ARMED FORCES JOURNAL ARTICLE RE SOVIET BUILDUP IN PERSIAN GULF

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90B01390R000400540048-5
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 10
• Document Creation Date: December 23, 2016
• Document Release Date: June 9, 2011
• Sequence Number: 48
• Publication Date: September 4, 1986
• Content Type: MEMO

STAT
STAT
STAT
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/06/09: CIA-RDP90BO139OR000400540048-5
Iq
Next 1 Page(s) In Document Denied
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/06/09: CIA-RDP90BO139OR000400540048-5
 Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/06/09: CIA-RDP90BO139OR000400540048-5
Was the US Ready
to Resort to Nuclear Weapons
for the Persian Gulf in 1980?
by Benjamin F. Schemmer
I t wasn't quite Jimmy Carter's Cuban
Missile Crisis, but six years ago the
United States seriously considered
usin nuclear weapons to protect free world
oil coming from the Persian Gulf.
It may seem mconceivaaTe today when
the world is in turmoil over a glut of oil. but
American war planners then soberly
debated the first use of tactical nuclear
weapQns to stem what looked like an immi-
nent Soviet invasion of Iran to seize Persian
Gulf oil fields and ports. ccor tng to min-
utes of a meeting which then Defense Sec-
retary Harold Brown held with his senior
war planners in the middle of August 1980,
the Joint Chiefs of Staff told Brown that the
US had "no other" military option to pre-
vent the Soviets from seizing those
lucrative targets and said the US would
have to resort to the first use of tactical
nuclear weapons if Brown and the President
considered oil flow from the region "vital"
to US interests.
Brown spent much of the meet-
ing objecting to the use of the
word "vital" to characterize
American interests in the region.
But seven months earlier, Presi-
dent Jimmy Carter had, in fact,
proclaimed those interests
"vital." In his State of the Union
address on January 23rd, Carter
proclaimed:
Let our position he abso-
lutely clear: An attempt by any
outside force to gain control of
the Persian Gulf region will be
regarded as an assault on the
vital interests of the United
States of America, and such an
assault will be repelled by any
means neressan_ including
military force. (Emphasis
added.)
(Carter later noted in his Presi-
dential memoirs: "This statement
was not lightly made, and I was
resolved to use the full power of
the United States to back it up. ")I
US intelligence officials were
split almost fifty-fifty on their
assessments of Soviet intentions
at the time, but most agreed that
Russia suddenly had the
capability imminently to choke
off the flow of the free world's
energy supply.
In the preceding weeks, Soviet
units in the Transcaucasia region cast of
Turkey and north of Iran, between the Cas-
pian and Black Seas, had been secretly
brought to such a high
level of war footing
that they could move
into Iran with over-
whelming force
within days. Brown's
military advisers told
him that i/the Soviets
moved south, they
could probably over-
run Iran's oil fields and
seize the northern
banks of the Strait of Hormuz--through
which 70% of Europe's, 77% of Japan's.
and 32`%r of US oil was moving at the
time- within 10 days to two weeks, and
perhaps within a week if Soviet airborne
units were used.
'T'hroughout a long and-the minutes
make clear-agonizing meeting on or
before August 19th with the Joint Chiefs of
Staff and their key war planners (officers at
the three-star level known as the "Ops
Deps," or Service Deputy Chiefs of Staff
for Operations and Plans), Brown repeat-
edly challenged the use of the word "vital"
to describe American
security interests in
the Persian Gulf.
"There has to be a bet-
ter word," he told his
military advisers time
and again. But they. in
turn, stressed that if
Brown and Cap ler con-
sidered it "vital" to
Brown protect the free world
energy supplies that
were so close to being threatened. America
had "no other option" than to use nuclear
weapons.
The meeting ended inconclusively, and
the crisis did not abate until almost a month
Brown repeatedly challenged the use of the
word "vital" to describe American
security interests in the Persian Gulf.
"There has to be a better word,"
he told his military advisers time and again.
later when, for reasons still not
evident, Soviet units stood down
in mid-September from their
unprecedented war footing.
The crisis was serious enough,
however, that, Carter later re-
vealed, he sent Warren Christo-
pher. his Deputy Secretary of State,
to Europe on or about September
12th to advise NATO allies of the
Soviet buildup and "consult with
them on how best to coordinate our
warnings to the Soviet leaders to
stay out of Iran. "3
The United States has never
renounced the first use of tactical
nuclear weapons, in large part
because such a policy might
invite a massive Warsaw Pact
invasion of Western Europe with
overwhelming conventional
forces which NATO's con-
ventional forces alone might he
unable to stem.
Clear but "Ambiguous"
Indicators
In the preceding month, US
intelligence sources had reported
an ominous, meticulously
orchestrated series of Russian
moves to ready forces north of
Iran for what many concluded
would he a lightning thrust to the
92 Armed Forces JOURNAL International/September 1986
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/06/09: CIA-RDP90BO139OR000400540048-5
 Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/06/09: CIA-RDP90B01390R000400540048-5
south. Specifically, these sources reported:
? Virtually all 28 Soviet divisions in the
region, which had always been in a rela-
tively low state of combat readiness, had
been reinforced and fleshed out with equip-
ment and trained personnel to the point that
some were in as high a state of readiness as
elite Soviet forces stationed in East Ger-
many.
? Their radio frequencies-and, in some
cases that American electronic intercept
resources were able to verify, their codes-
had been changed to types the intelligence
community believed reserved only for
imminent hostilities.
? Electronic silence was suddenly imposed
for some key units, thus making it impossi-
ble to fathom Soviet intentions and far more
difficult to track the movement of Russian
forces.
? Many units had moved out of their gar-
rison into the field, such that forces in the
region appeared geared in an order of battle
poised for an attack south.
? A Soviet airborne division in Eastern
Europe had apparently been placed on alert,
while the two airborne divisions normally
stationed in the region were in an unusually
high state of readiness.
? Some units had been moved from other
areas of operations to where they could
spearhead or quickly reinforce an attack
into Iran. These included some Soviet
Spetsnaz (special forces) units normally
controlled by the main intelligence direc-
torate of the Soviet General Staff and
trained to operate far behind enemy lines
for extended periods. No such repositioning
of some of the units had ever been observed
before.
? Soviet tactical fighter-bomber forces in
the region had been reinforced and brought
to a much higher state of readiness than
normal, with additional pilots and mainte-
nance personnel ready to operate them,
while highly unusual stocks of bombs and
ammunition were moved into the area and
fuel stocks raised to hitherto unseen levels.
All of these steps, as best US intelligence
sources could tell, had been taken within a
matter of a few weeks-and with a secrecy
achieved by massive cover and deception
measures unprecedented since the 1968
invasion of Czechoslovakia.
