[FPSPACE] OT: notes of Oak Ridge Comm. Lecture - Thomas Reed's "At the Abyss"

[Robert G Kennedy III]

It's long, and nothing to do with space /per se/ but lots about US & USSR
Cold War history from one who been there, done that, and got the tee-shirt.

That organization I used to run still recruits some very fine speakers. My
Fair City is a very special little place, and I'm mighty proud of it.

Tonight's lecturer was Thomas C. Reed, former Secy of the Air Force
(civilian appointee works for the SecDef), former director of the NRO,
comissioned USAF officer, engineer for the Ballistic Missile Division in
L.A., physicist at Lawrence Livermore and designer of two thermonuclear
shots in Operation DOMINIC (1962), California gubernatorial campaign
director for Ronald Reagan, and principal author of NSDD-32 in the Reagan
Administration. He came here to talk about his book, /At the Abyss: An
Insider's History of the Cold War/.

[These notes will be somewhat rough, and I haven't read the book yet
either. Everything after this is in the speaker's voice, except notes in
square brackets which are mine. ]

***

"I don't come to Oak Ridge often enough" [last here 40 years ago]

"Red Army officers are great people, careful, and at the right time, they
did the right thing" [reference to later mention of the August 1991 coup]

"much of what we think we know about the Cold War is wrong ... that's the
problem with oral history ... lotsa people walking around with crystal
clear memories of stuff that never happened"

[stuff that Thos. Reed says did happen:]
1953: Beria apparently murdered Stalin, at his /dacha/ not the Kremlin.
Took 3 days to die, Beria kept doctors away. Weapon: rat poison (warfarin).
Knowing of Stalin's dissatisfaction with his management of the Soviet
H-bomb program, Beria stuck first.
[according to Rhodes and also Holloway, Khrushchev and new Politburo didn't
even *know* about Soviet H-bomb program until after executing Beria in
1953, shocked to learn such huge thing existed beyond their purview.]
[curiously enough, warfarin is a chemical relative of the active ingredient
in that grass-flavored flavored vodka /zubrovka/ which we tried to import
years ago. East European buffalo grass, /hierochloe odorata/ has a
naturally occurring anticoagulant, coumarin aka coumadin, which is the
chemical which gives zubrovka its distinctive taste. I wonder if this was
Old Mustache's final drink, served to mask the taste of the real poison,
also an anticoagulant.]

1960: President Eisenhower was underrated by contemporaries, greater
appreciation emerging due to modern scholarship. Eisenhower authorized
numerous overflights of USSR by U-2s. When Francis Gary Powers was shot
down, thick barrage of SAMs also nailed two Soviet MiG-21s who were
trailing Powers at a distance. One former officer said to me, 'That's life
in the Soviet Army - you're expendable'. Eisenhower's valedictory counsel
about the 'military-industrial complex' was not anti-Business /per se/, but
advice that robust American economy would be more effective against
Communism long-term than simply military power, therefore tax economy no
more than necessary.

1962: During Cuban Missile Crisis, 98 nukes were on the ground in Cuba.
Gravity bombs for IL-28 bombers, warheads for antiship missiles, torps,
etc. Due to long communication line, Khrushchev preauthorized weapons
release by General Pliyev in Cuba. Kennedys made back-channel deal, averted
disaster, both sides removed nukes, US gave Fidel lifetime free pass.

1964: Navy pilot James Stockdale overflew two American destroyers which
reported attackers in Gulf of Tonkin, saw nothing, knew that Tonkin
Incident never happened, reported same to NMCC, but McNamara pushed issue
on Capitol Hill anyway next day. Stockdale kept secret from NVA
interrogators during 8 years as POW. Vietnam War was a huge disaster,
tremendously destructive of U.S. airpower. Comparison: Desert Storm (1991)
~12 a/c lost. Korean War (1950-53) ~130 a/c lost. Vietnam (1963-75) 2255
USAF a/c lost + about same for Navy + about same number of helos for US
Army. Young officers invented laser- and TV-guided bombs in frustration,
same officers grew up and are running things today with emphasis on PGMs.
Iraq War II as different from I as Desert Storm different from Vietnam or
WWII.

1982: US did plant early "Trojan horses" in computer chips designed to
sabotage Soviet industry. Realized they were screwed when agent confessed
in 1986(?), economy was thorughly infiltrated with compromised hardware.

