclear detonations in—and eventually above—the atmosphere. Most of the energy produced by a nuclear detonation is radiation emitted in the form of X-rays. If the detonation occurs in the lower atmosphere, the X-rays are rapidly absorbed by the air, which is quickly heated, creating a shock wave. If the nuclear explosion occurs at high altitudes or in space, then the X-rays emitted are not affected and can easily be measured. Thus, it was necessary to develop X-ray detectors and the means to carry them to high altitudes on sounding rockets. Equipment of this kind was used to observe the high-altitude megaton shots performed in the late 1950s and the early 1960s.These included Cherokee in 1956, and Teak and Orange in 1958. The Starfish shot was detonated in 1962 above the atmosphere at an altitude of 400 kilometers (250 miles). P-Division members participated in these efforts by developing and building the X-ray detectors used in these operations. The L-Division leader at the time was Jim Carothers, and I made it my business to meet with him frequently during my first year in order to learn about the work of his division. Visible-light lasers were invented in 1960, and people in P-Division were the first to operate lasers at the Livermore. In the years to come, large solid-state lasers and their development became a major focus of the laboratory. Since the new lasers were related to atomic transitions, we hired Jahn M. Khan, who had written his PhD thesis on atomic physics. He, along with Dr. Ray Kidder, who had joined us temporarily from his permanent post in T-Division, successfully built the first laser at the Livermore Laboratory. Kidder was a brilliant theoretical physicist, and during his career he made several important contributions. He was also very outspoken, and he eventually became a controversial, but still highly respected, figure. Nuclear reactions and neutron physics were still the mainstay of P-Division when I arrived in 1960. The leading figures in this work were John Anderson, Calvin Wong, Jack Benveniste, Louisa Hansen, and Carlton Schrader. Probably the most distinguished member of the P-Division staff was Stewart D. Bloom. He had come from Brookhaven National Laboratory, where he had done fundamental ex-

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perimental work on the beta decay of nuclei. Stewart was also the one who, along with Lloyd Mann, his colleague in the Chemistry Division, initiated the building of radiation detectors to be flown in space. I should mention my colleagues Robert C. Jopson, Charles Swift, Gerald Chodil, and Richard Rodriguez. We decided to start a program in atomic physics, which had been suggested to me by my friends in the nuclear weapons development divisions. We decided to initiate a program to develop X-ray detectors that would be sensitive to X-rays in the quantum-energy range, which are created in the cauldron of a nuclear detonation. These radiations have quantum energies between 0.5 and 10 kilovolts, and we concentrated our work in this range. Charlie Swift was the mainstay of our group. He was an extremely talented experimental physicist who had a level head and a strong sense of humor.Without his presence, nothing of value would have happened. Following his work in P-Division, Swift enjoyed a long and very valuable career at Livermore. Robert Jopson was by far the most technically knowledgeable of my collaborators in the work we initiated on atomic physics. Bob had written his PhD thesis at the California Institute of  Technology under the supervision of Robert Anderson on the subject of cosmic rays. Anderson had been awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1936 for his discovery of the positron. Bob was at Livermore when I arrived in August 1955. We worked together on the A-48 experimental program between 1955 and 1958. When I returned to Livermore in 1960, I invited him to work with us in P-Division on the atomic physics program. He became an important contributor. Unfortunately, what eventually happened was a genuine tragedy that I did not foresee. During my years at Livermore, Bob Jopson and I became strong friends, as did our families. Bob and his wife, Jolee, had five boys, who were all within a few years of our two children. I consider Bob the most talented scientist I have worked with in what has been, at this writing, a lengthy career. His instinctive feeling for how things worked allowed him to draw conclusions about what had to be done to design and complete an experiment. He could rapidly judge which factors were important and which were less relevant for a successful result. Because of this ability, our work with the A-48 accelerator turned out to be both voluminous and productive. My hope was that the same would be true for the work we initiated in 1960 on atomic physics. When Bob started to work with us, I quickly realized that something had changed. During our work with the A-48, he had had great energy and initiative. Now, two years later, he was lethargic and slow moving. Periodically, Bob would revert to his old self and participate actively in our work. But more often than not, he would sit silently in his favorite chair in our laboratory in Building 153 and answer questions with only a single word. Alarmed by this turn of events, I alerted the laboratory management. Bun and I also went to see Jolee, who confirmed that Bob was suffering from an extended bout of depression. We decided to do what

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we could to help. We tried to create a work environment in which Bob could still make contributions in spite of his mental disease. This approach worked for a few years, but stronger measures were eventually necessary. Bob began taking antidepressant drugs, which helped temporarily. Finally, he had to be hospitalized at a facility in Livermore that specialized in mental illness. He underwent electroshock treatments, which were the standard measure at the time for dealing with deep depression. Once again, these treatments caused a temporary improvement in Bob’s condition. But he continued to deteriorate and no longer came to work every day. The end came in July 1967.The last time I saw Bob Jopson was when Bun and I visited him at his Livermore home on Princeton Street. Bob’s wife ushered us into the living room. Bob was sitting on the couch, a shrunken figure. The shades were drawn, and the room was only dimly lit. We tried to make small talk, but Bob did not respond. We spent an hour with Jolee after seeing Bob, and she was very pessimistic about Bob’s future. She did not know how things would come out in the end. I had retired from the P-Division leadership in 1964, and was then spending more time on the campus in Berkeley. I still worked every Tuesday and Wednesday at Livermore, and I would stay overnight in the bunkhouse that the laboratory maintained for commuters who worked late. During a morning meeting with Charlie Swift, Jerry Chodil, and Dick Rodriguez in the summer of 1967, the director’s office called and asked me to come over. By this time, Michael May had replaced Johnny Foster as the director. Mike May, a decent and considerate person, tried to gently tell me that Bob Jopson was dead. Apparently, Bob had kept his access badge, which allowed him to get past the guards at the gate. That morning, Mike said, a guard who checked the bunkhouse found Bob Jopson’s body in one of the rooms. An empty bottle of powerful sleeping pills was found with him, so Bob’s death was considered a suicide. I was utterly shocked, and it took me some minutes to recover. When I returned to our laboratory, I called Bun and told her what had happened. I also called Jolee, who had already been informed. A few days later, there was a funeral service for Bob at the Episcopal church in Livermore. About two hundred people attended, which was a clear testimony to the respect and affection that people in Livermore had for Bob Jopson. Both Bun and I wept bitter tears over what had happened. I cannot end my discussion of the people I worked with at Livermore without mentioning Doris Hine. Doris was a small, lively brunette with a brilliant smile and a winning personality. She had been Jack Peterson’s executive assistant, and she therefore knew all there was to know about the workings of P-Division. Doris was also an acute judge of people, so she was extremely helpful to me in dealing with personnel matters. Finally, she had a keen intelligence and a fine sense of humor. It was Doris who taught me how to manage a large organization. With Doris’s help, I learned two principal rules of management: First, delegate the power to make important decisions to your senior associates. As Doris once told me, “Pick ’em carefully, but then let them do their own thing.” Second, it was extremely import-

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ant for me to know and to understand what the people in the organization were doing. Thus, participating actively in the division’s programs was important. Several groups worked on the ninety-inch cyclotron. I adopted the view that they were their own bosses and that they were free to make their own arrangements with the programmatic units in the laboratory; in this way, their work would be recognized by the management of the laboratory. I also decided that to make sure that I stayed on top of things, I would spend about half of my time working in Building 153 with my own research group. Thus, I was in daily contact with the working people in the division. Ultimately, these policies were successful. The evidence was in the publication record and in the expansion of the division, which is described in the next chapter. Late in 1960, Tom Pigford informed me that my appointment as an associate professor of nuclear engineering had been approved, effective July 1, 1961. So the future looked very bright indeed. I had a responsible job in one of the foremost technological institutions working on problems related to national security, and I would hold an academic appointment at the foremost public university in the nation. To fulfill the personal goals outlined in the introduction to this book, I could not have been in a better position. It was now up to me to perform.

The Election of John F. Kennedy Our move back to California coincided with the 1960 presidential election. This was the first truly post–World War II election, because the candidates were members of what Tom Brokaw called the “Greatest Generation.” Sen. John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts and Vice Pres. Richard M. Nixon had served in the US Navy— Kennedy on a small motor torpedo boat, PT-109, in the Pacific, and Nixon as an administrative officer stationed in Washington, DC. In August 1943, Lieutenant Kennedy was the captain of PT-109 when it was sunk in an engagement with a Japanese destroyer in the Solomon Islands. Kennedy managed to save the lives of his crew, a feat for which he was decorated for heroism in spite of losing his ship. The 1960 presidential election was the third in which I was able to participate. I had voted for Adlai Stevenson in 1952 and then for Dwight Eisenhower in 1956, one a Democrat and the other a Republican. I was in graduate school at MIT in 1952 when Rep. John F. Kennedy defeated the incumbent, Henry Cabot Lodge Jr., for a US Senate seat. I had seen the articulate young congressman speak, and I was duly impressed. What I knew about Richard Nixon was personally not favorable because of the relatively sleazy campaign he had run in 1950 against Helen Gahagan Douglas. I voted for Senator Kennedy. On Tuesday, November 8, he was elected president of the United States. The popular vote was extremely close. Out of nearly 70 million votes cast, Kennedy’s majority was less than 150,000. In his inauguration speech, Kennedy made two eloquent statements that had a long-lasting influence on American life. The first one was a challenge to American

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young people: “And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country.” The second assertion was more ominous. He stated, “Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty.” It is not clear whether the new president realized the commitment that he was making. I certainly did not at the time understand the ramifications of this statement. President Kennedy faced two immediate challenges. The first had to do with Cuba. In December 1959, an insurgency led by Fidel Castro had overthrown the military dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista and taken control of the island nation. Castro quickly made it clear that he was a socialist who would seek a strong relationship with the Soviet Union. The Eisenhower administration decided to try to overthrow the new regime. The CIA developed a plan to organize a group of Cuban exiles to invade Cuba. A force of about two thousand men was trained in Central America to execute the operation. Kennedy, who had been thoroughly briefed on the plan, approved it, but stipulated that no air support be provided. On April 17, 1961, the invasion force landed on the south coast of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs. In two days, the Cubans had captured the invaders and the game was over. Kennedy took responsibility for the failure, even though the plan had been developed under Eisenhower. Some believe that if air support had been provided, the operation would have succeeded. Personally, I doubt it.Without enough “boots on the ground,” air operations are at best limited. A second event, which occurred at almost exactly the same time, was that the Soviets sent the first human being, Soviet Air Force captain Yuri Gagarin, into orbit around Earth in the Vostok I spacecraft. This feat had as much impact as the failure of the Bay of Pigs operation, and perhaps even more. Once again, the Soviets had beaten the United States to the finish line with a feat in space, as they had done with Sputnik 1 in 1957. They were solidly ahead of the Americans in what had become a space race. Leadership in high technology was something that the American people understood viscerally. There was genuine consternation, and President Kennedy realized that something had to be done.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the Moon Race In October 1958, at the request of President Eisenhower, Congress passed the National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958. This law came in response to the great public concern over Sputnik 1. Its most important provision was to establish a civilian agency to provide unified management of the nation’s space program. The new National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) would have as core institutions the three aeronautical research laboratories of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA): the Langley Memorial Laboratory in Hamp-

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ton, Virginia, which was established in 1917; the Ames Aeronautical Laboratory at the southern end of San Francisco Bay, which began operations in 1940; and the Lewis Flight Propulsion Laboratory held its groundbreaking ceremonies in 1941. These institutions were the foremost aeronautical research centers in the world, and the work done by their people had been responsible for the overwhelming air superiority enjoyed by the United States during World War II. In addition, two other institutions were added to the new agency or contributed personnel. One was the Jet Propulsion Laboratory ( JPL), which was originally part of the Guggenheim Aeronautical Laboratory of the California Institute of  Technology. The JPL was a center of the army’s development of solid rocket fuel. Its personnel brought to the new agency an expertise that would be important for space propulsion. The other was a group at the US Naval Research Laboratory responsible for the development of the Vanguard rocket, which used liquid-fuel propulsion.The group from the Naval Research Laboratory was the nucleus of what, in 1959, became the NASA–Goddard Space Flight Center, located in nearby Greenbelt, Maryland. Later, in 1961, the NASA–George C. Marshall Space Flight Center was carved out of the US Army’s Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Alabama. A brand-new institution was established in Houston in 1962 to handle flight control and spacecraft design. It was named the NASA–Manned Spacecraft Center (later the NASA–Johnson Space Center, after the death of President Johnson). Finally, a NASA organization was established at Patrick Air Force Base at Cape Canaveral, Florida, called the NASA–Launch Operations Center in 1961. After President Kennedy was assassinated, the center was renamed the NASA–Kennedy Space Center. Thus, NASA, by the end of 1962, had all the capabilities to continue high-level research in aeronautics and to initiate a strong and sophisticated space exploration program. The two fields were related, and it was at this point that the term “aerospace” was coined to describe NASA’s function. President Eisenhower wanted the US space exploration program to be completely open and unclassified. He wanted to contrast the American way of doing business with the Soviets’ methods. In the early days, none of the Soviet space launches were announced, and rocket or spacecraft failures were kept secret. US space operations would be conducted under the microscope of the international media. Another important feature of the legislation that established NASA was the creation of the National Space Council, which would oversee the activities of NASA. The council would be chaired by the vice president, and its members would include the secretaries of state and defense and other senior officials. Although the Eisenhower administration was slow to recognize the political importance of operations in space, it eventually realized that space operations would be a battleground in the Cold War. Eisenhower selected the president of the Case Institute of  Technology, T. Keith Glennan, to be the first administrator of NASA. Hugh Dryden, the director of NACA, became the deputy administrator. It was a good team to get things started:

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Glennan represented the new, and Dryden was a symbol of continuity. They initiated a number of plans and programs that came to fruition in the coming years. Let me return to the last two months of 1960. Shortly after the November election, president-elect Kennedy asked his scientific adviser, Jerome Wiesner, the dean of engineering at MIT, to lead an advisory group for the space program. Kennedy asked James E. Webb to become the second administrator of NASA. Webb was a consummate Washington insider who had served as the director of the Bureau of the Budget (now the Office of Management and Budget) from 1946 to 1949, and then as under secretary of state from 1949 to 1953. Webb was a man of experience and energy, and I believe he was a perfect choice for the job. Gagarin’s orbital flight required a US response, and Kennedy went to his advisers on this matter. Wiesner had been saying since January that putting people in space (NASA’s Project Mercury) was both difficult and dangerous. He maintained that the Kennedy administration would be blamed if anything went awry. Wiesner’s group recommended vigorous programs in space science and in military space programs that used unmanned spacecraft. The president also consulted Vice President Johnson and Jim Webb.The following are the questions from his letter to both of them: Memorandum for the Vice President and NASA administrator In accordance with our conversation, I would like for you as Chairman of the Space Council be in charge of making an overall survey of where we stand in space. 1. Do we have a chance of beating the Soviets by putting a laboratory in space, or by a trip around the moon, or by a rocket to land on the moon, or a rocket to go the moon and back with a man? Is there any other space program which promises dramatic results in which we could win? 2. How much additional would it cost? 3. Are we working 24 hours a day on existing programs? If not, why not? If not, will you make recommendations to me as to how work can be speeded up? 4. In building large boosters would we put emphasis on nuclear, chemical or liquid fuel, or a combination of these three? 5. Are we making a maximum effort? Are we achieving necessary results? I have asked Jim Webb, Dr. Wiesner, Secretary McNamara and other responsible officials to cooperate with you fully. I would appreciate a report on this at the earliest possible moment. John F. Kennedy

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The president’s motivation was to do something to overcome the Soviet lead in space. NASA would become an essential element in the Cold War. Vice President Johnson consulted his staff on the National Space Council, and the following is, in part, what they wrote on April 28, 1961: “The Russians have had more experience with large boosters and with flights of dogs and man. Hence they might be conceded a time advantage in circumnavigation of the moon and also in a manned trip to the moon. . . . There are a number of programs which the United States could pursue immediately which promise significant world-wide advantage over the Soviets. Among these are communications satellites, and navigation and mapping satellites.” This was precisely what one would expect from a group of knowledgeable staff people who did not want to stick their necks out very far. Fortunately, Jim Webb sent a copy of the president’s letter to Wernher von Braun, the director of the NASA–George Marshall Space Flight Center, and asked for his opinion.Von Braun was at the time, without a doubt, the leading expert in space operations. Here are von Braun’s specific answers to the questions raised by President Kennedy: We do not have a good chance of beating the Soviets to a manned laboratory in space. We have a sporting chance of beating the Soviets to a soft landing of a (robotic) payload on the moon. We have a sporting chance of sending a 3-man crew around the moon before the Soviets. We have an excellent chance of beating the Soviets to the first landing of a crew on the moon (including return capability, of course).

Von Braun’s reply was clear and strong: the only operation that would meet the criterion established by the president and send a clear signal that we were in the lead was a trip to the moon. A few weeks after these inquiries, Kennedy and his cabinet discussed the proposal to go to the moon. Most of the cabinet was opposed to the plan. The one person in the room who was thoroughly in favor of the president’s proposal was Theodore Sorensen, the president’s special assistant and also one of his speechwriters. Kennedy had asked Hugh Sidey, a prominent newspaperman, to attend the meeting. Here is what Sidey wrote in a column in Time magazine in November 1983 to mark the twentieth anniversary of President Kennedy’s assassination: Kennedy decided to go to the moon late on an April afternoon, a short while after the Soviets had humiliated us with their first man in space and just 48 hours before the disastrous Bay of Pigs began. He had asked me to listen to the debate among his science and budget advisers. It was not a happy discussion. His space men wanted to go, but his budget man, David Elliott Bell, cautioned about spend-

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ing $40 billion. Science adviser Jerome Wiesner was not certain we could beat the Soviets to the moon even in ten years. I can still see Kennedy’s profile as he put his feet on the edge of the Cabinet table and tilted back, brow deeply furrowed, fingers nervously tapping his bared teeth. His face was clouded through most of the discussion. But something stirred him toward the end. He concluded the meeting, re-entered the Oval Office and 15 minutes later sent word out: “We are going to the moon.” Kennedy had heard the poets. He was beyond politics and dollars.

And so the decision was made. On May 25, 1961, President Kennedy delivered a message before a joint session of Congress. Here is what he said: “First, I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth. No single space project in this period will be more impressive to mankind, or more important for the long-range exploration of space; and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish.” It took another eight years for the objective set by President Kennedy to be achieved.

Kennedy and Khrushchev Meet in Vienna, June 4, 1961 Nikita Khrushchev assumed office as the chairman of the Council of Ministers (prime minister) of the Soviet Union and first secretary of the Soviet Union’s Communist Party on March 27, 1958. Khrushchev had been first secretary since the death of Joseph Stalin in March 1953. But the post of chairman of the Council of Ministers, which Stalin also held, was separated from the party position when Stalin died. Georgi Malenkov and Nikolai Bulganin had each held the chairman’s position, which was effectively the head of the Soviet government, before Khrushchev assumed full power in 1958. Thus, Khrushchev was the first person to occupy the same position that Stalin had held from 1925 to 1953. After World War II, Khrushchev had been the senior Politburo official responsible for Ukraine. When Stalin died, he and several other high-level officials, including Malenkov and Bulganin, arranged for the murder of Lavrenty Beria, the feared leader of the Soviet secret police (KGB). They considered Beria a brutal monster who would destroy them. Khrushchev, upon becoming party secretary, concentrated on domestic affairs. Malenkov, as chairman of the Council of Ministers, arranged to stop the fighting in Korea in 1953. At the Twentieth Communist Party Congress, in February 1956, Khrushchev shocked the delegates by denouncing Stalin and accusing him of committing multiple crimes and establishing a dangerous “cult of personality.” He established within the party a reform movement that sought to eliminate the more brutal aspects of the system. When Khrushchev assumed full control, he initiated a more conciliatory policy toward the United States. To implement this policy, he announced a suspension of the Soviets’ program to test nuclear weapons in the atmosphere. There was concern over the harmful

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effects of radioactive fallout from these detonations, especially because of the Lucky Dragon incident. During the Castle test series in the Pacific, the Bravo shot exceeded its calculated yield (fifteen megatons instead of seven), and the exclusion area designated for ships turned out to be too small. In the Bravo shot, the first test of a weaponized hydrogen bomb, the “hydrogen” (in fact, a mixture of hydrogen, deuterium, and tritium) was bound to the element lithium. The designers of the bomb did not know that the addition of lithium would result in many more neutrons being produced than had been calculated. A Japanese fishing vessel, the Lucky Dragon, although outside the defined exclusion zone, received enough radiation from the fallout that one of the crew members died. This incident received worldwide publicity and created a favorable atmosphere for a moratorium on the testing of nuclear weapons. Khrushchev, recognizing that it could be advantageous for the Soviet Union to lead an effort to control nuclear weapons testing, took the initiative. President Eisenhower agreed, and negotiations were initiated. In August 1958, an agreement was reached that the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union would suspend the testing of nuclear weapons in the atmosphere, under the surface of the sea, and in outer space. It was also agreed to start negotiations on the Limited Test Ban Treaty (LTBT), which would confirm the provisions of the moratorium. Formal negotiations ran into difficulties when questions regarding the monitoring and verification of the LTBT were raised. In spite of this setback, the three nations refrained from testing. The moratorium came to be called the “gentlemen’s agreement,” and it was the first such restriction on nuclear weapons development. By September 1959, the relationship between the Soviet Union and the United States had improved to the point that Khrushchev visited the United States, the first Soviet leader to do so. Khrushchev’s gruff kind of charm made him a popular figure. He visited Disneyland and had a meeting with John Wayne, then the most popular American film star. There was also a formal dinner at the White House. The atmosphere between the two superpowers during the years of 1958 and 1959 became known as a period of thaw in the Cold War. The LTBT negotiations proceeded fitfully until a U-2 spy airplane piloted by Gary Powers was shot down while flying a reconnaissance mission over the Soviet Union in May 1960. At first, US spokesmen maintained that the U-2 was a NASAoperated weather observation aircraft that had accidentally strayed off course. But Powers had survived the crash, and to prevent any further embarrassment, President Eisenhower told the truth and apologized for not announcing it in the first place. That the United States was conducting reconnaissance missions over Soviet air space enraged Khrushchev and the Soviet public. A planned summit meeting between Khrushchev and Eisenhower for the summer of 1960 was canceled. The thaw ended. After the failed invasion of Cuba and Gagarin’s orbital flight, President Kennedy needed to accomplish something positive. He had an interest in meeting Khrushchev,

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and Khrushchev clearly wanted to have the opportunity to test the new, young leader. So a summit meeting between the two men was arranged for June 4, 1961. John Kennedy was both smart and charming, but he would be tested by someone who was shrewd, experienced, and very tough. Khrushchev decided on a strategy that would, he hoped, reverse Stalin’s defeat in failing to eject the Western allies from Berlin in 1948. Kennedy wanted to discuss a broad range of subjects, including the control of nuclear weapons, the situation in Southeast Asia, China, and some ideological topics. Khrushchev would have none of it. He focused completely on Berlin and Germany. He told Kennedy that he would make a separate peace treaty with East Germany before the end of 1961. Khrushchev also told the president that he would turn over control of access roads, railroads, canals, and air routes to the East Germans. He warned of what would happen if the United States intervened: “Force will be met by force. If the United States wants war, that is their problem. It is up to the United States to decide whether there will be war or peace.” Finally, Khrushchev told the president, “The decision to sign a peace treaty [with East Germany] was firm and irrevocable. The Soviet Union will sign the treaty in December if the United States refuses to agree to changes in the status of Berlin.” Kennedy’s reply was simple: “Then, Mr. Chairman, there will be war. It will be a long, cold winter.” Kennedy refused to budge, and no agreement was reached. The failure of the Vienna summit meeting had immediate consequences. There was a mass exodus of Germans from East Berlin, the portion of the city controlled by the Soviets, to West Berlin, which was now part of the Federal Republic of Germany, or West Germany, as it was more often called.There were no travel restrictions between East and West Berlin. Several million people living in East Germany went to East Berlin, got on a subway, crossed into West Berlin, and continued on trains or airplanes to West Germany. The Soviets had to do something to stop this flow of people. At first they installed checkpoints, which had little effect. So they began to build a wall in August 1961, which by the end of the year ran from one border of the city to the other. The Berlin Wall became a Cold War symbol of the difference between the East and the West. It would remain standing for twenty-eight years, until it was torn down by the East Germans in 1989. A second consequence of the failure of the Vienna summit was that Khrushchev broke the gentlemen’s agreement not to conduct nuclear detonations in the atmosphere. And Kennedy ordered the deployment of fifteen Jupiter intermediate-range ballistic missiles in Izmir, Turkey. These missiles had a range of 1,500 miles, so they could reach Moscow and other major Soviet population centers. The message was clear: if trouble came, then the United States would have a strong hand to play.

Saber Rattling with Nuclear Weapons On July 10, 1961, Nikita Khrushchev convened a secret meeting of the senior leaders of the Soviet Union’s nuclear weapons program. He announced, without any

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discussion, that the country would begin testing nuclear explosives in the atmosphere on September 1. He ordered the assembled group to start a crash program to develop a nuclear weapon with an explosive yield of one hundred megatons. He wanted it to be detonated at the end of the test series on October 13, which would coincide with the Twenty-Second Congress of the Soviet Communist Party. It was clear, therefore, that Khrushchev was interested in the propaganda value of the test series as much as in what might be learned from it about the technology of nuclear weapons. The development of the hundred-megaton bomb would be led by Andrei Sakharov, the distinguished Russian physicist who later became a Nobel Prize– winning dissident. Sakharov was the principal designer of the Soviets’ hydrogen bombs, so he was natural figure for the job. Sakharov assembled a team and initiated the development of a three-stage fission-fusion-fission hydrogen bomb. The group met at the “Soviet Livermore,” Arzamas-16, about two hundred miles east of Moscow, and tried to produce a workable design. After a few weeks, the hundredmegaton design was deemed too risky. The decision was made to reduce the design yield to fifty megatons, which would still be more than three times as large as Castle-Bravo, which, at fifteen megatons, was the largest detonation performed by the United States. Confident that this design would work, Sakharov’s team began constructing what came to be called Big Ivan. Colloquially, the bomb was also called the “Tsar Bomba” because of the Russian practice of naming the largest object in any field, especially one made for show, after the tsar. (For example, the Tsar Kolokal and the Tsar Puska were the largest bell and the largest cannon that the Russians produced. Both are on exhibit in the Kremlin Museum.) The Soviet test series commenced on September 1 with a small-kiloton-yield range detonation at the test facility on the island of Novaya Zemlya in the Russian Arctic. Khrushchev made a public announcement that the Soviets would conduct a new series of atmospheric tests simultaneously with the initiation of the test program. Furthermore, Sakharov reports in his memoirs that during a review of the Big Ivan project, Khrushchev mentioned that he had told a visiting American (probably presidential adviser John J. McCloy) about the hundred-megaton superbomb, confirming the political rather than the technical or military nature of the project. Ordinarily, the Soviets made no announcements about any weapon tests or rocket launches before their execution.That way, if there were a failure, they would not have to explain it. Sakharov and his associates were therefore under extreme pressure to produce results, because failure would be a huge embarrassment. On October 30, a Soviet Tupolev-95 Bear aircraft carrying the 27-ton Big Ivan took off from its base in northern Russia and flew north.The aircraft had been modified to carry Big Ivan, which was 26 feet long and 6.5 feet in diameter. The bomb bay could not accommodate Big Ivan, so a hole was cut in the fuselage, partly exposing the bomb. The aircraft could fly with the bomb to an altitude of about 35,000 feet.

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Big Ivan was equipped with a parachute to slow the descent of the device before detonation, allowing the aircraft to fly to a safe distance. At 11:32 a.m. (Moscow time), Big Ivan detonated at an altitude of about 13,000 feet.The aircraft was about thirty miles away at the time of detonation. The bomb was detonated at the Mityushikha Bay test range on Novaya Zemlya. Eyewitnesses on the ground within a few hundred miles of the event or on observation aircraft all testified that the detonation was an awesome sight. A huge fireball reached all the way to the ground, creating a blast overpressure of three hundred pounds per square inch on the ground, six times as large as what was observed at Hiroshima. The bright flash of the explosion was visible to observers in Murmansk on the Kola Peninsula, more than 600 miles away. The fireball rose slowly, and the top reached an altitude of about 210,000 feet (almost 40 miles).The detonation created seismic waves in spite of the altitude at which it was detonated. The US Geological Survey reported a small (magnitude five) earthquake in the region of Novaya Zemlya. Finally, the shock wave created in the atmosphere was detected all over the world. It was a truly extraordinary event, which was precisely what Khrushchev had intended. What exactly was the explosive yield delivered by Big Ivan? Sakharov’s design group calculated it to be fifty megatons. Did they achieve their objective? When Khrushchev announced in September that the Soviets would resume testing nuclear weapons in the atmosphere, Herbert (Pete) Scoville, the deputy director of the CIA for science and technology, and Gerald Johnson, the assistant to the secretary of defense for atomic energy, moved rapidly. They organized a crash project, called Speedlight, that would deploy equipment as rapidly as possible to monitor the Soviet tests. Thus, by the time Big Ivan was detonated, the United States was able to collect accurate information that included measurements of light, pressure, and electromagnetic signals. These data were then analyzed by the Foreign Weapons Evaluation Panel, chaired by Hans Bethe of Cornell University. (Bethe won a Nobel Prize in Physics in 1967). According to their calculations, Big Ivan delivered an explosive yield of 57 megatons, or 14 percent higher than Sakharov’s goal. In fact, the difference between 50 and 57 was well within the accuracy of both calculation and measurement at the time. That Sakharov and his team were able to field Big Ivan in fourteen weeks was a genuine technological tour de force. It was generally agreed by military experts in the Soviet Union and in the United States that bombs such as Big Ivan had no practical military value. The destruction on the ground of an airburst such as the Hiroshima bomb (a yield of 12.5 kilotons, or 0.0125 megatons) or Big Ivan was a factor roughly equivalent to the cube root of the explosive yield. Thus, the destructive radius determined by the shock wave for Big Ivan was about 16.5 times as large as that of the Hiroshima bomb. (The calculation: 57,000,000 / 12,500 = 4,560; the cube root of 4,560 = 16.58.) The radius of complete destruction in Hiroshima was about 1.5 miles from

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ground zero, so Big Ivan’s radius of destruction was about 25 miles (total area of destruction, 1,963 square miles). The military judgment at the time was that no target would warrant such a radius. Both the United States and the Soviet Union fielded nuclear weapons with yields of six to ten megatons. These had destruction radii of the order of 10 miles, which was judged to be enough to destroy any citysized target. Because they were not as big as Big Ivan, they could fit into existing aircraft or missiles for delivery to the target. (I am making a point of describing these grisly calculations in order to illustrate a mind-set that was common at the time.) When the first Soviet nuclear bomb since 1958 was detonated in the atmosphere on September 1, 1961, many of us at Livermore were surprised.The Soviets had succeeded in keeping their plan secret, at least from those of us who did not have access to the necessary intelligence. We did not have a plan at the laboratory about how to respond. In September 1961, I had been P-Division leader for a little more than a year. In 1960, Harold Brown had succeeded Edward Teller as director, but Harold left early in 1961 when President Kennedy asked him to succeed Herbert York as director of defense research and engineering in the Pentagon. The new director of Livermore, John Stuart Foster Jr., had been on the job for a few months, although he was one of the original staff members at the laboratory. Johnny had been the first B-Division leader. He had the responsibility of designing efficient fission explosives, which were used as is or as the source of the radiation implosion for hydrogen bombs. Johnny’s family background was scientific. His father, John Stuart Foster Sr., was a physicist who had studied under Ernest Rutherford at McGill University. Rutherford spent the years 1898–1907 as a professor of physics at McGill. It was then that Rutherford began experimenting on the structure of the atom and the atomic nucleus. That work revolutionized physics and eventually led to the creation of nuclear weapons. John Sr. secured a faculty appointment at McGill and became the leading figure in Canadian physics. John Jr. was born in 1922, studied at McGill, and wanted to participate as a fighter pilot in World War II. His father thought otherwise. John Sr. knew of the research going on in radar technology, and he secured a position for his son in one of the laboratories working in that area. Johnny’s efforts were successful. He eventually flew on a number of bombing missions in the Mediterranean theatre as a civilian, in order to make sure that airborne radar would work under combat conditions. This took courage, a quality with which he was generously endowed. Johnny’s father was a friend of Ernest Lawrence, and Johnny went to Berkeley to work with Lawrence and earn his PhD at the University of California. He then went to work at the Radiation Laboratory, and eventually at the Livermore branch late in 1952. When I arrived at Livermore in 1956, I did not know anything about Johnny. I quickly learned how important he was in the organization of the laboratory. Right after the Big Ivan shot, he called a meeting of the lab’s senior leadership. Johnny

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told us that the United States would conduct a nuclear weapons test series to respond to the one the Soviets had just finished. He anticipated that we would be asked to develop it. Johnny told us that everyone in the laboratory would have to contribute and that we need not worry about organizational lines while making it happen. Finally, he told us that unlike the Soviet test series, ours would give priority to the scientific and technical value of the shot. P-Division would contribute by helping put together the diagnostic equipment for various tests. In addition, we would determine the neutron albedos (that is, the neutron-scattering properties) of the soil types at the Nevada Test Site. This was important for accurate analysis of the neutron measurements made for tower shots performed a few hundred feet above the ground. Johnny told us that our operation would be an important element in this phase of the Cold War and that he expected the best possible work from everybody. He was a natural leader, very good at stimulating enthusiastic responses. I always enjoyed working for him and with him. A few days after this meeting, Gerald Johnson, the assistant to the secretary of defense for nuclear weapons, and Maj. Gen. Austin W. Betts, the director of the Military Office at the Atomic Energy Commission, arrived at Livermore. Gerry had gone to Washington from the Livermore Laboratory to assume his current post. He had been the first L-Division leader at the laboratory and had done much to organize the Livermore operations at the Nevada test site. He had been promoted to associate director at about the same time that Harold Brown and Johnny Foster attained that rank. I did not attend any of the planning meetings, but Gerry, a good friend, told me that we were planning a nuclear weapons test series that would start in about four months—he estimated March 1962—and reiterated Johnny’s position that the test had to have technical and scientific value. I was not directly involved in any of the tests being planned. The prospective test series was given the code name Dominic. My job was to facilitate our people’s work and to coordinate with the L-Division leader, Jim Carothers, to see to it that the right people were in place. Fred Seward headed the L-Division group that would perform diagnostic measurements of the high-altitude shots being planned for Operation Dominic. Because of my earlier association with the Argus shots, I was particularly interested in the Starfish shot, which was scheduled to be detonated at an altitude of 250 miles. The Dominic test series was began on April 25, 1962.There was some hesitation on the part of President Kennedy because he still hoped to revive the negotiations on the Limited Test Ban Treaty. But he nonetheless gave the word to go ahead. The Starfish shot was detonated on July 9. The device had a total yield of about 1.4 megatons, and it was lifted to an altitude of 250 miles by a Thor missile.The launch point was Johnston Atoll, a small island about 800 miles southwest of Kauai in the Hawaiian Islands. The most important data were the first direct measurements of the X-ray output of the device. These measurements were performed by sounding rockets launched from the missile range at Barking Sands on the west coast of

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Chapter 3 Figure 3.4. Photograph of the Starfish shot taken by a KC-135 observation aircraft near Johnston Atoll. The charged particles, visible as the striations, are distributed along the lines of Earth’s magnetic field. The particles stayed in orbit around the planet for weeks. Photo courtesy of Los Alamos National Laboratory.

Kauai. Since most of the energy of a nuclear detonation is emitted in the form of X-rays with a quantum energy in the kilovolt range, it was important to measure both the total yield and the approximate energy spectrum. The X-ray detectors were mounted on sounding rockets using Nike solid-fuel first stages, which had originally been intended as antiaircraft weapons.The upper stages for our tests were designated Nike-Hercules, Nike-Ajax, or other combinations of stages in use at the time. The results of the Starfish shot were spectacular. Because the atmospheric pressure at the altitude of the detonation was not large enough to create the usual fireball, the high-energy charged particles distributed themselves along the lines of the Earth’s magnetic field. These created spectacular auroral effects that could be seen from many places in the Pacific Ocean. In Honolulu, the effects were particularly noteworthy. The Starfish event was clearly visible above the horizon at 10:00 p.m., local time. In the darkness, the whole sky was brilliantly lit by the detonation. In Honolulu, the strong electromagnetic pulse created by the explosion knocked out more than three hundred streetlights and a number of communications systems. Seven satellites in low-Earth orbits were disabled by the radiation effects.This confirmed the results obtained in 1958 by the Argus experiment. Thirty-seven nuclear shots were conducted at locations throughout the Pacific during Operation Dominic. The final one, on November 4, 1962, at Johnston Atoll, was a low-yield shot code-named Tightrope, detonated at an altitude of thirteen miles.

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The Cuban Missile Crisis The failure of Nikita Khrushchev’s effort to change President Kennedy’s position on Berlin during their meeting in June 1961 led him to start thinking about the next step. By April 1962, Khrushchev and his associates had developed Operation Anadyr. The plan called for the deployment in Cuba of Soviet missiles and aircraft capable of carrying nuclear weapons. These would be intermediate-range ballistic missiles (IRBMs), which, by this time, the Soviets had in significant numbers. These weapons had a range of about 1,500 miles, so they could put most of the population centers in the eastern portion of the United States at risk.The missiles would be the medium-range (1,000-mile) SS-3s and SS-4s and the intermediate-range (2,400mile) SS-5s. The aircraft would be Ilyushin Il-28 intermediate-range twin-engine bombers. The Anadyr plan would be developed in strictest secrecy. Intelligence sources alerted Kennedy to the potential deployment of Soviet nuclear-armed missiles and aircraft in Cuba. He ordered the deployment of U-2 reconnaissance aircraft over Cuba in April 1962. The U-2s confirmed the deployment of Soviet SA-2 antiaircraft missiles in August. These were not offensive weapons, but their presence indicated that something was afoot. In September and October, U-2s discovered that the Soviets were building two SS-4 launch sites in San Cristobal and Sagua la Grande, and an SS-5 launch complex in Guanajay. The Soviets embarked on a disinformation campaign. In May, Khrushchev had assured Kennedy that the “Soviet Union has no bases in Cuba and has no intention of establishing any.” In September, the Soviet news agency, TASS, headlined a story stating that there “are no Soviet missile deployments outside the Soviet Union.” The propaganda was to reassure people so that they would not worry about the confrontation that was certain to occur. Khrushchev, of course, knew that U-2 spy planes were flying missions over Cuba, but did not know how good the surveillance cameras were, nor did he think that Kennedy was ready to tell the world what the Soviets were doing. At a meeting on October 18 with Soviet foreign minister Andrei Gromyko, the president was once again assured that there were no Soviet offensive weapons in Cuba. But by that time, Kennedy realized that he had a major crisis on his hands, one much more dangerous than the Berlin blockade. Kennedy understood that he was about to be severely tested. He established an executive committee of the National Security Council to deal with the coming crisis.The members included senior cabinet officials connected with national security matters; McGeorge Bundy, the national security advisor; and Bundy’s deputy Walt Rostow. Kennedy’s brother Robert, the attorney general, was also a member, even though his position did not directly have a national security function. The president relied on his brother, and Robert Kennedy would play an important role in defusing the crisis. The photographs of the SS-5 sites were made available to the executive committee on October 16, 1962. The committee developed three options for dealing

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with the crisis: launch a series of air attacks to destroy the construction sites, impose a naval blockade to prevent the further delivery of missiles, or invade Cuba and overthrow the Castro regime. The first option was rejected because of the likelihood of collateral damage. The third was deemed to be risky and would involve US casualties, which might be politically unacceptable. Castro had secured some popular support in the four years he had been in power. Thus, President Kennedy chose to impose a naval blockade. Perhaps because of his service in the navy, he realized that the one area in which the United States had an overwhelming superiority was at sea.The executive committee endorsed President Kennedy’s choice, and he went on television that evening to deliver a very tough speech in which he issued the following warning: “It shall be the policy of this nation to regard any nuclear missile launched from Cuba against any nation in the Western Hemisphere as an attack on the United States, requiring a full retaliatory response upon the Soviet Union.” He then went on to explain how the United States would deal with the missiles that were still being sent to Cuba: “To halt this offensive buildup, a strict quarantine on all offensive military equipment under shipment to Cuba is being initiated. All ships of any kind bound for Cuba from whatever nation or port will, if found to contain cargoes of offensive weapons, be turned back. This quarantine will be extended, if needed, to other types of cargo and carriers. We are not at this time, however, denying the necessities of life as the Soviets attempted to do in their Berlin blockade of 1948.” The president used the term “quarantine” rather than “blockade” because under international law, a blockade is an act of war. Finally, the president stated the ultimate objective of the actions he was proposing: “All missile sites must be dismantled. Missiles must be removed from Cuba or destroyed.” During the speech, President Kennedy showed photographs that had been obtained by the U-2 reconnaissance flights. It was an impressive performance. The Cuban missile crisis coincided with the conclusion of Operation Dominic, so those of us at Livermore were preoccupied with the completion of the test series. Some people at the laboratory probably had the appropriate clearances to know what was happening, but I was not one of them. President Kennedy’s speech about missiles in Cuba thus came as a surprise. I had seen U-2 pictures of Soviet weapons tests and weapons deployments, so I found the president’s speech compelling. And my initial reaction was fear. For the first time since being on the run from Europe with my family in 1939, I was once again afraid that things might go very wrong. The US Navy’s Second Fleet, based at Norfolk,Virginia, was ordered to prepare to enforce the quarantine, starting on October 24. A number of other mobilization actions occurred at about the same time. The Pentagon ordered a change in the defense condition (DEFCON) from 4 to 3. The DEFCON was used to indicate the state of readiness of the US military to fight a war. At DEFCON 4, the military maintains a normal training schedule at bases around the world; DEFCON 3 is

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the first state of readiness for dealing with a crisis. In this case, some army divisions were alerted to be ready to move at a moment’s notice. In addition, medium-range B-47 bombers were deployed to southern bases, and the B-52 heavy bombers were told to prepare for airborne alert.There was no immediate response from the Soviets to the president’s speech. In his memoirs, the Soviet ambassador to the United States, Anatoly Dobrynin, notes that the Soviets had not anticipated Kennedy’s move and were “in a state of bewilderment.” Two naval task forces were organized. Task force 135 consisted of the new nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS Enterprise and the conventional USS Independence. The carriers were accompanied by fifteen destroyers. Task Force 136 was constituted around the conventional aircraft carrier USS Essex, with two cruisers, the USS Newport News and the USS Canberra. This task force was accompanied by nineteen destroyers. The ships were rapidly deployed along the quarantine line that President Kennedy had defined in his orders to the navy. Eighteen Soviet cargo ships accompanied by four diesel-powered Foxtrot submarines were on their way to Cuba. On October 24 and 25, US Navy ships began to stop cargo ships on the high seas. The destroyer USS Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. (named for the president’s deceased older brother), stopped the SS Marcula and sent a boarding party to inspect the ship. The Marcula flew the Panamanian flag but was under Soviet charter. No weapons were found aboard the ship. The destroyer USS Larve ordered the Soviet cargo ship SS Grozny to stop. The Grozny’s captain refused to stop, so the Larve sent a shot across its bow. The Grozny reversed course and left the scene. The US destroyers escorting the task forces forced all four Soviet submarines to surface. Late on October 25, all the Soviet cargo ships stopped short of the quarantine line. This Soviet action prompted US secretary of state Dean Rusk to say, “We were eyeball to eyeball, and I think that the other fellow just blinked.” There was still no word from the Soviet leadership, and US reconnaissance flights showed that the Soviet weapons deployed in Cuba were not being removed. Kennedy declared DEFCON 2 and ordered the Strategic Air Command’s B-52 bombers to go on airborne alert. On October 26, President Kennedy received a conciliatory telegram from Khrushchev. He wrote: “I see, Mr. President, that you too are not devoid of a sense of anxiety for the state of the world. . . . We must not succumb to intoxication and petty passions.” He went on to say that he had participated in two world wars, that war caused “death and destruction that he could not easily contemplate,” and that only “lunatics and suicides” would initiate “offensive war.” The telegram was long and rambling, but in the end Khrushchev offered a deal. The Soviets would remove the missiles from Cuba if the US would remove its missiles from Turkey. He also wanted a guarantee that US forces would not invade Cuba. The president was inclined to accept Khrushchev’s proposal, but with one condition: the removal of the fifteen Jupiter missiles from Turkey could not be made public. The president asked his brother to speak to Soviet ambassador

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Dobrynin and make it clear that if this condition were not met, then the United States would have to take further actions. Kennedy had no problem removing the missiles from Turkey, because they were already obsolete. But he did not want the public to believe that in addition to the no-invasion guarantee, the United States would have to “weaken” its military position in Europe. Dobrynin promptly reported the conversation with Robert Kennedy to Moscow. October 27 was the most critical day of the crisis. First, a U-2 aircraft was shot down over Cuba by a Soviet surface-to-air missile. Second, the executive committee voted not to accept Khrushchev’s conditions for the resolution of the crisis. None of the members knew about Robert Kennedy’s meeting with Dobrynin, so they felt that Khrushchev was demanding two moves from the United States, the no-invasion guarantee and the removal of the missiles from Turkey, for one by the Soviets, the removal of the missiles from Cuba. The military members of the committee urged that planning for military moves against Soviet positions in Cuba be initiated immediately. Finally, on October 27 another letter from Khrushchev arrived, and this one was much more bellicose than the first—even insulting. It reiterated the conditions stated in the letter sent the day before. President Kennedy—very wisely, I believe—ignored the second letter and asked the executive committee to answer the first one. October 28 was a Sunday, and Khrushchev and the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet met in the morning at Khrushchev’s dacha outside Moscow. Fortunately, Dobrynin’s report arrived during the meeting, and it was immediately translated. Khrushchev was not happy with the message, but his colleagues argued in favor of it. At the time, the United States had a substantial lead over the Soviets in ballistic missiles and the infrastructure required to use them. So Khrushchev and his colleagues communicated the acceptance of Kennedy’s condition that the removal of missiles from Turkey not be mentioned as part of the deal. They were not ready to go to war with the United States over this issue. There were still dangerous moments ahead. Between November 4 and November 11, Soviet ships carried the forty-five Soviet missiles deployed in Cuba back to the Soviet Union. The agreement called for “inspection” of the cargo ships by US warships. The ships would not be stopped, but they would slow down, take the protective tarpaulins off the missiles, and permit the Americans to ensure that the missiles were on board. The captain of the SS Vogoles refused to slow down to permit the USS Perry to inspect the missiles. The Perry’s captain prepared to send a shot across the bow of the Vogoles to force it to slow down. Before taking the action, he contacted the Second Fleet command, and the message was passed on to Washington. The Soviet leadership was quickly informed of the incident, and orders were passed to the captain of the Vogoles to comply. So the Cuban missile crisis was finally resolved. The Vogoles incident prompted President Kennedy to remark that in such a crisis, “there is always some son of a bitch who does not get the word.”

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The resolution of the Cuban missile crisis itself was essentially a standoff. Khrushchev got what he wanted: removal of US missiles from Turkey. Since he did not have to be concerned about public opinion in the Soviet Union, he was not upset that he could not announce that Kennedy had agreed to pull out the missiles. On the other hand, Kennedy could argue that the guarantee not to invade Cuba was a cheap price to pay for the removal of the Soviet missiles; given the failure of the Bay of Pigs, invasion was really not an option. The Cuban missile crisis was undoubtedly the most dangerous US-Soviet confrontation during the Cold War. It was the first time that the US military was placed on DEFCON 2 during the Cold War.The leaders of both nations were made aware of the importance of rapid and accurate communications during periods of crisis. A hotline was eventually established between the Kremlin and the White House, which eliminated some of the communication difficulties encountered during the crisis. From my perspective of more than six decades, there is no doubt that President Kennedy came out the winner. Though not personally involved in this event, all of us at the Livermore Laboratory regarded ourselves as active participants in the Cold War. I was very proud of the way our nation’s leader handled this most dangerous situation and defused the crisis.

4 The University of California, the Middle Eastern Wars, and the War in Vietnam

Given Bun’s and my improved circumstances, I felt confident enough to make an important financial investment: buying our first house. We decided to give up our rental house in Livermore, because in the longer term I felt that I would eventually become a full-time member of the Berkeley faculty. In addition, both Bun and I felt that the children would receive a much better education in the primary and secondary schools in Berkeley than in Livermore. (As things turned out, this was not the case.) The other difficulty was that I would have to drive the forty miles Figure 4.1. Rufus J. Mark, seven, and Jane H. Mark, ten, holding her cat “Blackie,” in the garden of our home on Avenida Drive, 1965. Blackie, a very clever cat, lived until 1980.

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from Berkeley to Livermore several times a week. Since I had already done this in 1955–58, I knew that the trip would not be a major problem. So we purchased a very nice, roomy house near the top of the range of hills immediately east of Berkeley. It was a comfortable one-and-a-half story split-level white stucco house at 90 Avenida Drive. Its closeness to the ridge road, Grizzly Peak Boulevard, one block away, made the commute to Livermore especially easy. We lived there until 1969. Our years in Berkeley were happy ones for the children. They had many friends and participated in many activities, which Bun encouraged; she was a leader in the Camp Fire Girls and saw to it that Rufus joined the local baseball league. In addition, she paid much attention to their education.

The Evolution of P-Division and the Development of High-Temperature Air-Cooled Nuclear Reactors The Livermore Laboratory was growing rapidly, and after the crash program to support Operation Dominic, Johnny Foster reorganized the laboratory. The division structure was maintained, but the number of divisions that had proliferated was reduced, and those that remained were grouped into departments headed by an associate director. One of these consolidations directly affected me. From the beginning, the laboratory had maintained a group to perform criticality measurements of nuclear systems, tests important for the design of nuclear-fission explosives and nuclear reactors. This group evolved into the Neutronics Division (N-Division), whose principal facility was a one-megawatt research reactor called the Livermore Pool Type Reactor, or LPTR. Since P-Division and N-Division shared many of the same support groups (electronic and mechanical engineering, for example), merging the two divisions into a single unit was an obvious move. The new division was designated the Experimental Physics Division (E-Division), and I was named its leader sometime in late 1962. A further expansion of E-Division occurred in early 1963 when we acquired two new particle accelerators. They were added to the existing ninety-inch cyclotron, which had been built in 1952, when the Livermore Laboratory was established. One of the new accelerators was a symmetrical cascade rectifier, of the type first developed in 1930 by John Cockroft and Ernest Walton. It could produce intense proton or deuteron beams with particle currents of about 250 milliamperes at a particle energy of about 500 kilo-electron-volts (keV). This machine produced the intense neutron beams used to calibrate particle detectors for the Nevada Test Site. The second machine was a linear electron accelerator capable of producing electron beams with a particle energy of about 100 million electron volts (MeV) and beam currents on the order of 10 milliamperes. This machine was used primarily for the radiography of components of nuclear weapons. E-Division was now about twice as large as the one I had taken over in 1960.

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The 1950s and much of the 1960s witnessed a major growth of new technologies. Many of these were related to national security because of the Cold War. But many national security activities had nonmilitary applications as well. The development of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) spawned the technology that led to Earth-orbital flights, the exploration of space, the trip to the moon, and NASA. The creation of large jet-propelled bomber aircraft such as the Boeing B-47 and B-52 triggered the development of the jet transports that dominate civil aviation today. The use of nuclear reactors on submarines gave rise to the nuclear power industry, which now has about 440 working reactors around the world. These provide about 16 percent of the world’s electric power. Finally, there is radar, which provided the fundamental technology used for television and other microwave communication systems. The harnessing of nuclear power drove a major project at Livermore and E-Division—the effort to develop rocket and ramjet engines fueled by nuclear energy. The advantage of nuclear fuels was the same as it was for submarines. Because of the much higher energy density provided by nuclear fuels compared with conventional ones, there was some logic supporting the initiation of this program, but there were formidable difficulties to be overcome. The basic idea was simple. A nuclear reactor would be used to heat a suitable working fluid to a high temperature, which would then be ejected through a properly designed nozzle. The reactor was a large cylinder with a number of holes drilled axially through it for the working fluid, which constituted the core of the reactor. The cylinder was made of a high-temperature-resistant ceramic containing a large fraction of beryllium to ensure that it was lightweight. Enriched uranium was distributed throughout the reactor core to produce a critical assembly.The reactor was controlled externally by an array of beryllium reflectors. The application of such nuclear reactors to rockets required hydrogen or helium as a working fluid in order to maximize the specific impulse that the rocket would deliver. In the case of the ramjet, the working fluid was air because the ramjet would power an “air-breathing” vehicle. The principal leader of this program was Harold B. Finger, who established an organization similar to Admiral Rickover’s from 1949. Finger was the head of both organizations responsible for nuclear-powered rockets—one at the Atomic Energy Commission and one at NASA. His office also managed the air-breathing propulsion program, but in this case the connection was not as close, because any application of this technology was deemed to lie further in the future than the nuclear rocket. Two programs were initiated: Rover would be responsible for nuclear rockets, and Pluto would handle the air-breathing portion of the program. The nuclear reactor portions of the programs were assigned to Los Alamos for the rocket and to Livermore for the ramjet. That assignment caused some major organizational changes at the laboratory. Theodore H. Merkle was the leader of the Reactor

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Design Division (R-Division). To accommodate the new mission, he was promoted to associate director for the Physics Department, and Harry Reynolds became the R-Division leader. In addition, the Theoretical Division (T-Division), headed by Sidney Fernbach, and E-Division would be moved to the Physics Department. This arrangement made sense; it was expected that developing Pluto would require the best talent in physics that the laboratory could muster. Thus, instead of reporting to the laboratory director (Fernbach), Reynolds and I would report to Merkle. Even though this was a downgrade for me in a bureaucratic sense, I was very satisfied. The substantial expansion of P-Division (and, later, E-Division) during my service more than made up for any rearrangement of the boxes on an organization chart. For the Pluto program, we built two reactors, Tory IIA and Tory IIC. Both were successfully operated at the Nevada Test Site, in 1961 and 1964. We designed and built an interesting storage system for the high-pressure air necessary to conduct these tests. Instead of constructing hugely expensive storage facilities, we used standard oil-well-drilling pipe, which is normally used to provide the casing that maintains the integrity of the hole in the ground. These pipes were made of very tough steel and were about ten inches in diameter. Twenty-five miles of pipe was laid out in an array in the desert and then connected in such a way that air could be pumped into the array up to a pressure of several thousand pounds per square inch. It was a rather bizarre-looking arrangement, but it worked. The Pluto project proved the concept that a large (five-hundred-megawatt) high-pressure-air-cooled nuclear reactor could work for several minutes. The time limit was determined by the air-storage capacity of the facility. The Rover and the Pluto programs typified the pervasive technological optimism of the 1950s and the 1960s. Neither nuclear rockets nor nuclear ramjets have ever been built. As far as I know, very little analytical work regarding the missions to be performed with nuclear rockets and ramjets was done. I remember a senior air force officer visiting Livermore and saying that “if nuclear power is good for submarines, it should be good for airplanes as well!” Such arguments would simply not be accepted today. What was my own attitude toward the Pluto project? My job as E-Division leader was to provide technical support to the people who were working on the Tory reactors. My boss, Ted Merkle, was a very good physicist and nuclear engineer, and meeting the technical challenge was important to him. In our discussions, we ruled out aircraft propulsion as an application because of the prohibitive weight of the shielding that would be required to protect the crew. Thus, an unmanned vehicle was proposed. Ted’s final position was that high-temperature gas-cooled reactors would be important for replacing the water-cooled and moderated reactors then coming online in American nuclear power stations. There was some truth to that idea, but I could not quite agree with his point. If high-temperature nuclear

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reactors were to be important for the generation of electric power, why not work on them directly? I liked and respected Ted, but we left our discussion there and agreed to disagree. I could not accept the very thin arguments used to justify spending hundreds of millions of dollars on the Pluto program. Was the effort to develop nuclear reactors for rocket and aircraft propulsion a failure? Writing now, fifty-three years later, I have to say yes. And there were other technical failures during the Cold War on our side. I console myself with the thought that the Soviets had many more than we did.

The Escalation of the US Role in the Vietnam War Fighting between the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) and the North Vietnamese began in October 1957. In May 1959, the North Vietnamese completed a supply road, the Ho Chi Minh Trail, just across the border with Laos. This road was used extensively to supply the Vietcong. Fighting between the ARVN and the Vietcong escalated in 1960, and some members of the US advisory group became involved in the fighting, contrary to President Eisenhower’s policy. The stage was now set for what I have called the “Second War in Vietnam,” which was the second hot war during the Cold War. As North Korea had been, North Vietnam was the surrogate of the Soviets. When President Kennedy was setting up his cabinet, he selected Robert S. McNamara, president of the Ford Motor Company, to serve as secretary of defense. McNamara had served in the US Army Air Force during World War II as an analyst and a logistics expert. He joined Ford after the war. By 1959, McNamara had risen to the presidency of the company. McNamara was young (forty-four— only a year older than the forty-three-year-old president), energetic, and extremely intelligent. He had an astonishing grasp of the details of his job and was comfortable with making decisions. Unfortunately, he was faced with problems that required wisdom more than skill, so his tenure in office became a personal tragedy. For his national defense staff in the White House, Kennedy chose two professors: McGeorge Bundy, forty-two years old, the dean of Harvard College, as his national security advisor, and Walt Rostow, forty-three years old, from MIT, as Bundy’s deputy. The new president met with Colonel Lansdale during an early review of the situation in Vietnam. He learned that the total strength of the Military Assistance Advisory Group was around 650 and that the ARVN had not been effective against the Vietcong. The latter had initiated a terror campaign against villages in the Mekong River delta. They would raid a village, kill the mayor and the village elders, and take over. Kennedy’s military advisers told him that the ARVN suffered from incompetence among its commanders. In addition, Diem had not been able to establish a popular government after five years in office, and there was extensive corruption among the civilian bureaucracy. Though not corrupt, Diem was puri-

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tanical, remote, and authoritarian. He urgently asked for more US assistance, and Kennedy authorized an expansion of the MAAG in May 1961. A small Special Forces combat unit was sent to help the ARVN deal with the Vietcong. Kennedy felt that a firm decision of some kind had to be made about what to do in Vietnam. He asked army general Maxwell D.Taylor, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Walt Rostow to lead a high-level delegation to Vietnam and then make recommendations about a policy and a course of action. In November 1961, Rostow proposed that twenty thousand American combat troops be sent to Vietnam to shore up the ARVN. McGeorge Bundy agreed, but General Taylor recommended a force of six thousand to eight thousand. Kennedy had to make a fundamental decision about Vietnam. He concluded that the United States could not give up South Vietnam. On February 8, 1962, the MAAG was replaced by the US Military Assistance Command in Vietnam (MACV). A four-star army officer, Gen. Paul D. Harkins, was named to command the MACV. The president’s decision was clear.There would be a massive escalation of the US presence in Vietnam in order to help the South Vietnamese government survive. I have gone into some detail to recount the events that led to President Kennedy’s decision, because I believe that February 1962 was the last opportunity to adopt a different policy in Vietnam. Were other options available to the president? Was John Foster Dulles correct about the domino theory? In Indonesia, by far the largest nation in Southeast Asia, Pres. Ahmed Sukarno was facing strong domestic pressure from local communists (encouraged by Moscow) to allow them to expand their influence. In 1967, when Sukarno was replaced as president, would his successor, General Suharto, have been able to suppress the massive communist coup attempt that followed without our presence in Vietnam? Ngo Dinh Diem was our man; President Eisenhower had approved of him assuming the presidency of South Vietnam. Could some way have been found to replace Diem with someone more competent? No one can answer these questions with certainty. My judgment is that Kennedy probably made the right strategic decision—and I emphasize the word strategic. By early 1962, Khrushchev had shown that he was an aggressive leader of the Soviet Union and that he strongly encouraged local communist organizations to take over the governments of former European colonies. Thus, the domino theory had, in my opinion, gained credibility, and I believe that President Kennedy acted accordingly. From a purely tactical viewpoint, a withdrawal from South Vietnam at that time would have been relatively painless, because we did not have many people there. In addition, there were no vital resources in Vietnam on which our economy depended, as is the case today in, say, the Middle East or Nigeria. In short, we had no overriding, purely national security reason for staying in Vietnam. Nevertheless, I thought that President Kennedy made the right strategic decision, and I supported him.

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The Atmospheric Test Ban Treaty of 1963 and the Consequences for the Livermore Laboratory When John Kennedy assumed the presidency, one of the items that he placed before Premier Khrushchev for discussion in 1961 was a formal treaty to limit the testing of nuclear explosives. The Soviets rejected the proposal because they were already planning to resume their testing of nuclear weapons in September 1961. The United States followed suit in April 1962, and these decisions strengthened the conviction among many in the scientific community that some limit should be placed on this testing. The strongest advocate of a test ban treaty was Linus Pauling of the California Institute of  Technology. He had been awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1954 for his work explaining the working of chemical bonds. Impressed by Pauling’s arguments, Kennedy repeated his proposal for a test ban treaty after the completion of Operation Dominic in November 1962. This time, Soviet leaders were prepared to listen, in part because their own scientific community advocated limitations, too. The Lucky Dragon incident and the large number of shots conducted in the atmosphere by both sides during 1961 and 1962 tipped the scales. The United States, the USSR, and the United Kingdom signed the Limited Test Ban Treaty (LTBT) in the Kremlin on August 5, 1963. The treaty prohibited the detonation of any and all nuclear explosives in the atmosphere, underwater, or in outer space. Underground detonations, with no limits on explosive yields, were permitted. Underground detonations had to be conducted so that any radiation emitted by the test would be confined to the territory of the nation conducting the test.This treaty was the first of a series of formal treaties limiting the testing and the development of nuclear devices. Fortunately, the Livermore Laboratory’s management, specifically Edward Teller and Harold Brown, had anticipated the provisions of the treaty. Livermore people had conducted the first underground nuclear detonation, the five-kiloton Rainier shot in Operation Plumbbob on September 14, 1957.Thus, we were the first to become experts at testing and performing good diagnostics with underground detonations. Linus Pauling was awarded a second Nobel Prize in 1962, this time the Peace Prize, for his advocacy of the Limited Test Ban Treaty. I should add a personal note here about Pauling. Early in his life, he spent some years in Europe, and in the mid-1920s he worked in my father’s laboratory in Berlin while learning the techniques of X-ray diffraction. My father and Pauling became close friends, and once or twice he visited our apartment in Vienna. I have no particular memory of Pauling from that time, but my father told me that I behaved myself. Later, when I was an undergraduate at the University of California, Pauling invited me to spend Thanksgiving at his home in Pasadena. In those days (1947), air travel was not what it is now, so I could not go home to New York. I have some very fond memories of staying with the Paulings for a few days and getting to know the family. Pauling and I eventually found ourselves on opposite sides in the debate concerning nu-

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clear weapons. Over the years, we participated in several public meetings on the subject. In spite of our differences, our relationship was always cordial and friendly. During the debate in the Senate over the ratification of the Limited Test Ban Treaty, Sen. Henry M. Jackson (D-WA) attached an important amendment to the measure that approved the treaty. This provision required that nuclear weapons laboratories maintain the “readiness” to perform nuclear detonations in the atmosphere if it was deemed necessary. I have already mentioned Livermore’s contribution to the development of X-ray detectors for measuring the X-ray output of nuclear detonations. In 1962, Ricardo Giacconi and his collaborators at MIT had discovered that certain stars are very intense sources of X-rays. With some modifications, we could adapt our equipment to observe such X-ray stars and perhaps make a scientific contribution. Senator Jackson’s amendment required the laboratory to deploy its diagnostic equipment twice a year in order to stay ready to perform nuclear weapons tests rapidly. Thus, quite by accident, we began a campaign to discover new stellar X-ray sources and to measure their spectra and their intensities. We achieved some interesting firsts, which was very satisfying. We were the first to detect X-rays from the Magellanic Clouds and the first to make simultaneous measurements of the X-ray and visible-light output of the intense X-ray star in the constellation Scorpio. We developed proportional counters that could measure the X-ray spectra of weaker X-ray stars in order to determine the type of star emitting the X-rays. We were competing with the real pioneers in the field, Giacconi’s group at MIT and the one headed by Herbert Friedman at the Naval Research Laboratory. Giacconi eventually received a Nobel Prize (2002) for his work on X-ray astronomy, and Friedman was awarded a National Medal of Science. We were essentially amateurs at Livermore, but we were pleased to be small players in this distinguished company. It was very satisfying for the members of our group, which included Charles Swift, Gerald Chodil, Richard Rodriguez, Fred Seward, and Richard Price. Charlie Swift was the de facto leader, and my job was to do the politics. There were moments during the Cold War when science was performed as a result of Cold War conditions. Probably the best example of this was the first detection of the neutrino by Fred Reines and Clyde Cowan of the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory. At first, they tried to use a nuclear detonation to produce the neutrinos, but that approach did not work. They were successful with the high-flux reactor at the Savannah River Plant of the Atomic Energy Commission. Reines was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in both their names in 1995. (Cowan died in 1974.)

The Assassinations of Presidents Diem and Kennedy In the spring of 1963, a serious religious conflict erupted in Vietnam. On May 8, Diem’s older brother, Ngo Dinh Thuc, celebrated the fifth anniversary of his consecration as the archbishop of Hue. May 8 was also the 2,578th anniversary

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of Buddha’s birth, and the Buddhist monks in Hue staged a large demonstration. President Diem interpreted this as an insult to his brother. He ordered the police in Hue to forbid the demonstration and the flying of traditional flags. This act infuriated the large Buddhist majority (more than 80 percent) in Vietnam. The demonstrations in Hue, serious enough in themselves, triggered others by Buddhist clerics around the country. The crisis came to a head on June 11, 1963. On that day, a senior Buddhist monk, Thich Quang Duc, stepped out of a car on a busy street in Saigon, sat down on the street in the lotus position, had one of his acolytes pour a five-gallon can of gasoline over him, and then had the young man set him on fire.This self-immolation, an extreme act of protest, caused an international uproar. In short order, Buddhist clerics burned themselves to death in several South Vietnamese cities.The Vietnamese military leaders complained that because 80 percent of their troops were Buddhists, they would not fight if their religious leaders continued such protests. President Kennedy realized that he had a crisis on his hands. He asked for the resignation of the US ambassador to South Vietnam, Frederick Nolting, and named Henry Cabot Lodge to succeed him. Lodge was the scion of a distinguished political family, his father having served in the US Senate for many years, as did the son. The younger Lodge had also served as the US representative to the United Nations in the Eisenhower administration, and he had been Richard Nixon’s running mate in the 1960 presidential election. Most importantly, Lodge was a highly respected Republican, and the president wanted badly to develop a bipartisan policy toward Vietnam. Kennedy’s instructions to the new ambassador were clear and simple. President Diem had to act as commander in chief and order his generals to fight the Vietcong. If they refused, then Lodge could suggest that the generals be dismissed. Second, Lodge was to tell Diem that the rampant corruption in his government had to be stamped out. The new ambassador presented his credentials to Diem, but the Vietnamese president refused to meet with Lodge for serious discussions of these issues. Lodge informed Kennedy of Diem’s intransigence. In addition, he told the president that senior Vietnamese military leaders were plotting to overthrow the Diem regime. During several press interviews in September 1963, the president criticized the Diem regime. He bluntly said that the war could be won only if there were “changes in policy and perhaps with personnel,” and he explained why: “I do not think that the war can be won unless the people support the effort and, in my opinion, in the last two months [that is, since the appointment of Ambassador Lodge], the government has gotten out of touch with the people.” Privately, the president was much more explicit. In a cable sent to Lodge, he indicated that the United States should not block any spontaneous military revolt against Diem. The Vietnamese military leadership waited patiently and secretly for the right moment to stage a coup d’état. Ambassador Lodge was informed of their intentions, and he informed the White House about the plan. Nothing was said publicly,

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and no guidance was provided. On November 1, 1963, ARVN tanks rolled through the streets of Saigon and Vietnamese infantry occupied the president’s palace. President Diem and his brother Ngo Dinh Thuc were executed the next day by the order of the coup leaders.Three weeks later, President Kennedy was assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald. I was driving from Berkeley to Livermore when the news came over the radio that President Kennedy had been shot. More information began to come over the air, and by the time I arrived at the laboratory, the president was dead. My feelings went from outrage to depression. I thought of my earliest memory, of Engelbert Dollfuss’s funeral in Vienna in 1934. As a result of this crime, would the United States suffer consequences equally disastrous as those that overtook Austria? The two nations were very different, but I had a sinking feeling that somehow our future would nonetheless be worse than it should have been. From this point on, the situation in Vietnam deteriorated. By tolerating and collaborating in the murder of its chief of state, the United States became completely responsible for what happened in Vietnam in the future. Problematic as Diem was, he had a reputation as a patriot and a fighter against the French. Every government of Vietnam following Diem’s murder was headed by a corrupt and incompetent Vietnamese general. All these governments were in fact puppets of the United States. There have been many debates over what President Kennedy would have done about Vietnam had he lived. Speculation is futile.What I know with certainty is that the legacy that the Kennedy administration left in Vietnam was bleak. On November 23, 1963, there were 16,700 US Army “advisers” in Vietnam, and the country was being run by a corrupt military junta.

The Election of President Johnson in 1964 and the Continuing War in Vietnam Vice Pres. Lyndon B. Johnson was sworn in as president of the United States aboard Air Force One on November 23, 1963, by federal district judge Sarah T. Hughes immediately following President Kennedy’s assassination.When the plane arrived in Washington with President Kennedy’s coffin on board, President Johnson declared that he would maintain the policies of the Kennedy administration and asked all the members of the cabinet to stay on the job. This was clearly a call for continuity. As things turned out, the most important members of Kennedy’s cabinet, Dean Rusk in the State Department and Robert McNamara in Defense, stayed for the long term. McGeorge Bundy resigned as national security advisor, and his deputy, Walt Rostow, succeeded him. The new president continued providing military assistance to the South Vietnamese. Probably the most important personnel change made by the new president was to replace General Harkins with Gen. William C. Westmoreland on June 20, 1964, signaling the development of a new strategy in Vietnam.

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Early in August 1964, there was a skirmish at sea in the Gulf of  Tonkin. The Kennedy administration had sent US warships to the waters around Vietnam. The Gulf of  Tonkin—between North Vietnam and China’s Hainan Island—came to be called “Yankee Station.” This was the area from which American carrier task forces would eventually launch air attacks against targets in North Vietnam. From August 2 to August 4, there were several engagements between two escort ships of the carrier task force, the destroyers USS Maddox and USS C. Turner Joy, and some small North Vietnamese gunboats. What actually occurred is still in question. Some of the more ardent opponents of the war in Vietnam claim that the whole incident was manufactured by the Johnson administration and really never happened. I do not know the precise answer to the question of what happened, but it is not an unreasonable assumption that some shooting occurred. Regardless, the response of the Johnson administration was out of proportion to the provocation. On August 7, the president asked Congress to pass a resolution that essentially gave him the power to pursue the war as he saw fit. The so-called Tonkin Gulf Resolution eventually came back to haunt some of its supporters in Congress. All these events occurred in the months before the 1964 presidential election. Lyndon Johnson enjoyed great popularity because of his Great Society programs in the areas of health care, education, and especially civil liberties. Johnson had no opposition for the Democratic nomination, and he chose Sen. Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota as his running mate. On the Republican side, the situation was more complicated. The two principal candidates for the Republican presidential nomination were Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller of New York and Sen. Barry M. Goldwater of Arizona. Rockefeller represented what came to be called the eastern establishment of the Republican Party; it had provided many of the successful candidates for president since the Civil War. The eastern establishment included the leaders of the financial complex in New York and the large manufacturing organizations of the Upper Midwest (Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, and Illinois). Goldwater was a western populist Republican who represented something new. He was not in the tradition of the Republicans who used to represent the heartland agricultural states such as Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, and the Dakotas. Rather, he represented people who had moved from their ancestral homes in the East and the Upper Midwest to the Southwest and California following World War II. These people tended to be entrepreneurial, opposed to big government, slightly wealthier than the average, and strongly anticommunist. They were not conservative in the traditional sense, but they acquired that label. Goldwater was a charismatic figure and an excellent speaker. He electrified the nominating convention when he defended himself from Democrats’ charges of extremism by saying, “I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue!”When Rockefeller tried to speak to the convention, he was shouted down by Goldwater’s delegates.

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Goldwater won the Republican presidential nomination and in doing so became the leader of the new conservative movement. The presidencies of Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan—westerners from the class represented by Goldwater’s constituency—were Goldwater’s legacy. But he lost the presidential election by a wide margin, almost sixteen million votes. Ironically, one reason for Johnson’s wide margin was that he was perceived as the peace candidate who would wind down the war in Vietnam. I voted for Lyndon Johnson primarily because I thought that he was more likely to do the right things in fighting the Cold War (including Vietnam) than Goldwater. It was during this election that I began to formulate a method of judging presidential candidates. Among the clearly identified constitutional powers bestowed upon president are command of the armed forces of the United States and responsibility for conducting American foreign policy. He has enormous influence on domestic issues, but in that arena he can only lead, not order. In foreign affairs and in war, he must lead, and therein lies his real power. Following his landslide victory, President Johnson moved quickly to strengthen the US military presence in Vietnam. He authorized combat aircraft to support ARVN units fighting the Vietcong south of the seventeenth parallel. This operation, Rolling Thunder, began on March 2, 1965. The first US Marines landed in Vietnam—two thousand of them—to protect the large US air base at Da Nang. General Westmoreland adopted a strategy of search and destroy, which meant finding and eliminating large Vietcong camps. Given the Vietcong’s superior knowledge of the terrain and numerical superiority, it was not clear that this approach could succeed. The fighting was reduced to a war of attrition in which Westmoreland and his staff used body counts (the numbers of Vietcong killed) as a measure of success. US commanders in Vietnam put faith in high-tech solutions to help achieve victory—that is, to force the North Vietnamese to the bargaining table. These weapons included new, very accurate laser-guided missiles, which caused heavy casualties. The extensive use of helicopters employed the tactics of vertical envelopment. The helicopters dropped exquisitely sensitive sensors that could count the trucks and sometimes the people moving down the Ho Chi Minh Trail—they were called “Charlie sniffers.” Finally, the Vietnam War was the first one during which Earth-orbiting satellites were used to detect weather patterns in order to plan missions for aircraft and sometimes ground-based troops as well. None of these technical innovations had the desired effect of persuading the Vietcong to give up. The problem was strategic, not tactical. Westmoreland’s war of attrition was as wrongheaded as French general Henri Navarre’s strategy of strong points had been in 1954. The problem for the entire period of the war in Vietnam was that the North had many more people under arms than either the French or the Americans. In such a situation, attrition simply would not work. More important was the political problem in South Vietnam. Successive military governments were unable to instill a will to fight in the AVRN soldiers.

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The failure of the attrition strategy in 1965 and 1966 led Westmoreland to ask for more troops. By December 1966, there were 385,000 American troops in Vietnam. This large commitment of US troops led Westmoreland to seek some setpiece battles against Vietcong units. He also made use of more South Vietnamese troops in these operations. There were some successes, but no clear and decisive military victories.

Domestic Opposition to the War in Vietnam The large increases in the American military presence in Vietnam required the activation of the conscription law. This move led to massive antiwar demonstrations on many US university campuses. Following the reelection of President Johnson and his advocacy of Great Society legislation, many young people became caught up in the movements that advocated civil rights, and others joined the antiwar movement. A confluence of issues made it possible to mobilize very large crowds of young people to demonstrate for or against particular issues. In addition, national organizations became very adept at staging such demonstrations. The most prominent of these groups were the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC, or “Snick”), Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), Vietnam Veterans against the War, and a number of others. Among the early leaders were Tom Hayden, Jerry Rubin, Julian Bond, John Kerry, and John L. Lewis. Many of these people had genuine political talent and eventually led distinguished political careers. Both Tom Hayden and Julian Bond were elected to state legislatures (in California and Georgia), John Lewis is a distinguished congressman from Georgia, and John Kerry was a member of the senate and a presidential candidate, and later secretary of state. Other leaders, Mario Savio and Jerry Rubin, for example, fell back into obscurity.The young people who protested in large numbers did succeed in undermining public support for the conduct of the war in Vietnam. In addition to legitimate advocacy movements, a small group of clearly terrorist organizations arose. The two most prominent ones were the Weathermen and the Symbionese Liberation Army. Both conducted terrorist operations that led to the death of innocent people. The Weathermen bombed a computer center at the University of Wisconsin sponsored by the Department of Defense. A graduate student working inside the building was killed. During a bank robbery by the Symbionese Liberation Army in Los Angeles, a guard was killed. Legal action eventually led to the demise of both groups. There was also violence when law enforcement officers tried to control large crowds. The most prominent case occurred at Kent State University. The Ohio National Guard was called out to control what looked like the beginning of a violent riot. Several soldiers fired into the crowd; four students were killed and others were injured. To some, it seemed as if the country was coming apart at the seams.

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I should mention one other point about the students and other young people. The manner in which the Selective Service Law (the formal name for conscription) granted deferments was badly biased. The deferment rules favored people wealthy enough to attend a college or a university; they were exempt until graduation—and graduation could be postponed almost indefinitely. I know from my experience in Berkeley from 1966 to 1969 that almost all our students were deferred. They felt both lucky and guilty. It was the feeling of guilt that motivated many of the students to join the demonstrations. Unlike what had happened in previous conflicts, the American elite did not go to war in Vietnam. It was fought by the less well-educated and poorer segments of society. Exacerbating this sense of deep unfairness was the fact that minorities—mostly Hispanics and blacks—were overrepresented among the army’s combat elements. It can be argued that at least some of our social problems today were caused by the distorted conscription law. Opposition to the war in Vietnam developed in Congress and within the Johnson administration. Senators Wayne Morse (D-OR), William Fulbright (D-AR), and Robert Kennedy (D-NY) broke with the president over the war. As the war continued, their influence increased. Within the administration, the most senior member who was strongly opposed to the war was Under Secretary of State George W. Ball. His opposition within the administration was ineffective, and eventually he resigned. One of the largest demonstrations against the war occurred on Saturday, October 21, 1967. More than fifty thousand people gathered on the Mall in Washington,

Figure 4.2. Mario Savio and protesters at the University of California, Berkeley, December 1964.

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DC, for a march to the Pentagon. I happened to be in town at the time for a meeting of a subcommittee of the Air Force Scientific Advisory Board. When we heard about the crowd collecting at the Lincoln Memorial, we decided to walk over from our downtown hotel and see what was going on. Watching the march could be more important, and more interesting, than anything we could do for the air force. At the Mall, the huge crowd reminded me of the crowds I had seen in Vienna during the German invasion of Austria in 1938. Students for a Democratic Society seemed to be the principal organizer, although I could not identify any of the people at the lectern as SDS leaders. But many of the “monitors” in the crowd wore armbands that identified them as members of the SDS. The titular leader of the march was the prominent poet Robert Lowell. He was the final speaker before the crowd started the march. He sounded eloquent, but I cannot remember just what he said. The Lincoln Memorial is on the west side of the Mall, and we started walking toward the Washington Monument and then turned right to cross the Potomac River on the 14th Street Bridge. When we got to the Pentagon, we found that many guards were surrounding the building. From the south parking lot, I could see a line of soldiers standing at close intervals in front. I stood on a slight rise at the edge of the lot, so I could see both the part of the building next to the lot as well as the River Entrance. (This vantage point no longer exists because of construction of the Metro station and the new roadways.) The mood of the crowd was festive. Most of the young people I saw surrounding the building treated the whole event like a big party. The same was not true for the organizers of the event. The soldiers on the southeast side of the building were members of the Third Infantry Regiment (the “Old Guard”), which handles both security and ceremonial duties at the Pentagon and at Fort Myer. These were highly disciplined troops. The River Entrance, on the other hand, was guarded by people wearing blue or dark uniforms, who were either police or US Marshals. Small knots of demonstrators accosted the troops of the Third Infantry. The soldiers stood their ground and refused to be provoked into striking back. It dawned on me that the purpose of accosting the soldiers was to create an incident that would turn the party atmosphere of the large crowd into one of anger and confrontation. The idea seemed to be to create a scuffle that would make headlines in the papers the next day and thereby draw widespread attention to the march on the Pentagon. If one of the guards injured a demonstrator or arrested one, then a charge of “brutality” could be leveled against the guards. When the provocations of the leadership did not work with the disciplined troops of the Third Infantry, I saw several of them go over to the River Entrance. Soon a scuffle erupted there, and some of the demonstrators even managed to get into the building. Police and US Marshals are not disciplined troops, so they were easier to provoke. Sure enough, stories in the newspapers the next morning reported on the disturbances. I came away from this incident with a better appreciation of the depths of the feeling of the people who were opposed to the war.

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From a different aspect of my career, I gained an understanding of the viewpoint of those who were not necessarily opposed to or in favor of the war—although many undoubtedly supported it—but definitely were opposed to the actions of the antiwar protesters. During the 1966 midterm elections in California, a charismatic newcomer entered American politics, a onetime movie actor, union leader, and host of a popular television program, Ronald Reagan. He was the Republican candidate for governor and was running against a two-term incumbent, Edmund G. (Pat) Brown. Reagan’s campaign was based on three issues: welfare reform, a more comprehensive health care program, and “cleaning up the mess in Berkeley”—meaning the student unrest there, much of it tied to antiwar protests. The third issue was the most popular one, primarily because it was obvious and simple to deal with. The people of California knew that as governor, Reagan would be the president of the University of California Board of Regents and therefore would be able to do what he promised. I was a strong supporter of the university and member of its Speaker’s Bureau, and I delivered a number of speeches in 1965 and 1966 to Rotary Clubs in California, promoting the benefits of UC Berkeley for the state. I was surprised by the anger that Rotary audiences expressed about the events in Berkeley dating from late 1964. Rotary’s rules meant that even in a small town, members had university educations; most of those were from state universities.These people were prominent physicians, bankers, lawyers, pharmacists, and other professionals. I tried to explain the situation as best I could, but in the end all I could do was to make lame excuses for how the administration had been handling the disruptions. I was both sad and ashamed for the institution that employed me and had provided me with my start in life. Ronald Reagan won the election for governor in November 1966, beating Governor Brown by a million votes. This victory marked the beginning of what became Ronald Reagan’s brilliant political career. In spite of his attacks on the university, I voted for him because I thought that he had taken the correct position regarding the management of the university.

The Six-Day War In the Nuclear Engineering Department at Berkeley, I had a student named Hasan Charif, a young man from Lebanon who had passed his qualifying examinations. I was looking forward to working with him on his thesis project. On the morning of June 6, 1967, Hasan told me that he had to return to his home in Lebanon “to fight the Jews.” At first I did not know what he was talking about; I had missed the morning news broadcast about the beginning of the Six-Day War between Israel and its Arab neighbors. Hasan told me that he felt obligated to go home and fight against Israel. I was very surprised at this, but he was adamant. Hasan was a good student, and his leaving would be a great loss for the university as well as for him-

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self. I had no idea of the depth of anger felt by Arabs toward Israel, and I was about to learn why this situation had developed. The State of Israel was proclaimed on May 16, 1948, by David Ben-Gurion and his colleagues, thus fulfilling the longtime dream of the nineteenth-century Zionist movement. But the local Arab population of Palestine was violently opposed to massive Jewish immigration, so the birth of the new state was both hard and bloody. The distinguished chemist and Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann was named president of the new nation, and Ben-Gurion became prime minister and the leader of the government. The immediate circumstance that triggered the creation of the Zionist state was the abrupt withdrawal of the British Army from the territory of Palestine, which it had occupied since 1922 under a League of Nations mandate. Palestine had been a province of the Ottoman Empire before World War I, and the Zionist movement in Europe provided funds to Jews who wanted to buy land and live in Palestine. Weizmann had moved to England in 1904 to teach organic chemistry at the University of Manchester. During World War I, he developed safer, more effective high explosives at the Royal Navy’s Scientific Laboratory. His work attracted the attention of British political leaders, and in November 1917 he succeeded in persuading the British foreign secretary, Arthur Balfour, to write a letter to Walter Rothschild (2nd Baron Rothschild), the prominent British financier and Zionist leader, declaring, “His Majesty’s government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.” The declaration qualified this guarantee somewhat (“nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine”), but the intent was clearly stated in the first sentence. The Zionist movement was modestly successful, and in 1922 the population of Palestine was a little more than 760,000: about 600,000 Muslim Arabs, 84,000 Jews, 71,000 Christians, and the remainder divided among local sects. Further immigration of Jews during the 1920s and the 1930s had increased the Jewish population of Palestine to 446,000 by 1939. This number was still smaller than the Arab population, but the growth of the Jewish segment created serious problems. Between 1936 and 1939, an Arab revolt led to some casualties and strained the resources of the British army of occupation. Shortly before the beginning of World War II, in May 1939, the British reversed the Balfour Declaration by issuing a White Paper that severely limited the immigration of Jews to Palestine. The British government anticipated the coming of a European war, and it did not want to antagonize the Middle Eastern oil sheiks, on whose oil the Royal Navy depended. What changed this situation was the brutal persecution and murder of millions of European Jews by the Nazis. Many nations, including the United States, greatly restricted the immigration of Jews to their countries. As a result, Jewish survivors of World War II felt compelled to go to Palestine. Even though the British had essentially guaranteed the Palestinians that Jewish immigration would be halted, a

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number of Jewish organizations around the world helped two million European Jews who survived the war get to Palestine. These groups included the Jewish Agency, headed by Chaim Weizmann; the Haganah (Hebrew for “the defense”), a quasi-military organization that would become the defense force for the Jewish state; the Irgun Zvai Leumi (“National Military Organization”), a military organization somewhat more active than Haganah and capable of committing terrorist acts; and the Stern Gang, an openly violent terrorist outfit. These organizations helped something on the order of a million Jews enter Palestine illegally, and the British Army could not bring itself to stop this flood of people because of the massive bloodshed that such a move would cause. Because of worldwide sympathy for the fledgling state, international recognition came rapidly. President Truman announced diplomatic recognition on the same day (May 16) that Ben-Gurion proclaimed the existence of the State of Israel, and the Soviet Union followed a day later. At the time, the events in Israel were not yet part of the incipient Cold War. The first battle to establish Israel as an independent state was won at a heavy price. Six thousand Israelis died during the year of fighting in 1948 and 1949— four thousand soldiers and two thousand civilians. This was about 1 percent of the Jewish population of Palestine at the time. The Arab states lost ten to twelve thousand people. But the Israeli victory did not settle the issue of Israel’s existence, and the ultimate outcome is still not clear as I write this more than sixty years later. I have spent some time describing how Israel came to be created in order to help explain why my student Hasan Charif felt as he did. In 1948 and 1949, more than a million Europeans were brought into a small Arab country, where they displaced much of the local population. Worse yet, over the following decades they established a prosperous, high-technology state in a place where not much had happened during the two thousand years since the Romans had left. The contrast between the wealth generated by Israel and the relative poverty of the surrounding Arab nations is very hard for the Arab population to accept. This is a difficult problem that, I am afraid, has no real solution. One other incident requires a brief explanation because it was an important precursor to the Six-Day War. In January 1956, Gamal Abdel Nasser was elected president of Egypt. In July, he announced that Egypt would buy back shares in the Suez Canal Company, a move seen by many as an attempt to nationalize the canal. The canal is a critically important sea-lane in that part of the world, as well as Egypt’s main source of revenue. The British, French, and Israeli governments planned a military operation against Egypt to return canal operations to the status quo. Israel’s part of the plan was to invade the Sinai and occupy the eastern bank of the canal. Operation Kadesh commenced on October 29, 1956, with paratroopers landing at strategic points. A day later, the amphibious British-French Operation Musketeer commenced as bombers destroyed hundreds of Egyptian planes on the ground and paratroopers secured major airfields in northern Egypt. There were

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also landings using World War II–era ships near Port Said. Artillery support for the landing from British and French warships offshore heavily damaged the city. The military campaigns were successful, and all the planned objectives were achieved. Nasser responded by sinking all forty ships (belonging to different nations) then in the Suez Canal. It took more than a year to restore the canal to normal service. The operation was a political disaster for the Israelis, the French, and the British. The Eisenhower administration, seeing the attack as a resurgence of neocolonial aggression comparable to the Soviets’ contemporaneous actions in Hungary, was furious. “Anthony, have you gone out of your mind?” the president famously asked the British prime minister in their first telephone conversation—and forced the three allies to call off the operation. There were threats of economic sanctions, and the president persuaded the Saudis to shut off oil supplies for Britain and France. Prime Minister Eden was forced to resign. After being Winston Churchill’s foreign secretary and deputy for three decades, he succeeded his distinguished predecessor in office but lasted only a year. The much more important consequence was that it drove Nasser firmly into the Soviet camp. He expanded weapons purchases and made a deal with the Soviets to train the Egyptian armed forces. The French and British troops in northern Egypt were replaced by Danish and Colombian units in the service of the United Nations. This action was the first time that a UN mission was deployed to maintain peace along that dangerous border. That state of affairs held until 1967. On May 16, Nasser ordered UN forces stationed in the Sinai to leave. After they did, Nasser rearmed Egypt’s border with Israel. On May 22, Nasser announced that Egypt would close the Straits of  Tiran to “all ships flying Israeli flags or carrying strategic materials.” The straits lead from the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aqaba. The Israeli port of Eilat, at the head of the Gulf of Aqaba, was a vital link between Israel and the sea routes to East Asia. Nasser’s move was an act of war under international law, so Israel appealed to the United Nations and to the international community. There was much talk but no action. In addition, Nasser used heated rhetoric to try to provoke Israel. In a speech to the Egyptian Parliament, he said, “The problem before the Arab countries is not whether the Port of Eilat should be blockaded and how to blockade it—but how to totally exterminate the State of Israel for all time.” He in fact made a number of speeches calling for “the destruction of Israel.” On May 23, 1967, the Israeli cabinet decided to mount a preemptive strike against Egypt. If the Straits of  Tiran were not opened by May 25, Israel would strike. There were some delays in order to provide more time for negotiations, but these failed. On June 1, Moshe Dayan, the hero of the 1948 war, was appointed minister of defense and Yitzhak Rabin was announced as chief of staff of the Israeli Defense Forces. On June 1, about two hundred Israeli jet aircraft moved against Egyptian air bases in the Sinai and on the other side of the Suez Canal in a surprise air attack.The surprise attack destroyed some four hundred aircraft—virtually the entire Egyptian Air Force—on the ground, almost all of Soviet manufacture.

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The next day, similar strikes were made on Syria and Jordan. The Israeli Air Force, which used British, French, and some American aircraft lost only twenty-six aircraft and was in good condition for further action. The war on land began almost simultaneously.The three strikes in the Sinai, one in the north, one in the center, and one in the south, were successful, and within days the Israeli Army stood on the east bank of the Suez Canal. About 100,000 Israeli troops were involved in this campaign, and an equal number of Egyptians were trapped in the Sinai.The southern thrust was commanded by Maj. Gen. Ariel Sharon, who would become an important and controversial leader of Israel in the future. On June 8, the USS Liberty, a converted cargo ship taken over by the US Navy and packed with electronic surveillance equipment, was attacked by Israeli airplanes. The ship was about thirteen miles off the Egyptian coast in what was then considered international waters.The Israelis claimed it was a case of mistaken identity and apologized. But there have always been doubts about the Israelis’ truthfulness in this matter. It might have been that they did not want the US Navy sniffing out the secrets of their electronic equipment. In a campaign conducted against Syria, the Israelis captured the strategic Golan Heights, a position that commands northern Israel and the road to Damascus. The Israelis also invaded the West Bank of the Jordan River. By June 10, the action in the field had come to a standstill. The captured territory increased the land area of Israel by a factor of three. The war was a crushing defeat for the Arab states and an astounding victory for Israel. It was also a defeat for the Soviet Union because in many instances its military equipment in Arab hands proved inferior to the French, British, and American equipment used by the Israelis. Israeli casualties were remarkably light, with 800 killed and about 2,500 wounded. Egypt suffered 10,000 killed and about 20,000 wounded, and for Syria the figures were 2,500 killed and 5,000 wounded. On June 19, 1967, Prime Minister Levi Eshkol and his cabinet discussed postwar steps. They voted unanimously to return the Sinai to Egypt and the Golan Heights to Syria and to make an appropriate arrangement with Jordan regarding the West Bank. In return, they asked for a formal peace treaty with each of the Arab nations. They asked the United States to deliver the message to the Arab states, but there was no response. At an Arab summit meeting in Khartoum (August 29–September 1), the defeated states issued a defiant manifesto: “no peace with Israel, no recognition of Israel, no negotiations with Israel.” On November 22, the UN Security Council passed Resolution 242, which essentially repeated the “land for peace” formula of Eshkol’s cabinet. At first there were no responses from the Arab states, but both Egypt and Jordan eventually signed Resolution 242. I am saddened to write these words now, forty years after the event.This conflict was the first step leading to Israel becoming a US client state, and Egypt becoming a Soviet one. Their antagonism became a flash point in the Cold War.

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I started this long digression on the affairs of the Middle East because of my student Hasan Charif. And I am pleased to say that he returned to Berkeley and earned his PhD in nuclear engineering. I had left the university early in 1969, and one of my colleagues finished the supervision of his dissertation. Hassan went to work for the UN and lives in Lebanon with his family. Although I have never visited him, we have corresponded once or twice a year for the past fifty years.

5 1967 and 1968 Years of Changes, Setbacks, and Decisions

The years 1967 and 1968 were times of crisis in the United States and around the world. In China, Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution was well under way, and the disastrous effects of brutally enforced orthodoxy—the closing of schools and universities, the near cessation of manufacturing, the killing of millions of people, and the relocation of millions more to the countryside to perform manual labor— would be felt until Mao’s death in 1976. In the Soviet Union, Leonid Brezhnev, who had succeeded Nikita Khrushchev as general secretary in 1964, was starting to undo many of his predecessor’s liberalizing reforms, returning to policies more Stalinist in nature. The Chinese communists and nationalists maintained a truce during World War II, but it ended when the war did.The communists won the resulting civil war, and Mao Zedong declared the existence of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) on October 1, 1949. The Soviets supported the Chinese communists with weapons and supplies, and the Chinese returned the favor only a year later when, in the winter of 1950, they intervened in the Korean War to force US troops out of Stalin-backed North Korea. The establishment of the PRC caused serious problems for President Truman. Several prominent Republicans in the Congress, including Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy (R-WI), Sen. William Jenner (R-IN), and Rep. Parnell Thomas (R-NJ), demanded, “Who lost China?” In an outpouring of irresponsible accusations and politicized hearings, wild statements and insinuations were made. The fact is that no one in the United States lost China—we never had it. Nevertheless, the people who fomented China hysteria distracted both the Truman and

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the Eisenhower administrations from pursuing their objectives during the early years of the Cold War. Thus, a few renegades in Congress truly damaged the national security of the United States. Joseph Stalin died in March 1953 and was succeeded by Nikita Khrushchev as the general secretary of the Soviet Communist Party. Mao did not recognize Khrushchev as his superior and disputed the primacy of the Soviet Union in the communist world. When Khrushchev denounced Stalin as a brutal tyrant in a speech in 1956 and accused him of forging a cult of personality that was dangerous to the maintenance of communist ideals, the Chinese communist leadership felt that this speech was clearly intended to undercut the cult of personality that Mao was developing. Tensions between China and Russia increased to the point that there were border clashes between the two nations during the 1950s and 1960s. The Soviet leadership was alarmed by some of Khrushchev’s policies and actions. His crude behavior was sometimes damaging to Soviet prestige. In addition, some were worried about his penchant for taking risks such as Operation Anadyr, which led to the Cuban missile crisis.The chickens eventually came home to roost. On October 13, 1964, at a meeting of the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party, Khrushchev was ousted as chairman in a coup organized by Leonid Brezhnev and Alexander Shelepin. Two days later, the entire Central Committee confirmed his ouster. Brezhnev became general secretary, but Khrushchev was not stripped of his honors or his party membership. He lived in honorable retirement and died in 1971 at the age of seventy-seven. In 1958, Mao launched his second five-year plan, which was called the Great Leap Forward. The plan violated Marxist theory, which required the urban industrial proletariat to be the “vanguard of the revolution.” Instead, Mao called on the vast Chinese peasantry to be the vanguard. Enormous pressure was put on farmers to increase agricultural production; in addition, small iron and steel “factories” were set up on collective farms. The Great Leap Forward was a great disaster. Millions of people died of starvation or were killed by communist cadres. The “peasant industries” failed miserably in their efforts to produce steel and other industrial materials. The diversion of the peasantry to “industrial production” resulted in nationwide food shortages; famine ensued. Mao was forced to abandon the project in 1962 and lost some prestige as a result. Younger leaders such as Liu Shaoqi (state president) and Deng Xiaoping (Communist Party secretary) became emboldened to challenge Mao’s control. In response, Mao launched what became known as the Cultural Revolution in 1966. This was essentially an attempt to brainwash the entire country. Millions more died in this second grand experiment in social transformation, mainly because it permitted violence to be used against people considered politically unorthodox. The Cultural Revolution essentially ended when Mao’s health began to fail in 1971. Mao had designated Gen. Lin Biao as his successor. Lin, the commander of the armies that had fought in Korea, by the late 1960s was the commander in chief

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of the People’s Liberation Army. When Lin discovered Mao’s condition, he may have started to organize a military coup d’état; the exact details are not known. When Liu and Deng got wind of this, they apparently tried to kill Lin and his collaborators. Lin escaped in a military transport plane, which crashed in Mongolia under mysterious circumstances. It is likely that Lin’s airplane was shot down by a Chinese Air Force unit loyal to Liu and Deng. Mao clung to power, despite his illness, until his death in 1976.

The Tet Offensive in Vietnam The climax of the war in Vietnam was reached in 1968 when the North Vietnamese mounted a large, well-coordinated attack against the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) and the US-dominated allied foreign forces. Planning for the operation, which became known as the Tet Offensive, had begun in Hanoi early in 1967. The proponents of the operation made two arguments—one emotional and the other a shrewd political judgment. First, Pres. Ho Chi Minh was in declining health, and Gen. Le Duan and Le Duc Tho, a senior diplomat, were anxious to secure victory in the war before his death. The second reason was that 1968 was an election year in the United States. The presidential race might distract US troops and the people of the United States from the conduct of the war and thereby perhaps improve the chances of a North Vietnamese victory. The Tet Offensive began on January 31, 1968, the day of  Tet Nguyen Dan, the Vietnamese New Year. It was devastating. At three o’clock in the morning,Vietcong units—about 84,000 troops in all—attacked a dozen major cities in South Vietnam. Saigon was the focus of the operation. Many US and ARVN military positions there were overrun by the Vietcong. A small group of Vietcong Special Forces occupied the US Embassy and trashed the building for six hours before finally being ejected. The fighting in Saigon continued until mid-March and did considerable damage to the city. The Vietcong suffered 11,000 casualties (3,000 killed and 8,000 wounded) during the six-week campaign in Saigon; on the ARVN and US side, the figures were 1,500 killed and about 7,700 wounded. In number of military casualties, it was the bloodiest battle of the war. General Westmoreland’s intelligence service had not anticipated the scale of the Tet Offensive, nor did it recognize the two-pronged strategy adopted by the North Vietnamese military. For two weeks after the offensive began, Westmoreland clung to the belief that the main attack was the one mounted against Khe Sanh.The general was correct that the North Vietnamese would strike across the border, but their objective was Hue. The battle for Hue began on January 31 when about 10,000 North Vietnamese regular troops swept into the city and occupied the old citadel (built in 1802), a fortress in which the ARVN First Division had its headquarters. The ARVN fought effectively and were able to regain their position in the citadel, but it was clear that they could not hold on indefinitely. US Army and Marine

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divisions moved in and, with help from the ARVN troops, cleared Hue of communist troops on February 24, 1968. Militarily, the Tet Offensive was a failure for the North Vietnamese. In mid-April 1968, the military situation was exactly what it had been on January 31, when the offensive began. The North Vietnamese suffered huge casualties, including 75,000– 85,000 killed. Furthermore, the Vietcong in the South were so decimated that the Hanoi government had to send regular North Vietnamese troops to replace them.

Political Casualties of the War Psychologically, Tet did not feel like a US victory, at least to the American public. Perhaps it was the realization of the horrific costs in blood and treasure needed just to maintain the status quo in the war. Pessimism about the war was heightened by the sudden resignation of Robert S. McNamara as secretary of defense, on February 28, 1968. By resigning, McNamara signaled a loss of faith in what he was doing. The judgment of Le Duan and Le Duc Tho was therefore vindicated. Although Tet was a tactical failure for the North Vietnamese, it was a strategic victory. US leaders were beginning to lose the will to fight. President Johnson asked Clark Clifford to replace Robert McNamara as secretary of defense. Clifford had been a member of President Truman’s staff and had participated in the debates leading to the creation of the Department of Defense in 1947. Clifford was a strongly partisan Democrat and also a strong supporter of the war in Vietnam. Gen. Earle Wheeler (chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff  ) and General Westmoreland, who were meeting in Vietnam, judged that Clifford would look with favor on expanding the war beyond the borders of South Vietnam. Accordingly, they developed a plan to increase troop levels by 200,000. There were a little more than 500,000 US troops in Vietnam at the time, so Wheeler and Westmoreland were suggesting an increase of 40 percent—a massive escalation.Wheeler submitted a pessimistic status report to President Johnson, requesting the increase of 200,000 troops but without mentioning a possible expansion of the theater of operations. After being sworn in as secretary, Clifford listened to extensive briefings on the military situation. Intelligent and decisive, he quickly came to a firm conclusion: continuing the present course in Vietnam could not be sustained, and increasing the number of troops would not change matters. Several of Clifford’s advisers suggested that he go to the president and ask him to initiate peace negotiations with the North Vietnamese. They prepared a position paper that Clifford took to the president, recommending a de-escalation of the war. President Johnson convened a meeting on March 25 of a group that he called the “Wise Men”—generals, former cabinet secretaries, ambassadors, and Supreme Court justices who all had long experience at the highest levels of government. The Wise Men were joined at the meeting by senior military officers and current

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cabinet secretaries. Clifford orchestrated the detailed, extensive discussion. At its conclusion, the Wise Men took a straw vote. Only four (of thirteen) supported the policies that the president had been following. President Johnson was very troubled by the fact that a large majority of this very distinguished group was opposed to his position and advocated immediate steps to wind down the war. Also weighing on the president were the results of the New Hampshire Democratic primary election, which had been held two weeks earlier. Sen. Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota, who had started a peace movement in the Democratic Party, received 42 percent of the vote to Johnson’s 49 percent. In effect, the president had lost control of the Democratic Party, and Senator McCarthy was now a viable candidate. Four days after the election, New York senator Robert F. Kennedy, the former president’s younger brother, announced his candidacy for the presidency. On March 31, the president made a televised address to the nation. Clifford had persuaded him to make three firm statements. First, there would be no increase in the number of US troops in Vietnam. Second, there would be a partial halt to bombing raids in North Vietnam, except for those that directly supported US troops on the ground in the South. Finally, he asked the North Vietnamese to engage in peace negotiations.Then, at the end of the speech, he dropped a bombshell: “I shall not seek, and I will not accept the nomination of my party for another term as your president.”

The Assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy Against the international backdrop of the Vietnam War and the Cold War, a domestic struggle was reaching its climax. This was the civil rights movement, which had the objective of securing the full rights of citizenship to Americans of African descent. This movement had begun with ratification of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the US Constitution in 1868 and 1870.Those amendments, which provided blacks with citizenship, equal protection of the law, and voting rights (for men), were crystal clear in their intent, but were nonetheless systematically violated in many areas of the country—mostly, although not entirely, in the former states of the Confederacy. White legislatures and political officials used poll taxes and property requirements, as well as illegal threats and intimidations, to prevent African Americans from voting. In addition, schools and public accommodations were segregated, a type of discrimination—“separate but equal”—that the Supreme Court had found constitutionally valid in 1896.The civil rights movement sought full enforcement of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. Thus, the leaders of the movement held the high ground. They were not asking for something new; rather, they were asking for protections that had been enshrined in the Constitution for almost a century.

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The modern civil rights movement began when President Truman abolished segregation in the US military in 1948. But in the civilian world, it was not possible to do things by executive order. In this case, leadership came from the African American community.The outstanding leader of the civil rights movement following the end of World War II was the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. King was born in Atlanta in 1929 to a prominent African American clergyman, Martin Luther King Sr., and Alberta Williams King. Their gifted son went on to earn a bachelor of arts degree in sociology at the age of nineteen, a bachelor of divinity several years later, and a PhD in systematic theology from Boston University in 1955. King’s involvement in the modern civil rights movement began with the Montgomery bus boycott in 1956, which was sparked by the arrest of Rosa Parks for refusing to give up her seat on a city bus. Victory in that fight led King to think about creating a much larger group to organize the kind of local action that had succeeded in Montgomery. Along with another prominent African American clergyman, Ralph Abernathy, King organized the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). The idea was to organize African American churches in the southern states to protest by using the nonviolent tactics advocated by Mohandas Gandhi. The SCLC organized successful actions in Albany, Georgia; St. Augustine, Florida; Selma, Alabama; and Birmingham, Alabama. In 1963, the SCLC and other civil rights organizations collaborated on the March on Washington, which drew national attention to the civil rights movement. It was at this event that King delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech. In October of the following year, King was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in recognition of his work to end racial prejudice in the United States by nonviolent means. In April 1968, King went to Memphis, Tennessee, to support a strike by the city’s sanitation workers. On April 4 at about 6:00 p.m., King was standing on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in downtown Memphis, waiting for his companions to go to dinner. From a rooming house across the street, James Earl Ray shot King once in the head with a high-powered rifle. It was clear that his injury was fatal. He was taken to the nearest hospital for surgery but died an hour later. The day before, King had delivered a speech in Memphis in which he said: Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people will get to the Promised Land. And I’m happy, tonight. I’m not worried about anything. I’m not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.

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The assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. was a national tragedy. There were riots in many cities, and the whole nation mourned. King’s killer, James Earl Ray, was a small-time criminal who had escaped from a Missouri penitentiary. Two months after the murder, Ray was captured in London, extradited to Tennessee, and charged with King’s murder. On March 10, 1969, Ray confessed to the murder, but recanted three days later. He died in prison on April 23, 1998, while serving a ninety-nine-year sentence for King’s murder. King was the preeminent leader of the civil rights movement, successful even beyond his own formidable dreams. In 1964, President Johnson persuaded Congress to pass the Civil Rights Act, which outlawed most forms of racial segregation that had been customary in many parts of the country. In 1965, again at the president’s behest, Congress passed the Voting Rights Act, which was probably even more important than the Civil Rights Act. This law specifically prohibited the system of poll taxes, intimidation, and literacy tests put in place to thwart the intent of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. Once African Americans could vote in large numbers, progress was certain to follow. After Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act, he purportedly turned to an aide and said, “We have lost the South for a generation,” anticipating the Republican Party’s southern strategy, which it adopted to wrest control of the South from the Democrats. King’s assassination spawned many conspiracy theories, as had Lee Harvey Oswald’s killing of President Kennedy. Many people cannot bring themselves to believe that killers such as Ray and Oswald, who led stunted, barren lives, could commit supposedly complex murders of such prominent people. My own view is different. Sociopaths like Ray and Oswald do commit murders on their own, and this is the likeliest explanation of what happened. Conspiracy theorists will always find increasingly complex tales to explain events that are a little beyond ordinary understanding, but the overly elaborate scenarios that they construct tend to be impossible to execute. During the spring semester of 1968, my father, Prof. Herman F. Mark, of what was then known as the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn, was asked by the University of California, Berkeley, to deliver a series of lectures on polymer chemistry. He stayed at the Durant Hotel, a block from the campus, so that he could walk to work. On some mornings he took a taxi to our house in Northside Hills and had breakfast with us. He and I would then drive to campus and head to our offices— his in Gilman Hall (the chemistry building) and mine in Etcheverry Hall. On June 6, my father showed up at our doorstep at 6:30 a.m., and his first words were “Kennedy has been shot!” I was thunderstruck—this was the second time in two months that a prominent American political leader had been killed by an assassin. My first thought was that the United States was deteriorating into something like a banana republic, where it was customary to kill politicians. The radio

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informed us that Sen. Robert F. Kennedy of New York had died from his wounds that morning. Both my father and I were concerned, and both of us remembered the assassination of my father’s friend Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss of Austria thirty-four years earlier. Was this murder of a potential presidential candidate going to usher in a new period of chaos? We were fearful. Robert Francis Kennedy was the third son of Joseph P. and Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy. Robert spent most of his life as an acolyte and assistant to his older brother John. After a brief period of service in the navy, Robert attended Harvard University and then earned a law degree at the University of Virginia in June 1951. In 1952 he managed his brother John’s successful senatorial campaign. For the next six years, Robert Kennedy served as a staff member on Senate committees. In 1960, he managed his brother’s presidential campaign. Robert Kennedy served as attorney general in his brother’s administration. He was also the president’s closest adviser and confidant. This was especially true during the Cuban missile crisis. Robert frequently brought together contrasting suggestions about how to deal with the emergency. Once the crisis was over, the members of the president’s Executive Committee reserved their highest praise for Robert Kennedy’s work. In the wake of President Kennedy’s death, Robert eventually resigned as attorney general, and in August 1964 announced his candidacy for a US Senate seat from New York, which he won handily. In the Senate, Kennedy continued his support of strong new civil rights legislation and of the correct enforcement of existing laws. He opposed President Johnson’s escalation of the war in Vietnam. President Johnson’s decision not to run for reelection in 1968 fractured the Democratic Party. Factions formed around Vice Pres. Hubert Humphrey ( Johnson’s chosen successor), Gov. George C. Wallace of Alabama (supported mostly by southerners opposed to the president’s civil rights policies), and Sen. Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota (the favorite of intellectuals and young students who opposed the war in Vietnam, along with Catholics and the working class). When McCarthy came within a few percentage points of defeating President Johnson in the New Hampshire primary, Robert Kennedy decided to enter the race, in essence creating a fourth faction. Kennedy was expected to gain the African American vote and split McCarthy’s support among liberals. The key to Kennedy winning the nomination was to beat McCarthy in California. A victory there would knock McCarthy out of the race and allow Kennedy to challenge Humphrey. Kennedy won a decisive victory. He had succeeded in merging opposition to the war in Vietnam with his strong stand on civil rights. Young people were especially attracted by this combination because some of them felt (paradoxically, I think) that civil rights activism was somehow a substitute for military service—several of my Berkeley activist students had told me this. I remember watching Kennedy make his victory speech, and then I turned off the television and went to bed. As I found out later, Kennedy left the podium, shook some hands,

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and then walked out through the passageway to the kitchen. There Sirhan Sirhan, a twenty-four-year-old Palestinian refugee, shot him twice in the head with a .22 caliber pistol. Kennedy was taken to Good Samaritan Hospital, where he died early in the morning of June 6. That evening, as I drove my father to the airport on the other side of San Francisco Bay, we discussed the events of the past year. We agreed that 1968 had, so far, been a bad time for the United States. My father knew about the problems I was having at the university, so I told him that my year had not been very good either. He said that the 1960s had been a period of decadence, the kind of thing that sometimes followed great calamities such as World War II. I considered this something of a stretch, but he reminded me of the 1920s and 1930s in Europe. While living in Germany from 1921 to 1933, my parents had experienced the unrest that followed World War I, so my father may have had a point. The hedonism and the extensive use of illegal drugs by young people who came of age in the 1960s were somewhat similar to what happened in Germany during the years of the Weimar Republic. As usual, my father gave me something to think about. I was in a very grim mood when I drove back to Berkeley.

Richard M. Nixon I first heard Richard Nixon’s name in 1948, about a year after I arrived in California. It was a presidential-election year, and it was also the first time that I really paid attention to national politics. Nixon had been elected to the US House of Representatives in 1946 from a district in Southern California by defeating longtime congressman Jerry Voorhis. He then gained national attention in 1947 and 1948 when, as a member of the House Un-American Activities Committee, he conducted an investigation of Alger Hiss. Hiss, who held a high post in the State Department, was a Soviet agent, and Nixon believed the allegations made against him by people who had worked with him during the 1930s. In 1950, Hiss was convicted of perjury after being found guilty of lying to the House Un-American Activities Committee. The Hiss case was controversial because many Americans— especially many intellectuals, including influential members of the press—could not believe that someone with Hiss’s background and credentials could possibly be a Soviet spy. Hiss had come from upper-class circumstances and had attended the best universities—Johns Hopkins University and the Harvard Law School. Many years later, when the Soviet archives were opened following the end of the Cold War, it was established beyond a doubt that Hiss had been a Soviet agent. In the 1950 midterm elections, Richard Nixon ran for the open US Senate from California against Democrat Helen Gahagan Douglas, who was also a member of the House. Since Douglas had been an actress in Hollywood (her husband was the actor Melvyn Douglas), she was vulnerable to attacks on the presumed left-wing bias of show people. In addition to accusations of this kind, Nixon played

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up his reputation as a successful “communist hunter,” capitalizing on the Hiss case as an example. Nixon won by a landslide, receiving almost 60 percent of the vote. Nixon spent only two years in the Senate because he was selected by the Republican Party to be Dwight D. Eisenhower’s vice presidential candidate in 1952. Eisenhower and Nixon won the election in 1952 by an overwhelming majority. When Nixon was inaugurated, he had celebrated his fortieth birthday just three weeks earlier. He had come a long way. His parents had run a small ranch in Yorba Linda, California. When it failed, they moved to the nearby small city of Whittier. Nixon did well in high school and then attended Whittier College, a small Quaker school. Nixon’s mother was a devout Quaker, and she had a strong early influence on him. He graduated in 1934 and then went to Duke University Law School, where he received his degree in 1937. He started a law practice in Long Beach, and in 1940 married Thelma Catherine Ryan. In spite of his Quaker heritage, Nixon joined the navy in August 1942, serving as an administrative officer in the South Pacific. He returned to the United States in 1945 with the rank of lieutenant commander and began his political career in the following year. President Eisenhower and his vice president were not close. Nevertheless, Nixon managed to enhance his reputation as a political leader during his eight years as vice president. He had little influence on policy, but kept a high profile by making visits around the world to defend US positions during the Cold War. Famously, he debated Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev at the American National Exhibition in Moscow on July 24, 1959. It was an impromptu affair in the kitchen exhibit. Each leader extolled the virtues of his political and economic system. Nixon got the better of the debate by keeping his cool and pointing out features of the kitchen equipment on display that were then unknown in the Soviet Union. Nixon received generally good press reviews for his work as vice president. In one instance, he stepped in as president of the Senate to interpret filibuster rules so that the 1957 legislation creating the Civil Rights Commission could be enacted. In 1960, Nixon decided to run for president and easily won the nomination. Sen. John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts was the Democratic nominee. The charismatic navy veteran came from a prominent and wealthy family. But Kennedy had one handicap: his religion. No Catholic had ever been elected president, and in 1960 the perception that a Catholic president would take orders from the pope was still a problem. The election was historic because it was the first in which the two candidates held a televised debate. Some think that Nixon lost the election because of the debate. He won the argument, but Kennedy looked better and was more composed, articulate, and attractive. Kennedy won the election, but his margin was infinitesimal—120,000 votes out of 60 million cast, in spite of the fact that the news media strongly favored Kennedy. Following his loss, Nixon went home to California. In 1962, Nixon was urged by Republican Party leaders in California to run against incumbent governor, Edmund G. (Pat) Brown. Against his better judgment, Nixon agreed to do this.

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He lost the election by a large margin. Both losses embittered Nixon, and he blamed the press, which became more negative about Nixon as his career progressed. Many people, including probably Nixon himself, believed that the defeat by Governor Brown marked the end of his political career. At a press conference following his defeat in 1962, he said, “You won’t have Nixon to kick around anymore because, gentlemen, this is my last press conference!” I saw this on television; it was truly startling to hear a major American political figure make such a statement. Nixon and his family moved to New York after his defeat in California. He joined a major law firm that became Nixon, Mudge, Rose, Guthrie, and Alexander. He remained active in politics by arranging a heavy speaking schedule, especially during the 1966 midterm elections. By helping prominent Republican candidates get elected to or retain their offices, he collected a number of important political IOUs. In 1968, Nixon decided for the second time to seek the Republican nomination for the presidency. The Democratic candidate was Vice Pres. Hubert Humphrey. Humphrey was highly qualified to be president. He had been an energetic and popular mayor of Minneapolis before his election to the Senate. He served in the Senate as a leader of the liberal caucus, but he was popular with both parties. But neither he nor anyone else in 1968 could pull together the demoralized Democratic Party. The people who opposed Lyndon Johnson’s civil rights policies had already left the Democratic Party to support Gov. George C. Wallace and his new Independent Party. Richard Nixon won the election by around 500,000 votes. I voted for Nixon because I thought the he would handle the foreign policy of the United States better than Humphrey. For example, I believed that the new president would be forced to conduct the most difficult kind of military operation in Vietnam—a strategic withdrawal—and that Nixon would be more likely than Humphrey to succeed in such an enterprise.

The Department of Nuclear Engineering The University of California had a rule that no department chairman could hold that position in an academic department for more than five years. In chapter 3, I mentioned Prof. Thomas H. Pigford, who was one of the founders of the nuclear engineering department at MIT. In 1959, he became the second chairman of the nuclear engineering department at the University of California. Tom was one of the leading US authorities on nuclear reactors. He developed a very ambitious program that included a new building, Etcheverry Hall, which would be shared with the Mechanical Engineering Department. In addition, there would be a large underground room where the TRIGA Mark III nuclear reactor would be housed. This water-moderated reactor could produce a megawatt of thermal power. In addition, the machine was designed to produce power pulses of

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a thousand megawatts for a few milliseconds. Tom supervised its installation and procured the necessary uranium-235 fuel, along with the control machinery. Other facilities in this large underground room would be used for a variety of research programs. At the same time, Tom worked hard to recruit new faculty members. Nuclear engineering is a hybrid of several engineering disciplines, the most important ones being mechanical and chemical engineering. During his five years of service, he used his acute sense of character judgment to hire an excellent group of people. The engineering school gave him wide authority to choose. At the end of his term, Tom had assembled the following group: Lawrence Grossman (reactor physics), Virgil Schrock (mechanical engineering, with special expertise in fluid flows), Paul Chambre (mathematics), Selig Kaplan (nuclear instrumentation), Lawrence Ruby (reactor engineering), Robert Pyle (theoretical and plasma physics), Harold Smith (fluid mechanics), Thomas Pigford (chemical engineering and chairman), Roger Wallace (health physics), and Hans Mark (neutron physics).The Nuclear Engineering Department was provided with eleven full-time positions. Sometime in April 1964, Tom called me to request a meeting. We arranged to meet at the Berkeley Faculty Club, which is located on a beautiful meadow near Strawberry Creek. He did not tell me what he wanted over the telephone, but when we sat down he came straight to the point. He told me that he would have to relinquish his job as chairman on July 1 and that he wanted me to be his successor. I was somewhat startled, but not really surprised. Since Tom had to quit, it made sense that he would start with me. I had good connections at Livermore, and I could be very helpful to the department when the new reactor needed equipment. I had some management experience, having just successfully enlarged the P-Division by merging it with the N-Division, creating the new E-Division, which I led. Finally, I was already a member of the faculty, so there would be no hassle over a tenured position. My answer at the time was to thank him and tell him that I was interested. It did not take long for me to accept Tom’s offer. I had watched what he did as chairman, and found it interesting. He had laid the groundwork for me. My job would be to get the TRIGA Mark III online by securing a license from the Atomic Energy Commission, and I would have to assemble and train a group of people to do the work. This move meant that I would have to change my routine. For the past four years, I had spent 80 percent of my time at Livermore and the rest at the Berkeley campus. Tom felt that I should now reverse that ratio and work 80 percent of the time on campus and 20 percent at Livermore. I agreed with his assessment, and so did Livermore. At Livermore, the research group that I had started was a going concern. Fred Seward of L-Division provided some of the intellectual guidance, and P-Division

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members Charlie Swift, Jerry Chodil, and Richard Rodriguez had become experts at instrumenting the sounding rockets that made important contributions to X-ray astronomy. Swift was the de facto leader of the group. He had a quick mind and was unusually talented at making things work. Twice a year, he would take our group to the Barking Sands Missile Range (now known as the Pacific Missile Range Facility, Barking Sands) on the island of Kauai and conduct launchings of the sounding rockets that carried our X-ray detectors. My teaching responsibilities on campus made it impossible for me always to accompany them, but I did join them twice—once in 1966 and then during the summer of 1967. Richard Price, one of my graduate students, joined the group. We continued using the ninety-inch cyclotron in Building 153 to study nuclear reactions. Another graduate student, Michael Yates, developed a detector that permitted us to determine the ratios of single, double, triple, and possibly larger neutron numbers emitted in nuclear reactions induced by high-energy protons.Yates’s dissertation on multiple-neutron emissions in such reactions was one of the best basic-research efforts performed at Livermore. I very much enjoyed participating in all of this as a member of the group. Michael May, who was Johnny Foster’s successor as the laboratory’s director, was personally interested in what we were doing, and thanks to Senator Jackson’s amendment to the Limited Test Ban Treaty (1963), our work in X-ray astronomy was well funded. I had a regular teaching schedule along with my duties as department chairman. One of the most rewarding educational activities that I undertook was to develop a new undergraduate course, Experiments in Modern Physics, for the engineering physics program. We developed laboratory experiments that illustrated principles of quantum mechanics and employed new laboratory techniques. One of our graduate students, N. Thomas Olson, was my main assistant in this effort. We had some really brilliant students in this course, the most important being Richard S. Post. Richard, a very resourceful gadgeteer, built a Van de Graaff electrostatic accelerator from surplus equipment. He used this machine to accelerate deuterons (stable particles composed of a proton and a neutron) to a particle energy of half a million electron volts. By bombarding a palladium target having adsorbed deuterons on its surface, he was able to produce energetic neutrons. This feat attracted considerable attention at the time because it was not easy to produce the targets or to adjust the machine in order to accelerate the deuterons. We published an article about Richard’s work in the American Journal of Physics. It attracted some attention, and several other universities initiated similar courses involving the construction of complex equipment. Richard went on to become a prominent industrial entrepreneur who founded and ran several high-technology companies. In addition, Olson and I wrote a textbook based on the course. The local representative of McGraw-Hill had heard about our course, and he suggested that we think about compiling its contents into a textbook. Experiments in Modern Physics

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was published by McGraw-Hill in 1966, and it enjoyed some success. Tom and I shared some substantial royalty payments, and were given a nice award by the local chapter of  Tau Beta Pi, the engineering honor society, for our work. All this was very satisfying, and I was pleased with the progress that we had made.The year 1967 was my third as department chairman, and as required by university regulations, my supervision of the department would be reviewed, in part by an external committee. The university administration had asked W. Kenneth Davis, the vice president for research and development of the Bechtel Corporation, to head the committee. The other members were Elias Gyftopolous of the Nuclear Engineering Department at MIT, Karl P. Cohen from General Electric, and Allan F. Henry from Westinghouse. We spent two days laying out our programs and documenting our work. Davis and Gyftopolous interviewed faculty members and students. The committee did a very thorough job. About two weeks later, I received a copy of the committee’s report from the dean’s office.There was a rather terse cover letter from George J. Maslach (the dean of engineering, who had replaced John Whinnery in 1965), asking me to read the report and then come around to see him. The report praised the quality of our faculty and our students, but it was severely critical of the direction of our research. The gist of the criticism was that we were not doing nearly enough to support the nuclear reactor industry, which was rapidly growing in the country. I was astonished by this conclusion. The year 1967 was a high point in the rate at which American electric power companies were buying nuclear reactors. The report pointed out that only five of our regular faculty members (out of ten) were working on problems directly related to the engineering of nuclear fission reactors. The rest were working on problems that the committee felt were only of peripheral value to the nuclear industry. In addition, none of the three part-time instructors were doing things directly related to the interests of the nuclear reactor industry. Finally, the report made the point that the work not related to nuclear reactors was well funded—some of it through the Lawrence Livermore and Berkeley laboratories— whereas funding for nuclear-reactor-related activities was relatively modest. They felt that this asymmetry was wrong and that the department’s research program should be balanced in this respect. I read the report carefully. Needless to say, I was very disturbed; it was a strong critique of my leadership in a way that I had not anticipated. My feeling was that work related to nuclear weapons, work on radiation detectors, work involving nuclear reactions, work on health physics, and even work on ion rockets were all related to the broad area of nuclear engineering. I decided that I would send a rebuttal letter to Dean Maslach before scheduling an appointment with him. In that way, I thought that we might have a structured conversation about the report. Our meeting was difficult, to say the least.The dean was a formidable personality, and he clearly had the high ground in the discussion. He told me that Ken Davis represented the university’s “customer” for our graduates. The fact that Davis was

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not happy with the educational program of our department was a serious problem. In addition, the dean was concerned by the criticism of our curriculum by Professor Gyftopolous. Maslach told me that the report was devastating to the academic reputation of the college and the university. At the end of the dean’s monologue-cum-indictment, there was only one thing that I could say, which was to offer my resignation. After all, this conversation was a review of my performance as chairman, and my peers in the field and in the industry had judged me a failure. I was surprised when Dean Maslach said, “That is the easy way out!”  Then he asked me to see whether I could develop a plan to move the department more in the direction suggested by the report. He went on to say that I had the remaining two years of my term to fix the problems but that my job as chairman hung in the balance. I was stunned by the dean’s response. I had not anticipated the extent of the problem, as he saw it, and certainly not his challenge to me to fix it. I arranged a faculty meeting to discuss the report, which the entire faculty had by then read. At the meeting, I told the group what the dean had told me. It was obvious that I had lost the ability to lead the department. The most important result of the review was that the department split into two factions—roughly the “good” (nuclear reactor) guys and the “bad” (other) guys. The most personal consequence for me was that it strained the excellent relationship that I had had with Tom Pigford since 1959. Tom had just been elected to the National Academy of Engineering for his seminal work on the safety of nuclear reactors. Thus, he was clearly among the “good” guys, and I was not. The real problem was that there was precious little I could do to change the focus of the department’s research program, given the constraints on personnel and funding. We did bring on Allan F. Henry, a member of the review committee and a national expert on the design of nuclear power reactors, as a senior lecturer. Unfortunately, his presence was only temporary because the university would not approve a permanent position for him. We also made an agreement with the Taiwan Electric Company to develop a master’s degree program for their senior engineers.This turned out to be successful for as long as I was there. Another event that caused me even more trouble at the same time was an article that appeared in Life magazine on June 9, 1967. Sometime in the fall of 1966, I got a telephone call from Theodore H. White, an extremely competent and widely read political writer. His specialty was the chronicling of presidential elections. White told me that he had been asked to write an article concerning academics who had influence on the policies of the US government. The article would be entitled “The Action Intellectuals,” and he asked me to be one of the subjects. I do not know how my name came to his attention. But after a few minutes of listening to him, I agreed to participate. Early in 1967, White spent two days with me in Berkeley. We had a wideranging conversation, and a portion of it had to do with Livermore and our ac-

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Figure 5.1. The Life article that caused an uproar, 1967

tivities there. I have to confess that it was flattering to have someone of White’s stature pay me any attention at all. I told him that as far as nuclear weapons were concerned, I was a minor player at Livermore compared with people such as Johnny Foster, Harold Brown, and Jim Carothers. He said that he wanted academics and that none of those people had regular academic appointments. We spent a few hours at the Livermore Laboratory showing him what I could—which, given the security concerns, was not very much. Most of our conversations dealt with problems we were facing at Berkeley in higher education generally and the management of universities. In the published article, most of what I had discussed with White was omitted. I was clearly the least important of the fourteen “action intellectuals,” who included

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Wilbur Cohen, the secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare and a professor at the University of Michigan; Jerome Wiesner, who had been President Kennedy’s science adviser and was now president of MIT; the current national security advisor, Walt W. Rostow, a professor at MIT; and Charles J. Hitch, who had been an under secretary of defense and was now the president of the University of California. The worst part of the article was the caption that accompanied a photograph of me. It mentioned that I was employed by the University of California’s Nuclear Weapons Laboratory at Livermore and then outlined my views on nuclear weapons. The caption said nothing positive about my academic activities, but instead used a somewhat snide, offhand remark of mine concerning the reactions of some of my Berkeley colleagues to my association with nuclear weapons. The caption writer could not have known that it would infuriate some of my colleagues as well as the management of the university. All I could do was to wait for the storm to break. Sure enough, a day after the article was published, Dean Maslach asked me to see him. When I was ushered into his office, I could see he was angry. He asked me how this article had come to be written and why the university was mentioned only in connection with Livermore. And he wanted to know whether I had seen a draft of White’s article before it was published. I replied as best I could, as calmly as I could. I was in trouble, and the dean had a good point. I told him that I had not seen the article before it was published and that I had spent a great deal of time talking with White about our academic activities. I could not control what he wrote, and I was sorry that no mention was made of the Berkeley campus. I mumbled that it was probably true that I should not have agreed to the interview in the first place. In hindsight, it was indeed a big mistake. This conversation with the dean was probably the low point of my career at the University of California. I was not sure that I could survive the crisis that had been created by the review committee’s report and by the Life article. On the other hand, the TRIGA reactor went critical in August 1967, and that event at least was very positive. We drank the traditional bottle of Chianti at the moment that the self-sustaining nuclear reaction (the meaning of the word “critical” in this context) was achieved. This was a tradition initiated by the Italian Nobel laureate Enrico Fermi, who was the first to establish a self-sustained nuclear chain reaction. This event lifted my spirits, but with the start of the new semester in September 1967, more problems arose. As chairman of the department, I conducted personnel evaluations of our faculty members. In this instance, I had to deal with the promotion of a brilliant young assistant professor to the tenure rank of associate professor, and with the promotion of an associate professor to the rank of professor. These personnel cases were the first to be considered following the devastating critique of the review committee’s report. The associate professor’s case had been controversial in the past, but was

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relatively routine this time. After being held up for promotion a year earlier, he had taken an administrative position within the college in addition to his academic duties. He had done so well that his evaluation sailed through the review process. The case of the young assistant professor was more difficult. He was highly qualified, having received both his undergraduate and graduate education at MIT, where he earned a PhD in nuclear engineering. During his eight years as a member of the department, he had developed a well-funded (more than $100,000 a year from NASA) program to work on the development of ion rockets. In fact, he ran the largest graduate research program in the department. He had been selected as a White House Fellow for the 1965–66 academic year and served as a special assistant to the secretary of defense, Robert McNamara. Under normal circumstances, conducting his review would have been a straightforward exercise. But in the wake of the review committee’s report and the trouble that I was in with Dean Maslach over the magazine article, things were anything but simple. One problem was that the assistant professor’s work was not in the mainstream of nuclear engineering as defined by the report. My own position was weak because I was running a research program criticized by the report as well. Ultimately, the assistant professor was promoted. But my promotion recommendation letter was turned down by the dean’s office, with a request for more information that would strengthen the case. This happened several times, and I began to suspect that it was the dean’s way of teaching me a lesson in how to manage an academic department. Finally, I submitted an acceptable recommendation. Needless to say, the young assistant professor was very upset by the delays in reaching a final decision about his promotion. Ever since joining the Berkeley faculty in 1960, I had divided my time between the Livermore Laboratory and the Berkeley campus. I wanted to retain my connection with the nuclear weapons program because I very much hoped to continue working on projects connected with the US position in the Cold War. But I also wanted to teach, out of a strong desire to follow in the footsteps of my professor father. The coveted faculty appointment I held at the University of California, Berkeley, was clearly a way to accomplish this objective. During the Christmas–New Year break between 1967 and 1968, I began to realize that the employment model I had adopted might not be workable. Even though Livermore was operated by the University of California, many academic people at the UC campuses were opposed, in principle, to having the laboratory as part of the university. I had made a long-term commitment to employment with the university, but I began to question whether my implementation of this commitment was logical. To resolve my doubts, I began to look at alternatives and to consult friends whose judgment I trusted. Could I achieve my objectives by relinquishing my connection with Livermore and joining the campus full-time? The work that we were doing at Livermore on X-ray astronomy might be transferrable to the Berkeley campus, although I would

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have to give up other Livermore activities. I had some friends in the Physics Department, Kinsey Anderson and Stuart Bowyer, who were prominent researchers in space science. Anderson and I had performed some experiments and published the results. I explored the possibility of joining their department, but there was no place available. They suggested that I talk with Samuel Silver, the director of the university’s Space Science Laboratory. Established following the creation of NASA in 1958, the organization was now a going concern. Silver was a very distinguished member of the Berkeley faculty. He was a member of the Electrical Engineering Department and a world-renowned expert on antennas. As director of the Space Science Laboratory for several years, he had overseen the construction of a fine new facility on a hill to the east of the campus, just above the site of what is now the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Our first meeting, over lunch at the Berkeley Faculty Club, lasted for more than two hours. I was surprised and pleased to learn that Professor Silver was aware of our work on X-ray astronomy. He was also familiar with my problems in the Nuclear Engineering Department. Nothing definite came of the meeting, except that I found Sam Silver to be a very shrewd judge of my situation, and a strong friendship began that afternoon. A second possibility was for me to return to the Livermore Laboratory full-time. I had several long conversations with Edward Teller and Michael May, the director. From the point of view of my desire to combine an academic career with work related to strengthening the US position in the Cold War, Livermore was probably the best option. During my years as P-Division leader, I had helped Teller establish a small academic unit at the laboratory through the Davis campus of the University of California. This unit was called the Department of Applied Science (or, more familiarly, “Teller Tech”).The department was a unit of Davis’s Engineering College, with faculty at Davis and at Livermore. Teller had served as the original chairman of the department, but Albert Kirschbaum was chairman in 1968. Kirschbaum was an old friend who had been the N-Division leader when I joined the laboratory, in 1955. When N-Division was merged with P-Division to create E-Division, he joined the Department of Applied Science as one of the founding members. Teller, May, and Kirschbaum all responded in the same way when I spoke with them: if I joined the Department of Applied Science at Livermore, I would be able to fulfill the desire to combine academic work with research related to the Cold War. This was definitely an attractive proposition. So in the spring of 1968, I was leaning toward moving my activities back to Livermore. I had spent three years (1961–64) commuting to Livermore from Berkeley, so I knew that making the drive every day was possible. Since making this change would not necessitate our family moving to a new city, it would clearly be the least disruptive option. Against the backdrop of the tumultuous national events of 1968, I pondered what to do next. During that time, I had three long conversations, one each with

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Teller, May, and Silver. Edward urged me very strongly to come to Livermore fulltime and to become involved in the laboratory’s leadership. He had a strong personality, and it was hard to argue with the points he made. The conversation with May was more interesting. I went through my main arguments, and after listening to them, he asked me a question that I thought at first was unrelated: “If you return to the laboratory, would you eventually want to become director? You have been a successful division leader, and at some point you would very probably become a candidate for the job.” I thought about it for a while and said, “Yes, I would like to do that.” “Then you would have to learn how to get along with Edward,” Mike replied. I told Mike, “I did that during my year as his assistant in Berkeley,” and Mike replied, “All right,” and left it there. I have to confess that I was puzzled by the drift of Mike’s remark about Edward, but I did not think anything about it at the time. Some weeks after my conversation with Mike, I learned, quite inadvertently, what he had really meant. In 1962, I acquired my first sailboat, a fifteen-year-old twenty-two-foot wooden boat with a good auxiliary engine. Bun and the children learned their sailing skills on this boat, which we named the Moby Dick. In 1964, we exchanged the Moby Dick for a brand-new twenty-five-foot fiberglass Cal 25 sloop. We named it Moby Dick II, and it was also a good racing boat. It was in this way that I became a member of the sailboat-racing community of San Francisco. From this association I came to know Arthur T. Biehl, who was one of the most prominent racing sailors in the San Francisco Bay—and an associate director of the Livermore Laboratory. Biehl invited me to crew for him in several races, and I apparently did well enough that he started to take me on ocean races, which were popular among the better sailors. One of these was the Anacapa Island race, and I was in the crew of five as a foredeck hand. The boat was a high-tech racer, so I was pleased to be considered good enough to be on board. The race, which took two days and one night, started at Marina del Rey in Los Angeles and then went around Anacapa at the eastern end of the Channel Islands. During the night watch, when Art and I were sailing the boat, we began to talk about Livermore. I told him about my conversation with Mike May. Art’s response was surprising: “The only real director at Livermore is Edward Teller. If you aspire to be director, then you need to understand that. Harold [Brown] and Johnny [Foster] were lucky that they could escape to Washington at the right time.” “There may be something to what you say, but that does not mean Edward will always want to do that,” I replied. Art replied: “Livermore is Edward’s creation and he’ll never leave. There is no one who comes close to his prestige, and so if you ever become director and you push something at Livermore that Edward doesn’t like, you’ll destroy your relationship with him and eventually lose your job as director.”

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This startled me, but gave me something to think about. What Biehl said was plausible. He was much closer to the laboratory’s management than I was. My relationship with Edward was very valuable: he had taught me much about physics, and there was a family relationship in that Edward had been my father’s student. I had known Edward for thirteen years, yet both Mike and Art saw something that I had not: if I went to work at Livermore, I would eventually get crosswise with Edward.

The Decision to Leave the University of California Sometime after the race, I went to see Sam Silver again. He started by saying that he thought I should move my research activities to the Berkeley campus. He could offer me a staff position at the Space Science Laboratory, but not an academic appointment in the Physics Department. Sam also thought that given my problem with my colleagues and Dean Maslach, I should resign my faculty position in nuclear engineering. He told me forcefully that my business model of mixing Livermore with Berkeley would not work. He claimed that NASA was as large a factor in the Cold War as the Atomic Energy Commission, which supported the Livermore Laboratory, or even the US military. Since we were in the midst of the space race, I agreed with him. Silver’s arguments were strong, and the staff position he offered me carried a somewhat higher salary than my current faculty position did. Sam made one other point: I should seriously consider leaving the University of California altogether—both Berkeley and Livermore. I had not considered this option at all because of my long association with the university: three and a half years as an undergraduate, three years as a full-time employee at Livermore, and eight years as a lecturer and professor. I had developed an intense loyalty to the school. This meeting with Sam Silver was a watershed event. He opened lines of thinking that I had not considered—particularly the possibility of leaving the university. My first opportunity to test his idea came in the summer of 1968. In 1967, Teller had secured an appointment for me on the US Air Force Scientific Advisory Board. Another member was Abraham Hertzberg of the University of Washington, who was a distinguished aerospace engineer. At the meeting of the board in the summer of 1968, he asked me whether I would be interested in becoming dean of engineering at the University of Washington. I knew about the university because we had taken summer sailing vacations in Puget Sound in 1964 and 1965. I had also befriended Albert L. Babb, who was chairman of nuclear engineering at the university. Hertzberg invited me to visit the university, give a lecture, and consider this opportunity. I was not a formal candidate, but Abe saw to it that I met with senior faculty members who would be involved in the search for a new dean. I was flattered by all the attention and thought quite seriously about the prospect of becoming a candidate, though I eventually decided not to. It was good to be reminded that there was a world outside California.

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In the autumn of 1968, the nation’s attention was focused on the upcoming presidential election. Late in October, I received a call from James M. Beggs, the associate administrator of NASA’s Office of Advanced Research and Technology (OART). He wanted to know whether I would be interested in becoming director of the NASA–Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California. My first reaction was to tell him that I was not qualified for the position, since I had little experience in the aerospace business. Beggs replied that some NASA people were impressed with our work at Livermore on X-ray astronomy, which was how my name had surfaced during the search process. I told Beggs that I would think about it. I called Sam Silver and asked whether he had put my name in the hopper for the Ames job. He said no but then strongly urged me to think about becoming a candidate. I took his advice. I called Beggs and asked to be put on the list of those who were interested in the job. Thus began the process that eventually led to my resignation from the University of California in February 1969. The period of due diligence began. The personnel people at NASA Headquarters in Washington sent me extensive material about the NASA–Ames Research Center. I made a trip to Mountain View (on the San Francisco Peninsula) one rainy Saturday in December to look at the neighborhood and to drive around Ames. It was a large operation occupying more than three hundred acres at the very south end of San Francisco Bay. Based on the material I had received from NASA, I knew that more than two thousand people worked there. I talked with Harry Goett, a longtime Ames staff member and later the director of the NASA– Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland. Goett had retired from NASA and was living in Los Altos near Ames. At Beggs’s suggestion, I spent two hours with Goett, who provided a comprehensive description of both NASA and Ames. It was a very useful visit that provided me with much food for thought. I began to think about what I would do if I were offered the job. What would happen to our family? How would the children react? Could I do the Ames job by commuting the forty miles from Berkeley to Mountain View? Could Bun find a good job in the neighborhood? Finally, I still was supervising two students, Raphael Kasper and Joe Upton, who had not yet completed their dissertations. What could I do about them? In addition, there were more personal matters to consider. Was I copping out? Was I running away from failures? During the student-faculty rebellion, I was on the losing side in the Academic Senate. The department that I headed had suffered a devastating review, and I had made serious mistakes, such as agreeing to be part of the article in Life. What about loyalty to the institution? Should I stay and fight, or should I cut and run? Just before Christmas, about a week after the trip to Mountain View, I was invited to go to Washington to meet some senior people in NASA. I was far enough along in the decision-making process to be fairly certain that I would leave the

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University of California whether or not I was offered the job at Ames. The strongest arguments that led me in this direction came from my wife. She scrutinized the questions I was asking and talked about things that I had not considered. First, my annual salary at Ames would be $36,000, rather than the $23,000 that I was earning as a professor. She added that I had done well at Livermore and was comfortable there—and Ames would be a similar environment—whereas I had not been truly happy as a faculty member in Berkeley. I could not disagree with her judgments, so I began to make plans to leave the university.

6 The NASA–Ames Research Center and the Cold War

Sometime early in December 1968, I called Jim Beggs and told him that I was interested in exploring the possibility of joining NASA as the director of the NASA–Ames Research Center. It was hard for me to say this, given my longterm association with the University of California. I agreed to visit Washington sometime before Christmas to talk to some people at NASA. Before then, I once again had a luncheon meeting with Samuel Silver. Sam was enthusiastic about my possible NASA opportunity and besides talking with Beggs, he also told me that I should meet two other NASA people: Homer Newell, who was the chief scientist, and John Naugle, the associate administrator for science and applications. This was good advice: in addition to being a large aeronautical research center, Ames also had a small but significant space science and applications program. I flew to Washington on December 21, 1968, which was the day that Apollo 8, the first mission to carry a human being around the moon, was launched. I arrived at Federal Office Building 5 (FOB5), then a NASA building on Independence Avenue, at about nine in the morning and headed to Mr. Beggs’s office. His executive assistant, Jo DiBella (who would later become a good friend), told me that Mr. Beggs was not available but that I should visit Charles William Harper, whose office was two doors down the hall. I had a sickening feeling that things were going awry. Bill Harper greeted me in a very friendly manner and said that we had two things in common: we were both graduates of the University of California, Berkeley, and we were both interested in Ames, where he had spent more than twenty years. After looking at my background and résumé, he decided that I was the right

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person to run the place. Harper had a wry sense of humor; my “interest” in Ames was tentative, whereas his was a strong, long-term commitment. At the end of our hour-long conversation, Bill and I were on a first-name basis. It was clear to me that his job was very important for the overall success of Ames. His title was deputy associate administrator for advanced research and technology (aeronautics), which meant that he was in charge of NASA’s aeronautical research and development program. This effort was concentrated largely in the NASA research centers—Ames, Langley, and Lewis—which had been transferred from the old National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics to NASA in 1958. Thus, Harper would have an important influence over more than half the work being carried on at Ames. During this meeting, I also learned that Bill Harper was an avid sailor, and I told him about our Cal-25 sailboat, Moby Dick, which we kept in the Alameda Estuary. At the end of our conversation, I asked Bill when I could meet with Beggs. He told me that he did not know, because Beggs was being interviewed by the personnel people in the White House for a presidential appointment in the newly elected Nixon administration. I was disappointed at not getting to meet the person who had initiated the discussion about my joining NASA. My face must have shown my chagrin, so Bill suggested that I stay in Washington for another day and come to a dinner party at his house the next evening (December 23), at which Beggs and his wife would be present. Since I had made the trip to Washington to meet with Beggs, I accepted. I then told Bill that my friend Sam Silver had recommended that I meet with Homer Newell and John Naugle. Would it be possible for me to meet with them as well? Naugle was not available, but an appointment with Newell was arranged. In addition, Harper told me that Bruce T. Lundin, the director of the NASA–Lewis Research Center, in Cleveland, Ohio, was in town and that I should meet with him too.The Lewis center was named for the most distinguished director of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), George W. Lewis. When John Glenn left the US Senate, the Ohio Legislature petitioned Congress to change the center’s name to honor Glenn. I met with Homer Newell in his office the next morning for more than an hour. He was a distinguished scientist who had a PhD from the University of Wisconsin– Madison and who had spent many years at the US Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) in Washington. He was a member of the NRL group that established the NASA–Goddard Space Flight Center and was now the principal scientific adviser to NASA’s managers. He quietly but compellingly laid out the scientific program of NASA as he saw it.There would be more robotic missions to the planets following the first flybys of Mars,Venus, and Mercury, which had been conducted during the 1960s. There would be orbital platforms for astronomical research that would eliminate the distorting effects of Earth’s atmosphere, and there would be an effort to explore Earth itself from space. It was a fascinating discussion. Bill Harper, Bruce Lundin, and I went to lunch at a restaurant near FOB5. Lundin was a tall raw-boned man with what could almost be called an “aw shucks”

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manner. His demeanor hid a keen intellect and a sterling reputation as an expert on rocket propulsion. The institution he headed had a long history of innovation, both in aircraft propulsion and in rocket technology. He talked at length about the aeronautical activities of NASA. I had not heard much detail about any of these things, so I was somewhat overwhelmed by the amount of information to take in. In the evening, I showed up at the Harpers’ house on Reservoir Road at the appointed hour. The house had an understated elegance that was typical of Georgetown. Bill met me at the door with a powerful martini in his left hand and a firm handshake with his right. He introduced me to his wife,Vicki. “Vicki” was a nickname derived from her maiden name,Vickers; her real name was Eleanor. Jim and Mary Beggs were standing in front of the fireplace. Jim was tall and gray-haired, with a strong face and a very distinguished look. Before joining NASA two years earlier, he had been a senior executive at the Westinghouse electronics plant in Baltimore. Mary Beggs was one of the most striking-looking women I have ever met. Almost as tall as her husband, she was blond with very blue eyes. I learned quickly that she was active in Republican Party politics. At the time, the Beggses were living in Howard Country, Maryland, where she was serving as chairman of the Republican Party county committee. Bruce Lundin also attended the party. The talk before dinner turned quickly to politics, the primary business in Washington. I learned that Jim Beggs’s nomination to become under secretary of transportation would be announced in a few days and that Bruce Lundin was in town because he would be replacing Beggs in his NASA job on an “acting” basis. There was also much speculation about the future of the acting NASA administrator, Thomas O. Paine. Paine had been appointed deputy administrator early in 1968 by President Johnson and had assumed the top position as acting administrator in October 1968 when James E. Webb, NASA’s potent second administrator, resigned. Webb, the driving force behind the Apollo program since 1961, had resigned in protest of President Johnson’s termination of Apollo missions to the moon beyond the seventh flight (Apollo 17), which was scheduled for late 1972. Paine was a Democrat, and there was great uncertainty and concern about his future. The first landing on the moon (Apollo 11) was scheduled for July 1969, and there was a conviction that experienced people should be occupying the key positions during what was certain to be a critical time. The talk then turned to politics more generally. By this time, I was working on my second Harper martini, which had an even higher vapor pressure than the first one. I did not recognize many of the names mentioned, but it quickly became clear that the divisions within the Republican Party between the Goldwater and the Rockefeller factions created during the 1964 convention still ran deep. Jim and Mary Beggs were strong Rockefeller people. They were pleased that the new vice president, Maryland governor Spiro T. Agnew, was a Rockefeller man. Many years later, Jim Beggs’s affiliation with this faction of the party would have tragic consequences.

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Dinner included some truly excellent wine, and later there was more political talk over brandy and cigars—it was still OK to smoke in 1968! Given all the drinks, I was no longer very sharp. It had begun to snow, and when the time came to leave, Bill and Vicki invited me to stay with them overnight rather than risk sliding around unfamiliar streets in my rental car. I gratefully accepted the offer, which sealed what eventually became a strong and lasting friendship. The Apollo 8 Flight and Genesis At breakfast the next morning, Bill told me that the Apollo 8 mission would be in orbit around the moon that day. The three astronauts, Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, and Bill Anders, would be making a television broadcast after they had completed their journey around the moon. We drove to his office to watch the show. At the appointed hour, the flickering, blurry images of the three astronauts became visible. They showed some pictures of the moon and a particularly spectacular picture of Earth “rising” above the moon’s horizon. Then the picture disappeared from the screen and Frank Borman’s voice came through: “For all the people on Earth, the crew of Apollo 8 has a message.” Then Borman started to recite the first verse of Genesis: “In the beginning God created the heaven and the Earth. And the Earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.” Jim Lovell continued: “And God said, let there be light: And there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good; and God divided the light from darkness. And God called the light Day and the darkness He called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day. And God said: Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. And God made the firmament and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters above the firmament: And it was so.” Finally it was Bill Anders’s turn: “And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day. And God said: Let the waters under the heaven be gathered onto one place, and let dry land appear. And it was so. And God called the dry land Earth: And the gathering of the waters he called Seas: And God saw that it was good.” When the recitation was finished, Frank Borman’s voice came on again: “From the crew of Apollo 8, we wish you good night, good luck, and Merry Christmas, and God bless all of you, all of you on this good Earth.” It was a truly awesome moment, and I have to confess that there were tears in my eyes. All of us in the room realized that we had just lived through a historic event, and the familiar lines from the King James Version chastened us just a little bit even as we were celebrating the moment of triumph. The words from Genesis kept going through my head later that day when I boarded the airplane at Dulles for the trip home to California.

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Even though I was very tired, we celebrated Christmas morning at home with the children and then drove to Hayward for Christmas dinner. Bun and I talked about the prospect of moving from the Berkeley hills to the South Bay, forty miles away. We had to consider how such a move would change our lives. It was, of course, premature, because I did not have a firm job offer from NASA. Joining the NASA–Ames Research Center Sometime during the Christmas vacation, Bun and I drove out to take a look at the NASA–Ames Research Center. It was raining when we arrived in Mountain View. We drove slowly, twice, around the center’s perimeter road. The facility was impressive. There were many large structures, which I assumed were wind tunnels, shops, and laboratory buildings. The property covered about 350 acres, and the east side fronted on the runways of the US Naval Air Station at Moffett Field. As we began our drive back to Berkeley, we were startled to see a rainbow arcing over the Ames installations. Amused, we wondered whether it was some kind of omen. We celebrated the coming of 1969 on January 1 with the Thorpe family in Hayward. It was somewhat subdued because 1968 had been a very bad year, with first and foremost the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy, as well as riots and the violence surrounding the 1968 presidential campaign. With some misgivings, I had voted for Richard Nixon because I thought that he might bring some new ideas for dealing with the problems facing the nation. More specifically, I did not think that his opponent, Vice Pres. Hubert Humphrey, could negotiate a satisfactory end to the war in Vietnam. Early in January, I was invited to visit the NASA–Manned Spacecraft Center (MSC) in Houston to meet with Thomas O. Paine, the acting administrator of NASA. Paine was a distinguished scientist and engineer who specialized in metallurgy. He had earned a PhD at Stanford University and then joined the General Electric Company. During World War II, he served with distinction as a submarine officer. At the time of his appointment as the deputy administrator of NASA, he was the director of General Electric’s Research Center in Santa Barbara, California. At our meeting, Paine came straight to the point and outlined his plans for NASA in the coming months. The most important of these was the landing of the Apollo 11 astronauts on the moon, scheduled for July 1969. Paine had been asked by the president-elect to start the process for the development of a post-Apollo space program. He mentioned NASA’s aeronautical research and stressed how important it was for NASA to maintain a strong relationship with the military in order for the United States to maintain its superiority in air warfare. I was impressed by Tom Paine and his plans. I asked him whether he thought that he would be kept on by the new president. He laughed and told me that he would be kept on until the first attempt at a moon landing. If it failed, then the new administration would blame the Democrats, and if it succeeded, then Pres-

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ident Nixon would take the credit. He told me that he would like to stay on as administrator but honestly did not know what Nixon would decide to do. There were two other people that Bill Harper had recommended that I meet with to learn more about Ames. One was Harry Goett, who had just finished some years of service as the director of the NASA–Goddard Space Flight Center and before that had spent more than twenty years at Ames. The other one was H. Julian Allen, who was the current director at Ames. Goett provided me with a very detailed description of the facilities and the capabilities at Ames. In addition, he talked candidly about the skills, character, and background of some of the senior people at Ames. His most important advice was for Ames to maintain strong programs in both technical areas for which NASA had the charter. “Never forget,” he told me, “that the first ‘A’ in NASA stands for ‘aeronautics.’” During the entire twelve years that I eventually spent as a member of NASA, I never forgot Harry Goett’s advice. H. Julian Allen was a very different person. I had heard his name in connection with the work he had done on atmospheric entry vehicles. One of the really important technical efforts during the early years of the Cold War was to prevent the nuclear warheads mounted on intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) from burning up when they reentered the atmosphere at very high speeds. Allen and his colleagues at Ames had worked out a method that was used on the early Atlas ICBMs. A blunt reentry body was protected by a heat shield that absorbed, by the process of ablation, the heat generated during reentry. I remember seeing these blunt reentry shields on the first Atlas ICBMs. The same reentry system was used on all the NASA spacecraft in the 1960s and the 1970s designed to carry people into space. Sometime in mid-January 1969 on a very rainy Saturday, I drove to Palo Alto to visit Allen, whose home was on Melville Street. Bill Harper had told me that Allen had the nickname “Harvey,” which he much preferred to his given name, “H. Julian.” (I never found out what the “H.” stood for.) A tall, stoutly built man greeted me with an infectious grin and ushered me into the house. In his spacious living room, which was somewhat cluttered—characteristic, perhaps, of someone who was a lifelong bachelor—there was an excellent stereo system. Harvey’s first question was whether I knew what piece was playing when we entered the room. Fortunately, I recognized it, so I said, “That is the overture to Mozart’s Magic Flute.” Harvey said, “Good. What will you have to drink?” It was about three in the afternoon, which was a little bit early for me, but I thought it better not to argue, so I said, “Jack Daniel’s on the rocks.” Harvey fixed two large whiskeys and ice. Before he sat down, he put another record on the turntable. It turned out to be a collection of Vivaldi concertos, and as luck would have it, I knew the first piece—a famous concerto for three violins. This went on for some time, and I thanked my lucky star that both my mother and father were music fanatics and that I had learned much about the classical repertoire. About fifteen or twenty minutes later,

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Harvey—by this time, after our second whiskey, we were on a first-name basis— put on a trumpet concerto that I did not recognize. (It turned out to be one by Albinoni, and I consoled myself with the thought that he was a relatively obscure composer.) The music kept playing, but Harvey stopped asking me to identify the pieces. The conversation then turned to politics. Harvey asked me what I thought about the new administration. I told him that I thought Hubert Humphrey was the better man, but that I had voted for Richard Nixon because Humphrey carried too much baggage to be able to initiate a fresh approach to the conflict in Vietnam. We spent some minutes talking about politics both domestic and international. I agreed with most of his well-formed and thoughtful views on the matters that we discussed. Harvey had joined the Ames Aeronautical Laboratory in 1940 as one of the founding staff members and had participated in some of the work on military aircraft during World War II. He told me about the role that Ames had played during the war and stressed the importance of the support it rendered to the military. By then it was about five o’clock, and this was the first time that the Ames Research Center was mentioned by its incumbent director. The whiskeys also kept coming. Harvey asked me what I knew about aerodynamics and fluid mechanics, and I confessed that it was not much. My experience at Livermore had to do with “fluids” at very high temperatures and pressures. He asked me more questions about what I had been doing at Livermore, and I explained as much as I could without touching on classified subjects. When I mentioned the Boltzmann equation, which we used to calculate the transport phenomena at high pressures, and also the equations of state that we had to employ, we spent another hour and a half discussing these technical points. There were also more whiskeys. By now, I had been with Harvey for more than four hours, and not much had been said about the situation at Ames. I began to realize that Harvey was more interested in figuring out what made me tick than in answering any questions I might have about Ames. It was close to eight o’clock before I was finally able to leave. Harvey Allen clearly had great technical competence and insight. If such people worked at Ames, that was, to me, a very positive factor. Harvey also had a great sense of humor. After I had accepted the job at Ames, John W. ( Jack) Boyd, who became both a close friend and a most valued collaborator, told me the following story: When Harvey arrived in his office at Ames on the Monday morning after his interview with me, there was a gaggle of people in his office. All of them wanted to know how the interview went. According to Jack, Harvey said, “Mark is a little weak on music, but he can drink!” About a week after my meeting with Harvey Allen, Bill Harper called to tell me that in a few days I would receive a letter from Tom Paine offering me the Ames job. Bun and I now had to make a decision, and it turned out to be agonizing. I had spent almost two decades at the University of California: as an undergraduate

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student, as an employee of the university’s nuclear weapons laboratory at Livermore, and as a member of the faculty at the Berkeley campus. I had experienced problems with some of my faculty colleagues because of my connection with the nuclear weapons program. But the election of Ronald Reagan as governor and the appointment of Charles Hitch as president had improved the management of the university. Time would surely calm matters on the Berkeley campus, so the problems there could not be the only reason for making the change. Furthermore, I had to think of my graduate students. If I left, I would have to make sure that all of them would be able to continue with their PhD programs. I also thought about Livermore and what I would be leaving there if I went to Ames. Most of my friends thought it would be a mistake for me to leave. I had a long conversation with Edward Teller. He provided a very evenhanded comparison of all the pros and cons. He hoped that I would stay at Livermore, but said that I should do what I thought was the right thing.This was an especially difficult interview for me, because I had been closely associated with Teller since 1955. By mid-February, it was time to make my decision. Bun was in favor of moving, in spite of some of the problems that it might cause for the children. She felt that I was not happy at Berkeley and that there would be new opportunities at Ames. Bun has an acute sense of judgment about the important issues in life, and her influence was ultimately decisive. My argument for moving was related to the Cold War as much as anything else. The opportunity to become involved in the development of US airpower was important. Also, the “race to the moon” had become another battleground in the Cold War. Finally, and Bun was particularly strong on this point, it was an opportunity for me to run a big organization. She thought that I would be good at it. So Bun and I decided to take the risk and make the move to Ames. I informed Bill Harper of our decision. He told me that he was delighted and that Tom Paine wanted to come to Ames for the announcement. As Bill put it, Tom wanted to “sprinkle holy water” on me to get things at Ames on the right track. On the last day of February 1969, at a brief ceremony in the Ames auditorium, Tom Paine introduced me as the new director to a group of about one hundred senior people. Bun watched me take the oath required of all federal employees to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, so help me God.” On the drive back to Berkeley, we reviewed the events of the past few months and hoped that things would go well. I was elated during the short ceremony, but second thoughts about the decision to leave the University of California would trouble me for some weeks to come.

My First Moves as Director The NASA–Ames Research Center was established in 1940 as a research laboratory to be operated by the NACA as the Ames Aeronautical Laboratory. At the time, it

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was obvious that the war in Europe would eventually spread. President Roosevelt and his administration took a number of steps to prepare the United States for the day when the nation would join the conflict. One of these was to strengthen military aviation. Thus, in addition to the Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory at Hampton,Virginia, two new aeronautical laboratories were established: the Lewis Flight Propulsion Laboratory in Cleveland and the one I was about to head in California.The location of the Ames Laboratory was determined by four considerations. First, inexpensive electric power was available from the recently completed Hetch Hetchy dam project, which was necessary to run the large wind tunnel complex that would be built at Ames. The second consideration was proximity to major universities. From the beginning, Ames was intended to be an institution that would concentrate on fundamental research. It established strong and continuing relationships with Stanford University, which was only about five miles away, and the University of California. Third, the lab needed to have access to an airfield—in this case, the naval air station at Moffett Field. Ames operated a number of experimental aircraft that were housed in a hangar right on the runway. Finally, the location had to be away from the East Coast. Even though the United States was not yet at war, there was a feeling that the Germans might attack important installations with long-range bombers or by submarines with powerful deck guns. At that point, the management of the NACA had not contemplated a war with Japan. Until July 1, 1969, I would spend two or three days a week at Ames and the rest of my time in Berkeley. I had much to do to close out things in Berkeley and at Livermore. My first concern was my remaining graduate students. Since 1960, I had supervised five PhD students, and now two would have to be shifted to other faculty members. Leaving my students was the most difficult part of the move to Ames. I could not escape the feeling that I had broken a promise. I did the best I could to fulfill my responsibilities, but in some cases I could do nothing but apologize for causing delays and difficulties in their education. The leadership of the College of Engineering was not happy with this state of affairs—not many tenured full professors at Berkeley resign their appointments the way I had. There were unavoidable tensions on both sides. My future was at Ames, so I began to concentrate on understanding the institution and making some decisions. First, I asked Jack Boyd to stay on as research assistant to the director. Next, I asked Clarence A. (Sy) Syvertson to become deputy director. Sy had joined the research center after earning a master’s degree in aeronautics at the University of Minnesota shortly after Ames was established, and had served with distinction in a number of positions. When I arrived at Ames, Sy was serving as the director of astronautics and as the acting deputy director. I simply removed the “acting” from Sy’s title and asked Glen Goodwin to replace Sy as the director of astronautics. Glen would supervise all of our spaceflight-related research.