Under a part of the 1975
Helsinki Accords, in a document
on "confidence-building mea-
sures," Russia and the NATO
countries are required to give each
other prior notification "of major
maneuvers exceeding a total of
25,000 troops," including "the
types and numerical strength of
the forces engaged [and] the area
and estipn " time frame of
[their] co ."T]tee signatories
agreed also to W,ft one another
on a ~ aqd: ateral basis
to sepal
to attend mill
0,11.1
tary n141"W& In 1976, the
Sovietsge exercise in
Tram Kavkaz '76;
they notified the West of it in advance and
invited observers from Bulgaria, Greece,
Romania, and Yugoslavia. It was a major
exercise, one of the first times the Soviets
tested an operational maneuver group, a
new combined arms formation designed for
independent, rapid strikes deep into an
enemy's rear area. The exercise was later
discussed in open Soviet literature. In 1978,
another Kavkaz exercise was announced in
advance.
There had been no such advance notice of
the 1980 Soviet "exercise" underway north
of Iran. Nor, as best AFJ can determine, has
it ever been mentioned in open Soviet writ-
ings, although it is common Russian prac-
tice to debate openly the "lessons learned"
once their maneuvers are over.
Three members of the 1980 Joint Chiefs
of Staff told AFJ in 1986 that they could not
recall any units being alerted for deploy-
ment or ordered into higher readiness
because of the Soviet buildup. But in late
August that year, one US general officer
sent to selected military commanders a
most highly classified "back channel" mes-
sage advising them, in an almost exact
paraphrase, "I believe a major war is immi-
nent. "
The most ambiguous intelligence of
Soviet intentions, according to Air Force
General David C. Jones, who was Chair-
man of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the time,
was that "not much" of the Soviet transport
aircraft fleet had been repositioned to
Transcaucasia.
"We watched that very carefully," Jones
told AFJ years after the event.
Thus, some intelligence analysts felt, a
major airborne assault and resupply of
ground invasion forces was neither feasible
nor imminent without further preparations
that would be detected in enough time to
provide more clear-cut indications of Rus-
sia's real intentions. Some US military
planners argued, however, that the airlift
needed for an airborne assault on the Strait
of Hormuz could be repositioned within
hours, under cover of darkness, or in one of
those short time spans when US satellites
might not be in position to detect the air-
craft's redeployment.
(Because of satellite failures, the US had
been caught by near-total surprise when the
Soviets invaded Afghanistan the preceding
December, and the US later proved ill-
equipped initially to monitor the Iran-Iraq
war that broke out on September 21st of
1980. The swiftness with which Russia can
mobilize its airlift had also surprised US
intelligence experts the preceding
December, when Afghanistan was invaded,
as it had in the August 1968 invasion of
Czechoslovakia, when Soviet units in the
western USSR were moved into Prague
almost overnight. Since much of Russia's
Aeroflot civil airline fleet is available for
military use, it is difficult to predict how
quickly Soviet airborne units can be put
into combat.)
The sudden buildup and near war footing
of Soviet forces north of Iran might have
gone unobserved until after the fact, had the
Soviets not invaded Afghanistan only seven
and a half months before, thus keying
American intelligence collection assets-
satellites and National Security Agency lis-
tening posts-to focus intensively on the
area at a time when it was also feared that
Russia might really be
using the Afghanistan
buildup as a base for
an attack into Iran
from the Turkestan
military district east of
the Caspian Sea and
then to the Strait of
Hormuz from the
northeast. That invas-
ion route would have
involved moving and
supporting Soviet forces over a distance of
roughly 750 air miles, compared to the
much longer route---over 1,000 miles-
had the Soviets moved south from Trans-
caucasia. Moscow was obviously aware that
the US was carefully monitoring its military
deployments and operations in Turkestan to
support the Afghanistan invasion, and
Soviet leaders may have assumed that a
buildup in and invasion from Trans-
caucasia, much farther west, could be
mounted with both strategic and tactical
surprise.
Combat-Ready Soviet Forces
Those forces-28 divisions and roughly
350 fighter-bomber aircraft in
what Russia calls its Southern
Theater of Military Operations
and located in the Turkestan,
Trans Caucasus, and North Cau-
casus military districts-had
always been among the least
ready of all Soviet divisions.
Category I units are ready for
war within days' notice, a week at
most; it takes about 30 days to
bring a Category II unit to Cate-
gory I status and as much as three
months to ready Category III
units for war.4
Historically, only about 15% of
them were so-called Category I
units, meaning they were "com-
Armed F(* L International/September 1986 93
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/06/09: CIA-RDP90B01390R000400540048-5
 Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/06/09: CIA-RDP90BO139OR000400540048-5
The Joint Chiefs and Their "Ops Deps"
THE JOINT CHIEFS OF STAFF during the 1980 Persian Gulf "incident" were
(seated from left to right): Army Chief of Staff General E.C. "Shy "Meyer; the
Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Thomas B. Hayward; the JCS Chairman, Air
Force General David C. Jones; General Lew Allen, Jr., Air Force Chief of Staff;
and General Robert H. Barrow, Commandant of the Marine Corps.
Behind them are their so-called "operations deputies," also from left to right:
then Lt. Gen. Glen K. Otis, Army Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations and Plans,
now a four-star general and Commander-in-Chief, US Army Europe; V. Adm.
S.R. Foley, Jr., the Deputy Chief of Naval Operations for Plans, Policy, and
Operations, later promoted to four stars as Commander-in-Chief, Pacific Fleet,
now retired and head of the Department of Energy's work on nuclear programs;
V. Adm. Fuller "Thor" Hanson, Director of the Joint Staff, and now retired; then
Air Force Lt. Gen. Charles A. Gabriel (who had left his post as USAF Deputy
Chief of Staff for Operations, Plans, and Readiness just before the August flap
unfolded to become a four-star general and Commander-in-Chief of US Air Forces
Europe, and who retired this summer after becoming Air Force Chief of Staff);
and Lt. Gen. Adolph G. Schwenk, the Marine Corps' Deputy Chief of Staff for
Plans and Programs, now retired. Shortly after this photo was taken, then Lt.
Gen. Jerome F. O'Malley replaced Gabriel as the Air Force "Ops Dep," later
becoming a four-star general and Commander of Tactical Air Command. O'Mal-
ley was killed in a 1984 plane crash.
bat ready" and manned close to their war-
time strength by recently trained personnel.
Usually another 15% were in a Category 11
status, fully equipped but manned at only
half to 75% of wartime strength. Close to
70% had always been Category III units,
those maintained at only cadre strength
with less than 50% of the personnel needed
to go to war. (In contrast, all Soviet divi-
sions in Eastern Europe are Category I
units, while about half of the divisions in
the Far Eastern military district historically
have been maintained at cadre strength. )5
In late August of 1980, over half of the
Soviet forces north of Iran had been brought
up to a Category I status and most of the
others to Category II, including four or five
divisions in Turkestan that were not
involved in the fighting in Afghanistan.
Combined, those forces entailed about
3,400 tanks, 370 combat aircraft, 350 heli-
copters, close to 4,000 artillery pieces, and
roughly 8,000 armored personnel carriers
or infantry fighting vehicles.' The 28 divi-
sions were deployed about as shown in the
table here. Opposite them, the US had
nothing. The first US forces that could inter-
vene were 7,000 miles away. (Theoretically.
the US could have airlifted a brigade from
Europe, but that would have saved little
time while greatly complicating an already
difficult problem with highly complex
political overtones.)
