Free The Pentagon's Brain by Annie Jacobsen Page B

scenario would become a staple of post-apocalyptic fiction, films, and video games. But in 1958 this was the first and only known official document of its kind. Out in Santa Monica, RAND analysts regularly gamed out first-and second-strike scenarios as war games, which Air Force officials would then use to persuade Congress to allocate more funds for the Strategic Air Command. But “The Emergency Plans Book” was not a “what if”; it was a “here’s when.” It was doctrine. An official reference manual.
    It was also not a report that could be ignored. “The Emergency Plans Book” was sent to the highest-ranking defense officials in each of the military services, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the director of ARPA, the secretary of defense, each of the assistant secretaries of defense, and the director of the National Security Agency. In a cover letter, the director of the Office of Emergency Planninginstructed recipients to submit changes or indicate they had none. As for Herb York, when faced with this portrait of extreme cataclysm, the ARPA director did not lose sight of the agency’s mission to prevent strategic surprise. Submitting or not submitting notes to the Office of Emergency Planning was, for York, a moot point.
    Herb York had another plan in play, a seemingly preposterous idea that was already several years in the making. What if ARPA could create a defensive shield over the entire United States and stop incoming Soviet ICBMs in their tracks? York believed it could be done on account of a theory that had been proposed to him by an eccentric, brilliant, and obscure scientist named Nicholas Christofilos. As York later explained, Christofilos believed it was possible to create “an Astro-dome like defensive shield made up of high-energy electrons trapped in the earth’s magnetic field just above the atmosphere.” It sounded ludicrous. Something straight out of a Marvel comic book. But York thought it just might work.
    Which is why, in the summer of 1958, Herb York gathered together a group of the nation’s top scientists and had them briefed on this radical, classified idea. York wanted to know what the top men of science thought of what he called the “Christofilos effect.” The top secret program had already been given the go-ahead by the president of the United States. In March 1958 York met with Eisenhower and personally briefed him on plans for an ARPA operation to test the Christofilos effect. By summer, the idea was no longer just an idea but ARPA’s first full-scale operation. The top secret, restricted data, limited distribution Operation Order 7-58 went by the cover name Project Floral. Its real name, which was classified, was Operation Argus—for the mythological giant with one hundred eyes.
    On July 14, 1958, with top secret clearances in place, twenty-two defense scientists gathered at the National War College at Fort McNair in Washington, D.C., with the goal of producing “ARPAStudy No. 1.” The gathering went by its own code name, Project 137. Its purpose, explained York, was “to identify problems not now receiving adequate attention” in the national security domain.
    “Fort McNair was a delightful place to work,” remembered Marvin “Murph” Goldberger, one of the Project 137 scientists. The facility was one of the oldest Army posts in the nation and one of the most genteel. Each morning the scientists gathered in Roosevelt Hall, a grand neoclassical building of red brick with granite trim overlooking the Potomac. There they listened to Defense Department officials deliver briefings on America’s “defense problems selected for their urgency.” Then the scientists gathered in groups to discuss what had been said and brainstorm science-based solutions. Afternoons were spent writing. In the early evening, everyone would dine together, in the War College mess hall, and discuss Soviet threats. They were dealing with a total of sixty-eight national security problems and programs,