1983: Ronald Reagan ignored Nancy's views and conventional wisdom on
/detente/. Closing down 'Evil Empire' was RR's first goal as president,
articulated before GOP Convention even. No president had a *plan* for
ending the Cold War until Reagan; most concentrated on not letting it get
out of control. Ex-presidents told author, 'I believed in containment' 'I
never knew how it would end'. RR's War Plan:
1. economic - no grain. machinery sales on credit, frustrate nat.gas sales
to Eur, blow up pipeline with bad chips is that didn't work
2. push mil/tech envelope past where Sovs could compete; SDI part of that
3. political - nonviolent but covert CIA activities, e.g. heading off
Castroization in Surinam
4. diplomatic - support to Afghans, make it painful for Sovs
5. information war - corrupted chips & software, feed sabotage to Sov
spies, Voice of America
RR's definition of war aims was to 'force the Soviets to seek the consent
of the governed'

1991: Soviet army officers decided "'we trust the Americans' [more than]
'those nuts' [coup plotters from the CPSU]" "the Soviet General Staff
disabled the /chegad/ [sp? probably acronym] nuclear briefcases assigned to
all the contending members of the Politburo"

[other comments]
"Soviets paid a terrible price for their nuclear complex. Careless,
ignorant, or too much rush led to huge accidents we never heard about.
Explosion at Mayak facility [equivalent of Hanford production reactors in
US] in the fall of 1957 was like 10 *thousand* Chernobyls, released 70-80
tons of radioactive garbage. Soves built tens of thousands of weapons but
weapon security and accounting is pretty decent. However, fissile material
security is terrible, and there's a huge amount of it"
[1500 tonnes of HEU, 400+ tonnes of Pu-239 according to /Bulletin of Atomic
Scientists/ this month]
"Soviet production just kept cranking the stuff out beyond rational need,
rhyme or reason. Shipped it all over the place. Very bad records and
accounting."
"USA totally screwed up the post-Cold War situation in Russia, blew a major
opportunity to become friends. We spent the peace dividend on a huge party
during the 90s, we just told the Russians 'too bad', just like ignoring the
world during the Roaring 20s after WWI. Now things are chilly again. People
I talked to just a couple years ago don't return calls anymore, or email.
Mayak fissile material storage facility was designed by American engineers
[who were in the audience]. They were once offered diplomatic passports by
Russians, now not even allowed onsite."
[I took this opportunity to mention that things ain't so easy on the
historical/scholarship front either anymore.]

Questions & Answers
-------------------
Q1. Do you believe Peter Schweizer's thesis in /Victory/? Was collusion
with Saudis to crash Soviet economy by flooding market with cheap crude a
major part of RR's/Casey's strategy?
A1. Yes, but Schweizer didn't have the information I had. Soviet economy
floated on huge pile of natural resources/commodities which was their
weakness. Schweizer did a great job with what he did have. Schweizer's book
[1994] was the inspiration for my own.

Q2. Was reason Soviet military didn't support August 1991 coup because they
realized after Desert Storm that they couldn't even defend /rodina/ with
existing doctrine?
A2. Yes, but opinion split according to age. Captains/majors paid right
kind of attention to Desert Storm, colonel and above didn't.
[This accords with ground truth about profound generation gap]

Q3. Which DOMINIC shots did you work on?
A3. Can't remember.

Q4. Did you hear the legend about the Politburo meeting the day after RR's
'Star Wars' speech? (Top scientists said to Politburo, 'it's physically
impossibly, we can prove it -- however, if anyone can do it, the damned
Americans can, therefore we must too')
A4. Heard the same thing, but don't have a citation either.

Q5. Is preemptive war OK doctrine?
A5. Generally, no, it's a bad idea. But nuclear weapons are in a special
class. Incipient proliferators ought to be hit. US had a plan to hit DPRK
in '94, but my friend Bill Perry [former SecDef] says, 'they can shoot
whenever they want to'; premptive strike would cause artillery barrage of
Seoul, 100K casualties, probably too late for preemption now. We should
have done it in Korea [in '94]. China *must* step in now, explain facts of
life to DPRK.
Saddam had a bomb program in 1991, wanted one bad. Taking him out was a
good thing. Islamist think we [West] have no place living in their ideal
world. Israelis took out Osirak reactor, they don't dither as much as we do.
[Later in offline conversation:]
Enriched uranium is more dangerous than plute, don't know if US has the
stones to preempt when that /casus belli/ exists.[my words]

Q6. Is US planning to split world and run it with China? [not my question]
[the old Co-Dominium theory, once popular in sci-fi]
A6. China is a up and coming gret power. China was a terrible proliferator
but China must realize proliferation in their neighborhood is the last
thing they want. China pretty much delivered complete copy of fourth
Chinese test device ("Chi-fer" sp?) to Pakistan as template for Pak nukes.
DPRK nukes mean South Korean nukes which mean Japanese nukes which mean
Taiwanese nukes and so on. A nightmare.

[Other people asked other questions, but frankly, I didn't write them down.
Sorry.]


--
Robert Kennedy, PE
http://www.ultimax.com