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About three months after my arrival at Ames, Russell Robinson, who was serving as the director of aeronautics, told me that he wanted to retire. Russ was one of the original employees at Ames—he had been present at the ground breaking on December 20, 1939. From a programmatic viewpoint, the directorate of aeronautics was the most important unit at Ames, involving more than two-thirds of the center’s employees. Thus, Robinson’s retirement would force me to make the first really critical personnel decision. There was no natural successor in place. I consulted a number of knowledgeable people at Ames and some former Ames staff members who were now on the faculty at Stanford. I finally interviewed Leonard Roberts, who was the chief of the Mission Analysis Division (MAD) at Ames. This unit reported directly to NASA Headquarters in Washington. The MAD had developed some trajectory analyses that were employed in the manned spaceflight programs, including the Apollo missions to the moon. Len Roberts was a Welshman who had earned his PhD under the supervision of Sir James Lighthill at the University of Bristol. He had worked in aeroacoustics and had made some brilliant contributions in the theory of noise generation. Roberts had come to the United States to work at the Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory; he eventually wound up at Ames. Impressed by Len, I offered him the job. He accepted, and Leonard and his wife, Barbara, would become lifelong friends. Perhaps my most important personnel decision in the first month at Ames was to retain the woman who had served Harvey Allen as secretary and confidential assistant, Edith Watson. Edie Watson was a gracious lady originally from Georgia who was by then a longtime Californian. Her husband was serving as the civilian chief personnel officer at Moffett Field. Edie was simply indispensable to me during my first months at Ames, and she became a valuable collaborator during the initial years of my time there. An Existential Threat In spite of the excitement that was building about the trip to the moon, President Johnson had other problems. The year 1968 was a pivotal one because Congress had approved much of his proposed Great Society legislation. But there was no visible end to the conflict in Vietnam. On March 31, the president delivered an address from the White House in which he told the American people that he would not run for reelection. In addition, he said that he would concentrate on making peace in Vietnam for the remainder of his term. The speech was a watershed. It was all but unprecedented for a sitting president to announce that he would not seek reelection. In addition, the speech signaled a reversal of US policy in Vietnam and had a number of other important consequences. The Great Society initiatives would have a major influence on the nation and would remain a high priority for the president. And the war in Vietnam would still be expensive, both in arms and in human casualties. From the point of view of

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Figure 6.1. George M. Low, deputy administrator of NASA, 1969–76. His superb leadership was critically important to the formulation of NASA’s post-Apollo space program.

NASA’s management, the fear was that there would be funding reductions in spite of the successful work that the agency had performed since its founding, almost ten years earlier. In fact, the reality of this concern was reflected in the NASA budgets between 1968 ($4.722 billion) and 1971 ($3.382 billion). About three weeks after I arrived at Ames, I had a lengthy conversation with Sy Syvertson, the new deputy director. I was still living in Berkeley and had not yet started full-time at Ames, but the meeting lasted long enough that I decided to sleep on the couch in my office rather than drive the thirty-five miles home. Our discussion ranged over everything that could happen to the center as a result of the likely budget reductions to come. I learned a great deal, and we both felt that our first step should be to fly to Washington and visit George Low, the deputy administrator of NASA. We made the trip sometime in the middle of March 1969. I had never met George, but I knew his reputation as a brilliant engineer and a superb manager.The three of us met in his office, and he came immediately to the point. Three NASA centers would be at risk: the NASA–Electronics Research Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts; the NASA–George C. Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama; and NASA–Ames. When George finished talking, I started to mumble and Sy quickly stepped in. I heaved a sigh of relief; having been at NASA only a few weeks, I really could not tell the deputy administrator what he could or could not do. Sy began describing the critical functions being performed at Ames. Since the Vietnam War was at its height, he listed items that were essential to support our military position, which

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involved much of the Ames aeronautics program. He mentioned helicopters first and pointed out that testing at Ames involved aircraft armed with combat guns and rockets, as well as ones used to transport injured soldiers. Sy went on to talk about commercial aviation, pointing out that commercial aircraft were now the nation’s second-largest export after agricultural products. Finally, he mentioned the work done on human factors in spaceflight. I did not know it at the time, but this field was of particular interest to George because he had a son who wanted to be an astronaut—an ambition that G. David Low later achieved. Sy’s masterly description of Ames impressed George, which was obvious from the questions he asked us. Our trip to Washington was important. We learned that Ames might be slated for closure. But since two other centers were in the same position, we could take steps to make it less likely that Ames would be eliminated. Sy and I concluded that the threat was “fairly valid” and that we would act accordingly. It was this term that we used in a special edition of the Ames Astrogram, the in-house newsletter that was distributed to all employees. Being a stranger to the institution gave me an advantage in seeing problems that needed to be addressed. As an academic, I was a stranger not just to Ames but also to the governmental way of doing things. For example, my leadership style could fairly be described as aggressive, and some employees viewed it negatively as “destroying the last vestiges of the old pre-NASA intimacy.” Others considered my methods a breath of fresh air in an institution that had become stodgy. Paradoxically, perhaps, one thing that made my job at Ames easier was the discussion at NASA Headquarters about whether to close the center. I thought that Sy Syvertson had convinced George Low to give us time to make improvements, and the sense that the center might be on the chopping block motivated the staff to listen to us. I was used to long hours from my experience at Livermore and elsewhere— twelve-hour days were not unusual, nor were seven-day workweeks. We expected the same level of dedication from our employees, a work ethic not always found among career civil servants. Another of my techniques was to fire off numerous detailed memos, which became known as “Hans-o-grams,” to staff members at all levels. In addition, a committee was set up that involved key researchers in planning for the institution; debates at committee meetings were often fierce. The goal was to involve numerous employees in the management of the center, even if they did not have management titles. Another important move was to institute research reviews in which every section head had to account for the work in his area to me and to his directorate.These periodic self-examinations could be traumatic for the presenters. In the same vein, there were frequent project reviews. We also revamped the procurement system. Whereas formerly one system had served the whole center, each major research area was given its own procurement branch. Finally, we added a directorate for research support. It oversaw computer operations, technical services, and facilities and equipment. Fortunately, we found Loren Bright to head the new organization.

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Not everything was changed. Harvey Allen’s practice of using technical research assistants was maintained, and they provided invaluable help in getting me up to speed on aeronautical technology. Further, the assistantships came to be seen as training positions for younger researchers who might be considering a move into management. Outside Ames, I worked to make the center indispensable to NASA. I “descended on Washington both frequently and persuasively,” according to one of my friends there, regularly taking the red-eye from San Francisco, attending meetings all day, and then flying back in the evening. I often made such trips twice a week. The overall plan for Ames had three parts: to obtain unique facilities that would attract important research projects, to foster outside associations and joint research programs (thus making it difficult for NASA Headquarters to cut back on our work), and to develop specific areas of expertise (thus protecting us against closure by making it harder for NASA to claim that other research centers could duplicate our work). The following is a list of some of the important facilities in place when I assumed my position as director of Ames. • The world’s largest wind tunnel, which has a closed-circuit test section 40 feet high and 80 feet wide, and a top speed capability of about 200 miles an hour. Built in the 1940s, it was large enough to test at full scale all US fighter aircraft developed during World War II. Even though the tunnel’s speed capability is relatively low, it is still in use because all aircraft, no matter their top speed, take off and land at low speeds. During the 1980s, a large open-throat section, 80 feet high and 120 feet wide, was added to the wind tunnel. • A 60-megawatt arc jet facility, a “wind tunnel” designed to test the heat shields that protect spacecraft and ICBM payloads when entering Earth’s (or another planet’s) atmosphere at many times the speed of sound. This facility was most useful in the development of the reusable surface insulation that was developed to protect the space shuttle during its return to Earth. • A 3.5-foot supersonic wind tunnel, which was designed to test small models of aircraft and missiles that fly at up to five times the speed of sound. Its test section is 3.5 feet in diameter—hence the name. • The Unitary Plan Wind Tunnel, a large, complex facility built under the Unitary Wind Tunnel Plan Act of 1948. This law was to ensure that the United States would be the world leader in aeronautical technology for the foreseeable future. Its three test sections were driven by a common system to produce the airflow. Each “leg” operates in a different speed regime, ranging from high subsonic (0.5 to 0.9 times the speed of sound) to low supersonic (1.0 to about 2.0 times the speed of sound). This facility was used to test most of the civil and military aircraft developed in the second half of the twentieth century.

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• The Flight Simulator for Advanced Aircraft (FSAA). Ames developed facilities that simulate the cockpit environment, in order to test the flying qualities of aircraft and to train pilots. The FSAA was the most advanced flight simulator in the world at the time. It could simulate cockpit motion, noise, instruments, and visual scenes (created by a camera moving over small realistic scenes of the kind used by people who build small-scale model trains). A large computer drove the FSAA, which could be programmed to simulate the flying qualities of the airplane being tested. The FSAA made Ames the leading research institution for the study of aircraft’s flying and handling qualities. The widely used Cooper-Harper Flight Quality Scale was developed at Ames by George Cooper, the center’s longtime chief test pilot, and was later revised in 1969 by Robert Harper of the Cornell Aeronautical Laboratory. Without the 40-by80-foot wind tunnel and the FSAA, the creation of such a scale would have been impossible. • The Large Centrifuge. Centrifuges that can generate powerful centrifugal forces are used to simulate the forces generated when manned spacecraft are launched and when they return. One of the largest centrifuges of this kind was built at Ames during the early 1960s to test the ability of Apollo astronauts to function at force levels up to seven times the force of gravity, which they would experience when reentering Earth’s atmosphere.

It took a large number of people to run an operation such as Ames.When I arrived, there were about 700 professionals, another 1,200 civil service employees to staff the facilities and the associated electrical and machine shops, and about 300 contractors who performed routine maintenance and housekeeping functions. Even with such a large staff, Ames was the next-to-the-smallest of the ten NASA centers, which ranged in population from about 3,000 to 5,000. (For comparison, the University of California’s Livermore Laboratory, which I had just left, had about 4,000 employees.) The question of shutting down one of the NASA centers for budgetary reasons came to a head early in 1970. I had received a telephone call from George Low sometime in December, and his message was clear: the NASA–Marshall Space Center would not be touched, because it was felt that the large rocket engines for future spacecraft would require the facilities and the expertise of the people working there. So now there were only two competitors for survival: the NASA–Electronics Research Center and the NASA–Ames Research Center. George told me that I should try to attend the meeting at the OMB offices in the Old Executive Office Building, which is the ornate structure immediately to the left of the White House. It was built in 1871–88 to house the War, State, and Navy Departments. Now it is an adjunct occupied by the White House staff and the Office of the Vice President. In 2002, the building was named after President Eisenhower. I mention all this because I have always liked the place. I attended many meetings in the Eisenhower

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Executive Office Building, and for some reason, I frequently tended to win arguments there. Being slightly superstitious, I decided to follow George Low’s advice and attend the meeting at which the decision would be made. My problem was to find out where and when the meeting would be held. I had no obvious way to find out, so I tried a long shot. Paul Yaggy, the director of the army’s helicopter laboratory, which was headquartered at Ames, had good connections in the Pentagon. Paul was eventually able to provide me the time and the place. In addition, he sent me the agenda, which allotted only ten minutes for each discussion. I approached the meeting room as unobtrusively as possible, and I was able to enter without any problem. It was a large rectangular room with a central table that could seat about fifteen people, and there were another thirty chairs against the wall. I took the most obscure chair against the wall and waited. The chairman of the meeting was the deputy director of the OMB, so he had decision authority, or close to it.The other people around the table were senior OMB officials, each with a portfolio of agencies for which he or she was responsible. The chairman called each of the people with their portfolios; he was crisply decisive in making judgments. In about an hour, he came to the official with the NASA portfolio. I was startled when the chairman said, “You don’t have a problem today. Both centers will remain open.” The lady who held our portfolio was crestfallen: “What happened?” “Apparently, John Volpe, who is the new secretary of transportation and also a former governor of Massachusetts, got to the president and persuaded him to keep the Electronics Center open. You will remember that our decision was to close it and take the money from NASA. We will still do this, but we will give the money to the Transportation Department, which will run the center. Secretary Volpe believes that the Transportation Department needs a high-technology research center, and President Nixon agreed. We will announce the transfer on July 1, 1970.” Both the OMB official and I were stunned by this turn of events. But the essential point was the Ames would not be shut down. I left the room as quickly as possible! The lesson that Sy Syvertson and I took from all of this was that we needed to keep a high profile in Washington and that the Ames facilities were essential for the survival of the institution. In May, Bun and I moved into our new home on 12874 Viscaino Road in Los Altos Hills. As I have already said, a number of my colleagues in Berkeley were not happy with some of my previous actions on the Berkeley campus, and the disagreements had resulted in strained relations and even some harsh words. The pain this caused me was alleviated by a telephone call that I received from Harold Smith, who was then serving as the chairman of the Department of Applied Science at the university’s Davis campus. This organization had established an academic connection with the Livermore Laboratory. He told me that the faculty of the

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department had voted to offer me an appointment as a lecturer in applied science. I was delighted because I would be able to retain an academic connection with the University of California. During the years that I was at Ames, I taught courses in neutron physics at the Livermore branch of the department, and I was able to serve on the thesis committees of several graduate students. Two weeks before my fortieth birthday ( June 17, 1969), a new phase of our lives began. Bun continued her career as a secondary school teacher, and the children acquired a new set of friends. And despite some rough spots, we came to very much enjoy our new life in Los Altos Hills.

The NASA–Ames Research Center and Its Specific Contributions to Military Capability An important factor in my decision to join Ames was the close relations that the center enjoyed with the army and the air force. For example, the army’s Aeronautical Research Laboratory was located at Ames. The laboratory performed research and developed advanced technology for helicopters. Helicopters were ubiquitous in the Vietnam War: as gunships in combat, as evacuation transports for the wounded, and as general utility vehicles. The war was a campaign in the Cold War, and I felt that it was very important for Ames to play a leading role. During my first year at the center, the army decided to add research groups at NASA–Langley and NASA–Lewis. This raised the question of where the headquarters of the expanded organization would be located. Working with the director of the army group at Ames, Paul Yaggy, we initiated a campaign to acquire the headquarters. We had a strong support in the Pentagon from Charles Poor, the deputy assistant secretary of the army for research and development, and he saw to it that headquarters of the US Army Air Mobility Research and Development Laboratory was established at Ames. Paul Yaggy was named the first director. During the 1970s, the number of civil service employees in the Air Mobility Research and Development Laboratory at Ames exceeded two hundred. Administratively, we treated the army contingent as the Ames Army Aeronautics Directorate. The director of the army’s laboratory would attend all of the weekly directors’ meetings, and people on the army payroll would be integrated into the support groups of the center. Army funding was made available to build new facilities at Ames that were necessary for the development of army aircraft. The most important of these was the Vertical Motion Simulator (VMS), which was used to develop new vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) aircraft as well as to create new operational methods for existing aircraft. This arrangement permitted the center to develop advanced rotorcraft while making immediate contributions to the military effectiveness of the helicopters used in Vietnam.

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The Development of Tilt-Rotor Aircraft The most important contributions made by the Ames Army Aeronautics Directorate during my term as director of the center was the development of the first working prototype of a tilt-rotor aircraft, the Bell XV-15. Ames had long been involved with tilt-rotor aircraft technology and had a very productive relationship with the Bell Helicopter Company. The tilt-rotor concept originated during World War II, in both Germany and Great Britain, but no airplanes using the design were built. The first experimental tilt-rotor aircraft, the Transcendental 1-G, was designed by Robert Lichten and built by his collaborators at the Transcendental Airplane Company. The tilt-rotor concept is a flying machine that can land and take off like a helicopter and, once at altitude, fly like a conventional aircraft.This is accomplished by tilting the rotors—or the “prop-rotors,” as they are called—from a horizontal position during the helicopter mode of flight to a vertical position for conventional aircraft flight. The Transcendental 1-G flew first in 1954 but never was able to convert from vertical to horizontal flight. Despite the failure of the Transcendental 1-G, the tilt-rotor idea took hold. Lichten joined Bell Helicopter and began to design a larger tilt-rotor aircraft. The US Army became interested. A joint Army-NACA/​NASA program was initiated in 1951, and Ames took the lead in managing and overseeing the program. The aircraft, which would be called the XV-3, was built by Bell Helicopter in its factory near Fort Worth, Texas. The XV-3 was a small aircraft with a gross weight of about 4,000 pounds. It was powered by a 750-horsepower air-cooled radial engine mounted in the center of the fuselage. A system of gears and shafts transmitted power from the engine to the prop-rotors, which were mounted on the wingtips. Two XV-3s were built, and much was learned during their testing. The climax came on December 18, 1958, when an XV-3 completed the first conversion from vertical to horizontal flight, proving the validity of the tilt-rotor concept. During the entire XV-3 development program, people from Ames worked closely with Bell engineers to make the successful outcome possible. The XV-3 executed more than one hundred conversions from vertical to horizontal flight before the flight test program was terminated. One of the XV-3s was still at Ames when I arrived in 1969. The tilt-rotor concept fascinated me because I thought that the potential versatility of such an airplane could be very important. Bill Harper expressed an interest in expanding the Ames aeronautics program to develop a successor to the XV-3. He asked Ames for some ideas. At a meeting of the senior leaders of the Aeronautics Directorate— including Brad Wick, Mark Kelly, Woodrow Cook, David Few, Paul Yaggy, and George Rathert—Cook proposed that we advocate the development of an experimental tilt-rotor aircraft to follow the XV-3. He used some strong language when he ended his speech. He looked directly at me and said: “Now you are the director, so make a decision! You have to fish or cut bait!” Only Woody used a more colorful version of that admonition.

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We decided that the new experimental aircraft should have turboprop engines for propulsion rather than the reciprocating engine that powered the XV-3. Turboprop engines have a significantly better thrust-to-weight ratio, so they can be mounted on wingtips. Using them would eliminate the heavy gears and shafts necessary when the engine was in the fuselage. We would develop a rough conceptual design, take it to Washington, and try it out on Bill Harper. He approved, and then began gaining the approval of NASA Headquarters. By this time, Oran Nicks had been selected to succeed Bruce Lundin as acting associate administrator for advanced research and technology. Nicks had been the deputy director of NASA–Langley. Nicks and Harper were both great believers in experimental aircraft projects as an essential element of aeronautical research. They asked the three NASA aeronautical centers (Ames, Langley, and Lewis) to make proposals about what should be done. We would make a formal presentation to the NASA administrator, Tom Paine, who would choose the projects to be pursued. Bill Harper decided that the focus of the presentations should be on vertical or short takeoff and landing (V/​STOL) aircraft. He felt that this was the field of aviation in which the most far-reaching advances were possible. Bill also told us to develop ideas that would be of interest to the military, because it was likely that we could leverage funding from the military and thus execute larger projects. Ames and Langley were the most active in the development of these proposals. The people at Langley advocated a tilt-wing design for their VTOL aircraft candidate. This concept had been developed in the 1950s, and some experimental planes had been built and flown. These aircraft could achieve vertical flight by tilting the entire wing rather than just the engines. Thus, there would be a real contest between Ames and Langley over which concept, tilt-rotor or tilt-wing, would be selected. There were also two concepts for the short takeoff and landing (STOL) aircraft. Langley advocated the development of large, complex wing flaps that would provide propulsive lift when hit by the jet stream produced by engines mounted under the wings. The Ames proposals were more complex, involving an augmentors wing and a system for mounting the jet engines above rather than below the wing. The presentations were made in April and May 1970. NASA leaders decided that the tilt-rotor was clearly superior to the tilt-wing and that a new experimental VTOL aircraft should be developed. With respect to STOL aircraft, both Ames and Langley were encouraged to come back within a year with firm proposals. We were sure that Ames could develop some workable concepts for STOL aircraft that would eventually be accepted. Negotiations began between NASA and the army for a joint program to develop the new tilt-rotor experimental airplane (to be called the XV-15). It was decided that the army’s military requirement for medical evacuation would govern the design—that is, the XV-15 would be the prototype of the aircraft used to

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evacuate wounded solders from the battlefield. The XV-15 could fly faster and for longer distances than the Bell UH-1 helicopter, the aircraft currently used for that purpose, which was the compelling reason to initiate the project. The cost to build two experimental aircraft was estimated to be $50 million, of which half would come from the army and half from NASA. Bell Helicopter, rather than Boeing Vertol, was selected to build the aircraft. Ames would be the lead NASA center for the project, and a project office headed by David Few was established in the Aeronautics Directorate. The XV-15 would have a gross weight of 15,000 pounds and would carry four wounded soldiers on stretchers and two attendants. Late in 1971, once the final plans were drawn up, David Few, Len Roberts, and I met with James Atkins, who was then the president and CEO of Bell Helicopter, for the final handshake that would start the program. When we finished, Jim told us about the civilian applications that he foresaw for tilt-rotor aircraft. He pulled a piece of paper from his desk drawer that showed some city pairs—say Cincinnati to Boston, or Memphis to Baltimore, or Albuquerque to Kansas City. Each of these city pairs is 650–700 miles apart. A line connecting each city pair was flanked by two numbers, one that indicated the downtown-to-downtown travel time for the Bell XV-15 and one for a Learjet. In each case the tilt-rotor aircraft travel time was substantially shorter; Learjets and other fixed-wing conventional aircraft could not land or take off downtown. Jim felt that these numbers showed the real reason why tilt-rotor aircraft should be developed. Jim’s ambition was to replace the Learjet-type aircraft with tilt-rotor Bell aircraft for executive and utility transportation. It was a daring vision when Jim made this statement in 1971, but now it is on the way to becoming real. On March 6, 2003, the Bell-Agusta 609 executive utility aircraft (now the AgustaWestland AW609) flew for the first time. So Jim Atkins’s dream (and ours also) is coming true. The contract to build two XV-15 aircraft was signed on July 31, 1973. The development program went smoothly. In fact, the only real dispute was over how much wind tunnel time to devote to tests on the XV-15. In the end, the wind tunnel tests that we insisted upon were performed. One of the XV-15s flew for the first time on May 7, 1977, and as Len Roberts said, it was an “elegant time.” An extensive test program was conducted to demonstrate the value of the XV15 for US Army missions. By 1981, the completed test program had shown that the XV-15 met all the army’s original specifications.The army canceled its tilt-rotor efforts in 1981 because the war in Vietnam was over, and it no longer felt this type of aircraft was needed. The marine corps, however, adopted the concept for its next transport aircraft, the MV-22 Osprey. How all this happened will be described in later chapters. The larger point is that the tilt-rotor concept has taken hold, and several other aircraft of this type were developed. The Bell XV-15 is now exhibited at the branch of the National Air and Space Museum near Dulles Airport in Washington.

Figure 6.2. Top: The Bell XV-3. Bottom: The army’s XV-15. Photos courtesy of NASA–Ames Research Center.

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Propulsive Lift for STOL Aircraft Two other significant experimental aircraft were developed during my time as director of Ames. Both were designed to test principles of propulsive lift necessary for STOL performance. Both experimental airplanes were based on a small military transport aircraft, the de Havilland C-7 Buffalo. This aircraft is a twin turboprop transport that can carry about twenty passengers. The program, a joint US-Canadian effort, used the Canadian built de Havilland airplanes as airframes. Boeing performed the modification of the aircraft, and the entire program was managed by Ames. Two airplanes were built. One, the C-8A Augmentor Wing, was powered by two small turbojet engines. The propulsive lift was obtained by ducting some of the exhaust air from the engines through the wings and then out through specially designed flaps on the trailing edge of the wings. The other C-8 aircraft used four small jet engines mounted on top of the wings. Propulsive lift was achieved by passing the airflow over the wings and then over some specially designed flaps on the trailing edge, an application of the Coanda effect.This aircraft later acquired the designation Quiet Short-Haul Research Aircraft (QSRA). An extensive test program to develop the flight envelope and the handling qualities of both aircraft was conducted. The airfield at Crow’s Landing near Modesto in the Central Valley of California was used for this work. Neither of the concepts used to achieve propulsive lift on these airplanes was adopted. A similar concept, however, called “externally blown flaps,” which had been tested at Ames in the 1960s, was eventually used for the very successful McDonnell Douglas C-17 military transport aircraft. The Ryan XV-3A and the Bell X-14A Two jet-powered aircraft, the Ryan XV-3A and the Bell X-14A, were designed for VTOL operations. In the XV-3A, part of the exhaust air of the engine was diverted to drive two “lift fans,” one on each wing, which provided the lift for vertical flight. The Bell X-14A used a flow diverter mounted on the exhaust nozzle of the aircraft’s jet engine.When I arrived at Ames, both aircraft had reached the end of their test-flight periods. No serious test flights were conducted. The lift fan concept was adopted by the Lockheed Martin F-35C Lightning II in a slightly modified form. This airplane will replace the McDonnell Douglas AV-8B Harrier II, which is currently the first-line fighter-attack aircraft of the marine corps. Wind Tunnel and Flight Simulator Tests The extensive facilities at Ames were used to test and evaluate many different kinds of airplanes. These were mostly military aircraft, since most advances in aviation were first conceived for and employed on military airplanes. The US Air Force was involved in an extensive modernization program during the 1970s that coincided with my term of service at Ames (1969–77). The McDonnell Douglas F-15 interceptor and the General Dynamics F-16 fighter-attack aircraft were both under

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Figure 6.3. A one-third scale model of the space shuttle in the forty-foot-by-eighty-foot wind tunnel at Ames, 1975. Photo courtesy of NASA–Ames Research Center.

development and were intended to replace the first-line aircraft then being used in the war in Vietnam. The aircraft that became the next generation of fighter and bomber aircraft were tested for thousands of hours in Ames wind tunnels. For the F-16, the Ames Aeronautics Directorate was heavily involved in the fly-off between two prototypes, the General Dynamics YF-16 and the Northrop YF-17. Following the flight tests, I briefed the secretary of the air force, John McLucas, and recommended the YF-16 for development as the F-16. In the press conference that followed the briefing, McLucas was asked by a reporter why he had selected the YF-16 over the YF-17. McLucas answered, “Because the YF-16 has the same engine as the F-15.” Later, I asked John why we had had to go through the fly-off if that was the reason. He laughed and said, “This was the only answer he would

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understand!” There is no doubt that the F-16 is currently the best fighter-bomber aircraft in the world. The YF-17 was modified later to become the navy’s F/​A-18 Hornet fighter-attack aircraft. Ames people performed the same function in the fly-off between the Fairchild YA-10 and the Northrop YA-9, two prototype attack aircraft for the air force. The winner was the Fairchild airplane, which became the A-10 Warthog. This airplane first saw important service in the Gulf War in 1991. A particularly interesting and amusing incident occurred sometime in 1970 when I visited the legendary Clarence (Kelly) Johnson, who ran the Lockheed “Skunk Works” for many years. During our meetings at the Skunk Works facility in Burbank, Kelly asked me whether wind tunnel time for the prototype “stealth airplane” that came to be called Have Blue could be made available. When I first saw the wind tunnel model of the airplane that Johnson had brought in, I said, “Kelly, an aircraft designed according to the Maxwell equations will not fly very well.” And Kelly replied, “I know. Hang a big enough engine on anything and it will fly!” We performed the tests on Have Blue, and it became the prototype for the Lockheed F-117 Nighthawk stealth attack aircraft.

Figure 6.4. The Lockheed Have Blue experimental aircraft were tested in Ames wind tunnels in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Photo courtesy of Skunk Works.

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Two particularly important projects required Ames’s capabilities in flight simulation. One was that the navy’s Grumman F-14 Tomcat, which was thoroughly tested using the Flight Simulator for Advanced Aircraft. It was found that the aircraft as designed would have a landing speed too high for aircraft carrier landings. The low-speed performance of the F-14 was accurately established through extensive wind tunnel tests in several Ames facilities. Once the aerodynamic performance of the F-14 was known, the performance parameters were established. Then a computer program was developed to drive the FSAA to simulate the F-14s flying qualities. Navy pilots were brought in to “fly” the simulator, and the computer program was varied until it determined the parameters that would allow the airplane to land on a carrier. Finally, the design of the aircraft was changed to fit the necessary flight parameters. It was found in the case of the F-14 that the addition of a vortex generator at the wing root would make it possible for the aircraft to fly at a slightly higher angle of attack, which slowed the aircraft enough that it could land on a carrier flight deck. The F-14 has been the standard carrier-based airsuperiority aircraft for the past thirty years. The FSAA was used to help the Federal Aviation Administration establish the certification criteria for allowing the British-French supersonic transport Concorde to land and take off at American airports. One of the consequences of this work was that Fred Drinkwater, who succeeded George Cooper as the chief test pilot at Ames, eventually got to fly the Concorde. The foregoing examples show important applications of wind tunnels. Other incidents illustrated even more clearly how critical wind tunnels are to aircraft development. In the 1960s, Lockheed developed a combat helicopter that had a unique rotor system—one without the hinges in the rotor hub that would normally allow the rotor blades to change their angles of attack. This was the Lockheed AH-56 Cheyenne combat helicopter. Lockheed used elastic materials rather than swash plates with hinges to achieve the axial motion of the blades. The company performed wind tunnel tests in small, subscale wind tunnels, and on the basis of these results, it built a number of helicopters and began a flight test program. In short order, three aircraft were lost, including one in which the test pilot was killed. Obviously, something was wrong. The Lockheed people then did what they should have done in the first place: they asked us to test a full-scale aircraft in our 40-by-80-foot wind tunnel. In this tunnel, it was possible to mount a full-scale aircraft in the test section and run the engine at a rate that truly simulated the flight of the aircraft. The AH-56 was tested under power in September 1969 in the 40-by-80-foot wind tunnel. I was in my office when the test was being performed, and a technician from the wind tunnel came in and said that there had been a serious accident. He and I ran down the street and quickly went upstairs to the control room. The place was a bloody mess. The rotor of the AH-56 had come apart shortly after the aircraft’s engine came up to speed. One of the rotor blades had detached from the hub and penetrated the

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wind tunnel test section wall. It passed through the control room near the ceiling and knocked down a light fixture that struck one of the operators on the head. Fortunately, his wound was a superficial scalp laceration, but such wounds tend to be very bloody. When the safety people gave us the go-ahead, I walked into the test section to look at the damage. When the rotor disintegrated, the vibrations created tore the AH-56 off the pylons in the test section, and the helicopter was thrown against the turning vanes at the end of the test section. Even though the rotor came apart shortly after it was started, enough data were collected to discern the dynamic conditions under which the rotor had failed. The small-scale wind tunnel tests that Lockheed conducted did not reveal the nonlinear behavior of the elastic material used in the rotor hub. The AH-56 program was ultimately canceled after millions of dollars had been spent. The fault for all this must be assigned to the army’s project managers for not insisting on full-scale wind tunnel testing before flight. The Lockheed engineers likewise should have insisted on the testing. For my part, I am grateful to the Good Lord that the accident did not cause any fatalities or additional serious injuries. The Airborne Laser Laboratory The Aeronautical Research and Development programs at Ames tested and helped develop many aircraft that played significant roles during and after the Cold War. One of the most interesting wind tunnel programs in which we participated involved the Airborne Laser Laboratory. In 1967, while still a professor at Berkeley, I joined the Air Force Scientific Advisory Board (SAB). This occurred largely because of the influence of my friend and mentor Edward Teller, who was the chairman of the SAB at the time. Fortunately, I did not have to resign from the board when I joined Ames; all the directors of NASA research centers were automatically members of the SAB. In 1968, at one of the first meetings of the SAB that I attended, we received an extensive briefing on the current technical status of lasers. Arthur Kantrowitz and Edward Gerry, working at the Avco Everett Laboratory just north of Boston in 1966, had invented the gas dynamic laser. They discovered that a supersonic stream of gas could produce a condition of population inversions that would lead to the creation of coherent light beams much more intense than those produced in stationary media. Inducing laser conditions in a flowing gas stream made it possible to extract more energy from the medium, because the heat produced by the pumping action, which would destroy or distort the stationary medium, was carried away by the moving gas stream. Using this method, Kantrowitz and Gerry succeeded in producing laser beams with intensities in the megawatt range. Thus, for the first time, one could think about a laser with the power to do damage to a target at a distance. At the 1968 meeting, Teller suggested that it might be possible to place such a high-intensity laser on an airplane, which could then shoot down interceptor

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aircraft and missiles. Such an airplane could escort and protect a group of bombers. Teller coined the term “aerial battleship” for this concept. The SAB formed the Laser Weapons Committee to study Teller’s suggestions and to make appropriate recommendations to the board. Abraham Hertzberg, a well-known professor at the University of Washington and a close friend of Arthur Kantrowitz, was named chairman of the committee, and I was asked to serve as a member. We spent about a year studying the matter and visiting the facilities at the Avco Everett Laboratory and at the Laser Laboratory located in the air force’s Weapons Laboratory at Kirtland Air Force Base. The air force manager during these activities was a brilliant young lieutenant colonel, Donald L. Lamberson, who had earned a PhD in aerospace engineering from the Air Force Institute of  Technology. He was a very effective mentor for those of us not too familiar with laser technology. Abe Hertzberg was a very active (and activist) chairman. He insisted that we make a firm and strongly worded recommendation to the board. Abe clearly wanted to do something, but told us that if the majority of our committee felt that the technology was not ready, he would faithfully express our views. As things turned out, he did not have to do that. Our committee agreed that we should initiate a program to put a large carbon dioxide laser on a large airplane and learn how such a system would work. We realized that our recommendation had one glaring weakness: the carbon dioxide laser would be a short-range weapon under the best of circumstances. The wavelength at which this laser operated was 10.3 microns. Since this wavelength of light would be heavily absorbed by the atmosphere, it would not deliver enough energy to destroy a target even if the laser worked as advertised. The counterargument was that the program would address fire control problems, systems problems with the laser, and structural problems with the airplane, even if the laser would not be an effective weapon. We made the argument that there were millions of laser level combinations that might operate at shorter wavelengths and thus would not be heavily absorbed by the atmosphere. Hence there was a good chance that a suitable laser combination would be found as we were solving the systems integration problems. The fact was that in 1968, the only high-intensity laser available was the Kantrowitz-Gerry carbon dioxide laser. If we were going to initiate a program, we had no choice but to use it. Hertzberg presented our committee report at an SAB meeting at Kirtland AFB late in 1969. Our specific recommendation was for the air force to initiate a program to put a one-megawatt carbon dioxide laser on a modified Boeing KC-135 aircraft. The air force would then conduct a series of experiments to prove that a large laser could become an effective weapon on an airplane. As we expected, there was strong opposition from some SAB members. Arthur T. Biehl, an associate director at the Livermore Laboratory, made the argument that it would be more prudent to wait until we had a shorter-wavelength laser that could be an effective weapon, rather than spending money prematurely. It was a powerful argument, and at the end of the first day of the meeting, no decision was reached.

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Don Lamberson and I went out to dinner at a Mexican restaurant after the meeting. Both of us were strongly in favor of going ahead with the proposal that the Laser Committee had developed.We tried to come up with a compelling argument to overcome Art Biehl’s opinion. It occurred to us that there was a historical precedent that might be useful. In 1921, to demonstrate the value of airpower for future conflicts, Brig. Gen. Billy Mitchell of the Army Air Corps asserted that he could use a bomber aircraft to sink a battleship. The army and the navy agreed to perform such a test; an old German pre–World War I battleship, the Ostfriesland, would be the target. The venue for the test was southern Chesapeake Bay near the Virginia capes. This location was close to Langley Airfield, the principal base of the US Army Air Corps. The navy insisted on restrictive ground rules, particularly regarding flight altitude, for conducting the test. Mitchell sank the Ostfriesland with his bombers, but violated the ground rules while doing it. This sort of zeal was what eventually led to Mitchell’s court-martial and dismissal from the army. Furious, the navy leadership pointed out that the battleship could have shot down Mitchell’s bombers at the (forbidden) low altitude at which they dropped their bombs. The secretary of the navy, Josephus Daniels, said that he would be willing to stand naked on the bridge of a battleship under air attack in order to illustrate how ineffective such an assault would be. Of course, Mitchell was correct and Daniels was wrong. Only twenty years later, on December 8, 1941, Japanese aircraft equipped with bombs and torpedoes sank the British battleship Prince of Wales and the battle cruiser Repulse. We agreed that the analogy between Mitchell’s proof-of-concept experiment and what we were proposing for airborne laser weapons was a good one. Back at the base, a young air force policeman helped us gain access to the base library, where we found a biography of General Mitchell. The next morning, the SAB held its debate, and I requested time to make the case for the airborne carbon dioxide laser as a proof-of-concept experiment, similar to Mitchell’s sinking of the Ostfriesland. The supporters of the proposal eventually won the day. The SAB sent a recommendation to the air force chief of staff, Gen. George Brown, to initiate the Airborne Laser Program. As things turned out, strong voices within the Air Force Systems Command were advocating the development of airborne lasers, too. Thus, the time was ripe to start the work. The program, dubbed the Airborne Laser Laboratory (ALL), was initiated in September 1970, when the first large sum of money was specifically allocated for it. Donald Lamberson was named the first project manager. As director of Ames, I offered our facilities for some of the required wind tunnel testing. A project office at Ames was established in 1971, and Don Buell was appointed on-site project manager. The air force assigned Lt. Col. Demos Kyrazis, who was a graduate student of UC Davis’s Livermore Department of Applied Science, to monitor the Ames effort. (As a member of the Department of Applied Science, I was on Colonel Kyrazis’s thesis committee.)

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The people at Ames were chartered to solve two principal problems. First, to make sure that the modified KC-135 aircraft, with the turret containing the beam director on top of the fuselage, could be flown safely. Wind tunnel tests indicated that the turret would generate substantial vibratory loads on the aircraft. Thus, a fairing for the turret was necessary. It took about a year’s worth of wind tunnel and flight testing to develop a satisfactory solution to this problem.The second task was to measure the distortion that the laser beam would suffer in passing through the turbulent boundary layer around the turret. The wind tunnel testing established that the measured distortion was small enough not to create serious problems. Once the wind tunnel work was finished, the people at Ames were not heavily involved in the remainder of the program. In 1978, Col. John C. Rich succeeded Don Lamberson as project manager. The ALL program came to a climax in May 1983 when the carbon dioxide laser, operating at a power level of half a megawatt, disabled five Sidewinder (AIM-9B) missiles that were on a parallel course with the ALL aircraft.We had succeeded in proving that an airborne laser could damage targets moving at high speed with respect to the gun platform. But the distance from the ALL aircraft to the missiles was three to five kilometers. To be a useful weapon, a laser would have to operate at a smaller wavelength. Such a laser was created by the Air Force Weapons Laboratory, the chemical oxygen iodine laser (COIL), which could deliver beams with a power level in the multi-megawatt range. As a result, in 1994, the air force chief of staff, Gen. Ronald Fogleman, initiated a program to equip a Boeing 747 cargo aircraft with a COIL laser capable of meeting important military requirements. After a lengthy construction program, the Boeing YAL-1 destroyed two missiles at long range in February 2010, but the program was canceled in 2011. Nuclear Arms Control and Mobile Missiles for the Air Force In spite of antagonism between the United States and the USSR, the two countries negotiated on the control of nuclear weapons throughout the Cold War. Both sides felt that decisions about nuclear weapons were too important and too dangerous to be left to low-level bureaucrats and junior military officers. On December 8, 1953, President Eisenhower delivered his “Atoms for Peace” speech before the General Assembly of the United Nations. It was the first proposal by a major political leader for the international control of nuclear weapons. He laid out a bold plan: The United States, heeding the suggestion of the General Assembly of the United Nations, is instantly prepared to meet privately with such other countries as may be principally involved, to seek an acceptable solution to the atomic armaments race which overshadows not only the peace, but the very life of the world. We shall carry into these private or diplomatic talks a new conception. The United States would seek more than the mere reduction or elimination of atomic materials for military purposes. It is not enough to take this weapon out of the hands of

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This strong statement was followed by a proposal to create an international agency to control nuclear weapons. Nothing came of that suggestion, because Soviet leaders knew that their country lagged behind the West in the development of nuclear technology.Their position was essentially not to talk until they had achieved nuclear parity with the United States. In 1955, negotiations for a treaty to prohibit the detonation of nuclear explosives in the atmosphere were initiated. These proved to be slow and very complex. On April 13, 1959, in a letter to Chairman Khrushchev, President Eisenhower suggested that while the negotiations were ongoing, the two sides agree informally not to test nuclear devices in the atmosphere.This so-called gentlemen’s agreement held for the remainder of President Eisenhower’s time in office. But, as detailed previously, the gentleman’s agreement did not last. The Soviets initiated an extensive nuclear weapons test series on September 1, 1961, which included the detonation of Big Ivan on October 30.This event was followed a year later by the Cuban missile crisis, which nearly led to a real confrontation with the Soviets. These events brought the leaders to the realization that something had to be done about the control of nuclear weapons. On August 5, 1963, they signed the Limited Test Ban Treaty, which prohibited the detonation of nuclear arms in the atmosphere. That treaty was followed by extensive negotiations to reach more comprehensive agreements, which came to fruition during the Nixon administration. In May 1972, President Nixon and General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev signed two important agreements on nuclear weapons: the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty I (SALT I), which essentially froze the number of nuclear weapons deployed by each side, and the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM Treaty), which prohibited the development of defenses against intercontinental ballistic missiles. By 1972, I had been at the NASA–Ames Research Center for about three years. During that time, I had not given much thought to nuclear arms control. But the 1972 agreements started me thinking about the treaties. I came to the conclusion that SALT I was fine. Establishing treaties about the number and location of weapons was, in my opinion, well within the national interest. I was particularly pleased by the provision that the treaty had an expiration date. Things change, and that understanding has to be taken into account in negotiating international agreements. The ABM Treaty was a very different matter. The rationale for it was best described in 1955 by Winston Churchill’s statement concerning nuclear weapons: “Safety will be the sturdy child of terror.” I never quite agreed with Churchill’s view. The Soviets were never reluctant to impose terror on their own people or

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to threaten terror elsewhere. Their military manuals talked about “winning” wars with nuclear weapons. The Soviet nuclear arsenal deterred our people from taking aggressive actions against them, yet it was never clear to me that our arsenal would necessarily deter them. But there was another, even more important point: we were better at technology development than the Soviets. The Soviets could not develop a functioning missile defense system, whereas we had at least a fighting chance of doing something of military value. Finally, the treaty had no expiration date. I could not accept the idea of a treaty that would be valuable in perpetuity. Thus, I became a long-term, vigorous opponent of the ABM Treaty. President Nixon was forced to resign on August 6, 1974, as a result of the Watergate scandal. He was succeeded by Vice Pres. Gerald R. Ford. The Soviets were anxious to continue the nuclear arms control process; being behind in technology, they thought that negotiations would hinder the US effort more than theirs. Thus, they suggested an immediate meeting between the new president and General Secretary Brezhnev. It was agreed that a late-November date would leave enough time for the necessary preparations. Late in August 1974, I was asked to attend a “highly secret” meeting at the air force’s Space and Missile Systems Organization (SAMSO), located at the Los Angeles Air Force Station in El Segundo. This was not the first time I had been asked to attend a meeting of this sort since my appointment as Ames director. A brisk young air force brigadier general, Robert Thomas Marsh, briefed about thirty of us on what I thought was a truly bizarre idea. President Ford, he told us, would meet with Brezhnev to discuss the renewal of SALT I. The White House had asked whether we could demonstrate to the Soviets that we had a “mobile way” of launching our land-based ballistic missiles. The technical question was whether it would be possible to drop a 78,000-pound Minuteman I missile out of a Lockheed C-5A transport without tearing the wings off the airplane. In a general discussion afterward, people asked jokingly, “Who the hell had this crazy idea?” But the consensus was that it could probably be done. I offered to cobble up some wind tunnel tests at Ames and make our people available for consultations with Lockheed, Boeing, and the other contractors. An ICBM was launched successfully from a Lockheed C-5 aircraft on October 24, 1974, a month before the Ford-Brezhnev meeting in Vladivostok. In addition, the missile propulsion system was lit, and the missile flew a ballistic trajectory to the target site near the Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands. Much later, I learned that this caper had been requested by Secretary of State Henry Kissinger because the Soviets were building large transporter erector launchers (TELs), which could move their missiles around to frustrate our targeting. He wanted the Soviets to know that we could play that game, too. At their meeting, Ford and Brezhnev agreed in principle to what eventually became SALT II.

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Space Exploration at Ames and the Space Race with the Soviet Union The space race between the United States and the Soviet Union was an element of the Cold War. The Soviets led initially with the launch of Sputnik 1 in October 1957, and followed that achievement the flight of Yuri Gagarin in April 1961. Both the United States and the Soviet Union sent robotic spacecraft to the moon during the early 1960s. There were three missions. On the US side, a series of “hard” landers, via the Ranger program, were designed to take thousands of photographs of the moon and then crash on the lunar surface; there were several successful Ranger missions in 1964 and 1965. Next came a group of “soft” landers, via the Surveyor program (1966–68), craft that used retro-rockets to land on the surface of the moon and then sent data back to Earth. The landers were designed to measure the mechanical properties and chemical composition of the moon’s surface. Finally, spacecraft in the Lunar Orbiter program took very sharp pictures of the lunar surface in 1966 and 1967 in preparation for the landing of astronauts. At Livermore, we had tried to get a neutron-scattering experiment aboard a Surveyor spacecraft in order to determine the elements on the lunar surface. Unfortunately, NASA did not approve our proposal. The Soviets were ahead of the United States during this phase of lunar exploration. They were the first to photograph the backside of the moon and also the first to place a hard lander on the moon. But when it came to putting people on the moon, the United States was first. Apollo 11:The First Men on the Moon The first landing of people on the moon was scheduled shortly after I arrived at Ames. Bun and I (as a newly minted NASA center director) were invited to be present in the Mission Operations Control Room (MOCR) at the NASA– Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston for the event. There were some genuine giants in this group, and I was very proud, and also humbled, to be included. The dominant personality was Wernher von Braun, a world-famous figure because of his pioneering work on rocket technology in Germany during World War II. My senior by seventeen years, von Braun was the director of the NASA–George C. Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. I was awed to hold the same nominal NASA rank as this famous man. Other center directors were equally distinguished, but were not household names. Robert R. Gilruth, the director of the NASA–Manned Spacecraft Center, was the most impressive among my new colleagues. Bob Gilruth was born in 1913 in a small Minnesota town. Following his education at the University of Minnesota, he began his engineering career at the NACA’s Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory in 1937 (since 1958, the NASA–Langley Research Center). In 1945 he was named chief of the Pilotless Aircraft Division at Langley, and in 1950 he became the assistant director of the

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laboratory. The creation of NASA in 1958 triggered the initiation of the Mercury project to put a man in Earth orbit, and Langley was given the task of organizing the effort. Gilruth was put in charge of the project. Under his leadership, John Glenn, wedged in a small Mercury spacecraft, became the first American to orbit Earth, in 1962.That same year, NASA completed the Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston, which would manage the enterprise of putting people in space. Gilruth was named the first director of the center. By the time of the Apollo 11 landing, Gilruth had been director for seven years. His truly impressive record included the completion of seven Mercury flights and then more orbital flights of the two-man Gemini spacecraft. He was a man of medium height with a balding head and deep blue eyes. He was quiet and thoughtful, but also had an eloquent manner of speaking and a commanding presence. He reminded me of President Eisenhower in the way he walked among his colleagues in the MOCR with a smile here and a nod of the head there. I vividly remember two high-point moments. One was, of course, the touchdown of the lunar module on Tranquility Base. I still recall the words of Neil Armstrong coming through 240,000 miles from the moon: “Tranquility Base here: the ‘Eagle’ has landed.” This event occurred at 6:00 p.m. local time on July 24, 1969. We then had to wait seven hours for the next event: the first step by a human being on the surface of the moon. The flight plan called for the astronauts to rest first. There were two people at the Manned Spacecraft Center with whom I was well acquainted from my days at Livermore: Harry Reynolds, the manager of NASA’s Lunar Landing Module Program, and Wilmot N. (Bill) Hess, who was in charge of all scientific research done at the Manned Spacecraft Center. Following the landing of the Eagle on the moon, we left the MOCR to attend a party hosted by Bill Hess at his home in Clear Lake, which was a few minutes’ drive from the center. It was a grand party, but we were nonetheless apprehensive about what would happen next. At around eleven, the party broke up so that we could return to the MOCR. When I got off the elevator on the third floor of the building, I ran into Bob Gilruth, who was walking up and down the hall, smoking a cigarette, and looking worried. I asked, “What’s the matter?” And Bob answered, “The bolts.” I inquired, “What bolts?” He replied, “The bolt circle that holds the ascent stage to the landing stage.” The Lunar Excursion Module consisted of two portions, the landing stage and the ascent module. They were held together by a flange with thirty-two explosive bolts. When the time came to leave the surface of the moon, the bolts would be detonated and the ascent module freed. Bob asked, “What if a bolt fails to explode?” And I said without thinking, “Well, there is nothing we can do about it.” Bob looked at me with an expression that clearly but silently said, “You just do not understand.” That look conveyed the stress he was under. More than ever, Bob reminded me of President Eisenhower, who likewise never revealed in public the stress he was feeling. Bob and I climbed the short stairway to the MOCR to

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Figure 6.5. Buzz Aldrin just after he planted the US flag on the moon, July 25, 1969.

take our seats, Bob at the director’s console and I in the viewing room, which was separated from the MOCR by a glass partition, to sit next to my wife. I had learned a lesson about NASA from Bob Gilruth. In the coming years, we worked together on the beginnings of the space shuttle program. To this day, I am proud to remember that Bob Gilruth was a friend. Close to midnight, the wake-up call for the astronauts came. Soon we saw the hatch of the Eagle open, and then came the view of Neil Armstrong’s feet coming down the ladder on one of the module’s legs.Then Neil Armstrong placed his shoe on the surface of the moon. His words crackled through the miles of space: “That is one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.” It was a momentous event. We stayed for another couple of hours to watch the first operations of humans on the surface of the moon. One of the signal events was, of course, the unfurling

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of the American flag by Buzz Aldrin. After Aldrin performed this task, he turned around and saluted the flag. Neil Armstrong photographed this, and the picture symbolized a very important victory in the Cold War. Secretary General Khrushchev congratulated President Nixon. But he claimed afterward that as far as he was concerned, there never had been a space race and that the lunar landing, although a great event, was nothing but a stunt. Of course, we knew better. The Soviets had a very vigorous program to put a man on the moon, and they were developing a large new rocket, the N-1, which was about the same size as the Saturn V. From satellite reconnaissance, we knew that the Soviets had tried without success to launch N-1s three times—on June 14, 1969, on July 4, 1969, and on November 24, 1972. Those failures demonstrated what was wrong with the Soviet system and the leadership it spawned. Khrushchev was full of aggressive bluster at the time, but in a political system based on deceit, it was impossible for the leader to tell the truth. He had to pretend. Shortly after the Apollo 11 mission, President Nixon hosted a large formal dinner to celebrate the event. The dinner was scheduled for August 13, 1969, and was to be held at the Century Plaza Hotel in Los Angeles. As a NASA center director, I was invited to attend the party along with my wife. I want to describe what happened at the dinner, not because it was intrinsically important, but because it illustrated prevailing attitudes toward the space program. Bun and I were excited because this was the first time that we had been invited to a party hosted by the president of the United States. We arrived at the Century Plaza at the appointed time. In the politically heated atmosphere of the time, there were almost certain to be pickets in front of the hotel, and a more active demonstration was possible. Sure enough, the pickets and the demonstrators were out in force. A major feature of the demonstration was a huge sign with the legend “Fuck Mars” printed on it in large letters that the demonstrators had somehow been able to hang along the upper floors of one of the office buildings across the street from the Century Plaza. The same message was repeated on signs that some of the demonstrators carried. It was clear where the demonstrators stood on the value of the space program and on some of the plans then being considered for the post-Apollo effort. I thought that the way the message was presented was typical of the intellectual level on which the protests of the 1960s—with few exceptions—were conducted. We picked our way through the crowd of people in front of the hotel and finally managed to get into the ballroom. Needless to say, the atmosphere was rather different inside. We sat at the same table with the actress Diane Baker, the comedian Jonathan Winters, and the secretary of health, education, and welfare, Robert Finch, and his wife, and the famous pilot Jacqueline Cochran. The atmosphere was festive and patriotic, and the president made a rousing speech before introducing the three heroes of the occasion, Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins. After the formal part of the program, the president walked around the ballroom and greeted

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some of the guests. I remember him coming over to our table and spending a few minutes speaking with us. He was in a euphoric mood, and I wondered whether he was at all concerned about the deep divisions in American society exemplified by what we had witnessed before the dinner. I suppose that he was concerned because, in his own way, he tried to do something about them. Unfortunately, it was not enough, and those divisions, together with his own character flaws, would eventually destroy his presidency. The Apollo 13 Accident Ames did not play a large specific part in the effort to support the Apollo program. One Ames scientist, Charles P. Sonnet, was the principal investigator responsible for the magnetometer that the astronauts placed on the moon. I did, however, have a connection with the third mission sent to the moon, Apollo 13. The Apollo 13 spacecraft was successfully launched by a Saturn V on April 11, 1970. Fifty-five hours into the mission, an explosion in the service module of the spacecraft disabled the electric power supply. The incident was announced by Jim Lovell, the Apollo 13 mission commander, who said: “Houston, we’ve got a problem.” Working under extreme pressure, the Apollo 13 crew, with critical help from the mission controllers and the engineers in the “back room,” managed to work out a way to get the spacecraft back to Earth. They did this by using the lunar landing module Eagle as a lifeboat. It was powered by batteries just capable of supplying enough power for the damaged spacecraft to return to Earth. The heroes that made it happen were the crew of Apollo 13, Jim Lovell, Fred Haise, and Jack Swigert; the mission controllers, Gene Kranz, Glynn Lunney, and Jerry Griffin; and among the back room people, Ed Smylie. Ed was the one who, on the spot, invented a way to save the lives of the astronauts when the air purification system turned out to be a major problem. Shortly after the successful landing (or splashdown, really) of Apollo 13, George Low asked me to serve on the Apollo 13 Review Board. I was flattered, having been employed by NASA for just over a year. This was the first time that George had personally asked me to do something. George, in my opinion, was the major force in NASA during my term of service as director of Ames. He had succeeded Tom Paine as the deputy administrator of NASA in 1969. He and I shared a very similar background. George was born in Vienna in 1926 to Jewish parents. His mother, Gertrude Burger, was a student with my father in the 1930s at the University of Vienna, and George also escaped from Europe to come to the United States to make a new life. George was educated at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and upon graduation, in 1949, he joined the NACA’s Lewis Aeronautical Propulsion Laboratory in Cleveland. In 1963, the legendary Abe Silverstein, the director of the NASA–Lewis Research Center (it had been renamed in 1958) was called to Washington to head the planning for NASA’s Manned Spaceflight Program. He asked George to help him in his new post.

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From 1963 to 1964, George served in Washington as Silverstein’s deputy, and Bob Gilruth asked George in 1964 to become his deputy. As deputy director of the Manned Spacecraft Center, George was at the very center of the program. In January 1967, the first fatal accident in a NASA program occurred. During an all-up ground test on what was to be the first Apollo test flight with people, a fire broke out on board the command module. Three astronauts, Ed White, Roger Chaffee, and Gus Grissom, were burned to death. The nation was in shock, and NASA established its Accident Investigation Board, chaired by Floyd Thompson, the director of the NASA–Langley Research Center. Following the release of the report, George Low was chosen by acclamation to lead the recovery effort. His title was Apollo spacecraft manager, which was a demotion from his job as Bob Gilruth’s deputy. But everyone in NASA knew that George was in charge and that the future of the space agency depended on him. George Low’s performance in his new job was a tour de force. His management style was made to order for what had to be done. It was serious, low-key, and extremely thorough. George knew how to ask all the right questions and then to take prompt and appropriate action. In addition, he had perfect pitch when it came to making engineering judgments. I do not exactly remember when I met George for the first time, but it was probably at a meeting early in 1969. George had been deputy administrator for only a few months, and I remember him as a spare, tightly coiled man with an athletic spring in his step—he was an avid skin diver and a runner. He chose his words with great care, and he still had a slight Viennese accent. I cannot say that George regarded me as a close friend during my time as Ames director, but whenever I asked him to do something for us, he did it. In heading the recovery effort, George performed miracles. The first all-up test flight of Apollo 5 with people aboard was performed in October 1968. Then, by being willing to take risks and cut back on the test flights, George saw to it that the first trip to the moon happened well within President Kennedy’s timetable, “before this decade is out.” The Apollo 13 Review Board studied details of the failed flight for three months. We determined that a defective oxygen tank failed and seriously damaged the service module. I made some minor contributions to the investigation, but mostly I learned. Being a member of this board was a forced graduate education about NASA, and I was both overwhelmed and hugely impressed. It became clear to me much later in my time at NASA that the rescue of Apollo 13 was NASA’s finest moment. The most prominent member of our committee was Neil Armstrong. He was still basking in the glow of his first step on the moon, nine months earlier. During our work, he was all business. When we were briefed by the people responsible for calculating the probability of a failure of the Apollo system, we were told that it was between one in a thousand and one in ten thousand. A committee member who felt that this was ridiculous asked Armstrong, “When you were a test pilot,

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how did you judge whether you would fly an experimental aircraft?” He replied, “If I thought my chance of getting back was three in four, I would fly it.” So much for the analysts. Neil Armstrong was a very private person. He was very friendly, but I could never really get close to him. He was capable of sharp riposte. After we had finished our report about the Apollo 13 mishap, the committee chairman made his report to Congress. There was a small reception in one of the conference rooms. During the party, someone made a disparaging remark about the government and the civil service, Armstrong piped up, “Remember that the first man to step on the moon was a GS-15.” Apollo 17:The Final Trip to the Moon My final connection with the Apollo program came through the astronaut Harrison H. ( Jack) Schmitt. I met Jack on July 21, 1969, at the party at Bill Hess’s house between the landing of the Eagle and Neil Armstrong’s first step on the moon. Jack had just joined the astronaut corps when I met him. He and I took to each other immediately, and we have had a long and fruitful association ever since. Jack is a distinguished geologist and geophysicist who holds a PhD in these fields from Harvard University. Jack was the only trained scientist to fly to the moon, and the results of his research provided a detailed and fascinating theory of the formation of the moon and its subsequent history (see The Encyclopedia of Space Science and Technology [2003], edited by Hans Mark). Jack subsequently represented New Mexico Figure 6.6. Jack Schmitt looking at a large rock in the Valley of  Taurus-Littrow on the moon, during the Apollo 17 mission, December 1972. He made a number of fundamental discoveries that altered our understanding of lunar history. Photo courtesy of NASA Headquarters.

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in the US Senate from 1977 to 1983. I had several important interactions with him in those years. Bun and I went to see Apollo 17 launched on December 7, 1972, at the Kennedy Space Center. We were accompanied by my old friend from the University of California, Edward Teller. The launch of a Saturn V rocket is truly an awesome sight. The great rocket stands 363 feet tall and weighs 3,600 tons. Apollo 17 was launched at night, which made for a spectacular display. The brilliant light emitted when the rocket engines were started was followed about five seconds later by a rumbling noise that overwhelmed us in the viewing stand, which was about a mile away. A component of the noise had a frequency at about thirty hertz, and it resonated with my torso. It was an odd feeling that a “noise” could have this kind of an effect. Participation in the Apollo program confirmed my belief that it was important to send people into space. Exploration with robotic spacecraft was an important ancillary capability, but I was thoroughly persuaded that there could be no effective exploration without the presence of human judgment and imagination.

Space Science at Ames Although the primary mission of Ames was aeronautical research and development, Harry Goett’s first A in NASA, the center had a small but active space-related scientific program. When I arrived at Ames, there was a successful satellite program called Pioneer. Small satellites were placed in orbit around the sun to measure the particles, plasmas, and magnetic fields in the interplanetary medium. In 1969, the program had six satellites in operation. A satellite launched as part of the program, Pioneer E, failed shortly after I joined Ames. Pioneer to Jupiter and Saturn In the 1960s, NASA developed a plan—the Grand Tour—for exploring the planets beyond the orbit of Mars. It had been calculated that during the 1970s and the 1980s, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune would be aligned, so a single spacecraft could conduct a flyby of all four in a single flight. NASA planned an elaborate program to conduct this exploration, which would involve two complex, sophisticated spacecraft. Since the program cost was estimated to be well over a billion dollars, a decision was made to conduct a precursor mission to test whether the expensive Grand Tour spacecraft would survive the environment they would have to endure. In 1968, the Space Science Board of the National Academy of Sciences approved the precursor mission, and NASA Headquarters assigned this mission to Ames, with the suggestion that the same group that had managed the earlier Pioneer missions should execute the planetary Pioneer missions. All this occurred before I assumed the director’s position at Ames. Shortly after my arrival, I received word from the Planetary Program Office at NASA Head-

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quarters that the Pioneer precursor mission would be canceled. Robert Kraemer was the director of this office. Several high-level Ames people and I went to Washington to see Bob Kraemer. We also met with John Naugle, the NASA associate administrator for space science and applications. We made our strongest case for the precursor program. We finally prevailed, and what became the Pioneer JupiterSaturn program was initiated in February 1969. Charles F. Hall, the manager of the earlier, very successful Pioneer program, was named to head Pioneer Jupiter-Saturn. He recommended that we retain TRW Corporation, which had built the previous Pioneer satellites. We had to develop two small spacecraft to be launched on Atlas-Centaur launch vehicles during the launch opportunity in March 1971, and we had to execute the entire program for $100 million. The design of the Pioneer spacecraft was simple and elegant. Like the previous Pioneers, it was a spin-stabilized spacecraft, and it was small, weighing only 550 pounds. Because the spacecraft would be moving away from the sun, solar electric power could not be used. The spacecraft would be equipped with two radioisotope thermoelectric generators that would use plutonium-238 and provide 155 watts of electric power. (The use of nuclear power sources triggered protests in the press and picketing during the launch, but there was no undue violence.) To make certain that there would be no schedule slips and consequent cost overruns, we imposed three hard-and-fast engineering constraints on the project. First, the spacecraft would be spin stabilized; that configuration was much less complex than three-axis stabilization, and the people at Ames had experience with this technique. Second, all data obtained by the spacecraft would be transmitted in real time, at 1,024 bits per second. In other words, there would be no data storage devices aboard the spacecraft, a constraint that preserved the simplicity of the design and would prevent the loss of the mission in case of failure of the data storage device. Third, no new technology would be used unless it was absolutely necessary to meet the basic mission requirements. The management team at Ames would be small—not more than twenty people. Charlie Hall would select each one. TRW, the contractor, would have broad discretion to do the work, but its management people for the project would be selected with Hall’s approval. These constraints limited the scientific capability of the spacecraft. But they were acceptable because of the precursor nature of the mission. Most of the credit for the acceptance and disciplined application of the constraints belongs to Charlie Hall. He was an astute project manager and a superb diplomat.Throughout the course of the project, he maintained the respect of the scientists who had instruments aboard the Pioneer planetary spacecraft. This group included some famous names, such as James Van Allen, who was the first scientist to fly a scientific instrument on Explorer 1 in 1968; William Simpson, who had achieved fame for his work on cosmic rays; and Brad Smith, who was an expert on imaging the planets. Working with this

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distinguished group was the Ames physicist John Wolfe, who served as the chief scientist of the program. The plan to conceive, design, and build the two Pioneer spacecraft was in place, and the principles we would follow had been established. With remarkable dispatch, the work progressed, and my periodic reviews of the program revealed few problems, none very serious. Charlie Hall and I agreed that there was an excellent chance that we could bring in the Pioneer program on schedule and at cost. To seal the bargain, we made a bet that if we succeeded, we would go to the White Horse Saloon on Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley (Charlie Hall was also a graduate of UC Berkeley), and I would buy us martinis. If we failed, Charlie would buy the martinis. After the Jupiter flyby, all the senior members of the project congregated at the White Horse to watch me pay for Charlie Hall’s martini. It was a great party. The launch of our little spacecraft was set for a window in March 1973.The two essentially identical spacecraft were designated Pioneer F and Pioneer G before the launch, and would become Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11 once they left Earth. Pioneer G would follow Pioneer F by thirteen months. The objectives of the mission were simple and clear. Pioneer F would be the first spacecraft to fly past the orbit of Mars and then through the asteroid belt. During passage through the asteroid belt, its instruments would measure the particle flux to determine whether it would be safe to send more expensive and sophisticated spacecraft through that part of the solar system. Pioneer F would then fly past Jupiter and measure its electric and magnetic fields in order to determine the design parameters for the spacecraft to follow. Pioneer F would also be the first craft to take close-up pictures of Jupiter, which would be far better than any that could be made from Earth. Once past Jupiter, Pioneer F would pick up enough extra speed to eventually pass beyond the orbit of Pluto. Thus, Pioneer 10 would become the first human artifact to leave the solar system. Like its predecessor, Pioneer G would fly through the asteroid belt and past Jupiter. If all went well, it would use Jupiter’s gravitational field to fly across the solar system and past Saturn. Pioneer G would be the first spacecraft to fly past Saturn, and its “gravity assist” trajectory would make it the second spacecraft to leave the solar system. Both Pioneer spacecraft would be equipped to measure charged particles, cosmic rays, plasmas, and magnetic fields along their entire trajectories. As the launch date approached, there occurred an amusing incident that might eventually have far-reaching consequences. Ames was involved with the search for extraterrestrial life. In connection with this effort, I had become acquainted with a brilliant young astrophysicist from Cornell University, Carl Sagan. Carl had published some important papers on planetary atmospheres and eventually became a well-known public figure through his creation of the very popular television series Cosmos, which was broadcast by PBS in 1980. Carl called me some months before the scheduled Pioneer F launch and said, “We have to put a plaque on the Pioneer F spacecraft.” “What are you talking about?” I responded, because I had no idea what he meant. “You know,” he said, “a plaque that will inform anyone who finds

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the spacecraft about us and where it came from.” Knowing of Carl’s interest in the possibility of extraterrestrial life, I should have guessed what he was driving at. “OK,” I said, “what do you have in mind?” He replied that his wife, Linda Salzman, had made a drawing and that he would send me a copy. Some days later, a letter arrived with Linda’s drawing.The message on the plaque was obscure enough to be beyond my comprehension. I asked Carl to decipher it for me. I finally caught on and became quite taken with Carl’s idea. One problem was that the most prominent features on the plaque were two human figures, one man and one woman, which were meant to show the finder what we looked like. They were, of course, totally naked, and I told Carl that I thought the people at NASA Headquarters would never approve of placing this thing on the spacecraft. I told Carl that if he really wanted the plaque to be part of Pioneer, I could arrange it with our own project people at Ames, with the TRW project people, and with John Neilon’s launch crew at the Kennedy Space Center to have the plaque attached to the spacecraft without the knowledge of the people at NASA Headquarters. I also told Carl that, just for the fun of it, I would have a brass plaque made up at a local engraving shop with Linda’s drawing etched on it so that he could see what it looked like. Carl agreed, and he told me that he would think about my proposition. A few days later, Carl called back and told me that he had talked with both John Naugle and Bob Kraemer about the idea. Much to my surprise, both had approved. Thus, the plaque that Carl had suggested was wired to the struts that held the large high-gain antenna to the body of Pioneer F. (A number of other plaques were made up for distribution to friends and supporters. Today there is still one on display in my University of  Texas office.) At the request of the people at NASA Headquarters, all involved in the caper were sworn to secrecy, out of fear of public reaction to the naked folks on the plaque. The Pioneer F spacecraft was successfully launched on March 2, 1972, where­ upon it was designated Pioneer 10. Sure enough, when the existence of Carl Sagan’s plaque on the spacecraft was made public, there was a sizable public reaction. Some people were scandalized, predictably, by the naked figures. In the press, cartoonists had a field day making fun of it in one way or another. When Pioneer 10 left Earth orbit and was finally put on the trajectory for Jupiter, Sagan called me. He asked me whether I was satisfied with the reaction. I admitted to him that he was right, that it had been great fun to play along with the gag. Pioneer 10 performed superbly, fulfilling or exceeding all our expectations. The passage through the asteroid belt was smooth, and on December 3, 1973, the moment of the closest approach to Jupiter occurred at 6:24 p.m. Pacific time. The pictures that our little spacecraft returned from Jupiter were spectacular, and we even succeeded in obtaining a picture of Ganymede, one of Jupiter’s large satellites, that revealed some of its surface features. The small room in the Ames

Figure 6.7. The plaque designed by Carl Sagan and Linda Salzman that was attached to Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11. Figure 6.8. My favorite cartoon of the era.

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Figure 6.9. NASA administrator Jim Fletcher and I looking at the first pictures of Jupiter returned by Pioneer 10 on December 1, 1973. Photo courtesy of NASA–Ames Research Center.

space project building from which the two Pioneer spacecraft were controlled was jammed with distinguished visitors. Carl Sagan was there, of course, having the time of his life. We had three Nobel laureates, Luis Alvarez, Harold Urey, and Willard Libby. In addition there was a gaggle of senior NASA people led by James C. Fletcher, who had succeeded Tom Paine as NASA administrator in April 1971. Finally, there was Wernher von Braun, who had become a good friend. It was, as my friend and colleague Leonard Roberts put it, “an elegant event.” The second Pioneer spacecraft was launched on April 5, 1973. There was a question about what course it should follow after the Jupiter flyby. We favored putting Pioneer 11 on a trajectory to Saturn with the help of Jupiter’s gravitational field. There were some objections to this proposal from the director of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, William Pickering. He argued that Pioneer 10 had fulfilled all the mission requirements of a precursor spacecraft and that Pioneer 11 should be confined to measuring particles and fields in the outer solar system. Planetary exploration was the business of the JPL, he maintained, and this argument was, of course, correct. Bill Pickering and I appealed to Jim Fletcher. My case was that it would be a shame to miss this opportunity to take a good look at Saturn. I also pointed out that the two Voyager spacecraft, which were the result of the Grand Tour proposals, might fail and that we should protect ourselves against the risk of having no close-up views of Saturn at all. After some hesitation, Fletcher made the

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decision to target Saturn, and this is what was done. On September 1, 1979, Pioneer 11 executed the first flyby of Saturn and returned truly spectacular pictures of Saturn and the prominent rings. The Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11 planetary explorations were a resounding success for Ames. Credit belongs first and foremost to Charlie Hall, John Wolfe, Skip Nunamaker, and the other members of the Ames project office. In addition, John Foster, who headed the Ames Space Projects organization, made important contributions. One of the high points of my time at Ames was to preside over the award ceremony at which Charlie Hall received NASA’s Distinguished Service Medal for his brilliant achievements as the manager of the Pioneer program. In the National Air and Space Museum in Washington is a large room called the Hall of Firsts. It is in the central portion of the building, and every visitor to the museum must pass through it. In the late 1970s, there was a black-tie ceremony at the museum to place the engineering model of the Pioneer spacecraft on exhibit. At the time, I was serving as the under secretary of the Air Force. The truly grand party brought together all my old friends who participated in what was one of the most successful of all space projects. Pioneer surely deserves to be there. Pioneer 10 was the first spacecraft to fly through the asteroid belt, to fly past Jupiter, and then to leave the solar system. Pioneer 11 was the first spacecraft to fly past Saturn. I still visit Washington quite frequently, and when I have time I visit the museum, stand in the Hall of Firsts, and look up to see Pioneer. It is suspended from the ceiling, and to its right is the Spirit of St. Louis, which carried Charles Lindbergh across the Atlantic in 1927, and to its left is the North American Aviation X-15, the first reusable vehicle to carry a human being (the test pilot Joseph Walker) into space, on July 19, 1963. (For this purpose, “space” is defined as starting sixty-two miles above the surface of Earth.) I cannot conceive of a better place for our little Ames spacecraft, and I stand there and remember all of my great and talented friends who put it there. There is one footnote that I must add to the Pioneer story. When I was writing this, more than forty years after Pioneer 10 began its epic journey, I was working on a problem connected with Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11. Until 2002, Pioneer 10 was still being tracked by the JPL-operated Deep Space Network in Goldstone, California. A Doppler radar system was used to locate the spacecraft and to measure the speed at which it was receding from Earth. At the time contact was lost, the spacecraft was about 70 astronomical units away from the sun, which is about 5.6 billion miles. Doppler ranging is an extremely accurate technique, and it is therefore able to detect very tiny effects. Shortly after Pioneer passed the orbit of Pluto, it was discovered that the spacecraft was not moving as rapidly as it should have been. The spacecraft was about 400,000 miles closer to Earth than it should have been if Einstein’s predictions from the general theory of relativity are correct. This observation was called the Pioneer anomaly. I helped raise money from NASA and from the Planetary Society so that some of my friends working at the JPL could

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make a more precise analysis of the trajectory of Pioneer 10, to see whether the anomaly was an effect of the design of the spacecraft or whether a modification of Einstein’s theory of gravitation would be necessary to explain it. As it turned out, the tiny amount of deceleration was due to heat from Pioneer’s instruments and power systems pushing back on the spacecraft. As Slava Turyshev, the lead investigator at the JPL, put it, “The effect is something like when you’re driving a car and the photons from your headlights are pushing you backward”—by an infinitesimal amount. Pioneer Venus and the Rivalry with the Soviet Planetary Effort The Pioneer missions to Jupiter and Saturn were a resounding success. But they had little to do with the space race, because the Soviets never mounted a program to explore the outer planets. In short, we had that field to ourselves. The Soviets did have an active and successful program to explore Venus. The first attempt to fly past another planet was Venera 1, which was launched on February 12, 1961. The mission failed, and it was followed by several other unsuccessful attempts. It was clear, however, that Venus was a principal target of the Soviets’ planetary program. They eventually put several probes into the atmosphere of Venus and measured both the structure of the atmosphere—that is, its pressure and the temperature as a function of altitude—and its chemical composition. Venera 3 impacted Venus on March 1, 1966, becoming the first human artifact to reach another planet. But it failed to return any data. In December 1970, Venera 7 landed on the planet and became the first spacecraft to return data from the surface of another planet. The Soviets’ most spectacular mission was Venera 9, which landed on Venus and sent back photographs of the planet’s surface. It was the first spacecraft to return pictures from another planet to Earth. Venera 10 performed the same feat. Venera 9 and Venera 10 were complex spacecraft that consisted of an orbiter and a probe. The orbiter was used to receive data from the lander and then relay it back to Earth. Both missions arrived at Venus in October 1975. The US program for Venus was modest by comparison. An American spacecraft, Mariner 2, executed the first successful flyby of another planet (Venus, in this case) in December 1962. It returned the first close-up data from Venus. Mariner 10, which was launched on November 3, 1973, flew past Venus on February 4, 1974, and provided the first ultraviolet photographs of the planet. Venus provided the gravity assist that put Mariner 10 on a trajectory to fly past Mercury three times in 1974. While these missions were valuable, the Soviets were clearly ahead of us in exploring the inner planets. A new US program for Venus was initiated by Donald Hunten of the Planetary Institute at the University of Arizona in 1972. A member of the National Academy of Sciences’ Space Science Board, he suggested a Venus exploration program that would not duplicate what the Soviets had done but would add new and important information. Hunten’s plan was to send two spacecraft to Venus, one carrying sev-

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eral atmospheric probes that would enter the Venusian atmosphere simultaneously. These would be instrumented so that their relative position could be measured as they passed through the atmosphere to the ground. The information they gathered would be the first measure of wind patterns of the Venusian atmosphere. The second spacecraft would carry imaging radar and would orbit the planet for a sufficient period to produce a radar map of the planet. While Hunten was developing this proposal, some people at NASA Headquarters had decided that it might be a good idea to find another mission for Charlie Hall’s group at Ames. Their record of success was so good that their possible involvement in Hunten’s project was a strong argument in its favor. And so a decision was reached to initiate a program called Pioneer Venus. I supported this move, and the Pioneer Venus program was soon approved by NASA Headquarters. The key person responsible for our success was Dan Herman, the manager of advanced planning for the Planetary Exploration program office. When we laid this plan before Congress, we ran into serious problems. While the authorization committees in both houses supported Pioneer Venus, the House Appropriations Committee did not. The opposition came from the chairman of the subcommittee that handled NASA’s budget. He was a senior congressman from Ohio who represented the Cleveland district in which the NASA–Lewis Research Center was located. Thus, he knew something about NASA, and he successfully persuaded his colleagues to vote against the Pioneer Venus proposal. The full Appropriations Committee likewise rejected the program. This happened in spite of strong support for the project from the committee chairman, Rep. Edward P. Boland of Massachusetts. What happened next was a relatively rare event in Congress. Even though Boland was overruled by his committee, he decided to make an issue of the matter. When the debate over the NASA budget was held late in 1974, Boland submitted an amendment to the NASA bill and asked for a vote by the full House to approve Pioneer Venus. He won his point, and thus we were on our way. Charlie Hall and his deputy, Skip Nunamaker, were in charge of the program office at Ames. There was a debate over how to make the arrangements with the contractor community. Because of the long and successful relationship we had developed with TRW over the years, there was strong sentiment among the people at Ames to make a “sole source” arrangement with this contractor. The people at NASA Headquarters had reservations about this approach. Deputy administrator George Low, in particular, thought that it might be worthwhile to run a competitive procurement for this mission. In addition, he suggested that we use a more capable launch vehicle than the proposed Atlas-Centaur. He argued that the Pioneer Venus spacecraft would be much more complex than Pioneer 10 or Pioneer 11, so there was a higher probability that something would not work. Dan Herman supported Low’s position. After some debate and also hesitation on my part, I agreed to initiate a competitive procurement for Pioneer Venus. Hall and his people felt TRW would win

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any contract competition. Two companies submitted proposals, TRW and Hughes Aircraft. The TRW proposal was, as expected, very competently written and fully responsive to what we wanted done. But the Hughes proposal was unique. Hughes Aircraft specialized in the development and production of geosynchronous communications satellites. It was the contractor for the INTELSAT IV series, which provided the means for an international communications company of the same name to provide broadcast services.The contract for INTELSAT IV was very profitable, and the company was doing well. The proposal submitted by Hughes called for two spacecraft: one to carry the probes and the other the imaging radar that would orbit Venus. The two Pioneer Venus spacecraft would be produced by taking an INTELSAT IV off the production line and cutting it in half. The top half would become the “radar mapper,” since the antenna despin bearing on top of the spacecraft would keep the antenna pointed at Earth. In this way, the radar map would be created. The bottom half of the spacecraft would become the probe carrier and would be equipped with the spin-up rockets and the release mechanisms to send the four probes on their way to Venus. It was a superb proposal, employing existing commercial technology to advance a new scientific venture. Against their initial expectations, the contract evaluation team came to the conclusion that Hughes Aircraft would do a better job and recommended accordingly. Both Charlie Hall and I endorsed the recommendation, and the people at NASA Headquarters agreed. So early in 1976, work on Pioneer Venus began. The negotiations with Hughes over the details of the work provided me with an added and unexpected pleasure. The president of the Hughes communications satellite division was Albert D. (Bud) Wheelon, an old acquaintance from my days as a graduate student at MIT. Bud Wheelon and I had known each other only slightly at MIT, since we worked in different areas. He was also two years ahead of me in his PhD work, even though we were both born in 1929. After leaving MIT, Bud made major contributions to the development of our intelligence-gathering satellites; I was familiar with these developments because of my work at Livermore. When I saw Bud again after more than twenty years, he was a tall, elegant, and distinguished-looking person. He carefully expressed himself with well-chosen words, and he had become an effective and commanding personality. I asked him why a very profitable company like his would want to work on what was essentially a purely scientific program. His answer was what I expected. He told me that a company like Hughes, which depended on high-quality technical employees, would occasionally have to do something that had great technical content and scientific interest, in order to hire and to keep the best people. For example, he recommended Steven Dorfman, a thirty-two-year-old engineer, as project manager on the Hughes side of things. I agreed to talk to Steve. Impressed with his ideas and style, I agreed with Bud’s recommendation. Unfortunately, I left Ames in April 1977, before the two Pioneer Venus spacecraft were launched, the orbiter on May 20, 1978, and the probe on August 8, 1978.

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During the work on the project that I was able to observe, Bud Wheelon and I were amused by the father-son relationship that developed between Steve Dorfman and Charlie Hall, who was in his midfifties at the time. Charlie became Steve’s mentor, and there is no doubt that he influenced Steve’s subsequent career. Steve eventually succeeded Bud Wheelon as chief executive of the Hughes communications satellite operation, and like Bud, he was elected to the National Academy of Engineering. Our confidence in young Steve Dorfman was justified by his proven work ethic and dedication. Pioneer Venus was every bit as successful as Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11. It produced the first map of Venus, with a resolution of the surface of about fifty miles. In addition, it measured the first large-scale motions of the Venusian atmosphere. In 1979, when I was serving as secretary of the air force, I had the great pleasure of attending a symposium on Venus sponsored by the National Academy of Sciences. It was very gratifying to see our Ames people on the same platform with the Soviet Venus team, as equals. The success of Pioneer Venus led to another US mission to Venus, called Magellan. This program was managed by the JPL, and the spacecraft was larger and more sophisticated than Pioneer. The major purpose of Magellan was to repeat the Pioneer Venus orbiter’s radar imaging, but with a resolution of a few hundred meters. The spacecraft was launched on May 4, 1989, and reached Venus in August 1990. The mission was a spectacular success. Among other things, the images revealed that there are probably still active volcanoes on Venus. Airborne Astronomy Because of Ames’s expertise in aerodynamics and fluid mechanics, there was an interest at the center in atmospheric physics. Two distinguished Ames scientists, R. C. Whitten and I. G. Poppoff, had written the definitive treatise on aeronomy. Part of the Pioneer Venus mission was to look in detail at the Venusian atmosphere with multiple probes. The orbiter provided data on the upper atmosphere of Venus by recording the change in character of the telemetry signals due to absorption in the upper atmosphere as the spacecraft circled the planet just before dipping behind it. Frank Low of the Lunar and Planetary Institute of the University of Arizona had a long association with the people at Ames interested in planetary atmospheres. When I arrived at Ames, I learned that he had developed the idea that an astronomical telescope could be put on an airplane and then used to study the atmospheres of planets in the solar system. Frank argued that a high-flying airplane would, at 40,000 feet, be above about 80 percent of the atmosphere. Thus, a telescope mounted on the airplane would have to look through only the remaining 20 percent, meaning that the heavy distortion of the spectra of planetary atmospheres experienced with ground-based telescopes could be avoided. Ames had a small Learjet aircraft that had originally been intended as an executive airplane for the first director, Smith J. DeFrance. It turned out that neither DeFrance nor his successor, Harvey Allen, used the aircraft for that purpose, so it

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was slowly commandeered by some of the researchers at Ames for their purposes. I thought that the work being done by the people using the Learjet was valuable; plus, I had no intention of using the airplane myself. I learned that Frank Low had put a small reflecting telescope (with a twelve-inch diameter) on the aircraft and obtained some very promising results. Thus, the idea was planted in my mind that we should find a larger airplane that could accommodate a considerably larger telescope. An opportunity soon arose when Lockheed ran into serious financial problems because of technical problems with the air force C-5 transport plane.The company was selling assets in order to meet its payroll. One of these was a civilian version of the Lockheed C-141 air force transport, which had been built in an abortive effort to attract the interest of commercial airlines. Glen Goodwin, the Ames director of astronautics, learned about this aircraft, which was in mothballs at the Lockheed plant in Marietta, Georgia. The asking price was seven million dollars. Glen asked for permission to visit the plant and make a deal: three million in cash for the plane. He knew that Lockheed was up against it, because he had some access to their financial data. I told him to go ahead, even though I had no idea at that moment where the money would come from. I called Frank Low to get his advice on the matter. Frank suggested that we get Gerard Kuiper, who was the director of the University of Arizona’s Lunar and Planetary Institute, to call NASA administrator Jim Fletcher and ask him for the money. Professor Kuiper was the most distinguished planetary astronomer at that time, and I knew that Fletcher had more than a passing interest in NASA’s astronomy program. I told Frank to go ahead and see whether Kuiper would be willing to make the call. A day later, I got a telephone call from Bill Lilly, the NASA comptroller. He was extremely annoyed. He told me that the administrator had just ordered him to add three million dollars to the Ames budget in order to buy an airplane that he knew nothing about. I mumbled an apology. Still fuming, Lilly shouted, “You got your goddamn money,” and banged down the telephone. This was not the last time that Bill vented his anger on me. Glen Goodwin bought the aircraft, and the Ames airborne astronomy program was initiated. There were a number of people at Ames particularly well suited to work in this area. Our distinguished planetary astronomers included Carl Sagan’s star graduate student Jim Pollack, and Fred Whitemore, who would later head the airborne astronomy program. People in our Aeronautics Directorate would supervise the contract with Lockheed to modify the airplane to carry a reflecting telescope with a one-meter-diameter mirror. We therefore improved the capability to do airborne astronomy by about one order of magnitude over Frank Low’s twelve-inch telescope on the Learjet. The important technical problems had to do with mounting the telescope on a bearing so that it would be as stable as one on the ground, and with assuring ourselves that the airplane could be flown safely with a large hole in the fuselage through which the light for the telescope would come. Neither problem was

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simple, but both were solved. With the Ames people monitoring two contractors, Lockheed for the airplane and Bausch and Lomb for the telescope, the difficulties were overcome. The C-141 with the telescope became operational in 1974. Many astronomers used the aircraft to make important observations for the next twenty years. When Gerard Kuiper died in 1973, a decision was made to name the facility the Gerard P. Kuiper Airborne Observatory, or KAO. The best testimony to the success of this program is that even before the KAO was shut down (in 1995), a program was initiated to put an even larger (2.5-meter-diameter) telescope on a Boeing 747. This is the SOFIA (Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy) project, which was initiated in 1984 and became operational in 2010. As a footnote, I should mention that the same people who made the KAO work subsequently worked on the Airborne Laser Laboratory KC-135 aircraft. It was quite typical of NASA institutions to have people on their research staffs who could make important contributions to the nation’s scientific standing and then turn around and work on projects vital to national security. Airborne Sciences and Gov. Ronald Reagan In addition to the airborne astronomy program, Ames had a Convair 990 aircraft dedicated to airborne sciences. The program was a combination of earth observation and atmospheric sciences. An important addition to the Airborne Sciences Office came when NASA initiated the Earth Resources Technology Satellite (ERTS) program in the late 1960s.This satellite system used a sophisticated camera system to conduct observations of Earth. The atmospheric sciences program concentrated on climatology and the chemical composition of the atmosphere. The chief of the Airborne Sciences Office, Michel Bader, wanted to add other airplanes to his organization. Sometime in early 1971, through my Air Force Scientific Advisory Board connection, I got wind of a move by the air force to declare some of the older Lockheed U-2 reconnaissance aircraft as surplus. These were the “C” models, which had performed some of the early high-altitude flights over the Soviet Union. Mike Bader thought that we could use two U-2C type aircraft to develop a supporting role for the ERTS program by determining what is called “ground truth”—that is, the actual features present on a terrain, regardless of what satellite imaging determines those features to be. He also thought that the aircraft would be useful for instrumentation development. I concluded that Mike’s ideas made sense and called my air force friends to put dibs on two of the surplus U-2s. The next step was to explain the program to George Low at NASA. I asked Mike Bader and Glen Goodwin to make the presentation with me. George liked the idea, but felt there might be an image problem. He reminded us that in 1960 Gary Powers’s U-2, which had been shot down by the Soviets, was conducting espionage under a NASA cover. This problem seemed insurmountable. At some point in the conversation, Glen Goodwin said, “Why don’t we paint the airplanes

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white?” George paused and said that that might be a way out. He then asked us to develop a public relations plan that would feature “white” U-2s performing important public service missions. And so a deal was struck with the air force to transfer two U-2Cs to NASA and to assign the unit to Ames. We found that by far the most useful application of our U-2 program was the monitoring of forest fires. Large forest fires are endemic in huge swaths of the western United States. The U-2 aircraft, flying at altitudes of seventy thousand feet, could cover a very wide field of view and spot incipient fires before they became large. If a forest fire spread, the U-2s were useful in helping the firefighters on the ground. Techniques were developed to produce photographs to the same scale as the topographic maps used by firefighters, so the photographs were immediately useful. In addition, infrared film could be used to determine the location of hot spots in the fire. Infrared pictures also could be used to determine when a fire was fully extinguished. Our successful program began to attract considerable attention. Late in 1971, I received a telephone call from Sacramento inviting me to a meeting with Ronald Reagan, who had just begun his second term as governor of California. The governor was arranging a meeting with a dozen or so federal officials who headed large federal institutions in California to find out what they were doing. The meeting was held in the governor’s office suite in the state capitol. I counted fourteen other people in the room, including the heads of the San Francisco Naval Shipyard, the Los Angeles Air Force Station, the Aerospace Corporation, and the large Department of Agriculture laboratory at Emeryville. I knew two of the people there: Michael May, the director of the Livermore Laboratory, and William Pickering, the director of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The governor walked in and shook hands with everyone and offered us jelly beans from the three large jars of them on the table in the conference room. Reagan started the meeting like this: “Welcome, and let me tell you why I wanted to talk with you fellows.Your outfits account for a total payroll of about four billion dollars. This is important to me and to the people of California, so I want to know what you are doing. I will go around the table, and each of you will tell me what you are doing. We have two hours, and I am going to limit each of you to five minutes.” I was interested to hear what my colleagues were doing, and an amazingly broad range of capabilities was represented in the room.When my turn came, I said a few words about Ames and then described the support our U-2 aircraft provided to firefighters. After I finished, the governor told me that he would be in touch. On the drive home, I looked back on the meeting, satisfied to have been invited, but expecting nothing more. Two weeks after the Sacramento meeting, a special assistant to Governor Reagan who had attended the meeting called me. He wanted to see for himself what we were doing with our U-2 aircraft. Given only short notice, we scrambled to prepare for his visit. To make a long story short, the visit led to an agreement according to which the State of California would support NASA’s U-2 operation to help fight forest fires by providing $2 million for our operational budget.

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We eventually expanded our firefighting effort to the Pacific Northwest. As the technology of the cameras and the sensors evolved, other capabilities became available. One of the most interesting efforts was that we were able to track some of the tree diseases plaguing Oregon, Washington, and Idaho. The Loss of Galileo At the beginning of the previous section, I mentioned the Convair 990 aircraft operated by the Airborne Sciences Office. This airplane was the attempt by Convair, then a major aircraft manufacturer, to enter the commercial airline business. The Convair 990 and its smaller companion, the Convair 880, were the company’s entries. The attempt was a failure. In the case of the Convair 990, only fifty-seven aircraft were built before the company gave up. The airplane was too heavy for its class, making its operational costs too high. But the Convair 990 was an excellent platform for scientific research because it was so stiff that turbulence events in flight would not harm the calibration of sensitive instruments on the aircraft. Ames acquired the aircraft on the initiative of Michel Bader in 1964, and it was named Galileo. The aircraft was based at Moffett Field, but it operated from many airfields around the world when on extended missions. A good example of such a mission was the use of infrared detectors to count marine mammals. The great walrus herd and the fur seals that live on and near the Pribilof Islands off the coast of Alaska were counted using this technique. Such a count was obviously approximate, but useful nevertheless. Later, Galileo was used to obtain an approximate count of California gray whales. In addition, Galileo was used for meteorological purposes, such as in situ measurements of air pollution around the world. My term of service as the Ames director was not without tragedy. On the evening of April 12, 1973, the Ames director of aeronautics, Leonard Roberts, deputy director Sy Syvertson, and I were flying back to California from Washington, DC. About halfway through the trip, a flight attendant told me that I was wanted on the flight deck. The captain told me that there had been a midair collision at Moffett Field and that Glen Goodwin was on a line that had been patched through to the airplane. The pilot switched on a speaker, and I heard Glen Goodwin’s voice: “There has been a midair collision between the Galileo and a navy P-3.” I asked, “Any casualties?” “Yes, nine people from Ames and four from the navy. One navy man survived,” Glen replied. I was shocked into silence. He continued, “The airplanes were both on final approach into Moffett Field and ran into each other above the golf course that lies just south of the runway.” Recovering my presence of mind, I asked Glen to have a car ready at the San Francisco Airport upon our arrival. The first thing that I wanted to do was to go to the crash site, and I wanted to arrange a meeting of our organizational directors shortly after the visit, which would be around one in the morning.

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We arrived at the golf course at about midnight. The local fire department had placed floodlights around the crash site. It was terrible to see the wreckage. Since the Galileo had come down on top of the P-3, the navy aircraft was completely destroyed.The fuselage of the Galileo was approximately intact, and I saw holes that had been cut in the skin to remove the bodies of those who had perished in the crash. It was a horrendous sight that left me with a major sense of loss. In my office, the directors were present for our meeting. We discussed the situation for about half an hour and then reached the following conclusions. I would meet with Admiral Ainsworth, the commander of Patrol Wings Pacific, first thing in the morning to find out what had happened. If necessary, we were determined to gain access to the recorded conversations of the people in the navy flight control tower, who were responsible for air traffic at Moffett Field. Any of our comments to reporters would start with the assertion that we were strongly committed to replacing Galileo with another Convair 990 aircraft—this was to preempt any contrary action by NASA Headquarters. All of us would try to attend the funerals of the people who perished in the accident. And within a few days, we would arrange an all-hands meeting to explain what happened and to provide a view of the future for the Ames program in airborne sciences. The cause of the accident became clear in the first few minutes of my conversation with Admiral Ainsworth. He played the tape of the air traffic controller; the young man in the tower had simply made the mistake of ordering both airplanes to land on the same runway at the same time. The following two weeks were difficult, filled with funerals and visits to griefstricken relatives. We tried to provide whatever comfort we could. On April 19, I delivered a short speech at our all-hands meeting. More than a thousand people stood on the tarmac in front of the Ames hangar. I pledged that we would replace Galileo and asserted that we had to continue the work that our fallen colleagues had started. It was a very emotional and difficult day for all of us. We pressed forward with heavy hearts. Soon, the replacement of Galileo became an adventure. Glen Goodwin discovered that the Indonesian national airline, Garuda, had bought some of these airplanes and was ready to sell them. He made a commitment to buy an airplane, and permission to do so was eventually granted. In the event the airplane we had selected had an accident, we also wanted to buy another one. In addition, we acquired the fuselage of the damaged airplane, so we had a mock-up in which we could test equipment that would eventually be flown. So about a year after we lost Galileo, its successor, Galileo II, was put into service. The Search for Extraterrestrial Life From the beginning, Ames had a group of people working on the human factors related to flight. This work led, early on, to the presence at Ames of medical people trained in physiology and biology and eventually to the construction of the sophisticated flight simulators and centrifuges mentioned earlier. When Ames was

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transferred to NASA in 1958, the programs related to human factors and biological activities were expanded. Human factors in space included work on how to adapt people to the space environment—for example, how to live and work in space suits in a zero-gravity environment. To oversee work of this nature, a Life Sciences Directorate was established at Ames, and Webb Haymaker, a distinguished neurophysiologist, was brought to Ames in July 1961 to head it. There were three divisions in the new directorate: Aeronautical Human Factors, Space Biology and Medicine, and Exobiology, which worked on the search for life elsewhere in the universe. Exobiology required the people at Ames to work on two very broadly based scientific questions: What is the origin of life? And is there life elsewhere in the universe? To deal with the first question, Cyril Ponnamperuma established a laboratory to look at how the molecules that constitute living things, from amino acids to DNA, come about. The question whether life exists elsewhere in the universe was divided into two separate inquiries: Is there, or was there, life on Mars? And is it possible to communicate with intelligent beings that may live on other planets in our galaxy? Webb Haymaker resigned as director of Life Sciences in 1963. He was succeeded by Harold P. (Chuck) Klein, who came from Brandeis University. When I arrived at Ames, Chuck Klein was deeply involved in the search for living things on Mars. There had been much speculation about life on Mars since the final years of the nineteenth century when the Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli and his American colleague Percival Lowell began to popularize the idea that Mars was inhabited by intelligent beings. Both were prominent, respected astronomers, and both reported that Mars was crisscrossed by straight lines. Schiaparelli did not take a position on this observation, but Lowell thought that the lines were canals that had been constructed on the planet. In fact, Lowell wrote an interesting book called Mars and Its Canals (1905), in which he made what he considered a persuasive case that there were intelligent people on Mars. This was a classic case of what the Nobel laureate Irving Langmuir (chemistry, 1932) later called “pathological science.” What he meant by this term was that if even a very distinguished scientist believes that something must be true, he will persuade himself that there is a “scientific” explanation and stick with it through thick and thin. The lines across the observed disc of the planet Mars through a telescope with a very small field of view turned out to be an optical illusion due to turbulence in Earth’s atmosphere. But the work of Schiaparelli and Lowell inspired H. G. Wells to write his sensational science-fiction novel War of the Worlds in 1898. A few years later, Kurd Lasswitz in Germany wrote Two Planets. Both books dealt with the interaction, sometimes violent, between Earthlings and a superior race of Martians. Although by 1920 the idea that there were intelligent beings on Mars had been scientifically discredited by the determination of the structure of Mars’s atmosphere—which turned out to be almost entirely carbon dioxide at a pressure

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of around 1 percent of Earth’s atmosphere on the ground—the thought of life on Mars lingered on in the public imagination. As more became known about Mars and about the nature of life and its chemistry, the idea arose that some form of life—probably very primitive—might be able to survive the harsh environment of Mars. At about the same time during the 1960s that the Grand Tour, the space telescope, and other major elements of the American space program were put in place, a program to put a soft lander on the surface of Mars was initiated. This project would be the most sophisticated (and expensive) effort at scientific space exploration ever mounted. The mission was called Viking, and the plan was to put two identical robotic spacecraft at two points on the planet and to have them instrumented to analyze the composition of the Martian atmosphere and soil, to measure winds, to establish whether there were “Marsquakes,” and to look for biological activity on the surface of Mars. The organization of the Viking mission was complex because NASA management wanted to involve as many as possible of the NASA institutions capable of doing some things of value.The NASA–Langley Research Center was given the job of organizing and leading the program.The director of Langley, Edgar M. Cortright, had been the director of NASA’s planetary exploration programs before assuming his current post, so he was experienced in the business. Jim Martin, who had extensive experience in project management, was named the overall project manager. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory was the principal supporting center. Other NASA institutions were required to contribute as their capabilities dictated. Because of the biological group that had been developed at Ames over the years, we were asked to manage the payload that would perform the “life detection” experiment. The principal investigators were Wolf Vishniac of the University of Rochester, Norman Horowitz of the California Institute of  Technology, and Harold P. Klein of the Ames Research Center. The life-detection payload consisted of three experiments. The first was designed to measure the presence of metabolic reactions in the Martian soil, which meant exposing the soil to oxygen and then measuring any carbon dioxide emitted. The second was to detect the presence of photosynthetic reactions involving the transformation of carbon dioxide to oxygen. The third was to “fertilize” the Martian soil with water to see whether any biological organisms would develop and grow. This experiment measured an increase in the turbidity of the soil exposed to water, which could indicate the growth of biological organisms. The spacecraft development group at TRW—the same organization that had built Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11—was selected to build the life-detection instrument. Its construction was complicated by the fact that the Viking spacecraft had to be sterilized in order to prevent the contamination of Mars by terrestrial microorganisms. This requirement was mandated by a National Academy of Sciences committee chaired by the Nobel laureate Joshua Lederberg (physiology, 1958).

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The problems were eventually overcome, although the launch had to be postponed from 1974 to 1975. The first Viking spacecraft (Viking 1) was launched on August 20, 1975. The landing sites for Viking 1 and Viking 2 were carefully chosen based on photographs of the surface of the planet by the spectacularly successful Mars orbiter Mariner 9. To make certain that the Viking spacecraft remained standing after touchdown, we selected regions with few large boulders. At the time of the Viking launch, the Soviets had attempted several soft landings on Mars. One of these spacecraft, Mars 3, which landed on the planet on December 2, 1971, transmitted data back to Earth for twenty seconds before falling silent. The probable explanation was that the spacecraft had landed on a boulder or protuberance and fallen over. We wanted to ensure that would not happen to the Viking spacecrafts. Competition with the Soviets to beam back the first pictures from Mars was intense. The results were soon in hand. Viking 1 landed successfully on the western slope of Chryse Planitia (the Plains of Gold) on July 20, 1976, and proceeded to transmit the first pictures ever made from the surface of Mars. I was present in the control room at the JPL when these pictures were received. It was a profound experience for all of us as the first image from the surface of Mars was built up slowly on the TV monitor by the raster scanner moving across the screen. The final picture showed a reddish rock-strewn desert with no large features. It was not a scenic view, but then we had deliberately chosen a place that looked uninteresting in order to guarantee a safe landing—and so it was.

Figure 6.10. Pioneer 10 display in the Hall of Firsts of the Smithsonian.

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The first result from the life-detection experiments was a complete surprise: a large reaction occurred when water was added to the Martian soil. The massive gas release raised our hopes that maybe something interesting was there. But a more mundane explanation was soon forthcoming. The soil on Mars is very oxygenrich, and in the strong ultraviolet flux from the sun, otherwise unstable oxides of silicon or iron might become stable. Such compounds would emit oxygen when water was added, which would account for our observation. The final result of the life-detection experiment from Viking 1 and Viking 2 was that no evidence was found of any biological activity.This was a disappointment, but it was also essentially what we had expected to find. An unexpected event occurred shortly after the first pictures were returned from Mars. In November 1976, US senator John Tunney of California was up for reelection. About a week after the Viking 1 landing, Senator Tunney’s campaign office asked Ames to provide a speaker for a Rotary Club meeting in San Jose that the senator would be forced to miss because of a crucial Senate vote. The young lady on the line sheepishly said that the date of the Rotary Club meeting was the next day and then quickly apologized for the very short notice. I decided to deliver the speech myself and to talk about the Viking mission. I have spoken to many Rotary groups in my time, but this one was unique. I had about thirty slides that described the Viking mission, and the last three or four showed pictures of the Martian surface that had been received at the JPL a few days earlier. They had not yet been released to the public, so this audience was getting a “premiere” viewing. The most interesting comment came from a club member who was a dentist I happened to know. He said, “You know, I think that this picture looks just like the place in the Mojave Desert where we go camping.” I was startled by the remark, but then I realized that my dentist friend had caught the very essence of what we learned from the Viking missions. Mars is very much like Earth in many respects. How many other Mojave Deserts are there in the universe? Viking 2 was launched on September 5, 1975, and touched down on Mars on September 3, 1976, in the Utopia Planitia, about 1,500 miles from the landing point of Viking 1. It was an equally featureless area. The life-detection results were identical to those of Viking 1. The most important result of the Viking experiments came from the atmospheric probes mounted on each spacecraft. The instruments were equipped with a small mass spectrometer that could measure the isotopic ratios of the gases in the Martian atmosphere. All the isotopic ratios were the same as those on Earth except for one—the ratio of nitrogen-15 to nitrogen-14. In Earth’s atmosphere, the ratio is 0.00368, and on Mars it is 0.0065 ± 0.0005. Why is the ratio substantially larger on Mars than on Earth? The size of the difference is far past the margin of error in the measurement, so the effect is real. The explanation is complex, and it has to do with a calculation that the English physicist Sir James Jeans performed in the early years of the twentieth century to

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determine how fast planetary atmospheres escape. Small planets (or satellites), such as Mercury or Earth’s moon, have no atmospheres at all. Mars, which is larger than Mercury or the moon, has a tenuous but measurable atmosphere.Venus and Earth, which are about the same size and much larger than Mars, have very dense atmospheres. Four and a half billion years ago, the small inner planets of the solar system were roughly the same in the composition of their atmospheres. The formula developed by Jeans predicts that the moon and Mercury lost their atmospheres long ago—before the first billion years of the life of the solar system. It also predicts that Earth and Venus should have large enough gravitational fields to keep their atmospheres. Mars is somewhere in between. The higher nitrogen-15 to nitrogen-14 ratio on Mars is due to the fact that nitrogen-14, being the lighter isotope, escapes from the planet more rapidly than nitrogen-15. From the data point given by the Viking result, it is possible to calculate the pressure of the Martian atmosphere shortly (say, five hundred million years) after the formation of the solar system. The essential conclusion of this calculation is that the atmospheres of Earth and of Mars were similar in pressure, composition, and temperature. Since there is strong evidence that DNA-based life on Earth began in the first five hundred million years of Earth’s history, it is possible that the same thing happened on Mars. Because of the nitrogen isotope measurement, the question about life on Mars has changed. It is not whether there is biological activity on Mars now, but rather whether there was such activity in the planet’s first billion years. The best indirect indication that life may have started on Mars early in the history of the planet is evidence that liquid water was once there. There is no liquid water on the Martian surface today, because the atmospheric pressure is too low. Water can exist on Mars now only as water vapor or ice, depending on the local temperature. Very-high-resolution pictures of the Martian surface taken by orbiting spacecraft have revealed features that look like dry riverbeds and lake beds. In addition, spacecraft landing on Mars near suspected lake beds have discovered sedimentary rocks, which can form only in the presence of liquid water. The other element of the search for life elsewhere in the universe is something that has come to be called SETI, or the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. The first step in this effort was taken at Ames in 1970 when Bernard M. Oliver, who was then vice president for research at Hewlett-Packard Corporation, organized a summer study to develop a means of looking for signals in the cosmos that might have been sent by intelligent beings. Bernard—or Barney, as we called him—was a true original. He was a highly successful industrial engineering scientist who was responsible for the development of the first handheld calculators developed by Hewlett-Packard. But he was also a dreamer. He was convinced that there was “someone out there” and that we were obligated to look. The product of Barney’s summer study was a report called Project Cyclops. This report was a serious engineering effort to define what needed to be done to detect such signals.They would have to be in the microwave frequency (centimeter wave-

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length) because only that sort of radiation can both carry information and suffer less absorption while passing through light-years of space. The report captured the attention of the public, and in due course Carl Sagan, the brilliant expositor of space exploration, wrote a novel called Contact based on the technology pioneered by the Cyclops study. The SETI effort has, after some false starts, evolved to the point that the subject of astrobiology is now one of the major missions of Ames and the scientific community in general. I was fascinated by this work, even though the probability of a true “contact” seemed vanishingly small. I thought that good science meant attempting to answer important, really difficult questions. Certainly, the origin of life and whether it exists elsewhere in the universe are questions that are both important and difficult to answer.

Competition and Cooperation with the Soviets: Biosatellites and Space Biology One of the first decisions I had to make in the spring of 1969 was whether to launch the Ames Biosatellite. This was a project initiated in 1962 to study the behavior of biological organisms in the space environment. The project was assigned to Ames because of the center’s expertise in biological sciences. When I reviewed the program, what I found was troubling. Biosatellite was designed to carry a small, highly instrumented monkey that would be severely confined by restraints so that detailed measurements could be made of the effects of zero gravity on systems of the body (cardiovascular, nervous, muscular, and so forth). To accomplish this, several traumatic operations were performed on the animal, and I wondered whether the resulting physiological damage would mask any effects due to zero gravity. Following the first review of the program, I flew to Los Angeles to see the principal scientific investigator of the program, Ross Adey of UCLA. Adey was a distinguished neurophysiologist who had developed a strong interest in spaceflight. I told him that what troubled me about the Biosatellite experiment was the inability to obtain unambiguous results. Adey assured me in a rather imperious way that he knew what he was doing and that important results would be obtained. I went away from this meeting even more concerned; Adey’s “trust me” attitude was not encouraging. I consulted with the people at Ames, especially Chuck Klein, the director of Life Sciences, and Charles Wilson, the Biosatellite project manager. Chuck agreed that Adey’s experiment was not well conceived. But it had been approved by the people at NASA Headquarters and the relevant committees of the National Academy of Sciences. Charles told me that he was confident that the spacecraft would work properly from an engineering viewpoint. My conclusion after consulting with Jack Boyd and Sy Syvertson, as well as Chuck and Charles, was that in spite of the reservations we all had about Adey’s experiment, we had no choice but to go ahead and launch Biosatellite.

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The mission plan was to put the satellite carrying the monkey into Earth orbit for twenty-one days and collect measurements on the monkey via telemetry. Then the monkey would be brought back alive for follow-up experiments on the ground. Biosatellite was successfully launched on June 28, 1969, and remained in Earth orbit for nine days. The mission had to be aborted when the monkey came close to death. Adey wanted the monkey returned alive so that he could examine him, but it was not to be. The monkey died shortly after the landing, so no really useful information was obtained. In my judgment, the mission was essentially a failure, but the people at NASA Headquarters declared it a “partial success.” I was glad to wash my hands of the whole business, especially having to deal with the haughty Professor Adey. I thought that the enterprise was ill conceived, and I strongly resisted suggestions that we mount another Biosatellite mission. Fortunately, that was the final decision. Cooperation with the Soviets in Space Biology Following the failure of the Biosatellite project, Chuck Klein had a good idea. The Soviets were regularly flying Earth-orbiting Vostok spacecraft. He thought that it might be possible to approach the Soviets about whether it would be possible to fly US biological payloads on some of these missions. Chuck was a close friend of the distinguished Soviet biologist and biochemist Alexander I. Oparin, who was a senior member of the Soviet Academy of Sciences. Oparin was one of the first scientists to do serious research on the origin of life, and as mentioned, a small but excellent group headed by Cyril Ponnamperuma was working on the subject at Ames. In 1970, Chuck invited Oparin and his wife to visit Ames. Oparin was in his seventies. A European professor of the old school, he had been educated in Russia and Germany before the Bolshevik revolution. The Oparins showed up, he impeccable in a dark blue suit and Madame Oparin in a fabulous mink coat. We treated them accordingly and put them up in the best hotel in the area. I had the distinct impression that both Oparins were glad to be out of the “workers’ paradise” for a while. Professor Oparin was impressed by the work of Ponnamperuma and his group. It was Chuck Klein’s intention to ask Professor Oparin to use his influence to convince the Soviet Academy to fly our biological payloads. The approach worked. In 1972, the Soviet Academy of Sciences agreed to occasionally fly American-built biological payloads on specially modified Vostok spacecraft. The payloads included small live animals. But Chuck Klein, the principal scientific investigator, never made the same blunder committed by Ross Adey. He never instrumented or restrained animals in such a way that it killed them before useful data could be obtained. From 1975 to 1990, six American payloads were flown by the Soviets. This was an unusually successful program because both sides had excellent leadership, which instilled an impressive team spirit in both

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teams. Credit for this arrangement was due to Chuck Klein and Joe Sharp on our side, and to Oleg Gazenko, the leader of the Soviet space biology program. As a Cold Warrior, I found this kind of cooperation to be something new. But the results were what counted. Our agreement called for mutual visits every year, one by a Soviet group to Ames and then by a NASA group to Moscow.When the first Soviet group of seven or eight people came to Ames, we started with formal briefings in our conference room. At the end of the briefing, we invited the visiting party for a tour. As they left the conference room, all of them left their cameras on the conference table. I told them, “Take them along.You might want some mementos from this visit.” One of them replied, “We can’t. We don’t allow you to take pictures in our facilities, and our agreement says that we cannot take pictures in yours.” So I replied, “I’m the director, and I think that you need pictures. Please bring your cameras and take some pictures.” One of them slowly took his camera, and the others reluctantly took theirs—all except one, who adamantly refused. No matter what I said, he refused. It suddenly occurred to me that he was the KGB spook who, during those years, accompanied all such Soviet delegations to the United States. On subsequent occasions, we always used the same routine to identify the spook. Someone on our side was then delegated to be especially nice to him and to try and get him drunk at the dinner party. It was great fun! The other Soviet visitors were very different. In 1975, NASA and the Soviet counterparts executed the Apollo-Soyuz mission. This involved the docking of an Apollo command-and-service module with a Soyuz spacecraft. An American astronaut and a Soviet cosmonaut then moved to the docking collar and performed the “handshake in space.” This mission was inspired by the policy of détente, which was meant to improve US-Soviet relations. President Nixon and his senior foreign policy adviser, Henry Kissinger, were the authors of this policy, and their hope was to continue the limitations on strategic nuclear arms with a second agreement like SALT I. The Ames Research Center was not directly involved in this mission. But late in 1975, the two Soviet cosmonauts, Alexei Leonov and Valeriy Kubasov, were on a tour of the United States. We were asked by NASA Headquarters to host them during their visit to San Francisco. They were escorted by Col. Thomas P. Stafford, a US astronaut. The cosmonauts and Tom Stafford spent a day at Ames for thorough briefings. I was very impressed by Leonov, who I could communicate directly with because he spoke passable German. He was a very interesting and an accomplished gentleman. The next day we toured San Francisco, and there was a dinner party hosted by the Russians at the restaurant on top of the Mark Hopkins Hotel. There were speeches and toasts to friendship and peace. It was a fine party and a respite from Cold War tensions. Nazdarovya!

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Computational Fluid Mechanics and the Acquisition of Modern Computers at Ames When I first arrived at Ames, I was immediately impressed by the number of talented theoreticians at the center. It started with the director, Harvey Allen, who, as mentioned, was responsible for conceiving and developing the “blunt body” atmospheric entry body. Dean Chapman, a student of Hans Liepmann at the California Institute of  Technology, was a major expert in supersonic and hypersonic flight; Leonard Roberts was a highly respected expert in aeroacoustics; Harvard Lomax was a first-rate aerodynamicist; and Morris Rubesin, Paul Kutler, and Paul McCroskey all deserve mention. What surprised me was that with all this talent, Ames’s computer capability was limited to two aging IBM machines. I was used to the lavish computer installation at the Livermore Laboratory, and I felt that something would have to be done to rectify things at Ames. The opportunity came in the summer of 1969 when the new Nixon administration canceled the air force’s Manned Orbiting Laboratory (MOL). A groundcontrol facility for the MOL was at the Sunnyvale Air Force Station, right next to Ames. The facility was conspicuous because it was located in a large windowless concrete block known locally as the Blue Cube because of its bright blue color. Through my air force connections, I had learned that there was an advanced IBM Duplex 160/​67 computer in the facility, a machine much more powerful than the IBM 7040 at Ames. This computer would soon appear on the government surplus equipment list. I decided to go over to the Blue Cube to see the computer and also to talk with the air force people in charge. The colonel who was the commander of the ground control unit was very accommodating. I told him what we had in mind and then asked him whether the air force had any plans for the computer system in the Blue Cube. He told me that as far as he knew, the computer would be put on the surplus list. I launched into a short explanation of what we could do with the computer, and then I popped the question: “Could you give me a couple of weeks before you put the computer on the surplus list? I want to find out whether we could improve our computation group at Ames by moving this computer to the center.” The colonel laughed and told me that he would be pleased to do anything that I wanted. He continued to tell me about the shutdown of the MOL. The end of this program, he said, would destroy the air force’s capability to operate in space. When word came that the MOL program would be canceled, he was disappointed and angry. The air force had offered him an insignificant job, and instead he had taken early retirement. He also told me that as soon as he could disband his command, he had a good job lined up with one of the local technology companies. Finally, he said, “Now you can see why I am inclined to help you.”

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I left it there, went back to my office, and called an impromptu meeting to find out what our computer people wanted me to do. Harv Lomax, Dean Chapman, and some others were involved. The consensus was to get the computer, but we would have to hire some competent people to find a way to operate the new equipment. I went back to see the colonel and asked Dean Chapman to come along. A deal was struck, and we transferred the machine to Ames. About three weeks after moving the computer to Ames, I checked the surplus list published by the General Accounting Office (GAO). There was no sign of the IBM Duplex 160/​67 on the list, so the colonel was as good as his word. But I did not get away without paying my dues. Two months later, someone in our accounting department found the computer on the surplus list. Near the end of 1969, a GAO agent came to see me, and he wanted to know about the computer. I spent an uncomfortable hour giving him lame excuses. In the end, he handed me some papers to sign, and that was the end of it. The beginning of what became Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) was the establishment of a branch in Dean Chapman’s division, headed by Harv Lomax. As this organization grew during 1969 and 1970, Bill Ballhaus and Paul Kutler were the first people to join.We eventually secured better computers through the efforts of Loren Bright. In 1971, we obtained a state-of-the-art CDC 7600 machine and, later on, one of the new computers built by Seymour Cray. We began to solve problems that had never before been tackled. Dean Chapman and Bill Ballhaus developed relationships with the aviation industry and introduced new computer methods. This work was greatly aided by DARPANET, which made it possible to link large computers. Such connectivity greatly enhanced the aviation industry’s efforts to become efficient. Airplanes like the Boeing 787 and the Bell MV-22 were built using these new methods. The ILLIAC IV The next opportunity to enhance Ames’s computational capability came a year later. The student rebellion of the 1960s spawned a number of terrorist groups that committed outrageous acts in the United States in subsequent years.These included the Weathermen, which was a national group, and local ones in California, such as the Symbionese Liberation Army. On August 24, 1970, an explosion at the University of Wisconsin’s Computer Center killed a graduate student; the Weathermen were responsible. Much of the work at the computer center was sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), which made it a target for the antiwar Weathermen. About a week later, Edward Teller called me. He was worried that there might be other attacks on university-based facilities sponsored by DARPA and other agencies of the Department of Defense. He was particularly concerned about a new computer—he called it a supercomputer—that would shortly be installed at the Urbana-Champaign campus of the University of Illinois. The computer,

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called the ILLIAC IV (Illinois Automatic Computer), was the most recent of the ILLIAC computers that Arnold Nordsieck had designed and built at the University of Illinois. Teller told me that it was most important that this computer be built, because it was based on a promising new architecture called “parallel processing.” He suggested that I call Lawrence Roberts at DARPA and find out what this was all about. Roberts was the head of the computer division at DARPA, and by the time I talked with him, he was well on the way to becoming a legend. He was responsible for funding many of the innovations that ushered in the information age, including the Internet. Roberts told me about his concern about the vulnerability of the ILLIAC IV if it were installed at the University of Illinois. Based on my experience in Berkeley, I readily agreed that his concern was well founded. Finally, he suggested that I go the University of Illinois to talk with Daniel Slotnick, who had developed the new architecture on which the ILLIAC IV was based. When I heard the name “Slotnick,” I did a double take.There was a Dan Slotnick in my brother Peter’s class (1949) at Stuyvesant High School. Could this be the same person? It was indeed the same Dan Slotnick. I told him that we could provide a secure facility for assembling the ILLIAC IV. Ames was located on Moffett Field, whose perimeter fence was guarded by a company of US Marines. Elated by all this, I began to think that we might actually persuade the Pentagon to let Ames manage the ILLIAC IV. I touched base with George Low about this, and he told me to go ahead. I should add that when the NASA comptroller, Bill Lilly, got wind of what we were doing, I got a furious telephone call from him. I told him to keep his shirt on because no NASA money was involved. Needless to say, he was not satisfied with my answer, so once again I made an extensive apology. Bill finally got even with me. He wrote a memoir in which he called me “a son of a bitch” and also indicated “I did not trust Mark further than I could throw him!” Oh well. At Ames, we decided how to organize the assembling, testing, and operating of the ILLIAC IV. We proposed to establish the Institute for Advanced Computation (IAC), which would perform this job. The institute would be located in the Ames Directorate of Research Support, headed by Loren Bright. Loren was an excellent technical administrator with a good understanding of computers and a knowledge of people broad enough to allow him to handle the “free spirits” likely to collect around the ILLIAC IV.We also established a new branch, led by Harvard Lomax, in Dean Chapman’s Astronautics Directorate, to start the process of learning how to use the ILLIAC IV to develop more sophisticated theories of aerodynamics. What would the advent of parallel processing bring to the capability of computers? The serial computer architecture originated by John von Neumann and his colleagues in the 1940s performs one computation at a given time. The speed of the computer is determined by the speed with which the circuit elements can be switched and the speed with which the signals can be transmitted from one circuit element to another—that is, the speed of light. The switching time can ultimately

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be made small compared to the time it takes to transmit the signal from one element to the next. Thus, the speed of light turns out to be the limiting factor of the computational speed that can be reached by a computer using serial architecture. Dan Slotnick’s idea was to build a computer with a number of serial processors running in parallel. In the case of the ILLIAC IV, sixty-four processors ran simultaneously on the same clock. A problem to be solved was broken into sixty-four portions and distributed among the sixty-four processors, each solving a part of the problem. If all the processors finished together, the solutions were combined to get the complete answer. The computer could therefore theoretically increase computational speed by a factor of sixty-four. Things were not quite that simple because the processors did not finish their parts of the problem at the same time. Most problems cannot be made perfectly parallel. Also, some time is required for communication between the processors. Although parallelism offered a clear advantage in computer speed, there was a price to be paid. Besides the fact that not all problems could easily be cast in parallel form, at the time we took on the job there was no high-level language such as FORTRAN, which would have made it easy to program the ILLIAC IV. Harvard Lomax’s branch had the job of defining problems appropriate for parallel architecture and developing the procedures for programming computers with parallel architecture. When the ILLIAC IV arrived at Ames in 1971, the Institute for Advanced Computation was established. A brilliant young professor of computer science from the University of California, Berkeley, Melvin W. Pirtle, was brought in as director. It was not easy to assemble the ILLIAC IV, but by the end of 1974, it was producing useful results in computational fluid mechanics, classified navy programs requiring fast-Fourier transforms, calculations of molecular structures from first principles, and analyses of reconnaissance pictures. In April 1975, Dean Chapman, Mel Pirtle, and I published a paper, “Computers vs. Wind Tunnels for Aerodynamic Flow Generation,” in Astronautics and Aeronautics (now Aerospace America), in which we predicted that highly capable computers would ultimately replace much wind tunnel testing. The paper was controversial at the time—few could foresee computer modeling exceeding the accuracy and reliability of real-world experimentation such as wind tunnel testing. The agreement between NASA and the Department of Defense under which we operated the ILLIAC IV expired in 1979. The computer was shut down in 1983 when Ames acquired advanced machines with greater capabilities. But we had proved that computers using parallel architecture were useful for large computations related to aerodynamic and flight-control problems. As operating systems and compilers were developed, many other problems could be solved. Today, every large computer uses parallel architecture. In addition, we put together the computer network known as DARPANET, which permitted one computer on

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the network to use any one of the others. DARPANET eventually provided the technology from which today’s Internet was derived.

Suggestions for the Post-Apollo Space Program Shortly after being elected in 1968, President Nixon asked for some plans to develop a space program that would follow a successful landing on the moon. Vice President Agnew, as the new chairman of the National Space Council, formed the Space Task Group to formulate a comprehensive space program for the nation. Two other groups were chartered to provide ideas for the future of the space program. One was a National Academy of Sciences committee chaired by Lewis Branscomb, who was the director of the National Bureau of Standards. The other was established by NASA, the Management Council of the Office of Manned Space Flight (OMSF), which was chaired by George Mueller, the associate administrator of NASA for manned spaceflight. The Management Council consisted of Mueller and three center directors: Robert R. Gilruth of the NASA–Manned Spacecraft Center, Wernher von Braun of the NASA–George C. Marshall Space Flight Center, and Kurt Debus, the director of the NASA–John F. Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Mueller added three other members to the committee: Edgar M. Cortright of the NASA–Langley Research Center, Bruce T. Lundin of the NASA– Lewis Research Center, and me. So a few months after joining NASA, I was involved in the planning of NASA’s post-Apollo space program. We started looking at options at a number of meetings in the spring of 1969. The consensus was to look toward the creation of an infrastructure in Earth orbit that would eventually be used to mount manned missions into the solar system.Von Braun was the strongest proponent of this approach, and at one of the meetings he showed us a series of articles that he and others had published between 1952 and 1954 in Collier’s magazine under the title “Man Will Conquer Space Soon.” The main point of the articles was that the United States needed to build a space station in Earth orbit that would be used as a staging base for ambitious missions to send people out into the solar system. Von Braun made a very persuasive case that this was the correct long-term approach for NASA. In the autumn of 1969, Gilruth and his brilliant associate Maxime Faget visited Ames to talk about the space shuttle. Faget had been responsible for the engineering design of the Mercury spacecraft and had also made major contributions to the Gemini and Apollo programs. Faget was one of the nation’s most persuasive, as well as most brilliant, engineers. He delivered a lecture on the space shuttle to the Ames senior engineering staff in which he eloquently explained the possibilities, difficulties, and solutions as he saw them. He had an impish sense of humor, so he wound up his lecture by flying some small balsa wood models of space shuttles that he had brought with him. “See, it flies!” he kept saying with a wide grin on his

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face. In spite of the skeptical attitude that I brought to all my evaluations of NASA’s plans, I was impressed by what Gilruth and Faget had to say about the shuttle. I did not know it at the time, but this visit was the beginning of a long and fruitful collaboration between Ames and the Johnson Space Center on the shuttle program. In the meantime, Vice President Agnew’s Space Task Group, with the help of Apollo 8 astronaut Bill Anders, developed an all-out program to send people to Mars by 1979 and to return to the moon to build a lunar base for further exploration. The Space Task Group report that President Nixon had requested early in 1969 was submitted in September of that year. Even before it was finished, it was clear to me that the political climate in the country was such that the ambitious program outlined in the report would not be executed. When it became apparent that the Space Task Group’s recommendations were stillborn, Tom Paine decided to leave NASA. I have always felt that Paine copped out and did not have the stomach to fight the battle. Given his past record, Paine’s decision was hard to understand. Fortunately, his deputy, George M. Low, turned out to be a man of unusual talent, tenacity, and strength of character. Even though Low never became administrator, he provided the critical leadership in 1970 when it was necessary to regroup from the setback of the rejection of the Space Task Group program. He injected the appropriate degree of realism into the deliberations and saw to it that in-house NASA study groups actively pursued the best recommendations. This turned out to be crucial in developing the post-Apollo program when the time came to make some real choices. Branscomb’s National Academy of Sciences committee made a recommendation very different from that of the Space Task Group. Its report suggested a de-emphasis of manned spaceflight and a more robust program of planetary exploration, space astronomy, and Earth observations. The White House rejected this recommendation, because President Nixon knew that manned spaceflight still had strong public support. The Influence of Wernher von Braun At about the same time, a shakeout of the planning process in NASA Headquarters was in progress. As a first step, von Braun was persuaded to come to headquarters to supervise the development of NASA’s post-Apollo plan. This was in late 1970, and von Braun held the title of deputy associate administrator—which was not really descriptive, but it served well enough. I came to know him well during the short time he spent with NASA in Washington, and I had the opportunity to see his mind at work. As feasible program plans were developed, the space shuttle became more and more important relative to the other elements under consideration. George Mueller’s plan to put the space station and the space shuttle at the highest priority level was compelling, and it was, at least implicitly, adopted by my senior colleagues. But even this plan was too expensive for the political environment at the time, and it was apparent that there would have to be a decision whether to do

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the space station or the space shuttle first. With the funds unlikely to be available, it would not be possible to do both projects in parallel. It was von Braun, as much as anyone, who persuaded me that the space shuttle was the right first step. During a number of in-depth conversations in 1970 and 1971, he explained his rationale. First, people were absolutely essential if we were going to conduct really sophisticated space operations. He felt that there was really no substitute for the presence of human judgment and imagination on the spot, and that these qualities would be important in any advanced mission. People can take advantage of unexpected opportunities and deal with emergencies. These arguments were similar to ones that people in the air force use to justify manned combat aircraft for most important purposes. I found these arguments persuasive, and they went a long way toward making me a supporter of the space shuttle program. There was another important matter over which von Braun apparently had considerable influence. He was strongly in favor of doing the space shuttle before the space station. He felt that establishing a space station without having something like a large space shuttle in operation made no sense. According to him, an effective space station would have to be assembled in orbit, and it would be impossible to do that effectively with expendable launch vehicles. He also made two other points. The space shuttle was the technically more difficult part of the whole program. Thus, the pace at which the shuttle program could be executed would eventually determine when a space station could be deployed. Once the space shuttle was built, operations with the shuttle would attract considerable public attention, which in turn would make it easier to persuade the political system to commit to a space station program. On this last point, as it turned out, von Braun was correct. There is no doubt that shuttle operations and the public attention they generated were decisive factors in the decision to build the space station. During 1970, all discussions of the space shuttle revolved around a fully reusable system. When James C. Fletcher, who was then president of the University of Utah, was appointed administrator of NASA in early 1971, negotiations with the White House to fund the post-Apollo program were resumed. Fletcher had to establish himself and advocate a program that would carry NASA through what clearly would be some lean years. Fletcher was an extremely intelligent man with an astute sense of the political atmosphere. I felt very comfortable with Fletcher as the NASA administrator because I thought that he would try to develop a NASA program that could be sustained even under difficult financial circumstances. At the time of Fletcher’s appointment, the country was distracted by internal disorders brought about by opposition to the Vietnam War, and Fletcher judged (correctly, I believe) that the ambitious plans proposed by the Space Task Group could not be sustained. He also recognized the importance of carrying out what is called a “balanced” program, in which care is taken to make certain that each of NASA’s major constituent parts takes part in the program.

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Fletcher’s early planning resulted in a NASA program with two major elements: a reusable space shuttle, but one cut back from the completely reusable vehicle proposed by George Mueller’s committee. The reusable booster was discarded for a large external fuel tank for the main engine and the two large solid-fuel boosters necessary to get the whole thing off the ground. Second, a program would be initiated to put a soft-landing spacecraft on Mars. (This became Project Viking.) In addition, an active but rather modest program of smaller projects would provide the balance that Fletcher thought was so important. Early in 1970, Dale Myers succeeded George Mueller as associate administrator for manned spaceflight. It fell to Myers to lead the work of redefining the shuttle configuration and to make certain that the preliminary design and engineering work were properly executed. Myers, who is an experienced and exceedingly competent aerospace executive, performed these tasks with great distinction. I was not really an enthusiastic supporter of the space shuttle program when it was started. In fact, I was something of an inside critic. But two things changed my mind: One was my service on the Apollo 13 Review Board. The other was my association with von Braun. He was an enthusiastic sailor, a passion that I shared with him. On every visit of his to Ames during the early 1970s, I made it a point to arrange a sailing trip for him. I vividly remember one day in late 1972 or early 1973 when we took him on one of the sailing races that we had in the winter on San Francisco Bay. The last Apollo flight (Apollo 17) had just finished, and one of the young members of our racing crew asked von Braun when we would ever return to the moon. As it happened, we were on a long downwind leg with not much to do, so von Braun had a chance to hold forth on his views. He drew an analogy between the exploration of the moon and the exploration of Antarctica. He pointed out that after the epoch-making trips of Robert Scott and Roald Amundsen to the South Pole in 1911, not much of interest happened until an “enabling technology,” as he called it, was put in place. In the case of Antarctica, this enabling move was the airplane, which was first used for Antarctic exploration by Richard Evelyn Byrd and Lincoln Ellsworth in 1929. Von Braun asserted that the “enabling technology” in the case of the moon would be the space station. In making this claim, von Braun was restating the arguments that Guido von Pirquet first made in his seminal articles of 1927 and 1928, pointing out that once you were in Earth orbit, you were three-quarters of the way to wherever else you wanted to go. Our boat’s whole crew found von Braun’s lecture fascinating. I think it is appropriate at this point to say a few words about Wernher von Braun. He was born in 1912 into an ancient German aristocratic family that traces its lineage in Silesia, Pomerania, and Posen back seven hundred years. Wernher’s father, Magnus Freiherr von Braun, was a large landholder in Silesia and Pomerania and a prominent regional leader. He served in the government of the Weimar Republic as minister of food supply and agriculture. I believe that this background provided Wernher the massive self-confidence that was central to his character. In

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Figure 6.11. Wernher von Braun and I shared the love of sailing. Here we are relaxing after a cruise on San Francisco Bay.

my four-year association with him, I never heard him agonize over a decision. He would think hard about problems and listen carefully to his friends. But he never vacillated, saying one thing one day and another the next. In addition, he was kind and considerate from a sense of noblesse oblige that was an essential part of his ancestral heritage. Wernher’s mother, the Baroness Emmy von Braun, was a cultured woman. She had a great interest in astronomy. So for Wernher’s twelfth birthday, she gave him a telescope. This gift changed the direction of his life. At about the same time, Hermann Oberth published his book Die Rakete zu den Planetenräumen (The Rocket into Interplanetary Space). Soon von Braun was building small rockets, and by 1930, at the age of eighteen, he had joined Oberth’s Raketen Verein (Rocket Society) and was working on primitive liquid-fuel rockets at the Raketenflugplatz (Rocket Flight Place) near Berlin. Thus, the principal objective of Wernher von Braun’s life was established. He wanted to build big rockets to send people to the moon. In early 1932, von Braun registered at Berlin’s Friedrich-Wilhelm University. He was awarded a PhD in physics in December 1934 after writing a thesis on liquid-fuel rocket engines. After Adolf Hitler seized power in Germany, the amateur Raketen Verein soon went out of business, and most of the people involved—including Wernher von Braun—were absorbed by the German Army. Following their defeat in World War

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I, the Germans were forbidden to produce artillery with calibers larger than 105 mm. To circumvent this restriction, a bright young German artillery officer, Capt. Walter Dornberger, persuaded the army to establish a small rocket-development program at a test range at Kummersdorf, south of Berlin. The people from the Raketenflugplatz were transferred to Kummersdorf. By 1936, the Kummersdorf operation had become huge. It needed a new facility where it could both expand in size and conduct long-range testing. A site on the Baltic coast near the village of Peenemünde was chosen. (Von Braun’s mother had suggested it.) When the move was completed in 1939, Wernher von Braun, at age twenty-seven, was named technical director. The stage was set for the development of the German V-2 rocket, which was built with slave labor and would cause many civilian casualties in England and Eastern Europe in late 1944 and 1945. As my friendship with von Braun developed, some of my friends questioned its appropriateness. To some extent, this reminded me of questions that my friends at MIT raised about my relationship with Edward Teller during my years at Livermore and Berkeley. I remember that in 1947, when I went to England with my father, we had several conversations about how we should deal with German friends. My father’s view was that above all we should avoid assigning “collective guilt” in making judgments. Membership in the German Army, or even in the Nazi Party, should not be the only criterion for making judgments. A great many people joined the Nazi Party in order to hold on to jobs, and he told me, “You cannot expect people to be heroes, and you cannot imagine their circumstances.” Unfortunately, many considerations such as these lead nowhere.Wernher’s behavior was decent and kind; I liked him and enjoyed his company. Moreover, I learned spaceflight from him, just as I learned quantum mechanics from Edward Teller. That was reason enough for friendship as far as I was concerned. In the meantime—that is, in the summer and fall of 1971—Jim Fletcher took charge of NASA. He had persuaded the administration to approve the space shuttle program as the centerpiece of the nation’s space effort. Before President Nixon approved the proposal to build a space shuttle, he asked his science adviser, Edward David, for an opinion. David established a committee to look into the problem, and the committee produced what was, in essence, a negative report. Its central argument was that it was not necessary to put people in space. All the objectives of the US space program could be achieved more easily and at far less expense by using unmanned spacecraft—so the assertion went. This argument, a recurrent feature of the US space effort, continues to be widely used and believed. I do not know whether it is right because I do not know how to quantify the value of putting people in space. What I do know is this: the argument is almost certainly beside the point. People will go into space for reasons that have nothing to do with a cost-benefit analysis of the type advocated by David’s committee. Nixon, who understood this point, and the political value of putting people in space, ignored

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the advice of David’s group and approved the shuttle program. It should be remembered that President Kennedy made the decision to go to the moon over the opposition of his scientific advisers. On January 5, 1972, Jim Fletcher met with President Nixon in San Clemente and secured final approval of the space shuttle program. Now we had to produce. Each NASA center was assigned a significant role in the development of the space shuttle. Ames was to help develop the thermal protection system and provide some supporting work in the areas of guidance and control. In February 1972, George Low called a meeting of the center directors to discuss the readiness of the necessary technologies and the risks involved in the creation of the space shuttle. Unfortunately, I could not attend the meeting, but the Ames people involved in the shuttle program collaborated on a letter to my immediate supervisor, Roy P. Jackson, the associate administrator for aeronautics and space technology, on February 15, 1972. The letter is reproduced in appendix 1 of The Space Station: A Personal Journey (a book I published with Duke University Press in 1987). Our assessment was that we were ready to go, but that we could not develop the technology to build a reusable thermal protection system on schedule. Here, we were helped out by delays in the program. It is an interesting sidelight that our letter cautioned that one of the problems we were facing was how to glue the thermal-protection tiles to the structure of the shuttle so that they would not come off. Our advice was not heeded, and much trouble would come as a result—but I am getting ahead of the story.

The People of Ames I would be remiss if I did not mention some of the truly extraordinary people with whom I worked during my eight-plus years at Ames. I have already mentioned John W. ( Jack) Boyd, who was the first person to serve as research assistant to the director. After about a year on the job, Jack became the deputy director of aeronautics, and he worked closely with Len Roberts in that post for the remainder of my term. Jack was succeeded by four people, each of whom spent two years in the position: John Dusterberry, Lloyd Jones, Dale Compton, and Alan Chambers. In addition, I should mention some of the people who were part of the Strategy and Tactics Committee, which Betsy Muenger described as “a floating group of Ames personnel” that provided advice and was asked to work out problems as needed. Among these were Richard Peterson, John Klineberg, William Ballhaus, John Billingham, Robert T. Jones, Dallas Denery, George Rathert, and a number of others. Several of these people were subsequently promoted to top-level posts. Four became NASA center directors: Compton (Ames), Peterson (Langley), Klineberg (Lewis and Goddard), and Ballhaus (Ames). Three later were appointed as associate administrators of NASA: Peterson (Aeronautics and Space Technology), Ballhaus

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(Aeronautics and Space Technology), and Boyd (Management). There was actually a time during the mid-1980s when three of the nine NASA center directors (Ballhaus, Peterson, and Klineberg) were Ames alumni. R. T. Jones was a special case. He was one of the most distinguished American applied scientists and technologists of the time. He started his career at the NACA’s Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory. There, in the mid-1940s and 1950s, he developed the idea of swept wings for aircraft flying at transonic speeds. He also, with Doris Cohen, developed the theory of supersonic wings. Jones then spent a few years at Ames and later went to work in industry. In 1971, I managed to persuade him to return to Ames. From 1971 to 1977, he ran what we called the R. T. Jones seminar. Many of our best people cut their teeth in science and engineering at these seminars. The work of R.T. Jones was recognized by his election to the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering.

7 Nelson Rockefeller, the End of the War in Vietnam, and the Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons

During my years at Ames, I was able to participate in other activities closely related to what was being done at Ames. I have already described the connection that I maintained with the University of California through the Department of Applied Science at Livermore, which was a branch of the Davis campus of the university. Livermore was about a forty-five-minute drive from Ames, so it was possible to go there once a week for a three-hour lecture session. I taught the course in neutron physics and another one in transport theory. The latter subject was related to our work at Ames, since the Boltzmann transport equation is the foundation of the laws of aerodynamics. Later during my time at Ames, I was able to establish an academic connection with Stanford University through the good offices of Professors Walter Vincenti and William Reynolds, who were both former members of the Ames research staff. Stanford was only a ten-minute drive from Ames, so I reduced my commitments at the University of California and taught a course titled “The Management of Research Institutions” at Stanford. Probably the most interesting extracurricular activity was the relationship that I established with Nelson Rockefeller during the last three years of my time at Ames. The connection, which was related to my work at Ames, provided me with my first personal taste of high-level American politics.

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The Reelection of President Nixon In the 1972 presidential election, Sen. George McGovern of South Dakota was the Democratic candidate. Once again, as in 1968, I felt forced to vote for Richard Nixon. Also as in 1968, I felt that Democratic candidate was the better person but that President Nixon was, and would probably continue to be, the better president. McGovern was a very straightforward candidate. There was nothing devious about him. He had served with distinction in the US Army Air Corps during World War II as a pilot flying B-24 Liberator bombers in the Italian campaign. He was awarded a Distinguished Flying Cross for his service in the war. McGovern was an American original. He was the brightest kid in the small South Dakota town where he was born. He earned a PhD in history and politics at Northwestern University in Chicago in 1953 and became a professor at South Dakota Wesleyan University. He was elected to the US Senate in 1963, and he was in his second term when he received the nomination of his party to run for president. I never met Senator McGovern, but I think that I would have liked him. Nonetheless, I thought his policy positions on most of the important Cold War issues— arms control, military budgets, and several technological issues—were wrong and more than a little bit naïve. Nixon, on the other hand, was not a pleasant person. As mentioned in a previous chapter, I met President Nixon at a dinner in honor of the Apollo 11 astronauts in 1969. I sensed that he disliked doing the table-hopping that was required on this occasion. He seemed to be someone who was never quite comfortable in his own skin. But it was also true that President Nixon had turned in a sterling performance as president during his first term. His trip to China in February 1972 was probably his most important foreign policy initiative. President Nixon and his national security advisor, Henry Kissinger, took advantage of strained relations between China and the Soviet Union to normalize relations between the United States and China, which had been nonexistent since the communist victory over the Chinese nationalists in 1949. US recognition of China and the establishment of formal relations with the country were major changes in the political landscape during the Cold War. Ultimately, it was of great benefit to the United States. Three months later, Nixon signed the first Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty with the Soviet Union. This agreement essentially froze the number of strategic nuclear weapons at current levels. I was in favor of this move because the number of nuclear weapons in the world was much too large for any reasonable military purpose. In 1969, Nixon had begun withdrawing American troops from Vietnam, starting with a contingent of fifty thousand. In doing this, he was conducting the most difficult type of military operation—a strategic withdrawal. President Nixon gave enormous aid and assistance to the South Vietnamese leadership, but the military governments established during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations had

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failed to establish their legitimacy and their authority. By 1973, all US troops in Vietnam were gone. On December 2, 1970, President Nixon signed the bill that created the Environmental Protection Agency. He deserves full credit for this farsighted initiative. It is interesting that most of my young friends cannot believe that it was President Nixon who institutionalized the environmental movement within the federal government. And yet it is true. In my view, the positive value of the points listed above outweighed the negative side, so I voted for Richard Nixon in 1972.

Nelson Rockefeller In 1973, Nelson Rockefeller was serving as governor of New York. He had won reelection to an unprecedented fourth term in 1970. At sixty-two years old, he was at the height of his political career. Even though he had been defeated six years earlier for the Republican presidential nomination by Sen. Barry Goldwater, there was every reason to believe that he would be a candidate again in 1976. Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller was born in 1908, the son of John D. Rockefeller Jr. and the grandson of the man who built one of the first great American fortunes, John Davison Rockefeller. The Rockefeller fortune came from the Standard Oil Company; the creation of the company coincided with the invention of the internal combustion engine and the automobile.The elder John D. Rockefeller amassed vast wealth, valued, at the time of Nelson’s birth, at a few billion dollars. At the time, it was the largest American fortune. Nelson Rockefeller was the second of five sons of John D. Rockefeller Jr. and Abigail Aldrich. His mother was the daughter of Sen. Nelson Aldrich of Rhode Island, who at the turn of the century was one of the leading Republican members of the US Senate. From the beginning, therefore, Rockefeller had both wealth and access to power. John D. Rockefeller Jr. devoted himself to philanthropy and to building an image of the Rockefeller family that would counter negative public attitudes that had been directed toward his father. The elder Rockefeller was a rapacious capitalist who was once called a “malefactor of great wealth” by Pres. Theodore Roosevelt. The five Rockefeller brothers were raised strictly, and all of them made important contributions to society. The eldest, John D. III, devoted himself to managing the family fortune, which had become widely diversified by the 1930s. Nelson and his younger brother Winthrop both went into politics. At one point, they served simultaneously as governors of two American states—Nelson in New York and Winthrop in Arkansas. Laurance (born in 1910) became a major philanthropist and an early leader of the American environmental movement. The youngest brother, David, became a distinguished banker and financier. Nelson Rockefeller was educated at Dartmouth College, graduating with honors in 1930. He then joined the family’s firm in New York and participated in

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philanthropic activities. He had a genuine passion for modern art, and he greatly expanded New York City’s Museum of Modern Art, which his mother had founded. He developed a strong interest in the family’s oil business and participated in the development of the oil fields near Lake Maracaibo in Venezuela. On June 23, 1930, Nelson Rockefeller married Mary Todhunter Clark, who was a member of a prominent Philadelphia family. They eventually had five children—three boys and two girls. In 1940, with World War II starting in Europe, President Roosevelt called on Nelson Rockefeller to head the new Office of Inter-American Affairs. Roosevelt felt that with the fighting in Europe and Asia ( Japan had invaded China in 1937), the United States should develop stronger relationships with the nations in Central and South America, and that a special office in the White House would be the best way to focus this effort. The choice of the thirty-two-year-old Nelson Rockefeller as the coordinator of Inter-American Affairs was a shrewd one. Through his connections with the Venezuelan oil operations, he was familiar with the affairs of the region. In addition, he spoke Spanish fluently. There was also a political reason. The Rockefeller family, which had strong Republican connections, supported the candidacy of Wendell Willkie in the presidential election that year. By appointing a member of a Republican family to an important post, the president began to build the coalition government that would be essential once the United States was drawn into the widening war. In 1944, President Roosevelt formalized Rockefeller’s office by creating an appropriate position in the State Department: assistant secretary of state for Latin American affairs. This was the first formal governmental position that Nelson Rockefeller held. He participated in the 1946 international conference in San Francisco at which the United Nations was founded. Shortly afterward, he left government and returned to the family interests in New York. Following the election of Dwight Eisenhower as president in 1952, Nelson Rockefeller once again returned to government service. In 1953, he became a member (and later the chairman) of a commission established by the new president to look at governmental organization. That same year, he was appointed under secretary of the newly established Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. By then, Rockefeller had decided to embark on a career in elective politics. He returned to New York, and in 1958 he was elected governor, defeating the Democratic incumbent, W. Averell Harriman. Nelson Rockefeller turned out to have a genuine flair for elective politics. He was an activist governor who had a major impact on all facets of state government. Of the projects that he initiated during his term of service, 1959–73, the following were among the most important: • Persuading the New York State Legislature to enact strict laws against the use of dangerous narcotics and providing the means for enforcement. These laws, passed in 1973, are still on the books. They are among the toughest in the nation.

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• Greatly expanding and improving the quality of the multicampus State University of New York. • Expanding and improving the state highway system. Projects undertaken on his watch included the Long Island Expressway, the Southern Tier, the Adirondack System, and Interstate Highway 81. • Developing downtown Albany (the state capital). His efforts in this area changed a rather seedy-looking collection of old structures into a world-class capital city of the most important American state of the time. (The mall in downtown Albany is now called the Nelson A. Rockefeller Downtown Plaza.) • Reforming the public transportation system in New York City. Consolidating the New York City subway system, the Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority, the Long Island Railroad, and the Metro North Railroad brought about economies of scale and improved coordination that were very beneficial. As someone who lived in New York City before these reforms were implemented, I can testify to their value.

These significant achievements helped make Rockefeller a popular governor. He was elected in 1958, 1962, 1966, and 1970, each time by large majorities. A brilliant campaigner, he enjoyed public speaking and greeting people. “Hi ya, fella!” became something of a standing joke among late-night TV talk show hosts. In spite of his popularity, Governor Rockefeller was subjected to severe criticism in 1971 when a prisoner revolt occurred at the state penitentiary near Attica, New York. Some prisoners took thirty-eight prison employees and guards hostage. The prisoners demanded a meeting with the governor in order to explain their grievances. After four days of riots and a standoff, Governor Rockefeller ordered a thousand state troopers and national guardsmen to recapture the prison and to secure it. In the process, forty people were killed, including eleven of the hostages. In spite of the criticism, most people felt that the governor did the right thing. Any governor of New York is automatically considered a possible presidential candidate. This was especially true of Nelson Rockefeller, given his prominence and his prior national public service. In 1960, Rockefeller mounted a brief campaign against Vice Pres. Richard Nixon, but could not overcome Nixon’s standing in the polls or in the party. He ended up supporting Nixon during the 1960 campaign. In 1964, Governor Rockefeller was considered the front-runner for the Republican nomination. But his divorce in 1962 and rapid remarriage to a much younger woman in 1963 offended many Republican conservatives. (At that time, divorce disqualified any presidential candidate. Up to that time, no divorced person had ever served as president.) Nevertheless, Rockefeller decided to make a run. He was narrowly defeated by Sen. Barry Goldwater in the California Republican primary, and so he dropped out of the race. Later, at the Republican convention in San Francisco, Governor Rockefeller was shouted down when he tried to give a speech. The incident left a bitter taste in the mouths of Rockefeller and his sup-

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porters. In 1968, Richard Nixon, who had spent six years accumulating friends and influence within the Republican Party, proved unbeatable. Rockefeller’s support for Nixon in 1968 was decidedly lukewarm.

Meeting with Governor Rockefeller Sometime in August 1973, Edward Teller asked me to meet him at Livermore. When I showed up in his office, he started right away by saying, “Governor Rockefeller wants to see you.” I was really startled. I knew that Edward was close to Rockefeller. His association with the family dated back to 1934, when he held a Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship for a year’s study at Niels Bohr’s institute in Copenhagen; later, Edward came to the United States with the help of a Rockefeller Foundation grant. Edward did not know what Rockefeller had in mind, but strongly urged me to accept the governor’s invitation.When I called the governor’s office in Albany, I was told that the governor wanted to invite me to have dinner with him and Mrs. Rockefeller at their apartment in New York City. We agreed on a date, and since I visited the East Coast frequently in those years, it was easy for me to accommodate the governor’s schedule. The Rockefellers’ New York residence was in one of the elegant apartment houses on Fifth Avenue at 63rd Street. I would be staying with Dr. Sheldon M. Atlas and his wife, Helen, who lived at Central Park West and 81st Street. Sheldon Atlas was a longtime colleague of my father at the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn, and his wife edited Dance News, making her a major figure in the New York ballet scene. He was also well connected in New York Democratic politics, being a close friend of Stanley Steinberg, the Speaker of the New York State Assembly. I had arranged to stay with the Atlases because I wanted to talk with Sheldon after my dinner with the Rockefellers. Plus, the Beresford apartment house, where they lived, was just a short walk across Central Park from the Rockefellers’ building. At the appointed hour, I showed up at the Rockefellers’ apartment. I was ushered in by an appropriately dressed servant and taken to an elevator.The apartment occupied three stories, and there was a private elevator to take people from one level to another. When the elevator stopped, I walked into a small foyer and was then ushered into a drawing room. Governor Rockefeller and his wife were already there. They greeted me warmly and asked me what I would like to drink. I asked for a martini and joined the Rockefellers in eating some small delicacies. Nelson Rockefeller was an impressive-looking person, slightly under six feet tall and well put together. He had a very friendly manner, and he immediately asked a string of questions about my past work with Edward Teller and my current projects. Mrs. Rockefeller was a wholesome-looking lady of about forty-five with a friendly smile and a very gracious manner. Her given name was Margaretta, but everyone called her “Happy,” a longtime nickname that was an accurate description of her disposition. The Rockefellers were very good at making me feel at ease, and pretty

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soon I no longer felt as if I were walking on eggs. We exchanged some anecdotes about Teller, and he assured me that he took seriously what Edward recommended. In fact, he told me, that was why I had been invited. After about fifteen minutes, we were ushered into the dining room. At first the conversation was quite general, but about halfway through the meal, Nelson Rockefeller began to speak very seriously about what was on his mind. He started by pointing out that 1976 would be the two hundredth anniversary of the republic. He then listed some of the events of the past few years: the war in Vietnam, which was winding down but was still damaging the reputation of the United States; the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and the Kennedy brothers; the Cold War with the Soviet Union; and the turmoil among our young people, including the violence at Kent State and the death of a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin in an attack on a DARPA-sponsored facility. He mentioned the Watergate affair, which was already attracting public attention. His overall conclusion was that people were beginning to lose faith in American institutions. He said that he wanted to do something to restore the confidence of the American people in their political system and specifically in the Constitution itself. Rockefeller reminded us that it had taken some time to ratify the Constitution, which was completed in 1787 but approved by a majority of the states only in 1789. He pointed out that the key to securing approval of the Constitution was a series of debates carried out in the newspapers; the most influential essays in those debates came to be called the Federalist Papers, which were written principally by James Madison and Alexander Hamilton, along with a few by John Jay. He maintained that the upcoming bicentennial might be a good time to think about rewriting something like the Federalist Papers to restore people’s confidence in the Constitution and in the political institutions established by it. It was at this point that Governor Rockefeller dropped his bombshell. He had decided to resign his post as governor in order to concentrate on efforts to restore the confidence of the American people in their Constitution. I was flabbergasted. My first reaction was to blurt out, “You can’t do that! The people of New York elected you to finish your term.” And then I turned to Happy Rockefeller with a questioning look. She said, “He is serious, so you better listen.” Governor Rockefeller went on to outline his plan. He would establish a broadly based group of distinguished people that would be called the Commission on Critical Choices for Americans. The commission would be charged with producing a modern version of the Federalist Papers. He would fund this work with his own money and would pay for the publication of the books that would result from the studies carried out by the commission. It was a grand, sweeping vision, and the governor described it with great eloquence. At this point, Rockefeller dropped another bombshell. He asked me whether I would be interested in becoming the executive director of the commission. He told me that Edward Teller would be participating and that he, Rockefeller, would be the chairman of the commission.

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I would thus be working directly for him. Finally, he said that I would be working on this project for the next three years and that my annual salary would be $150,000. It took me a few minutes to absorb all this. I had been at Ames for a little more than four years, and I was in the middle of my work there.Would it be right for me to leave? My salary at Ames was $45,000 a year. Should I pass up an opportunity such as this one, which would put me in close contact with people at the top levels of both the government and the financial community? At Ames, I was still directly involved in some very interesting technical work. Should I give that up now when so much of it was not finished? Finally, there was the family. Even the move from Berkeley to Los Altos Hills four years earlier had been difficult. Did I really want to uproot my family again to move to New York? All these thoughts coursed through my mind as Governor Rockefeller was talking. I decided that the only tactic was to go on the offensive. I asked Rockefeller whether he would be running for president in 1976. His first reply was that in 1976 he would be sixty-eight years old and that the only man who had ever run for president at that age was William Henry Harrison in 1840, and he died after a month in office. Having first passed off the question with a joke, he became serious. He said that whether he decided to run would depend on whether the commission could develop a winning platform. “Fair enough,” I said. Rockefeller gave the right answer. By this time it was after ten, and we all decided to leave it there. We said good-bye, and I promised to respond to his proposal in writing. As I walked across Central Park back to Sheldon Atlas’s apartment, I reviewed the dinner party. First, this was my first in-depth conversation with a major American political leader. There is no doubt that I was affected by the experience. Sheldon was still up, so we had a few whiskeys and talked about what had happened. He predicted that as a result of the conversation with Governor Rockefeller, I would eventually get into politics. I did not like the sound of that.

The Yom Kippur War, October 1973 While I was pondering what to do about Governor Rockefeller’s proposal, war flared up in the Middle East. On October 6, 1973,Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement), the most important Jewish High Holiday, Egyptian Army forces crossed the Suez Canal and quickly overwhelmed the lightly manned fortifications of the Bar Lev Line. This hundred-mile-long string of forts and minefields was built following the Six-Day War, six years earlier. The attack was a complete surprise. Even the Mossad, Israel’s vaunted intelligence service, missed the warning signs that an attack was imminent. The attack on Israel was carefully planned and brilliantly executed. For the first three or four days, the Egyptians inflicted heavy losses on Israeli forces while occupying much of the Sinai.The Israelis lost four hundred tanks and armored personnel

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carriers in the first two days. The Syrians inflicted heavy losses on the Israeli forces in the Golan Heights. Soviet surface-to-air missiles on the west (African) side of the Suez Canal decimated Israeli McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom attack aircraft. Worst of all, the Israelis suffered almost three thousand dead out of a total military force of two hundred thousand, including reserves—1.5 percent of the military establishment. A comparable casualty rate in the US forces would mean losing forty-five thousand troops. Furthermore, the three thousand were lost in only two weeks, so the deaths were especially painful. The full Israeli reserves were called up three or four days after the attack began, finally allowing Israel to respond in some reasonable way to the attack. The Israelis stopped the Egyptian thrust, mostly with their infantry, and then mounted a counterattack. The commander responsible for the plan was Maj. Gen. Ariel Sharon, who would later become prime minister. Sharon mounted an offensive to cut a corridor between the Egyptian Second Army on the north and the Third Army on the southern border on the Sinai side of the canal. The Israelis built a pontoon bridge across the canal and placed their forces on the African side. Meeting no resistance, they set up four more pontoon bridges. They could move freely because the entire Egyptian Army was on the Sinai side. By this time, diplomatic efforts were under way to end the conflict. The United States had asked the UN Security Council to order a cease-fire. On the military side, both the United States and the Soviet Union sent aid to their client states.The United States worked to rapidly replace the large number of Israeli tanks that had been lost. It was decided on October 12 to run an air supply line from the United States. The new Lockheed C-5 transports used for this purpose could each carry two M60 tanks. But problems arose because neither the British nor the Spaniards would let the US tanker aircraft land on their territory. Finally, Portugal permitted us to use the Azores as a refueling base. On October 22, the UN Security Council passed a unanimous resolution to enforce a cease-fire. General Sharon’s division still had not completely cut off all supply lines to the Egyptian Third Army—upward of fifty thousand troops—on the Sinai side of the canal, so he ignored the cease-fire and completed the operation to trap the Egyptians. This action was quite characteristic of Sharon. He took large risks and was implacable in his defense of Israel. In addition, Israeli troops had stabilized the front in the Golan Heights and then defeated the Syrian forces. When a cease-fire was finally arranged, Israeli troops were within forty miles of Damascus. When it became obvious that the Egyptian troops were in trouble, the Soviets mobilized some airborne divisions in the Caucasus. In response, the United States placed its military on enhanced alert (defense readiness condition, or DEFCON, 3). The order to take this step was given by Henry Kissinger, who was both secretary of state and President Nixon’s national security advisor. Normally, the president would give the order as commander in chief. But late in October 1973, the

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president was deeply enmeshed in the Watergate scandal. When the decision to respond had to be made, he was intoxicated. Therefore, Kissinger gave the order in the president’s name. The order was rescinded a few hours later when the Soviets stood down. I was not present at this event, but a high-ranking air force general told me what happened. This was the second time that the US military had been put on this state of alert during the Cold War, the first time having been during the Cuban missile crisis. On October 26, a cease-fire was called and an armistice arranged. The ultimate outcome of the Yom Kippur War was that Israel successfully defended the territorial gains made during the Six-Day War. The idea of trading some of those gains for a permanent peace began to be seriously considered by leaders in Israel and Egypt. The Camp David Accords of 1978, discussed in the next chapter, formally implemented this idea.

Consultant to the Commission on Critical Choices for Americans When Bun and I discussed my conversation with Nelson Rockefeller, she, as usual, had some very important insights. We decided that I should try to establish a relationship with Rockefeller’s commission without leaving Ames. The two major arguments for staying in California were the children ( Janey, seventeen, and Rufus, fifteen, were still in high school) and the fact that my own work at Ames was not yet completed. The Pioneer Jupiter and Saturn flybys were still in the future, the first flight of the XV-15 was three years away, and the ILLIAC IV was not yet operational. In the next few days, I worked on a response to Governor Rockefeller. In the letter, I explained as thoroughly as I could my reasons for staying at Ames. I told him that I was very interested in participating in the activities of the commission, but could not be a member of it, because doing so would be incompatible with my position as a civil service employee. I could work as a consultant to the commission, which would allow me to focus on organizing and editing the written material it produced. In addition, I suggested that Prof. Wilson K. Talley of the Department of Applied Science (at Livermore) be offered the post of executive director of the commission. Wilson was well suited for this position. He had received his PhD in nuclear engineering from UC Berkeley in 1963 during my time on that faculty. He had held a White House Fellowship from 1969 to 1970 and then served as assistant administrator for research and development at the newly established Environmental Protection Agency from 1974 to 1976. Finally, he was a scholar who would ensure the high quality of the commission’s reports. I wrote a draft of the letter and then visited Washington to see NASA administrator Jim Fletcher and deputy administrator George Low. Over a long lunch, we discussed the proposition that I become a consultant to Rockefeller’s commission.

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There was some political risk involved, which both Fletcher and Low understood. Although Rockefeller had supported Nixon in the 1968 presidential election, the relationship between the two men was not warm, and this was well known in Washington. We agreed that it would be to NASA’s advantage if I were to work with Rockefeller, but to avoid problems with the White House, it would be important for me to keep a low profile. Specifically, my name should not be associated with the commission, and above all I should receive no money or gifts from it. I agreed to include all these stipulations in my letter to Governor Rockefeller. The governor replied on October 19, 1973. In a friendly letter, Rockefeller agreed to the conditions that I had laid out. Following Rockefeller’s resignation as governor in December 1973, he announced the formation of the Commission on Critical Choices for Americans and what it would be doing. I visited Rockefeller at his new headquarters in a brownstone on East 54th Street in Manhattan, where he was ensconced as the chairman of the commission. The commission would be a unit of a nonprofit entity called the Third Century Corporation, and my “contract” would be with the corporation. Since I would be paying my own expenses, I wondered whether it would be possible to take a deduction from my income tax by calling those outlays a charitable contribution to the Third Century Corporation, which was legally established to accept charitable contributions.When Rockefeller and I sealed the arrangement with a handshake, he laughed. “You realize, of course, what a unique arrangement we have just made,” he said. “You are the only person I know who has ever made a charitable contribution to me!” Also, Rockefeller’s letter contained an interesting postscript in which he reiterated what he had said at the August dinner party about the 1976 presidential race. In the following weeks, Rockefeller established the membership of the commission. It was an extremely distinguished, ostentatiously bipartisan group of people. The most prominent members were Nobel laureate Norman Borlaug, a professor at Texas A&M University who was largely responsible for the Green Revolution, which increased agricultural production around the world through the application of genetic engineering, and whose work was supported largely by the Rockefeller Foundation; George P. Shultz, who would later serve as secretary of the treasury and then secretary of state; Clare Boothe Luce, author, former member of Congress, and former ambassador to Italy; Daniel Patrick Moynihan, US ambassador to the UN and later a US senator; Lane Kirkland, president of the AFL/​CIO; Russell W. Peterson, a former governor of Delaware who was later chairman of the Council on Environmental Quality; and Wilson C. Riles, the superintendent of public education in California. What was most interesting was that Rockefeller’s choices included people from all walks of American life.The first meeting was held in February 1974 in a large conference room in the East 54th Street brownstone. Most of the commission members were present. Attending as an observer, I sat in a chair along the wall and carefully avoided any open contact with commission

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members or the staff. Taking my advice, Rockefeller had installed Wilson Talley as the executive director of the commission’s staff. Wilson had a seat at the table, and two or three other people I did not know also sat in chairs along the wall. Chairman Rockefeller, gavel in hand, called the meeting to order promptly at nine. He began with some flattering remarks about the high quality of the assembled group, which demonstrated that he knew how to deal with people who had capacious egos. Then he explained the commission’s purpose, saying many of the same things that he had told me at the dinner meeting a few months earlier. This time, however, he referred to substantive contributions made by some of the people around the table, which were woven into his remarks. Finally, he made some self-depreciating jokes, which served to lubricate the proceedings. At the end he said that he would ask people to express their own views about the questions he had raised. It was a masterly performance. The discussion then became general, and Rockefeller deftly kept things on track. Two important decisions were reached. First, the commission would be divided into panels covering the subjects to be considered—agriculture, energy, manufacturing, communication, and so on. There would also be a panel to coordinate the work of the other panels and then create a summary of their work. The commission would publish a series of books dealing with the topics taken up by the panels. The books would formulate “critical choices” that needed to be made. In the spirit of the Federalist Papers, the problems and the possible solutions would be related to the ability of America’s constitutional structure to handle the problems, whether through regulations, laws, or amendments. Shortly after noon there was a half-hour break for lunch, which, in Rockefeller fashion, was excellent. Most of the afternoon session was devoted to selecting the membership of the panels and deciding on procedures. The most important of these was that the panels would meet separately to discuss their findings and prepare the reports. Overall progress would be reviewed at periodic meetings of the entire commission. Finally it was agreed that the results of the commission’s work would be published by 1976 so that they would be part of the bicentennial year activities. This was my first time seeing Nelson Rockefeller in action, and he was very good at leading the group to a positive outcome. The commission adjourned at about five so that the members could attend a dinner party hosted by Rockefeller at the Algonquin Hotel, just across Fifth Avenue. I did not attend the dinner party, in order to keep my promise to maintain a low profile. Instead, I walked to the Atlases’ apartment on 82nd Street. I had drinks and dinner with Sheldon, Helen, and several friends he had invited. They were all curious about what I was doing in New York, but I could give only general answers. A couple of the guests had political connections, so the talk turned to Watergate (which was then in its initial stages), the coming end of the war in Vietnam, and the 1974 congressional elections. It was a relaxing way to end a rather hectic day.