US Short of Options
Early in 1980, Brown himself had issued
it secret Consolidated Guidance document
which illustrated how poorly US forces
were positioned to intervene in the very
kind of Persian Gulf contingency that faced
him in August and September. (The chart
below reproduces those estimates.)
Even after the Carter Administration's
proposed buildup by 1982 of a "rapidly
deployable" Indian Ocean task force whose
equipment would be prepositioned on float-
ing warehouses, US forces trying to inter-
vene in the Persian Gulf would be
outnumbered 6-to-1 a week after mobiliza-
tion, 10-to-I two weeks after mobilization,
and 14-to- I at the end of 30 days. And in
August of 1980, that buildup was still
largely a paper plan. (Formation of a new
Rapid Deployment Joint Task Force had
been announced in 1979, but then Lt. Gen.
Paul X. Kelley of the Marine Corps had not
been named as its Commander until Febru-
ary of 1980 and his headquarters had been
established only in March of 1980.)
Persian Gulf Force Ratios
1982
Thus, it is little wonder his war planners
told Brown in -August of 1980 that, if the
Soviets moved south, the US had no re-
course but to use nuclear weapons to pre-
vent Russia's seizing the West's supply of
vital Persian Gulf oil.
Notwithstanding his repeated objections
to the term "vital" during deliberations
with his war planners, the characterization
was certainly not new to Brown. In his
Fiscal Year 1980 Annual Report, presented
early in 1979, Brown had said: "We are not,
and do not wish to be, superior to the Soviet
Union in the Caspian Sea or Lake
Baikal. . . . [But, I
we and our Allies
need to be Number
One in our ability to
halt any attack on
Western Europe or
other vital areas."
Soviet Forces Poised North of Iran in
Mid-1980
Trans North
Caucasus Caucasus Tlukestan
Motorized Rifle
11
5
Artillery
1
1
Tank
1
1
Airborne
1
-
(Emphasis added.)
Moreover, Brown had
warned then, the
"three greatest dan-
gers to Western
Europe lie else-
7 28 where," and the third
one, he cautioned, " is
96 Hrrnen rnr,Q rnuors~ ~nmrn~Hnn&I rn ember 1986
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/06/09: CIA-RDP90B01390R000400540048-5
 Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/06/09: CIA-RDP90BO139OR000400540048-5
Moreau Gray
THE KEY WAR PLANNERS were Air
Force Maj. Gen. John T. Chain, Jr., now
a four-star general and Commander-in-
Chief of Strategic Air Command; Army
Maj. Gen. Robert L. Schweitzer, who
retired recently as a three-star officer
heading the Inter-American Defense
Board; R.Adm. Arthur S. Moreau, Jr.,
now a four-star admiral and Com-
mander-in-Chief, Allied Forces South-
ern Europe, and Commander-in-Chief,
US Naval Forces Europe; and Marine
Corps Maj. Gen. D'Wayne Gray, now a
three-star commanding Fleet Marine
Forces in the Pacific.
the vulnerability of Western Europe's oil
supply, some 60% of which moves by sea
from the Persian Gulf. "7
Only eight months before the mid-1980
Soviet buildup, Brown in his FY81 Annual
Report had voiced even stronger concern
about that vulnerability: "The two biggest
dangers [to non-Soviet Europe] originate
outside Europe.... The first danger
comes from the heavy European depen-
dence on OPEC oil, and the possibility that
its supply could be disrupted. "8 (Emphasis
added.) Brown emphasized his concern
with a full-page map, reproduced here,
showing the West's dependence on that oil.
Moreover, he noted, "The Soviets are mov-
ing closer to the capability to operate simul-
taneously on several widely separated
fronts . . . a considerable departure from
their previous capability."
Not Enough Airlift
And, Brown added prophetically, "I am
not satisfied that we have acquired enough
strategic mobility to move the forces and
their support elements into the two theaters
with the necessary dispatch. Nor is it clear
that we have all the options necessary for
graduated or rapid and complete mobiliza-
tion. "9
The Gulf is 7,(X)) air miles from the East
Coast of the United States, a trip which
takes 15 hours in a nonstop, aerially
refueled flight by the Air Force's giant C-5
or smaller C-141 cargo transports. As just
one indication of the almost insurmounta-
ble problems facing US war planners in
mid-1980, it would have required 2.450
C-141 sorties to fly just the ammunition
from the East Coast to the Persian Gulf
needed to sustain a Marine division (about
12,500 men) for 30 days of combat. The US
unit's combat aviation support elements.
The first such ship became operational this
summer, in 1986.)10
Ironically, just as the 1980 Soviet buildup
became apparent, Brown's analysts and the
JCS staff were nearing completion of a
landmark study of US airlift and sealift
needs to counter a Soviet invasion of Iran
(as well as for other scenarios, such as a war
in Europe and various combinations of
simultaneous major and minor contingen-
cies). Called the
Congressionally
Mandated Mobilty
Study it concluded
that the US needed
to be able to move
by air 102-million
ton miles of cargo a
day within the first
15 days of a Soviet
invasion of Iran.
At the time, the US
could move only
about 35-million
ton miles per day
(and that only after
mobilizing the Civil
Reserve Air Fleet-
commercial air-
liners earmarked for
military use in a
national emergency,
which accounted for
over half the US'
total airlift capac-
ity).
As Brown had
Worldwide Oil Flow-1979
YFMCMIA ~,y
.Uw.,p. ter
pWI.
"FR
1. The total net imports shown and the difference between pro-
duction and consumption are not identical owing to spot
market purchases and small flows omitted for the sake of
simplicity.
2. The Latin American figures for production /consumption and
net oil now include the considerable amount of Middle East
crude that Is imported, refined, and then reexported by Latin
American nations,
South America
17
Middle East
32
North Africa
16
West Africa
12
Indonesia
7
Spot or Other
16
Percent of Oil
Consumption Imported
48
Importer (Percent of Imports)
United States Western Europe Japan
has since prepositioned such ammuni-
tion--and the combat equipment for three
Marine brigades--on ships anchored at
Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, 2,300
miles from the Strait of Hormuz.
But the US had only 304 operable C-5s
and C-141 s in mid-1980, and it takes 249
airlift sorties to move just the "fly-in " eche-
lon of one brigade of that force--Marines
carrying just their individual weapons-to
the Gulf, where it would take them five days
to marry up with their equipment in a non-
hostile, secure locale and be combat ready.
