Item COLD WAR 27/75 - Transcript of interview with Professor William Reid Kaufmann, 1996

Typescript transcript of interview with Professor William Reid Kaufmann, Professor Emeritus, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1996, relating to the differences in nuclear strategy between the administrations of US Presidents Dwight David Eisenhower and John Fitzgerald Kennedy, 1960-1961; the US Strategic Air Command's Single Integrated Operational Plan (SIOP) for the use of nuclear weapons against the USSR, 1960; the 'whiz kids', defence advisors brought into the US Pentagon mostly from the RAND Corporation and the Harvard Business School, by US Secretary of Defense Robert Strange McNamara, 1961-1968; the poor relationship between the US military establishment and McNamara and the 'whiz kids', 1961-1968; the relationship between McNamara and the US Strategic Air Command (SAC), USAF, and particularly with US Gen Curtis E LeMay and Gen Thomas S Power, 1961-1968; a presentation given by Kaufmann on counterforce theory at SAC Headquarters, Omaha, Nebraska, USA, and the opposition to the theory shown by US Gen Power, [1962]; the employment of McNamara's 'whiz kids' on the 'ninety six trombones', ninety six separate studies into aspects of US defense policy, 1961-1968; the US nuclear doctrine of counterforce, emphasising limited nuclear strikes against an enemy's armed forces and not against civilian populations, 1962; the US strategic doctrine of mutually assured destruction (MAD), 1967; the planned US deployment of one thousand LGM-30A Minuteman I Inter-Continental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs), [1962]; the targetting of Moscow, USSR, by US ICBMs, 1961-1968; speeches made by McNamara on US defense policy in Athens, Greece, and Ann Arbor, University of Michigan, USA, [1961-1962]; the US reaction to the detonation of the first Chinese atomic bomb, Lop Nor, People's Republic of China, Oct 1964; the summit meeting between US President Lyndon Baines Johnson and Soviet Prime Minister Alexei Nikolayevich Kosygin, Glassboro, New Jersey, USA, Jun 1967; the Soviet development of an anti-ballistic missile (ABM) system, [1968-1969]; the US development of multiple independently targetable re-entry vehicles (MIRVs), [1968-1972]; the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT), 1969-1979; the omission of discussions on the limitation of MIRVs during the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT I), 1969-1972; the Palomares incident, the collision of a Boeing B-52 Stratofortress and a Boeing KC-135 tanker aircraft over Spain resulting in the loss of the two aircraft and the crash landing of four thermonuclear weapons, Jan 1966; the face off between Soviet and US tanks, Checkpoint Charlie, Berlin, Germany, Oct 1961. 36pp