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The next day, I met with Wilson Talley and other members of the commission staff, including Henry Diamond, a bright young New York lawyer, and Michael Deutch, an economist on the staff of the Rockefeller Foundation who was on loan to the commission. In addition there were several young people connected with other Rockefeller operations. Deutch was the most impressive member of the group, and I eventually developed a strong relationship with him. I found out that he was the father of John Deutch, who was at that time a postdoctoral fellow in the Chemistry Department at MIT. Many years later, John served as deputy secretary of defense and director of central intelligence in the Clinton administration. We also discussed ways for me to contribute to the effort. Since I could not spend more than three or four days a month in New York, I thought that in addition to editing the commission’s papers and books, I would try to write something. One of the commission’s panels dealt with topics related to energy, national security, and the development of new technology. I started to think about a book that would weave these things together. My own interest was in technology development. On my next trip to New York, I talked with Wilson Talley about such a book and told him that I would start writing something about technology development and the organization of technological enterprises in the United States. The Erie Canal, the railroads, the Panama Canal, the Manhattan Project, and NASA’s Apollo project turned out to have many common elements: the application of new technology, political involvement, and their effects on people generally. I spent a couple of months working on this paper, which was titled “Technology Development and the National Purpose.” I sent the paper to Wilson Talley, and he suggested that I send a copy to Nelson Rockefeller and then meet with him on my next visit to New York. I followed Wilson’s advice. On my next trip, I made an appointment to see the governor—he liked to be called “governor” even though he had resigned. Much to my surprise, Rockefeller had read the piece carefully and asked some good questions. He suggested that we enlarge the paper to cover the management of new technology. Finally, he wanted to send copies of the paper to Edward Teller and to Johnny Foster. At this point, early in 1974, the Commission on Critical Choices for Americans was still being organized into panels, and there was one devoted to change, national security, and peace. Rockefeller felt that my paper made a strong case that most changes were ultimately driven by technology. He added that Edward, Johnny, and I should work with this panel—and perhaps some others. He mentioned the prospect of the three of us writing a book on the subject of technology development, energy production, and national security. And so it came to pass. Edward, Johnny, and I wrote Power and Security (1976), volume 4 of the fourteen books produced by the commission. The commission’s panels began to work in earnest in the spring of 1974. I attended some of the meetings of the panels that were developing material related to our book. Nelson Rockefeller chaired many of these meetings, and I contin-

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ued to be amazed by his ability to deftly move a discussion along and then distill the essence of the conclusions into a succinct summary. Yet Nelson’s flaws could sometimes be hard for the commission members and staffers to take. He had a way of dropping disconcerting comments. He could sit all day in a meeting of people with great intelligence and their accompanying expansive egos and draw the best out of them. Then, at the end of an exhausting session, he would say, “Good work. Happy and I are leaving town for a week’s vacation at our place in Venezuela.” I think that like many very rich people, he had gotten used to the idea that he could do exactly as he pleased and the devil take the hindmost. During my time with the commission, I was fortunate to work with some outstanding people. I spent most of my time with the staffers I have already mentioned—Henry Diamond, Mike Deutch, and my old friend Wilson Talley. I had, of course, worked closely with Edward Teller and Johnny Foster for many years. Two members, William O. Baker, the president of Bell Telephone Laboratories, and Russell W. Peterson, were chemists and friends of my father. I had met Bill Baker before, so it was easy for me to seek him out and establish a connection. Peterson had spent a number of years heading the Polymer Chemistry Department at the DuPont Company’s Experiment Station in Wilmington, Delaware, before seeking public office. My father had long-term connections with Peterson’s group as a consultant. He and I had a number of good conversations. Finally, I developed a friendship with Walt and Elspeth Rostow, who were serving as consultants to the commission. I had heard of the Rostows because both taught at MIT during the 1950s. In 1961, they left MIT to join the Kennedy administration. Walt eventually served as President Johnson’s national security advisor, and both joined the faculty of the University of  Texas at Austin in 1969. I had several important conversations with Walt about how to factor the development of new technology into predictions of national economic growth. The Rostows would become good friends after I joined the University of  Texas System.

The Summer of 1974 at Pocantico Hills In the spring of 1974, the panels of the Commission on Critical Choices for Americans were developing material that would eventually wind up in the books meant to fulfill Nelson Rockefeller’s desire to update the Federalist Papers. Wilson Talley and I began to worry about how all this material could be incorporated into a coherent message. The commission’s office called to ask when my next trip to the East was scheduled; the “governor” wanted to see me. I had a Monday meeting in New York, so I went early and met with Rockefeller on a Sunday afternoon at his estate. The Rockefeller estate is about forty miles north of Manhattan near Tarrytown, New York. The Hudson River broadens into a large “lake” called the Tappan Zee, a

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name reflecting the strong Dutch heritage of the region.The estate, Kykuit (another Dutch name), is a couple of miles to the east of Tarrytown. It is a large tract of land near the village of Pocantico Hills. The estate covers many hundreds of acres and includes about thirty or forty residences and other structures. There is an elaborate garage with about twenty vehicles; a playhouse with a swimming pool, tennis courts, a bowling alley, and many other facilities; the “Japanese” house, designed by a prominent architect, which served as a home for Nelson and Happy when they felt like using it. It was also a museum for some of the very best paintings that Rockefeller owned. The three surviving Rockefeller brothers, Nelson, Laurance, and David, all had houses on the property. Nelson and Happy lived in what we all called the Rock House, which was the big house that John D. Jr. built. Laurance and David each had sumptuous residences. Finally, there were ten or fifteen regular farmhouses that had been on the land before the estate was created. The Rockefellers renovated them and used them as guesthouses for friends, relatives, and other visitors. I arrived at the Rock House at about two on that Sunday afternoon in the spring of 1974. Rockefeller was alone. He led me to a sitting room, and a servant brought in a tray with a selection of drinks. Rockefeller started with some small talk and then launched into a discourse about his youth. He told me that he was dyslexic. He had had a difficult time learning to read even though everything possible had been done to help him overcome the problem. By the time John D. senior died in 1937, he was worth one billion dollars—a fortune equal to or better than those of Warren Buffett and Bill Gates today. He looked at me and asked me why I thought he had been given all this wealth and privilege. He told me that he attended Dartmouth College because he had not been accepted by Princeton. He did well at Dartmouth because of intensive tutoring provided by his mother. All this was said in an almost apologetic manner. I was a little embarrassed by it all, and I was reminded of Matthew 19:24, Jesus’ admonition about the rich man, the camel, and the eye of the needle. I told Rockefeller that I thought that there would be a place in heaven for him because we would engineer a camel that could go through the eye of a needle. At this point, Rockefeller started to talk about the commission’s work. He told me that he wanted to get the books produced by the commission out by the end of 1975. He then launched into a monologue about the presidency. He told me that from the time he was six years old, he had thought about being president. I asked, “Nelson, will you run for president in 1976?” He responded: “I don’t know. It is not a good year for us. Nixon’s problems will make it unlikely that a Republican can be elected in 1976.” By this time in 1974, the Watergate scandal was well under way. I decided to take the bull by the horns: “Why did you establish the commission and have all the material written? I always thought that in addition to rewriting the Federalist Papers, we were preparing you for a presidential campaign.”

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Nelson looked down, sighed, and said, “We will see.” That was the end of the meeting, and after some small talk we walked out to the front door. A portrait of George Washington hung on the wall. I said, “That’s a beautiful copy of the Gilbert Stuart painting of Washington that is in thousands of school rooms around the country.” “It’s not a copy. It’s the original,” Rockefeller replied. I was beginning to learn what life was like among the very rich. A few days later, Rockefeller called to ask whether I would be willing to come to Pocantico in July and August to finish editing all the books that would be published. I asked him whether I could bring my family, and he agreed. So we would spend two months of the summer of 1974 at Pocantico. Our daughter, Janey, was in Mexico as an exchange student. So Bun and Rufus would be staying with me at Pocantico. We were quartered in one of the restored farmhouses—a large, very comfortable, whitewashed house. The next morning, Nelson Rockefeller drove up to the house in a red Ford Mustang. He was in a good mood; he was his ebullient self. It was typical of him to welcome us personally. Rufus was then just learning to play chess, and he and Bun were engaged in a game when Rockefeller walked into the house. “Who’s winning?” he asked Bun said, “Rufus is—he’s getting to be very good.” Then Rockefeller lapsed into a reflective mood. “When I married Mary Tod”— his first wife, Mary Todhunter Clark—“we used to play a lot of chess.”  Then he went on sadly, “I always beat her—maybe I should have let her win once in a while. It could have saved our marriage.” Both Bun and I were amazed that Nelson Rockefeller was so candid about his thinking. As I got to know him better, this turned out to be one of Nelson’s most endearing qualities. Wilson Talley set up our shop in the playhouse. We spent many hours a day working over the manuscripts. About ten members of the commission staff, Edward Teller, Michael Deutch, and some others helped us. Since it was summer, we would take time off in the afternoon to swim in the pool or play tennis. I met some members of the Rockefeller family. One was Rodman Rockefeller, Nelson’s eldest son, who would eventually become the senior member of the family’s next generation. Another was John D. Rockefeller IV, the only son of John D. III. I would work with him some twenty-five years later when, as Jay Rockefeller, he served as a US senator from West Virginia. Finally, Nelson’s brothers, Laurance and David, occasionally came to look at what we were doing as well as to swim and play tennis. I remember mentioning one day that I had some business in New York. David Rockefeller told me that I could come to town with him the next day. I drove to David’s house at the appointed hour in the morning and got into his car. Instead of driving to New York City, we drove only a few minutes to a helipad on the Pocantico property. From there, a Bell Ranger helicopter whisked us to the East River helicopter terminal on East 34th Street. Another lesson about the life of the very rich!

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All that summer, Watergate was rapidly coming to a climax. As a result of this scandal, Richard Nixon became the first president of the United States to resign from office. On August 9, 1974, President Nixon sent a resignation letter to his secretary of state, Henry Kissinger. On the same day, Laurance Rockefeller was hosting a dinner party at his residence on the Pocantico property. It was a somber occasion. In addition to Bun and myself, the guests included Edward Teller, Wilson and Helen Talley, William O. Baker, Oscar Ruebhausen (a lawyer and Rockefeller confidant), William Ronan (the director of the Port Authority of New York and a Rockefeller political associate), and the two Rockefeller brothers and their wives. Over cocktails, the discussion naturally centered on the president’s resignation. The people in the room were all Rockefeller supporters, and they expressed satisfaction at what had happened. Nelson Rockefeller had spent many millions of dollars to secure the Republican presidential nomination in 1960, 1964, and 1968. In 1960 and 1968 he was bested by Richard Nixon. Thus, there was no love lost for Nixon among Nelson Rockefeller’s supporters. Several people made comments to the effect that they were glad that Nixon was gone and good riddance. Nelson Rockefeller very quickly said that what had happened was very bad for the country. It would weaken the republic, and there would be a loss of respect for and confidence in the United States. Rockefeller brought us up short, and we were in a somber mood. Conversation was desultory until Laurance began to talk. He started to outline the post-Nixon political situation. He eventually said: “You know, Nelson, President Ford will select you to become vice president. You are a prominent political leader, you are a leader of the liberal wing of the Republican Party, whereas the new president is a conservative, and you are available because you hold no important political office. So, you see, you are it.” Nelson was agitated by Laurance’s speech. “I have been asked by a number of presidential candidates to be the vice presidential candidate. I always told them that I would not want the job because it was too constraining. Besides, the vice president has nothing to do! I am not a fifth wheel.” It was clear that Nelson was not happy with his brother’s prediction. Laurance changed the subject, and once again the conversation slowed. Finally, Laurance tried again. “You know, Nelson, you will not be able to avoid accepting the offer to be vice president by the president.You had better start thinking about it.” Nelson said to no one in particular: “I don’t want to think about it now.” Then he looked directly at Laurance: “You are right. I will have to think about it, but so will all of you in this room. After dinner, let’s adjourn to the drawing room and talk about what I should do when I am vice president.” After dinner, we all found seats in the drawing room. Nelson, standing in the center, started to talk: “The vice presidency is a very strange office. Most people who have held the office have made only small contributions. Most of the vice

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presidents were relatively obscure politicians. I am not obscure, and I have held important appointive positions in Washington, serving three presidents. Finally, I am the only person who has ever been elected governor of New York four times.” He paused for a few seconds to let this sink in.Then he went on, “There are two criteria that I want you to keep in mind as we consider what I should be doing if I become vice president. First, whatever I do must be compatible with my status as a first-class political leader. Second, whatever jobs or functions you decide to recommend, these cannot get me crosswise with the president.Whatever I do must be something that President Ford wants done and will not even remotely look as if I am trying to compete with the president.” We started to make lists of things that might meet the criteria that Nelson had established. Once again, during the discussion, Nelson Rockefeller displayed the remarkable talent to which I have already alluded. He could guide contentious arguments to a constructive conclusion, and he could do this with a roomful of highly intelligent people with strong opinions. At the end of about two hours, we had come to a consensus about what Nelson should try to do as vice president. The first came from a suggestion by David Rockefeller, who observed that the Watergate scandal had devastated the American intelligence services. President Nixon had used the Central Intelligence Agency to spy on Americans within the United States, something that was manifestly illegal. The agency’s prestige plummeted when those actions became public. A US Senate investigation chaired by Idaho senator Frank Church into the domestic spying produced findings that reflected badly on the whole intelligence apparatus. David Rockefeller felt that the new president should counter this congressional initiative with one run by the administration. He felt that the vice president should chair a high-level committee to look at the US intelligence community and to suggest operational changes that would prevent the kind of abuses that occurred during the Watergate episode. All of us felt that this was an excellent suggestion. The second suggestion came from Bill Baker. At the time, Bell Telephone Laboratories, which Baker headed, was still the premier industrial research operation in the nation. The transistor, the laser, fiber optics, and a number of other valuable innovations had originated at the Bell Labs. Several Nobel laureates were on the staff. Bill was concerned because President Nixon had fired Ed David as his science adviser and abolished the President’s Science Advisory Committee. This happened early in 1973, shortly after President Nixon was reelected. The president asked David to initiate two studies—one about the space shuttle, which the president had approved a year earlier, and the other about a federally funded program to develop a supersonic transport aircraft. Some months later, David submitted his recommendations, which were to cancel the supersonic transport and to take another look at the space shuttle. Greatly annoyed by this answer, Nixon promptly concluded that he did not need a science adviser. To forestall criticism from the scientific commu-

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nity, the president asked H. Guyford Stever, the director of the National Science Foundation (NSF), to act as his science adviser too. After recounting this story, Bill Baker suggested that the resurrection of a science and technology office in the White House might be another course that Rockefeller could pursue. There was general agreement on the two issues that we had developed, and Rockefeller said that he would think about it. Bun, Rufus, and I returned to California at the end of August. The summer at Pocantico had been interesting, useful, and enjoyable. We had done much work on editing and organizing the fourteen volumes that would become the publications of the Commission on Critical Choices for Americans.

Vice Pres. Nelson Rockefeller Shortly after we returned home, President Ford announced (on August 20, 1974) that he would ask Nelson Rockefeller to become vice president of the United States. This was the second time within a year that the Twenty-Fifth Amendment to the Constitution had been invoked to fill the vice presidency. In October 1973, Vice Pres. Spiro Agnew had been forced to resign because of corruption charges against him, and President Nixon appointed then-congressman Gerald R. Ford to be vice president. One of the major consequences of Rockefeller’s nomination was that he could no longer be chairman of the Commission on Critical Choices for Americans. I learned early in September that Bill Ronan had become the acting chairman, and a few days later I got a telephone call from Bill asking me to come to New York for a meeting of the commission staff. Bill informed us that the “governor” wanted us to finish the work of the commission and to get the books published. He also told us that the Third Century Corporation would stay in existence to complete the work that we had started. Wilson Talley, the staff chief, was pleased, but said to no one in particular that he regretted that our work would never be used as a platform for a presidential campaign. Upon hearing this, Bill Ronan laughed and said, “You have to remember that since the end of the Second World War, three vice presidents have reached the presidency, Truman, Nixon, and Johnson. Don’t underestimate Nelson’s ability to be the fourth!” I did not know quite what to think about this. During the next two or three months, I had only one conversation with Nelson at the headquarters of the commission. I had come to work on one of our books with Wilson Talley, and Nelson showed up late in the afternoon. He had just come back from Washington, and he was very depressed. His confirmation hearing in the Senate had become contentious. The Twenty-Fifth Amendment required that a vice presidential nominee be confirmed both by the Senate and the House of Representatives. Even though the choice of Rockefeller met with general approval from the press and the public, many in the Congress, in both parties, thought it would be a good idea to dig into

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Rockefeller’s financial dealings. The most startling revelation was that Rockefeller had made large “loans” to friends in and out of politics. For example, Henry Kissinger had received several large “loans,” some while he was serving in public office. Several senior officials in the New York state government had likewise been beneficiaries of Nelson’s generosity. All this confirmed my earlier decision not to take any money from the Rockefellers. The inquiries had a depressing effect on Nelson. I asked him, “Had you known what would happen in your confirmation hearings, would you have accepted President Ford’s nomination?” “Of course! Look, we are in a very real constitutional crisis. For the first time in our history, we have an unelected president. Yet he is still our president, and if he asks me to do something, I cannot refuse.” He said this firmly and with great conviction and then added, “In spite of all the uproar in Congress, I will eventually be confirmed. I want you to continue to work with me. Will you do that?” I replied that I would. I repeated what I had told him in late 1973, which was that I would work for him part-time. I told him that it would be easier for me to do this if he became vice president, because we would then both be on the federal payroll. He laughed and said, “OK, we’ll both be bureaucrats!” Then he became serious, “I have been thinking about what I would like you to do.You remember that dinner party at Pocantico last August?” “Yes.” “Well, you remember Bill Baker’s proposal to reconstitute the President’s Science Advisory Committee?” I nodded and he said, “I want you to draft the legislation to reestablish the White House science adviser.” “I don’t believe legislation is necessary,” I replied. Rockefeller continued, “But that is just the point. Nixon could abolish the job of science adviser and the President’s Science Advisory Committee because they were just members of the White House staff. I want to have an organization that has legal status, with a director who would be confirmed by the US Senate. In that way, no president will be able to arbitrarily abolish the office when he receives advice he does not like.” I thought that this was an interesting proposition, and I told Nelson that I would start thinking about the problem. On the flight back to California the next morning, I began to read about the history of how the president acquires advice on scientific and technical issues. It was also at this time that Rockefeller began to recruit his staff. Bill Ronan, who was Rockefeller’s most trusted political adviser, would stay in New York to finish the work of the commission. Henry Diamond would move to Washington to help run the vice president’s office. Oscar Ruebhausen would stay in New York but would advise Rockefeller on the two issues that had been discussed at Pocantico at the dinner party. Since I would be working on the science advice problem, I would essentially be reporting to Oscar Ruebhausen.

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In the final months of 1974, I spent some time completing my section of Power and Security. I wrote a piece on technology development, Edward Teller wrote something about the energy problem, and Johnny Foster wrote about national security. I remember that Johnny asked us, his coauthors, to make some predictions about the world ten years later, in 1985. In a letter to Johnny dated September 25, 1974, I tried to answer his question. I was almost completely wrong in my views about what would be happening in our country in the future. I was pessimistic, and the general theme of my predictions was that the United States would have less influence in the world in 1985 than it had in 1974. I did not reckon on the presidency of Ronald Reagan. He was able to pull the country out of the funk it was in following the Watergate debacle—but I do not want to get ahead of the story. In the meantime, the other matter that we discussed at Laurance’s dinner party, the problems caused by President Nixon’s misuse of the CIA and other intelligence agencies, was flaring up. Seymour Hersh, one of the more persistent investigative reporters around, published a piece in the New York Times in which he described alleged activities of the CIA in spying on groups that opposed the Vietnam War during the Nixon administration.To respond to these allegations, President Ford appointed a blue-ribbon commission to investigate them. Just as Nelson Rockefeller had anticipated, Ford asked him to head the commission. Not to be outdone, the Democratic leadership of the Senate established a select committee to investigate the same incidents. This was the committee chaired by Sen. Frank Church. What ensued was a classic argument between the executive and legislative branches of the government. Senator Church demanded the relevant materials from the White House. He was told that everything had been given to the Rockefeller Commission. When Senator Church approached Rockefeller, he was told that the papers would be delivered as soon as the commission submitted its report. From the administration’s point of view, it was a neat way of finessing the problem. The Church committee did eventually secure the documents. Some of its recommendations were damaging to the operation of the American intelligence community.The whole episode was not one of the shining moments in American politics. President Nixon had definitely broken the law by using the CIA for domestic spying. On the other hand, Senator Church and his colleagues did not use the restraint needed to prevent doing some very real damage to our intelligence operations. Nelson Rockefeller was finally confirmed by Congress, and he assumed office as the forty-first vice president of the United States on December 19, 1974. Battles over the investigation of intelligence activities had delayed the confirmation. In fact, the congressional leadership wanted to hold off on the confirmation hearings until the next Congress was seated, in January 1975. President Ford made a special appeal to the Democratic leaders, Sen. Mike Mansfield, the Senate majority leader, and Speaker Carl Albert. Talking about the refusal of the Congress to act, the president said, “You just cannot do that to the country.You cannot do it to Nelson Rockefeller, and you cannot do it to me. It is in the national interest that you

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confirm Rockefeller, and I am asking that you move as soon as possible.” Fortunately, the congressional leaders conceded the point to the president.

The President’s Advisory Group on Science and Technology At about the same time, President Ford was organizing his administration. Even though Nelson Rockefeller was not yet confirmed by the Congress, he was staking out the areas in which he would concentrate his efforts. He wanted to establish himself as a leading figure in the administration on energy, national security, and technology development. To achieve this objective, Rockefeller would use the people he had collected as members and staff of the Commission on Critical Choices for Americans. To draw President Ford’s attention to the work of the commission, Rockefeller arranged a meeting with the president on December 19, 1974. The president and some members of his staff were in New York on that day, so the meeting was held in the presidential suite at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel. At about four o’clock, we were ushered into the sitting room of the suite. The president and several members of his staff, Donald Rumsfeld (the White House chief of staff  ), Frank Zarb (the president’s adviser on energy matters), and two press aides, Ron Nessen and Hugh Morrow, were there. Nelson Rockefeller introduced Edward Teller, John Foster, Oscar Ruebhausen, Bill Ronan, George Woods, Carroll Wilson, and me as we entered. Since the discussion was to focus on energy, national security, and technology development, we had agreed that Teller, Foster, and I would be the spokesmen for the group. The topics on the agenda were those on which all three of us had worked. The president sat in an easy chair next to the fireplace, which dominated one wall of the room. I found myself awestruck to be in his company. I had met President Nixon in 1969 at the party to celebrate Apollo 11s successful trip to the moon. That was my first time meeting a president, but it was nothing more than a perfunctory handshake and some polite small talk. This time was different. Along with a small group of people, I was meeting with the president of the United States to inform him about the work we were doing. President Ford said some kind words about the Commission on Critical Choices and then turned to Rockefeller to get things going.While Rockefeller was speaking, the president pulled a pipe of his coat pocket, lit it, and listened carefully. Rockefeller called upon Teller to start the discussion. The people at Livermore had just finished some underground nuclear detonations to break up oil-bearing shale, burn some of the oil underground, and extract the heat as well as the remaining oil. Zarb mentioned that Occidental Oil, a California company, had built a facility in Colorado to conduct experiments with this technology. The president interjected that he was interested in this kind of in situ energy recovery and asked Zarb for a more thorough discussion when they all got back to Washington. Teller then talked about nuclear reactors, particularly breeder reactors that could convert the abundant isotope of

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uranium (U-238) to plutonium (Pu-239), which can be used as nuclear reactor fuel. The president wanted to know whether the federal government should support breeder reactors, and the consensus was that it should. Teller concluded that the United States should be an exporter of energy by 1985. The next speaker was Carroll Wilson, who was a distinguished professor of economics at MIT’s Sloan School of Management. He started by describing the international oil situation and the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), whose oil embargo on the West (imposed in response to US involvement in the Yom Kippur War) had been lifted in March. The president wanted to know how Wilson and Woods would try to channel OPEC money to regions of the world that needed development, to indigenous industries in the Middle East, to black Africa, and to Southeast Asia. George Woods, who was a former president of the World Bank, thought that the distribution of food around the world was another matter that deserved attention. Johnny Foster picked up on the energy problem, which, he said, was central to national security. He asked how an energy development program should be organized.The president provided some important insights. He said, “The top guys in Washington are too much on the firing line. Things are really in the control of second- and third-level people.” The president’s prescription was to break the problem into constituent parts—oil, gas, coal, and so on—and then organize an Apollo-like program to deal with them. I am not sure that the president was right about what he said, but his engagement in the discussion was really interesting. When my turn came to speak, I quickly went through the history of technology development of the United States, starting with the Morrill Act of 1862, which created the land grant colleges and the accompanying agricultural and engineering experiment stations. I went on to describe some of the things we were doing in electronics, aviation, and biotechnology, and the institutions in which the work was being done. Finally, I talked about the plans we were making to reestablish the science adviser’s office in the White House.The president encouraged us to get on with it. It was now after six, and Donald Rumsfeld reminded the president that another group of people would soon be coming in. The president expressed his thanks and told us that he would follow up on some of the things we recommended. My overall impression of President Ford was very favorable. He was engaged in the discussion, he was knowledgeable, and he had the capacity to listen—which I have found to be unusual in the case of many other political figures. He was surprisingly articulate, and he asked excellent questions. The former quality was surprising, because he was not a good speaker before large audiences; he had suffered some merciless criticism from the media for this. There is no doubt that Gerald Ford was a man of high intelligence and sterling character. Finally, there was an obvious aura of decency about him. During January, I worked with Oscar Ruebhausen on drafting the legislation for a presidential science and technology adviser. On January 27, 1975, Ruebhausen,

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Teller, Baker, Foster, Wilson, Diamond, Robinson, and I met in the office of the vice president to discuss this matter. That morning I had delivered to Ruebhausen a handwritten draft outlining what I thought would be areas of agreement and those for which there was no consensus. He modified the wording somewhat and then had it typed for the meeting. During the rather lengthy meeting, we managed to agree on the following items: • Someone in the office of the president should have the responsibility of advising the president on matters related to science and technology. The person should hold the rank of assistant to the president and should be confirmed by the US Senate in that position. The latter provision was inserted because I knew that the vice president wanted it that way. • There would be an advisory council on science and technology. The majority of those at the meeting were opposed to this provision. The problem was that there was a bill pending in the Senate to establish such a council. Rather than being preempted by Congress, we thought it best to put in this provision. • The person holding the science advisory position should have the authority to review federal agency budgets related to science and technology. The person should also review the qualifications of those nominated by the president for senior positions related to science and technology. These would be the assistant secretary posts in the federal departments. • The assistant to the president for science and technology should have a staff of about twenty people. (I had proposed a staff of six to eight, but I was overruled by my colleagues.)

I have gone into some detail in order to illustrate how things in the president’s office would be organized if our proposal for a science adviser was adopted. I would spend a significant fraction of my time developing a final version of the proposal to submit to Congress. On February 3, 1975, I received a letter from Vice President Rockefeller that outlined briefly and in broad terms the functions that I would perform as an adviser or consultant to the vice president. In the ensuing months, Oscar Ruebhausen and I produced a number of drafts of legislation establishing the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), which would fulfill roughly the functions listed above. Oscar made some valuable suggestions. The most important one was the inclusion of a couple of statutory assistants to the science adviser, who would also be the director of the OSTP. One of these would be an assistant director for national security technology and the other would be an assistant director for health matters or biological and medical affairs. In addition, Oscar wanted to be specific about the duties of the director. Among these were:

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• to resolve conflicting technical advice the president receives from federal agencies; • to provide the president with “early warning” information about the promise and perils of new technologies; • to “fill the gaps” in federal agencies’ technology development programs (with the object to ensure that the United States would stay in the lead in the most important new scientific and technical developments); and • to prevent periods of drift in science and technology, which were characteristic of our behavior in the past.

We submitted drafts of this proposal to a number of people for comments and approval. The vice president and president would submit our proposals to Congress. While all this was going on, we were working on forming the presidential advisory committee on matters of science and technology. At this time, Congress was passing new, very restrictive laws limiting the effectiveness of such advisory bodies. The laws were meant to provide more public access to the advisory structure of the federal government. But in fact, the result was to destroy the ability to provide the president and vice president with frank advice on confidential subjects. Ruebhausen and I believed that there should be no formal President’s Science Advisory Committee, as there had been in the past. We thought that the best way for the president to secure advice from more broadly based groups would be through ad hoc groups organized by the director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy. Such groups would not be subject to the new law restricting the ability of permanent advisory committees to operate. Plus, the congressional initiative to establish an advisory committee on science and technology should not be permitted to interfere with our efforts to provide an advisory structure on science and technology for the president. If forced to establish an advisory committee, we wanted to have the freedom to organize it so as to minimize the adverse effects of the new laws governing advisory committees. I was learning the ways of Washington. We worked with the legal staff in the White House and in Congress to establish a temporary advisory group on science and technology to the president.The group would be divided into two sections—one for science and one for technology. Bill Baker would chair the science group, and Simon Ramo would head the technology group. I would become a member of both groups and provide the connection between them. I was also designated to keep a record of the meetings. In performing this function, I became especially close to Si Ramo. Simon Ramo was a distinguished electrical engineer and entrepreneur. After earning a PhD in 1936 from the California Institute of  Technology, he went to work at General Electric’s Research Laboratories in Schenectady, New York. In 1946, he moved back to California to become director of the Hughes Aircraft

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Company’s electronics laboratory. There he met another brilliant electrical engineer, Dean Wooldridge, with whom he quickly established a close relationship. Both Ramo and Wooldridge wanted to work on the new weapons systems that were being developed as a result of the Cold War. The leader of the Hughes organization, Howard Hughes, was not enthusiastic about this prospect, and so they decided to leave Hughes Aircraft. They formed the Ramo-Wooldridge Corporation in September 1953. A year later, the Defense Department formed a committee to examine the possibility of developing intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs). John von Neumann headed the group, and both Ramo and Wooldridge were members. The committee recommended that the air force initiate an accelerated program to develop what von Neumann called “intercontinental artillery.” This meant that the air force would be charged with developing rockets that could carry nuclear warheads to targets 10,000–12,000 miles away. A brilliant young air force brigadier general, Bernard A. Schriever, was put in charge of a Los Angeles–based organization to develop ballistic missiles. The Ramo-Wooldridge Corporation was selected as the prime contractor for this effort. The corporation was extremely successful, and a stable of air force missiles—the Atlas, Thor, Titan, and Minuteman—was created in the ensuing years. In 1958, an Atlas rocket became the first ICBM by delivering a dummy nuclear weapon to a target 6,000 miles away. Si Ramo was known as the “architect of the nation’s ballistic missile program.” Once the missile development program was successfully completed, Ramo and Wooldridge sought other opportunities, especially in the commercial sector. In 1969, the company merged with Thompson Products, an old and respected manufacturer of automobile parts and products.The resulting company, TRW Corporation, became a leading manufacturer of spacecraft for military and civilian purposes. Simon Ramo was a small wiry man with a rapid speaking manner. He had one of the two or three quickest minds I have ever encountered. He had a robust sense of humor and loved to tell stories with funny endings.When I met him in 1974, he was the vice chairman of  TRW in charge of all the company’s technical development programs. I worked closely with him for more than a year and a half, which turned out to be a great pleasure as well as an honor. He passed away in June 2016, at age 103. The first meeting of the President’s Advisory Group on Science and Technology was held on July 17, 1975. Vice President Rockefeller was in the chair. The discussion was mostly about procedural and organizational matters. The meeting was held in the vice president’s conference room in the Old Executive Office Building, which is across the street from the West Wing of the White House. This building used to house the State Department, the War Department, and the Navy Department.You can tell by the decorations on the doorknobs which department a particular room once belonged to. At five thirty we adjourned for a meeting with President Ford in the Cabinet Room. The discussion was wide ranging, but

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the central theme was energy. My old friend and colleague Norman Rasmussen of MIT delivered a short report about the study he was conducting on nuclear reactor safety. His results would be written up in a comprehensive document that turned out to be a bible on the whole subject. It was also controversial. In 1975, it was still possible to have a rational discussion on this subject, something that became much more difficult following the events at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl. One positive outcome of the study was that it led to Rasmussen’s election to the National Academy of Engineering. In a previous chapter, I mentioned that Norman and I used to play poker in his laboratory, along with some other graduate students. I was pleased that my old friend was now briefing the president of the United States about his important work on the safe and effective management of nuclear reactors. Once again, I was impressed by the questions the president asked and the way he led the discussion. The Advisory Group on Science and Technology held four meetings in 1975 and five in 1976. National security, energy, and health were at the top of the agendas. Events in the Cold War were thus never far from our minds.The vice president usually attended at least a part of each meeting. He made certain that the assistant secretaries for science and technology were present when items of interest to them were on the agenda. I thought this was a much better way of doing things rather than writing thick reports. It also made for much better discussions because, for the most part, the assistant secretaries were very bright people. While all this was happening, the legislation to establish the Office of Science and Technology Policy was working its way through Congress. The meeting of the Advisory Group on Science and Technology on April 22, 1976, was held in the Committee Room at the NASA–Ames Research Center. Chairman Si Ramo was familiar with many of the things we were doing at Ames, so he readily agreed to my suggestion to meet there. I thought that it would be good to show some of the members of our group a really good government research center and to illustrate the quality of the people working at Ames. Glenn Schleede, a staff member of the White House’s Domestic Council, reported on the status of the OSTP bill. He passed around a copy of the draft legislation, and I was amused to see that almost nothing from the draft prepared by Oscar Ruebhausen and me was in it. Once more I learned something about the ways of Washington. The executive branch can write legislation, but Congress has to approve it in the end. Most disappointing was the elimination of the provision allowing the OSTP director to review research and development budgets and pass on the presidential appointments of senior officials responsible for science and technology. Fortunately, the OSTP would become a statutory office, as we recommended, and the director would have to be confirmed by the Senate. In any event, I was pleased that what we had started in August 1974 had now come to pass. The bill to create the OSTP was approved on May 11, 1976, and H. Guyford Stever, the director of the National Science Foundation, became its first director.

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One amusing but slightly embarrassing incident that I need to recount here shows, in part, why I found my Washington experience very satisfying. Sometime before the 1976 election, Nelson Rockefeller told me that President Ford wanted me to replace Stever as the director of the NSF. Though flattered, needless to say, I was unsure whether I was really qualified. I had worked with Guy Stever on several matters in the past, and we shared an MIT background. Given President Ford’s intention, I decided to visit him in his office at the NSF headquarters (in downtown Washington at G and 17th Streets, very close to the White House). I asked him some detailed questions about the operations and the programs of the NSF. His face became more quizzical and startled as my questions continued. Finally, he said, “Why are you asking all these questions?” “The vice president told me that President Ford would like to nominate me for your job after you take over the new Office of Science and Technology Policy,” I replied. Guy Stever started to laugh and then said, “I don’t know anything about this!” So we both laughed. I apologized to Guy for jumping the gun. I assumed, of course, that there was instant communication between the president and the vice president and their people. Even worse, it was quite possible that President Ford was just musing when he mentioned to Rockefeller that he wanted me to head the NSF. Perhaps Rockefeller, to be nice, told me that I would be nominated. Quite embarrassed by my faux pas, I continued to apologize. Guy Stever interrupted me: “Don’t worry, I understand.” Then he continued: “If President Ford tells you that he wants to nominate you for the NSF job, you should not accept. The director of the NSF is appointed for a six-year term because the people who wrote the NSF legislation wanted to isolate the director from partisan politics. If you accept the nomination now, Congress will not confirm you because the presidential election is just a few months away. If President Ford is reelected, you will be confirmed, and I am convinced that you will do a good job. However, if he loses the election, then you will be in limbo if the new president wants someone else for the job.Worse, you will create a situation in which the new president will be forced to drop you to nominate someone else. He can do that, of course, but it will create the impression that the NSF job is political. Do you really want to do that?” Guy made an excellent point. I kicked myself for not recognizing the problem before he lectured me about it. I quickly agreed with him. Later that week, I ran into Norman Hackerman at a cocktail party. He was the president of Rice University, in Houston. In 1976, he was also the chairman of the National Science Board, which was the oversight committee for the NSF. I knew Hackerman because he was a distinguished chemist and a friend of my father. In addition, I was familiar with Hackerman’s work. He was a leading expert on corrosion chemistry, and on several occasions during my time at Livermore and Ames, problems relating to corrosion had arisen.

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I told Hackerman about my meeting with Guy Stever. He laughed and said, “Guy was exactly right! If you accept the nomination, you will help to politicize the NSF. You must go back to Vice President Rockefeller and tell him that you will accept the nomination only after the election.” I took Norman’s advice, and the vice president agreed I that should wait for the election. My first exposure to high-level Washington politics was both interesting and enjoyable. The 1976 presidential campaign was in full swing, so public attention was focused on that rather than on science-related concerns at the national level. It turned out that Nelson Rockefeller would not be President Ford’s running mate. He was replaced on the ticket by Sen. Robert Dole of Kansas. Nelson Rockefeller was disappointed, but he had many other fish to fry. The Democrats nominated former governor Jimmy Carter of Georgia for president and Sen.Walter Mondale of Minnesota for vice president. It was a strong ticket. What was important was that after all the sleaze and pain of Watergate, we would have an election between two honest, decent, and intelligent people. I had met Governor Carter when he was in the Georgia State Senate and chairman of the Committee on Education. I was chairman of Berkeley’s Department of Nuclear Engineering. At the time, Georgia was reorganizing its public highereducation system. My friend Richard Fink of the George Institute of  Technology, with whom I had just coauthored a review article titled “Atomic Fluorescence Yields” (1966), suggested that I testify before Carter’s committee to discuss the organization of the University of California System. Sometime in the spring of 1967, I traveled to Atlanta and spent a few hours with Senator Carter and his committee. It was a good session, and I found Carter to be sharp, knowledgeable, and clearly in charge. At the time he was forty-three years old, sporting a crew cut of red hair, and carrying a few more pounds than he did when he came to Washington as president in 1977. I had a difficult time making up my mind about the 1976 election. I liked President Ford and thought that he had done very well in office. After some agonizing, I voted for Jimmy Carter. The fact that he had served in the navy on nuclear submarines was important to me, since I had more than a nodding acquaintance with the program. I also thought it important that Carter (age fifty-two) was younger than President Ford (sixty-three) by enough years to be counted as a member of my generation. (I was forty-seven years old in 1976.) Finally, I felt that somehow the nation had to get over the Watergate trauma sooner rather than later and that a Democratic president would be more likely to facilitate that. Jimmy Carter won the 1976 election by a narrow margin in the popular vote—only two percentage points. My work with Nelson Rockefeller had given me a fairly virulent case of “Potomac fever.” My eighth anniversary at Ames was in February 1977, and I was coming to the conclusion that I should start thinking about what I would do next. Having

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been connected with Nelson Rockefeller for two years, I did not think that I would be a candidate for a position in a Democratic administration. I consoled myself with the thought that there was still much to do at Ames and that Los Altos Hills was a great place to live. Nelson Rockefeller left Washington in January 1977, satisfied with what had been accomplished. He returned to New York and spent much of his time managing his art collection. I visited him in his office a few times in the spring of 1977, and I was truly amazed by his skill in organizing books that described and contained great collections of modern paintings. It was clear that Nelson Rockefeller was a happy man.

The End of the War in Vietnam In previous chapters, I have provided short descriptions of the two hot wars that occurred during the Cold War. Unlike the two world wars, which had decisive military and political outcomes, these hot wars ended more ambiguously. The Korean War (1950–54) ended in a stalemate that still exists sixty-four years later. In the case of Vietnam, the North Vietnamese achieved their military objective and occupied Saigon on April 30, 1975. The communist government in Hanoi then controlled all of Vietnam, attaining its political objective as well. The beginning of the end came on March 30, 1972. The North Vietnamese Army launched an invasion across the seventeenth parallel into South Vietnam. Operation Nguyen Hue was a conventional warfare offensive with artillery, tanks, and a large logistic train. The offensive stalled largely because of support provided to the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (the South Vietnamese) by American airpower. In addition to aiding the ARVN and American troops on the ground, President Nixon authorized air attacks against targets in North Vietnam. Hanoi and the city’s port, Haiphong, sustained heavy damage. Also, the harbor of Haiphong was mined via air-dropped weapons. More than two hundred Boeing B-52 bombers, based as far away as Guam, were eventually used in the air campaign, which was called Operation Linebacker. The air campaign continued for about six months. By August 1972, all American combat troops had been withdrawn from Vietnam. Given the stalled North Vietnamese offensive and the inability of Operation Linebacker to break the North’s resolve, the parties returned to the peace negotiations that had been abandoned almost two years earlier. On October 8, 1972, Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho reached an armistice agreement. It called for the withdrawal of all American military personnel, not only the combat troops, and preserved the independence of South Vietnam, leaving Pres. Nguyen Van Thieu and his government in place. The sticking point was that communist troops would also remain in South Vietnam. President Thieu refused to sign the agreement, whereupon Le Duc Tho walked out of the negotiations.

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President Nixon ordered a resumption of intense bombing of Hanoi and Haiphong on December 18, 1972. Operation Linebacker II was carried out once again by B-52s. It was suspended on January 8, 1973, when peace negotiations in Paris were resumed. An armistice acceptable to President Thieu was concluded on January 27, 1973. He was able to extract a promise from President Nixon that American troops would return if North Vietnamese forces and other communist elements moved south. As a result of the negotiations, Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho were awarded the 1973 Nobel Peace Prize. Kissinger accepted the award, but Le Duc Tho turned it down, saying that “there is no real peace.” President Nixon’s resignation changed the situation. In January 1975, North Vietnamese regular troops again crossed the seventeenth parallel in force and occupied large segments of the nation. The ARVN was powerless to stop the invasion. On March 25, Gen.Van Tien Dung, who had replaced General Giap as commander in chief, launched the Ho Chi Minh Campaign to capture Saigon. President Thieu requested US aid, but President Ford rejected the appeal. The city fell on April 30, 1975, amid scenes of frantic refugees trying to climb the walls of the US Embassy to escape communist rule. It was a bitter defeat for the United States, even though there were no longer any American troops in Vietnam. Fifty-eight thousand Americans had died to maintain the independence of South Vietnam between 1963 and 1975. The effort had failed. President Thieu was taken out of his capital city by an American helicopter and flown to a waiting American aircraft carrier. In the ensuing months, more than a million and a half Vietnamese fled the country. Most of these people came to the United States, which had adopted an open-door policy for refugees from Vietnam. The American people were deeply divided by the war. Most outlets of the public media, especially the major newspapers, had come to oppose the war by the early 1970s. An unfair conscription system that deferred young people from military service if they attended universities exacerbated the divisions between the wealthy and the less affluent. The faith of the people in their government and the credibility of their leaders were both compromised by the failure to meet military and political objectives in Vietnam. Finally, the morale of the professional military was damaged by the manner in which the retreat from Vietnam was conducted. Almost three million Americans served in Vietnam with honor and courage, and they had failed to win. North Vietnam also suffered grievous losses. More than two million people—soldiers and civilians—were killed between 1963 and 1975. These losses, together with the refugees leaving the country, meant that about 15 percent of the 1975 population of the country was gone. But for the North Vietnamese, there was the consolation that their country was now independent. They had been fighting for almost a century against the French, the Japanese, and finally the Americans, and they had prevailed. While the final act in Vietnam was being played out, we were busy closing out the activities of the Commission on Critical Choices for Americans. I was

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still helping Wilson Talley and the commission staff with the final editing of the fourteen books that would be published as a result of the commission’s work. With Nelson Rockefeller’s accession to the vice presidency, the original purpose of using the work of the commission as a campaign platform for a 1976 presidential campaign was no longer in the cards. Clearly, the vice president could not run in the Republican primaries if President Ford decided to run for reelection. All of us felt, however, that the books we had written should be published, since some of them had genuine value. I remember that the atmosphere in Washington during the spring of 1975 was somber. On the eve of the two hundredth anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, things were not going well for the nation. There was one bright spot: the Mayaguez incident. An American merchant ship, the SS Mayaguez, was seized off the coast of Cambodia by troops of the Khmer Rouge, who were allies of the North Vietnamese. A rescue mission was mounted, and on May 15, 1975, a force of US Marines carried in by a squadron of air force helicopters rescued the ship, which was empty, the crew having been removed to a nearby island. The operation was marred because forty-one Marines were killed—twenty-three in a single helicopter crash—a very high casualty rate for such a small operation. Nevertheless, it was at least a small success. It was also the last operation to be carried out by American military forces in the area. (The commander of the helicopter squadron, Col. Harry A. Goodall, would serve as my military assistant when I became under secretary of the air force in 1977.) What were the long-term consequences of our decade-plus presence in Vietnam? Did any of the consequences have some positive effect on the eventual outcome of the Cold War? I believe that there are good arguments that point in that direction. Here is a partial listing of some Vietnam-related events that helped make our eventual victory in the Cold War more likely. President Nixon’s initiative in February 1972 to establish formal relations with China was by far the most important. Such a move toward China might have been made in any event, but our problems in Vietnam certainly made the establishment of such relations more urgent. It is speculation on my part, but I believe that a good case can be made that ending the political isolation of China had a positive effect on the succession struggle that followed the death of Mao Zedong in 1976. It is at least likely that the more moderate faction headed by Deng Xiaoping would not have come to power had it not been for our presence in Vietnam. At the end of World War II, Indonesia secured its independence from the Netherlands with a liberation movement led by Ahmed Sukarno. There was a strong communist party in Indonesia, called the PKI. In 1948, the communists staged an uprising, which failed primarily because of Sukarno’s rise to power. In October 1965, the PKI attempted another coup d’état, this time by trying to assassinate the army’s general staff. A number of generals were killed, but most were not, including the chief of staff and his most trusted lieutenants. Following this attempt to over-

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throw the government, more than half a million communists or suspected communists were executed. Suppression of this uprising led to Sukarno’s downfall and the three decades of relatively stable military rule by General Suharto. Currently some semblance of democratic rule exists in Indonesia. Last but not least, the strong American alliances with Japan and with South Korea were not compromised by the tactical defeat of American forces in Vietnam. Thus, in the longer term, one can argue that the United States suffered a tactical defeat in Vietnam but that our strategic position and our influence in the world remained the same. It may even have been enhanced by our military presence in Vietnam. But as mentioned, the price in American lives was high.

The Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, 1952–1991 On May 18, 1974, India detonated a nuclear explosive device in the desert area of Rajasthan in the western part of the country. The explosive yield was estimated to be about ten kilotons of equivalent high explosive.This event was the first time that a nation other than one of the five acknowledged nuclear powers demonstrated the capability to produce nuclear explosives. The Indian test indicated that there was a problem with international efforts to control the spread of nuclear weapons. The Limited Test Ban Treaty had been negotiated in 1963, and it was followed in 1968 by the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Somehow, nuclear weapons proliferated in spite of the treaty. It is important to understand how and why proliferation occurred. I have already covered in some detail how the United States and the Soviet Union developed nuclear weapons—the latter largely through espionage—so I will now explain how the other three nuclear powers of the original five, the United Kingdom, France, and China, acquired theirs. The British were the first to establish a scientific group to determine the feasibility of building a nuclear explosive. The establishment of this group, the MAUD Committee, was triggered by a detailed calculation of the critical mass of uranium-235 that would be necessary to sustain a nuclear explosion. This work, completed in February 1940, was performed by two refugee scientists who had become British subjects, Rudolf Peierls (from Germany) and Otto Frisch (from Austria). As mentioned earlier, it was Frisch who, along with his aunt, Lise Meitner, had published the first paper (February 1939) describing the nuclear fission process and calculating the huge quantity of energy released during the reaction. The MAUD Committee was chaired by Sir Henry Tizard, the principal scientific adviser to the Royal Air Force and rector of the Imperial College of Science and Technology in London (1929–42). By July 1941, the committee had developed a design for an implosion plutonium bomb and also for the means of separating uranium-235 from natural uranium by gaseous diffusion. Its work was conducted under the strictest security and code-named Tube Alloys. The committee’s work was completed before the United States entered World War II and a year before

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the committee chaired by J. Robert Oppenheimer at the University of California performed the same calculations in the summer of 1942. Because of the work done by the MAUD Committee, a collaboration between the British and the American nuclear weapons efforts was formalized at the Octagon Conference between Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt in Quebec in August 1943. A dozen British and Canadian scientists joined the scientific staff at Los Alamos Laboratory that same year. They included Geoffrey Taylor of  Trinity College, a leading expert in shock wave theory; his student William Penney; Rudolf Peierls; James L. Tuck, an expert in plasma physics; Alan Nunn May; and Klaus Fuchs, a refugee from Germany who had become a British subject.The latter two participated in the program and then promptly informed the Soviets about the results of their work. Following the end of World War II, the British developed a crash program to secure their own nuclear explosives. The person in charge of the program was Air Chief Marshall Sir Charles Portal (later,Viscount Portal of Hungerford), who had been the chief of staff of the Royal Air Force during World War II. His job was equivalent to that performed by Maj. Gen. Leslie Groves in the United States. A veritable galaxy of British scientists was mobilized and led by Sir John Cockroft, the discoverer of the neutron, for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1951. In practice,William Penney, who was at Los Alamos during World War II, was the real leader. The British Labour government elected in July 1945, headed by Prime Minister Clement Attlee, placed the project on highest priority. In January 1947, he gave the word to proceed. The first nuclear explosive device was detonated on October 3, 1952, at Trimouille Island in the Monte Bello group off the western coast of Australia. It was a plutonium device, not a weapon, with a yield of about twenty kilotons equivalent of high explosive. Atlee also saw to it that the appropriate infrastructure to develop and produce nuclear weapons was in place. A large nuclear reactor was built at Windscale, and an institution similar to Los Alamos was built at Aldermaston. The collaboration between the United States and Great Britain was curtailed in 1946. But leading figures such as William Penney continued to participate by visiting the nuclear weapon test sites in the Pacific.When Klaus Fuchs confessed to espionage in January 1950, the collaboration was suspended.The British continued to work on weaponzing plutonium bombs, and they also tested some hydrogen bombs based on Sakharov’s “layer cake” design, which the British independently developed. In October 1951, Winston Churchill was returned to office as prime minister. A year later, the United States conducted the Ivy Mike shot, which was the first explosion of a hydrogen device using the radiation implosion principle. The detonation had an explosive yield of ten megatons. During the spring of 1954, the British were allowed to observe Operation Castle in the Pacific, which included the Castle Bravo shot. This was an airdrop of the first weaponized hydrogen bomb;

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it produced an explosive yield of fifteen megatons. The British observers were apparently so impressed by this that Winston Churchill ordered the British nuclear weapons organization to develop and build a hydrogen bomb based on the radiation implosion principle. A little more than three years later, on November 8, 1957, the British detonated Grapple Round C, which was an air-dropped weapon having an explosive yield of 1.8 megatons.The operation was carried out near Malden Island, three hundred nautical miles south of the equator in the Central Pacific. France presents probably the most interesting case of nuclear weapons proliferation. Paris fell to the Nazis in June 1940, and was liberated in August 1944. A French provisional government was established with Charles de Gaulle as president. At the insistence of Winston Churchill, France was treated as one of the victors of World War II. Thus, France would oversee one of the zones of occupation in Germany after the Nazi surrender in May 1945. Equally important, France was awarded one of the permanent seats on the UN Security Council. None of this would have happened without the prestige gained by Charles de Gaulle. His stubborn refusal to concede defeat and his consummate political ability to persuade the French colonies in northwestern Africa to join him was the source of his power. Unlike Britain, France was in no position to mount a nuclear weapons program during the war. But France had (and still has) a fine scientific and engineering tradition. The nation also had a large cadre of talent in science and engineering. The most distinguished nuclear physicist in France was Frédéric Joliot-Curie. He was married to Irene Curie, the daughter of Marie Sklodowska Curie, the Polish-born chemist who first isolated the element radium, in 1895. Joliot-Curie, who had adopted and hyphenated his name with that of his mother-in-law, and his wife were awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry for their own work in the chemistry of radioactive elements. He had both credentials and courage. In May 1940, he had two of his colleagues, Hans von Halban and Lew Kowarski, smuggle all his papers and materials on radioactive chemistry to England. Joliot-Curie and his wife both remained in France and worked surreptitiously for the French resistance movement, the Maquis. One of the first things that President de Gaulle did early in 1945 was to call Joliot-Curie and ask him to take the post of high commissioner for atomic energy, with a mandate to develop a nuclear weapons program as soon as possible. De Gaulle did this in spite of the fact that Joliot-Curie was a longtime member of the Communist Party. It was a clear message from the new leader that there were things in the world that were more important than political affiliations. Joliot-Curie quickly gathered a first-class scientific engineering team, including Pierre Auger, Lew Kowarski, Jules Guerou, Pierre Langevin, and Bertrand Goldschmidt. The last named of this group was especially important because he was the last assistant in Marie Curie’s laboratory before she died in 1934. Goldschmidt spent the war years in Canada working with the nuclear reactor at Chalk River, Ontario. It was there that he developed methods for extracting

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plutonium chemically from spent reactor fuel elements. In 1948, Goldschmidt led the construction of the first nuclear reactor in France. Finally, Joliot-Curie was able to persuade the other French Nobel laureate in physics, Louis de Broglie, to become a senior adviser to the High Commission on Atomic Energy in 1945. During his short first term as president (1945–46), de Gaulle did not initiate a program to develop nuclear weapons. But by picking Joliot-Curie as head of the French nuclear commission, he provided the momentum necessary for such a program to eventually become functional. In 1954, de Gaulle wrote a long article advocating that France initiate a high-priority program to develop nuclear weapons. He argued that unless France demonstrated that it could develop these weapons, it would lose its position as a major world power. He argued that the development of nuclear technology was absolutely essential to the future of France—not only for weapons but also for the generation of electricity. He wanted France both to be as independent as possible of foreign sources of energy and to have an independent nuclear military force. De Gaulle returned to power as prime minister in June 1958. The previous month, he had given the word to go ahead with the construction of a nuclear weapon. During the dozen years that de Gaulle was out of the government, the nuclear weapons program that he initiated had matured, and all that was required was his order to proceed. On February 13, 1960, a seventy-kiloton device was detonated at a site in Algeria near the town of Reggane. This Sahara test site was employed for three other atmospheric detonations between April 1960 and April 1961, after which the site was abandoned. French army general Pierre Marie Gallois was in charge of the operation, and he acquired the title “le pére de bombe A,” the father of the A-bomb. Following the declaration of independence by Algeria on July 5, 1962, an agreement was reached with France to move the nuclear test site to In Eker, also in the Sahara. This site, designed for underground detonations, was located about three hundred miles east of Reggane and a thousand miles south of the Algerian coast. Thirteen underground detonations were conducted there between November 1961 and February 1966. Under the agreement with Algeria, all French nuclear weapons testing was halted after the final In Eker test, and all French equipment was removed from Algeria by July 1, 1967. The French established a new nuclear weapons test site in the South Pacific, near Tahiti in French Polynesia. Between 1966 and 1996, the French conducted 193 nuclear detonations near the islands of Mururoa and Fangataufa, about 600 miles southeast of  Tahiti. On August 24, 1968, the French detonated their first hydrogen bomb, code-named Canopus. The explosive yield, using the radiation implosion principle, was 2.6 megatons equivalent of high explosive. The bomb was dropped by an airplane above Fangataufa Atoll. De Gaulle was president when Canopus was detonated, so he had the satisfaction of seeing the French nuclear

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weapons project through without any foreign help, either in science and engineering or in the construction of the facilities. That was how he wanted it. It is worth mentioning the use of nuclear reactors in France to generate electric power—another development prompted by de Gaulle. His far-reaching decision has had two important consequences. First, France is now ahead of every other country in the field of nuclear power reactors. It has a large breeder reactor called Phoenix, which is producing power for the country’s electrical grid. A breeder reactor also produces plutonium-239 by neutron bombardment of the abundant isotope uranium-238. The word “breeder” means that the reactor generates new fuel as it is making energy with the original uranium fuel. The breeder reactor concept was developed in the United States, and Detroit Edison built and ran one for a decade. Then President Carter decided to forbid the reprocessing of nuclear fuel elements because he thought it would encourage the proliferation of nuclear weapons. As a result, we will have to buy future reactors from the French. One other point needs to be made concerning the French nuclear weapons program, and that has to do with Israel. At the end of World War II, there were about two million Jewish refugees in Europe, Africa, and Asia. Many of them made their way to British Palestine, and when the State of Israel was declared in May 1948, it welcomed all Jewish people who wanted to immigrate there. The local Palestinian population objected to this incursion, and Israel fought several wars with the neighboring Arab countries, starting in 1948. Since the Jewish state was very small and vastly outnumbered by active and potential enemies, it decided to acquire nuclear weapons. These would have to have small effective yields and be compatible with delivery systems available in Israel. Israel had no resources to mount an indigenous program to produce nuclear explosives. What Israel did have was a highly trained technical workforce and a significant number of world-class scientific and engineering people. To produce nuclear fuel for a bomb, which is either uranium-235 or plutonium-239, a special centrifuge or a nuclear reactor is necessary. Since no hard information is available about the initiation of the Israeli program, the best guess is that it was probably begun sometime between 1955 and 1960. The centrifuge technology used today to separate uranium-235 was not available then, and the methods that were available, gaseous diffusion and electromagnetic separation, were cumbersome and expensive. Therefore, a large (fifty-megawatt) thermal nuclear research reactor was built at Dimona in the Negev. To produce plutonium, the reactor needs enriched uranium fuel rods. Seymour Hersh, in his book The Sampson Option, maintains that the fuel rods came from France. I believe this is a plausible assumption. Once the fuel elements are installed in the reactor and it is turned on, the production of plutonium is a matter of time. The manager of the Israeli nuclear program, again according to Seymour Hersh, was Peter Bergmann. Peter was a colleague of my father. I knew him slightly, and there is no doubt that he could do the job.

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Israeli policy, on the nuclear weapons we believe they have, is enigmatic. The country has consistently denied having nuclear weapons. There is, of course, a rationale that explains why Israel would want to possess nuclear weapons, given that Israel (8.4 million people) has borders with three Arab states, Egypt (89 million), Jordan (6.7 million), and Syria (23 million), along with Lebanon (4.1 million), which is not necessarily hostile to Israel, but is used as a staging area for attacks. Jordan and Egypt both have peace treaties with Israel, but they may not be very firm. Thus, there are more than 120 million Arabs within a few hundred miles of Israeli territory. In addition, there are several large Arab cities in the region that could be held hostage by nuclear weapons if there is a crisis. I believe that this is the grisly calculation that the Israelis have made. My guess is that they have about two hundred small nuclear weapons in the range of five to ten kilotons equivalent explosive yield. In October 1949, the long Chinese Civil War ended. For more than twenty years (1927–49), a large communist movement and the party that created the Chinese Republic in 1911 fought for control. The Japanese invasion of China in 1937 suspended the struggle for some time, but the civil war resumed with major combat operations in 1945. Throughout the Long March from central China to Shensi Province in the Northwest during 1934–35, Mao Zedong gained widespread support and prestige. By 1937, he had achieved the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party. Thus, with the communist victory in the civil war in 1949, he assumed power as the supreme leader in China. In 1949, the Cold War was just beginning, with the US-Soviet confrontation in Berlin. Joseph Stalin considered himself the leader of the worldwide communist movement, and Mao Zedong his junior partner. Soviet Russia provided substantial aid, much of it military, to strengthen Mao’s position. Stalin died in March 1953. His successors maintained his policies. The Soviets had detonated their first nuclear explosion in 1949 and tested their first hydrogen bomb in 1953. In 1942, Stalin had authorized an exchange of nuclear materials and information with the Chinese. In 1957, Khrushchev reached a comprehensive agreement to share all Soviet nuclear weapons data with China. The Soviets even provided them a mock-up of a plutonium bomb. Mao had let it be known that he considered himself the leader of the world communist movement. My guess is that Khrushchev gave the Chinese all these things to appease them. In spite of this, the relationship between the Soviets and the Chinese deteriorated in the late 1950s, and by 1960 the Soviets had begun to withdraw their advisers, including the nuclear weapons contingent. By 1963, all Soviet advisers were gone. The Chinese had started their nuclear program in 1955 under Soviet tutelage, but by 1960 they were on their own. The best information is that the first nuclear explosion in China was detonated at Lop Nor in southeastern Sinkiang Province on October 16, 1964. In all probability, for this uranium bomb they used electromagnetic separation of uranium-235 from uranium-238 to produce enough ura-

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nium critical mass needed for the detonation. The Chinese bomb (CHIC-1) had an equivalent explosive yield of twenty-five kilotons.The Chinese hydrogen bomb was a full two-stage megaton-yield thermonuclear weapon detonated on June 17, 1967. It is quite remarkable that the Chinese were able to produce a megaton-yield bomb in less than three years. The Chinese now have 250–300 nuclear weapons in their arsenal. They also have a stable of rockets for all ranges, including intercontinental ones, to deliver these weapons. The next proliferator of nuclear weapons during the Cold War has already been mentioned—India. Aside from the United States, in collaboration with Great Britain, the only two nations that built a bomb from scratch, so to speak, were France and India. The Soviets had spies in the United States and in Great Britain from whom they received detailed information on constructing a nuclear weapon. In the case of China, the Soviets supplied it with materials and equipment and then showed how to build one. India was probably motivated by the Chinese bomb. Ever since India’s independence, in 1947, there have been minor clashes in the border region at the extreme northwest of India between China, Pakistan, and India. The province of Jammu and Kashmir borders China’s far western province of Sinkiang. The border country is high in the Karakorum Range, which has little value. To complicate the matter further, Jammu and Kashmir is disputed territory between India, Pakistan, and China. So there was reason for concern among the Indian government and its citizens when China demonstrated its ability to build nuclear weapons. India had one great advantage in constructing a nuclear weapons program: its heritage of being a former member of the British Empire. One of the most important legacies left by the British was education. Many of the senior leaders of the Indian liberation movement were graduates of the finest British universities, including Mohandas Gandhi (University of London) and Jawaharlal Nehru (Cambridge University). The British also saw to it that India had a good university system. It is no accident that the first Asian to win a Nobel Prize in physics (in 1930) was an Indian, Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman. In addition to education, India had developed good relations with other members of the British Commonwealth. India’s effort to develop nuclear weapons began in 1944 when the distinguished Indian physicist Homi J. Bhabha asked the wealthy Tata family (Bhabha was a relative by marriage) to found the Institute for Nuclear Physics.This was accomplished in December 1945, and Bhabha persuaded Prime Minister Nehru to establish an Indian Atomic Energy Commission in 1948. The nuclear weapons effort began in earnest in August 1954 with the formation of the Department of Atomic Energy, which reported directly to the prime minister. In early 1955, the new department began to construct a small (one-megawatt) nuclear research reactor. This reactor was used to train a cadre of scientists and engineers who would eventually run the weapons development program. In September 1955, India negotiated the acquisition of a larger nuclear reactor from Canada.

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The Canadians had been peripherally involved in the American nuclear weapons effort by building a large nuclear reactor in Chalk River, Ontario. The reactor, which used heavy water as the neutron moderator, instead of graphite or ordinary water, was used to make very accurate measurements of neutron interactions with matter. It was also a good facility for producing plutonium. The Indians decided to buy a forty-megawatt reactor of the type used at Chalk River—one that would be large enough to produce a significant amount of plutonium. The Canadians were aware that the reactor they were selling to the Indians could lead to the proliferation of nuclear weapons. They therefore wrote a clause in the sales contract that required the Indians to guarantee that they would not extract the plutonium from the spent reactor fuel elements. The Indians, from the very beginning, decided not to honor the contract. Starting with the Canadian reactor, the Indians had enough materials and equipment to build a nuclear weapon. The development program was led by a metallurgist, Brahm Prakash. The project was competently pursued, and as mentioned earlier, the first bomb was detonated on May 18, 1974. The explosive yield was probably of the order of ten kilotons. I should mention that India has never signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty. The Indians built a nuclear arsenal of the order of a hundred weapons and a stable of rockets to deliver the weapons. Pakistan also developed nuclear weapons, at the behest of Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. The principal reason was that India had a bomb but Pakistan did not. Although lacking India’s infrastructure, Pakistan had some very good scientists and engineers. The program was started in 1972 at a meeting in Multan chaired by Prime Minister Bhutto. The star of the meeting was Abdus Salam, whose work in high-energy physics would later earn him a Nobel Prize. Seeking outside help for its nuclear endeavors, Pakistan, like India, turned to Canada. It purchased a 500-megawatt deuterium-moderated CANDU reactor.This machine is capable of generating 140 megawatts of electric power, and more importantly, plutonium can be extracted from its spent fuel elements more easily than from conventional light water reactors. In addition, the Chinese provided Pakistan with two large reactors for the production of electricity as well as plutonium. Perhaps the most bizarre character in Pakistani program was Abdul Qadeer Khan, who advocated the use of centrifuges for the separation of uranium-235 from uranium-238. Khan eventually started illegally selling materials and machinery for the construction of nuclear weapons to all comers, including North Korea. For a while, the Pakistani government put him under house arrest, but he is free today. In one way or another, Pakistan built nuclear weapons with help from many sources. Finally, on May 28, 1998, following the detonation of a second bomb by India a few weeks earlier, Pakistan detonated its first nuclear device. The country may now have more than one hundred nuclear weapons—and, like India, has not signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

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The final proliferator to be described is South Africa. Why did South Africa try to build a nuclear weapon? It must be remembered that when South Africans initiated their nuclear weapons program, the country was governed by a white minority of about two million, living with a large black majority of about twenty million. During the 1970s, the international community pressured South Africa to abandon the racial segregation system called apartheid. The UN and major trading nations placed sanctions on South Africa. It is probable that the diehards in the South African government thought that they might be able to prevent being overwhelmed by the black majority by developing a nuclear weapon. My guess is that the white government felt that the possession of nuclear weapons would deter the black population from revolting, in case other measures failed. But this argument is seriously flawed because there were no targets—that is, no concentration of black populations that were not also close to large white populations. In the case of Israel, which developed its nuclear weapons program for somewhat the same reason, there were large cities in neighboring states that could be held hostage. Beginning in the early 1970s, the South Africans started producing enough weapons-grade uranium to make a nuclear explosive. They probably used the centrifuge method of separating uranium-235 from the abundant isotope uranium-238 and some tritium from Israel. The South Africans most likely acquired the centrifuge technology from the Dutch and the Germans. Their facility for isotope separation was located at Pelindaba, and they also built a test site in the Kalahari Desert. Much of this work was initiated during the term of Pieter Willem Botha as minister of defense. The South Africans abandoned their nuclear weapons program in 1989 when Pres. F. W. de Klerk and the South African Parliament decided to end apartheid. The African National Congress leader Nelson Mandela was released from prison after twenty-five years. In a truly democratic election, Mandela won the presidency in 1994. At the same time, while de Klerk was still in office, he declassified and publicized the nuclear weapons program. He invited inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency to Pelindaba to show them the facility and the six nuclear weapons that they had built.The bombs were destroyed and the facility was dismantled. In addition, South Africa joined the signers of the Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1993.

Some Personal Reflections My mother, Maria Schramek Mark, died on March 10, 1970, a few months short of her seventieth birthday. It was a great shock to all of us in the family. She had suffered from congestive heart failure for some time, and finally her time simply ran out. She had been married to my father for forty-eight years. Our whole family flew to Vienna for the funeral. Her life had not been easy, having gone through

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World War I as a teenager and suffered from the food shortages that plagued Vienna at the time. Twenty years later, we had to leave our home on short notice, and in many ways she was the one who held the family together. She was a tough-minded street fighter equipped with quick thinking and a sharp wit. Mimi (that was her nickname) also had a beautiful singing voice and considerable talent as a portrait artist. She was a great lady, and I still miss her. Our life in Los Altos Hills was very busy and pleasant. The children were prospering. Janey was fourteen when we moved to Los Altos Hills, and Rufus was twelve. We continued our interest in sailing and moved our Cal 25 sailboat Moby Dick from the Alameda Estuary to the yacht harbor in Redwood City. We also continued to charter sailboats in other places around the world. We started in 1969 with a cruise to the Bahamas from Fort Lauderdale, and two cruises to the Pacific Northwest in a beautiful forty-foot boat owned by the aeronautics professor Robert Street of the University of Washington. The best charter we arranged during this period was in 1974 in the Fiji Islands. There were eight people on this cruise. Besides the four Marks, the crew included Bill and Vicki Harper (Bill was a great sailor who had returned to Ames from Washington following his assignment there) and Frank and Betty Kolk, who were also experienced sailors. We charted a fifty-foot catamaran named Bristol Light, which was skippered by a delightful Englishman by the name of Irv Lippiatt. It was a great adventure to visit tropical islands and see pods of whales longer than our boat swimming next to us. Bun’s career prospered during these years, and she was listed regularly in Who’s Who in America as a leading figure in American secondary education. She taught in schools with many at-risk students and found ways to attract and keep their attention. Both of our children graduated from Gunn High School in Palo Alto. Although both missed some of their friends in Berkeley, they quickly adapted to the new environment. And all of us enjoyed the fine house that we had bought when we moved to Los Altos Hills. Janey left home in the fall of 1973 to attend the University of Washington, and Rufus left two years later to attend Yale University. Life was good, but with the children gone, Bun and I were ready for something new.

8 The National Reconnaissance Office and the US Air Force

A week or so after the election of Jimmy Carter as president, the first cabinet selections were announced. The one that was most important from my viewpoint was the choice of Harold Brown to be secretary of defense. I have already mentioned Harold in the chapter on my work at Livermore, where he was an associate director (1956–60) and director (1960–61), and we had worked fairly closely with him on the Argus program in 1958 (see chapter 2 for details). Knowing someone in a very influential position helped cure me of the “Potomac fever” that I had acquired during the two years that I spent working with Nelson Rockefeller. About a week later, William J. Perry, the president and chief executive officer of Electronic Systems Laboratories (ESL), asked me to have dinner with him. ESL was heavily involved in the development and construction of intelligence-gathering satellites. On several occasions during my term as the director of NASA–Ames, our people were called on to help with some of their design features. Bill Perry is an extremely intelligent man and a first-class engineering scientist. I came to know him because ESL was located in the Sunnyvale Industrial Park, almost within walking distance of the Ames Research Center. Bill and I saw each other with reasonable frequency, in part because we both had much business in Washington. During the 1960s, United Airlines flew the thennew Douglas DC-8 jet transports nonstop from San Francisco to Dulles Airport (also new at the time) near Washington. Flight 56 from San Francisco left daily at about midnight and arrived at about five in the morning. This was the famous “red-eye special.” United Flight 57, the complement to Flight 56, left Dulles Airport at 5:30 p.m. and arrived in San Francisco at about nine. These flights made

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it possible for people on the West Coast to fly to Washington and back without missing more than a day of work. In the early 1970s, Bill and I met frequently on the red-eye special and sometimes on the return flight. In the days of the Carter administration, before the airlines were deregulated, Flight 56 was always almost empty—there might have been fifteen to twenty people on an airplane designed to carry two hundred. After takeoff, Bill and I would have a nightcap and exchange stories. Then we would each find three empty seats in the main cabin, stretch out, and go to sleep. When we arrived in Washington, we sometimes rode downtown on the same bus. But I digress. Our dinner happened a few days later at a restaurant near ESL and Ames. He told me that he had been offered the post of director of defense research and engineering by Harold Brown. He knew that I had worked with Harold for some years at Livermore, and he wanted my take on Harold’s character and style of operation. I told him what I thought, which was, of course, very favorable. Bill knew that I had worked on the establishment of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, too, and he asked me whether I thought that I might be asked to come to Washington to head the new office. I told Bill that even though I was registered as a Democrat, I had been working with Vice President Rockefeller and therefore thought it was very unlikely that the new administration would hire me for a significant position. We left it there and enjoyed a fine dinner. We had a fine Christmas at home in 1976 and celebrated the New Year in Los Altos Hills with our children. In Janey’s freshman year at the University of Washington, she had met Gregory Bernstein. Gregory was the son of a prominent musician and composer of scores for motion pictures, Elmer Bernstein, and Janey was clearly in love with Gregory. Both Bun and I had met Gregory, and he seemed like a promising young man. A year after meeting, they decided to leave the university and enroll at the University of California at Los Angeles. Janey later married Greg, but unfortunately their marriage didn’t last. On February 28, 1977, I celebrated my eighth anniversary as the director of the NASA–Ames Research Center. We had developed a tradition that my administrative assistant, Edie Watson, would host a party every year to celebrate the anniversary of my arrival. It was always a fine event. This party was especially memorable because we had had an excellent year. Ames could boast of several important program successes, especially in the new field of computational fluid dynamics, which we were developing. In December 1976, I was notified that I had been elected to the National Academy of Engineering. This was a high honor, and I was duly grateful to my friends and colleagues at Ames, who had provided the opportunity for me to do what was necessary to meet the criteria for election to this prestigious group. At forty-seven, I was the youngest person elected that year. About two weeks after the party, Eugene Fubini, who was serving as chairman of the Defense Science Board (DSB), called me. As a consequence of my work in establishing the new Office of Science and Technology Policy, I had been asked

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to join the board in September 1976. For a reason that he did not explain, Fubini wanted to see me in Washington in the DSB office at the Pentagon; a few days later, I was sitting in his office. Eugene Fubini was an energetic, diminutive person, always with a broad smile on his face. The Fubini family was very prominent in Milan and in northern Italy. Gene Fubini’s father was a world-famous mathematician, and Gene had inherited his father’s scientific talents. After getting an excellent education and earning a PhD at the University of Rome, Gene left Italy in 1939. When the Mussolini government signed the Axis pact with Nazi Germany that year, the Italian Fascists adopted some of the Nazis’ discriminatory policies. Gene felt he had to leave Italy and join the fight against fascism. He went to work for the US Army Air Corps and became an expert at avionics and sensors for combat aircraft and later made critical contributions to the development of airborne radar. Gene was a man of considerable courage. Even though he was a civilian, he would fly on bomber aircraft carrying the new radars on dangerous missions to make certain that they worked properly. Gene’s work during World War II led him to start a company with some of his colleagues. Airborne Instruments Laboratory became a major corporation involved in the construction of airborne electronic equipment. Later, Gene was appointed vice president for research at IBM. When I accepted Gene Fubini’s invitation, I thought that the conversation would be about DSB business. I was startled when Gene told me that Harold Brown wanted me to come to Washington to work with him at the Pentagon as the director of the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO). At the time, the very existence of the NRO was classified “top secret,” as were the names of the people working for the organization. I asked Gene why he and Harold thought that I was qualified for the job. He replied: “Both Harold and Bill Perry were impressed by what had been done at Ames in the spacecraft development business. Specifically, they, as well as I, were particularly impressed by the Pioneer missions to Jupiter and how they were managed. Furthermore, Harold also wanted someone who had a background in the nuclear weapons business.” This was a new proposition, so I asked, “Do you think that my recent association with former Vice President Rockefeller would make it difficult to work with the people in this administration?” “You do not have a ‘political’ reputation, so our judgment is that you would have no problems with respect to confirmation or with the vetting process that you would face in the White House,” Fubini replied. He then went on to explain that President Carter was very interested in expanding the scope of the US-Soviet nuclear arms control treaties. The NRO was a vital organization in that effort because the satellites that it managed provided the data that allowed us to monitor and verify arms control agreements advantageous to the United States. Fubini then turned to the technical issues. He told me that with Bill Perry as the director of defense research and engineering, the Defense

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Department had someone intimately familiar with what might be technically possible in the future, and he thought that the time was now to do something new in the field of strategic weapons. Finally, Fubini asked me whether I would like to see Harold for a few minutes. I said of course, so we went down to the third floor, where the secretary’s office suite is located. I had not seen Harold for a couple of years, but he had not changed much since I saw him during a visit to the California Institute of  Technology, where he was then serving as president. Harold was not good at small talk, so he came directly to the point: “I want someone in the NRO job who has demonstrated technical competence and whom I have known for twenty years and who is not political.” And then he laughed and said, “And someone who will occasionally tell me to go to hell!” Harold seemed to have mellowed since I worked for him at Livermore twentyplus years earlier. As Gene Fubini and I were walking out the door, Harold turned to me and said, “Hans, we are serious about the offer that Gene has told you about.” “I know, Harold, and I promise you that I will think seriously about it.” Back in Gene’s office, he asked me whether I could stay over for one day; he wanted me to meet some people with whom I would be working if I accepted the job. I said yes, and he picked up the telephone and asked for a car to take me to the Central Intelligence Agency headquarters in suburban Langley,Virginia, where I would meet with the director. Gene told me that Adm. Stan Turner held that position and that I would have much to do with him, should I agree to come to Washington. Admiral Stan (Stansfield, really) Turner welcomed me with a warm smile. He was of medium size and very well built. He had played football at the Naval Academy, where he was a classmate of the president. He did not mention that during our conversation, but it was nonetheless clear that he was close to the president. The admiral began a long explanation of how the National Reconnaissance Office worked and what he expected. The office was established in 1960 as a result of a report by a committee called the Technical Capabilities Panel, which was headed by James R. Killian, the president of MIT, and Edwin Land, the founder and head of the Polaroid Corporation, who invented the Polaroid sunglasses and the “picture in a minute” camera. The job of the panel, as given by President Eisenhower in early 1954, was simple: “Given the closed nature of the Soviet Union, are there technical means by which we can learn as much as we can about the Soviet nuclear weapons program?” The panel answered this question straightforwardly in early 1955, after a year of study. The heart of the recommendation called for a system of Earth-orbiting satellites equipped with imaging, electronic, and communication sensors that could observe Soviet facilities where nuclear systems were being built. As an interim measure, the panel recommended that a high-altitude aircraft be built that could perform the same function until the satellites were ready. This aircraft was the Lockheed U-2, designed by the brilliant

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Clarence A. (Kelly) Johnson and built at his Skunk Works. The project began in early 1955, the first flight occurred about a year later, and the first operational flight was conducted in 1956. In 1960, a U-2 aircraft was shot down on May 1 during an overflight of the Soviet Union. This act created a major diplomatic incident. Three months later, something really remarkable happened: the first successful orbital flight of a SAMOS (Satellite and Missile Observation System) satellite was performed. The National Reconnaissance Office was established to operate the new reconnaissance capabilities. Admiral Turner used the term “completely vertical,” meaning that the function of the NRO was to conceive, develop, build, and operate all the nation’s reconnaissance satellites. The director of the NRO would be a senior member of the US intelligence community and would also have the title under secretary of the air force. That designation was in part a cover for the director of the NRO, but it also reflected the fact that the NRO depended heavily on the resources of the air force. As a Senate-confirmed presidential appointee, the director also had political status. In 1960, the National Reconnaissance Office had only one real customer: the president of the United States—which accounted for “national” in the name of the organization. A second important point was that the organization was a mixed one, employing both civilian and uniformed military people. As Admiral Turner explained it, the office had three major components. Program A, the largest, was an air force unit headed by a serving major general. This unit, located at the Los Angeles Air Force Station, was responsible for developing some of the NRO satellites, operating ground control stations for them, and making the arrangements to launch all the NRO satellites. Program B was a CIA unit located at the Langley headquarters; it was headed by the CIA’s deputy director for science and technology. This unit likewise had responsibility for developing and operating satellites, along with their ground stations. Program C was a small navy-run program to develop satellites, especially for maritime applications. Finally, there was a small headquarters unit at the Pentagon with an Air Force brigadier general in charge. The deputy director of the NRO was a senior CIA officer. I had never been exposed to all this in detail, and at the end of the meeting, Admiral Turner explained the reporting structure of the NRO. The director reported to both the secretary of defense and the CIA director, who also held the title director of central intelligence (DCI). This arrangement was awkward, to say the least, but there was a reasonable division of authority. The director of central intelligence had oversight as well as some control over the budgets of all the units in the US government with intelligence responsibilities. These included the National Security Agency, the CIA, the NRO, the FBI, and the intelligence unit of the Department of State.The directors of all these institutions constituted the National Foreign Intelligence Board, which was the committee that negotiated how much of the overall budget of the US intelligence community would be assigned to each

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member agency. The board was chaired by the DCI. I have gone to some lengths to explain in detail what was involved in the job I was offered. In 1977, everything described in the past few pages was highly classified. The existence of the NRO was declassified in 1993, and there have been many changes in the organization since 1977. In addition, some of the optical-imaging reconnaissance satellite program (1960–72) has also been declassified. I was aware of this program because of my connection with the Livermore Nuclear Weapons Laboratory. My security clearance gave me access to data generated by Earth-orbiting satellites. This is a good place to describe the first imaging satellite that was conceived, developed, and operated by the NRO. Its code name was Corona (KH-4 was the designation for those who had access to the pictures). The Corona was essentially an orbiting camera that could produce pictures with a ground-resolved distance (resolution) as small as three meters, or ten feet. The Corona spacecraft weighed two to three thousand pounds and orbited in a low-Earth polar orbit at an altitude of approximately one hundred miles. It was launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base via a Thor-Agena launch vehicle. In a single mission, a Corona satellite could take pictures of as much as a million square miles of territory. The pictures were produced by two panoramic cameras using 75 mm photographic film from a supply roll carrying more than thirty thousand feet of the film. The Corona spacecraft was placed in Earth orbit with the second-stage Agena vehicle still attached to it. The film would be exposed and then sent to a take-up roll at the front end of the spacecraft.The take-up rolls were mounted inside a heat shield that would be detached from the spacecraft and sent on a reentry trajectory for the Pacific Ocean. Near the end of the trajectory, the reentry vehicle deployed its parachute, which would be snagged by an aircraft based at Hickam Air Force Base in Hawaii. These reentry vehicles were called “buckets” (most of the aircraft used two). It took about a week to develop and distribute the film. Between 1960 and 1972, Corona spacecraft flew 144 missions, very few of which were failures. The Corona missions focused primarily on observing nuclear weapons tests and the deployment of the delivery systems—that is, the missiles and the aircraft that carried the weapons. Once the Corona program had established a good track record, its spacecraft were launched about once a month. Although the purpose and the technical specifications of the spacecraft were highly classified, the launches were not. The cover name for the launches was Discoverer, and the cover story was that they were scientific missions. As things turned out, some scientific payloads in fact flew along with Corona spacecraft. There were called “piggyback” payloads, and it became possible to carry them as the payload margin increased. On KH-4 mission 71, we were able to secure piggyback payload space for a scientific experiment. As mentioned in chapter 4, while I was at Livermore in the 1960s, our objective was to develop X-ray detectors to observe the output of

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high-altitude nuclear detonations. We were able to place an X-ray detector modified to look at X-rays from the sun and the cosmic X-ray background. The data were taken on August 7 and 8, 1967, and the results were published in the Astrophysical Journal in June 1970. My meeting with Admiral Turner lasted more than two hours. At the end of it, I told him that no one else I had spoken with about this job had spent as much time explaining it as he had. I thanked him for his time and then asked him one question: “Do you believe that I am qualified to run the NRO?” He replied, “Yes.” I told him that I would think carefully about the job offer and get back to him quickly with an answer. Before I left Washington, I paid a call on my boss, Jim Fletcher, the NASA administrator. I told him about what had transpired and asked for his opinion. His answer was simple: “You must accept. What you will be doing will be much more important to our national security than you can at Ames.” So that was it. All this gave me much to think about on the flight back to California.

The Cold War in 1977 and the Move to Washington When I arrived at our house in Los Altos Hills, it was a little later than usual; Flight 57 was an hour late. Bun was already asleep. In the morning, we had a long breakfast and discussed the situation. Unlike some of our previous decisions to move, this one was not difficult.The children were both on their own, the new job would mean a substantial raise in pay, and we were both ready to try something new. Later that day, I called Gene Fubini and told him that I would accept the job and also asked him to tell Harold Brown and Admiral Turner that I was on board. The next telephone call I made was to James Plummer, who had just retired as a senior executive at the Lockheed Missile Systems Corporation in Sunnyvale. I knew Jim casually because the Lockheed factory complex was near Ames. Also, Jim had served as director of the National Reconnaissance Office and under secretary of the air force in the Nixon and Ford administrations (1973–75), so he knew much about the job that I had just accepted. In addition, I knew that Lockheed Missile Systems was heavily involved in building the satellites operated by the NRO. Thus, Jim had a good view of the industrial complex with which I would have to work. Jim and I had a lengthy meeting. The first point he made was that I would be working in a totally new environment. He was aware of the technical contributions we had made at Ames, both in aeronautics and in strengthening the position of the United States in the Cold War. He told me that I now would be involved not only in making technical judgments, but also in advising policy makers (members of Congress, administration officials). This meant that I would have to look at the Cold War from a much wider perspective than before.

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Jim then launched on a comprehensive lecture on the state of the Cold War in 1977. He thought that Brezhnev had reached the height of his power. He had accumulated the titles first secretary of the Communist Party (1964), general secretary of the Communist Party (1966), and marshal of the Soviet Union (May 1976), the country’s highest military honor. A few months after my conversation with Jim Plummer, Brezhnev assumed the title chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet. Brezhnev thus was the leader of the Soviet Communist Party, the head of state (as chairman of the Presidium), and holder of a top post in the military (as marshal). He was indeed at the zenith of his power; only Stalin had held the same assortment of positions. He would hold all these posts until his death on November 10, 1982. After discussing the Soviet leadership, Jim ran through the problems that I would probably be dealing with. President-elect Carter had already mentioned wanting a new treaty to extend the terms of SALT I. He told me that the NRO would be heavily involved in working out the details of any new treaty because of the agency’s responsibility to monitor and verify the provisions of the treaties. Jim’s term of service as NRO director had followed the signing of SALT I, so he had considerable experience in these matters. The other major issue had to do with the arms race in strategic arms—that is, nuclear weapons and their delivery vehicles. After the near disaster of the Cuban missile crisis, Khrushchev took aggressive steps to counter the widespread notion that the Soviet Union was weak. The Soviets initiated a massive nuclear weapons test program in late 1963, which was followed by efforts to build a large number of land-based intercontinental missiles, huge new missile-carrying submarines, and at least two new, highly capable manned bombers. None of that, however, was enough to save Khrushchev’s job. When Brezhnev took over in 1964, he greatly accelerated the strategic arms buildup. Not only that—he reversed some of Khrushchev’s political moves. Crucially, he tried to rehabilitate Stalin’s reputation; Khrushchev had denounced Stalin’s atrocities in speech on February 5, 1956. In May 1965, at the twentieth-anniversary celebration of the Allied victory over Germany, Brezhnev spoke glowingly of Stalin’s contributions to the development of the Soviet Union and to the victory over Germany. It was the first time in almost a decade that a Soviet leader had spoken of Stalin in a positive light. In addition, he restored the power of the KGB (the Soviet secret police) and installed the remarkable and astute Yuri Andropov (who eventually succeeded Brezhnev as general secretary) as its chief. Brezhnev also did not hesitate to use military force to keep the European Soviet satellite nations in line. Just as Khrushchev had suppressed the Hungarian revolution in 1956, Brezhnev used Soviet troops to remove a “liberal” Czech communist leader, Alexander Dubcek, from power in 1968. Later, Dubcek’s short term in office was called the Prague Spring. Unlike the leaders of the Hungarian revolt in 1956, who were tried and shot, Dubcek was removed from office and expelled

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from the Communist Party, and his movements were restricted. The Western press christened it an example of the Brezhnev Doctrine, according to which the Soviet Union had the right to interfere in the internal affairs of Warsaw Pact nations in order to “safeguard socialism.” The Soviets clashed with China too. Mao Zedong wanted to be seen as the leader of world communism, and he considered Stalin’s successors in Moscow to be pale imitations of their predecessors. Skirmishes between Soviet troops and the People’s Liberation Army erupted along the Ussuri River, which forms the border between Manchuria and the Soviet Union. In spite of all these problems, Brezhnev pursued a modified policy of détente with respect to the United States. President Nixon and Brezhnev signed SALT I in May 1972 in Moscow, and Brezhnev visited Washington, DC, on a state visit the following June. In 1975, the détente era climaxed with the signing of the Helsinki Accords at a large conference in Finland. In return for the United States recognizing the hegemony of the Soviet Union in Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union agreed “to respect human rights and fundamental freedoms, including the freedom of thought, conscience, religion or belief, for all without distinction as to sex, race language or religion.” The Soviets roundly ignored this declaration and, to a large extent, continued to pursue policies of repression and persecution of specific groups of people. The failure of the Soviet Union to permit Russian Jews to immigrate to Israel was a particular sore point in its relations with the United States. In November 1974, President Ford met with Leonid Brezhnev in Vladivostok, in the Soviet Far East. Nothing of great moment came from this meeting, except a joint declaration to continue the arms control process. At this point, Jim Plummer ended his two-hour discourse on the Cold War, and I thanked him for his time and the detailed, comprehensive lecture. Just as I was about to leave his office, Jim said, “Oh by way, I would suggest that you buy a tuxedo.” Surprised, I said, “I have never owned one—why should I start now? I am fortyseven years old!” Jim laughed and continued: “You will be on the A-list for invitations to various functions, and many of these will be formal. So buy a tuxedo and get your wife some nice formals.” Thus, our meeting ended with another valuable piece of advice, which I promptly followed. In mid-April, the White House personnel office asked me to come for a visit to begin the vetting process. From the distance of forty years later, the process was mild compared to what I had to go through to become director of defense research and engineering in 1998. Later in the month, I was notified that President Carter would nominate me to become under secretary of the US Air Force. I submitted my resignation as director of the NASA–Ames Research Center to Jim Fletcher so that the deputy director, Sy Syvertson, could assume the leadership in a smooth transition. At about the same time, Bun and I went to Washington to look for a

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house. It did not take long for us to find a nice bungalow on George Mason Place, which was a cul-de-sac off Monticello Road in Alexandria,Virginia. The location was about a half-hour walk from the Pentagon, which was convenient when we were snowed in. The neighborhood was pleasant, and there was a large park at the end of the cul-de-sac. We also had interesting neighbors; one, retired air force colonel Jim Wallace and his wife, Barbara, became close friends. We spent the rest of April and most of May arranging the move from Los Altos Hills to Washington. On one of our visits to Washington during this period, Bun found a teaching job in Camp Springs, Maryland, at Roger B. Taney Middle School. Camp Springs is a community just south of Andrews Air Force Base, about ten miles from our new house. In addition, she applied for admission to the Graduate School of Education at George Washington University. Bun eventually earned her doctorate in education at the university. Ever the scholar and educator, she gave me a diary so that I could record events that I thought were noteworthy. She told me that although it was unlikely, I might do something important in Washington. In any event, I took her advice and from then on recorded all the events described in this book. I flew to Washington on July 7, 1977, and checked in at Bolling Air Force Base, where Bun and I would stay until we could move into 2704 George Mason Place. The next day, Friday, I attended a meeting at the White House. Actually, it was held in the auditorium of the Old Executive Office Building. But people say they are “going to the White House” whenever they go to one of the several buildings around the White House that are used by agencies of the Executive Office of the President. This meeting was intended for newly confirmed or newly nominated presidential appointees. It was good to see some old friends there. For instance, I had known Bob Frosch since his service as the assistant secretary of the navy for research and development; he would become the new NASA administrator. Alan Lovelace, who had been the director of the Air Force Materials Laboratory at Wright Field, was a friend because of the collaboration between his laboratory and Ames. Alan was to be the new deputy administrator of NASA. The administration trotted out some high-level speakers, including Secretary of State Cyrus Vance and Alice Rivlin, the president’s chief economic adviser.The most amusing speaker was the president’s press secretary, Jody Powell. He provided some good advice in short, pithy sentences. The most important was: “Never sit on bad news. It is like a fish, which begins to stink after a few days!” I went to church on Sunday at the Bolling Air Force Base Chapel and listened to chaplains from several religious denominations. What interested me most was that the congregation included service members from a wide variety of religious backgrounds. All of them took the services seriously, but there was no hint of fanaticism or untoward behavior. I prayed for all of them that the Good Lord would protect them wherever they were sent.

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Monday, July 11, was my first day at the Pentagon. I was introduced first to the man who would be my immediate superior in the air force hierarchy, the secretary of the air force, John C. Stetson. He was a tall, imposing person with a friendly manner. He had been in office for only two months and had no prior experience in the air force, so he was still figuring things out. John had a distinguished career before assuming his current position. He and I were both graduates of MIT, where he had earned a BSc in aeronautical engineering in 1943. John had gone to work at Douglas Aircraft as a structural engineer before joining the navy briefly as a communications officer. In 1951, he joined the consulting firm Booz, Allen, and Hamilton. After leaving the firm in 1963, John and his family spent several years living in the Middle East, where he was a consultant to several oil companies. In 1963, he became president and chief executive officer of the Houston Post Company, a position he held until 1970. He returned to his hometown, Chicago, to head the A. B. Dick Company, a manufacturer and distributer of office machinery. When he assumed his role at the Pentagon, John was fifty-seven years old. As I got to know him, I respected his keen intelligence, wide knowledge of the American business community, and detailed understanding of the problems in the Middle East. His military assistant took me to meet the chief of staff of the air force, Gen. David C. Jones. We had a short and rather stilted conversation, and then I was whisked off to see the vice chief of staff, Gen. William V. McBride. In World War II, McBride had been a fighter pilot escorting heavy bombers on their raids over Germany. He earned numerous decorations, including the Distinguished Flying Cross. Unlike General Jones, he was very friendly; he spent an hour with me explaining the current problems that the air force had to deal with and suggesting what I might be able to do to help. I liked General McBride, and we eventually developed a strong friendship. We still see each other occasionally on visits to air force friends in the large air force retirement facility in San Antonio. The next day, I began to move some of my things into the under secretary’s office. There I met the secretarial staff, Josephine L. Watson and Evelyn Deuchar, as well as some of the other junior military staff members. Both women stayed with me until the end of my term of service in February 1981. Both were fine examples of the excellence of the US civil service. It was late in the afternoon when Antonia Handler Chayes, one of the assistant secretaries, who was also awaiting confirmation, came to see me. She was a small blonde woman with an engaging manner. Toni Chayes, as we called her, had been nominated to become assistant secretary of the air force for manpower and reserve affairs. She had an excellent background for the position she was about to occupy. An attorney who had good political connections in the White House, Toni had held a position on the White House staff during the Kennedy administration. Her husband, Abram Chayes, was a distinguished professor at the Harvard Law School

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who had served as legal adviser to the State Department during the Kennedy administration. Abram Chayes played an important part in developing the nuclear arms control policies during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, working with MIT professors Jerome Wiesner and Jack Ruina. July 13 was the day of our confirmation hearings before the Senate Armed Services Committee. Our hearings were scheduled for ten, and we were taken to the hearing room by an air force legislative liaison officer. There were two other candidates for confirmation: Walter LaBerge, nominated to be under secretary of the army, and Toni Chayes. Both were accompanied by their spouses. The hearing was a purely pro forma affair, but it was nonetheless very important for those of us who participated. Only one senator was present to question us, Thomas McIntyre (D-NH). He asked us to introduce our families, which we did, and then he had a short word for each of them. Finally, he started to ask questions, all of which were softballs. In my case, they concerned the state of our nuclear weapons delivery systems, something with which I was very familiar. The whole hearing lasted less than an hour. Senator McIntyre congratulated each of us and promised that the Senate would act rapidly on our confirmations. Following the hearing, we decided that we would go to the Monocle Restaurant for lunch. The Monocle, a local landmark, is about a block from the Hart Senate Office Building. We all had a grand time, and were looking forward to what we were certain would be a bright future.

Who Is My Boss? On Monday morning, July 18, 1977, an article by Rowland Evans and Robert Novak entitled “Intelligence Signals: A Defeat for Turner” appeared in the Washington Post. The story was an account of a bureaucratic struggle between Harold Brown and Stansfield Turner concerning the control of the budget of the intelligence services, one of which I was about to head. Needless to say, this piece really caught my interest. I had read some newspaper stories concerning a reorganization of the intelligence agencies. In the wake of the Nixon administration’s illegal use of CIA agents to help with the Watergate cover-up, a congressional inquiry headed by Sen. Frank Church had investigated the scope and activities of all US intelligence agencies; the new administration sought to make moves that would preempt implementation of some of the committee’s recommendations. As head of the Central Intelligence Agency and the director of central intelligence,Turner was first among equals with respect to the directors of the other intelligence agencies. In addition, Turner had persuaded President Carter to make him a member of his cabinet. This was done by awarding him “cabinet rank.” I had some qualms about this arrangement. An intelligence officer should be an adviser to the president and his cabinet, but should not be included in the making and implementing of decisions.

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My view on this issue was not what was current at the time.The article by Evans and Novak went one step further. Apparently, Admiral Turner wanted to have total control of the NRO and perhaps some of the other organizations in the intelligence business, such as the National Security Agency and the military intelligence organizations. In my negotiations with Gene Fubini and Harold Brown, there had not been a participant who represented Admiral Turner. My assumption was that I would be working for Harold Brown in the Defense Department. The day after my confirmation hearing, I attended a meeting of the Intelligence Executive Committee. This was my first glimpse of the inside workings of the US intelligence system. As the DCI, Admiral Turner was in the chair. The other members of the committee were Charles Duncan, the deputy secretary of defense, and David Aaron, the deputy national security advisor, who represented his boss, Zbigniew Brzezinski. The meeting, though routine, helped me understand the dynamics of this group, which represented the Department of Defense, the intelligence community, and the White House. None of the tensions suggested by the article were apparent at the meeting, but it was clear that the organization of our intelligence efforts needed work. On July 22, my confirmation as under secretary of the air force came through. Unfortunately, I could not be sworn in, because Harold Brown was out of town and the president had not signed the commission. I decided that I would go and see retired four-star admiral Daniel J. Murphy, who was Brown’s adviser and factotum on intelligence matters. I wanted to ask him to get my paperwork accelerated so that I could be sworn in. Admiral Murphy had some real Irish charm, so he let me down easy. First, he told me that I should not worry about the paperwork and that I should start acting as if I had been sworn in. Second, he launched into a thorough explanation of what was going on between Turner and Brown. Initially, President Carter was very high on Admiral Turner, which accounts for the cabinet rank and for giving Turner the authority to plan a reorganization of the intelligence community. But some cracks had appeared in the relationship between the president and the admiral. Murphy said that much of the problem was Turner’s fault, for two reasons: first, he was not on top of the budget and didn’t know the numbers, and second, he was fascinated by the technological aspects of intelligence and denigrated “good old” espionage. Murphy laughed and told me that the NRO would prosper under Turner’s regime because of this bias, so I should continue to be nice to him. But Murphy was worried about the future of the CIA’s espionage activities. Many old and distinguished intelligence officers were no longer effective because their covers had been blown or because they were no longer willing to take risks. Turner would have to “clean house,” Murphy said, but without destroying the clandestine service, which performs espionage by human beings. The more I listened to Dan Murphy, the more impressed I was. He was not a Naval Academy graduate, but he had reached the highest rank in the navy with his brains, judgment, and charm. He was a naval aviator, which by any measure is

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a dangerous activity, and he had served in the Vietnam War. In addition to ability, he had courage. During the 1960s and 1970s, Admiral Murphy had held several important naval commands, including the US Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean. He retired from the navy in 1977 to join the Carter administration as the deputy under secretary of defense for policy. At the end of our meeting, I asked Murphy what he thought should be the outcome of the current debate over the organization of the intelligence community. He laughed and asked me: “You want to know who you work for, who will be your boss?” “Well,” I replied, “given the responsibility I will have and the funds for which I will be responsible, it would be nice to know.” Then he told me what he thought would happen to the NRO as a result of the debate over the organization of the intelligence community. There would be no major changes in the NRO’s reporting structure.The majority of the people working in the NRO directly and in supporting activities were uniformed members of the air force and the navy. A military connection was therefore essential. On the other hand, the intelligence community and, more importantly, the national security structure in the White House, including the president, had an important stake in complete access to and some control over the information the office gathered. Murphy told me there would be a compromise that both Harold Brown and Stan Turner would accept. Essentially, the Defense Department would retain overall control of operations and personnel through the NRO.The DCI would be given a large measure of control by having the National Foreign Intelligence Board, which he chaired, develop the annual budget for the intelligence community, including the NRO. Murphy was right: this was what eventually happened. On January 24, 1978, President Carter signed the legislation that established the arrangement I have outlined. I was present at the signing ceremony. He added one more point that I found really surprising: “You should be glad that you will have two bosses! If you are halfway smart, you will figure out how to play one of them against the other!” Surprisingly, perhaps, I found it comfortable to work for two bosses. And in the next four years, Dan Murphy and I became strong collaborators and friends. Because I also maintained a good relationship with Admiral Turner, I became something of a link between the Department of Defense and the intelligence community. On August 8, 1977, I was finally sworn into office, by Deanne Siemer, who was the general counsel for the Department of Defense. It was a signature event for my family and me. My father was very pleased; he was eighty-two years old and in fine shape. The children were there as well and enjoyed their first visit to the Pentagon. At the swearing in, I shared the podium with Walter LaBerge, who was confirmed as under secretary of the army. Eighteen years later, Walter and I would work together in the same laboratory at the Institute for Advanced Technology at

Figure 8.1. President Carter in the Cabinet Room of the White House, signing the bill that reorganized the intelligence community. A few of the figures present: (second from left) Sen. Birch Bayh (D-IN), a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee; (next to him) Sen. Daniel Inouye (D-HI); (in the checked suit) Admiral Stansfield Turner, CIA director; (next to him) Rep. Edward P. Boland (D-MA), chairman of the House Intelligence Committee; (behind President Carter in front of the window) Charles Duncan, deputy secretary of defense. I am at the extreme right, trying unsuccessfully to stay out of the shot. Photo courtesy of the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library.

Figure 8.2. My swearing in as under secretary of the US Air Force, the cover title for the director of the NRO. Left to right: Harold Brown, John Stetson (behind Brown), me and Bun, Prof. Herman Mark; (with her back to the camera) Deanne Siemer, general counsel of the Department of Defense.

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the University of  Texas in Austin. After the ceremony, my new military assistant, Col. Harry A. Goodall, along with Jo Watson, Evie Deuchar, and the other members of the under secretary’s staff, marched into my office with new flags—a US flag and a white flag with four blue stars that represented the under secretary of the air force. We had a nice celebration that was enjoyed by all. Toni Chayes had been sworn in as assistant secretary of the air force for manpower and reserve affairs on July 21. She was sworn in by federal appellate judge David Bazelon, chief of the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. I went to her swearing-in ceremony and then to the party afterward. Many high-ranking officials were present, including Secretary Vance. The party was held at Jean Gordon’s home in Georgetown. It was at this party that I first met Sen. Gary Hart (D-CO). He introduced himself and then started to question me about a number of current issues. He was obviously very smart. I kept wondering why he was spending so much time with me, a total greenhorn in the ways of Washington. At the end of the party, I asked Toni to explain to me why Senator Hart had buttonholed me for a half an hour. She replied, “You have to get used to this. Gary is a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and he knows that you will be director of the NRO. However, he could not tell you this in Jean Gordon’s drawing room because you do not exist in the unclassified world. He was just sizing you up to see whether you are up to the job. In fact, this is why I invited him to the party! He is a very astute person, and I think that he has an important future.” It was the first time I had seen a real Georgetown party, and I could see that I had much to learn.

A New Chief of Staff for the Air Force Two weeks after my arrival in the Pentagon, I attended a “change of command” ceremony at the Air Force Systems Command (AFSC), located at Andrews Air Force Base just outside the eastern border of the District of Columbia. The event marked the relief of Gen. William Evans by Lt. Gen. Lew Allen Jr. as commander of the AFSC. He was moving on to head the Tactical Air Command at Langley Air Force Base. General Allen had just completed four years as the director of the National Security Agency, and he received his fourth star as commander of AFSC. Lew Allen was an old friend. As a young major, he had been assigned to the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory (now the Los Alamos National Laboratory) in New Mexico to work on the Argus project while I was involved with it at Livermore. Lew’s group performed the theoretical calculations for the measurements of charged particles trapped in the geomagnetic field that James Van Allen, Carl McIlwain, and George Ludwig were detecting with Explorer IV (see chapter 3). The “change of command” ceremony was a fine opportunity to see him again.

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Figure 8.3. Lew Allen Jr. as I like to remember him. We were friends and colleagues from 1958 until his death in 2010.

By 1977, Lew Allen had already established a reputation as the most brilliant general officer in the air force. He had attended the US Military Academy (class of 1946), and in 1947 he joined the newly created air force. Assigned to the Strategic Air Command, he flew Boeing B-29 bombers and helped introduce the huge new Convair B-36 bombers into active service. In 1950, he was sent to the University of Illinois, where he earned a PhD in physics in 1954. The air force next assigned him to Los Alamos, and he later became the chief scientific adviser at the Air Force Special Weapons Center at Kirtland Air Force Base in New Mexico. In 1961, he joined the Office of the Director of Defense Research and Engineering, where he became a leading figure in the development and operation of Air Force Space Systems. In 1965, he was assigned to the National Reconnaissance Office, where he first served on the staff in the Pentagon and later became the commander of the NRO operation at the Los Angeles Air Force Station, holding the rank of major general.The acquaintance we had established in 1957 quickly became a firm friendship. In the first few months of my service in the Pentagon, I learned how to work with John Stetson. Although John was not in the NRO’s chain of command, I made it my business to keep him informed. In a way, he was my third boss, because some air force matters concerned me, particularly personnel issues, on which we

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worked together. Not knowing much about the air force, John spent much of his time traveling and visiting its facilities in the United States and around the world. As a consequence, he soon found himself in trouble with the press. Like many people who join the government from the private sector, he did not understand that the perquisites (or perks) granted by the government were circumscribed by complex regulations. On November 2, 1977, a story in the Washington Post accused John of “blatant use of government airplanes for private purposes,” which, unfortunately, was the case. As a result, I spent much more time than I had expected as acting secretary. Although my air force title was a cover for my job at the NRO, I was required to take care of air force business when the secretary was on a trip. It was really too bad. John Stetson was superbly qualified to be secretary of the air force. But as time went on, I realized that he was not putting in the necessary time to do the job effectively. He resigned two years later. One of the advantages of frequently being acting secretary was that I attended events normally reserved for the secretary. On October 8, 1977, Bun and I were invited to attend the Air Force–Navy football game, which was played in Annapolis that year. Before the game, there was a reception and a buffet lunch at the superintendent’s residence on the Naval Academy’s campus. There were perhaps thirty or forty people at the party, most of them senior flag officers and their wives. Stan Turner and his wife were there, along with several other new friends. The senior officer present was air force general George Brown, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He was due to retire in the next year, and there was much speculation about who might be his successor. I was interested in eavesdropping on these high-level conversations, having never been as close to this level of command in my life. The most interesting discussion I listened to had to do with the rotation policy among the services for this important post. Since General Brown’s predecessor was Adm. Thomas H. Moorer, speculation was that an army general would be the next chairman. Since there were no army officers present, there were discussions about army friends who might have the inside track. As things turned out, I would have a ringside seat to watch the proceedings. Air Force lost to Navy 10–7. Sometime late in November, John Stetson told me that he had heard a rumor that the air force chief of staff, David Jones, would be the next chairman of the joint chiefs. I told John that, given what I had heard at the Annapolis party, this was unlikely. The job rotated among the services, and as far as I knew, two air force generals had never served successively as chairmen. John said, “There is always a first time,” adding, “Harold will ask me to make a recommendation. You know these fellows better than I do. I am especially interested in Generals Dixon and Ellis, since they head the two most important air force commands.” “OK,” I said. “I will do what I can to help.” On Sunday, December 11, 1977, Lew Allen called me in the morning and asked whether I could come over for a talk. I drove out to Andrews Air Force Base and parked in front of the AFSC commander’s residence, “Belle Chance,” a beautiful

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old Maryland mansion. Lew was not in uniform, and after a friendly greeting, he led me to his study and came straight to the point. “Harold wants me to move to the Pentagon to be vice chief of staff.” I was surprised and a bit stunned. “Why?” I asked. “You have been here only since last July.” “Bill McBride is retiring shortly, so there will be a vacancy.” He added, “But there may be some more musical chairs games among the four stars.” Then he came to the point. “What do you think I should do?” Once again, I was surprised. “What do you want to do?” “Stay here!” he said with great emphasis. “I have four years left in the air force before I retire. There is much to do here, and I am the right person to make it happen. Besides, Barbara and I have moved around so often that she is really tired. And she loves living here at Belle Chance.” He laughed. “Well, let me think some more about the matter,” I said, and then asked him, “Have you heard any rumors about David Jones as chairman of the joint chiefs?” “Yes,” he replied, “but I don’t believe them.” At this point neither one of us had any desire to pursue that topic, so we went on to other matters. Lew Allen called me on another Sunday, February 12, 1978, with the same request to visit Belle Chance in the afternoon. Lew had decided to accept Harold Brown’s offer to serve as vice chief of staff. I was not surprised, but I then asked him whether the rumor he had heard about David Jones being appointed chairman was true. He replied, “Possibly, but there are no decisions yet.” “You will be a candidate to be chief of staff if Jones leaves to be chairman,” I replied. “Yes.” We spent the rest of the afternoon talking about other things. On February 21, I spent a day at the headquarters of the Tactical Air Command. I was familiar with the place because Langley Air Force Base shared an airfield with the NASA–Langley Research Center, which I had visited numerous times during my years at Ames. The commander of the Tactical Air Command, Gen. Robert J. Dixon, was a legend in the US Air Force. He had earned a degree in English literature from Dartmouth College in 1939 and had then joined the Royal Canadian Air Force. He was commissioned a pilot officer (second lieutenant) and shipped to England, where he flew Supermarine Spitfire IX reconnaissance aircraft. In 1943, he transferred to the US Army Air Force and flew combat missions. Shortly before the end of the war, his airplane was shot down, and he spent the remainder of the war in a German prison camp. Following the end of the war, General Dixon had a distinguished career that eventually led to his present position of command. General Dixon was an innovator, and one of his more interesting ideas was to initiate what was called the Red Flag advanced training system, which was effective but controversial. It involved developing highly realistic training maneuvers on the

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training range at Nellis Air Force Base, in Nevada. It was General Dixon’s contention that the very high casualty rates in air combat at the start of a war were caused by poor training. He thought these casualties could be avoided if all pilots went through rigorous training routines. General Dixon supported his contention with painstaking statistical analyses of our experience in Vietnam. The unavoidable price that had to be paid for all of this was a somewhat higher accident rate during the training period, which is why the implementation of Red Flag was controversial. General Dixon was sitting at his desk, dressed in a flight suit. He did not get up, and his first question, before I had a chance to say anything, was “Are you honest, Dr. Mark?” Completely taken aback by this, I started to explain that this was something that other people would have to judge. I probably mumbled a lot while I was trying to make sense. General Dixon kept pushing the question, and after some minutes, I sat down in the chair in front of his desk. I waited for an opportune moment and said, “General Dixon, the secretary of the air force asked me to come here to find out whether you would be a candidate to become chief of staff, should General Jones step down.” Clearly expecting this question, he answered immediately, “No, I will not consider it!” He then launched into a lengthy monologue in which he castigated the Washington establishment for being incompetent and corrupt. This went on for some minutes more. I finally got up from the chair, turned my back, and walked out of the office without saying another word. I have to confess that I was shaken by this interview, and it took me a couple of minutes to recover my balance. At the airport, I telephoned John Stetson. I told him that General Dixon did not want to be candidate for the job and added that he would be totally unqualified for the position. When I saw Harry Goodall the next day, I told him about my interview with General Dixon. He was not surprised. He told me that I had gotten the “Dixon treatment.” However, the “treatment” did not prevent me from strongly supporting General Dixon’s nomination for the Collier Trophy (for outstanding achievement in aeronautics), which he received on May 26, 1978, for initiating Red Flag. A few days later there was a dinner party at Belle Chance hosted by General and Mrs. Allen. Gerry Dinneen, Walt LaBerge, and Adm. Bob Geiger, along with their spouses, were the guests. It was a fine event. At the end of the party, Lew Allen took me aside. He told me that he would be leaving the AFSC shortly to move to the Pentagon as the vice chief of staff and that David Jones would succeed George Brown as chairman of the joint chiefs. So the event that most of my friends had thought improbable occurred. On March 14 at the change-of-command ceremony at Andrews Air Force Base, I watched Lt. Gen. Alton D. Slay relieve Lew Allen as commander of the AFSC. On March 16 and 17, a Corona conference was held at Homestead Air Force Base, in Florida. These conferences were held twice a year, and all the four-star

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officers and the secretary of the air force were present. The chief of staff presided and set the agenda, although it could be modified. There were usually reports from the major air force commands.The functional ones included the Strategic Air Command, Tactical Air Command, Air Transport Command, and Air Education and Training Command.There were also geographic commands: the US Air Forces in Europe, the Pacific Air Forces, and the North American Air Defense Command / Air Defense Command (NORAD/​ADCOM), which was a joint US-Canadian command with a Canadian general as vice commander. It was interesting to see several senior generals quietly “campaigning” to become chief of staff. Generals Robert E. (Dutch) Huyser, Lew Allen, and James A. Hill were the most prominent. Generals Huyser and Hill were both bomber pilots with distinguished World War II and Korean War combat records. At that time, Hill headed the Pacific Air Force Command, and Huyser the Air Transport Command. Lew Allen was a real long shot—no combat record and a very specialized career, even though very distinguished. Probably the sentimental favorite of the group was the other General Hill, James E. Hill. He headed NORAD/​ADCOM, had been a fighter pilot in World War II (P-47s), and held a Distinguished Service Cross, two Distinguished Service Medals, a Silver Star, and several other American decorations. In addition, he held both the French and the Belgian Croix de Guerre, which made him by far the most decorated officer in the room. Unfortunately, he was some years older than the others, so he knew he was not in the running. At the end of the first day, I had a long conversation with Lew Allen. As vice chief of staff, he held the senior position, so I told him that he would be a candidate, whatever happened. Lew was a bit reluctant because, as he put it, he “had never been shot at.” I pointed out that Dwight Eisenhower had never been in combat, either, before assuming command of Operation Torch as a lieutenant general. We talked in some depth about our current problems in the Cold War, a different kind of conflict. I told him that I thought his background was well suited for the kinds of situations he would be facing. At the end, I told him that I would support his candidacy, although I realized that as under secretary I would have little if any influence in the matter. On the second day of the meeting, Dutch Huyser delivered a rousing speech on his views of the world situation; it probably advanced his candidacy for the chief ’s position. On March 2, I visited the headquarters of the Strategic Air Command at Offutt Air Force Base, near Omaha, Nebraska.The commander in chief was Gen. Richard H. Ellis, who was another very impressive military officer I met during my time in the Pentagon. General Ellis had been a bomber pilot in the Pacific Theater and had acquired almost the same decorations as James E. Hill. He demonstrated superb leadership ability early on. In 1945, he requested to be released from service to study law at Dickinson College. He was admitted to the bar and practiced law until 1950. Recalled to duty at the beginning of the Korean War, he remained in the military until his retirement in 1979. In contrast to his colleague at Langley, Gen-

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eral Ellis was very pleasant and exceedingly courteous. He was anxious to know what I wanted to hear about the mission and the operation of SAC. Following the very thorough briefing, he and I had a short meeting in his office. I asked him whether he would be a candidate for chief of staff, assuming that the post would become vacant upon the probable selection of David Jones as chairman. General Ellis said, “Yes, I would like to be a candidate, but you must realize that I am the oldest of the current group of four-star generals. This fact alone would disqualify me, because I will be sixty in 1979.” “OK. But suppose you are asked to do the job in spite of the problem.” “Then I would clearly accept the job.” He continued, “I have no real choice, because I am a soldier.” “General, thank you for the time you have taken. I much appreciate all you have done to make this visit both very useful and enjoyable.” Riding back to Washington on the T-39, I came to the conclusion that Richard Ellis would be a first-class chief of staff. The next day, I went to see John Stetson. I told him that I thought Ellis would be the best selection for chief of staff, with Lew Allen as vice chief, adding, “These gentlemen would make one hell of a leadership team!” I mentioned Ellis’s point about his age and pointed out that Lew Allen had unique qualifications to be chief, given the nature of the Cold War. On April 5, 1978, the announcement naming the new leadership of the air force was made. David Jones would be the new chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Lew Allen would be the new chief of staff, and James A. Hill would be the vice chief of staff. In the end, it turned out to be a good decision. I knew that I could work with Lew Allen, which was the key point. Much later, I asked John Stetson whether Richard Ellis was considered for the top position. “I do not know,” he replied. “Harold made the final decision.” It had been interesting being a spectator as this important decision was made. On June 30, I attended the formal retirement ceremony of Gen. George Brown and the formal swearing in of Gen. David Jones as chairman of the joint chiefs, Gen. Lew Allen as chief of staff, and Adm. Thomas B. Hayward as chief of naval operations.

The Strategic Balance and the NRO When I arrived in Washington in May 1977, the Cold War legacy of the Nixon and Ford administrations regarding the Soviet Union could be described as follows: • Maintain “essential equivalence” with the Soviet Union in nuclear weapons and their delivery systems. • Reduce the intensity of the Cold War by seeking détente. • Seek formal treaties with the Soviet Union to limit the number of nuclear weapons and their deployment.

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These objectives were achieved by maintaining what came to be called the “strategic triad,” which described how our nuclear forces were deployed. We would deploy nuclear weapons on intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) in the continental United States on nuclear-powered submarines carrying appropriate ballistic missiles; and on large aircraft carrying gravity bombs. The idea behind this concept was that a deployed triad of nuclear weapons would ensure that at least one of the three ways of delivering nuclear weapons would penetrate any defenses that the Soviets could deploy. The annual “Guidance” document of the Department of Defense contained a military doctrine called mutually assured destruction (MAD). According to “Guidance,” this doctrine meant that “the United States shall deploy its nuclear weapon armed forces in such a way that they would survive a first strike by an adversary and still be capable of inflicting unacceptable damage on the adversary following the first strike.” This doctrine created what people referred to as the “strategic balance,” which would create “stability” through fear. I have already quoted Winston Churchill’s description of this situation, when he said in a speech in Parliament in 1955: “Safety will be the sturdy child of terror and survival the twin brother of annihilation.” From the very beginning of the NRO in 1960, its primary function was to ascertain in as much detail as possible the status of the Soviets’ development and deployment of nuclear weapons and their delivery systems. I became familiar with this in the late 1950s when I first saw pictures taken by U-2 aircraft of the Soviet nuclear weapons test sites. In 1977, the Soviets’ nuclear capability was still the primary target, but it had become much more complex. In the beginning, the test sites were important, but by 1977, the deployment sites were considered much more important. We wanted to use NRO assets to analyze the locations as well as the capabilities of the delivery systems of the weapons, the airplanes, and the submarines, as well as the technical features of the land-based systems. The NRO had changed substantially in the seventeen years since it was organized. In addition to imaging satellites that were much improved over the Corona system (declassified in 1996), there were satellites that could intercept communications and other electronic signals. These were the so-called COMINT (communications intelligence) and ELINT (electronic intelligence) satellites. To make this point more clearly, let me recount some history. SALT I, the arms control treaty signed by President Nixon and General Secretary Brezhnev, recognized the role of satellite reconnaissance in monitoring and verifying that the provisions of the treaty were not being violated. Accordingly, a provision in it required the signatories “not to interfere with each other’s national means of verification.” The phrase “national means of verification” was the cover for the then highly classified NRO satellite systems. President Ford met with Brezhnev in 1974 to start a new chapter in arms control. In Vladivostok on November 23, 1974, they developed the framework for a new treaty that would be called SALT II. There were five important provisions in

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the framework: • An equal aggregate limit of 2,400 on strategic nuclear delivery vehicles (ICBMs, submarine-launched ballistic missiles [SLBMs], and heavy bombers) • An equal aggregate limit of 1,320 on MIRV (multiple independently targeted reentry vehicles) systems • A ban on the construction of new land-based ICBM launchers • Limits on deployment of new types of strategic offensive arms • The incorporation of important elements of the Interim Agreement (e.g., relating to verification) into the new agreement

One of the very important technical developments then occurring was the development of more accurate guidance systems for ICBMs and SLBMs. As long as the accuracy of ballistic missiles had a radius of something like a mile or more, the weapons were effective against large-area targets such as cities or seaports because of the vast destructive power of a nuclear detonation. But such weapons would have only a relatively small probability of destroying protected point targets such as an underground command bunker or a silo housing an ICBM. As the accuracy of the missiles improved greatly, the aim point area reached a radius as small as a hundred yards.With that degree of accuracy, a multi-kiloton weapon could reliably get close enough to a heavily protected command post or missile silo to destroy it. These considerations led both the Americans and the Soviets to review the deployments of their nuclear weapons. In the strategic triad, aircraft were based so that they could take off before the nuclear warheads arrived at their bases. In addition, some aircraft were kept on airborne alert. Submarines were hidden underwater and hard to find. The land-based missiles, however, were vulnerable to a first strike. One could ask why it was necessary to have a land-based missile force. Was it a necessary component of the strategic triad? Yes, for an important reason: landbased missiles were by far the least expensive part of the triad to maintain. Of the operational cost of the triad, the 1,557 US land-based missiles, which carried almost 5,000 deployed warheads, amounted to about 10 percent of the total. The answer to the problem of the vulnerability of land-based ballistic missiles was mobility. If they could easily and quickly be moved from one place to another, then the problem of targeting the missiles would become very difficult. It was here that the Soviets enjoyed a major advantage. Unlike us, the Soviets had placed a major emphasis on movable nuclear-capable ballistic missiles. The first and most important of these was the SS-20 Saber. It had about the same total weight as the US Minuteman III ICBM. But its range was only about 3,400 miles, owing to the heavier weight of the three warheads it carried—more of a Minuteman’s weight could be used for propellant, thus giving it a longer range. The SS-20 was thus an

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intermediate-range ballistic missile rather than an ICBM—whereas the Minuteman III, which also carried three warheads, had a range of six thousand miles. The development of the SS-20 Saber missile system was initiated in 1966, long before any of the issues of arms control or first-strike vulnerability were on the table. The first SS-20 Saber was deployed in March 1976 and became operational in November. In July 1977, the Soviets initiated the development of a true ICBM, one with a range of six thousand miles, which would also be movable. This was the SS-25 Sickle. Thus, at the beginning of the Carter administration, the Soviets had two mobile ballistic missile systems—one of intermediate range and one intercontinental. The United States did not have a similar mobile system, nor any plans to develop one. This situation caused much discussion about a “window of vulnerability” affecting the US land-based ballistic missiles. For a number of reasons, it was difficult or impossible for the United States to deploy movable long-range missiles. Although public opinion in the United States was generally in favor of pursuing the Cold War, that attitude did not extend to the placement of land-based nuclear weapons on highways and railroads passing through populated areas. It was acceptable to place land-based missiles in fixed silos in the sparsely populated northern tier of states—Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Wyoming. But the public was exceedingly concerned about how nuclear weapons were moved around the country. No one wanted to be the target of the first-strike nuclear-armed missiles. It would not be politically possible in the United States to move nuclear weapons on public highways on trucks that could erect the missile and launch it. The same was true of missiles mounted on railroad carriages. None of these restrictions existed in the Soviet Union. The Soviets did not have the same extensive highway system as the United States. But they did have a well-developed railroad system, which could carry a large number of mobile missiles and the associated erector and launcher systems. They could implement a road- or rail-based mobile missile system without worrying about public opinion. The improved accuracy of US missiles would be useless if the location of their targets could be changed at will. There was thus a fundamental asymmetry in the deployment of land-based nuclear missiles. In chapter 6, I explained how on October 24, 1974, a Minuteman I missile was successfully launched by dropping it on a parachute from the rear ramp of the Lockheed C-5A off the California coast near Vandenberg Air Force Base. The missile was then ignited in midair by remote control, and it hit a target on Kwajalein Atoll, four thousand miles away. So exactly a month before the Ford-Brezhnev meeting, we demonstrated that we had a mobile missile launch system for an ICBM. If forced to, we could put Minuteman missiles on our fleet of fifty C-5A aircraft and launch them from any point in the world. And we could do this long before the Soviets could deploy their mobile ICBMs, the SS-25 Sickles. It was a bit of a stunt, but it was nevertheless effective in delivering the message.

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Even before I arrived in Washington, President Carter made it clear that he would try to extend the 1972 arms control treaty, in keeping with the provisions of the 1974 Vladivostok agreement. Accordingly, I made it my business to seek out the people who would be in charge of negotiating any new agreements. On September 22, 1977, I met with the director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (ACDA), Paul C. Warnke, and his deputy, Spurgeon M. Keeny Jr. Warnke was a distinguished Washington lawyer, a partner in the firm of Covington and Burling, before turning to public service in 1966. He served in the Department of Defense during the Johnson administration, first as general counsel for the department (1966–67) and later as assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs (1967–69). He returned to private practice during the Nixon and Ford years. As head of the ACDA, he would serve as the chief negotiator for any new talks on nuclear arms control. Spurgeon Keeny had served in the US Air Force as an intelligence officer (1950–55); thus we had something in common immediately. In addition, Spurgeon had a technical background, having earned both a BA and an MA in physics from Columbia University. Following his military service, he became a staff member of the Congressional Committee on Atomic Energy for a year and then served in the Pentagon and on the National Security Council. In all of these positions, his work was closely related to nuclear weapons and nuclear energy. I spent two hours with Warnke and Keeny, and I was very impressed by both of them. Keeny and I eventually became good friends and very effective collaborators. We both had scientific backgrounds, so we spoke the same language. I also thought that these gentlemen made an excellent team, and I discovered later that both were graduates of Columbia. The substance of the meeting was a complete exchange of information. Warnke thoroughly explained what the president had in mind for a new arms control agreement. In answer to one of my questions, he told me that even though the ACDA worked closely with the State Department, it was an independent agency and that he reported directly to the president. He then laughed and said that one price he had to pay for this was his drab office in a dreary building on Connecticut Avenue. The SALT I treaty, Mr.Warnke explained, counted delivery vehicles, from which the number of warheads could be estimated. Would it be possible to have a system that could count warheads? Would it be possible to improve the resolution of imaging satellites so that they could provide better estimates of the capabilities of aircraft and land combat vehicles? Would it be possible to detect submerged submarines from space? Would it be possible to follow more accurately in real time the movements of the elements of the Soviets’ strategic triad? This was just a partial list of his questions. I responded by outlining the technological possibilities that might be applied. Both Warnke and Keeny listened carefully, and after more than two hours, Paul asked Spurgeon to work closely with me to answer these questions. He wanted to

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have a proposal with good cost estimates that he could take to the president sometime within the coming months. The key word here was “cost.” Because of the highly classified nature of the NRO, it was very important to keep to an absolute minimum the number of people with full compartmental access to everything that the NRO was doing.

The New Technology Satellite In the fall of 1977 and the spring of 1978, Spurgeon and I, with the help of the NRO staff, made some estimates of what might be done to meet the requirements contained in Warnke’s questions. The best way to augment the imaging capability of the NRO would be to deploy a new-technology satellite. The first electrooptical-imaging satellite was launched on December 19, 1976, and it was a major technological breakthrough by the CIA (Program B in the NRO). This satellite replaced earlier optical-imaging satellites, which used photographic film to record the images. The electro-optical system produced a digital image that could be sent to a ground station via telemetry—much more convenient than film for recording vast amounts of data. By the time that I arrived at the NRO, this technology had been extensively tested on aircraft and spacecraft. The staff of the NRO and I judged that it was therefore ready for deployment on a full-fledged reconnaissance satellite. This new-technology satellite would be outfitted with the electro-optical imaging system. A second technology we considered was the enhancement of our ability to intercept telemetry signals from the Soviets’ tests of their newest heavy missile, the SS-18. Since the SS-18 carried MIRVs, the hope was that we could learn something about the maximum number of warheads that the missile could carry. This was important because of President Carter’s desire to count warheads and not delivery vehicles. Accomplishing this objective would require more-sensitive detectors of microwave frequency radiations and a larger-area, high-gain antenna. All this would require the development of an entirely new satellite system and a very significant upgrade of the existing systems. It was evident that we could not achieve the objectives outlined in the last few paragraphs without a very substantial increase in the NRO’s budget. The best estimate of Jimmie Hill, who was the chief budget officer of the NRO, was that the budget would eventually have to be doubled. It was time to broach the subject of an NRO expansion with others in the administration who had an interest in our plans and would be involved in President Carter’s effort to secure a new arms control arrangement. On October 14, 1977, I met for the first time with the National Security Agency director, V. Adm. B. R. Inman. Although I had not met him before, I knew about his work, for which I had great respect. He was very familiar with President Carter’s plans for a second round of negotiations, which had already acquired the acronym SALT II. He was, for

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obvious reasons, very supportive of improving our ELINT and SIGINT (signals intelligence) capabilities, since doing so would enhance the work of the NSA as well. On November 3 and 4, at a meeting of the National Foreign Intelligence Board, I laid out the plans being developed for the monitoring capabilities related to the projected SALT II agreement. On February 1, 1978, I visited Harold Saunders, who was the assistant secretary of state for arms control. His portfolio was much broader than those of Paul Warnke and Bob Inman, so I had waited until our plans were more definite before meeting with him.Two weeks later, I went to see David Aaron, the president’s deputy national security advisor. David was Zbigniew Brzesinski’s deputy, and he would be my contact in the White House. No decisions were made at any of these meetings. My intention was to meet the people whom I did not already know but who would play important parts in determining the success or failure of our plans at the NRO. On February 17, 1978, I flew to Los Angeles on a T-39 to meet with the director of Program A, Maj. Gen. John ( Jack) Kulpa of the air force, and the director of Program B, Leslie C. Dirks, who was the deputy director of the CIA for science and technology. Both were substantial people. Jack Kulpa graduated high in his class at West Point, and he was also a first-class engineer. Les Dirks was even stronger in technical matters, but he did not have Jack’s charismatic leadership ability. Les and I had several things in common. We were MIT graduates, and we had earned degrees in physics. Les, his wife, Eleanor, and their two sons lived in the Georgetown section of Washington. Bun and I were frequent visitors. We became close friends, and I came to have great respect for Les’s intellect and character. During our time in Washington, Les became a substitute for my brother Peter, who died in 1979. In 1980, I managed to get Les elected to the National Academy of Engineering by organizing all the academy members who had the necessary security clearances. These people could attest to Les’s achievements, and the academy’s management agreed to take their word for it. Unfortunately, Les’s life ended in tragedy. Eleanor died of cancer shortly after we left Washington in 1984. Les remarried and moved to California. A few years later, he began to suffer from a particularly devastating form of dementia, which prevented him from working. He died in 2001, and it fell to me to write his obituary for publication by the National Academy of Engineering. I have digressed somewhat by telling the story of Les Dirks’s tragic end because his fate made a particularly strong impression on me.When Les died, I prayed often to try to understand why it happened to him. The meeting with Jack Kulpa and Les Dirks was informative and also contentious. Fairly detailed, and quite different, proposals had been developed for the new-technology satellite system.The air force (Program A) idea, presented by Jack, called for a “brand-new-technology satellite,” along with a sophisticated datarelay satellite system. There was not much doubt that what Jack was proposing could be made to work, but it would be very expensive. Les Dirks (Program B) had a different, technically elegant solution. Les and his people suggested that the

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optical-imaging satellite be modified so that the new-technology unit could be mounted on the same vehicle. By combining the two sensors, the same data-relay system could be employed and no new ground station would be needed (just expanded somewhat)—meaning that substantial cost savings would be realized. Following the presentation of the proposals, I asked a number of questions that caused a spirited debate between Les and Jack. Les’s major critique of the air force’s plan was that it would cost too much. In addition to the optical-imaging satellite, which Les ran, he had an important COMINT system as well. He said that there had to be a balance between imaging and COMINT. He was afraid that even an expanded NRO budget would not be sufficient to cover the cost of Jack’s proposal and that some very important SIGINT capability would therefore be lost if the air force’s proposal were adopted. In criticizing the CIA’s proposal, Jack Kulpa pointed out that combining the two capabilities on the same spacecraft would lead to a very complex vehicle. He questioned whether such an elaborate satellite would actually be less expensive than his proposal, and compared Les’s concept to Battle­ star Galactica, a large rickety spacecraft in a television series of the same name. I listened to both of them and realized that a difficult decision lay ahead of me. I thought long and hard about it all on the flight home. On February 24, I had an important meeting with Spurgeon Keeny at the ACDA about the NRO’s support of the SALT II process. A particular concern was how to determine the number of nuclear warheads being put on the large new Soviet missiles. This would require more sophisticated ELINT and COMINT, which could be used to detect the telemetry emitted during Soviet missile tests and, it was hoped, to ascertain their intentions as well. I assured Spurgeon that we would be able to do some of these things, but the discussion sharpened what Les Dirks had said at my meeting at SAMSO. It is customary for federal agencies to start testifying in February for the upcoming fiscal year, which starts on October 1. Our first hearings in 1978 began February 27 before the House Select Committee on Intelligence. Congressmen Edward Boland (D-MA), Omar Burleson (D-TX), and James Kenneth Robinson (R-VA) were present. These gentlemen were very senior members. Boland was especially important because of his position on the House Appropriations Committee. I asked Jimmie Hill, the NRO’s chief budget officer, to sit with me at the witness table because I knew that our financial estimates would be an important topic. In addition, Roland Inlow, who headed the Photographic Analysis Center, was invited by the committee to sit at the table. The principal questions posed by the committee had to do with the verification components of the proposed SALT II treaty, and fortunately, we were well prepared. There were sharp questions from the committee members. On March 7, we testified before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Present were Senators William Hathaway (D-ME), who was the chair; Gary Hart (D-CO); Clifford Case (R-NJ); and Robert Morgan (D-NC). This hearing was

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longer than the one in the House, and the questions were more sophisticated. Senator Hart was a particularly acute interrogator. In addition to paying attention to program formulation, I also had to develop a feeling for the overall NRO organization in order to ensure that the programs would be smoothly executed. To do this, I took a page from NASA’s book and organized the NRO Management Council, which consisted of the heads of the program offices, the budget officer, and the air force officer who headed the NRO staff in room 4C1000 of the NRO suite in the Pentagon. On January 23, 1978, I had met with NRO Pentagon staff to explain the kind of organization that I had in mind. I told the group that I wanted to encourage competition among the program offices, but the competition had to focus on our objectives. The first meeting of the Management Council occurred on March 13. There was some tension, but in the end I thought the exchanges were useful. My hope was that the antagonism that existed between Program A and Program B would be mitigated somewhat by holding periodic council meetings. On April 6, the Senate Intelligence Committee called to say that it was holding an impromptu hearing on SALT II verification. Senators Hathaway, Hart, and Malcolm Wallop (R-WY) were there. We scrambled to collect all our data on this topic and did the best we could at the hearing. Senator Hart pulled me aside afterward, and I spent an hour with him and his principal staff aide, Larry Smith.The major topic was arms control, and we thoroughly explored the entire question. The season for congressional hearings was in full swing, and on April 10 and 11 there were lengthy sessions before the House Appropriations Committee. Adm. Stan Turner, Adm. B. R. Inman, Dr. John Harvey (a friend from my Livermore days), David Aaron, and I were at the witness table. The hearing was thorough and lengthy. Chairman George Mahon, a very serious Democratic congressman from Lubbock, Texas, was in the chair for the entire two-day proceeding. The principal issue that I had to deal with was the new-technology satellite. Since this was not a classified meeting, I could discuss it in only very general terms. It was clear that arms control and the SALT II treaty were the major concerns and that many of the members of the Appropriations Committee were very positive about funding whatever the NRO needed in order to make it possible to conclude a new treaty. All this was very gratifying, and it confirmed that the alliance we had made with Paul Warnke, Spurgeon Keeny, and the other people at the ACDA would pay off handsomely. We would be able to introduce new, more capable satellite systems in the coming months. I still had to decide between the two versions of the new-technology satellite. Should I make a definite recommendation of one over the other, or should I make a case for each and then let my superiors, Stan Turner and Harold Brown, make the choice? I consulted some of the advisory groups that had the necessary clearances to provide good input. On April 14, I had a long lunch session with Richard Garwin. He was a few years older than I and had participated in the design of the

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first thermonuclear (hydrogen) bombs. He had earned his PhD at the University of Chicago with the legendary Enrico Fermi, and then had a lengthy association with IBM. He spent much of his time as a senior adviser to the Department of Defense at the highest level. He was a member and several times the chairman of the Jasons, an important scientific advisory group. I was working at the Livermore Laboratory during the late 1950s when a group of professors from the University of California, Berkeley, including Keith Brueckner and Kenneth Ford, established the Jasons. They were organized to advise Herbert York, the first director of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, as an independent, self-selected advisory group. They have been in business ever since. At my lunch meeting with Garwin, I explained the details of the NRO program and told him that eventually we would ask for his advice. On May 9 and 10, we had another lengthy review of the new-technology satellite system, at which I wanted to inform the people in Programs A and B about our congressional hearings. Also, I reviewed the most recent developments in each program to make certain that what we told the Appropriations Committees was accurate. Jack Kulpa provided a very thorough description of the Program A version and introduced Col. Donald Cromer of the air force, who would be the program manager. Les Dirks and his people did their usual excellent job on the Program B version. There were no real changes to the descriptions of the programs that I have already provided. A day later, there was a meeting of the National Foreign Intelligence Board with Frank Carlucci in the chair. Frank was an experienced diplomat who had just been appointed deputy director of central intelligence. He had made his reputation by helping foil a coup by a communist group to overthrow the Portuguese government during his term as the US ambassador there. Frank would be a very effective deputy for Stan Turner. I took the opportunity to inform the group about the technical progress that had been made in the development of new-technology satellite and the results of our congressional hearings. On May 19, the Soviets conducted one of the periodic tests of their antisatellite system. Starting in the 1960s, the Soviets had initiated the development of a coorbiting satellite that could destroy another satellite. The basic idea was to launch a satellite carrying an explosive shrapnel charge and place it in an orbit very close to the intended target satellite—hence the term “co-orbiting.” The charge would then be detonated, destroying the target satellite. On May 31, Secretary Brown and DCI Turner called a meeting of interested parties. Dan Murphy, Les Dirks, Lew Allen, Bob Inman, and others were present. The question was how to respond to what the Soviets might do with this new capability. At the time, we had no system for shooting down satellites. Thus, we could not retaliate in kind if the Soviets conducted this sort of attack. The consensus was to go ahead with the launch schedule for our own antisatellite system—a conclusion that I strongly supported. I was delegated to contact the congressional

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staffs and inform them of the decision; others were sent to the White House to inform the National Security Council staff.The only negative view I heard was from Charles Snodgrass, who was Congressman Mahon’s chief staff member. I spent some time with him and was eventually able to persuade him not to make an issue of the launch schedule, which might disrupt the flow of our data gathering. The most important outcome of the meeting was that it stimulated the development of a US antisatellite system. The program that was eventually initiated involved the direct ascent of a large missile carried to a high altitude by an F-15 aircraft. The rocket would carry a warhead called a “miniature homing vehicle,” which would be launched from the rocket to hit the target satellite. This system was successfully tested on September 13, 1985, by shooting down an inactive US satellite in near-Earth orbit. One event that I attended from this very busy time offers a small window onto the lives of the powerful. On May 27, 1978, there was a celebration of Nelson Rockefeller’s seventieth birthday at the Pocantico Hills estate. Bun and I were invited to attend because of my past association with him. That Saturday was a beautiful day, and the party was in full swing when we arrived at about four o’clock in the afternoon. About two hundred people were there, many of them very prominent and powerful. I ran into the secretary general of the United Nations, Kurt Waldheim. I introduced myself in German, and because of my Viennese accent, he immediately recognized me as a fellow Austrian. I was not surprised to see him there, because the Rockefellers had provided the funds to build the UN Headquarters in Manhattan. I spent a few minutes talking with him and then went to look at the rest of the crowd. There were two heads of state, Helmut Schmidt of West Germany and Pierre Trudeau of Canada; two US senators, Jacob Javits of New York and Claiborne Pell of Rhode Island; the sitting governor of New York, Hugh Carey; and a former governor, Averell Harriman, who had also served as secretary of commerce and US ambassador to the Soviet Union during World War II. Also present were former secretary of state Henry Kissinger and General Al Haig, who would serve as secretary of state in the first years of the Reagan administration. In addition, there were some old friends, among them Johnny Foster, William O. Baker, Simon Ramo, and Edward Teller. It was a grand party, and Bun and I thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.The event was a welcome relief from the many tense meetings described above. In addition to the imaging new-technology satellite, we had some new initiatives for the ELINT and COMINT systems related to SALT II. On July 3, 1978, I had a long meeting with Admiral Inman to discuss those satellite systems, which were sources of information used and analyzed by the National Security Agency. The conversation had to do mostly with how the NRO would manage to upgrade the satellites and how we would secure the necessary political and financial support. During the rest of the summer, there was little action on the new NRO satellite systems.

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On October 9, we faced an important hearing before the Joint Appropriations Conference Committee. This was the committee that made the final funding allocations. Admiral Turner was the principal witness, and John Koehler, the head of the Intelligence Community staff, and I were the supporting witnesses. The two chairmen of the two Appropriations Committees, George Mahon for the House and John Stennis for the Senate, were both present. Stan Turner did an excellent job, and I believe that he sold our program to Congress. The next day there was a long meeting at the Office of Management and Budget. Jim McIntyre, its director; his deputy, Bo Cutter; and the person who handled NRO program, Randy Jayne, were present. The OMB people were very unhappy that our program had been organized around the process to achieve a SALT II arms control agreement. They were not against the proposed treaty, but thought that we were spending too much money. This was not a good argument, and following the meeting, I went to see Randy Jayne. I told him that I would be willing to spend as much time as necessary to describe the program to them. In late October at a meeting with Harold Brown, I described the current status of the two proposals to him. It was still a matter of comparing cost with risk. The Program B proposal (CIA) was less expensive, but the one from Program A (USAF) promised greater capability. At this point, I was leaning toward recommending the CIA program. My thinking was influenced by the “frugality” that was President Carter’s hallmark. At the same time, the risk of placing all of our imaging capability on one satellite caused me to hesitate. Harold Brown was very much in favor of going ahead with the new-technology satellite, but he thought that President Carter would approve the more expensive, air force version because of the reduced risk. The president had a major interest in securing SALT II, so he would probably be willing to spend the extra money. It has been my habit for a long time to reserve Saturdays for lengthy, open-ended meetings with a few colleagues in order to prepare for important decisions. One of these meetings occurred on Saturday, October 28, and the discussion centered on the high cost of the air force (Program A) version of the imaging satellite. Someone suggested that perhaps existing facilities or projects could be used to reduce the estimated cost of the system. As the discussion went on, the idea took shape that the new-technology satellite could be configured in such a way that NASA assets could be used, along with those of other potential customers, who could share the costs. The group concluded that this idea should definitely be considered. The technical elements could probably be worked out, but the need to protect a highly classified satellite system operating in parallel with unclassified ones might be a deal breaker. Because of my earlier work with NASA, I began to prepare for meetings with senior NASA officials to broach the question of NASA participation in the new-technology satellite. On November 22, I was asked to come to NASA Headquarters to hear about problems with the development of the space shuttle. Having

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been involved in the development of this program during my years at Ames, I was not surprised. But the story I heard from the deputy administrator, Alan Lovelace, and the associate administrator for spaceflight, John Yardley, was really troubling. They told me that the first launch of the shuttle would be delayed for two years (from 1979 to 1981) and that there would be a substantial cost increase (to $8 billion from a projected $6 billion or so). This news was serious and would create a number of problems for me in the coming months. At the end of the meeting, I took Al Lovelace aside for a private word. Since he had the appropriate clearances, I could explain to him what we had in mind for the new-technology satellite. I knew from my own experience in NASA that some people in the agency would object to collaborating at all with the military; Al would have to deal with that. Fortunately, he had had a long and brilliant career as a research scientist and manager of air force laboratories, which gave him the background to make the judgment. He told me that he would do what he could to have NASA work with us on the new-technology satellite. Finally, he reminded me that his boss, the NASA administrator, Robert A. Frosch, had spent many years in the Pentagon as the assistant secretary of the navy for research and development. I came away satisfied that NASA and its leadership would help us. The NRO devoted December to a major effort to formulate the new-technology satellite and to persuade the intelligence community and, ultimately, the president to go ahead with the program. This would permit us to prepare for the congressional actions that would be necessary to fund the program. On December 14 there was a rather tense meeting of the NRO Management Council. I reported to the group on my meetings with Admirals Turner and Murphy on the new-technology satellite. In addition, I told them about meetings with Harold Brown, Bill Perry, and Gerry Dinneen. I went into some detail about these conversations because I wanted to be up-front with Jack Kulpa and Les Dirks.There was a lively discussion about the possibility of working with NASA. I asked Jack to go into detail about the arrangements that would be necessary. I knew that both Jack and Les were on pins and needles about the president’s decision, so there was a spirited argument. Jack called the CIA concept Battlestar Galactica, and Les defended himself by touting the “simplicity” and “elegance” of the CIA proposal. On December 16, Stan Turner came by to talk with me before meeting with Harold Brown. He told me that he was strongly in favor of the CIA proposal. His position was not surprising. I told him that I was leaning in the same direction, but that the air force proposal to work with NASA made that option more attractive. Stan came by my office again and told me that he had made the case for the CIA program but that Harold had been noncommittal on the matter. Turner and Brown met with the president on December 19. I would have enjoyed being a fly on the wall in Harold’s office! In my meeting with Harold, I had made the point that I was leaning toward the CIA solution because of the lower cost. But I also told him that I would be satisfied with either outcome. The

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decision came on December 22. The president decided to go with the air force configuration. Appropriate arrangements would be made to ensure that the classified information produced by the new-technology satellite would remain secure. Harold told me that it had not been an easy decision. The president had concluded that the new-technology satellite was important enough to pursue. I was very pleased that President Carter had involved himself in this matter. So we had our marching orders, and Jack Kulpa’s people in California would get to do the job. One unpleasant consequence that I had to deal with came when Stan Turner went to see the president to appeal the decision to go with the air force system.There was not much I could do about it. I felt that once the president had made the decision, we needed to go along with it. Turner’s appeal was turned down. We would now have to secure the appropriate funding from Congress. Late in January 1979, we learned that the Senate Armed Services Committee had appointed a Scientific Advisory Committee to evaluate our proposal. It was headed by Donald Strominger and William O. Baker; Sidney Drell, Richard Garwin, and Alexander Flax were members.This was a high-level group, and by a stroke of luck, I was well acquainted with some of the members. Sid Drell had been an assistant professor at MIT when I was a graduate student in 1953 and 1954. As described in chapter 2, Sid and his family lived in the same apartment complex in Brookline as Bun and I. Sometimes Sid and I would walk to work across the Charles River Bridge. I got to know him very well and have great respect for him. Bill Baker was cochairman (with Si Ramo) of the President’s Advisory Group on Science and Technology, which I described in the previous chapter. As discussed above, I had met several times already with Richard Garwin, who was probably the most prominent member of the committee as an adviser to the federal government. In view of all this, I felt optimistic that they would approve our plan for a new-technology satellite. Unfortunately, many years passed before we could realize the capability of the new-technology satellite. The proposal submitted by President Carter was likewise supported by President Reagan. I was no longer the director of the NRO when congressional approval for the new-technology satellite was secured. I helped explain the satellite to a number of important members of Congress and to persuade them to approve the program while I was secretary of the air force (1979–81) and deputy administrator of NASA (1981–84). The launch of the satellite was delayed by the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger on January 28, 1986. The destruction of Challenger was a serious blow to the American space program, and not just in the loss of life. It seriously compromised the original, 1972-era justification for the space shuttle, which was that it would replace expendable launch vehicles. A reusable vehicle was supposed to lower the cost of access to space. This argument depended on the flight rate of the shuttle, and as things turned out, this rate, fifty flights a year, never came even close

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to being realized. During my years in the Pentagon, I advocated that the space shuttle be used to launch NRO satellites and others related to national security. My principal reason was that with a sixty-thousand-pound payload capability, it was able to carry a larger mass than any other available expendable launch vehicle at the time. The shuttle also had a volume advantage because its payload bay (fifteen feet in diameter and sixty feet long) was larger than any available in an expendable launch vehicle.The advantages were important in the design of the new-technology spacecraft, which was heavy and had a large volume. The new-technology satellite was used extensively in the first Gulf War in 1990 and 1991. On August 26, 1997, there was a ceremony at the headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency in Langley, Virginia. All the former directors of the National Reconnaissance Office were present; the event openly recognized our achievements, which up to 1993 had been unknown to the general public. I was one of several directors honored for “distinguished service.” The citation mentioned “major upgrades of existing systems,” which were intended to make it possible to count multiple warheads in tests, and the initiation of “an important new system,” which was the new-technology system. In addition, it cited the expansion in funding and personnel that occurred on my watch, and “research into viable alternatives to expendable launch vehicles,” which was a reference to my advocacy of using the space shuttle to launch satellites related to national security. In hindsight, this advocacy was a mistake. Otherwise, I felt very satisfied with the work we had done thirteen years earlier, which had had such a positive result.

The Camp David Accords Perhaps the most significant foreign policy achievement of President Carter was to help engineer the first peace agreement between Israel and one of the neighboring Arab states, Egypt. As mentioned earlier, in the Yom Kippur War between Israel and Egypt in October 1973, the Israelis were surprised by the Egyptian attack and initially suffered heavy losses. But they prevailed in the end, with American military assistance. At the end of the war, Israel occupied most of the Sinai Peninsula. Egypt and most of the other Arab states remained Soviet clients, and Israel was completely dependent on the United Sates for military and financial assistance. During the Nixon and Ford years, the dominant American figure in foreign policy was Henry Kissinger. His major achievement was to initiate the normalization of relations between the United States and the People’s Republic of China. In the Middle East, Henry Kissinger invented “shuttle diplomacy,” in which he acted as a go-between facilitating “conversations” between people who would not talk to each other. The real problem was that the Arab states in the region simply did not recognize the existence of Israel, so direct conversations were considered impossible. In May 1977, a conservative party in Israel, the Likud, led by Menachem Begin, won enough seats in the Knesset (legislature) to form a governing coalition. Begin

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was very different from prior Israeli leaders. David Ben-Gurion, Moshe Sharett, Levi Eshkol, Golda Meir, and Yitzhak Shamir all tended to operate at a “legitimate” level during the last years of British rule in Palestine (1945–48). The Jewish Agency was their political vehicle, and the Haganah was their military arm. Most of the leaders of Haganah served with the Jewish Legion of the British Army during World War II. Unlike these people, Begin was a terrorist. He was a leader of the Irgun, a group that committed a number of terrorist acts, including the bombing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem in 1946, which killed about a hundred people. It was thought that this change of leadership in Israel could, perhaps ironically, create an opening for peace, which Mapai, the previous ruling party, had failed to do. Gamal Abdel Nasser, the president of Egypt, died of a heart attack on September 28, 1970. He was succeeded by another military man, General Anwar Sadat, soon thereafter. In chapter 4, I mentioned that Egypt became a Soviet client state as a result of the Six-Day War. But President Sadat later began looking for a way to get out from under Soviet influence. Begin was interested in a peace agreement that would stop the periodic Arab-Israeli wars, which drained Israel’s resources and caused numerous casualties. A strategy of “land for peace” had been discussed for some time, but no way to implement it had been found. Both leaders were motivated to look for some way to reach an agreement. Sadat sent Hassan Tuhani to meet with Moshe Dayan in Morocco to start top-secret talks. These meetings were kept so quiet that NATO, the UN, and President Carter were unaware that they were in progress. As a result of the meetings in Morocco, Sadat delivered a public speech in Cairo stating the he would go “anywhere, even Jerusalem,” to talk about peace. In response, Begin invited Sadat to come to Israel to speak to the Knesset. Anwar Sadat thus became the first Arab leader to visit Israel, thereby recognizing the existence of the state without formally saying so. On November 20, 1977, in Sadat’s speech, he made his own suggestions about what should be done. His most important statement was that “direct confrontation is the nearest and most successful method to reach a clear objective.” By this, he meant that he and Begin should bypass the United Nations and the UN-sponsored Geneva conference and start direct peace negotiations. Neither the Soviets nor the US administration was happy with this approach, because it would leave both of them out of the loop. The Soviets, who regarded Egypt as an ally, were especially upset.They had some of their Warsaw Pact partners direct military threats at Egypt. President Carter, seeing his opportunity, let it be known to Begin in August 1978 that he would be willing to broker a deal between Israel and Egypt. Such a deal would include the return of the Sinai to Egypt in exchange for a formal treaty of peace between Israel and Egypt.Thus, there was the framework of a deal, but the details would have to be worked out. I was elated by all this. For the first time, I felt that there was a real chance for peace between Israel and its Arab neighbors. I was impressed by the television reports of President Sadat’s visit to Jerusalem. In addition, when the White House

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announced that President Carter had invited both leaders to come to Washington, it was clear that his initial unhappiness with the bilateral approach was gone. By making an about-face, the president would wind up as peacemaker. Also, the Soviets would be completely left out of the equation. President Sadat and Prime Minister Begin began their negotiations at Camp David, the president’s retreat in the Maryland hills west of Washington. The negotiations began on September 5, 1978. Some friends of mine were close to these negotiations, including David Aaron, who was Zbigniew Brzezinski’s deputy on the National Security Council staff, and Col. Robert A. Rosenberg of the air force, who was a member of the staff. They told me that the negotiations were difficult. According to Rosenberg, the president went into excruciating detail over just where the border between Israel and Egypt would be drawn. They had plenty of maps: since the Yom Kippur War, we had been flying U-2 missions over the area to look at changes in the landscape. Rosenberg told me that one of the maps was too large for any of the tables.The president of the United States and the leaders of Israel and Egypt crawled on the floor on their hands and knees around this huge map to determine exactly where the border would be drawn. Carter’s patience and persistence paid off, and the negotiations were completed on September 17. The next day, the president explained the Camp David Accords in a speech before a joint session of Congress. I managed to get a ticket to the gallery of the House Chamber. A week later, on September 25, there was a meeting of the Armed Forces Policy Council. Since John Stetson was not present, I represented the air force. Harold Brown had invited Zbigniew Brzezinski to come and describe the accords. Brzezinski told us that the negotiations were extremely difficult and that for much of the time, Begin and Sadat were not on speaking terms. Thus, the president had to act as a go-between. The accords had two major points: • Framework for peace in the Middle East: Israel had to recognize the existence of a Palestinian state, and vice versa. It was Brzezinski’s opinion that this would not happen. • Framework for peace between Egypt and Israel: Israel would withdraw all military forces from the Sinai. A border between the two nations had been agreed on. There would be a formal peace treaty between Egypt and Israel. The United States would fund the construction of two air bases, one for each country, on each side of the border. (I did not know it at the time, but I would be secretary of the air force when construction of the bases was started; that is described in the next chapter.) Finally, each side would receive about three billion dollars a year in military assistance from the United States.

Brzezinski was convinced that a treaty would formalize these provisions between Israel and Egypt. I sat in Harold’s office and listened to all of this. When I got to my own office, I wrote a description of the meeting in my diary. At the end of it, I wrote: “This treaty is a grand achievement for all of the participants. I am very

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much afraid that President Sadat will be assassinated as a result.” Sadly, my fear was confirmed on October 6, 1981, when Sadat was shot during a military parade by radical members of the Muslim Brotherhood. I wept bitter tears when this happened. “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall see God” (Matt. 5:9). The Camp David Accords led to a formal peace treaty that was signed at the White House on March 26, 1979. Harold Brown and President Carter had gone to the Middle East two weeks earlier to make certain that nothing would go wrong. They returned on March 14, and Toni Chayes and I decided to go to Andrews Air Force Base to meet them. A small crowd on the ramp awaited their arrival. The most prominent person there was Averell Harriman, who was ninety years old at the time. I got to shake his hand because Tony Chayes knew him—he was one of the great men from the Roosevelt years, and I felt it was a privilege to meet him. It was raining and the airplane was late, but we decided to wait. When it finally landed, we were there to say, “Well done and welcome home.” Interestingly, Toni and I were the only senior civilian officials from the Pentagon to attend the arrival of Air Force One following the president’s great achievement. Both Toni and I were disappointed that other friends and colleagues from the Pentagon had failed to show up. The consequences of the peace treaty were both positive and negative. Worldwide reaction was positive; Begin and Sadat were jointly awarded the 1978 Nobel Peace Prize. The new relationship between Israel and Egypt permitted tourism between the two nations, and thousands of Israelis took advantage of the opportunity. The high point was reached in 1999, when more than four hundred thousand Israelis visited Egypt. A brisk trade relationship also developed between the two nations. Unfortunately, the reaction in the Arab world was very different. Egypt was ejected from the Arab League, and many Arab nations, including Syria, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia, broke off diplomatic relations with Egypt. Only one other Arab nation has signed a peace treaty with Israel—Jordan—which did so in 1994.

Three NRO Vignettes In this chapter, I have concentrated on the subject that was most important for the NRO: monitoring and verifying the terms of the SALT II agreement. But there were other priorities as well, including the gathering of “technical intelligence” and the monitoring of other nations’ nuclear weapons activities. The term “technical intelligence” refers to satellite pictures with a groundresolved distance (the term of art for “resolution” in this business) fine enough to reveal the details of airplanes, ground vehicles, and ships, thus allowing the details of performance parameters to be inferred. The importance of this capability can be illustrated by an incident that occurred in the fall of 1978. (I did not record the exact date in my diary, because the incident dealt with a matter that was highly classified at the time.) I was on a visit to the air

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force’s Foreign Technology Division (FTD), at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, in Ohio. This organization is responsible for analyzing foreign weapons systems and estimating their capabilities. Since I was head of the US spy satellite program, the staff focused on what the division was doing with our pictures and our electronic and signals intelligence satellites. One of the items on their list was an “airplane”—really, a “seaplane” or “flying boat”—that they had been observing in the Caspian Sea for some time. The Caspian Sea is a large, very salty lake in the southwestern Soviet Union. It was a strange-looking vehicle, obviously very big, with stubby wings, eight large fan-jet engines on a special platform at the forward end of the fuselage, and a very large empennage (tail assembly). The colonel commanding the division told me that the “airplane” probably weighed more than five hundred tons. Because of these strange features, the FTD people called this vehicle the “Caspian Sea Monster.” During the briefing, it occurred to me that we could take the pictures, make a model of the configuration, and then test the model in one of our wind tunnels at Ames. After the briefing, I called Leonard Roberts, the director of aeronautics at Ames, and asked him to contact the people at the FTD to see whether something like this could be done. Since Ames had performed some wind-tunnel tests of highly classified aircraft in the past, it should be possible. Such tests were eventually conducted not only at Ames but also at air force facilities. The results showed that the Caspian Sea Monster would not fly very well. It might get off the ground, but it would not rise above an altitude out of ground effect, which limited it to perhaps thirty feet. We were all puzzled by what the Soviets had had in mind for this craft. At one point when some of the speculation became particularly bizarre, I made the following statement: “The vice admiral who runs this program has a cousin who is a member of the Soviet Politburo. They simply do not know how to shut this program down!” My guess, made in jest, turned out to be wrong. The explanation for the existence of these aircraft, in fact, was even more bizarre than my offhand “guess.” After the end of the Cold War, the Russians published pictures of the aircraft. They were called “X,” which was the Russian term for a “ground effect” flying vehicle. Some of the pictures of the X aircraft had four large rockets mounted on top of their fuselages. They looked like intermediate-range ballistic missiles, and one of the pictures shows a missile taking off from the back of an aircraft. For the life of me, I still cannot figure out what targets the Russians thought they would be shooting at in that part of the world. This example of technical intelligence—perhaps a rather extreme one—illustrates what can be done to estimate the performance of an unknown weapons system. It indicates something else as well: both sides during the Cold War initiated complex technical programs that were ill conceived and therefore had no military value. I have already discussed the Pluto program in chapter 4 in connection with my work at the Livermore Nuclear Weapons Laboratory. This was a real boondog-

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gle on our side. The Caspian Sea Monster was a Soviet example. Only two of these very large vehicles were built, and one was mothballed. The second NRO incident concerns the proliferation of nuclear weapons. This item, like the case of the Caspian Sea Monster, was highly classified at the time. Sometime shortly after I was confirmed, an official in the State Department asked me to meet with him. He knew that I had some experience with the testing of nuclear weapons and also that I ran the spy satellite program. He showed me three messages that had been exchanged between the Soviet Union and the United Sates: • USSR to US: “The South Africans are about to test a nuclear explosive device.” • US to USSR: “Baloney,” in polite diplomatic language. • USSR to US: “Look at coordinates x and y in the Kalahari Desert.”

This answer was important, so our assets were deployed to look at the site. I should add that the director of the NRO had nothing to do with the direct targeting of the sites to be photographed. I was there not as the director of the NRO, but as someone who had seen a nuclear weapons test site and was familiar with the nuclear weapons business. Then I was shown the picture that had been produced. My host asked: “Does this picture look like a test site to perform an underground nuclear detonation?” I looked carefully at the picture. It showed a drill rig and cable trays from the drill rig to a concrete bunker some distance away. I then replied, “Yes, this very likely is a nuclear weapons test site.” That, after some small talk, ended the meeting. A few weeks later, the same official asked me to visit him again. This time, he showed me another picture of the same area, but the test site had been destroyed. He then pulled out a folder that contained two messages: • US to South Africa: “Knock it off!” in polite diplomatic language. • USSR to US: “Spasibo!” which is Russian for “Thank you.”