(Even then, the schedule presupposes that
an "aviation logistics support ship" is on
station within 10 days of the order to deploy,
otherwise an additional 160 sorties would
he needed to move maintenance gear for the
told Congress the
preceding January,
although in a some-
what more positive
vein, that was just
2 enough airlift for a
suicidal
w
f
h
s
o
o
70 77
11 - force in the Persian
6 - Gulf. As Brown had
- 13 put it:
11 10 We can al-
ready airlift a
87 100 unit of brigade
size to a remote
area quite quick-
ly. But it would
have to be lightly armed. To move a
mechanized or an armored brigade an
equivalent distance would tie up most of
our airlift capabilty for a considerable
time, even assuming enroute basing and
overflight rights were available. 12
"To accelerate this kind of movement,"
Brown said, "in Fiscal Year 1981 we will
fund the first two of 14 Maritime Preposi-
tioning Ships to be acquired over the next
five years, as well as the equipment for three
Marine brigades to be placed aboard these
ships in dehumidified storage." But FY81
would not begin until October 1st of 1980,
and in August of 1980 it was evident, as
Brown had testified in January, that the
Ayatollah Khomeini's "regime appears
incapable of dealing [even] with the mili-
Armed Forces JOURNAL Internatienal/*Ante ber 1986
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/06/09: CIA-RDP90BO139OR000400540048-5
 Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/06/09: CIA-RDP90BO139OR000400540048-5
tints who have held Americans hostage for
nearly three months"-much less the pros-
pect of a Soviet invasion now looming on
Iran's northern horizon.
(Brown himself estimated later, in 1983,
that it would take "two or three divisions
and four or five air wings" to "slow a major
Soviet attack" intended for "a quick mili-
tary grab for the Persian Gulf ") 13
The disparity starkly evident between US
and Soviet forces ready to intervene in the
Persian Gulf must have had a chilling effect
on Brown and his war planners in mid-1980
as they discussed the score of Soviet divi-
sions suddenly, credibly, and apparently
poised for attack into Iran.
A Well-Kept Secret?
Back-Channel Warnings?
It is not known whether a Russian thrust
into Iran was aborted because the US made
known to Soviet leaders, through direct or
back-channel diplomatic means, that
America might or would resort to the use of
nuclear weapons to protect vital US inter-
ests in the Persian Gulf.
Although the US State Department pub-
lishes periodic protests of maneuvers the
Soviets hold but which they have not noti-
fied Helsinki signatories of in advance, AFJ
can find no public record of any such pro-
test in the case of the 1980 Soviet exercises
north of Iran.
The Soviet buildup was so closely held
that key Members of Congress apparently
were not told of it. Yet, one major general
told AFJ, referring to the deliberations
about using nuclear weapons, "Never
before, to my knowledge, did so many plan-
ners look at that so seriously and so soberly
with the full understanding of what was at
risk."
Shown an early draft of this article, JCS
Chairman Jones emphasized, "We weren't
'close' [to using tac rues]; we didn't rec-
ommend an action; we talked about
'options' and what might happen and what
might be necessary. . . . The Joint Chiefs
of Staff did not 'recommend' the imminent
use of tactical nuclear weapons."
Jones told AFJ the Chiefs discussed
options of both "horizontal" and "vertical"
escalation with Brown, "but we never fig-
ured out where to hit them elsewhere."
Horizontal escalation was a strategy in
vogue at the time to respond to Soviet
adventurism in one part of the world by
acting in another where they might be more
vulnerable. It had been discussed with
some prominence and wishful thinking in
some of Brown's annual Consolidated
Guidance papers (and early in the Reagan
Administration's renamed Defense Guid-
ance documents), but it was eventually dis-
carded as a meaningful strategic option. Its
appeal evaporated after the JCS concluded
that there were not many places where the
Soviets had vulnerabilities that could be
exploited without risking still more serious
vertical escalation or, more importantly,
turning a regional conflict into a world war.
Moreover, many planners believed horizon-
tal escalation was a more attractive option
for the Soviets, who had 180 active and
reserve divisions at the time, than it was for
the US, which had 28 divisions. 14 Most US
divisions were "nailed down" in Europe or
the Far East, while almost all of the divi-
sions remaining in the continental US were
formally "committed" to NATO reinforce-
ment. As one analyst would put it later.
"Guess who has the most forces in uncom-
mitted reserve to play horizontal escala-
tion?" 15
The mid-1980 crisis is not hinted at in
anything Harold Brown has said publicly or
written since leaving office early in 1981.
But in his 1982 Presidential memoirs.
Keeping Faith, Carter digresses from a
long, anguished discussion of negotiations
It is not known whether
a Russian thrust into Iran
was aborted because
the US made known
to Soviet leaders,
through direct or back-
channel diplomatic means,
that America might or would
resort to the
use of nuclear weapons.
over the Iranian hostage crisis in September
of 1980 to note:
At this time,
there was a Soviet
military buildup
along the Iranian
border, and we
needed to acquaint
our European allies
with the informa-
tion we had. [Un-
der Secretary of
State Warren]
Christopher went
to Europe, as far as other officials in the
Pentagon and State Department knew,
for the sole purpose of sharing this evi-
dence with the heads of state of Great
Britain, France, and Germany, and con-
sulting with them on how best to coordi-
nate our warnings to the Soviet leaders
to stay out of Iran. 16
(Christopher was sent to Europe prin-
cipally to meet with an Iranian intermediary
in Germany who, it turned out, was mate-
rially helpful in finally resolving the hos-
tage crisis.)
Carter says nothing further of the Soviet
buildup or near crisis that it precipitated.
Christopher twice declined to discuss his
unusual mission when told AFJ was prepar-
ing an article on the mid-1980 Soviet
buildup north of Iran.
But that hitherto obscure paragraph in
Carter's memoirs clearly indicates that Rus-
sia's Transcaucasian buildup was of major
concern.
American Presidents don't dispatch the
Deputy Secretary of State to Europe to brief
allies on a Soviet military "exercise," as
Robert W. Ke mer,
Brown's Under Secre-
tary of Defense for
Policy, now charac-
terizes the "incident. "
(Although he recalls
being out of the coun-
try at the time and
says, "I knew nothing
of this," Komer adds,
"I would not be sur-
prised if the war plan-
ners told Brown they had 'no other option.'
because that is true. The Soviets did not go
on a war footing; they were having a big
exercise. I have no evidence to suggest that
we were 'on the brink.' None. But
remember, we'd lost Afghanistan; the res-
cue attempt had failed; and the Soviets were
organizing for something. So this was not a
normal time. We had never run into [an
exercise] like this in this area before.")
Briefings about exercises are routinely han-
dled through regular intelligence channels,
through US defense attaches posted abroad,
or, in more serious cases, by regional com-
manders-in-chief (in this case, General Ber-
nard W. Rogers, the Commander-in-Chief
of the US European Command and also
NATO's Supreme Allied Commander,
Europe).
