The Bomb: Presidents, Generals, and the Secret History of Nuclear War

by Fred Kaplan

LeMay had a case, but by early 1960 General White concluded that a unified command was a pipe dream: the admirals and the Army generals were implacably opposed, and for good reason. So White devised what he described in private memos as a “fallback position.” He proposed the creation of a new organization called the Joint Strategic Target Planning Staff. It would consist of officers, from all the services, who would combine their individual nuclear war plans—their lists of what weapons would be fired at what targets—into a Single Integrated Operational Plan. Sitting on top of all these creations—which soon became known by their acronyms, the JSTPS and the SIOP—would be the Director of Strategic Targeting. The catch was that the JSTPS would be located inside SAC headquarters, and the Director of Strategic Targeting would be the same four-star Air Force general who served as SAC commander. In short, the SIOP would be a multiservice war plan, but SAC would plan the war.