I was both amazed and encouraged by this exchange. First, I was amazed at the impact of our pictures, and second, I was encouraged that in the middle of the Cold War it was possible for the United States and the USSR to collaborate when vital common interests, such as prevention of the proliferation of nuclear weapons, were at stake. About two weeks later, I received an invitation to a diplomatic reception at the State Department. There is a large and beautifully appointed reception room on the ninth floor of its building on C Street. I was surprised that at the entrance were two US Marines with sidearms. I was frisked by a security officer before I could enter the room. Once inside, I was astonished to see Secretary of State Cyrus Vance

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talking to Stan Turner. There were a number of other State and Defense Department officials as well as members of the intelligence community. A few minutes later, the door opened and the Soviet ambassador to the United States, Anatoly Dobrynin, along with a small entourage, arrived. Soon the secretary of state and the ambassador stood at a small rostrum while some waiters arrived with drinks and canapés. Then, Secretary Vance delivered a short speech. He thanked Ambassador Dobrinin for the Soviets having alerted us to the prospective South African nuclear test. Dobrinin then responded by thanking Secretary Vance for persuading the South Africans to cease and desist. Dobrinin proposed a toast: “Let us join together to keep the peace! Nazdarovya!” I was pleased to have played a small part in this moment of US-Soviet cooperation. The third incident was truly bizarre. The most serious breach of security in the history of the NRO was the case of the Falcon and the Snowman, Christopher John Boyce and Andrew Daulton Lee, in the mid-1970s; the story of their espionage for the Soviets, which compromised some very sensitive NRO work, was made into a movie released in 1985.That one was a tragedy, but the story I am relating here was tragedy turned farce. This espionage case involved a twenty-three-year-old man named William Kampiles. He was of Greek extraction and had grown up in Chicago. Following graduation from Indiana University, he went to work for the CIA. He was given the relatively minor job of monitoring files and updating them if necessary. Kampiles felt that such a job was not worthy of his talents. His ambition was to be an intelligence officer, not a glorified clerk. But he had failed the tests to be an intelligence officer several times. His frustration grew until he decided to take matters into his own hands. He decided on the following plan: he would steal what he thought was an important classified document concerning the principal optical-imaging satellite that the NRO operated. The document was essentially an instruction manual for operating the satellite; it contained relatively little information about the craft’s performance parameters and capabilities. Kampiles was not technically competent enough to evaluate what he had stolen. In 1977, Kampiles resigned from the CIA and traveled to Greece with the instruction manual. He made contact with Soviet consular officials in Athens—he was fluent in Greek—and told them that he had an important American document for sale. He showed them the instruction manual and said that it would cost them $3,000. The deal was struck, and Kampiles went home with the money. Upon his return, Kampiles immediately told his former supervisor at the CIA what had happened. Now that he had good connections with the Soviet officials in Greece, Kampiles continued, he was prepared to act as a double agent. The CIA official was thunderstruck by this offer. The CIA promptly had Kampiles arrested and tried for treason. He was convicted and sentenced to forty years in prison in 1978. His prison sentence was later reduced to nineteen years. He was released in December 1996.

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I was not directly in the line of command in this case, since it was an internal CIA matter. I was assured by the Program B people that not much of value had been lost. After listening to all this, I admonished the CIA to tighten its security procedure and to administer intelligence tests to prospective employees! I did not know whether to laugh or to cry about the case of William Kampiles.

Nelson Rockefeller Again and Iran On November 3, 1978, I flew to New York at the invitation of Nelson Rockefeller. Following his service as vice president, he had returned to New York to devote his time to his art collection. He was an expert on modern art and a true connoisseur. Over the course of time, Rockefeller had amassed an astounding collection of modern paintings; he was also a longtime sponsor of New York’s Museum of Modern Art. He wanted my opinion on the galley proofs of a modern art catalogue that he was editing. When I demurred and told him that I was no expert, he said, “Look, I would like to see you again.” So I made the trip. I arrived at Nelson’s office about ten in the morning. It was located at 30 Rockefeller Plaza, on 35th Street and Fifth Avenue. He started to show me the galley proofs of his book, and it was truly an impressive production. He told me that he hoped to have it published late the next year. The telephone rang. Rockefeller answered, put his hand over the telephone, and said to me, “It’s Zbigniew Brzezinski. He wants to talk about Iran.” “Should I leave the room?” I asked. “No,” he said, “at least you can hear my part of the conversation.” For the next two or three minutes, Rockefeller said very little except a few yeses and nos. Finally, he said, “OK,” and hung up the telephone. He pushed the intercom button and told his secretary, “Please get me Zahedi on the line.” He then turned to me and said, “Ardeshir Zahedi is the Iranian ambassador to the United States.” I had not paid much attention to the situation in Iran during my first year in Washington. I did know that a group of fundamentalist mullahs had mounted an insurgency against the shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. But the prevailing image of Iran was of a large nation with a leader, the shah, who was a strong ally of the United States and was trying very hard to modernize a still-backward country. That sounds pretty naïve now, but it was how I felt at the time. Soon the buzzer sounded and Rockefeller picked up the telephone: “Mr. Ambassador, how are you?” There was a short pause, and then he said, “Mr. Ambassador, please get me the shah on the telephone.” There was another pause with some small talk, and then Rockefeller hung up. He turned to me and launched into an explanation. The shah was in deep trouble. He had lost touch with his people, and the mullahs had gained a strong foothold among large segments of the population. There had been serious mass

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demonstrations against the shah in many important cities, and he had been unable or unwilling to do anything about them. Then the buzzer sounded again, and Rockefeller picked up the telephone. Before he could start talking, I asked, “Shall I leave?” He shook his head, and then in a loud but pleasant voice said: “Your Majesty, how are you and how is Her Majesty? I have missed seeing you for some time now.” Rockefeller then sat back in his chair and listened. There were periodic nods of the head and a spoken yes and no at intervals. This continued for about fifteen minutes, and then it was Rockefeller’s turn to speak: “Your Majesty, if your position is seriously challenged, you must fight back. The mullahs are a reactionary force. They want to return your country to the Middle Ages, and you cannot let that happen.This is especially true because the demonstrators have started to use armed violence against your police. If necessary, you must call on the military to help the police restore order.” Then Rockefeller sat and listened for an extended period. I could only guess what the shah was saying at the other end of the line, but it clearly did not please Rockefeller. Finally, he seemed to interrupt the shah in midsentence: “Your Majesty, you must take firm action and do it quickly. Some years ago I faced a somewhat similar situation. There was a revolt by prisoners in the New York State Prison at Attica near Buffalo. The prisoners had killed some guards and took others hostage. There were negotiations, but after a week of fruitless talk, I made the decision to end the prison revolt. It was clear that the prison guards and the local police could not handle the situation, so I had to call out disciplined units of the New York State Police.The troops had orders to recapture the prison from the rebel prisoners. They obeyed orders and the prison was captured, but there were casualties. I was roundly criticized for the actions I took, and I expected that. However, had I not taken this action, I would have been the target of much more serious criticisms. I would have been accused of losing control, and as the governor of the state, I could not afford to do that. The criticisms that were aimed at me soon became fierce, but I had to endure these. Had I not acted, many more people would have died. Your Majesty, you must act and do so quickly.” The telephone call lasted another minute or so, and then after some pleasantries, Rockefeller hung up. He sighed and said: “The game is up. The shah is ill and he can no longer make decisions. He has a serious cancer and not much longer to live. It is a terrible situation. The mullahs will gain control of the country, and this will create a bleak future for Iran and also for us.” This hour-and-a-half meeting with Rockefeller provided me with another lesson in high-level politics. Before I left, he asked me to stay in touch. On January 19, 1979, the shah finally left Iran. The story in the newspapers was that he was leaving to seek treatment for his cancer. For the remainder of the year, Iran was very much in the news. What was happening was a totally unexpected event, at least in my mind. It was a religious revolution, something that had not

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happened in Europe since the Thirty Years’ War, in the seventeenth century. Most Americans were probably in the same frame of mind as I was at the time. How could a reactionary group of clerics take over a large, modern, and, we all thought, secular nation? What was their power base? Did they have weapons? These were only some of the questions in my mind. On February 1, 1979, Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the leader of the revolution, arrived in Tehran from France. The grand ayatollah was seventy-seven. In the beginning, I thought that he might become a figurehead, but that is not what happened. There were secular people in the new group of leaders, the most prominent being Abolhassan Banisadr, who was named as finance minister in the new government. I expected that people such as Banisadr would soon create a popular and secular regime, but that did not happen. The grand ayatollah had been in exile for fourteen years, primarily for attacking the shah’s pro-Western policies. During most of that period, he lived in the city of Najaf in Iraq. In 1978, then vice president Saddam Hussein had him deported to France. Within a few weeks of his return to Iran, it was clear that he was in charge. I could not really come to grips with all this; it was too far outside the framework that we had become used to since the beginning of the Cold War. The shah had been a strong ally, and he had kept Iran very much on our side against the Soviet Union. Looking back, what I remember most was my fear that this regime change in Iran would not be, in the short term or the long term, in the interest of the United States.

9 Long-Range Bombers, Missiles, and a Space Command for the Air Force

Following the departure of John Stetson on May 19, 1979, I was in charge as acting secretary of the air force. I assumed that I would be acting secretary for some time to come, since it would take awhile—at least six months—to select and vet someone for the post. Thus, the new secretary would not be in office until a month or so before the beginning of 1980. My guess was that the post would go to a current presidential appointee in the Pentagon or another executive department. I thought that Gerry Dinneen, who was Bill Perry’s deputy, or John Deutch, Jim Schlesinger’s deputy in the new Department of Energy, would be the most likely candidate. Both had roughly the same background as I did, and better political credentials. I could work well with either one, so I would be satisfied to stay in my current position. To my great surprise, Harold Brown called me into his office two weeks after Stetson’s departure to tell me that he had recommended that President Carter nominate me to be secretary of the air force. My first reaction was to tell him that I thought the National Reconnaissance Office was more important than the air force, but fortunately held my tongue. Harold then asked me what I thought about asking Toni Chayes to serve as under secretary. Although I had had some disagreements with Toni in the past, she was certainly the best choice of those available in the Office of the Secretary. Plus, Toni’s good connections in the White House would be extremely important if I were secretary. So I enthusiastically agreed with Harold’s idea. I suggested that Robert Hermann, who worked with Bill Perry, should succeed me as director of the NRO, but assured Harold that I could stay on at the NRO if necessary.

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When I walked out of Harold’s office, I remembered what Benjamin Disraeli told his beloved Mary Anne when he was selected to be Queen Victoria’s prime minister in February 1868: “Yes, I have climbed to the top of the greasy pole!” I felt the same way, and when I got home I told Bun about the meeting. My confirmation hearing was held on July 13, 1979. Senator John Stennis (D-MS) was in the chair, and Senators Harry F. Byrd Jr. (D-VA), John Warner (R-VA), Gordon Humphrey (R-NH), Barry Goldwater (R-AZ), and William Cohen (R-ME) were present. The questioning was routine. Toni Chayes and Bob Hermann were in the same hearing, and therefore all three of us would be confirmed at the same time. I was very pleased that Harold had followed my suggestion that Hermann become my successor as director of the NRO. His cover title would be assistant secretary for research and development. Our commissions were signed, and we were all sworn in at the same ceremony. It was a grand event. Averell Harriman was there as a friend of  Toni’s from the State Department. At Figure 9.1. My official portrait when I was sworn in as secretary of the US Air Force, July 1979.

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age eighty-eight, he was still working as a special ambassador, performing missions for President Carter. Several members of Congress attended as well. In the evening, there was a nice party at Dirk Jameson’s house. It was at this party that it sank in for the first time: “I am now the head of the US Air Force”—still a bit of an awesome thought!

Priorities for the Air Force After I was sworn in as secretary, I began to think about how best to establish my position. In previous posts of responsibility, I had found that it was paramount to outline a few top priorities—four or at most five. A few carefully chosen areas of focus should make it possible to establish a clear direction for the organization. Fortunately, my association with the air force went back to 1967, when I joined the Air Force Scientific Advisory Board. In addition, my eight years at the NASA– Ames Research Center had provided me with an important view of some air force activities. In our wind tunnel testing, flight simulator tests, and computer flow calculations of aircraft performance, we participated in air force programs for the Rockwell B-1 and the McDonnell Douglas F-15, as well as for the navy’s Grumman F-14 (see chapter 6). Finally, we helped the air force adjudicate the “flyoffs” that we conducted periodically at Edwards Air Force Base. These included the General Dynamics YF-16 versus the Northrop YF-17, and the Fairchild YA-10 versus the Northrop YA-9. I decided that the annual meeting of the Air Force Association in September would be the best forum for a speech concerning priorities. I had a little more than two months to think about what to say. I spent several weeks in intensive consultations with many people on the Air Staff, beginning with the chief, Gen. Lew Allen. I also consulted with friends who were not in the air force, including Walter LaBerge and Jim Woolsey, who were, respectively, under secretaries of the army and the navy, and Col. Robert A. Rosenberg, who was on the staff of the National Security Council. I decided to adopt three priorities. First, we would enhance our strategic forces enough to maintain strategic equivalence with the Soviet Union. This priority was not controversial. From the beginning, President Carter had adopted President Nixon’s doctrine of maintaining “essential equivalence” with the Soviets in strategic forces. Here is what I said in the speech to the Air Force Association regarding this point: The modernization of the strategic deterrent is our first priority today. For the past fifteen years, the Soviet Union has consistently increased its strategic power and is now in a position where, in a number of fields, it could have superiority. The current balance could easily be upset if we do not take aggressive steps to reverse present trends. We have upgraded our Minuteman ICBM force, and some of our Boeing B-52s are being modified to carry the new air launched cruise

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missile. The president has approved our plans to deploy a new (strategic) missile system (MX), and we are proceeding to improve our strategic command and control systems. These actions fall short of a complete solution. They must be followed by a basing decision for the MX, positive plans for a new bomber, and continued real growth in the defense budget. All of these steps must be taken to correct projected vulnerabilities and to provide a secure strategic force structure to support further negotiations for strategic arms limitations. These actions will help stabilize the strategic relationship between ourselves and the Soviet Union, but they will only work if we have a position of equivalence with our major military opponent.

Writing now, more than thirty years later, I need to make one clarification and one comment. The first is the use of the word “strategic.” During the Cold War, this word meant military forces that carried nuclear weapons. The comment concerns the phrase “positive plans for a new bomber.” This was really the only mildly controversial statement in this part of the speech, because it was an implied criticism of President Carter’s decision to suspend the construction of the B-1. The comment was apparently mild enough that it did not attract the attention of people in the Office of the Secretary of Defense. The draft of the speech was returned to me without comment. Our second priority would be to enhance strategic and tactical airlift so that we could adequately respond to worldwide contingencies when our national interests were involved. I placed this item second on the list for several reasons. The immediate one concerned problems with the Lockheed C-5 aircraft (more on this later in the chapter). A second reason was that the air force had already modernized its fighter fleet with the F-16 and the F-15, so we could afford to wait before planning for the next generation. Finally, I had spent much time during my tenure at NASA–Ames learning about the technology of transport aircraft. Thus, I had some technical background. Here is what I said about this priority in the speech: We must continue to be able to respond to crisis situations in different parts of the world where our vital interests are involved. We must be able to supply allies rapidly and we must be able to project force if that needs to be done. We must also be able to evacuate Americans rapidly who are endangered by revolutions and conflicts around the world. While we do have good strategic airlift capability, we do not have enough aircraft and the tactical airlift force will have to be modernized in the next decade. Thus, airlift modernization must be considered as an essential element of our overall ability to operate as a major power, and a renewed effort must be made to improve this portion of our force.

This proposal was not controversial, because everyone realized that air transport was essential. But funds allocated to this function were usually placed at a lower level of priority than those used to buy combat aircraft. By placing this item on the list, I knew that I would have interesting debates with some of my friends.

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The third priority was to create a new organization to manage the operations of the air force in space. Here is what I said in the speech: The United States today is operationally dependent on space systems for a variety of functions that are critical to the national security. Our military forces today have improved because of more reliable communications, more accurate maps, more exact navigation and targeting, better weather information, and the capability for more reliable and quicker warning of attack due to a network of satellites that provides these things. It is certain that space operations will increase in the future. Thus, it is important that we now establish an appropriate organization to run all US Air Force space programs.

The essential point I tried to make was that space operations are different from those involving airplanes. Some of the technologies are the same, such as those involving fluid mechanics, structural mechanics, and guidance and control. That was why I stressed “operations”: space and aircraft operations are totally different. Aircraft operations usually deal with hundreds or even thousands of units. Spacecraft, on the other hand, come in ones and twos and operate under a completely different military doctrine. It was for that reason that I advocated the establishment of the Air Force Space Command from the very beginning of my term of service as secretary.

Have the American People Lost Confidence? On Sunday, July 15, 1979, President Carter delivered a speech from the Oval Office. The country was beset with real and perceived problems. Even though the president never used the word “malaise” in the speech, it came to be known as the “Malaise Speech.” That description was intended to highlight Carter’s failure to instill the confidence that he said was lacking in the American people. The theme of the speech was energy, and his proposals were technically sound. After all, the president had earned an engineering degree at the US Naval Academy. The problem with the speech was not the content, but the tone. Here is an example: “The threat is nearly invisible in ordinary ways. It is a crisis of confidence. It is a crisis that strikes at the very heart and soul and spirit of our national will. We can see this crisis in the growing doubt about the meaning of our own lives and in the loss of a unity of purpose for our nation. The erosion of our confidence in the future is threatening to destroy the social and the political fabric of America.” The president continued for another few paragraphs. All of them accused the American people of losing confidence. The president seemingly did not realize that it was his job to provide the leadership that would restore confidence. The remainder of the speech was a complex and detailed list of actions and programs. I am not sure that many people followed what he said. He ended the speech with a very flat statement: “In closing, let me say this: I will do my best, but I will not do it alone.

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Let your voice be heard. Whenever you have a chance, say something good about our country.With God’s help and for the sake of our nation, it is time for us to join hands in America. Let us commit ourselves together to a rebirth of the American spirit. Working together with our common faith, we cannot fail.” On July 17, the White House announced that President Carter had requested letters of resignation from all his cabinet members. I was astonished by this move; it made no sense at all. If the president wanted to change cabinet members, he should have done so privately, with appropriate words of gratitude for the person’s work. As things turned out, five cabinet secretaries were dismissed: W. Michael Blumenthal (Treasury), Patricia Roberts Harris (Housing and Urban Development), James R Schlesinger (Energy), Joseph A. Califano Jr. (Health, Education, and Welfare), and Griffin Bell ( Justice). The list increased my concern, since those dismissed tended to be the stronger cabinet members. After the speech, which truly disturbed me, and the cabinet dismissals, I was certain that President Carter would lose the election in 1980. But I made up my mind to soldier on.

American Hostages in Iran On November 4, 1979, a group of students and demonstrators surrounded the US Embassy in Teheran. They blockaded the door and eventually trapped the people who were inside, including the US Marine Corps guards, who had been ordered not to shoot. After some ad hoc negotiations, the people occupying the embassy released the female hostages and the non-Caucasian men. There were attempts to negotiate with higher authorities, but it was not clear who had the power to negotiate. Prime Minister Mehdi Bazargan headed a secular government, but it was not quite evident who was calling the shots. A deal was reached with Bazargan for the release of all the hostages, but when he took it to the grand ayatollah, he was summarily dismissed, which made it crystal clear that the clerics led by Khomeini were in charge. A positive occurrence at the time proved, paradoxically, somewhat embarrassing for the administration. Ross Perot, a Texas electronics and computer entrepreneur, was able to get some of his employees out of  Tehran with the help of some forged documents and the Canadian Embassy. Were we, the government, doing anything to free our people from captivity?

Operation Eagle Claw The secretary of the air force has no direct role in the operations of the air force. The jobs of the secretary and the chief of staff are to recruit, train, and equip the forces. Military operations are run through a chain of command that begins with the commanders in chief of the major American military commands around the

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world and culminates with the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the Pentagon. This is a committee headed by the chairman and a vice chairman, who are both four-star officers. The four members of the Joint Chiefs, one for each service, participate in the supervision of military operations. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs is the principal military adviser to the president and reports to the secretary of defense. Even though I had no statutory authority over military operations, my relationship with the Air Staff was good enough that I could ask some of its members to hold regular meetings with me. The deputy chief of staff for operations during my term of service as secretary was Lt. Gen. Charles Gabriel. We met on every Tuesday whenever both of us were available. At our meeting on March 25, 1980, I asked Charlie about a mission to rescue the hostages. He laughed and told me that he could easily talk about this matter because there was no operation planned and there would be none. I told him that I agreed—such an operation was not feasible. Helicopters were the only aircraft that could be used to pick up the hostages, but helicopters are notoriously prone to failure on very lengthy trips, which was why they were no longer used for commercial service. I speculated on how useful the tilt-rotor airplane, the Bell XV-15, would be if a rescue mission were contemplated. In 1980, we were in the middle of an extensive test program for the airplane, which had attracted some attention in the trade press. Charlie had been in the Vietnam War, and he knew about helicopters’ high failure due to the vibrational loads imposed on the vehicles. He agreed that tilt-rotors were faster than helicopters when flying in the airplane mode and had no serious vibratory behavior. (See chapter 6 for a detailed discussion of the tilt-rotor concept.) Our talk was a casual, technical discussion, and I did not think much about it after Charlie left. A week later, on April 3, I flew to Keesler Air Force Base, just outside Biloxi, Mississippi. I was there to give a speech and inspect the Air Force Technical School for Electronics. I spoke about which technical areas in the field would be important in the future, and during the short question period that followed, a young lady from the Biloxi paper asked me whether a mission to rescue the hostages in Iran with helicopters had been considered. Remembering my conversation with Charlie Gabriel and anticipating a question on the hostage matter, I had written the following statement ahead of time, should it be needed: “I do not know whether such an operation has been considered. I do know from our experience in Vietnam that helicopters are prone to failure on lengthy trips. The hostages are far from our bases, so this would be a problem. If it was considered, it certainly would be rejected because it was just not feasible.” I added that diplomacy was the only way to resolve the hostage situation. On April 25, we were officially informed that an operation to rescue the hostages had been mounted but then aborted. The complex operation, code-named Eagle Claw, was a joint operation between the army, the navy, and the air force. The operational plan was to bring in about 150 Army Special Forces troops on air force Lockheed C-130 transport aircraft. These airplanes would land at a remote

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spot about a hundred miles west of  Tehran. Simultaneously, eight Sikorsky CH-53 Sea Stallion helicopters would take off from the USS Nimitz, which was stationed in the Arabian Sea outside the Straits of Hormuz. These would make the fourhundred-mile flight to meet the C-130s at a location referred to as Desert One. The C-130s successfully brought the Special Forces troops to “Desert One” on April 24. So far, so good. But the helicopters ran into trouble. One had a navigation failure and returned to the Nimitz. Two others had to fly through a sandstorm and were forced to land. Thus, only five of the Sea Stallions arrived at Desert One, and they were late. The plan was for the Special Forces troops to board the helicopters, fly into Tehran, and land at the sports stadium close to the US Embassy. The troops would rescue as many people as possible and fly back to Desert One. The C-130s would then take the troops and the hostages back to their base in Saudi Arabia. The plan required perfect coordination, so with three helicopters out of commission, the air force and army commanders on the ground had a problem. They did not know whether they should try to complete the mission with only five helicopters; the mission rules called for at least six. The colonels used their communication link to ask Washington for instructions. Word came back to abort the mission. It was at this point that the real tragedy occurred. One of the helicopters, while taking off, collided with a C-130, killing eight Americans and wounding two more. Thinking quickly, the army commander, Col. Charles Beckwith, ordered all his troops onto the remaining C-130s and left Desert One. It was a humiliating, self-inflicted defeat. What went wrong? First, the plan was much too complicated. Everything had to work exactly right or there would be catastrophic consequences. There was clearly no contingency plan. Second, I have often wondered about the wisdom of having a communications link directly to the Situation Room in the White House. What would the commanders on the ground have done had they been on their own? My feeling is that there is a good chance that they might well have gone ahead and tried to carry out the mission, even without all the necessary equipment. Had they rescued even a few of the hostages, it would have counted as a victory. Finally, there was the problem with the helicopters. I remembered my conversation with Charlie Gabriel about helicopter failure rates. If six helicopters were required for the mission, why did they fly off only eight from the Nimitz? The carrier is a big ship, and they clearly could have sent more. Although I was not directly involved in military operations, I felt that I had to attend the funeral services for the people who had lost their lives. The funerals were held on April 30 at Hurlburt Field, a few miles from Eglin Air Force Base in Florida, which houses the Air Force Special Forces headquarters. It was a muted ceremony, and several people made speeches. When my turn came, I took Jesus’ words spoken before the crucifixion: “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends” ( John 15:13). I then said a few words about each of the casualties. Finally, I could not resist telling the people present that we

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were working on aircraft that could have performed this mission much more effectively, and I told them about the test program that was being conducted on the Bell XV-15. On May 5, at the Armed Forces Policy Council meeting, Harold Brown called the mission a “partial success.” My heart went out to my old friend because he was trying to make the best of a bad situation, which in this case, simply could not be done. Later, I attended a press conference at which Harold described the mission and then answered questions from the reporters. I prayed to the Good Lord that no one there had read the piece in the Biloxi Daily Herald containing my statement that the “use of helicopters had been considered but rejected.” My prayers failed; someone did indeed ask Harold why helicopters had been used when the secretary of the air force had said that “their use certainly would be rejected.” Harold had a quick answer: “Dr. Mark was talking about a different mission.” He had to prevaricate because he did not want to tell the press that the service secretaries had not been told about the mission. It was not a good day.

Bombers, Missiles, and Politics When I was sworn in as under secretary on July 27, 1977, the new administration was already deeply involved in a serious debate over the structure of our strategic (that is, nuclear-armed) forces. There were three modes of delivery: airplanes, landbased ballistic missiles, and submarine-based ballistic missiles. As noted previously, this was called the strategic triad. The essential justification for having three delivery modes was that each had unique advantages and disadvantages. Airplanes could be sent on a mission and then recalled if the situation changed. But they could also be shot down. Land-based missiles were the least expensive of the three, and had a highly reliable command-and-control system, but since the adversary knew where they were located, they were vulnerable to destruction by a massive first strike. Submarine-based ballistic missiles were well hidden—the Soviets could not find our submarines—but the command-and-control system was not robust, so there was a definite risk of an accidental launch. When I arrived in the Pentagon, the air force had 1,507 land-based ballistic missiles deployed, which carried 2,407 warheads. There were 57 Titan II missiles fueled with hypergolic liquid propellants, each carrying a single very-high-yield multi-megaton warhead. These “countervalue” weapons, our largest ICMBs, were intended to threaten populations. There were 1,450 solid-fuel ballistic missiles: 1,000 Minuteman I missiles, each carrying one warhead, and 450 Minuteman III missiles, each carrying three warheads. These warheads—known as “counterforce” weapons—had an explosive yield of a few hundred kilotons, and were intended to strike the strategic forces of the adversary. The Titan missiles were built from 1959 to 1965 and deployed from 1962. The Minuteman I missiles were deployed in 1962, and the Minuteman IIIs in 1970. Both the Titan and the Minuteman missiles

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Figure 9.2. A Minuteman III being placed in its silo.

were deployed in underground shelters called silos. The missiles could be launched within a few minutes when on “alert” status. The missiles were distributed in fixed silos over broad areas in the Great Plains region. The air force in 1977 had approximately 178 large aircraft capable of carrying nuclear weapons. There were about 102 Boeing B-52H aircraft and 76 General Dynamics FB-111 fighter-bombers. The B-52Hs had intercontinental range and were therefore part of the strategic force, and the FB-111s were counted as strategic, too, because the Soviets had a somewhat similar airplane, the Tu-22M Backfire, which they deemed part of their strategic arsenal. In addition, there were a small number of air force fighter aircraft, McDonnell-Douglas F-15s and General Dynamics F-16s, that could carry tactical nuclear weapons.The air force aircraft could altogether carry something like 1,200–1,800 nuclear warheads, which, combined with the number of land-based missiles, made a total of about 4,000. In addition,

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the navy deployed a somewhat larger number of warheads on submarines, so at the height of the Cold War, the United States had upward of 10,000 deployed nuclear weapons. The last B-52 aircraft was built in 1965, and the last FB-111 in 1971. The age of strategic missiles and aircraft had resulted in calls for modernization even before the 1976 election, and Mr. Carter had agreed that this was an important priority.

The MX Missile The air force started to plan for a replacement of the Minuteman in 1973. The program developed rapidly, and by the time Carter was inaugurated in January 1977, there was a “point design” ready for adoption. The MX missiles, as they were called, were a direct response to the Soviets’ deployment in 1973 of the huge SS-18 missiles. The MX was a large launch vehicle (193,500 pounds, compared with 78,000 pounds for the Minuteman) that could carry up to ten nuclear warheads. The technology for developing the missile and the multiple warheads was in hand, but the problem of how to deploy them was still open. My first meeting as acting secretary took place on May 23, 1979. The topic of discussion was how the new MX missiles should be based. Congress had delayed funding for the construction of the missiles in 1976 because some people objected to deploying them in the same fixed silos housing the Titan and the Minuteman missiles. The Soviet SS-18s were accurate enough to destroy fixed silos, and by the time we would be able to deploy the MX, the Soviet plan was to have about three hundred SS-18s in place. The obvious answer was to somehow move the missiles around the country in such a way that there would be no fixed aim points. Both we and the Soviets had smaller, mobile missiles, and the question was whether the technology could be scaled up. We tentatively concluded that some kind of a roadbased mobile system might be possible and that we would start studying ways and means of doing that. I was not really satisfied with this state of affairs. Mobility might be a good solution for the Soviets, but not for us. The Soviet Union was a closed society, and its government had sealed off large parts of the country to foreign visitors. We could not really do that, so this difference was a fundamental asymmetry. The more I thought about deployment, the more I felt that mobility might not be the right solution for us. My feeling was that we should probably place the MXs in the fixed Minuteman silos and adopt a doctrine to launch our missiles when we had warning of an attack. This doctrine was dangerous because it was susceptible to errors that could have truly catastrophic consequences. But it might have been worthwhile to see how valuable such a doctrine could be in combination with diplomacy in certain situations. In addition, I began to think about developing defenses against ballistic missiles. My interest in this area had a history going back to the Argus

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experiment in 1958. In addition, I had served as a consultant to the Army Ballistic Missile Agency (ABMA) in the 1960s during my years at Livermore. Thus, I was familiar with the evolution of a series of proposed defense systems: Nike-X to Sentinel to Safeguard. None of them were ever seriously pursued, but by working with them I had gained familiarity with the technical problems and with the people working on them. Both the “launch on warning” doctrine and missile defense were opposed by the senior leadership in the White House and the Pentagon. It made no sense for me to start an argument about them at the time. For the next couple of weeks, I worked on other matters, but I kept thinking about the MX problem. I eventually came to the conclusion that developing an acceptable basing mode for MX was a political, not a technical or a military, problem. I consulted with Toni Chayes, and she offered to take on the job of finding a basing method for the new missile. Toni’s suggestion was brilliant—it was one of those ideas that, when you hear it, you kick yourself for not having thought of it first. Toni was right. She was smart, tough, dedicated, and politically well connected. In short, she was the ideal person for the job. On June 22, I had a conversation with Harold about the MX. I told him about Toni’s suggestion that she handle the job, and Harold immediately agreed. He laughed and said, “I wish I had thought of that!” Whereupon I replied, “So do I.” I called Toni when I returned to the office and told her about Harold’s reaction. She laughed and said that she was used to that kind of thing: “You guys are both pretty smart, but it takes you a long time to figure out that women can do these jobs as well as men!” Then it was my turn to laugh, and I told Toni that she had my complete support. Toni Chayes became a first-class advocate of the MX system. My own attitude was to support her as strongly as I could, even though I thought that none of the basing methods considered were really feasible. The administration wanted an invulnerable land-based missile, and we tried to do the best possible job of providing one. Having a land-based missile system was important, and so I supported the development of a large solid-fuel launch vehicle, and I would support any basing system acceptable both to the public and to the administration. It would be Toni’s job to accomplish this objective. The basing modes were made public, and public reaction was generally negative. Rail-based deployment was rejected immediately because nobody wanted to have railroad cars carrying nuclear-armed missiles rolling through their neighborhoods. The railroad companies were also unhappy with the idea. Here was an example of asymmetry with respect to our Soviet adversary. The Soviets had a rail-based ICBM system, the SS-24 Scalpel, which used the Soviet rail system to move the missiles around the country. The Scalpel system was initiated in 1976. Since public opinion did not count in the Soviet Union, it was possible for them to solve the problem in a way unavailable to us.

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Other, more complex basing modes were proposed. Toni was tireless in her efforts to explain them to the public. She participated in congressional hearings and met with the editorial boards of many newspapers. She was very effective, and even though the proposed basing modes were not accepted by the public or Congress, she earned the respect of senior air force officials and others in the Pentagon because of her courage and persistence. Toni’s efforts eventually paid off: at the end of the summer, the administration selected the “racetrack” basing mode for the MX missile. In this system, several large tracts of land in the western United States, each covering up to many thousands of acres, would contain thirty to fifty well-protected concrete shelters, and these would be connected by roadways not open to the public. Under operational alert, the transporters and their missiles would leave the shelters and move around on the roads (hence the name “racetrack”) so that the exact position of the missiles would not be known. On November 5, 1979, a congressional hearing was held in Cedar City, Utah, a town of about ten thousand people in the southwestern part of the state. This was one of the sites selected for the construction of a racetrack system.Toni Chayes and I attended the hearing to help shape the discussion. Five congressmen were present, all members of the Military Construction Subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee: Chairman Gunn McKay (D-UT), Norman Dicks (D-WA), Clarence Long (D-MD), Ronald Ginn (D-GA), and Ralph Regula (R-OH). After breakfast on the day of the meeting, we were taken by helicopter to the racetrack site, a few miles west of town. There was absolutely nothing at the site, and both Toni and I thought that the MX program office had made a mistake by putting this side trip on the agenda. The hearing began at about nine in the morning in the auditorium of Southern Utah State College. There were about 150 people in the room, and about 20 witnesses on the agenda. Gov. Scott Matheson of Utah, the first witness, welcomed us and said that Utah was very interested in supporting national security. He would do what he could to persuade Utahans to accept the location of the MX missile base.Then a number of local officials testified, all in favor of locating the MX racetrack in Utah, particularly because of the new jobs that would be created. The first testimony against locating the missiles near Cedar City came from a local who said that she was concerned about losing tourist business in nearby Zion National Park. All the remaining negative testimony came from people who were from Salt Lake City or from outside Utah. These people were either environmental or antiwar activists. Some of them were eloquent advocates for their causes, and some were just foolish. Most were students or faculty members from so-called elite universities. Chairman McKay did an excellent job of conducting the meeting, and both Toni and I thought that the hearing was a useful exercise. As a result of this hearing, Toni initiated the process to create an environmental impact statement for the MX racetrack system. I have to confess that I thought this

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was a little bit bizarre, since warfare and environmental concerns were clearly at odds. Toni was right, however, so I went along with her proposals. On February 6, I met with Gunn McKay again. He told me that he was a strong supporter of the MX and of the ICBM program in general, but that he did not want it based in Utah. I kept my temper in check and thanked him for his support. As far as I am concerned, his opposition really killed the program, and we needed to think about alternatives. A few days later, I met with Bill Perry (under secretary of defense for science and technology) and Jack Stempler (general counsel for the Department of Defense). I told them about my meeting with Representative Gunn, so both of them knew that we had a real problem with the MX. On February 29, I wrote a long letter to Harold Brown concerning the MX situation. I felt that as his secretary of the air force, I had the responsibility to tell him exactly what I thought about the problem. Before writing this letter, I had asked Bill Perry, Jack Stempler, Tom Ross (assistant secretary for legislative affairs), and Toni Chayes to “put together an assessment of where we stand with MX in a number of different areas.” In my letter, I summarized what my colleagues thought. Perry and Chayes were optimistic that we could sell the racetrack basing system to Congress; Ross was skeptical, but said that we had to try; Jack Stempler and I thought that it had no chance of succeeding. I told Harold that the only thing to do was to build the larger missiles and put them in existing Minuteman silos. I then said that if we eventually wanted to move the missiles around, we would need to develop a heavy-lift helicopter to do it. This suggestion was made tongue in cheek, because it would mean work for NASA–Ames, my old home. I never got a reply. On March 7, at another one of the periodic Corona meetings attended by all of the active-duty four-star generals, Lew Allen, in discussing the MX program, told us that we needed to consider the possibility of adopting the “launch on warning” doctrine for the land-based ballistic missiles; he thought that the mobile missile-basing modes we were considering would not be acceptable to the public. I was relieved to hear him say that—my neck would no longer be out there, as it would have been if I were the only one who thought that we should seriously think about and discuss this doctrine. In 1976, I had served briefly as a member of the Defense Science Board. Gene Fubini, the chairman, had arranged for me to join because of my connection with President Ford’s scientific advisory group. I attended a meeting in the summer of 1976 during which the secretary of the air force, Thomas C. Reed, provided a briefing. Later, at the customary dinner, I sat next to him. During a short conversation, we found that we had been at the Livermore Laboratory at the same time. He had been an air force officer working in John Nuckoll’s nuclear weapons design group from 1959 to 1961. Tom told me that he knew who I was because I had been the P-Division leader during this time at the laboratory. At the end of the dinner, we agreed to stay in touch because we had much in common: we had

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lived in the San Francisco Bay area, we had scientific and technical interests, and we were Livermore alumni. As so often happens, though we agreed to stay in touch, we didn’t. After Jimmy Carter’s election as president in November 1976, Tom, who was a strong Republican activist, returned to California. In 1978, he went to Texas to manage the successful gubernatorial campaign of William P. Clements, a former deputy secretary of defense. (He had earlier helped manage Ronald Reagan’s first campaign for governor of California, in 1966.) In 1980, Tom was back in Washington as an adviser to Republican presidential candidate Ronald Reagan. On April 6, Tom called me. He wanted to meet with me about the future of the air force’s strategic weapons program. I was in something of a quandary because Tom was an adviser to the man seeking to replace the president I was serving. I agreed to see him because he was a former secretary of the air force, and he was thoroughly familiar with the strategic weapons program. Thus, his advice on technical and military issues might be of real value. I asked one of the officers in my staff group, Col. Lee Butler, to attend the meeting as well. We had a long and wide-ranging discussion about all the strategic issues. I told Tom that I would not be able to talk about bombers because of classification concerns, but the MX and the proposed new transport (C-X) were fair game. I learned from Tom that he felt the same as I did about the MX. There was no chance that the racetrack basing mode would be approved by the public. He thought that placing the new MX missiles in Minuteman silos was the best plan. I told him that I agreed with this position, and we left it there. Nothing was done by the administration or Congress to hasten the fielding of the MX missiles system until after the 1980 election. (In chapter 11, I describe what happened.)

The Debate over Air Force Bombers In the speech I delivered to the Air Force Association in September 1979, I stated that we needed to “make plans for a new bomber.” I had been involved in that effort since 1969, when I joined NASA–Ames, and now, starting in 1979, I would be able to do something to move the program along. The development of long-range all-jet-engine-powered aircraft was initiated immediately after the end of World War II. The first was the Boeing B-47, which was followed by the all-jet Boeing B-52. This was a large airplane, more than five hundred thousand pounds gross takeoff weight, and had a range in excess of six thousand miles. Powered by eight jet engines, it could carry a payload of fifty thousand pounds. The B-52 was fielded in 1952, and about five hundred were built in the next decade. For thirty years they were the mainstay of the Strategic Air Command (SAC), which had the mission of delivering nuclear weapons to distant targets.

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During the late 1960s, the air force began to think about what might be done to replace the B-52. A project called AMSA (Advanced Manned Strategic Aircraft) was initiated. Enough progress had been made in propulsion and in supersonic flight to think about a large bombing aircraft. A small fighter-bomber (120,000 pounds gross takeoff weight), the General Dynamics FB-111, was rolled out on July 18, 1967. It featured large new engines and a variable configuration that allowed the wings to be swept back at a sharper angle for supersonic flight. The AMSA project called for a large aircraft (500,000 pounds gross takeoff weight) that would have supersonic capability with swept wings and a range and payload capability comparable to those of the B-52. In 1968, Rockwell (the old North American Aviation Corporation) was awarded the contract. During the competition, the wind tunnel and flight simulator facilities at NASA–Ames were used extensively (many thousands of hours of testing) to help the contractors develop and fine-tune their configurations. Thus, I was thoroughly familiar with the position of the air force regarding the AMSA. The Rockwell aircraft, designated the B-1, flew for the first time on December 23, 1974. By the time President Carter took office, three prototypes had been built. Parts for one more had been manufactured but not assembled. On June 30, 1977, President Carter suspended production of the B-1. Through the efforts of Defense Secretary Harold Brown, the three existing B-1s were kept in flight status, and the fourth airplane was assembled. In spite of the suspension of production, the four airplanes were used to conduct an extensive flight-test program. I was aware of all this. But at the time, I was working hard to understand my job at the National Reconnaissance Office. I thought the suspension of B-1 production was a mistake, but I did not have much to do with the air force’s aircraft program. On Saturday, August 4, 1979, I visited SAC in Omaha to discuss the bomber program. Gen. Richard Ellis presented his idea of “stretching” the FB-111 to approach the size of the Soviet Tu-22M Backfire, rather than restarting the B-1 program. This modification would increase the weight of the aircraft substantially, as well as its range and payload capacity. I thought this was an idea worth considering, but I wondered whether the structural integrity of the airplane, especially the landing gear, could be maintained. On December 27, 1979, Soviet troops invaded Afghanistan. By this move, Leonid Brezhnev had destroyed the era of détente and begun a new phase of the Cold War. I was in Europe to celebrate Christmas and the New Year with our relatives in Vienna. For New Year’s Eve, my father—the Geheimrat (most esteemed professor)—invited us to see the Johann Strauss II operetta Die Fledermaus, which was great fun. This is a New Year’s tradition, and the Austrians call New Year’s Day “Sylvester.” (December 31 is the feast day of St. Sylvester.) During our stay in Vienna, I spoke with my cousin and other relatives to get a feeling for the general situation in Europe. American prestige was very high, and this was something of great value. This opinion was confirmed by Saul Polansky, who was the first secretary of the

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US Embassy in Vienna, with whom I had two long discussions. By the end of our stay, I concluded that the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan gave us an opportunity to strengthen our armed forces, and so I resolved to find a way to do that. We stayed in England for a couple of days before returning home. I met the US ambassador, Kingman Brewster, who had been president of Yale University in the 1960s. I was not impressed. The courtesy call was at ten in the morning, and there was a distinct smell of alcohol about him. I then visited Geoffrey Pattie, the secretary of state for air, my British counterpart. We discussed the joint BritishUS V/​STOL fighter aircraft program, which I had helped initiate when I was the director of NASA–Ames. Finally, I asked Pattie how we should respond to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. His answer was quick and simple: “Strengthen your armed forces.” We spent January 4 at Farnborough, which is the British equivalent of the large US Air Force facilities at Wright Field in Ohio and Tullahoma in Tennessee. I delivered a lecture on the space shuttle, which was well received. There are some good people at Farnborough, as well as excellent equipment. We flew back to Washington on January 5. The Pentagon was just coming back online from the vacation, so I spent the time traveling to Albuquerque to visit friends at the Air Force Weapons Laboratory at Kirtland AFB. I spoke with Demos Kyrazis, Pete Avizonis, and others. I had dinner with Sen. Harrison H. “Jack” Schmitt and some friends. I put the same question to them as I did to Geoffrey Pattie: “How can we take advantage of the situation in Afghanistan?” Their answer was the same as Pattie’s. They mentioned several specific things that could be done. When I mentioned reviving production of the B-1, there was a consensus that it should be placed at a very high level of priority. On the flight back to Washington, I made up my mind to investigate ways to revive the B-1. On January 16, I was in Colorado Springs to deliver a speech at the US Air Force Academy, and I took the opportunity to consult with two senior faculty members, Brig. Gen. William Orth, the dean of the faculty, and Col. Ervin Rokke, the chairman of the Political Science Department. I put the B-1 problem to them, and not surprisingly, both were enthusiastic. The opinion of Erv Rokke was particularly important. He had earned his PhD at Harvard University, where Henry Kissinger was his thesis adviser. Erv had a very broad view of things, and he thought the B-1 was a perfect issue. One thing he said really stuck in my memory: “Don’t forget the non-nuclear-weapons role of an aircraft such as the B-1A.” It was an interesting meeting. From Colorado, I continued on to San Francisco to give a speech at the Commonwealth Club. I decided to make it a substantive one. I began with a list of Soviet aggressive acts and then described our responses to them. I talked about George Kennan’s “long telegram” of February 1946. He had recommended that only by frustrating Soviet aggression, by force if necessary, could we maintain relative peace. I ended with the famous conclusion to volume 1 of Alexis de

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Tocqueville’s Democracy in America. In this passage, which was written in 1835, he compares Russia and the United States and accurately predicts the state of affairs that would exist a century and a half later: There are at the present time two great nations in the world, which started from different points, but seem to tend towards the same end. I allude to the Russians and the Americans. Both of them have grown up unnoticed; and while the attention of mankind was directed elsewhere, they have suddenly placed themselves in the front rank among the nations, and the world learned their existence and their greatness at almost the same time. . . . The American struggles against the obstacles that nature opposes to him; the adversaries of the Russian are men. The former combats the wilderness and savage life; the latter, civilization with all its arms. The conquests of the American are therefore gained by the plowshare; those of the Russian by the sword. The Anglo-American relies upon personal interest to accomplish his ends and gives free scope to the unguided strength and common sense of the people; the Russian centers all the authority of society in a single arm. The principal instrument of the former is freedom; of the latter, servitude. Their starting point is different and their courses are not the same; yet each of them seems marked out by the will of Heaven to sway the destinies of half the globe.

I said that it was our task to see to it that freedom prevailed over servitude. I received a standing ovation. I was truly determined to do something about the B-1. On January 24, President Carter delivered a really tough State of the Union message. The most interesting statement he made was the following: “Let our position be absolutely clear: An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force.” He said this after describing the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan as a threat to the entire region. Carter also reminded Congress that two-thirds of the world’s easily recoverable oil resources were in and around the gulf. I was very encouraged by the president’s speech. It confirmed my decision to revive the B-1. I decided that the best way to get things started was to call a meeting of some knowledgeable people whom I knew well and trusted. The meeting was held on January 29 at Maxwell Air Force Base, the site of the Air University, in Montgomery, Alabama. The attendees were Eugene Fubini, an old friend and the closest adviser to Harold Brown; Lt. Gen. Glenn Kent (USAF, retired), a recognized expert on strategic bombing aircraft; Gen. Russell Dougherty (USAF, retired), a former SAC commander; Gen. Richard Ellis (USAF), the current SAC commander; Gen. Alton D. Slay (USAF), commander of the Air Force Systems Command (AFSC); Col. John Sullivan, from the Air Force Secretariat staff; and a colonel from the Air University. The meeting lasted two full days, and Glenn Kent led the discussions. We began with a thorough discussion of the history and the uses—failed or successful—of

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strategic airpower, and ended with a thorough analysis of the current situation. At the end of the meeting, I listed four possible courses of action: do nothing, stretch the FB-111, revive the B-1, or go with a new concept. The vote at the end of the meeting was no one for doing nothing; Ellis for stretching the FB-111; Kent, Slay, and Mark for reviving the B-1; and Fubini for something new (cruise missiles on a Boeing 747). I was encouraged by these results, and it was time for me to think about what to do next. What was missing was a good technical assessment of what exactly should be done. The essential question was whether to build more B-1 aircraft of the type that we already had, or to modify them in some way that might improve them and, equally important, make them less expensive. I decided to ask the Air Force Scientific Advisory Board to perform one of its monthlong summer studies to resolve this question. I called the board’s chairman, Dr. Raymond Bisplinghoff, a few days later and asked him to make the necessary arrangements. He informed me the board would study the use of the space shuttle, too—a topic that board members wanted to examine. I agreed with the plan to deal with both issues and offered to provide whatever resources I could. I made one other point to the chairman. The people on the Air Staff working on the bomber problem, led by Maj. Gen. Kelly Burke, were leery about using the term “B-1” for the aircraft we were considering. They suggested that we call the effort to revive the B-1 the “long-range combat aircraft” (LRCA). It was a “neutral” title that would also be useful for the board’s conduct of the study. Calling it the “B-1 revival” would undoubtedly prejudice the outcome. Congressional hearings, in the House and the Senate, on the strategic weapons system began on February 2, 1980. I had to walk a careful line on the B-1 question, but I managed to avoid an argument. The hearings were sidetracked by a debate over the role of women in the military, which was a controversial matter for many members of Congress. It took some time for the first results of our testimony to be made public. On March 20, we were informed that the House Armed Services Committee had put an additional $600 million into the existing B-1 program, along with language to restart the production line. To pay for that, they killed the authorizations on the books for the Consolidated Space Operations Center, the new transport plane (C-X), and the upgrades planned for the B-52 fleet. The House was controlled by the Republicans, so this step was not really surprising. I was pleased by the outcome, but knew that I would have to work hard to restore the funds for the programs that the committee had deleted. One of the important institutions that was supported by the air force (and still is, in part) was the RAND Corporation, headquartered in Santa Monica. On April 12, while in California for air base visits, I took the opportunity to visit Donald Rice, the president of RAND. I wanted him to start thinking about how to protect the important programs that we had either carried forward or initiated. Don provided me with a good analysis of the situation. He thought that Ronald Reagan would win the presidential election. The B-1 revival would then almost certainly

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happen, and Reagan would expand military spending and pursue a more aggressive foreign policy than President Carter’s. I liked Don Rice and thought that he had an important future. He would serve as secretary of the air force in President Reagan’s second term. During the debate over the B-1, developments occurred in the aviation industry that would eventually play a large role in decisions about long-range combat aircraft. One was a DARPA-sponsored project code-named Have Blue. The idea was to develop aircraft configurations that would have very small radar cross sections. The leader of this effort was the legendary chief of the Lockheed Skunk Works, Clarence A. (Kelly) Johnson. Kelly Johnson had a strong record in developing innovative new aircraft, beginning with the Lockheed P-38 Lighting in World War II, then the SR-71 supersonic reconnaissance aircraft, and finally the ultra-high-altitude Lockheed U-2. All of these aircraft were unique designs, and they were manufactured using techniques developed and practiced at Skunk Works. I was vaguely aware of the Have Blue effort; in the early 1970s, we conducted some wind tunnel tests at Ames that were highly classified. I did not have the requisite clearance to look at the detailed configurations of the vehicle at the time, but I was aware of the general idea. Two small aircraft were eventually built to test the concept of a plane with a small radar cross section. Kelly Johnson’s idea was to build an airplane that would have no curved, streamlined surface panels on the aircraft’s fuselage and wings. Curved metal surfaces reflect an incident radar beam in all directions, and so at least some of the radar-beam’s energy would be reflected back to the receiver. If the airplane were built of flat panels, then radar would reflect in only selected directions, away from the direction of the receiver. In effect, this would make the aircraft invisible to a radar detector. The price that had to be paid for this faceted design was that the airflow over such an airplane would not be smooth, and the turbulence would add to drag during flight. In addition, the faceted design would make the aircraft harder to control. At high enough speeds, the aircraft would experience flow separation, which means that the air pressures on the control surfaces would fluctuate, depending on the turbulent flow on the surface. These difficulties became apparent during testing, and eventually both aircraft were lost. Fortunately, the test pilots were able to punch out and survive the accidents. Enough was learned during the Have Blue test program between 1977 and 1978 that a decision was made on November 1, 1978, to develop a larger aircraft based on the faceted design. This aircraft became the Lockheed F-117 Nighthawk. The Have Blue aircraft were small, with a maximum takeoff weight of 12,500 pounds, about the same size as a Northrop T-38 training aircraft. The F-117 was about 52,500 pounds, comparable to the first models of the F-15. The decision to build the F-117 was made while I was still running the NRO. I remember that the original order was for seventy-five aircraft; fifty-nine were eventually built.

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Figure 9.3. The F-117 was developed based on the lessons learned during the Have Blue test program.

The F-117 performed extremely well in the first Gulf War, during Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm. Carrying two 2,000-pound GPS-guided bombs, these aircraft destroyed the Iraqi command-and-control system, which made it impossible for the Iraqis to defend themselves. In 1999, the F-117 performed very well in the Kosovo War. One of the F-117s was lost because the Serbs had developed a bistatic radar system that, with appropriate intelligence information, made it possible to track the airplane. The principal drawback of the airplane was its short range, less than 1,000 miles, which was due to the turbulence and flow separation created by the faceted design. In each campaign mentioned above, the F-117 required many KC-135 tankers to support the operations. In addition to the radar-evading capability of the Lockheed F-117, there was another way of achieving “stealth,” which was promoted by the Northrop Company. The concept was based on work done by the company’s founder, Jack Northrop, shortly after the end of World War II. Northrop was interested in developing large bomber aircraft with the longest-possible range. His idea was to reduce drag by eliminating the aircraft’s fuselage. It was in this way that the flying wing was conceived. A number of flying-wing aircraft were built from 1946 to 1949, some with conventional propellers and some with the new jet engines. I knew quite a bit about the flying wing because I had gotten to know Jack Northrop during my time at Ames. In 1970, he was seventy-five years old, retired and living in Los Angeles. I invited him to come to Ames to give a lecture to our aeronautics people. It was very interesting: Jack was an imaginative, hands-on

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airplane engineer. Unfortunately, when I invited him again a few years later, I was told that he was no longer traveling. Between 1945 and 1950, Jack and his engineering staff produced several large aircraft, both jet- and propeller-driven. The YB-35 was a large (about two hundred thousand pounds gross takeoff weight) turboprop-driven flying wing. The aircraft flew for the first time in June 1946, and only a few more flights were made before a decision was reached to build an alljet-propelled flying wing driven by eight turbojet engines. This airplane became the Northrop YB-49, and several were built. The YB-49 flew for the first time in October 1947. The airplane had a large payload capacity (forty-five thousand pounds), and the low drag meant that its range was expected to be in excess of ten thousand miles. The essential problem with the flying-wing configuration was that the airplane was unstable. All three of the aircraft were lost in the test program. Jack left his company a few years after the cancellation of the program. But the company survived, and the idea of the flying wing was kept alive. On May 27, 1980, there was another Corona meeting. The salient topic of discussion was the air force’s Program Objectives Memorandum (POM) for fiscal year 1981. The POM was the five-year plan that each military service had to submit to the secretary of defense every year. As mentioned, the House Armed Services Committee had placed money in the air force’s budget for a manned long-range bomber. The $600 million mentioned by the committee appeared in the POM. General Ellis was furious about this development, since it meant that he lost the stretched FB-111 and the B-52 upgrades. But otherwise there was general agreement that we should work hard to create a new long-range combat aircraft. Charles Corddry was one of the most distinguished writers on military affairs in the nation. He was working as the Pentagon correspondent of the Baltimore Sun. I met with him on June 18 for a long discussion about the development of a replacement for the B-52. I told him about the study that the Air Force Scientific Advisory Board was conducting about a new long-range combat aircraft. Corddry wrote a good column and relayed the same things I told him, but in such a way to keep me out of trouble. A couple of days later, I had lunch with Tony Battista, who was the chief of staff of the House Armed Services Committee. Tony was both smart and influential. We discussed the advisory board’s work on the combat aircraft, and he approved of the program that I described to him. I was encouraged by both these conversations, and I began to think that we were on the right track. June 30, 1980, was my first day back at the Pentagon after a lengthy trip to the Far East. The most important priority in the coming months would be the longrange combat aircraft (LRCA). I learned an interesting tidbit that day from Col. Tom Sawyer, my military assistant. Apparently, we had an ally in Bill Perry’s office, Seymour “Sy” Zyberg, who was Bill’s assistant for strategic systems. Tom told me that Sy, who shared my position on the B-1, had been arguing with Bill over the bomber program. This was really good news. At that point, however, I could not afford to talk to him, because we would surely both get into trouble. A day later

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we had the promotion ceremony for Tom Sawyer, who became a brigadier general, which would mean a more important post for him. I was sorry to see him leave, but I knew that he would have a great career. On July 10, Bill Perry and I had a lengthy meeting about the LRCA. Bill explained his position in detail. He told me that he thought that the B-1 was a doomed program because it could never be a truly “penetrating” bomber, given the Soviets’ air defense system. There was some truth to what he said. He believed that the new cruise missile would be a more effective strategic weapon. It was hard to shoot down, it could be carried by any large airplane, and the whole system was less costly than the manned bomber. In addition, he told me that the right way to have manned penetrating aircraft was to apply stealth technology. I did not argue with him during this conversation. I knew that we would be debating this issue later in public; there would be time to argue then. A week or so later, I met with Lew Allen, the air force chief of staff. The matter of the long-range bomber was going to come to a head, so I took the opportunity to explain my position on it. It was important to make certain that the chief of staff would support, or at least not oppose, what I was doing. I pointed out that large aircraft had been the long-range weapons of choice since World War I. With refueling, their long-range capability had become global, and our global reach was a huge strategic advantage. My second point was that a long-range aircraft, unlike a missile, was under positive control at all times during a mission. Thus, if necessary, the airplane could be recalled or diverted to another target. Finally, there was the matter of human judgment at the scene of the action, which neither ballistic nor cruise missiles could perform. Evaluation started with damage assessment, but probably the most important reason for human judgment on the spot was to recognize and deal with unexpected events. None of these points were controversial, and I continued to talk about the Advanced Manned Strategic Aircraft project and the B-1. I told Lew that the B-1 had a long history at Rockwell, beginning with the XB-70 supersonic aircraft. Finally, the government had spent more than four billion dollars on developing the B-1, and we should not discard that investment lightly. We also discussed the current array of stealth concepts. I told Lew about what I had learned on my visit to Northrop in 1973, which turned out to be very valuable. Northrop’s people had continued to study the stability problem and had made significant progress. The advent of small, very capable computers led to the solution. If a small, fast computer is placed between the pilot and the control surface, the computer can “shrink” the pilot’s reaction time, allowing him to keep the airplane under control. This “fly-by-wire” technology was far enough along that a properly designed flying wing would be stable. In addition, I told Lew that that the idea of using composite materials for the airframe held great promise for achieving small radar cross sections. Switching to composites would drastically reduce the quantity of radar-reflecting metals used in the basic structures of an aircraft. There was great promise in the concept, but it would take time to develop an airplane.

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All this was background, well known to Lew Allen. I told him that we needed to revive the B-1 as both a strategic aircraft and a tactical one, just as B-52s had carried conventional weapons during the two Linebacker operations in Vietnam in 1973 and 1974. I wanted to field the B-1 during the 1980s and start developing the stealth bomber so that it could be fielded in the 1990s. This plan was what came to be called the two-bomber solution. During our two-hour conversation, I did not make any recommendation about which version of the stealth aircraft should be selected, Jack Northrop’s or Kelly Johnson’s. I noticed that during our meeting, Lew became more and more uncomfortable with what I was saying. He was very concerned about my deteriorating relationship with Bill Perry and how it might jeopardize other air force programs. I told him that I would do everything that I could to retain Bill’s friendship and confidence. But I also said that the plan I had laid before him made sense and had strong support within the air force and elsewhere. Lew told me that he still felt uncomfortable, but he left it there. Three days later ( July 21), I met with Bill Perry to discuss the bomber problem again. Bill told me that Lew Allen had briefed him about our discussion. Now Bill wanted to hear what I had to say. Bill was not hostile or angry, but it was clear that I had to be on my best behavior. Since the Air Force Scientific Advisory Board would make its recommendations in a few days, I decided to lay everything on the table. I started by going through the history since 1977: the cancellation of the production program of the B-1, and how we had kept the four airplanes flying. Then I described the meeting at Maxwell AFB, which Bill told me he knew about from Gene Fubini. At this point, Bill stopped me and began telling me what he thought: “The problem is both technical and political. The politics is that the president does not want to back away from his decision on the B-1. He is looking for a strategic airplane that could be fielded in the 1980s.” And then he asked, “What do you think?” I replied, “If the B-1 is out, then the only other possibility is Dick Ellis’s stretched FB-111.” Bill agreed and I continued: “The stretched FB-111 was probably not technically feasible. Originally, the gross takeoff weight was about 75,000 pounds, but since the FB-111 has been upgraded, that weight was now close to 100,000 pounds. The stretched version would weigh nearly 125,000 pounds, which meant that the airplane would, at the very least, require new landing gear. This would add even more weight, and the airplane would still be small compared to the Soviet Tu-22 Backfire.” I therefore concluded that the stretched FB-111 would not be an appropriate response to the Soviet development. Bill agreed with this point, but then said that maybe we should skip conventional airplanes such as the B-1 and the stretched FB-111. He said that Ben Rich, the new leader of the Skunk Works at Lockheed, would build a large version of the F-117 that would be roughly the same size as the stretched FB-111. According to Bill, this airplane would be based on the same stealth principle as the F-117, so

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it could be fielded in the 1980s. This point was probably the most important one that Bill made during the discussion. The political problem would be solved if the administration could assert that it had stopped B-1 production because it had a better idea—a stealthy strategic airplane that could be ready for action by the end of the 1980s. I told Bill that I thought that such a plane could not be a long-range aircraft because of its faceted construction (and all the attendant problems, detailed above). Thus, a new fleet of tanker aircraft would have to be built to service such a bomber fleet if an intercontinental range was required. I was not privy to the discussion that Bill had with Ben Rich about this matter. However, many years later when Ben Rich published his autobiography, Skunk Works (1994), I found the following passage on page 303: “‘If you guys are eager for a small bomber,’ I told Fubini and Perry, ‘look no further than our basic design for the stealth fighter. All we’ve got to do is make it larger and we have an airplane that could carry the payload of the F-111, but with a radar cross section at least ten orders of magnitude better. We’ll hit the most heavily defended target on your list. Can the F-111 make the same claim?’” At the end of our conversation, Bill told me that what I was doing was counter to the policies of the administration. He told me that he would talk to Harold about our conversation to see what would be done. I responded by saying that if we were restricted to only one new airplane, then I would recommend that we upgrade the B-52s and from there go straight to the Northrop version of the stealth bomber. From then on, the situation developed very rapidly. The day after my meeting with Bill Perry, I flew to California to meet with the Air Force Scientific Advisory Board to listen to their recommendations. The meeting was held at the Naval

Figure 9.4. The Northrop B-2 Spirit bomber in action, originally planned as the long-range combat aircraft (LRCA). A GPS-based guidance system attached to each bomb can deliver the weapon to the target very accurately.

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Postgraduate School in an auditorium in the old Del Monte Hotel in Monterey, California. The subcommittee of the board that worked on the LRCA problem was chaired by Ivan Getting. I had run across Ivan during my short stay at MIT in 1959 and 1960. He had designed and built the synchrotron electron accelerator, which was, at three hundred million electron volts, the highest-energy accelerator at MIT. Getting had left MIT to head the Aerospace Corporation in 1960 at what was then the Los Angeles Air Force Station. This organization was established to support the missile and space activities of the air force and had originally been part of the Ramo-Wooldridge Company. With his broad background, Getting was the right person to provide advice on the problem of developing a new bomber. I spent an hour and a half with him and members of the subcommittee. What they came up with was a brand-new idea. Here, in essence, is what Getting said: Our first, very firm conclusion is that the country needs a new conventional bomber to replace the B-52. Second, we believe that the Rockwell B-1 as it exists today should be a model for a new aircraft, but does need to be modified. The B-1 is designed for sustained supersonic flight close to the ground. We believe that this requirement makes the aircraft more expensive than it needs to be. We believe that, given the advances in electronics, we could equip the airplane with electronic countermeasures that would make the low-altitude supersonic “dash” to escape radar detection unnecessary. We recommend that we redesign the current B-1 in such a way that the aircraft could still fly at supersonic speeds at high altitudes for short periods as a defensive measure. This modification would keep the variable geometry—that is, the variable swept wings—but the sweep angle would be reduced. This measure would make the design less risky and would substantially reduce the cost. Finally, we should start with the design modifications of the B-1 immediately.

I was delighted with this recommendation. The proposed new design was one that we could go ahead and use to develop a new long-range bomber that would eventually replace the B-52, or so I thought at the time. In any event, what we had was a recommendation from a knowledgeable and prestigious group to go ahead with a new airplane. The board had also been asked to make some recommendations about the use of the space shuttle by the air force. The subcommittee that studied this issue was unanimous that the air force should not use the space shuttle to deploy its satellites in Earth orbit.This was a real blow to the space shuttle program, because it violated the principle on which the program had been approved during the Nixon administration. The original idea was that all space payloads would be launched by the shuttle, and that policy was now being challenged. Moreover, this recommendation came from a subcommittee chaired by John McLucas, a former secretary of the air force, who was one of the most highly regarded engineers and policy makers in

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Washington. This recommendation was a setback for what I had been trying to do, but it was not as important as the positive recommendation about the B-1. On July 26, there was a big meeting at the Pentagon with members of the Air Staff, the Secretariat, and the leadership of the Air Force Scientific Advisory Board. The senior people present were Bill Perry; Sy Zyberg; Gene Fubini, who was still Harold Brown and Bill Perry’s most influential adviser on this issue; Johnny Foster, from the Defense Science Board; Ivan Getting; Gen. Alton D. Slay from the Air Force Systems Command; Lt. Gen. Larry Skantze and Maj. Gen. Kelly Burke, who were members of the strategic systems unit in the Air Staff; Leonard Roberts from NASA–Ames, who had supervised all the wind tunnel testing on the B-1B aircraft configuration; a number of other people from Lew Allen’s staff from the Office of the Secretary of Defense; and a one-star general and a colonel from SAC in Omaha, who would represent the views of General Ellis. This meeting was restricted to people working for the government; no one from industry was present. The purpose of the meeting was to lay out the relevant issues so that everyone there would be familiar with the overall situation. Gene Fubini, who was very good at this kind of thing, acted as the moderator. What followed was a two-hour discussion of the technical and military issues relevant to long-range combat airplanes. Bill Perry outlined all the options fairly and even brilliantly. He finished by making an eloquent argument that a new strategic bomber was not necessary. We had cruise missiles that had been specifically designed for the bomb bay of a B-52, and using them that way was a better and less expensive option than developing a new aircraft. Bill added that Lockheed’s Skunk Works was ready to build a larger version of the F-117 that could be fielded before 1990 and would be much more effective than the B-1 at penetrating Soviet air space. A number of people chimed in to support Bill’s proposal, including the representatives from Harold Brown’s office. In the discussion that followed, most of the questions and comments concerned the stealth aircraft that Bill had proposed. Len Roberts raised an interesting point about a large airplane based on the faceted design of the F-117. He pointed out that a large airplane with a gross takeoff weight in excess of two hundred thousand pounds would have to have a flexible structure. Thus, the flat panels that constituted the fuselage and the wings would have to bend into curved segments. This effect could cause radar energy to be scattered in several different, unwanted directions, thereby compromising the stealth design of the airplane. Roberts conceded that this point was not as important as the low lift-to-drag ratio of the airplane, which would require many refueling maneuvers on a long trip. But the flexibility problem would make the design of the airplane difficult. Unsurprisingly, Ivan Getting spoke in favor of the proposal that the Air Force Scientific Advisory Board had developed. Ivan was not as good a speaker as Bill Perry, but he provided a good, solid description of the modifications that his com-

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Figure 9.5. The Rockwell B-1B bomber, which formally entered service in 1986.

mittee had proposed. During this speech, Ivan suggested that the modified B-1 be called the B-1B, and that the four existing aircraft be designated the B-1A models. Needless to say, these designations were not made public during the Carter administration, since official policy was that there would not be a B-1 aircraft. They would, however, be picked up by the next new administration. Following Ivan’s speech, Johnny Foster made a strong supporting statement that stressed the importance of having people on the aircraft. He thought there was only a very small probability that the new aircraft would ever be used for a mission with nuclear weapons. Therefore, it was important to look at the B-1B’s capability to carry out missions using conventional weapons. He cited the B-52 missions during the Vietnam War, with which he had been heavily involved as the director of defense research and engineering in the Johnson administration. Johnny told the group that the bombings of Haiphong and Hanoi by Guam-based B-52s in 1973 and 1974 were essential in bringing Pham Van Dong, Le Duan, and Le Duc Tho back to the negotiating table. Johnny thought that people on the spot—that is, pilots and other crew members—would be essential for missions involving conventional weapons, and he cited his own experiences during World War II, when he flew along on bombing missions as a civilian radar expert. It was an impressive and useful presentation. Finally, the people from SAC gave a short presentation on the stretched FB-111. Since no one else had picked up this idea, there was little discussion. The meeting fulfilled my expectations. Getting and Foster had the technical and military argu-

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ments in hand and therefore made a better impression than Perry. But then again, I was prejudiced. Since the meeting was not intended to produce a decision, we left things as they were. It became clearer to me at the end of July that I was approaching a confrontation on the B-1. On July 29, I met with Gene Fubini and Adm.Tom Hayward, the chief of naval operations, about vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) aircraft. I provided a short briefing on the status of the XV-15 tilt-rotor aircraft and the VTOL fighter program that we were initiating with the British to replace the AV-8B Harrier aircraft flown by the marine corps. Admiral Hayward was polite but clearly not very interested. After the meeting, Gene and I had a short conversation about the B-1. He told me that he did not want anything more to do with this issue, because as far as he was concerned, I was “off the reservation” on this matter. Then Gene made a very good suggestion: “Why don’t you write a letter to Bill Perry and lay out the entire bomber issue for him? He really needs to know all the details you have put together, but leave me out of it.” I thanked Gene for the suggestion and then went to work on it. It was a long and detailed letter that I gave to Bill Perry on July 30. I had to classify it “top secret” because of the stealth aircraft section. But this was just as well because the letter soon became a real bone of contention. After outlining all the technical arguments, I ended by saying that there was no need to choose between the B-1B and the “stealthy” airplane; the nation needed both to do a good job. We could field the B-1B in the 1980s. The stealthy bomber was technically more difficult. I thought that the Northrop flying-wing version was the better choice because of its long range and large payload capability. If we started on it now, the aircraft could be fielded in the mid-1990s. At the same time, I got into an argument with Harold Brown that was also a distraction. At the weekly Armed Forces Policy Council meeting on August 4, 1980, a Monday, Harold passed around a speech that he would be making at several meetings on the West Coast in the coming weeks. In essence, the message in the draft was as follows: “The United States should not try to gain military superiority. We should develop a well-thought-out mix of diplomatic, economic, and military programs that would lead to the achievement of our objectives.” Jack Stempler (the general counsel) and I immediately raised objections.We pointed out that if Harold delivered the speech as written, the Republicans would have a made-to-order issue for the election campaign.The secretary of defense has to be the principal advocate for military superiority—unapologetically. My own feeling was that Harold was right about what he was saying, but he was unaware of how it could be twisted. Even though I wasn’t sure it would do any good, I decided to try to help by advocating a strong strategic bomber program. In that way, Harold could follow Teddy Roosevelt’s “talk softly but carry a big stick” policy. At this point, I decided to visit the contractors for the aircraft to make certain that I knew what they were doing and that they would be able to fulfill their

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promises. On August 13, I arranged a trip to Rockwell in Los Angeles to discuss the B-1 and the space shuttle. When I was back in Washington, Bill Perry and I had lunch, at his request. The topic was Skunk Works and the stealthy aircraft. He wanted me to provide a more thorough study of the Skunk Works proposal and to support it. He told me that there was congressional interest in stealth bombers and that we need to prepare for hearings. He thanked me for the long letter and asked for my help with the congressional people. I told Bill that I would do what I could. But I noted that the election was less than three months away, and that there probably would not be a hearing before then. On Saturday, August 16, there was a special meeting with Harold Brown in his office because the following day he would appear on a popular Sunday talk show called Issues and Answers. The problem was what, if anything, he could say about stealth aircraft during the interview. The answer was clear: nothing, since the aircraft was classified. Harold agreed. I did not hear the program, because Bun and I went sailing. On Monday morning there was a note on my desk to attend a meeting at four in Bill Perry’s office. After a long day, I arrived a little late, and the meeting was already in progress. Among those present were two people who worked on declassification, which gave me a clue about the topic under discussion. Apparently Harold was satisfied with the outcome of the press interview the day before, and he was looking for ways to declassify the stealth aircraft program. I sat through the meeting without saying anything because the outcome was clear: the stealth program would be declassified. I was disturbed by this introduction of politics into the project, which could not help but would very likely hurt. It thus became even more important for me to visit the contractors so that I could learn about their plans and prospects. On Wednesday, I flew to Los Angeles in the evening. On the flight, I had a little time to think about the election. Jimmy Carter had been renominated at the Democratic National Convention a week earlier, along with Vice Pres. Walter Mondale. Thus, the opposing sides had been chosen, since Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush had been selected on July 17 by the Republicans. It was obvious that we would not reach a decision on either the MX or on the B-1 before the election, so I had to figure out how best to exert influence when I was out of office. I eventually fell asleep. When I woke up, I decided that I could not really plan anything until I had more information. I resolved to call Tom Reed when I returned to Washington to find out what he knew about the likely election outcome. I spent August 21 at the Northrop factory in Hawthorne, a community next to the Los Angeles airport. This was not my first visit to the Northrop facility. I had become very familiar with the corporation when Roy Jackson was named associate administrator of NASA for advanced research and technology in 1970. Roy came to NASA from the Northrop Corporation, where he had been a vice president. I was the director of NASA–Ames at the time, which meant that in the NASA chain of command, Roy was my immediate supervisor.

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Roy made periodic visits to Ames to review our programs. On one of these visits in 1973, he suggested that I accompany him on a visit to Northrop. The visit was a real eye-opener. The company had done very well, selling thousands of T-38 training aircraft and some F-5 fighter aircraft, which were based on the same airframe. Unfortunately, they had not been as successful with the Northrop F-22 Tigershark. I was involved in extensive discussions on technical issues during this visit. The most important and, to me, the most interesting concerned the revival of the flying-wing concept. The Northrop people in 1973 were optimistic that new developments in fly-by-wire technology and the work on composite materials would enable a revival of the flying wing. My visit on August 21, 1980, was almost a continuation of the one from seven years earlier. The same people were present, but this time Roy Jackson was back at his post as vice president. In addition, T.V. Jones, the Northrop board chairman and CEO, came by for a short time. Jones was in some legal trouble, so he had problems other than getting the government to support his bomber plans. The Northrop version of the stealth bomber was based on three technical features: • The aircraft would be based on a flying-wing design to reduce drag and extend range. • Low radar cross sections would be achieved by using fiber-reinforced composite materials in the primary structure of the airplane. In addition, the engines would be buried in the wing, and the configuration would be designed to reflect the majority of the radar energy away from the receiver. • The airplane would have a fly-by-wire system to augment the control system. There would be no vertical fins.

There was general agreement that these were reasonable, but what we were looking for were the “long poles in the tent”—that is, those items that would cause trouble. The clear consensus was that the highest risks involved the compositematerial structural elements.There was a huge database available for metal structures, but nothing comparable for composites. Roy Jackson and I had good connections at NASA, and we would use them to recruit the people at the NASA–Langley Research Center who were experts in composite materials. Equally important was that Northrop had test facilities and pilot-plant-type manufacturing capabilities, so we could perform the relevant experiments that might be required. Still not quite satisfied, I suggested that we carry an aluminum main spar for the wing in the budget as a backup until we were certain that the composite materials would work. This suggestion was accepted. Next, we discussed whether we could further reduce the radar cross section by designing an appropriate planform for the aircraft. We agreed that the effort should be made.

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I then went through the Hawthorne plant and looked at all the manufacturing facilities. I learned that the company did not have the capability to build the airplane in-house. This meant that we would have to arrange for contractors to supply the components and the subsystems that would be assembled in Hawthorne. Since this was common practice in the aeronautical industry, I was not particularly concerned. Northrop had a first-class engineering staff and excellent leadership. Back in my hotel, I turned on the news and learned that the stealth aircraft program had been declassified. Both Harold Brown and Bill Perry held press conferences and said that we had an airplane that was invisible to the fire-control radars of surface-to-air missiles. They discussed the F-117, which was being built, and then added that a larger airplane of this type was on the drawing board. This aircraft would replace the B-52 as our main strategic bomber. They both said that the B-1 would not be necessary, and that it had been the administration’s intent all along to “leapfrog” conventional technology and take advantage of new technical developments. They said that the new aircraft would be operational during the 1980s. So in essence we had a “Republican” bomber, the B-1B, and a “Democratic” bomber, which would have stealth capability. I was sorry to see matters reach this point. But something like this was probably inevitable in an election year. I resolved to stick with the program that I had suggested in my letter to Bill Perry: we should build the B-1B now and field it in the 1980s, and then build the Northrop stealth bomber and make it operational during the 1990s. The next day, I drove out to Burbank to visit Ben Rich at Skunk Works. Lockheed was a huge company with three major factories: Lockheed Georgia, near Atlanta, which concentrated on the development and construction of military transport aircraft; Lockheed California, which developed and built commercial transport aircraft as well as military airplanes; and the Lockheed Missiles and Space Corporation (LMSC), which produced ICBMs, large aircraft, and rockets powerful enough to put massive payloads into Earth orbit. Skunk Works was, and still is, a branch of Lockheed California (now Lockheed-Martin). Ben Rich, who had succeeded Kelly Johnson upon his retirement, was in charge of the work being done on the F-117 Nighthawk attack aircraft. Ben provided me with a thorough briefing. The plane was an expanded version of the F-117, as I expected, with a gross takeoff weight in excess of two hundred thousand pounds. Ben knew of all the technical arguments that I had made when opposing this idea. Therefore, he concentrated on the fact that he could produce a hundred-plus airplanes by the end of the 1980s. This was the major factor that made the Lockheed alternative attractive to the Carter administration. Ben then surprised me by showing me another configuration that was being considered. He pulled out a small model of a flying wing and started to talk about it. The Lockheed flying wing was smaller than the Northrop version. In addition, Lockheed did not believe that the aircraft would be laterally stable without vertical fins. He maintained that flaperons, which the Northrop aircraft featured, would not have enough control authority to make for stable flight. I asked Ben whether he

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thought that he could build the flying-wing version in quantity during the 1980s, and he said that all the company’s resources would be mobilized to help Skunk Works achieve that objective. With this, I thanked Ben and his people and left. Ben realized that he had not made a strong enough impression.When I returned to my hotel, there was a message from him. When I called back, he asked whether I could come back the next day to continue our discussion. The next day was a Saturday; I had some free time so I agreed to come. This time, Ben was not alone. Kelly Johnson, Willis Hawkins, and Ed Cortright (the head of Lockheed California) were present as well. Hawkins was a retired Lockheed vice president who still had great influence.The essential point that the Lockheed group tried to make was that Lockheed would commit the entire resources of the company to the development of a stealthy new long-range bomber. All these people were friends of mine, with whom I had many prior dealings, so I was surprised that they thought that I could be swayed by that kind of argument. The meeting eventually evolved into a more general discussion of the state of affairs in the country. We parted as friends. On August 26, I wrote a letter to Harold about the airplane problem. It was much shorter than the letter to Bill Perry, and less technical, but the message was the same. The two-bomber solution was the right answer to the problem. I did not use strong language—for I was anxious to maintain a reasonable relationship. The next day, I learned that Bill Perry and Harold Brown would have to testify under oath before the subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee chaired by Sam Stratton (D-NY). They would be asked who had made the decision to declassify the stealth aircraft program. The exchange was likely to get nasty. On August 29, I received a copy of the draft request for proposal (RFP) for the stealth aircraft. I rewrote parts of it because it was too heavily biased against the Lockheed version of the aircraft. From August 31 to September 8, I was on an extended trip to Europe (as described in the next chapter).When I returned to the Pentagon on September 8, the declassification of the stealth technology was still the first item on the agenda. On September 11 at about three in the afternoon, I was notified that I would have to appear on The MacNeil/​Lehrer Report news program that evening.The topic would be the press “leak” about the stealth aircraft program. The other people on the program would be Sen. Richard Lugar (R-IN), Richard V. Allen (foreign policy adviser to Governor Reagan), and Rep. Robert Carr (D-MI). I had little time to prepare, so my best strategy was to say as little as possible. Senator Lugar was the only real heavyweight on the panel. He made a short, succinct statement that the release of classified material to the press was very damaging and that it should not have happened. He spoke seriously and eloquently, which was very effective as well as partisan. Senator Lugar was very knowledgeable about the issue, and as a Republican, he favored building the B-1B, but he had an open mind about stealth technology. Richard Allen was important because he would very probably be President Reagan’s national security advisor. He was clever enough not to get involved in the

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controversy except to make a short and effective campaign statement that incidents of this kind would not occur under a Reagan administration. Congressman Carr supported the administration’s position that leapfrogging to a new technology was the right move.When it came my turn to speak, I simply supported Senator Lugar’s position that press leaks were not the way the public business should be conducted. My colleagues on the panel were all good at this kind of thing, which was something I had to learn. On Saturday, September 13, I had a long lunch meeting with Bill Schemmer, who was the editor of the Armed Forces Journal. Schemmer was a respected but aggressive journalist. He had broken the story in his magazine that we were working on a stealth bomber. He began the conversation by showing me a “top secret” document he had acquired, and then started to lecture me about the “leakiness” of the Pentagon. I cut him short: “Mr. Schemmer, by showing me this document, you have broken the law, and I will report this incident to the appropriate people.” “Dr. Mark, you are obviously not familiar with the law. I did not break the law; the person who gave it to me broke the law.” I apologized for not knowing the letter of the law and then said: “OK, but you, as a patriotic citizen, should not have accepted the document and accused the one who . . .” It was now Schemmer’s turn to cut me off: “Dr. Mark, you forgot the First Amendment to the Constitution!” I laughed and told Schemmer that he had won the argument. Schemmer then continued by asking me whether I believed what I had said about “press leaks” on The MacNeil/​Lehrer Report. I replied that I did, whereupon he said: “Then you must go and talk to your friend Bill Perry, because he was the one who told me about the new stealth technology.” So I had fallen into Schemmer’s trap. I told him that I did not believe what he told me and that I knew Bill well enough to know that he would never do such a thing. Schemmer shot back: “What did you say in your letter to Perry about the stealth matter?” So he knew, or at least guessed, about my letter. At this point, I decided to stop the conversation by simply saying, “No comment.” Schemmer continued to press me, so I told him that as far as I was concerned, the conversation was over and he could write whatever he pleased about me. I was both relieved and chagrined when Schemmer left my office, because I had been reduced to silence by a journalist who knew more about the ways of the world than I did. On the same day, I had a lunch appointment with Tom Reed. I was still a little bit shaken from the interview when I saw him. I asked Tom what he thought about the upcoming election, and he replied that it would be a landslide for Ronald Reagan. I was not so sure, but then I was not as expert as Tom about judging the political situation. We had a lengthy discussion about the MX and the bomber situations. Tom and I were in essential agreement on all the important strategic

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initiatives under consideration. I told him that I expected him to continue what we had started if Reagan won the election.Tom said that he would try, but warned me that he was not as close to Reagan as he had been in the past. For the remaining six weeks before the election, nothing more was said about the future of the strategic bomber force. The future of the US Air Force’s strategic weapons structure would be decided by the next administration.

Changes in Air Transportation My priority for air transportation was the only noncontroversial subject of my September 1979 speech. The plan comprised four programs: First was the development of a new transport aircraft to replace both the Lockheed C-5 Galaxy and C-141 Starlifter. Second was the expansion of our tanker capability by introducing a new tanker aircraft, the McDonnell Douglas KC-10. Third was the program to upgrade the Lockheed C-141 transport, and fourth was the effort to repair the wings of the C-5 fleet to extend the lifetime of the airplanes. All these projects had been initiated before my tenure as secretary. I pushed them along and helped raise the money to speed up the schedules. The Lockheed C-141 Starlifter Development and Upgrade:The First All-Jet Military Transport Military air transport has a long history. During World War II, air transport was vital for supplying China with military equipment—there was simply no other way to reach the country.The venerable Douglas DC-3 (C-47), the Douglas DC-4 (C-54), and the Curtiss-Wright C-46 were crucial to the success of that mission. The same aircraft were used to carry paratroopers during the invasion of France in June 1944. These aircraft deployed entire airborne divisions to support the troops landing on the beaches. The Douglas Aircraft Company was the dominant manufacturer of these airplanes. Following the end of World War II, the same airplanes made it possible to supply Berlin when the Soviets denied land access to the city. The advent of turbine engines after the war led to the development of a new generation of transport aircraft that took advantage of the higher thrust-to-weight ratio of jets compared to reciprocating engines. The first application of the turboprop engine was by Lockheed with the C-130 Hercules aircraft, which was (and still is) powered by four turboprop engines. The first flight of the C-130 was on August 23, 1954, and several hundred of these aircraft are still the mainstay of the air force’s tactical force. Douglas Aircraft continued to build transport aircraft; its C-124 Globemaster was powered by four large radial piston engines. Later on, some of these aircraft were modified to use turboprop engines. By the late 1950s, the air force had begun to plan for a large transport aircraft that would be powered by four turbojet engines. On March 13, 1961, Lockheed was awarded a contract to design such an aircraft, which was designated the

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C-141 Starlifter. Its initial flight occurred on December 17, 1963, and a total of 285 aircraft had been built by 1968. I was very familiar with this airplane because the Kuiper Airborne Observatory, described in chapter 6, used a highly modified C-141 aircraft. The principal problem with the C-141 was that the volume of the cargo space was small, meaning that the payload would often fill the space before the maximum weight capability was reached. In 1976, the air force developed a plan to “stretch” the airplane so that its volume capacity would accommodate its intended payload. I was briefed on this program on August 5, 1977, by Lloyd Mosemann, the civilian official in charge of logistics. Because of my familiarity with the C-141, I could appreciate what was being done to the airplane. Even though my major work had to do with satellite reconnaissance, I was interested in other air force programs in which I could, perhaps, provide some help. During Mosemann’s briefing, I was told that the program office was considering the addition of a refueling port on the airplane. I strongly supported this addition, and I helped add the necessary funding. The first stretched airplane flew on March 24, 1977. It was thirty-four feet longer than the original, now designated the C-141A. This modification increased the capability of the fleet by about one-third, or 90 aircraft. By 1982, 240 of the existing airplanes had been converted and designed C-141B. The remaining aircraft were converted to work with Special Forces units. The Upgrade of the C-5A Galaxy Two years after the beginning of the C-141 program, the air force initiated a study for a larger version of the airplane, which became the Lockheed C-5. In 1963, the air force published requirements for an aircraft that could carry a payload of 125,000 pounds and had a range of 8,000 miles. This meant that the airplane would a have a gross takeoff weight of about 750,000 pounds, larger than any airplane built so far. In June 1964, the air force issued a short-term study contract for preliminary designs to Lockheed, Boeing, and McDonnell Douglas. Lockheed was chosen in October 1965 to build the airplane. (The Boeing version of the design later became the Boeing 747 civilian transport.) The aircraft’s development history was troubled. The essential difficulty was that the final requirement specified a landing-field length of 7,500 feet. Given the size and weight of the airplane, this requirement could not be met. Lockheed requested relief by asking for about 1,000 feet to be added to the landing-field length. The project office refused the request, and Lockheed responded by taking weight from the primary structure of the airplane in order to meet the requirement. The decision not to relieve the requirement ended up causing real trouble. When I assumed office as secretary of the air force, a program was in progress to restore the wings of the 84 C-5 aircraft that had been built to the original design. The lifetime calculated for the wings of the C-5 was 30,000 hours. In my first few months in office, I heard several briefings that asserted that the lifetime of the

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wings had been reduced to about 5,000 hours by the weight-reduction effort that Lockheed had been forced to make. The technical problem that caused the wings to have shorter lifetimes was related to the way that Lockheed had to reduce the weight of the aircraft. Much of the weight of an airplane is in the wings, which have a dense structure compared to the fuselage. Thus, Lockheed had no choice but to take out most of the weight savings from the wings. Circular holes were cut in their ribs and spars, which reduced their weight—but at a price. Cutting away that much metal raised the area where small cracks could start. The growth of such cracks eventually caused the wings to fail, shortening their lifetimes. The error responsible for this problem was made in the very beginning. The Air Force Project Office should have waived the requirement for a 7,500-foot runway and let Lockheed build the aircraft as it was originally designed. We could have saved a great deal of money. I had no difficulty in persuading Bill Perry and Harold Brown that replacing the wings was an important project and that the money spent doing it would be small compared with the cost of building the rest of the C-5 fleet. My problem was in Congress. We had a request from Sen. William Proxmire (D-WI) to participate in a hearing on the program to replace the wings of the C-5 fleet. Proxmire was a member of the Appropriations Committee, which handles all budgetary matters. He had opposed the C-5 program in the beginning, and he now thought he had a good reason for holding up funding for the wing replacement program. But that was not all. The senator was something of a grandstander, and he was well known for his antagonism toward the military. The hearing was scheduled for September 15, 1980. I decided that our best strategy would be to present a comprehensive technical description of the problem. This involved making charts that gave a complete analysis of the wing of each airplane. We displayed measurements of the small fatigue cracks and then applied the “rogue flaw” theory to calculate the expected lifetime. This theory, developed by William Tiffany of Boeing, was the standard for estimating the lifetime of aircraft wings. My plan was to provide information to Senator Proxmire and his committee that would persuade them that replacing wings on the C-5 would be money well spent. We arrived at the hearing room at nine. I was accompanied by the members of the Air Staff who helped put the charts together. Senator Proxmire was the only senator present, and several staff members were with him. The senator began with a long speech, lasting perhaps half an hour, castigating Lockheed in many ways and also charging the air force with negligence. Finally, he turned to me, and I began my testimony. As I proceeded with my explanation, Senator Proxmire started displaying some exasperation, and he finally stopped me and asked, “What do you think of Lockheed’s performance on this program?”

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“I was not involved in the C-5 development, so I cannot comment on that. However, I have been involved in other Lockheed efforts, and I regard the company as a highly competent organization.” “Give me examples,” Senator Proxmire shot back, and I began to list a large number of such programs. Finally, the senator told me to continue with my testimony. I first said very politely that my job was to persuade the committee that we should go ahead with the program. To do that, I said, it was necessary to provide some technical background. Then I continued with the charts. After another ten minutes, Senator Proxmire stopped me again and asked about Lockheed, and I gave the same answer. When I returned to my charts, Senator Proxmire walked out and asked one of his staff members to continue the hearing. The young man took the chair, and I once again proceeded. Finally, Proxmire’s assistant thanked me for my testimony and announced that the hearing was over. We learned a few weeks later that the wing replacement program for the C-5 would be fully funded. Furthermore, during the Reagan administration, fifty more C-5s were built. All of these and the ones with the replaced wings were designated Lockheed C-5B transport aircraft. About 126 Lockheed C-5s of all types are still in service. The McDonnell Douglas C-17 Globemaster III Aircraft The one new development that occurred in my term of service was the initiation of the program to build a transport aircraft that would ultimately replace the C-141 and the C-5. On December 4, 1979, I went to the rollout ceremony for the first Lockheed C-141B—that is, the stretched version of the airplane. Gen. Robert E. (“Dutch”) Huyser, the commander of the Military Airlift Command, told me that he was initiating a program to develop a transport aircraft to replace both components of the current long-range transport fleet.This program was designated the C-17, and in the coming months I received numerous briefings on it. During my years at Ames, we had studied short takeoff and landing (STOL) airplanes and had built several experimental airplanes to test propulsive-lift concepts necessary for STOL performance. On one of my visits to Ames while secretary, I asked for an assessment of propulsive-lift technology and came to the conclusion that the technology could be applied to Dutch Huyser’s C-17. During several meetings with members of the Air Staff and the program office, I mentioned that we should consider the incorporation of STOL performance on the C-17. My argument was that if we were able to do this, then the new transport might also be able to land on short runways and take over some of the functions of the C-130. On October 3, 1980, there was a long meeting about the request for proposal for the C-17. I made main two points: first, we needed to get the proposal out quickly so that we could win the internal debate in the Pentagon; second, we had to incorporate STOL requirements in the RFP. Both of these suggestions were

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accepted, and the RFP for the airplane moved forward on October 7. I was really pleased that we were able to accomplish all this, because it meant that in due time, the air force would have a modern air transport system. Three proposals were received in 1981. By then, I was serving as the deputy administrator of NASA, but my successor as secretary of the air force, as well as a very good friend, Verne Orr, let me look at the proposals. The Boeing proposal (Boeing YC-14) picked up the idea of over-the-wing blowing, which had been developed at Ames with the de Havilland C-8B QSRA (Quiet Short-Haul Research Aircraft); needless to say, I was pleased to see this. The winning proposal was submitted by McDonnell Douglas, which became the C-17 Globemaster III. The STOL technology used on this airplane, called “externally blown flaps,” was first put on the Boeing 367–80, which was a prototype for the Boeing 707 civilian transport aircraft. Later, this airplane was used as an experimental aircraft. The propulsive-lift characteristics of externally blown flaps were tested at both Ames and NASA–Langley. The McDonnell Douglas C-17 flew for the first time on September 15, 1991, and it entered service in January 1995. There are now 223 in service. Every new administration tries to identify programs initiated by the previous administration. Part of this is simply good practice, in order to learn what has been done. Part is an effort to show that the previous administration did something really stupid. In the Clinton administration, the latter motive was directed at the C-17. Because of the decision to build fifty more Lockheed C-5B aircraft, there were delays in the C-17 program, which eventually led to cost increases. Some technical problems delayed things, too, but these alone were not enough to sink the program. Sometime in early 1993, Gen. Ronald Fogleman, the commander in chief of the US Military Transportation Command, asked me to come to Scott Air Force Base in Illinois to discuss the problems related to the completion of the C-17 program. The first flight had been conducted successfully in 1991, and initial operational capability was scheduled for 1995. By 1993, I was no longer chancellor of the UT System, nor was I involved in any aeronautical programs. But General Fogleman knew about the work we had done during the 1970s at NASA–Ames on STOL aircraft, which he mentioned during our telephone conversation. Fogleman had also asked the C-17 program manager, Brig. Gen. Ronald Kadish, to attend. I received a thorough briefing on the status of the program and the problems it was facing. In the discussion that followed, they asked me to write some op-ed pieces on the importance of air transport capability, and also a popular technical article that would help explain the new features of the C-17 and their importance. I complied, and an article on the C-17 was published in the March 1994 issue of Aerospace America. This article and my op-ed pieces were later used in congressional testimony regarding the program. The program was eventually continued, and operational capability was achieved during the Clinton administration.

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Figure 9.6 The McDonnell Douglas C-17 transport, which replaced the C-141 and the C-5. It has a gross takeoff weight of 585,000 pounds and an unrefueled range of 2,800 miles. The double slot in the externally blown flaps helps retard flow separation and diverts engine thrust to provide propulsive lift.

An amusing incident resulted from the publication of the article in Aerospace America. A few weeks after the issue appeared, the editor told me that the journal had received two dozen critical letters about the article, which, she felt, was unusual. She wanted to know whether I wanted to reply to my critics. I asked her to send me copies of the letters so that my response would answer the letter writers’ objections. As it turned out, every letter came from an active or retired staff member of Lockheed. Amused, I called the editor and told her that I would not be writing a response—doing so would only reopen the debate that had been settled when McDonnell Douglas was chosen to develop and construct the C-17. Air Force Tanker Aircraft Enhancements Before I arrived at the Pentagon, the air force had contracted with McDonnell Douglas to modify its commercial DC-10 aircraft, a large, wide-body jet transport, to an aerial tanker. The result was the KC-10. I had nothing to do with the development phase of this airplane, but I strongly supported its production. I was also fortunate enough to attend the rollout of the airplane. There are now fifty-nine KC-10s in service with the air force. Finally, the air force was also beginning to think about placing new engines on the Boeing KC-135 tanker fleet. This process is now complete.

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The First Moves to Establish a Space Command for the Air Force The organization of the American military changes constantly. There are new adversaries, new tactics, and new technology, and periodically the political leadership of the nation changes. One of the three priorities I listed in my speech to the Air Force Association in September 1979 was that in view of the military’s increasing dependence on space operations, it was important to “establish an appropriate organization to run all US Air Force space programs.” That was the first step that led to the organization of the US Air Force Space Command in June 1982. Almost the first visit I made immediately following my confirmation as under secretary was to the NORAD/​ADCOM headquarters in the old Chidlaw Building in Colorado Springs. This command had two separate functions: The Air (later Aerospace) Defense Command (ADCOM) operated hundreds of aging interceptor aircraft, mostly F-102 and F-106 types, which were designed to attack and shoot down Soviet bombers. NORAD, the North American Air (later Aerospace) Defense Command, operated the facilities that would warn of an attack and characterize the means by which the attack would be executed. The essential assumption was that the Soviet Union would be the aggressor. NORAD’s major facilities were ground-based radars, the Distant Early Warning Line (DEW Line) in northern Canada and the Pinetree Line across southern Canada, along with other large radar installations elsewhere. In addition, the air force operated satellites in Earth orbit that were designed to detect the signal produced by a rocket launch. NORAD was a joint US-Canadian unit with an American as commander and a Canadian as vice commander. The Proposed Reorganization of ADCOM/​NORAD In February 1978, the air force chief of staff, Gen. David C. Jones, announced a plan to reorganize ADCOM/​NORAD. He pointed out that the aircraft in ADCOM were old and no longer useful. A Soviet attack on the United States would most likely be carried out by nuclear-armed missiles, which the ADCOM aircraft could do nothing to stop. ADCOM would therefore be abolished and its aircraft assigned to the Tactical Air Command (TAC). They would eventually be sold or sent to the boneyard. Jones estimated that several billion dollars a year would be saved by this move. NORAD would be kept because of its vital function of warning of an attack. The specifically designed radars and satellites composing these systems could detect the approach of bomber aircraft or the launch of an ICBM. The management control of these systems would be turned over to the Strategic Air Command; NORAD would retain only “operational” control. I thought that this arrangement was unsatisfactory and confusing. In the air force, it was (and still is) customary under some circumstances for a command with management authority—the Tactical Air Command, for example—

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to assign airplanes to an “operational” commander.This person could be, for example, the commander of US Air Forces in Europe, who would then mount combat missions with aircraft obtained from TAC. In this case, there would be a clear distinction between management and operational functions. Here is another example: TAC, as part of its management duty, would write the requirements and specifications for the development of new air-superiority fighter aircraft and for air-to-ground attack aircraft. These requirements and specifications would be turned over to the Air Staff for approval and then assigned to the Air Force Systems Command (AFSC) for development. When the development was complete, the management control of the aircraft would be removed from AFSC and given back to TAC. Its management function would then be to maintain the aircraft’s combat readiness until they were assigned to an operational command. The procedure I have outlined works well when there are a large number of standardized units involved—that is, hundreds or even thousands of aircraft. The same is not true for the facilities of NORAD. The number of warning radars and satellites is relatively small compared with the number of aircraft. In my experience, no two satellites are exactly the same. Upgrades and improvements are always being incorporated. The same is true about large ground-based warning radars. Thus, clearly separating management and operational control in the case of satellites and warning radars was difficult to accomplish. During this same meeting, I pointed out these differences and said that I was very uncomfortable with the proposed arrangement. There was some discussion, but I was clearly in the minority. Looking back on it, I believe that I was drawing a technical distinction between aircraft and spacecraft that was not well understood by the people in the room. At the end of the meeting, General Jones told Secretary Stetson that he would be submitting this proposal to him shortly, and there the matter rested. On April 5, 1978, it was announced that General Jones would be named chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. I was very pleased that my friend had reached the top and that we would have the opportunity to work together again. Origin of the Idea of an Air Force Space Command On April 21, 1978, I visited ADCOM/​NORAD again to meet the commander in chief, Gen. James E. Hill, and his Canadian deputy, Lt. Gen. David Adamson.We had a long discussion about the reorganization of ADCOM/​NORAD as proposed by General Jones. Neither one of the generals had any problem with the dissolution of ADCOM and the reassignment and eventual disposal of the old airplanes. But both were worried about the proposed arrangement with respect to NORAD. As stated above, my principal concern was a technical one about the important differences between managing spacecraft or long-range warning radars and managing airplanes. Generals Hill and Adamson agreed with me that the management of the assets of NORAD should remain under its commander in chief. And they had another

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worry, which had to do with what they called the “slippery slope.” If SAC were given the management functions of NORAD, how long would it be before some new chief of staff said, “Move all of NORAD to SAC”? I had to admit that this was a real possibility. Hill then asked me to imagine what might happen in the event of an attack on the United States by the Soviet Union. Under the current arrangement, he said, “I would be the one who calls the president and tells him ‘They’re coming.’ The president then has to make the terrible decision and then call Dick Ellis at SAC and say, ‘Go ahead and launch’ or ‘Stand down’ or something in between.” On the other hand, if NORAD were transferred to SAC, then Dick Ellis would make one call and say, “They’re coming, Mr. President. What do you want me to do?” This meant that one man, the commander in chief of SAC, would be in a position to influence the president to make this fateful decision. The SAC commander was thus the only one to recommend to the president what decision he felt should be taken. Hill said that it was “absolutely imperative” that at least two four-star military field commanders knowledgeable about nuclear conflict should have the duty to advise the president during such an ultimate crisis. I found this argument compelling. On August 22, there was a NORAD/​ADCOM “Space Symposium” in Colorado Springs. Lt. Gen. Richard Henry, the commander of the Air Force’s Space and Missiles Organization in Los Angeles, was present with some of his people. General Hill, General Henry, and I had two long dinner meetings during the symposium. At one of these meetings, General Hill suggested that we consider broadening the function of NORAD and turning it into something that might be called the Air Force Space Command. He pointed out that the large ground-based radars used to detect incoming missiles were being steadily replaced by detectors aboard Earth-orbiting satellites, and that an increasing portion of the complex and secure communications used by the nation’s strategic forces was being performed by satellite links. Finally, General Hill told us that the idea for the Air Force Space Command had been floated some years earlier by Gen. Bernard A. Schriever. General Schriever was the leader of the air force’s effort to develop ICBMs. He had done a brilliant job in creating the Atlas, Thor, Titan, and Minuteman missile systems. Thus, there was the precedent of a highly respected air force leader suggesting the idea we were considering. All this made it easier for us to revive the idea of the Air Force Space Command and push it as best we could. We concluded our meeting by discussing what steps would have to be taken to create the organization. This meeting clarified my own thinking about the matter of a space command. I believed that the time had come to get things started. On September 6, 1978, I wrote a letter to Secretary Stetson reporting on my meeting with Generals Hill and Henry. I suggested to the secretary that the idea of establishing the Air Force Space Command should be seriously considered. I never received a reply.

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The Consolidated Space Operations Center At the same time, another space-related initiative was being considered. Ever since the military began to use orbiting spacecraft for communications, weather observations, and other purposes, there had been a proliferation of ground stations to control the satellite systems.When I arrived in the Pentagon in 1977, I heard much talk about the consolidation of satellite ground-control stations. These ideas were eventually distilled into a proposal that called for the establishment of the Consolidated Space Operations Center (CSOC). Once I had a chance to study the matter carefully, I thought that reducing the number of ground stations via consolidation was a good idea. As might be expected, the location of the proposed CSOC excited considerable interest among political leaders. I talked with Sen. Gary Hart about the development of a “space complex” in Colorado Springs on February 22, 1979. He wanted to know whether the proposed operations center could be part of such a complex, and I told him that I was advocating that plan within the air force. I said that other locations would have to be considered, and that as under secretary, I would probably not be a player in the final decision process. I knew that Senator Harrison ( Jack) Schmitt, an old friend and Apollo 17 astronaut, would push to locate the CSOC in New Mexico, and I told Hart to expect that. In addition, I said that a number of air bases in the Great Basin region and the Mountain West would be considered. Here, I should say a word about the concept of the “space complex.” It was clear to me that space activities related to national security would expand in the future. I thought that the development of space-based systems would require substantial intellectual horsepower. For this, the region around Denver and Colorado Springs was well suited. There was a substantial aerospace industry in the neighborhood: Martin-Denver, which produced the Titan rocket; Ball Brothers, which built some of the most sophisticated spacecraft at the time; and a division of Beechcraft Corporation, which had been an important NASA subcontractor during the Apollo program. Second, there were excellent institutions of higher education in the area, including the University of Colorado at Boulder and Colorado College in Colorado Springs. Most importantly, the US Air Force Academy was located in Colorado Springs. The combination of all these advantages, I thought, could not be matched by other locations being considered. Thus, I became a strong advocate for locating CSOC in Colorado. On February 8, 1979, there was a “Corona South” commanders’ conference at Homestead Air Force Base, in Florida. During a break, Gen. James E. Hill took me aside and told me about a reorganization being considered at SAMSO. The new MX program was going into high gear, and the Air Staff wanted a separate unit to manage it. The idea was to move the launch-vehicle program offices, currently at SAMSO, to a facility at Norton Air Force Base near Riverside. Both the Air Force

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Satellite Program offices and the NRO Satellite Program offices would be kept at the present SAMSO facility in Los Angeles. I caught the drift of General Hill’s comment immediately. The fraction of SAMSO that remained in Los Angeles could be renamed the Space Division of the Air Force Systems Command simply with a stroke of a pen by the secretary of the air force. General Hill’s point was that this move would “focus” space activities and would be acceptable to the senior air force leadership. We contacted General Henry at SAMSO, and he agreed that this was a good move. The problem was to get Secretary Stetson to use his “stroke of the pen.” On February 15, 1979, I met with General Allen and the new vice chief of staff, Gen. James A. Hill. They told me that Secretary Stetson had shown them my letter about establishing a space command. They told me that they did not think the time was right for such a step, and that there was strong opposition on the Air Staff to the proposed command. An amusing sidelight of this meeting had to do with the fact that the new vice chief had exactly the same name as the NORAD commander, except for the middle initial—A for the vice chief and E for the NORAD commander. It became something of a joke to call the vice chief the “greater” Hill because he thought he was very influential in the Pentagon, and the NORAD Hill the “lesser” Hill because he was in the field and not as well connected. As things turned out, both generals became good friends of mine. I had an active correspondence with each of them, and we saw each other on occasion after we all left the air force.

Secretary of the Air Force Once I became secretary of the air force, I had much more influence in guiding the organizational structure of the service. I spent many hours in discussions with Air Staff members to learn how to make organizational changes. I assumed office just as the question of NORAD’s place in the air force was being decided. On June 22, 1979, a long and eloquent letter from General Ellis arrived. It was a tightly argued, detailed argument advocating that NORAD eventually be folded into the Strategic Air Command. During a short civilian hiatus following his service in World War II, General Ellis had earned a law degree, and his letter demonstrated that he had retained his legal skills. He acknowledged General Hill’s point about having at least two senior air force officers involved in giving advice to the president if the Soviets launched a missile attack. Even though the operational part of NORAD would not be transferred to SAC, General Ellis promised to appoint a senior three-star officer as the SAC deputy commander in chief for indications and warning. This compromise was not good enough for me, but I did not know whether my view would prevail. It also confirmed the suspicion of Generals Hill and Adamson that a “slippery slope” might well lead to the end of NORAD as a separate command.

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The following day, I met with Generals Allen and Ellis to discuss the move of the management of NORAD to the Strategic Air Command. I explained my position to the generals, and we agreed to disagree. I realized that I would not be able to budge the senior generals of the air force on the matter of the space command. I would have to find other ways to point out that warning of a strike and the potential retaliating operation should not be in the hands of the same military commander. This was ultimately a political matter, and as secretary of the air force, I had a responsibility to speak out. I would probably have only eighteen months in office, so I had to move quickly. Shortly after being sworn in, I went to Los Angeles to announce the establishment of the Air Force Space Division. This was precisely the suggestion that General Hill had made a few months earlier at the Corona meeting. In a speech before the local chapter of the Air Force Association on August 3, 1979, I announced that the Air Force Space Division would be established as one of the major “product” divisions of the Air Force Systems Command (as General Hill also hinted at the Corona meeting). I pointed out that the opportunity to take this step had presented itself when the MX program went into high gear. It was decided to split SAMSO into two components: one to manage the MX Strategic Missile Program, which would be located at Norton Air Force Base near Riverside, and the other to manage the development of space systems. The new Space Division, to be located at the Los Angeles Air Force Station, would be the first major air force unit commanded by a three-star officer devoted exclusively to the development of space systems. The Space Division would be at the same level as the other “product” divisions in the AFSC, such as the Electronic Systems Division at Hanscom Air Force Base and the Aeronautical Systems Division at Wright Field. Now that I had the pen, I decided to use it. This was an important step, but the managerial and operation responsibilities for space systems were still divided between two major commands. Late in September 1979, I met with members of the Air Staff about the Consolidated Space Operations Center. They had developed a plan that called for closing a number of air force ground stations and consolidating them under one roof. A sticking point was what to do about the satellite ground stations of the NRO. Since I was still the NRO director, it was a legitimate question for me. I told them that the NRO facilities should be included in the CSOC and that I would do what I could to support such a move. I added that Colorado Springs would be the right location for the CSOC. On October 10, I visited Gary Hart in his Senate office. We had a long, wide-ranging discussion about a number of issues. He told me that he would have a rough time getting reelected in 1980. At that time, Colorado was a Republican state, so I could understand his concerns. I outlined the air force’s plans for the CSOC and my recommendation to place it near the current NORAD Headquarters in Colorado Springs. Since Hart was chairman of the Military Construction

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Subcommittee of the Senate Appropriations Committee, one way or another he would play an important part in the effort to get the CSOC built in Colorado. I also had to work the Air Force Space Command into the mix somehow. Senator Hart had a clear self-interest in locating the CSOC in Colorado, but I had not had time to find out what he thought about the Space Command. On October 27, I met with the Air Force Staff Board, twenty-five to thirty two-star officers who were responsible for defining the issues to be debated by the members of the Air Force Staff Council. The council was composed of the three-star deputy air force chiefs of staff. I was pleasantly surprised that the council had agreed to locate the CSOC in Colorado Springs. We would still have to go through a selection process in order to eliminate other possible sites. (Kirtland Air Force Base in New Mexico and Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana were the other two under consideration.) But an endorsement of Colorado Springs by the Air Force Staff Council and, hopefully, the Air Force Staff Board would be an important step forward. On December 31, Gen. James E. Hill retired from the air force. He had decided to remain in Colorado Springs, and he would continue to be active in affairs related to the civil and military space programs. He was replaced by Lt. Gen. James V. “Grrr” Hartinger, who was at the retirement ceremony. I liked him immediately, and we had a long and wide-ranging discussion about the ADCOM/​NORAD reorganization and the development of the Space Command. He told me that he had read my speech to the Air Force Association meeting in September and agreed that we should “develop a doctrine and an organization that will permit greatly increased air force activities in space.” It was a very good first meeting, and General Hartinger would become an important advocate for the Space Command. In the early months of 1980, I started to develop a close relationship with Larry Smith, a senior member of Senator Hart’s staff. Smith was very well connected, having served as a senior staff member in Congress for a number of years. We had several long conversations. I learned that Senator Hart nursed the ambition to be president someday. Given what I knew about Hart, I thought that this was not unreasonable. We also talked about the 1980 elections. Larry thought that Hart would have a tough reelection campaign. Finally, we had a long discussion about activities in space, both civilian and military. Since Senator Hart was a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Larry had all the necessary clearances. Thus, I could describe the entire picture to him, including the NRO. I outlined the plans for developing the Space Command. I told him about the creation of the Air Force Space Division, and we discussed similar steps that might be taken before the Space Command could be established. In March, I visited the Air Force Space Division twice for detailed talks with Lt. Gen. Dick Henry and Maj. Gen. John Kulpa. General Kulpa was General Henry’s deputy, but his job was to run the secret units that managed the air force’s NRO

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satellites. The conversations were in part about the relationship between the NRO and the air force, and also about the development of the Space Command. In October, I met with Larry Smith at his home in Washington. There were two urgent topics of discussion. First, the polls in Colorado showed that Senator Hart would probably lose reelection. Larry asked me whether I would come to Colorado and campaign for Senator Hart. He said that even though I was a member of a Democratic administration, I had great credibility with Republicans on national security matters because of my association with Edward Teller and nuclear weapons. I told Larry that I could not campaign for anyone; my boss, Harold Brown, had asked senior officials of the Defense Department not to participate in partisan politics. On the second topic, securing the CSOC for Colorado, I told Larry that the people in Colorado would have to provide the necessary real estate at no cost to the government. I pointed out that the New Mexico site would be at Kirtland AFB and the Montana site at Malmstrom AFB, and that both of these were on federal land. If Colorado wanted to have a chance, it would have to donate the land. Then Larry put the matter in the clearest possible terms: “If Senator Hart is reelected, he will have the influence to get the land; if not, then the CSOC will not be in Colorado.” I agonized for several days over whether to go to Colorado. On the one hand, if I refused, we could lose the best location for the CSOC. But if I went, I would be disobeying a direct request of the secretary of defense, who was also an old friend. This quandary was not like my disagreements with Harold over airplanes, because these were essentially technical. Whether to campaign for Senator Hart was strictly a political matter, and Harold was in charge of politics. On October 31, I finally decided to go to Colorado. I could not make myself feel good about the decision. On November 1, I wrote some notes for speeches that I would give in Colorado, and then I flew to Denver the next day—two days before the election—with Larry Smith. I delivered two speeches, one in Denver and the other in Colorado Springs. In both speeches, I talked about the importance of Colorado to the air force as the home of ADCOM/​NORAD and the Air Force Academy. I discussed the growth of space operations and their importance for our military position. I mentioned the possibility of locating the CSOC in Colorado and the eventual creation of a new command to have overall responsibility for space operations. I told the audiences— a couple of hundred leading local people in each location—that Gary Hart was thoroughly familiar with all this and that if he were reelected, he would be the key person to make all of these things happen. The speech in Denver went well and was followed by some good questions. When I delivered the same speech at the Broadmoor Hotel in Colorado Springs, the environment was more animated. There were some supporters of Gary Hart’s Republican opponent, the Colorado secretary of state Mary Buchanan, in the audience. When I mentioned Gary Hart’s name in my speech, there was some

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hooting. I made it crystal clear that the air force’s ability to locate the CSOC in Colorado depended on Hart’s presence in the Senate. After the speech, I had to field a number of hostile questions, but the meeting ended in good spirits. On November 3, I spent the day with General Hartinger at the Chidlaw Building, discussing the future of ADCOM/​NORAD and the CSOC. We agreed that the first priority would be to locate the CSOC in Colorado and then work to create the Air Force Space Command, which would take the place of ADCOM. I flew back to Washington on a T-39, contrary to my standard practice of flying commercial. November 4 was Election Day, and I had to make certain that I could get home to vote. Even though it had been a long campaign, I still had not made up my mind which candidate to vote for. I have never voted a straight ticket, and I usually wait to make up my mind until just before Election Day. This year would be no different.

10 Other Duties as Assigned and the Election of Ronald Reagan

In the job descriptions of many high-level positions in the military, the phrase “other duties as assigned” sometimes appears. Generally, this refers to unspecified functions that the person is to perform in the course of the job, or to “surprises” that he or she is expected to handle. This chapter compiles a series of such duties or circumstances that I handled during the Carter administration; they were important—in themselves and in their relation to the Cold War—but not necessarily in the mainstream of air force activities. Some are purely personal, and others are of scientific or technical interest. What they all have in common is that I was involved in one way or another.

My Brother, Peter There are tragedies in life from which you never really recover. Mine is the death of my brother, Peter, on September 26, 1979, following a short and gallant fight against virulent lymphoma. He was forty-eight years old. Peter Herman Mark was born on April 8, 1931, in Mannheim, Germany. My first memories of Peter go back to 1935, when we were living in Vienna, having left Germany when Adolf Hitler assumed power in 1933. Our apartment house (22 Strohgasse) was a few blocks from the Ring, the boulevard that enclosed the “inner city” of Vienna.We attended a school on the Reissnerstrasse, which was also within easy walking distance. Our father, Prof. Herman F. Mark, was the director of the Chemical Institute at the University of Vienna, and our mother was well known in Viennese society.

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Peter and I were experienced street urchins by 1938, when I was nine years old and Peter was seven. There were so many things to do in our neighborhood. One of our favorite expeditions after school was to walk to the Ring and look at the automobile agencies that were concentrated in that part of the city. Both of us were fascinated by automobiles. We would press our noses to the large glass panes that separated the cars in the salesrooms from the sidewalk. We were very interested in the American cars because our father had just acquired a fine blue eight-cylinder Hudson sedan; we felt we were in the same class as the people inside the store. But we were even more interested in the German agency because it showed racing cars as well as the new Volkswagen—the “people’s car”—which we had heard about. This automobile was the brainchild of a brilliant automotive engineer, Ferdinand Porsche. He had built a small factory and started to develop the Volkswagen. He was the leader of the second generation of German automobile manufacturers, following Carl Benz and Gottfried Daimler, the originators of the automobile. At some point in 1936, Hitler heard about Porsche and what he was doing—and that Porsche was in financial trouble. Hitler realized that Porsche’s activities might have political value. If Porsche developed a “people’s car,” Hitler could exploit the achievement for his own purposes. Hitler eventually supported Porsche with money allocated to the Kraft durch Freude (Power through Joy) organization. On March 12, 1938, German troops occupied Austria, which put up no resistance. My brother and I were vaguely aware of what was going on.What we noticed almost immediately were the new flags in our school. Next, pictures of Hitler were plastered everywhere, and it was crystal clear that he would be our next leader. It was announced that Hitler would visit Vienna on March 20. We wanted to catch a glimpse of him, so we prepared an expedition to the Hotel Imperial. It was on the corner of the Ring and a large plaza called the Schwarzenberg Platz. Getting there should have been a twenty-minute walk, but it took us more than an hour. Peter and I maneuvered our way through the crowd to get close to the entrance of the hotel, where two rope lines bordered the carpet. We were about five feet from the rope when Hitler and some of his associates walked by. There was a deafening cheer as they were recognized. About ten minutes after entering the hotel, Hitler appeared with several other people on the small balcony over the entrance. There was another loud cheer, and he raised his right arm in response. We learned that this was the new Hitler salute that everyone would soon have to use. When the cheering died away, Hitler started to speak. I had heard him on radio broadcasts, and I expected to hear a loud, rasping voice that would end in almost a scream. Nothing like that happened. Hitler was quite relaxed and seemingly normal. Peter and I were astounded when he started to talk about automobiles. He asserted that in a few years every German citizen would be driving an automobile. He told us that the car would be the property

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of the owner. In 1938, this promise seemed unbelievable to us, since much of the commerce in the streets of Vienna was still conducted in horse-drawn carriages. Neither Peter nor I understood politics, but we understood automobiles, and we thought that what Hitler said was far-fetched. Walking home afterward, we agreed that we should try to learn more about the automobile business. Things quickly turned serious. Nazi thugs began to break store windows, harass and beat people with clubs, and kill them. Peter and I saw several such incidents. A day or two later, things got much worse. When we came home from school, my mother told us that our father had to go on a trip and that Peter and I were not to leave the house without her permission. We were brought up short by all this, and for the first time we realized that something was seriously wrong. (In chapter 1, I describe my father’s arrest, the circumstances of his release, and our subsequent escape.) When we arrived in New York, in 1941, I was twelve and Peter was ten. Until then, the difference in our ages was important enough that I regarded Peter as someone who simply followed me around. In New York, I realized that Peter was another member of the family, not just an appendage. We both went to PS 92, and we joined the battalion of the Junior Bluejackets together. In addition, we both ultimately attended Stuyvesant High School. Peter followed in my footsteps. He reached the rank of petty officer first class in the Bluejackets, but instead of being assigned to another battalion, as I was, he stayed with Battalion 11 as a senior member of the command staff. At Stuyvesant, both of us became president of Arista, which was the school’s honor society, I in 1947 and Peter in 1949, our graduation years. As we grew older, we began to differentiate. Peter developed an easy charm that I could never manage. He was much more popular with the young ladies at PS 92 than I was, and he was also closer to our parents. He was especially attached to our mother and would help around the house voluntarily, while I always had to be told to do this or that. Finally, he had a truly great sense of humor. There were also activities that we shared. In 1943, my father decided to give us a really expensive joint birthday present—our birthdays were a little more than two months apart—and he called us to his study. He told us that we had a choice between an Encyclopaedia Britannica and an old sailboat he had discovered. It took us a microsecond to make up our minds, and we simultaneously chimed, “The sailboat!” It was a seventeen-foot Snipe class, and we named it Polymer. This led to a lifelong passion for sailing that we shared. Very unfortunately, we sailed together on only one ocean cruise. This was a very enjoyable trip in a thirty-foot sailboat in 1969 from Fort Lauderdale, Florida, to the Bahamas. We also liked to play tennis and go on lengthy bicycle trips. There was, of course, the usual sibling rivalry for attention, but it was not a dominant feature of our relationship. As I have already stated, my most serious problem with Peter was that he was much more attractive to the young ladies than I was!

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The different paths we would follow became much more apparent when I left home to go to California. Two years after I matriculated at the University of California, Berkeley, Peter was admitted to Harvard University. What we had in common was our study of physics, an area where Peter was the better scholar. He thrived at Harvard. His years as an undergraduate (1949–53) marked the beginning of his love for Ivy League universities. After graduating from Harvard, Peter went to Yale University to earn his master’s degree in physics in 1954. In addition to Peter’s affinity for Ivy League universities, which was genuine, he stayed in the East out of concern for our parents; both Harvard and Yale are only a few hours’ drive from New York City. In this respect, Peter and I differed substantially. I wanted to get as far away from home as I could, and having seen California in 1941, I yearned to live there. In addition, I followed and studied the development of nuclear weapons, and as mentioned in an earlier chapter, I wanted to join the people who worked in that field in California. Peter earned his PhD at New York University in 1958. He moved to New York from Yale because he had a particular interest in the research of NYU professor Hartmut Kallmann, who would be his thesis adviser. Another factor was that Peter wanted to be even closer to home than he had been at Harvard and Yale. While he was in graduate school, Peter met Catherine Delia Henderson, who was a student in the School of Nursing at Columbia University. Delia, as she liked to be called, was a member of an old, distinguished Virginia family. The family plantation, Bellevue, was in the small village of Forest, about fifteen miles west of Lynchburg. It was a beautiful place with a fine manor house surrounded by about 150 acres of rolling pasture. Its historical significance was attested to by the fact that even the century-old slave quarters had been preserved. The Blue Ridge Mountains were about fifteen miles farther to the west, with the Peaks of Otter, the highest point in the mountain range, always in sight. Two Henderson sisters lived in the house, Jane and Frances. Jane, the oldest, had been a schoolteacher. She was a fount of historical knowledge. On one visit, Aunt Jane took me aside and showed me a letter dated 1867 from Robert E. Lee, then president of Washington College in Lexington. In it, he thanked one of Aunt Jane’s ancestors for giving fifty dollars to the college. Aunt Frances was married to Louis Houff (Uncle Louie), who had a very prosperous mail-order food-basket business, The Virginia Gentleman. He provided the money to keep the estate going. There was a third sister,Virginia Henderson, who was a distinguished professor of nursing at Yale University. She had written a major textbook on nursing (Principles and Practice of Nursing, 6th ed., 1978), and she had a worldwide reputation in the field. Finally, there was also a brother, Daniel Brosius Henderson, Delia’s father, who had died some years earlier. Delia and Peter were married on December 17, 1958, at Bellevue. They had one daughter, Catherine, born November 9, 1959, who attended Wellesley College and the Yale University School of Nursing. She married

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Charles Burdge, and they have two children. Catherine is now the manager of an outpatient-procedure center in Fairfield, Connecticut. Following the completion of his doctoral dissertation, Peter spent four years (1958–62) working at the Polaroid Corporation in Boston with the company’s CEO, Edwin Land, a renowned expert on optics and photography. After leaving Polaroid, Peter held several fellowships, the most important at the Max Planck Institute for Physics in Munich, Germany. There he continued his work done at NYU. In 1966, Peter moved to Princeton as an associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science, as well as a senior consultant and staff member at the RCA Research Laboratory (now the Sarnoff Laboratory), also located in Princeton. In 1972, Peter was promoted to the rank of professor. By then he had achieved considerable recognition for his research and also for the book Current Injection in Solids (1970), which he coauthored with his colleague Murray Lampert. The book was one of the first comprehensive treatments of the quantum mechanics of surfaces and the application of that field to the manufacture of electronic components. Peter was a highly regarded professor at the third Ivy League school with which he was associated. He was on his way to a truly brilliant academic career in a field that would grow by leaps and bounds. Peter told me after his promotion in 1972: “Now I am in the catbird seat!” He had achieved his goal of holding an important academic position at an Ivy League university at the early age of forty-one. I was not as committed to an academic career as Peter, and I left my professor’s post at Berkeley in 1969 to join NASA. This, in turn, led to more than seven years in Washington, first in the Pentagon with the air force and then at NASA Headquarters. In February 1979, I was under secretary of the air force, and on February 20, 1979, I received a telephone call from Peter very early in the morning. Peter told me that a spot on his lung had been diagnosed as a malignant tumor. Furthermore, doctors suspected that this tumor was not the primary one but a metastasis from an as yet undetected cancer. I asked what he intended to do, and his answer was simple: “I will continue what I am doing now as long as the Good Lord lets me do so!” I had no answer to that, and after a pleasantry or two, I hung up the telephone. Peter was as good as his word. He continued to teach his courses and work with his graduate students. He also continued to travel with his very busy consulting practice. Peter was a member of the board of directors of the International Rectifier Corporation in California. A couple of weeks after calling me, Peter flew to California to attend a meeting of the IRC board. When he returned from California, he suffered a seizure; it was clear that he could no longer drive a car. From then on, Delia drove him back and forth to work. April 8, 1979, was Peter’s forty-eighth birthday. Delia invited us to attend the party, so Bun and I drove to Princeton. I was shocked by Peter’s appearance. His

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Figure 10.1. Peter Mark, my younger brother, in his laboratory at Princeton University, some months before his death in 1979. He had just been awarded the Humboldt Prize, which is given to internationally renowned scientists and scholars.

hair had turned white, and he was frail and gaunt. But when he saw me walk into the living room, he slowly got out of his chair and told me his latest joke.The party, with about twenty people, was very successful. In spite of his appearance, Peter was an upbeat and charming host. It must have taken a great deal of courage to go through with the party, and my admiration for Peter knew no bounds. On May 30, Delia called me to say that Peter’s cancer had spread to his brain. She was worried that Peter would not last much longer, and she urged us to visit as soon as possible. A few weeks later, on June 17, there was a birthday party for me in the apartment of Sheldon and Helen Atlas in New York City. Bun and I went through Princeton on the drive from Washington to New York and visited Peter and Delia for dinner. Once again, I could only marvel at Peter’s courage and staying power. During the visit, it was impossible to think that Peter suffered from a life-threatening disease. As we went out the door, Delia told us that Peter had had some convulsions a few days prior and urged us to visit again soon. I agreed because I was afraid that we would never see Peter alive again. The next two months were very hectic in Washington. There was the “mass resignation” of cabinet officers, as I described elsewhere. After confirmation hearings, I was finally sworn in as secretary of the air force on July 26. Because of all this, I

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was not able to visit Peter until July 29. There was not much change, but I decided to visit more often. Two weeks later, Bun and I drove to Princeton, and this time there was a major change. Peter was bedridden and could no longer speak. His aphasia was caused by the spread of the tumor in the brain. In spite of this, he still communicated with a pad of paper and a pencil. It was really terrible to see this. The last time I saw Peter alive was on August 25, 1979. An Austrian friend, Fritz Gleissner, and his wife, Lilli, were also visiting, and we spent an hour with him. It was very hard for me to see Peter struggling to make conversation, and our Austrian friend did his best to communicate with Peter. We had lunch with Delia afterward, and all of us wept bitter tears. I drove back to Washington depressed and concerned about what would probably soon happen. One of the important functions of the secretary of the air force is to make trips to visit US airbases around the world. I had arranged to spend the end of September and early October on a weeklong trip to the Far East to look at our bases in the Pacific, first in Hawaii and then in allied nations.The trip was scheduled to start on September 25, and I had arranged for our airplane to stop at Castle Air Force Base in central California. It was a Strategic Air Command base, and I wanted to have a look at the Boeing B-52 bombers and KC-135 tanker aircraft. I was given a suite in the Distinguished Visitors Quarters for the night. There was a telephone call at 6:50 in the morning informing me that Peter had died. I had to get back to New Jersey as soon as possible. As it happened, a KC-135 was scheduled to leave Castle AFB shortly for Andrews AFB near Washington. I called the wing commander, explained the circumstances, and asked whether I could hitch a ride. He assented. But not only that: he promised that there would be an air force car available for me to drive to Princeton after we arrived.We left on time, refueled a B-52 on the way, and landed at Andrews at about eight in the evening. I drove to Princeton without changing my flight suit, arriving two hours later. The next day, September 27, I did what I could to help Delia. We cried a lot, shared stories, and reminisced about Peter. Later that day, I helped her select a coffin, which was a very hard thing to do, and I struggled mightily to avoid breaking down completely. Peter’s daughter, Catherine, flew in from Boston; she was a nineteen-year-old student at Wellesley College, just west of the city. She was a great help because she distracted us from concentrating on Peter. In the afternoon, many of Delia’s friends came to visit, so their company, along with Catherine’s presence, reassured me that she would be all right. I drove to Kennedy Airport in New York to pick up the Geheimrat, and then we spent the night at Sheldon’s apartment in Manhattan. I was still wearing my flight suit. September 28 was Bun’s forty-ninth birthday. I drove to Washington, turned in the car, and took a taxi to Alexandria. We had a small personal party, which we thought would be appropriate, given the circumstances.

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The next day was the hardest day of my life. My father (the Geheimrat), Bun, and I were driven from the Pentagon to Lynchburg in a government limousine. We arrived at Bellevue at about eleven. Peter’s closed coffin was in the large hall surrounded by about twenty family members and friends.We joined the group, and when the time came to remove him to the church, my father walked over to the coffin and placed his hand on top of it. It was as if he were reaching out to say his last good-bye. The funeral service was held at St. Stephen’s Church in Forest, Virginia, close to the Bellevue estate.When we arrived, Aunt Jane took the Geheimrat, Bun, and me for a walk through the cemetery. She showed us the graves of her ancestors, which went back to the late 1830s. It was as if she were introducing us to her family to assure us that Peter would be in good company. Peter’s funeral was one long torture. The Reverend Charles Newberry, who was a good friend of Peter’s, conducted the very good but very painful service: “Ashes to ashes and dust to dust.We brought nothing into this world and certainly we take nothing out.” Then we went to the grave site and watched the commitment.There was a small gravestone inscribed “Peter Mark (1930–1979). He Loved Life.” At the end of the burial, the Geheimrat and I looked at each other, embraced, and wept. Following the funeral, there was a reception at Bellevue. It took about an hour for us to return to more or less normal behavior. Behavior was one thing, but feelings were quite another. My father and I never completely recovered from this terrible episode. May Peter rest in peace with the Lord.

The Global Positioning Satellite System One of the most far-reaching technical developments in the second half of the twentieth century was the development of the Global Positioning System (GPS). It is amusing that the idea of global-positioning satellites was first broached by Edward Everett Hale, whose story “The Brick Moon” was published in the Atlantic Monthly magazine in 1869. It tells of a group of New England friends who decide to build an Earth-orbiting satellite. They were concerned about ships being lost off Nantucket and other places along the coast, because navigation at the time was not very accurate. They thought that an “artificial star” with a fixed orbit would aid navigation and reduce these losses. Hale wrote the story with his tongue firmly in his check, because in the late nineteenth century there was no way that an Earth-orbiting satellite could be built. The story is imaginative and a little bizarre. But Hale recognized the relationship between an artificial Earth-orbiting satellite and accurate navigation. It took about a century to create the technology to place satellites in Earth orbit. The first engineering study that provided quantitative statements about how to accomplish this objective (“Preliminary Design of an Experimental WorldCircling Spaceship”) was published in May 1946 by a group working for the Douglas Aircraft Company. It took another eleven years to make what the authors of the

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Douglas Company report had in mind a reality. The Soviets launched Sputnik in October 1957, which was followed by the American Explorer I in January 1958. On the other hand, it did not take long for the US Navy to pick up on the idea of navigation satellites. The technology depends on two factors: accurate knowledge of the orbital parameters, and accurate knowledge of the time that the satellite occupies a given place in the orbit. A single satellite can be an aid to navigation by conventional means, but it takes a constellation of satellites to locate position on the ground precisely. During World War II, a ground-based navigation system using radio beams, called LORAN (long-range navigation), was developed. It consisted of a series of transmitters around the world and the appropriate receivers on shipboard.With this system, a ship could determine its position to within about ten miles at most places on the globe. However, loran had some serious drawbacks. It was vulnerable to shutdown because of disturbances in the upper atmosphere from solar activity and local weather conditions. The navy’s first satellite navigation system was conceived by two scientists at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, William H. Guier and George C. Weiffenbach. They developed a satellite system called TRANSIT. It works on the Doppler principle: when the satellite is approaching, the frequency (of whatever kind of wave is being emitted—radio waves, sound waves, microwaves, and so on) is higher; when it is directly overhead, the frequency is exactly what is transmitted by the satellite; and when the satellite recedes, the frequency is lower.The position of the receiver on the ground can be exactly determined when the Doppler shift is zero. Interestingly, Guier and Weiffenbach developed this technique while “listening” to the microwave signals that Sputnik emitted as it orbited. TRANSIT was declared operational in 1964, and it could provide the ground position of a good receiver to within several hundred meters. Five TRANSIT satellites were deployed in polar orbits. They were useful, but they could not provide continuous position coverage. Two people were primarily responsible for the development of the follow-up to TRANSIT. One was Ivan Getting, a distinguished MIT faculty member who later served for many years as the president of the Aerospace Corporation at the Los Angeles Air Force Station. The other was an air force officer who had earned a PhD at Stanford University, Col. Bradford Parkinson. Both felt that the ultimate satellite system would be a constellation of satellites that would provide sustained and worldwide coverage. They also judged that the technology to do that was already available. The essential idea of the system—NAVSTAR, as it was first named—was to place a constellation of satellites in an Earth orbit high enough that the effects of the drag on the satellite caused by the atmosphere could be neglected. In addition, the orbit had to be high enough that an inordinately large number of satellites would not be needed to provide worldwide coverage. The altitude that was eventually chosen to meet these requirements was approximately 12,551 miles above

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Earth’s surface. At this altitude, twenty-four satellites deployed in roughly circular orbits can meet the requirements. What was necessary to achieve great location accuracy was to place the satellite in an orbit with sufficiently stable parameters (altitude, inclination, precession, and other smaller factors that depend on relativistic effects). In addition to an accurately determined and stable orbit, it was necessary to have very accurate “clocks” so that the exact position of the satellite in the orbit could be known. I put “clocks” in quotation marks to indicate that these were not common clocks, but atomic clocks that use the frequency of an atomic transition to obtain an extremely stable time signal. There are atomic clocks that use atoms of hydrogen, cesium, rubidium, and many other elements. The problem here was to make an atomic clock that was small enough and light enough to put on board a satellite. Finally, the cesium and rubidium clocks were found to be the best. Each satellite has several redundant clocks, so a voting system is necessary to get the best accuracy. I have provided this short description of GPS so that people can make judgments about the complexity of the system and the difficulties that had to be overcome in order to deploy it.The first NAVSTAR satellite, which was the proofof-concept vehicle, was placed in orbit on February 22, 1978. I met Colonel Parkinson on April 14, 1979, at a briefing session concerning the air force’s space satellite programs. One of the subjects was the NAVSTAR system, now named the Global Positioning System. By then, the program was well under way. Parkinson explained the serious technical problems that had been encountered with the clocks on board the satellite. In the following days, I made it my business to learn more about GPS. I was especially intrigued by Parkinson’s point that if position accuracy of the order of one meter or less was to be achieved, then calculations of the satellite orbits would have to take into account effects predicted by Einstein’s general theory of relativity. To get a better feeling for the subject, I went to see Carroll Alley of the University of Maryland, an expert on the subject. He explained to me how the calculations were made, and it quickly became obvious that the relativistic effects were real and important. It was fun for me to talk about a theoretical physics problem that was related to my day job. On August 23, 1979, there was a meeting of the AFSARC (Air Force Systems Acquisition Review Council), which approves all major acquisition programs. The chairman of this committee was Jack Martin, the assistant secretary of the air force for research and development. I decided to attend the AFSARC meeting because I had come to the conclusion that GPS would be very important for future combat situations if accuracy to within one meter could be achieved. Such a system could be used for the accurate targeting of guided weapons as well as for navigation. To my disappointment, Colonel Parkinson retired from the air force. But I need not have worried; he was replaced by Col. Bernard Randolph. Randy, as we called him, was articulate and bright, and well versed in the technology.

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The most worrisome news from the meeting was that the Air Staff people were concerned about the cost increases caused by the clock problem. Some very senior generals wanted to cancel the program entirely. Others argued that we should continue to work on GPS, but persuade the potential users (i.e., the army and navy) to pay for part of the future development. It was clear that I would eventually have to decide whether the air force would continue its sponsorship if we could not convince the other military services to contribute. We made inquiries of the army and navy leadership, and they were, as expected, not interested. When I informed members of the Air Staff that we had to continue the program and solve the problem of the clocks, they opposed my decision. I threatened not to sign out the air force budget unless the GPS line item was fully funded. Fortunately, Lew Allen supported my position, so the program would continue. For the remainder of 1979 and early 1980, I continued to carefully follow the program. On January 15, 1980, I called a meeting to review the GPS program in anticipation of another move to cut our funding by the Air Staff. About three months later, Maj. Gen. Jasper ( Jack) Welch and a member of his staff came to see me about GPS. Since Bob Hermann was now the NRO director, I asked him to join us—he obviously had an interest in the subject. Welch, the director of longrange planning, was an old friend who knew what he was talking about; he holds a PhD in physics from the University of California, Berkeley. Jack began his argument by saying that he was a very strong supporter of GPS. But, he added, “I choke when the army and the navy refuse to pay for some of the cost.” “Jack, you cannot ask them to pay before we know whether it will work,” I replied. “We do not ask the army to pay for the C-17s and the C-5s that fly their men and equipment to war. We certainly never asked them to help pay for the development costs! Why should they pay for the development of GPS?” I finished the meeting by telling our two visitors that I would again refuse to sign the air force budget unless GPS was fully funded. When I left office in February 1981, the GPS program was still in the air force budget. Fortunately, my successors as secretary took the same position as mine. As things turned out, GPS fully justified our faith. It was an extremely effective support system in Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm in 1990 and 1991, and also in Kosovo in May 1999. GPS became a major force multiplier. In addition, the civilian applications of GPS have added billions of dollars to our gross national product. I was very satisfied with our actions in this case and regarded it as a good example of the need for ultimate civilian control of military procurement. Many years later, I was the editor of the Encyclopedia of Space Science and Technology (Wiley, 2003). I asked Brad Parkinson to write the article on GPS. At that time he was a distinguished professor of electrical engineering at Stanford University, and he readily agreed to do so. Brad wrote an excellent article, together with his associates James Spilker and Gabriel Elkaim. One passage was particularly satisfying: “At the same time, the US Air Force was not comfortable with having

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to shoulder the whole financial burden for the program and attempted to cancel GPS at least three times. In each case, the civilian leadership (including the editor of this encyclopedia) overruled the suggestion.” It was a very nice way to finish the GPS business and to remember the small role I had played in bringing about this important new technology.

The Vela Event, September 22, 1979 From the very beginning of the US program to develop nuclear weapons, it was important to develop the means of finding out what other nations were doing in their own nuclear efforts. It began with high-flying aircraft to pick up air samples. The first nuclear detonation performed by the Soviets, on August 29, 1949, was detected by a Boeing B-29 bomber that had been converted to carry radiationdetection equipment, which measured the radioactive isotopes carried by the wind. Devices that could pick up the shock waves created by the explosion were also on board.The results of these measurements made it possible for our experts to reconstruct how the nuclear explosive worked. Much progress was made in the “diagnostics” of nuclear detonations. The airplanes used in the early days were replaced by satellites during the late 1960s. A program code-named Vela was initiated in 1965, and staff members of the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory designed the payload of the satellite. The principal detection device on board the Vela satellite was an instrument sensitive to visible light; it was designed to detect the precise light pulse emitted by a nuclear detonation. That signal has two peaks: the first one is short, in the range of a few microseconds, and the second one is longer, in the range of a tenth of a millisecond. The first is caused by the initial light flash, which can be detected immediately. The heat generated in the air by the detonation causes a shock wave that is very dense and absorbs the light from the initial pulse. As the air is heated and ionized by the intense radiation, the air itself then begins to glow, and with the dissipation of the shock wave, the secondary light is picked up by the detector. This accounts for the longer pulse that follows the short one. The instrument used to detect these pulses is called the bhangmeter.The strange name is due to Frederick Reines of the University of California at Irvine. He was one of the people who helped develop the instrument during his years at Los Alamos. At one point in the process, he told one of his colleagues that he must be smoking bhang if he thought he could ever make the thing work. (Bhang is a narcotic, related to cannabis, used in India.) The “thing” worked, and is still in use. Fred Reines was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1995 for detecting the neutrino particle for the first time. The constellation of twelve Vela satellites that was deployed could detect the light flash of a nuclear detonation anywhere in the world. The air force was responsible for operating the Vela satellite system. The unit was called the AFTAC (Air Force Technical Applications Center). Headquartered at Patrick Air Force Base in Florida, it was very highly classified.

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On September 22, 1959,Vela satellite 6911 observed the characteristic “doublehump” light flash of a nuclear detonation. The people looked carefully at the data and examined all the signals on the tape. The Vela satellites carried a number of other detection devices intended for astrophysics research. These included the measurement of cosmic X-rays, gamma rays, and neutrons. The people at AFTAC who examined the data tapes produced by the Vela satellites were professionals and were extremely careful about drawing conclusions. It took them a month of careful examination before the group sent their report on the event to the Air Staff. I was briefed about it on Saturday, October 23, and the analysts had an interesting story. The event occurred in the Indian Ocean in a region between the southern tip of Africa and Antarctica. Two small island groups, the Prince Edward Islands (about 37° E and 47° S), which belong to South Africa, and the Crozet Islands (about 51° E and 46° S), which belong to France, were the closest landmasses to the suspected detonation. At the end of the briefing, I asked the Air Staff whether Harold Brown had been informed, and they said that he had. My second question was whether steps had been taken to look for other evidence of a nuclear detonation. Did the satellites detect radioactive materials in the atmosphere? Did we make a search? Were shock waves observed in the atmosphere or in the ocean? Were any seismic events observed? I was assured that all of such possibilities had been explored and that all the results were negative. A couple of days later, Frank Press, President Carter’s scientific adviser and the director of the Office of Science and Technology, told me that Harold Brown had asked him to establish a committee to examine the data and to draw some conclusions about the Vela event. He told me that he would ask Jack Ruina of MIT to chair the group, and other members would be Luis Alvarez, a Nobel laureate at the University of California;Wolfgang Panofsky and Allen Peterson of Stanford University; Richard Garwin, who is by any measure the most knowledgeable world-class scientist on matters concerning US military technology; Ricardo Giacconi, then at Harvard, who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2002;William Donn of Columbia University; Richard Muller of the University of California; and F. W. Sarles of MIT. Press had collected a stellar group. With the exception of Donn and Sarles, I knew all the members, and some of them I knew very well. On October 26, I was in Los Angeles to give a speech to the local chapter of the Air Force Association. Following the speech, several people asked me about the Vela event. I answered as best I could, but my questioners were not satisfied. When I returned to the Pentagon, I decided to look at the data in some detail. The Vela system had successfully detected all forty-one atmospheric nuclear tests conducted after the system was deployed. Each of the signals looked as it should, so there was no doubt in my mind that the Vela system could accurately detect the signals from known nuclear detonations. It was quite another matter to look at a signal of unknown origin and be certain that it had been made by an unannounced nuclear explosion. Other signals were similar to but not quite the same as the events triggered by the forty-one known nuclear detonations. These “nearly correct” signals,

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later called “zoo events” by the Ruina Committee, became important when it developed its conclusions. The other step I took was to call Alan Berman, the technical director of the US Naval Research Laboratory and also a world-class oceanographer. I asked him what he thought about the Vela event and specifically whether there were any observations by SOSUS (sound surveillance system, a worldwide series of underwater listening posts). Since all this was classified, he told me that he would call back on the classified line. When we were connected again, he told me that a hydrophone at St. Helena had picked up an acoustic signal that could have been a pressure wave caused by the Vela event. He also said that so far, this was the only one that had been observed. At a meeting at the White House on November 1, the AFTAC people provided a thorough briefing for the Ruina Committee and the responsible staff members of the National Security Council. I was satisfied that the right information was being put before the people who would ultimately have to decide what had actually happened. In the ensuing months, the Ruina Committee worked on the problem, and I had several conversations with Professor Ruina about their progress. Much of the discussion had to do with zoo events and whether the September 22 event was one of them. The zoo events were eventually identified as being caused by micrometeoroid bombardment of the satellite. If a tiny meteoroid struck the spacecraft within the field of view of the detector, the short light pulse could be explained by the impact, and the longer pulse by the sunlight reflected by the debris ejected from the crater following the impact. Zoo events of this type were also observed by the micrometeoroid detector aboard the Pioneer 10 spacecraft as it passed through the asteroid belt. There is no way that these events could be related to a nuclear detonation. The report of what came to be called the Ad Hoc Panel on the September 22 Event was published on May 23, 1980. It was an exhaustive document that carefully examined all the possibilities. The conclusion of the panel was carefully qualified: “Based on the lack of persuasive corroborative evidence, the existence of other unexplained zoo events which have some of the characteristics of signals from nuclear explosions, and the discrepancies observed in the September 22 signal, the panel concludes that the signal was probably not from a nuclear explosion. Although we cannot rule out the possibility that this signal was of nuclear origin, the panel considers it more likely that the signal was one of the zoo events, possibly a consequence of the impact of a small meteoroid on the satellite.” In spite of the conclusion drawn by the panel, the incident still generates controversy. Skeptics assert that it was a test conducted by two nations, Israel and South Africa, who had nuclear weapons in 1979 but had never tested them. It is well known that Israel and South Africa collaborated on a number of nuclear matters, so it is easy to believe that this collaboration extended to conducting a test deto-

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nation. I also remember that there were accusations of a “cover-up” for political reasons. The story at the time was that the Carter administration was struggling with the hostage crisis, a gasoline shortage, and inflation, and it did not need another problem to deal with. So it appointed a group of scientists who were partisan Democrats, which delivered the desired negative result. My own reaction to all this was to urge the critics to read the conclusion: “The event could have been a nuclear detonation but the preponderant technical evidence was that it was not.”

The National Medal of Science for My Father The Henderson family had a tradition that Christmas Day was devoted to prayer and meditation. The celebration would be held December 26. Because of Peter’s death just three months earlier, we decided that it would be appropriate for us to visit Bellevue on December 26 to celebrate and, yes, to grieve once again over Peter’s absence. I spent Christmas Day with Lew Allen. It was his custom on Christmas to visit all the people under his command who had drawn the short straw and had to be part of the skeleton complement at work. We spent about three hours on the morning of December 25, 1979, walking the halls of the Pentagon where people were working. We wished them a Merry Christmas and also prayed with them as the spirit moved us. Then I went home to have a festive dinner with the family. Rufus (then a student at Yale) and Jane (who was teaching elementary school in Los Angeles) were with us, as was my father and his longtime companion since my mother’s death in 1970, Dr. Elfrieda Braunsteiner. Finally, Delia and her daughter, Catherine, were present, and I could see that their feelings were still raw and that they were in deep mourning. We were all somewhat subdued. After dinner, we got on the train for Lynchburg. The next day was a Wednesday. We had just finished breakfast and were back in our hotel room, preparing to drive to Bellevue, when the telephone rang. Catherine answered and turned to me: “Hans, it is someone from Washington who wants to talk with Dr. Mark.” I picked up the telephone, and the voice on the other end asked: “Dr. Herman Mark?” “No,” I said, “but he is here.” And with that, I gave him the receiver. Catherine had immediately concluded that any call from Washington would be for me. For many years afterward, she enjoyed reminding me of her mistake in thinking that I was more important than my father. My father took the phone and for about two minutes said nothing. Finally, he thanked the caller profusely and hung up the telephone. Then he turned around with the broadest of smiles: “They are giving me the National Medal of Science!” All of us got up and cheered, and then congratulations were in order.

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We drove to Bellevue. We now not only had a Christmas to celebrate but also the Geheimrat’s medal. There was another amusing incident, this time with Delia’s Aunt Virginia Henderson. She was about eighty years old at the time and, as previously noted, had enjoyed a distinguished career as a professor of nursing at Yale University. The tradition at Bellevue was that Aunt Jane, the oldest person present, would place small gifts around the room and then pass a hat containing numbered pieces of paper. The person who drew number one had the first choice of a gift, the person with number two got the next choice, and so on. At the end of this process there would be a fine dinner. What happened next was a surprise. Aunt Virginia got up and told us that she had to leave to catch an airplane. Almost everyone in the room said, “You can’t do that. Where are you going?” “St. John’s,” she replied. “St. John’s? Where’s that?” someone asked. “Newfoundland” was her answer. We were all astounded. Here was this eighty-year-old lady telling us that she was flying to one of the coldest places on the continent. Jane asked, “Why are you going?” “There is a nursing school at St. John’s, and they have been asking me for a year to visit and deliver a lecture.The school is a good one, and they have good students, and it is my responsibility to help them!” Now my father took the floor: “I understand, Virginia, because I do the same thing.” Then he turned to face the group, lifted his wine glass, and said: “I propose a toast to Prof. Virginia Henderson, who is a great educator because she understands the secret of our profession: students come first. It is our duty to come and teach. Virginia, go and good luck and auf Wiedersehen.” We all joined the toast; then Virginia left us. Later there was a fine dinner party, which was an excellent way to end an eventful day. The ceremony to award the Medal of Science was scheduled for January 14, 1980, at the White House. Each year, twenty people are chosen to receive the award, and I was delighted to see Victor Weisskopf ’s name on the list, because he was a great mentor when I was at MIT. Also on the list was Bob Noyce, one of the inventors of the integrated circuit and the chief executive of the Intel Corporation. At ten, a briefing for the medalists and their guests was held in the auditorium of the Old Executive Office Building. Frank Press, the president’s science adviser, acted as master of ceremonies. He introduced Bo Cutter, the deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget, who presented a detailed chart of the federal budget and droned on for almost an hour about the figures. I thought to myself that Frank had missed an important opportunity to inform an influential group of scientists and engineers of policies that the administration would shape during President Carter’s second term—if there was one. The award ceremony was held in the East Room of the White House. President Carter awarded the medals, and Frank Press introduced the medalists. It was a great moment when the Geheimrat stepped up to the stage, shook hands with the president, and accepted the medal.

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Figure 10.2. My father, Herman F. Mark, receiving the National Medal of Science from President Carter, January 14, 1980.

After the presentation ceremony was over, people milled around the first floor of the mansion and impromptu tours were conducted. Although it was not announced, President and Mrs. Carter were receiving their guests in one of the large rooms on the west side of the mansion. I looked for family members (Rufus, Jane, Catherine, Delia, and Bun) but could not locate them. Finally, the Geheimrat and I got in line to meet President Carter and the First Lady. The Geheimrat was wearing his new medal around his neck, so he was easily identified. All I had was a badge that identified me as “Hans Mark” and “Family (Son).” The drill on these occasions is that one of the president’s young military aides greets the guest before he or she shakes hands with the president and then tells the president, “This is Mr. or Mrs. So-and-So.” Standing behind the president is another young military aide who sees to it that there are no unwarranted delays in moving the line along. When our turn to be introduced came, a young female army captain introduced my father and then turned to me. The Geheimrat and the president exchanged some pleasantries, and the young captain turned to me and said to the president, “Mr. President, this is Hans Mark, Dr. Mark’s son,” whereupon my father, having just met Mrs. Carter, turned around and told the president, “Oh, by the way Mr. President, he happens to be your secretary of the air force!” It was clear that the president did not recognize me, and he looked at the captain with a puzzled expression. A very tall young marine corps major behind the president saw that there was an obvious stall in the receiving line. He moved be-

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tween me and the president and very politely asked that I leave the line—which I promptly did! I can honestly say that I am one of the few people who ever got the bum’s rush while I was trying to shake the president’s hand. After the ceremony at the White House, we went to a fine restaurant on 17th Street and had a great family celebration.

A Trip to the Orient and a Welcome Respite from the Pentagon From June 22 to June 30, 1980, I went on a trip to the Far East. It was a very interesting experience, and I began to regret my earlier decision not to take lots of junkets, although many people in my position got into trouble with the press for doing just that. I had two companions: my military assistant, Col. Tom Sawyer, and one of the members of my brain trust, Col. John Endicott. John was a very interesting person who became a strong friend and collaborator. He was an expert on the Far East, with a PhD from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. Both of these gentlemen were excellent colleagues. We began in Alaska with a flight on one of the converted Boeing KC-135s that was part of the Eighty-Ninth Special Mission Wing at Andrews Air Force Base near Washington. The Eighty-Ninth operated Air Force One, a specially equipped Boeing 747, and another one for backup. It also had a couple of Boeing 720s, which were early versions of the commercial Boeing 707s. Nicely appointed aircraft equipped with comfortable seats, they were intended for flights by important people. Finally, there were the “Tubes,” which were several converted Boeing KC-135 tanker aircraft with no windows. As secretary of the air force, one of my jobs was to decide which aircraft would be assigned to people holding high positions in the administration or in Congress who loved to go on junkets. Some people with a well-developed sense of entitlement would get very upset if they had to fly on one of the Tubes. I selected one of the Tubes for the trip just to avoid possible criticism. We flew first to Anchorage, landing at Elmendorf Air Force Base early in the morning. Lt. Gen. Winfield Scott, the commander of our military forces in Alaska, met us when we landed. He was a direct descendant of Winfield Scott, who was the victor of the Battle of Chapultepec in the Mexican War (1846–48). Later, in 1861, as general in chief of the army, Scott devised the strategy of blockading the Confederacy and then closing the Mississippi River to them. This maneuver, called Scott’s Anaconda, eventually squeezed the Confederate states to death. The current General Scott was an extremely intelligent man who presented a brilliant briefing on the situation in Alaska. Our reconnaissance aircraft and ships in Alaska were vital elements in the Cold War. We learned a great deal about Soviet ballistic-missile tests by monitoring what was happening on the Kamchatka Peninsula, which was the target area for their missile tests. Their long-range rockets were launched from

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northern Kazakhstan, and they would land six thousand miles down range in Kamchatka. In the evening, we drove into Anchorage, where I gave a speech before the Commonwealth Club North. I delivered the same speech that I had given in San Francisco six months prior, and it was again well received. The next day, General Scott showed me some of the Alaskan scenery. He had a Beechcraft C-12 at his disposal, and I was suitably impressed by the landscape. On the way back to Elmendorf, General Scott let me sit next to him in the aircraft’s cockpit. He talked about Soviet air operations, which were conducted by large Tupolev Tu-95 Bear aircraft. General Scott let me land the airplane, which I did reasonably well—I was grateful that Alan Faye, my flight instructor, had spent the time to teach me how to execute this maneuver. (I learned to fly in 1971 and accumulated enough flying hours to pass the solo flight, but never applied for a license. I was able to pilot a Cessna 172 owned by Jim Jopson, my son-in-law, for many enjoyable hours.) General Scott and I met again some years later when he was serving as the superintendent of the New Mexico Military Institute, and we had a fine reunion. That evening, we boarded our Tube and crossed the International Date Line, losing a day. In Japan we landed at Yokota Air Base near Tokyo at seven in the morning on Tuesday, June 24. The base was the headquarters of the Fifth Air Force, commanded by Lt. Gen. William Ginn. The general was also the commander of all US military forces in Japan. I heard the morning command briefing and inspected the base. After lunch, we drove to the Japanese naval air force base near Tsuchiura, north of  Tokyo. During the 1930s, this base was the most important training school for Japanese carrier pilots. At the time, Capt. Isoroku Yamamoto commanded the school; later, during World War II, he was in charge of the Japanese Combined Fleet. Toward the end of the war, the base was used to train kamikaze pilots, and there was a memorial to these young men on the grounds. John Endicott and I visited the shrine, offering silent prayers for the young men whose lives were wasted by the madness of war. We had a nice dinner with the young navy captain who commanded the base, along with his staff. I was very impressed by these young people—and I expressed the hope that they would not wind up like their predecessors for whom the memorial was built. It was good that John was with me, because he spoke fluent Japanese. In the evening there was a reception at Yakota for some senior Japanese defense officials. The Japanese were very cautious because the country did not yet have a new prime minister. The Liberal Democratic Party had just won the election on a very pro-American platform. At the end of the event, I delivered a short speech stressing Japanese-American friendship, and then General Ginn presented me with a Fifth Air Force necktie. I was satisfied that the US Air Force leadership in Japan was excellent and that their relationship with the Japanese was good. The next stop was Kadena Air Base on the island of Okinawa, a three-hour flight from Misawa. We arrived at about one thirty in the afternoon on June 26.

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Kadena is a very large base with many types of aircraft. There were brand-new McDonnell Douglas F-15s and some venerable McDonnell RF-4s, the reconnaissance version of the aircraft.These were operated by the Eighteenth Tactical Fighter Wing. We toured the base and then had dinner with Brig. Gen. Jim Brown and his staff. The highlight of this visit came the next day—a flight for me and for Tom Sawyer in an F-15. Two or three of the two-seater aircraft were used for training. Tom and I were suited up and introduced to our instructor pilots, Capt. Bill Bledsoe for me and Capt. Frank Strasburger for Tom. We took off and headed north for Korea.We executed some mock combat maneuvers. During one of these, Captain Strasburger got on our tail, and Captain Bledsoe cut in the afterburner and made an almost vertical left turn during a high-speed climb. We pulled about five g’s during this escape and wound up at thirty-five thousand feet. It was a grand experience. I flew the airplane on the way back to Kadena. It was very easy to fly, and I went through some turns and shallow climbing and diving maneuvers. The principal problem I found was that the throttle was sluggish compared with the one in the Cessna 150, which I had flown for my first solo flight ten years earlier. The F-15 flights were the high points of our visit to the Far East. It was a clear demonstration of the “Global Reach and Global Power” of the US Air Force. Our next stop was Clark Air Base in the Philippines. We flew on a Boeing KC-135 tanker aircraft. On the way, we refueled some F-15s, and I had the chance to observe the operation. It was very smartly done. Clark is the headquarters of the Thirteenth Air Force, commanded by Maj. Gen. James “Cotton” Hildreth. We went straight to the morning command briefings on June 27. The two topics were the Muslim insurrection in the Philippines and the use of Diego Garcia, an atoll in the Indian Ocean, as a base for long-range bomber aircraft for emergencies in the Middle East.There were about two million Muslims in the Philippines in 1980 out of a population of forty-seven million. They lived mostly on Mindanao, and some of them used terrorist methods to try and control the island. It was the opinion of the air force officers that the Philippine military could deal with the insurgents. The essential point was that the Muslim population was small and contained. We next went to Manila, where I had some diplomatic chores to finish. We were beginning negotiations to renew the lease on Clark Air Base. It was not my job to participate in the negotiations, but to provide some high-level cover. Early on the morning of the 28th, I met with Gen. Romeo Espino, a four-star officer who was the commander in chief of the Philippine military. We talked for more than an hour about military problems in East Asia. General Espino was older than an equivalent officer in the US military by about ten years. My guess was that he was between sixty-five and seventy. He had fought in the Hukbalahap Rebellion during the 1940s and 1950s, and told me that after a long campaign, victory over the communist-supported “Huks” was complete. We also discussed the aftermath of the war in Vietnam. The general was clear that if the United States had not been in Vietnam with a large military presence, the current situation in the region would

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be very different. China would still be under the heel of radical communists, and, he said as he smiled, “I would have been killed by the Huks!” People who believe that our presence in Vietnam from 1963 to 1974 was wrong should listen to those like General Espino, whose lives would have been very different had the United States failed to intervene. My next chore was to visit the US Embassy to pick up an envelope that I was supposed to deliver to the Foreign Ministry. I did not know what was in the envelope, but the embassy people told me it had to do with the negotiations over Clark. An embassy car took me to the Foreign Ministry, where I delivered the envelope to a waiting official. I exchanged pleasantries with one of the deputy ministers for a few minutes and then returned to the embassy. I asked my contact what it was all about. He told me that the envelope contained a check for $50,000 as “part of the negotiation.” When I remonstrated that I should have been told what was going on, my contact explained: “The Filipinos wanted a ‘high-level’ American official to deliver the bribe so that it would enhance their prestige.You were available, so we used the opportunity.” “Why the hell didn’t you tell me?” I replied. “Because it takes a good actor to do a job like this one, and we thought it best not to let you in the know about what we had to do!” I was learning more and more about the ways of the diplomatic world. The next day, June 29, we left Manila on a KC-135 for the flight to Andersen Air Force Base on Guam. The aircraft’s commander, Major Kahl, let me sit in the copilot’s seat, and I flew the aircraft to the final altitude of thirty-three thousand feet. Once we were at altitude, the autopilot took over, and we relaxed for the next six hours. When we made preparations for the landing, Major Kahl allowed me to sit in the right seat again on the flight deck. Since there was a typhoon three hundred miles to the east of Guam, our descent was quite rough—I didn’t get to land the airplane. The visit to Guam gave me the opportunity to look at an operational base of the Strategic Air Command. Most of the aircraft were Boeing B-52H models, the newest aircraft of this type. The last H model was built in 1962, so even these aircraft were eighteen years old. Maj. Gen. Louis C. Buckman, the commander at Guam, told me that one of the problems with the B-52s at Guam was corrosion due to high humidity and salt particles in the air. General Buckman was a great supporter of the plan for a new B-1 bomber. The typhoon mentioned above came closer to Guam. One of the units based on Guam was a squadron of Lockheed WC-130 weather observation aircraft. We had the opportunity to visit the squadron and look at the pictures of the great storm, by then only a hundred miles away. We departed Guam on the VC-137 (Boeing 720) under the control of Lt. Gen. Thomas Hughes, the head of the Pacific Air Command. We arrived at Hickam AFB in time to make an inspection of the installation before lunch. It is a large base that shares a runway with the civilian Honolulu airport. We spent some time with

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the air force unit that recovers packages from space. The 6594th Test Group flew specially equipped Lockheed C-130s on the recovery missions. There was a ninety-minute command briefing with General Hughes and his staff. When that was finished, we had an hour-long discussion about how best to replace the elderly B-52s. Their advice was that we should work to revive the B-1. The next day was a Sunday, June 30, and we went sailing off Waikiki Beach. We sailed from Pearl Harbor to Diamond Head and back.We had a very well-appointed Islander 36 with good equipment. General Hughes and his deputy, Maj. Gen. Hoyt S. “Sandy” Vandenberg Jr., as well as Tom Sawyer, were along for the ride. The boat was captained by “Papa Lou” Foster, who was something of a character in the Hawaiian sailing community. In the evening, we boarded General Hughes’s VC-137 for the flight back to Andrews Air Force Base.