On the other hand, the Soviets faced any-
thing but a cakewalk moving south through
western Iran. They would have to advance
across the Elburz mountains and then along
the slopes or over the spine of the Zagros
Mountains, 12,000 to 15,000 feet high. It is
one of the most uninviting, inhospitable
invasion routes on earth. A 600-mile attack
to the northern end of the Persian Gulf
entails hundreds of choke points-bridges,
defiles, rivers, and high mountain passes-
and translates to 1,000 tortuous miles on
the ground. There are only two roads south:
one roughly parallels the Turkish-Iraqi
border to Abadan at the northern tip of the
Persian Gulf; the other runs hundreds of
miles to the east through Tehran, Qom,
Esfahan, and then through Kerman and
back across the Zagros mountains to Ban-
dar Abbas on the northern bank of the Strait
of Hormuz, 500 miles farther south in the
Gulf. It is not the kind of terrain through
which armored and mechanized forces
move smartly. In some pI es, tank col-
umns have to emerge from defiles one tank
at a time.
The classic scenario for a Soviet invasion
of Iran involves about 20 to 25 divisions in a
three-pronged attack, one involving forces
from Turkestan moving southwest, with
two axes of advance south from the Trans-
100 Armed Forces JOURNAL Intemational/Sentember 1986
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/06/09: CIA-RDP90BO139OR000400540048-5
 Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/06/09: CIA-RDP90BO139OR000400540048-5
Caucasus, one west of the Zagros mountains
headed for the northern tip of the Gulf near
Abadan, the second aimed southeast at
south central Iran and then hooking back to
the southwest to seize the northern banks of
the Strait of Hormuz near Bandar Abbas.
The best defensive line for US forces
trying to stem a Soviet attack is far to the
north, before Soviet forces can debouch
into the plains near Tehran where two long
valleys Itiown as the Esfahan and Yazd cor-
ridors are fairly well suited as high speed
avenues of advance for armored forces, one
25 kilometers wide at its widest point,
another 100. Once there, the Soviets also
gain access to a number of airfields from
which their fighter-bombers can support
operations in the Gulf itself, which is vir-
tually beyond range of aircraft operating
from Transcaucasia. 17 (It is 1,807 kilo-
meters from Yerevan to Bandar Abbas, and
the combat radius of a MiG-23 is about
1.150 kin, only 800 km for a MiG-27.)
But to reach those corridors, Soviet units
have to negotiate cruel terrain where their
approach is canalized by narrow defiles.
(The formidable obstacles in that terrain are
evident in that the highest peak in Iran lies
between the Caspian Sea and Tehran; it is
18,371 feet high.)
As one of Carter's White House assistants
described that terrain, "Great tac nuke tar-
gets, don't you think?" Thus, the earlier the
US responded to a Soviet invasion, and the
farther north, the better the prospects of
stopping it.
One of Brown's military options was to
insert small special operations units that
could parachute into the Zagros mountain
passes and block those defiles or blow the
bridges with special explosives. But, plan-
ners told him, such operations were
unlikely to stem a determined Soviet invas-
ion. First, Soviet airborne forces could leap-
frog the choke points, which in any case
could be cleared unless defended by sub-
stantial forces. (As Admiral William J.
Crowe, Jr., today's JCS Chairman, testified
early last month before the Senate Subcom-
mittee on Sea Power and Force Projection,
special operations forces "are not designed
to hold ground, to fight toe to toe with
conventional forces, or to take objectives
defended by conventional forces. They are
too lightly armed for such tactics. ") Thus,
special operations teams would serve only
as "trip wires" triggering a more credible
display of American force's-and, under
the circumstances, tactical nuclear weap-
ons were the only alternative Brown had.
Second, public opinion might become so
outraged upon learning that American
troops had been sacrificed on "no win, one
way" missions that the outcry would fore-
close support for more meaningful inter-
vention by conventional forces. Third, the
US had no basesinthe region from which to
insert such team-or from which tactical
aircraft might operate to try to knock out the
same bridges or close the same defiles with
conventional weapons.
Yet, Brown must have realized, any delay
in responding to a Soviet attack could prove
"politically paralytic," forestalling any
further options he might develop. 19
Opinions at the time and recollections
now differ on whether Brown and US war
planners were discussing a hypothetical
possibility or the real prospect of having to
use small-yield nuclear weapons delivered
by tactical aircraft. But one senior officer
says emphatically: "It wasn't just 'another,
great big manuever. 'They were loading up;
they were going to come. That was not just
an exercise that we divined wrong. The
Soviets don't exercise like that; nobody
does. They were getting ready to go--what-
ever the considerations were that caused
them to undo that decision, and it may have
been our resolve and the signaling that was
going on. This was no accident that the
Soviets backed down."
Thus, minutes of the Joint Chiefs' meet-
ing with Brown make it clear that, had the
Soviets moved south, they could have
seized Iran's oil fields and denied the free
world oil supplied through the Strait of Hor-
muz unless Carter and Brown, who between
them comprised the National Command
Authority that has to approve the use of
tactical nuclear weapons, authorized their
employment.
M
Retired Air Force
General Charles A.
Gabriel, who had just
become Commander-
in-Chief of US Air
Forces in Europe as
the Soviet buildup
reached its peak.
recalls the time: "We
didn't have the lift, and
we couldn't get the
forces to the right
place at the right time. We didn't have them
organized to go into the Zagros mountains.
Special forces or special operations teams
and F-I I is-that was about it."
Gabriel told AFJ in 1986, "We tin
USAFE] were aware of the buildup, but our
crews were not alerted. We weren't that
close to a 'crisis,' but it was serious, that's
true. "
The Army C'hief of
Staff then was General
E.C. "Shy" Meyer.
He too emphasizes
that the Joint Chiefs
discussed, but did not
recommend, the use of
nuclear weapons. But
he acknowledges that
had the Soviet forces
moved south
"It was
,
Meyer a very serious alter-
native that we would have had to address.
There just were no other alternatives. The
majority of the intelligence community feT
So n was ssr le. eyer told
AFJ he could not reca a point in history
when the US had such limited options."
Since taking office, President Carter and
his advisers had grown increasingly con-
cerned about the energy crisis and the pos-
sibility of a Soviet incursion into the Persian
Gulf.
In April of 1977, for instance, soon after
Carter entered the Oval Office, the Central
Intelligence Agency had predicted that
"world oil production would peak as early
as 1978 and then fall sharply, forcing the
USSR and Eastern Europe to become net
importers by 1985. "
This assessment,
according to Air Force
Lt. Gen. Eugene F.
Tighe, Jr., who was
Director of the
Defense Intelligence
Agency between 1977
and 1981, "was lead-
ing some to believe
that the USSR would
take military action to
gain access to Persian Gulf oil re-
sources. "20
About 60% of the free world's oil came
from the Persian Gulf at the time (compared
with about 26% today), and most of it had to
be shipped through the narrow Strait of
Hormuz. The US in 1980 depended upon
the Gulf states for almost a third of its oil,
compared with only 4% today.
By the fall of 1979, the CIA's Director of
Economic Research, Max Ernst, had re-
ported that communist nations as a group
were shifting from being net exporters of oil
to net importers. Early in 1980. one energy
analyst wrote in an exhaustive, unclassified
analysis, "The West is approaching a
serious energy crisis and there are growing
prospects of superpower competition over
oil. "21 By that summer, other experts who
monitored world energy supplies were say-
ing that for the first time in recent history,
the rate of increase in Soviet oil production
had dropped to zero in May of 1980; that the
USSR had been forced to make serious cuts
in its planned net exports of oil in the first
six months of 1980; and that the Soviets
were experiencing serious exploration
problems in their key fields.
