Date

Feb 24, 1972

Description

The JCS message that went mistakenly to Secretary Laird was a request that the commander-in-chief of the Pacific Command review the instructions to the DSTP. The message described the target categories assigned to the "China nuclear package," which had two variants: one to minimize the Chinese nuclear threat to U.S. forces and allies in East Asia; the other to destroy a Chinese ICBM threat to the United States. Each of the variants had Designated Ground Zeroes of different scope: 160 for the option to minimize the Chinese nuclear threat to U.S. allies and U.S. forces in the region, while 12 (possibly a typo for 120) DGZs would be required to destroy ICBM capabilities. The general objective was to "negate any immediate Communist Chinese nuclear threat to the United States and preclude the PRC from emerging as the dominant nuclear power following a nuclear exchange between the USA and the USSR." The circumstances in which the U.S. would launch such attacks was not discussed.

According to one of Moorer's assistants, Admiral Swartzauber, the JCS message "displeased" Secretary of Defense Laird. It was not only the timing (President Nixon was in Beijing) that irritated Laird but the fact that a major policy message on U.S. nuclear war planning had been sent while a special panel on nuclear targeting policy, chaired by Assistant Secretary of Defense John S. Foster (and of which Moorer was a member), was beginning its deliberations. According to Laird, "I believe we should hold in abeyance consideration of any target/SIOP changes 1ike those addressed in the message, at least until the policy review and guidance panel I appointed ... had an opportunity to make its initial report to me."

By setting up a special panel on nuclear targeting, Laird was responding to White House concerns about the immense destructiveness of the nuclear strikes included in the SIOP. Briefings on war plans and the huge casualty levels that they would cause had made Nixon, like other presidents, alarmed and uneasy. He also saw a credibility problem; in a crisis and confrontation, U.S, adversaries, nuclear or otherwise, would not find it believable that the U.S. would actually launch attacks that could destroy the world. The SIOP would have to be modified with small attack options to make it more suitable for crisis management. The damage that a few nuclear weapons would cause would still be terrible, but some nuclear policy experts believed that threatening to launch smaller attacks might be more believable. It was in that context that Laird gave the Foster panel its marching orders.

Source

National Archives, Record Group 218, Records of Joint Chiefs of Staff, Chairman's Files, Thomas A. Moorer, box 48, SIOP, mandatory declassification review request

Document published in following posting(s):

Nuclear War Planning and the Challenge of Civilian Oversight

Jan 22, 2020

[Sayre A.] Swartzrauber to JCS Chairman et al., "Single Integrated Operational Plan," 25 February 1972, Top Secret, enclosing memorandum from Secretary of Defense Laird to JCS Chairman on same topic, 25 February 1972, and JCS message 3440, same topic, 24 February 1972, Top Secret