Commencement Address at the US Air Force Academy, May 28, 1980 During the twenty-one months that I occupied the office of secretary of the air force, I delivered about two or three speeches a week, or about two hundred in total. Many of these were short, impromptu talks to small audiences, but often I spoke to large audiences numbering in the hundreds. My favorite major speech was the commencement address I delivered at the Air Force Academy in 1980. For the fifty-plus years that I have been delivering speeches, I have always written them myself. In the positions I occupied that rated a speechwriter, I always told the writer: “I write my own speeches, and you are promoted to chief critic.” In this way, I was able to get a lot of bright people to greatly improve my speeches. This particular speech would be delivered before the first graduating class in which women would be walking across the stage to receive their diplomas and their commissions in the air force. I asked my staff what they thought, and the preponderance of opinion was that I should talk about the role of women in the military. I told them that this theme was too obvious and asked them of think of something else. The next couple of days were routine, but word had gotten around the office that I would be speaking at the academy commencement. As you can probably guess, I received a great deal of advice from people in the Pentagon, much of it from female officers who wanted me build my speech around the theme of women in the military. I was old enough to remember the thousands of women who had served in uniform during World War II. There was the Women’s Army Corps (the WACs), the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASPs), and the Women Appointed for Voluntary Emergency Service (WAVES) in the navy, not to mention a Nurse Corps for each military service. I could not honestly deliver a speech about women currently in the military without mentioning the long and distinguished history of serving women.Would it really be appropriate for me to start with a history lesson?

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After thinking about what to do, I finally decided that the best way to handle the problem was to mention women in the military very prominently somewhere in the speech and to leave it at that.The fact is that I wanted to say other things in the speech that I thought deserved more emphasis. My solution was to mention women in the military in my first sentence. I wrote: “General Tallman, Mr. Mayor, parents, families, friends, and ladies and gentlemen of the Cadet Wing.” I was astounded by the response of the audience. Even before I finished the sentence, there was cheering as soon as I said “ladies.” This continued for a few seconds, and finally everyone stood up and applauded. It turned out that the first female graduate was Kathleen Conley, who was the daughter of Maj. Gen. Philip J. Conley, the commander of the Air Force Flight Test Center. As she crossed the stage, a cheer rose from the crowd; I kissed her on the cheek, which again led to prolonged cheers. In any event, the commencement was a fine occasion, and I was pleased to be part of it. But that was not the end of it. Three weeks later, one of the colonels in the legislative affairs office sent me a copy of the June 18, 1980, edition of the “Extensions of Remarks” section of the Congressional Record, with a paper clip on page E3039. When I looked closely at it, I was astonished to see my commencement speech reprinted in full at the request of Rep. Jack Hightower of  Texas. I did not know Mr. Hightower, and all this happened four years before I moved to Texas. Kathleen Conley served in the air force with distinction for more than twenty-two years. She retired in 2003 with the rank of colonel and later served as director of the Land Forces Division in the Program Analysis and Evaluation Directorate in the Pentagon. Currently she is a staff member at the Institute for Defense Analysis.

A Trip to Europe and the 1980 Military Air Show at Farnborough My experience on the trip to Asia in June changed my mind about making foreign trips. I used to consider them useless boondoggles—and some undoubtedly are just that. On the other hand, military people enjoy meeting the leadership, and I made it my business to meet with groups of enlisted people and young officers. On one such trip to Europe, we left Washington in the late afternoon and arrived at Heathrow Airport, near London, at 7:15 the next morning on September 1, 1980. Bun and I were accompanied by Col. Craven C. (Buck) Rogers, who had succeeded Tom Sawyer as my military assistant. We were met by Col. Ervin Rokke and his wife, Pamela. Colonel Rokke, the air attaché at our embassy, was on a leave of absence from his post as a professor of political science at the US Air Force Academy. Colonel Rokke is a very tall and distinguished-looking person. As mentioned previously, he had earned his PhD at Harvard University in political science under the supervision of Henry Kissinger. Since I would be the senior American

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representative at Farnborough, I now held the title “Ambassador,” and I had a card from the State Department to prove it! Our first duty was to pay some courtesy calls on senior British defense officials, so our first visit was to Whitehall. We had had a chance to shave and shower at Heathrow, so we looked reasonably presentable. First, we went to the office of Sir Francis Pym, the minister of defence (to use the British spelling). Sir Francis greeted us very cordially and introduced us to Air Chief Marshal Sir Michael Beetham, the chief of the Air Staff. After some small talk, the conversation quickly turned to our proposal to develop a joint successor to the AV-8B Harrier vertical-takeoff-and-landing (VTOL) fighter aircraft. Sir Michael was well briefed on the subject, so we had a good discussion.They knew about the work the Ames people had done on the Bell XV-15 tilt-rotor aircraft. I promised to do what I could to push our people into getting serious about the AV-8B, which they eventually did. As I write this, the marine corps still has some of these aircraft in service. Sir Francis wanted to know who I thought would win the election, and I immediately said President Carter, ending it at that. I did not want to get trapped in a political argument. Finally, he told me that he was interested in “this business of stealth,” which was all over the newspapers. I danced around the subject and said nothing substantive about this matter, which I still thought should not have been declassified. Following this meeting, we had lunch at Lockett’s Restaurant near Westminster, hosted by Geoffrey Pattie, MP, the under secretary of state for air, who was essentially my counterpart in the British political establishment. It was during his visit to Washington the year before that we had formulated a proposal to develop a joint US-British V/​STOL aircraft. Chuck Snodgrass was there, as were Mr. Pattie’s assistant (a Mr. Peters) and Air Vice Marshall P. B. Howe. In the afternoon we visited Parliament and spoke with some members who were interested in military aviation. In the evening, Edward Streeter, the deputy chief of mission at our embassy, hosted a dinner party attended by the Rokkes, the Patties, and Harold Colvin, MP, the vice chairman of the Aviation Committee in Parliament. It was a fine time with good conversation. We spent September 2 at Farnborough. Farnborough is the central British aviation establishment, with a large research component. Probably the closest US counterpart is the US Air Force Laboratory complex at Wright-Patterson AFB. There are good facilities at Farnborough—wind tunnels, computers, and flight simulators—with maybe upward of a thousand employees. Our NASA aviation centers have had strong relationships with Farnborough, which has the formal name National Aeronautical Establishment. I had delivered lectures there several times, and both the people and the organization were always impressive. There are two big air shows in Europe. In the odd-numbered years, there is the great Paris Air Show in June at Le Bourget Airfield. This is a very large affair that

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deals with all things aeronautical. In the even-numbered years, there is a smaller air show at Farnborough in September, which is focused on military aviation. It was Farnborough’s turn in 1980, and at this show there were well over a hundred aircraft on static display. The American aircraft dominated the show because we had just fielded a new series of military aircraft, including the F-15, F-16, and A-10 combat aircraft, and several new types of transport aircraft.The star of the show was clearly the General Dynamics FB-111. The French were second, with new Mirage models; the Germans were next with the Panavia Tornado; and the Swedes had a SAAB Viggen. There were also British entries with the Jaguar and the J-5. Another feature of the air shows are the “chalets,” which are essentially small, tentlike structures along the side of the runway. Each chalet has elegant appointments and serves exquisite food and drinks. We were invited to observe the flybys at the Pratt & Whitney chalet, and Richard Coar, the CEO of Pratt, was the host. Geoffrey and Mrs. Pattie were there, and Bun came along, as did several high-ranking military officers. The main event began with flybys starting at about ten. Some were very impressive indeed.The FB-111 executed the most spectacular flyby.The aircraft made one pass with its wings extended, flaps and landing gear down, and afterburners on. The result was a very slow flight with a great roar.The airplane took about ten seconds to make the pass and then disappeared. About thirty seconds later, the plane reappeared with its wings swept all the way back, gear retracted. It thundered past, one hundred feet off the runway at Mach 1.5, creating a tremendous shock wave. It was a superb performance! As several other airplanes flew past, and wine was being served, a distinguishedlooking RAF air vice marshal asked Bun, “Well, what do you think of the air show?” “I love it! Spectacular! It is just like a fashion show!” “A fashion show?” “Yes.You know, the airplanes fly past the customers over the runway just as the young ladies walk on their runway!” “I see.” Then he laughed and said, “I never thought about it that way, but you do have a point.” Bun did indeed have a point. She has always had a remarkable ability to connect things that most people consider to be totally different. As the senior American official present, I was invited to lunch with the president of the air show, always a senior British aerospace official, who had his own chalet. Joining me at the president’s table were Sir Francis Pym; Hosni Mubarak, the vice president of Egypt, who was a former commander of the Egyptian Air Force; Gen. Ramsey Withers, the newly appointed chief of staff of the Canadian Armed Forces; Prince Faher Taimur Al-Said of Oman, who, I was told, was the number-two man in the country; and the Egyptian ambassador in London. I was seated between Mubarak and the prince, which was somewhat surprising. As the US secretary of

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the air force, I held a relatively minor position, whereas my two neighbors were each the second-highest-ranking political leader in their nations. It occurred to me that someone had placed me between the two Arab leaders because the Camp David Accords had concluded just eighteen months before the air show. One of the provisions of the agreement was that the United States would provide three billion dollars a year in military assistance to Egypt and to Israel, so there was at least a reason for Vice President Mubarak to be friendly. I decided to ask as many questions as I could about their feelings regarding recent events in Iran.The prince told me that he was very concerned about the situation because Iranian military units were in Oman to help the country deal with communist guerrilla fighters from Yemen (Aden), the neighboring Soviet satellite to the southwest. These fighters were crossing the border into Oman and making trouble. Both the prince and Vice President Mubarak then told me that the regular military in Iran no longer existed, something that did not surprise me, because of what an Iranian general had told me back in 1976. Mubarak provided an emphatic and detailed description of what would happen in Iran. He predicted that the situation would continue to deteriorate, since there was no one in charge. The political figures were weak, and Khomeini was old and had no leadership experience. Both Mubarak and the prince were particularly concerned that there was no plan for succession in the event of Khomeini’s death. When I asked what they thought would eventually happen to change things, both said that it would have to be a military coup d’état. Mubarak said that it would take at least three years to plan and mount a coup, and in this he spoke from experience, having been a young air force officer in 1953 when King Fuad of Egypt was overthrown by a group of military officers led by Gen. Mohammed Naguib and Col. Gamal Abdel Nasser. When I mentioned the conversation I had had with General Khoshnevissan in 1976, he conceded that it might take longer, but he insisted that a coup would eventually occur. As an afterthought, both told me that the creation of two separate nations, Yemen (Sa’na) and Yemen (Aden), as a result of the Soviet-aided insurrection, was a bad idea. I agreed. After lunch, we went back to the Pratt & Whitney chalet to watch the rest of the flight displays. One of the best was a pass over the runway by a Boeing E-3A Sentry, an airborne warning and control system aircraft. This aircraft, which had been put into service in March 1977, was based at Tinker AFB in Oklahoma. I remember a big budget fight over the number of airplanes to buy. The suggested figure was seven, and some people in the Pentagon and in Congress thought this was too many! At this writing, the US Air Force has thirty-two of these aircraft in service, and there are more than sixty-six in service around the world, with the second-largest group (eighteen) belonging to NATO. We left Farnborough in the late afternoon and drove to Greenham Common, a nearby Royal Air Force (RAF) base. Though virtually abandoned, it would become

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the eventual site for the ground-launched cruise missiles that the US Army based in Europe. From there, we flew to RAF Upper Heyford in a Beechcraft C-12 Kingair. This was the base used by the US Air Force’s Twentieth Tactical Fighter Wing, which flew F-111Es. About fifty aircraft were deployed at the base. We enjoyed a nice dinner party with the senior staff and spent the night. For the next two days, we toured the major RAF bases in southern England at which US Air Force units were located. At RAF Upper Heyford, we had good conversations with the enlisted people in the ground crews. Morale was high, and everyone understood why they were deployed in Europe. For lunch, we were joined by Gen. James R. Allen, USAF, who was the deputy commander of the US European Command, and some members of the International Institute for Strategic Studies. We discussed the future of NATO. After lunch we flew to RAF Mildenhall in the C-12. We were received by Maj. Gen. Robert W. Bazley, who was the commander of the Third Air Force. This unit operates more than three hundred combat aircraft that can be rapidly deployed to Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East. RAF Mildenhall operates many support aircraft, including Boeing KC-135 tankers and Lockheed C-141 transports. We then drove to RAF Lakenheath, a few miles away. (I should mention that all the bases I am describing were built during World War II in a ring around London. It was from these bases that the Eighth US Army Air Force sent the thousands of Boeing B-17 and Consolidated B-24 bombers that devastated the European continent.) At RAF Lakenheath, we saw a General Dynamics F-111F fighter-bomber unit.The “F” model aircraft were the newest of this class, so when we went through the flight line, we heard about plenty of teething problems with the airplanes. But the maintenance crews were optimistic that they could be fixed, and in the end they were right. In the evening, there was a nice dinner party at the officers’ club. Gen. Charles A. Gabriel, who had just been appointed commander in chief of the US Air Forces in Europe, attended the dinner. It was good to see him again. At breakfast the next morning, General Bazley made a short speech thanking us for coming and told us how important such visits were. His words were almost the same as those used by Gen. Bill Ginn at Yokota a few months earlier. Once again, I began to wonder whether my negative view of such trips was correct. Our next stop was RAF Bentwaters, which was a short flight away.This base was the home of the Eighty-First Tactical Fighter Wing, a very big unit. It consisted of six squadrons (108 airplanes) of Fairchild Republic A-10 attack aircraft. The most important item we saw was a storage site for some of the nuclear weapons that the United States was deploying in Europe.These were B-61 gravity bombs, and it was an interesting experience to see the results of the work we had done at Livermore more than two decades before. We then returned to London on the C-12, landing at RAF Northolt. There was a World War II–vintage Avro Lancaster bomber on the tarmac. I asked the RAF flight lieutenant to see whether we could get a tour

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of the aircraft. I had built a model of this airplane in 1942 and had remained fascinated with it, so I could not resist seeing the real thing in detail! The tour of the airplane took me back to the grim years of World War II. We drove to London and arrived at Durrants Hotel in the afternoon. In the evening we went to Covent Garden to see a fine performance of Hector Berlioz’s The Damnation of Faust. It was an example of the infinite variations that have been derived from the Faust legend. Christopher Marlowe wrote the story as a simple matter of the strength of faith, Goethe turned it into an account of the intellectual’s Weltschmertz, and Berlioz wrote an almost erotic celebration of redemption through pure love. I have never warmed to Faust as a character, but the legend has, at least, given us some pretty good poetry and some great music. Saturday, September 6, was a free day. We went shopping and then had lunch with Roy and Charlotte Jackson, who happened to be in London at the same time, at a really fine restaurant near Hyde Park Corner. In the afternoon, Bun arranged for us to enjoy high tea with Erv and Pamela Rokke at Brown’s Hotel on Albemarle Street. This is the finest old hostelry in town, and everyone needs to visit it at least once. It was a very pleasant party, and all had great fun. At the end, Bun distinguished herself by sneaking all the uneaten scones and cookies into her handbag. When we were out on the street, she gave them to Pam Rokke for her children at home. Bun is very adept at doing good things for people! We went to the theater that night to see Bertolt Brecht’s Galileo. Unfortunately, it was not very good.The next day, a Sunday, we took a taxi to Heathrow and flew home. It was an excellent minivacation and, I hoped, a useful trip.

The Mariel Boatlift An event of far-reaching importance during the Cold War occurred between April 15 and October 31, 1980. During these six months, 125,000 Cubans left their country voluntarily and came to Florida. The initial cause of this exodus was one of the periodic downturns of the Cuban economy. The resulting unrest led some Cubans to take matters into their own hands, and they began to seek asylum in foreign embassies in Havana. The embassies’ staffs were overwhelmed by the large number of asylum seekers, and their guards were not adequate to prevent violent incidents. The Castro government exacerbated the situation by deploying military units around the embassies. Things came to a head when one of the dissident Cubans and a dozen followers hijacked a bus and crashed it through the fence of the Peruvian Embassy on April 1, 1980. The people aboard the bus asked the Peruvian ambassador for asylum as political fugitives, which he granted. The Castro government demanded that the dissidents be returned, and the ambassador refused. On April 4, Castro withdrew the troops guarding the embassy, and by the next day there were close to a thousand people inside the fence of the Peruvian Embassy. A similar event

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occurred at the Venezuelan Embassy, and by April 6, Easter Sunday, about ten thousand Cubans were distributed among the Peruvian, Spanish, Venezuelan, and Costa Rican Embassies. At this point Castro decided to let the dissidents leave the country. The Cuban government announced on April 21 that anyone wishing to leave Cuba could go to the port city of Mariel, about twenty-five miles west of Havana, find a boat, and leave. The Castro revolution in late 1959 had resulted in about a million Cubans (about 10 percent of the island’s population) fleeing the country. Most of the refugees settled in Florida, where they established a large community of Cuban exiles. Following Castro’s announcement, President Carter granted the Cuban refugees immediate political asylum—in short, as he put it, the Cubans would be welcomed with open arms. This was an object lesson for the American people about how those who lived in the alleged communist paradise truly felt. The exodus from Berlin that resulted in Khrushchev building the wall in 1962 happened far away. Here we had an exodus right on our own border. The reaction of the Cuban community in Florida was to descend on port cities from Key West to Fort Lauderdale, hire boats, and sail to Mariel to pick up those who wanted to leave. Many Cuban dissidents managed to persuade Cuban boat operators in Mariel to take them to harbors in Florida. On April 23, the first Cuban refugees from Mariel arrived in Key West. Local coast guard officers realized that many of the Cubans’ boats were not seaworthy, so they mobilized their ships (coast guard cutters) to help any refugee-carrying craft that were in trouble. From April 21 to May 1, almost eight thousand refugees reached Florida via this makeshift sealift. By early May, Castro’s government realized that it had made a mistake in permitting Cuban citizens to leave the country. An initial trickle had turned into a flood, which became a public relations disaster for Castro. Why were so many willing to risk a dangerous journey in small boats to get away from their homeland? To counter this view of the situation, Castro began to release criminals from Cuban prisons, taking them to Mariel and placing them on boats going to Florida. He said publicly that his government had organized this Mariel operation in order to get rid of “undesirables” and escuria (scum). This move by Castro had some effect on the “open arms” policy adopted by the Carter administration. The released convicts could not be distinguished from legitimate refugees. Political opponents of the president began to question the wisdom of his policy. In May 1980, almost eighty-seven thousand Cuban refugees arrived in Florida on the Mariel boatlift. R. Adm. Benedict L. Stabile of the coast guard was put in charge of helping more than 1,700 boats, American and Cuban, arrive safely in Florida.The USS Saipan, a navy assault ship, was deployed to help the much smaller coast guard cutters. The help provided by the coast guard and the navy saved many lives, although the exact number is not known—no accurate records of the Floridabound departures from Mariel were kept. It is known that twenty-seven people

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died when several of the small boats foundered near coast guard units. The Cuban government closed Mariel to potential emigrants on October 1, thus ending the boatlift. From June 1 to October 1, another thirty thousand refugees escaped from Cuba. The air force was not directly involved in the boatlift. But some air force bases in Florida were used as receiving depots for arriving Cubans. On April 30, I was at Hurlbut Field to attend the funerals of those killed during Operation Eagle Claw. Hurlbut is adjacent to the much larger Eglin AFB, and following the ceremony, we drove over there. Since we were in the neighborhood, I had scheduled a meeting with the two senior commanders at Eglin, Maj. Gens. Robert Bond and Donald Lamberson. They told me that there were several hundred Cuban refugees housed at the base, and they thought that it might be a good idea for me to talk to them. They had already anticipated my answer—obviously, I could not refuse—and on our walk over to the base auditorium, I had to think about what to say. It quickly occurred to me that the people in the room and I had one thing in common: we were political refugees. There were about two hundred people in the auditorium; they were well dressed, but somewhat the worse for wear. Many of the Mariel boat people were remnants of the Cuban middle class, so I should not have been surprised. My first move was to ask someone to come up to the stage and translate my remarks. There was some discussion in the audience, and they finally decided that they did not need a translator, because most of them knew enough English to understand. Once again, I should not have been surprised. My speech was short and succinct. I told them that I had been a political refugee, and I talked about our escape from Europe. I welcomed them to the United States. And then inspiration struck. There were some children in the audience, and I picked a boy who looked to be about twelve years old—the same age that I was when I came to the United States. I had him stand next to me and then said, “In 1941, when I came to this country, I was about the same age as this young man. I will make a prediction: in thirty or forty years, this young man will be a United States senator. That, to me, is the real meaning of what this country is all about!” As things turned out, there are now two members of the Senate who are descendants of Cuban refugees: Robert Menendez of New Jersey and Marco Rubio of Florida. I am certain that in the coming years, there will be more.

The Titan Missile Accident in Damascus, Arkansas The Titan was the oldest intercontinental ballistic missile still deployed in 1980. The Martin LGM-25C Titan II had achieved operation capability in 1963. It was by far the largest missile in the air force’s inventory: it weighed 340,000 pounds, and it was 110 feet high and 11 feet in diameter. It could deliver a payload of

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8,200 pounds to a target 9,300 miles away. The Titan missile carried a single W53 warhead with an equivalent explosive yield of nine megatons. This was by far the largest-yield warhead in the air force’s inventory. These were called “countervalue” weapons because they were intended to destroy cities and kill people, which were the “values” of the warring nation. Other, smaller weapons, designated “counterforce” weapons, were designed to destroy the military installations of the Soviets and their allies. I have to confess that I never felt that there was a real distinction between these definitions, but then, I am not a policy expert. Fifty-four Titan missiles were deployed at three locations around the country: Wichita, Kansas; Tucson, Arizona; and Little Rock, Arkansas. There were eighteen missiles in each of the three units. The missiles were kept on alert, which was possible because the Titan missiles did not have to use cryogenic fuels. The Titan II missile used hypergolic fuel (A-50 hydrazine / dinitrogen tetroxide), which ignites on contact. Therefore, it takes only the turn of a valve to launch the missiles. On September 19, 1980, Harold Brown called me at six in the morning. I tend to get up early, so he knew I would be in my office. He told me that there had been an accident at the Titan missile silo near Damascus, Arkansas. He asked me to handle the press, the politics, and any other calls. After I hung up the telephone, I called the National Command Center downstairs (generally known as the “Tank”) and told them I was coming. When I arrived, David Jones was already there. He provided me with a short description of the accident. General Jones knew of my technical background in the nuclear weapons business, so he wanted me to look at what had happened to the weapon. My first concern was the weapon itself. The W53 warhead was a Los Alamos design. We had to find out whether the high explosive in the warhead had detonated and scattered the plutonium not only in the pit of the weapon but also in the vicinity. Plutonium is highly toxic as well as very radioactive. The colonel, who was the action officer for the incident, did not know the answer to my question, but told me that the missile was located near Damascus in Faulkner County, about a hundred miles due north of Little Rock. The Titan II was a unit of the 308th Strategic Missile Wing. When I returned to my office, I called the assistant to the secretary of defense for nuclear, chemical, and biological programs so that I could learn something about the warhead. I was told that the warhead had survived the explosion and had been ejected intact from the silo in which the missile was located. It ended up on the ground about one hundred feet from the top of the silo. The heavy concrete cover of the silo had been blown off and had, more or less, survived the blast. Needless to say, I was delighted to hear that the warhead had survived, but I was not surprised. The warhead is encased in a very tough cocoon of material so that it can survive the rigor of reentering the atmosphere at high speed at the end of its flight. A press conference was scheduled for four o’clock, so I had to spend some time with our lawyers. I wanted to make sure that I did not say anything that would

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cause us legal problems. I thought our most serious problem would be an avalanche of lawsuits alleging radiation poisoning and illness from the release of toxic materials. My major concern was that people would make injury claims because the hypergolic fuel, vaporized by the explosion, had probably drifted around the area. Hypergolic materials are very toxic, so these lawsuits would have to be taken seriously. Fortunately, about half an hour before the press conference, I had a telephone call from the wing commander at Little Rock Air Force Base. This was my first conversation with anyone who was a witness to the event. This was what happened. During some maintenance being performed on one of the access platforms at the top of the hundred-foot-deep silo, a heavy socket wrench rolled off the platform and struck one of the fuel tanks of the rocket. It was a relatively small leak, so the local commander put together a “tiger team” to deal with the situation. The cleanup from the accident was proceeding, but eight and a half hours after the initiating event, hydrazine vapor exploded and destroyed the missile as well as the silo. One air force technician was killed, and twenty-one others were injured. The press conference was well attended. I made a short statement describing what had happened and then opened the floor to questions. The obvious first question was about radiation escaping from the warhead. My answer was that there was none, and I explained why the warhead had a good chance of surviving. I had some credibility because of my past familiarity with the design of nuclear weapons, but I could see that there were still skeptics in the room. I then described exactly what had happened, and once the radiation matter was laid to rest, the conference wound down to reasonable and more general questions. The next day, there was a story about the Titan accident, but fortunately, it was not on page one. In the next few days there were congressional hearings, the first one on September 24, convened by the House Armed Service Committee. Maj. Gen. Chris Adams of the Strategic Air Command was with me. Half the committee was there, and once again, the big question concerned radiation leaking from the warhead. It took a long time for us to persuade people of the truth, and my experience in the nuclear weapons business turned out to be useful. During a closed session of the hearing, I explained in detail how the W53 warhead works.The hearing took three and a half hours, but I think it was worth it. We got the full press treatment, and all the TV networks covered the story. On September 26, I flew to McConnell Air Force Base near Wichita, Kansas, where another Titan missile wing was based. Col. Elmer Brooks was the commander of the 381st Strategic Missile Wing. He very much wanted to show me that everything was going well. I performed a detailed inspection and was very impressed by the morale and the technical competence of the crews. This was important because there was talk of retiring this Titan missile force. There was a good military argument for doing so, but I thought it would be a mistake at the time because it would be seen as another sign of weakness, which would hurt the presi-

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dent’s reelection chances. I made this point in a short handwritten report about my visit to Wichita. On October 10, I made my first visit to Little Rock Air Force Base since the accident. I received a complete briefing. It had apparently been a confined explosion that dissipated most of its energy inside the silo. The seven-hundred-ton metal-and-concrete cover had been lifted off the top, and the warhead had been ejected intact. The people who had been hurt were in a gallery that led to the bottom of the silo. After lunch, I took a helicopter to the Damascus site to see the facility for myself. The top of the silo was destroyed. I walked over to look at the warhead, which was several hundred feet away. The local commander told me that many people in the neighborhood had complained about the toxic fumes created by the explosion. Air force people had been visiting the surrounding communities to find out what the effects were in their area. This information, he told me, would be provided in detail to the Air Staff to help it prepare for any lawsuits arising from the accident. As a result of this visit, I concluded that the correct action was being taken. In the evening there was a party to celebrate the twenty-fifth anniversary of the base. It was a grand affair. The political establishment of the state was well represented, beginning with Governor Clinton. Senators Bumpers and Pryor were there, as well as two congressmen, William Alexander and Edwin Bethune. After the dinner, I delivered a short speech in which I stressed the importance of continuing to maintain a strong strategic air force. At the end of the party, Governor Clinton took me aside and asked whether I could stay over the next day, which was a Saturday. He wanted me to appear with him on two television programs to explain what had happened at Damascus. I told the governor that I could do something like that only if it could not be construed as a political campaign appearance. He told me that he was in the middle of a very tough reelection campaign and that he wanted to have me help him show people that he had a connection in Washington. In addition, he wanted me to explain exactly what had happened at Damascus, in the hope that doing so would quell some of the rumors being spread about radiation and poisonous gases. I told the governor that I was under instructions not to participate in any partisan activities, and he agreed with that position. He told me that he would make a statement at the beginning of the interview to make sure that the audience understood that this appearance was for informational, not political, purposes. William Jefferson Clinton was thirty-four years old in 1980. After serving two two-year terms, he was in a tight reelection race. He had long hair and wore one of the polyester leisure suits that were fashionable at the time. I agreed to stay and give two TV interviews. The governor decided not to appear on them himself, because no matter what he said, it would be interpreted as political. In the end, I appeared on three interviews, two in Little Rock and one in Fort Smith, the second-largest city in Arkansas. Governor Clinton made a Kingair aircraft available to me for the

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trip. I returned to Little Rock Air Force Base in the evening for the flight back to Washington on a T-39. Congressman Bethune was with me, and we took the opportunity to have a long conversation. He was definitely a friend and a very astute person. A week after my visit to Arkansas, I received a thank-you letter from Governor Clinton, along with a certificate naming me an “Arkansas Traveler.” It still hangs in my office today, right under the commission naming me the director of defense research and engineering signed by President Clinton. Governor Clinton lost the election in 1980.

The Cruise Missile Decision One of the really important weapons developed during the Cold War was the cruise missile. This was essentially a small subsonic unmanned airplane with a unique guidance system that used Earth’s terrain to provide guidance to the target. It could carry a nuclear or a conventional warhead, had a payload capacity of 3,000 pounds, and had a range of 1,500 miles. The missile was very versatile, and it could be launched from land, air, or sea. The idea for an accurately targeted missile that did not depend on rocket propulsion was not new. The German V-1 (the V stood for Vergeltungswaffe, “vengeance weapon”) was a cruise missile. It was a small unmanned airplane with a range of a few hundred miles, and it carried a thousand-pound warhead of high explosives. Because the aircraft was not guided, it was in essence a terror weapon: the one who fired it did not know whom it would kill. It was powered by a ramjet engine that burned kerosene. The V-1 had descendants in the years immediately after World War II.The advent of microelectronics made it possible to control such missiles, and the development of turbojet engines made it possible to extend their range by an order of magnitude. By 1968, the air force had developed an interest in a precisely guided missile that otherwise resembled the V-1. Another important development was spaceflight, which made it possible for the first time to construct an accurate map of Earth. With radars mounted on Earth-orbiting satellites, the topology of the planet was accurately determined. As a result of these developments, the Joint Cruise Missile Project Office was established in 1977 to combine the interests of both the navy and the air force in such a weapon. The project office was placed under the supervision of the director of defense research and engineering, William J. Perry, and the project manager was R. Adm. Walter M. Locke. The office was chartered to develop a jet engine and guidance system that would be used by both the navy and the air force versions of the missile. By the time Bill Perry arrived in the Pentagon, the cruise missile requirements of the two services had diverged. The navy needed cruise missiles that could be

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fired from torpedo tubes in existing submarines, which allowed for a diameter of only twenty-one inches. Thus, these cruise missiles looked from the outside very much like the standard torpedoes used by submarines. The air force, on the other hand, needed cruise missiles that could fit into the bomb bay of a Boeing B-52. Thus, the fuselages of these missiles would have to have a roughly triangular shape. It was decided to require each of the services to adopt the common portions of the missiles—the propulsion and guidance systems—and then to develop separately the vehicles that would carry the weapons. The small jet engine was the Williams F107 turbofan engine, and the guidance system was a terrain-following radar, the McDonnell Douglas AN/​DPW-23 TERCOM (terrain contour matching) with a Litton-1000 Inertial Navigation System. When I was sworn in as secretary of the air force, the process of abolishing the Joint Cruise Missile Project Office and turning responsibility over to the services was well under way.The air force had let contracts to Boeing and General Dynamics to build the missiles. As things turned out, I had to make the choice between the contractors. This was a rather daunting proposition; nothing I had ever done before was even remotely connected with some of the critical technologies of the cruise missiles. I spent considerable time studying the details of the contractors’ work and their test results. It was very important that I be able to hold my own in the technical reviews that would be held before I had to decide between the two. Things came to a head on March 25, 1980. I selected Boeing because it was hands-down the better solution. The main determinant was that Boeing’s model had better aerodynamic performance than the one from General Dynamics. This was not surprising; Boeing had much more experience in this type of business, and it showed. I tell this story to illustrate that some very successful programs have given the United States a strong lead in military capability. Bill Perry was responsible for successfully concluding the cruise missile program. He knew when to initiate a joint program and how to manage it out of his office until it could be turned over to the military services. Later in the Carter administration, Perry assumed the title of under secretary of defense for research and development. He returned to the Pentagon during the Clinton presidency and served with distinction, first as deputy secretary of defense and later as secretary (1994–97).

The Air Force and the Space Shuttle The approval of the space shuttle program by President Nixon in January 1972 was preceded by a lengthy and important negotiation. In 1969, Caspar Weinberger came to Washington to head the OMB. He had been a member of the state legislature in California representing a district in San Francisco. He was also the host of a popular radio talk show. Upon his arrival, Weinberger quickly acquired the nickname “Cap the Knife.” President Nixon wanted to show that he would reduce

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federal spending. One way was to find areas of duplication and then combine the work of several agencies. I have already mentioned in chapter 6 how the space shuttle evolved from the fully reusable configuration to the “stage and a half ” version, which was finally approved by President Nixon in January 1972. This evolution was triggered by the requirement developed by the OMB that, given the high number of flights necessary to break even with expendable launch vehicles (fifty flights a year), the space shuttles should eventually be used to put all US-launched spacecraft into Earth orbit. The most important consequence of this requirement was that it forced the air force to negotiate with NASA about how the service’s spaceflight requirements could be met by using only the space shuttle. The air force people were clearly unhappy about this development because they did not want to lose control of creating their own expendable launch vehicle. But the White House dismissed these concerns, and planning for the use of the space shuttles was initiated. Fortunately, the secretary of the air force in 1969 was Robert Seamans, who had served as deputy administrator of NASA in the Johnson administration and thus was thoroughly familiar with plans for the space shuttle. In addition, John S. Foster Jr., who was very knowledgeable about the matter, was still serving as the director of defense research and engineering. On the NASA side, George Low, the deputy administrator, was the lead negotiator, which was also a fortunate choice. The air force placed two important requirements on the design of the space shuttle. The payload bay had to be large enough to accommodate the biggest satellites to be launched by the National Reconnaissance Office—payloads in excess of forty thousand pounds. The second requirement was more difficult because it involved a maneuver that had not been seriously considered in the original designs. The shuttle would have to be able to execute a single Earth orbit and land at the same place from where it was launched.The military wanted to use the space shuttle to gather very time-sensitive information—for example, damage assessments of an air raid or a missile raid on a distant target. This meant that a shuttle coming back from Earth orbit would have to be able to glide more than a thousand miles (at least) to the east in order to reach the same place from which it was launched. (The shuttle’s orbit is fixed in space once it is launched, and the Earth turns west to east underneath the orbit.) To achieve this range, or “cross range,” as it was called, the configuration would have to be changed from the straight wing favored at the time to one that had the lowest drag. It was for this reason that the final configuration of the space shuttle orbiter featured a delta-shaped wing and a lifting body. When I joined the Carter administration in 1977, the development schedule for the space shuttle was about half finished.There were already some signs that all was not well. The most difficult technical problem was the space shuttle main engine (SSME). The SSME was a major step in rocket-engine development. Each engine would have a thrust of about 800,000 pounds, which required a combustionchamber pressure of 2,747 pounds per square inch for the liquid hydrogen-oxygen

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fuel mixture. This was more than two and a half times higher than the combustion chamber pressure of 1,050 pounds per square inch in the F-1 main engine of the Saturn V rocket. As time went on, the SSME experienced several failures, and this required delays in the schedule and more money to finish the program. During 1978, I had a number of meetings with John Yardley, the NASA associate administrator for manned spaceflight, and Alan M. Lovelace, the NASA deputy administrator. These conversations continued into 1979, and on August 30, 1979, I met with Lovelace, Bob Frosch (the NASA administrator), and William Lilly (the chief budget officer). I was told that because of problems with the shuttle’s main engine, there would be a cost increase in the program of $200 million in fiscal year 1980 and $300 million the following year. They also said that there would be a yet-unestimated schedule delay. I responded by telling them that the space shuttle would now be vulnerable to cancellation unless something positive was done. On September 8, I met with Max Faget. Max was the “chief designer” of all US spacecraft and the director of engineering at the NASA–Johnson Space Center. He told me that the delay of the first flight would be by more than a year, to late 1980 or early 1981. In addition, he expressed great concern about having people on board the first flight. He thought we should spend the money and the time to develop an automatic landing system before risking a flight with people aboard. I made up my mind to visit both the Johnson and the Marshall Centers to find out whether I should take Max Faget’s concerns seriously. In addition, I would visit both the Rockwell manufacturing facility in Canoga Park (a northwest Los Angeles neighborhood), where the shuttle airframes were being built, and the Rocketdyne SSME test facility in Santa Susana (west of Canoga Park) to see for myself how things were going. On October 24 at a meeting at Canoga Park, the Rockwell space shuttle project manager, George Jeffs, provided us with a pessimistic assessment of the situation. Lt. Gen. Richard Henry, the commander of the Space and Missile Systems Organization, and Maj. Gen. Jack Kulpa of SAF/​SP (Secretary of the Air Force / Special Program, the code name for Jack Kulpa’s unit of the NRO) were with me. He told us that there would be cost increases and schedule delays, but unlike the NASA officials I had met with, he did not mention figures. Both of my air force friends were disturbed by this report. During the ride back to SAMSO at the Los Angeles Air Force Base in the staff car, we discussed the possibility that the entire shuttle program might be canceled. All this caused me some real problems in trying to maintain the air force’s commitment and interest in the exclusive use of the space shuttle. I reminded my air force friends that the Carter administration had continued the policy of using only the space shuttle for all launch activities. Thus, we had no choice but to adjust our space activities accordingly. I have to confess that I was beginning to have serious doubts about the wisdom of the “space shuttle only” launch policy. I did make sure that enough expendable launch vehicles were available to launch the highpriority spacecraft of the NRO. (A few years later, when I was confirmed as deputy

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administrator of NASA, Milton Silveira and I were asked to prepare a long-range planning paper for NASA; it recommended abandonment of the “shuttle only” policy. The Reagan administration accepted our recommendation.) Things came to a head late in 1979. We got word that James McIntyre, the chief of the OMB, recommended that the space shuttle program be canceled. He cited the ongoing delays and cost overruns. We were notified that a decision about the shuttle program would be made at a meeting with the president on November 14 at the White House. The meeting was held in the Cabinet Room, a large conference room next to the Oval Office. Besides President Carter, the attendees included Robert Frosch (NASA administrator), James McIntyre (OMB director), Alan Lovelace (deputy administer of NASA), John Yardley (associate administrator of NASA for manned spaceflight), Frank Press (the president’s science and technology adviser), and two of his staff members.There were also representatives from the

Figure 10.3. A meeting in the Cabinet Room of the White House, November 14, 1979. It was decided to continue with the space shuttle program, in spite of recent technical problems. Left to right: James McIntyre, OMB director; President Carter; Robert Frosch, NASA administrator; me; Alan Lovelace, NASA deputy administrator; and two of Frank Press’s assistants. As secretary of the air force, I was there to represent the interests of the Department of Defense.

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National Security Council staff, headed by Col. Robert A. Rosenberg (USAF). I represented the Defense Department. The president began the meeting by announcing that he wanted to make a strong statement of support for the space shuttle program. I was surprised because I had been told by the White House official who invited me to this meeting that it would be a “decision” meeting. The decision to continue with the space shuttle program had apparently been made earlier that day by the president, Frosch, and McIntyre. I now understood why I was there rather than Harold Brown to represent the Defense Department. I was chagrined but pleased by the decision, and I wondered whether I was the only person in the room who did not know that the decision to go ahead with the space shuttle had already been made. The president explained that arguments in favor of going ahead with the program would be based primarily on the national security applications of the space shuttle. He made the point that going forward, everyone involved had to be on the same page. He ended by telling us that the program would have a single point of contact in the White House, Jim McIntyre. Bob Frosch then gave a detailed presentation of the status of the space shuttle. It was very well done; Bob was one of the most articulate and eloquent senior people in the government. He described the mission model of the space shuttle, stressing the critical national-security-related payloads that would be flown on it in the first few years of operation. He likewise emphasized the large number of commercial payloads that would be flown; he predicted an “explosion in the space-based communication business.” The president asked some good questions about the economic forecasts for the communications business, which indicated that he was skeptical about the projections. Frosch then discussed technical issues, beginning with the shuttle main engine, which was still the “pacing item” in the program. He mentioned that progress had been made. The president then asked about the problems we had with the “tiles” of the reusable surface insulation (RSI). He said that there had to be a better way of doing this. Because of my experience at Ames during the development of the RSI system, I provided a short description of the system and added the reasons why I thought it would work. Finally, Frosch discussed the projected cost and schedule. He provided an estimate of $8.5 billion to complete the program, about 23 percent above the original cost estimate. Frosch estimated that the first manned orbital flight would happen sometime late in 1980. The president was keenly interested in the exact date of the flight and told us that he wanted to be there. My turn came at the end of Bob Frosch’s description, and I was brief. There were two important points about Defense Department uses of the shuttle: the launch of vital NRO satellites and the single-orbit reconnaissance mission, which had determined the planform and design of the shuttle. At the end of my statement, the president asked Frank Press, his scientific adviser, what he thought we should say in the statement announcing the continuation of

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the space shuttle program. Press made a strong and eloquent statement of support: the concept of a reusable spaceship would ultimately represent a unique new capability. He urged the president to make a similarly strong and clear statement of support. And so the air force would continue to support the space shuttle. In addition to achieving the one-thousand-mile cross range, the service agreed to develop an upper stage for the space shuttle that would be designed specifically to put Earth-orbiting satellites in geosynchronous orbits. In addition, the air force agreed to place a launch facility at Vandenberg Air Force Base in Southern California. From there, space shuttles could be launched into the polar “sun-synchronous” orbits characteristic of imaging reconnaissance satellites. Space Launch Complex–6 would be upgraded to accommodate space shuttle launches. There was considerable argument over establishing a launch facility at Vandenberg, because of the high cost. It was canceled following the loss of Challenger, when use of the space shuttle was restricted to missions sponsored by NASA’s scientific and technology-development flights. One final story needs to be told about the air force and the space shuttle. When Ronald Reagan assumed office as president in 1981, Edward C. (Pete) Aldridge, a distinguished aerospace engineer and executive, was appointed under secretary of the air force and director of the NRO. Pete Aldridge continued the service’s support of the space shuttle, and the first classified shuttle launch occurred on his watch. But Aldridge decided to fly on the shuttle himself as a payload specialist. He started the training program, but did not go through with it when Challenger was lost. Even if he was ultimately not able to fly on a mission, I applauded Pete’s eagerness to make the effort.

The Election of President Reagan It has been my habit ever since participating in my first presidential election in 1952 to wait until the very end of the campaign to decide how to vote. The election of 1980 was no different. Except this time I was not only a voter, but also a member of the Carter administration. So in a way, I was a participant. I held a commission from President Carter, and in this sense, I was in part responsible for the state of affairs.Was I also bound to vote for him? If my intent was to stay on in a second Carter administration, then I was clearly bound to vote for him. If not, then I would be free to vote for Governor Reagan. But I also felt that if I entertained the idea of voting for the president’s opponent, then I would have to resign before the election. For these reasons, I had to make a carefully considered analysis before coming to a conclusion. A year earlier, on October 26, 1979, I had been at a party at the Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles, hosted by the local chapter of the Air Force Association. Most of the people present were Republicans, and several primary elections had

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already been held. Gov. John Connally of  Texas and Ronald Reagan were the Republican front-runners, and Edward Kennedy was challenging President Carter for the Democratic nomination.There was much political talk. Here is what I wrote in my diary: “These people are all split between Connally and Reagan, and they don’t know how to deal with that situation. I believe it will be Carter-Mondale versus Reagan-Bush, with a toss-up as to who will eventually win. Neither Connally nor Kennedy will measure up in the end because of the apparent character flaws they both possess.” The most interesting point in this passage is that I predicted that George H.W. Bush would be Ronald Reagan’s running mate. Sure enough, on July 16, 1980, he was nominated for that post by the Republican National Convention in Detroit. I spent a few hours on October 29 studying the matter. The polls were of no help because the major ones said essentially that the election was too close to call. I remembered what I had told the British defense minister, Sir Francis Pym, in London the prior September: “Mr. Carter will win the popular vote, but he could easily lose the presidency because of the way our electoral college works. Mr. Reagan is strong in states that tend to have small populations, which are overrepresented in the electoral college. Therefore, in a close popular vote, Mr. Reagan could win the presidency even if he loses the popular vote.” That was still my analysis when I went to bed. This is what I wrote in my diary: “My fearless forecast is that Mr. Carter will win the popular vote, but that Mr. Reagan will be our next president.” None of this had anything to do with the decision awaiting me. The next day was very slow, and early in the morning Jim Fletcher asked me to have lunch with him. We met at a bistro on K Street. Jim Elms, a longtime NASA executive who at the time headed the NASA–Electronics Research Center in Cambridge, was with him. I knew both of them well, and I was curious about what they had in mind. After some preliminaries, they came to the point. They wanted to know whether I would be interested in serving as NASA administrator if Governor Reagan was elected. This was not a new idea. Some months before this meeting, Bill Perry had told me that in Mr. Carter’s second term, I should leave the Pentagon and head NASA instead. Both Fletcher and Elms were concerned about the state of NASA because the Carter administration had not initiated any new major programs. Finally, both Fletcher and Elms were Republicans, and they told me that they would support my selection if Reagan was elected. I felt flattered by the attention but told them that as a member of the current administration, I could not answer that question. My first responsibility was to stay in the Pentagon and do my job until the situation was clarified. We talked about other matters, and we agreed that NASA had been placed at a lower level of priority during the Carter years, which was not a positive development. I spent the afternoon trying to sort things out. I decided to go to Colorado Springs to shore up Gary Hart’s reelection campaign with a view toward establishing an air force space command headquartered in Colorado Springs (see chapter

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9). I felt that the trip was successful in keeping people in the state focused on the creation of a space command located in Colorado. I returned on Monday evening, November 3. I had a long talk with Bun. In spite of the fact that she was not satisfied with her teaching position in Maryland, she was in the middle of completing her dissertation at George Washington University. All other things being equal, she wanted to stay in Washington to finish her degree. So we decided that whatever happened, we would stay in Washington. The next day was Election Day. In the morning, I went to the polling place located in a church on Monticello Road and cast my ballot for Ronald Reagan. It was a tough decision. President Carter is a decent and intelligent person who had some important achievements on his record. The successful negotiation of a peace treaty between Egypt and Israel was at the top of my list. He had pushed for the civil service reform initiative, which led to significant improvements of civil service personnel policies.The centerpiece was the introduction of the Senior Executive Service, combined with a substantial bonus system for superior service. But, unfortunately, these achievements were marred by serious failures. The most important of these was Mr. Carter’s inability to gain the confidence of the American people, which was illustrated by their response to his “malaise” speech. While the SALT II Treaty was a step in the progress of arms control, the signing ceremony in Vienna was marred when, following the signing, President Carter walked over to an astonished Leonid Brezhnev, embraced him, and then kissed him on the cheek. The gesture was not only inappropriate, but also sent a very wrong message to the American people concerning their president. Finally, there was the mishandling of the Iranian hostage situation. By raising it into a major issue, publicly counting the number of days that they were being held, and by the failure of the rescue operation, the president was handing a propaganda victory to Iran. I felt at the time that he should have been very low-key about the whole matter and perhaps have run some clandestine operations to learn what might be feasible. Ronald Reagan, on the other hand, had strong credentials. He had been a successful governor of the nation’s largest state and had also acquitted himself well on a national level, especially with his October 1964 speech supporting the presidential candidacy of Barry Goldwater. Even his failed efforts to win the Republican presidential nomination, in 1968 and in 1976, enhanced his political standing. I have already described the meeting that I attended with Governor Reagan in 1971 (see chapter 6), which made a very strong impression on me. Finally, I thought that he would take a stronger position against the Soviets because of his lengthy anticommunist record, dating back to his days as the president of the Screen Actors Guild from 1947 to 1952, and again in 1959. Thus, I made the choice. When I arrived at my office, I wrote a letter of resignation to President Carter, which I would send to him in the event that he won the election. I carried a copy down to Harold Brown’s secretary on the third floor so that he would know what I had in mind and could plan accordingly. The rest of the day was normal.

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At home in the evening, Bun and I watched the election returns on the television. It was not long before it became obvious that Ronald Reagan would be our next president. The final numbers were that Reagan received 50.7 percent of the popular vote, Carter 41 percent, and Republican congressman John Anderson 6.7 percent, with the remainder going to minor candidates. The electoral vote was a landslide: with 44 states and 489 electoral votes for Reagan, and 6 states and the District of Columbia, totaling 49 electoral votes, for the president. We turned off the television and talked about what would come next. I was concerned about Bun’s job in Maryland because she was working for little reward in a very difficult situation. We discussed that and also her studies. I told her that we had two real choices: we could stay here or return to California. I had a standing offer from Ames, and it would be easy to return. We still had the house in Los Altos Hills, and frankly, I was rather looking forward to going home. She then talked about her work on the doctorate and how important it was to her. We continued to weigh the possibilities, and in the end we decided not to make a decision right away. The one point that was clear was that we would have a new president, and we prayed for his success. When I arrived in my Pentagon office the next morning, there was an envelope on my desk. I opened it, and it was the letter to Harold Brown that I had sent him the day before. Across the top of the letter, Harold wrote, “Thanks, but this is overcome by events!” Harold did have a sense of humor.

11 The Interregnum and the Return to NASA

By late 1980, Bun and I had been in Washington for three and a half years. Given the imminent change in administrations, we had to decide whether to try to stay on or to go home. On November 5, the day after the election, we looked at the pros and cons of staying. Bun did not like her teaching job in Camp Springs, Maryland, but she was about halfway through her doctoral program at George Washington University, and she wanted to stay in Washington long enough to finish. In my case, I would have to leave the Pentagon, but there might be other opportunities for me in the private sector or at one of the universities in the Washington area. The other possibility would be for me to return to the NASA–Ames Research Center in some kind of senior research position. We concluded that we did not have enough information at the moment to make a sound decision. A week later, I went to NASA Headquarters to observe the flyby of Saturn by Voyager 1. The pictures that were beamed to Earth, in real time, were absolutely spectacular. Over the course of the next several weeks, I was alternately told by groups of friends and colleagues that I should put myself forward as a candidate to be the new NASA administrator, or that I had no chance of gaining that post. On November 24, I flew to California to visit Edwards Air Force Base. I was still secretary of the air force, so I received all the requisite honors. Chuck Yeager, the first pilot to break the sound barrier, and his wife, Glynnis, hosted a going-away party for me that evening. I then flew to San Jose for a visit to Ames. My major purpose was to see Bob Pike, the personnel officer, to arrange a job for me in case we decided to return to California. I filled out the paperwork for a civil service appointment at the GS-15 level as a senior research scientist. In addition, there was a ceremony at Ames to hon-

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or me for my work on the local Boy Scouts council. David Packard (the chairman of Hewlett-Packard and a former deputy secretary of defense) presented the award. Rep. Pete McCloskey was with him. After the event, they took me aside to ask whether I would be interested running for Congress in 1982. McCloskey said that he would not be running for reelection, and he thought my taking his seat would be a good thing for the district and for California. I was taken totally by surprise. Packard told me that if I decided to run, he would make an appropriate campaign contribution. I told them that I would think about it and then thanked them for their confidence in my ability to represent the district in Washington. On the red-eye back to Washington, I decided that the transition period was turning out to be much more active and confusing than anticipated. Back at the Pentagon, I heard from a couple of knowledgeable sources that there was no chance of my becoming NASA administrator in the new administration. On November 30, I wrote a letter to Bob Pike accepting a GS-15 senior research scientist appointment at Ames. I told Bun about this, and with her usual insight, she told me that I was jumping the gun. Amid the swirling rumors about who might get which job, someone asked me whether I would consider being the deputy administrator of NASA. The thought was an interesting one. Obviously, the new administrator would have a voice in selecting the deputy. I decided to continue to express an interest in serving as the administrator and leave the matter of the deputy’s position until the new head of NASA was chosen. On December 10, I met with Sen. John Glenn, at his invitation, in his Senate office. He quickly came to the point: Would I be interested in serving as NASA administrator? I was somewhat surprised by the question because of the rather spirited debate that he and I had had over the ratification of the SALT II Treaty during the Carter administration. I told Senator Glenn that I would accept the NASA job if asked to do so and then added some statements about priorities. I told him that we would have to make the space shuttle work and that we should then try to persuade the Reagan administration to adopt the construction of a space station as our next big initiative in space. Satisfied, he told me that he would talk to Sen. Paul Laxalt, who would be the senior Republican senator concerned with space policy.This was the most serious meeting that I had had about the proposition that I should lead NASA. The next morning, Jay Morris of the White House personnel office called to tell me that I was a candidate to be NASA administrator. He asked me whether I would accept the nomination if it came, and I told him that I would. For the next couple of hours, I was elated that I had at least a chance to lead NASA, and I began to think about what we should do once I was in charge. Jim Elms, a former director of the NASA–Electronics Research Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts, called to tell me that Jim Beggs would be the NASA administrator. I had to laugh, and I told him of my conversation with Jay Morris. He told

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me that his information came straight from the White House, not from the personnel office. So I would be going back to California after all. The ups and downs in the past month had been hard to take, so I was relieved that the waiting was over. I then went over to NASA to have a discussion about the upper stage for the space shuttle, which was one of the items that the air force was responsible for under our agreement with NASA. I told the acting NASA administrator, Al Lovelace, what had happened, and we both had a good laugh! On December 12, Alan Berman, the director of research at the Naval Research Laboratory, asked me whether I would consider becoming head of the lab’s Space Science Division. The Naval Research Laboratory is, by any measure, the best civil service scientific laboratory in the nation, so a position there would be rewarding. The proposal came as a complete surprise, and I was on the verge of telling Alan that I could not consider it when he continued: “You know, you will have to move out of the Pentagon shortly, and if you like, I will give you an office here so that you will have time to make up your mind.” “Alan,” I replied, “you really are throwing me a curve, but I much appreciate your offer. I am in the process of trying to decide whether to return to California or to try to stay in Washington.” I thanked him for the offer and told him that I would think very carefully about his proposal. That evening, Bun and I discussed the situation in detail. I told her that Berman’s offer would give us a chance to stay in Washington for a while longer. Bun would have time to finish her degree at George Washington University, and I would have time to find a good job. She saw the point, so we decided to stay in Washington.

A Confusing Few Weeks About a week later, it was announced that George M. Low, the president of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and former deputy administrator of NASA (1969–76), would be the leader of the transition team for NASA. This was good news; George knew NASA as well as anyone. In addition, as the outgoing secretary of the air force, I would have the chance to talk with him. When it was my turn to brief the transition team, I prepared some good graphics and some models of aircraft and spacecraft that we were working with. At the end of the meeting, which lasted several hours, George suggested that we have dinner at the Cosmos Club. George and I had been close friends since his appointment as deputy administrator in 1969. I knew that he was a straight arrow, and he knew that I was interested in one or the other of the top jobs at NASA.When I asked him point-blank whether I had a shot at one of them, he did not mince words. He told me there was no chance of my securing a presidential appointment, since I had served in a Democratic administration. He added that he had seen enough of the new people to know that they were highly partisan. We left it at that and had an enjoyable dinner.

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The next day ( January 27, 1981), Jim Fletcher called to tell me that I had a very good chance of being the next NASA administrator. I laughed and told him about my meeting with George Low, and he laughed also. I was grateful for all my friends’ encouragement, despite the wildly differing messages, which confused things. Jim laughed again and told me that he likewise had been very confused before he got the call from the White House telling him that he had the job.

New Cold War Leadership for the West In the twenty-four months between October 16, 1978, and November 5, 1980, there was a fundamental change in the leadership of the West that would have far-reaching consequences. Karol Jósef Wojtyla was elected pope by the College of Cardinals on October 16, 1978; Margaret Hilda (Roberts) Thatcher was named prime minister of the United Kingdom by Queen Elizabeth II on May 4, 1979; and as we have seen, Ronald Wilson Reagan was elected president of the United States on November 5, 1980. The trio had a number of characteristics in common, and their backgrounds were similar in some ways: all came from modest homes; all had lived through World War II; all had attended and graduated from institutions of higher education; all were very intelligent; all had a complex and sophisticated approach to conservative politics; all were charismatic and eloquent speakers; and finally, all had a deep and abiding faith in freedom and thus were strong opponents of the communists and their ideology. Because of their influence in bringing about victory in the Cold War, here I will provide a short background sketch of each one. I had the good fortune to meet two of these outstanding people: Reagan and Thatcher. As mentioned in chapter 6, I met Governor Reagan in 1971. During my term of service as deputy administrator of NASA (1981–84), I attended a number of meetings in the White House and elsewhere that included the president. These are described in more detail in chapters 12 and 13. I met Mrs. Thatcher twice— once in 1991 and then again in 1993. Her son, Mark, moved to Dallas, and after she left office in 1989, she was free to travel for personal reasons. I was still serving as the chancellor of the University of  Texas System in 1991. A group of prominent people in Dallas arranged a dinner party for Mrs.Thatcher, and as head of the most prominent state university system, I was invited. Thus, I have some firsthand impressions about the mind-sets and methodologies of the leaders who won the Cold War. In order of their accession to power, here are some short descriptions of their lives. Karol Wojtyla, Pope John Paul II Karol Wojtyla was born on May 18, 1920, in Wadowice, a town in what is now southern Poland (Galicia). In his early school years, he developed a love of sports and excelled in his academic work as well. In 1938, he moved to Krakow to study at the Jagiellonian University. He studied languages and philology, and supported

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Chapter 11 Figure 11.1. Karol Jósef Wojtyla, Pope John Paul II, 1978–2005.

himself by doing odd jobs and working in the library. In 1940 the Nazis closed the university and put all young Polish men to work. Karol worked as a laborer in a quarry and in a chemical factory. Two years later he decided to become a priest, having concluded that it was an “inner fact of unquestionable and absolute clarity” that he should do so. While working at menial jobs from 1940 to 1944, he began his religious studies in one of the underground seminaries run by the archbishop of Krakow. Karol Wojtyla was ordained a Catholic priest on November 1, 1946, by the archbishop of Krakow and was then sent to Rome for graduate studies. He returned to Poland in 1948 as a parish priest and also as an adjunct professor at the Jagiellonian University. In his first years as a priest, he wrote both secular and religious works, and demonstrated his charisma and leadership by organizing a small group of young people who called themselves the “Rodzinka” (“family” or “folks”). He led discussion groups on theology, philosophy, and literature, and wrote both poetry and plays. Wojtyla was an accomplished actor who appeared in his own plays. The plays were controversial because they carried an anticommunist message. The Rodzinka, which eventually expanded to include about two hundred people, organized skiing, mountain-climbing, and kayaking expeditions in addition to intellectual activities. In 1954, Wojtyla earned a PhD at the Jagiellonian University with a dissertation comparing Catholic ethics and an ethical system based on the work of the secular philosopher Max Scheler. Wojtyla was a man of enormous energy, intellect, and charisma, and exhibited courage, faith, and persistence in adversity. His enormous talent did not escape the

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attention of the leadership of the Catholic Church. In 1958, he was named auxiliary (deputy) bishop of Krakow, an appointment sponsored by the primate of Poland, Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski, the archbishop of Warsaw and head of the Polish Catholic Church. At thirty-eight years old, Karol was the youngest bishop in Poland. Four years later, he was named archbishop of Krakow. During the Second Vatican Council, convened by Pope John XXIII, Wojtyla was a very active participant, using the power of his pen to draft several of the important documents produced by the council. In June 1967, at the age of forty-seven, he was raised to the rank of cardinal by Pope Paul VI. During this period, Wojtyla honed his management skills and began to become a focus of the opposition to the communist leadership in Poland. Pope Paul VI died in August 1978, and in the conclave that followed, an Italian cardinal, Albino Luciani, the archbishop of Venice, was named pope. He took the name “John Paul I” in honor of the two popes who preceded him. Unfortunately, the new pope died after only thirty-three days in office. A new conclave was called in October 1978, and a deadlock developed between two Italian cardinals. The influential cardinal archbishop of Vienna, Franz König, suggested a third candidate as a compromise, the Polish cardinal Wojtyla. Cardinal König’s campaign succeeded, and on October 16, 1978,Wojtyla was elected pope by the College of Cardinals on the eighth ballot, garnering 99 votes out of 111. He became the 264th pope in the succession to St. Peter.The new pope took the name “John Paul II” in honor of his immediate predecessor. He was fifty-eight years old, the youngest man to hold the office since the election of Pope Pius IX in 1846, and the first non-Italian pope in 455 years. The newly elected pope showed early on that he would be active. His first important move was to visit Poland in June 1979, only eight months after his election. When his airplane landed at the Warsaw airport, the pope walked down the steps from the plane, knelt, and kissed the ground of his homeland. John Paul recognized that he had to be very careful not to cause a riot, in which many people could be hurt. He simply showed up in selected areas, and crowds would collect. He issued very simple but important statements: “Be not afraid,” “Stick together,” “God is the only source of goodness and the only standard of conduct,” and so on. Crowds gathered wherever he went, and millions of Poles got a glimpse of their countryman. Whenever possible, they would shout, “We want God! We want God!” over and over again. The pope lifted the morale of the people, and in 1980 Lech Walesa found the courage and the support to start the Solidarity movement. John Lewis Gaddis, an influential writer on the Cold War, said, “John Paul II began the process of communism’s demise.” Margaret Hilda Thatcher (née Roberts) Margaret Hilda Roberts was born on October 13, 1925, in Grantham, a market town in Lincolnshire about a hundred miles north of London. Her father owned

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Figure 11.2. Margaret Hilda Thatcher, prime minister of the United Kingdom, 1979–1990.

two grocery stores in the town; the family lived in an apartment above the larger of the two. She was educated in the town’s elementary schools and at the Kesteven and Grantham Girls’ School (high school). An excellent student, she was also very active in extracurricular activities, including music and sports. She graduated as Head Girl in 1943 and earned a scholarship to attend Somerville College, a unit of Oxford University. Margaret arrived at Oxford in September 1943 and decided to study chemistry. In addition, she participated in student political activities and was elected president of the Oxford University Conservative Association in 1946. Margaret’s father, Alfred Roberts, had been an active member of the town council in Grantham, so her interest in politics was not surprising. Margaret Roberts earned a bachelor of science degree in chemistry in 1947, receiving second-class honors. During her time at Oxford, she had the opportunity to work with Prof. Dorothy Hodgkin, who won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1964, the third woman to do so. Margaret Roberts went to work in 1948 as a research chemist at BX Plastics Company in Colchester. She joined the local Conservative Association and attended conservative political conventions as a representative of the Oxford University Graduate Conservative Association. During 1950, she began to look for opportunities to stand for a seat in Parliament. In the British political system, it is not necessary to reside in a constituency in order to represent it in the House of Commons. Through her Oxford connections, she discovered a constituency at

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Dartford, in Kent. In January 1951, she was selected by the Dartford Conservative Association to be the candidate in the February 1951 election. She lost the election, but reduced the Labour Party’s majority in the district by several thousand votes. She lost another election that October, but again reduced Labour’s majority. Margaret Roberts had moved to Dartford in order to participate in these political activities. She continued her scientific career at J. Lyons and Company in Hammersmith, working on the development of emulsifiers used by soap and food manufacturers. Probably the most important event occurred when she met Denis Thatcher at a dinner party in February 1951. Denis Thatcher was a wealthy entrepreneur, and he and Margaret were immediately attracted to each other. In December 1951, they were married. In 1953, Margaret and Denis Thatcher had two children, twins Carol and Mark Thatcher. Margaret decided to continue her education, this time in the law, which would be important for a political career. She qualified as a barrister in 1953. In 1955, Margaret, this time with the help of her husband, began to look for another opportunity to gain a seat in the Parliament. The objective was to secure a seat with a large Conservative majority in the population. After one abortive attempt, Margaret was selected for the Fitchley constituency in April 1958. In the 1959 election, she was elected to the House of Commons after a hard campaign. Margaret Thatcher was thirty-four years old. It did not take long for Thatcher to rise to prominence in the Commons. In 1961, Prime Minister Harold MacMillan promoted her to parliamentary under secretary for the Ministry of Pensions and National Insurance. This position permitted her to sit on the front bench in the Commons and to participate actively in debates. She was quick on her feet, and she had a razor-sharp mind. When the Labour Party won the 1964 election, Thatcher became a minority member, but was able to retain a position on the Conservative front bench as a spokesperson for the “shadow” Treasury Ministry. While the Conservatives were in the minority, she held a number of other “shadow” cabinet posts. In the 1970 election, the Conservatives were returned to office, with Edward Heath as prime minister. Thatcher was given her first ministerial appointment as secretary of state for science and education. She was highly qualified for this position. She became famous for asking difficult questions and for reducing or abolishing programs she considered badly managed or unnecessary. But the Heath administration began to have difficulties in two areas: the failure of nationalized industries and strikes by large labor unions. As a result, the Heath government was voted out in the 1974 election. Because of  Thatcher’s record as a cabinet officer, she was able to defeat Edward Heath for the leadership of the Conservative Party. She began to establish positions in economics and in foreign policy. She came to the conclusion that the British experiment in socialism had failed and that the United Kingdom would go bankrupt if socialist policies continued. She became the principal proponent of Conservative

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social policies—privatizing previously nationalized companies, lowering taxes, and reducing government spending. And for the first time in her political career, she began to take positions on British foreign policy. On January 19, 1976, she delivered a foreign policy speech at a forum at Kensington Town Hall in London. Here is what she said about the Soviet Union: “The Russians are bent on world dominance, and they are rapidly acquiring the means to become the most powerful imperial nation the world has seen. The men in the Soviet Politburo do not have to worry about the ebb and flow of public opinion. They put guns before butter, while we put just about everything before guns.” In response, a Soviet Defense Ministry official called her the “Iron Lady,” a title that she enjoyed for the remainder of her career. It is interesting to note that she made this statement long before Ronald Reagan had assembled the coalition that elected him to the presidency in 1980. By 1977, Prime Minister James Callaghan’s Labour government was in real trouble. Strikes and threats of strikes by railroad workers, coal miners, and others were creating a situation in which the government seemed not to be in control. In early 1979, Callaghan lost a vote of confidence in Parliament and was forced to resign. In the subsequent election, the Conservatives, using the punning slogan “Labour is not working,” won a forty-four-seat majority in the House of Commons. Queen Elizabeth II asked Margaret Thatcher to form a government, and on May 4, 1979, she became the first woman to occupy the office of prime minister. Upon entering 10 Downing Street, she said: “Where there is discord, may we bring harmony. Where there is error, may we bring truth. Where there is doubt, may we bring faith. And where there is despair, may we bring hope.” Ronald Wilson Reagan Ronald Reagan is the final member of the West’s Cold War leadership as I have defined it. Since his story is generally more familiar than Wojtyla’s and Thatcher’s, I will not go into great detail about his life. What I will do is to describe the events in his life that shaped his thinking and influenced his actions during his presidency. Ronald Reagan was born in Tampico, Illinois, on February 6, 1911.Tampico is a small town of about a thousand people, 120 miles due west of Chicago. In his first twenty-one years, he lived in Tampico, Galesburg, Monmouth, and Dixon, where he attended high school. These towns were within a radius of fifty miles of one another. In 1928 he enrolled at Eureka College, a small denominational school in the neighboring town of the same name. He studied economics, participated in student activities, and was elected president of the student body. The small corner of Illinois where the itinerant Reagan family lived was a prosperous region of the state. Chicago dominated the region for a thousand miles in every direction. The American version of the Industrial Revolution was still in full swing, and Chicago was surrounded by vigorous manufacturing centers such as

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Figure 11.3. Ronald Wilson Reagan, fortieth president of the United States, 1981–1989.

Rockford, Moline, and Peoria. I venture to guess that Ronald Reagan’s unquenchable optimism was the result of living in this environment in spite of the family’s very modest circumstances. In 1932, Ronald Reagan earned his bachelor’s degree and drove to Iowa, where he secured a job at the radio station (WOC) in Davenport, just across the Mississippi River from Moline. It was his first move west. Reagan wound up as a sports announcer at WHO in Des Moines. In 1937, he enlisted in the 322nd Army Reserve Cavalry Regiment there as a private. Reagan traveled extensively as a radio sportscaster with the Chicago Cubs. With his knack for making highly realistic play-by-play descriptions, he quickly gained a strong following. On a trip to California in 1937 with the Cubs, he signed up for a screen test at the Warner Bros. studio. That step led to the career that made him a public figure. Ronald Reagan was a good actor, but not a great one. He appeared in a large number of inexpensively produced films (i.e., B movies). A great many were being made around this time, when the movies were the principal form of entertainment in the country. Reagan once quipped, “The producers didn’t want them great; they

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wanted them Thursday!” He did appear in some memorable films before World War II, such as Kings Row and The Voice of the Turtle. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the army called Reagan to active duty in April 1942 and commissioned him a second lieutenant. Because of his extreme nearsightedness, he was assigned to an air force unit in Hollywood that made training films. By the end of the war, four hundred training films had been produced. Released from active duty in December 1945, Reagan returned to the movie industry. Reagan appeared in a number of films after the end of the war, but they were not as well received as was his earlier work. Even so, he appeared in seventy films before ending his acting career in 1964. He had been an active member of the Screen Actors Guild (SAG), a labor union, before the war, and with time on his hands after 1945, he became a member of its leadership. In 1947, Reagan was elected president of SAG, an office he held for seven years (1947–52, 1959). The Hollywood entertainment community was (and still is) very liberal and voted almost uniformly Democratic. In addition, because of the wealth associated with filmmaking, the Hollywood community was (and is) a major source of campaign funds for the Democratic Party. Reagan was a Democrat, so he was a member of the community majority. In the late 1940s and 1950s there was an active Communist Party in the United States, and the Hollywood community was a target for infiltration. Reagan was determined to oppose any communist attempt to take over SAG, so he began to work with the FBI to identify “secret” communists whose goal was to control SAG. He also worked with the FBI to identify people whom he thought were subversives. His experience with communists in Hollywood acquainted him with their methods of deceit, lies, and prevarication, so he became a strong and articulate opponent of communist ideology and of those who believed in it. In 1954, Reagan made a decision that changed his life and would prepare him for a political career at the highest level. He signed a contract with the General Electric Company to host one of the early television theater programs. I remember watching these programs—General Electric Theater—and they were of high quality. I was a graduate student at MIT at the time, watching on a black-and-white TV, and I now realize that this was my first conscious recognition of Ronald Reagan. General Electric is one of America’s iconic businesses. It was established by Thomas Edison and three other investors in 1878 as the Edison General Electric Company. Its purpose was to commercialize the recently invented electric lightbulb. In 1892, several other corporations merged with Edison’s group to establish GE. This was done to meet a challenge from George Westinghouse, who in 1886 developed long-range alternating-current electric power transmission lines, which made the electrical power grid possible. GE survived this blow by establishing a large corporate laboratory in Schenectady, New York, which was intended to institutionalize the process of innovation in electrical technology. The GE Laboratory

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was a huge success. It is still in existence, as is GE. By contrast, Westinghouse, after many iterations, was closed in 1999. What made Reagan’s work at GE important was that Ralph Cordiner, the chief executive officer of the company, regarded the television programs as a way to make the American public aware of the company and what it did. In addition, a clause in Reagan’s contract required him to visit all 139 GE factories and meet with the management and workers. Cordiner wanted Reagan to learn what the company did in detail, because he thought that someone with Reagan’s name recognition would be an asset to the company as an “ambassador to the public.” Of course I cannot prove this, but I believe that the GE years were probably the most important part of Reagan’s preparation for holding high political office. GE was a quintessential “high tech” company long before the term became popular. For example, in 1946 the company signed a contract with the US Navy to establish a laboratory and a pilot plant in Niskayuna, New York, to develop nuclear power reactors for use on submarines. This was the Knolls Atomic Power Laboratory, at which the first submarine propulsion reactors were developed. Reagan most likely visited the laboratory and learned about the development and application of new technology. In addition to this, GE had great jet-engine factories—one in Lynn, Massachusetts, and the other in Cincinnati, Ohio—that produced engines for half the military and civilian airplanes in the United States. My strong feeling is that Reagan learned how important factories such as these were to the military power of the country and also to the civilian economy. When Reagan worked for GE, I wonder whether he had anything to do with inventing the slogan used in the 1950s on its General Electric Theater programs: “Progress is our most important product.” Reagan left GE in 1962. In 1964, he delivered a speech supporting the presidential candidacy of Sen. Barry Goldwater.The other presidential candidate was Nelson Rockefeller. In addition, Ronald Reagan vigorously campaigned for Goldwater. On October 27, 1964, two weeks before the election, he delivered a nationally televised speech in Los Angeles. The consensus is that this speech raised Reagan’s political profile to the point that, two years later, he was elected governor of California. The speech was an articulate, comprehensive exposition of the American conservative position. I have read the text carefully, and as in all political statements, it contains a number of half-truths on domestic issues that cannot be taken at face value. The most important parts of the speech are the last three paragraphs: The specter our well-meaning liberal friends refuse to face is that their policy of accommodation is appeasement, and appeasement does not give you a choice between peace and war, only between fight and surrender. We are told that the problem is too complex for a simple answer. They are wrong. There is no easy answer, but there is a simple answer. We must have the courage to do what we know is morally right, and this policy of accommodation asks us to accept the greatest

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Chapter 11 possible immorality. We are being asked to buy our safety from the threat of “the bomb” by selling into permanent slavery our fellow human beings enslaved behind the Iron Curtain, to tell them to give up their hope of freedom because we are ready to make a deal with their slave masters. Alexander Hamilton warned us that a nation which can prefer disgrace to danger is prepared for a master and deserves one. Admittedly there is a risk in any course we follow. Choosing the high road cannot eliminate that risk. Already some of the architects of accommodation have hinted what their decision will be if their plan fails and we are faced with the final ultimatum.The English commentator [Kenneth] Tynan has put it: he would rather live on his knees than die on his feet. Some of our own have said “Better Red than dead.” If we are to believe that nothing is worth the dying, when did this begin? Should Moses have told the children of Israel to live in slavery rather than dare the wilderness? Should Christ have refused the Cross? Should the patriots at Concord Bridge have refused to fire the shot heard round the world? Are we to believe that all the martyrs of history died in vain? You and I have rendezvous with destiny. We can preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on earth, or we can sentence them to take the first step into a thousand years of darkness. If we fail, at least let our children and our children’s children say of us we justified our brief moment here. We did all that could be done.

It is in this part of the speech that Ronald Reagan outlined his position on the Cold War. It would be twenty-seven years before Boris Yeltsin lowered the red flag that had flown above the Kremlin for seventy-four years. But Ronald Reagan’s position on what would have to be done about the Soviet Union was crystal clear.

President Reagan Takes Charge According to the US Constitution, “The terms of the President and Vice President shall end at noon on the 20th day of January, . . . and the terms of their successors shall then begin” (Twentieth Amendment, Section 1). In keeping with this provision, Ronald Wilson Reagan was sworn in by Chief Justice Warren Burger as the new president of the United States on January 20, 1981. On January 23, it was announced that the president had nominated Verne Orr of California to be the next secretary of the air force. Orr had held important positions in the years when Reagan served as governor of California, and he was a close friend of the president’s. Although he had no background in aviation or with the air force, I discovered that he was very bright and quick on the uptake. He and I developed a strong and lasting friendship during and following our service in the Pentagon. In 2004,Verne Orr earned a PhD in public policy from Claremont University with a dissertation concerning the LCRA (long-range combat aircraft)

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and how it evolved into the Rockwell B-1B bomber; I had the pleasure of serving on his dissertation committee.Verne was eighty-eight years old at the time. At the end of the day there was a going-away party for me in the office. I have to confess that I very much regretted having to leave. I met with Orr in my Pentagon office on Saturday. Besides being very sharp, he was an excellent judge of people, but the most important thing that he brought to the table was a close relationship with the president. I believed that this would be very important for the future of the air force. During the next few days, my pace at the Pentagon began to slow as the new people coming in took the reins.Verne Orr was doing well in his Senate confirmation effort, so I made plans to leave my office. There was a story in the Washington Post on January 29 that Senators Goldwater and Schmitt were lobbying for me to become NASA administrator, so that job still seemed like a (remote) possibility. That evening there was a dinner at the Georgetown Tavern Club in honor of Sen. John Tower. Secretary Weinberger delivered an excellent speech. At the end of it, he gave me the opportunity to introduce Verne Orr as my successor. I thought that this was a nice gesture, and I told Mr. Weinberger that I very much appreciated his kindness. January 30, 1981, was a particularly eventful day. At noon there was a lunch hosted by the air force chief of staff, Lew Allen, for the three-star deputy chiefs of staff in my honor. I was flattered by this gesture, and each of them had a small memento for me. I was truly touched, and I told them that I did not want to leave but that the democratic rules of the game had to be preserved. In the afternoon, I went to Andrews Air Force Base to retire the commander of the Air Force Systems Command (AFSC), Gen. Alton D. Slay. Before doing that, however, we had to anoint General Slay’s successor, Lt. Gen. Robert Thomas Marsh. This involved his promotion to the rank of general and pinning the fourth star on his shoulder, denoting his new rank. There is a brief story behind this event that needs to be told. General Marsh would be the first four-star officer in the air force since the end of World War II who did not wear pilot’s wings.The term of art in the air force was that he was a “nonrated officer.” Ever since attending the commencement ceremony at the Air Force Academy in June 1980, I was concerned that there were no nonrated four-star officers, but that only about one-third of the graduates of the academy would become pilots. I had some conversations with Lew Allen about this matter but did not make any specific suggestions.When General Slay announced his retirement, I recommended that Tom Marsh be chosen as his successor. Marsh, who was then the commander of the air force’s Electronics Systems Center at Hanscom AFB in Massachusetts, was highly qualified for the technical aspects of the job. (I mentioned General Marsh in chapter 6 in connection with dropping a Minuteman I missile out of a Lockheed C-5A aircraft in 1974 and lighting it off to convince the Soviets that we had a mobile missile sys-

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tem.) In addition, I discovered that Lew Allen and Tom Marsh had been classmates at West Point and were also close friends. Lew accepted my suggestion, and I had the pleasure of presiding over the change-of-command ceremony. I delivered a short speech about Al Slay’s distinguished career. Knowing that he was a Civil War buff, I quoted from Gen. Robert E. Lee’s farewell order to his troops on April 10, 1865: “With an unceasing admiration of your constancy and devotion to your country, and a grateful remembrance of your kind and generous consideration for myself, I bid you an affectionate farewell.” I could see that Al Slay was very moved by all of this. He had performed with distinction and he deserved the accolades. After the ceremony, there was a reception at the officers’ club. I saw Jim Beggs there and began to walk across the room to see him. I remembered Jim Elms’s advice that I should consider the deputy administrator’s position as well as the number one job. When I approached Beggs, I decided to throw caution to the wind: “There are some rumors that you will be named as NASA administrator by President Reagan.” “Yes,” he replied, “but I am not sure I could do that with the responsibilities that I now have in St. Louis. I am the executive vice president, and I think that General Dynamics may be a more important organization than NASA.” “Well, you persuaded me to join NASA ten years ago, so I learned from your arguments that NASA was more important than the University of California!” Jim laughed and said, “OK, maybe I will take the job if they ask me to do it.” “In that case, I hope that you will consider me for your deputy.” Jim laughed again. “What? You want me to make the same mistake twice?” I could tell from the body language and the twinkle in his eyes that he actually meant the opposite. After some more small talk, I concluded that I had sown a seed in his mind, and that was all that mattered at this point. On February 2, I learned that Jim Beggs would be the new NASA administrator. Vice President Bush had recommended him, and the president had agreed. I thought it was a good decision; Jim would do a fine job. I wondered whether he would pick up on my suggestion that I become his deputy. I spent the next couple of days in New York interviewing for academic jobs. Both involved serving as dean of an engineering school—one at the City College of New York and the other at Columbia University. Neither one was really suitable for me at the time. In the evening I took my father and his friend Dr. Elflriede Braunsteiner out to L’Escargot, which was a fine restaurant in mid-Manhattan. It was a welcome change from Washington. I moved out of my office in the Pentagon on Saturday, February 7. I was alone, and I packed my belongings as best I could. Some people from the building staff came by to move the stuff to an empty office down the hall. Sometime in the next week I would move all the boxes over to the Naval Research Laboratory. In the evening, I hosted a party for the office staff at Gadsby’s Tavern in Old Town

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Alexandria. This is a historic house that dates back to the Revolutionary War. The restaurant is on the ground floor, and the second floor has several large rooms— one used for large celebrations and balls and the other for smaller meetings. At one point during the war, Gen. George Washington had his headquarters on the second floor. It was a fine party, and I believe that everyone enjoyed it. Monday was my final day as secretary of the air force. I had lunch with Alan Berman, and we discussed my move to the Naval Research Laboratory. I would continue on the federal payroll and be paid at the GS-15 level by using NASA money from Ames, since I already had an appointment at that level there. Berman urged me to fill out the application to be head of the lab’s Space Science Division. He would have my salary transferred to the navy if I elected to work full-time at the lab. I was still interested in the position, but I had some qualms about it. After eight years away from direct scientific work, I was fearful that I had gotten rusty. In any event, I decided to wait to see how it all would work out. Bun and I decided to take a minivacation for the next three days to try to forget for a while the confusing events since the election. We drove over to Maryland’s Eastern Shore.We had lunch at the Tidewater Inn in Easton and then drove to Oxford to dine and stay at the Robert Morris Inn. This place was one of our favorite haunts in the region, and we went there several times during our years in Washington. We drove down to Cambridge, which is on the Maryland-Virginia state line bisecting the Delmarva Peninsula. We drove back then to Easton and dined once again at the Tidewater Inn before driving home. I was at my office in the Space Science Building at the NRL early on February 17. In quick succession there came telephone calls from Bennie Schriever, Edward Teller, and Jim Beggs about NASA’s leadership, and each expressed very different views. It was clear that things were still up in the air. A few days later, I visited NASA Headquarters to observe the flight readiness firing (FRF) of the three space shuttle main engines (SSMEs) of the space shuttle Columbia on the NASA TV network. The test was flawless; the engines ran for twenty seconds without a hitch. It was a successful milestone, but only that. On Columbia’s first flight, the engines would have to run successfully for six hundred seconds, thirty times as long. On Tuesday the 24th, Bruce Murray, the director of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, came to see me about the future of his laboratory. I had been instrumental in recommending Bruce for his job, so it was natural that he would come to me for advice. He was concerned about the performance of the space shuttle’s IUS (inertial upper stage). The JPL’s planetary missions depended on very-high-energy launches to get to the planets. Having looked at the IUS situation carefully, I told him that I thought it would be all right. Bruce told me about his plans for future planetary explorations, and to me they seemed much too ambitious and too expensive. I urged him to reevaluate his entire program, because it was very important that he put something on the table that could be accepted.

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At the end of the day, around four thirty, the telephone rang. A voice asked, “Are you Dr. Mark?” “Yes,” I answered. “My name is Newt Gingrich, and I have just come to town as a new member of Congress,” he explained. He continued, “You have served as secretary of the air force, and I want to hear about your experiences.” “I will make an appointment to come and see you,” I said. “No,” Gingrich replied, “I want to see you right now! I have a great many things to consider, and I have some time for you to come and see me.” I really could not turn him down. An hour later I arrived at Gingrich’s office, which was an unmarked door in the basement of the Rayburn Building—it was a good thing that he had given me the room number. The chaos in the office was astounding. Books and papers were scattered all over the room, and Gingrich was sitting behind a desk piled deep with reports from congressional committees. Gingrich came right to the point and asked me what I had done as secretary of the air force; I spent a half hour telling him. When I finished, he asked a rapid series of brief, cogent questions. I answered as best I could for the next hour or more, and I have to confess that after almost two hours with the young Mr. Gingrich, I was exhausted. At the end of the meeting, he asked me to stay in touch. My impression of Congressman Gingrich was that he had a truly unusual mind and plenty of energy. I felt that we would hear more from him in the future. At the end of my first week at the NRL, I was able to spend the day learning what was being done by the people at the Space Science Division. Dr. Howard Smith and I had an enjoyable conversation about infrared astronomy, something I knew quite a bit about. Maybe I could actually become a successful Space Science Division chief. In the afternoon, a group from NASA Headquarters led by Tony Calio, one of the associate administrators, visited me. He had chosen some of the best younger people, and they wanted to discuss the use of the space shuttle. I knew that he was one of the best of the new generation in the NASA hierarchy and that he wanted to be deputy administrator. I laid out a plan for the shuttle that included, first, conducting orbital scientific experiments that used the Spacelab payloads; learning how to retrieve and repair spacecraft in near-Earth orbit; learning how to launch satellites into geosynchronous orbit; and finally, building and assembling a space station in Earth orbit. There was a spirited discussion afterward. Late in the afternoon, I was invited to deliver the Charles H. Davis Lecture at the US Naval War College. I agreed to do so because, in all likelihood, I would not have gainful employment by May, so preparing for the talk would give me something to do. During the first week of March, rumors continued to swirl about who would lead NASA. I spent the weekend working on the Davis Lecture. The chance to deliver the talk was a godsend. It greatly mitigated my occasional fits of depression.

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At the end of the weekend, Bun and I confirmed our earlier decision to stay in Washington, at least until she received her doctorate. I decided to begin looking for opportunities to deliver lectures and attend technical meetings. Jim Elms called me on Monday afternoon, and I thanked him for all he had done, but it was time to really think about the possibility of my heading the Space Science Division at the NRL instead of the highest post at NASA. I was in my NRL office at six on Friday evening, March 13, when the telephone rang. It was Pendleton James from the White House. He informed me that President Reagan intended to nominate me to become deputy administrator of NASA and that Jim Beggs had accepted the nomination to become the administrator. Mr. James wanted to know whether I would accept the nomination; I told him that I would. He said that he would be in touch concerning the next step. So the process that Jim Elms had put in motion at NASA–Ames on November 14, 1980, finally reached its desired end, more than four months later. The process of selecting midlevel presidential appointments works, but it resembles a random walk.

12 The Space Shuttle, Air Force Bombers, and a Long-Range Plan for NASA

When I was informed that Jim Beggs and I had been tapped to run NASA, I felt an enormous sense of relief. The future, at least for the next four or five years, was foreseeable. I had extensive experience in NASA, and my more recent work in the Pentagon would also be an asset. In addition, my new position as deputy administrator would give me a platform to influence the programs that I had helped initiate during the prior four years. These included the new-technology satellite (chapter 8), the Rockwell B-1B and Northrop B-2 bombers (chapter 9), and the Air Force Space Command (chapter 9). At the same time, there would be the opportunity to help shape NASA’s future. On March 21, 1981, I flew to St. Louis to talk with Jim Beggs about what we would do at NASA. Jim was the executive vice president of General Dynamics, a large conglomerate that primarily developed and manufactured weapons systems. Jim had been second in command at the organization since leaving the Nixon administration in 1973. Company headquarters were in St. Louis, and Jim, his wife, Mary, and their youngest son, Charlie, lived in an elegant house in a St. Louis suburb. The Beggs family and I had a very pleasant dinner. I have mentioned Jim Beggs a number of times already. Mary had been chairman of the Republican Committee in Howard County, Maryland; Jim had previously worked at NASA and later in the Nixon administration as under secretary of transportation. He had superb qualifications to head NASA. He had attended the US Naval Academy and served in the navy for seven years. Following his military service, he earned a master’s degree in public policy and management at Harvard University.

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Jim began his industrial career with the Westinghouse at its Baltimore facility, eventually becoming vice president and manager of that facility. This unit of Westinghouse was responsible for electronic and space satellite systems. In 1964, Jim joined NASA as the associate administrator of the Office of Advanced Research and Technology (OART). He was responsible for NASA’s research centers: Ames, Langley, and Lewis. Later, as executive vice president of General Dynamics, he oversaw a broad range of products, including fighter aircraft, submarines, tanks, and spacecraft. In all these areas, Jim had turned in a sterling performance. After breakfast the next day, Jim and I had a detailed conversation about NASA and what we would do when, as Jim said, “we had the con.” We quickly decided on the division of responsibilities. Jim would handle political relationships with the White House, Congress, and other federal agencies. I could make recommendations, especially about matters and people with whom I was familiar, but he would make the final judgments. My job would be to act in his place when he was out of town; in addition, he would delegate technical decisions and judgments to me. He would, of course, have to be kept informed and to have a veto. He would make the final decisions on major personnel issues, but I could make recommendations. There was nothing new about this arrangement for NASA; traditionally, the administrator was “Mr. Outside” and the deputy administrator “Mr. Inside.” Nonetheless, both of us thought that it was important to say so. We then turned to the programmatic issues. The most important one was the space shuttle. The first flight of Columbia was only a few weeks away, and we had to make certain that there would not be an accident. We agreed that I would go to Houston for all the technical briefings. In addition, I would be in the Mission Operations Control Room (MOCR) during the launch and landing. There was also the broader matter of making the space shuttle work. Jim said that he would attend every launch of the shuttle, provided no urgent matter kept him in Washington.We both agreed that this was the most immediate priority for NASA. We next turned our attention to the longer term. In relation to space science, my view was that we should concentrate on astronomy and astrophysics. We had done very well in planetary exploration, but the proposed space telescope, I thought, would be a uniquely important new endeavor. An acquaintance of mine from MIT days, George Field, had just completed an extensive study of what needed to be done in astronomy. In addition to recommending that the space telescope be accelerated, his panel suggested that we build large spacecraft that would carry instruments for performing observations in all regions of the electromagnetic spectrum, ranging from gamma rays, X-rays, and ultraviolet light to infrared radiation. This suggestion was eventually adopted, and these spacecraft would be referred to as the “Great Observatories.” For human spaceflight, we would recommend the development of a permanently occupied space station. Our view was that we should execute the plan that Tom Paine had originally proposed to President Nixon in 1970. This was to

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build a facility that would be a laboratory in space where scientists could perform the necessary research regarding long-term human spaceflight. It would also be a maintenance base in Earth orbit for the retrieval and repair of satellites. The station would need a “space tug” that could move satellites from their orbits to that of the space station for repairs or upgrading before redeploying them. Above all, the space station would be a staging base for assembling spacecraft that would eventually carry people to other planets in the solar system. Our final topic of discussion dealt with personnel and organization.We discussed John Yardley, who had done a superb job of heading the development of the space shuttle but now wanted to go back to an industrial position in the private sector. Therefore, we would have to find someone with extensive operational experience to head this program. In addition, we both felt that the organizational structure of NASA could be improved. Specifically we wanted to have an organization that would make a clear distinction between the people who held line management jobs and those in staff positions. People who held line management positions would have permanent responsibility for managing one of the large NASA units headed by an associate administrator. We would delegate broad functions to them and “manage them by exception,” meaning that we would not interfere with them unless we felt they were on the wrong track. We would continue the practice of having “management councils” headed by each of the line managers (i.e., the associate administrators); committee members would be the center directors, who had the responsibility of implementing the programs in each of the large NASA administrative units. The staff positions at NASA Headquarters would be occupied by people whose primary function was to provide advice to the administrator. These people would include the general counsel, the chief financial officer, liaisons with the Congress, and those who would handle our international relations. They would generally hold the title of assistant administrator, although there were some exceptions. I was very satisfied with the outcome of this meeting with my new boss. We were clearly on the same page about all the important issues. We spent some five hours discussing these matters. On March 23, I moved over to NASA Headquarters from my temporary base at the Naval Research Laboratory. I was given an office down the hall from the administrator’s on the ninth floor. The acting administrator was Alan M. Lovelace. His permanent job was deputy administrator, but he was acting as the administrator because of the resignation of Bob Frosch late in 1980. Al Lovelace had a distinguished career as a civilian research and development executive, having directed the Materials Research Laboratory, a unit of the Air Force Research Organization at Wright Field. Al, a polymer chemist, was largely responsible for stimulating the development of fiber-reinforced synthetic materials that could be used for aircraft structures. Al was a first-class scientific leader and also a good friend. I asked him to arrange some meetings for me with the senior executives at NASA Headquarters

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so that I could inform them of my discussion with Jim Beggs and gauge their reactions. On March 24, it was announced that Edward C. (Pete) Aldridge had been selected to be under secretary of the air force, meaning that he would succeed Bob Hermann as the director of the NRO. In addition, Ty McCoy and Russell Hale would be assistant secretaries of the air force for manpower and installations and for financial management, respectively. The new civilian air force leadership was in place. The next day, Jim Beggs and I met for several hours with the senior leadership of NASA, a group of people from the centers, and some air force personnel to explain where we believed the organization should go. The permanent headquarters staff in 1981 was truly first-class. It included some people from NASA centers, Bob Gilruth, Max Faget, and Glynn Lunney from Houston; former deputy administrator George Low; Walt Williams, the director of the NASA Flight Test Center in Southern California; and Generals Tom Stafford and Jim Abrahamson of the air force. It was a long, interesting session. I came away very optimistic about the future of NASA and the nation.

The Attempt to Assassinate President Reagan On March 30, I began to meet with people who would be influential in determining NASA’s future. I started with a visit to Glen Schleede at the Office of Management and Budget. I had worked with him during the Ford administration, when he was a member of the vice president’s staff. We had a positive and productive meeting, but Glen was distracted by one of the periodic crises that were all too common in Washington, and he had to leave early. He introduced me to one of his young assistants, Fred Khedouri, who would continue the discussion. Fred and I would have several important dealings in the future. In any event, I decided that another meeting with the folks at OMB would be necessary. In the afternoon, I went to visit Rep. Ron Flippo of Florida in his office. He was the chairman of the Space Subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee. I wanted to talk to him about some important near-term projects that required short-term funding, particularly the upper stage for the space shuttle and upgrading the Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System. Most members of Congress had television sets in their offices. Normally these were muted so that people could check events on the screen while continuing with discussions or paperwork. My back was toward the TV. Suddenly, Ron’s eyes widened, and he got up to turn up the volume. Then he said, “My God, they’ve shot the president!” The assassination attempt had immediate political consequences. As it happened, Vice President Bush was on an airplane at the time and out of contact with people in Washington. The Twenty-Fifth Amendment to the US Constitution specifies what must be done when the president is “incapacitated.” The vice president be-

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comes the acting president after notifying congressional leaders. In this situation, the president was on an operating table and the vice president was on an airplane. Alexander Haig, the secretary of state, had gone to the White House to manage the crisis that ensued. A newspaper reporter asked Haig, “Who is in charge?” Haig replied, “I am in charge.” This reply, being inaccurate, caused a brouhaha among the press. Haig had apparently forgotten that the Presidential Succession Act of 1947 made the Speaker of the House, rather than the secretary of state, third in line to the president. Unfortunately, the press took advantage of Haig’s faux pas. Haig’s “I’m in charge” statement diminished his reputation and, in part, led to his departure from office in mid-1982. John Hinckley Jr. was immediately arrested and charged. My first reaction was that he should be quickly tried and either executed or given a life sentence without the possibility of parole. That is not what happened. Hinckley was declared not guilty by reason of insanity. He was committed to St. Elizabeth’s Hospital, a public psychiatric facility. In recent years, Hinckley has been given increased freedom to visit his mother. President Reagan recovered in a remarkably short time. He delivered a very upbeat speech before a joint session of Congress on April 28, 1981. Even right after the shooting, he kept his sense of humor. When he met the First Lady at the door of the hospital, he apologized to her: “Sorry, honey, I forgot to duck!” When he arrived at the operating room just before he received his anesthetic, he told the surgeons, “I hope you guys aren’t all Democrats!” The president came out of this ordeal with his reputation enhanced because of his quick recovery and gallant behavior.

The First Flight of Columbia In early April, I continued to talk with people at NASA Headquarters about the situation at the agency. Jack Boyd, my old friend from Ames, accompanied me. Tony Calio, who was the NASA associate administrator for space and terrestrial applications, was in a particularly interesting position. He was attempting to get my nomination retracted by the White House, by encouraging influential people in Congress to lobby for this step. We discussed organizational changes at two meetings, and it seemed we were both walking on eggshells. Tony was one of the most competent people at NASA Headquarters, and I wanted to keep him around in spite of his earlier activities. But soon enough, Tony was nominated to be the deputy administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, a job for which he was highly qualified. On April 8, 1981, my brother Peter would have celebrated his fiftieth birthday. My father and I decided to visit Delia’s family at Bellevue and Peter’s grave. The prior week had been a difficult one. In my talks with NASA and the Department

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of Defense folks, I had been unable to get an agreement to have a classified data link placed on the Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System; this was something that I would have to do once I was confirmed. On April 7, my father and I arrived in Lynchburg and enjoyed a nice dinner party with Aunts Jane and Frances, along with Uncle Louis and Delia.The next day, we went to St. Stephen’s Church to visit Peter’s grave. We all cried a little. Then we drove the long way home through the Peaks of Otter before heading back to Washington. On April 9, I flew to Houston to be in the Mission Operations Control Room for the first flight of Columbia. When I arrived, I met with Max Faget, who was the director of engineering at the Houston Center (called the Manned Spacecraft Center, MSC, at that time), and my old friend Milton A. Silveira, who was the deputy manager of the Shuttle Orbiter Program. Milton was also the primary contact for the work on the shuttle that we performed at Ames. It was good to see them again. Since I wanted to be present for the entire two-day flight, I made arrangements to sleep on a cot in a small room in the infirmary. The infirmary is attached by a skywalk to the building where the MOCR is located. Late that night, the decision was made to fill the large tank with liquid hydrogen and oxygen for the launch in the morning. I decided to go to bed early because I planned to get up at three in the morning to follow the entire launch and landing sequences. Before going to sleep, I counted the number of firsts that would be recorded as a result of this flight: • The first launch of a reusable spacecraft. • The first launch of a manned spacecraft that had not undergone a test flight with people on board. This point made the launch very risky. • The first large spacecraft to use both liquid hydrogen and oxygen in the first stage of flight. The volatility and the flammability of the hydrogen fuel made this another risk.

All this was a large order, and I went to sleep praying that we would be successful. I arrived at the MOCR at 3:45 a.m.The countdown was in progress for a launch at 5:20. The crew members of Columbia—John Young (mission commander) and Robert Crippen (pilot)—were in their seats. Because the first four shuttle flights were deemed experimental, the shuttle carried a crew of only two people. The Columbia had ejection seats in case a serious accident occurred during takeoff or landing. At 5:00 a.m., twenty minutes before the scheduled launch, there was a hold, which meant that the countdown was stopped. (The technical term for this was “hold at minus twenty minutes.”) The backup flight control system had failed. The primary control system has three computers, and a fourth is intended for use if a primary computer fails. By 7:00, people in the MOCR and the backup room were still working on the problem, without success. Chris Kraft (the director of the

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MSC) suggested that we delay the launch by half an hour in order to pick up the count at minus fifty minutes. As a result of this suggestion, mission specialists were given about an hour to work out the problem. The countdown was renewed at minus fifty-one minutes, at about 8:00 a.m. By 8:30, the countdown was proceeding normally. But when the attempt was made to load the flight program into the backup flight control computer, it failed again. At about 9:30, the decision was made to scrub the launch that day. The crew was removed from the shuttle (formal term: “stood down”). The explanation for the delay was discovered later that day and the next. The backup computer was not in phase with the three computers in the primary flight control system. Because the clock times of the backup computer were not the same as those of the primary system, the backup computer would not accept the software program, as was required by the rules for launch. A lengthy press conference was held to explain what had happened, and the launch was rescheduled for about 6:00 a.m. CST on April 12. I have gone into detail to explain what happened in order to show what I was able to learn by sitting at a console with Milton Silveira and others assigned to the control of the shuttle orbiter. The console had a communication system that could plug into any of the conversations between the flight controllers and the people who supervised and monitored the performance of the subsystems, such as propulsion, flight controls, navigation, payload, and several others. By listening in on these conversations, it was possible for me and the other supervisory people to assess what was going on. I could choose the communication circuit for any of the important subsystems and even listen to two of them simultaneously. To this day, I am grateful to Milton Silveira, Daniel Germany, Gene Kranz, and Chris Kraft for allowing me to sit at the console during the first flight of Columbia and for teaching me how to use the equipment. I went to bed early that night because I knew I would have to get up early again. On April 12, I arrived in the MOCR at 3:30 a.m. We were just coming out of a two-hour hold with the clock running at −1:57 hours. The countdown went without incident to the hold at minus twenty-minutes. The commander and pilot were in their seats in the shuttle and ready to go. I got more and more excited as the countdown proceeded. Liftoff occurred at 6:12 a.m. CST. It was an awesome sight to see the great bird (as we called the orbiter) rise from the launch pad. Needless to say, I was elated to see Columbia reach orbit. At 7:30 a.m., the astronauts opened the payload-bay doors so that they could see the back end of the space shuttle orbiter. This operation was shown on television screens at the front of the MOCR. Although the resolution of the system was not high, when we looked closely at the two humps at the aft end that house the two orbital maneuvering engines of Columbia, it was clear that there were dark spots on both orbiting maneuvering system (OMS) pods. This could only mean that some of the tiles of the thermal protection system on the pods had been stripped by the

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441  Figure 12.1. Top: First launch of Columbia, April 12, 1981. This launch was unique in that the external tank holding the liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen was painted white. Since covering the tank required upward of a thousand pounds of paint, it was decided to omit the painting on subsequent flights. Bottom: Columbia on one of its later landings. To me, the landings were more impressive than the launches. Photos courtesy of NASA Headquarters.

sheer force of the slipstream present during the flight in the atmosphere after the launch. Would the places where the tiles came off get hot enough to cause damage to the structure of the OMS pod? More importantly, would the adhesive that held these tiles to the airframe fail on the underside of the fuselage too? If so, there

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could be catastrophic damage to the airframe, since the fuselage would be exposed to very high heat upon reentry. We discussed what to do at a meeting of senior officials, with Chris Kraft presiding. Even though I was essentially a guest, Chris included me in the meeting. The first suggestion was to calculate whether the heating on the OMS pods would be high enough to cause structural damage. The adhesive was spread on a substrate colored a bright red. We could see that the bottom of the places where the tiles were missing was red. Thus, the substrate was still there, and the calculations showed that the substrate would be strong enough to prevent damage to the OMS pods. The more important question was whether we could find out the state of the underside of the bird. I offered to call my friends at the NRO and ask them to do what they could. (There was as secure telephone connection at the Manned Spacecraft Center.) Fortunately, my friends knew what to do very quickly, without me telling them the details. They told me that it would take six to ten hours to produce a result. The time we spent waiting was agonizing. We discussed whether we should tell the crew that tiles were missing from the underside (if they were) and that they might not be able to reenter the atmosphere. After a spirited discussion, we concluded that we were honor-bound to tell them and then to try to figure out a way to rescue them if at all possible. Fortunately, we did not have to make that decision. Word came back from the NRO that there was no large zone on the underside of Columbia that did not have tiles.They told us that the resolution was not very good; a few tiles might be missing, but they could not really tell.This answer was good enough for us; we had conducted “missing tile” tests on a sample of the tile and substrate at Ames in 1973 or 1974. We were almost certain, based on those tests, that Columbia would land safely. A space shuttle landing is a truly spectacular event. First come two sonic booms caused by shock waves that are characteristic of the shuttle configuration. If you have a good pair of binoculars, you can see the vehicle at this point.To me, the best moment is the final approach, when the vehicle is on a steep (nineteen-degree) flight path and then levels off and slowly touches down on the runway.We watched all this on a flickering television screen on the MOCR stage. I reflected on the fact that I was present in this room for what so far were the two most important events of America’s human spaceflight program: the Apollo 11 landing on the moon and the first flight of the space shuttle. I have to confess that I felt very lucky. During the landing sequence, Max Faget, Milton Silveira, and I sat at the console in the back of the MOCR, which was occupied by people from the Orbiter Project Office. Max was seated on my left. As soon as Columbia came to a stop, Max turned to me and, with the broadest grin on his face, said, “Let’s do it again!” With that, he captured the principal reason for building the space shuttle in the first place. If we could frequently and safely operate the vehicle, then we would

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have the capability to build a space station. That step would provide the necessary infrastructure in Earth orbit to explore the rest of the solar system. In the MOCR, it was customary after a successful mission to pass around boxes of good cigars and light up. Then we would walk around the room and congratulate one another. Grateful for all the kindness and courtesy that Chris Kraft had shown me, I thanked him and congratulated him on a wonderful success. In the evening, there was a really nice dinner at the Rendezvous Restaurant near the Johnson Space Center. Chris Kraft; Aaron Cohen, the orbiter project manager; Milton Silveira; Joe Engle, who would be Columbia’s commander on the next flight; and, of course, Max Faget attended. It was a grand party, and I felt very honored to be in this group. The next day, April 16, 1981, I flew back to Washington. Attending the first space shuttle launch was a truly exhilarating experience, and I recited a prayer of thanks to the Good Lord that everything went as expected.

Unfinished Business: The Rockwell B-1B Bomber, the Northrop B-2 Stealth Bomber, and the Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System Several programs that I had a strong interest in were kept alive, revived, or modified during my term of service in the Carter administration, including the B-1B bomber, a modified version of the Rockwell B-1A bomber, which had its production suspended by President Carter; the Northrop B-2 stealth bomber, which was, in my judgment, the right aircraft for the next generation of long-range combat aircraft; and the modification of the Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System (TDRSS) to handle classified data. As a prospective member of the new administration, I felt that I should try to shape the development of these programs. I was careful to make certain that the people appointed by the new president to be in charge of these programs would not object to having me around to help. Verne Orr was already familiar with the airplane programs, and he was enthusiastic about my participation. Jim Beggs agreed in principle that the TDRSS should carry an encryption system, but he asked me to write up a detailed appraisal so that he could make his own judgment. I still had access to a desk in the Pentagon in a suite of offices across the hall from the secretary’s office, generally reserved for visiting dignitaries. Verne Orr kindly let me use this facility. So I moved between NASA Headquarters and the Pentagon until I was sworn in as deputy administrator. In the Pentagon, I learned that General Ellis had not given up trying to promote the “stretched” version of the General Dynamics FB-111 as the new strategic bomber. It was ironic that the commander of the Strategic Air Command was not enthusiastically behind the opportunity to field an aircraft that was much more capable than his alternative. I worked with Tom Stafford and Bennie Schriever to make the case as strong as pos-

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sible so that Verne Orr would be willing to accept it. On April 20, I had a chance to talk with him, and I think I made some progress. On April 21, I met with Donald Beale, who had replaced Robert Anderson as the chairman of Rockwell. We discussed the B-1B program, and I told him that I was concerned about the run-out cost. I told him of the cost savings that would accrue by changing from the B-1A to the B-1B. Beale offered to run a complete cost review of the B-1B program, which I accepted. I hoped that we would be able to be push things through. The next day, I learned that the “new-technology satellite” that we had developed during my term as director of the NRO had been deleted from the intelligence budget by Sen. Malcolm Wallop’s subcommittee. This program would require my attention if it was to be funded by Congress. In the afternoon, I flew to California for visits to Ames and Livermore. At Ames, I reviewed the new large computer facility that NASA was funding at the center. The facility would eventually comprise a cluster of new computers, including a powerful Cray machine. Known as the Numerical Aerodynamic Simulator, it would be the most powerful facility of its kind the world. I was very pleased to see how things had developed since my departure in 1977. While I was visiting Ames, the announcement of my nomination to be the deputy administrator of NASA by President Reagan was made public. My old friends at Ames organized an impromptu party to celebrate! The next week, I made another trip to California, this time to visit the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and later the Northrop factory. The JPL visit was essentially a courtesy call. The Cal Tech people turned out in force. Marvin “Murph” Goldberger, a distinguished particle physicist and president of the university, was there, along with Ed Stone, the Voyager program manager, and Bruce Murray, the laboratory director. I listened more than I spoke. Their story was simple: planetary exploration was NASA’s most important program and should be given first priority. I kept silent on this programmatic issue because I knew that they were familiar with a lecture I had delivered at a meeting of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in San Francisco in 1974. I criticized the priority that NASA placed on planetary exploration rather than astrophysics. I felt that work in astrophysics would quickly lead to more fundamental results.This debate was a bone of contention during my three-plus years as deputy administrator. My main chore at this time was to conduct a thorough review of the Northrop B-2 bomber program. The Northrop team and I met at their plant in Hawthorne. I wanted to be on top of the technologies and finances of the program because I knew that there would be opposition to Northrop’s version of the B-2. I wanted to understand two major technical matters. One was the aircraft’s structure, which was to be made entirely of composite materials. Although these materials were often employed in secondary structures (ailerons, control surfaces, etc.), they were never used for primary load-bearing members (wing spars and fuselage longerons).

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I wanted to know about Northrop’s testing to ensure that the composite materials were ready for prime time. The second technical issue was how the “fly-by-wire” control system would work. A flying wing is inherently unstable. This was demonstrated during a test program conducted by Jack Northrop in the late 1940s on the XB-47 and XB-49 series aircraft. To maintain a very low radar cross section, the B-2 could not have any vertical fins, since they would act like corner reflectors at certain incident angles, destroying the stealth features of the configuration.The yaw of the aircraft was thus controlled by “flaperons” near the wingtips. I wanted to look at the data from the wind tunnel tests. There were also propulsion questions—specifically, how the inlets and the exhaust nozzles were designed to minimize radar reflections. We spent the entire day, eight in the morning till nine at night, in very intensive discussions. Northrop put its first team forward for this meeting. Irving Waaland, the chief designer of the B-2, orchestrated the briefings. Welco Gasich, executive vice president, was the senior person present; Roy Jackson, vice president for engineering, who had been my immediate boss at Ames, was there; and my old friend Tom Stafford, assistant chief of staff for research and development in the air force, also attended. At the end of the meeting, I was satisfied that Northrop had the situation well in hand. My concern about the use of composite materials for the primary weight-bearing structures of the airplane was addressed by a backup design that used an aluminum wing spar. It would be initiated in case the composite materials failed too often in the test program. There was also a discussion of the political situation. The Northrop people had learned of Bill Perry’s conversations with the new secretary of defense, Caspar Weinberger. The word was that Perry was urging Weinberger to drop the Rockwell B-1B and “skip a generation of technology” by going directly to the stealth aircraft. The Northrop people knew that their version of the stealth aircraft could not be fielded before the early 1990s. They feared that the conversations between these gentlemen would lead to the adoption of Ben Rich’s “stealthy” B-2, which was based on an expanded version of the Lockheed F-117. Worse yet, I knew that Ben was also working on a flying-wing configuration. My own feeling was that it was unlikely to be competitive with the Northrop design. But Bill and Dick Ellis were very persuasive people.The Northrop folks had a point. On my flight to Washington, I decided to write a detailed letter to Richard DeLauer, who had replaced Bill Perry as under secretary of defense for technology and acquisition. Fortunately, I had met Dick DeLauer when I was at Ames and he was a navy pilot assigned to Moffett Field. He was a close friend of Sput and Edie Watson, who was my secretary, so he might listen to me. In addition, I would arrange a meeting with Verne Orr and give him a complete report on the B-2 situation, as well as a copy of my projected letter to DeLauer. I spent the first week of May 1981 working on the letter to DeLauer and delivered it to him personally on May 6. We had a long conversation about the Rock-

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well B-1B and the Northrop B-2. I went into great technical detail with him concerning the B-2 because the design was not yet “frozen.” In the case of the B-1B, I told him it was crucial to understand what it would cost to produce several hundred of these aircraft. I told him that Rockwell’s CEO, Don Beale, would provide a complete financial report in due course and that he was most welcome to attend. That afternoon, I flew to Newport, Rhode Island, to deliver the Charles H. Davis Lecture at the US Naval War College. This is an endowed lecture intended to acquaint the students and faculty with a subject of interest to them. My lecture, “Technology Development and the Strategic Deterrent,” dealt with the present and future technologies for deterring the Soviet Union from attacking the United States or our allies. The principle upon which our Cold War strategy was based came from Sun Tzu, an ancient Chinese military strategist and philosopher who said, “The best way to defeat an opponent is to persuade him that he cannot win.” We chose to achieve this objective by maintaining technically superior weapons in those fields that could be decisive. After providing some historical examples, I mentioned space operations and high-energy lasers, in particular the Airborne Laser Laboratory (ALL), which in 1981 was the centerpiece of the US high-energy laser program. I speculated that a high-energy laser mounted on a large airplane could be used to shoot down submarine-launched ballistic missiles. The idea was to have laser-armed aircraft patrolling the areas of the North Atlantic where the Soviets stationed their submarines. If one of these launched a missile, it could be detected by an airplane shortly after breaking the surface. The missile would be tracked, and when it reached an altitude of about forty thousand feet, it could be shot down at a range of several hundred miles. As far as I know, this was the first time that this possibility was mentioned in print. I will say much more about this subject shortly, because the ALL was successful, but the program was canceled in 2011. On April 21, I had my first meeting with NASA people about the Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System. I did most of the talking. There was resistance to placing a secure data link on satellites. Doing so would allow classified data to be gathered from certain air force and NRO satellites and transmitted to the ground. This was, and still is, a program conceived and operated by NASA, but the agency had to agree to provide the service. I thought this was an obvious thing to do, and I was naïve enough to think it would easily be arranged. As things transpired, it became a real bone of contention for the better part of a year. The problem was that neither the air force nor NASA wanted to do this. The air force wanted its own data-relay system so that it would have complete control of the priorities.The NASA people were equally anxious to retain control, but in addition, many of the civil service people working at NASA believed that having classified material pass through their data links would be a violation of NASA’s “peaceful” mission. I had to spend much more time than I thought reasonable to finally reach an agreement.

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The first sign of trouble came at a meeting on April 30, 1981.The NASA people made some reasonable technical points about the program, but were hung up on the question of who would pay for the upgrades. Although they never mentioned the “peaceful mission” argument, because they knew I did not buy it, it nonetheless remained the major sticking point for them. A week later, at the regular “Space Breakfast” in the Pentagon, I raised the TDRSS matter, and the reaction was negative. I tried again at a meeting with the air force people on May 11, and once again I went away empty-handed. I decided to go see Bob Hermann, who was the NRO director at the time because Pete Aldridge had not yet been confirmed. Bob told me that the air force and the NRO each wanted its own classified system, and that I was wasting my time by trying to convince them otherwise. On May 18, I went to see Hugh Loweth at the OMB, who had the intelligence portfolio. I told him about the impasse over the TDRSS. He agreed with my position, but thought that I was wrong to push it before Pete Aldridge and I were confirmed and before the OMB could knock heads. I decided to back off on the matter and wait for a more auspicious time to bring it up again. On the day before I abandoned trying to reach an agreement on the TDRSS, I attended a party for the new science adviser to the president, George A. ( Jay) Keyworth. Jay was the P-Division leader at Los Alamos, so he and I had something in common. I had held the same position at Livermore twenty years earlier. He was young, forty-two years old, and did not have any Washington experience. I had learned that several more senior scientists had turned down the position. This was at least partly due to the fact that most scientists tended to be Democrats and did not want to work with the new president. Jay was a protégé of Edward Teller, and that is essentially how he was selected; Edward had substantial influence with President Reagan. I supported the appointment because I thought it was good to have young people in high positions. In addition, I felt that it would be good to have a nonacademic person in the job. All previous science advisers, with the exception of Edward E. David Jr., who served under President Nixon, had been academics. Ed David was an MIT graduate, a distinguished electrical engineer, and an executive vice president of Bell Laboratories. The small dinner party was hosted by Frank Press, the outgoing science adviser. I was invited because of my part in establishing the Office of Science and Technology Policy during the Ford administration. Guests included William O. Baker, still the president of the Bell Telephone Company, and the Nobel laureate Charles Townes (physics, 1964) of the University of California. All present voiced their support for Jay Keyworth. I made a point of praising the way Frank Press had handled the job with President Carter. I told the group that Frank had been a valued adviser and had not tried to be a representative of the scientific community. Some events in Washington are truly memorable. Even though I was only a nominee for a high-level position, I was invited to a luncheon at the White House to honor John Young and Bob Crippen, who had piloted Columbia on its first

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successful mission a month earlier.The event was held in the Rose Garden on May 19. President Reagan, the host, sat at a table with the astronauts and NASA’s acting administrator, Al Lovelace. Al had taken on the task of organizing and leading the first space shuttle mission, and I was very pleased when he was the first person honored by the president with a NASA Distinguished Public Service Medal. It was a fitting tribute to my old friend and predecessor as deputy administrator. Young and Crippen received NASA Distinguished Service Medals, and Young was also decorated with the Congressional Space Medal of Honor by Vice President Bush, who, as president of the Senate, bestowed the medal. Many senior members of the new administration were present, including Secretaries Haig and Weinberger as well as James Baker, the new White House chief of staff. Following the luncheon, President Reagan made a short and very punchy speech about the importance of NASA’s space exploration program for national security and as part of the national purpose. I recall him saying, memorably, that “a great nation has the obligation to explore.” It was a wonderful way to conclude a fine event. On May 21, I met with Lt. Gen. Lincoln Faurer of the air force, who had succeeded Bob Inman as the director of the National Security Agency. Bob would shortly receive a fourth star and become William Casey’s deputy in the Central Intelligence Agency. I mentioned the TDRSS problem to General Faurer, since he was heavily involved in the program. Immediately grasping what needed to be done, he promised to help me bring the air force and NASA together when it was time to place a secure data link on the TDRSS satellites. Faurer became a strong supporter of my position on this question. On the same day, the National Science Board honored Frank Press, who had just become president-elect of the National Academy of Sciences. The National Science Board is essentially the board of directors of the National Science Foundation. It was a very nice, formal affair, and many old friends were in the room. The chairman of the National Science Board was Norman Hackerman, a distinguished chemist, the president of Rice University, and a good friend of my father’s. We had first met in 1976, when there was a chance I would be tapped to run the NSF (see chapter 7). I was pleased and surprised to see him again, and Norman and I would go on to become great friends. At the end of the dinner party, Frank Press took me aside and told me that a number of scientists involved in space research had sent him letters opposing my selection as the deputy administrator of NASA. He told me that several academy members were among this group and that he would have to take these opinions seriously. Taken aback, I told Frank that I regarded what he told me as a serious problem. I spent the next day thinking about Frank’s revelation. I decided to take the offensive. It would be inappropriate to approach the academy members who had objections to my appointment and try to appease them, so I decided to call Herb Friedman, the former head of the Space Sciences Division at the US Naval Research Laboratory. Herb knew about our X-ray astronomy work at Livermore, and

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he was also a member of the academy. Herb’s advice was simple: “Lay low and see what happens.” While considering Herb’s advice to be sound, I felt obligated to tell Jim Beggs that my position might be in jeopardy as a result of objections from some members of the academy. I wrote Jim a letter offering to turn down the nomination. I did not expect a quick answer, and this is how I wanted to handle it in order to give people (including me) time to cool down. In the end, nothing happened. About a year later, I asked Jim whether he had received my letter. He said, “Yes, and I even read it.” “What did you think?” “Nothing. I threw it away!” Both of us laughed, and that was the end of the story. But when I originally wrote the letter, of course, I did not know there would be such a benign outcome. Thus, I was in a pretty foul mood. Fortunately, Bun and I spent the next weekend in New Haven to celebrate Rufus’s graduation from Yale. It was a delightful time; it is always fun to see bright young people enjoying themselves and celebrating. On Saturday morning the Geheimrat showed up, as did Delia and Catherine. We had lunch at Fitzwilly’s, a famous bar in New Haven. Rufus would be a bartender there during the summer. Bun paid Rufus’s tuition at bartender school as a part of his education! Saturday was Class Day, the ceremony for student awards. Carl Sagan was the speaker. He was charismatic, as usual, but his message was a bit garbled: it tried to relate the space exploration program to the abolition of nuclear weapons. Carl was at the height of his fame because of the Cosmos television series. The graduation ceremony, on Sunday, was held in the main courtyard of the old campus. Pres. Bart Giamatti bestowed the degrees on the students, and violinist Itzhak Perlman and Shirley Hufstedler, a former federal judge and the first US secretary of education, received honorary degrees. After the ceremony, the students went to their residential colleges, where they would receive their diplomas. Rufus was awarded his diploma summa cum laude at Morse College. In addition, it was announced that he had been elected to Phi Beta Kappa.We were all very proud of him. A few days later, I visited the NASA–Johnson Space Center in Houston for conversations and to give a speech to a large audience of employees about the space station. It was very well received; the people at JSC believed that this would probably be their next important project. We also discussed space shuttle operations. On this matter, I sensed a divergence of opinion. My position was that a new, and perhaps separate, organization—not NASA—should operate the four space shuttles. This matter became really contentious as time went on. As mentioned, I had given up on finding a way to put a secure data link on the TDRSS satellites. But I still discussed the problem with relevant people on occasion. On May 29, 1981, I had lunch with Tony Calio, and the TDRSS problem was the first on his agenda. We agreed that the TDRSS satellites should be equipped

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with an encryption system. Since Tony would shortly be moving to NOAA, he had an interest in the problem, and he was anxious to help. He promised to do so once he moved. The following day, I decided to go to the NASA office to clear up some paperwork. Bob Aller and Ed Smylie were there, and we had an impromptu meeting about the TDRSS. Both of them worked in Tony Calio’s organization, so that they were thoroughly familiar with the problem. They were both opposed to placing a secure link on the TDRSS because they thought that NASA’s traffic alone would saturate the system. To draw this conclusion, they used NASA’s fifty-flights-per-year model, which I thought was essentially wrong. I had great respect for Ed Smylie because he had developed the workaround on the Apollo 13 mission when the astronauts lost the carbon dioxide scrubber. Indeed, he was my first candidate to replace Tony Calio, so I followed Hugh Loweth’s advice and said nothing—especially in view of the fact that I had earlier asked Hugh to intercede and knock heads.

NASA Matters On June 1, 1981, I was in California for a ceremony at the JPL to award medals to the people who had worked on Voyager 1 and Voyager 2. On the morning of the ceremony, I had a long meeting with Bruce Murray about budgetary problems. There was simply not enough money in the budget to perform all the missions that Bruce had in mind. They were oriented to exploring Mars and Venus—rovers on the Martian surface, spacecraft that could collect samples and return to Earth— and would clearly be valuable. Though he did not dispute that claim, he remained cool about my statement. Unlike the other NASA centers, the JPL was not a civil service organization. Instead, it was a federally funded research and development center managed for NASA by the California Institute of  Technology. This meant that the JPL had means of exerting influence in Washington—for example, through its prestigious board of regents—not available to the other NASA centers. Things would eventually have to come to a head, but this was not the time. The award ceremony was very well done. President Goldberger of Cal Tech made some appropriate remarks about the scientific achievements. My task was to present the medals, even though I had not yet been confirmed in my new position. First came group achievement certificates for the people in the technical areas.Then there were Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medals and Exceptional Engineering Achievement Medals for some of those involved. Finally, Ed Stone received a NASA Distinguished Service Medal for his work as the project scientist. Carl Sagan, one of the intellectual fathers of the Voyager program, received a Distinguished Public Service Medal. I delivered the final speech and talked about the importance of space exploration and its relationship to the nation’s security and well-being. At a reception after the ceremony, I had the opportunity to congratulate some of the award recipients. I congratulated Carl Sagan on his medal

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and reminded him of the good times we had in 1973 during Pioneer’s first flyby of Jupiter. He acknowledged my comment and then told me that he was opposed to my selection as deputy administrator of NASA because of my connection with the military. I was taken completely by surprise by his comment; I mumbled some pleasantry and left him to his thoughts. At a meeting on June 10, the National Security Council staff was scheduled to make some preliminary recommendations about the future direction of the nation’s space program. The day before, I had met with Verne Orr to decide on the topics we should mention. The meeting was held in the Situation Room, in the West Wing of the White House. It was my first visit there, and I was surprised to see that it was relatively small and had none of the paraphernalia familiar to me from air force command centers. A conference table was surrounded by about fifteen chairs; more chairs were along the walls for people we called “straphangers.” There were some pictures and a screen at one end of the table for who chaired the meeting. As the NASA representative, I had a chair at the table (despite not yet having been confirmed). Richard Allen, the president’s national security advisor, was in the chair; Verne Orr (air force secretary), Jay Keyworth (science adviser), Ed Harper (deputy OMB director), and Bill Schneider (OMB national security director) were the principal people at the meeting, along with eight or ten others who sat along the wall. The group agreed on three clear recommendations: • Urge the president to reaffirm the national commitment to the space shuttle program. To do this, we would put together a “show and tell” before the entire National Security Council, with the president leading the discussion. • Establish a mechanism within the National Security Council to resolve disputes between NASA and the Department of Defense. This arrangement, we hoped, would prevent situations like the one we faced with the TDRSS. • Establish a committee to study how existing or new launch vehicles might supplement the space shuttle. Although this might seem to contradict the first point, I argued that it was unrealistic to assume that conventional launch vehicles would be eliminated. I suggested that Jay Keyworth lead the study, because I wanted to bolster his position.

Around this time, I started interviewing people for possible appointments as associate administrators of NASA. One of my first candidates was Jack Kerrbrock, an MIT professor, for the OART (Office of Advanced Research and Technology). Jack was a helicopter expert with a distinguished academic and engineering record. I told him that Jim Beggs and I were very interested in placing more emphasis on NASA’s role in aeronautical research, and that we would change the name of OART to OAST (Office of Aeronautics and Space Technology) to illustrate the point. I also talked with Ed Smylie about succeeding Tony Calio at the Office of

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Space Applications. I was not in a position to make firm offers, but I wanted to have a list of people to submit to Jim when the time came. On June 11, Jim and I were informed that our confirmation hearings were set for June 17, so we began to make our rounds to visit the members of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, which would have jurisdiction over our cases. We did not encounter any real problems during these visits. The committee hearing began at 10:00 a.m. on the appointed day. Jack Schmitt, a scientist and astronaut as well as a senator from New Mexico, was in the chair because he headed the Subcommittee on Space Technology. Sen. John Danforth of Missouri introduced Jim Beggs as one of his constituents, and Senator Goldwater said a few good words about me, for which I was very grateful. At the end of his remarks, Senator Goldwater moved that the committee approve our nominations and submit them to the entire Senate for approval. Jack Schmitt did not immediately act on the motion, because he wanted to ask us some questions. He ran through a long list of inquiries about NASA’s management and a number of technical issues. After about a half hour of this, Senators Danforth and Goldwater left the hearing. They were soon followed by the two other members. Jack continued his questions for another hour and a half, and we did our best to answer him. In the end, Jack told us that he would recommend confirmations. During this hearing, I began to realize that Jack Schmitt would not be reelected to the Senate in 1982, when his term expired. If he were a highly regarded senator, he would have accepted Senator Goldwater’s motion and the hearing would have been over in a half hour. As it was, Jack spent two hours of his valuable time trying to prove that he was in charge. He did not realize that having his colleagues walk out should have been an embarrassment for him. In the afternoon, I went to see Jay Keyworth for a long conversation. I hoped to persuade him to become a strong supporter of the proposed space station, but came away disappointed. Bun had arranged a fine birthday party for me that evening. It was held in our home on George Mason Place. Twenty or so of our friends were there, and I was very grateful to Bun for the nice ending to a somewhat strange and disappointing day. On June 19, I received a really disturbing message from a staff member of the Senate Armed Services Committee: Secretary Weinberger had decided not to go ahead with the Rockwell B-1B program.We knew that Bill Perry had been speaking to him about this matter. Bill’s argument was that the B-1B was “old technology” and that we should go straight to the Northrop version of the B-2. On June 23, I persuaded Verne Orr to call a meeting about the B-1 with Generals Tom Stafford, Kelly Burke, and Guy Hecker. I strongly urged them to develop some persuasive counterarguments to Perry’s. We agreed to ask for a meeting. The next day, I checked with Tom Stafford to make certain that the meeting would be held.

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Tom told me that the secretary’s military assistant had confirmed that the meeting would occur during the first week of July. I was afraid that we would encounter some real trouble unless something favorable happened before too long. At another Pentagon session to discuss the B-1B, we decided that Kelly Burke would approach the Rockwell people to develop a common strategy. The next day we heard that Jim Beggs had been confirmed by the Senate. My own confirmation was still hung up, probably because of the National Academy of Science’s Space Sciences Committee and perhaps also because of Carl Sagan. I decided to be patient. On June 30, 1981, we discovered that our planned meeting with the generals had been canceled. Something more to worry about! I had hoped that a face-toface meeting between Verne Orr and the secretary would help. I could not predict where this program would wind up on the administration’s priority list. Though still not confirmed, I moved my remaining belongings over to NASA from the Pentagon, mostly as a courtesy to Verne Orr. Even though he was very kind and generous to me, it must have been awkward to have his predecessor sitting in his office suite. This move resulted in a problem for Jo Watson. I hoped to persuade Verne to take Jo on as his confidential secretary, and I was eventually successful. I had decided to hire Dorothy Kokoski as my NASA secretary. I first met Dorothy when she was working for Roy Jackson and I was at Ames. I was really impressed with how she handled matters. In addition, I continued to look for associate administrators.The most important job at this level was the associate administrator for manned spaceflight. He would head the Office of Manned Space Flight (OMSF) and be responsible for making the space shuttle work. The OMSF had been headed by John Yardley, who had turned in a magnificent performance and persisted until the first flight of Columbia. For this post, I wanted Jim Abrahamson, an air force major general who had overseen the development of the General Dynamics F-16 aircraft. When I approached him with this proposition, my argument was that making the space shuttle work would be a high-profile job that would eventually lead to something more important. I had known Jim well enough during my time in the Pentagon that I could make the argument credible. Jim said that he would let me know in a week. My sense was that he would accept; he had been designated an air force astronaut under the Manned Orbital Laboratory program. This was essentially an air-force-run space station that President Nixon had canceled in 1969 when NASA was given the exclusive charter to run programs involving people in space. I have not yet mentioned an important and contentious program that received much attention at the time.This was an effort to build, on the West Coast, a second site for space shuttle launches. There was already a large space-launch complex at Vandenberg Air Force Base near Lompoc on the coast of Southern California.This facility was originally constructed to launch ICBMs. Later, beginning in 1961, Vandenberg became the principal site for launching photographic reconnaissance

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satellites. These were launched due south into polar orbits, since they had to cover the entire Earth.The air force had six to eight launch pads in place for the different types of launch vehicles for spacecraft. As I have already indicated, the air force’s attitude toward the space shuttle, which is worth repeating again, was concern over the control of the launch schedule. The air force wanted direct control of the launch schedule. It believed—correctly, I thought—that having NASA operate the space shuttle would make each launch a negotiation, which, as a matter of principle, the air force leadership was unwilling to accept. A second major problem was that under the “shuttle only” policy, people would have to be aboard every mission. The air force felt that risking people’s lives for every mission would be folly because doing so unnecessarily could expose air force personnel to hostile fire. All air force space missions could be performed with conventional launch vehicles. The exception was the largest imaging satellite operated by the National Reconnaissance Office. The Hexagon spacecraft could not be carried by any conventional launch vehicle; indeed, the space shuttle was specifically designed to carry Hexagon. Thus, it was necessary for the air force to construct a launch pad for the shuttle at Vandenberg Air Force Base. I felt that these arguments were compelling. But I also believed that the space shuttle provided the nation with a unique capability that would ultimately be of great value. I disagreed with the “shuttle only” policy because it placed severe constraints on the development of a flexible space-launch capability. When James C. Fletcher, as NASA administrator, led the effort to persuade the Nixon administration to develop the space shuttle as NASA’s next major program, the people at the Office of Management and Budget, headed by Caspar Weinberger, insisted that the principal condition for approving the shuttle program was the eventual phasing out of all existing expendable space launch vehicles. Fletcher reluctantly agreed, and this compromise was the origin of the present problem. The cost of building a launch complex for the space shuttle at Vandenberg was very high, somewhere around $4 billion. The project would create Space Launch Complex Six (SLC-6, or “Slick Six,” as it was generally called). On July 2, there was a program acquisition review (PAR) for the Slick Six at the USAF Systems Command Headquarters at Andrews AFB near Washington, DC. We called it a “Super PAR” surreptitiously because of the complexity of the problem and the major viewpoint differences among the participants. The air force chief of staff, Gen. Lew Allen, presided; NASA was represented by the acting associate administrator of the OMSF, L. Michael Weeks, and the three OMSF center directors, Chris Kraft from the NASA–Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center,William Lucas from the NASA–Marshall Space Center, and Richard Smith from the NASA–Kennedy Space Center. The meeting was difficult. I could not speak because I was not yet confirmed in my position. Mike Weeks was a temporary placeholder, and the NASA center directors were there to protect their own interests.Thus, NASA was in a very weak

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position from which to make a strong argument for another space shuttle launch site. General Allen held all the cards. The air force project managers presented a very detailed description of the status of Slick Six and the problems so far encountered, along with the costs. It was clear that the air force had no enthusiasm for the program. The NASA response was muted because there was no one from NASA who could make a strong and credible statement about its position on the project. At the end of the meeting, General Allen made a very strong and articulate statement in support of NASA’s space shuttle program. He then outlined the air force’s position and made a forceful argument for maintaining a stable of expendable launch vehicles for missions by the air force and the NRO. He said that the air force would use the space shuttle when appropriate, but that as far as the service was concerned, it would take a long time to implement the “shuttle only” policy. The air force eventually established a Mission Support Element at the NASA– Johnson Space Center, commanded by Col. William Shelton. Several important air force and NRO satellites were flown on the shuttle, including the new-technology satellite. Finally, I am pleased to say that at this writing, William Shelton, who retired with four stars, was the commander of the US Air Force Space Command from 2011 to 2014. Perhaps the space shuttle helped give future leaders of the air force a thorough knowledge of space operations.

Deputy Administrator of NASA and a Long-Range Plan for the Agency On July 9, 1981, I learned that my selection as the deputy administrator of NASA had been confirmed by the US Senate and that my commission had been signed by the president. In the morning, I went over to the Pentagon to participate in the ceremony at which Richard DeLauer, the under secretary for research and engineering, presented the Defense Meritorious Service Medal to Alan M. Lovelace, a well-deserved accolade. I then made a brief stop at the White House to see Robert Garrick, the deputy counselor to the president. He congratulated me and said that he would be NASA’s contact man in the White House. Later that day I had lunch with Larry Smith, who was Gary Hart’s chief assistant. We talked politics, specifically about Hart’s prospects for winning the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination in 1984. It was clear that Hart would be a contender, but I told Larry that I did not think a few years in the Senate was sufficient preparation for the presidency. I agreed with Larry that Hart’s experience as George McGovern’s campaign manager in 1968 might have been useful, but it was a temporary job, not a long-term responsibility. We left it there and agreed that Hart would be a man to watch. After lunch, I went to the White House for the swearing in of Jim Beggs. It was scheduled for 3:00 p.m. in the vice president’s office. Jim had brought his family, including eight-year-old Charlie, his youngest son. The vice president welcomed

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Figure 12.2. The swearing-in ceremony for Jim Beggs as NASA administrator, in the office of Vice President Bush, July 9, 1981. Left to right: Bun, me, Mary Beggs,Vice President Bush, and Jim Beggs.

us. Mr. Bush is a tall distinguished-looking man with a very friendly manner. Just before the ceremony, someone did a headcount, and it was determined that we were one witness short. Charlie Beggs was missing. He had apparently drifted off into the labyrinth of the West Wing. Mary Beggs quickly organized a search team, and we were assigned to different areas. I came up empty, but by the time I returned to the vice president’s office, Charlie had been collared. Bush made some introductory remarks and pointed out that Charlie Beggs had simply been looking around for an office to occupy on becoming a White House staff member thirty years hence. All of this created a good-humored atmosphere. I had taken the mandated oath of office myself several times, but I still felt a thrill when the vice president asked Jim Beggs to “swear or affirm to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies foreign and domestic and to bear truth faith and allegiance to the same . . . So help me God!” After the swearing in, we all shook hands with the vice president. We went back to NASA Headquarters, where Jim Beggs swore me in as deputy administrator, with Bun holding the Bible. There was a party in the office suite of the administrator, and many friends from Ames and even from Berkeley were present. It was a grand event. On Saturday, July 11, I spent three hours with Hugh Loweth and Jeff Strothers, the two OMB staff members responsible for the NASA budget. They were inter-

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ested in a detailed explanation of the space shuttle budget, which I provided. They seemed satisfied, but I sensed that the program might be faced with some difficulties. Monday was my first full day as deputy administrator. My first move was to hire Dorothy Kokoski as my primary assistant and young Anne Eddins as number two. As another housekeeping matter, I decided not to use my government car. I had done likewise in the Pentagon because of the onerous restrictions on the use of government vehicles. I felt that a perk such as a car should be made available to senior officials gracefully—a few words of caution should be enough—not accompanied by a long, detailed rule book. For almost six months while I was without an official job but back on the Ames payroll, (courtesy of the personnel officer, Bob Pike, and the director, Sy Syvertson), I tried to move along the unfinished business from my time in the Pentagon. I cannot say that I was successful, so I decided to use my new platform to continue to push work on the bombers (the Northrop B-2 and the Rockwell B-1B) and the Tracking Data and Relay Satellite System. I had some justification in doing this because all three were aerospace programs for which NASA had at least some responsibility. In addition, Jim Beggs would be working full-time in Washington starting on July 15. The pace at NASA Headquarters would quicken then, so I would have to be careful in how I spent my time. The next weekend I was in California at the 1981 “encampment” of the Bohemian Club (based in San Francisco) at the Bohemian Grove, in Sonoma County, as a guest of Jimmy Doolittle, who often visited us at Ames and had become a good friend. These encampments are a unique and very important California institution. They have no relationship at all to the Cold War; however, many current and former high-level governmental officials, prominent military and civilian industrial leaders, and academics come to these gatherings. Former president Ford led the group of dignitaries at this particular encampment. For the next month, I placed the development of a long-range plan for NASA at the highest level of priority. Milton Silveira, my old colleague from the Johnson Space Center during the 1970s while we were developing the space shuttle, worked with me on this effort. I’d like to take a few moments to highlight some of the important and controversial items in the document, as seen from the perspective of more than three decades later. The final paper, entitled “Notes on Long Range Planning,” was submitted to Jim Beggs on August 18, 1981. He replied with a simple “OK, Let’s Go!” on September 24. The document discusses seven areas encompassing NASA’s activities: facilities, aeronautics, the space shuttle, the space station, unmanned launch vehicles, scientific exploration, and space applications. Facilities: NASA’s missions cannot be successfully executed without highly capable and modern facilities. Somewhat controversially, we considered high-performance computers to be research facilities rather than merely aides for computation. This view was accepted. The Numerical Aerodynamic Simulator, a supercomputer to be

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built at Ames, was to be regarded as a major facility. At this writing, Ames has the best aerodynamic simulation facility in the world. Aeronautics: We recommended that NASA continue to strongly support military aviation. And in fact, this is still being done today, and we have the new Lockheed Martin F-22 and the family of F-35 aircraft, both developed with NASA’s assistance. A new technology introduced by NASA in the 1970s, tilt-rotor aircraft, was implemented by Bell Helicopter in developing the MV-22 Osprey. The US Marine Corps and US Air Force deploy several dozen of these aircraft in the Middle East. Traditionally in the United States, new aircraft concepts have been introduced first on military aircraft (all-metal airplanes, jet engines, swept-wing designs, supersonic flight, etc.). It is quite possible that as the flight experience with the Osprey becomes more extensive, civilian versions of the tilt-rotor will be developed, ultimately replacing the small aircraft currently used for short trips. The use of tilt-rotor aircraft, which do not need runways, could substantially relieve airport congestion. One other aeronautical technology to which NASA has made a substantial contribution in recent years is in air traffic control. Using the powerful computers at NASA–Ames, an air traffic control simulator referred to as “Future Flight Central” makes it possible to perform research on air traffic control technology. The leading developer of this facility is Heinz Erzberger, who was recognized for his achievements by election to the National Academy of Engineering. The space shuttle: NASA’s plan was to conduct four shuttle flights with a crew of two, and as mentioned earlier, ejection seats were provided for the crew in case something went wrong. I thought that they had very limited value. After those four flights, the shuttle vehicle would be declared operational and would begin a specified set of activities. I thought that this was not the right approach, but since I was a newcomer to manned spaceflight, I kept my own counsel. Milton and I proposed that NASA first agree on what “operational” meant for the shuttle. The next step would be to create an organizational unit for it in either the government or the private sector. The important point was that the Johnson Space Center was essentially an engineering research and development organization, not an operational one. We suggested that operation of the space shuttles be phased out there and moved to the Kennedy Space Center. When I broached this topic with the people at NASA Headquarters, the JSC, and the Kennedy Space Center, there was universal opposition. I nonetheless thought that it would be important to put it on paper in order to get people thinking about the difference between development and operations. In the end, the space shuttle was never a truly “operational” vehicle. Maybe the people who were opposed to what I tried to do were right; maybe the space shuttle was intrinsically an experimental craft that could never be made operational. The space station: This was the large new program that Jim Beggs and I wanted to initiate. We were successful in persuading the president and Congress to adopt the space station as a major new effort, and initial funding of $150 million was included in the fiscal year 1985 budget request from NASA. Jim was brilliant at working the

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politics of the situation. The steps were all properly calculated and timed. He even managed to persuade the president to mention the space station in his 1984 State of the Union Address. The details of how all this happened are described in the next chapter. Unmanned launch vehicles: This item was controversial but important enough to mention. Milton and I felt that the “shuttle only” policy for space launches would not be workable. Too many different configurations of spaceships would require unmanned launch vehicles. We added the provision that the space shuttle’s propulsion technology be used to create the new rockets. It is an interesting point that the now-canceled Ares program was intended to use space shuttle technology for unmanned programs.We had the right idea, but NASA was so weak in 2009 that it could not be implemented. Scientific exploration: This is the section of the document that I found most interesting. We recommended that NASA concentrate on astrophysics research rather than planetary exploration. Looking back, I think what we said was correct. By concentrating NASA’s scientific efforts on orbiting satellites carrying instruments to look out far into the universe, we have made a number of very important new discoveries. There is no question that the Hubble Space Telescope is one of the most important scientific instruments ever conceived, built, and deployed. In addition, two American scientists awarded Nobel Prizes in Physics used data acquired by NASA satellites in near-Earth orbit. Ricardo Giacconi was awarded the prize in 2002 for X-ray astronomy using three satellites sensitive to cosmic X-rays: Uhuru, the Einstein X-Ray Observatory, and most importantly, the very large Chandra X-Ray Observatory, launched by Columbia on July 23, 1999. Giacconi served as the first director of NASA’s Space Telescope Science Institute, located at Johns Hopkins University, where he is also a professor of physics. John C. Mather received the Nobel Prize in 2006 for highly accurate measurements that determined the “black body form and the anisotropy of the cosmic microwave background radiation.” The anisotropy mentioned here is strong evidence that the big bang model of the origin of the universe and its subsequent expansion is correct. Mather is a senior astrophysicist at the NASA–Goddard Space Flight Center and an adjunct professor of physics at the University of Maryland. He used the Cosmic Background Explorer satellite, which was developed and operated by NASA–Goddard. These results seem like clear vindication of the research plans we adopted. Space applications: This program has always been something of a stepchild at NASA because of a fundamental division of opinion between Republicans and Democrats. Essentially, the Republicans say that the private sector should pay for the development of satellites from which eventually there would be a profit stream. Conversely, the Democrats have no problem with using tax money to subsidize promising technologies whether or not profits would eventually result. Milton and I recommended that we try to anticipate technologies that might have applications in the future and begin working on them now.The idea was to place some bets and

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see what might happen. In any event, we wanted an active NASA space applications program. These points taken together would make up the NASA long-range plan for the next five years.

Organization, Budgets, and Personnel Decisions On September 10, I visited the Johnson Space Center for a two-day review. (The resulting meetings are described more fully later in this chapter.) The very competent and highly motivated people there were concerned about their future. They believed that with the space shuttle development program successfully completed, no new program was on the horizon for them. The points raised by the leadership of the center were real and serious. They were concerned about what Milton Silveira and I had written about the shuttle program in our “Notes on Long Range Planning.” Specifically, they wanted to have a clearer explanation of what we meant by the difference between development and operations. I told them that the JSC had a truly superb record in development. The Apollo program was a major triumph, but it had had no real operational continuation. Each of its launches was an “operation,” and so was the flight to the moon and back. But those operations were not designed to serve a customer. The space shuttle, on the other hand, was designed to serve many customers who had spacecraft to launch, and this was an entirely different enterprise. My audience was skeptical. They wanted to hang on to the shuttle operation if no new development program was available. I discussed the possibility of developing a space station, which would be the next development program for them. They agreed that this was a good idea, but were skeptical of my ability to persuade the new administration to adopt the space station as a new initiative. I should say a word about my relationships with the people at the Johnson Space Center. There was always mutual respect for each other’s technical capabilities. I formed close friendships with several senior people there, including Aaron Cohen and Milton Silveira, who were the manager and deputy manager of the space shuttle orbiter, which was a task of central “development” responsibility. Other friends included Glynn Lunney and Gerald Griffin, members of the flight control staff, which was the “operational” part of the program. But I never really penetrated the inner group at the JSC. Even though I had spent eight years running a NASA center, Ames was a research center, not a development center, which made a big difference.There was not much I could do about this circumstance, but it had to be factored into my thinking. Another matter that was foremost in my mind at this point was implementing the new organization that I had discussed with Jim Beggs—one that would make a clear distinction between line management positions and staff positions. On September 14, I had a lengthy meeting with Jim concerning this matter. In the end, he

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told me to prepare an announcement that would explain the new organization. It is worth repeating that line managers were people who had permanently delegated responsibilities over specific elements of a NASA program. These would hold the title of associate administrator and would be managed by exception. The staff people reported directly to the administrator and held the title of assistant administrator. They were the administrator’s assistants, with specialized functions such as personnel, legal, financial, procurement, and other functions of this type. Jim and I discussed the selection of people for these posts. Ever since learning that I would be named deputy administrator, I had been thinking about people to bring into NASA. I have already mentioned Jack Kerrbrock, who would serve as associate administrator for aeronautics and space technology. Jim and I agreed that we were very lucky to have him. For this process, I would prepare a list of qualified candidates; we would discuss them, add or drop candidates, and in the end make a decision. In my judgment, the most important job in NASA was the associate administrator for spaceflight (Office of Space Flight, formerly the Office of Manned Space Flight). I had developed a list of candidates for the OSF post, and I was surprised to learn that Jim had several problems accepting my primary recommendation. My candidate for the post was Lt. Gen. James A. Abrahamson, USAF. “General Abe,” as we all called him, was the ideal candidate for the job. He had a strong combat record in Vietnam and was later selected as an air force astronaut in the Manned Orbiting Laboratory program. When that program was canceled in 1969, Abrahamson returned to active air force jobs. I first met Abrahamson in 1977 when I was at Ames and he had just been promoted to brigadier general. He came to see me dressed in his flight suit after piloting a Northrop T-38 trainer to Moffett Field. He congratulated me on my nomination to become under secretary of the air force and then told me about some of the things he had been doing. When I approached him about the OSF job in 1981, he had earned a second star and had been managing the General Dynamics F-16 fighter aircraft program, the flagship procurement program at the time. The program was complex because of the international relations involved. It was necessary to encourage other nations, especially NATO allies, to buy the aircraft and also to participate in its production. All of this was done by General Abe with great flair. General Abe was first on my list of candidates for the job. I was surprised that Jim Beggs did not immediately agree. He hesitated on this selection as well as some of the other ones. I was concerned by this slowing down of decision-making. In the course of waiting, I learned something about Jim Beggs: he was a cautious man who would ponder over an important decision for, in my opinion, far too long. I decided that I would gently push him to make important decisions and see what might happen. I tended to shoot more from the hip in making decisions, but then I also made some pretty bad mistakes. In any event, all I could do at the moment was fret about it.

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On September 16, 1981, I went to visit the NASA–George C. Marshall Space Flight Center to review its programs. The center had been in charge of developing the space shuttle main engine, and for at least the first flight, things worked well. During my years at Ames, I had developed a good relationship with Wernher von Braun through our common interest in sailing. Von Braun had gone to NASA Headquarters shortly after the Apollo 11 mission. Eberhardt Rees, who succeeded von Braun, was still the director when I made my visit. I had a good time speaking German with some of Eberhardt’s people. When it came to business, however, the story was similar to that at the Johnson Space Center. There was great concern, for the same reasons. The essential question was what would come after the completion of the shuttle program. It was a good question, and I had no answer. I did not know whether Marshall would have any role in the development of the space station, because no new propulsion system would be necessary for it. September 18 was a good day. Jim Beggs agreed to hire Jim Abrahamson to run the space shuttle program. On September 23, Jim agreed to go ahead with the reorganization plan that we had developed. We also decided on two more senior appointments: Burton Edelson as associate administrator for space science and applications, and Robert E. Smylie as associate administrator for space tracking and data systems. Later we would add an associate administrator for management who would essentially be the “center director” of NASA Headquarters. Walter Olstad was the first person to hold this position, and when he retired, John W. Boyd, my old friend and colleague from Ames, took the reins. I had a good feeling about the way things were moving along. On September 28, the final negotiations began for the fiscal year 1983 budget. It was also Bun’s birthday, and we had a great party at the King’s Landing restaurant in Old Town Alexandria. Bun is truly a great lady, and I do not know what I would do without her. The essential problem with the NASA budget was that the OMB wanted to give us $6 billion, but we had requested $7.2 billion. Our budget for the previous fiscal year was $6.1 billion, so we were looking at a real reduction. I had a meeting with Bill Schneider, the defense man at the OMB, but he had no suggestions. Jim Beggs and I then went to see Richard Allen, the president’s national security advisor. Jim told me that he knew Allen would be favorably disposed to us. Allen listened carefully to our story, and I thought that he would help us with the space shuttle and the aeronautics programs. Jim did his usual superb job in laying out our case. The next few days were spent refining the numbers in the NASA budget. On the afternoon of October 8, there was a meeting in the Roosevelt Room at the White House. Ed Harper, the deputy director of the OMB, and Col. Mike Berta, the air force representative on the National Security Council staff, were among the attendees. Jim Beggs once again made our pitch and left an excellent impression. One problem, however, was that we did not yet have a centerpiece around which to organize our budget. We wanted the space station eventually to occupy that position, but we had not yet formulated the program.

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The next day we had a response from people at the OMB. They wanted us to amend some of the ways we had formulated our budget. The most important change was to treat the space shuttle as a separate item. I thought that this was a good step because it might make it easier to split the shuttle off as an operational organization. As a short relief from all of this, we went to the Air Force–Navy football game in Annapolis on October 10. It was good fun even though we lost the game, 30–17. There was a fine breakfast before the game at Admiral Waller’s residence. John Lehman, the secretary of the navy, was there as the senior official of the administration. We had a good talk. I felt that he was one of the better people in the new administration. We went back to work on the budget and decided to develop four areas of concentration: support national defense, support the commercial sector, support scientific exploration, and develop a fully capable space shuttle. Our general feeling was that we should shoot for a final budget of $6.5 billion, but to do that we would ask for $7.14 billion. On Saturday, October 17, I had a long lunch meeting with Hugh Loweth and Jeff Strothers.They were the “worker bees” at the OMB who handled our funding. One thing I learned in Washington was never to ignore these folks; ultimately, they develop the framework within which budgets are developed.We had a long discussion about the future of NASA and how its programs should be developed. I came away with the following impressions: • We would get more than $6 billion. • The aeronautics program was in real trouble. • Jim Beggs and I were in trouble with some people in the administration for stirring up a serious fight over the NASA budget. • We would need to work seriously on the four area budgets that we developed in order to give the policy workers some choices.

A few days later we had a meeting of all the NASA center directors in Washington to give them a feeling for what had to be done. I was amazed by their relative innocence. Most of them seemed to think that support for NASA in Congress and by the American people was automatic and strong. I pointed out to them at length that we would have an uphill battle within the administration and Congress to secure adequate support for a good NASA program. There was much discussion, but everyone seemed to reluctantly agree at the end of the meeting that we would have a difficult time. In the evening, I flew to the Kennedy Space Center for the Flight Readiness Review (FRR) for the second flight of Columbia. Early on, I had decided that I would preside over the FRRs for each space shuttle flight. This would be the best way to quickly learn about any problems and also to assess the capabilities of the people involved. What concerned me the most

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were failures of the space shuttle main engine (SSME). This was the most complex system on the shuttles, and some of the failures during the test program had caused us to be very careful. Cracks in the turbine blades raised concerns, along with the heavy vibrations when the SSMEs started. I was concerned about hydrogen leaks in the aft section of the space shuttle. To me, the takeoff was the most critical point in the trajectory, and so we paid the most attention to it. The review was completed at about noon the next day, and we flew back to Washington. On the plane I wrote a long letter to Mike Weeks, who was still the acting associate administrator, summarizing what I had concluded and giving him the go-ahead to launch Columbia in about two weeks. Frank Press, the new president of the National Academy of Sciences, called a meeting of the academy for the morning of October 26, 1981, to inform the members about the funding situation for the nation’s scientific and technological enterprises. I spoke about the space and aeronautical programs, particularly what I called the “hyperinflation” in their costs. I used the Atlas Launch Vehicle Program, which had experienced large cost overruns due to mismanagement, to illustrate my point. Surprisingly, most of the hundred or so scientists were not aware of what I was telling them. For this reason, I escaped, more or less, unhurt by any questions. During lunch at the Pentagon,Verne Orr told me that they were having trouble in the Senate with the B-1B program. Secretary Weinberger was not an enthusiastic supporter of the program, and the Senate Democrats would vote against it. I urged Verne to establish a committee to work on pushing the B-1B program through Congress; he told me he would activate such a group. My most important meeting of the day was with Fred Khedouri at the OMB. We spent about three hours in a detailed discussion to prepare for the budget review with Ed Meese (White House counsel), James Baker (White House chief of staff  ), and David Stockman (OMB director). I reduced the entire situation to two major questions: Will we honor the commitment to make the space shuttle an operational shuttle system? Will NASA be able to continue to work on all the programs mandated by the National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958, or will we have to shut some of them down? A subsidiary point to the second question was which of the programs should be shut down if any were to be. This is a good opportunity to say a few words about Fred Khedouri. In late 1981, he was barely thirty-one years old, very young for the position he held at the OMB, which had oversight and advisory powers for programs budgeted at tens of billions of dollars. He was born in New York after his family had to leave their home in Iraq. Fred displayed a keen mind early on, and he received an excellent education at the University of Chicago (AB, 1972) and the University of  Texas Law School ( JD, 1975). He entered government service, rising rapidly at the OMB to his current post, associate director for natural resources, energy, and science. I liked Fred and respected his judgment and intelligence. During our three-hour sparring match, we both enjoyed ourselves.

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The first topic was the space shuttle and the funding for the fleet.The OMB figure was $3 billion for a four-orbiter shuttle fleet beginning in the 1983 fiscal year. I told Fred that it would take at least $3.4 billion to run the fleet if we included needed upgrades. I mentioned a plan to recover and repair the Solar Maximum Mission satellite, a damaged spacecraft that was intended to measure the output of the sun at maximum sunspot activity. We were anxious to demonstrate the capabilities of the shuttle as soon as possible, and this would be one way to do it. Fred agreed to revise the $3 billion figure upward to include some critical demonstration experiments. The next question had to do with the overall size of the NASA program. The OMB mark for the fiscal year was $5.9 billion, which would leave $2.9 billion for the remainder of NASA. We had initially asked for $7.1 billion. Fred wanted to know why we were not willing to shut down some programs deemed to be not valuable. I told him that we had cut out some $300 million; the remaining programs were essential for carrying out the mandates of the National Aeronautics and Space Act. I added that in developing our program, we were following political guidance from the White House, even though we had not had any meetings with members of the White House staff. Fred, half in jest, told me that he had more trouble with us than with all the other agencies he dealt with. I pointed out, also half in jest, that I thought NASA really reported to the OMB and that he was our representative in the White House bureaucracy. My overall impression from the meeting was that NASA would be funded at $6.6 billion to $6.7 billion. I reported this result to Jim Beggs, who asked me to prepare a detailed budget based on these figures. On November 3, I flew to Houston to prepare for the second flight of Columbia. I arrived at the Mission Operations Control Room at three in the morning the next day.The launch was scheduled for six thirty but had to be scrubbed because of contamination of the lubricating oil in auxiliary power units #1 and #3. It turned out that a “waxy” polymer in the lubrication oil had formed from hydrazine leaking from a fuel tank and reacting with the lubricating oil. I told the people in charge that I was astounded that no checklist called for a precountdown examination of the power units. Problems such as these should be discovered early. I pointed out that such an event would not have happened in a truly operational organization. I returned to Washington to wait until the problem was fixed. I also asked some people at NASA Headquarters to look at the problem and give me their opinions. They responded that the contamination was so minor that we should have flown. This was food for thought about the future of the Johnson Space Center. A few days later, I spoke with Mike Weeks, the acting associate administrator of the Office of Space Flight. He told me that the problem with the power units had been resolved and that we would be ready for launch on November 12. I talked to him about the lack of discipline in the launch process and said that I would preside over the next Flight Readiness Review for a shuttle launch.

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On Monday morning, November 9, I attended a meeting in the East Room of the White House. No reason had been specified for the meeting. Tables were set for breakfast, and in the room there were about a hundred second-level officials from all the departments of the executive branch. During the almost four years that I served in the Carter administration, I was never invited to an event of this kind. Perhaps this kind of reaching out to second-level officials was what accounted for the ultimate success of the Reagan administration. I was surprised and pleased to be there. Vice President Bush presided, and he was strictly business. He told us that we were there to listen closely to some of the top-level individuals in the administration. The first person to speak was Donald Regan, the secretary of the treasury and the former CEO of Merrill Lynch, a Wall Street investment house. An imposing man, Regan delivered his speech strongly and articulately, but I was disappointed by the lack of substance. He simply repeated the economic policy of the administration without any nuance or stories: lower taxes, tight money, less government regulation, and so on and so forth. David Stockman, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, was next. His speech was strident, shrill, and not at all convincing. He reminded me of an aging 1960s Berkeley radical who thought he knew all the answers. He was the only speaker who was a true embarrassment to the administration. The final speaker was Pendleton James, the White House personnel officer. He congratulated us on surviving the vetting process, which drew a laugh from the audience. He predicted that half the people in the room would not be in their positions after two years—the average tenure of a presidential appointee. He told us that he would begin looking for our replacements as soon as we were all confirmed. At the end of this speech, President Reagan walked into the room. He shook hands with some people and then delivered a short and spirited speech. He had not changed since I saw him in 1971 after his reelection as governor of California. One again, the theme was smaller government. He also warned us about the Washington bureaucracy. I was astounded by the depth and the intensity of the antigovernment feeling—it was incredible. Where else in the world could you find a head of government making an antigovernment speech? There is no doubt that the president was a political leader of the first rank. But it was, nevertheless, incongruous that this talented politician would make such a speech to his own political allies and appointees. I hoped very much that he would succeed in achieving his two major objectives: fixing the economy and strengthening our military. I resolved to do what I could do to help him.

The Second Flight of Columbia and President Reagan at the Mission Operation Control Room On November 11, I flew to Houston to attend the second launch of Columbia. When I arrived at the MOCR at about five thirty in the morning, the countdown

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was already in progress for STS-2 (the second flight of the “Space Transportation System”), with the launch scheduled for nine. The countdown was going well, and at seven fifteen Jim Beggs called with two messages: a piece of electronic equipment (a multiplex-demultiplex unit) had failed, and he asked me to look into it and get the problem fixed; and the president and the vice president would be in Houston for the weekend. He told me that he had contacted the White House to find out whether the president would be interested in visiting the MOCR. By this time, I had alerted Chris Kraft, who was sitting at the console next to mine, and he picked up the telephone. Jim told us to prepare for a visit by the president. The countdown proceeded without any problems. Columbia lifted off smoothly, as planned, at nine. We watched the takeoff on the TV repeater at the front of the MOCR. It was again an exhilarating experience. At two in the afternoon we opened the payload bay successfully, and we were ready to begin testing the Canadian manipulator arm. I was very interested in this experiment; on a prior visit to the Johnson Space Center, I had observed an exercise with the manipulator arm in the Shuttle Simulator. During that visit, I noticed a Canadian flag painted on the manipulator arm. I asked my guide whether there would be an American flag in the payload bay. Immediately picking up on what I was driving at, he told me not

Figure 12.3. A tense moment a few minutes before the second launch of Columbia, November 12, 1981. Left to right: Jerry Bostick, a staff member in the Orbiter Project Office; Daniel Germany, a staff member in the office; me; Milton A. Silveira, deputy manager of the office; and Gene Kranz, NASA flight director. Photo courtesy of NASA Headquarters.

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to worry. When the payload bay doors were opened, I was satisfied to see a small American flag painted on Columbia’s aft bulkhead. I was impressed by the manipulator arm’s capability and looked forward to seeing it in action during this flight. At three, while I was following the flight on my console, I heard through the network that fuel cell #1 was failing and probably could not be brought back online. At a four o’clock mission management meeting, the consensus was to shorten the mission from seventy-five hours to fifty-four in order to reduce the risk of losing all three fuel cells before returning to Earth. This meant the shuttle would come back on Saturday rather than late Sunday or early Monday. The weather forecast showed that Edwards Air Force Base should be fine for the landing. All these measures were recommended by Gene Kranz, the Mission Control division chief. I spent much of the rest of the day looking at what had gone wrong with the fuel cell. The cell, built in 1976, had been used during the approach and landing tests made by Enterprise. I was astounded to learn that it had never been refurbished. The problem was caused by a short circuit in one of the sixty-four battery units in the fuel cell; the failure of one unit would shut down the entire power supply. I went to bed at eight thirty that night and got up three hours later. I had word that the president’s Secret Service detail would show up after midnight. Sure enough, they arrived at about twelve thirty. In addition to the Secret Service, there were also some political advance men. The MOCR was thoroughly checked out with electronic sniffers and other gadgets. We passed muster. Jim Beggs called to tell me that our White House liaison, Jim Fanseen, would be coming to Houston with the president on Air Force One. At one, Steve Stoddart, the president’s advance man, showed up. He told us that the president would be at the center between six and seven that evening. I introduced Stoddart to Chris Kraft and Gene Kranz. They decided to limit the number of visitors in the MOCR to the president and his principal assistant on the trip, Mike Deaver. The rest of the presidential party would be in the viewing room behind the MOCR. At one thirty I went to bed for a few hours. I was back in the MOCR at about six thirty. At an eight o’clock mission management meeting, we reviewed the technical situation and reaffirmed the decision to land on Rogers Dry Lake near Edwards AFB on Saturday afternoon after fiftyfour hours and twenty-three orbits.We formed a backup option in case of a weather problem. There was also a long discussion about how the planned experiments needed to be prioritized in view of the shorter time in orbit. At three the news media arrived in force. The TV people unobtrusively set up some equipment. Neil Hutchinson, the lead flight controller, made some sensible suggestions about how to behave when the president was in the room. He reminded people that the successful completion of the mission had first priority.