A Carter Administration assessment at
the time, called National Energy Plan II,
also projected serious cuts in the amount of
energy available from nuclear power and
coal in the US and warned there were no
additional oil supplies to import except at
the direct expense of America's allies.
OPEC had raised its prices 60% in
mid-1979, and the economic aftershocks
were devastating. Carter called for the US to
respond to the energy crisis with the "moral
equivalent of war. " By mid-1980, his book
notes, he had made his "fifth nationwide
address about energy. "
Persian Gulf oil had become a critical
point of Western vulnerability, a jugular
vein that, Brown's war planners told him in
August of 1980, Soviet forces might be able
to sever within 10 days to two weeks, and
possibly sooner.
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/06/09: CIA-RDP90BO139OR000400540048-5
 Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/06/09: CIA-RDP90BO139OR000400540048-5
By the time of that buildup, Carter had
seen Iran fall to the Ayatollah Khomeini in
January of 1979; the American Embassy in
Tehran seized for two days in February
while Ambassador William Sullivan and
his staff were held hostage after two Marine
guards were wounded; the Turkish govern-
ment refuse entry to a small US helicopter
force deployed to rescue or evacuate
Embassy personnel; the American ambas-
sador in Kabul murdered on his very door-
step; the US Embassy in Tehran fall again in
November of 1979, its personnel eventually
to be held hostage for 444 days; the Soviet
Union invade Afghanistan on December
27th, 1979, the first time since World War
11 that Russian troops had been sent into
combat outside of Soviet borders; and
America's crack counterterrorist team,
Delta Force, forced to abort its rescue effort
in mid-point at Desert One in April of 1980
when a nation spending $200-billion a year
on defense ended up short one helicopter.
Carter's National Security Adviser. Zbig-
view Brzezinski, had labeled the region
from Turkey through
the Middle East and
into the Persian Gulf
back up into
Afghanistan an "Arc
of Crisis" in which the
US was ill-prepared to
influence events.
Earlier in that
period, in February of
1979, Carter had suf-
fered the ultimate dip-
(During Brown's flight from Washington
to Saudi Arabia, a "senior defense official"
aboard his plane had stressed to reporters
invited to accompany him on the historic
trip that the Secretary was making the trip to
"articulate American resolve" to protect
its interests and its allies in the region.
Brown bristled in silence when one of the
reporters asked him what he was planning
to do to "demonstrate" that resolve, having
heard that Carter had just ordered an aircraft
carrier sent from the Philippines into the
Indian Ocean to turn back as it was transit-
ing the Java Sea. Brown replied werkly that
aircraft carriers were useful only iri certain
situations and that the US needed to hold
them in readiness for contingencies else-
where. He was not amused when AFJ asked
him "What are you saving them for-a
parade up the Hudson River?")22
Saudi Arabia, apparently, had observed
that the United States of America did not
have a single aircraft carrier within striking
distance of Tehran or the holy city of Qom
at the very time when its recent bulwark in
the region-Iran-was under siege and
lomatic indignity: the King of Saudi Arabia
had declined to receive the US Defense
Secretary after Carter had dispatched
Brown to the Middle East for the first visit
ever made there by an incumbent of that
office. Brown had been sent in part to
deliver a personal message to the King from
Jimmy Carter.
The King, his ministers explained to
Brown after he arrived in Riyadh, was
unavailable because he was in the desert
playing with his falcons.
How Vital Is Vial
Depends on When It's Vital
urrng the August 1980 meeting at which the nuclear
option was discussed at such length, Brown objected five
DI more times to use of the word "vital" to characterize
the Importance of Persian Gulf oil to American national security
interests, notes taken during the meeting show. But in the 1983
book he wrote after leaving the Pentagon, Thinki"n"g About
National Security, Brown uses the word "vital" at least five times
to emphasize its importance to the US and its allies.
The Johns Hopkins Foreign Policy Instlt
school o/Advenced IntersetMer Sbpdi"
Mr. Benjamin F. Schemmer
Editor
Armed Forces Journal International
Suite 104
1414 22nd Street, NW
Washington, DC 20037-1098
Thanks for sending me the advance version of your
screenplay. It is certainly one of your more imaginative
efforts. I particularly like your idea of footnoting your-
2_lZ as an authoritative source.
The Gulf in a region where political instability, Soviet
propinquity and interest, U.S. geographical remoteness, and
allied energy dependence combine to make the regional military
balance difficult for the West. (Surely one of your informants
can give you a 1986 version of your 'Persian Gulf Force Mismatch'
chart). And such a situation always sharpens the issue of
possible use of nuclear weapons.
But the events you purport to describe don't ring a bell
with me -- though they have some small overlap with reality. As
I read your article, moreover, your description doesn't seem to
jibe with the recollections of any former civilian or military
official whom you quote by name.
Harold Brown
"Tbe Europeans and the Japanese," he wrot , ` have
the choice of managing without Persian Gol ,, wed
cutoff of oil from the Persian Gulf would be re called
that prospect a "nightmare" for the United
States and "a mortal blow to ... the indus-
trialized democracies. "
In that book, Brown's discussion of possi-
ble future contingencies in the region reads as
if he is reliving his own nightmare i
What is the overall military balance nn
United States.... It is doubtful that the 1 rapidly
deployable to a Zagros mountain line asl1 ...tit least
the late 1980s could hold back a de grate
This means that at least for a time the 'see less
military risk in an adventure in Southwest te.
And the prize would be nearly as grev4% of
Persian Gulf oil would make it possible to Western
Nevertheless, Brown wrote, the prospect otf 4` Soviet mili-
tary actions along these lines are low." With Oki, t be pro-
phetic reflection on his 1980 war plans said,
"Some have argued that Persian Gulf oil is Iothe
industrialized democracies that the Soviet
by that very fact from a military move to
that a Western response could in one tjtay er food to
thermonuclear ?v." (Emphasis added.) a
Perhaps that was Brown's way of ackne `,
~ pars
later to his 1980 war planners, "I didn't
you were right: that oil is vital, and we
However, after being asked to comment
article (which was considerably mom I
was closer to using nuclear weapons
conveys), Brown wrote AFJ calling ;
e
eventsA
weapons," l n said tth
~
`
with they have some
is reproduced ben in full to let AFJ
(See pie 1,04 for the more current,
which Dr. Rwwn suggested we include
Europe and Japan. -
102 Armed Forces JOURNAL IntemationatSeptember 1986
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/06/09: CIA-RDP90BO139OR000400540048-5
 Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/06/09: CIA-RDP90BO139OR000400540048-5
sovereign US soil, the American Embassy
in Tehran, overrun by a hand of uncon-
trolled revolutionaries.
