114. Memorandum From the President’s Special Assistant for National Security Affairs (Bundy) to President Kennedy0
SUBJECT
- Atmospheric Testing
Attached is a really powerful paper1 arguing for a last effort to avoid atmospheric testing, by announcement that we will not test in the air unless and until the Soviets do it again. This is the best statement of the case I have seen, and it satisfies a feeling I have had for some time that you have a right to hear a better argument against testing now than you have yet heard from advisers nearly all of whom personally favor testing.
I believe that if you personally care enough, and want to make the argument strongly enough, you can carry a decision against atmospheric testing with the Congress and the country. I also believe it is safe. The missile/anti-missile balance is the only serious area of possible danger, and we can be confident that Soviets are not decisively ahead here on what they have done so far. I know no one who believes they can deploy an effective AICBM system without further tests and long lead time of construction. If I myself, on balance, prefer to test, it is because I think the net military advantage is real, and the political balance a very even one. But this case for the other view deserves your close attention. Especially you should weigh the consequences of unlimited testing on both sides, through time.
An alternative to the course in the memo would be to keep our April 1 deadline and simply renew—perhaps first privately and earnestly—the Kennedy-Macmillan offer of September, with a sixty-day time limit. This would put quite a lot of heat on Khrushchev, and if he is prepared to come along at all, it would offer him the carrot of preventing some tests of ours which otherwise will surely happen.
[Page 287]The Soviet answer to either of these proposals will probably be, at first anyway, to demand also a moratorium on underground tests. We cannot accept such a moratorium, as I think nearly everyone agrees. We need underground tests to maintain the readiness and morale of our nuclear laboratories and to avoid falling behind decisively in the case of new Soviet secret preparations and massive tests. But I now believe that underground testing would be enough to keep our labs alive, and I think this point was seriously neglected in our Bermuda talks.
If you like either of these proposals enough to want to go further with them, I believe we should schedule a prompt small meeting for extended discussion. I would limit such a meeting to yourself, Vice President, Rusk, McNamara, McCone, Seaborg, Brown, and me. I regret to say that every one of these men, except yourself, favors atmospheric testing. But a decision to go the other way, if you take it, should be yours alone—not yours with support from politically vulnerable disbelievers like Wiesner, Sorensen, and the author of the attached memo. I believe that every one of these men, except perhaps John McCone, will do his best to support and defend whatever decision you do take—and even John would try—though he’s deeply committed the other way.
- Source: Kennedy Library, National Security Files, Subjects Series, Nuclear Weapons Tests, 12/21/61-1/8/62. Secret. A handwritten note reads: “President saw.” In a covering note to Clifton, not found attached, Bundy stated that this memorandum and Schlesinger’s memorandum (Document 113) needed to be “called to the President’s attention for careful consideration.” The President had “several times indicated to me his desire to have the other side of the atmospheric case sharply stated,” as Schlesinger’s memorandum did. “Since it will be very important, if the President should ever take this course, not to have the author of this memo blamed for it, I am emphasizing the quality of the argument and not the name of the creator.” (Kennedy Library, National Security Files, Subjects Series, Nuclear Weapons Tests, 12/12/61-1/8/62)↩
- Reference is to Document 113, not found attached.↩