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A few minutes after six, the president and Mike Deaver were ushered in by Chris Kraft. Jim Beggs walked in after them. Kris showed the president around the room and then introduced him to Hutchinson and to me. The president asked some questions about the functions represented by the consoles in the room. At each stop, he shook hands and made some appropriate remarks. When it came time for him to talk with the astronauts, Joe Engle (commander) and Richard Truly (pilot), Chris Kraft led the president to the “cap com” console. (“Cap com,” short for “capsule communicator,” originated in the early days of manned spaceflight, when the spacecraft that carried the astronauts was called the “capsule.”) Dan Brandenstein, the cap com, handed the telephone to the president. The president’s first words were “This is like a miracle!” He was clearly on a high, and once again he started asking good questions. I was standing behind him, so I could hear what he was saying. It was clear that he was both elated and curious. In 1981, contact with the shuttle was not continuous because there were no

Figure 12.4. President Reagan in the MOCR during the second flight of Columbia, November 13, 1981. He is talking with the orbiting astronauts. Seated to the left of the president is Terry J. Hart, an astronaut. Behind them are (from left) Dan Brandenstein, the cap com; me; Gene Kranz (in the vest), legendary chief of the Flight Control Division; Jim Beggs, NASA administrator; and Chris Kraft, NASA–Johnson Space Center director. Photo courtesy of NASA–Johnson Space Flight Center.

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communications satellites that could pick up the shuttle signals and relay them to Earth. Thus, after about four minutes, the president turned around in his chair and asked, “Their voices are fading?” Then he turned to Dan Brandenstein: “Will we hear from them again?” “Yes, in about fifteen minutes.” The president turned to Mike Deaver, who was standing next to me: “Can we stay for another fifteen minutes? I was not finished.” Mike Deaver replied: “Mr. President, you have a speaking engagement downtown in twenty minutes.” “Can we postpone it?” “No.” Deaver said with some regret. The president got up, apologized to Dan Brandenstein, and turned around and said: “I want to thank all of you for opening my eyes to a brand-new world. I am proud and pleased to be with you here who have put the United States first in space exploration. God bless you all.” With that he turned and began to walk through the room and shake as many hands as he could. He received a loud ovation as he left. In watching all this, it was clear to me that the president had more than a passing interest in what we were doing. The rest of Columbia’s flight passed without incident. We received word that 150,000 people were waiting at Lancaster near the dry lake bed on which Columbia would land. Columbia touched down at 3:30 p.m. on Saturday, November 13, 1981.The icing on the cake was a ceremony at the White House on December 7 at which President Reagan awarded NASA Distinguished Service Medals to Joe Engle and Dick Truly. The president was gracious and made a short, energetic speech extolling the importance of space exploration. He repeated one of his favorite sayings: “A great nation has the obligation to explore.” After the ceremony, the president let in about thirty reporters and held an impromptu press conference. My reaction to all this was guardedly optimistic. The president was clearly interested in what we were doing and thought spaceflight was important. Perhaps we would be able to persuade the president to adopt a large new NASA initiative. When I told Jim Beggs what I was thinking, he said, “Oh yes, we’ve got him. He’s hooked!” I remembered that Jim was a man of few words.

Congressional Approval of the Modernization of the Air Force’s Strategic Weapons To backtrack a bit, on October 26, 1981, during a very busy day, I went to see Verne Orr to discuss the status of the strategic bomber program. He was pessimistic about it because there was plenty of Democratic opposition in Congress to the B1-B.

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A few days later I decided to try to do something about the impasse. The strategic initiatives we had formulated in the Carter administration would be continued. Caspar Weinberger had finally agreed to our proposals to build a fleet of B-1B bombers and also the MX missiles (without selecting a basing mode). The problem was to get Congress to fund them. I would draft a letter to the editor to the Washington Post in support of the president’s strategic bomber and missile program. I would get as many of the twelve former air force secretaries as possible to sign it. It would be intentionally nonpartisan. On the afternoon of November 9, I went to a wine-tasting party at Tom Reed’s house in Old Town Alexandria. Tom was the cofounder of a vineyard near Healdsburg, California. It produced a very good white wine under the label Clos du Bois. I had heard that Tom would be appointed to a senior position on the National Security Council staff, which meant he would be in a good position to help with the appropriation problem. My real purpose in attending the wine tasting was to discuss the idea of having all or most former air force secretaries sign the letter to the editor. I told Tom that once the letter was printed, we would send copies to all members of Congress before the vote on the strategic bomber and missile forces. Following my conversation with Tom, we made a number of telephone calls to round up secretaries who would sign up. Despite my earlier optimism, only five former secretaries (including myself and Verne Orr) agreed to sign the letter. The others were John Stetson (Carter), John McLucas (Nixon), and Robert Seamans (Nixon). We decided to go ahead anyway. On November 17, I spent the day on the telephone trying to get the five former secretaries to agree on the wording of the letter. It was hard going because each of my friends had strong ideas of his own. In any event, I mailed the letter to the newspaper that evening. The next day, the House of Representatives approved the defense appropriation (335–61) for fiscal year 1982, so we had some momentum. This meant that both the production of the Rockwell B-1B bomber and the development of the Northrop B-2 would be funded if the Senate followed suit.We had expected this result; we knew our problem was in the Senate. The Washington Post called to apologize for not being able to print the letter because of a huge backlog of letters to the editor. I pointed out that having five former air force secretaries agree on anything might even be a news item. The woman laughed and repeated her statement that her mailbox was overloaded. I then sent copies to the New York Times and to the Los Angeles Times. In addition, I called John Stetson in Chicago and told him what had transpired with the Post. John had been the CEO of the Houston Post Corporation (1963–70), so he knew something about the newspaper business. He told me: “You are wasting your time with the New York Times and the Los Angeles paper. They will not print anything that supports President Reagan in passing an important program.” “Will any large circulation paper print it?” I asked with some desperation.

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“I will get the letter printed in next Sunday’s Chicago Tribune. They supported President Reagan, so they will do it. Besides, I have good connections at the paper.” Sure enough, the letter we had carefully drafted appeared in the November 22 edition of the Tribune. As planned, I had copies distributed to every member of the Senate. On December 4, the Senate defeated an amendment (66–28) to delete the B-1B program from the defense appropriation bill. We had finally secured approval for the strategic modernization program initiated in 1977. It was conceivable that our letter had a little bit to do with this positive outcome. Regardless, I was satisfied that this four-year effort to strengthen an important element of our military capability had been successfully concluded. I believe it was one of the important moves that strengthened the US position in the Cold War.

Program and Personnel Changes at the Johnson Space Center and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory NASA operates nine field centers. It is important to understand what they do and how they achieve their objectives, so I am providing a brief explanation here. As discussed in chapter 6, I had the great good fortune to work at the NASA–Ames Research Center for eight years (1969–77). Writing this in the second decade of the twenty-first century, I find it hard to convey the atmosphere at NASA during the 1970s. The space race with the Soviets was in full swing, and each center also competed for programs with other NASA centers. Anyone who has worked in NASA knows that being a center director is the best job in the agency. It is a position of great influence because directors can hire bright new young people or experienced, more mature ones. Thus, it is possible to control the quality of the institution, which is the most important measure.Yet the center director must rely on the people at NASA Headquarters for funding and program approval. During my tenure at Ames, I could not persuade NASA Headquarters to increase our civil service personnel ceiling or to increase our funding allocation. But I brought people to the center who would make changes and invent new ways of doing business. There are two unique NASA centers: the NASA–Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. When I first visited the JSC, it was still called the NASA–Manned Spacecraft Center, which exactly described its function. The achievements of the JSC were widely known to the public, and the climax came with the Apollo 11 mission. To illustrate the prominence of the JSC, whenever I tell people that I spent almost twelve years working for NASA, they commonly respond: “How did you like living in Houston?” I have always felt that these incidents are the real measure of the JSC’s influence. The other unique “NASA center” is the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. I put quotes around “NASA center” because, unlike the other NASA centers, the

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JPL is managed by the California Institute of  Technology for NASA. This means that the people working at the JPL are Cal Tech employees, but the funding comes from NASA. Thus, the laboratory does not have to obey the sometimes onerous rules of the civil service system and does not have to follow federal procurement regulations. The JPL sets its own salaries and personnel rules; as a result, the per capita operational cost of the JPL is higher than that of the other NASA centers. The JPL has about four thousand employees, about average for a NASA center. When the JPL was added to NASA in 1958, its charter was changed from working on rockets to developing spacecraft for unmanned exploration of the moon and the solar system. And in fact, the JPL is the leading NASA institution in the field of planetary exploration. Why does NASA sustain a place like the JPL? It is essentially the function of the JPL to set scientific and engineering standards for the rest of NASA—although the average civil service employee at NASA would not agree with this proposition. Both the JSC and the JPL had outstanding performance records, the former in sending people to the moon, and the latter in sending unmanned spacecraft to explore other planets and satellites in the solar system. Ironically, both were in some trouble in the late 1970s because of their great success. In the long-range planning document that Milton Silveira and I put together in August 1981 (discussed earlier in this chapter), we proposed that the space shuttle be run by a new operational organization, not by the JSC, and in the case of the JPL, we suggested reducing the planetary exploration program in favor of astrophysics performed by Earth-orbiting satellites. The Space Shuttle and the Johnson Space Center On September 10 and 11, 1981, I spent two days at the Johnson Space Center to give several speeches and hold an in-depth discussion with the center’s leadership. At a meeting with Chris Kraft and his senior staff, I explained what I thought needed to be done to make the space shuttle a working, competitive system: Eventually a separate organization would need to run the program. The key question was a technical one. Was the vehicle designed so that it could be made operational? Watching the first launch of Columbia in April showed me that the shuttle was functional but not yet really operational. I asked whether the shuttle’s complex countdown was necessary or whether it could be shortened. There was a good discussion on these topics. The following day, we had an all-hands meeting to discuss the future of the space shuttle program. I told the crowd that the essential need was to make an operational vehicle out of the space shuttle. My guess was that it would take ten or fifteen flights to begin understanding the vehicle in such a way that we could call it truly “operational.” I then went on to say that the real future of the JSC lay with the space station. In Jim Beggs’s words, the space station would be built “by the

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yard.” The station would evolve over time, whereas the shuttle would have to be a reliable launch vehicle, not something evolutionary. It was a very good two days, but I could see that there would be some problems ahead. Sometime in the fall, Milt Silveira came to me with an idea. He asked, “Have you ever heard of Solar Max?” “Solar what?” “The Solar Maximum Mission satellite,” he replied. “We fly a series of satellites to monitor the solar cycle, and the one I am talking about has failed.” Milton explained that the Solar Maximum satellite had been launched in February 1980 and that the power system had failed that September. A group of people at the JSC were suggesting that we try to retrieve the satellite and repair it in the shuttle’s payload bay. My feeling was that it would be a good idea to make the attempt; it would be a triumph if we could pull it off. Most importantly, it would be an early demonstration of the shuttle’s capabilities. I asked some people at NASA Headquarters about the idea of rescuing the Solar Max. The response was mixed, but it was perhaps significant that Phil Culbertson was in favor of it. (As mentioned above, I discussed this possibility with Fred Khedouri of the OMB as well.) During the second flight of Columbia, I talked about this proposed mission with Chris Kraft. He told me that he knew about the idea, but was opposed to the astronauts doing an EVA (extravehicular activity; i.e., space walk) early in the shuttle flights. This concern was legitimate, and I took his comments under advisement. When I got back to Washington, I discussed the proposed mission with Jim Beggs. Jim told me that Chris Kraft wanted to know whether we were serious about it. When Jim said yes, Chris made a strong statement against performing an EVA so early in the shuttle program. Jim told me that we would need demonstrations of as many of the shuttle’s capabilities as possible in order to maintain the program once we got into next year’s budget. If we could pull off this mission sometime in 1984, it would be great for us. On December 24, Jim Beggs and I discussed the matter again. I thought that with the shuttle, we should use EVAs under the right circumstances. A few days later, Jim told me that Chris was adamantly against using an EVA to retrieve the Solar Max. We agreed that it was time to find a successor to Chris. Jim said, “Chris has been in the job for almost ten years; maybe he is tired but will not admit it.” “Perhaps, but maybe he is also trying to demonstrate who is in charge,” I replied. Jim’s response was “OK, start looking for someone.” On January 5, 1982, I had breakfast with Jim Elms and George Low to discuss the situation at the JSC. Both of them had served as deputy directors of the center, so they knew something about the place. I put four candidates on the table: Aaron Cohen, Max Faget, Gerald Griffin, and Glynn Lunney. Several other people were suggested, and Jim Elms made a strong case for Jim Abrahamson. My response was that we could not spare him right now. Finally, George Low made a strong case for Gerry Griffin, and upon reflection, I agreed that he might be the best candidate.

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I then mentioned the space shuttle’s management and how we should handle it. I made two points: We were treating the shuttle’s first four flights as sufficient for declaring the shuttle operational, but that was not nearly enough. We should run a review after the fourth flight and then decide what “operational” really meant. Second, we should seriously consider establishing a new organization to do nothing but operate the shuttle. My thought was that if we kept that job within NASA, we should move it to the Kennedy Space Center. Kennedy already had an operational mission for the launch and the payload integration. We should designate Kennedy as an “operational” center, and its efforts should be concentrated in that area. On the other hand, the JSC was, and should remain, a development center. Ultimately, the JSC would develop and then run the space station. Since the space station would essentially be a developmental laboratory, the JSC’s involvement made sense. My friends thought that we might want to set up a committee to study the matter. They also recommended that I approach Gerry Griffin about taking the job of JSC director. I talked to Jim Beggs, and he told me to approach Gerry to see what he would say. When I called Gerry, he was surprised, and then said that he did not think he was really qualified for the job. I asked him to think about it and said I would be in touch again. I called Gerry on January 22, 1982, and told him why he should take the job. The first reason was continuity, because everyone knew that Gerry was a protégé of Chris Kraft. Second, I reminded him that in an earlier conversation about the future of the JSC, we had agreed on most of the open issues, especially the operation of the shuttle. Gerry agreed to accept the job if we offered it to him. I told Jim that Gerry was on board. A month later Jim Beggs had a talk with Chris Kraft, and on March 10 it was announced that Gerry Griffin would replace Chris Kraft as director of the Johnson Space Center. I called Gerry to congratulate him, and the first thing he told me was that he would put a group together to plan the “Solar Max Retrieval and Repair Mission.” I told him that he did not need to do that right away. “You are wrong. This is a difficult mission, and it will be necessary to do the most meticulous work. No, we have to do it now. If we do not, we may lose the shuttle eventually because we cannot develop the full potential of the vehicle.” Then he added, “I was one of the people here at JSC advocating that we do the Solar Max mission to demonstrate what the space shuttle can do.” I congratulated myself for winning one. “OK, I guess that I owe you one more congratulation!” We both laughed. While all this was going on, I did lose one. When I was at the JSC for the STS-2 mission, I had the opportunity to spend an hour with Glynn Lunney. I wanted to explain the ideas that we were developing about shuttle operations. Glynn was another protégé of Chris Kraft and something of a rival to Gerry Griffin. I explained our thinking about the future of the space shuttle and the JSC. Glynn listened intently and asked a number of good questions. At what I thought was the

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right moment, I asked whether he would be interested in becoming director of the Kennedy Space Center. I explained that we were interested in developing an operational organization for the shuttle and that Kennedy would be at the heart of this effort. We speculated that the “operational” organization might not even be part of NASA because NASA was, and should remain, a first-class engineering developmental organization. Grafting an operational organization onto NASA might not work.We spent the better part of two hours discussing the pros and cons of the move. On March 9, Glynn told me that he could not take the job. He had come to the JSC when nothing was there, and he was too dedicated to the institution to leave. In addition, he told me that his wife was entering local politics and that he would support her. There was nothing I could say to counter these arguments. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Crisis My involvement with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory started in 1976. On July 20 of that year, the Viking 1 spacecraft landed on the surface of Mars. I was in the mission control center at the JPL because Viking carried a NASA–Ames payload that would look for evidence of biological activity on the surface of the planet. Bruce Murray of Cal Tech, who had just been selected as the laboratory’s second director, was in the mission control center, as was Harold P. (Chuck) Klein, NASA’s principal investigator for the Ames project. About a year earlier, Robbie Vogt of Cal Tech’s Physics Department had called to tell me that the director of the JPL, William Pickering, would shortly announce his resignation. Robbie told me that he was a member of the search committee charged with finding a successor. Then he dropped his bombshell: “Would you be interested in the job?” I was stunned. I had been at Ames for six years and had acquired a good reputation. Maybe it was time to think about doing something else. So I said, “Robbie, I will think seriously about your proposition and call you in a couple of days and let you know.” I spent the next two days thinking about the matter. Ames was an interesting place, and I really liked being its director. The JPL, however, was a much more prominent institution. In addition, I thought that a connection with Cal Tech might be interesting. So I told Robbie that I was interested. A couple of weeks later, I was invited to Pasadena to meet with the search committee. Robert Leighton was the chairman, and rest of the committee consisted of five or six faculty members, a member of the administration, two or three JPL employees, and a member of the Cal Tech board. The meeting lasted about two hours. Afterward, Leighton and Vogt invited me to have dinner with them at the Cal Tech Athenaeum, their faculty club.We had a long and wide-ranging conversation about the JPL. They told me that it had acquired a first-class reputation starting with Explorer 1 and the Surveyor spacecraft on the moon, and continuing with the Mariner probes, which had gone out into the solar system. The two Voyager spacecraft and

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Galileo would be coming in the future.They did not mention the Viking spacecraft, because the management of Viking was handled by NASA–Langley. Listening to all this, I was somewhat overwhelmed. Did they expect the next director to continue this winning streak? I told them that I would expect some pause in the number of planetary-exploration spacecraft. I told them that the people at the JPL ought to anticipate some cuts and to look at taking on projects from other agencies. Both Leighton and Vogt knew that I had been doing just that at Ames. I then asked them about relations with the faculty. Bill Pickering, a longtime Cal Tech faculty member, was the only director that the JPL had ever had. Should the second director come from the outside? Would a faculty appointment come with the job? My friends suggested that I meet with the president of Cal Tech to get answers to some of these questions. A week later, I made another trip to Pasadena, this time to meet with Harold Brown, the president of Cal Tech. I knew Harold well, having worked at Livermore with him for two years before he went to Washington in 1961. He had asked me to work on the Argus program in 1957, which began my work on defense against ballistic missiles. We spent about half an hour together, and he quickly answered my questions. A faculty appointment for the director was not in the budget, but it could be done if the faculty in the department of choice wanted to hire me. On the programmatic issue, Harold told me that he knew that NASA support would decline; that was the principal reason why he wanted me to run the JPL. Finally, I asked what the Cal Tech faculty would think of having an outsider run the laboratory. Harold said there were a dozen faculty members vitally concerned with the JPL, and I would have to come to terms with them. On the flight home, I thought about the proposition. When I arrived at the office, I wrote a letter to Robbie Vogt, telling him that I could not come to the JPL because of my responsibilities at Ames. In addition, I recommended Bruce Murray for the job. I thought it should go to a faculty member, and Bruce Murray had the technical and scientific background for the position. Finally, I offered to help the lab formulate a good and affordable program. I could do so because with the end of the Pioneer program, Ames was not competing with the JPL. A few days later Robbie told me that the committee had recommended that Bruce Murray be named director. When the announcement was made, I congratulated Bruce on the appointment and welcomed him to the club of NASA center directors. When I visited the JPL in June 1981, Bruce had been in the position for a little more than five years. In that time, he had presided over the development and launches of the two Voyager spacecraft. The second Voyager would be the real triumph—the first spacecraft to fly past Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. On June 2, Bruce and I had a wide and rather rambling talk over breakfast about the future of the JPL. He had a large number of planetary missions in mind. He called them “purple pigeons,” and they featured sample-return missions to Mars (that is, missions in which a spacecraft would fly to Mars, collect samples of the Martian

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surface, and return to Earth), an orbiter around Jupiter, landing missions on one of the Galilean moons, and a mission to Saturn to examine the rings in detail. It was an imaginative, comprehensive, and expensive program. He thought he could persuade Jim Beggs and the NASA Headquarters people to fund the program. At the end of our conversation, he reminded me of the fine day in 1976 when Viking 1 landed on Mars. I agreed with him and left it there. On June 10, I met with Jack James, the deputy director of the JPL. I told him that there was no way that we could afford the lab’s proposed planetary exploration program. I added that I would do everything I could to sustain the JPL and its people because they were valuable resources. The fall of 1981 was an extremely busy time because we had to develop the first NASA budget for the new administration. Thus, I could not spend any time studying the JPL situation in detail. On January 11, 1982, we started a two-day review of its program and the state of the institution. I made the same comments at every meeting: NASA could not afford the JPL’s proposed planetary exploration program. We could execute some but not all of the projects. The JPL would have to take on other programs, probably from the Pentagon. People did not like to hear this, but they understood the problem. On April 2, I had a long meeting with Jim Beggs about personnel problems. We agreed that Bruce Murray would have to go and that we would try to get Lew Allen to take his place as JPL director. I mentioned that I had told both Bruce and Lew about serious problems at the JPL—specifically, that we would have to raise money from other sources to maintain the lab. Two months later, Jim flew to California to tour NASA centers and visit several defense contractors. We had decided earlier that Jim would visit the JPL to talk with Bruce Murray. I told Jim how Bruce Murray had been appointed director at my suggestion, and that Bruce and I had a long-term friendship. In 1980, I had helped Bruce, Carl Sagan, and Louis Friedman found the Planetary Society, which would become an important advocacy organization. Jim understood my position, so he was the one to visit Bruce. Bruce Murray resigned as director on June 30. He had done an excellent job. He returned to Cal Tech to continue a brilliant academic career.

13 Spacelab, Columbia, and Fundamental Changes in Cold War Policy

In December 1981, I visited Germany to accept the first Spacelab module from ERNO, the German manufacturer that built it. The Spacelab program had been initiated in 1973 as part of the effort to provide a facility that could be placed in the payload bay of the space shuttle’s orbiter and give astronauts the means to perform experiments in Earth orbit. Since the module would have a “simple interface” with the shuttle’s payload bay, it was felt that Spacelab would be a good candidate for a collaborative program with the Europeans. After several false starts, the European Space Agency (ESA) was founded in 1975. It was based on a carefully crafted compromise between the two major Continental powers, France and Germany. By 1980, both the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) and France had a more or less tacit agreement that France’s National Center for Space Studies (CNES; Centre national d’études spatiales) would develop a European stable of launch vehicles and that the Germans would work with the Americans on human spaceflight. The whole enterprise would be coordinated by the ESA. This politically comfortable arrangement was consistent with events in Europe following the end of World War II. Soon after the end of the war, both the United States and the Soviet Union began developing space exploration programs based on the military rockets that carried nuclear weapons. In Europe, which was devastated at the end of the war, the focus was on economic recovery. But in 1957, the Soviet launch of Sputnik 1 energized Europeans to think about developing a space exploration program. Two prominent scientists, Pierre Auger of France and Eduardo Amaldi of Italy, provided

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the first push by calling a meeting in 1958 of a number of scientists and engineers from eight European nations to discuss the implementation of a space program. The creation of the ESA reflected political developments in Europe in the first two decades after 1945. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was founded in 1949 following the defeat of the Soviets’ blockade of Berlin; the principal European members of NATO were the United Kingdom, France, and the Federal Republic of Germany. NATO remains a military alliance of like-minded European nations, along with Canada and the United States.The objective of NATO was first to contain the Soviet Union and its ideology. The ESA was established somewhat along the same lines. The competition with the Soviets was an important motivation. Europe had had a tradition in high technology since the eighteenth century; thus its competition with the Soviet Union in space exploration was real. Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom participated in the process that created the ESA. All these nations, except Sweden and Switzerland, were members of NATO as well. A central issue in the negotiations was what to do about the national space programs that several nations operated. France, in particular, had a large national space program, which was developing a space launch vehicle, the Ariane. The French were in a somewhat similar position with regard to NATO. In 1966, France withdrew its military forces from the NATO alliance because it wanted to play an independent role, especially with respect to nuclear weapons, but nonetheless insisted on remaining a member of the alliance. In the case of the ESA, the French were adamant about maintaining their national space agency. The Germans also had a national space agency, the DVLR (Deutscher Verein für Luft und Raumfahrt; Society for Aeronautics and Astronautics), which had a strong record in the development of spacecraft. Spain and the United Kingdom had smaller national programs. The ESA has a launch vehicle, the Ariane 5, and a launch site near the equator in French Guiana at Kourou, courtesy of France; it also has Spacelab, courtesy of Germany. As a final point, this division of work had a clear Cold War rationale:West Germany had a long border with the German Democratic Republic (East Germany), a member of the Warsaw Pact. As a frontline nation, it had a good reason to work with the strongest member of NATO, the United States. On the other hand, France was not a frontline nation during the Cold War, so it could afford a degree of independence in NATO and the ESA. The funding for the ESA is contributed by member nations, and today it is about $6 billion per year. In 1923, Hermann Oberth headed a German group that first mentioned the idea of putting a laboratory in Earth orbit. When the space shuttle was approved in 1972, the first serious engineering studies of a lab that could be put aboard the shuttle began at the NASA centers. The facility would be a “shirtsleeves” environment. In 1973, NASA issued a request for proposals for such a shuttle-based lab. The Nixon administration, a strong supporter of both NATO and the efforts to

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unify Europe, suggested that a European contractor build what would be called Spacelab. On September 24, 1973, a memorandum of understanding was signed by NASA and the ESA, giving the latter the responsibility to select a Spacelab contractor, which would probably be a German firm. The NASA–George C. Marshall Space Flight Center was selected as the lead NASA center for the program. In June 1974, ERNO–VFW Fokker, a German company with a major factory located in Bremen, was given the contract. The Spacelab hardware consisted of two pressurized modules. They were 13.39 feet in outside diameter, which the 15-foot diameter of the bay would accommodate. The modules were 8.8 feet long, and they could be put together to make a single habitable module 17.6 feet long. The modules were connected to the lower deck of the crew compartment by a tunnel through which crew members could crawl to get to the modules. The air pressure inside the modules was the same as the pressure at sea level, and the composition of the atmosphere was roughly the same as Earth’s at sea level. The modules were outfitted with electrical power and equipment racks, as well as two 4.2-foot-diameter openings on top of the cylinder Figure 13.1. Astronauts working in the Spacelab module in the shuttle while in orbit.

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that could be used for mounting instruments or viewing windows. Up to four crew members could work in the double module. In addition to the habitable modules, five pallets could be used to carry instruments, which could be controlled remotely by the astronauts on the flight deck or from the ground. The pallets could be mounted in a number of configurations: all five in the payload bay, or up to three in one of the habitable modules. The pallets were built by British Aerospace. Finally, the Spacelab program had a separate fixture called the Instrument Pointing System (IPS), which had a very accurately stabilized platform for experiments that required accurate pointing. The IPS was built under contract for ESA by the Dornier Company in Friedrichshafen, southern Germany. ESA’s total cost of the Spacelab program hardware was about $1 billion. Back to my trip to Bremen. I left on December 2 in a bad mood. December was when all the important decisions for the next fiscal year were made. Plus, I did not really like to travel for essentially ceremonial purposes. Looking at my diary entries, now more than thirty years later, I realize that I was wrong. My presence in Washington for three days was not important compared with what I learned on this trip that would be useful for future decision-making by NASA. At the time, my only consolation was that Bun was with me, along with Ken Pedersen, NASA’s international relations director. We flew overnight from Washington to Frankfurt and arrived in Bremen around ten in the morning on December 3. We went to bed for a few hours to recover from jet lag. In the evening we went to a banquet and party at the Rathaus, a fine old building on a large public square in the center of town. The Rathaus was the headquarters of the many governing bodies, state, city, and local. There were more than a hundred people at the banquet. I was seated next to a Senator Fröhlich, who was clearly a major political figure in Bremen. Our conversation mostly concerned the anti-American feelings rampant in Europe. The senator told me that it was not so much anti-American as antiwar and anti–nuclear weapons. I countered by saying that the demonstrators were playing into the hands of the Soviets. The senator told me that the feelings expressed by the demonstrators were “veneer thin.” I did not know whether to believe him. After a break, I made a short speech in the banquet hall. It was well received, and at the end I presented the German and Bremen flags that had been flown on the second flight of Columbia to the group for display in the Bremen Rathaus. The next day, I had breakfast with Wolfgang Finke, the director of the Ministry of Science and Technology. His assistant, Herman Strub, was with him, and I was accompanied by Ken Pederson and Dick Barnes, the NASA representative in Paris. We had a good discussion about the space shuttle and Spacelab. I told him that our commitment to the program was solid and that we looked forward very much to working with the German space agency. Finke then broadened the discussion to include European politics. He told us that he foresaw some very lean years because

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Germany already had a socialist government and France was on the verge of electing a socialist, François Mitterand, as president. He nonetheless thought we could live through the upcoming period and that the future would be good for people interested in spaceflight. The Germans would turn over the first Spacelab module to NASA at a ceremony at the ERNO facility at eleven thirty. Before leaving the hotel, I called Washington to learn what was happening there. Phil Culbertson told me that the OMB had rejected all our budget appeals for the 1983 fiscal year. This meant that we would have to go to the White House Budget Review Committee (Meese, Baker, and Stockman) to make a last-resort appeal. The meeting was scheduled for the next Wednesday, and I told Phil that I hoped that they would let me attend the meeting, since I would be back from Germany. At the ceremony, Wolfgang Finke, Eric Quistgaard (the director general of the ESA), and I made speeches. Quistgaard’s speech was short but very forward looking. He said that the ESA was an embodiment of the future because of the importance of eventually creating a European union. His remarks were eloquent and delivered with elegance and enthusiasm. He had been appointed director general in 1980, the second person to hold the position. He was a Danish businessman and entrepreneur who had served most recently as the managing director of the Danish shipbuilding company Odense Steel Shipyard. Before that, he was the general manager of Volvo in Sweden. And having spent three years in the United States as an executive with Chrysler, he was well acquainted with the American manufacturing industry and the way it worked with the government. He was an excellent choice to head the ESA, and NASA worked hard to develop a strong collaborative relationship with it. Finke’s remarks stressed the relationship between Germany and the United States. He emphasized Germany’s commitment to the ESA and to NATO, noting that Germany was on the front line of the Cold War. I began my speech by referring to my European heritage and reiterated that Europe was the cradle of modern technology. Finally, I mentioned the role that Germany had played in the development of space technology during the 1920s and 1930s with Hermann Oberth, Klaus Ridell,Wernher von Braun, and others. I mentioned that all these people did things that had terrible results, but then, I said, so did our side. I mentioned our nuclear weapons program and my part in it. The audience was silent when I said these words, but I thought something like this was essential. I finished by asking all present to commit themselves to not repeat the terrible mistakes of the past. Strangely, I received a standing ovation when I sat down.

The Third, Fourth, and Fifth Flights of Columbia On March 9, 1982, we had the Flight Readiness Review for the third flight of Columbia (STS-3), at the NASA–Kennedy Space Center. There were some prob-

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lems, the worst one involving the seals in the liquid oxygen pump on the shuttle’s main engines. I was really worried about the possibility of a main engine failure. The very thorough review lasted nearly all day. Presiding over the Flight Readiness Reviews was among the most important functions that I performed. There was also some discussion about the landing site because of weather conditions, both at Cape Canaveral and at the Rogers Dry Lake at Edwards AFB, which at times contained too much water for aircraft to land. On Sunday, March 21, I flew to Houston to attend the third flight of Columbia. As before, I stayed in a small room in the infirmary that was attached to the MOCR. I got up at three in the morning to follow the countdown for the launch, scheduled for eleven. Liftoff occurred on schedule, and the launch was very smooth. Right after the separation of the external fuel tank from the orbiter at 11:10, auxiliary power unit #3 failed. Fortunately, there were three other APUs, so the flight was not affected. But something needed to be done to fix this recurring problem. Since the third flight would be in orbit for seven days, I had time to go back to Washington and then return for the landing. On March 24 during a discussion with Jim Beggs, I told him that the fourth flight Columbia was scheduled to land at Edwards AFB on July 4, 1982. I asked Jim, “Are you thinking what I am thinking?” “Yes,” he replied, “Let’s get the president to come to Edwards to watch the landing!” He continued: “The president knows that the landing will attract upward of half a million people from Los Angeles to see the great white bird. The president is a great politician who could not resist speaking to a crowd of that size! I believe that if we invite the president, he will accept our invitation. After all, his estate near Santa Barbara is only a half-hour helicopter ride from Edwards.” Jim Fanseen was delegated to deliver the invitation to the White House, and as we expected, it was accepted. The next day, I learned that Columbia was experiencing some problems with the S-band telemetry gear, which is essential for communication with the ground. I decided to fly to Houston a day early. At the Johnson Space Center, I visited some of the scientists in the Payload Operations Control Center. This was the first time that the shuttle carried scientific payloads, making it a good test for future work in that area. On Monday, March 29, I arrived in the MOCR at about six in the morning. There were weather problems on the East Coast (thunderstorms) and at Edwards AFB (rainfall accumulation). A decision was made to land at the Northrop Strip, an emergency landing site at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. This possibility had been discussed at the Flight Readiness Review two weeks earlier. The JSC people floated the idea of using the newly opened runway at the Kennedy Space Center. I took a stand here and gave a lecture to the assembled flight controllers about safety of flight.You do not land a billion-dollar shuttle on a new strip in bad weather! Columbia finally landed successfully at 10:05 in the morning on March 30, 1982, at the Northrop Strip.

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A few days later, I attended a large meeting at CIA Headquarters about future space missions. These proposed missions were for civilian and military purposes, so pretty much everyone in the business was present. Jay Keyworth, the president’s science adviser, delivered the after-dinner speech. He told the audience that although the president was a strong supporter of the space program, he would not support the space station or the construction of a fifth orbiter. He added that the president would not make any space-related announcements at Edwards AFB on July 4. I felt that he was talking directly to me! I had been in Washington long enough to know that such statements were sometimes a warning to the advocates of a program that the president was opposed to it. Knowing both the president’s attitude and Jay Keyworth’s opposition, I did not take it very seriously. On June 14, I presided over the Flight Readiness Review for STS-4 at the Kennedy Space Center. There was the usual extensive discussion. I still had concerns about potential problems with the main engines. Earlier, on May 21, one of the shuttle engines (number 2013) failed on the test stand at the Santa Susana Rocketdyne site. We had not yet finished the investigation into what caused that failure. On June 17 (my fifty-third birthday), there was a meeting at the White House to plan for the president’s visit to Edwards. Craig Fuller, the secretary of the cabinet, presided; Richard Darman, an assistant to the president, and Lt. Col. Gilbert D. Rye, a National Security Council staff member, were present. The most important item we discussed was the president’s speech. President Reagan’s custom was to ask whatever agency had requested his presence to draft a speech for him. He would look over the speech, make changes, and then distribute it to people whom he thought should see it. The OMB was the most important of these reviewers because its job was to eliminate any items that would adversely affect the president’s budget. I had drafted a speech before the meeting. The most important paragraph of the speech was the following: “Columbia’s fourth flight is just the beginning. The Space Shuttle gives us the means for establishing the permanent presence of mankind in space.This is the next step, and there is no question that Americans will be in the lead. I have, today, directed the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to initiate the first step toward the creation of a permanently manned space station.This space station will fulfill the promise of the space shuttle and will clearly establish this country’s preeminence in space well into the twenty-first century.” I told my colleagues that the people at the OMB would kill the passage about directing “NASA to develop a Space Station,” but they might miss the “permanent presence of mankind in space.” Both Fuller and Darman told me that they hoped I was right, but that the ruse was a little bit obvious. In any event, they agreed to pass the draft on to the president. For the next two days I was heavily involved in the budget battle over Sen. Jack Schmitt’s proposal for the Defense Department to give NASA $400 million for the fifth orbiter. I never thought that this was a good idea, but a compromise might be

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possible, and I should try to arrange one. My first inquiry failed, and I left it there. On June 25, I flew to the Kennedy Space Center to preside over the L-2 day (launch minus two days) review. I generally did not attend these meetings, but I wanted to prevent any long launch delays that would interfere with the president attending the landing. In the evening, I flew to Houston with Milt Silveira to be present in the MOCR for Columbia’s launch. I spent some time with our public affairs people at the JSC because we had the first air force payload on this flight and there had been some hostile questions from reporters. I told the public relations folks to be straight and simply tell the truth. If any reporters accused NASA management of “destroying the civilian image” of the agency, they should answer by referring to the 1958 National Aeronautics and Space Act, which requires NASA to collaborate with the military. I went to the MOCR at two in the morning to follow the countdown for the launch. The launch procedure was very smoothly conducted, and Columbia lifted off as planned at nine thirty on June 27. Hank Hartsfield was the mission commander, and Ken Mattingly was the pilot. Several of my air force friends were present in the MOCR. They regarded this mission as a “dry run” for how we would handle classified payloads in the future. It was a fine reunion. A couple of days later, I had some debates with Senators Huddleston and Schmitt about the military’s payments for space shuttle payloads. Schmitt wanted the military to pay more. It was a nasty problem; Schmitt was right, but he annoyed the military and made things harder for NASA. The problem was different from having the Pentagon buy a space shuttle because some compromise would eventually have to be worked out. In the afternoon, Jim Beggs called me from the air force airplane carrying a congressional delegation to the ceremonies at the landing of Columbia. He told me that he had seen a copy of the president’s speech: “The entire portion about the space station is missing. However, the ‘permanent presence in space’ is still in the speech, but someone crossed out the statement!” “Do you have a copy of the speech?” I asked. “Yes.” “How much time will you have with the president when you get to Edwards?” “I will be with him when we pin the third star on Jim’s shoulders.” Beggs was referring to a surprise that we had arranged for Jim Abrahamson’s promotion from major general to lieutenant general by having the president pin his third star. “Maybe I can show him the copy of the speech I have and ask him whether he wanted that line crossed out,” Beggs responded. “Great idea!” And I really meant it. I added, “Good luck—this is really important.” On July 3, Bun and I flew to Houston on NASA One. We were alone on the airplane, the first time that had happened. In any event, both of us really enjoyed the trip without feeling too guilty about it.

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I got up at five thirty the next morning and had breakfast with Bun, and then we drove over to the Mission Control Building. Bun would sit in the viewing room immediately behind the MOCR. I would be in my usual place at the Orbiter Project 5 Office console. The first important decision made by the mission controller was that Columbia would land on runway 22, the principal runway at Edwards, rather than on Rogers Dry Lake. I thought that this was a very low-risk decision, demonstrating that the space shuttle could land on a normal runway. Perhaps more importantly, Columbia would stop at a point where the president and Mrs. Reagan could go out and welcome the crew back from orbit. All this went off without a hitch. Following the landing, there was a pause of about half an hour before the president would make his speech from a podium that was set up right next to the Enterprise, the engineless space shuttle that was used for approach and landing tests in 1979. During this period, the president would preside over Jim Abrahamson’s promotion and Jim Beggs would, hopefully, restore the important “permanent presence of mankind in space” to the president’s speech. Needless to say, I was sitting on pins and needles. After what seemed like an eternity, the television repeater in the MOCR flashed on and the flag-draped podium appeared. Shortly thereafter, the president and Mrs. Reagan stepped onto the platform, followed by Jim Beggs, Hank Hartsfield, and Ken Mattingly. There was a huge roar from the audience, which was estimated at 525,000 people. Early in his speech, the president said: “Beginning with the next flight, the Columbia and her sister ships will be fully operational and ready to provide routine access to space for scientific exploration, commercial ventures and for tasks related to the national security. Simultaneously, we must look aggressively to the future by demonstrating the potential of the space shuttle and establishing a more permanent presence in space.” I was relieved to hear that Jim Beggs had succeeded in persuading the president to put the phrase back into the speech. But without the word “mankind,” the phrase was pretty weak beer. Overall, we did as well as we could have. Our intention was to imply in forthcoming speeches and testimony that “permanent presence in space” referred to a space station. Looking back from a distance of more than thirty years, I cannot suppress a feeling of regret. The landing of Columbia on July 4, 1982, was a high point. Both Jim Beggs and I were fairly sure that we could persuade the president to adopt the space station as the next large project for NASA. But when I reread the paper that Milt Silveira and I wrote in August 1981, I have a sense of failure. Would we have lost Challenger in 1986 if we had turned over the operation of the space shuttle to a truly competent organization that would do nothing but run the shuttle’s operations? There is no way to answer this question. What I do know is that I failed in my effort to reorient the Johnson Space Center to concentrate on the development of the space station and to move shuttle operations elsewhere.

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The fifth flight of Columbia would be the first “operational” flight. The word meant nothing to me in this context, but I did not argue the point. I had some serious concerns about the safety of flight, and on October 23, 1981, I wrote the following in my diary: • Even though STS-5 is the first “operational” flight, the space shuttle will not be truly operational for two or three years. However, the public thinks that it is operational, and the newspapers will make more trouble for us if anything goes wrong because of this. • This is the first flight in which we are not using ejection seats, and we are flying a crew of four. • Chris Kraft is no longer in Houston, and we will be blamed for “firing” him and other people who “knew what they were doing” and substituting people who are not experienced. • There is some tired hardware on the bird. The cracks in the impellor on SME engine 20005 are an example. How many others are there?

The Flight Readiness Review for STS-5 was on October 25. There were some open items that needed fixing, and I wrote a note to General Abrahamson to document them. STS-5 was going to be our most critical mission. We had a classified Defense Department payload on board, and two mission specialists would do an EVA (space walk). I prayed to God that everything would work. I returned to Washington and on the 27th and met Edward Teller at the National Press Club. He was scheduled to speak on the “nuclear freeze movement,” which had received much attention in the spring of 1982. This movement grew out of a number of anti–nuclear weapons organizations established after the detonations of the first nuclear weapons. What brought the freeze movement to real prominence that spring was Ronald Reagan’s policy of strengthening the US armed forces.The leaders of the movement wanted to stop the research, development, production, and deployment of nuclear weapons. The idea was simple and seemingly easy to implement. The primary promoter of the idea was Randall Forsberg, who had earned a PhD at MIT in nuclear arms control and who headed the Institute for Defense and Disarmament Studies. Articulate and energetic, she had secured the support of a number of prominent political leaders, including Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-MA) and Rep. Patricia Schroeder (D-CO). The movement reached its climax on June 12, 1982, when some seven hundred thousand people collected in New York’s Central Park to support a nuclear freeze. On the same day, ninety thousand people protested at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, and another fifty thousand in San Francisco. Two months later, the House of Representatives narrowly defeated (204–202) a resolution supporting the nuclear freeze.

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Edward’s speech was an eloquent and effective rebuttal to the notion that a nuclear freeze was a good idea. His principal point was that it was naïve to believe that other nations could be persuaded to curtail or abolish their stockpiles of nuclear weapons if we did likewise. He mentioned the proliferation of nuclear weapons and the problems that an unbalanced situation would create. Teller always had in mind that there were many clever people in the world who could invent nuclear weapons and maybe even improve on what we had done. He said it was essential for us to maintain superiority in nuclear weapons, and that required strong public support. After the meeting was over, I had a short chat with him. I knew that he and Lowell Wood were working on a problem involving defense against ballistic missiles, but I did not know exactly what they were doing. Edward was not willing to talk about it. November 3 was Election Day. The Republicans kept the Senate by a 54–46 margin.The Republicans lost twenty-six seats in the House, but retained a majority. Two senators, Howard Cannon of Nevada (D) and Jack Schmitt of New Mexico (R), lost their elections. This was probably the worst electoral outcome for us. Both senators were strong supporters of NASA. On November 8, I met with Tom Reed to discuss the MX missile problem. We had worked on this during the Carter administration, and we were at last in a position to solve the problem. My strong recommendation was to put the MX missiles in the silos built for the Minuteman II missiles. Tom agreed, and I believed that we had the solution. I asked him whether he could sell this to the president. He thought that he could. While all of these problems were occurring, Columbia was conducting its mission in Earth orbit. Things were not going well. The plans for the EVA by Bill Lenoir were canceled because he was sick. The EVA by Joe Allen had to be canceled, too, because of a faulty space suit—a regulator valve failed to work. Since Joe and Bill were about the same size, Joe could use the suit intended for Bill, but as things turned out, that suit failed because the air circulation fan did not work correctly. I was in the MOCR on November 16 for the fifth landing of Columbia. The landing went smoothly, but I could not escape the feeling that the first operational flight of Columbia was a failure. The fact that neither of the planned EVAs could be performed was a real setback. It emphasized the uncertainty of what the word “operational” meant in the case of the space shuttle. Later in the day, I had a long meeting with Gerry Griffin about personnel matters. I raised the matter of developing an operational organization to run the shuttle. The Johnson Space Center was an engineering development organization, and I pointed out that if we persuaded the president to adopt the space station as the next major NASA initiative, then the JSC would be very busy. Gerry argued that the space shuttle and the space station could not be separated. From the very

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beginning, he told me, the two were tied together. From a technical viewpoint, I told Gerry that he was wrong, but because I had to get back to Washington, we would have to postpone a debate on the subject for another time. I was depressed on the flight home. It was clear that the JSC people would strongly oppose our plans for the shuttle.

John Lehman, Secretary of the Navy Shortly after I moved in at NASA Headquarters in March 1981, Leonard Roberts, the director of aeronautics at Ames, told me that some of the people working on the tilt-rotor aircraft program at Ames thought that it might be a good idea to get the Bell XV-15 tilt-rotor aircraft to the Paris Air Show the following June. Leonard wanted to know whether I could persuade the air force to fly the XV-15 in a Lockheed C-5 Galaxy to Le Bourget Airfield, where the show would take place. I told Leonard that I thought it was an excellent idea and that I would do what I could. I called Lew Allen, who was still chief of staff of the air force. He immediately saw the advantage of showing off the XV-15 at an international event. He promised to make it happen. The XV-15 could fit into the cargo bay of a C-5, so a tilt-rotor aircraft (NASA702) was flown to Le Bourget. The chief of the Test Flight Branch at Ames was Fred Drinkwater, and he took charge of the whole enterprise. As things turned out, the XV-15 was the star of the 1981 Paris Air Show. Fred and his people had worked out a routine for the airplane that involved some startling maneuvers. The XV-15 could hover, and it could move slowly forward, backward, and even sideways. It could fly at a high speed (250 miles per hour) fifty feet above the runway.The final maneuver was the pièce de résistance. After much cheering and applause, Fred positioned the aircraft at the center of the runway and had it hover about twenty feet above the ground. He then slowly lowered the nose of the aircraft while remaining in the hovering position, making it seem as if the XV-15 were bowing to the audience, acknowledging the applause. Needless to say, this elicited more cheering. John F. Lehman Jr., who had just been confirmed as the new secretary of the navy, attended the 1981 Paris Air Show. John was a naval aviator and a qualified weapons systems officer on the McDonnell Douglas F-4. He was also a private pilot. When he saw Drinkwater’s flight demonstration of the XV-15, he asked him whether he (Lehman) could fly it. Fred pointed out that the aircraft was experimental and that only a qualified test pilot could fly it. Lehman was disappointed, and Fred was concerned enough about his feelings to put a transatlantic call through to me. The telephone next to my bed rang at three in the morning. Though a bit groggy, I woke up quickly when I understood the situation. I told Fred to stick to his guns about not allowing Lehman to fly in Paris but to promise that we would arrange for him to fly the XV-15 when he was back in the United

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States. That flight was duly performed while one of the two XV-15s was at the Patuxent River Naval Air Station in Maryland. Drinkwater, who was in the right seat during Lehman’s flight, reported that everything went well. Fred told me that Lehman was very impressed with the flight and would likely be an enthusiastic supporter of the tilt-rotor concept. Although I had helped make John Lehman aware of the tilt-rotor aircraft, I had never met him in person. This was about to change because I had received an invitation to meet with him and his assistant secretary for research and development, Melvin Paisley. Lehman was one of the more unusual people I worked with during my years in Washington. He was one of the most knowledgeable and respected young people in the Pentagon during the Reagan administration. Named secretary of the navy when he was just thirty-eight years old, he had earned BA and MA degrees at Cambridge, and a PhD in history from the University of Pennsylvania. I have already mentioned his career as a naval aviator, and it was somewhat amusing to my admiral friends in the Pentagon that he maintained his flight status via temporary flying stints while secretary of the navy. Lehman was a man of genuine intellectual capabilities, having written several good books on matters related to national security. My meeting with Lehman and Paisely occurred on February 18, 1982. Lehman began by thanking me for introducing him to the XV-15 and tilt-rotor aircraft, adding that the airplane would have an important future, including military applications. Lehman was prescient: the Falkland Islands conflict was already in progress on South George Island, and the outcome of that conflict eventually drove the Defense Department to build a fleet of tilt-rotor aircraft. The principal purpose of the meeting was to discuss a proposal by a McDonnell Douglas/General Dynamics team for a new navy attack aircraft. This aircraft was to be stealthy (that is, with a low radar cross section) and able to operate from an aircraft carrier. The aircraft, designated the A-12 Avenger II, was meant to replace the Grumman A-6 Intruder, the navy’s heavy attack aircraft (and also a good reconnaissance aircraft). The smaller and older Douglas A-4 Skyhawk was the navy’s other carrier-based attack aircraft. Lehman had asked me to look at the A-12 and advise him on whether the navy should buy the A-12 Avenger II or upgrade the A-6. I took the assignment seriously and wrote a report, which I delivered to him a week later. I recommended that the navy upgrade the A-6 Intruder. With the Grumman F-14 Tomcat program in full swing, and what eventually became the McDonnell Douglas F/A-18 Hornet evolving from the Northrop YF-17, I did not think a third new aircraft was warranted. In addition, I thought that the A-12 was deeply flawed. My feeling was that stealth capability and the requirement to operate from an aircraft carrier were incompatible.The engine configuration of a stealthy aircraft would make it difficult for one to be designed to include the afterburners necessary for catapult takeoffs. On the other hand, I thought that the A-6 was sound

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and could continue the attack mission. (The Northrop Grumman EA-6B Prowler eventually took on its predecessor’s reconnaissance role.) The navy did not follow my advice to Lehman. It issued a request for proposals for the stealthy A-12, and the McDonnell Douglas / General Dynamics team won the job. The program was in trouble from the beginning because the navy’s requirements were simply not compatible with the technology available at the time. As the contractors worked on the design, they realized that what the navy wanted could not be built. The navy eventually canceled the A-12 contract for nonperformance. That move was a huge mistake. Instead of canceling the contract for the “convenience of the government,” the navy made it possible for the contractors to bring a lawsuit against the government for $4 billion. The case went all the way to the US Supreme Court; in the end, Boeing (which had acquired McDonnell Douglas) and General Dynamics each paid $200 million to the navy. The A-12 scandal is the worst recent example of incompetence in our military procurement system.

A Dinner Party about Defense Policy On March 4, 1982, I flew to Boston and stayed with Abe and Toni Chayes at their big house at 3 Hubbard Park in Cambridge. The purpose of the trip was to work with Professors Richard Goody and Mike McElroy to develop the “Global Habitability” program, which we wanted to sell to Ames.The idea was to inject some life and pizzazz into NASA’s Satellite Applications Program. The focus was on weather satellites. Both professors taught at Harvard; McElroy was an expert in fluid mechanics, and Goody in meteorology. We made progress in developing the satellite constellation to be deployed under the rubric Global Habitability. We also started to work on the speech that Goody would deliver at the UNISPACE 82 meeting that summer (as fully described in the next section). In the evening, Abe and Toni hosted a dinner party for me. The guests were a group of high-level Cambridge academics, most of whom had worked in government. Paul Doty, a Harvard chemistry professor, and his wife were present. Paul had worked under my father as a postdoctoral fellow at the Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute. His new wife, Helga, was also a chemist, and they made an interesting team. I had known Paul for more than thirty-five years, ever since I was a high school student “working” in the laboratory at Poly. Joseph Nye (political science) and his wife were there. Professor Nye had been on the National Security Council, would later serve as under secretary of state in the Clinton administration, and finally became dean of the Kennedy School of Government. I had known him during the Carter administration because of the debates we had over arms control and how to monitor and verify arms control agreements. We had especially vigorous debates over the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. The others were George Rathjens, an MIT electrical engineering professor, and his wife; Stanley Hoffman, a professor

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of political science and history from Harvard; and Mr. and Mrs. David Rockefeller Jr. I had met David Rockefeller during the time I had spent at Pocantico working with Nelson Rockefeller. The people all knew one another well so that I was sometimes unable to decode their conversational shorthand. We finally did get into a vigorous give-and-take. Nuclear arms control was the major topic, and first up was the nuclear freeze movement. All the people at the party were supporters of this idea, and I did what I could to shake their views. In a way, I felt a little bit like a missionary among heathens who were totally impervious to any argument—it was not a productive discussion. We found that the ABM Treaty was also a subject on which there was no give. The conversation became more general, and we had some interesting exchanges on the proliferation of nuclear weapons and on scenarios that might lead to their use. Finally, we had a good conversation about the technical issues related to missile defense. Abe Chayes and George Rathjens led in this discussion because both knew a great deal about the subject. The party broke up around midnight. I enjoyed myself—admittedly more in hindsight than at the time—and I wonder whether I would be welcomed today by a similar group of people at Harvard and MIT.

UNISPACE 82 The United Nations organizes periodic conferences on the subject of space exploration. The year 1982 was the twenty-fifth anniversary of the launch of Sputnik 1, the first human artifact in Earth orbit, and the UN management chose the anniversary for a UNISPACE conference, to be held in Vienna. As one of the “UN Cities” (the others are Geneva, Paris, and New York),Vienna has a large UN complex located on the opposite side of the Danube from the center of the city. The area is home to two large UN agencies, the United Nations Industrial Development Organization and the United Nations International Atomic Energy Agency, along with several smaller ones. I first heard about UNISPACE 82 at a staff meeting on March 26, 1982, at which Jim Beggs raised a number of miscellaneous issues. At first, I did not think much about the conference, because I had many other, higher-priority matters to deal with. Two weeks later, Jim Beggs asked several people, including Phil Culbertson, Jim Fanseen, Tom Newman, and me, to meet with him. Beggs told us that he had been asked to be the US representative to UNISPACE 82, with the temporary rank of ambassador. The State Department would guide our policy statements, and we would be responsible for developing exhibits that would inform conference attendees and the general Viennese public about the US space program. Our guide and mentor during the conference would be Ambassador Gerald B. Helman, a very distinguished diplomat who had been the US ambassador to the European Office of the United Nations (1979–81). He had served as the under secretary of state

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for political affairs (1976–78) during the transition from the Ford to the Carter administrations, and more recently, he had developed an interest in the diplomacy related to spaceflight. A few days later, Gerald Helman’s office asked me to see him on April 17. I said that I was not planning to attend the conference, but the lady on the line told me that Mr. Helman still wanted to see me. At our meeting, Helman got to the point very quickly. He knew about my Austrian background and wanted to know what I would be doing at the conference. I told him that I would not be going because I had more important responsibilities in Washington. In addition, when the administrator of NASA was out of town, it was my duty to be acting administrator. Helman urged me to think about attending and playing a substantial role. He told me that I could be very important, as someone with an Austrian background, in the public relations area. Because I spoke German, he thought that I could be very effective in press and TV interviews. He also told me that another former Austrian, Joan Clark, who was the wife of William P. Clark, the president’s national security advisor, was signed up to go to the conference. All this was interesting but not relevant. I told Mr. Helman that I understood his point, but nonetheless could not leave Washington while the administrator was out of town for a week. On May 3, I had an interview with Craig Covault, a senior reporter at Aviation Week. Craig, although an excellent journalist, was not well disposed toward my work at NASA. I tried to stay away from all journalists while I was in Washington, but sometimes I could not avoid them! This time, his target was not my “disdain for the scientific community” but the “militarization of NASA.” Craig is a smart guy, so he knows that NASA has a statutory responsibility to work with the military on projects related to aeronautics (for example, wind tunnels and flight simulators) and space (GPS). I was used to this kind of stuff, so I simply passed off the questions by reminding Craig of our mission. One question he asked brought me up short: “Did you know that the Soviets will accuse the US of the militarization of space as a central issue at the upcoming UNISPACE 82 conference?” I did not know this, so all I could do was mumble. I then told Craig that I was not scheduled to attend the conference, so the question was not really relevant to our discussion. It was not a surprise that the Soviets would pick an issue like this one and accuse us of having warlike plans. I thought it was another good reason for me to stay away from Vienna in August. The people at the State Department approved our exhibit. Jim Beggs said that Mr. Helman was pleased with the result, so we were ready to ship the stuff overseas. Two weeks later, on July 1, I participated in the comprehensive review of our position. I pointed out that the Soviets would claim that the space shuttle would be used to destroy Soviet satellites or to capture them in orbit. This accusation did not make any technical sense, but it would play with the public. I promised to write some position papers, including one on the Global Habitability program. I thought that it might be a good counter to the “militarization of

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space” issue. On July 7, Professors McElroy and Goody visited NASA Headquarters to brief Jim Beggs on their planned presentation. They did an excellent job. My hope was that Global Habitability would not only be a good theme for our position at UNISPACE 82, but would also become a central feature of NASA’s Earth Observation Program. On July 19, Jim Beggs and I again reviewed the Global Habitability paper to be delivered by Richard Goody. It was very well done. A few days later there was a dinner party at the apartment of Klaus Emmerich, an Austrian TV producer and the representative of the Austrian TV network (ORF) in Washington. There were several other Austrians, an Austrian embassy representative, and a couple of American journalists, most likely connected with ORF. There was an extensive discussion of UNISPACE 82, and all the people around the table urged me in the strongest possible terms to attend. I decided to go to Vienna as a private citizen and do some television and radio interviews, but I would stay away from any connection with the conference. I would not stay for the whole weeklong meeting and would return as soon as the TV interviews were over. The next day, I told Jim about my decision, and he had no problem with it. I would avoid the locations in the Hofburg, the Old imperial palace that is now used as a conference center, and the Exhibition Hall (Messepalast), where the booths and exhibits would be set up. I would just do radio and television shows.We agreed that Phil Culbertson would be the acting administrator while I was gone. On July 29, I went over to the old Executive Office Building to talk with Joan Clark about our proposed joint TV appearance in Vienna. Things went well, so I had no worries on that score. When I returned to headquarters, I received word from Gerald Helman’s office that I would be an accredited member of the US delegation to UNISPACE 82. I guess I should have anticipated all this is in the first place and agreed to go to Vienna without all the hesitations. Bun and I flew to Vienna on the night of August 6 and were met by US Embassy people. We drove to my Aunt Lisl’s house in an embassy car and then spent the rest of the day recovering from the flight. Aunt Lisl, my father’s sister, was the widow of Eugene Czitary, a distinguished professor of civil engineering at the Technical University of Vienna. She lived with her cousin Herta Vogt in a fine old house in the Hietzing district. On Sunday, we slept late and then went to the Bristol Hotel on the Ring Road to register for the conference. There were two members of Congress present at UNISPACE 82, Rep. Ronald Flippo (D-AL) and Sen. Daniel Akaka (D-HI), chairmen of the committees dealing with space programs. In the evening, the entire US delegation went to a party in Grinzing, the district just west of the city where all the wineries are located. The new administration had not yet appointed an ambassador to Austria; the highest-ranking US official was the excellent chargé d’affaires, Sol Polansky. In the next few days, we had two in-depth conversations, and he provided me with an impressive description of the situation in central Europe.

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The first day of UNISPACE 82 was Monday, August 9. At a meeting of the US delegation at the Bristol Hotel, Polansky outlined the political situation in Austria. Gerry Helman talked about the administrative matters related to the delegation’s operations. We then walked over the Hofburg for the first plenary session of the conference. We met in one of the ornate ballrooms, where about one hundred delegates were gathered, along with perhaps another hundred staff and press members. The first speaker was the secretary-general of the United Nations, Javier Pérez de Cuéllar. In excellent English, Pérez de Cuéllar stressed the importance of collaborative international programs like INTELSAT (International Telecommunications Satellite) and INMARSAT (International Maritime Satellite). But his real message was that the militarization of space was to be avoided at all costs. He asked that the UN play a definitive role in this effort. The next speaker was Rudolf Kirchschlager, the president of Austria. He welcomed us to Vienna and, on a light note, referred to our conference as UNISPACE II; the first UNISPACE conference had been held in Vienna, too. Speaking, like Pérez de Cuéllar, in excellent English, he then became serious, making a strong plea for international collaboration in space. Once again the real message was that we had to prevent the militarization of space. I began to see that the US delegation would have some very real problems. The plenary session of the conference had been organized to place the militarization of space on the top of the conference agenda. It was interesting that Helman had not warned us that this might be the conference theme. Willibald Pahr, the foreign minister of Austria, was elected president of the conference by acclamation. In his speech, Pahr vigorously called for an “end” of the “militarization of space.” There was no explanation of what militarization really meant. In any event, I was now certain that we would be in for a rough ride. After lunch, I went over to the Messepalast to see our show. There was no doubt that our exhibit was the best, with great visual aids and diverse program exhibits. The Soviet exhibit was a pure caricature of the Soviet Union. There were huge statues of  Tsiolkovsky, Korolev, Keldysh, and Gagarin. Each was at least twelve feet high. (In 1895, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky realized that rockets would be the means for space travel, the first person to do so; Sergei Korolev was chief designer of Soviet rockets; Mstislav Keldysh was the president of the Soviet Academy of Sciences in 1982; and Yuri Gargarin was the first human being to fly in Earth orbit.) The second day of the conference began with a breakfast at which Burt Edelson, NASA’s associate administrator for space science and applications, and I discussed candidates to be NASA’s chief scientist. We decided on Frank McDonald as the obvious choice, since he had just been elected to the National Academy of Sciences. Next came a morning meeting of the US delegation. Helman described a deadlock at the prior day’s meeting of the diplomatic advisers regarding whether a working group should be appointed to begin drafting a final report. I learned that this was a common way to do business at international meetings of this kind. The

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Western powers wanted a working group that would focus on technology transfer, militarization, and the coming congestion of satellites in geosynchronous orbit. The Soviets would have none of this, claiming that the militarization of space should be the only matter for serious discussion. I began to realize that UNISPACE 82 was really a skirmish in the Cold War. Jim Beggs then talked about the “US Night” that evening at the Volkstheater.We had determined that the centerpiece of the program would be Richard Goody’s talk about Global Habitability. Our hope was that this focus would draw the teeth out of the accusations that we were interested only in the militarization of space. The final speaker was Joe Charyk, a member of the committee charged with writing the final report of the conference. After the delegation meeting, I went over to Hans Ortner’s office. He was the director of ASSA, the Austrian Solar and Space Agency, and an old friend who had spent a year in the United States during the 1970s. We discussed the televised debate that would be held at the end of the conference on Friday. He was cohosting the debate with Lothar Beckel, the director of the Austrian Academy’s Institute of Geodesy. Beckel was an expert in the interpretation of images made by the US LANDSAT and European imaging satellites. He had a wide following in Austria because he had published a number of striking picture books. The other participants were the European delegate, Erik Quistgaard (ESA), and the Soviet representative, Alla Masevich, a sixty-nine-year-old scientist with a very lively and confident manner. She was a distinguished Soviet astronomer who had earned a sterling reputation by being the first to accurately determine the orbital parameters of Sputnik 1. A member of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, she served as the deputy general secretary of UNISPACE 82. I should mention that the TV discussion was not an official event of the conference, but a program sponsored by ORF. Thus, an important requirement for participation in the debate, intended for an Austrian audience, was the ability to speak German. Masevich spoke excellent German, albeit with a slight Russian accent. So the situation that Klaus Emmerich had anticipated some months ago—namely, that I would be useful as an American representative—had come to pass. The rehearsal began with Klaus Emmerich asking us some typical questions that might arise. It was here that I had my first surprise. Instead of answering the question, Masevich said that the question was irrelevant and should be withdrawn. She told us that it made her uncomfortable to discuss money. Klaus turned to me, and I provided a short summary of the NASA budget for fiscal year 1983. I stressed that all of budgetary amounts were public knowledge and that this was as it should be. It occurred to me that Masevich might not have known just what the Soviets were spending on their space program. In response to other questions, she made statements that were truly astounding. Here are just a few of her claims: • There had been no race to the moon. This was a well-known position that the Soviets announced after our landing on the moon. What was a real sur-

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It was strange for me to see that this bright, accomplished scientist and I were on completely different wavelengths. This was, of course, the very nature of the Cold War. My work kept me a step removed from dealing directly with genuine, convinced communists, so this was a new, disheartening experience. In the evening we all went to the Volkstheater for the US Night event. This was supposed to provide an Austrian audience with highlights of the US space program and to explain our future objectives. Aunt Lisl and Bun were with me. The entire US delegation was present, and the senior Austrian official was Anton Benya, the president of the Austrian parliament (Bundestag) since 1971 and a leader of the Austrian labor union movement. Seventy years old, he had started out as a machinist and a metalworker before becoming a member of parliament in 1963. There was a small gathering in one of the larger rooms before the start of the program, and I introduced Mr. Benya to Aunt Lisl and Bun. Benya did not speak English, and he immediately took a shine to Aunt Lisl. He told her that he needed a translator and that she would be his “date” during the event. Aunt Lisl was surprised, even a bit astounded. She was a few years older than he, but they made a great pair moving among the guests. Bun and I were hugely amused, as were my NASA friends, by what had transpired. The first speaker was the distinguished writer James Michener, who had just finished a novel about space exploration titled simply Space. He delivered an excellent and inspiring lecture on the future of the exploration of the solar system by humans. The centerpiece of the program was Richard Goody’s presentation of the Global Habitability initiative. He made a very strong case that the best way to monitor the environment was by the use of orbiting spacecraft. An excellent speaker, Goody received a standing ovation at the end of his speech. Next, two astronauts, Ann and Bill Fisher, gave a presentation on their experiences in space. Another astronaut, Hank Hartsfield, showed the movie that was

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made on the fourth flight of Columbia. It was very well done and featured the speech by President Reagan after Columbia landed on the runway at Edwards Air Force Base. It was good that this international audience was able to hear the president say that the shuttle would be used to “establish a more permanent presence in space.” At the end of the meeting, there was a video of President Reagan extending his greetings to the UNISPACE 82 participants, and he was his usual eloquent self. The video received a strong round of applause. After the meeting, Mr. Benya wanted to see the exhibits at the Messepalast. Bun, Aunt Lisl, and I went over with him and provided a short tour of the exhibition. Again, Aunt Lisl acted as the translator for Benya, who told us that he was very impressed. Benya asked the press photographer who was with him to take his picture with Aunt Lisl, and said that he would send her a copy. After he left, Bun, Aunt Lisl, and I went to the Hauswirth Restaurant for a late supper. Wednesday was an easy day for me because it was devoted to the committee meetings that would eventually result in recommendations to be made to the UN. Helman told us at the morning meeting that the move by the Soviets to get UNISPACE 82 to focus on the militarization of space was very real.The objective was to get the conference to issue a strong statement accusing the US of this militarization. In addition, they would try to pass a resolution requiring the United States to cease and desist. Helman told us that his State Department instructions were to stonewall the issue and to say nothing. This was probably the practical approach, but I volunteered to write a statement that Jim Beggs and Gerry Helman would issue if the conference did adopt a measure accusing the United States of preparing to wage war in space. In the evening, there was a reception in one of the ornate rooms in the Hofburg for the UNISPACE 82 attendees. Bundeskanzler (chancellor) Bruno Kreisky was the host. He was a Social Democrat with a strong practical streak and considerable charisma. Walking through the reception line, I was very pleasantly surprised when I shook Kreisky’s hand and he asked me to pass on his best wishes to my father, the Geheimrat. I have always been amazed by the very broad range of friends and acquaintances that my father had around the world. Thursday was busy with television interviews. My first meeting was a press conference with the Austrian Industrial Trade Press that was arranged by Herbert Pichler, a former student of my father. The Austrian Industrial Union occupied a nice old palace on the Schwarzenbergplatz just off the Ring Road. There were about fifty people in the room. After a short introduction, we took questions. Most of them were oriented toward the oil and plastics industries, which was a big topic in the country. There was a small oil field in the northeastern corner of Austria. Shortly after the end of World War II, the Austrians decided not to use their oil resource for producing fuels. Rather, they would use the oil as feedstock for a large and healthy plastics industry. They succeeded in doing that, so much of the questioning dealt with what was going on in this sector. Fortunately, having

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lived with my father, I knew enough about the plastics business that I did not embarrass myself. The second topic covered the small but highly competent Austrian military weapons industry. Here I had more personal experience, and we had a good discussion. On my walk back to the Messepalast, I encountered a television crew from the German TV network (Deutscher Rundfunk). They recognized me and asked whether I would do an interview right there on the sidewalk. I agreed, and spent about twenty minutes speaking mostly about commercial space enterprises, particularly communications satellites. This was a multibillion-dollar industry that had been spawned by NASA’s first satellite placed in a geosynchronous orbit. The Applications Technology Satellite, launched in 1966, proved that it was possible to send signals back and forth from a satellite in a geostationary orbit. A satellite placed in such an orbit would be able to send and receive signals from about one-third of Earth’s surface, and three of them would cover the entire earth. Many satellites of this type were now stationed 18,600 miles above the equator. I told the crew that one of these was probably picking up their signal and rebroadcasting it throughout Germany. I added that some of the DRF’s profits resulted from the United States developing and then fielding this technology. I had not really planned what to say, but the German TV people were satisfied with my remarks. I learned later from some of my German friends that the interview was broadcast all over Germany. After lunch, I went over to the Hofburg to meet with Arthur C. Clarke in one of the small conference rooms. An old friend, Arthur was one of the distinguished visionaries invited to attend the conference. He was an Englishman who had studied electrical engineering and served in the Royal Air Force during World War II. Before the war, he was one of the founding members of the British Planetary Society; immediately after the end of the war, he published a seminal paper in which he was the first to suggest that a network of communications satellites could be placed in the geostationary equatorial orbits that I just mentioned. For some time in the technical literature they were called “Clarke orbits.” Subsequently, Arthur began to write popular articles in the press, and in the ensuing years he became a brilliant writer of science-fiction books. Queen Elizabeth II bestowed a knighthood on him in 1998. During our meeting, Arthur told me that he would like to give the delegates and the other conference attendees a strong rationale for exploring the solar system. His idea was to provoke them into thinking about sending people to Mars by asking the following questions: Why did fish migrate from the oceans to land three hundred million years ago? Was it inscribed in their DNA to do that? Is it inscribed in our DNA to break the bonds that bind us to Earth? Does something in our DNA make a trip to Mars imperative? I thought that this was an interesting approach, and I urged him to develop these ideas in a short piece that could be attached to the report issued by the conference.

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On August 13, I had a six o’clock breakfast at the Bristol Hotel with Joan Clark to plan for our TV interview with Erich Steinitz, one of the senior executives of the Austrian television establishment. It would be held at the Messepalast against a backdrop of the US exhibits concerning the Hubble Space Telescope, the space shuttle, and the space station. It took about two hours for the Austrian TV crew and Steinitz to put all this together. Joan did most of the talking. An excellent speaker, she had a natural way of explaining things that could be understood by the general public. I interjected comments when appropriate, but Joan carried the show and made us both look good. On our walk back to the hotel, we joked about becoming a TV team when we got home. We would make a lot of money explaining space travel to a large audience! We returned in time for the morning meeting. The Soviet “peace offensive” was in full swing. Many Third World nations, along with some US friends and allies, were signing up for it, and I thought our policy of stonewalling rather than engaging in this debate was not the correct approach. I planned to write a statement over the weekend and to see whether we could get it into the conference proceedings. I met with Michael Gwynne for lunch. He was an English scientist who ran the United Nations Environmental Program. Located in Nairobi, the agency would eventually hold the environmental portfolio within the UN. Gwynne told me that he had attended the US Night meeting and was interested in pursuing the Global Habitability concept. Delighted that someone had picked up the idea, I gave him the names of the people at NASA who were working on the program. The awkward title Global Habitability was eventually replaced by NASA’s Mission to Planet Earth, which is now one of the agency’s major enterprises. At 7:00 p.m., we went to the ORF studios for the televised debate that Klaus Emmerich had arranged.We would be on the nightly program Nachtstudio, an hour of talk and discussion beginning at nine. As mentioned above, Hans Ortner was the moderator, and Lothar Beckel and Peter Jankowitsch, a prominent young Austrian diplomat, were the Austrian participants. The foreign participants were Eric Quistgaard, Alla Masevich, and me. We agreed not to talk about the militarization of space, because that would lead to an impasse. Each of us would pick a topic of interest and talk about it for some minutes and then answer questions from the other participants. The two Austrians started by describing the map of Austria that they had constructed from LANDSAT, SPOT Image, and Soviet pictures. It was an interesting presentation because it demonstrated how computers could be used to “rectify” images from different sources. Masevich told some stories about the first Sputnik and how she had managed to get involved in this pioneering project. Quistgaard provided a very good description of how the ESA was related to the national space programs that each of the European nations ran. My own segment was a short description of the Apollo 13 accident and how the astronauts eventually returned

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safely to Earth. I called it “NASA’s finest moment.” Following the individual remarks, there was a general discussion about the future of space exploration, and all agreed that the space enterprise had to be preserved and that international collaboration was a most important element. I was very satisfied with the way things went, and we received good reviews in the local press the next day. The only negative comment was that at ninety minutes of talk, it was too long! On Saturday, we drove out to Mondsee, a small lake about ten miles west of Salzburg. My cousin, Dr. Hermann Mark, and his family had converted an old farmhouse and barn into a summer cottage. It is a really beautiful place on one of the mountains near the lake. The only reason I mention this is that Lothar Beckel had a cabin on one of the high alpine meadows near Bad Ischl, about fifteen miles from my cousin’s house. He had arranged a party for about ten people associated with UNISPACE 82. They were young staffers from national delegations, including two Russians, a Japanese, two Indians, and several Europeans. All of them came from nations with substantial space programs, and all of them spoke English. We arrive at the Beckel cabin at about two after driving to within a couple of miles of the cabin and then hiking the rest of the way. People brought their wives or girlfriends. Bun and I were the oldest people present, and it dawned on me that Lothar had arranged the party so that I could meet people associated with the space business who were my juniors by, on average, ten or fifteen years. There was eating, drinking, and dancing. Lothar had named the event “Tanz auf der Alm,” or “Dance on the Meadow.” Most importantly, there was much interesting conversation. We stayed up late, and everyone eventually retired to sleeping bags except Lothar, his wife, Bun, and me, who used the two available bedrooms. The young people were highly intelligent and very motivated. During the conversations, I learned an important lesson: these young people had much more in common with one another than I had with Alla Masevich. I came away feeling good about the future. We arose late the next day. There was a fine breakfast, and we continued our conversations. I organized a question-and-answer session and opened up the floor to any topic. The most common question, posed in several different ways, was how I managed to reach influential positions in the United States as an immigrant. The Europeans, the Russians, and the Indians all wanted to know how this was possible. I pointed out that another immigrant, Henry Kissinger, had reached a much more important post. The secretary of state was the senior cabinet officer, and Kissinger had been the architect of American foreign policy during the 1970s. I then listed other immigrants who had made important contributions to American industrial, scientific, and cultural activities. To drive the point home, I mentioned my participation in the US nuclear weapons program.The senior leadership of this program was made up mostly of prominent European scientists who had fled the Nazis, the communists, or the fascists in Italy. Among others were Enrico Fermi (Italy); Edward Teller, Eugene Wigner, and John von Neumann (Hungary);

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Hans Bethe (Germany); George Kistiakowsky (Russia); and Felix Bloch (Switzerland). Fermi had won his Nobel Prize before immigrating, and Wigner, Bethe, and Bloch were awarded theirs after the end of World War II. I may have made an impression on them that they had not anticipated. The party broke up around noon. Bun and I drove to the Attersee, which is the lake east of Mondsee. We had dinner at the Attersee Yacht Club with my cousin Hermann Mark and his wife, Monika, along with Kurt and Andrea Seidler, who were sailing friends of ours.We spent the night at Hermann’s house and then drove to Vienna. The next day, August 17, was my final day in Vienna at UNISPACE 82. Since I had performed the public relations chores that Gerry Helman had asked of me, I thought that I was free to leave. The conference had degenerated to the point that the militarization of space had become the central topic. By stonewalling, we had given the high ground to the Soviets, and they had made the most of it. All the Soviet satellite states, as well as many of  Third World countries, followed the Soviet lead and condemned the United States. Early in the morning, I drafted the statement for Jim Beggs and Gerry Helman that I had promised to write. I also gave a copy to Lt. Col. Gilbert D. Rye, who held the space portfolio on the staff of the National Security Council. I left things at this point and urged both Jim and Gerry to use the whole statement, or at least portions of it, in their closing remarks on Friday, the final day of the conference. On the flight back to Washington, I thought about the outcome of UNISPACE 82. Overall, the conference was useful because it acquainted the representatives of many nations with the activities of the major “spacefaring” nations—the United States, the Soviet Union, China, France, Germany, Japan, and India. These nations had launch vehicles and had deployed spacecraft in Earth orbit and into the solar system. I talked with many people who were grateful to the UN for organizing the conference. The behavior of the Soviets was bad, as expected, and I thought we should have responded to their accusations. On the other hand, in the long run, the stonewalling may have been right policy because the Soviets looked like schoolyard bullies to many of the more sophisticated delegates. When he returned, Jim Beggs thanked me for writing the draft statement but told me that it was not used. Gerry Helman had written a more comprehensive statement that dealt with the militarization question in a few sentences and implied that the conference had more important matters to discuss.

A New Cold War Policy for the United States toward the Soviet Union In the seven months between May 1982 and January 1983, President Reagan initiated a study by the National Security Council staff that would have far-reaching consequences. The president judged that Leonid Brezhnev’s long period of lead-

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ership had, through cronyism and corruption, so weakened the Soviet Union that it was time for a change. On May 20, 1982, the president issued National Security Decision Directive Number 32, entitled “US National Security Strategy,” which accepted the recommendations of the National Security Council staff. The most important foreign policy goal in the directive was “to contain and reverse the expansion of Soviet control and military presence throughout the world and to increase the costs of Soviet support and use of proxy, terrorist, and subversive forces.” The words “contain and reverse” signaled a new approach. In previous chapters I have chronicled the evolution of our policy toward the Soviet Union, which can briefly be described as “massive retaliation” (Eisenhower), “proportionate response” (Kennedy), “containment and essential equivalence” (Nixon), and “deterrence” (Carter). The word “reverse” was new. It challenged the doctrine of “coexistence,” which had been, since 1958, the best description of the relationship between the Soviet Union and the United States. The message was clear: President Reagan was out to win the Cold War, not just settle for a stalemate. I was not privy to the content of this document at the time. During the Carter years, friends who were staff members of the National Security Council would talk with me about policy matters. It was always assumed that we would contain the Soviet Union while maintaining a military posture strong enough to deter a Soviet attack. But no one I spoke with during those years ever used the word “reverse.” By September 1982, I was aware that major changes in our military policy regarding the construction of a defense against ballistic missiles were coming. On January 17, 1983, President Reagan issued National Security Decision Directive Number 75, which was much more explicit.Titled “US Relations with the USSR,” it began with the following statement: “To contain, and over time, to reverse expansion by competing effectively on a sustained basis with the Soviet Union in all international arenas—particularly in the overall military balance and in geographical regions of priority concern to the United States. This will remain the primary focus of US policy toward the USSR.” This is as clear a policy statement as could be crafted. President Reagan and his advisers believed that the time was right to win the Cold War. The Soviet leadership was old and weak. The communist ideology was no longer as appealing as it had been to many people following the end of World War II. By now, plenty of evidence showed that adopting communist ideology would lead to tyranny and economic failure. The statement quoted above was followed by a number of others that clearly expressed what should be done. Here are some examples: US policy must have an ideological thrust which clearly affirms the superiority of US and Western values of individual dignity and freedom, a free press, free trade unions, free enterprise, and political democracy over the repressive feature of Soviet Communism. We need to review and significantly strengthen US instruments of

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political action including . . . support[ing] democratic forces; . . . [and] efforts to highlight Soviet human rights violations.

This provision goes on to suggest that it is important to expose at all available fora the double standards employed by the Soviet Union in dealing with difficulties within its own domain and the outside (“capitalist”) world

and to prevent the Soviet propaganda machine from seizing the semantic high-ground in the battle of ideas through the appropriation of such terms as “peace.”

There was an admonition that it would require patience and resolve to implement the new policy: The interrelated tasks of containing and reversing Soviet expansion and promoting evolutionary change within the Soviet Union itself cannot be accomplished quickly. The coming 5–10 years will be a period of considerable uncertainty in which the Soviets may test US resolve by continuing the kind of aggressive international behavior which the US finds unacceptable.

And finally: The policy outlined above is one for the long haul. It is unlikely to yield a rapid breakthrough in bilateral relations with the Soviet Union. In the absence of dramatic near-term victories in the US effort to moderate Soviet behavior, pressure is likely to mount for a change in US policy.There will be appeals from important segments of domestic opinion for a more “normal” US-Soviet relationship, particularly in a period of political transition in Moscow. It is therefore essential that the American people understand and support US policy. This will require that official US statements and actions avoid generating unrealizable expectations for near-term progress in US-Soviet relations. At the same time, the US must demonstrate credibly that its policy is not a blueprint for an open-ended, sterile confrontation with Moscow, but a serious search for a stable and constructive long-term basis for US-Soviet relations.

I was not privy to any of these documents at the time they were written. It is obvious that NSDD-32 and NSDD-75 presaged major changes in US policy toward the Soviet Union. But it soon became obvious in the early months of 1983 that something different was happening. On March 8, 1983, President Reagan delivered a speech in Orlando, Florida, in which he called the USSR an “evil empire,” and on March 23, he announced the program to develop a defense against ballistic

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missiles. I did not realize it at the time, but the policies the president adopted in 1983 led to the end of the Cold War eight years later.

The War between Israel and Lebanon, June–August 1982 This conflict was one of the many flare-ups that are part of the permanent effort by certain Arab leaders to eliminate the State of Israel. The complex events that led to this conflict are not really relevant to this brief summary. The important point is that the Israel-Lebanon conflict was part of a proxy war between the United States and the Soviet Union, and a field test of the weapons that they had provided to both sides. By the 1970s there were more than three hundred thousand Palestinians in Lebanon, nearly all of them having fled Israel as refugees from a steady series of wars and conflicts. The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) was formed in 1964 to oppose the occupation of Palestine by Jewish settlers. The PLO, under the leadership of Yasser Arafat, established its headquarters in southern Lebanon. In 1978, Israel sought to establish a buffer zone there to prevent PLO rocket attacks and incursions into northern Israel. The Israeli defense minister, Ariel Sharon, who had commanded a division in the Six-Day War, and Prime Minister Menachem Begin conceived a plan to remove the PLO from Lebanon. Sporadic fighting began in 1981, and on July 17 the Israeli Air Force mounted a major air attack on the southern district of Beirut, which was the location of many PLO buildings and facilities. Many hundreds of civilians were killed in this operation; it attracted worldwide attention, and Israel was blamed for committing atrocities. In addition, about thirty thousand Syrian troops moved into northern and central Lebanon, occupying the Bekaa Valley, which runs north-south through the middle of the country. On June 6, 1982, Israeli army, air force, and naval units began a full-scale invasion of Lebanon. Sharon’s objectives were to drive the PLO out of Lebanon and destroy the PLO’s military infrastructure there, install a Maronite Christian government in Lebanon, conclude a peace treaty between Israel and Lebanon, and expel the Syrian armed forces from Lebanon. The Israeli Army moved quickly, supported by massive air raids on PLO and Syrian military installations. There was a major air battle over the Bekaa Valley in central Lebanon, involving more than 150 aircraft. The Syrians had placed a large number of Soviet surface-to-air missile (SAM-5) batteries in the valley. The battle began with an Israeli strike against the SAM sites, using drone aircraft as well as F-16s, conventional air-to-ground attack aircraft. It was the largest engagement of jet aircraft up to that time. Besides F-16s, the Israelis deployed F-4s and F-15s, and the Syrians had Soviet MiG-23s and Sukhoi aircraft. The Syrians lost more than eighty aircraft in the course of two hours. The Israelis did not lose any aircraft in aerial combat, and only one A-4 on the ground.

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The Israelis’ stunning defeat of the Syrians was regarded as a proxy battle between Soviet and American aircraft technologies. Following the battle, the Soviets sent the vice commander of the Soviet air defense forces to Syria in order to find out what had caused such a total defeat. At the time, I heard rumors that the Soviets had grounded all their air defense force aircraft to examine them for technical flaws that might explain what had happened. Many years later, when I was serving as the director of defense research and engineering (1998–2001), my Israeli counterpart, Maj. Gen. Itzakh Ben Israel, told me that after the end of the Cold War, several senior Russian officers who had participated in the battle said that it was a watershed event for Russia. Their opinion was that the defeat was their first sign that Soviet Russia would collapse.

The Death of Leonid Brezhnev On November 10, 1982, Leonid Brezhnev died in office at the age of seventy-six. The last time a general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union died on the job was when Joseph Stalin died on March 1, 1953.Two days after Brezhnev died, Yuri Andropov was elected general secretary by the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party. He was sixty-eight years old and not in good health. The message was clear: the communist leadership was not ready to trust anyone from a younger generation. When it was announced that Yuri Andropov had been elected general secretary, I wondered why the selection was made quickly. Khrushchev had had to share power with Nikolai Bulganin for an extended period of time, and Brezhnev had done the same with Alexei Kosygin. A few reasons for this were apparent. Andropov had been head of the KGB for almost two decades, and he likely had extensive dossiers on all the people who elected him. And there was a factor that perhaps only a few people knew: Andropov was dying. Perhaps the really knowledgeable inner circle in the Kremlin voted for Andropov because they knew he would not be around for much longer. Probably the most important move that Andropov made shortly before his death was to suggest that Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev be designated to preside over the meetings of the Politburo and the Secretariat of the Central Committee if he (Andropov) was unable to attend. This suggestion was ignored, but it was a clear message that Andropov thought that Gorbachev should be his successor. Andropov died on February 9, 1984, after fifteen months in office, but Gorbachev had to wait for another year before finally ascending to the position of general secretary.

14 Defense against Ballistic Missiles and Two Important Firsts in Spaceflight

At the end of chapter 9, I described the steps we took to create a space command for the air force. I could not finish the story because I had to leave the Pentagon in February 1981. At that point, there was no agreement on either the location of the Consolidated Space Operations Center (CSOC) or the question of a USAF space command. It was eventually decided to locate the CSOC on a tract of land about ten miles east of Colorado Springs. This land was given to the federal government in part thanks to Sen. Gary Hart’s influence. The CSOC soon became a major air force facility. Completed in 1988, it was designated Falcon Air Force Station. In 1998, the facility was renamed Schriever Air Force Base for Gen. Bernard A. Schriever, the first commanding general of the Air Force Systems Command. Today about 6,200 people work at Schriever Air Force Base, controlling more than 150 satellites performing functions related to national security and civilian concerns. My successor as secretary of the air force was Verne Orr—an excellent choice. He had served in the navy during World War II and later had a distinguished business career. When Ronald Reagan was elected governor of California in 1966, he appointed Orr commissioner of motor vehicles, and shortly thereafter he was promoted to be the California director of finance, a post in which he served until 1975. As someone close to Governor Reagan, he joined him in Washington when Reagan became president. I knew about Orr’s work in California, and I was delighted to learn of his selection to become secretary of the air force. As the incoming secretary, he kindly let me use an office in the Pentagon following his

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confirmation. During the transition period, we had a number of conversations. I was elated to learn that he agreed with me about the necessity of establishing an air force space command, in addition to a number of other matters still pending from my term of service. We became good friends, and until I left Washington in 1984, we had numerous meetings about air force problems and priorities. Our association continued after Verne left Washington.

A Conversation with Lew Allen On January 22, 1982, Lew Allen invited me to have lunch with him at the Pentagon. It was fun for me to be back in that elegant suite, where the secretary and the chief of staff could have a fine lunch. I urged him once again to sign off on establishing an air force space command. As on previous occasions when we had discussed this matter, he put me off. I knew that Lew was not popular with his senior generals because although he was a pilot, he had not flown any combat missions. He had helped with the development of the huge Convair B-36 longrange bomber and had flown Boeing B-52s, but these aircraft were never used significantly during the Korean War. I was certain he feared that signing off on the establishment of the space command would further damage his relationship with his senior commanders. I wanted to tell him that since he would be retiring in six months, this was the time to act. But I did not want to hurt the good relationship that he and I had enjoyed since the 1950s, when we were both in the nuclear weapons business. Lew asked me how I was getting on with my job at NASA. I told him about the recent problem with Bruce Murray at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Lew questioned me about the programs at the JPL and solicited my thoughts on what should be done. As the conversation continued, he became quite animated. From his background at the NRO and other military space projects, he was thoroughly familiar with the business of space operations. Halfway through the conversation, it dawned on me that Lew Allen might be the right person to succeed Bruce Murray as director of the JPL. The more I listened to him talk, the more I became convinced he would be a first-class choice for the job. Lew was fifty-seven years old, which was a little bit old for the position, but he had a great deal of experience with space-related military programs. Lew had served as the head of the NRO staff as a major general. Plus, he had headed the National Security Agency, which depended on the NRO space systems for its raw data. Finally, and this was most important, I knew that he was also a good scientist, having worked with him on the Argus experiment in 1958. I decided to throw caution to the wind and ask him whether he would be a candidate to succeed Bruce Murray as director of the JPL. Lew immediately dismissed the idea. He told me that he wanted to stay in Washington and do some consulting. Besides, he told me, his wife, Barbara, would not want to live in Pas-

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adena. He insisted that the idea of moving to California was one that he simply could not consider. I left the Pentagon hoping that I had at least planted some seeds in Lew’s mind about the JPL, but I was not optimistic. I called some of my friends on the Cal Tech faculty, including Robbie Vogt (aeronautics), Ed Stone (physics), and several others, to sound them out about the possibility of Lew Allen as director, and the response was enthusiastic. I asked them to talk to their friends on the board of trustees about Lew. On June 18 there was a retirement ceremony for the chairman of the joint chiefs, Gen. David Jones of the air force, at Andrews Air Force Base. My old friend and boss Harold Brown was there. I knew that Harold was not only a Cal Tech trustee, but also a former president of the university, and was, therefore, very influential. During a break in the proceedings, I told him about my conversation with Lew Allen. Even though Harold and I were not on the best of terms, because of our disagreements over the bomber problem, he listened to my suggestion. Harold thought that making Lew the JPL director was an excellent idea, and he told me that he would push hard to make it happen. Ten days later, I went to Lew Allen’s retirement party at the same venue. I congratulated him on having done a firstclass job as chief and on his long service to the nation. I did not mention our conversation about the JPL six months earlier.

The Air Force Space Command Is Established A number of milestones marked the creation of the Air Force Space Command. On March 30, 1980, the Aerospace Defense Command was abolished, accomplishing half the change that Gen. David Jones had initiated. The other part of the proposed change, which was not implemented, was to transfer the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) to the Strategic Air Command. It remained an independent command, with Gen. James V. “Grrr” Hartinger in charge. He was promoted to four-star rank in October 1981 in order to reflect the independence of the command. On September 1, 1982,Verne Orr announced the establishment of the Air Force Space Command. Its relationship with NORAD would be the same as ADCOM’s had been, meaning that General Hartinger would head both commands. Thus, four and a half years after my conversation with Gen. James E. Hill about the proposed ADCOM/​NORAD reorganization, the Air Force Space Command was finally a reality. Needless to say, I was delighted. The organization of the space command has changed several times since its inception. Today it is a unit of the US Strategic Command (STRATCOM), and the STRATCOM commander also heads the space command. What General Hill feared in 1978 came to pass, but the end of the Cold War neutralized much of his argument. NORAD is now part of the US Northern Command. Changed

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circumstances have redefined the role of the air force in the post–Cold War environment, which is exactly how it should be. Some management problems spurred Congress to call for a review of the nation’s national-security-related space program. I was a member of the panel that performed the review of the relevant space program. Unfortunately, our report had no real effect. On July 22, 1982, it was announced that Lew Allen would be the new director of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and would also serve as vice president of the California Institute of  Technology. For me, this was really the icing on the cake. The air force had a space command, and I would again be able to work with Lew on important and interesting problems.

The MX Missile During the Carter administration, some progress was made in the development of a large new ballistic missile to replace the Minuteman. Designated “MX,” these missiles were substantially larger and more capable than the Minuteman III, which was then the best land-based missile in the inventory. (About 1,000 Minuteman I and II missiles, with single warheads, were deployed during the 1960s. During the 1970s, 450 Minuteman III missiles, each with three warheads, were placed in silos, for a total of 1,450 launchers and 2,350 warheads.) Good progress was made on the missile, but as mentioned in the previous chapter, there was no agreement on how to base the MX so that it could survive a Soviet first strike. I concluded that the solution was to put the new missiles in the Minuteman silos. There were three reasons why a missile like the MX needed to be built. • We had to match the Soviet SS-18s. Doing so was not strictly necessary from a military viewpoint, because we could probably maintain a deterrent—as far as the Soviets were concerned—with small missiles. But if we did nothing, we would risk the rest of the world, and a substantial number of our own people, concluding that we were pulling out of strategic competition with the Soviets. • The MX missile is a good space-launch vehicle. It can put about five thousand pounds of payload in low-Earth orbit. Also, it can be kept in a launch-standby condition longer than the liquid-fueled Titan rocket or, of course, the space shuttle. I considered the MX a space launcher for crisis or wartime conditions. The missiles would be put in hardened silos around the country and would be launched with their surveillance and reconnaissance payloads after hostilities reached a certain level. • We needed large ICBMs as a hedge against the conclusion of a comprehensive test ban treaty. There was a reasonable probability that such a treaty would be signed in the next two or three decades, when the missiles would be deployed. During that time, we would probably change the warheads at

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What could be done to solve the MX problem? After a period of reflection, I decided that the best course would be to discuss the matter with Tom Reed, a staff member of the National Security Council. On October 17, 1982, Tom and I spent several hours discussing a number of matters. He told me that he was the “action officer” for the MX, so if we made a good case, we could probably convince the Pentagon to put the missiles in the Minuteman silos. We worked on a strategy to persuade the powers that be that our proposed MX basing was the right move. Our plan had several points: • The Senate should ratify the SALT II treaty, which President Carter signed in 1979. It would cost nothing to do this, and it might go a long way toward persuading many congressional Democrats to go along with the president’s basing proposal for the MX. • The air force should deploy the MX missiles in the Minuteman silos. • All vulnerable land-based missiles should eventually be eliminated in order to discourage first strikes, and deterrence should rely instead on air- and sea-based missiles.

On Saturday, November 13, I again went to see Tom. He showed me the statement that the president would make concerning the MX missile the following Monday. It stated that we would deploy MXs in Minuteman silos temporarily and continue to look at other alternatives. I thought the president’s statement was eminently sensible, and I spent the rest of that Saturday writing up our suggestions for the MX. A few days later, I had lunch with Verne Orr, and most of the discussion was about the MX. Some air force people had picked up on a crazy idea for basing the MX missiles in a “dense pack.” The idea was to base the missiles in a small area, with the silos spaced about 1,800 feet apart. It was thought that an attack by a single hostile missile on the array would create a debris cloud that would destroy or detonate any subsequent incoming warheads. The silos would be hardened to withstand ten thousand pounds per square inch, so that airbursts from incoming weapons would not damage them. I was very skeptical and told Verne Orr that the idea did not deserve even a microsecond of consideration! I spent a few days in Puerto Rico over the next week to be with my father as he accepted a major award from the American Chemical Society. The meeting was at the Dorado Beach Hotel, a fine resort just outside San Juan. It was a grand

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party, and I very much enjoyed being there. The newspapers carried the president’s statement concerning the MX. He supported the program but, unfortunately, said that the “dense pack” was probably the best way to deploy the missiles. We had a long way to go! In the first part of December, the House of Representatives turned down the administration’s MX proposal, primarily because of the “dense pack” problem. About a week later, I told Verne Orr that the MX was in real trouble because no one understood what the “dense pack” business was all about. At my urging, he agreed to sound out the White House about placing the MX missiles in the Minuteman silos. He told me that there was enough trouble with the “dense pack” business that a study commission would be appointed to make some recommendations about MX basing. Brent Scowcroft, a retired air force lieutenant general, would be the chairman, Tom Reed would be vice chairman, and Jim Woolsey was a member. This was good news. For the first time in this whole dismal story there was light at the end of the tunnel. I was sure that Scowcroft would eventually come to the right conclusions. During the Christmas season, I was, as usual, fully engaged with the NASA budget, but the MX problem still demanded my time. Earlier I had spoken with Jim Woolsey, who was under secretary of the navy when I had the same job at the air force, in an effort to enlist Democratic support for using Minuteman silos to house the MX. We met several times in late December. He thought the best tactic would be to approach congressional Democrats whom we knew well and who were familiar with national security matters. Our first opportunity to do some lobbying came on March 23, 1983, at a meeting with Rep. Norman Mineta (D-CA). He was chairman of the House Select Committee on Intelligence, and I had known him since my days at NASA–Ames, when he was the mayor of San Jose. Norman was very skeptical about the “dense pack,” which was not surprising. Jim and I went away believing that in spite of Norman’s concern, he would eventually support the MX program as proposed by the administration. In the morning, I had breakfast with Rep. Bill Nelson (D-FL), and Mineta was also present. I also knew Bill Nelson because he represented the district that included the NASA–Kennedy Space Center. Once again, the major topic was the MX. During the intense discussion, I had to answer some good, tough questions. I was slowly becoming more optimistic about our prospects for the MX. In the afternoon, Tom Reed told me about a story that would appear in the newspapers the next day. He was under investigation by the FBI for an insidertrading deal involving his father’s influence on the stock price of a company called Amax Inc. The deal involved a $3,000 investment that eventually led to a profit of more than $400,000. When the morning papers came out, Tom’s picture was on the front page. The charges were serious. I was really sorry about this development because it would almost certainly lead to Tom’s resignation. Tom’s career had long

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been on an upward trajectory; for some time, I had speculated that he would wind up as the national security advisor or in another high position at the Pentagon. He resigned a few days later. Woolsey and I next visited Rep. Donald Fuqua (D-FL), another influential Democrat. Jim was extraordinarily eloquent, and I believed that he converted the congressman to a yes vote on the MX. On April 11, the Scowcroft commission released its report. Brent Scowcroft told a nationwide television audience that the commission recommended building one hundred MX missiles and deploying them in Minuteman II missile silos that would become vacant as those missiles were retired. In essence, the commission recommended exactly what many of us thought should be done. This proposal matched what I had told Harold Brown three years earlier should be done with the MX missiles. Nonetheless, the fight over the MX program was not over. On April 20, there was a meeting at the Blair House (the president’s guest house), which was just across Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House. About twenty people were there to hear Brent Scowcroft, Tom Reed, and Jim Woolsey talk about the report. (Even though Tom was no longer a member of the government, he was there as a member of the Scowcroft commission.) I made a short speech on the technical features of the MX. I stressed that the missile was a good space-launch vehicle. All of us in the room knew that securing funding for the system would be a tough job. On April 26, Woolsey and I met with Rep. Robert Matsui (D-CA). Given what had happened in recent weeks, Matsui said that he would support the program. On May 5, the House Appropriations Committee marked up the NASA budget. We came out very well, except the committee took $5 million out of the $20 million that we had allocated for the Numerical Aeronautical Simulator, an important computational facility, at Ames. We would appeal that decision. In the afternoon,Woolsey and I went to see Rep. Norman Dicks (D-WA) about the MX. Boeing was located in his district, so he knew something about technology, and was knowledgeable about national security as well. Norman told me that the MX issue would not be settled quickly. The next day, we met with Senators John Chafee (R-RI) and Jake Garn (R-UT) to lobby for the MX program. Chafee was opposed and Garn in favor. Chafee told us that he might support the MX program if it were tied to a reasonable proposal for nuclear arms control. The conversation with Senator Garn was mainly about tactics. He suggested that we enlist Henry Kissinger in the effort, and Woolsey responded enthusiastically, since Kissinger was active in several arms control negotiations at the time. On July 22, the MX won funding in the House of Representatives, and it was fairly certain that it would win in the Senate as well.This was great news, but we still had to get both Appropriations Committees to go along. They would make their decisions sometime in September. On September 21, I met with Congressmen

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Harold Volkmer (D-MO) and Norman Mineta. Both were opposed to funding the MX. On September 29, I visited with Daniel Akaka (D-HI) and Mervyn Dymally (R-CA), who were both members of the House Appropriations Committee. Both of them wanted to know why, as a NASA official, I was lobbying them about a Defense Department program. I explained that I was still a technical adviser to the Defense Department on strategic weapons.They told me to watch my step because of concerns about the militarization of NASA. I assured them that I was sensitive to the matter. Both told me that the MX program had strong bipartisan support and would be funded. The next day, I spent several hours with Norman Dicks for a thorough review of the MX program. Dicks thought that the MX was “destabilizing,” but if it were linked with a new arms control agreement, then Congress would fund it. He said that the best move would be for Jim Woolsey to be appointed negotiator of the administration’s Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) team. Jim’s appointment to this position would be proof that we had won the battle over MX. I asked him whether my attempts at retail politics with Congress had had any real effect. Norman was a close enough friend to tell me that he thought I should ease off. He agreed with what Congressmen Akaka and Dymally had told me about my promoting a Defense Department program as a NASA official. I assured Norman that I would both stay away from Congress and try to work with the National Security Council staff to see whether we could come up with an arms control agreement that would lead to congressional approval of the MX program. On October 8, I attended the Air Force–Navy football game in Annapolis. At the game, I learned from Verne Orr that Jim Woolsey had been appointed to the delegation that would negotiate START with the Soviets. This meant there was now a good chance of securing bipartisan support for both the MX and a new arms control agreement. The House Appropriations Committee voted 29–23 to fund the MX program as proposed by the administration. A critical vote in the House as a whole came on November 1. Rep. Joseph Addabbo (D-NY), the chairman of the Defense Appropriations subcommittee, introduced a motion to delete the MX missile from the defense appropriations bill. The amendment was defeated by a vote of 217–208, meaning there was no doubt that the MX ballistic missile program would be implemented. In thinking about all this, I recalled the speech I had delivered at the annual meeting of the Air Force Association in September 1979. During the speech, I proposed that we modernize our strategic deterrent forces by agreeing on “a basing decision for the MX” and “positive plans” for a new bomber. We developed the “new bomber,” the Rockwell B-1B Lancer, and we now had the basing mode for the MX. In addition, I advocated a space command for the air force, which had been accomplished, too. Thus, on that November 1, I was grateful to the Good Lord that he had given me the opportunity to succeed in helping implement these programs.

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The JVX and the Origin of the Bell MV-22 Osprey One of the best programs we initiated and managed during my term of service as director of the NASA–Ames Research Center was the development of the Bell XV-15, a tilt-rotor aircraft (see chapter 6). The contract with Bell was signed in 1972, and the first flight occurred in May 1977. Afterward, we conducted an extensive test program with the XV-15 to demonstrate the possible military value of tilt-rotor aircraft, and some useful tactical applications of tilt-rotor aircraft were developed. Shortly after I rejoined NASA in 1981, Jim Ambrose, the under secretary of the army, told me that the army would be pulling out of the tilt-rotor program by the end of the fiscal year. He said that since the war in Vietnam was over, the army had other priorities. I could not convince him that he was doing the wrong thing. To keep the tilt-rotor idea alive, we persuaded Al Gessow, the helicopter expert in the aeronautics program at NASA Headquarters, to include the tilt-rotor concept in the JVX ( J for “joint,” V for “VTOL,” and X for “experimental”) study program, which the Pentagon was developing. What we had in mind was a relatively small, tactical transport tilt-rotor aircraft that would have a gross takeoff weight of about forty thousand pounds (the figure for the Bell XV-15 was fifteen thousand pounds). We felt that an aircraft of this size would be attractive to the marine corps as an eventual replacement for its current transport helicopters, including the Boeing Vertol CH-46.There was some interest in the tilt-rotor concept among the technical people in the Pentagon, but the military leadership was not disposed to listen. On July 28, 1982, I met with John Lehman and Mel Paisley. We discussed what had been learned from the Falklands War, which had ended in June. The extraordinary performance of the French Exocet missiles carried by the French-built Argentine Super Étendard aircraft had caught the attention of the marine corps leadership. The current marine corps doctrine for amphibious assaults called for ships to maintain a standoff distance of fifteen miles. Conventional helicopters could be used to carry supplies and people to and from the beach at that distance. But assault ships were now vulnerable to long-range Exocet-type land-based missiles located up to fifty miles inland from the beach. NASA’s assertion was that a tilt-rotor aircraft with about the gross weight of a Boeing Vertol CH-46 would allow assault ships to stand offshore out of range of Exocets and similar kinds of missiles. A tilt-rotor aircraft that could fly at 300 knots (345 miles per hour) in the airplane mode with a range of several hundred miles should be able to increase the standoff distance to as much as one hundred miles. For these reasons, I urged Lehman and Paisley to adopt the tilt-rotor concept for the design of the JVX. This meeting was the first of a series that I had with the senior leadership of the navy and the marine corps. Several months later, Mel Paisely told me that there was great interest among the marine corps leadership in the JVX for the reasons that

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Figure 14.1. Third Battalion, Third Marines, preparing for an Osprey flight.

I had outlined for him and Secretary Lehman. It was likely, he said, that Lehman would put some serious study money into the navy’s proposed budget for the 1984 fiscal year. I was delighted. Each December, the people in the Pentagon make detailed decisions about the budget that will come into effect a year and a half later. On December 22, I met with Lt. Gen. William Fitch of the marine corps, who was the assistant commandant for aviation. He told me that after careful study, he and his staff were ready to recommend to the marine corps commandant, Gen. P. X. Kelley, that the tilt-rotor concept be adopted for the JVX. Fitch asked for NASA’s help in developing arguments for the concept. I told him that NASA would do whatever it could to help. In early February, I went to the Pentagon to see the marine corps people responsible for running the JVX program.The project office fully supported the tilt-rotor concept, and the project had been moved from the Office of Naval Research to the Naval Air Systems Command—a good sign that we were on our way. In late April, it was announced that the navy had signed an $18 million contract with Bell Helicopter to develop a forty-thousand-pound tilt-rotor transport aircraft. So we now had a follow-up program for the XV-15. At the time of this writing, about three hundred MV-22 Ospreys have been built in the Amarillo, Texas, factory and about one hundred are deployed around the world.

The First Two Flights of Challenger The sixth flight of the space shuttle would not be made by Columbia. The next orbiter off the production line was Challenger, which was at Cape Canaveral and

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ready to fly. Although Challenger was the sister ship of Columbia, it was several thousand pounds lighter. Columbia, being the first ship in the fleet, was designed with a somewhat more conservative safety margin than the subsequent vehicles. On December 13, 1982, I went to the Kennedy Space Center to preside over the review of the “flight-readiness firing” of the bird’s main engines. The idea was to run the shuttle’s three main engines while the aircraft was attached to the launch pad. The engines would be lit and tested at various thrust values for a five-minute run. I thought this review should be carried out with extreme care, so we spent five hours looking at all the details. I was satisfied that we had considered all possible problems, so we decided to go ahead with the firing. The flight-readiness firing was performed five days later. As we watched on the television repeaters at NASA Headquarters, things seemed to go well. One problem was that after the firing, a high level of hydrogen was discovered in the aft end of the bird, where the three rocket engines were located. This was a serious matter. In early January, we had a long meeting to decide what to do about the hydrogen leak. My first point was simple: we would not fly Challenger until we found the source of the leak. This would delay the launch, but so be it. I had had experience with detecting hydrogen leaks while I was at MIT and at Livermore. The most sensitive instruments for this procedure were the so-called helium detectors, which substitute helium atoms for the hydrogen in the system and then trace back any leaked helium to its source. The leak was eventually discovered in a very inaccessible place, and it took more than a month to plug it. At a flight-readiness firing on March 13, a new serious problem arose: fatigue cracks in the turbine blades of the high-pressure fuel turbo­ pump. Milton Silveira thought that the flow inside the high-pressure pipes generated regions of turbulence and flow separation that caused high-frequency vibrations in the system, and these in turn might have led to the growth of cracks in the blades. He wanted to have the people at Ames look at the problem using computational fluid dynamics. This was a good suggestion, and I would try to implement it. Otherwise, there was the possibility of a catastrophic failure. Ultimately, we needed to develop a main engine that did not have the fluid flow problems of the current configuration. At the end of the Flight Readiness Review, we established a launch date for Challenger on or about April 1. One of the crew of four on Challenger’s first flight, Story Musgrave, was a medical doctor. After the fourth flight of Columbia, NASA decided to put medical people on later flights. The reason was space sickness. This was not part of a structured program; the human-spaceflight people at NASA Headquarters simply wanted to have some medical people aboard to observe the astronauts. The first flight of Challenger would be the first time that a medical doctor would conduct detailed physical examinations and draw blood samples from people in zero gravity.

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On April 1, I went to the Kennedy Space Center to attend the L-3 (three days before launch) review. I did not normally attend these meetings, because they dealt with the minutiae of launch procedures. But this flight was the first one for a new shuttle orbiter, and in addition we were launching the first Tracking Data Relay Satellite. It would become the first in a constellation to be used by both the military and the civilian sector. On Sunday, April 3, I was in the MOCR at the Johnson Space Center at five in the morning, and then followed the procedure to a flawless first launch of Challenger at twelve thirty. While driving to Hobby Airport shortly after the launch, I heard that there was a problem with the small control rockets mounted on the orbital maneuvering system’s rocket pods. As it turned out, this was easy to fix. In addition, I found out later that the inertial upper stage did not work properly, so the satellite was not put in the right orbit. From a strictly bureaucratic viewpoint, this one was not my problem. The operation of the IUS was an air force task. But I very much wanted it to be a successful element of the space shuttle program. A work-around was found, and eventually the IUS functioned properly. On the April 9, I watched Challenger come in for a landing at the Kennedy Space Center. It was a great ending for what turned out to be a very successful flight. On June 16, I flew to Houston to attend the Flight Readiness Review for STS-7, the second flight of Challenger. The next day was my fifty-fourth birthday, and fortunately there were no parties or celebrations—I was just not in the right mood. Too many problems remained unresolved, and I was worried about the longer term. For the first six flights, I had presided at these reviews, but Gerry Griffin felt that it would now be better for one of the people in Houston to perform that function. I agreed, but told him that I would continue to attend. The review was uneventful, but I did mention some general concerns I had about the status of the space shuttle’s main engines—namely, cracks in the high-pressure fuel pumps of several of the engines that had been flown. I told them that we ought to organize a team to look at this problem. Gerry wanted to reduce the number of people in the MOCR during each mission.To comply, I asked for a regular console to be established for me by converting a small telephone room on the front right side of the viewing room. Gerry agreed, so from then on I would sit alone, but my console would allow me to follow the action and to intervene if I thought it necessary. Challenger’s second flight attracted great public attention because it carried the first American woman to fly in space. Sally K. Ride was selected as the best candidate among the first six women trained as astronauts. A physicist who had earned a PhD at Stanford University in 1978, she was a good representative of the new astronauts being trained not only to fly the shuttle as pilots, but also to be mission specialists who would perform scientific experiments in space. In addition, this flight was the first to carry a crew of five.

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Challenger’s scheduled launch time was 6:33 a.m. on Saturday, June 18. To observe the countdown, I had to be at the MOCR by 3:30 in the morning. The only problem that I heard about concerned one of the auxiliary power units running a little too hot. This was an ongoing difficulty, but not something likely to hold up the launch. The countdown was one of the smoothest so far, and the great white bird took off exactly on time. I was still frightened every time we staged a launch. They were so complicated that we could not cover every contingency. On June 24, I returned to Houston to watch Challenger’s landing. When I arrived at the MOCR at about four in the morning, I learned that we were having problems. The weather at the Kennedy Space Center was bad, but improving. We tried to land twice, on the ninety-fifth and ninety-sixth orbits, on the runway there. Finally, we brought Challenger back to Earth, on its ninety-seventh orbit, on Rogers Dry Lake. It was the last opportunity on that particular day, and the next chance would not come for another couple of days. It was too bad that we had to skip landing at Kennedy, since a large crowd was waiting there to watch Challenger come home. STS-7 was a picture-perfect mission. Much of the credit for that success belonged to Bob Crippen, the mission commander—one of the very best in the astronaut corps. Crippen and his crew deployed three communications satellites. One amusing incident kept me fairly busy right after the launch of Challenger— the mission with the first American woman on board motivated NASA’s public affairs people to invite a large number of prominent women to observe the launch. Nearly everyone who watches a shuttle launch in person does so from the NASA Causeway, which runs across the Banana River (actually, a lagoon) from the mainland to Merritt Island, where the Kennedy Space Center is located. Upward of a million people have camped on this site to observe moon shots and shuttle launches. The causeway is about six miles away from launch pad 39A, the site of most shuttle launches. But there is also another viewing area: a grandstand that holds three hundred to four hundred people, located right next to the huge Vehicle Assembly Building. The grandstand is about two miles from the launch pad. To sit in the grandstand, a person must be invited by NASA. A day after the launch, the papers were full of pictures of people who attended. I looked at these cursorily, taking no notice of exactly who was there. Then Jim Beggs called me into his office. “We had a call from the White House,” he said as he handed me the morning paper.There on the front page was a picture of a group of people on the grandstand. One clearly recognizable face among the people there belonged to Jane Fonda. “Did we invite Jane Fonda to the launch?” Jim asked. “I don’t know, but I will find out,” I replied. “The people at the White House are hopping mad about this, so we better have a good explanation. Please find out what happened. There are a number of highly

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partisan folks in the White House. Get on top of this as soon as you can. I’ve got to go to a meeting down the hall, but you can interrupt me as soon as you have something.” I had never paid much attention to how the invitation list was decided on. I went down a floor to the office of Jack Murphy, the assistant administrator for external affairs. We spent half an hour going through the list of invitees in some detail. We could not find Jane Fonda’s name. I was reluctant to go back to Jim when all I could tell him was that we could not find her. I understood why the people in the White House were upset. Jane Fonda was not an admirable person. During the war in Vietnam, she went to Hanoi to encourage our enemies. It was a miserable performance. In addition, her personal behavior in other areas left much to be desired. While I was mulling over these thoughts, it occurred to me that there might have been other people in the grandstand who were not on the list. Each astronaut could invite ten people, so with a crew of five, there were fifty people whose names were not on the list. These names were confidential, so I called Gerry Griffin and asked him to take a look at the list. Gerry called back in about an hour and told me that Mr. and Mrs. Tom Hayden were on Sally Ride’s guest list. Tom Hayden’s wife at the time was Jane Fonda. This mystery was cleared up, but we still needed to know how and why it happened. Tom Hayden had been a prominent person in radical political movements during the 1960s and 1970s. He was a member of the Chicago Seven, who were charged with inciting the riots that disrupted the Democratic Party’s national convention in Chicago in 1968. He was also a founder of the most effective radical organization at the time, Students for a Democratic Society, and the author of the “Port Huron Statement,” which provided a plan for the radical political action. By 1982, Hayden had entered elective politics in California. That June he was the Democratic candidate for the California State Assembly in the 44th Assembly District, and he won the election in November. I reported what I knew to Jim Beggs, but I could not say any more, because the only person who knew how Hayden and Fonda wound up attending the launch was in Earth orbit. I counseled Jim to tell the White House people how Jane Fonda got into the grandstand and to wait for Challenger’s return to find out why it had happened. The story I heard from some of my friends at the JSC was that Sally’s father was a professor of political science at Santa Monica College. He thought that Tom Hayden would win the election in the fall and, according to my informant, persuaded Sally to invite Hayden. He apparently felt that it was an opportunity to make contact with someone who would be influential in the future, which would then help the college. I did not go any further, because it was not necessary to bother the Ride family with this piece of trivia.

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Defense against Ballistic Missiles and the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) Following the end of World War II, the threat of long-range airplanes carrying nuclear weapons became a major military concern. The nation’s response was to establish the North American Air Defense Command, which would operate a system of radar installations capable of detecting any hostile aircraft approaching the continent. This was the SAGE (Semi-Automatic Ground Environment) system, developed by a group at MIT that had created practical radar sets during the war. At the same time, the US Army was developing short-range missiles for shooting down bomber aircraft. Most of this work was managed from the Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Alabama. This was the Nike system, and hundreds of Nike rockets were deployed at many US sites. Finally, the air force developed a number of interceptor aircraft designed to shoot down incoming bombers. They were called the “Century” series aircraft, which began with the F-100, F-102, F-104, and F-106. By the mid-1950s, the first working ballistic missiles that could carry nuclear weapons had been successfully tested. These included the army’s medium-range Jupiter missile and the air force’s medium-range Thor missile, along with two intercontinental ballistic missiles, the Atlas and the Titan. All these were liquid-fuel rockets, which could not easily be kept on constant alert. To overcome this limitation, the air force and the navy began the development of solid-fuel rockets. Eventually, more than a thousand Minuteman missiles were deployed in remote areas of the nation. The air force kept these missiles on instant alert. The navy developed large solid-fuel missiles to be carried by the new nuclear-powered submarines. These were the Polaris missiles, which were first tested in 1958 on the USS George Washington, the first operational ballistic-missile submarine. It was one thing to develop a defense against aircraft, but ballistic missiles were harder to deal with.The technical problems associated with shooting down ballistic missiles in flight were daunting. Most of the scientific and technical community considered the problem too difficult to warrant mounting a full-scale effort to find a solution, although research work was strongly supported. The preponderant opinion was that the best way to deal with nuclear weapons was by the doctrine of mutually assured destruction. The Nixon administration sought to enshrine this doctrine by diplomatic means, and the result was the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM Treaty). This pact between the Soviet Union and the United States prohibited the development and deployment of antiballistic missiles that could shoot down “strategic” ballistic missiles. In this case, “strategic” referred to long-range nuclear-armed ballistic missiles capable of destroying a large city. The ABM Treaty was signed by Nixon and Brezhnev on May 26, 1972. In truth, Nixon signed the treaty primarily to help his reelection campaign. I was not happy with this treaty for several reasons. The treaty permitted limited deployments of point defenses of Washington, DC, and Moscow, and also for one

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field of a hundred strategic offensive missiles on each side. The latter provision would preserve the ability to launch a second strike, should either side mount a surprise attack. I thought that this provision favored the Soviets because they would be able to deploy such systems, whereas it would be impossible to do in this country because of objections from people living where these systems would be deployed. Another dangerous feature of the treaty was that it did not have an expiration date. The provision that really concerned me was the limit on the technologies that could be employed.The treaty prohibited the application of new technology to the construction of an ABM system. I thought that this provision was particularly disadvantageous to the United States. We were better than the Soviets at developing new technology, so we were giving up a major advantage. As discussed in an earlier chapter, I participated in the Argus experiment during my years at the Livermore Laboratory. It was an attempt to create a comprehensive system to destroy ballistic missiles’ electronic guidance and firing circuits that detonated the nuclear weapons. We demonstrated that we could inject energetically charged particles in the geomagnetic field, which could create the required radiation field. But the idea was abandoned when it was shown that transistor electronics could be easily made more resistant (or “hardened”) to high levels of ionizing radiation. The Argus project introduced me to the problems faced by the people working on a defense against ballistic missiles. Safeguard In 1965, while at Livermore, I was asked to join an advisory committee for the army’s project to develop a ballistic missile defense system. This project was based on the army’s Nike antiaircraft system, which had been developed as part of the SAGE system. By then, it had become apparent that ballistic missiles rather than airplanes would deliver nuclear weapons. The idea was to upgrade Nike rockets and their detection and guidance systems. The original name for the system was Nike-X, which was changed to Sentinel and then to Safeguard. The committee that I joined was a unit of about two hundred people based at the army’s White Sands Proving Ground near Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas. When the Nixon administration changed the name of the system to Safeguard, we became the advisory committee to the Safeguard System Evaluation Agency (SAFSEA). The committee was chaired by Robert Machol of Northwestern University. An expert on civil and systems engineering, he had a very strong record of practical achievements. The Safeguard system was a very complex, multi-billion-dollar affair. The army officer in charge was Lt. Gen. Alfred Dodd Starbird. I had met General Starbird several times during my years at Livermore and had developed a great respect for him. The Safeguard system had two layers. The first was designed to intercept incoming warheads at a high altitude (about 350 miles); it used a large rocket (the Spartan) carrying a six-megaton warhead. In 1970, we did not have the very accu-

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rate guidance systems necessary for the warhead to hit the target, so we relied on a very large explosive to do the job. The Spartan warhead was successfully tested with an underground detonation on Amchitka Island in the Aleutian Islands. The second layer was designed to hit the incoming warhead at some point in the upper atmosphere. A much smaller warhead, with a much smaller explosive yield—on the order of ten kilotons—was used for this phase. The warhead used a Sprint missile, which has a very large acceleration, on the order of one hundred g’s. This missile could maneuver in the atmosphere to find the incoming nuclear warhead when equipped with radar guidance capability from the ground. Safeguard used three radar systems. The first was a large phased array called the Perimeter Acquisition Radar (PAR). It was designed to detect hostile warheads coming over the horizon. When appropriate satellites became available, PAR received signals from the satellites in order to establish a more accurate trajectory of the incoming missile. PAR would hand over the tracking to the Missile Site Radars (MSR), which would guide the Spartan and Sprint missiles to their targets. Two radars in the MSR provided guidance for the missiles. One of the weaknesses of the Safeguard system was that the radars were very vulnerable to electromagnetic pulse radiation produced by nuclear explosions above Earth’s surface. A very large computer would control the engagement of the Spartan and Sprint missiles with the incoming warhead. It eventually became the largest computer ever built by using parallel architecture. Early in 1969, we were informed that President Nixon was thinking about deploying the Safeguard system. But there was a real problem: we had not yet tested the weaponized explosives for the Spartan and Sprint missiles. Bob Machol, along with two or three committee members, told the SAFSEA management that Safeguard was by no stretch of the imagination ready for deployment. We later prepared a detailed report explaining why deployment of the system should be delayed. The management apparently sent it to Huntsville without any changes. A couple of weeks later, Machol asked whether I would accompany him to Washington for a meeting with General Starbird. Apparently the general had read our report and had some questions. At our meeting, we answered a few technical questions, and then he came to the point. The president was impatient to make the deployment announcement. He wanted to sign an arms control agreement with the Soviets before the next presidential election. He could put pressure on the Soviets by telling them that we had an antimissile system ready, or almost ready, to deploy. Starbird wanted to know what the technical community would think if Nixon went ahead with his announcement. We told the general that eventually we could do something that might have military value, but we could not put a firm date on the initial operational capability (IOC). Starbird told us that our silence on the IOC would weaken his position when he met with the president. In addition, he was worried that our position would strengthen the hands of those in the American technical and scientific community

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who, for political reasons, were opposed to building a defense system. Second, if the president announced a deployment, he would not be able to answer questions about the IOC. On March 14, 1969, President Nixon made the decision to deploy the Safeguard missile defense system. There was much dismay among people who thought that a missile defense was destabilizing, but the reaction was confined to a relatively small group of activists. The president turned out to be right. The reaction of the Soviet leadership was clear. They thought that Safeguard could work. After some maneuvering, President Nixon signed the ABM Treaty in May 1972. In addition, he won the election in the fall of that year in a landslide. Although the decision to deploy the Safeguard antimissile system was made, very little hardware was ever built. During the following years, the United States continued to develop the Safeguard system, but within the strict limitations of the ABM Treaty. Many of us peripherally involved in the Safeguard program felt that the major weakness of the system was the use of nuclear explosives as the kill mechanism. Accordingly, a project was initiated to develop hit-to-kill technology. On June 10, 1984, the Homing Overlay Experiment (HOE) was initiated. It led to the first successful intercept of a dummy warhead carried by a ballistic missile above the atmosphere.The missile was launched by the air force at Vandenberg Air Force Base at a target located on Kwajalein Atoll in the central Pacific, six thousand miles away. The intercepting missile was launched from Meck Island in the atoll about twenty minutes after the ballistic missile launch. The interceptor struck the target warhead and destroyed it without using explosives or shrapnel.The combined kinetic energy of motion was enough to kill the missile. The HOE demonstration was criticized because it was “contrived” in such a way that the hit-to-kill was “easy” to achieve. I knew the criticism was frivolous; it had been a well-conducted, honest experiment. In addition, the HOE was criticized for violating the spirit, even if not the letter, of the ABM Treaty. My own feeling was that this objection was a legitimate political view and should be part of the debate about missile defense. Today, the creation of a ballistic missile defense is more important than ever because of the slow but steady proliferation of nuclear weapons around the world. An Anonymous Paper about Arms Control and Missile Defense When I assumed the position of deputy administrator of NASA, I did not think that I would have another opportunity to contribute to the ballistic missile defense program. And then on September 16, 1982, I attended an issues briefing at the Old Executive Office Building. Robert C. (Bud) McFarlane, the deputy national security advisor, was the principal speaker, and he provided a comprehensive briefing on the world situation as it affected US national security. At the end of the meeting, McFarlane sought me for a short conversation. Knowing that I had served in the

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Pentagon, he asked me whether I would be able to help him with some technical issues concerning arms control and nuclear weapons technology. I assented, and we left it at that. Two weeks later there was a meeting in the White House Situation Room. It was attended by senior staff members of the National Security Council; Bud McFarlane was again in the chair, and I was on the agenda. I presented NASA’s plans for space shuttle operations and the development of a space station.These proposals generated substantial debate, and I felt that the meeting was a warning that all would not be smooth sailing for NASA. At the end of the meeting, McFarlane took me aside and asked me to write a paper on nuclear weapons that would include arms control, future technological developments, and the prospects for the defense against nuclear warheads carried by ballistic missiles. I told him that my old friends from Livermore—Edward Teller, Lowell Wood, and several others—were trying to secure a meeting with the president in order to persuade him that new developments in nuclear weapons would make defense against ballistic missiles possible. McFarlane laughed and told me that was the reason why he wanted my paper: to get an independent view from someone who had been in the nuclear weapons business. And he knew that I was a friend of  Teller and was familiar with his proposals. I should explain why McFarlane specifically mentioned Lowell Wood. Lowell joined the Livermore Laboratory in 1960, when I was still a member of the staff. I met him a few times, and I was very impressed. As a graduate student at UCLA, he had worked with the Nobel laureate Willard Libby. He soon attracted Edward Teller’s attention, and by 1969 he was Teller’s academic assistant at Livermore, the same post that I had held fifteen year earlier. By the mid-1970s, Lowell had achieved a prominent reputation as someone with a fine, innovative mind and a strong personality. In 1970, Teller had been named associate director for physics in the Office of the Director. He persuaded Roger Batzel, the laboratory director, to let Lowell establish the Special Studies Group, which was attached to his office. Teller hoped Lowell would be his successor as associate director for physics, but the laboratory’s management balked at this. John Nuckolls, a respected longtime Livermore staff member, eventually got the job. Lowell remained the leader of O-Group and reported directly to Teller, who took emeritus status but nonetheless stayed active at the laboratory. Under Lowell’s leadership, O-Group developed into a highly elite assemblage. The focus of O-Group was to develop a space-based system for shooting down ballistic missiles.The Argus program established something of a tradition of looking at “global” defense systems, and this was still an important factor. The thinking among the newer people in O-Group—Lowell Wood, George Chapline, and Tom Weaver—was to do something with a nuclear explosive, something they were all familiar with. The solution came from a newcomer in 1975, Peter Hagelstein, who

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arrived at Livermore from MIT. He was very interested in developing an X-ray laser, an ambitious goal, since in 1975 no one knew how to build one. A brilliant Livermore scientist, Hagelstein developed a computer code that could find pairs of quantum states in atoms that could then be manipulated to become a laser. Once he discovered such pairs, the first part of the problem was solved. The second question was how to “pump” the lasing material in order to produce a good, coherent beam. The answer was to use a nuclear explosive. The energy of a nuclear explosion is emitted mostly in the form of X-rays in roughly the same wavelength region as that of Hagelstein’s laser-producing energy states. Materials that had such energy states would be formed into the long straight rods that would be pumped by the nuclear explosion. The pumping process in turn creates a large number of excited states inside the rods, which then emit powerful, coherent laser beams capable of destroying hard targets. It is important to note that the sequence of effects described in this paragraph occurs in the first few nanoseconds after the detonation of the nuclear device. The combination of fifty to one hundred of Hagelstein’s laser rods and a nuclear device capable of pumping them in an instant led to a preliminary antimissile weapon system named Excalibur. Thomas Weaver, a senior member of O-Group, was given the job of engineering a satellite that from Earth orbit could use laser beams to shoot down missiles launched from the ground. Livermore conducted four tests to see whether Weaver’s nuclear explosive could make Hagelstein’s laser intense enough to destroy a missile. The results were ambiguous. The laser worked but was not remotely intense enough to be of military value.This meant that many years of work would be necessary before one could think of developing a practical weapon. In addition, the satellites containing the laser rods and the nuclear devices would be vulnerable to being shot down, even if the lasers could be made lethal. An aggressor could launch antisatellite vehicles and destroy the defensive satellites before launching ICBMs against a defender’s targets. There were several other suggestions about how the laser rods could be deployed in Earth orbit in time to shoot down incoming ICBMs. Edward Teller thought that if the defensive missiles were carried on our large submarines, we could “pop up” the defensive missiles once the aggressor’s missiles were detected. Others argued that it would be better to store the defensive systems in higher orbits, using stealth technology to hide them. All this would require many years of research before anything of value could be produced. Investigating the problems concerning the laser, fire control, and vehicle placement would require time, and the results could not be anticipated. Accordingly, the Defense Department canceled the program. I agreed to write the paper for McFarlane, but told him that it would describe my own views on missile defense and other nuclear weapons matters. I would keep the paper technical and also comment on other missile-defense proposals. McFarlane had a few stipulations of his own: I was not to tell anyone that I was

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working on this for him, and I could not put my name on the paper. He had asked some other people to advise him as well, and he wanted anonymity. Finally, he told me that my contact in the White House would be Lt. Col. Gilbert D. Rye of the air force, who was on the National Security Council staff. This was good news for me because Gil Rye had worked as a staff member of the secretary of the air force during my service from 1979 to 1981, so I knew that he was exceedingly competent. By late January 1983, I had not yet finished the paper, and McFarlane told me that its delivery was now urgent. I would have to find time to finish it. On February 7, 1983, there was a meeting at the White House to celebrate the two hundredth anniversary of the first flight of a hot air balloon, which was done by the Montgolfier brothers in France. President Reagan spoke, mentioning the anniversary of the Montgolfiers’ achievement and stressing the importance of vision in the development of technology. But the topic he most wanted to discuss was the nuclear freeze movement. He reminded us that during the prior summer as many as a million supporters of the movement had gathered in Central Park. The president was very concerned about this development because, given the current state of our relations with the Soviets, we had to have an arsenal of nuclear weapons. He was especially concerned by the vote in the House of Representatives in rejecting a motion to adopt the freeze, which was much too close for comfort (204 to 202 against the freeze motion). The president went on to say that in his experience, any vote that close would be repeated and could easily come out the other way. The extremely close House vote against the freeze movement was worrisome, but another development was even more troubling. The president said that Archbishop Joseph Bernardin of Chicago was circulating the draft of a pastoral letter among the members of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, suggesting that the military doctrine of mutually assured destruction, under which our nuclear forces were deployed, was immoral. The archbishop’s letter pointed out that the doctrine required people to live in fear, and people should not have to live in fear forever. That, Bernardin’s letter stated, was why the doctrine was immoral. President Regan said that the bishops were right. People should not have to live in fear forever, and we should try to do something about it. He did not mention the development of defenses against ballistic missiles, which was still a “close hold” item at the time. But he appealed to our imaginations to see what could be done. After the end of the meeting, I sought out Jay Keyworth, the president’s national science adviser, for a short conversation. He told me that Edward Teller, Lowell Wood, and some others from Livermore had met with the president to discuss means of developing a defense against ballistic missiles. They made some claims about X-ray lasers driven by nuclear weapons. I laughed and asked whether we were back to the old competition between Livermore and Los Alamos (where Jay had led the Physics Division), and Jay laughed with me. I told him that I was work-

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ing with some of my friends on the creation of tables of atomic wave functions calculated by both more accurate formulations and better computers than had been used previously. I thought it very probable that there were pairs of atomic energy levels that were candidates for stimulated emissions in the wavelength region necessary to create an X-ray laser. But I also thought that turning this scientific fact into a weapon was not feasible on any time scale of practical interest. Finally, I told Jay that Livermore had a long record of thinking about and even working in the field of missile defense, so it was perhaps valuable for Edward and Lowell to talk to the president about it. On March 9, I gave Bud McFarlane and Gil Rye a draft of my paper, which ran to thirty pages. A few days later, Gil and I settled on the final version. I never mentioned the existence of the paper in my diary because the paper was “close hold.” On the bottom of the last page of my yellowed copy of the paper, it gives the time and place: “February 1983, Washington, DC.” I made four recommendations: • We had to continue to seek genuine arms control agreements with the Soviets that limited and reduced the deployment of nuclear weapons of all kinds and provided for adequate verification measures. It was important to recognize that treaties limiting deployments were much more likely to be to the advantage of the United States than those that limited testing or development. The Soviets could easily outspend us to deploy weapons, but they were not our equals in the development of new technology. Thus, we had to maintain the freedom to stay at the forefront of new developments and to make the necessary investments to retain this technological lead. • We had to avoid entering into any arms control agreements with the Soviet Union or any other country that limited the development or, in some cases, the testing of any weapons based on new technology. This was especially true of nonnuclear antiballistic missile systems and high-intensity lasers. It was not possible to monitor and verify the development process adequately, and the testing of these new weapons systems could, in many cases, be successfully hidden. • We had to vigorously pursue technologies that would lead to the creation of defensive systems against nuclear ballistic missiles. Since it was likely that not only the USSR but also other technologically advanced nations would develop such systems, we had to try to maintain our advantage in order to be able to judge the viability of these weapons as accurately as possible. • We had to begin to examine carefully what kinds of international arrangements would be most advantageous to the United States if the doctrine of mutually assured destruction became unsustainable because of new technical developments.

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President Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) On March 23, 1983, President Reagan delivered a comprehensive speech on national security. At the end, he put forward the following proposition: “Up until now, we have increasingly based our strategy of deterrence upon the threat of retaliation. But what if free people could live secure in the knowledge that their security did not rest upon the threat of an instant US retaliation to deter a Soviet attack, that we could destroy strategic ballistic missiles before they reached our own soil or that of our allies?” Then he explained how the existence of a defensive system would affect our friends and allies around the world: As we pursue our goal of defensive technologies [against nuclear weapons], we recognize that our allies rely upon our strategic offensive power to deter attacks against them.Their vital interests and ours are inextricably linked.Their safety and ours are one. . . . I clearly recognize that defensive systems have limitations and raise certain problems and ambiguities. If paired with offensive systems, they can be viewed as fostering an aggressive policy, and no one wants that. But with these considerations firmly in mind, I call upon the scientific community in our country, those who gave us nuclear weapons, to turn their great talents now to the cause of mankind and world peace, to give us the means of rendering these nuclear weapons impotent and obsolete. Tonight, consistent with our obligations of the ABM Treaty and recognizing the need for closer consultation with our allies, I’m taking an important first step. I am directing a comprehensive and intensive effort to define a long-term research and development program to begin to achieve our ultimate goal of eliminating the threat posed by strategic nuclear missiles. This could pave the way for arms control measures to eliminate the weapons themselves. We seek neither military superiority nor political advantage. Our only purpose—one all people share—is to search for ways to reduce the danger of nuclear war. My fellow Americans, tonight we’re launching an effort which holds the promise of changing the course of human history. There will be risks, and results take time. But I believe we can do it. As we cross this threshold, I ask for your prayers and your support.

I was delighted by what the president said concerning defense against ballistic missiles. He not only called for the development of missile defense, but also recognized that arms control agreements would have to be adjusted. My only quibble with the text was the statement that we would be “rendering these nuclear weapons impotent and obsolete.” This was impossible; even with a defensive system, the weapons would continue to exist. The next day, Gil Rye told me that he had helped draft the final portion of the president’s speech and that he found my paper useful. In my diary, I noted that “this

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is the first time in six years in Washington that a president has picked up something that I have written.” I also asked Gil how the phrase “impotent and obsolete” got into the speech; it was clearly an exaggeration. Gil thought that it came from the White House Press Office—someone there felt that the speech would not appear on page 1 of the Washington Post without some “really jazzy” quotes. The proposal to shoot down nuclear-armed missiles, which did make page 1, was quickly labeled “Star Wars” by the press, even though the space-based defensive system that my Livermore friends advocated was never mentioned in the speech. In the days following the speech, there was an uproar in the press about “Star Wars.” Critics leveled accusations of “destroying the strategic balance” and ridiculed the technical feasibility of missile defense.The scientific community was likewise adamant in its opposition to the president’s proposal. There was an ongoing, lengthy debate on this matter through the end of the Cold War, and I participated in it as best I could by stressing the importance of missile defense. Since the end of the Cold War, circumstances have changed. Defenses against ballistic missiles of many kinds have been successfully tested. On January 25, 2002, I had the privilege of being aboard the USS Lake Erie for the first successful hit-to-kill intercept of a medium-range (two-thousand-mile) ballistic missile. Some forty successful missile intercepts under a variety of circumstances have been conducted since 2002, including scenarios much more sophisticated than the one I witnessed. For example, intercepts with maneuvering target missiles have been shot down, as have missiles carrying decoys. As a result, about ten Aegis-equipped ships have become integral parts of ballistic missile defense, and in 2012 about half were on station in the Sea of Japan and the Persian Gulf. I am grateful to the Good Lord for letting me live long enough to see that defense against ballistic missiles is now an accepted part of our defensive preparations.

Enterprise in Europe In the spring of 1983 I attended a cocktail party at the German Embassy. This was one of the “grinning parties” that were part of the work of diplomats. While I was standing around and looking for someone to talk to, I overheard a conversation between two young embassy staffers. They were discussing, in German, that fact that 1983 was the three hundredth anniversary of the first German settlement in what is now central Pennsylvania. Much more interestingly, one young gentleman asked the other: “How are the negotiations coming along with NASA to have them bring the Enterprise to Cologne?” “The prospects look quite good,” the other replied. Upon hearing this exchange, I edged over to the young fellows and asked them, in German, about the idea of flying Enterprise to Europe on top of the Shuttle Carrier Aircraft. The two young gentlemen clearly did not know who I was, but my

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name tag identified me as “Hans Mark,” giving them the idea that I was German. Both of them relaxed and told me that the negotiations were well along and that there would probably be a positive result. I had heard nothing at all about this matter at NASA Headquarters, so there was no doubt a requirement for secrecy. I really wanted to go along on the trip if it was indeed in the works. Assuming that the matter was still secret at NASA, I decided to see Gerry Helman at the State Department. We had developed a good relationship during UNISPACE 82. On May 4, I told him about the conversation I had overheard and asked him what was going on. He was a little surprised that I did not know. He told me that the Germans had made the proposal. Since the first Germans had come to Pennsylvania from the Rhineland area in 1683, a group of people from Cologne had suggested that the space shuttle Enterprise visit the Rhineland. I asked Gerry about the secrecy, and he told me that it was necessary. If the negotiations became public, the French, Italians, British, and others would want to be included. Because the visit was a German initiative, a deal had to be made with them before others were considered. I asked Gerry to recommend to the NASA management that I be the one to lead the trip. A couple of days later, Jim Beggs told me that I should speak with Ken Pedersen, who was in charge of the negotiations. It was quickly decided that I would lead the expedition.To get some advice on how to handle things, I went to see Richard Allen. He had briefly been national security advisor to President Reagan, but had been forced out of office because of an indiscreet incident. He was available to people who needed high-level advice but could not reach those who had the authority to make decisions. Allen knew about the project and thought that it was an excellent idea. He said that once the deal was cut, we should take the initiative and contact Britain, Italy, and specifically France about taking the shuttle to those countries. Such a move, in his opinion, could have very positive results. In addition, he pointed out that since the Paris Air Show would be going on at the same time, we should think about taking the space shuttle to Le Bourget. The flight of Enterprise to Europe was a fairly complex operation. Unlike the other shuttles, Enterprise had no rocket engines; it was designed to fly only in the atmosphere. Enterprise was used to develop the procedures by which a space shuttle could perform a dead-stick landing (that is, a landing made without power) from Earth orbit. That maneuver would have to be done safely on every flight. Enterprise was transported on the back of a large Boeing 747 called the Shuttle Carrier Aircraft (SCA). The Enterprise-SCA combination could not fly very fast or very high, but it was high enough and fast enough to release the Enterprise so that it could make a gliding flight to the ground. Enterprise was based at the Dryden Flight Research Center, which was adjacent to Rogers Dry Lake.The Enterprise-SCA combination would take off from Rogers Dry Lake, make two stops in the continental United States, and make a final stop in

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the Western Hemisphere in Gander, Newfoundland. From there, the combination would fly to Reykjavik, Iceland, and then on to RAF Fairford, a base about thirty miles north of London. Bun and I took a commercial flight to Heathrow Airport and then drove to Fairford in an embassy car. We arrived at Fairford at about eleven thirty. The base is very large, and a wing (twenty-four aircraft) of Boeing B-52s, along with the necessary complement of Boeing KC-135 tankers, was stationed there. A huge crowd of people waited outside the airfield fence. The schedule of the Enterprise-SCA had been kept secret precisely in order to avoid situations such as this one, which would delay our schedule, but someone had leaked the information. To be honest, I was secretly pleased that so many people were there to see us. It was a harbinger of a successful trip. The Enterprise-SCA arrived about an hour after we did. The pilot had the good sense to fly in a circle over the crowd twice so that everyone could get a good look at the vehicle. Standing on the tarmac, we had a good view, and it was indeed an awesome sight to see the bird fly. Because of the large number of people present, we had to spend an extra hour and a half meeting local leaders who had come to welcome us. As the Enterprise-SCA rolled down the runway, the pilots put a Union Jack out the window on one side of the flight deck and the American flag out the other. This gesture elicited a huge cheer from the crowd. At the edge of the tarmac, the stairway was rolled to the exit door of the SCA and Col. Larry Griffin stepped out. He was the senior officer on the flight. Bun and I climbed the stairs, waved to the crowd, and went in to prepare for takeoff. The pilots aboard the plane were Joe Algranti and Tom McMurtry, who were test pilots from Dryden, and Richard Scobee, an astronaut. Also on board was astronaut Karol Bobko and his wife. We took off from RAF Fairford at about three in the afternoon. It was a twohour flight to Cologne. Since at that time of year sunset in northern Europe is at about nine, there would be time for us to fly down the Rhine River from Basel to Cologne. This leg of the journey was exhilarating. The roads and bridges on both sides of the river were jammed with people who had come out to see us. We flew two circles around the Bonn-Cologne airport, landed, and put out the German and the American flags from the cockpit. Once again there was a huge cheer from the crowd. We later discovered that seventeen thousand people had watched us land. As soon as we landed, our diplomatic job began. Two senior officials from the German technological establishment were there to meet us—Wolfgang Finke and Herman Strub. Finke was the senior civil servant in the Ministry of Science and Technology, and Strub was his deputy. I had met both of these gentlemen when I went to Bremen to accept the first Spacelab modules (see chapter 13). Finke introduced me to Heinz Riesenhuber, who was the minister of science and technology.

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After shaking hands, he took a few papers out of his pocket and delivered a lengthy prepared statement that stressed the importance of technology development and the equal importance of close collaboration between Germany and the United States. He mentioned the three hundredth anniversary of a German settlement in Pennsylvania. I did not have a prepared statement, so I used a theatrical trick of which I was slightly ashamed. I began my ad lib remarks in English, and then switched to German and told the audience that I was born in Mannheim, seventy miles up the river, and that I was glad to be back. I then continued in German to talk about how much we who delivered the space shuttle owed to the German scientists and engineers who had laid the groundwork for the science of aerodynamics. I talked about Ludwig Prandtl, Theodor von Kármán, Hermann Oberth, and others. I told them that I thought it appropriate that the first public landing of the space shuttle outside the United States was in Germany. I was met with rousing applause after I finished. The next day, May 21, was a Saturday. The Enterprise-SCA was on display at the airport. People could walk around it, take pictures, and look at the exhibits we had brought with us. We did some interviews with print, television, and radio reporters. At a formal press conference, I made some brief remarks and answered some questions. One particularly aggressive reporter, Helmut Rywalski, asked me about weapons in space. He also wanted to know how the space shuttle could be used to capture another nation’s satellites. I told him that we had no weapons in space, nor had we captured any other nation’s satellites. Then, following Gerry Helman’s advice for dealing with hostile questions, I went on the offensive. I asked Rywalski whether he had ever been invited to a Russian space launch or allowed to visit a Russian launch site or seen a Russian launch vehicle. He tried to claim that I was changing the subject, so I changed it even more explicitly by asking whether he had read his own newspaper’s stories about the Soviets’ antisatellite tests. I asked whether he had ever visited the Soviet Union to see what went on in their space facilities. I invited him to visit the Kennedy Space Center, NASA’s treat. At that, he left the room. I received some cheers from the other newspeople in the room. The next event was more benign. Our embassy (which in 1983 was in Bonn, then the capital of West Germany) had arranged for all the scientific attachés of the foreign embassies to visit the Enterprise-SCA. A passenger 747 had a first-class section underneath the raised flight deck. In the SCA, all the seats in the aircraft were removed except for the forty in the first-class section. When the scientific attachés arrived in a large bus, Bun, Karol Bobko, his wife, and I received them. There were about twenty attachés, and about half had their wives with them. Bun and I led the group up the stairs and showed them the inside of the SCA. Except for the first-class seats, it was empty. The cavernous space made an awesome sight. After everyone was settled in the first-class seats, I delivered a lecture on the fifth flight of Columbia, the first “operational” shuttle mission. It was

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well received. In the question-and-answer period, I noticed that there were no representatives from nations behind the Iron Curtain. I knew that they had accepted invitations to attend. I was told afterwards that they had rescinded their acceptances on orders from Moscow. The Cold War was alive and well. The next day, we expected a big crowd at the airport to view the Enterprise-SCA, but we were not prepared to be completely engulfed as soon as the airport gates were opened. People poured in. At the end of the day, the police reported that more than a hundred thousand people had viewed Enterprise. Both Karol and I were overwhelmed. I spent the day talking to visitors. Karol and I wore our NASA flight jackets, which made us the center of attention. The fact that I spoke German was important. Many people were surprised by that, and several thought I was a German imposter who had somehow acquired a NASA jacket! The German people seemed overwhelmingly interested in NASA and very pro-American. The next day was a holiday, so we again expected huge crowds at the airport. Sure enough, a record 150,000 people came to visit. Karol Bobko and I had our hands full with delivering lectures to groups of schoolchildren and showing a film of Challenger’s maiden flight. At about three we went back to the hotel to watch the television coverage of the events at the airport. In the evening there was a nice dinner party hosted by the US chargé d’affaires, the number three man in the embassy. The ambassador’s job was vacant at the time, and the deputy chief of mission, the number two, was away on a trip. At the Bonn-Cologne airport the next day before our flight to Paris, I presented local officials with a German flag that had been flown in space. The trip to Paris took about an hour. At Le Bourget, we taxied past the static aircraft display and the chalets that housed delegations of aerospace manufacturers and the larger national pavilions. Joe Algranti had been ordered to a relatively remote tarmac, where a small welcoming party was waiting for us. There were no large crowds or speeches, but this was expected because the crowd was focused on the air show. The welcome party was headed by Serge Dassault (the son of Marcel Dassault, a distinguished French aircraft designer and executive) and Michel Bignier, the head of the European Space Agency’s flight program. NASA was represented by Richard (Dick) Barnes, the NASA representative in Paris, and Jim McCulla and Debbie Hahn from the public affairs office at NASA Headquarters. There were also representatives from the US Embassy and from the office of the mayor of Paris. After the greetings, we were whisked away to a hall in the airport where the Paris trade press was waiting. During our ride to the press conference, Dick Barnes told us that two main topics would be raised. First was the coming competition between the space shuttle and the Ariane, a large Delta-sized launch vehicle being developed by the National Center for Space Studies and the ESA. The second was that the prefect of police in Paris had forbidden the Enterprise-SCA to fly over the city. Dick handed me a copy of the prefect’s letter forbidding flight over a large area marked on an attached map.

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The first question at the press conference was posed by an NBC reporter, who nastily asked, “Fifty-six years ago, Charles Lindbergh flew over Paris with huge crowds waiting for him. Why can’t you overfly Paris the way Lindbergh did in 1927?” Having been prepared for the question by Dick, I said, “Things have changed. There are now air traffic rules, and these have to be obeyed. Safety must come first.” “That’s not good enough. They could modify the rules for a day or two!” continued the reporter. Then I had an inspiration. I took the police prefect’s letter out of my pocket. His message was simple. He quoted the safety rule and promised that it would be enforced. I read the letter to the assembled reporters, first in French and then translated into English. That was my answer. The press conference continued with a number of questions about the air show, the Ariane–space shuttle competition, and a few other technical matters. With respect to the competition, I said that I welcomed it because the contest would make each side better. In this, I was supported by a strong statement by M. Bignier. After the press conference, we were driven to Paris in an embassy car. We arrived just in time for lunch in the embassy dining room. In the afternoon, Bun and I went on a sightseeing tour in an embassy car with a very personable young driver. We started with Notre-Dame, the Gothic cathedral located on the Ile de la Cité, where, legend has it, Paris was founded. Then it was over to Montmartre to see Sacré-Coeur, the other great cathedral in Paris (Byzantine rather than Gothic in style). We drove along the Champs-Élysées, and by the Louvre and the Tour Eiffel. At about five we arrived at our hotel, the Atala, a fine boutique hostelry on the Rue Chateaubriand. We had a good dinner at the hotel and then watched the TV coverage of the Enterprise-SCA at Le Bourget. The report was good; there was even a shot of the press conference. We spent the next day sightseeing, and at four that afternoon, I spoke to the ambassador’s staff. Evan Galbraith, the US ambassador to France at the time, was back in town from a trip, and about fifteen senior embassy staffers were in attendance. I talked about NASA and our objectives and then showed the film of Challenger’s maiden flight. After the lecture, the ambassador and his staff asked some good, sharp questions. The conference room was a secure facility, so I could also explain some of NASA’s applications to national security. In the evening, Dick and Helena Barnes hosted a party at the embassy for all the NASA people attending the air show. At some point, Dick told me that the prefect of police had rescinded his earlier order, so the Enterprise-SCA could now overfly Paris. I asked him why he gave way, and Dick laughed: “It was your reading of the prefect’s letter in French at the press conference! It turns out that the press conference was televised, and reading the letter resulted in an avalanche of telephone calls to the prefect’s office. They told me that the telephone lines were jammed for sev-

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eral hours!” Then he showed me the letter: a single sentence rescinding the earlier order. So we had quite inadvertently made it possible for the citizens of Paris to see the Enterprise-SCA fly over the Eiffel Tower. May 26 was press day at Le Bourget. At the main US pavilion, Jim Abrahamson and I were the principal respondents at the press conference. Most of the questions were softballs. After about ten minutes, we invited the astronauts in our group to take our places. Karol Bobko, Bill Lenoir, and Donald Peterson were ready to field questions. The astronauts were questioned in detail, and they were the hit of the show. After the press conference, we went over to the Soviet pavilion for a visit. There was a good but relatively small exhibit. Jim and I tried to draw the Soviets into conversations, but we never got beyond pleasantries. Later at the Boeing chalet, we were told that the Quiet Short-Haul Research Aircraft (QSRA) was at the show. I was pleased; we had developed the QSRA—a modified de Havilland Twin Otter—at Ames. The air show officially began the next day. The president of France, François Mitterrand, opened the event. The plan was for me to stand in front of the Enterprise-SCA, which had been brought to the area where the static displays were located. The Ariane rocket was right across the street. The schedule called for Mitterrand to stop first at the Enterprise-SCA and for me to receive him and show him around. He would then cross the street to see the Ariane. There was a great traffic jam on the way to Le Bourget, and I was afraid that we would be too late to greet the president. As things transpired, Mitterrand arrived about three-quarters of an hour late. His car moved slowly down the street, but when it turned, it did not turn toward the shuttle, but rather toward the Ariane. I guessed that because of the delay in his arrival, his people had suggested that he skip the visit to the Enterprise-SCA.Taking matters into my own hands, I told our people to stay put and then elbowed my way through the crowd to President Mitterrand. During a break in his conversation with the Ariane people, I stepped up to the president and introduced myself in my fractured French. Fortunately, the president’s brother, General Jacques Mitterrand, was standing next to him. He was the former CEO of Aerospatiale, so he knew who I was. I could drop my French and ask General Mitterrand (in English) to come across the street to meet our people and see the Enterprise-SCA. He assented, and so the president and his brother walked across the street to meet the NASA group. Someone gave me a NASA lapel pin, which I presented to the president, who promptly put it on. Then there was a photo opportunity for the press, and I tried to maneuver the president so that the shuttle would be in the background of the picture. I do not know whether any of the pictures that I tried to arrange ever saw the light of day. The visit by President Mitterrand ended with smiles and handshakes all around.

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After Mitterrand left, we received word that Sen. John Tower and his wife had arrived at the US pavilion. The senator was President Reagan’s personal representative, so we had to make sure that he knew the drill at the air show and that there would be no slips. I had worked with Tower when I was in the Pentagon and he was chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. He was a smart and effective senator with a good sense of humor. He was also a short man, maybe five six. His favorite response to a greeting was “My name is Tower, but I don’t.” After we greeted the senator and his companions, we went to the US pavilion for the ribbon cutting that would open the building for people interested in what was going on in the US aerospace business. Since the pavilion was run by the Commerce Department, a deputy assistant secretary of commerce was there to help Senator Tower cut the ribbon. There was a very well-prepared exhibit by major US contractors, and on the second floor there was a nice restaurant. After having lunch there, Bun and I went over for a short visit to the Soviet pavilion. We tried to strike up conversations with people, but it was very difficult. The men tended to wear square suits, and Bun said that they reminded her of the plug-uglies in the old gangster movies. Later in the afternoon, we returned to Paris to attend a reception at the Hotel Crillon hosted by MBB (Messerschmitt-Bölkow-Blohm), a large German aerospace company. Interestingly, the senior German representative at the air show was a major political figure. This was Franz-Josef Strauss, the minister president (i.e., governor) of Bavaria. Strauss was a pillar of the ruling conservative party. We had a short conversation, and he perked up when I spoke German with a Viennese accent. I told him about NASA’s contracts with MBB in Munich and Ludwigshafen for America’s space and aeronautics programs. He was very pleased to hear this and asked me to call him when I was next in Munich. At the end of our conversation, I gave him a NASA pin, which he immediately put on—he laughed when I told him that President Mitterrand had done the same thing. We had word that the Enterprise-SCA would fly in a circle over the city, following the Paris peripherique—the ring road round Paris—at about this time. Sure enough, the Enterprise-SCA, now called La Navette (the shuttle) by Parisians, showed up, and as luck would have it, the Eiffel Tower could be seen from the balcony where we were standing. From my view, La Navette flew right over the top of the tower. It was a grand sight! May 28 was another banner day at Le Bourget. We had been invited to stay at the MBB chalet for the afternoon. Shortly after we arrived, Dick Barnes called to tell me that a decision had been made to send the Enterprise-SCA to Italy. There had been strong pressure from some congressional people to visit Rome. In anticipation of this, I had already decided not go; it would be more useful for me to shore up the situation in Germany and work on Spacelab-related efforts. While I was thinking about this, a murmur went through the crowd in the chalet. The Enterprise-SCA appeared at the end of the runway and began slowly gathering

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speed. The vehicle lifted off the ground just as it passed the MBB chalet. Bun and I decided to wait until the flight was complete so that we could watch the landing. More than two hundred thousand people visited the Paris Air Show that day. On Sunday, Bun and I drove to Bonn and discovered that the Rhine was in flood. We stayed at the Steigenberger hotel in Bonn, since the basement and the ground floor of the Rhine Hotel Dreesen were underwater. I spent the morning in meetings at the main German aerospace research center. In the afternoon, I received a message that the US secretary of defense, Caspar Weinberger, was staying at the same hotel.There would be a press conference at six, and I was invited to attend. At the time, there was serious controversy about the deployment of US Pershing missiles in Europe. At the press conference, Weinberger explained why he was there and made an eloquent argument about why the deployment of the Pershing missiles was important to match the deployment of Soviet SS-20s in Europe. One reporter asked Weinberger: “There is a large ‘peace movement’ in the United States. Please tell us what you think about it?” “It is an excellent movement, and President Reagan and I are the leaders,” Weinberger replied. There was laughter in the audience, and Weinberger continued: “I am serious. Both the president and I are devoted to peace, and we are maintaining a military force that will keep the peace.” This time cheers came from the audience. The newsman who had asked the question was reduced to blustering about being “misunderstood.” At the end of the press conference, I stood up and congratulated Weinberger on his handling of the situation, and we received another hearty round of applause. The next day was given over to lectures. I delivered one at the US Embassy and another at the main German aerospace research center. A third lecture was triggered by my election as a corresponding member of the DGLR (Deutsche Gessellschaft für Luft und Raumfahrt, a private organization essentially equivalent to the American Institute for Aeronautics and Astronautics). This was an honor awarded to respected foreigners. In this speech I discussed German achievements in the aerospace industry, astronomy, and science in general. After the lecture, there was a lovely dinner at a fine restaurant called Tulpenfeld (“tulip field”). The next day we drove to Bremen, a four-hour trip. This visit was intended as a repeat look at work on the Spacelab—its first mission was scheduled for later in the year—and also as a chance to check on other projects. One of these was a project called EXOSAT, which was an X-ray astronomy satellite. Because of my own work and continuing interest in the field, I really enjoyed this particular briefing; the progress being made was encouraging. Other longer-range programs had to do with orbital transfer vehicles and large free-flying platforms that would be part of the space station constellation once it was deployed. On June 2, we flew to Munich for visits to the MBB factory and the Dornier Company. Dornier is located in Friedrichshafen on Lake Constance (Bodensee, the

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Austrians call it). In 1914, Claudius Dornier established the company as an aircraft manufacturing operation specializing in seaplanes and flying boats. The Dornier Company had two important NASA contracts. One project, jointly developed with the ESA, was called the International Solar Polar Mission, for which Dornier was the prime contractor. We examined the engineering prototype, and it was an impressive piece of work. The ISPM was launched in 1990 and turned out to be very successful at surveying the sun and several comets. The second program, the Instrument Pointing System, was more troublesome. It was intended for use on one of the Spacelab platforms to help telescopes, magnetometers, and cameras point more accurately. Dornier did not meet NASA’s specifications, so after many warnings, we canceled the contract and stopped payment. To its credit, Dornier finished the project on its own. One of my tasks was to see whether the system worked and whether Dornier could take the next step. If both those conditions were met, we might decide to buy the project after all. I was pleased with the progress that the company had made, but we decided to wait until we got home to make a decision. The events at Dornier were over at about three, and we had to start our drive to Paris if we were to rejoin the Enterprise-SCA on June 5. We had rented a Ford Escort for the drive, which would cover more than 1,000 kilometers (620 miles). We arrived in Zurich at about seven and stayed in a motel. On Saturday we had to drive 727 kilometers (450 miles) to get to Paris in time for the flight home on Sunday. Fortunately, we made good time on the drive. On the drive to Le Bourget the next morning, we gave Dick Barnes a short briefing on our trip to Germany.We went to the French chalet to await our departure. Jacques Mitterrand and Serge Dassault were both there, along with a number of other senior people. We gave everyone NASA lapel pins, and I presented an American flag to Dassault. He told me that attendance at the 1983 Paris Air Show was the largest ever. There was a general feeling that La Navette Enterprise was responsible for that record. We boarded the SCA and took off promptly at 1:20 p.m. We flew north to Belgium; made passes over Charleroi, Brussels, and Antwerp; and then made a circle around Amsterdam, all the time flying at three thousand feet. We then turned west and headed for the Thames Estuary. A fog bank over the estuary made it hard to see the ground. Our instructions were to fly up the Thames at three thousand feet until we got near Heathrow. There we would use Heathrow’s radio navigation to set a course for Stansted Airfield, about forty miles north of London. As things turned out, we altered our instructions just a bit. About halfway to Heathrow, we had a call from the Heathrow tower. Joe Algranti left the flight deck and relayed the message: “The queen is at Windsor Castle, and she and her family would like to see us. The tower will give us permission to go down to two thousand feet.”

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“OK,” I said, and Joe went back to the flight deck. Slowly the Enterprise-SCA descended, and we then made two circles around Windsor Castle, which was just to the right of the Heathrow runway. Before climbing and turning north, Joe came out of the flight deck again and asked whether we should fly down the Thames at two thousand feet so that the people in London could see us. I nodded, and Joe went back to the flight deck and shortly stuck his hand out the door with a thumbs-up. Here is how I recorded the flyover in my diary: The flight down the Thames River was the best of all. There were thousands of people along the river banks waiting for us to pass. We passed over Westminster and the Houses of Parliament in a fairly steep left bank so we could see the ground well. Westminster Bridge was jammed with people. As we passed over, the whole bridge began to sparkle as thousands of people popped flashbulbs to take pictures of us. We then passed directly over the Tower of London and over Greenwich and the old Royal Observatory on the South bank of the river.

We were on our descent path to Stansted twenty minutes later.The reception there was totally over the top, a veritable sea of people. I estimated that about a hundred thousand people were watching. Right after the touchdown, we deployed the Stars and Stripes and the Union Jack from the flight deck’s hatches. The huge roar from the crowd was sustained until we stopped on the tarmac in front of the administration building. Everyone in the crowd around the building had their hands up in Churchill’s “V for victory” sign. The US ambassador in London, John Louis, and the British minister of industry, Sir John Jenkins, were the senior members of the reception committee; P. J. Weitz, an astronaut, was present to welcome us. I stepped out of the aircraft in my NASA flight jacket, and there was a huge roar from the crowd. Then Bun, Joe Algranti, and Karol Bobko walked down the stairs with me, and we joined the reception group on the platform. After Jenkins made a few welcoming remarks, I stepped up to the microphone and raised my hand in the V sign, which again resulted in roaring cheers from the crowd. As I described our trip down the Thames, I pointed out that we flew by two important symbols linking Britain and America. One was Parliament, from which our democratic institutions arose. The other was the Royal Observatory at Greenwich, from which much of our common scientific heritage was drawn. In addition, I noted that two of Enterprise’s three sister ships were named after British research and exploration vessels: Discovery, which was one of Capt. James Cook’s ships during his third exploration of the Pacific Ocean (1776–80), and Challenger, which was the British research vessel that performed the first comprehensive surveys of the ocean floor (1872–76). I ended my speech with the words “Ladies and gentlemen, this is no accident; we are still following in your footsteps!” There was a huge and sustained roar from the crowd, and I have to confess that I had tears in my eyes.