Nor, apparently, did the Soviet Union fail
to notice the gap between rhetoric and
resources -for the clandestine war footing
that became evident north of Iran in August
of 1980 could not have happened without
months of advance planning and debate in
the highest councils of Moscow's Politburo.
As it was to Saudi Arabia in February of
1979, it must have been evident to Moscow
that US policy in the Persian Gulf was bank-
rupt: There was nothing there to back it
up---short of nuclear weapons.
No Forces, No Bases
By August, the US had deployed two
aircraft carriers into the Indian Ocean. But
the Soviets had also reinforced their own
naval task force there.
While the US had announced that it
would form a Rapid Deployment Joint Task
Force to protect its interests-and its allies'
interests--in the region, all that existed
were a plan, a newly formed headquarters
7,0(X) miles away at MacDill AFB in Flor-
ida, and some budget proposals which Con-
gress had yet to fund. There was no
How Does the US Stand Today?
I n August of 1986, the US Central
Command finished its biennial Gal-
lant Eagle exercise on the West
Coast of the US. Marine Corps General
George B. Crist, the CENTCOM Com-
mandet-in-Chief, told reporters, "The
Soviets now not
only possess the
desire to expand
into the Indian
Ocean, but they
have established
the military cap-
ability to do so as
well." According
to a report of his
press conference in
the Baltimore Sun
(CENTCOM did not make a transcript),
Crist added, "I really could give them a
hell of a fight, but if he wants to pay the
price, I expect he could push me out."
Today the US Central Command, the
successor to Carter's Rapid Deployment
Joint Task Force, has about five Army
and Marine Corps divisions plus seven
Air Force tactical fighter wings and
three Navy carrier battle groups-over
230,000 men in all-earmarked for
Southwest Asia contingencies. In Janu-
ary of 1982 the US launched a multi-
billion-dollar investment to build 50
more of the huge C-5 transports, and to
complete initiatives Carter and Brown
Persian Gulf Force Ratios
1987
had launched to lengthen the C-141's
fuselage to carry about 33% more cargo
and make it in-flight refuelable and to
buy a fleet of 44 KC-10 tanker/cargo
aircraft. As a result, the US today has a
strategic airlift capacity of roughly 45-
millon ton miles per day, but that is still
far short of the 102-million ton miles a
day thought to be needed to thwart a
Soviet invasion of Iran. The US has
almost completed the Carter initiative to
preposition on ships berthed at Diego
Garcia with enough equipment,
ammunition, water, and fuel for a divi-
sion-size Marine amphibious force
geared for Persian Gulf crises. One such
ship holds about 220 times the cargo a
single C-5 ean.carry and over 500 times
the equipment a C-141 can move; 17 of
the vessels are now at anchor in the
Indian Ocean. By sea from the US, other
forces would still have to travel 8,000
miles through the Suez Canal or 12,000
miles around the Cape of Good Hope,
trips that take from 11 to 31 days,
depending on what kind of ships are
used, once they are ready to sail.
Notwithstanding that significant
improvement in readiness for Persian
Gulf contingencies-most of it a result
of what the Carter Administration set in
motion in 1980 once the Shah was gone
and it became clear that Iran was a bas-
ket case-many former and present gov-
ernment officials question (as Jody
Powell wrote AFJ, after reading a draft
of this article), "that we could now stop
a major Soviet offensive in that area
without the use of nukes." As he put it,
the increases in conventional
capabilities "certainly improve our
options in less serious scenarios. . .but
if the Russkies come down in full force, I
get the definite impression that these
extra troops will amount to little more
than a larger tripwire, "
The force mismatch still extant is
illustrated here in this 1980 Carter
Administration estimate of 1987 force
ratios, which Harold Brown suggested
in his letter on page 102 that AFJ print
with this article. 0 * a
American military force on Diego Garcia.
as there is today just plans to store Marine
equipment afloat there-3,000 miles from
Transcaucasia. There was no American mil-
itary base in the Gulf or equipment preposi-
tioned there.
(Even today, the US Central Command's
"forward headquarters" is at sea on a con-
verted amphibious transport ship that has
limited visiting privileges at ports in the
Persian Gulf region.)
Some years later, General Robert C.
Kingston, the first Commander-in-Chief of
US Central Command, viewed the 1980
crisis this way:
Well, in 1980, had the President of the
United States directed the military to
send a sizable force to the Middle East to
protect Iran and block the Russians.
nobody, at that time, could have told you
where the force would come from, what
the force would consist of, how long it
would take them to get there, how they
would get there, the sequence, how they
would be sustained, and who would he
in command.23
In mid-1984, he
was able to say, "I can
answer all those ques-
tions now."
But in 1980, the
Joint Chiefs of Staff
were still debating
what forces could be
assigned to the
RDJTF's operational
Amer-
control should Amer-
Kingston
ica need to deploy
forces in the Persian Gulf, since virtually all
units stationed in the US were already com-
mitted to reinforcing NATO.
Even if the US had had forces in August
of 1980 that it could deploy to counter the
Persian Gulf crisis, it had no place to posi-
tion them-no "staging area" within credi-
ble striking distance of Transcaucasia. Me-
dium-range Navy A-6 bombers launched
from carriers in the Indian Ocean would
have had to refuel in mid-air two or three
times over hostile Iranian air space to drop a
tactical nuclear weapon on any of the geo-
graphic choke points along the likely Soviet
invasion route in western Iran.
Jody Powell, Car-
ter's press secretary
and so close a confi-
dant that Carter had
him sit in on briefings
leading up to the April
1980 Iranian rescue
mission, said in 1986,
"I remember the inci-
dent vaguely. Yes.
there was concern, a
good bit of concern.
But I never sat in on a meeting where spe-
cific responses were discussed. Then it just
sort of went away.
"But it was certainly clear that you would
have to consider the use of tac ntkes.
"There was a lot of discussion about put-
ting ground forces into Iran. The debate I
104 Armed Forces JOURNAL Internationa/September 1986
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/06/09: CIA-RDP90BO139OR000400540048-5
 Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/06/09: CIA-RDP90BO139OR000400540048-5
recall was, 'If you put them in, you're likely
to lost; then: putt 'em in to draw a line, a
quickly Positioned trip wire' [versus]
tbfea*4Ag the use of tac nukes
make the Sov' ;bak off?"
Powell recalled, however, that "late in
1979, we saw m beginning to do things
in Afghanistan. The consensus was,
'They're not going to invade.' Thus, in 1980
we weren't going to make the same mistake
twice. "
Powell said also, "I never kept notes [at
such meetings], but I recall there were some
choke points discussed, and some of the
better ones are fairly far north, and you have
to act early"
The Missing Airfields
Nor, Brown's war planners advised him
in the critical hours of that crisis, was the
US in any position to covertly land special
operations forces within reasonable strik-
ing distance of the Soviet invasion forces,
should they move south. There just were not
any airfields near enough. Or so the war
planners thought when they briefed Brown.
As it turned out, there were at least two
such airfields available, ones from which
the US might have been able to insert spe-
cial operations teams by C-130 transports.
The CIA and the Pentagon didn't know
about them, nor were they listed on the Joint
Chiefs of Staff annually updated master list
that's supposed to show every airfield
worldwide longer than 3,000 feet and thus
able to handle C-130 tactical assault trans-
ports or, in grave emergencies, even a nu-
clear-armed F-I11.
Boeing's Commercial Airplane Com-
pany had recently sent an expert team to
survey the oil pipeline linking Aramco's
vast oil fields near Dhahran with port facili-
ties along the Persian Gulf to the east and
the Mediterranean to the northwest. Along
that fragile I ,000-mile artery are about 20
small airfields, constructed by Aramco to
provide inspection, maintenance, and repair
teams quick access to the pumping stations
which dot the pipeline. Two of the airfields,
the survey team had found out in the late
spring or early summer of 1980, had been
recently f:;nproved, their runways length-
ened to over 3,000 feet. Their runways and
turnaround areas had been strengthened to
the point that even a twin-engine Boeing
737 airliner could land and take off; so
could a heavily laden C-130 land there.
(The Royal Saudi Arabian Air Force had
bought and operated that very aircraft and
improved the airfields to handle them, as
well as some of the Aramco and the Saudi
Airlines' commercial 737s, "just in case"
of terrorist operations against the pipeline's
vulnerable pumping stations.)
Just as the Soviet buildup north of Iran
was peaking, David Axelson, an affable,
middle-management Boeing supervisor
working on military airlift projects,
received anoddphonecall asking him, on a
"trust me" basis, to fly across the country
that night and bring to Washington all of the
photographs, maps, and soil test results
which Boeing survey teams had made a few
weeks earlier along the Aramco pipeline-
but to tell "no one" at Boeing about the trip.
The next morning, the bleary victim of a
cross-country "red-eye" flight was hustled
into the Pentagon, introduced to a major
general and about six war planners, their
specific jobs unbeknownst to him, and
asked to discourse on everything he knew
about recently improved airfields in Saudi
Arabia (or others anywhere else in the Per-
sian Gulf area). The session lasted about an
hour, according to one of those present,
after which Axelson was told by the two-
star general that he had done his Nation a
"great service," etcetera.
For some reason not obvious
from news reports then,
the US desperately needed
a few remote airfields.
Barely had the somewhat bewildered
Axelson checked into a hotel for some
badly needed sleep when he was called and
asked to meet with yet another two-star
general from another Service and go
through the same "briefing" with still more
war planners. Although their jobs hadn't
been told him, Axelson had "broken the
code" by then-discerning that, for some
reason certainly not obvious from recent
news reports, the United States of America
desperately needed a few remote airfields
near the Persian Gulf that very Icw people
knew existed.
As events would unfold, Jimmy Carter
didn't need them. The nuclear war America
had to think about unleashing, didn't hap-
pen. Whether or not Jimmy Carter and
Harold Brown would have launched it. may
never be known. But the record is clear that
their military advisers urged them to he
ready to use tactical nuclear weapons to
protect "vital" American interests in a
region that six years ago was the free
world's jugular vein ready to he slit wide
open.
And, many believe, the threat is almost as
precarious today. ^ =r ^
In research for this article, six war
planners, all general or flag officers
involved in the 1980 PersianGulf "inci-
dent," were asked: "Has the United
States ever been closer to using nuclear
weapons, that you know of?" Three of
them answered, in effect, but in almost
the same terms, "Not on my watch," or
"Not that I know of, " ^ * ^
1 Jimmy Carter, Keeping Faith: Memoirs o/a
President, Bantam Books, 1982.
2Department of Defense Annual Report.
Fiscal Year 1981, January 29, 1980.
]Carter, op. cit.
4John M. Collins, (IS-Soviet Military Red
once. 1980-1985, Pergamon-Brasscv',,
1985. Also, Soviet Military Power, US
Department of Defense, editions of 1981,
1982, 1983, 1984, and 1985.
5Soviet Military Power, 1981.
6 "Soviet Order of Battle," Defense Elec-
tronics, January 1982.
7Department of Defense Annual Report,
Fiscal Year 1980, January 25, 1979.
8Organization of Petroleum Exporting
Countries: at that time, Saudi Arabia, Iran,
Iraq, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait,
Qatar, Venezuela, Libya, Indonesia, Algeria,
Nigeria, Gabon, and Ecuador.
9DoD Annual Report, FY81.
10Lt. Col. George M. Brooke, 111, USMC,
and Lt. Col. Frederick McCorkie, USMC,
"Rapid Response Force Option," Ainphibi-
ous Warfare Review, Summer 1986.
"Jeffrey Record, "US Strategic Airlift:
Requirements and Capabilities," Institute
for Foreign Policy Analysis, Inc., January
1986.
12 DOD Annual Report, FY80.
13Harold Brown, Thinking About National
Security: Defense and Foreign Policy in a
Dangerous World, Westview Press, 1983.
14DoD Annual Report, FY81.
1-"John H. Collins, "What Have We Got for
$1 Trillion'!" The Washington Quarterly,
Spring 1986.
16Carter, op. cit.
""C-17 Southwest Asia Combat Utility
Study" (Revised), McDonnell Douglas Air-
craft Company, 1985.
"Such sucidal operations were anathema to
the military, however. As General Robert C.
Kingston, then Commander-in-Chief of US
Central Command, would put it in a 1984
AFJ interview, "I don't want to be a party to
what I call 'throw-away' teams. These mis-
sions will be selected with great care on sur-
vivability. Can the Icam survive:' Does it have
to go on a survival status immediately upon
hitting the ground'? Obviously, if they're in
for a destruction mission, the enemy will
eventually know that they've been there... .
You've got to watch out for the Spetsnaz
[Soviet special operations forces], which
will precede any invasion or any Soviet move
into the IPersian Gulfl area."
"Rodney W. Jones, cd., Small Nuclear
Forces and US Securit Policy. Lexington
Books, 1984.
't'he term "politically paralytic" does not
appear in minutes of Brown's August 1980
meeting with his war planners but is aptly
used in a treatise (published in this reference)
by Anthony H. Cordesman on Persian Gulf
contigency options.
211Lt. Gen. Eugene F Tighe, Jr., ""[he DIA Is
as Good as the CIA,- 771e Washington Post,
February 22, 1986.
21 Bridget Gail (pseudonym), "The World
Oil Crisis and US Powcr Projection Policy:
The Threat Becomes a Grim Reality," Armed
Forces Journal International, January 1980.
22 Benjamin F. Schemmer, "Harold Brown's
Mideast Odyssey," Armed Forces Journal
International, April 1979.
23LuAnne K. Leven', and Benjamin F.
Schemmer, "An Exclusive AFJ Interview
with General Robert C. Kingston, USA,
Commander-in-Chief. I IS Central Com-
mand," Armed Gin-, es Journal Interna-
tional, July 1984.
* UPUBettman Newsphoto.
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/06/09: CIA-RDP90BO139OR000400540048-5