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An Important Interlude at Farnborough Shortly after being named secretary of the air force in 1979, I met with Geoffrey Pattie, who had just been named parliamentary under secretary of defense (RAF) in the government of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Our positions were roughly equivalent. But he was also a member of Parliament, so he had significantly more influence in his government that I had in mine. We had a rather lengthy and fruitful conversation. Since I am an unashamed enthusiast for vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) aircraft, I raised the question whether Britain and the United States should develop jointly the successor to the BAE/​McDonnell Douglas Harrier AV-8B. We agreed to look into the matter. The VTOL aircraft that led to the Harrier was built by the Hawker Siddeley Aircraft Company. That plane, nicknamed the “Kestrel,” flew for the first time in 1960. The RAF then started a serious program to develop a VTOL combat aircraft, which resulted in the Harrier GR-1, manufactured by Hawker Siddeley. This aircraft, which flew for the first time in 1967, led to an American version, the AV-8B, which first flew in 1978. The program was very successful: 278 Harriers of the GR series were built for the RAF, and 323 AV-8Bs were built by McDonnell Douglas for the US Marine Corps. The Falklands War in the spring of 1982 focused attention on VTOL combat aircraft. The British Harriers had been very successful during the fighting, and Pattie and I decided to organize a conference that would look at the Harrier and the next possible step in the evolution of  VTOL combat aircraft. Since I was scheduled to go to Europe with Enterprise, I asked Geoffrey to set aside three days in Britain for the conference. The conference, now called a seminar, on short takeoff and landing (STOL) aircraft (STOL) and VTOL aircraft began on June 6 in a large auditorium at Farnborough, where BAE had its headquarters. About seventy-five representatives, half of them British and half American, from industry, government, the military, academia, and other organizations, attended. Pattie, by then the minister of state for defense procurement, was the keynote speaker. He said that we should build on the success of the Harrier program and initiate another one in the short takeoff and vertical landing (STOVL) area. His friends at British Aerospace had coined the term STOVL to describe how Harriers operate most of the time. With a short takeoff run, the aircraft could carry a much larger payload than a VTOL plane. I then outlined what I hoped the seminar could accomplish. • The two sides would develop a joint technology program to evaluate the current state of vectored thrust, lift fans, tilt rotors, augmenter wings, and other devices for propulsive lift. More or less arbitrarily, I set a time frame of five years for the program. In 1987 or 1988, we would sit down again, look

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at the state of STOVL technology, and recommend the joint development of one or more experimental aircraft. • In those years, we would make decisions about establishing one or two joint experimental-aircraft programs. Without experimental planes, nothing intelligent ever happens in aircraft design and development. • If experimental aircraft were flying by 1995, then it might be possible to start working on production of an STOVL aircraft by 2000.

I ended by making two points. First, whatever we did in STOVL aviation would be opposed by the US military. In 1983, the senior officers in the air force and the navy had spent their combat careers in Korea or in Vietnam. In both wars, military air bases were put in “sanctuary” locations. The North Koreans did not bomb US bases in Japan, and the North Vietnamese never attacked our air bases in Thailand. In addition, the Soviets never provided the North Koreans or the North Vietnamese with submarines capable of threatening the American aircraft carriers that stood offshore unmolested as they mounted air attacks against targets on land. Our military leaders had never had the experience of flying from airfields that could be under attack. Thus, they were viscerally opposed to trading “capability” for aircraft with the maneuverability to operate from makeshift bases. My second point was that we were considering a long-term program—one that would take in excess of twenty years. It was therefore all right to let technology rather than military requirements drive the work. Later that day, the US Navy’s position was stated by Capt. F. J. Staudenmeyer, who staunchly defended the navy’s stance on the importance of large carrier battle groups. Afterward, the captain had to answer some tough questions from the Royal Navy contingent, so much so that in the end he laughed and said, “Hey fellows, I’m just following orders!” The US Air Force representative was a bright young lieutenant colonel named Winters, who was much faster on his feet. Almost the first thing he said was that STOL capability was extremely important and that both the F-16 and the F-15 were capable of taking off, with a limited payload, in two thousand feet at the longest ranges, and they could land on a two-thousand-foot runway upon returning to base. Colonel Winters did a good job of showing that the air force was at least concerned about base vulnerability. The afternoon of the final day was devoted to developing a seminar report that, it was hoped, would include recommendations pointing the way to some joint programs. Each delegation held a caucus to establish positions, and then the two sides met to see what kind of joint programs could be developed. It quickly became apparent that there were wide differences in our approaches to the problem. The British argued for a strong program to make incremental improvements to the Harrier. The US position was even worse. Neither the air force nor the navy

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would say that there was a “requirement” for an STOVL combat aircraft. In the combined session, I reminded the group of the joint (tripartite—British, American, and German) program that developed the Kestrel. (The Germans were very much a junior partner.) Could something like that be done now? Unfortunately, the answer was no. We did pick up one suggestion from the senior working group. We would establish four joint committees that would work for a year on the following topics: vectored thrust, augmenter-ejector, remote augmenter lift systems, and tandem-fan engines. The reports of these committees turned out to be the only tangible result of the seminar, a true disappointment. I console myself with the thought that the United States has developed a STOVL combat aircraft—the Lockheed Martin F-35B, which is a “stealthy” one at that.

The Third Flight of Challenger and the Sixth Flight of Columbia The third flight of Challenger was the first mission for which I did not attend the Flight Readiness Review; I was sick in bed. The flight would essentially repeat the prior mission. There would be a mix of activities, satellite deployments, and experiments in the crew compartment. In addition, it would carry the first African American astronaut. This was Guion Bluford Jr., a lieutenant colonel in the US Air Force and a physicist by training. I had several lengthy talks with him before the flight, and I came away impressed. Selecting Guy Bluford to fly this first mission was a very good move by the people in the astronaut office at the Johnson Space Center. In the years since, African Americans have served frequently in high-level positions at NASA, including as administrator (Charles Bolden). I arrived at the MOCR at nine on the night of August 29, 1983. The countdown was proceeding as usual, but there were some weather problems. We saw lighting flashes on the large television screen located on the right side at the front of the MOCR. By eleven the weather seemed to be clearing, so there was some hope that we could launch during the thirty-four-minute launch window. The weather continued to be touch-and-go; after two “holds,” Challenger lifted off at 1:32 a.m., within a few minutes of the end of the launch window. This was the first night launch of the shuttle, and it was really spectacular. I slept on the cot in the infirmary and got up early to do some paperwork. After breakfast, I went over to see John Young and some of the other astronauts who happened to be there. He asked me to make some impromptu remarks, and I took the opportunity to talk in some detail about NASA’s priorities. Specifically, I told them the safe operation of the space shuttle should be at the top of the list, and a lively debate broke out about how best to do it. When I talked about establishing a separate, non-NASA organization to operate the shuttle, there was a very mixed response. I stressed the difference between a development institution, such as the JSC, and an operational one, such as United Airlines. My comments were not pop-

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ular with the astronauts, but I thought that it was important to broach the topic so that this important group would at least start thinking about the matter. I finished by mentioning the deployment of very important national-securityrelated payloads on future shuttle flights. At this point, I was startled to see Sally Ride get up and leave the room. (Her husband, the astronaut Steve Hawley, did not leave.) I wondered why Sally left. My hope was that she had something else to do, but I could not rid myself of the suspicion that she was protesting my well-known opinion that the shuttle had an important role in enhancing national security. A month later, on October 7, I attended a prelaunch meeting for STS-9, the sixth flight of Columbia, and learned that there had been a close call during Challenger’s launch. Some of the carbon-carbon (graphite with carbon fiber reinforcement) composite material liner inside one of the solid rocket motor’s nozzles had almost burned through. The carbon-carbon composite is about three centimeters thick, but the burn-through reduced it to a few millimeters.The material was a few seconds from burning through when the motor’s fuel was exhausted. This was a real problem that had to be dealt with immediately.We had no choice but to postpone the upcoming launch until we thoroughly understood what had happened. Thankfully, the problem was soon solved. One of the second-level contractors that manufactured the composite liner material did not follow the manufacturing instructions, and therefore the material was still “soft” when Challenger was launched. The First Spacelab Flight The flight designated STS-9 was a major step forward in our effort to learn what could be achieved by the orbital operations of the space shuttle. It would be the first mission with a six-member crew; the first to carry Spacelab; the first with a foreign astronaut, Ulf Merbold, a German payload specialist; and the first to stay in space for 247 hours, almost twice the duration of any previous flight. John Young, the leader of the astronaut corps, was the mission commander. On October 31, we had a lengthy meeting to decide when to launch. We carefully reviewed again the solution to the problem of the SRM nozzle lining on STS-8. We carefully looked at each of the experiments to be conducted on the Spacelab module, as well as the other items that would be in the payload bay. We set a tentative date for the launch as “the end of November.” On November 18, we held the Flight Readiness Review for the mission. Once again, we took painstaking care to make certain that everything was in good order. In the end, we judged that there were loose ends in Spacelab that needed to be fixed. So we decided to hold another Flight Readiness Review before the launch. While all this was going on, we had to prepare for the cabinet meeting sometime in December at which the final decision about the space station would be made. Therefore, I was unable to attend the Flight Readiness Review at which

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the mission was cleared for launch on November 28. I attended the L-2 (two days before launch) Review at NASA Headquarters on November 26. It looked as if all the open items had been closed out. Later in the day I flew to Houston to attend the launch. When I arrived at the MOCR at four thirty in the morning, the countdown was well under way. I talked with Gene Kranz about the launch, and he gave me a clear thumbs-up.The only problem encountered during the countdown was a very small air leak in Spacelab, which might have caused problems. Columbia lifted off at ten with a picture-perfect launch. I spent the rest of the day in the Payload Operations Control Center (POCC), a large room next to the MOCR. About forty scientists and their aides were there. Each scientist had a control console for his or her experiment, and each had a communications link to the mission specialist who was tending the experiment in Spacelab. Over the course of more than four hours, I talked in detail to each of the scientists. The experiments were focused on the effect of zero gravity on particular phenomena. From my viewpoint, the most important experiments were those that dealt with materials science. For example, would it be possible to purify metals in zero gravity beyond what could be done on the ground? Before continuing, I should mention the opposition of many influential scientists to the space shuttle program. Close collaboration between NASA and, for example, the National Academy of Sciences has generally been extremely effective in developing NASA’s programs in planetary exploration, space physics (that is, the study of the interplanetary medium in the solar system), and most importantly, astronomy and astrophysics; work in the last two areas resulted in Nobel Prizes for two NASA-affiliated physicists: Riccardo Giacconi of the Hubble Telescope Institute, and John C. Mather of the Goddard Space Flight Center. But human-tended experiments on the shuttle have been generally unpopular with the scientific community. I remember one distinguished chairman of the Space Science Board (an advisory group within the National Academy of Sciences) telling me, “NASA forced the space shuttle on the scientific community.” Late in the afternoon, Eric Quistgaard and Jim Abrahamson visited the POCC. We looked at the experiments for another hour. Columbia returned to the Kennedy Space Center on December 8 after an extremely successful mission. Unfortunately, I could not be in the MOCR for it, because I had to testify at a congressional hearing.

Two Important Space Shuttle Missions The missions described in this section marked some important firsts in spaceflight: an untethered EVA, and the retrieval, repair, and redeployment of a failed satellite. Both missions were conceived with a future space station in mind. Since any space station would have to be assembled in orbit, regular EVAs would be important

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Figure 14.2. Bruce McCandless II performing the first untethered spacewalk on a Challenger flight in 1984. He spent around six hours flying the manned maneuvering unit. Photo courtesy of NASA Headquarters.

elements of that process. An untethered EVA might not be something we would be doing soon, but there was no harm in trying it now. The repair, retrieval, and redeployment of satellites were already extremely important. In 1983 we were already planning the instrument that became the Hubble Space Telescope. It was being designed specifically to be repaired and upgraded in Earth orbit. We therefore thought it prudent to seize an early opportunity to see how this could be done. The Fourth Flight of Challenger and the First Untethered EVA I attended the Flight Readiness Review for this mission (STS-10) on January 24, 1984. I was distracted because that evening President Reagan would deliver his 1984 State of the Union address. He was expected to announce the building of a space station, but you could never tell whether a given item would remain in the speech. It is also worth noting that beginning with this flight, Jim Abrahamson’s new system for numbering flights was introduced. I never quite figured out how it worked! Under the new guidelines, STS-10 became STS-41B. Finally, this shuttle mission was the only one for which I would not be in the MOCR. On February 1, I flew to the Kennedy Space Center on NASA One, our Grumman jet. The next day, I attended the L-1 review to see whether there were any problems, and I was relieved that things seemed to be going well. Since I was the senior NASA official at the KSC, I had some social responsibilities. One was to have lunch with the Canadian and the Indonesian technology ministers, since we were launching Canadian and Indonesian communications satellites.

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On February 3, I had a very early breakfast with the shuttle crew, Vance Brand (mission commander) and Bruce McCandless II, who would be the hero of the mission by conducting the first untethered space walk. He was an old-timer, with seventeen years in the astronaut corps, and he would be the oldest person (at age fifty-seven) to fly in space. I arrived at the Launch Control Center at about six thirty. Because we weren’t in the MOCR, I felt apprehensive—I was not in the loop for the launch. I spent my time in the viewing room explaining the procedures to the Canadian and Indonesian guests. The liftoff of a space shuttle is a spectacular sight. I had seen nine launches on the large TV screen in the MOCR, but the real thing was completely gripping. There is simply no sight equal to the concentration of power resulting from six million pounds of thrust in the propulsion system. On February 8, McCandless performed his untethered space walk. I was at Ames for a program review and watched the whole thing from a TV repeater in the committee room. McCandless’s EVA lasted around six hours. Unfortunately, not all parts of the mission were going well. The launch of Westar, the Canadian communications satellite, failed. The spacecraft was destined for geosynchronous orbit, and it was probable that the PAM-D rocket, a type of booster rocket, had failed. Two days later, the Indonesian Palapa-B satellite also failed. Why was it launched? The Palapa-B was very similar to Westar, and it had the same booster. I made a note to myself to ask some serious questions about how this fiasco happened. Challenger returned on February 11 with a perfect landing at the Kennedy Space Center. The Fifth Flight of Challenger and the First Retrieval, Repair, and Redeployment of a Failed Satellite Challenger was back for the next mission on April 6. It was the shortest interval between shuttle flights, and in this case it was the same vehicle as well. At the Flight Readiness Review on March 30, one of the items on the agenda had to do with the aft field joint of the left-hand solid rocket motor, which showed damage that might eventually cause a failure. We had observed the same kind of damage after the second flight of Columbia. It was after this observation that Mike Weeks, the acting associate administrator of the Office of Space Flight, told me that he had waived the fail-safe requirement in March 1983. I had heard of damage on other joints in other seals, but I did not systematically keep track of them. In any event, I decided to ask for a review of the status of the seals and joints on the solid rocket motor, since one of its field joints had failed at least twice in the same way. The action item that I wrote after this Flight Readiness Review was addressed to Larry Mulloy of the Marshall Space Flight Center, who was the program manager for the solid rocket motor.The due date for the review was May 30, 1984; Mike Weeks

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signed off on the memo on April 5. Depending on the outcome of the review, we would either suspend flights or fly the shuttles under restricted rules until the seals were again made fail-safe. On the evening of April 5, I flew to Houston to attend the launch. I was at my console in the MOCR at a little after four the next morning. The only problem that could stop the launch was the weather at the airport in Dakar, Senegal, which was one of the emergency landing points, should there be a failure to reach orbit after launch. The weather eventually cleared, and we had a good liftoff. The most important part of this mission was the retrieval, repair, and redeployment of the Solar Max (Solar Maximum Mission) satellite. The retrieval attempt began on April 8. One of the mission specialists, George D. (Pinky) Nelson, would stabilize the satellite and maneuver it into the payload bay, where the repair would take place. James D. A. “Ox” van Hoften would assist Nelson. I watched this attempt on the TV repeater on the wall of the administrator’s conference room; it was a disappointing failure. The fault lay with the grappling tool that Nelson used. It simply would not work. They had to regroup. Bob Crippen (mission commander) and Terry Hart (mission specialist) had to maneuver Challenger into a position that would allow the Canadian robot arm to

Figure 14.3. The fifth flight of Challenger and the first retrieval, repair, and redeployment of a failed satellite. Photo courtesy of NASA Headquarters.

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pick up the failed satellite and place it where it could be repaired. To execute this maneuver, coders had to rewrite the necessary software in real time. It was a frantic effort, but the maneuver was successful. Nelson and van Hoften redeployed the satellite and returned to Challenger’s lower deck following their EVA. This retrieval and repair of a satellite showed what could be done. Just as Milt Silveira and I had anticipated, it would help us explain the kinds of activities that would be performed on the space station. The last undertaking of this mission was to deploy the Long Duration Exposure Facility. It was a large (school-bus-sized) satellite with hundreds of samples fixed on its surface. The satellite was scheduled to be retrieved in three years (in the end, it was in orbit almost six years), and the samples would be examined to see how they had fared during their time in space. This flight of Challenger was the most successful shuttle mission with which I was associated.

15 The Space Station, the President, and Leaving Washington

The dream of putting on object in Earth orbit with people on board goes back to the mid-nineteenth century, but serious studies of space stations were published only after three people independently derived the rocket equation: Konstantin Tsiolkovsky (1895), Robert Goddard (1919), and Hermann Oberth (1923). These scientists realized that rockets could reach arbitrarily high speeds depending on the mass of their fuel-oxidizer combinations—and thus that space travel was possible. In a book written by the German author Willie Ley in 1945, the space station, or “Terminal in Space,” was the subject of an entire chapter. Ley followed the work of an Austrian engineer, Count Guido von Pirquet, who wrote a comprehensive article on the subject in Die Rakete, the journal of the German Rocket Society. In addition to developing the orbital mechanics of a space station in Earth orbit, von Pirquet pointed out that it could be used as a staging base for spacecraft picking up fuel for a trip into the solar system. He maintained that once a spacecraft was in Earth orbit, it was two-thirds of the way to anywhere else in the universe. Both of these are still important points.

The Soviets Take the Lead in Human Spaceflight The Cold War was still very much on the front burner in 1980. Late in 1979, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan when the Moscow-backed regime in Kabul was overthrown by local insurgents. The Soviet Union took this step under the Brezhnev Doctrine, which asserted that it had the right to sustain socialist governments

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around the world, by military force if it was necessary. The Carter administration, led by the president’s national security advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, responded with a program to arm local resistance fighters. (Ultimately this strategy was successful, and by February 1989 the Soviets had withdrawn all their troops.) It was clear that the Soviets had serious problems with their client states in Eastern Europe, the Baltic region, and Central Asia. Unlike the Cold War, the space race was muted in 1980. The decision to build the space shuttle ruled out any human spaceflights by the United States until the first shuttle mission. On the other hand, the Soviets were building and flying a series of small “space stations.” A Soyuz rocket, which was really a space capsule, was first flown in 1966. A Soyuz rocket was later part of the Apollo-Soyuz docking mission, a component of the détente policy adopted by President Nixon at the suggestion of Henry Kissinger. This mission led to the “Handshake in Space” between US astronaut Tom Stafford and Soviet cosmonaut Alexei Leonov in July 1975 while Soyuz 19 was docked with an Apollo command and service spacecraft. This was the last human spaceflight by Americans until Columbia’s first flight, in 1981. The Soyuz program was followed by Salyut: real space stations in the sense that unlike the Soyuz rockets, they did not have the capability to return to the Earth. The program had three variants: a civilian scientific research spacecraft, a military version, and a larger civilian version that featured two docking ports. A Salyut craft was designed to be launched without a crew. The crew would reach Earth orbit in a Soyuz vehicle and enter the station through a docking port.When the first Salyut was launched, on April 19, 1971, the intended crew failed to enter the spacecraft. The second crew entered successfully, but on their return to Earth, a vent on their vehicle failed to close, and the crew suffocated. The next Salyut mission failed. Salyut 3, Salyut 4, and Salyut 5, all successful, were military missions. Salyut 6 and Salyut 7, the final ones, were civilian missions conducted with the larger version of the spacecraft. During the 1970s and the early 1980s, the competition between the Soviet Union and the United States in space slackened. There was a hesitant but definite movement toward collaboration, illustrated by the Apollo-Soyuz mission and by the cooperation in space biology that we had developed at NASA–Ames starting in 1974. The United States and the USSR still competed in space, but in different fields. The United States stressed high technology, particularly in its development of the space shuttle. The reusable spaceship attracted public attention for the first time when Enterprise, a “form-fit-and-function” test vehicle without rocket engines, performed approach and landing tests from February to October 1977. At the same time, the Soviets had launched Salyut 6 on September 29, 1977, and then conducted sixteen visits by cosmonauts, ending in May 1981. Thirteen Soviet cosmonauts as well as eight from Soviet satellite nations, including Cuba, took part. I was then working at the Pentagon, and we received much criticism in the press

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because of the favorable worldwide public response to the international crews on Salyut 6. In addition, the Soviets set several duration records for human spaceflight, far exceeding the eighty-four-day mark set by Skylab in 1973–74. The longest Soviet spaceflight was the 237 days (February to October 1984) spent on Salyut 7 by the cosmonauts Leonid Kizim,Vladimir Solovyov, and Oleg Atkov. The records set on Salyut spacecraft were not broken until the Mir space station was in operation a few years later. Looking back now on this period, I believe that between 1972 to about 1990, give or take, the Soviets regained the lead in human spaceflight. We started flying the shuttles in 1981, and the Soviets activated Mir, which replaced Salyut, in 1986. The Salyut 6 missions were particularly important in that the Soviets began a sustained scientific program to learn what happens to human beings when they are subjected to long periods of zero gravity. They continued to work on this matter with Mir. The cosmonaut Valeri Polyakov set a record of 240 days in space on Mir in 1988. He then spent a record 438 days in continuous Earth orbit on Mir in 1994–95. Polyakov had a clear objective in performing these missions: he wanted to prove that a human being could survive in space long enough to fly to Mars. Spaceflight enthusiasts like me felt that the United States needed to develop a program to outdo the Soviets’ efforts, but there was little or no public support, or even awareness, of such a project.This was the situation when I met with Jim Beggs in St. Louis on March 21, 1981. As mentioned in chapter 12, the space station was a major topic of discussion. We agreed that competition with the Soviets was not the way to stimulate public interest in a new large NASA initiative. I reminded Jim of a statement that President Carter’s science adviser, Frank Press, had made unchallenged in 1978: “It is neither feasible nor necessary at this time to commit the US to a high-challenge, highly visible space engineering initiative comparable to Apollo.” Jim thought of a way around this restrictive policy: “What we will have to do is to persuade President Reagan to adopt the space station as the next major NASA initiative in space. He is the only one who can do this and make it stick.” My thought was that such an approach might not be easy. As things turned out, I underestimated Jim’s ability to make things happen. About three weeks after the confirmation hearing for Jim Beggs and me, a gentleman appeared in my office and introduced himself as Jim Fanseen. He told me that he was a friend of Jim Beggs, that he was from Baltimore, and that he was looking forward to working with us. I learned later that Fanseen’s exclusive job would be to handle our relations with the White House; he was an influential figure in Republican politics and had been very active in the Reagan campaign. It was not long before I found out what Fanseen could do. I have described President Reagan’s visit to the MOCR during the second flight of Columbia in November 1981. Fanseen arranged the visit and then later ensured that the president presented Distinguished Service Medals to Joe Engle and Dick Truly. As Fanseen and I became good friends, I began to understand that he would be our

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point man to implement Jim Beggs’s strategy of persuading the president to adopt the space station as the next large NASA initiative. Maybe we really did have a chance.

Jim Fletcher’s Space Station Choices and Phil Culbertson as Space Station Coordinator The success of the president’s visit to the MOCR moved Jim Beggs to begin thinking seriously about the technical features that should be part of the space station. I knew that both the Johnson Space Center and the Marshall Space Flight Center had well-developed plans, but we nonetheless wanted to have other choices. Beggs asked Jim Fletcher to head a committee to look at space station configurations, and he asked Phil Culbertson to coordinate all the space station activities at NASA Headquarters. Phil, a longtime NASA Headquarters official, was also a solid engineer. I had worked with him during my years at Ames, and I liked the way he did business. To emphasize the importance of his job, Phil would hold the title associate deputy administrator, ranking him third in the NASA hierarchy. Beggs told us all individually that we should not discuss these steps with anyone. Although he thought the president was in favor of a large space initiative, most of his advisers would be opposed. It was therefore important to keep our work on the space station very low-key—minimizing documentation and not talking about what we were doing. In the meantime, Fletcher started work with his committee. It was a stellar group: Tom Paine (former NASA administrator), Bob Gilruth (former Johnson Space Center director), Bill Anders (former astronaut), and Leslie Dirks (CIA). In a letter to Fletcher, I asked him for some results on or about December 1981. Early in 1982, he and his committee provided us with four options: an unmanned platform, permanently maintained, that could be used for a variety of scientific and applications experiments; a “minimum” manned platform that would allow two or three people to remain permanently in space and would be maintained and refurbished via the space shuttle; an “intermediate” manned platform that would have designed into it the ability to grow in size, power, and capability; or a full-size space station that could be used for servicing and supporting satellites, erecting large structures in space (such as antennas), and serving as a laboratory in space. The committee was well aware of the internal situation at NASA. Option one was favored by the Marshall Space Flight Center, and was estimated to cost $1 billion. Option four, favored by the Johnson Space Center, was estimated at $10 billion; the JSC called the design the Space Operations Center. Besides defining the landscape within which the final configuration would sit, Fletcher’s committee expressed its own preference. It eliminated the first option because the shuttle would be bringing people to the platform on every flight, so there needed to be

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some way of accommodating people.The committee eliminated the second option too. If there were people on the station, then it would be important to build them a habitat, since shuttles might be unavailable for periods longer than people could stay in the minimum space station. Thus, the committee recommended consideration of options three and four, which meant a cost range of $7 billion to $10 billion. Culbertson began to look for people to be on the team that would develop the space station concept. The first person brought in was Daniel H. Herman. I felt that this was a brilliant move; I knew Dan Herman well and had worked with him on several projects. Next hired was John D. Hodge. He had worked as a flight controller at the JSC, where he befriended Jim Beggs. When Jim moved to the Department of  Transportation as under secretary, Hodge went with him. Two other people were brought in: Terry Finn and Capt. Robert Freitag (USN, retired). I knew Finn quite well because I had watched him operate as one of NASA’s best congressional liaisons. Freitag had spent twenty-three years in the navy, where he worked on, among other things, rocket and missile programs in the military. Thus, he was intimately familiar with much of the technology that NASA depended on. On May 20, 1982, Jim Beggs made a short statement about the people who would plan the development of the space station. John Hodge would be the director of the Space Station Task Force; Dan Herman would be the chief engineer; Terry Finn would handle the congressional politics related to the project; Bob Freitag would be Hodge’s deputy and would also handle relationships with the military. They and the people under them would report to Phil Culberston.

The Effort Starts In early July, Jim told the space station group: “The president has a very definite interest in NASA and the space program. Furthermore, I believe that he has a deep and knowledgeable appreciation of the political value of the space program.” “Is there strong opposition to what we are trying to do with respect to the space station?” I asked. Jim replied: “There will definitely be opposition, but I do not know yet where it will come from. If we are really serious, we will need to put some money into the FY84 budget allocated to a possible space station program. That will smoke out the people who will provide us with plenty of fun!” The discussion then proceeded to money matters. At this point, we were just finishing the negotiations on the budget for the 1984 fiscal year, which would begin on October 1, 1983. So the question was how to introduce the space station into the budget. The NASA budget had some large fixed items—salaries, shuttle operations, maintenance of buildings, and others expenses of this kind—that were difficult to change. Committed programs were a little more vulnerable to changes because these could be delayed or canceled. The easiest way to find some new

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money in the budget was to use money that does not yet exist—that is, money allocated to other potential new starts. The largest of the requested new starts was a fifth shuttle orbiter, budgeted at $200 million. We decided to take $30 million from those funds. Doing so would delay the effort to acquire a fifth orbiter, but its construction had not been authorized, so the delay was only hypothetical. This accounting trick gave us some substantial money for John Hodge’s team, which would now be officially identified as working on developing a space station. Normally, I spent Saturdays talking to people for longer periods than was possible during the workweek. On Saturday, September 8, 1982, I had a lengthy conversation with Dan Herman about possible configurations of the space station. We discussed the proposals made by the Johnson and Marshall Centers. In Dan’s view, neither was the right choice. He suggested a configuration that was both innovative and feasible. Instead of a single, monolithic space station, he recommended a constellation of satellites flying in formation in the same orbit. Around a central, permanently manned core would be a number of unmanned spacecraft close enough to the core to be reached by a short space walk or extravehicular activity (EVA). Dan’s friends in the scientific community told him that the unmanned spacecraft would each be devoted to a specific scientific purpose. For example, there would be one devoted to zero-gravity experiments for purifying materials. In a monolithic space station, it would be impossible to maintain a pure zero-g environment. The same argument held for zero-g experiments in other scientific disciplines, such as biology. Probably the most important virtue of Dan’s proposal was that it would make it possible to use the space station as a staging base for launching spacecraft to other bodies in the solar system. One of the unmanned platforms would be an assembly facility and launch site. Since both assembling and launching spacecraft involve risks, it was important that the facility for these purposes be separate from the central core. I was impressed by the technical aspects of Dan’s arguments. One counterargument was that his plan required extensive space walking. The experience gained during the last thirty-plus years, however, has shown that this issue is settled. An important, unassailable advantage was an economic one. The space station proposed by Dan would be built in steps: first the central core, or main module, and then the other modules, in order of the scientific priorities of the time. This was what Jim Beggs called the ability to purchase the space station “by the yard.” During this time, there was a short interruption in my work on the space station that is worth mentioning. A project called the Infrared Astronomical Satellite (IRAS) was a small spacecraft designed to detect infrared light from stars and cosmic dust clouds. It carried a small telescope about one meter in diameter. The focal plane of the telescope had to be cooled to the temperature of liquid helium (−450°F). A cryostat on the satellite could keep the focal plane cold for a year via a

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special porous plug in the helium tank, which allowed helium to slowly evaporate and thereby cool the focal plane. On Saturday, January 22, 1983, I heard from two Ames people, Dale Compton, the IRAS project manager, and Bill Shipley, the chief scientist. They told me that a flaw in the focal plane was causing three of the detector lines to fail. They recommended that we fix the focal plan array and delay the launch. I asked how much scientific data would be lost by the delay, and Shipley guessed maybe 10 percent. I thought that if they brought the system up to room temperature and tried to fix it, there was a greater than 10 percent chance that something else would go wrong. My recommendation was to launch right away. After some hesitation, Compton agreed. IRAS was launched successfully on January 25. The very successful mission revealed for the first time the massive black hole at the center of our galaxy, which is usually obscured by dust. The mission lasted for ten months, when the liquid helium in the cryostat that cooled the focal plane was exhausted.

A Debate with the Scientific Community about the Space Station Opposition to the space station came from the Pentagon, which was to be expected. The argument was straightforward: all existing and foreseeable experiments could be accomplished by robotic satellites, and there was no clear military value to the space station. Opposition from the scientific world was more surprising. But in late June 1983, the Space Science Board of the National Academy of Sciences issued the following statement about the space station: “The Board has examined the set of specific missions proposed for implementation from the Space Station System during the years 1991–2000. It was found that few of these missions would acquire significant scientific or technical enhancement by virtue of being implemented from this Space Station. In view of this and the adequacy of the present space transportation system for the purpose of space sciences, the Board sees no scientific need for a Space Station during the next twenty years.” So there it was! The scientific community’s spokesmen for space science had no use for the space station. I was appalled by the narrow views taken by the worthy members of the board. The missions referred to in the statement were those listed by John Hodge and his task force. Clearly, we would have to develop a strategy to overcome this large obstacle. And we were soon confronted by a challenge from the president’s science adviser, Jay Keyworth. Victor H. Reis was Keyworth’s deputy. I had known him slightly when I was in the Pentagon and he was working as a staff member of the National Security Council. He came to see me a few days after the Space Science Board issued its statement. Besides being a very good scientist and engineer, Reis was a shrewd Washington operator. He proposed that John Hodge and his group perform a de-

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tailed study of how the scientific missions that they had outlined could be carried out without the space station—that is, by the use of Earth-orbiting satellites and extended space shuttle flights. It did not take John Hodge long to figure out that there were really no scientific missions that could not be performed somehow without the space station. When I heard John’s briefing, I stopped him halfway through and told him that science was not the issue. The only real argument for building the space station was that it would be used as a staging base for sending people to explore Mars and possibly other bodies in the solar system. That had been a principal rationale for the space station from the very beginning. The only way to really justify the space station was to bypass the scientific debate and argue on the grounds of adventure and human exploration. Jay Keyworth, the president’s science adviser, had never been friendly toward our proposals for building a space station. His strategy became clear in a speech on June 27, 1983, in Seattle. Here is the crucial part: How can we use our investments in space to bolster our science and technology base and to re-ignite the spirit of adventure that captured America in the past? The most-often discussed—and most immediate—possibility is a manned space station serviced by the shuttle and composed of modules supporting a broad spectrum of space activities. This would obviously be a challenging use of the shuttle’s capabilities and the needed technology appears to be within reach. The people supporting the space station readily acknowledge that it is, in truth, only an intermediate step in a more ambitious long-range goal of exploring the nearby Solar System. Why, then, can’t we be forthright and lay those ideas on the table? Surely, we learned from our Apollo experience that this country can be strongly supportive of ambitious new programs if the citizens share the vision and if they are convinced that important national needs are being served.

The last sentence in this excerpt would seem to be a ringing endorsement of our plans. And he was right: the American people would not have been convinced that going to the moon met “important national needs” were it not for President Kennedy’s leadership. But Jay Keyworth and Vic Reis knew that by including that final statement, they were trying to trap us into getting ahead of the president. Jim Beggs was not about to be drawn into that argument. Thus, the situation we faced in the summer of 1983 was as follows: Two important constituencies, the military and the scientific community, were vigorously opposed to the space station. In addition, it was very probable that most members of the president’s cabinet were opposed, if only because they believed that money for the space station would be better spent elsewhere. Despite these difficulties, we were determined to follow the strategy that Jim Beggs had outlined at the beginning: engage the president and persuade him to adopt the space station as a new initiative for the nation, just as President Kennedy had done with the trip to the moon.

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Personnel Changes and a Meeting with Edward Teller In the summer of 1983, the struggle over the space station was reaching its climax, but I still had to deal with the day-to-day management of NASA. Two important personnel issues had not yet been settled: providing permanent posts for Jack Boyd and Milton Silveira. Both had come to Washington on temporary assignments, and I wanted to change that. On June 15, I suggested to Jim Beggs that Jack Boyd be named associate administrator for management, a job that had been vacant for some time. In addition, I proposed replacing Stan Weiss as chief engineer with Milton Silveira, who would have a charter similar to the one held by Frank McDonald as the chief scientist. Jim agreed, and both suggestions were implemented. On June 21 there was a celebration of Edward Teller’s seventy-fifth birthday at the Stanford University Faculty Club. I was one of the organizers of the dinner, and I sat at the head table next to my old friend Lowell Wood. He and I discussed the editing of a book to celebrate Edward’s birthday—we were late in finishing the job. We had presented a copy of the manuscript to Edward, but the published volume, as it turned out, was not finished until 1988, in time for his eightieth birthday! On Sunday, July 17, I had lunch with Edward Teller at the Cosmos Club in Washington. I immediately saw that something was bothering him. Usually in cases such as this, he would come right to the point, but this time he hesitated. Finally, he asked me why I was against X-ray lasers. Lowell Wood, apparently, had told him this. I explained that I was working with Bernd Crasemann on finding atomic energy level pairs that could be used to build an X-ray laser. He then asked me about X-ray laser weapons that could be used to shoot down missiles. I guessed that this was bothering him because I had made some public statements that were not supportive of the idea. I told him honestly that I did not think the idea was practical, because only a tiny fraction of the detonation energy could be used to power a laser. We left it there and had a good discussion of NASA’s future. Edward was not optimistic about it. In fact, I could never persuade him that NASA was at all useful.

The Secretary of Defense Makes a Case against the Space Station On August 7, we were notified that there would be a meeting with the president the next day to discuss the space station proposal. The timing seemed odd. A meeting was scheduled for August 10 at which the briefing for the president was supposed to be developed. We were told that tomorrow’s meeting would be a briefing by the Defense Department about its objections to the space station. Since Jim Beggs would be out of town, I would be representing NASA. Since I did not

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have much time to prepare, I decided that my job would be to plant just enough doubt in the president’s mind that he would not listen to Weinberger when the showdown came. I would go to the meeting alone, without any notes. I could use what I had learned in the almost four years that I was in the Pentagon. The meeting convened at two o’clock in the Situation Room. I came a little early, and only Edwin Meese was there. He was one of the president’s close colleagues and advisers. I knew him slightly because his father was the tax assessorcollector of Alameda County. When we lived in Berkeley from 1960 to 1969, I made out my real estate tax check to Edwin Meese Jr. Edwin Meese III, his son, was a young assistant district attorney during the 1960s. When we had trouble on the Berkeley campus, he was the person to call if we needed deputy sheriffs to deal with a disturbance. Other people began to come into the room. In a few minutes, the president’s national security advisor, William P. Clark, called the meeting to order. A minute later the president came in, and we all stood. The president chose one of the chairs almost opposite to where I was sitting. I took detailed notes at the meeting. Besides the president, Clark, Meese, and me, those present were Caspar Weinberger (Defense), William Casey (CIA), James A. Williams (Defense Intelligence Agency), Kenneth Damm (State), James D. Watkins (admiral, representing the JCS), James Baker (chief of staff  ), Edward “Pete” Aldridge (under secretary of the air force and NRO director), Thomas Krebs (lieutenant colonel, USAF, and DIA briefer), and Gilbert Rye (lieutenant colonel, USAF, National Security Council). One of the surprises was that the president did not lead the meeting. Under the administration’s system, the relevant cabinet member or presidential assistant ran the meeting, and the president was free to interject comments or questions as he chose. Weinberger started the meeting by asserting that the issue continued to be Russia versus the United States. The first priority in space had to relate to defensive weapons. The space station would not contribute to this effort. He claimed that the space station would cost $18 billion—I had no idea where he got that figure—and that there was no “military requirement” for a space station. He then turned the meeting over to Lieutenant Colonel Krebs. Krebs discussed the differences between the US and Russian space systems. He discussed the Soviet space shuttle, and I pointed out that it was not the same as ours. When he said that the Soviets were starting to store fuel in Earth orbit, I chimed in that there was no evidence for this claim.Weinberger admonished me to let Krebs continue. Krebs said that the fuel would be for a permanent Soviet space station. He made a point of stressing that the Soviets put up more satellites than we did. The Soviets’ military Salyut space station, according to Krebs, could send out manned reconnaissance satellites. He added that the Soviets had plans for very large space stations capable of accommodating twenty to a hundred people. The annual Soviet military space budget was equivalent to $28 billion. He foresaw extensive

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manned Soviet operations; Therefore the United States had to increase military space efforts. Weinberger commented that the Russians could have an SDI system before we did, and I noted that the claim, along with Krebs’s entire briefing, was a great exaggeration.The president then winked at me. I didn’t know what that meant, but later found out that it was a signal to me to “keep cool.” Pete Aldridge then articulately and concisely described the air force and NRO satellite systems in some detail. The president was very attentive. Aldridge compared the US and Soviet space programs, stressing our advances in robotics. I asked whether the US military would ever have people in space, and the president winked at me again. I got the message: shut up! Aldridge made a strong argument in favor of the space shuttle and ended by saying that we had to maintain our lead in space technology. It was an excellent presentation. Weinberger repeated his call that the $18 billion (that mythical figure again) for the space station be spent on SDI. The president talked about his work in the army during World War II. He told some Hollywood stories about the comic-book spaceman hero Flash Gordon, a character in movie serials, and about seeing space rockets on movie sets forty years ago. Before leaving, he asked the following question: “Space operations are important. What do you think our administration will be remembered for a hundred years from now?” That question was the most important event in the entire meeting. My conclusion was that the president understood what we were trying to do—and that we would get approval for the space station. After the session with Mr. Weinberger, Jim Beggs and I decided on two steps to take: since the president had heard the arguments against the space station at Weinberger’s briefing, we should try to set a hearing for him on the positive side; in addition, we should get a copy of Colonel Krebs’s briefing paper and see how much of it was true. Some good news came later in the summer. On August 17, Sen. John Glenn issued a statement supporting the space station as an essential part of the nation’s space program. He pointed out that NASA was founded twenty-five years earlier, on October 1, 1958. Glenn outlined a comprehensive program, including a healthy space science operation. This was an important statement because Senator Glenn would very likely be a candidate for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination.

Fletcher’s Report on Implementation of the Strategic Defense Initiative On September 16, I received the report that Jim Fletcher and his committee had produced on the implementation of the president’s Strategic Defense Initiative. The nonclassified section proposed a four-tiered system of defense. First were groundbased interceptor missiles—specifically, endo-atmospheric maneuvering missiles,

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which would be descended from the army’s Patriot system. This missile eventually became the PAC-3 (Patriot Advanced Capability-3). These weapons could be used to kill reentry vehicles or launch vehicles in the boost phase. The second layer was an exo-atmospheric interceptor. This was the army’s Thea­ ter (now Terminal) High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) and the navy’s Standard Missile 3 series. Much has been achieved in this area with missiles that are under positive control from the ground. The navy’s Aegis system has been fielded, and the army’s THAAD is close to it. These weapons could be used to kill reentry vehicles or launch vehicles in the boost phase. The third tier was the “boost vehicle kill.” This idea came from the Livermore group headed by Lowell Wood. It called for a constellation of satellites in lowEarth orbit armed with a number of small heat-seeking missiles that would be fired when a satellite’s infrared detector identified the rocket exhaust flame of an ICBM booster.The system would be accompanied by a large constellation of small reconnaissance satellites to monitor the situation on the ground. The fourth component was Project Excalibur, which depended on “pumping” X-ray lasers with a nuclear explosive device. The laser beams would be aimed at missiles above the dense atmosphere. The idea was to develop a nuclear explosive that could pump up to about forty laser beams simultaneously. Fletcher judged that the hit-to-kill weapons for ground- and sea-based systems could be fielded within a decade, but that use of the space-related weapons was far in the future. I agreed with his opinion. All three hit-to-kill systems have been fielded, and although some research work is being done on the space-based systems, there are no plans to spend large amounts of money on them. On September 26 there was a meeting to evaluate Jim Fletcher’s report on SDI. I was amused by the reaction of both the military people and the policy folks. The military felt that whatever was going to be spent on defense against ballistic missiles would come out of their budgets. The policy people were concerned about the negative reaction of the Europeans. I consoled myself with the thought that the president was behind the program and would push it.

The Road to a Final Decision on the Space Station October 14, 1983, was an important day. It was announced that William Clark would replace James Watt as secretary of the interior. Although this move had nothing to do with our problem, I thought it was a break for us. Clark’s likely successor as national security advisor was Bud McFarlane (the other candidate was Brent Scowcroft, who would hold the position in the George H.W. Bush administration). Since I had worked with McFarlane on missile defense, he would represent a good pipeline to the White House. As mentioned in chapter 14, I met the German minister of science and technology, Heinz Riesenhuber, in Cologne in May when we arrived with Enterprise

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and the Shuttle Carrier Aircraft. After speaking with him several times, I felt he had no connection with or real interest in the aerospace business. He knew about Spacelab and the investment it represented for Germany, but was clearly interested in other matters. On October 17, I attended a luncheon at the German Embassy in Riesenhuber’s honor. The people who arranged the lunch knew that I spoke German, so they seated me next to him. I was astounded by our conversation: Riesenhuber had made an about-face on the question of putting people in space and on the space station initiative. He told me that Germany would be very interested in collaborating with us on the project, and he would use his influence to get the ESA (of which Germany was a leading member) to collaborate as well. In the evening, Ed Knapp, the director of the National Science Foundation, hosted a dinner party at the Cosmos Club in honor of Riesenhuber. In a short speech, the guest of honor strongly supported Spacelab and said that he was looking forward to working with us on a space station program. Frank Press was there, and I was amused by his body language when Riesenhuber talked about the space station. When I looked at Ed Knapp, he was shaking his head as well. So much for the scientific community! On October 19, Jim Beggs met with Fred Khedouri of the OMB. Fred was not the final decision maker on funding for the space station, but he was senior enough to count. Fred offered a “compromise” on the space station that would allow NASA to get a foot in the door, but there would be no endorsement by the president. I put the word “compromise” in quotes because what worried Fred was that the president would overrule the OMB on the space station. In the discussion that followed at NASA Headquarters, Peggy Finarelli, who headed the external-relations group that promoted the work of the Space Station Task Force, made a crucial point: the German minister’s suggestion to make the space station an international project led by the United States might be how we should present the space station program to the president for a decision. I thought that she was exactly right, and I would try to persuade Jim to adopt this position. Preparations and Cost Estimates In the following days, we had a number of meetings about strategy. We emphasized the possibility of international participation in the space station program. We grappled with proposed costs. To make a firm cost estimate of the entire program was not possible. For a decade-long program with a clear objective, like Apollo, one could make a stab at a reasonable estimate. Even in that case, the cost estimate of $24 billion turned out to be accurate only because the NASA administrator at the time, Jim Webb, doubled his staff ’s $12 billion estimate. In the fall of 1983, the baseline space station that we had in mind was the model that Dan Herman had proposed: a central core housing six to eight people, plus a number of unmanned spacecraft built to achieve certain objectives. They would fly in formation with the central core. We defined the proposed space station as the

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Figure 15.1. Artist’s rendition of the baseline space station. The central core of the station is shown with a space shuttle docked to it. A spacecraft is flying in formation about a kilometer away, and astronauts are shown executing EVA maneuvers. This version of the space station was never built. Photo courtesy of NASA Headquarters.

central core, along with one accompanying unmanned spacecraft.We could make a good cost estimate for this configuration because we had done the same for Skylab and the Hubble Space Telescope. My back-of-the-envelope calculation of the cost of the two items, plus inflation, came to almost $8 billion: $6 billion for the central core and about $2 billion for the unmanned spacecraft. That estimate became the figure we used. On November 18, Craig Fuller, the secretary of the cabinet, and Gil Rye came over for a long lunch meeting. Peggy Finarelli had alerted me that this meeting was critical: a new idea for putting the space station program before the president had appeared on the horizon. Craig and Edwin Meese had approached Malcolm Baldrige, the commerce secretary, to see whether the space station proposal could be presented to the president at a meeting of the Cabinet Council on Commerce and Trade. Baldrige, who had an extensive history as an executive in heavy industry, seemed like a natural ally. When I asked Craig whether Baldrige would support our case, Craig said that he did not know. I consoled myself with the thought that someone with a good technical background would respond positively if we made a convincing case.

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At the end of the meeting, Gil Rye told me that President Reagan liked to have “touchy feelies” (visual aids) on the Cabinet Room table when buildings or hardware items were discussed. He wanted to know whether we could provide a model of the space station when the time came. I said that this could be a controversial item because the baseline configuration was by no means a unanimous choice of the NASA working troops. Some people at the Johnson Space Center were not at all happy with it. But we could push it through one of the wood shops at Langley or Ames that built our wind tunnel models. I called Don Hearth, the director at Langley, and told him what would have to be done. A day later, he faxed me the design, and I told them to build it. On November 22, Gil Rye came over to my office for a lengthy strategy meeting. We spent a couple of hours making up charts that Jim Beggs might want to use at the briefing, even though we knew that Jim would change them. In addition, Gil brought a copy of the talking points prepared by David Stockman, the director of the OMB. This information was invaluable: we now knew what Stockman would say. The next day, we received our first “mark” from the OMB for the fiscal year 1985 budget. None of the new starts that we proposed were in the document. Even the $30 million we had allocated in the previous budget for John Hodges’s work on the space station was gone. A Surprise Progress Report on the Strategic Defense Initiative While the preparations for the December 1 meeting for the space station were in full swing, Jim Beggs and I were invited to attend a Cabinet Council meeting about the Strategic Defense Initiative on November 30. The agenda indicated that Secretary Weinberger would do the talking. Both Jim and I thought that this was a move by him to divert the president’s attention from the Cabinet Council on Commerce and Trade meeting that would be held the next day. Jim felt that Weinberger would try to persuade the president that the nation’s real space program was the part handled by the Department of Defense. We decided that we would not say anything at the meeting unless we were asked a question or we could deliver a zinger at an appropriate point. We would not prepare anything and would play it by ear. The meeting was attended by top-level members of the executive branch and the military concerned with nuclear weapons. Bud McFarlane opened things by telling the group that Jim Fletcher had developed an architecture for strategic defense and had recommended hardware to deploy; we should take his report as a baseline. Then McFarlane turned to the secretary of defense. The following account is drawn from notes that I made during the meeting. Weinberger asserted that Soviets had an operational system to defend Moscow with several hundred missiles. To maintain our superiority, the president wanted the ability to have attacking missiles shot down by weapons at every altitude. (One of

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the charts Weinberger used showed a ground-based laser, and I wanted to say that this was impossible—but with some difficulty, I kept quiet.) Weinberger mentioned the X-ray laser in passing, saying that its use was far in the future. He finished by saying that the cost of the system had to come from new money and should not be taken out of existing programs. He did not want to reveal cost estimates—too many unknowns. He talked about the need for political support for the program. President Reagan readily agreed to make speeches in support of the system. From where I was sitting, I could watch the president’s reactions to what Weinberger was saying. The best word to describe his features was “animated.” George Shultz, the secretary of state, was the first to comment. He said that the proposal was refreshing because it was large and all-encompassing; we needed to go easy about throwing conventional wisdom away. Deterrence works—why junk it? And there were important questions concerning our international relations. What would ballistic missile defense do to our alliances? Would the allies think that we were abandoning them by seeing to our own defenses? Would our alliances fall apart? Good foreign policy was important; it could be a big plus if handled correctly. But he added that the best defense was a good offense. We could not abandon the strategy of deterrence—it worked. I was totally engaged by this exchange between the nation’s secretary of defense and secretary of state. Everyone in the room, including the president, was listening intently to their remarks. Weinberger then answered Shultz.We would not junk deterrence.We were modernizing both offense and defense. The offense-defense argument did not work in this case, because a good offense could kill the world! The only way forward was to eventually have a good defense. The president then began to speak. He agreed with Schultz, but added that the genie could not be put back in the bottle. Then he asked a startling question: If we had a good defense against ballistic missiles, would we have the bargaining chip that would allow us to rid the world of nuclear weapons? This would be the optimistic view if we got there first. The pessimistic view: they got there first. The president’s questions were sharp and to the point. Looking at him, I remembered when Clark Clifford called Reagan an “amiable dunce.” Clifford was an intelligent person, but his judgment of people left something to be desired. I was regularly amazed by how the mainstream press consistently misjudged President Reagan and his ability as a political leader. Then the president made a statement that stunned the room. He told us that eventually nuclear explosives had to be entirely eliminated. I was flabbergasted, but I was looking right at the man, and it was clear that he meant it. Interestingly, George Shultz later became a member of an influential group of Americans advocating what is now called the “zero option.” After the president finished, Shultz said that it was premature to talk about such a possibility, and Weinberger agreed. Shultz added that the missile defense proposal

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reminded him of the Maginot Line because it could be overwhelmed by a large number of offensive missiles. Ken Adelman, the director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, asked how the defense against ballistic missiles would affect the “deep reductions” in the strategic nuclear weapons called for by the first Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START), which was being negotiated at that time. Would the ability to shoot down ballistic missiles make the treaty more difficult to negotiate? In response, the president made the “bargaining chip” argument: if we built the system, the president said, we could give it away in return for both sides agreeing to keep a much smaller number of weapons. Even if parity was reached in that area, the United States would still be ahead overall. President Reagan cited US industrial capacity. Could the Soviets keep up? Jay Keyworth, the president’s science adviser, stated, “We must offer the public hope instead of fear.” He pointed to the section of the Fletcher study concerning the “boost phase.” He was very optimistic that this space-based system could be made to work, and what was more, we had enough justification for a responsible and hopeful statement by the president on this matter. McFarlane said that Keyworth’s plan would make us vulnerable to accusations that we were militarizing space, particularly regarding Excalibur and nuclear weapons in space. Weinberger interrupted to say that there would be no nuclear weapons in space; we would do everything without nukes. Paul Thayer, the deputy secretary of defense, talked about costs. He said that the program as presented would run $8 billion total for the next five years, and we could use another $800 million. William Casey, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, told us that the Soviets had been working on missile defense since 1967 and currently had about ten thousand people working on the problem at eleven sites. The president closed the meeting by saying, “We simply cannot afford not to build a missile defense system.” He looked somber as he said it, and there were no jokes at the end of the meeting. The Meeting of the Cabinet Council on Commerce and Trade about the Space Station When I returned to my office, John Otten was waiting for me. John, a lieutenant colonel in the air force, was working on the Airborne Laser. The ALL had destroyed five Sidewinder missiles in May, and John told me that it had recently destroyed two navy cruise missiles flying close to the surface of the ocean. Another good result! The people who managed the ALL were doing a very good job, and this boded well for our ability to implement a missile defense system. On December 1, we had our meeting with the president about the space station. In the morning, we had some last-minute rehearsals. Our biggest problem was that in the Cabinet Room, where the presentation would be made, we would have to

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use large charts on an easel (the custom for presentations there) rather than the projected transparencies that we had prepared. It was obvious that we did not have time to make up the required charts, so Jim Beggs asked Jim Fanseen, “Do you think you can get the White House people to let us bring a projector and screen?” Jim Fanseen replied, “Let me go and see.” When he came back he gave us a thumbs-up, and we heaved a sigh of relief. We arrived about forty-five minutes early to check on the preparations. The projector and the screen were set up. The model of the space station was standing on the large polished table. The Langley people had done an excellent job, faithfully following Dan Herman’s sketches for the central core of the space station. As a bonus, they had fashioned two small astronaut figures on the end of thin wires so that they looked as if they were performing EVAs. It was a masterly job; we could easily explain how the space station would be operated. As people started to come into the room, I placed the model of the space station near the door. Almost everyone stopped to look at the model, and I kept up a running commentary about what the thing was supposed to do. The president, Ed Meese, and a couple of other people walked in through a side door that leads down a short hallway to the Oval Office. Everyone sat down, and Malcolm Baldrige called on Gil Rye to introduce the subject. Gil went over to the model and briefly explained what the space station was and how it was supposed to work. Jim Beggs then opened his presentation by saying that the space station was intended to rectify a mistake made during the Apollo program. It should have included an Earth-orbit rendezvous point so that we would have some infrastructure left in space. Then he stated the four major functions of the space station: a laboratory in Earth orbit, an Earth observation post with a human presence, an orbiting repair-and-maintenance base for spacecraft, and a staging base for exploratory missions into the solar system. He recounted the program details smoothly and comprehensibly, and finished by saying that the whole reason for a space station was exploration: we are a great nation, and great nations have an obligation to explore. It was an eloquent performance. The president asked whether the space station would eventually lead to the development of a base on the moon. Jim answered that it was the first step. Jay Keyworth, one of our chief opponents, was next. He made the argument that he had been making all along: the Russians already have space stations, so why should we build one? Instead, we should be going back to the moon right away. To broaden the outlook, he called for a “space summit” of knowledgeable people who would come up with plans for going to the moon. Baldrige commented that the proposed space station plan was too narrow. Unsurprisingly for a commerce secretary, he said that we should include commercialization in the program. He wanted the president to make a statement supporting the space station in his forthcoming State of the Union address.

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Paul Thayer pointed out that in the military’s view, there was no significant requirement to put people in space. He was concerned that the space station would be detrimental to the space shuttle program, which was still short of being operational. Then he turned to cost. The figure of $8 billion might be enough for the development of the space station, but the operational costs would come to $10 billion to $15 billion annually for some years to come. The Pentagon would not put the space station at a high level of priority. In addition, both the National Science Foundation and the US Chamber of Commerce had issued statements opposing the program. David Stockman, the OMB director, said that this was not the time to spend money on a space station. He knew the numbers, and he could prove that the space station was not worth the investment—and the country was going bankrupt. The current deficit of $208 billion would balloon to $600 billion in three years. Not least, we had to continue our defense buildup before doing anything else. The president said that he would not make a decision right away. He just wanted to have the arguments laid out. This was a great disappointment. William French Smith, the attorney general, turned to Stockman and said, “David, I will bet you anything that the comptroller of Ferdinand and Isabella said the same thing when Columbus came to them to ask for money for his trip west across the Atlantic.” The president laughed and said: “You all will remember that Isabella ultimately had to sell her jewels to finance the trip. I want to know—who has the jewels around here?” No one answered, but the attorney general said that he would support the construction of a space station, whereupon the president turned to him and said, “Bill, I knew you were rich, but eight billion dollars?” I had previously seen the president do something to ease tension at a meeting. When the discussions continued, people were more relaxed. So was I, because I never thought the attorney general would support the space station. William Brock, the US trade representative, made a strong speech in favor of starting the space station right away, calling it a high-quality investment. It would also excite the public. It was nice to see that we had some support from people who were not part of NASA. The president made a short closing speech, in which he thanked Jim Beggs profusely, apologizing for the “going over” he got from his colleagues. He laughed and said, “Well, at least they didn’t throw any jelly beans at you,” referring to the bowls of his signature candy on the table. Baldrige asked for a show of hands of those in favor of going ahead with the space station program. Three hands went up: Baldrige, Smith, and Brock. Another disappointment! As we got up from our chairs, the president spotted me and said: “Your boss did a great job. Do you have a few minutes to show me the model of the space station?”

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We walked over to the model, and I described the working of the space station to him and several others who had gathered around. The president asked me, “Do you want to visit this Space Station?” I answered immediately, “Yes, I would.” And he replied, “So would I if I was your age.” I looked into his eyes when he said that and tried to fathom what he was thinking. He had interesting eyes—friendly, but somehow opaque. The president thanked me and left the room through the door that led to the Oval Office. As Gil was collecting the papers and the transparencies and placing the pieces of the space station model back in its box, I said to no one in particular, “Well, I guess we bombed out.” Jim Beggs turned around and asked, “Why do you say that?” “We only got three votes out of the dozen voting people in the room,” I replied. Jim said that we got the only vote that actually mattered: the president’s. I asked him, “How do you know?” Jim replied, “That’s easy. He winked at me a couple of times while I was talking!” Budget Decisions and Other Events On Saturday, I flew to California for some speeches and to see Janey. Her marriage was in trouble, and I needed to be around occasionally to help her. Unfortunately, I could not help her marriage with Greg Bernstein. As things turned out, Janey would recover. She married Jim Jopson, the fourth son of Bob and Jolie Jopson. They have two promising children and now have been married for more than thirty years. I called Jim Beggs when I got to my hotel. He told me the results of the budget negotiations with Fred Khedouri at the OMB. Our final number would be about $7.6 billion, which was about what we had set our sights on, and $150 million of that would go to start the space station. So, at long last, we had won the battle. Jim did a brilliant job in promoting the space station program. His ability to make the right political connections carried the day. I was very grateful for the opportunity to play a role in such an important effort. The decision to start the space station would rank with President Kennedy’s decision to go to the moon and President Nixon’s decision to do the shuttle. Despite the president’s support, the opposition—the scientific community and the Pentagon (strange bedfellows, these!)—was already mobilizing. My guess was that in Congress, the opposition would come from the liberal Left—“know nothings” like William Proxmire—and fiscal conservatives on the Appropriations Committees. We expected a tough fight. On Sunday, December 4, I attended a meeting of the Citizens’ Advisory Council on National Space Policy, which was headed by the writer and spaceflight enthusiast Jerry Pournelle.The group had invited me to talk about the space station. About forty people gathered at Jerry’s large house in Tarzana. Among them were Buzz Aldrin, the second man on the moon; Lowell Wood; the science-fiction writer G. Harry Stine; Lou Friedman; and a number of other prominent supporters of space travel

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and exploration. I delivered the space station lecture and then described the meeting of the Cabinet Council Meeting on Commerce and Trade. There was a long question-and-answer session, followed by a party and numerous interesting discussions. I spent a couple of days at the NASA–Langley Research Center to review the leadership and the administrative side of the institution. Don Hearth was doing a good job as director. On the second day, there was a festive lunch in the model shop with the craftsmen who built the space station model. About twenty people sat around a long table, and there was much laughter and cheerful talk. When we were finished eating, I described the response of the president and the White House folks to the model, and everyone seemed gratified to have been part of such a success. The Filament Wound Case for the Solid Rocket Booster As part of the ongoing refinement of the space shuttle’s components, there was speculation that we could replace the steel casing of the solid rocket boosters (SRBs) with a fiber-reinforced plastic material, which would result in a substantial weight savings. The density of steel is about 7.5 grams per cubic centimeter. There were, at the time, fiber-reinforced synthetic materials with a density of about 4 grams per cubic centimeter.Thus, if it were possible for these synthetic materials to contain the pressure of the burning rocket fuel, the weight savings would be quite substantial. The two SRBs were the heaviest elements of the space shuttle system when it was launched. A substantial decrease in their weight would therefore have a large effect on the shuttle’s payload. The prospect of switching from steel to synthetic casings was promising enough that we asked the National Academy of Sciences to set up a committee to study the matter. On December 13, the committee met in the academy’s building on Constitution Avenue. This was fairly close to my office on Maryland Avenue, so I decided to walk over and attend at least part of the session. When I walked into one of the smaller conference rooms, I was thunderstruck to see Prof. Herman F. Mark (the Geheimrat!) sitting at the head of the table and running the meeting. As I walked in, he looked up and said, “Welcome, Dr. Mark, we are pleased to see you at our meeting”; then he pointed to an empty chair and said, “Please sit down.” I could only laugh and say, “Nobody told me that you were the chairman!” So, very politely, he repeated: “Please sit down, have some coffee, and listen to what we are doing.” Needless to say, I was both surprised and pleased to see him chairing this committee. He was one of the world’s top authorities on synthetic materials, so it was entirely appropriate for him to have been selected. What was really remarkable was that he was eighty-eight years old. I reflected on the fact that my father was eight years old when the Wright brothers flew their first powered aircraft at Kill Devil Hill on North Carolina’s Outer Banks. Here he was leading a discussion about an aircraft designed to fly in space.

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In the evening, Bun and I took my father and some of his friends to his favorite restaurant, Trader Vic’s. My father’s committee recommended that we stay with steel casings for the SRBs. The committee started with the Minuteman missile, which was the major launch vehicle used by the ground-based air force strategic command. The missile had a casing made of a fiber-reinforced synthetic material. The missile was successful, recording very few launch failures. The diameter of the Minuteman rocket was 1.67 meters, and that of the SRB was 3.71 meters—more than twice as large. Calculations showed that with the increased diameter, the thickness of the fiberreinforced material would likewise have to be increased. This consideration reduced the weight savings, and the committee concluded that using the synthetic material for the SRB was just too risky. We took their advice. The Secretary of Defense and the Strategic Defense Initiative On December 15, I was scheduled to appear on Good Morning America with the legendary test pilot Chuck Yeager. It was Chuck, flying a small rocket-powered aircraft, the North American Aviation X-1, who, on October 14, 1947, became the first person to fly faster than the speed of sound. Chuck went on to have a brilliant career in the air force as a senior test pilot; by this time, he was a retired brigadier general. We talked about supersonic flight, the Rockwell B-1B supersonic bomber, and the Aerospatiale / British Aerospace Concorde. It was great fun to see Chuck again. About a week later, I spent the morning doing some Christmas shopping with our son, Rufus, which was a pleasure. In the afternoon, Caspar Weinberger called me. He asked whether I would be willing to join him in the Pentagon to run the Strategic Defense against Ballistic Missiles Program. I would be reporting directly to him, and my title would be director of the Strategic Defense Initiative Organization (SDIO). I would formulate the program and then decide on the kinds of weapons systems to be used in it and the kind of research to be performed. He asked me to take some time to think about the proposition and to make an appointment to see him within a week. I promised him an answer by January 1. I wanted to accept the offer because I had been involved in the defense against ballistic missiles since 1958 with the Argus program and later with airborne lasers. But I wanted to make sure that the circumstances would be such that I could succeed. I thought that it would be best to set the stage for an interview by sending him a letter. I spent the Christmas vacation thinking about what to write, and on January 4, I sent Weinberger a long letter outlining what I wanted to see done. The major points were the following: • The proper way to run the program was to place it in the air force. The necessary technical skills were in that service, and those that were missing could

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be supplied by the other services. This was an important point. My previous experience in the air force had shown me that large programs should not be run out of the Office of the Secretary of Defense because it has no acquisition department. The air force would have to devote a fair fraction of its acquisition system to the job regardless of where it was overseen, so it was logical to put it in the air force right away. • We needed to decide how to phase the sequence of the development of the systems. The Fletcher plan, for example, called for a sequence of systems that would result in Fletcher’s layered system. • Finally, I said that I was committed to seeing the space station through to the conclusion of the congressional appropriation process.

On January 6, I was called to the West Wing to meet with Bud McFarlane and Ed Meese. Both of them were adamant that I take the job as it was explained to me by Weinberger. Both had seen my letter, so they were familiar with my points. A couple of days later, I wrote a letter to Jim Beggs in which I explained what had happened at that meeting. McFarlane and Meese told me that there would be an augmentation of $570 million in the 1985 fiscal year over the $1.6 billion spent on the SDIO program in the previous budget cycle. They were looking for someone with technical credibility who could educate Congress and the public, and promote the program in public forums. Separately, Meese told me that the president was personally interested in having me do this job. I met with Caspar Weinberger on January 17, 1984. I went through my proposal and made it clear that if the program were given to the air force, I would take the job. I had been working with the air force secretary very closely on the development and construction of the Rockwell B-1B and the Northrop B-2 bombers, and I could easily continue collaborating with him. At the end of the lunch, Weinberger asked me to think about it again, and I promised to do so. We met again a couple of weeks later. I reiterated that incorporating the SDIO into his office would create major problems in persuading the military services to do things for him. To make the thing work, the program had to have its own infrastructure. Then I had an idea that I thought Mr. Weinberger might buy into. I said: “What about asking a serving air force general to head the SDIO? There are several generals I know who could do the job, and I would be pleased to make a list for you.” “What would be the advantage?” the secretary asked. “You can find a general with a good technical reputation who has successfully managed a large program and who also has experience in dealing with Congress and the press. The other big advantage is that the air force will do everything to help him because he is well known. The fact that he and the SDIO will report to you would not be a big deal, since he wears the uniform—in fact, it could be an advantage.”

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Mr. Weinberger told me that he thought that this might be a good idea. He ended by thanking me and said good-bye. Afterward, I did some serious thinking about what had just happened. First, I promised the secretary that I would suggest some people who could do the job. Jim Abrahamson had all the qualifications that I listed. Second, I would have to write a letter turning down the SDIO job and suggesting that Weinberger interview Jim Abrahamson. Third, I would write a letter to Bud McFarlane, explaining what I had done. Finally, I would write a letter of resignation to Jim Beggs. I realized that whatever happened, I had burned my bridges with the Reagan administration. I turned down a position that was very high on the administration’s priority list.This meant that there would be some disappointed people around, so I thought it was time to get out. An ironic postscript to this watershed moment: my suggestions for organizing the SDIO were not adopted. It is still part of the Office of the Secretary of Defense. But except for one civilian, Dr. Henry Cooper (1990–93), all other directors of the SDIO (now the Missile Defense Agency) have been serving three-star officers.The Missile Defense Agency has achieved the best results of any independent agency in the last thirty years. On and off, I served on the scientific and technical advisory committees of the agency during successive administrations. The President’s State of the Union Message I was not heavily involved in the discussions about the president’s State of the Union address on January 25. I had to take care of several internal matters, and at the time I was still concerned about the Weinberger business. But there was still the matter of persuading the president to mention the space station in his speech. If the decision was made to include it in the speech, then we would likely be asked to provide a few paragraphs. During a conversation about other matters, Richard Johnson, who was one of Jay Keyworth’s assistants, told me that the president would not mention the space station in the speech. I let the remark pass, but I told Jim Beggs that Jay was working to prevent the president from mentioning the space station in his annual message. My main concern was that if the president did not refer to it, thereby indicating that it was not an administration priority, we would have problems with congressional funding. The other matter that we were asked to consider was international participation in the space station.When the White House people asked about it, we immediately agreed that it would be a good idea, not least because it would help us in Congress. We had already flown foreign astronauts on the space shuttle, so this kind of cooperation would be nothing new. When the time came for the speech, I walked over from my office to the Capitol. It was a cold, crisp winter night. The building was brightly illuminated, which brought out the strength and the elegance of the design. When I arrived, I discovered that I should have come much earlier! Luckily, I ran into Joan Clark, my

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television partner in Vienna eighteen months earlier. She told me that she and her husband, a former cabinet officer, sat in a special section. She said, “Come along.” I told her, “I have a ticket,” and showed it to her. “You won’t find your place in time. Come on, sit with us.” We went up to a door behind which there was a stairway, and at the top there was a guard. Joan showed him her pass, and we walked out in a gallery that led to our seats. It was a stroke of luck that I got to see the president speak, and I was grateful for it. As the president started to speak, I listened very carefully for any hint of what he might say about the space station. After brief introductory remarks, he announced four major themes: ensuring steady economic growth, developing America’s next frontier, strengthening our traditional values, and building a meaningful peace. He began to explain how each theme would be implemented, and I had a sneaking suspicion that the space station would be the centerpiece. Sure enough, here is what he said: Our second great goal is to build on America’s pioneer spirit . . . Nowhere is this more important than our next frontier: space. Nowhere do we so effectively demonstrate our technological leadership and ability to make life better on Earth. The Space Age is barely a quarter of a century old. But already we’ve pushed civilization forward with our advances in science and technology. Opportunities and jobs will multiply as we cross new thresholds of knowledge and reach deeper into the unknown. . . . America has always been greatest when we dared to be great. We can reach for greatness again. We can follow our dreams to distant stars, living and working in space for peaceful, economic, and scientific gain. Tonight, I am directing NASA to develop a permanently manned space station and to do it within a decade. A space station will permit quantum leaps in our research in science, communications, in metals, and in lifesaving medicines which could be manufactured only in space. We want our friends to help us meet these challenges and share in their benefits. NASA will invite other countries to participate so we can strengthen peace, build prosperity, and expand freedom for all who share our goals. Just as the oceans opened up a new world for clipper ships and Yankee traders, space holds enormous potential for commerce today. The market for space transportation could surpass our capacity to develop it. Companies interested in putting payloads into space must have ready access to private sector launch services. The Department of  Transportation will help an expendable launch services industry to get off the ground.We’ll soon implement a number of executive initiatives, develop proposals to ease regulatory constraints, and, with NASA’s help, promote private sector investment in space.

So there it was. The president embraced the space station program as the central part of the effort to craft a future. I really felt that we had won an important victory. As Joan Clark and I were walking down the stairs, she said, “Well, you finally got

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Figure 15.2. From left: Ronald Reagan (president of the United States), Margaret Thatcher (prime minister of Britain), unidentified, and Pierre Trudeau (prime minister of Canada) inspecting a model of the proposed space station at the G7 Summit in London, June 1984. Photo courtesy of Ronald Reagan Presidential Library.

your space station.” All I could do was to grin—and I hope that I did not look foolish. An interesting side note from the speech concerned the diplomatic corps, which always sits in a reserved section of the House. Most of the ambassadors received the message favorably and applauded along with everyone else. I sat near the Russian ambassador, Anatoly Dobrynin. He applauded only once, and that was when the president made a strong statement on the necessity of preventing nuclear war. I hoped that was a good sign. While I was exhilarated by the president’s promotion of the space station in his speech, and by the administration putting $150 million in the budget to start funding it, we still had to convince Congress to go ahead with the project.

The Campaign for the Space Station in Congress We had to develop a comprehensive strategy to get the space station approved. Congress has sometimes been much in favor of a strong space program.The launch of Sputnik in 1957 led to enormous pressure to outdo the Soviets with some major enterprise, which eventually became the Apollo trip to the moon. But the moon landing in July 1969 marked the end of automatic congressional approval of NASA’s

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funding requests. In fact, curtailment of the Apollo flights began even before September 1970, when President Nixon limited the moon flights to seven. There would never be another “era of good feelings” for NASA like that one. When President Nixon approved the space shuttle in February 1972, the action stirred little interest, and it was a struggle with Congress every year to secure adequate funding for the shuttle development program. The first flight of Columbia in April 1981 attracted considerable attention, and the first five years of shuttle operations were successful. This was one of the reasons why Jim Beggs and I thought that enough support could be marshaled to get the space station program approved. In the week following the president’s speech, we developed a list of likely opponents. As mentioned, the military and the scientific community were firmly opposed. Both thought that space activities were a zero-sum game because NASA used funds that could go to scientific or military projects. Since this was simply not the case, there was not much sense in their arguments, but there was also not much we could do about it. Two other groups opposed to the space station could cause real problems because they were essentially internal ones and therefore dangerous. The first group was composed of people within NASA and a few in the military.They claimed that developing a space station was premature and that we should build a fifth shuttle orbiter instead. Some of them wanted a fifth orbiter because they anticipated more traffic.This was a good argument, and eventually we would have to reach an agreement with this group. The second group’s argument, which was also strong, concerned the overall value of human activity in space. These people were very familiar with the technology of robotics. In the debate over the previous fiscal budget, the Senate subcommittee that oversaw NASA’s budget included the following statement in the report accompanying the appropriations bill: “In reference to the space station, the Committee suggests that NASA devote additional effort to exploring the potential benefits that can be derived through the design of a fully automated space platform. . . . The development of an automated platform might lead to significant advancements in pattern recognition, robotics, and artificial intelligence.” The Congressional Hearings Begin The budget wrangling for the 1985 fiscal year began on February 1, 1984, with a hearing in front of the House Subcommittee on Space Science and Applications, which was under the Committee on Science and Technology. This was a friendly group, so the questions were not difficult to handle. All the members were impressed with the brilliant explanation that Jim Beggs presented. It was clear that the chairman, Harold Volkmer (D-MO), was eager to move the project along. On February 27, we had our first serious hearing, this one before the Senate Budget Committee.The witnesses were Jim Beggs (NASA), Jay Keyworth (Office of

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Science and Technology Policy), John Gibbons (Office of  Technology Assessment), and William D. Carey (executive director, American Association of the Advancement of Science). Sen. Pete Domenici (R-NM) was in the chair, and the other senators were Charles Grassley (R-IA), Slade Gorton (R-WA), and Lawton Chiles (D-FL). Domenici made some essentially negative introductory remarks. He was concerned about the health of our basic research establishment. In addition, he was worried that the country spent less on the civil space program than on space activities related to national security. Things went about as expected. Keyworth presented the administration’s position on science and technology; his list of priorities had high-energy physics at the top. He made an eloquent argument that what happens at very high particle energies created by large ground-based particle accelerators will reveal how the universe began. Jay was really good at that kind of thing. Jim Beggs made his usual good speech about the space station. Carey, a representative of the scientific and academic communities, strongly made the point that we needed to pay much more attention to scientific and technical education. He indicated the numbers of university US graduates in science and engineering, and they were dismal compared with figures from other large industrial countries. A surprise came with the testimony of John Gibbons. He set his sights on the space station, saying that NASA had not made a “serious case” for it, that it was too expensive, and that it needed further study. He attacked NASA’s management (!) and called for a comprehensive study of the space program. Despite all this condemnation, he claimed that he did not have enough information to give advice or make decisions on these matters. Senator Chiles then asked, “Dr. Gibbons, do you think that the Congress would have started the Apollo program with advice such as you have just given us?” This question brought him up short, and after a long interval he said, “Yes, because Apollo was better defined than the space station.” Jim Beggs chimed in: “In that case, you were not listening while I was talking!” Chairman Domenici then interrupted and asked, “Dr. Gibbons, what do you think we should do?” Gibbons replied, “Better studies.” Upon hearing this, Senator Domenici said, “You can study things to death! Given what you have said, I believe that the OTA should be investigated.You are supposed to give us advice, not kick the can down the street!” The clearly irritated chairman then rapped his gavel and adjourned the hearing. Over the next two weeks, Jim and I did a fairly constant round of retail politics, meeting with congressmen, senators, and staff members on the relevant committees and subcommittees. On March 13, we had the first hint that our efforts were paying off. Volkmer’s subcommittee of the House Committee on Science and Technology marked up the NASA bill and included the $150 million that we requested for the space station.

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The Appropriation Process and the Endgame The next day it was back to retail politics with members of the full Science and Technology Committee. These meetings were necessary because, in the end, every vote counts. On March 20, the committee voted on the NASA budget with only minor changes. The bill contained the $150 million for the space station. The next day, I went to see Rep. Bob Traxler (D-MI), who was the number two man on the Appropriations subcommittee that handled the NASA program. I explained the space station program to him, and I was impressed by his sharp questioning. The first important news on March 27 was that Jim Abrahamson had accepted the job of running the Strategic Defense Initiative Organization. I would miss working with Jim, who was one of the very best colleagues I ever had. He had done a first-class job of running the space shuttle program. The other item that day was our first hearing with the House Appropriations Committee. Rep. Edward Boland (D-MA) was the chairman of our subcommittee. He had no use for NASA or the space program. We had tussled with Boland in 1976 when seeking congressional approval for the Pioneer-Venus mission. We were defeated in his subcommittee and then in the Appropriations Committee as well. We proposed the program to the entire House of Representatives, and won.We hoped that it would not be necessary to go to that extreme this time. As things turned out, Boland relented. He changed his mind and helped pass the bill with the space station included. Two days later, we had our first hearing before the relevant Senate Appropriations subcommittee. This one was chaired by Sen. Jake Garn (R-UT). He was the only senator present, and he spent much of the time asking what it would take for him to fly on the space shuttle. He told us that he had many thousands of hours as an air force pilot flying Lockheed C-130s. Jim Beggs authorized a flight for Senator Garn in 1985. The whole hearing was a charade. The problem with the Senate Appropriations Committee was Dr. Wallace G. Berger. Berger, a member of the committee’s professional staff, was well educated (PhD, Michigan State University) and had a good technical background. He argued for robotic platforms instead of manned space stations. Berger had great influence on the committee members, making him a formidable opponent who would have to be persuaded. On May 9, the Senate passed the NASA authorization bill with the full $150 million in the budget for the space station—a clear win. The next day, I was back working the House Appropriations Committee. The committee wound up voting for the space station and putting $150 million in its markup. The committee wrote in the bill that we should spend 10 percent of the money to study unmanned options for the space station. Fortunately, such “congressional language” was not binding. On May 29, I had a long meeting with Wally Berger. It turned out that he had moved Senator Garn to a totally unacceptable position on the space station. He had written into the bill a paragraph that called for a large number of automated

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and robotic systems that would hamstring a human crew. This move was an excellent example of an intellectually arrogant staffer exercising influence way beyond what he should have by right. Jim Beggs would have to talk with Vice President Bush to see whether we could get him to talk with Senator Garn. Our best case was the political one: a manned space station was the president’s initiative, and as a Republican subcommittee chairman, Garn had to support it. On July 11, we were informed that the House authorization and appropriation bills had passed and that the conference committee’s report contained the $150 million for the space station. It has been a long hard haul, but we now had a very real victory on our hands. There would eventually be a real space station built by Americans in collaboration with our friends and allies. I was elated.

The First Flight of Discovery On June 24, I flew to Houston to observe the first flight of Discovery, our third working orbiter. The countdown was under way when I arrived at four in the morning, so I started following it on my console. At seven thirty a computer problem caused the flight to be canceled. Unlike my previous practice, I did not ask any questions, having promised Jim Beggs not to get involved in the operations of the Johnson Space Center. We tried again the next day. The launch was again aborted, but the anomaly was much more serious than a computer glitch. The third main engine started and shut down after three seconds, and then the second main engine started and shut down almost immediately after. The first never started at all, so it was clear that we had serious problems. On August 30, we tried again, and this time Discovery took off at 9:20 a.m. It was a good mission, and two communications satellites were deployed. I was satisfied that the space shuttle program was as good as we could make it. I simply did not have the authority to develop a competent group that would be purely devoted to shuttle operations.

Our Decision to Leave Washington When Bun and I decided to leave California in 1977 and go to Washington, it was our intention to stay for at most four years and then return to California. In fact, I had made arrangements with the personnel people at Ames so that technically I would be on a “leave of absence” as a GS-15 civil servant while we were away. In addition, we did not sell our house in Los Altos Hills, since we expected to come back at the end of President Carter’s first term. In previous chapters, I related some of the events that changed our minds and gave us reasons to stay longer. The election of Ronald Reagan in 1980 opened up opportunities that were not available during the Carter administration—the space station program was an important example. Although full congressional approval of

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the space station would not occur until July 11, 1984, we thought that a decision to leave late in May would not change things. Probably the most important event that made it possible to leave was Bun’s graduation from George Washington University with a doctorate in education. On August 23, 1982, Milt Silveira, some other friends, and I watched as Bun walked across the stage in the university’s basketball court to receive her doctoral hood. It had been a long haul because she worked full-time as a teacher while performing her dissertation research. It was truly a great achievement. Bun’s dissertation, “A Study to Compare the Effectiveness of Functional Reading Instruction with Reading Comprehension at a Maryland Junior High School,” attracted some attention. In the 1980s, “functional reading” was thought to be sufficient to “get along” in ordinary activities such as reading street signs, advertisements, and simple instructions. Functional reading was thought to be easier to learn than standard reading, and Bun showed by a thorough statistical analysis that, in effect, there was no difference between the two. She concluded: “Functional and Standard Reading tests are measuring the same abilities. That being the case, one might well question the wisdom of a policy that requires the expenditures of a great deal of time and money in an essentially duplicative procedure.” This statement caused some consternation among the leaders of the Maryland educational establishment. I was very proud of Bun. She had accomplished something important under difficult circumstances. Bun and I had had some interesting experiences in Washington, but we both felt that we did not really want to live there in the long term. To make a long story short and to leave the details to another book, Bun and I decided to move to Texas. I had been offered the position of chancellor of the University of  Texas System.We made the decision to take this step on May 28, 1984. When President Reagan included the space station in his State of the Union message on January 20, 1984, both Bun and I thought that it was a signal. We had arrived in Washington in the spring of 1977, and it would soon be the spring of 1984, which would be our seventh year in town. Since I had about ten years of academic experience, five as a department chairman, both Bun and I thought that it would be best to look for an academic post. What I was looking for was a presidency. I had an interview with Oregon State University, but I did not make the grade. Salvation came quite unexpectedly. Late in February 1984, I received a telephone call from Jess Hay, of Dallas. He told me that he was a regent of the University of  Texas System and the chairman of the search committee for a new chancellor. He asked whether that position was something that might interest me. My first instinct was to turn the proposition down, but then I remembered the conversation with Bun, and I told Hay that I would be interested in talking to him about it. Hay and two other regents came to Washington, and we had a long conversation. I was very impressed by the three regents. At the end of our talk, it was agreed

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that I would fly to Austin, where the UT System had its headquarters, for additional interviews. As it turned out, I made two trips to Austin and one to Dallas, where the formal meeting with the search committee was held. It lasted several hours, since the committee had about fifteen members. When I returned to Washington, I had to make a decision about what to do. Both Bun and I leaned toward going to Texas. I had promised Jon Newton, the chairman of the board of regents, that I would make the decision by the end of May. Bun and I made two telephone calls on May 28, both to very close friends. One was to Jack Boyd, and the second to Tom Pigford. Both agreed that I should accept the job. So once again, we rolled the dice to discover what would come next.

16 The Loss of Challenger, Crucial Summit Meetings, and Defense-Related Research at the University of  Texas

On May 30, 1984, I stood in the large and elegant Regent’s Room on the ninth floor of Ashbel Smith Hall in downtown Austin. This was one of the buildings at the headquarters complex of the University of  Texas System. The system’s board of regents had just elected me to be the sixth chief executive officer (chancellor) of the system by a unanimous vote, and I was both awed and humbled to have the opportunity to assume this position. I silently prayed to the Good Lord and asked for help. On the flight to Austin, I wrote a short acceptance statement. I mentioned my own history in public higher education and noted that the idea went back to Thomas Jefferson and the University of Virginia. Bun was standing next to me, grinning ear to ear, as she had every right to do. It was essentially because of her urging that we were in that room. The whole event was a watershed in our lives, and perhaps as an omen of some kind, there was a partial eclipse of the sun on that day—in Austin it was more than 80 percent—which would, I hoped, bring us both luck. I thought it was perhaps God’s joke that since I had just left a position in the nation’s space agency, he arranged an astronomical event like this to be part of my send-off. As chancellor of the UT System, I was not directly engaged in Cold War matters as a full, true participant. I did remain determined to do what was in my power to further US national interests. Cold War events required either a bit of my time (I refer to these as “interludes” in this chapter) or my full attention, as with the efforts to secure defense-related work for the University of  Texas at Austin.

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Cold War Interludes in Washington and Austin On March 11, 1985, the Soviet news agency, TASS, announced that the Soviet leader Konstantin Chernenko was dead at age seventy-three. This was the second time in a few years that a Soviet leader had died in office after a very short tenure. The next day, it was announced that Mikhail Gorbachev would be the general secretary of the Soviet Communist Party. Not much information was revealed about the new leader except that he was fifty-four years old and had been brought to the Politburo a year and a half earlier by Yuri Andropov, Chernenko’s predecessor. He was said to be a protégé of Andropov, and this was taken to be significant. My initial response to the news of Gorbachev’s promotion was that he was the first world leader younger than I was! Much more importantly, perhaps Gorbachev’s selection signaled a reversal of what had been a slow but steady decline in the power and influence of the Soviet Union. There had been corruption among the people of the nomenklatura (governmental elites) during Brezhnev’s tenure, and then the disastrous invasion of Afghanistan in 1979.Would Gorbachev be able to reverse this trend? One sure thing was that the Cold War would now enter a new era, and I was chagrined to be far from the center of affairs in Washington. I did have advisory positions in Washington at the time. One was with the Strategic Defense Initiative Organization (SDIO), headed by my old friend and protégé Jim Abrahamson, as a member of the Scientific Advisory Committee. I had worked on issues related to defense against ballistic missiles for many years, so the position was a natural fit. A second formal advisory job involved my membership on the Executive Panel of the chief of naval operations. I had been appointed to it by Adm. James Watkins, and I continued when Adm. Carlisle Trost succeeded him, in 1987, as chief. When I was appointed, I participated in a study on the navy’s role in space operations related to the national security. The study was headed by Jim Woolsey, with whom I had worked during the Carter administration. We recommended an expansion of the navy’s role in space and also an organization to manage the navy’s space operations, to be headed by a flag officer.This recommendation was accepted, and a space unit was established at the Naval Surface Weapons Center (now the Naval Surface Warfare Center) near Washington. The former astronaut Richard H. Truly, who had just been promoted to the rank of rear admiral, was chosen to head the new command. Another matter that I was concerned about at the time was the control of antisatellite weapons. This was a major issue during the Carter administration, because in 1977 the Soviets successfully tested an antisatellite weapon, making the technology a subject for discussions on arms control. My own position on arms control has been simple. I have generally favored agreements that controlled the number of weapons and their places of deployment. But I have opposed treaties that ban the development of new weapons, on the general principle that the United States is far more adept at developing new technology than other nations. On antisatel-

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lite weapons, I provided technical advice to Peter Zimmerman, who was a senior official in the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (ACDA), whose advisory committee I sat on. My position was that we should not compromise our ability to develop an effective antisatellite weapon. Although no longer involved in such matters every day, I wanted very much to maintain a connection. For the longer term, I even entertained the idea of returning to Washington. Another interesting Cold War incident occurred on March 8, 1985, a few days before the announcement of Chernenko’s passing and Gorbachev’s selection as general secretary. This was a visit by a Soviet delegation to the Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library on the UT-Austin campus. Such visits by leading Soviet people were fairly frequent after the death of Brezhnev. This delegation was headed by Vladimir Shcherbitsky, the Soviet party secretary (leader) in Ukraine. An impressive-looking man, he was sixty-nine years old but looked quite a bit older. He also gave the impression of being somewhat wistful and tired. I attended a rather lengthy luncheon at which I was seated next to Georgi Arbatov, the director of the Institute of American and Canadian Studies of the Soviet Academy of Sciences. During the entire Brezhnev era, he had been the most influential adviser to the Soviet Politburo on US issues. Arbatov seemed to be about sixty, although he could have been younger. For some reason, the Soviet leaders that I had met always seemed to look older than they really were. Our discussion centered on arms control, a major topic at the time. I told Arbatov that I had been working on nuclear weapons for many years and on developing defenses against ballistic missiles since 1958. Looking somewhat surprised, he asked me whether I thought such defensive weapons could be made to work. I said, “Yes, given enough time and money.” “Our scientists tell me that there will never be a missile defense that really works,” he replied. “Then why,” I responded, “have you deployed a missile defense system around Moscow?” This was the Galosh system—about one hundred missiles designed to shoot down attacking ballistic missiles. At this point Arbatov switched to making ad hominem attacks on Sen. John Tower and Ambassador Max Kampelman, who were the leaders of our current arms control delegation. He accused them of prevarications and evasions during the current negotiations. It was not a very useful conversation.

Two Debates about Defense against Ballistic Missiles and Nuclear War In September 1985, I had been chancellor of the UT System for a year and had not been paying much attention to what was going on in Washington. I had my hands full with learning about the ways of  Texas and the university. The Reagan admin-

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istration was generally handling national security well. And so I had not made any public statements about security-related matters. My speeches about topics other than the UT System were confined to my work at NASA. A vital question still under vigorous public discussion was the development of a defense against ballistic missiles. Since this matter had been something of a personal interest of mine ever since the Argus project in 1958, I wanted to start participating again in the debate. I decided to start accepting invitations to talk about US defense against ballistic missiles—the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), or “Star Wars” in popular jargon. When I told the regents’ chairman, Jess Hay, that I was thinking about doing this, his answer was crisp and clear: “If you keep it technical, OK, but stay out of policy and politics.” James C. Fletcher and the Defense Technology Study Panel had outlined, in a comprehensive report issued in October 1983, the manifold difficulties that had to be overcome (see chapter 15). Because of the importance of the program, Fletcher had wide latitude. The panel, which quickly became the Fletcher Panel, was very large—more than sixty people. They were organized into three groups: an executive group, a private-sector group (which was misleadingly named, since most of its members were from research institutions and corporate laboratories), and a Department of Defense group. At the time, I was the deputy administrator of NASA, so I could not be directly involved in the panel. In debates on SDI, I planned to stay away from discussions of the more controversial items, such as satellite-based weapons with “brilliant pebbles” or “X-ray lasers.” I would stick to systems that I had worked on, such as the Airborne Laser Laboratory, which we helped develop at Ames, and some of the more promising sea-based applications based on the navy’s Aegis system. I participated in two SDI-related events. On Saturday, November 23, 1985, MIT hosted a technical symposium at which the feasibility of several proposals was discussed. It was a vigorous debate. Alexander Flax, the director of the Institute for Defense Analyses, took a neutral position and asked good questions that kept things going. Richard Garwin (Columbia University), Ashton Carter (Kennedy School, Harvard), Jerome Wiesner (MIT), and Jack Ruina (MIT) were opposed to developing a strategic defense system; and Gerold Yonas (Sandia Corp.), Fred Hoffman (former assistant secretary of defense), and I were in favor. I believe that we acquitted ourselves well, but we were outnumbered. The audience was overwhelmingly opposed to the development of defenses against ballistic missiles. That evening, there was a nice dinner party at Gerald Holton’s house. Holton was a distinguished physicist who was also a historian of physics. Steven and Louise Weinberg were present, as were Daniel Bell and his wife. Bell was a distinguished sociologist who had written some prescient books about how American society would evolve in the coming years. Everyone at the table was critical of what I said during the debate. Holton, who was born in Berlin, had come to the United States along a similar route (in his case, Vienna to England to America) and in the same

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year (1941) as I did, so we had something in common. At some point, Holton mercifully started to change the subject, and I followed suit by telling Bell that I had read his book The Coming of Post-Industrial Society (1973), adding that his prediction of the decay of our industrial base had, unfortunately, come to pass.Then I remembered an article I had written for Defense magazine in 1980, called “Productivity, Technology and the Illusion of a Free Lunch.” In the article, I stated that if Bell’s prediction came true, the results would lead to disaster. I continued by saying that if we lost our ability to make things, we would wind up as part of the Third World. All agreed with what I had written. The conversation ended by Bell mentioning that he had graduated from Stuyvesant High School in New York in 1938. Since I knew that Steve Weinberg had gone to the Bronx High School of Science, the dinner party ended with a friendly argument about which high school was better, a debate in which I was finally in the majority! Two weeks later there was a conference titled “Forty Years of the Nuclear Age” at the LBJ School of Public Affairs on the campus of the University of  Texas at Austin. It was sponsored by the Peace Education Center, a local group concerned with international affairs.The meeting was held to mark the fortieth anniversary of the nuclear age, which seemed a little muddled. Technically, the nuclear age began when Enrico Fermi succeeded on December 2, 1942, in producing the first reactor that could sustain a nuclear chain reaction. But the public did not become aware of the nuclear age until August 6, 1945, when the city of Hiroshima was destroyed by the detonation of a nuclear weapon. So either the organizers got the month right but the year wrong, or the month wrong and the year right. The speakers were headed by John Kenneth Galbraith, the prominent Harvard economics professor and a former US ambassador to India.The title of his introductory talk was “Military Power and the Politics of Peace.” In contrast to the meeting at MIT, which was essentially a technical one, this one had a much broader charter, and there were about 150 people in the audience. On the second day of the meeting there were five panel discussions. I participated in the final one, “Star Wars: Strategic Defense Initiative,” which, as it turned out, did not begin until seven o’clock in the evening. The other panelists were a former naval aviator, R. Adm. Eugene Carroll Jr., who had had a distinguished navy career and was then the deputy director of the Center for Defense Information; Col. S. Peter Worden, USAF, an old friend who was then the chief scientist of the Strategic Defense Initiative Office (SDIO); and Zdena Tonin, an executive in the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. The meeting was moderated by James Katz of the LBJ School. Our panel discussion was the best one at the meeting, in my opinion, because we were evenly matched. Admiral Carroll and Ms. Tonin were arguing against initiating the strategic defense program, and Colonel Worden and I were in favor of doing something. More importantly, all of us were thoroughly familiar with the subject. Worden and I laid out the plans for SDI while conceding that the technical problems were formidable and that it would take a long time to do something

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that had military value. But it was necessary to make the investment to see what could be done. Carroll and Tonin asserted that the ultimate objective should be no nuclear weapons at all in the world—the zero option. Our meeting lasted more than two hours, and there were many questions from the audience. As is often the case, the differences between the pro and con arguments could not be reconciled. But meetings of this kind are nonetheless very important. They give people a chance to think through their positions and then to test them against people who disagree with them. One of the UT regents who attended the meeting, Shannon Ratliff, took me aside afterward and suggested that we organize more conferences like this one.

The Loss of the Space Shuttle Challenger Looking back now over my time at the University of  Texas, I can honestly say that the only time I ever seriously considered leaving the university was when the space shuttle Challenger was lost on January 28, 1986. I was driving with old friend from the NASA–Ames Research Center, Jack Boyd, who had recently joined the chancellor’s staff; we were heading to Randolph Air Force Base in San Antonio, where I would be speaking to a group of retired servicemen. At the gate, a public affairs officer told us that there had been an accident with the space shuttle. He took us to a conference room with a TV monitor, which was showing a tape of the first two minutes of the launch. We saw a flame appear about seventy seconds into the flight. Three seconds later, the Challenger broke apart, the orbiter disintegrated, and the pieces fell into the ocean. Jack and I were horrified by what we saw. The great white bird that we had worked so hard to create was vulnerable. Challenger was destroyed by the failure of an O-ring in the solid rocket motor, which was attached to the right side of the large fuel tank. The senior NASA leadership had been aware of problems with this O-ring seal since the second flight of Columbia, in September 1981. I described earlier problems with these seals in some detail in chapter 14. This seal, which is the one between the bottom two segments of the stack, had two O-rings in order to receive a fail-safe rating. An examination of this seal following Columbia’s second flight revealed that hot gas from the inside the solid-fuel rocket case had leaked through one of the O-rings of the seal, so at the very least, the seal was not fail-safe. Also in chapter 14, I mentioned discussing this problem with the deputy associate administrator for spaceflight, L. Michael Weeks, and about the waiver required if any fail-safe system turned out not to meet that requirement. Mike, as the acting associate administrator at the time, had the authority to waive the requirement, but he asked my opinion. I supported Mike’s position to waive the fail-safe requirement for two reasons, one technical and one operational. The technical reason was that the Titan IV launch vehicle had a solid-fuel rocket just as the shuttle did, but it

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Figure 16.1. The Challenger explosion. My old friend Jack Boyd and I looked at this terrible image repeatedly as we watched videotape of the disaster in General Andrew Iosue’s conference room. The picture shows the portside solid rocket motor flying away from the disintegrating orbiter and the burning fuel tank. Photo courtesy of NASA Headquarters.

had only one O-ring, instead of the shuttle’s two, for the seals in the same position in the solid rocket booster. At that time, the Titan IV had a sterling launch safety record of more than one hundred successful launches. The operational reason was that had I insisted that the seal be fail-safe, it would have taken a year or more to redesign and rebuild. I was wrong about the technical matter regarding the solid rocket booster used by the Titan IV launch vehicle. There were significant design differences between it and the shuttle’s booster. By not studying these differences carefully enough, I inadvertently laid the foundation for the tragedy that befell Challenger. I still have feelings of guilt about this matter that I cannot shed. I have already described the Flight Readiness Review for the eleventh shuttle flight (the fifth flight of Challenger) in March 1984. We had seen severe erosion of the O-rings on the previous flight, and this time I was really alarmed. I issued a memo that called for a thorough review of all seals and joints on the solid rocket motor. My intention was to review the technical situation in detail and then see whether it would be necessary to rescind the fail-safe waiver we had agreed on a year or so earlier.

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Figure 16.2. My action item calling for a thorough review of all seals and joints on the solid rocket motor (SRM).

My action item for this review was issued on March 30, and I made the decision to leave NASA two months later, on May 28. My boss, Jim Beggs, correctly took me out of the operational decision-making loop once I had decided to leave. He and I thought that a new deputy administrator would be named to replace me within a few weeks. As things turned out, that did not happen for many months. The trouble was essentially political. The White House wanted to have William Graham as deputy administrator. Bill Graham is a good man and a very competent physicist with a strong background in nuclear weapons. As the president’s science adviser, he was active in the development of the ideas for President Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative. In addition, he had strong support from influential members of the president’s staff. Jim Beggs did not want Graham as his deputy administrator. Bill had no experience in air and space technologies, and he had never managed a large organiza-

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tion. There was probably another factor. Bill had a reputation for being politically hard right, whereas Jim and his wife, Mary, were staunch mainstream Republicans. Mary, in fact, was quite active in Maryland Republican politics, having served as the Republican chairman in Howard Country. Since I was not quickly replaced as deputy administrator, the review that I had ordered was not held on May 30, 1984, as specified in my action item, but was postponed for more than a year. During that delay, evidence accumulated that something was seriously wrong with the O-ring seal. A review was finally held to close out my action item on August 19, 1985, fifteen months after the specified deadline. The senior NASA official present was the deputy associate administrator for spaceflight, Mike Weeks. A highly qualified go-ahead for flight was given, but I do not know whether anyone higher in NASA’s hierarchy ever saw that briefing. I learned that the impasse concerning Bill Graham’s appointment was broken when I received a call from him inviting me to have dinner with him on my next trip to Washington. On October 30 at the Cosmos Club, Bill informed me that he would shortly be nominated by President Reagan to serve as deputy administrator of NASA. Throwing caution to the wind, I asked Bill why he was now acceptable to Jim. He told me that he could not talk to me about it, but that I would find out soon enough. We discussed NASA and its problems, and I came away with the impression that Bill could do the job well. After being nominated and rapidly confirmed by the Senate, Bill was sworn in as deputy administrator of NASA late in November 1985. Several weeks later, I was back in Washington. On December 1, I visited Jim Fanseen, who was still the NASA liaison officer with the White House, at NASA Headquarters. He was morose. He told me that Jim Beggs would shortly be indicted for fraud for something that had occurred seven years earlier during his tenure as executive vice president of General Dynamics. Fanseen said that some of the hardright people on the White House staff had arranged to have these charges brought against Jim Beggs in order to force him out of office to make room for Bill Graham. I said that I found all this very hard to believe. His response: “Just wait and see.” A day or two later on my flight back to Austin, I had to change planes in St. Louis. Sure enough, the papers were full of stories about the indictment of the Jim Beggs, the NASA administrator, being accused of fraudulent dealings. It was ironic that I learned about this tragedy in the same city where, four and a half years earlier, Jim and I had laid our plans to lead NASA. I was in a black mood about all of this when I arrived home. I was determined to try and do something about the situation, but I had no idea where to start. After sleeping on it, I decided to send a handwritten letter to the vice president, describing the situation as I saw it. I thought that he was the right person to approach because he was still the chairman of the National Space Council. Furthermore, I thought that I knew him well enough that he might listen. My principal suggestion was that the former NASA administrator Jim Fletcher be

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placed in charge of NASA until Bill Graham had gained enough experience to run the organization. In addition, I raised the possibility of a shuttle accident—I had a premonition of deep trouble. Were we tempting fate by deliberately putting inexperienced leaders in charge of NASA? I received a noncommittal reply from the vice president. Nothing was done to implement any of the suggestions that I had made.

Figure 16.3. My letter to Vice President Bush, warning that problems could result if none of the top leaders at NASA had spaceflight experience.

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On December 5, 1985, it was announced that Jim Beggs would be put on an indefinite leave of absence from NASA to give him time to defend himself against the charges. The new deputy administrator, William Graham, would become the acting administrator. Thus, my worst fear was confirmed. A good man with no experience was at the helm, and there was no deputy with both experience and stature to help him.

Figure 16.4. Vice President Bush’s response to my letter.

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Two days after the Challenger explosion, I wrote another letter to the vice president, making the same suggestion, only in much stronger terms. On January 31 there was a memorial service for those who lost their lives in the catastrophe. It was a very moving, very difficult experience for me. In Houston, I spent the morning with my old friends Milt Silveira and Aaron Cohen, the deputy manager and manager of the Space Shuttle Orbiter Program, to learn in detail what had happened. It was indeed the O-ring seal at the bottom joint of the right side of the solid rocket motor that had failed—the same O-ring seal that Mike Weeks and I had declared “safe” three years earlier. I did not reveal my sinking feeling of guilt, but the realization made the day even more difficult. At the ceremony, President Reagan delivered a speech that was both sincere and articulate. He began by quoting the famous line from John Gillespie Magee’s poem, saying that the astronauts had “slipped the surly bonds of Earth.” He then repeated his promises to make the space shuttle work and to build the space station. It was an eloquent eulogy. It is very hard to say how I felt after all this except that I was emotionally drained. I deeply regretted leaving NASA. Maybe I could have done something to prevent the accident. To this day I have a strong sense of guilt about what happened. I looked around and spotted Jim Beggs, and we tightly hugged each other, weeping bitter tears. I was really in a blue funk. It took me a couple of days to recover. I should say a word about the people who died aboard Challenger. I knew Dick Scobee quite well because he was a veteran of a previous shuttle flight. He had been at the 1983 Paris Air Show that I had attended with the space shuttle Enterprise. Dick was one of the pilots (along with Fitz Fulton) who flew the Boeing 747 that carried the Enterprise. Judy Resnick had a PhD in electrical engineering from the University of Maryland. Ron McNair was a physicist with a PhD from MIT. I had helped to persuade Judy to become a mission specialist. She was very bright and very intense, with a promising future. Ron was more laid-back but still had a very sharp and sophisticated mind. He also played a mean saxophone, and we developed a special friendship because of our shared MIT background. I had many interesting conversations with Judy and Ron, which I remember well to this day. Because of these friendships, it was very hard for me to come to grips with their passing. I did not know the other members of the crew. One concern I did have was for Christa McAuliffe. While deputy administrator, I vigorously opposed putting people on the space shuttle who were neither thoroughly trained nor fully cognizant of the risks involved. Some NASA publicity blurbs called shuttle flights “routine.” They were not, and I tried to counter that argument as best I could. Once I left NASA, Jim Beggs decided to start permitting people who were not thoroughly trained in spaceflight to ride in the shuttle. This began with Sen. Jake Garn of Utah, who had badgered us during congressional hearings to let him fly. Rep. Bill Nelson of Florida was next, and finally poor Christa McAuliffe. Six of

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the seven people aboard Challenger were trained astronauts and either mission or payload specialists, and all understood the risks they were taking.They were heroes, just like trained soldiers who die in battle. I could never escape the feeling that Christa McAuliffe was murdered; she really never knew what she was getting into when she agreed to be the “teacher in space.” It was a shabby publicity stunt not worthy of what I thought NASA should be. NASA violated its own rules in the investigation of the Challenger accident. The rules required the NASA administrator to appoint a committee to conduct the investigation and then to make appropriate recommendations. I earlier described this procedure in connection with the Apollo 13 accident. Bill Graham did not do this. Apparently, he called the people in the White House, and their reply was “We will take care of this.” This abdication of responsibility led to the formation of a presidential commission chaired by former secretary of state William P. Rogers. The members of the commission had stellar qualifications, but I was very much afraid that overall it had a political agenda. I wanted to be asked to testify before the commission, but that did not happen. On April 9, 1986, a staff member of the Rogers Commission, Randy Kehrli, came to Austin to see me. We had a thorough discussion over the course of more than three hours. I told him what I knew about the technical situation and what my history in dealing with the O-ring seal problem had been. He knew about my action item of March 30, 1984, and asked me why I had not insisted on holding the review of all the “seals and joints on the SRM to make certain that there is satisfactory closure” by the May 30, 1984, deadline I had set. I told him that I had started the procedure to conduct the review, but when I announced my resignation, Jim Beggs, quite correctly, pulled me off all decision-making tasks. Kehrli then asked me about procedures. He wanted to know what I thought about the NASA management overruling objections from the Morton Thiokol people about the decision to launch. (Morton Thiokol manufactured the O-rings.) I told him that I was in the Mission Operations Control Center in Houston for the first twelve space shuttle launches. At every countdown, a contractor informed us of a problem that might jeopardize the launch. In each case we listened to the argument and tried to fix the problem. In the previous chapter, I described two instances in which we postponed the flight for substantial periods because the contractors made a strong case. I was not present in the control room on January 28, so I did not know what I would have done. I do know that I urged postponement when I thought it necessary. Finally, Kehrli told me that many people in the NASA leadership had testified before the commission that they had no knowledge of the problem with the O-ring seals on the solid rocket motor. I told him that this did not sound credible to me. On March 7, it was announced that James C. Fletcher would once again take up the leadership of NASA—my suggestion from the prior December may somehow

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have gotten through to the White House. Fletcher had had a very successful first term, 1972–77, and would now take on the much more difficult job of leading NASA out of the deep, serious problems created by the loss of Challenger. A day before the announcement, I called Fletcher in Washington. I asked whether he would accept the administrator’s position if it were offered. He said that he was not interested in another term as administrator and that he did not know what he could bring to the table. I urged him to think about it and offered to go to work for him in any capacity that he thought would be helpful. Given that conversation, I was surprised when the announcement was made. On March 29, Ray Colladay, who was associate administrator of NASA for space science and applications during my service as deputy administrator, called to tell me that Jim Fletcher was having trouble with Bill Graham undercutting his position with people in the White House. I was not surprised; there was a hardright cadre of people who would support any efforts by Graham to topple Fletcher. I told Ray that Fletcher had to fire Graham; since he had just been appointed, it was extremely unlikely that he would be fired if he were to let Graham go. Ray agreed with me, suggested that I call Fletcher and tell him the same thing, and gave me Fletcher’s home telephone number. I spent a half hour thinking about all this and then decided to resign as chancellor. I wrote a short letter of resignation and then picked up the telephone and called Jim Fletcher. We spent the next two and a half hours on the telephone. He started out by telling me that President Reagan had personally asked him to accept the NASA job. Fletcher later told Donald Regan, the White House chief of staff, that he needed to fire Graham. Regan essentially said, “Go ahead,” so that hurdle was cleared. Then Jim told me what he thought was the real problem: as a result of the Challenger accident, commercial and military payloads would both be taken off future shuttle flights. Toward the end of the conversation, I told him that I wanted to return to Washington to work for him in any capacity that he thought would be useful. I read him the resignation letter that I had just written. A former university president himself, Fletcher advised me not to do anything rash. It seemed clear that he was skeptical of my commitment to return to NASA. He never offered me a job. On June 9, 1986, I received a copy of the Rogers Commission report. It at first appeared to be a very thorough job, but a more careful reading revealed some flaws. Most critically, the report did not rigorously follow the rules of accident reports. There must be a separation between findings, determinations, conclusions, and recommendations. The report concluded that the loss of Challenger was caused by the flawed design of the O-ring seal between the lowest segment, with the rocket nozzle, and the next one above. The problem was exacerbated by the cold air temperature at the time of launch. That much was true, but the important part was the recommendation that shuttle flights be suspended until redesign and testing of the improved

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joint seal was finished. If adopted, that recommendation meant there would be no shuttle flights for something like two years. I was appalled. While the space race with the Soviets was clearly not of the highest priority, given the moon landings, there was still some competition and a competitive edge to maintain. During the two years that Americans might not be in space, the Soviets would keep flying people to their space station. Many of us thought this was unacceptable. I wanted to get the space shuttle fleet flying again as soon as possible. Two other findings attracted my attention. Workers in the huge Vehicle Assembly Building discovered upon trying to assemble the solid rocket motor segments that the upper segment was “out of round” and could not be mated easily with the bottom segment. A special tool was used to squeeze the upper segment in order to decrease the eccentricity so that the upper segment could be mated to the circular lower segment. The finding that describes the operation states: “While the assembly conditions had the potential of generating debris or damage that could cause O-ring seal failure these were not considered factors in the accident.” This conclusion should have been justified by clear evidence that there was no damage. A final point in the finding was that the long diameter of the upper segment was oriented between 120° and 300°. Thus, if the O-rings were damaged, it was most likely that they would have failed at these points, since the clearance between the upper and lower segments was the smallest. A second finding reported that Challenger flew through a wind shear “typical of the largest values experienced on previous missions.” In the “Analysis of the Accident” section of the report is a statement concerning the loads experienced by the solid rocket motor: “These loads were well below the design limit loads and were not considered the cause of the accident.” This statement is true because the “design limit loads” assumed that the O-ring seals were sound. But if there was a possibility that the O-ring seal was damaged during the assembly of the solid rocket motor, then the load calculation could have been wrong. One other point needs to be made. The failure of the O-ring occurred sixty seconds into the flight, very close to the point when the highest wind shear was experienced. And perhaps equally important, the first sign of the failure of the O-ring in the joint between the lowest and the next segment occurred at the 307° point in the circumference—very close to the point where damage to the O-ring would have occurred during the assembly of the seal. It was also strong evidence that the O-ring seal probably sustained some damage during assembly. From these analyses, what I concluded about the failure of the O-ring in the joint was that the flawed design and the cold temperature were definitely contributing factors, but the possible damage to the O-rings and the wind shear needed to be considered as well. I sent my conclusions to Eugene Covert of MIT, who was a member of the Rogers Commission, a technically astute scientist, and an old friend. Instead of waiting for two years or more until the O-ring seal was redesigned and tested,

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I suggested that we do what was done in aircraft accidents. After a preliminary investigation determines the probable cause, flying is resumed, but under restricted flight rules. My case went something like this: Although the design of the seal is flawed, it worked for twenty-four flights. We should fly again, but not in cold weather, not through high wind-shear conditions, not when there were difficulties in assembling the SRM joints, and to reduce stress on the whole system, only with small payloads until the redesign and testing was complete. We had a somewhat desultory correspondence about this matter, but Gene elected to stick to the position of the Rogers Commission. He told me that it was the conservative approach and that he agreed with it. Many of my friends have asked me whether I would have given the go-ahead to fly Challenger under the conditions that existed on January 28. My answer is a resounding no, and it had nothing to do with O-rings. When I saw the picture in the Rogers Commission Report of launch pad 39A just before the launch, I was astounded. The structure of the pad was covered with massive icicles. During the time that I spent in the Mission Operations Control Room in Houston (1981–84), we would postpone the launch if this much or even less ice was on the pad structure. When the shuttle main engines are started, a few seconds before liftoff, the Figure 16.5. Icicles, some more than a foot long, on launch pad 39A on the morning of January 28, 1986. Had I been in charge of the launch, I would have postponed it for the icing alone. Photo courtesy of NASA Headquarters.

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launch pad undergoes intense vibrations, which cause the icicles to break off the structure. These loose icicles become missiles that can damage the space shuttle’s heat shield or propulsion system. It made sense not to take that risk.

Two Important Summit Meetings: Geneva and Reykjavik Unlike his predecessors, Ronald Reagan did not meet with his Soviet counterpart, Leonid Brezhnev, the general secretary of the Communist Party. Brezhnev was a sick man from the start of the president’s time in office; in fact, his illness was evident when President Carter met with him on June 18, 1979, to sign SALT II. Reagan and Brezhnev nonetheless corresponded extensively, exchanging some twenty-five messages before Brezhnev’s death on November 10, 1982. President Reagan likewise never met with either of Brezhnev’s successors, Yuri Andropov and Konstantin Chernenko. Each was in ill health when he became general secretary, and each just served a little more than a year in office. During this period, someone challenged the president about his failure to organize a summit meeting. The president replied, “They keep dying on me!” On the other hand, President Reagan almost immediately established a strong relationship with Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher of Britain, who entered office in May 1979. Shortly after his inauguration, President Reagan invited her to visit Washington, and on February 26, 1981, she attended a cabinet meeting. Early in their relationship, Mrs. Thatcher was the president’s mentor in the field of foreign affairs. From the very beginning, it was clear that US relations with the Soviets would be different with Mikhail Gorbachev as general secretary. He quickly adopted the policy of perestroika (restructuring) regarding the Communist Party and the Soviet government, and later also talked about glasnost (openness). All this was important, but I want to focus on the relationship that developed between Reagan and Gorbachev and how it affected the relative positions of the United States and the Soviet Union. In the final years of the Brezhnev government, the Soviets began to deploy new mobile missiles, the SS-20 Sabers, which were intermediate-range ballistic missiles (five hundred to five thousand miles). The Soviets set up several hundred SS-20 missile batteries in the satellite nations behind the Iron Curtain. I have always wondered why the Soviets took this step, because there was really no good military reason for it. The missiles had enough range to easily reach all the territory in Europe from bases within the Soviet Union. My guess is that these deployments were made to impress the satellite nations that the Soviet Union was a high-tech military power. The American response was to deploy Pershing II missiles, which were the army’s best intermediate-range missiles. From a military viewpoint, the American deployment did not make much sense either. But this was a game of tit for tat, so the step was taken.

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People in Europe were upset about the deployments, but they were used to Cold War moves of this kind. The usual antiwar activists demonstrated against the US deployment of Pershing IIs rather than holding vigils in front of the gates of the Soviet embassies in European capitals. In spite of all this, the time was ripe for some new initiatives. President Reagan won his second term in November 1984 by a landslide, and the size of his victory allowed him to take some political risks. One of these was to suggest that we should begin to think about reducing, not just limiting, the number of strategic nuclear weapons. In addition, he proposed negotiations to reduce or eliminate intermediate-range ballistic missiles and the defensive weapons to shoot them down in Europe. Negotiations in those areas resulted, in 1987, in the Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty.These initiatives meant that President Reagan eventually would have to meet with General Secretary Gorbachev to discuss the arms-control matters facing them. As it happened, both men were interested in a summit meeting as the year 1985 unfolded. There was the problem of nuclear weapons in Europe, and there was the Soviet concern about the American project to create a defense against ballistic missiles.The two sides met in Geneva on November 19 and 20, 1985.The meeting was held in a palatial mansion owned by the Aga Khan. Developing an agenda for the meeting was not easy. Robert McFarlane, the president’s national security advisor, was pessimistic about finding items of agreement. In preparing for the summit, President Reagan likely remembered President Eisenhower’s policy of developing personal relationships with other national leaders. In addition, his mentor, Margaret Thatcher, had told an interviewer after her first meeting with the Soviet leader, “I like Mr. Gorbachev. We can do business together.” When Reagan first met Gorbachev, he liked the man, too. Here is what he said about him in his autobiography: “As we shook hands for the first time, I had to admit—as Margaret Thatcher and Prime Minister Brian Mulroney of Canada predicted I would—that there was something likable about Gorbachev. There was a warmth in his face and his style, not the coldness bordering on hatred I had seen in most senior Soviet officials I had met until then.” This was important, and President Eisenhower’s advice was right. In spite of this good start, nothing was really achieved at the Geneva meeting. Much more attention was paid to the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) than to the problem of nuclear weapons in Europe. In Gorbachev’s book Perestroika (1987), he discusses SDI and provides his major argument against it: “Why do you believe that a defensive system against ballistic missiles can be built when the vast majority of your own scientists are arguing that it will never work?” My answer to this difficult question was the general one that we Americans are highly skilled at innovation and that President Reagan (and I) believed that something like this could be done, given enough time. It was clear that there would be no agreement in Geneva, except to say that there would be more meetings of this kind in the future. President Reagan invited

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Secretary Gorbachev to come to Washington in 1986, and Gorbachev accepted the invitation and then invited President Reagan to Moscow in 1987. In my judgment, the one useful result of this meeting was that the two leaders established the kind of rapport that President Eisenhower thought important. As mentioned in an earlier chapter, President Reagan wanted not only to reduce the number of strategic nuclear weapons but also to eliminate all intermediate-range nuclear-capable missiles. The latter issue was triggered by the deployment of the SS-20s in Europe. Reagan talked about the elimination of all nuclear weapons shortly after his inauguration. In fact, every president since 1968 has promised to work toward the elimination of all nuclear weapons. The nuclear nonproliferation treaty requires the five original nuclear powers—the United States, the Soviet Union, the UK, France, and China—to “work toward the elimination of nuclear weapons.” My guess is that President Reagan might have been more serious about this than his predecessors, because he was intent on nuclear arms reduction rather than just control. In January 1986, Gorbachev, in response to Reagan, proposed that all nuclear weapons be eliminated, in three stages, by 2000. Reagan answered on July 25, 1986, with a proposal to consider radical reductions in nuclear arms, a multiyear moratorium on the deployment of missile defenses, the sharing of antimissile technology, and elimination of all nuclear-armed intermediate-range ballistic missiles. Both sides took these seriously. Given the stakes involved, Gorbachev proposed that the meeting be held in a secluded venue. In addition, he wanted the meeting to take place as quickly as possible, because he was not certain about the American position on many matters of interest. Gorbachev suggested either Reykjavik or a secluded spot in London. They agreed on Reykjavik for a meeting on October 11 and 12. That did not leave much time to prepare. On the first day of the meeting, Saturday, October 11, the Soviets put a list of definite proposals on the table: • A 50 percent reduction of the strategic weapons by each side. These would include the massive Soviet SS-18 missiles, the mainstay of the Soviets’ groundbased deterrent. • Complete elimination of all nuclear-capable intermediate-range ballistic missiles in Europe by both sides. • A guarantee that neither party would withdraw from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty for ten years. • A prohibition against testing in a realistic environment any elements of the space-based systems of the Strategic Defense Initiative. Ground-based tests in laboratories would be permitted.

President Reagan’s reaction to the proposals was immediate. He said that everything he had heard was encouraging, although some points of difference remained,

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Figure 16.6. Reagan and Gorbachev negotiating one-onone in Reykjavik. The others in the room are interpreters and note takers.

mostly concerning defense against ballistic missiles. But the proposals were a surprise to George Shultz, the US secretary of state. He was under the impression that the summit would just be exploratory, meaning that no firm agreements would be reached. Shultz organized a meeting of the staffs as a way to give him and his Soviet counterpart, Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze, a chance to develop an agreement. The delegations spent all night working out a draft agreement that would reduce the number of strategic offensive weapons on each side. On Sunday morning, October 12, Gorbachev wanted to discuss the SS-20. On the previous day, he had proposed “complete elimination of all nuclear-capable intermediate-range ballistic missiles in Europe by both sides.” He now wanted to keep about one hundred SS-20s in case problems arose in Asia. There was general agreement on this point. Later that day, President Reagan responded with the following written draft: The U.S.S.R. and the United States undertake for 10 years not to exercise their existing right to withdraw from the ABM Treaty, which is of unlimited duration, and during that period strictly to observe all its provisions while continuing research, development and testing [of SDI components], which are permitted by the ABM Treaty. Within the first five years of the 10-year period (and thus through 1991), the strategic offensive arms of the two sides shall be reduced by 50 percent. During the following five years of that period, all remaining ballistic missiles of the U.S.S.R. and the United States will have been totally eliminated. At the end of the 10-year period, either side could deploy defenses (against ballistic missiles) if it so chose unless that the parties agree otherwise.

President Reagan’s statement called for the elimination of all “ballistic missiles,” which meant that there would be no launch vehicles to carry land-based nuclear warheads. This was a startling offer, and Gorbachev was duly surprised. He asked President Reagan what he meant by the statement “I want to eliminate all of the

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strategic forces, not just the ballistic missiles.” The American president answered, “It would be fine with me if we eliminated all nuclear weapons.” There it was, the first time that the “zero option” concerning nuclear weapons had been laid on the table. According to Shultz, the president reread the key provision of the statement to Gorbachev: “Listen once again to what I have proposed: During that 10-year period [of not withdrawing from the ABM Treaty] while continuing research, testing and development [on defenses against ballistic missiles], which is permitted by the [ABM] Treaty, all remaining ballistic missiles of the USSR and the United States will have been totally eliminated. At the end of that 10-year period either side could deploy defenses [against ballistic missiles] if it so chose unless the parties agree otherwise.” It came down to two words. Gorbachev insisted that work on SDI should be confined to “laboratories,” and Reagan insisted that “testing” was necessary. The president was not ready to change the ABM Treaty, which permitted “testing.” At several points during the discussions, President Reagan suggested to President Gorbachev that they should work together on developing a working defense against ballistic missiles. But the moment was gone. Gorbachev told Reagan that he did not believe that such a collaboration was possible because the United States would not even give the Soviets the data for machines used to pasteurize milk! And so the Reykjavik summit meeting ended in a stalemate. Would the world really be better off if nuclear weapons did not exist? When I started working with Edward Teller in 1955, I thought about this question in some detail. It had been ten years since the end of World War II, and we had survived two major crises: the Berlin airlift and the Korean War. In neither instance did crisis lead to a general conflict. I concluded that in both cases it was the fear of nuclear weapons that had restrained the Soviets from initiating a general war.Winston Churchill was right when he said, in his final speech to the House of Commons on March 1, 1955, “Safety will be the sturdy child of terror and survival the twin brother of annihilation.” This was an elegant formulation of what later came to be called the doctrine of mutually assured destruction. Then why was President Reagan willing to abolish all nuclear weapons? The zero option that he proposed was, I believe, a genuine statement of intent. I am speculating here, so I will try to lay out what I think the president had in mind. President Reagan thought about the long-term future. He believed firmly that in thirty to fifty years, it would be possible to build a system that could shoot down even a large number of attacking nuclear-armed warheads. I believe he felt that the absence of nuclear weapons in the world—the zero option—would be acceptable if both the United States and the Soviet Union had such a defensive system. Thus, the invitation by President Reagan to President Gorbachev that the Soviets should join us in the development of a defense against ballistic missiles was a very serious proposal. President Reagan felt that the zero option could be adopted simultane-

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ously with the joint development and construction of a workable defense against ballistic missiles. But in 1986, the suggestion was simply one step too far. Writing this in June 2017, I still wonder whether I was right to work at the Livermore Laboratory so many years ago. Up until the end of the Cold War, I knew it had been the right decision. The prevention of a hot war between the United States and the USSR was due to the work we did at Livermore. But as time goes on, I become more worried every year. Nuclear weapons have proliferated dangerously, and are now at the disposal of nations such as North Korea and Pakistan, and they will eventually be in Iran. Interestingly, this situation has revived talk of President Reagan’s zero option. Some distinguished people have started a campaign to destroy all nuclear weapons, and their position is that the United States should start the process unilaterally. Two former secretaries of state (Henry Kissinger and George Shultz), one former secretary of defense (Bill Perry), and one former US senator with long experience in nuclear policy matters (Sam Nunn) are leading this movement. These people have to be taken seriously. My own view is that trying to adopt the zero option would be a really serious error. The number of casualties in war matters, and the twentieth century was particularly bloody. Is it an accident that between 1900 and 1945, about eighty million people were killed in conflicts, whereas from 1945 to 2000, the number was barely twenty million? In addition, casualties in post-2000 wars are small compared to the figures for previous conflicts. Thus, a case can be made that the presence of nuclear weapons still has a stabilizing influence on global warfare. More nations will develop nuclear weapons in the future, and each will have to be treated appropriately. What is most important is for the United States to maintain its leadership in nuclear weapons technology. We do not want to be surprised by the development of a weapon that we cannot handle. In 2017, my view is that it is still not the right time to adopt the zero option. I base this opinion on the technical progress that we have made in the development of defenses against ballistic missiles. It has been more than thirty years since President Reagan initiated serious research and development on missile defense, and we have made significant progress since then. We have fielded three working antiballistic-missile weapons. One, the army’s Patriot antiaircraft system, was used in the Gulf War (Desert Storm) against Iraqi Scud short-range missiles. Though Patriots were only marginally successful, the experience led to the development of the PAC-3 (Patriot Advanced Capability-3) system, which is now deployed in several places. The army’s Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system and the navy’s ship-based Aegis system have both been deployed. These systems are designed to deal with medium-range ballistic missiles. Israel, with extensive US assistance, has developed a short-range antimissile system called Iron Dome.This system, which is based on Patriot missile technology, has been successfully used against short-range missiles fired against Israel.

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What has not yet been done successfully is to devise a defense against longrange, intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs). There have been serious efforts, particularly the Ground-Based Interceptor by the army and the Airborne Laser by the air force, but neither one is ready for serious deployment. My own feeling is that we should continue with a very strong effort to create a defense that can deal with ICBMs, preferably with the help of our allies and friends. This is the only way to deal with the rogue nations that will inevitably develop or acquire nuclear weapons. Today North Korea is developing nuclear weapons. The United States, in collaboration with Japan, deploys Aegis-equipped ships in the Sea of Japan that are capable of shooting down North Korea missiles. There are also Aegis ships in the Persian Gulf. In addition, the United States is deploying Patriot-type systems in eastern Europe to protect Romania, Bulgaria, and others against possible threats. All this raises the question whether the zero option is appropriate in 2017. The answer clearly is no.

The Cold War and the University of  Texas at Austin In chapter 2 of this book, I recalled how I felt about my admission to study at the University of California in Berkeley. It really was a “miracle” that happened. In addition, I was enormously impressed by the part that the university and its people had played in winning the recent war. What I did not know at the time was that most American universities had a part in securing victory and that I would personally be involved in working on matters related to the national security while I was also on university faculties over the years. What I did not really understand when I was walking up University Avenue on my first day in Berkeley was the tight connection that existed between most American universities and work related to national security. It was the Morrill Land-Grant Act of 1862 that created the connection. Rep. Justin Smith Morrill of Vermont introduced legislation that required “each state to establish at least one college where the leading object shall be, without excluding other scientific and classical studies and including military tactics, to teach such branches of learning as are related to agriculture and the mechanic arts, in such a manner as the legislatures in the states may respectively prescribe, in order to promote the liberal and practical education of the industrial classes in the several pursuits and professions of life.” The Morrill Act was signed into law on July 2, 1862, by Pres. Abraham Lincoln. This was the law that created the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps, and it mandated that the universities teach the “mechanic arts,” which was the term used for engineering at the time. The land grant institutions I have mentioned are still in business. They played an important part during the Cold War by keeping the military power of the United States the strongest in the world. As described in chapters 3 and 4, I spent many

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years at the University of California’s Lawrence Livermore Radiation Laboratory. I was, therefore, very familiar with these institutions. When I arrived in Austin in 1984, I quickly discovered that at the University of Texas at Austin, three large laboratories of this kind worked on technical matters that were of interest to the Department of Defense and to NASA. I developed an interest in these laboratories because I had worked in such institutions in California. They were the Applied Research Laboratories, the Center for Electromechanics, and the Center for Space Research. A fourth large engineering laboratory, the Institute for Advanced Technology, was established in 1990. As chancellor, I was able to help these institutions on several occasions. Ultimately, I believed in the truth of a saying that has been attributed to the ancient Greek historian and soldier Thucydides: “A nation that makes a great distinction between it scholars and its warriors will have its laws made by cowards and its wars fought by fools.” Applied Research Laboratories This institution was a product of World War II. Two circumstances resulted in its creation. One was the establishment of a laboratory at Harvard University that worked on problems related to submarine warfare, the Harvard Underwater Sound Laboratory. The other was Prof. C. P. Boner of the University of  Texas at Austin. An expert in the field of acoustics, he had been asked to join the Harvard laboratory as the associate director. At the end of the war, Boner thought it would be a good idea to establish a similar kind of laboratory at the University of  Texas. In 1945, the Defense Research Laboratory (DRL) was started, with Boner as director. Its first project was a surface-to-air missile called “Bumble Bee.” In 1949, DRL began working on underwater sound problems. A group that Boner collected persuaded the navy that good research on this topic could be performed at a university laboratory not fronting an ocean. So, underwater research was adopted as the primary mission. A few years later—in the early 1950s—an experiment station was established at nearby Lake Travis. The lake turned out to be deep enough for experiments with military value to be performed there. In 1964, DRL acquired another UT defense-related laboratory—the War Research Laboratory. A year later, Chester M. McKinney replaced Boner as director, and in 1967 the laboratory was moved from the main campus to the Balcones Research Center, a tract of land about eight miles north. In 1968 the DRL was renamed to indicate the broader mission it had taken on: Applied Research Laboratories (ARL), still its name today. The director of ARL would report to the vice president for research of UT-Austin. McKinney served as director from 1965 to 1980. It was a period of physical and intellectual growth that coincided with the height of the Cold War, and the new director was exactly the right person to lead the institution at such a time. A born Texan, he had served in the US Army Air Corps during World War II as a

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radar officer, and left the army with the rank of captain. He received his training at MIT’s Radiation Laboratory. He was accepted as a graduate student in physics at UT-Austin in 1946. In addition, he secured a job at the then newly established Defense Research Laboratory. McKinney earned a master’s degree in 1947 and a PhD in physics in 1950. Following three years as a faculty member at what is now Texas Tech University, McKinney retuned to Austin to work at DRL. The 1960s and 1970s saw the development of the US ballistic-missile submarine force, which became the principal deterrent weapon during the Cold War. Thus, the choice of undersea research for ARL was not only important science but also vital to the nation’s victory in the conflict. ARL was heavily involved in all the technologies necessary to create an effective force. McKinney became interested in high-frequency sonar, which was important in detecting small objects like mines on the sea bottom, frogmen, and small submersibles. ARL was very active during the war in Vietnam, providing acoustic detectors for the shallow and muddy waters of the Mekong River delta. Most important of all, McKinney foresaw that ARL should diversify into other areas that might become important after the end of the Cold War. These included a program to develop applications for the newly deployed Global Positioning System, and sonar for the exploration under the arctic icecap and the Antarctic ice shelves. When Chester McKinney retired, in 1980, he was succeeded by Loyd D. Hampton, an associate director of ARL. When I arrived in Austin in September 1984, nearly the first thing I did was to visit ARL and ask Hampton whether it was possible for me to have an office where I could work on classified problems. He readily assented, and since Bun and I were newcomers to Austin, he invited us for dinner at his house. Dr. Hampton provided me with a small office, which I used fairly frequently during the first months in Austin. There were several highly classified items that I needed to finish. I gave up the ARL office within a year or so because I was no longer working on top-secret programs. On May 28 and 29, 1985, I was in Washington to touch base and to maintain my contact with the navy’s research establishment. On May 29, I visited Mel Paisley, the assistant secretary of the navy for research development and acquisition. His name has already appeared in these pages in connection with the development of tilt-rotor aircraft. Paisley did not mince words. He clearly had anticipated my question, and told me that ARL was the weakest of the navy’s university laboratories. He added that changes in the management of ARL would be essential to prevent a shutdown of the institution. I was shocked by Paisley’s words, so I made it my business to find out what was going on. Paisley was not one of my favorite people, because he was crude and arrogant. But the problem was, he could be right. It was now critical for me to learn more about ARL and how it worked. When I returned to Austin, I arranged for a program review of ARL as soon as possible. The meeting was held on July 1, 1985, beginning at eight in the morning.

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Loyd Hampton started to describe the institution by introducing the twenty or so who attended the meeting. These were the division leaders and other senior executives. ARL at the time had a staff of a little under five hundred and an annual budget of about $35 million. He showed some organization charts and then turned the meeting over to the program leaders. (Today, ARL has about eight hundred employees and an annual budget of close to $100 million.) Several of the program leaders gave excellent presentations on technical problems.There were also presentations about work performed by ARL staff on submarines and surface vessels at sea. Both were of great interest. During the discussion after the presentations, the people in the room expressed concern that they did not have enough real support from their sponsors in Washington. Unfortunately, Dr. Hampton hardly participated in the discussions. That evening I wrote in my diary: “Spent the morning reviewing the programs at the Applied Research Laboratories. We have a problem with Navy support for this particular institution. We do have a real problem with this particular institution and right now I do not know what to do about it.” I decided that I would check with some of my friends in Washington about the problem. ARL, as a university-affiliated research center of the navy, received some funding through the Office of Naval Research (ONR). Given my interview with Mel Paisley, I wanted to make sure that the people who would implement things agreed with me. Fred Saalfeld was an old friend as well as a senior official at the ONR, and I went to see him on July 29. He told me that ONR was only a small part of the funding for ARL. Furthermore, he told me that he was very familiar with ARL and that he thought that it was a “heads-up” operation. I felt better because I had a great deal of respect for Fred’s judgment. On October 2, 1985, during one of my periodic visits to Washington, I had breakfast with Ann Berman, who was a deputy assistant secretary of the navy for research and acquisition. She was aware of the situation at ARL, and very frank. She told me that only new management at ARL could fix the problems. I listened to her and decided that I should back away, because I simply did not know enough about the problems they posed. To try and resolve the ARL problem, I asked for a meeting with Gerhard (Gerry) Fonken (executive vice president and provost of UT-Austin) and Bill Cunningham (president of the university). They did not welcome these meetings, because at this stage, I was still a greenhorn in their eyes. Since the Austin campus was by far our largest and best institution, they thought that the chancellor was superfluous. I should add that as I learned more about the politics of the UT System, things got better. But the Austin campus was always the elephant in the room during my term of service as chancellor. We had a long agenda for the meeting, and it was sometimes contentious. When I brought up the ARL situation and my findings, there was immediate agreement. Fonken, a very distinguished professor of chemistry in addition to being a top-level administrator, was fully aware of the situation at ARL,

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and he promised to fix things. I trusted him implicitly because we were both products of the University of California. Therefore, I did not follow the status of ARL in detail any longer. I occasionally saw Gerry, and learned that Paisley and Berman had failed to make any changes that would adversely affect ARL. I also learned that Loyd Hampton announced his retirement in January 1988; his replacement would F. Michael Pestorius. This was a fine choice because he was a former naval officer who had reached the rank of captain and eventually commanded a nuclear submarine. Pestorius had a successful term as director of ARL, and I consulted him often, about a number of subjects, during the remainder of my time as chancellor. On July 1, 2014, I resigned from the University of  Texas at Austin and received the titles of professor and chancellor emeritus. Because I still wanted to work fulltime and I had long experience in the fields of nuclear weapons and aerospace, I thought that my best move would be to turn to ARL for a position as a “university affiliate.” The ARL management and I agreed on this designation, and I joined the Center for Quantum Research, a group within the Signal and Information Sciences Laboratory. I also deliver occasional lectures to the staff. At the time of this writing, I have had an office at ARL for almost four years. In addition, I have continued my relationship as a consultant with the NASA–Ames Research Center and maintained a seat on the MIT Lincoln Laboratory Advisory Board.When I go to my ARL office, I use a new badge, but it has the same number I had thirty-five years ago. I am once again working on technical issues related to national security. I am very grateful to the ARL management and my colleagues, and I thank the Good Lord for the good fortune he has chosen to give me. The Center for Electromechanics This institution is one of the smaller ones that I mentioned above, but it is one with which I am very familiar. There were two originators, Professors Grady Rylander of the Mechanical Engineering Department and Herbert Woodson of the Electrical Engineering Department. The original idea was to create an institution that would concentrate on high-current electrical technology. The lab was established in 1970 with a group that was interested in large electric motors and large rotating power supplies. In 1973, it was formally named the Center for Electromechanics (CEM), and Professor Rylander was appointed director. In 1977, a young professor, William F. Weldon, joined the group, and the center moved to the Balcones Research Center. A large facility in which heavy hardware could be built was erected to house the CEM. At about the same time, my brother, Prof. Peter Mark of Princeton University, and his colleague at the army’s Picatinny Arsenal, Dr. Harry D. Fair, developed a new initiative. They, along with some other colleagues, developed a proposal to revive the technology of electromagnetic railguns (EMRGs). This technology had been pioneered by Prof. Marcus Oliphant and his graduate student, Richard Marshall, a decade earlier.

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Weldon was named technical director of the CEM the year he joined the group. He secured funding from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to begin the development of pulsed rotating power supplies called “compulsators” to produce the high-current pulses necessary to run an electromagnetic railgun. When the Strategic Defense Initiative was established in 1983, the CEM received a large contract to look at the development of power supplies for EMRGs. In 1985, Bill Weldon was appointed director of the CEM, with the strong support of Herb Woodson, who was the chairman of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. The center adopted a major DARPA- and army-funded program to develop EMRGs. The CEM would develop the railguns as well as the rotating power supplies that would produce the electromagnetic pulses that accelerate the projectile. Unfortunately, the work done during the time Weldon was there was not very successful. The CEM did succeed in developing a compulsator with a stored energy of twenty megajoules that could produce four megajoule pulses with a ten-millisecond “pulse width.” But this was achieved after Bill resigned. The machine successfully put one hundred pulses into a dummy load. Unfortunately, the machine was never connected to an electromagnetic gun. Bill Weldon left the CEM in 1993 and resigned from the university faculty in 2000. The work on the subscale power supply was performed successfully while Alan Walls was director of the CEM and Dr. Sid Pratap was the principal scientist. The CEM continued to work on pulsed power supplies, but its only real success was the compulsator. In 1997, I was approached by the staff of Secretary of Defense William Cohen about coming to work in the Pentagon as the director of defense research and engineering. After a short negotiation, I accepted the position in October 1997 and was confirmed in June 1998, securing a two-year leave of absence from the university. Dr. Robert E. Hebner, formerly deputy director of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, assumed the director’s position on August 2, 1999, and he is still director as I write this. Hebner changed the business model of the CEM in an important way. Instead of concentrating on a single customer, he broadened the work. The only criterion for taking on a job was that the work had to be a combination of electrical and mechanical systems. The work at the CEM continues to have value for the US Navy: studies of all-electric ships, laser weapon system integration, shipboard power grid reconfiguration, and optimization for high-power loads. Perhaps the most interesting program the CEM recently finished was the manufacture of a cradle for the Cassegrain mirror of the Hobby-Eberle telescope at the university’s McDonald Observatory. The hope is that this instrument will reveal the nature of dark matter and dark energy. There is no doubt in my mind that the CEM is still a valuable asset to the university. It employs fifty to seventy people and has an annual budget of about $10 million.

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Institute for Advanced Technology The institute was a follow-on to the work that was being performed at the Center for Electromechanics. As explained in the previous section, the objective was to produce a working electromagnetic railgun (EMRG). Two things are needed in order to do this: build a power supply (compulsator) and build the railgun. The people at the CEM were able to build a good power supply for an EMRG, but were unable to build a working railgun that the compulsator could energize. Harry Fair, mentioned in the previous section, seemed to me to be someone who could help the CEM develop a railgun. At my invitation, he agreed to come to Austin, and he and his family arrived in October 1986. He quickly integrated himself into the CEM. But when Bill Weldon left, it was clear that Harry was at loose ends. In late 1990 (when I was still chancellor), Fair decided that we should develop a new laboratory to concentrate on the development of EMRGs with pulsed power. He looked at a surplus item list and pointed out many pieces of equipment that would be useful for a laboratory focused on EMRGs. I thought that Harry’s idea was sound and that we should go ahead. Our first step was to recruit several people who had been working at EMRG research facilities. These included Walter LaBerge, Ian McNab, and J.V. Parker, who took a leave of absence from Los Alamos to help us set up our laboratory. We also acquired a light gas gun (hydrogen) from Sandia, a capacitor bank to produce the pulsed power for the EMRGs, and several large steel tanks that would serve as containers for the targets of our EMRGs. In September 1990, the Institute for Advanced Technology (IAT) was chartered and recognized by the university as a unit of the engineering school. Our first funding came from the army to get things going. I left the chancellor’s office in September 1992, and thereafter I participated as a part-time employee of the IAT. The next few years were devoted to setting up the equipment that we had acquired, and Fair did an excellent job of developing the capabilities required to perform significant research on EMRGs. The first experiments were performed in 1996. From that point on, we employed fifty to seventy people and had a yearly budget of about $10 million annually, first from the army and later from the navy. There were two major subjects for research. One was to develop hypervelocity projectiles that could penetrate the most up-to-date armor. The second was to develop EMRGs that could achieve muzzle velocities of 2,500 meters per second. Both goals were achieved. By 2005, the US Navy expressed an interest in the development of EMRGs with larger-bore diameters than the ones we could work with at IAT (55 mm). The work for the army had some successes in developing penetrating projectiles. It became clear, however, that the long pole in the tent was the weight of the rotating machinery that would be necessary for the creation of the electrical pulses. The army abandoned work on EMRGs around 2005. The case of the navy was somewhat different. Ships were large enough that a power supply could be built to operate onboard EMRGs. But we could not de-

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velop large enough EMRGs at our facility at the IAT to satisfy the navy. In 2010, we decided to shut down the IAT and to move the equipment we developed to the navy’s Surface Warfare Center at Dahlgren, in Virginia.We were able from 1990 to 2010 to develop the knowledge necessary to build an EMRG of military value, but our projectiles were too small for shipboard use. Our hope was that the people at Dahlgren would be able to scale up our EMRGs and produce ones with bore diameters in the range of 120–150 mm. Several promising experiments were performed, but for various reasons, the program was ultimately terminated.

Center for Space Research The Center for Space Research was organized in 1981 by Prof. Byron D. Tapley, who was a member of the Department of Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanics. Professor Tapley, who had served as department chairman, decided to organize a group of people to focus on research carried out by spacecraft moving in Earth orbit. The whole enterprise would be supported by NASA. At the time, I was in Washington working as deputy administrator of NASA, and I was aware of what was on the list of programs being considered. During the 1980s, NASA was working on a satellite that would carry a laser system that could precisely measure the distance from the satellite to the ground and also to the surface of the ocean. This satellite, SEASAT, was being developed by the Goddard Space Flight Center.This satellite was very successful, but unfortunately, it failed after only a few months. SEASAT was successful enough that we decided to develop a much more sophisticated satellite that would spend a much longer time in orbit. In 1984, while learning the ropes as chancellor, I asked for an appointment to talk with Tapley. The plan for the new satellite system was called TOPEX/​ Poseidon. Tapley explained that the program was an international effort with France. I knew from my days at NASA that the satellite would have two payloads on board, one built by NASA called TOPEX (Topographic Experiment), and the French payload, named Poseidon, for the Greek god of the ocean. Tapley was named principal investigator of the program, and he collected a number of distinguished people to work at the Center for Space Research. The faculty of the Department of Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanics contributed Professors Bob Schutz,Wallace Fowler, and Glenn Lightsey.The center has about half a dozen postdoctoral members and perhaps twenty or so graduate students. Around fifty people are on the regular payroll, as well as technicians and others. The average spending per year is about $10 million to $15 million. Finally, I should add that the work being done at the center is of the highest quality. The result has been that two employees of the CSR have been elected to the National Academy of Engineering. The work deals with the interpretation of the results of the laser systems. The laser measurement is exquisitely accurate—within a millimeter. It was this factor

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that allowed the CSR scientists to deduce the behavior of El Niño that results in very small changes in the surface of the ocean. The TOPEX/​Poseidon spacecraft was launched on August 10, 1992, and was turned off in January 2006. The CSR adopted a program called GRACE (Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment). This program also depended on the extreme accuracy of laser pulses. In this case, the idea was to make a topographic map of Earth. Earth is a slightly oblate sphere, which causes the gravitational force on the Equator to be slightly smaller than the gravitational force on the North and South Poles. An object on the poles is closer to the center of the Earth than the same object on the equator. There are places where the density of the Earth is greater, and the surface itself is not homogeneous. The GRACE experiment consisted of two large spacecraft (1,074 pounds) flying on the same equatorial orbit about 300 miles above the Earth and about 150 miles apart. The force of gravity changes periodically as the spacecraft move in orbit. The spacecraft sped up if the force of gravity was larger than normal, and vice versa. The GRACE satellites were launched on March 17, 2002, into a polar orbit, and have provided a new understanding of how our planet is changing. Both of these experiments have been very important, and it is a real tribute to Professor Tapley that he was able to lead both of them successfully. You may notice that I have included the CSR in this section even thought it was not directly related to the Cold War. This is because my connection with NASA taught me that whatever the program was, we were always in competition with the Soviet space program. I believed that the Soviets would never have had the skills to do what we did at NASA and in our military establishment.

The Royal Aeronautical Society’s Seventy-Fifth Annual Wilbur and Orville Wright Memorial Lecture In May 1986, I received an invitation from the president of the Royal Aeronautical Society, John Fozzard, to deliver the Seventy-Fifth Annual Wilbur and Orville Wright Memorial Lecture. This lecture is very prestigious, so of course I accepted. Fozzard, an old friend from my days at Ames, had played a major role in the development of BAE’s vertical-takeoff-and-landing Harrier aircraft, which had earned its spurs in the Falkland Islands conflict. Bun and I decided to spend a few days in London as a sort of minivacation while I hobnobbed with the British aviation establishment. As things turned out, there was another reason for us to go to the United Kingdom. The University of  Texas at Arlington (UTA) had begun to develop a research center that would specialize in robotics. The impetus for this came from James Roach, the president and chief executive officer of the Tandy Corporation, who wanted to strengthen manufacturing in the Fort Worth area. (Tandy was the parent company of the Radio Shack electronic equipment stores.) The funding campaign

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was successful, and construction of the building was well along. What was needed was a director. Roach saw to it that funds were available to fund an academic chair in robotics. The faculty of UTA’s Electrical Engineering Department had recommended Jeffrey Collins, a professor of electrical engineering at the University of Edinburgh. Professor Collins was retiring from the faculty, and so would be free to do something else. My job was to try to persuade him to come to Texas. Bun and I arrived in Edinburgh on December 8, 1986.We were met by Professor Collins, which was a nice surprise.The first thing he taught was how to pronounce “Edinburgh”: “Edinborrrrro”! We tried, and eventually Collins was satisfied. He took us on a short drive around town, beginning with Princess Street—the main thoroughfare—and the starkly impressive Edinburgh Castle. He eventually deposited us at the Carlton Highland Hotel. I spent the next day with Collins while Bun explored museums and stores. The University of Edinburgh is the third-ranking university in the United Kingdom, after Cambridge and Oxford. Students from its storied past include James Clerk Maxwell, the greatest scientist in Britain during the nineteenth century; John Napier, the inventor of logarithms; Lord Kelvin ( James Thomsen); and James Watt. I found the place impressive and the Department of Electrical Engineering most exciting. After a two-hour briefing, I delivered a lecture on the Challenger accident. In the evening, Collins and I had dinner at a fine restaurant in the neighborhood. I expected that I would have to work hard to persuade him to leave all this and come to Texas. After the first minute of my pitch, he told me that he had already decided to accept our offer. We both had a good laugh about it and enjoyed our dinner. When Bun and I got back to our hotel, I called Wendell Nedderman and told him that Collins would be the director of the Advanced Robotics Research Institute, which was the name that we finally chose for the institution. The next morning, we took the British Airways shuttle to Heathrow Airport. We were met by David Thomas, the assistant to the rector (dean) of the Imperial College of Science and Technology. The Imperial College is essentially the college of engineering for the University of London. After spending a day looking at some of the activities of the college, I did not think the college was up to the standard of our best engineering schools. In the evening, Eric Ash, the rector of the college, hosted a cocktail party. He was born in Germany and had escaped from Europe very much the way I had.You never know when you will meet someone who has had a parallel life. Bun and I checked into Durrants Hotel; when we got up in the morning, we realized that we had finally conquered our jet lag. The next day, December 11, was the one for which we made the trip. We spent the morning buying clothes on Bond Street, which was within walking distance of Durrants. Bun selected two suits for me, and I still have one of them, thirty years later. Back at the hotel, I spent a couple of hours reviewing my lecture. Then we changed into our formal clothes and left for the meeting.

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The Royal Aeronautics Society is headquartered in a fine old mansion on Hamilton Place just off Park Lane. The evening of the Wilbur and Orville Wright Memorial Lecture was also when the society presented its awards. I was pleasantly surprised to learn that Geoffrey Pattie would be named as a Companion of the Society, which is its highest award. Pattie was secretary of state for the Royal Air Force when I had the similar job in the Pentagon. The award ceremony was initiated by a footman in a bright red uniform with a row of medals on his chest. He pounded a long staff on the floor to call us into the auditorium. The program contained a list of former lecturers, and it brought me up short. Donald Douglas, Jack Northrop, and Glen Martin, who were on the list, had founded aircraft companies and were the namesakes of famous aircraft. In the scientific area, honorees included Ludwig Prandtl, Theodore von Kármán, and Jerome Hunsaker, the last of whom founded the Aeronautics Department at MIT. I stopped looking at the program because it made me nervous. The title of my talk was “Aircraft without Airports and the Tilt-Rotor Concept.” I stumbled a couple of times in the first minute or so, but eventually straightened out. There were some good questions after the speech. Once again, the man in the red uniform pounded on the floor with his staff, and several of his assistants separated the women and men into different rooms. This was the half hour before dinner, during which canapés and drinks were served. Bun and I were amused by this maneuver, but we knew that this was how things used to be done. The man in the red uniform came back, pounded the ground with his pole, and announced, “Dinner is served.” Bun and I were seated next to people we did not know. One final surprise really floored me. The president of the society, John Fozzard, proposed toasts before we were seated: “Her Majesty the Queen.” “The president of the United States.” “To the memory of Wilbur and Orville Wright.” “The lecturer—Dr. Hans Mark.” I damn near dropped my glass! Not knowing what to do next, I took a sip of champagne, and the lady next to me laughed and said, “You should not do that.” My face was red. Bun, standing almost directly opposite me, was grinning from ear to ear. The next day, we visited the Rutherford-Appleton Laboratory, a British nuclear institution next to town of Harwell. Sir Dennis Wilkinson, one of the leaders of the British nuclear weapons program, who had visited us at Livermore during the 1960s, was our guide. It was good to see him again. We spent another two days in London relaxing, and then flew home.

17 The Reunification of Germany and the Collapse of the Soviet Union

This book is a memoir, so almost all the text concerns something with which I was directly involved. This penultimate chapter has nothing to do with me, but I feel it necessary to write a few pages about the outcome of the Cold War. A natural consequence of this is that my words will convey my subjective view of the world at that time. The Cold War was, in essence, the geopolitical rivalry between the United States and the USSR. Germany was a site of particular contention between the two superpowers. Unsurprisingly, the end of the Cold War was marked by several historic events in those countries. Among the most prominent were the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989, the reunification of Germany in late 1990, and the culmination of the breakup of the Soviet Union in December 1991. To get some sense of how Germany and Russia reached those watersheds, a bit of background is needed. The German nation was a newcomer among the major powers of Europe. It was only in 1871 that the German-speaking people were united in one nation.The architect of this was Otto von Bismarck, chief minister of the king of Prussia, Wilhelm I. On January 18, 1874,Wilhelm, who was a member of the Hohenzollern family, was declared the first emperor of Germany. Bismarck had outmaneuvered France, Austria-Hungary, and several smaller German duchies in order to achieve this objective. Germany became a new empire in the middle of Europe.

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In contrast to Germany, Russia was a much older nation. By the time of the Russian Revolution in 1917, the country had been governed by tsars since the sixteenth century, and by tsars from one dynasty for more than three hundred years. The first Romanov tsar, Michael I, gained the throne in 1613. The Romanov dynasty ended in 1918 when Nicholas II and his family were murdered. Michael II was named tsar, but was forced to abdicate the throne a few days later.

World Wars I and II The world was transformed by two global conflicts in the twentieth century. The effects of those wars on Germany and Russia were particularly profound. World War I, which began in 1914, was the first really devastating war in Europe since the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815, at Waterloo. In the intervening century, the Industrial Revolution took hold in Europe, and armaments were produced that would change the nature of warfare. The most important development was that warships began to be constructed of steel rather than wood, as they had been for centuries. The second most important technology was the invention of high-yield explosives that could propel long-range projectiles, allowing them to do extensive damage from great distances. In the course of World War I, about twenty million people—soldiers and civilians—were killed. Millions of soldiers died or suffered catastrophic injuries from prolonged trench warfare; in addition to civilians caught up in the horrors of war, twenty million to fifty million died in a flu epidemic that reached every continent in 1918. The war was touched off by the assassination of a high-ranking Austrian aristocrat in line for the imperial throne. The situation escalated because of the effects of a system of interlocking treaties that had been signed during the long peace. Germany, Italy, and Turkey became the major powers on one side, and Britain, France, and Russia—and eventually the United States—formed the other side, which finally triumphed. The war brought to an end four major empires—Russian, Austro-Hungarian, German, and Ottoman. Germany was held responsible for starting the war. A weak and vain German emperor, Wilhelm II, had been talked into coming to Austria-Hungary’s aid in order to honor a treaty between the two empires. The Treaty of Versailles, which formalized the end of hostilities, was harsh on Germany, which kept one of Europe’s formerly strongest nations in a weakened state and engendered deep-seated bitterness and resentment in the German people. In effect, the interval between the two world wars was just an armistice. In the interwar period, the monarchies were replaced by the new ideologies of fascism and communism. The people who adhered to these ideologies believed that only they knew how the world worked, and their political views subordinated human life to ultimate ideological goals. World War II was started by the vilest per-

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son of this kind, Adolf Hitler, the chancellor of Germany, in September 1939. The war added airpower, in the form of airplanes and rockets, as a new, very lethal type of weapon. Airplanes, in turn, delivered nuclear weapons, the ultimate explosive. World War II was more destructive than the first because the machinery of warfare was deadlier. It has been estimated that sixty million soldiers and civilians perished. We have been able to avoid another world war precisely because of the vast destruction possible with nuclear weapons.

The Postwar Fate of Germany At the Yalta Conference, in February 1945, the Allied leaders—Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Joseph Stalin—decided that Germany would submit to an unconditional surrender, which meant that there would be no German government. The country would be divided into four zones to be administered by the four victorious nations: the United States, the USSR, Britain, and France. This design was implemented during the Potsdam Conference, held outside Berlin in July 1945. Berlin would lie entirely within the Soviet zone, but since it was the capital and most important city, the victorious powers divided it, too, into four zones of occupation. The United States implemented the Marshall Plan in 1948 to help rebuild the devastated economies of Europe. When Stalin refused to participate in the plan, it shattered the hopes of most people that the Unites States could be at peace with Soviet Russia. The Cold War began with Stalin’s decision to blockade West Berlin (the part of the city not under Soviet control) in May 1948—that is, to deny the other powers access to the city by rail or road. The airlift that broke that blockade in May 1949 was the first US victory over the Soviet Union in the Cold War. The blockade contributed to the decision of the western allies to establish a military alliance, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which was intended to prevent the Soviets from starting a new conflict. In addition, the three non-Soviet zones were abolished, and a new German government was created in May 1949, the Federal Republic of Germany. The first chancellor of the republic was Konrad Adenauer, who held the post for fourteen years. The Soviets replied in kind, creating the German Democratic Republic from the erstwhile Soviet zone a few months later. It quickly became obvious that the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany was the colloquial name) would rapidly outpace the German Democratic Republic (East Germany). Here are the statistics for the populations. In the period 1950–90, the population of West Germany grew from 50.9 million people to 63.2 million, an increase of 24 percent, while the population of East Germany fell from 18.4 million to 16.1 million, a loss of 12 percent. These figures indicate the bankruptcy of the communist system, which was unable to sustain a viable nation.

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A Surprising and Significant Interlude in Germany In 1990, Bun and I spent the week of September 30–October 4, 1990, in Europe. Our first mission was to represent my father, Prof. Herman F. Mark, at a meeting of the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna. The academy had struck a special medal in honor of his ninety-fifth birthday the previous May, which we accepted on his behalf. We spent some time with my cousin Dr. Hermann E. Mark; his wife, Monika; and her children. My cousin was a very distinguished physician in Vienna, and he had a beautiful fifty-foot sailboat that we often sailed in the Adriatic Sea. On October 1, we drove to Friedrichshafen on Lake Constance, just across the border from Austria.The city has a long history in aviation. It was in Friedrichshafen that Ferdinand von Zeppelin invented the large lighter-than-air dirigibles that were the first commercial flying machines.We visited an excellent aviation museum there. A large aviation company, the Dornier Company, is based in Friedrichshafen. The organization, founded by Claudius Dornier in 1914, produced a number of aircraft for commercial and military purposes. The best known was a huge flying boat called the DO-X, which first flew in 1929. The aircraft was propelled by twelve air-cooled engines mounted on top of the wing, six as tractors and six as pushers. It must have been awesome to see it fly! The purpose of our visit was to examine a NASA-funded program to develop a stable platform for mounting telescopes and other instruments in the space shuttle’s payload bay. We held a comprehensive review on October 2 and pinpointed some problems. The visit was useful, and I even got paid promptly! At the end of the day, we returned to our hotel, the Goldener Hirsch (Golden Stag). We had a fine dinner and went to bed. Then, at about ten at night, we heard a loud commotion on the street. A huge crowd with burning torches was walking down the Riedleparkstrasse. We got up and joined the parade. The people of Friedrichshafen were celebrating the reunification of the two Germanys. We marched down the street, which led to a wide boardwalk along the shore of Lake Constance, where the beautiful beach was lit by torches. There were several large bonfires, and a number of bands were playing on the boardwalk. Many people were dancing, and many vendors of bratwurst and other German specialties, including good lager beer, were doing a brisk business. The waterfront party lasted until the early morning. It was the first day of the new unified Germany. Bun and I left the beach at about three, very tired but elated. We left Friedrichshafen around noon on the October 3 and saw signs of many celebrations on the way to Munich. Bun and I felt like we were in Philadelphia on July 4, 1776! On our flight home, I thought a great deal about the comparison between Europe and the United States. Had it not been for Canada in 1939 and the United States in 1941, everyone in our family would have been killed in the death camps.

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(We found out later that about forty relatives died at Theresienstadt.) Now we were celebrating a new start for the nation that had committed those crimes a half century ago. All I could conclude was that there is evil in the world and that there is a God who had delivered us from evil.

Helmut Kohl and Hans-Dietrich Genscher Unite Germany Helmut Kohl and Mikhail Gorbachev were almost exact contemporaries. Kohl was born in 1930, and Gorbachev in 1931. Both came from prosperous families, and both were well educated. Both were destined to play crucial roles in their respective nations; one would succeed, and the other would fail. Kohl was a German Rhinelander who very much admired Konrad Adenauer, the founder of the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU). He joined the party, earned a PhD in political science, entered politics, and in a few years was elected minister-president (governor) of the state of Rhineland-Palatinate. He did an excellent job, particularly in the development of the local University of  TrierKaiserslautern, and also created two new ministries. Kohl entered the Reichstag (parliament) in 1973 and quickly made himself an important player. He wanted to be chancellor, but failed in several tries because the CDU did not have the necessary votes. Kohl brought about two important changes that made it possible for him to eventually sit firmly in the chancellor’s chair. The first was to arrange an alliance with Franz Josef Strauss, the minister-president of Bavaria. Strauss was a leader of the CSU, the Christian Social Union, and he agreed that the parties should be merged as the CDU/​CSU. In 1976, the CDU/​CSU narrowly lost the election, but the alliance of the two parties held. Following this defeat, Kohl looked for anther alliance. Through a complicated arrangement, he approached Hans-Dietrich Genscher, who was the leader of the FDP, the Free German Party. The FDP controlled about 10 percent of the votes in the parliament, and Kohl calculated that this amount, added to the CDU/​CSU total, would be enough to overcome the German Socialist Party. On October 1, 1982, the FDP joined the two “Christian” parties, and the coalition gained the majority in the parliament. In the next election, Kohl was elected chancellor, and Hans-Dietrich Genscher became vice chancellor.The two made an excellent team, and they began immediately to plan the reunification of Germany. In January 1984, they agreed that Kohl would concentrate on visiting influential foreign leaders and that Genscher would see to it that the three-party coalition held together. Kohl began his visits by going to Israel, with which Germany had good relations. In 1949, Chancellor Adenauer had seen to it that generous payments would be made to at least partially atone for the Holocaust. Then Kohl went to France and next to Washington, DC, where there was real enthusiasm for what was being done. The next two visits were more difficult. In the Soviet Union, Kohl was

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Figure 17.1. Helmut Kohl, who led the reunification of Germany.

received cordially by Mikhail Gorbachev, who had just assumed the leadership of the country, and Kohl was somewhat surprised that things went well. His final visit was to East Berlin to visit Erich Honecker, the puppet chancellor of East Germany. This was pro forma because Honecker knew that he would not be important after unification. Kohl did not talk to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher of Britain, because she was adamant that Germany never again be united. The pace of events was hastened by the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989. For the first time in forty years, people could move freely throughout all parts of the city. The final work was done by Hans-Dietrich Genscher, a consummate diplomat. The unification of Germany would require some kind of treaty. The Berlin Declaration of June 5, 1945, gave the United States, the USSR, Britain, and France “the full authority to determine the future of Germany.” In addition, the two Germanys were treated as sovereign powers, which was something that Adenauer had inserted in the original documents. The Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) was prosperous. On the other hand, the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) had imploded, and an election was organized by Helmut Kohl’s CDS/​CDU to displace the communist government. The vote was more than 90 percent in favor of the CDS/​CDU. Lothar de Maizière was named chancellor because he headed a small organization that had been supported by the CDS/​ CDU during the communist years. There was a delay from April 12 until October 2, 1990, because of questions by the Soviets, the British government, and five East German states that had to be fully discussed and settled. All the parties signed their agreements on October 3, and I always felt that this was the beginning of the end of the Cold War. De Maizière’s closest associate in the new government was a bril-

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Figure 17.2. Prime Minister of the GDR, Lothar de Maizière, and his deputy, Dr. Angela Merkel. De Maizière was the last elected leader of East Germany. Dr. Merkel has had a brilliant career in the new Germany.

liant young physics professor, Dr. Angela Merkel. She remained in politics, and as I write this, she is still chancellor of Germany.

Mikhail Gorbachev, Boris Yeltsin, and the Disintegration of the Soviet Union It is ironic that the Soviet Union was in the process of disintegrating while Germany was reuniting. At the same time that the final German documents were signed, five of the Soviet Socialist Republics that made up the USSR—Lithuania, Moldova, Estonia, Latvia, and Armenia—declared their independence and left the authority of the Soviet Union. It is important to understand how this happened. On March 10, 1985, Gorbachev was elected as the general secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The people who elected him were the dozen or so members of the Politburo, which was essentially a board of directors. Gorbachev was the youngest member of the Central Committee, and he had come to Moscow after a term as first secretary of the Stavropol Krai (equivalent to the governor of a small US state).

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Gorbachev was a fine choice for the job of leader of the Soviet Union. In the first months, he made a good impression, especially on people in the United States. As noted previously, Prime Minister Thatcher of Britain once commented to an interviewer, “I like Mr. Gorbachev. We can do business together.” After a visit to Washington with his wife, Raisa, President Reagan was also enthusiastic. The evi­ dence was clear that the trip was successful when Time magazine put a picture of Gorbachev on the cover, and a few weeks later, his wife appeared in the same position. Gorbachev instituted a number of domestic policies, one of which was very controversial. He doubled the price of vodka and other alcoholic beverages. Alcoholism had become rampant in the Soviet Union. It was becoming a serious national health crisis—for example, the average life expectancy for men started dropping—as well as interfering with the country’s economic production. Needless to say, the price hike was exceedingly unpopular. It immediately produced a black market and hurt the revenue of the state. When I heard about this, I thought that such a drastic move made early in his leadership was a real mistake.The change took the public by surprise, and the atmosphere it created was morose rather than optimistic. Gorbachev also developed the policy of perestroika, or governmental and economic reform. I waited to see what he would do, and his moves were simply on the edge of the problem rather than getting to the heart of the matter. My feeling at the time was that he was moving too slowly and that he waited too long to do the right thing. Gorbachev did not rapidly change the method of government. It was four years before he organized the Congress of People’s Deputies, in 1989, the first step to a democratic government. He did not rapidly dismantle the Communist Party apparatus, and for some time both the new Congress of People’s Deputies and the old Central Committee of the Communist Party were left as they stood. People were confused by all this, and I thought that it was a huge mistake on Gorbachev’s part that he did not abolish the Central Committee before establishing the Congress. It was, in fact, this confusion that permitted Boris Yeltsin to become the president of the Russian Soviet Republic by having friends in both camps. Although Gorbachev was ultimately not able to retain his grip on power, he nevertheless was recognized as the leader who ended a long-lasting tyrannical regime in Russia that had caused great suffering for millions of people. In 1990, He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his reform efforts. The endgame was chaotic. Gorbachev and his family were on vacation when a group of people held them prisoner. He was eventually able to return to Moscow, where he was accosted by a rebellion orchestrated by Gennadi Yanayev, his onetime second in command. The rebellion was quelled the next day. In the meantime, all fifteen erstwhile Soviet Republics declared their independence. Boris Yeltsin, president of the Russian Soviet Republic, visited the presi-

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Figure 17.3. Boris Yeltsin, an engineer by trade, was the most important figure in the collapse of the Soviet Union. He was essentially the mayor of Moscow, which was also the capital of the Russian Soviet Republic. Shrewd maneuvering elected him as the first president of the Russian Republic.

dents of Belarus and Ukraine and persuaded them to join him in establishing the Coalition of Independent States. He claimed that such a coalition was necessary to ensure that Russia would retain its permanent seat on the Security Council of the United Nations. All the former Soviet republics were eventually admitted to the UN, and the largest of them, Russia, held the permanent seat on the Security Council. The end of the Cold War came on December 25, 1991. In the morning, Mikhail Gorbachev resigned his position as president of the Soviet Union—in fact, an empty gesture by that point. What was important on that day was that Boris Yeltsin had the red hammer-and-sickle flag lowered, and in its place was raised the Russian white, blue, and red flag that had been adopted by Tsar Alexis I in 1668. December 25 was an ordinary day in Moscow because the Eastern Orthodox Church used the Julian calendar, which celebrated January 7 as Christmas Day. Bun and I were still living in the Bauer House (the residence of the chancellor of the UT System), and our custom was to have a Christmas party for the children of the people who worked for the UT System Office. The party began at about eleven, and the final guests usually left around four. By five, there were only three people left in the house: my father, who was ninety-five years old at the time and living with us; Bun; and me. We were all a little tired, so we decided to have a nightcap in the library, which was very well appointed and comfortable. After some small talk, my father said: “You know, it is almost dark here, and Moscow is on the other side of the world. I heard that Yeltsin pulled down the red flag and replaced it with Russia’s old flag in the morning.” “I know,” I said.

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He continued: “My war started late in August 1914; I was put on a train going east to capture Lemberg (now Lviv, in western Ukraine) from the Russians, which we did. Then, in July 1915, I was wounded and went to Vienna for almost a year to recover.” I replied: “I was lucky because the Cold War had few casualties compared to World War I. The Good Lord saw to it that there were people on both sides who kept their heads, so when things got too heated, nothing happened.” After a short pause, and with a smile, he said, “We are both lucky. We are both citizens of the United States of America, and we both contributed to the end of the Cold War.”

18 Encore in Washington

In early September 1997, I received a telephone call from Bob Tyrer, a special assistant to Secretary of Defense William Cohen, asking me to visit Washington to discuss the possibility of assuming a high-level position in the Pentagon. I agreed, and our brief meeting in the capital later that month mainly involved an exchange of pleasantries. He then turned me over to a young assistant, Pamela Berkowski, who conducted the formal interview. I was being considered for the position of director of defense research and engineering (DDRE). I was not too surprised when she told me, since several of my Pentagon friends had alerted me that something like this was in the wind. What was amusing was that I was being interviewed for this position by a very bright young woman who was not as old as my own daughter and who lacked the technical background to make any judgment about my qualifications for the position. We had a pleasant conversation, and in the end, she told me that I would be contacted again on this matter. I should say a word about the position of DDRE. The post was established in 1958 after the crisis created by the Soviets’ launch of Sputnik 1 on October 7, 1957. Because of the perceived challenge to American technology, high-level positions were created in the White House (the president’s science adviser) and the Pentagon (the DDRE). They were to be occupied by people with strong scientific and technical credentials with direct access to the president or the secretary of defense. In fact, when Herbert F. York became DDRE in 1958, he was the third-ranking official in the Pentagon. After a number of reorganizations, including the abolition of the position in 1977 and then its reestablishment in 1987, the DDRE ranked thirteenth on the department’s protocol list. Today, the position formerly known as the DDRE is called the assistant secretary of defense for research and engineering.

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True to her word, Ms. Berkowski called a few weeks later and told me that Jacques S. Gansler would be appointed under secretary of defense for acquisition and technology (in mid-2000, the term “logistics” was added to this title) and that he wanted to see me. The under secretary is the immediate superior of the DDRE, so our meeting would be my real employment interview. A week later, we had a lengthy, in-depth conversation. We agreed on most of the important issues facing the Defense Department. He told me about the Defense Reform Initiative (DRI), which had just been published. This document called for an increase in the responsibilities of the DDRE and the abolition of the position overseeing nuclear, chemical, and biological warfare matters in the Defense Department. He wanted those portfolios moved under the DDRE. Also, he told me about a new organization being established, the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA), which would combine all the inspection functions for nuclear and other “mass destruction” weapons in foreign nations with the technical competence of the Defense Special Weapons Agency. Gansler told me that he wanted the DTRA to report to me. Finally, we discussed the ballistic missile defense program. He told me that he wanted me to take a very active role in reviewing its components and advising him on what should be done in this area as well. All this was very positive, and on October 16, 1997, Gansler formally offered me the DDRE position. I accepted, which touched off the process of political vetting and background checks for the security clearances required for presidential appointments requiring Senate confirmation. The vetting process was much more elaborate then than it was twenty years earlier (March 1977), when I was designated to become under secretary of the air force by President Carter. At that time, the procedure took a little more than three months to come to a conclusion—March 7 to June 17, 1977. The vetting process was not always on point. An example of the kinds of questions that I was asked by a young lawyer (younger than my son!) in the White House Personnel Office: “Dr. Mark, have you ever written anything that could be construed by anyone to be contrary to the policies of the Clinton administration?” I replied the only way I could, by saying that there were probably things I had written that could be so construed. When he asked me in which articles or books these could be found, I could only say in exasperation, “I’ll be damned if I know! Who is ‘anyone’?” It was because of questions such as this one, along with a microscopic examination of my financial records, that it took eight months, from late October 1997 to July 1, 1998, to clear me and presumably other people for executive level IV positions such as the DDRE. Executive levels I through III are for cabinet officers, deputy secretaries, and under secretaries, respectively. Assistant secretaries are rated at level IV, and the DDRE then ranked as the senior person of the dozen or so assistant secretaries in the Department of Defense. This was the remaining vestige of the glory days when the DDRE ranked third in the department.

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My confirmation hearing was held on June 2, 1998. Unlike the three previous hearings I had gone through, this one was thorough, not perfunctory. The reason for this was that India and Pakistan had detonated a number of nuclear explosive devices just before the date of the hearing. On May 11–13, India detonated five explosives: one was a thermonuclear (that is, hydrogen) device, and the others were plutonium explosives. Pakistan detonated five nuclear devices, too, four on the same days as the Indian ones and the fifth on May 30. All the Pakistani detonations were plutonium bombs—that is, there were no thermonuclear devices. These events drew six members of the Armed Services Committee, including Chairman Strom Thurmond (R-SC). The others were John Warner (R-VA), Carl Levin (D-MI), Joseph Lieberman (D-CT), Charles Robb (D-VA), and Max Cleland (D-GA). Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) was present to introduce me to the committee. They all were deeply interested in the status of our nuclear weapons stockpile.The meeting lasted more than three hours, and I had to draw on my experiences at Livermore and elsewhere. I think that the senators were pleased with this unexpected tutorial. In any event, my nomination was confirmed, so I could start work. Although Jacques Gansler’s plan substantially increased the responsibilities of the DDRE, I did not believe that Congress would accept the proposed changes contained in the Defense Reform Initiative once we requested the necessary legislation. The Clinton administration had abolished the position of assistant to the secretary of defense for chemical, nuclear, and biological programs. I felt that the congressional staff members and the senators concerned with these matters would never approve the elimination of this important position. This was exactly what happened, and so I had to make informal arrangements with the people concerned, in order to do the job as Gansler had envisaged it. These improvised procedures entailed risk and also caused embarrassing moments and awkward situations for me, but I felt that I had no choice but to do the best I could, in the hope that eventually things would be straightened out. Although the situation was never clarified in a de jure sense, I was able to function de facto as Gansler had intended. The major bone of contention with Congress was the post of assistant to the secretary of defense for nuclear, chemical, and biological defense programs (ATSD/​ NCB). The Defense Reform Initiative, as mentioned, called for the abolition of this position, which was the standoff that finally resulted between Secretary Cohen and Congress. I was doing the job, and probably because of my long experience in the nuclear weapons business, everybody agreed that this would be all right. I was eventually nominated to fill the position, in addition to my job as DDRE. (It turns out that such a maneuver is quite legal as long as you do not get paid for doing both jobs!) Fortunately, the nomination was never taken up by the Senate Armed Service Committee, so I was spared the embarrassment of having to explain why the administration tried to abolish this important position in the first place.The decision to abolish the job was reached before I returned to Washington.

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As DDRE, I repeatedly but unsuccessfully urged that a qualified person be found to fill the position of ATSD/​NCB. I eventually passed through all the hurdles, and on June 16, 1998, President Clinton signed my commission as the director of defense research and engineering. On July 1, I was sworn in by David O. (Doc) Cooke, the chief administrative officer of the Department of Defense. Doc is informally known as the “Mayor of the Pentagon,” and he is an old and good friend. Twenty-one years earlier, he had sworn me in as under secretary of the air force. Needless to say, I was delighted that he was still around to repeat the performance. My term of service in the Pentagon ended officially 998 days later, on March 10, 2001. Since this was just two days short of a thousand, I thought that “A Thousand Days in the Pentagon” would be an appropriate title for the report that I wrote at the end of my term of service. (A difference of one-fifth of 1 percent is good enough for government work.) This description of events is based on the report.

The War in Kosovo, March 24–June 10, 1999 It is the business of the Department of Defense to fight and win wars. I spent a total of a little more than seven years in the Pentagon (under secretary of the air force and director of the NRO, 1977–79; secretary of the air force, 1979–81; and DDRE, 1998–2001) and lived through several conflicts around the world. During my term, only one involved a significant number of American fighting men and women: the war in the Balkans between Serbia and Kosovo. The nation of Yugoslavia was created at the end of World War I as a monarchy ruled by members of the Karatheodory family. During World War II, the monarchy was dissolved, and the country was ruled by a military dictator, Josip Broz Tito.Tito died in 1980, and because of the multilingual, multiethnic, and multireligious nature of the region, the nation of Yugoslavia disintegrated in 1992, ultimately leading to the formation of Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro, and Macedonia. In the aftermath of the dissolution, a number of upheavals shattered the region. Roman Catholic Croats wound up pitted against Orthodox Serbs, who also waged war on the Muslims of Bosnia and Herzegovina. During the 1990s, major disturbances between these nations worsened to the point that NATO had to step in and make peace. The primary conflict was caused by Serbia, the largest and the most military oriented of the former Yugoslav republics. Serbia’s southernmost province was Kosovo, whose majority population was made up of Albanian Muslims. Beginning in 1992 and escalating rapidly thereafter, the Serbian Army made forays into Kosovo and killed many local people who were not ethnic Serbs. By 1998, open conflict had broken out between local Serb police and a Kosovar guerrilla force, the Kosovo Liberation Army. The Serbian Army stepped into the conflict, and a bloody war resulted.

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In September 1998, the secretary-general of NATO, Javier Solana, delivered an ultimatum to Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic to halt the fighting and withdraw the Serbian Army from Kosovo. Milosevic agreed to negotiations conducted by the NATO nations, but in March 1999 the negotiations failed. NATO’s military force was then mobilized to intervene in Kosovo. The senior military commander at NATO, who is always an American four-star officer, was Gen.Wesley Clark (US Army). Solana, as secretary-general, was his superior officer. President Clinton asked General Clark to draw up a plan of action against the Serbian Army in Kosovo. The general recommended a massive air campaign before any NATO troops were committed to the ground. The operation was named Allied Force, indicating that it would be international and strong. In chapter 9, I described how the US Air Force developed the “long-range combat aircraft” (LRCA), which provides the “long reach” required by our air force. I was heavily involved in the development of two of the three heavy bombers, the Rockwell B-1B Lancer and the Northrop B-2 Spirit. I did not have much to do with the Boeing B-52H Stratofortress except to make sure that it could carry a very heavy load of cruise missiles. About 730 aircraft from all NATO nations were mobilized for Operation Allied Force. These included troop transports, tanker aircraft (KC-135s), special aircraft to gather intelligence, and of course, the combat aircraft that carry bombs and rockets. The top tier of the aircraft used by Allied Force comprised twenty-two American heavy bombers: ten B-52Hs, eight B-1Bs, and four B-2 stealth bombers. The B-52Hs and B-1Bs were based at RAF Fairford, located in Gloucestershire in southern England. The B-2s flew from Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri to Kosovo and back. This trip took thirty hours, on average, and covered a distance of about twelve thousand miles. The twenty-two heavy bombers dropped approximately twelve thousand weapons, which was about half of the ordnance used by all aircraft in the Kosovo conflict. Two other technical points need to be mentioned. Most of the bombs and rockets dropped by the aircraft were Joint Direct Attack Munitions ( JDAMs), which are regular bombs that can be guided to targets by GPS. This arrangement is exceedingly effective at destroying fixed targets on the ground. Because the formerly “dumb” bombs were now “smart,” the large aircraft could fly above 35,000 feet and did not have to be concerned about the weather. From March to June, these heavy bombers destroyed all the bridges across the Danube in Serbia and all the airfields used by the Serbian Air Force. In addition, command posts and the Serbian military headquarters in Belgrade were seriously damaged. None of the heavy bombers were damaged during the Kosovo conflict. Hundreds of smaller combat aircraft were deployed during the Kosovo conflict. They were flown near the ground to destroy moving targets such as tanks, other combat vehicles, and ground troops. In the ground war between the wellequipped Serbian Army and the guerrilla-force Kosovo Liberation Army, the

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Serbs sustained losses of tanks, which they asked the Russians (fellow Slavs) to replace. Russian president Boris Yeltsin refused to help—a major reason why the war was short. The smaller aircraft were provided by a number of NATO allies. Denmark, Belgium, and the Netherlands flew F-16s that were US made but had been partially built by factories in those nations. The British, French, and German fighter aircraft included joint efforts like the Typhoon (Eurofighter) and individual French aircraft from the Dassault Mirage series and the Super Étendard. The German Air Force used US-built Lockheed F-104 Starfighters, and the Spanish and Italian Air Forces used the Typhoon. The US Air Force deployed F-15E models that were air-toground combat aircraft, along with F-16s; the navy supplied F/​A-18 Hornets from the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt. Only a few conventional aircraft were shot down during the Kosovo conflict. Finally, the “stealthy” Lockheed F-117s were used on a number of missions. These aircraft were first used in 1989 in the Panama incursion to capture Gen. Manuel Noriega. The interesting point about the F-117 is that the Serbs shot one down by using a bistatic radar system. They posted an observer at Aviano Air Base in northern Italy to record when the aircraft took off on its mission. The next step was to estimate the plane’s flight path so that the two radars necessary to locate it could be properly placed. The radar operators had only a very short time to shoot down the F-117 as it passed their position. Recall that the F-117 has a small radar cross section only if it is flying directly toward the location of the radar. If the radar beam is perpendicular to the aircraft, it can easily detect it. Thus, by placing a radar on each side of the path of the aircraft, an opposing force can very accurately locate it and shoot it down. This is what the Serbs did, and it was a very long shot for them. The war in Kosovo was a clear victory for NATO. The coalition defeated a rogue nation, arrested that nation’s leader, Slobodan Milosevic, and tried him before the International Court of Justice in The Hague for war crimes. Milosevic died in 2006 before the verdict was rendered, but it was clear early in the trial that he would have been convicted. I was very satisfied that weapons developed during the Cold War proved their military value in the Balkans. The Kosovo War also had human costs. According to the best evidence, the air war resulted in 5,700 civilian casualties, dead and wounded. The ground war contributed 1,200 dead and 3,000 wounded. No NATO soldiers died in combat during the 104-day conflict; two American soldiers died in an accident when their AH-64 helicopter crashed in Albania.

American Nuclear Weapons in Europe The United States maintains nuclear weapons in Europe as part of its commitment to NATO. Whereas both the United Kingdom and France have nuclear weapons

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that they developed themselves, the United States has placed American nuclear weapons in other nations, partly to demonstrate trust that the smaller nations in NATO can use nuclear weapons if NATO requires it. The American nuclear weapons were located in Germany, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, Greece, and Turkey. Each of these nations had aircraft that could carry nuclear weapons and the pilots trained to use them. Each air base at which the nuclear weapons were stored had a US Air Force contingent of about twenty people, who would maintain the weapons and their storage spaces. In addition, they would arm the weapons if they needed to be used in anger. A US Air Force major was in command of each unit. The ministers of defense of each nation that has its own nuclear weapons constitute the Nuclear Planning Group (NPG), which is the senior decision-making body.The nations lacking their own nuclear weapons but hosting them on their air bases are also members of this group. The NPG meets periodically to review the general situation. The senior advisors to the NPG form a unit called the High Level Group (HLG), about forty people drawn from civilians and the military at the two-star level. This group advises the NPG on policy matters and also is responsible for technical matters about safety, security, and improved storage and transportation methods for the weapons. The chairman of the HLG must be an American, and in the Clinton administration the chairman was Frank Miller. He was an excellent choice; Frank had long experience in both the policy group in the Pentagon and in the arms control unit in the State Department. As luck would have it, he was also a graduate of Stuyvesant High School in New York, my alma mater. He was ten years younger than I, but we were pleased about the coincidence. In the absence of an ATSD/​ NCB, I was named vice chairman of the HLG. Frank Miller and I agreed that I should inspect all the foreign bases to assess any problems. The bases in Germany, Italy, and Belgium were well run by the local people, and the air force units were up to standard or better. The unit in the Netherlands was sloppily managed and had been penetrated a number of times by unauthorized people. In addition, it was not up to standard, because of the local commander’s incompetence. We relieved the US Air Force major of command of the unit and contacted the Netherlands Air Force Command to fix their management problem. I visited the base on my next trip to Europe, and the new people, both American and Dutch, were much better. My visit to the Greek air base was most interesting. The Greek Air Force was excellent, and the American unit was also heads-up. The problem was that Greece was threatened by a revolution led by a hard-left party. During my visit, several hundred people demonstrated at the gate of the base, and some tried to climb the chain-link fences. Fortunately, the Greeks’ very good military police unit prevented any real trouble from occurring.

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We agreed with the local Greek commander and with the US Air Force major in command of the weapons unit that we should remove the nuclear weapons from Greece before someone infiltrated the base and broke into the vaults where the weapons were kept—the kind of breach that could cause havoc with radioactive materials. The problem was that the operation to retrieve the weapons had to proceed under profound secrecy. If the Greek government found out that we were pulling our weapons out, but that the weapons in Turkey were staying put, there would be hell to pay. Back in Washington, I went to my boss, Jacques Gansler, and told him that given the problems in Greece, we should remove the weapons. He agreed, and that same day we told Secretary Cohen what was what going on. He made one telephone call, and the message from the secretary of state, Madeleine Albright, was clear: “Go ahead.” Everything went as planned. A large US Air Force transport aircraft landed at night and pulled the nuclear weapons out of the Greek air base. No one in Greece knew for some time that this had been done.

The Defense Threat Reduction Agency When I learned from John Hamre, the deputy secretary of defense, about the proposal to create the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA), I did not have to think twice about who should be the director. I made two telephone calls. One was to Jacques Gansler, who knew about Jay Davis’s work on the Iraqi nuclear situation. I told him that I thought that Jay was the only person for the job, and he agreed. My second telephone call was to Jay in California, and I asked him to think about taking the position.We talked for a bit, and then I told Jay that I was ready to fly to California to talk about the proposal in person. We spent a day discussing it, and in the end Jay agreed to come to Washington to talk with the senior leadership. The visit to Washington went well. John Hamre was especially impressed, and so Jay Davis became the founding director of the DTRA. At the end of World War II there was a lengthy delay before US political leaders reached a consensus on how the development and production of nuclear weapons should be managed. I remember two important questions that had to be resolved. First, the majority of people in Congress did not want the military to control the nuclear weapons. Sen. Brien McMahon (D-CT), who was the chairman of the committee dealing with the problem, had very strong feelings about this matter. The second issue was to recognize that the technology of nuclear weapons was brand-new. The people who would work in the newly created organization would have to be knowledgeable and be willing to work on the development of these very terrible weapons. Overseeing the infrastructure needed to create nuclear weapons was a huge job, and Congress ultimately decided to form an independent agency called the Atomic Energy Commission. It was established in 1947. When the Department of

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Energy was established, in 1980, the Atomic Energy Commission was disbanded and replaced by the National Nuclear Security Administration, which became a unit within the department. In the Defense Department, the nuclear weapons business was on the back burner in the late 1990s. Agencies that dealt with nuclear weapons reported to different units in the Pentagon.The Defense Nuclear Agency was the most important of these, since it oversaw the safety of nuclear weapons that had been turned over to the Pentagon by the Department of Energy. The On-Site Inspection Agency was equally important, because it worked with the Russians on arms-control compliance. This agency was established as part of the 1997 Defense Reform Initiative. Smaller units included the Defense Technology Security Administration and an office, attached to the Office of the Secretary of Defense, that monitored the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction Program. All these organizations would become part of the DTRA. The DTRA has approximately two thousand employees, about half civilians and half military. Its budget for in-house operations is about $800 million, and about $1.8 billion for external research programs. About 70 percent of the staff works at the DTRA Headquarters at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, just south of Washington, DC. About 15 percent are engaged in the inspections mandated by START, which calls for Americans to visit the Soviet (now Russian) stockpile and other facilities, and for the Russians do the same in the United Sates; this unit is headed by a serving two-star officer. The final 15 percent of the DTRA staff is located at test facilities in New Mexico and Nevada, and in smaller groups elsewhere. The consolidation of all these activities was very successful. The DTRA has been a going concern for nineteen years, and there is good reason to expect it to continue. Jay Davis deserves the credit for this favorable outcome.

Refurbishing Nuclear Weapons and the Reliable Replacement Warhead The final nuclear detonation conducted by the United States was in 1992. Thus, the newest nuclear weapon in our stockpile was six years old when I assumed my position in the Pentagon in 1998. Nearly all the items in the nuclear stockpile are much older; some were manufactured in the late 1960s. The basic problem is that in the heyday of testing, we never worried about shelf life of the materials in the weapons. In this matter, I worked with a leading nuclear weapons expert in the Department of Energy, Victor Reis. Our first chore was to go to the Pantex facility in Amarillo, Texas. Warheads there would be examined for faults, and then decisions made about what to do to fix things. Up to this point, these types of inspections were being conducted piecemeal, but we felt that we should systematically examine and record the discovered flaws, if any, in some reasonable order. In the end,

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we would have to develop a system for deciding whether a flaw required a major operation or whether it could be ignored. Since the ultimate objective required subjective judgments, we wanted to be careful with the selection. The refurbishment started with a procedure called the Dual Revalidation Program. An evaluation team of three to six people, half from Los Alamos and half from Livermore, would examine a subject weapon from one of those sites. Liver­ more people would examine weapons from Los Alamos carefully and look for flaws, and the Los Alamos people would try to minimize the flaws—and vice versa. They would then write a joint report that would recommend how to refurbish the weapon. This process was complicated and thorough. The most important, and most numerous, weapons in our stockpile at this time, 1998–2000, were the W76s, which were the warheads put on submarines. As a result of this activity, we developed a program to refurbish the W76, at a total cost of $4 billion.There were problems with the procedures, but we improved the health of the stockpile. When my term expired in 2001, the W76 program was in good shape, and we had started to look at the W80 for the next refurbishment. The W80s were intended for placement on cruise missiles. The refurbishment of existing warheads was important but also expensive. On one of my visits to the Los Alamos National Laboratory, I learned that several people were looking at the possibility of developing a new nuclear warhead that would incorporate some of the things we had learned during the refurbishment process. During the forty-seven-year span when we detonated a little more than a thousand nuclear devices, nuclear technology proceeded fast enough to warrant building weapons that were quite different from those in the previous generation. Since they were replaced every few years, shelf life was only a small consideration. Nonetheless, people such as John Browne and Stephen Younger thought seriously about building nuclear weapons that would incorporate new technology but would not have to be tested. Instead, it might be possible for the newest and best computers to determine accurately whether a warhead would work. My feeling at the time (August 1999) was that it would be a good idea to start such a project to see whether computers could indeed be relied on to accurately calculate the explosive yield of a warhead. We had more than one thousand detonations to examine, and if the computer predictions about explosive yields matched what had in fact occurred, we could go ahead with such a program. I also wrote a letter to Edward Teller (reproduced herein) to alert him about this possibility. This program was accepted by the George W. Bush administration and given the name Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW). The decision was made to follow the same method used for refurbishment.The Los Alamos and Livermore laboratories were asked to submit proposals for the RRW by November 2006. Funding for the project would start at $25 million in fiscal year 2006, rising to $89 million by fiscal year 2008. On March 2, 2007, the National Nuclear Security Administration

Figure 18.1. My letter to Edward Teller in August 1999.

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announced that Livermore’s RRW design had been selected for the initial production version. What made this outcome special for me was that Dr. Cynthia Nitta was the chairman of the team that represented Livermore in the Dual Revalidation process. Cindy is the daughter of Hank Nitta, an engineer at the NASA–Ames Research Center. We were neighbors, and Cindy and our children all went to Gunn High School in Palo Alto in the 1970s. There was vocal opposition to building a new nuclear weapon. Congress appropriated only about $20 million to continue the studies in the 2008 fiscal year. With the election of President Obama, the RRW program was canceled. I was disappointed by this move. We should at least have gone through the exercise of comparing the computers’ results to existing experimental data.

Some Miscellaneous Weapons and Facilities During my time as DDRE, several weapon systems and facilities advanced substantially in their development. What follows is a series of brief descriptions of the most notable ones. The Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) is a missile developed by the army to shoot down medium-range ballistic missiles above the atmosphere. When I arrived in Washington in 1998, the program was in deep trouble. The Lockheed Space and Missile Division in Sunnyvale had had ten successive failures. I visited the contractor twice and found that sloppy assembly of the wire harnesses was the problem. The upshot was that we relieved the project manager and then told management that the next three tests had to be successful or we would cancel the program. The Lockheed people made three successful intercepts. The THAAD missile system is now being deployed. The Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor was intended to replace the McDonnell Douglas F-15 Eagle. The initial design called for a large cradle that would hold two large engines to be made of titanium. But there was trouble with cracks in the cradles. At a meeting to discuss the matter, I recommended that aluminum structural material should be used, which was eventually done. The F-22 aircraft is now in service. The Lockheed Martin F-35 Lighting ( Joint Strike Fighter) was doomed to be controversial because of the requirement that all three services—the navy, marine corps, and the air force—use the same airframe. At first, I thought that achieving this sort of standardization would be impossible. There were two contractors when I showed up in the Pentagon in 1998, Boeing and Lockheed Martin. I prepared a detailed paper for Jack Gansler that recommended canceling Boeing’s contract

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($4 billion) because the company was hopelessly behind. We might be able to find some way to save the money. Jack agreed with me, but told me that breaking the contract with Boeing would lead to lawsuits that would likely be more expensive than maintaining Boeing’s involvement. He then reminded me of what happened after the Pentagon canceled the contract for the General Dynamics A-12 aircraft— twenty-three years of relentless litigation. As I write this, all three F-35 variants (those for the air force, the marine corps, and the navy) are being tested. The program has been troubled by delays and cost issues. But there is no question about the performance of the aircraft, in spite of these difficulties. The F-35 class of airplanes will become an important asset. Given my old connection with the Livermore Laboratory, I decided to respond to a request from the Energy Department to take a look at the National Ignition Facility at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. The NIF is a huge laser that was originally built to ignite a mixture of tritium and deuterium in a small container and then fire a laser beam at the container to make it “burn” and release a huge mass of neutrons with kinetic energies of fourteen million electron volts. When I arrived in Washington as DDRE, I learned that the director of the NIF project had falsified his résumé by claiming to have a PhD. He was dismissed, and it became my job to look at the management and the technical status of the NIF machine. In the case of the management, I advised the Livermore director to ask Dr. George Miller to run the NIF program. In addition, I realized that the laboratory was doing too much of the construction in-house and had too many contractors to manage. I recommended that Livermore hire Jacobs Engineering, a large and competent outfit from Los Angeles, to handle construction. My recommendations were accepted. The most important move was to hire Miller, who did an excellent job of putting the NIF online. The machine is being used for fusion experiments intended to help us understand how the secondary explosion—that is, the fusion explosion—in a nuclear device functions. Unfortunately, the NIF has yet to reach ignition. In that sense, the NIF has been a failure. But some interesting experiments have found applications in astrophysics and in matters related to nuclear weapon stockpiles. In 1994, I joined the advisory committee that R. Adm.Wayne Meyer established to help with the development of sea-based missiles and their guidance systems. When I came to Washington again in 1998, I had to step down from Admiral Meyer’s committee, but I made it my business to have good connections with the leaders of the Ballistic Missile Defense Office (BMDO), because I had a statutory dotted line to the BMDO on the organization charts. The BMDO directors during my term in the Clinton administration, Generals Lester Lyles, Ronald Kadish, and Malcolm O’Neill, were all good friends. In addition, I visited staff members of the Naval Surface Warfare Center, which developed the ships on which the weapons were

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placed. The Aegis ships are at the heart of this enterprise. I made it my business to see whether I could sail on one of these cruisers and watch their operations. Another strong connection, and more important than the one with the BMDO, was with R. Adm. Michael G. Mullen, the head of the Surface Warfare Office on the Naval Staff. He was very keen on getting the navy interested in ballistic missile defense, and we both believed that this was the best way to start a more active program in that area. Admiral Mullen and I drafted a memorandum for the chief of naval operations, Adm. Jay Johnson, that outlined what we thought the navy should do about defense against ballistic missiles. Admiral Mullen left his job with a promotion and eventually served as chief of naval operations and later as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Finally, there was R. Adm. Kate Paige, the deputy director of the Aegis program. She arranged for me to be aboard two Aegis cruisers. The first was the USS Hue City (CG-66). In February 2001, we flew to Puerto Rico, drove to Roosevelt Roads, and then boarded the ship by helicopter. The ship’s mission was to meet the USS Cape St. George (CG-71) and to exercise the Cooperative Engagement Capability (CEC) system. The CEC will allow an Aegis cruiser to control a missile fired by another ship. Our ships were stationed about fifty miles north of Vieques Island. For two days, the ships alternated in firing missiles. I was able to persuade the coxswain to take me out on an inflatable when the ship was dead in the water, which allowed me to calibrate the ship’s radar. We spent an hour taking pictures of the Hue City, and I got a very good shot just as the ship fired a Standard Missile 2. The second cruise that Admiral Paige arranged for me was on the USS Lake Erie (CG-70). The Lake Erie was a standard Aegis cruiser that had been modified to shoot down a ballistic missile with an Aegis system for a “hit to kill.” We left Pearl Harbor and set a course for Necker Island, which is about three hundred miles northwest of the Pacific Missile Range on the west coast of Kauai.The target would be a Scud-type missile fired from the range. The interception of the target missile occurred at an altitude of about one hundred miles. The exercise, which took place on January 25, 2002, was completely successful, and all of us were very pleased. On the way back, we stopped for a burial at sea. At the end of World War II, the navy made it possible to have a burial at sea for any US Navy sailor who was present at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. We participated in such an event, and it was a very impressive ceremony. Capt. John J. Hammerer of the Lake Erie presided, wearing his white uniform with all his medals. The honor guard, also in white, was mustered on the quarterdeck. Captain Hammerer recited the naval burial service and then the bugler played taps. In keeping with tradition, the coffin holding the deceased sailor was draped with an American flag. Finally, the coffin was slowly slipped into the sea. Three sailors on each side of the coffin then folded the flag, which would be sent to the next of kin.

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Figure 18.2. The USS Lake Erie launching an SM-3 missile to intercept a mediumrange Scud missile. The first kill of a ballistic missile launched by the ship was conducted on January 25, 2002.

I was really moved by the ceremony. My guess was that I was probably the only person on the Lake Erie who was alive when Pearl Harbor was bombed. Was it really so long ago? Did I do all the right things during the Cold War? Should I have stayed in the navy when I had the chance? While I was standing on the helicopter platform, looking down at the honor guard being dismissed, it occurred to me that the best that could be done was to pray to the Good Lord for the soul of the sailor we had just given to the sea. Having done that, I thought it appropriate to dedicate this volume to all Americans who prevailed in World War II and in the Cold War.

Index Page numbers in italic refer to illustrations. Aspects of the author’s life are indexed under his name with separate main entries for his early years, higher education, personal details, and professional career. HM = Hans Mark Aaron, David, 291, 306, 308, 316 Abernathy, Ralph, 146 ABM Treaty. See Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty Abrahamson, James A., 437, 453, 461, 474, 486–88, 537, 546–47; Strategic Defense Initiative Organization director, 574, 579, 584 ACDA. See Arms Control and Disarmament Agency Acheson, Dean, 39 Adams, Chris, 404 Adamson, David, 365, 368 ADCOM. See NORAD/​ADCOM Addabbo, Joseph, 515 Adelman, Ken, 567 Adenauer, Konrad, 619, 621–22 Adey, Ross, 222–23 Adler, Bob, 450 Advanced Manned Strategic Aircraft, 339, 346 Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), 90 Advisory Committee on Uranium, 15 AEC. See Atomic Energy Commission Aegis (missile defense system), 531, 562, 586, 605, 640 “aerial battleship,” 189 Aeronautical Research Laboratory (US Army), 179 Aerospace America, 362–63 Aerospace Corporation, 214 African Americans, 133, 145, 147. See also civil rights movement

A-48 accelerator. See under Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Aga Khan, 601 Agnew, Harold, 79 Agnew, Spiro T., 166, 229, 255 Agusta Westland AW609, 182 Ainsworth, Herbert, 216 Airborne Instruments Laboratory, 280 Airborne Laser Laboratory (ALL), 188–91, 213, 446, 567, 586, 606 Air Education and Training Command, 299 Air Force Association, 326, 338, 369, 385 Air Force Project Office, 360 Air Force Satellite Program, 367 Air Force Scientific Advisory Board. 134, 161, 188, 213, 326, 345; B-1 bomber and, 342, 347–50; Laser Weapons Committee, 189–90; space shuttle and, 342 Air Force Space Command, 328, 364–68, 370, 372, 413–14, 508–11, 515 Air Force Space Division, 369–70 Air Force Special Forces, 331 Air Force Systems Acquisition Review Council, 382 Air Force Systems Command (AFSC), 294, 368–69; Air Force Space Division as part of, 369 Air Force Technical Applications Center, 384 Air Force Technical School for Electronics, 330 Air Force Weapons Laboratory, 191, 340 Air Mobility Research and Development Laboratory, 179 Air Staff, 326, 330, 342, 350, 369, 385, 405; Air Staff Board, 370; Air Staff Council, 370 Air Transport Command, 299 Akaka, Daniel, 495, 515

644

Index

Alameda Estuary, 36, 278 Alaska: air force and, 390–91 Alban, Hans von, 14 Albert, Carl, 257 Alberts, Watson, 61 Albright, Madeleine, 634 Aldrich, Nelson, 239 Aldridge Edward C. (Pete), 412, 437, 447, 560–61 Aldrin, Buzz, 196, 197, 570 Alexander, Norene, 38 Alexander, William, 405 Alexis I (tsar), 625 Alfrey, Turner, 10, 61 Algeria, 272 Algranti, Joe, 533, 535, 540–41 Allen, Barbara, 297–98, 509 Allen, H. Julian (Harvey), 169–70, 211, 225 Allen, James R., 399 Allen, Joe, 489 Allen, Lew, Jr., 299, 368, 382; Air Force Systems Command, head of, 294–98, 295; air force, vice chief of staff and chief of staff, 298, 326, 337, 346–47, 387, 429–30, 454–55, 490, 509–10; JPL and, 478, 511; new-technology satellite and, 309 Allen, Richard V., 356–57, 451, 462, 532 Alley, Carroll, 382 Allied Control Commission, 39 Altgeld, John Peter, 59 Alvarez, Luis, 21, 40, 66, 82, 206, 385 Amaldi, Eduardo, 479 Ambrose, Jim, 516 Amchitka Island, 524 American Journal of Physics, 153 American Physical Society, 68 Ames Aeronautical Laboratory, 104, 171–72. See also NASA–Ames Research Center Ames Astrogram, 175 Amundsen, Roald, 232 Anami, Korechika, 26 Anders, Bill, 167, 230, 554 Andersen Air Force Base, 393 Anderson, John (congressman), 415 Anderson, John (physicist), 99 Anderson, Kinsey, 159 Anderson, Robert, 100, 444 Andrews Air Force Base, 317 Andropov,Yuri, 286, 507, 584, 600 Antarctica, 232 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM Treaty), 192, 492–93, 522–23, 525, 530, 602–604

antisatellite weapons, 310, 584–85 Apollo program, 229; Apollo 1, 199; Apollo 5, 199; Apollo 8, 164, 167; Apollo 11, 166, 168, 194–97, 472, 576; Apollo 13, 198–99, 501, 596; Apollo 17, 166, 200–201, 232 Apollo-Soyuz mission, 224, 552 Apollo 13 Review Board, 198–99, 232 Applications Technology Satellite, 500 Arab-Islamic extremism, 3, Arab League, 317 Arafat,Yasser, 506 Arbatov, Georgi, 585 Ares program, 459 Argus project, 88, 90–91, 93, 114, 279, 294, 334–35, 509, 523, 526, 572, 586 Ariane (French rocket), 535–37; Ariane 5, 480 ARL. See University of Texas at Austin: Applied Research Laboratories Armed Forces Journal, 357 Armed Forces Policy Council, 316, 332, 352 Armenia, 623 Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (ACDA), 304, 585 Armstrong, Neil, 195–97, 199–200 Army Ballistic Missile Agency, 335 Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN). See under South Vietnam ARPA. See Advanced Research Projects Agency Arzamas-16, 110 Ash, Eric, 615 Astrophysical Journal, 285 A-10 Warthog. See Fairchild Republic A-10 “Warthog” Atkins, James, 182 Atkov, Oleg, 553 Atlantic Charter, 2, Atlas (nuclear missile), 88, 169, 262, 366, 522 Atlas, Sheldon M., 242, 248, 378–79 Atlas, Helen, 242, 248, 378 Atlas-Centaur (launch vehicle), 202, 209 Atlas Launch Vehicle Program, 464 Attlee, Clement, 270; at the Potsdam Conference, 23–24 atomic clock, 382 Atomic Energy (Smythe), 19 Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), 44, 46, 65, 81, 152, 634–35; Cold War and, 161; General Advisory Committee (GAC), 45–46, 65 atomic weapons. See hydrogen bomb; nuclear weapons

Index Attica (prison), 241, 322 Auger, Pierre, 271, 479 Austria: Nazi occupation of, 5, 374–75. See also Vienna Austrian Academy of Sciences, 620 Austro-Hungarian Empire, 618 Avco Everett Laboratory, 188–89 AV-8B Harrier. See under McDonnell Douglas aircraft Aviano Air Base, 632 Aviation Week, 494 Avizonis, Pete, 340 Avro Lancaster bomber, 399–400 Babb, Albert, 161 Bader, Michael, 213, 215 Baker, Diane, 197 Baker, James, 448, 464, 560 Baker, William O., 250, 253–55, 260–61, 310, 313, 447 Baldridge, Malcolm, 564, 568–69 Balfour, Arthur, 136 Balfour Declaration, 136 Ball, George W., 133 Ballhaus, William, 226, 235 Ballistic Missile Defense Office, 639 ballistic missiles: land-based, 302–303. See also intercontinental ballistic missile; intermediate-range ballistic missile; nuclear missiles Baltimore Sun, 345 Banisadr, Abolhassan, 323 Bao Dai, 72–73 Barking Sands Missile Range, 113, 153 Barnes, Richard (Dick), 482, 535–36, 538, 540 Barnes, Helena, 536 Bartovics, Albert, 10 Batista, Fulgencio, 103 Battista, Tony, 345 Batzel, Roger, 526 Bausch and Lomb, 213 Bayh, Birch, 293 Bay of Pigs, 103 Bazargan, Medhi, 329 Bazelon, David, 294 Bazley, Robert W., 399 Beale, Donald, 444, 446 Beckel, Lothar, 497, 501–502 Beckham, Walter, 77 Beckwith, Charles, 331 Beechcraft C-12, 391, 399

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Beetham, Michael, 396 Beggs, Charlie, 434, 455–56 Beggs, James M., 417; fraud allegations against, 591, 593; HM and, 162, 164, 166, 430–31, 573–74, 595; JPL and, 478; NASA administrator, 430, 433–37, 443, 449, 451–53, 455–57, 456, 467–70, 469, 520, 532, 579, 590–91; NASA budget and, 462–63, 465, 570; NASA organization and, 460–61; space shuttle and, 484; space station and, 458–59, 473–74, 486–87, 553–55, 558, 561, 563, 565, 568, 570, 574, 577–78, 580; Strategic Defense Initiative and, 565; UNISPACE 82 and, 493–95 Beggs, Mary, 166, 434, 456 Begin, Menachem, 314–16, 506 Beirut, 506 Bekaa Valley, 506 Belarus, 625 Belgian Congo, 15 Belgium, 15, 633 Bell, Daniel, 586–87; The Coming of PostIndustrial Society, 587 Bell, David Elliott, 106 Bell, Griffin, 329 Bell-Agusta 609, 182 Bell aircraft: UH-1, 182; X-14A, 184; XV-3, 180, 183; XV-15, 180–82, 183, 246, 330, 332, 352, 396, 490–91, 516 Bell Boeing MV-22 Osprey, 182, 458, 516–17, 517 Bell Helicopter Company, 180, 182 Benedict, Manson, 95 Ben-Gurion, David, 136–37, 315 Ben Israel, Itzhak, 507 Benveniste, Jack, 99 Benya, Anton, 498 Berger, Wallace G., 579 Bergmann, Peter, 273 Beria, Lavrenty, 107 Berkowski, Pamela, 627–28 Berlin airlift, 39–40, 50, 619 Berlin Wall, 109, 401; fall of, 617, 622 Berlioz, Hector, The Damnation of Faust, 400 Berman, Alan, 386, 418, 431 Berman, Ann, 609 Bernardin, Joseph, 528 Bernstein, Elmer, 280 Bernstein, Gregory, 280, 570 Berta, Mike, 462 Bethe, Hans, 17, 19, 21, 111, 503 Bethune, Edwin, 405–406

646 Betts, Austin W., 113 B-52. See Boeing aircraft: B-52 Bhabha, Homi J., 275 bhangmeter, 384 Bhutto, Zulfikar Ali, 276 Biehl, Arthur T., 160–61, 189 Big Ivan (Soviet hydrogen bomb), 110–11, 192 Bignier, Michel, 535–36 Bikini Atoll, 66 Billingham, John, 235 Bing, George, 90 Biosatellite, 222–23 Birge, Raymond T., 86 Birke, Friedrich, 58 Bismarck, Otto von, 617 Bisplinghoff, Raymond, 342 Bledsoe, Bill, 392 Bloch, Felix, 17, 503 Bloom, Stewart D., 99–100 Bluford, Guion, Jr., 544 Blumenthal, W. Michael, 329 Bobko, Karol, 533–35, 537, 541 Boeing civilian aircraft: 367–80, 362; 707, 362; 747, 359 Boeing Company: cruise missiles and, 407 Boeing military aircraft: AH-64 Apache, 632; B-17, 399; B-29, 25, 40, 43, 384; B-47, 117, 122, 338; B-52, 117, 122, 326, 334, 338–39, 342, 345, 349–51, 355, 379, 407, 509, 533; B-52, in the Vietnam War, 266–67, 347, 351; B-52H, 333, 393, 631; E-3A Sentry, 398; KC-135, 189, 191, 344, 363, 379, 390, 392–93, 399, 533, 631;VC137, 393–94;YAL-1, 191;YC-14, 362 Boeing Vertol, 182; CH-46, 516 Bohemian Club, 457 Bohr, Aage, 82 Bohr, Niels, 12, 21 Boland, Edward P., 209, 293, 307, 579 Bolden, Charles, 544 Bolling Air Force Base, 288 Boltzmann transport equation, 237 Bond, Julian, 132 Bond, Robert, 402 B-1 bomber. See Rockwell aircraft: B-1 Boner, C. P., 607 Borlaug, Norman, 247 Borman, Frank, 167 Bosnia and Herzegovina, 630 Bostick, Jerry, 467 Botha, Pieter Willem, 277

Index Bothe, Walter, 16 Bowyer, Stuart, 159 Boyce, Christopher John, 302 Boyd, John W. ( Jack), 462, 559, 582, 588; at NASA–Ames Research Laboratory, 170, 172, 222, 235–36, 438 Bradbury, Norris, 45 Bragg, William Henry, 32 Bragg, William Lawrence, 32 Brand,Vance, 548 Brandenstein, Dan, 469–70, 469 Branscomb, Lewis, 229–30 Braun, Wernher von. See von Braun, Wernher Braunsteiner, Elfrieda, 387, 430 Bravo shot (hydrogen bomb), 66, 108 Brecht, Bertolt, Galileo, 400 Brewster, Kingman, 340 Brezhnev, Leonid, 141–42, 286, 339, 503, 600; arms control and, 192–93, 287, 522; death of, 507; Gerald Ford and, 193, 287, 301; nuclear weapons and, 286; Richard Nixon and, 301 Brezhnev Doctrine, 287, 551–52 Briggs, Lyman, 15 Bright, Loren: at NASA–Ames Research Center, 175, 226–27 Britain. See United Kingdom British Aerospace (BAE), 482, 542 British Planetary Society, 500 Brock, William, 569 Broglie, Louis de, 272 Brooklyn Polytechnic. See Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn Brooks, Elmer, 404 Brown, Edmund G. (Pat), 135, 150–51 Brown, George, 296, 298, 300 Brown, Harold, 97, 156, 160, 510; at Cal Tech, 477; at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, 83–84, 90, 126; director of defense research and engineering, 112; MX missile and, 335, 337, 514; secretary of defense, 279, 281–82, 290–92, 293, 296–97, 300, 316–17, 324, 332, 352, 360, 385, 411, 415; new-technology satellite and, 308–309, 311–13; stealth aircraft and, 353, 355; strategic bombers and, 348, 350, 356; Titan missile accident and, 403 Brown, Jim, 392 Browne, John, 636 Brown’s Hotel (London), 400 Brown v. Board of Education (1954), 48 Brueckner, Keith, 309

Index Brzezinski, Zbigniew, 291, 306, 316, 321, 552 B-61 gravity bomb, 399 B-29. See Boeing B-29 Buchanan, Mary, 371 Buckman, Louis C., 393 Buell, Don, 190 Bulganin, Nikolai, 107, 507 Bumpers, Dale, 405 Bun (nickname). See Mark, Marion Thorpe: nicknamed “Bun” Bundy, McGeorge, 115, 124–25, 129 Burdge, Catherine Mark (HM’s niece), 376–77, 379, 387, 449 Burdge, Charles, 377 Burger, Gertrude, 198 Burger, Warren, 428 Burke, Kelly, 342, 350, 452–53 Burleson, Omar, 307 Burnstein, Raphael, 31, 34 Bush, George H. W., 353, 413, 562; as vice president, 430, 437, 448, 455–56, 456, 466, 580, 591 Bush, George W., 3, 636 Bush,Vannevar, 16–17, 21 Butler, Lee, 338 Byers, Nina, 49 Byrd, Harry F., Jr., 325 Byrd, Richard Evelyn, 232 Byrnes, James F., 21, 39 Cairo Declaration, 24 Califano, Joseph A., Jr., 329 California Institute of Technology: Jet Propulsion Laboratory and, 104, 473 California Research and Development Corporation, 81 Calio, Tony, 432, 438, 449–50 Callaghan, James, 424 Cambodia, 268 Cambridge University, 32 Campbell, William Wallace, 47 Camp Bluejacket, 12 Camp David Accords, 246, 314–17, 398 Canada: nuclear weapons and, 275–76 Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, 10 Canadian International Paper Company, 9 Canfield, Eugene, 77 Cannon, Howard, 489 Canopus (hydrogen bomb), 272 Cape Canaveral, 104, 484, 517 carbon-14, 68 Carey, Hugh, 310

647 

Carey, William D., 578 Carlucci, Frank, 309 Carnegie Institute of Technology, 31 Carothers, Jim, 99, 113, 156 Carr, Robert, 356–57 Carroll, Eugene, Jr., 587–88 Carter, Ashton, 586 Carter, James Earl, 3, 10, 265, 273, 279, 287, 293, 311, 326, 353, 387, 389, 396; arms control and, 281, 286, 304–305, 312–13; arms race and, 326; B-1 bomber and, 339; Camp David Accords and, 314–17; Leonid Brezhnev and, 414; “Malaise Speech,” 328– 29, 414; Mariel boatlift and, 401; NASA and, 413; National Medal of Science and, 388–89; 1980 presidential election and, 412, 414; Persian Gulf and, 341; Soviet Union and, 552; space shuttle and, 409–12, 410; strategic forces and, 334 Carter, Rosalynn, 389 Case, Clifford, 307 Casey, William, 448, 560, 567 Castle Air Force Base, 379 Castro, Fidel, 103; Mariel boatlift and, 400–401 CDC 7600 computer, 226 Cedar City, 336 Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), 282; director of central intelligence, 283–84; National Reconnaissance Office and, 283 cesium, 382 Cessna 172, 391 Chadwick, James, 13 Chafee, John, 514 Chaffee, Roger, 199 Chalk River Nuclear Laboratory (Canada), 43, 271, 276 Challenger (space shuttle): explosion of, 313, 412, 487, 541, 588–96, 589; explosion, investigation of, 596–98; first flight of, 517–19, 535–36; second flight of, 519–20; third flight of, 544–45; fourth flight of, 547–48; fifth flight of, 548–50, 589 Chambers, Alan, 235 Chambre, Paul, 152 Chandra X-Ray Observatory, 459 Chapline, George, 526 Chapman, Dean, 225–26, 228 Charif, Hasan, 135–37, 140 Charyk, Joe, 497 Chayes, Abram, 289–90, 492–93

648

Index

Chayes, Antonia Handler (Toni), 289–90, 294, 317, 324–25, 335–37, 492 Chernenko, Konstantin, 584, 600 Chernobyl, 263 Cherokee shot (thermonuclear detonation), 99 Chiang Kai-Shek, 24, 53, 57 Chicago Tribune, 41, 472 Chiles, Lawton, 578 China, 2, 141; Korean War and, 56–57, 141; North Vietnam and, 73; nuclear weapons and, 274–75; Soviet Union and, 141–42, 274, 287; United States and, 238, 268, 314 Chodil, Gerald, 100–101, 127, 153 Christofilos, Nicholas, 87–88 Chryse Planitia, 219 Chupp, Edward L., 84, 88 Church, Frank, 254, 257, 290 Churchill, Winston, 2, 10, 21, 30, 192, 270, 619; The Grand Alliance, 11; “Iron Curtain” speech, 29; nuclear weapons and, 271, 301, 604; at the Potsdam Conference, 23–24 CIA. See Central Intelligence Agency Citizens’ Advisory Council on National Space Policy, 570 Civil Rights Act of 1964, 147 Civil Rights Commission, 150 civil rights movement, 145–46, 148 Claremont Hotel (Berkeley), 35 Clark, Arnold, 84 Clark, Joan, 494–95, 501, 574–75 Clark, Wesley, 631 Clark, William P., 494, 560, 562 Clark Air Force Base, 392 Clarke, Arthur C., 500 “Clash of Civilizations, The” (Huntington), 3, Clay, Lucius D., 40 Cleland, Max, 629 Clements, William P., 338 Clifford, Clark, 144–45, 566 Clinton, William Jefferson, 405–406, 630–31 Coalition of Independent States, 625 Coanda effect, 184 Coar, Richard, 397 Cochran, Jacqueline, 197 Cockcroft, John, 121, 270 Cohen, Aaron, 443, 460, 474, 595 Cohen, Doris, 236 Cohen, Karl P., 154 Cohen, Wilbur, 157 Cohen, William, 325; secretary of defense, 611, 627, 629, 634

Cold War, 1–4; Berlin airlift, 39–40; end of, 506, 617–26; Korean War as part of, 54–57; lunar exploration as part of, 197; Mariel boatlift as part of, 400; 1948 presidential election and, 42; in 1977, 286; North Atlantic Treaty Organization and, 42; scientific research and, 127; Six-Day War as part of, 139; Soviet invasion of Afghanistan as part of, 339; space exploration and, 104, 171, 535 (see also space race); starting point, 27–28; thaw, 108; UNISPACE 82 as part of, 497; universities and, 606–607;Vietnam War as part of, 124, 179, 268 Colladay, Ray, 597 Collier’s magazine, 229 Collier Trophy, 40, 298 Collins, Jeffrey, 615 Collins, Michael, 197 Cologne, 533 Colorado: air force and, 367–72, 508 Columbia (space shuttle), 431; first flight of, 435, 438–43, 441, 473, 552, 577; second flight of, 463–70, 474, 548, 588; third flight of, 483–84; fourth flight of, 484–87, 499; fifth flight of, 488–90, 534; sixth flight of, 545–46 Columbia University, 14 Colvin, Harold, 396 Coming of Post-Industrial Society,The (Bell), 587 COMINT (communications intelligence) satellites, 301, 307, 310 command economy, 2, Commission on Critical Choices for Americans. See under Rockefeller, Nelson Aldrich Commission on Government Secrecy, 53 communism, 618 Communist Party USA, 65, 426 Compton, Arthur H., 17 Compton, Dale, 235, 557 Concorde, 187, 572 Congressional Record, 395 Congressional Space Medal of Honor, 448 Conley, Kathleen, 395 Conley, Philip J., 395 Connally, John, 413 Connick, Robert, 38 conscription. See Selective Service Law Consolidated B-24, 399 Consolidated Space Operations Center (CSOC), 342, 367–72, 508; NRO and, 369

Index Contact (Sagan), 222 Convair aircraft: 880, 215; 990, 213, 215; B-36, 509; F-102, 364, 522; F-106, 364, 522 Cook, Woodrow, 180 Cooke, David O. (Doc), 630 Cooper, George, 187 Cooper, Henry, 574 Cooperative Engagement Capability system, 640 Corddry, Charles, 345 Corona (imaging satellite), 284–85, 301 Corona conferences, 298–99, 337, 345, 367 Cortright, Edgar M., 218, 229, 356 Cosmic Background Explorer (satellite), 459 Cosmos (television program), 203 counterforce weapons, 403 countervalue weapons, 403 Courant, Ernest, 87 Covault, Craig, 494 Covert, Eugene, 598 Cowan, Clyde, 127 Coyle, Edward, 12 Coyle, Philip, 84 Crasemann, Bernd, 559 Cray, Seymour, 226 Crippen, Robert, 439, 447–48, 520, 549 Croatia, 630 Cromer, Donald, 309 Crozet Islands, 385 cruise missiles, 406–407 CSOC. See Consolidated Space Operations Center Cuba: Mariel boatlift, 400–402 Cuban missile crisis, 2, 115–19, 192 Culbertson, Phil, 474, 483, 493, 495; space station and, 554–55 Cultural Revolution, 141–42 Cunningham, Bill, 609 Curie, Irene, 271 Curie, Marie, 14, 271 Current Injection Solids (P. Mark and Lampert), 377 Curtiss-Wright C-46, 358 Cutter, Bo, 311, 388 C-X transport plane, 338, 342 Czechoslovakia, 53, 286 Czitary, Elizabeth (Lisl) Mark (HM’s aunt), 8, 495, 498–99 Czitary, Eugen (HM’s uncle), 8, 495

649 

Damascus (AK), 403, 405 Damm, Kenneth, 560 Damnation of Faust,The (Berlioz), 400 Da Nang, 131 Danforth, John, 452 Daniels, Josephus, 190 Darman, Richard, 485 DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), 226–27, 343, 611 DARPANET, 226, 228–29 Dassault, Marcel, 535 Dassault, Serge, 535, 540 Dassault Mirage aircraft, 397, 632 David, Edward E., Jr., 234, 254, 447 Davis, Jay, 634–35 Davis, W. Kenneth, 154 Dayan, Moshe, 138, 315 DCI. See Central Intelligence Agency: director of central intelligence Dean, Gordon, 46, 65 Dean, William, 55 Deaver, Michael, 468–70 Debus, Kurt, 229 Declaration of Independence, 3, DEFCON (defense condition), 116–17, 119, 245 Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. See DARPA Defense (trade journal), 587 defense against ballistic missiles. See nuclear missiles: defense against Defense Meritorious Service Medal, 455 Defense Nuclear Agency, 635 Defense Reform Initiative, 628–29, 635 Defense Science Board, 84, 281, 337 Defense Special Weapons Agency, 628 Defense Technology Security Administration, 635 Defense Threat Reduction Agency, 628, 634–35 DeFrance, Smith J., 211 de Gaulle, Charles , 72; nuclear weapons and, 271–73 de Havilland aircraft: C-7 Buffalo, 184; de C-8A Augmentor Wing, 184; C-8B QSRA, 362 de Klerk, F. W., 277 DeLauer, Richard, 445, 455 de Maizière, Lothar, 622, 623 Democracy in America (Tocqueville), 341 Denery, Dallas, 235 Denfeld, Louis, 50

650

Index

Deng, Xiaoping, 142, 268 détente, 224, 287, 300, 339, 552 Deuchar, Evelyn, 289, 294 Deutch, John, 249, 324 Deutch, Michael, 249–50, 252 deuterium, 44, 46, 639 Deutsche Gessellschaft für Luft und Raumfahrt, 539 Dewey, Thomas E., 41 Diamond, Henry, 249–50, 256, 260 DiBella, Jo, 164 Dicks, Norman, 336, 514–15 Die Fledermaus (Strauss), 339 Diego Garcia, 392 Diem (Ngo Dinh Diem), 73, 124–25, 128–29 Dien Bien Phu, 72 Die Rakete (journal), 551 Die Rakete zu den Planetenräumen (Oberth), 233 Dinneen, Gerry, 298, 312, 324 Dirac Paul, 75 director of defense research and engineering. See under Mark, Hans, professional career; US Defense Department Dirks, Eleanor, 306 Dirks, Leslie C., 306–307, 309, 312, 554 Discovery (space shuttle), 541; first flight of, 580 Disraeli, Benjamin, 325 Distant Early Warning Line, 364 Distinguished Service Medal (NASA), 207 Dixiecrats, 41 Dixon, Robert J., 296–98 Dobrynin, Anatoly, 117–18, 320, 576 Dole, Robert, 265 Dollfuss, Engelbert, 4, 129, 148 Domenici, Pete, 578 domino theory, 73, 125 Donn, William, 385 Doolittle, Jimmy, 457 Doppler radar, 207 Dorfman, Steve, 210–11 Dornberger, Walter, 234 Dornier, Claudius, 540, 620 Dornier Company, 482, 539–40, 620 Doty, Helga, 492 Doty, Paul, 492 Dougherty, Russell, 341 Douglas, Helen Gahagan, 102, 149 Douglas, Melvyn, 149 Douglas aircraft: A-4 Skyhawk, 491, 506; C-124 Globemaster, 358; DC-3, 358; DC-4, 358; DC-7, 74; DC-8, 279

Douglas Aircraft Company, 358, 380 Drell, Sidney, 71, 313 Drinkwater, Fred, 187, 490 Dryden, Hugh, 104–105 Dryden Flight Research Center, 532 Dubček, Alexander, 286–87 Duerr, Hans-Peter, 77–78 Dulles, John Foster, 73, 125 DuMond, Jesse W. M., 83 Duncan, Charles, 291, 293 Dunning, Robert, 18 Durant Hotel (Berkeley), 61, 147 Dusterberry, John, 235 Dymally, Mervyn, 515 Eagle (lunar module), 195–96, 198 Earth Resources Technology Satellite (ERTS) program, 213 East Berlin, 109 East Germany (German Democratic Republic), 109, 480, 619, 622 Eddins, Anne, 457 Edelman, Burton, 462 Eden, Anthony, 138 Edwards Air Force Base, 416, 468, 487 Eglin Air Force Base, 331, 402 Egypt: Six-Day War, 137–39; Soviet Union and, 139, 245. 315; Suez crisis, 137;Yom Kippur War, 244–46 Eighteenth Tactical Wing, 392 Eighth US Army Air Force, 399 Eighty-First Tactical Fighter Wing, 399 Eighty-Ninth Special Mission Wing, 390 Einstein, Albert, 12–13, 15, 21, 65, 207, 382 Einstein X-Ray Observatory, 459 Eirich, Frederick, 13 Eisenhower, Dwight D., 20–21, 48, 240, 299, 601; arms control and, 191–92; Cuba and, 103; NASA and, 103; Nikita Khrushchev and, 108; 1952 presidential election, 64; nuclear weapons and, 108; Richard Nixon and, 150; satellites and, 282; space exploration and, 89, 104; Suez crisis and, 138;Vietnam and, 72–73, 125 Eisenhower Executive Office Building, 178 electromagnetic pulse (EMP), 91 electromagnetic railguns, 610–13 ELINT (electronic intelligence) satellites, 301, 306–307, 310 Elizabeth II (queen), 424, 500, 540–41 Elkaim, Gabriel, 383 Ellis, Richard H., 296, 299–300; NORAD

Index and, 368–69; strategic bombers and, 339, 341–42, 345, 350, 443, 445 Ellsworth, Lincoln, 232 Elmendorf Air Force Base, 390 Elms, Jim, 413, 417, 430, 433, 474 El Niño, 614 Elugelab Island, 66 Emmerich, Klaus, 495, 497, 501 Encyclopedia of Space Science and Technology,The (ed. HM), 200, 383 Endicott, John, 390–91 Engle, Joe, 443, 469–70, 553 ENIAC, 45 Eniwetok Atoll, 46, 66, 81 Enola Gay (airplane), 25 Enterprise (space shuttle), 468, 487, 552; in Europe, 531–39 Environmental Protection Agency, 239 ERNO, 479, 481, 483 Erzberger, Heinz, 458 ESA. See European Space Agency Eshkol, Levi, 139, 315 Espino, Romeo, 392–93 Estonia, 623 Eurofighter Typhoon, 632 European Space Agency (ESA), 479–80, 501, 535, 540; NASA and, 481, 563 EVA (extravehicular activity). See under space shuttle; space station Evans, Rowland, 290 Evans, William, 294 Ewald, Paul Peter, 13 Excalibur (antimissile system). See Project Excalibur Executive Office of the President, 288 Exocet (French missile), 516 EXOSAT (European X-ray Observatory Satellite), 539 Experiments in Modern Physics (Mark and Olson), 153–54 Explorer (US satellite program): Explorer 1, 90, 202, 381, 476; Explorer II, 90; Explorer IV, 90, 93, 294 explosive lens, 19 F/​A-18. See McDonnell Douglas aircraft: F/​ A-18 Hornet Faget, Maxime, 229–30, 409, 437, 439, 442–43, 474 Fair, Harry D., 610, 312 Fairchild Republic A-10 “Warthog,” 186, 397, 399

651 

Fairchild YA-10, 186, 326 Falcon Air Force Station, 508 Falklands War, 491, 516, 542, 614 Fangataufa, 272 Fankuchen, Isidor, 12–13 Fanseen, Jim, 468, 484, 493, 553, 568, 591 Faraday, Michael, 32 Farnborough, 340, 542–44; military air show (1980), 395–400 fascism, 618 “Fat Man” (nuclear bomb), 26 Faurer, Lincoln, 448 Faye, Alan, 391 Federal Aviation Administration, 187 Federalist Papers, 243, 248, 250 Federation of American Scientists, 66 Feinerman, Burt, 34 Feld, Bernard, 63 Feldmann, Bob, 34 Felsenfeld, Gary, 31 Fermi, Enrico, 14, 16–17, 45, 157, 309, 502 Fernbach, Sidney, 97, 123 Ferri, Antonio, 13 Few, David, 180, 182 Feynman, Richard, 19 F-15. See McDonnell Douglas F-15 Field, George, 63, 435 Fifteenth Amendment, 145, 147 Fifth Air Force, 391 Finarelli, Peggy, 563–64 Finch, Robert, 197 Finch, William, 517 Finger, Harold B., 122 Fink, Richard, 265 Finke, Wolfgang, 482–83, 533 Finn, Terry, 555 Fisher, Ann, 498 Fisher, Bill, 498 Fisher, Robert, 61 Flash Gordon, 561 Flax, Alexander, 313, 586 Fletcher, James C.: NASA administrator, 206, 206, 212, 231, 413, 591, 596–97; HM and, 246, 285, 287, 419; space shuttle and, 232, 234–35, 454; space station and, 554; Strategic Defense Initiative and, 561–62, 565, 586 Flight Readiness Review: Challenger launches, 519, 544, 547, 548, 589; Columbia launches, 463, 465, 484, 488, 545 Flippo, Ronald, 437, 495

652

Index

“fly-by-wire” technology, 346, 354, 445. See also under stealth aircraft flying-wing aircraft, 344–46, 352, 354–56. See also stealth aircraft Fogleman, Ronald, 191, 362 Fonda, Jane, 520–21 Fonken, Gerhard (Gerry), 609–10 Ford, Gerald R., 253, 255, 457; arms control and, 193; Leonid Brezhnev and, 193, 287, 301; Rockefeller Commission and, 257; science policy and, 258–59, 262–64; Soviet Union and, 300–301;Vietnam War and, 267 Ford, Kenneth, 309 Foreign Affairs (journal), 28 Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, 84 Foreign Technology Division (FTD), 318 Foreign Weapons Evaluation Panel, 111 forest fires, 214 Forsberg, Randall, 488 Fort Bliss, 89 Foster, John (NASA–Ames scientist), 207 Foster, John Stuart, Jr., 408; B-1 bomber and, 350–51; Lawrence Livermore director, 83–84, 101, 112–13, 121, 156, 160; Nelson Rockefeller and, 249–50, 258–60, 310; Power and Security (with Teller and HM), 249, 257 Foster, John Stuart, Sr., 112 Foster, “Papa Lou,” 394 Fourteenth Amendment, 145, 147 Fowler, Wallace, 613 Foxtrot (Soviet submarine class), 117 Fozzard, John, 614, 616 France, 618; National Center for Space Studies, 479; nuclear energy and, 273; nuclear weapons and, 271–73; spaceflight and, 479–80;Vietnam and, 72–73 Frank, Nathaniel, 93–94 Frankel, Stanley, 17 Freitag, Robert, 555 Freud, Sigmund, 8 Friedman, Herbert, 127, 448 Friedman, Louis, 478, 570 Frisch, Otto, 14, 269 From Small Organic Molecules to Large (H. F. Mark), 7–8 Frosch, Bob, 288, 312, 409–11, 410, 436 F-16. See General Dynamics F-16 FTD. See Foreign Technology Division Fuad (king), 398

Fubini, Eugene, 280–82, 285, 291, 337, 341–42, 347, 350, 352 Fuchs, Klaus, 43–44, 270 Fuller, Craig, 564 Fuqua, Donald, 514 Fulbright, William, 133 Fuller, Craig, 485 Fulton, Fritz, 595 Gabriel, Charles, 330, 399 Gaddis, John Lewis, 421 Gagarin,Yuri, 103, 194, 496 Galbraith, Evan, 536 Galbraith, John Kenneth, 587 Galileo (aircraft), 215–16; Galileo II, 216 Galileo (Brecht), 400 Galileo (spacecraft), 477 Gallois, Pierre Marie, 272 Galosh missile defense system, 585 Gandhi, Mohandas, 146, 275 Gansler, Jacques S., 628–29, 634, 638 Ganymede ( Jovian moon), 204 Garn, Jake, 514, 579–80, 595 Garrick, Robert, 455 Garuda, 216 Garwin, Richard, 308–309, 313, 385, 586 Gasich, Welco, 445 Gazenko, Oleg, 224 Geiger, Bob, 298 Gemini (NASA program), 195, 229 General Advisory Committee (GAC). See under US Atomic Energy Commission General Dynamics aircraft: A-12 Avenger II, 491–92, 639; F-16, 184–86, 327, 333, 397, 453, 461, 506, 543, 632; F-111, 399; F-111F, 399; FB-111, 333–34, 397; FB111, stretched, 339, 342, 345, 347, 351, 443;YF-16, 185, 326 General Dynamics, cruise missiles and, 407 General Electric, 426–27 Genesis, 167 Geneva, 601 Geneva Accords, 72–73 Genscher, Hans-Dietrich, 621–22 George shot (thermonuclear detonation), 46 Gerald P. Kuiper Airborne Observatory, 213 German Empire, 618 Germany, 617–23, 633; reunification of, 617, 620–23 Germany, Daniel, 440, 467 Gerry, Edward, 188

Index Gessow, Al, 516 Getting, Ivan, 349–51, 381 Giacconi, Ricardo, 127, 385, 459, 546 Giamatti, Bart, 449 Gibbons, John, 578 GI Bill, 38 Gilruth, Robert R., 194–96, 199, 229, 437, 554 Gingrich, Newt, 432 Ginn, Bill, 399 Ginn, Ronald, 336 glasnost, 600 Gleissner, Fritz, 379 Gleissner, Lilli, 379 Glenn, John, 165, 195, 417, 561 Glennan, T. Keith, 104–105 Global Habitability program, 492, 494–95, 497–98, 501 Global Positioning System. See GPS Goddard, Robert, 551 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 400 Goett, Harry, 162, 169 Goldberger, Marvin (Murph), 444, 450 Goldschmidt, Bertrand, 271–72 Goldwater, Barry M., 130–31, 241, 325, 427, 429, 452 Goodall, Harry A., 268, 294, 298 Goodman, Clark, 60, 69–70, 75; The Science and Engineering of Nuclear Power, 51, 69 Good Morning America, 572 Goodwin, Glen: at NASA–Ames Research Center, 172, 212–13, 215–16 Goody, Richard, 492, 495, 497–98 Gorbachev, Mikhail Sergeyevich, 507, 584, 600, 621–22; arms control and, 601–606; end of the Soviet Union and, 623–25; Perestroika, 601; Ronald Reagan and, 601–606, 603 Gorbachev, Raisa, 624 Gordon, Frank J., 84, 88 Gordon, Jean, 294 Gorton, Slade, 578 Gottfried, Kurt, 70 Gouzenko, Oleg, 43–44 GPS (Global Positioning System), 380–84, 608; air force and, 382–84 GRACE (Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment) program, 614 Graham, William, 590, 592–93, 597 Grand Alliance,The (Churchill), 11 Grand Tour (NASA program), 201, 218

653 

Grapple Round C, 271 Grassley, Charles, 578 Great Leap Forward, 142 Great Observatories, 435 Great Society, 130, 132, 173 Greece, 633–34 Greek Air Force, 633 Greek Civil War, 30 Greenham Common, 398 Greteman, Gen, 74, 96 Griffin, Gerald, 198, 460, 474, 489, 519, 521 Griggs, David, 66 Grissom, Gus, 199 Gromyko, Andrei, 115 Grossman, Lawrence, 152 Ground Based Interceptor, 606 Groves, Leslie R., 17, 19, 65 Grumman aircraft: A-6 Intruder, 491; F-14 Tomcat, 187, 326, 491 Guam, 393 Guernsey, Janet, 69 Guerou, Jules, 271 Guggenheim Aeronautical Laboratory, 104 Guier, William H., 381 Gulf War (1990), 314, 344, 605 Gwynne, Michael, 501 Gyftopolous, Elias, 154–55 Hackerman, Norman, 264–65, 448 Haganah, 137, 315 Hagelstein, Peter, 526–27 Hahn, Debbie, 535 Hahn, Otto, 13 Haig, Alexander, 310, 437, 448 Haiphong, 266–67, 351 Haise, Fred, 198 Halban, Hans von, 271 Hale, Edward Everett, 380 Hale, Russell, 437 Hall, Charles F., 202–203, 207, 209–11 Halley, Edmund, 32 Halvorsen, Gale, 40 Hamilton, Alexander, 243 Hammerer, John J., 640 Hampton, Lloyd D., 608–10 Hamre, John, 634 Hanford (WA), 18 Hanoi, 266–67, 351 Hansen, Louisa, 99 “Hans-o-grams,” 175 Hart, Terry J., 469

654

Index

Harkins, Paul D., 125, 129 Harper, Charles William (Bill), 164–67, 170–71, 180–81, 278 Harper, Ed, 451, 462 Harper, Eleanor (Vicki), 166–67, 278 Harriman, W. Averell, 240, 310, 317, 325 Harris, Patricia Roberts, 329 Hart, Gary, 294, 307–308, 367, 369–71, 413, 455, 508 Hart, Terry, 549 Harteck, Karl, 16 Hartinger, James V. (Grrr), 370, 372 Hartsfield, Hank, 486–87, 498 Harvard Underwater Sound Laboratory, 607 Harvey, John, 308 Hathaway, William, 307–308 Hawker Siddeley aircraft: Harrier GR-1, 542; Kestrel, 542, 544 Hawkesbury (Ontario), 9, 11 Hawkins, Willis, 356 Hawley, Steve, 545 Hay, Jess, 581, 586 Hayden, Tom, 132, 521 Hayden Planetarium, 28 Haymaker, Webb, 217 Haymarket riot, 59 Hayward (CA), 58–59 Hayward, Thomas B., 300, 352 Hearth, Don, 565, 571 Heath, Edward, 423 Heathrow Airport, 540 Hebner, Robert E., 611 Hecker, Guy, 452 Heisenberg, Werner, 16, 77, 79 Heitler, Walter, The Quantum Theory of Radiation, 75 helium, 556 Helman, Gerald B., 493–94, 496, 499, 503, 532, 534 Helmholz, August Carl, 49 Helsinki Accords, 287 Henderson, Daniel Brosius, 376 Henderson, Jane, 376, 380, 388, 439 Henderson,Virginia, 376, 388 Henry, Allan F., 154–55 Henry, Richard, 366, 368, 370, 409 Herman, Daniel H., 209, 555–56, 563, 568 Hermann, Robert, 324–25, 383, 437, 447 Herrell, Myron, 61 Hersh, Seymour, 257; The Sampson Option, 273 Hertzberg, Abraham, 161–62, 189

Hess, Wilmot N. (Bill), 195 Hexagon satellite, 454 Hickam Air Force Base, 284, 393 High Level Group, 633 Hightower, Jack, 395 Hildebrand, Joel, 11, 31, 38, 48, 51 Hildreth, James (Cotton), 392 Hill, James A. (air force general), 299, 368 Hill, James E. (air force general), 299, 365–68, 370, 510 Hill, Jimmie (NRO budget officer), 305, 307 Hine, Doris, 101 Hinckley, John, Jr., 438 Hirohito (emperor), 26–27 Hiroshima, 13, 25 Hispanic Americans, 133 Hiss, Alger, 53, 149 Hitch, Charles J., 157, 171 Hitler, Adolf, 4, 15, 233, 374–75, 619 hit-to-kill technology, 525 HMS Prince of Wales, 30, 190 HMS Repulse, 190 Ho Chi Minh, 72–73, 143 Ho Chi Minh Campaign, 267 Ho Chi Minh Trail, 124, 131 Hodge, John D., 555–57, 565 Hodgkin, Dorothy, 422 Hofburg (Vienna), 495–96, 499–500 Hoff, Nicholas, 13 Hoffman, Fred, 586 Hoffman, Stanley, 492 Hohenstein, Walter P., 12–13 holmium: holmium-165, 93 Holocaust, 621 Holton, Gerald, 586 Homing Overlay Experiment, 525 Honecker, Erich, 622 Horowitz, Norman, 218 Houff, Frances Henderson, 376, 439 Houff, Louis, 376, 439 Howe, P. B., 396 Howley, Frank, 40 Hubble Space Telescope, 459, 501, 547, 564 Huddleston, Walter, 486 Hudson (automobile), 7, 10, 374 Hue, 143–44 Hufstedler, Shirley, 449 Hughes, Howard, 262 Hughes, Sarah T., 129 Hughes, Thomas, 393–94 Hughes Aircraft, 210 Hukbalahap Rebellion, 392

Index human spaceflight. See under NASA Humphrey, Gordon, 325 Humphrey, Hubert, 130, 148, 151, 168 Hunten, Donald, 207–208 Huntington, Samuel P., 3 Hurlburt Field, 331, 402 Hussein, Saddam, 323 Hutchinson, Neil, 468–69 Hutchison, Kay Bailey, 629 Huyser, Robert E. (Dutch), 299, 361 hydrogen, 382 hydrogen bomb: American, 46, 65–66, 67, 81; British, 270–71; Chinese, 275; French, 272; Soviet, 44–46, 66 IBM Duplex 160/​67 computer, 225–26 IMB 7040 computer, 225 ICBM. See intercontinental ballistic missile “I Have a Dream” speech, 146 ILLIAC IV (computer), 226–28, 246 Ilyushin Il-28, 115 Imperial College of Science and Technology, 615 India: nuclear weapons and, 169, 274–76, 629 Indian Atomic Energy Commission, 275 Indian Ocean, 385 Indonesia, 125, 268–69 Infrared Astronomical Satellite, 556–57 Inglis, David, 79 Inlow, Roland, 307 Inman, Bobby Ray, 305–306, 310, 448; new-technology satellite and, 308–309 INMARSAT (International Maritime Satellite), 496 Innitzer, Theodor, 5 Inouye, Daniel, 293 Institute for Nuclear Physics (India), 275 Instrument Pointing System, 482, 540 Intelligence Executive Committee, 291 INTELSAT (International Telecommunications Satellite), 496; INTELSAT IV, 210 intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), 122, 169, 262, 301–302, 366, 606; launcher, 302 Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, 601 intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM), 89, 109, 115, 303 International Atomic Energy Agency, 277, 493 International Court of Justice, 632 International Geophysical Year, 89

655 

International Solar Polar Mission, 540 International Working People’s Association, 59 Internet, 229 Iosue, Andrew, 589 Iran, 321–23, 398; Iranian Revolution, 322–23, 329; nuclear weapons and, 605 IRBM. See intermediate-range ballistic missile Irgun Zvai Leumi, 137, 315 Iron Dome, 605 Israel, 135–37, 605, 621; nuclear weapons and, 273–74, 386; Six-Day War, 135–39; Suez crisis and, 137; United States and, 139, 245; war with Lebanon (1982), 506–507;Yom Kippur War, 244–46. See also Zionism Issues and Answers (television program), 353 Italy, 618, 633 Jackson, Charlotte, 400 Jackson, Henry M., 127 Jackson, Roy, 353–54, 400, 445, 453 Jacobs Engineering, 639 James, Jack, 478 James, Pendleton, 433, 466 Jameson, Dirk, 326 Jankowitsch, Peter, 501 Japan, 269, 606; Indochina and, 72; Korea and, 54; in World War II, 21, 23–27 Jasons, 309 Javits, Jacob, 310 Jay, John, 243 Jayne, Randy, 311 Jayne, S. R., 50 Jeans, James, 220 Jefferson, Thomas, 583 Jeffs, George, 409 Jenkins, John, 541 Jenner, William, 141 Jet Propulsion Laboratory ( JPL), 104, 206, 211, 444, 472–73, 476–78, 509, 511; Deep Space Network, 207; mission of, 473; planetary exploration and, 444, 473;Viking program and, 218–19 Jewish Agency, 137, 315 Jews, 135–37 Joe I (Soviet nuclear device), 43–45 John Paul I, 421 John Paul II (pope), 419–21, 420, Johnson, Clarence A. (Kelly), 186, 283, 343, 355–56 Johnson, Gerald, 84, 111, 113

656

Index

Johnson, Jay, 640 Johnson, Louis A., 50 Johnson, Lyndon Baines: civil rights and, 147; space exploration and, 105–106;Vietnam War and, 129–31, 144–45, 173. See also Great Society Johnson, Montgomery, 77–78 Johnson, Richard, 574 Johnson-Teller model, 78 Johnston Atoll, 91, 113–14 John XXIII (pope), 421 Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee, 11 Joint Chiefs of Staff, 330 Joint Cruise Missile Project Office, 406–407 Joint Direct Attack Munitions, 631 Joliot-Curie, Frédéric, 14, 271–72 Jones, David C., 289, 296–98, 300, 364–65, 403, 510 Jones, Lloyd, 235 Jones, Robert T., 235–36 Jones, T.V., 354 Jopson, Jane Mark (HM’s daughter), 75–76, 78, 80, 92, 120, 246, 252, 278, 280, 292, 387, 570; sailing and, 160 Jopson, Jim, 391, 570 Jopson, Jolee, 100–101, 570 Jopson, Robert C., 84, 88, 100–101, 570 Jordan, 139, 317 Journal of Geophysical Research, 91 JPL. See Jet Propulsion Laboratory JSC. See NASA–Johnson Space Center Junior Bluejackets of America, 12, 28 Jupiter (nuclear missile), 89, 109, 118–19, 522 Jupiter (planet), 201, 203–204, 206, 477–78; moons of, 478 JVX, 516–17 Kadena Air Base, 391–92 Kadish, Ronald, 362, 639 Kallmann, Hartmut, 376 Kamchatka Peninsula, 390 Kampelman, Max, 585 Kampiles, William, 320 Kantrowitz, Arthur, 188–89 Kaplan, Selig, 152 Karlweis, Oskar, 11 Kármán, Theodor von, 534 Kasper, Raphael, 162 Katz, James, 587 Kay, Robert, 68–69 Kazakhstan, 391 Kazi, Abdul Halim, 94, 98

KC-135. See Boeing KC-135 Keeny, Spurgeon M., Jr., 304–305, 307–308 Kefauver, Estes, 64 Kehrli, Randy, 596 Keldysh, Mstislav, 496 Kelley, P. X., 517 Kelly, Mark, 180 Kelvin, Lord, 615 Kendall, Henry, 63 Kennan, George, 28, 39, 340 Kennedy, Edward, 413, 488 Kennedy, John F., 148; assassination of, 129; Cuba and, 103, 115–19; 1952 presidential election, 64; Nikita Khrushchev and, 108–109, 117–18; 1960 presidential election, 102–103, 150; nuclear weapons and, 113, 126–27; space exploration and, 105–106, 235, 558, 570;Vietnam War and, 124–25, 128–29 Kennedy, Joseph W., 16 Kennedy, Robert, 133, 145; assassination of, 147–49; Cuban missile crisis and, 115, 117–18, 148 Kennedy Space Center. See NASA–Kennedy Space Center Kent, Glenn, 341–42 Kent State University, 132 Kerr, Clark, 47 Kerrbrock, Jack, 451, 461 Kerry, John, 132 Key West, 401 Keyworth, George A. ( Jay), 447, 451; missile defense and, 528, 567; space station and, 452, 485, 557–58, 568, 574, 577–78 Khan, Abdul Qadeer, 276 Khan, Jahn, 99 Khedouri, Fred, 437, 464, 474, 563, 570 Khe Sanh, 143 Khmer Rouge, 268 Khomeini, Ruhollah, 323, 329 Khrushchev, Nikita, 107, 125, 141–42, 507; arms control and, 192; Berlin Wall and, 401; Cuban missile crisis and, 115–19; denunciation of Stalin, 67, 107, 142; Dwight D. Eisenhower and, 108; John F. Kennedy and, 108–109, 117–18; nuclear weapons and, 107, 109–110, 274, 286; Richard Nixon and, 150, 197 Kidder, Ray, 99 Kido, Koichi, 26 Kiehn, Robert M., 69–70 Killian, James R., 70, 282

Index Kim Il Sung, 55 King, Alberta Williams, 146 King, John, 63 King, Martin Luther, Jr., 146–47 King, Martin Luther, Sr., 146 Kirkland, Lane, 247 Kirschbaum, Albert, 159 Kirchschlager, Rudolf, 496 Kirtland Air Force Base, 189 Kissinger, Henry, 193, 253, 256, 310, 395, 502, 514, 605; China and, 238, 314; détente and, 224, 552;Vietnam War and, 266–67; Yom Kippur War and, 245–46 Kistiakowsky, George, 18, 503 Kizim, Leonid, 553 Klein, Harold P. (Chuck), 217–18, 222–24, 476 Klineberg, John, 235 Koehler, John, 311 Kohl, Helmut, 621–22, 622 Kokoski, Dorothy, 453, 457 Kokura, 25 Kolk, Betty, 278 Kolk, Frank, 278 König, Franz, 421 Konopinski, Emil, 17; hydrogen bomb and, 44 Korea: China and, 56; Japan and, 54; Soviet Union and, 55, 68; United States and, 55; Korean War, 54–57, 60, 68, 266, 509, 543 Korolev, Sergei, 496 Kosovo, 630 Kosovo Liberation Army, 630–31 Kosovo War, 344, 383, 630–32 Kosygin, Alexei, 507 Kowarski, Lew, 14, 271 Kraemer, Robert, 202, 204 Kraft, Chris, 439–40, 442–43, 454, 467–69, 469, 473–74, 488 Kranz, Gene, 198, 440, 467, 468, 469, 546 Krebs, Thomas, 560–61 Kreisky, Bruno, 499 Kubasov,Valeriy, 224 Kuiper, Gerard, 212–13 Kulpa, John ( Jack), 306–307, 309, 312–13, 370, 409 Kummersdorf, 234 Kutler, Paul, 225–26 Kwajalein Atoll, 193, 303, 525 Kykuit, 251 Kyrasis, Demos, 190

657 

LaBerge, Walter, 290, 292, 298, 326, 612 Lake Peekskill, 34, 94 Lake Travis, 607 Lamberson, Donald L., 189–91, 402 Lampert, Murray, Current Injection Solids (with P. Mark), 377 Land, Edwin H., 93, 282, 377 LANDSAT, 497, 501 Langenberg, Donald, 76–77 Langevin, Pierre, 271 Langley Air Force Base, 297 Langley Memorial Laboratory, 103, 172. See also NASA–Langley Research Center Langmuir, Irving, 217 Lansdale, Edward, 73, 124 LaPorte, Todd, 49 lasers, 99, 188 Lasswitz, Kurd, Two Planets, 217 Latter, Albert, 91 Latvia, 623 “launch on warning” doctrine. See under nuclear missiles Lawrence, Ernest O., 16, 21, 35, 38, 47, 54, 84, 85–86, 112; Radiation Laboratory and, 78, 80–83 Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, 48, 77, 80; A-Division, 97; A-48 accelerator, 82–88, 92–93, 100; B-Division, 97; Department of Applied Science, 159, 178–79; E-Division, 121–22, 152, 159; lasers and, 99; L-Division, 97, 99; M-Division, 97; National Ignition Facility, 639; N-Division, 97, 121, 152, 159; nuclear reactors and, 121–24; nuclear weapons and, 80–87, 99; P-Division, 97–102, 113, 152, 159; Radiation Laboratory, ; R-Division, 97, 123; space race and, 90; T-Division, 97, 123; X-ray astronomy and, 127, 153, 158, 162; X-ray detectors and, 99–100, 113–114, 127, 153, 284–85 Lawson, Robert D., 74, 77–78 Laxalt, Paul, 417 LBJ School of Public Affairs, 587 League of Nations, 136 Learjet, 182, 211–12 Lebanon: war with Israel (1982), 506–507 Le Bourget Airfield, 396, 490, 532, 535–38, 540. See also Paris Air Show LeConte Hall. See under University of California, Berkeley Lederberg, Joshua, 218 Le Duan, 143–44, 351

658

Index

Le Duc Tho, 143–44, 266–67, 351 Lee, Andrew Daulton, 320 Lehman, John, 463, 490–92, 516–17 Leighton, Robert, 476–77 LeMay, Curtis, 40 Lenoir, Bill, 489, 537 Leonov, Alexei, 224, 552 Les Tenseurs (Levi-Civita), 58 Levi-Civita, Tullio, Les Tenseurs, 58 Levin, Carl, 629 Lewis, George W., 165 Lewis, Harold W., 49, 54 Lewis, John L., 132 Lewis Flight Propulsion Laboratory, 104, 172. See also NASA–Lewis Research Center Ley, Willie, 551 Libby, Willard, 206, 526 Lichten, Robert, 180 Lieberman, Joseph, 629 Liepmann, Hans, 225 Life (magazine), HM in, 155–57 Lighthill, James, 173 Lightsey, Glenn, 613 Lilienthal, David, 44–46 Lilly, William, 212, 227, 409 Limited Test Ban Treaty (LTBT), 108, 113, 126–27, 153, 192, 269 Lin Bao, 142–43 Lincoln, Abraham, 606 Lincoln Laboratory. See under Massachusetts Institute of Technology Lindbergh, Charles, 207, 536 Lisl (HM’s aunt). See Czitary, Elizabeth Lithuania, 623 “Little Boy” (nuclear bomb), 25 Little Rock Air Force Base, 404–406 Liu Shaoqi, 142–43 Livermore Laboratory. See Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory Livermore Pool Type Reactor, 121 Livermore Radiation Laboratory. See under Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory Livermore Weapons Laboratory. See Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory Livingston, Stanley, 87 Locke, Walter M., 406 Lockheed aircraft: AH-56 Cheyenne, 187–88; C-5 (or C-5A) Galaxy, 193, 212, 245, 303, 327, 358–61, 383, 490; C5-B, 361–62; C-130 Hercules, 330–31, 358, 361, 394, 579; C-141 (or C141A) Starlifter, 212–13, 358–59, 361, 399; C-141B, 359,

361; F-104 Starfighter, 522, 632; F-117 Nighthawk, 186, 343–44, 344, 347, 350, 355, 445, 632; Have Blue, 186, 186, 343; P-3, 215; P-38 Lightning, 343; SR-71, 343; U-2, 282–83, 343; U-2C, 213–14; WC-130, 393 Lockheed Corporation, 212–13, 360–61, 363 Lockheed Martin aircraft: F-22 Raptor, 458, 638; F-35 Lightning II, 458, 638–39; F-35B, 544; F-35C, 184 Lockheed Missile Systems Corporation, 285 Lockheed Skunk Works, 186, 283, 343, 347, 350, 353, 355 Lodge, Henry Cabot, Jr., 102, 128 Loeb, Leonard, 38, 60 Lomax, Harvard, 225–28 Lomon, Earle, 70 Long, Clarence, 336 Long Duration Exposure Facility (satellite), 550 long-range combat aircraft (LRCA). See Rockwell aircraft: B-1B LORAN, 381 Los Alamos Laboratory. See Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory Los Alamos Ranch School, 18 Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory, 18–19, 25, 35, 48, 122, 127, 270; espionage at, 23, 43; hydrogen bomb, development of, 46; Physics Division, 19; T-Division (Theoretical Division), 19–20;Vela program and, 384 Los Altos Hills (CA), 178, 266, 278, 285, 415, 580 Los Angeles Air Force Station, 214, 369 Los Angeles Times, 471 Louis, John, 541 Lovelace, Alan M., 288, 312, 409–10, 410, 418, 436, 448, 455 Lovell, Jim, 167, 198 Low, Frank, 211–12 Low, G. David, 175 Low, George M., 418–19, 437, 474; NASA administrator, 174–75, 174, 177, 198–99, 209, 213–14, 227, 230, 246; space shuttle and, 235, 408 Lowell, Robert, 134 Lowell, Percival, 217; Mars and Its Canals, 217 Loweth, Hugh, 447, 450, 456, 463 LTBT. See Limited Test Ban Treaty Lucas, William, 454 Luce, Clare Boothe, 247

Index Luciani, Albino. See John Paul I Lucky Dragon incident, 108, 126 Ludwig, George, 90, 294 Lugar, Richard, 356 Lunar Excursion Module, 195 Lunar Orbiter program, 194 Lundin, Bruce T., 165–66, 181, 229 Lunney, Glynn, 198, 437, 460, 474 Lyles, Lester, 639 Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library, 585 MAAG. See Military Assistance Advisory Group MacArthur, Arthur, 56 MacArthur, Douglas, 55; Harry Truman and, 56–57 Macedonia, 630 Machol, Robert, 523–24 Macmillan, Harold, 423 MacNeil/​Lehrer Report,The, 356–57 Madison, James, 243 Magee, John Gillespie, 595 Magellan (NASA program), 211 Magellanic Clouds, 127 Mahon, George, 308, 311 Malden Island, 271 Malenkov, Georgi, 107 Mandela, Nelson, 277 Manhattan Project, 17–21, 44 Mann, Lloyd, 100 Manned Orbiting Laboratory, 225, 453, 461 Mansfield, Mike, 257 Mao Zedong, 53, 141–43, 268, 274, 287 March on the Pentagon, 134–35 March on Washington (1963), 146 Mare Island Naval Shipyard, 36 Mariel boatlift, 400–402 Mariner (NASA program), 476; Mariner 2, 208; Mariner 9, 219; Mariner 10, 208 Mark, Catherine Delia Henderson (HM’s sister-in-law), 93, 376–79, 387, 438–39, 449 Mark, Hans, early years: birth and childhood, 4–5, 6, 7–9; in Vienna, 4, 9, 29, 373–75; escape from Austria, 7; flight to England and Canada, 8–9; learning English, 10; move to New York City, 10; student at Public School 92, 10–11, 375; as a Junior Bluejacket, 12, 28, 35, 375; student at Stuyvesant High School, 4, 12, 28, 30–31, 375; first trip to California, 10–11; X-ray diffraction, studies of, 13, 31–32; in

659 

England (1947), 31–33; Gilbert Chemistry Prize, 34 Mark, Hans, higher education of: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, graduate student at, 60–64, 68–71, 75; Naval Reserve Officers Training Corps (at UC Berkeley), 4, 31, 35–38, 36, 50–52; Phi Beta Kappa, 61; Sigma Pi, member of, 49, 52; staff writer for California Engineer, 53; University of California, Berkeley, undergraduate at, 31, 34–39, 46–54, 61; Mark, Hans, personal details: antiwar protests and, 133–35; on conspiracy theories, 147; courtship and marriage, 57–60; Edward Teller and, 74–77, 93–94, 96, 159–61, 171, 188, 201, 234, 242, 431, 559, 604, 636–37; Jim Beggs and, 162, 164, 166–67, 430–31, 573–74, 595; Nelson Rockefeller and, 237, 242–44, 246–56, 258–66, 310, 321–23; presidential elections, voting in, 64, 102, 131, 151, 168, 239, 265, 414; sailing, passion for, 12, 160–61, 232, 233, 278, 353, 375, 394, 620; Wernher von Braun and, 230–31, 233–34; William J. Perry and, 347, 413 Mark, Hans, professional career: air force, under secretary and secretary of, 324–72, 325, 380–87, 390–400, 402–12, 410; Apollo program and, 194–201, 232; Charles H. Davis Lecture, 432, 446; director of defense research and engineering, 611, 627–30, 632–41; Encyclopedia of Space Science and Technology, The (ed.), 200, 383; Experiments in Modern Physics (with Olson), 153–54; interregnum, 428–33; at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, 81–87, 97–102, 112– 13, 121–24, 152–53, 158–59, 605–606; leadership style of, 175; Life magazine and, 155–57, 156, 162; management of large organizations, 101; NASA, deputy administrator of, 433–43, 450–550, 456, 467, 469; at the NASA–Ames Research Center, 164–236, 206, 246, 287; National Academy of Engineering, election to, 280; National Reconnaissance Office, director of, 37, 70, 281–323, 293; Office of Science and Technology Policy and, 259–63, 447; Power and Security (with Teller and Foster), 249, 257; publications, 78, 153–54, 228, 265; space shuttle and, 340; The Space Station, 235; at Stanford University, 237;

660

Index

at UC Berkeley, 74–76, 97–98, 102, 133, 135, 151–62, 170–72; at UC Davis (at Livermore), 178–79, 237; at the University of Texas at Austin, 293; University of Texas System, chancellor of, 581–82; Wilbur and Orville Wright Memorial Lecture, 614–16 Mark, Hans (HM’s uncle), 8 Mark, Herman F. (HM’s father), 4–5, 5, 7–10, 71–72, 94, 97, 126, 147–49, 198, 234, 273, 292, 293, 430, 438–39, 512, 620, 625–26; From Small Organic Molecules to Large, 7–8; Geheimrat, 339, 379–80, 388–89, 449, 499, 571–72; lecture trip to England, 31–33; Leo Szilard and, 19–20; National Medal of Science winner, 10, 387–90, 389; at Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn, 10, 492; in Vienna, 373, 375 Mark, Hermann (HM’s grandfather), 7–8 Mark, Hermann E. (HM’s cousin), 502–503, 620 Mark, James Randall “Rufus” (HM’s son), 92, 120, 246, 252, 255, 278, 292, 387, 449, 572; sailing and, 160 Mark, Jane (HM’s daughter). See Jopson, Jane Mark Mark, Katherine (HM’s niece), 93 Mark, Lili Mueller (HM’s grandmother), 7–8 Mark, Maria (Mimi) Schramek (HM’s mother), 4–5, 6, 7, 9, 19–20, 60–61, 277–78, 373, 375 Mark, Marion Thorpe (HM’s wife), 79–80, 93, 95–97, 100–101, 162, 168, 170–71, 280, 285, 377–80, 431, 449, 452, 462, 572; in Austin, 583, 608, 625; at Boston University, 62, 71; courtship and marriage, 57–60, 62; in Europe, 395–400; family history, 58–59, 91–92; at George Washington University, 288, 414, 416, 581; in Los Altos Hills, 178; NASA events and, 194, 196–97, 201, 486–87; Nelson Rockefeller and, 246, 252, 255, 310; nicknamed “Bun,” 52; motherhood, 71, 74–76, 78–79, 120–21; overseas trips, 395–400, 482–83, 495–503, 533–44, 614–16, 620; sailing and, 160, 353, 620; teaching career, 179, 278, 288, 415–16; at UC Berkeley, 50, 52–53; in Washington, DC, 287–88, 293, 296, 306, 415–16, 418, 433, 456 Mark, Monika, 620 Mark, Peter Herman (HM’s brother), 4, 6, 7–8, 10, 12, 19, 61, 93, 96, 373–80, 378,

438, 610; and Catherine Delia Henderson (wife), 376; Current Injection Solids (with Lampert), 377; at Harvard, 63, 71, 376; Humboldt Prize winner, 378; illness and death of, 306, 374, 377–80, 387; at NYU, 376–77; Polaroid and, 377; at Princeton, 377; at Yale, 376 Mark, Rufus (HM’s son). See Mark, James Randall market economy, 2, Marlowe, Christopher, 400 Mars, 165, 203, 450, 476–78; atmosphere of, 220–21; manned mission to, 500, 553; search for life on, 217–21; water on, 221. See also Viking Mars and Its Canals (Lowell), 217 Marsh, Robert Thomas, 193, 429–30 Marshall, George Catlett, 21, 26, 39 Marshall, James C., 17 Marshall, Richard, 610 Marshall Plan, 39, 619 Mars 3 (Soviet spacecraft), 219 Martin, Jack, 382 Martin, Jim, 218 Martin, Joseph, 57 Masevich, Alla, 497–98, 501 Maslach, George J., 154–55, 157 Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), 51; Lincoln Laboratory, 93; MIT Radiation Laboratory, 63; Neutron Physics Group, 63, 68–70 Mather, John C., 459, 546 Matheson, Scott, 336 Matsui, Robert, 514 Mattingly, Ken, 486–87 MAUD Committee, 269–70 Max Planck Institute for Physics, 377 Maxwell, James Clerk, 615 May, Michael, 101, 153, 159–60, 214 Mayaguez incident, 268 MBB (Messerschmidt-Bölkow-Blohm), 538 McBride, William V., 289, 297 McCandless, Bruce, II, 547, 548 McCarthy, Eugene, 145, 148 McCarthy, Joseph R., 53, 141 McCarthyism, 53–54 McAuliffe, Christa, 595–96 McClelland, Clyde L., 69–70 McCloskey, Pete, 417 McConnell Air Force Base, 404 McCoy, Ty, 437 McCroskey, Paul, 225

Index McCulla, Jim, 535 McDonald, Frank, 496, 559 McDonald Observatory, 611 McDonnell Douglas aircraft: A-12 Avenger II, 491–92; AV-8B Harrier II, 184, 352, 396, 542; C-17 Globemaster III, 184, 361–63, 363, 383; DC-10, 363; F/​A-18 Hornet, 186, 491, 632; F-4, 490, 506; F-15 Eagle, 184, 310, 326–27, 333, 343, 392, 397, 506, 543, 638; F-15E Strike Eagle, 632; KC-10, 358, 363; RF-4, 392 McElroy, Mike, 492, 495 McFarlane, Robert C. (Bud), 525–29, 562, 565, 567, 573–74, 601 McGovern, George, 238, 455 McIlwain, Carl, 90, 294 McIntyre, James, 311, 410, 410 McIntyre, Thomas, 290 McKay, Gunn, 336–37 McKinney, Chester M., 607–608 McLucas, John, 185, 349, 471 McMahon, Brien, 634 McMillan, Edwin, 35, 49, 80, 83, 85 McMurtry, Tom, 533 McNab, Ian, 612 McNair, Ron, 595 McNamara, Robert, 105, 124, 129, 144, 158 Medaris, John, 89 Meese, Edwin, 464, 560, 564, 568, 573 Meir, Golda, 315 Meitner, Lise, 14, 269 Menendez, Robert, 402 Merbold, Ulf, 545 Mercury (NASA program), 105, 195, 229 Mercury (planet), 165, 208, 221 Merkel, Angela, 623, 623 Merkle, Theodore H., 122–24 Messepalast (Vienna), 495–96, 499–501 Metropolis, Nick, 79 Meyer, Wayne, 639 Michener, James, 498 MiG-23, 506 Mike shot (thermonuclear detonation), 66, 67, 81 militarization of space, 494–99, 501, 503, 534, 567. See also under space shuttle military air transport, 358–63 Military Assistance Advisory Group (MAAG), in South Vietnam, 73, 124–25 Military Assistance Command in Vietnam (MACV), 125 Miller, Frank, 633

661 

Miller, George, 639 Mills, Mark, 97 Milosevic, Slobodan, 631–32 Mindanao, 392 Mineta, Norman, 513, 515 Minuteman (nuclear missile), 262, 326, 334, 366, 522, 572; Minuteman I, 193, 303, 332, 511; Minuteman II, 489, 511; Minuteman III, 302–303, 332, 333, 511 Mir (Soviet space station), 553 Mirage (French aircraft). See Dassault Mirage MIRV (multiple independently targeted reentry vehicle), 302, 305 Missile Defense Agency, 574 Missile Site Radar, 524 Mission Operations Control Room (MOCR), 194–96, 435, 439–43, 465–68, 484, 486–87, 489, 519–20, 544, 546, 549, 599 MIT. See Massachusetts Institute of Technology Mitchell, Billy, 190 MIT Radiation Laboratory, 63 Mitterand, François, 483, 537 Mitterand, Jacques, 537, 540 Moby Dick (sailboat), 160, 165, 278 Moby Dick II (sailboat), 160 MOCR. See Mission Operations Control Room Moffett Field, 168, 172, 215–16, 227 Moldova, 623 Molotov,Vyacheslav, 23, 26, 39 Mondale, Walter, 265, 353 Montenegro, 630 Montgolfier brothers, 528 moon: exploration of, 194–201; manned missions to, 105–107. See also Apollo program Moorer, Thomas H., 296 Morgan, Robert, 307 Morrill, Justin Smith, 606 Morrill Land-Grant Act of 1862, 259, 606 Morris, Jay, 417 Morrow, Hugh, 258 Morse, Philip, 63 Morse, Wayne, 133 Morton Thiokol, 596 Mosemann, Lloyd, 359 Mossad, 244 Mountain View (CA), 162 Moynihan, Daniel Patrick, 53, 247 Mrak, Emil, 47

662

Index

Mubarak, Hosni, 397–98 Mueller, George, 229–30 Muenger, Betsy, 235 Mullen, Michael G., 640 Muller, Richard, 385 Mulloy, Larry, 548 Mulroney, Brian, 601 Murphy, Daniel J., 291–92, 309, 312 Murphy, Franklin, 47 Murphy, Jack, 521 Murray, Bruce, 431, 444, 450, 476–78, 509 Mururoa, 272 Museum of Modern Art (New York City), 240, 321 Museum of Natural History (New York City), 28 Musgrave, Story, 518 Muslim Brotherhood, 317 mutually assured destruction, 2, 51, 301, 522, 528–29 MV-22 Osprey. See Bell Boeing V-22 Osprey MX (nuclear missile), 327, 334–38, 353, 357, 367, 369, 471, 511–15; deployment problems of, 334–38, 489, 511–12, 514 Myers, Dale, 232 NACA. See National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics Nagasaki, 25–26 Naguib, Mohammed, 398 Najaf, 323 Napier, John, 615 NASA: aeronautics and, 458; air force and, 408; astronomical research and, 165, 459; Cold War and, 161; components of, 103–104; Earth Observation Program, 495; ESA and, 481; facilities of, 457–58; human spaceflight, 435–36; lunar exploration and, 194–201; Mission to Planet Earth, 501; national security and, 536; newtechnology satellite and, 311–12; Office of Manned Space Flight, 229; origins of, 103–104; OMB and, 462–63, 465; planetary exploration and, 165; Project Mercury, 105; Satellite Applications Program, 492; space applications and, 459– 60; space shuttle and, 458; space station and, 458–59. See also Apollo program; and individual NASA research centers NASA–Ames Research Center, 162, 164– 236, 444; aeronautics program, 173, 175, 179, 212; airborne astronomy and, 211–13;

airborne sciences and, 213–15; air traffic control and, 458; Ames Army Aeronautics Directorate, 179–80; Cold War and, 179, 188; commercial aviation and, 175; Computational Fluid Dynamics, 226, 280; computers, 225–29; exobiology and, 217; facilities, 176–77; flight simulation tests at, 187; Flight Simulator for Advanced Aircraft, 187; HM’s management of, 172–73, 175–76; human factors related to flight and, 216–17; Institute for Advanced Computation, 227–28; lasers and, 189–91; Numerical Aerodynamic Simulator, 444, 457; planetary exploration and, 201–11; search for extraterrestrial life and, 203– 204, 217–22; space biology and, 222–24; spaceflight and, 175; space shuttle and, 229–30, 235, 518; tilt-rotor aircraft and, 180–84;Vertical Motion Simulator, 179; wind tunnel tests at, 184–88, 185, 190 NASA Causeway, 520 NASA Distinguished Public Service Medal, 448, 450 NASA Distinguished Service Medal, 448, 450, 470, 553 NASA–Electronics Research Center, 174, 177 NASA Exceptional Engineering Achievement Medal, 450 NASA Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal, 450 NASA–George C. Marshall Space Flight Center, 104, 174, 177, 462, 481, 554 NASA–Goddard Space Flight Center, 104, 165, 613 NASA Headquarters, 162, 181, 201, 204, 209, 216, 224, 230, 436, 438, 472; Biosatellite and, 222–23; JPL and, 478; Planetary Program Office, 201–202 NASA–Johnson Space Center ( JSC), 104, 168, 194–96, 460, 465, 472–74; as developmental center, 475, 489; space shuttle and, 230; space station and, 475, 487, 489, 554, 565. See also Mission Operations Control Room; space shuttle; and names of individual space shuttles NASA–Kennedy Space Center, 104, 201, 458, 474, 484, 518, 520, 547 NASA–Langley Research Center, 165, 179, 181, 218, 354 NASA–Launch Operations Center. See NASA–Kennedy Space Center

Index NASA–Lewis Research Center, 165, 179 NASA–Manned Spacecraft Center. See NASA–Johnson Space Center NASA One (airplane), 486, 547 Nasser, Gamal Abdel, 137–38, 315, 398 National Academy of Engineering, 306 National Academy of Sciences, 211, 218, 222, 229–30, 546, 571; Space Science Board, 201, 208, 546; space shuttle and, 557 National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), 103, 165, 171 National Aeronautical Establishment, 396 National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958, 103, 464, 486 National Aeronautics and Space Administration. See NASA National Air and Space Museum, 182, 207 National Center for Space Studies (France), 479, 535 National Command Center, 403 National Conference of Catholic Bishops, 528 National Defense Research Committee, 16 National Foreign Intelligence Board, 283–84, 292, 306, 309 National Nuclear Security Administration, 635 National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), 280–85, 301, 305, 314, 454; air force and, 283, 370–71, 446; CIA and, 283; Consolidated Space Operations Center and, 369–70; Management Council, 308, 312; NASA and, 454–55; NRO Satellite Program, 368; organization of, 283; space shuttle and, 408–409, 411, 442; technical intelligence and, 317–18. See also newtechnology satellite; satellites National Science Foundation (NSF), 264, 569; National Science Board, 264, 448 National Security Agency (NSA), 305–306, 310 National Security Council, 3, 55, 115; staff, 310, 411, 451, 471, 503, 515 National Security Decision Directive Number 32, 504–505 National Security Decision Directive Number 75, 504–505 National Space Council, 104, 106, 229, 591; Space Task Group, 229–31 NATO. See North Atlantic Treaty Organization Naugle, John, 164–65, 202, 204

663 

Naval Air Systems Command, 517 Naval Research Laboratory, 418, 430 Naval Surface Warfare Center, 584, 639 Naval Surface Weapons Center. See Naval Surface Warfare Center Navarre, Henri, 72, 131 NAVSTAR satellite system, 381–82 Navy Junior ROTC, 12 Nazis, 4, 9, 136, 374–75 Necker Island, 640 Nedderman, Wendell, 615 Nehru, Jawaharlal, 275 Neilon, John, 204 Nelson, Bill, 513, 595 Nelson, Eldred, 17 Nelson, George D. (Pinky), 549–50 Neptune, 201, 477 Nessen, Ron, 258 Netherlands, 633 Neutron Physics Group (MIT), 63, 68–70 Nevada Test Site, 113, 121, 123 Newberry, Charles, 380 Newell, Homer, 164–65 Newman, Tom, 493 new-technology satellite, 305–14, 444, 455 Newton, Jon, 582 New York Central Railroad, 34 New York Times, 471 Neylan, John, 54 Ngo Dinh Diem. See Diem Ngo Dinh Thuc. See Thuc Nguyen Van Thieu, 266–67 Nicks, Oran, 181 Niigata, 25 Nike (antiaircraft system), 522–23; Nike-X, 335 Nimitz, Chester W., 37–38 Nimitz, Chester W., Jr., 37, 51, 60 nitrogen: nitrogen-14, 220–21; nitrogen-15, 220–21 Nitta, Cynthia, 638 Nitta, Hank, 638 Nitze, Paul, 39 Nixon, Richard, 131, 149–51, 168, 197–98; arms control and, 192–93, 238, 287, 522; China and, 238, 268; CIA and, 254, 257, 290; defense against ballistic missiles and, 524–25; Leonid Brezhnev and, 301; Nikita Khrushchev and, 197; 1950 congressional election, 102, 149–50; NASA and, 168–69, 178; 1952 presidential election, 150; 1960 presidential election, 102, 150, 241; 1962

664

Index

gubernatorial election, 150–51; 1968 presidential election, 151; 1972 presidential election, 238; resignation of, 193, 253; Soviet Union and, 224, 300–301; space programs and, 225, 229, 234–35, 254, 407, 480, 570, 577;Vietnam War and, 73, 238–39, 257, 266–67;Yom Kippur War and, 245–46 Nixon, Thelma Catherine Ryan (Pat), 150 N-1 (Soviet rocket), 197 Nolting, Frederick, 128 Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), 269, 276–77, 602 NORAD/​ADCOM (North American Air Defense Command / Air Defense Command), 299, 364–66, 368–70, 372, 510, 522 Nordsieck, Arnold, 227 Noriega, Manuel, 632 North American Aviation aircraft: F-100, 522; T-39, 372, 406; X-1, 572; X-15, 207; XB70, 346 North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), 42–43, 50, 399; Cold War and, 42, 480, 619, 632–33; Kosovo War and, 630–32 North Korea (Democratic Republic of Korea), 55, 68; nuclear weapons and, 276, 605–606. See also Korea; Korean War Northrop, Jack, 344–45, 445 Northrop aircraft: B-2 Spirit, 348, 443–46, 452, 457, 471, 573, 631 (see also stealth aircraft); F-5, 354; F-22 Tigershark; T-38, 343, 354, 461;YA-9, 186, 326;YB-49, 345; YF-17, 185–86, 326 Northrop Corporation, 353–55 Northrop Grumman EA-6B Prowler, 492 Northrop strip, 484 North Vietnam (Democratic Republic of Vietnam), 73, 143, 266–67; China and, 73; Soviet Union and, 73. See also Vietnam; Vietnam War Norton Air Force Base, 367, 369 Novak, Robert, 290 Novaya Zemlya, 110 Noyce, Bob, 388 NRO. See National Reconnaissance Office NSA. See National Security Agency NSF. See National Science Foundation Nuckolls, John, 337, 526 nuclear explosion, 19; detection of, 384; physics of, 99 nuclear freeze movement, 488–89, 493, 528

nuclear missiles: defense against, 334–35, 489, 504–506, 522–31, 584, 586–88, 601, 603, 605, 628, 640 (see also Strategic Defense Initiative); land based, 335; “launch on warning” doctrine, 334–35, 337. See also Atlas; Minuteman; MX; Thor; Titan Nuclear Planning Group, 633 nuclear power industry, 122–23, 154 nuclear reactors, 122 nuclear shell model, 77–78 nuclear testing: atmospheric, 108–110 nuclear weapons, 2; arms control, 191– 93; development of, 13–17, 43–46; proliferation of, 269–77, 319–20, 489; refurbishing of, 635–36; use of, 19–23, 25–26; W53 warhead, 403–404; W76 warhead, 636; W80 warhead, 636 Nunamaker, Skip, 207, 209 Nunn, Sam, 605 Nunn May, Alan, 43–44, 270 Nye, Joseph, 492 Oak Ridge (TN), 18 Obama, Barack, 638 Oberth, Hermann, 480, 483, 534, 551; Die Rakete zu den Planetenräumen, 233 O’Brien, Morrough P., 94–95 Octagon Conference, 270 Office of Inter-American Affairs, 240 Office of Management and Budget. See OMB Office of Manned Space Flight (OMSF), 453. See also Office of Space Flight Office of Naval Research, 517, 609 Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), 259–63, 280 Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD), 16–17 Office of Space Flight (OSF), 461, 548 Okinawa, 391 O’Konski, Chester, 49 Old Executive Office Building, 177–78 Oliphant, Marcus, 610 Oliver, Bernard M., 221 Olson, N. Thomas, 153; Experiments in Modern Physics (with HM), 153–54 Olstad, Walter, 462 Oman, 397–98 OMB (Office of Management and Budget): NASA and, 462–63, 485; NASA–Ames Research Center and, 177–78 O’Neill, Malcolm, 639 Onishi, Takijiro, 26

Index On-Site Inspection Agency, 635 Oparin, Alexander I., 223 OPEC (Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries), 259 Operation Allied Force, 631 Operation Anadyr, 115, 142 Operation Castle: Bravo shot, 66, 108, 110, 270 Operation Coronet, 20 Operation Desert Shield, 344, 383 Operation Desert Storm, 344, 383 Operation Dominic, 113, 116, 121, 126; Starfish shot, 113–14, 114; Tightrope shot, 114 Operation Eagle Claw, 329–33, 402 Operation Greenhouse, 46 Operation Hardtack, 91; Orange shot, 91, 99; Teak shot, 91, 99 Operation Ivy: Mike shot, 66, 67, 81, 270 Operation Kadesh, 137 Operation Linebacker, 266, 347 Operation Linebacker II, 267, 347 Operation Musketeer, 137 Operation Nguyen Hue, 266 Operation Olympic, 20 Operation Paperclip, 89 Operation Plumbbob: Rainier shot, 126 Operation Ripper, 68 Operation Rolling Thunder, 131 Operation Speedlight, 111 Operation Torch, 299 Oppenheimer, J. Robert, 97, 270; development of nuclear weapons and, 17–19, 22, 35, 44, 46, 81; security clearance, loss of, 65–66, 75; at UC Berkeley, 17, 35, 47, 49 Orbiter Project Office, 442 Oregon State University, 581 Orr,Verne: MX missile and, 512–13; secretary of the air force, 362, 428–29, 451, 471, 508–10; strategic bombers and, 443–45, 452–43, 464, 470 Orth, William, 340 Ortner, Hans, 497, 501 OSRD. See Office of Scientific Research and Development Ostfriesland, 190 Oswald, Lee Harvey, 129, 147 Otten, John, 567 Ottoman Empire, 136, 618 oxygen-18, 69, 75

665 

Pacific Air Forces, 299 Pacific Missile Range, 640 Pacific Reserve Fleet, 36 Packard, David, 417 PAC-3 (Patriot Advanced Capability-3) missile, 562, 605 Pahlavi, Mohammad Reza, 321–22 Pahr, Willibald, 496 Paige, Kate, 640 Paine, Thomas O., 166, 168–71, 181, 198, 230, 435, 554 Paisley, Melvin, 491, 516–17, 608 Pakistan: nuclear weapons and, 276, 605, 629 Palapa-B satellite, 548 Palestine, 136–37, 506 Palestine Liberation Organization, 506 Panavia Tornado, 397 Panmunjom, 57, 68 Panofsky, Wolfgang K. H., 82, 385 Pantex, 635 Paris, 267, 535–39 Paris Air Show, 396, 490, 532. See also Le Bourget Airfield Parker, J.V., 612 Parkinson, Bradford, 381–83 Parks, Rosa, 146 Patrick Air Force Base, 104, 384 Patriot (antiaircraft system), 605 Patriot (missile system), 562 Pattie, Geoffrey, 340, 396, 542, 616 Patuxent River Naval Air Station, 491 Pauling, Linus, 11, 126–27 Paulissen, George T., 70, 75, 85 Paul VI (pope), 421 Pax Americana, 30 Pax Britannia, 30 Payload Operations Control Center, 484, 546 Pearl Harbor, attack on, 11, 640 Pedersen, Ken, 482, 532 Peenemünde, 234 Peierls, Rudolph, 269–70 Pell, Claiborne, 310 Penney, William, 270 Pentagon, 134 perestroika, 600, 624 Perestroika (Gorbachev), 601 Pérez de Cuéllar, Javier, 496 Perimeter Acquisition Radar, 524 Perlman, Itzhak, 449 Perot, Ross, 329 Perry, William J., 279–81, 337, 360, 605; B-1 bomber and, 345–46, 350, 352; director

666

Index

of defense research and engineering, 280, 406–407; HM and, 347, 353, 413; new-technology satellite and, 312; stealth aircraft and, 355–57, 445, 452 Pershing (nuclear missile), 539; Pershing II, 600–601 Pestorius, F. Michael, 610 Peterson, Allen, 385 Peterson, Donald, 537 Peterson, Jack, 96, 98, 101 Peterson, Richard, 235 Peterson, Russell W., 247, 250 Pham Van Dong, 351 Philippines, 392–93 Physical Review, 70, 75 Pichler, Herbert, 499 Pickering, William, 89, 206, 214, 476–77 Pigford, Thomas H., 95–96, 151–52, 155, 582 Pike, Bob, 416–17, 457 Pinetree Line, 364 Pioneer (NASA program), 207, 477; Pioneer E, 201; Pioneer F, 203–204; Pioneer G, 203; Pioneer Jupiter-Saturn, 202, 246, 281; Pioneer 10, 203–209, 219, 386; Pioneer 11, 203, 206–207, 209; Pioneer Venus, 209–10, 579; plaque on Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11, 203–204, 205 Pioneer anomaly, 207–208 Pirquet, Guido von, 232, 551 Pirtle, Melvin W., 228 PKI, 268 Placentia Bay, 30 Planck, Max, 12 Planetary Society, 207, 478 Plummer, James, 285–87 Pluto (planet), 203, 207 Pluto (ramjet program), 122–24, 318 plutonium, 16, 80; plutonium-238, 202; plutonium-239, 16, 18–19, 259, 273 Pocantico Hills (NY), 251 Polansky, Saul, 339, 495–96 Polaris (nuclear missile), 88, 522 Polaroid Corporation, 93 Pollack, Jim, 212 Polyakov,Valeri, 553 Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn, 10 Polymer Research Institute, 10, 12–13 Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn, 10, 12–13, 19 Ponnamperuma, Cyril, 217, 223 Poor, Charles, 179 Poppoff, I. G., 211

Porsche, Ferdinand, 374 Portal, Charles, 270 Portugal, 245 Post, Richard S., 153 Potomac fever, 265, 279 Potsdam Conference, 23–25, 619 Potsdam Declaration, 24–26 Pournelle, Jerry, 570 Powell, Jody, 288 Power and Security (Teller, HM, and Foster), 249, 257 Powers, Gary, 108, 213 Prakash, Brahm, 276 Prandtl, Ludwig, 534 Pratap, Sid, 611 pre-heat (nuclear physics phenomenon), 18–19 presidential elections: 1948, 41–42; 1952, 64, 102, 150; 1956, 64, 102; 1960, 102–103, 150, 241; 1964, 130–31, 241; 1968, 151; 1972, 238; 1976, 265; 1980, 412–15; 1984, 601 Presidential Succession Act of 1947, 438 President’s Advisory Group on Science and Technology, 262–63, 313, 337 President’s Science Advisory Committee, 254, 256, 261 Press, Frank: president’s science adviser, 385, 388, 410–12, 447–48, 553; National Academy of Sciences and, 464 Pribilof Islands, 215 Price, Richard, 127, 153 Prince Edward Islands, 285 Progressive Party, 42 Project Cyclops (report), 221–22 Project Excalibur (antimissile system), 527, 562, 567 Project Matterhorn, 45 Proxmire, William, 360–61, 570 Pryor, Mark, 405 Pyle, Robert, 152 Pym, Francis, 396–97, 413 Quang Duc (Thich Quang Duc), 128 Quantum Theory of Radiation,The (Heitler), 75 Quiet Short-Haul Research Aircraft, 184, 537 Quistgaard, Eric, 483, 497, 501, 546 Rabi, I. I., 45 Rabin,Yitzhak, 138 radium, 271 RAF Bentwaters, 399

Index RAF Fairford, 533, 631 RAF Lakenheath, 399 RAF Mildenhall, 399 RAF Northolt, 399 RAF Upper Heyford, 399 Raketenflugplatz, 233 Raketen Verein, 233 Raman, Chandrasekhara Venkata, 275 Ramo, Simon, 261–63, 310, 313 RAND Corporation, 342 Randolph, Bernard, 382 Randolph Air Force Base, 588 Ranger (lunar program), 194 Rasmussen, Norman, 63, 94–95, 98, 263 Rathert, George, 180, 235 Rathjens, George, 492–93 Ratliff, Shannon, 588 Ray, James Earl, 146 Reagan, Nancy, 438, 487 Reagan, Ronald Wilson, 131, 257, 419, 424–28, 425, 466, 576, 597; arms control and, 313, 601–606; assassination attempt on, 437–38; Challenger explosion and, 595; defense against ballistic missiles and, 530–31; foreign policy of, 503–506; Columbia and, 469–70, 469, 487–88, 499, 553; as governor of California, 135, 171, 214, 427; Mikhail Gorbachev and, 601– 606, 603, 624; 1980 presidential election and, 412–15, 580; 1984 presidential election, 601; nuclear weapons and, 566; as presidential candidate, 338, 342–43, 353, 357–58; space exploration and, 448; space shuttle and, 410; space station and, 485, 487, 547, 553–54, 559–61, 567–70, 574–76, 595 Red Flag advanced training system, 297–98 Redstone Arsenal, 89, 104, 522 Redstone rocket, 91 Reed, Thomas C., 353, 357, 471, 489, 512–14; secretary of the air force, 337–38 Rees, Eberhardt, 462 Regan, Donald, 466, 597 Regula, Ralph, 336 Reines, Frederick, 127, 384 Reis,Victor H., 557–58, 635 Reissner, Hans, 13 Reliable Replacement Warhead, 636–38 Republic Party: Goldwater faction, 166; Rockefeller faction, 166 Reserve Officers’ Training Corps, 606 Resnick, Judy, 595

667 

Reykjavik summit, 602–604 Reynolds, Harry, 123, 195 Reynolds, William, 237 Rhee, Syngman, 55 Rice, Donald, 342–43 Rich, Ben, 347–48, 355–56, 445; Skunk Works, 348 Rich, John C., 191 Rickover, Hyman, 51, 70 Ride, Sally, 519, 521, 545 Rideal, Eric, 31 Ridell, Klaus, 483 Ridgway, Matthew, 57, 68 Riesenhuber, Heinz, 533, 562–63 Riles, Wilson C., 247 Rivlin, Alice, 288 RMS Queen Elizabeth, 31–32 Roach, James, 614–15 Robb, Charles, 629 Roberts, Alfred, 422 Roberts, Barbara, 173 Roberts, Lawrence, 227 Roberts, Leonard, 206; at NASA–Ames Research Center, 173, 182, 215, 225, 235, 318, 350, 490 Robinson, Russell, 173 Rockefeller, Abigail Aldrich, 239–40, 251 Rockefeller, David, 239, 251–52, 254 Rockefeller, David, Jr., 492 Rockefeller, John Davison, 239, 251 Rockefeller, John D., Jr., 239, 251 Rockefeller, John D., III, 239 Rockefeller, John D., IV, 252 Rockefeller, Laurance, 239, 251–53 Rockefeller, Margaretta (Happy), 242–43, 251 Rockefeller, Mary Todhunter Clark, 240, 252 Rockefeller, Nelson Aldrich, 130, 239–44, 247–55; art collection of, 240, 266; Commission on Critical Choices for Americans, 243–44, 247–52, 255, 258, 267–68; as governor of New York, 239–41, 322; HM and, 237, 242–44, 247, 250–56, 258–66, 310, 321–23; as presidential candidate, 241, 244, 251, 427; Rockefeller Commission and, 257; as vice president, 253–58, 260–65 Rockefeller, Rodman, 252 Rockefeller, Winthrop, 239 Rockefeller Foundation, 64, 242 Rocketdyne, 409 Rockwell aircraft: B-1 (or B-1A), 326, 339–43, 345–53, 355, 393–94; B-1B

668 Lancer, 350–51, 351, 355–56, 428–29, 443–46, 452–53, 457, 464, 470–72, 515, 572–73, 631 Rockwell International, 353, 409 Rodriguez, Richard, 100–101, 127, 153 Rogers, Craven C. (Buck), 395 Rogers, Harry, 13 Rogers, William P., 596 Rogers Dry Lake, 468, 484, 520, 532 Rokke, Ervin, 340, 395–97, 400 Rokke, Pamela, 395–97, 400 Ronan, William, 253, 255–56, 258 Roosevelt, Franklin Delano, 2, 15, 20–21, 30, 41, 172, 240, 619 Roosevelt, Theodore, 239, 352 Rosenberg, Robert A., 316, 326, 411 Ross, Ann Auriol, 77 Ross, Tom, 337 Ross-Lawson-Mark potential, 78 Rostow, Elspeth, 250 Rostow, Walt W., 115, 124–25, 129, 157, 250 Rothschild, Walter, 136 Rover (rocket program), 122–23 Royal Aeronautical Society, 614–16 Royal Air Force, 40 Royal Institution (UK), 31–32 Royal Navy, 136 Royal Observatory (UK), 32, 541 Royal Society (UK), 32 Rubesin, Morris, 225 rubidium, 382 Rubin, Jerry, 132 Rubio, Marco, 402 Ruby, Lawrence, 152 Ruebhausen, Oscar, 253, 256, 258–61, 263 Ruina, Jack, 290, 385–86, 586 Rumsfeld, Donald, 258–59 Rusk, Dean, 117, 129 Russia, 618 Russian Empire, 618 Russo-Japanese War, 23, 54 Rutherford, Ernest, 13, 112 Rutherford-Appleton Laboratory, 616 Ryan XV-3A, 184 Rye, Gilbert D., 485, 503, 528–30, 560, 564–65, 568, 570 Rylander, Grady, 610 Rywalski, Helmut, 534 SAAB Viggen, 397 Saalfeld, Fred, 609

Index SAB. See US Air Force Scientific Advisory Board SAC. See Strategic Air Command Sachs, Alexander, 15 Sadat, Anwar, 315–17 Safeguard (missile defense system), 334, 523 Safeguard System Evaluation Agency (SAFSEA), 523–24 Sagan, Carl, 203–204, 206, 449–51, 478; Contact, 222 SAGE (Semi-Automatic Ground Environment) system, 522–23 Sag Harbor (New York), 12 Said, Faher Taimur Al-, 397–98 Saigon, 128, 143, 266–67 Sakharov, Andrei, 110, 270 Salam, Abdus, 276 Salomaa, Matti K., 69 SALT I. See Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty I SALT II. See Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty II Salyut (Soviet space station program), 552, 560; Salyut 3, 552; Salyut 4, 552; Salyut 5, 552; Salyut 6, 552–53; Salyut 7, 552–53 Salzman, Linda, 204 SAMOS (Satellite and Missile Observation System) satellite, 283 Sampson Option,The (Hersh), 273 SAMSO. See Space and Missile Systems Organization San Francisco Naval Shipyard, 214 Sarles, F. W., 385 satellites: communications satellites, 500; imaging satellites, 284–85; military uses of, 131; optical-imaging satellites, 305, 307, 320; weather satellites, 492; X-ray astronomy satellites, 539. See also newtechnology satellite Sato, Naotake, 23, 26 Saturn, 201, 203, 206–207, 477–78 Saturn V (US rocket), 197–98, 201, 409 SA-2 (Soviet antiaircraft missile), 115 Saunders, Harold, 306 Savannah River Plant, 127 Savio, Mario, 132, 133 Sawyer, Tom, 345–46, 390, 392, 394 Saxon, David S., 78 SCA. See Shuttle Carrier Aircraft Scalapino, Robert, 49 Schemmer, Bill, 357

Index Schiaparelli, Giovanni, 217 Schiff, Leonard, 75 Schleede, Glenn, 263, 437 Schlesinger, James R., 329 Schmidt, Helmut, 310 Schmitt, Harrison H. ( Jack), 200–201, 200, 340, 367, 429, 452, 485, 489 Schneider, Bill, 451, 462 Schrader, Carlton, 99 Schramek, Franz (HM’s grandfather), 8 Schriever, Bernard A., 262, 366, 431, 443, 508 Schriever Air Force Base, 508 Schrock,Virgil, 152 Schroeder, Patricia, 488 Schultz, Bob, 613 Schwab, Johanna Altgeld, 59 Schwab, Michael, 59 Schwartz, Charles, 70 Science and Engineering of Nuclear Power,The (ed. Goodman), 51, 69 SCLC. See Southern Christian Leadership Conference Scobee, Richard, 533, 595 Scott, Robert, 232 Scott, Winfield (air force officer), 390 Scott, Winfield (army general), 390 Scoville, Herbert (Pete), 111 Scowcroft, Brent, 512–14, 562 Scud (Iraqi missile), 605 SDI. See Strategic Defense Initiative Seaborg, Glenn, 16, 35, 49, 80 Seamans, Robert, 408, 471 search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI), 203–204, 221–22 SEASAT, 613 Segre, Emilio, 16, 19 Seidler, Andrea, 503 Seidler, Kurt, 503 Selective Service Law, 132–33 Senior Executive Service, 414 Sentinel (missile defense system), 334, 523 Serber, Robert, 17 Serbia, 630 Serbian Army, 630–32 Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944. See GI Bill SETI. See search for extraterrestrial intelligence Seward, Fred, 113, 127, 152 Sewell, Duane, 84 Shamir,Yitzhak, 315

669 

Sharett, Moshe, 315 Sharon, Ariel, 139, 245, 506 Sharp, Joe, 224 Shcherbitsky,Vladimir, 585 Shelepin, Alexander, 142 Shelton, William, 455 Shevardnadze, Eduard, 603 Shipley, Bill, 557 Shipley, Joseph T., 12 short takeoff and landing (STOL) aircraft, 181, 184, 361–62, 542 short takeoff and vertical landing (STOVL) aircraft, 542–44 Shultz, George P., 247, 566, 603–605 Shuttle Carrier Aircraft (SCA), 531–41 Sidewinder (missile), 54, 191, 567 Sidey, Hugh, 106 Siemer, Deanne, 292, 293 SIGINT (signals intelligence) satellites, 306–307 Sikorsky CH-53 Sea Stallion, 331 Silicon Valley, 48 Silveira, Milton, 410, 439–40, 442–43, 467, 474, 486, 518, 559, 581, 595; “Notes on Long Range Planning” (with HM), 457, 460, 473, 487, 550 Silver, Samuel, 159–62, 164 Silverstein, Abe, 198 Simpson, William, 202 Sinai Peninsula, 138–39 Sirhan, Sirhan, 149 Situation Room, 451, 526, 560 Six-Day War, 135, 138–39, 244 6594th Test Group, 394 Skantze, Larry, 350 Skunk Works. See Lockheed Skunk Works Skunk Works (Rich), 348 Skylab, 553, 564 Slay, Alton D.: AFSC commander, 298, 341–42, 350, 429–30 Slotnick, Daniel, 227–28 Slovenia, 630 Smith, Brad, 202 Smith, Harold, 152, 178 Smith, Howard, 432 Smith, Larry, 308, 370–71, 455 Smith, Richard, 454 Smith, William French, 569 Smylie, Robert E. (Ed), 198, 450–51, 462 Smythe, Henry D., Atomic Energy, 19 Snodgrasas, Charles, 310, 396

670

Index

SOFIA (Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy) project, 213 Sokolovsky,Vasily, 39 Solana, Javier, 631 Solar Maximum Mission satellite, 465, 474–75, 549 Solidarity movement, 421 Solovyov,Vladimir, 553 Sonnet, Charles P., 198 Sorensen, Theodore, 106 SOSUS (sound surveillance system), 386 South Africa: nuclear weapons and, 277, 319–20, 386 Southern California: aerospace industry, 48 Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), 146 South Korea (Republic of Korea), 55, 68, 269. See also Korea; Korean War South Vietnam, 73, 266–67; Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN), 124–25, 131, 143–44, 266–67. See also Diem; Vietnam;Vietnam War Soviet Academy of Sciences, 223 Soviet aircraft. See Tupolev aircraft Soviet-American Control Commission, 54 Soviet nuclear missiles: SS-3, 115; SS-4, 115; SS-5, 115; SS-18, 305, 334, 511, 602; SS20 Saber, 302–303, 539, 600, 602–603; S-24 Scalpel, 335; SS-25 Sickle, 303 Soviet space station. See Mir; Salyut Soviet Union: Afghanistan and, 339, 551, 584; arms control and, 300; China and, 141–42, 274, 287; defense against ballistic missiles, 561, 567, 584; East Germany and, 108; end of, 1–2, 617; Egypt and, 138–39, 140, 245, 315; Israel and, 137; Korea and, 55, 68, 107; nuclear espionage, 43–44; nuclear weapons, 43–46, 66, 109–110, 274; North Vietnam and, 73; nuclear weapons and, 107, 115, 384; space exploration by, 88, 103–104 (see also Sputnik 1; Sputnik 2; Vostok 1); United States, arms race with, 44, 66, 81, 446; United States, cooperation with, 223–24, 319–20; United States, geopolitical rival of, 27; United States, proxy wars with, 506; United States, space race with, 103–104, 161, 194, 197, 208, 219, 472, 479, 497–98, 552–53, 598;Vietnam War and, 124–25; in World War II, 21, 26. Soyuz (Soviet rocket), 552; Soyuz 19, 552 Space and Missile Systems Organization (SAMSO), 193, 307, 367, 369

Spacelab, 479–83, 481, 533, 538–40, 545–46, 563 Space Launch Complex-6, 412, 454–55 space race, 90, 103–104, 161, 171, 194, 197, 208, 219, 497–98, 552–53, 598. See also under Soviet Union; United States space shuttle, 185, 229–32, 234–35, 353, 432, 435, 451, 494, 501, 511, 526, 552, 558, 561; air force and, 349, 407–12; commercial payloads and, 411; design of, 408; development of, 311–12, 408–409; EVAs and, 474, 488–89, 546–48, 547, 550; fifth orbiter, 485, 556, 577; funding for, 463, 465; inertial upper stage, 431, 519; militarization of space, alleged instrument of, 494–98, 534; National Reconnaissance Office and, 408–409, 411; national security and, 411, 545; orbital maneuvering system (OMS) pods, 440–42; “operational” nature of, 458, 464, 473, 475–76, 487–89, 534; original purpose of, 313–314; reusable surface insulation of, 411; satellite repair and, 546–47, 549–50, 549; “shuttle only” policy, 454–55, 459; single-orbit reconnaissance missions, 408, 411–12; solid rocket boosters, 571–72; solid rocket motor, 588–89, 596, 598; Spacelab and, 479–80; space shuttle main engine (SSME), 408–409, 411, 431, 462, 464, 484, 488, 518–19, 580; space station and, 569. See also Challenger; Columbia; Enterprise space station, 229–32, 432, 435–36, 443, 452, 473–74, 501, 526, 539, 546, 553, 564, 573; conceptual origins of, 229, 551; Congress and, 576–80; decision to build, 458–60, 545, 547, 559–65, 567–70; EVAs and, 556; features of, 554–55, 563; international participation in, 563, 574; NASA–Johnson Space Center and, 449, 473, 475, 554; space shuttle and, 569 Space Station,The (HM), 235 Space Station Task Force, 563 space telescope, 435 Spain, 245 Spartan rocket, 523–24 spheres of influence: in Eastern Europe, 30 Spilker, James, 383 Spirit of St. Louis, 207 SPOT (satellite), 501 Sprint missile, 524 Sproul, Gordon, 46–48, 61

Index Sputnik (Soviet satellite program): Sputnik 1, 88, 90, 103, 194, 381, 479, 493, 497, 501, 576, 627; Sputnik 2, 88–90 SS Duchess of Richmond, 9 SS Grozny, 117 SS Marcula, 117 SSME. See space shuttle: space shuttle main engine SS Vogoles, 118 Stabile, Benedict L., 401 Stafford, Thomas P., 224, 437, 443, 445, 452–53, 552 Stalin, Joseph, 55, 67–68, 142, 274, 286, 507; Berlin blockade and, 39–40, 619; Eastern Europe and, 30; at the Potsdam Conference, 23–24 Standard Missile series: Standard Missile 2, 640; Standard Missile 3, 562 Stansted Airfield, 540–41 Starbird, Alfred Dodd, 523–24 Starfish shot (thermonuclear detonation), 99, 113–14, 114 Staudenmeyer, F. J., 543 stealth aircraft, 346–48, 353–57, 396, 491; composite materials in, 346, 354, 444–45; “fly-by-wire” technology, 346, 354, 445 Steinberg, Samuel, 12 Steinberg, Stanley, 242 Steinitz, Erich, 501 Stelson, Paul, 69 Stempler, Jack, 337, 352 Stennis, John, 311, 325 Stern Gang, 137 Stetson, John C.: secretary of the air force, 289, 293, 295–96, 298, 300, 316, 324, 365–66, 368, 471 Stevenson, Adlai E., 64 Stever, H. Guyford, 255, 263–64 St. Helena, 386 Stimson, Henry L., 20–21 Stine, G. Harry, 570 Stockman, David, 464, 466, 565, 569 Stoddart, Steve, 468 Stoermer orbits, 88 STOL aircraft. See short takeoff and landing (STOL) aircraft Stone, Ed, 444, 450, 510 Strasburger, Frank, 392 Strassmann, Fritz, 13 Strauss, Lewis, 65, 81 Strategic Air Command (SAC), 117, 299–300, 338, 364, 366, 368–69, 379, 393

671 

Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty I (SALT I), 192–93, 238, 286–87, 301, 304 Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty II (SALT II), 193, 301–302, 305–308, 310–11, 317, 414, 417, 511, 600 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START), 515, 567, 635 strategic balance, 301 Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), 530–31, 561–62, 565–67, 572–74, 586, 601–603, 611; nicknamed “Star Wars,” 531, 586. See also nuclear missiles: defense against Strategic Defense Initiative Organization (SDIO), 572–74 strategic triad, 301–302, 332 Stratton, Sam, 356 Strauss, Franz Josef, 538, 621 Strauss, Johann, II, Die Fledermaus, 339 Street, Robert, 278 Streeter, Edward, 396 Strominger, Donald, 313 Strothers, Jeff, 456, 463 Strub, Herman, 482, 533 Stuart, Gilbert, 252 Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, 132 Students for a Democratic Society, 132, 134 Stuyvesant High School (New York City), 4, 12, 587, 633 submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM), 302, 608 submarines: nuclear powered, 51, 68, 122, 301–302 Suez Canal, 137–39 Suez crisis, 137 Suharto, 125, 269 Sukarno, Ahmed, 125, 268–69 Sukhoi aircraft, 506 Sullivan, John (air force officer), 341 Sullivan, John L. (navy secretary), 50, Sunnyvale Air Force Station, 225 Sun Tzu, 446 “Super” (hydrogen fusion reaction), 44–46, 65 Super Étendard aircraft, 516, 632 Supreme War Council ( Japan), 26 Surface Warfare Center, 613 Surveyor (lunar program), 194, 476 Suzuki, Kantaro, 24–25 Sweeney, Charles W., 25 Swift, Charles, 100–101, 127, 153 Swigert, Jack, 198 Symbionese Liberation Army, 132, 226

672

Index

Syria, 139, 506–507 Syvertson, Clarence A. (Sy), 172, 174–75, 178, 215, 222, 287, 457 Szilard, Leo, 14–15, 19–21 Tactical Air Command, 294, 297, 299, 364 Taft, Robert A., 64 Taiwan Electric Company, 155 Talley, Helen, 253 Talley, Wilson K., 246, 248–50, 252–53, 255, 268 tantalum-181, 85, 92–93 Tapley, Byron D., 613–14 Tarski, Alfred, 49 TASS, 584 Tau Beta Pi, 154 Taylor, Geoffrey, 270 Taylor, Leonard, 31 Taylor, Maxwell D., 125 TDRSS. See Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System Technical Capabilities Panel, 282 Teller, Augusta Maria “Mici” Harkanyi, 78–79, 79 Teller, Edward, 15, 66, 75, 78–79, 79, 84, 226, 447, 502; “aerial battleship” and, 189; defense against ballistic missiles and, 526–28; HM and, 71–72, 74–77, 93–94, 159–61, 171, 188, 201, 234, 431, 559, 604; Hoover Institution and, 75; hydrogen bomb and, 44, 81; at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, 74, 85, 90, 96–97, 126; at the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory, 44; Manhattan Project and 17, 19; Nelson Rockefeller and, 242–43, 249–50, 252–53, 258–60, 310; nuclear freeze movement and, 488–89; Power and Security (with HM and Foster), 249, 257; replacement warheads and, 636–37; “Super” and, 44–46; theoretical work, 77–78; at UC Berkeley, 74–77 Teller, Paul, 78 Teller, Wendy, 78 Tenney, Jack, 47 terbium: terbium-159, 93 Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system, 562, 605, 638 terrorist attacks: September 1, 2011, 3; Tet Offensive, 143–44 Thatcher, Carol, 423 Thatcher, Dennis, 423

Thatcher, Margaret Hilda Roberts, 419, 421–24, 422, 542, 576, 600, 622; Mikhail Gorbachev and, 601, 624; nicknamed the “Iron Lady,” 424 Thatcher, Mark, 423 Thayer, Paul, 567, 569 Theater High Altitude Area Defense. See Terminal High Altitude Area Defense Theresienstadt, 621 Thich Quang Duc. See Quang Duc Third Air Force, 399 Third Century Corporation, 247, 255 Thirteenth Air Force, 392 Thomas, David, 615 Thomas, Parnell, 141 Thompson, Floyd, 199 Thor (nuclear missile), 113, 262, 366, 522 Thor-Agena launch vehicle, 284 Thorpe, Angela, 59 Thorpe, Eida, 58 Thorpe, Jennie Altgeld (HM’s mother-inlaw), 58, 60 Thorpe, John (HM’s brother-in-law), 59–60 Thorpe, Milton W. (HM’s father-in-law), 58–60, 75–76, 92 Thorpe, William, 58 308th Strategic Missile Wing, 403 381st Strategic Missile Wing, 404 Three Mile Island, 263 Thuc (Ngo Dinh Thuc), 128–29 Thurmond, Strom, 41, 629 Tibbets, Paul, 25 Tiffany, William, 360 tilt-rotor aircraft, 180–84, 458, 490, 516 Tinker Air Force Base, 398 Titan (nuclear missile), 88, 262, 366–67, 402–403, 511, 522; accident (Damascus, AK), 402–406; Titan II, 332, 334, 402–403 Titan IV launch vehicle, 588–89 Tito, Josip Broz, 630 Tizard, Henry, 269 Tocqueville, Alexis de, Democracy in America, 340–41 Togo, Shigenori, 23 Tokyo, 391 Tonin, Zdena, 587–88 Tonkin Gulf Resolution, 130 TOPEX/​Poseidon satellite, 613–14 Tory IIA (nuclear reactor), 123 Tory IIC (nuclear reactor), 123 Tower, John, 429, 538, 585

Index Townes, Charles, 447 Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System (TDRSS), 437, 439, 443, 446–50, 457, 519 Tranquility Base, 195 Transcendental Airplane Company, 180; Transcendental 1-G, 180 TRANSIT satellite system, 381 transporter erector launcher, 193 Traxler, Bob, 579 Treasure Island (CA), 36 Treaty of Brussels, 42 TRIGA Mark III nuclear reactor, 151–52, 157 Trimouille Island, 270 Trinity (nuclear test site), 19 tritium, 44, 639 Trost, Carlisle, 584 Trudeau, Pierre, 310, 576 Truly, Richard, 469–70, 553, 584 Truman, Harry, 29, 31, 64; China and, 141–42; civil rights and, 146; nuclear weapons and, 13, 20–23, 25, 41, 45–46, 50; Berlin airlift and, 39–40; desegregation of the US military, 41; Douglas MacArthur and, 56–57; Greek Civil War and, 30; Israel and, 137; Korean War and, 55–57; 1948 presidential election, 41–42; at the Potsdam Conference, 23–25 Truman Doctrine, 30 Trump, John G., 64 TRW Corporation, 202, 209–10, 218, 262 Tsiolkovsky, Konstantin, 496, 551 Tuck, James L. 270 Tuhani, Hassan, 315 Tunner, William, 40 Tunney, John, 220 Tupolev aircraft: Tu-22M Backfire, 333, 339, 347; Tu-95 Bear, 110, 391 Turkey, 41, 109, 117–19, 618, 633 Turner, Stansfield (Stan), 320; CIA director, 282–83, 290–92, 293, 296, 310; newtechnology satellite and, 308–309, 312–13 Turyshev, Slava, 208 Tuveson, Merle A., 49–50, 52 Twentieth Tactical Fighter Wing, 399 Twenty-Fifth Amendment, 255, 437 two-bomber solution, 347, 356 Tyrer, Bob, 627 Uhuru (satellite), 459 Ukraine, 625

673 

Ulam, Stanislw, 46, 66 Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. See Soviet Union UNISPACE 82, 492–503 United Kingdom, 245, 618; Israel and, 136– 37; nuclear weapons and, 269–71; “special relationship” with the United States, 30 United Nations: Suez crisis and, 138 United Nations Environmental Program, 501 United Nations Industrial Development Organization, 493 United Nations International Atomic Energy Agency. See International Atomic Energy Agency United States: arms control and, 300, 529; China and, 238, 314; hydrogen bomb, development of, 44–46, 65; Iran and, 329–332; Israel and, 138–39, 245; Korea and, 55; Soviet Union, arms race with, 44, 66, 81, 326–27, 384, 446; Soviet Union, cooperation with, 223–24, 319–20; Soviet Union, geopolitical rival of, 28; Soviet Union, proxy wars with, 506; Soviet Union, space race with, 103–104, 161, 194, 197, 208, 219, 472, 479, 497–98, 552–53, 598; United Kingdom, “special relationship” with, 30;Vietnam War and, 72–73, 124–25, 127–35, 266–69; West Germany and, 483; in World War II, 17–27 University of California, Berkeley, 34–39; Callahan Hall, 35; Campanile, 35; Department of Nuclear Engineering, 151– 61; Etcheverry Hall, 96, 147, 151; Gilman Hall, 147; Greek Theater, 47; Lawrence Livermore National Larboratory and, 96; LeConte Hall, 17, 74; McCarthyism at, 54; nuclear physics and, 16; nuclear weapons and, 35, 157; Radiation Laboratory, 78, 80–81; Space Science Laboratory, 159, 161 University of California, Davis, 159, 178 University of Chicago: Metallurgical Laboratory, 16–17 University of Texas at Arlington, 614; Advanced Robotics Institute, 615 University of Texas at Austin: Applied Research Laboratories, 607–10; Balcones Research Center, 607, 610; Center for Electromechanics, 607, 610–11; Center for Space Research, 607, 613–14; Cold War, involvement in, 583, 606–14; Defense Research Laboratory, 607; Institute for

674

Index

Advanced Technology, 607, 612–13; War Research Laboratory, 607 University of Vienna, 4, 7 UN Security Council, 55, 139, 245, 271 Upton, Joe, 162 uranium, 13–17; uranium-235, 16, 18, 44, 152, 269, 273–74, 276–77; uranium-238, 16, 18, 44, 259, 273–74, 276–77; uranium-239, 16, 18 Uranus, 201, 477 Urey, Harold, 206 US Air Force: Colorado and, 367–72, 413–14; GPS and, 382–84; NASA and, 408, 446, 454–55; National Reconnaissance Office and, 283, 371; Program Objectives Memorandum, 345; space operations of, 225, 328, 364; space shuttle and, 349, 407–12, 418, 454 US Air Force Academy, 340, 394–95 US Air Force Laboratory, 396 US Air Force Scientific Advisory Board. See Air Force Scientific Advisory Board. US Air Forces in Europe, 299 US Army: Third Infantry Regiment, 134–35 US Army Corps of Engineers, 17 US Atomic Energy Commission. See Atomic Energy Commission US Chamber of Commerce, 569 US Congress: Joint Appropriations Conference Committee, 311 US Constitution, 3, 243. See also individual amendments US Defense Department, 144; director of defense research and engineering, 83, 627 US Energy Department, 634–35 US Geological Survey, 111 US House of Representatives: Appropriations Committee, 209, 308, 437, 514–15, 579; Armed Services Committee, 336, 342, 345, 356, 404; Science and Technology Committee, 577–79; Select Committee on Intelligence, 307, 513; Un-American Activities Committee, 149 US Naval Research Laboratory, 104, 165 US Navy, 12; National Reconnaissance Office and, 283; satellites and, 381; Second Fleet, 116 US Northern Command, 510 USS Augusta, 25 USS Canberra, 117 USS Cape St. George, 640 USS Colahan, 36, 60

USS C.Turner Joy, 130 US Senate: Armed Services Committee, 313, 452, 629; Appropriations Committee, 360, 370, 579; Budget Committee, 577; Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee, 452; Intelligence Committee, 370; Select Committee on Intelligence, 307–308 USS Enterprise, 117 USS Essex, 117 USS George Washington, 522 USS Hue City, 640 USS Independence, 117 USS Joseph P. Kennedy Jr., 117 USS Lake Erie, 531, 640, 641 USS Larve, 117 USS Liberty, 139 USS Loftberg, 36 USS Maddox, 130 USS Misssouri, 56 USS Nautilus, 70 USS Newport News, 117 USS Nimitz, 331 USS Norton Sound, 90, 93 USS Perry, 118 USSR. See Soviet Union USS Saipan, 401 USS Shields, 36, 37 USS Theodore Roosevelt, 632 US Strategic Command, 510 Utopia Planitia, 220 U-2 (spy airplane), 108, 282–83, 301, 316; Cuban missile crisis and, 115–16, 118. See also under Lockheed aircraft Van Allen, James A., 89–90, 202, 294 Van Atta, Chester, 85, 87 Vance, Cyrus, 288, 294, 319–20 Van de Graaff, Robert J., 64 Vandenberg, Hoyt S. (Sandy), Jr., 394 Vandenberg Air Force Base, 284, 303, 412, 453–54, 525 Vanguard (satellite program), 89, 104 van Hoften, James D. A. (Ox), 59–50 Van Vleck, John H., 17 Van Tien Dung, 267 Vela event, 384–87; Ad Hoc Panel on the September 22 Event, 386 Venera (Soviet space program): Venera 1, 208; Venera 3, 208; Venera 7, 208; Venera 9, 208; Venera 10, 208 Venona Papers, 53

Index Venus, 165, 208–11, 221, 450 Vertical Motion Simulator. See under NASA– Ames Research Center vertical or short takeoff and landing (V/​ STOL) aircraft, 181 vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) aircraft, 179, 184, 352, 542, 614;VTOL fighter program, 352, 396 Vienna, 109, 339, 373–75, 493, 495–501, 620 Vietcong, 73, 124, 128, 131–32, 143 Viet Minh, 72 Vietnam: France and, 72–73 Vietnam Veterans against the War, 132 Vietnam War, 73, 124–25, 127–35, 143– 45, 266–69, 392–93, 543; American opposition to, 133–35, 148, 257 Viking (NASA program), 218, 232, 477; Viking 1, 219–20, 476; Viking 2, 219–20 Villa, Pancho, 56 Vincenti, Walter, 237 Vishniac, Wulf, 218 Vladivostok agreement, 193, 287, 301–302, 304 Vogt, Herta, 495 Vogt, Robbie, 476–77, 510 Volk, Norbert, 34 Volkmer, Harold, 515, 577 Volkstheater (Vienna), 497–98 Volkswagen, 374 Volpe, John, 178 von Braun, Emmy, 233 von Braun, Wernher, 89, 106, 194, 206, 229– 35, 233, 483; HM and, 230–31, 233–34, 462; personal details, 232–34 V-1 (German rocket), 406 Vo Nguyen Giap, 72–73 von Neumann, John, 45–46, 227, 262, 502 Voorhis, Jerry, 149 Vostok (Soviet space program), 223; Vostok 1, 103 Voting Rights Act of 1965, 147 Voyager (NASA program), 206, 450, 476; Voyager 1, 416; Voyager 2, 450, 477 V/​STOL aircraft. See vertical or short takeoff and landing (V/​STOL) aircraft VTOL aircraft. See vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) aircraft V-2 (German rocket), 89, 234 Waaland, Irving, 445 Wahl, Arthur C., 16 Walcher, Lina Schramek (HM’s aunt), 8

675 

Walcher, Robert (HM’s cousin), 8 Waldheim, Kurt, 310 Walesa, Lech, 421 Walker, Joseph, 207 Walker, Walton, 55 Wallace, Barbara, 288 Wallace, George C., 148, 151 Wallace, Henry A., 41–42 Wallace, Jim, 288 Wallace, Roger, 152 Wallop, Malcolm, 308, 444 Walls, Alan, 611 Walton, Ernest, 121 Ware Hall (Cambridge, MA), 62, 71 Warner, John, 325, 629 Warnke, Paul, 304, 306, 308 War of the Worlds (Wells), 217 war on terrorism, 3, Warren, Earl, 37, 48, 61 Warren, Nina, 48 Warren Court, 48 Warsaw Pact, 287 Washington, George, 431 Washington Post, 471 Watergate, 193, 248, 251, 253–54, 290 Watkins, James D., 560, 584 Watson, Edith, 173, 280, 294, 445 Watson, Josephine L., 289, 453 Watson, Sput, 445 Watt, James, 562, 615 Wayne, John, 108 Weathermen, 132, 226 Weaver, Tom, 526–27 Webb, James E., 105–106, 166 Weber, Ernst, 13 Weeks, L. Michael, 454, 464–65, 548–49, 588, 591, 595 Weiffenbach, George C., 381 Weimar Republic, 149 Weinberg, Louise, 586 Weinberg, Steven, 586–87 Weinberger, Caspar, 407, 429, 448, 452, 539; space shuttle and, 454; space station and, 560–61; strategic bombers and, 445, 464, 471; Strategic Defense Initiative and, 565–67, 572–74 Weiss, Stan, 559 Weisskopf,Victor F., 19, 21, 63, 71, 388 Weitz, P. J., 541 Weizmann, Chaim, 136–37 Weizsacker, Carl Friedrich von, 16 Welch, Jasper ( Jack), 383

676

Index

Weldon, William F., 610–12 Wellington, 1st Duke of, 2 Wells, H. G., War of the Worlds, 217 Westar satellite program, 548 West Germany (Federal Republic of Germany), 109, 619, 622; spaceflight and, 479–80, 531–35; United States and, 483 Westinghouse, George, 426 Westminster College, 29 Westmoreland, William, 129, 131–32, 143–44 Weygand, Maxime, 9 Wheelon, Albert D. (Bud), 210–11 Wheeler, Earle, 144 Wheeler, John, 45 Whinnery, John, 154 White, Ed, 199 White, Harry Dexter, 53 White, Harvey, 49 White, Mary E., 69 White, Theodore H., 155–57 Whitehall, 396 White Horse Saloon (Berkeley), 203 Whiteman Air Force Base, 631 Whitemore, Fred, 212 White Sands Missile Range, 484 White Sands Proving Ground, 523 Whitten, R. C., 211 Wick, Brad, 180 Wideroe, Rolf, 85 Wiesner, Jerome, 105, 107, 157, 290, 586 Wigner, Eugene, 15, 45, 502 Wilbur and Orville Wright Memorial Lecture, 614–16 Wilcox, John, 54 Wilhelm I (emperor), 617 Wilhelm II (emperor), 618 Wilkinson, Dennis, 616 Williams, James A., 560 Williams, Walt, 437 Willkie, Wendell, 240 Wilson, Carroll, 258–60 Wilson, Charles, 222 Windsor Castle, 540–51 Winters, Jonathan, 197 “Wise Men” (advisory group to LBJ), 144–45 Withers, Ramsey, 397 Wojtyla, Karol Jósef. See John Paul II Wolfe, John, 203, 207 Women Air Force Service Pilots, 394

Women Appointed for Voluntary Emergency Service, 394 women in the military, 394–95 Women’s Army Corps, 394 Wong, Calvin, 99 Wood, Lowell, 489, 526, 528, 559, 562, 570 Woods, George, 258–59 Woods, R. D., 78 Woodson, Herbert, 610–11 Wooldridge, Dean, 262 Woolsey, James, 326, 513–15, 584 Worden, S. Peter, 587 World War I, 618 World War II, 9–13, 21, 23–27, 618–19 Wyszynski, Stefan, 421 X-ray astronomy, 127, 153, 459 X-ray detector, 99–100, 113–114, 127, 153, 284–85 X-ray laser, 527–28, 559, 562, 566 XV-15. See Bell XV-15 Yaggy, Paul, 178–80 Yalta Conference, 619 Yamamoto, Isoroku, 391 Yanayev, Gennadi, 624 Yardley, John, 312, 409–10, 436, 453 Yates, Michael, 153 Yeager, Chuck, 416, 572 Yeager, Glynnis, 416 Yeltsin, Boris, 1, 428, 624–25, 625, 632 Yemen (Aden), 398 Yemen (Sa’na), 398 Yokota Air Base, 391 Yom Kippur War, 2, 244–46, 259 Yonas, Gerold, 586 York, Herbert F., 81–83, 84, 90, 112, 309, 627 Young, John, 439, 447–48, 544–45 Younger, Stephen, 636 Yugoslavia, 630 Zahedi, Ardeshir, 321 Zarb, Frank, 258 Zemach, Ariel Charles, 31, 34 Zeppelin, Ferdinand von, 620 zero option, 604–606 Zimmerman, Peter, 585 Zinn, Walter, 14 Zionism, 136 Zyberg, Seymour (Sy), 345, 350